Pious Irreverence: Confronting God in Rabbinic Judaism 9780812293050

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Pious Irreverence

Divinations: Rereading Late Ancient Religion Series Editors: Daniel Boyarin, Virginia Burrus, Derek Krueger

Pious Irr e v e r e nc e Confronting God in Rabbinic Judaism

D ov W e i s s

U n i v e r s i t y of Pe n ns y lva n i a Pr e s s P h i l a de l p h i a

Copyright © 2017 University of Pennsylvania Press All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher. Published by University of Pennsylvania Press Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112 www.upenn.edu/pennpress Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 A Cataloging-in-Publication record is available from the Library of Congress ISBN 978-0-8122-4835-7

For Mommy and Abba

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Contents

A Note on Manuscripts, Critical Editions, and Translations Used in the Text Introduction

ix 1

Chapter 1. Confrontation as Sin

21

Chapter 2. From Sin to Virtue

50

Chapter 3. Varieties of Confrontation

88

Chapter 4. Confrontation as Ethics

121

Chapter 5. The Humanization of God

149

Chapter 6. Divine Concessions

161

Conclusion

183

Notes

187

Bibliography

263

Index

283

Acknowledgments

289

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Manuscripts, Critical Editions, and Tr ansl ations Used in the Text

Manuscripts and Critical Editions All references to the following rabbinic documents are to the critical editions listed here. Avot de-Rabbi Nathan. Edited by Solomon Schechter. New York: Feldheim, 1967. Aggadat Bereshit. Edited by Solomon Buber. Krakow: Fisher, 1902. Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael. Edited by Haim Shaul Horovitz and Israel Rabin. Jerusalem: Bamberger and Wahrman, 1960. Mekilta de-Rabbi Shimon Bar Yoḥai. Edited by J. N. Epstein and E. Z. Melamed. Jerusalem: Hillel, 1955. Midrash Aggada. Edited by Solomon Buber. New York: Madah, 1960. Midrash Leqaḥ Tov. 2 vols. Edited by Solomon Buber. Vilna, 1884. Midrash Shemot Rabbah, Parashot 1–14. Jerusalem: Devir, 1984. Midrash Tanḥuma (Buber). Edited by Solomon Buber. Vilna, 1885. Midrash Tannaim. Edited by David Tzvi Hoffman. Berlin: Itzkowski, 1908. Midrash Zuta. Edited by Solomon Buber. Berlin, 1894. Pesiqta de-Rav Kahana. 2 vols. Edited by Bernard Mandelbaum. New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1987. Pesiqta Zutrata. Edited by Solomon Buber. Vilna 1880. Sifre Numbers. Edited by Haim Shaul Horovitz. Leipzig, 1917. Reprint, Jerusalem: Shalem, 1992. Sifre Deuteronomy. Edited by Louis Finkelstein. New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 2001.

x A N o t e o n M a n u s c r i p t s

For the following rabbinic documents, I have primarily relied on the best manuscripts as selected by the Historical Dictionary Project of the Academy of the Hebrew Language. These manuscripts can be found online (now free of charge): http://maagarim.hebrewacademy.org.il/Pages/PMain.aspx. Babylonian Talmud (BT) Deuteronomy Rabbah Ecclesiastes Rabbah Esther Rabbah Exodus Rabbah I (1–14) Exodus Rabbah II (15–52) Genesis Rabbah Jerusalem Talmud (JT) Lamentations Rabbah Leviticus Rabbah Midrash Psalms Mishnah (M) Numbers Rabbah I (1–14) Pesiqta Rabbati Pirqe de-Rabbi Eliezer Ruth Rabbah Seder Eliyahu Rabbah Song of Songs Rabbah Tanḥuma (Standard Recension) Tosefta However, on occasion, I cite variant manuscripts or quote the aforementioned works from the following critical editions (these instances are noted in the book): Midrash Bereshit Rabbah. Edited by Julius Theodor and Chanoch Albeck. Jerusalem: Shalem Books, 1996. Midrash Devarim Rabbah. Edited by Saul Lieberman. Jerusalem: Shalem, 1992. Midrash Proverbs. Edited by Solomon Buber. Vilna: Ha-Almana weha-Aḥim Reʾam, 1893. Midrash Psalms. Edited by Solomon Buber. Vilna: Ha-Almana weha-Aḥim Reʾam, 1891.



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Midrash Shemot Rabbah, Parashot 1–14. Edited by Avigdor Shinan. Jerusalem: Devir, 1984. Vayikra Rabbah. 5 vols. Edited by Moshe Margaliot. Jerusalem: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1953–1960. I have obtained variant textual witnesses for the Babylonian Talmud from the online Lieberman database: http://www.lieberman-institute.com/. I have relied on manuscripts for Pesiqta Rabbati from the following source: Ulmer, Rivka. Pesiqta Rabbati: A Synoptic Edition of Pesiqta Rabbati Based upon All Extant Manuscripts and the Editio Princeps. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1997. Currently, no manuscripts or critical editions are readily accessible for Numbers Rabbah II (15–23). Thus, citations of this work are taken from Numbers Rabbah according to MS Oxford-Bodleian 147 (microfilm obtained from the National Library of Israel, Jerusalem).

Translations While taking full responsibility for the translations that appear herein, I have relied on the following works, freely making changes to them as deemed necessary: The Babylonian Talmud. Translated by Israel Slotki et al. Edited by Isidore Epstein. 18 vols. New York: Soncino, 1961. Berlin, Adele, Marc Zvi Brettler, and Michael A. Fishbane. The Jewish Study Bible. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Berman, Samuel A. Midrash Tanhuma-Yelammedenu: An English Translation of Genesis and Exodus. Hoboken, N.J.: KTAV, 1996. Braude, William G. The Midrash on Psalms. Yale Judaica Series, vol. 13. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1959. Braude, William G. Pesiqta Rabbati: Discourses for Feasts, Fasts, and Special Sabbaths. Yale Judaica Series, vol 18. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1968.

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Braude, William G., and Israel J. Kapstein. Pesikta de-Rab Kahana. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1975. Braude, William G., and Israel J. Kapstein. The Lore of the School of Elijah. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1981. Friedlander, Gerald. Midrash. Pirke De Rabbi Eliezer According to the Text of the Manuscript Belonging to Abraham Epstein of Vienna. London: Bloch Publishing Company, 1916. Hammer, Reuven. Sifre: A Tannaitic Commentary on the Book of Deuteronomy. Yale Judaica Series. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1986. Lauterbach, Jacob Z. Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael: A Critical Edition, Based on the Manuscripts and Early Editions. 3 vols. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1976. Midrash Rabbah. Edited by H. Freedman and Maurice Simon. 13 vols. London: Soncino, 1939. Neusner, Jacob. Sifre to Numbers: An American Translation and Explanation. Brown Judaic Studies no. 118–119. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1986. Neusner, Jacob. The Talmud of the Land of Israel: A Preliminary Translation and Explanation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982. Townsend, John T. Midrash Tanḥuma. Hoboken, N.J.: Ktav, 1989.

Introduction

She bought her first new car and You hit her with a drunk driver. What, was that supposed to be funny? . . . What did I ever do to [Your Son] except praise His glory and praise His name? . . . Have I displeased You, You feckless thug? . . .  haec credam a deo pio, a deo justo, a deo scito? cruciatus in crucem! tuus in terra servus, nuntius fui; officium perfeci. cruciatus in crucem. eas in crucem [should I believe that these things are from a benevolent God, from a just God, from a knowing God?? To hell with Your torments (lit., crucifixions)! On earth, I was your servant, your messenger; I did my duty. To hell with Your torments. To hell with you (lit., may You go to the cross)]. —President Josiah Bartlett, “Two Cathedrals” (episode 44, May 16, 2001), The West Wing

Described as “one of the best episodes in the history of American television,”1 the finale of the second season of The West Wing revolves around the tragic and untimely death of Mrs. Landingham, the personal secretary of President Bartlett (Martin Sheen). After the funeral, the president emptied the church of his security personnel and, approaching the altar, angrily rebukes God: “cruciatus in crucem. eas in crucem.” (To hell with Your torments. To hell with You).2 This unexpected and irreverent diatribe from America’s most beloved fictional president stunned West Wing viewers. How could the hit TV show portray a highly ethical and faithful Christian castigating God in such brazen fashion? Noting that the episode’s writer, Aaron Sorkin, is Jewish, one

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TV analyst offered this explanation: “Sure, [the scene] was in a church, the actor and characters were both Catholic, and the final words were in Latin. But it was a uniquely Jewish religious experience. . . . This may have been the most Jewish scene ever written (mostly) in English.”3 Scholars often describe Judaism as a religion that tolerates, even celebrates, arguing with God. Unlike Christianity and Islam, it is said, Judaism endorses the tradition of protest as first expressed in the biblical stories of Abraham, Job, and Jeremiah.4 Bible scholar Carol Newsom, for example, argues that “[while] both Judaism and Christianity have retained the notion of a personal God . . . only Judaism has developed the Joban piety of argument with God.”5 Similarly, literary scholar Bernard Schweitzer notes that “what sets Judaism apart is the liberty with which Jews express their doubts, their quarrels, and their rebellions against God.”6 And, in light of the horrors of the twentieth century, progressive theologians Johann Baptist Metz and John K. Roth have called on the Christian community to affirm the distinctively Jewish “theodicies of protest.”7 Surprisingly, however, despite its centrality in contemporary Jewish thought,8 no work has comprehensively analyzed the ancient roots of this Jewish protest theology. While scholars have treated such expression as it emerged in Hasidic thought9 and the post-Holocaust theology of Elie Wiesel,10 little has been done to trace the origins and development of this distinctive feature of Judaism.11 In fact, Ephraim Urbach, Arthur Marmorstein, and Max Kadushin, the leading scholars of rabbinic theology of the past generation, ignore the theme of protest altogether in their books on ancient Jewish theology.12 Indeed, as we shall see, when these scholars discuss theological protest they do so only as it relates to other topics such as prayer, parables, or suffering; because of their circumscribed focus, they do not analyze this religious expression in depth.13 Consequently, the tradition of arguing with God is often assumed in contemporary literature without understanding and appreciating its roots in the rabbinic age (70 ce–800 ce). This neglect is due in part to the unsystematic and fragmentary nature of its earliest expressions in the foundational texts of Judaism—the works of Midrash and Talmud—which were produced by rabbis in Hebrew and Aramaic more than fifteen hundred years ago.14 Without careful consideration of the complex history of the confrontational idea in these formative religious documents, however, simplistic celebrations of the “Jewish protest tradition” are of limited value. Utilizing diverse lenses, including the conceptual, historical, ethical, and theological, this study produces a comprehensive analysis of this bold religious tradition. In doing so, it provides greater nuance and sheds crucial light on an understudied yet central theme in Judaism. Most



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significantly, it demonstrates that the Jewish protest tradition is not simply the result of horrific recent historical events but is rooted in the most canonical of Jewish works: Midrash and Talmud.

Defining Confrontation Before I present the major themes and arguments of this work and provide a brief chapter overview, our topic needs to be defined. The criteria of inclusion are quite flexible and broad in this study, incorporating all sorts of thinking, verbal and demonstrative communications, and expressions with or about the divine that highlight a moral or rational problem with God’s conduct or lack of conduct. This entails moderate challenges to God, including simple questions, as well as more radical expressions of protest, such as critiquing God’s past actions, whether directly communicated to God or to a third party. It also includes future-oriented challenges or aggressive demands that seek to have God reverse His prior decisions. Of course, since we have only a written record of these protest expressions it is often difficult to ascertain whether the author imagined a submissive or aggressive tone to the confronter’s challenge. Thus, I have adopted a maximal definition of “confrontation.” For the sake of literary flow, I use a number of words to denote confrontation with God, such as “complaint,” “protest,” “critique,” “challenge,” “rebuke,” and “confrontation.” As these terms are fluid in the English language, I use them interchangeably. That said, on occasion, when seeking to distinguish between various types of confrontation (as I do in Chapter 3), I alert the reader that I am deliberately using a specific English term over another one. This decision—to adopt an expansive and non-rigid definition toward the category of confrontation—is borne out of a conceptual concern to test the relational contours of the human-divine dynamic. In this regard, all types of bold communication with or toward God can be instructive. And the decision to use confrontational English terms interchangeably is informed by the fact that the rabbis themselves—from the early tannaitic period onward—employ a variety of Hebrew terms to denote challenge or critique without defining them or distinguishing between them. In my research, I have not found any cogent explanation to account for why, in specific contexts, the rabbis employ certain words over others. The most common rabbinic verbs used to denote protests against God are leharher (to criticize; lit., to think), lehashiv (to challenge; lit., to respond), limḥot (to protest), lekro tagar (to reproach; lit., to call out as partial),

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and lehatiaḥ devarim (to hurl words). The rabbis also at times use biblical nouns to denote a challenge to God such as tokheḥah (rebuke) and riv (argument). I should also note that I include within this study any rabbinic narrative that uses these protest terms even if the details of the human-divine communication reflect a slightly different concern.

Theological Protest in Pre-Rabbinic Literature Rabbinic endorsement of theological protest is, of course, informed by many passages in the Hebrew Bible where challenging God is not foreclosed as a legitimate response to suffering or unethical divine behavior. Alongside moments of pious submission to the divine will, such as the story of Abraham and the aqedah (Genesis 22), biblical texts are replete with instances in which individuals protest against God without any repercussions. The motif appears in the Pentateuchal narratives (Abraham regarding Sodom and Gomorrah; and Moses in Egypt, at Mount Sinai, and in the Wilderness), the prophetic writings (Jeremiah and Habakkuk), and wisdom literature (Job and numerous Psalms).15 After none of these challenges does God castigate or punish the challenger. Regarding Jeremiah’s rhetorical lawsuits against God, B. Gemser remarks: “The fact that Jeremiah has allowed, or even caused, these most intimate and intrepid disputes with God to be put in writing and preserved for posterity reveals the prophet’s . . . innermost conviction that God finally does not reject but tolerates and vindicates even his ‘revolting prophets.’”16 Similarly, Yochanan Muffs posits that “biblical religion does not seem to require the man of faith to repress his doubts in silent resignation. Abraham, Jeremiah and Job, all men who question God’s ways, are hardly numbered among the wicked. There is even some evidence that God demands such criticism, at least from His prophets (cf. Ezek. 22:3).”17 Despite my general agreement with these sentiments, Muffs’s description of Job as a “man of faith” whose religion does not require him to “repress his doubts” should be qualified. To be sure, Muffs bases his view on the following points: God praises Job’s speeches at the book’s close, declaring that, contrary to his friends, only Job has “spoken the truth” (42:7). Moreover, God doubles Job’s fortunes that he had lost (42:10). And, as the book concludes with divine praise and reward, one gets the impression that Job’s protests are not regarded by God as “sinful” or “rebellious.” However, Muffs and other scholars ignore chapter 38 where God reprimands Job for his protests: “Who is this who darkens counsel speaking without knowledge? . . . Where were



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you when I laid the earth’s foundations? Speak if you have understanding” (Job 38:2, 4). Following these verses, God cites numerous examples of His unparalleled knowledge and awesome power. These are invoked to strengthen God’s primary claim that Job’s accusations lack foundation because human beings have insufficient knowledge of the world; Job’s challenge to the divine is by its very nature deficient and thus unacceptable.18 Job, in return, concedes his error, telling God: “Indeed I spoke without understanding of things beyond me, which I did not know. . . . Therefore, I recant and relent, being but dust and ashes” (Job 42:3, 6).19 Read plainly, then, God’s attitude toward Job’s protests is inconsistent: God both reprimands (chapter 38) and defends (chapter 42) Job’s challenges. Naturally, later exegetes and scholars will have to reconcile this seeming inconsistency.20 The only biblical text that unequivocally opposes the right of an individual to challenge God is found in Deutero-Isaiah. After God tells the Persian king, Cyrus, that his victories are for the purposes of bringing the Israelites back to Zion, God laments those who would critique Him for bringing about Israel’s redemption through the nonconventional means of a gentile king. God proclaims: “Shame on him [‫ ]הוי‬who argues [‫ ]רב‬with his Maker [‫]יצרו‬. Though naught but a potsherd of earth! Shall the clay say to the potter, ‘What are you doing? Your work has no handles?’ Shame on him who asks his father, ‘What are you bearing?’” (Isaiah 45:9–10). As it would be absurd for clay to critique its potter, so too would it be absurd for a human to critique his Maker. Hence, with the exception of Isaiah 45 (and possibly Job 38), the authors of the Hebrew Bible legitimize individual challenges leveled at God. Relatedly, not only does the character of God in the biblical narratives tolerate irreverent acts of protest, but biblical law does as well. Although Scripture prohibits cursing God (Leviticus 24:13–16) and mentioning God’s name in vain (Exodus 20:7), it never proscribes challenging or critiquing the divine. Even the opposition found in Isaiah 45 is only formulated as a lament (“shame,” ‫)הוי‬, rather than a proscription. While never stated explicitly, individual complaints against God appear in Scripture as a legitimate method to communicate with the creator of the world.21 Not surprisingly, as we shall see, these narratives occupy a central place in the debate between anti-protest and pro-protest rabbis (and church fathers). Following the biblical view, some of the writings of the (nonbiblical) Second Temple literature depict confronting God as a legitimate, if not virtuous, human act in response to a perceived divine injustice. In the immediate aftermath of the Second Temple’s destruction, the apocalyptic works 2 Baruch

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and 4 Ezra contain Baruch and Ezra’s protests against God. In these narratives, the protagonists are not chastised for violating any theological principle.22 We also have a few protests in the genre of rewritten Bibles of the period, such as in Pseudo-Philo’s Liber antiquitatum biblicarum (LAB), the Genesis Apocryphon from the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the pseudepigrahic work Joseph and Aseneth.23 And, as we shall soon see, Philo of Alexandria (20 bce–40 ce) celebrates, albeit under strict conditions, the act of challenging God.

Biblical Virtue of Tokheḥah In the aforementioned biblical narratives, challenging God emerges, for the most part, as a legitimate method to engage the divine. But could one go further and even regard theological protest as a positive expression? In both ancient Israel and in the Greco-Roman world, critiquing a friend was deemed a virtue. To denote this act, the Bible frequently uses the term tokheḥah (“rebuke”) while Greco-Roman writings tend to use the term parrhesia (“frank speech”). Accordingly, one question posed by this study is whether, and to what extent, these positive and meritorious dimensions of “rebuke” or “frank speech” might still be relevant when applied to God. I propose that the answer to this question depends on a variety of issues, most prominently what one’s conception is of (1) God, (2) the appropriate relationship between God and humanity, and (3) the nature of “critique” itself. While the first two issues are dealt with at length in the body of the book, I touch on the last issue now: the nature of critique. The classical Jewish tradition provides two basic models to understand the obligation of tokheḥah.24 The first one emerges from a simple reading of Leviticus 19:17: “You shall not hate your kinsfolk in your heart. Reprove your kinsman [‫ ]הוכח תוכיח את עמיתך‬but incur no guilt because of him.” As many scholars have noted, Leviticus here connects the commandment to “reprove your kinsman” with the commandment not to hate: if one has been offended by another, he should not allow negative feelings (for the offender) to fester, but rather openly confront the offender as a method to expunge hatred from his or her heart. Given this linkage, the purpose of rebuke (for Leviticus 19) seems to be driven by an interpersonal concern. According to Zvi Zohar, this view regards “repressed hostility and hatred” as a “recipe for interpersonal disaster. . . . The Torah . . . [is concerned with] the emotional quality of immediate interpersonal relationships . . . [and regards] suppressed hatred/enmity [as possibly leading] to serious social problems.”25



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In this dimension of rebuke, what some have coined the “interpersonal” approach, the aim of rebuke is to improve relations between members of society. And, according to Leviticus 19, rebuke serves, more specifically, as a method to remove hatred from the offended parties’ heart. However, there is no claim, at least from Leviticus 19, that critiquing another would, in a positive fashion, engender feelings of love. This more ambitious claim for the powers of critique appears in Proverbs 9:8: “Reprove a wise man, and he will love you [‫הוכח לחכם‬ ‫]ויאהבך‬.” But note that in this passage the positive emotional affects of rebuke occur to the reproached, and not to the reproacher (as in Leviticus 19). Apparently, this passage from Proverbs posits that as long those who are reproached are wise they will recognize the advantages of being critiqued. Connected to the interpersonal element but distinct from it is the pedagogical dimension, which, in most discussions of the biblical notion of tokheḥah, assumes center stage. According to this model, the purpose of critique is primarily to teach and to persuade the one reproached to change her or his ways. In other words, the object of the act is not conceived as strengthening an interpersonal bond or as inducing greater intimacy, as in our last model, but as a method to discourage others from sinning. Zvi Zohar calls this the “intrapersonal” dimension of rebuke.26 This responsibility, to educate the other, is often assumed by a loving superior who has greater knowledge and authority, as is the case in Proverbs 3:11–12: “Do not reject the discipline of the Lord, my son; Do not abhor His rebuke [‫]בתוכחתו‬. For whom the Lord loves He rebukes [‫]יוכיח‬, as a father the son whom he favors.” A father rebukes a child in order to educate him in the proper path, just as God rebukes Israel to help her do the same. According to this approach, rebuke is regarded not as a means to achieve love (or remove enmity), as love is already present, but rebuke is now an expression of that abiding and unconditional love. When you love someone, you want to help that person make the correct choices. And, contrary to Leviticus 19, its virtue no longer primarily resides in its capacity to remove hatred or, as in Proverbs 9, to intensify love, but in its ability to steer the other in the right direction. Notwithstanding the plain reading of Leviticus 19 and Proverbs 3, the notion that the biblical command of rebuke applies even outside a distinct relationship—whether this be fractured, neutral, or loving—emerges explicitly in the Babylonian Talmud.27 Here, the obligation to rebuke another applies not only to offenses against the rebuker himself (as Leviticus 19 suggests) but to all types of offenses, even those perpetrated against God.28 In other words, the rebuker need not be the offended party. Hence, the primary aim of rebuke is not to strengthen the interpersonal ties between members of society, but to help

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“bring the erring person back to the right path.” It is a religio-educational act, not a social one. Along these lines, Proverbs 25:12 conceives “rebuke” as a method to impart, more specifically, wisdom: “Like a ring of gold, a golden ornament, is a wise man’s reproof in a receptive ear.” Because rebuke aims to educate, it should be embraced so long as the rebuker is wise and his teachings are sound. Thus, whereas for the first model rebuke serves to repair or strengthen a relationship, for the second model it serves to repair error. Will the rabbis apply either of these positive dimensions of tokheḥah to the human-divine realm? Would having an open and even critical dialogue with God repair a fractured relationship as Leviticus 19 seems to posit, or lead to greater love from God, the reproached, as Proverbs 9:8 suggests? Could human beings really serve as God’s pedagogues? Would admonishing God steer God in the right direction and correct His mistakes? These are some of the questions the present work seeks to answer.

Philo of Alexandria and Theological Parrhesia In addition to the biblical commandment of tokheḥah, the rabbis were likely aware of the classical Greco-Roman virtue of parrhesia (παρρησια; lit., all speech), which, in late antiquity, referred to speaking frankly and candidly toward others.29 The notion is prominently found in a number of ancient Greek texts, including the writings of the rhetorician Isocrates (436–338 bce) and the cynic philosopher Diogenes of Sinope (410–323 bce).30 But as Arnold Momigliano has shown, this usage of the term parrhesia was rare at that time (the fifth and fourth centuries bce), as it then primarily, but not exclusively, carried a public and political sense: every Greek citizen in a democracy should have the freedom to express his opinions.31 By the turn of the millennium, however, the term carried more of a personal and moral connotation: it expressed the virtuous idea that a person should be frank and honest with a friend, even to the point of criticism. Here, the act of parrhesia expressed and defined a relationship of privileged intimacy and true friendship. As a result, in Greek culture, flatterers and sycophants were avoided, and those embodying parrhesia were sought. Most famously, in this period, the Epicurean philosopher Philodemus (110–40 bce) authored an entire book on the subject, On Frank Criticism,32 and Plutarch, the well-known Middle Platonist (46– 120 ce), devoted thirteen chapters of his magnum opus Moralia to the proper way to admonish others.33



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Tellingly, these secular Greek thinkers do not valorize the exercise of parrhesia—in the sense of “critique”—in relation to God; the virtue only appears in the context of interhuman relations. By contrast, Jewish-Hellenistic sources appropriate the term in relation to God.34 For example, the Septuagint uses the term parrhesia when referring to a human-divine encounter (Job 22:26). This source, however, is not particularly relevant for us as the term in that context connotes a sense of confidence and joy rather than critique or challenge.35 Parrhesia before God also appears a few times in the New Testament (e.g., in 1 John and Hebrews), but, as in the Septuagint, these examples are not relevant to the issue of challenging God: the term is stripped of its aggressive or critical valence and describes, as Stanley Marrow puts it, nothing more than an “inner disposition” of Christian confidence and “ready access” to God through the blood of Christ.36 The first Jewish-Hellenistic source to use the virtuous term parrhesia both in the sense of challenge or critique and also in the context of a humandivine encounter is the Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria (20 bce–40 ce). Predictably, Philo synthesizes elements of both the philosophical as well as Jewish traditions. On the one hand, echoing the Septuagint, he uses the term in the context of a human-divine encounter, and, on the other hand, echoing Philodemus, he uses parrhesia in the sense of a complaint or challenge (and not merely speaking with “confidence” or “without fear”). Interestingly, no previous Greek source used parrhesia in both senses.37 Philo, however, limits the applicability of this bold act by placing specific conditions on who can exercise theological parrhesia: When therefore is it proper for the servant of God to use freedom of speech to the ruler and master of himself, and of the whole word [i.e., God]? Is it not when he is free from all sins, and is aware in his conscience that he loves his master, feeling more joy at the fact of being a servant of God, than he would if he were sovereign over the whole race of mankind, and were invested without any effort on his part with the supreme authority over land and sea.38 Philo posits that one can speak frankly with God only when the following conditions are met: a person (1) is free from sin, (2) loves God, and (3) would rather be a servant of God than rule the whole world. Later in that section, Philo adds another condition: (4) the confronter must be counted among “the wise.”39 These requirements emphasize the confronter’s unique qualities in the realm of action, emotion, and intellect. For Philo, Moses is the quintessential biblical

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personality who embodies these admirable traits and, thus, has the right, or even privilege, to confront God. This allows Moses, like other virtuous biblical characters, to use “freedom of speech [παρρησίᾳ] not only to speak and cry out [toward God], but even to bring charges or complain (to Him) [καταβοᾶν] with true confidence and courageous feeling.”40 According to Philo, Moses uses ­parrhesia toward God for the first time in Exodus 5:22–23 when Moses calls out: “Lord, why have you afflicted this people [Israel]? Why have you sent me? From the time that I went forth to speak to Pharaoh in your name, he has [only] afflicted the people. You have not delivered you people.”41 Notwithstanding the aforementioned conditions, with Philo we encounter something new and bold within the Greco-Roman world: an explicit monotheistic endorsement of questioning or challenging God. While the Hebrew Bible and Second Temple literature envision theological protest in most circumstances as a justified response to problematic divine behavior, we do not witness this level of explicit celebration as we have in Philo’s writings.42 Notably, following Philo, Flavius Josephus (35–70 ce) also applies the Greco-Roman virtue of parrhesia to biblical characters who challenge God.43

Rabbinic Debate over Debating God We have no evidence that the rabbis were aware of Philo; in fact, this famous Greek Jew is never mentioned in rabbinic literature.44 As contemporary scholars of Judaism have noticed, that did not prevent many rabbis—probably unknowingly—from supporting Philo’s general positive view toward confronting God. Most of these same scholars, however, have ignored or not given sufficient attention to the fact that in rabbinic Judaism the idea of debating God was itself a matter of debate: not every rabbi embraced this theological expression. As this book argues, during the early rabbinic period (often referred to as the tannaitic period, the second and third centuries ce) the sages explicitly opposed challenging God. Some late rabbinic passages even accompany this proscription with specific punishments, such as lashes or excommunication, should a Jew defy this ban. Describing the biblical character of Job as a sinner for his brazenness toward God, these voices emphasize the absurdity of challenging a morally perfect deity or, alternatively, decry the disrespect shown to the Creator with such a defiant act. In contrast to these explicit rabbinic denunciations against arguing with God, rabbis in the post-tannaitic period validated or even encouraged arguing



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with God. Their support, unlike Philo, is generally not explicit at all. They do not use their own voices to express their views. Rather, they use biblical characters to camouflage their arguments. It is well known that the Jewish sages retold biblical stories in the Talmud and Midrash.45 But scholars have largely overlooked the rabbinic tendency, widespread by the late rabbinic period, to put complaints against God into the mouths of biblical figures in their literary elaborations.46 Later rabbinic works contain over one hundred and fifty such instances. In the majority of these instances, the rabbis do not portray God admonishing the challenger. Indeed, at times God even welcomes the challenge, implying that the rabbis sanction such daring confrontations. This act of ventriloquism provides a safe space for the rabbis to generate their critiques with impunity as they present themselves not as originators of the confrontation but only as their transmitters. Moreover, the sages did not base their expanded narratives of theological protest upon their own human authority. Rather, they claimed that these bold scenes had long been hidden within the “divine” words of the Torah. As good exegetes, they were merely discovering them. In this way, the rabbis cleverly justified an innovative and religiously risky project. As I show throughout this book, this late rabbinic legitimation of confrontation intensifies over time. Whereas pro-protest traditions begin to emerge in amoraic texts, such as Genesis Rabbah and Lamentations Rabbah (Palestine, ca. fifth century), and are intensified in the post-amoraic writings of the Babylonian Talmud (ca. seventh century), they reach their fullest expression in the midrashim of Tanḥuma-Yelammedenu (ca. seventh century).47

The Midrashim of Tanḥuma-Yelammedenu Because texts from the Tanḥuma-Yelammedenu (TY) literature appear prominently in this book and are less known even to scholars of Midrash who tend to focus on the earlier tannaitic and amoraic strata of rabbinic literature, an introduction to this literary family is in order. The term Tanḥuma-Yelammedenu should best be understood as a genre or group of rabbinic texts that share the same general form and characteristics, rather than as referring to a specific set of books.48 Texts from this genre can be found in the following midrashic works: (1) Midrash Tanḥuma, both the standard and Buber editions; (2) Exodus Rabbah II, chapters 15–52; (3) Numbers Rabbah II, chapters 15–23;49 (4) Deuteronomy Rabbah, both the standard and Lieberman editions; (5) Pesiqta Rabbati, chapters 1–14, 19, 25, 29, 31, 33, 38–45, 47, and supplements 1 and 2;50 and (6)

12 I n t r o du c t i o n

hundreds of TY fragments found in the Cairo Genizah.51 Indeed, the plethora of TY texts and manuscripts testifies to its popularity in late antique Palestine of the Common Era—and explains why so few Midrash scholars have dared to produce a critical edition.52 In the past, scholars have dated TY literature from as early as the fourth century ce to as late as the ninth century.53 Most contemporary scholars, however, rely on the recent findings of Marc Bregman, who argues for a more complex dating of the TY corpus. According to him, we can divide the TY midrashic material into several developmental strata:

(1) The early stratum of TY, produced in Palestine around the fifth century ce, contains a large amount of Galilean Aramaic as well as Greek and Latin loan words, and is roughly contemporaneous with the Jerusalem Talmud and the classical midrashim such as Leviticus Rabbah and Genesis Rabbah. (2) The middle stratum developed toward the end of Byzantine rule in Palestine (sixth and early seventh century) and represents the vast majority of the TY material we have today. Unlike the early stratum, it avoids Galilean Aramaic wherever possible, replacing it with Hebrew. TY works produced in this period include Exodus Rabbah II, Numbers Rabbah II, both versions of Deuteronomy Rabbah, and portions of Pesiqta Rabbati. (3) The late stratum includes minor accretions to the TY material added after the Islamic conquest. In contrast to the earlier strata, it seeks to eliminate all Greek and Latin loan words. TY texts of this period consist of the standard edition of Midrash Tanḥuma (probably redacted in Babylonia), and the Buber edition of Midrash Tanḥuma (probably redacted in Europe).54

Tanḥuma-Yelammedenu texts generally commence with a halakhic proem that poses a simple question of Jewish law, often introduced with the phrase “Let our master teach us (‫)ילמדנו רבנו‬.” (Yelammedenu is Hebrew for “let teach us.” Since these teachings often cite Rabbi Tanhuma, a fourth-century sage, they are also designated as the Tanhuma midrashim.) A TY midrash will typically begin the answer with the statement “thus have our rabbis taught us (‫כך שנו‬ ‫ ”)רבותינו‬or “thus have the sages taught us (‫)כך שנו חכמים‬.” After the specific



I n t r o du c t i o n

13

query has been solved by quoting a tannaitic legal text, the midrash connects the legal issue to a nonlegal teaching and then links the entire discussion to a verse from the beginning of the weekly Torah portion. Usually, the legal proem is followed by one or more nonlegal proems, similar to those found in the earlier fifth-century homiletical midrashim, such as Leviticus Rabbah and Pesiqta deRav Kahana. These nonlegal proems begin by citing a remote passage from the Hagiographa and then creatively connecting it again to a local passage from the weekly Torah lection. Finally, the peroration usually contains a statement about the redemption and the coming of the Messiah. One of the ways that the TY midrashim differ from the earlier homiletical amoraic midrashim (ca. fifth century ce) is in their choice of language. Whereas earlier texts like Leviticus Rabbah and Pesiqta de-Rav Kahana contain “a mix of Hebrew and Aramaic with a sprinkling of Greek terms,” TY texts tend to use Hebrew.55 Furthermore, Leopold Zunz recognized already in 1832 that TY midrashim have the tendency to record teachings anonymously by dropping the name of the tradent, or sometimes even “forging the names of certain earlier sages.”56 Marc Bregman has also shown that TY texts tend to add “honorific titles, such as ‘Ha-Levi’ and ‘Be-rabbi’ to the names of sages.”57 These characteristics seemingly express a desire on the part of the TY authors to present their work as an earlier rabbinic commentary. In recent years, scholars have noticed that the literary style of the TY represents a watershed moment in the history of rabbinic literature. Whereas early Midrash tends to designate a biblical passage and then comment on it, late Midrash, beginning with the TY, tends to integrate the passage and its interpretation into its own retelling of the biblical narrative. In these texts, there is little to no transition between the biblical passage and its interpretation, as the biblical passage is often embedded within the interpretation. At times, the biblical proof text is even omitted altogether. In other words, while early Midrash presents itself as an explicit commentary on the Bible, late ­Midrash is an attempt to re-narrate the Bible, blending together biblical verses and interpretation. TY literature thus marks the beginning of the rabbinic “rewritten Bible” genre that reaches its apex with the writing of Pirqe de-Rabbi Eliezer (ca. eighth century).58 In their retellings, the TY’s authors tend to combine many prior exegetical comments found in the classical midrashim (like Genesis Rabbah or Leviticus Rabbah) and weave them into one long and continuous narrative. In addition, to achieve this quality of a “rewritten Bible,” TY midrashim generally do not present multiple interpretations of a biblical verse, as earlier midrashic texts do, but rather give only one

14 I n t r o du c t i o n

interpretation—even though this reading draws, sometimes problematically, from the multiple interpretations of earlier rabbinic texts.59 While they usually do not mark their sources, TY texts often rely upon— or at least are aware of—earlier rabbinic traditions. Consequently, to fully appreciate the distinctiveness of the TY midrashim and the ways in which they were historically constructed, this study often identifies their textual parallels in pre-TY texts. Relying on Bregman’s findings, extant TY texts were redacted either at the end of the Byzantine period in Palestine (the middle stratum, sixth or early seventh century) or soon after the Islamic conquest (the late stratum, eighth or ninth century). They thus, in their final form, postdate the tannaitic works, such as the Mishnah, Tosefta, Mekhilta deRabbi Ishmael, Sifre Numbers, and Sifre Deuteronomy (edited ca. third century), and also generally postdate the amoraic texts, such as the Jerusalem Talmud, Genesis Rabbah, Leviticus Rabbah, and Pesiqta de-Rav Kahana (redacted ca. fifth century). Thus, when contemporary Midrash scholars notice differences between TY and pre-TY texts, they typically assume that TY authors are reworking pre-TY texts rather than the other way around. While it is possible that in rare and isolated cases TY midrashim preserve, in full, teachings that predate or are contemporaneous with its amoraic parallels (i.e., they comprise the earliest stratum of Bregman’s three-fold division), the fact that TY redactors in these instances decided to preserve specific earlier teachings still communicates something about the TY authors and their exegeticalideological orientation. As this study shows, TY texts sometimes produce new exegetical teachings not recorded in any prior rabbinic work. In these instances, one could reasonably assume that the TY author was aware of the earlier traditions and decided to take a new path. This approach implies a conscious privileging of one scriptural reading over another. Alternatively, even if we reject that assumption and argue that the TY’s author was unaware of the prior tradition, contrasting the exegeses provides a crucial way to highlight the distinctiveness of the TY.

Exegetical Ethics As noted above, the sages in the late rabbinic period—most notably in the Baby­lonian Talmud and the Tanḥuma-Yelammedenu literature—did not base their narratives of theological protest upon their own human authority. Rather, they claimed that these bold scenes had long been hidden within the “divine”



I n t r o du c t i o n

15

words of the Torah. As good exegetes, they were merely discovering them. In this way, the rabbis cleverly justified an innovative and religiously risky ­project.60 From a scholarly perspective, however, I argue that such exegetical literature opened a space for Jewish interpreters of that period to express their own personal moral discomfort with specific divine acts found in Scripture. The rabbis’ own claims notwithstanding, this boldness tells us less about the Bible than it does about the rabbis’ own theology and ethical intuitions.61 Consequently, in this study, rabbinic biblical interpretation is used as a tool to reveal rabbinic ethics. As such, the study builds on, but also diverges from, the work of Moshe Halbertal, who, in his book Interpretive Revolutions in the Making, emphasizes the centrality of biblical interpretation for rabbinic ethics.62 For Halbertal, many sages used their own moral intuitions to guide their interpretation of biblical law. As a result, they neutralized morally troubling divine decrees. Like Halbertal, this study also extracts rabbinic ethics from rabbinic biblical exegesis. But unlike Halbertal, who treats only legal (halakhic) texts, nonlegal (aggadic) texts are dealt with here. This shift of genre, from law to narrative, is necessary as the legal material does not fully open up the depth of the rabbinic ethical and interpretive universe.63 In ­Halbertal’s rabbinic texts, the sages interpret biblical dicta through a moral lens to produce a perfect and righteous lawgiver.64 This type of strategy was also developed by Philo and early Christian exegetes such as Origen (184–253) and Augustine (354–430).65 However, this study traces a different and underappreciated reaction to the problematic image of God. Instead of dogmatically defending every divine action or law, even the troubling ones, as the early rabbis and church fathers had done, some sages from the late rabbinic period acknowledged the moral-theological irritant through an act of what I call “protest ventriloquism.” In effect, they called attention to the theological problem without resolving it by putting protests into the mouths of biblical heroes. These ancient Jewish devotees of Scripture thus remained in a state of ambivalence or unease with regard to a particular divine action. In the arena of divine law with which Halbertal deals, the dilemma is not just theoretical, but practical, demanding an actual solution. The arena of problematic divine action, on the other hand, reflects a theoretical problem that does not always require an immediate solution. While many aggadot still find ways to resolve the theological crisis, many do not. ­Accordingly, this study focuses on rabbinic voices that occupy a middle ground on the ethical-exegetical continuum. Rather than responding to troubling ­passages about God through charitable apologetics and reinterpretation (like

16 I n t r o du c t i o n

Halbertal’s texts and those of the church fathers) or, on the other extreme, assuming an evil Old Testament God (like Marcion, for example),66 this late rabbinic response simply voices its ethical reservations by reimagining the speeches of biblical heroes. It allows the protest to remain standing and God to be left in a state of ethical impunity.

Rabbinic Theology The dearth of scholarship on the confrontational theme reflects a general scholarly disregard for rabbinic theology. While there is a plethora of works treating nontheological rabbinic subfields such as history, culture, law, literature, and biblical interpretation, the unsystematic theological writings of the sages, with some notable exceptions, have been largely neglected. In fact, the last scholarly book in English focusing exclusively on the rabbinic God appeared over twentyfive years ago.67 With this in mind, this book examines expressions of theological protest in aggadic sources to highlight, in part, the uniqueness of the rabbinic God in relation to later Jewish conceptions—both philosophical and mystical. I argue that the rabbinic acceptance of confrontation was, in part, ­fueled by a radical conception of God that was distinctive of the late rabbinic period. Assuming a humanlike body and emotions, the rabbinic God was not understood to be an unapproachable being, but a relational character who participates as a member in society, albeit a privileged one. Indeed, the divine is not reflected upon in isolation as in medieval Jewish philosophy or mysticism, but rather characterized as an entity yearning to be in direct relation to others.68 Going beyond the moderate anthropomorphism of the Hebrew Bible,69 the rabbinic God suffers, laughs, cries, kisses people, studies Torah in a yeshiva, follows the commandments (mitzvot), and even spends His time matchmaking and sporting with Leviathan, the monster of the sea.70 In short, this study proposes that the late rabbinic valorization of theological protest is animated by a distinctive rabbinic theology that reflects the heightened humanity and personality assumed by the rabbinic God.71 Finally, this book posits that some sages in the late rabbinic period took the theology of divine humanization to its extreme. They did not automatically assume a morally perfect deity. While fundamentally good, God, like His human creations, does not always make the correct ethical choice. Hence, the act of protest was not deemed a futile expression but one that, in the imagined biblical



I n t r o du c t i o n

17

period at least, could propel God to recognize His ethical shortcomings. Indeed, the widespread motif of divine moral concessions, particularly in the ­midrashim of Tanḥuma-Yelammedenu, suggests that scholars ought to consider modifying and nuancing their assumption that the sages always imagined God to be morally perfect. For example, in the first half of the twentieth century, Arthur Marmorstein argued that the tannaim (early rabbis) adamantly defended the existence of an ethically infallible God to counter the Marcionite heresy that viewed the Hebrew Bible’s God as ruthless and unjust.72 Here, Marmorstein does not take into account the possibility that this rigid Jewish attitude may have waned over time. Similarly, David Weiss Halivni asserts that the rabbis never consciously set their own sense of morality above a straightforward reading of a “difficult” biblical law since that would have implied that God’s morality was in error—and the “Perfect Law Giver” could never err.73 And, as noted above, Halbertal has argued that the ancient rabbis conceived of God in perfectly righteous terms. For Halbertal, even those early sages who granted interpretive weight to their own moral convictions did so only because they confidently believed their ethical values intuited God’s perfect morality.74 However, as some late rabbinic passages show God acquiescing to a number of moral critiques, they present a radically different conception of God from the rabbinic texts adduced by Marmorstein, Halivni, and Halbertal. Constructing a “human” God who is not morally perfect, these images sharply contrast with the unchanging and morally infallible God championed by much of ancient Greek philosophy, early Christian thought, and medieval Jewish philosophy. In some aggadot, although God is concerned with and committed to justice and morality, He also recognizes His limitations and fallibility.75 Most radically, in some of these aggadot, God is willing to reform His methods of governing the world after receiving human input. Thus, in this study, I suggest that, unlike the image of God presented throughout most of the Bible, this late rabbinic God is not the ultimate moral sovereign. Rather than imitating God’s own actions, the rules of ethical conduct now emerge through dialogues between God and various biblical heroes. In addition, while these texts imply a profound lesson about divine morality and the possibility of change, they also point, in accordance with the thinking of the late religious humanist David Hartman, to human dignity and empowerment. God, according to some rabbis, reaches the pinnacle of ethical action through His dialogues with mortals. In this way, they grant significant religious value to human moral sensibilities.76

18 I n t r o du c t i o n

Chapter Overview In its broadest structure, the book is divided into two halves. The first half traces various rabbinic attitudes toward challenging God. It asks: did the sages permit or prohibit it? Did they deem it a vice or virtue? The second half of the book shifts its gaze from the rabbis as evaluators of theological protest to looking at them as its practitioners. Here, I explicate actual critiques of God generated by the rabbis themselves. Breaking it down more specifically, Chapter 1, “Confrontation as Sin,” examines anti-protest traditions found in the Talmud and Midrash—a topic that has been largely ignored by scholars of religion. I argue that early rabbinic opposition to theological protest marks a new moment in the history of Jewish theology. After theorizing why this prohibition emerges at this point, the chapter explicates its exegetical and conceptual basis: why did these tannaim prohibit challenging God, and where in Scripture do they find “clues” to hang this prohibition? The second half of the chapter makes two central arguments. First, I posit that later rabbinic anti-protest texts intensify or radicalize their opposition. While early anti-protest traditions merely prohibit one from challenging God, later aggadot tend to attach harsh punishments to that prohibition. ­Second, from a comparative perspective, I contend that rabbinic anti-protest sentiments diverge from similar sentiments voiced by the church fathers. While both critique the act of protest on exegetical and (similar) conceptual grounds, they have different ways of reconciling their stringent attitudes with a biblical tradition that seems to tolerate, if not valorize, confronting God. More specifically, I demonstrate that whereas the rabbinic position typically retells the biblical confrontation by having God castigate or punish the protester, early Christian thinkers tend to reject the literal reading of Scripture altogether: any apparent protest by a biblical hero is deemed a dangerous misreading. The chapter concludes by offering possible reasons to account for this difference. Chapter 2, “From Sin to Virtue,” turns to the more lenient rabbinic view as it examines late rabbinic ambivalence toward—or outright endorsement of— the bold act of protest. I argue that this more open attitude surfaces in amoraic literature and intensifies in the late midrashic texts of Tanḥuma-Yelammedenu and the Babylonian Talmud. This parallel development of an “ideological ­intensification”—on both sides of the protest issue, whether permissive or prohibitive—is not coincidental. It reveals that the question over the legitimacy of challenging God played a central role within late rabbinic culture (fifth to ­seventh century). To highlight the uniqueness of the rabbinic position that



I n t r o du c t i o n

19

celebrates theological protest, the chapter contrasts rabbinic and early Christian readings on the clay-potter parable found in Isaiah and Jeremiah. This parable, the reader may recall, is of crucial importance to our topic as it was appropriated by the author of Deutero-Isaiah to chastise those who question God. We shall see that, unlike the rabbis, this passage was invoked by the church fathers to quash those who challenge God’s ways. The chapter concludes by situating the rabbinic pro-protest phenomenon historically, and speculating as to why these permissive sentiments surface only in late rather than early rabbinic literature. As part of this discussion, the chapter engages with recent scholarship on the relationship between the two late rabbinic corpora of late antiquity: the Babylonian Talmud and the TY midrashim. Chapter 3, “Varieties of Confrontation,” explores different types of theological protest and their implications. The first half of the chapter traces rare moments of rabbinic self-reflection. In them, the rabbis present a third approach to theological protest: some challenges are permitted and some are prohibited. In this regard, three basic types of distinctions are presented, relating to (1) the tone of the critique, (2) the topic of the critique, and (3) the person expressing the critique. To illuminate these discussions, the chapter draws from the philosophical reflections on parrhesia that appear in the Greco-Roman writings of Philodemus (110–40 bce), Philo (20 bce–40 ce), and Plutarch (46–120 ce). Marking the book’s transition from “rabbis on protest” to “rabbis of protest,” the second half of the chapter explores the variety of literary contexts and genres used by the sages to situate their own remonstrations. These include (1) courtroom lawsuits, (2) prayers, and (3) parables. This section seeks to understand how these diverse framings affect the nature of the challenge. That is, what function or purpose do these tropes serve the rabbis? Do they intensify the critique or, alternatively, justify it? Chapter 4, “Confrontation as Ethics,” examines the possible factors that motivated the rabbis to produce their protests. After noting their hermeneutical and rhetorical value, the crux of the chapter is devoted to highlighting the ethical dimension. Here, I argue that placing critiques into the mouths of biblical heroes provided the sages with a method to work through their own misgivings and anxieties about problematic divine behavior. In addition, the exegetical dimension provided a safe space for the sages to express their concerns without taking formal responsibility for these irreverent expressions. This rabbinic reflex to challenge God in the face of the theological-moral problem developed on a spectrum between those anti-YHWH thinkers in the pagan, Zoroastrian, and

20 I n t r o du c t i o n

Gnostic world who sought to erode the Old Testament’s authority by accentuating God’s immoral behavior, and, on the other extreme, early Christian and rabbinic thinkers who dogmatically defended YHWH’s ethical perfection at all costs through radical reinterpretation. To make its case, the chapter presents select rabbinic responses to four well-known biblical narratives: (1) The generation of the Flood, (2) Phineas’s zealotry, (3) Moses and the Promised Land, and (4) Sarai in Pharaoh’s palace. The chapter concludes with a survey of nonrabbinic critiques of the Old Testament God from the second to the ninth century. Chapter 5, “The Humanization of God,” argues that the intensification of divine anthropomorphism in rabbinic thought allowed for, and fueled, the production of these theological protests. After highlighting the ways in which this rabbinic conception of God differs from earlier biblical conceptions, and even more radically from later medieval conceptions (both philosophical and mystical), the chapter argues that many sages did not consider protest to be disrespectful of the human-divine hierarchy because God’s human-like personality and striking relational informality with Israel forestalled that concern. There was no ontological divide that required preservation. Arguments with God could be freely expressed just as one argues with a friend. Furthermore, the chapter showcases how the rabbinic humanization of God provided the sages with a mechanism to anchor their confrontations. In a number of late rabbinic passages God is described as being subject to the dictates of Jewish law: just as humanity must follow God’s commands, so too God must follow His own commands.77 With this theological assumption, found nowhere in Scripture, the rabbis acquired a standard by which God’s actions could be judged. Chapter 6, “Divine Concessions,” presents the boldest thesis of the book: some late rabbis did not consider God to be morally perfect. To defend this idea, the chapter explores moments in rabbinic (and biblical) literature where God morally retracts from His prior point of view, and moments in rabbinic (and biblical) literature where God ethically concedes error in response to a human critique. I argue that whereas divine retractions and concessions can be found in biblical and amoraic rabbinic literature, these depictions of God reach their most radical articulations and expressions in the writings of the Tanḥuma-Yelammedenu. To illustrate TY’s distinctiveness in this area, the chapter presents three case studies: (1) the dictum of transgenerational punishment (Exod. 20:5), (2) the Israelite war against Sihon (Num. 21:21–35), and (3) the laws of the cities of refuge (Num. 35:9–34).

Chapter 1

Confrontation as Sin

The Oxford textbook World Religions Today, studied by thousands of undergraduates across the country, regards “debates with God” as a distinctively Jewish means to “achieve harmony with the will of God . . . where peace and justice will reign.”1 To reinforce this typical scholarly assumption, Anson Laytner collected hundreds of Jewish protest expressions from rabbinic literature, early medieval Jewish poetry, the Hebrew chronicles of the Crusades, Eastern European Hasidic thought, and, finally, post-Holocaust theology.2 However, such records of theological struggle are potentially distortive, presenting only one side of the picture; they ignore the fierce anti-protest traditions of Judaism. In the twentieth century, Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Undsdorfer (1888–1944) of Bratislava, a victim of Auschwitz, just months before his death wrote: “All justice is with [God], and there is no injustice to the just and the righteous. . . . Lord of the Universe, heaven forbid that we should question Your attributes and the justice of Your judgments. . . . We also need to conduct ourselves like children toward Him and not question His ways, heaven forbid. For justice is with Him. ‘Righteous are You, O Lord, and upright are Your judgments.’”3 Or consider the pious demurral of Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Ehrenreich (1863–1944) of Romania, also a victim of Nazi brutality: “The reckless among us will open their mouths, asking questions and doubting God, ‘Why did God do this to pious and good Jews? . . . [However,] each person should be . . . very careful not to speak or to think, heaven forbid, against the Holy One. Though we do not understand, the Holy One knows. Justice is with Him, and He knows how He needs to behave.”4 These sentiments, of course, are not uniquely a product of the twentieth century, but echo, and are nurtured by, dozens of rabbinic passages. In this

22 c h a p t e r 1

chapter, I isolate and explicate these ancient midrashic expressions. In so doing, I set the stage for later discussions, providing the contrast to the more permissive attitude that emerges in the post-tannaitic period. In what follows, I engage the anti-protest material from a number of vantage points, including literary, exegetical, historical, and conceptual. I ask: What literary form does this opposition assume? Is it expressed explicitly through dogmatic maxims or implicitly via the retelling of a biblical narrative (the literary dimension)? Onto what scriptural stories or contexts do the rabbinic sages ground their opposition? Does their reading flow simply and naturally from the biblical text, or do the early rabbis read Scripture unnaturally and counterintuitively (the exegetical dimension)? Is the tannaitic opposition to confronting God a continuation of earlier Jewish expressions from the Second Temple period and the Hebrew Bible, or does it reflect a sharp break from them? And to the extent that these anti-protest sentiments are revolutionary, why does this attitude emerge at this time in Jewish history (the historical dimension)? What theological worries and concerns animate the opposition? Put simply, why should challenging God be so problematic (the conceptual dimension)? And finally, do the anti-protest voices continue to be sounded in the post-tannaitic period? And, if so, in what ways do these later stringent views contrast with earlier ones (the diachronic dimension)? As the ancient rabbis were not the only ones prohibiting verbal confrontations with God, the chapter also selectively engages the writings of Greek and Latin church fathers. Their works evince a similar antagonism toward the act of confrontation: God should not be critiqued, controverted, or challenged, but submissively encountered. After noting this commonality, the chapter considers the ways in which Christian opposition diverges from its rabbinic analogue. I hope this comparative approach illuminates the distinctiveness of the rabbinic antipathy to theological challenge. We begin by ­looking at the earliest anti-protest Jewish voices found in the tannaitic midrashim.

Tannaitic Opposition Rabbinic texts from the early tannaitic period evince a near unanimous antipathy to the notion of challenging or critiquing God.5 Unlike texts from the amoraic and post-amoraic periods, which produce an abundance of celebrated confrontational narratives, tannaitic texts contain few of them.6 While



Confrontation as Sin

23

the post-tannaitic corpus of Midrash is substantially larger than the corpus of tannaitic Midrash, there is still a considerable amount of nonlegal material in tannaitic Midrash. As Menachem Kahana has noted, the accepted term of “Midrash Halakha” to designate tannaitic Midrash is “misleading.” Much of this material is, indeed, aggadic, or nonlegal, in nature. In fact, according to Kahana’s tally, half of the tannaitic Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael and Sifre Deuteronomy is made up of aggadic or nonlegal exegesis.7 Moreover, in a prior work I have shown that in many instances in which post-tannaitic ­midrashim have a biblical hero critiquing God, tannaitic nonlegal parallels do not have such a confrontational story.8 I would argue that these realities reflect an early rabbinic culture that opposes such aggressive acts. Indeed, many tannaitic texts explicitly prohibit protesting God and God’s justice system.9 Consider this anti-challenge midrash found in Sifre Deuteronomy, a third-century work: The Rock [‫—]צור‬the Powerful One—His deeds are perfect [‫תמים‬ ‫[ ]פעלו‬Deut. 32:4]: His actions in regard to all creatures of the world are perfect; one should not murmur against His actions [‫ואין‬ ‫]להרהר אחר מעשיו‬. None of them can look at Him and say: Why should the Generation of the Flood have been swept away? Why should the people of the tower [of Babel] have been scattered from one end of the earth to the other? Why should the people of Sodom have been swept away by fire and brimstone? Why should Aaron have assumed the priesthood? Why should David have assumed the kingship? Why should Korah and his followers have been swallowed up by the earth? Therefore the verse goes on to say: Yea, all His ways are just [‫[ ]כי כל דרכיו משפט‬ibid.] – He sits in judgment [‫ ]בדין‬on everyone and dispenses to each what is appropriate for him. (Sifre Deuteronomy 307)10 This tannaitic text links the prohibition against complaint to the first passage of Moses’ poem at the end of Deuteronomy: “The Rock’s [God’s] deeds are perfect [‫ ;]תמים‬yea, all His ways are just [‫( ”]משפט‬Deut. 32:4). While this biblical passage says nothing about criticizing God, the midrashic author assumes that questioning divine justice would be tantamount to denying the verse’s theological principle that God’s deeds are perfect. Sifre Deuteronomy posits that given God’s perfect justice, it would not only be futile but inappropriate to challenge any of God’s judicial decisions. For the act of critique,

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the midrash uses the term hirhur (‫)הרהור‬, which literally means “conceiving” or “thinking.” In rabbinic literature, the term carries a number of meanings and connotations. It can simply refer to thinking as opposed to speaking; to thinking impure sexual or idolatrous thoughts; or (as in our case) to critiquing others, most often to critiquing God’s “actions” (‫ )מעשיו‬or “attribute of justice” (‫)מדת הדין‬.11 As we shall see, hirhur is one of many terms used by the rabbis to signal a critique of God.12 A second tannaitic text that prohibits challenging God appears in Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael, a third-century commentary to Exodus: “He is one; who can dissuade Him [‫ ?]והוא באחד ומי ישיבנו‬Whatever He desires, He does [‫ונפשו‬ ‫[ ]אותה ויעש‬Job 23:13]: . . . [Interpreting this verse, Rabbi Akiva] said: One should not challenge [‫ ]אין להשיב‬the words of Him who spoke and the world came into being, for every word is in accordance with truth [‫ ]באמת‬and every decision in accordance with justice [‫( ”]בדין‬Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael, Vayehi 6 [Horovitz-Rabin, 112]). Rabbi Akiva, arguably the most dominant figure in rabbinic Judaism, bases his teaching on a passage from Job 23:13: “He [God] is one; who can dissuade Him [‫ ?]והוא באחד ומי ישיבנו‬Whatever He desires, He does [‫]ונפשו אותה ויעש‬.”13 In the biblical context, Job critiques God, bemoaning the fact that God never changes His mind. Whatever God desires—no matter how just or unjust—He will do; and, given God’s immense power, there is no one who can stop Him. Indeed, the entire chapter in which this passage appears is replete with critiques of God. Rabbi Akiva, however, turns the verse upside down. Instead of Job challenging God, Rabbi Akiva uses the verse to declare the very opposite: that one should “not challenge God [‫]אין להשיב‬.” To accomplish this exegetical inversion, Rabbi Akiva offers a new explanation for why one would not protest God. Instead of stating that any protest would be futile, as the verse seems to suggest, Rabbi Akiva remarks on God’s moral perfection. God rules with truth and justice, and it would be senseless, if not subversive, to challenge God’s decisions. Remarkably, a biblical passage that critiques God becomes the very source of its prohibition! And ironically, it is Job, the paradigmatic biblical character of chutzpah, who becomes the spokesperson requiring Jews to express due reverence to the Creator.14 These early rabbinic voices of opposition to confronting God stand in stark contrast to the Hebrew Bible and Second Temple writings, which, in virtually every case, do not castigate those individuals who brazenly confront God. Thus, the early rabbinic texts of Sifre Deuteronomy and Mekhilta deRabbi Ishmael signal a new moment in the history of Jewish theology. Their



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explicit and unequivocal opposition to an individual confronting God stands in sharp contrast to virtually everything we encounter in the Hebrew Bible.

Rabbi Akiva, Martyrdom, and Marcionism We now turn to the crucial historical question: why should such strong opposition to challenging God and His justice system emerge at this point in Jewish history? Why were the tannaim unwilling to tolerate or embrace a theological motif that had deep roots in the Hebrew Bible? We find a plethora of confrontational material in later rabbinic texts, but nothing of this sort in early rabbinic literature. In his magisterial work Torah from Heaven, Abraham Joshua Heschel links this early conservative outlook to the ideology of the dominant secondcentury rabbinic hero Rabbi Akiva.15 According to Heschel, Rabbi Akiva’s forceful opposition to challenging God emanates directly from Rabbi Akiva’s oft-cited theological conviction that “[human] suffering is precious [‫חביבין‬ ‫]ייסורין‬.”16 Rather than viewing suffering as a sign of divine disfavor or disregard, Rabbi Akiva sees human pain as an expression of divine love and care.17 Thus Jews who are beset by troubles should thank God rather than curse their god, as gentiles do. For Rabbi Akiva, the requirement to offer thanks in the face of hardship flows from a biblical verse that at first glance seems to prohibit idolatry: “You [pl.] shall not make, with Me [‫]אתי‬, gods of silver” (Exod. 20:20). The strange inclusion of the phrase “with Me,” however, drives Rabbi Akiva to uncover a hidden divine injunction:18 “Rabbi Akiva said: With me, therefore, you shall not make [any gods of silver] [Exod. 20:20]: Do not act towards Me in the manner in which others [gentiles] behave toward their deities. When good comes to them, they honor their gods . . . but when evil comes to them they curse their gods. . . . But you, if I bring good upon you, give thanks, and when I bring suffering [‫ ]ייסורין‬upon you, give thanks [‫( ”]הודאה‬Mekhilta deRabbi Ishmael, Baḥodesh 10 [Horovitz-Rabin, 239]). Rabbi Akiva transforms a biblical passage prohibiting idolatry into one requiring Jews to thank God in times of travail. By thanking God even in difficult times, Jews distinguish themselves from idolaters who praise their gods only in times of prosperity. Thus for Rabbi Akiva, refusing to critique or challenge God in times of despair is not only mandated but becomes a central distinguishing characteristic of the Jewish faith.19 Not surprisingly, post-tannaitic legends recount that Rabbi Akiva, the spiritual leader of the failed Bar Kokhba revolt, opted not to challenge God at the moment of his martyrdom, instead proclaiming his

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happiness at finally fulfilling the biblical mandate to “love the Lord your God . . . with all your soul” (Deut. 6:5).20 Similar legends appear in relation to other tannaitic martyrs.21 Whereas Heschel sought to situate the tannaitic anti-protest worldview within Rabbi Akiva’s theology, Arthur Marmorstein placed the tannaitic prohibition in the context of the religious battles over the Hebrew Bible and its God in the second century.22 Proto-Orthodox Christians were defending both the sanctity of the Old Testament and the righteousness of the Old Testament God against attacks waged by “heretical” Christian groups, such as the Marcionites and select Gnostics, as well as by pagan intellectuals who denied the divinity and authority of the Old Testament. Specifically, the second-century Christian dualist Marcion of Sinope (85–160 ce) critiqued the God of the Hebrew Bible for anger, hubris, a penchant for war, and other acts of injustice.23 While Marcion’s work, entitled Antithesis, is no longer extant, Adolf Von Harnack, a nineteenth-century German theologian, reconstructed it from the citations of early Christian heresiologists.24 In this work, Marcion contrasts the evil creator-God of the Hebrew Bible with the good Lord of the New Testament by placing thirty-one conflicting statements from the two Testaments side by side (Marcion had his own New Testament canon).25 For example, Marcion argues that the “Creator-God [YHWH] did not cause blind Isaac to see again, but our Lord [Jesus], because he is good, opened the eyes of many blind persons.”26 Similarly, “the prophet of the Creator-God [YHWH] commanded the bears to come out of the thicket and to eat the children; but the good Lord [Jesus] says, ‘Let the children come to me, and do not forbid them, for such is the Kingdom of Heaven.’”27 Proto-Orthodox Christian theologians, devoted to a stricter monotheism and to the unity of the two Testaments, sharply condemned Marcion’s teachings by either attacking his literalist hermeneutic, as did Origen (185–254),28 or by arguing that Marcion failed to appreciate the necessity of divine harshness when implementing justice, as did Tertullian (160–225).29 While not as systematic as Marcion, some Gnostic authors similarly sought to denigrate the Old Testament God by highlighting His injustices. For example, the author of Testimony of Truth, a Coptic Gnostic text found at Nag Hammadi, states: “Surely, he [the biblical God] has shown himself to be a malicious envier. And what kind of a God is this? For great is the blindness of those who read, and they did not know it. And he said: “I am the jealous God; I will bring the sins of the fathers upon the children until three and four generations” (Exod. 20:5).30



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This anonymous Gnostic author criticizes the biblical God for the Decalogue’s unjust principle of punishing children for the sins of the parents “until the third of fourth generations.” Because of this doctrine, God is described as a “malicious envier.”31 Similarly, the Gnostic authors of The Secret Book According to John and the Revelation of Adam denounced YHWH and identified Him as “Ialdabaoth” or “Saklas” (Satan).32 Other Gnostics, such as Ptolemy in his Letter to Flora, more moderately describe the God of the Hebrew Bible as “imperfect” for commanding an imperfect law.33 Around the same time, the second-century Middle Platonist Celsus, who was familiar with the teachings of Marcion,34 criticized the Hebrew Bible for its all-too-human and childish depiction of God (for example, a God who rests, retracts, and speaks with anger).35 While the anthropomorphic dimension takes center stage, Celsus also objects to God’s arrogance, His problematic decision to imbue humanity with the Evil Inclination, and His “arbitrary destruction of the world.”36 In response to these sorts of critiques, proto-­ Orthodox Christians such as Justin, Tertullian, Origen, and Irenaeus sought to undermine these polemical attacks (albeit in different ways) by justifying the goodness and justice of the Old Testament God at all costs.37 Origen in particular responds to Celsus as he did to Marcion, charging him with reading Scripture too literally and with failing to appreciate its deeper allegorical message.38 Marmorstein suggests that these types of theological debates concerning the justness of the Old Testament God must have reached the ancient rabbis. In one place, he even suggests the existence of “Jewish Marcionites.”39 Like the proto-Orthodox Christian theologians, Rabbi Akiva and other tannaim responded to these heretical claims by proclaiming a morally perfect and just God. Any admission or hint of divine error would only bolster the audacious charges of these Marcionites, Gnostics, and pagans. To be sure, Marmorstein’s claim of a direct influence must be severely qualified as, in recent years, scholars have problematized the notion of “influence”40 and have stressed the difficulty in reconstructing the precise historical context in which rabbinic theology was produced.41 Moreover, Marmorstein’s claim that the examples cited in Sifre Deuteronomy correspond in detail to Marcion’s critiques in his Antithesis is not exact. There is no one-to-one correspondence: not every example found in Sifre Deuteronomy appears in Marcion’s (reconstructed) work. Notwithstanding these methodological reservations, Marmorstein’s hypothesis that anti-God sentiments emanating from various sectors in late antiquity played a role in igniting anti-confrontational passages in early

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rabbinic texts seems possible. Accordingly, the two tannaitic texts analyzed above (Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael and Sifre Deuteronomy) might be seen as emerging in this religious and cultural context.42 Unlike these heretics, the early rabbis not only proclaimed that God judges with truth and justice; but they also prohibited one from challenging God.

Conceptual Basis: Error or Disrespect? Having investigated the religio-historical context for this new conservative approach, we now turn to explore its conceptual basis. As noted, pro-challenge sentiments found in late rabbinic literature must overcome not only the earlier textual opposition to confrontation, but also its conceptual basis. In both Sifre Deuteronomy and Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael texts, the authors link the prohibition against critique to the theological assertion that God always judges with complete truth and fairness. For these midrashim, religious opposition to challenging God is intrinsically connected to the nature of divinity. Because God is perfect, “‫( ”תמים‬as in Deut. 32:4), it would be entirely absurd to argue with Him. Therefore, one who criticizes the divine must also hold an erroneous belief about God. Some early church thinkers highlight this dimension as well, such as Gregory the Great (540–604), who posits in the Moralia, his famous commentary to Job, that “the acts of our Maker ought always to be reverenced without scrutiny [indiscussa], for they can never be unjust [iniusta].”43 Related to the concern of falsehood and error is the notion that humans have limited knowledge and are thus in no position to judge the Creator of the World. According to this view, human challenges reflect the height of arrogance because the challengers assume knowledge they do not have, in effect denying the reality of the deeply flawed human condition. Gregory the Great alludes to this idea too: “For to seek a reason for God’s secret counsel is nothing else than to erect one’s own pride against His counsel. So when the motive of God’s acts cannot be discovered, in humility we should remain silent under those acts, for the senses of the flesh are not equal to the task of penetrating the secrets of God’s majesty.”44 This claim—that critiquing God reflects human hubris and a misguided sense of self—also appears in Midrash Tannaim, a partial Ishmaelian commentary to Deuteronomy reconstructed by scholars: “You must be perfect [‫ ]תמים‬with the Lord your God [Deut. 18:13]: Rabbi Eliezer the son of Jacob said: You shall not critique [God] [‫ ]תהרהר‬after



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[receiving] afflictions, and so did David say, O Lord, my heart is not proud, nor my look haughty; I do not aspire to great things, or to what is beyond me (Psalms 131:1)—for I did not critique [‫ ]הרהרתי‬my Maker” (Midrash Tannaim, 18:13). Instead of reading the Psalms verse of “my heart is not proud, nor my look haughty” as a general statement promoting humility and human inadequacy, as the simple reading suggests, Rabbi Eliezer reads it as a verse explaining why one should never critique (‫ )תהרהר‬God. By refraining from challenging God, a person reaffirms his limitations and inadequacy, and through that inaction achieves the sought-after level of perfection (‫)תמים‬. Both of the aforementioned reasons—the perfect justness of God and human inadequacy—share a similar conceptual concern with confronting God: falsehood and error. But whereas Rabbi Akiva (in the Mekhilta text) links this concern with divine perfection, Rabbi Eliezer connects it with human imperfection.45 By contrast, later rabbinic texts highlight not a theoretical problem with challenging God but a relational one. As creator of the world and giver of life, God should not be approached with irreverence and disrespect. Even if one assumes that God does at times judge incorrectly, the proper religious response should be submission rather than challenge. In rabbinic literature, this submissive approach is expressed by texts that compare one who protests God with one who protests a person of higher rank. For example, the Babylonian Talmud in Berakhot 19a includes aggressive challenges to God as akin to violating the requirement of “respecting a teacher/master [‫]כבוד הרב‬.” Surely, the common link between the models of student/teacher and human/God is not the infallibility of the superior figure (as human teachers are fallible), but the hierarchical structure that must be preserved. The teacher ought to remain in the superior position, the student in the inferior position. I note also that this text explicitly connects challenging God with a lack of respect (‫)כבוד‬ rather than with falsehood or error.46 Another example of this concern can be found in the following talmudic pericope: “Rava said: Dust should be put in the mouth of Job, because he makes himself the colleague of heaven [‫]חברותא כלפי שמיא‬. . . . Rava [further] said: Dust should be placed in the mouth of Job: is there a slave who rebukes his master [‫”?]כלום יש עבד שמוכיח את רבו‬47 In the Bible, God reprimands Job’s critiques because they are spoken “without knowledge” (‫( )דעת‬as in Job 38:2, 4); Job’s crime is due to cognitive error. By contrast, in this talmudic text, Job’s crime is not cognitive but relational. Rava denounces Job for presumptuously and incorrectly viewing himself as a friend of God rather than as the

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slave that he truly is. While a friend has the right to casually engage his master with such frankness of speech, a slave does not: “Is there a slave who can rebuke his master?”48 In the Christian tradition, John of Chrysostom (347–407), the well-known preacher at Antioch, echoes this relational approach: “We must not argue with God… [since] when we are in the presence of a king, we do not dare argue with him [lit., speak back, αντιφθεγξασθαι] . . . even more so we must behave before God.”49 As in the preceding talmudic text, opposition to confrontation is driven by notions of respect for a superior, and thus would apply to both a human and divine king, albeit to different degrees. In another place, Chrysostom makes this point explicitly: “By prying into the person of God you are not honoring God.”50 Like Rava in the Talmud, Chrysostom’s opposition to confronting God is not related to harboring false notions about God, but to a lack of proper respect exhibited toward God. Along these lines, one of the PseudoClementine works avers that “it is not suitable that one who is created judge the Creator, but that to judge the work of another belongs to him who is either of equal skill or equal power.”51 In this view, only one who assumes a similar or greater place in the social hierarchical structure could critique another. This would naturally preclude a human critique of God. These two conceptual explanations for rabbinic opposition to confrontation are explicitly formulated. Of course, it is very likely that a deeper sociological concern (whether conscious or not) also played a role: a rabbinic concern for protecting their own power and authority. Were critiques of God an acceptable act, the rabbis themselves might be exposed to critiques as well. We have already seen this teaching in BT Sanhedrin 110a: “Rabbi Abahu said: Whoever critiques [‫ ]המהרהר‬his Rabbi, it is as if he critiques the Shekhinah [God].”52 Could one not make the reverse claim as well: Whoever critiques God it is as if he is critiquing the rabbis? Indeed, the rabbinic project to establish and heighten their authority in the centuries after 70 ce has recently received an abundance of attention.53

The Moral-Exegetical Context Rabbinic opposition to confronting God is not relegated to tannaitic texts; it also reverberates in subsequent rabbinic texts of the amoraic and post-amoraic periods. Like the tannaitic material, these passages express the stringent view while often ignoring the explicit biblical context. For example, in Genesis 6:7,



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God announces that, because of the grievous sins of humanity, He will destroy the world with a flood: “I will blot out [‫ ]אמחה‬from the earth the men whom I created.” But rather than reading ‫ אמחה‬as the Hebrew word for “I will blot out,” an anonymous teaching from Genesis Rabbah (ca. fifth century) anachronistically reads the term as an Aramaic appellation (‫)מחי‬, meaning “protest.” The verse now reads: “I [God] can protest [‫ ]ממחה‬My creatures, but My creatures cannot protest Me.”54 Unlike the tannaitic texts discussed above, which had humans—Moses, Job, King David—express the prohibition on critique, this later midrash places the normative maxim into the mouth of God. In addition, unlike the tannaitic texts, which connect the prohibition to theological error, Genesis Rabbah associates it with the considerable hierarchical gap between God and humanity: “I can protest [‫ ]ממחה‬My creatures, but My creatures cannot protest Me.” In other words, I read “creature” versus “one created” here not only as a description of God versus human, but also as explaining the nature of the prohibition (i.e., the hierarchical gap). What might have driven this anonymous sage to counterintuitively reinterpret Genesis 6:7 as a statement criticizing those who protest God? There are no glaring biblical gaps or lacunae that demand resolution.55 I argue that the author planted this teaching specifically in a context where readers would be prone to protest. We know that God’s decision to destroy the entire world during the generation of the Flood prompted many theological questions and critiques.56 In order to preempt these claims, this anonymous sage warns the reader of the narrative not to even consider such a response. As with the Job proof text adduced by Rabbi Akiva (in Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael), this amoraic midrash justifies its anti-protest sentiment by rereading a biblical section that might seem to cast aspersions on God’s moral character. Thus, a passage that introduces God’s desire to commit virtual omnicide is now read as a statement condemning those who would protest that very act. The rabbinic move to insert anti-protest teachings into ethically problematic scriptural verses also appears in post-amoraic texts. A good example is Isaiah 26:20, where the prophet warns the Israelites: “Go, my people, enter your chambers [‫ ]בחדריך‬and lock your doors behind you. Hide but a little moment, until the indignation [‫[ ]זעם‬of God] passes. For lo! The Lord shall come forth from His place to punish the dwellers of the earth for their iniquity.” In this verse, Isaiah commands the Israelites to hide in their homes in preparation for God’s punishing the wicked of the world’s nations. The passage problematically implies that God’s wrath will destroy all people, righteous and wicked alike, who are found outside their houses. To escape God’s

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destructive anger, the Israelites are warned to hide inside their homes.57 This reading is made explicit in the following rabbinic teaching and proof text: “The angel, once permission to harm is given him, does not discriminate between the righteous and the wicked, as it is said: ‘Go, my people, enter your chambers [‫ ]בחדריך‬and lock your doors behind you’ [Isa. 26:20].”58 On this Isaiah passage, Midrash Tanḥuma (ed. Buber), a late rabbinic text (sixth to eighth century), comments: Go, my people, enter your chambers [Isa. 26:20]: Look into the chambers of your heart, and see that it was not in proportion to your sins that I brought sufferings upon you,59 for “your chambers” are nothing but kidney chambers, as it says searching all the chambers of the belly [Prov. 20:27]. But, if sufferings come upon you, do not open your mouth [‫ ]לא תפתח פיך‬and complain against the Attribute of Justice [‫]תקרא תגר אחר מדת הדין‬. Rather and lock your doors behind you [Isa. 26:20]. Why? Hide but a little moment until the indignation passes [ibid.]. (Tanḥuma [Buber] Vayetse 5)60 Instead of Isaiah’s warning the Israelites to remain in their homes at the time of divine wrath, the Tanḥuma has Isaiah exhorting Israel to remain silent during moments of mass destruction by reinterpreting “chamber” (‫ )חדר‬as a kidney chamber rather than as a house chamber. The charge is no longer to turn inside one’s own house, but to turn even further inside one’s own body.61 This teaching transforms the prophet’s concern about God’s wrath for humanity to humanity’s wrath for God. Moreover, the Tanḥuma extends the prohibition of complaint, applying it not only to the First Temple period (as the context suggests) but to any moment of suffering (‫)יסורין‬: “But, if sufferings come upon you, do not open your mouth [‫ ]לא תפתח פיך‬and complain against the Attribute of Justice.” For this midrashic author, the appropriate theological response to pain is not to “open [one’s] mouth” and complain, but to turn into the chambers of your heart. Finally, note how the Tanḥuma uses a different term to express its negative view of confrontation: not hirhur (as in Sifre Deuteronomy), lehashiv (as in Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael), or meḥa’ah (as in Genesis Rabbah), but koreh tagar “to reproach” (lit., to call out “it is partial”).62 To sum up, like Job 23 and Genesis 6, Isaiah 26:20 presents its readers with a morally problematic God who is prepared to strike the righteous along with the wicked. But interestingly, and I argue not coincidentally, it is in these very contexts that these rabbinic texts anchor their opposition to protest. Sensitive



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to the problematic biblical descriptions of God, the rabbinic authors warn their readers to ignore or bracket the problem, to refrain from judging God. Quite cleverly, they do so not by basing these sentiments on their own authority, but by reading these sentiments back into the problematic textual passages themselves. The words of Scripture that communicate the problem on a surface level also communicate, on a deeper level, the appropriate religious response.

From Prohibition to Punishment Although Rabbi Akiva and other tannaim prohibit one from challenging God, they do not mention a humanly or divinely imposed punishment that might accompany the act. By contrast, in the post-tannaitic period, the act of critiquing or verbally disrespecting God is not only opposed but also met with harsh penalties. Indeed, one can say that some post-tannaitic texts intensify the opposition beyond that expressed in earlier texts. In subsequent chapters, I argue that this radicalization of opposition emerges specifically in a cultural climate where arguing with God has become a legitimate, if not valorized, midrashic motif. It is quite probable that those sages who opposed confrontation sought new ways to quash this emerging literary motif, and the adoption of harsh penalties might have been one of them. Some rabbinic texts associate this extreme view with the amora Rabbi Eleazar b. Pedat, who seems to have succeeded Rabbi Akiva in leading the stringent camp.63 Consider this talmudic passage: Levi ordained a fast but no rain fell. He thereupon exclaimed: Master of the Universe, You did go up and take Your seat on high, but You have no mercy upon Your children. Rain fell, but he became lame. Rabbi Eleazar [the son of Pedat] said: Let a man never address himself in a reproachful manner towards God [lit., “hurl words heavenward”] [‫]אל יטיח אדם דברים כלפי מעלה‬, seeing that one great man did so and he became lame. And who was it? Levi. (BT Ta’anit 25a according to MS Vatican 134) Rabbi Eleazar interprets the aftermath of Levi’s audacious and direct challenge to God in a time of drought as proof that one should never criticize

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God; after Levi boldly turned to God and proclaimed, “You have no mercy upon Your children,” he becomes lame.64 Rabbi Eleazar sees Levi’s horrible predicament after his critique of God as a sign that Levi has been directly punished for his brazenness. In contrast to the aforementioned texts, this talmudic pericope does not rely on a biblical passage to anchor its opposition but on a contemporary story. Without scriptural backing, the story reveals the painful consequences that await a person who engages in this sort of scandalous behavior. And it is no coincidence that Levi, a well-known sage and preacher of aggadah, appears in this story as the one who hurls words at God; as we shall see in subsequent chapters, Levi often celebrates theological protest.65 While Rabbi Eleazar’s strident opposition to confrontation reflects a stringent sensibility, elsewhere in the Talmud (BT Berakhot 31b) he displays a more ambiguous mindset by imaging biblical heroes, such as Hannah, Elijah, and Moses, as sinfully “hurling words” (‫ )הטיח דברים‬against God.66 In those accounts, Rabbi Eleazar reinterprets Scripture against its plain sense to show how Hannah critiques God for not providing her a child; Elijah accuses God of turning the Israelites’ hearts from the correct path; and Moses blames God for helping to produce the Golden Calf. Of course, none of these critiques appear in the Bible. While in the context of the Berakhot passage, we are unsure whether Rabbi Eleazar adopts a negative, positive, or neutral attitude toward such challenges, in light of his aforementioned comments in Ta’anit 25a and elsewhere (where he prohibits such language) it would appear that he takes a critical stance. And in contrast with the Levi narrative, the reader is not informed as to whether these biblical heroes are punished for their brazenness. Rabbi Eleazar’s vociferous opposition to speaking imperiously to God also emerges in his reading of the famous first-century bce legend, where a drought-stricken community called upon the miracle worker Ḥoni to use his powers to bring rain:67 “He [Ḥoni] drew a circle and stood within it and exclaimed, ‘Master of the Universe, Your children have turned to me [to request rain] because they believe me to be like a member of Your household [lit., “son in your house”] [‫ ;]בן בית‬I swear by Your great name that I will not move from here [‫ ]איני זז מיכן‬until You have mercy upon Your children [and bring rain].’”68 In response to this act, Shimon b. Shetaḥ, the brother of Queen Salome Alexandra, declared: “Were it not that you are Ḥoni, I would have placed you under a ban, but what can I do unto you who nudges [‫]מתחטא‬ God and He accedes to your request, as a son that nudges his father [‫כבן שהוא‬ ‫ ]מתחטא לאביו‬and he accedes to his request” (M Ta’anit 3:8).



