In this book, Lynn Kaye examines how rabbis of late antiquity thought about time through their legal reasoning and storytelling, and what these insights mean for thinking about time today. Providing close readings of legal and narrative texts in the Babylonian Talmud, she compares temporal ideas with related concepts in ancient and modern philosophical texts and in religious traditions from late antique Mesopotamia. Kaye demonstrates that temporal flexibility in the Babylonian Talmud is a means of exploring (...) and resolving legal uncertainties, as well as a tool to tell stories that convey ideas effectively and dramatically. Her book, the first on time in the Talmud, makes accessible complex legal texts and philosophical ideas. It also connects the literature of late antique Judaism with broader theological and philosophical debates about time. (shrink)

This article describes the tripartite structure, a formative style used in the redaction of some sugyot in Tractate Eruvin. The attitude to the tripartite structure is portrayed here as reflected by commentators and researchers who mentioned this pattern, whether directly or indirectly. The purpose of the article is to present several select examples of the tripartite structure in some sugyot in Tractate Eruvin. This will have the significant effect of illuminating different literary forms worthy of exploration, such as the tripartite (...) structure here, as well as in other Talmudic sugyot whose focus is mainly halakhic. Sometimes the form utilized has a considerable effect on redaction of the contents, for example for understanding the sugya or solving various difficulties that it contains. These patterns are also evident in other additional sugyot and they constitute an important research foundation for examining their application in additional sugyot in the different tractates. (shrink)

This chapter evaluates the use of the Babylonian Talmud for the study of the history of late-Roman Palestine using astrology as a case example. It explains that the Babylonian Talmud contains much material which derives from Palestine and may sometimes preserve Palestinian rabbinic material in a form closer to the original than is found in Palestinian compilations. Palestinian sources often do not contain trustworthy evidence about Palestinian Sages and institutions.

This volume looks at tractate Menachot, which is concerned mostly with grain offered at the Temple to atone for various misdeeds. Fogel approaches the text, page by page, commenting with doses of humor and comparisons in a manner meant to explain the text for contemporary readers.

Motivations and on the method -- Juxtaposing Jewish and Greek conceptions of time as the first cause -- Ideals and reality -- The learning curves: a functional model for knowledge acquisition -- Marx as the Kasrilovker Melamed or the Kasrilovker Melamed as Marx?.

The Babylonian Talmud, compiled from the 2nd to 7th centuries C.E., is the primary source for all subsequent Jewish laws. It is not written in apodeictic style, but rather as a discursive record of (real or imagined) legal (and other) arguments crossing a wide range of technical topics. Thus, it is not a simple matter to infer general methodological principles underlying the Talmudic approach to legal reasoning. Nevertheless, in this article, we propose a general principle that we believe (...) helps to explain the variety of methods used by the Rabbis of the Talmud for resolving uncertainty in matters of Jewish Law (henceforth: Halakhah). Such uncertainty might arise either if the facts of a case are clear but the relevant law is debatable or if the facts themselves are unclear. (shrink)

This article treats the Jewish Babylonian Aramaic 3rd person singular pronoun נוולא nawla, attested four times in the vast rabbinic corpus: three times in the Babylonian Talmud and one time in Tractate Sofrim. First, it is shown that the form is epicene, as it can have both masculine and feminine antecedents. Second, the four attestations reveal a specialized meaning for the form, to wit, ‘this-one’ or ‘that-one’ when there are specifically two items under discussion. Which is to (...) say, the form נוולא nawla is not used for simple ‘he’ or ‘she’ or ‘this’ or ‘that’, for which JBA and other Aramaic dialects have familiar and widely attested forms. Third, the article proposes that the form is borrowed from the Hurro-Urartian family, well known for its epicene pronouns. See, for example, Hurrian anni=lla, ani=lla, etc., Urartian i=ne=lə, ina=ne=lə, etc. Even though these forms are plural forms, while נוולא nawla is a singular form, comparative evidence demonstrates that when pronouns are borrowed from one language to another, they at times may jump person and number. (shrink)

The Babylonian Talmud has reached us in multiple versions in medieval manu- scripts, early printed editions, and in citations in the works of medieval and early modern scholars. The field of Talmud criticism has developed criteria for working with these materials and the scholar E. S. Rosenthal famously theorized about the implications of textual variants for the history of the Talmud’s redaction. Tractate Temurah of the Babylonian Talmud received special attention due to the frequency (...) and, at times, unique usage of the term, lishana ’aḥarina, meaning “alternative textual reading,” found in it. In Temurah the term lishana ’aḥarina does not only signal a difference in formulation, as in other tractates of the Talmud, but some- times also seems to introduce a separately redacted text of the tractate that was integrated into a widespread and known base text. (shrink)

