I do want to point out that this approach (titled revadim or layers by Weiis-Halivni), although a central part of Talmudic analysis, is not the only kind of academic Talmud scholarship. Another major subfield, sometimes under the umbrella term of Rabbinics, is the historical critical analysis of the text, which focuses on comparing rabbinic traditions and methodologies with broader Jewish (such as Hellenistic Jewish, sectarian, or even early Christian) or even non-Jewish (such as Greco-Roman or sassanian) sources, and probably most of the scholarly literature on the Talmud falls into this field (possibly because it's of broader interest towards understanding Judaism holistically).
Absolutely! Christine Hayes would fall under that subfield and I love her work. It's just that it's way less accessible for the average yeshiva trained guy.
Just to share a funny anecdote I've heard Christine say once in a lecture (she's next level), she mentioned that at right when she got her PhD she and another Talmud scholar were the only non-jewish active Talmud scholars. However, several years later, the other non-Jewish scholar converted to Judaism (reform). So by then she was the only non-jewish scholar in the field. (It's a pretty small field, so most Rabbinics scholars tends to know each other).
That doesn't make sense. Why does she see the reform conversion as binding? Why is she only using her critical faculties for the Talmud and not for Reform Judaism?
Huh? She doesn't exactly share your beliefs about Orthodox Judaism, so why shouldn't it be valid as a form of Judaism? Leaving out any theological discussion, just as you would agree that Islam or christianity can define for themselves what a Christian or Muslim is, why shouldn't the various Jewish denominations have the same right?
I spent six months looking at Hayes's work. She relies on the fact that nobody( how many of her readers know Hebrew?) is going to look up her sources (for an example, say a reference to an obscure tosefta in a footnote or endnote) in the original Hebrew. 90% of the time she completly distorts the sources to shove her agenda through. Her agenda being being to show the rabbis were always driven by external sources. Her scholarship can be summed up;
a) If the external sources are similar to the rabbis, the rabbis were aping the secular sources
b) If the rabbis argue with the external sources they deliberately ruled the opposite to keep external sources out.
In other words, she can't lose. Either way the rabbis were driven, in one wat or the other by the external sources. Great scholarship.
Of course, the talmud can't be understood without rishonim so her work is all nonsense.
Agreed, R Shaul Lieberman was a master of the craft.
I cannot forbear to share a story I once heard from Prof Marc Shapiro.
If I recall correctly Prof Shapiro once stumbled across Weiss-Halivni in Israel's national library, where he (Weiss-Halivni) sat all day with a gemara and a dikdukei soferim!
Shaul Lieberman was an absolute giant who transcended both worlds. He was both the most accomplished traditional Talmud scholar of his day by far, and the premier academic scholar of Rabbinics outshining all of his peers. He was a true חד בדרא, on par with Maimonides and the Vilna Gaon.
Cue the letter decrying academic scholarship from his first cousin R AY Karelitz (of Chazon ish fame, who himself was relatively more of a textualist & pashtan than most in the yeshiva world), which was ostensibly addressed to R Lieberman regarding his mode of study.
the same website also has a sister site for academic talmud, though with far fewer articles.
2)
"The Talmud itself is notoriously challenging. It requires years of dedicated yeshiva study to navigate its blend of Hebrew and Aramaic, its dense legal arguments, and its unique dialectic style. Even with modern tools like the excellent Sefaria online library offering English translations and linked commentaries, the text remains dauntingly huge and complex" -
This assertion is often made, but it's significantly overrated, in my opinion. First of all, there's aggadah, which is at least a quarter of the Talmud, and is relatively straightforward to read and understand. Second of all, even for halachic sugyas, a major thing that makes it difficult is the hairsplitting of the Stam. Much of a sugya is simple statements (as you discuss) and relatively straightforward derivations/reasons (meaning, it's relatively simple to understand the derivation/ explanation being posited).
As an aside, one of the things that makes traditional study so (unnecessarily) difficult is the almost complete lack of formatting and standard punctuation in the traditional tzurat hadaf.
3)
re the academic method, your piece focuses on:
- source criticism (רבדים)
- textual criticism (שינויי נוסח, גירסאות)
- parallels in Yerushalmi and other works of חז"ל
Other commenters point to historical/ comparative elements.
