A “Great Man” Said That? the Representation and Significance of Scholastic Failure in the Babylonian Talmud
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12013228 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Lynn Kaye (0000-0002-9654-3231, The Ohio State University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2016 |
| Volume | 40 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 305-334 |
| Publication date | 2016-11-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | AJS Review The Journal of the Association for Jewish Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0364-0094 • E-ISSN: 1475-4541 |
| Publisher | Project MUSE (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s036400941600043x |
| OpenAlex | W2554652140 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 26 |
Academic achievement was prized in Babylonian rabbinic culture (fourth to sixth centuries CE). Yet alongside examples of scholarly ingenuity, the Babylonian Talmud records intellectual setbacks. How academic failure is constituted and the reactions to it within the talmudic text are key to understanding dynamics between sages and the cultural values of Babylonian rabbinic Judaism. Academic failure depends more on the social rank of the man than on the nature of his mistake. The modes of failure for sages in teaching positions differ from those for sages in lower-ranked social positions. Higher-status sages are treated more sympathetically, while lower-rank sages encounter derision within brief narratives and critique from the later editors. These exchanges demonstrate the high degree of expertise expected of participants in the scholastic culture, while normalizing scholastic failure (to a certain extent) as part of academic innovation. Analyzing brief narratives depicting scholastic failure in talmudic legal dialectic necessitates literary analysis of legal passages as a whole, emphasizing the continued importance of literary theory in the study of rabbinics
Archaeology · Art · Dialectic · Epistemology · Ingenuity · Judaism · Literature · Mistake · Narrative · Political science · Rank (graph theory · Representation (politics · Sociology · Talmud · Biblical Studies and Interpretation · Families in Therapy and Culture · History · Law · Marriage and Sexual Relationships · Mathematics · Philosophy
Conversational joking
Narrative Discourse
The Female Breast and the Male Mouth Opened in Prayer in a Talmudic Vignette (BT Bava Batra 9a-b)
A Prince without a Kingdom
Tradition and the Formation of the Talmud
A Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature
Talmudic Portrayals of Relationships Between Rabbis
Must the Patriarch Know 'Uqtzin? The Nasi as Scholar in Babylonian Aggada
The Comparative Study of “Scholasticism” in Late Antique Mesopotamia
The Iranian Talmud
Narrating the Law
Laughing and Ridicule
Social Consequences of Disparagement Humor
| Highly cited | No |
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