Halakhah in Light of Epigraphy

Edited by Albert I. Baumgarten, Hanan Eshel, Ranon Katzoff & Shani Tzoref.

14 contributions by Moshe Benovitz, Vered Noam, Eyal Regev, Lawrence H. Schiffman, Aharon Shemesh, Hanan Eshel, Steven D. Fraade, Shamma Friedman, David Goodblatt, Yonatan Adler, Chaim Ben David, Tal Ilan, Ze'ev Safrai, Chana Safrai and Guy D. Stiebel; organized in three chapters: 1. Halakhah and the Scrolls from Qumran; 2. Halakhah and Quotidian Documents from the Judean Desert; 3. Halakhah and Epigraphic Sources. - Epigraphic finds, here interpreted broadly to include papyri, scrolls, and the like, have immeasurably enriched our knowledge of the ancient Jewish past while at the same time posing a challenge to modern scholarship: how does one integrate old knowledge, based on previously known sources, with new information? We now recognize that Rabbinic texts are normative: they tell us how their authors believed life should be lived, rather than the details of ordinary, everyday, experience. What weight, then, should be given to traditional halakhic texts in evaluating the contents of newly discovered written remains? And what light can be shed by these new finds, especially those inscriptions and documents that record small moments of ancient Jewish life, upon the long-familiar normative texts? The conference on "Halakhah in Light of Epigraphy" was intended to generate discussion on these broad issues, as well as to provide a forum for exploration of specific matters of halakhah reflected in the epigraphic sources. The papers in this volume tend to emphasize the centrality of halakhah in ancient Judaism. Proceedings of a conference at Bar-Ilan University, May 2008. 303 Seiten mit 16 Abb., gebunden (JAJ.S - Journal of Ancient Judaism. Supplements; Vol. 3/Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 2011) leichte Lagerspuren/minor shelfwear