| This dissertation explores changes in halakhah (Jewish law) in the classical rabbinic period as reflected in sources dating from the first through the sixth centuries CE. Despite law's goal of stability and predictability, bold legal change and development occur throughout this formative period. Previous scholars have highlighted a number of factors that caused these legal changes, including external social pressures and internal interpretive disputes. I argue that literary pressures were also a significant force for legal change in the classical rabbinic period, particularly in late antique Babylonia, as the redactors of the Talmud Bavli sought to organize vast and wide-ranging inherited legal traditions. The oral mode of traditional rabbinic teaching burdened these redactors with the task of packaging this legal content in ways that would link preexisting literary units and facilitate mnemonic transmission To accomplish this task, editors often distorted the content of earlier sources in order to fit them into highly developed literary units that could more easily preserve large quantities of oral material. The redactors' affinity for elaborate, dialectic discussions, which they viewed as the most complete expression of Torah, also advanced this process. Since the Talmud Bavli later became the main source and authority for halakhah, these literary pressures had profound halakhic consequences.;In the introduction, I lay out criteria for identifying halakhic changes that have their origins in literary creativity. The body of the dissertation provides examples of this phenomenon, taken from the laws of forbidden and permitted mixtures. When permitted and forbidden food combine, what is the status of the resulting mixture? The four central chapters of the dissertation trace distinct concepts from this field, beginning with the earliest available Tannaitic sources and continuing through the latest stratum of the Talmud Bavli. In each case, a literary agenda transformed a legal idea and changed the course of subsequent halakhah. I conclude with reflections on the ramifications of my findings for future scholarship on the history of halakhah, as well as for our understanding of the Talmud Bavli and the culture of its redactors. |
