The Talmud is one of the richest and most complicated works of literature the world has ever known. Since being composed around 1500 years ago it has inspired not only religious reverence but significant intellectual engagement. In this course learners will be introduced to the unique characteristics of this text and the challenges that inhere in studying it while studying a chapter of the Talmud. Students of the course can expect to develop an appreciation for how the Talmud works and why it continues to inspire religious and intellectual devotion. They will be challenged to employ critical reading skills and to analyze legal and historical concepts.
Video 19 Palestinian Talmud
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From the course by Northwestern University
The Talmud: A Methodological Introduction
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Tosefta, Tannaitic Midrash and Palestinian Talmud
Rabbinic literature consists of multiple works in three genres—Midrash, Mishnah and Talmud. This module introduces each of these different genres with a comparative analysis of texts related to false testimony in works of each type.
Meet the Instructors
Barry Scott WimpfheimerAssociate Professor
Religious Studies
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Recall from our prior videos, that Midrash and Mishnah started out as styles of
learning among small groups of rabbis in the 1st and 2nd century before becoming
crystallized as works of literature that were originally published orally.
Around the year 200 C.E. Rabbi Judah the Prince published the Mishnah,
a work that combined the contributions of various Rabbinic study halls and
staked a claim to being the definitive statement of religious life.
The Mishnah unequivocal clarity is both its greatest strength and
its greatest weakness.
Because the Mishnah asserts everything largely without rhyme or reason
a reader or hearer is left wondering where the author derived some of these ideas.
On the other hand while Midrashic works are messily disorganized,
they are clearly built upon the authority of the Bible.
And one can see the direct connection between a new meaning and
the Biblical original.
Like Midrash and Mishnah, Talmud emerged as yet another style of learning.
This style of learning came to produce an oral literature.
The propagation of this learning style among rabbinic circles in different
locations is how two separate Talmuds came to be produced.
The Palestinian Talmud sometimes called Talmud Yerushalmi and
the Babylonian Talmud sometimes called Talmud Bavli.
As a genre of literature Talmud is something of a meta genre
that combines the separate disciplines of Merosh and Mishnah.
Talmudic passages commonly begin by asking how we know a certain
idea presented in the Mishnah.
The answer to this question is always a Midrash.
Which connects the Mishnaic idea with a biblical verse as understood rabbinically.
The two Talmuds constitute a single genre on the basis of their similarities.
Here are the things they have in common.
Both Talmuds are structured around the Mishnah.
Both contained comments attributed to rabbis who lived both before and
after the period of the Mishnah composition.
Both produced something of a multi-generational conversation.
Both are marked by intense logic and dialectical analysis and
both are written in a combination of Hebrew and Aramaic.
But the two Talmud's also have striking differences, starting with size.
The Babylonian Talmud is much longer in terms of total text, and
the average smaller unit, the or is also longer.
The two Talmuds are written in different dialects of Aramaic.
While the Babylonian Talmud records attributed statements from six generations
of post missionary rabbis, the Palestinian Talmud only attributes statements to
four generations of post missionary rabbis.
Finally, the Palestinian Talmud has much less textual signage in
to facilitate reading.
There are four interrelated factors that explain these differences.
First, the Palestinian Talmud was redacted
after a shorter period in which Talmud was the main style of learning.
While the Babylonian Talmud showed signs of strong intellectual activity
beyond the six generations of attributed rabbis, the Palestinian Talmud seems to
have been redacted and closed after four generations of rabbis.
Second, in addition to the shorter period of gestation, the Palestinian Talmud's
reaction was less literarily ambitious than that of the Babylonian Talmud.
Where the editors or of the Babylonian Talmud actively reorganize inherited
materials and contributed sizeable chunks of anonymous commentary and
exposition the of the Palestinian Talmud allowed their
inherited materials to settle in place with much framing or interpretation.
The Babylonian Talmud is the only work of literature definitively produced
by the rabbis of Babylonia.
In contrast there are more than twenty works of Midrash and two works of Mishna,
in addition to the Palestinian Talmud that survived from Palestine.
Fourth, some of the differences identified in terms of redaction and textual signage
are not a function of the original work itself, but of its reception history.
After the Rabbinic period the Babylonians home had become celebrated and
well studied, while the Palestinians home had languished.
There are many reason why this happened, the major one being,
that the figures who popularize Rabbinic literature were living in Babylonia.
But the reasons are less important than the fact that the Babylonians home,
it was heavily stylized during its period of oral transmission in the eighth and
ninth centuries.
And would continue to be intentionally and unintentionally stylized
to facilitate reading during its period of handwritten manuscript transmission.
