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Scripture Commentary in the Babylonian Talmud: Primary or Secondary Phenomenon?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 October 2009

David Kraemer
David Kraemer
Affiliation:
Jewish Theological Seminary, New York, N.Y.
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Extract

Virtually without exception, the Bavli is described by its students as a commentary on the Mishnah. This definition is such a commonplace that it is difficult to imagine the need to test or defend it. Its accuracy seems so selfevident that the question “what is the Bavli?” is itself rarely, if ever, asked.

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AJS Review , Volume 14 , Issue 1 , Spring 1989, pp. 1 - 15
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Copyright © Association for Jewish Studies 1989

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References

My gratitude is due to Baruch Bokser and Leonard Gordon for their kind suggestions in the revision of this paper.

1. Chicago and London, 1986.

2. See Neusner, pp. 223 and 233.

3. See Torah: From Scroll to Symbol in Formative Judaism(Philadelphia, 1985), pp. 144f. The equation is also made in the Yerushalmi, as Neusner shows, but the explicit phrase “oral Torah” does not appear there; see pp. 75–77.Google Scholar

4. See Neusner, Judaism, pp. 96–100.Google Scholar

5. For the primary results of this research, see “Stylistic Characteristics of Amoraic Literature” (Ph.D. diss. Jewish Theological Seminary, 1984), hereafter cited as SCAL.

6. The “generations” are conventions, and there is some difference in arrangement among scholars. The sages to whom we are referring flourished in the mid-third to the mid-forth centuries.

7. The statistics for this sage have been misplaced, hence his absence from the following tables. His contribution was not as large as that of many others, however, and the sample is large enough that this will not affect the outcome.

8. These traditions were the “apodictic” traditions attributed to these sages, and not statements found in argumentational exchanges. Argumentational contributions are extremely rare in the earliest generations, and are considerably fewer in number than apodictic traditions even in the later generations that I include. Furthermore, comments on Scripture are rare in the argumentation. For this reason, our choice of data can be considered reliable. See SCAL, chaps, ii-iv.

9. Nos. xxxiii, xlviii, lvii, lviii, lxxiv.

10. Nos. xl, li, lxiii, lxviii-the language of composition of these units makes it likely that they are simply baraitot that are not identified as such.

11. Professor D. Halivni, in personal consultation, has confirmed this conclusion on the basis of his own studies with respect to the rest of the Bavli. The anonymous gemara rarely generates comment on Scripture independently.

12. I do not assume that traditions attributed to a particular sage were necessarily composed by that sage. That is in no way necessary for the data herein examined to be deemed reliable for present purposes. Even if the attributions are an absolute fiction (which I do not assume), they may still be used as a test for the distribution of Scripture comments through different Bavli tractates, for the reasons that I described above. The language I use below in reference to these attributions is more literal merely for purposes of brevity.

13. Depending upon the reading of the Mishnah, 3:7 may or may not quote two. In any case, the two that might be quoted are nearly identical, rendering them, for present purposes, a single text.