The Talmudic Argument

The Talmudic Argument PDF Author: Louis Jacobs
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780521263702
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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Book Description
This book examines in detail a number of typical lengthy passages with a view to showing how Talmudic reasoning operates and how the Talmud was compiled by its final editors.

The Talmudic Argument

The Talmudic Argument PDF Author: Louis Jacobs
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780521263702
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 220

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book examines in detail a number of typical lengthy passages with a view to showing how Talmudic reasoning operates and how the Talmud was compiled by its final editors.

The Talmudic Argument

The Talmudic Argument PDF Author: Louis Jacobs
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521269483
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
This book, the only one in English that can serve as a textbook for beginners and more advanced students of the Babylonian Talmud, examines in detail a number of typical lengthy passages with a view to showing how Talmudic reasoning operates and how the Talmud was compiled by its final editors. The book serves as an introduction to the nature of this fascinating work on which the Jewish mind has been intellectually stimulated and nourished for over 1500 years. Original insights into the Talmudic debates are provided for the consideration of Talmudic experts but the work is intended chiefly as a guide to students who wish to obtain a more than superficial idea of what the Talmud really is about.

Arguing with God

Arguing with God PDF Author: Anson Laytner
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 0765760258
Category : Covenants
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
As an old proverb puts it, "Two Jews, three opinions." In the long, rich, tumultuous history of the Jewish people, this characteristic contentiousness has often been extended even unto Heaven. Arguing with God is a highly original and utterly absorbing study that skates along the edge of this theological thin ice--at times verging dangerously close to blasphemy--yet also a source of some of the most poignant and deeply soulful expressions of human anguish and yearning. The name Israel literally denotes one who "wrestles with God." And, from Jacob's battle with the angel to Elie Wiesel's haunting questions about the Holocaust that hang in the air like still smoke over our own age, Rabbi Laytner admirably details Judaism's rich and pervasive tradition of calling God to task over human suffering and experienced injustice. It is a tradition that originated in the biblical period itself. Abraham, Moses, Elijah, and others all petitioned for divine intervention in their lives, or appealed forcefully to God to alter His proposed decree. Other biblical arguments focused on personal or communal suffering and anger: Jeremiah, Job, and certain Psalms and Lamentations. Rabbi Laytner delves beneath the surface of these "blasphemies" and reveals how they implicitly helped to refute the claims of opponent religions and advance Jewish doctrines and teachings.

Jews, Gentiles, and Other Animals

Jews, Gentiles, and Other Animals PDF Author: Mira Wasserman
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812249208
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
In Jews, Gentiles, and Other Animals, Mira Beth Wasserman undertakes a close reading of Avoda Zara, arguably the Babylonian Talmud's most scandalous tractate. According to Wasserman, Avoda Zara is where this Talmud joins the humanities in questioning what it means to be a human.

Talmudic Thinking

Talmudic Thinking PDF Author: Jacob Neusner
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description


Plato and the Talmud

Plato and the Talmud PDF Author: Jacob Howland
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139492217
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
This innovative study sees the relationship between Athens and Jerusalem through the lens of the Platonic dialogues and the Talmud. Howland argues that these texts are animated by comparable conceptions of the proper roles of inquiry and reasoned debate in religious life, and by a profound awareness of the limits of our understanding of things divine. Insightful readings of Plato's Apology, Euthyphro and chapter three of tractate Ta'anit explore the relationship of prophets and philosophers, fathers and sons, and gods and men (among other themes), bringing to light the tension between rational inquiry and faith that is essential to the speeches and deeds of both Socrates and the Talmudic sages. In reflecting on the pedagogy of these texts, Howland shows in detail how Talmudic aggadah and Platonic drama and narrative speak to different sorts of readers in seeking mimetically to convey the living ethos of rabbinic Judaism and Socratic philosophising.

Tradition and the Formation of the Talmud

Tradition and the Formation of the Talmud PDF Author: Moulie Vidas
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 069117086X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 249

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Book Description
Tradition and the Formation of the Talmud offers a new perspective on perhaps the most important religious text of the Jewish tradition. It is widely recognized that the creators of the Talmud innovatively interpreted and changed the older traditions on which they drew. Nevertheless, it has been assumed that the ancient rabbis were committed to maintaining continuity with the past. Moulie Vidas argues on the contrary that structural features of the Talmud were designed to produce a discontinuity with tradition, and that this discontinuity was part and parcel of the rabbis' self-conception. Both this self-conception and these structural features were part of a debate within and beyond the Jewish community about the transmission of tradition. Focusing on the Babylonian Talmud, produced in the rabbinic academies of late ancient Mesopotamia, Vidas analyzes key passages to show how the Talmud's creators contrasted their own voice with that of their predecessors. He also examines Zoroastrian, Christian, and mystical Jewish sources to reconstruct the debates and wide-ranging conversations that shaped the Talmud's literary and intellectual character.

