The Talmud (8 page)

8
For different interpretations of this story see, for example, Gafni, 1990; Herman, 2008; Sperber, 1994.

9
Weiss Halivni, 1986.

10
Bava Batra 173b. Nahman argued that the Mishnah could only mean that the guarantor cannot be forced to pay until the debtor has failed to do so.

11
Weiss Halivni, 1986, p. 4.

12
Plato’s laws 722D–723B, cited in Weiss Halivni, 1986, p. 5.

13
Seneca’s
Writings
94: 38, also cited in Weiss Halivni, 1986, p. 5.

14
Exodus 24.7.

15
Shabbat 88a.

16
Halivni argues that there were collections of laws, known as
hora’ah
or instruction, which were formulated by the Babylonian rabbis even though they didn’t have the same force as laws in the Mishnah (Weiss
Halivni
, 1986).

17
J. Peah 2.6 (17a).

18
Bava Batra 130b.

19
Bava Batra 82b–83a.

20
M. Peah 1.1.

21
Kiddushin 40b.

22
Amos 4.1.

23
Shabbat 32b.

24
Sanhedrin 99b.

25
Berachot 31a. Rav Ashi broke the glass to introduce a note of solemnity into the occasion, based on the principle that since the destruction of the Temple all celebration is to be tempered somewhat with reflection.

26
Jacobs, 1981. Of the two hundred and fifty seven
teyku
problems which are attributed to a specific teacher, Rava accounts for forty seven, far more than anyone else.

27
See Chapter 8.

28
Oppenheimer, 2005, pp. 417–20 shows that the main period of activity for the
nahotei
– scholarly travellers between Israel and Babylon – was concentrated in the period between the end of the third century and the first decades of the fourth. The best known of the
nahotei
are Ulla, Rav Dimi and Rabin. Many of the rulings they brought with them are transmitted in the name of Rabbi Yohanan, the most prominent of the
amoraim
in the Land of Israel.

29
Gafni, 2006; Ben Sasson, 1967.

30
Bava Metzia 86a. One of the reasons why Rav Ashi was regarded as the final editor may be a statement in Bava Batra 157b which has Rav Ashi ruling one way in his ‘first revision’ and another way in his second. But of course this could also simply refer to his personal revision of what he had learnt.

31
Moed Katan 28a.

32
Jacobs, 2005.

33
David Weiss Halivni terms these the
Stammaim
or the Anonymous.

34
Bava Kamma 2a–3b.

35
For a full discussion on this passage see Jacobs, 1973.

36
Ellman, 1999.

37
Fishman, 2011 and the sources cited in the note thereon. The earliest known, written fragment of Talmud text dates from the late seventh or early eighth century.

38
Fishman, 2011.

39
Jacobs, 2005, p. 4.

40
Friedman, 2004.

41
Most notably Rabbi Yohanan and Resh Lakish who are mentioned hundreds of times in the Talmud yet as far as we are aware never set foot in the country.

5

The flowering of Babylon

Ben Bag Bag said: Turn in it and turn in it for everything is in it, and gaze into it, and grow old and weary in it and don’t depart from it, for you have no better measure than it. Ben Hé Hé said, according to the trouble, so is the reward.’
1

Despite the immensity of the Talmud project, most sixth-century Jews knew nothing of it. Much of the Hebrew nation had long since scattered from its ancestral homeland, and whilst the greatest concentrations of population could still be found in Israel and the land they anachronistically called Babylon, their compatriots could now be found as far away as Spain and India, the Arabian Peninsula and France. Most of them did not belong to the rabbinic elite. What bound them together was a common belief system, a common language, family ties and, too often, a painful awareness of what it was to be part of a minority. They had their customs and traditions, they had their Torah and holy writings. Of the Talmud, most of them were blissfully unaware.

All that was about to change. But not because of anything they did.

Limits of influence

In the year 622
ce
the prophet Mohammed and his followers embarked on a series of military campaigns from their base at Medina in the Arabian Peninsula. Within a remarkably short period of time the political and religious map of the Middle East would look very different. No nation, faith or institution which fell under their influence would emerge unchanged. The Talmud was no exception.

Mohammed had an extensive knowledge of Judaism and Jewish practice. This is clear from the Qu’ran itself, as well as from later commentaries and legends. He may even have been influenced by Jewish teachers.
2
One legend has the Prophet discussing the names of the stars in Joseph’s dream with the son of the exilarch Bustanai,
3
of whom we will soon hear more. At first Mohammed instructed his followers to face Jerusalem when praying, as the Jews do, and he instituted a fast on the tenth day of the first month, corresponding to the Jewish Day of Atonement. When he eventually abandoned these practices it was most likely the result of an early alliance with local Jewish tribes turning sour.