In contemporary bioethics, the autonomy of the patient has assumed considerable importance. Progressing from a more limited notion of informed consent, shared decision making calls upon patients to voice the desires and preferences of their authentic self, engaging in choice among alternatives as a way to exercise deeply held values. One influential opinion in Jewish bioethics holds that Jewish law, in contradistinction to secular bioethics, limits the patient's exercise of autonomy only in those instances in which treatment choices are sensitive (...) to preferences. Here, we analyze a discussion in the Mishna, a foundational text of rabbinic Judaism, regarding patient autonomy in the setting of religiously mandated fasting, and commentaries in the Babylonian and Palestinian Talmuds, finding both a more expansive notion of such autonomy and a potential metaphysical grounding for it in the importance of patient self-knowledge. (shrink)

Investigation into the history of the Talmud was sparked by the Karaite rebellion against the authority of the Talmud at the beginning of the eighth century. The most influential work of Talmudic chronology is the Iggeret de-Rav Sherira Gaon , composed in 986, which sought to explain how the Mishnah and the Talmud were compiled, and demonstrate the unbroken chain of the tradition. Maimonides gives a summary of the history of the tradition in his Commentary to the (...) Mishnah. Although Maimonides' reconstruction is an artificial one, with no attempt to verify sources or test their reliability, he stated that the Babylonian Talmud was compiled about one hundred years after the Jerusalem Talmud; in cases of disagreement, therefore, the rulings of the Babylonian Talmud were the ones adopted by the post-Talmudic Halakhah. The French glossators, or Tosafists, argued that a law in the Talmud could be changed when the original circumstances in which it was promulgated were no longer evident. More objective, critical historical accounts have been given by more modern scholars, particularly Yon Tov Lippmann Heller, Jeheil Heilprin, and Hayyim Joseph David Agulai. (shrink)

A Fortiori Logic: Innovations, History and Assessments is a wide-ranging and in-depth study of a fortiori reasoning, comprising a great many new theoretical insights into such argument, a history of its use and discussion from antiquity to the present day, and critical analyses of the main attempts at its elucidation. Its purpose is nothing less than to lay the foundations for a new branch of logic and greatly develop it; and thus to once and for all dispel the many fallacious (...) ideas circulating regarding the nature of a fortiori reasoning. -/- The work is divided into three parts. The first part, Formalities, presents the author’s largely original theory of a fortiori argument, in all its forms and varieties. Its four (or eight) principal moods are analyzed in great detail and formally validated, and secondary moods are derived from them. A crescendo argument is distinguished from purely a fortiori argument, and similarly analyzed and validated. These argument forms are clearly distinguished from the pro rata and analogical forms of argument. Moreover, we examine the wide range of a fortiori argument; the possibilities of quantifying it; the formal interrelationships of its various moods; and their relationships to syllogistic and analogical reasoning. Although a fortiori argument is shown to be deductive, inductive forms of it are acknowledged and explained. Although a fortiori argument is essentially ontical in character, more specifically logical-epistemic and ethical-legal variants of it are acknowledged. -/- The second part of the work, Ancient and Medieval History, looks into use and discussion of a fortiori argument in Greece and Rome, in the Talmud, among post-Talmudic rabbis, and in Christian, Moslem, Chinese and Indian sources. Aristotle’s approach to a fortiori argument is described and evaluated. There is a thorough analysis of the Mishnaic qal vachomer argument, and a reassessment of the dayo principle relating to it, as well as of the Gemara’s later take on these topics. The valuable contribution, much later, by Moshe Chaim Luzzatto is duly acknowledged. Lists are drawn up of the use of a fortiori argument in the Jewish Bible, the Mishna, the works of Plato and Aristotle, the Christian Bible and the Koran; and the specific moods used are identified. Moreover, there is a pilot study of the use of a fortiori argument in the Gemara, with reference to Rodkinson’s partial edition of the Babylonian Talmud, setting detailed methodological guidelines for a fuller study. There is also a novel, detailed study of logic in general in the Torah. -/- The third part of the present work, Modern and Contemporary Authors, describes and evaluates the work of numerous (some thirty) recent contributors to a fortiori logic, as well as the articles on the subject in certain lexicons. Here, we discover that whereas a few authors in the last century or so made some significant contributions to the field, most of them shot woefully off-target in various ways. The work of each author, whether famous or unknown, is examined in detail in a dedicated chapter, or at least in a section; and his ideas on the subject are carefully weighed. The variety of theories that have been proposed is impressive, and stands witness to the complexity and elusiveness of the subject, and to the crying need for the present critical and integrative study. But whatever the intrinsic value of each work, it must be realized that even errors and lacunae are interesting because they teach us how not to proceed. -/- This book also contains, in a final appendix, some valuable contributions to general logic, including new analyses of symbolization and axiomatization, existential import, the tetralemma, the Liar paradox and the Russell paradox. (shrink)

