The Formation of the Talmud

2017

In this book, Daniel Boyarin offers a wide-ranging introduction to the many fields of study to which the Talmud can contribute, from linguistics to gender studies to the relations between formative Judaism and Christianity and the literary genres of the Talmud in the Hellenistic context.

Routledge eBooks, 2023

MAKE Literary Magazine, 2014

The Wisdom Of The Talmud A Thousand Years of Jewish Thought (Wisdom Library) Citadel (2001)

Foucault Studies, 2011

The vast and multifaceted tradition of Hebrew thought may provide readers of Foucault with the possibility of expanding upon his work, especially with respect to the kind of action [ergon] focused on reading and writing that was such a preoccupation of his ethical turn. While Foucault's interest in Ancient, Medieval, and early modern Christianity in the shaping of a self is well known, as is his interest in Iranian Shi'ism and its links to self practices (though this latter has been overshadowed by the political storm provoked by his writings on the Iranian revolution and Khomeinism), there seems to be virtually nothing specifically about Jewish thought in Foucault, apart from his comments on Spinoza and the role of the imagination in Hebrew thinking in the introduction to his translation of Binswanger on dreams and existence (1954). In recent issues, Foucault Studies, with two book reviews by David A. Kaden, has sought to bring to its readers' attention the possible links between the final Foucault's interest in ethics, modes of being-in-the-world, care of self, and Jewish religious thinking. With Sergey Dolgopolski's volume, here under review, that effort shifts its focus to the complex of issues raised by the reading of a text and its aims, as it emerged in the art of Talmud. Here, indeed, are Foucauldian questions. The Hebraic Talmudic tradition, as Dolgopolski explores it, contains a vision of reading as a spiritual exercise, a conception of paired learning, both of which are concerns of Foucault, and-perhaps the most striking-a different understanding of commentary, not as polemic, which Foucault eschewed, but as a component in the very formation of a text itself. Indeed, Dolgopolski's exploration of the Talmudic tradition provides us with a new ‚take‛ on the famous, but aborted, debate between Habermas and Foucault: With Dolgopolski's Talmud, the reader enters a ‚world‛ where the aim of a dialogical encounter, of communicative action, to use a Habermasian trope, is not agreement; it is a ‚world‛ where a reversal of the very bases of the Habermasian ideal speech situation produces disagreement. Dolgopolski's What Is Talmud? is not an exploration of either Jewish law or ethics. It is, rather, an inquiry into the ways in which the meaning or sense of an argument is established, the mode in which one reads a text or hears an oral argument, the way in which truth claims are constituted. And it is a contribution to the

SUMMARY In this essay I show that rabbinic reasoning, in its mature Talmudic form, rests on a foundation of five presuppositions, or axioms, including the comprehensiveness and non-redundancy of scripture, and is guided by two formulas. The first formula is the formula of bijection, A ∼B, which establishes a one-to-one correspondence between A the textual elements of the Torah and B the propositions of law comprising the system of halakha; the second is the formula of adequate justification, ∃fx (fx ⊃ L), which states that there is a feature fx that serves as adequate justification for the application of a law L. The 'Thirteen Rules of Rabbi Ishmael' are analysed in terms of these formulas. An outline of stages in the evolution of rabbinic interpretation and reasoning in the Talmudic period sets the Thirteen Rules in their historical context as a third-century attempt, subsequently refined, to systematize rabbinic scriptural interpretation and legal reasoning.

Ajs Review-the Journal of The Association for Jewish Studies, 2010

2020

Reading Talmudic Sources as Arguments: A New Interpretive Approach elucidates the unique characteristics of Talmudic discourse culture. Approaching Talmudic literature from a linguistic perspective, the book shows the extensive and hidden ways in which later rabbis used early formulations. Applying Quentin Skinner's interpretive question “What was the author doing in composing the text in this particular way?" to Talmudic literature reveals that Talmudic debate is not only about ideas, concepts, and laws but also about the latter's connection to pre-existing formulations. These early traditions, rather than only being accepted or not, are used by later generations to build their own arguments. The book articulates the function of tradition at the time that Rabbinic Judaism was forged. For the entire book please send a request.