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The Mishnah does not provide the specific reason as to why Shimon would have excommunicated Ḥoni, nor does it present a clear explanation as to why Ḥoni’s close relationship with God serves to mitigate the problem. As to the first issue—the content of the so-called crime—scholars have put forward a number of theories including the following: that Ḥoni’s act consisted of magic;69 that Ḥoni was one of many charismatic miracle workers opposed by the rabbinic establishment;70 that Ḥoni’s attempts to stop the rainfall violated Jewish law;71 that Ḥoni used an inappropriate vow;72 or that Ḥoni used impudent and disrespectful language when leveling his threat (“I will not move from here [‫ ]איני זז מיכן‬until You have mercy upon Your children”).73 Not surprisingly, this last explanation was already offered in the Talmud by our Rabbi Eleazar: Rabbi Joshua b. Levi further said: In twenty-four places we find that the court inflicted excommunication for an insult to a teacher [‫]רב‬, and they are all recorded in the Mishnah. Rabbi Eleazar asked him: Where? He [Rabbi Joshua] replied: See if you can find them. He [Rabbi Eleazar] went and examined and found three cases: . . . and a third case, one who acts presumptuously towards heaven [‫]המגיס דעתו כלפי מעלה‬. . . .  What is the case of one behaving presumptuously with heaven?—As we have learnt: Shimon b. Shetaḥ sent to Ḥoni the Circle Maker: You deserve to be excommunicated, and were you not Ḥoni, I would pronounce excommunication against you. But what can I do, seeing that you ingratiate yourself with the Omnipresent and He performs your desires, and you are like a son who ingratiates himself with his father and he performs his desires; and to you applies the verse: Your father and mother will rejoice; she who bore you will exult [Prov. 23:25]. [BT Berakhot 19a] Rabbi Joshua ben Levi maintains that the Mishnah records twenty-four in­ stances in which a Jewish court would excommunicate someone for disrespecting a teacher. Rather than citing all twenty-four instances, Rabbi Joshua urged his student, Rabbi Eleazar, to locate them. Claiming partial success, Rabbi Eleazar presents three examples, including “one who acts presumptuously towards God [‫]המגיס דעתו כלפי מעלה‬.” Rabbi Eleazar’s tannaitic proof text for this prohibition against acting arrogantly toward a teacher was Shimon b. Shetaḥ’s statement that Ḥoni’s act warranted excommunication, with God as the greatest

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teacher of all. What Rabbi Eleazar fails to tell us, however, is why Shimon declined to excommunicate Ḥoni. Did he refuse to excommunicate Ḥoni because as a “member of [God’s] household,” Ḥoni had the right to speak in such a brazen fashion, or because, while Ḥoni’s language may have been disrespectful, his ability to bring rain overrode his problematic tactics? We have seen how Rabbi Eleazar regards “hurling words” or “speaking presumptuously” toward God as irreverent acts that are not only prohibited, but also warrant punishment—either at the hands of the divine court (Levi becomes lame) or the human court (Ḥoni’s theoretical excommunication). In both cases, Rabbi Eleazar derives the harsh penalty from a story or legend, rather than from a biblical proof text. Other late midrashim place the concept of a confrontational penalty onto a scriptural verse, or use this form of penalty as a hermeneutical tool. Two late exegetical narratives illustrate this phenomenon. The first reframes the binding of Isaac, perhaps the most famous and moving story in the Hebrew Bible. In Genesis 22, God “tests” (‫ )נסה‬Abraham’s faith by commanding him to sacrifice his most beloved son, Isaac, as a burnt offering. Abraham fully acquiesces to God’s command up until the point that his knife is about to descend upon Isaac’s neck. An angel of God, however, rescinds the command at that moment, saving Isaac’s life. Subsequently, God blesses Abraham for passing the test and promises that his “descendants will be as numerous as the stars of the heaven” (Gen. 22:17). In the Bible, God’s command is presented as a test of faith—one that Abraham courageously passes. This reading continues to be the dominant one in rabbinic literature.74 However, a rabbinic passage from Midrash Tanḥuma rewrites the narrative and paints a very different picture: You find that Abraham once criticized the Attribute of Justice [‫]מהרהר אחר מדת הדין‬. And what did he say? Rabbi Levi said: [Abraham said] I have already received my full reward in this world, inasmuch as the Holy One, blessed be He, has assisted me against the kings and has saved me from the furnace. Surely, I have received my full reward; there can be no additional reward awaiting me in the world-to-come. The Holy One, blessed be He, said to him: Since you dare criticize My actions [‫]הואיל והרהרת אחר מעשי‬, you must bring a burnt offering to Me. Therefore, He said: Take your son, your favored one, [Isaac whom you love, and go to the Land of Moriah] and offer him there as a burnt offering [‫[ ]עולה‬Gen. 22:2]. (Tanḥuma, Lekh Lekha 10)



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This startling Tanḥuma teaching, attributed to Levi, regards the painful episode not as a test of faith but as a punishment for Abraham’s critique of God’s attribute of justice. Abraham does not challenge God because he has suffered too much—rather, because he has not suffered at all! God has always been Abraham’s savior, rescuing him in times of distress. Showered by God’s goodness in this world, Abraham is deeply concerned that he will have no more merits remaining to secure divine favor in the more-important next world. Abraham’s line of thinking anticipates the rabbinic tradition that God punishes the righteous for their minor transgressions in this world as a sign of love, protecting them from incurring a more painful punishment in the next world.75 As a righteous person, Abraham questions God’s fairness in bestowing upon him, a faithful devotee of God, such an easy life. According to the Tanḥuma, Abraham’s critique of God constitutes a theological sin requiring atonement through a burnt offering. That burnt offering, the olah, was fulfilled by bringing Isaac as a “sacrifice.” And to support its claim, the Tanḥuma notes that God describes the binding of Isaac as a “burnt offering” in Genesis 22:2.76 A second example of where the sages use the idea of a “confrontational penalty” as a hermeneutical tool surfaces in one rabbinic retelling of the narrative of the spies (Num. 13). In the Bible, Moses dispatches twelve spies to gather information about the soon-to be-conquered Land of Canaan and its inhabitants. To the dismay of Moses, upon the spies’ return, ten of them advocate abandoning the idea of conquering Canaan altogether, for two reasons. First, they claim that the Israelites are militarily weaker than the natives as the natives are “stronger than we [‫( ”]חזק הוא ממנו‬Num. 13:31); and, second, even if Israel were to emerge victorious in war, the Land of Canaan “devours its inhabitants” (13:32).77 In response, God punishes them through a deadly plague because of the “evil words” spoken about the Land (14:37). In this biblical episode, the spies refrain from disparaging God, reserving their negative assessments for either the Promised Land or the people of Israel. By contrast, some rabbinic retellings have the spies criticizing God. Consider this passage from the Jerusalem Talmud: “Rabbi Shimon b. Lakish [Reish Lakish] said: They spoke words against God [‫]דיברו דברים כלפי למעלן‬ ‘ for they are stronger than we [‫[ ’]ממנו‬Num. 13:31]—if it is possible [to say] [‫ ]כביכול‬He [God] could not overcome them [‫]לא יכיל להון‬.”78 Instead of reading “‫ ”כי חזק הוא ממנו‬as “they [the Canaanites] are stronger than we,” that is, stronger than Israel, the Talmud reads “‫ ”כי חזק הוא ממנו‬as “they are stronger than He,” God. This text, attributed to Reish Lakish, a friend and contemporary of Rabbi Eleazar, exploits the ambiguous term “‫ממנו‬,” which in biblical

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Hebrew could mean either “than we” or “than he.” Read contextually, the term certainly means “we,” but the rabbis do not always read contextually; hence this talmudic passage reinterprets the seemingly straightforward phrase as an encoded statement questioning God’s strength.79 Ostensibly, the Jerusalem Talmud teaching has no relevance to our topic. There is no moral challenge against God, or fault-finding with God, only an earnest belief that God is not as powerful as the giants of Canaan. However, a midrashic tradition from Numbers Rabbah 16, a passage associated with the late Tanḥuma-Yelammedenu group, rewrites this tradition by placing disbelief in God’s unparalleled power under the prohibitive category of “hattaḥat devarim” (lit., hurling words), a phrase that, as we have seen, typically denotes an ethical critique of God: Reish Lakish said: They hurled [insulting] words [‫ ]הטיחו דברים‬at the One above. Because of this sin [‫ ]עון‬severe decrees were issued against them. What did the Holy One, blessed be He, say to Jeremiah? Go and tell them: You do not know what you have uttered with your mouth. With a great soaring sound [Jer. 11:16] which you uttered, what have you brought upon yourselves? He has set it on fire [ibid.] upon you; You shall bear your punishment [‫ ]עונותיכם‬for forty years, corresponding to the number of days—forty days—that you scouted the land [Num. 14:34]. (Numbers Rabbah 16:11) By expanding the category of hattaḥat devarim (“to hurl words”) to include doubting God’s power, Numbers Rabbah conflates critiquing God’s omnibenevolence with questioning God’s omnipotence. This conceptual extension further reflects the centrality of hattaḥat devarim for late rabbinic Judaism, and the extent to which some later rabbis opposed theological protest. For them, challenging God is placed in the same prohibitive category as doubting God’s ability to lead the Israelites into the Promised Land. Note also that this post-amoraic reformulation of Reish Lakish’s teaching explicitly labels “hurling words” toward God as a “sin” (‫)עון‬.80 And the “sin” is a serious one as it propels God to issue “severe decrees” against Israel, including delaying Israelite entry into the Promised Land for forty years, and even bringing the destruction of the First Temple.81 To summarize, we have seen how rabbinic opposition to the protest trope turns from mere disapproval in the tannaitic stratum into a sin that incurs a variety of punishments in the post-tannaitic strata.82 This intensification



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provides the rabbis with an interpretive tool to explain legendary stories (Levi’s becoming lame), vague tannaitic formulations (Shimon’s opposition to Ḥoni), as well as foundational biblical stories such as the binding of Isaac (Gen. 22) and the spies narrative (Num. 13). In this section, I have also noted that the strongest voices of opposition emerge in the post-amoraic texts of Tanḥuma-Yelammedenu. Rather than seeing this reality as evidence of a late rabbinic culture that loathes the confrontational motif, I propose that, on the contrary, it is a reaction to the dominant rabbinic ethos of its day that sanctioned the daring gesture. Indeed, as I show in forthcoming chapters, both the sharpest formulations of opposition and their approval can be found in Tanḥuma writings, thus signaling that the question over the legitimacy of challenging and critiquing God played a central role within late rabbinic culture.

Late Antique Reception of Biblical Confrontations If I am indeed correct that the rabbinic period marks a new theological moment and the beginnings of an anti-protest tradition, then how did these stringent voices explain how biblical heroes such as Moses, Jeremiah, Habakkuk, and Job protest God with seeming impunity, even at times with explicit divine approval? If challenging God is prohibited, then why does Scripture fail to castigate these daring debaters? This question must have presented itself not only to the ancient Jewish rabbis such as Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi ­Eleazar, but also to the church fathers. I would argue that, broadly speaking, while early Jewish and Christian theologies converge in their opposition to challenging God, they diverge on how to read the confrontational narratives of Scripture. More specifically, I contend that whereas the conservative Jewish camp tends to retell the dialogue by having God castigate or punish the protester, early Christian thinkers, by contrast, tend to reject a literal reading of Scripture: any apparent protest is viewed as a misreading. To support this hypothesis, and to further illustrate these contrasting methods, we now trace early Jewish and Christian readings of memorable biblical protests, including those launched by Job, Moses, and Habakkuk. Using courtroom imagery, the biblical Job launches the most dramatic and intense protests of God in the Hebrew Bible.83 In many of these chapters, Job admonishes God for creating an unjust world in which Job personally suffers. His most strident challenges include the following:

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Man cannot win a suit [‫ ]יצדק‬against God. If he insisted on a trial [‫ ]לריב‬with Him, He would not answer one charge in a thousand. (9:2) He wounds me much for no cause [‫]והרבה פצעי חנם‬. (9:17) Though I were blameless, He would prove me crooked [‫תם אני ויעש־‬ ‫]קני‬. (9:20) It is all one.... He destroys the blameless and the guilty [‫תם ורשע‬ ‫]הוא מכלה‬. (9:22) I am disgusted with life. . . . I say to God, “Do not condemn me” [‫]אל תרשיעני‬. Let me know what You charge me with [‫]על מה תריבני‬. Is it good that You should oppress [me] [‫]כי תעשק‬. (10:1–3) Indeed, I would speak to the Almighty; I insist on rebuking [‫]והוכח‬ God. (13:3) Here now my rebuke [‫]תוכחתי‬, listen to the accusations [‫ ]ורבות‬of my lips. (13:6) He may well slay me . . . yet I will argue [‫ ]אוכיח‬my case before Him. (13:15) See now, I have prepared a case [‫]משפט‬, I know that I will win it [‫]אצדק‬. (13:18) Why do you hide Your face and treat me like an enemy? (13:24) Today again my complaint is bitter [‫]מרי שחי‬, my strength is spent on account of my groaning. Would that I knew how to reach Him, how to get to his dwelling place; I would set out my case [‫]משפט‬ before Him and fill my mouth with rebuke [‫]תוכחות‬. (23:2–4) He is one, who can dissuade Him? Whatever He desires, He does. . . .  Therefore I am terrified at His presence; when I consider, I dread Him. (23:13–15) As a philosophical and poetic symposium between humans rather than a work of prophecy, the author of Job does not have God immediately respond to these protests. Even when Job confronts God directly, there is, until the end of the book, a deafening silence from heaven. Eventually, however, God responds to Job’s complaints, albeit with inconsistency. While initially rebuking Job with “Who is this who darkens counsel speaking without knowledge? . . . Speak [only] if you have understanding” (Job 38:2, 4), God praises Job’s speeches at the book’s close, declaring that, contrary to his friends, only Job “has spoken correctly” (42:7). Moreover, God doubles Job’s fortunes that



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he had lost (42:10). As the book concludes with divine praise and reward, one gets the impression, chapter 38 notwithstanding, that Job’s protests are not regarded by God as “sinful” or “rebellious.” Because the overall sense of the book—if one judges from the conclusion—is that its author sanctions protest, the early rabbis who prohibited theological protest were forced to employ interpretive strategies to neutralize or account for the apparent divine endorsement.84 According to Mishnah Eduyyot (2:10), Rabbi Akiva posited that Job was punished in the afterlife, although Scripture does not mention it.85 Rabbi Akiva likely regarded Job’s remonstrations of the divine as the very opposite of the relational model that Rabbi Akiva himself had championed. Rather than accepting suffering in silence or blessing God, Job, to quote Rabbi Akiva, “remonstrated when punished [‫]לוקה ומבעט‬.”86 Clearly, the great rabbi’s strong opposition to any critique of God—even in the face of immense pain—explains his startling antagonism toward Job, whom Rabbi Akiva believes languished in Gehinnom (hell) for twelve months, together with the likes of the generation of the Flood, the ancient Egyptians, and other wicked people.87 Although Rabbi Akiva does not make explicit why Job deserved such harsh punishment, Ephraim Urbach reasonably surmises that “this accords with [Rabbi Akiva’s] view of Job as a challenger [of God].”88We do not know, however, how Rabbi Akiva explains God’s rewarding of Job at the book’s conclusion. He quite possibly, but not necessarily, concurred with the following anonymous talmudic statement: “When the Holy One, blessed be He, brought chastisements upon [Job], Job began to curse and blaspheme, so the Holy One, blessed be He, doubled his reward in this world so as to expel him from the world to come.”89 In this typical rabbinic inversion, rewards become punishments and punishments become rewards. Here, Job’s reward in this world replaces all future rewards that he would have experienced in the more important next world. Thus, for this talmudic statement and perhaps for Rabbi Akiva as well, God’s doubling of Job’s possessions should be viewed counterintuitively, as a punishment rather than a reward. These Jewish views critical of Job stand in marked contrast to the Septuagint’s ending to the book of Job: “And Job died, an old man and full of days: and it is written that he will rise again (πάλιν ἀναστήσεσθαι) with those whom the Lord raises up” (Job 42:17). In the Hebrew Bible, no mention is made of Job’s afterlife status. This theological lacuna allowed anti-Job voices, such as Rabbi Akiva, to rob Job of some of his afterlife, and pro-Job voices, such as the Septuagint’s author, to further honor and glorify him.

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The rabbis also sustain their anti-protest sensibilities by ignoring God’s praise of Job in chapter 42, instead highlighting God’s rebuke in chapter 38. This approach appears in the late midrash Pesiqta Rabbati, which posits that Job inappropriately “raised a cry [‫ ”]קרא תיגר‬against God.90 Attributing the teaching to Rabbi Ḥama b. Papa, the Midrash avers that had Job refrained from protesting and accepted his suffering in silence, he would have achieved the same religious standing as the patriarchs. Jews in their daily prayers would have characterized God not only as “the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,” but also as “the God of Job.” But as Job failed to remain quiet, God’s name would not be forever linked to his. In addition, Pesiqta Rabbati has God berating Job directly, telling him that because of his myriad reproaches, he failed to attain the religious heights of Adam, Abraham, Isaac, and Moses, who did not challenge God when punished. In short, to express their anti-protest sensibilities, some rabbis imagine God rebuking or even punishing Job for his chutzpah. By contrast, many of the church fathers employed a different exegetical strategy to voice their stringent view: they denied that Job ever challenged or critiqued God.91 Through this rereading, Job is held up as a paragon of Christian virtue. For example, the Latin church father Tertullian (160–225) avers: “By all [Job’s] pains he was not drawn away from his reverence for God; but he has been set up as an example and testimony to us, for the thorough accomplishment of patience. . . . What a bier for the devil God erected in the person of that hero! What a banner did He rear over the enemy of His glory, when, at every bitter message, that man uttered nothing out of his mouth but thanks to God.”92 According to the North African theologian, Job never lashes out at God; as in Rabbi Akiva’s legend, he only praises God during his afflictions. Following this reading, how would Tertullian read those biblical passages where Job explicitly protests the Creator? While Tertullian does not treat this question, later Christian theologians grappled with it.93 In the fourth century, Didymus the Blind (313–398), the Alexandrian biblical scholar, echoed Tertullian’s view that Job was a “model of patience in the face of suffering.” Instead of disparaging others (oligoria), including God, he courageously accepted his fate (andreia). But Didymus goes further than Tertullian by explaining away Job’s protests. As Richard Layton notes, “­Didymus has a consistent strategy for handling the sharp-tongued complaints in Job’s prayers. Although putatively directed at God, Didymus regards the prayers as speech intended to be overheard by Job’s friends.”94 In other words, rather than reading Job’s protests as a rebuke of God, Didymus



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reads them as a rebuke of Job’s friends. For Didymus, “the incendiary prayers are part of Job’s pedagogical technique”; as such, they are merely a clever rhetorical method by which Job could teach his friends that God does not punish the innocent.95 As a result, according to Layton, Didymus “flattened the emotional experience of his protagonist” and turned “Job’s imprecations into the measured words of an instructor.”96 A similar, yet different, explanation is found in the writings of Saint Ambrose (340–397) who, according to Judith Baskin, regards Job’s “disturbing words” as merely voicing the “devil’s advocate.”97 According to Ambrose, Job in effect declares: “I am going to say what I do not approve; but I shall utter wrong words to refute you.”98 Following these Christian exegetes, Gregory the Great (540–604) denies that Job ever protested the divine. Susan Schreiner makes the point this way: “Gregory resolutely defends the reverence and piety of all Job’s words. . . . Job never murmured against divine justice. . . . He warns that we must understand Job’s words according to their ‘interior meaning.’”99 Moreover, Gregory argues that the reader who believes that Job argued with God becomes the sinner himself: through this interpretive act, the reader makes God the loser in His wager with the Devil. In the words of Gregory: “Whoever then maintains that the holy man [Job] . . . committed sin by his words, what else does he [the reader] do than reproach God, who had pledged Himself for him, with being the loser?”100 Thus, not only does Gregory deny that Job rebuked God by rejecting the plain sense of Scripture, but he also asserts that those readers who affirm Job’s rebuke are actually the real rebukers, as they are claiming that God lost the wager with Satan. For Gregory, the act of claiming that Job rebuked God is itself an act of blasphemous rebuke. What drove these early Christian exegetes, in contrast to the rabbis, to neutralize Job’s strident and irreverent language? Why did they not resolve the problem of Job’s harsh speeches in the same manner as the rabbis had— by depicting him as a sinner? Part of the answer is that the image of Job in the Christian tradition was not primarily shaped by the Hebrew Bible’s Job, but rather by the Septuagint’s Job, which downplays the stinging critiques of God. As Lawrence Besserman has noted: “One finds that the Greek translator [of the Septuagint] consistently introduced changes designed to tone down Job’s presumptuousness and eliminate his most impious remarks from the Hebrew . . . the changes in the Septuagint are relatively slight, but they are far from insignificant.”101 Moreover, unlike the ancient rabbis, the church fathers were aware of and affected by two other canonical texts that omit any trace of Job’s impatience or protest: the first-century ce apocryphal Testament of Job,

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which “emphasizes Job’s perfect patience and endurance” as a “wrestler for God” rather than as a “rebel against God,”102 and the New Testament’s Epistle of James that lauds the “patience of Job.”103 While the image of Job in the Septuagint, the Testament of Job, and the Epistle of James significantly contributed to the church fathers’ decision to remove any real protest from the mouth of Job, it was by no means the sole factor. The church fathers took a similar approach with other biblical figures of protest such as Moses and Habakkuk. As with their interpretations of Job’s challenges, early Christian and rabbinic readings of these human-divine dialogues often diverge. Whereas Christian interpretations tend to deny any real challenge, anti-protest Jewish voices tend to affirm the reality of the scriptural protest, but they then construct a new narrative conclusion that reflects their opposition to that protest. We begin with Moses, a figure well known for having challenged God. In the early part of the Exodus narrative, Moses complains about God’s earlier recommendation that he and Aaron should confront Pharaoh to free the Israelite slaves; however, after the confrontation, Israel’s workload only increased: Then Moses returned to the Lord and said, “O Lord, why did you bring harm [‫ ]למה הרעתה‬upon this people? Why did You send me? Ever since I came to Pharaoh to speak in Your name, he has dealt worse with this people; and still You have not delivered Your people.” Then the Lord said to Moses: “You shall soon see what I will do to Pharaoh: he shall let them go because of a great might; indeed, because of a greater might he shall drive them from his land.” God [‫ ]אלהים‬spoke to Moses and said to him, “I am the Lord.” (Exodus 5:22–6:2) Moses uses strident language in 5:22 when he questions God: “Why did you bring harm [‫ ]למה הרעתה‬to this people?” In Scripture, God ignores Moses’ critique and merely reasserts His promise that He will redeem Israel with “great might” (6:1). This divine response supports the assertion made by Bible scholars that the biblical God tolerates, if not welcomes, critiques from his prophets. However, unlike a simple reading of this biblical section, Midrash Tanḥuma produces a new narrative ending whereby God does indeed punish Moses for his aggressive and irreverent posture:



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[Then Moses returned to the Lord and said: O Lord] why did You bring harm [‫ ]למה הרעתה‬upon this people? [Why did You send me?] [Exod. 5:22]: If a man should dare say to a person more important than himself [‫]לגדול ממנו‬, “Why did you bring harm [‫”?]למה הרעתה‬ He would be speaking harshly [‫]דבר קשה‬, yet he [Moses] went further, saying: Ever since I came to Pharaoh to speak in Your name, he has dealt worse with this people [5:23[ ]‫]הרע לעם הזה‬. The Holy One, blessed be He, said to Moses: Alas for those who have perished but are not to be found! Many times, I revealed Myself to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as the Lord Almighty [‫אל‬ ‫]שדי‬, but I never disclosed to them that My name is YHWH, as I did to you, yet they never criticized My attributes [‫ולא הרהרו אחר‬ ‫]מדותי‬. . . . However, on the very first mission I assigned to you, you asked Me, What is Your name? [see 3:13]. And now you say: Ever since I came to Pharaoh to speak in Your name, he has dealt worse with this people etc. [5:23]. [Therefore] You shall soon see what I will do to Pharaoh [6:1]: That is, you will witness the war with Pharaoh, but you will not witness the war against the thirty-one kings, that Joshua, your disciple, will wage in vengeance against them. From this verse you may learn that Moses was punished by being forbidden to enter the land. Hence it is written: And God [Elohim] said unto Moses [6:2]— that He would requite him with Divine Justice. [But He also said unto him]: I am the Lord—with Divine Mercy, I [God] will redeem the Israelites and bring them into the land. (Tanḥuma Va’era 1)104 In this midrashic reworking, God accuses Moses of hirhur, of criticizing God’s attributes, a crime that, according to Sifre Deuteronomy 307, Moses himself would prohibit in Deuteronomy 32:4. Unlike the patriarchs, Moses fails to remain silent in the face of adversity and instead lashes out at God.105 According to the Tanḥuma, for this act, God punishes Moses with banishment from the Promised Land. This explanation is startling: according to Numbers 20, God only denies Moses entry to the Land after the incident at the waters of Meribah, forty years after the Exodus. Furthermore, as is standard with midrashic elaborations, the new elements to the narrative are not only posited but written into the scriptural narrative via exegesis. The divine claim that “you shall soon see what I will do to Pharaoh” (Exod. 6:1) is now understood as a limiting phrase: you, Moses, will only see God’s war with the Egyptians, but you will not see

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God’s war with the native population of Canaan. The Tanḥuma also regards the shifting names of God in Exodus 6:2 as signaling this punishment. The use of the name Elohim, connoting divine justice, at the outset of verse 2 points to God’s punishing Moses; the use of YHWH, connoting divine mercy, at the end of the verse signals that God will nevertheless have compassion for Israel and redeem them from Egyptian bondage. Unlike the Tanḥuma, which expresses its opposition to protest by having Moses punished, St. Augustine of Hippo (354–430), the most influential of the Latin church fathers, voices his antagonism to the confrontational motif inversely, by softening the tone of Moses’ challenge: “The words that Moses speaks to the Lord are not words of contumacy or indignation but of inquiry and prayer. This fact is clear from the way the Lord answered him. For he did not accuse him of infidelity but revealed what he was about to do.”106 According to Augustine, Moses could not have spoken inappropriate words to God because God would have scolded or punished him had he in fact done so. Because Scripture does not record any such divine reprimand, Moses’ words must be understood as a moderate question rather than as a serious critique or protest. For the Tanḥuma, by contrast, the Bible does contain a divine rebuke of Moses, albeit one that must be unearthed from the semantic fullness of Scripture; while the real divine response is not readily apparent according to a simple reading, it can be midrashically decoded. These two types of conservative responses—constructing a new ending that portrays protest as sin (Jewish) or denying a protest altogether (Christian)—are also found in Jewish and Christian readings of Habakkuk, labeled the “prophetic Job” by Y. Kaufmann.107 The seventh-century BCE Judean prophet begins his book by confronting God about his own personal suffering: “How long [‫]עד אנא‬, O Lord, shall I cry out and You not listen [‫שועתי ולא‬ ‫]תשמע‬, shall I shout to You, “violence!” and You not save? Why do you make me see iniquity, [why] do You look upon wrong? Raiding and violence are before me, strife [‫ ]ריב‬continues and contention goes on. That is why Torah fails, and justice [‫ ]משפט‬never emerges, for the villain hedges in the just man— therefore judgment [‫ ]משפט‬emerges deformed” (Habakkuk 1:2–4). Later in the opening chapter, Habakkuk shifts his concern toward the pain of others, challenging God, as Jeremiah does (12:1), to explain why the wicked prosper and the righteous suffer: “You [God] whose eyes are too pure [‫ ]טהור עינים‬to look upon evil, who cannot countenance wrongdoing [‫]והביט אל עמל לא תוכל‬, why do You countenance treachery [‫]תביט בוגדים‬, and stand by idle while the one in the wrong devours the one in the right [‫( ”?]בבלע רשע צדיק ממנו‬Hab. 1:13).



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Habakkuk sees a gap between God’s essential nature and the reality of human suffering. For Habakkuk, while God theoretically cannot countenance wrongdoing, we live in a world in which God does “countenance treachery.” This disjunction bewilders the prophet, and in response he calls upon God to maintain and implement His just nature. Like Job, Habakkuk calls these challenges toward God a rebuke (‫)תוכחה‬: “I will take stand on my watch, take up my station at the post, and wait to see what He will say to me, what He will reply to my rebuke [2:1( ”]‫)תוכחתי‬. In the Bible, God does not admonish Habakkuk for any of his challenges; rather, in response, He prophesies a brighter future (understood in the Jewish tradition as the coming of the Messiah). In a late midrashic rereading of the book, however, God does admonish Habakkuk for questioning divine justice: “Thereupon, God revealed Himself to Habakkuk, and said: ‘Will you raise a cry against Me [‫ ?]קורא תיגר‬Is it not written: [The Rock!—His deeds are perfect, Yea, all His ways are just (‫ ;])משפט‬A faithful God, never false, True and upright is He [Deut. 32:4]”?108 The midrash here has God rebuke Habakkuk for his claims of divine injustice because they contradict Moses’ dictum of Deuteronomy 32:4: “God’s ways are perfectly just.” God admonishes Habakkuk for rejecting this metaphysical truth. Strikingly, “at that moment,” according to the Midrash, Habakkuk admits his error, announcing: “I spoke in error, as is said: A prayer of Habakkuk the prophet: Upon words spoken in error [Hab. 3:1].”109 Of course, Habakkuk’s concession of wrongdoing is found nowhere in Scripture, but it is a creative and noncontextual rereading of the strange Hebrew word shigyonot (‫ )שגיונות‬appearing at the end of Habakkuk 3:1, a term that has baffled ancient and modern scholars alike.110 In contradistinction, the church fathers oppose the seeming sanction of biblical protests by rejecting the very premise that the prophet ever spoke words of complaint. With regard to Habakkuk’s protests, the church father Theodore of Mopsuestia (ca. 350–428) remarks: It is not as though bringing a censure against God that the prophet [Habakkuk] says this [Hab. 1:2–4]. Rather, [Habakkuk] speaks this way as it is the custom with people who are in some sort of trouble or who are righteously indignant with those responsible to present the injustice of what is being done under the guise of censure. Blessed David also says in like manner, Why stand You far off, O Lord? Why do you overlook us in times of need, in affliction? While the ungodly one acts proudly, the poor is hotly pursued [Ps. 10:1–2, LXX]

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and so on, saying this not to censure God but to express indignation with those responsible for it and at a loss as to how they are not quickly called to account.111 Instead of understanding Habakkuk as leveling a charge of injustice against God, as a surface reading would suggest, Theodore interprets it as a censure against those within the community who generate and perpetuate that injustice. This is a common type of exegesis within the Christian tradition: interpreters redirect a prophet’s words from a vertical axis (God) toward a horizontal one (other humans). Challenges and critiques of God are thus understood to be rhetorical devices through which prophets motivate society to produce a more moral and just world. More importantly, this ethical hermeneutic allows the church fathers to view the prophets as protesting human injustice rather than divine injustice. To be clear, I do not claim that these divergent paradigms of anti-protest readings apply for every early Jewish and Christian interpretation—yet they are typical. We now must ask: what could account for these contrasting stringent approaches? While each biblical protest may have its own factors that influence the split (such as the differences in the Hebrew and Greek texts of Job), I would offer three speculative reasons. First, the divergence might relate to differing early Christian and rabbinic attitudes toward biblical prophets. Whereas the church fathers typically portray biblical heroes as paradigmatic followers of God, rabbinic Jews, on the other hand, have less compunction about highlighting the sins and misconducts of their vaunted prophets and patriarchs.112 Second, the difference between rabbinic and patristic anti-protest expressions might relate to their distinctive literary forms. Early Christian exegetes rarely engaged in the sort of freewheeling narrative retellings and expansions of the Bible that we have in rabbinic literature. Accordingly, the Jewish sages were afforded a unique mechanism of reinterpretation not readily available to Christian exegetes. Third, and finally, anti-protest rabbis may have opted, unlike the church ­fathers, to reaffirm the biblical protest and then have God criticize that act because this particular method would more forcefully combat the robust proprotest viewpoint emerging in late rabbinic culture. By contrast, early Christian exegetes, who were not facing a similar dissenting pro-protest Christian attitude, had no polemic need to imagine God as criticizing biblical confronters.113



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Conclusion This chapter has sought to correct the common misconception that Judaism celebrates the confrontational motif in toto. While challenging God appears as a legitimate method to engage the Almighty in the Hebrew Bible and Second Temple literature, early rabbis, Rabbi Akiva chief among them, prohibited such an expression. Moreover, later rabbis and passages not only prohibited challenging and critiquing God, but also deemed the irreverent act as incurring harsh penalties. Because of that, these anti-protest sages imagined God punishing biblical confronters for their brazenness. In the next chapter, we begin our exploration of the alternate perspective as we trace the rabbinic voices that regard challenging God not as sin but as virtue.

Chapter 2

From Sin to Virtue

In the previous chapter, aggadic voices that prohibit challenging God were analyzed. I noted that while the proscription emerged in the tannaitic period, it intensified over time. Only post-tannaitic sages attached various punishments to the prohibition. By contrast, this chapter examines aggadot that express sympathy, if not support, for theological protest. It posits that the pro-protest tradition first emerges in post-tannaitic texts, most notably in Genesis Rabbah and Lamentations Rabbah and then reaches its fullest expression in the post-amoraic writings of the Babylonian Talmud and the ­midrashim of Tanḥuma-Yelammedenu. It further theorizes that the appearance of pro-protest voices and the intensified anti-protest voices at the same time should not be viewed as coincidental, but as the by-product of a religio-­ cultural battle being waged over the legitimacy of theological confrontation. The chapter also outlines different degrees of support that pro-protest positions assume: from mere expressions of ambivalence or sympathy to sanction and celebration. Relatedly, it exposes the various ways these pro-challenge sentiments are voiced: from those that are subtly encoded and hidden to those that are straightforward and unequivocal. The chapter also traces how pro-protest rabbis contend with earlier anti-protest positions, which, as seen in the previous chapter, are attributed to Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Eleazar. It asks: Does the permissive position ignore, openly challenge, or creatively reinterpret earlier texts that explicitly oppose theological protest? The second half of the chapter argues that the rabbinic support for confronting God reflects a unique theological attitude in Jewish late antiquity. To defend this assertion, the chapter traces Jewish and Christian readings of the clay potter parable found in Isaiah and Jeremiah. This section concludes by considering this crucial historical question: Why do the sages glorify confronting



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God only in the post-tannaitic period? What factors might have fueled this new attitude in late antiquity, an attitude that revives the dominant theological sensibility of the biblical authors?

Cracks in the Opposition Paradoxically, critiques of God are often preserved in rabbinic texts that prohibit critiquing God. In Sifre Deuteronomy, for example, the author is not content with proclaiming the prohibition of theological critique, but also presents specific examples of what constitutes “critique” (hirhur): “Why should the generation of the Flood have been swept away? Why should the people of the tower (of Babel) have been scattered from one end of the earth to the other? Why should the people of Sodom have been swept away by fire and brimstone? Why should Aaron have assumed the priesthood? Why should David have assumed the kingship? Why should Korah and his followers have been swallowed up by the earth?” (Sifre Deuteronomy 307). This early midrash contains six hypothetical challenges to divine conduct: four relating to divine justice (how could God destroy the generation of the Flood, the generation of the Dispersion, the people of Sodom, and Korah and his followers?) and two dealing with divine election (why did God elect Aaron’s descendants as high priests and David’s descendants as kings?). These examples do not emerge out of thin air. Most probably, they reflect, and are in response to, the moral-theological concerns of the day. And yet, ironically, these critiques are not preserved by the select group articulating these reservations, but by Sifre’s author who supposedly opposes voicing these questions. While the Midrash ostensibly does not sympathize with those who would critique God, it unintentionally preserves that view. This “accident” is one of the many ironies of history: thinkers and movements often perpetuate the very ideas they strive to eliminate. Yet the preservation of specific critiques of God in other anti-protest ­midrashim appears to be no accident of history. Indeed, some purportedly anti-protest expressions are more uncertain than what a quick and simple reading would suggest. Lurking in the shadows of some rabbinic critiques of theological protest is, in reality, a profound ambivalence or even sympathy for the irreverent expression. Consider, for example, the Pesiqta Rabbati text presented in Chapter 1. This “anti-challenge” TY midrash has God excoriating Job for raising a cry against Him, claiming that had Job remained silent in the face of suffering, he would have attained the religious heights of the

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Patriarchs. Jews in their daily prayers would have characterized God not only as “the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob,” but also as “the God of Job.” Following this claim, Pesiqta has God admonish Job a second time: Why do you [Job] raise a challenge [‫ ?]קורא תיגר‬Is it because suffering befell you? Do you then perhaps consider yourself greater than Adam, the creation of My own hands? Because of a single command that he made nothing of, I decreed death for him and for his progeny. Yet, he did not raise a challenge [‫]ולא קרא תיגר‬. Or consider yourself greater than Abraham? Because he ventured to say: Whereby shall I know that I shall inherit it? [Gen. 15:8] I put him to trial after trial, saying to him, know of a surety that your seed shall be a stranger [Gen. 15:13]. Yet he did not raise a cry. Or consider yourself greater than Isaac? Because he persisted in loving Esau the wicked I made his eyes dim: And it came to pass, that when Isaac was old, [and his eyes were dim, so that he could not see] [Gen. 27:1]. Or consider yourself greater than Moses? Because he said Hear now, you rebels [Num. 20:10] I decreed as punishment for him that he should not enter into the Land. Yet he did not raise a challenge. (Pesiqta Rabbati 47:1) In this post-amoraic midrash, God expresses disappointment with Job by demonstrating the religious achievements and supremacy of Adam, Abraham, Isaac, and Moses. Unlike Job, these men refused to challenge God (‫קרא‬ ‫ )תיגר‬even after experiencing a perceived divine injustice: God dooms Adam and his descendants for death merely because of Adam’s one transgression;1 God enslaves Abraham’s descendants in Egypt only because Abraham sought confirmation for God’s covenantal promise;2 God blinds Isaac only because Isaac loved his son Esau;3 and, finally, God bars Moses from the Promised Land merely because he called the Israelites “rebels.”4 In these situations, despite the apparent gap between crime and punishment, these biblical heroes remain silent, refusing to challenge their Maker. This level of religiosity is what, according to the Pesiqta’s God, sets them apart from Job, who, problematically, challenges God when experiencing unexplained suffering. These vignettes provide God with additional justification to downgrade Job’s religious standing. Because of his protest, Job does not reach the standard set by others, and is, therefore, not included in the daily liturgy. However, why did this author of Pesiqta Rabbati detail the harsh injustices incurred by these



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heroes (Adam, Abraham, Isaac, and Moses)? Why not narrate only how these biblical figures remained silent in the face of hardship and suffering? Why construct moments of disproportionate punishment that have no apparent basis in Scripture? These questions are only reinforced when comparing this Pesiqta passage to a similar teaching of Midrash Tanḥuma discussed in the last chapter. There, God admonishes Moses for berating God over the deteriorating conditions of the Israelite slaves after God tells Moses and Aaron to confront Pharaoh. Like the Pesiqta, Midrash Tanḥuma has God reinforce His critique of Moses by generating a contrast between Moses, who complains, and the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who, in the face of suffering, refrain from critiquing God’s attributes (‫)הרהר אחר מדותי‬. But, unlike our Pesiqta, Tanḥuma has God praise the patriarchs for theological restraint in the face of natural adversity only, not in the face of disproportionate punishment. Despite the fact that Abraham “could not find a burial site for Sarah,” “Isaac could not find water,” and Jacob “could not find a place to pitch his tent,” none of them complained. In short, the Tanḥuma’s concern is not the injustice of God but rather human suffering more generally. Returning to the Pesiqta text, the questions thus remain: Why does its author highlight specific divine injustices (placed in the mouth of God Himself!) at the very moment it expresses opposition to challenging divine injustice? Is not the Midrash here undermining its own teaching? Would it not have been better to state only that, in contrast to Job, other biblical characters remained silent as they suffered? One possible explanation is that Pesiqta Rabbati sought to present divine injustices of a grievous nature so as to accentuate the spiritual heights of select biblical characters. To remain silent in the face of divine injustice is more difficult than simply remaining silent in the face of hardship and pain. Put differently, the level of praise for the act of non-confrontation is dependent, at least to some extent, on the level of injustice incurred. Therefore, because Adam, Abraham, Isaac, and Moses were the victims of a great divine injustice—God binds Isaac for loving Esau, or God enslaves the Israelites because of Abraham’s naive question—their subsequent restraint becomes all the more spiritually impressive. However, this rhetorical strategy produces a paradox. The “anti-protest” midrashic author transgresses the very value he is trying to inculcate: the value of non-protest. For in order to castigate those who protest God (or in order to praise those who remain silent), the author himself, albeit tentatively, must propose that God committed those very acts of injustice. In support of this reading, consider the fact that the specific Pesiqta claims of cause and effect (between the relatively benign crimes and their correlating

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harsh punishments) are nonbiblical. They emerge in late Second Temple or earlier rabbinic literature. Hence, we must appreciate the fact that the author of this Pesiqta is making an exegetical choice; other interpretive explanations, which would have exonerated God from these injustices, are discarded.5 The Pesiqta chose, according to this interpretation, the theologically uncharitable readings of these biblical narratives and their explanations of sufferings from earlier Jewish writings as a rhetorical tool to magnify the religious accomplishments of these heroes. At the expense of God’s apparent injustice, these legendary figures are glorified. A second possible reading, and more relevant to our current concerns, is that, while the Pesiqta author formally opposes protest, he also evinces—­ consciously or unconsciously—a degree of empathy with those struggling with God’s judicial system. That would explain why the Pesiqta raises morally troubling rabbinic claims of divine punishment that attribute, for example, universal death, Israelite enslavement in Egypt, Isaac’s loss of sight, and Moses’ banishment from the land to minor sins. According to this view, rather than ignoring juridical disproportionality out of a concern for impugning God, the Pesiqta voices his moral uncertainty and ambivalence through acknowledging the problem (amazingly, via God’s own admission!).6 And, I might add, there could be no safer—and more subversive—way to express reservations about divine conduct than in a midrash that putatively wails against expressing those concerns. While I cannot prove which of these readings is correct—and these explanations need not be mutually exclusive—I incline toward the latter. Either way, this text is remarkable as it records and brings to the audience’s attention four problematic divine punishments in a literary text that, ironically, purports to critique those who question God’s justice.7 While the Pesiqta’s motive in detailing cases of apparent divine injustice is not clear, a more obvious agenda emerges from Exodus Rabbah II—a text associated with the Tanḥuma-Yelammedenu literature.8 Like the Pesiqta, this late midrash purports to oppose the act of protesting God, and likewise appropriates the character of Job to make its point: What is the meaning of They perish for ever without any regarding it [Job 4:20]? Job said to God: Oh that I knew where I might find Him. . . . I would order judgment before Him [23:3]. This is to be compared to a palace soldier [‫ ]בריון‬who being drunk kicked at [the door of] the prison and allowed the prisoners to escape. He threw stones at the bust of the governor of the city, cursed the magistrate,



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and said, “Show me where the king of this city lives and I will teach him justice [‫]מלמדו את הדין‬.” He entered, and they showed him the king sitting on a dais imprisoning a noble lady, banishing the prefect, putting out the eyes of the general, imposing a sentence on the Count and putting the Magister in the stocks. When he saw the king of the city doing all this, he was afraid and said, “Please, king, I was drunk; don’t be mad at me.” So did Job stand and scream [‫]צווח‬: Oh that I know where I might find Him . . . I would order judgment before Him [Job 23:3]. He threw stones at His image. . . . He cursed the ruler. . . . He then saw the king sitting on His throne, imprisoning a noble lady. Behold, Miriam was leprous, as white as snow [Num. 12:10]; driving out Moses. Therefore you shall not bring this assembly into the land [Num. 20:12]; he made blind the general; this is Isaac, as it says, And his eyes were dim, so that he could not see [Gen. 27:1]. He passed a sentence on Abraham, as it says, Know of a surety that your seed shall be a stranger, etc. [Gen. 15:13]; He put Jacob in the stocks— And he limped upon his thigh [Gen. 32:32]. When Job saw all this he said: “Please, [God], I have been drunk,” for it says, And be it indeed [that I have erred, mine error remains with myself ] [Job 19:4]. Why was all this? Because they knew not the power [‫ ]כח‬of the judge [‫ ;]דיין‬hence They perish for ever without any regarding it [Job 4:20]. (Exodus Rabbah II, 30:11) In this Midrash, Job is compared to a drunken and rebellious palace soldier who is enraged with the king (i.e., God) for some unknown reason. He breaks into the city’s prison to free its prisoners, stones the governor’s statue, and then reaches the king’s palace in order to “teach him justice [‫]מלמדו את הדין‬.” Upon entering, however, the palace soldier (Job) changes his mind because he sees the king sitting on his throne and abusing his top officials through “imprisoning,” “blinding,” “expelling,” “sentencing,” or “wounding” them. Fearful, the palace soldier apologizes for his actions, defending himself by noting that he was drunk. According to Exodus Rabbah, the people abused by the king represent Miriam (imprisoned because of her leprosy), Moses (expelled from the Land), Isaac (blinded), Abraham (descendants sentenced to slavery), and Jacob (wounded in the thigh). And the palace soldier represents Job, who had intended to continue his protests of God (the king) and to “teach Him justice,” but changed his mind only after reflecting on God’s terrifying power,

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and how God afflicts suffering even on His closest followers and confidants (e.g., Abraham, Moses). Thus, upon seeing these prisoners, Job asks God for forgiveness, declaring, “Please, [God], I have been drunk.” And he laments the fact that the abused biblical heroes did not know “the power of the Judge.” The exoteric message of this exegetical narrative seems to be that it is unwise to protest God because of God’s immense power, and, as Job recognizes, God is willing to use that power even against His most loyal followers (as seen with Miriam, Adam, and Moses). Problematically, however, if this is the essential reason to remain silent in the face of divine mistreatment, then it appears as a morally bankrupt one. The text implies that God’s perfect justness and morality are not the basis for decrying protest. The contrast between “power” and “justice” lies at the crux of the text. While initially Job, as the palace soldier, attempts to “teach” the king (God) “justice” (‫)מלמדו את הדין‬, he ultimately abandons that idea, not because he recognizes God in reality judges with “justice” (‫)דין‬, but rather because of God’s overwhelming “power” (‫)כח‬. This subversive reading is further supported by the depiction of God (the king) as someone who abuses His own prophets and the people most loyal to Him. Noticeably, the midrash provides no explanation or defense as to why God harshly punished these people (Miriam, Moses, Isaac, Abraham, and Jacob), only presenting God’s abusive actions as arbitrary and unprovoked.9 In short, while the previous Pesiqta Rabbati passage presents a God who applies disproportionate justice, Exodus Rabbah II has, more problematically, a God who oppresses for no apparent reason at all. The midrash also provides a new reading of the Book of Job. In chapter 38, God rebukes Job for his protests: “Who is this who darkens counsel speaking without knowledge? . . . Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundations? Speak [only] if you have understanding!” (38:2, 4). Recognizing his cognitive limitations, Job concedes his error: “Indeed I spoke without understanding of things beyond me, which I did not know” (Job 42:3). Here, in the Hebrew Bible, the focus is on God’s supreme “knowledge” and “understanding,” not power. By contrast, Exodus Rabbah’s rereading of Job ignores the quality of wisdom (and justice) in favor of God’s power: the midrashic message is that Job, and by extension all Jews, should refrain from protest, otherwise an irrational and unjust God will strike back. If this reading is correct, then Exodus Rabbah II, even more than Pesiqta Rabbah, is a subtle confrontational text that voices a protest in the context of warning against such protest. The midrashic author projects his own sensibilities



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onto Job, and therefore envisions Job as a person who desires confrontation but is afraid to embark on such a course. Yet Job overcomes his anxiety by getting drunk, which allows him to reveal his true feelings, at least initially, just as the midrashic author overcomes his fear, at least to some extent, by embedding a protest of God in an ostensibly anti-protest teaching. The teaching also provides the midrashic Job and the midrashic author with a solid defense: the ­midrashic Job could—and does—defend his actions by claiming he was drunk, and the midrashic author could claim that his teaching was merely meant to inspire a theology of silence, not protest. To sum up: the tannaitic Sifre Deuteronomy shows how some anti-­ challenge midrashim, probably unwittingly, communicate the very problems with divine justice they want to suppress. This is the paradox that, generally speaking, oppositional texts face: they sometimes preserve what they seek to eliminate. We then explicated two late rabbinic texts that complicate the assumption of a single-minded antagonism toward theological protest in “prohibitive” textual traditions. These two passages, to different extents, reflect what can be called “cracks” in the totality of opposition. They refract different degrees of ambivalence and ambiguity toward theological confrontation. The first text, from Pesiqta Rabbati, displayed, at least according to one reading, a level of sympathy for the confrontational act as it had God Himself acknowledge the problematic gap that exists between sin and divine punishment in some re-narrated biblical stories. In this ostensibly anti-protest ­Midrash, the author chose explanations for patriarchal and prophetic suffering that depict God in an uncharitable light. The second and more radical text, from Exodus Rabbah II, revealed a subversive and stinging critique of God’s justice while at the same time arguing, at least exoterically, against such a communication. Here, while God’s conduct essentially deserves to be challenged, the midrashic author uses Job to warn his readers that God’s immense and arbitrary power should deter one from embarking on such a project. Remarkably, these two midrashic struggles with God are found in texts that, at least outwardly, espouse the more stringent view. In the following section, I treat another method whereby sympathizers of confrontation express their lenient sensibilities: not through subtle hints of ambivalence or discomfort embedded or encoded within “anti-protest” traditions, but via the rabbinic reception of earlier “anti-protest” traditions. Here, my analysis is not synchronic but diachronic; I seek to highlight the transformations of a fluid tradition over time, rather than the multivocality of a given static tradition.

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Deterioration of the Opposition The influential early rabbinic voices opposing remonstrating God were Rabbi Akiva (second century) in the tannaitic period and Rabbi Eleazar (third century) in the amoraic period. This unambiguous early prohibitive stance, however, is attenuated in some late amoraic and post-amoraic texts, particularly in the Tanḥuma-Yelammedenu literature and the Babylonian Talmud. In these instances, rabbinic editors expand or rework these Akivan and Eleazarian “anti-challenge” traditions in such a way as to neutralize or weaken their oppositional force. And, at times, the anti-challenge tradition is even inverted to produce a glorification of protest. These midrashic shifts expose the evolving attitudes toward confrontation in rabbinic Judaism. Even though the debate over the issue of theological protest is never made explicit in the Talmud and Midrash, by tracing the aforementioned transformations that occur within a particular rabbinic tradition, we can uncover ideological tensions over this central religious issue. More specifically, I argue that because the “pro-protest” position gains traction in late rabbinic literature, they must find creative ways to suppress the earlier—and virtually unanimous—antagonism toward theological critique.

Rabbi Akiva’s Prohibition Previously, we encountered this dictum of Rabbi Akiva found in the Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael: “One should not challenge [‫ ]אין להשיב‬the words of Him who spoke and the world came into being, for every word is in accordance with truth [‫ ]אמת‬and every decision in accordance with justice [‫]בדין‬.”10 Rabbi Akiva bases his teaching on a passage from the Book of Job: “He [God] is one; who can dissuade Him [‫ ?]והוא באחד ומי ישיבנו‬Whatever He desires, He does” (Job 23:13). However, the biblical Job actually declares the very opposite of what Rabbi Akiva has Job claim. In Scripture, Job is not denouncing critiques against God, as Rabbi Akiva posits, but denouncing God Himself. Rabbi Akiva portrays Job bemoaning the fact that God is of one mind and never changes His mind. Whatever God desires—no matter how just or unjust—He will do; and, given God’s immense power, there is no one who can stop Him. Rabbi Akiva, however, turns the passage around. Instead of having Job challenge God, Rabbi Akiva has Job announce that one should not challenge God (‫)אין להשיב‬. To accomplish this exegetical inversion, Rabbi Akiva



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offers a new explanation as to why someone would not protest God’s ruling. Instead of attributing it to futility, as the simple reading suggests, Rabbi Akiva attributes it to God’s moral perfection. As God judges alone with ­perfect truth and justice, it would be senseless and wrong to challenge God’s ruling. But a very different reading (of Job 23:12) is proposed by Rabbi Akiva’s interlocutor, Rabbi Pappus: “[God] judges all that come into the world by Himself, and there is no one to argue against His words [‫ואין מי ישיב על‬ ‫]דבריו‬.”11 Rather than reading the biblical phrase “He is one; who can challenge Him?” as a prescriptive prohibition as Rabbi Akiva had (“no one should challenge”), Rabbi Pappus interprets it descriptively: “there is no one to challenge God.” For Pappus, the absence of challengers is not because challenging God is prohibited, but because people recognize that it would be futile to challenge God. Although Pappus’s reading returns us to Scripture’s plain and contextual sense, Rabbi Akiva regards Rabbi Pappus’s reading as religiously offensive. For Rabbi Akiva, it implies that God rules with stubborn arbitrariness. Accordingly Rabbi Akiva declares: “That is enough, Pappus!”

Neutralizing Rabbi Akiva’s Prohibition The aforementioned exchange appears in a tannaitic corpus. However, a few post-tannaitic passages, such as the following from Midrash Tanḥuma, rework the Akiva-Pappus debate, and with it the locus of their disagreement radically shifts.12 While Pappus’s position remains relatively stable, Rabbi Akiva’s position does not: [God] is one; who can dissuade Him? Whatever He desires, He does [Job 23:13]. Rabbi Pappus expounded: because He is alone in the world and there is no one to protest [‫ ]שימחה‬his actions; whatever He wants to do, he does. . . . Rabbi Akiva said to him: By your life! We do not expound thus. [Pappus] said to him: So what then is the meaning of He is one and who can turn Him [Job 23:13]? He (Rabbi Akiva) replied: Just as men question each other [‫ ]שואל‬on earth, so too in the heavens. How do we know this? It is written: The matter is by the decree of the watchers, and the sentence by the word of the holy ones; to the intent that the living may know that the Most High rules in the kingdom of men, and gives it to whomsoever He will, and sets it

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up over the lowest of men [Dan. 4:14]. In other words, just as men discuss and argue [‫ ]נושאין ונותנין‬a law here on earth, so does those above, and every decision rendered is in accordance with Justice [‫]משפט‬, as it said: Howbeit I will declare unto you that which is inscribed in the writing of the truth [‫]אמת‬. No one [‫ ]אחד‬is helping me against them except you prince, Michael [Daniel 10:21]. . . .  But, then, what is meant by [He is one] and who can turn Him [‫[ ]ומי ישיבנו‬Job 23:13]? [This applies only] when the ruling has been determined [‫]נגמר דין‬, at which time the Holy One, blessed be He, would enter the place in which they were not permitted to go and seal the judgment, as it is said: He is at one with Himself, and who can turn Him [ibid.]? That is, He knows the opinions of all His creatures, and there are none who could challenge [‫]ואין מי שישיב‬ His words. (Midrash Tanḥuma, Shemot 18) In Tanḥuma’s reworking, Rabbi Akiva has Job claim that God arrives at His judicial decisions only after discussion and debate with His heavenly court; God in fact does not judge alone.13 To accomplish this rereading, the Tanḥuma no longer interprets the biblical phrase ‫“( והוא באחד‬He [or it] is one”) as referring to God (i.e., God judges alone), but to the heavenly and earthly judicial realms that are deemed “one” in how they secure justice: in both systems, “justice” is determined not by a sole figure but—to reach a truthful and just verdict—a plurality of judges, even when God rules. Only through consultation and argument does truth and justice emerge. Hence, the tannaitic and posttannaitic versions of the “Akiva-Pappus debate” diverge in their understanding of Akiva’s dictum: the earlier Mekhilta has Rabbi Akiva argue that God judges by Himself with perfect truth and justice. Because of that, it would be religiously problematic to challenge God’s rulings. By stark contrast, the Midrash Tanḥuma depicts Rabbi Akiva as claiming that “truth,” even in the celestial sphere, emerges only from God’s consultations with His angelic retinue. Before a decision is reached, God and His court would “question” (‫ )שואל‬and “deliberate the matter” (‫)נושא ונותן‬.14 And, in the course of these discussions, arguments and differences of opinion are aired until a proper conclusion is reached.15 To bolster its new Akivan reading of Job 23:13, the Tanḥuma adds supporting intertexts from Daniel 4:14 and 1 Kings 22:19, 20 in which God’s celestial court appears. In these passages, God does not judge alone. With the aid of these verses, Tanḥuma reads the phrase “it is one” (Job 23:13) as



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signaling that God seeks out justice with the aid of others. If so, according to Rabbi Akiva, how should the phrase “who can turn Him” (‫ )ומי ישיבנו‬be understood? Does it not counter the preceding comments as it implies that no one, not even angels, can influence God’s decisions? Tanḥuma concludes that, for Akiva, the phrase “who can turn Him” only applies after the celestial court has handed down its ruling (‫)נגמר דין‬. At that point “no one will challenge God” (‫ )אין מי שישיב‬since it would be futile to do so. Before then, however, God’s angels would challenge God, thereby decisively impacting the court’s decision. The upshot is that the Tanḥuma transforms Rabbi Akiva’s view from “one should not challenge God” (‫)אין להשיב‬, as in the Mekhilta’s version, into “there is no one to challenge [‫ ]אין מי שישיב‬God” (again, the concern here is futility, not sin). Put succinctly, Tanḥuma’s Rabbi Akiva now reads ‫ ומי ישיבנו‬as Mekhilta’s Pappus had, and, with that, more importantly, Rabbi Akiva’s blanket prohibition of challenging God simply vanishes. To review: late rabbinic texts, such as Tanḥuma, radically rework the “Akiva-Pappus debate” as found in the tannaitic Mekhilta. In the earlier reiteration, Rabbi Akiva argues that, as God alone is perfectly righteous, an individual is prohibited from challenging God’s ruling. Pappus disagrees. He maintains that, while one is permitted to argue with God, it would be futile to do so as God stubbornly pays no heed to opinions other than His own. In the Tanḥuma’s expanded and revised version, however, Rabbi Akiva posits that God does not judge alone because justice can only be achieved through consultation and dialogue with others.16 Thus, challenging God at this point in the judicial process would be, indeed, permitted, and perhaps necessary. Only after the heavenly court has issued its ruling would it be futile to argue with God, as the truth will have already surfaced. Against this position, Tanḥuma’s Pappus maintains that God reaches His decision on His own and never pays heed to others. It emerges, then, that the focus of the Akiva-­Pappus debate has shifted from the question of the legitimacy of challenging God as per the Mekhilta to a more technical question of whether God judges alone or not as per Tanḥuma. And, the central theological outcome of this revised debate is that Rabbi Akiva’s prohibition of challenging God in the latter text no longer applies. Indeed, this late rabbinic text neutralizes the Akivan opposition to theological protest.

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To Challenge [‫ ]להשיב‬God: From “Sin” to “Right” One can also detect a permissive shift in relation to Rabbi Akiva’s original prohibition of “challenge” (‫ )השבה‬by showing how some amoraic passages, including the following from Leviticus Rabbah, have a biblical hero proclaiming that he could have, but did not, “challenge” God (‫)להשיב‬. While the following amoraic tradition does not relate directly to Rabbi Akiva’s dictum, it does relate linguistically to the form of protest scorned by Rabbi Akiva (according to the earlier Mekhilta): Rabbi Bibi17 in the name of Rabbi Yoḥanan explained: Abraham said before the Holy One, blessed be He: “Sovereign of the Universe! It was manifest and known before Your honorable throne, that when You said to me: Take now your son, your only son [Gen. 22:2] that I could have challenged You [‫ ]היה לי להשיבך‬and said to You [but] yesterday You promised me, For in Isaac shall seed be called to you [21:12], and now You tell me, Take now your son, your only son!? [Gen. 22:2]. But just as I could have challenged You but did not challenge You, so too when the children of Isaac give way to transgressions and evil deeds, You should remember for them the Binding of Isaac and atone [their sins]. (Vayikra Rabbah, Margaliot 29:9)18 In this midrash, attributed to Rabbi Bibi in the name of Rabbi Yoḥanan, Abraham requests that God have mercy on future Jewish sinners even though, as sinners, they do not deserve mercy. Abraham asks God to “turn the other cheek” and refrain from exacting punishment for Israelite transgression in light of the fact that Abraham at the Akedah opted in like fashion, “turning the other cheek” as he refrained from challenging God. Abraham could have challenged God with the following contradiction: first, God, You tell me that Isaac will be my long sought-after heir and co-forefather to my nation, and then, soon after, You command me to kill that child. Thus, contrary to Rabbi Akiva’s teaching in Mekhilta that, given God’s perfect justice, “one should not challenge God [‫אין‬ ‫]להשיב‬,” Leviticus Rabbah has Abraham declaring: “I could have challenged God [but did not] [‫]היה לי להשיבך‬.” Stated differently, the Midrash seems to have Abraham argue that because he went beyond what was required in adopting a posture of silence, so too Abraham desires that God adopt a similar posture of silence when responding to Israelite malfeasance. As he foregoes his right to protest, Abraham reasons, God too should forego His right to punish.19



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This “permissive” reading of Leviticus Rabbah, which understands “I could have challenged” as meaning “I had a right [‫ ]זכות‬to challenge,” is made explicit in this early medieval reworking of Rabbi Yoḥanan’s teaching: [Abraham said:] yesterday, You said to me: For in Isaac shall seed be called to you [Gen. 21:12], and now You tell me, Take now your son, your only son [Gen. 22:2]!? [Just as] I had a right to challenge You [‫ ]היה לי זכות להשיב לפניך‬and I said nothing, but I made myself like a deaf person and fulfilled Your will, so, too, every time my children sin in front of You, and You have a right [‫[ ]זכות‬to punish them] on account of their sinning, [nevertheless] You should repress Your anger and not punish them but rather remember the Binding of Isaac and have mercy on them. (Aggadat Bereshit, 38) In Leviticus Rabbah, Abraham merely tells God: “I could have challenged You.” The words “could have” (‫ )היה לי‬are, admittedly, somewhat vague: does it mean that Abraham had a religious right to challenge God, or only the practical ability to question God (but still no religious right)? Given the overall context of Leviticus Rabbah, and the fact that Abraham asked God to act contrary to what was in God’s right to do (i.e., apply strict justice) I argue for the former: Abraham proclaims his religious right to question. This reading, while implicit in Leviticus Rabbah, is made explicit in the aforementioned medieval Aggadat Bereshit text where the term “right” (‫ )זכות‬is added to the text. Here, the theological contrast between Rabbi Akiva’s early prohibition (placed in the mouth of Moses) of “do not challenge” God and Aggadat Bereshit’s later pronouncement (placed in the mouth of Abraham) of “I had a right to challenge” God (‫ )היה לי זכות להשיב‬is even more pronounced.20

Protesting Rabbi Akiva’s Martyrdom Beyond looking at the reception of Rabbi Akiva’s anti-challenge dictum, the weakening of the prohibitive attitude can also be demonstrated by tracing how later rabbinic texts present the legend of Rabbi Akiva’s death. As noted, in a number of tannaitic passages, Rabbi Akiva posited that human suffering should be understood as an expression of divine love rather than divine abandonment. Accordingly, in times of despair, one should bless or thank God rather than wail against Him. This Akivan theology pervades much of early

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rabbinic literature. Not surprisingly, some amoraic texts, such as those recorded in the Jerusalem Talmud, have Rabbi Akiva martyred by Roman legions and expressing satisfaction for finally being able to fulfill the biblical injunction to “love God with all your soul” (Deut. 6:5).21 As Rabbi Akiva’s soul departs, he happily proclaims the well-known Shema prayer: “Hear O’ Israel, the Lord is Our God, our Lord is One.” But, as David Kraemer has shown, some post-amoraic descriptions of Rabbi Akiva’s martyrdom complicate the very theology of nonconfrontation that Rabbi Akiva himself espoused.22 Consider the following talmudic text: When Rabbi Akiva was taken out for execution, it was the hour for the recital of the Shema, and while they combed his flesh with iron combs, he was accepting upon himself the kingship of heaven. His disciples said to him: Our teacher, even to this point? He said to them: All my days I have been troubled by this verse: with all your soul [Deut. 6:5] [which I interpret] even if He takes thy soul. I said: When shall I have the opportunity of fulfilling this? Now that I have the opportunity, shall I not fulfill it? He prolonged the word “one” [Deut. 6:4] until he expired while saying it. (BT Berakhot 61b according to MS Munich 95) The Bavli describes the gruesome death of Rabbi Akiva (“they combed his flesh with iron combs”), and how Rabbi Akiva, notwithstanding this reality, accepted his fate without despair or protest, but with joyful acceptance. Kraemer notes that the initial section of this Babylonian Talmud narrative copied, with slight alteration, this description of Rabbi Akiva’s death from the Jerusalem Talmud.23 The message is clear: one should not protest God’s justice even in such extreme cases. However, while the Jerusalem Talmud concludes the story here, the Babylonian Talmud accompanies the sad narrative with a celestial confrontation that counters Rabbi Akiva’s philosophy: But the ministering angels said before the Holy One, blessed be He: This is the Torah, and this is its reward [‫[ ?]זו תורה וזו שכרה‬Rabbi Akiva should have been] From them that die by Your hand, O Lord [Ps. 17:14] [i.e., die a natural death]. God replied to them: They have their portion in life [Ps. 17:14] [i.e., the righteous like Rabbi Akiva are rewarded in the afterlife]. A



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Heavenly Voice went forth and proclaimed, happy are you, Rabbi Akiva, that you are destined for the life of the World to Come. (BT Berakhot 61b according to MS Munich 95) Not sharing Rabbi Akiva’s theology of nonconfrontation, the angels protest God’s unfair treatment of the great sage, asking rhetorically: “This is the Torah and this is its reward?” They argue that Rabbi Akiva, a man of total devotion to Torah, does not deserve such torture. Tellingly, in response, God does not rebuke the angels’ chutzpah or their right to protest, only responding to the substantive charge by proclaiming, with Psalms 17:14, that Rabbi Akiva, as a righteous person, will receive his due reward in the afterlife.24 From this angelicdivine dialogue, it would appear that the authors of the Babylonian Talmud struggled with God’s treatment of Rabbi Akiva, and, rather than remain silent, expressed these reservations through an angelic protest. Ironically, while Rabbi Akiva loathed confrontation, the angels, who defended Rabbi Akiva and reflected on his death, embraced it. In addition, as Kraemer has insightfully argued, because God does not condemn the angels, it would appear that the Bavli’s God sanctions protest, at least with regard to His celestial retinue. And, by extension, we can say that the authors of the Babylonian Talmud, who constructed this sanctioned exchange, must have regarded challenging God, contrary to Rabbi Akiva himself, as a permissible act.25 Notably, this is not the only Bavli text that records a protest against God for allowing Rabbi Akiva to be tortured. In Tractate Menaḥot, the same protest is launched, this time by Moses: “Then he [Moses] said: Lord of the Universe, You have shown me [Rabbi Akiva’s] Torah, show me [now] his reward. Turn around, said He; and Moses turned round and saw them weighing out [Rabbi Akiva’s] flesh at the market stalls. Lord of the Universe said [Moses], “This is the Torah, and this is its reward [‫( ”?]זו תורה וזו שכרה‬Menaḥot 29b).26 Kraemer maintains that regarding both of these talmudic passages (from Berakhot and Menaḥot) “there can be no question that, in the opinion of the Bavli, this sort of challenge is absolutely legitimate. It is expressed in its pages, after all, by the wisest of all sources, next to God [i.e., Moses].”27 Kraemer concludes his discussion of Rabbi Akiva’s martyrdom with this assertion: “In the Bavli such doubts and challenging questions are unreservedly legitimate, it is none other than Moses and the Ministering Angels who allow themselves these expressions in its stories. Doubt and question are supported. There is no condemnation whatever of responses to suffering that are less than completely accepting.”28

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While I agree with Kraemer’s general sentiments concerning the Bavli’s attitude toward theological protest, his reliance on these two talmudic texts as clear-cut proof texts is problematic. He ought to have raised an important distinction between the angelic protest in BT Berakhot 61b and Moses’ protest in BT Menaḥot 29b: in Berakhot, as Kraemer correctly notes, “God respond(s) without condemnation;” in Menaḥot, however, God does condemn Moses, declaring: “Be silent (Moses), for such is My decree [‫שתוק כך‬ ‫]עלתה במחשבה לפני‬.” Kraemer, however, does not mention this divine condemnation and, because of that, he is able to posit that we have “no condemnation” of the protest motif in both aggadot; for Kraemer, the Bavli authors, as can be seen in these two texts, “unreservedly” support the protest act.29 Though Kraemer’s bold claim (of a Bavli valorization of protest) certainly finds support in the angelic-divine exchange of Berakhot 61b, Menaḥot 29b is ambiguous. Yes, Menaḥot 29b produces Moses’ protest, but it also produces a divine response condemning such protest. Hence, I would modify Kraemer’s claim and argue that while the author(s) of Berakhot 61b sanction protest, the author(s) of Menaḥot 29b express ambivalence. While Moses expresses the theological struggles no doubt felt by many over God’s apparent abandonment of Rabbi Akiva, crucially, these same authors also depict God as condemning such irreverence—as would Rabbi Akiva himself!30 Putting aside this important difference between the two Bavli texts, both martyrdom legends nonetheless contain voices that run contrary to Rabbi ­A kiva’s own theological commitments. Neither the Talmud’s Moses nor the Talmud’s angels adhere to Rabbi Akiva’s strict anti-challenge sentiments, as they embrace a theology of challenge. But, ironically, these expressions of verbal defiance, generated by the Bavli authors, are found in the very same texts that record earlier voices—borrowed from Jerusalem Talmud—celebrating Rabbi Akiva’s theology of submission.31 This value transformation, whether complete (as in BT Berakhot) or partial and ambivalent (as BT Menaḥot) characterizes, more generally, a growing (but by no means unanimous) theological shift occurring in rabbinic culture: many post-tannaitic sages no longer think of confronting God as a sin, but as a daring gesture that should be tolerated, if not embraced.32 To sum up, many post-tannaitic sages reject Rabbi Akiva’s theology of non-protest. This attitude can be exposed when paying close attention to how Rabbi Akiva’s injunction has been subtly reworked; by noting how the act of ‫( השבה‬challenge) loses its negative valence in some midrashim; and, finally, drawing from Kraemer, we saw how the legend of Rabbi Akiva’s martyrdom in the Babylonian Talmud (as preserved in Berakhot 61b) becomes, ironically,



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an anti-Akivan moment accentuating the religious value of theological assertion and protest. In response to this more permissive attitude, which legitimated protest, the more stringent school reacted in later rabbinic texts by intensifying its opposition: as shown in Chapter 1, not only do some aggadot proclaim that critiquing God is prohibited, but, more radically, post-tannaitic texts conceive it as an act that incurs punishment. Put succinctly, whereas in the early period we have a unified voice of moderate opposition to theological protest, in the later periods we encounter the rise of two extreme attitudes: on the one hand, a pro-protest view that rejects this opposition, and, on the other hand, an extreme anti-protest view that radicalizes the opposition. These emerging extremes illustrate how the question of theological protest and its legitimacy occupied a central place in late rabbinic Judaism.

Rabbi Eleazar’s Prohibition Rabbi Eleazar the son of Pedat (third century) succeeded Rabbi Akiva (­second century) as spokesman for the anti-protest camp. In what follows, I hope to demonstrate, as I did with Rabbi Akiva, how Rabbi Eleazar’s restrictive view becomes neutralized or neglected in later rabbinic strata. This fact will further strengthen the central argument of this chapter that some rabbis in the post-tannaitic period began to evince a more positive attitude toward confrontation, even as that provoked a more extreme anti-protest backlash. As we saw in Chapter 1, Mishnah Ta’anit (3:8) contains a story about Ḥoni, who challenged God to bring rain for a draught-stricken Jewish community. Rabbi Shimon ben Shetaḥ responded by declaring that, were it not for the fact that Ḥoni had a close relationship with God, he would have excommunicated Ḥoni. While the Mishnah does not disclose the reason for Shimon’s hypothetical censure, Rabbi Eleazar attributes it to Ḥoni’s arrogant challenge to God.33 In contrast to Rabbi Eleazar’s interpretation, a later talmudic reworking of the Ḥoni story in BT Ta’anit has Shimon b. Shetaḥ concerned about a very different problem: “[Shimon the son of Shetaḥ says]: Were it not that you are Ḥoni, I would have placed you under the ban, for were the years like the years [of famine in the time] of Elijah, in whose hands were the keys of rain, would not the name of Heaven be profaned through you?”34 To understand this comment, some background information is needed. In 1 Kings 17:1, the prophet

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Elijah swears to King Ahab that no rain will fall on Israel for a few years. In the Mishnah, Ḥoni also swears that “I will not move from here [‫]איני זז מיכן‬ until You have mercy upon Your children [and bring rain].” Thus, according to the Bavli’s version of the Ḥoni narrative, Shimon argues that had Ḥoni lived in Elijah’s time, one of their oaths would have been desecrated: either Elijah’s oath that there will be no rain or Ḥoni’s oath that there will be rain. Logically, both of these oaths could not be maintained; accordingly, God’s name, which is attached to the oath, would have been desecrated. Significantly, the opposition to Ḥoni’s proclamation to God of “I will not move from here” is no longer animated by Ḥoni’s arrogance and irreverence toward God, as Rabbi Eleazar maintained, but a far-fetched hypothetical concern about desecrating oaths: had Ḥoni lived in the same period as Elijah, one of their oaths would have been desecrated.35 Like Rabbi Akiva’s prohibition against challenging God, Rabbi Shimon’s desire to excommunicate Ḥoni also undergoes revision in later rabbinic texts. While Rabbi Eleazar attributes Shimon’s antagonism to the miracle worker’s disrespectful tone, a later anonymous voice in BT Ta’anit (re)reads Shimon’s opposition to be driven by a technical problem: the use of an oath that might, however unlikely, have led to its desecration. Strikingly, the problem of dis­ respecting God is completely passed over.36 What drove the anonymous late amoraic (or even post-amoraic) teaching to ignore Rabbi Eleazar’s more intuitive reading of the Mishnah? Why shift opposition from the act of protest itself to a hypothetical and highly improbable side problem of oath violation? While we can never know with certainty what a rabbinic author or editor had in mind, it would seem that this shift of interpretation is reflective of a broader shift in rabbinic thought. More and more, rabbis adopt a more favorable attitude toward confrontation (which then evokes an extreme anti-confrontation response). This would explain why the talmudic author (of the pseudo-beraita in Ta’anit) did not see any problem with speaking toward God in such a bellicose fashion.37 Regardless of whether this diachronic claim of a transformation of theology is correct or not, from a purely technical and textual perspective it is striking that BT Ta’anit no longer excommunicates a commoner (as Rabbi Eleazar would) for the type of disrespectful language invoked by Ḥoni. In what follows, I provide one last example to highlight the deterioration of anti-protest sentiments in late rabbinic literature. Rabbi Eleazar’s attack on theological confrontation is found not only in his reading of the Ḥoni narrative (BT Berakhot 19a), but also in two other contexts, the latter of which is our



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current focus. The first is in BT Ta’anit (25a), where Rabbi Eleazar declares: “Let a man never hurl words toward God [‫]אל יטיח אדם דברים כלפי מעלה‬, seeing that one great man did so and became lame. And who was it? Levi.” The second comes from BT Berakhot (31b and 32a), in which Rabbi Eleazar regards three biblical figures as engaging in the act of “hurling words toward God”: Rabbi Eleazar said: Hannah hurled [words] toward heaven [‫דברים‬ ‫]הטיחה‬, as it says, And Hannah prayed unto [‫ ]על‬the Lord [1 Samuel 1:10]. This teaches that she spoke insolently toward heaven. . . .  Rabbi Eleazar also said: Elijah hurled words [‫ ]הטיח דברים‬toward heaven, as it says, For You did turn their heart backwards [1 Kings 18:37]. . . .  Rabbi Eleazar also said: Moses hurled words [‫ ]הטיח דברים‬toward heaven, as it says, And Moses prayed unto the Lord [Numbers 11:2]. Read not el [unto] the Lord, but ‘al [upon] the Lord. In this talmudic pericope, Rabbi Eleazar reads Scripture counterintuitively to have three great biblical characters protesting God: Hannah critiques God for not providing her a child; Elijah accuses God of turning the Israelites’ hearts away from the correct path; and Moses blames God for producing the Golden Calf. While in the context of this talmudic pericope, we are not certain whether Rabbi Eleazar takes a negative, positive, or neutral attitude toward these challenges, in light of Rabbi Eleazar’s aforementioned comments in BT Berakhot 19a (regarding Ḥoni) and BT Ta’anit 25a (regarding Levi), it stands to reason that Rabbi Eleazar takes such a critical stance in BT Berakhot 31b as well.38 Yet, here too, we can detect a shift from the anti-protest view toward a pro-protest view. This can be seen in the cases of Elijah and Moses, where a later amora transforms Rabbi Eleazar’s ostensibly negative description of hattaḥat devarim (hurling words) into a positive one by having God, strikingly, concede their critiques: Rabbi Samuel the son of Isaac said: From where do we know that the Holy One, blessed be He, retracted [‫ ]שחזר‬and came to agree [‫ ]והודה לו‬with Elijah? Because it says, And whom I have wronged [Micah 4:6] . . . 

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Rabbi Samuel the son of Nahmani said in the name of Rabbi Jonathan. From where do we know that the Holy One, blessed be He, retracted [‫ ]שחזר‬and came to agree [‫ ]והודה לו‬with Moses? Because it says, And multiplied unto her silver and gold, which they used for Baal [Hosea 2:10]. (BT Berakhot 31b, 32a) According to two rabbis named Samuel (both of whom lived after Rabbi Eleazar), God announces that Elijah’s and Moses’ accusations against Him were indeed correct. Consequently, God retracts His prior actions. God admits that, at least to some extent, He is responsible for Israelite apostasy both in the days of Moses (with the Golden Calf) and Elijah (with the idolatrous prophets of Baal). By having God concede, the rabbinic author appears to endorse confronting God, for the act served a constructive purpose, correcting an erroneous divine view. Put differently, while divine concessions do not necessarily imply rabbinic support for theological protest, they certainly point in that direction. As such, this is another example that signals an evolving attitude toward protest. Whereas the earlier strata of BT Berakhot 31b/32a reflects a negative attitude, as seen in the position of Rabbi Eleazar, the latter strata evinces, albeit implicitly, a more favorable attitude toward theological protest.

From Opposition to Valorization We can also intuit a positive attitude toward theological protest when considering the fact that in well over one hundred and fifty cases the sages place a critique of, or challenge to, God into the mouth of a well-established biblical character. While the rabbis usually do not express their opinions on the appropriateness or inappropriateness of the act—they most often present the confrontational story as historical fact without making a normative or value claim on its readers—it is significant that they usually put a critique into the mouth of a well-established biblical hero rather than a villain. While biblical heroes are often presented as flawed individuals, we have no reason to assume, unless otherwise noted, that these acts of protest reflect a moment of misconduct or impropriety. Tellingly, in the overwhelming majority of these exegetical dialogues, God does not admonish or punish the challenger, leading us to conclude that the rabbis (who “report” these dialogues) condone, or even celebrate, the act. This pro-protest tradition emerges in amoraic texts, such as Genesis Rabbah and Lamentations Rabbah, and reaches its fullest expression in the writings of



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the post-amoraic Babylonian Talmud and the midrashim of TanḥumaYelammedenu.39 The amoraim most often associated with these traditions are Rabbi Isaac, Rabbi Levi, Reish Lakish, Rabbi Ḥanina, and Rabbi Berekhya.40 Rabbinic endorsement of confrontation is even more apparent when a sage has God concede the challenge, as in the aforementioned examples of Moses and Elijah. In these cases, the rabbinic author embraces theological protest as it corrects an erroneous view. Moreover, as Yoḥanan Muffs has argued, rabbinic legitimation emerges most strongly when the rabbis have God Himself proclaim His desire to be challenged or corrected. Muffs cites the well-known Exodus Rabbah II tradition in which God requests that Moses confront God over God’s intended plan to destroy Israel after they worshipped the Golden Calf.41 And right before Moses’ death, the Tanḥuma imagines God lamenting Moses’ departure, calling out: “[Now] who will stand up for Israel at the time of My wrath? Who will stand [for Israel] in the war with My children” (‫ ?)ומי יעמוד במלחמתו של בני‬42 Muffs argues that “this [prophetic] war is with God Himself,” adding, “How does the prophet participate in this war? By his prayer the prophet controls the divine anger.”43 Indeed, many statements such as these—of God seeking human confrontation—can be found in late rabbinic literature.44 We can also easily detect rabbinic support for confrontation when the sages associate protest with prayer.45 Although the rabbis were not willing to fix a standardized liturgy of protest, they were willing to do so in their spontaneous prayers. And, in a few aggadot, this counterintuitive connection is made explicit. For example, according to Midrash Psalms, Rabbi Judah Bar Simon, a fourth-century amora, declared: “Are not the prayers [of Jeremiah, Habakkuk, David, and Moses the same thing as] their protests [‫”?]תפלתן היא קינתרונן‬46 We also have passages where rabbis employ military language when describing their prayers of protest. This rhetorical image appears in the above Tanḥuma text where God cries out: “Who [after Moses’ death] will stand [for Israel] in the war with My children?” Going even further, the Jerusalem Talmud contains a striking normative implication for this linkage: “Rabbi Phineas, Rabbi Levi, and Rabbi Yoḥanan said in the name of Menaḥem the Galilean: When one invites [the cantor] to go before the ark they [the people] do not say [to him], ‘Come and pray’ [‫]בוא והתפלל‬. Rather they say [to him], ‘Come and draw near [‫בוא‬ ‫]וקרב‬: [because this term “draw near” will simultaneously imply the following ideas]: come and make our offerings for us, provide for us, make war for us [‫עשה‬ ‫]מלחמותינו‬, make peace for us.’”47 This talmudic teaching, attributed to Menaḥem the Galilean, requires the prayer community to instruct the cantor

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before he takes the podium to “come and draw near [‫ ”]בוא וקרב‬because this latter phrase also connotes, among other things, the notion of doing “war” [‫ ]מלחמה‬with God.48 Thus, the rabbinic legitimation, if not valorization, of theological protest, while often not explicit and, in light of the evidence of the previous chapter by no means unanimous in the rabbinic tradition, returns us, at least to a certain extent, to the biblical model wherein heroes unleash protests of God with impunity and seeming approval. This positive attitude toward theological protest in some late rabbinic circles, which surfaces only in post-tannaitic texts, can nicely be summed up by this talmudic maxim: “Rabbi Nahman said: Chutzpah [‫]חוצפה‬, even against Heaven, is effective.”49

Rabbinic and Patristic Reception of the Prophetic Potter-Clay Parable One of the central arguments of this book is that the celebration of theological protest distinguishes late antique Jewish theology from other monotheistic traditions of its time, most notably Christianity. In what follows, I highlight one noteworthy example of this divergence. Isaiah 45:9–10 contains the only unambiguous expression of biblical opposition to an individual confronting God. In this passage, God proclaims: “Shame on him [‫ ]הוי‬who argues [‫]רב‬ with his Maker [‫ ;]יצרו‬Let the potsherd strive with the potsherds of the earth. Shall the clay say to the potter, ‘What are you doing? Your work has no handles? Shame on him who asks his father, ‘What are you begetting?’”50 As it would be absurd for clay to argue with its maker (the potter), so would it be absurd, God declares, for a human to critique his Maker (God). The clay/potter imagery also appears in Isaiah 29:16 and 64:7 and in Jeremiah 18:6. There, the parable is employed to critique human arrogance (Is. 29:15) as a means to express Israel’s utter dependence on God (Is. 64:7); and as a rhetorical tool to emphasize God’s power and providence (Jer. 18:6).51 In what follows, I demonstrate how the distinctive rabbinic and patristic attitudes toward theological protest led them to explain the potter-clay parables in radically different, and even opposite, ways. Whereas, following Paul, the church fathers often draw on a simple reading of the parable in Isaiah 45:9–10 to rail against challenging God, the rabbis, ignoring the anti-protest parable of those verses, counterintuitively reinterpret the clay-potter imagery of Jeremiah 18:6 and Isaiah 64:7 itself as a sanctioned Jewish critique of divine justice.