Prohibition on sex selection may well be unnecessary and oppressive as well as posing risks to women’s lives The urge to select children’s sex is not new. The Babylonian Talmud, a Jewish text completed towards the end of the fifth century of the Christian era, advises couples on means to favour the birth of either a male or a female child.1 The development of amniocentesis alerted the public in the mid-1970s to the scientific potential for prenatal determination of (...) fetal sex,2 and progressive decriminalisation of abortion afforded choice about continuation of pregnancy. The more recent emergence of preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) obviates resort to abortion, and improved techniques of sperm sorting and diagnosis permit creation of zygotes that will ensure the sex of a future child. Growth of biomedical means to select the sex of future children has been accompanied by fear that such means will be employed to favour births of sons, and so perpetuate devaluation of girl children and women’s inferior family and social status. A reaction to this fear has been the demand for legal and medical professional prohibition of sex selection techniques. For instance, the Council of Europe’s Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine3 provides in article 14 that: The use of techniques of medically assisted procreation shall not be allowed for the purpose of choosing a future child’s sex, except where serious hereditary sex-related disease is to be avoided. Legislation has been enacted in a number of countries, and proposed in others, to prohibit sex selection on non-medical grounds, such as the Prenatal Diagnostic Techniques (Regulation and Prevention of Misuse) Act, 1994 in India. In Canada, for instance, government draft legislation introduced in May 2002 proposes to make it a crime for any person, for the purpose of creating a human …. (shrink)

Responding to doubts expressed by contributors to the Common Knowledge symposium on xenophilia, this introduction to the seventh and final installment seeks to explain the critics’ methodological concerns in a case study of strong affect in the Babylonian Talmud. Examining the story of Rav Rehumi and his wife in Ketubot 62b, the author inquires whether differences of culture and the passage of time make it impossible for us to determine whether love is the affect involved. The case is (...) especially difficult to resolve, given that, while there may be two lovers in this narrative, there may be three objects of love: the rabbi, his wife, and the Torah. In the story, Rav Rehumi is so ravished by Torah that he forgets his wife. Since the narrative does not predicate that he chose not to visit her but, rather, that he was swept away, the author proposes that “studying Torah is sex, not like sex, but sex itself.” The story describes not sublimation of libido but its desublimation. If so, the story confronts us with an unnamed affect in ancient Jewish culture that “encompasses both the joy of sex and the joy of text.” It is not that, dourly, the Talmudic Rabbis cannot imagine, or that they ignore, corporeal pleasure; it is rather that the erotic experience of Torah is the same pleasure but, at least for them, even stronger. This piece concludes, therefore, that a term like xenophilia, which incorporates the word love, is not universally applicable across cultures and epistemai. The concept of love is too various. (shrink)

This article engages in the explanation and interpretation of three unclear words, dyofe, meiarak and kitana, that appear in the Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Eruvin 104a-b. The words are part of the Talmudic text and the article addresses the various meanings ascribed to them and explains them. This is required because of the contradiction and confusion that exist in the explanation and interpretation of these three words. The research method employed involves examining the various explanations given by the commentators, (...) comparing the words with other sources and checking their suggested meanings in Talmudic dictionaries. The research results show different versions of these three words and the conclusions indicate that the different versions change their possible explanation and interpretation. CONTRIBUTION: The innovation of this article is in presenting the various sources of these words, noting their various versions and the different interpretations that derive from them. The article also describes the interpretive development of these words, as well as noting the commentators who offer explanations for the two first words, which generate contradictory meanings. (shrink)

Given the unprecedented scope and stakes of contemporary environmental crisis, ethicists have raised critical questions about whether traditional religious texts can speak in a meaningful way to climate change and other environmental risks in the anthropocene. Building on the ethical urgency of the environmental justice movement, this essay offers a feminist reading of Jewish narratives from the Babylonian Talmud that centers attention on issues of power, privilege, and social inequality in the midst of disaster. Talmudic tales of the (...) destruction of Jerusalem critique the moral oblivion of wealthy residents who failed to act in response to crisis. Articulating a Jewish feminist reconstituative ethics, the author uses these tales to trace the ethical costs of epistemologies of ignorance—the complex strategies and social processes through which privileged communities cultivate ignorance of environmental suffering, maintain social distance from environmental risk, and disown moral culpability for environmental injustice. (shrink)

This paper deals with the concept of three eras, as brought to us firstly in the Babylonian Talmud, and later reshaped and reformulated by Christian theologians Joachim of Fiore, Amalric of Bène, and finally by Luce Irigaray. In the first part, we start with the idea of the three eras. This is followed by a critical approach to Sloterdijk’s You must change your life in which religion is substituted by the anthropotechnics. We argue that even in these secular (...) times, the salvation history still remains unfulfilled and that our world is in need of a new, post-Christian materially spiritual narrative. The second part is entirely dedicated to Amalricians and their teachings. Also by tackling strong Islamic influences, we try to find a new opening towards the post-Christian era beyond the mentioned anthropotechnics/atheism divide. In the third part, the Age of the Spirit is approached and defined as a future messianic-utopian era in which a hidden and forgotten inner spiritual core will be revealed to us and in which humanity will give itself a gift of becoming spiritually transformed and divinized. (shrink)

