B. Barry Levy
- Published in print:
- 2001
- Published Online:
- April 2004
- ISBN:
- 9780195141139
- eISBN:
- 9780199834945
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/019514113X.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Judaism
Many scholars and learned readers believe that rabbinic Judaism assumes a dogmatic commitment to the notion that the Bible text, particularly the Torah text, is letter perfect; orthodox Jews often ...
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Many scholars and learned readers believe that rabbinic Judaism assumes a dogmatic commitment to the notion that the Bible text, particularly the Torah text, is letter perfect; orthodox Jews often accept this notion as fact, others, as normative rabbinic doctrine. This position developed over the centuries as an internal theological and interpretative posture and as a response to external pressures. These factors include rabbinic indifference to alternative forms of the Bible text recovered from pre‐rabbinic times or non‐rabbinic sources, attacks from Christians and Muslims who accused the Jews of falsifying the text or failing to transmit it accurately, and mystical Jewish teachings that saw in the Torah a divinely revealed and perfectly transmitted document whose letters were, in their entirety, a divine name. The assumption of letter‐perfect accuracy sustains much of the midrashic literature and has become a cornerstone of the postmodern fad of decoding the text to reveal alleged references to phenomena that occurred long after its books were written. This study, based on careful examination of hundreds of authoritative rabbinic writings, offers a very different picture of the Bible's textual reality and the rabbinic beliefs about it. Beginning with late antiquity and progressing throughout the subsequent ages, this book explores Talmudic, midrashic, medieval, Renaissance, and modern rabbinic texts that address the question of the letter‐perfect accuracy of the Bible text; it is particularly attentive to the writings of Rabbis Solomon ben Adret, Jacob ben Ibn Adoniyah, and David Ibn Zimra, as well as others who lived between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries. The documents analysed have been chosen from Bible commentaries, responsa, halakhic codes, guidebooks for scribes, studies of Bible manuscripts and the printed Bible, and many other rabbinic works. In presenting these sources, many translated here for the first time, the author explores the various rabbinic attempts to fix the Bible text—to correct it and to establish its authoritative spelling. He demonstrates conclusively that many of the same rabbinic figures whose teachings inform other contemporary Orthodox doctrines were quite open about the fact that their Bible texts, even their Torah scrolls, were not completely accurate. Moreover, though many of the variations are of little exegetical significance, these rabbis often acknowledged that, textually speaking, the situation was beyond repair.Less
Many scholars and learned readers believe that rabbinic Judaism assumes a dogmatic commitment to the notion that the Bible text, particularly the Torah text, is letter perfect; orthodox Jews often accept this notion as fact, others, as normative rabbinic doctrine. This position developed over the centuries as an internal theological and interpretative posture and as a response to external pressures. These factors include rabbinic indifference to alternative forms of the Bible text recovered from pre‐rabbinic times or non‐rabbinic sources, attacks from Christians and Muslims who accused the Jews of falsifying the text or failing to transmit it accurately, and mystical Jewish teachings that saw in the Torah a divinely revealed and perfectly transmitted document whose letters were, in their entirety, a divine name. The assumption of letter‐perfect accuracy sustains much of the midrashic literature and has become a cornerstone of the postmodern fad of decoding the text to reveal alleged references to phenomena that occurred long after its books were written. This study, based on careful examination of hundreds of authoritative rabbinic writings, offers a very different picture of the Bible's textual reality and the rabbinic beliefs about it. Beginning with late antiquity and progressing throughout the subsequent ages, this book explores Talmudic, midrashic, medieval, Renaissance, and modern rabbinic texts that address the question of the letter‐perfect accuracy of the Bible text; it is particularly attentive to the writings of Rabbis Solomon ben Adret, Jacob ben Ibn Adoniyah, and David Ibn Zimra, as well as others who lived between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries. The documents analysed have been chosen from Bible commentaries, responsa, halakhic codes, guidebooks for scribes, studies of Bible manuscripts and the printed Bible, and many other rabbinic works. In presenting these sources, many translated here for the first time, the author explores the various rabbinic attempts to fix the Bible text—to correct it and to establish its authoritative spelling. He demonstrates conclusively that many of the same rabbinic figures whose teachings inform other contemporary Orthodox doctrines were quite open about the fact that their Bible texts, even their Torah scrolls, were not completely accurate. Moreover, though many of the variations are of little exegetical significance, these rabbis often acknowledged that, textually speaking, the situation was beyond repair.
