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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 to 4:6–7 at the penultimate stage of its reworking for the purpose of concluding Tractate Yadayim. 62. E. Qimron and J. Strugnell, Discoveries, vol. 10, pp. 48, 53 (text) and 155–156, 161–162 (commentary). See pp. 131–177 for a comprehensive discussion of the various conceptual parallels of legal positions staked out in 4QMMT and in rabbinic texts. The pioneering study, which has not been outdated by the publication of Qimron and Strugnell, is that of Y. Zussman, “Research in the History of the Halakhah and the Scrolls of the Judean Desert” (Heb.), pp. 11–76 (an English summary of which appears in Qimron and Strugnell, pp. 179 –200). The tendency to link the legal positions of 4QMMT's addressee to those of the Pharisaic and later rabbinic traditions, with particular reference to the question of the spout of liquid, is effectively challenged by Y. Elman, “Some Remarks on 4QMMT,” pp. 99–128. 63. See, for example, S. Lieberman, “The Discipline in the So-Called Dead Sea Manual of Discipline,” p. 202. Lieberman's trenchant critique of efforts to link the Association to the Yahad is grounded in an unargued assumption that the Association is a Pharisaic group. Cf. C. Rabin, Qumran Studies, who argues, to the contrary, that “the Qumran community . . . represents the old haburah [Association] more faithfully than does the ‘rabbinic’ community of the Tannaitic period, because the latter had made extensive concessions in halakhic matters in order to enable non-Pharisees to share in its life” (p. viii). Thus, in contrast to Lieberman, Rabin finds Pharisaic origins for both the Yahad and the Association. In order to make this view workable, Rabin argues for a no-longer-tenable first-century CE dating for the Damascus Document. 64. The most important discussion of the literary relationship of M. and T. Demai is that of R. Sarason, A Study of Tractate Demai , pp. 69 –107. Following Neusner's paradigm of the Tosefta as a commentary on the Mishnah, Sarason views T. Demai 2:2–3:9 as an extensive expansion of the Mishnah's slim notice. For reasons I will elaborate in chapter 6 of this study, the relationship of any given Mishnaic passage to its Toseftan parallel is likely to be more complex. This is one of those passages. In my view, M. Demai 2:2–3 is a brief allusion end p.181 to the fuller Toseftan passage that circulated as a unit of tradition prior to the redaction of the extant tractates of the Mishnah and the Tosefta (a possibility entertained by Sarason as well, pp. 77, 79). In any event, the question of the M.–T. relationship does not affect our discussion of the relation of the Associates to the Pharisees, since mention of Pharisees is conspicuously absent in both sources. 65. According to S. Lieberman, Tosefta Ki-fshuta, vol. 1, p. 209, the differences refer to different stages of entry into the Association: “the Mishnah refers to the practices of the Associates after they have already accepted the rules of the Association, but the Tosefta specifies the conditions that a disciple of the Sages or an undisciplined Jew must accept prior to entry into the Association.” 66. This is the reading of MS Erfurt and the first edition. MS Vienna has “for” (l). Lieberman, Tosefta Ki-fshuta, vol. 1, p. 216 prefers the reading of MS Erfurt. 67. C. Rabin, Qumran Studies, pp. 1–21. Most of the Sages who comment upon the Mishnaic and Toseftan rulings come from the mid- second century, post-bar Kosiva generation. This fact suggests that the formulation of the foundational material is somewhat removed from the pre-70 milieu. If so, the terminology need no longer accurately represent putative first-century usage. 68. In many contexts, the phrase tlmyd km is equivalent to “Sage.” Here, since it stands in apposition to the term km in ruling 2, the intention is to distinguish between an apprentice and a fully qualified Sage. See next note. 69. B. Bekhorot 30b: zqn (“Elder”). This variant confirms that the use of tlmyd km in ruling 1 is intended to refer to a disciple. 