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Torah in the Mouth, Writing and Oral Tradition in Palestinian Judaism, 200 BCE - 400 CE Jaffee, Martin S., Samuel and Althea Stroum Professor of Jewish Studies, University of Washington Print publication date: 2001, Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: November 2003 Print ISBN-13: 978-0-19-514067-5, doi:10.1093/0195140672.001.0001 purification of Israel, as waters of lustration, for purification” (Num. 19:9). end p.159 end p.160 Notes Introduction 1. This text has been commented on extensively by historians of rabbinic tradition. Those that have most shaped my own reading include B. Gerhardsson, Memory and Manuscript , pp. 134–135; J. Neusner, “Oral Torah and Oral Tradition,” pp. 61–62; and P. Schäfer, Studien zur Geschichte und Theologie, pp. 186–188. Neusner's most recent discussion of the text may be consulted in J. Neusner, What, Exactly, Did the rabbinic Sages Mean by “The Oral Torah”? pp. 174–178. I differ from Neusner primarily in my skepticism that the mishnah referred to in this text denotes the redacted compilation ascribed to Rabbi Yehudah the Patriarch. 2. See A. Kohut, Aruch Completum, s.v. mšnh. 3. See the pioneering discussion of W. Bacher, Traditionen und Tradenten , pp. 22–24, and the important philological observations of Y. Blidstein, “The Foundations of the Concept Torah in the Mouth” (Heb.), pp. 496–498. For the English reader, the best place to begin is G. Stemberger, Introduction to Talmud and Midrash , pp. 31–44. 4. There is a growing consensus that the Babylonian Talmud in particular circulated in diverse oral recensions until around the tenth century. The occasion for producing written recensions seems to have been the need to extend the authority of Geonic institutions beyond the Middle East and North Africa into Europe. For an up-to-date review of this discussion, see R. Brody, The Geonim of Babylonia , pp. 155–170. For a recent discussion of the relative lack of scribal forms of technical literacy among Babylonian masters as a causal factor contributing to the preservation of the Babylonian Talmud as an oral text, see Y. Elman, “Orality and the Redaction of the Babylonian Talmud,” (forthcoming). Elman's work is one very good reason that I have omitted discussion of the Babylonian Amoraim from this study. He has opened up so many new questions about the distinctions between Palestinian and Babylonian literary cultures that it would be hazardous to generalize about the Babylonian context without a good deal of further work and reflection within the scholarly community. As for the written preservation of Palestinian rabbinic writings, this has been pushed back to as early as the sixth or seventh century on the basis of material evidence. See Y. Zussman, “The Inscription in the Synagogue at Rehob,” pp. 146–151, for a discussion of the earliest known fragment of rabbinic literature (textually quite close to the Palestinian Talmud), and M. Bregman, “An Early Fragment of Avot de-Rabbi Nathan in a Scroll” (Heb.), pp. 201–222. end p.161 5. F. Bäuml, “Medieval Texts and Two Theories of Oral-Formulaic Composition,” pp. 42–43. 6. In the meantime, readers might consult J. Neusner, What, Exactly, Did the rabbinic Sages Mean by “The Oral Torah”? pp. 208–221. Neusner's comparative discussions of the Palestinian and Babylonian contributions to the conceptualization of Oral Torah suggest to him that the Bavli's formulations constitute a “final statement” in relationship to which the Palestinian is only “intermediate.” I am more inclined, on the basis of Neusner's own discussion, to the view that the Babylonians provide footnotes to the basic ideological positions of their Palestinian colleagues. But I leave it to readers to make their own judgments. 7. Let me acknowledge a few intellectual debts at this point. I have learned much about the interconnections of oral and written tradition in late antiquity from the excellent introduction to the problem by D. Aune, “Prolegomena to the Study of Oral Tradition in the Hellenistic World,” pp. 59–105. Students of early Christianity have been particularly influential in shaping my own perspective on the rabbinic material. These include B. Gerhardsson, Memory and Manuscript ; W. Kelber, The Oral and the Written Gospel ; H. Gamble, Books and Readers in the Early Church; J. Dewey, ed., Orality and Textuality in Early Christian Literature ; P. J. Achtemeier, “Omne Verbum Sonat,” pp. 3–27; P. J. J. Botha, “Greco-Roman Literacy as Setting for New Testament Writings,” pp. 195–213; and V. Robbins, “Writing as a Rhetorical Act in Plutarch and the Gospels,” pp. 142–168. 8. O. Anderson, “Oral Tradition,” p. 30. See his comments, pp. 43–53, on the particular problems posed by the commission of oral tradition to writing. 9. Useful discussions of the economy of oral and written tradition in societies having both media are available in J. Goody, The Logic of Writing, pp. 1–44, and W. Ong, Orality and Literacy , pp. 78–116. 10. Let one citation stand for a hundred: R. Bauman, Story, Performance, Event. 11. Here I try to make my own what I learned from the chapter on “Continuities of Reception” in J. Foley, The Singer of Tales in Performance, pp. 136–180. I am reasonably certain that the last thing that Foley was thinking about as he wrote was the scribal tradition in early Judaism. 12. These three aspects condense for my own purposes the eleven “parameters of oral tradition” enumerated by O. Anderson in “Oral PRINTED FROM OXFORD SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (www.oxfordscholarship.com). (c) Copyright Oxford University Press, 2003 - 2011. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in OSO for personal use (for details see http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/oso/public/privacy_policy.html). Subscriber: Columbia University; date: 20 September 2011
