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Article: Discovering the Talmud.
- Article from:
- First Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion and Public Life
- Article date:
- August 1, 1998
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1998 Institute on Religion and Public Life. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Consider the book we are talking about. It is written in two foreign languages, one of which is native to but one small country, and the other now spoken nowhere on earth. It is the product of a minority culture within a vast and now crumbled empire. The text itself is ancient, handicapped by scribal errors and emendations of hostile censors over the centuries. Its subject matter is often abstruse, ranging from such exalted topics as the contents of the phylacteries worn by a decidedly non-corporeal divinity, to such humble ones as the direction a person should face while defecating. Its logic is precise, indeed sharply exacting, but idiosyncratic. There is no obvious ...