Peter Biller
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199265596
- eISBN:
- 9780191699085
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199265596.003.0010
- Subject:
- History, European Medieval History, History of Ideas
This chapter deals firstly with works which supplied a dense backcloth for ‘demographic’ thought, providing very detailed and plausible data about reproduction, and then secondly with one ...
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This chapter deals firstly with works which supplied a dense backcloth for ‘demographic’ thought, providing very detailed and plausible data about reproduction, and then secondly with one ‘demographic’ theme, life-span. It focuses on the treatises by Aristotle which were known in the middle ages as On animals, and in particular among these the History of Animals and the Generation of animals; Aristotle's tract Length and Shortness of Life; and a work attributed to Aristotle, the Problems. In addition there are Avicenna's On Animals, which contains much from Aristotle, and Averroes's epitome of Length and Shortness of Life. Set alongside these is just one representative and important example of medical texts, Avicenna's Canon of Medicine.Less
This chapter deals firstly with works which supplied a dense backcloth for ‘demographic’ thought, providing very detailed and plausible data about reproduction, and then secondly with one ‘demographic’ theme, life-span. It focuses on the treatises by Aristotle which were known in the middle ages as On animals, and in particular among these the History of Animals and the Generation of animals; Aristotle's tract Length and Shortness of Life; and a work attributed to Aristotle, the Problems. In addition there are Avicenna's On Animals, which contains much from Aristotle, and Averroes's epitome of Length and Shortness of Life. Set alongside these is just one representative and important example of medical texts, Avicenna's Canon of Medicine.
Peter Biller
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199265596
- eISBN:
- 9780191699085
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199265596.003.0008
- Subject:
- History, European Medieval History, History of Ideas
This chapter reviews medieval texts which are traces of priests dealing with ordinary people, looking at some examples from three periods, around 900, 1200, and 1300. It covers the Two books on ...
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This chapter reviews medieval texts which are traces of priests dealing with ordinary people, looking at some examples from three periods, around 900, 1200, and 1300. It covers the Two books on synodal cases and ecclesiastical disciplines written in 906 by a Rhinelander, Regino of Prüm, and pastoral texts.Less
This chapter reviews medieval texts which are traces of priests dealing with ordinary people, looking at some examples from three periods, around 900, 1200, and 1300. It covers the Two books on synodal cases and ecclesiastical disciplines written in 906 by a Rhinelander, Regino of Prüm, and pastoral texts.
Peter Biller
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199265596
- eISBN:
- 9780191699085
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199265596.003.0009
- Subject:
- History, European Medieval History, History of Ideas
This chapter reviews medieval texts concerning geography, the Holy Land, conversion, and population beyond Latin Christendom. There is the direct evidence: texts read and written by the literate ...
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This chapter reviews medieval texts concerning geography, the Holy Land, conversion, and population beyond Latin Christendom. There is the direct evidence: texts read and written by the literate minority. There is also a no-longer recoverable mental world of ‘population geography’: ordinary men and women's picture of the peopling of their own families, villages, towns, cities, kingdom, far-off countries, and the world. The texts look remote, for in style and content they went back to classical Greece and Rome and changes in them came about in part through intellectual developments in the schools. But there will have been connections as well as distances and differences between the mental world of a monk teaching geography at St Victor in Paris and the mental world of a trader or farmer in the Île-de-France, living in the same region and at the same time.Less
This chapter reviews medieval texts concerning geography, the Holy Land, conversion, and population beyond Latin Christendom. There is the direct evidence: texts read and written by the literate minority. There is also a no-longer recoverable mental world of ‘population geography’: ordinary men and women's picture of the peopling of their own families, villages, towns, cities, kingdom, far-off countries, and the world. The texts look remote, for in style and content they went back to classical Greece and Rome and changes in them came about in part through intellectual developments in the schools. But there will have been connections as well as distances and differences between the mental world of a monk teaching geography at St Victor in Paris and the mental world of a trader or farmer in the Île-de-France, living in the same region and at the same time.
