TY  - BOOK
AU  - Rosen-Zvi,Ishay
TI  - Demonic Desires: "Yetzer Hara" and the Problem of Evil in Late Antiquity 
T2  - Divinations: Rereading Late Ancient Religion
SN  - 9780812243390
AV  - BJ1406 .R64 2011
U1  - 296.3/16 22
PY  - 2011///]
CY  - Philadelphia : 
PB  - University of Pennsylvania Press, 
KW  - Good and evil
KW  - Religious aspects
KW  - Judaism
KW  - RELIGION
KW  - History
KW  - Yetzer hara (Judaism)
KW  - Religious Studies
KW  - RELIGION / Judaism / History
KW  - bisacsh
KW  - Ancient Studies
KW  - Religion
N1  - Frontmatter --; Contents --; Introduction. The Riddle, or: How Did the Evil Yetzer Become a Mighty King? --; Chapter 1. "The Torah Spoke Regarding the Yetzer": Tannaitic Literature --; Chapter 2. Yetzer and Other Demons: Patristic Parallels --; Chapter 3. Yetzer at Qumran: Proto-Rabbinic? --; Chapter 4. Coming of Age: Amoraic Yetzer --; Chapter 5. Refuting the Yetzer: The Limits of Rabbinic Discursive Worlds --; Chapter 6. Sexualizing the Yetzer --; Chapter 7. Weak Like a Female, Strong Like a Male: Yetzer and Gender --; Afterword. Toward a Genealogy of the Rabbinic Subject --; Notes --; Bibliography --; Subject Index --; Source Index --; Acknowledgments; restricted access; Issued also in print
N2  - In Demonic Desires, Ishay Rosen-Zvi examines the concept of yetzer hara, or evil inclination, and its evolution in biblical and rabbinic literature. Contrary to existing scholarship, which reads the term under the rubric of destructive sexual desire, Rosen-Zvi contends that in late antiquity the yetzer represents a general tendency toward evil. Rather than the lower bodily part of a human, the rabbinic yetzer is a wicked, sophisticated inciter, attempting to snare humans to sin. The rabbinic yetzer should therefore not be read in the tradition of the Hellenistic quest for control over the lower parts of the psyche, writes Rosen-Zvi, but rather in the tradition of ancient Jewish and Christian demonology.Rosen-Zvi conducts a systematic and comprehensive analysis of the some one hundred and fifty appearances of the evil yetzer in classical rabbinic literature to explore the biblical and postbiblical search for the sources of human sinfulness. By examining the yetzer within a specific demonological tradition, Demonic Desires places the yetzer discourse in the larger context of a move toward psychologization in late antiquity, in which evil-and even demons-became internalized within the human psyche. The book discusses various manifestations of this move in patristic and monastic material, from Clement and Origin to Antony, Athanasius, and Evagrius. It concludes with a consideration of the broader implications of the yetzer discourse in rabbinic anthropology
UR  - https://doi.org/10.9783/9780812204209
UR  - https://www.degruyter.com/isbn/9780812204209
UR  - https://www.degruyter.com/document/cover/isbn/9780812204209/original
ER  -