The reader's guide to the Talmud

This systematic introduction to the Talmud of Babylonia (Bavli) seeks to answer basic questions of form: how is this a coherent document? How do we make sense of the several languages in which it is written? What are the principal parts of the complex writing? Turning to questions of modes of thought, the account proceeds to address the intellectual character of the Bavli and in particular the character and uses of its dialectics. Finally, questions of substance come to the fore: how does the Ta