From Scrolls to Memory: How Early Rabbis “Read” the Bible
<p>Inpopular imagination, the ancient rabbis were attentive readers. We imagine them slumped over a scroll day and night, carefully unpicking the threads of the ancient teachings of the Torah. Such an image has also long been assumed in religious scholarship. The Pentateuch is and always was seen as a pristine and perfect record of divine will, right? Well, Rebecca Scharbach Wollenberg has done her utmost to challenge this narrative in popular and academic minds with her new publication called <strong>The Closed Book: How the Rabbis Taught the Jews (Not) to Read the Bible</strong>. In focusing on rabbinical texts from the period from 200 CE to 650 CE, Wollenberg explores how early rabbinic thinkers perceived the biblical text, envisioning it not as an unblemished divine revelation but rather as a dynamic and evolving entity — a “make-shift scripture.” This scripture, they believed, echoed greater truths, shaped by history and lovingly reconstructed by human hands.</p>
<p><a href="https://medium.com/@kugelbooks/from-scrolls-to-memory-how-early-rabbis-read-the-bible-aa0877659b72"><strong>Click Here</strong></a></p>