Migrating tales: the Talmud's narratives and their historical context (original) (raw)

Richard Kalmin, Migrating Tales: The Talmud’s Narratives in Their Historical Context. Journal of Religion 96.3 (2016), 409-411

cepts. Briefly alluding to negative theology as "an ongoing ritual of unsaying," he quotes Foucault referring to himself as a "negative theoretician" (121) in order to emphasize that Foucault does not offer theories of power or the subject, but rather a historical analytics of power's operation with respect to the objects it brings into being. This astute observation frames Foucault's entire corpus as an ethical exercise of self-writing, a succession of efforts to think himself otherwise, and, in a Kierkegaardian gesture, to harness, confound, and redirect the reader's desire "to another way of conceiving the self " (151). Foucault's turn to the ancient world comes into focus not as an enterprise of recovering lost origins, but as an ethical attempt to write across thresholds of alterity , an effort to unmake oneself so as "to become again," in a Nietzschean turn of phrase, "what one never was" (173).

Ancient Fiction: the Matrix of Early Christian and Jewish Narrative ? Edited by JoAnn Brant, Charles W. Hedrick, and Chris Shea

Religious Studies Review, 2007

Pp. 332, appendices. $135.00, ISBN 0-567-02592-6. Gmirkin proposes a new theory concerning the date of the composition of the Pentateuch that focuses upon the parallels between the Babylonian mythological materials preserved by the priest Berossus (ca. 278 BCE) and the Genesis stories, and the Egyptian historical and mythological materials preserved by the priest Manetho (ca. 285-80 BCE) and the accounts in Exodus. Because these materials closely accord with the earliest level of the biblical accounts, he proposes that the translation of the Pentateuch into Greek, the Septuagint, in 273-72 BCE in Alexandria was actually the first time that the text was written down as a whole. In presenting this hypothesis, Gmirkin summarizes archeological, epigraphic and literary evidence that would weaken the basis for the documentary hypothesis (or JEPD theory). He proposes that the biblical narratives should be seen in the light of the events of the third century BCE, primarily those of Alexander and his immediate successors.

Old Testament Story: an introduction (updates)

2004

Among the enduring joys of learning are those who share the journey. Year after year, there are students, who share their willingness to learn. They come, they question and they learn, and so do I. My own teacher, Rolf P. Knierim (Claremont Graduate University) taught me what his teacher-Gerhard von Rad (Heidelberg University)-had taught him, and so much more. Rolf's own passion for the text made it clear that biblical studies was not only good work, it was exciting work. His commitment to carefully crafting the exegesis of a text, as well as to appreciating what these texts contributed to the theology of the Bible, taught me that the measure of biblical scholarship was not only that it made sense, but that it also made a difference. Victor H. Matthews (Southwest Missouri State University), my long-time friend and writing colleague, made the sometimes elusive goal of collaboration a reality and introduced me to a whole new way of learning and writing.