Gray on charity in the rabbinic texts

ANCIENT JEW REVIEW: Reading Charity Texts: On Intertextuality and Social History (Alyssa Gray).

In sum, the scholar of rabbinic charity requires ongoing methodological self-awareness. Care in gathering and systematizing texts, focused and detailed analyses of discrete topics, use of source-, form-, and redaction-criticism (especially of the Bavli), attention to intertextuality and the literary nature of rabbinic texts, and drawing meaningful and restrained conclusions, are all desiderata. The reward for these methodological pains will be a better and richer understanding of this fascinating topic.