Jewish-Christian Dialogues on Scripture in Late Antiquity

Michal Bar-Asher Siegal is a senior lecturer at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel and an elected member of the Israel Young Academy of Sciences. Her first book, Early Christian Monastic Literature and the Babylonian Talmud (Cambridge, 2013) received the 2014 Manfred Lautenschlaeger Award. She is also the co-editor of numerous volumes: The Faces of Torah: Studies in the Texts and Contexts of Ancient Judaism in Honor of Steven Fraade, (2017) and Perceiving the Other in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity (2017).

• 1. Mimin stories in the Talmud: introductory discussion; 2. 'A fool you call me?': On insult and folly in Late Antiquity; 3. 'He who forms the mountains and creates the wind': Amos 4:13 and the Jewish-Christian argument in b. Ḥullin 87a; 4. 'Rejoice, O barren one who bore no child': Isaiah 54:1 and the Jewish-Christian argument in b. Berachot 10a; 5. 'The best of them is like a brier': Micah 7:4 and the Jewish-Christian argument in b. 'Eruvin 101a; 6. 'He has drawn off from them': Hosea 5:6 and the Jewish-Christian argument in b. Yevamot 102b; 7. Reflections.

'Michal Bar-Asher Siegal unpacks several narrative dialogues in the Babylonian Talmud that have been previously misunderstood or deemed unexplainable. By reading them on the background of Christian polemics, this study succeeds in resurrecting the lively debates tucked away in these brief stories. This book combines an engaging prose style, methodological rigor, and creative insight, to recreates a previously unknown world of Christian-Jewish polemics in Babylonia. These dialogues come alive for the first time in centuries thanks to Bar-Asher Siegal's careful analysis. I feel like she has uncovered the ruins of a city long buried and that we can now hear for the first time the voices of these ancient polemicists - both their overt attacks as well as their subtle jabs and sarcastic wit.' Richard Hidary, Yeshiva University, New York