The Faces of Torah: Studies in the Texts and Contexts of Ancient Judaism in Honor of Steven Fraade [1 ed.] 9783666552540, 9783525552544

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Michal Bar-Asher Siegal / Tzvi Novick /  Christine Hayes (eds.)

The Faces of Torah Studies in the Texts and Contexts of Ancient Judaism in Honor of Steven Fraade

Journal of Ancient Judaism Supplements Edited by Armin Lange, Bernard M. Levinson and Vered Noam   Advisory Board   Katell Berthelot (University of Aix-Marseille), George Brooke (University of Manchester), Jonathan Ben Dov (University of Haifa), Beate Ego (University of Osnabrück), Ester Eshel (Bar-Ilan University), Heinz-Josef Fabry (University of Bonn), Steven Fraade (Yale University), Maxine L. Grossman (University of Maryland), Christine Hayes (Yale University), Catherine Hezser (University of London), Alex Jassen (University of Minnesota), James L. Kugel (Bar-Ilan University), Jodi Magness (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), Carol Meyers, (Duke University), Eric Meyers (Duke University), Hillel Newman (University of Haifa), Christophe Nihan (University of Lausanne), Lawrence H. Schiffman (New York University), Konrad Schmid (University of Z ­ urich), Adiel Schremer (Bar-Ilan University), Michael Segal (Hebrew University of Jerusalem), Aharon Shemesh (BarIlan University), Günter Stemberger (University of Vienna), Kristin De Troyer (University of St. Andrews), Azzan Yadin (Rutgers University)

Volume 22

Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht

Michal Bar-Asher Siegal/Tzvi Novick/ Christine Hayes (eds.)

The Faces of Torah Studies in the Texts and Contexts of Ancient Judaism in Honor of Steven Fraade

Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht

With 2 Figures Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data available online: http://dnb.d-nb.de. ISSN 2197-0092 ISBN 978-3-666-55254-0 You can find alternative editions of this book and additional material on our Website: www.v-r.de Cover image: Tunisian mosaic of Virgil seated between Clio and Melpomene, “virigl mosaic, bardo museum, tunis, tunisia” Datei: #33324292 | © Urheber: Peter Robinson/fotolia © 2017, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Theaterstraße 13, D-37073 Göttingen/ Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht LLC, Bristol, CT, U.S.A. www.v-r.de All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission from the publisher. Typesetting by SchwabScantechnik, Göttingen

Table of Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .9 Second Temple Literature and Its Afterlife Elizabeth Shanks Alexander Reading for Gender in Ancient Jewish Biblical Interpretation: The Damascus Document and the Mekilta of R. Ishmael . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .15 Aaron Amit The Knowledgeable and the Weak in 1 Corinthians and Rabbinic Literature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .35 Carol Bakhos Transmitting Early Jewish Literature: The Case of Jubilees in Medieval Jewish and Islamic Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .49 Daniel Boyarin An Isogloss in First-Century Palestinian Jewry: Josephus and Mark on the Purpose of the Law . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .63 John J. Collins Divorce and Remarriage in the Damascus Document . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .81 Devorah Dimant Apocalyptic and the Qumran Library . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .95 Charlotte Hempel The Theatre of the Written Word: Reading the Community Rule with Steven Fraade . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .119 Jan Joosten “A Gift of Arms”: The Greek Translation of Sirach 7:31 and the Interpretive Process Underlying the Septuagint . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .131

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James Kugel With a Little Help from the Rabbis: The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs and Rabbinic Exegetical Traditions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .139 Vered Noam Why Did the Heavenly Voice Speak Aramaic? Ancient Layers in Rabbinic Literature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .157 Aharon Shemesh Thou Shalt Not Rabbinize the Qumran Sectarian: On the Inflexibility of the Halakah in the Dead Sea Scrolls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .169 Rabbinic Literature and Rabbinic History Alan Appelbaum R. Matthia ben H  eresh: The First European Rabbi? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .181 Elitzur A. Bar-Asher Siegal/Michal Bar-Asher Siegal “Rejoice, O Barren One Who Bore No Child”: Beruria and the Jewish-Christian Conversation in the Babylonian Talmud . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .199 Albert I. Baumgarten “Sages Increase Peace in the World”: Reconciliation and Power . . . . . . . . . . .221 Beth A. Berkowitz Revisiting the Anomalous: Animals at the Intersection of Persons and Property in Bavli Sukkah 22b–23b . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .239 Marc Bregman Mordecai Breastfed Esther: Male Lactation in Midrash, Medicine, and Myth .257 Robert Brody “Rabbinic” and “Nonrabbinic” Jews in Mishnah and Tosefta . . . . . . . . . . . . . .275 Joshua Ezra Burns Roman Law in the Jewish House of Study: Constructing Rabbinic Authority after the Constitutio Antoniniana . . . . . . .293 Chaya Halberstam Partial Justice: Law and Narrative in Sifre Deuteronomy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .309

