Chapter 4 Parable and Ritual in Changing Contexts

In: The Power of Parables
Author:
Adiel Kadari
Search for other papers by Adiel Kadari in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Close
Open Access

This article will consider the evolution of the parable of “one who immerses with a reptile in his hand,” which appears throughout rabbinic literature. I chose to study this parable because the oral-performative context in which it was spoken has been preserved; this context is generally regarded as the original context for parables as a genre.1 By studying the various versions of this parable, I seek to demonstrate the versatility of the parable as a genre, the possibility of transferring parables by adapting them to new contexts, and the attendant changes in meaning and message.

1 The Parable in the Context of the Fasting Ceremony

The parable of “one who immerses with a reptile in his hand” appears in t. Taʿan. 1:8 as part of the description of the ritual of fasting in time of drought.2 Fast day rituals were organized in situations of extreme drought and other catastrophes. The ritual included fasting, prayer, and other expressions of mourning and self-affliction. As part of the ritual the “eldest among them” would “make a speech of admonition”3 which included this parable:

As part of his sermon, the elder compares the individual who takes part in the fasting ritual while failing to mend his ways to a person who immerses to cleanse himself from his impurity while holding a reptile in his hand. According to Lev 11, there are various types of reptiles that render impure anyone who comes into contact with their carcasses. In order to rid oneself of impurity, the individual must immerse in a ritual bath. But the person described in this parable seeks to cleanse himself while still holding on to the reptile that caused his impurity in the first place. The moral of the parable is not stated explicitly, but those who hear the sermon are supposed to understand it from the context. A Tannaitic source quoted in the Babylonian Talmud references the parable and makes the analogy explicit:

This parable is not typical of rabbinic parables. It is concise, it is not very sophisticated literarily, and it is not presented in an exegetical context,6 like the majority of parables in rabbinic literature are.7 Yonah Fraenkel refers to such parables as “pictorial parables.”8 He uses this term to refer to parables that describe an ordinary event, even a daily occurrence, and that lack the drama of more plotted parables. He argues that these parables belong to an earlier stage of rabbinic literature. In his book on parables in midrash, David Stern studies the history of the terms “mashal” and “parable” and notes that the ancient rhetoricians such as Aristotle used the Greek term parabole to refer to the brief comparisons, generally fictitious, which orators would invent to prove or demonstrate their points.9 Stern adds that in Aristotle’s work these “parables” are closer to similes than to genuine stories.10 This is also true of our parable about the reptile. Perhaps the confluence of a terse and pithy wording and the rhetorical context of a sermon delivered before an audience, serve to provide us with a window into a relatively early stage of the development of the genre of parables in rabbinic literature.

What is the role of the parable in the context of the fasting ritual? The parable serves as a rhetorical tool for the orator, who wishes to demonstrate the appropriate relationship between ritual behaviour and moral-religious conduct. The preacher quotes the prophet Isaiah to establish that the appropriate fast is one that “unlocks the fetters of wickedness,” that is, a fast accompanied by a mending of one’s ways on the interpersonal level. As the prophet says, “No, this is the fast that I choose, to unlock the fetters of wickedness” (Isa 58:6). The elder demonstrates this principle by invoking the laws of purity and impurity: a person who wishes to get rid of his impurity must first relinquish the reptile, which is the source of his impurity, and only then will his immersion be effective in purifying him.

One role of the parable, as various scholars have suggested, is to serve as an illustrative parallel, whose purpose is to demonstrate an abstract concept by means of a concrete narrative example.11 But in the case of our parable, it is difficult to see how the example of the individual who immerses with a reptile in his hand—which requires a knowledge and understanding of the laws of purity and impurity—is clearer or simpler to grasp than the religious notion that the preacher seeks to convey, namely that ritual on its own is meaningless and must be accompanied by repentance. What, then, is the rhetorical function of the parable in this sermon? It seems that its role is more to persuade than to clarify. The contradiction depicted in the parable between immersion in water and continuing to grasp the reptile which has rendered one impure is more concrete and unambiguous than the contradiction between participating in a fasting ritual while failing fully to mend one’s ways. One could imagine a fasting ritual in which the people appeal to God’s mercy and ask for rain without righting all the wrongs in their society. This would not necessarily seem illogical to those looking on from the sidelines. It seems that the purpose of invoking the parable is to serve as a persuasive rhetorical device that is intended to sharpen and strengthen the sense of paradox and contradiction as the audience’s attention shifts from the parable to the moral, that is, from the context of the laws of purity and impurity to the context of repentance and fasting.

