Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

Introduction : of legal fictions and narrative worlds -- Nomos and narrative before "nomos and narrative" -- Interpretive authority in the studying community at Qumran -- To whom it may concern : miqsat maase -- Rhetoric and hermeneutics in miqsat maase -- The Dead Sea Scrolls and rabbinic Judaism after sixty (plus) -- Qumran yahad and rabbinic havurah : a comparison revisited -- Looking for legal midrash at Qumran -- Looking for narrative midrash at Qumran -- Shifting from priestly to non-priestly legal authority : a comparison of the Damascus document and the midrash sifra -- Deuteronomy and polity in the early history of Jewish interpretation -- Ancient Jewish law and narrative in comparative perspective : the Damascus document and the Mishnah -- Theory, practice, and polemic in ancient Jewish calendars -- "The torah of the king" (deut 17:14-20) in the temple scroll and early rabbinic law -- Priests, kings, and patriarchs: Yerushalmi Sanhedrin in its exegetical and cultural settings -- Navigating the anomalous: non-Jews at the intersection of early rabbinic law and narrative -- Literary composition and oral performance in early midrashim -- Rewritten Bible and rabbinic midrash as commentary -- Rabbinic midrash and ancient jewish biblical interpretation -- Rabbinic polysemy and pluralism revisited: between praxis and thematization -- Moses and the commandments: can hermeneutics, history, and rhetoric be disentangled? -- Hearing and seeing at Sinai: interpretive trajectories -- The temple as a marker of Jewish identity before and after 70 c.e. : the role of the holy vessels in rabbinic memory and imagination -- Local Jewish leadership in Roman Palestine : the case of the parnas in early rabbinic sources in light of extra-rabbinic evidence -- Afterword : between history and its redemption.

Description based on print version record.