[Avodah] Characterizing our era

[Micha Berger]

On Fri, Mar 02, 2012 at 12:26:14PM -0500, Jonathan Baker wrote:
: >the shoa is the dividing line
: 
: Is it, though?  It's A dividing line, sure, but do eras really have 
: dividing lines?  I think we discussed this some years ago, and it seems
: there are transition periods between the major periods, and that major
: codes often characterize the transitions: the Mishna, the Gemara, the
: Rambam, the SA....

We're using era in two different ways. I'm thinking more like the line
between ge'onim and rishonim. It had no characterizing text, but did
happen at a cultural rupture.

And what looks to us like a broad transition era looks like a line
with a few centuries hindsight. Rav tanna hu upalig. The mishnah was
a kind of line, but there was blurriness around it.

Last, yes, RARR expressed it as a guess, that he expects that 200
years from now this will be deemed a new era. Not that we could
really know that already.

:-)BBii!
-Micha

-- 
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