Fate and danger in the Babylonian Talmud : rabbinic engagements in a Sasanian context
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- The Babylonian Talmud, or Bavli, is a pivotal corpus in the history of Judaism, consolidating centuries of Babylonian -- and Palestinian -- rabbinic culture, law, and hermeneutics; and from the early Islamic period onward, serving as the basis of rabbinic Jewish tradition throughout the world, through to the present day. Expanding on recent scholarly advances in the study of rabbinic literature and related fields, my dissertation highlights the relationship between Babylonian rabbinic literary productions and those of neighboring Sasanian communities of Zoroastrians, Mandaeans, Syriac-speaking Christians, and Manichaeans. I also note the religious syncretism evident in contemporaneous material artifacts like amulets and incantation bowls -- which illustrate how ideas and practices were borrowed, combined, and reconfigured across these religious traditions. Focusing on shared concerns about the myriad forms of danger that Sasanian communities perceived as pervading their world, I describe how the Babylonian rabbis constructed sustained discourses around these subjects, in notable contrast to their Palestinian counterparts in the Roman Empire. And I illustrate how their strategies of identification, avoidance, prevention, and remedy bespeak their engagement with linguistic and conceptual vocabularies prevalent throughout Mesopotamia and the broader Sasanian Empire. I demonstrate how the producers of the Babylonian Talmud balanced the need to offer effective and compelling solutions to urgent problems with the desire to assert their own apotropaic and interpretive prowess. Throughout, I argue that greater attention to these common, quotidian dimensions of Sasanian religious life and literature affords novel insights into this monumental, albeit enigmatic, period of Jewish history.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic resource; remote; computer; online resource |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Place | California |
| Place | [Stanford, California] |
| Publisher | [Stanford University] |
| Copyright date | 2019; ©2019 |
| Publication date | 2019; 2019 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Marcus, Alexander Warren |
|---|---|
| Degree supervisor | Fonrobert, Charlotte Elisheva |
| Thesis advisor | Fonrobert, Charlotte Elisheva |
| Thesis advisor | Mayse, Evan |
| Thesis advisor | Penn, Michael Philip |
| Thesis advisor | Vevaina, Yuhan Sohrab-Dinshaw |
| Degree committee member | Mayse, Evan |
| Degree committee member | Penn, Michael Philip |
| Degree committee member | Vevaina, Yuhan Sohrab-Dinshaw |
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Religious Studies. |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|---|
| Genre | Text |
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Alexander Warren Marcus. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Religious Studies. |
| Thesis | Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2019. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2019 by Alexander Warren Marcus
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