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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 formulation: “these topics of torah are the essence of the halakhot”? In both cases the point is similar: the core of authoritative legal tradition is found where law is most deeply imbedded in scriptural interpretation. But this should not obscure the fact that, in the Tosefta, torah and halakhah have been profoundly transvalued. In torah, for the Tosefta, the teachings of Moses in Scripture and those of the Sages' oral-performative tradition each have their place. But the most authoritative core—the “essence of the halakhot”—is constituted by rabbinic traditions that exhibit the clearest scriptural warrant. Halakhah, in other words, has been resignified and emptied of its fundamental independence from scriptural interpretation. We have here been alerted to a fundamental tension in Tannaitic thinking about the relation of text-interpretive tradition associated with Scripture and the oral-performative tradition transmitted by Sages as legal norms independent of the Mosaic Torah. The concept of torah mediates this tension. It has made room for the co-existence of Scripture and rabbinic tradition within a comprehensive body of authoritative learning that transcends both. The text-interpretive tradition associated with the recitation of Scripture here emerges as the symbolic center of rabbinic conceptions of torah. The Tosefta testifies that the effort to synthesize the two sources of torah—the Mosaic book and the halakhic oral tradition—has become a matter of pressing ideological concern. 15 Oral-Performative Tradition as a Modality of Revelation The Mishnaic and Toseftan material we have examined claims a wide range of relationships between halakhic norms and scriptural commandments. But the claim is end p.87 scarcely exemplified in these compilations, for they are rather poor in concrete examples of scriptural interpretation. The key testimony to the complex rabbinic project of weaving the halakhic traditions of the Sages into the fabric of scriptural law is found chiefly among collections of Tannaitic biblical exegesis. These appear to have begun their compositional history around the middle of the third century and survive as detailed compendia organized around the heart of the Mosaic Torah—the legal portions of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Within them we have the most explicit representations of how rabbinic readers of the scriptural text grasped that text through the prism of the oral-performative tradition of recitation and explication that gave it voice. 16 This is not the place, however, to mount a comprehensive study of the ways in which early rabbinic biblical exegesis folds back into the text rabbinic norms and practices now enshrined in the traditions of the Mishnah and the Tosefta. 17 We can, however, scan some examples of a small but ideologically significant body of texts that make a scant appearance in the Mishnah and the Tosefta 18 but that proliferate within the extra-Mishnaic collections of Tannaitic biblical exegesis and, later, the Talmuds. For reasons that will soon become clear, I shall refer to these texts as “curriculum pericopes.” Like other examples of midrashic exegesis, the curriculum pericope quite easily elides the distinctions between the scriptural word and rabbinic tradition. But it is much bolder in its attempt to demonstrate that the very genres of the comprehensive rabbinic oral-literary tradition (and not only its text-interpretive results) are anticipated in the revelation to Moses. Accordingly, these pericopes normally select scriptural clauses in which two or more synonyms for divine instruction appear. The exegetical discourse then relates each of these synonyms to one of the intellectual operations or literary genres characteristic of the rabbinic curriculum. The result is a hermeneutical procedure in which scriptural terms are systematically resignified and reconfigured so as to anticipate and define the rabbinic taxonomy of traditional learning. Normally, elements of the scriptural lexicon are linked to such rabbinic terms as halakhah, midrash, and aggadah (broadly, ethical maxims). Other common terms include divrei soferim (scribal rulings), talmud (legal dialectic), mishnah (recitation of traditions), gezerot (edicts), and other technical terms for rabbinic learning. We have seen that such a taxonomic interest in the modalities of tradition is already part of the intellectual equipment of the Mishnah and the Tosefta. The point of the curriculum pericope is simply to provide such a taxonomy of tradition with a scriptural genealogy. It embodies as exegetical discourse the ideological claim that the rabbinic curriculum of study is in some sense included in the revelation to Moses. An important example occurs in Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael to Exodus 15:26. In this verse, the children of Israel have just crossed the Sea of Reeds and are suffering from thirst three days into their wilderness wandering. Responding to the people's murmuring, Moses miraculously sweetens the bitter waters of Marah and takes the opportunity to impose a covenant promise upon Israel (Ex.15:26): end p.88 And he said: If you will indeed listen to the voice of YHWH your God, and do what is upright in his sight, and lend your ears to his commandments, and observe 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 all his laws, then I will not send upon you all the plagues which I sent upon Egypt, for