rabbinize

R1A1B3B3I1N1I1Z10E1

verb

To interpret from the perspective of rabbinic teaching; to make consistent with rabbinic lore.

Scrabble 22

Meanings

verbrabbinize (third-person singular simple present rabbinizes, present participle rabbinizing, simple past and past participle rabbinized)

present singular third person rabbinizes · participle present rabbinizing · participle past rabbinized · past rabbinized · alternative rabbinise

  1. To interpret from the perspective of rabbinic teaching; to make consistent with rabbinic lore.

    However, the rabbis attempted to rabbinize it by making it an incentive for obedience to the Torah: the Messiah would come, if all Israel would keep the Torah.

    2001, D. A. Carson, Peter Thomas O'Brien, Mark A. Seifrid, Justification and Variegated Nomism, page 275
    4 more examples

    This issue is far from simple, given the later rabbinic tendency to 'rabbinize' earlier Jewish history, and particularly Jewish heroes from as far back as biblical times.

    1987, Shemuel Safrai, The Literature of the Sages

    Joseph and Daniel would have figured largely as authorities, in the way in which they figure in later Christian oneirocritica. Instead the Rabbis take over the standard oneirocritica of their own day and rabbinize it .

    1995, The Journal of Jewish Studies - Volume 46, page 246

    The later Babylonian version of this story, therefore, credits Jesus with the ability to derive law via scriptural interpretation, and is therefore consonant with a Babylonian Talmudic tendency to rabbinize wonder-workers, healers, and rain-makers, holy men on the periphery or outside the rabbinic movement.

    1996, Magne Saebo, Hebrew Bible, Old Testament: The History of Its Interpretation, page 301

    Taking their cue from Vermes , a whole school of New Testament scholars have taken up the notion of 'rabbinization' , and have sought to recover the Chasidim as highly idiosyncratic individuals who had little or nothing in common with the Pharisee movement, despite later attempts to 'rabbinize' them .

    2003, Hyam Maccoby, Jesus the Pharisee, page 32

Origin

Cite this entry
APA

rabbinize. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/rabbinize

MLA

“rabbinize.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/rabbinize. Accessed November 3, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “rabbinize,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/rabbinize.

Source: rabbinize on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.