Papers by Constanza Cordoni
The Jewish revolts in the first and second centuries ce ushered in the socalled rabbinic period o... more The Jewish revolts in the first and second centuries ce ushered in the socalled rabbinic period of Jewish history and marked the beginning of the most paradigmatic of the diasporas.7 While Jews had been living in places other than their ancestral homeland before the revolts,8 the meaning of their dispersion changed with the destruction of the Temple and the end of Jewish sovereignty in Judea. Jews in the diaspora as well as in the ancestral homeland his book to major topics concerning the rabbis' Land-concepts, emphasising the academic character of a discourse that replaces a realistic geography); Ben-Eliyahu, Identity and Territory, ch. 4. There are two major collections of excerpts of rabbinic literature on the Land: M.
Journal for the Study of Judaism
NTT Journal for Theology and the Study of Religion
“Written for Our Discipline and Use”, 2021
Zeitschrift Fur Franzosische Sprache Und Literatur, 2019
Journal for the Study of Judaism, 2018
After 70CE, when Israel was no longer an independent nation in the land of Israel and their culti... more After 70CE, when Israel was no longer an independent nation in the land of Israel and their cultic center was no longer physically present there, the rabbis of the Palestinian and Babylonian diaspora reflect from different perspectives on the beginning of the story of the land, on what can be called the “homeland myth” of the patriarchal narratives of Scripture. In doing so, they create their own ancestral homeland myth. In this article, two sets of rabbinic texts are examined in order to illustrate how the rabbis refashioned the scriptural myth and produced two versions of a rabbinic ancestral homeland myth. The first group of texts are related to the promise of the land and its fulfilment, the second to the establishment of the first Jewish grave in the promised land.
Cahiers de recherches médiévales et humanistes, 2015
Ibn Hisday, has not yet been identiied, but it is clear that the work that has come down to us is... more Ibn Hisday, has not yet been identiied, but it is clear that the work that has come down to us is no direct translation of any of the extant Arabic precursors of the legend of Barlaam and Josaphat 1 , the diverse pre-barlaamic texts here collectively referred to as Kitab Bilawhar wa-Budasf 3. This article will look at the text as it stands. I will irst present a description of the work (II.), complemented with an appendix which provides an overview of the parable corpus. In a second part (III.), I will focus on a group of both diegetic and metadiegetic passages dealing with the transmission of wisdom, probably the most representative aspect of the "job description" of the ascetic, but also of advisors in general, and probably one of the main subjects of the work.
Medieval Worlds, 2020
Following the early commentary on the book of Exodus in the Mekhilta deRabbi Yishmael (third cent... more Following the early commentary on the book of Exodus in the Mekhilta deRabbi Yishmael (third century CE), a series of later rabbinic texts with other exegetical agendas praise the children of Israel for remaining loyal to their language identity during the time of the Egyptian bondage. This tradition is found both in Hebrew and in Hebrew-Aramaic rabbinic corpora of the classical period before it is taken up in early medieval works, for the most part written in Hebrew, which attest to a return to Hebrew in part of the Jewish literary production in the early Middle Ages. This paper is about tracing this evolving tradition through changing contexts.
Petterson designates his hermeneutical approach "contextual intention inference". On how narratol... more Petterson designates his hermeneutical approach "contextual intention inference". On how narratology and hermeneutics can be merged he writes: "contextual intention inference requires the kind of detailed contextual, historicallyanchored and interdisciplinary study of the literary work that post-classical narratology and its multi-faceted toolkit is well equipped to provide in the study of fiction. Hence, narratology and hermeneutics can profitably be combined: classical narratology offers the textual tools, postclassical narratology the contextual and cognitive tools, and a hermeneutics based on contextual intention inference provides an account that is able to deal with narratology's interpretive features and approximate interpretive validity." (21-22) 2 Ibid.
This article compares three versions of a rabbinic story dealing with the so called impurity of w... more This article compares three versions of a rabbinic story dealing with the so called impurity of women during the menstruation and its biblical roots. Since rabbinic stories do not stand on their own but are always used to illustrate an argument made in the context in which they are transmitted, be it talmudic or midrashic, special attention is paid to the specific function the story has in each of the studied contexts.
