The Origins and Worldwide Significance of Judaic Hermeneutics
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3135980 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Anne Schumann (0000-0002-9944-8627, University of Information Technology and Management in Rzeszow, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 16 |
| Issue | 6 |
| Pages | 717 |
| Publication date | 2025-06-03 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Religions (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2077-1444 • E-ISSN: 2077-1444 |
| Publisher | MDPI AG (PUBLISHER • IT) |
| DOI | 10.3390/rel16060717 |
| OpenAlex | W4411001644 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 24 |
This paper explores the origins and global significance of Judaic hermeneutics as a foundational logical culture, arguing that it constitutes one of the earliest and most sophisticated systems of reasoning in human history. Far beyond a method of religious interpretation, Rabbinic hermeneutics represents a logic in practice: a structured, culturally embedded framework of inference rules (middôt), such as qal wāḥōmer (a fortiori reasoning), that guided legal deliberation and textual exegesis. By comparing Judaic hermeneutic methods with Greco-Roman rhetoric, Indian logic, and Chinese philosophy, this study reveals that similar logemes-elementary reasoning units-appear only in these four ancient traditions. All emerged within a narrow geographic corridor (32-38° N latitude) historically linked by trade routes, particularly the Silk Road. Drawing on legal documents and logic history, this paper argues that logical cultures did not arise from isolated individuals, but from collective intellectual traditions among elites engaged in commerce, law, and education. Judaic hermeneutics, with its roots in Babylonian legal traditions and its codification in the Talmud, offers a clear example of logic as a communal, evolving practice. This study thus reframes the history of logic as a pluralistic, global phenomenon shaped by cultural, economic, and institutional contexts
Epistemology · Hermeneutics · Biblical Studies and Interpretation · History · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies · Jewish Identity and Society · Philosophy
Canaanite in the Amarna Tablets (4 Vols.)
Jewish Cultural Encounters in the Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern World
Jewish travel in antiquity
Archaeology of Logic
Sign-inferences in Greek and Buddhist Logic
Who Thinks in the Talmud
Theories of the Sign in Classical Antiquity
Ideologies and Encounters of Ideas at the Crossroads of the Ancient World
Transferring Divinatory Practices
Defining a Meṇḍaka Question in the Questions of Milinda and Its Commentarial Texts
Talmud Today
| Highly cited | No |
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