Torah in the Mouth.pdf

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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 the criterion of revelation (apokalupseos) to distinguish Paul's preaching from all other teaching about Christ (Gal. 1:11–16): For I would have you know, brethren, that the gospel which was preached by me is not man's gospel. For I did not receive it from man, nor was I taught it, but it came through a revelation of Jesus Christ. For you have heard of my former life in Judaism, how I persecuted the church of God violently and tried to destroy it; and I advanced in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people, so extemely zealous was I for the traditions of my fathers [patrikon mou paradoseon]. 20 But when he who had set me apart before I was born, had called me through his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son to me, in order that I might preach him among the Gentiles, I did not confer with flesh and blood. Here Paul subsumes the Judaic “traditions of my fathers” under a larger category of humanly generated tradition that includes the teachings of other apostles about Christ. Paul makes no explicit equation of his former Judaic traditions with specifically Pharisaic norms, but it is tempting indeed to read his allusion here in light of his Pharisaic self-identification in Philippians. The result is that, from Paul's new end p.45 postrevelation perspective, his Pharisaic tradition appears to have been, even in full respect to its antiquity, merely a human construction. But this idea is of little help in determining how the Pharisaism known to Paul might have represented the source of whatever traditions it transmitted. Perhaps by showing Pharisaic tradition to be “human-all-too-human” Paul is satirizing a Pharisaic claim to possess a divinely disclosed text-interpretive tradition akin to that found in the prologue to the third century rabbinic tractate, Avot 1:1ff (of which, more later, particularly in chapter 4). But this notion is purely speculative and cannot enter into a description of the Pharisaic conception of tradition known to Paul. In sum, Paul's writings help us little in our efforts to learn about the sorts of authority enjoyed by Pharisaic interpretive tradition or the degree to which it was, as a matter of principle , transmitted independently of written texts. The second source of early Christian tradition about the Pharisees, more or less contemporaneous with the Pauline corpus, is the hypothetical source of memorable sayings ascribed primarily to John the Baptizer and Jesus, known to New Testament scholarship as “Q. ” 21 Broadly speaking, this source is claimed to underlie those parallel passages of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke that have no parallel in Mark. The Pharisees make only occasional appearances in passages that draw upon Q, and in all but one case they figure only in the redactional language supplied by the Matthean editor rather than in the logion itself. These references, accordingly, are not part of the original Q tradition at all, but rather are the contribution of the Matthean gospel tradition. For example, John the Baptizer's condemnation of the “brood of vipers” is directed against Sadducees and Pharisees in Mat. 3:7–12 but to “the multitudes” in Luke 3:7–9. In the story of the exorcism of the demoniac, similarly, the crowd's skeptical comments are ascribed to the Pharisees in Matthew's two versions (Mat. 9:32–34, 12:22–28), whereas Luke places them in the mouths of “some of the people” (Luke 11:14–15). The same distinction occurs in Mat. 12:38–42 (“Pharisees”)/Luke 11:16 (“others”) where a request for Jesus to perform a sign draws his condemnation of “an evil generation.” This equivocation in the earliest layer of the eventual gospel tradition about the precise antagonists besetting John and Jesus should make us cautious in drawing any inferences about Pharisees from these passages. In any case none of them is relevant to our interest in Pharisaic concepts of tradition. The only passage of Q that refers to Pharisees within quoted logia is found in Q 11:42, within the extended condemnations of Pharisaic faults woven throughout Jesus' speeches in Mat. 23:1–36/Luke 11:39–52. 22 Here too there are suggestive differences in the way Q is shaped in the transmitted Gospel texts. The formulaic phrase “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!” which inaugurates each condemnation in Matthew, is absent in the Lukan parallels. Luke, for its part, confines its opprobrium to Pharisees alone (omitting scribes, who play no role in Luke's narrative framework) and neglects the explicit charge of hypocrisy (although Pharisaic hypocrisy is surely the point throughout). Q 11:42 and its accompanying material, in any case, make no specific mention of Pharisaic tradition per se. Nor do its references to such practices as cleansing cups or tithing herbs necessarily distinguish these practices as central to or distinctive of Pharisaic tradition. The point is not that Pharisees, contrary to other Jews, purify their end p.46 utensils or tithe mint and cumin; rather it is that they do this while “neglecting the weightier matters of the law” (Mat. 23:23) or, in the Lukan version, “the love of God” (Luke 11:42). Ultimately, then, the Q tradition is no more helpful than the Pauline corpus in illuminating the character of Pharisaic tradition in the first half of the first century CE. Moving to the next stage in the formation of the emerging Christian gospel tradition, represented by the synoptic Gospels of Mark, Matthew, and Luke, we find ourselves planted firmly in the latter third of the first century. 