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Judith Hauptman A New Interpretation of the Thirty-Nine Forbidden Sabbath Labors . . . . . . .323 Martha Himmelfarb “Greater Is the Covenant with Aaron” (Sifre Numbers 119): Rabbis, Priests, and Kings Revisited . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .339 Marc Hirshman The Rabbis, Trade Guilds, and Midrash . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .351 Richard Kalmin Observation in Rabbinic Literature of Late Antiquity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .359 David Kraemer Interpreting the Rabbinic Sabbath: The “Forty Minus One” Forbidden Labors of Mishnah Shabbat 7:2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .385 Lee I. Levine Jews and Judaism in Palestine (70–640 CE): A New Historical Paradigm 

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Chaim Milikowsky At the Beginning of Rabbinic Literary Culture: External Sources of Knowledge—Legitimate or Illegitimate? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .413 Stuart S. Miller The Study of Talmudic Israel and/or Roman Palestine: Where Matters Stand . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .433 Maren R. Niehoff “Not Study Is the Main Objective, but Action” (Pirqe Avot 1:17): A Rabbinic Maxim in Greco-Roman Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .455 Tzvi Novick Formal Mirroring and Iterative Paraphrase in Tannaitic Midrash . . . . . . . . . .473 Ishay Rosen-Zvi Is the Mishnah a Roman Composition? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .487 Jeffrey Rubenstein Hero, Saint, and Sage: The Life of R. Elazar b. R. Shimon in Pesiqta de Rab Kahana 11 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .509

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Adiel Schremer “Most Beautiful of Women”: Story and History in Sifre Deuteronomy . . . . . .529 David Stern Just Stories: Fictionality and the Ma‘aśeh, from the Mishnah to Ma‘aśeh Yerušalmi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .545 Azzan Yadin-Israel “These and These Are Words of the Living God”: Halakic Pluralism and Its Discontents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .567 Prayer and the Synagogue Moshe Bar-Asher The Presence of Mishnaic Hebrew in the Blessing Formulas Ordained by the Sages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .583 Esther G. Chazon “The Road Not Taken”: Prayer in Rabbinic and Nonrabbinic Circles . . . . . . .603 Bernard Septimus Who Were the ‫ ? ַאנְ ֵשׁי ֲא ָמנָ ה‬A New Answer from an Ancient Poem . . . . . . . .619 Joseph Yahalom Early Rhyme Structures in Piyyut and Their Rhetorical Background . . . . . . .635 List of Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .659

Introduction

Steven Fraade, the Mark Taper Professor of the History of Judaism at Yale University, was born in New York City in 1949. He entered Brown University in 1966 as a physics major, and left in 1970 with a degree in religious studies, after taking courses with Salo Baron and Jacob Neusner. Steven spent a number of years after college in Israel, first as a member of the group that re-established Kibbutz Gezer, then at Kibbutz Hulda. Upon returning from Israel, Steven took classes at the Jewish Theological Seminary, then, in 1974, entered the PhD program at the University of Pennsylvania in the Department of Oriental Studies, Near-Eastern Division. His studies there—especially under Jeffrey Tigay (Hebrew Bible), Barry Eichler (Ancient Near Eastern legal literature), Robert Kraft (Second Temple Judaism and Early Christianity), Zvi Rin (Aramaic), R. E. A. Palmer (Roman History), and most importantly Judah Goldin (Rabbinics), his advisor—shaped Steven’s academic career. He also took advantage of the presence of numerous visiting scholars from Israel to develop ties with Israeli academia, another determinative influence on his scholarly trajectory. Steven’s dissertation would serve as the foundation of his first book, Enosh and His Generation: Pre-Israelite Hero and History in Post-Biblical Interpretation. Finally, and of no little moment, Steven’s stint in graduate school also yielded his marriage, in 1979, to Ellen Cohen. They are the parents of Shoshana, Tani, and Liora. After graduating from Penn in 1980, Steven took up a position in the history of early Judaism in the Department of Religious Studies at Yale University, which has profited from his presence ever since. In his early years at Yale, Steven benefited from the support and guidance of senior colleagues in Religious Studies and beyond, among them Hans Frei, William Hallo, Geoffrey Hartman, ­Bentley ­Layton, Wayne Meeks, and Franz Rosenthal. The poststructuralist moment at Yale in the 1980s, which drew attention to the performative aspect of texts, helped shape ­Steven’s second book, From Tradition to Commentary: Torah and Its Interpretation in the Midrash Sifre to Deuteronomy, which was published in 1991 and won the National Jewish Book Award for Scholarship. Together with his colleagues in the Judaic Studies Program and beyond, Steven has made Yale’s Religious S­ tudies Department a major international destination for the study of Second Temple and rabbinic Judaism. Steven has contributed in major and enduring ways to our understanding of the legal literature of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the “halakhic midrashim” of the early rabbinic movement, the dynamics of ancient scholasticism, and an assortment of issues in late antique Roman Palestine: rabbinic asceticism, rabbinic institutions,

