In this book, which is a slightly revised version of his dissertation, Aryeh Cohen tackles the challenge of reading the Babylonian Talmud as “literature.” This is a complex task, because the basis for a literary reading is not readily apparent. Large portions of the Bavli consist of logically dense legal argumentation. Cohen is to be commended for making these dense passages that comprise the overwhelmingly larger part of the Bavli the central topic of his analysis, for they give the Bavli its most distinctive literary qualities. Other approaches focus on subunits of rabbinic literature that are overtly literary, like parables or sage stories (ma‘asim). While these approaches stress the literary qualities of rabbinic literature, as Cohen notes, they treat the subunits in isolation and consequently ignore the meaning conferred upon them by their broader contexts.