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
24:40; Ps. 26:3; Is. 38:3/2 Kings 20:3) and Qumran (e.g., 1QS 3:20–21, 4:15, CD 12:22, 20:6) as a description of a comprehensive pattern
of behavior, for good or ill. And certainly, we stand here close to the semantic range covered by the term halakhah in later
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rabbinic texts. At the very least, then, this passage conveys the sense that, among Pharisees, ancient traditions were revered as part of
an all-embracing pattern of life. It may constitute, as well, the earliest indirect attestation of the term halakhah in the sense it ultimately
bore in later rabbinic literature.
Section 4 reinforces the images of its predecessor, adding more fuel to the fire. The contrast between divine norms (entelon) and Pharisaic
tradition (paradosin) echoes the vocabulary of LXX Is. 29:13, showing how Pharisaic customs regarding vows permit violations of the
divine commandment to honor parents. It is precarious to assert that, in this highly polemical passage, Mark has gotten Pharisaic custom
entirely straight. Later rabbinic laws of vows, in contrast to Mark's representation, incorporate a mechanism for absolving oneself from any
vows that entail violations of biblical commandments. 29 Indeed the specific instance of the absolution of a vow involving dishonor of
parents is addressed at M. Nedarim 9:1. It is impossible, obviously, to surmise the Pharisaic situation. But Mark's representation of the
term “Corban” as central to the language of oaths is reflected in Josephus and early rabbinic literature as well. 30 While we might suspect
Mark of exagerating the extent to which vows would have been made in order to circumvent scriptural commands, the text is clearly in
touch with genuine Palestinian Jewish practice, both within and beyond the Pharisaic orbit.
To summarize the conclusions about what can be learned from early Christian literary sources regarding the conception of text-interpretive
authority among the Pharisees of the mid-late first century CE: Paul, Q, and the synoptic traditions concur that a salient trait of first-
century Judaism in general was comformity to an ancestral tradition of norms that govern behavior. Paul may view this adherence to
tradition as distinctive to Pharisaism, but Q's single reference represents it as a characteristic of Jewish piety in general. The synoptic
tradition represented in Matthew and Mark moves well beyond both Paul and Q in defining Pharisaism substantially as loyalty to a
distinctive ancestral tradition that in some sense can supersede specific biblical laws. But the synoptics are less interested in the details
of this tradition than in showing how it blinds the Pharisees to the teaching and person of Jesus.
These results, obviously, leave many questions unanswered. Was Pharisaic ancestral custom anchored in a text-interpretive tradition?
The sources make no particular reference to text-interpretive practices among Pharisees, although we do find the charge that the tradition
can do violence to scriptural norms. If not textually rooted in scriptural interpretation, was the tradition perceived as independent of
Scripture but in some sense equally important? Christian sources give us little basis upon which to judge. How was the authority of
Pharisaic tradition conceived by those who submitted to it? The synoptics represent its authority as grounded in ancestral usage rather
than in the personal authority of the teacher. This idea seems convincing, but in light of the concern of the Gospels to highlight the
charismatic authority of Jesus over against that of tradition, it is possible that Phaisaic traditionalism may be overstated as well. 31
Therefore we cannot entirely discount the role of charismatic teaching authority, of a kind we earlier noticed at Qumran, within Pharisaic
circles. 32
Finally, and most germane to our concerns here: early Christian sources tell us precious little about the specific content of Pharisaic text-
interpretive tradition and nothing about the form—oral, written, or some combination of each—in which it
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might have been transmitted. That is, if Christian sources of the first century were our only source of knowledge about Pharisaic tradition,
it is unlikely that we would suspect that it was privileged as a purely oral tradition uncontaminated by the written word. There may be more
to say on this last subject after a survey of the representation of Pharisaism in the most exhaustive first-century source on the nature of
Second Temple Jewish society.
The Writings of Josephus
The extant writings of Flavius Josephus are among the most important and well-studied sources for the history of the Jews during the
Second Temple period. His discussions of the Pharisees, in particular, woven throughout writings produced over the course of the last two
decades of the first century CE, form the basis of virtually all academic accounts of the nature of Pharisaism prior to the first century. 33 In
his various accounts of Pharisaic involvement in Judean politics during the Hasmonean dynasty, during the reign of Herod, and in the last
decades prior to the war against Rome, Josephus consistently portrays the Pharisees as a disciplined political group promoting as part of
its program a scrupulous adherence to ancestral Jewish tradition anchored in the laws of Moses. 34 Unfortunately, he shares virtually
nothing about the particulars of this tradition. Were Josephus our only source for Pharisaic customs, for example, we would know nothing
about the Pharisaic hand-washing and tithing that otherwise looms so large in the Gospels. While somewhat more forthcoming about the
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