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We begin with the ancient Christian tradition. A number of church ­fathers used the clay-potter parable as a rhetorical tool and proof text to condemn those individuals who dare confront God. The image became a popular one in large measure because of Paul’s allusion to it in his Letter to the Romans: What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness [ἀδικία] with God? God forbid. . . .  Nay but, O man, who are you that challenges [ἀνταποκρινόμενος] God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it: Why have you made me thus? Has not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honor, and another unto dishonor?52 (Paul’s Letter to the Romans 9:14, 20, 21) In these passages, Paul responds to those who critique God for arbitrarily choosing, as “children of God,” Abraham’s descendants through Jacob rather than Abraham’s descendants through Ishmael and Esau (vv. 7–13), and for unfairly punishing Pharaoh when God had “hardened his [Pharaoh’s] heart” (vv. 17–19). But rather than defend God on substantive grounds, Paul employs the biblical clay-pottery imagery to undermine a person’s very right to argue with her Creator. And this is based on two points. First, for just as it would be absurd for clay to complain to the potter, its maker, so too would it be absurd for humans to complain and critique God, their Maker (v. 20). Second, like a potter, God has the right to do whatever He pleases: He can make one vessel for “honor” and one for “dishonor” (v. 21). Echoing Paul, many church fathers reference the potter-clay parable to rebuke those who challenge the divine will. For example, Cyril of Alexandria (376–444), the leader of the monophysites in the East, cites it to castigate those Jews, who, resisting Christ’s will, “enter into argument” with God: [The Jews] resisted, as I have said, the teachings of Christ. . . . But  . . . how do you, then, who are like clay in the potter’s hands and have not knowledge at all of how your spiritual rebirth will take place, have the audacity to enter into argument? And why do you not rather understand that you should cede to the artisan and father the knowledge of how to do these things? . . . It is therefore necessary to give way to what God says. He himself knows the way of his own works, and what he has fashioned is not to be curiously

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inquired into. It belongs to someone like ourselves to honor what transcends the human mind with an unquestioning faith.53 In the fifth century, Theodoret of Cyrus (393–457), the bishop of Syria, appropriates the “image of the clay and the potter” in his Commentary to Isaiah to rebuke those who “demand an accounting from the Creator of the Universe.”54 The Syrian philosopher Nemesius of Emesa (ca. 400 Syria) uses it wail against those who, challenging the extent of divine providence, “make themselves God’s judges.”55 And, finally, in his treatise Against the Pelagians, the Latin church father Jerome (347–420) cites the potter-clay parable as a rhetorical trope to respond to those thinkers who marshal ethical critiques of God’s decrees. More specifically, Jerome notes the moral objections raised by some regarding God’s corporate killing of Achan’s family (for Achan’s sin),56 and God’s orchestration of the Israelite campaign to exterminate the native population of Canaan (via hardening their heart).57 Both of these challenges relate to the killing of innocent people. Citing Paul, Jerome sidesteps the substantive moral problem inherent in corporate punishment, responding only that if “it was done by the will of God how could we not but declare the potter-clay parable of Isaiah: ‘Why then does he find fault? For who can resist his will . . . [Nay but, O man, who are you that challenges God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it: Why have you made me thus?]’” (Paul’s Letter to the Romans 9:19, 20).58 These early Christian appropriations of the clay-pottery parable contrast sharply with how the rabbis use this biblical image. First, unlike patristic writings, there is no rabbinic text, at least prior to the Islamic period, that employs the parable as a rhetorical tool to condemn those who challenge God or against those who inquire into the “divine nature of things.” 59 In fact, the clay-potter parable is rarely cited in rabbinic literature at all. It surfaces in only two contexts. The first is in a legal context in which some amoraim invoke it to support the view that a person may ask God to change the sex of a fetus, even as late as the time of birth.60 For just as a potter can change the configuration of the clay at any time, so too can God do the same to His “clay.” The second context, relevant for our purposes, is a theological one: amoraic and post-amoraic texts employ the clay-potter parable when discussing the Yetser Hara (YH), or Evil Inclination.61 However, before explicating the connection between the Evil Inclination and the clay-potter parable, a quick overview of the rabbinic conception of the YH is in order. As Ishay Rosen-Zvi has shown, the various strata of rabbinic literature convey different conceptions of



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the YH.62 Within tannaitic literature, the first, credited to Rabbi Akiva, follows the biblical model:63 rather than seeing the YH as fundamentally evil, Rabbi Akiva views it as representing the natural urges, propensities, and inclinations of humans (which potentially can be a force for good). Furthermore, according to Rabbi Akiva and his school, the YH is not a separate entity, but an inherent part of the human being.64 Rosen-Zvi notes that the school of Ishmael opposed this model, understanding the YH to be a demonic, antinomian, and cosmic force implanted within the heart of every individual. For Rabbi Ishmael and his school, the YH is not an essential component of the human being, as it was for Rabbi Akiva. It is rather an external and independent entity housed within the human heart. Moreover, for Rabbi Ishmael, the YH does not drive a human being to sin by manipulating a person’s emotions or desires, but rationally incites him or her to disobey God.65 According to Rosen-Zvi, the position of Rabbi Ishmael emerged as the dominant one in the post-tannaitic period as these sages regarded the Evil Inclination as fundamentally evil. Because of that, not unexpectedly, a theological problem arose: Why would God create something that is evil or harmful to humanity? 66 Does this not imply that God is evil, or, at least, responsible for evil? Indeed, some non-monotheistic late antiquity thinkers, such as Marcion (85–160), Celsus (second century), and Adimantus (fourth-century student of Mani) all railed against the idea that YHWH implanted an evil desire in the hearts of humanity, beginning with Adam.67 They argued: if God created this sinful force, why should humanity suffer the consequences? God, therefore, must be unjust. These types of critiques might have reached the rabbis, which, naturally, would have only exacerbated the theological crisis. Either way, the rabbis were confronted with this theological-moral dilemma. While many early rabbinic texts attempt a theodicy, that is, to justify God’s decision to fashion the Evil Inclination,68 other rabbinic texts evince a profound discomfort and unease with an evil entity created by God. And, it is in this context that our potter-clay parable resurfaces: “Were it not for [the declarations in] the following three Scriptural verses, Israel [lit., the feet of the enemies of Israel] would have nothing to stand on. . . . Another is the verse [Jer. 18:6], ‘Behold, as the clay in the potter’s [‫ ]היוצר‬hand, so are you in My hand, O House of Israel’ (BT Sukkah 52b).” In this talmudic teaching, Rabbi Ḥama b. Ḥanina maintains that if not for three scriptural passages, Israel would have no defense for its sins. The Jewish people would have been destroyed for its transgressions if not for these biblical passages which—if read midrashically—highlight the destructive force of the divinely created Evil

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Inclination. Through these rereadings, God realizes, remarkably, that since He created this inclination, He must take upon Himself some of the responsibility for Israelite sin. As a consequence, God allows Israel to survive. One of the three proof texts cited is Jeremiah’s potter-clay parable (18:6): “O House of Israel, can I not deal with you like this potter?—says the Lord. Just like clay in the hands of the potter [‫]היוצר‬, so are you in My hands, O house of Israel!” According to the plain-sense reading, God here emphasizes His supreme power and control over the world. Veering from a straightforward reading, however, Rabbi Hama reads the word ‫ יוצר‬not as referring to a potter, a general creator of things, but as a pun signaling, more specifically, “one who creates the Evil Inclination [‫]יצר הרע‬.” The rabbinic justification for this bold reinterpretation is that the central letters making up the word for “inclination” (‫ )יצר‬are the same as those making up those for “potter” (‫)יוצר‬. In addition, clay (‫ )חומר‬is taken to refer to the human being molded by the hands of the “potter” (God) to act in a certain way. Rabbi Ḥama b. Ḥanina claims that, in this passage, God recognizes His own role in creating the Evil Inclination and therefore takes responsibility for the evil actions committed by Israel. In this way, the sins of the Israelites are minimized or absolved. By boldly reinterpreting the passage out of its context, Rabbi Ḥama b. Ḥanina produces a striking exegetical and theological inversion. While the simple reading of the passage praises God’s power and providence, Rabbi Ḥama b. Ḥanina transforms it into a critique by taking this theological notion of providence and radical control to its logical extreme: If God has complete sovereignty and power over the world, then God should also take responsibility for the creation and subsequent actions of the Evil Inclination. God should be held accountable, at least to some extent, for the wrongdoings committed by Israel. According to Rabbi Ḥama b. Ḥanina, God Himself, the very author of the parable, acknowledges and affirms this understanding of the potter-clay imagery.69 The impetus to construct such a theologically daring divine admission, I would argue, is due to a profound discomfort among the sages with God’s role in creating an evil entity. In similar fashion, the clay-potter parable is used in Exodus Rabbah II— one of the midrashim of Tanḥuma-Yelammedenu. Here the parable is adduced to construct a moment not of divine self-blame as in BT Sukkah, but human protest: What is the meaning of We are the clay, and You our potter [Isa. 64:7]? Israel said: Lord of the Universe! You have caused it to be



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written (or dictated) concerning us [‫]אתה הכתבת לנו‬: Behold, as the clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in My hand, O house of Israel [Jer. 18:6]. For this reason, do not depart from us, though we sin and provoke You: we are but the clay and You are our potter. See now, if the potter makes a jar and leaves therein a pebble, then when it comes out of the furnace, it will leak from the hole left by the pebble and lose any liquid poured into it. Now what caused [‫ ]מי גרם‬the jar to leak and thus to lose any liquid placed therein? The potter who left the pebble therein. This was how Israel pleaded before God: Lord of the Universe! You have created in us an Evil Inclination from our youth, for it says, For the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth [Gen. 8:21], and it has caused us to sin before you, and [yet] you shift the sin upon us [‫]ואת מסלק עלינו את החטא‬. Remove it from us [‫]העבירהו‬, we pray You, in order that we may perform Your will. God replied: This I will do [‫]כך אני עושה‬, as it says, In that day, says the Lord, will I assemble the lame [sheep], and I will gather her that is driven away, and her that I have afflicted [‫[ ]ואשר הרעתי‬Mic. 4:6]. (Exodus Rabbah II 46:4) In this late rabbinic passage, Israel challenges God: “You have created in us an Evil Inclination from our youth . . . and it has caused us to sin before you, and [yet] you shift the sin upon us [‫ ”?]מסלק עלינו את החטא‬For Israel, the injustice is this: if sin is caused by the Evil Inclination, then the responsibility for sin should be placed on the Evil Inclination, rather than on Israel. God should not blame Israel, the innocent party, but Himself as creator of the Evil Inclination.70 According to Exodus Rabbah II, Israel then pleads with God: “Remove it from us [‫]העבירהו‬, we pray You, in order that we may perform Your will.” In response, God promises to rectify the situation.71 While this late midrash does not explicitly state that God changed His mind in direct reaction to the Israelite challenge, it implies it. And, even if one were to reject this reading of a divine concession, at minimum this teaching has God empathizing with Israel’s point of view and their right to protest; God gives it a sympathetic hearing. In short, in this TY text, divine appreciation for the problematic nature of the Evil Inclination is not presented as emerging from God’s self-awareness (as in BT Sukkah) but through human protest (Exodus Rabbah II).72 To recast Jeremiah’s potter-clay parable from suggesting divine recognition of responsibility (as in BT Sukkah) to human critique and

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confrontation, the author of Exodus Rabbah II adds another potter-clay proof text, this time from Isaiah 64:7. In this verse, God does not declare “I am the potter [creator of the Evil Inclination],” as in the Jeremiah text, but now Israel declares to God: “You are the potter [creator of the Evil Inclination]” (‫ואתה‬ ‫)יוצרנו‬. Shifting the proof text from Jeremiah to Isaiah produces the confrontational moment. In other words, Exodus Rabbah does not ignore the Jeremiah proof text, but has Israel citing it to substantiate its charges. Finally, to communicate its teaching more powerfully, Exodus Rabbah II, echoing the biblical model, compares God’s placing the Evil Inclination in the hearts of humanity to a potter who mistakenly leaves a pebble in his recently made jar. The pebble causes the jar to deform and liquid oozes out. Clearly in this case the potter is responsible for the leak, not the jar. So too, the author of Exodus Rabbah II argues, did God place the Evil Inclination (pebble) into the human being (jar); sins that emerge from this decision (oozing liquid) should be attributed to God (potter) and not to the jar itself (humanity). The rhetorical force of the parable is that it effectively exonerates humanity to the fullest extent possible. It does not merely place some of the burden of sin on God (as in BT Sukkah), but by comparing Israel to a nonsentient object with no legal responsibility, all of the responsibility is placed on God’s shoulders.73 Bracketing the minor differences between BT Sukkah and Exodus Rabbah II, we can now clearly perceive and appreciate the stark difference between the early Christian reception of the prophetic potter-clay parable and the rabbinic one. While the church fathers faithfully cited the parable to rebuke those who would dare challenge God, some rabbis used it, ironically, to do just that, adducing it as a proof text to challenge God for His decision to imbue humanity with the Evil Inclination. Rather than drawing on the biblical parable of Isaiah 45 as a rhetorical tool to quash the right of humans to question God and morally challenge God’s providential system (as we have with the church fathers), the rabbis cite the parable of Isaiah 64 and Jeremiah 18 to condone, albeit implicitly, that very act of questioning and challenging. This is done either via a rabbinically constructed divine self-critique (in its rereading of Isaiah 64:7) or through an imagined Israelite protest (as in the midrashic reading of Jeremiah 18:6). The late antiquity reception of the potter-clay parable starkly demonstrates the contrasting rabbinic and Christian sensibilities toward theological protest. While the early church fathers adopt the anti-protest tradition of Isaiah 45:9 (as echoed in Romans 9), the rabbis express, at least in certain



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circles, a strong counter-tradition that understood the act of confronting God as not only legitimate, but as a privileged form of communicating with the divine.

Contexts and Factors: Explaining the Phenomenon We now turn to the crucial historical question: Why do protest narratives surface primarily in post-tannaitic literature? And, along with that, why do only later rabbis tolerate, even celebrate, the protest motif? As David Kraemer has correctly noted, rabbinic texts seem to accept this daring communication with God more and more with the passage of time. Kraemer posits that, while tannaitic texts such as the Mishnah and the halakhic midrashim manifest no signs of protest, the later Palestinian midrashim (redacted ca. fifth century) contain subtle and implied “voices of ambivalence” where a “lack of explanation and justification [for suffering] may be . . . an expression of complaint.”74 Kraemer attributes this theological shift to the beginnings of a rabbinic openness to honestly face the traumatic historical realities of exile—which the Mishnah ignored75—and, more importantly, to the deflating “triumph of Christianity” which engendered increased “injustices” for Byzantium Jewry, both mentally and physically.76 Kraemer also speculates that there is more protest material in the Palestinian midrashim than the contemporaneous Jerusalem Talmud in part because “midrash is a more popular medium than [the Jerusalem] Talmud” and was thus more “attentive and sensitive to the sentiments of Jews at large.”77 Going beyond the encoded critiques of the classical midrashim, explicit and “forceful” critiques of divine injustice, according to Kraemer, appear only with the chronologically later Babylonian Talmud. Kraemer attributes this theological shift to geographical differences: as Palestinian Jews under Byzantium were persecuted, they tended to evince a more defensive and conservative theological posture. By contrast, Babylonian Jews, according to Kraemer, had, theologically speaking, the “luxury of being less defensive, more questioning and skeptical” because they lived in relative security under the Sasanian Empire.78 While I concur with Kraemer’s claim of an incremental legitimization of protest within rabbinic literature, and, more specifically, with attributing the emergence of the motif in amoraic texts to the heightened injustices fueled, to a large extent, by the Christianization of the empire, his explanation for why the Babylonian Talmud evinces the culmination of that theological openness seems

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somewhat strange and arbitrary. For had the evidence been inverted—had the classical midrashim or the Jerusalem Talmud sanctioned the protest expression more than the Bavli, then, I assume, Kraemer would have made the opposite argument: because Palestinian Jews were persecuted they were driven to embrace a protest theology whereas Babylonian Jews, who did not face the same level of persecution, had little real-life pressures to adopt such a radical mode of thought. Indeed, Kraemer himself made that argument to explain why the Palestinian midrashim evince a greater openness to the protest motif than the tannaitic material.79 Moreover, according to Kraemer, why attribute the contrast between the Palestinian midrashim and the Babylonian Talmud to geography and not chronology? Perhaps the difference between the classical midrashim and the Bavli has more to do with the date of redaction than the place of redaction. Or, perhaps, there are literary or cultural contrasts between these works that would account for their diverging theological sensibilities.80 One way to test Kraemer’s argument would have been to take into consideration the content of the midrashim of the Tanḥuma-Yelammedenu, most of which was composed, according to Marc Bregman, toward the end of Byzantine rule in Palestine (sixth and early seventh century).81 These aggadot could have served as a test case to prove Kraemer’s thesis of a geographical distinction, as the provenance for this material is largely Palestinian, and their ideas were roughly produced at the same time as the Bavli. Kraemer, however, does not treat any Palestinian Midrash beyond the fifth century.82 In a prior work I traced TY’s attitude toward the protest motif.83 Even though this investigation did not treat, like Kraemer’s work, responses to suffering as such, it demonstrated how the protest motif—even in contexts that have nothing to do with suffering—served as one of TY’s distinguishing theological motifs. In the more than fifty such instances in which TY authors use this topos, the midrashic parallels from earlier texts generally do not contain such confrontations. In the cases where earlier texts do contain such sentiments, the Tanḥuma invariably dramatizes the imagery or radicalizes the language. Hence, I would argue that the valorization of the protest motif occurs not only in late Babylonian texts (as Kraemer shows), but even more prominently, within late Palestinian texts of Tanḥuma-Yelammedenu literature. And, with that, Kraemer’s argument for a geo-historical explanation for the Bavli’s tendency to embrace protest is now, I believe, put into further question. Returning to Kraemer’s original query, then, how should we account for the ever-increasing rabbinic acceptance, if not celebration, of theological protest? Why does the motif emerge in post-tannaitic midrashic compilations



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and reach its highpoint in the post-amoraic works of the Babylonian Talmud and Tanḥuma-Yelammedenu? While, admittedly, answers to this question are difficult to prove—and thus should be formulated with care—a set of tentative explanations ought to be considered. First, following Marmorstein, some of the factors that might have fueled a strong anti-protest attitude in the tannaitic period are no longer present in the post-tannaitic period.84 By the fourth and fifth centuries, we no longer have such anti-YHWH thinkers as Marcion, Celsus, Porphyry, and other Gnostics berating the ethics of the Hebrew Bible and its God. We could thus speculate that without these external moral challenges to the Old Testament God, greater theological space could be granted to insiders, such as the later rabbis, to express their own frustrations, misgivings, and struggles with YHWH. They could now do so without the risk of being labeled a Marcionite, Gnostic, or Pagan.85 Moreover, we should not underestimate the profound theological influence exerted by arguably the greatest tannaitic sage, Rabbi Akiva, who, it would appear, more than anyone else championed the anti-protest approach. We should also consider, at least as a contributing factor, the different audiences of the Mishnah and early (“halakhic”) Midrash as opposed to late (“aggadic”) Midrash. While tannaitic teachings were produced by scholars in the academy for other scholars, the original setting of the classical midrashim, according to most scholars, appears to arise from the synagogue sermon where preachers would inspire, educate, and entertain.86 And, quite possibly, the sages felt more constrained in their theological reflections when engaged in scholarly communications than when rhetorically communicating with the less educated folk.87 Contemporary scholars have noted greater exegetical freedom in later Midrash,88 and the same might be true about theological freedom. Indeed, Kraemer made this very distinction when explaining why the synagogue-based Palestinian midrashim of the fifth century evince a greater openness, however subtle, toward the protest motif than the more scholarly based Jerusalem Talmud.89 It is also possible that the widespread appearance of the confrontational topos in later rabbinic texts may be linked to a crucial historical change that took place with regard to parrhesia in late antiquity. As Peter Brown has shown, in the first few centuries of the Common Era, the philosophers assumed the task of parrhesia. They candidly confronted the emperor, tamed his anger, and steered him in the right direction. By the late fourth and early fifth centuries ce, however, we witness the emergence of the Christian holy man who replaces the pagan philosopher in this role. It is now the bishops

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and monks who—using their unique moral authority—confront the ruler, constrain him, and, as champions of the poor and downtrodden, courageously communicate their grievances to the emperor.90 If this cultural transition affected the sages, it may explain, in part, the centrality of the confrontational theme in late rabbinic literature. Late antiquity Jews did not have religious leaders to perform parrhesia. They had no political power and no emperors of their own. But could it be that through biblical interpretation, rabbinic authors were able to produce Jewish holy men—Jewish saints—who became veritable figures of parrhesia? Abraham, Moses, and others could now anachronistically be imagined to have assumed these courtly roles. And, by generating these exegetical confrontations, the sages could produce for the communal imagination Jewish leaders who carried an intimate friendship with God. These Jewish holy men championed the underprivileged, and with unusual courage morally confronted not the king but the King of Kings. Indeed, Jews now had their own figures of parrhesia of whom they could be in awe and gain inspiration from. While parrhesia existed before the fifth century, of course, it assumed greater popularity in religious circles once the task was transferred to Christian bishops and monks. In short, I am suggesting that the emergence of the Christian holy man as a figure of parrhesia in the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries may have had an impact on later rabbinic biblical interpretation in the Byzantine period. Jews at that time, like their Christian counterparts, produced figures of parrhesia: not in the world of history, but in the world of the exegetical imagination. Turning now, more specifically, to the apex of this bold tradition in the works of Tanḥuma-Yelammedenu and the Babylonian Talmud, we could further say that their authors naturally developed the confrontational idea from earlier amoraic midrashim, where it appeared in embryonic form. Thus, in addition to attributing its appearance to external non-Jewish influences alone, we should also look internally and posit an organic growth. Indeed, in another study, I have shown how TY texts radicalize the confrontational theme already found in pre-TY texts.91 In addition, that the Tanḥuma corpus contains the largest amount and most vivid moments of theological protest may be linked to its literary quality. Generally speaking, Tanḥuma-Yelammedenu texts evince a certain theatrical dimension and are wont to build suspense in order to produce a sensational and vivid retelling of the biblical story. J. Elbaum has alluded to this characteristic when noting how TY passages add “new dramatic details” to the older narrative, and how they use “dramatic additions” or linking



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phrases such as “immediately” or “at that time” to create an continuous narrative.92 These literary tools keep the storyline moving, vibrant, and exciting. We might posit, then, that the widespread use of the protest motif in TY literature is merely one instantiation of this general TY tendency. Conflict and change are integral components of drama as they elicit tension and intrigue, captivating and edifying the audience of readers. The theatrical quality of TY also expresses itself through transforming earlier exegetical teachings or narrative storylines into first-person dialogues.93 Indeed, the performative dimension of Tanḥuma-Yelammedenu can most starkly be seen in its framing: at the start of most sections, the audience poses a legal query to the spiritual leader with the phrase “Let our master teach us [Yelammedenu],” which leads the teacher to cleverly link the legal answer with the weekly Torah portion. The prose TY literature is not the only sixth- or seventh-century Jewish exegetical writing to evince a dramatic theatricality; as Laura Lieber has recently shown, Aramaic poetry of that period does so as well.94 Another historical and cultural parallel to this literary quality can be found in fourth- to sixth-century poetic hymns and homilies produced by Syriac Christians, such as Ephrem the Syrian (306–373), Narsai (fifth century), Jacob of Serugh (451–521), and Romanos the Melodist (sixth century), who, according to Sebastian Brock, place “dramatic dialogues” of “dispute” into the mouth of rivaling biblical figures (such as Isaac and Ishmael or Abraham and Sarah).95 In many instances, one of the characters seeks to persuade the other to adopt a theological or ideological position that has been rejected at the outset.96 Like our dramatic TY dialogues, these Syriac poems and homilies seek to edify their audience and readers and to communicate their fundamental religious values. And, according to Brock, the “Syriac dramatic homily tradition” is more developed in the sixth century than in the fifth century, which would chronologically correspond to the TY material presented here.97 But what can be said about the Babylonian Talmud? Why, alongside with Tanḥuma-Yelammedenu texts, does it contain the strongest voices of sanction for theological confrontation? Kraemer explains this phenomenon in political terms, reflecting the security and freedom experienced by Babylonian Jewry. Jacob Neusner, by contrast, has explained the phenomenon in theological terms, positing that the protest narratives against God in the Bavli reflect the heightened personality assumed by God in the Babylonian Talmud. Boldly, Neusner labels the Bavli God as “incarnate.” Neusner’s use of this christological term is purposeful. He does so to explain why God’s “humanity” appears primarily in the Babylonian Talmud but not in other rabbinic documents. Neusner

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suggests that the Babylonian sages living in the Persian Empire were not concerned about sounding too Christian and, thus, blurring theological boundaries. Unlike their Palestinian counterparts, the Babylonian rabbis were not living in Christendom and thus, according to Neusner, felt uninhibited in formulating their religious convictions. However, as I show in Chapter 5, Neusner’s premises are unfounded as God is radically humanized in both Babylonian and Palestinian sources (early and late). Moreover, as contemporary scholars have demonstrated, Jewish studies scholars of the previous generation have underestimated the impact of Christianity on the lives of Babylonian Jews.98 Thus, unlike Kraemer’s political explanation and Neusner’s theological explanation, I would explain the Bavli’s penchant for protest narratives in cultural and literary terms. As Jeffrey Rubinstein has demonstrated, one of the distinctive cultural features of the Babylonian Talmud—as opposed to the Jerusalem Talmud—is its glorification of Torah “argumentation.” He posits that, to highlight this cultural value, the Bavli even has “God dispute with His whole ‘heavenly academy’ in dialectic debate.” Remarkably, the Bavli “construct[s] God in the image of a sage, and a stammaitic sage at that. God is not absolute monarch or indomitable judge, nor exclusively a figure of authority; he is a sage who participates in academic debate.”99 Related to this point, Rubinstein also claims that the authors of the Bavli, more than the Yerushalmi, were prepared to critique the sages of the academy. Thus, I would add, just as the anonymous Bavli redactors were prepared to critique the sages, they, by extension, were also prepared to criticize God, who, for the rabbis, assumed the role of a distinguished sage in the heavenly academy. Similarly, Moshe Lavee and Ronit Nikolsky have shown how the Bavli reworks earlier Palestinian material to produce literary traditions that are highly “polemical,” “dialectical,” and “dialogical.”100

The Relationship between the Bavli and Tanḥuma-Yelammedenu Until now, I have presented independent reasons to explain the prominence of theological protest in the literature of Tanḥuma-Yelammedenu and the Bavli. This approach relies on the reigning scholarly assumption that, between the fifth and seventh centuries ce—when most of the Bavli and TY traditions were being produced—communication between the two reigning centers of Jewish life, Palestine and Babylonia, was sparse.101 During this period, Jewish



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Palestinian literature exhibits little influence from Babylonia, and vice versa. Only after the Islamic conquest of the Byzantine and Persian Empire (in the 630s), when Jews were then united under one empire, did cultural and religious contact between these two intellectual centers become a significant phenomenon.102 This scholarly position aligns with Marc Bregman’s initial findings that Bavli traditions do not significantly make their appearance in TY literature until the tenth and eleventh centuries, in what Bregman calls the medieval “satellite works” of Tanḥuma-Yelammedenu (e.g., Exodus Rabbah I, 1–14).103 In studying protest traditions, I have similarly found this scholarly claim to be true. Of approximately one hundred confrontations with God found in the Bavli and Tanḥuma-Yelammedenu, only a handful are found, for the first time, in both works.104 In other words, the vast of majority of the protest traditions are distinctive to either the TY or the Bavli. However, in recent years, this picture of Jewish Palestine and Jewish Babylonia as two isolated communities in the pre-Geonic period has been qualified. Scholars of late Midrash have increasingly become aware of, and attuned to, late Babylonian traditions that have seeped into late Palestinian Midrash. They maintain that, while for the most part resisting Babylonian influence, Palestinian authors and redactors do exhibit some familiarity with Babylonian traditions and, at times, record it approvingly. For example, Reuven Kiperwasser has identified Bavli influence in Ecclesiastes Rabbah,105 and Ronit Nikolsky has recently demonstrated how Bavli traditions have found its way into select Tanḥuma midrashim.106 According to Nikolsky, these and other findings illustrate that the boundaries between Jewish Palestine and Jewish Babylonia in the pre-Geonic era were not hermetically sealed, as previously assumed. While resisting influence, Palestinian and Babylonian scholars were well acquainted with the cultural traditions of their geographical neighbors.107 Building on these recent studies, I would speculate that the tendency of the Bavli and TY to privilege dialogical and argumentative literary forms, with their attendant celebration of theological protest, should not be seen as completely coincidental. While these corpora were mostly produced in separate locations, they were formed at roughly the same time. Thus, if the cultural barriers between these communities were not completely sealed off as originally thought, then we can regard this distinctive literary feature in both corpora as reflective of a more common literary style of Middle East Jewry in the pre-Geonic period. Expressed differently, even though Babylonian and Palestine religious texts during this period refrain from appropriating much in terms of specific literary expressions, they probably were affected by the other’s literary culture. Indeed,

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to maintain that the apex of dialogicity and polemic in rabbinic literature—and with that the apex of theological protest—occurred in two separate corpora at the same time, but that there was no positive reinforcement or “snowball effect” between these cultural expressions, seems far-fetched. While, as we have seen, there are independent reasons to explain the emergence of these literary features in each corpus, it would be a mistake to discount the strong likelihood that cultural cross-fertilization between Palestine and Babylonia served as a contributing factor in explaining the intensification of the phenomenon.

Conclusion This chapter posits that many post-tannaitic rabbis endorsed theological protest. These amoraic and post-amoraic expressions, which are almost always communicated through their retelling of the biblical narrative, should be viewed as reviving the dominant biblical theology that, with few exceptions, granted individuals the right to engage in theological protest. Yet these proconfrontation expressions are not presented in monolithic fashion: some are hidden and concealed; some express mere ambivalence and sympathy; and others communicate their view in a more straightforward fashion. And, strikingly, I have shown how some of the non-straightforward pro-protest sentiments can even be found, at least outwardly, in anti-protest passages. The chapter also has demonstrated the ways in which the pro-protest camp contended with earlier rabbinic (and biblical) denunciations of the confrontational act. Rather than directly opposing these denunciations, they disguised their permissive agenda by subtly reworking or reinterpreting older traditions. In this fashion, they subversively weakened or neutralized prior anti-protest traditions without admitting, or calling attention to, their theological agenda. Isaiah’s pottery-clay parable no longer symbolizes God’s right and authority to act as He pleases, but Israel’s right to blame God for any defects found in the vessel (humanity); Rabbi Akiva’s prohibition to criticize the Judge of the World (God) is retold such that Akiva merely announces that the Judge does not judge alone; and Rabbi Eleazar’s prohibition against “hurling words at God” is defanged when the Babylonian Talmud cites later rabbis who announce that God admits His error in response to the various “hurling of words.” Indeed, as Bernard Levinson has shown in another context, these methods of critique are most powerful as the later traditions “reverse or abrogate [the earlier tradition’s] substantive content, all the while under the hermeneutical mantle of consistency



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with or dependency upon its source. . . . [They are] the guise of continuity with the past.”108 Consequently, these traditions are doubly bold: they not only sanction a theology of protest, but, to do so, also embark on an assertive exegetical project—both of earlier rabbinic texts and of Scripture. Emerging first in circa fifth-century texts and reaching their high point in the post-amoraic writings of the Babylonian Talmud and TanḥumaYelammedenu, these bold Jewish voices are devoid of analogues in late antique Christian theology. Indeed, post–Second Temple “confrontational theology” is a distinctively Jewish phenomenon.109 Unlike the rabbis who often extol and celebrate biblical heroes who challenge God, Christian theologians, as we have seen, tend to reinterpret these stories. Drawing on the work of David Kraemer, in the chapter’s final section I have sought to explain the ever-growing rabbinic openness to protest over time. I have speculated on a number of factors to explain this phenomenon, including the historical (the demise of Marcionism and the death of Rabbi Akiva), the cultural (bishops and monks become users of parrhesia, and the glorification of “debate” and “argument” in late Babylonian culture), and, finally, the literary (the midrashic shift from academy to synagogue and the dramatic dimension of Tanḥuma-Yelammedenu).

Chapter 3

Varieties of Confrontation

We have been tracing two competing theological models in rabbinic culture: the first prohibited theological protest (Chapter 1) and the second championed its legitimacy (Chapter 2). These opposing positions never clashed explicitly. We do not have a statement in the Talmud that reads “Rabbi X says one can challenge God; and Rabbi Y says one cannot challenge God.” However, rabbinic literature does contain both of these sentiments. While anti-protest expressions can be located in normative maxims, pro-protest sentiments are voiced covertly by imagining biblical figures critiquing God without any backlash.1 Moreover, although resisting a head-on clash, the pro-protest camp weakened earlier antiprotest dictums through subtle additions, revisions, and reinterpretations. By doing so, the act of hashavah (challenging), hirhur (critique), and hattaḥat ­devarim (hurling of words) no longer carried the same near-unanimous negative valence they had in prior rabbinic teachings. Indeed, Rabbi Akiva’s and Rabbi Eleazar’s antipathy to assertively confronting God had, to a large extent, been discarded or, at the very least, attenuated in most sage circles. On the other hand, as we have seen, this late pro-protest position stimulated a counter-stringent reaction that radicalized its opposition to theological protest. Confronting God became not only prohibited for some, but also penalized. This chapter traces a third approach to theological protest, one that assumes a mediating position between the aforementioned extremes: some types of challenges to God are permitted, others prohibited. This perspective qualifies its acceptance of the protest motif by conditioning its support on certain factors being met. I suspect this intermediate position arose in part as a response to the conflicting sentiments found in the Hebrew Bible, which generally condones confrontation, and, on the other hand, early rabbinic literature, which condemns it. As heirs to both traditions, some amoraic and



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post-amoraic sages rejected both extremes and sought ways to harmonize these incompatible textual positions. And they did so by legitimizing certain forms of challenges while delegitimizing others. Investigating a few of these moderate positions will not only yield a typology of theological confrontation, but also refine what we mean by the terms “confrontation” or “challenge.” To illuminate these rabbinic distinctions and types, the chapter selectively draws on the philosophical reflections on “frank speech” (parrhesia) found in Greco-Roman literature. As these ancient models of critique are primarily presented in the context of human-human relations and not divinehuman relations, our concern will be to elucidate their conceptual contribution to the phenomenon of rebuke and protest rather than present a detailed account of their literary and social history. Thus, I am not arguing for any historical influence, but contending that these Greek writings shed interpretive light on select rabbinic passages. The second half of the chapter exposes additional varieties of theological confrontation, but from a different vantage point. These types do not emerge from rabbis distinguishing between permitted and prohibited types of confrontation, but reflect the multitude of literary tropes with which the rabbis themselves launch their challenges—placed, of course, in the mouths of biblical and mythic characters. Here, our focus shifts from how the rabbis assess theological protest to how they actualize theological protest. That is, select rabbis are also producers of confrontational literature, not just its objective evaluators. In this regard, we will see that rabbinic protest narratives often take the following literary forms: lawsuits, prayers, and parables. The end of the chapter investigates how these framings affect the nature of the rabbinic critique of God. It asks: What function and purpose does the variety of confrontational contexts serve? In short, what do these literary types provide the rabbis?

The Tone: Question, Persuasion, or Fault-finding? Some rabbinic texts appear to be self-conscious about conflicting sentiments with regard to challenging God—and, consequently, distinguish legitimate protest from illegitimate protest. These drawing of boundaries could explain some of the inconsistent attitudes toward confrontation found in biblical and early rabbinic literature. Consider the following text from Genesis Rabbah: “Rabbi Levi said: Two men said the same thing [‫]דבר אחד‬: Abraham and Job. Abraham said: Far from you to do after the manner, to slay the righteous with the

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wicked [Gen. 18:25]. Job said: It is all one—therefore I say: He destroys the innocent and the wicked [Job 9:22]. Yet Abraham was rewarded for it, and Job was punished for it? The reason is because Abraham said it with due deliberation [‫ ]ביישוב‬while Job spoke intemperately [‫( ”]פגה‬Genesis Rabbah, TheodorAlbeck 49:9).2 This teaching, attributed to Rabbi Levi (third century CE), seeks to understand why Abraham’s critique of God for seeking to kill the righteous along with the wicked people of Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen. 18) is deemed a righteous act, as Abraham is rewarded for it, whereas Job’s similar critique of God for destroying the innocent along with the wicked is deemed a sinful one, as Job is punished for his critique. Before analyzing Rabbi Levi’s solution to this unequal treatment, it should be noted that there really is no inconsistency from the perspective of a contemporary reader. God in the Hebrew Bible does not reward or praise Abraham for his questioning the divine, nor does God in Scripture punish Job for his bold critiques of the divine. It is only the rabbis themselves who generate these different conceptions of Abraham and Job, and, accordingly, the “inconsistency” between the divine treatment of Abraham and the divine treatment of Job emerges with them alone.3 Markedly, this Genesis Rabbah text provides no proof texts or further details to support its contention that Abraham was rewarded for his ethical protest. These gaps are filled by a different Genesis Rabbah text that applies the following biblical verse to Abraham: “You love righteousness and hate wickedness; [rightly has God, your God, chosen to anoint you with oil of gladness over all your peers] [Ps. 45:8]. . . . Rabbi Azariah interpreted it in the name of Rabbi Aḥa: when Abraham our father stood to plead for mercy for the Sodomites, what is written there? Far be it from You to do such a thing, to bring death upon the innocent as well as the guilty [Gen. 18:25]” (Genesis Rabbah 39:6).4 Rabbi Azariah taught, in the name of Rabbi Aḥa, that God rewarded Abraham with the distinction of direct revelation or prophecy (“the anointment of oil”)5 because Abraham committed himself to fight for the rights of the righteous as illustrated by Abraham’s protest regarding Sodom and Gomorrah. Indeed, this rabbinic text is the only one that I am aware of that explicitly rewards a human being for launching a protest against God. While it is true that Abraham is not rewarded for his challenge per se, nevertheless this act of protest did serve as the primary indicator of Abraham’s unbridled love for justice. Genesis Rabbah also omits any scriptural proof texts or elaboration for the idea that God punished Job for his moral contestations. In fact, from a surface reading of Scripture, the very opposite seems to be the case, for, at least in one passage, Job is rewarded for his daring challenges: “The Lord



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blessed the latter years of Job’s life more than the former” (Job 42:12). As noted in Chapter 1, however, the rabbis, for the most part, deemed Job’s protests as transgressions and, accordingly, imagined God as punishing him. Returning to our Genesis Rabbah text (49:9), Rabbi Levi’s solution, which distinguishes between Abraham’s and Job’s challenges, is cryptic: “Abraham spoke with calm deliberation [‫ ]ביישוב‬while Job spoke intemperately [‫]פגה‬.” How are we to understand this distinction? Noting the word “pagah” (‫)פגה‬ comes from the Greek πηγη, which means “uncompromisingly or without hesitation,” Ephraim Urbach explains the contrast between the biblical characters in this way: “Abraham made his statement with calm deliberation [‫;]ישוב הדעת‬ he could not imagine that God would slay the righteous with the wicked, whereas Job made a definite and unqualified charge [‫‘—]פסקנות‬it is all one!’”6 Urbach’s reading echoes the traditional commentary of Abraham Schick (nineteenth-century Lithuania) who understands Abraham’s challenge to God not as a critique but as a “puzzling question [‫]בלשון תמיה‬.”7 Other commentaries, in contrast, read Abraham’s speech to God (according to Rabbi Levi) as an urgent request that God change His mind. For example, Zev Wolf Einhorn (d. 1861) regards Abraham’s challenge as a “prayer” (‫)תפילה‬, and Job’s challenge as a “decision” (‫)דרך החלט‬.8 Likewise, the commentator Hanoch Zundel (d. 1867) regards Abraham’s speech, unlike Job’s, as an urgent “plea” (‫ )בקשה‬that “could be corrected” (‫)אפשר לתקן‬. The commonality between these modern midrashic readings is that, according to Rabbi Levi, Abraham struggled with God’s apparent disregard for the life of the innocent, and, therefore, challenged God either to reconsider His decision or to rationally and morally explain it. By contrast, Job’s challenge was not launched to access greater knowledge of God’s decisionmaking process or to have God reverse His decision, but to make a derogatory statement about God’s providence.9

Typology of Confrontation Genesis Rabbah’s distinction, albeit an unclear one, reminds us that we need to further refine our terms as there are different types of challenges, and, moreover, different ways for a person to express these challenges. What follows is a breakdown, in broad terms, of the potential meanings we imply when we say that someone “challenged” or “confronted” another. On the submissive side, a challenge can function as a method for the challenger to obtain answers. We can call this “the challenge as question.” The purpose would be

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for the confronter to access information she did not have before leveling the challenge. In these moments, the challenger assumes the basic righteousness of the other and assumes the other has more knowledge of the situation; accordingly, the challenger seeks information as to why the other performed a specific troubling action.10 Philo (20 bce–40 bce) alludes to this function when arguing for the benefits of frank speech (parrhesia) toward God: “Silence, then, is a desirable thing for those who are ignorant, but for those who desire knowledge . . . parrhesia is a most necessary possession. . . . Why therefore shall I not have courage to say what I think? And why shall I not ask questions, when I desire to learn something more?”11 In short, via confrontation, knowledge is transmitted from the one challenged to the challenger. In the middle of the spectrum, challenge can also function as a method of persuasion and influence. Here, the goal is not for the challenger to obtain new information for herself, but to persuade the one challenged to change his course of action. The challenger is hopeful that, through the dispensation of new knowledge, the one reproached will alter his ways. Philo here accentuates this dimension of confrontation when noting who has the right to perform parrhesia: “When, then, has a slave freedom of speech [παρρησίαν] toward his master? Is it not when [the slave] is conscious that he has not wronged [the master], but that he [slave] has done and said everything with a view to the advantage of his owner?”12 In other words, the challenge for Philo does not serve as a method for the challenger to obtain new information (as in the last model), but rather to educate the one challenged, and, through that, persuade the other to take a different and more beneficial course of action. According to Rabbi Levi (in Genesis Rabbah), Abraham launches one of these two challenges (depending on which reading you adopt), either “challenge as question” or “challenge as persuasion,” and, strikingly, is rewarded for doing so. On the other extreme, there is “challenge as fault finding.” In this instance, the purpose of the challenge is not for the challenger to receive new information (like the challenge as question), or to educate and transform the one being challenged (like the challenge as persuasion), but to express anger and dissatisfaction, whether to oneself, the other, or society at large. In this form of challenge, the challenger does not necessarily need to directly confront the other. In fact, the challenger can live hundreds of years later because the purpose of the challenge is to allow the challenger to express his or her feelings and values without necessarily desiring any change in the real world (as is the case in the last two models). No new information or action is necessarily sought. Unlike “challenge as persuasion,” “challenge as critique” seeks



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either to provide a cathartic moment for oneself, to educate society, or to inflict emotional harm on another. Moreover, this type of challenge is antagonistic as the challenger directly opposes the one being challenged and does not seek, as do the other forms of challenge, to narrow the relational gap between the parties. In his treatise How to Distinguish a Flatterer from a Friend, Plutarch (46–120 ce) distinguishes between these last two types, between the virtue of challenge as persuasion, what he calls “admonishment” (νουθεσίαν), and the vice of challenge as critique, what he calls “fault-finding” (μέμψινεἶναι).13 According to Rabbi Levi, Job launches the latter challenge, which, quite naturally, is the most severe in relation to God. On the heuristic spectrum that I have just constructed, we can, a priori, maintain that “challenge as question” assumes the least problematic type when applied to God. The challenge is presented with humility and in a respectful manner, and therefore does not imply divine deficiency and does not upset the image of divine superiority. “Challenge as criticism,” the third type, occupies the most problematic place for its disrespectful tone and claim of divine imperfection. While challenge as persuasion might not be as theologically problematic as challenge as criticism—because persuasion is a more graceful act—it does compromise the notion of God as teacher or perfect moral arbiter. It ought to be recalled that while these various types of challenges contrast significantly with one another, they would all, as distinct religious postures, stand in opposition to a theologically submissive approach, which would dictate, following Rabbi Akiva, virtual silence in the face of injustice and persecution. This religious posture, as we have seen, characterizes the tannaitic period.

The Topic: Sake of Self or Others? Rabbi Levi’s distinction between a virtuous challenge and a sinful one revolves around the content and tone of the challenge: was it presented, or intended, as a question, suggestion, or critique? By contrast, Deuteronomy Rabbah, another work of Tanḥuma-Yelammedenu, presents a different demarcation: “He who has clean hands and a pure heart [‫[ ]ובר לבב‬Psalms 24:4]: Rabbi Isaac said: even for an ordinary man to speak to his friend [‫ ]לחבירו‬in such a manner would be unseemly [‫]גנאי הוא לו‬, yet Moses said: Let not Your anger, O Lord, blaze forth against Your people [Exod. 32:11]. It was only because his motive was perfectly unselfish [‫]לבו ברור עליו‬, in that he was not pleading for his own needs [‫]צורך עצמו‬, but for the needs of Israel [’‫( ”]צורכן של ישר‬Deuteronomy Rabbah

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11:2).14 This teaching, attributed to Rabbi Isaac, claims that it would be inappropriate [‫ ]גנאי‬for a person to critique a friend in the manner that Moses questions God in Exodus 32:11. As this claim would be true for an ordinary person, Rabbi Isaac argues, it would no doubt be true for Moses, an extraordinary person, who spoke out against God when God intended to destroy the Israelite people for worshipping the Golden Calf. After God announced his intended destruction, Moses challenges God: “Why does your anger burn hot against your people [Exod. 32:11]?” The question, of course, is rhetorical, if not acerbic and combative, as Moses is surely aware that God becomes angry at Israel for committing idolatry. Nevertheless, Rabbi Isaac maintains that Moses’ challenge is fully appropriate because Moses’ motives were “pure” (‫ )בר‬and unselfish. His sincerity is reflected in the fact that Moses does not challenge God for the sake of himself but for the sake of others—the Israelites. Moses’ primary concern is to defend Israel at all costs. Had Moses challenged God for personal gain, his motives would have been tainted with impurity and his protest would have been deemed inappropriate or unseemly. Significantly, in this text, Moses’ critique of God is not merely sanctioned or justified but exalted and praised; Moses’ courageous act is said to exemplify his “purity of heart.” To justify his teaching, Rabbi Isaac personalizes the general claim of Psalms 24:4 that only a person “whose deeds are blameless and whose motives are pure” can enter into the Temple sanctuary or, as Scripture calls it, the “mountain of the Lord” (Ps. 24:3).” For Rabbi Isaac, the passage from Psalms does not refer, in a general sense, to anyone who has these virtues, but specifically to Moses.15 In short, the proof text accentuating Moses’ “pure motives” is derived from Moses’ selfless challenge to God after the Israelites worshipped the Golden Calf. In this moment, Moses risks his own well-being not for the sake of himself, but for the sake of others. With its teaching, Deuteronomy Rabbah presents a second post-­tannaitic distinction between virtuous and sinful forms of theological challenge. The focus is not, as it was for Rabbi Levi, on the form and content of the protest, but on the virtues of the protestor: is he a person of selflessness and “pureness of heart,” one whose central concern is to alleviate the pain and suffering of others, or is the protestor more concerned for his own self-regard and standing? If the former, the critique of God is justified; if the latter, the critique is illegitimate—even for “friends” of God. This notion, that reprimanding God is less problematic when defending the well-being of others as opposed to oneself, is also found in the early medieval Midrash, in Exodus Rabbah I (ca. ninth or tenth century):



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What is the meaning of still You have not delivered Your people [Exod. 5:23]? . . . Rabbi Akiva said that Moses argued thus: I know that you will one day deliver them, but what about those who have been immured in the buildings? Then the Attribute of Justice sought to strike Moses, but after God saw that Moses argued thus only for the sake of Israel [‫]שבשביל ישראל‬, the Attribute of Justice did not strike him. Then the Lord said to Moses, “You shall soon see what I will do to Pharaoh” (Exod. 6:1)—You will witness only the war against Pharaoh but not the wars against the thirty-one kings of Pharaoh, on whom your disciple Joshua will exact vengeance. From here we derive that it was at this point that Moses received the sentence that he would not enter the land. (Exodus Rabbah I [Shinan] 5:22, 23) Before explicating this late midrashic text, it will help to recall that an earlier rabbinic passage regarded Moses’ critique of God in Exodus 5:22–23 as the reason why God bans Moses from the Promised Land.16 In that Exodus verse, Moses reprimands God for not only failing to redeem Israel, but for making matters worse: “Why did you bring harm [‫ ]למה הרעתה‬to this people?” Specifically, Moses complains to God that God’s earlier suggestion that he and Aaron confront Pharaoh only backfired. Rather than free the Israelite slaves, Israel’s workload only increased. In the above medieval reworking of Rabbi Akiva’s teaching, however, Moses does not challenge God for failing to save Israel, but for the reverse: Moses indeed knows that God will ultimately save Israel, but, because of that, chides God for not saving them now.17 Put differently, according to Rabbi Akiva in Exodus Rabbah I, Moses questions God as to why He would allow for the death and suffering of the Israelites in the interim—between the present moment and the time of salvation. In response, God punishes Moses for his temerity by denying him entry into the Land of Israel. Significant for our purposes, Exodus Rabbah I adds an additional dimension that does not appear in earlier rabbinic parallels: God softens Moses’ punishment. That is because before God announced His decree, the Attribute of Justice desired to kill Moses. The divine, however, prevents the killing and saves Moses’ life. Exodus Rabbah I has God opt to give Moses the lighter punishment of barring his entry to the Promised Land rather than the harsher punishment of death because, although Moses critiqued God, he did so “for the sake of Israel” (‫)בשביל ישראל‬. How are we to understand this rabbinic distinction as it appears in these two midrashim—Deuteronomy Rabbah and Exodus Rabbah I? Why, for

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Exodus Rabbah I, should confronting God with an eye toward defending the honor or well-being of others be less problematic, and for Deuteronomy Rabbah even praiseworthy, than when a person defends his own honor or well-being? What difference should it make whom one defends? If anything, the opposite distinction ought to be proposed: the right, if not obligation, to rebuke another might only apply when the rebuker is directly affected by the offender. In both Deuteronomy Rabbah and Exodus Rabbah I, however, Moses is defending others, not himself. Put succinctly, why should the identity of the party being defended, whether it’s the challenger himself or a third party, determine the level of virtue or vice in the confrontational act? To solve this puzzle, we could argue that an act of selfless critique of God contains both a praiseworthy and problematic dimension wherein the praiseworthy gesture of extending help to others cancels out the problematic act of chiding God. In other words, the virtuous element of defending others does not directly transform the problematic dimensions of the act per se (it is still a “vice”), but merely mitigates it (as in Exodus Rabbah I) or overrides it (as in Deuteronomy Rabbah). The act of challenging God, when viewed in isolation, still stands as a problematic one. Turning again to the Greco-Roman literature on parrhesia can provide us a second way of reading these rabbinic texts. Plutarch introduces the topic of rebuke in How to Distinguish a Flatterer from a Friend by making the same distinction found in the aforementioned two midrashim: Seeing, therefore, that there are certain fatal faults attending upon frankness of speech let us in the first place divest it of all self-regard by exercising all vigilance lest we seem to have some private reason for our reproaches, such as a personal wrong or grievance. For people are wont to think that anger, not goodwill, is the motive of a man who speaks on his own behalf, and that this is not admonition but faultfinding. For frankness is friendly and noble, but fault-finding is selfish [φίλαυτον] and mean. For this reason those who speak frankly are respected and admired, while fault-finders meet with recrimination and contempt. (Plutarch, How to Distinguish a Flatterer from a Friend, 26)18 Plutarch here first notes that parrhesia, while a potentially virtuous act, can under certain circumstances be easily abused and turned into a vice. And his first example of this phenomenon, what he calls “fatal faults attending upon frankness,” refers to rebuke that is done for one’s own “self-regard” (φιλαυτίαν)



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rather than for the regard of a third party. For Plutarch, the problem with “selfish reproach” is not merely that it is selfish but that it colors or transforms the nature of the reproach itself. Now the reproach is seen less as a “goodwill” gesture made by the reproacher to convince the other of the error of his ways, but more as an angry and personal attempt by the reproacher to defend his own honor by getting back and finding fault with the other. For Plutarch, the subjective or personal element of the rebuke could, problematically, color or turn the courageous act from one of admonition (νουθεσίαν), a virtue, into one of faultfinding (μέμψινεἶναι), a vice. In making this argument, Plutarch links his prior distinction of challenge as admonition and challenge as fault-finding with the current distinction of selfish and nonselfish rebuke. Applying this Plutarchian idea to our Deuteronomy Rabbah and Exodus Rabbah texts, we could posit that Moses’ selfless devotion to defend the Israelites did not override or counterbalance the sin of protesting God (our first explanation), but that the selfless nature of his challenge defined the courageous act as a meritorious one (Deuteronomy Rabbah) or, minimally, a less sinful one (Exodus Rabbah I).

The Protestor: Insider or Outsider? Unlike Rabbi Levi and Rabbi Isaac’s teachings, other rabbinic texts focus on the relationship between the protester and God, rather than merely the content of the protest (Rabbi Levi) or for whose sake the protest is being waged (Rabbi Isaac). In these aggadot the act of protest is legitimated not by the more submissive tone of the protest or the selflessness of the courageous act, but by the privileged intimacy that exists between the protestor and God. Accordingly, the bar for sanctioned protest is not primarily or exclusively determined by the nature of the protest or the intention of the protester at the time of protest but, more broadly, by the relationship between protestor and God prior to the act. Critiques of God are deemed illegitimate, or worse, sinful, when the protester has no special connection with the divine.

Friend More specifically, some rabbinic texts regard “friendship” as the relational model one must have with God in order to challenge Him.19 Consider this statement found in the Babylonian Talmud: “Rava said: Dust should be put

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in the mouth of Job, because he makes himself a colleague [or friend] toward heaven [‫]חברותא כלפי שמיא‬. . . . Rava [further] said: Dust should be placed in the mouth of Job: is there a servant who argues with his master [‫כלום יש עבד‬ ‫( ”?]שמוכיח את רבו‬BT Bava Batra 16a). According to Rava, Job erroneously viewed himself as God’s colleague or friend (‫ )חבר‬rather than, as was really the case, God’s servant: while a friend of God would have the right to speak candidly or even “rebuke” the Creator of the World, Job, as merely a servant of God, would not.20 Job’s fundamental “sin,” according to Rava, meriting that “dust should be placed into his mouth,” was not that he rebuked God, but that, as a “servant of God,” he misidentified himself. Job presumed a friendship with God that he did not have. In similar fashion, a late rabbinic text excoriates King Hezekiah for casually praying to God “as a man speaks with his friend” (‫)כאדם שהוא מדבר עם חבירו‬.21 On the flip side, one talmudic passage lauds Abraham for refusing to critique God when initially failing to find a burial place for his wife, Sarah. Not coincidentally, the passage describes Abraham in this context not as God’s “friend” or “child,” but rather as God’s “servant.” In this way, the Talmud subtly and implicitly offers the logical grounds upon which his confrontational act would have been condemned: servants do not have the right to challenge their master.22 A few more examples will illustrate this point: the Babylonian Talmud describes Moses as a “friend” (‫ )חבירו‬of God who grabs His garment, demanding that He forgive Israel after the Golden Calf incident.23 And the prophet Jeremiah is described as God’s “best friend” (‫ )שושבינה‬who challenges God to either divorce His “wife” (Israel) or stop abusing her.24 Implicitly, these texts sanction the protest in cases where God’s confronter is His close confidant. As David Konstan has shown, in the Greco-Roman philosophical tradition, the right and even responsibility of people to critique their friends was a popular topos.25 For Isocrates (436–338 bce) parrhesia was understood as a virtuous act that one performs on his friend, even a superior one.26 As an expression of deep concern and devotion, rebuke, while difficult to give and hear, ultimately profits the one being rebuked. Here, too, the context of friendship transforms the challenge from one of fault-finding into an act of love. Plato and Aristotle, like Isocrates, argue that true friends should not be afraid to censure each other.27 The Epicurean philosopher Philodemus (110– 40 bce), too, in his book On Frank Criticism, regards parrhesia as an act that takes place among friends.28 The nexus between parrhesia and philia in the ancient world reaches its most systematic treatment in Plutarch who, echoing the aforementioned authors, argues that a willingness to admonish someone



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else is the sign of true friendship; flatterers, by contrast, are only interested in ingratiating themselves, and thus only pretend to be one’s friend. Candor, for Plutarch, is crucial in loving relationships as it allows people to fully know themselves. We need friends to speak honestly and candidly because people are blinded by their own “self-love.”29 Friends can teach others who they really are, and not merely who they want to be.30 What is missing from these Greek texts, of course, is that they only treat interhuman relations. The concept of friendship is not applied to the humandivine realm and is not evoked to justify or sanction humans confronting God. The only exception is the Greek-speaking Jewish philosopher Philo, who, anticipating the rabbis, extends the connection between friendship and critique to include the divine: All the wise are dear to God, and especially those who are wise with the wisdom of the most sacred giving of the law. And freedom of speech [παρρησία] is nearly akin to friendship [φιλίας]; since to whom would any one speak with more freedom than to his friend? Very appropriately therefore is Moses spoken of in the scriptures as dear to God, when he goes through an account of all the dangers which he had incurred by reason of his boldness, in such a way that they seem to deserve to be attributed to friendship rather than to arrogance; for audacity belongs to the character of the arrogant (or stubborn) man; but good boldness belongs to the friend.31 For Philo, Moses assumed the right to challenge God because, as a wise man, he was a “friend of God.” Because of that, Moses’ critiques of divine action should not be viewed as self-serving, “arrogant,” or “audacious” but, more positively, as “courageous” and “bold.”

Child To symbolize an intimate and close relationship with God, one that would justify confrontation, rabbinic texts not only draw upon the language of friendship but also various familial metaphors. This idea is not new, as the biblical author of Proverbs had already used a father-son analogy to justify God’s reproach of Israel: “Do not reject the discipline [‫ ]מוסר‬of the Lord, my son; Do not abhor His rebuke [‫]בתוכחתו‬. For whom the Lord loves He

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rebukes [‫]יוכיח‬, as a father the son whom he favors” (Prov. 3:11–12]. In rabbinic literature, however, the father-son metaphor is appropriated not to justify God’s “rebuke” of Israel but Israel’s rebuke of God.32 As we have seen, according to Rabbi Eleazar’s reading of Mishnah Ta’anit, Shimon ben Shetaḥ (first century bce) legitimizes the act of confronting God only for those, like Ḥoni the Circle Maker, who are compared to one who is like a “son” to God: “Were it not that you are Ḥoni, I would have placed you under a ban, but what can I do unto you who nudges [‫ ]מתחטא‬God and He accedes to your request, as a son that nudges his father [‫ ]כבן שהוא מתחטא על אביו‬and he accedes to his request.” For Shimon ben Shetaḥ, others of lesser status, who do not maintain such an intimate relationship with God, would not only be discouraged from doing so but also banned from the community. This idea, that the children of God have a distinctive right to implore God, later reappears in Exodus Rabbah II. But unlike Shimon’s formulation, it extends the son metaphor to all of Israel: “Just as a son nudges [‫ ]מתחטא‬his father and [the father, nevertheless] fulfills [the son’s] will, so too you [Israel] nudge Him [God] and He [nevertheless] fulfills your desires.”33 In short, both Mishnah Ta’anit and Exodus Rabbah II sanction challenges against God by borrowing from the father-son analogy, yet they argue over how far to extend that analogy: to select individuals (Shimon ben Shetaḥ’s view) or to all of Israel (Exodus Rabbah’s view).

Husband Confrontations with God most often take the form of critique or challenge. But there is another significant type of confrontation found throughout rabbinic literature that has received lesser attention: making demands of God. The sages often declare “whatever the righteous decree of God, God will fulfill” (‫צדיק גוזר‬ ‫)והקב”ה מקיים‬.34 This theological dictum inverts the typical ancient Jewish view that positions God as the one who decrees (‫ )גוזר‬and Israel as the one who fulfills those decrees. In this bold maxim, the sages position the righteous in the more dominant position in relation to God.35 While most of these rabbinic texts grant this privilege to all righteous people, Pesiqta de-Rav Kahana limits this power to one person: “The man of God [‫[ ]איש האלהים‬Deut. 33:1]: Reish Lakish said: Were it not written in Scripture, it would be impossible to say such a thing [‫—]אלמלא מקרא כתוב אי אפשר לאומרו‬as a man makes decrees on his wife and she does them, so too Moses decrees [‫ ]גוזר‬on the Holy One, blessed be He, and He does [them]” (Pesiqta de-Rav Kahana, supplement to Zot Haberakhah 1 [TY]).36



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In Deuteronomy 33:1, Moses is described as a “man [‫ ]איש‬of God.” Veering from the plain sense, however, Reish Lakish reads the word ish to mean not “man of”—as the context clearly suggests—but “husband of.” According to this counterintuitive reading, Scripture declares that, as God’s “husband,” Moses could make demands of God, his “wife.” Hence, this text appropriates a new relational analogy to sanction the confrontational motif: not friend-friend or parent-child, but husband-wife.37 The midrashim presented in this chapter justify challenging God when the challenger assumes a privileged relationship with the divine. With this view, the fundamental problem with confronting God relates to issues of respect, or of upsetting the proper hierarchy that ought to exist between humanity and God rather than seeing the problem as the espousal of false metaphysical claims. That being the case, people who have a close and privileged position in relation to God, such as Ḥoni or Moses, would overcome the detrimental effects normally associated with the act of theological protest. Their challenges and protests would not be seen as disrespectful, but as a sign of love and concern that is typical of friends and family members. And, quite remarkably, sometimes these types of justified critiques are glorified. To review, we have encountered three post-tannaitic distinctions between sanctioned and unsanctioned theological confrontations. The first centered on the nature and tone of the protest itself: Was it articulated as a question, suggestion, or accusation? The second focused on the beneficiary of the protest: is it waged for the sake of the protester herself or a third party? And, finally, the third distinction revolved around the status of the protestor: is he an insider or outsider? These restrictive attitudes—in whatever form— reflect an intermediate position between the unequivocal condemnations of such speech and its unqualified acceptance.

Phenomenological Approach At the start of this chapter, I presented one approach to account for these “intermediate positions”: they reconcile, on the one hand, the biblical sanction of protest and, on the other hand, its early rabbinic condemnation. In this sense, they reflect a compromise between the two opposing perspectives presented in the first two chapters. Following the methodological approach of Elliot Wolfson’s Through a Speculum That Shines, however, another possibility emerges. Tensions over the legitimacy of theological protest within the rabbinic corpus

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might also be explained phenomenologically, or what Wolfson calls, in a different context, “typologically.”38 According to this interpretive approach, alluded to at the start of Chapter 2, conflicting rabbinic voices on the legitimacy of confrontation might also represent internal tensions waging within the heart and mind of a single individual or society. That should not come as a surprise. Conflicted feelings about the right or benefit of critiquing God would naturally emerge when we consider the complex nature of the act of critique. As I have sought to accentuate so far in this study, the nature of critique is paradoxical. On the one hand, as seen in our discussions of parrhesia and tokheḥah, when done appropriately, critique reflects or engenders increased intimacy between two parties; it could also aid the one being critiqued, intellectually and morally. On the other hand, the act of critique, as is well known, can also cause pain to the recipient, even at times alienating one party from the other. Not only are feelings hurt, but the act of critique often repositions the critic on a higher rung in the community’s social hierarchy. It can be an expression of power. In a series of lectures at the University of California, Berkeley in 1983 (one of his last), Michel Foucault reflected on the historical and philosophical implications of this two-faced nature of critique.39 He noted how, in the classical world, parrhesia was used by the emperor’s advisors toward the emperor. Quite expectedly, this type of speech act was no simple matter; according to Foucault, ambiguity, danger, and uncertainty pervaded the entire moment. Often the inferior character who exercised parrhesia wondered how his superior would react to his daring and bold critiques. Will the superior punish him for disrespecting the honor due to the seat of power, or will the superior thank him for steering him in the right direction? To a large degree, Foucault’s description of parrhesia as a dangerous and yet courageous act that stands to be condemned or praised nicely describes the ambivalent and tenuous nature of this form of discourse. The ambiguous nature of critique—as an act of potential love but also as an act of potential alienation—emerges starkly in those rabbinic texts examined in this chapter where the boundary line between a sanctioned protest of God (that is celebrated) and an unsanctioned one (that incurs punishment) is murky. Recall Rabbi Levi’s teaching in Genesis Rabbah: while Job and Abraham voiced “similar” challenges to God, Abraham is rewarded and Job is punished. This discrepancy highlights how questioning or protesting another—and especially God!—is not a neutral act, but a powerfully dangerous one that elicits a forceful response, whether positive or negative. The same could be said about Rabbi Isaac’s distinction as found in Deuteronomy Rabbah: he posits a thin line between an unseemly and frowned upon challenge of God, and a praiseworthy



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challenge that guarantees a person exclusive access to the Temple Mount. And, most famously, Shimon ben Shetaḥ (as interpreted by Rabbi Eleazar) would have excommunicated Ḥoni for his brazen demand that God end the drought, if not for the fact that Ḥoni maintained a close familial relationship with God. Thus, the very same act that would warrant excommunication when launched by the “wrong” person saves the Jewish community when launched by the “right” person. These cases highlight how the act of critique in general, and in rabbinic literature in particular, contains a meritorious dimension as well as a deeply subversive one. As a result, the boundary line between a sanctioned challenge of God and a nonsanctioned challenge is often vague. Nevertheless, despite its vagueness, or perhaps because of it, the stakes are quite high: a sanctioned protest is praised and rewarded; and an unsanctioned one is decried and worthy of punishment. This “phenomenological” or “typological” approach also provides another lens to explain some of the inconsistencies encountered in the first half of Chapter 2. For example, it was noted that some rabbinic texts formulate their opposition to protest while proclaiming the very critiques they seek to suppress (synchronic tension). We also saw that within one rabbinic text/tradition, later voices or strata evince a different attitude toward protest—typically a permissive one (diachronic tension). While I presented subversive explanations to account for these local tensions, we should also not foreclose the more general possibility that they reflect a deep-seated internal struggle over the propriety of theological critique. That is, while recognizing the prohibition of hirhur, some rabbis deeply desired to engage with God in hirhur. While defending the absurdity of critiquing God conceptually, some rabbis yearned to do so emotionally. To be clear: with this interpretive approach, we ought not to abandon the overarching argument of the book—that inconsistent rabbinic statements toward theological protest can typically be explained chronologically. I am convinced this is accurate. Yet I would argue that both of these approaches—the phenomenological and the chronological—need to be employed to fully illuminate the complexity of the rabbinic tradition with regard to theological protest.

Literary Forms The second half of this chapter continues to map out the variety of confrontational types in rabbinic literature. However, these additional types will not be located by distinguishing between sanctioned and unsanctioned challenges,

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but rather by isolating the different literary forms and contexts in which the sages situate their own challenges. This juncture thus marks a transition in the book, for heretofore we have primarily sought to uncover rabbinic attitudes toward theological protest. Toward this end, rabbinic protest literature was examined but only insofar as they could reveal rabbinic attitudes toward protest. By contrast, the rest of the book explicates critiques of God waged by the sages themselves without regard to the question of legitimacy. This material will aptly illustrate that theological protest was not only a theoretical subject of conversion between rabbis, but a veritable speech act embarked on by the rabbis. Of course, we must recall that the rabbis most often produce these critiques by placing them into the mouths of various biblical and mythic heroes. Although from a scholarly perspective the critiques are designated as “rabbinic” creations, the rabbis do not admit as such. This act of ventriloquism provides a safe space for the rabbis to generate their critiques with impunity as they present themselves not as originators of the confrontation but only as their transmitters. The sages thereby remove themselves from the picture, placing sole responsibility for the challenge onto a particular character. Furthermore, the sages claim that these bold scenes had long been hidden within the “divine” words of Torah. As good exegetes, they were merely discovering them, not inventing them. Notwithstanding these displacement methods, modern readers recognize that these confrontations were crafted by the rabbis. Our investigation, then, will highlight the various tropes in which the sages embed their protests. These include the forensic, the liturgical, and the parabolic. In doing so, I seek to understand how these framings affect the nature of the rabbinic critique. In other words, what function or purpose do these various tropes serve the rabbis?

Courtroom Lawsuits Readers of the Hebrew Bible likely know well that biblical characters often use courtroom language to critique divine morality.40 This trope most famously appears in Abraham’s arguing with God over the proposed destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, when Abraham calls out: “Will not the Judge [‫ ]שופט‬of the earth act justly [‫”?]משפט‬41 Similarly, Jeremiah introduces the framework of a legal lawsuit (‫ )ריב‬into his criticisms of God.42 The usage of forensic imagery to confront God is also found in the Book of Job, in particular in chapters 9, 13, and 23, where such terms as “claim” (‫)ריב‬43 and “justice” (‫ )משפט‬appear frequently.44



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Forensic terms are also used by late rabbinic texts to express ethical critiques of God, most notably referencing God’s din, meaning “court case,” “judgment,” or “justice.” Unlike the typical legal language employed in the Hebrew Bible, such as “claim” (‫ )ריב‬or “justice” (‫)משפט‬, rabbinic literature has various characters call for judgment, din, against God, or argue that God’s din should be scrutinized or challenged. For example, Genesis Rabbah (fifth century ce) has Abel blaming God for complicity in Abel’s own murder as God failed to intercede on his behalf. Significantly, this amoraic text uses courtroom imagery—and specifically the term din—in communicating Abel’s critique: “Let my court case [‫ ]דיני‬appear before the King!”45 In late midrashic texts, Moses brings a court case, din, against God for denying him entry into the Promised Land,46 and according to Ecclesiastes Rabbah, Saul “judges” (‫)מדיין‬ God for demanding that he commit genocide against the Amalekite people.47 While these sages employ forensic language in their critiques of divine conduct, they do not present us with an actual courtroom scene. As Michael de Roche convincingly argues with regard to the biblical use of the term riv, the use of forensic language to critique God is not always tantamount to a lawsuit. “The quarrel between Yahweh and Israel [often] remains on a personal, bilateral level . . . [and for] this reason the terms ‘prophetic lawsuit’ and ‘covenantal lawsuit’ should be abandoned.”48 Thus, sensitive to de Roche’s distinction, in what follows I analyze two late midrashic texts that provide us not only with a bilateral court case (din) with God, but present full-fledged lawsuits within imagined courtrooms. By elucidating these post-amoraic texts, I hope to theorize as to why late Palestinian sages sometimes appropriate courtroom frameworks to launch protests of divine conduct. Stated otherwise, what does a highly charged courtroom scene provide the sages? How does placing an ethical critique of God into this context affect the nature of that critique and God’s subsequent response? I address these questions after analyzing two courtroom midrashim.

The Birth of Dinah In the Bible, the birth of Dinah, daughter to Leah, is presented without any incident or problem (Gen. 30:21). However, Midrash Tanḥuma rewrites the biblical account to produce a combative encounter between Leah and God: You find that this happened to Leah. After she had given birth to six sons, she prophesized that Jacob would ultimately have twelve

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sons. Since she had already given birth to six sons, and was pregnant with her seventh child, and the two handmaids had each born two sons, making ten sons in all, Leah arose and protested [‫]מתרסת‬ the Holy One, saying: Master of the Universe, twelve tribes are to descend from Jacob, and since I have already given birth to six sons, and am pregnant with a seventh child, and each of the handmaidens has born two sons, which accounts for ten sons, [if the child within me is a male], my sister will not bear even as many sons as the handmaidens. The Holy One, blessed be He, hearkened to her prayer and converted the fetus in her womb into a female, as it said: Afterward, she bore him a daughter, and named her Dinah [Gen. 30:21]. The masculine form of “afterward” is written in this verse and not the feminine. Why [did Leah call her] Dinah? Because the righteous Leah stood up in judgment [‫ ]בדין‬before the Holy One, blessed be He. The Holy One, blessed be He, said to her: Since you are merciful, so I shall be merciful to her. Forthwith, And God remembered Rachel [Gen. 30:22]. (Tanḥuma, Vayetse 8)49 In this Midrash, Leah, one of Jacob’s wives, foresees that only twelve boys will be born to Jacob. Thus, should she, Leah, give birth to her seventh boy, then Rachel, her sister and co-wife to Jacob, would give birth to no more than one son, while each of Jacob’s handmaidens already have two. Worried by this possibility and thus desperately seeking a girl, Leah “protests” (‫ )מתרסת‬against God, declaring: “[If the child within me is a male] my sister will not bear even as many sons as the handmaidens.” At this point, God concedes the challenge and miraculously switches the sex of the fetus from male to female. The Tanḥuma has Leah naming her daughter Dinah after Leah’s decision to “stand in judgment [din] before God.”50 The root of the name Dinah is din (judgment); through this name designation, Leah marks the courageous moment in which she angrily stood as a litigant and confronted God in a court of law. The appropriation of courtroom imagery to confront God is not unusual for the midrashic authors. As Joseph Heinemann has noted, complaints against God in rabbinic literature are often patterned on a courtroom scene where the petitioner assumes the role of defendant and God plays the judge.51 Heinemann points out that the specific roles played by the petitioner and God are often interchangeable. It is only a “small step” from defending oneself against accusations to launching “counter-accusations.” Thus, “the petitioner (often) . . . plays



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a double role. At times he is the defendant or the accused party . . . at other times he becomes the prosecutor who hurls accusations. God, then, is not only the judge . . . but is [H]imself a litigant in the case.”52 Following Heinemann, Leah’s “standing before God in judgment” in this text signals that God is also being judged. The midrashic conclusion supports this reading, for God concedes Leah’s challenge by declaring that “[since] you [Leah] are merciful, so I [God] shall be merciful to her [Rachel].” This line indicates that not only has Leah’s claim been justified, but that through the process, God, the judge, has recognized His ethical shortcomings and been moved by the court proceedings.53 Thus, in contrast to the classical theological maxim of imitatio dei, where man imitates God’s ethical traits (“just as God is merciful, so shall you be merciful”),54 God here learns to be merciful from a human being—imitatio hominis!55 Leah has become an ethical role model for divine behavior.56

Salvation Through Children According to some rabbinic texts, wicked parents are saved from going to Gehinnom (Hell) if their children die young or righteously.57 While the sages adduce a number of different scriptural proof texts to anchor this theology, one passage from Ecclesiastes Rabbah (ca. sixth century ce) regards the principle as established in a mythic courtroom encounter between young children who have died and God: I further observed all the oppression [that goes on under the sun: the tears of the oppressed, with none to comfort them] [Eccl. 4:1]. . . .  Rabbi Judah says: It refers to the children who are buried early in life because of the sins of their fathers in this world. In the Hereafter they will stand with the righteous group [in heaven], while their fathers will stand with the wicked group [in Gehinnom]. They [the children] will speak before Him: Lord of the universe, did we not die early only because of the sins of our fathers? Let our fathers exit [Gehinnom] through our merits. He [God] replies to them: Your fathers sinned [only] after your [death], and their wrongdoings accuse them. Rabbi Judah b. Rabbi Ilai said in the name of Rabbi Joshua b. Levi: At that time, Elijah, may he be remembered for good, will be there to suggest a legal defense. He will say to the children: Speak before Him: Lord of the universe, which attribute of Yours predom-

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inates, that of goodness or punishment? Surely the attribute of goodness is great and that of punishment small, yet we died through the sins of our fathers. If, then, the attribute of goodness exceeds the other [attribute], how much more should our fathers come over to us [and join us in heaven]!? Therefore He [God] says to them [the children]: He [Elijah] has taught you a good defense [‫ ;]יפה לימדה אתכם סניגוריא‬let them come over to you; as it is written, They shall live with their children and shall return [Zech. 10:9]: which means that they [the parents] returned from the descent to Gehinnom and were rescued through the merit of their children.58 (Ecclesiastes Rabbah 4:1) In the first part of the midrash, Rabbi Judah reads Ecclesiastes’ description of “all the oppression [that goes on under the sun]” (Eccl. 4:1) as referring specifically to children who die young because of the sins of their parents. Brazenly, this late rabbinic text depicts the biblical dictum of transgenerational punishment wherein God “visits the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generation” (Exod. 20:5) as oppressive.59 Despite dwelling with the righteous in heaven (ostensibly because they died without sin), these children are deemed “oppressed” not only because they have lost their lives through no fault of their own, but also because there are “none to comfort them” (Eccl. 4:1), as their fathers are with the wicked in Gehinnom. In Rabbi Judah’s account, the children themselves protest their oppression in a divine courtroom; using a legal a fortiori argument, the children request that their parents be allowed to join them in heaven. They argue that if they themselves died young in this world because of their parents’ sins, then, conversely, their parents should be rewarded in the next world for their children’s merit. Unfortunately, God, the judge, denies their wish, arguing that the death of righteous children only atones for sins committed by the adults before the moment of their child’s death, but not those committed after. Thus for Rabbi Judah, the account ends on a pessimistic note. For Rabbi Judah b. Ilai, however, the mythic trial has a happy ending. After God rejects the children’s initial plea, Elijah the Prophet appears on the scene and teaches the children how to formulate a successful courtroom argument. He advises the children to slightly shift their legal claim to accentuate God’s goodness: if God punishes righteous children for the sins of parents, then certainly God should save the parents because of their righteous children, as God’s attribute of goodness surpasses His attribute of punishment. Strikingly, in response, God reverses His decision and accepts this more forceful argument,



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telling the children that “he [Elijah] has taught you a good defense” (‫יפה לימדה‬ ‫)אתכם סניגוריא‬.60 The parents are then reunited with their children in heaven. According to this view, Scripture alludes to this divine change of heart when the prophet Zechariah declares: “And they [interpreted as the wicked parents] shall live with their children, and shall return [interpreted as from Gehinnom to heaven]” (Zech. 10:9).61 Significantly, this midrash gives humans immensely persuasive power in shaping how God governs the afterlife. Equally striking, this midrash also valorizes an evolving or progressive biblical theology. Initially, as per Ecclesiastes 4:1, God maintained an oppressive punitive dictum in which uncomforted dead children are destined to dwell in heaven without the comfort of their parents. After a successful legal plea, God reverses His decision, thereby mitigating the sad lament of Ecclesiastes, at least to some extent. At some point in mythic time, a new theology arises, one in which “they [the unrighteous parents] shall live with their children, and shall return [from Gehinnom to heaven]” (Zech. 10:9). Like other post-tannaitic texts, this midrash uses the imagery of a divine courtroom to narrate a protest of divine insensitivity. Through this literary device, the righteous children who die young do not critique God in a vacuum, but do so in a highly formalized and structured framework. Their complaint that God unfairly affirms vicarious punishment but not vicarious merit does not merely hang in the air; rather, it becomes part of an official courtroom transcript.

The Courtroom as a Method of Protection I argue that the appropriation of a courtroom setting to frame these and other moral critiques of God in late rabbinic literature serves a dual purpose. First, it implicitly sanctions or legitimizes the right of the confronter to challenge God. Litigants and defendants in a court case have the legal right to present their best arguments and claims to secure a successful verdict. Theologically, protests against divine action can be tolerated or sheltered in this formal context, as courtroom procedure provides claimants with a validating structure and safe space to express their opinions.62 Second, the forensic framework offers protection not only to the one confronting God, but to God Himself. With supreme power and authority, God as judge alone determines the verdict. In a sense, even when critiques fundamentally seek to undermine authority and disempower, they are softened by the overwhelming authority

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and power that judges already wield. In other words, the courtroom structure conceals these midrashic critiques, muting their impact as “reproaches” to God. They are presented as typical court cases: litigants speak their mind; defendants put forth their best arguments to achieve vindication. The above two midrashic court cases (as well as others)63 are far from standard representations of courtrooms. Litigants do not normally lash out at the judge, and the focus of attention is generally not the prior actions of the judge, but only the alleged behavior of the litigants. As we have noted, in these midrashim, while God formally occupies the role of judge, He is actually the defendant. In these cases, God is accused of making the wrong decision. Through the proceedings of the trial, God is moved to recognize the problematic nature of His own past deeds and to revise them: while Leah stands trial, God recognizes His mistake in making Leah’s fetus a male; and the petitions of the righteous deceased children move God to realize His error in placing their parents in Gehinnom. These divine courtroom scenarios more closely resemble a court of appeals than a lower court. In them, the appellate judge (God) does not reflect on the past behavior of the litigants in isolation, as a trial court judge would do; rather, God primarily reviews the decisions of the lower court. In this monotheistic system, it is God’s own earlier decisions that are now being reviewed and questioned. In these specific texts, note how Leah’s court case only occurs once she is pregnant. The court case brought by the deceased righteous children takes place after God places their parents in Gehinnom, not before. In short, the litigants in these mythic divine courtrooms are reacting to a prior divine action; they are boldly challenging God to reevaluate His own initial ruling. Yet as these challenges are situated within a seemingly typical courtroom context where God is judge and not defendant, the sting of these critiques is to some extent defanged. In other words, courtroom critiques of God have two primary affects. On the one hand, it legitimates the challenge, and crucially provides a safe space for the challenger to challenge God without restraints; on the other hand, the forensic context moderates the challenge as it presents the reproach of God as merely a defense plea.