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Introduction

literary and orality, translation, targum, and multilingualism. His scholarship is notable for its capaciousness and nuance. It is capacious in its chronological scope, stretching from Second Temple literature to the late antique synagogue. It is capacious, more importantly, in its methodological framework, which combines the philological precision for which Israeli rabbinics scholarship is rightly famous with the theoretical interests more characteristic of American scholarship. If this dichotomy of Israeli philology and American theory is less helpful today than it was in the past, this is in part due to Steven’s work and influence. Finally, Steven’s scholarship is capacious in its recognition of the impossibility of considering texts apart from history, or, in the areas of interest to his scholar­ship, history apart from texts. The categories that dominate Steven’s work—rhetoric, performativity, translation—inhabit precisely the interface between text and history. The bridging work that Steven’s scholarship achieves between periods, between methodologies, between text and history, is distinguished by its uncommon nuance. When Steven asks, as in the title of one of his articles, whether “hermeneutics, history, and rhetoric [can] be disentangled,” you can be sure that his short answer is no, and that his long answer involves an appreciative and instructive analysis of the entanglements. A collection of many of these articles was published in 2011 as Legal Fictions: Studies of Law and Narrative in the Discursive Worlds of Ancient Jewish Sectarians and Sages. Steven has contributed to the field of Jewish studies in ways other than through his scholarship. The relationships that he has cultivated with scholars of early Christianity in the Department of Religious Studies have helped to build bridges between this area and Jewish studies. His long-standing ties with scholars beyond Yale, in America, Europe, and especially Israel, have yielded rich and varied fruit, some easily discernible, in the form of edited volumes and conference proceedings, and some less palpable, but no less important: conversations, collaborations, friendships, insights. Steven is not only a great colleague but an inspiring teacher and mentor. His seminars model careful, nuanced textual and contextual analysis, and his graduate students can attest to his exemplary concern and support for them in every aspect of their studies. That many of Steven’s former students have contributed to this volume is a testament to the closeness of the bonds that he has formed with them. It is no coincidence that much of Steven’s research—on Tannaitic midrash, for example, and on 4QMMT—concerns the practice of teaching. Pedagogy, for Steven, is a topic worthy of careful attention, in theory and in practice. Nor does he confine his pedagogical pursuits to the academy. At his New Haven synagogue, Beth El–Keser Israel (BEKI), he regularly leads a class on the weekly Torah reading. He has occupied leadership roles in other capacities at the synagogue, as well as at nearby Jewish schools, the Ezra Academy and the Jewish High School of Connecticut. Many of the community members whom he has influenced joined with some of his students and colleagues at a conference in Steven’s honor at Yale

Introduction

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University in May 2014, “Rabbis and Other Jews: Rabbinic Literature and Late Antique Judaism,” at which earlier versions of some of the papers included in this Festschrift were presented. The articles collected here reflect many of Steven’s scholarly interests. They divide into three sections, one on Second Temple literature and its afterlife, a second on rabbinic literature and rabbinic history, and a third on prayer and the synagogue. This Festschrift would not have been possible without the help of many people, first and foremost the scholars whose work is contained herein. We acknowledge the numerous other scholars who wished to contribute an article in Steven’s honor but were for one reason or another unable. An incalculable debt of gratitude is owed to Aviva Arad for her copyediting work. Our warmest thanks, too, to Renee Reed, the program administrator for the Judaic Studies Program at Yale, who coordinated the aforementioned conference, and assisted with other logistics in connection with the Festschrift. We thank Professors Armin Lange, Bernard M. Levinson, and Vered Noam, coeditors of the JAJ Supplements Series, for agreeing to publish the Festschrift in the series, and Christoph Spill, the editor for Religion and Theology at Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, for ably shepherding the volume to publication. Finally, we acknowledge the generous financial assistance of Yale University through the Edward J. and Dorothy Clarke Kempf Fund and the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale. Michal Bar-Asher Siegal Tzvi Novick Christine Hayes

