The Mind of the Talmud: An Intellectual History of the Bavli

by David Kraemer

This critical study traces the development of the literary forms and conventions of the Babylonian Talmud, or Bavli, analyzing those forms as expressions of emergent rabbinic ideology. The Bavli, which evolved between the third and sixth centuries in Sasanian Iran (Babylonia), is the most comprehensive of all documents produced by rabbinic Jews in late antiquity. It became the authoritative legal source for medieval Judaism, and for some its opinions remain definitive today. Kraemer here examines the characteristic preference for argumentation and process over settled conclusions of the Bavli. By tracing the evolution of the argumentational style, he describes the distinct eras in the development of rabbinic Judaism in Babylonia. He then analyzes the meaning of the disputational form and concludes that the talmudic form implies the inaccessibility of perfect truth and that on account of this opinion, the pursuit of truth, in the characteristic talmudic concern for rabbinic
process, becomes the ultimate act of rabbinic piety.

Genres: Jewish

240 pages, Hardcover

First published December 6, 1990

Reviews

[Andrew Jampol-Petzinger · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book offered helpful insight into a very specific line of argument, but with lots of valuable insights to be gleaned along the way even if/when its central claim might remain unpersuasive. The manner of evaluating the form of the Bavli itself as thetical (in other words, that the very form itself makes an argument or a claim) is provocative, even if the particular claim supposed to be identified in that form remains somewhat obscure. Ultimately Kraemer gives his strongest framing of his thesis in the last chapter, where it is the interplay between the rationalistic contributions of interpreters (sages, rabbis, etc.) and tradition/scripture that replaces any apodictic form of truth. At the same time, the fact that earlier formulations of this idea come as an argument that the Stammaim themselves believed that there *was* no single truth strikes me as overly anachronistic. Where one’s expertise is limited one has to suspend judgement, but such a claim, to my ears, has the sheen of coming from someone relatively unfamiliar with the tradition of Western philosophy, where many steps have to be make before one concludes a radical “relativism” from the sort of disagreement and pluralism evidenced in the Bavli.

Many excellent takeaways, an enterprising work :)