TeTra | Monika Amsler "Creative work with excerpts: A lesson from the Babylonian Talmud"

TeTra Research Seminar | April 25th, 2024
Monika Amsler (University of Bern)
Creative work with excerpts: A lesson from the Babylonian Talmud
Late antique texts are known for their “jeweled style,” their piecemeal aesthetics, their compilatory nature. While these traits are relatively quickly observed, sometimes criticized and more rarely admired, it is much more difficult to explain, how ancient authors achieved this mix-and-match of different and often numerous sources. How did they collect and manage their data? What did late antique text architecture look like?
In this paper I will argue that by looking at the materiality of text composition and the practices applied to everyday bookkeeping, we can ourselves compile the evidence into a method and understand how the authors proceeded, and why the texts have the structures they do-with all their virtues and flaws.
I will underline my thesis with examples from the Babylonian Talmud, a document from Sassanid Babylonia (c. sixth century CE) which not only claims to be part of an oral tradition, but also imitates a vivid oral style-thereby revealing a very complex text architecture.
bern.academia.edu/MonikaAmsler