A Dying Story: Told and Retold

Abstract

Understanding the interrelationships between narratives and norms in contemporary Jewish bioethics requires at least two projects, one that looks at what the stories are and one that examines how they are read. First, effort must be given to identify and analyze narratives in their textual contexts. This involves reading ancient stories as they are found in the textual tradition. Care should be given to locating and analyzing these stories in complementary textual witnesses. Second, how modern Jewish bioethicists read these stories requires scrutiny. Of course bioethicists are not the only scholars who turn to these stories for insight and guidance. For this reason it is important to juxtapose modern bioethical readings of these ancient stories with other modern interpretations. The first step appreciates the beauty and complexity of the stories in their own light, and the second highlights the difficulty these very stories pose for contemporary scholars. This chapter attempts to accomplish the first of these tasks; the subsequent two chapters fulfill the second.

There has never been a death more foretold.¹