Talmud as a New Intellectual Project

“The Bavli might remain the most celebrated rabbinic work, but the Yerushalmi was the first of its kind. The Bavli, in a sense, becomes less unique through Moulie’s reading, and “the Talmud” is re-situated within its late antique Palestinian intellectual context – among Origen, Eusebius, Jerome, and Epiphanius, and other contemporaneous scholars.”

“I ask to what extent the Talmud was indeed unique or rather overlapping in its approach and perhaps even in its hermeneutic details with the Midrash. Did both types of compilations engage in constructing individual authorship and pay careful attention to the scholarly work of each rabbi in a particular geographical environment?”