RBL 06/2014 David Weiss Halivni The Formation of the Babylonian Talmud Translated by Jeffrey L. Rubenstein New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. Pp. xxxv + 312. Cloth. $65.00. ISBN 9780199739882. Joshua Ezra Burns Marquette University Milwaukee, Wisconsin The latest offering by David Weiss Halivni is a welcome addition to his already-rich scholarly oeuvre. The Formation of the Babylonian Talmud is the first monograph-length study in English relating to Halivni s Meqorot umesorot (Sources and Traditions) project, a Hebrew-language commentary on the Babylonian Talmud thus far published in eight volumes between 1968 and 2012. 1 Prepared by Jeffrey L. Rubenstein, the present volume constitutes a programmatic statement of Halivni s source-critical approach, originally published as the introduction to his 2007 volume on the talmudic tractate Bava Batra. Yet more than merely translating his mentor s Hebrew prose, Rubenstein skillfully contextualizes Halivni s work amidst an ever-evolving discipline of critical scholarship on the Talmud far exceeding the limitations of its text. In what follows, therefore, I shall describe Halivni s and Rubenstein s respective contributions to the present volume before assessing the value of their joint effort as an aid to critical study of the Talmud and its history. 1. Earlier methodological statements in English include the fifth chapter of Halivni s Midrash, Mishnah, and Gemara: The Jewish Predilection for Justified Law (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986), 76 92; and idem, Aspects of the Formation of the Talmud, in Creation and Composition: The Contribution of the Bavli Redactors (Stammaim) to the Aggada (ed. Jeffrey L. Rubenstein; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005), 339 60, the latter of which summarizes Halivni s thesis as articulated in the volume presently under review.
Halivni presents his theory in four parts. The first part introduces a cadre of ancient rabbinic scribes whom he dubs the Stammaim, literally the anonymous ones. These proposed redactors have figured prominently in Halivni s work since the 1975 second volume of Meqorot umesorot on tractates Yoma-Ḥagigah. In his current estimation, Halivni dates the activities of the Stammaim from the late sixth century to the late eighth century. Over a span of roughly two hundred years, he argues, generations of anonymous Babylonian redactors collected locally sourced oral traditions associated with the earlier Jewish sages known as the Tannaim (ca. 70 200 CE) and the Amoraim (ca. 200 550 CE), that is, the named rabbinic authorities whose attributed sayings fill the pages of the Talmud. Despite deferring to the legislative prerogatives of their predecessors, the Stammaim routinely reorganized, supplemented, and emended the abstract oral dicta that they received in order to facilitate their constructive application and retransmission. These efforts resulted in the unattributed dialectical argumentation that frames the words of the Tannaim and Amoraim throughout the talmudic text. Only during the latest stages of this process did the Stammaim known since the Middle Ages as the Saboraim or reasoners (ca. 700 750) start to commit this verbally transmitted proto-talmud to writing, adding their explicit editorial glosses in the process. The Babylonian Talmud thus reached its current state of completion shortly after the age of the Saboraim (ca. 770 CE). The second part of his study sees Halivni take on the question the Talmud s editing. Observing the text s frequent exhibition of contradictory Tannaitic and Amoraic saying, he challenges the common assumption that the Talmud underwent a uniform process of editorial revision. Alluding to a misunderstood statement in the Talmud, Halivni dispels the traditional notion that the early fifth-century Babylonian sages Rav Ashi and Ravina saw to the end of the creative process exemplified in the main of the Talmud s commentary on the Mishnah (see b. Bava Metzi a 86a). At best, he contends, the Stammaim recognized Rav Ashi and Ravina II, a younger nephew of Ashi s colleague, as leading figures among the last generations of Amoraim thought to sustain authoritative knowledge of the Mishnah s sources. Contrary, therefore, to the idea that the Talmud was compiled by the later Babylonian Amoraim, Halivni asserts that those sages merely provided the raw materials for a more diffuse compositional enterprise later to be undertaken by the Stammaim. The next part of Halivni s treatment addresses the technical aspects of that redactional process. Focusing on the dialectical style of the Stammaim, Halivni argues that the mode of oral communication traditionally associated with the Tannaim long outlasted the composition of the Mishnah around 200 CE. Rather, Halivni argues, professional transmitters continued to cultivate Tannaitic dicta throughout the age of the Amoraim, preserving in their own oral cultural medium an ever-expanding body of received rabbinic wisdom. By the time that corpus reached the Stammaim, it had evolved into a
