Aharon Shemesh Halakhah in the Making sku-11024373

Aharon Shemesh's Halakhah in the Making (sku-11024373) is in Religion & Religious Studies Books. This hardcover is Edition 1 of the Taubman Lectures in Jewish Studies series, volume 6. It is the first comprehensive study of legal material in the Dead Sea Scrolls and its place in the history of Jewish religious law, or halakhah.

Shemesh examines the relationship between Second Temple Jewish practice and rabbinic law written more than a hundred years after the Temple's destruction. Scrolls found at Qumran supplied material missing from a two-hundred-year gap in knowledge. The publication of 4QMMT, a polemical letter about Jewish law, made it possible to compare specific Qumran sect laws with rabbinic laws.

The book is the first book-length treatment since 4QMMT's publication and the first attempt to apply its findings to the work of nineteenth-century scholars. It is the first work on this topic written for readers without specialist training in Jewish legal history.