The Talmud: Commentary or Encyclopaedia?! How to Make Sense of a Genre

• In Event: Graduate Student Lightning Session: Rabbinic Literature and Culture

Abstract

The Babylonian Talmud (BT) is usually referred to as an enhanced commentary of the Mishna, a work of encyclopaedic character, or both. And yet, not much ink has so far been spilled on assessing either genre. The vagueness of these classifications already points to the problem: the genres are modern, the Talmud is ancient and genres are hard to grasp anyway: Why bother?
This paper will argue that it is worth looking into the question. First of all, because the genre to which the Talmud is allocated affects the scholarly approach. The choice will, for example, govern the items for comparison (comparanda). Scholars who consider the Talmud a commentary likely compare it to commentaries based on a modern notion of the genre. Those scholars who consider the BT an encyclopaedia, on the other hand, tend to target scientific works, based on a modern idea as well. Such comparisons often highlight the incommensurability of the BT.
An analysis of 'genre' in late antiquity shows that the time is marked by a deliberate conflation of ancient genres. (In fact, a phenomenon not unlike the ongoing dissolution of modern categories and axioms in contemporary (postmodern) scholarship - of which this paper is but one example.) Indeed, the fragmentation of texts, their recombination and/or annotation was the method to create new texts and knowledge in late antiquity (Formisano 2007). They show increasingly signs of an at least rhetorical polymathy (Olmos 2012; Szabat 2015). In the end, the distinction between commentary and encyclopaedia centers on the structure of the work (following another text or free). In that, the Babylonian Talmud is a commentary, since it follows the text and organization of the Mishna. In comparison with the Palestinian Talmud, however, the BT comes closer to a late antique encyclopaedia in its inclusive approach (i.e. inclusion of midrashic and aggadic material; the covering of every order), but also in its pedagogical packaging, enabling self-education (Samely 2017; Kress/Lehman 2003).
In the end, the question of the genre remains uncertain. Yet, the paper will stress that exactly this marks the BT out as a fashionable late antique 'commentopaedia'.

Author

• Monika Amsler, University of Maryland, College Park