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This chapter analyzes the dozens of texts in rabbinic literature, including the Jerusalem Talmud and Midrashim, that describe the Persians as an imperial ethno-class. After explicating the range of scholarly debates, from Jacob Neusner’s pessimism to Yaakov Elman’s optimism, regarding the extent to which there exist Persian influences on the Talmud, chapter 3 investigates the rabbis’ attitudes and debates surrounding Persians as external others. For its part, the Babylonian Talmud discusses Persian cuisine, sex habits, fashion, festivals, and law in various places, typically as a means of contrast with rabbinic culture. Several common leitmotifs are found in these passages—namely, the Persians as haughty, horse riders, and bears (Dan. 7:5). Both exegesis and history play a role in the way in which the Babylonian rabbis depict the Persians. Notably, the Talmud does not focus on the Zoroastrian elements of Persian culture, thus downplaying the religious dimensions of the Jewish-Persian interface. This chapter also discusses at length the interpretation of Iranian loanwords in the Talmud.

This chapter discusses the dating and identity of the Stammaim. Halivni revises his previous view and now dates the Stammaitic era to 550-750 CE. He views the Saboraim, the post-Talmudic sages mentioned in Geonic sources, as the later Stammaim, c. 700-750 CE. Evidence for the late dating of the Stammaim is presented, including Talmudic passages that contain multiple layers of anonymous strata, and could only have been composed over a very lengthy period of time. Halivni also explains that the Talmud was never “closed” by a formal decision or agency, but came to a close in and of itself when sages began writing independent books, c. 770 CE. Halivni underscores the differences between his view and the traditional Jewish view of the dating of the Talmud and accounts for why the Stammaim and their contribution were lost to Jewish tradition.

This chapter explores the written work of R. I. Canpanton entitled The Ways of the Talmud. It studies this work of Talmudic methodology in order to compensate for the lack of its existence in English and to show how his book corresponds empirically to the theoretical perspective established in the first chapter.

The Introduction outlines agendas, approaches and structure of the book. It asks the question of difference between modern thinking and historical methods of thinking, particularly within Jewish tradition. It isolates Talmud as a way of thinking and highlights discontinuity between late ancient and medieval versions of the thinking called “Talmud.” The structure of the book takes the reader from the question “Who Speaks in the Talmud?” to “Who Thinks in the Talmud?” to “Who remembers in the Talmud?”

Selden is 17th-century England’s greatest Erastian, but he is also its greatest humanist scholar, and he brings his learning to bear on the subject of excommunication, which was the flash-point in the debates over clerical and secular power. People resented the meddling of the clergy in their private lives and the public shame of exclusion from the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. Selden’s arguments in De Synedriis and in the Proceedings of the Westminster Assembly of Divines against Presbyterian control of excommunication can be summed up in Milton’s famous line, ‘New Presbyter is but old Priest writ large’.

This chapter explores the role of Compilers and Transposers in the formation of the Babylonian Talmud. The Compilers gather passages from different academies and set them in the order now found in the tractates of the Talmud. They added brief glosses and did some minimal editing, but they could not rework the traditions they received to any significant degree. The Compilers were active at the very end of the Stammaitic era, 730-770 CE. The Transposers transferred material from one Talmudic passage to another. They were active throughout the Talmudic era, beginning in Amoraic times, and up to the end of the Stammaitic era. The author categorizes transpositions into five types.

The chapter articulates the difference in the understanding of the role of memory in thiniking in modern ways of thinking, and in the way of thinking displayed in the late ancient texts of the Talmud. The chapter gives voice to otherwise tacit Cartesian foundations of modern Talmud scholars in their thinking about thinking in the Talmud.

The chapter describes Talmud criticism as a hitherto predominant modern “scientific” approach to the archive of texts and the body of thought called, to use its medieval name, “The Talmud.” It further outlines the trajectory of moving through (even if not “beyond”) Talmud criticism and the tacit philosophical subscriptions it runs towards asking about Talmud as a discipline of thought and memory performed in the texts of the Talmud.

What does “to think” mean at the age of technology from mechanical machinery to its most advanced forms of computing? The chapter situates the tradition of thinking in the Talmud in juxtaposition with philosophical and rhetorical traditions of thinking vis-a-vis technology, in particular in view of the impasses of thinking in the context of technology on the historical scope from Plato to Heidegger.