Posted at <https://www.ancientjewreview.com/read/2026/6/1/talmud-as-a-new-intellectual-project> is the first of a series of reviews of "The Rise of Talmud" with Sarit Kattan Gribetz, Maren Niehoff, Ishay Rosen-Zvi and response from Moulie Vidas. Go there for full text of:linebreaklinebreaklinebreakTalmud as a New Intellectual Projectlinebreakby Sarit Kattan Gribetz linebreaklinebreakI remember, many years ago, knocking on Moulie’s office door on the second floor of 1879 Hall in Princeton, to return a book I had borrowed. It was already dark outside, and late, and Moulie was huddled over an open Yerushalmi, a table lamp illuminating the page. Reading Moulie Vidas’ The Rise of Talmud (Oxford University Press, 2025), I kept thinking of that scene, a symbol of Moulie’s indefatigable dedication to this research. The book is clearly a labor of love. The sensitive readings, the devotion to understanding the text’s terms, the commitment to identifying with precision what makes this work unique and new – these are evident throughout the book, in the empathy that Moulie expresses when he speaks about the amoraim and how they related to the work of their scholarly predecessors, and in his efforts to identify the humans that are folded into this anthological composition and how they conceived of the humanness of their scholarly endeavors. Not every book exudes its author’s love of the subject matter as much as this one.linebreaklinebreakThe Rise of Talmud contends that talmudic literature, and the Yerushalmi in particular, represents a novel intellectual project. Talmud is often characterized as an interpretation of or commentary on the Mishnah in the same way that the Mishnah or Midrash are interpretations of or commentaries on Scripture, and, moreover, that what distinguishes Talmud from earlier rabbinic literature is the literary genre of the sugya and the emphasis on dialectical argumentation. Vidas argues, in contrast, that Talmud is not merely the next step in this interpretive tradition, couched in a new genre, but rather a new intellectual project, one that relates to the traditions of previous rabbinic scholars differently from how it relates to scriptural traditions – and that thus also required unique forms of engagement. The Sages distinguish between scripture, which they understood to be (for the most part) complete and perfect, and rabbinic traditions, which are fragmentary, imperfect, and subject to misunderstanding, corruption, and confusion. Studying rabbinic traditions, engaging with them, making sense of them, tracing their evolution, and revising them therefore entailed, for the Sages within this interpretative tradition, different strategies from those necessary to explicate divine scripture, which assume a more stable and whole work that is knowable in full. The Talmud, in Vidas’ words, develops a “hermeneutics of imperfection.” He writes: “the Yerushalmi construes rabbinic tradition as a thoroughly human product” (306). The book points to the various ways in which the rabbis grappled with the humanness of the rabbinic traditions they inherited and which they themselves continued to transmit.linebreak[...]linebreaklinebreak--- linebreak