The Cambridge Companion to the Talmud and Rabbinic Literature Book

List of Contributors     ix
Acknowledgments     xi
Brief Time Line of Rabbinic Literature     xiii
Glossary     xvii
List of Abbreviations     xxi
Introduction     1
The Conditions of Rabbinic Literary Activity
Rabbinic Authorship as a Collective Enterprise   Martin S. Jaffee     17
The Orality of Rabbinic Writing   Elizabeth Shanks Alexander     38
Social and Institutional Settings of Rabbinic Literature   Jeffrey L. Rubenstein     58
The Political Geography of Rabbinic Texts   Seth Schwartz     75
The Genres of Rabbinic Literary Composition
Rabbinic Midrash and Ancient Jewish Biblical Interpretation   Steven D. Fraade     99
The Judaean Legal Tradition and the Halakhah of the Mishnah   Shaye J. D. Cohen     121
Roman Law and Rabbinic Legal Composition   Catherine Hezser     144
Middle Persian Culture and Babylonian Sages: Accommodation and Resistance in the Shaping of Rabbinic Legal Tradition   Yaakov Elman     165
Jewish Visionary Tradition in Rabbinic Literature   Michael D. Swartz     198
An Almost Invisible Presence: Multilingual Puns in Rabbinic Literature   Galit Hasan-Rokem     222
Hermeneutical Frames for Interpreting Rabbinic Literature
The "Other" in Rabbinic Literature   Christine Hayes     243
Regulating the Human Body: Rabbinic Legal Discourse and the Making of Jewish Gender   Charlotte Elisheva Fonrobert     270
Rabbinic Historiography and Representations of the Past   Isaiah Gafni     295
Rabbinical Ethical Formation and the Formation of Rabbinic Ethical Compilations   Jonathan Wyn Schofer     313
Hellenism in Jewish Babylonia   Daniel Boyarin     336
Bibliography     365
Index     393
Source Index     401