Virtually from its redaction about the sixth century A.D., the
Babylonian Talmud became the rabbinic document par excellence. Through
its lens almost all previous canonical rabbinic tradition was refracted.
Study and mastery of the Talmud marked one as a rabbi, a "master." This
book examines the character, use and social meaning of the formalized
rhetoric which pervades the Babylonian Talmud. It explores, first, how
the editors of the Talmud employ a consistent and highly laconic code of
formalized linguistic terms and literary patterns to create the Talmud's
(renowned) dialectical, analytic "essays." Second, the work considers
the social meanings implicitly communicated by the use of this rhetoric,
which not only provided an authoritative model for modes of thought and
for treatment of earlier authoritative Judaic tradition, but also
reflected, reinforced or helped engender new social definitions.
Through comparison of the Talmud's rhetoric with that of other, earlier
rabbinic documents and by placing the editing of the Talmud against the
backdrop of the social and political situation of Rabbinism in the Late
Persian Empire, the book relates the Talmud's creation and promulgation
to a major shift in Rabbinism's understanding of the social role,
"rabbi," and to the emergence and ascendancy of the talmudic academy
(the Yeshiva) as the primary institution of Rabbinism toward the end of
Late Antiquity. In its agenda, and methodological and theoretical
perspectives, The Rhetoric of the Babylonian Talmud brings together
the insights and tools of historical, literary and rhetorical analysis
of the New Testament and of early rabbinic literature, on the one hand,
and the sociological and anthropological study of religion, on the
other.