As Prayers In addition to lawsuits, the rabbis also describe challenging God as a “prayer.” The nexus between prayer and protest, of course, does not originate with the



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rabbis. It is a common trope in the biblical Book of Psalms, which not only contains submissive praises of and requests from God, but also assertive challenges. While not using the heightened forensic imagery of Jeremiah or Job, Psalms includes numerous laments that draw upon questions to powerfully confront God. In these verses, the psalmists struggle with their own misery and God’s apparent silence, rejection, and abandonment; and they seek to understand how a merciful God could appear, at times, so merciless.64 As noted in Chapter 2, the linking of prayer and protest in rabbinic literature has been treated by Joseph Heinemann in his work Prayer in the Talmud.65 He argues that while the sages were not willing to standardize protests in the fixed liturgy—this would be too radical a move—they were willing to level challenges against God in their spontaneous prayers. Notwithstanding Heinemann’s astute distinction, some Palestinian sages did interpret a fixed preparatory call to prayer as, in part, a call to protest. Recall the text we encountered in Chapter 2 from the Jerusalem Talmud that requires the prayer community to instruct the cantor before he takes the podium not to “come and pray” but rather “to come and draw near” (‫ )בוא וקרב‬because this latter phrase also connotes, among other things, the notion of doing “war” (‫ )מלחמה‬with God.66 While Rabbi Phineas and others transmitted this preparatory call to liturgical “war” in the name of Rabbi Menaḥem, Rabbi Phineas himself taught a different confrontational teaching related to prayer. He claims that the biblical figure Daniel elided a key part of the well-known liturgical phrase “God, the great, mighty and awesome,” which according to Rabbi Phineas had been enacted by Moses (see Deut. 10:17), as a method to protest God’s unwillingness to save Israel from bondage. This teaching, too, appears in Tractate Berakhot of the Jerusalem Talmud: “Said Rabbi Phineas: Moses ordained the form of the prayer, ‘Great and mighty and awesome God’ [Deut. 10:17] . . . [However] Daniel [only] said, ‘O Lord, the great and awesome’ [Dan. 9:4]. And why did he not call Him ‘mighty’? [‫ ?]גיבור‬Because when we, His children are [in captivity] in chains, where is His might?” (JT Berakhot 7:3).67 According to Rabbi Phineas, while Moses had described God as “great, mighty and awesome,” Daniel elided the term “mighty” from the patriarch’s liturgical adulation because it would be absurd to call God “mighty” when “His children are [in captivity] in chains.” Sensing the sacrilegious nature of Daniel’s act, the Talmud asks: “Do men of flesh and blood [such as Daniel] have the power to limit such things [i.e., praises of God]? Rabbi Isaac b. Eleazar said: The prophets know that God is always true [‫ ]אמיתי‬and they do not try to flatter [Him]” (JT Berakhot 7:3). In this phrase, Rabbi Isaac b. Eleazar justifies Daniel’s brazen act of

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withdrawing one of God’s praises from the standard liturgy. He posits that God does not want his prophets to praise God with all sorts of attributes they do not believe or experience. For Rabbi Isaac, God is not interested in “flattery” (‫)חניפה‬ but “truth” (‫)אמת‬.68 And the truth in this case is that God’s power in Daniel’s time had not been manifest.69 While in these two cases the sages appropriate fixed liturgy as a tool to struggle with the divine (either by what is said or not said), they also adopt the language of “prayer” in nonliturgical settings to frame their theological protests. This move should not surprise us as the rabbis often transform explicit biblical prayers into biblical protests. For example, Moses’ submissive “prayers” that God forgive Israel after the Golden Calf incident and, later, that he be allowed entry into the Promised Land become strong protests in some rabbinic traditions.70 Similarly, Hannah’s submissive “prayer” turns into a moment wherein Hannah assertively threatens God with defying Jewish law should God refrain from providing her with a child (1 Sam. 1:12).71 Admittedly, in these sorts of cases, the rabbinic decision to characterize the protest as “prayer” is less significant for it merely echoes the scriptural appellation.72 However, the rabbinic designation of protest as “prayer” achieves greater significance when the biblical story has no record of prayer. Take, for example, the Tanḥuma’s rereading of the biblical story of Sarai’s captivity in Pharaoh’s palace (Gen. 12:10–20). In the Bible, Abram and Sarai descend to Egypt in response to a devastating famine in the Land of Canaan. To protect himself, Abraham tells his beautiful wife to inform the Egyptians that she is merely his sister. After Sarai’s beauty is noticed, Egyptian courtiers take her to Pharaoh’s palace. Soon afterward, “the Lord afflicted Pharaoh and his household with mighty plagues on account of Sarai, the wife of Abram” (10:17). In the biblical account, neither Abram nor Sarai challenge God for the presumed difficulties they encounter in Egypt. In fact, no communication is recorded at all between any biblical character and God. In its retelling of the story, however, the Tanḥuma imagines Abram complaining to God for placing his wife in a painful incarceration: “And the Princes of Pharaoh saw her [‫]ויראו‬, and praised her unto Pharaoh [Gen. 12:15]—When Abraham saw [‫ ]שראה‬this, he began to weep, and pray [‫ ]ומתפלל‬to the Holy One, blessed be He: Master of the Universe, is this to be my reward for my abiding trust [‫ ]בטחתי‬in You? Now, act for the sake of Your compassion and Your lovingkindness, ‘let me not be ashamed of my expectation’ [‫[ ]מסברי‬Ps. 119:116]” (Tanḥuma Lekh Lekha 5).73 In this text, Abram sarcastically questions God for placing him and his wife in a precarious situation where they could be



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mistreated: “Is this to be my reward for my abiding trust in you?” Abram demands that God rectify their current predicament. Significantly, note how the Tanḥuma designates Abram’s protest as “prayer.” Why would the rabbis frame these and other confrontations with God as moments of “prayer?”74 I posit that labeling an irreverent act as devotional protects and legitimizes the problematic language or tone adopted by the (biblical) challenger; like courtroom cases, the prayer context frames the subversive religious act as a sanctioned one. And, moreover, it provides a safe space for the challenger to heighten the content of the critique. This rabbinic device resembles Philodemus’s and Plutarch’s suggestion that “one leaven blame with praise.”75 And yet, while the “prayer” designation allows for the intensification of challenge, it also has a moderating effect, for now the communication is not labeled as a “protest” but only a “prayer.” In short, like the courtroom context, the prayer context both legitimates the confrontation but also, paradoxically, undermines its force. For while the bold and combative content is religiously protected, it has a steep price: the irreverent communication is framed as a pious one. Unlike the aforementioned aggadic texts, which do not treat or problematize the relationship between prayer and protest, Midrash Psalms cites an anonymous group of “rabbis” as doing just that.76 While acknowledging the prayer-protest connection, these unnamed sages continue to treat them as two distinct categories. More specifically, using various proof texts, they depict four biblical heroes—Moses, Jeremiah, Habakkuk, and David—as “directing their prayers [to God after] they chided the Holy One, blessed be He, with their words [‫]וקינטרו דברים‬.” Seemingly, for these anonymous rabbis, prayer serves to mitigate the dangerous effects the prior protest may have triggered. In a remarkable response, Rabbi Judah bar Simon challenged this bifurcation of protest and prayer: “But were not their very prayers chidings of [God]?” For Rabbi Judah, prayer and protest should not be seen as two separate domains. Buttressing his own proof texts, Rabbi Judah boldly argues that these biblical protests of God can in and of themselves be considered acts of prayer. In short, critiquing God can be a devotional act. The lemma that stimulated this debate is “a prayer of Moses, a man [‫ ]איש‬of God” (Ps. 90:1). Rather than reading “ish” as a Hebrew word meaning “man,” this rabbinic tradition read it as the Aramaic word ‫אווש‬ (“avash”), meaning “to shout.” Thus, Moses both prayed and shouted to God, and the debate between the anonymous sages and Rabbi Judah bar Simon is whether this praying consisted of shouting (i.e., protesting) or whether the praying and shouting/chiding are independent communications.77

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As Parables As is well known, rabbinic literature draws upon parables to communicate its teachings. In them, God is most often compared to a king, and Israel, or select biblical characters, to a member of the royal court, either as queen, prince, or the king’s best friend.78 In his Parables in Midrash, David Stern demonstrates that many aggadic parables already existed in the ancient Greco-Roman world, with some even containing kernels of historical truth.79 They were subsequently “rabbinicized” and stylized by midrashic authors to fit the classical Jewish worldview. According to Stern, the sages used parables both to aid them in their reading of Scripture—as an exegetical tool and as a rhetorical tool. With regard to the latter function, parables persuade its audience to accept their claims by drawing from real-life images and experiences. Moreover, according to Stern, the rabbis purposefully generated gaps between the parable itself (sometimes referred to as the mashal proper) and its parabolic referent (often referred to as the nimshal) as a literary device that invites the reader to play a more active role in its interpretation.80 This happens, according to Stern, because the reader has to link the parable with its referent; it is not a given. Thus, via that active process, the midrashic message will resonant more vividly. Paradoxically, according to Stern, the mashal’s lack of explicit nature is what makes the message more rhetorically persuasive. Not surprisingly, in over two dozen cases the rabbis appropriate parables when crafting their challenges to God.81 In these instances, the King of the World is often compared to a human king who abuses his power, applies disproportionate justice, or, in a general sense, acts irrationally and capriciously.82 But God is likened to other characters as well, such as a hypocritical teacher;83 an absent-minded father or husband;84 an insensitive creditor;85 or an incompetent owner, watchman, or craftsman.86 According to Stern, these parables and analogies serve as the “best index of standards by which to measure God’s deeds” as the problematic nature of God’s actions emerges more vividly and concretely when presenting them in human terms.87 A good example illustrating this confrontational intensification through parables can be found in Midrash Tanḥuma’s reception of God’s banning of Aaron from the Promised Land. Before presenting the Tanḥuma, some background information is necessary. In Numbers 20:7–13, Moses’ brother, Aaron, is punished for his role in the Waters of Meribah incident. But throughout the centuries, scholars have struggled to identify the precise sin that ultimately denied Aaron this privilege. More specifically, why should Aaron be



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punished if only Moses called the Israelites “rebels” (20:10); only Moses problematically asked “can we not fetch you water out of this rock” (20:10), and only Moses hit the rock instead of speaking to the rock (20:11).88 The dominant response to Aaron’s punishment in rabbinic literature is to regard God’s punishment as unfair.89 Sifre Deuteronomy (ca. third century CE) states: “You did strive at the waters of Meribah [Deut. 33:8]—a false denunciation turned against him [Aaron]. If Moses said, Listen, you rebels [Num. 20:10]—what did Aaron . . . do ?” (Sifre Deuteronomy 349).90 Rather than seek to defend God’s justness with a cogent explanation for Aaron’s punishment, as most medieval and modern interpreters have done,91 the Sifre acknowledges that in reality Aaron was unjustifiably punished, as only Moses sinned by calling the people “rebels.” The tannaitic text finds scriptural support for its reading of the Numbers narrative in Deuteronomy 33:8: “And of Levi he [Moses] said: Let your Thummim and Urim be with your faithful one, whom You tested [‫ ]נסיתו‬at Massah, strove with [‫ ]תריבהו‬at the waters of Meribah.” In this passage, set right before Moses’ death, Moses offers a blessing to the tribe of Levi requesting that God grant them the priesthood (represented in the Thummim and Urim that are the “priestly divination devices” ).92 To demonstrate that Levi is worthy to receive this reward, Moses recalls two historical incidents involving one of the tribe’s representatives: God tested a certain Levite at Massah, and God strove with a certain Levite at Meribah. The problem, however, is that God never tests or contends with Moses, Aaron, or any other Levite at these places. On the contrary: in these places, the Israelites tested and contended with Moses, Aaron, and God.93 This difficulty has led Jeffrey Tigay to claim that this passage “refers to an unknown incident at Massah and Meribah or to a different version of those related in Exodus 17 and Numbers 20.”94 Contra Tigay, the Sifre maintains that Numbers 20 does record an incident wherein God “strove with” and “tested” Aaron: God strove with Aaron by punishing him at the Waters of Meribah for no apparent reason, and God tested Aaron’s faithfulness by gauging his response to this undeserved punishment. Seemingly, for the Sifre, Aaron “passes the test” by remaining silent and accepting the divine injustice without protest, a heroic decision for which Aaron and his descendants merit the priesthood. In one sense, Sifre Deuteronomy is bold as it constructs a new critique against divine conduct that Scripture does not record. This, indeed, would be unusual for the submissive tannaim. Yet Sifre’s boldness is quickly neutralized, if not completely subverted, when it imagines the apparent injustice as

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merely part of a pre-planned divine test to assess Aaron’s faithfulness. In the end, Aaron is rewarded for submissiveness, for accepting God’s decree, however unfair. This Sifre text thus contains a striking paradox: it produces an implicit critique of God (for unfairly punishing Aaron) while at the same time celebrating Aaron’s decision not to critique God.95 The Midrash Tanḥuma preserves Sifre’s interpretation while subtly revising it. These alterations and edits, however slight, reflect, as I have noted elsewhere,96 the tendency of Tanḥuma to intensify the confrontational motif: But the Lord said to Moses and Aaron: because you did not trust me [Num. 20:12]—if Moses sinned, how did Aaron sin? The matter is comparable to a creditor who came to take away a debtor’s barn. He took away both his barn and that of his friend. The debtor said: If I am guilty, how has my poor neighbor sinned? Similarly, Moses said: Sovereign of the World, I was angry, but how did Aaron sin? Therefore, God praises him [Aaron], [as it is stated]: And of Levi he said: Let your Thummim and Urim [be with the faithful one, whom You tested at Massah and with whom You strove at the waters of Meribah] [Deut. 33:8]. (Tanḥuma [Buber] Ḥuqqat 32)97 While fundamentally similar, the Sifre and Tanḥuma passages contain a number of stylistic differences. For the present discussion, the most relevant change is that the Tanḥuma adds a parable to the teaching. This heightens the imagery and force of the injustice. God is likened to a creditor who collects not only from the debtor’s barn, but also, unjustly, from the barn of the debtor’s poor neighbor. Through the parable, God is presented as harming those who have no culpability and whose guilt comes from mere association. In short, the Tanḥuma revises the Sifre’s critique by placing it in the form of a parable to escalate the rhetorical force. Those receiving the teaching can relate to the narrative best when the characters are drawn from everyday life and experience.98 Protest parables not only function as a rhetorical tool to intensify the critique, as in the prior example, but, as Alan Mintz has argued, it could also do the reverse: conceal the radical implications of the protest.99 What the sages are not prepared to say explicitly—even through the mouths of biblical characters—they sometimes articulate implicitly with the help of the parable. In other words, the sages might be more comfortable placing harsh complaints against



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the “human king” or the “human father” who is only compared to God, rather than directly critique God. This type of gapping, according to Mintz, functions as a method of protection: “In the . . . gaps between the comparison [mashal proper] and the situation [nimshal] . . . there is much room for ambiguity and implication. When it is God’s justice that is being questioned the need for rhetorical indirection is paramount.”100 As noted, contra Mintz, Stern regards the gapping of parables as a method to intensify the complaint, not to conceal it.101 The Tanḥuma’s retelling of Moses’ encounter with God after Israel worshipped the Golden Calf supports Mintz’s contention that parables, at times, disguise the most subversive elements of the critique. Before turning to the Tanḥuma, we shall review the biblical story. In response to the idolatrous act of worshipping the Golden Calf, God tells Moses: “Let Me be, that My anger may blaze forth against them and that I may destroy them [‫ ]ואכלם‬and make of you a great nation” (Exod. 32:11). God wants to destroy the entire Israelite nation and produce a new one through Moses alone. Defending Israel, Moses seeks to change God’s mind by making two arguments. First, God’s reputation would be damaged in the eyes of the Egyptians if He were to destroy Israel (32:12). They would argue, says Moses, that God knowingly took Israel out of Egypt only to maliciously destroy them in the desert.102 Second, God should remember His own promise to the patriarchs that He would make their offspring as numerous as the stars of heaven (32:13). Notably, neither of Moses’ arguments defends the Israelites on substantive grounds. They do not challenge the notion that Israel willfully performed a heinous crime. Moses, however, argues that it would be in God’s best interest not to destroy Israel; either it would ruin God’s reputation among the Egyptians, or, through their destruction, God would be reneging on certain promises made to the patriarchs. While most amoraic texts reread Exodus 32:11–14 as an attempt by Moses to exonerate Israel from all legal wrongdoing, virtually none of them have Moses rebuking or castigating God.103 In the Babylonian Talmud and in Tanḥuma-Yelammedenu literature, on the other hand, we witness a revolutionary rereading and reimagining of this God-Moses encounter. Rather than having Moses occupy the role of defense attorney and plead for divine mercy on extrajudicial grounds (as the biblical text records), or plead for divine justice by positing legal loopholes (as many classical rabbinic texts maintain), they have Moses reprimand God. Moses is pictured as castigating God for His declared intention to destroy Israel. A Tanḥuma-Yelammedenu text found in Exodus Rabbah II has Moses exonerating Israel, remarkably shifting the blame for the idolatrous act from

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Israel onto God. Here, the Israelites are depicted as the victims of the event rather than as its violators: Whom You delivered from the land of Egypt [Exod. 32:11]. For what reason did [Moses] mention here the going out of Egypt? Because it was thus that Moses pleaded: Lord of the Universe, from where did you bring them out? From Egypt where everyone worships lambs. R. Huna said in the name of Rabbi Yoḥanan: It can be compared to a wise man who opened a perfumery shop for his son in a marketplace of harlots. The street did its work, the business also did its share; and the youth, likewise contributed its part, with the result that the son fell into evil ways. When the father came and caught him amidst the prostitutes, he began to shout: I will slay you! But his friend was there, and he said: You destroyed [the character of] this youth, [‫ ]אתה איבדת את הנער‬and yet you rail against him [‫ ?!]ואתה צועק כנגדו‬You ignored all other professions and taught him only to be a perfumer, and you forsook all other districts and opened a shop for him just in the street where prostitutes dwell! Similarly, Moses said: Lord of the Universe! You ignored the entire world and have caused Your children to be enslaved only in Egypt, where all worshipped lambs, and from whom your children learned [to do corruptly]. It is for this reason that they also have made a Calf. For this reason does [Moses] say, Whom You delivered from the land of Egypt [as if to say:] Bear in mind from where You have brought them forth. (Exodus Rabbah II 43:7)104 This anonymous teaching has Moses blame God for the sin of the Golden Calf because the Israelites had learned about lamb worship from the Egyptians. Thus God should be held responsible for their rebellious actions since He led them to Egypt. To exegetically anchor this confrontation, the midrash has Moses accentuate the word “Egypt” in the phrase “Whom You delivered from the land of Egypt” (Exod. 32:11). Moses reminds God that the Israelites recently left Egypt, a place full of idolatry, and a place to which God Himself led them. God not only orchestrated the Israelite departure from Egypt, but their arrival as well. Exodus Rabbah II thus radically inverts the force of the phrase “you have brought out from the Land of Egypt.” Rather than a statement illustrating divine concern and rescue, it is now one of accusation and



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critique. Through this defense, Moses, strikingly, shifts the onus of responsibility for the worship of the Golden Calf from Israel onto God.105 To drive home the point more forcefully, Exodus Rabbah II supplies its readers with a parable attributed to Huna in the name of Yoḥanan: a wise man opens up a perfume shop for his son in a marketplace of prostitutes. Subsequently, the father catches his son fornicating with those prostitutes. Because of this, he declares that he will kill his son. A friend of the wise father, however, intercedes and reveals to the father his (the father’s) own liability: “You destroyed [the character of] this youth, and yet you shout at him?!” (‫אתה איבדת את‬ ‫)הנער ואתה צועק כנגדו‬. In essence, the friend tells the father that by opening up a perfume shop next to a brothel, he has caused his son to “fall into evil ways.” The father, therefore, should not kill his son, for the son is not the responsible party—rather, the father is! The midrash does not record any response from the father. Notably, a similar parable appears in the Babylonian Talmud.106 Though Exodus Rabbah II equates God’s bringing Israel into Egypt with a father’s establishing a perfume shop for his son next to a brothel, the equation is not exact: gaps remain. Significantly, the formulations adopted to describe the actions of the father in the mashal are more combative than the language used to describe God’s activity in the story’s nimshal. The friend’s declaration to the father that “you destroyed [the character] of this youth, and yet you shout at him!?” has no parallel in the nimshal. While the critique is implicit, the midrash does not have Moses explicitly tell God, “You destroyed the character of Israel.” Following Mintz, I would maintain that this is so because the rabbis are more comfortable with leveling harsh critiques against God in the mashal part of the midrash than they are in the nimshal.107 As Mintz argues, through this method of gapping, parables provide protective cover for the sages to express their scandalous critiques of God.108 In sum, the rabbis use lawsuits, prayers, and parables to frame their exegetical protests of God. These literary contexts accomplish two goals. First, it intensifies the challenge. Labeling the protest as a prayer or a legal defense legitimates the daring speech, thereby granting greater leeway for the challenger to radicalize her formulations. Parables, too, as Stern argues, have the rhetorical force of heightening the complaint as they draw on real-life imagery. Conversely, these literary framings and contexts also provide religious shelter for the irreverent content. Prayers are conceived as pious acts; courtroom procedures grant litigants greater freedom to offer up their best defense; and, finally, parables provide sufficient textual distancing when their sharpest critiques only appear in the mashal proper. There is one other literary context

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in which aggadic protests of God are framed: the pedagogical one. In these cases, God is either depicted as a teacher who is challenged by his students or as a student who learns from others. This literary submotif will receive its own treatment in Chapter 6.

Conclusion As not all confrontations with God are the same, this chapter has attempted to complicate and refine the phenomenon of confrontation. It did so in two ways: first, by tracing those cases where the sages evaluate, in a positive fashion, the legitimacy of theological protest. In this regard, we highlighted three types of distinctions the rabbis make between prohibited, permitted, and praised protests. Specifically, Genesis Rabbah valorizes challenges that are articulated with due deference, but reprimands challenges that are offensive and aim to fault. Other aggadic texts focus not on tone, but on the content of the challenge: does the protestor have a personal and vested interest in the outcome, or is the challenge only an act of altruism? And, in other rabbinic passages, protests against God are legitimized only if launched by those who assume a privileged relationship with the divine. Second, the chapter has sought to uncover the variety of confrontations by looking at the different literary framings in which the rabbis themselves situate their challenges. These include confrontational lawsuits, confrontational prayers, and confrontational parables. I have surmised that these contexts both intensified the force of the critique but also provided religious shelter for the confrontation’s irreverence. In the next chapter, I seek to understand not how the rabbis generate their critiques of God, but why they would construct these types of communications in the first place.

Chapter 4

Confrontation as Ethics

In earlier chapters, we encountered various rabbinic attitudes toward theological protest: rejection (Chapter 1), acceptance (Chapter 2), and qualified acceptance (Chapter 3). And, at the end of the last chapter, we examined protest narratives produced by the rabbis; in this vein, I highlighted different literary forms these confrontations take. This chapter continues to investigate these bold narratives by asking a different question: What drove the ancient rabbis to construct critiques of God? Why do they read Scripture counterintuitively to generate dramatic encounters with the divine? And why place critiques into the mouths of biblical heroes when the Bible contains no such challenge or contains only a milder version of it? These questions are not evaluative but functional. In this chapter I do not raise questions of right and wrong but of purpose and aim. And these questions are only reinforced when we recall the anti-protest sentiments recorded in Chapter 1. If, in fact, aggressively confronting God was, for many, theologically problematic, if not outright prohibited, what value or counter-pressure motivated some rabbis to launch challenges to the divine? To be sure, the answer to these questions is difficult to ascertain with any degree of certainty. Nevertheless, it is reasonable to posit that a number of factors are at play. First, confrontational narratives sometimes fix scriptural problems. In these instances, the dialogue with God serves as a hermeneutical tool to solve a contradiction, grammatical peculiarity, or inconsistency. An excellent example of this exegetical strategy is found in Exodus Rabbah’s rereading of the Mosaic commission narrative (Exodus chapter 3). In the biblical text, God (or an angel of God) appears in a burning bush (v. 2) and beckons Moses to confront Pharaoh and secure the freedom of the Israelite slaves (v. 10). Moses initially resists the divine call by presenting five different objections.1

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Our discussion revolves around the first objection, wherein Moses questions his ability to serve as the Israelite leader and messenger of God: “Who am I (‫ )מי אנכי‬that I should go to Pharaoh and free the Israelites from Egypt?” (v. 11). The straightforward reading of the statement expresses Moses’ selfabasement and humility.2 Yet instead of rebutting Moses’ claim of inadequacy by noting his leadership potential, God points to His own role in the salvation scheme: “Because I will be with you” (v. 12).3 Sensitive to even the slightest textual problem, the authors of Exodus Rabbah II solve this textual gap by offering a radical intervention: (A) [I [God] brought you up from the Land of Egypt, I redeemed you from the House of Bondage] and I sent Moses, Aaron, and Miriam before you [Mic. 6:4]—this teaches that Moses was not willing to deliver Israel but said to God: Who am I [‫[ ]מי אנכי‬Exod. 3:11]? Did You promise their ancestors that You would redeem their descendants by the hands of a mortal? Who am I [‫ ]מי אנכי‬that I should go . . . ? Am I [‫ ]אנכי‬he whom You are sending to redeem them? Did You not promise Jacob: I [‫ ]אנכי‬will go down with you to Egypt; and I will also bring you back [Gen. 46:4]. And [now] You tell me to do so? (B) God replied: By your life, I will go down and save them. One woman came into Egypt, and on her account did I go down, and I saved her. When was this? When Pharaoh took Sarah, as it says: And the Lord afflicted Pharaoh [Gen. 12:17]. If on account of one woman I came down, should I not come down for the sake of six hundred thousand men, six hundred thousand women, and six hundred thousand children? Therefore, Scripture says: And I sent before Moses, Aaron, and Miriam [Mic. 6:4]. (Exodus Rabbah II 15:14) To attain greater scriptural continuity and coherence, Exodus Rabbah II reverses the signified of the lemma anokhi (‫)אנכי‬, “I”: it no longer refers to Moses, but to God.4 The midrash justifies the daring lemmatic transformation by citing an intertext from Genesis 46:4 in which God uses the word anokhi before promising to rescue Israel (Jacob).5 The midrash thus does not read Exodus 3:11 as do most commentators. Rather than understanding Moses’ question “Who am I [‫[ ]מי אנכי‬Moses] that I should go?” as an expression of humility, they read it as a rhetorical question, a challenge launched



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against God: Where is the God who calls Himself anokhi? That is, why is God giving a human being this job, rather than giving it to the divine of Genesis 46:4 who promised, “I will go down with you [‫ ]אנכי ארד עמך‬to Egypt; and I will also bring you back.” Through switching the signified of ‫ אנכי‬from Moses to God, Exodus Rabbah II construes Moses as criticizing God for failing to follow through on His commitment to redeem Israel. With this lemmatic transformation, the authors of the midrash create a smoother transition between these two scriptural passages. Now both Exodus 3:11 and 3:12 revolve around God’s role in the redemption scheme (as opposed to v. 11’s centering on Moses and v. 12’s on God). According to this reading, after God calls upon Moses to “free My people the Israelites out from Egypt” (v. 10), Moses sidesteps the request and boldly criticizes God for disregarding His promise to personally rescue Israel. And now, in verse 12, conceding to Moses’ critique,6 God identifies Himself as anokhi and reaffirms his commitment to oversee the Israelite exodus from Egypt: “And He [God] said: ‘I will be with you [‫ ]כי אהיה עמך‬. . . it was I who sent you [‫( ”’]כי אנכי שלחתיך‬v. 12). Moses will be the messenger, but God will assume ultimate responsibility for bringing the Israelites to freedom. To confirm its interpretation, Exodus Rabbah II cites Micah 6:4 wherein God reminds Israel: “For I [God] brought you up from the land of Egypt, I redeemed you from the house of bondage. And I [God] sent before you Moses, Aaron, and Miriam.” In this verse, God, and not Moses or his siblings, is credited with rescuing the Israelites; the children of Amram were merely His messengers. Thus, to solve the textual difficulty of Exodus 3:11–12 the authors of Exodus Rabbah II turn to the motif of confrontation. As there are other interpretive options usually available to the midrashic authors who generate the protest literature (as in this Exodus Rabbah II text), and in some confrontational texts the dialogue does not solve a textual problem, the hermeneutical function must be supplemented by other factors. One of them is the performative value. Recently, Rachel Anisfeld has cautioned that we not forget about the rhetorical dimension of post-tannaitic Midrash.7 While this body of literature assumed a literary form over time, it began as oral literature and probably originated in the synagogue sermon.8 No doubt, ancient Jewish preachers sought to make the weekly Torah narratives fresh, exciting, and interesting for the masses. But how can they accomplish this if every year the same stories of the Bible are being read? As a solution, Joshua Levinson maintains that, while ancient Jewish preachers could not fully veer from the biblical narrative, they could—and would—insert new material within the gaps

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of the narrative to excite and shock the crowds.9 For example, the synagogue audience knew that the Israelites left Egypt—but not how they left Egypt. Thus, the synagogue preachers would add different details every year—­unstated in Scripture—to keep the audience’s attention. Thus, new stories were told in the framework of old ones. The life setting in which post-tannaitic Midrash originated helps to explain the frequency of protest literature in late rabbinic literature. To excite the masses and to hold their attention, ancient Jewish preachers might have produced bold encounters between biblical characters and God. These types of narratives would interest the masses for a number of reasons. First, confrontations—even between two humans—produce a level of suspense. How will the one being confronted respond to the confrontation? Will a fight ensue? Who will emerge victorious? And, obviously, confrontation with God adds another element of intrigue: not only does it represent a courageous act on behalf of the confronter, but it also produces a thrilling moment of suspense as the audience is kept wondering how God will respond. Would He accept the critique? Would He reject it? And, if rejected, would it be for substantive reasons or merely procedural ones? According to this vantage point, these dramatic and aggressive dialogues primarily serve a performative function. Beyond entertaining the synagogue audiences (rhetorical dimension), rabbinic protest narratives also serve to bolster rabbinic authority (sociological function). The rabbis, to varying degrees, saw themselves as successors to biblical heroes and prophets.10 Accordingly, the exegetical move to intensify the dialogical power of biblical characters in relation to God might also serve to heighten the sages’ own power in the eyes of the masses. This claim—that human challenges to God elevate the challenger in the eyes of the people—is offered by Rabbi Judah bar Ilai (second century) in the context of Moses’ dialogues with God: “In order that the people may hear when I speak with you [Exod. 19:9]: Rabbi Judah [bar Ilai] says: From where can you say that the Holy One, blessed be He, said to Moses, ‘Behold I will say something to you, and you will challenge Me [‫]מחזירני‬, and I will accede [‫ ]מודה‬to you, in order that Israel will say, “Great is Moses, for God acceded to him.”’ As it is said: And so trust you ever after (Exod. 19:9)” (Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael, Baḥodesh, 2 and 4).11 According to Judah bar Ilai, God and Moses at Sinai were engaged in a fake debate in order to bolster Moses’ authority in the eyes of the people. In each of these staged give-and-takes, God ultimately “concedes” to Moses’ point of view. Similarly, the rabbis themselves may generate protests as a means to strengthen their own authority.



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Exegesis as a Source of Ethics The aforementioned hermeneutical, rhetorical, and sociological functions of Midrash address different relationships. The rhetorical and sociological function focuses on the impact that a rabbinic text has on its audience or reader; the hermeneutical function revolves around the rabbinic text’s relation to the Bible.12 But we must not forget a third crucial dimension, one that will occupy the focus of this chapter: how Midrash reflects the distinctive values and worldview of its authors, or, as Richard Rubinstein has put it, its “yearnings,” “anxieties,” and “aspirations.”13 Literary theorists have shown that original narratives are always retold through the prism of the values of those who convey or interpret that narrative.14 Indeed, there is no such thing as a neutral or objective retelling of a story divorced from an exegete’s ideological disposition. Whether the authors are consciously aware that their values are fueling the exegetical teaching is, for our purposes, secondary.15 Applying this dimension to our topic, I argue that the sages often place challenges against God into the mouth of a biblical character to express their own struggles, ambivalences, and discomforts with morally troubling divine acts. Indeed, they provide a literary safe space for the sages to express their frustrations with God who, at times, acts capriciously, arbitrarily, and without due mercy.16 This act of ventriloquism does not solve the moral problem, but it does provide a cathartic outlet for the sages to work through their theological-moral anxieties.17 If my reading is correct, then many confrontational narratives provide an excellent locus for extracting some of the distinctive moral sensibilities of the sages. As the midrashic authors do not arbitrarily generate a rabbinic confrontation on every divine action, the specific places where they do so become highly significant. There are also specific confrontational topics that appear more than others. Recurring moments of one type of critique reveal a heightened rabbinic concern with a particular ethical value. In addition, we must also pay close attention not only to when the rabbis construct a confrontation (and its pervasiveness throughout rabbinic literature) but how that confrontation is formulated. Doing so will uncover, with greater accuracy, the distinctive moral convictions of the sages. But in the process of tracing the ethical dimension, we must not ignore the exegetical justification as it powerfully illustrates the extent to which the rabbis, in order to justify these daring scenes, were prepared to read Scripture against the grain. Using rabbinic biblical interpretation as a method to reveal Jewish ethics is not a new endeavor. In his pioneering work Interpretive Revolutions in the

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Making, Moshe Halbertal demonstrates how many second- and third-century sages used their (own) ethical values as essential criterion when interpreting or, better put, reinterpreting biblical law.18 Through this process, they neutralized many morally problematic divine decrees. Specifically, analyzing cases of family law, Halbertal traces how some tannaim drew upon ethical values not only to solve exegetical ambiguities but even to override unambiguous, and morally problematic, scriptural passages. To uncover rabbinic ethics, then, Halbertal highlights the significant gap that often exists between a straightforward reading of a biblical law and its ethically driven reinterpretation. Following Halbertal, this chapter seeks to extract rabbinic ethics from the genre of biblical exegesis. But whereas Halbertal focuses on exegetical laws, this chapter treats exegetical narratives. It explores, for the most part, how rabbinic ethics shapes the retelling of certain biblical narratives in which God appears to behave unethically. Similar to Halbertal’s examples, these biblical texts demand a moral rabbinic reaction. The sages could not simply read about problematic divine acts and move on to the next biblical section as they could—and often would—when a human character acts inappropriately. On this issue, the sages responded in one of two ways. They could reread the biblical narrative in such a way as to neutralize the problematic divine act. This type of response parallels the approach tracked by Halbertal: when God appears unethical, reinterpret the biblical text charitably to produce a fully righteous and just God. In this chapter, I present a different type of rabbinic response not treated by Halbertal. Instead of apologizing and defending God’s actions or laws, other sages morally challenge them by placing an ethical critique of God into the mouth of others. This latter rabbinic approach reflects a more radical strategy than the one accentuated by Halbertal. Rather than assuming a morally perfect God and, because of it, embarking on a moral reinterpretation, this alternate midrashic approach questions the very assumption that God conforms to the ethical ideal. This position is reflected not in rabbinic law, but in a number of rabbinic retellings of biblical stories whereby the sages generate a protest to express their discomfort with a divine action. Although not solving the moral-theological dilemma, it allows the rabbis to freely voice their uncertainties. Accordingly, in what follows, I present four case studies that highlight the ethical function of protest. The first two of these, regarding the generation of the Flood and the Phineas narrative, treat instances where God seemingly disregards innocent human life when dispensing justice. The third case,



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Moses and the Promised Land, also revolves around divine punishment, but here the problem is not collective punishment but the incongruity between crime and punishment. Our last case, regarding Sarai in Pharaoh’s palace, is not about punishment at all, but an instance where an innocent person seems to suffer unfairly.

The Generation of the Flood It is well known that, in many biblical narratives, YHWH punishes the just together with the unjust, or alternatively punishes the just in place of the unjust.19 While this problematic divine feature has often been downplayed by some contemporary Bible scholars who seek to harmonize biblical thought with modern ethical sensibilities,20 Joel Kaminsky has argued (correctly, I believe) for its centrality for the vast majority of biblical authors, even for later exilic ones.21 Citing dozens of cases, he shows how YHWH’s justice is fundamentally corporate as YHWH is driven by uncontrollable wrath in the face of transgression.22 God not only punishes the transgressor but also those people associated with the transgressor—be it children, grandchildren, a community, a nation, or even the entire world. Although in rare instances God’s harsh punitive policy is reprimanded,23 in the vast majority of cases God’s doctrine of corporate responsibility is left morally unchallenged. In rabbinic literature, however, post-tannaitic sages will sometimes insert within the biblical account a morally driven challenge. And, strikingly, many of these challenges echo critiques of the Old Testament God launched by anti-YHWH thinkers of late antiquity. In Genesis, God flooded the world because of the wickedness of humanity. Every human being was killed except for Noah and his family. The ethical problem inhering in this narrative (Gen. 6–9) was powerfully and succinctly formulated by the great medieval Jewish sage Sa’adia Gaon (882–942 ce): “We are confronted by the fact that God, the just, ordered the killing of the young children of the Midianites (Numbers 31:17) and the extermination of the young children of the Generation of the Flood (Genesis 6–9). We note also how He continually causes pain and even death to little babes. Logical Necessity, therefore, demands that there exist after death a state in which they would obtain compensation for the pain suffered prior thereto.”24 In this passage, Sa’adia acknowledges that God’s decision to wipe out, inter alia, the generation of the Flood, minus Noah and his family, if taken at face value, was immoral. Even if

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every adult acted violently and with corruption (Gen. 6:12)—and that itself is a huge assumption—what could justify God’s destruction of small children? 25 To defend God, Sa’adia posits the necessity of the afterlife: although killed in this world, children will be rewarded in the next one.26 Remarkably, for this Jewish theologian, God’s killing of children, or His commanding of it, proves the existence of the afterlife; for if the soul does not survive death, then God would be deemed immoral and unjust, which for Sa’adia, as a staunch defender of God’s justice, would be rationally impossible.27 Hundreds of years before Sa’adia, Christians and Jews of late antiquity were conscious of this theological problem. Not surprisingly, in the second century ce, the “heretic” Marcion of Sinope (85 ce–160 ce) used the Flood narrative to demonstrate the cruelty and injustice of the Old Testament God.28 Critiquing Marcion, the early Christian allegorist Origen of Alexandria (184–253) maintained that Marcion and his followers erred because “they are ignorant how to interpret any passage except literally.”29 The rabbis of the Talmud and Midrash were also confronted with God’s act of near-omnicide.30 But, unlike Sa’adia and Marcion, the early rabbis, as they were wont to do, dismissed the problem altogether by simply proclaiming God’s infallible justice: “His actions in regard to all creatures of the world are perfect [‫פעולתו‬ ‫ ;]שלימה‬there can be no critique [‫ ]להרהר‬whatsoever about His work. None of them can look at Him and say: Why should the Generation of the Flood have been swept away?” (Sifre Deuteronomy 307).31 Not only is God’s near-omnicide morally justified here, but even raising the problem is deemed by Sifre Deuteronomy as subversive. In similar fashion, one amoraic rabbinic text, Genesis Rabbah, has God Himself castigate those who would raise such questions: “In all the actions and thoughts which I executed upon the people of the Generation of the Flood, who could dare say to Me [God], ‘You have not acted properly [‫”’?]לא עשית כשורה‬32 Yet many sages were not satisfied with merely declaring God perfect and foreswearing any challenge against God; they offered more elaborate responses and defenses that were not always consistent. For example, in a striking passage, Midrash Psalms posits that God punished even those under punishable age among the generation of the Flood “because of the sins of their fathers.”33 A very different defense is offered in Leviticus Rabbah. In the beginning of this text Rabbi Ḥiyya states that “the Generation of the Flood was blotted out from the world because they were steeped in whoredom [‫]זנות‬,” though Scripture itself never mentions this sin.34 In support of this view, Rabbi Simlai remarkably argues: “In every instance where you find the



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prevalence of whoredom, an androlepsia [a Greek word meaning ‘to snatch people’] comes upon the world and slays both the righteous [‫ ]יפים‬and the wicked [‫]רעים‬.”35 Here, Rabbi Simlai acknowledges that God meted out communal guilt when destroying the generation of the Flood.36 Like Roman emperors, the biblical God at times kills the innocent together with the righteous. As a defender of corporate punishment, at least in cases of sexual impropriety, these two rabbinic texts—Midrash Psalms and Leviticus Rabbah—evince clear continuities with biblical thought.37 By stark contrast and perhaps directly rebutting the earlier tradition of Leviticus Rabbah, an anonymous teaching from the post-amoraic Midrash Tanḥuma proclaims the very opposite: The nature of God is not like the nature of flesh and blood. In the case of a king of flesh and blood, when a province rebels against him, he acts against it with an indiscriminate punishment [androlepsia] and kills the good along with the bad without considering: this one has sinned and this one has not sinned [‫]זה חטא וזה לא חטא‬. Instead he kills the whole of it [the province]. Now, God is not like that, but rather at the time when a generation provoked Him, He saves the righteous and destroys the wicked. . . . For example, the generation of the Flood provoked Him. So He destroyed them, as stated: And all existence on earth was blotted out [Gen. 7:23] but He rescued Noah as stated: And Noah found favor with the Lord [Gen. 6:8]. (Tanḥuma [Buber] Bamidbar 32) Whereas Leviticus Rabbah compares God to a Roman emperor who applies corporate punishment in cases of sexual sin, this Tanḥuma text condemns that very practice by contrasting human kings, who kill the innocent together with the righteous, with the biblical God who rejects such a policy. And the rejection is cast in moral terms: God, unlike humans of flesh and blood, knows “who has sinned and who has not sinned.”38 Thus, during the flooding of the world, according to the Tanḥuma, God saved every righteous person; no one just was put to death. While the latter two midrashic texts debate the ethics of applying communal punishment for grave sins such as sexual impropriety (zenut), as well as historically debating whether God killed the just during the Flood, they both share a common agenda: to defend God. This is achieved either by justifying the practice of collective punishment (in extreme cases of sin such as zenut) or

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by denying that God ever killed the innocent. Yet, even in their defense, we can detect a level of discomfort, if a fleeting one. Most probably, these rabbinic voices were responding to questions raised by inquiring minds, their own or others, concerning the generation of the Flood. My interest, however, is not to highlight these voices of defense, but rather voices of anxiety and struggle. In these cases, no moral resolution is offered, but the rabbis could express their deep ambivalence and irritation by an act of ventriloquism: they do not question God’s actions through their own voice, but through the mouths of biblical characters. Moreover, they justify their bold retellings of these narratives by finding linguistic clues embedded within the words of Scripture itself that conflict with a plain and contextual reading. In this sense, these sages are doubly bold: in their theological imaginations and in their hermeneutical innovations. Midrashic authors and editors often appropriate Abraham to voice ethical concerns. That surely is no coincidence as Abraham in Genesis protests God’s decision to destroy the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. Along these lines, another Midrash Tanḥuma passage anchors an Abrahamic protest of God’s handling of the generation of the Flood by exploiting a superfluous divine move found in the Sodom narrative. In Genesis 18:17, God reveals to Abraham that He is going to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah: “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do?” Learning of God’s future plans, Abraham pleads with God to spare Sodom for the sake of the righteous (18:23–32). God consents to grant mercy but only if ten righteous people can be located there. Pre-Tanḥuma texts, such as Genesis Rabbah, struggle to explain why God feels the need to divulge His plan of destruction to Abraham but offer a few suggestions: (1) divulging secrets and divine mysteries is how God shows His love for and intimacy with righteous people; (2) God felt a responsibility to let Abraham know about the destruction since God had recently given Abraham this land as an inheritance; or (3) God felt a specific obligation to divulge His plans since Lot, a denizen of Sodom, was Abraham’s nephew.39 After citing two of these solutions, the Tanḥuma adds a new one in the name of Rabbi Levi: Why did the Holy One, blessed be He, reveal [His decision concerning Sodom and Gomorrah] to Abraham? He did so because Abraham had previously reflected critically [‫ ]מהרהר‬upon the episode of the generation of the Flood and had said [to himself]: It is impossible that there were not twenty righteous men or perhaps even ten righteous men in that generation for whose sake the Holy



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One, blessed be He, might have suspended His decision. Hence, the Holy One, blessed be He, declared: I will disclose the entire matter to him so that he will not say to me: “Perhaps there are righteous men even in Sodom.” You know that it was so, for no sooner did He finish saying Shall I hide from Abraham? [Gen. 18:17]. When he had told him all of this, how did he respond? Abraham drew near and said: Will You sweep away the innocent along with the guilty? [Gen. 18:23]. (Tanḥuma Vayera 5) According to Rabbi Levi, God reveals His destructive plans out of a concern to safeguard His own reputation.40 Abraham was morally disturbed by God’s drowning of most of humanity during Noah’s time. Struggling with this divine act, Abraham assumed that there must have been “twenty righteous men or perhaps even ten righteous men in that generation for whose sake the Holy One, blessed be He, might have abrogated His decision.”41 Abraham’s criticism [‫ ]מהרהר‬of how God had judged the generation of the Flood stands in sharp contrast to the previously mentioned Sifre doctrine that “[God’s] actions in regard to all creatures of the world are perfect; there can be no critiquing (hirhur) His work [‫]ואין להרהר אחר מעשיו‬. None of them can look at Him and say: Why should the Generation of the Flood have been swept away?” (Sifre Deuteronomy 307). Whereas the earlier Sifre prohibits hirhur (critique) as a response to the Flood, the later Tanḥuma has the righteous Abraham doing just that. In this Tanḥuma, Abraham does not communicate his ethical concerns to God. However, God is still aware of them; affected by it, God adjusts accordingly. To preclude Abraham from also criticizing the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, God discloses His plan to destroy these cities. As God predicted, Abraham challenges God’s decision by declaiming: “Will you destroy the innocent along with the guilty?” (Gen. 18:23). Abraham is mollified after recognizing that, in this instance, there are not even ten righteous people in Sodom. Despite this adjustment in the divine plans, the Tanḥuma never relates any divine response to Abraham’s earlier critique of God’s flooding of the world. The midrashic reader is thus left guessing as to what God’s response was or could have been.42 What motivated the Tanḥuma to construct this imagined narrative? It could not have been pressure for a convincing exegesis, since prior solutions to explain God’s revelation had already been offered by the pre-Tanḥuma text of Genesis Rabbah. I would argue that the Tanḥuma authors took advantage

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of the scriptural redundancy of God’s figurative question, “Shall I hide from Abraham,” to express their own ethical struggles with God’s previous act of near-omnicide. The Tanḥuma authors anxiously wondered whether God’s communal punishments could be justified; instead of ignoring the problem or justifying it through reinterpretation, they expressed their ethical struggles and doubts through the character of Abraham.43 Rabbinic discomfort with God’s handling of the generation of the Flood also surfaces in an amoraic elaboration of the Philistine king Abimelech’s encounter with God in Genesis 20. There, after hearing that Sarah is Abraham’s sister, Abimelech has Sarah brought to him. But before Abimelech can sleep with her, God scolds him for taking a married woman and predicts his death. In response, Abimelech protests: “Would you slay an innocent nation? He [Abraham] himself said to me, ‘She is my sister’!” (Gen. 20:4–5). The textual problem is obvious: what “innocent nation” is Abimelech referencing? Does Abimelech assume God will punish Abimelech’s entire nation for his own sin?44 Relying on the textual anomaly, Genesis Rabbah has Abimelech referring to God’s prior punitive decisions: “He [Abimelech] said: If You judged the Generation of the Flood . . . in this fashion [i.e., as You are judging me], [he protested,] then they were righteous [like me].”45 In this reading, Abimelech cites God’s prior act of near-omnicide to buttress his current critique of divine misconduct. Abimelech is not only deeply perturbed by his own maltreatment at the hands of God, but this experience only confirms, albeit tentatively, a prior miscarriage of justice that Abimelech never personally witnessed: God’s virtual destruction of the world during the Flood.46 In the aforementioned rabbinic texts—and many more could be cited—amoraic and post-amoraic rabbis resolved textual bumps by drawing from their own reservoir of values and concerns. Chief among them was God’s problematic act of violence found in Genesis 6–9.

Phineas’s Zealotry In the fourth century ce, the pagan emperor Julian the Apostate (331–363) argued for the immorality of the Old Testament God by citing, in part, God’s action in the Phineas narrative (Num. 25).47 In Scripture itself, Phineas is heralded for his religious zealousness in publicly stabbing Zimri to death, an Israelite man, and Cozbi, a Moabite woman, with whom Zimri had been fornicating. Both of them also had been engaged in an idolatrous fertility rite.48 Through this violent act, Phineas courageously put an end to a divinely



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imposed plague that came as a punishment to Israel for “profaning themselves by whoring with the Moabite women.” The plague took the lives 24,000 Israelites (Num. 25:1–9). For Phineas’s double homicide, he was rewarded with the priesthood and a special “covenant of peace” (Num. 25:10–15). Documenting the “ethicization of content” in inner-biblical exegesis, Michael Fishbane cites this narrative when showing how later biblical authors revise earlier traditions to make them more ethical.49 Disturbed by Phineas’s violent actions and God’s valorization of it, a later historiographical liturgist revises the account by claiming that Phineas merely “intervened [‫ ”]ויפלל‬to stop the plague (Ps. 106:30).50 The psalmist makes no mention of any physical aggression and “transforms the priest’s deed into a nonviolent act.”51 This new version, according to Fishbane, “repress[es] a violent or aggressive tradition in favor of a more ethical or noble version of it.”52 While the morally driven Psalmist has Phineas curtail the plague through an unspecified but seemingly nonviolent act of “intervention” [‫]ויפלל‬, the Babylonian Talmud goes even further and reinterprets the verse from Psalms to have Phineas ending the plague with an act of protest—not against those Israelites engaged in sin, but, remarkably, against God: Rabbi Yoḥanan said: . . . He [Phineas] came and struck them [Zimri and Cozbi] down [‫ ]בא וחבטו‬before the Almighty, saying, “Sovereign of the Universe! shall 24,000 perish because of these?” As it is written, And those who died of the plague numbered 24,000 (Num. 25:9). Hence it is written then Phineas stepped forth and intervened [‫( ]ויפלל‬Ps. 106:30). R. Eleazar said: [vayitpallel] [he prayed] is not written, but vayefallel, as though he argued [’‫ ]פלילו‬with his maker [on the justice of punishing so many]. Thereupon the ministering angels wished to repulse him, but He said to them, “Let him be, for he is a zealot and the descendant of a zealot; a turner away of wrath and the son of a turner away of wrath.” (BT Sanhedrin 82b according to MS Munich 95)53 This talmudic teaching transforms Phineas, a zealous defender of God, into Phineas, a zealous defender of Israel.54 The radical moment is no longer the public murder of Zimri and Cozbi, but what happens next: Phineas takes these dead bodies and uses them as props to protest the divinely instigated plague that took the lives of 24,000 Israelites.55 Stated differently, Phineas’s

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anger is no longer fueled solely (or perhaps even primarily) by Israelite transgression, but by God’s overly harsh and unjustified killing of 24,000 Israelites for the acts of (seemingly) far fewer than that.56 Here, God stops the plague not after Phineas’s brazen killing, but after Phineas’s brazen demonstration. After this seeming irreverent act, the angels seek to knock Phineas down [‫ ;]לדחפו‬but God does not allow them, announcing that the pious Phineas, following in the footsteps of his ancestors, “is a zealot and a turner away of [God’s] wrath.” While God with these words defends Phineas, the basis of God’s praise is ambiguous: is God lauding Phineas’s courageous act of killing Zimri and Cozbi, or his courageous act of taming God’s own wrath? Or, perhaps, both and the ambiguity is deliberate. Notably, this talmudic text echoes the critique of Julian the Apostate cited above. However, whereas Julian cites the narrative to propositionally conclude that the Old Testament God is immoral, the Talmud merely expresses its ethical anxiety by rewriting Phineas’s speech and without making any definitive statement.

Moses and the Promised Land The prior two examples exposed rabbinic reservations about God’s method of corporate punishment. A second prevalent rabbinic anxiety about God’s conduct relates to moments where God seems to punish righteous people unfairly. This moral discomfort is not that God kills innocent people for the sins of others, as in the prior examples, but that God mistreats certain biblical heroes. Sometimes the rabbinic concern relates to an overly harsh divine punishment, while in other cases the concern is about God’s apparent disregard for the plight of the righteous—even in cases where there is no punishment. Here, too, some sages voice ethical frustrations by speaking through biblical characters. Indeed, dozens of examples of this type of rabbinic protest could be adduced; for example, the burning to death of Aaron’s sons Nadab and Abihu,57 Abraham’s grueling experience at the Aqedah,58 and Hannah’s desire to have a child.59 But as not to overburden the reader, I select one wellknown case that illustrates the various moral anxieties shared by the ancient rabbis of the Talmud and Midrash. Moreover, this example—God’s denying Moses the right to enter the Promised Land—further highlights the wide gap between the various strata of rabbinic literature. As previously noted, while early tannaitic texts tend to defend God and decry any moral critique of the divine, post-tannaitic texts—and especially post-amoraic ones—tend to



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produce strident protests of divine behavior. And, as we shall see, sometimes these late rabbinic texts cleverly appropriate and rework earlier rabbinic passages to do so. In Numbers 20, God tells Moses that he will not bring the Israelites into the Promised Land because Moses—after denouncing the Israelite rebels— failed to sanctify God during the rock-striking episode at Meribah. The Bible does not record any protest from Moses, who, in Deuteronomy, only prays that he be allowed to enter the land. I pleaded [‫ ]ואתחנן‬with the Lord at that time, saying, “O Lord God [‫]יהוה אלהים‬, You who let Your servant see the first works of Your greatness and Your mighty hand [‫]ידך החזקה‬, You whose powerful deeds no god in heaven or on earth can equal! Let me, I pray [‫]נא‬, cross over and see the good land [‫ ]הארץ הטובה‬on the other side of the Jordan, that good hill country, and the Lebanon.” But the Lord was wrathful with me on your account and would not listen to me. The Lord said to me, “Enough! Never speak to Me of this matter again!” (Deut. 3:22–26) In these passages, the Deuteronomic author uses reverential terms like “pleading” (‫( )ואתחנן‬v. 23) and “prayer” (‫( )נא‬v. 25) to illustrate Moses’ relational posture. Moses does not meet God with angry words or criticism. Instead, he praises “Lord-Elohim” (‫ )יהוה אלהים‬for allowing him (Moses) to see His “greatness,” “powerful deeds,” and “mighty hand” with which no other god compares. Moses then makes his submissive petition to enter the land. After God refuses his request (v. 26), we have no report of any response from Moses. Reflecting on these and other passages, Judah Goldin correctly maintains: We must presume that the reasons given for the death sentence [of Moses] (and his being denied entry into the Land) must have appeared sufficient . . . to the biblical narrators. The reasons they offer are not challenged, and presumably the narrators are satisfied with the contents of their accounts. Only one appeal against the sentence is heard, the appeal by Moses—by the very victim, the interested party—and all he does is plead. . . . The charges, if charges there be, are not denied or contradicted. . . . The appeal is a petition, after the invocation of God’s omnipotence (Deut. 3:24), as though one were asking for a special favor. Hence we will have to

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say that in the framework of Scripture, the death sentence (and the denial of entry) is legitimate, even to Moses. God’s decisions are just.60 Early non-rabbinic exegetes do not deviate from the pattern of characterizing Moses’ disposition at this moment as submissive. In the first century ce, postbiblical Hellenistic versions of the narrative present an obedient and passive Moses who does not challenge God’s decision.61 On the contrary, in these versions, Moses, upon hearing of his fate, passively resigns himself to the divine decision, weeps, and begs God to be compassionate to Israel.62 In addition, in the writings of the fourth-century Samaritan works, we find no complaints or protests.63 For example, in the account of Memar Marqah, when he hears of his death decree Moses, rather than challenging God’s decision on moral grounds, proclaims, “Greatness to the perpetual, eternal powerful One!”64 In Muslim sources, too, Moses does not demonstrate against the divine decree.65 Explaining this phenomenon, Rella Kushelevsky claims that the “Moslem believer accepts Divine judgment without protest, which inspires the description of how Moses willingly enters his own grave.” 66 Turning from the non-rabbinic to the rabbinic reception of these biblical passages, tannaitic exegetes do not significantly diverge from a surface reading of Scripture, presenting a submissive Moses who begs God to change His mind.67 Indeed, not only does the tannaitic Sifre Deuteronomy fail to reinterpret Moses’ words as an accusation against God, but it even feels the need to justify Moses’ plea for divine mercy after God had already sealed his fate: “Is it possible that Moses could have asked God to let him enter the Land? Is it not stated elsewhere ‘ for you shall not go over the Jordan’ [Deut. 3:27]?”68 In stark contrast, some post-amoraic texts reread these passages as a protest against and critique of divine justice. To demonstrate the considerable gap between these two reactions, I contrast the Sifre’s and the Tanḥuma’s interpretation of one key biblical phrase of the narrative. Commenting on Deuteronomy 3:23, Sifre Deuteronomy links the word ‫( ואתחנן‬v. 23) with the word ‫ חנם‬to underscore the notion that Moses sought entry into the Land through the mechanism of divine favor/grace (‫)חנם‬, rather than by claiming a right based on prior merit: “Israel had two fine leaders, Moses and David, king of Israel. Their meritorious deeds could have sustained the whole world, yet they begged the Holy One, blessed be He, only for a favor [‫]חנם‬.”69 Other tannaitic texts merely cite the phrase ‫ ואתחנן‬and maintain the phrase’s straightforward meaning of referring to a submissive



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plea or petition. In marked contrast, the post-amoraic Midrash Tanḥuma boldly reinterprets the word ‫ ואתחנן‬as signaling—through a clever pun—a powerful critique of God. (A) I pleaded [‫ ]ואתחנן‬with the Lord [Deut. 3:23]—The text is related to It is all one [‫ ;]אחת היא‬therefore I say He destroys the innocent and the wicked [Job 9:22]. Moses said: Sovereign of the World, everything is equal before you. There is one decree [‫ ]גזירה‬for the righteous and the wicked. (B) Similarly also Solomon says For the same fate is in store for all: for the righteous, and for the wicked; for the good and for the pure, and for the impure [Eccl. 9:2]. . . . For the good refers to Moses, as stated and when she saw that he was good [Exod. 2:2] in that he was born circumcised. For the pure refers to Aaron, who would purify the sins of Israel. For the impure refers to the spies. The one group [the spies] uttered slander against the Land of Israel, while the other [Moses and Aaron] uttered praise for the Land of Israel. [Still] the former did not enter [the Land] nor did the latter enter it. (Tanḥuma [Buber] Va’etḥanan, 1) Part B of this Tanḥuma passage is copied from a teaching attributed to Rabbi Shimon in Leviticus Rabbah, who identifies the different types of characters listed in Ecclesiastes 9:2: “For the same fate is in store for all: for the righteous, and for the wicked; for the good and pure, and for the impure.”70 In the Bible, the author of Ecclesiastes bemoans the reality of life: all of humanity, whether righteous or not, meets a common fate in death. The rabbis, however, abhor biblical anonymity and often seek to personalize impersonal descriptions. In this text, too, Rabbi Shimon attaches specific biblical personalities to each of these general types. “The good” refers to Moses; “the pure” to Aaron; and “the impure” to the spies (of Numbers 13). Rabbi Shimon interprets Solomon as bemoaning the historical reality that even though Moses and Aaron praised the Land of Israel and the spies spoke derogatorily about it, they nevertheless all received the same fate: neither was permitted to enter the Promised Land. Thus, whereas the author of Ecclesiastes decries the lack of cosmic justice, Leviticus Rabbah—in the name of Shimon—reads the Ecclesiastes passage as a specific critique against God for treating the “good” Moses in the same fashion as the “impure” spies. After presenting “Solomon’s critique” as reformulated by Rabbi Shimon (in Leviticus Rabbah), the

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Tanḥuma inserts a new protest in the mouth of Moses (Part A). Not only is the critique of divine justice maintained by Solomon about Moses—à la Rabbi Shimon—but the critique was marshaled by Moses himself. Strikingly, the Tanḥuma sees the formulation of Moses’ protest as anticipating or echoing Job’s critique against divine justice.71 The specific content of Moses’ “pleading” (‫ )ואתחנן‬in Deuteronomy 3:23 appropriates the words of Job: “It is all one; therefore I say He destroys the innocent and the wicked” (Job 9:22). I would maintain that the anonymous author of this Tanḥuma text transforms Moses’ response from a submissive plea to a theological critique because he was deeply bothered by God’s decision to deny Moses—after all his work for Israel—entry into the Promised Land. The Tanḥuma author found cover for his critique by having Moses produce the protest. But what drove the author to reread Moses’ response to the devastating news as a Jobian one? Why link Job and Moses? Put differently, what is the exegetical link between Deuteronomy 3:23 and Job 9:22? Indeed, the connection between these characters is somewhat unexpected as other rabbinic texts, such as Genesis Rabbah, drew fundamental distinctions between the legitimate critiques launched by Abraham and the illegitimate critiques produced by Job.72 Why then turn Job into Moses? I contend that the Tanḥuma’s author exploited a linguistic similarity between the words ‫ ואתחנן‬and ‫ ההיא‬in Deuteronomy 3:23 and the words ‫ אחת היא‬in Job 9:22. The word ‫ היא‬appears in both passages, and one can rearrange the first three letters of ‫ אתחנן‬to read ‫אחת‬. Through a playful word rearrangement (anagram), the Tanḥuma uncovers a concealed and more antagonistic layer of Moses’ voice than what the surface biblical passage presents. The submissive word ‫( ואתחנן‬pleading) becomes the antagonistic word ‫אחת‬, which represents the claim of an unjust world where there is only one punishment meted out to all—innocent and wicked alike.73 Judah Goldin has already noted this Mosaic protest and others like it are “articulating what obviously human readers or auditors of the Moses story in the midrashic-talmudic times feel.”74 He further claims that “the protests put into the mouth of Moses reveal to us a moral disquietude of sensitive readers of the Moses stories in midrashic-talmudic times.”75 For Goldin, this Mosaic confrontation is not crafted to solve textual problems or to serve as a rhetorical tool, but rather by the authors’ need to express his ethical attitudes and sensibilities. Furthermore, Goldin claims that the specific formulation of God’s negative response (also constructed by the sages) reflects the views of those rabbis who sought to defend God’s decision: “God’s various retorts reveal how in those days men tried to justify His ways, for His ways must be



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just.”76 For Goldin, the heated dialogue between Moses and God represents the actual real-life arguments and debates waged by various rabbis over the justness of God’s decision. Building on Goldin’s claim, I posit that the confrontations between Moses and God in rabbinic literature might not only be an expression of a debate between sages (à la Goldin) but of a particular sage’s own inner struggles and doubts. A rabbinic exegete or storyteller may be utilizing the confrontational dialogue to voice his own conflicting emotions about God’s stern punishment. Speaking more broadly, by utilizing the genre of an exegetical protest, a rabbinic exegete can externalize—with impunity— his own internal moral and religious questions, struggles, and conflicts.

Sarai in Pharaoh’s Palace In our final case study, the rabbis have biblical characters challenge God not over divine injustice, but for allowing God’s most cherished followers to suffer needlessly. In Genesis 12, Abram and Sarai descend to Egypt in response to a devastating famine in the Land of Canaan. To protect himself, Abraham tells his beautiful wife Sarai to inform the Egyptians that she is merely his sister. After Sarai’s beauty is noticed, Egyptian courtiers take her to Pharaoh’s palace. Soon afterward, “the Lord afflicted Pharaoh and his household with mighty plagues on account of [‫ ]על דבר‬Sarai, the wife of Abram” (12:17). In the biblical account, neither Abram nor Sarai challenge God for the presumed difficulties they encounter while in Egypt. In fact, no communication is recorded between any biblical character and God in this story. Rabbi Berekhya, however, cited in Genesis Rabbah 41:2, imagines Sarai as complaining to God for placing her in a painful incarceration. “Rabbi Berekhya said . . . And the whole of that night Sarah lay prostrate on her face [‫שטוחה על‬ ‫ ]פניה‬saying: Sovereign of the Universe! Abraham went forth [from his land] with trust [‫]בהבטחה‬, and I went forth with faith [‫ ;]באמונה‬Yet, Abraham is not in prison while I am in prison!? Said the Holy One, blessed be He, to her: Whatever I do, I do for thy sake, and all will say: it is on account of Sarai, the wife of Abram [Gen. 12:17]” (Genesis Rabbah 41:2).77 According to Rabbi Berekhya, Sarai tells God that she has been unfairly treated. To buttress her complaint, she draws a contrast between two types of spiritual reliance. Unlike Abram and his religious devotion, which is based on trust in the explicit divine promise [‫]הבטחה‬, Sarai notes that her religious commitment emanates from an even higher place: faith [‫ ]באמונה‬without divine assurances. Sarai never experienced

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the divine call to leave her home and settle in the Promised Land. Even without this direct promise, Sarai nevertheless devoted herself to the covenantal mission. Sarai argues, therefore, that it is unjust for her to linger in prison while Abram, who did not take this “leap of faith,” remains a free man.78 God immediately concedes to Sarai’s protest: “Whatever I [am about to] do [to Pharaoh], I do for your sake.” In this Genesis Rabbah text, God declares that the plagues that He will inflict upon Pharaoh and his household will be the direct result of Sarai’s complaint. Furthermore, God announces that everyone will be aware of this fact: “They will all say” that the plagues came about “because of the word [‫ ]על דבר‬of Sarai, the wife of Abraham.”79 The exegetical anchor for Rabbi Berekhya’s teaching is the phrase “on account of” [12:17( ]‫)על דבר‬. Instead of translating the phrase idiomatically as “on account of” Sarah, as a straightforward reading would suggest, Rabbi Berekhya reads it super-literally as “[on account of ] the word of ” (i.e., the complaints of) Sarai. But what drove Rabbi Berekhya to suggest that Sarai’s complaints consisted of contrasting her current situation with Abram’s? Could not Sarai have complained about her imprisonment without making reference to Abram’s state? Joshua Levinson suggests that Rabbi Berekhya was sensitive to the preceding verses that underscore the discrepancy between the plight of Abraham, who became rich with “sheep, oxen, asses” (12:16), and Sarai herself, who languished in prison (12:15).80 The Midrash Tanḥuma records Rabbi Berekhya’s basic teaching as presented in Genesis Rabbah, but significantly revises its details: . Sarah likewise cried out [‫]צווחת‬: my Master, I knew nothing at all, but when he [Abraham] told me that you [God] commanded him: Go forth from your native land [Gen. 12:1], I believed in Your word. I have been separated from my father, my mother, and my husband, and shall this evil man approach me and abuse me [‫ !?]ויתעלל בי‬Act for the sake of Your great name, and because of our trust in Your word. The Holy One, blessed be He, replied: I swear [lit., your life], no harm will befall you, as it is written: No harm befalls the righteous, But the wicked have their fill of misfortune [Prov. 12:21]. (Tanḥuma, Lekh Lekha 5) In this text, Sarai complains to God that given her trust in God, her current plight is unfair. This account echoes Rabbi Berekhya’s teaching in Genesis Rabbah, which also produces a confrontation between Sarai and God. But, unlike



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Rabbi Berekhya’s teaching, the Tanḥuma does not have Sarai emphasize the discrepancies between herself and Abram. There is no contrast between Abram’s and Sarai’s religious commitments (trust versus faith) as Sarai describes herself both as a woman of “faith” and “trust.” The sharp contrast between Abram and Sarai has been erased. Instead, the Tanḥuma highlights the disparity within Sarai’s own life: between her past religious commitments and her current dire predicament. More specifically, the Tanḥuma has Sarai complaining to God that while she expressed unusual faith and trust when leaving her homeland, she now finds herself completely alone, separated from her family and awaiting “abuse” by the “evil” Pharaoh. Sarai essentially cries out to God: is this fair and just? The Tanḥuma also describes the details of Sarai’s current plight with greater detail. Her complaint is no longer merely that she is in prison (‫בתוך‬ ‫)הסירה‬, but that Pharaoh will abuse her (‫)יתעולל בי‬. The Tanḥuma also describes Sarai’s communication to God with the emotionally charged verb “crying out” (‫ )צווחת‬rather than the neutral term “saying” (‫)אומרת‬. Last, the Tanḥuma does not have Sarai merely noting her unfair treatment, as she does in the Genesis Rabbah account, but has her more boldly demanding that God reverse the current situation: “act [the imperative ‫ ]עשה‬for Your name.” Thus, the Tanḥuma has rhetorically heightened the details of Sarai’s current anguish, and her cries for help have now taken on a more urgent tone. In response, God, citing Proverbs 12:21, swears to Sarai that no harm will befall her or her husband. Tellingly, the Tanḥuma does more than just heighten the rhetoric and details of Sarai’s complaint from Genesis Rabbah: it also produces a second protest—this time placed in the mouth of Abram. “Pharaoh’s courtiers saw her [‫]ויראו‬, and praised her to Pharaoh [Gen. 12:15]—When Abraham saw [‫]שראה‬ this, he began to weep, and supplicate to the Holy One, blessed be He: Master of the Universe, is this to be my reward for my abiding trust [‫ ]בטחתי‬in You? For the sake of Your compassion and Your loving-kindness, let me not be ashamed of my expectation [‫[ ]מסברי‬Ps. 119:116]” (Tanḥuma, Lekh Lekha 5). In this text, Abram critiques God for placing him and his wife in a situation where they could be mistreated: “Is this to be my reward for my abiding trust (‫בטחוני שבט־‬ ‫ )חתי‬in you?” The notion that Abram had “trust” (‫ )בטחון‬in God is clearly taken from Rabbi Berekhya’s prior teaching (cited in Genesis Rabbah). But whereas Rabbi Berekhya uses this concept to have Sarai underscore Abram’s lower level of religiosity (Sarai has “faith”) and thus buttress her complaint against God, the Tanḥuma uses it as the basis to construct a new protest—this time launched by Abram.81 Like Sarai, Abram demands that God rectify his current predicament. But unlike in Sarai’s case, God ignores Abram’s challenge. The scriptural

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justification for Abram’s protest comes from the phrase “and the princes saw her.” Rather than reading it as the “princes saw her,” the Tanḥuma reads it as “and he, Abram, saw her [‫ ]כיון שראה‬with the officers of Pharaoh.” In response to this “seeing,” Abram launches his complaint.82 These midrashic rereadings of this biblical story demonstrate again the late rabbinic openness to theological protest and how Tanḥuma texts typically intensify the rhetoric of pre-Tanḥuma protests (and in this case Tanḥuma produces an additional confrontation). Moreover, relevant to our current concerns, while the authors of both Genesis Rabbah and Tanḥuma ground their protest narratives back onto the words of Scripture, the details of their protest—and their intensity—reflect a profound rabbinic discomfort with God’s apparent abandonment of Sarai and Abram in the House of Pharaoh. This unexplained and unjustified mistreatment of Sarai and Abram, the founding couple of Judaism—just a few verses after God promises Abram divine protection for him and his progeny—must have troubled some rabbis in late antiquity. Rather than defend God’s apparent abandonment, these rabbis place their moral concerns into the mouths of Abram and Sarai.

Ethical Critiques in Non-Rabbinic Literature: A Survey The rabbis of the Talmud and Midrash were not the only ones to morally question the biblical God in late antiquity or early Middle Ages. Other religious thinkers, not committed to the Israelite religion, attacked the biblical God with a passion and certitude that go well beyond anything we encounter in rabbinic sources. In what follows, I survey the literature produced by these thinkers, literature that Judah Rosenthal has termed “aporia” or “Difficulties literature.”83

The Second Century We begin in the second century with those Christians who rejected the canonicity of the Old Testament. The Christian dualist Marcion of Sinope (85–160 ce) attacked the Old Testament God for, among other things, His anger, hubris, penchant for war—especially in the days of Joshua and David—and other acts of injustice, such as transgenerational punishment and God’s treatment of the generation of the Flood.84 While Marcion’s work Antithesis is no longer extant, Adolf Von Harnack reconstructed it from early Christian heresiologists



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who cite it.85 Here, Marcion contrasts the “evil” creator God of Tanakh with the “good” God of the New Testament by placing conflicting statements from these two Testaments side by side.86 Like Marcion, some Christian Gnostic writers, such as the author of The Secret Book According to John and the author of Revelation of Adam, denounce YHWH, identifying Him as “Ialdabaoth” and “Saklas” (Satan).87 In another Gnostic work, The Testimony of Truth, YHWH is described as a “malicious envier” and “jealous” deity, punishing children for the sins of the parents.88 Other Gnostics, such as Ptolemy in his Letter to Flora, more moderately describe YHWH as an “imperfect” lawgiver.89 Around the same time, Celsus, the second-century pagan Middle Platonist who was probably familiar with the teachings of Marcion,90 criticized the Hebrew Bible in his no longer extant work, The True Word, for its all-toohuman and childish depiction of God: for example, God rests, retracts, and speaks with anger.91 While the anthropomorphic dimension takes center stage, Celsus also objects to God’s arrogance, His “arbitrary destruction of the world,” and His problematic decision to imbue humanity with the Evil Inclination. The early Christian theologian Origen (185–254) responded to this pagan thinker in the same way he answered Marcion: he charges Celsus with reading Scripture too literally, and for failing to appreciate its deeper allegorical message.92

The Third and Fourth Centuries Pagan writings against the Old Testament do not cease with Celsus. Despite expressing a favorable disposition toward Judaism and the Old Testament God in general, the third-century neo-Platonic philosopher Porphyry (234– 305) nonetheless denounced the biblical God for withholding knowledge from Adam in the Garden of Eden. Porphyry argued that Adam should not be held responsible for his disobedience because God did not give him the requisite capacity to distinguish between right and wrong.93 Similarly, in Against the Galilean, Julian the Apostate echoed Porphyry’s charge labeling God’s handling of the Garden of Eden narrative as “absurd” and praising the serpent for his attempts to aid humanity.94 In addition, as Marcion had done, Julian highlights God’s wrath, His undignified jealousy, and His problematic doctrine of inherited guilt whereby children are punished for the sins of the parents. Julian adopts this strident position while still voicing, as had Porphyry, respect and admiration for the ancient religion.95

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Moral struggles with the biblical God also appear in the writings of late antique and early medieval Christian defenders of YHWH. This literature, coined by Byzantine grammarians in the twelfth century as “erotapokriseis,” assumes the form of questions and answers on the Bible.96 In the fourth century, the Italian Ambrosiaster (also known as Pseudo-Ambrose) authored Questions on the Old and New Testament, a tract that attempts to answer more than one hundred biblical problems raised by either nontheists or struggling Christians.97 These challenges include a number of moral attacks on the Israelite God for applying corporate punishment. For example, God killed children for the sins of the parents (question 14); God destroyed the innocent along with the righteous when destroying the city of Sodom (question 13); and God had thirty-six Israelites killed at the hands of the people of Ai because of the sin of one person, Achan, who stole some of the proscribed objects in the war against the people of Jericho (question 36).98 The author of the tract Quaestiones et responsiones ad orthodoxos also cites those people struggling with YHWH’s justice, asking why God brought a pestilence that wiped out 70,000 Israelites merely because King David violated the law by holding a census (2 Samuel 24:15–17).99 And, of course, we must not ignore the Manicheans, a neo-Gnostic Christian group with whom Augustine spent so much ink refuting in his commentary to Genesis.100 Adimantus, the leading Manichean missionary to Africa in the fourth century and a disciple of Mani (the founder of Manichaeism), authored The Disputationes, a work no longer extant, which, following Marcion’s Antithesis, sought to contrast the “evil” Old Testament God with the “righteous” New Testament God. Scholars see strong Marcion influence in the work, though it is unclear as to whether Adimantus directly ­borrowed from Marcion’s Antithesis or not.101 Recently, J. A. van den Berg reconstructed The Disputationes by excerpting Adimantus’s citations found in Augustine’s Against Adimantus.102 Among Adimantus’s thirty-four “antitheses,” which seek to accentuate the “rough ethics” of the Old Testament, we find a number of recycled moral critiques of YHWH: His uncontrolled jealousy;103 His causing evil in the world;104 and His punitive policy of intergenerational guilt, to name just a few.105 Augustine responded to Adimantus in the fourth century as Origen responded to Marcion and Celsus in the third century: the Bible must be read metaphorically, not literally.106 Indeed, an incorrect hermeneutic leads inexorably to heresy.



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The Ninth Century In the seventh century, Anastasios of Sinai, a preacher and abbot of St. Catherine’s Monastery at Mt. Sinai, and an important source of our knowledge about the Islamic conquest of Palestine and Egypt, wrote two works, Guide Along the Right Path (or Hodegos) and Questions and Answers.107 Both of them contain— among other things—responses to dozens of religious conundrums and difficulties posed to him by skeptics and heretics that Anastasios encountered on his trips to the East.108 In the process of selecting, editing, and organizing Questions and Answers, anonymous compilers in the ninth century added their own material. These new questions and answers, designated by Joseph Munitiz as “pseudo-Anastasian,” include new ethical critiques of the Old Testament God.109 For example: how could God harden Pharaoh’s heart and then hold him responsible for enslaving the Israelites (question 29)? Why does God punish children for the sins of the parents (question 35)? And why did God deny Moses entry to the Promised Land for such a small sin (question 37)?110 Ethical challenges to the Old Testament God also can be found in another ninth-century Christian work, Amphilochia, produced by the influential Patriarch of Constantinople, Photius (810–893).111 The book raises over three hundred questions on the Bible, many of them aimed at the Old Testament. While the book has not been translated into English, Judah Rosenthal has listed thirty-eight examples from the book, including these: Why does God punish children for the sins of the parents (question 266)? Why does God punish Moses from entering the Promised Land for such a small sin (question 288)?112 Beginning in the ninth century, Moslem theologians and freethinkers (Zindiqs) alike began to denounce the “corrupted” Old Testament depiction of God. In his Refutation of Christianity, the Mu’tazilite Amr b. Bahr Al Jahiz (781–869), who may have been the first Moslem to translate some Hebrew Bible passages into Arabic, berates the Old Testament authors for their blasphemous anthropomorphisms and polytheistic lapses.113 Around the same time, the Moslem freethinker Ibn Al-Rawandi (827–911), in his Kitab alDamigh, indicts YHWH for “behaving like a wrathful, murderous enemy” and for being “vindictive and quarrelsome.”114 In a book dedicated to detailing medieval Islamic critiques of the Hebrew Bible, Hava Lazarus-Yafeh maintains that Al-Rawandi’s antagonism may have been shaped by Celsus, Porphyry, and Julian, and by Christian heretical sects such as Marcionism and Manichaeism.115 Further Islamic critiques of the Old Testament God

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appear in the writings of the Spanish theologian Ibn Hazm (994–1064) and the Persian scholar Al-Shahrastani (1086–1153).116 A ninth-century Zoroastrian work, the Skand Gumanig Wizar (DoubtDispelling Exposition), contains polemics against the world’s major religions. In chapters 13 and 14 the author, Mardanfarrox I Orhmazddadan, sets his combative eyes on Judaism. While Mardanfarrox does not cite the Old Testament directly, he is aware of, and cites extensively from, a work called First Scripture, which contains the essential teachings of Judaism culled mostly from the Bible and rabbinic literature.117 Mardanfarrox is deeply troubled by the Jewish God who, presented as an arrogant and angry deity, seeks to prevent knowledge from human beings and is responsible for evil in the world. Moreover, the biblical God indiscriminately kills thousands of people in one night (including women and children) and punishes children for the sins of the parents.118 As a Zoroastrian dualist, Mardanfarrox associates YHWH with the evil deity Ahriman. In a recent work, Sam Thrope has noted the myriad Marcionite and Manichean ideas (also dualist systems) found in the Skand Gumanig Wizar.119 One last ninth-century critique of YHWH should be noted. The Jewish heretic and contemporary of Mardanfarrox, Hiwi al-Balkhi, also launched a polemic against rabbinic Judaism and the God of Scripture.120 While his book, which contains 200 biblical difficulties, is no longer extant, scholars have reconstructed it by collecting Hiwi’s citations found in those rabbinic and Karaite texts that attempt to refute him, most notably Sa’adia Gaon’s Book of Beliefs and Opinions.121 In addition, Ezra Fleisher has published a small fragment of Hiwi’s work found at the Cairo Geniza.122 Hiwi indicts God for, among other things, not protecting Abel, too harshly punishing the Sodomites, unfairly testing Abraham at the Akedah, implanting the Evil Inclination in humanity, demanding the mutilation of children through circumcision, keeping women barren, and accepting bribes.123 Most of these ideas are not new, leading scholars such as Judah Rosenthal to question which religious movement most directly influenced Hiwi’s thought: Marcionism, Manichaeism, Zoroastrianism, or the Moslem freethinkers.124 Though most scholars have argued that Hiwi and his circle appropriated their critiques from the aforementioned sources, Jacob Guttmann put forth the provocative claim that Hiwi drew inspiration from questions posed by the rabbis. For Guttmann, Hiwi only drew from the rabbis’ questions but ignored their answers.125 Related to Hiwi’s “heresy,” Solomon Schechter in 1901 published a document found at the Cairo Geniza that contained 103 exegetical and moral difficulties with the Hebrew Bible. While initially entertaining the possibility



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that the document was written by Hiwi himself, Schechter concluded that the work more likely emanated from someone in Hiwi’s circle.126 Contained in this list were critiques of God for either too harshly punishing the guilty (Lev. 26:18 and Is. 40:2) or for His corporate justice wherein the righteous are punished for the sins of the unrighteous (1 Sam. 2:12 and 2 Sam. 24).127

Conclusion We normally think of the aforementioned “heretical” anti-YHWH thinkers as the only ones to critique the morality of the biblical God. But, following Jacob Guttman, we can now add the confrontational rabbinic texts presented in this book to this “aporia literature.” That is, we do not need to look outside of monotheistic literary traditions to find moral critiques of the biblical God. Some rabbinic Jews did as well, though they do not, typically, express these sentiments on their own authority. In fact, many of specific moral critiques launched by Marcion, Celsus, Porphyry, and so forth reappear with striking similarity in late midrashic texts. By comparing these literatures I do not mean, of course, to gloss over the obvious contrasts. Thinkers like Marcion, Celsus, and Porphyry highlight God’s problematic conduct as a weapon to undermine the Israelite religion. Clearly, the aggadic protest texts that I have collected, in sharp contrast, are not polemical, and do not seek to erode the Bible’s authority or to undermine Jewish observance. The rabbinic voices are internal critiques, not external ones. They express moral struggle and uncertainty, but not opposition and castigation. Notwithstanding these fundamental differences, both literatures do bring into sharp focus the troubling moral dimensions of the biblical God. And neither of these literatures—both rabbinic and “heretical”—embark upon various methods of charitable reinterpretation to align God’s conduct with their internal moral sensibilities, as do most Judeo-Christian readings. Thus, the rabbinic impulse to produce ethical protests such as these— and dozens of others not cited—represents an intermediate approach between those anti-YHWH thinkers, such as Marcion and Celsus, who sought to erode the authority of the Bible by accentuating God’s immoral behavior, and, on the other hand, those Jewish sages—especially the tannaim—and the church fathers who defended God’s perfection at all costs by morally reinterpreting troubling verses. In collecting these protests texts, I have argued that classical Jewish ethics does not simply flow from the Bible and its assumed

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Author, rather that in many instances Jewish ethical sensibilities emerge out of a profound moral crisis with the biblical God. The problem is not always resolved, but it is certainly addressed. In the next chapter, we move from ethics to theology. The chapter seeks to answer the following crucial question: What do these protest narratives reveal about the rabbinic conception of God?

Chapter 5

The Humanization of God

We saw in Chapter 1 that anti-protest rabbis—as well as many church fathers— opposed theological confrontation on two grounds. Either protesting God was viewed as an act of disrespect that impinges on God’s exalted status as the King of Kings (relational problem), or critiques of God are erroneousness as God is perfectly good and just (wrong metaphysics). The final two chapters shift our attention to explore the theological presuppositions of the counter-position: how would or could those sages who endorsed theological protest defend their position against these two arguments? In this chapter, I argue that the pro-protest position was nurtured and fueled by a distinctive rabbinic theology, one that culminated in the postamoraic period. And that theology can be described as the humanization of God. It is only against this conceptual backdrop that some sages could comfortably accept the protest motif. With this theology, the rabbis could overcome both anti-protest charges presented above, thereby justifying their confrontations. In what follows, I illuminate this theological orientation and explain how it authorizes confrontation. To do so, I explicate aggadot that are both related to, and not related to, the theological protest. Stated succinctly, this chapter focuses not on what drove the sages to produce protest narratives (as in the previous chapter) but rather on how these contentious dialogues could shed light on late rabbinic conceptions of God. In the process, I answer the following questions: What do protest narratives assume and imply about the nature of God, and God’s relationship with humanity? And, furthermore, in what ways does the rabbinic God contrast with later medieval Jewish depictions of the divine?

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Hierarchical Flattening The rabbinic embrace of confrontation was built on the humanization of God. In the aggadah, the sages anthropomorphize God in ways that outdo anything we encounter in the Hebrew Bible.1 Although in Scripture, YHWH is conceived as having humanlike limbs and organs such as arms, eyes, and legs, and humanlike emotions such as love, anger, regret, and jealousy,2 rabbinic literature expands the anthropomorphic and anthropopathic field by having God assume humanlike roles and features never before entertained by biblical authors.3 This has led some scholars to describe the rabbinic God as “imitatio hominis.”4 A few examples suffice to illustrate this anthropomorphic intensification. In the Hebrew Bible, God only saves or punishes Israel. Rabbi Akiva and other sages, by contrast, also imagine God, the Shekhinah, to be “in exile” with His people and also, until the redemptive moment, in physical bondage with them.5 As the Israelites experience suffering, so does the rabbinic God. Thus, to quote Abraham Joshua Heschel, “salvation of Israel” became no longer just a “human need” but a “divine need.”6 And, as Michael Fishbane has shown, these images are not only theologically bold but exegetically bold as well. The rabbis transform biblical texts of divine empowerment into texts of divine disempowerment.7 Similarly, post-tannaitic sages imagine God as lamenting uncontrollably over Israel’s exile and the Temple’s destruction. Here, too, the rabbis anchor this striking divine image by reading Scripture counterintuitively and decontextually, transforming the crying figure of a human prophet, such as Jeremiah, or a personified figure, such as Zion, into God.8 Other examples of rabbinic humanization include God laughing,9 dancing with sages,10 studying and teaching Torah in the house of study,11 engaging in matchmaking,12 and spending His free time playing with mythic sea-monsters.13 We also have dozens of midrashic texts detailing God’s physical features, such as His clothing and crown.14 God even rides a horse15 and kisses the walls of the Temple16 and His most beloved human followers.17 Most of these images do not have analogues in the various biblical traditions. Not surprisingly, as Elliot Wolfson has noted, mystical visions of God, which are an isolated phenomenon in biblical texts, are intensified—with graphic details—not only in Merkavah Mysticism but also within rabbinic literature.18 There were, of course, limits to humanization; God does not assume every human role. The rabbinic God is Creator and humanity is the created; God is the commander and humanity is the commanded;19 God is eternal, does not need food for sustenance, and never engages in sex.20 While God is



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a “parent” to Israel in a metaphorical sense, he never assumes that position in a biological sense. And, crucially, God is fundamentally just, good, and concerned with the welfare of humanity. Thus, where exactly to draw the line— what human traits could be applied to God and what could not—was murky, and sometimes, as in the tannaitic period, a matter of debate. As Arthur Marmorstein and Abraham Joshua Heschel have claimed, Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Ishmael argued this very issue, with Rabbi Akiva expanding the anthropomorphic horizon and Ishmael limiting it (sometimes even to the extent of negating biblical anthropomorphisms altogether).21 Because in the post-tannaitic period, the Akivan position emerged triumphant,22 amoraic and post-amoraic texts present extreme anthropomorphic and anthropopathic depictions of God. As we shall see, some of these late characterizations even outdo earlier Akivan ones. For, as Heschel emphasizes many times, even Rabbi Akiva, the bold tannaitic anthropomorphist, was not willing to concede the humanity of God as it relates to divine morality.23 For Rabbi Akiva, God’s justice was morally perfect, and, consequently, he prohibited any human protest that would cast aspersions on this central metaphysical truth.24 What function did this anthropomorphic intensification serve the rabbis? What did it provide them? Why, for example, did they portray God as wearing tallit and tefillin, or as praying and studying Torah in the academies?25 What drove them to imagine God in such a fashion? The rabbis themselves do not answer these questions because, in general, they fail to reflect on the motivations behind their mythologizing. Notwithstanding this limitation, it would be fair to conjecture that, in the context of late antique Judaism, where Jews had neither the Temple nor political power, the rabbis were driven to emphasize the intimate bond that God continues to have with Israel.26 To humanize God was to make God “disarmingly familiar,”27 to feel His closeness, and to impress upon Israel that, appearances to the contrary, God had not abandoned them.28 Put simply, by intensifying and radicalizing the anthropomorphic biblical imagery, the rabbis effectively minimized the ontological divide between God and humanity.29 God was, indeed, one of them. As Jacob Neusner noted in passing, this increased intimacy between God and humanity provided fertile theological grounds for the rabbis to support and generate protests against God.30 For in this context, protest would not disrupt or disrespect the human-divine hierarchical structure. God’s closeness with Israel would forestall that concern: no ontological gap required preservation. As a central expression of this hierarchical flattening, many midrashim depict God as Israel’s “brother”31 or “friend”32—a relational model that virtually never appears

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in the Hebrew Bible.33 In these relational analogies, the vertical hierarchy between God and humanity is downplayed, and the horizontal relationship between God and humanity is accentuated.34 And, more radically, as Moshe Halbertal has demonstrated, the rabbinic God at times assumes a weaker position in the human-divine imagery: “The singular contribution that the midrash makes to textual anthropomorphic theology is through the depiction of social spaces in which the accepted biblical authority relationships are reversed and in which God takes the place expected of man. God is the slave, the student, the judged, the wife, and the one who is redeemed from suffering.”35 Conversely, humans assume, at times, the more powerful role of husband, parent, creditor, judge, and master. In these moments, the sages boldly invert the traditional and standard biblical analogy between God and humanity in which God assumes the superior position in the relational hierarchy. Against this backdrop, it is no wonder that critiques of God in rabbinic culture were not deemed, at least by many, as an act of irreverence or as a threat to Jewish piety and worship. If anything, the very production of these confrontations might function as a method by which the rabbis demonstrate and reconfirm God’s unique intimacy with Israel and its treasured leaders.

