[dejb]

This is a pretty lame 'religious mystery' in my view. There doesn't seem to be any real wisdom in the method of splitting the debt and the explanation seems fairly straight forward. It isn't even new. Why people find this interesting is beyond me. What's next 'A numerical analyses of the Book of Revelations and Daniel'?

[sethg]

Even though the Talmud is a religious document, the discussions in it cover a wide range of topics, including theology, ritual law, civil law (which, for observant Jews, is religious), medicine, demonology, funny stories about what happened when Rabbi So-and-So got drunk, etc., etc. It’s like fifth-century Usenet.

[kilian]

Honestly, I would enjoy this. Game theory, and motivations behind a relatively unintuitive split such as this are only understood fairly recently. That the writer(s) of the Talmud (15+ centuries old) already knew this is very interesting.