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Contributor: Eliyahu Krakowski

Book Review: ‘After Revelation: The Rabbinic Past in the Medieval Islamic World’, by Marc D. Herman

Book Review: ‘After Revelation: The Rabbinic Past in the Medieval Islamic World’, by Marc D. Herman

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Dr. Marc Herman’s After Revelation: The Rabbinic Past in the Medieval Islamic World (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2025) examines shifting conceptions of Torah she-beʿal peh within the Judeo-Islamic world from the geonic period through the time of Maimonides. Beginning with Rav Saadya Gaon and concluding with the Rambam, Herman traces a gradual reorientation away from the geonic understanding of Torah she-beʿal peh as wholly revealed toward the Maimonidean position, in which human interpretation plays a constitutive role in the formation…

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How much Greek in “Greek Wisdom”? On the Meaning of Hokhmat Yevanit

How much Greek in “Greek Wisdom”? On the Meaning of Hokhmat Yevanit

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In the medieval controversies over the study of philosophy, one of the major points of contention was the Talmudic prohibition against hokhmat yevanit. Modern historians, who are generally well-disposed toward the Maimonidean proponents of philosophy (often at the expense of the anti-rationalists), nevertheless often assume that the anti-rationalists had the better of this particular argument. The Maimonidean defense of philosophy against the Talmudic stricture, if not an outright distortion, was at least a forced explanation. However, the truth seems to…

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