He took the knife: biblical narrative and the formation of rabbinic law
The legal theorist and classicist James Boyd White argues for an understanding of law as a rhetorical activity through which meaning and communities are created. While law contains rules, its definition should not be limited to those rules. Rather, law is a literary and compositional activity, one o...
| Published in: | AJS review |
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| Subtitles: | Research Article |
| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
University of Pennsylvania Press
[2010]
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| In: |
AJS review
Year: 2010, Volume: 34, Issue: 1, Pages: 65-90 |
| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
Bible
/ Story
/ Rabbinic literature
/ Jewish law
/ Relationship
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| RelBib Classification: | BH Judaism |
| Further subjects: | B
Sacrifices
B Narratives B Passover B Redaction B Rabbis B Talmud B Jewish rituals B Jewish Law B Normativity |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (kostenfrei) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | The legal theorist and classicist James Boyd White argues for an understanding of law as a rhetorical activity through which meaning and communities are created. While law contains rules, its definition should not be limited to those rules. Rather, law is a literary and compositional activity, one of our social modes through which we aim to constitute community. Significantly, for White, law is a cultural activity, a language, one of the ways in which we shape and give meaning to our world. The written records of classical rabbinic culture, the Talmuds and the midrashim, present us with an example of this world in which law is a cultural and rhetorical mode of expression. In fact, as these texts, and the Talmuds in particular, usually do not present us with codified rules but rather artfully construed discussions, models of “thinking” about a particular legal decision, they are excellent examples of the ways in which the creation of law is the creation of meaning. Classical rabbinic literature presents us with a textual world of law and narrative, a weaving of one genre into the other, and a use of one genre in the service of the other. Rabbinic texts often inform us precisely which stories the rabbis choose to utilize for specific norms. Law does not exist in its own bordered realm, but is part of a larger web of meaning in which it and narrative together create behavioral claims. A claim to legal authority, therefore, is not only a claim about which stories are authoritative, but also a claim to a specific understanding of a tradition, a move toward narratival authority. |
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| ISSN: | 1475-4541 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Association for Jewish Studies, AJS review
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1017/S0364009410000012 |