Torah in the Mouth.pdf
Torah in the Mouth.pdf 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 primary sources that must be considered in reconstructing the matrix of Y. Yoma's comment in a spectrum of oral and written literary tradition. Two sources are now found in extant Tannaitic compilations, the Tosefta and Sifra; a third is the foundation of the discussion of M. Yoma 4:6 in the Talmud Bavli. Here are the texts. T. Kippurim 2:11 39 On every day there were 2 pyres there, but this day 3. 1 for the large pyre and 1 for the second pyre and 1 they added for the incense of the innermost chamber— words of Rabbi Yehudah Rabbi Yose adds 1 for maintaining the fire. Rabbi Yose adds 1 for maintaining the fire. Rabbi Meir adds 1 for limbs and innards unconsumed from evening. Sifra, Tzav per. 2:11 40 Rabbi Yehudah says: 2 pyres on every day, and 3 on Yom Kippur. 41 Rabbi Yose says: 3 on every day, and 4 on Yom Kippur. 1 for the large pyre and 1 for the incense pyre and 1 for maintaining the fire and 1 they added for Yom Kippur Rabbi Meir says: 4 on every day, and 5 on Yom Kippur. 1 for the large pyre and 1 for the incense and 1 for maintaining the fire and 1 for limbs and innards unconsumed from evening and 1 they added for Yom Kippur B. Yoma 45a 42 On every day there were 2 pyres, but this day 3 1 for the large pyrea and 1 for the second pyre of incense and 1 they added on that day— words of Rabbi Yehudah Rabbi Yose says: On every day 3, but this day 4. 1 for the large pyre and 1 for the second pyre of incense and 1 for maintaining the fire and 1 they added on that day Rabbi Meir says: On every day 4, but this day 5. 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 end p.137 1 for the large pyre and 1 for the second pyre of incense and 1 for maintaining the fire and 1 for limbs and innards unconsumed from evening and 1 they added on that day These texts bear complex relationships to each other as well as to M. Yoma. Let's summarize them briefly before reflecting on their connections to the Mishnah exegesis at Y. Yoma. We will then illumine these relationships in light of the model of oral permutations of a written text in the Progymnasmata. M. Yoma differs from its parallel sources in two respects. The first concerns a mnemonic matter. M. lists its distinctions between daily liturgy and Yom Kippur in descending numerical order (Meir–4/5, Yose–3/4, Yehudah–3/2), while all the parallels reverse the mnemonic, moving in ascending numerical order from Yehudah through Meir. The second obvious difference is that all the parallel passages contain material absent from M. Yoma but crucial to grasping its implications—that is, only the parallels enumerate the precise sorts of pyres assumed by Meir, Yose, and Yehudah. So the Tannaitic parallels together share traits that distinguish them collectively from the Mishnah. They also differ from each other, primarily in their economy of supplying the information missing from the Mishnah. T. Kippurim offers a complete list of pyres only for Yehudah's view and then specifies the further pyres Yose and Meir would add. Printed editions of Sifra and B. Yoma, for their part, are progressively more ample, the former supplying complete lists for Rabbis Yose and Meir, the latter supplying them for all three authorities; however, Codex Assemani's version of Sifra is virtually identical in this regard to the Bavli's text. As renderings of Tannaitic tradition, all the pericopes are textually distinct from M. Yoma, but they fall into two basic groups. Bavli and Sifra, organized for mnemonic convenience, represent versions of a single textual tradition, while T. Kippurim, composed without mnemnonic requirements in mind, represents an independent way of organizing the same information. The same mnemonic patterning in Sifra and B. Yoma indicates that both are closer than T. Kippurim to the mnemonically arranged textual tradition of M. Yoma. They merely reverse the order of M.'s mnemonic cues and fill in M.'s gaps, while T. Kippurim shows no attempt to follow the Mishnaic mnemonic at all. Let us now reflect upon this complex set of literary relations with the help of the model offered by Greco-Roman rhetorical practice. In that setting, the disciplined transformation of memorized texts was a routine aspect of rhetorical training that prepared students to deploy texts in various versions in their spoken and written discourses. Moreover, the transformation of such texts involved not only expansive elaboration (as in Hermogenes) but also exercises in simple grammatical reconstructions of the core text (as in Theon). There are instructive analogies to such transformations in the Tannatic texts before us. Surely it is not difficult to arrange M. Yoma, Sifra, and B. Yoma as a single pattern of transformations. All share an identical mnemonic (albeit in reverse order), and the latter two texts seem to expand M. Yet one must ask: is this expansion “exegetical” in the sense that it supplies information needed by a textual exegete to interpret the Mishnah? Or does it simply give textual expression to knowledge the Mishnaic tradent already