I'd like to point out that there are many other elements to the academic method:
- linguistics is fundamental (especially semantic analysis - the precise meanings of terms, and how words and concepts evolve over time)
- understanding how the talmudic rabbis understood the Bible (hermeneutics)
I really love this idea as a kiruv tool for OTDers. Make people love learning Gemara again! It's genius! Re-introduce them to Gemara, divorced from the negative associations they had with yeshiva learning. In the words of the Chazon Ish להחזירם בעבותות אהבה ולהעמידם בקרן אורה במה שידינו מגעת- "To bring them back with bonds of love and to raise them up in the beam of light (of the Torah) to the extent of our ability"
I have always found one crucial element missing from the works of the academics, and that is their failure to take into account the analysis of the Rishonim. When we study a sugya well, and see different explanations between, let us say, Rashi, Tosafos and Rambam, and with the help of Pnei Yehoshua, Nachlas Dovid and Beis HaLevi, we discover thst each of the Rishonim understood differently the very dialogue of the Gemara. At this point, we look back at the Gemara, at the Hava Amina and Maskana, and realize that there was an undercurrent at the heart of the sugya that we missed entirely. Absent this, the perspective of the 'Stammaim' will certainly be lost to the academic, so he will make up historical, political or other reasons to provide his own 'Chiddush'.
Hi Binyamin. I actually wrote (with my hevruta) two books on this in English. Reconstructing the Talmud (there are two volumes). The aim of these books is to help regular Talmud students understand this different approach. Using examples etc. I think you and those who read this blog would benefit. [I do not make a cent off of these books--wrote them because I want people to understand the academic study of Talmud].
Honestly, it can be hard to draw the line when it comes to deconstrustivist interpretations of the Gemara. Like you said, it's no novelty that the Gemara contains layers. See Ramban et al. on the beginning of Kiddushin, "Gemara" Tamid. And you'll find plenty of Rishonim who limit tannaitic or amoraic statements to their original context.
And like others have said, you're forgetting about things like The Iranian Talmud that analyze the social and cultural contexts of Rabbinic Traditions. Which, again, aren't necessarily heretical.
I recently did a Biblical-Talmudic analysis on the development of a specific law, of an eye for an eye.
As we know, the ancient law codes have a variety of punishment given for the crime of damaging someones eye (for example the code of Hammurabi says that if done to an aristocrat, the punishment was eye for eye, but for the commoner it was just some money.) However, the Torah's text indicates it wanted a literal eye for an eye. Leviticus 24:19-20 says "like he did, shall be done to him ... eye for an eye ... Just like he gave a wound in a man, so shall be given to him." Deuteronomy 19:19-21 says "You shall do to them what they planned to do ... and your eyes shall not pity them ... eye for an eye." If this was a money issue, one would not expect the need of the statement "don't pity them."
Interestingly, the Talmud (Bava Kamma 84a) has a long discussion trying to demonstrate that the Torah really means money (mamon) and not literally (mamesh). But suddenly, we get a report that Rabbi Eliezer believes it means literal! The Gemara tries wonders how it's possible that he would disagree with all other Tannahim, and both Rabbah and Rav Ashi are quoted with various solutions to harmonize this statement with the mainstream view.
But following the academic methods, I would argue Rabbi Eliezer actually meant a literal eye removal, and later rabbis centurirs later invented the "unanimous tradition from Mount Sinai" that an eye for an eye only meant money. Studying the evolution of Judaism is fascinating.
I wonder if sometimes we attribute more seriousness (for lack for a better word) to some statements in the Talmud than the ancient Rabbis would have themselves. For example, with regards to the different opinions about a goy studying Torah, and the resolution that one opinion concerns the mitzvot bnei noach and the other the rest of the Torah, maybe the Rabbis who came up with that were well aware that was not the intention of the Tannaim, and the Tannaim do in fact disagree, but finding far fetched resolutions to contradictions was just something they saw as healthy, productive, religious fun.
Yes, especially by aggada. There are some statements that are probably meant to be funny which are taken literally.
Or meant to be figurative- eating olives cases forgetting but eating olive oil remembering - a clear lesson on the importance of patience - ends up being interpreted as literal fact which is ridiculous.
Nice explanation, but in order for it to work you would have to find a similar explanation for all of the other things in the ברייתא that make you forget and remember such as washing your legs one on top of the other. [Maybe it would work just to explain the מימרא of ר יוחנן but the ברייתא seems to be saying a fact]
[Plus many poskim took the גמ about olives literally]
Sounds like special pleading. Why assume specifically in uncomfortable cases that the Rabbis didn’t mean what they said, or that later harmonizations were just playful? If Talmudic dialectics were mainly 'religious fun', that undermines the seriousness of the entire work . Can’t selectively neutralize passages one finds problematic
I would add that one need not accept academic assumptions to utilize this method. One can agree that the Stammaim has a mesorah for the correct pshat, for example, yet recognize there are parallel sources and read them in context. In fact it should be essential for any Talmud Chacham.
