The Rise of Rabbinic Midrash and Its Christian and Pagan Context
Dr. Azzan Yadin-Israel, from the Department of Jewish Studies, Rutgers University, delivered a lecture on ‘The Rise of Rabbinic Midrash and Its Christian and Pagan Context’. He began his lecture by reminding the class that the emergence of Rabbinic Judaism was not a foregone conclusion. Today rabbis are heavily identified with Judaism, but after the fall of the Second Temple, Judaism as a religion was thrown into flux and Rabbinic Judaism competed with rival models of Judaism. In his lecture, he examined what constituted rabbinic authority and its context in classical antiquity.
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Yadin-Israel ended the class by pointing out two parallel processes in classical antiquity. Christianity began with a coalescence of scripture collection and henceforth Christian intellectuals stepped in to interpret those scriptures. Similarly, Homeric tradition saw the rise of interpreters such as Cassius Longinus who sought to reconcile texts such as the Odyssey and Iliad with contemporary physics. His lecture brought to the forefront of the class’s mind the distinction between claims to authority through received tradition and that of scriptural interpretation.
