ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a short history of Rabbinic literature from a deconstructive point of view. It fundamentally argues that the Babylonian Talmud eventually became the central pillar of Orthodox Judaism at the cost of concurrent Rabbinical texts and whoever is different from an ordinary Jewish male—women, children, Gentiles, and animals. The monograph shows how the Babylonian Talmud acquired a particular ‘centrality’ with respect to other Rabbinic sources and would have established a predominance on account of a very specific set of intellectual assumptions: ‘writing,’ ‘orality,’ and ‘Scripture.’
