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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 between Pharisees and Sages or for the development among Pharisees of an ideological commitment to the transmission of an exclusively oral tradition of textual interpretation. The general lack of rabbinic interest in drawing historical connections between Pharisaic and rabbinic intellectual lineages is surprising, given the great value assigned in the Mishnah and all later rabbinic compilations to delineating patterns of intellectual tradition through chains of transmission (e.g., M. Avot 1:1ff.). It is therefore curious that, while there are a number of rabbinic texts that refer to Pharisees as an identifiable Second Temple community, there is little suggestion in them that the transmitters of these texts found here references to their own immediate predecessors. We can confine ourselves, for present purposes, to the Tannaitic compilations that most probably contain traditions formulated from the second through the early third centuries. 54 The most important of these, because it is commonly read as proof of rabbinic continuity with the Pharisees, is found in M. Yadayim 4:6 –7. The passage records a series of disputes between Pharisees and Sadducees 55 regarding matters of law for which the Torah provides no explicit ruling: 1. (M. Yad.4:6) Sadducees say: We challenge you, Pharisees! For you rule: “The sacred writings render the hands unclean, but the end p.55 Homeric books do not render the hands unclean.” 56 2. Said Rabban Yohanan b. Zakkai: And have we only this against the Pharisees? Behold, they rule: “The bones of an ass are clean, but the bones of Yohanan the High Priest are unclean!” 57 3. [The Sadducees] replied: According to their preciousness is their uncleanness, so that a person will not turn the bones of his father On the basis of purely literary-formulaic considerations, the passage consists of two distinct elements. A list (1–2 + 4–6) governed by a distinctive compositional formula (X say: We challenge you, Y, because of Z) has been supplemented by explanatory material (3, 7). This formal distinction between the compositional elements corresponds to an interesting distinction in viewpoint as well. In the core list, Pharisees and Sadducees are set against each other with no explicit suggestion as to which party the composer favors. Indeed, there may even be a hint of preference for the Sadducean positions: an important Sage of the early Yavnean period, Rabban Yohanan b. Zakkai, weighs in against the Pharisees with his own complaint (2), and the Sadducees fire the last salvo (6). The supplements to this core list, however, reorient the entire point. The interchange between Rabban Yohanan and Sadducees at 3 now shows his statement at 2 to have been ironic: he in fact agrees with the Pharisees on the capacity of Scriptures to defile the hands, and he bases his view on a principle that the Sadducees themselves are made to articulate: “preciousness” and the capacity to defile are integrally connected. Similarly, the debate between Sadducees and Pharisees at 7 results in a Pharisaic victory grounded in the power of logic. 61 and mother into spoons! He replied: So, too, regarding the sacred writings—in accordance with their value is their uncleanness. But the Homeric books, which have no value—they do not render the hands unclean. 4. (M. Yad.4:7) Sadducees say: We challenge you, Pharisees! For you declare clean the spout of liquid. 58 5. Pharisees say: We challenge you, Sadducees! For you declare clean a stream of water flowing from a cemetery! 59 6. Sadducees say: We challenge you, Pharisees! For you rule: “My ox and my ass that have caused damage—we are obliged for compensation [as at Ex. 21:35]; but my male or female slave who has caused damage—we are exempt from compensation.” 60 7. But consider: concerning my ox and my ass, upon which I'm obliged to perform no commandments, I am still obliged for damage they cause; doesn't it follow, concerning my male and female slave, upon whom I'm indeed obliged to perform commandments, that I should be obliged for damage they cause? They replied: No! If you raise the case of my ox or my ass, which have no power of intention, will you also persist regarding my male or female slave, who indeed have the power of intention? For if I abuse him, he may go and torch another's harvest, and I would be obliged for compensation. As I have already pointed out, it is dangerous to attempt to date the “composition” of any compositional unit in the rabbinic corpus. But insofar as the legal positions ascribed here to the Pharisees tend to be adopted in other Mishnaic passages, it seems likely that M. Yadayim 4:6–7 (+8) reached its present form during the late second-century or early third-century decades that witnessed the overall compositional work that yielded the Mishnah. Its core list, however, is likely to be older. How much older, it is impossible to say. At least two of these disputed issues (2, 4) are attested in the Qumranian Halakhic Letter (4QMMT B:22–23, 55–58) to have separated its writer from a dominant Jewish party in the second century BCE. 62 So even if we cannot date the formulation of the core list that early, it surely preserves memories that emerge very early in the historiography of legal Jewish disputation. What appears to have happened is that a pre-70 catalogue of Pharisaic–Sadducean disputes, represented at least in part by our core list, has been preserved in the rabbinic Mishnah. Its preservation, however, came at the price of editorial modifications that