New Books Network: Interview with Dr. James Adam Redfield

Book Discussed: Adventures of Rabba and Friends: The Talmud’s Strange Tales and Their Readers (Brown Judaic Studies, 2025)
Host: Rabbi Mark Katz
Guest: Dr. James Adam Redfield
Date: December 14, 2025

Episode Overview

This episode features a lively and scholarly discussion between Rabbi Mark Katz and Dr. James Adam Redfield about Redfield's new book, which explores the strangest, most enigmatic stories in the Talmud—specifically those attributed to Rabba bar Bar Hana. Redfield examines not only the tales themselves but also the diverse and evolving interpretative frameworks brought to them over centuries, providing insights into Jewish hermeneutics, anthropology, and cultural exchange.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Origins and Purpose of the Book

• Redfield’s Background (02:23):

  • Redfield brings together anthropology and hermeneutics to explore how people, especially within Jewish culture, construct meaning.
  • He was drawn to the Talmud through a course taken while pursuing a doctorate in anthropology, eventually rerouting his academic career.

• Book’s Central Question (03:43):

  • The book examines a handful of peculiar Talmudic stories and how these have been interpreted over time.
  • It considers how difficult, transgressive, or puzzling texts challenge and inspire new methods of interpretation within Judaism.

2. Who Was Rabba bar Bar Hana? (04:41)

• Rabba bar Bar Hana was a third-century Babylonian sage known for extraordinary travel tales—often bizarre, mythical, or grotesque in nature, and claiming firsthand experience.
• He was considered an outsider, whose narratives were sometimes at odds with mainstream legal or theological discussions in the Talmud.

3. Example Tale: The Gigantic Bones in the Desert (06:28)

• Story summary: Rabba travels in the desert, sees gigantic ancestral bones, takes a piece of the deceased’s tallit as a souvenir, and is unable to move on until he returns it.

• Audience response: His academy colleagues dismiss the fantastical elements, focusing instead on technical minutiae about the tallit’s threads.

• Insight: This exemplifies how Rabba’s audience interpreted his strange stories through their own priorities, often reducing vast mythical adventures to legal minutiae.

  “They say, ‘Oh, yeah, tell us more about that little thread...’ and basically dismiss the rest of the story and sort of say, well, you know, this was the kind of evidence that, in fact, you could have reported orally to us and given us some sort of legally relevant datum here. But instead, you’ve just told us this kind of preposterous tale...”
  — Dr. James Adam Redfield (09:10)

4. Pitfalls of Traditional Scholarly Approaches (11:31)

• Redfield critiques the tendency to fit strange Talmudic stories into rigid genres like “tall tales” or “apocalyptic tales,” arguing that such pigeonholing obscures the diversity of interpretations and the ways readers historically engaged these texts.

  “My overall criticism is that [these genre categories] tend to kind of pigeonhole these texts...and then creating a whole interpretation that’s rather too comprehensive and static...that obscures really the internal heterogeneity of the source itself.”
  — Dr. James Adam Redfield (12:14)

5. How Interpretive Frameworks Change Over Time (15:10 onward)

• Redfield periodizes interpretation across Talmudic through medieval eras:
  • Early Talmudic Era: Stories integrated into midrashic discourse, exploring scriptural questions about divine power.
  • Later Compilation: Tales grouped as a literary unit, read for connections, themes, and repetitions (“revelation through the stories”).
  • Stammaitic Period: Tales edited into extended thematic or exegetical units, linked to broader Talmudic concerns.

6. Orality vs. Textual Transmission (20:34)

• The stories bear marks of both oral and written tradition, featuring a poetic quality, alliteration, and wordplay.

• Redfield suggests they were likely performed and experienced orally before, during, and after their textualization.

  “There is a poetry to these stories, the way that they are performed...if you listen to them and you hear how they're put together, they might actually convey a sense of wonder or of amazement...so I think the sound dimension...points, in my view, to at least a predominantly oral setting in which Talmudic audiences are engaging them.”
  — Dr. James Adam Redfield (23:50)

7. Cross-Cultural Influences (24:47)

• Persian Context: Parallels with Zoroastrianism; similar mythical beasts and cosmological concerns.

• Greek Context: Jewish storytellers absorbed genres such as ethnography, “novel”/fiction, and romance from Hellenic sources.

