This book seeks to combine the methodological and the literary approach to the study of the reasoning and argumentation typical of the Babylonian Talmud. In the great, traditional Yeshivot, most of which today are influenced by the methods of the Lithuanian Talmudic giants – R. Hayyim Soloveitchik and his son R. Velvel; R. Simeon Skopf; R. Moshe Mordecai Epstein of Slabodka; R. Baruch Baer of Kamenitz; R. Joseph Judah Laib Bloch of Telz; R. Meir Simhah of Dvinsk; R. Elhanan Wasserman and others too numerous to mention – the Talmud is subjected to acute, logical analysis of the utmost rigour, to yield important results for the full understanding of the work. But, in these institutions, historical and literary questions are virtually ignored. Modern critical investigation is considered not so much to be taboo as irrelevant. As the old Yeshiva gibe has it, the Professor of Semitics can tell you what kind of clothes Abbaye wore but the lamdan (‘traditional scholar’) can tell you what Abbaye said. Modern critical scholars, on the other hand, in addition to their massive historical researches, have, in recent years, subjected the Talmudic texts to keen literary analysis, in which the pre-history of the Talmudic pericopae and their later formulation have been studied in order to shed fresh light on how the literary traditions have emerged and to try to solve the mystery of how the Babylonian Talmud came to assume its present form, who its authors were and how they went about their task.