Torah in the Mouth.pdf

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.
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