Profiling Jewish Literature in Antiquity An Inventory, from Second Temple Texts to the Talmuds

This book presents a new methodology for the study of ancient Jewish literature extant in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. It provides a unified approach to texts that come from a period of 900 years and were created by authors that are unknown today, sometimes presenting themselves as speaking with the voice of a biblical hero. These texts often differ fundamentally from modern texts, and the new methodology helps to describe and clarify their literary features withgreater precision than has been possible so far. The book sets out, explains, and illustrates the new methodology. It is accompanied by an online database of hundreds of literary profiles which show howthe concepts apply to specific texts of Jewish antiquity (literarydatabase.humanities.manchester.ac.uk ).