Gunter Stemberger's revision of H. L. Strack's classic introduction to rabbinic literature, which appeared in its first English edition in 1991, was widely acclaimed. Gunter Stemberger and Markus Bockmuehl have now produced this updated edition, which is a significant revision (completed in 1996) of the 1991 volume. Following Strack's original outline, Stemberger discusses first the historical framework, the basic principles of rabbinic literature and hermeneutics and the most important Rabbis. The main part of the book is devoted to the Talmudic and Midrashic literature in the light of contemporary rabbinic research. The appendix includes a new section on electronic resources for the study of the Talmud and Midrash. The result is a comprehensive work of reference that no student of rabbinics can afford to be without.

This theological commentary to the Rabbinic Midrash explores a simple proposition, in three parts. I. The reading of Scripture by principal parts of the Rabbinic Midrash is formed by compositions and composites that are animated by a cogent theological system. II. These primary components of the Midrash-compilations, further, are in part aimed at systematic demonstrations of theorems of a theological character. III. While forming a principal part of a large theological structure and system, each document is unique. This commentary in its concluding chapter presents what is common to the animating theology of Rabbinic Judaism in all its documentary components and what is unique to Song of Songs Rabbah.

Printed editions of midrashim, rabbinic expositions of the Bible, flooded the market for Hebrew books in the sixteenth century. First published by Iberian immigrants to the Ottoman Empire, they were later reprinted in large numbers at the famous Hebrew presses of Venice. This study seeks to shed light on who read these new books and how they did so by turning to the many commentaries on midrash written during the sixteenth century. These innovative works reveal how their authors studied rabbinic Bible interpretation and how they anticipated their readers would do so. Benjamin WIlliams focuses particularly on the work of Abraham ben Asher of Safed, the Or ha-Sekhel (Venice, 1567), an elucidation of midrash Genesis Rabba which contains both the author's own interpretations and also the commentary he mistakenly attributed to the most celebrated medieval commentator Rashi. Williams examines what is known of Abraham ben Asher's life, his place among the Jewish scholars of Safed, and the publication of his book in Venice. By analysing selected passages of his commentary, this study assesses how he shed light on rabbinic interpretation of Genesis and guided readers to correct interpretations of the words of the sages. A consideration of why Abraham ben Asher published a commentary attributed to Rashi shows that he sought to lend authority to his programme of studying midrash by including interpretations ascribed to the most famous commentator alongside his own. By analysing the production and reception of the Or ha-Sekhel, therefore, this work illuminates the popularity of midrash in the early modern period and the origins of a practice which is now well-established-the study of rabbinic Bible interpretation with the guidance of commentaries.

The Midrash: An Introduction sets forth the way in which Judaism reads the Hebrew Bible. In this masterful presentation, the reader is introduced to the classics of Jewish Bible interpretation, with special attention to the way in which the ribbis of Talmudic times read the Pentateuch, the Book of Ruth, and Song of Songs. The seven Midrash compilations are introduced with a lucid account of their main points, accompanied by selections that give the reader a direct encounter, in English, with the Bible as Judaism understands it. The word midrash, based on the Hebrew root DaRaSH (“search”), means “interpretation” or “exegesis.” Midrash also more formally refers to the compilations of such interpretations of Scripture. As Dr. Jacob Neusner explains, these compilations “reached closure and conclusion in the formative stage of Judaism, that is, the first seven centuries of the Common Era, the time in which the Mishnah (ca. 200), Talmud of the Land of Israel (ca. 400), and Talmud of Babylonia (ca. 600) were written.” Midrash is not so much about Scripture as it is a subordinate part of Scripture: “They did not write about Scripture,” Dr. Neusner says. “They wrote with Scripture … much as painters paint with a palette of colors.” The Midrash: An Introduction is the second volume in Dr. Jacob Neusner’s series of introductory volumes on classical rabbinic literature. As with the first volume – The Mishnah: An Introduction – this book offers the layperson a concise description of the religious literature and, drawing on Dr. Neusner’s own translations of the texts, walks readers through the selections, providing them with firsthand experience with the document itself. As Dr. Neusner says in his preface to The Midrash: An Introduction, “In these pages I mean to make it possible for readers to know one such compilation from the other and so to begin studying their own.”

Images of Nebuchadnezzar attempts to probe the diversity of cultural attitudes reflected in the characterizations of this famous king through an examination of both the original cuneiform sources as well as the accounts of chronographers written in Greek, Roman, and medieval times. Included in this revised and expanded second edition are two new chapters that examine both Nebuchadnezzar's administrative policies and the impact that his death had on both contemporary and later cultures. Both the positive and negative images of the king are explored, with conclusions being developed as to what the authors of the various surviving accounts actually thought the king really was. In the process, the whole nature of historiography in the ancient world is analyzed, and a number of broad conclusions are developed. Anyone who has ever read Second Kings or the books of Daniel and Jeremiah of the Old Testament is familiar with the name of Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon who conquered the kingdom of Judah and destroyed Solomon's temple. As the second member of the Chaldean dynasty of Mesopotamia (626-539 B.C.), he ruled for forty-three years (605-562 B.C.), during which time he also led military campaigns into Syria and Lebanon. He also organized a number of building projects that were to transform Babylon into one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. Among his noteworthy achievements were the construction of massive fortification walls around Babylon, the refurbishing of Marduk's temple in the city, and the building of huge palaces that served as the king's residences. Tales of these legendary achievements, as well as those of his father, Nabopolassar (626-605 B.C.), also found their way into the narratives of a number of Greek, Roman, and medieval historians and chronographers many centuries later. Unfortunately, much of the record of Nebuchadnezzar's achievements that was written in his own time has not survived. Instead, only secondary accounts of his military campaigns or his construction projects in Babylon written in Greek, Latin, Hebrew, or Arabic are available for analysis. These stories vary greatly in content and emphasis and, in many cases, distort much of what we know from Nebuchadnezzar's own sources. The Hebrews, for example, described Nebuchadnezzar's siege of Jerusalem in such a way as to consider it something that should never again be repeated. The Greeks, on the other hand, saw the building projects in Babylon as evidence of almost superhuman achievements, as monuments that were the result of efforts by a king who was almost godlike. Why, then, is there such diversity in the characterizations of Nebuchadnezzar? This book proposes answers to these questions.

The author states in his preface: For a thousand years, from its earliest documents of the second century to the High Middle Ages, Rabbinic Judaism preferred to compose and collect anecdotes, not to construct of them sustained and connected biographies. This is a study of the inclusion of biographical narratives about sages in some of the components of the unfolding canon of Rabbinic Judaism in the formative age, the documents of the first six centuries C.E., exclusive of the two Talmuds. A sage here is defined as a man who embodies the Rabbinic system. A sage-story, then, is an anecdote about the life and deeds of a Rabbinic sage. A biographical narrative in general is the record of things done on a concrete and specific past-tense occasion by named individuals. The stories are not told as part of a sustained biographical account of those individuals' lives, birth to death. I am able in this way to correlate the unfolding of the authorized biography in the counterpart-Christian one. The documentary hypothesis yields the correlation between the advent of the Christian authorized biography and the advent of the sage-story in the later documents of the Rabbinic canon.