1st Edition
Ancient Bible Interpretation and its Legacies Politics, Literature, and Heresy
Contents
Foreword by John A. Hall
Acknowledgements
Introduction
PART I: Jewish origins: from the ancient Near East to the Roman empire
1. After Eden: midrashic antecedents in the Hebrew Bible
2. Talmudic midrash and the Graeco-Roman empire: from Herod to Judah Hanasi
3. Ancient Bible interpretation and politics: leaders and national disaster
4. Early Christian anti-Judaism and midrashic polemics
5. Midrash and Jewish education in the early Roman empire
6. Major themes in Bible interpretation
7. Economic factors in ancient midrash
8. The Bible, exile and Kabbalah
9. Nationalism and midrashic visions of Zion
PART II: Secular societies and homiletic traditions
10. Monarchic crisis and poet-priests: aspects of the English homiletic tradition
11. English dissenters and the Bible: Bunyan, Defoe, and Blake
12. Bible interpretation, Wordsworth and the ‘holy poor’
13. Bialik, Aggadah and Jewish nationalism
14. Midrash, the Hebrew revival, and anti-Semitism, 1881-1948
15. Midrash and early 20th century culture
16. The Bible for atheists: Orwell, Steinbeck, Carlo Levi
17. The Bible in literature of developing countries
18. Midrash and environmental moral dilemmas
Bibliography
Index
Biography
David Aberbach is Emeritus Professor of Hebrew and Comparative Studies at McGill University, Montreal. He has written widely on Jewish literature from the Bible to the present day. His books include: The European Jews, Patriotism and the Liberal State; Nationalism, War, and Jewish Education; and The Hebrew Bible, Nationalism and the Origins of Anti-Judaism.
