Words of a Wise Man's Mouth are Gracious (Qoh 10, 12): Festschrift for Gunter Stemberger on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday

540 Pages·2005·17.609 MB·English

by  Mauro Perani (editor)

"THE WORDS OF Λ WISE MAN'S MOUTH
ARE GRACIOUS" (QOH 10,12)
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DE
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STUDIA JUDAICA
FORSCHUNGEN ZUR WISSENSCHAFT
DES JUDENTUMS
HERAUSGEGEBEN VON
E. L. EHRLICH
BAND XXXII
WALTER DE GRUYTER · BERLIN · NEW YORK
"THE WORDS OF A WISE MAN'S MOUTH
ARE GRACIOUS" (QOH 10,12)
FESTSCHRIFT FOR GÜNTER STEMBERGER
ON THE OCCASION OF HIS 65TH BIRTHDAY
EDITED BY
MAURO PERANI
WALTER DE GRUYTER · BERLIN · NEW YORK
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ISBN-13: 978-3-11-018849-3
ISBN-10: 3-11-018849-X
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Contents
Foreword by Mauro Perani IX
Preface von Kurt Schubert und Fritz Werner XIII
Peter Schäfer, A Brief Survey of Günter Stemberger's Scholarly Work XV
The Bibliography of Günter Stemberger (1972-2005) XIX
Transcription of Hebrew XXXIII
CHRISTOPH DOHMEN, Grenzen der Interpretation für die von Gott zur Ausle-
gung gegebene Torah ? 1
CHAIM MILIKOWSKY, Rabbinic Interpretation of the Bible in the Light of
Ancient Hermeneutical Practice 7
ARMIN LANGE, Authoritative Literature and Scripture in the Chronistic
Corpus 29
DANIEL BOYARIN, The Parables of Enoch and the Foundation of the Rabbinic
Sect: A Hypothesis 53
MARC PHILONENKO, Sur les expressions «elus de verite», «elus de justice» et
«Elu de justice et de fideliti». Contribution a Vetude du sociolecte esseno-
qoumränien 73
JACOB NEUSNER, How Important was the Destruction of the Second Temple in
the Formation of Rabbinic Judaism? Some Reconsiderations 77
ARYEH KASHER, Josephus in Praise of Mosaic Laws on Marriage (Contra
Apionem, II, 199-201) 95
JONATHAN J. PRICE, Some Aspects of Josephus' Theological Interpretation of
the Jewish War 109
LUCIO TROIANI, Strabone e la cosiddetta riforma ellenistica 121
CORRADO MARTONE, Verso un'edizione italiana dell'archivio di Babatha.
II Papiro Yadin 1: testo e traduzione 129
PlERO CAPELLI, The Outer and the Inner Devil. On Representing the Evil
One in Second Temple Judaism 139
WERNER ECK, Ehret den Kaiser. Bögen und Tore als Ehrenmonumente in der
Provinz Iudaea 153
MIRIAM PUCCI BEN ZEEV, Were the Jews Accused of Roasting their Enemies? ... 167
AHARON OPPENHEIMER, The Severan Emperors, Rabbi Judah ha-Nasi and the
Cities of Palestine 171
MIGUEL PEREZ FERNANDEZ, Sobre las funciones de la particula se- en Hebreo
Misnaico 183
VIII Contents
LEE I. LEVINE, Bet Se'arim in Its Patriarchal Context 197
OLGA RUIZ-MORELL, Elementes singulares en Tosefta Sabbat 227
GIUSEPPE VELTRI, Magic, Sex and Politics: The Media Power of Theatre
Amusements in the Mirror of Rabbinic Literature 243
DAVID M. GOLDENBERG, What Did Ham Do to Noah? 257
CATHERINE HEZSER, Towards the Study of Jewish Popular Culture in Roman
Palestine 267
CARLOS DEL VALLE RODRIGUEZ, Los primeros contactos de la Iglesia con el
Talmud: El significado de la deuterosis 299
Luis F. GIRON BLANC, Midras Qohelet: Un fragmento de la Genizah de El
Cairo 309
GOTTFRIED REEG, Die Ursache für die Bindung Isaaks: Wie lasen die Rabbinen
die Bibel? 319
JOHANN MAIER, Berechtigung und Grenzen der Notwehr und Selbstverteidi-
gung im jüdischen Recht 331
URSULA RAGACS, Hoffnung für die Zukunft: Feststellungen und Spekulationen
zum jüdischen Verständnis von Dtn 30,3 385
MAURO PERANI, Yosef Ben Sim'on Kara's Lost Commentary on the Psalms:
The Imola Fragment from the "Italian Genizah" 395
SAVERIO CAMPANINI, Talmud, Philosophy, and Kabbalah: A Passage from
Pico della Mirandola's Apologia and its Source 429
MICHAEL KRUPP, Der Anfang der Hisronot ha-Schass-Literatur: Christliche
Talmudzensur und ihre jüdische Überwindung 449
KURT SCHUBERT, Zionismus und jüdische Identität 463
PETER SCHÄFER, Judaistik und ihr Ort in der universitas litterarum heute:
Einige Überlegungen zum Fach Judaistik in Deutschland 475
Index 493
Foreword
by
MAURO PERANI
It was with great pleasure that I accepted to be the editor of this Festschrift in
honour of Günter Stemberger on the occasion of his 65th birthday. My personal
friendship with the honouree, dating back more than twenty years, has be-
come even stronger in recent times, because of the common interest in some
ancient Talmudic and midrashic manuscript fragments, which we studied as a
part of the "Italian Genizah" project and that we published together.
The Walter de Gruyter Verlag of Berlin, which sponsored the publication
of this Festschrift in the prestigious series "Studia Judaica", made sure together
with me that the studies included in this volume would have been those of the
most prominent experts in the field and that their contributions would have
