“the structuralist approach to literary texts has been replaced by the post-modern approach…”

In recent years, the structuralist approach to literary texts has been replaced by the post-modern approach which focuses on intertextuality and indeterminacy. Such approaches have been applied to midrash, but have not been sufficiently exploited in the study of legal texts. In addition, rabbinic legal literature and hermeneutics may be compared with the forms and rhetorics of Graeco-Roman and other Ancient Near Eastern legal traditions in order to determine shared forms and styles.

Catherine Hezser, “Form-Criticism of Rabbinic Literature”, in The New Testament and Rabbinic Literature, eds. Reimund Bieringer, Florentino García Martinez, Dider Pollefeyt and Peter J. Tomson (Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2010), 104.

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