ABSTRACT
This chapter provides the history of the dissemination of the Talmud from East to West—from Babylon to Northern France—according to a deconstructive perspective. The chapter examines the role of the Geonim who were the first commentators on the Babylonian Talmud and elaborated a complex dialectic between orality and writing that will be put into question, only much later, by the Medieval French commentators. The dimensions of orality and writing changed dramatically from a fundamentally oral culture that conceives of writing as a means for memorization (the Babylonian Geonim) to a more textual culture that progressively relies more on texts (the Medieval French commentators).
