The Rhetoric of Innovation: Self-Conscious Legal Change in Rabbinic Literature (Studies in Judaism)

Through critical examination of more than 1,000 occurrences of terms depicting legal innovation, this study maps the contours of legal change reported during the rabbinic period. The Rhetoric of Innovation examines temporal clusters of statements and actions attributed to authority figures in the Tannaitic and Amoraic periods, also reviewing the geographic distribution of these words and their divergent usages in documents edited in Roman Palestine and Babylonia.

Aaron D. Panken serves as Dean and Director of the Rabbinical Program at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York City, where he teaches Rabbinic and Second Temple Literature. Ordained at HUC-JIR, he earned his Ph.D. in Hebrew and Judaic Studies from New York University and teaches and speaks widely throughout North America and abroad.