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New Edition of the Babylonian Talmud; Original Text, Edited, Corrected, Formulated and Translated Into English Volume 1
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This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.
As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
230 pages, Hardcover
First published March 28, 2010
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About the author
Michael Levi Rodkinson
402 books7 followersMichael Levi Rodkinson (1845–1904) was an American-Jewish publisher, known for being the first to translate the Babylonian Talmud to English.
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October 2, 2017
Note :
1) There are dozens of these entries, when realistically the version of this I have is in *one* book spanning many volumes. I have written this review for *all* of them put together, and it will span approx 3 'books' on goodreads. Carrying on...
2) goodreads won't let me put my whole review in one volume. C'est la vie, I'll put it in 3 parts.
First I tried getting the Talmud from the library, and was sent a book *about* the Talmud. But finally I've gotten through the real, honest to yahweh, Babylonian Talmud in its entirety. What to say? The Talmud is enourmous. It clocks in at somewhere above "reasonable" and somewhere below "Al-Kafi". As a read, an attempt to get the truth, to scientific truth, to personal truth, to historical truth... it's got a curious structure; like some daydreaming anon rambling in incredibly long unbroken thoughts moving from topic to topic so that no one has a chance to interrupt ...of course many *tried* to interrupt this chain of reasoning - the Talmud has been burned, those who taught it killed and their buildings demolished.
As a work you have to cut it a little slack; it's the thoughts of those who could not have possibly known better. I might have made some jabs at their ridiculously small astronomical worldview, but they really were doing the best they could and it was the method they had which was more important than the results. They lived in a time a lot longer ago than, say, mohammed ﷺ, and you could see within its pages a time when the hebrew faith and the alternatives to it encompassed both what would eventually become scientific reasoning and religious backwardness. The two were not yet separable and would probably not be separable *but* for the talmud's many attempts at clarifying, once and for all, the many topics it touches upon.
For example, you could tell that architecture and religion were not yet separated There were arguments for why buildings couldn't be larger than a certain amount that were probably very reasonable given the materials and designs they had...yet they were fundamentally theological arguments.
Similarly, medicine and religion were not separate either. Like the Hadiths, you get stuff like:
"What is Egyptian zeethum? R. Joseph taught: "A mixture of equal parts of barley, salt, and wild saffron," but R. Papa substitutes wheat for barley. The ingredients of this mixture are soaked, then parched over the fire, and afterwards ground. (When the liquid is fermented) it is usually drunk from Passover to Pentecost. One who is constipated is relieved thereby, and diarrhœa is stopped. For a sick person or a pregnant woman it is a dangerous beverage." (p1331)
There was, in fact, during the 1800s or so an attempt at writing a variety of translated-to-more-modern-european-language books along the lines of "Tamudic Medicine" "Talmudic Poetry" etc. For a list of these books, consult the last few chapters of this translation.
Another example: science(or perhaps another word to give a clue that there was a shared history: alchemy(kabalistic alchemy!))). there were quite a few instances where the dogma of the torah was questioned as far as...does it actually work that way? Can we test it? I thought that some of the hadiths had at least testable arguments but the Talmud seems to go beyond that into open dissent, open questioning of dogma especially when there are records to contradict it. For example, does praying for rain actually bring rain? They actually started to count(p2197). Doesn't matter what their conclusion was...the fact that they were trying to get that far puts them miles ahead of even pre-golden age Islam. Also noteworthy, is that they had noticed some scale-free networks/exponential growth problems (p1743) and had begun to compare them together.
The talmud also has buried within it both the seeds for free culture(by virtue of science, and free inquiry), and permission culture. For example remixing songs is supposed to cause evil(p1895).
