The talmud a biography
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The Talmud: A Biography
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This book exposes my Dunning-Kruger knowledge of Judaism. Obviously, I've heard of the Talmud. I've used the expression "Talmudic" to express a complicated and deep way of reasoning about complex problems. I had an understanding of the Talmud as commentary around - literally surrounding - scripture. But, in point of fact, I really never thought to question the superficial picture I had.
This book - The Talmud - A Biography - is part of a series that looks at the origin, reception and life within the community of religious texts ranging from Augustine's "The Confessions" to the Tibetan "Book of the Dead." A reader might think that this is a dry topic area, but it is surprisingly lively.
In this case, my reading brought back memories of law school. The Talmud appears as something akin to a case book, where various cases and excerpts from cases, are apparently tossed in more or less randomly with the organization limited to an opaque topic, e.g., "Consideration." The law student is supposed to tease out a thread that connects the texts provided into something approaching a coherent schema, usually aided by a sage law professor and dialectic
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Book Review // The Talmud: A Biography Banned, Censored and Burned&#;The Book They Couldn’t Suppress
By Eugene Goodheart | Dec 01,
The Talmud:
A Biography Banned, Censored and Burned&#;The Book They Couldn’t Suppress
Harry Freedman
Bloomsbury
, pp. , $
A Cathedral of Knowledge
by Eugene Goodheart
Full disclosure: I am not a biblical or Talmudic scholar. As a professor of literature, I have taught selections from the Bible in humanities courses. I think of myself as a secular humanist and an agnostic interested in understanding the role of religion in the lives of millions of people. I deplore the militant atheism of Richard Dawkins and his ilk, and their view of religion as an abomination.
Freedman’s book is addressed to believers and non-believers alike. Indeed, close to the end of his short book on this immense subject (millions of words in 37 volumes), he informs us that “the Talmud is no longer the exclusive property of the religious… It helps, of course, to be familiar with the Bible and religious concepts, but the Talmud is fundamentally an exercise in interpretation and logic. It assumes, but does not demand belief.” Perhaps the most astonishing confirmation of this claim is the fact delivered on the next-to-last page of the book: The Talmud h
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The Talmud: A Biography: Illegal, Censored folk tale Burned. Rendering Book They Couldn't Suppress.
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