When the Divine Is in the Details: The Talmud’s View of Divine Law
Hosted By: The National Library of Israel (NLI)
The ancient world produced two radically different ideas of divine law – Greek natural law, grounded in abstract reason, and biblical law, grounded in concrete revelation.
The confrontation of these two ideas of divine law led some Jews in late antiquity to think of the revealed Torah in terms of Greek natural law: an absolute, immutable, abstraction of universal truth.
Other ancient Jews, particularly the rabbis of the Babylonian Talmud, resisted this new way of thinking.
They sought to preserve and reinforce the divine Torah’s dynamic and historically-embedded character.
But how did they do this? What tools did they use?
Join Prof. Christine Hayes for a journey into the rabbis’ workshop, where a spirit of play and a devotion to detail are key strategies for preserving the Torah’s open-ended vitality:
Sunday, February 20th
8 pm Israel / 7 pm CET / 6 pm UK / 1 pm EST
Part of “What is the Talmud?”, a series from the National Library of Israel moderated by Prof. Michal Bar-Asher Sigal, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.
The event listed here is hosted by a third party. My Jewish Learning/70 Faces Media is not responsible for its content or for errors in the listing.
