The Babylonian Talmud's Emphasis on Demarcation of Identity

No Boundaries for the Construction of Boundaries: The Babylonian Talmud’s Emphasis on Demarcation of Identity

Moshe Lavee

The growing awareness of the Talmud’s gradual construction has afforded scholars new tools for examining historical developments during the talmudic period. Equipped with this new awareness, we are now able to investigate otherwise undetected social and cultural developments in Talmudic times. Unique tendencies of the Babylonian Talmud are manifested in three differ- ent ways:

1. in the structure and arrangement of materials, which hints at the distinct agenda of the redactors; 2. in later layers of additions and comments by the savoraim or stammaim; 3. on “Babylonian baraitot” and meimrot, namely, Babylonian versions of tannaitic and early Palestinian amoraic statements, whose innovative character can be discerned from a comparison with parallels in earlier rabbinic texts from the Land of Israel.1

At first sight, the methods used for identifying the last two phenomena seem to contradict one another. The effort to identify late additions, as in phenom- enon 2, is based on the assumption that they were added to earlier materials that were preserved verbatim, and still reflect the authentic sayings of their authors. Synoptic comparisons, however, reveal at times that the cited texts, as we have them in the Bavli, are comprehensive reworkings of the Palestinian version to the extent that they may be identified as Babylonian baraitot.

1 For recent surveys of pertinent methodologies see the introduction in J. L. Rubenstein, Creation and Composition (Tübingen 2005) 1–22; R. L. Kalmin, “The Formation and Character of the Babylonian Talmud,” in: S. T. Katz (ed.), The Cambridge History of Judaism, vol. 4 (Cambridge 2006) 840–76; Y. Brody, “The Literature of the Gaonim and the Talmudic Text,” Talmudic Studies 1 (1990) 237–303; E. Fonrobert and M. S. Jaffee, The Cambridge Companion to the Talmud (Cambridge 2007) 1–37; S. Friedman, Talmudic Studies: Investigating the Sugya, Variant Readings and Aggada (New York 2010).

It seems that the conceptual and social circumstances that led to introduc- ing Babylonian changes had worked in both channels. At times they led to minor but significant rephrasing of earlier materials, (Babylonian baraitot and meimrot) and at times they are recognized because they appear in late anony- mous Aramaic additions (stam). Together, the three phenomena produce the organizing or lecturing voice of the Bavli. It is important to clarify that I do not claim here an authorial coher- ence of this voice; neither do I accept its perception as the product of inten- tional redactors. Rather, this voice is the conglomerated product of centuries of evolution of the text in a Babylonian environment. The “Babylonization” of rabbinic culture began during the last generations of the Babylonian amoraim, who contributed to, and shaped, the nature of Babylonian discussions, and hardly left any influence on the rabbinic works of the Land of Israel (from Rava and Abbayye onwards). This activity continued with those who were involved in organizing sugyot, in the late additions of comments and questions; and it ended (but was never sealed) with minor changes to the text during the long period of its oral transmission, well into the Gaonic era. I doubt whether the talmudic text permits a more delicate and detailed account of its formation than this sketchy presentation. In the following pages I use these three categories—arrangement of materials, late comments on earlier texts, and reworking of earlier texts—to portray briefly the unique voice of the Bavli in issues related to the demarcation of identity and the marking of social boundaries. Social boundaries are expressed in various manners: they are declared in the imagined gates of the city, the act of conversion; this is the procedure of entrance into the group, and the way this procedure is designed, performed, and conceived. They are stated in the perception of newcomers. They are manifested in engagement in, or avoidance of, seeking new adherents. They may also be noticed in the liminal social areas between “us” and “them,” representing the extent to which the group permits the existence of those who are neither here nor there. The following examples will demonstrate a relatively consistent tendency towards further fortifying the boundaries of Jewish identity in the Bavli. This tendency is manifested in all three modes described in the first paragraph of the present study: the structuring of larger units of texts (no. 1); commenting upon and contextu- alizing earlier traditions (no. 2), and rephrasing and reworking them (no. 3). The overall cultural work of this process offers something which is beyond the introduction of a unique Babylonian agenda. These textual processes divert the chronological prism, and portray later developments as the fruits of earlier generations.