Lloyd Ridgeon
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748641826
- eISBN:
- 9780748653249
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748641826.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Middle Eastern Studies
How did medieval Sufis express their system of everyday morality? Sufism attracts much attention in the West, yet its ethical dimension is often overlooked. Jawanmardi – a key element of Persian ...
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How did medieval Sufis express their system of everyday morality? Sufism attracts much attention in the West, yet its ethical dimension is often overlooked. Jawanmardi – a key element of Persian Sufism – was the ethic that encouraged the Sufi to put others before himself and to overlook the sins committed by others, representing a humane and liberal understanding of Islam. Many writers in the Persian tradition wrote about jawanmardi, and this book presents three of the key medieval texts in translation: Kitab al-futuwwa by Shihab al-Din Umar Suhrawardi, Futuwwat nama of Mirza 'Abd al-'Azim Khan Qarib, and Risala-yi Hatim al-Tayy by Husayn Wa'iz-i Kashifi. The texts are drawn from across the medieval period, reflecting different timeframes and audiences. This allows the reader to identify shifts in the ethic of jawanmardi and Sufism more generally. An introduction highlights the main contours and developments of jawanmardi, and each text is prefaced by a contextualising introduction including information about the author. The texts reflect the political, social, and gender issues of the time.Less
How did medieval Sufis express their system of everyday morality? Sufism attracts much attention in the West, yet its ethical dimension is often overlooked. Jawanmardi – a key element of Persian Sufism – was the ethic that encouraged the Sufi to put others before himself and to overlook the sins committed by others, representing a humane and liberal understanding of Islam. Many writers in the Persian tradition wrote about jawanmardi, and this book presents three of the key medieval texts in translation: Kitab al-futuwwa by Shihab al-Din Umar Suhrawardi, Futuwwat nama of Mirza 'Abd al-'Azim Khan Qarib, and Risala-yi Hatim al-Tayy by Husayn Wa'iz-i Kashifi. The texts are drawn from across the medieval period, reflecting different timeframes and audiences. This allows the reader to identify shifts in the ethic of jawanmardi and Sufism more generally. An introduction highlights the main contours and developments of jawanmardi, and each text is prefaced by a contextualising introduction including information about the author. The texts reflect the political, social, and gender issues of the time.
Peter Biller
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199265596
- eISBN:
- 9780191699085
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199265596.003.0007
- Subject:
- History, European Medieval History, History of Ideas
This chapter examines the large collections of canon lawyers and the Sentences commentaries of the academic theologians. Canon-law books were used in the schools of canon law, where they were the ...
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This chapter examines the large collections of canon lawyers and the Sentences commentaries of the academic theologians. Canon-law books were used in the schools of canon law, where they were the subject matter of lectures and the object of glosses and commentaries. These books had been studied and learnt by the practising lawyers, and they were supposed to be consulted by judges in marriage courts, alongside ‘men learned in law’. The milestones among these books were Gratian's Decretum of around 1140 and Gregory IX's Five Books of the Decretals of 1234. As the theology of the schools emerges in the early 12th century the theme is already there. Compiled around 1120, the Sententie Magistri A contains a selection of passages from Augustine forming the links in a chain of reflections on the theology of marriage, and its three goods, including offspring.Less
This chapter examines the large collections of canon lawyers and the Sentences commentaries of the academic theologians. Canon-law books were used in the schools of canon law, where they were the subject matter of lectures and the object of glosses and commentaries. These books had been studied and learnt by the practising lawyers, and they were supposed to be consulted by judges in marriage courts, alongside ‘men learned in law’. The milestones among these books were Gratian's Decretum of around 1140 and Gregory IX's Five Books of the Decretals of 1234. As the theology of the schools emerges in the early 12th century the theme is already there. Compiled around 1120, the Sententie Magistri A contains a selection of passages from Augustine forming the links in a chain of reflections on the theology of marriage, and its three goods, including offspring.
