| Abstrakt: |
This paper examines the different versions of the birth of Dinah, daughter of Jacob and Leah in rabbinic literature. Dinah's birth is mentioned briefly in the tightly plotted chapter of Genesis 29-30, in what seems to be an addition that stands out both in style and in content. However, this note is developed and expanded by rabbinic homilies found in both the Palestinian and the Babylonian Talmuds, and in Genesis Rabbah and the Aramaic Targum. The comparison between these texts, using literary exegetical as well as textual-philological methods, serves as an example of the development of rabbinic Aggadic Midrash. By a careful textual analysis, this paper displays the evolutionary process in the stages of this tradition and demonstrates the way each text uses elements from former versions. It reveals an underlying Hebrewbased exegetical basis that was used as early as the first century CE by Philo, as well as thought-provoking textual relations between the rabbinic texts, especially between Genesis Rabbah and the Palestinian Talmud. The literary comparison of the versions of this story shows how each of them succeeds in integrating the core, the laconic note in the biblical plot, along with its exceptional gender aspects, and uses it to increase or to resolve the tension in the conflict between the characters of Rachel and Leah. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
