Author Description

Since its creation and to this day, the Babylonian Talmud has been at the centre of the Jewish bookcase and the focus of Torah scholars. But despite its prevalence and centrality, it is difficult to define. It is a religious book, but it hardly deals with theology; it deals with law, but does not focus specifically on practical questions; it is organised as a text that interprets the Mishnah, but digresses at every opportunity into independent discussions. What is this work? How is it structured? How did it become the most fundamental textbook? And how has it been read throughout the generations? The first part of the Talmud: The History of Scholarship is devoted to the Talmud 'itself,' in which the authors isolate the various components of the Talmudic discussion and examine how it was created, for what purpose, and in what context. The second part of the book is devoted to the reception of the Talmud, that is, the ways in which it has been read and interpreted from its completion to the present day. The title of the book reflects this duality. On the one hand, the title describes the scholarly processes that created the Talmudic text, and on the other hand, it describes the history of its study and the discourse that has developed around it in different periods