SATAN the nemesis: the Talmud’s curriculum on God’s attribute of justice

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Title

SATAN the nemesis: the Talmud’s curriculum on God’s attribute of justice

Identifier

DSP2016Seinfeld

Subjects

["Judaism","Religion"]

Type

["Text"]

Genre

["Dissertations"]

Format

["pdf"]

Rights

Access to this document has been permanently and indefinitely restricted by the author until or unless the author submits a written request to Special Collections & Archives to change the access restrictions and/or make it freely available. Only Albert S. Cook Library staff members may access this file for administrative purposes unless written permission from the author is presented to staff members of the Towson University Special Collections & Archives department. Copyright protected, all rights reserved.

General Notes

Doctoral thesis research directed by the Jewish Studies Program.

Extent

v, 241 pages

Language

["English"]

Repository

["Towson University. Albert S. Cook Library. Special Collections and University Archives"]

Collection Name

["Towson University Graduate Theses and Dissertations"]

Author

Seinfeld, Alexander

Degree Date

2016

Department or Program

["Towson University. Jewish Studies Program"]

Abstract

The motif of ?A?AN appears in thirty-nine passages in the Talmud, clustered into eighteen sugyot. Historically, most of these statements are attributed to various sages who lived over a period of some four centuries. But the Talmud is not a mere historical record, it is a text crafted by a later group of rabbinic scholars. Although they chose to remain anonymous, much is known about their cultural orientation and motives for selecting and arranging these specific statements at the exclusion of all others. Similar to their choices of halachic sugyot, their selection of aggadot appears to reflect a deliberate sifting in order to create a theological curriculum. Based on the redactors’ likely interpretation of the ?A?AN source narratives in Tanach, and based on a close reading of the Bavli's thirty-nine ?A?AN passages, the rabbis conceived of ?A?AN as metaphorical. Applying a synchronic interpretation to the Bavli's eighteen ?A?AN sugyot reveals a consistent didactic message about divine justice which may be called a theology of nemesis. This theology conceptualizes the mechanics of divine justice as a didactic process of hindering a person on their present path of hubris in order to correct the path or learn a lesson. The Bavli's ?A?AN curriculum reflects an agenda that was likely responding to cultural influences, including theologies which may have impacted Talmudic redaction such as Christianity, Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism, Gnosticism and Greco-Roman paganism. The methodology expands on Jacob Neusner's research on Talmudic halachah, on the work of Moulie Vidas in uncovering the agenda of the Talmud's redactors on the scholarship of Yaakov Elman, Shai Secunda and others on the redactors’ cultural setting, and synthesizes the scholarship of Richard Hidary, Daniel Boyarin and Stephen Fraade to demonstrate how Talmudic dialectics and disputes may be understood as a type of oral performance, projecting the rabbis’ self-understanding as transmitters of oral texts. The thirty-nine ?A?AN passages in the Talmud present an exceptional laboratory for studying rabbinic theology. In addition, the Bavli emerged as a peak of a long period of rabbinic creativity that spans the entire period of early Christianity and therefore might provide clues to the ideas and cultures that spawned it. Ultimately, this dissertation will also contribute to the emerging consensus among scholars today that there is something called “the Bavli's perspective” which is the ideology and agenda of the Stammaitic redactors.

Contents

Scholarship of the theology of ?A?AN -- Scholarship of rabbinic theology and of the Talmud -- Pre-rabbinic sources -- ?A?AN in the Bavli -- The Stammaitic voice

Thesis Committee Members

["Fisher, Benjamin E.","Garfein, Susanna","Sax, Benjamin Elliot"]

Date Published

28 October 2016

Author (Controlled)

["Seinfeld, Alexander"]

Thesis Advisor

["Reisner, Avram I."]

Degree Note

(Ph. D.) -- Towson University, 2016.

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