shift the original 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 emphasis of the tradition. What began as a neutral or mildly pro-Sadducean list of disputes was reconstructed into an example of legal reasoning that aligns the Pharisaic views more closely to the legal positions taken in the later rabbinic tradition. M. Yadayim 4:6–7 confirms many details about Pharisees that we have noticed elsewhere. First, it corroborates the Josephan picture of the Pharisees and Sadducees as groups in legal conflict. It also confirms the picture—of 4QMMT and the Gospels—that purity served as a point of contention among interpreters of scriptural law in late Second Temple times. It even testifies that certain elements of Second Temple Pharisaic legal tradition played a formative role in the shaping of the Mishnah's representation of its own halakhic tradition. But M. Yadayim 4:6–7 does not confirm that the literary framers of this third-century CE tractate, believed themselves to be descendants of the Pharisees. The Mishnah's concern is to establish the ancient lineage of legal principles and reasoning, through the mediation of a genuine rabbinic hero, Rabban Yohanan b. Zakkai (e.g., M. Avot 2:8, M. Rosh Hashannah 4:1–4, T. Parah end p.56 3:8), who is himself never identified as a Pharisee, even though he is made to speak on their behalf. But it shows little interest in creating the impression of communal continuity and identity between pre-70 Pharisees and third-century Sages. The passages we have just examined constitute the strongest evidence for simple social continuity between Pharisaism and rabbinism. Even so, the case for such continuity is a weak one. The earliest rabbinic identification of Pharisees and Sages can be assigned to a source cited no earlier than fourth century CE Pumbedita (B. Qiddushin 66a), whereas a classic, early portrayal of Pharisaic–Sadducean conflict (M. Yadayim 4:6–7) shows only that some elements of Pharisaic legal tradition were embraced by the Mishnaic editors. But neither the Tannaitic foundation of B. Qiddushin 66a nor M. Yadayim 4:6–7 knows anything about the exclusively oral transmission of Pharisaic interpretive tradition. Let us examine one last passage that often appears in attempts to link the third-century Sages to pre-70 Pharisaic communities. 63 When we meet a group in the Mishnah and Tosefta that corresponds most closely to the Gospels' portrayal of Pharisaic obsession with tithing, hand-washing and other concerns involving cleanness, we find them referred to not as “Pharisees,” but as “Associates” ( brym). The richest source for this group is found in T. Demai 2:2–3:9, some form of which probably underlies the extremely truncated presentation of the rules for joining the Association ( brwt) adumbrated in M. Demai 2:2–3. 64 The Tosefta offers a compendious collection of rulings regarding requirements for admission into Associate status, the conduct expected of Associates, and the nature of Associates' relationships with Jews, including family members who may not be members of the Association. T. Demai 2:2 and M. Demai 2:3 offer rather different criteria for defining the primary obligations of the Associate. 65 They agree, however, that the discipline of the Associate is defined in contrast to the practices of the ‘m h'r (vocalized as am haaretz). This term, in its distinctively rabbinic meaning, is best rendered as “an undisciplined Jew.” It refers primarily to Jews whose ignorance or carelessness regarding rabbinic disciplines of tithing behavior and ritual cleanness places their food under suspicion of being untithed or ritually unfit for consumption. In this vein, T. Dem. 2:2 holds that the Associate shall not offer heave-offering and tithes to an undisciplined Jew [of priestly lineage]; and he shall not prepare clean foods in the presence of [’ l] 66 an undisciplined Jew [of common lineage]; and he shall eat his non-sanctified food in conditions of cleanness. The Mishnah, for its part, specifies that the Associate does not sell wet or dry [produce] to an undisciplined Jew [of priestly or common lineage]; and he does not purchase wet [produce] from him; and he does not accept the hospitality of the undisciplined Jew; and he does not receive him [in the Associate's home] while [such a Jew] is wearing his own clothing. It is not the differences, but the convergences that concern us here. For both texts the Associate's responsibility is twofold: (1) to ensure that he does not aid the undisciplined Jew in consuming untithed produce or in rendering food ritually unclean, and (2) to ensure that he is personally untainted by the uncleanness common among undisciplined Jews. end p.57 The Tosefta assumes that such undisciplined Jews are found throughout the social hierarchy, from the priesthood down to the peasantry. Therefore the undisciplined Jew is not merely an ignorant or unlettered Jew; he could be a priest learned in priestly lore who neglected the specific practices prescribed for the Association. The surprising aspect of the Tosefta's discussion is that, despite the restrictions against close association with undisciplined Jews, the boundary between the Associates and such Jews is fairly permeable. As the Tosefta's catalogue of rules unfolds, it soon becomes clear that undisciplined Jews are assumed to be able to take trustworthy vows of conforming to practices of the Association (T. Demai 2:3, 2:5), upon which point, presumably, they enter the same period of training incumbent upon 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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