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MEKHILTA DE-RABBI SHIMON BAR YOHAI: TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH, WITH CRITICAL INTRODUCTION AND ANNOTATION. By W. David Nelson. Pp. xxx + 398. Philadelphia, Pa.: The Jewish Publication Society, 2006. Cloth, $75.00.
In 1870, Meir Friedmann restored the Mekhilta De-Rabbi Shimon to the world of Jewish scholarship by printing a list of potential passages from this midrash in the appendix of his edition of the Mekilta De-Rabbi Yishmael. The latter was a well known Tannaitic midrash to the book of Exodus attributed to the "school" of Rabbi Yishmael. That text has been published in a number of editions, including the three-volume Jewish Publication Society's bi-lingual edition and translation by J. Z. Lauterbach (1933-1936). Alas, the Mekhilta De-Rabbi Shimon, ostensibly of the other school of tannaitic exegesis, the "school" of Rabbi Aqiba, had disappeared from view and had never been printed. In 1905, David Hoffman offered a reconstruction of the Mekhilta De-Rabbi Shimon, and in 1955, an updated and expanded edition based in part on Geniza fragments, was published by J. N. Epstein and E. Z. Melamed.
In the half century since, many new manuscript fragments of the Mekhilta De-Rabbi Shimon were discovered. At the same time, however, the thesis presented by Hoffman that there were two distinct "schools" of tannaitic midrash came under attack. All of which should make the publication of a bi-lingual edition and translation of the Mekhilta De-Rabbi Shimon a welcome addition to scholarly libraries. The Jewish Publication Society and Professor W. David Nelson have undertaken the task, offering a brief but comprehensive scholarly introduction, English translation, and some minimal notes offering parallels between the two Mekhilta collections, with occasional explications of difficult readings. Unfortunately, this is not a new edition of the midrash, but a translation of the 1955 Epstein and Melamed edition.
Nelson himself...