Medina, in modern Saudi Arabia, is several hundred miles south-east of the Land of Israel. Jewish tribes were amongst its earliest inhabitants; Moshe Gil explains that the first Jewish settlers in the Arabian Peninsula were refugees from the Romans whose numbers increased as they converted the surrounding Arabian tribes.
4
Unlike the nomadic Bedouins, with whom they shared the region, the Jews lived in walled towns and farmed the land, growing dates and vines. The Jewish tribes played an active role in the governance of Medina.
5
In fact their presence in the Arabian Peninsula was so influential that for a short period in the sixth century the royal household of Yemen converted to Judaism.
6

Early relations between Mohammed’s followers and the Jews in the area were good. In the Constitution of Medina, which Muslim sources describe as a pact between the Muslims and the Jews, Mohammed states that ‘the Jews have their religion and the Muslims have theirs’. But the amity wouldn’t last. Despite the contact they had with the Prophet, not all of the Jews of Medina warmed to the Islamic revolution. Mohammed fought and won separate battles against three different Jewish tribes, expelling two of them, massacring most of the men in the third and taking the women and children into slavery.
7

It has been argued that the hostility of the Arabian Jewish tribes to Mohammed was due to his alliances with dissenting Jewish sects.
8
Our modern conception of religion prevents us from appreciating just how fluid the ancient
faiths were. Major religions today have a clear set of doctrines, well-established rituals, clergy who are responsible for the faith’s propagation and buildings dedicated to worship. But the early days of a faith are rarely so well structured. The history of Judaism, Christianity and Islam is full of competing sects vying for influence.

The Talmud sat at the centre of Jewish life in Babylon and Israel but it was probably unknown to the remote desert communities. Even if the Jews of Arabia were aware of it, there is no reason to assume that its teachings remained unchanged as they diffused from the centre to the periphery of Jewish settlement.
9
Far from it; the Talmudic centres were so distant from Arabia, and the prevailing lifestyles so different that we can imagine a local, exotic Jewish culture which would have been virtually unrecognizable to a Jew from Babylon.

The Mishnah had cemented the religious authority of the rabbis amongst the Jewish communities in Israel and Babylon, but that wasn’t the case elsewhere. The ideological victory that the Pharisees had gained over the Sadducees all those years ago hadn’t universally standardized Jewish belief and practice. Nor had the birth of Christianity stopped other messianic groups from emerging within Judaism; the best known of whom were followers of the eighth–century, sectarian Abu Isa.
10

One of the ideological battles the Talmud was yet to fight would be to bring dissenting Jewish groups, such as those in the Arabian Peninsula, within its sphere of influence. It was the spread of Islam over the next few centuries which allowed the battle to be won.

Baghdad – city of culture

Once they had consolidated their stronghold in Arabia the Prophet’s followers moved to challenge the powerful Sassanian and Byzantine Empires to the north and east. The first assault against the Sassanians was in 633
ce
. Within a few years the Islamic victory was complete; four hundred years of Sassanian rule
over Mesopotamia came to an abrupt end. From his stronghold in Medina the Caliph Umar was redrawing the map of the world.

Umar’s successors, the Umayyads, built upon his successes. The caliphate grew rapidly. By the middle of the eighth century Muslim rule extended from Spain in the west, across the whole of North Africa, to Iran and India. But despite their territorial gains the Umayyads could not suppress internal dissent. The Umayyad caliphate fell in 750
ce
, defeated by the Abassids, descendants of Mohammed’s youngest uncle, Abbas ibn Abd al-Muttalib.

In one of those fortuitous accidents of history, al-Mansur, the Abbasid caliph commissioned a new city to be built as his capital. He chose a new name for it but people continued to refer to it by the name of the settlement that had previously stood there. They called it Baghdad. Had al-Mansur not chosen Baghdad as the site of his capital it is quite possible that the history of the Babylonian Talmud would have run a completely different course. It may not even have run a course at all.

Baghdad’s rise was brisk. Within a few years of its founding it was echoing the former glories of Babylon, the ruins of which lay a day’s journey to the south. Baghdad became a flourishing centre of culture and knowledge, a dazzling capital of honeyed bazaars and scented gardens, gilded palaces and gaily bedecked caravans. Its citizens paraded through its market streets garbed in coloured silks and wools, its air hung heavy with the beguiling scents of exotic spices. The city’s salacious romances and perfumed intrigues
have been immortalized in
The One Thousand and One Nights
. But its greatest achievement surpassed all sensual experiences.

The Abbasid caliphate regarded learning as one of the highest of virtues, an attitude that was embodied in the saying ‘the ink of a scholar is more holy than the blood of a martyr’. From the ninth century onwards their capital, Baghdad, became a magnet for scholars from across the Empire. Deeply conscious that language was a barrier to knowledge, that the Greeks had produced a branch of philosophical literature barely understood by Arabic speakers and that an inward-looking Islamic empire risked losing sight of the wisdom and ideas of the great world cultures that it was his ambition to surpass, the Caliph Harun al-Rashid embarked on a major intellectual project.

