The Rhetoric of the Babylonian Talmud, Its Social Meaning and Context

Richard C. Smith is a professor in the Classics Department of the
University of Alberta.

This sixth volume in the series Studies in Christianity and Judaism
(which has focused on the interrelationship of the two faiths or the
cultural and social contexts in which they developed in the period from
the second century B.C.E. to the sixth century C.E.) is a specialized
study of the rhetorical patterns found in the Babylonian version of the
Talmud, which was edited ca. 550-650 C.E.

Most of the work is taken up by analysis of the structural and
dialectical formularies found in the Bavli (as the Babylonian Talmud is
called) and how they differ from the content of the Mishnah (ca. 200
C.E.) or even the Palestinian Talmud, edited in the 5th century C.E.
Thus, in contrast with the other volumes in this series (including one
by Professor Lightstone himself), which hold material of considerable
interest to the nonspecialist, the bulk of this work is quite technical
in its examination of the rhetorical reasoning of the rabbinic academies
in late Persian Mesopotamia.

The last chapter, however, provides some more interesting conclusions.
Just as the Mishnah offers a reflection of the social and political
transformation of the rabbinic movement from 165 to 220 C.E., so the
Bavli offers insight into the developments that took place within
rabbinism during the last century of Sassanid rule. The outstanding
feature of this development was the emergence of the rabbinic academy as
an autonomous institution that replaced other forms of Jewish
self-government, and in which virtuosity in religious rhetoric was the
new certification of authority and the justification of argument for its
own sake. Thus, just as the rabbis who created the Mishnah acted as
priestly scribes to create intellectually an “ideal” Temple state on
which their lives could be based following the chaos resulting from the
destruction of the actual temple, so the rabbis of Babylonia also had to
deal with a changing world in which insularity was an impossibility and
a new technique of authority was needed to link the various Jewish
communities. With the formation of the Talmud, Judaism was prepared to
face the disappearance of aristocratic self-government and the new
situation resulting from the Islamic conquest of Babylonia.