The Two-Stage Sugya : Rosh HaShanah 2b-3a as a Case Study for the Bavli’s Formation

• In Event: Reading the Bavli

Abstract

This paper uses RH 2b-3a as a case study in how the Bavli Sugya was formed. A close reading of that Sugya, regarding the source for counting years for kings from Nissan, indicates that the Sugya appears twice, first in longform (~544 words) and then in shortform (~86 words). The short version contains only the core building blocks of the Sugya, the various biblical prooftexts, but no further analysis. Although the short version is presented as a Tannaitic support for an Amoraic statement, it appears to be of Bavli origin, as no parallel Tannaitic source exists, and it diverges significantly from the Yerushalmi partial parallel. It seems that the Bavli preserves two stages of the Sugya, with the shorter version maintaining the ‘raw material’ of the Sugya, meant to be expanded into the longer version as the Sugya was formed. This may have often been the case in Sugya formation, but is only preserved in this unusual case.
The implications drawn from this two-staged Sugya are suggestive for the larger question of how Bavli Sugyot were composed. Until recently, scholarship (Epstein, Lieberman, Sussman) has assumed that the composition of the Bavli was oral, the text only written down much later. Some more recent scholarship (Jaffe, Shanks Alexander) have suggested rabbinic texts were performed orally, without a fully set form. A recent book (Amsler) argues, in light of parallel cases of late antique writing, that the Babylonian Talmud was composed using written form, as a number of strips of paper containing short lines of text that were organized and formulated into Sugyot. She further provides an account as to how the relevant strips of text were chosen to be juxtaposed to one another, namely their sharing of a keyword.
The findings drawn from this Sugya will be evaluated for what light they shed on these theories of the formulation of Bavli Sugyot. The prospect of a circulating short form of the Sugya offers support for the idea of Bavli composition as oral performance, and raises the tantalizing possibility that there existed as “stage notes” for those presenting the Bavli in written form, even as this theory will diverge somewhat from Amsler’s.

Author

• Shlomo Zuckier, Institute for Advanced Study