Alexander Samely

The University of Manchester, Religions and Theology, Faculty Member

Followers

174

Following

Public Views

I work on the modern philosophy of reading and ancient Jewish texts, in particular rabbinic and pre-rabbinic discourse and narrative. I have also published on textuality more generally, in particular in my phenomenological analysis of processes of contemporary reading in the book Reading and Experience. A Philosophical Investigation (June 2024, https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-55763-7). My literary analysis of 1 Enoch was published in July 23 (https://cart.sbl-site.org/books/063551C) and my account of biblical coherence in 2020 (HeBAI).

less

Ian Young

Australian Catholic University

Reza Banakar

Lund University

Cristiana Facchini

Università di Bologna

David Seamon

Kansas State University

Joel Krueger

University of Exeter

John Sutton

Macquarie University

Eros Carvalho

Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul

Yannis Hamilakis

Brown University

avraham walfish

Herzog College

Michael Shanks

Stanford University

InterestsView All (22)

Uploads

Chapters in Books by Alexander Samely

The Use of Genre for Many Text Meanings: Apocalypse and 1 Enoch

Ditommaso and Goff (eds.), Reimagining Apocalypticism: Apocalyptic Literature in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Related Writings, 2023

"The Use of Genre for Many Text Meanings: Apocalypse and 1 Enoch”, in Lorenzo DiTommaso and Matth... more "The Use of Genre for Many Text Meanings: Apocalypse and 1 Enoch”, in Lorenzo DiTommaso and Matthew Goff (eds.), Reimagining Apocalypticism: Apocalyptic Literature in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Related Writings (Atlanta, GA: Society of Biblical Literature Press), pp. 157–196, https://cart.sbl-site.org/books/063551C

The Quotable Bible

Forms of Rabbinic Literature and Thought, 2007

Narrative Coherence and Narrative Aggregation

An Inventory, from Second Temple Texts to the Talmuds, 2013

Sample Profile 4: Genesis Rabbah (Theodor–Albeck/London MS)

An Inventory, from Second Temple Texts to the Talmuds, 2013

The Perspective and Knowledge Horizon of the Governing Voice

An Inventory, from Second Temple Texts to the Talmuds, 2013

The Poetic and Rhetorical-Communicative Constitution of Texts

An Inventory, from Second Temple Texts to the Talmuds, 2013

Correspondences and Verbal Overlap with Other Texts

An Inventory, from Second Temple Texts to the Talmuds, 2013

Small-Scale Coherence Relationships

An Inventory, from Second Temple Texts to the Talmuds, 2013

Small Forms in the Governing Voice

An Inventory, from Second Temple Texts to the Talmuds, 2013

Meta-Textual Structuring of Texts

An Inventory, from Second Temple Texts to the Talmuds, 2013

Thematic Coherence and Thematic Aggregation

An Inventory, from Second Temple Texts to the Talmuds, 2013

The Juxtaposition of Part-Texts in a Compound

An Inventory, from Second Temple Texts to the Talmuds, 2013

Dominant Subject Matter and Scholarly Genre Labels

An Inventory, from Second Temple Texts to the Talmuds, 2013

Sample Profile 1: Jubilees (Ethiopic Version)

An Inventory, from Second Temple Texts to the Talmuds, 2013

Sample Profile 2: Temple Scroll [Fragment]

An Inventory, from Second Temple Texts to the Talmuds, 2013

Sample Profile 3: Mishnah as a Whole

An Inventory, from Second Temple Texts to the Talmuds, 2013

Introductory Remarks on the Text of the Inventory

An Inventory, from Second Temple Texts to the Talmuds, 2013

The Self-Presentation of the Text as a Verbal Entity

An Inventory, from Second Temple Texts to the Talmuds, 2013

Creating Scriptural Segments

Rabbinic Interpretation of Scripture in the Mishnah, 2002

Hermeneutic Orientation and Introduction

Rabbinic Interpretation of Scripture in the Mishnah, 2002

The Use of Genre for Many Text Meanings: Apocalypse and 1 Enoch

Ditommaso and Goff (eds.), Reimagining Apocalypticism: Apocalyptic Literature in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Related Writings, 2023

