Migrating Tales
Richard Kalmin
Abstract
This book situates the Babylonian Talmud, or Bavli, in its cultural context by reading several rich rabbinic stories against the background of Greek, Syriac, Arabic, Persian, and Mesopotamian literature of late antiquity and the early Middle Ages, much of it Christian in origin. The book argues that non-Jewish literature deriving from the eastern Roman provinces is a crucially important key to interpreting Babylonian rabbinic literature, to a degree unimagined by earlier scholars. The book demonstrates the extent to which rabbinic Babylonia was part of the Mediterranean world of late antiquity ... More
Keywords: rabbinic literature, Babylonian Talmud, Bavli, late antiquity, Babylonia, Mediterranean, non-Jewish literature, Palestine, Syria, Mesopotamia
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2014 | Print ISBN-13: 9780520277250 |
| Published to California Scholarship Online: January 2015 | DOI:10.1525/california/9780520277250.001.0001 |