massive collection of abstract apodictic traditions of varied geographical and temporal provenance. Moreover, the vagaries of its oral transmission meant that many of those traditions were preserved in duplicate and sometimes inconsistent forms. The task, therefore, of the early Stammaim was to serve as combiners, synthesizing their received knowledge in a manner suited to their purpose of creating a cohesive commentary on the Mishnah. In practice, this meant providing forced ad hoc explanations of thematically related Amoraic materials that seemed to resist easy harmonization. This effort to juxtapose what were originally isolated source materials yielded the artificial dialogues between Amoraim of different times and places later to be inscribed in the Talmud s pages. The final major part of Halivni s discussion covers the origin of the Talmud s written form. Following its initial organization, the structured text of the oral proto-talmud was committed to memory by subsequent Stammaitic compilers to whom Halivni assigns further minor editorial embellishments. Among these, he posits, were transposers, who cross-referenced thematically related passages in the formative Talmudic corpus by replicating them in multiple redactional contexts. These final strokes of textual invention gave the completed Talmud the occasional appearance of a work compiled by a single editor or editorial collective in spite of its manifold features indicating no such coordinated effort. Halivni concludes his treatment with a postscript comparing the contributions of the Babylonian Stammaim to the relatively more subtle redactors of the Mishnah, the Palestinian Talmud, and the halakic Midrashim. Where those earlier rabbinic scribes, he submits, were not categorically disinclined to preserve elements of verbal exchange between past rabbinic personages, the Babylonian Stammaim were the first to construe dialectical argumentation as an a valid means of scriptural exegesis governed by its own hermeneutical principles. So much for Halivni s argument. I shall now comment briefly on Rubenstein s contributions. It bears noting that Rubenstein is uniquely suited to the task of curating Halivni s work, having studied under the latter s tutelage and having published several books of his own on the unique contributions of the Stammaim to the Babylonian Talmud. Naturally, his most significant contribution here is his lucid English translation of Halivni s highly technical Hebrew idiom. Rubenstein also provides a helpful biographical introduction detailing the development of Halivni s source-critical project and highlighting the more innovative features of his Stammaitic thesis. Finally, and perhaps most crucially, Rubenstein provides annotations on Halivni s text explaining the latter s sometimes obscure points of reference and updating his bibliography where necessary. He thus effectively transforms what was written as a progress report within a continuing series of complex talmudic commentaries into a self-contained study obliging to readers wanting for direct access to those volumes.
Let us now consider the advantages and disadvantages of Halivni s thesis. Rather than simply challenge traditional assumptions as to the Talmud s composition, Halivni adds depth to those assumptions by evaluating its text in view of its internal dynamics. As he demonstrates in his notes, past critical efforts to account for the Talmud s origin tended to proceed from the notion that the Babylonian Amoraim, the putative authors of the greater part of the Talmudic text, contributed to its form chiefly in their efforts to update the exegetical traditions of their recent Palestinian predecessors. Halivni, on the other hand, suggests that Babylonian Stammaim often deliberately reconceived the traditions of both the Palestinian and Babylonian Amoraim to thoroughgoing and profoundly innovative effect. Their purpose, then, was more than simply pragmatic. They aimed to breathe new life into the abstract legal statements of their forebears, to generate new exegetical discourses both current and relevant to the growing ranks of Jews throughout the Near East prone to seek practical guidance from the heads of the Babylonian rabbinic academies Halivni s vision of the Babylonian Talmud as the work of generations of authors and redactors not necessarily in direct communication with one another helps explain many of the more peculiar features of its text. To suppose that no one ever tried to impose logical uniformity upon its uniquely sourced oral traditions naturally appeals to the reader seeking to account for the Talmud s myriad repetitions, inconsistencies, and incongruities. If, as Halivni supposes, the form of the text remained in continual development for hundreds of years after the age of the Amoraim, it stands to reason that those centuries saw corresponding developments in its content. As Rubenstein points out in his introduction and annotations, this observation has already opened new vistas of research into the heretofore underappreciated influence of Mesopotamian and Iranian culture on a Mishnaic literary tradition conceived in Roman Palestine. Halivni s Stammaim did far more than simply convert that tradition into a new language. They developed the dialectical sensibilities and study techniques that would ensure the endurance of the Mishnah as the cornerstone of classical Jewish thought. Of course, Halivni s theory is susceptible to the same order of