Michal Bar-Asher Siegal – författare

Stories portraying heretics ('minim') in rabbinic literature are a central site of rabbinic engagement with the 'other'. These stories typically involve a conflict over the interpretation of a biblical verse in which the rabbinic figure emerges victorious in the face of a challenge presented by the heretic. In this book, Michal Bar-Asher Siegal focuses on heretic narratives of the Babylonian Talmud that share a common literary structure, strong polemical language and the formula, 'Fool, look to the end of the verse'. She marshals previously untapped Christian materials to arrive at new interpretations of familiar texts and illuminate the complex relationship between Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity. Bar-Asher Siegal argues that these Talmudic literary creations must be seen as part of a boundary-creating discourse that clearly distinguishes the rabbinic position from that of contemporaneous Christians and adds to a growing understanding of the rabbinic authors' familiarity with Christian traditions.

This book examines literary analogies in Christian and Jewish sources, culminating in an in-depth analysis of striking parallels and connections between Christian monastic texts (the Apophthegmata Patrum or 'The Sayings of the Desert Fathers') and Babylonian Talmudic traditions. The importance of the monastic movement in the Persian Empire, during the time of the composition and redaction of the Babylonian Talmud, fostered a literary connection between the two religious populations. The shared literary elements in the literatures of these two elite religious communities sheds new light on the surprisingly inclusive nature of the Talmudic corpora and on the non-polemical nature of elite Jewish-Christian literary relations in late antique Persia.

Stories portraying heretics ('minim') in rabbinic literature are a central site of rabbinic engagement with the 'other'. These stories typically involve a conflict over the interpretation of a biblical verse in which the rabbinic figure emerges victorious in the face of a challenge presented by the heretic. In this book, Michal Bar-Asher Siegal focuses on heretic narratives of the Babylonian Talmud that share a common literary structure, strong polemical language and the formula, 'Fool, look to the end of the verse'. She marshals previously untapped Christian materials to arrive at new interpretations of familiar texts and illuminate the complex relationship between Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity. Bar-Asher Siegal argues that these Talmudic literary creations must be seen as part of a boundary-creating discourse that clearly distinguishes the rabbinic position from that of contemporaneous Christians and adds to a growing understanding of the rabbinic authors' familiarity with Christian traditions.

Der vorliegende Sammelband untersucht literarische Darstellungen von "Anderen", das heißt Personen und Gruppen, die nicht dem eigenen religiösen und/oder ethnischen Kontext zugerechnet werden können, innerhalb des antiken Judentums und Christentums. In welcher Art und Weise werden diese Anderen präsentiert und welchen Anliegen dient die Auseinandersetzung mit ihnen? Dieser Band achtet dabei besonders auf die methodologischen Herausforderungen in der Auswertung des vielgestaltigen historischen Quellenmaterials und trägt so zu einem vertieften Verständnis der Beziehungen zwischen unterschiedlichen religiösen Gruppierungen in der Antike bei.

Der vorliegende Band versammelt Beiträge renommierter internationaler Wissenschaftler, die im akademischen Dialog mit dem Werk von Albert Baumgarten stehen. Sie kontextualisieren antike jüdische Texte, um die Antike im Allgemeinen zu beleuchten und befassen sich mit Texten aus der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft, des hellenistischen Judentums, der Sekten zur Zeit des Zweiten Tempels, der rabbinischen Literatur und verschiedener Facetten des frühen Christentums. Darüber hinaus beschäftigen sich einige Artikel mit vergleichender Religionswissenschaft, Wissenssoziologie, Anthropologie und Wirtschaftsgeschichte. Zusammengenommen bilden die Artikel in diesem Band eine eingehende Analyse der Sozialgeschichte der Juden in der Antike.

This volume is a festschrift in honor of Steven Fraade, the Mark Taper Professor of the History of Judaism at Yale University. The contributions to the volume, written by colleagues and former students of Professor Fraade, reflect many of his scholarly interests. The scholarly credentials of the contributors are exceedingly high. The volume is divided into three sections, one on Second Temple literature and its afterlife, a second on rabbinic literature and rabbinic history, and a third on prayer and the ancient synagogue. Contributors are Alan Applebaum, Joshua Burns, Elizabeth Shanks Alexander, Chaya Halberstam, John J. Collins, Marc Bregman, Aharon Shemesh, Ishay Rosen-Zvi, Vered Noam, Robert Brody, Albert Baumgarten, Marc Hirshman, Moshe Bar-Asher, Aaron Amit, Yose Yahalom, Lee Levine, Jan Joosten, Daniel Boyarin, Charlotte Hempel, David Stern, Beth Berkowitz, Azzan Yadin, Joshua Levinson, Elitzur Bar-Asher Siegal, Michal Bar-Asher Siegal, Tzvi Novick, Devora Diamant, Richard Kalmin, Carol Bakhos, Judith Hauptman, Jeff Rubenstein, Martha Himmelfarb, Stuart Miller, Esther Chazon, James Kugel, Chaim Milikowsky, Maren Niehoff, Peter Schaefer, and Adiel Schremer.