The Reader's Guide to the Talmud

The Reader's Guide to the Talmud PDF Author: Jacob Neusner
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9789004121874
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 416

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Book Description
This systematic introduction to the Talmud of Babylonia (Bavli) answers basic questions of form: how is this a coherent document? How do we make sense of the several languages in which it is written? What are the principal parts of the complex writing? Turning to questions of modes of thought, the account proceeds to address the intellectual character of the Bavli and in particular the character and uses of its dialectics. Finally, questions of substance come to the fore: how does the Talmud relate to the Torah? and how does tradition enter in? These basic questions of rhetoric, topic, and logic that anyone approaching the text will raise are dealt with clearly and authoritatively.

Jesus in the Talmud

Jesus in the Talmud PDF Author: Peter Schäfer
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400827612
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
Scattered throughout the Talmud, the founding document of rabbinic Judaism in late antiquity, can be found quite a few references to Jesus--and they're not flattering. In this lucid, richly detailed, and accessible book, Peter Schäfer examines how the rabbis of the Talmud read, understood, and used the New Testament Jesus narrative to assert, ultimately, Judaism's superiority over Christianity. The Talmudic stories make fun of Jesus' birth from a virgin, fervently contest his claim to be the Messiah and Son of God, and maintain that he was rightfully executed as a blasphemer and idolater. They subvert the Christian idea of Jesus' resurrection and insist he got the punishment he deserved in hell--and that a similar fate awaits his followers. Schäfer contends that these stories betray a remarkable familiarity with the Gospels--especially Matthew and John--and represent a deliberate and sophisticated anti-Christian polemic that parodies the New Testament narratives. He carefully distinguishes between Babylonian and Palestinian sources, arguing that the rabbis' proud and self-confident countermessage to that of the evangelists was possible only in the unique historical setting of Persian Babylonia, in a Jewish community that lived in relative freedom. The same could not be said of Roman and Byzantine Palestine, where the Christians aggressively consolidated their political power and the Jews therefore suffered. A departure from past scholarship, which has played down the stories as unreliable distortions of the historical Jesus, Jesus in the Talmud posits a much more deliberate agenda behind these narratives.

Judaism's Great Debates

Judaism's Great Debates PDF Author: Barry L. Schwartz
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 0827609329
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 125

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Book Description
Thanks to these generous donors for making the publication of this book possible: David Lerman and Shelley Wallock; D. Walter Cohen, Wendy and Leonard Cooper; Rabbi Howard Gorin; Gittel and Alan Hilibrand; Marjorie and Jeffrey Major; Jeanette Lerman Neubauer and Joe Neubauer; Gayle and David Smith; and Harriet and Donald Young. Ever since Abraham’s famous argument with God, Judaism has been full of debate. Moses and Korah, David and Nathan, Hillel and Shammai, the Vilna Gaon and the Ba’al Shem Tov, Spinoza and the Amsterdam Rabbis . . . the list goes on. Jews debate justice, authority, inclusion, spirituality, resistance, evolution, Zionism, and more. No wonder that Judaism cherishes the expression machloket l’shem shamayim, “an argument for the sake of heaven.” In this concise but important survey, Rabbi Barry L. Schwartz presents the provocative and vibrant thesis that debate and disputation are not only encouraged within Judaism but reside at the very heart of Jewish history and theology. In his graceful, engaging, and creative prose, Schwartz presents an introduction to an intellectual history of Judaism through the art of argumentation. Beyond their historical importance, what makes these disputations so compelling is that nearly all of them, regardless of their epochs, are still being argued. Schwartz builds the case that the basis of Judaism is a series of unresolved rather than resolved arguments. Drawing on primary sources, and with a bit of poetic license, Schwartz reconstructs the real or imagined dialogue of ten great debates and then analyzes their significance and legacy. This parade of characters spanning three millennia of biblical, rabbinic, and modern disputation reflects the panorama of Jewish history with its monumental political, ethical, and spiritual challenges.