Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Contributors
- INTRODUCTION: SECTARIANISM IN EARLY JUDAISM: SOCIOLOGICAL ADVANCES? SOME CRITICAL SOCIOLOGICAL REFLECTIONS
- Part I MAX WEBER ON SECTS AND VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATIONS WITH SPECIFIC REFERENCE TO SECOND TEMPLE JUDAISM
- Part II SOCIOLOGICAL APPROACHES TO SECTARIANISM IN SECOND TEMPLE JUDAISM
- WHEN IS A SECT A SECT – OR NOT? GROUPS AND MOVEMENTS IN THE SECOND TEMPLE PERIOD
- SECT FORMATION IN EARLY JUDAISM
- WAS THERE SECTARIAN BEHAVIOUR BEFORE THE FLOURISHING OF JEWISH SECTS? A LONG-TERM APPROACH TO THE HISTORY AND SOCIOLOGY OF SECOND TEMPLE SECTARIANISM
- ATONEMENT AND SECTARIANISM IN QUMRAN: DEFINING A SECTARIAN WORLDVIEW IN MORAL AND HALAKHIC SYSTEMS
- GROUPS IN TENSION: SECTARIANISM IN THE DAMASCUS DOCUMENT AND THE COMMUNITY RULE
- INFORMATION PROCESSING IN ANCIENT JEWISH GROUPS
- Index of References
- Index of Authors
INFORMATION PROCESSING IN ANCIENT JEWISH GROUPS
from Part II - SOCIOLOGICAL APPROACHES TO SECTARIANISM IN SECOND TEMPLE JUDAISM
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Contributors
- INTRODUCTION: SECTARIANISM IN EARLY JUDAISM: SOCIOLOGICAL ADVANCES? SOME CRITICAL SOCIOLOGICAL REFLECTIONS
- Part I MAX WEBER ON SECTS AND VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATIONS WITH SPECIFIC REFERENCE TO SECOND TEMPLE JUDAISM
- Part II SOCIOLOGICAL APPROACHES TO SECTARIANISM IN SECOND TEMPLE JUDAISM
- WHEN IS A SECT A SECT – OR NOT? GROUPS AND MOVEMENTS IN THE SECOND TEMPLE PERIOD
- SECT FORMATION IN EARLY JUDAISM
- WAS THERE SECTARIAN BEHAVIOUR BEFORE THE FLOURISHING OF JEWISH SECTS? A LONG-TERM APPROACH TO THE HISTORY AND SOCIOLOGY OF SECOND TEMPLE SECTARIANISM
- ATONEMENT AND SECTARIANISM IN QUMRAN: DEFINING A SECTARIAN WORLDVIEW IN MORAL AND HALAKHIC SYSTEMS
- GROUPS IN TENSION: SECTARIANISM IN THE DAMASCUS DOCUMENT AND THE COMMUNITY RULE
- INFORMATION PROCESSING IN ANCIENT JEWISH GROUPS
- Index of References
- Index of Authors
Summary
Any fruit, even a lemon
Must have a beautiful rind
But if this lemon's a lemon
It's a scholar's prerogative to change her (his) mind
(With apologies to Johnny Mercer)When we lived in Canada I was a member of the Education Committee of the school my children attended. My responsibilities included interviewing candidates for teaching positions and over the years I must have met dozens of teachers. I developed a standard question that I asked of them all. It had a double virtue: it was one for which no one seemed to have a canned answer, hence it allowed committee members to see the candidate thinking on his/her feet. Second, the way the candidate framed the answer told us a good deal about that person, much more than the reply to usual questions. My question was: tell me about your successes and your failures, with special emphasis on the failures, rather than the successes.
In this chapter I want to take up the challenge of answering my own question. At conferences and in published papers we rarely present our failures, only what we believe to be our successes (how we feel after the discussion of our paper is another matter). And yet, our failures have a lot to teach us. Why do we consider certain ideas successes and others failures? What distinguishes a success from a failure? What, if anything, can we learn from our failures?
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- Sectarianism in Early JudaismSociological Advances, pp. 246 - 255Publisher: Acumen PublishingPrint publication year: 2007