ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the invention of the court for conversion as part of a wider evolution of conversion to Judaism documented in classical rabbinic literature of late antiquity. It includes the findings concerning the court of conversion and the procedure, and portrays legal and conceptual transformations concerning the rabbinic use of imagery of the convert as newborn. The developments presented in both fields together portray the rabbinic conversion to Judaism as an example of the rabbinic conversion of Judaism. The study of rabbinic literature during the last generation has recognized two important features of the Babylonian Talmud. The prevailing conceptual framework offered in the Babylonian Talmud is a product of a gradual and prolonged process. The Babylonian use of the imagery of new birth as a marker of the legal severing of family ties implies that the new birth constituted the lack, henceforth, of valid family relations.
