Minim stories and Jewish-Christian Debates over Scripture: Babylonian Talmud Yevamot 102b

This paper reads the story about R. Gamliel and a min in BT Yevamot 102b against the backdrop of contemporaneous Christian writings. This reading can shed new light on the min-rabbi dialogue. The story implies rabbinic awareness of Christian uses of the topos of h˙alitzah, which are based on a different halakhic formulation of the law. Only based on this knowledge does the position of the min in the Talmud make sense. This story is yet another step in figuring out the complex matrix of Jewish-Christian relations in Late Antiquity and the Persian Empire, how much the rabbis knew about their Christian neighbors, how much they cared to engage with them, and what sort of engagement we can discern.