Second Temple Literature and Its Afterlife

Elizabeth Shanks Alexander

Reading for Gender in Ancient Jewish Biblical Interpretation: The Damascus Document and the Mekilta of R. Ishmael Introduction Scholars interested in the early halakic construction of women and gender have repeatedly sought to identify patterns in the rabbinic interpretation of biblical terms that can plausibly be understood to include or exclude women.1 The Bible uses a number of grammatically masculine terms (e. g. “man,” “citizen,” “sons of Israel”) to signify the community of Israel. When the early rabbis read the biblical text, they faced an interpretive dilemma. Should they read these terms in a restrictive manner, as indicating the men of Israel only? Or should they read these terms in an open-ended manner, as referring to both men and women? Grammar alone does not resolve the matter since both possibilities are encoded within masculine forms. Scholars have identified this phenomenon—rabbinic interpretation of grammatically masculine forms that alternately include and exclude women— as data rich in potential insights into rabbinic gender. They seek to uncover the reasons—presumably fundamental rabbinic instincts as regards gender—to move sometimes toward inclusive interpretation and at other times towards exclusive interpretation. My preliminary study of midrashic texts2 engaging this interpretive dilemma suggests that a number of factors impact rabbinic interpretation and guide the rabbis towards inclusive or exclusive readings, respectively. Notably, rabbinic assumptions regarding gender are not intrinsic to all of these factors. Drawing in many 1 Shaye Cohen, Why Aren’t Jewish Women Circumcised? Gender and Covenant in Judaism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 122–42; Tal Ilan, “‘Daughters of Israel, Weep for Rabbi Ishmael’: The Schools Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Ishmael on Women,” Nashim 4 (2001): 15– 34; Michael Chernick, “‘Ish’ as Man and Adult in the Halakic Midrashim,” The Jewish Quarterly Review 73, no. 3 (1983): 254–80; and Chana Safrai and Avital Campbell-Hochstein, Women out—Women in: The Place of Women in Midrash (in Hebrew) (Tel Aviv: Mishkol, 2008). 2 At this stage in my research, I have limited my investigation to interpretations preserved in the Tannaitic midrashic collections (Mekilta of R. Ishmael, Mekilta of R. Shimon bar Yohai, Sifra, Sifre Numbers, Sifre Zuta, Sifre Deuteronomy, Midrash Tannaim on Deuteronomy, and Sifre Zuta on Deuteronomy).

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cases on the past thirty years of ground-breaking scholarship on midrash, I offer the following tentative list of factors influencing interpretive outcomes: 1. the availability of earlier interpretive traditions pursuing one or the other reading 2. constraints imposed by decisively gendered biblical language (e. g. “each male”) 3. constraints imposed by related passages from elsewhere in the biblical text3 4. assumptions regarding the default gender of biblical subjects 5. assumptions regarding the grammatical gender of biblical language 6. assumptions regarding the divine, as opposed to human element of biblical language and halakah 7. real and ideal gender in rabbinic society 8. attention to textual irritants (repetition, contradiction, extra letters, etc.)4 9. adherence to the norms of Akivan vs. Ishmaelian midrash5 As is readily apparent, rabbinic assumptions regarding gender figure in only some of these factors (2, 4, 5, 7). Even where gender plays a role, it affects interpretation in different ways depending on whether it concerns the biblical text (2, 4, 5) or manifests in society (7). The process of distinguishing among these factors and identifying which come into play in any given instance offers scholars a finely calibrated device for understanding the ways in which gender and interpretation intersect. Where previous studies have focused almost exclusively on data provided by rabbinic choices to include or exclude,6 this approach expands the aperture of its lens by additionally attending to the rhetoric of interpretation: How do the

3 Daniel Boyarin’s work has been foundational in alerting me to the pressures exerted by related passages from across the canon in the generation of midrashic readings of Scripture. See Daniel Boyarin, Intertextuality and the Reading of Midrash (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), esp. 22–38. 4 I am indebted to James Kugel’s work for my understanding of the role that textual irritants play in the generation of midrash. See James L. Kugel, “Two Introductions to Midrash,” in Midrash and Literature, ed. Geoffrey H. Hartman and Sanford Budick (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986), 77–103, and James L. Kugel, In Potiphar’s House: The Interpretive Life of Biblical Texts (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990). 5 I have learned most on this topic from Azzan Yadin-Israel. See Azzan Yadin, Scripture as Logos: Rabbi Ishmael and the Origins of Midrash, Divinations (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004); Azzan Yadin, “Resistance to Midrash? Midrash and Halakhah in the Halakhic Midrashim,” in Current Trends in the Study of Midrash, ed. Carol Bakhos (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 35–58; and Azzan Yadin-Israel, Scripture and Tradition: Rabbi Akiva and the Triumph of Midrash (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015). 6 Scholars differ in their explanations of rabbinic choices. Where Michael Chernick sees rabbinic interpretation most intensively constrained by features of the biblical text (Chernick, “‘Ish’ as Man and Adult in the Halakic Midrashim”), Tal Ilan sees rabbinic attitudes towards women as a decisive factor (Ilan, “The Schools of Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Ishmael on Women”).

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rabbis understand and frame their interpretive work? Borrowing a method from the scholarship of Steven Fraade, in this paper I examine rabbinic interpretation alongside that of other ancient Jewish readers of the Bible in order to highlight the distinctive way that the rabbis understand and frame their interpretive enterprise.7 The current essay considers a single midrashic text wrestling with this interpretive dilemma. The Mekilta of R. Ishmael (henceforth, Mekilta) proposes a general principle that appears to resolve the question of when to interpret inclusively and when exclusively, without having to decide on a case-by-case basis. While the text in question offers an inclusive reading, I argue that text’s halakic conclusions are by no means its most interesting feature for the study of rabbinic gender. Following an approach that runs through Fraade’s scholarship, I draw attention to the rhetorical framing of interpretation as the rabbinic interpreter interposes himself8 and mediates between the scriptural text, on one hand, and the social world where gender is lived out, on the other. It is here, I argue, that this text most clearly illuminates rabbinic views about how gender operates in the world. Also as in Fraade’s scholarship, this essay highlights distinctive features of the rabbinic phenomenon by juxtaposing it to comparable materials from Qumran. The essay focuses on this particular excerpt from the Mekilta because of its potential for generative comparison with Qumran texts.