Rabbinic Versus Medieval Theology The rabbinic God is presented not as a transcendent, omnipotent, and omniscient being, but as a complex, corporeal, and unpredictable deity who evinces greater similarities to the capricious gods of Greek and Roman mythology than to the perfect unchanging Christian God of Augustine or Aquinas.36 Because of this, in many periods, these “scandalous” and “embarrassing” depictions of the Jewish deity have fanned the flames of anti-Judaism or anti-rabbinism.37 Rather than defend these odd divine depictions as genuine expressions of the rabbinic imagination, the standard traditional Jewish response, beginning in the eighth and ninth centuries, was to neutralize the problem by adopting various strategies of containment.38 These apologetic maneuvers included decanonizing or devaluing the non-legal sections of the Talmud and Midrash;39 seeing these strange divine images as “poetic conceits” for the uneducated masses; or embarking on various forms of allegorical reinterpretation that expose the deeper spiritual kernel of the rabbinic depiction. As Yair Lorberbaum has documented, the medieval philosopher Moses Maimonides (1138– 1203) adopted all these techniques and thereby created a virtual stranglehold on



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Jewish theology—even for later academic scholars.40 From Maimonides onward, rabbinic texts concerning God were typically read, by both traditional and nontraditional scholars, through a philosophical lens: They were ignored, not taken as serious theology,41 or reinterpreted as expressing lofty ideas in concrete form.42 Alternatively, drawing on the writings of Sa’adia Gaon, some medievalists understood the anthropomorphic descriptions of the Shekhinah or Kavod (Divine Glory) in rabbinic passages as referring not to God Himself, but rather to lofty creations of God.43 In short, rabbinic theology was not read on its own terms. The problematic effects of this medieval hijacking of classical Jewish thought can be seen in many works, but most starkly in Ephraim Urbach’s encyclopedic The Sages (1969), which, while systematizing the unsystematic thinking of the rabbis, imposes abstract medieval categories and conceptions retroactively onto rabbinic material. According to Urbach, although the sages express their conceptions in highly concrete and vivid terms, they, like their medieval philosophical descendants, understood God as an incorporeal, omniscient, and omnipotent being. Thus, any rabbinic statement to the contrary must reflect a rhetorical concession to the masses or, in other instances, must be perceived as mere metaphor.44 From this vantage point, Urbach could maintain that “the sages acquired a supra-mythological and supernatural conception of the deity. He is spirit and not flesh.”45 And elsewhere, he argues that midrashim describing God with human attributes were merely meant to “counter the deistic outlook which removed God from the world.”46 The most telling sign of Urbach’s failure to distinguish between rabbinic and medieval modes of thinking is his decision to name his book ‫ אמונות ודעות‬:‫חזל‬. The subtitle of Urbach’s book harkens back to Judah Ibn Tibbon’s twelfth-century translation of Sa’adia Gaon’s Kitāb ul-ʾamānāt wal-iʿtiqādāt, which attempted to systematize and organize Jewish theology, much like Urbach’s work, in abstract terms.47 In the 1990s and 2000s, however, revisionist scholars such as Michael Fishbane and Moshe Idel sought to break Maimonides’ philosophical hold on rabbinic theology.48 As part of their larger projects treating Jewish myth and mysticism, respectively, they stressed the discontinuities between early rabbinic and later philosophical thought.49 Reading talmudic and midrashic texts without the guiding hand of Maimonides, Fishbane and Idel have shown that the rabbis of old conceived of God as an evolving, mythical, and corporeal deity who is a player in the world’s events rather than merely its determiner. In these moments of divine transformation, what Idel calls “theurgy,” God not only affects humans via His decisions but, like the mythic

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gods of antiquity, God is also deeply affected by the actions of humans.50 Fishbane and Idel argue that the rabbinic God is not an unchanging, transcendent, and omnipotent being like the God of Maimonides, but a highly protean and vulnerable God who seeks and yearns for acts of human righteousness to solidify His power. Because they refuse to sideline vivid anthropomorphic imagery or reinterpret it as metaphor, Fishbane and Idel designate the rabbis as mythmakers rather than philosophers. As such, they reject Gershom Scholem’s famous assertion that medieval mystical “Kabbalism” represents a sharp break from the anti-mythic stance of “Rabbinism.”51 The unapologetic works of Fishbane and Idel have ignited a renewed interest in the rabbinic God. “Scandalous” anthropomorphic texts that had been ignored and downplayed are now being read on their own terms. Following Fishbane and Idel’s recent revisionism, this study has rejected a medieval abstract reading of the rabbinic God. Yet in significant ways, my reading of rabbinic theology departs from theirs. As scholars of myth and Kabbalah, respectively, Fishbane and Idel are invested in tracing the mythic continuities between rabbinic thought and later mystical thought. To that end, their work succeeds. No doubt, certain rabbinic notions such as theurgy, the plurality of divine attributes, and the possibility of divine disempowerment set the stage for latter kabbalistic developments. However, their works do not emphasize areas of discontinuity: how the rabbinic conception of God contrasts with later Jewish mystical conceptions. Without engaging this issue, Jewish studies scholars run the risk of replacing one medieval hermeneutical lens (philosophy) to read rabbinic texts with another medieval hermeneutical lens (Kabbalah). Possibly ­alluding to this concern, Alon Goshen-Gottstein argues that “the liberation of rabbinic theology from the reigns of medieval theology is still underway.”52 Unlike medieval philosophers and kabbalists, the rabbis do not systematically reflect on the nature of God; the divine simply appears on the scene as the central character of a story. Yet these stories communicate theology as the sages typically expressed their essential values and concerns in their narratives, rather than in their dogmatic pronouncements or maxims. Rabbinic notions of God as well as the rabbis’ understanding of the ideal human-divine relationship cannot be accurately captured in theological categories, as is true in the medieval period, but must be extracted from their narrative embellishment of biblical accounts.53 These personal and relational depictions of the God of Israel contrast sharply with the impersonal portrayals developed by later medieval Jewish philosophers and mystics. Specifically, like Aristotle, Maimonides understood God as the “unmoved mover,” a concept or being rather than a character or



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person.54 And the kabbalistic God, while pictured in the form of a human being (with the ten Sefirot [emanations]), is typically thought of as a complex system of interrelated realms or powers. The kabbalistic godhead is not a distinct and unified personality or consciousness, but a fragmented, dynamic, and complex machine-like structure that is automatically affected by human actions.55 Thus, despite the fact that relations between philosophers and kabbalists tended to be acrimonious (they often issued bans and counter-bans against each other), on the conceptual plane there was much that united them. Underscoring this convergence, Bernard Septimus posits that both esoteric systems regard “the entire cosmos—the spiritual realm included—as bound up in a causal network that operates with lawlike necessity.”56 Unlike the unpredictable, historical, and relational God of the rabbis and Scripture, the medieval God or godhead is predictable, described in naturalistic terms, and, most importantly, devoid of real personality.57 Consequently, since biblical and rabbinic encounters with God are patterned after relations between humans, the primary point of connection between heaven and earth is through dialogue. By contrast, as Adam Afterman has detailed, medievalists—philosophical as well as mystical—aspire to nondialogical and impersonal contact in the form of rational or mystical attachment to the divine known as devekut, a feature notably absent in rabbinic Judaism.58 This fundamental distinction, I argue, accounts for the centrality of the protest motif in rabbinic texts, and its near total absence in medieval philosophical and mystical texts.

God’s Violations of Torah Law The rabbinic narrowing of the ontological divide between humanity and God is expressed in some of the protest narratives themselves. In them, God, just like any other human being, is subject to Jewish law; because of that, God is at times accused of hypocritically violating the Torah. This theological notion that God abides by His own mitzvot is not found in Scripture. While it is true that the biblical God commits Himself to abide by His promises and covenants,59 He is not subject to the laws incumbent on the Israelites. As Alvin Plantinga has noted, God can freely transgress the command of “You shall not kill.”60 By contrast, the rabbis imagine God to be bound to Jewish law. 61 With this notion, the rabbis had a tangible mechanism to ground and justify their protests. The earliest Jewish intimation that God keeps His own law is found in the second-century bce work The Book of Jubilees (2:18): “And all the

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angels of the presence, and all the angels of sanctification, these two great classes He has bidden us to keep the Sabbath with Him in heaven and on earth.”62 This tradition, that God observes the laws of Sabbath, resurfaces in Genesis Rabbah, a fifth-century midrashic work, in the context of a theological debate between a Roman governor and Rabbi Akiva.63 Other amoraic texts, more ambitiously, have God keeping all the Torah’s laws, not just the Sabbath. For example, we read in the Jerusalem Talmud: R. Eleazar said: “For the king, the law is not binding” [the Talmud uses Greek words in Hebrew letters: “para basileos ho nomos agraphos”]—It is the way of the world that when a mortal king issues an order (‫)גזירה‬, if he wishes, he can obey it [‫]מקיימה‬, or if he wishes, [only] others will obey it. The Holy One, blessed be He, however, is not like that, but He issues a decree and He Himself performs it first. What is the [biblical] justification? And they shall keep My ordinance [‫ ]משמרתי‬. . . I am the Lord [Lev. 22:9]—I am He who is first to observe the commandments of the Torah. (JT Rosh Hashanah 1:2)64 R. Eleazar highlights the distinctiveness of the divine king over and against ordinary kings. Unlike hypocritical “flesh and blood” rulers who, abiding by the Greek aphorism “For the king, the law is not binding,” do not keep some of their own laws, God, the Ruler of Israel, always does.65 The teaching is derived from Leviticus 22:9 “And they shall keep my ordinance. . . . I am the Lord.” Rather than reading the pronoun “My” from “My ordinance” as signifying God as “author of the Law,” Rabbi Eleazar understands it as God declaring Himself as the “follower of the Law.” It is “God’s ordinance” in the sense that God is constrained by it. The rabbinic move to interpret God’s possessive pronoun in this fashion is similarly used in other passages describing God’s ordinances, such as “If you follow My laws” (Lev. 26:3)66 and “He [God] issued His commands to Jacob; His statutes and rules to Israel” (Ps. 147:19).67 The paradox of this Jerusalem Talmud passage is that while Rabbi Eleazar piously draws a fundamental distinction between hypocritical human rulers and the non-hypocritical God of Israel, his teaching effectively blurs the distinction between God and humanity as now not only do humans follow the Divine Law, but God as well. This is indeed one of the most remarkable expressions of the humanization of God. Yet, ironically, the maxim claims to be doing the very opposite: contrasting God with human beings. In his monograph on divine anthropomorphism, Arthur Marmorstein sees this



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rabbinic insistence that God fulfills His own mitzvot as a polemic against early Christian thinkers who attempted to downplay the importance of the Law.68 Having God abiding by Jewish law underscores its absolute value; it does not have mere relative importance.69 David Dauber takes a different approach. He reads this talmudic passage and others like it not as a critique of Christianity but as a “polemic against Roman law.”70 According to Daube, “The rabbi was pointing out that even God is under the law, and from this we learn a qal vaḥomer [argumentum a fortiori] that how much more is the Emperor under the law!”71 While recognizing the plausibility of these arguments, I would also regard these texts as fitting into the large rabbinic project to humanize God, to see God in the “image of man.” The rabbinic subjugation of God to halakha provides the midrashist with fertile ground to critique God with greater felicity; the rabbis now have a legitimate standard and structural tool in which God’s actions could be measured and judged. Indeed, in a dozen or so rabbinic texts, God is taken to task for ignoring, if not violating, in reality or in spirit, His own Torah law.72 The stock phrase used to signify this form of protest is the rhetorical question “Have you not written [in the Torah] [‫ ?”]הכתבת‬In what follows, I present two examples: the first accuses God of committing arson, and the second accuses God of taking revenge.73

Responsibilities of an Arsonist The section of Exodus known as “the Book of the Covenant” (20:19–23:33) contains interpersonal civil laws, dictated by God, that govern Israelite life. The end of chapter 21 and the beginning of chapter 22 delineate penalties for crimes against another’s property. One of them is the law governing arson: “When a fire is started and spreads to thorns, so that stacked, standing or growing grain is consumed, he who started the fire must make restitution” (Exod. 22:5). While the Bible applies the arson law to the Israelites, a Tanḥuma-Yelammedenu section of Pesiqta Rabbati has Israel rhetorically applying the law to God as well: It is written . . . From above He sent a fire down into my bones [Lam. 1:13]. Israel asked: Master of the Universe, how long shall the Temple be ashes? Have you not written in Your Torah [‫ ]הכתבת‬He who started the fire must make restitution? [Exod. 22:5]. And you kindled it, as it says: From above He sent a fire down into my bones [Lam. 1:13]! You are required [‫ ]צריך‬to rebuild it, and to comfort us—not

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through an angel, but You with your own glory. God said to them: As you live! Thus I shall do, as it says: The Lord rebuilds Jerusalem; He gathers in the exiles of Israel [Ps. 147:2]. And I am He who comforts you [Isa. 51:12]. Where do we know He will comfort us? From what we read in the prophets: I am He who comforts you [ibid.] (­Pesiqta Rabbati 33) In this late midrash, Israel accuses God of ignoring His legal responsibility to make restitution for damages. The idea that God—and not the enemies of Israel—burned down the Temple and should thus be considered the primary arsonist is read into Lamentations 1:13, where a personified Zion proclaims, “From above He sent a fire down into my bones.” Based on this historical reality, Pesiqta Rabbati has Israel protesting God: “Have you not written in Your Torah [‫‘ ]הכתבת‬He who started the fire must make restitution?’ [Exod. 22:5]. . . . [Thus], You are required [‫ ]צריך‬to rebuild it, and to comfort us.” Israel mythically imagines God as bound by the Book of the Covenant, and, more specifically, by the laws of arson restitution, arguing that God personally, and “not . . . an angel,” must restore Zion to her previous state. Conceding the charge, God swears that He will personally rebuild Jerusalem and the Temple, and, through this action, comfort Israel: “I am He who comforts you” (Isa. 51:12). This striking late rabbinic passage transforms the impetus for the promise of divine comfort as found in the Bible. In Isaiah 51:12, God’s loving announcement of “I am He who comforts you” is provoked by Israel’s appeal to God’s power and might; as God struck down the mythic sea-monsters of rahab and tanin in primordial times (51:9), so too God should destroy the enemies of Israel (51:11). By contrast, Pesiqta Rabbati reimagines God’s promise of comfort as following on the heels of Israel’s accusation that God failed to repay Israel for damages ensued. In other words, instead of Israel appealing to God’s strength and ego—as we have in Scripture, Pesiqta Rabbati has Israel appeal to God’s ethical obligation as “damager of Israel.” According to this rabbinic inversion, God’s commitment to comfort Israel is not related to divine pride, as a surface reading of Isaiah 51 suggests, but now of divine infraction. It emerges only after God assumes liability for burning down the Temple. To accomplish this daring retelling, Pesiqta Rabbati rearranges Scripture, placing Isaiah 51:12 as a reaction to Lamentations 1:13 (“From above He sent a fire down into my bones”), and not, as with a contextual reading, to what is presented right before it (Isa. 51:9–11). Second, by creating this intertextual link the force of Lamentations 1:13 is transformed. The phrase “From



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above He sent a fire down into my bones” is no longer a lament, an expression of suffering, but rather a legal accusation.74

Taking Vengeance and Bearing a Grudge Challenges against God for breaking halakha most often appear in relation to interpersonal laws. For example, take Genesis Rabbah 55:3, wherein Israel accuses God of violating the prohibition against taking revenge (Lev. 19:18): R. Avin commenced his discourse thus: Forasmuch as the king’s word has power; and who may say unto him: What do you (Eccl. 8:4)? . . . Israel said to the Holy One, blessed be He: Sovereign of the Universe! You did write in Your Torah [‫]כתבת בתורתך‬, You shall not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge [‫( ]לא תקום ולא תטור‬Lev. 19:18), yet You do so Yourself, as it says, The Lord avenges [’‫ ]נוקם ה‬and is full of wrath, the Lord takes vengeance on His adversaries, and bears a grudge for His enemies [‫( ]נוטר הוא לאויביו‬Nah. 1:2).75 In this amoraic midrash, Rav Avin portrays Israel as charging God with hypocrisy: God commands His people not to take revenge and bear a grudge (Lev. 19:18), but God Himself, according to the book of Nahum (1:2), embarks on both of those acts.76 Rabbi Avin compares Israel’s brazen challenge to a student (‫ )תלמיד‬who similarly questions his teacher (‫)רב‬: “Master (‫)רבי‬, you tell me, ‘Do not lend money on interest,’ yet you yourself lend on interest!? For you it is permitted and for me it is prohibited?” By drawing from this relational metaphor, Rabbi Avin might be accentuating the inappropriate behavior of the student (Israel) who challenges his teacher, a superior (God). More likely, however, the educational parable does the very opposite, providing the conceptual grounds upon which such a challenge might be legitimated. Through the use of the parable, Israel is envisioned as maintaining a privileged and intimate relationship with God. Therefore, just as a student could justifiably challenge his teacher for producing a hypocritical teaching, Israel too retains that right in relation to God. It is the close relationship between teacher (God) and student (Israel) that allows for an open exchange of ideas, even as the teacher continues to occupy the privileged role in that relational hierarchy.77 God responds to Israel’s charge not by challenging her right to launch such an accusation, but by turning to the substantive issue and distinguishing

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between two types of revenge/grudge: those taken against Jews and those taken against non-Jews. “Said God to them (Israel): I wrote in My Torah, ‘You shall not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge’ against Israel; but in respect of the nations—‘Avenge the children of Israel’ [Num. 31:2].” The divine subjugation to Torah law reflects the extent to which some sages were prepared to flatten the hierarchical divide between heaven and earth. Like humanity, God too is not exempt from abiding by the dictates of Mosaic law. My argument is that, given the rabbinic humanization of the divine, critiques or protests against God—even those not using the literary form of “Have you not written”—would not undermine the strict ontological distance between the divine and human realms. This is because these sages denied such a strict divide. In addition, critiques of God that do draw on the “Have You not written in Your Torah” formula provide the rabbis with a tangible justification and structural framing to launch their critiques. In these cases, the challenges are not presented as a clash between human ethics and divine actions, but between God’s laws and God’s actions. In this way, citing Torah law provided the sages with a further shield to protect them against real or imagined accusations of religious irreverence.78

Conclusion The radical humanization of the divine in rabbinic culture reflects the extent to which the sages rejected the Greek philosophical tradition. Unlike most early Christian thinkers who sought to reconcile the philosophical and biblical traditions, the rabbis do not appropriate philosophical language when formulating their own conceptions of God and the world.79 This posture allowed the rabbis to conceive of God in extreme human terms. This humanization also affected the ways in which the rabbis constructed their (exegetical) confrontations with God. Because God, like humanity, is bound by Torah law, the sages could have biblical figures accuse God of violating the mitzvot. Notwithstanding these subversive dimensions, it should not be forgotten that this humanization was driven, most probably, not by a desire to deride God, but a desire to become familiar with God, to experience divine intimacy. This is where the great paradox lies; divine humanization is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, the notion breaks down the sharp ontological divide between heaven and earth; closeness with the divine can now be achieved. On the other hand, the price of this intimacy is quite high: it provides the space to produce a morally fallible God.

Chapter 6

Divine Concessions

The previous chapter’s question of whether God could break His own Torah law is linked to a larger question: did the sages consider God to be morally perfect? Bracketing the issue of God’s commitment to Torah law, could God err or misjudge? To answer this question, in this chapter I explicate rabbinic texts that treat the possibility of God regretting past actions or conceding moral critiques. I argue that whereas earlier rabbinic texts tend to dismiss the idea of God making mistakes, later aggadot—especially those found in the Tanḥuma-Yelammedenu (TY)—tend to be more open to this bold notion. In many TY texts, while God is portrayed as fundamentally good and just, He does not always make the correct ethical choice. Imagining God in such a fashion upends the second primary objection to theological protest. We have seen that for some sages, like Rabbi Akiva, protesting God is problematic in that it presumes a fallible God, and, for them, this is absurd as God is ethically perfect. Yet, if God is not morally perfect, then this line of objection loses its force. Moreover, from this perspective, challenging God might in and of itself constitute a virtue, as it could move God to reconsider, at least in the reimagined prophetic age, a prior errant decision. To be sure, the authors of these late midrashim do not proclaim the imperfection of God as a maxim or normative teaching (e.g., “Rabbi X says: God sometimes does not judge or act appropriately”). Such a blatant statement would be too radical and subversive for any pious Jew to make.1 Yet this theological assumption—of divine moral imperfection—could be accessed by analyzing how some late sages depict God in their numerous retellings of select biblical narratives. More specifically, the notion that God is morally imperfect at times can be assumed when late midrashim have God regret a decision or when they have God concede an ethical critique leveled by a biblical hero. In both these

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instances—whether unprovoked regret or a provoked concession, God recognizes that His past act or decision does not comport with the moral ideal. It is thus within exegetical narratives—rather than doctrinal maxims—that we can unearth the living theology of the sages. In these texts, the humanization of God reaches its most extreme expression: not only is God humanlike in being subject to and sometimes guilty of breaking Torah law, but, most radically, God is also human-like with regard to His moral character. As human beings regret and err, so does God.

Divine Retraction in the Hebrew Bible In order to highlight the distinctiveness of late rabbinic theology, we need to first consider the question of divine regret and concession in the Hebrew Bible and early rabbinic literature. In Scripture, we encounter contradictory claims as to whether God is human-like in relation to regretting past decisions.2 On the one hand, Balaam prophecies that God is “not mortal . . . [that He would] change His mind [‫]ויתנחם‬. . . . Would He speak and not act?” (Num. 23:19); likewise, Samuel deposes King Saul while declaring that God “is not human that He should change [‫ ]ינחם‬His mind” (1 Sam. 15:29).3 On the other hand, biblical passages elsewhere state the very opposite: God regrets creating humanity (Gen. 6:6), for crowning Saul the king of Israel (1 Sam. 15:11, 35), and for punishing Israel at the end of the First Temple period (Jer. 42:10).4 While theologically significant, in these latter cases God’s regret or change of heart is not necessarily driven by ethical considerations. Likewise, ethical considerations do not appear to be the central concern of two other biblical verses where God’s regret is triggered by a human challenge. In the first instance, God agrees to save the Israelite kingdom from a divinely created plague of locusts after the prophet Amos asks God to forgive [‫]סלח נא‬ the northern tribes: “How will Jacob survive? He is so small?” (Amos 7:2).5 And, in the Pentateuch, God accedes not to destroy the Israelite people for the worship of the Golden Calf only after Moses pleads [‫ ]ויחל‬with God to keep them alive (Exod. 32:7–14).6 Yet, here too, while these biblical narratives manifest a deity who changes His mind in reaction to a human challenge, they do not represent a fundamental transformation of God’s moral compass. In the first case, Amos does not argue the people’s innocence, but rather that Israelite crimes should be forgiven in order to sustain the nation. In the second case, Moses does not criticize God’s decision on the moral grounds



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that to destroy the entire Israelite nation for the sins of a few would be unjust. There is no echo of Abraham’s challenge to God (“far be it from You to do such a thing, to bring death upon the innocent as well as the guilty” [Gen. 18:25]). In short, these verses do not by necessity undermine God’s moral perfection or omnibenevolence: regret does not imply moral deficiency. Nonetheless, as they might compromise God’s perfection, these verses present problems for later Jewish and Christian exegetes committed to an unchanging, non-anthropomorphic God.7 Not surprisingly, these very verses served as weapons in the arsenal of Marcionites, pagans (e.g., Celsus), Zoroastrians (e.g., Mardanfarrox), and Jewish heretics (e.g., Hiwi) seeking to undermine religious commitment to YHWH. Contrary to what I have argued, these critics regarded these passages as reflecting not only divine imperfection, but divine imperfection of a moral nature. In doing so, they glossed over the aforementioned distinction between regret and moral deficiency. Responding to such moral critiques of the Old Testament God, early Christian exegetes typically reinterpreted God’s “regret” in such a fashion as to deny God actually erred, or even could err. For example, consider Tertullian’s (160–225) response to this type of challenge raised by Marcion (85–160 ce): With respect to the regret which occurs in [God’s] conduct you interpret it with similar perverseness just as if it were with fickleness and improvidence that he regretted, or on the recollection of some wrongdoing; because he actually said, “I repent that I have set up Saul to be king” [1 Sam. 15:11] very much as if he meant that his regret savored of an acknowledgment of some evil work or error. Well, this is not always implied. There occurs even in good works a confession of regret, as a reproach and condemnation of the man who has proved himself unthankful for a benefit. . . . However, he did, as I have said, burden the guilt of Saul with the confession of his own regret; but as there is an absence of all error and wrong in His choice of Saul, it follows that this “regret” is to be understood as upbraiding another rather than as self-incriminating. (Against Marcion 2:24)8 According to Tertullian, God was not mistaken in selecting Saul as king; 1 Samuel only uses the language of “divine regret” as a rhetorical tool to chastise Saul. For Tertullian, God correctly chose Samuel as king because “at that

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moment, [Saul] was the choicest man.” Echoing his North African predecessor, St. Augustine (354–430) argues that God’s expression of “regret” [‫]נחמתי‬ in 1 Samuel 15:11 should “not to be taken according to the human sense, as we have already argued at length.”9 In support of his contention, Augustine points to a contradictory passage found in that very chapter: “He [God] is not like a man that He should change His mind ” (1 Sam. 15:29).

Divine Retraction in Tannaitic Literature Unlike these early Christian exegetes, the tannaim did not seek to undermine a simple reading of Scripture: God can recant. Being less philosophically inclined, biblical anthropomorphisms did not bother the rabbis to the same extent they did their Christian counterparts.10 At the same time, the early sages were usually not prepared to construct new moments of divine regret.11 A divine change of heart, especially in areas of justice, might come too close to suggesting a morally fallible God, a position that even the more anthropomorphically minded tannaim could not tolerate. This early rabbinic posture is articulated by the redactor of the Mishnah, Rabbi Judah the Patriarch. In the Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael, he is cited as objecting to Rabbi Judah bar Ilai’s stunning assertion that, at Sinai, God and Moses were engaged in a fake debate in order to bolster Moses’ authority in the eyes of the people. In each of these staged give-and-takes, God ultimately “concedes” to Moses’ point of view: In order that the people may hear when I speak with you [Exod. 19:9]. R. Judah [bar Ilai] says: From where can you say that the Holy One, blessed be He, said to Moses, “Behold I will say something to you, and you will challenge Me [‫]מחזירני‬, and I will accede [‫]מודה‬ to you, in order that Israel will say, ‘Great is Moses, for God acceded to him.’” As it is said: And so trust you ever after [Exod. 19:9]. Rabbi [Judah the Patriarch] says: We need not make Moses great, if, in order to do so, we cause the Holy One, blessed be He, to reverse Himself and His word [‫]שחזר בו ובדבורו‬. (Mekhilta deRabbi Ishmael, Baḥodesh, 2 and 4)12 According to Rabbi Judah the Patriarch, Rabbi Judah bar Ilai’s view is untenable because God would not have allowed even the perception that He retracted



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His word in response to a prophetic challenge. This impression would falsely cast aspersions on God’s perfection. Moreover, Rabbi Judah the Patriarch maintains his opinion even in the present case where the perception of divine concession would have achieved a religious benefit, bolstering Moses’ authority in the eyes of the people.

Divine Retraction in Amoraic Literature In contrast to the tannaitic strata, amoraic texts evince a greater openness to the possibility of God morally regretting or conceding. As we have seen, the sages were troubled by the idea that God created the Evil Inclination and destroyed the Jerusalem Temple. But rather than embark on rationalizations or apologetics, some amoraim envisioned God expressing remorse for the ­current state of affairs. For instance, with regard to the Evil Inclination, the Jerusalem Talmud has God “regretting [‫ ]ותהא‬having created the Evil Inclination,”13 and Genesis Rabbah imagines God declaring: “It was a regrettable error [‫ ]תהות‬on My part to have created the Evil Inclination within him, for had I not created an evil urge within him, he (humanity) would not have rebelled against Me.”14 As previously noted, the exegetical basis and justification for these claims run counter to the plain meaning of Scripture. Markedly, these are new constructions of divine regret, even while these sages ground these admissions back onto the biblical narrative. Likewise, in relation to the destruction of the Temple, Lamentations Rabbah (ca. fifth century), an amoraic Midrash, contains a number of such divine regrets, as when God laments, “Woe is Me! What have I done? [‫אוי לי‬ ‫]מה עשיתי‬,”15 or, recognizing His own role in the exiling of Israel, when God proclaims: “[The fault is with me, since] I have brought them up badly [‫אנא‬ ‫]הוא דתרבותי בישא‬.”16 David Stern has shown that, to justify these daring depictions, the sages invert the plain reading of Scripture. They transform human dismay into a divine one.17 As is typical, in both these cases—the Evil Inclination and the Temple’s destruction—amoraim sought scriptural anomalies to ground their bold assertions. The rabbinic readiness to have God change His mind is not only assumed in the aforementioned narratives, but becomes a self-reflective theological maxim in amoraic literature. Unlike Augustine, who reads the contradictory biblical verses of 1 Samuel 15 as evidence that God’s “change of heart” (1 Sam. 15:11) should be understood metaphorically, Genesis Rabbah

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harmonizes the inconsistent biblical position on the possibility of divine retraction in a way that affirms, at least in certain cases, that God does change His mind: Rabbi Samuel the son of Nachman said: In this verse the beginning does not correspond to the end, or the end to the beginning. [Thus it commences], God is not . . . mortal to change His mind [while it concludes], He speaks and does not act” [Num. 23:19]. When the Holy One, blessed be He, decrees [‫ ]גוזר‬to bring good [‫ ]טובה‬upon the world, then, God is not . . . mortal to change His mind. But when He decrees to bring evil [‫ ]רעה‬upon the world, then He speaks and does not act. (Genesis Rabbah [Theodor-Albeck] 53:1)18 According to Rabbi Samuel b. Nachman, God is not “human-like” when He seeks to retract His initial decree of “goodness” [‫ ;]טובה‬but God is humanlike when He seeks to retract His initial decree of “evil” [‫]רעה‬. Rabbi Samuel bases this good-evil distinction by ignoring the simple reading of Numbers 23:19. Contextually, the verse rejects the notion of a divine retraction. “God is not . . . mortal to change His mind. Would He speak and not act, promise and not fulfill?” The second part of this passage is clearly a rhetorical question, poetically reinforcing the first half of the passage: “God is not . . . mortal to change His mind.” Ignoring context, however, Rabbi Samuel b. Nachman understands the second half of the verse as a statement and not a question: “He speaks and does not act.” This reading produces an internal contradiction, as the verse according to Rabbi Samuel now reads: “God is not . . . mortal to change His mind; He speaks [to act] and does not act.” In order to reconcile this purported “contradiction,” Rabbi Samuel distinguishes between the purpose of retraction: is God’s initial decree for the purpose of harm and destruction (if so, there can be a retraction) or for the purpose of goodness and benefit (if so, there can be no retraction)? Rabbi Samuel’s distinction clarifies why God sometimes changes His mind, as in God’s commanding Abraham to sacrifice Isaac or God’s promise to destroy the Israelites after the worship of the Golden Calf, and sometimes God does not change His mind as in God’s promise to Abraham that he shall have a son from Sarah, or God’s promise to redeem Israel from Egyptian slavery. Incredibly, Numbers 23:19—a verse that denies the humanness of God and the possibility of divine regret—becomes the central rabbinic proof text affirming divine



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regret. Rabbi Samuel b. Nachman’s exegesis thus sharply contrasts with Augustine’s: while Augustine deanthropomorphizes an anthropomorphic verse (1 Sam. 15:11), Rabbi Samuel anthropomorphizes an anti-anthropomorphic verse (Num. 23:19). While significant, the above amoraic assertions do not constitute, perforce, instances of divine moral retraction.19 To regret creating the Evil Inclination is not necessarily tantamount to viewing its construction as an immoral act; to lament the destruction of the Temple and Israelite exile is not equivalent to God conceding that He acted unjustly. They merely might reflect a divine wish that things be different. The same could be said of Rabbi Samuel b. Nachman’s theological assertion that God can reverse a prior decision for the purposes of human “goodness” [‫ ]טובה‬but not human “evil” [‫]רעה‬. The term “evil” [‫ ]רעה‬here does not signal a moral value judgment made on God’s initial decision, but rather should be understood in the sense of hardship or pain incurred by human beings. Lastly, I would add that, in these amoraic texts, it is often difficult to ascertain what issue or value is driving the retraction. This is due in large part to the fact that God typically shifts His mind without a prior human challenge that would have pinpointed the issue leading to God’s new attitude. By contrast, as we shall soon see, in the post-amoraic literature of Tanḥuma-Yelammedenu, divine retractions most often are set in motion by a prior ethical challenge. Here, the moral issue driving the divine concession is expressly articulated, not merely conjectured or assumed. And, because of that, in these late rabbinic narratives, the ethical issue is brought into sharp focus. That said, one amoraic text brings us closer to the fully developed divine moral retractions we find in post-amoraic texts. In the biblical narrative of the generation of the Flood (Gen. 6–9), no characters express moral reservations about God’s destruction of the world. As noted often in this study, the standard early rabbinic position, as found in Sifre Deuteronomy, dismissed the problem altogether: “[God’s] actions in regard to all creatures of the world are perfect [‫ ;]פעולתו שלימה‬there can be no critique [‫ ]להרהר‬whatsoever about His work. None of them can look at Him and say: Why should the Generation of the Flood have been swept away?”20 Not only was God’s near-omnicide morally defended, but even citing the problem was deemed, by this Sifre, as theologically problematic. Against this position, Genesis Rabbah expresses, through an act of ventriloquism, its moral discomfort with God’s destructive act.21 Here, God bemoans the fact that some anonymous people are “verbally abusing [‫ ”]חובלים עלי דברים‬Him for mistreating earlier generations, including the generation of the Flood. Remarkably, in response to these anonymous

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complaints, God tells Abraham that He is ready to learn from him (Abraham) and recognize His own errors if Abraham should find God guilty of inappropriate judgment: “And if I [God] have erred, you [Abraham] shall teach me [‫]ואם טעיתי אתה הוריני‬.” In this text, God assumes the role of student, and Abraham that of teacher. The question, though, is how seriously we should take God’s openness to admit moral failure. Do the sages really have God prepared to be “taught” by Abraham? Put differently, did Genesis Rabbah seriously regard God’s willingness to morally concede as a real possibility, or was this merely a rabbinically constructed rhetorical tool to have God confidently reassert His complete righteousness?

Divine Concessions in Post-Amoraic Literature The notion of divine moral imperfection as seen through the prism of divine concession emerges most clearly in post-amoraic literature. Most of this material comes from the TY midrashim where we read of biblical heroes teaching or counseling God to adopt a more ethical approach to governing the world.22 Strikingly, God accedes to these moral challenges and charges, declaring that the contentious encounter has caused Him to adopt a new moral position. In these midrashim, God’s apparent capitulation is transformative and substantial, reflecting an ongoing and fundamental change in God’s attitude toward Jewish law and His governance of the world. Rather than a one-time concessional act of divine mercy as we have in the Hebrew Bible or earlier aggadot, these TY-generated retractions become codified or systematized; and, most radically, they express an essential change in God’s moral compass. In what follows, I present three of these instances in detail, showing how late rabbinic texts tend to adopt divine confrontation and concession as a hermeneutic tool. After doing so, I present one other concessional aggadah found in the Babylonian Talmud.

Transgenerational Punishment The biblical doctrine that God punishes children for the sins of the parents is found in Exodus 34:6–7: “The Lord passed before him [Moses] and proclaimed: The Lord! The Lord! A God compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in kindness and faithfulness, extending kindness to the



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thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity, transgression and sin; yet He does not remit all punishment, but visits the iniquity of parents upon children [‫פוקד‬ ‫ ]עון אבות על בנים‬and children’s children, upon the third and fourth generations.” In these verses, God proclaims the attributes of kindness and mercy that characterize divine providence.23 And yet, while God graciously remits sin, God reserves the right to defer it to later generations.24 The doctrine of inherited guilt is also found in the context of the Decalogue (Exod. 20:5) where God announces that, as a “jealous God,” He will “visit the guilt of the parents upon the children, upon the third and upon the fourth generations.”25 Notwithstanding possible differences between these two presentations,26 these passages affirm, in principle, the doctrine of inherited punishment. As Michael Fishbane has thoroughly documented, this doctrine posed serious theological problems to subsequent Israelite exegetes.27 Within the Bible itself, Israelite authors struggled with, revised, or rejected outright the earlier doctrine. For example: • The author of Lamentations (5:7) accentuates the injustice of transgenerational punishment when declaring, in light of the destruction of the First Temple, that “our fathers sinned . . . but, as for us, the punishment of their iniquities we must bear.”28 • The prophet Ezekiel openly rejects the problematic doctrine altogether. Justifying its abrogation through a revelatory experience, he declares: “A child shall not share the burden of a parent’s guilt, nor shall a parent share the burden of a child’s guilt” (Ezek. 18:20). According to Jon Levenson, by innovating this new theology Ezekiel communicates to the Judeans “that the guilt of the ancestors which caused the destruction of the Juhadite kingdom and the ensuing exile does not condemn their current descendants to unending misery.”29 • Jeremiah (31:28–29) also abrogates the theology, although he argues that the abrogation will take place at some future time. • Deuteronomy 7:9–10, which scholars date to the exilic period,30 has Moses rejecting transgenerational punishment, positing that those who hate God will be punished immediately.31 Like these later biblical authors, the rabbis struggled with how the Pentateuch in Exodus 34 and Deuteronomy 5 could endorse a theology that punishes an innocent person for the sins of another. How does this punitive doctrine

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comport with God’s attributes of mercy and kindness?32 Moreover, the need for Jewish—and, for that matter, Christian—biblical exegetes to respond to this problem was heightened by the fact that anti-YHWH thinkers, from Marcion onward, were wont to cite the doctrine of inherited punishment to argue for the immorality of the Old Testament and the Old Testament God.33 For example, the author of Testimony of Truth, a Coptic text found at Nag Hammadi, states: “Surely, he [the biblical God] has shown himself to be a malicious envier. And what kind of a God is this? For great is the blindness of those who read, and they did not know it. And he said: ‘I am the jealous God; I will bring the sins of the fathers upon the children until three and four generations [Exod. 20:5].’”34 Like the ancient rabbis, Christian exegetes would also have to reconcile Deuteronomy 5 and Exodus 34 with God’s goodness, albeit in very different ways.35 Yet the rabbis and church fathers also had to face a second problem that later biblical authors did not have to contend with: for whereas Exodus 34 and Deuteronomy 5 affirm transgenerational punishment, Deuteronomy 7 and the prophetic texts, as I have noted, reject it.36 Here the problem is not a theological-ethical one, but literary: the Bible contradicts itself. Some early rabbinic texts ignore the ethical and textual problems and simply affirm the theology of transgenerational punishment.37 Others, like the following tannaitic text, derive formal and textual clues from Scripture to solve the dilemma: “Visiting the guilt of the parents upon the children [upon the third and upon the fourth generations] [Exod. 20:5]: During a time when there is no skipping [i.e., there is continuous evil behavior throughout the generations] . . . What does this mean? An evil person [who is] the son of an evil person, [who himself is] the son of an evil person” (Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael, Baḥodesh, 7). Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael posits that a child of the third generation would only be punished for the sins of his grandparent if there were a continuous line of evildoers from the grandparent to the grandchild. If the grandparent, parent, or child were righteous, then the child would not be punished for any of his or her ancestors’ sins. As a close reader of Scripture, the author of this ancient midrash derives this condition of continuity by noticing that the words “upon the third generation [‫ ”]על שלשים‬are superfluous. The lone words “upon the children” would have sufficed to teach that grandchildren would be punished for the sins of grandparents, since rabbinic literature uses the term “children” to include grandchildren. Thus, the extra words “upon the third generation” teach that for the punishment to apply, three continuous generations must be evil.38 By limiting the applicability of transgenerational punishment to those who continue in their parents’ evil



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ways, this tannaitic text resolves the implicit moral problem: innocent children are not punished for the sins of their parents or grandparents. In the subsequent amoraic period, most rabbinic texts affirm this tannaitic condition of continuity.39 However, there is one talmudic teaching from the Babylonian Talmud that diverges from this reading and offers a novel solution: “Moses said: Who visits the iniquity of parents upon children [Exod. 34:7], and Ezekiel came and nullified it: The person who sins, only he shall die [Ezek. 18:4].”40 This talmudic view, attributed to Rabbi Yosi b. Ḥanina (third-century Palestine), maintains that Moses decreed the doctrine of inherited punishment and Ezekiel subsequently annulled it. The teaching openly acknowledges that the Pentateuch’s theological dictum only applied for a limited period of time; in other words, a clause from the Decalogue no longer applies. In addition, the institution of inherited punishment is attributed not to God but to Moses, who now becomes the proclaimer of the thirteen divine attributes (Exod. 34:6–7).41 These aforementioned pre-TY texts solve the ethical problem posed by the doctrine of inherited punishment by either conditioning its application on the continuity of sin (Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael) or by attributing the annulled doctrine to Moses (BT Makkot). These approaches reject the idea that God could punish innocent children for the sins of others. By contrast, one teaching from Midrash Tanḥuma affirms the simple reading of Scripture, but then solves the ethical and textual problems with a dialogical confrontation between Moses and God: Rabbi Levi said: Three things Moses did [‫ ]עשה‬on his own accord [‫ ]מדעתו‬and God assented to him [‫]והסכים הקב”ה על ידו‬. And these are they: . . . It is written: Visiting the guilt of the parents upon the children [Exod. 34:7] and Moses said: parents shall not be put to death for children, nor children be put to death for parents [Deut. 24:16]. And where do we know that God agreed [‫ ]הסכים‬with him? For it says: “but he did not put to death the children of the assassins, in accordance with what is written in the Book of the Teaching of Moses, [where the Lord commanded] Parents shall not be put to death for children” [2 Kgs. 14:6]. (Tanḥuma Shoftim 19)42 In the Tanḥuma’s reading, Moses challenges God’s justice system for it dictates that children be punished for the sins of parents. Unlike BT Makkot 24a, this text has God, and not Moses, as the institutor of the doctrine, and it

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has Moses, not Ezekiel, as its challenger.43 Though the Tanḥuma text does not detail the rationale behind Moses’ challenge, we are aware that God concedes to Moses’ point of view.44 The authors of this Tanḥuma text do not construct this teaching from scratch. Rather, they appropriate and rework a tannaitic beraita found in BT Shabbat: “As it was taught in a beraita: three things Moses did on his own accord [‫ ]עשה משה מדעתו‬and God assented to him [‫]והסכים הקב”ה על ידו‬: he added one day on his own accord, he separated from his wife, and he broke the tablets of the Law” (BT Shabbat 87a). This beraita asserts that God approved of three unilateral actions performed by Moses: adding a day of sexual separation between all Israelite husbands and wives before the revelation on Sinai, refraining (Moses himself) from sexual relations with his wife from the time of revelation until his death, and breaking the tablets of the law.45 Although Moses certainly risked God’s censure by performing these unsanctioned actions, none of these deeds listed in the beraita challenged or contravened God’s explicit command.46 Thus this beraita presents us with a courageous and daring Moses—but not a theologically subversive or defiant one. The Midrash Tanḥuma, on the other hand, while maintaining the relatively moderate opening header of the beraita’s “three things Moses did and God assented,” radically revises its content with challenging comments, transforming Moses’ neutral actions into a confrontational one. Though the form of the beraita looks the same—“Moses performed three unilateral actions”—the content has now significantly changed. The Midrash Tanḥuma’s use of the beraita both legitimizes and moderates its radical message. On the one hand, it allows for a radical reading of Scripture, one where Moses challenges God by borrowing on an already established, nonradical tradition that has Moses acting on his own without a prior divine command. On the other hand, by using the moderate beraita to legitimize a more radical reading of Scripture, the Tanḥuma places limits on the boldness of its claim. The Midrash Tanḥuma never uses the phrase “nullification” (‫ )ביטול‬when describing the abolishment of the doctrine of transgenerational punishment. It only makes the moderate claim that this is one of “the three cases where Moses acted [‫[ ]עשה‬unilaterally].” We thus have a moderate pronouncement with radical examples. Returning to the Tanḥuma text, we cannot tell whether Moses is personally and directly confronting God with this critique. When Moses declares that “parents shall not be put to death for children, nor children be put to death for parents,” it is unclear to whom he speaks: is he speaking directly to God or to Israel, or indirectly to another party? In contrast, another TY midrash from



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Numbers Rabbah II 19:33 is less ambiguous, presenting an impassioned face-toface confrontation between Moses and God. Unlike the previous Tanḥuma text, this TY midrash does not seek to disguise the radical nature of its teaching: This is one of three instances where Moses said something before God and He responded: You have taught Me something [‫]למדתני‬. . . . The second instance: When the Holy One, blessed be He, said to him: visiting the guilt of the parents upon the children (Exod. 20:5), Moses said: Master of the World, how many evil ­people give birth to righteous people? Shall they take [punishment] from the sins of the parents? Terah worshipped idols, and Abraham his son was righteous. And also Hezekiah was righteous, and his father Ahaz was a wicked man. And also Josiah was righteous, and his father Amon was a wicked man. Is it appropriate that righteous people shall receive lashes for the sins of their parents [‫וכן נאה שיהן‬ ‫ ?]הצדיקים לוקין בעון אביהם‬God said to him: You have taught Me something. By your life, I will nullify My decree and establish your word, as it says: Parents shall not be put to death for children, nor children be put to death for parents [Deut. 24:16]. And by your life, I will write it in your name, as it says: in accordance with what is written in the Book of the Teaching of Moses [2 Kgs. 14:6]. (Numbers Rabbah II 19:33 acc. to MS Paris 150) This TY text fills in the details of the dialogue between Moses and God, explicitly depicting Moses as protesting God’s theological dictum face-to-face.47 Moses rhetorically asks, “Shall they [the righteous people] take [punishment] from the sins of the parents?” After providing a few biblical cases where righteous children are born to wicked men, Moses asks again, “Is it appropriate that righteous people shall receive lashes for the sins of their parents?” Upon hearing Moses’ critique, God concedes the point and nullifies the theology of inherited punishment.48 God declares, strikingly, “You have taught Me something [‫למד־‬ ‫]תני‬. By your life, I will nullify My decree and establish your word.”49 These two TY midrashim depict a dramatic confrontation between Moses and God which does not appear in Scripture. The new narrative solves the ethical problems with the early biblical doctrine by placing different Torah passages in dialogue and decreeing that one has superseded the other. Ultimately, the ethical intuition of the human Moses emerges triumphant, albeit with God’s consent. Although the TY’s authors likely knew of the nonconcessional solutions found

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in the Mekhilta and BT Makkot, they preferred to use the concessional model. Thus, in this case, the notion of a divine moral retraction is not only tolerated, but it is even the privileged exegetical option to solve the textual problem. Simply put, divine concession becomes a hermeneutical tool. By adopting this literary motif, the TY does not attempt to resolve the moral problem by hiding behind formal exegetical reinterpretations, as found in the earlier strata. Furthermore, this text is theologically striking for its image of God being taught [‫ ]למד‬the moral principle of individual responsibility.

Genocidal War A second example: The Pentateuch presents two different accounts of the Israelite conquest of the Amorite kingdom in Transjordan. In Numbers 21:21– 35, the Israelites conquer the Amorite territory as an act of self-defense when Sihon, the Amorite king, refuses to let Israel pass through his land (21:23).50 In Deuteronomy 2:24–37, however, the picture is more complex. As in the Numbers account, Sihon refuses to let Israel pass peacefully through his country (2:26–30), but, unlike the Numbers account, his refusal is orchestrated by God who “stiffened his [Sihon’s] heart in order to deliver him [Sihon] into [Israel’s] power” (2:30). In addition, before Moses makes his request for peaceful passage (2:26–29), God commands him: “Set out across the wadi Arnon! See, I give you into your power Sihon the Amorite, king of Heshbon, and his land. Begin the occupation; engage him in battle” (2:24). In this passage, the occupation of Sihon’s territory is described not as the result of a war of selfdefense but as part of an offensive conquest of the Land of Canaan. Finally, in contrast to the Numbers account, Deuteronomy applies the principle of ḥerem (‫)חרם‬, or annihilation of the entire population, to Sihon’s kingdom; all their men, women, and children are killed, “leaving no survivor” (2:34). Critical Bible scholars solve these conflicting accounts by arguing that they reflect two different traditions on the status of Transjordan, an area that included Sihon’s territory.51 The older tradition, represented by Numbers, treats this area as outside the Promised Land. As a result, Israel’s conquering of Sihon’s kingdom could only be justified as an act of self-defense, rather than as part of the rightful occupation of their given lands. By contrast, the later tradition (represented in part by Deuteronomy) views Transjordan as an integral part of the Promised Land.52 Accordingly, like the other territories within the Land of ­Canaan, this area falls under the divine command of occupation.53 However,



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given that the Numbers narrative had already emerged as an established tradition, the deuteronomic draftsmen attempted to retain it alongside the new tradition. Both traditions are thus reflected in Deuteronomy, albeit with some tension and inconsistency. On the one hand, echoing the older Numbers view, Moses sends “messengers of peace” to request that Sihon allow Israel to pass (Deut. 2:26). On the other hand, representing the newer view, God commands Moses to wage an offensive war to occupy Sihon’s territory (2:24), to conquer this integral part of the Promised Land. It also seems that the deuteronomic editor attempted to integrate the inconsistent accounts by claiming that the request for peaceful passage through Sihon’s area merely served as a pretext for the ultimate war of conquest. Because God had already intended to harden Sihon’s heart (2:30), Moses’ request for a safe passageway would inevitably be futile, although it did provide Israel with justification for their military offensive. Finally, since the newer tradition sees Sihon’s territory as part of the Promised Land, the deuteronomic laws of ḥerem, annihilation of the entire population,54 apply here as well.55 As the ancient Sifre (ca. third century) assumes single authorship of Deuteronomy,56 its authors cannot solve the textual gap as critical scholars do. Instead, they regard the inconsistency between God’s desire for war (Deut. 2:24) and Moses’ call for peace (2:26) as an intentional moral teaching: “Great is peace, for even in a time of war people need peace, as it is said: When you approach a town to attack it, you shall offer it terms of peace [Deut. 20:10]. [See, I give into your power Sihon the Amorite, king of Heshbon, and his land. Begin the occupation: engage him in battle] . . . So I sent messengers from the wilderness of Kedemoth to King Sihon of Heshbon with an offer of peace [Deut. 2:24, 26]” (Sifre Numbers 42).57 Highlighting the importance of peace by noting that it appears in the context of war, this early midrash reads the Sihon narrative of Deuteronomy 2:24–35 as following the legal and ethical norms prescribed in Deuteronomy 20:10–18: war is only mandated when the enemy refuses a peaceful overture. Sifre Numbers, then, harmonizes God’s call for war (2:24) and Moses’ call for peace (2:26) by implicitly claiming that God’s call to war is predicated on the enemies’ refusal to accept a peace deal (2:30). Although not stated explicitly in Scripture, Moses’ sending of peaceful messengers (2:26) fully complied with God’s will. While God chose to harden Sihon’s heart (2:30), the formal call for peace was nevertheless required to preserve the principle of seeking peace before waging war (20:10–18).58 Rather than using this earlier hermeneutic of harmonization, the Tanḥuma solves the textual inconsistency by again generating a confrontation between

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Moses and God: “Rabbi Levi said . . . In the days of Sihon and Og, God said: Go and fight with him and close up his water canal; but Moses did not do so [‫]ומשה לא עשה כן‬, as it says, I sent messengers [Deut. 2:26]. God said: By your life, you have done appropriately [‫ ]חייך עשית כראוי‬for I agree [‫ ]מסכים‬with your actions. Therefore Moses warned the Israelites and said to them: When you approach a town to attack it, you shall offer it terms of peace [Deut. 20:10]” (Tanḥuma Shoftim 19).59 Instead of resolving the discrepancy between verses 24 and 26, the Tanḥuma exploits it to claim that by sending messengers of peace, Moses defied God’s wishes.60 The inconsistency reflects two different points of view and an initial dispute between God and Moses: God commands war, yet Moses seeks peace. Significantly, the Tanḥuma has God concede to Moses’ approach and affirm a new policy of “negotiation first” for any future war. This new ethical approach to battle, codified in the biblical passage “when you come to a city to fight against it, you shall call forth peace” (Deut. 20:10), reflects a divinely sanctioned Mosaic revision of God’s earlier decree that mandated war without first seeking peace (Deut. 2:24). Although in this Tanḥuma text, we are not told how—or even if—Moses justifies his defiance, another Tanḥuma text fills in this gap: See I begin by placing Sihon and his land at your disposal [Deut. 2:31]. What is written there? Engage him in battle [Deut. 2:24], but they [Israel] did not do so. Rather, then I sent messengers [of peace] [Deut. 2:26]. The Holy One, blessed be He, said: I said engage him in battle [Deut. 2:24] but you are talking of peace, [yet] there is no peace, says the Lord, for the wicked [Isa. 48:22]! See, the words of peace are so great that Israel transgressed [‫ ]שבטלו ישראל‬what He had told them: and engage him in battle. Still, He was not angry with them. . . .  From the desert of Kedemot [‫[ ]מדבר קדמות‬Deut. 2:26]: What is the meaning of from the desert of Kedemot? Moses said to Him: From You I learned, You Who existed before the world [‫ממך למדתי‬ ‫]שקדמת לעולם‬. You could have sent a single bolt of lightning to burn Egypt, but you did not do so. Rather you sent me to Pharaoh, as stated Let my people go [Exod. 5:1]. Therefore, Kedemot. The Holy One, blessed be He, said: You are asking for peace; by your life, you shall take possession of their land in peace, as stated: But the lowly shall inherit the land, and delight in abundant peace [Ps. 37:11]. (Tanḥuma [Buber] supplement to Devarim 10)



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According to this TY midrash, Moses defends his act of defiance by claiming that he learned his approach from God.61 Just as God initially sought a peaceful solution to the Israelite enslavement before destroying the Egyptians, so too, argues Moses, Israel should first attempt to reach a nonviolent settlement with the Amorite nation before engaging them militarily. The midrash derives Moses’ theological justification from Deuteronomy 2:26, where Moses sends messengers from “the wilderness of Kedemot” (‫)מדבר קדמות‬. Instead of reading this phrase as merely indicating a place’s name, the midrash reads it as “from the word [‫ ]דבר‬of the Ancient One [‫]קדום‬, God.” Tanḥuma (Buber) interprets verse 26 not as “and Moses sent messengers from the wilderness of Kedemot” but as “and Moses sent messengers from [the authority of] the word of the Ancient One.” The midrash thus significantly softens and moderates the boldness of Moses’ defiance: instead of relying on his own moral compass [‫]מדעתו‬, Moses uses God’s past actions [‫ ]ממך‬as a justification for defying God’s present command.62 The clash is not cast as a fundamental debate between the values of Moses and God, but as a struggle to uncover the accurate divine point of view. Moses’ boldness is merely in privileging one divine action over another.63 While this Tanḥuma (Buber) text has Moses defend his defiance theologically by pointing to God’s own conduct, another Tanḥuma (Buber) text has Moses offering a significantly bolder justification: This is the law of the sacrifice for peace offerings [Lev. 7:11]: This text is related to [Wisdom’s] ways are pleasant ways, and all her paths, peaceful [Prov. 3:17]. Whatever is written in the Torah is written (as an expression of) [to establish] peace. You find that the Holy One cancelled the decree [‫שביטל הקב”ה‬ ‫[ ]את הגזירה‬of utter destruction] for the sake of peace. When? When the Holy One said to Moses When you approach a town to attack it, you shall offer it terms of peace [Deut. 20:10].64 Now concerning the whole matter, the Holy One had said that he would destroy them, as stated No, you shall utterly destroy them [Deut. 20:17]. However, Moses did not do so. Rather he said: Am I to go and smite them now [‫ ?]עכשו אני הולך ומכה‬I do not know65 who has sinned and who has not sinned [‫איני יודע מי חטא ומי לא‬ ‫]חטא‬. Instead, I will come to them in peace, as stated, Then I sent messengers from the wilderness of Kedemot to King Sihon of Heshbon with an offer of peace . . . ” [Deut. 2:26]. When he [Moses] saw that

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he [Sihon] did not come in peace, he smote him, as stated, So they smote him, his children, and all his people [until there were no survivors] [Num. 21:35]. The Holy One said to him: I myself told you, No, you shall utterly destroy them [Deut. 20:17]. Now you have come to them in peace. By your life, just as you have said, so will I do [‫חייך כשם‬ ‫]שאמרת כך אני אעשה‬. Thus it is stated: When you approach a town to attack it, you shall offer it terms of peace [Deut. 20:10]. Therefore, it is so stated: [Wisdom’s] ways are pleasant ways, and all her paths, peaceful [Prov. 3:17]. (Tanḥuma (Buber) Tsav 5) In this Tanḥuma (Buber) text, Moses justifies his defiance by acknowledging the moral legitimacy of his own moral sensibilities. He tells God: “Am I to go and smite them now? I do not know who has sinned and who has not sinned! Instead, I will come to them in peace.” The midrash presents the confrontation as a clash between Moses’ ethics and God’s. Rejecting God’s command, Moses seeks peace with Sihon’s kingdom, claiming that not all of them are evil. He wishes to avoid a war that would inevitably cause the death of the innocent along with the guilty. In a striking response, God concedes to Moses’ ethical sensibilities and ratifies this less militant approach into law (Deut. 20:10). Indeed, as in the case of inherited punishment, one version of this midrash has God telling Moses that “you have taught me something [‫]למדתני‬.”66 It should also be noted that, unlike the other Tanḥuma texts presented, which have Moses or Israel defy God’s general command to wage war against Sihon, this Tanḥuma (Buber) text has Moses specifically challenge one problematic element of religious war: the ḥerem (annihilation) law. Moses’ moral concern is not in fighting any war, but in fighting an unnecessary war of genocide that requires the killing of every man, woman, and child. Driven by his moral conscience, Moses rejects this form of war. Indeed, God’s subsequent concession serves to validate Moses’ critique of genocidal war. Yet this Tanḥuma (Buber) text refrains from ascribing the bold formulation of “nullification” to Moses but ascribes it to God. Thus, according to this text, God—with the help of Moses—qualifies the older ḥerem theology of Deuteronomy 20:17 with a new rule (cited in Deut. 20:10) requiring that the Israelites first seek a peaceful solution. The Tanḥuma’s (Buber) historical reconstruction of Deuteronomy 20 inverts the contemporary view that regards the harsh laws of ḥerem as a later addition to the earlier and more ethical laws of warfare.67



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In the aforementioned TY texts, Moses challenges God’s attitude toward war through defiance or verbal critique. By contrast, in the following TY text found in Deuteronomy Rabbah, Moses uses a different technical term to describe the revocation: “God commanded him [Moses] to make war on Sihon, as it is said, engage him in battle [Deut. 2:24], but he did not do so, but [as Scripture has it], and I sent messengers [Deut. 2:26]. God said to him: I told you to make war with him, but instead you began with peace; by your life, I will confirm your decree [‫ ;]שאני מקיים גזירתיך‬every war in which Israel shall enter, they shall begin with [a declaration of] peace” (Deuteronomy Rabbah 5:13).68 In this passage, Moses’ act of defiance is not merely a claim against God’s war code: he is actually dictating to God that His war code be revised. The technical term “decree” (‫ )גזרה‬in rabbinic literature is normally used when the sages institute new laws that are incumbent upon the people. Remarkably, in this context, the “decree” is directed at God.

Inadvertent Killing and the Cities of Refuge A third, and final, example: the laws of the cities of refuge for inadvertent killers are delineated in Numbers 35:9–34 and Deuteronomy 19:1–13. These places of asylum grant protection to one who unwittingly killed another, protecting him from the victim’s next of kin, the “blood avenger” [‫]גאל הדם‬, who could otherwise legally kill the inadvertent murderer with impunity. The cities of refuge thus significantly curtail the ability of the victim’s family to avenge the death of their loved one, giving the unintentional killer an impenetrable safe space. Numbers 35 records this law: “When you cross the Jordan into the land of Canaan, you shall provide yourselves with places to serve as cities of refuge [‫ ]ערי מקלט‬to which a manslayer who has killed a person unintentionally may flee. The cities shall serve you as a refuge from the avenger [‫]מגאל‬, so that the manslayer may not die unless he has stood trial before the assembly” (Num. 35:10–12). In this account (as well as in Deuteronomy), the right of the blood avenger to retaliate against his or her relative’s killer is presumed (35:12), although this right is not stated explicitly as a scriptural law. In apparent response to this practice, God commands Moses to establish the cities of refuge to temper the unbridled power of the blood avenger (35:12). This seeming temporal discrepancy between the presumed law of the blood avenger and the innovation of the cities of refuge may have motivated Deuteronomy Rabbah, a Midrash of Tanḥuma-Yelammedenu, to construct

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the following backstory: “Israel declared before God [after being informed of the blood avenger law]: ‘Master of the Universe, is this an example of prolongation of days? A man kills another unwittingly and the avenger of blood pursues him to kill him, and both die before their time?’ God thereupon answered Moses: ‘Israel speaks rightly [‫]יפה הם מדברים‬. Go and set aside for them cities of refuge, as it is said, Then Moses separated [three cities on the east side of the Jordan] . . . [Deut. 4:41]’” (Deuteronomy Rabbah 2:28). According to Deuteronomy Rabbah, the law sanctioning blood vengeance predates the divine decision to establish the cities of refuge. Initially, the victim’s next of kin had the unrestricted right to avenge a relative’s killer. But this unmitigated power in the hands of the blood avenger seemed unjust to Israel; it contradicts the biblical principle that long life awaits those who follow God’s commandments. Why should both the victim and the inadvertent killer die before their times? Thus, Israel argued, God should create a legal mechanism to protect the life of the innocent inadvertent killer. Recognizing the justness of their complaint with the words “Israel speaks rightly [‫]יפה הם מדברים‬,” God commands Moses to limit the rights of the blood avenger with the cities of refuge.69 This divine decision curtails the capacity of the victim’s next of kin to retaliate—and thus better preserves the sanctity of human life.70 Here again, in this Tanḥuma-Yelammedenu text, God only recognizes the need to morally amend a problematic law after a human protest. Not surprisingly, this reading has no parallels in pre-TY rabbinic literature; no other texts assume that the blood avenger had ever been granted the unconditional right to kill the inadvertent killer. This TY text thus introduces two new ideas. First, it maintains that the laws surrounding unintentional killing evolved in two stages, with the law of the blood avenger preceding the cities of refuge. Second, and more important for our purposes, it posits that a human ethical complaint propelled God to establish those cities of refuge.

Divine Concessions in Other Late Rabbinic Texts Divine concessions are also found in late rabbinic works that are not part of the TY family.71 Perhaps the boldest expression of these is formulated by Rabbi Shimon b. Azzai in the Babylonian Talmud.72 In this passage, the moon questions God’s decision to create two great lights, the sun and the moon: “It is impossible for two kings to wear the same crown.” To resolve the matter, God commands the moon to shrink. Not surprisingly, the moon



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protests God’s solution: “Because I have suggested that which is proper [‫דבר‬ ‫ ]הגון‬must I then make myself smaller?”73 God’s various arguments and retorts are not effective, and the moon is not consoled. Recognizing the moon’s unabated distress, God proclaims: “Bring an atonement [‫ ]כפרה‬for Me for making the moon smaller.” In rabbinic literature, the term “atonement” [‫ ]כפרה‬typically designates expiation from sin. So the Bavli text seems to have God admit transgression when unfairly making the moon shrink. This reading is bolstered by the striking proof text subsequently offered by Rabbi Shimon b. Lakish: “Why is it that the he-goat offered on the new moon is distinguished in that there is written concerning it a sin-offering to the Lord? [’‫[ ]חטאת לה‬Num. 28:15]. Because the Holy One, blessed be He, said: Let this he-goat be an atonement for Me for making the moon smaller [‫( ”]הביאו כפרה עלי שמיעטתי את הירח‬BT Hullin 60b). Rabbi Shimon b. Lakish finds scriptural support for this bold teaching in Numbers 28. There, God tells Moses to command the Israelites to bring a number of sacrifices to celebrate the new moon and new month (28:11–15). Along with sacrificing two bulls, one ram, and seven lambs as a burnt offering (‫)עולה‬, the Israelites were to bring a he-goat as a “sin-offering to the Lord” [’‫( ”]לחטאת לה‬Num. 28:15). But instead of reading the prefix lamed (“to”) as meaning “a sin-offering dedicated to God,” Rabbi Shimon, strikingly, understands it to mean “ for God.”74 In other words, Moses commands that a sin offering [‫ ]חטאת‬be brought on God’s behalf!75 This monthly ritual, on the day that celebrates the new moon, would secure atonement for God’s historic mistreatment of the moon at the beginning of time.76

Conclusion: Theological Implications The late rabbinic proclivity to generate divine concessions, most notably as found in the Tanḥuma-Yelammedenu, has important theological implications. To be sure, this is not a systematic or consistent theology á la Augustine or Origen, but an informal and fragmentary one, as is true of much of rabbinic theology. In late rabbinic tradition, conceptions of God are not derived from logical principles; more often they are presented in narrative form and show the interpretive imagination of their authors. Indeed, this chapter has demonstrated how the living theological voice of the sages surfaces more through rewritten biblical narratives than through normative or propositional formulations.77 Furthermore, it should be noted that, while these unsystematic theologies are significant, they likely were not constructed for the

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purposes of theology. Other pedagogical, textual, cultural, or literary dimensions and pressures might have fueled the production of these remarkable narratives, such as the wish to communicate divine love, humility, and intimacy; the need to solve scriptural problems; the development of literary forms; or the desire to produce dramatic and entertaining narratives for the synagogue crowds. Nonetheless, we should not sideline or discount the radical theological assumptions embedded within these texts even if these assumptions did not fuel the production of these texts. Stated differently, the authors of these aggadot would not have sacrificed their foundational religious commitments— their conceptions of God—on the altar of literary form, rhetorical drama, or exegetical cohesiveness. As the character of God would have been treated with utmost seriousness, these depictions of the divine should not be regarded as mere literary conceits but as reflecting a bold religious sensibility in preIslamic Byzantine Palestine or Babylonia. So what are the theological implications of these texts? They present a striking vision of God: a human-like deity who welcomes confrontation and at times revises His past ethical decisions. Indeed, the widespread motif of divine retractions and concessions in late rabbinic literature should move scholars to modify their assumption that the sages always imagined God to be morally perfect. Constructing a fallible God, these radical images sharply contrast with the unchanging and morally perfect God championed by much of Greek philosophy, early Christian thought, and medieval Jewish philosophy. In these rabbinic texts, although God is concerned with and committed to justice and morality, He also recognizes His limitations and fallibility. Most radically, in some of them, God is willing to change His methods of governing the world after receiving human input. Unlike the image of God presented throughout most of the Bible, the God of late Midrash is not the impassable ultimate moral sovereign. Rather than following God’s own actions, the rules of ethical conduct now emerge through contentious dialogues between God and various biblical heroes.

Conclusion

The first half of this study explained the inconsistent rabbinic statements toward theological protest chronologically. Positing a silent controversy, I showed how later rabbinic authors tended to recast earlier strata in ways that intensify their opposition to protest (as in Chapter 1) or, alternatively, that endorse protest (as in Chapter 2). In Chapter 3, I argued that, in addition to the chronological claim, some of these tensions and inconsistencies might also be explained phenomenologically. That is, they might reflect internal conflicts lurking in the hearts and minds of rabbis, as individuals or as a group. These inconsistent attitudes would naturally emerge when we consider the complex nature of critique: it serves both as a source of alienation and affection. Moreover, ambivalent and inconsistent attitudes toward protest can further be explained when considering the rabbinic conception of God. As we saw in Chapter 5, the rabbis shy away from systematic theology, and instead pattern their conceptions of God on the ever-fluid examples of human-to-human relationships. Unlike the pagan religions that posit a system of polytheistic anthropomorphism, where each god assumes a distinct role within society, in the monotheistic anthropomorphism of rabbinic Judaism, YHWH fills multiple roles within society at once.1 Thus, God is the metaphorical slave owner, king, father, mother, judge, husband, wife, friend, and sibling. Consequently, the shifting image of God in rabbinic literature lends itself to shifting and inconsistent attitudes toward theological protest. Whereas the image of God as slave owner or king would demand silence and submissiveness, God as sibling, friend, or spouse might allow for, or even require, rebuke and assertiveness. Because the rabbis for pedagogical reasons maintain all these relational models, the natural consequence is an ambivalent attitude toward confrontation. When we leave the confines of rabbinic Judaism and turn our attention to consider theological protest in other religious traditions, we should similarly not

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be surprised when witnessing a lack of consistency on our topic. From a dispassionate and doctrinal perspective, we would likely encounter normative statements bemoaning, if not prohibiting, theological protest. Cognitively, the act contains serious theological problems: misunderstanding the nature of God (metaphysical error) and acting disrespectfully (relational problem). When we leave the dimension of doctrinal theology, however, and consider the world of a lived theology, a very different temperament might emerge. When a person’s life is infused with a consciousness of a providential and personal God, very real feelings of frustration and dismay are bound to surface. Indeed, disappointment is a typical experience in all loving relationships, and this certainly should be the case in the human-God encounter. Beyond being unnatural and even painful, holding back feelings of anger might even be detrimental to an honest and open relationship. To paraphrase Genesis Rabbah, “Love without rebuke is not love.”2 In short, while religious thinkers might rail against those questioning God’s will and ways, we should not be surprised if in the very next moment that same religious actor questions the will and ways of the divine. This inconsistency, phenomenologically, would be similar to Wolfson’s penetrating insight that medieval Jewish theologians who decry the possibility of ever seeing God are often the very ones who, in the next moment, describe God’s physical features. Yet, if, a priori, we would assume that monotheistic systems of faith would adopt contradictory impulses with regard to questioning God, then we need to account for the differences on this issue within particular religious traditions. More specifically, why in the Christian tradition do we not witness the same level of ambivalence toward protest as we have in the Jewish tradition? How do we explain the fact that, unlike the rabbinic tradition, the Christian tradition has, generally speaking, not revived the biblical model that celebrates expressions of theological dissent?3 Bemoaning this reality (of a Jewish-Christian divide), Johann Baptist Metz (1928–), a German Catholic theologian, places the blame squarely on Augustine of Hippo (354–430).4 According to Metz, Marcion’s penchant critiques of the creator-God drove Augustine to adopt a theology that exonerated the creatorGod from all human suffering. Augustine accomplished this, for Metz, with his theology of original sin. By attributing world suffering to humanity’s inherent sinfulness, Augustine “silenced” the “theodicy question” and subsequently “anaesthetized” the “eschatological questioning of God.”5 No guilt whatsoever could be placed on God, as “guilty humanity alone” ought to be viewed as “responsible for this history of suffering.”6 Departing from Augustine, Metz expresses hope that the Christian community could return to embrace not only the



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aggressive prayers of Israel as found in Job, the Psalms, and Lamentations, but also to their echoes found in the famous lament of Jesus of Nazareth, who on the cross called out: “My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34).7 While Metz regards Augustine as the primary figure responsible for the Jewish-Christian divide on protest, John K. Roth, a Christian philosopher, blames it on Christian readers of the New Testament who “think, mistakenly, that these Jewish [protest] expressions have been superseded by the New Testament, which apparently plays down such themes if they are present at all.”8 Following Metz, however, Roth believes that his “theodicy of protest has a place in Christian life,” as he urges Christians to reflect on the fact that even Jesus “ends up crucified and God-forsaken.”9 I would merely add to Roth’s insightful observation that the New Testament emphasizes the problematic nature of challenging God. Paul, in his Letter to the Romans (chapter 9), forcefully reaffirms and spotlights Isaiah’s lament toward those who argue with their Maker (Isa. 45:9). As noted in Chapter 2, the church fathers often appropriated Paul’s proclamation of “Nay but, O man, who are you that challenges God?” to rebuke those who would question divine justice. In addition to Roth’s and Metz’s claims, three other factors ought to be considered when reflecting on this Jewish-Christian divide. First, at the core of Christian theology is the image of Christ on the cross. Here, divine suffering is not merely one theological dictum out of many, as in early rabbinic literature, but an image that stands at the center of Christian thought. Accordingly, the motif of challenging God in response to human suffering would naturally seem strange and out of place.10 Indeed, for many Christian thinkers, experiencing pain is not a theological problem but an experiential ideal. For example, for early Christian ascetics, like Antony (261–356) or Simeon Stylites (388–459), human suffering was sought as a method to mimic Christ. While not regarding the crucifixion as the primary reason why Christian “theology will not allow questioning of God in the face of the history of suffering,”11 Metz does recognize that the “language of the suffering God” cannot but lead to “an externalization of suffering” and a “secret aestheticization of all suffering.”12 For Metz, this serves, too, as a contributing factor to Christianity’s loathing of theological protest. Second, the rabbinic openness to challenging God is fueled and nurtured by their humanization of God. As seen in Chapter 5, for many sages, not only does God have body, but God is also morally imperfect and bound by Jewish law. By contrast, in early Christian thought, the humanization of God is, counterintuitively, less intense. While God as Son, of course, becomes incarnate in human flesh, the Christian God, in most respects, is less “human” than the

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rabbinic God. Specifically, in patristic thought, God the Father is incorporeal, morally perfect and, as lawmaker, not bound by any laws. These theological contrasts, I would argue, are a direct result of the different degrees of cultural integration with Greco-Roman philosophy. As G. Stroumsa noted with regard to divine corporeality: “In Christianity . . . anthropomorphic conceptions of God . . . became peripheral and of no major importance. . . . The encounter between Jewish thought and Platonic philosophy, on the other hand, was severed soon after Philo, and Jewish exegesis was left to struggle with biblical anthropomorphism without the help of the most effective of tools: the Platonic conception of a purely immaterial being.”13 Extending Stroumsa’s contrast to include other anthropomorphic dimensions (not just the issue of corporeality), one could argue that, contra the early Church, the rabbinic rejection of philosophy ultimately paved the way for the rabbinic endorsement of theological protest. The final factor that we cannot dismiss is the historical one. It would not be an overgeneralization to state that, throughout the generations, Jews have suffered at the hands of their enemies more than Christians have (notwithstanding early Christian persecution under the Roman Empire). As a consequence, Jewish powerlessness and victimization naturally played a role in igniting the flames of the protest motif within the Jewish tradition. In addition, as a people with no political power, Jews could more easily critique power. The act of challenging authority, in all its manifestations, would not pose the same threat for Jews as for Christians who needed to preserve and protect their own power structures. Lastly, as we saw in Chapter 4, this openness to critique God supplied the rabbinic exegetes with a distinctive method to confront the ethically problematic God of the Hebrew Bible. While many Christian and Jewish exegetes revised and reinterpreted these difficult passages, others such as pagans, Gnostics, and Marcionites rejected its divine authority altogether for this very reason. By contrast, some rabbinic voices, most notably those found in the TanhumaYelammedenu, found a third way, not revision or rejection, but remonstration. Television writer Aaron Sorkin revived this rabbinic tradition of placing irreverent protests into the mouths of pious leaders when he had the beloved President Bartlett berate God for the death of Mrs. Landingham in The West Wing. But, of course, if a dogmatic religious leader were to confront Sorkin about the scene in question, Sorkin would probably distance himself from Bartlett’s diatribe, just as the rabbis typically distanced themselves from the theological protests launched by “their own” biblical heroes.

Notes

Introduction 1. James Lipton, host of Bravo’s Inside the Actor’s Studio, cited at http://www.imdb .com/title/tt0745721/trivia (accessed June 1, 2014). 2. Literally, “To a cross with Your punishments, to a cross with You!” 3. Gil Reich, http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/aaron-sorkins-jewish-christian-­problem/ (accessed June 1, 2014). 4. On confrontations with God in the Hebrew Bible, see Sheldon Blank, “The Confessions of Jeremiah and the Meaning of Prayer,” Hebrew Union College Annual 21 (1948): 331–54; Sheldon Blank, “Men Against God: The Promethean Element in Biblical Prayer,” Journal of Biblical Literature 72 (1953): 1–13; David Blumenthal, “Confronting the Character of God: Text and Praxis,” in God in the Fray: A Tribute to Walter Brueggemann, ed. Tod Linafelt and Timothy K. Beal (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1998), 38–51; James Crenshaw, “Popular Questioning of the Justice of God in Ancient Israel,” Zeitschrift fur die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 82, no. 3 (1970): 380–95; James Crenshaw, “The Soujourner Has Come to Play the Judge,” in Linafelt and Beal, God in the Fray, 83–92; Berend Gemser, “The Rib—or Controversy—Pattern in Hebrew Mentality,” Vetus Testamentum 3 (supplement) (1955): 120–37; William Holladay, “Jeremiah’s Lawsuit with God,” Interpretation 17 (1963): 280–87; Yochanan Muffs, Love and Joy: Law, Language, and Religion in Ancient Israel (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1992), 9–48; Meira Z. Kensky, Trying Man, Trying God: The Divine Courtroom in Early Jewish and Christian Literature (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010), 13–61; Claus Westermann, “The Complaint Against God,” in Linafelt and Beal, God in the Fray, 233–41. 5. Carol A. Newsom, “The Invention of the Divine Courtroom in the Book of Job,” in The Divine Courtroom in Comparative Perspective, ed. A. Mermelstein and S. Holtz (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 258. 6. Bernard Schweizer, Hating God: The Untold Story of Misotheism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 168. 7. Johann Baptist Metz, “Suffering unto God,” Critical Inquiry 20, no. 4 (1994): 611–22; John K. Roth, “A Theodicy of Protest,” in Encountering Evil: Live Options in

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Theodicy, ed. Stephen T. Davis (Louisville: Westminister John Knox Press, 2001), 1–20. The phrase “theodicy of protest” is taken from Roth. 8. See the essays of Pinchas Peli, Zvi Kolitz, Emil Fackenheim, Eliezer Berkowitz, Robert Gordis, Irving Greenberg, and Jonathan Sacks in Wrestling with God: Jewish Theological Responses During and After the Holocaust, ed. Steven T. Katz, Shlomo Biderman, and Gershon Greenberg (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 245–50, 394–400, 36, 62–89, 91–95, 552. 9. For general surveys, see Anson Laytner, Arguing with God: A Jewish Tradition (Northvale, N.J.: Jason Aronson, 1990), 177–229; Louis I. Newman and Samuel Spitz, The Hasidic Anthology: Tales and Teachings of the Hasidim (Northdale, N.J.: Jason Aronson, 1987), 56–59. With reference to this theme in the legends of Levi Yitzhak of Berditchev (1740–1809), see Samuel H. Dresner, Levi Yitzhak of Berditchev: Portrait of a Hasidic Master (New York: Hartmore House, 1974), 72–90; Katz, Biderman, and Greenberg, Wrestling, 70, 248. In the legends of Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Kotzk (1787–1859) and their influence on Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972), see Shai Held, Abraham Joshua Heschel: The Call of Transcendence (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013), 174–98. In the thought of Kalonymus Kalman Shapiro (1889–1943), see Erin Leib, “God in the Years of Fury: Theodicy and Anti-Theodicy in the Holocaust Writings of Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Shapira” (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 2014). 10. See Michael Berenbaum, The Vision of the Void: Theological Reflections on the Works of Elie Wiesel (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1979); Robert McAfee Brown, Elie Wiesel, Messenger to All Humanity (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983); Carole J. Lambert, Is God Man’s Friend?: Theodicy and Friendship in Elie Wiesel’s Novels (New York: Peter Lang, 2006). 11. Though Anson Laytner and Immanuel Olsvanger have composed monographs on the arguing-with-God theme, neither focuses exclusively on the ancient period. Never­ theless, I am indebted to them: Immanuel Olsvanger for starting this important discussion and Anson Laytner for amassing a significant amount of protest material. Laytner, Arguing with God; Immanuel Olsvanger, Contentions with God: A Study in Jewish Folklore (Cape Town: Jewish Historical and Literary Society, 1921). 12. Max Kadushin, Organic Thinking: A Study in Rabbinic Thought (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1938); Max Kadushin, The Rabbinic Mind, 2nd ed. (New York: Blaisdell, 1965); Arthur Marmorstein, The Doctrine of Merits in Old Rabbinical Literature (London: Oxford University Press, 1920); Arthur Marmorstein, Studies in Jewish Theology (London: Oxford University Press, 1950); Arthur Marmorstein, The Old Rabbinic Doctrine of God (Farnborough: Gregg, 1969); Efraim E. Urbach, The Sages: Their Concepts and Beliefs (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1975). 13. To be sure, the following scholars have written articles, though not books, on the subject, but only as it relates to specific rabbinic challenges to God: Joel Duman, “The Treatment of the Cain and Abel Story in Midrash Tanhuma,” Moed 17 (2007): 1–28; Judah Goldin, “On Honi the Circle-Maker: A Demanding Prayer,” Harvard Theological Review 56, no. 3 (1963): 233–37; Joshua Levinson, “The Athlete of Piety: Fatal Fictions in



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Rabbinic Literature,” Tarbiz 68, no. 1 (1998): 61–86; Ishay Rosen-Zvi, “The Standing Woman: Hannah’s Prayer in Rabbinic Exegesis,” in Tarbut Yehudit Beʿen Haseʿara, ed. Nachum Ilan and Abraham Sagi (Tel Aviv: Ha-Kibbutz ha-Meuchad, 2002), 675–98. 14. For good introductions to rabbinic literature, see Charlotte Elisheva Fonrobert and Martin S. Jaffee, The Cambridge Companion to the Talmud and Rabbinic Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); Catherine Hezser, “Classical Rabbinic Literature,” in The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Studies, ed. Martin Goodman, Jeremy Cohen, and David Jan Sorkin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002); Hermann Leberecht Strack and Günter Stemberger, Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash, trans. Markus N. A. Bockmuehl (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996). 15. See, for example, Gen. 18:17–33, 32; Exod. 32:11–14; Num. 14:11–20, 16:20–24; Hab. 1:2–4, 13; Jer. 12:1, 15:18; Job 9, 13, 23; Ps. 6, 10, 12, 22, 43, 44, 74, 80, 89. 16. Gemser, “Rib,” 134, 35. 17. Yochanan Muffs, The Personhood of God: Biblical Theology, Human Faith, and the Divine Image (Woodstock, Vt.: Jewish Lights, 2005), 184. Also see Muffs, Love and Joy. David Kraemer also argues that from Job “we are left with the unambiguous realization that . . . God does not require that we blindly defend the divine system of justice. The pious individual may legitimately challenge and question and God approves of doing so. . . . The canonical status of this view meant that protest would never again have to be judged unacceptable.” David Charles Kraemer, Responses to Suffering in Classical Rabbinic Literature (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 33. 18. Based on these verses, Pinchas Peli writes, “God convinces Job that the human attempt to ‘understand’ His ways is useless. In light of this fact, man should keep silent. . . . The only one who is able and permitted to ask questions is God.” Pinchas Peli, “Borderline: Searching for a Religious Language of the Shoah,” in Katz, Biderman, and Greenberg, Wrestling, 258. 19. We should also be open to the possibility that God’s perspective in the book of Job may not represent the author’s own view. On this possibility, see Carol A. Newsom, The Book of Job: A Contest of Moral Imaginations (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 234–58. Yet even if this were the case, late antiquity readers would have likely read God’s response as reflecting the correct position. 20. Academic Bible scholars maintain that the inconsistent divine response to Job reflects the fact that the book originally consisted of two or more distinct compositions. The first book, which scholars call “Job the Patient,” includes the prose sections of the first two chapters where Job refuses to curse God, and the last chapter, in which, because of Job’s silence, God declares that Job has “spoken the truth” (42:7). The second book, which scholars call “Job the Impatient,” includes the poetic middle sections in which Job vociferously speaks out against God. It is to this “impatient” Job that God declares: “Speak if you have understanding!” (32:4). For a detailed analysis of this hypothesis, see Marvin H. Pope, Job (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1965), xxiii–xxx. 21. With regard to communal protests against God, the biblical picture is murkier. While some Israelite complaints and arguments go unpunished (e.g., Exod. 16:8, Num.

