#Modern notion definition series#
But critics of the very enterprise of trying to trace the genealogy of a term should voice protest against the series editors and not its authors. It is important to note that the very question of the genealogy of a term, any term, but certainly one that carries as much weight as “Judaism,” is fraught with numerous challenges, philosophical, historical, and philological. It seems to me that one of the meta-objectives of this book, then, is to make an argument for philology as something-perhaps the only thing-that we can use to get at the knotty problem of origins: in this case the origin of the term “Judaism” as a “religion,” or “Judaism” as it is used today. And part of the purpose of this book-as I read it-is to revive philology as a scholarly enterprise, suggesting that philology performs a function that other forms of textual analysis cannot achieve what I will call the difference between reception history and genealogy. That is, the theoretical frame that so often informs Boyarin’s later work is now situated in chapter 1 to enable us to look more closely at his earlier methodology that is, the exercise of philology.
#Modern notion definition full#
It is thus at its core a philological study, in some way taking Boyrain back to his earlier grammatical work now integrated into a well-honed theoretical frame.īefore entering into the body of the argument, it is worth noting that this book is an illustration of Boyarin textually coming full circle. It is a monumental task to investigate a term so seemingly understood, and the modestly sized book (under 250 pages) takes the reader from antiquity through the Christian and Muslim Middle Ages, examining terms that others used to refer to what we know as Judaism. Part of a series called Keywords in Jewish Studies with Rutgers University Press, this book investigates the origins and genealogy of the term “Judaism,” when it was first used, what it meant then, and what it meant throughout subsequent Jewish history. His new book Judaism: The Genealogy of a Modern Notion is perhaps the most synthetic of all.
Pappenheim. Of late his books have become more synthetic, taking on larger issues such as gender and sexuality, rhetoric, the Judeo-Christian divide, and identity. From the early 1980s until the present, Boyarin has written extensively on everything from grammatical forms in Babylonia Aramaic to Bertha O. Reviewed by Shaul Magid (Dartmouth College)Ĭommissioned by Barbara Krawcowicz (Norwegian University of Science and Technology)įor those who read scholarly works on Judaica, especially but not limited to Jewish and Christian antiquity, the name Daniel Boyarin is ubiquitous. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2018. Judaism: The Genealogy of a Modern Notion.
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