Review: Boyarin, Socrates and the Fat Rabbis

BMCR REVIEW:

Daniel Boyarin, Socrates and the Fat Rabbis. Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press, 2009. Pp. xiv, 388. ISBN 9780226069166. $45.00.

Reviewed by Oona Eisenstadt, Pomona College (oona.eisenstadt@pomona.edu)

Preview

The broadest purpose of this book is to argue that Plato’s dialogues and the Babylonian Talmud are examples of Menippean satire, or spoudogeloion, a genre in which high and low elements are mixed in such a way that the practices of intellectuals “are both mocked and asserted at one and the same time” (26). Almost every society, Boyarin tells us, produces such satire, but Plato and the Talmud are particularly comparable because they share a Hellenistic viewpoint (133) and because they apply the satire similarly. The meat of the book constitutes a description of the similarity through close readings of several passages from Baba Metzia and other tractates (chs. 4, 5, and 6), as well as the Protagoras (ch. 2), the Gorgias (ch. 3), and the Symposium, particularly the speeches of Pausanias, Socrates, and Alcibiades (chs. 7 and 8). Boyarin’s interpretations of Talmud are novel and compelling, as is the evidence adduced of a general rabbinic familiarity with Greek and Roman stories. The interpretations of Plato probably offer the scholarship at large no net gain, but reframe the work of others in way that is consistent and engaging. The book is driven by delight in all things clever and witty, and, while often cavalier, is pleasant and unrancorous.

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