Aristeas or Aggadah: Talmudic Legend and the Greek Bible in Palestinian Judaism

Scholars of rabbinic literature from the Talmudic or late classical era have greatly valued E. P. Sanders's artempts to rescue rabbinic texts from abuse at the hands of theologians, New Testament scholats, and historians of Second Commonwealth politics and society. It is not simply a marter of calling artention to the negative presuppositions that are often attached to such terms as "Pharisees" or "ritual." His contributions extend to a more substantial scholarly recognition that the extant compendia of rabbinic teachings, all of which postdate the second century C.E., were not treatises on theology or chronicles of their authors' or protagonists' times. For that reason, they provide little if any evidence for the doctrines of the early church or the life of the hisrorical Jesus. It is unfortunate that Talmudic Judaism has not left us a Paul or an Augustine, a Josephus or a Eusebius. Artempts to reconstruct historical narratives out of specialized works devoted to the minutiae of legal debate or rhetorical preaching can be undertaken only with extreme caution.