Marc Herman, After Revelation: The Rabbinic Past in the Medieval Islamic World (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2025).Cross-file under New Book.... Starting in the tenth century with the later geonim, Jews in the Islamic world began to ask “big” questions about rabbinic literature, its authority and its authenticity. Where did it come from? How did it work? And why should it matter? Both Qaraites (who rejected rabbinic authority) and Rabbanites (who championed it) pondered such problems. But the nature, scope, and function of Oral Torah did not stem only, or even primarily, from the Qaraite-Rabbanite debate; instead, constructions of the sages were central to Jewish self-understanding and even, one might say, to imaginings of “Judaism” itself. ...
Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.