About this Book

Produced ca. A.D. 600, the Babylonian Talmud--or Bavli-- serves as the single authoritative statement of Jewish law and theology. In this fourth volume of his examination of major formative texts of Judaism, Jacob Neusner explains how and why the Bavli came to define the Jewish faith from its time to ours. Through an analysis of the text, its sources and editorial organization, he traces the history of the composition of the Babylonian Talmud, clarifies its relation to the earlier corpus of canonical literature, and clearly establishes its philosophical, religious, and cultural context. Because there is little objective, external evidence from which to interpret the Bavli's development, Neusner uses the signs of redactional layering within the literature to discover the motivations and…