Written Religion: Some New Avenues in Analyzing Ancient Jewish Texts

Ancient Jewish religious literature appears to be largely written from an impersonal point of view, which sits somewhat uneasily with modern lay intuitions of what constitutes religious experience. Many of these works also disappoint profound assumptions on text coherence, which modern readers, including scholars, tend to bring to any text. Professor Alexander Samely (University of Manchester) illustrates a methodology for suspending such assumptions and introduces an online tool that supports the new methodology—a database of comparative profiles of ancient Jewish texts.
00:00 Introduction by D. Andrew Teeter, Associate Professor of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Harvard Divinity School
03:00 "Written Religion: Some New Avenues in Analyzing Ancient Jewish Texts" by Alexander Samely, Professor of Jewish Thought and co-director of the Centre for Jewish Studies, University of Manchester
52:10 Q&A
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