Another example: it is conceivable that, since some of the first temples practised temple prostitution, that the temple and prostitution were one and the same general activity at one point, and the same is true *of markets*, and that is only later that the activity of trading for sex and trading for other things started to be seen as not part of the same activity, similar to "prostitution" and "organized religion" started to be seen as not necessarily something that always happens together. Yet organized sexual activity and organized religion do not seem to be altogether separate, n'est pas? (*cough* Catholic Church)
The Talmud also gives the glimpse of a humanity that was WAY more based on agriculture than it is today. Realistically farming was yet another one of those activities that wasn't altogether separate from religion. It would be more familiar to those in places like Saskatchewan where an agricultural worldview is much more recent. "Where there is a dearth of bread, culture cannot thrive, and lack of culture causes dearth of bread". Like many examples in the Talmud. If you read the list of rabbis at the end before you read the beginning you'll realize that many of the authors were killed, the warnings about 'follow these rules or you'll be killed' were not an idle threat - it was likely that jews under persecution, in a harsh and confusing world would suffer. Long before the Holocaust(which there is a confusing ritual/chapter named after, which is a little eerie to read 40 years before it happened) they had experience suffering in their history that gave them an appreciation for the seriousness of their undertaking. The seed must be planted, the prayers must be made, their god must be appeased. More examples of the agricultural way of life that is coupled to their worldview the problem is that the Talmud assumes that you know about animal husbandry or at least the basics of agricultural life. If you grow up a cityboi and are not exposed to and do not learn about farm animals...you won't get some of the premises of their arguments, however sound they may be.
In particular(p2755), the ethic of making sure to take care of your own needs, to Do It Yourself is present here. It was viewed valuable to be able to grow your own food, to make your own tools in a reasonable way that would sound very familiar to farmers today.
Another thing that was part of the agriculture-religion-science complex was music. This arrangement you can see echoed all the way to the baroque era. But music was an important part of life. Listening to songs, and playing songs on horns(p949) was at certain times obligatory, even. Music and Law/Talmud were considered separate : "Shall the Gemara be like a song, to learn it without knowing any reason for each decision?"(p1991). Notice that Islam kind of regressed on this distinction, forbidding music that was not part of itself.
One particular instance of an obligatory song is the song of the Jubilee (Jubil Hi).
"On the New Year we blow (a cornet) made of ram's horn, and on the jubilee one made of the horn of a wild goat." (p945)
In particular the Talmud dates to the era of time when the practice of Jubilee broke down, that there was a general weakening of jubilee (p2368). As Graeber pointed out in his "Debt: the first 5000 years" it got harder and harder to coordinate jubilees once trade between nations started - slaves were not 'free to return to their mothers' - but perhaps as importantly, the music of culturally sanctioned freedom stopped. When culture was lost, bread (for the slaves) was lost. If we're serious about re-imagining what a jubilee would be like, we're going probably to need world-scale music to help us.
Since economics was not yet a twinkle in Adam Smith's eye and was still very much part of religion (has that even changed?) the talmud, as expected also touched on some of the concepts involved, like money, husbandry and in particular the Double Spending Problem( ppl were expected to destroy notices of debt to prevent it). A system of Proof of Debt was in place, that gives us some reason to consider there may be space between one:one, one:many, many:many relationships(with and without memory and archy involved) that informs us how to deal with issues at both the large and small scale, whether we're talking about economies the size of the world economy or peer to peer systems like Tribler. "One holds that a thing which causes payment is itself considered as money, and according to the other it is not considered such". This is a relatively modern view of money, something a lot of people who struggle with the idea of cryptocurrency don't really get. They did though, even back then.
Speaking of cryptocurrency, some good advice from the Talmud: give money to charity while you have it, because your fortune can disappear in an instant. Jews can attest to how bad things can get, how seemingly quickly. If you have the ability to help someone financially *now*, use it. Easier said than done, of course. Likewise political power will one day leave you, be mindful of that (p1679).
The question of who has title over what, and how does that relate to the tools(in their case, writing) available at the time...as well as is another problem as old as the talmud. Their rules often entail the necessity of Occupying (p985,p1034) Land in order to own it: "According to R. Simeon, title is given to documents and to all their contents by transferring; and therefore when the donee returned it to the donor, the latter acquired title to it and to its contents. But according to the rabbis, title is not given by transferring; hence when the donee takes possession of the gift, the returning of the document counts nothing" (p1248).
The problem of the Tragedy of the Commons came up and they seemed to have come up with a solution that worked for them: bring heaven into the picture(p2737). Unfortunately this isn't going to be a long term solution, but it's worth contemplating that perhaps there is something in the world to come.
Another thing worth considering: the question of how much to trust your own judgment versus the judgment of others. How many witnesses would it take for you to doubt yourself? (p2480) Yes there's the asch conformity problem, but it seems there's another problem lying in lurk nearby: that we contain multitudes, and it would be wise in most matters that occasionally do some external cognition/judgment based on the opinions of others.