Btw, there some literary academics who claim they absolutely did, and were arranging the sugya to prove a point or to match the mesorah. (Many sugyos are arranged with a distinct literary purpose in mind.)
I'll be honest. My exposure to these discussions is primarily through the halivni school of thought who generally argues to the contrary, so I might be missing a more rounded perspective. However, I have seen many of his arguments and studied various sugyos through that lens and found that it does a good job of making sense of the various layers.
However, I will comment that many of those instances where we observe a distinct literary purpose it often has to do with considerations which do not necessarily represent the original meaning. This includes a desire to reinterpret earlier authorities to align with later rulings, the general goal to minimize disagreement, and sometimes the attempt to adapt earlier traditions to later developments either intellectual, customs, or due to later circumstances. This often suggests the opposite of what you said, instead of trying to reinterpret texts to fit with a tradition, they try to reinterpret texts and traditions to fit with contemporary positions.
If you are referring to the arrangement of the sugya, It's obvious that there were literary interests involved such as building a dialectic or other considerations, but I don't see what that has to do with content, more with the structure.
I hate to rain on your parade, but these lines below (especially the end-- comparing arguing (respectfully) with the Stamah d'gemara is on par with arguing with Rashi--) would get your "Talmud Chacham" kicked out of the BM faster than the schnitzel running out on Tuesday lunch in the Mir:
The key insight here is that the Stam has an agenda, often driven by specific interpretive principles. For instance, the Stam generally assumes:
Amoraim do not fundamentally argue with Tannaim on matters of law decided in the Mishnah.
Contradictory Tannaitic or Amoraic sources must somehow be harmonized or assigned different contexts.
The entire body of rabbinic teaching forms a coherent, unified system.
An academic scholar, however, does not necessarily share these assumptions. They might look at a sugya and conclude:
"This Beraita directly contradicts the Mishnah. The Stam performs complex logical gymnastics (a chiluk, a change in circumstance) to make them fit, but perhaps they simply reflect differing early traditions."
"The Stam interprets Rabbi X's statement in light of Rabbi Y's later statement, but read in isolation, Rabbi X might have meant something quite different."
...Just as one might respectfully disagree with Rashi's interpretation of a Pasuk or a line of Gemara, an academic might respectfully disagree with the Stam's interpretation of a Mishnah or a Memra, suggesting alternative original meanings.
End Quote.
But as far as the other methods of analysis posted here, you are 100% correct that they are very easily transferrable to the traditional Beis Midrash. The other methods mentioned in the comments about cross-cultural comparisons are also outside the pale.
From memory: No less than Rashi and Tosfos acknowledge the gemara uses mishnayos in a different way to get to it's answers. By the gemara of the letters of the luchos (floating mems and ayins) of whether a Navi can be mechadesh something, the shakla vetarya is flipped in each time it appears, and iirc they say there that כך היא דרכה של הגמרא...
You aren't giving me enough information here to evaluate whether these examples support your case against me. Please be more specific about the sources you are mentioning and how they support you.
Very clear.
I do want to point out that this approach (titled revadim or layers by Weiis-Halivni), although a central part of Talmudic analysis, is not the only kind of academic Talmud scholarship. Another major subfield, sometimes under the umbrella term of Rabbinics, is the historical critical analysis of the text, which focuses on comparing rabbinic traditions and methodologies with broader Jewish (such as Hellenistic Jewish, sectarian, or even early Christian) or even non-Jewish (such as Greco-Roman or sassanian) sources, and probably most of the scholarly literature on the Talmud falls into this field (possibly because it's of broader interest towards understanding Judaism holistically).
Absolutely! Christine Hayes would fall under that subfield and I love her work. It's just that it's way less accessible for the average yeshiva trained guy.
Agreed.
Just to share a funny anecdote I've heard Christine say once in a lecture (she's next level), she mentioned that at right when she got her PhD she and another Talmud scholar were the only non-jewish active Talmud scholars. However, several years later, the other non-Jewish scholar converted to Judaism (reform). So by then she was the only non-jewish scholar in the field. (It's a pretty small field, so most Rabbinics scholars tends to know each other).