Rabbinic tales of drought, disaster, and charismatic holy men illuminate critical questions about power, ethics, and ecology in Jewish late antiquity. Through a sustained reading of the Babylonian Talmud's tractate on fasts in response to drought, this book shows how Bavli Taʿanit challenges Deuteronomy's claim that virtue can assure abundance and that misfortune is an unambiguous sign of divine rebuke. Employing a new method for analyzing lengthy talmudic narratives, Julia Watts Belser traces complex strands of aggadic dialectic to (...) show how Bavli Taʿanit's redactors articulate a strikingly self-critical theological and ethical discourse. Bavli Taʿanit castigates rabbis for misuse of power, exposing the limits of their perception and critiquing prevailing obsessions with social status. But it also celebrates the possibilities of performative perception - the power of an adroit interpreter to transform events in the world and interpret crisis in a way that draws forth blessing. (shrink)

In this article, I study several midrashic passages preserved in the Babylonian Talmud that deal with Satan. The verses that they are based on are nearly all drawn from the book of Job. I find that these midrashim strongly support the conclusions of Ishay Rosen-Zvi’s monograph Demonic Desires in several ways, notably that Satan is not the font and origin of evil in the world as he is in other branches or wings of the ancient Jewish imagination.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Emperor’s Daughter, the Wise Rabbi, and the Realtor’s FaceliftJohn Davidson and Ruhama WeissFour decades ago during the clinical years of medical school, my (JD) first patient–care efforts included serendipitous contacts with three non–physician mentors. Each a rabbi. Each a Texan. Each of a different generation. Each acting in a pastoral care role in Houston’s Texas Medical Center. By sharing with all–comers their command of the two–millennia–old rabbinic literary (...) corpus, especially its aggadic, or nonlegal texts, they changed me forever. Theological dogma was not their passion. Caregiving for their hospitalized congregants was. And in so doing, they opened gates of discovery to rabbinic stories (aggadot) as articles of faith to be put into action for patients, staff, students, and doctors alike. These unexpected gifts have catalyzed and sustained my medical career and personal life ever since.The most influential of those stories was the famous Talmudic tale of the eminent Rabbi Eliezer (Babylonian Talmud, Bava Metzia 59b) using every conceivable means to support his view in a dispute, including miracles and a voice of approval from Heaven. His colleagues refused to assent to the singularity of his methods or arrival. They insisted on reasoning their way through to a majority decision based on consideration of the evidence at hand with the tools available. The tale ends with a joyous, proud, yet defeated parental deity declaring, “My children have bested Me, my children have bested Me.”The legend empowered me as a student to speak my mind in seeking to value the methodical, collaborative process of clinical decision–making over the sometimes ferocious voices of “the experts.” It continues to resurface decades later in daily efforts at finding common ground with both patients and other clinicians as we try to figure out, “what to do.” For more on this topic see my article, “Empathy and Integrative Thinking: Talmudic Paradigms for the Essentials of a Medical Interview” found in Medical Humanities.Just as those rabbis in the 1970’s told their stories in order to make sense of worldly and spiritual matters, so have I come now to appreciate the value of similar narratives for my patients and myself. Sometimes stories are shared in a near prescriptive fashion. Sometimes they are recalled silently as a compass suggesting the next step in an interview or treatment process. These rabbinic tales come to mind during clinical encounters after years of personal reflection on favorite texts and even more often in the midst of weekly if not daily textual study as a central element of my Jewish religious life. This practice has led to a realization that recalling rabbinic texts in contemporary clinical contexts is neither far–fetched nor irrelevant. At times it is uncannily helpful. Two millennia are not so long ago.During the past year, an Israeli colleague (RW) and I have revisited various Talmudic passages on a regular basis. Unlike Texas four decades ago, now I have learned with a pastoral care clinician who is a “hevruta,” or study partner, from the same Hebrew root as “haver,” meaning “friend.” Ours is a centuries–old way of study consisting of a pair of learners conversing freely on equal footing as they wrestle with interpreting a chosen, often familiar, text in a new way. My hevruta and I parse verbs. We examine articles. We question redundancy and grammatical reversals. We search for allusions. We read closely. We do all of this for its sake alone. It is part of our spiritual journey. It is one way we search for God. We engage the words on the page or screen and talk to each other.It is also a dyadic effort whose process and content bear a likeness to that of a doctor and a patient as they try to dialogue together regarding a patient’s concerns and the doctor’s capacity to help. Here, too, there is give and take, an attention to details, a reinterpretation of the past, and a reconsidering of the present. It is not surprising that the fruits of an ongoing dialogue on one stage with a hevruta, related to rabbinic stories and grammatical puzzlements, is of use on another... (shrink)

Rabbinic Talmudic tradition is marked by chains of tradition, integrating written Scripture and oral Traditions. The interrelation of word, voice, and instruction is paramount. Levinas’s reading of Talmudic texts follows this format and continues this tradition, by superimposing his voice and philosophical concerns. I have chosen his reading of Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Makkot 10a as an exemplum. In the process, Levinas’s style and method can be seen as a contemporary meta-commentary on the ancient rabbinic source.