While workingo nachaptero fm yd octoral dissertation Ig ot to thep oint whereI thought that inste... more While workingo nachaptero fm yd octoral dissertation Ig ot to thep oint whereI thought that insteadofdescribing ac ertain hermeneutical operation, Ishould simplyname it usingaterminustechnicus which wasprobablytobefound in one of the lists of middot attributed to Hillel,Ishmael, andEliezer benY ose,¹ butw hichIwas not able to find on my own. So Ic onsultedm yDoktorvater,who promptlyr eplied that my description wasc orrect, and thatasimilarm ethod is describedi no ne of R. Eliezer's middot,b ut that for ad iscussion of the very operation Iw as dealing withImightf indi tu seful to read ap assage in AlexanderS amely's Rabbinic interpretationo fS cripturei nt he Mishnah.² Afterr eading those ando ther pageso ft hat book Ir ealized that Samelya greed with those anticipatory wordso fS temberger in distinguishingb etween the rabbinic theory of hermeneuticsa nd thea ctualh ermeneutic praxis of whichr abbinict exts give evidence:³ The theory of thel ists of middot that have come down to us does nota ccountf or alloft he hermeneutic operations we encounter when readingr abbinic texts.⁴ Samely'sb ook describes the manyw aysi nw hich the Mishnah interprets Scripture, which he terms "hermeneuticr esources." Scriptural verses are segmented, their Scriptural co-text is neutralized, and anew perspective is imposed on them in the rabbinic document,wherethey might be explicitlyquotedornot, or explicitlyi ntroduced or not.M anyi nsights of Samely'sb ook concerning the hermeneutic mechanisms present in the Mishnah appear to be true of other types of classicala nd post-classicalr abbinic documents. On the middot lists see Günter Stemberger, Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash, nd ed. (Minnesotta,M N: Fortress Press, ), -,a nd the literaturec ited therein. My question pertained to metathesis, an operation discussed in Samely, Rabbinic interpretation of Scripture in the Mishnah (Oxford: OxfordU niversity Press, ), -. See ibid., -. Alexander Samely, Forms of rabbinic literatureand thought: An introduction (Oxford: OxfordU ni-versityPress, ), ,observesonthe lists of middot: "These lists clearlydid notserve to explain to apprenticerabbinicinterpreters howt odotheirbiblical reading. Rabbinics kills in interpretation were probably learned very largely by analogya nd imitation, much likeo therc omponents of rabbinic culture … rabbinics trategieso fr eading were neithere xhaustivelya rticulated norc odifiedi n the rabbinicp eriod. Even their modern scholarly description is still in itsi nfancy."
Targums and Early Rabbinic Literature, 2021
"Written for Our Discipline and Use": The Construction of Christian and Jewish Identities in Late Ancient Bible Interpretation, 2021
The Case of the Land of Israel * Religions mark this place as unlike others. Religions say: take ... more The Case of the Land of Israel * Religions mark this place as unlike others. Religions say: take off your shoes before you enter here. Religions say: walk no farther than this on the Sabbath, […] Religions, in other words, involve homemaking. They construct a homeand a homeland. They delineate domestic and public space and construct collective identity. Religions distinguish us and them-and prescribe where and how both should live. (T. Tweed, Crossing and Dwelling) * This article has been written in the context of the project "Reconfiguring Diaspora: The Transformation of the Jewish Diaspora in Antiquity, " directed by Leonard V. Rutgers and financially supported by the Dutch Research Council (NWO). I wish to thank Günter Stemberger and Lieve Teugels for their suggestions on an earlier version of this text. 1 For a brief treatment of "sense of place, " see Wilkie/Roberson, Sense of place. Apart from Relph's blog entry on "sense of place" (, 06. 06. 2019), I am not aware of a research overview or survey article on the uses of the concept "sense of place. " For the related idea of place attachment and its historical background see Low/Altman, Place attachment, and the literature cited therein. Although the expression has become commonplace, it continues to appeal as meaningful. See Malpas, Place and Singularity.
Die Bibel und die Frauen 4.2: Das jüdische Mittelalter, 2020
Medieval Worlds 11, 2020
Following the early commentary on the book of Exodus in the Mekhilta deRabbi Yishmael (third cent... more Following the early commentary on the book of Exodus in the Mekhilta deRabbi Yishmael (third century CE), a series of later rabbinic texts with other exegetical agendas praise the children of Israel for remaining loyal to their language identity during the time of the Egyptian bondage. This tradition is found both in Hebrew and in Hebrew-Aramaic rabbinic corpora of the classical period before it is taken up in early medieval works, for the most part written in Hebrew, which attests to a Rehebraicisation of part of the Jewish literary production in the early Middle Ages, i.e. the return to Hebrew as the sole mode of expression that leaves behind classical diglossia of the major works of talmudic literature, the Talmudim and the amoraic midrashim. This paper is about tracing this evolving tradition through changing contexts.
Journal for the Study of Judaism 49, 2018
After 70 CE, when Israel was no longer an independent nation in the land of Israel and their cult... more After 70 CE, when Israel was no longer an independent nation in the land of Israel and their cultic center was no longer physically present there, the rabbis of the Palestinian and Babylonian diaspora reflect from different perspectives on the beginning of the story of the land, on what can be called the "homeland myth" of the patriarchal narratives of Scripture. In doing so, they create their own ancestral homeland myth. In this article, two sets of rabbinic texts are examined in order to illustrate how the rabbis refashioned the scriptural myth and produced two versions of a rabbinic ancestral homeland myth. The first group of texts are related to the promise of the land and its fulfilment, the second to the establishment of the first Jewish grave in the promised land.
Cahiers de Recherches Médiévales et Humanistes 29 , 2015
Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Narratives from the Late Antiquity through to Modern Times, 2014
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Papers by Constanza Cordoni
Digital Workshop
Hochschule für Jüdische Studien
November 8, 2021, Heidelberg (online)