The Talmud is a collection of rabbinic elocutio around the classical topics (ars topica judicalis) of the Mishna. The exchanges and discussions conducted at different times and at different Yeshivoth were recorded and eventually edited in the Talmud. In the Bavli the weaving of diverse sources, views, and controversies at hand - many taking place in different Yeshivoth over long periods of time - are laced into a single, cogent unit known as a sugya (pl. sugyoth), the Syriac equivalent of halakha, implying “course,” “flow,” [and] “structure.” The sugya comes in various forms. The weaving and design of the sugya follow specific structures, conditioned by editorial strategies, rather than simple chronology. The language is dense and precise, and uses technical terminology…Although referred to as the interpretation of the Mishna, the Talmud is not a commentary in the standard sense of the term…
The Babylonian Talmud was designed to meet the crisis of spiritual and intellectual fragmentation brought about by the collapse of Jewish society. From its incipient moment, Jewish strategy had been designed to confront political crisis by creating something new in the annals of history…the Babylonian Talmud is much more than a book. It is a virtual society, embodying the minds and voices of myriads of Jews at the Kalla gatherings.
The Talmud is not the product of a cloister. Quite the contrary. It was born in the open space of the Kalla, of which the classroom was a part, not the other way around. According to tradition, the Babylonian Talmud was redacted under the direction of Rav Ashe (335-426), head of the Yeshiva and the national court (Beith Din), together with his colleague Ravina (d. 422). Primarily, the Talmud contains the material that was either developed at, or transmitted and revised by, a national institution: the Yeshiva. “All” the traditions that were deposited in the hands of the sages, “from the days of Moses and until his time,” wrote Maimonides, were “redacted by Rav Ashe in the Talmud.” It was subsequently “conluded” (Gamru) with the formal approval of the elders. A key factor for the understanding of the Babylonian Talmud is that it constitutes a formal closure of the “oral” period: de jure “Rav Ashe and Ravina” are “the last two sages in the chain of oral tradition inaugurated by Moses.” Henceforth, no sage would have the authority to introduce any further material in the name of oral tradition…
For fifteen hundred years, the Talmud stood alone against cultural arrogance, the aggression of the mighty, the epistemology of the infallible, the conceit of the spiritual superior and the intellectually enlightened…Alone it stands for consensus rather than coercion; for dialectics and interaction in which all members of society have a voice, including those standing outside the fringe of Scripture - the magicians and the heretics, the agnostics and the fraudulent, and even the depraved and the demoniac. All of these, within the joyous ambiance of Kalla, amidst a multitude of voices in a multitude of languages, spoken by the most diverse assembly known to humankind: the Jewish crowd. Without these voices, the teachings of the sages would be empty, without a soul; Israel’s memory would fade away and with it the words uttered by God at Sinai.
