I've mentioned before that the Talmud tends to
meander quite a bit. It'll be talking about
something, and that'll remind one of the
authors/commenters of something else, and so
it'll talk about that for a while, and then
that'll remind someone... and, as far as I know,
no one has produced an index to the complete
set of 63 tractates [1]. If you want to know
where the Talmud discusses such-and-such
topic, and you don't have either an expert or
an electronic copy and a search engine, you're
probably doomed.
But studying it -- on its terms, not to
find out something specific -- can be amazingly
cool, as I've said before.
Something did make me wonder today, though.
(Note: you do not need to chase the following
footnotes to understand the main part of this
entry!)
My rabbi and I are currently working through
the beginning of Tractate Berachot, which begins
with the question of how early one can say the
evening Shema [2]. The mishna (earlier part of the
Talmud) says "at the same time that kohanim who
were tamei can eat t'rumah" [3]. Which happens to be
"nightfall" [4], but it doesn't come out and say
that.
Ok, so the gemara (commentary on the mishna) asks,
"why didn't the mishna just say 'nightfall', instead
of bringing t'rumah into it?". A good question, in
my opinion. :-) Quite a bit of commentary then
follows, rooted in the premise that "the mishna
(or gemara, in some cases) must be trying to teach
us something" (about t'rumah, in this case).
Um, must it? Must every comment be
an effort to teach something? Are there
really no asides, no oh-by-the-ways, no off-topic
thoughts? I find that possibility astonishing.
The mishna was written down by someone who, basically,
wrote down everything he had been taught -- I gather,
in the order that he remembered it. Of course
there are going to be digressions. The gemara seems
to assume that every statement or answer that is not
straightforward was deliberately round-about in order
to make some other point. This seems odd to me; I
know how people write, and how at least some people
think, when they're doing data dumps. I don't
understand why the gemara looks for motives. In
some places the commentaries quibble over the
order in which the mishna and gemara
present topics, as if the order was completely
planned. But I don't get the impression that it
was.
Perhaps I'll ask my rabbi about this when we
study on Monday.
( followup from a previous conversation )
( footnotes )
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