The festival calendars in the Pentateuch have made up the heart of critical biblical research from the beginning. Each of the calendars was thought to have taken shape against its own specific historical background and to accurately reflect a distinct stage in the development of Israel's cultic and social institutions. Classical hypotheses used them to distinguish the different legal codes in the Pentateuch from each other, to define the original compositions, and to arrange them relative to each other in an historical, chronological sequence. Shimon Gesundheit challenges the classical historical reconstructions and the methodology driving them. He presents an alternate point of view, according to which the festival laws do not simplistically reflect the specific cultic or social realities of actual historical periods. Rather, through their legal discourse, they shape and promote new ideas by textual revision and redaction, in the lemmatic style of midrash, and they represent a process of progressive literary development.
The Biblical View of Man argues cogently that the Bible is more about human beings than about God and insists that, in the biblical view, what human beings need is not so much wisdom or grace but rather their own free will to fulfill the obligations that a loving God has bestowed upon them in order to allow them to prove and improve themselves. According to Rabbi Leo Adler, the exercise of such free will, rather than implying a lack of need for God, actually requires a firm commitment to God. First published in German in 1965, this engaging interpretation of the Bible appears in English for the first time.
The festival calendars in the Pentateuch have made up the heart of critical biblical research from the beginning. Each of the calendars was thought to have taken shape against its own specific historical background and to accurately reflect a distinct stage in the development of Israel's cultic and social institutions. Classical hypotheses used them to distinguish the different legal codes in the Pentateuch from each other, to define the original compositions, and to arrange them relative to each other in an historical, chronological sequence. Shimon Gesundheit challenges the classical historical reconstructions and the methodology driving them. He presents an alternate point of view, according to which the festival laws do not simplistically reflect the specific cultic or social realities of actual historical periods. Rather, through their legal discourse, they shape and promote new ideas by textual revision and redaction, in the lemmatic style of midrash, and they represent a process of progressive literary development.
The Biblical View of Man argues cogently that the Bible is more about human beings than about God and insists that, in the biblical view, what human beings need is not so much wisdom or grace but rather their own free will to fulfill the obligations that a loving God has bestowed upon them in order to allow them to prove and improve themselves. According to Rabbi Leo Adler, the exercise of such free will, rather than implying a lack of need for God, actually requires a firm commitment to God. First published in German in 1965, this engaging interpretation of the Bible appears in English for the first time.
This will help us customize your experience to showcase the most relevant content to your age group
Please select from below
Login
Not registered?
Sign up
Already registered?
Success – Your message will goes here
We'd love to hear from you!
Thank you for visiting our website. Would you like to provide feedback on how we could improve your experience?
This site does not use any third party cookies with one exception — it uses cookies from Google to deliver its services and to analyze traffic.Learn More.