A NEW BOOK on the history of the interpretation of the Talmud and its implications:

Agreeing to disagree: KU prof’s new book on Talmud

Written by Beth Lipoff, Staff Writer [Kansas City Jewish Chronicle)
Friday, 03 July 2009 12:00

Sergey Dolgopolski has studied Talmud in his native Russia, Israel and the United States, and in his new book, he’s come to a conclusion: the disagreements in the text’s commentary are a lost art.

“What this is trying to accomplish is to show that Talmud is an intellectual discipline, like rhetoric or logic — an art of thinking,” Dolgopolski said.

In “What is Talmud? The Art of Disagreement,” Dolgopolski, an assistant professor of religious studies and Jewish studies at the University of Kansas, says that contemporary, mainstream culture encourages agreement as an ultimate goal.

However, Dolgopolski argues that the 15th century Talmud shows instances where it’s fine to disagree when someone cannot prove his point is right and another person’s is wrong.

“The book places the ways in which the Talmud has been studied into the much larger context, not only what was going on in the 15th century … but how the ways of studying the Talmud fit into the larger view of the history of western civilization and thought,” Dolgopolski said. “I’m not doing the work of a historian, but rather the work of an intellectual who looks at those methodologies from a theoretical perspective that has been developed in the 20th century.”

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The Babylonian Talmud was, of course, redacted in the sixth century or perhaps a little later. I take it that by "the 15th century Talmud" the writer means the interpretation of the Talmud in the 15th century.