Satlow's Jewish Marriage in Antiquity

It only took me a decade to get to it, but I'm reading Michael L. Satlow's Jewish Marriage in Antiquity. I'm realizing how very little I know of the differences between the Yerushalmi and the Bavli voices.  Also, when you get to overhear conversations about something as fundamental to social identity as marriage, you hear parenthetical comments that betray the differences between between ideals and normalcy. I.e. the rabbis give you both "what life should be like" and "what life is like".  You don't get nearly as much of these insights from the Dead Sea Scrolls or apocalyptic literature.  Satlow's book draws out these distinctions brilliantly.

-anthony