Rabbinic hermeneutics in ancient Judaism reflects this multifaceted world of the text and of reality, seen as a world of reference worth commentary. As a mirror, it includes this world but perhaps also falsifies reality, adapting it to one's own aims and necessities. It consists of four parts:Part I, considered as introduction, is the description of the "Rabbinic Workshop", the rabbinic world where the student plays a role and a reformation of a reformation always takes place, the world where the mirror was created and manufactured. Part II deals with the historical environment, the world of reference of rabbinic Judaism in Palestine and in the Hellenistic Diaspora; Part III focuses on magic and the sciences, as ancient (political and empirical) activities of influence in the double meaning of receiving and adopting something and of attempt to produce an effect on persons and objects. Part IV addresses the rabbinic concern with texts as the main area of "influence" of the rabbinic academy in a space between the texts of the past and the real world of the present.

Giuseppe Veltri, University of Hamburg, Germany.