The Poetics of Mishnah: A Methodological Study
Mishnah is a notoriously difficult work to study as a coherent text. The apparent lack of clear logical arrangement, the abrupt shifts of topic, and the frequent insertions of associatively-arranged sections which interrupt the topical flow have challenged students of Mishnah from Talmudic times until the present. In this course we will explore the nature and purpose of Mishnah redaction. Employing close reading techniques, we will see how the Mishnah redactor employs keywords and literary structures such as inclusion and parallelism in order to weave together units and themes in surprising and suggestive ways. Intertextual reading of Mishnaic passages in comparison with biblical texts or with parallel rabbinic compilations will afford further insight into the larger questions upon which Mishnah summons us to reflect.
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