ABSTRACT
Two schools of learning compete in contemporary academic scholarship on Judaism - as distinct from Yeshiva-scholarship on the same subject, which conforms to a different paradigm altogether. The one is centered in Jerusalem and is associated with the names of E. E. Urbach, S. Lieberman, G. Scholem, and the like. The other is diffused throughout US, Canadian, and European universities and predominates everywhere outside of Jerusalem. For Jerusalem has lost its standing in most Western academic circles, but Western, academic scholarship in the study of ancient Judaism enjoys no hearing whatsoever in Jerusalem. The use of evidence for the theological character of talmudic Judaism is just as gullible and credulous as it is for biographies of talmudic rabbis. From the very beginnings of Talmudic history, the critical program of ancient history and of biblical studies remained remote. By the 1850s, biblical studies had attained a quite critical program.
