Do the Talmud and Midrash engage in parody? Holger M. Zellentinseeks to assess how the classical rabbis imitate previous texts with comical difference. The result shows rabbinic society and its literature participating confidently in the great debates of the Byzantine and the Sasanian Empires, commenting on issues such as pedagogy, abstinence, dream interpretation, inheritance law, ritual purity, and Christian supersessionism and asceticism. In constant conversation with the Hebrew Bible, the rabbis reveal themselves as capable of critically reinventing the Jewish tradition, as well as of playfully engaging select Gospel passages favoured by their Christian interlocutors.weiterlesen