To stake a claim : the making of rabbinic agricultural spaces in the Roman contryside
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- This dissertation argues that the prescriptions for Jewish practice and the boundaries of Jewish space in the Late Antique countryside may be considered a call by the rabbis for the transformation of a landscape filled with many different neighbors, from non-rabbinic Jews to Roman conquerors. The rabbinic sources set forth the vision for an idealized Jewish landscape filled with rabbinic Jews who manage their estates in accordance with God's will. In modern scholarship, agricultural rituals and spaces in the Mishnah and the Tosefta are often set aside in favor of consideration of urban life and society. By interrogating the importance of these spaces and their rituals, this dissertation shows that the authors of Jewish literature adopt Roman ideals of rural life but subvert those ideals to impose a specifically Jewish vernacular upon the landscape. The commitment to Biblical laws of agriculture, even in light of profound changes to the landscape wrought by Roman imperial domination, serves to challenge that domination through the assertion of distinctly Jewish agricultural spaces. In this dissertation, the halakhic reasoning and argumentation found in early rabbinic literature is analyzed through textual, literary, and spatial analysis to reveal the cultural and spatial ideals of the creators of these texts. These legal texts describe a world filled with outsiders, from Roman conquerors to Jews with different interpretations of scripture and practice: the laws of Jewish farming serve to differentiate normative Jewish practice and social structures from those others. It is the spatial aspect of agricultural life, from its fences to its regimented rows of crops that serve to physically and visually mark a Jewish space as distinct. This dissertation offers tools for spatial analysis of legal texts in rabbinic Judaism specifically and imperial spaces more broadly.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic; electronic resource; remote |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Publication date | 2014 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Associated with | Mandsager, John Robert |
|---|---|
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Religious Studies. |
| Primary advisor | Fonrobert, Charlotte Elisheva |
| Thesis advisor | Fonrobert, Charlotte Elisheva |
| Thesis advisor | Bashir, Shahzad, 1968- |
| Thesis advisor | Klein, Gil P |
| Thesis advisor | Parker, Grant Richard, 1967- |
| Thesis advisor | Weitzman, Steven, 1965- |
| Advisor | Bashir, Shahzad, 1968- |
| Advisor | Klein, Gil P |
| Advisor | Parker, Grant Richard, 1967- |
| Advisor | Weitzman, Steven, 1965- |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | John Robert Mandsager. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Religious Studies. |
| Thesis | Thesis (Ph.D.)--Stanford University, 2014. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2014 by John Robert Mandsager
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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