Our Gemara on Amud Aleph grapples with legal and textual inconsistencies, where the subject matter of the various legal cases and oaths described in Shemos (chapter 22) are difficult to ascertain. According to one approach, עירוב פרשיות כתוב כאן, there is a blending of distinct cases within the verses. In the same verses, one part might be referring to an oath for partial admission, while the second half could be referring to a watchman’s oath.

This idea that the Torah seems to have no order or logical sequence is alien to the western scientific approach. We have similar statements such as,  אין מוּקְדָּם וּמְאוּחָר בַּתּוֹרָה there is no absolute chronological order in the Torah, as events that occurred later in time can appear earlier in the Torah (Pesachim 6b). And, most recently we saw, אֵין סֵדֶר לַמִּשְׁנָה The Mishna is not sequential (Bava Kamma 102a). 

Amongst the commentaries, there are qualifications and distinctions regarding when do we say there is no order, and when we say there is order, but for the purposes of this discussion, we are going to look at the general theme.  Torah follows a system, however sequential order is not its particular kind of system. It is more like a web of simultaneously related items. That is why, especially when you are learning Gemara, though one might expect that the title of the mesechta dictates its contents, often there are discussions that range through all kinds of related topics, far away from what the original title would suggest. My famous personal rule of Gemara is that every daf assumes you know every other daf in shas, except for that one, and every Tosafos expects you to know every other Tosafos and Gemara in Shas except for the one that the question is dealing with. Once you have that basic fact down, the rest is easy.

Gershon Scholem, the brilliant Jewish scholar of mysticism (and apikores), I believe, was correct in his observation that the more something is authentically Jewish, the less systematic it is.  It is notable that when the Rambam ambitiously sought to codify the entire Torah Sheba’al Peh in his magnum Opus, the Mishna Torah, he divided everything into strict topics, sections and subsections. (This was pan unparalleled feat by a single person in history, and it encompassed Bavli, Yerushalmi, Toseftos, Safra, Sifri etc.) The Rambam’s “rebbe”, so to speak,  in philosophy was Aristotle (quoted more than 70 times in the Moreh Nevuchim.)  Aristotle was a great classifier and organizer of information and wisdom.  This is the scientific, rational and linear method which surely has advantages. However, if you are considering something that represents the infinite multi-faceted will of God, how could it possibly be systematic from a human perspective? We are bound by time and space, but God is not. The Torah, by necessity, goes in all directions at once.  Torah is grand and hyperlinked (think gezeira shava), with various levels of meaning and cross references, that it cannot be fully contained in any order.  The fact that there is an appearance of some order, is a nod to human intellectual frailty, “The Torah speaks in the vernacular” (Berachos 31b).  

Translations Courtesy of Sefaria, except when, sometimes, I disagree with the translation

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