Speaking of serious judgment, there's some discussion on how and under what circumstance the death penalty is appropriate. The more human the person, the 'thicker' the identity in question is determined put to death, the bigger the number of judges required to condemn(p1742) him or her. Mosquitoes and snakes take the judgment of one, wolves 23, false prophets 71, etc. It provides a bit of a frame for how we *already* employ violence against our environment, and carries with it an implicit understanding that the seriousness of both increasing and decreasing said violence at different levels. I'll have more to say about this perhaps when I review the other book that has my brain humming on this topic. This is going to be increasingly important to get right as we try to grapple with such oddities as self-driving cars(p1083), and our dealings in robotics generally.
The talmud describes a demon haunted world that is our forefathers society - a society that really did believe in the evil eye, spirits, blood rituals and where mutilating children on behalf of some spirit's advice was seen as rational. I thought that the Book of Satan went a little overboard in its suggestion of dark rituals, but now I know that Satanism is really just another take on what the hebrew faith *was*. This translation referred to Islam as a daughter of the hebrew branch of abramism, clearly Satanism is the rebellious and much younger son. Actually the blood rituals were a little disturbing, going through all the gory details in a way the Book of Satan wasn't.
Satanism/Lesswrong takes the approach
'What if atheists want some kind of mysticism in their life, some ritual? we could light candles! we could pour wine(speaking of, p1073's description of wine is clearly written by an alcoholic.)! we could have blood sacrifices! we could meet in churches, we could have social communion with eachother! we could get laid together, in giant orgies!'
but what if what is missing is shared, arbitrary judgment on people? what if that's what human beings crave so much and will not be happy without?
Facebook/Instagram gives this to us. Christianity claims not to give this to us, but they not-so-secretly provide it. Shared arbitrary judgment of other people might very well be part of how you get a group to survive for a long time.
That said. As far as judgment goes, the Talmud was wary about the consequences of judgment, and had an eye for justice on all levels. "Do you desire strict law, or arbitration?"(p1676). I once read an intro to law textbook, and they had within it a discussion of the various kinds of arbitrary rule that centred around the prince's foot - since when the prince was the person who judged between people's claims, often you'd get arbitrary decisions, or metaphorically judgments based on the size of the prince's foot. And that over time, as the common law system, including but not limited to mandatory minimum sentences began to make sure that the unfairness of even professional judges could not come into play, that biases were to the largest extent possible removed -- but in this case there were still cases where there was clear violations of justice(under one's subjective view) but that these were done based on the unfairness of the rules, not the people -- that it's the rule by "foot rule". Similarly, they appear to have been aware of this tradeoff and made a conscious decision to be in one part of the slippery slope.
The burden of proof in civil v. criminal cases dates to the talmud. But in the Talmud civil cases start with the opinion of the eldest first, and ended when the eldest got the last word(p1756). Anyone may judge civil cases(think: judge.me), only those in the right caste can judge criminal - levites, priests and those who can marry daughters of priests (p1738).
One aspect of this society was that writing really was new and they had rules for it based on their perceived power. You could not say aloud the names of not just the hebrew god, but the *other* tribe's gods too(p1799). You could, however write them down. (There was a great deal of concern for those gods of other tribes though... In particular Moloch(p1803) was mentioned as one to avoid participating in rituals, sacrificing children to.) This reminds me of those who believe that you can have someone draw you but to photograph you removes part of your soul. Or maybe before then...in islam where it was forbidden to have *any* pictures(p2522) of people or animals.
Also interesting is an argument whether to only rely on cuneiform rather than old hebrew(p 2230) (not even current-as-of-time-it-was-written hebrew, which would be beyond archaic today), as the old hebrew isn't considered a legitimate copy. I have definitely been in arguments with people who know hebrew and who have tools for digging underneath the english translations of the NT/torah/qur'an/hadith and always felt that they did have a point when they tried to put the conclusions I tried to make beyond my grasp on the basis that there was a language barrier between me and a sound argument wrt the material in question. But it's worth noting that nevermind arabic/hebrew/aramaic unless you are reading the original cuneiform you are not getting the whole story. And I'd bet dollars to doughnuts there's more in egyptian hieroglyphics, possibly all lost to time, that will tell us even more.