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20:13), others lead to stern punishment. For example, at the end of the narrative of the spies, God asks Moses and Aaron: “How much longer shall that wicked community keep muttering against Me [‫  ?]מלינים עלי‬. . . In this very wilderness shall your carcasses drop. Of all of you . . . who have muttered against Me [‫]אשר הלינתם עלי‬, not one shall enter the land in which I swore to settle you” (Num. 14:27, 29–30). From these verses, it would seem that the Israelites were barred from entering the Promised Land and thus doomed to die in the wilderness because of their complaining, expressed most stridently in Numbers 14:2–3: “If only we had died in the land of Egypt . . . .. Why is the Lord taking us to that land to fall by the sword? . . . It would be better for us to go back to Egypt!” On closer inspection, however, other surrounding passages reveal that the Israelite complaint was not regarded as their primary sin; rather, their complaint reflected more serious crimes, such as a lack of “faith” (14:11) or outright rebellion (14:9). 22. Of course, we also have the submissive model of Tobit and Sarah in the Book of Tobit. On challenging God in Second Temple literature (and its immediate aftermath), see 4 Esdras 3:20–22, 3:28–36, 5:29–30, 6:55–59; 2 Baruch 5:1, 14:1–19; Kensky, Trying Man, Trying God, 119–80; Michael Stone, “Reactions to the Destruction of the Second Temple,” Journal for the Study of Judaism 12 (1981): 200–212; Michael E. Stone, “The Way of the Most High and the Injustice of God in 4 Ezra,” in Knowledge of God Between Alexander and Contantine, ed. R. van den Broek, Tjitze Baarda, and Jaap Mansfeld (Leiden: Brill, 1988), 132–42. 23. LAB 10:4, 46:4–47:1; Genesis Apocryphon 20:14; Joseph and Aseneth 11:3. 24. On the nature of tokheḥah, see especially James L. Kugel, “On Hidden Hatred and Open Reproach: Early Exegesis of Leviticus 19:17,” Harvard Theological Review 80, no. 1 (1987): 43–61; Aharon Lichtenstein, “The Parameters of Tolerance,” in Tolerance, Dissent, and Democracy: Philosophical, Historical, and Halakhic Perspectives, ed. Moshe Sokol (Northvale, N.J.: Jason Aronson, 2002), 137–74; Zvi Zohar, “Between Love and Enmity: Three Traditional Modes of Understanding the Commandment of Tokheha (Rebuke) and Their Socio-Religious Implications,” in Essays in the Social Scientific Study of Judaism and Jewish Society, ed. Simcha Fishbane and Jack N. Lightstone (Montréal: Department of Religion, Concordia University, 1990), 105–21. 25. Zohar, “Between Love and Enmity,” 107. Likewise, James Kugel has called this dimension, which he sees echoed in a number of Wisdom texts, as the “moralistic” or “externalizing” understanding of tokheḥah. Kugel, “On Hidden Hatred,” 57. 26. Zohar, “Between Love and Enmity,” 109, 10. 27. See BT Yevamot 65b, BT Arakhin 16b, and BT Shabbat 55a. 28. For a nice formulation of this, see Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Laws of Knowledge, 6:7. 29. On parrhesia, see D. Russell Scott, “Boldness,” in Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, ed. J. Hastings (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1909), 2:785–86; H. Schlier, “Parrhesia,” in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, ed. Gerhard Friedrich (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1954), 871–86; Peter Brown, Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Towards a Christian Empire (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992), 61–70; David Konstan, Friendship in the Classical World (Cambridge: Cambridge University



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Press, 1997), 93–95, 103–6, 51–52; David Konstan “The Two Faces of Parrhesia,” Antichthon 46 (2012): 1–13; Arnaldo Momigliano, “Freedom of Speech in Antiquity,” in Dictionary of the History of Ideas, ed. Philip P. Wiener (New York: Scribner’s Sons, 1973), 252–63. 30. Konstan, Friendship, 93–95, 151. 31. Momigliano, “Freedom of Speech in Antiquity,” 252–63. 32. Philodemus, On Frank Criticism, ed. David Konstan (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1998). 33. Plutarch, Essays, ed. I. G. Kidd, trans. Robin Waterfield (London: Penguin, 1992); Konstan, Friendship, 98–105. 34. W. C. van Unnik, Sparsa Collecta: The Collected Essays of W. C. van Unnik, vol. 2, Supplements to Novum Testamentum (Leiden: Brill, 1980), 274–90. 35. See discussion in Schlier, “Parrhesia,” 875–77. 36. Stanley Marrow, “Parrhesia and the New Testament,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 44, no. 3 (1982): 431–46, at 440–41. See also Schlier, “Parrhesia,” 881. Similarly, the church fathers employed the term parrhesia in the sense of informally speaking with God without fear or shame. For example, see Liviu Petcu, “The Light or the Return from the False Reality Towards God: Apatheia and Parrhesia in St. Gregory of Nyssa,” Classica Et Christiana 7, no. 1 (2012): 221–34. 37. These two dimensions also emerge in Josephus’s writings. See Schlier, “Parrhesia,” 878. 38. Philo, Who Is the Heir to Divine Things 1:7, in Works of Philo Judaeus, trans. C. D. Yonge, 4 vols. (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1854), vol. 2. 39. Ibid. 1:20, 21. 40. Ibid. 1:19. 41. Ibid. 1:20. 42. Philo can depict Moses as a challenger to God because he does not adopt an allegorical hermeneutic in his discussion of Moses (in contrast to his biography of Abraham and Joseph). According to Louis Feldman, the Alexandrian philosopher neglected allegory here because, with a non-allegorical reading, he could portray the real-life historical greatness of Moses to the non-Jewish Greco-Roman world that had recently “cast aspersions” on Moses’ character. See Louis H. Feldman, “Remember Amalek!”: Vengeance, Zealotry, and Group Destruction in the Bible According to Philo, Pseudo-Philo, and Josephus (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 2004), 13. 43. For example, Josephus in Antiquities of the Jews 5:38 paraphrases Joshua’s challenge to God in Joshua 7:7 as an act of parrhesia. For other instances, see Schlier, “Parrhesia,” 878. Also see 1 Clement 53:4, 5. 44. See Louis Finkelstein, “Is Philo Mentioned in Rabbinic Literature?,” Journal of Biblical Literature 53, no. 2 (1934): 142–49. 45. In scholarship this is referred to as “exegetical narratives.” For an examination of this rabbinic genre, see James L. Kugel, In Potiphar’s House: The Interpretive Life of Biblical Texts (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1990); James L. Kugel, Traditions of the Bible: A Guide to the Bible as It Was at the Start of the Common Era (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard

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University Press, 1998); Joshua Levinson, “Dialogical Reading in the Rabbinic Exegetical Narrative,” Poetics Today 25, no. 3 (2004); Joshua Levinson, Hasipur Shelo Supar: Amanut Hasipur Hamiqra’ i Hamurḥav Bemidreshe Ḥazal (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2005). 46. For a modern-day equivalent, see Kilian McDonnell, Wrestling with God (College­ ville, Minn.: Saint John’s University Press, 2011). 47. For a full description of these texts, see Strack and Stemberger, Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash. 48. See M. D. Herr, “Tanḥuma Yelammedenu,” in Encyclopedia Judaica (Jerusalem, 1972); Ephraim Urbach, “Tanḥuma Yelammedenu Fragments,” Kovetz al-yad 6, no. 16 (1966). 49. Excluding 18:15–18 and 20:5, 6 which is post- Tanḥuma Yelammedenu. 50. Throughout the book, I place TY in parentheses after a Pesiqta Rabbati section belonging to Tanhuma-Yelammedenu literature. 51. There is even some TY material that has been deposited in Genesis Rabbah and Pesiqta de-Rav Kahana. For a listing of all extant TY texts and manuscripts, see Marc Bregman, Sifrut Tanḥuma-Yelammedenu: Teʾur Nusḥeha Veʿiyunim Bedarkhe Hithavutam (Piscataway, N.J.: Gorgias Press, 2003), 20–96. 52. To date, we have an unpublished critical edition to the first twenty chapters of Tanḥuma on Exodus. See Allen David Kensky, “Midrash Tanḥuma (Hanidpas) Shemot: Shemot ad Beshalaḥ” (Ph.D. diss., Jewish Theological Seminary, 1990). Marc Bregman’s dissertation also contains critical editions to the texts he analyzes. Marc Bregman, “Sifrut Tanḥuma Yelammedenu” (Ph.D. diss., Hebrew University, 1991). Also see Rivka Ulmer, Pesiqta Rabbati: A Synoptic Edition of Pesiqta Rabbati Based upon All Extant Manuscripts and the Editio Princeps (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1997). 53. On the dating of the TY literature, see Bregman, Tanḥuma Yelammedenu Literature , 1–5; Marc Bregman, “Tanḥuma Yelammedenu,” in Encyclopedia Judaica, ed. Fred Skolnik (Detroit: Keter, 2007), 503–4; Ira Chernus, “On the History of a Pericope in the Midrash Tanhuma,” Journal for the Study of Judaism 11 (1980): 53–65; A. Gruenheit, “­Midrash Tanḥuma Vehayelammedenu,” Hamagid (1897): 33–42; Zvi Meir Rabinowitz, “Kerovot Yanai to Exodus 7:8 and the Problem of the Ancientness of the Midrashim of Tanḥuma-Yelammedenu,” Bar Ilan University Yearbook 1 (1963): 207–9; Rubenstein, “Mythic Motifs,” 131–59; Strack and Stemberger, Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash, 302–6. 54. See Bregman, Tanḥuma Yelammedenu Literature, 4–5. 55. Jacob Elbaum, “On the Character of the Late Midrashic Literature,” Proceedings of the Ninth World Congress of Jewish Studies 3 (1986): 57. 56. Leopold Zunz, Haderashot Beyisrael, trans. Chanoch Albeck (Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 1954), 111. 57. Bregman, Tanḥuma Yelammedenu Literature, 3. 58. Jacob Elbaum, “From Sermon to Story: The Transformation of the Akedah,” Prooftexts 6 (1986): 97–117; Avigdor Shinan, “Scriptural Exegesis to Liberated Narrative,” Jerusalem Studies in Hebrew Literature 5 (1984): 203–20. Contra Elbaum, Joshua Levinson



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locates the beginnings of this genre transformation in Leviticus Rabbah. See Levinson, Hasipur Shelo Supar, 239–69. 59. Elbaum, “Sermon to Story.” 60. For the central role that exegesis plays in rabbinic theology, see Michael A. Fishbane, The Exegetical Imagination: On Jewish Thought and Theology (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998), 1–19. 61. On this point, see especially Levinson, Hasipur Shelo Supar, 35–59; Richard L. Rubenstein, The Religious Imagination (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1985), 22–42. 62. Moshe Halbertal, Mahapekhot Parshaniyot Behithavutan: Arakhim Keshiqulim Parshaniyim Bemidreshe Halakha (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1999), 13–41, 168–203. 63. On the relationship between law and narrative in rabbinic literature, see Moshe Simon-Shoshan, Stories of the Law: Narrative Discourse and the Construction of Authority in the Mishnah (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012); Daniel Boyarin, Socrates and the Fat Rabbis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 133–67; Naftali S. Cohn, The Memory of the Temple and the Making of the Rabbis (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013); Barry S. Wimpfheimer, Narrating the Law: A Poetics of Talmudic Legal Stories (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011). 64. Moshe Halbertal, People of the Book: Canon, Meaning, and Authority (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997), 27–30. 65. On morality as a hermeneutic tool in the Christian tradition, see David Steinmetz, “The Superiority of Pre-Critical Exegesis,” Theology Today 37, no. 1 (1980): 30, 31. 66. On Marcionism, see Adolf von Harnack, Marcion: The Gospel of the Alien God (Durham, N.C.: Labyrinth Press, 1990); Sebastian Moll, The Arch-Heretic Marcion (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010). On “uncharitable” readings of the Old Testament, see also Halbertal, People of the Book, 40–44. 67. Jacob Neusner, The Incarnation of God: The Character of Divinity in Formative Judaism (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988). For the last book in Hebrew on the rabbinic God, see Yair Lorberbaum, Tselem Elohim: Halakhah Ve’aggadah (Jerusalem: Hotsa’at Schocken, 2004). 68. Jon Levenson makes the same point regarding the biblical God. Jon Douglas Levenson, Creation and the Persistence of Evil: The Jewish Drama of Divine Omnipotence (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994), xxi. 69. For this claim, see David Stern, “Imitatio Hominis: Anthropomorphism and the Characters of God in Rabbinic Literature,” Prooftexts 12 (1992): 151–74; Arthur Green, “The Children in Egypt and the Theophany at the Sea,” Judaism 24 (1975): 446–56; Elliot R. Wolfson, Through a Speculum That Shines: Vision and Imagination in Medieval Jewish Mysticism (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994), 33. Against these views, Meir Bar-Ilan has posited that “in Talmudic sources there are fewer anthropomorphic concepts of God in comparison with the Bible.” Meir Bar-Ilan, “The Hand of God: Chapter in Rabbinic Anthropomorphism,” in Rashi 1040–1990: Hommage à Ephraim E. Urbach, ed. G. Sed-Rajna (Paris: CERF, 1993), 321–35.

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70. Marmorstein, Old Rabbinic Doctrine, 69–76. 71. See Neusner, Incarnation of God, 180–88. Before Neusner, Solomon Schechter similarly noted that God’s humanity (“imitatio hominis”) is reflected, in part, by God’s arguing with man “on equal terms.” S. Schechter, Aspects of Rabbinic Theology (New York: Schocken Books, 1961), 37. 72. Marmorstein, Studies in Jewish Theology, 1–71. For rabbinic texts supporting this pious proposition, see Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael, Vayehi 6, 307; Sifre Deuteronomy 307; Genesis Rabbah 44:1. 73. David Weiss Halivni, “Can a Religious Law Be Immoral?,” in Perspectives on Jews and Judaism: Essays in Honor of Wolfe Kelman, ed. Arthur A. Chiel (New York: Rabbinical Assembly, 1978), 165–70. 74. Halbertal, Mahapekhot, 185. As Halbertal argues in People of the Book, 29: “In the case of a sacred text the speaker is God and it is thus by definition perfect. . . . Such an assumption naturally influences the way the text is read in relation to other sources that seem less than perfect in comparison. Reading a holy text requires using the principle of charity as generous as possible in interpreting it, since it is inconceivable that such a text could err.” 75. Heschel comes close to making this point. He argues that, according to Rabbi Ishmael, while God’s actions originate in justice, the effects of His actions are sometimes unjust. Abraham Joshua Heschel, Heavenly Torah: As Refracted Through the Generations, trans. Gordon Tucker (New York: Continuum, 2005), 215. On the demonic and malevolent side of the biblical God in contemporary scholarship, see Jon Levenson, “Cataclysm, Survival, and Regeneration in the Hebrew Bible,” in Confronting Omnicide: Jewish Reflections on Weapons of Mass Destruction, ed. Daniel Landes (Northvale, N.J.: Jason Aronson, 1991), 39–68. 76. See David Hartman, A Living Covenant: The Innovative Spirit in Traditional Judaism (New York: Free Press, 1985), 52–57; Heschel, Heavenly Torah, 407–50. 77. Marmorstein, Old Rabbinic Doctrine, 26, 65–68.

Chapter 1 1. John L. Esposito, Darrell J. Fasching, and Todd Thornton Lewis, World Religions Today, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 22. 2. Anson Laytner, Arguing with God: A Jewish Tradition (Northvale, N.J.: J. Aronson, 1990). 3. Steven T. Katz, Shlomo Biderman, and Gershon Greenberg, eds., Wrestling with God: Jewish Theological Responses During and After the Holocaust (New York: Oxford University Press,2007), 55, 59. 4. Ibid., 69, 70. See also the writings of Hayim Yisrael Tsinerman found in Katz, Biderman, and Greenberg, Wrestling, 157–62. On the other extreme, atheists have also criticized those who protest God, but for the opposite reason. For example, Alexander Donat



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(1906–1983), a survivor of Majdanek and Dachau, reprimands Elie Wiesel for his religious rebelliousness, arguing that “outbursts of complaint, bitterness, and blasphemy are [merely] ways of acknowledging Him by way of protest, and I want no part in that. . . . My Judaism is one without God. . . . To believe in God after Auschwitz is an insult to our intelligence. . . . I indict God [but unlike Wiesel] without prosecuting Him.” Katz, Biderman, and Greenberg, Wrestling, 274–86. On this point, also see Bernard Schweizer, Hating God: The Untold Story of Misotheism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 9. This idea, that challenging God affirms an individual’s commitment to a fundamentally moral God, has been noted by J. Heinemann: “The use of [moral protests] . . . reveals a decidedly ethical, normative conception of God and of His relationship to man, predicated on the assumption of a stable ethical order in the universe that was established by God and is sustained by Him. Justice is the fundamental concept in the Jewish ethico-religious worldview.” Joseph Heinemann, Prayer in the Talmud: Forms and Patterns (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1977), 208. Heinemann further argues triumphantly that “the idea that God should allow one of his creatures to ‘take him to court’ . . . which is expressed so strikingly in the Confessions of Jeremiah, for example, and even more so in the Book of Job is certainly a Jewish innovation. . . . The legal controversy of man with God . . . is only possible against the background of a radically monotheistic faith (since in polytheism, the objections to one’s fate can never be directed to a particular deity with any degree of certainty that that deity is in fact to be held responsible).” For this argument, also see Sheldon Blank, “The Confessions of Jeremiah and the Meaning of Prayer,” Hebrew Union College Annual 21 (1948): 342. 5. David Kraemer concludes similarly when tracing rabbinic reactions to human suffering. See David Charles Kraemer, Responses to Suffering in Classical Rabbinic Literature (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 91–101. Critiques of God in early rabbinic literature, if there are any, are concealed. For example, see Sifre Deuteronomy 45, Mekhilta deRabbi Ishmael Shirata 8, Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael Nezikin 18. 6. See Sifre Numbers 95, Sifre Deuteronomy 323 and, possibly, Mekhilta de-Rabbi Shimon Bar Yoḥai 6. 7. Menahem Kahana, “The Halakhic Midrashim,” in The Literature of the Sages, ed. Shemuel Safrai (Assen, Netherlands: Fortress Press, 1987), 6. 8. See Dov Weiss, “Confrontations with God in Late Rabbinic Literature” (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 2011), 82–95, 115–25, 34–49. 9. On the prohibition to critique God’s laws, see Sifra Aḥare Mot 9:9, 9:10; Sifre Numbers 115, BT Yoma 67b. On the rationality of divine law in rabbinic Judaism, see chap. 6 of Christine Hayes, What’s So Divine About Divine Law? Ancient Perspectives (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2015). 10. This text only appears in MS London 341. Scholars debate whether the aggadic material at the end of Sifre Deuteronomy, including this section, belongs to the school of Akiva (view of A. Goldberg) or Ishmael (view of J. N. Epstein). On this issue, see Kahana, “The Halakhic Midrashim,” 96–97. 11. For hirhur as “thinking” as opposed to speaking, see M Berakhot 3:4 and BT Shabbat 150a; for hirhur as impure sexual or idolatrous thoughts, see BT Niddah 13b, BT

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Yoma 29a, and BT Berakhot 12b. For hirhur as critiquing others, including God, see Tanḥuma (Buber) Lekh Lekha 13; Exodus Rabbah I, 6:1; Midrash Aggadah to Lev. 14:2; Pesiqta Zutrata to Exod. 33:19, Lev. 26b, 39b. At other times, the term hirhur signals a critique of God without saying so explicitly; rabbinic texts call this simply “thinking of the heart” (‫)הרהור הלב‬. See Tanḥuma (Buber) Vayera 7 and Tsav 9, Tanḥuma Vayetse 10, Exodus Rabbah I 1:30, Leviticus Rabbah 7:3. 12. The paragraph immediately preceding this quote contains a similar teaching: “[God’s] workmanship in regard to all creatures of the world is perfect; there can be no critique [‫ ]להרהר‬whatsoever about His work. None of them can look at himself and say, ‘If only I had three eyes, if only I had three arms, if only I had three legs, if only I walked on my head, if only my face were turned the other way, how nicely it would become me!’” Also see Midrash Tannaim 18:13: “You must be wholehearted with the Lord your God: Rabbi Eliezer Hakappar says: You should not criticize [‫ ]תהרהר‬the ways of God. . . . Rabbi Eliezer the son of Jacob says: You should not criticize [‫ ]תהרהר‬God over sufferings.” 13. On the life and thought of Rabbi Akiva, see the bibliography cited in Azzan Yadin, “Rabbi Akiva’s Youth,” Jewish Quarterly Review 100, no. 4 (2010): 573–97. 14. On Rabbi Akiva’s view (and Pappus’s counter position), see Abraham Joshua Heschel, Heavenly Torah: As Refracted Through the Generations, trans. Gordon Tucker (New York: Continuum, 2005), 137; Meira Z. Kensky, Trying Man, Trying God: The Divine Courtroom in Early Jewish and Christian Literature (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010), 293–95. 15. Heschel claims that Rabbi Ishmael and his school represent a counter-tradition wherein challenges to God are not only justified but also freely leveled. According to him, Rabbi Ishmael sanctions protest because he rejects the Akivan principle that all divine “sufferings are beloved.” Heschel’s construction of an Akivan-Ishmaelian debate on our issue, however, is highly problematic. First, the specific sources Heschel cites simply do not match his claims. Many of his texts that support protestations are post-tannaitic and have no clear connection to Rabbi Ishmael and his school. Second, the one critique of God emanating from the school of Ishmael is only an implicit critique (at best), and it is only attributed to Rabbi Ishmael’s school in post-tannaitic sources. (The source: “‘Who is like you O Lord among the Gods [‫[ ]באלים‬Exod. 15:11]’: Who is like You among the deafmute [‫ ]אילמים‬who though seeing the insult heaped upon Your children keep silent.” Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael Shirata 8; cf. BT Gittin 56b.) Finally, Heschel’s entire methodology has been challenged in scholarly circles. For example, as Azzan Yadin writes, “Heschel makes sweeping claims about the two schools, often at the expense of more nuanced readings and a fuller consideration of the historical setting of the various corpora that make up rabbinic literature.” Azzan Yadin, Scripture as Logos: Rabbi Ishmael and the Origins of Midrash (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), x. Hence, for the aforementioned reasons, I continue to reject the existence of a tannaitic tradition that valorizes confrontation. 16. See, for example, Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael, Baḥodesh 10, and Sifre Deuteronomy 32. The dictum is often repeated by his students in rabbinic literature (e.g., BT Bava Metzi’a 85a and BT Sanhedrin 101a). On Rabbi Akiva’s understanding of suffering, also



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see E. P. Sanders, “Akiba’s View of Suffering,” Jewish Quarterly Review 63 (1972–1973): 332–52; Efraim E. Urbach, The Sages: Their Concepts and Beliefs (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1975), 444–48. 17. BT Berakhot 60b: “It was taught in the name of Akiva: whatever God does, it is for the good.” 18. LXX solves the problem by translating “‫–אתי‬with me” as “ἑαυτοῖς–for yourselves.” 19. Interestingly, hundreds of years later, St. Jerome (347–420 CE) makes the same distinction, but privileging the Christian community: “We give thanks in particular when we rejoice in the benefits of God which have befallen us. But the gentile also does this, as does the Jew. . . . It is the special virtue of Christians to return thanks to the creator also in those things which are thought to be adverse: if one’s house has fallen to the ground, if a dearly loved wife and children have been snatched away . . . the greatest virtue is that we give thanks to God in the dangers and miseries themselves and always say ‘blessed be God.’” Origen and Jerome, The Commentaries of Origen and Jerome on St. Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians, ed. Ronald E. Heine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 230 (emphasis mine). 20. JT Berakhot 9:5. For an analysis of this text, see Kraemer, Responses to Suffering, 110–14. 21. See, for example, Sifre Deuteronomy 307 and the reworked version found in BT Avodah Zarah 17b–18a. On the martyrdom of Rabbi Ishmael and Rabbi Shimon, see ­Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael, Nezikin 18. For the shared early Jewish-Christian discourse on martyrology, see Daniel Boyarin, Dying for God: Martyrdom and the Making of Christianity and Judaism (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1999). As Beth Berkowitz has noted: “The amoraic midrashim manifest a flourishing of martyrdom narratives that become ever more elaborate as they pass through editor’s hands.” Beth A. Berkowitz, Execution and Invention: Death Penalty Discourse in Early Rabbinic and Christian Cultures (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006). On the development of the “medieval ten martyrs” literature and its sources, see Raanan S. Boustan, From Martyr to Mystic: Rabbinic Martyrology and the Making of Merkavah Mysticism (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005). 22. Arthur Marmorstein, Studies in Jewish Theology (London: Oxford University Press, 1950), 1–13. 23. On Marcion’s critique of the Old Testament God, see Adolf von Harnack, Marcion: The Gospel of the Alien God (Durham, N.C.: Labyrinth Press, 1990); Heikki ­R aisanen, “Marcion and the Origins of Christian Anti-Semitism,” Temenos 33 (1997): 121–33; Sebastian Moll, The Arch-Heretic Marcion (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010). 24. Von Harnack extracted citations of Antithesis found most notably in Tertullian’s “Against Marcion” and the anonymous work of the “Dialogue on the True Faith in God.” 25. Sebastion Moll argues that Marcion saw YHWH not merely as a stern God of justice, as von Harnack had claimed, but more radically as an evil deity. According to Moll, von Harnack was misled by later Marcionites who adopted the more moderate position. Moreover, according to Moll, von Harnack’s misreading of Marcion may have been

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fueled by von Harnack’s overall affinity for Marcion, who in many respects anticipated Luther. Moll, The Arch-Heretic Marcion. Recently, however, Moll’s reading has been stridently criticized by Jason Beduhn, “Book Review: Sebastion Moll, the Arch Heretic Marcion,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 20, no. 2 (2012): 337–39. 26. Harnack, Marcion, 60. 27. Ibid. 28. Origen, On First Principles (New York: Harper and Row, 1966), book 4. 29. Tertullian, Adversus Marcionem, trans. Ernast Evans (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), book 2. On this text, see Kensky, Trying Man, Trying God, 284–92. On the protoOrthodox defense against Marcion more generally, and how this contributed to Christian antisemitism, see David Efroymson, “The Patristic Connection,” in Antisemitism and the Foundations of Christianity, ed. Alan T. Davies (New York: Paulist Press, 1979), 98– 108. Origen and Tertullian’s contrasting response to Marcion reflects their contrasting approaches to biblical exegesis more generally. See Donald K. McKim, Dictionary of Major Biblical Interpreters (Downers Grove, Ill.: IVP Academic, 2007), 787–95, 963–68. 30. See the “Testimony of Truth” in James M. Robinson, The Nag Hammadi Library in English (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1978), 455. 31. For further analysis of this text and other uncharitable Gnostic readings of the canon, see Moshe Halbertal, People of the Book: Canon, Meaning, and Authority (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997), 40–44; Birger Pearson, “Gnostic Interpretation of the Old Testament in the Testimony of Truth,” Harvard Theological Review 73, no. 1/2 (1980): 311–19. 32. See Bentley Layton, The Gnostic Scriptures: A New Translation with Annotations and Introductions (London: SCM Press, 1987), 23–64. 33. Ibid., 306–15. Ptolemy regarded some of the divinely given Torah teachings such as the doctrine of inherited punishment and lex talionis (the law of “an eye for eye”) as imperfect and hence in need of revision. In this work, Ptolemy, like Marcion, contrasted the problematic elements of Torah law with the teachings of Jesus. 34. See Gary T. Burke, “Celsus and the Old Testament,” Vetus Testamentum 36, no. 2 (1986): 241–45; Efroymson, “The Patristic Connection,” 107. 35. Celsus, On the True Doctrine: A Discourse Against the Christians, trans. R. Joseph Hoffmann (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987). This work was preserved and later challenged by Origen in his Contra Celsum, trans. Henry Chadwick (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980). On Celsus’s critiques of the Old Testament God, see Burke, “Celsus and the Old Testament,” 241–45; Henry Chadwick, Early Christian Thought and the Classical Tradition (Oxford: Clarendon, 1966), 22–30; John G. Gager, Origins of Anti-Semitism: Attitudes Toward Judaism in Pagan and Christian Antiquity (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), 103; Edward Young, “Celsus and the Old Testament,” Westminster Theological Journal 6, no. 2 (1944): 166–97. 36. Chadwick, Early Christian Thought, 25. 37. As Meira Kensky has shown, defending God’s goodness and justice is also of central concern in some early Christian Apocalypses, such as the Apocalypse of Peter



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(where Jesus critiques Peter for questioning why God created evil people) and the Apocalypse of Paul (where an angel berates Paul for lamenting those people suffering in hell). Kensky, Trying Man, Trying God, 255–84. 38. Origen, Contra Celsum. 39. Arthur Marmorstein, The Old Rabbinic Doctrine of God (Farnborough: Gregg, 1969), 23. 40. See Michael Satlow, “Beyond Influence: Toward a New Historiographic Paradigm,” in Jewish Literatures and Cultures: Context and Intertext, ed. Anita Norich and Yaron Z. Eliav (Providence, R.I.: Brown Judaic Studies, 2008), 37–53. 41. See, for example, Adiel Schremer, Brothers Estranged: Heresy, Christianity, and Jewish Identity in Late Antiquity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 9, 10. 42. Rabbinic opposition to critiquing God also reached the folk, as evidenced by its entry into popular liturgy. In late antiquity, an anonymous Jewish author composed a poem to be recited by those mourning the loss of a relative. The poem, entitled the “Justification of [Divine] Judgment” (‫)צידוק הדין‬, contains biblical citations and allusions proclaiming the goodness and justness of God. The first few stanzas commence with a paraphrase of Deut. 32:4: “The Rock! His deeds are perfect [‫ ;]תמים‬yea, all His ways are just [‫ ;”]משפט‬and virtually each stanza concludes with the word “the Rock,” the name of God referenced in that very verse. Most significantly, toward the end of the poem, we have a liturgical echo of our Sifre Deuteronomy text: “We know, O Lord, that Your rulings are just [see Ps. 119:75] / You are just in Your sentence and right in Your judgment [Ps. 51:6] / And [we] do not criticize [‫ ]ואין להרהר אחר‬Your attributes [of mercy and justice] / For You are righteous, O Lord; and Your rulings are just [Ps. 119:137] / The Rock [Deut. 32:4].” In this stanza, the poem’s author assembles three disconnected verses from Psalms that highlight God’s judicial perfection and then inserts Sifre Deuteronomy’s prohibition of “criticizing [hirhur]” God between them. (I obtained this text from the online Historical Dictionary Project of the Academy of the Hebrew Language, http://hebrew-treasures.huji.ac.il/.) A second possible liturgical implication revolves around the biblical commandments of Deuteronomy 22:6–7, which requires a person not to take young birds (or eggs) in the presence of their mother. Rather, the mother bird should first be let go. On these verses, Mishnah Berakhot 5:3 states: “If one [in praying] says: Your mercies extend to the bird’s nest . . . he is silenced.” It is not at all clear from the Mishnah what is wrong with offering such praise. One interpretation, found in both the Jerusalem Talmud (Berakhot 5:3) and Babylonian Talmud (Berakhot 33b), is that such a statement grounds God’s law in ethics; according to this view God’s law should be followed for no other reason than it is God’s will. A second explanation, only found in the Jerusalem Talmud, adopts the opposite approach: such praise of God masks an implicit ethical critique (‫)קורא תיגר‬: as if to say, God’s mercy only reaches the bird’s nest, but it has still not reached the petitioner. Read this way, the Mishnah states that any critique of God, even an implicit one in the context of prayer, is unacceptable. It is not surprising that this latter view only appears in the Jerusalem Talmud. As I show in Chapter 2, theological protest, generally speaking, receives a warmer welcome in the Babylonian Talmud than in the Jerusalem Talmud.

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43. Gregory, Morals on the Book of Job, trans. John Henry Parker (Oxford: J. H. Parker, 1844), 511 (emphasis mine). For an excellent analysis of Gregory’s commentary to Job, see Susan Schreiner, Where Shall Wisdom Be Found?: Calvin’s Exegesis of Job from Medieval and Modern Perspectives (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 22–54. 44. Gregory, Morals on the Book of Job, 511. In somewhat similar fashion, Augustine (354–430) posits: “We as sinners deserve nothing other than eternal damnation, who then does the man from this mass think he is that he is able to question God and say: ‘Why have you made me this way?’” Here, however, the emphasis seems to be on human sinfulness in general rather than, more specifically, on human intellectual deficiencies. Augustine, Eighty-three Different Questions, trans. David Mosher (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1982), 159. 45. Interestingly, both Sifre Deuteronomy and Midrash Tannaim cite biblical passages that accentuate the concept of tamim (‫)תמים‬. But while Sifre Deuteronomy prohibits critique of God because the critique seeks to undermine God’s nature as tamim (perfection), Midrash Tannaim, by contrast, prohibits critique because it compromises the sought-after tamim quality in the human being (here tamim meaning “blameless”). 46. For the conceptual distinction between philosophical error and relational dis­ respect in another context, see Moshe Halbertal and Avishai Margalit, Idolatry (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992), 64. 47. BT Bava Batra 16a. 48. Also see Exodus Rabbah II 32:2 and Tanḥuma Va’era 1. 49. John of Chrysostom, Commentary on Job, trans. Robert C. Hill (Brookline, Mass.: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2006), 181. I have slightly veered from Hill’s translation. Notably, however, Chrysostom limits the prohibition against arguing with God to long-winded arguments. 50. Ibid., 180 (emphasis mine). 51. Alexander Roberts and Sir James Donaldson, eds., The Ante-Nicene Fathers: Translations of the Writings of the Fathers Down to A.D. 325 (Grand Rapids, Mich.: W. B. Eerdmans,1980), vol. 8, 140. Ambrose of Milan (340–397) formulates a similar concern, highlighting the attempted inversion of judicial roles when one challenges God: “No one should protest [God] that some misfortune has befallen him and complain that he has been afflicted contrary to his merit. For who are you to proclaim your merit beforehand? Why do you desire to anticipate your Judge? Why do you snatch the verdict from the mouth of Him who is going to pronounce it?” Ambrose, On the Death of His Brother ­Satyrus (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1947), 206–7. 52. A similar formulation can be found in Numbers Rabbah 18:20. 53. On this issue, see especially Berkowitz, Execution and Invention; Shaye J.D. Cohen, “The Rabbi in Second Century Jewish Society,” in The Cambridge History of Judaism, vol. 3, ed. W. D. Davies, William Horbury, and John Sturdy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 922–90; Naftali S. Cohn, The Memory of the Temple and the Making of the ­Rabbis (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013); Lee I. Levine, The Rabbinic Class of Roman Palestine in Late Antiquity (Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi, 1989).



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54. Genesis Rabbah 28:4. 55. It is quite possible that the author of Genesis Rabbah sought to explain the seemingly redundant phrase of “whom I created.” Yet, even if this were the case, the question remains: what drove the midrashic author to reinterpret the phrase “I will blot out” as a critique of theological protest? 56. See Chapter 4. 57. This is according to a reading of this passage that points to the indiscriminate nature of God’s destructive power. Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael, Pisḥa 11. 58. Ibid. 59. I interpret this to mean that God metes out lesser punishment than one truly deserves. My reading follows Aggadat Bereshit 22:1 to Genesis 18:25 (ed. Buber, p. 45). 60. See also the parallel in Pesiqta Rabbati 31, which adds a proof text from Lamentations 3:39. 61. On the rabbinic tendency to equate architectural structures with human body parts, see Charlotte Elisheva Fonrobert, Menstrual Purity: Rabbinic and Christian Reconstructions of Biblical Gender (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2000), 40–66. 62. The phrase ‫( קורא תגר‬in various spellings) first appears in amoraic literature. See Genesis Rabbah 1:10, 40:2, 44:14, 92:1; JT Berakhot 5:3. 63. Beginning with Jacob Neusner, Jewish studies scholars have warned us against uncritical acceptance of attributions. On this issue, see discussion and bibliography in Shai Secunda, The Iranian Talmud: Reading the Bavli in Its Sasanian Context (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014), 29–31. 64. For another story where a rabbi protests God and becomes lame, see JT Ta’anit 3:8 (though we have no subsequent reflection from Rabbi Eleazar). 65. Note that Rabbi Eleazar uses a new term to denote a protest of God: hattaḥat devarim (to hurl words). When used in the sense of critique, the phrase usually follows one of these words: “toward” (‫)כלפי‬, “against” (‫)נגד‬, or “after” (‫)אחר‬. On this language of theological critique, also see M. Z. Levinson-Labie, “Hattaḥat Devarim Kelappe Maʿala,” Sefer Hashanah Leyehude Ameriqa 3 (1938): 113–27. The prohibition of “hurling words” is most strikingly articulated by Targum Pseudo-Jonathan’s comments to Genesis 15:6. To explain the phrase “Abraham believed in the Lord,” the Targum translates: “that [Abraham] did not hurl words at God [‫]דלא אטח לקמיה במילין‬.” 66. On Hannah’s protest, see Ishay Rosen-Zvi, “The Standing Woman: Hannah’s Prayer in Rabbinic Exegesis,” in Tarbut Yehudit Beʿen Haseʿara, ed. Nachum Ilan and Abraham Sagi (Tel Aviv: Ha-Kibbutz ha-Meuchad, 2002), 675–98. 67. For recent scholarship on the Honi story (and for an extensive bibliography), see Michal Bar-Asher Siegal, Early Christian Monastic Literature and the Babylonian Talmud (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013); Moshe Simon-Shoshan, Stories of the Law: Narrative Discourse and the Construction of Authority in the Mishnah (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 149–66; Suzanne Last Stone, “Rabbinic Legal Midrash: A New Look at Honi’s Circle as the Construction of Laws Space,” Yale Journal of Law and the Humanities 17 (2005): 97–123; Suzanne Last Stone, “On the Interplay of Rules, ‘Cases’

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and Concepts in Rabbinic Legal Literature: Another Look at the Aggadot of Honi the Circle-Drawer,” Dine Yisrael 24 (2006): 125–56. For classic treatments, see especially David Daube, “Enfant Terrible,” Harvard Theological Review 68, no. 3/4 (1975): 371–76; Judah Goldin, “On Honi the Circle-Maker: A Demanding Prayer,” Harvard Theological Review 56, no. 3 (1963): 233–37. 68. Later rabbinic texts appropriate this threatening phrase, “I will not move from here until,” and place it into the mouths of various biblical characters before they make demands of God. For the character of Moses, see Numbers Rabbah II 17:2; Tanḥuma Shelaḥ 14 (cf. Genesis Rabbah 56:11); Avot de-Rabbi Nathan (version a) 9, s.v. Rabi Shimon; Tanḥuma Mishpatim 18; Exodus Rabbah II 42:1; Pesiqta de-Rav Kahana, supplement to Vezot Haberakhah 1; Deuteronomy Rabbah 1:10. For other characters, see Midrash Psalms 7:17, 77:1; Genesis Rabbah 37:3; Leviticus Rabbah 19:6; and Tanḥuma (Buber) Ki Tavo 2. 69. See Joshua Trachtenberg, Jewish Magic and Superstition: A Study in Folk Religion (New York: Behrman’s Jewish Book House, 1939), 121. Although Judah Goldin initially adopted this position, he later abandons it. Goldin, “Honi the Circle-Maker.” 70. Alan Avery-Peck, “The Galilean Charismatic and Rabbinic Piety: The Holy Man in the Talmudic Literature,” in The Historical Jesus in Context, ed. Amy-Jill Levine, Dale C. Allison, and John Dominic Crossan (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006), 149–65; William Scott Green, “Palestinian Holy Men: Charismatic Leadership and Rabbinic Tradition,” in Aufstieg Und Niedergang Der Römischen Welt, ed. Wolfgang Haase (Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1972), 619–47. Both Avery-Peck and Green see the Honi story as illustrating how charismatic miracle workers could be brought into the rabbinic mainstream. Others see Honi as a member of a Pietist movement opposed by the rabbis. For this view, see Shmuel Safrai, “Teaching of Pietists in Mishnaic Literature,” Journal of Jewish Studies 16 (1965): 15–33; Géza Vermès, Jesus the Jew: A Historian›s Reading of the Gospels (London: Collins, 1973), 69–72. Citing Safrai, Stone raises the possibility that Shimon opposed Honi’s techniques for this reason. Stone, “On the Interplay,” 138–39. 71. Stone, “On the Interplay,” 138–43. 72. Gideon Leibson, “Determining Factors in Herem and Nidui,” Shenaton Hamishpat Ha‘ ivri 2 (1975): 299–330. 73. See, for example, Daube, “Enfant Terrible”; Goldin, “Honi the Circle-Maker.” This is the standard reading of the story. 74. On the rabbinic reception of the Aqedah story, see Jacob Elbaum, “From Sermon to Story: The Transformation of the Akedah,” Prooftexts 6 (1986): 97–117; Martha Himmelfarb, “Ordeals of Abraham: Circumcision and Akedah in Origen, Mekhilta and Genesis Rabbah,” Henoch 30, no. 2 (2008): 289–310; Moshe Bernstein, “Angels at the Aqedah: A Study in the Development of a Midrashic Motif,” Dead Sea Discoveries 7, no. 3 (2000): 263–91; Shalom Spiegel, The Last Trial (New York: Pantheon Books, 2007). 75. See, for example, Sifre Deuteronomy 307; JT Horayot 3:2; BT Kiddushin 39b. For a comprehensive treatment, see Kraemer, Responses to Suffering, 91–94; Urbach, The Sages, 444–48.



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76. The notion that a “burnt offering” is brought for matters of the “heart” first appears in Leviticus Rabbah 7:3 and JT Yoma 8:7 (and preserved in Tanḥuma Tetsaveh 15 and Tsav 9, 13). By contrast, BT Zevaḥim 88b and BT Arakhin 16a have the priest’s wide belt atoning for “sins of the heart.” For other possible sins for which a burnt offering is brought, see BT Yoma 36a. This post-amoraic midrash presents two problems. First, the attribution of Levi as the author of this teaching is highly problematic because, as I have noted, Levi is often described as the sage who sanctions or celebrates the protest motif. Second, from where does the Tanḥuma develop the idea that critiquing God specifically incurs the penalty of a burnt offering? Why would sacrifice be required, and why a burnt offering rather than a sin offering? The earlier Leviticus Rabbah (7:3) offers us some answers. Attributing its teaching to the second-century sage Rabbi Shimon b. Yoḥai, Leviticus Rabbah maintains that a person must bring a burnt offering to atone for the “[evil] thoughts of the heart [‫]הירהור הלב‬.” While the amoraic text does not define what constitutes “thoughts of the heart,” the two proof texts cited in the name of Levi imply idolatry and blasphemy. (The first proof text, from Ezekiel 20:32, treats the sin of idolatry; the second, from Job 1:5, treats the sin of blasphemy.) Thus, if one merely desires to commit idolatry or to curse God—even without actually doing it—one would offer a burnt offering. Our Tanḥuma text then does not produce its claim of Abraham’s requiring a burnt offering ex nihilo; rather, it extends the definition of “thoughts of the heart” to include a significantly more benign thought-crime: questioning or critiquing divine justice. Furthermore, I would argue that the later Tanḥuma text understandably, though problematically, associates its teaching with Levi because Leviticus Rabbah had cited Levi as the sage who produced the proof texts from Ezekiel and Job. But while the Levi of Leviticus Rabbah associates “crimes of the heart” with the burnt offering, he did not take the radical step of equating critiquing God with the need for sacrificial atonement. This is a fanciful extension of the Levi position made by the Tanḥuma authors. Finally, it ought to be noted that this Tanḥuma passage surpasses anything we have encountered in rabbinic literature, as it conceptually places questioning divine justice in the same prohibitive category as intending idolatry or blasphemy. 77. Baruch Levine argues that these two distinct reasons reflect two different biblical sources (JE vs. P). See Baruch A. Levine, Numbers 1–20 (New York: Doubleday, 1993), 358. 78. JT Ta’anit 4:6. On the cautionary term “if it is possible to say” (‫)כביכול‬, see ­Michael A. Fishbane, Biblical Myth and Rabbinic Mythmaking (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 325–401. 79. Also see BT Sotah 35a, BT Menaḥot 53b, and BT Arakhin 15a, where, according to all the key manuscripts, the teaching is attributed to Ḥaninah b. Pappa, and the phrase “they spoke a powerful word” (‫ )דבר גדול דיברו‬appears instead of JT Ta’anit’s “spoke words towards heaven” (‫)דיברו דברים כלפי למעלן‬. Like Numbers Rabbah, Tanḥuma Shelaḥ 7 attributes the teaching to Shimon b. Lakish, but he uses the phrase “they struck toward Heaven [‫]הקישו כלפי למעלה‬.” 80. As does Tanḥuma (Buber) Va’etḥanan 6.

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81. My reading follows the commentary of Rabbi David Luria (1798–1855) to Numbers Rabbah 16:11 s.v. Mah. Midrash Rabbah, 6 vols. (Jerusalem: Vagshal, 2001), vol. 4, 404. Also see the commentary of Anaf Yosef (Hanoch Zundel, d. 1867) to Tanḥuma Shelaḥ 7, s.v. hakishun, who, more radically, interprets the “knocking of God” as a case of heresy (‫)כפירה‬. Midrash Tanḥuma Hashalem (Jerusalem: Ohel Rabeinu Yonoson Ublima, 2008), 3:266. The connection between the punishment of the spies and the destruction of the Temple had already been posited by the Mishnah, which maintained that both of these events occurred on the ninth of Av. See M Ta’anit 4:6. Of course, these late ­midrashim go further than the Mishnah by claiming that the Temple’s destruction was a punishment for the sin of the spies. 82. For other examples, see Genesis Rabbah (Theodor-Albeck) 49:9, Numbers Rabbah II 18:1, and Tanḥuma (Buber) Koraḥ 14. 83. On the legal terms appropriated by the author of Job, see a full bibliography in Meira Kensky, “Trying Man, Trying God” (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 2009), 55n.78. 84. On the reception of Job in rabbinic literature, see Judith Baskin, Pharaoh’s Counsellors: Job, Jethro, and Balaam in Rabbinic and Patristic Tradition (Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press, 1983), 7–26; Hananel Mack, It Was Only a Parable: Job in Second Temple and Rabbinic Literature (Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan Press, 2004); Urbach, The Sages, 400–419. 85. “[Rabbi Akiva] used to say: there are five things of [the duration of] twelve months: the judgment of the generation of the Flood [continued] twelve months; the judgment of Job [continued] twelve months; the judgment of the Egyptians [continued] twelve months; the judgment of Gog and Magog in the time to come [will continue] twelve months; the judgment of the ungodly in Gehinnom [continues] twelve months” (M Eduyyot 2:10). 86. See M Semaḥot 8:11: “Rabbi Akiva said: A certain king had four sons. One remained silent when punished; another protested when punished; another pleaded for mercy when punished; and another, when punished, said to his father: ‘punish me’ (still more). Abraham was silent when punished . . . Job remonstrated when punished [‫לוקה‬ ‫ ]ומבעט‬. . . Hezekiah begged for mercy . . . David said to his Father ‘punish me.’” 87. See Mack, Job, 149–50. Not surprisingly, Exodus Rabbah I 5:22 attributed to Rabbi Akiva the teaching that Moses was denied entry to the Promised Land because he critiqued God. 88. Urbach, The Sages, 407. Urbach also interprets the second-century debate between Rabbi Yochanan b. Zakai and Rabbi Joshua b. Hyrcanus as to whether Job served God merely out of fear (Rabbi Yochanan) or out of love (Rabbi Joshua) in M Sotah 5:5 as an argument about whether one could serve God out of love even when challenging God. Urbach’s claim is too speculative and should not be accepted without further support; The Sages, 408–10. In contrast to Urbach, Mack makes no connection between Job’s protests and whether he served God out of love or fear. Mack, Job, 141–45. 89. BT Bava Batra 15b. 90. Pesiqta Rabbati 47:1.



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91. On the patristic reception of Job, see Judith Baskin, “Job as Moral Exemplar in Ambrose,” Vigiliae Christianae 35 (1981): 222–31; Baskin, Pharaoh’s Counsellors, 32–43; Richard A. Layton, Didymus the Blind and His Circle in Late-Antique Alexandria: Virtue and Narrative in Biblical Scholarship (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004), 56–84; Schreiner, Where Shall Wisdom Be Found?, 22–54. 92. Alexander Roberts and Sir James Donaldson, eds., The Ante-Nicene Fathers: Translations of the Writings of the Fathers Down to A.D. 325 (Buffalo: Christian Literature Publishing Company, 1885), 3:707. 93. On Tertullian’s defenses of a perfectly just Old Testament God, see Kensky, “Trying Man, Trying God,” 284–92. 94. Layton, Didymus the Blind, 77. 95. Ibid. 96. Ibid., 78. 97. Baskin, “Job as Moral Exemplar in Ambrose,” 224. Reading Job’s protest as merely playing devil’s advocate is also expressed in Aquinas’s reading. See Schreiner, Where Shall Wisdom Be Found?, 77–82. 98. Ambrose, “On the Duties of the Clergy,” I:12:42, found in Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church. Second Series, trans. H. de Romestin, H. T. F. Duckworth, and E. de Romestin (Buffalo: Christian Literature Company, 1890), 8. 99. Schreiner, Where Shall Wisdom Be Found?, 35. 100. Gregory, Morals on the Book of Job, preface, iii. 101. Lawrence L. Besserman, The Legend of Job in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1979), 36, 37. For further details, see Donald Gard, “The Concept of Job’s Character According to the Greek Translator of the Hebrew Text,” Journal of Biblical Literature 72 (1953): 182–86; Henry Gehman, “The Theological Approach of the Greek Translator of Job 1–15,” Journal of Biblical Literature 68 (1949): 231–41. For a partial rejection of this view, see Harry M. Orlinsky, “Studies in the Septuagint of the Book of Job,” Hebrew Union College Annual 28 (1957): 53–74. Orlinsky continued to argue his position in numerous articles appearing in HUCA in the late 1950s and early 1960s (vols. 29, 30, 32, and 33). Subsequently, Ephraim Urbach refuted Orlinsky and defended Gard. See Urbach, The Sages, 866–67 n.66. 102. Besserman, Legend of Job, 49. 103. James 5:11. Judith Baskin offers a second factor that should be considered. She proposes that the rabbinic antipathy toward Job should be seen as a polemic against the Christian tendency to depict Job as a pre-figuration of Christ. Baskin, Pharaoh’s Counsellors, 7–43. 104. For parallels, see BT Sanhedrin 111a, Tanḥuma (Buber) Va’etḥanan 6, and Avot de-Rabbi Nathan (version b) 38. For further discussion, see Yaakov Blidstein, Etsev Nevo (Jerusalem: Herzog, 2008), 36–38. Not surprisingly, Mekhilta de-Rabbi Shimon bar Yoḥai attributes the teaching to Rabbi Akiva, the most vocal early rabbi of the anti-protest camp, and, in BT Sanhedrin according to MS Florence (II:1:9), the teaching is attributed to Rabbi Eleazar, the most vocal anti-protest amora.

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105. By having God contrast Moses with the patriarchs, the Tanhuma echoes the next few biblical verses (Exodus 6:2–3). But the valence is inverted: whereas, in Exodus, God privileges Moses by revealing His name, in the Tanhuma, God privileges the patriarchs for not criticizing His ways. 106. Questions on Exodus 14, found in Corpus Christianorum. Series Latina (Turnhout: Brepols, 1953), 33:75. 107. Yehezkel Kaufmann, The Religion of Israel: From Its Beginnings to the Babylonian Exile, trans. Moshe Greenberg (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960), 399. 108. Midrash Psalms 90:7. 109. See also Midrash Psalms 7:17, in which Habakkuk is said to have violated Ecclesiastes 5:1: “Keep your mouth from being rash, and let not your throat be quick to bring forth speech before God.” 110. See Francis I. Andersen, Habakkuk: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New York: Doubleday, 2001), 268–73. The author of Midrash Psalms reads shigyonot as shogeg, error. 111. Theodore, Bishop of Mopsuestia, Commentary on the Twelve Prophets, trans. ­Robert C. Hill (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2004), 268 (emphasis mine). 112. On the rabbinic tendency to lay blame on biblical heroes, see Ari Schwat, “Innocent in Scripture, Guilty in Rabbinic Literature,” Talele Orot 12 (2006): 13–99 [Hebrew]. (To be sure, we also have instances where the rabbis whitewash the sins of biblical heroes. For more on this move, see Eliezer Margaliot, Guilty in Scripture, Innocent in the Talmud [London: Ararat, 1949] [Hebrew]). On specific contrasts between Christianity and Judaism on this issue, see also Baskin, Pharaoh’s Counsellors, 7–43; Naomi KoltunFromm, “Aphrahat and the Rabbis on Noah’s Righteousness in Light of the JewishChristian Polemic,” in The Book of Genesis in Jewish and Oriental Christian Interpretation, ed. Judith Frishman and Lucas van Rompay (Lovanii: Peeters, 1997), 57–71; Naomi ­Koltun-Fromm, “Zippora’s Complaint: Moses Is Not Conscientious in the Deed! Exegetical Traditions of Moses’ Celibacy,” in The Ways That Never Parted: Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, ed. Adam H. Becker and Annette Yoshiko Reed (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003). On the strident talmudic critiques of King David, see Richard Lee Kalmin, “Midrash and Social History,” in Current Trends in the Study of Midrash, ed. Carol Bakhos (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 133–59. On the willingness of the Talmud to critique earlier sages, see Jeffrey L. Rubenstein, Talmudic Stories: Narrative Art, Composition, and Culture (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), 281–82. For a general survey of rabbinic attitudes toward biblical characters, see Berachah Elitzur, “Palestinian Amoraic Sermons Dealing with Biblical Characters: Ideology, Nationalism, Society and Polemics” (Ph.D. diss., Bar Ilan University, 2006) [Hebrew]. 113. I thank the anonymous reader for the University of Pennsylvania Press for offering these last two suggestions.



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Chapter 2 1. On the Second Temple and rabbinic belief that Adam’s sin engendered human mortality, see James L. Kugel, Traditions of the Bible: A Guide to the Bible as It Was at the Start of the Common Era (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998), 94–99. 2. This post-amoraic reading of Genesis 15 is also found in Tanḥuma (Buber) Kedoshim 13 and Pirqe de-Rabbi Eliezer 48 (cf. Leviticus Rabbah 11:5). 3. This rabbinic interpretation of Genesis 27 also appears in Genesis Rabbah (65:5, 6), and Tanḥuma (Buber) Ki Tetse 4. 4. Throughout the centuries, both traditional commentators and academic scholars have sought to identify the precise sin that ultimately denies Moses and Aaron entry into the Promised Land. The biblical narrative (Num. 20:7–14) is quite vague as to which of their actions reflects “a lack of belief” or a failure “to sanctify” God (see v. 12). God had told them to extract water from the rock—and, ostensibly, that is exactly what they did. Numerous theories have been proposed, including that Moses hit the rock instead of speaking to it (v. 11), or that he inappropriately asked, “Can we [not] fetch you water out of this rock” (v. 10). However, the most widespread and dominant approach of rabbinic literature is to locate Moses’ sin in his loss of temper. By calling the Israelites “rebels” (v. 10), Moses defames them; as a consequence, God denies him entry into the Promised Land. For a detailed summary of these views, see Jacob Milgrom, Numbers (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1990), 448–56. Also see the extensive bibliography cited in Steven D. Fraade, “Sifre Deuteronomy 26 (Ad Deut. 3.23): How Conscious the Composition?,” Hebrew Union College Annual 54 (1983): 258n.27; M. Margaliot, “The Transgression of Moses and Aaron—Num. 20:1–13,” Jewish Quarterly Review 74, no. 2 (1983): 196–97. 5. For a list of Second Temple and rabbinic passages that reject the notion that Adam’s sin engendered human mortality, see Kugel, Traditions of the Bible, 94, 95. For other explanations for Isaac’s blindness, see Genesis Rabbah 65:8, 65:9, 65:10, Deuteronomy Rabbah 11:3, and Pirqe de-Rabbi Eliezer 46. For a different reading of Abraham’s question “Whereby shall I know that I shall inherit it?” see Genesis Rabbah 44:14. On God denying Moses’ entry to the Promised Land, see the alternative explanations offered in Midrash Leqaḥ Tov Ḥuqqat 123a and Midrash Aggada 20:12. While, admittedly, the virtual consensus view of classical rabbinic literature is to locate the sin of Meribah in Moses’ losing his temper, some rabbinic texts still maintain that Moses was denied entry into the Promised Land long before the Meribah sin. For a full analysis, see Yaakov Blidstein, Etsev Nevo (Jerusalem: Herzog, 2008), 29–40. Also, in contrast to this Pesiqta, other ­Midrashim do have Moses protest God’s punishment. For more details, see Dov Weiss, “Confrontations with God in Late Rabbinic Literature” (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 2011), 134–64. 6. Along these lines, Jonathan Schofer has also understood the rabbinic claim of divine punishment for trivial sin as an implicit critique of God. Jonathan Schofer, “Protest

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or Pedagogy: Trivial Sin and Divine Justice in Rabbinic Narrative,” Hebrew Union College Annual 74 (2003): 243–78. 7. For a similar irony, see Sifre Deuteronomy 349, where Aaron is praised for his silence in the face of divine injustice, and its reworking in Tanḥuma (Buber) Ḥuqqat 32. For analysis, see Weiss, “Confrontations,” 210–15. 8. Recall that scholars have deemed the second half of Exodus Rabbah, chapters 15–52, as belonging to the TY literature. The first part, chapters 1–14, has been ascribed to a later period (ninth or tenth century). For details, see Marc Bregman, Sifrut TanḥumaYelammedenu: Teʾur Nusḥeha Veʿiyunim Bedarkhe Hithavutam (Piscataway, N.J.: Gorgias Press, 2003); Avigdor Shinan, Midrash Shemot-Rabah, Parashot 1–14 (Jerusalem: Devir, 1984). 9. For a midrash that describes God as governing arbitrarily, see Pesiqta Rabbati 30. 10. Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael, Vayehi 6. 11. See, however, Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael according to MS Oxford 151 and MS Munich 117, which record Pappus as stating: “ein lehashiv al devaro” (‫)אין להשיב על דברו‬, which can be translated in one of two ways: either “do not argue with His word” or “there is no one to argue with His word.” But given the context, and the counter-position of Rabbi Akiva, the phrase should be translated as “there is no one to argue with His word.” Not surprisingly, although the Lauterbach edition usually follows MS Oxford 151 and MS Munich (when they are in agreement), in this instance Lauterbach diverges from theses manuscripts and follows the first printing in order to make the Akiva–Pappus debate clear. 12. For parallels, see Sifre Numbers 134, Tanḥuma (Buber) Vayera 21 and Shemot 14, Tanḥuma Mishpatim 15, Song of Songs Rabbah 1:1:9, and Exodus Rabbah I 4:3. 13. Also see BT Makkot 13b. Ephraim Urbach has noted that, in the tannaitic period, the unanimous rabbinic position was that God judges alone. See Mishnah Avot 4:8; ­Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael, Vayasa 6, and Efraim E. Urbach, The Sages: Their Concepts and Beliefs (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1975), 178–80. (This claim is also made by Arthur Marmorstein, The Old Rabbinic Doctrine of God [Farnborough: Gregg, 1969], 46.) However, post-tannaitic sages maintain that God does not judge alone as the Heavenly Court has numerous judges, including God and His angels. Naturally, the proponents of this latter position were forced to reinterpret the earlier position as merely claiming that God alone signs the verdict. See, for example, JT Sanhedrin 1:1. 14. For an exception to this principle, see Tanḥuma Mishpatim 15, which claims that God does judge alone when rendering a decision on those people who violate the law against lending on interest. 15. The sages often depict angels arguing with God. See, for example, Genesis Rabbah 56:5; Lamentations Rabbah, proem 24; Esther Rabbah 1:10; Song of Songs Rabbah 2:1, 8:8; Seder Eliyahu Rabbah 29; Pirqe de-Rabbi Eliezer 30; BT Berakhot 20b, 61b; BT Giṭṭin 7a; BT Bava Batra 11a, 75b; BT Sanhedrin 38b, 96b; Tanḥuma (Buber) Vayera 36; Pesiqta Rabbati (TY) 31, 42; Pesiqta Rabbati 28. 16. Relatedly, God creates the world only after consulting His angels. See Genesis Rabbah 8.



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17. Leviticus Rabbah according to MS Paris 149 reads “Rabbi Berekhya.” 18. For parallels, see Pesiqta de-Rav Kahana 23:9 and Tanḥuma (Buber) Vayera 46. Note that Leviticus Rabbah according to MS Paris 149 has a different version: “[Abraham said:] Just as I could have challenged You [but] I suppressed that inclination and did not challenge You, so too when the children of Isaac give way to transgressions and evil deeds, You should remember for them the Binding of Isaac and atone [their sins]. And you will be filled with mercy upon them, and have mercy on them and shift from the Attribute of Justice to the Attribute of Mercy.” 19. Unlike the biblical account of the Akedah in which Abraham does not protest God’s command, the rabbinic retelling of the story has Abraham challenge God. In addition to the aforementioned rabbinic texts, see also Genesis Rabbah 56:11,12 Genesis Rabbah 56:5, Numbers Rabbah 17:2, Tanḥuma Shelaḥ 14, Pesiqta Rabbati 40:6, and Pirqe de-Rabbi Eliezer 30. 20. Interestingly, these permissive expressions of confronting God—implied by Leviticus Rabbah and explicitly stated in Aggadat Bereshit—subtly, but crucially, contrast with a different version of this same midrashic tradition found in Genesis Rabbah. There, Abraham’s claim that he “could have challenged God” is contextually embedded in such a way as to leave the reader with the impression that, while Abraham had the practical ability and logical grounds to challenge God’s inconsistency, he had no religious right to do so: Rabbi Bibi Rabbah said in Rabbi Yoḥanan’s name: [Abraham] said to Him: Sovereign of the Universe! When You ordered me, Take now your son, your only son [Gen. 22:2], I could have challenged [‫]היה לי להשיב‬, “Yesterday You promised me, For in Isaac shall be your seed ” [Gen. 21:12], but now You say: Take now thy son. Yet Heaven Forbid [‫ !]חס ושלום‬I did not do this, but suppressed my feelings of compassion in order to do Your will. So may it be Your will, O Lord our God, that when Isaac’s children are in trouble, You will remember that binding in their favor and be filled with compassion for them. (Genesis Rabbah, Theodor-Albeck 56:14) This version (of Rabbi Yoḥanan’s retelling of the Akedah narrative) parallels the one in Leviticus Rabbah, but with a crucial difference. It has Abraham assert that, while he could have challenged God, “Heaven Forbid” (‫ )חס ושלום‬he did not do so. This phrase “Heaven Forbid” strongly signals that it would have been wrong, if not prohibited, for Abraham to embark on such a protest of God’s command. With this concession, the prior phrase “I could have challenged” now must be read as merely a practical expression, but not a religious one. That being the case, Rabbi Akiva’s dictum of prohibiting confrontation “‫( ”השבה‬as presented in Mekhilta) would still be intact, and, with that, we would have no “weakening of the opposition.” That said, it is hard to know whether this cautionary phrase of “Heaven Forbid” actually appeared in the earliest (literary or oral) expressions of Genesis Rabbah or whether it reflects a later pious scribal insertion. (The same phrase “Heaven forbid” also appears in JT Ta’anit 2:4.) For our purposes, it really

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does not matter. What is important is that a number of subtle qualifying terms in Rabbi Yoḥanan’s exegetical narrative—including Aggadat Bereshit’s “right” (‫ )זכות‬or Genesis Rabbah’s “Heaven Forbid” (‫—)חס ושלום‬point to late rabbinic tensions and struggles over the legitimacy of theological protest. 21. JT Sotah 5:7 and JT Berakhot 9:5. In a recent article, Paul Mandel has argued against labeling these texts (and even the Bavli accounts) as “martyrological.” See Paul Mandel, “Was Rabbi Aqiva a Martyr? Palestinian and Babylonian Influences in the Development of a Legend,” in Rabbinic Traditions Between Palestine and Babylonia, ed. Ronit Nikolsky and Tal Ilan (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 306–53. 22. David Charles Kraemer, Responses to Suffering in Classical Rabbinic Literature (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 169–71. 23. JT Sotah 5:5. 24. My reading follows Maharsha (Rabbi Shmuel Edeles, sixteenth century) to BT Berakhot 61b s.v. amar le. 25. Kraemer, Responses to Suffering, 170. In JT Ḥagigah 2:1, a different protester charges God with injustice upon seeing a righteous person martyred. Like the angels and Moses, he similarly asks: “This is the Torah, and this is its reward?” Here, however, the protester is none other than Elisha ben Avuyah, the arch-heretic of the rabbinic period. Kraemer nicely argues that this further demonstrates the contrast between the Jerusalem Talmud, which, opposing the act of protest, places a challenge into the mouth of a heretic, and the Babylonian Talmud, which, celebrating the act of protest, places a challenge into the mouth of virtuous characters (angels and Moses). 26. On the larger context of this rabbinic story, see Jeffrey Rubenstein, “Talmudic Stories and Their Rewards,” in Why Study Talmud in the Twenty-first Century?, ed. Paul Socken (Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2009), 177–94; Nachman Levine, “Reading Crowned Letters and Semiotic Silences in Menaḥot 29b,” Journal of Jewish Studies 53 (2002): 35–48; Yonah Fraenkel, “Hermeneutic Problems in the Study of Aggadic Narrative [Hebrew],” Tarbiz 47 (1978): 163–72. 27. Kraemer, Responses to Suffering, 170; emphasis mine. 28. Ibid., 171. 29. Ibid. 30. Jeffrey Rubinstein goes even further, surmising that the BT Menaḥot “story teach[es] that one should not complain against undeserved suffering” (emphasis mine). Jeffrey L. Rubenstein, Rabbinic Stories (New York: Paulist Press, 2002), 216. Pinchas Peli concludes similarly. See Pinchas Peli, “Borderline: Searching for a Religious Language of the Shoah,” in Katz, Biderman, and Greenberg, Wrestling, 258–59. 31. As Richard Kalmin has shown, the Bavli redactors refused to “excise” from the text “earlier traditions” that did not “conform to their own sentiments.” Richard Lee Kalmin, “The Formation and Character of the Babylonian Talmud,” in The Cambridge History of Judaism, ed. Steven T. Katz (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 4:844. 32. Abraham Joshua Heschel also highlighted the ironic gap between Rabbi Akiva’s own theology and later rabbinic reflections on Rabbi Akiva’s death (as found in BT



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Menaḥot 29b). But, unlike Kraemer, who accentuates their contrasting attitudes toward protest, Heschel accentuates their contrasting theodicies. Specifically, he claims: “Rabbi Akiva preached the doctrine that the world is judged in goodness, yet his own martyrdom would seem to refute and destroy this thesis. The Sages of Israel, in later generations [as we see in BT Menaḥot 29b], grew weary in their struggle to find justification for his brutal death and were forced to resort to the explanation that it was the divine decree that we must accept in faith.” Gordon Tucker, Heschel’s translator and annotator, aptly notes: “The response to the puzzlement’s about Akiva’s suffering and martyrdom was decidedly Ishmaelian [non-Akivan] in tone!” Abraham Joshua Heschel, Heavenly Torah: As Refracted Through the Generations, trans. Gordon Tucker (New York: Continuum, 2005), 214. Echoing Heschel, Jeffrey Rubenstein also draws attention to the theological contrast between BT Berakhot 61b (and Rabbi Akiva’s own theology), which posits the typical afterlife theodicy, and BT Menaḥot 29b, which presents a “mean-spirited,” “cold,” and “capricious master [God] who . . . watches the death of one slave with no care to explain why to others.” Rubenstein, “Talmudic Stories and Their Rewards,” 177–94, 87. 33. BT Berakhot 19a. 34. BT Ta’anit 23a. 35. This reworking of the mishnah appears in what scholars have called a “pseudotannaitic text.” Jeffrey Rubenstein has surmised that these types of “pseudo-beraitot” may be the work of the redactors (especially those, like ours, that are preceded by the technical phrase “Our rabbis taught us”). Jeffrey L. Rubenstein, Talmudic Stories: Narrative Art, Composition, and Culture (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), 261–62. In any event, I am assuming here that the anonymous pseudo-beraita of BT Ta’anit 23a is a later recapitulation of the mishnah than Rabbi Eleazar’s reading found in BT Berakhot 19a. On this issue, also see Louis Jacobs, “Are There Fictitious Baraitot in the Babylonian Talmud?” Hebrew Union College Annual 42 (1971): 185–96. 36. This inconsistency between BT Ta’anit 23a and BT Berakhot 19a was already noticed by Aryeh Leib Gunzberg (eighteenth-century Lithuania) in his Gevurat Ari (Bnei Brak, 2003) to BT Ta’anit 23a, s.v. gozrani. 37. A similar method of neutralization occurs in BT Berakhot 33b’s reworking of JT Berakhot 5:3. M Berakhot 5:3 states: “If one prays ‘May Your mercies extend to a bird’s nest (see Deut. 22:6–7) . . . he is silenced.” The Jerusalem Talmud suggests a number of possible theological problems with this seemingly benign prayer, including that the prayer “challenges [‫ ]קורא תיגר‬the attributes of God [as it implies that] on this bird’s nest does God’s mercy reach, but God’s mercy does not reach this person.” Tellingly, while the Bavli accepts other explanations of the mishnah found in the Yerushalmi, it drops this one. This example further illustrates the Bavli’s greater openness to theological protest than the Yerushalmi. 38. On Hannah’s protest, see Ishay Rosen-Zvi, “The Standing Woman: Hannah’s Prayer in Rabbinic Exegesis,” in Tarbut Yehudit Beʿen Haseʿara, ed. Nachum Ilan and Abraham Sagi (Tel Aviv: Ha-Kibbutz ha-Meuchad, 2002), 675–98. 39. There are roughly twenty-five exegetical confrontations in amoraic literature: nine in Genesis Rabbah, ten in Lamentations Rabbah, two in Pesiqta de-Rav Kahana,

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and four in Leviticus Rabbah. In post-amoraic literature, there are approximately thirtyfour exegetical confrontations in the Babylonian Talmud and fifty-eight in the literature of Tanḥuma-Yelammedenu. 40. Rabbi Isaac: Lamentations Rabbah 5:1; BT Nedarim 39b; BT Menaḥot 53b; Tanḥuma (Buber) Bo 8; Exodus Rabbah II 44:9; Deuteronomy Rabbah 1:2. Rabbi Levi: Lamentations Rabbah 3:1; BT Ta’anit 25a; Tanḥuma (Buber) Vayera 7; Tanḥuma Lekh Lekha 10. Reish Lakish: BT Berakhot 32b; BT Gittin 58a; Tanḥuma (Buber) supplement to Shelaḥ 6; Numbers Rabbah II 16:11. Rabbi Ḥanina: Genesis Rabbah 56:5; BT Bava Batra 75b; Tanḥuma (Buber) Zot Haberakhah 5; Exodus Rabbah II 43:1. Rabbi Berekhya: Genesis Rabbah 41:2; Lamentations Rabbah 1:37, 5:1; Tanḥuma (Buber) Vayishlaḥ 10; Tanḥuma Vayetse 5. While one needs to be suspicious of the authenticity of any attribution in rabbinic literature, the widespread appearance of these names in relation to these confrontational narratives point to their relative accuracy (albeit not in its details). 41. Exodus Rabbah II 42:9: “Now therefore let me alone [‫[ ]ועתה הניחה לי‬Ex. 32:10]—was Moses holding God? To what can the thing he compared? To a king who was angry with his son, and when the son was brought into the chamber and about to be beaten, the king cried from the chamber: Let me alone, that I may smite him. Now, the instructor [of the son] happened to be standing without and he thought to himself: If both the king and the son are within the chamber, then why does he say: let me alone? It must be because the king is desirous that I should entreat him [‫[ ]אפייסנו‬on his son’s behalf] and for this reason does he say: let me alone. Similarly, God said to Moses: Now therefore let me alone—Forthwith Moses began to plead [‫ ]מבקש‬for mercy [on their behalf], as it says, And Moses besought the Lord His God [Exod. 32:11].” This TY midrash radicalizes a tradition already found in Sifre Deuteronomy 27. Also see the parallel in BT Berakhot 32a where Moses, more daringly, grabs God’s garment and refuses to leave God alone until the Israelites are forgiven. For a similar legend in the Christian tradition, see ­Jerome, The Homilies of Saint Jerome, trans. Marie Liguori Ewald, The Fathers of the Church, a New Translation (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1964), vol. 48, 211–12; Ephrem, The Exodus Commentary of St. Ephrem: A Fourth Century Syriac Commentary on the Book of Exodus, ed. Alison Salvesen and Moran Etho (Piscataway, N.J.: Gorgias Press, 2011), 52. 42. Tanḥuma (Buber) Va’etḥanan 6. 43. Yochanan Muffs, Love and Joy: Law, Language, and Religion in Ancient Israel (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1992), 33. 44. See Tanḥuma Vayera 8: “When mankind sins and provokes Him to anger, what does God do? He relents and seeks an advocate to plead on their behalf [‫ומבקש‬ ‫]להם סניגור‬.” Also see Exodus Rabbah II 45:2, wherein God tells Moses: “Did I not tell you that when I am angry, you will appease Me [‫כשיהיו פני כעוסות יהיו מרצים פניך את‬ ‫ ”?]פני‬Although in these cases the sages have God use moderate terms to describe the confrontational act, such as appeasing (‫ פייס‬or ‫ )מרצים‬and offering a legal defense (‫סני־‬ ‫)גור‬, these teachings powerfully illustrate how God seeks out religious leaders who will confront Him for the sake of Israel. And, ultimately, God views His own “loss” to the



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arguments of his religious leaders as a moment of “victory” (see Pesiqta Rabbati [TY] 40). 45. The linking of these two communications has been analyzed by Joseph Heinemann, Prayer in the Talmud: Forms and Patterns (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1977), 193–207. 46. Midrash Psalms 90:2. 47. JT Berakhot 4:4. Also see the parallel in Genesis Rabbah (Theodor-Albeck) 49:23: “Rabbi Phineas, Rabbi Levi, and Rabbi Yoḥanan, in the name of Menaḥem the Galilean said: When one passes before the Ark, we do not say to him, Come and do [‫]עשה‬, but ‘Come and draw near [‫’]וקרב‬, which means, come and wage war [‫ ]מלחמתינו‬for us, come and offer the public sacrifice.” (Note, however, that this teaching does not appear in Genesis Rabbah according to MS Vatican 30.) Traditional commentators struggle to explain this radical teaching: whereas the nineteenth-century commentator Hanoch Zundel describes the “war” as a battle against God’s “power of wrath” or God’s “attribute of justice” (Ets Yosef to Genesis Rabbah 49:8 s.v. hagashah), Moses Margolies, the eighteenth-century commentator, sees the war, more piously, as a battle against the celestial prosecutor (‫( )המקטרג‬Pne Moshe to JT Berakhot 4:4, s.v. zeh she‘over). This Genesis Rabbah passage also cites Rabbi Judah’s view that when Abraham protested God’s decision to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, he engaged God in “war.” In rabbinic literature, more generally, debates over Torah and its meaning are often compared to war. On the rabbinic description of Torah study as “warfare,” see Rubenstein, Talmudic Stories, 277. 48. While the biblical verb karev means “to come close,” the biblical noun kerav means war (e.g., Job 38:23 and Ps. 55:22). 49. BT Sanhedrin 105a. These sentiments also appear in Pesiqta de-Rav Kahana 24:11 and JT Ta’anit 2:1. 50. Translation based on KJV. 51. John L. McKenzie, Second Isaiah (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1968), 77. 52. Paul’s Letter to the Romans 9:1 (KJV). 53. Cyril of Alexandria, Cyril of Alexandria, trans. Norman Russell (New York: Routledge, 2000), 91–92, emphasis mine. 54. Cited in Johanna Manley, Isaiah Through the Ages (Menlo Park, Calif.: Monastery Books, 1995), 95. 55. William Telfer, ed., Cyril of Jerusalem and Nemesius of Emesa (Philadelphia: Westminster Press,1955), 4:440. 56. See Joshua 7. 57. See Joshua 11:19–20. 58. Jerome, Saint Jerome, Dogmatic and Polemical Works, trans. John Nicholas Hritzu (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1965), 287–88. Also see Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, Jerome: Letters and Select Works (New York: Christian Literature Company, 1890), 133:9. On Augustine’s use of the clay-potter parable (in Paul’s Letter to the Romans), see Paula Fredriksen, Augustine and the Jews: A Christian Defense of Jews and Judaism (New York: Doubleday, 2008), 178–82.

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59. See, however, the early medieval Midrash Psalms 7:17, which cites Isaiah 45:9 to critique theological protest. 60. See the position of Rabbi Judah ben Pazzi in JT Berakhot 9:3 and Genesis Rabbah 72:6. The potter-clay imagery is also found in the Yom Kippur liturgy, wherein the petitioner uses the metaphor to highlight God’s absolute control over human life. 61. For secondary literature on the rabbinic conception of the Evil Inclination, see Elizabeth Shanks Alexander, “Art, Argument and Ambiguity in the Talmud: Conflicting Conceptions of the Evil Impulse in B. Sukkah 51b–52a,” Hebrew Union College Annual 73 (2002): 97–132; George Foot Moore, Judaism in the First Centuries of the Christian Era: The Age of the Tannaim (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1954), 474–96; F. C. Porter, “The Yecer Hara: A Study in the Jewish Doctrine of Sin,” in Biblical and Semitic Studies: Yale Historical and Critical Contributions in Biblical Science (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1901), 93–156; S. Schechter, Aspects of Rabbinic Theology (New York: Schocken Books, 1961), 242–92; Jonathan Schofer, “The Redaction of Desire: Structure and Editing of Rabbinic Teachings Concerning Yeser (‘Inclination’),” Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 12, no. 1 (2003): 19–53; Urbach, The Sages, 471–83. 62. Ishay Rosen-Zvi, “The Evil Inclination in Amoraic Literature,” Tarbiz 77, no. 1 (2008): 71–107; Ishay Rosen-Zvi, “The Torah Speaks to the Evil Inclination: The School of Ishmael and the Origins of the Evil Inclination,” Tarbiz 66, no. 1–2 (2007): 41–79. 63. See Hab. 2:18, Jer. 18:11, and 1 Chron. 28:9; Urbach, The Sages, 472; and RosenZvi, “Torah Speaks,” 68. 64. Rosen-Zvi, “Torah Speaks,” 42–47. 65. Ibid., 45–60. 66. Some biblical authors, however, sidestep this dilemma altogether as they posit the existence of an uncreated primordial evil. See Israel Knohl, The Divine Symphony: The Bible’s Many Voices (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2003), 9–19; Jon Douglas Levenson, Creation and the Persistence of Evil: The Jewish Drama of Divine Omnipotence (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994), xx, 53. 67. Jacob Albert van den Berg, Biblical Argument in Manichaean Missionary Practice: The Case of Adimantus and Augustine (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 117–18; Adolf von Harnack, Marcion: The Gospel of the Alien God (Durham, N.C.: Labyrinth Press, 1990), 58, 68, 69; Origen, Contra Celsum, trans. Henry Chadwick (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 370, 71; Edward Young, “Celsus and the Old Testament,” Westminster Theological Journal 6, no. 2 (1944): 186. 68. These texts are analyzed in Daniel Boyarin, Carnal Israel: Reading Sex in Talmudic Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 61–67. The most radical “Christian-like” explanation appears in Avot de-Rabbi Nathan (version b) 42: God implanted the Evil Inclination in humanity as a punishment to Adam for eating from the Tree of Knowledge. 69. A bolder amoraic response to the problem of the divinely created Evil Inclination is found in JT Ta’anit 3:4. God here not only acknowledges His responsibility and His role in fashioning the Evil Inclination, but also, more significantly, His remorse. The



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teaching is attributed to Rabbi Joshua b. Yaʾir in the name of Phinehas b. Yaʾir: “There are three things of which the Holy One, blessed be He, regretted [‫ ]ותהא‬having created, and they are: the Chaldeans, the Ishmaelites, and the Evil Inclination. . . . The Evil Inclination, since it is written, ‘[And I will gather her that is driven away] and her that I have afflicted [‫[ ’]ואשר הרעתי‬Mic. 4:6].” The scriptural passage from Micah is read as not only signaling divine assumption of responsibility (as in BT Sukkah), but also divine regret. God both acknowledges His role in human sin by creating the Evil Inclination, as Ḥama b. Ḥanina had posited, and even comes to bemoan creating the Evil Inclination altogether. This remorse, however, does not lead Him to re-create humanity anew; alas, God proceeds in an imperfect world. 70. This last point is not made explicitly in the parable’s moral teaching (nimshal), but is clearly inferred from the narrative (mashal) where the potter is blamed for the broken jar for mistakenly leaving a pebble inside the jar. By contrast, in the nimshal, the Exodus Rabbah author refrains from placing the blame explicitly on God the potter (though it is implied), but blames the Evil Inclination (the pebble itself). 71. The printed edition adds the words “in the future” to God’s concession. Yet, from the formulation in the best manuscript of Exodus Rabbah, God concedes to the Israelite complaint without any limitation or condition. 72. See Avot de-Rabbi Nathan (version a) 16, which also has Israel confronting God on this issue: “Said Rabbi Shimon b. Yoḥai: How do we know that Israel will never see the inside of Gehenna? . . . Israel shall plead before the Holy One, blessed be He: Master of the World, You know that the Evil Inclination stirs us up—as it says, ‘For He knows our impulse’ [Ps. 103:14].” The language of this confrontation, however, is far less combative than Exodus Rabbah’s version. (Also see Avot de-Rabbi Nathan (version b) 30.) Moreover, the dating of Avot de-Rabbi Nathan is far from clear. On this issue, see Hermann Leberecht Strack and Günter Stemberger, Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash, trans. Markus N. A. Bockmuehl (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996), 225–27. 73. See Avot de-Rabbi Nathan (version b) 30, which draws on a different parable to make a similar point. 74. Kraemer, Responses to Suffering, 124–26. 75. Kraemer here draws on the writings of Jacob Neusner, who famously argued that the authors of the Mishnah ignored the painful historical realities of their day: the Temple’s destruction and loss of political sovereignty. Turning a blind eye to these facts, they coped by creating an imaginary, utopian, perfect world where the Temple still stood. According to Neusner, this explains why the Mishnah devotes so much time and energy to detailing cultic ritual even though the Jerusalem Temple no longer stood. Ibid., 53, 54; Jacob Neusner, Judaism, the Evidence of the Mishnah (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981). For other explanations as to the Mishnah’s continued interest in detailing cultic ritual, see Naftali S. Cohn, The Memory of the Temple and the Making of the Rabbis (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), 1–4. 76. Kraemer, Responses to Suffering, 146–48. 77. Ibid., 148.

