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
memory—even the minutest contributions of the ancient scribes—is included among the “specifications” proferred to Moses and foreseen
even before him by Abraham. Scribal traditions, isolated in the Mishnah from the main body of rabbinic tradition, have now penetrated that
tradition and become a synonym for it. As the Babylonian Talmud would later have it in its own interpretive rendering of MS Erfurt's
tradition: “All the same are the words of the Torah and the words of the scribes” (B. Yoma 28b). 38
As far as the tradents of Mishnaic tradition are concerned, we have seen, the words of the scribes are a source of law secondary to and
distinct from halakhah. But the Mishnaic current of tradition overlaps with and, indeed, is ultimately recast by a different perspective, now
preserved in various forms in the Tosefta. In this view, words of the scribes are assimilated to halakhic tradition in both a jurisprudential
and historical sense. On the one hand, the Toseftan tradents conceive scribal teaching as the Second Temple period equivalent of the
halakhah embodied in the decisions and teachings of rabbinic Sages of the third century. The difference lies in terminology, not
substance. Accordingly, on the other hand, the concept of halakhah, preserved in the Mishnah as a source of tradition quite distinct from
scribal teachings, begins in the Tosefta and the midrashic literature to assimilate the latter to itself.
For the Galilean Amoraic heirs of the Tannaitic traditions, whose contribution to the concept of Torah in the Mouth will occupy us in
chapter 7, it will become all but impossible to understand halakhah and words of the scribes as anything but distinct and equal
components of the rabbinic legal system. Thus, Rabbi Yohanan, the late-third-century master, will be reported to have said that “words of
the scribes overrule words of the Torah” (Y. Maaser Sheni 2:2, 53c) or that “words of the scribes are related to words of the Torah and as
beloved as words of the Torah” (Y. Berakhot 1:7, 3b). 39 Words of the scribes will enjoy—with halakhah, midrash, aggadah, talmud , and
other topics within the rabbinic curriculum—the status of the original, revealed companion to the Mosaic Torah bequeathed to Moses and
Israel at Sinai.
Summary
Our study of the earliest results of rabbinic reflection on the origins, nature, and authority of halakhic tradition can now be briefly
summarized. We observed in chapter 4 that a single, stable assumption—that rabbinic knowledge was transmitted orally in face-to-face
tutoring—characterizes all Tannaitic sources from the Mishnah to the halakhic midrashim. The differences concern largely the degree to
which distinct tradents of Tannaitic traditions took this fact of transmission to have ideological or jurisprudential significance. In this
chapter we found that each compilation of Tannaitic tradition preserves a multiplicity of points of view. Yet at the same time, each
displays certain characteristic tendencies which contextualize, and perhaps somewhat neutralize, materials preserving alternate
perspectives.
The process of halakhic construction, for example, is represented in diverse and incommensurate ways. The Mishnah and the Tosefta are
at one in preserving these diverse images. At times halakhic norms are legislated by the most sober of official deliberations, emerging
from the most prestigious of national institutions; at others the halakhah is imposed by force through the crassest exercises of back-room
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politics in the lofts of private homes. In still others, a Sage can create a halakhic precedent simply through his own personal action without
benefit of official action.
There is as well no unanimity regarding the antiquity of the tradition that serves as the foundation for the implementation of halakhic
norms. Sinai, the source of the revelation of the Torah of Moses, is virtually ignored in the Mishnah and Tosefta as a foundation for the
substance of the oral-performative halakhic tradition. The testimony of M. Avot, devoid of all interest in halakhic tradition, does not alter
this picture. Rather, the tradition of legal reflection is consistently linked to individual founders of the late Second Temple period,
predominantly Hillel, Shammai, and their disciples. But, as we have repeatedly noticed, midrashic compilations of traditions bearing the
names of the very Sages who supply Mishnaic opinions consistently push every element of the rabbinic curriculum of learning—the
halakhah included—back to the Sinaitic moment.
The related matter of the legal genealogy of halakhic tradition also presents itself in a variety of faces. Are halakhic norms derived by
Sages exegetically from scriptural revelation as text-interpretive tradition, or do Sages legislate as they see fit in essential independence
of exegetical legitimation? In the Mishnah and Tosefta the question is difficult to answer. Images of halakhic mountains hanging by thin
threads of scriptural rules conjoin claims that all halakhic norms stem from the exegesis of scriptural commandments. Claims of locating
the “essence” of halakhic tradition in scriptural exegesis are ignored by the acceptance of great bodies of binding norms that have no
correlation with scriptural legislation. Yet, primarily in the midrashic compilations—precisely where the stakes for the authority of exegesis
are highest—there is little doubt that everything legislated within the halakhic tradition can be collapsed back into relatively straightforward
readings of the language of God recorded by Moses.
At best we have been able to discern a certain trajectory or motion of thought that tends to orchestrate the disparate points of view. There
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