[Avodah] medieval jewish history

[Arie Folger]

2009/8/3 Shlomo Pick <picksh at mail.biu.ac.il>:
> Don't quite understand you. The first part of midrash rabba to bamidbar has
> been shown to be provencal, medieval and late. Tanchuma is not medieval but
> according to mainstream jewish periodization to be from the classical
> period, or Talmudic - post Talmudic period.

I was replying to a post by RMB, without checking the content. He
simply reported that Wikipedia, which has for this article essentially
the Jewish Encyclopedia of 1905's text, says that Midrash Eile Ezkera
is Mediaeval. So I commented that that is a rather meaningless period
description, as almost all of Torah shebe'al Peh is Mediaeval, unless
it's modern or Mishna/Tosefta/Haggadah shel Pessach and a handful of
the earliest Midrashim. Everything else is Mediaeval. (all the more so
if you argue that the Jewish Middle Ages ended with Chmielnicki and
the concurrent Peace of Westphalia, or, kal vachomer ben beno shel kal
vachomer, if you count 'em 'till the French Revolution)

That is all.

-- 
Arie Folger,
Latest blog posts on http://ariefolger.wordpress.com/
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