The Quotable Bible

Forms of Rabbinic Literature and Thought, 2007

Narrative Coherence and Narrative Aggregation

An Inventory, from Second Temple Texts to the Talmuds, 2013

Sample Profile 4: Genesis Rabbah (Theodor–Albeck/London MS)

An Inventory, from Second Temple Texts to the Talmuds, 2013

The Perspective and Knowledge Horizon of the Governing Voice

An Inventory, from Second Temple Texts to the Talmuds, 2013

The Poetic and Rhetorical-Communicative Constitution of Texts

An Inventory, from Second Temple Texts to the Talmuds, 2013

Correspondences and Verbal Overlap with Other Texts

An Inventory, from Second Temple Texts to the Talmuds, 2013

Small-Scale Coherence Relationships

An Inventory, from Second Temple Texts to the Talmuds, 2013

Small Forms in the Governing Voice

An Inventory, from Second Temple Texts to the Talmuds, 2013

Meta-Textual Structuring of Texts

An Inventory, from Second Temple Texts to the Talmuds, 2013

Thematic Coherence and Thematic Aggregation

An Inventory, from Second Temple Texts to the Talmuds, 2013

The Juxtaposition of Part-Texts in a Compound

An Inventory, from Second Temple Texts to the Talmuds, 2013

Dominant Subject Matter and Scholarly Genre Labels

An Inventory, from Second Temple Texts to the Talmuds, 2013

Sample Profile 1: Jubilees (Ethiopic Version)

An Inventory, from Second Temple Texts to the Talmuds, 2013

Sample Profile 2: Temple Scroll [Fragment]

An Inventory, from Second Temple Texts to the Talmuds, 2013

Sample Profile 3: Mishnah as a Whole

An Inventory, from Second Temple Texts to the Talmuds, 2013

Introductory Remarks on the Text of the Inventory

An Inventory, from Second Temple Texts to the Talmuds, 2013

The Self-Presentation of the Text as a Verbal Entity

An Inventory, from Second Temple Texts to the Talmuds, 2013

Creating Scriptural Segments

Rabbinic Interpretation of Scripture in the Mishnah, 2002

Hermeneutic Orientation and Introduction

Rabbinic Interpretation of Scripture in the Mishnah, 2002

Jewish Studies and Reading

De Gruyter eBooks, Jun 20, 2016

JewishS tudies and Reading JewishStudies todayisnot restricted to the methodological and evidenti... more JewishS tudies and Reading JewishStudies todayisnot restricted to the methodological and evidential paradigms of nineteenth-century Wissenschaft des Judentums. This is not to denythat those parts of the discipline which belong to the historical humanities still nourish themselvesfrom the historical and philological achievementsofthat Wissenschaft. But other dimensions have changed considerably.N ot onlyh aveJ ewish Studies expandedinto manynon-philologicalareas,includinghistorical, social, anthropological and culturalr esearch into non-elite expressions of Jewishness very different in nature from the religious-textual traditions of Judaism. The scholarlyp ractice of studying the religious-textual evidence itself has seen important additions and changes to the procedures used by Zunz, Geiger and Steinschneider.P erhaps the most profound changea ffects the very notion of what it means to read at ext for academic purposes. Assumptions that used to underpin how practicallya ll scholars read their sources, Jewish or otherwise, have become challenged and, in the case of some contemporary approaches in JewishS tudies, abandoned. Conceptual issues surroundingr eadings trongly affect the academic methodologyo fs tudyingt he textual heritageo fJ udaism. The reason for this is thatm anyp rimaryt exts are readings of earlier primary texts,with both the earlier and the later text preserved for academic inspection. So text-oriented JewishS tudies find themselvesa tt he very centreo fas torm blowing through the humanities, the crisis of reading, because of the centrality of reading as acultural practice in certain strands of Jewish culture. In this paper Iexplore how the studyofJewish sources is affected by anumber of trends in the conceptualization and practice of reading.Itouch upon psychological and phenomenological approachestoreading, the post-modern challengetothe ideas of stable text meaning and text coherence, the role of Jewishidentity among Jewish Studies academics as readers, and one important illustration of the scholarly readingo fJ ewishr eading, the studyo fr abbinicM idrash. 1J ewishS tudies as aD iscipline Concerned with Cultures of Reading The Jewish cultural practice of reading texts closelygoes back to the time when the Hebrew Bible was still being formed. At first,e arlier "biblical" textsw ere Bereitgestellt von | De Gruyter / TCS Angemeldet Heruntergeladen am | 14.

