In the preceding chapter, I described the Talmud and the Platonic dialogues as complex writings that draw readers into their argument and action, encouraging them to question the text, to uncover problems inherent in its surface, and to search its depths for solutions. I also asserted that the moral and intellectual capacity of sympathetic imagination is an interpretative key that can unlock the inner meaning of aggadic and Platonic storytelling. In this chapter, we shall begin to see concretely what these claims amount to as we start to think through the Mishnah and Gemara of Ta'anit 3.

Ta'anit 3 and Plato's Euthyphro exemplify a distinctive feature of both the dialogues and the Talmud: the employment of narrative and drama to explore central themes and questions and thus to develop, at least implicitly, an overall argument. While Ta'anit as a whole reflects on a set of related halakhic issues pertaining to religious fasts, Ta'anit 3 is unusually rich in aggadic material relating to the lives and deeds (many of them miraculous) of certain rabbis and other Jewish “holy men.” So, too, the philosophical argument of the Euthyphro is embedded within the story of an encounter that occurs at a defining moment of Socrates' life – the beginning of the legal proceedings that will soon result in his conviction and execution.