Rhetoric of Failed Refutation in the Bavli

Volume 10, No.2 lWnter 1992 73 RHETORIC OF FAILED REFUTATION IN THE BAVLII by David Kraemer David Kraemer is Associate Professor of Talmud and Rabbinics at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. He is the author of The Mind ofthe Talmud and editor of The Jewish Family: Metaphor and Memory. In my recent book, The Mind of the Talmud, I make certain claims concerning the underlying ideologies of the Talmud's authors based upon analyses of the Bavli's distinctive forms of expression. Trying to understand "the Bavli's characteristic preference for argumentation and process over settled conclusions," I argue that this quality of the Talmud's argumentational form bespeaks a recognition on the part of its authors, that Divine truth is ultimately indeterminable.2 The form itself suggests that Divine truth may be approached but never determined with confidence, and for this reason the 11 am indebted to Richard Kalmin and Burton Visotzky for their critiques and advice in revising this paper. 2Jacob Neusner has claimed that my characterization of the Talmudic form is incorrect (see How the Talmud Shaped Rabbinic Discourse [Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1991], pp. 147-153). I assume he cannot mean my speaking ofthe Talmud as "argumentational " (where "argumentational" means the presence of regular questioning, discussion, objections, search for reasons, etc.), for every page of the Talmud attests to its argumentational quality; this claim requires no demonstration. He must instead have a different conception of the nature of the Talmud's argumentation; the many texts and phenomena I identify he characterizes as "anecdotal" and therefore essentially irrelevant to the inquiry. Yet his confidence in his alternative is based, in the present context, upon the evidence of "Babylonian Talmud Tractate Zebahim Chapters One and Five" (p. 150); even assuming his understanding of that material is correct, can he imagine that the evidence of two chapters speaks for the whole? I draw upon evidence distributed among many dozens of chapters! I shall have ample occasion to respond to Neusner's arguments in the future. At present, I merely offer the phenomenon analyzed herein as but one more support for the essential correctness of my characterization and conclusions. 74 SHOFAR Talmud is more concerned with theoretical argumentation than with halakhic (practical) conclusions.3 Underlying this position, I suggest, is the recognition that God's will, recorded in Torah, is accessible only through profoundly human and therefore fallible acts of interpretation.4 Affirming this flaw, the Bavli's authors place the act of interpretation, in the application of human reason, at the very center of their enterprise.5 This ideological position is implicit, I suggest, in many of the Bavli's common forms. For example, when the Bavli begins a deliberation with two or more opinions or interpretations-as it does so often-it will typically seek to maintain the viability of all expressed opinions, even when those opinions are contradictory. What, other than the ideology described briefly above, could lie at the foundation of such an approach? Certainly, if the Bavli's primary concern were the actual determination of halakha or divine truth, such a preference would be indefensible. Similarly, the Bavli pursues alternatives-alternative explanations, alternative answers, alternative interpretations -with a zeal that is difficult to comprehend.6 Again, how could alternatives be so important if divine truth resided in a single known position ? The Bavli's extensive attention to opinions that are known to be rejected in practice, such as those of the school of Shammai, is another wellknown illustration of this ideology. In fact, the Bavli's argumentational form itself-so I argue-with its incessant questioning and search for justifications , shows the recognition of its authors that the truth may not finally be determined. The authoritative tradition does not, the Bavli shows, speak with a single, unambiguous voice. But there are certain features in the argumentation of the Bavli that might appear to contradict the thesis that I have laid out. The most obvious of these are the Bavli's common willingness to support given positions, the record of conclusive halakhic decisions in some talmudic discussions, and the presence, at the Bavli's final compositional layer, of definitive refutations. I will comment on the...