Download

Introduction: Artefact and Text

Is targumic aramaic rabbinic Hebrew? A reflection on midrashic and targumic rewording of scripture

Journal of Jewish Studies, 1994

Le Targum n'est pas essentiellement une traduction mais aussi une recomposition exegetique de... more

Is targumic aramaic rabbinic Hebrew? A reflection on midrashic and targumic rewording of scripture

Journal of Jewish Studies, 1994

Le Targum n'est pas essentiellement une traduction mais aussi une recomposition exegetique de... more

How Coherence Works. Reading, Re-Reading and Inner-Biblical Exegesis

Hebrew Bible and Ancient Israel, 2020

"How Coherence Works. Reading, Re-Reading and Inner-Biblical Exegesis”, Hebrew Bible and Ancient ... more

Database for the Analysis of Anonymous and Pseudepigraphic Jewish Texts of Antiquity

http://literarydatabase.humanities.manchester.ac.uk/, 2013

This analytical database contains Profiles of works of Jewish antiquity in Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek... more

Stressing Scripture's Words: The Use of Semantic Contrast as a Midrashic Technique in the Mishnah

Journal of Jewish Studies, 1995

Notes on the Sequencing of Information in Mishna Tractates

The Background of Speech: Some Observations on the Representation of Targumic Exegesis

Journal of Jewish Studies, 1988

Educational Features in Ancient Jewish Literature: An Overview of Unknowns

Jewish Education from Antiquity to the Middle Ages, 2017

The interpreted text: among the Hebrew manuscripts of the John Ryands University Library

Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 1991

A. HORIZONS OF INTERPRETATION: WORK, CODEX, COLLECTION 1 This account has grown out of work towar... more A. HORIZONS OF INTERPRETATION: WORK, CODEX, COLLECTION 1 This account has grown out of work towards a descriptive catalogue of the Hebrew manuscripts in the Library. Both the limited scope and the tentative nature of the picture given here reflect that project's unfinished state. I would like to take this opportunity to ask all scholars who have worked in the past on manuscripts in the Library or have knowledge of the history of the collections for their collaboration. If they believe themselves to be in possession of information that might be relevant for the final catalogue, I should like to ask them to get in touch with me at the John Rylands Research Institute, 150 Deansgate, Manchester M3 3EH, where the manuscripts are housed. Apart from a number of individual literary and manuscript experts whose kind help is acknowledged in the following footnotes, I am greatly indebted to a collective of scholars: the work of the Institute of Microfilmed Hebrew Manuscripts (see note 4; has proved an immense help in the investigation of these documents. 2 The opening statement of this article, apparently reporting only a measurement, already incorporates a number of interpretative decisions leading to the exclusion of certain manuscripts; see below section D and note 69. 3 A number of Hebrew texts in the Library are not in codex form. Tora scrolls, l.siher scrolls, kelubboth and amulets are not covered by this survey.

Download

Observations on the Structure and Literary Fabric of the Temple Scroll

The Temple in Text and Tradition : A Festschrift in Honour of Robert Hayward

8. The works considered as part of the empirical foundation of the Inventory are listed in Samely... more

Download

Forms of Rabbinic Literature and Thought: An Introduction - By Alexander Samely

Reviews in Religion & Theology, 2008

Download

Scripture's Implicature: The Midrashic Assumptions of Relevance and Consistency

Journal of Semitic Studies, 1992

Page 1. Journal of Semitic Studies XXXVII/2 Autumn 1992 SCRIPTURE'S IMPLICATURE: THE MIDRASH... more

Download

Inventory of Structurally Important Literary Features in the Anonymous and Pseudepigraphic Jewish Literature of Antiquity

Aramaic Studies, 2011

2.5.2. As part of the words of a quoted character, but with implications also for the governing v... more 2.5.2. As part of the words of a quoted character, but with implications also for the governing voice. LevR 7.3 (R. Acha, p. 155 Margolioth); Tosefta RH 2.6. The text presents itself as speaking to certain persons, groups or entities, explicitly projecting a certain image of its addressee. Judith, Tobit, Susannah 4.1.2.1. The narrative builds up one central narrative tension as having special intrinsic interest, or unites in some other way a number of narrative strands. Judith, Tobit, Susannah 4.1.2.2. The action pivots around one character or a small set of interconnected characters. Tobit, Judith, Susannah 4.1.2.3. The narrative emphasizes personal, private, or domestic aspects of lives. Tobit 4.1.3. The narrative provides a clear closure, or dwells on the closure. Judith, Tobit 4.1.4. The narrative foregrounds apparently exact information on the absolute and relative timing of events. 8.1.16. Descriptive sentence of a static (ocular) structure or 'scientific' descriptive sentence.

