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2 results

  • Chapter 10 - ‘I Will Be Who I Will Be’ (Exod. 3:14)

  • Edited by Corinne Bonnet, Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa
  • Translated by Ralph Häussler
  • Preface by Ian Rutherford, University of Reading
  • Book:
    The Names of the Gods in Ancient Mediterranean Religions
    Published online:
    23 February 2024
    Print publication:
    07 March 2024, pp 189-206

  • Summary

    This chapter copes with the challenge of portraying a divinity which is supposed to be nameless and imageless, and evoked by ‘abstract’ notions such as the ‘God’, the ‘Lord’, the ‘Name’ or even the ‘Place’. The bans on pronouncing his name and depicting his image are two faces of the same coin: to explore in a new and unpredictable way his identity. Starting from the role played by names in ancient Near Eastern traditions and in the Hebrew Bible, this chapter explores the onomastic puzzle of the biblical god, who holds many names, but whose name YHWH is the only one regarded as a proper name and revealed by himself to Moses. Such a central and enigmatic name is interpreted as a promise of presence and assistance to the people god chose on earth (Israel). The onomastic connection between YHWH and the Jews never ceased to strike external observers and produced many misunderstandings, and even mystifications, in the history of the research of the biblical divine names.

  • 35 - Torah in rabbinic thought: the theology of learning

    • By Marc Hirshman, The Melton Center of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
  • Edited by Steven T. Katz, Boston University
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of Judaism
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    22 June 2006, pp 899-924

  • Summary

    Rabbinic literature is a complex anthology of more than half a millennium of Jewish thought, stretching from the sparse statements of the last two centuries BCE to the ample oeuvre of the first five centuries of the Common Era. This chapter selects the most powerful expressions of various rabbinic positions on the meaning and significance of the Torah and Torah study, culled from the classical period of rabbinic literature. These sources will be amplified by selections from contemporaneous Graeco-Roman and Christian literature on the one hand and by modern critical scholarship on the other. One can imagine that the struggle with the Church over the correct interpretation of Scripture led the Rabbis to emphasize the status of the oral law. The Torah, oral and written, was God's word, and closeness to God could be measured not simply by obedience to God's word but by constant recitation and study of the word.