Midrash And Multiplicity: Pirke De-Rabbi Eliezer And The Renewal Of Rabbinic Interpretive Culture

Book Summary

Pirke de-Rabbi Eliezer represents a late development in ""midrash"", or classical rabbinic interpretation, that has enlightened, intrigued and frustrated scholars of Jewish culture for the past two centuries. Pirke de-Rabbi Eliezer´s challenge to scholarship includes such issues as the work´s authorship and authenticity, an asymmetrical literary structure as well as its ambiguous relationship with a variety of rabbinic, Islamic and Hellenistic works of interpretation. This cluster of issues has contributed to the confusion about the work´s structure, origins and identity. Midrash and Multiplicity addresses the problems raised by this equivocal work, and uses Pirke de-Rabbi Eliezer in order to assess the nature of ""midrash"", and the renewal of Jewish interpretive culture, during its transition to the medieval era of the early ""Geonim"".

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