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Essays that explore the rich engagement of the Talmud with its cultural world The Babylonian Talmud (Bavli), the great compilation of Jewish law edited in the late Sasanian era (sixth–seventh century CE), also incorporates a great deal of aggada, that is, nonlegal material, including interpretations of the Bible, stories, folk sayings, and prayers. The Talmud’s aggadic traditions often echo conversations with the surrounding cultures of the Persians, Eastern Christians, Manichaeans, Mandaeans, and the ancient Babylonians, and others. The essays in this volume analyze Bavli aggada to reveal this rich engagement of the Talmud with its cultural world. Features: A detailed analysis of the different conceptions of martyrdom in the Talmud as opposed to the Eastern Christian martyr accounts Illustration of the complex ways rabbinic Judaism absorbed Christian and Zoroastrian theological ideas Demonstration of the presence of Persian-Zoroastrian royal and mythological motifs in talmudic sources
The contributors to this book analyze how the redactors of the Talmud transformed and reworked earlier aggadic (non-legal) traditions. Critical study of the Babylonian Talmud is founded on the distinction between two literary strata: traditions attributed to named sages (the Amoraim, c. 200-450 CE) and setam hatalmud, the unattributed or anonymous material. The conclusion of modern scholars is that the anonymous stratum postdates the Amoraic stratum and should be attributed to the Talmudic redactors, also known as Stammaim (c. 450-700 CE.) The contribution of the Stammaim to the aggadic (non-legal) portions of the Talmud - to midrash, narratives, ethics and theology - has received minimal scholarly attention. The articles in this book demonstrate that the Stammaim made a profound contribution to the aggadic portions of the Babylonian Talmud and illustrate the processes by which they created and composed many aggadic traditions.
This monograph discusses the Zohar, the most important book of the Kabbalah, as a late strata of the Midrashic literature. The author concentrates on the 'expanded' biblical stories in the Zohar and on its relationship to the ancient Talmudic Aggadah. The analytical and critical examination of these biblical themes reveals aspects of continuity and change in the history of the old Aggadic story and its way into the Zoharic corpus. The detailed description of this literary process also reveals the world of the authors of the Zohar, their spiritual distress, mystical orientations, and self-consciousness.
While in contemporary culture we tend to resort to a single, if broadly defined, range of discourse for the results of systematic thought about public matters of the social order, this is not the case in Rabbinic Judaism. Judaism's authoritative documents set forth the entire structure of belief and system of behavior in two distinct modes of discourse, Halakhic and Aggadic, or broadly construed, statements of law and lore. Theology in Action shows how the Talmud of Babylonia (a.k.a., the Bavli) account of normative action sets forth in a dual discourse the single, coherent theology of Rabbinic Judaism.
The dual discourse tells a continuous story."--BOOK JACKET.
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