We can demonstrate this point by comparing our parable to a similar but not entirely identical simile, which appears in the book of Ben Sira, a text that predates the Tosefta by several centuries.12 Ben Sira writes:

If a person again touches a corpse after he has bathed
What did he gain by the purification?
So with a person who fasts for his sins,
But then goes and commits them again:
Who will hear his prayer,
And what has he gained by his mortification?
Ben Sira 34, 30−3113

This simile does not speak about a person holding a reptile while immersing, but rather about a person who immerses himself due to the impurity contracted from a corpse and is then purified, only to touch a corpse once again. Admittedly, the incident described in the parabolic saying or simile of Ben Sira is more plausible than the one described in the Tosefta, but it lacks the same sense of paradox and internal contradiction between the acts of immersing and grasping the reptile. In light of the resemblance between the saying in Ben Sira and in the Tosefta, it seems possible that the Tosefta was familiar with the earlier saying and adapted it, as a parable, to suit its own rhetorical needs.

In the Tosefta, the incorporation of the elder’s sermon into the framework of the fast day ritual results in an interesting and perhaps surprising amalgamation of anti-ritualism within a ritual context. After all, the elder proclaims that there is no value to fasting on its own or to the accompanying ceremony, unless the people mend their ways; and yet he makes this proclamation at the height of the ritual and as part of the ceremony. This is perhaps even more evident in the “words of admonition” included in the Mishnah:

David Levine regards the elder’s words of admonition in the Mishnah as the articulation of an approach according to which “the fast day prohibitions and the fasting ritual in the open space of the town are not what is truly important. The most important factor, without which everything else is irrelevant, is the repentance of the heart and mending of one’s ways.”14 He goes on to note that “the content of the homily explicitly conflicts with all that revolves around it and negates the efficacy of these external means.”15

This interpretation can account for the Mishnah, but it is important to note that in the Tosefta, the dichotomy between internal and external and between ritual and repentance is less stark. First, rather surprisingly, in the context of a sermon that seeks to proclaim that ritual is not everything, the parable that is invoked to make this argument is in fact based on another ritual—the ritual of immersion! Second, there is the halakhic aspect of the parable, which states that after the one who immerses tosses the reptile from his hand, his immersion is effective in forty seahs of water—meaning that he will become purified, even if he immerses in a ritual bath with only the minimum amount of water. The moral correspondingly states that the fasting ritual as enshrined in rabbinic sources does have significance, and it will be effective as long as it is accompanied by repentance. This is also the message that emerges from the verses cited in the Tosefta: “He who confesses and gives them up [i.e., his transgressions] will find mercy” (Prov 28:13), and “Let us lift up our heart with our hands to God in heaven” (Lam 3:41). That is, the sinner needs to forsake his sin and cleanse his hands while also turning to God in prayer. It is not either-or, but both-and.

In this context, we should note that while the fasting ritual is ineffective in the absence of the religious-moral act of repentance, the efficacy of the immersion ritual in the parable is not conditional on any inner spiritual transformation, but only on the rules of the ritual itself. The one who is immersing needs only to let go of the reptile which renders impure and to immerse in a “kosher” ritual bath with at least forty seahs of water. He need not repent in order to become purified.

To further hone this point, let us consider this excerpt from Josephus’s description of John the Baptist:

For Herod had put him to death, though he was a good man and had exhorted the Jews to lead righteous lives, to practise justice towards their fellows and piety towards God. And in so doing to join baptism. In his view this was a necessary preliminary if baptism was to be acceptable to God. They must not employ it to gain pardon for whatever sins they committed, but as a consecration of the body implying that the soul was already thoroughly cleansed by right behaviour.