The Mekilta in Comparative Context The Mekilta offers the following principle for determining the legal subjects in a set of related verses employing the term “man” (’iš): .'‫היה ר' ישמע' או‬ ‫ פורט אני כל‬.‫ ופרט באחד מהן שעשה בו נשים כאנשים‬.‫הואיל וכל הנזיקין שבתורה סתם‬ .‫הנזיקין שבתורה לעשות נשים כאנשים‬

R. Ishmael used to say: Since all of the civil damages in the Torah are [stated] in a generic manner [stam] [using the term “man” without further modification] and [since] it [Torah?] specified [parat] in one of them making women like men, I specify for all of the civil damages in the Torah to make women like men. (Mekilta of R. Ishmael, Neziqin 6)9

7 See especially Steven D. Fraade, From Tradition to Commentary: Torah and Its Interpretation in the Midrash Sifre to Deuteronomy, SUNY Series in Judaica (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991), esp. 1–23, 149–58, and Steven D. Fraade, Legal Fictions: Studies of Law and Narrative in the Discursive Worlds of Ancient Jewish Sectarians and Sages (Leiden: Brill, 2011). 8 The rabbinic interpreter is most certainly a “he.” 9 Oxford–Bodleian Library 151:2, translation my own; transcribed from Maagarim 3.0 (The Academy of the Hebrew Language). Citation corresponds to Horovitz-Rabin, 269.

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In this excerpt from a passage to be discussed extensively below, R. Ishmael offers a general principle by which to resolve the confusion arising from grammatically masculine terms. R. Ishmael proposes that a particular domain of law (civil damages) be treated as a whole rather than adjudicated on a case-by-case basis. In all cases of civil damages, women should be included alongside men, who are Scripture’s explicit subjects. The principle is articulated when glossing Exod 21:18 (“when men quarrel,” with one injuring the other and becoming liable for damages). The redactor also cites the principle to include women as subjects in three adjacent verses (Exod 21:20, 22, and 26).10 The principle is not, however, cited when discussing several other adjacent verses, nor is an interpretation of these verses presented that explicitly includes women (Exod 21:33, 37; 22:4).11 It is noteworthy that the redactor does not refer to the principle when treating these verses, because two of them (Exod 21:33 and 22:4) are cited in the Mekilta immediately following the presentation of R. Ishmael’s principle. In the ensuing discussion R. Yonatan rejects the need for a general principle to include women, since inclusion can be learned from other features of verses with male subjects. R. Yonatan uses Exod 21:33 and 22:4 to illustrate his contention that a general principle is not necessary. We will examine his argument in detail later in the essay, but for now R. Yonatan’s discussion of female subjects with respect to these verses establishes the significance of the redactor’s failure to cite R. Ishmael’s principle when discussing those verses, as he does when discussing Exod 21:20, 22, and 26.12 A later scribe was sufficiently troubled by the principle’s absence in one of these cases that he viewed it as an oversight and added it in his text.13 It appears, then, that the principle was inconsistently invoked even when it was relevant; this fact suggests that the principle serves additional purposes alongside the straightforward task of resolving linguistic ambiguity in the Bible. I argue that the principle provides an occasion for the midrashic interpreter to position himself and the social world he inhabits relative to Scripture. Articulating the principle becomes a way for the interpreter to stabilize social dimensions of the world by grounding them in Scripture. The interpreter’s efforts to connect the social world to Scripture are necessary because, ironically, the very activity (midrashic interpretation) that connects the two also constructs a gap between them. Before proceeding further in my analysis of the Mekilta, I want to point our attention to an intriguing parallel in the Dead Sea Scrolls that, to my knowledge, has not been brought to bear in the study of midrashic engagement with grammati-

10 See Mekilta Neziqin 7, 8, and 9 respectively. 11 Mekilta Neziqin 11, 12, and 14. 12 Mekilta Neziqin 7, 8, and 9. 13 See Yalqut Shimoni on Exod 21:33 (ed. pr., Saloniki 1526/7, ed. Venedig 1566), cited in the critical apparatus of Horovitz-Rabin, 287 (Neziqin 11).

