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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 proffered. The spectacle of a Sage forgetting his own words, however, is too much for the final tradent of this story, who has blunted its force with the disclaimer at 2 and the apostrophe to memorization at 3. These stress the importance of memorizing and mastering one's traditions. In the concluding contribution, Rabbi Aqiva speaks in the name of the Repeated Tradition itself, beseeching its human tradents to incorporate it in their memories through song. 28 This point needn't be belabored any further. At the foundation of the earliest rabbinic compilations stands the assumption that literary traditions distinctive to the rabbinic community are passed on in the medium of speech, from Sage to disciple. They are mastered in memory through private reiteration and performed publicly in the process of being reported and examined. These traditions are already framed as generic entities, with a distinctive taxonomy. Aggadic traditions, conveying their points through narrative, are juxtaposed with halakhic traditions that specify forms of behavior. Text-interpretive traditions, conceptualized as midrash, are distinguished from halakhah, conveyed in an oral-performative tradition of its own. Let us move further, then, and flesh out some relevant distinctions within the oral- performative tradition of halakhah in particular. end p.72 Halakhah as a Modality of Tradition The term mishnah is only the most comprehensive label for a series of subcategories or tradition genres which often overlap in their range of reference. 29 Our brief glance at T. Berakhot 2:12 above showed one example, and we will see more before long. It is surprising, then, that terms corresponding most nearly to the Latin traditio and its cognates in other Indo-European languages are rare, and their usage corresponds only partially to the semantic range of the English. Substantive nouns such as msrt (masoret: “that which is passed on”) 30 and qblh (qabbalah: “that which is received”) 31 are scarce and of restricted semantic range. The verbal forms of these roots—“to hand on” (msr ) or “to receive” (qbl)—are more common and appear in the frequently cited passage of M. Avot 1:1ff that defines the rabbinic chain of learned tradition stemming from Moses. We shall soon note a few other instructive examples. While nouns formed of roots meaning “to transmit” or “to receive” have their place in the Tannaitic lexicon of tradition, a far more prominent place is reserved for a noun derived from the root hlk, to go or walk. This is the term halakhah, usually rendered in translation as “law.” 32 This rendering is not entirely inappropriate, but neither is it unproblematic. For the moment, it is enough to observe that halakhah has a much broader usage within the Mishnah and Tosefta in particular, a usage that indeed proves instructive for this study. For example, M. Gittin 6:7 records the opinion, in the name of Rabbi Meir, that a man who appoints three agents to deliver a bill of divorce to his wife thereby bestows upon them the status of a court. Unlike mere agents, they are now empowered to delegate the writing of the document to another person. There is a problem, however, since the tradition according to Rabbi Meir differs from other formulations on the same subject that circulate within the community: 1. Now this halakhah [of Rabbi Meir's] was brought by Rabbi Haninah of Ono when he was released from prison: I have received [qbl] [as Halakhah here is used in a manner analogous to the term mšnh, which we explored at M. Taanit 4:4. It is a report, orally delivered, of a legal norm which is received by the reporter as tradition (qbl) from an authoritative source (here unspecified) and then transmitted. It is possible, as in the present instance, to have conflicting reports, and these must be adjudicated. Unlike ben Azzai's challenge to Rabbi Aqiva (M. Taanit 4:4), Rabbi Yose's response to Rabbi Haninah is not really about which version of a shared traditional text has been correctly memorized and transmitted. Rather, at stake here is a question of larger theoretical approaches that, stemming from different masters, have come into conflict in the discourse of their disciples. 33 One way of dismissing apparent conflicts among transmitted rulings from different sources highlights the degree to which the formulators of Mishnaic and Toseftan traditions conceived of halakhah as a datum passed on within the medium end p.73 tradition] that one who says before three: “Give a bill of divorce to my wife”—they may appoint others to write it, since he has constituted them as a court. 2. Said Rabbi Yose: We reply to our messenger—We too have received [qbl] [as tradition] that even if he said before the High Court in Jerusalem: “Give a bill of divorce to my wife”—they must learn to write it and then deliver it. of oral-performative tradition. A valid objection to the authority of a halakhic report is a claim that it is based upon a misunderstanding of the spoken word by one of its transmitters. As in the following interchange, such a claim yields an effort to reconstruct the original halakhic report by identifying the element within it that misled the tradent who transmitted it from his teacher (M. Ohalot 16:1; cf. T. Ahilut 15:12): 1. All movable tools [that overshadow a corpse] convey the uncleanness [of the corpse] when [their diameter equals] the thickness of a 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 