•  54
    Diaspora: Generation and the Ground of Jewish Identity
    with Jonathan Boyarin
    Critical Inquiry 19 (4): 693-725. 1993.
  •  36
    When Augustine condemns the Jews to eternal carnality, he draws a direct connection between anthropology and hermeneutics. Because the Jews reject reading “in the spirit,” they are therefore condemned to remain “Israel in the flesh.” Allegory is thus, in his theory, a mode of relating to the body. In another part of the Christian world, Origen also described the failure of the Jews as owing to a literalist hermeneutic, one that is unwilling to go beyond or behind the material language and discov…Read more
  •  34
    The Talmud meets church history
    Diacritics 28 (2): 52-80. 1998.
    In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Talmud Meets Church HistoryDaniel Boyarin (bio)Virginia Burrus. Chastity as Autonomy: Women in the Stories of the Apocryphal Acts. New York: Edwin Mellen, 1987.———. ‘“Equipped for Victory’: Ambrose and the Gendering of Orthodoxy.” Journal of Early Christian Studies 4.4 (1996): 461–75.———. The Making Of A Heretic: Gender, Authority, And The Priscillianist Controversy. Berkeley: U of California P, 1995.———. “Reading Agnes: The Rhet…Read more
  •  30
    5.'Lycidas': A Wolf in Saint's Clothing 'Lycidas': A Wolf in Saint's Clothing (pp. 684-702)
    with Françoise Meltzer, Marc Blanchard, Simon Coleman, Lawrence Jasud, Arnold I. Davidson, Michael A. Di Giovine, Simon Ditchfield, Malika Zeghal, and Aviad Kleinberg
    Critical Inquiry 35 (3): 587-610. 2009.
  •  21
    Like/as a woman
    Diacritics 20 (4): 31-42. 1990.
  •  20
    The Eye in the Torah: Ocular Desire in Midrashic Hermeneutic
    Critical Inquiry 16 (3): 532-550. 1990.
    My construction of the position of the eye in Rabbinic Judaism represents almost a reversal of the roles “Hebraic” and “Hellenic.” A powerful case can be made that only under Hellenic influence do Jewish cultures exhibit any anxiety about the corporeality of visibility of God; the biblical and Rabbinic religions were quite free of such influences and anxieties. Thus I would identify Greek influences on Judaism in the Middle Ages as being the force for repressing the visual. The Neoplatonic and A…Read more
  •  19
    Toward a Dialogue with Edward Said
    with Jonathan Boyarin
    Critical Inquiry 15 (3): 626-633. 1989.
    As critics, a vital part of our task is to examine the ways in which language mystifies and reveals, serves and disserves human desires and aspirations. In that spirit we feel that engaging the leading Palestinian intellectual in the United States in a critical dialogue is a vital task. Although this reply takes issue with several points in Edward Said’s paper, “An Ideology of Difference” , our critique is intended as part of the struggle for increased mutual empathy. We in no way wish to deny S…Read more
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    Socrates and the Fat Rabbis
    University of Chicago Press. 2009.
    What kind of literature is the Talmud? To answer this question, Daniel Boyarin looks to an unlikely source: the dialogues of Plato. In these ancient texts he finds similarities, both in their combination of various genres and topics and in their dialogic structure. But Boyarin goes beyond these structural similarities, arguing also for a cultural relationship. In _Socrates and the Fat Rabbis_, Boyarin suggests that both the Platonic and the talmudic dialogues are not dialogic at all. Using Micha…Read more
  •  15
    Analogy vs. Anomaly in Midrashic Hermeneutic: Tractates Wayyassa and Amaleq in the Mekilta
    Journal of the American Oriental Society 106 (4): 659-666. 1986.
  •  12
  •  11
    Dialectic and divination in the Talmud
    In Simon Goldhill (ed.), The End of Dialogue in Antiquity, Cambridge University Press. pp. 217. 2008.
  •  10
    The Satanic Verses and Evil in Babylonia
    Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 30 (1): 70-89. 2022.
    In this article, I study several midrashic passages preserved in the Babylonian Talmud that deal with Satan. The verses that they are based on are nearly all drawn from the book of Job. I find that these midrashim strongly support the conclusions of Ishay Rosen-Zvi’s monograph Demonic Desires in several ways, notably that Satan is not the font and origin of evil in the world as he is in other branches or wings of the ancient Jewish imagination.
  •  8
    “[A] fascinating recasting of the story of Jesus.” —Elliot Wolfson, New York University In July 2008, a front-page story in the New York Times reported on the discovery of an ancient Hebrew tablet, dating from before the birth of Jesus, which predicted a Messiah who would rise from the dead after three days. Commenting on this startling discovery at the time, noted Talmud scholar Daniel Boyarin argued that “some Christians will find it shocking—a challenge to the uniqueness of their theology.” G…Read more
  •  7
    Introduction
    with Anne Marie Wolf and Lilith Acadia
    Common Knowledge 26 (3): 373-384. 2020.
    Responding to doubts expressed by contributors to the Common Knowledge symposium on xenophilia, this introduction to the seventh and final installment seeks to explain the critics’ methodological concerns in a case study of strong affect in the Babylonian Talmud. Examining the story of Rav Rehumi and his wife in Ketubot 62b, the author inquires whether differences of culture and the passage of time make it impossible for us to determine whether love is the affect involved. The case is especially…Read more
  •  2
    Proceeding by means of intensive readings of passages from the earlymidrash on Exodus The Mekilta, Boyarin proposes a new theory of midrash that restsin part on an understanding of the heterogeneity of the biblical text and theconstraining force of rabbinic ideology on the production of midrash. In a forcefulcombination of theory and reading, Boyarin raises profound questions concerning theinterplay between history, ideology, and interpretation.
  •  1
    This work covers the typological relation of rabbinic Judaism to Christianity, and provides a re-examination, by going back to the roots, of a rabbinic Judaism that would not manifest some of the deleterious social ideologies and practices that modern orthodox Judaism generally does.
  •  1
    Anna (O)rthodox: Bertha Poppenheim and the making of Jewish feminism
    Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 80 (3): 65-88. 1998.
  • L'embourgeoisemen Freud, gender, and the
    Diacritics 24 (1): 16-41. 1994.