Gillian Rudd
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- July 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719072482
- eISBN:
- 9781781701713
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719072482.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, Anglo-Saxon / Old English Literature
This chapter considers trees as individual specimens and as groups. It distinguishes between woodland and forests, and studies the concepts and associations that are attached to the term ‘forest’. ...
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This chapter considers trees as individual specimens and as groups. It distinguishes between woodland and forests, and studies the concepts and associations that are attached to the term ‘forest’. This chapter demonstrates the various roles that are assigned to trees in medieval texts, such as Geoffrey Chaucer's A Knight's Tale.Less
This chapter considers trees as individual specimens and as groups. It distinguishes between woodland and forests, and studies the concepts and associations that are attached to the term ‘forest’. This chapter demonstrates the various roles that are assigned to trees in medieval texts, such as Geoffrey Chaucer's A Knight's Tale.
Gillian Rudd
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- July 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719072482
- eISBN:
- 9781781701713
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719072482.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Anglo-Saxon / Old English Literature
This chapter introduces present green literary criticism that is used on late medieval texts and ecocritical literary study. It first tries to define the term ecocriticism and then addresses the ...
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This chapter introduces present green literary criticism that is used on late medieval texts and ecocritical literary study. It first tries to define the term ecocriticism and then addresses the issue of anthropocentrism. This chapter also tries to show an analogy between ecosystems and literary analysis, and takes a look at several texts that have been subjected to green criticism.Less
This chapter introduces present green literary criticism that is used on late medieval texts and ecocritical literary study. It first tries to define the term ecocriticism and then addresses the issue of anthropocentrism. This chapter also tries to show an analogy between ecosystems and literary analysis, and takes a look at several texts that have been subjected to green criticism.
Heinrich Institoris
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- July 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719064401
- eISBN:
- 9781781700419
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719064401.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, European Medieval History
The Malleus Maleficarum is one of the best-known treatises dealing with the problem of what to do with witches. Written in 1487 by a Dominican inquisitor, Heinrich Institoris, following his failure ...
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The Malleus Maleficarum is one of the best-known treatises dealing with the problem of what to do with witches. Written in 1487 by a Dominican inquisitor, Heinrich Institoris, following his failure to prosecute a number of women for witchcraft, it is in many ways a highly personal document, full of frustration at official complacency in the face of a spiritual threat, as well as being a practical guide for law-officers who have to deal with a cunning, dangerous enemy. Combining theological discussion, illustrative anecdotes and useful advice for those involved in suppressing witchcraft, the treatise's influence on witchcraft studies has been extensive. The only previous translation into English, that by Montague Summers in 1928, is full of inaccuracies. It is written in a style almost unreadable nowadays, and is unfortunately coloured by Institoris's personal agenda. This new edited translation, with an introductory essay setting witchcraft, Institoris and the Malleus into clear English, corrects Summers' mistakes and offers an unvarnished version of what Institoris actually wrote. It will undoubtedly become the standard translation of this controversial late medieval text.Less
The Malleus Maleficarum is one of the best-known treatises dealing with the problem of what to do with witches. Written in 1487 by a Dominican inquisitor, Heinrich Institoris, following his failure to prosecute a number of women for witchcraft, it is in many ways a highly personal document, full of frustration at official complacency in the face of a spiritual threat, as well as being a practical guide for law-officers who have to deal with a cunning, dangerous enemy. Combining theological discussion, illustrative anecdotes and useful advice for those involved in suppressing witchcraft, the treatise's influence on witchcraft studies has been extensive. The only previous translation into English, that by Montague Summers in 1928, is full of inaccuracies. It is written in a style almost unreadable nowadays, and is unfortunately coloured by Institoris's personal agenda. This new edited translation, with an introductory essay setting witchcraft, Institoris and the Malleus into clear English, corrects Summers' mistakes and offers an unvarnished version of what Institoris actually wrote. It will undoubtedly become the standard translation of this controversial late medieval text.