Josephus, Ant. 18.11716

According to Josephus, John the Baptist maintained that good deeds were a necessary prerequisite if baptism were to be effective. We can note both points of commonality and divergence between the approach Josephus attributes to John the Baptist and the approach expressed in the Tosefta’s parable. On the one hand, the two sources are similar in that both refer to the purity of the body, and both maintain the distinction between the ritual plane involving purification and the ethical-social plane involving the demand of mending one’s ways. On the other hand, John the Baptist regards good deeds as a prerequisite for the efficacy of immersion, such that it is only after the soul has become purified by good deeds that the immersion that purifies that body will be accepted;17 whereas in the Tosefta, the efficacy of immersion is not conditional—it purifies regardless of a whether or not it is accompanied by repentance. This seems to me to be an expression of the rabbinic nature of the Tosefta’s parable. In the Tosefta, the efficacy of immersion is dependent on halakhic rules alone, and immersion and repentance—the parable and its moral—remain distinct from one another.

2 The Parable in New Contexts

I shall now turn to the development of the parable in later sources in an effort to demonstrate how this parable is employed in new contexts and becomes imbued with additional significance. The Jerusalem Talmud tells of two sages who undertook a fast, in the context of which one of them delivered a homily similar to the one that appears in the Tosefta:

In terms of content, this parable is more or less identical to the parable in the Tosefta, except that here Rav Ba’s words are presented as a homily on the verse “Let us lift our hearts to our hands.” Rabbi Ba offers an exegesis on this verse, which is presented in the Tosefta at the conclusion of the passage. He asks a rhetorical question based on a literal reading of the image in the verse:18 Is it possible for someone to take his heart and place it in his hands? Of course not, and thus the implication is that we must regard our hands as we regard our hearts, that is, we must focus on mending our ways, and only then should we entreat God to heed our prayers. This story preserves the rhetorical context of a sermon offered as part of a fasting ceremony. But this is less apparent when we turn to the Babylonian Talmud.

In the Babylonian Talmud, the focus is on the “words of admonition” spoken by the elder as they appear in the Mishnah. The Talmudic sugya quotes from the Tannaitic source I presented above:

One who has sinned and confesses his sin but does not repent may be compared to a man holding a dead reptile in his hand, for although he may immerse himself in all the waters of the world his immersion is of no avail unto him; but if he throws it away from his hand then as soon as he immerses himself in forty seʾahs of water, immediately his immersion becomes effective, as it is said (Prov 28:13), “But who confesses and forsakes them shall obtain mercy.”

B. Taʿan. 16a

This quote appears in the Talmudic sugya in the context of public fasts in the wake of drought. But if we ignore the context and focus only on the text of the parable and its moral, we note that it does not reference the fasting ceremony, but refers rather to a person who confesses without repenting. Invoking this source enabled later sages to disassociate the parable from the fasting ceremony, and to apply it to other contexts. Some mediaeval sages understood this parable as relating to the laws of Yom Kippur, where a tremendous emphasis is placed on confession.19 Other sages invoked this parable in the context of a theoretical or halakhic discussion of the laws of repentance more generally. Perhaps the mediaeval sages were searching for a way of applying the parable more broadly or more “effectively” rather than merely limiting it to the context of fasting in time of drought.20

I will offer two examples of the use of this parable in the context of discussions of repentance. In his book The Duties of the Heart (eleventh-century Spain), Bahya ibn Paquda offered an interpretation of this parable in his discussion of the various impediments to repentance:

Bahya expresses a unique stance. He demands that the repentant sinner must repent of all his sins. His words suggest that every sin a person continues to commit constitutes a “reptile” that impedes his purification, and thus, even if a person repents of some of his sins but persists in committing others, his repentance is insufficient. Bahya seems to be stretching the limits of the image of the sin as a reptile. True, on the level of the parable, so long as a person is in contact with something impurifying, no matter how small, immersion will be ineffective. But the sense of paradox conveyed by the parable in the Tosefta is weakened in Bahya’s statement. It does not seem implausible for a person to be embraced as a penitent and his repentance to be deemed acceptable even if aspects of his behaviour remain in need of correction.

