The redaction of desire: Structure and editing of rabbinic teachings concerning yeser (“inclination”)

Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy

Volumn 12, Issue 1, 2003, Pages 19-53

  Schofer, Jonathan ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN MADISON   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 61349182748     PISSN: 1053699X     EISSN: 1477285X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/1053699032000133627     Document Type: Article

References (38)

1. Kister, Studies, pp. 7, 220;
2. Saldarini, Scholastic, pp. 135-142
3. Rabbi Nathan B, pp. 1216;
4. Strack and Stemberger, Introduction, p. 227.
5. G. W. Bowersock, Hellenism in Late Antiquity (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1990), pp. 71-82.
6. G. W. Bowersock et al. eds., Late Antiquity: A Guide to the Postclassical World (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999).
7. Kister, Studies, p. 62;
8. Finkelstein, Introduction, p. 72).
9. Judah Goldin argues that many such maxims originally described one idea, and then were atomized in rabbinic exegesis as in R. Nathan. (Goldin, Studies in Midrash, pp. 16 n.21, 18 n.84;
10. The printed edition reads “transgression” (devar aveyrah). Ms. V and Ms. N read “obscene act” (devar zimmah). See Schechter, R. Nathan, p. 166, and also n. 144.
11. Ivan Marcus, Rituals of Childhood: Jewish Acculturation in Medieval Europe (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1996), pp. 43-44
12. S. Fishbane and J. Lightstone eds., Essays in the Social Scientific Study of Judaism and Jewish Society (Montreal: Concordia University, 1990), pp. 47-103.
13. See Goldin, Studies in Midrash, pp. 83-100;
14. Jonathan Schofer, The Making of a Sage: The Rabbinic Ethics of Abot de Rabbi Natan (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Dissertation Services, 2000), pp. 99-231.
15. Schofer, The Making of a Sage, pp. 81-97, 166-198.
16. James Kugel, In Potiphar's House: The Interpretive Life of Biblical Texts (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990).
17. Kugel writes that name “Joseph the Righteous” is based on his behavior during the incident with Potiphar's wife (Potiphar, p. 25).
18. Rudolph Mach, Der Zaddik in Talmud und Midrasch (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1957), pp. 242-245.
19. · a) echoes Daniel 3:8, where elite Jews working in the kings' administration are accused of not engaging in proper worship. On the vocalization, note Marcus Jastrow, A Dictionary of the Targumim, The Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature (New York: The Judaica Press, 1992), p. 1425.
20. Hezser, Social Structure of the Rabbinic Movement, pp. 165-171; Schwartz, Imperialism and Jewish Society, p. 114.
21. Stern, “The Captive Woman,” pp. 98-99, 116.
22. Both David Stern and Marc Hirshman have argued that the figure of R. Akiva is often associated with rabbinic ideals of particularism and suspicion of Roman society. See Stern, “The Captive Woman” and Hirshman, “Rabbinic Universalism”, p. 115.
23. In the terms of virtue ethics, R. Akiva is fully virtuous, while R. Tzadok shows self-control or continence. On the distinction, see for example Foucault, Use of Pleasure, pp. 63-91;
24. Rosalind Hursthouse, On Virtue Ethics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 91-107.
25. Herr writes of the story of R. Tzadok in the Talmud that it “shows signs of late adaptation” (“Dialogues,” p. 136 n.58).
26. Kister states that the story in the Palestinian Talmud is the source of the one in R. Nathan A (Studies, p. 210 n. 452).
27. Jacob Neusner, Eliezer ben Hyrcanus: The Tradition and the Man, Part 1 (Leiden, E. J. Brill, 1973), pp. 170-171.
28. On this epithet as indicating distinction, see Hezser, Social Structure of the Rabbinic Movement, pp. 301-306.
29. R. Eliezer is lauded for his great knowledge often in R. Nathan. See A6,30-31;
30. David J. Williams, Paul's Metaphors: Their Context and Character (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1999), pp. 36-40.
31. This focus on compassion is also present in Ps. 103 as a whole. M. Fishbane writes that the psalm “is a sustained appeal for divine compassion;” see his Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), p. 348.
32. Kister discusses the general relation of A and B in Studies, pp. 149-169
33. The term appears three times in Ms. P; see Saldarini, Rabbi Nathan B, p. 176 n. 3.
34. See the analysis in Fishbane, Kiss of God, pp. 7-8.
35. Goldin, Rabbi Nathan, pp. 130, 205 n. 14.
36. W. S. Towner, The Rabbinic “Enumeration of Scriptural Examples” (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1971), 246.
37. · er in tractate Sukkah, see Boyarin, Carnal Israel, pp. 4-67;
38. Porter, “Yeçer,” pp. 123, 127, 129.