70. So MS Vienna. Abba Shaul's comment is lacking in MS Erfurt and the Toseftan parallel at Y. Demai 2:3, 22d, but attested at B. Bekhorot 30b. 71. In this judgment, I agree with E. Rivkin, A Hidden Revolution, p. 174, although I admit to finding more ambiguity in the matter than he does. 72. See the summaries of pre-70 traditions incorporated into later Mishnaic tractates in J. Neusner, Judaism, pp. 45–75. 73. See the convenient collection in R. Herford, Christianity in Talmud and Midrash , pp. 35–96. Herford notes some sixteen passages in the Talmud Bavli that contain clear or veiled references to Jesus and only one umistakable reference in the Yerushalmi (Y. Taanit 2:1, 65b). 74. Whether this was conceived as the cultivation of priestly levels of purity among nonpriests remains a controversial matter. See the dispute between E. P. Sanders, Jewish Law From Jesus to the Mishnah , pp. 130–254, and J. Neusner, Judaic Law from Jesus to the Mishnah, pp. 205–230, 247–273. 75. A useful comparative study of Qumranian and rabbinic purity laws is offered by H. Harrington in The Impurity Systems of Qumran and the Rabbis. See in particular her comments on the Sanders–Neusner debate regarding the nature of Pharisaic purity concerns, pp. 267 –281. 4. Tannaitic Tradition as an Object of Rabbinic Reflection 1. Useful discussions of the social history of Palestinian Jewry in the second and early third centuries are M. Goodman, State and Society in Roman Galilee, pp. 27–89; R. Horsley, Galilee, pp. 111–282; J. Sanders, Schismatics, Sectarians, Dissidents, Deviants, pp. 40 –151; and H. Lapin, Early Rabbinic Civil Law and the Social History of Roman Galilee , pp. 119–235. See also the several important essays in W. Horbury et al., The Cambridge History of Judaism, volume 3 . This work appeared too recently to make an impact on my 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 study. 2. See S. Fraade, From Tradition to Commentary, pp. 73–74, and especially the sources cited on p. 232, n. 202. end p.182 3. For the early history of the term, see H. Lapin, “Rabbi,” in D. Freedman, The Anchor Bible Dictionary , vol. 5, pp. 600–602. On the shape of the nascent rabbinic movement in second- and early third-century Galilee, see M. Goodman, State and Society in Roman Galilee, pp. 93–171; R. Horsley, Galilee, pp. 94–103; S. Fraade, From Tradition to Commentary, pp. 69–121; and S. Cohen, “The Place of the Rabbi in Jewish Society of the Second Century,” in L. Levine, ed., The Galilee in Late Antiquity, pp. 157–173. 4. C. Hezser, The Social Structure of the Rabbinic Movement , pp. 1–42, offers a fine survey of the scholarship. 5. See the rabbinic sources woven into the account of Jewish scribal practice offered by M. Bar-Ilan in “Scribes and Books in the Late Second Commonwealth and the Rabbinic Period,” pp. 21–37. 6. This is reflected in a number of ways. First, rabbinic historical memory represents Second Temple Sadducees as subjected in their cultic practice to the Sages' authority (e.g., T. Kippurim 1:8, T. Parah 3:8). For a thorough survey of sources and their interpretation, see G. Alon, Jews, Judaism, and the Classical World , pp. 48–88. Second, prerogatives assigned in Scripture to priests in the evaluation of states of uncleanness are appropriated by Sages in rabbinic halakhah (e.g., M. Negaim 3:1, Sifra, Negaim, per. 1:8–9 [Lev. 13:2]). Priests are thus transformed from their scriptural status as interpreters of the Torah in their own right to executors of Sages' will. The issue is explored in further depth in J. Neusner, A History of the Mishnaic Law of Purities, vol. 8, pp. 139–145, 254–256. Related to this point, the inherited status of holiness enjoyed by the priesthood is made secondary to the acquired status of holiness conferred by study of torah under the direction of Sages (e.g., M. Horayot 3:8). On this matter, see M. Jaffee, Horayot, pp. 24–28. Finally, with the single exception of Shimon the Righteous, all First and Second Temple priests are omitted from the chain of authoritative torah tradition (M. Avot 1:1ff). On the implications, see M. Heer, “Continuity of Tradition in the Transmission of Torah,” pp. 43–56. C. Hezser discusses the post-70 relationship between the emerging rabbinic movement and the priestly caste in The Social Structure of the rabbinic Movement, pp. 480–489. 