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78. Ibid., 209. 79. Ibid., 146–48. 80. For a critique of Kraemer’s work on methodological grounds, see Yaakov Elman, “How Should a Talmudic Intellectual History Be Written? A Response to David Kraemer’s ‘Responses,’” Jewish Quarterly Review 89, no. 3/4 (1999): 361–86. 81. See Bregman, Sifrut Tanḥuma-Yelammedenu, 4, 5. 82. Unfortunately, scholars of rabbinic thought often neglect to discuss late Palestinian Midrashim in their survey of rabbinic literature. While they extensively discuss sixthand seventh-century Babylonian texts, such as the Babylonian Talmud, they do not do the same with sixth- and seventh-century Palestinian texts, such as passages from Tanḥuma-Yelammedenu. In addition to Kraemer, this omission can be seen in the following works: Richard Lee Kalmin, “Rabbinic Portrayals of Biblical and Post-Biblical Heroes,” in The Synoptic Problem in Rabbinic Literature, ed. Shaye J.D. Cohen (Providence, R.I.: Brown Judaic Studies, 2000), 119–41; Rachel Neis, The Sense of Sight in Rabbinic Culture: Jewish Ways of Seeing in Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013); Jacob Neusner, The Incarnation of God: The Character of Divinity in Formative Judaism (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988); Ishay Rosen-Zvi, Demonic Desires: Yetzer Hara and the Problem of Evil in Late Antiquity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011). 83. Weiss, “Confrontations.” 84. See Chapter 1. 85. Strong moral critiques of YHWH would only resurface in the ninth century with the Jewish heretic Hiwi al-Balkhi and the Zoroastrian Mardanfarrox. See the end of Chapter 4. 86. See Rachel A. Anisfeld, Sustain Me with Raisin-Cakes: Pesiqta Derav Kahana and the Popularization of Rabbinic Judaism (Leiden: Brill, 2009). 87. Jeffrey Rubinstein makes the opposite argument in relation to rabbinic critiques of earlier sages: “The heightened criticism of the sages in BT stories should be attributed in part to their provenance in the later Babylonian academy. . . . Stories were reworked by the Stammaim to teach the values of their elite, scholastic culture to other sages. . . . The focus, in other words, was internal, not external, and the redactors could afford to project failings and weaknesses upon earlier sages” (emphasis added). Rubenstein, Talmudic Stories, 281. 88. Strack and Stemberger, Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash, 237–40. 89. Kraemer, Responses to Suffering, 148. 90. Peter Brown, Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Towards a Christian Empire (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992). A rabbinic link or echo to the Roman courtly parrhesiastes may be reflected in Tanḥuma (Buber) Zot Haberakhah 5, where an angelic figure called the Ruaḥ Piskonit (lit., Spirit of Decisions) is permitted, and even tasked, to challenge God “like a senator before the King [‫]כסנטר לפני המלך‬.” (See also BT Sanhedrin 44b, where we also find the term Ruaḥ Piskonit without the subsequent court imagery.)



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91. See Weiss, “Confrontations.” Jeffrey Rubenstein makes the same argument in another context, noting that medieval midrashic literature naturally develops mythological tropes found in earlier rabbinic works. Jeffrey Rubenstein, “From Mythic Motifs to Sustained Myth: The Revision of Rabbinic Traditions in Medieval Midrashim,” Harvard Theological Review 89, no. 2 (1996). 92. Jacob Elbaum, “From Sermon to Story: The Transformation of the Akedah,” Prooftexts 6 (1986): 97–117. 93. For example, compare Leviticus Rabbah 20:1 to Tanḥuma (Buber) Va’etḥanan 1; cf. Sifre Deuteronomy 349 to Tanḥuma (Buber) Ḥuqqat 32 and compare JT Ta’anit 3:4 (66:3) to Exodus Rabbah II 46:4. 94. Laura Lieber, “The Play’s the Thing: Theatricality in Aramaic Piyyutim,” paper presented at the International Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature (Amsterdam, July 25, 2012). 95. See the following works by Sebastian Brock: “The Dispute Poem: From Sumer to Syriac,” Bayn al-Nahrayn 7, no. 28 (1979): 417–25; “Dialogue Hymns of the Syriac Churches,” Sobornost 5, no. 2 (1983): 35–45; “Dramatic Dialogue Poems,” Symposium Syriacum IV (O.C.A. 229, 1987) (1987): 135–47; and From Ephrem to Romanos (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999), 109–19, 39–51. 96. Brock, “Dialogue Hymns of the Syriac Churches,” 44, 45. 97. Brock, From Ephrem to Romanos, 82. 98. For discussion and bibliography, see Shai Secunda, The Iranian Talmud: Reading the Bavli in Its Sasanian Context (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014), 21; Michal Bar-Asher Siegal, Early Christian Monastic Literature and the Babylonian Talmud (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 1–34. 99. Rubenstein, Talmudic Stories, 272–75. 100. See Moshe Lavee, “’Sarah Nursed Children’: Different Models of Jewish-Gentile Relations in the Metamorphosis of Midrashic Traditions,” in “On the Well’s Mouth”: Studies in Jewish and Halakhic Thought, ed. Howard T. Kreisel, Daniel J. Lasker, and Gerald J. Blidstein (Be’er Sheva: Ben Gurion University Press, 2008), 284, 91 [Hebrew]; Ronit Nikolsky, “From Palestine to Babylonia and Back: The Place of the Bavli and the Tanḥuma on the Rabbinic Cultural Continuum,” in Rabbinic Traditions Between Palestine and Babylonia, ed. Ronit Nikolsky and Tal Ilan (Leiden: Brill 2014), 284–305. On the dialogicity of the Babylonian Talmud, see Daniel Boyarin, Socrates and the Fat Rabbis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009); Barry S. Wimpfheimer, Narrating the Law: A Poetics of Talmudic Legal Stories (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011). 101. See the scholarly references cited in Nikolsky and Ilan, From There to Here (bSan 5a), Rabbinic Traditions Between Palestine and Babylonia, 19–21. 102. See Mordekhai Margaliot, “Differences Between Babylonian and Palestinian Jews” (Ph.D. diss., Hebrew University, 1937), 3, 4. 103. Bregman, Sifrut Tanḥuma-Yelammedenu, 4. 104. For rare instances, see Hannah’s protest (BT Berakhot 31b and Pesiqta Rabbati 43:2) and the sun’s and the moon’s protests (BT Nedarim 39b and Numbers Rabbah 18:20).

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105. Reuven Kiperwasser, “Early and Late in Kohelet Rabbah: A Study in Redaction Criticism,” in Iggud: Select Essays in Jewish Studies, ed. Baruch Schwartz, Abraham Melamed, and Aharon Shemesh (Jerusalem: Magnes, 2008), 291–312. 106. Nikolsky, “From Palestine to Babylonia,” 284–305. 107. A systematic analysis of TY material for Babylonian influence is a scholarly desideratum. 108. Bernard M. Levinson, Deuteronomy and the Hermeneutics of Legal Innovation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 15, 16. 109. I borrow the term “confrontational theology” from Menachem Fisch, “Judaism and the Religious Crisis of Modern Science,” in Nature and Scripture in the Abrahamic Religions, 1700–Present, ed. Jitse M. Meer and S. Mandelbrote (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 525–67.

Chapter 3 1. On extracting theology from rabbinic elaborations of biblical narratives, see Richard L. Rubenstein, The Religious Imagination (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1985), 28. 2. Compare this formulation, which is attested in Genesis Rabbah MS Vatican 30, to its parallel in Tanḥuma (Buber) Vayera 7: “Abraham ate it cooked [‫ ;]בישול‬Job swallowed it unripe [‫]פגה‬.” The Tanḥuma comparison to the eating of ripe and unripe fruit has perplexed the commentators. According to some, such as Avraham Rozen from Warsaw (in his Bi’ur Ha’amarim, s.v. elah) and Israel Moshe from Lodz (in his Netiv Yam, s.v. balah), the metaphor of eating ripe and unripe dates can be understood this way: while the eating of ripe and unripe fruits looks the same to an outsider, in reality one is unhealthy and the other is healthy. So, too, while Job’s and Abraham’s challenges to God look similar on the outside, they are in reality very different acts: one is sanctioned and the other condemned. The comments of Avraham Rozen and Israel Moshe can be found in Midrash Tanḥuma Hashalem (Jerusalem: Ohel Rabeinu Yonoson Ublima, 2008), vol. 1, p. 112. Ephraim Urbach, however, has shown that the Tanḥuma version, which TheodorAlbeck preferred even as the correct reading for Genesis Rabbah, is a faulty one and grew initially out of a misreading of the Genesis Rabbah word pagah. Instead of reading it as a Greek word meaning “uncompromising,” scribes must have read it as a Hebrew word meaning “unripe.” Indeed, some Genesis Rabbah manuscripts, such as MS Paris 149, Oxford 147, and Oxford 2335, retain echoes of this problematic Tanḥuma version. For more details, see Efraim Urbach, “Lashon Ve‘inyan,” Leshonenu: A Journal of the Study of Hebrew Language and Its Cognates 32 (1968): 124–25. 3. Note that the Tanḥuma (Buber) Vayera 7 parallel does not include the line “Abraham was rewarded for it, and Job was punished for it.” 4. See parallel in Leviticus Rabbah 10:1. The connection between Genesis Rabbah 49:9 and 39:6 is made by Hanoch Zundel (in his Ets Yosef on Genesis Rabbah 49:9, s.v. natal).



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5. In the Hebrew Bible, high priests (see Lev. 8:2), kings (see 1 Sam. 10:1), and prophets (1 Kings 19:16) all were anointed with oil. This Genesis Rabbah text may be alluding to the fact that Abraham was called a “prophet” soon after his challenge to God over the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen. 20:7). 6. Efraim E. Urbach, The Sages: Their Concepts and Beliefs (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1975), 412–13. 7. Eshed Haneḥalim, s.v. Abraham, cited in the Liqqutim on Midrash Rabbah, 6 vols. (Jerusalem: Vagshal, 2001), vol. 1, 510. 8. Maharz”u, s.v. Avraham Ve’ iyyov, ibid. 9. Rabbi Levi is often associated with the protest motif in rabbinic literature. See, for example, Lamentations Rabbah 3:1; BT Ta’anit 25a; Tanḥuma (Buber) Vayera 7; Tanḥuma Lekh Lekha 10. 10. The medieval Jewish exegete Abraham Ibn Ezra (1089–1164) understood the biblical virtue of rebuke between humans as a method for the confronter to obtain information he did not have prior. See Ibn Ezra’s commentary to Leviticus 19:17. 11. Philo, Quis Rerum Divinarum Heres Sit 1:14, 1:28 (emphasis mine). The translation is taken from Works of Philo Judaeus, trans. C. D. Yonge, 4 vols. (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1854), vol. 2. 12. Ibid., 1:6. 13. Plutarch, Quomodo adulator ab amico internoscatur (How to Distinguish a Flatterer from a Friend), 26, taken from Plutarch’s Moralia, trans. Frank Cole Babbitt, vol. 1, Loeb Classical Library (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1927). 14. See parallel in Midrash Psalms 93:8. 15. The rabbis abhor biblical anonymity and often seek to personalize impersonal descriptions. On this rabbinic tendency, see Isaac Heinemann, Darkhe Haʾaggada, 2nd ed. (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1953), 15–27. 16. Midrash Tanḥuma, Va’era 1. Unlike many of the rabbis who regarded Moses’ communication to God in Exodus 5:22 as sinful, Philo regards it as courageous. For him, it exemplifies the virtue of parrhesia: “For these, and similar things, any one would have feared to say to any king of this earth; but to deliver such sentiments, and to speak freely to God, was an instance of what ought to be called not extreme audacity, but of good courage (ἐθάρρησεν) (Philo, Quis Rerum Divinarum Heres Sit 1:28, Works of Philo Judaeus, vol. 2). 17. For the exegetical basis of this teaching, see Yaakov Blidstein, Etsev Nevo (Jerusalem: Herzog, 2008), 36–39. For a similar type of Mosaic critique, see Sifre Numbers 95. 18. Plutarch’s treatment of rebuke occupies chapters 26–37 of his How to Distinguish a Flatterer from a Friend (this treatise can be found in vol. 1 of Plutarch’s Moralia). 19. Unlike Aristotle and other Greco-Roman writers who denied human-divine friendship, the Alexandrians Philo and Clement, as well as the Stoics and rabbis, affirmed this possibility. See Catherine Hezser, “Rabbis and Other Friends: Friendship in the Talmud Yerushalmi and in Graeco-Roman Literature,” in The Talmud Yerushalmi and Graeco-Roman Culture, ed. Peter Schaefer (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000), 247–51;

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David Konstan, Friendship in the Classical World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 167–70. 20. For the opposite view, that those with inferior status, such as slaves, have greater access and intimacy with God, see David Daube, “Enfant Terrible,” Harvard Theological Review 68, no. 3/4 (1975): 371–76. 21. Seder Eliyahu Rabbah 9. 22. BT Bava Batra 15b. 23. BT Berakhot 32a. 24. See Exodus Rabbah II 31:10, Tanḥuma Mishpatim 11, and Numbers Rabbah II 21:2. Also see the striking passage in Exodus Rabbah II 21:2 where the friend metaphor justifies Moses issuing forth commands to God: “Rabbi Levi said: Just as God commanded Moses and spoke with him, so did Moses, as it were, command [‫]מצוה‬ God. . . . R. Joshua the son of Levi said: It is like a king’s friend [‫ ]לאוהבו של מלך‬who was concerned about a matter and came crying unto the king. The king said: Why do you cry? You have only to decree [‫ ]גזור‬and I will perform it.” 25. Konstan, Friendship, 93–108. 26. See Isocrates, Letter to Antipater 1:5: “He [Diodotus] possesses frankness [παρρησίαν] in the highest degree . . . [one] which would rightly be regarded as the surest indication of devotion to his friends [φίλους].” On the possibility of having friendships with superiors in the ancient world, see Konstan, Friendship, 93–95. For the philosophical position that true friendship only exists among equals, see Hezser, “Rabbis and Other Friends,” 210–15. 27. Plato, Gorgias, ed. Joachim Dalfen (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2004), 487 a–e; Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics, ed. W. D. Ross and J. O. Urmson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), 9:2, 224. 28. Konstan notes that Philodemus “emphasizes the usefulness of frankness . . . in advancing solidarity among the Epicurean friends.” Philodemus, On Frank Criticism, ed. David Konstan (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1998), 23. 29. On parrhesia as a device countering “self-love,” also see Foucault’s lectures on parrhesia presented at the University of California, Berkeley, in October and November 1983. The lectures can be found online at http://foucault.info/documents/parrhesia/. 30. Plutarch, How to Distinguish a Flatterer from a Friend, 25 (vol. 1 of Plutarch’s Moralia). The privileging of rebukers over flatterers can also be found in rabbinic literature. See Avot de-Rabbi Nathan (version a) 29: “Love the rebuker and hate the flatterer, for the rebuker brings you to the next world, and the flatterer removes you from the world.” 31. Philo, Quis Rerum Divinarum Heres Sit, 1:21.Translation taken from Works of Philo Judaeus, vol. 2. 32. On the use of the father-son metaphor to describe God’s relationship with Israel, see Alon Goshen-Gottstein, “Elohim Veyisra’el Keav Uven Basifrut Hatana’it” (Ph.D. diss., Hebrew University, 1986); Moshe Idel, Ben: Sonship and Jewish Mysticism (New York: Continuum, 2007).



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33. Exodus Rabbah II 24:1. For the opposite view, see Sifre Numbers 115: “When God redeemed Abraham’s progeny [from Egypt], He did not redeem them to be [God’s] sons, but rather slaves, so that when He makes decrees, and they do not accept [the decrees], He will say to them ‘you are my slaves.’” In Sifre Deuteronomy 96, both Rabbi Judah and Rabbi Meir regard Israel as God’s “children” (citing Deut. 14:1) but argue over whether this status depends on Israel’s righteousness. Also see BT Bava Batra 10a. 34. See various formulations of this maxim in BT Ta’anit 23a, JT Ta’anit 3:12, Exodus Rabbah II 21:2, Deuteronomy Rabbah 5:13, Devarim Rabbah (Lieberman) 13, Tanḥuma (Buber) Vayera 22, Tanḥuma Vayera 19, and Exodus Rabbah II 15:20. (Other texts use different verbs to describe the demands of the righteous—Midrash Tannaim 33:1: “He [Moses] blesses [‫ ]מברך‬and God fulfills”; Pesiqta Rabbati (TY) 43: “He [God] grants them [the righteous] whatever they desire [‫]מבקשין‬.” Notably, the righteous are also described as being able to “nullify” (‫ )מבטל‬the decrees (‫ )גזירות‬of God. See, for example, BT Mo’ed Qatan 16b, Midrash Tannaim 33:1, and Tanḥuma Ki Tavo 1. 35. For other hierarchical inversions in rabbinic literature, see Moshe Halbertal, “If the Text Had Not Been Written, It Could Not Be Said,” in Scriptural Exegesis: The Shapes of Culture and the Religious Imagination, ed. Deborah A. Green and Laura Suzanne ­Lieber (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 146–65. 36. According to Bregman, this section of Pesiqta de-Rav Kahana is a TY midrash. See Marc Bregman, Sifrut Tanḥuma-Yelammedenu: Teʾur Nusḥeha Veʿiyunim Bedarkhe Hithavutam (Piscataway, N.J.: Gorgias Press, 2003), 60. 37. On the concept of Moses or other humans as God’s “husband” in kabbalistic literature, see Elliot R. Wolfson, Through a Speculum That Shines: Vision and Imagination in Medieval Jewish Mysticism (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994), 388; Moshe Idel, Kabbalah and Eros (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2005), 161. Other rabbinic texts use the typical metaphor of God as husband when describing the demands of the prophet. See, for example, Song of Songs Rabbah 1:7:2: “Rabbi Yosi the son of Jeremiah said: Why are the prophets compared to women? To tell you: just as a wife is not embarrassed to demand [‫ ]לתבוע‬needs for the house from her husband, so too the prophets are not embarrassed to demand needs of Israel from their Father in heaven” (cf. Midrash Proverbs 31). 38. Wolfson, Through a Speculum That Shines, 24–28, 27. 39. http://foucault.info/system/files/pdf/DiscourseAndTruth_MichelFoucault_1983 _0.pdf. 40. On the divine courtroom in the Hebrew Bible, see Meira Z. Kensky, Trying Man, Trying God: The Divine Courtroom in Early Jewish and Christian Literature (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010), 13–61. 41. Gen. 18:25. 42. In so doing, he reverses earlier prophets, such as Micah and Isaiah, who describe God’s bringing a lawsuit against Israel when they breach the covenant. Jeremiah reasons that “if Yahweh could sue Israel for breach of contract, Jeremiah could turn and sue Yahweh for breach of contract as well.” William Holladay, “Jeremiah’s Lawsuit with God,”

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Interpretation 17 (1963): 283. “You will be in the right, O Lord, when I make a claim [‫]אריב‬ against You, yet I shall pass judgment [‫ ]משפטים‬on You. Why does the way of the wicked prosper? Why are the workers of treachery at ease?” (Jer. 12:1). In this case, it is not God who brings a legal claim (riv) against Israel for neglecting justice (mishpaṭ); rather, Jeremiah brings a counter-claim (riv) against God for creating an unjust world where the wicked prosper. In this verse, Jeremiah boldly passes judgment (‫ )משפטים‬on God. On Jeremiah’s lawsuit against God, see Sheldon Blank, “The Confessions of Jeremiah and the Meaning of Prayer,” Hebrew Union College Annual 21 (1948): 331–54; Holladay, “Jere­ miah’s Lawsuit with God,” 280–87. 43. Job 9:2 and 13:6. On the legal terms appropriated by the author of Job, see Kensky, Trying Man, Trying God, 41n.78. For possible meanings of the word riv, see James Limburg, “The Root Riv and the Prophetic Lawsuit Speeches,” Journal of Biblical Literature 88, no. 3 (1969): 291–304. 44. Job 13:18, 23:2–4. For an analysis of the juridical language in Psalms, see Hans Schmidt, “Das Gebet Der Angeklagten Im Alten Testament,” Beihefte zur ZAW 49 (1928). 45. Genesis Rabbah 22:9. On this Genesis Rabbah text, see Moshe Halbertal, “Ilmale Miqra Katuv Iy Efshar Le’omro,” Tarbiz 68, no. 1 (1998): 43, 44; Joshua Levinson, “The Athlete of Piety: Fatal Fictions in Rabbinic Literature,” Tarbiz 68, no. 1 (1998): 61–86. 46. See Deuteronomy Rabbah 2:7, 8, according to Parma 1240 and Devarim Rabbah (Lieberman) 47. 47. Ecclesiastes Rabbah 7:16. 48. See Michael De Roche, “Yawheh’s Rib Against Israel: A Reassessment of the SoCalled ‘Prophetic Lawsuit’ in the Preexelic Prophets,” Journal of Biblical Literature 102, no. 4 (1983): 574. 49. Also see JT Berakhot 9:3–6, Genesis Rabbah 72:6, and BT Berakhot 60a. On the rabbinic reception of Dinah’s birth, see Dov Weiss, “Confrontations with God in Late Rabbinic Literature” (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 2011), 216–25. 50. Some modern translators of this Tanḥuma text have overtranslated this phrase. For example, Samuel A. Berman, Midrash Tanhuma-Yelammedenu: An English Translation of Genesis and Exodus (Hoboken, N.J.: Ktav, 1996), 193, translates: “Leah pleaded for justice before the Holy One, blessed be He.” Adapting an even more aggressive reading, Menachem Fisch, “Judaism and the Religious Crisis of Modern Science,” in Nature and Scripture in the Abrahamic Religions, 1700–Present, ed. Jitse M. Meer and S. Mandelbrote (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 558, translates: “Leah the righteous called the Almighty to task.” 51. Joseph Heinemann, Prayer in the Talmud: Forms and Patterns (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1977), 202. Heinemann, however, problematically assumes that all critiques of God in rabbinic literature follow the courtroom pattern even where no forensic imagery is evoked. 52. Ibid. A similar argument runs through the recent work of Kensky, Trying Man, Trying God. 53. The Buber edition of the Tanḥuma does not have Leah protesting God as she is described as merely “requesting mercy [‫ ]רחמים מבקשת‬on her sister’s behalf.” God responds by declaring “since you had mercy [‫ ]ריחמת‬on your sister, I will make what is in



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your womb a female.” First, unlike in the standard Tanḥuma, in Tanḥuma (Buber) God learns from Leah’s action and not from her essential character. Second, in Tanḥuma (Buber), we have a neat correlation between Leah’s prayerful request of mercy and God’s response of mercy. By contrast, the standard Tanḥuma disrupts the direct and clean correlation between the human request and divine response when it consciously erases ­L eah’s submissive formulation of “request for mercy” (‫ )מבקשת‬and replaces it with a new, more combative term, describing it as ‫( מתרסת‬protest). 54. BT Shabbat 133b. 55. On the notion of imitatio hominis in rabbinic literature, see Michael A. Fishbane, Biblical Myth and Rabbinic Mythmaking (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 73–94; S. Schechter, Aspects of Rabbinic Theology (New York: Schocken Books, 1961), 37; David Stern, “Imitatio Hominis: Anthropomorphism and the Characters of God in Rabbinic Literature,” Prooftexts 12 (1992): 151–74. 56. Fisch, “Religious Crisis,” 558–59, correctly notes that in this midrash “God is depicted as having erred in indeed giving Leah a seventh male child. . . . God is astonishingly described as being corrected on moral grounds, admitting his mistake, and righting the morally flawed situation for which He was responsible. . . . God, the Tanḥuma all but states openly, is simply not the all-perfect judge, and should be treated as such by anyone!” (emphasis in original). Leah’s sister, Rachel, also becomes an ethical role model for God in proem 24 of Lamentations Rabbah. On this text, see Stern, “Imitatio Hominis.” For other instances in rabbinic literature where God learns from other humans how to behave ethically, see Pesiqta de-Rav Kahana 15:7 and 16:5 (where God learns to act ethically from the evil Nevuzardan), Ecclesiastes Rabbah 3:16 (where God learns from Nevuḥadnetsar how to be merciful), and Pesiqta Rabbati 30. 57. For a full explication of this theology, see Dov Weiss, “Between Values and Theology: The Case of Salvation Through Children in Rabbinic Thought,” Milin Havivin 3 (2007): 1–15. Although numerous Jewish apologists have tried to deny it, rabbinic literature makes thousands of references, albeit in an unsystematic fashion, to Gehinnom (hell), a fiery place where people are tortured for sins committed during their lifetime. See Dan Cohn-Sherbok, Rabbinic Perspectives on the New Testament (Lewiston, Me.: Edwin Mellen, 1990), 1–17. 58. For another analysis of this text, see Kensky, Trying Man, Trying God, 305–7. 59. On the rabbinic reception of transgenerational punishment, see Arthur Marmorstein, The Doctrine of Merits in Old Rabbinical Literature (London: Oxford University Press, 1920); Schechter, Aspects of Rabbinic Theology, 185–89. Whereas Schechter attempts to accentuate the rabbinic denial of transgenerational punishment, Marmorstein attempts to show the punishment’s acceptance. (One can see that each author had an agenda, for rarely do they cite the same texts.) For another treatment of this issue, see Reinhard Neudecker, “Does God Visit the Iniquity of the Fathers upon Their Children?,” Gregorianum 81, no. 1 (2000): 5–24. 60. The phrase “you have taught well” (‫ )יפה אמרתם‬often appears in rabbinic literature before God concedes to a challenge. See, for example, Exodus Rabbah II 44:9, Numbers Rabbah II 18:11, and Deuteronomy Rabbah 2:28.

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61. While not explicitly referenced, Elijah’s role in this midrash is based on Malachi 3:24: “He shall reconcile parents with children and children with their parents.” 62. This calls to mind the teaching from the Jerusalem Talmud (Pe’ah 9:10) that gossip is permitted in a courtroom context. 63. For other examples, see Pesiqta Rabbati (TY) 42 and Exodus Rabbah II 43:1. 64. See Psalms chap. 6, 10, 12, 22, 43, 44, 74, 80, and 89. 65. Heinemann, Prayer in the Talmud, 193–207. 66. JT Berakhot 4:4. 67. See parallels in JT Megillah 3:7, BT Yoma 69b, and Midrash Psalms 19. Unlike the JT texts, BT Yoma 69b has a slightly different conclusion: “Rabbi Isaac the son of Eleazar said: Since they knew that the Holy One, blessed be He, insists on truth, they would not ascribe false [things] to Him [‫]כיזבו בו‬.” 68. The privileging of “honest critique” over “dishonest flattery” forms the basis of Plutarch’s How to Distinguish a Flatterer from a Friend. In a series of lectures at Berkeley in 1983 (among his last before he died), Michel Foucault expounded on the value of truth as a motivating factor behind the courageous, albeit dangerous, act of parrhesia, especially in cases where an inferior uses parrhesia toward a superior. Foucault argues that an inferior would only voluntarily embark on such a bold venture out of a sense of duty and commitment to moral truth: for Foucault, a parrhesiastes (one who uses parrhesia) is willing to risk everything for his values and ideals; and that is what makes parrhesia so compelling and dramatic. The lectures can be found at http://foucault.info/documents /parrhesia/. 69. Both JT Berakhot 7:3 and JT Megillah 3:7 have Jeremiah arguing with Daniel: “Why did [Jeremiah] call [God] ‘mighty’ [‫ ?]גיבור‬Because it is fitting to call ‘mighty’ one who is able to witness the destruction of his Temple and keep silent.” For JT’s Jeremiah, “mighty” is defined by self-control, not the physical manifestation of power (as JT’s Daniel will maintain). On the view of gevurah as self-restraint, see Mishnah Avot 4:1 and Avot de-Rabbi Nathan (version a) 23. A similar view to JT’s Jeremiah appears in Mekhilta deRabbi Ishmael Shirata 8 (and parallel in BT Gittin 56b) where God’s silence in the face of Jewish persecution stimulates human praise: “‘Who is like you O Lord among the Gods [‫[ ]באלים‬Exod. 15:11]’: Who is like You among the deaf-mute [‫ ]אילמים‬who though seeing the insult heaped upon Your children keep silent.” As noted in Chapter 1, Abraham Joshua Heschel, however, reads this midrash as an implicit critique of God. On the rabbinic notion of God’s gevurah more generally, see Urbach, The Sages, 80–96. 70. See, for example, BT Berakhot 32a, Deuteronomy Rabbah 11:10, Exodus Rabbah II 43:1, and Seder Eliyahu Rabbah 4. For larger treatment, see Weiss, “Confrontations,” 134–80. 71. Hannah tells God that should God not grant her a child willingly, Hannah would “force God’s hand” by secluding herself with a married man. In that scenario, Hannah would have to prove her fidelity by drinking the bitter “Sotah waters.” And, according to Numbers 5:28, a woman who passes the “Sotah waters” test will be granted forthwith a child. See Pesikta Rabbati (TY) 43 (cf. BT Berakhot 31b). Also see Ishay



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Rosen-Zvi, “The Standing Woman: Hannah’s Prayer in Rabbinic Exegesis,” in Tarbut Yehudit Beʿen Haseʿara, ed. Nachum Ilan and Abraham Sagi (Tel Aviv: Ha-Kibbutz haMeuchad, 2002), 675–98. 72. In a similar vein, Tanḥuma Vayetse 8 records, as we have seen, a tradition whereby Leah “protested” God’s decision to grant Rachel only one boy. In that text, Leah’s protest is described as a “prayer.” But the Tanḥuma’s use of the term “prayer” is not significant as it merely reflects linguistic remnants of earlier rabbinic descriptions, such as JT Berakhot 9:3 and Genesis Rabbah (Theodor-Albeck) 72:21, wherein we have no mention of protest. 73. Tanḥuma as it appears in the printed Midrash Tanḥuma (Warsaw: Unterhendler, 1877). Note, however, that Tanḥuma Lekh Lekha according to MS Cambridge 1212 has ‫ מתנפל‬instead of ‫מתפלל‬. 74. See also Seder Eliyahu Rabbah 28 and Tanḥuma (Buber) Bamidbar 28. 75. Konstan, Friendship, 112; Philodemus, On Frank Criticism, 75. 76. Midrash Psalms 90:2. 77. I rely here on the interpretation of William Gordon Braude, The Midrash on Psalms (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1959), 494n.6. 78. For an overview of the various roles that parables play in rabbinic literature, see Yonah Fraenkel, Darkhe Aggadah Vehamidrash (Tel Aviv: Yad La-Talmud, 1996), 323–38; David Stern, Parables in Midrash: Narrative and Exegesis in Rabbinic Literature (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991). 79. On comparing God to a human king, see Stern, Parables in Midrash, 19–21. 80. Ibid., 9, 15, 18. 81. Ibid., 130–45. 82. See, for example, Genesis Rabbah 22:9, 56;11; Pesiqta de-Rav Kahana 19; BT Berakhot 31b; Tanḥuma (Buber) Koraḥ 19; Numbers Rabbah II 18:12, 21:15; Deuteronomy Rabbah 1:2. 83. Genesis Rabbah 55:3. 84. BT Berakhot 31b, 32b; Exodus Rabbah II 43:7. 85. Tanḥuma (Buber) Ḥuqqat 32. 86. Lamentations Rabbah 5:1; Tanḥuma Bereshit 9; Exodus Rabbah II 46:4. 87. Stern, Parables in Midrash, 131. Stern also argues that the intentional gapping between mashal and nimshal intensifies the complaint against God. 88. Scholars usually explain Moses’ punishment in one of these ways. For not speaking to the rock, see Leqaḥ Tov Ḥuqqat 123a, and Midrash Aggada 20:12. For the statement “Can we not fetch you water out of this rock,” see Nahmanides, Commentary on the Torah, trans. Charles B. Chavel (New York: Shilo, 1971), 215–16. For calling the Israelites “rebels,” see Sifre Deuteronomy 29, 349, Pesiqta de-Rav Kahana 14:5, Genesis Rabbah (TY) 99:5, Tanḥuma (Buber) Vaʾetḥanan supplement 1, s.v. im ya‘aleh, Tanḥuma Vayeshev 4, and Song of Songs Rabbah 1:6. While the near consensus of the rabbis is to locate the sin of Meribah in Moses’ losing his temper, some rabbinic texts, as we have seen, still maintain that Moses was denied entry into the Promised Land long before the Meribah sin. For an analysis of these texts, see Blidstein, Etsev Nevo, 24, 29–40.

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89. For other views, see Samuel Loewenstamm, “The Death of Moses,” in Studies on the Testament of Abraham, ed. George W. E. Nickelsburg (Missoula, Mont.: Scholars Press, 1976), 191; M. Margaliot, “The Transgression of Moses and Aaron—Num. 20:1– 13,” Jewish Quarterly Review 74, no. 2 (1983): 206. 90. The inclusion of Miriam here is problematic, since Numbers 20:12 only has God punishing Moses and Aaron for their actions at Meribah. On this difficulty and possible solutions, see Steven D. Fraade, “Sifre Deuteronomy 26 (Ad Deut. 3.23): How Conscious the Composition?,” HUCA 54 (1983): 265n.47; Menahem Kahana, “New Fragments of the Mekilta on Deuteronomy,” Tarbiz 54, no. 4 (1985): 544–45. 91. See Leqaḥ Tov Ḥuqqat, 123a, Midrash Aggada 20:12, Nahmanides, Commentary on the Torah, 215–16. For a summary of these views, see Jacob Milgrom, Numbers (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1990), 448–56. Also see the extensive bibliography cited in Fraade, “Sifre,” 258n.27; Margaliot, “Transgression,” 196–97. 92. See Jeffrey H. Tigay, Deuteronomy (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1996), 323. Tigay notes that, unlike in the priestly code, the Deuteronomist maintains that “all Levites are potential priests.” On the Urim and Thummim, see Tigay, Deuteronomy, 324. 93. See Exodus 17:2, 7, Numbers 20:13, and Psalms 95:8, 9. 94. Tigay, Deuteronomy, 324. Interestingly, the Septuagint solves this problem by translating these phrases in the plural: “They [Israel] tested the Levite at Massah, and they [Israel] strove with him at Meribah.” 95. This is yet another ironic instance where the rabbis produce a critique of God in the very context of glorifying submissiveness. On this phenomenon, see the beginning of Chapter 2. For another reading of this Sifre Deuteronomy text, see Blidstein, Etsev Nevo, 92–95. 96. Weiss, “Confrontations,” 185–243. 97. Also see Numbers Rabbah II 19:9, Tanḥuma Koraḥ 10. For another TY text, in which God’s treatment of Aaron is compared to how God treats evildoers, see Numbers Rabbah II 19:11, which cites the verse from Ecclesiastes 8:14: “There are just men, to whom it happens according to the deeds of the wicked.” 98. While in the majority of cases, the protest parable is employed by the narrator, in rare instances it is marshaled by the character who protests. For examples of the latter, see Sifre Numbers 95, Song of Songs Rabbah 5:16, Tanḥuma Vayetse 5, and Exodus Rabbah II 46:4. 99. Alan L. Mintz, Hurban: Responses to Catastrophe in Hebrew Literature (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984), 79–83. For a critique of this perspective, see Stern, Parables in Midrash, 130–45. 100. Mintz, Hurban, 80. 101. Stern, Parables in Midrash, 131. “Some scholars have explained . . . that the mashal, with its oblique, concealing nature, offered a convenient disguise for the complaints more scandalous aspects. In fact, there is nothing hidden or obscure about most complaint-meshalim; if anything, their messages are loud and clear.”



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102. See, however, Deuteronomy 9:28, where Moses adds that the Egyptians would also claim that “it was because the Lord was powerless to bring them into the land that He had promised them.” The Deuteronomic author drew this imagined gentile claim of divine impotence from Numbers 14:16 and integrated it with the claim of divine maliciousness found in Exodus 32. This analysis follows the view that Deuteronomy drew from the Exodus account and not vice versa. In support of this claim, see Christine Hayes, “Golden Calf Stories: The Relationship of Exodus 32 and Deuteronomy 9–10,” in The Idea of Biblical Interpretation: Essays in Honor of James L. Kugel, ed. Hindy Najman and Judith H. Newman (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 44–93. 103. According to Levi Smolar and Moshe Aberbach, the ubiquitous theological exploitation of the Golden Calf incident by early anti-Jewish Christians (claiming that God had rejected Israel for its worship) drove many rabbinic texts to “apologetically” and “polemically” have Moses pleading for Israel’s innocence. On the Christian side, see “The Letter of Barnabas” 4:6–8, and chap. 3 of Tertullian’s “Answer to the Jews,” which can be found in Bart D. Ehrman, After the New Testament: A Reader in Early Christianity (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 100, 30. Also see “Irenaeus Against Heresies” 15:1, in Alexander Roberts and Sir James Donaldson, The Ante-Nicene Fathers: Translations of the Writings of the Fathers Down to A. D. 325 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1989), 479. On the rabbinic side, see most prominently Exodus Rabbah II, 43:1, 43:5, and other sources cited in Leivy Smolar and Moshe Aberbach, “The Golden Calf Episode in Postbiblical Literature,” Hebrew Union College Annual 39 (1968): 91–116. While Smolar and Aberbach merely argue that there existed conflicting rabbinic approaches to the Golden Calf incident—some seeing Israel as fundamentally guilty and others not—both Irving Mandelbaum, in “Tannaitic Exegesis of the Golden Calf Incident,” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament. Supplement Series 100, ed. Philip R. Davies and Richard T. White (Sheffield, England: JSOT Press, 1990), 207–23, and Arthur Marmorstein, in Studies in Jewish Theology (London: Oxford University Press, 1950), 198–206, have correctly noted that these differing opinions line up historically. While the tannaim (with one exception) understood the Golden Calf incident as a narrative of sin and punishment, the amoraim attempted to exonerate Israel of all misdoings (see especially the statement of Rabbi Joshua b. Levi in BT Avodah Zarah 4b). 104. A shorter version of this TY midrash appears in Deuteronomy Rabbah 3:17. 105. Also see the teaching of the School of Yannai in BT Berakhot 32a according to MS Florence 11-1-7 (and its parallels in BT Yoma 86b and BT Sanhedrin 102a): “Thus spoke Moses before the Holy One, blessed be He: Sovereign of the Universe, the silver and gold [‫ ]זהב‬which You did shower on Israel until they said ‘Enough’ [‫]די‬, that is what led [‫]גרם להם‬ to their making the Calf.” (On the differences between Exodus Rabbah II 43:7 and BT Berakhot 32a, see Weiss, “Confrontations,” 173–76.) BT Berakhot 32a and its parallels draw from and substantially revise an earlier tannaitic tradition found in Tosefta Kippurim 4:15b. There, reinterpreting Exodus 32:31, Rabbi Akiva has God declaring His own culpability for the idolatrous incident, since He provided the Israelites with the gold needed for the construction of the Golden Calf. While quite bold, Rabbi Akiva’s teaching—as is typical—in

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no way presents a human protest of the divine. God is reflecting on His own mistakes, rather than being criticized by a human voice. Yannai’s teaching, however, transforms Rabbi Akiva’s claim of a divine self-critique into a human critique of God. We should also note that, while BT Berakhot 32a and BT Sanhedrin 102a make no explicit mention of Rabbi Akiva’s teaching, BT Yoma 86b, quite problematically, equates the teachings of Rabbi Akiva and Yannai. Lastly, there is another rabbinic tradition that alternatively cites Rabbi Akiva (and others) as wailing against the dangers of gold, without making any reference to God whatsoever (see Genesis Rabbah 28:7, Devarim Rabbah [Lieberman] 7, and Avot deRabbi Nathan (version a) 34). In this strain of the tradition, the gold itself is to blame for the Golden Calf worship, and not God. It is difficult to know, however, which “Akiva tradition” is primary, and which is merely a secondary reworking. 106. See BT Berakhot 32. The motif of a father/king placing a child in an area frequented by prostitutes can already be located in Leviticus Rabbah 23:7. In this amoraic text, however, no confrontation is leveled against the father/king (God). The force of the teaching is simply that the Israelites should not follow the licentious ways of the Egyptians. By contrast, Exodus Rabbah reworks the parable in order to establish a critique of God for placing the Israelites in a spiritually hazardous environment. 107. See Mintz, Hurban, 79–83. For a critique of this perspective, see Stern, Parables in Midrash, 130–45. 108. For other examples, see Genesis Rabbah 22:9 and Exodus Rabbah II 46:4.

Chapter 4 1. These objections appear in Exodus 3:11, 3:13, 4:1, 4:10, and 4:13. Brevard S. Childs notes that the multitude of objections reflects a confluence of a number of biblical traditions. See Brevard S. Childs, The Book of Exodus: A Critical, Theological Commentary (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1974), 73. 2. See Adele Berlin, Marc Zvi Brettler, and Michael A. Fishbane, The Jewish Study Bible (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 632n.18, Childs, The Book of Exodus, 73– 74, William H. Propp, Exodus 1–18: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New York: Doubleday, 1999), 202. This form of objection also appears in Judges 6:15, Jeremiah 1:6, 1 Samuel 9:21, 18:18, 2 Samuel 7:18, and 2 Chronicles 2:5. For an analysis of this form of resistance, see George Coats, “Self-Abasement and Insult Formulas,” Journal of Biblical Literature 89, no. 1 (1970): 14–26. While most scholars read Moses’ objection as sincere, Propp regards it as merely an excuse to “evade his commission.” 3. See Propp, Exodus 1–18, 203. 4. For a similar exegetical move, see Exodus Rabbah II 15:18 and Tanḥuma Bereshit 9. 5. Although the “you” in this passage refers specifically to Jacob, the midrash reads it as referring to the entire nation of Israel. 6. In this pericope, it is not clear whether God concedes to Moses’ critique or merely informs Moses that He has been misunderstood. Following the latter view, Hanoch Zundel,



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in his commentary Ets Yosef (s.v. isha aḥat), reads God’s subsequent a fortiori response as a rebuke against Moses for doubting His intent to fulfill His prior commitments. In contrast, I follow the first interpretation (divine concession), since in a parallel midrash (Exodus Rabbah II 15:18) God explicitly admits His mistake. This divine realization occurs after Pharaoh, refusing to meet with the mere messenger Moses, demands a direct encounter with God, the true Redeemer. Conceding to Pharaoh’s claim, God then strikingly declares that “he (Pharaoh) is right [‫]כראוי עשה‬.” For another parallel, see Exodus Rabbah I 3:4. In that passage, Rabbi Joshua ben Levi compares God to a king who reneges on his promise to provide his newly married daughter with a proper maidservant. Similarly, Moses accuses God of disregarding His promise to rescue Israel from Egypt. On the theme of Moses critiquing God for His willingness to break His promises, see Exodus Rabbah II 32:8. 7. Rachel A. Anisfeld, Sustain Me with Raisin-Cakes: Pesiqta Derav Kahana and the Popularization of Rabbinic Judaism (Leiden: Brill, 2009). 8. See, especially, Joseph Heinemann, Sermons in the Talmudic Period (Jerusalem: Bialik Press, 1982); Joseph Heinemann, “The Nature of the Aggadah,” in Midrash and Literature, ed. Geoffrey H. Hartman and Sanford Budick (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1986); Elizabeth Shanks Alexander, “The Orality of Rabbinic Writing,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Talmud and Rabbinic Literature, ed. Charlotte Elisheva Fonrobert and Martin S. Jaffee (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 38–57. 9. Joshua Levinson, Hasipur Shelo Supar: Amanut Hasipur Hamiqraʾi Hamurḥav Bemidreshe Ḥazal (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2005), 127. The notion of grabbing the attention of the synagogue crowd by promulgating shocking or unusual ideas is found in a number of places throughout rabbinic literature. Sometimes the term “to break [the people’s] ear [‫ ”]לשבר את האוזן‬is used. See, for example, Pesiqta Zutrata Exodus 19. The term also appears in medieval biblical exegesis. See Rashi to Exodus 13:18, 19:18, 19:19, 31:17, and Rabbenu Baḥya to Numbers 23:22 (cf. Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael, Vayasa 5). 10. See Richard Lee Kalmin, “Rabbinic Portrayals of Biblical and Post-Biblical Heroes,” in The Synoptic Problem in Rabbinic Literature, ed. Shaye J. D. Cohen (Providence, R.I.: Brown Judaic Studies, 2000), 119–41. 11. For further discussion on this Mekhilta text, see Steven D. Fraade, “Moses and the Commandments: Can Hermeneutics, History and Rhetoric Be Disentangled?,” in The Idea of Biblical Interpretation: Essays in Honor of James L. Kugel, ed. Hindy Najman and Judith H. Newman (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 405. 12. Steven Fraade has termed this dimension of “ancient scriptural commentary” as a “double-facing character.” Fraade, From Tradition to Commentary: Torah and Its Interpretation in the Midrash Sifre to Deuteronomy (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991), 14. For further discussion, see Beth A. Berkowitz, Execution and Invention: Death Penalty Discourse in Early Rabbinic and Christian Cultures (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 7. 13. Richard L. Rubenstein, The Religious Imagination (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1985), xi. 14. See Levinson, Hasipur Shelo Supar, 35–40.

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15. For those who emphasize the unconscious element, see Isaac Heinemann, Darkhe Ha’aggada, 2nd ed. (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1953), 8, 9; Rubenstein, The Religious Imagination, 22–42. For the opposite view, see Moshe Halbertal, Mahapekhot Parshaniyot Behithavutan: Arakhim Keshiqulim Parshaniyim Bemidreshe Halakha (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1999), 21, 22; Heinemann, “The Nature of the Aggadah,” 49. 16. Presently, the morally problematic God of Scripture occupies a central concern for theology scholars. See the recent collection of papers in Michael Bergmann, Michael J. Murray, and Michael C. Rea, Divine Evil?: The Moral Character of the God of Abraham (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). 17. On whether the rabbis generate dialogues to express their anxieties consciously or unconsciously, see Christine E. Hayes, “Displaced Self-Perceptions: The Deployment of Minim and Romans in B. Sanhedrin 90b–91a,” in Religious and Ethnic Communities in Later Roman Palestine, ed. Hayim Lapin (Potomac, Md.: University of Maryland Press, 1998), 249–89. 18. Halbertal, Mahapekhot. 19. For a collection of these moments, see Joel Kaminsky, Corporate Responsibility in the Hebrew Bible (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995). Kaminsky rejects the scholarly contention that divine corporate justice becomes less pervasive in later biblical writings. 20. Kaminsky cites A. J. Heschel, W. Eichrodt, and J. Barton. Ibid., 58, 59, 64. 21. See the essays by Michael Bergmann, Michael Murray, Michael Rae, Louise Antony, Edwin Curley, and Even Fales in Bergmann, Murray, and Rea, Divine Evil?, 1–21, 29–46, 58–78, 91–108. 22. On YHWH’s anger problem, see also Deena Grant, Divine Anger in the Hebrew Bible (Washington D.C.: Catholic Biblical Association of America, 2014); Yair Lorberbaum, “The Rainbow in the Cloud: An Anger-Management Device,” Journal of Religion 89, no. 4 (2009): 498–540. On the “darker side” of God in the Old Testament, see R. N. Whybray, “’Shall Not the Judge of the Earth Do What Is Just?’: God’s Oppression of the Innocent in the Old Testament,” in Shall Not the Judge of All the Earth Do What Is Right? Studies on the Nature of God in Tribute to James L. Crenshaw, ed. David Penchansky and Paul L. Redditt (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2000), 1–19. 23. Most famously, Abraham protests: “Will you sweep away the innocent along with the guilty?” (Gen. 18:26). Likewise, Moses and Aaron successfully reproach God after the Korah rebellion on these grounds: “O God, Source of the breath of all flesh! When one man sins, will you be wrathful with the whole community?” (Num. 16:22). Or David who rebukes God on this basis when a divinely imposed plague kills 70,000 Israelites as punishment for David’s conducting a census: “I alone am guilty, I alone have done wrong; but these poor sheep, what have they done?” (2 Sam. 24:17). 24. Sa’adia Gaon, The Book of Beliefs and Opinions, trans. Samuel Rosenblatt (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1976), 330. 25. To be sure, in comparison with other ancient Near East flood myths, such as the Gilgamesh Epic and Atrahasis, the biblical God appears more ethical. For while in Genesis,



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God commits near-omnicide because of the “corruption” and “violence” of humanity, in the Ancient Near East tales the god Enlil seeks to destroy the world because humanity is keeping the gods up at night. Nevertheless, the corporate dimension of God’s destructive punishment in Genesis should not be overlooked and remains problematic. God does not discriminate between the guilty and the innocent. For more on the various flood myths, see Tikva Simone Frymer-Kensky, Studies in Bible and Feminist Criticism (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2006), 51–66, 307–28; Jon Levenson, “Cataclysm, Survival, and Regeneration in the Hebrew Bible,” in Confronting Omnicide: Jewish Reflections on Weapons of Mass Destruction, ed. Daniel Landes (Northvale, N.J.: J. Aronson, 1991), 39–68. 26. Sa’adia, problematically, ignores Mishnah Sanhedrin 10:3: “The generation of the Flood does not have a share in the World to Come [‫]עולם הבא‬.” Cf. Tosefta Sanhedrin 13:2, 6. 27. On the centrality of divine justice and unity in Sa’adiah’s theology, see Sarah Stroumsa, “Saadya and Jewish Kalam,” in The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Jewish Philosophy, ed. Daniel H. Frank and Oliver Leaman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 71–90. 28. See Sebastian Moll, The Arch-Heretic Marcion (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010), 57; Origen, On First Principles (New York: Harper and Row, 1966), 101–2, 270. 29. Origen, On First Principles, 102. 30. On Second Temple justifications for God’s flooding of the world in the writings of Philo, Pseudo-Philo, and Josephus, see Louis H. Feldman, “Remember Amalek!”: Vengeance, Zealotry, and Group Destruction in the Bible According to Philo, Pseudo-Philo, and Josephus (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 2004), 88–96. 31. See, however, Sifre Deuteronomy 311, which asserts that God acted “cruelly [‫אכז־‬ ‫ ”]ריות‬to the generation of the Flood as He “caused them to float like leather bottles in the water.” 32. Genesis Rabbah 36:2. 33. Midrash Psalms 1:12. 34. While the Bible only describes humanities’ sin(s) in general terms—“violent” (Gen. 6:11) and “sinful” (Gen. 6:12)—the rabbis sought to specify the sin. Leviticus Rabbah 23:9 and Genesis Rabbah 26:5 connect the evilness of Genesis 6:5 to the sexual sins mentioned in the prior story (Gen. 6:1–4); and Ecclesiastes Rabbah 5:1 regards humanities’ sin as evil business practices. Earlier, Josephus located the generation’s evilness in its “hubris” (Antiquities 1:73). 35. Leviticus Rabbah 23:9. This midrash continues to say that “God is long-suffering toward every offense except whoredom.” For more on this text, see Frymer-Kensky, Studies in Bible and Feminist Criticism, 312. Also see parallels in Genesis Rabbah 26:5 and Tanḥuma (Buber) Bereshit 33. 36. Tanḥuma (Buber) Koraḥ 6 makes a similar claim in connection with Korah’s rebellion. Here, however, the sin is not sexual immorality, but promoting dissension among the Israelites: “R. Berekhya commented: How grievous a thing must strife [‫מח־‬ ‫ ]לוקת‬be! The Heavenly Court as a rule inflicts penalties only on sinners who are twenty

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years old and upward, and the terrestrial court does so only on those who are thirteen years old or more, yet in Korah’s strife babies of a day old were burned and swallowed up in the bottomless abyss; as it is written: ‘with their wives, and their sons, and their little ones. . . . So they, and all that appertained to them, went down alive into the pit’ [Num. 16:27, 33].” On rabbinic anxiety surrounding God’s punishment of Korah’s congregation, see Hananel Mack, “Women and Men in the Aggadot of Korah and His Congregation,” Mada‘e Hayahadut 40 (2000): 138–40. Philo, too, was troubled by the possibility that innocent people of Korah’s community may have been killed. On this, see Louis H. Feldman, “Philo’s Interpretation of Korah,” Revue des Etudes juives 162, no. 1–2 (2003): 10, 15. 37. This rabbinic text contrasts with Philo, who maintains that, excluding Noah and his family, “every separate individual [at that time] was full of wicked practices” (On Abraham, 1:40). There was no exception. On Noah’s righteousness in early Judaism and Christianity, see Naomi Koltun-Fromm, “Aphrahat and the Rabbis on Noah’s Righteousness in Light of the Jewish-Christian Polemic,” in The Book of Genesis in Jewish and Oriental Christian Interpretation, ed. Judith Frishman and Lucas van Rompay (Lovanii: Peeters, 1997), 57–71. 38. The phrase “this one sinned and this one has not sinned” is often used by ­midrashic authors in the context of a moral protest of God. See Numbers Rabbah II 18:11 and Tanḥuma (Buber) Tsav 5. 39. Genesis Rabbah 49:2. 40. Note again how it is the sage Rabbi Levi, known for his pro-protest attitude, who generates this critique. 41. The motif of Abraham having greater sensitivity to the loss of innocent life than God also appears in Tanḥuma, Lekh Lekha 10. This midrashic teaching, attributed to Rabbi Isaac, has Abraham, after the war against the five kings in Genesis 14, “excoriating himself unmercifully [‫]היה לבו הוגה לענה‬, saying: Perhaps among those whom I have killed, there were some righteous men. God replies: Those whom you have destroyed were like thorns that you eradicated from before Me. You did not transgress.” 42. However, Avraham Rozen, a traditional commentator on the Tanḥuma, imposes this interpretation: “And when he [Abraham] will search and not find [even ten], he will deduce that the same was true with the generation of the flood. This, then, will be a benefit to Abraham to set his mind straight that God does not make a judgment without justice.” See Rozen’s Bi’ur Ha’amarim to Midrash Tanḥuma Hashalem, vol. 1 (Jerusalem: Ohel Rabeinu Yonoson Ublima, 2008), 111, s.v. shema. (The translation is mine.) 43. For other post-tannaitic texts that express moral unease with God’s handling of the Flood, see Genesis Rabbah 49:10; Tanḥuma (Buber) Vayera 10; Avot de-Rabbi ­Nathan (version b) 2; and Tanḥuma (Buber) Ḥaye Sarah 5. 44. See E. A. Speiser, Genesis (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1964), 149. Because of this problem, the eleventh-century grammarian Jonah Ibn Janach substitutes ish (man) for goy (nation). See discussion in Barry Dov Walfish, “Medieval Jewish Interpretation,” in Jewish Studies Bible, ed. Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler (New York: Oxford, 2004), 1881. 45. Genesis Rabbah 52:6.



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46. Pesiqta Rabbati 42:3 relays the exegetical narrative of Genesis Rabbah 52:6, but adds one element: Abimelech accuses God of punishing the generations of the Flood and Dispersion without “forewarning [‫]התרייה‬.” 47. Julian, Against the Galileans, trans. R. Joseph Hoffmann (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 2004), 110–12. Scholars reconstructed Julian’s work from citations found in Cyril of Alexandria’s Against Julian, composed in the 430s. 48. On the relationship between idolatry and sexual impropriety, see Moshe Halbertal and Avishai Margalit, Idolatry (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992), 9–36. 49. Michael A. Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), 397–99, 426. 50. Fishbane notes that the word ‫ ויפלל‬has a “legal-judicial overtone.” Ibid., 398n.36. 51. Ibid., 398. 52. Ibid. 53. Also see an earlier version of Phineas’s protest in Sifre Numbers 131. There, however, Phineas’s protest is aimed at the angel. 54. On rabbinic reactions to Phineas’s zealotry more generally, see Christine Elizabeth Hayes, Gentile Impurities and Jewish Identities: Intermarriage and Conversion from the Bible to the Talmud (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 155–56. On the image of Phineas in Second Temple Judaism, see Martin Hengel, The Zealots: Investigations into the Jewish Freedom Movement in the Period from Herod I until 70 A.D (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1989); Feldman, Remember Amalek, 193–216. 55. The tradition of Phineas as protesting divine justice first emerges in Pseudo-­Philo’s re-narration of the concubine of Gibeah narrative (Judges 19–21). See Pseudo-Philo’s Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum (LAB), 46:4–47:1. 56. As Louis Feldman notes, “There is no indication in the Bible that only those who had apostasized were killed in the plague.” Feldman, Remember Amalek, 211. See also Tanḥuma Vayetse 5 and Numbers Rabbah II 20:25, which claim that 24,000 Israelites were killed for Zimri’s sin. 57. Pesiqta Rabbati 47:1. 58. Genesis Rabbah 56:5, 56:11, 12; Pesiqta Rabbati 40; Pirqe de-Rabbi Eliezer 40:6. 59. BT Berakhot 31b; Pesiqta Rabbati 43. 60. See Judah Goldin, Studies in Midrash and Related Literature, ed. Barry L. Eichler and Jeffrey H. Tigay (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1988), 176 (emphasis added). Goldin correctly notes that, contrary to the biblical perspective, “the fate of Moses was . . . profoundly disturbing . . . to later generations.” Contrary to Goldin, Steven D. Fraade, “Sifre Deuteronomy 26 (Ad Deut. 3.23): How Conscious the Composition?,” Hebrew Union College Annual 54 (1983): 259, remarks that “it might seem [from these passages] that Moses audaciously challenges God’s judgment.” I agree with Goldin over Fraade: these passages contain not even a trace of protest. 61. See Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 4:48, 49; Philo, On the Life of Moses II: 51 (288–292); Pseudo-Philo, LAB chap. 11; and Johannes Tromp, The Assumption of Moses: A Critical Edition with Commentary (Leiden: Brill, 1993), 21–23.

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62. For more on these versions of the death of Moses, see Rella Kushelevsky, Moses and the Angel of Death (New York: P. Lang, 1995), 33–43. On Philo’s account, see Louis H. Feldman, “The Death of Moses According to Philo,” Estudios Biblicos 60, no. 2 (2002): 225–54. 63. See Kushelevsky, Moses, 143–48. 64. John Macdonald, Memar Marqah: The Teaching of Marqah (Berlin: A. Töpelmann, 1963), 193. 65. For an analysis of the various Islamic legends on the death of Moses, see Haim Schwarzbaum, Mimeqor Yisra’el Veyishma’el (Tel Aviv: Dan, 1975), 45–57. 66. See Kushelevsky, Moses, 154. 67. See, for example, Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael, Amalek 2, s.v. ’‫ ;ויאמר ה‬Sifre Numbers 105, s.v. ’‫ ;אל ה‬Sifre Numbers 134, s.v. ’‫ ;ויאמר ה‬and Sifre Deuteronomy 26–28. I am not including within the “tannaitic corpus” material on the death of Moses cited in Midrash Tannaim (MT) 3:23, 3:24, 31:14, pp. 13–17 and 178–80, which Hoffman reconstructed from the late medieval Yemenite anthology, Midrash Hagadol (MHG). Scholars have already noted that Hoffman mistakenly labeled large amounts of material from MHG as tannaitic, even though the editor of MHG clearly took much of this material from later sources, including, quite often, from as late a source as Maimonides. See J. N. Epstein, Introduction to Tannaitic Literature, ed. Ezra Zion Melamed (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1957), 632—33; ­Menahem Kahana, “New Fragments of the Mekilta on Deuteronomy,” Tarbiz 54, no. 4 (1985): 495; Hermann Leberecht Strack and Günter Stemberger, Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash, trans. Markus N. A. Bockmuehl (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996), 273–75. Ezra Zion Melamed, Pirqe Mavo Lesifrut Hatalmud (Jerusalem: n.p., 1973), 220, argues that one can only assume that material found in Midrash Hagadol is the lost Mekhilta on Deuteronomy, as Hoffman had claimed, if there are no parallels in the Talmud nor the early and late midrashim. Since there are numerous parallels between the material on the death of Moses in MHG and our TY midrashim (not to mention other late midrashim), I do not view this MHG material as citations from the lost Mekhilta on Deuteronomy. Moreover, the linguistic formulations of these MHG texts are clearly not tannaitic, both in terms of the language used (i.e., Aramaic—see MT, p. 16, ‫)את שרית קרית להון‬, as well as phrases that are markers of late rabbinic material (e.g., ‫ יש לי דין‬and ‫ הכתבת‬on p. 15). Lastly, Kahana has already noted that the Cambridge fragment of Mekhilta to Deuteronomy 3 significantly diverges from the “tannaitic” material claimed by Hoffman in MT (pp. 13, 14). It stands to reason, then, that if we were to find the lost Mekhilta to Deuteronomy that comments on our material, significant differences would emerge between it and the “tannaitic” citations claimed in MT (pp. 15, 16). Thus, in this work, the material on the death of Moses found in MT will be cited as MHG and not as MT. 68. Sifre Deuteronomy 28. This midrash therefore concludes that Moses’ petition was not an earnest attempt to enter the Land (since God’s decree is always final), but a method by which Moses could express his love for God and His command: “Moses demonstrated how precious to him were God’s words by asking Him to let him enter the Land. Hence, ‘Let me go over, I pray You, and see the good land.’” Also see Sifre Numbers



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134. Some classical rabbinic texts also do not have Moses criticizing God for denying him entry into the Land. See, in particular, the claim of Pesiqta de-Rav Kahana 14:5 that, after being denied entry, Moses still “found no iniquity in [God] (‫ עול‬. . . ‫)לא מצא‬.” Also see the post-TY text of Midrash Psalms (5:10), which states: “At the end of [Moses’] praise of God, what did he say? ‘The Rock, His work is perfect [Deut. 32:4].’ [Moses] said this lest men should declare that the divine justice was too severe (‫ )עברה עלי מידת הדין‬with him because he was not allowed to enter the Land of Israel, and [Moses] went on to say: ‘Heaven forbid, there is no partiality in the sight of God [‫]אין לפניו משוא פנים‬.’” 69. Sifre Deuteronomy 26. See Reuven Hammer, Sifre: A Tannaitic Commentary on the Book of Deuteronomy (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1986), 400n.8, who notes the link between ‫ ואתחנן‬and ‫חנם‬. For an analysis of this text and its relationship to the Christian doctrine of grace, see Reuven Hammer, “The Doctrine of Grace in Sifre Deuteronomy,” in Mishneh Torah: Studies in Deuteronomy and Its Cultural Environment, ed. Nili Sacher Fox, David A. Glatt-Gilad, and Michael J. Williams (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2009). Also see Fraade, “Sifre,” 295, who elegantly sums up the Sifre’s comments: “The emphasis of our midrash [Sifre Deuteronomy] is on the petitions of the righteous, who despite their accumulated merits are required to seek God’s gratuitous mercy. . . . The example of Moses (and David) as expressed by our midrash provides an antidote to the potential for . . . rabbinic hubris. When it comes time for judgment, regardless of whatever prerogatives and powers the Sage has acquired through his merits of service to God and community, he stands empty-handed like everyone else, beseeching God for gratuitous and undeserved favor” (emphasis added). Fraade further notes (260) that Sifre Deuteronomy regards Moses’ submissive plea as a legal model for petitionary prayer in general. As we shall soon see, the contrast between this rabbinic view and the later midrashic one is striking. 70. Leviticus Rabbah 20:1. 71. The sages are uncertain as to whether Job lived before or after Moses. For example, one sage argued that Job lived during the days of Abraham. For the various views on this issue, see BT Bava Batra 15a–b. Also see Hananel Mack, It Was Only a Parable: Job in Second Temple and Rabbinic Literature (Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University Press, 2004), 68–94. 72. See Genesis Rabbah 49:9. 73. My reading of the Tanḥuma text is reinforced by a parallel—and fuller— Tanḥuma-Yelammedenu teaching recorded in the Lieberman edition of Devarim Rabbah (TY): “I pleaded [‫ ]ואתחנן‬with the Lord at that time [‫ ]ההיא‬saying [Deut. 3:23]. . . . The text is related to It is all one; therefore I say He destroys the innocent and the wicked [Job 9:22]. Moses said: Sovereign of the World, it is one” [‫—]אחת היא‬everything is equal before you. There is only one decree [‫ ]גזירה‬for the righteous and the wicked” (Deuteronomy Rabbah [TY ] [Lieberman 34]). As opposed to the Tanḥuma (Buber), Devarim Rabbah (Lieberman) makes the connection between the phrases “‫ ההיא‬. . . ‫ ”ואתחנן‬and “‫ ”אחת היא‬more explicit. The Tanḥuma’s scribe, however, elided or truncated the phrase ‫ אחת היא‬twice from the earlier Devarim Rabbah text; through this elision, the exegetical connection between these two verses

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n o t e s t o pa g e s 13 8 – 1 43

became obscured. It is noteworthy that this linguistic link between Deuteronomy 3:23 and Job 9:22 was missed by some of the Tanḥuma commentators. For example, see Avraham Rozen’s commentary (called Biʾur ha’amarim) in Midrash Tanḥuma Ha-Shalem, vol. 4, pp. 8, 9. s.v. ‫הכל שוין‬, where he claims that the exegetical teaching stems from the superfluous words “to God.” Moreover, the traditional commentator excuses Moses’ actions by claiming that Moses was “in pain” and was therefore not punished for his irreverent words. Remarkably, in the next paragraph, he reinterprets Moses’ critique as being concerned lest other people should claim (‫ )יאמרו הבריות‬that, should Moses not be admitted into the Land, “all is equal before you (God).” In effect, this commentator undermines Moses’ entire critique by reinterpreting the argument as being driven by concern for divine honor—and thus Moses is no longer seen as critiquing God for acting unjustly. Admittedly, Tanḥuma-Yelammedenu literature also preserves the standard tannaitic view as well, that ‫ ואתחנן‬reflects a plea for divine mercy. See, for example, Deuteronomy Rabbah 2:1, 4. Yet remarkably, even here, when the TY authors cite and preserve this older seemingly submissive view (of Moses pleading to enter the Land of Israel), it transforms the force of the statement and produces a confrontational moment by noting that prior to the death of the first generation of Israelites, Moses spoke with God “forcefully” (‫(בזרוע‬. In short, even where the TY midrash preserves the “submissive view,” it significantly limits its scope. In their version, Moses only speaks with God submissively at the end of his life. 74. Goldin, Studies in Midrash, 179. 75. Ibid., 181 (emphasis mine). 76. Ibid. 77. Also see Genesis Rabbah 52:18. 78. In the biblical text, not only is Abram not in prison, but he is awarded riches by Pharaoh (Gen. 12:16). 79. For another analysis of this Genesis Rabbah text, see Levinson, Hasipur Shelo Supar, 114–15. 80. Ibid., 114. 81. Contrast this Tanḥuma text with Genesis Rabbah 40:2, which praises Abraham for not complaining to God after a famine hits Canaan. 82. This Tanḥuma text also drops the Genesis Rabbah proof text of ‫“( דבר שרי‬by the word of Sarai”). This change makes perfect sense since, according to the Tanḥuma, Sarai and Abram both confront God. Thus, it would be inaccurate to claim that God responds merely because of the “word [‫ ]דבר‬of Sarai.” The dropping of proof texts is also a common feature of the Tanḥuma midrashim. See Avigdor Shinan, “Scriptural Exegesis to Liberated Narrative,” Jerusalem Studies in Hebrew Literature 5 (1984): 203–20. 83. Judah Rosenthal, “Hiwi Al-Balkhi: A Comparative Study: Christian Heretics,” Jewish Quarterly Review 39, no. 1 (1948): 80, 93. 84. See Edwin Cyril Blackman, Marcion and His Influence (New York: AMS Press, 1978); Moll, The Arch-Heretic Marcion. 85. Adolf von Harnack, Marcion: The Gospel of the Alien God (Durham, N.C.: Labyrinth Press, 1990).



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86. Moll convincingly shows that, contra von Harnack, Marcion did believe that the Old Testament God was “evil.” Moll, The Arch-Heretic Marcion, 47–63. 87. Bentley Layton, The Gnostic Scriptures: A New Translation with Annotations and Introductions (London: SCM Press, 1987), 23–64. 88. The author produces a “Midrash” on Genesis 3 in which the Serpent is depicted as the hero. The text can be found in James M. Robinson, The Nag Hammadi Library in English (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1978), 412. Moshe Halbertal uses the work as an example of an uncharitable reading of Scripture. Moshe Halbertal, People of the Book: Canon, Meaning, and Authority (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997), 40. Also see the Gnostic work Second Treatise of the Great Seth, which calls the Old Testament God of the Jews a “laughingstock” for his policy of transgenerational punishment. Bart D. Ehrman, After the New Testament: A Reader in Early Christianity (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 234. 89. Layton, Gnostic Scriptures, 306–15. On Christian Gnostic critiques of the Old Testament God, also see John G. Gager, Origins of Anti-Semitism: Attitudes Toward Judaism in Pagan and Christian Antiquity (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), 167–73. 90. See Gary T. Burke, “Celsus and the Old Testament,” Vetus Testamentum 36, no. 2 (1986): 241–45; Henry Chadwick, Early Christian Thought and the Classical Tradition (Oxford: Clarendon, 1966), 26. 91. Scholars reconstructed Celsus’s work from citations found in Origen, Contra Celsum, trans. Henry Chadwick (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980). For an English translation of the reconstruction, see Celsus, On the True Doctrine: A Discourse Against the Christians, trans. R. Joseph Hoffmann (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987). On Celsus’s view of the Old Testament God, see Chadwick, Early Christian Thought, 22–30; John Granger Cook, The Interpretation of the Old Testament in Greco-Roman Paganism (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004), 55–149; Gager, Origins of Anti-Semitism, 103–4; Edward Young, “Celsus and the Old Testament,” Westminster Theological Journal 6, no. 2 (1944): 166–97. 92. Origen, Contra Celsum. 93. Cook, Interpretation of the Old Testament, 170–73. On Porphyry’s complex attitude toward the Old Testament and the Jewish God, see Cook, Interpretation of the Old Testament, 150–247; Gager, Origins of Anti-Semitism, 105–7; Porphyry, Porphyry’s Against the Christians: The Literary Remains, ed. and trans. R. Joseph Hoffmann (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1994). 94. Cook, Interpretation of the Old Testament, 258–59. Scholars have reconstructed Julian’s work from citations found in Cyril of Alexandria’s Against Julian composed in the 430s. For an English translation of the reconstruction, see Julian, Against the Galileans. 95. Cook, Interpretation of the Old Testament, 248–344; Gager, Origins of Anti-­ Semitism, 94–97. 96. Annelie Volgers and Claudio Zamagni, eds., Erotapokriseis: Early Christian Question-and-Answer Literature in Context (Leuven: Peeters, 2004). 97. This unidentified Latin author also wrote a complete commentary on the thirteen Pauline Epistles. His Questions on the Old and New Testament, produced anonymously, was

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subsequently attributed to Augustine in the medieval period. The work exists in three recensions: one has 127 questions, another has 115 questions, and the third has 150 questions. Of note, question 44 is a polemic entitled “Against the Jews.” In 1908, A. Souter published the recension with 127 questions and added questions from the 150-question recension in the appendix. See Pseudo-Augustine, Quaestiones Veteris Et Novi Testamenti Cxxvii. Accedit Appendix Continens Alterius Editionis Quaestiones Selectas, ed. Alexander Souter, vol. 50 (Vindobonae: F. Tempsky, 1908). This work has yet to be translated into English. For more details and full bibliography, see D. G. Hunter, “Ambrosiaster,” in Dictionary of Major Biblical Interpreters, ed. Donald K. McKim (Nottingham: Inter-Varsity Press, 2007), 123–26. 98. These examples are noted in Cook, Interpretation of the Old Testament, 293–94. 99. The questioner echoes David’s own challenge to God: “I alone am guilty, I alone have done wrong, but these poor sheep, what have they done?” (2 Sam. 24:17). Contemporary scholars designate the author of Quaestiones et responsiones ad orthodoxos as “PseudoJustin” because the work has been falsely attributed to Justin Martyr. For more on this work and its significance, see Yannis Papadoyannakis, “Defining Orthodoxy in Pseudo-Justin’s ‘Quaestiones Et Responsiones Ad Orthodoxos,’” in Heresy and Identity in Late Antiquity, ed. Eduard Iricinschi and Holger M. Zellentin (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008), 115–27. 100. Augustine, On Genesis: Two Books on Genesis Against the Manichees, ed. Roland J. Teske (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1990). Since the 1969 discovery of Manichean documents in Kellis, Egypt, scholars have with greater confidence argued that Manichaeism should be understood as a Christian-Gnostic sect rather than as a Persian religion. See Jacob Albert van den Berg, Biblical Argument in Manichaean Missionary Practice: The Case of Adimantus and Augustine (Leiden: Brill, 2010). 101. Berg, Biblical Argument, 140; Samuel N. C. Lieu, Manichaeism in the Later Roman Empire and Medieval China (Dover, N.H.: Manchester University Press, 1985), 92. 102. Berg, Biblical Argument, 105–21. 103. Disputatio 11, 13, in ibid., 109–11. 104. Disputatio 26, 27, in ibid., 117–18. 105. Disputatio 7, in ibid., 107–8. 106. Augustine, On Genesis, 91–138. 107. Anastasius, Hodegos (Viae Dux), ed. Karl-Heinz Uthemann (Turnhout: BrepolsLeuven University Press, 1981); Anastasius, Questions and Answers, ed. and trans. Joseph A. Munitiz (Turnhout: Brepols-Leuven University Press, 2011). 108. J. Haldon, “The Works of Anastasios of Sinai: A Key Source for the History of East Mediterranean Society and Belief,” in The Byzantine and Early Islamic Near East, ed. Averil Cameron, Lawrence I. Conrad, and G. R. D. King (Princeton, N.J.: Darwin Press, 1992). 109. See Joseph Munitiz, introduction to Anastasius, Questions and Answers, 19–22. 110. As Munitiz has shown, Migne’s edition of Anastasias’s writings includes pseudoAnastasian material as well. J. P. Migne, ed., Anastasius Sinaita (Paris: Garnier, 1865), 314ff. For other examples, see Rosenthal, “Hiwi Al-Balkhi,” 83–85. 111. J. P. Migne, Photius (Paris: J. P. Migne, 1860). 112. Rosenthal, “Hiwi Al-Balkhi,” 86–93.



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113. Hartwig Hirschfeld, “Mohamedean Criticism of the Bible,” Jewish Quarterly Review 13 (1901): 222–40. 114. Sarah Stroumsa, “Blinding Emerald,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 114, no. 2 (1994): 163–85; Sarah Stroumsa, “From Muslim Heresy to Jewish-Moslem Polemics: Al Rawandi’s Kittub Al-Damig,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 107, no. 4 (1987): 767–72. On Moslem freethinkers, see Sarah Stroumsa, Freethinkers of Medieval Islam: Ibn Al-Rawandi, Abu Bakr Al-Razi and Their Impact on Islamic Thought, Islamic Philosophy, Theology, and Science (Leiden: Brill, 1999). 115. Hava Lazarus-Yafeh, Intertwined Worlds: Medieval Islam and Bible Criticism (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1992), 30–33. 116. Hirschfeld, “Mohamedean Criticism of the Bible”; Lazarus-Yafeh, Intertwined Worlds; Stroumsa, “Muslim Heresy.” 117. Samuel Thrope, “Contradictions and Vile Utterances: The Zoroastrian Critique of Judaism in the Skand Gumanig Wizar” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 2012). 118. Ibid., 170–71. 119. Ibid., 11, 12, 20, 32, 47–49, 55, 78, 129–30. 120. Judah Rosenthal, “Hiwi Al-Balkhi: A Comparative Study,” Jewish Quarterly Review 38, no. 3 (1948): 317–42. 121. Israel Davidson, Saadia’s Polemic Against Hiwi Al-Balkhi (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1915). 122. Ezra Fleisher, “A Fragment from Hiwi,” Tarbiz 51 (1982): 49–57. 123. Davidson, Saadia’s Polemic; Rosenthal, “Hiwi Al-Balkhi: A Comparative Study.” 124. See Davidson, Saadia’s Polemic; Lazarus-Yafeh, Intertwined Worlds; Rosenthal, “Hiwi Al-Balkhi,” 79–94; Judah Rosenthal, “Hiwi Al-Balkhi: A Comparative Study (Continued),” Jewish Quarterly Review 38, no. 4 (1948): 419–30; Menachem Stern, “Hiwi AlBalkhi,” in Sefer Klozner, ed. Naphtali H. Tur-Sinai (Tel Aviv: Va’ad Ha-yovel, 1937), 210–25; Stroumsa, Freethinkers of Medieval Islam, 218–21; Thrope, “Skand Gumanig Wizar,” 25, 78. 125. Cited in Davidson, Saadia’s Polemic, 17. 126. Solomon Schechter, “The Oldest Collection of Bible Difficulties, by a Jew,” Jewish Quarterly Review 8 (1901): 345–74. Also see the fragment of Bible difficulties published by Judah Rosenthal, “Ancient Questions on the Hebrew Bible,” Hebrew Union College Annual 21, no. 48 (1948): 29–91. 127. Schechter, “Bible Difficulties,” 349–50.

Chapter 5 1. On the humanization of God in the Hebrew Bible, see Yochanan Muffs, The Personhood of God: Biblical Theology, Human Faith, and the Divine Image (Woodstock, Vt.: Jewish Lights, 2005); Moshe Halbertal and Avishai Margalit, Idolatry (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992), 67–78. For the claim that rabbinic anthropomorphism surpasses

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biblical anthropomorphism, see David Stern, “Imitatio Hominis: Anthropomorphism and the Characters of God in Rabbinic Literature,” Prooftexts 12 (1992): 151–74; Arthur Green, “The Children in Egypt and the Theophany at the Sea,” Judaism 24 (1975): 446–56; Elliot R. Wolfson, Through a Speculum That Shines: Vision and Imagination in Medieval Jewish Mysticism (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994), 33. 2. The various documents of the Hebrew Bible reflect varying degrees and kinds of anthropomorphism. See Anne Katherine Knafl, “Forms of God, Forming God: A Typology of Divine Anthropomorphism in the Pentateuch” (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 2011); Israel Knohl, The Divine Symphony: The Bible’s Many Voices (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2003), 71–86; Benjamin D. Sommer, The Bodies of God and the World of Ancient Israel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009); Moshe Weinfeld, Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1992), 191–209. 3. Most famously, Alon Goshen-Gottstein has posited that “in all of rabbinic literature there is not a single statement that categorically denies that God has body or form.” Alon Goshen-Gottstein, “The Body as Image of God in Rabbinic Literature,” Harvard Theological Review 87, no. 2 (1994): 172. Yair Lorberbaum, however, has questioned this radical assertion. Yair Lorberbaum, Tselem Elohim: Halakhah Ve’aggadah (Jerusalem: Hotsa’at Schocken, 2004), 27. Early Christian thinkers such as Origen (182–154), Justin Martyr (100–165), and Basil the Great (329–379) criticized the Jewish belief in the corporeality of God. On the other hand, Numenius, the second-century (non-Christian) Platonic philosopher, testified that some Jews maintained an anti-anthropomorphic conception of the deity. While in the first few centuries of the common era some early Christians believed in a corporeal God, most notably Tertullian (160–220) and quite possibly Melito of Sardis (second century), this view became quickly marginalized due to Christianity’s embrace of neo-Platonism. For full discussion of these sources and bibliography, see David L. Paulsen, “Early Christian Belief in a Corporeal Deity: Origen and Augustine as Reluctant Witnesses,” Harvard Theological Review 83, no. 2 (1990): 105–16; Gedaliahu G. Stroumsa, “Form(s) of God: Some Notes on Metatron and Christ,” Harvard Theological Review 76, no. 3 (1983): 269–88; Gedaliahu G. Stroumsa, “The Incorporeality of God: Context and Implications of Origen’s Position,” Religion 13 (1983): 345–58. 4. Michael A. Fishbane, Biblical Myth and Rabbinic Mythmaking (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 15; S. Schechter, Aspects of Rabbinic Theology (New York: Schocken Books, 1961), 37; Stern, “Imitatio Hominis.” Unlike Schechter and Fishbane, Stern uses the term to denote the idea that God is moved to adopt a more ethical position after dialoguing with humans. 5. Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael, Pisḥa 15; Pesiqta de-Rav Kahana 5; Lamentations Rabbah 1:51. For full treatment of these and other texts, see Fishbane, Biblical Myth, 132–59. 6. Abraham Joshua Heschel, Heavenly Torah: As Refracted Through the Generations, trans. Gordon Tucker (New York: Continuum, 2005), 107. On the term Shekhinah in the rabbinic period, see Efraim E. Urbach, The Sages: Their Concepts and Beliefs (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1975), 37–65; Max Kadushin, The Rabbinic Mind, 2nd ed. (New York:



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Blaisdell, 1965), 222–61; Peter Schäfer, Mirror of His Beauty: Feminine Images of God from the Bible to the Early Kabbalah (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2002), 79– 102; Heschel, Heavenly Torah, 93–126. In the medieval period, the term Shekhinah no longer signified God but—following Sa’adiah Gaon—an entity created by God, or, as in medieval Kabbalah, the last of the ten Sefirot (emanations) of God. For an extensive treatment of the various notions of Shekhinah in the medieval period, see Wolfson, Through a Speculum, 125–392; Schäfer, Mirror of His Beauty, 103–28. 7. Fishbane, Biblical Myth, 132–59. 8. Ibid. 9. See Song of Songs Rabbah 7:1:2; BT Avodah Zarah 3b. 10. JT Megillah2:4 11. See Pesiqta de-Rav Kahana 4, 12:21; BT Avodah Zarah 3b; Midrash Psalms 19:17. 12. See Pesiqta de-Rav Kahana 2; Genesis Rabbah 68:4; Leviticus Rabbah 8:1; JT Kiddushin 3:12. 13. See BT Avodah Zarah 3b. 14. On God’s clothing, see Genesis Rabbah 3:4, 59:4; Song of Songs Rabbah 4:10:1; Exodus Rabbah II 20:11, 39:8; Deuteronomy Rabbah 2:37; and Midrash Psalms 21. On God’s crown, see Leviticus Rabbah 24:8; and discussion in Arthur Green, Keter: The Crown of God in Early Jewish Mysticism (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1997), 10, 11. 15. See Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael, Vayehi 6; Genesis Rabbah 68:9; Song of Songs Rabbah 1:9:4; Midrash Psalms 18:14, 19:7. 16. See Lamentations Rabbah proem 25, Pesiqta de-Rav Kahana 13:11, Song of Songs Rabbah 1:2:5. 17. See Michael A. Fishbane, The Kiss of God: Spiritual and Mystical Death in Judaism (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1994). 18. Rabbinic texts depict a polymorphous God: for example, appearing to Israel as a “warrior doing battle” at the Red Sea and an “old man full of mercy” at Sinai (Mekhilta deRabbi Ishmael Shirata, 4); as an “old teacher” to Daniel and a “youthful lover” in the time of Solomon (Pesiqta de-Rav Kahana 12:24); as a “bridegroom entering his chamber” at the Tabernacle (Pesiqta Rabbati 33). See Wolfson, Through a Speculum, 33–41; Sommer, The Bodies of God and the World of Ancient Israel, 126–29. Wolfson maintains that the “polymorphous nature of the divine expressed in the aggadic . . . sources . . . may properly speaking be referred to as a docetic orientation, since the forms by which God is perceived, the theophonic images, are mental constructs or phantasma.” Wolfson, Through a Speculum, 36. Yair Lorberbaum, however, is unconvinced by Wolfson’s docetic reading. Lorberbaum, Tselem Elohim, 64–67. On seeing God in rabbinic literature more generally, also see Michael A. Fishbane, “Some Forms of Divine Appearance in Ancient Jewish Thought,” in From Ancient Israel to Modern Judaism: Intellect in Quest of Understanding, Essays in Honor of Marvin Fox, ed. Jacob Neusner, Ernst S. Frerichs, and Nahum M. Sarna (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989), 261–70; Green, “The Children in Egypt and the Theophany at the Sea,” 446–56; Moshe Halbertal, Concealment and Revelation: Esotericism in Jewish Thought and Its Philosophical

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Implications (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2007), 13–17; Arthur Marmorstein, The Old Rabbinic Doctrine of God (Farnborough: Gregg, 1969), 94–106; Rachel Neis, The Sense of Sight in Rabbinic Culture: Jewish Ways of Seeing in Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 41–81. 19. For a fascinating exception, see Exodus Rabbah II 21:2. 20. Philo, however, claims that God inserted sperm into Wisdom to produce the world. See Philo, On Drunkenness, 8:30, 31. And, of course, in later kabbalistic texts, the godhead becomes, exoterically, a highly sexualized organism. See the bibliography and discussion in Wolfson, Through a Speculum, 357–68. 21. Heschel, Heavenly Torah, 104–26; Marmorstein, Old Rabbinic Doctrine, 11–56. Marmorstein problematically depicts Rabbi Ishmael as breathing “the same intellectual atmosphere as that of the Greek-speaking teachers” (p. 24): advancing an anti-anthropomorphic, “allegorical” (p. 28) or “rationalistic” (p. 35) reading of biblical texts. However, as Max Kadushin and David Stern have noted, Rabbi Ishmael’s rejection of Akivan descriptions of God is not driven by a concern to defend divine incorporeality but by a need to defend a loftier and differentiated sense of the deity. See Kadushin, The Rabbinic Mind, 277–78; David Stern, Midrash and Theory: Ancient Jewish Exegesis and Contemporary Literary Studies (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1996), 76, 77. Before Kadushin, Harry Wolfson made a similar distinction, albeit using different terminology. See Harry Austryn Wolfson, Philo: Foundations of Religious Philosophy in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, 2 vols. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1948), 2:127–28. 22. Marmorstein, Old Rabbinic Doctrine, 56; Stern, Midrash and Theory, 76. 23. Heschel, Heavenly Torah, 214–15. On Heschel’s rejection of divine iniquity, see Shai Held, Abraham Joshua Heschel: The Call of Transcendence (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013), 149–51. 24. Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael, Vayehi 6. 25. See Pesiqta de-Rav Kahana 5:16 and BT Berakhot 6a. 26. Marmorstein, Old Rabbinic Doctrine, 70–73; Urbach, The Sages, 152–53. 27. Stern, Midrash and Theory, 74. 28. On the theological crisis engendered by the destruction of the Second Temple, see Adiel Schremer, “The Lord Has Forsaken the Land: Radical Explanations of the Military and Political Defeat of the Jews in Tannaitic Literature,” Journal of Jewish Studies 59, no. 2 (2008): 183–200. 29. The rabbis and early Christians both sought to minimize the gap between God and humanity. But, as Solomon Schechter has astutely noted, they did so in different ways: while the sages humanized God, early Christianity (what Schechter calls the “rising sectarianism”) deified man. Schechter, Aspects of Rabbinic Theology, 36. 30. Neusner posits that the rabbinic God achieves a full “personality” in the Babylonian Talmud when He is portrayed as freely engaging with and even arguing with human beings. In these moments, God and humanity have the “same rules of discourse” and God is “held accountable to human standards.” Neusner calls this the “social attributes” of “incarnation.” Jacob Neusner, The Incarnation of God: The Character of Divinity in



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Formative Judaism (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988), 180ff. For a critique of Neusner’s use of the term “incarnation,” see Elliot R. Wolfson, “Book Review: The Incarnation of God by Jacob Neusner,” Jewish Quarterly Review 81, no. 1/2 (1990): 219–22. Cf. Wolfson, Through a Speculum, 217. While it is true that in another context Wolfson, following Neusner, posited a Jewish theology of “incarnation,” Wolfson is quick to note the ways in which Jewish incarnation theology contrasts with medieval Christian ones. See Elliot R. Wolfson, Language, Eros, Being: Kabbalistic Hermeneutics and Poetic Imagination (New York: Fordham University Press, 2005), 190–260. 31. See, for example, Tosefta Sanhedrin 9:7; Pesiqta de-Rav Kahana 6; Ecclesiastes Rabbah 4:8; Seder Eliyahu Rabbah 7, 14; Tanḥuma (Buber) Shemot 24; Song of Songs Rabbah 5:2:2; Midrash Psalms 4. 32. See, for example, Genesis Rabbah 74:7; BT Berakhot 32a; Exodus Rabbah II 21:2, 31:10, 32:2, 32:5, and 52:1; Leviticus Rabbah 11:7; Esther Rabbah proem 11; and Midrash Psalms 36, 81. In rabbinic literature, biblical heroes are often compared to God’s “beloved” (‫ )אוהבו‬as God is compared to a king. 33. See David Konstan, Friendship in the Classical World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 167–73. 34. See Moshe Halbertal, “If the Text Had Not Been Written, It Could Not Be Said,” in Scriptural Exegesis: The Shapes of Culture and the Religious Imagination, ed. ­Deborah A. Green and Laura Suzanne Lieber (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 146–65. 35. Ibid., 157. 36. For this formulation, I follow E. LaB. Cherbonnier, “The Logic of Biblical Anthro­ pomorphism,” Harvard Theological Review 55, no. 3 (1962): 187. 37. See Michael A. Fishbane, The Exegetical Imagination: On Jewish Thought and Theology (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998), 29–32; Arnold Ages, “Luigi Chiarini—A Case Study in Intellectual Anti-Semitism,” Judaica 37, no. 2 (1981): 76–89; Arnold Ages, French Enlightenment and Rabbinic Tradition (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1970); Jeremy Cohen, The Friars and the Jews: The Evolution of Medieval AntiJudaism (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1982), 60–76; Marc Saperstein, Decoding the Rabbis: A Thirteenth-Century Commentary on the Aggadah (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980), 1–20. 38. See Fishbane, Biblical Myth, 3–13. 39. This attitude to aggadah already began in the Geonic period. See Yair Lorberbaum, “Reflections on the Halakhic Status of Aggadah,” Dine Israel 24 (2007): 33–36. 40. Lorberbaum, Tselem Elohim, 27–82; Yair Lorberbaum, “Anthropomorphisms in Early Rabbinic Literature: Maimonides and Modern Scholarship,” in Traditions of ­Maimonideanism, ed. Carlos Fraenkel (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 313–53. 41. For example, Alexander Altmann has maintained that rabbinic stories about God should not even be construed as theology: “In spite of the ease with which rabbis used anthropopathic imagery in haggadic homilies, their theological stance was one of opposition to any sort of anthropomorphism.” And, later in the article, he posits that aggadic

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“strand[s] . . . cannot be said to have had within early Judaism any theological . . . significance.” Alexander Altmann, “Homo Imago Dei in Jewish and Christian Theology,” Journal of Religion 48, no. 3 (1968): 235–59. Along these lines, Solomon Schechter has described rabbinic theological musings as mere “impulses” that are “uncertain,” “incoherent,” and “not always trust­worthy,” and that the rabbis show “carelessness and sluggishness in the application of theological principles.” Schechter, Aspects of Rabbinic Theology, 12, 13. Elsewhere, he describes the rabbis as “simple, naïve people, filled with a childlike scriptural faith.” Schechter, Aspects of Rabbinic Theology, 42. Indeed, this pessimistic attitude informed Jewish psychologist Eric Fromm to assert that “little is found in the Talmud that could be described as ‘theology.’” Erich Fromm, You Shall Be as Gods: A Radical Interpretation of the Old Testament and Its Tradition (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1966), 34. In similar fashion, Max Kadushin has argued that rabbinic theology reflects the “spontaneous expressions” and “values” of the uneducated masses. For him, aggadah is the product of communal life. Kadushin’s position assumes that, unlike the medieval period, there was no sharp division between the masses and the rabbinic elite. Because of this, Kadushin dislikes the term “rabbinic theology”: first, this material is not representative of “rabbinic” thought only (as it reflects folk thought as well) and, second, the term “theology” implies a sophisticated scholarly production. Rabbinic thought, however, for Kadushin is “un-premeditated,” “naïve,” and “effortless.” Max Kadushin, The Theology of Seder Eliahu: A Study in Organic Thinking (New York: Bloch, 1932), 29; Max Kadushin, Organic Thinking: A Study in Rabbinic Thought (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1938), 211–14. Along these lines, also see Louis Ginzberg et al., The Legends of the Jews, vol. 1 (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1967), 29–32. Galit Hasan-Rokem also subscribes to the folk thesis, but only applies it to select aggadot. Galit Hasan-Rokem, Web of Life: Folklore and Midrash in Rabbinic Literature (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2000). 42. At other times, Max Kadushin regards the metaphoric imagery of rabbinic theology as an ideal method to communicate God’s love of Israel. In presenting his case, Kadushin critiques Yehezkel Kaufman’s claim that the rational God of medieval Jewish philosophy is a positive development over the pre-rational God of rabbinic Judaism. See Kadushin, The Rabbinic Mind, 273–303. 43. See Wolfson, Through a Speculum, 126–27; Alexander Altmann, “Saadya’s Theory of Revelation: Its Origin and Background,” in Studies in Religious Philosophy and Mysticism, ed. A. Altman (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1969), 140–60. 44. For both formulations, see Urbach, The Sages, 226. Joseph Heinemann follows the first explanation: He regards rabbinic discourse not as an ideal method of communication but as an unfortunate rabbinic concession to the uneducated masses who cannot conceive of an abstract God. Joseph Heinemann, “The Nature of the Aggadah,” in ­Midrash and Literature, ed. Geoffrey H. Hartman and Sanford Budick (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1986), 41–55. 45. Urbach, The Sages, 37. 46. Ibid.



