My dissertation addresses the “historical” problem of the emergence of “rabbinic” Judaism out of the many post-biblical Judaisms. It studies, on the example of a specific group of texts, the portrayal of this “historical” transformation on the literary, discursive level of the text in rabbinic literature. The argument throughout the dissertation is principally literary; however, through analysis of literary texts I strive to give answers to basically “historical” questions.

Texts found in abundance in rabbinic literature in which a dialogue is portrayed between a Rabbi and an “Outsider to the tradition” can, if studied collectively as texts belonging to a specific literary genre, be considered as reflecting the discursive transfer in rabbinic literature from a world of different Hellenistic Judaisms to the world of rabbinic Judaism that considers and portrays itself as the sole, “normative” form of Judaism. These texts, among many others, attest to the process of creating “rabbinic” identity in the cultural discourse of rabbinic literature. Thus, the main concern of the dissertation is to study this process of transformation; the main literary question of the dissertation is concerned with the way this transformation is accomplished and portrayed in the discourse of rabbinic literature.

In reading specific texts in rabbinic literature I try to trace the vestiges of the creation of “rabbinic” identity in the literary discourse; thus I go against the presupposition that such an identity already existed and the texts only mirror it. On the contrary, the texts are proof to the process, not the end result of, this transformation.

The main “historical” question the dissertation strives to give an answer to concerns the point in history after which we can speak of rabbinic Judaism. In the dissertation I hope to find an answer to the how and the why the change from a “pluralism of Judaisms” to a “Judaism of pluralism” happened at that specific point in “historical” time.