Demythologising the Rabbinic Aggadah: Menahem Meiri
Many of the mediaeval Jewish teachers, partly in defence of the Talmud against attack by the Karaites, partly because of their own rationalistic stance, engaged in what Marc Saperstein in a fine study has called ‘decoding the Rabbis’. That is to say, passages, especially in the Talmudic Aggadah, which seemed to them offensive to reason and general religious sensibilities, these teachers interpreted in the light of their own philosophical views, treating the Talmudic Aggadah as if it were a code…