Levinas himself defines his Talmudic endeavor as a translation of the Talmud into Greek, the language of philosophy. Within the shared "Greco-Biblical culture" of Europe, the Bible and the Talmud require the universality of philosophical discourse, so that they do not degrade into mere elements of identity for a racial or national community.

The Aristotelian "one must philosophize" inevitably applies to the European person, whether Jewish or non-Jewish, whether religious or not. However, this formulation of the biblical message in Greek does not at all mean that it acquires, in this way, what it lacks, namely universality, but rather, on the contrary, it can be philosophically articulated because it has an "inherent universality." Biblical monotheism is universally defined.

"Monotheism is not the arithmetic of the divine. It is perhaps the supernatural gift to see, beneath the various traditions that each continues, one person like another. It is a school of alienation and anti-racism." Nor does this Greek translation of the Talmud mean that the relationship between Athens and Jerusalem is unbalanced, implying that Judaism needs Hellenism but not vice versa.

"Jewish uniqueness needs to be translated into Greek, which we have learned in Europe, thanks to assimilation. We have a great obligation to articulate in Greek the principles that Greece ignored. Jewish uniqueness awaits its philosophy." from the Prolegomena of Stavros Zouboulakis