Sa'adyah Gaon was an outstanding tenth-century Jewish thinker-a prominent rabbi, philosopher, and exegete. He was a pioneer in the fields in which he toiled, and was an inspiration and basis for later Jewish writing in all these areas. The last major English-language study of his work was published in 1921, long before Genizah research changed the understanding of the time in which he lived. Robert Brody's masterly work, covering Sa'adyah's biography and his main areas of creativity in an accessible way, is therefore a much-needed reassessment of an outstanding figure. The opening chapter, on the geonic period that formed the background to Sa'adyah's life (a period on which there are few works in English), is followed by an overview that brings out the revolutionary aspects of his work and the characteristic features of his writings. Subsequent chapters consider his philosophical works; his Bible commentaries; his pioneering linguistic work; his poetry; his halakhic activity (including an examination of his use of the Palestinian Talmud compared to that of the Babylonian Talmud); and his activity as a polemicist, notably against the Karaites.An Epilogue sums up his importance in medieval Jewish culture. Particularly valuable features of the book are the copious quotations from Sa'adyah's works, which facilitate familiarity with his style as well as his ideas; the clarity in presenting complex and difficult concepts; the constant assessment of his relationship to his predecessors in his various fields of study and his own unique contributions to each field; and the contextualization of his contribution within the political, cultural, and religious climate of his times so that both revolutionary and conservative elements in his thought can be identified and evaluated.

Mishnah and Tosefta Ketubbot: Text, Exegesis and Redaction includes new editions of tractate Ketubbot in the Mishnah and Tosefta and offers a new model for presenting these interdependent texts. After an introduction which deals at length with some central topics in Mishnah and Tosefta research, especially with regard to textual criticism, the two editions are presented in parallel; each edition is accompanied by selected variants and explanatory notes. Please note: The book was typeset so there is a parallel between Mishna and the matching Tosefta. For this reason pages 76, 82, 97, 100, 124, 177, 180, 220, 240, 256, 298, and 300 are blank. These pages were left blank intentionally.

This book breaks new ground in several areas of Talmudic philology, especially with regard to the central work of classical rabbinic literature, the Mishnah, and its companion volume the Tosefta. The first section, devoted to the textual criticism of the Mishnah, exposes a number of widespread fallacies with regard to the so-called "Palestinian" and "Babylonian" manuscripts of this work. The second section, the largest and most innovative of the book, seeks to place the textual criticism of the Tosefta on a firm foundation on the basis of a detailed analysis which upends the scholarly consensus in this area. The third section contributes to the ongoing debate concerning the relationship between Mishnah and Tosefta, emphasizing the multifaceted nature of this relationship which varies substantially from one passage to another. Finally, the afterword makes an impassioned plea for editors of classical rabbinic texts to abandon the antiquated notions of legitimate editorial practice which still prevail in the field in favor of approaches which have long been accepted in other disciplines.

Table of Contents Introduction Robert Brody — Canon: An Elusive Concept Sarah Stroumsa — Whose Canon? A Reconstruction of the Philosophical Horizon of Jews in the Middle Ages Moshe Lavee — Haggadic Midrash in the Genizah, as Reflected in the Book Lists of Rav Yosef Rosh Haseder Miriam Fraenkel — Literary Canon and Social Elite in the Geniza Society Daniel Stoekl: Canonization as a Non-Linear Process. What the Christian (and Jewish) Papyri from Egypt Reveal about the Process of Canonization Menahem Ben-Sasson — Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah: Towards Canon Formation in the Life of an Author Yehudah Zvi Stampfer — Writer’s Authority and Halakhic Canon in the Geonic Period Aharon Maman — To What Extent did Medieval Philological Works Survive? Three Case Studies Shulamit Elizur — Hebrew Poetry in the Cairo Genizah: Survival and Canonization of A-Canonical Texts Ze’ev Elkin — Sefer Ha-Galui Gabriela Cerra — Translation and the Canonization of Literary Texts – The Latin Translations of Aratos’ Phaenomena Donna Shalev — Protagoras and the Controversy over ‘First Inventor’ as a Canonical Founding Figure: Prw'toi EuJretaiv In Greek and Subsequent Culture Amia Lieblich — The Second Generation of Kfar Etzion − Collective Memory and the Canon Maya Benish-Weisman — Transformation and Preservation in Jewish Identity Characteristics of Immigrants from the Former USSR Yoel Regev — The Other Side of the Horse: Canon and Kabbalah: Narratives of Two Disintegrating Balance Mechanisms Christof Schmidt — Canon, Gnosis and Modernity − Hans Blumenberg's Legitimacy of the Modern Age Revisited

This volume comprises a collection of English and French articles in Jewish studies published by Professor E. E. Urbach in the course of over fifty years, as well as several articles and lectures found among his papers after his death in 1991. The articles collected here include contributions to various spheres of Jewish studies, particularly those to which the author dedicated most of his scholarly career and in which he became a leading figure: Halakhah, Aggdah, classical rabbinic thought, anti-Christian polemics, Jewish history of the Second Temple, and the Talmudic and Medieval periods. The history and spiritual world of Polish Jewry, a topic on which the author concentrated his later years, is also represented here. Also included are several essays in which the author surveyed trends and developments in the field of Jewish Studies.