The Talmudic hermeneutics of medieval Halakhic decision-making: ‘compound ambiguities’ and the reading practices of the rishonim

Abstract

The literary ambiguities present in the discrete literary sources of a Talmudic sugya and the further ambiguities created by the redactors’ placement of these sources into dialogue with one another result in the phenomenon I call ‘compound ambiguities’. Rishonim interpret compound ambiguities in two ways. ‘Macro-reading’, employed by Rashi and Rambam, is a global approach to explaining and ruling from a sugya in which the explication of ambiguities incorporates the use of terminology, concepts and interpretations known from elsewhere in Talmudic literature. ‘Micro-reading’, evidenced in the unlikely location of Rabbi Jacob Baal HaTurim’s code of Jewish law, relies only on the local context of a sugya when ruling and ignores the overlap with Talmudic parallels, resulting in innovative inferences and understandings of Talmudic material.