Closed Book
About This Book
Scholars often portray early Judaism as a faith built on close study of a single, fixed scripture, a culture of learning organized around one canonical text. Rebecca Scharbach Wollenberg challenges that picture, arguing that Jews did not really take the biblical text to heart until roughly a thousand years after it had been canonized. The book focuses on the centuries in between, when rabbis rarely consulted a Bible and many remained wary of treating its words as a source of sacred knowledge. In their place, early Jewish thinkers embraced a form of biblical revelation that has largely disappeared from religious practice today. Wollenberg shows that these rabbinic authorities imagined a third category of revelation, positioned between the written Torah of Scripture and the oral Torah of the rabbis. In this view, memorized spoken formulas drawn from the biblical tradition constituted a distinct version of the revelation. Passed from mouth to mouth rather than confined to written pages, this living recitation was thought to bear a fuller and more authentic witness to the revelation at Sinai. This allowed the rabbis to draw on the authority of biblical revelation while keeping the text itself at a distance from everyday communal life. The result is a reconsideration of the Jewish people as a community of the book, examined at a time before the book held that central place.
ISBN: 9780691243306
You might also like
Unlock Exclusive Content
Experience the hidden layers of 'Closed Book'. Scan the book cover with the Appilog mobile app to see behind-the-scenes videos, author reviews, and interactive digital stories.
Available on iOS & Android
