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148 SHOFAR Fall 1992 Vol. 11, No. 1 In evaluating Buber in his conclusion Breslauer states, on the positive side, that "Buber's attention to the sources of hasidism and refusal to reduce the meaning of myth to simply an existentialist, esoteric, or psychological significance allows him to present it honestly (p. 366). On the negative side, Breslauer writes: Buber's characterization ofmyth as a record of "I-You" meeting includes too many different kinds of stories under a single rubric and ignores the distinctive purpose of myth. Not only myth but other stories serve the same function of stimulating I·You relationships. Not only mythic memory but historical memory and imaginative, didactic tales fulfill a similar purpose (pp. 364f).· This is a strange criticism and one which illustrates the kind of lapses which mar an otherwise excellent study. First of all, while Buber once says that myth is the pure shape of meeting, he almost never uses the language of I and Thou (here I follow Ronald Gregor Smith's earlier and better translation ofI and Thou) in connection with myth. Breslauer superimposes it himself. Secondly, Buber distinguishes carefully between myth, saga, and legend, as Breslauer fails to note. Thirdly, he never claims that only myth embodies the I-Thou, as Breslauer implies. Maurice Friedman Department of Religious Studies San Diego State University John Selden on Jewish Marriage Law: The Uxor Hebraica, translated with a Commentary byJonathan R. Ziskind. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1991. 537 pp. At its best, scholarship in the humanities has served society as a civilizing force, a beacon with which to dispel some of history's darker shadows. Renaissance humanism, and in particular the discipline of Christian Hebraism, are cases in point. Though they in no way brought an end to persecution and anti-Jewish sentiment in Europe, the Christian Hebraists-Reuchlin, Grotius, and others-helped open the eyes of their contemporaries to the possibility that Jewish texts other than the Hebrew Bible contain much valuable material for the study of the human experience . Scholars engaged in the search for truth could advance beyond the prejudicial view of post-Biblical Judaism as a foil for early Christianity and appreciate it as a self-sufficient (if, for purposes of salvation, insufficient) Book Reviews 149 religious tradition. One such scholar was John Selden (d. 1654), 'who figured in the religious and political controversies of Stuart England. A lawyer and a student of civil law (itself a relatively new scholarly field in England), Selden authored a number of books on Jewish law, whose institutions he believed shed light on some ofthe pressing legal and ecclesiastical questions of his day. The most comprehensive of these volumes is the Uxor Hebraica (1646), his treatise on the rabbinic law of marriage. In this translation from the "original and crabbed Latin" (p. 1), Jonathan R. Ziskind renders this fascinating work accessible to a wider readership. In his helpful introduction, Ziskind provides a brief sketch of the author's career which places him squarely within the context of his time. Selden indeed drew upon Jewish materials for guidance on such contemporary issues as church governance and (in the Uxor Hebraica) the law of divorce, but this tendency, as Ziskind notes, is subtle rather than overtly polemical. Selden throughout maintains the posture ofthe careful scholar, true to the canons of the historical-philological method (the mos galltcus) favored by Renaissance humanists. His access to the literature of the Talmud, a source whose stylistic difficulty and theological incorrectness were enormous barriers to the non-Jewish student, is truly remarkable. In both his diligence and his devotion to the search for truth wherever it may lie, Selden's work is one of the closest approximations of the scholarly ideal that the seventeenth century (or, for that matter, any century) has to offer. It is not, on the other hand, a reliable description of its subject matter. To a great extent, Selden depends upon Maimonides' Code of Jewish Law (the Mishneh Torah) as a key to the law of marriage and divorce. Ziskind attributes this to the high regard which Maimonides enjoyed among Christian Hebraists as well as to the literary simplicity and precision of his Code...

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