Holger M. Zellentin seeks to probe how far the classical rabbis took their literary playfulness in order to advance their religious and societal causes. Building on the literary approaches to rabbinic Judaism of the past decades, this work considers the rabbis' attitudes towards their Byzantine and Sassanian surroundings. The author examines how the Talmud and Midrash in Palestine and Persia repeat previous texts with comical difference, oscillating between reverence and satire. The result shows rabbinic society and its literature engaging in the great debates of their times, commenting on...