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cally masculine terms like “man.” The Damascus Document (henceforth, CD) offers the following defense for the prohibition of marriage between uncle and niece: But Moses said, “To your mother’s sister you may not draw near, for she is your mother’s near relation” [Lev 18:13]. [This verse prohibits a MAN from lying with his AUNT.] Now [the law concerning] forbidden relations is written for males, but [in this domain of law] women are like them [men], so if a brother’s daughter [WOMAN] uncovers the nakedness of a brother of her father [UNCLE], she is a [forbidden] close relationship. (Damascus Document V, 9–11)

As in the Mekilta, here too a principle is articulated that ostensibly relieves the need to adjudicate female inclusion in the Bible’s stipulations on a case-by-case basis. As with the Mekilta’s principle, CD’s principle operates in a particular domain of law, in this case the laws of forbidden relations. Also as with R. Ishmael’s principle, that of CD is inconsistently invoked within the Qumran corpus of halakic materials.14 Aharon Shemesh argues that the principle is operative, though not cited, in Jubilees 41:25–26, where the punishment of burning specified in Lev 20:14 (which prohibits a MAN from having relations with his MOTHER-in-law) is assigned for the sin of a WOMAN having relations with her FATHER-in-law.15 Shemesh also notes the silence of the Qumran corpus regarding two relations that the androcentric biblical text does not address. Lev 18 prohibits the inverse of neither 18:10 (a MAN with his grandDAUGHTER) nor 18:17 (a MAN with his step-grandMOTHER, that is, the wife of his paternal or maternal grandfather).16 CD’s principle leads us to expect that the gendered inverse of the stated relations (that is, a WOMAN with her grandSON and a WOMAN with her step-grandFATHER) are likewise prohibited. The Qumran corpus, however, does not confirm that the principle is applied to these relations. Shemesh argues that the Qumran sectarians followed the dominant position attested in other ancient Jewish writings, prohibiting these relations (woman with grandson and woman with step-grandfather). He explains that the sectarians were not prompted to articulate their position because it was

14 Aharon Shemesh argues that legal materials from Qumran should be viewed as a coherent collection of law, on account of the fact that legal materials (whether exegetical or code-like in format, whether from early or later documents) consistently reflect the perspective of sectarians of priestly Sadducean origins. Though the Qumran corpus encompasses both exegetical and code-like legal materials, he regards the differences between the two genres as inconsequential in view of the fact that “the sectarians themselves didn’t distinguish between biblical and nonbiblical ordinances” (Halakhah in the Making: The Development of Jewish Law from Qumran to the Rabbis [Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009], 30). On the idea that halakic materials from Qumran form a unified corpus, see ibid., esp. 15–19. 15 Shemesh, Halakhah in the Making, 84–5. 16 Shemesh, Halakhah in the Making, 85–6.

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not controversial.17 Like R. Ishmael’s principle, then, that of CD is inconsistently invoked. I argue that it too serves rhetorical purposes that go beyond clarifying the gender of scriptural law’s subjects. The parallels between the Qumran corpus and rabbinic literature are striking and invite comparison. Fraade’s work provides a powerful model for thinking about which scholarly questions are well served by bringing the Qumran corpus into dialogue with rabbinic literature, and which less so. He writes, Juxtaposing these textual corpora to one another may be less useful for tracing putative lines of direct genetic filiation, than for highlighting the distinctive reliefs of their respective morphologies of teaching. We thereby gain a richer understanding of how each corpus of textual practices performatively responded to and worked within its distinct cultural setting.18

In the analysis that follows I explore how each text structures the relationship between Scripture, on the one hand, and behavioral norms and the social world, on the other, and how each positions the interpreter within that relationship. Though CD and the Mekilta wrestle with similar exegetical dilemmas and propose similar solutions, the rhetorical framing of interpretation offered by each stands in sharp contrast to that of the other. Fraade’s work redirects our attention from “exegetical outcomes,” where both CD and the Mekilta include women by devising a broadly applicable principle, to the rhetorical framing of exegesis, where important differences give us insight into different ways of thinking about Scripture, gender, and interpretation. Studying the rabbinic phenomenon against the backdrop of Qumran illuminates rabbinic practices of interpretation by setting them against a project executed differently.19 Though the broader interest of this essay is to illuminate an exegetical phenomenon in its rabbinic manifestation, its comparative dimension requires attention to the Qumran phenomenon on its own terms and it is there that I begin.

Damascus Document CD’s principle appears in the text’s polemical introduction, called by scholars the Admonition, in which the sect’s history is narrated and the basis for its separation articulated. In the section of the Admonition that scholars call the “Nets of Belial” the text distinguishes between the appropriate practices of the sect and sinful ones 17 Shemesh, Halakhah in the Making, 85. 18 Fraade, Legal Fictions, 123. 19 A similar approach to comparison is found in Beth Berkowitz, Execution and Invention: Death Penalty Discourse in Early Rabbinic and Christian Cultures (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), esp. 181–213.

