מבנה כיאסטי בקובץ בן חמישה סיפורים בתלמוד הבבלי, בבא בתרא קנא ע"א–ע"ב

This article examines the connection between the stylistic structure and the content of a five-story cluster in the Babylonian Talmud on Bava Batra 151a–b. We point out that in the first story, there are two judges (dayanim), R. Bibi Bar Abaye and R. Huna, son of R. Yehoshua, while in the other four stories, there is only one judge (dayan), R. Naḥman. An important question we seek to elucidate is why the redactor of the sugya chose the first story rather than a similar story that appears in tractate Ketubot (78b–79a), wherein R. Naḥman is the only judge, as in the other four stories in the five-story cluster under study. Given its similar content, the story in Ketubot would appear to be a better fit with the cluster of stories in Bava Batra. This article seeks to show that this five-story cluster expresses a thought-provoking process of redaction, in terms of both the chronological sequence of the generations of characters it portrays and the content of the stories. While the cluster may have originally included four stories, the first story was likely added in a later redaction. This addition gave a chiastic structure of five stories to the cluster. Describing the chiasmus, we suggest that its formation was indeed a consideration of the redactor of the sugya.