Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 January 2010
The Babylonian Talmud consists almost entirely of arguments having as their aim the elucidation of the law, ruling, religious teaching or ethical idea. Theories are advanced and then contradicted. They are examined from many points of view and qualified where necessary. One argument leads to another when logic demands it. The claims of conflicting theories are investigated with great thoroughness and much subtlety. Fine distinctions abound between apparently similar concepts. The whole constitutes reasoning processes which have received the most careful study on the part of generations of Jewish scholars and have contributed more to the shaping of the Jewish mind than any other factor.
No serious student of the Babylonian Talmud can be unaware that, for all the variety of topics discussed in the work, there is a formal pattern to the argumentation. Whatever the subject matter, the moves open to the debaters are comparatively few in number and these are always expressed in the same stereotyped formulae. There is much originality in Talmudic argumentation but this consists in the application to new situations of conventional responses, not in the invention of new responses. The game is always played according to the rules.
These formal methods of argumentation occur with the utmost frequency in the Babylonian Talmud yet, although there is to be observed a complete consistency in their use, nowhere in the Talmud itself is any attempt made at their enumeration and classification. Part of this task was left to the famous post-Talmudic methodologies, largely concerned with the classification of Talmudic method. However, in the main, the Talmudic methodologies deal with the precise definition of the terms used rather than with the actual types of argument.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.