According to Rabbi Tarfon (2), the anonymous ruling at 1 is grounded in an incorrect inference drawn from an improperly understood case (3). The issue is a complex matter of the capacity of a round object, such as a cattle prod, to contract uncleanness from overshadowing the contaminating remnant of a corpse and to convey it to humans and other utensils through contact with them or by overshadowing them. Spelling out the problem will help us to understand Rabbi Tarfon's objection and Rabbi Aqiva's response. A fundamental postulate of early rabbinic thought on uncleanness is that a tent containing an olive's bulk of corpse matter conveys the uncleanness of the corpse matter to other objects in the tent (M. Ohalot 2:1). Throughout this body of thought, a “tent” is understood metaphorically as any surface that measures a handbreadth square and overshadows the requisite measure of corpse matter (M. Ohalot 3:6–7). The metaphor can even extend to round objects, such as a pillar lying on the ground, if they create an overhang of at least one handsbreadth over the corpse matter (M. Ohalot 12:6). 34 This is all assumed at ruling 1 and is now applied to nonstationary objects. The movable cattle prod can function as tentlike conveyer of uncleanness if it is the thickness of a handbreadth. Thus, if one end of the prod overshadows corpse matter, utensils passing under the other end will contract uncleanness. Rabbi Tarfon's objection (2) is based upon his utter rejection of the idea that a relatively slender object can serve as a tent. In reply, he offers a case that, in his view, offers a sound view of the law (3). The latter ruling is not about the capacity of the cattle prod to convey uncleanness to other objects, but only about its ability to become contaminated itself from overshadowing. The crucial but ambiguous phrase m'whw (“they declared it unclean”) has been mistakenly interpreted in reference to the worker, insofar as the pronomial suffix hw can refer equally to the porter or the prod. For Rabbi Tarfon, a perfectly acceptable proposition about the capacity of a round, slender, moving object end p.74 cattle prod. 2. Said R. Tarfon: May I cut off the lives of my children if this is anything but a mangled halakhah! For the one who heard [hšwm‘] it heard [sm‘] and erred, as follows: 3. The farmhand carrying a cattle prod on his shoulder, and one end overshadowed a grave—they declared it unclean [ m'whw ] under the rule of tools that overshadow a corpse. 4. Said Rabbi Aqiva: I can correct this in a way which preserves the words of Sages, as follows: 5. All movable tools [that overshadow a corpse] convey the uncleanness to the person who carries them by the thickness of a cattle prod, and upon themselves by any amount, and upon other persons by the width of a square handbreadth. to contract uncleanness from a corpse beneath it has been “mangled” to produce the false inference that the same object can convey uncleanness to other items beneath it, including the worker. Rabbi Aqiva's contribution is to propose a new general theory of the transmission of uncleanness by movable objects. His theory (5) incorporates ruling 1 within its scope while accounting for Rabbi Tarfon's case at 3. The elegance of the solution is not our concern. We observe only that both Rabbi Tarfon and Rabbi Aqiva assume an oral milieu for the transmission of 3 and acknowledge that errors of interpretation grounded in the oral transmission of knowledge are conceivable. They differ only regarding whether ruling 1 is such an error. It is clear, then, that the term halakhah commonly refers to an orally transmitted report concerned with normative behavior in a particular sphere of activity. To this we may now add a second and related usage which is even more prevalent. Throughout the Tannaitic literature, in context after context, halakhah refers not only to discrete logia relating cases or principles, but also to the entire complex of norms deemed active within the community of the Sages. Consider the following discussion, which alludes to the penchant of tradition transmitters for preserving contradictory opinions about halakhic norms in the literary form of disputes between particular Sages (M. Eduyyot 1:5–6): 1. Now, [insofar as the halakhah is determined only in accord with the majority of Sages] why are minority opinions mentioned where there are majority opinions? So that, should a court agree with a minority opinion, it may rely on it in its own deliberations, 35 for a court is unable to overrule the opinion of a fellow court unless it exceeds the latter in wisdom and number. . . . 2. Said R. Yehudah: If so, why are minority opinions mentioned among the majority for nought? So that if a person says “So have I received” [qbl], one may reply “You [only] heard [šm‘] so-and-so's [minority] opinion.” As far as this discussion is concerned, halakhic traditions—reports about specific norms or practices—serve as the basis for the construction of a halakhic tradition—a systematic corpus of normative rulings. But not all traditions are equally effective in structuring the ongoing life of the community as an embodiment of its effective tradition. Rather, it is necessary to convene a body of halakhic tradents in order to determine which traditions are to become socially operative and which are to remain a passive possession of the community, preserved only as materials for pure learning. 36 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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