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One of the most satisfying but challenging facets of studying the Talmud involves
the Talmud's deep engagement with legal concepts.
This video will explain different stages of the development of conceptualization
in the Talmud.
You will initially see how the Mishnah introduces legal rules through scenarios.
And requires the reader to actively read into the cases
to produce any kind of categorical, conceptual understanding.
After considering the Mishnah, we will transition from the case based
articulation of the Mishnah and early rabbis.
To the concept based articulation of later Amoraim and
ultimately, the full abstraction of the Talmud's anonymous redacters.
You will learn that one of the differences of traditional and
critical ways of studying the Talmud relates to this transition.
Unlike traditional learners who accept the interpretations offered by later rabbis of
early rabbinic materials in the text.
Critical readers have a heightened awareness of the way changes in conceptual
thinking effect the way one reads earlier materials.
The Mishnah considers whether false witnesses should receive one or
two punishments in two similar cases.
One involving a tour in which monetary compensation is the punishment.
And one involving a religious crime in which the punishment would be 40 lashes.
Unlike Mishnah texts that only provide the reader with a legal rulings.
This example is particularly helpful to understanding the conceptual thinking
that underlies the legal ruling.
Because in both scenario A and scenario B, rationales are provided for each position.
We testify about so-and-so that he owes his fellow 200 zuz.
If the witnesses are found to be lying, they are lashed and
make financial compensation.
In the first scenario which we'll call scenario A,
two witnesses testify that John Doe owes a friend some money.
Let's use our own currency and say $200.
These witnesses are then determined to be liars.
Two views of Tannaim, early rabbis, are cited.
First Rabbi Meir asserts that the witnesses received lashes and
pay $200 to their intended victim.
The rational Rabbi Meir offers is that the name that
brings him to corporal punishment is not the one that brings him to compensation.
This is not typical Rabbinic rhetoric.
The now name is particularly hard to decipher.
From context one can suggest two possible readings.
A, that the designation of the crime that causes the witnesses
to pay $200 is not the same designation as the one which forces their lashing.
And B, the verse from which we learn the $200
punishment is not the same as the verse whence their lashes are derived.
If we allow ourselves to reflect more abstractly on what Rabbi Meir could mean.
It may be that the $200 quid pro quo payment is restorative for John Doe.
The putative victim who they were slandering with their testimony.
And the lashes are restorative for society or God for having committed the crime or
sin of falsely testifying.
The Sages say that anyone who pays is not lashed.
The Sages, an anonymous collective rabbinic viewpoint
say that the witnesses pay $200 but are not lashed.
The rhetoric the Mishnah employs for the Sages in scenario A is also problematic.
While Rabbi Meir's position had been articulated as legal ruling plus
rationale.
The Sages position is expressed through a universal statement.
Whoever pays is not lashed.
This statement does the work of a ruling by asserting that the witnesses would pay
$200 and not get lashed.
Does it provide a rationale though?
To answer the question, one needs to reflect on the need for a rationale.
When you have a debate between two sides,
it often falls to one side to justify itself through a rationale.
Because the other side represents the status quo or default expectation.
Part of the problem of determining whether the universal statement,
whoever pays is not lashed is a rationale or not.
Is that the reader is unsure that the sages even need a rationale.
After all, if Rabbi Meir's position asserting two punishments
is itself in need of a justifying rationale.
The Sages position could simply reflect the status quo before
Rabbi Meir's intervention.
There is a further complication with the universal statement through which
the Sages assert their position.
If the witnesses were obligated in two possible punishments,
how would one decide which one to administer?
It certainly would make sense that they would receive the more severe punishment.
Otherwise, one would be rewarded for compounding one's violations.
As between $200 in lashes then.
Wouldn't one expect the witnesses to be lashed?
It turns out then that the universal statement in scenario A of the Mishnah.
Might have been intended to justify not giving two punishments
as Rabbi Meir requires.
Or it might be functioning as a rationale to explain why the witnesses receive what
appears to be the lesser of the two punishments.
Or alternatively it might be serving simply as a fancy way of recording
the legal ruling of the Sages.
We have seen that the rationales recorded in scenario A are somewhat ambiguous and
a bit confusing.
The rationales found in the nearly identical scenario B are clearer.
In order for clarification for those in scenario A, at least for
Rabbi Meir's position.
We testify that so-and-so is liable to receive 40 lashes.
If the witnesses are found to be lying, they receive 80 lashes.
In this case two witnesses testified that John Doe has
done something that will result in his receiving 40 lashes.
Rabbi Meir says the lying witnesses receive 80 lashes, a double punishment.
This is because of do not testify falsely against your fellow and
because of you shall do to them as they schemed to do, says Rabbi Meir.
And the Sages say they only receive 40 lashes.
The view of the Sages is articulated without a rationale in the simple language
of a ruling.
This does not clarify the confusion about the universal statement employed
in Scenario A.
However, Rabbi Meir's position in Scenario A is clarified in Scenario B.
Instead of his statement about the name that brings, Rabbi Meir in Scenario B
says that the witnesses received one set of 40 lashes for
having violated the prohibition in the Ten Commandments.
Against testifying falsely and a second set of 40 lashes in fulfillment
of the quid pro quo punishment laid out explicitly at Deuteronomy 19.
While the new rationale nicely interprets the vaguer rationale found in scenario A.
A critical scholar would be skeptical of this easy clarification and
might suggest that the second clause was produced by a later rabbi.
Who was himself struggling to determine the meaning of the name that brings.
This is one way in which critical scholarship introduces a factor of
historical time into its mode of reading.