criticism leveled against other contemporary scholars who would seek to reduce ancient texts to theoretical sources lacking for empirical evidence. Although one can say with confidence that elements of the Talmud were transmitted, combined, compiled, and transposed, the cavalcade of editorial specialists adduced by Halivni are lacking for clear attestation amidst his mostly undifferentiated shadow collective of Stammaim. This naturally casts doubt over the historical quality of even his relative schematization of the Talmud s textual development at the hands of those anonymous scribes. In fairness, neither Halivni nor Rubenstein attempts to locate these proposed redactors in a specific time or place beyond relating their activities to a number of poorly documented bouts of civil unrest
involving the Jewish population of the Sasanian Empire. But that ambiguity is telling of the uncertain nature of their science. As for the material evidence most likely to support his argument, Halivni gives little air to the theory that the authors of the Babylonian Talmud made regular use of written texts, including not only the Mishnah but also the Tosefta, the Palestinian Talmud, and the early Midrashim. His steadfast assertion of the oral context of the Talmud s composition precludes conversation with scholars such as Christine Hayes and Richard Kalmin, who have argued just as plausibly that much of its exegetical innovation reflects the deliberate efforts of the Babylonian Amoraim to modify the words of their Palestinian predecessors for constructive application in their own disparate cultural climes. Nor does Halivni engage the vital work of Shamma Friedman, who has proposed an alternative theory regarding the authorship of the Talmud s anonymous content, dating it to just shortly after the age of the Amoraim. Also conspicuous in his absence from Halivni s treatment is Jacob Neusner, whose well-received form-critical theory of the Talmud s design receives only passing reference in Rubenstein s notes. In fact, Halivni s major dialogue partners are scholars of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries whose tentative theories of the Talmud s transition from the spoken to the written medium were current when he initiated his source-critical project in the 1960s. Those theories, in turn, are indebted to the even more tentative observations of the medieval talmudic commentators whom Halivni frequently cites as aides in his analytical process. As for more recent critical interlocutors, Halivni refers most frequently to his own work in the Meqorot umesorot series. This is certainly understandable in view of the original context of his contribution to the present volume. But it lends his argument a distinctly biased aspect. Rubenstein does a fair job of supplementing Halivni s limited bibliographical survey with reference to selected contemporary studies both complementing and varying from his mentor s agenda. Yet to his credit Rubenstein shows care in allowing Halivni s treatment to stand largely on its own merit. The result might leave some readers unsatisfied, although I imagine that others would have found the alternative no less objectionable. Despite these caveats, I should acknowledge that I find Halivni s disciplined scholarship here and throughout the pages of his Meqorot umesorot mostly agreeable and always stimulating. Any theory attempting to account for a subject as vast and as varied as the Babylonian Talmud is bound to incur snags in its execution. The marvel of Halivni s intricate portrait of the Stammaim is that it reads convincingly more often than not. In the final analysis, the author succeeds here in making his case for the need to recognize the contributions of the anonymous rabbinic sages and redactors whose names have been lost to history but who made the Talmud what it is today. Likewise, Rubenstein succeeds
in making his case for the monumental significance of Halivni s contributions to modern talmudic research. Both authors are therefore to be congratulated for producing a volume that undoubtedly will inspire further research on the origins of a treatise of foremost standing in the Jewish intellectual canon. Finally, I should say a word about the book s anticipated readership. The Formation of the Babylonian Talmud is a formidable volume. Compactly written and brimming with textual exemplars, Halivni s discussion makes for a rigorous read. The author assumes a considerable measure of familiarity with the Talmud s contents, its Aramaic idiom, and its textual mechanics. Rubenstein s translation certainly helps ease the digestion of Halivni s dense prose. Nevertheless, the finished product remains very much in the sophisticated vein of his Meqorot umesorot project. In short, this book is not an easy read. It is therefore not for readers seeking a straightforward introduction to the Babylonian Talmud or classical rabbinic culture in general. To my mind, the book seems best suited to those already familiar with the Talmud and prepared to question their preconceptions regarding its provenance. Irrespective of whether one agrees with Halivni s conclusions, those encountering his work for the first time in this volume will have their views of the Babylonian Talmud changed irreversibly.