Barkley, the accumulation of Talmud was based on the theory that - I know this will sound strange, but bear with me - the younger rabbis were all simply writing down things that older rabbis had told them. In the Orthodox view the Talmud is the "Torah sheh b'al'Peh", the Oral Torah, which was also given to Moses at Mount Sinai, and then transmitted verbally down through the generations until it was finally written down. All law in the Talmud is supposed to have been transmitted from Mount Sinai - there's nowhere else that wisdom can come from. If there are disputes in the commentaries, then they're both right, and the task of future generations is to figure out how they can both be right, because you can never say an older rabbi is wrong, because they're closer to Mount Sinai than you. The fact that much of the law in the Mishna or Gemara is blatantly medieval or blatantly based on incorrect medieval beliefs is somehow just not thought about.