This volume introduces students of rabbinic literature to the range of historical and interpretative questions surrounding the rabbinic texts of late antiquity. The editors, themselves well-known interpreters of Rabbinic literature, have gathered an international collection of scholars to support students` initial steps in confronting the enormous and complex rabbinic corpus. Unlike other introductions to Rabbinic writings, the present volume includes approaches shaped by anthropology, gender studies, oral-traditional studies, classics, and folklore studies.

 Clear, accessible introduction to the Talmud and Rabbinic literature, and the academic disciplines that currently explore it  Cutting edge essays by major contemporary scholars - all of the contributors are leaders in this field  Extensive bibliographical guidance to the field

Contents
Introduction; Part I: 1. Rabbinic authorship as a collective enterprise Martin S. Jaffee; 2. The orality of Rabbinic writing Elizabeth Shanks Alexander; 3. Social and institutional settings of Rabbinic literature Jeffrey L. Rubenstein; 4. The political geography of Rabbinic texts Seth Schwartz; Part II: 5. Rabbinic Midrash and ancient Jewish biblical interpretation Steven D. Fraade; 6. The Judaean legal tradition and the Halakhah of the Mishnah Shaye J. D. Cohen; 7. Roman law and Rabbinic legal composition Catherine Hezser; 8. Middle Persian culture and Babylonian sages: accommodation and resistance in the shaping of Rabbinic legal tradition Yaakov Elman; 9. Jewish visionary tradition in Rabbinic literature Michael D. Swartz; 10. The almost invisible presence of the other: multi-lingual puns in Rabbinic literature Galit Hasan-Rokem; Park III: 11. The `other` in Rabbinic literature Christine Hayes; 12. Regulating the human body: Rabbinic legal discourse and the making of Jewish gender Charlotte Elisheva Fonrobert; 13. Rabbinic historiography and representations of the past Isaiah Gafni; 14. Rabbinic ethical formational and the formation of Rabbinic ethical compilations Jonathan Wyn Schofer; 15. Hellenism in Jewish Babylonia Daniel Boyarin.