rabbinize

English

Alternative forms

• rabbinise

Etymology

rabbi +‎ -n- +‎ -ize

Verb

rabbinize (third-person singular simple present rabbinizes, present participle rabbinizing, simple past and past participle rabbinized)

1. To interpret from the perspective of rabbinic teaching; to make consistent with rabbinic lore.
   • 1987, Shemuel Safrai, The Literature of the Sages:

     This issue is far from simple, given the later rabbinic tendency to 'rabbinize' earlier Jewish history, and particularly Jewish heroes from as far back as biblical times.

   • 1995, The Journal of Jewish Studies - Volume 46, page 246:

     Joseph and Daniel would have figured largely as authorities, in the way in which they figure in later Christian oneirocritica. Instead the Rabbis take over the standard oneirocritica of their own day and rabbinize it .

   • 1996, Magne Saebo, Hebrew Bible, Old Testament: The History of Its Interpretation, page 301:

     The later Babylonian version of this story, therefore, credits Jesus with the ability to derive law via scriptural interpretation, and is therefore consonant with a Babylonian Talmudic tendency to rabbinize wonder-workers, healers, and rain-makers, holy men on the periphery or outside the rabbinic movement.

   • 2001, D. A. Carson, Peter Thomas O'Brien, Mark A. Seifrid, Justification and Variegated Nomism, page 275:

     However, the rabbis attempted to rabbinize it by making it an incentive for obedience to the Torah: the Messiah would come, if all Israel would keep the Torah.

   • 2003, Hyam Maccoby, Jesus the Pharisee, page 32:

     Taking their cue from Vermes , a whole school of New Testament scholars have taken up the notion of 'rabbinization' , and have sought to recover the Chasidim as highly idiosyncratic individuals who had little or nothing in common with the Pharisee movement, despite later attempts to 'rabbinize' them .