This paper deals with the concept of three eras, as brought to us firstly in the Babylonian Talmud, and later reshaped and reformulated by Christian theologians Joachim of Fiore, Amalric of Bène, and finally by Luce Irigaray. In the first part, we start with the idea of the three eras. This is followed by a critical approach to Sloterdijk’s You must change your life in which religion is substituted by the anthropotechnics. We argue that even in these secular (...) times, the salvation history still remains unfulfilled and that our world is in need of a new, post-Christian materially spiritual narrative. The second part is entirely dedicated to Amalricians and their teachings. Also by tackling strong Islamic influences, we try to find a new opening towards the post-Christian era beyond the mentioned anthropotechnics/atheism divide. In the third part, the Age of the Spirit is approached and defined as a future messianic-utopian era in which a hidden and forgotten inner spiritual core will be revealed to us and in which humanity will give itself a gift of becoming spiritually transformed and divinized. (shrink)

In the rabbinic literature from the land of Israel the poor are depicted not as passive recipients of gifts and support, but as independent agents who are responsible for their own behaviour. Communal care for the needy was expected to go beyond their basic needs for food, clothing and shelter; the physical safety of the poor and the value of their time as well as their dignity and self-worth were also included in the scope of charity. In this monograph, Yael (...) Wilfand offers a comprehensive and contextual analysis of major rabbinic texts on poverty and charity composed during the first five centuries of the Common Era in the land of Israel, principally the Mishnah, the Tosefta, the Palestinian Talmud and midrashim. She shows that, for the rabbis, the poor were not necessarily considered outsiders; indeed, some students and rabbis in Palestine may have personally experienced poverty. Wilfand claims that such socio-economic diversity contributed to the thinking of these rabbis, who rarely saw poverty as a result of transgression (in contrast to the Babylonian Talmud). This book presents a number of contrasting viewpoints held by Palestinian rabbis over such questions as: Must communal administrators ensure applicants' eligibility for alms? Should the newly indigent from wealthy families receive exceptional levels of support? Might neighbouring gentiles qualify for economic assistance from Jewish communal sources? By examining Palestinian rabbinic sources within the contexts both of the hegemonic Greco-Roman (later, Christian) milieu and of the biblical heritage, this volume offers an absorbing account of some ancient approaches to timeless social challenges. (shrink)

This article deals with different versions of a story in Tractate Eruvin of the Babylonian Talmud. This story has different versions in various sources, including in one page from the Genizah fragment Cambridge U-L T-S F2 23, numbered C98948 in the Friedberg Jewish Manuscript Society. Each version changes our understanding of the story’s content, and in this article we will display these variations and examine the feasibility that they reflect about the original version. The story ends with the (...) phrase Lo shamiʿa li, for which we shall offer a new alternative meaning.Contribution: The main contribution of this article is in revealing the importance of comparing the different versions to the same story which implies a change in the content of the story. This has future implications when considering a story that has different versions. In addition, exploring and examining a particular phrase can offer a different interpretation or meaning than it was commonly thought. These insights are based on story and phrase found in the theological text, so that the article fits to the focus and scope of this journal. (shrink)

Rabbinic tradition, as given in the Palestinian and Babylonian versions of the Talmud, transmits an account of Rabbi Elisha ben Abuyah only to depreciate him for the “pariah” that he was during his lifetime. For one who accepts rabbinic authority, there can be no moral ambiguity about the character of the man, his beliefs, or his aspirations.1 The twelfth-century philosopher and rabbi Moses Maimonides spared no criticism of Elisha. Maimonides wrote The Guide for the Perplexed with the object (...) of enlightening “a religious man who has been trained to believe in the truth of our holy Law, who conscientiously fulfills his moral and religious duties, and at the same time has been successful in his philosophical studies .. (shrink)

The Babylonian Theodicy. By Takayoshi Oshima. State Archives of Assyria Cuneiform Texts, vol. 9. Helsinki: The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project, 2013. Pp. lxiii + 63. $39. [Distributed by Eisenbrauns, Winona Lake, Ind.].

Babylonian Poems of Righteous Sufferers: Ludlul Bël Nëmeqi and the Babylonian Theodicy. By Takayoshi Oshima. Orientalische Religionen in der Antike, vol. 14. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014. Pp. xx + 572, 65 plts. €139.

