In addition to teaching my course on antisemitism this fall, I’ll also be teaching a course on the Talmud (in English). The description is below, and the full downloadable syllabus, in pdf format, can be downloaded here.
This course will introduce you to the Babylonian Talmud. Compiled in the third through seventh centuries CE, the Babylonian Talmud (henceforth the Talmud) played a crucial role in the history of Judaism, perhaps rivaling even the Bible in importance. In addition to its religious importance, the Talmud is an unparalleled – if complex – source for the study of ancient history. As a text that at times seems foreign to our way of thinking, the Talmud also challenges us, as modern readers, to probe and interrogate our own logical assumptions.
We will spend much of our class time actually reading the Talmud, in English translation. In honor of the U.S. election, we will focus on passages that deal with politics and governance. There are no prerequisites and no prior knowledge is assumed.
I have also become more interested in using machine learning as a research tool for the Talmud. I am not very far along and am still working on learning the basic tools to do this. However, I did manage to produce the chart below, which maps the similarity between the different tractates of the Babylonian and Palestinian Talmud:
This is more of a proof of concept than anything else, but it showed a very clear division between the two Talmuds. This is not unexpected, but nor was it obviously so.
More to come on this front.
I am interested in talking Micael Satlow’s upcoming course on the Talmud and wanted to confirm that it is available online for people outside the university. Three quick questions. Is there a charge to take the course. Is there a syllabus and when do classes start.
Alas, it is not available online. The syllabus is available through the post.