What is Good, and What God Demands. Normative Structures in Tannaitic Literature.

Novick, Tzvi

ISBN 10: 9004187588 / ISBN 13: 9789004187580

Published by Brill Academic Publishers, Leiden & Boston, 2010., 2010

About this Item

Octavo (250 x 170 mm), publisher's full cloth with publisher's illustrated dustjacket, xii, 248 pp., a well preserved copy. [JSJS - Supplements to the Journal for the study of Judaism; 144]. - ISBN: 9789004187580. - [00B | SOD | oR ] 600 g.

Seller Inventory # 000034

Bibliographic Details

• Title: What is Good, and What God Demands. Normative Structures in Tannaitic Literature.
• Publisher: Brill Academic Publishers, Leiden & Boston, 2010.
• Publication Date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 9004187588
• ISBN 13: 9789004187580
• Binding: Hardcover
• Weight: 600 grams
• Seller catalogs:
  • JUDAICA, JUDENTUM - judaica, judaism

About this title

Synopsis

The normative rhetoric of tannaitic literature (the earliest extant corpus of rabbinic Judaism) is predominantly deontological. Prior scholarship on rabbinic supererogation, and on points of contact with Greco-Roman virtue discourse, has identified non-deontological aspects of tannaitic normativity. However, these two frameworks overlook precisely the productive intersection of deontological with non-deontological, the first because supererogation defines itself against obligation, and the second because the Greco-Roman comparate discourages serious treatment of law-like elements. This book addresses ways in which alternative normative forms entwine with the core deontological rhetoric of tannaitic literature. This perspective exposes, inter alia, echoes of the post-biblical wisdom tradition in tannaitic law, the rich polyvalence of the category mitzvah, and telling differences between the schools of Akiva and Ishmael.

About the Author

Tzvi Novick, Ph.D. (2008) in Religious Studies, Yale University, occupies the Jordan Kapson Chair in Jewish Studies at the University of Notre Dame. He has published on a wide variety of topics in rabbinic and Second Temple literature.