Wide-ranging and astutely argued, Talmud /and/ Philosophy examines the intersections, partitions, and mutual illuminations and problematizations of western philosophy and the Talmud. Among its devoted students or "learners," the Talmud - both as text and mode of thought - is a constantly unfolding truth about humans in their relationship to God in the world. Among many philosophers, the Talmud has been at best an idealized and remote object, and at worse, if noticed at all, an object (...) for curiosity. The contributors to this volume collectively turn on and probe a new mode of inquiry by approaching the very question of partitions, conjunctions and disjunctions between the Talmud and philosophy as the guiding question of their inquiry. Rather than using the Talmud and its modes of argumentation to develop existing philosophical themes, the essays probe the question of how the Talmud as an intellectual discipline sheds new light on the unfolding of philosophy in the history of thought. (shrink)

This article analyzes the angular spacing of the degree marks on the zodiac scale of the Antikythera mechanism and demonstrates that over the entire preserved 88° of the zodiac, the marks are systematically placed too close together to be consistent with a uniform distribution over 360°. Thus, in some other part of the zodiac scale (not preserved), the degree marks have been spaced farther apart. By contrast, the day marks on the Egyptian calendar scale are spaced uniformly, apart from minor (...) errors. A solar equation of center is apparent which rises by nearly 2.7° over the preserved portion of the zodiac. The placement of the degree marks indicates that, in the preserved portion of the zodiac, the Sun was considered to run at a uniform pace of about 30° per synodic month, which is consistent with the Sun’s speed in the fast zone of the Babylonian solar theory of System A. (shrink)

This paper examines the deontic logic of the Talmud. We shall find, by looking at examples, that at first approximation we need deontic logic with several connectives: O T A Talmudic obligation F T A Talmudic prohibition F D A Standard deontic prohibition O D A Standard deontic obligation. In classical logic one would have expected that deontic obligation O D is definable by $O_DA \equiv F_D\neg A$ and that O T and F T are connected by $O_TA \equiv (...) F_T\neg A$ This is not the case in the Talmud for the T (Talmudic) operators, though it does hold for the D operators. We must change our underlying logic. We have to regard {O T , F T } and {O D , F D } as two sets of operators, where O T and F T are independent of one another and where we have some connections between the two sets. We shall list the types of obligation patterns appearing in the Talmud and develop an intuitionistic deontic logic to accommodate them. We shall compare Talmudic deontic logic with modern deontic logic. (shrink)

We describe the state of the Talmudic Logic project as of end of 2019. The Talmud is the most comprehensive and fundamental work of Jewish religious law, employing a large number of logical components centuries ahead of their time. In many cases the basic principles are not explicitly formulated, which makes it difficult to formalize and make available to the modern student of Logic. This project on Talmudic Logic, aims to present logical analysis of Talmudic reasoning using modern logical (...) tools. We investigate principles of Talmudic Logic and publish a series of books, one book or more for each principle. The series begins with the systematic analysis of Talmudic inference rules. The first book shows that we can present Talmudic reasoning intuitions as a systematic logical system basic to modern non-deductive reasoning, such as Argumentum A Fortiori, Abduction and Analogy. The second book offers a systematic common sense method for intuitively defining sets and claims that this method adequately models the Talmudic use of the rules Klal uPrat. These books also criticize modern Talmudic research methodology. Later books deal with additional topics like Deontic logic, and Temporal logic, Agency and processes in the Talmud and more. The aims of the project are two fold: 1. To import into the Talmudic study modern logical methods with a view to help understand complicated Talmudic passages, which otherwise cannot be addressed. 2. To export from the Talmud new logical principles which are innovative and useful to modern contemporary logic. (shrink)

a re-analysis of Old Babylonian letters reveals the construction of class identity for men called “gentlemen” through their use of sympathetic expressions positioning correspondents as brothers, friends, colleagues, etc. While this observation is not new, this article makes two further points. First, I argue that class consciousness was created through the policing of failures to enact the social relations expressed in the letters, rather than superficial claims that such relations existed in the first place. This reading requires that we (...) engage seriously with the contingent nature of class identity—that fears and anxieties about falling out of status were more in evidence as the motor for and incentive towards class membership than simple claims of inclusion or group solidarity. Second, I argue that the sympathy enjoined by the letters simulated the affective-spatial cognitive states necessary for group identity. Group problems of geographic and physical distance and even loneliness were solved by the letters’ production of sympathy. Not only does a sincere consideration of the subjective experience of class formation require an understanding of individual and group emotional states, the letters themselves, filled with expressions of pathos and worry, invite it. (shrink)

The most discussed and mysterious column within the Babylonian astronomy is columnΦ. It is closely connected to the lunar velocity and to the duration of the Saros. This paper presents new ideas for the development and interpretation of columnΦ. It combines the excellent Goal-Year method with old ideas and practices from the “schematic astronomy”. Inspired by the old “TU11” rule for prediction of times of lunar eclipses, it proposes that columnΦ, in a similar way, used the sum of the (...) Lunar Four to predict times of lunar eclipses as well as the duration of one, 6, and 12 months by means of what usually is called “R–S” schemes. It also explains fully the structure and development of such schemes, a fact that strongly supports the new interpretation of columnΦ. (shrink)