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47. Sa’adia Gaon, The Book of Beliefs and Opinions, trans. Samuel Rosenblatt (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1976). The first scholar to partially break from the Maimonidean approach to midrashic thought was Arthur Marmorstein. Marmorstein, Old Rabbinic Doctrine. Anticipating Heschel, he posits a theological debate between the Akivan School, which, reading Scripture literally, affirms a corporeal God, and the ­Ishmaelian School, which, reading Scripture nonliterally, rejects divine corporeality. By doing so, Marmorstein rejects Maimonides who would never claim that a rabbi, let alone a school, would affirm a corporeal God. However, in other ways, Marmorstein is still quite Maimonidean. First, his work is highly apologetic. He proudly supports the antianthropomorphic view of the Ishmaelian school and seeks to justify how the legendary Rabbi Akiva could maintain such a “low” and “unspiritual” conception of the deity. Moreover, as David Stern and Max Kadushin have noted, Marmorstein appropriates Maimonidean language when describing the Ishmaelian School as “allegorical,” “rational,” and “anti-anthropomorphic.” They correctly note that Rabbi Ishmael’s rejection of the Akivan view is not driven by a conscious concern to defend divine incorporeality, as with Philo, but by a need to defend a lofty and exalted sense of the deity. Kadushin, The Rabbinic Mind, 277–78; Stern, Midrash and Theory, 76. 48. Fishbane, Biblical Myth, 10–13, 95–249; Moshe Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1988), 156–72; Moshe Idel, “Rabbinism Versus Kabbalism: On G. Scholem’s Phenomenology of Judaism,” Modern Judaism 11 (1991): 281–96. For a contemporary defense of a Maimonidean reading, see Shalom Rosenberg, “The Myth of Myths,” Jewish Studies 38 (1998): 145–79. 49. On how this shift uprooted the possibility of seeing God, see Daniel Boyarin, “The Eye in the Torah: Ocular Desire in the Midrashic Hermeneutic,” Critical Inquiry 16 (1990): 532–50. 50. Unlike prayer, rabbinic theurgy, as defined by Idel, is not personal. It is a mechanical act that operates automatically; it does not pass through the will or consciousness of God. For a helpful definition and overview of the terms “theurgy,” “theosophy,” and “myth,” see Lorberbaum, Tselem Elohim, 146–70. 51. Gershom Scholem, On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism (New York: Schocken Books, 1965), 120–21. To support this perspective, Scholem regarded the anthropomorphic expressions in rabbinic thought as “metaphorical.” Gershom Scholem, On the Mystical Shape of the Godhead: Basic Concepts in the Kabbalah (New York: Schocken Books, 1991), 19. 52. Goshen-Gottstein, “The Body as Image of God in Rabbinic Literature,” 171. 53. See David Hartman, A Living Covenant: The Innovative Spirit in Traditional Judaism (New York: Free Press, 1985), 199; Jenny R. Labendz, Socratic Torah: Non-Jews in Rabbinic Intellectual Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 212–19; Neusner, Incarnation of God, 201–30; Richard L. Rubenstein, The Religious Imagination (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1985), 22–42. Moreover, as Patricia Ewick and Susan Sibley have pointed out, narratives have a subversive quality as their underlying assumptions are not expressed, thus providing a safe space to say radical things without saying them explicitly. Patricia Ewick and Susan S. Silbey, “Subversive Stories and Hegemonic

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Tales: Toward a Sociology of Narrative,” Law and Society Review 29, no. 2 (1995): 197–226. In this regard, recent Jewish studies scholars have used rabbinic narrative to enhance our understanding of rabbinic thought. Barry Wimpfheimer, for instance, has shown how talmudic stories subtly complicate—and even subvert—hegemonic talmudic law. And, following Wimpfheimer, Moshe Simon-Shoshan has detailed how mishnaic narratives function, in part, as a method for the rabbis to assert their own authority over post-­ Temple Jewish life. Moshe Simon-Shoshan, Stories of the Law: Narrative Discourse and the Construction of Authority in the Mishnah (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012); Barry S. Wimpfheimer, Narrating the Law: A Poetics of Talmudic Legal Stories (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011). 54. See Howard T. Kreisel, “The Suffering of the Righteous in Medieval Jewish Philosophy,” Daat 19 (1987): 19–25; Alvin Jay Reines, “Maimonides’ Concepts of Providence and Theodicy,” Hebrew Union College Annual 43 (1972): 169–206; Kenneth Seeskin, Searching for a Distant God: The Legacy of Maimonides (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000). 55. Moshe Idel sees the kabbalists as “fragmenting the divine personality.” See Moshe Idel, Ben: Sonship and Jewish Mysticism (York: Continuum, 2007), 156. 56. Bernard Septimus, Hispano-Jewish Culture in Transition: The Career and Controversies of Ramah (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982), 111. 57. For this point, see Halbertal, Concealment and Revelation, 139. 58. Adam Afterman, Devequt: Mystical Intimacy in Medieval Jewish Thought (Los Angeles: Cherub, 2011), 36–43, 273–85, 340–44; Adam Afterman, “From Philo to Plotinus,” Journal of Religion 93, no. 2 (2013): 178, 81–84. Because of these and other points of confluence, Wolfson critiques the “overly simplistic bifurcation of philosophy and Kabbalah as distinct fields of research.” Elliot R. Wolfson, “Beneath the Wings of the Great Eagle: Maimonides and Thirteenth-Century Kabbalah,” in Moses Maimonides (1138–1204): His Religious, Scientific, and Philosophical Wirkungsgeschichte in Different Cultural Contexts, ed. Gorge Hasselhoff and Otfried Fraisse (Wurzburg: Ergon, 2004), 212. Wolfson also emphasizes the nexus of philosophy and Kabbalah in his Language, Eros, Being, 209. 59. See Fromm, You Shall Be as Gods, 24, 25; Hartman, A Living Covenant, 52–59. 60. “We are commanded not to kill . . . and hence it is wrong . . . for us to kill; but of course the same does not go for God.” Alvin Plantinga, “Comments on ‘Satanic Verses: Moral Chaos in Holy Writ,’” in The Moral Character of the God of Abraham, ed. Michael Bergmann, Michael J. Murray, and Michael C. Rea (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 111. With this argument, among other arguments, Plantinga seeks to justify the moral standing of the biblical God. 61. See Marmorstein, Old Rabbinic Doctrine, 67, 68. 62. On the centrality of the Sabbath for the Book of Jubilees, see Lutz Doering, “The Concept of the Sabbath in the Book of Jubilees,” in Studies in the Book of Jubilees, ed. Matthias Albani, Jorg Frey, and Armin Lange (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1997), 179–206. This claim, that God observed the Sabbath along with the upper classes of angels, goes beyond the mere fact—attested to in Scripture—that God rested on the seventh day (Gen. 2:2–3,



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Exod. 31:17). According to Doering, Jubilees maintained that God transferred control over the world on the seventh day of the week to the five lower classes of angels as the latter did not observe the Sabbath. See Doering, “Concept of the Sabbath,” 186. Unlike Jubilees, Philo maintains that “God never leaves off making” and while God “causes to rest that which . . . is apparently making . . . He Himself never ceases making.” Philo, Allegorical Interpretation 1:5, 6. Following Philo, the author of the Gospel of John has Jesus justifying his violation of the Sabbath by declaring that God, his father, also works on the Sabbath: “My father works until now, I also work” (John 5:17). In response, Jesus’ opponents do not critique Jesus’ claim that God violates the Sabbath; they seem to accept this assertion. Instead, they are appalled that Jesus would compare himself to God in the process of justifying his sin (John 5:18). On this exchange, see D. A. Carson, The Gospel According to John (Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press, 1991), 246–49; B. Lataire, “Jesus’ Equality with God: A Critical Reflection on John 5:18,” in The Myriad Christ: Plurality and the Quest for Unity in Contemporary Christology, ed. Terrence Merrigan and Jacques Haers (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2000), 177–90. In the second century, Justin Martyr used this notion, that God does not observe the Sabbath, as an argument against the centrality of the Laws. He tells Trypho, his Jewish interlocutor, “[to] think it not strange that we drink hot water on the Sabbaths, since God directs the government of the universe on this day equally as on all others.” That is, God’s not following the Sabbath points to its conditional, rather than eternal, status. On this text and its relationship to select aggadic passages, see Marc G. Hirshman, A Rivalry of Genius: Jewish and Christian Biblical Interpretation in Late Antiquity (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), 40–49. For an early rabbinic text that similarly posits that God works on the Sabbath by continuing to administer justice, see Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael, Shabbata, 1. For all the relevant literature on God’s relationship to the Sabbath in Second Temple and rabbinic texts, see Michael H. Burer, Divine Sabbath Work (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2012). 63. In Genesis Rabbah 11:5, Rabbi Akiva tells Tinneus Rufus that, while God observes the Sabbath, He does not violate the laws against carrying from a private domain to a public domain, as all the earth is considered God’s private domain. Marc Hirshman regards the core of this material as tannaitic and reflecting a Jewish response to the kind of argument laid forth by Justin (see previous note). Hirshman, Rivalry of Genius, 46. Also see Exodus Rabbah II 30:9, Pesiqta Rabbati 23, and Tanḥuma Ki Tisa 33. 64. Also see Exodus Rabbah II 30:9, where it is said that Rabbi Gamliel, Rabbi Joshua, Rabbi Eliezer ben Azaryah, and Rabbi Akiva preached this tradition in Rome. The JT Rosh Hashana pericope concludes with this statement attributed to Rabbi Simon: “It is written, ‘You shall rise up before the hoary head, and honor the face of the old man, and you shall fear your God: I am the Lord’ (Lev. 19:32). ‘I am the Lord ’ means: I am He who was first to carry out the precept of rising before an old man.” Rather than interpreting the concluding phrase “I am the Lord” as an implicit threat against those who would consider ignoring the command, as a plain reading suggests, Rabbi Simon interprets it as God declaring that He Himself was the first to observe this law. Genesis Rabbah 48:7 and JT Bikkurim 3:3 provide the details of this tradition: when Abraham was healing from his

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circumcision (Gen. 18), the Shekhinah stood while Abraham sat. Other examples of God fulfilling the details of Torah law include the following: God follows the laws of mourning (e.g., Sifre Deuteronomy 305, Lamentations Rabbah 1:1, 1:23, 1:51; Pesiqta de-Rav ­K ahana 15:1, 15:2, 26:4; Genesis Rabbah 100:7; JT Moed Katan 3:5); wears tefillin (BT Berakhot 6a); and is subject to the laws of purity and impurity (Exodus Rabbah II 15:5; Tanḥuma (Buber) Metsora 18). 65. Saul Lieberman notes that “this proverb was quite popular in the Orient.” See Saul Lieberman, Greek in Jewish Palestine/Hellenism in Jewish Palestine (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1994), 38n.51 and 144n.2. 66. Leviticus Rabbah 35:3. 67. Exodus Rabbah II 30:9. 68. Marmorstein, Old Rabbinic Doctrine, 66–68. 69. M. Joel, Blicke in Die Religionsgeschichte Zu Anfang Des Zweiten Christlichen Jahrhunderts (Breslau: Verlag Schottlaender, 1880), 173. 70. Reported by Prof. Alan Corre on H-net: http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin /logbrowse.pl?trx=vx&list=H-Law&month=9905&week=a&msg=/6ipq1dgy/6DZ0RqS HeL/Q&user=&pw= 71. Ibid. 72. Interestingly enough, Avot de-Rabbi Nathan (version a) 3 depicts angels challenging God by citing a mishnah in Sanhedrin (rather than Torah passages). 73. For other examples, see Sifre Deuteronomy 323 (accusation that God establishes disqualified judges), Lamentations Rabbah 1:37 (accusation that God mistreats “animals”), Deuteronomy Rabbah 11:10 (accusation that God abuses His workers), and ­Pesiqta Rabbati 30 (accusation that God mistreats slaves). 74. A similar teaching is found in BT Bava Qamma 60b. There, however, God’s recognition of His legal-moral responsibility emerges from divine self-judgment rather than a human accusation. On this talmudic text, Michael Fishbane writes that “this is far from the position of a sovereign God beyond the law. . . . God acknowledges the act of destruction and incriminates Himself.” In this context, Fishbane also cites Pesiqta Rabbati 30, where God similarly confesses His responsibility to rebuild the Temple: “It is only fitting that I Myself go to appease her (Jerusalem) since I have transgressed” the arson law of Exodus 22:5. Fishbane, Biblical Myth, 168–69. On these midrashic texts, also see Ira Chernus, “’A Wall of Fire About’: The Development of a Theme in Rabbinic Midrash,” Journal of Jewish Studies 30 (1979): 68–84. 75. This Midrash, with slight deviations, also appears in Ecclesiastes Rabbah 8:4. 76. Michael Fishbane has noted that Nahum 1:2, 3 is one of many revisions of the divine attribute formulary found in Exod. 34:6, 7. However, it is unique in that in these verses we have no “mitigating divine mercy.” Fishbane, Biblical Myth, 347. 77. These two readings may depend on how one reads the scriptural framing of the Midrash taken from Ecclesiastes 8:4: “For in the word of a king there is authority [‫;]שלטון‬ and who may say to him, What do you do [‫ ”?]מה תעשה‬According to most commentaries, this verse teaches that no one has the right to tell the King (God) what to do. The question is



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understood rhetorically, and thus the answer to the question is no one. Read this way, the passage serves to undermine the very act of questioning God that is presented in the Midrash: God’s simple distinction between Jews and non-Jews highlights the flawed enterprise of human confrontation. This approach is adopted by Hanoch Zundel (nineteenth century), who understands the rabbinic citation of Ecclesiastes as positing that “even on matters that appear as if the King decrees on others, but not Himself, do not mistakenly think [that God is hypocritical]. For the truth is, that all His ways are just and no one can challenge Him saying, ‘What are you doing’ and criticize Him [‫]ויהרהר אחריו‬.” Ets Yosef to Genesis Rabbah 55:3. Alternatively, we could read Genesis Rabbah’s citation of Ecclesiastes 8:4 in line with later Tanḥuma-Yelammedenu literature where the passage is utilized to justify—rather than condemn—confrontations with God. (As I show later in this chapter, this is typical of Tanḥuma texts.) In Tanḥuma texts, Ecclesiastes 8:4 is not read as a rhetorical question, “Who may say to him, ‘What do you do?’” but as a serious question that is answered at the opening of verse 5: “One who obeys mitzvot.” In other words, only people who follow God’s laws can confront God, the King of Israel. (This goes against a simple reading of Ecclesiastes 8:5, which seems to be making a new point: “One who obeys mitzvot shall feel no evil thing.”) More specifically, Tanḥuma Ki Tavo uses Ecclesiastes 8:4, 5 to argue that righteous people can nullify the decrees of God. And Tanḥuma Vayera 19 cites it as a proof text that God fulfills the demands of the righteous. 78. This rabbinic outlook diverges not only from the Greco-Roman position, where the king is not bound by the rules of the empire, but also from the position held by early Christian thinkers. For example, John Chrysostom (347–407) claims that God, the King of Kings, like His human counterparts on earth, is not bound by the laws He legislates for others. “The [human] king is not subject to the laws but above them, being maker of the laws in fact. So it is right that the one who says to the maker of the laws, ‘You are doing wrong’ is censured just as if you were to say to the maker [of the laws] and creator [i.e., God], ‘You are making it badly’ [and so similarly censured].” John of Chrysostom, Commentary on Job, trans. Robert C. Hill (Brookline, Mass.: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2006), 179. Here, like the sages, Chrysostom explicitly links the question of the sovereign’s relationship to societal law to the question of one’s right to question that sovereign. According to Chrysostom, because God creates laws, He cannot be bound by them; as such, Christians have no right to challenge God for any apparent mishap. For Chrysostom, God infuses law into the universe, and is thus not subject to law; God could never be held accountable. Augustine also adopted the view in his polemic with the Pelagians that God can do the opposite of what He commands others to do. See especially Augustine, Answer to the Pelagians, Three, ed. Edmund Hill et al. (Hyde Park, N.Y.: New City Press, 1999), 294–95. 79. Famously, Harry Wolfson contended that “in the entire Greek vocabulary that is embodied in the Midrash, Mishnah and Talmud there is not a single technical philosophical term.” Wolfson, Philo, 1:91–92. Warren Zev Harvey, however, correctly modified the claim, noting that philosophical terminology is used when describing the views of the various non-Jewish interlocutors. Warren Zev Harvey, “Rabbinic Attitudes Towards

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­ hilosophy,” in Open Thou Mine Eyes: Essays on Aggadah and Judaica Presented to Rabbi P William G. Braude (Hoboken, N.J.: KTAV, 1992), 83–101.

Chapter 6 1. The closest we come to this type of formulation is Sifre Deuteronomy 311. Here, God is described as judging the world “with cruelty” (‫ )אכזריות‬before Abraham came into the world. 2. The Bible states that God is also not human-like in His ability to overcome His anger (Hosea 11:8, 9). 3. Also see Malachi 3:6 and Isaiah 31:2. 4. In both verses, the verb “‫ ”נחם‬is used. 5. Amos 7:3: “And God relented concerned this [’‫]נחם ה‬.” 6. Exodus 32:14: “And the Lord relented of the evil which he thought to do to his people [‫]וינחם ה’ על הרעה אשר דבר לעשות לעמו‬.” This phrase is echoed in Jonah 3:10. Also, see God’s retraction not to destroy the Israelites after the sin of the spies (Numbers 14). In this case, though, no explicit expression of divine regret is expressed; God merely says that He has forgiven the people (“I have pardoned [‫ ]סלחתי‬according to your word”) (Num. 14:20). Yet, unlike Exodus 32, in Numbers 14 Moses’ critique of God is an ethical one: Moses argues that God has failed to live up to His attributes of mercy (Num. 14:17– 19). In similar fashion, God seems to retract in Numbers 16:20–24, but here too no expression of regret is employed. Finally, Deuteronomy 32:36 could also be read as a divine regret. Yet, in that context, it is not at all clear whether ‫ יתנחם‬should be understood as “comfort” or “regret.” Sifre Deuteronomy 326 understands it as “regret” (‫)תהות‬. 7. For this reason, some manuscripts of the Septuagint on Genesis 6:6 have “and God considered” (ἐνεθυμήθη) rather than “and God relented.” On Philo’s defense of an unchanging God in light of contrary biblical evidence, see Louis H. Feldman, “Remember Amalek!”: Vengeance, Zealotry, and Group Destruction in the Bible According to Philo, Pseudo-Philo, and Josephus (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 2004), 90, 91. 8. This text can be found in Alexander Roberts and Sir James Donaldson, AnteNicene Christian Library: Translations of the Writings of the Fathers Down to A.D. 325 (Edinburgh: T and T Clark, 1868), 104. 9. On Various Questions to Simplican 2:2:5, which can be found in Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina (Turnhout: Brepols, 1953), vol. 44, pp. 80, 81. In City of God (14:11), Augustine made the point this way: “Though we sometimes hear the expression ‘God changed his mind’ or even read in the figurative language of Scripture that ‘God repented’ we interpret these sayings not in reference to the decisions determined by almighty God but in reference to the expectations of man or to the order of natural causes.” Philip Schaff, A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church (New York: Scribner, 1886), vol. 2, p. 271. See, similarly, Gregory of Nyssa’s commentary in his Answer to Eunomius’ Second Book, found in Philip Schaff, A Select Library of the



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Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church (Series Two) (Oxford: Parker, 1892), vol. 5, pp. 292–93. 10. See Warren Zev Harvey, “Rabbinic Attitudes Towards Philosophy,” in Open Thou Mine Eyes: Essays on Aggadah and Judaica Presented to Rabbi William G. Braude (Hoboken, N.J.: Ktav, 1992), 83–101. 11. One exception, however, can be found in the following debate: “The generation of the desert does not have a share in the World to Come . . . as it says: Concerning them I swore in anger, [they shall never come to My resting place] (Psalms 95:11). These are the words of Rabbi Akiva. Rabbi Eliezer says: They will come [into the World to Come]. . . . So how will he interpret I swore in anger, [they shall never come to My resting place? I swore, but then] I retracted [‫( ”]חוזר אני בו‬Tosefta Sanhedrin 13:10).” Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Eliezer debate whether the generation of the desert will have a share in the World to Come. Rabbi Akiva replies in the negative, and derives his position from Psalms 95:11: “I swore in anger that they shall never come to My resting place,” understanding “resting place” as not referring to the Promised Land but to the afterlife. By contrast, Rabbi Eliezer maintains that the generation of the desert will merit the afterlife. He rejects Rabbi Akiva’s proof text (Psalms 95:11) by arguing that God “retracted” [‫ ]חוזר‬His oath that would have barred these Israelites from reaching the eschaton. Here, too, however, God’s retraction does not imply a prior moral error: we have no concession to a human challenge or critique, and we are not told the reason for God’s change of heart. (Note that Rabbi Eliezer’s position is attributed to Rabbi Joshua in JT Hagigah 1:8. Also see parallels in BT Hagigah 10a and BT Sanhedrin 110b.) See also Tosefta Yoma 4:14, where Rabbi Akiva has God declare: “Who caused [‫ ]גרם‬them [Israel] to make the god of Gold? Me, [as I] supplied them with an abundance of gold [in Egypt].” Though a bold teaching, we have here no concessional language. (See also Sifre Numbers 134, Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael, Baḥodesh 9.) 12. Steven Fraade has suggested that Rabbi Judah the Patriarch’s position “may not be original to our text, but an insertion made at a later stage of editing.” Steven D. Fraade, “Moses and the Commandments: Can Hermeneutics, History and Rhetoric Be Dis­ entangled?,” in The Idea of Biblical Interpretation: Essays in Honor of James L. Kugel, ed. Hindy Najman and Judith H. Newman (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 403. (My translation is taken from Fraade, “Moses,” 403–4.) 13. JT Ta’anit 3:3. In this passage, God also regrets creating the Ishmaelites and the Chaldeans. (BT Sukkah 52b adds “exile [‫ ”]גלות‬to this list.) 14. Genesis Rabbah (Theodor-Albeck) 27:6. 15. Lamentations Rabbah proem 24. 16. Lamentations Rabbah proem 2. On this passage, see Michael A. Fishbane, Biblical Myth and Rabbinic Mythmaking (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 69, 70. 17. David Stern, Parables in Midrash: Narrative and Exegesis in Rabbinic Literature (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991), 145–51. 18. Markedly, even in this midrash we have no concessional language, as in “‫חזר‬,” “‫מתחרט‬,” or “‫מודה‬.” By contrast, in post-amoraic reiterations of Rabbi Samuel b.

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Nachman’s teaching, technical terms of retraction are employed. See Tanhuma, Vayera 13 and Deuteronomy Rabbah (Lieberman) 13, which describe the concession as an act of “‫חזרה‬.” (Also see the anti-Christological interpretation of Numbers 23:19 attributed to Rabbi Avahu in JT Ta’anit 2:1. Instead of reading the passage as referring to God [“God is not . . . mortal to change His mind”], Rabbi Avahu reinterprets it to refer to any human being who claims divinity: “If someone says, ‘I am the son of man’ [‫]בן אדם‬, in the end he will regret it [‫]לתהות בו‬.” Basing himself on Exodus 32:14, Rabbi Avahu in fact affirms that God does change His mind.) 19. I would even make the same claim in regard to Lamentations Rabbah (proem 24), where, after Israel’s exile of 586 bce, the matriarch Rachel begs God to redeem Israel, arguing that if she, as a mere mortal, was not jealous of her sister, Leah, and allowed her to marry Jacob first, then certainly God, the Righteous One, should not be jealous of other idols that “have no reality.” God’s “mercy was stirred” [‫ ]נתגלגלו רחמיו‬by Rachel’s plea, and forthwith He declared: “For your sake, Rachel, I will restore Israel to their place.” But here as well, although Rachel activates or reenergizes God’s merciful attribute, her critique is not grounded on the immorality of the divine destruction, but relies, first, on the metaphysical claim that idols have no substance, and, second, on the notion that God’s nature should rise above the very human characteristic of jealousy. The language of the divine concession is weak; we have no declaration from God that He acted inappropriately. On this well-known aggadah, see especially Moshe Halbertal and Avishai Margalit, Idolatry (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992), 33–35; Alan L. Mintz, Hurban: Responses to Catastrophe in Hebrew Literature (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984), 57–62; David Charles Kraemer, Responses to Suffering in Classical Rabbinic Literature (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 143–46; Suzanne Last Stone, “Justice, Mercy and Gender in Rabbinic Thought,” Cardozo Studies in Law and Literature 8, no. 1 (1996): 139–74; David Stern, “Imitatio Hominis: Anthropomorphism and the Characters of God in Rabbinic Literature,” Prooftexts 12 (1992): 151–74. 20. Sifre Deuteronomy 307. 21. Genesis Rabbah 49:10. 22. Of course, we also have new moments of divine regret in post-amoraic literature. See, for example, BT Sanhedrin 108a, in which God admits that He did “not act properly [‫ ”]לא יפה עשיתי‬in preparing graves for those killed in the generation of the Flood. Also in Tanhuma (Buber) Bereshit 36, God regrets promising never to flood the world again (‫כבי־‬ ‫)כול תוהא שנשבע‬. 23. On transgenerational punishment in the Hebrew Bible, see especially Michael A. Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), 333–45; Bernard Levinson, “You Must Not Add Anything to What I Command You: Paradoxes of Canon and Authorship in Ancient Israel,” Numen 50 (2003): 1–50; Moshe Greenberg, “Some Postulates of Biblical Criminal Law,” in Jubilee Volume for Yeḥezkel Kaufmann, ed. Menahem Haran (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1960), 20–27. 24. Yochanan Muffs argues that the doctrine of intergenerational punishment in Exodus 34:6–7 expresses God’s mercy, not wrath: rather than emphasizing that children



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suffer for the sins of their parents, this verse comes to teach that God does not punish sinners immediately, but compassionately delays punishment until the time of their children or grandchildren. See Yochanan Muffs, Love and Joy: Law, Language, and Religion in Ancient Israel (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1992), 16–22. 25. Moshe Weinfeld argues that the final ambiguous clause “to those who hate Me” at the close of the passage refers to the children and grandchildren (not the sinning grandparent), and was subtly added by a later editor who wanted to harmonize Deuteronomy 5:9 with Deuteronomy 7:9–10. In other words, God will now only punish those children and grandchildren who continue to sin. Moshe Weinfeld, Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1992), 318. On this point, also see Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation, 345n.2; Levinson, “You Must Not Add,” 37n.64. 26. In contrast to Exodus 34:6–7, Exodus 20:5 highlights the harsh consequences of sin: not only will sinners suffer for their transgressions, but their progeny will be punished as well. In this passage, the doctrine is about extending punishment rather than delaying it. See Adele Berlin, Marc Zvi Brettler, and Michael A. Fishbane, The Jewish Study Bible (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 89, 149; Muffs, Love and Joy, 16–22. 27. Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation, 333–45. 28. See discussion in Levinson, “You Must Not Add,” 29–31. 29. Jon Douglas Levenson, Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel: The Ultimate Victory of the God of Life (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2006), 177. See also Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation, 337. 30. See Levinson, “You Must Not Add,” 44. 31. As Michael Fishbane and Bernard Levinson have shown, these inner-biblical rejections of transgenerational punishment are quite subtle, if not subversive, as they never openly admit revoking the older authoritative dictum. Ezekiel rhetorically draws on language from Deuteronomy 24:16, which rejects transgenerational punishment only in human courts and simply extends it to the divine realm. On this move, see the contrasting formulations in Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation, 338–39; Levinson, “You Must Not Add,” 33, 34. Moreover, Ezekiel only claims to abrogate a well-known folk saying (“fathers eat sour grapes and their children’s teeth are set on edge”) rather than a previous divine revelation. As Levinson puts it, “Ezekiel . . . uses the proverb as a strategic foil to the far more theologically problematic act of effectively nullifying a divine law.” Levinson, “You Must Not Add,” 33. And, quite cleverly, as Fishbane notes, the exilic author of Deuteronomy 7:9–10 camouflages its radical rejection of the earlier doctrine of Deuteronomy 5 by citing that very verse, Deuteronomy 5, but citing it incorrectly. Fishbane puts the point this way: “With one stroke, later tradition thoroughly controverted an earlier revelation, and authenticated its novel viewpoint by means of a presumptive misquote” (emphasis in original). Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation, 343. 32. On Philo’s strong opposition toward the notion of inherited punishment, see Feldman, Remember Amalek, 21. 33. See, for example, Jacob Albert van den Berg, Biblical Argument in Manichaean Missionary Practice: The Case of Adimantus and Augustine (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 107–8; Adolf von Harnack, Marcion: The Gospel of the Alien God (Durham, N.C.: Labyrinth

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Press, 1990), 69; Julian, Against the Galileans, trans. R. Joseph Hoffmann (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 2004), 102; Samuel Thrope, “Contradictions and Vile Utterances: The Zoroastrian Critique of Judaism in the Skand Gumanig Wizar” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 2012), 170. 34. See the “Testimony of Truth” in James M. Robinson, The Nag Hammadi Library in English (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1978), 455. 35. As he is wont to do, Tertullian maintains a literal reading of Exodus 20 and Exodus 34. Because of that, he morally defends the doctrine of inherited punishment by arguing that only such a measure would have ensured compliance with God’s will among the stiff-necked Jews. Tertullian, Adversus Marcionem, trans. Ernest Evans (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), 2:15, p. 129. Gregory the Great also accepts a straightforward reading of Exodus 20 and 34, but, unlike Tertullian, sees it as pointing to the doctrine of original sin which can be overcome via baptism. Gregory, Morals on the Book of Job, trans. John Henry Parker, vol. 1 (Oxford: J. H. Parker, 1844), 21:19. In contrast to Tertullian and Gregory the Great, other early Christian exegetes read the doctrine as an allegory. For example, following Philo of Alexandria, St. Jerome interprets “fathers” as mere “thoughts” of sins and “sons” as sinful “actions”: See his Letter to Demetrius 130:6 found in Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, Second Series, trans. H. de Romestin and H. T. F. Duckworth E. de Romestin (Buffalo: Christian Literature Company, 1893), vol. 6, p. 266. For another allegorical interpretation, see Origen, Homilies on Genesis and Exodus, trans. Ronald E. Heine (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1982), 316–33. 36. Moshe Greenberg notes that while Deuteronomy 24:16 also rejects transgenerational punishment, the rejection only refers to punishments meted out in human courts, not by God. He writes that Deuteronomy 24:16 should be “recognized as a judicial provision, not a theological dictum. It deals with an entirely different realm than Deut. 5:9 and Exod. 20:5. . . . This is clear from the verb yumat (‫)יומת‬, ‘shall be put to death,’ referring always to judicial execution and not to death at the hand of God.” Greenberg, “Some Postulates,” 21–23. Some rabbinic texts, however, see this deuteronomic passage as rejecting even the transgenerational punishments administered by God. 37. See, for example, the tannaitic statement attributed to Rabbi Yossi preserved in Avot de-Rabbi Nathan (version b) 22. 38. Also see the parallel to this Mekhilta in Midrash Tannaim 5, which also main­ tains this condition of continuity but derives it from a different word. It reads the word ‫“( לשנאי‬of those who hate me”) as referring not to the sinning parent, as a straightforward reading would suggest, but to the second, third, and fourth generations, who also reject God. Thus, a child would only be punished for the sins of his ancestors if he follows in their evil ways and “hates” God. 39. See Pesiqta de-Rav Kahana 25:3, BT Sanhedrin 27b, and BT Berakhot 7a. 40. BT Makkot 24a. 41. In the Bible itself (Exod. 34:6–7), it is unclear whether Moses or God proclaims these divine attributes. See Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation, 335.



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42. This Tanḥuma text does not appear in Tanḥuma MS Cambridge 1212, Tanḥuma MS Jerusalem 5836, or the first printed edition of the Tanḥuma (Constantinople: 1520). It first appears in the Mantua edition of the Tanḥuma, printed in 1563 (facsimile Jerusalem 1971) by Ezra of Fano, who had in his possession additional Tanḥuma manuscripts that are no longer extant. For more on Ezra of Fano’s additions, see Buber’s introduction to his Tanḥuma, 161–80. For a similar text that emerged in fragment form from the Cairo Genizah, see Jacob Mann and Isaiah Sonne, The Bible as Read and Preached in the Old Synagogue (New York: KTAV, 1966), 226. (For the sake of space I have not translated the other two times that “Moses did things on his own accord.” These are his breaking the Tablets of the Law and refusing to attack Sihon without attempting to make peace first.) 43. Contrary to the biblical scholars (like M. Greenberg), this Tanḥuma text understands Deuteronomy 24 as applying not only to the human realm, but to the divine one as well. 44. The midrash reads the passage in 2 Kings 14—”in accordance with what is written in the Torah of Moses” (‫—)ככתוב בתורת משה‬as a proof text that God had conceded to Moses’ point of view. It thus rereads this phrase not to mean the “Torah (revealed) to Moses” (as it is normally read) but the “Torah (revealed) by Moses.” Moses becomes, in this midrash, the very author of Torah! This reinterpretation of the phrase ‫ תורת משה‬is counterintuitive— and thus more radical—since, as Adiel Schremer has noted, Rabbi Levi conveniently ignores and skips over the phrase “where the Lord commanded” (‫ )אשר צוה ה‬which appears in that very passage (2 Kings 14:6). These words clearly point to the divine, and not human, origin of this new theology. See Adiel Schremer, “Between Radical Interpretation and Explicit Rejection,” in Renewing Jewish Committment: The Work and Thought of David Hartman, ed. A. Sagi and Z. Zohar (Jerusalem: Machon Shalom Hartman, 2001), 762–63. 45. See Rashi on BT Shabbat 87a, s.v. bitlata. 46. BT Shabbat 87a offers the exegetical justifications for Moses’ actions. 47. This midrash views the rejection of transgenerational punishment in Deuteronomy 24 as referring to God’s system of justice (rather than just human justice, as Bible scholars argue). 48. Numbers Rabbah does not portray Moses as actually canceling God’s decree— this may have been a position too radical for this rabbinic text to entertain. In this text, God nullifies His own enactments after hearing the protest. 49. Menachem Fisch emphasizes the radical nature of this midrash: “God is astonishingly described as having produced a morally deficient early draft of the Torah, [and then] Moses is portrayed as having refused to comply, and having challenged it on moral grounds. . . . [The theology] is subsequently described as having been happily revised by virtue of God accepting Moses’ superior moral judgment.” Menachem Fisch, “Judaism and the Religious Crisis of Modern Science,” in Nature and Scripture in the Abrahamic Religions, 1700–Present: Brill’s Series in Church History, ed. Jitse M. Meer and S. Mandelbrote (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 552. 50. On the ethically driven reading of the Sihon war in the writings of Philo and Josephus, see Feldman, Remember Amalek, 173–83.

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51. See Moshe Weinfeld, Deuteronomy 1–11: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New York: Doubleday, 1991), 173–78. 52. In this analysis, I follow those Bible scholars who see the deuteronomic account as later than the Numbers account. For the opposite view, see John Van Seters, “The Conquest of Sihon’s Kingdom: A Literary Examination,” Journal of Biblical Literature 91, no. 2 (1972): 182–97. 53. Weinfeld argues that this new tradition was established sometime during the reign of Hezekiah or Josiah. Weinfeld, Deuteronomy 1–11, 177. On the status of Transjordan in the tannaitic period, see Sifre Numbers 159. 54. The laws of ḥerem are delineated in Deuteronomy 7:2, 7:26, and 20:17. For more on ḥerem as a distinctly deuteronomic legal doctrine, see Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation, 200–201. 55. Ibid., 207–8. 56. I exclude the last few verses in Deuteronomy since even some rabbinic texts acknowledge its non-Mosaic authorship. 57. Also see Midrash Tannaim 20:10. 58. Also see Pesiqta de-Rav Kahana supplement no. 5, s.v. ma navu, which, like Sifre Deuteronomy, seeks to reconcile these conflicting biblical passages. 59. This teaching, too, first appears in the Mantua edition of the Tanḥuma, printed in 1563 (facsimile, Jerusalem, 1971) by Ezra of Fano, who had in his possession additional Tanḥuma manuscripts that are no longer extant. 60. For other treatments of this Tanḥuma text and its parallels, see Fisch, “Judaism and the Religious Crisis,” 549–51; Schremer, “Radical Interpretation,” 759–63. 61. See Schremer, “Radical Interpretation,” 759–60. 62. It is unclear whether this Tanḥuma (Buber) text sees Moses as “citing God against God” (as we have explained it) or has Moses using God’s past actions to help him interpret God’s present command. See ibid., 760. Also see Devarim Rabbah (Lieberman) 28, s.v. re’e, and Midrash Aggadah on Deuteronomy 2:26, where Moses justifies his defiant act by citing Scripture’s call for peace in Deuteronomy 20:10. These texts regard Deuteronomy 20:10 not as coming about as a result of Moses’ defiance but rather as the cause and justification for the defiant act itself. In short, Moses uses Scripture to overrule a divine command. 63. Tanḥuma (Buber) supplement to Devarim 10 also offers a second justification: Another explanation: “ from the desert of Kedemot [‫]קדמות‬: From the Torah I learned that it [the Torah] existed before everything. When you came to give it, it was revealed to you that the children of Esau and the children of Keturah would not accept it. But nevertheless you persevered and demanded it for them [Israel] so that they would accept it. Therefore, I sent messengers [from the desert of Kedemot].” In contrast to the first voice, this view interprets ‫קדמות‬ as referring not to God, but to the Torah that preceded (‫ )קדום‬everything. Moses reasons that just as God offered the Torah to the non-Jewish nations even though He knew that his offer would be rejected, so too will he go through the motions of seeking peace with Sihon, even though he knows that



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his offer will be rebuffed. The implication of this view is that although he was fully aware that Sihon would reject his offer, Moses opts for negotiations as a formality. (The reason for this is unclear: is it an educational move or a publicity stunt?) This interpretation undermines the defiant nature of the act by assuming that Moses never seriously considered not engaging in the divinely commanded war. He merely postponed the battle until after the formality of negotiation. 64. This translation follows Buber’s (p. 16n.35) emendation. The manuscript erroneously cites the verse from Deuteronomy 20:19. 65. The words “I do not know” do not appear in the standard Tanḥuma (MS Cambridge 1212). 66. Numbers Rabbah II 19:33, according to MS Paris 150. 67. See Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation, 207–8. 68. For a similar description, see Devarim Rabbah (Lieberman) 13, s.v. ki. 69. This articulation of divine concession also appears in a TY elaboration of Numbers 16. In the biblical account of Korah’s rebellion, God tells Moses and Aaron to “stand back from this community [‫ ]העדה‬that I may annihilate them in an instant” (16:21). Responding to God’s destructive impulse, Moses and Aaron call out: “When one man sins, will You be wrathful with the whole community?” (16:22). While Scripture does not have God formally conceding, it does, in the very next verse, have God telling Moses: “Speak to the community and say: ‘Withdraw from the abodes of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram’” (16:23). Not surprisingly, instead of neutralizing God’s troubling impulse (to destroy all of Israel), a TY midrash dramatizes both the human critique and the divine concession: They [Moses and Aaron] said to Him: Sovereign of the Universe! In the case of a mortal king, if a province rebels against him and rises and curses the king or his deputies, even if only ten or twenty of them have done so, he sends his legions there and carries out a massacre [‫]אנדרלמוסיא‬, slaying the good with the bad, because he cannot tell which of them has rebelled and which has not, or who has honored the king and who has cursed him. You, however, know the thoughts of man and what the hearts and reins counsel. You discern the inclinations of Your creatures and know which man has sinned and which has not [‫]ואתה יודע מי חטא ומי לא חטא‬, who has rebelled and who has not. You know the spirit of each and every one. Accordingly it says, O God, Source of the breath of all flesh, when one man sins, will You be wrathful with the whole community? [Numbers 16:22]. The Holy One, blessed be He, said to them: You have spoken well [‫ !]יפה אמרתם‬I shall make it known who has sinned and who has not sinned [‫]אני מודיע מי חטא ומי לא חטא‬. (Numbers Rabbah 18:11 ) This TY passage heightens the confrontational rhetoric of Numbers 16 by having Moses and Aaron tell God that while human kings sometimes adopt a policy of communal punishment because they cannot detect the guilty party, an omniscient God has no justification for killing the many for the sins of the few. Notably, the primary phrase that Moses uses to critique God— “you know which man has sinned and which has not” [‫ואתה יודע‬

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‫—]מי חטא ומי לא חטא‬is virtually identical to the Tanḥuma-Yelammedenu phrase used by Moses to protest God’s handling of the Sihon war: “I do not know who has sinned and who has not sinned [‫]איני יודע מי חטא ומי לא חטא‬.” More importantly, in contrast to Scripture, this Midrash has God formally conceding with the phrase: “You have spoken well [‫יפה‬ ‫]אמרתם‬.” By using the formulation, TY dramatically presents Moses and Aaron as God’s moral teachers. Here, too, God only commits Himself to the ethical principle of individual responsibility after a human protest. A third TY passage appropriates the formulation of “you have spoken well” when retelling how Moses challenged God not to destroy Israel after the Golden Calf incident. The midrash states, strikingly, that “God could not respond” [‫ ]לא היה יכול להשיבו‬to Moses’ forceful arguments; to dramatize the concession, God then declares: “You have spoken well [‫( ”]יפה אמרת‬Exodus Rabbah II 44:9). 70. Deuteronomy 4:40 declares that those who keep God’s commandments will secure a long life [‫ ;]תאריך ימים‬in the very next verse (4:41), Moses establishes three cities of refuge in Transjordan. As rabbinic hermeneutics often seeks deeper connections between neighboring passages (and certainly where the second passage begins with “then [‫ ]אז‬Moses set aside three cities”), the Deuteronomy Rabbah author assumed that the notion of long life (for Torah observance) stated in v. 40 caused the establishment of the places of shelter presented in v. 41. That is, the Israelites exploited the value of long life to challenge the problematic unconditional right of the blood avenger to kill the inadvertent murderer. 71. For other examples, see the non-TY section of Pesiqta Rabbati 30:4 according to MS Parma 3122 (formerly 1240), MS JTS 8195, and the first printed edition (Prague, 1653 or 1656) wherein a personified Zion “rebukes” [‫ ]תוכחה‬God for allowing the destruction of the Temple and the subsequent exile. Amazingly, God here, too, “admits [‫ ”]הודה‬error, responding: “I have acted arbitrarily with you [‫]הסכלתי בכם‬.” In the Pesiqta Rabbati printed editions of Vienna (1880) and Warsaw (1893) the word ‫“( הסתכלתי‬I looked”) appears instead of ‫הסכ־‬ ‫“( לתי‬I acted foolishly”). Either this was a scribal error (leaving out the “‫ )”ת‬or pious correction applied by the editors. To quote a fuller version of the midrash: “Accordingly, when the Holy One, blessed be He, comes to say to Jerusalem: Accept comforting from Me, as is said: ‘Open to me, my sister’ [Song of Songs 5:2], she will reply: I shall accept no comforting from You until I and You have reproved [‫ ]תוכחות‬each other. . . . Jerusalem will say: Master of the Universe, before You gave the Torah to Israel, You did go around offering it to all seventy nations, no one of which would accept it. It was finally Israel who accepted it. And since it was they who accepted it, how could You have done to them what You have done? At once, the Holy One, blessed be He, will accept the reproof from Jerusalem, and will say: I acted foolishly arbitrary with you as is said: ‘I am your true husband’ [Jer. 3:14].” To ground this teaching exegetically, the Pesiqta Rabbati inverses the meaning of God’s call to Israel: “I am your true husband (or Lord) [‫( ”]בעלתי‬Jer. 3:14). Rather than reading it as an expression of divine love and closeness (and possibly a wordplay subtly referencing the Near Eastern god Ba’al ]‫)]בעל‬, Pesiqta Rabbati reads it as God incriminating Himself for acting in an arbitrary and capricious manner toward Israel: like a lord to a slave who is not bound by any rules of conduct. Understandably, this radical Midrash was piously reinterpreted by later exegetes. For example, Ephraim Zalman Margalit (Galicia, 1762–1828) in his commentary to Pesiqta



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Rabbati sees God’s concession as a psychological ploy, as mere rhetoric to comfort the Jewish people in her time of distress. And he cautions his reader not to come to the conclusion that God is anything but morally perfect. This is how he puts it: “This is only hyperbole [‫לשבר‬ ‫]האוזן‬. . . . And so, too, it is written ‘I regret making them’ [Gen. 6:7]. But, in truth, one should not criticize [God’s] attributes: ‘[O Lord, how great are your works!] And your thoughts are very deep!’ [Ps. 92:6]—we do not understand at all ‘why has [the Lord] done thus’ [Jer. 22:8]. And here [God’s regret] is by way of consolation. And so it is that whoever hurts his friend, and, accordingly, wants to appease and comfort him, and he knows that it is impossible to explain to him (the friend) what he did because of his (the victim’s) limited knowledge and depth of understanding. [Hence,] it is necessary that he tell him, as a method to console [‫ ]פיוס‬him, that “in truth, I did not act justly, as you claimed, and I regret acting in such a fashion.” (These comments appear in Margalit’s Biur to Pesiqta Rabbati, p. 248.) Also see Midrash Zuta (Buber) to Lamentations 1:23, where God admits that He “transgressed the laws” (‫ )שעברתי על הדין‬pertaining to the sanctification of the first-born animal (Deut. 15:19). Here, God recognizes that He violated the spirit of this law in His maltreatment of Israel, whom the Torah describes as God’s firstborn (following Ex. 4:22). Remarkably, in this midrash, God also admits violating the Torah law against “hating your brother in your heart” (Lev. 19:17) when He exiled Israel. Finally, see BT Berakhot 31b, where God admits partial responsibility for the idolatrous practices of the people in the times of Moses and Elijah. 72. BT Ḥullin 60b. 73. For other protests against God launched by the moon, see BT Nedarim 39b, BT Sanhedrin 110b, Numbers Rabbah II 18:20, and Midrash Psalms 19. 74. This is the only time in the Torah where the phrase “sin offering to the Lord” [’‫ ]לחטאת לה‬is employed. 75. This Bavli section reworks—and radicalizes—a more moderate version found in the amoraic Genesis Rabbah 6:16 (Theodor-Albeck). There, the basic teaching and proof text is attributed to Rabbi Phineas in the name of Rabbi Simon (and the proof text supplied by Rabbi Phineas in his own name); in addition, in Genesis Rabbah, God does not regret making the moon smaller, but only that He allowed the moon to appear during the day, thereby infringing on the sun’s territory. Moreover, in Genesis Rabbah there is no protest from the moon that provokes God’s concession: “R. Phineas said: In respect of all other sacrifices it is written, ‘And one he-goat for a sin-offering’; whereas in respect of New Moon it is written, ‘And one he-goat for a sin-offering for the Lord’ [Num. 28:15]: The Holy One, blessed be He, said: It was I who caused it to enter its neighbor’s domain [‫]אני הוא שגרמתי לו להיכנס בתחום חבירו‬.” It should be said, however, that, as the TheodorAlbeck edition has noted, the Venice 1545 printing of Genesis Rabbah (and in most printings henceforth) added the sentence “Let this he-goat be an atonement for Me for making the moon smaller.” It was clearly added by later scribes or editors influenced by BT Ḥullin 60b. However, none of the Genesis Rabbah manuscripts, including Vatican 30, 60 and British Museum 27169, include this sentence. See Midrash Bereshit Rabba, ed. Julius Theodor and Chanoch Albeck (Jerusalem: Shalem Books, 1996), 1:42. In the tannaitic strata, there is no trace of this radical tradition. Sifre Numbers 145 interprets the anomalous phrase

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“sin offering to the Lord” to mean that the one goat atones for those sins only knowable by God. This reading of Sifre Numbers follows Abraham Joshua Heschel, Heavenly Torah: As Refracted Through the Generations, trans. Gordon Tucker (New York: Continuum, 2005), 122. 76. To make sense of this bold aggadah, traditional exegetes of the Talmud, committed to the notion of a morally perfect God, offered a number of apologetic reinterpretations. Rabbi Isaac Alfasi (Morocco, 1013–1113), for example, interprets the teaching this way: “To make you feel better, I will honor you since I shrunk you. How so? On the first day of the month, Israel will sacrifice before Me to atone for their sins [‫]לכפר עונותיהם‬.” Alfasi to BT Shavuot 1b. In this reading, Alfasi absolves God of any wrongdoing as the sacrifice atones for the sins of the people, not God. God institutes this monthly ritual only as a method to appease the moon, but not as a divine method to secure atonement for Himself. The Tosafists (BT Shavuot 9a, s.v. Se‘ ir) propose a similar reading in the name of Nathan ben Yehiel (Italy, 1035–1106): “This goat atones for Israel. And it is on Me [‫]עלי‬ to establish the time of this atonement.” Already in the thirteenth century, Rabbi Asher ben Yehiel (also known as the Rosh, Germany/Spain, 1250–1327) recognized these types of interpretations as “stretched” (see Tosafot Harosh to BT Shavuot 9a, s.v. Se‘ ir). A colleague of Rabbi Asher, Rabbi Yom Tov ben Avraham Asevilli (often referred to as the Ritva; Spain, 1250–1330) proffered this interpretation: ‫ כפרה‬should be understood as “appeasement” rather than “atonement” (following Gen. 32:21). Ritva to Shavuot 9a, s.v. ‫הכי‬ ‫גרסינן‬. In the nineteenth century, the leader of ultra-Orthodox Jewry, Rabbi Moses Sofer (1762–1839), offered the following creative reinterpretation: “God appeased the moon. For in the next world, in the world of fixing [‫]תיקון‬, the flaws of the moon will be fixed and the light of the moon will be like the light of the sun. And with this, the moon will be appeased. However, the matter depends on the fixing of our own deeds, only then will there be a fixing [of the moon]. But, because of our great sins, we are prolonging the exile with our depraved acts. [Consequently,] the moon protests God that He has not rushed to appease him [by bringing the Messiah]. It thus turns out that we are causing the [moon’s] protests against God!! Therefore, on the first day of the month, the time of the renewal of the moon, we need to bring a sacrifice for our souls for we caused the moon to still be unappeased.” Ḥatam Sofer to BT Ḥullin 60b, s.v. ‫הביאו עלי‬. Rabbi Sofer’s reading of BT Ḥullin 60b highlights, in stark fashion, the gap of theological thinking between the authors of this Bavli teaching and the leader of nineteenth-century ultra-Orthodox Jewry: whereas BT Ḥullin 60b sanctions, even celebrates, the moon’s protest (as evinced by God’s confession of sin), Rabbi Sofer regards the moon’s protest—or any protest, for that matter against God—as a grave sin! According to Rabbi Sofer, the Jewish people as a whole are responsible for the moon’s protest because had the Jewish people followed God’s Torah, the Messiah would come and perfect the moon, thereby ending the moon’s ongoing “sinful” protest. In short, every monthly lunar protest against God implicates world Jewry. Interestingly enough, Rabbi Moses imposes his opposition to theological protest onto a rabbinic text that, perhaps more than any other, celebrates the legitimacy of theological protest.



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77. See Richard L. Rubenstein, The Religious Imagination (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1985), 28: “There are no abstract summations of rabbinic belief in philosophical categories. One can discern definitive trends in Jewish theology, but only by examining the concrete stories about interpersonal and divine-human encounters.”

Conclusion 1. I once heard this formulation from Moshe Halbertal. 2. Genesis Rabbah 54:3. 3. See Sheldon Blank, “Men Against God: The Promethean Element in Biblical Prayer,” Journal of Biblical Literature 72 (1953): 1–13. 4. Johann Baptist Metz, “Suffering unto God,” Critical Inquiry 20, no. 4 (1994): 611–22. 5. Ibid., 615–16. 6. Ibid., 618. 7. Notably, this famous cry does not appear in the Gospel of Luke or the Gospel of John. Possibly, the author of Luke or John found Jesus’ lament as theologically problematic. Indeed, bothered by the lament, Ambrose of Milan makes it clear that only as a human being could Jesus ever doubt God. Hence, it was only Jesus’ human voice, not his divine one, that cried out, “My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?” See Ambrose, On the Christian Faith, 2:7:56, found in Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, Second Series (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1890), 10:230. 8. John K. Roth, “A Theodicy of Protest,” in Encountering Evil: Live Options in Theodicy, ed. Stephen T. Davis (Louisville: Westminister John Knox Press, 2001), 19. 9. Ibid. 10. Indeed, this could also explain Rabbi Akiva’s harsh denunciation of theological protest. Recall, it was Rabbi Akiva who emphasized divine pathos: God suffers with Israel in exile. 11. Metz, “Suffering unto God,” 618. 12. Ibid., 619. 13. Gedaliahu G. Stroumsa, “Form(s) of God: Some Notes on Metatron and Christ,” Harvard Theological Review 76, no. 3 (1983): 270.

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Index

Abraham, 2, 4, 36–37, 52, 53, 62–63, 73, 82, 90, 91, 92, 98, 102, 104, 112, 130–32, 134, 138, 139–41, 146, 163, 166, 168 Adimantus, 75, 144; The Disputationes, 144 Afterman, Adam, 155 Against the Galilean (Julian the Apostate), 143 Akiva, Rabbi, 25–27, 29, 31, 33, 39, 41–42, 49, 50, 58–67, 68, 75, 81, 86, 87, 88, 93, 95, 150, 151, 156, 161 Ambrose, 43 Ambrosiaster (Pseudo-Ambrose), 144; Questions on the Old and New Testament, 144 Amphilochia (Photius of Constantinople), 145 Anastasios of Sinai, 145; Guide Along the Right Path, 145; Questions and Answers, 145 Anisfeld, Rachel, 123 anthropomorphism, 20, 27, 143, 145, 150–56, 163, 164, 167, 183, 185–86 Antithesis (Marcion of Sinope), 26, 27, 142– 43, 144 Antony, 185 Aristotle, 98, 154 Augustine of Hippo, 15, 46, 144, 152, 164, 165, 167, 181, 184–85 Auschwitz, 21 Babylonia, 84–86, 87, 182 Babylonian Talmud (BT), 7–8, 11, 14, 15, 18, 19, 29, 50, 58, 64–67, 70–71, 79–87, 97– 98, 117, 119, 133, 168, 171, 180–81 Baskin, Judith, 43 Berg, J. A. van den, 144 Besserman, Lawrence, 43 Book of Beliefs and Opinions (Sa’adia Gaon), 146 Book of Jubilees, The, 155–56 Bregman, Marc, 12–14, 80, 85 Brock, Sebastian, 83

Brown, Peter, 81–82 Celsus, 27, 75, 81, 143, 144, 145, 147, 163; The True Word, 143 children, 27, 99–100, 107–10, 127–28, 143– 46, 168–74 Christianity, 1–2, 9, 15, 17–22, 26–27, 30, 39, 42–44, 46, 48, 50–51, 72, 73–74, 78–84, 87, 128, 142–47, 152, 157, 160, 163, 164, 170, 182, 184–86; potter-clay parables, 73–74. See also Augustine of Hippo; Origen of Alexandria cities of refuge, 179–80 concession, 17, 20, 47, 70, 77, 168–82 confrontation: Abraham, 2, 4, 36–37, 42, 53, 62–63, 82, 83, 89–92, 98, 102, 104, 112, 130–34, 138, 139–41, 163, 168; Akiva, Rabbi, 25–27, 29, 31, 33, 39, 41–42, 49, 50, 58–67, 68, 75, 81, 86, 87, 88, 93, 95, 150, 151, 156, 161; anthropomorphism, 20, 27, 143, 145, 150–56, 163, 164, 167, 183, 185–86; children, 99–100; Christians, 142–47; friendship, 8, 97–99, 151–52; Gnostics, 20, 26–27, 143; Habakkuk, 4, 39, 44, 46–48; Ḥoni, 34–36, 39, 67–69, 100, 101, 103; husbands, 100–101; Job, 2, 4–5, 10, 24, 29, 31, 39–44, 47, 51–60, 89–93, 97–98, 102, 138; language, 3, 34, 35, 36, 43, 44, 68, 71, 104, 105, 112, 113, 185; lawsuits, 104–10; Moses, 4, 9–10, 34, 37, 39, 42, 44–47, 52, 53–56, 63, 65–66, 69–71, 94–101, 105, 111– 24, 134–39, 145, 162–63, 164–65, 171–81; Moslems, 145–46; parables, 72–79, 114– 20; parrhesia, 6, 8–10, 19, 81–82, 87, 89, 92, 96, 98–99, 102; Phineas, 132–34; posttannaitic texts, 79–84, 86–87; power, 30, 38, 55–58, 82, 86–87, 102, 150, 186; prayers, 110–14; rabbinic authority, 30, 33, 124, 147; rabbinic ethics, 125–48; Sarah (Sarai),

284

i n de x

83, 139–42; Second Temple literature, 5–6, 10, 22, 24–25, 49, 54, 87; valorization, 9, 16, 18, 33, 66, 70–72, 80, 109, 120, 133 critique. See confrontation Cyrus, King of Persia, 5 Daube, David, 157 David, king of Israel, 31, 51, 136, 144 Dead Sea Scrolls, 6 Deuteronomy Rabbah, 11, 12, 93–97, 102–3, 179–80 Didymus the Blind, 42–43 Diogenes of Sinope, 8 Disputationes, The (Adimantus), 144 doubt, 2, 4, 21, 38, 65–66, 132, 139, 146 Ecclesiastes Rabbah, 85, 105 Ehrenreich, Rabbi Shlomo Zalman, 21 Einhorn, Zev Wolf, 91 Elbaum, J., 82–83 Eleazar, Rabbi, 33–39, 50, 58, 67–70, 86, 88, 100, 103, 156 Eliezer, Rabbi. See Pirqe de-Rabbi Eliezer Ephrem the Syrian, 83 Esposito, John L., World Religions Today, 21 Evil Inclination, 27, 74–78, 143, 146, 165, 167 Exodus Rabbah I, 94–97 Exodus Rabbah II, 11, 12, 54, 55–57, 71, 76– 78, 100, 117, 118, 119, 122–24 Fasching, Darrell J., World Religions Today, 21 Fishbane, Michael, 133, 150, 153–54, 169 Flavius Josephus, 10 Fleisher, Ezra, 146 Foucault, Michel, 102 frank speech. See parrhesia friendship, 8, 82, 97–100, 151–52 Gemser, B., 4 Genesis Rabbah, 11, 12, 13, 14, 18, 31, 32, 50, 70–71, 89–92, 102, 105, 120, 128, 130, 131– 32, 138–42, 156, 159, 165–68, 184 genocidal war, 174–79 Gnosticism, 20, 26–27, 81, 143, 144, 186; Revelation of Adam, 27, 143; The Secret Book According to John, 27, 143; The Testimony of Truth, 26–27, 143, 170. See also Manichaeism; Ptolemy Goldin, Judah, 135–36, 138–39 Goshen-Gottstein, Alon, 154

Greece (ancient), 8–10, 17, 22, 48, 89, 99, 160, 182 Gregory the Great, 28, 43; Moralia, 28 Guide Along the Right Path (Anastasios of Sinai), 145 Guttmann, Jacob, 146, 147 Habakkuk, 4, 39, 44, 46–48, 71, 113 Hagiographa, 13 Halbertal, Moshe, 15–16, 17, 19–20, 21, 125– 26, 152; Interpretive Revolutions in the Making, 15, 17, 20, 125–26 Halivni, David Weiss, 17 Hartman, David, 17 hashavah, 88 Hasidim, 2, 21 hattaḥat devarim, 38, 69–70, 88 Heinemann, Joseph, 106–7, 111 Heschel, Abraham Joshua, 25–26, 150, 151; Torah from Heaven, 25–26 hirhur, 88, 103 Hiwi al-Balkhi, 146, 147, 163 Holocaust, 2, 21 Ḥoni, 34–36, 39, 67–69, 100, 101, 103 How to Distinguish a Flatterer from a Friend (Plutarch), 93, 96–97 humanization. See anthropomorphism husbands. See confrontation Ibn Al-Rawandi, 145; Kitab al-Damigh, 145 Ibn Hazm, 146 Idel, Moshe, 153–54 Interpretive Revolutions in the Making (Halbertal), 15, 17, 20, 125–26 intimacy, 8, 97, 102, 130, 151–52, 160, 182, 277 Irenaeus, 27 Isaac, Rabbi, 93–94, 97, 102–3 Ishmael, Rabbi. See Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael Islam, 2, 12, 14, 74, 85, 136, 145–46, 182 Isocrates, 8, 96, 98 Jacob of Serugh, 83 Jahiz, Bahr Al, 145; Refutation of Christianity, 145 Jeremiah, 2, 4, 39, 46, 71, 98, 104, 113, 150 Jerusalem Talmud, 12, 14, 37, 38, 64, 66, 71, 79, 80, 81, 84, 111, 156–57, 165 Jesus of Nazareth, 9, 73, 185 Job, 2, 4–5, 10, 24, 29, 31, 39–44, 47, 51–58, 60, 89, 90, 91–93, 97–98, 102, 138



i n de x

John of Chrysostom, 30 Judah the Patriarch, Rabbi, 164–65 Julian the Apostate, 132, 143, 145; Against the Galilean, 143 Justin, 27 Kabbalah, 154–55 Kadushin, Max, 2 Kahana, Menachem, 22 Kaminsky, Joel, 127 Kaufmann, Y., 46 Kiperwasser, Reuven, 85 Kitab al-Damigh (Al-Rawandi), 145 Konstan, David, 98 Kraemer, David, 64–66, 79–81, 83–84, 87 Kushelevsky, Rella, 136 Lakish, Reish, 101 Lamentations Rabbah, 11, 50, 70, 165 language. See confrontation Lavee, Moshe, 84 law, 155–60, 161, 162; lawsuits, 104–10, 120 Laytner, Anson, 21 Layton, Richard, 42, 43 Lazarus-Yafeh, Hava, 145 Letter to Flora (Ptolemy), 27, 143 Levi, Rabbi, 71, 89–94, 97, 102, 130–31, 171, 176 Levinson, Joshua, 123–24, 140 Leviticus Rabbah, 12, 13–14, 17, 18, 62–63, 128, 129, 137–38 Liber antiquitatum biblicarum (LAB), 6 Lieber, Laura, 83 Lorberbaum, Yair, 152–53 love, 7, 8, 25, 37, 63, 98, 99, 101, 102, 150, 182, 184 Maimonides, Moses, 152–55 Manichaeism, 144, 145. See also Adimantus Marcion of Sinope, 16, 17, 25–28, 75, 81, 87, 128, 142–46, 147, 163, 170, 184, 186; Antithesis, 26, 27, 142–43, 144 Mardanfarrox I Orhmazddadan, 146, 163; Skand Gumanig Wizar, 146 Marmorstein, Arthur, 2, 17, 26–28, 81, 151, 156–57 Marrow, Stanley, 9 mashal, 114–20 Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael, 14, 23, 24–25, 28–29, 31, 32, 58, 60, 61, 62, 124, 164, 170, 171, 173–74

285

Messiah, 13, 47 Metz, Johann Baptist, 2, 184–85 Midrash Tanḥuma: Buber, 11, 12, 32; Standard, 11, 12, 36–37, 44–45, 53, 59–61, 105– 6, 114, 116, 129–30, 137, 140, 171–74 Mintz, Alan, 116–17 Mishnah, 14, 35, 41, 67–68, 79, 81, 100, 164 Momigliano, Arnold, 8 Moralia (Gregory the Great), 28 Moralia (Plutarch), 8 Moses, 4, 9–10, 20, 23, 31, 34, 37, 39, 42, 44–47, 52–56, 63, 65–66, 69–71, 82, 93– 101, 105, 111–27, 134–39, 145, 162, 164–65, 168–69, 171–81 Muffs, Yochanan, 4–5, 71 Munitiz, Joseph, 145 mysticism, 16, 150, 153, 154; Kabbalah, 154–55 Narsai, 83 Neusner, Jacob, 83–84, 151 Newsom, Carol, 2 Nikolsky, Ronit, 84, 85 nimshal, 114–20 Numbers Rabbah II, 11, 12, 173 On Frank Criticism (Philodemus), 8, 98 Origen of Alexandria, 15, 26, 27, 128, 143, 144, 181 paganism, 19, 26, 27, 81, 132, 143, 163, 183, 186 Pappus, Rabbi, 59–61 parables, 72–79, 114–20 Parables in Midrash (Stern), 114 parrhesia, 6, 8–10, 19, 81–82, 87, 89, 92, 96, 98–99, 102 Pesiqta de-Rav Kahana, 13, 14, 100 Pesiqta Rabbati, 11, 12, 42, 51–57, 157–58 phenomenology, 101–3, 183, 184 Philodemus, 8, 9, 19, 98, 113; On Frank Criticism, 8, 98 Philo of Alexandria, 6, 8–10, 11, 14, 15, 19, 20, 92, 99 Phineas, 20, 132–34 Photius of Constantinople, 145; Amphilochia, 145 Pirqe de-Rabbi Eliezer, 13, 28–29 Plantinga, Alvin, 155 Plato, 98 Platonism, 8, 27, 143, 186. See also Celsus; Porphyry

286

i n de x

Plutarch, 8, 19, 93, 96–99, 113; How to Distinguish a Flatterer from a Friend, 93, 96– 97; Moralia, 8 Porphyry, 81, 143, 145, 147 post-tannaitic period, 10–11, 22, 33, 50–51, 67, 75, 81, 151 prayers, 110–14, 120 prohibition, 18, 23–24, 26, 28, 31–32, 33, 35– 36, 50, 58–63, 67–70, 86, 159 protest theology. See confrontation protest ventriloquism, 11, 15, 104, 125, 130, 167 Ptolemy, 27, 143; Letter to Flora, 27, 143 punishment, 10, 18, 20, 33–41, 46, 50, 52–54, 57, 62, 67, 74, 95, 102–3, 108–9, 115, 127– 34, 138–39, 142, 144, 168–73, 178; children, 27, 107–10, 127–28, 143–46, 168–74; Flood narrative, 20, 31, 41, 51, 126, 127–32, 167; Phineas narrative, 132–34; Promised Land narrative, 134–39; Sarah (Sarai) narrative, 139–42 Questions and Answers (Anastasios of Sinai), 145 Questions on the Old and New Testament (Ambrosiaster), 144 rabbinate: authority, 30, 33, 124, 147; ethics, 15–16, 125–48, 126 rabbinic age, 2, 10–20, 39 rebuke. See confrontation Refutation of Christianity (Al Jahiz), 145 regret, of God, 162–64 retraction, of God, 164–68 Revelation of Adam, 27, 143 Roche, Michel de, 105 Romanos the Melodist, 83 Rome (ancient), 6, 8, 10, 19, 64, 73, 89, 96, 98, 114, 129, 152, 157, 186 Rosenthal, Judah, 142, 145, 146 Rosen-Zvi, Ishay, 74–75 Roth, John K., 2, 185 Rubinstein, Jeffrey, 84 Rubinstein, Richard, 125 Sa’adia Gaon, 127–28, 146, 153; Book of Beliefs and Opinions, 146 Sages, The (Urbach), 153 Sarah (Sarai), 53, 83, 98, 132, 139–42, 166 Schechter, Solomon, 146–47 Schick, Abraham, 91

Scholem, Gershom, 154 Schreiner, Susan, 43 Schweitzer, Bernard, 2 Second Temple literature, 5–6, 10, 22, 24–25, 49, 54, 87 Secret Book According to John, The, 27, 143 Septimus, Bernard, 155 Septuagint, 9, 41, 43, 44 Shahrastani, Al-, 146 Sifre Deuteronomy, 14, 23–25, 27–28, 32, 45, 51, 57, 115–16, 128, 131, 136, 167, 175 Sifre Numbers, 14, 175 Sihon, 174–79 Simeon Stylites, 185 Skand Gumanig Wizar (Mardanfarrox I Orhmazddadan), 146 Sorkin, Aaron, 1–2, 186; West Wing, 1–2, 186 Stern, David, 114, 117, 165; Parables in Midrash, 114 Stroumsa, G., 186 Tanhuma, Rabbi, 12. See also TanḥumaYelammedenu (TY) Tanḥuma-Yelammedenu (TY), 15–19; Deuteronomy Rabbah, 11, 12, 93–97, 102–3, 179– 80; Exodus Rabbah II, 11, 12, 54, 55–57, 71, 76–78, 100, 117, 118, 119, 122–24; Midrash Tanḥuma (Buber), 11, 12, 32; Midrash Tanḥuma (Standard), 11, 12, 36–37, 44–45, 53, 59–61, 105–6, 114, 116, 129–30, 137, 140, 171–74; Numbers Rabbah II, 11, 12, 173; Pesiqta Rabbati, 11, 12, 42, 51–57, 157–58 tannaitic period, 3, 10, 13, 15, 18, 22–25, 50, 58, 81, 93, 151 Tertullian, 26, 27, 42, 163–64 Testimony of Truth, The, 26–27, 143, 170 Theodore of Mopsuestia, 47–48 Thorpe, Sam, 146 Through a Speculum That Shines (Wolfson), 101–2 Tigay, Jeffrey, 115 tokheḥah, 4, 6–8, 102 Torah from Heaven (Heschel), 25–26 Tosefta, 14 True Word, The (Celsus), 143 Undsdorfer, Rabbi Shlomo Zalman, 21 Urbach, Ephraim, 2, 41, 91, 153; The Sages, 153 valorization, 9, 16, 18, 33, 66, 70–72, 80, 109, 120, 133



i n de x

287

Von Harnack, Adolf, 26, 142–43

Yetser Hara (YH). See Evil Inclination

West Wing, 1–2, 186 Wiesel, Elie, 2 Wolfson, Elliot, 101–2, 150, 184; Through a Speculum That Shines, 101–2 World Religions Today (Esposito, Fasching), 21

Zohar, Zvi, 6, 7 Zoroastrianism, 19, 146, 163; Skand Gumanig Wizar (Mardanfarrox I Orhmazddadan), 146 Zundel, Hanoch, 91 Zunz, Leopold, 13

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Ac k n o w l e d g m e n t s

For the support offered me as the seeds of this book were planted, I wish to express my utmost appreciation. James Robinson’s clarity of thought and expression coupled with his encyclopedic mind, passion for medieval Jewish philosophy, and deep humility were tremendously inspirational. I am also profoundly grateful to Paul Mendes-Flohr for the wonderful Torah he taught me over the years. Through him, the figures of Mendelssohn, Rosenzweig, and Buber truly came alive. And, of course, words cannot adequately describe the appreciation, affection, and immense gratitude I have for Michael Fishbane. He has been—and continues to be—my rebbe. An unparalleled intellectual giant and one of the few constructive Jewish theologians of our day, he has devoted so much of his time and energy to help me grow as a Jewish studies scholar and as a Jew. I want to express my indebtedness to the Shalom Hartman Institute and the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago for funding some of the case studies from Chapters 2 and 6 and for providing exceptional forums through which I could receive crucial feedback. The same is true of the Ancient Judaism workshop at Yale University. I thank those in attendance, especially Christine Hayes, Steven Fraade, Robert Brody, Sara Ronis, Simcha Gross, Yoni Pomeranz, and Jonathan Kaplan, for their insightful comments and constructive critiques. Much of the research for this book took place in the spring of 2012 during my semester at Harvard University as a Starr Fellow. Special thanks to Shaye Cohen and the Center for Jewish Studies for bringing together an impressive cadre of scholars in rabbinics. Our weekly and very lively workshops provided camaraderie and intellectual stimulation. In this context I received invaluable suggestions on my book project from Yoni Miller, David Stern, Marc Saperstein, Meir Ben-Shachar, Shaye Cohen, Ari Finkelstein, Jay Harris, Yishai Kiel, Bernard Septimus, Zvi Septimus, Michal Bar-Asher Siegal, and Elitzur BarAsher Siegal.

290 Ac k n o w l e d g m e n t s

Over the past few years, I have been blessed with incredible colleagues in the Department of Religion at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: Jessica Birkenholtz, Michael Dann, Jonathan Ebel, Valerie Hoffman, Richard Layton, Shankar Nair, Alexander Mayer, Robert McKim, Rini Mehta, Rajeshwari Pandharipande, Wayne Pitard, David Price, Bruce Rosenstock, Brian Ruppert, James Treat, and Valerie Hotchkiss. This super-talented group has provided precious support and encouragement over the last few years. In November 2014, I received helpful comments on the book’s introduction at the department’s annual seminar workshop. I particularly wish to acknowledge Richard Layton for his invaluable suggestions and critiques. And special thanks to David Price, the outgoing head of the department, who has been my guide since I arrived on campus. On many occasions, David offered crucial insights with regard to the book’s arguments, organization, and development. For this and so much more, I am so appreciative. In October 2013, I presented Chapter 3 at the University of Illinois’s Program in Jewish Culture and Society monthly seminars. I received valuable advice from Bruce Rosenstock, Jacqueline Vayntrub, Matti Bunzl, David Price, and Richard Ross. And special thanks to Matti Bunzl, the outgoing head of Jewish Studies, for his general guidance and unwavering support. At moments of deep pessimism, Matti had the uncanny ability to lift my spirits. His presence on campus has been sorely missed. Although I never studied formally with Moshe Halbertal, his writings and lectures have profoundly shaped my development as a Jewish studies scholar. His towering influence pervades much of this book—probably more than I am aware—and I am deeply indebted to him. My utmost appreciation also goes out to Jerry Singerman, senior editor at the University of Pennsylvania Press, for shepherding this book through the publication process. Many thanks to the entire staff, and in particular Hannah Blake, Erica Ginsburg, Eric Schramm, and Jennifer Konieczny. I am also grateful to Daniel Boyarin, Derek Krueger, and Virginia Burrus, the editors of the Divinations series, for agreeing to publish my work. And special thanks to Tzvi Novick who carefully read the manuscript and offered invaluable critique and feedback. This milestone would not have been reached without the assistance, encouragement, and love of close friends. David Drew, David K. Harris, Evelyn Behar, and Rabbi Paul and Linda Saiger have helped me get through dreary Chicago winters. Eli Schostak, my theology and psychology havruta, has always been there for me—in good times and not so good. I am honored to



Ac k n o w l e d g m e n t s

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have him as a dear friend and comrade. Asher and Rachel Lopatin and their adorable children always provide me with a second home. Their love and friendship have deeply enriched my life. Adam Hyman and Zalman Rothschild have been like brothers to me. Their literary talents and creative minds have left their imprints on this book. And, finally, Elli Stern, a cherished friend since rabbinic school, has been my primary confidant throughout the entire writing process. More than simply commenting on specific chapters, Elli incessantly pushes me to think more broadly, to consider “the stakes.” Available at any hour of the day, Elli has been my sounding board for all things academic, as well as non-academic. I am forever grateful. I am blessed to have such a wonderful family. My brilliant aunt, Tova Reich, has been a role model since childhood; I check in with her before making any important life decision. My sisters, Elana Fischberger and Dena Levie, together with their husbands, Michael and Mark, and their amazing children, are a constant source of pride and joy. I feel their love and support even when we are not together. My mother, Toby Weiss, is a rare gem in this world. Her warmth, radical optimism, youthful energy, and perennial smile (not to mention her love of the Yankees!) inspire me daily and brighten my life. My father, Avi Weiss, is one of the thirty-six righteous people of our day. His passion for Torah scholarship, his commitment to helping those in need, his devotion to producing an open-minded and forward-thinking Judaism, and his insistence that one stand up for moral truth in the face of abusive power have been the guiding values and principles that I aspire to live by. Indeed, more than anyone I know, he exemplifies the paradoxical posture of piety and irreverence. To sum it all up: my parents are the best! I love them dearly and could not have reached this professional milestone without them. Aharona, aharona haviva, to my fiancée, Shayndi Raice. Your support and love have guided me through the book’s final stages. When I met you, everything changed. It took two decades, but finally I found you. You are the light of my life. ‫ כמעט‬...‫על משכבי בלילות בקשתי את שאהבה נפשי בקשתיו ולא מצאתיו‬ ‫ אחזתיו ולא ארפנו (שיר‬...‫שעברתי מהם עד שמצאתי את שאהבה נפשי‬ )‫ד‬-‫ א‬:‫השירים ג‬ Upon my couch at night I sought the one I love—I sought, but found . . . not. . . . Scarcely had I passed them when I found the one I love. I held . . . fast, I would not let . . . go. (Song of Songs 3:1-4)