If she thinks reform conversion is a conversion, I would say that there is still only one non-Jewish scholar in the field- it's just not her.
You're trying to be smart? She knows what the Talmud says about conversion, just doesn't mean she sees it as binding.
No she doesn't because she doesn't 'do rishonim'.
That doesn't make sense. Why does she see the reform conversion as binding? Why is she only using her critical faculties for the Talmud and not for Reform Judaism?
Huh? She doesn't exactly share your beliefs about Orthodox Judaism, so why shouldn't it be valid as a form of Judaism? Leaving out any theological discussion, just as you would agree that Islam or christianity can define for themselves what a Christian or Muslim is, why shouldn't the various Jewish denominations have the same right?
I spent six months looking at Hayes's work. She relies on the fact that nobody( how many of her readers know Hebrew?) is going to look up her sources (for an example, say a reference to an obscure tosefta in a footnote or endnote) in the original Hebrew. 90% of the time she completly distorts the sources to shove her agenda through. Her agenda being being to show the rabbis were always driven by external sources. Her scholarship can be summed up;
a) If the external sources are similar to the rabbis, the rabbis were aping the secular sources
b) If the rabbis argue with the external sources they deliberately ruled the opposite to keep external sources out.
In other words, she can't lose. Either way the rabbis were driven, in one wat or the other by the external sources. Great scholarship.
Of course, the talmud can't be understood without rishonim so her work is all nonsense.
You were her student? Ask one of her students if she ignores rishonim.
I have read her books. Good enough.
Agreed, R Shaul Lieberman was a master of the craft.
I cannot forbear to share a story I once heard from Prof Marc Shapiro.
If I recall correctly Prof Shapiro once stumbled across Weiss-Halivni in Israel's national library, where he (Weiss-Halivni) sat all day with a gemara and a dikdukei soferim!
I remember seeing Prof Halivni, an old man at the time, in the National Library sitting over a Gemara learning with the intensity of a yeshiva bachur.
Shaul Lieberman was an absolute giant who transcended both worlds. He was both the most accomplished traditional Talmud scholar of his day by far, and the premier academic scholar of Rabbinics outshining all of his peers. He was a true חד בדרא, on par with Maimonides and the Vilna Gaon.
Cue the letter decrying academic scholarship from his first cousin R AY Karelitz (of Chazon ish fame, who himself was relatively more of a textualist & pashtan than most in the yeshiva world), which was ostensibly addressed to R Lieberman regarding his mode of study.
And don't forget about R Aharon Kotler when he took the position in JTS...
Remind me
He gave a speech in BMG saying he was a rasha and it's assur to learn his torah (I heard this from my grandfather who was in BMG at the time, but I think it's well known). Also look at this interesting article with several cool anecdotes https://joshyuter.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Saul-Lieberman-and-the-Orthodox-411.pdf
Good, balanced overview.
Some notes:
1)
"With resources like TheTorah.com" -
the same website also has a sister site for academic talmud, though with far fewer articles.
2)
"The Talmud itself is notoriously challenging. It requires years of dedicated yeshiva study to navigate its blend of Hebrew and Aramaic, its dense legal arguments, and its unique dialectic style. Even with modern tools like the excellent Sefaria online library offering English translations and linked commentaries, the text remains dauntingly huge and complex" -
This assertion is often made, but it's significantly overrated, in my opinion. First of all, there's aggadah, which is at least a quarter of the Talmud, and is relatively straightforward to read and understand. Second of all, even for halachic sugyas, a major thing that makes it difficult is the hairsplitting of the Stam. Much of a sugya is simple statements (as you discuss) and relatively straightforward derivations/reasons (meaning, it's relatively simple to understand the derivation/ explanation being posited).
As an aside, one of the things that makes traditional study so (unnecessarily) difficult is the almost complete lack of formatting and standard punctuation in the traditional tzurat hadaf.
3)
re the academic method, your piece focuses on:
- source criticism (רבדים)
- textual criticism (שינויי נוסח, גירסאות)
- parallels in Yerushalmi and other works of חז"ל
Other commenters point to historical/ comparative elements.