You can also use the Talmud as a lens to see back what *hasn't* changed over the long haul, too. Pall bearers(p2315), burial attendants...all sorts of things that you will recognize as something that they, too had back then. They are big on feeling awe at this sort of thing, and standing on the edge of history and gazing this far back and recognizing things...that is awe inspiring for sure.
part 2
1) There are dozens of these entries, when realistically the version of this I have is in *one* book spanning many volumes. I have written this review for *all* of them put together, and it will span approx 3 'books' on goodreads. Carrying on...
2) goodreads won't let me put my whole review in one volume. C'est la vie, I'll put it in 3 parts.
First I tried getting the Talmud from the library, and was sent a book *about* the Talmud. But finally I've gotten through the real, honest to yahweh, Babylonian Talmud in its entirety. What to say? The Talmud is enourmous. It clocks in at somewhere above "reasonable" and somewhere below "Al-Kafi". As a read, an attempt to get the truth, to scientific truth, to personal truth, to historical truth... it's got a curious structure; like some daydreaming anon rambling in incredibly long unbroken thoughts moving from topic to topic so that no one has a chance to interrupt ...of course many *tried* to interrupt this chain of reasoning - the Talmud has been burned, those who taught it killed and their buildings demolished.
As a work you have to cut it a little slack; it's the thoughts of those who could not have possibly known better. I might have made some jabs at their ridiculously small astronomical worldview, but they really were doing the best they could and it was the method they had which was more important than the results. They lived in a time a lot longer ago than, say, mohammed ﷺ, and you could see within its pages a time when the hebrew faith and the alternatives to it encompassed both what would eventually become scientific reasoning and religious backwardness. The two were not yet separable and would probably not be separable *but* for the talmud's many attempts at clarifying, once and for all, the many topics it touches upon.
For example, you could tell that architecture and religion were not yet separated There were arguments for why buildings couldn't be larger than a certain amount that were probably very reasonable given the materials and designs they had...yet they were fundamentally theological arguments.
Similarly, medicine and religion were not separate either. Like the Hadiths, you get stuff like:
"What is Egyptian zeethum? R. Joseph taught: "A mixture of equal parts of barley, salt, and wild saffron," but R. Papa substitutes wheat for barley. The ingredients of this mixture are soaked, then parched over the fire, and afterwards ground. (When the liquid is fermented) it is usually drunk from Passover to Pentecost. One who is constipated is relieved thereby, and diarrhœa is stopped. For a sick person or a pregnant woman it is a dangerous beverage." (p1331)
There was, in fact, during the 1800s or so an attempt at writing a variety of translated-to-more-modern-european-language books along the lines of "Tamudic Medicine" "Talmudic Poetry" etc. For a list of these books, consult the last few chapters of this translation.
Another example: science(or perhaps another word to give a clue that there was a shared history: alchemy(kabalistic alchemy!))). there were quite a few instances where the dogma of the torah was questioned as far as...does it actually work that way? Can we test it? I thought that some of the hadiths had at least testable arguments but the Talmud seems to go beyond that into open dissent, open questioning of dogma especially when there are records to contradict it. For example, does praying for rain actually bring rain? They actually started to count(p2197). Doesn't matter what their conclusion was...the fact that they were trying to get that far puts them miles ahead of even pre-golden age Islam. Also noteworthy, is that they had noticed some scale-free networks/exponential growth problems (p1743) and had begun to compare them together.
The talmud also has buried within it both the seeds for free culture(by virtue of science, and free inquiry), and permission culture. For example remixing songs is supposed to cause evil(p1895).
Another example: it is conceivable that, since some of the first temples practised temple prostitution, that the temple and prostitution were one and the same general activity at one point, and the same is true *of markets*, and that is only later that the activity of trading for sex and trading for other things started to be seen as not part of the same activity, similar to "prostitution" and "organized religion" started to be seen as not necessarily something that always happens together. Yet organized sexual activity and organized religion do not seem to be altogether separate, n'est pas? (*cough* Catholic Church)
The Talmud also gives the glimpse of a humanity that was WAY more based on agriculture than it is today. Realistically farming was yet another one of those activities that wasn't altogether separate from religion. It would be more familiar to those in places like Saskatchewan where an agricultural worldview is much more recent. "Where there is a dearth of bread, culture cannot thrive, and lack of culture causes dearth of bread". Like many examples in the Talmud. If you read the list of rabbis at the end before you read the beginning you'll realize that many of the authors were killed, the warnings about 'follow these rules or you'll be killed' were not an idle threat - it was likely that jews under persecution, in a harsh and confusing world would suffer. Long before the Holocaust(which there is a confusing ritual/chapter named after, which is a little eerie to read 40 years before it happened) they had experience suffering in their history that gave them an appreciation for the seriousness of their undertaking. The seed must be planted, the prayers must be made, their god must be appeased. More examples of the agricultural way of life that is coupled to their worldview the problem is that the Talmud assumes that you know about animal husbandry or at least the basics of agricultural life. If you grow up a cityboi and are not exposed to and do not learn about farm animals...you won't get some of the premises of their arguments, however sound they may be.
