Technical Terms for Tradition

Technical Terms for Tradition.

Particularly interesting are the cases in which a divergent account is presented before Ashi, and thus before the one who projected the definitive redaction of the Talmud, Ashi appearing in all these cases as representing the version first given. Thus the amora Mordecai said to Ashi: "Thou teachest thus; but we teach differently" (Men. 42b; Ber. 5a). In addition to such statements, which are ascribed to members of the Babylonian academies, and which indicate divergencies in amoraic tradition, the extant text of the Talmud contains also a number of othervariants, which are included without such statements. These are introduced by such formulas as "And if you will say (), referring to other authorities, or "There are those who say," or "There are those who teach," and similar phrases. The expression "another version" () frequently appears in the text as a superscription to a divergent account (Naz. 9b; B. K. 59a; hul. 119b; Tem. 5a, 6a, 9b; 11b, 30b [comp. Frankel in "Monatsschrift," 1861, x. 262]; Niddah 29a, 38a). All these instances afford an idea, even though but an imperfect one, of the gradual development of the Talmudic text. To comprehend why only practically a single Talmud was produced, despite the various academies, the great number of authoritative transmitters of the mass of material, and the number of generations that collaborated on the work, it must be borne in mind that there was a continual interchange of ideas between the academies, and that the numerous pupils of the successive generations who memorized the Talmud, and perhaps committed at least a part of it to writing, drew from a single source, namely, the lectures of their masters and the discussions in the academies; further, that, since the work on the Talmud was continued without interruption along the lines laid down by the first generation of amoraim, all succeeding generations may be regarded as one body of scholars who produced a work which was, to all intents and purposes, uniform. This unity finds its expression in the phraseology adopted in the anonymous framework of the Talmud, which terms the authors "we," exactly as a writer speaks of himself as "I" in an individual work. Examples of this phraseology occur in the following formulas: ("We then raised the question"; see Shab. 6b, 71a, 99b; Yoma 74a, 79b; Suk. 33a; Meg. 22a; Yeb. 29b; Kid. 49a; Git. 60b; Shebu. 22b; 'Ab. Zarah 35a, 52b; Niddah 6b); ("We have opposed [another teaching to the one which has been quoted]"); ("We have learned," or, in other words, "have received by tradition"), the conventional formula which introduces mishnaic passages; and, finally, ("Whence have we it?"), the regular preface to an inquiry regarding the Biblical basis of a saying. In all these formulas the "we" denotes the authors of the Talmud regarded as a collective unity, and as the totality of the members of the academies whose labors, covering three centuries of collaboration, resulted in the Talmud. It was in the Babylonian Academy of Sura, moreover, that the final redaction of the Talmud took place, the very academy that took the lead in the first century of the amoraic period; and the uniformity of the Talmud was thus assured, even to the place of its origin.