I'd like to point out that there are many other elements to the academic method:
- linguistics is fundamental (especially semantic analysis - the precise meanings of terms, and how words and concepts evolve over time)
- understanding how the talmudic rabbis understood the Bible (hermeneutics)
- analysis of literary structure/ rhetoric
- many more
…..and the…Tosefta…😄
I really love this idea as a kiruv tool for OTDers. Make people love learning Gemara again! It's genius! Re-introduce them to Gemara, divorced from the negative associations they had with yeshiva learning. In the words of the Chazon Ish להחזירם בעבותות אהבה ולהעמידם בקרן אורה במה שידינו מגעת- "To bring them back with bonds of love and to raise them up in the beam of light (of the Torah) to the extent of our ability"
This whole blog is a secret Kiruv project
Lol
I have always found one crucial element missing from the works of the academics, and that is their failure to take into account the analysis of the Rishonim. When we study a sugya well, and see different explanations between, let us say, Rashi, Tosafos and Rambam, and with the help of Pnei Yehoshua, Nachlas Dovid and Beis HaLevi, we discover thst each of the Rishonim understood differently the very dialogue of the Gemara. At this point, we look back at the Gemara, at the Hava Amina and Maskana, and realize that there was an undercurrent at the heart of the sugya that we missed entirely. Absent this, the perspective of the 'Stammaim' will certainly be lost to the academic, so he will make up historical, political or other reasons to provide his own 'Chiddush'.
Hi Binyamin. I actually wrote (with my hevruta) two books on this in English. Reconstructing the Talmud (there are two volumes). The aim of these books is to help regular Talmud students understand this different approach. Using examples etc. I think you and those who read this blog would benefit. [I do not make a cent off of these books--wrote them because I want people to understand the academic study of Talmud].
Yes! I'm a huge fan of your books. I recommended them in my other post - https://apikorsus.substack.com/p/an-ex-yeshiva-bochurs-guide-to-jewish
I also really really love the Schechter haggadah you put together. I use it every year at the seder. Thank you!!
Great! So glad to hear. We’re working on a new one about the tannaim and second temple sages. Hope it’s out next summer.
Honestly, it can be hard to draw the line when it comes to deconstrustivist interpretations of the Gemara. Like you said, it's no novelty that the Gemara contains layers. See Ramban et al. on the beginning of Kiddushin, "Gemara" Tamid. And you'll find plenty of Rishonim who limit tannaitic or amoraic statements to their original context.
And like others have said, you're forgetting about things like The Iranian Talmud that analyze the social and cultural contexts of Rabbinic Traditions. Which, again, aren't necessarily heretical.
I love this! I’m excited to use this approach the next time I open a gemarah
I recently did a Biblical-Talmudic analysis on the development of a specific law, of an eye for an eye.
As we know, the ancient law codes have a variety of punishment given for the crime of damaging someones eye (for example the code of Hammurabi says that if done to an aristocrat, the punishment was eye for eye, but for the commoner it was just some money.) However, the Torah's text indicates it wanted a literal eye for an eye. Leviticus 24:19-20 says "like he did, shall be done to him ... eye for an eye ... Just like he gave a wound in a man, so shall be given to him." Deuteronomy 19:19-21 says "You shall do to them what they planned to do ... and your eyes shall not pity them ... eye for an eye." If this was a money issue, one would not expect the need of the statement "don't pity them."
Interestingly, the Talmud (Bava Kamma 84a) has a long discussion trying to demonstrate that the Torah really means money (mamon) and not literally (mamesh). But suddenly, we get a report that Rabbi Eliezer believes it means literal! The Gemara tries wonders how it's possible that he would disagree with all other Tannahim, and both Rabbah and Rav Ashi are quoted with various solutions to harmonize this statement with the mainstream view.
But following the academic methods, I would argue Rabbi Eliezer actually meant a literal eye removal, and later rabbis centurirs later invented the "unanimous tradition from Mount Sinai" that an eye for an eye only meant money. Studying the evolution of Judaism is fascinating.
Very original analysis. Good work!
You have to be kidding
Duh
I wonder if sometimes we attribute more seriousness (for lack for a better word) to some statements in the Talmud than the ancient Rabbis would have themselves. For example, with regards to the different opinions about a goy studying Torah, and the resolution that one opinion concerns the mitzvot bnei noach and the other the rest of the Torah, maybe the Rabbis who came up with that were well aware that was not the intention of the Tannaim, and the Tannaim do in fact disagree, but finding far fetched resolutions to contradictions was just something they saw as healthy, productive, religious fun.
Yes, especially by aggada. There are some statements that are probably meant to be funny which are taken literally.
