Collected Essays: v. 2

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Haym Soloveitchik
Keyword(s):  
Jewish History ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Northern Europe ◽  
Work Of Art ◽  
Babylonian Talmud ◽  
Islam And Christianity ◽  
Comprehensive Study

This book grapples with much-disputed topics in medieval Jewish history and takes issue with a number of reigning views. The book provides a searching analysis of oft-cited halakhic texts of Ashkenaz, frequently with conclusions that differ from the current consensus. Part I questions the scholarly consensus that the roots of Ashkenaz lie deep in Palestinian soil. It challenges the widespread notion that it was immemorial custom that primarily governed Early Ashkenaz. It similarly rejects the theory that it was only towards the middle of the eleventh century that the Babylonian Talmud came to be regarded as fully authoritative. It is shown that the scholars of Early Ashkenaz displayed an astonishing command of the complex corpus of the Babylonian Talmud and viewed it at all times as the touchstone of the permissible and the forbidden. The section concludes with a radical proposal as to the source of Ashkenazi culture and the stamp it left upon the Jews of northern Europe for close to a millennium. Part II treats the issue of martyrdom as perceived and practised by Jews under Islam and Christianity. It claims that Maimonides' problematic Iggeret ha-Shemad is a work of rhetoric, not halakhah. This is followed by a comprehensive study of kiddush ha-shem in Ashkenaz. The book concludes with two chapters on Mishneh torah, which argue that that famed code must also be viewed as a work of art which sustains, as masterpieces do, multiple conflicting interpretations.

The ‘Our Talmud’ Tradition and the Predilection for Works of Applied Law in Early Sephardi Rabbinic Culture

2018 ◽  
pp. 123-146
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Literary Theory ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Northern Europe ◽  
Babylonian Talmud ◽  
Jewish Communities ◽  
Legal Decisions ◽  
Influential Theory

This chapter links a Sephardi tradition about the written Talmud to an influential theory in medieval Arabic literary theory and practice. It reviews the text of the Babylonian Talmud that played significantly different roles in the Jewish communities of Ashkenaz and Sepharad, which is the most visible and enduring of the rabbinic subcultures that emerged in the Middle Ages. It also cites Ashkenazi scholars of northern Europe who placed the study of the Talmud at the centre of the rabbinic curriculum, while their counterparts in North Africa and al-Andalus studied eleventh-century talmudic commentaries. The chapter reviews talmudic commentaries by R. Nisim, R. Hananel, and R. Isaac Alfasi that relayed applied legal decisions. It examines how Sephardim relied less on Talmud than on works of decided law, whether these were expressed in commentaries, geonic responsa, or legal digests.

Ezekiel in the Jewish Tradition

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yedida Eisenstat
Keyword(s):  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Jewish Tradition ◽  
Northern Europe ◽  
History Of

After a brief survey of early rabbinic ambivalence toward this controversial prophetic book and its use in synagogue liturgy, this chapter traces the history of rabbinic interpretation of the repetition of “I said to you, ‘Through your blood, live’” in Ezek 16:6. The midrashic tradition ascribes redemptive power to these “two bloods”—of circumcision and of the paschal lamb. This chapter argues that the “bloods” of the verse become metonyms for all of the commandments through which Jews realize their covenant with God. Both blood and circumcision (or lack thereof) were weighty symbols for Christians, too; so as Jews migrated into Christendom in larger numbers in the eleventh century, they had to address Christianity’s competing claims to the same covenant. The addition of this verse to the Jews’ circumcision liturgy upon their arrival in northern Europe can be explained in light of these shared symbols.

Tradition and Vision

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Moulie Vidas
Keyword(s):  
Jewish History ◽  
Active Part ◽  
Babylonian Talmud ◽  
Jewish Culture ◽  
Torah Study ◽  
Alternative Vision

This chapter considers Hekhalot literature to show that the Sar ha-Torah narrative from this corpus responds to the Talmudic academies‘ ideology of Torah study, presenting an alternative vision for Jewish culture in which retention and recitation are central rather than marginalized. It argues that this response correlates with other Hekhalot texts that recruit powerful images such as heavenly vision, transformation, and angelic liturgy to the project of memorizing and reciting the Oral Torah. It also contends that there is some evidence that the individuals whom the Babylonian Talmud marks as its opponents—the tanna'im—had a role in the shaping of Hekhalot traditions. Finally, the chapter suggests, based on the fact that the Hekhalot texts enter Jewish history as texts transmitted by Babylonian reciters, as well as on other connections between the tanna'im and Hekhalot texts, that the Babylonian reciters took active part in the shaping of Hekhalot traditions.

Reception

2020 ◽  
pp. 305-335
Author(s):  
Howard Hotson
Keyword(s):  
Northern Europe ◽  
East Central ◽  
The Third ◽  
Three Stages ◽  
Comprehensive Study

A comprehensive study of the reception of the post-Ramist tradition within central, east-central and northern Europe is a topic too large and amorphous for treatment in the space available here. Instead, the third section of this book deals with the more limited topic. Between the relatively modest and successful project of developing textbooks for teaching a revised philosophia novantiqua (Part I) and the hugely ambitious pursuit of universal reformation via pansophia and pampaedia (Part II) lay the intermediate aim of overhauling Alsted’s Encyclopaedia on the basis of the intellectual developments of mid-century. This chapter introduces that topic in three stages. The first provides a brief reminder of the scope and structure of Alsted’s culminating work (section 9.i). The second surveys its avid reception at every Latinate level of society throughout the Reformed world and beyond it (section 9.ii). The third discusses some of the objections to the work which helped provoke efforts to revise it (section 9.iii).

