Heavenly Tablets: Interpretation, Identity and Tradition in Ancient Judaism (2007 LiDonnici, Lieber), edited volume

Heavenly Tablets: Interpretation, Identity and Tradition in Ancient Judaism (2007) is a volume edited by Lynn R. LiDonnici and Andrea Lieber.

Abstract

"This volume brings together a wide range of international scholars of Ancient Judaism, in celebration of the career of Betsy Halpern-Amaru. The essays in the first section, Interpreting Ritual Texts, examine Jewish ritual praxis in late antiquity, highlighting the ways in which text and ritual intersect in the process of interpretation. Mapping Diaspora Identities asks how Diaspora communities came to understand the Bible’s preoccupation with land, and how land was used to figure ancient authors’ depictions of “center” and “margin” in drawing the boundaries of Jewish communities, and of Jewish identity. Finally, Rewriting Tradition explores rewriting of biblical stories in Hellenistic and later Jewish sources, and the ways that authors work through the tradition to reflect their current realities and their hopes for the future."

Editions and translations

Published in Leiden: Brill, 2007 (Supplements to the Journal for the Study of Judaism, 119).

Table of contents

• Introduction / Lynn LiDonnici and Andrea Lieber

Part 1 - Interpreting ritual texts

• Three Jewish ritual practices in Aristeas [sections] 158-160 / Benjamin G. Wright

• Prayers in Jubilees / John C. Endres

• Amulets and angels: visionary experience in the Testament of Job and the Hekhalot literature / Rebecca Lesses

• Is the Prayer of Manasseh a Jewish work? / James R. Davila

• "According to the Jews:" identified (and identifying) 'Jewish' elements in the Greek magical papyri / Lynn LiDonnici

Part 2 - Mapping diaspora identities.

• Imago mundi of the Genesis Apocryphon / Esther Eshel

• Jubilees in the Hellenistic context / Cana Werman

• "Gather the dispersed of Judah:" seeking a return to the land as a factor in Jewish identity of late antiquity / Esther G. Chazon

• Sectarian consciousness in the Dead Sea scrolls / John J. Collins

• Between motherland and fatherland: diaspora, pilgrimage and the spiritualization of sacrifice in Philo of Alexandria / Andrea Lieber

Part 3 - Rewriting tradition

• Case of the blasphemer (Lev. 24:10-16) according to Philo and Josephus / Louis H. Feldman

• Chaste betrayals: women and men in the apocryphal novels / Adele Reinhartz

• Damascus document's "Three nets of Belial:" a reference to the Aramaic Levi document? / Hanan Eshel

• Why did Antiochus have to fall (II Maccabees 9:7)? / Daniel R. Schwartz

• End of the matter? Jubilees 50:6-13 and the unity of the book / James C. VanderKam

External links

• [ Google Books]