Hebraism and Hellenism: Greco-Roman Culture and the Rabbis

Catalog description

This course will analyze the interaction of the Rabbis of the Talmud with their surrounding Greco-Roman culture regarding such diverse areas as language, law, science, art, mythology, and philosophy with special emphasis on their use of classical rhetoric, the mainstay of higher education throughout the Greco-Roman world. In each class, we will read primary sources from both Greek and Rabbinic sources in order to develop a methodology of how to go about such comparative analysis.