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of the sect’s opponents. The text here is difficult; to facilitate discussion I divide the text into three paragraphs (A, B, and C), drawing on the source-critical analysis of Philip Davies.20 (A) But during all those years, Belial is let loose on Israel, as God spoke through the hand of Isaiah, son of Amoz, saying, “Fear [pahad] and the pit [pahat] and the snare [pah] are upon you, O inhabitant of the land,” [Isa 24:17]—Its meaning [pišro] is the three nets of Belial, of which Levi, son of Jacob said, that he [Belial] entrapped Israel with them, making them seem as if they were three types of righteousness. The first is unchastity, the second is wealth and the third is defilement of the sanctuary. One who escapes from this is caught by that, and he that is saved from that is caught by this. (B) “The builders of the barrier,” [Ezek 13:10]—[are those] who walked after the Commander, the Commander is the spitter, of whom it is said, “Spitting, they spit,” [Mic 2:6]—[indicating] they are caught by two [nets]. (C) By unchastity: (1) Taking two wives during their lifetimes, While the foundation of creation is “male and female he created them” [Gen 1:27]. And those who entered [Noah’s] ark “went two by two into the ark” [Gen 7:9]. 21 And they also polluted the sanctuary by not separating according to the Torah: (2) They lie with a woman who sees a blood flow. (3) And they marry each one his brother’s daughter or sister’s daughter. But Moses said, “To your mother’s sister you may not draw near, for she is your mother’s close relation” [Lev 18:13]. Now the law concerning forbidden relations is written for males, but [in this domain of law] women are like them [men], so if a brother’s 20 Philip R. Davies, The Damascus Covenant: An Interpretation of the “Damascus Document” (Sheffield, UK: Dept. of Biblical Studies, University of Sheffield, 1983, c1982), 110–16. 21 Davies, following a number of scholars, suggests that the bracketed text has been interpolated. The analysis offered below is not affected one way or another by its status, whether interpolated or original. See Davies, Damascus Covenant, 116.

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daughter [NIECE] uncovers the nakedness of a brother of her father [UNCLE], she is a [forbidden] close relation. (Damascus Document [MS A] IV, 12 – V, 11)22

According to Davies, the text before us was created by joining two distinct sources (A and C), with B serving as a redactorial gloss. In A, a verse from Isaiah is interpreted to indicate that those outside the sect are caught in Belial’s three nets, leading them to sin in three areas: promiscuity, wealth, and defilement of the sanctuary (references to Belial’s nets in the text are indicated by boldface type). In Davies view, C was initially a separate source accusing those outside the sect of three types of sexual sin: (1) polygamy,23 (2) relations with a menstruating woman, and (3) uncleniece marriage (these accusations are indicated in the text with boldface italics).24 A and C were joined on account of the common count of three that appears in each source. In order to reinforce the connection between the two sources the redactor glossed accusation #2 (sexual relations with a menstruating woman) in C so that it now referred to defiling the sanctuary, the third net of Belial. Even so, there remains incongruity between the two sources, as there is no accusation that corresponds to the second net of Belial (wealth)25 and insofar as recasting accusation #2 as defilement of the sanctuary is not entirely convincing, as several scholars note.26 Two of the three accusations in C are supported by a biblical prooftext. The first accusation against polygamy is bolstered by three prooftexts, though scholars speculate that the third prooftext was interpolated after the text had been stable for some time (proposed interpolation is indicated with ).27 Davies argues that the prooftext verses support the polemical argument of the Admonition. He writes, The criticism of non-community halachah is justified on the basis of Mosaic law, public, not esoteric; … The argument is: you can see that their (your?) interpretation

22 James H. Charlesworth, ed., Damascus Document, War Scroll and Related Documents, vol. 2 of The Dead Sea Scrolls: Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek Texts with English Translations (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1995), 18–20; translation my own in consultation with Davies, ­Damascus Covenant, 243–45. 23 Scholars debate the intentions of the sectarian prohibition against taking two wives in one’s lifetime. I follow Schremer and others who read it as a reference to polygamy. See Adiel Schremer, “Qumran Polemic on Marital Law: CD 4:20–5:11 and Its Social Background,” in The Damascus Document: A Centennial of Discovery, ed. Joseph M. Baumgarten, Esther G. Chazon, and Avi Pinnick (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 147–60, esp. 148–49 (nn. 3–5), 157–60 and Davies, ­Damascus Covenant, 116. 24 Davies, Damascus Covenant, 115–16. 25 Davies, Damascus Covenant, 113. 26 See Davies, Damascus Covenant, 110, and Schremer, “Qumran Polemic on Marital Law,” 150. 27 See Davies, Damascus Covenant, 116, and Schremer, “Qumran Polemic on Marital Law,” 152.

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is contrary to (revealed) scripture, whereas ours is not …. This passage is a demonstration that those outside the community are misled …; [their halachah] is thought to be right by those who follow it only because they themselves are misled by Belial.28