Or meant to be figurative- eating olives cases forgetting but eating olive oil remembering - a clear lesson on the importance of patience - ends up being interpreted as literal fact which is ridiculous.
Nice explanation, but in order for it to work you would have to find a similar explanation for all of the other things in the ברייתא that make you forget and remember such as washing your legs one on top of the other. [Maybe it would work just to explain the מימרא of ר יוחנן but the ברייתא seems to be saying a fact]
[Plus many poskim took the גמ about olives literally]
Literally all the examples work, including that one. (One who washes two legs at once is rushing). They're all metaphors.
Yes, poskim took it literally. That doesn't make them correct.
got it.
Is this your own idea?
No. I heard it from a satmar Talmud Chacham. He said many weird aggadata can be explained this way.
Sounds like special pleading. Why assume specifically in uncomfortable cases that the Rabbis didn’t mean what they said, or that later harmonizations were just playful? If Talmudic dialectics were mainly 'religious fun', that undermines the seriousness of the entire work . Can’t selectively neutralize passages one finds problematic
I would add that one need not accept academic assumptions to utilize this method. One can agree that the Stammaim has a mesorah for the correct pshat, for example, yet recognize there are parallel sources and read them in context. In fact it should be essential for any Talmud Chacham.
The stammaim clearly did not have a mesorah for many things, hence the reason why they try to prove the intention through talmudic reasoning
Btw, there some literary academics who claim they absolutely did, and were arranging the sugya to prove a point or to match the mesorah. (Many sugyos are arranged with a distinct literary purpose in mind.)
I'll be honest. My exposure to these discussions is primarily through the halivni school of thought who generally argues to the contrary, so I might be missing a more rounded perspective. However, I have seen many of his arguments and studied various sugyos through that lens and found that it does a good job of making sense of the various layers.
However, I will comment that many of those instances where we observe a distinct literary purpose it often has to do with considerations which do not necessarily represent the original meaning. This includes a desire to reinterpret earlier authorities to align with later rulings, the general goal to minimize disagreement, and sometimes the attempt to adapt earlier traditions to later developments either intellectual, customs, or due to later circumstances. This often suggests the opposite of what you said, instead of trying to reinterpret texts to fit with a tradition, they try to reinterpret texts and traditions to fit with contemporary positions.
If you are referring to the arrangement of the sugya, It's obvious that there were literary interests involved such as building a dialectic or other considerations, but I don't see what that has to do with content, more with the structure.
Yes, I was talking about in a yeshivish Halachic context.
I hate to rain on your parade, but these lines below (especially the end-- comparing arguing (respectfully) with the Stamah d'gemara is on par with arguing with Rashi--) would get your "Talmud Chacham" kicked out of the BM faster than the schnitzel running out on Tuesday lunch in the Mir:
The key insight here is that the Stam has an agenda, often driven by specific interpretive principles. For instance, the Stam generally assumes:
Amoraim do not fundamentally argue with Tannaim on matters of law decided in the Mishnah.
Contradictory Tannaitic or Amoraic sources must somehow be harmonized or assigned different contexts.
The entire body of rabbinic teaching forms a coherent, unified system.
An academic scholar, however, does not necessarily share these assumptions. They might look at a sugya and conclude:
"This Beraita directly contradicts the Mishnah. The Stam performs complex logical gymnastics (a chiluk, a change in circumstance) to make them fit, but perhaps they simply reflect differing early traditions."
"The Stam interprets Rabbi X's statement in light of Rabbi Y's later statement, but read in isolation, Rabbi X might have meant something quite different."
...Just as one might respectfully disagree with Rashi's interpretation of a Pasuk or a line of Gemara, an academic might respectfully disagree with the Stam's interpretation of a Mishnah or a Memra, suggesting alternative original meanings.
End Quote.
But as far as the other methods of analysis posted here, you are 100% correct that they are very easily transferrable to the traditional Beis Midrash. The other methods mentioned in the comments about cross-cultural comparisons are also outside the pale.
From memory: No less than Rashi and Tosfos acknowledge the gemara uses mishnayos in a different way to get to it's answers. By the gemara of the letters of the luchos (floating mems and ayins) of whether a Navi can be mechadesh something, the shakla vetarya is flipped in each time it appears, and iirc they say there that כך היא דרכה של הגמרא...
You aren't giving me enough information here to evaluate whether these examples support your case against me. Please be more specific about the sources you are mentioning and how they support you.