14. Seder Eliyahu Rabbah

Günter Stemberger investigates the raison d’être of a late rabbinic text in ‘Seder Eliyahu Rabbah: Rabbinic Tradition for a Non-Rabbinic Society’. Although Seder Eliyahu cites the Mishnah and other classical rabbinic texts, it does not demand a level of learning greater than knowledge of the Hebrew Bible. A couple of the interlocutors with the narrator are not even Jewish. According to Stemberger, the text advocates a “minimal Judaism” bordering on universalism, where respect for the Law is equal to or greater than academic achievement.