"Beyond Influence: Reconceiving the Bavli in the Wake of Babylonian Jews and Sasanian Imperialism in Late Antiquity."

• In Event: Imperial Jews and An Integrationist Model of Empire

Abstract

One of the achievements of Simcha Gross' Babylonian Jews and Sasanian Imperialism in Late Antiquity is the way it gestures beyond the binary paradigm of accommodating or resisting, restoring agency to the Babylonian Jewish community as it navigated Sasanian Babylonia. This paper will reconsider the set of approaches known as Irano-Talmudica, suggesting that we think less in terms of how the Talmudic text may have (or may not have) been influenced by its Sasanian context and more in terms of it constituting one textual project among others in the Sasanian Empire.

Author

• Shai Secunda, Bard College