23 The composition of the Gospel of Mark is usually dated to sometime after the mid-60s of the first century, with Matthew and Luke following in the 80s and 90s. Here the sparseness 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 of Q's testimony about the Pharisees is overcome by a plethora of overlapping and, at times, competing representations of the Pharisees as being among the most persistent antagonists of Jesus' person and message. The full range of images has been the subject of frequent discussion and will not detain us here. From the perspective of our interest in the nature of Pharisaic tradition, however, one particular passage, paralleled in Mat. 15:1–20 and Mark 7:1–23, is of singular importance. The unit begins with Jesus' criticism of the preoccupation of scribes and Pharisees with hand-washing before meals (Mat. 15:1–2/Mark 7:1 –5), a theme explored as well in the Q materials underlying Mat. 23 and Luke 11 (see above). In the present setting, Jesus goes on to a broader charge, reminiscent of Paul's statements in Gal. 1:14, that Pharisaic practices in general replace divine commandments with human conventions (Mat. 15:3–9/Mark 7:6–13). He concludes by redefining defilement as that which is found in the human heart rather than absorbed from material agents such as food (Mat. 15:10–20/Mark 7:14–23). The parallel versions differ slightly in the sequence of logia and their precise formulation. Each pericope, moreover, has its own emphasis, containing material not found in its companion. Since the Markan version focuses more squarely on our own interests here, we will use it as the basis of this discussion. The most relevant portion extends from Mark 7:1–13 (Mat. 15:1–9): 1. (7:1–2) Now when the Pharisees gathered together to him, with some of the scribes, who had come from Jerusalem,/ they saw that end p.47 some of his disciples ate with hands defiled, that is, unwashed. 2. (7:3–4) For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, do not eat unless they wash their hands, observing the tradition of the elders [paradosin ton presbuteron]; and when they come from the market place, they do not eat unless they purify themselves; and there are many other traditions [parelabon] that they observe, the washing of cups and pots and vessels of bronze. 3. (7:5) And the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why do your disciples not live [peripatousin] according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with hands defiled?” (7:6–8) And he said to them, “Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites as it is written (Is. 29:13): ‘this people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me;/ in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the precepts of men’ [entalmata anthropon]/. You leave the commandment of God, and hold fast the tradition of men.” 4. (7:9–13) And he said to them, “You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment [entelon] of God, in order to keep your tradition [paradosin]! For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother [Ex. 20:12, Dt. 5:16]’; and ‘He who speaks evil of father and mother, let him surely die [Ex. 21:16, Lev. 20:9]’; but you say, ‘If a man tells his father or his mother, What you would have gained from me is Corban (that is, given to God)—then he is no longer permitted to do anything for his father or mother,’ thus making void the word of God through your tradition [paradosei] which you hand on [paredokate]. And many such things you do.” Sections 1 and 3 are an original literary unity into which 2 has been interpolated as a parenthetic ethnographic guide to Pharisaic ritual practice. 24 Section 4 amplifies the concluding point of 3, that Pharisaic tradition contravenes the divine will. Let us focus on key points of interest in sections 2–4 in sequence. As A. Baumgarten has observed, 2's key terms for tradition, paradosin and parebelon, correspond respectively to the acts of passing on and receiving something from the past. These echo the Hebrew roots msr and qbl that play a key role in the later Mishnah's representation of the linkage of rabbinic tradition to Mosaic origins (M. Avot 1:1ff.). 25 Mark here identifies hand-washing as an element of this larger tradition received from the ancestors. Later rabbinic tradition also links traditions about ritual hand-washing at mealtimes to the first-century disciples of Hillel and Shammai (M. Berakhot 8:2–3, T. Berakhot 5:26–27). 26 So it is at least possible that—if this interpolated passage stems from a late moment in the development of Mark's textual tradition—it might reflect terminology for the transmission of tradition that was current in some Jewish circles in the latter portion of the first century CE or after. The question, however, is whether in Mark's view this tradition is distinctive to the Pharisees. “All the Jews,” after all, follow this custom. 27 So it is not clear at this point that the Pharisaic challenge to Jesus' disciples is based on specifically Pharisaic custom or, to the contrary, accuses the disciples of ignoring the traditions of Israel in general. 28 Section 3 resolves this matter. Jesus' ascription of Is. 29:13's “people” (LXX: laos; MT: ‘m) to his Pharisaic opponents leaves no doubt that, in Mark's mind, whether or not the Pharisees originated the ritual of hand-washing, it is their tradition alone that has elevated a human convention to the level of a divine commandment. The quotation from Scripture is a close paraphrase of the Septuagint, which also contrasts divinely originating didaskalias (“doctrines”) with mere human “precepts” (entalmata: cf. MT: m wt ’nšym). It is impossible to know whether late first-century Pharisees claimed divine origins for their customs, but it is clear that Mark understands their loyalty to their traditions as defiance of God's own commandments. Another important element of section 3 is the very question posed by the Pharisees to Jesus. As is commonly pointed out, the verb peripatousin is best rendered as “walking” or “conducting oneself,” in this case in accord with the tradition of the elders. It is likely that some form of the Hebrew root hlk underlies this expression. The reflexive form is well attested in the Hebrew Bible (e.g., Gen. 6:9, 17:1, 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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