The Vilna Gaon’s methods for the textual criticism of Rabbinic literature

ENOn April 11,1920, Louis Ginzberg stood in front of an audience at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York and spoke in commemoration of the two hundredth anniversary of the birth of "The Gaon, Rabbi Elijah Wilna", known to us more generally as the Vilna Gaon. Ginzberg called the Gaon "the father of the criticism of the Talmud", by which he meant the father of modern critical study of the talmudic text. He described the Gaon as having been liberated from authority in the interpretation of the Talmud, depending instead on reason, and, more importantly for the subject of this paper, the first Jewish scholar to see clearly "that ancient documents... were bound to reach us full of inaccuracies." The Gaon set out to determine the correct text and to emend incorrect versions. This "external criticism" was accompanied by "internal criticism", meaning that the study of Rabbinic texts had to involve the investigation of the similarities and differences between parallel passages in the Mishnah, Tosefta, Babylonian and Jerusalem Taimuds. Ginzberg's view, as presented in that lecture, is not that different from the general view which many Maskilim painted of the role of the Vilna Gaon as a precursor of the enlightenment. The Gra was seen as having supported the pursuit of secular studies and therefore as an example of one who already pointed the way toward participation of the Jews in the European enlightenment. That this picture is greatly romanticized should materials first regarding the Mishnah, Tosefta, after that the Babylonian and Jerusalem Taimuds and then, to a lesser extent, the Midrashim. In many ways, this study may be viewed as an introduction to the detailed examination of each work which is clearly a desideratum [p. 116-118].