Torah in the Mouth, Writing and Oral Tradition in Palestinian Judaism, 200 BCE - 400 CE Jaffee, Martin S., Samuel and Althea Stroum Professor of Jewish Studies, University of Washington Print publication date: 2001, Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: November 2003 Print ISBN-13: 978-0-19-514067-5, doi:10.1093/0195140672.001.0001 Tradition,” pp. 32–37. 13. For a representative bibliography and sober discussion of the issues regarding the nature and antiquity of an exclusively oral-literary tradition in Rabbinic Judaism, see G. Stemberger, Introduction to Talmud and Midrash , pp. 31–44. Stemberger omits a provocative discussion of the semiotics of orality and writing in rabbinic culture by Faur, Golden Doves with Silver Dots , pp. 84–113. The most exhaustive treatment of rabbinic oral tradition is the first half of B. Gerhardsson's Memory and Manuscript . Gerhardsson's enormously useful work is marred by his tendency to allow the rabbinic literature to serve as a source for describing the oral-literary tradition of Second Temple Pharisaism. Thus, for example, he argues: It seems entirely improbable that transmission before Aqiba [i.e., late first to early second century CE] can have taken place following entirely different principles from those later observed, though there may have been certain differences. The balance of probability is that the basic material in the oral Torah was transmitted and learned in a fixed form as early as during the last century of the Temple; this material was arranged in blocks, grouped on midrashic and mishnaic principles. (p. 111; brackets and italics added) For other examples of Gerhardsson's confidence that the basic model of rabbinic oral tradition typified Pharisaic tradition as well, see pp. 21–25, 29–30, 58–59, 76–77, 158. end p.162 Neusner's work has been the clearest in distinguishing the textual substance of oral-literary tradition from the question of the ideological formations that constitute its legitimation. This distinction has permitted him to make the important point that Jewish “oral tradition” and rabbinic “Oral Torah” need not stand for one and the same literary complex. See his classic statement in J. Neusner, “Oral Tradition and Oral Torah,” pp. 59–75. In his foreword to the recent reprint of Gerhardsson, Neusner repents of his earlier criticisms of Gerhardsson (pp. xxv–xxxii). For my part, I have always found them convincing and still do. 14. In rabbinic literature, the earliest authorities represented as mentioning the term Torah in the Mouth are Hillel and Shammai, both of whom lived at the turn of the Common Era. The term appears in one story that survives in parallel versions in the later strata of rabbinic literary tradition (B. Shabbat 31a/ Avot de-Rabbi Nathan A15, B29). In chapter 5, we shall find reason to doubt the historical reliability of this ascription. 15. On the folktale, see A. Olrik, “Epic Laws of Folk Narrative,” in A. Dundes, The Study of Folklore , pp. 131–141, and V. Propp, Morphology of the Folktale . 16. See, for example, R. Finnegan, “What Is Oral Literature Anyway?” pp. 127–166. Of particular interest in the present context is the study of “folk law,” which has produced a rich historical and ethnographic literature without yielding much in the way of general principles for the form and structure of unwritten legal traditions. See A. D. Renteln and A. Dundes, eds., Folk Law , vol. 1, pp. 1–4. 17. A. B. Lord, The Singer of Tales , is the crucial statement of the rootedness of oral-literary tradition (particularly epic poetry) in the setting of performance; cf. R. Bauman, “Verbal Art as Performance,” pp. 291–311. Lord's most influential interpreter, J. Foley, provides wide-ranging theoretical reflection on the performative nature of oral-traditional texts in The Singer of Tales in Performance . See his introductory comments, pp. 1–28. 18. For the Vedic instance, see F. Staal, Rules Without Meaning , pp. 37–46, 157–163, 369–385. For the ancient Hellenistic world, see D. E. Aune, “Prolegomena to the Study of Oral Tradition in the Hellenistic World,” pp. 83–90. 1. Social Settings of Literary and Scribal Orality 1. Discussing the finds, at the Wadi Murabba‘at caves, of such documents as bills of sale for land and goods, marriage contracts, and the like, J. Milik observes, “Judean triglossia, already quite pronounced during the Herodian period, maintained itself up until the War of Ben Kosba” (P. Benoit et al., Discoveries in the Judean Desert, 2, p. 69). 2. A thorough description of Palestinian coinage and the various languages attested on their inscriptions is available in Y. Meshorer, Ancient Jewish Coinage. See in particular his discussion of the political dimension of coinage, pp. 81–90. 3. See the survey essays on the extant literature outside the canon of the Hebrew Bible in M. E. Stone, ed., Jewish Writings of the Second Temple Period . Additionally, biblical scholars are increasingly aware that the canonizing processes yielding the Hebrew Bible by the end of the first century CE included extensive reshaping of literary materials that survived from the monarchic period of Judean history prior to 587 BCE. That is, much of the present Hebrew Bible not merely is a literary tradition preserved by Second Temple scribal circles, but is indeed a tradition created largely by them. See P. R. Davies, Scribes and Schools , and M. Haran, The Scriptural Collection. 4. The intersection of sectarian social identity and polemical literary activity has been examined most recently by A. Baumgarten, The Flourishing of Jewish Sects in the Maccabean Era, pp. 114–136. 5. Greek translations of the Torah and other Hebrew texts circulated in Alexandrian circles from the third century BCE, forming the basis of the Septuagint and other Greek renderings. PRINTED FROM OXFORD SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (www.oxfordscholarship.com). (c) Copyright Oxford University Press, 2003 - 2011. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in OSO for personal use (for details see http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/oso/public/privacy_policy.html). Subscriber: Columbia University; date: 20 September 2011
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