In this paper, we discuss Babylonian observations of a “massing of the planets” reported in two Astronomical Diaries, BM 32562 and BM 46051. This extremely rare astronomical phenomenon was observed in Babylon between 20 and 30 March 185 BC shortly before sunrise when all five planets were simultaneously visible for about 10 to 15 min close to the horizon in the eastern morning sky. These two observational texts are not only interesting as records of an extremely rare planetary configuration, (...) but also because the observers appear to be confused by the presence of all planets simultaneously and mix them up in their reports, and the two reports of the same observations are so different that we are forced to conclude that they were carried out by two different observers. There is an additional astronomical event which makes this planetary configuration even more unique: the exact conjunction of the planets Mars and Jupiter in the afternoon of 25 March 185 BC. An exact conjunction, where two planets are so close together that they appear as one object in the sky, is also extremely rare. Although this exact conjunction between Mars and Jupiter occurred during the day so that it was not observable, it was correctly predicted by the Babylonian scholars: a remarkable achievement and a nice illustration of their astronomical craftsmanship. Finally, our study clearly exposes one of the limitations of Babylonian naked-eye astronomy. When first appearances of the planets Mercury, Mars and Saturn are expected around the same date, it is nearly impossible to correctly identify them because their expected positions are only approximately known while they have about the same visual magnitude so that they become visible at about the same altitude above the horizon. (shrink)

What is astro-culture? In The Babylonian Planet it is unfolded as an aesthetic, an idea, a field of study, a position, and a practice. It helps to engineer the shift from a world view that is segregated to one that is integrated - from global to planetary; from distance to intimacy and where closeness and cosmic distance live side-by-side. In this tour de force, Sonja Neef takes her cue from Edouard Glissant's vision of multilingualism and reignites the myth of (...) the Tower of Babel to anticipate new forms of cultural encounter. For her, Babel is an organic construction site at which she fuses theoretical analysis and case studies of artists, writers and thinkers like William Kentridge, Orhan Pamuk and Immanuel Kant. Her skilful interrogations then allow her to paint a portrait of art and culture that abolishes the horizon as a barrier to vision and reclaims it as a place of contact and relation. By combining the Babylonian concept of the encounter and the planetary concept of the whole-earth, Neef creates a space - an astro-culture - in which she can examine topics as varied as language, translation, media, modernity, migration and the moon. In doing so, she instigates a renewed cultural understanding receptive to the kinder forms of cultural encounter and globalisation she hopes will come. (shrink)

Un célèbre enseignement du Talmud de Babylone maudit la « sagesse grecque ». Or qu’est-ce que la « sagesse grecque »? On a souvent compris que le Talmud récusait la philosophie. C’est pourtant une lecture hâtive et, en définitive, erronée. Car par « sagesse grecque », le Talmud entend désigner une forme d’intelligence pratique qui caractérise les hommes de pouvoir. Ce que le Talmud maudit, c’est donc une forme de « machiavélisme » avant la lettre, et (...) non une radicalité rationaliste. (shrink)