Like Bahya, Maimonides in the twelfth century also invokes this parable in his discussion of repentance. He features it at the heart of his discussion of the laws of repentance, where it is cited alongside his definition of repentance:

Maimonides presents confession as a literal articulation of the sinner’s repentant thoughts. The penitent must “make verbal confession and utter the resolutions which he made in his heart.” The relationship between repentance and confession is the relationship between thought and speech. Maimonides returns to this distinction when he presents the parable: “He who confesses in words and has not in his heart resolved to forsake his sin is like one who immerses himself and keeps in his hand a reptile.”

The notion that speech is an expression of thought is a cornerstone of Maimonides’s theory of language.22 As he sees it, words that are not accompanied by thought are empty, hollow, and devoid of meaning.

The emphasis on the conceptual distinction between thought and speech, and the dichotomy constructed between oral speech and thoughts of the heart, have a basis in the Talmudic text, though Maimonides imbues it with much more rhetorical force and conceptual clarity. Elsewhere, I have demonstrated that this conceptual clarity has halakhic ramifications, and that the normative rule that appears in his next statement about specifying one’s sin is a product of this conceptual distinction.23 According to Maimonides, the hand of the individual who immerses while holding a reptile represents not the actions of the penitent, but rather his thoughts.

3 Conclusion

In conclusion, we can start to trace the development of the use of this parable in rabbinic literature. It begins with the Tosefta, where the parable is adduced in the context of the fasting ceremony and is understood as a demand to mend one’s ways on the ethical and social planes. Later the parable “migrates” to other contexts, such as the Yom Kippur confession, where it shifts from a public context to a more personal and private one. Finally, we find instances in which the parable is used in the context of discussions of repentance, where the hand that relinquishes the reptile corresponds to the heart of the penitent who has resolved to mend his ways. There is an evolution from the public to the personal, and from the context of mending social ills in the Tosefta to a more spiritual context in Maimonides, and from the use of the parable in a performative-oral context in the Tosefta to the use of the parable as a literary text in mediaeval sources. While in the Tosefta the purpose of the parable is to persuade and motivate the audience to mend their ways, in Maimonides the parable serves as an illustration of a philosophical and religious viewpoint on the appropriate relationship between speech and thought, and between verbal confession and thoughts of repentance. In light of these conclusions, it seems that the various versions of the reptile parable reflect not just a rabbinic affinity for invoking parables and the versatility of the parable as a genre. These versions also testify of the evolution and transformations that rabbinic Judaism has undergone throughout the generations.

Bibliography

  • Dov Chavel, Haim, ed. The Writings of Rabbeinu Behaye, 3 vols. Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1969.

  • Feldman, Louis H., ed. and trans. Josephus: Jewish Antiquities, Volume IX: Book 20. LCL 456. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1965.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Flusser, David. Jewish Sources in Early Christianity: Studies and Essays. Tel Aviv: Sifriyat Po’alim, 1979 (Hebrew).

  • Fraenkel, Yonah. Darkhei ha-aggadah vehamidrash. Givatayim: Yad Latalmud, 1991 (Hebrew).

  • Furstenberg, Yair. Purity and Community in Antiquity: Traditions of the Law from Second Temple Judaism to the Mishnah. Jerusalem: Magnes, 2016 (Hebrew).

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Goldberg, Abraham. “The Tosefta—Companion to the Mishna.” Pages 283302 in The Literature of the Sages. Vol. 1. Oral Tora, Halakha, Mishna, Tosefta, Talmud External Tractates. Edited by Shmuel Safrai and Peter J. Tomson. CRINT 2.3a. Assen: Van Gorcum; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Hacham, Noah. “Public Fasts During the Second Temple Period.” PhD diss., Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1995.

  • Kadari, Adiel. Studies in Repentance: Law, Philosophy and Educational Thought in Maimonides’ Hilkhot Tesuvah. Beer-Sheva: Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Press, 2010 (Hebrew).

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Levine, David. Communal Fasts and Rabbinic Sermons: Theory and Practice in the Talmudic Period. Tel Aviv: Hakibutz Hameuchad, 2001 (Hebrew).

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • McCall, Marsh H. Ancient Rhetorical Theories of Simile and Comparison. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1969.

  • Neusner, Jacob. The Tosefta: Translated from the Hebrew. SFSHJ 10. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1990.