In particular(p2755), the ethic of making sure to take care of your own needs, to Do It Yourself is present here. It was viewed valuable to be able to grow your own food, to make your own tools in a reasonable way that would sound very familiar to farmers today.
Another thing that was part of the agriculture-religion-science complex was music. This arrangement you can see echoed all the way to the baroque era. But music was an important part of life. Listening to songs, and playing songs on horns(p949) was at certain times obligatory, even. Music and Law/Talmud were considered separate : "Shall the Gemara be like a song, to learn it without knowing any reason for each decision?"(p1991). Notice that Islam kind of regressed on this distinction, forbidding music that was not part of itself.
One particular instance of an obligatory song is the song of the Jubilee (Jubil Hi).
"On the New Year we blow (a cornet) made of ram's horn, and on the jubilee one made of the horn of a wild goat." (p945)
In particular the Talmud dates to the era of time when the practice of Jubilee broke down, that there was a general weakening of jubilee (p2368). As Graeber pointed out in his "Debt: the first 5000 years" it got harder and harder to coordinate jubilees once trade between nations started - slaves were not 'free to return to their mothers' - but perhaps as importantly, the music of culturally sanctioned freedom stopped. When culture was lost, bread (for the slaves) was lost. If we're serious about re-imagining what a jubilee would be like, we're going probably to need world-scale music to help us.
Since economics was not yet a twinkle in Adam Smith's eye and was still very much part of religion (has that even changed?) the talmud, as expected also touched on some of the concepts involved, like money, husbandry and in particular the Double Spending Problem( ppl were expected to destroy notices of debt to prevent it). A system of Proof of Debt was in place, that gives us some reason to consider there may be space between one:one, one:many, many:many relationships(with and without memory and archy involved) that informs us how to deal with issues at both the large and small scale, whether we're talking about economies the size of the world economy or peer to peer systems like Tribler. "One holds that a thing which causes payment is itself considered as money, and according to the other it is not considered such". This is a relatively modern view of money, something a lot of people who struggle with the idea of cryptocurrency don't really get. They did though, even back then.
Speaking of cryptocurrency, some good advice from the Talmud: give money to charity while you have it, because your fortune can disappear in an instant. Jews can attest to how bad things can get, how seemingly quickly. If you have the ability to help someone financially *now*, use it. Easier said than done, of course. Likewise political power will one day leave you, be mindful of that (p1679).
The question of who has title over what, and how does that relate to the tools(in their case, writing) available at the time...as well as is another problem as old as the talmud. Their rules often entail the necessity of Occupying (p985,p1034) Land in order to own it: "According to R. Simeon, title is given to documents and to all their contents by transferring; and therefore when the donee returned it to the donor, the latter acquired title to it and to its contents. But according to the rabbis, title is not given by transferring; hence when the donee takes possession of the gift, the returning of the document counts nothing" (p1248).
The problem of the Tragedy of the Commons came up and they seemed to have come up with a solution that worked for them: bring heaven into the picture(p2737). Unfortunately this isn't going to be a long term solution, but it's worth contemplating that perhaps there is something in the world to come.
Another thing worth considering: the question of how much to trust your own judgment versus the judgment of others. How many witnesses would it take for you to doubt yourself? (p2480) Yes there's the asch conformity problem, but it seems there's another problem lying in lurk nearby: that we contain multitudes, and it would be wise in most matters that occasionally do some external cognition/judgment based on the opinions of others.
