
After Revelation
The Rabbinic Past in the Medieval Islamic World
Marc Herman(Author)
University of Pennsylvania Press
Published on 5. August 2025
Book
Hardback
288 pages
978-1-5128-2778-1 (ISBN)
Description
Reveals how medieval Jews developed religious law through contact with their Muslim neighbors
After Revelation offers a dynamic new perspective on medieval Jewish legal thought and its integration in the wider Islamic world. Here, Marc D. Herman demonstrates that Jews were fully conversant in their contemporaries' ideas about revelation, law, and legal interpretation. Bookended by the two luminaries of medieval Judaism-Saadia Gaon and Moses Maimonides-After Revelation analyzes the legal theory that medieval Jews produced in Islamic lands, mostly in Arabic, and reveals previously unrecognized commonalities between Jewish and Islamic constructions of religious law.
Herman tackles one of the central doctrines of post-biblical Judaism: that God had supplemented the written Hebrew Bible with an Oral Torah. Tracing this idea from Baghdad to Cordoba to Cairo, he shows that the Oral Torah took many new forms in the medieval Islamic world. After Revelation makes plain that medieval Judaism took the shapes that it did largely because of contact with Islam.
After Revelation offers a dynamic new perspective on medieval Jewish legal thought and its integration in the wider Islamic world. Here, Marc D. Herman demonstrates that Jews were fully conversant in their contemporaries' ideas about revelation, law, and legal interpretation. Bookended by the two luminaries of medieval Judaism-Saadia Gaon and Moses Maimonides-After Revelation analyzes the legal theory that medieval Jews produced in Islamic lands, mostly in Arabic, and reveals previously unrecognized commonalities between Jewish and Islamic constructions of religious law.
Herman tackles one of the central doctrines of post-biblical Judaism: that God had supplemented the written Hebrew Bible with an Oral Torah. Tracing this idea from Baghdad to Cordoba to Cairo, he shows that the Oral Torah took many new forms in the medieval Islamic world. After Revelation makes plain that medieval Judaism took the shapes that it did largely because of contact with Islam.
Reviews / Votes
"Challenging commonly held theological and scholarly positions, After Revelation's analysis is measured and sophisticated, offering groundbreaking conclusions that are innovative and convincing." (Sarah Stroumsa, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Pennsylvania
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Paper over boards
Illustrations
1 map
Dimensions
Height: 232 mm
Width: 161 mm
Thickness: 24 mm
Weight
542 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-5128-2778-1 (9781512827781)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

E-Book
08/2025
1st Edition
University of Pennsylvania Press
from
€150.99
Available for download
Person
Marc D. Herman is Assistant Professor at York University in the Department of Humanities.