I am YHWH, who heals you. Observe the Mekhilta's refraction of the verse: The creator of this set of correspondences assumes that the various scriptural references correspond to elements of rabbinical learning (2 –4), each of which is held to be continuous with the initial moments of revelation (1). Of particular interest is the linkage of scriptural laws and rabbinic halakhah (4). This decision is clearly inflected by the Mishnaic and Toseftan estimate of halakhah as a traditional legal structure. At the same time, however, it furthers the argument—mounted specifically at T. Hagigah 1:9 and M. Hagigah 1:8—that halakhah, as an oral-performative tradition, is in some sense reducible to the interpretive construction of the implications of revealed commandments. The independence of halakhic tradition from scriptural foundations—taken for granted in most Mishnaic and Toseftan settings—is here deftly undermined by stipulating an identity between the Sinaitic laws and the halakhic corpus. The tradent of the Mekhilta's exegesis has narrowed the rather wide semantic band along which the term halakhah moves in the Mishnah and the Tosefta. In the latter, the weight of emphasis rests upon the relatively recent origins of halakhic discourse in the circles of Sages; but now the minor theme of the Mosaic origins of some halakhic norms has come to dominate. If we are to read the Mekhilta's exegetical elaborations of Scripture contextually into the pre-Sinaitic situation described in the scriptural verse itself, the exegete's argument is that the covenant promise at Marah was in fact made in the name of the revelation that was to follow, a revelation that included not only the Mosaic Torah but the oral-performative halakhic tradition that would define its relevance to Israelite covenant life. While there is no reason to assume that the editors of the Mehkilta have any direct hand in the creation of other compilations of rabbinic legal exegesis, we find a remarkable uniformity of opinion throughout the other collections regarding the relation of the rabbinic curriculum in general, and the halakhic element in particular, to elements of revelation. Throughout these documents, creators of curriculum pericopes take great pains to insist that all aspects of rabbinic oral-literary tradition—exegetical or otherwise—have their ultimate derivation from revelation. Another example, this from the Sifra to Leviticus, must speak for a diverse range of material. Here is God's cautionary statement to Aaron at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting after the death of his two sons, who had offered “strange fire” upon the altar (Lev.10:10–11): end p.89 1. “To the voice of YHWH your God”—these are the Ten Commandments, given from mouth to mouth in ten utterances. 2. “And do what is upright in his sight”—this refers to the sublime aggadot which resound in the ears of every person. 3. “And lend your ears to his commandments”—this refers to the gezerot. 4. “And observe all his laws”—this refers to the halakhot. 19 This is an eternal law throughout your generations, to distinguish between the holy and the profane, between the unclean and the clean, and to guide the children of Israel in all the laws which YHWH spoke through Moses Note the rendering of this verse in Sifra Shemini, par.1:9: 1. “to distinguish between the holy and the profane”—this refers to vows for substitute valuation [‘rkyn: cf. Lev.27 and M. Arakhin]. 2. “between the unclean and the clean”—this refers to the laws of pollution and purification [e.g., Lev. 11–15 and the Mishnah's Order of Purities]. 3. “and to guide the children of Israel”—this refers to Sages' judicial rulings [hwr'wt: cf. Lev.4 and M. Horayot]. 4. “in all the laws”—this refers to the midrashot. 5. “which God spoke”—this refers to the halakhot. 6. “through Moses”—this refers to Scripture. Units 1–3 link the verse's various topical rubrics to the corresponding topic in the rabbinic tradition of learning. Thus, for example, the injunction to distinguish between the profane and the holy, which is given no concrete qualification in Scripture, is linked to a particular subtheme in the Mishnah's general treatment of the principles of sanctification—rules governing how one estimates the monetary value of one's person, cattle, and so on so as to sanctify the equivalent value in money to the Temple. Shared by each of the three topics chosen by the exegete at 1–3 is the fact that for each an ample body of Mishnaic material on the topic corresponds to a relatively rich scriptural foundation as well. These are not, that is, examples of halakhot which have “nothing to rely upon.” Units 4–6, however, are of most importance for us. The reference to “laws” is linked to rabbinic text-interpretive tradition associated with scriptural law (midrash), God's speech is interpreted as a reference to the oral-performative halakhic tradition, and Moses' role is summed up as the writing of Scripture. Here a decisive move has been made. The halakhah is no longer merely rabbinic tradition or an element, with Scripture, in a larger body of torah. Rather, it is tradition which comes from the mouth of God. 20 In sum: the Tannaitic midrashic literature has no unanimity regarding the precise equivalence of halakhah to one or another scriptural term. But there is no doubt whatever that, in its view, halakhic tradition, along with the entire spectrum of rabbinic learning, is to be 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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