been related to Stemberger's favourite research topics, that is to say, with the
development of Judaism from antiquity to modern times.
I have chosen the title of this volume from a passage of Qohelet 10,12a
which says: ]Π"Π3Π 'D '121, The words of a wise man's mouth are gracious. I think
that this verse best expresses the scholarship and the wisdom of Günter Stem-
berger, which are graceful not only for their deepness and mastership but also
for the clarity and humanity which this great scholar shows when he offers his
works to his pupils, to his friends and to the academic world. Delicacy and
grace are the main characteristics of the intelligent people who, after having at-
tained the knowledge of the ΓΠΠ03 Π03Π - according to the Kabbalistic mean-
ing attributed by the mystics to the word ]"Π as an acronym of "hidden wis-
dom" - became humble and simple, avoiding any arrogance and haughtiness.
In fact, Stemberger's style is full of simplicity and delicacy, really gracious, but
also marked by a rigorous, almost syllogistic, logic.
He has certainly fully deserved the honour that we want to pay to this
great and international scholar, whose personal career realises and embodies
best the old saying according to which the humble will be exalted.
The volume is opened by a preface written by Kurt Schubert and Fritz
Werner who outlined the most important phases of Stemberger biography and
scholarship.
I edited for this occasion the complete bibliography of Günter Stemberger
(1972-2005), masterfully commented by Peter Schäfer in his A Brief Survey of
Günter Stemberger's Scholarly Work.
χ Mauro Perani
The thirty articles included in this Festschrift have been arranged accord-
ing to the chronology of their topics and, following two essays concerning gen-
eral hermeneutical problems, they cover a wide variety of subjects, ranging
from the Biblical book of the Chronicles, through classical Antiquity, the Middle
Ages and the Modern Era, to the position and significance of Jewish Studies in
the universitas litterarum today.
The language of this volume is English, even though a significant number
of the contributions is written in one of the other main European languages.
The problem of preserving a homogeneous character to the book has been
solved, hopefully, by adopting a solution of compromise: an absolute confor-
mity would have been annoying in most cases. The articles originally being
written in five languages (English, German, Italian, French and Spanish), I
have agreed with Claus-Jürgen Thornton, editor in chief for Theology, Jewish
Studies and Religious Studies of the publishing house Walter de Gruyter, to
adopt the following conventions: for each language we have chosen a uniform
style of quoting Biblical passages; in the articles written in English we have referred
to SBL Handbook of Style for English language essays, Hendricksen, Peabody
(Mass.) 1999; in the articles written in German: S.M. Schwertner, Internationales
Abkürzungsverzeichnis für Theologie und Grenzgebiete, De Gruyter, 2. Aufl., Berlin
1992; for the Italian articles: La Bibbia di Gerusalemme, Edizioni Dehoniane Bo-
logna, Bologna 1974 (with a few exceptions); for the French articles: La Bible de
Jirusalem, nouvelle edition, Paris, Editions du Cerf, 1973 and, finally, for the
Spanish articles: J. Trebolle, La Biblia judia y la Biblia Cristiana, Trotta, Madrid,
3a edition, 1998. As far as the reference to chapters and verses of Biblical, rab-
binical and other texts concerns, we decided to use the comma and not the co-
lon. For reference to rabbinical sources we have adopted the system used by
the "Jewish Quarterly Review".
As far as the transcription of Hebrew words and sentences is concerned, I
could only come up with an intermediate solution: every time that a Hebrew
text, either Biblical or rabbinical, is transliterated, I followed a system of tran-
scription in which the length of the vowels is not rendered, nor the fricative
pronunciation of the six consonants BGDKPT with the exception of B/V and
Ρ IF; I am aware that in English the fricative kaf is rendered with Kh, but for the
sake of conformity I decided not to follow this usage in the transliteration of
single words or sentences from the Hebrew. Nevertheless, it has been deemed
advisable, following the suggestion of some contributors, to adopt the orthog-
raphy of Halakhah, Midrash, Mishnah - as they appear in the English diction-
aries - when these terms are used in the context of a non-Hebrew sentence,
whereas, when they occur in the transcription of a larger sentence from He-
brew, they have been transcribed according to the general adopted criteria.
Someone could remark that our compromise is not the best solution, but it
is for sure the best under the given conditions.