Al-Rashid, and after his passing, his son, al-Ma’mun, oversaw the creation of a new library, the House of Wisdom, which was charged with the massive task of translating the major literature of all languages into Arabic.

This project, which would soon embrace every known field of scholastic endeavour, laid the foundations for the great advances that the Islamic world
would make in mathematics, philosophy, poetry, astronomy and medicine. Advances which would fulfil Harun al-Rashid’s ambitions to make Islam the most advanced civilization the world had ever known.

The significance of the developments in Baghdad was not lost upon the scholars of the Talmudic academies, in their traditional halls of learning a little way down river. Baghdad was both the intellectual centre of the world and the capital of the expanding Islamic Empire. The hegemonic aspirations of the Babylonian
yeshivot,
the Sura and Pumbedita Academies, were just as bold, within the far smaller Jewish orbit. They already considered Babylon to be the leading spiritual authority in the Jewish world, whilst reluctantly accepting that there were still regions over which the Palestinian
yeshiva
held sway. The finalizing and editing of centuries of Talmudic study was to be the pinnacle of their intellectual achievement, the
yeshiva
would become a fitting equal to, and companion for, the House of Wisdom. They gave the heads of their academies; first Sura and later Pumbedita, the title
Gaon,
or Excellency, to reflect their new self image.
11

The formative discussions in the Academy had already come to an end by this time and the process of compiling and editing the Talmudic discussions had quietly been going on, though we know virtually nothing about it. We do know though that the twice yearly, month-long study sessions were still taking place, just as they had done for generations.
12

All we can say with confidence is that when we left the Talmud the final discussions were taking place in the provincial academies of Sura and Pumbedita; and by the time we are able to pick up its story again it is fully formed, albeit in a fluid, oral form, at the centre of a bustling and intellectually thriving Baghdad, poised to begin its journey from a local scholarly exercise to a classic of world literature.

The highly charged intellectual environment in Baghdad created one of the two conditions the Talmud needed if it was to break out of the academies into the wider world. The other was Baghdad’s geographical location, at the centre
of the caliphate’s unified polity and international communication network, stretching from the Atlantic coast of North Africa to the borders of India.

More than anything else it was these two factors which would bring about and facilitate the dissemination of the Babylonian Talmud to Jewish communities throughout the Islamic world, and eventually beyond.

Shared ideas – the Talmud and Islam

As their links with the new metropolis strengthened the luminaries of Sura and Pumbedita found they had much in common with their opposite numbers in the Islamic world. They discovered they were grappling with similar issues, actively applying their scholarship, legal and religious traditions, to regulate the day-to-day lives of their co-religionists.

Each faith influenced the other. This is obvious both from the structure of their legal systems and some of the legislation itself. Their influence upon each other was more than just a simple two-way process; Gideon Libson explains it as a feedback model in which the Talmudic system first impacted Islam, which at a later stage left its imprint on Talmudic law.
13

Both Islam and Judaism are religions which minutely regulate every aspect of the believer’s life. They’re each based on a God-given written document – the Torah for Judaism and the Qu’ran for Islam. These divine texts are each interpreted and expanded upon by an oral tradition – the Talmud and the Hadith respectively. Both traditions contain legal and ethical material, and the legal material in each distinguishes between religious laws and social laws. The Jewish system of law is called
halacha,
the Islamic system is called
shar’ia.
Both names mean a ‘pathway’ or a ‘way to go’. Unlike Christianity, the laws and beliefs in Islam and Judaism are derived through a process of reasoning and scholarship; there are no councils or synods to rule on doctrine, ethics or behaviour.
14
In fact the two religions are so close in terms of their structure that the tenth-century rabbinic leader Saadia
Gaon
would unselfconsciously refer to Jewish law as
shar’ia
, to the prayer leader in a synagogue as an
imam
and the direction in which Jews faced when praying as
qibla.
15

Although in these twin systems the Qu’ran and Torah parallel each other as divinely revealed written texts, the Qu’ran was written down long after the Torah. So whilst we find characters, ideas and motifs from the Torah in the Qu’ran,
16
we shouldn’t expect to find them the other way round.

However, the Talmud and Qu’ran do originate from a similar period and it’s not hard to find concepts from the Talmud occurring in both the Qu’ran and Hadith, and vice versa.

One such case is the ritual definition of daybreak. The Qu’ran defines the moment of daybreak, when the faithful must begin to fast during Ramadan, as when the ‘white thread of dawn becomes distinct to you from the black thread’.
17
Similarly, the Jewish Mishnah rules that the morning prayer is to be said when the worshipper can distinguish between blue and white.
18

Both traditions use the same analogy to emphasize the sanctity and uniqueness of every human life. The Qu’ran states that ‘We decreed upon the Children of Israel that whoever kills a soul … it is as if he had slain mankind entirely. And whoever saves one – it is as if he had saved mankind entirely’.
19
This is a reference to the passage from the Mishnah that: