The Tales of the Sages in Late Midrash

A Curtain Set with Jewels
Erscheinungsjahr 2025
ISBN: 978-90-04-54721-6
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 79, 240 Seiten, Format (B × H): 155 mm x 235 mm

Reihe: The Brill Reference Library of Judaism

How should we read tales about rabbinic sages unique to post-Talmudic works? What theological, poetic, and social changes do they hide? Who could have authored them? The Tales of the Sages in Late Midrash, reveals these narratives’ hypertextuality. Their characters, phrasings, and themes only invert, expand, and mimic other tales. In their own words, they are mosaics of cherished stories set into new narrative tapestries– What Acher thought of R. Akiva’s death? How was Akiva buried? Who was Resh Laqish before he met R. Yochanan? Analyzing twenty little-known such stories from fourteen compositions and discussing many others, Sivan Nir shows how medieval scholars use their stories to explore tensions between rabbis and laypersons, men and women, God and history, medieval culture and the Talmudic past.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Nir, Sivan

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Jüdische Studien Jüdische Studien Heilige & Traditionstexte: Torah, Talmud, Mischna, Halacha

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1 Existing Scholarship on Late Tales and Its Deficiencies

2 Method

3 Overview

4 The Choice of Title

5 A Note about the Translations

Part 1: Reaction Tales and Counter Narratives

1 R. Zyinon and the Doctor (Devarim Rabbah [Lieberman] Eikev)

1 Conclusions: Devarim Rabbah as a New Narrative Rather Than a Version

2 The Chassid and the Spirit (Bereshit Rabbati Wayesalach, pp. 145–146)

1 Conclusions: Bereshit Rabbati’s Job Parody vs the Bavli’s

3 The Disguised Wife (BemR 9:3)

1 Conclusions: Bemidbar Rabbah as an Opposed Digest of the Bavli

4 Anti-Dama Ben Netinah (Pesiqta Rabbati 14)

1 Conclusions: Anti-Dama vs Polemical Dama Recensions

5 The Disciple and the Prostitute (Pseudo-Eliyahu Zuta 4)

1 Conclusions: Opposed Prostitutes, Cooperating Classes

6 The Seven Good Years (Ruth Zuta 4:11)

1 Charity and Failed Messiahs

2 Conclusions: the Voice of the Poor in Ruth Zuta

Part 2: Temporal Continuations

7 Rashbi on the Ship on Route to Caesar (Ekhah Zuti 43)

1 Conclusions: Ekhah Zuti and ‘The Prayer of Rabbi Shim'on bar Yochai’

8 Another Episode on the Ship on Route to Caesar (Bereshit Rabbati Wayegash)

1 Conclusion: between Bereshit Rabbati Rashbi and R. Shfatiah

9 Resh Laqish before He Met R. Yochanan (Pirqe de-Rabbi Eli'ezer 43)

1 Conclusions: the Unchallenged Benefit of the Torah to the Individual

10 R. Meir Redeems Acher (Midrash Mishle 6:22–29)

1 Conclusions: Disciples Are Better Than Sons

11 R. Akiva’s Illuminating Daughter-in-Law (Midrash Tehillim 59:3)

1 Conclusions: between Two Wives, between Bavli and Midrash Tehillim

12 R. Akiva’s Burial (Midrash Mishle 9 and Yalqut 944)

1 Akiva’s Burial Answering Bavli Menachot 29b

2 Conclusions: Adding Akiva’s Missing Reward to the Bavli

Part 3: Typical Imitations

13 Abnimos and the Builder (Shemot Rabbah 13:1)

1 Divine Censure

2 Conclusions: Builder and God as Heroes

14 Two Sages Lamenting at the Western Wall (Seder Eliyahu Rabbah 28:11)

1 Shades of Akiva’s Fox in Seder Eliyahu

2 The Two Late Imitations

3 Conclusions: a Dispersion of Mystic Comfort

15 What Acher Thought of R. Akiva’s Death (Pitron Torah, Wayiqra, p. 15)

1 Conclusions: Elisha as the Intended Audience

16 Akiva, Turnus Rufus, and the Father (Bereshit Rabbati Lech Lecha, pp. 72–73)

1 Conclusions: Martyrdom for All Not Just for Akiva

17 Antoninus and Rabbi’s Circumcision (Bereshit Rabbati Wayera, pp. 86–87)

1 Antoninus and Not Rabbi Is the Second Moses

2 Conclusions: a Missionary Fantasy That Denies the Rabbis Center Stage

18 R. Joshua and Hadrian at the Carnival of Beasts (Esther Rabbah 10:11)

1 Conclusions: Scribal Testimony of Esther Rabbah’s Animalistic Exile

19 The Death of R. Meir’s Two Sons (Midrash Mishle 31:10)

1 Conclusions: between a Legendary Happy Ending and a Rabbinic Discussion

Conclusions

1 Characters: Idolized Super Stars and the Marginal, the Female, and the Anonymous

2 Themes of Theodicy, Charity, and Tempered Eschatology

3 A Rhetoric of the Marvelous Rather Than Dialectics

4 Authors of Late Tales Are Closer to Tosafists than to Copyists

5 Closing Words

Bibliography

Über Autor(innen)

Sivan Nir, Ph.D. (2019), Tel Aviv University, is a research fellow there and at Haifa. He has published on the medieval, Midrash, and interreligious receptions of biblical figures and literary concepts, including Characterization in Midrash and Medieval Jewish Bible Commentaries (SBL, 2024).