A New Approach to the Apocryphal Ladder of Jacob

2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 171-181
Author(s):  
Christfried Böttrich
Keyword(s):  
Critical Edition ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
New Approach ◽  
German Translation ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Christian Literature ◽  
Mutual Relations ◽  
Comprehensive Study

For a long time the apocryphal Ladder of Jacob was accessible only in arbitrarily selected translations. Without a critical edition and a comprehensive study of the whole textual segment, scholars were unable to evaluate its significance for Early Jewish and Christian literature. Since 2015/17, with the publication of a new critical edition and German translation (accompanied by a detailed introduction, footnote commentaries and appendices with related texts), a new approach to this important but hitherto widely unknown text has been made possible. This approach verifies the different layers or strata in the text, which are: a supposed Jewish apocalypse (mid-second century), a Christian expansion of the angels speech in light of the praeparatio evangelica tradition (fourth–seventh centuries), a Jewish mystical prayer (eleventh century) and the incorporation of this narrative block into the Tolkovaja Paleja together with a series of exegetical commentaries (end of the thirteenth century). In the light of the new approach, it can be said that the Ladder of Jacob is most of all an outstanding example of mutual relations between Jewish and Christian theology.

scholarly journals The Making of Nordic Monasticism, c. 1076–c. 1350

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (8) ◽  
pp. 581
Author(s):  
James G. Clark
Keyword(s):  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Religious Life ◽  
Northern Europe ◽  
Economic Power ◽  
Original Writings ◽  
Archaeological Research ◽  
Ruling Elite ◽  
Nordic Region ◽  
Stable Community

The introduction of regular religious life in the Nordic region is less well-documented than in the neighbouring kingdoms of northern Europe. In the absence of well-preserved manuscript and material remains, unfounded and sometimes distorting suppositions have been made about the timeline of monastic settlement and the character of the conventual life it brought. Recent archival and archaeological research can offer fresh insights into these questions. The arrival of authentic regular life may have been as early as the second quarter of the eleventh century in Denmark and Iceland, but there was no secure or stable community in any part of Scandinavia until the turn of the next century. A settled monastic network arose from a compact between the leadership of the secular church and the ruling elite, a partnership motivated as much by the shared pursuit of political, social and economic power as by any personal piety. Yet, the force of this patronal programme did not inhibit the development of monastic cultures reflected in books, original writings, church and conventual buildings, which bear comparison with the European mainstream.

Constructions of Christian Identity in the Northern Periphery: the Sawley World Map in Twelfth-Century England

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
MIHAI DRAGNEA
Keyword(s):  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Early History ◽  
Northern Europe ◽  
Christian Identity ◽  
Complex Relationship ◽  
Specific Context ◽  
History Writing ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Greco Roman

An exploration of the complex relationship between Christian constructions of identity and the idea of sacrality derived from the ancient Greco-Roman world, this article argues that Christian identity developed uniquely in a specific context, often intertwined with theology and mythology. The complex relationship between the two was crucial in the construction of Christian identity in the lands recently converted, and influenced the authors of world maps from the eleventh century onward. This study investigates how the pagan past and Christian present were incorporated in some world maps, such as the twelfth-century English Sawley map. Thus it offers readers a coherent analysis of early history-writing in northern Europe in the first centuries after conversion.

scholarly journals St. Symeon the New Theologian and Western Dissident Movements

2012 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 137-144
Author(s):  
Bernard Hamilton ◽  
Janet Hamilton
Keyword(s):  
Eleventh Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Northern Europe ◽  
Religious Dissent ◽  
Corporate Worship ◽  
Spiritual Director ◽  
Strong Resemblance ◽  
Byzantine Church ◽  
Institutional Church ◽  
Vision Of God

The trial at Orleans in 1022 of a group of aristocratic clergy, who included the confessor of Queen Constance of France, and their followers on the charge of heresy is the most fully reported among the group of heresy trials which were conducted in the Western Church during the first half of the eleventh century. Although the alleged heretics of Orleans are usually considered a part of a wider pattern of Western religious dissent, the charges brought against them differ considerably from those levelled against the other groups brought to trial in that period. The heterodox beliefs with which the canons of Orleans were charged bear a strong resemblance to the teachings of the Byzantine abbot, St. Symeon the New Theologian, who died in 1022. St. Symeon taught that it was possible for a Christian to experience the vision of God in this life if he or she received ascetic guidance from a spiritual director, who need not be a priest. In the late tenth and early eleventh centuries a significant number of Orthodox monks visited northern Europe, including Orleans, and some of them settled there. It is therefore possible that the Canons of Orleans who were put on trial had been trained in the tradition of St. Symeon by one of those Orthodox monks who were familiar with it. St. Symeon was part of the Hesychast tradition in the Byzantine Church. Even so, his emphasis on the supremacy of personal religious experience at the expense of the corporate worship of the institutional Church was strongly criticised by some of his contemporaries. A study of his writings shows that he was, in fact, completely Orthodox in faith and practice and that these criticisms were ill-judged. Nevertheless, if, as we have suggested, the Canons of Orleans had tried to live in accordance with his teachings, the hostile reactions of the Western hierarchy would be comprehensible. For there was no tradition of Hesychasm in the spirituality of the Western Church, and the fact that the dissidents at Orleans saw little value in observing the rituals of the established Church would have alarmed conventional churchmen.

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