The Closed Book: How the Rabbis Taught the Jews (Not) to Read the Bible

Rebecca Scharbach Wollenberg's "The Closed Book" challenges the notion that Jews embraced the biblical text immediately after it was canonized, suggesting that they instead developed a form of biblical revelation known as the "third Torah" during the intervening centuries. This living tradition of recitation was believed to provide a more authentic witness to the scriptural revelation at Sinai.

Format: Hardback
Length: 272 pages
Publication date: 18 April 2023
Publisher: Princeton University Press

Early Judaism, a millennium before the Bible's centrality, underwent a groundbreaking reinterpretation. Traditionally seen as the religion of the book, it was characterized by a deep reverence for the Bible and a culture of sacred bookishness. However, in her book "The Closed Book," Rebecca Scharbach Wollenberg challenges this notion by suggesting that Jews did not fully embrace the biblical text until nearly a thousand years after its canonization.

Wollenberg narrates the story of the intervening centuries, during which even rabbis seldom opened a Bible and many rabbinic authorities remained deeply ambivalent about the biblical text as a source of sacred knowledge. She reveals that, instead of relying solely on the biblical text, early Jewish thinkers embraced a form of biblical revelation that has largely faded from practice.

Between the fixed transcripts of the Written Torah and the fluid traditions of the Oral Torah, these rabbinic thinkers imagined a "third Torah." In this "third Torah," memorized spoken formulas of the biblical tradition were envisioned as a distinct version of biblical revelation. It was believed that this living tradition, passed down by human mouths and unbound by the limitations of written text, provided a fuller and more authentic witness to the scriptural revelation at Sinai.

By embracing this "third Torah," early rabbinic authorities were able to leverage the idea of biblical revelation while simultaneously quarantining the biblical text itself from communal life. This reinterpretation offers a revealing glimpse into the "people of the book" before they became known as such. It sheds light on the complex and evolving relationship between Jews and their sacred text, highlighting the ways in which they sought to interpret and apply it to their lives in a changing world.

Weight: 580g
Dimension: 164 x 243 x 28 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780691243290