The occasion to present this work, published in 2018, is that it received one of the most important Jewish book prizes, the Schnitzer Award, in the category “Biblical Studies, Rabbinics, and Jewish History and Culture in Antiquity.”
In this book, Lynn Kaye examines how the rabbis of late antiquity thought about time through their legal reasoning and storytelling, and what these insights mean for thinking about time today. Steinsaltz, the scholar of the century concerning Judaism and Tora, saw and understood time as organic.
By reading legal and narrative texts in the Babylonian Talmud from close quarters, she compares temporal ideas with related concepts in ancient and modern philosophical texts and in religious traditions from late antique Mesopotamia.
Kaye shows that temporal flexibility in the Babylonian Talmud is a means of exploring and resolving legal uncertainties, as well as a tool for telling stories that convey ideas effectively and dramatically.
Her book, the first on time in the Talmud, makes complex legal texts and philosophical ideas accessible. It also connects the literature of late antique Judaism with broader theological and philosophical debates about time.
Ben Rothke wrote in the Times of Israel about this book: “In this fascinating monograph, Kaye shows how many of the Bavli texts can contribute to contemporary theoretical examinations of time, and suggests future directions of research, particularly the application of similar methods of analysis to case law and narrative texts in the Mishna … This is a captivating book on a number of topics that are essential to the crux of Jewish life and philosophy.“
- Publisher: Cambridge University Press
- Online publication date: February 2018
- Print publication year: 2018
- Online ISBN: 9781108525619
- DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108525619