Hanan Eshel – författare

This volume contains the proceedings of the conference entitled "Halakhah in Light of Epigraphy" held on 29 May 2008 under the auspices of the David and Jemima Jeselsohn Center for Epigraphy at Bar-Ilan University. Epigraphic finds, here interpreted broadly to include papyri, scrolls, and the like, have immeasurably enriched our knowledge of the ancient Jewish past while at the same time posing a challenge to modern scholarship: how does one integrate old knowledge, based on previously known sources, with new information? We now recognize that Rabbinic texts are normative: they tell us how their authors believed life should be lived, rather than the details of ordinary, everyday, experience. What weight, then, should be given to traditional halakhic texts in evaluating the contents of newly discovered written remains? And what light can be shed by these new finds, especially those inscriptions and documents that record small moments of ancient Jewish life, upon the long-familiar normative texts? The conference on "Halakhah in Light of Epigraphy" was intended to generate discussion on these broad issues, as well as to provide a forum for exploration of specific matters of halakhah reflected in the epigraphic sources. The papers in this volume tend to emphasize the centrality of halakhah in ancient Judaism.

The eighteen essays in this collection were chosen by Prof. Hanan Eshel (1958–2010) shortly before his untimely death, to serve as a legacy of his rich contributions to Dead Sea Scrolls scholarship, particularly in the integration of archaeological and textual analysis.The Qumran texts that stand at the center of these articles are correlated with archaeological and geographic information and with a variety of textual sources including epigraphic evidence.The book includes essays that have been co-authored with Esther Eshel, Shlomit Kendi-Harel, Zeev Safrai, and John Strugnell.