7. For example, a first-century figure, Nahum the Lavlar (Greek: liblarios, a copier of documents), figures at M. Peah 2:6 in the transmission of a halakhic tradition of Mosaic origins. The second-century Sage, Rabbi Meir, is remembered as having been a skilled scribe ( km wswpr : B. Gittin 67a, Avot de-Rabbi Nathan, A18) who could copy out the entire text of the Esther scroll from memory (T. Megillah 2:5). In general, however, scribes as literary professionals (in contrast to notaries or clerks) are not normally portrayed as insiders to the rabbinic community. See B. Gerhardsson, Memory and Manuscript , 45–51, and C. Schams, Jewish Scribes in the Second-Temple Period , pp. 288–289. 8. The only explicit case in the Mishnah and Tosefta is at M. Kelim 13:7/M. Tevul Yom 4:6, paralleled in T. Kelim, Bava Metzia 3:14/T. Tevul Yom 2:14. A second example appears at Sifre Num. 5:18, pis. 8. A final possible example is from the late appendix to M. Avot (6:9): “I come from a great city of Sages and scribes.” Terms such as “judicial scribes” (swpry hdyynym: e.g., M. Sanhedrin 4:3, T. Sandhedrin 9:1) refer to court clerks rather than Sages per se. J. Weingreen (“Oral Torah and Written Records,” pp. 56–59) has argued, unpersuasively in my view, that the records of such scribes formed an important written substratum of the traditions that ultimately came to be known in rabbinic Judaism as the Oral Torah. 9. Neusner's most recent contribution to the discussion (J. Neusner, What Exactly Did the Sages Mean by “The Oral Torah”? pp. 211 –213), seems to place the idea in the post-Mishnaic period that produced the halakhic midrashim, the Palestinian Talmud, and the great Palestinian midrashic compilations. P. Schäfer, “Das Dogma von der Mündlichen Torah,” pp. 196–197, finds the thematic origins of the idea in “early Tannaitic times,” although end p.183 it is only in Amoraic times that he finds “the dogma of linking the entire oral Torah back to Moses.” See also D. Kraemer, “On the Reliability of the Attributions in the Babylonian Talmud,” pp. 185–190; he argues for the primacy of the circle of the mid-third-century Sage, Rabbi Yohanan bar Nappaha. The concluding chapter of this volume will confirm and amplify arguments for a mid-third-century setting. 10. For the term tn' and variants as designations for tradents of Mishnaic and other early traditions, see W. Bacher, Terminologie, vol. 2, p. 241, and M. Sokoloff, A Dictionary of Jewish Palestinian Aramaic , p. 386, s.v., tnwy. See also B. Gerhardsson, Memory and Manuscript, pp. 93ff. I will discuss the corresponding term, 'mwr' (Amora), and its variants in chapter 7. 11. Y. Epstein, Introduction to the Text of the Mishnah , pp. 673–726, has shown that the extant texts of the Mishnah stemming from medieval manuscripts cannot be regarded as identical to the textual traditions that circulated from the early third century under the authority of Rabbi Yehudah the Patriarch. Nevertheless, these texts must serve. For a fruitful new approach to the gradual emergence of the Mishnaic text in the discipleship circles of the third century, see the dissertation of E. Alexander, Study Practices that Made the Mishnah. Citations of the Mishnah in this book are translated by the author from the edition of C. Albeck unless otherwise noted. 12. Scholarly positions on the dating of this crucial compilation of Tannaitic tradition have ranged from the mid-third century through the 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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