“In the west, they laughed at him:” The mocking realists of the Babylonian Talmud
In the present article I examine the rhetorical function of the phrase “in the west [the Land of Israel], they laughed at him/it” found in dialectical halakhic contexts in the Babylonian Talmud. I argue that the literary motif of “mocking westerners” allows Babylonian rabbinic authors/redactors to v...
| Auteur principal: | |
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| Type de support: | Électronique Article |
| Langue: | Anglais |
| Vérifier la disponibilité: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | En cours de chargement...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Publié: |
Brill
2013
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| Dans: |
Journal of law, religion and state
Année: 2013, Volume: 2, Numéro: 2, Pages: 137-167 |
| Sujets non-standardisés: | B
Realism
nominalism
interpretation
reflexivity
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| Accès en ligne: |
Volltext (Verlag) |
| Résumé: | In the present article I examine the rhetorical function of the phrase “in the west [the Land of Israel], they laughed at him/it” found in dialectical halakhic contexts in the Babylonian Talmud. I argue that the literary motif of “mocking westerners” allows Babylonian rabbinic authors/redactors to voice reservations about the nominalist or anti-realist orientation of some rabbinic legal interpretation as seen in the use of legal fictions, contrary-to-fact presumptions and judgments, a high degree of intentionalism, and acontextual interpretive techniques. The ability of Babylonian rabbinic authors/redactors to depict the rabbis’ nominalist approach as the object of mockery by various external and, in this case, internal others indicates a high degree of rabbinic self-awareness regarding legal interpretative assumptions and methods. The paper concludes by suggesting that rabbinic nominalism flows from a distinctive and somewhat scandalous rabbinic understanding of divine law—one that self-consciously rejects an ideal of divine law that assumes its truth and verisimilitude. |
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| ISSN: | 2212-4810 |
| Contient: | In: Journal of law, religion and state
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1163/22124810-00202002 |