Babylonian Talmud
AGES Also Recommends:
People who have shopped AGES Library for Babylonian Talmud also shopped for:
Edited by Jacob Neusner
- Compiles rabbinic discussions on Jewish law, ethics, and customs
- One of Judaism's most important documents
- Complete text of the Talmud Bavli (Babylonian Talmud)
- 16,000+ pages, all fully searchable
- SRP: $99.95 - Introductory special: $79.95
Why does the Talmud of Babylonia command a hearing?
The Talmud records an entire culture, so that in places far away from the place of its origin and long after its publication, people can find in its pages the design that enables them to build a new world in the model of the old. It is a commonplace understanding that out of the pages of James Joyce's Ulysses, the Dublin of the time of which he wrote can be reconstructed. So too, the Jewish people for fourteen hundred years have found in the Talmud a virtual and portable homeland. Lacking a physical homeland from 70 C.E. when Jerusalem was lost, to 1948, when the state of Israel once more came into being, the community of Judaism found in the Talmud of Babylonia the source and model of the culture for later ages and distant lands. The faithful of Judaism consult it to find the law and theology that define their way of life and worldview. Commentaries upon its texts, codes commencing with its laws, and interpretations of its statements form the staple of the classical schools of Judaism. The Talmud is important in Judaism because it presents that religion's law and theology, transforming the Torah of Sinai into the how and why of everyday life. Its processes of thought shape the culture of Judaism, and its propositions, its legal and theological program.
But why does the Talmud command a hearing beyond the limits of the boundaries of Judaism? It is because it records the working of practical reason and applied logic in the construction of a social order and systematically in detail shows how to accomplish that construction. As a foundation-document for a utopian construction that can be realized in everyday life, it claims its place among the most successful pieces of literature of social imagination in the history of humanity. Its success lies in its enduring influence over the very community that from the beginning its authors wished to address.
Common to world-constructing religions is a point of interest that transcends the paramount position each enjoys in its parochial context. What those classics of Christianity, philosophy, as well as those of Islam or Buddhism or Hinduism, share is the power to compel response for many centuries after their original presentation. If we wish to learn about the power of compelling ideas to shape the historical culture of humanity, we do well to turn to the example of the Qur'an, for example, received by Muslims as God's word and also as source of public policy, or to the Bible - Old and New Testaments - that have been responded to in much the same way by Christians of every generation including our own.
So too, in an unbroken chain, the Talmud has exercised the power to impart its ideals of sanctification and virtue, both moral and intellectual. It has shaped generations of Israel into a single intellectual model - one of enormous human dignity. Its special point of interest should not be missed. It is the capacity to form out of details a coherent picture, and to make the particular into the exemplary and suggestive. That power of generalization and the resulting system-construction concerns both society and intellect, the public and the personal. The Talmud defines the model of what it means to be a human being, made in God's likeness, after God's model. That model embodies all that is rational and refined.