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  • 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.