The Bloomsbury Companion to Jewish Studies Quotes

“The rabbis applied the name of Antonius to all nonhostile Roman emperors; Antonius’ major character trait was that he had the good sense to converse with the rabbinic masters and to learn from them.”
― Dean Phillip Bell, The Bloomsbury Companion to Jewish Studies

“Among his most interesting conclusions are the following: courtroom scenes focus on matters of status and hierarchy, which are paralleled in noncourtroom encounters between sages,62 and although we often view the rabbis as superior moral beings, the Talmud within the context of its legal narratives shows that they act as human beings concerned with their own best self-interests.63 To summarize, Kalmin and Hayes argue that the final editors of the Babylonian Talmud did not homogenize what they received in such a way as to make it impossible to discover the various streams of earlier thinking within the Talmud.”
― Dean Phillip Bell, The Bloomsbury Companion to Jewish Studies

“three volumes Rubenstein examines Torah as the primary value of the Talmudic academy and discusses the means by which one gains stature in the academy: by engaging in argumentation, through one’s lineage, or as a result of the breadth of one’s knowledge.”
― Dean Phillip Bell, The Bloomsbury Companion to Jewish Studies

“Literature on this reading is intimately connected to and cannot be divorced from the culture that produced it, so that the literature expresses the values and meaning of that culture.”
― Dean Phillip Bell, The Bloomsbury Companion to Jewish Studies

“Nonetheless, the fecundity and dynamic nature of rabbinic exegesis should not be overlooked, nor should their openness to multiple interpretations be underestimated. In spite of centuries of study, this rabbinic material still offers many surprises for those who approach it in a nondogmatic, unbiased manner.”
― Dean Phillip Bell, The Bloomsbury Companion to Jewish Studies

“It is more productive, however, to seek out the theological or ideological motivations that led the different authors/editors to shape their narratives in the way they did. In order to do this, it is necessary to consider that the authors/editors of”
― Dean Phillip Bell, The Bloomsbury Companion to Jewish Studies

“wisdom is rewarded; its opposite (more often described as foolishness than as evil) invariably leads to destruction.”
― Dean Phillip Bell, The Bloomsbury Companion to Jewish Studies

“past and ongoing relationship with God.”
― Dean Phillip Bell, The Bloomsbury Companion to Jewish Studies