Rabbis and Classical Rhetoric: Sophistic Education and Oratory in the Talmud and Midrash by Richard Hidary, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018.Excerpt:
More important, however, is Hidary’s contribution to understanding rabbinic literature on its own terms—whether or not those terms were influenced by the rhetorical modes of the Second Sophistic more broadly. Multiple times, I read Hidary’s explanations of rabbinic passages as rhetoric and thought about how this explains frustration my students express at the weirdness of rabbinic literature.
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