Jewish Studies Seminar with Eliav Grossman: "Imitation of the Mishnah and Expansion of Rabbinic Culture in the Early Islamic Period"

In this talk, we will explore a corpus of rabbinic texts that dates to the late Byzantine and early Islamic periods. This corpus needs to be excavated and argued for because it comprises texts heretofore considered marginal and eclectic. These texts, written in Mishnaic Hebrew and featuring only the names of sages who appear in Tannaitic texts, imitate the Mishnah. We will suggest their belated dates of composition by showing their engagement with major literary, political, and cultural discourses of the late Byzantine and early Islamic world. The goal of the talk will be not only to prove the existence of this neo-Mishnah corpus, but to show its value as a category for scholars interested in Jewish history of late antiquity and the early Islamic era.

Eliav Grossman is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Rabbinics and Classical Judaism at Vanderbilt University. He completed his PhD at Princeton University's Department of Religion in 2024. Eliav's research investigates the changing modes of rabbinic literary production in late antiquity and the early Islamic period, the gradual diffusion of rabbinic texts and culture across the Mediterranean and Middle East, and the tension generated by the rise of rabbinic hegemony.  

The Yale Jewish Studies Seminar, organized by graduate students, invites junior and mid-career scholars to campus to present their Jewish Studies research in a seminar setting with the university community.  All are warmly invited to attend.