“They Were Experts, We Are Not Experts”: Rabbinic Valorization of Literacy Failures

• In Event: Misreading the Bible in Antiquity

Abstract

Rebecca Scharbach Wollenberg’s paper will consider classical rabbinic traditions that denigrate rabbinic skills in the technicalities of literacy. It will look at narrative episodes in which a rabbinic authority is pictured making a decoding mistake in the course of a reading. It will analyze midrashic traditions in which an exegesis is offered on the wrong spelling of a word and the mistake is remarked upon but not corrected in the editorial layer. Finally, it will look at early rabbinic statements that contrast a lack of facility with the technicalities of writing in early rabbinic circles with the imagined prowess of Second Temple scribes.

Author

• Rebecca Wollenberg, Frankel Center for Judaic Studies, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor