Chapter 9 - The Reception of the Bavli

Summary

The rabbis did not emerge as leaders of the Jewish community until at least the seventh century. So how did the Talmud, a product of ancient rabbinic culture, become so influential? The acceptance of the Bavli was due to several factors, including the fact that the academies that sponsored it were located in the center of the new Islamic empire, Bagdhad. But this did not assure the authority of the rabbis or their Talmud, and some Jews opposed rabbinic authority for centuries. In this chapter, we trace the growing authority of the Talmud in different sections of the Jewish world, along with different approaches to studying the document. We come to recognize the medieval Jewish world as the world of halakhah (Jewish law), conceived as an outgrowth of Talmudic deliberations. We consider the reception of the Talmud in Christian Europe, in which the Talmud represented the error of the Jews from the time of Jesus onward. We recount disputations in which prominent rabbis were forced to defend the Talmud against Christian condemnation, and we detail the earliest burnings of Talmuds, so hateful was the text in the eyes of many in the church.