ABSTRACT
The reconstruction of the Eldadian corpus’ evolution opens a window onto a momentous development in the annals of the Jewish people: the rise of the Babylonian Talmud at the expense of all earlier and concurrent Jewish traditions. The Babylonian and Land of Israel traditions vied for supremacy. Israel Ta-Shma excavated through layers of the Babylonian culture in the writings of twelfth-century Ashkenazic sages. Despite the aberrancy of Eldad’s laws with respect to language and content, they were integrated into a Babylonian-oriented system of knowledge in an “evolutionary” or cumulative manner. The Land of Israel tradition and other independent frameworks that existed before the 800s were devoured in the Babylonian textual juggernaut. Schloessinger merely notes that Eldad’s place of origin was far removed from the Land of Israel.
