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How the Ba Vli Shaped Rabbinic Discourse the Case Of HOW THE BAVLI SHAPED RABBINIC DISCOURSE THE CASE OF SIFRA BY lacob Neusner Tampa, U.S.A. Not only did the framers of the Bavli define rabbinic discourse for the future, but they also redefined the discourse of the prior centuries. They were the on es who decided that only the Mishnah would receive a talmud, that is, a sustained exercise in applied reason and practical logic, set forth in a moving or dialectical argument aimed at holding together in a single, coherent structure a variety of facts and principles. The Mishnah would have a talmud, which then was The Talmud (whether of Babylonia or of the Land of Israel) - but not the Sifra, the Tosefta, or other received compositions and composites assigned Tannaite standing along with the Mishnah. Other talmuds, for those other Tannaite materials, can have been and were composed. But only one document, the Mishnah, would in the end have a talmud, and the other talmuds that were under way prior to the closure of the Talmud were either never brought to conclusion and closure or were simply suppressed. I think the former the more likely of the possibilities. So the Talmud, meaning both Talmuds, the Talmud of the Land of Israel and the Talmud of Babylonia, decisively shaped rabbinic discourse not only by what was done but also what was not done but left half-done. That the framers of the Bavli decided to do, and that they did, The Mishnah is not the sole document of the initial writings of the canon of the ludaism of the dual Torah - those classified as Tannaite in authority or standing - that was subjected to the sustained application of practical reason and critical analysis that, for the Mishnah, yielded the Talmud of Babylonia. Three other classifications of materials enjoyed that same remarkable reading: the Tosefta, the Sifra, and statements marked as Tannaite (e.g., with such sigla as TNY', TN', and the like), Each of these HOW THE BA VLI SHAPED RABBINIC DISCOURSE 205 classifications of received statements was read exactly as was the Mish­ nah, and the results of that reading were expressed in the rhetorical and logical program that characterizes the Talmud to the Mishnah. Not only so, but at a determinate age in the unfolding of the rabbinic writings, defined solely by the point of redaction of various writings, people working on the Mishnah and on these other compilations contemplated a talmud not only for the Mishnah, but also for the Tosefta, the Sifra, and some other compositions and even composites bearing Tannaite standing. So - from the perspective of the treatment of those other documents, besides the Mishnah - there can have been a talmud to the Tosefta, the Sifra, and other Tannaite formations or conglomerations of sayings. I shall show precisely wh at those other talmuds would have looked like by citing passages, sustained and weil executed, of Sifra-, Tosefta-, and baraita-criticism and amplification that are indistinguishable in any detail from passages of Mishnah-criticism. When the reading of the Mishnah that yielded our Talmud was under way, these other documents, or materials of the same status - Tannaite - as the Mishnah, also were being read along the same lines. But those other talmuds ne ver reached us, and although the Bavli contains ample indication that such talmuds could have come into being, it also contains no evidence that, in any sustained way, they did. Once we realize that ours is not the only Talmud that was under way from the closure of the Mishnah to the conclusion of the Bavli, 200-600, we then grasp how profoundly the framers of the Talmud of Babylonia reshaped ail prior discourse, since they made certain that there would be only one talmud, the Talmud, and only one privileged document entitled to such a talmud, namely, the Mishnah. The compositors of the Bavli, or the Talmud of Babylonia preserve evidence that, just as the Talmud of Babylonia was worked out as an analysis and critique of the Mishnah, so other docu­ ments were subjected to the same kind of critical analysis. These compo­ sitors provide us with important sampies of the written result of that analysis. Just as the Mishnah was studied in a systematic and orderly way so as to yield the Bavli as we have it, so the Sifra and the Tosefta (among numerous documents closed prior to the Bavli) were studied in the same way. Not only so, but certain types of statements, accorded the status of Tannaite, were systematically analyzed in their own terms as weIl. The bearing of these facts upon the problem of how to find out wh at passages of the Bavli attest to opinion held prior to the closure of the .
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