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The Reader's Guide to the Talmud

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The Reader's Guide to the Talmud THE READER’S GUIDE TO THE TALMUD Jacob Neusner BRILL THE READER’S GUIDE TO THE TALMUD THE BRILL REFERENCE LIBRARY OF ANCIENT JUDAISM Editors J. NEUSNER (Bard College) — H. BASSER (Queens University) A.J. AVERY-PECK (College of the Holy Cross) — Wm.S. GREEN (University of Rochester) — G. STEMBERGER (University of Vienna) — I. GRUENWALD (Tel Aviv University) — M. GRUBER (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev) G. G. PORTON (University of Illinois) — J. FAUR (Bar Ilan University) VOLUME 5 THE READER’S GUIDE TO THE TALMUD BY JACOB NEUSNER BRILL LEIDEN • BOSTON • KÖLN 2001 This book is printed on acid-free paper. Cover design: Robert Nix, Badhoevedorp, The Netherlands Die Deutsche Bibliothek - CIP-Einheitsaufnahme Neusner, Jacob: The reader’s guide to the Talmud / by Jacob Neusner – Leiden ; Boston ; Köln : Brill, 2001 (The Brill reference library of ancient Judaism ; Vol. 5) ISBN 90–04–12187-0 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is also available ISSN 1566-1237 ISBN 90 04 12187 0 © Copyright 2001 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Brill provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910 Danvers 01923, USA Fees are subject to change. printed in the netherlands preface v CONTENTS Preface . vii Bibliography . xxii Part One The Talmud’s Formal Qualities Chapter one: The Bavli’s One Voice . 3 Chapter two: The Bavli’s Two Languages . 30 Chapter three: The Bavli’s Constituent Elements: Compositions and Composites . 52 Part Two How the Talmud thinks Chapter four: The Bavli’s Intellectual Character . 111 Chapter five: The Bavli’s Dialectics . 161 Part Three The Talmud and Judaism Chapter six: The Talmud and the Torah . 205 Chapter seven: The Question of Tradition . 258 Appendix: The Bavli’s Unique Voice . 295 General Subject Index . 365 Index of Textual References . 369 This page intentionally left blank preface vii PREFACE The Bavli, or Talmud of Babylonia, the foundation-document of Judaism, now finds its place in the high culture of the English-speak- ing world. Numerous translations and introductions make the work accessible, and considerable response in the market-place of culture indicates an interest in what the Talmud has to teach. That is as it should be. For the Talmud offers a compelling possibility of culture: the rational reconsideration of the givens of the social order. It shows the way to the systematic translation of high ideals of social and personal conduct into the humble realities of the workaday world. Those high ideals are set forth in Scripture, which the Talmud frames into the rules of the reasoned conduct. Its rigorous and systematic, argumentative and uncompromisingly rational inquiry sets forth the moral and civil consequences of Scripture’s laws and narratives. This the Bavli does in vast detail, the rigorous inquiry of criticism extending into the smallest matters. So the Talmud sets forth an orderly world, resting on reason and tested by rationality, all in accord with con- sistent principles. To the cultural chaos of our own day the Talmud shows a way of rationality to a world in quest of reason and order. A commentary to the Mishnah, a philosophical law-code made up of sixty-two topical expositions or tractates compiled in the Roman-ruled Land of Israel by ca. 200 C.E., the Bavli, produced at about 600 C.E. in the Iranian satrapy of Babylonia, in the vicin- ity of present-day Baghdad, takes up the Hebrew Scriptures (a.k.a., the Old Testament). The Talmud translates Pentateuchal narratives and laws into a systematic account of its “Israel’s” entire social or- der. In its thirty-seven topical presentations of Mishnah-tractates, the Talmud portrays not so much how people are supposed to live— this the Mishnah does—as how they ought to think, the right way of analyzing circumstance and tradition alike. That is what makes encounter with the Bavli urgent for the contemporary situation. To a world such as ours, engaged as it is, at the dawn of a new century by standard reckoning, in a massive enterprise of reconstruction after history’s most destructive century, old systems having given way, new ones yet to show their merit and their mettle, the Talmud presents a considerable resource. voorw.p65 7 4/4/01, 2:01 PM viii preface The Bavli shows not only a way of reform, but, more valuable still, a way of thinking and talking and rationally arguing about reform. When we follow not only what the sages of the Talmud say, but how they express themselves, their modes of critical thought and—above all—rigorous argument, we encounter a massive, con- crete instance of the power