A 'Great Man' Said That? the Representation and Significance of Scholastic Failure in the Babylonian Talmud
| Autor: | Lynn Kaye |
|---|---|
| Rok vydání: | 2016 |
| Předmět: |
060201 languages & linguistics
Cultural Studies Literature Dialectic History Literature and Literary Theory business.industry Great Man theory Judaism media_common.quotation_subject Religious studies Mistake 06 humanities and the arts Talmud Ingenuity Literary theory 0602 languages and literature Narrative business media_common |
| Zdroj: | Lynn Kaye |
| ISSN: | 1475-4541 0364-0094 |
| DOI: | 10.1017/s036400941600043x |
| Popis: | Academic achievement was prized in Babylonian rabbinic culture (fourth to sixth centuries CE). Yet alongside examples of scholarly ingenuity, the Babylonian Talmud records intellectual setbacks. How academic failure is constituted and the reactions to it within the talmudic text are key to understanding dynamics between sages and the cultural values of Babylonian rabbinic Judaism. Academic failure depends more on the social rank of the man than on the nature of his mistake. The modes of failure for sages in teaching positions differ from those for sages in lower-ranked social positions. Higher-status sages are treated more sympathetically, while lower-rank sages encounter derision within brief narratives and critique from the later editors. These exchanges demonstrate the high degree of expertise expected of participants in the scholastic culture, while normalizing scholastic failure (to a certain extent) as part of academic innovation. Analyzing brief narratives depicting scholastic failure in talmudic legal dialectic necessitates literary analysis of legal passages as a whole, emphasizing the continued importance of literary theory in the study of rabbinics. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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