This collection of essays by many of the leading scholars of midrash and rabbinics reflects the various current methodological approaches to the study of rabbinic scriptural interpretation. During the last three decades of the 20th century scholars in the field made significant forays into literary studies, interdisciplinary studies, and to some degree women's studies. This volume thus illustrates these trends, and highlights several fundamental studies, such as the origins of midrash, the making of critical editions, and the relationship of midrash to other forms of Jewish as well as...

This volume explores the ways in which Jews lived within the Hellenistic and Greco-Roman contexts, how they negotiated their religious and social boundaries in their own distinctive manner.Scholars demonstrate how the Jewish encounter with Hellenism led not to a conscious struggle with alien forces but rather in many instances to an active re-tailoring and re-shaping of tradition in light of their material, ideological and philosophical surroundings. That is to say, the Jews, a minority people, maintained their identity by adapting the trappings, to varying degrees, of their milieu.These...

Islam and Its Past: Jahiliyya, Late Antiquity, and the Qur'an brings together scholars from various disciplines and fields to consider Islamic revelation, with particular focus on the Qur'an. The collection provides a wide-ranging survey of the development and current state of Qur'anic studies in the Western academy. It shows how interest in the field has recently grown, how the ways in which it is cultivated have changed, how it has ramified, and how difficult it now is for any one scholar to keep abreast of it. Chapters explore the milieu in which the Meccan component of the Qur'an...