of intellect to purify and refine. For the sages of the Talmud, alongside the great masters of Greek philoso- phy and their Christian and Muslim continuators, exercise the power of rational and systematic inquiry, tenacious criticism, the exchange of not only opinion but reason for opinion, argument and evidence. They provide a model of how intellectuals take up the tasks of so- cial criticism and pursue the disciplines of the mind in the service of the social order. And that, I think, is what has attracted the wide- spread interest in the Talmud as shown by repeated translations of, and introductions to, that protean document. Not an antiquarian interest in a long-ago society, nor an ethnic concern with heritage and tradition, but a vivid and contemporary search for plausible examples of the rational world order, animate the unprecedented interest of the world of culture in the character (and also the con- tents) of the Bavli. That is the premise of this Reader’s Guide to the Talmud, that to which, I think, people wish to gain access. The Talmud embodies applied reason and practical logic in quest of the holy society. That model of criticism and reason in the en- counter with social reform of which I spoke is unique. The kind of writing that the Talmud represents has serviceable analogues but no known counterpart in the literature of world history and philosophy, theology, religion, and law. That is because the Talmud sets forth not only decisions and other wise and valuable information, but the choices that face reasonable persons and the bases for deciding matters in one way rather than in some other. And the Talmud records the argument, the constant, contentious, uncompromising argument, that endows with vitality the otherwise merely informa- tive corpus of useful insight. “Let logic pierce the mountain”—that is what sages say. Not many have attained the purity of intellect characteristic of this writing. With the back-and-forth argument, the Talmud enlightens and engages. How so? The Talmud sets forth not so much a record of what was said as a set of notes that permit the engaged reader to reconstruct thought and recapitulate reason and criticism. Indeed, the Talmud treats coming generations the way composers treat unborn musicians: they provide the notes for the voorw.p65 8 4/4/01, 2:01 PM preface ix musicians to reconstruct the music. In the Talmudic framework, then everything is in the moving, or dialectical argument, the give and take of unsparing rationality, which, through our own capacity to reason, we are expected to reconstitute: the issues, the argument, the prevailing rationality. The Bavli makes enormous demands upon its future. It pays a massive compliment to its heirs. In that aspect, the Talmud recalls the great philosophical dialogues of ancient and medieval times. Readers familiar with the dialogues of Socrates as set forth by Plato—those wonderful exchanges con- cerning abstractions such as truth and beauty, goodness and justice, will find familiar the notion of dialectical argument, with its unfold- ing, on-going give-and take. But in the concrete statement of the Talmud they will be puzzled by the chaos of the Talmudic dialec- tic, its meandering and open-ended character. And they will miss the formal elegance, the perfection of exposition, that characterize Plato’s writings. So too, the Talmud’s presentation of contrary po- sitions and exposition of the strengths and weaknesses of each will hardly surprise legists. But the inclusion of the model of extensive exposition of debate surprises. Decisions ordinarily record the main points, but not the successive steps in argument and counter-argu- ment, such as we find here. And, more to the point, we expect decisions, while much of the Talmud’s discourse proves open-ended. The very character and the style of the Talmud’s presentation certainly demand a kind of reading not ordinarily required of us. What we are given are notes, which we are expected to know how to use in the reconstruction of the issues under discussion, the argu- ments under exposition. That means we must make ourselves active partners in the thought-processes that animate the document. Not only is the argument open-ended, so too the bounds of participa- tion know no limits. Indeed, it is the very reticence of the Talmud to tell us everything we need to know, the remarkable confidence of its compilers that generations over time will join in the argument they precipitate, grasp the principles they embody in concrete cas- es, find compelling the issues they deem urgent—it is that remark- able faith in the human intellect of age succeeding age that lifts the document above time and circumstance and renders it immortal.
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