  • Ottenheijm, Eric. “On the Rhetoric of ‘Inheritance’ in Synoptic and Rabbinic Parables.” Pages 1536 in Parables in Changing Contexts: Essays on the Study of Parables in Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and Buddhism. Edited by Eric Ottenheijm and Marcel Poorthuis. JCP 35. Leiden: Brill, 2020.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Paquda, Bahya ibn. The Duties of the Heart. Translated by Yaakov Feldman. Northvale: Aronson, 1996.

  • Rabbinowitz, Joseph, and Isodore Epstein. Hebrew-English Edition of the Babylonian Talmud: Taʿanith. London: Soncino, 1984.

  • Ravitsky, Aviram. “Maimonides’ Theory of Language: Philosophy and Halakhah.” Tarbiz 76 (2007): 185231 (Hebrew).

  • Refael, Yitzhak, ed. Sefer Hamanhig. 2 vols. Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1978.

  • Skehan, Patrick W., ed. and trans. The Wisdom of Ben Sira: Introduction and Commentary by Alexander A. di Lella. AB 39. New York: Doubleday, 1987.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Stern, David. Parables in Midrash: Narrative and Exegesis in Rabbinic Literature. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991.

  • Stern, Josef. “Maimonides on Language and the Science of Language.” Pages 172226 in Maimonides and the Sciences. Edited by Robert S. Cohen and Hillel Levine. BSPS 211. Dordrecht: Springer, 2000.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Taylor, Joan E. The Immerser: John the Baptist within Second Temple Judaism. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997.

  • Teugels, Lieve M. The Meshalim in the Mekhiltot: An Annotated Edition and Translation of the Parables in Mekhilta de Rabbi Ishmael and Mekhilta de Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai. TSAJ 176. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2019.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Wartski, Isaac. Studies in the Language of the Midrashim. Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1970 (Hebrew).

1

See David Flusser, Jewish Sources in Early Christianity: Studies and Essays (Tel Aviv: Sifriyat Po’alim, 1979), 209 (Hebrew); David Stern, Parables in Midrash: Narrative and Exegesis in Rabbinic Literature (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991), 6; Eric Ottenheijm, “On the Rhetoric of ‘Inheritance’ in Synoptic and Rabbinic Parables,” in Parables in Changing Contexts: Essays on the Study of Parables in Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and Buddhism, ed. Eric Ottenheijm and Marcel Poorthuis, JCP 35 (Leiden: Brill, 2020), 20–22.

2

For a discussion of fast ceremonies in rabbinic literature, see David Levine, Communal Fasts and Rabbinic Sermons: Theory and Practice in the Talmudic Period (Tel Aviv: Hakibutz Hameuchad, 2001). For a discussion of fast ceremonies during the Second Temple period, see Noah Hacham, “Public Fasts During the Second Temple Period.” (PhD diss., Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1995).

3

On the term “speech of admonition” (Heb. divrei kibushin), see Levine, Communal Fasts, 97−102; Isaac Wartski, Studies in the Language of the Midrashim (Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1970), 79−96 (Hebrew).

4

Translation from Jacob Neusner, The Tosefta: Translated from the Hebrew, SFSHJ 10 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1990), 121−122.

5

Translation from the Soncino Babylonian Talmud: Joseph Rabbinowitz and Isodore Epstein, Hebrew-English Edition of the Babylonian Talmud: Taʿanith (London: Soncino, 1984).

6

The verses from Proverbs and Lamentations function here as a rhetorical tool to strengthen the call to correct the deeds.

7

The majority of parables in rabbinic literature appear in exegetical contexts as part of a midrash. See Stern, Parables in Midrash, 7. David Flusser distinguished between what he viewed as the original Sitz im Leben of parables that were spoken in the context of public instruction, like the majority of Jesus’s parables, and exegetical parables, which he regarded as a later development. See Flusser, Jewish Sources in Early Christianity, 202−205. For a discussion of the range of positions among various scholars with regard to this issue, see Lieve M. Teugels, The Meshalim in the Mekhiltot: An Annotated Edition and Translation of the Parables in Mekhilta de Rabbi Ishmael and Mekhilta de Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai, TSAJ 176 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2019), 7−9; see also 20−64 for a clear overview of the scholarship to date on parables in rabbinic literature.

