Carasik, Michael
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Introduction
I'm a biblicist by training, with secondary interests throughout Jewish studies of the pre-modern era. I teach Biblical Hebrew at the University of Pennsylvania and the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. My current publication for a general audience is The Bible's Many Voices, forthcoming in 2014 but available now for pre-order
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Publication Review of Joel M. Hoffman, And God Said: How Translations Conceal the Bible's Original Meaning(2012-01-01) Carasik, MichaelA little learning, they say, is a dangerous thing. Joel Hoffman's background would seem to have left him with more than just a little learning, but a reading of his book And God Said demonstrates that he still falls well within the danger area. It's too bad, because his topic is one that deserves a good book for a general readership; and Hoffman himself has a few worthwhile things to say.Publication Review of Yairah Amit, Shoftim (Judges: Introduction and Commentary)(2000-01-01) Carasik, MichaelLet me begin my review of Yairah Amit's Judges volume in the Mikra LeYisra'el commentary series by making an admission which, rumor says, more of my fellow reviewers make than do: I have not read this book--not, at any rate, from cover to cover. I make this admission with a clear conscience because of the hybrid nature of the commentary form, part introductory material, part reference work. What I have done, therefore, is to read the book's introduction and to use the rest of the book as its owners and borrowers will do, by consulting the commentary, the fifteen excurses, and the eight indexes (to biblical references, extra-biblical literature, textual witnesses, emendations, structural/redactional terms, religious terms, grammatical terms, and geographical names). My purpose was to get a sense of how useful the volume will be for me--and hence, I hope, for the typical reader of Hebrew Studies.Publication Review of Alan F. Segal, Sinning in the Hebrew Bible: How the Worst Stories Speak for Its Truth(2012-11-01) Carasik, MichaelPublication Exegetical Implications of the Masoretic Cantillation Marks in Ecclesiastes(2001-01-01) Carasik, MichaelA rabbinic tradition preserved in b. Yoma 52a-b suggests that five biblical verses are "undecidable"--that is, it is not clear how they ought to be punctuated. This makes evident a fact that is not often noticed: the Masoretic punctuation of the Bible is sometimes exegetical in character. Simcha Kogut, in his recent book Correlations between Biblical Accentuation and Traditional Jewish Exegesis, has shown that the biblical text is sometimes punctuated "against" the peshat, the meaning which a "reasonable" reader would assume to have been intended by the author. Such punctuation is a silent commentary. The reason for it is not explained; but it would seem to be prompted by a desire to shape the meaning of the text, often to match it in an interpretation found in rabbinic literature. Choon-Leong Seow's recent Anchor Bible commentary on Ecclesiastes notes over a dozen probable or possible places in that book where biblical scholars have suggested that the Masoretic punctuation does not match the intended meaning of the text. The purpose of this paper is to analyze these cases to determine whether any of these examples were indeed prompted by exegetical concerns. In several cases, the Targum to Ecclesiastes translates the same word twice--that is, they translated simultaneously in accordance with two different decisions about how the verse should be punctuated. I suggest that, in many cases, the Masoretic decision to place a pause in a location that seems to contradict the peshat was similarly made not to contradict it, but to add a second possibility. Despite the restrictive quality of the vowels and punctuation marks which the Masoretes added to the traditional consonants, they may, paradoxically, have been actuated by a desire to preserve the indeterminability of the text.Publication Response to Aryeh Cohen "Notes Towards an Erotics of Martyrdom"(1997) Carasik, MichaelI would like to thank Aryeh for his reading of b. Sanh. 74a-75a. The mark of a good reading, to my mind, is that it does not merely explain a text, but suggests further creative interaction with it; and Aryeh's reading has done this for me. I will focus my remarks on the chief line to which Aryeh drew our attention (his line #25, in my translation): "so also must (s)he be slain rather than he transgress." Just as the textual crux of *t/yehareg* provided Aryeh with the kind of uncertainty into which a wedge that opens the text for interpretation can be fit, lines 24 and 25 both share a grammatical indeterminacy that prompts further reflection. But bear with me a moment on my way to the Sanhedrin text; as a student primarily of the Tanakh, not the Talmud, I have a biblical errand to run before I can get there.Publication Qohelet's Twists and Turns(2003-12-01) Carasik, MichaelWhen Elias Bickerman wrote a little volume called Four Strange Books of the Bible, Ecclesiastes was an easy choice for inclusion. As he remarks, "Ecclesiastes has no known antecedents or spiritual posterity in Jewish thought."¹ This is an exaggeration,² but even Qohelet's successors, the Jewish sages of the rabbinic period, found Ecclesiastes questionably biblical. Thus in Leviticus Rabbah 28:1, R. Benjamin B. Levi remarks, "They sought to suppress Ecclesiastes, for they found in it matters that tend toward the heretical."³ The purpose of this article is to highlight what I think is a particularly significant facet of Ecclesiastes' distinctive, and at first glance heretical, stance vis-á-vis the rest of biblical literature. This is Qohelet's emphasis on the imagery of turning.Publication Midrash: The Story Behind the Story(2003-01-01) Carasik, MichaelPublication Review of Mark Leuchter, The Polemics of Exile in Jeremiah 26-45(2009-01-01) Carasik, MichaelPublication A Deuteronomic Voice in the Joseph Story(2009-01-01) Carasik, MichaelFor many years, it has been common to point to the Joseph story, Genesis 37-50, as being fundamentally different from the rest of Genesis "in that its author(s) or redactor(s) brought to their material a superior literary craftsmanship which enabled them to create a single, sustained narrative work whose parts are organically related to one another."¹ At the same time, it remains easy to detect the traditional J, E, and P sources in the story, as noted (for example) in the Anchor Bible commentary of E. A. Speiser.² It is understandable that these sources could be assembled into a narration like that of Genesis 6-9, where the contradictions about how many of each animal were taken on board and so forth show relatively clearly the seams where previously existing volumes of the story were assembled into a single text. But how could these prefabricated pieces be put together to form a work of "superior literary craftsmanship"?Publication