Speaking of serious judgment, there's some discussion on how and under what circumstance the death penalty is appropriate. The more human the person, the 'thicker' the identity in question is determined put to death, the bigger the number of judges required to condemn(p1742) him or her. Mosquitoes and snakes take the judgment of one, wolves 23, false prophets 71, etc. It provides a bit of a frame for how we *already* employ violence against our environment, and carries with it an implicit understanding that the seriousness of both increasing and decreasing said violence at different levels. I'll have more to say about this perhaps when I review the other book that has my brain humming on this topic. This is going to be increasingly important to get right as we try to grapple with such oddities as self-driving cars(p1083), and our dealings in robotics generally.
The talmud describes a demon haunted world that is our forefathers society - a society that really did believe in the evil eye, spirits, blood rituals and where mutilating children on behalf of some spirit's advice was seen as rational. I thought that the Book of Satan went a little overboard in its suggestion of dark rituals, but now I know that Satanism is really just another take on what the hebrew faith *was*. This translation referred to Islam as a daughter of the hebrew branch of abramism, clearly Satanism is the rebellious and much younger son. Actually the blood rituals were a little disturbing, going through all the gory details in a way the Book of Satan wasn't.
Satanism/Lesswrong takes the approach
'What if atheists want some kind of mysticism in their life, some ritual? we could light candles! we could pour wine(speaking of, p1073's description of wine is clearly written by an alcoholic.)! we could have blood sacrifices! we could meet in churches, we could have social communion with eachother! we could get laid together, in giant orgies!'
but what if what is missing is shared, arbitrary judgment on people? what if that's what human beings crave so much and will not be happy without?
Facebook/Instagram gives this to us. Christianity claims not to give this to us, but they not-so-secretly provide it. Shared arbitrary judgment of other people might very well be part of how you get a group to survive for a long time.
That said. As far as judgment goes, the Talmud was wary about the consequences of judgment, and had an eye for justice on all levels. "Do you desire strict law, or arbitration?"(p1676). I once read an intro to law textbook, and they had within it a discussion of the various kinds of arbitrary rule that centred around the prince's foot - since when the prince was the person who judged between people's claims, often you'd get arbitrary decisions, or metaphorically judgments based on the size of the prince's foot. And that over time, as the common law system, including but not limited to mandatory minimum sentences began to make sure that the unfairness of even professional judges could not come into play, that biases were to the largest extent possible removed -- but in this case there were still cases where there was clear violations of justice(under one's subjective view) but that these were done based on the unfairness of the rules, not the people -- that it's the rule by "foot rule". Similarly, they appear to have been aware of this tradeoff and made a conscious decision to be in one part of the slippery slope.
The burden of proof in civil v. criminal cases dates to the talmud. But in the Talmud civil cases start with the opinion of the eldest first, and ended when the eldest got the last word(p1756). Anyone may judge civil cases(think: judge.me), only those in the right caste can judge criminal - levites, priests and those who can marry daughters of priests (p1738).
One aspect of this society was that writing really was new and they had rules for it based on their perceived power. You could not say aloud the names of not just the hebrew god, but the *other* tribe's gods too(p1799). You could, however write them down. (There was a great deal of concern for those gods of other tribes though... In particular Moloch(p1803) was mentioned as one to avoid participating in rituals, sacrificing children to.) This reminds me of those who believe that you can have someone draw you but to photograph you removes part of your soul. Or maybe before then...in islam where it was forbidden to have *any* pictures(p2522) of people or animals.
Also interesting is an argument whether to only rely on cuneiform rather than old hebrew(p 2230) (not even current-as-of-time-it-was-written hebrew, which would be beyond archaic today), as the old hebrew isn't considered a legitimate copy. I have definitely been in arguments with people who know hebrew and who have tools for digging underneath the english translations of the NT/torah/qur'an/hadith and always felt that they did have a point when they tried to put the conclusions I tried to make beyond my grasp on the basis that there was a language barrier between me and a sound argument wrt the material in question. But it's worth noting that nevermind arabic/hebrew/aramaic unless you are reading the original cuneiform you are not getting the whole story. And I'd bet dollars to doughnuts there's more in egyptian hieroglyphics, possibly all lost to time, that will tell us even more.
You can also use the Talmud as a lens to see back what *hasn't* changed over the long haul, too. Pall bearers(p2315), burial attendants...all sorts of things that you will recognize as something that they, too had back then. They are big on feeling awe at this sort of thing, and standing on the edge of history and gazing this far back and recognizing things...that is awe inspiring for sure.
part 2
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