"The War at the Gates" by Shelomo ben Aharon of Poswol. Issues of Text Reading and Interpretation
"The War at the Gates" by Shelomo ben Aharon of Poswol. Issues of Text Reading and Interpretation

Summary/Abstract: The article presents—using the Karaite work “The War at the Gates” by Shelomo ben Aharon (17th/18th century; a polemic with rabbinic Judaism)—three common issues related to the analysis of Hebrew manuscripts written before the 19th century. These issues include: (1) determining the fundamental meaning of individual parts of the work; (2) analyzing the argumentative structure of the work’s narrative in relation to its biblical interpretation, which seeks to justify specific religious laws established within the religious community of the tradition/author; (3) verifying certain commonly accepted scholarly assumptions. I demonstrate how I addressed these challenges while working on the aforementioned treatise and attempt to draw generalized, practical conclusions.

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