Time in the Babylonian Talmud
Natural and Imagined Times in Jewish Law and Narrative

Time in the Babylonian Talmud explores how rabbinic jurists' language, reasoning, and storytelling reveal their assumptions about what we call time.

Lynn Kaye (Author)

9781108423236, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 8 February 2018

202 pages, 3 b/w illus.
23.5 x 15.7 x 1.5 cm, 0.43 kg

'In this fascinating monograph, Kaye shows how many of the Bavli texts can contribute to contemporary theoretical examinations of time, and suggests future directions of research, particularly the application of similar methods of analysis to case law and narrative texts in the Mishna … This is a captivating book on a number of topics that are essential to the crux of Jewish life and philosophy. At 160 pages, it is a good launching point, and Kaye provides plenty of references for additional reading.' Ben Rothke, The Times of Israel

In this book, Lynn Kaye examines how rabbis of late antiquity thought about time through their legal reasoning and storytelling, and what these insights mean for thinking about time today. Providing close readings of legal and narrative texts in the Babylonian Talmud, she compares temporal ideas with related concepts in ancient and modern philosophical texts and in religious traditions from late antique Mesopotamia. Kaye demonstrates that temporal flexibility in the Babylonian Talmud is a means of exploring and resolving legal uncertainties, as well as a tool to tell stories that convey ideas effectively and dramatically. Her book, the first on time in the Talmud, makes accessible complex legal texts and philosophical ideas. It also connects the literature of late antique Judaism with broader theological and philosophical debates about time.

1. Spatial, temporal and kinesthetic concepts of simultaneity
2. Divine temporal precision and human inaccuracy
3. Being fixed in time
4. Retroactivity reimagined
5. Matzah and madeleines.

Subject Areas: Judaism: sacred texts [HRJS], Judaism [HRJ], Philosophy of religion [HRAB], Religion: general [HRA]