Download

Studies In Islamic and Middle Eastern Texts and Traditions In Memory of Norman Calder

Management, mondialisation, écologie : regards critiques en sciences de gestion (Traité Technolog... more

Delaying the Progress from Case to Case: Redundancy in the Halakhic Discourse of the Mishnah

Spinozas Theorie Der Religion

Writing in an (almost) Classical vein: the art of Targum in an Aramaic paraphrase of the Amidah

Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 1993

A. THE WORK 2 The following abbreviations and technical terms will be used: TAM stands for Targum... more A. THE WORK 2 The following abbreviations and technical terms will be used: TAM stands for Targum Amidah', OAM for 'Original Hebrew Amidah' (if not further qualified, the Yemenite rite). To refer to individual Berakhot (=Blessings) of the Amidah, the Roman letters I to XIX will be used. I shall refer to the concluding eulogy of each Berakhah as the Hatimah. 3 'Ein Targum der Amidah'. 4 The codex has 109 folios of paper of varying sizes (from 142 x 93 millimetres to 164 x 113 millimetres) and textures (at least ten different types) in various Yemenite scripts and a few lines in Arabic script. The contents are in Hebrew, Arabic and Aramaic. There are occasional rulings and catchwords. The codex contains mostly short documents relating to astrology and brontology, magic, theological and aggadic material (including midrashic forms and excerpts from Midrash ha-gadol), as well as liturgical pieces (see note 6). Like many of the Gaster codices now in the Rylands, it is an artless product, functional rather than beautiful (part of the codex, including the pages of TAM, is marked by a large brown stain in the bottom half of every opening) and apparently much used. Some background on Moses Gaster and his manuscripts, as well as the John Rylands collection of which it is part, may be found in Samely, 'The interpreted text: among the Hebrew manuscripts of the John Rylands University Library',

Download

The Bible as Talked About: Reflections on the Usage and Conceptual Implications of the Term Miqra’ in Early Rabbinic Literature

Front Matter of Book: Reading and Experience. A Philosophical Investigation

Reading and Experience. A Philosophical Investigation, 2024

This text (https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-55763-7) is the first comprehensive a... more This text (https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-55763-7) is the first comprehensive attempt in decades to integrate reading into the philosophical discussion of the synthesis of experience more generally. It offers a comprehensive critique of three disciplinary approaches to reading: philosophical, literary and empirical/neuroscientific, while developing an innovative and unifying phenomenological account. (for Sept 24 review by Philip Davis see: https://www.bps.org.uk/psychologist/what-reading-psychologically). It discusses texts from a variety of contemporary and historical contexts. It is inclusive, treating non-fiction alongside fiction, literary art alongside everyday texts, and narrative alongside thematic discourse. It addresses all reading practices found today: casual and unreflective reading, close and scholarly reading with re-reading, the analysis of literary art, and sacred text study and memorization. In the current intellectual landscape, the book is unique in bringing all these aspects together in a philosophically coherent discussion.

The book provides a critique of philosophical accountsof text meaning and linguistic experience by philosophers from Husserl and Ingarden to Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Arendt, Gadamer and Derrida, and examines the positions of contemporary ‘naturalizing’ phenomenologists, such as Varela and Thompson. Also treated are neuroscientists such as Dehaene, and theorists of consciousness such as Kintsch, Flanagan and Dennett. Finally, this volume engages with psychological, linguistic, structuralist, ‘theory of mind’ and ‘experiential’ approaches in literary studies, from Bühler and Hamburger to Fludernik, Herman and Kuzmičová.

Download

Alexander Samely

Uploads

Chapters in Books by Alexander Samely

Log In