But this is not the end of his commentary on the
aggadic tale.
The Talmud states that the
aggadic interpretation that Achashverosh would not allow the Temple to be built is based on interpreting the phrase half the kingdom as "a matter that divides the kingdom", an issue that is very divisive and which can bring trouble to the Persian Empire, dividing it in half.
He argued that, since Muslims believe that God alone is the source of the Qur'an, "if we can trace the teaching of the [Qur'an], or any part of it, to an earthly Source, or to human systems existing previous to the Prophet's age, then Islam at once falls to the ground." (6) The basic idea behind this view is that the biblical text is chronologically earlier, more historically accurate, and more authoritative than the apocryphal or
aggadic materials, and so the presence of the latter in the Qur'an represents error or confusion.
As they declare in their introductory chapter, the authors are more drawn to the
aggadic ("homiletic, legendary, theological, and ethical") as well as halakhic ("legal") traditions, rather than Judaism's more mystical and esoteric trajectories, including the scholarship of Gershom Scholem and others (13).
In
aggadic literature, Moses, bargaining for his life, is willing to forfeit the latter to salvage the former (Blidstein 2008).
plus a mass of
Aggadic material from the Rabbis, (37) flesh out the
The hints of what is to come make the text more suspenseful and more
aggadic.
Yet a glance at the
aggadic sections of the Talmud, filled with stories of rabbinic sexual fantasies, reveals how Mailer's devilish voice mimics the narrative tone of the Babylonian Talmud.
is a reliable guide in much of this material but misses badly in arguing that the legend and its
aggadic elaborations played an important role in Catholic teaching about the status of the Septuagint as Scripture.
Bachya Ben Asher, Spanish commentator (1263-1340), who first applied the Four Worlds into a Torah commentary based on four simultaneous yet sequential levels of meaning of text: plain, midrashic (
aggadic or homiletic), philosophical, and kabbalistic exegesis.
Alongside the legal discussion about women's hair-covering is the
aggadic and mystical imagery.
After comparing Halakhic with
Aggadic, the narrative part of the Torah, theological programs, he takes seven exemplary Halakhic texts that illustrate principal part of the implicit system of animating the Halakhah of Rabbinic Judaism in its formative age.
For Conservatives, it may be sufficient to construct behavior based on meaningful interpretations of rabbinic texts and traditions,
aggadic as well as legal, even when such a view is not shared by dominant authorities.
In this book, Jacob Neusner is concerned with "modes of thought" in Rabbinic writings, i.e., with "types of analysis" and "types of argumentation" pervading "the entire corpus of the Rabbinic writings of late antiquity," which he claims to examine on the basis of "a systematic probe of representative Halakhic and
Aggadic documents" (xi).
Obviously, these are
aggadic or midrashic sources, which means they are in the realm of homiletics and theological fancy.
