More on the Formatting of the Talmud, especially of Non-Halachic Portions (Aggada), and Analyzing Structure in Aggadic Sugyot
Aggada, and traditional formatting (tzurat hadaf); A few interesting examples, of more extreme cases - Bava Batra, 16a (~820 words); Shabbat 119b (~740 words); Bava Batra 35a (~40 words)
I'm currently working on a project to programmatically identify the longest and shortest pages in the Talmud. During this process, I've discovered further fascinating aspects of its formatting, particularly concerning the longer pages. Before delving deeper into this, I want to address some comments and responses from my recent related post, “Helpful Formatting of the Talmud: Ohr Somayach’s ‘Talmud Navigator’” (Dec 12, 2023). I cite them in what follows, with slight adjustments. My responses are based on responses to similar questions asked in comments to my piece at Seforim Blog, “From Print to Pixel: Digital Editions of the Talmud Bavli” (June 5, 2023)
EB asked:
Considering the well accepted idea that the real value of Talmud study is teaching one to think, and that aids -- even such as punctuation, but especially translation and color-coding -- make it too easy and defeat the ultimate purpose, when is it too much?”
My response:
It’s difficult to argue that lack of punctuation is any kind of advantage, narrowly speaking. Of course, speaking more broadly, communities that are more conservative will be much more invested in their studies, and so will be able to overcome lack of punctuation and other such difficulties.
In general, as I point out in the piece, even the Orthodox world has accepted more and more user-friendly texts: Steinzaltz, Schottenstein, Oz VeHadar, Mesivta, and more
I think all this is quite clear if you think about a regular English book, which invariably has standard punctuation. If it didn’t have punctuation, you would still parse the text correctly in 99%+ cases. But it would be a lot more of a mental effort, for no reason.
In addition, even if it’s true that “the real value of Talmud study is teaching one to think”, this is only true for halachic sugyot, and not aggadic ones. I’ll expand on this more in the second half of this piece, below.
DR asked:
Certain insertions of punctuation are subjective in that the meaning of a portion of a sugya will be impacted dramatically by their placement and thus read differently by, for example, Tosfos and Rashi. Thus, while I agree that most punctuation will be apparent, in some cases one must base punctuation on the interpretations of Rishonim or even Achronim.
This is true. But from my experience, it’s extremely rare for matters related to how to punctuate the text to be the subject of disagreement. In a discussion in the Facebook group “Ask the Beit Midrash”, R’ Josh Waxman agreed that it is extremely rare.
Aggada, and traditional formatting (tzurat hadaf)
“Aggadah [...] is the non-legalistic exegesis which appears in the classical rabbinic literature of Judaism, particularly the Talmud and Midrash.”
Rav Yitzchak Blau, “Understanding Aggada - Introduction”, Yeshivat Har Etzion (17.01.2016):
“Due to the centrality of [halacha] in Judaism, most [...] energy was historically channeled towards elucidating the halakhic parts of the Talmud. Many great medieval commentaries [...] almost never comment on aggadic sections. The contemporary world of yeshivot [...] tends to focus [lectures] almost exclusively on conceptual analysis of the legal principles, leaving little to no room for aggadic analysis.”
The longer pages in the Talmud are typically filled with aggadic sugyot, which often have minimal commentary from Tosafot as well relatively less from Rashi, as their content is more straightforward to read and understand. Aggada constitutes about a third of the Talmud. Almost from the beginning of Talmudic interpretation (by the geonim over a thousand years ago, as well as in contemporary yeshivot), aggada was looked down upon, relative to halachic sugyot. This is due to a variety of reasons, which I won’t get into here. (See Daniel Boyarin in the beginning of his book Socrates and the Fat Rabbis [2009], for a discussion of this.)
In the traditional Talmud layout (tzurat hadaf), pages are characterized by dense blocks of text.This is even more prominent in pages of aggada. Those who have studied in yeshivot and tried to locate sources in the traditional printed Talmud pages often encounter these intimidating text walls. Segmenting these pages is thus very helpful for easier navigation and understanding.
Simple formatting techniques can be extremely useful in this context. (Similarly, graphing out halachic sugyot could be very beneficial as well, as discussed in an article by Robert Brody, and in R' Michael Avraham's writings on Talmudic Logic, but this is considerably more complex. See my piece “From Print to Pixel”, cited above, for a discussion.)
A few interesting examples, of more extreme cases
Bava Batra, 16a (~820 words)
Look at this unusual page, with no Tosafot!:
Bava Batra, 16a ( has ~820 words):
Shabbat 119b (~740 words)
Screenshot of traditional page of Shabbat 119b (has ~740 words):
Compare this with Sefaria’s digital formatting, where there's an option to segment it into numbered sections (in this case, 11 sections), based on the Steinzaltz edition:
https://www.sefaria.org/Shabbat.119b:
The section segments in the Steinzaltz edition are relatively arbitrary, being primarily based on having a relatively uniform length. Ohr Sameach’s Talmud Navigator does it better, uniformly splitting each independent passage into one line, regardless of length (Cf. my discussion of this resource in my previous piece. In this specific page, there’s a formatting error, with text cut off in one of the boxes):
https://ohr.edu/yhiy/article.php/8920?showobject=1, pp. 15-6:
This brings us to an important aspect which is analyzing the structure of aggadic sugyot. Notice how in this passage the 8x format of “Said R’ X: Jerusalem was destroyed due to Y, as it states [in the Bible]: [...]”. Patterns like this are much more noticeable in the Talmud Navigator, even compared to Steinzaltz. Compare a ctrl +F of “לא חרבה” in Steinzaltz:
Here’s the Talmud Navigator again, with focus on that specific series of aggadic statements, marked with red ticks:
It’s so much easier to notice the structure and pattern!
Notice also the 2x of “לעולם יסדר אדם שלחנו”, and 2x of “כל העונה אמן”. Highlighting how the Talmud is both formulaic (even when ostensibly citing different rabbis), and associative.
Very short page - Bava Batra 35a (~40 words)
On the other hand, there are pages with very few words, due to the large amount of commentary (including Rashbam’s famously relatively long commentary, vs. Rashi’s more laconic commentary). As you could now have guessed, this is an halachic sugya. In this case, simple punctuation and formatting would likely be less important overall, though logical graphing could potentially help a lot.
Screenshot of Bava Batra 35a:
