Legal Fictions: Studies of Law and Narrative in the Discursive Worlds of Ancient Jewish Sectarians and Sages (Supplement to the Journal for the Study of Judaism 147)

Ancient Jewish writings combine interpretive narratives of Israel’s sacred history with legal prescriptions for a divinely ordered way of life. Two ancient Jewish societies have left us extensive textual corpora preserving interpenetrating legal and narrative interpretive teachings: the sectarian community of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the sage-disciple circles of the early Rabbis. This book comprises studies that explore specific aspects of the interplay of interpretative, narrative, and legal rhetoric with an eye to pedagogic function and social formation for each of these communities and for both of them in comparison. It addresses questions of how best to approach these writings for purposes of historical retrieval and reconstruction by recognizing the inseparability of literary-rhetorical textual analysis and a non-reductive historiography.

Steven D. Fraade, Ph.D. (1980) in Near Eastern Studies, University of Pennsylvania, is the Mark Taper Professor of the History of Judaism at Yale University, in the Department of Religious Studies and the Program in Judaic Studies. He is a former Guggenheim Fellow and the author of From Tradition to Commentary, winner of the 1992 National Jewish Book Award in the category of Scholarship.