A single document, the Talmud of Babylonia – that is to say, the Misha, a philosophical law code that reached closure at ca 100 C.E., as read by the Gemara, a commentary to thirty-seven of the sixty-three tractates of that code, compiled in Babylonia, reaching closure by ca 600 C.E. – from ancient times to the present day has served as the medium of instruction for all literate Jews, teaching, by example alone, the craft of clear thinking, compelling argument, (...) correct rhetoric. That craft originated in Athens with Plato’s Socrates for the medium of thought, and with Aristotle for the method of thought, and predominated in the intellectual life of Western civilization thereafter. When we correlate the modes of thought and analysis of the Talmud with the ones of classical philosophy that pertain, we see how the Talmud works, by which I mean, how its framers made connections and drew conclusions, for the Mishnah and Gemara respectively. And when we can explain how the Talmud works, I claim, we may also understand why it exercised the remarkable power that it did for the entire history of Judaism from its closure in the 7th century into our own time. These two questions – how it works, why it won – define the task of this presentation. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Talmud Meets Church HistoryDaniel Boyarin (bio)Virginia Burrus. Chastity as Autonomy: Women in the Stories of the Apocryphal Acts. New York: Edwin Mellen, 1987.———. ‘“Equipped for Victory’: Ambrose and the Gendering of Orthodoxy.” Journal of Early Christian Studies 4.4 (1996): 461–75.———. The Making Of A Heretic: Gender, Authority, And The Priscillianist Controversy. Berkeley: U of California P, 1995.———. “Reading Agnes: The Rhetoric of Gender in Ambrose and Prudentius.” (...) Journal of Early Christian Studies 3.1 (1995): 25–46.———. “Word and Flesh: The Bodies and Sexuality of Ascetic Women in Christian Antiquity.” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 10.1 (1994): 27–51.[1] Prologue: Morningside Heights, 1941—A Talmudist Meets a Church HistorianIn 1944, my teacher Saul Lieberman published a classic essay in which he treated talmudic martyrology in the context of patristic literature. 1 The article had been written under the inspiration of his meeting and friendship with Henri Gregoire, the great Belgian church historian, then a refugee from the Nazis in the Morningside Heights neighborhood in New York, where Lieberman, the great Lithuanian talmudist, had also found refuge and where the two met. Nearly a half-century later, this student of Lieberman’s met another church historian, Virginia Burrus, in Morningside Heights under happier circumstances, when both of us were participants at a conference on asceticism at Union Theological Seminary, and a similar intellectual interaction began. This paper represents some of the first fruits of that second encounter and aspires to modestly continue the enterprise begun by the first.[2] Intertextuality and InterdisciplinarityAveril Cameron has recently written:The myth of early Christianity as the resort of the poor and underprivileged is precisely that, and a very convenient one it has been. It is a myth that rests, moreover, on the fallacy of an original Christianity uncontaminated by external influences; but its holders then have to explain how this “new” faith could make [End Page 52] the leap to center stage. Thus, we have been told, “the naiveté of the early Christian speech came in the course of time to wed itself to the cultures of the world.” But while much of current New Testament scholarship is directed at the internal (that is, theological) articulation of the texts, there is also a perceptible trend towards a mode of interpretation that balances the external and internal factors operative in the literary texts. It is thus less a question of the degree of “influence” of Greco-Roman or Jewish literary or philosophical elements on early Christian writing than of their integral relationship.[37–38]Judaism also (and Jewish scholarship) has had a stake in inscribing itself as pure and uncontaminated, for reasons that Philip Alexander has articulated: “The attempt to [lay down a norm for Judaism in the first century] barely conceals apologetic motives—in the case of Christianity a desire to prove that Christianity transcended or transformed Judaism, in the case of Jews a desire to suggest that Christianity was an alien form of Judaism which deviated from the true path” [3]. Indeed, the very distinctness of Judaism has been articulated by Jews as precisely its distance from a “syncretistic” Christianity whose defining feature is that it is somehow a composite of Judaism and Hellenism. 2In this essay, in conversation with some of the work of Burrus, I wish to begin to suggest a few of the ways that study of the Talmud can be further enriched through the engagement of talmudic scholars with the recent sophisticated (and especially gender-oriented) work being done on early Christianity. Indeed, I will be hinting (and in future work explicitly arguing) that we have to begin seriously thinking about Judaeo-Christianity as a single cultural system: contentious, dialectical, polemical, and sometimes friendly, but—I hasten to add—not moralistic in the homogenized “family values” sense implied by the modern usage of this term. I put forth here, as a case in point, that the richest contexts for understanding the sets of cultural tensions that gave rise to a particular talmudic text are to be uncovered in contemporary patristic literature. From the point of view of a New Historicist approach to talmudic literature, this suggests that the... (shrink)

Nul n'était mieux qualifié que l'autour de ce livre - docteur en philosophie et rabbin de la synagogue de Birmingham - pour entreprendre le véritable tour de force qu'il a réussi en réalisant la synthèse de l'enseignement contenu dans le Talmud. La richesse de son information n'a d'égale que la maîtrise avec laquelle il répartit son savoir en une suite de chapitres aussi clairs que précis. Cet ouvrage, pendant longtemps encore, rendra d'inestimables services à ses lecteurs.

Levinas’s conception of listening for the “trace” of the infinite implies that the human spirit grows when it comes into contact with something greater than it had previously known. When Levinas reads the Talmud, sourcebook of Jewish Law, he tries to enter into conversation with it, allowing the meaning of the text to expand to touch his own contemporary concerns. At the flip side of this expansion, however, lies my worry that the text junctions as a “totality,” assimilating all (...) contemporary concerns to its discussions. At this time of rebuilding in Jewish history, Jews cannot afford narrow conceptions of Jewish practice. This essay does not attempt to elucidateLevinas’s thought, but to use some insights gained from reading his work to think about contemporary Judaism. (shrink)

The essay offers a Jewish account of education in nonviolence by examining the first of Emmanuel Levinas' Talmudic readings ‘Toward the Other.’ I begin by exploring Levinas' unique philosophy of religious education, which nurtures responsibility for the other, as part of an alternative to enlightenment-orientated modern Jewish thought pioneered by the likes of Gershom Scholem, Martin Buber, and Franz Rosenzweig. I then consider a question raised by Yusef Waghid and Zehavit Gross at the 2012 meeting of the Philosophy of Education (...) Society of Great Britain in Oxford concerning whether one must forget in order to forgive great wrong doing such as South African Apartheid or the Holocaust of European Jewry. Through an examination of Levinas' treatment of several Talmudic passages, I argue that the Jewish tradition takes a paradoxical approach to this question. We should forget in order to remember wrong doing. The spiritual process that both perpetrators and victims must undergo in order to embrace this paradox, I contend, is a genuine education in nonviolence. (shrink)