ARTICLES:
Suspending New Testament: Do the Two Talmuds Belong to Hermeneutics of Texts?
Issue: 6:2 (The twenty second issue)
The paper explores the role of competing notions of what does it
mean to have a testament of the law of the past in Christian and Rabbinic
corpora of text and thought. The argument probes and renegotiates the complex
relationships of the Christian suspension of Old Testament by the New
Testament and the Rabbinic suspension of (any) new testament in the two
Talmudim. It consequently draws implications of that analysis for
understanding the relationships of the two Talmudim to the tradition of
hermeneutics of texts, as influenced as the latter has been by theological and
literary approaches of various Christian theologies of the two Testaments. As a
part of that analysis the articles justifies the task of advancing and providing a
critique of political theology and political philology as modes of thought and
investigation. That provides a way to ask anew the question about relationships
between theology, literary theory, and political thought.