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Hermeneutics of Holiness: Ancient Jewish and Christian Notions of Sexuality and Religious Community. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. Pp. xv, 309. Cloth with dust jacket. £45.00. ISBN 978-0-19-973648-5. Many Jews and Christians in late antiquity believed that Moses led a celibate life as a prophet and leader of the Israelites. But what did this belief imply for their lives, for their marital choices, for their understandings of issues such as sexuality, purity, and holiness? This book addresses this tradition and other writings, from the Hebrew Bible through the fourth century c.e., to explore how members of these diverse communities considered the relationship between holiness and sexual practices such as marriage, asceticism, and/or celibacy. One reason these questions are especially intriguing is that Syriac Christian writers (most particularly Aphrahat) and Babylonian talmudic rabbis developed their ideas through “related exegetical traditions and interpretive methods” (4), yet came to different, even opposite conclusions. Thus the inter-connected set of issues explored here include self-definition, influence between groups, and internal and external boundary setting. These are examined through the lens of “hermeneutics of holiness”: “the different ways in which my subjects have constructed their notions of holiness, how these notions both exist in
Journal for the Study of Judaism – Brill
Published: Feb 11, 2014
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