Effective Combinations of Words and Things: The Babylonian Talmud Gittin 67b-70b and the Literary Standards of Late Antiquity

The Babylonian Talmud (BT) incorporates some lengthy passages on medical treatments that are mostly unparalleled by the Palestinian rabbinic writings. These texts (e.g. Shab 66b; Shab 109b-110b; Pes 111a-113b; Git 67b-70b and AZ 28a-29b) cannot be classified as either legal or narrative. Therefore, they provide ample material to serve as a test-case for the current scholarly consensus on redaction criticism in the BT. This redaction-critical approach has its foundation in the analysis of legal (halakhic) texts in the BT. The application of this method to narrative (aggadic) texts by Rubenstein (1999; 2005; 2010), however, has shown that further refinements are needed in order to distinguish between the supposed contributing parties (Amoraim and Stammaim). But since Rubenstein approached only texts with parallels in Palestinian works, this project will have to explore a variety of new ways and develop new critical tools to be able to distinguish between the two sources.

Apart from such redaction-critical contributions, the project aims at a historical contextualization of the selected texts within their intellectual environment. This will contribute to the question of how the BT was produced, what sources were included and, possibly, why and how they were reshaped for the purposes of the complier.

Monika Amsler

Prof. Christoph Uehlinger, University of Zurich, Switzerland
Prof. Michael L. Satlow, Brown University, Providence RI

2014 – 2018