People of the Book: Canon, Meaning, and Authority

Halbertal (Jewish thought and philosophy, Hebrew Univ., Jerusalem) offers a sophisticated analysis of the development of Jewish text-centered cultures. His work is an important study for the history of interpretation within Judaism, though its significance as a model of how text-centered religions think extends even beyond Judaism. Halbertal explains convincingly why the rabbinical model of text-centeredness first arose as the result of the loss of both statehood and sacred space in the land, how it came to be variously reinterpreted among the many medieval subcultures of Judaism in the Diaspora, and why, as the result of Zionism and the return to land and statehood, the rabbinical notion of text-centeredness no longer dominates modern Jewish social identity. The work would make an excellent classroom introduction to the nature of the role that canonization plays in religions whose experience of the divine is mediated by the interpretation of sacred texts. This book is best suited to the philosophically sophisticated lay reader and to students or scholars of the sociology of religion. It should certainly be included among the holdings of all general, theological, and religious studies research libraries.

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