assumed on the part of students? I suggest the latter. M. Yoma could hardly have conveyed much useful information at all unless its audience was already familiar with the kinds of pyres used in daily and festival liturgy. The Mishnah is, in fact, formulated with such information in mind. In order to yield to the rigor of its overall mnemonic program (M. Yoma 4:4–6), M. 4:6 has simply end p.138 omitted what its framers assumed could be taken for granted. Sifra and B. Yoma, from this perspective, are not “commentaries,” supplying by exegetical ingenuity information wholly independent of the text they cite. Rather, they restore to the text the oral audience's implicit referential system. M. Yoma, then, is bound up with Sifra and B. Yoma in an oral-peformative hermeneutical circle that appears impossible to open from our own historical distance. On what grounds might we determine that the Mishnaic form is textually primary and the others secondary or, to the contrary, that the Mishnah formulates in its own way material already known in the forms preserved in Sifra and B. Yoma? Here, it would seem, lies the one crucial difference between the example of the Progymnasmata and the Tannaitic examples. While the rhetoricians supply us with the written versions of the chreiae that serve as the basis of mnemono-technical exercises, there appears little hope in the rabbinic case of firmly determining which text—if any—is the “base” and which the “transformation.” In this example, however, there may be a way out of the echo chamber of oral tradition. The key lies, perhaps, at T. Kippurim. 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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<strong>Torah</strong> <strong>in</strong> <strong>the</strong> <strong>Mouth</strong>, Writ<strong>in</strong>g and Oral Tradition <strong>in</strong> Palest<strong>in</strong>ian Judaism, 200 BCE - 400 CE<br />
Jaffee, Mart<strong>in</strong> S., Samuel and Al<strong>the</strong>a Stroum Professor of Jewish Studies, University of Wash<strong>in</strong>gton<br />
Pr<strong>in</strong>t publication date: 2001, Published to Oxford Scholarship Onl<strong>in</strong>e: November 2003<br />
Pr<strong>in</strong>t ISBN-13: 978-0-19-514067-5, doi:10.1093/0195140672.001.0001<br />
primary sources that must be considered <strong>in</strong> reconstruct<strong>in</strong>g <strong>the</strong> matrix of Y. Yoma's comment <strong>in</strong> a spectrum of oral and written literary<br />
tradition. Two sources are now found <strong>in</strong> extant Tannaitic compilations, <strong>the</strong> Tosefta and Sifra; a third is <strong>the</strong> foundation of <strong>the</strong> discussion of<br />
M. Yoma 4:6 <strong>in</strong> <strong>the</strong> Talmud Bavli. Here are <strong>the</strong> texts.<br />
T. Kippurim 2:11 39<br />
On every day <strong>the</strong>re were 2 pyres <strong>the</strong>re, but this day 3.<br />
1 for <strong>the</strong> large pyre<br />
and 1 for <strong>the</strong> second pyre<br />
and 1 <strong>the</strong>y added for <strong>the</strong> <strong>in</strong>cense of <strong>the</strong> <strong>in</strong>nermost chamber—<br />
words of Rabbi Yehudah<br />
Rabbi Yose adds 1 for ma<strong>in</strong>ta<strong>in</strong><strong>in</strong>g <strong>the</strong> fire.<br />
Rabbi Yose adds 1 for ma<strong>in</strong>ta<strong>in</strong><strong>in</strong>g <strong>the</strong> fire.<br />
Rabbi Meir adds 1 for limbs and <strong>in</strong>nards unconsumed from even<strong>in</strong>g.<br />
Sifra, Tzav per. 2:11 40<br />
Rabbi Yehudah says: 2 pyres on every day, and 3 on Yom Kippur. 41<br />
Rabbi Yose says: 3 on every day, and 4 on Yom Kippur.<br />
1 for <strong>the</strong> large pyre<br />
and 1 for <strong>the</strong> <strong>in</strong>cense pyre<br />
and 1 for ma<strong>in</strong>ta<strong>in</strong><strong>in</strong>g <strong>the</strong> fire<br />
and 1 <strong>the</strong>y added for Yom Kippur<br />
Rabbi Meir says: 4 on every day, and 5 on Yom Kippur.<br />
1 for <strong>the</strong> large pyre<br />
and 1 for <strong>the</strong> <strong>in</strong>cense<br />
and 1 for ma<strong>in</strong>ta<strong>in</strong><strong>in</strong>g <strong>the</strong> fire<br />
and 1 for limbs and <strong>in</strong>nards unconsumed from even<strong>in</strong>g<br />
and 1 <strong>the</strong>y added for Yom Kippur<br />
B. Yoma 45a 42<br />
On every day <strong>the</strong>re were 2 pyres, but this day 3<br />
1 for <strong>the</strong> large pyrea<br />
and 1 for <strong>the</strong> second pyre of <strong>in</strong>cense<br />
and 1 <strong>the</strong>y added on that day—<br />
words of Rabbi Yehudah<br />
Rabbi Yose says: On every day 3, but this day 4.<br />
1 for <strong>the</strong> large pyre<br />
and 1 for <strong>the</strong> second pyre of <strong>in</strong>cense<br />
and 1 for ma<strong>in</strong>ta<strong>in</strong><strong>in</strong>g <strong>the</strong> fire<br />
and 1 <strong>the</strong>y added on that day<br />
Rabbi Meir says: On every day 4, but this day 5.<br />
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