Summarizing David Weiss Halivni on the Talmud
In the most recent issue of Les Cahiers du judaïsme there is an article about the approach to Talmud study of David Weiss Halivni, “The teaching of David Halivni: deciphering the voices of the Stammaim,” written by Florian Deloup Wolfowicz. Hopefully we’ll see more from his blog, שקלא וטריא. Below is the author’s summary of Halivni’s dating of the anonymous Talmud.
David Halivni’s answer to this question is a patient development of several decades over the course of which he progressively strays away from the traditional viewpoint. The publication of each new volume reinforces the idea that a distinct generation of sages was at work after the complete end of the Amoraic period. In the volume of Messorot u-Meqorot devoted to Seder Nashim, David Halivni still ascribes a part of the anonymous discursive material to the Amoraim. The volume devoted to Seder Moed (from Yoma to Hagigah) is a turning point: he recalls this fundamental hypothesis. He has then reached the conclusion that the anonymous passages of the Guemara (stammoth) were not introduced before Rav Ashi and Ravina (middle of the fifth century) but a later period, after that of the Amoraim. In particular he writes at the beginning of the introduction to the volume devoted to the treatise Shabbat: “What we received from the Amoraim and what we did not received from them, the form in which we received their words, all over are the Stammaim’s fingerprints. The teachings of the Amoraim are diluted in the teachings of the Stammaim.” In the introduction to the volume devoted to the treatise Baba Metsia, he postpones the period of the Stammaim: the production of stammot did not begin right after Rav Ashi and Ravina, but rather after the latest Amora quoted in the Talmud (around 550-600). In the latest volume published in 2008 on Baba Bathra, he extends their activity until the middle of the eighth century, so that it lasts about two centuries, a considerable period of time, commensurate with the huge task of reconstruction and re-creation of the shakle ve-taria of the sages.
Here is a longer version of the above article in French.
June 7th, 2010 at 8:01 am
After the amoraim weren’t there a group of sages called the soferim which is probably what Rav Halivni is talking about when he mentions the stammaim of Talmud Bavli and weren’t the soferim accepted by all traditional Orthodox scholars
June 7th, 2010 at 8:05 am
You may be thinking about the Saboraim which were describer in Iggeret Rav Sherira Gaon.