The Rhetoric of the Babylonia Talmud: Its Social Meaning and Context.

• Author: Kalmin, Richard

Jack Lightstone's book is evidence of a healthy trend in the modern study of ancient rabbinic literature. More and more scholars are incorporating aspects of the methodologies of Jacob Neusner and David Halivni, rather than retreating behind ideological barricades and claiming that the approaches of these two leading scholars are irreconcilably opposed. Light-stone, a student of Neusner, acknowledges his debt to Halivni and his students (especially David Kraemer), and his book benefits from intellectual cross-fertilization.

Most of the book is a painstaking analysis of the rhetoric of the Babylonian Talmud (henceforth, BT, or the Talmud) and comparison of this rhetoric to that of other ancient rabbinic documents. Lightstone's analysis is responsible and accurate, and successfully demonstrates the uniqueness of BT's rhetorical formulae.

The author argues persuasively that BT's formalized rhetoric has "social meaning." The Talmud's stock rhetoric "as much as its content, became interwined with social definitions, relationships, and forms of organization," since study of the Talmud, which included mastery of Talmudic rhetoric, enabled one to exercise power and authority as a rabbi (pp. ix-x).

BT's rhetorical language, the author claims further, expresses "a set of meanings and values." What are these implicit values? BT is characterized by "the open-ended analysis, seemingly for its own sake, of passages . . . of the Mishna and other sacred texts." These holy texts, the author maintains, "disappear as integral, externally constraining wholes," and "the process of critical analysis displaces these sources as loci of authority" (p. 21).

The first and final chapters explain the significance of the technical discussions of rhetoric which form the bulk of the book. The author's theories are imaginative and suggestive but for the most part lack proof. A large part of the problem, acknowledged by Lightstone himself, is the scarcity of relevant source material regarding the period of, and that immediately following, the redaction of BT. Lightstone's attempt to fill the gap by arguing that BT's rhetorical formulae derive from the later editors is not convincing. Just as plausibly, earlier rabbis originated these formulae, and later editors followed patterns established years earlier.

A brief description of the author's arguments will illustrate both their elegance and speculative nature. Lightstone claims, for example, that BT's treatment of holy texts...