Babylonian Talmud

The Babylonian Talmud is an enormous, anthological compilation of earlier sources, including mishnayot, baraitot, amoraic teachings, biblical exegesis, legal cases and precedents, exempla, and much more. Recent research suggests that the editors of at least some tractates of the Babylonian Talmud were familiar with the basic structure and contents of the parallel tractates of the Palestinian Talmud, adopting and modifying them to suit their own purposes. Because its redaction extended into the seventh century CE, more than two centuries after the redaction of its Palestinian counterpart, the Babylonian Talmud reached new heights of formal and substantive complexity. Earlier sources served as the building blocks for lengthy, dialectically presented discussions (sugyot) crafted by anonymous redactors (for whom scholars have coined the term stammaim, from stam, meaning “anonymous”). In the Babylonian Talmud, rabbinic dialectic reaches its zenith.