Q&A: The Arrangement of the Tractates in the Talmud
The Arrangement of the Tractates in the Talmud
Question
Maimonides explains the logic behind the arrangement of the tractates in the Talmud as follows: in principle it follows the order in which the commandments appear in the Torah, unless there is a special reason otherwise. For example, Yevamot appears first in the Order of Nashim because with levirate marriage you are obligated either to perform halitzah or yibbum, and a person can be compelled in this matter; but marriage itself cannot be imposed on a person, and therefore it is fitting that something obligatory should precede something that has a kind of optional aspect to it (this is roughly how Maimonides puts it). I don’t understand: after all, God too presumably had a reason for arranging the commandments in the Torah in a certain order, yet He still chose to place the commandment of levirate marriage almost at the end of the Torah. So why did Rabbi nevertheless not stick to the “divine logic” of the Torah and instead develop a kind of order with a different logical pattern?
Answer
Even Maimonides did not stick to the divine logic, nor to Rabbi’s logic. Everyone organizes things according to what seems right to him. There doesn’t have to be any divine logic here. Some order is needed, and each person chooses what seems appropriate to him. It could also be a pedagogical consideration, because the Written Torah is not like the Oral Torah.
It is worth noting that in Rabbi Margaliot’s book The Foundation of the Mishnah and Its Redaction, he says that the order of the tractates throughout all the orders of the Mishnah runs from the tractate with the greatest number of chapters to the one with the fewest chapters (taking into account that the entire Order of Nezikin is one tractate, Sanhedrin and Makkot are one tractate, etc.), with, if I remember correctly, one exceptional case in the Order of Zeraim. So apparently there is no need to look for a reason for the juxtaposition of the tractates.