Language:
English
Year of publication:
2022
Titel der Quelle:
Journal of Jewish Studies
Angaben zur Quelle:
73,2 (2022) 305-332
Keywords:
Avot de-Rabbi Nathan Criticism, interpretation, etc.
;
Avot de-Rabbi Nathan Criticism, Textual
;
Midrash History and criticism
Abstract:
The unique, composite historical narrative of the destruction of the Second Temple in the Fathers of Rabbi Nathan, Version B, is explored using the frame of Mikhail Bakhtin’s theoretical notions of dialogic discourse and the chronotope. The analysis reveals a redactional artistic impulse that has composed a coherent narrative sequence from numerous discrete units of texts of different genres and a sustained dialogic interaction between their chronotopic motifs, effected in a variety of ways. Three different chronotopes, or underlying assumptions of the relationship between place, time and character agency, are explored: historical, Midrashic and the rabbinic romance chronotope. Ultimately, the narrative is dominated by the historical chronotope, which assumes human proactive agency, and the marginalization of divine agency, in historical causation.
DOI:
10.18647/3544/jjs-2022
URL:
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