Review of Kalmin, Migrating Tales

H-JUDAIC REVIEW:

Richard Kalmin. Migrating Tales: The Talmud's Narratives and Their Historical Context. Oakland: University of California Press, 2014. 312 pp. $65.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-520-27725-0.

Reviewed by Dvora E. Weisberg (Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, Los Angeles)
Published on H-Judaic (October, 2015)
Commissioned by Matthew A. Kraus

A Thousand and One Sasanian Nights

Like his previous book, Jewish Babylonia between Persia and Roman Palestine (2006), Richard Kalmin’s Migrating Tales represents an attempt to understand the literature of the Babylonian Talmud in its cultural context. While the earlier book focused on Palestinian rabbinic and Persian Christian traditions, this book considers Talmudic narratives against non-rabbinic narratives, both Christian and pagan, from the Roman East. Kalmin’s readings support his contention that there was a growing “cultural unity” that crossed the borders of the two major empires of the time, Rome and Sasanian Babylonia. He argues that the rabbis of the Babylonian Talmud were influenced by both Mesopotamian Christians and groups in the eastern Roman Empire. This influence can be attributed in part to Persian conquest of portions of the eastern Roman Empire in the third century and again in the sixth. The book also considers the Babylonian rabbis’ awareness of Christianity and relations between the two religions in this period.

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