The Palestinian Talmud did not generate as robust a period of oral transmission, and
we can speculate on the basis of the paucity of handwritten manuscripts
that it underwent much less stylizing during this stage as well.
The subsequent boom in commentary on the Babylonian Talmud and
the dearth of commentary on the Palestinian only exacerbated these issues.
The first printed edition of the Palestinian Talmud, Venice, 1523,
drew its text from a 1289 manuscript,
now housed at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands.
If you look at the beginning of the first chapter of Makkot you will find all of
the chapter's Mishnah text at the beginning before any of the Talmud
commentary on the Mishnah.
This was the original manuscript practice for Babylonian Talmud as well before
scribes facilitated learning by chopping up the Mishnah and
associating specific sections of Talmud with appropriate Mishnaic sections.
The Yerushalmi text opens with a statement attributed the third generation rabbi,
Rabbi Ba bar Mamel.
The syntax of the statement marks it as exegetical and
this is a case in which he was killed, but if he was not killed, no.
One of the things that makes the Palestinian Talmud so
difficult to read is that there is much less editorial help for the reader.
Rabbi Ba bar Memel statement is not introduced and
is vague enough to potentially attach to a number of statements in the Mishna.
The anonymous editorial voice, the stamp of the Rishawi
attaches it to the Mishnah about recurring sets of witnesses who each come and
falsify the testimony of the previous set.
The stam sees Rabbi Ba's statement as a comment on a view you have Rabbi Judah
that says in the Mishnah about recurring false witnesses,
that only the first set of witnesses is killed.
Rabbi Ba is thus adding something to Rabbi Judah's statement.
Since Rabbi Judah thinks that the entire scenario is a conspiracy,
it is strange that he licenses even the killing of the first set of witnesses.
Rabbi Ba explains Rabbi Judah's meaning as referencing a case in which the conspiracy
only materialized after the execution of the first set of witnesses.
One cannot resurrect these executed witnesses, but
one certainly would not kill the first set of witnesses once it became clear that
a conspiracy was involved.
The text continues with another third-generation Rabbi.
Rabbi Bone asks about a case in which the new rabbinic technique for
definitively establishing a false witness ends up in a gray area.
What if a set of witnesses testifies that so-and-so murdered someone in Lod
on the first of the month, and a second set testified that the witnesses were in
Caesarea on the 5th of the month, and
a third set testified that the second set was in Zippori on the 10th of the month.
Though the testimony takes the proper forum for
establishing a false witness, the content allows for some wiggle room as
it would be possible with some difficulty to have been in both places.
Rabbi Bone decides that in this case,
one can not kill the defendant because the initial witnesses may be lying and
one can not kill the witnesses either because they may be speaking the truth.
One of the challenges of studying the Palestinian Talmud is that there are often
aspects that are difficult to explain.
Consider the passage we just read.
Why does Rabbi Bone narrate a case where there are three sets of witnesses instead
of a case with two sets of witnesses?
If the point of the hypothetical is to explain that it is unclear whether
the defendant is guilty or not there is no need for the third set of witnesses.
Once the second set of witnesses challenges the first set about
their location,
that should undermine their credibility enough to shed doubt on their testimony.
The inclusion of the third set of witnesses might indicate
that the hypothetical was offered as commentary on the mission of
regarding the conspiracy of multiple lying witnesses.
If that is the case, then it could be commenting on either that majority view,
that all the conspiring witnesses can be killed, or
the view of Rabbi Judah, where only the first set is killed.
I would argue that it is most likely commenting on Rabbi Judah, and
it understands Rabbi Judah differently than Rabbi Ba bar Mamel.
Rabbi Ba bar Mamel had assumed that Rabbi Judah would not
kill even the first set of witnesses in a conspiracy case.
Rabbi Bone disagrees.
And understands Rabbi Judah as punishing the first set of witnesses,
uniquely in cases of conspiracy.
As if the conspiracy is itself strong
evidence that the first set of witnesses are liars.
The hypothetical is designed to tweak Rabbi Judah's position
in cases in which the conspiracy is uncertain.
The constructed scenario is designed to show that the arrival in court of
multiple alternating witnesses is not in and of itself proof of a conspiracy.
And the guilt of the first set of witnesses,
in such a case even Rabbi Judah will not execute the first set of witnesses.
Notice how much work I had to do to explain a few words in the Palestinian
Talmud and how even after I'm done I cannot be 100% confident in my reading.
This is a typical experience for readers of the Palestinian Talmud.
In the next video we will see how the prominent Babylonian Rabbi Rava handles
a case similar to that of Rabbi Bow.
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