How the Rabbis Set Themselves Apart from the Greeks

At the time of the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, overwhelming numbers of Jews—not only in the Land of Israel, but also in the thriving Diaspora communities of what are now Turkey, Syria, and Egypt—lived in a thoroughly Hellenistic milieu, where Greek was the primary language and culture. Simon Goldhill argues that the sages of the Talmud were acutely aware of this culture, and deliberately shaped their works and ideas in contradistinction to its beliefs, attitudes, and even literary modes. Nowhere, he explains in conversation with J.J. Kimche, was this more evident than in the genre of narrative known as aggada, or, more colloquially, as midrash. (Audio, 63 minutes.)