Objectives : This seminar aims to develop students’ ability to undertake a close, methodologically rigorous, and historically informed reading of classical Jewish and Christian sources. It seeks to foster a critical awareness of the hermeneutical assumptions and interpretive strategies that shape normative readings within both traditions.

Learning Outcomes : By the end of the course, students will be able to identify and analyse major rabbinic and Christian interpretive genres and authorities, critically assess hermeneutical claims made within classical sources, and apply appropriate scholarly methods to the study of Jewish and Christian texts from Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages.

Content : Both Judaism and Christianity understand themselves as interpretative traditions grounded in Holy Scripture and shaped, after the formation of the biblical canon, by distinctive forms of normative reading. On the Jewish side, this seminar engages with the classical corpus commonly designated as the “classics of Judaism” (Jacob Neusner), including the Mishnah, the Talmud, the Midrashic literature, and selected medieval commentaries. On the Christian side, it examines representative expressions of what is commonly referred to as the Tradition of the Church, including patristic and scholastic theological writings and the role of ecclesial authority in the regulation of interpretation. While Jewish and Christian hermeneutical traditions have long been perceived primarily in terms of mutual opposition, recent scholarship and official ecclesial documents have emphasised the possibility of learning across traditions at the level of exegetical practice. As stated by the Pontifical Biblical Commission, “on the practical level of exegesis, Christians can, nonetheless, learn much from Jewish exegesis practised for more than two thousand years, and, in fact, they have learned much in the course of history” ( The Jewish People and Their Sacred Scriptures in the Christian Bible ).

Methodology : The seminar, co taught by a rabbi and the Director of the Cardinal Bea Centre, introduces students to the close reading of selected Jewish and Christian texts in order to identify the hermeneutical and methodological criteria that govern both traditional interpretations and innovative re readings arising from shared study. Working inductively and through detailed textual analysis, the course examines passages dating from Late Antiquity to the late medieval period. After an initial session devoted to the presentation of the methodological framework and thematic orientation of the course, subsequent sessions are led by individual students or pairs of students. Each session is structured around the guided reading of selected primary sources from the formative period of both Judaism and Christianity, from the first centuries of the Common Era to the early Middle Ages, and is designed to stimulate collective discussion grounded in close textual analysis.

Means of Evaluation : It will be indicated at the beginning of the seminar.