Peter, Your Date for 'the Talmud' at earlychristiansausages

[Secret Alias]

You have 188 - 217 CE as the date for the Talmud at your website. That's off by a century.

[semiopen]

That came up in an old thread.

Peter is giving a legendary date for the Mishnah.

The rabbis who contributed to the Mishnah are known as the Tannaim,[13][14] of whom approximately 120 are known. The period during which the Mishnah was assembled spanned about 130 years, or five generations, in the 1st and 2nd centuries CE. Yehudah haNasi is credited with the final redaction and publication of the Mishnah,[15]

15 Abraham ben David calculated the date 189 CE. Seder Ha-Kabbalah Leharavad, Jerusalem 1971, p.16 (Hebrew)

This isn't based on any kind of hard evidence and the word "publication" is odd.

The Talmud includes the Gemara and the Mishnah.

The process of "Gemara" proceeded in what were then the two major centers of Jewish scholarship, Galilee and Babylonia. Correspondingly, two bodies of analysis developed, and two works of Talmud were created. The older compilation is called the Jerusalem Talmud or the Talmud Yerushalmi. It was compiled in the 4th century CE in Galilee. The Babylonian Talmud was compiled about the year 500, although it continued to be edited later. The word "Talmud", when used without qualification, usually refers to the Babylonian Talmud.

According to this, Peter is referring to the Babylonian Talmud because he didn't qualify "Talmud."

However, the date of 500 is derived from circular reasoning more than facts. It was certainly not written in 500, so the word "edited" is misleading. 8th century is more reasonable.

I think Peter mentioned he would change the date in the old thread... but his simple and elegant original statement turns into a can of worms so I can sympathize him with not doing that.

[Secret Alias]

I say late third century

[semiopen]

Talmud

...Accordingly, traditionalists argue that Ravina’s death in 499 CE is the latest possible date for the completion of the redaction of the Talmud. However, even on the most traditional view a few passages are regarded as the work of a group of rabbis who edited the Talmud after the end of the Amoraic period, known as the Saboraim or Rabbanan Savora'e (meaning "reasoners" or "considerers").

The question as to when the Gemara was finally put into its present form is not settled among modern scholars. Some, like Louis Jacobs, argue that the main body of the Gemara is not simple reportage of conversations, as it purports to be, but a highly elaborate structure contrived by the Saboraim, who must therefore be regarded as the real authors. On this view the text did not reach its final form until around 700. Some modern scholars use the term Stammaim (from the Hebrew Stam, meaning "closed", "vague" or "unattributed") for the authors of unattributed statements in the Gemara. (See eras within Jewish law.)

My impression is that the phenomenon of the Stammaim is well respected by modern scholars.

I don't see how an earlier date than 499 CE can be justified.

[Peter Kirby]

It's metaphorical. Otherwise it'd have to be removed from the website canon for being too late in date, and that would be blasphemy.

I say late third century

That might work, actually. That's still before 325, the new terminus for the website (the old one was 200). What happened in the late third century?

[DCHindley]

What happened in the late third century?

It was late for the party and got left behind.

I've seen dates for the final edited forms of the Talmud (not the Mishnah) between 4th & 7th centuries, depending on whether you refer to the Babylonian Talmud or the Talmud of Jerusalem. The Babli, IIRC, was certainly put together later than the Jerusalem Talmud, but details are hazy and I haven't had any coffee yet.

The final editing of the written Mishnah seems to be regarded as no earlier than 200 CE, but obviously before the earlier Talmud as the Talmuds are commentaries upon it.

This kind of thing is why I asked for opinions about Neusner's book on the Jews of Babylonia. Neusner describes a situation where the religious authorities in Parthian controlled Babylon and Mesopotamia as being somewhat disconnected from the Judean authorities in Jerusalem before the war, and Rabbinic authorities in the Roman empire based in Galilee, after it. Any respect that is given them is due to training they underwent in the Roman controlled sphere of Judaism. Yet their commentary is preferred over the Palestinian commentary. What changed?

This has the appearance of an inconsistency. The Babylonian Talmud is clearly the favorite of Rabbinical Judaism, and the JT almost treated as somehow second rate and not worthy of serious study, or at least dispersions are cast to dissuade folks from doing so. Look at the heat Neusner took for translating the JT. "It's textual history was too complex to attempt to translate unless he is a specialist in it, which he is not."

Perhaps I am wrong, but I read "too complex" to mean "too uncertain to us BT advocates and thus utterly worthless for study." It is the Rabbinical Jewish equivalent of how the Textus Receptus (or the more critical Majority/Byzantine Text) is venerated among Christian fundamentalists, except they consider the Nestle-Aland Text to be inferior because it does not follow the majority readings, but attempts to pick and choose among a variety of readings one that has the appearance of being more original.

Christian Sabbath version.

[Secret Alias]

I think the Palestinian Talmud was earlier.

[semiopen]

There is an anecdote about a lady who attended a dinner party with Samuel Johnson. She farted while sitting down and tried to cover this up by scraping her chair leg back and forth. Johnson told her there was no need to find a rhyme, etc. I've tried to verify this anecdote but can't find it.

I got the impression Peter was also trying to find a rhyme to his obvious mistake. Why not just change Talmud to Mishnah where at least the date is sort of correct. Otherwise why not put a from to thing with the possible dates?

[Peter Kirby]

A perfectly neat solution is difficult to find. The subject is the Talmud, not the Mishnah. The date of the Talmud's written composition is well outside the scope of the website. The date of the oral transmission of the material is both difficult to say and covers a long period of time, both before and after the early third century.

The outline date now says 200-500. But there wasn't actually any kind of "mistake," obvious or not. If you read the article, it tells you right off that the date being listed referred to the (oral) codification of the Mishnah, which isn't the entire Talmud:

"The Babylonian Talmud is huge and occupies thirty volumes in the Soncino translation. The Mishnah is the earliest material and constitutes about 20% of the whole Babylonian Talmud. Amazingly, this great mass of material was passed on in oral form for generations of rabbis. The Mishnah was codified by Rabbi Judah before his death in 217 CE, but this may not have involved writing the material down on paper."