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
that our text may have circulated at least as early as the first third of the second century CE—that the pedagogical model established in
end p.4
end p.5
the Sinaitic generation is precisely the basis for rabbinic instruction in the present generation. Sages today teach their disciples precisely
as the Blessed Holy One taught Israel through Moses.
The content of the tradition given to Moses may no longer have been preserved in its original form—after all, we no longer have the words
given to Moses, transmitted
to Aaron and, thence, to all the people. The Talmud explains in another place that much was forgotten in the trauma following Moses'
death and had to be reconstructed by logical inference, the original words having been lost (B. Temurah 15b–16a). The point, however, is
that the tradition surviving among the Sages is transmitted in the original way—by patient repetition, from master to disciple, from mouth
to ear, and from ear to memory, without the intervention of a written text. This teaching is thoroughly oral; in the parlance of the Talmud
and other early rabbinic writings, it is Oral Torah (twrh šb‘l ph) 3 or, as I prefer to render it—Torah in the Mouth.
Now, as it happens, for at least a thousand years the traditions of Torah in the Mouth have been memorized from written texts. 4 Later in
this book I will argue that written recensions of Oral Torah existed as early as the third century CE, not much later than the era represented
by teachers such as Rabbi Aqiva and Rabbi Eliezer, and certainly well before the historical moment at which the anonymous composers of
this section of Babylonian rabbinic tradition chose to adduce the text just cited as a precedent for their own oral pedagogy.
I would like, therefore, to call attention to another text, more recent in origin. It is the composition of an esteemed scholar of medieval
European literature, Franz Bäuml. He has thought deeply about the processes by which orally composed poetic traditions found their way
into written compositions that preserved the traits of orally transmitted traditions out of which they emerged. Of course, the texts upon
which Bäuml works, such as the Song of Roland , are in no sense analogous in genre to those produced by ancient rabbis. But something
suggested by Bäuml has stuck in my mind for many years. In a way, this book is the result of my effort to explore its implications for my
own understanding of rabbinic literature.
Bäuml is interested in the formulaic, repetitive style of oral-traditional poetry, its reliance upon sterotypical literary forms. On the one hand,
written versions of such oral-traditional poetry betray their dependence upon the oral-performative setting in which the unwritten versions
had their social being prior to having been written down. On the other, the act of writing introduces its own changes into the character of
the oral text. Not only does it wrest the text from its social matrix of performance, fixing a living and constantly shifting text into a much
less malleable form. More important, it changes the nature of the oral tradition that continues to surround and mediate the written text to its
audience.
This is what Bäuml has to say about the problem. I cite his text extensively, omitting certain parts that are less directly relevant here:
The mechanism of oral transmission, which is the basis for stereotypical formulation on the lexical and thematic levels, does not
cease to function in the transmission of texts like the Chanson de Roland or the Niebelungenlied merely because they have
become written and their formerly oral formulism has become a matter of style. . . . In such instances one must distinguish
between the functions of stereotypical devices in the processes of oral and written composition, transmission, and reception
[italics added]. In each process these devices can have a mechanical and a referential function. In the processes of oral-epic
composition, performance, and reception, they are essential mechanisms for the composition and simultaneous performance of
the text, as well as for its reception and retention. They are also culturally essential references to the tradition they formulate and
transmit. In the
process of oral-formulaic written composition they play no essential mechanical part, but they necessarily have a referential role:
they refer to a specific (oral) type of text and thus represent the convention which determines the composition of the written text.
Once this written text is formulaically composed, there is no longer any option to the function of its stereotypical devices as
mechanisms in its performance and reception. Whether the text is read aloud, recited from memory, or read silently, its formulism
mechanically affects its performance; it aids recitation from memory, conditions reading by its repetitiveness, and serves the
retention of the text in the memory. . . . But whatever the mechanical role of formulism in performance and reception may be, its
referential function is clear: the written formulaic text inescapably refers the receiver to the oral-formulaic tradition, provided only
that he is familiar with its attributes. In referring to the oral tradition, the written text fictionalizes it. Since the one is given a role
to play within the other, since oral formulae in the garb of writing refer to “orality” within the written tradition, the oral tradition
becomes an implicit fictional “character” of literacy [italics added]. 5
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