Inhalt: | "The Babylonian Talmud, the great compilation of Jewish law edited in the seventh century CE, also contains a great deal of aggada, that is, non-legal material, including interpretations of the Bible, stories, folk sayings and prayers. The Talmud's aggadic traditions contain echoes of the conversations with the surrounding cultures of the Persians, other Iranian peoples, Eastern Christians, Manichaeans, Mandaeans, and the ancient Babylonians. The essays in this volume analyze Bavli aggada to reveal this rich engagement of the Talmud and its cultural world" -- Introduction / Geoffrey Herman and Jeffrey L. Rubenstein -- A Demonic Servant in Rav Papa's Household: Demons as Subjects in the Mesopotamian Talmud / Sara Ronis -- Narrative Bricolage and Cultural Hybrids in Rabbinic Babylonia: On the Narratives of Seduction and the Topos of Light / Reuven Kiperwasser -- "Meishan Is Dead": On the Historical Contexts of the Bavli's Representations of the Jews in Southern Babylonia / Yakir Paz -- "In Honor of the House of Caesar": Attitudes to the Kingdom in the Aggada of the Babylonian Talmud and Other Sasanian Sources / Geoffrey Herman -- Clusters of Iranian Loanwords in Talmudic Folkore: The Chapter of the Pious (b. Taanit 18b-26a) in its Sasanian Context / Jason Mokhtarian -- Gaze and Counter-Gaze: Textuality and Contextuality in the Anecdote of Rav Assi and the Roman (b. Baba Metsia 28b) / Shai Secunda -- Martyrdom in the Persian Martyr Acts and in the Babylonian Talmud / Jeffrey L. Rubenstein -- A Persian Anti-Martyr Act: The Death of Rabba bar Naḥmani in Light of the Syriac Persian Martyr Acts / Simcha Gross -- "Fool, Look to the End of the Verse": b. Ḥullin 87a and Its Christian Background / Michal Bar-Asher Siegal -- Dualistic Elements in Babylonian Aggada / Yaakov Elman -- First Man, First Bovine: Talmudic Mythology in Context / Yishai Kiel -- Mourner's Kaddish, The Prequel: The Sassanian Period Backstory That Gave Birth to the Medieval Prayer for the Dead / David Brodsky |