8

Yonah Fraenkel, Darkhei ha-aggadah vehamidrash (Givatayim: Yad Latalmud, 1991), 373 (Hebrew).

9

Stern, Parables in Midrash, 10.

10

Stern, Parables in Midrash, 10.

11

See Marsh H. McCall, Ancient Rhetorical Theories of Simile and Comparison (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1969), 27−28. Fraenkel also noted the centrality of the explicatory role of the parable. He defined the parable as a “short fictional narrative that serves to explicate another matter.” See Fraenkel, Darkhei ha-aggadah, 323.

12

The book of Ben Sira is dated to the second century BCE; see Patrick W. Skehan, ed. and trans., The Wisdom of Ben Sira: Introduction and Commentary by Alexander A. di Lella, AB 39 (New York: Doubleday, 1987), 8−18; The compilation of the Tosefta is dated to the third century CE; see Abraham Goldberg, “The Tosefta—Companion to the Mishna,” in The Literature of the Sages, vol. 1, Oral Tora, Halakha, Mishna, Tosefta, Talmud External Tractates, ed. Shmuel Safrai and Peter J. Tomson, CRINT 2.3a (Assen: Van Gorcum; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987), 283−284.

13

Skehan, The Wisdom of Ben Sira, 411.

14

Levine, Communal Fasts, 79.

15

Levine, Communal Fasts, 80.

16

Translation from Louis H. Feldman, ed. and trans., Josephus: Jewish Antiquities, Volume IX: Book 20, LCL 456 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1965), 81−83.

17

My concern here is with the way in which Josephus depicts John the Baptist’s approach to immersion. For other views on John the Baptist’s approach, see Yair Furstenberg, Purity and Community in Antiquity: Traditions of the Law from Second Temple Judaism to the Mishnah (Jerusalem: Magnes, 2016), 70−73 (Hebrew); Joan E. Taylor, The Immerser: John the Baptist within Second Temple Judaism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 64−100.

18

The verse apparently relates to an upward prayer gesture with the hands.

19

See, for instance, Yitzhak Refael, ed., Sefer Hamanhig [of Rabbi Abraham ben Nathan from the twelfth-thirteenth centuries], 2 vols. (Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1978), 1:335; Kad HaKemah [of Bahya ben Asher from the thirteenth-fourteenth centuries],; Haim Dov Chavel, ed., The Writings of Rabbeinu Behaye, 3 vols. (Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1969), 163.

20

Another aspect worthy of examination in its own right is the use of the image in this parable in the context of halakhic discussions of purity and impurity. See Solomon Buber, ed., Midrash Lekah Tov [of Rabbi Tobias ben Eliezer from the eleventh–twelfth centuries] (Vilna, 1880−1884), 64. I am grateful to Marcel Poorthuis for bringing this source to my attention. See also Refael, Sefer Hamanhig, 2:427.

21

Bahya ibn Paquda, The Duties of the Heart, trans. Yaakov Feldman (Northvale: Aronson, 1996), 332.

22

On the Maimonidean theory of language, see Josef Stern, “Maimonides on Language and the Science of Language,” in Maimonides and the Sciences, ed. Robert S. Cohen and Hillel Levine, BSPS 211 (Dordrecht: Springer, 2000), 173−226. For an examination of the relationship between the Maimonidean theory of language, as a philosophical theory, and the linguistic theory that emerges from his halakhic writings, see Aviram Ravitsky, “Maimonides’ Theory of Language: Philosophy and Halakhah,” Tarbiz 76 (2007), 185−231 (Hebrew).

23

See Adiel Kadari, Studies in Repentance: Law, Philosophy and Educational Thought in Maimonides’ Hilkhot Tesuvah (Beer-Sheva: Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Press, 2010), 52−56 (Hebrew).

  • Collapse
  • Expand

The Power of Parables

Essays on the Comparative Study of Jewish and Christian Parables

Series:  Jewish and Christian Perspectives Series, Volume: 39

Metrics

All Time Past 365 days Past 30 Days
Abstract Views 0 0 0
Full Text Views 72 24 1
PDF Views & Downloads 43 24 1