Title: Introduction: Some Thoughts on Ancient Jewish Texts and the ‘Literary’
Abstract: Since the late 1970s and early 1980s, the literary approach has considerably defined the academic landscape of biblical studies.As an answer to the historical-critical and theological studies of the hebrew Bible, it offered a fresh look on an old text, focusing on its qualities as a piece of literature.whereas the Bible text received much attention from literary scholars, the approach did not make its way immediately to studies of other ancient Jewish texts, such as the study of midrash, liturgical texts, or early commentaries.this article presents some observations regarding the relationship between literary analysis on the one hand and ancient Jewish text studies on the other hand.In 2007, the academic journal Prooftexts issued a special volume entitled "Before and After the Art of Biblical narrative."1In this volume, articles are brought together that analyze the past, present, and future of the literary approach to ancient Jewish texts as it was given shape in biblical studies by robert Alter in the early 1980s.2Some of the contributions are rather critical, accusing the method of having a hidden theological agenda3 and 1 "Before and After the Art of Biblical narrative," Proof 27,2 (2007). 2 robert Alter, The Art of Biblical Narrative (new york: Basic Books, 1981).other works and scholars did do preliminary work on the literary approach in biblical studies; however, it is Alter who achieves a major breakthrough for the method's general acceptance in the field of biblical studies.In a very accessible and novel like way, he makes a literary reading of the Bible available to a broad audience (both academic and non-academic).Preliminary steps can be found in the work of among others, erich Auerbach (Mimesis: