Socrates and the Fat RabbisWhat kind of literature is the Talmud? To answer this question, Daniel Boyarin looks to an unlikely source: the dialogues of Plato. In these ancient texts he finds similarities, both in their combination of various genres and topics and in their dialogic structure. But Boyarin goes beyond these structural similarities, arguing also for a cultural relationship.In Socrates and the Fat Rabbis, Boyarin suggests that both the Platonic and the talmudic dialogues are not dialogic at all. Using Michael Bakhtin’s notion of represented dialogue and real dialogism, Boyarin demonstrates, through multiple close readings, that the give-and-take in these texts is actually much closer to a monologue in spirit. At the same time, he shows that there is a dialogism in both texts on a deeper structural level between a voice of philosophical or religious dead seriousness and a voice from within that mocks that very high solemnity at the same time. Boyarin ultimately singles out Menippean satire as the most important genre through which to understand both the Talmud and Plato, emphasizing their seriocomic peculiarity.An innovative advancement in rabbinic studies, as well as a bold and controversial new way of reading Plato, Socrates and the Fat Rabbis makes a major contribution to scholarship on thought and culture of the ancient Mediterranean. |
Contents
| 1 | |
The Protagoras as Monological Dialogue | 33 |
On Monological and Dialogical Readingthe Gorgias | 81 |
The Two Voices of the Babylonian Talmud | 133 |
Menippean Satire and the Literary World of the Babylonian Talmud | 193 |
Rabbi Meirs Babylonian Life as Menippean Satire | 243 |
The Symposium as Monologue | 281 |
8 A Crude Contradiction or The Second Accent of the Symposium | 319 |
On the Postmodern Allegorical | 345 |
Acknowledgments | 351 |
| 355 | |
| 371 | |
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Agathon aggada Alcibiades Ancient answer apostates argue argument Aspasia Athenian Athens Babylonian Talmud Bavli beautiful Burrus Callicles Cambridge University Press cited claim Classical comic course cultural democracy dialectic Dialogic Imagination Diotima discourse discussion Dostoevsky’s Poetics epistemology eros erotic Genres in Dialogue Glazov-Corrigan Gorgias Gorgias’s Greek grotesque halakha Hasan-Rokem Helen human intellectual interpretation Jewish language legends literary literature logos Lucian Lucian of Samosata means Menexenus Menippean satire Michael Holquist Mikhail Bakhtin Mishna monological narrative Nightingale novel oral Torah Oxford Parmenides parody Pericles philosophy Plato polis political Polus practice precisely Problems of Dostoevsky’s Protagoras question Rabba Rabbi Me'ir Rabbi Yoh.anan Rav Kahana reading Relihan Resh Lakish rhetoric satyr play Schiappa scholars seems sense serious sexual Socrates Sophists speech spoudaios stamma story Studies suggest sugya Symposium Texas Press things Thucydides tion Torah tradition tragedy trans translation truth voice Wimpfheimer words writes