This segues into the next phase in our struggle to interpret rabbinic texts. We know the Talmud is literary, and that it belongs to a unique genre; now, we must attempt to apply the genre to the context of the literature, as was briefly accomplished in the enumeration on the effects of orality on genre. Before doing so, though, it is essential to note the great difficulties which exist in the field. Marc-Alain Ouaknin, “Interpretation,” in his chapter on “Interpretation” in The Burnt Book: Reading the Talmud, warns readers of accepting wholly-historical and non-subjective approaches to analysis and application. He explains, “One must be wary of the objectivist or pseudo-objectivist effort that tends to promote a way of cutting itself off, …show more content…
The stories entered the Hebrew-Aramaic written corpus from sources written in Greek that have not been preserved, and the translated versions retain the punning of the originals. 2. The stories were told and/or written down by narrators who were multilingual enough so that their proficiency in Greek, in addition to their native Hebrew/Aramaic, enabled them to create the whole multilingual system of punning, possibly to amuse an equally multilingual audience. 3. The stories were extant in a Hebrew/Aramaic that was continuously impressed by the Greek until they reached the narrators/editors of the rabbinic texts, who retained the form of the tales without being necessarily aware of the puns.” In summation, the puns were either intentional due to fluency, accidental due to fluency, or accidental due to a lack of fluency. In each case, however, we see that the audience developed is one of educated individuals, probably of rabbis—one which would most likely understand such references and, for lack of a better phrase, “get the joke.” Therefore, in researching the interplay of languages in a text, one can develop a stronger sense of the application of the genre to the context, and more specifically develop a basic idea of the intended audience’s