The Talmud and the Two-Headed Man

The Babylonian Talmud is known for its pluralism—its readiness to canonize multiple opinions and reluctance to decide between them. Yet in several passages in the Babylonian Talmud, suggestions or questions by rabbinic figures are met not with counter-arguments but with the threat of expulsion from the scholarly community. Why does the Talmud portray these comments as so threatening—and why does it then ultimately restore the legitimacy of the opinions and/or their authors?

I argue in this paper that these passages represent the Talmud’s ambivalent relationship with Greek-influenced logical thought. Greek thought, in particular Aristotelian logic, was studied in translation (as well as polemicized against) by Christian scholastic groups in the Sassanian Empire. As Moulie Vidas has shown, the Babylonian Talmud contains polemics against Greek-influenced Eastern Christian modes of thinking. Yet as Vidas, Richard Hidary, and David Brodsky have demonstrated, rabbinic literature also betrays familiarity with Greek rhetoric.

My paper furthers the scholarly understanding of rabbinic engagement with Greek thought by pointing out the specific ways in which Greek rhetoric influenced the development of rabbinic legal abstract thought. In each of the passages I analyze, a rabbi uses logic in a formalistic way and receives a sharp rebuke from his colleague(s), but ultimately his scholarly reputation is defended. I show that these passages manifest both a rabbinic discomfort with the internalization of Greek modes of abstract logical thought and a desire to reclaim them as ultimately relevant and acceptable.