Analytical Templates of the Bavli

Analytical Templates of the Bavli Synopsis

In the Mishnah (ca. 200 C.E.), the Tosefta (ca. 300 C.E.), and the commentaries that joined them-the Yerushalmi, the Talmud of the Land of Israel (ca. 400) and the Bavli, and the Talmud of Babylonia (ca. 600)-the law of Judaism is outlined topic by topic. The exposition of these topics, however, is shaped in part by a generic analytical program. The hermeneutics of the Halakhah of the formative canon guides the Rabbinic sages to say the same thing about many things. Specifically, issues of a patterned analytical character guide the presentation, so that most topics in some measure, and some topics in paramount measure, serve to illustrate ubiquitous, generic problems of thought or intellectual templates. Two generative problems, found in four intellectual templates, predominate: [1] intentionality and concomitantly, [2] teleology, [3] resolution of doubts and concomitantly, [4] the classification of mixtures. The second and fourth templates form subsets of the first and the third. In this project, author Jacob Neusner identifies the occurrences of the four intellectual templates and shows, in complete detail, where and how the same problems recur time and again.

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