Fabrizio Pregadio
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780804751773
- eISBN:
- 9780804767736
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804751773.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, World Religions
This book examines the religious aspects of Chinese alchemy. Its main focus is the relation of alchemy to the Daoist traditions of the early medieval period (third to sixth centuries). The book shows ...
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This book examines the religious aspects of Chinese alchemy. Its main focus is the relation of alchemy to the Daoist traditions of the early medieval period (third to sixth centuries). The book shows how alchemy contributed to and was tightly integrated into the elaborate body of doctrines and practices that Daoists built at that time, from which Daoism as we know it today evolved. It also clarifies the origins of Chinese alchemy and the respective roles of alchemy and meditation in self-cultivation practices. The book contains full translations of three important medieval texts, all of them accompanied by running commentaries, making available in English the gist of the early Chinese alchemical corpus.Less
This book examines the religious aspects of Chinese alchemy. Its main focus is the relation of alchemy to the Daoist traditions of the early medieval period (third to sixth centuries). The book shows how alchemy contributed to and was tightly integrated into the elaborate body of doctrines and practices that Daoists built at that time, from which Daoism as we know it today evolved. It also clarifies the origins of Chinese alchemy and the respective roles of alchemy and meditation in self-cultivation practices. The book contains full translations of three important medieval texts, all of them accompanied by running commentaries, making available in English the gist of the early Chinese alchemical corpus.
Sandra Lindemann Summers
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780813044187
- eISBN:
- 9780813046198
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813044187.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, Early and Medieval Literature
This chapter analyzes the representation of the female gaze in two medieval German texts: Winsbeckin by an anomymous author and Der Renner by Hugo von Trimberg. While the former satirically deplores ...
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This chapter analyzes the representation of the female gaze in two medieval German texts: Winsbeckin by an anomymous author and Der Renner by Hugo von Trimberg. While the former satirically deplores the deceptiveness of women and their roaming eyes, the latter sternly admonishes girls to refrain from frivolous ogling and from superficially judging men by their looks.Less
This chapter analyzes the representation of the female gaze in two medieval German texts: Winsbeckin by an anomymous author and Der Renner by Hugo von Trimberg. While the former satirically deplores the deceptiveness of women and their roaming eyes, the latter sternly admonishes girls to refrain from frivolous ogling and from superficially judging men by their looks.
Georges Vigarello
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780231159760
- eISBN:
- 9780231535304
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231159760.003.0002
- Subject:
- History, Social History
This chapter considers the ambiguity surrounding the definition of “fat” in medieval texts. These texts variously refer to fat as an oily, pliable, and fundamentally aqueous material, sometimes more ...
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This chapter considers the ambiguity surrounding the definition of “fat” in medieval texts. These texts variously refer to fat as an oily, pliable, and fundamentally aqueous material, sometimes more compact depending on the location, and of a composite, somewhat obscure nature. Unknown were its proportions of water, oil, blood, or phlegm; its consistency and density; and its origin and content. All that is certain is the immediate evidence: colors, odors, resistance, and extension that lump together many possible substances as sources of fatness. Even air must be considered since it is thought to move through the body provoking swelling and puffiness, a by-product of body heat as much as smoke from fire.Less
This chapter considers the ambiguity surrounding the definition of “fat” in medieval texts. These texts variously refer to fat as an oily, pliable, and fundamentally aqueous material, sometimes more compact depending on the location, and of a composite, somewhat obscure nature. Unknown were its proportions of water, oil, blood, or phlegm; its consistency and density; and its origin and content. All that is certain is the immediate evidence: colors, odors, resistance, and extension that lump together many possible substances as sources of fatness. Even air must be considered since it is thought to move through the body provoking swelling and puffiness, a by-product of body heat as much as smoke from fire.