• Jewish Adaptation (“Talmudization”): While Hellenic tales prized critical and empirical observation, rabbinic redactors often used Rabba’s stories as cautionary tales highlighting the limits of perception and the primacy of rabbinic interpretation.

  “When rabbis, as I call it, Talmudize—not only retell but recast and edit and modify and comment on Rabba’s stories...I often find they do precisely the opposite. The same idea that this individual...he saw, he thought, he knew, and then he was profoundly wrong.”
  — Dr. James Adam Redfield (27:35)

8. Medieval & Early Modern Interpretations: Peshat vs. Allegory (29:43 onward)

• “Peshat” (Plain Sense): Rashbam (Rashi’s grandson) sought contextual and more literal readings, emphasizing what the text tries to convey in situ.
• Allegorical and Midrashic Approaches: Later commentators, especially in high medieval Ashkenaz and Sepharad, moved toward elaborate allegory—interpreting strange Talmudic tales as symbolic codes referencing sin, morality, or mystical cosmology.

  • The process paralleled Christian exegetical movements, such as those surrounding Song of Songs.

    “There’s enough material there to give us a sense of why they were looking for what they were looking for, who they were talking to and what they were doing with the material...all of a sudden we’re in early modern Poland...and he [Elkum Goetz] undertakes to interpret the stories as particular prescriptions for the way his students can combat their lustful urges, can tame their evil inclination, and can prevent demons from coming into the world.”
    — Dr. James Adam Redfield (38:07)

9. Hermeneutic Pluralism: Is There a “True” Reading? (40:07–44:26)

• Redfield resists assigning any “authentic” or “canonical” reading, arguing that meaning is inherently shaped by both text and reader, and is always historically situated.

  • There is no final, unchanging meaning but an ongoing, often chaotic process of meaning-making.

  “What I do have is a commitment to letting readers speak for themselves as much as possible, to creating a framework, an interpretive framework for engaging their minds that exposes their creativity, their diversity, their conflicts...”
  — Dr. James Adam Redfield (41:35)

• The metaphor of the book group: Through interpreting strange tales, one learns as much about the interpreter as the text.

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Rabba as the ethnographer:

  “He comes to represent...the figure of someone who has that kind of knowledge to offer, the kind of knowledge that an ethnographer or a traveler sometimes claims to have to offer.”
  — Dr. James Adam Redfield (05:41)

• On interpretive diversity:

  “Just as the text is very diverse and the readers are very diverse, so should our apparatus for understanding the history of their interpretation be properly differentiated.”
  — Dr. James Adam Redfield (13:38)

• On rabbinic canon as a horizon of interpretation:

  “The very idea of rabbinic canon as a kind of unifying horizon of meaning as a whole within which we can interpret all parts as connected to one another...is already, of course, true with scripture, but now is true with rabbinic texts as well.”
  — Dr. James Adam Redfield (36:53)

Timestamps: Key Segments

• [02:23] – Redfield’s intellectual background and turn to Talmud
• [03:43] – Summary of book’s focus and interpretive questions
• [04:41] – Introduction to Rabba bar Bar Hana and his tales
• [06:28] – Classic tale: gigantic bones and the “brushed aside” evidence
• [11:31] – Shortcomings of genre-based interpretations
• [15:10] – Periodization of interpretive modes from Talmudic through stammaitic periods
• [20:34] – Orality, language, and Talmudic storytelling
• [24:47] – Cultural interaction: Persian and Greek parallels; “Talmudizing” foreign tales
• [29:43] – Medieval readings: peshat, allegory, and intertextuality
• [37:51] – Influence of Christian exegesis and internal Jewish motives
• [40:07] – On authenticity, reader context, and pluralism
• [44:26] – The interpretive process as “knowing the reader”
• [45:31] – Redfield’s next project: Rabbis as anthropologists & Jewish custom

Conclusion

Redfield’s study is both a microhistory of one Talmudic oddity and a sweeping exploration of how Jewish readers across eras have turned “strange tales” into a laboratory for hermeneutic creativity. He foregrounds the diversity and dynamism of Jewish interpretation, cautioning against easy genres or reading hierarchies. The episode is essential listening for anyone interested in Jewish studies, interpretive theory, or the strange power of stories to outgrow their contexts and live on through the imaginations of their readers.