Those outside the sect have been deceived into regarding their practices as appropriate. Their misdeeds do not follow from lack of access to esoteric teachings, to which the sect alone might have access.29 Rather, the outsiders’ interpretations are manifestly wrong, and Belial has deceived them into thinking they act appropriately. Davies suggests that no prooftext is provided for the second accusation (relations with a menstruating woman) because this behavior is not a point of dispute between those inside and outside the sect.30 The first point to make, then, about CD’s principle is that it is articulated in the context of a polemic about behavior. Scripture in this context is not a point of interest in and of itself, nor is interpretation pursued in an open-ended fashion. Rather, the principle is deployed to clarify what is and what is not correct practice, to sharpen the boundaries between insiders and outsiders, and to emphasize the errors of the outsiders. Correct practice is the primary concern of the polemicist, and Scripture is cited to legitimate sectarian practice rather than as a topic of interest in its own right. Shemesh notes that the sectarians do not distinguish between legal directives that are independent of Scripture and those that are derived from Scripture.31 Practice and Scripture are two sides of the same coin. Fraade suggests that sectarian practice itself has an “ongoing revelatory quality.”32 The fact that sectarian practice is regarded as authoritative in and of itself may explain why scriptural language is conceptually subordinated to the law/practice that it conveys. When discussing Lev 18:13, which prohibits relations between nephews and their aunts, CD distinguishes between the law (mišpat) concerning forbidden relations and the (apparently incidental) language in which it is written (katub). Though the law is written in a manner that names men as the primary subjects, women are like men insofar as they too are subjects of the law. Law (mišpat) regulating practice is something that one encounters in its written form in Scripture, but it appears to have a reality independent of its (incidental) scriptural articulation. In its essence, this law includes both men and women as subjects. Furthermore, insofar as the polemic represents sectarian law as self-evident from Scripture, it minimizes its own interpretive intervention via the principle.

28 Davies, Damascus Covenant, 109. 29 In contrast to the “hidden things” (nistarot) mentioned earlier in the Admonition (CD III, 13–14). 30 Davies, Damascus Covenant, 115. 31 Shemesh, Halakhah in the Making, 30. 32 Fraade, Legal Fictions, 57.

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The Qumran corpus refers on two additional occasions to the prohibition of uncle-niece marriage in the context of reworked biblical passages.33 4QHalakha A, which includes a paraphrastic rendering of Lev 18, records two prohibitions when rendering the single prohibition of Lev 18:13. The first prohibition (“No man shall uncover the nakedness of the sister of [his] mo[ther or of his father]”) is addressed to a man and forbids intimate relations with his aunt (as per Lev 18:13). The second prohibition (“[A woman shall not be given to the brother of] her father or to the brother of her mother”) is directed to a woman and forbids intimate relations with her uncle (as per CD’s principle).34 The second prohibition is a mirror image of the first, except that the gender of the parties has been reversed. 4QHalakah upholds the logic of CD’s principle, insofar as it states the nonbiblical uncle-niece prohibition alongside the biblical nephew-aunt prohibition. The fact that the two prohibited relations are presented in comparable terms in 4QHalakhah A highlights the rhetorical import of CD’s distinction between biblical and nonbiblical prohibitions. Unlike 4QHalakhah A, CD distinguishes between them in order to highlight the errors of the sect’s opponents. Hindy Najman explains that reworkings of biblical texts like 4QHalakha A wove their own versions of law, temple ritual, calendrical system and covenant, along with the very words of already authoritative traditions, into a single seamless whole. Thus they claimed, for their interpretation of authoritative texts, the already established authority of the texts themselves.35

Reworkings of biblical law that elide the differences between scripturally attested and interpretively derived mandates appear to be the norm at Qumran. A second source, the Temple Scroll, obscures the interpretive process that yields the uncle-niece prohibition even further. The derived prohibition is reworked so that it no longer is addressed to the woman, as it is when formulated as a female inversion of Lev 18:13 in 4QHalakha A. Temple Scroll 66:16–17 addresses the man rather than the woman as in 4QHalakha A, forbidding him to have relations with

33 Hindy Najman proposes that we avoid the term “Rewritten Bible” coined by Geza Vermes in favor of the term “Reworked Bible,” to avoid the anachronistic assumptions that accompany the concept of writing in our day. She considers the Temple Scroll (discussed below) as a premiere work of Reworked Bible. Hindy Najman, Seconding Sinai: The Development of Mosaic Discourse in Second Temple Judaism (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 7–8, 43–6. 34 4QHalakha A (4Q251) 17: “No man shall uncover the nakedness of the sister of [his] mo[ther or of this father. This is wickedness. A woman shall not be given to the brother of] her father or to the brother of her mother.” Geza Vermes, ed. and trans., The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English, rev. ed., Penguin Classics (London: Penguin, 2004), 233. 35 Najman, Seconding Sinai, 45.

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his niece.36 “A man shall not take the daughter of his brother or the daughter of his sister for this is abominable” (emphasis added). The prohibition against uncleniece relations now conforms stylistically to other biblically prohibited relations in Lev 18, which are likewise addressed to men. Aharon Shemesh writes that the “scroll’s author brings to its conclusion the process that started with a hermeneutical maneuver. It is not only that the law written from the male point of view should be read as directed to women as well. It is now actually written down this way.”37 Although CD presents the prohibition against uncle-niece marriage as deriving from Scripture with the aid of a hermeneutical principle, the sectarians saw fit to distinguish the original biblical prohibition from the hermeneutically derived in the context of polemical argumentation only. A final observation concerns the role of gender in CD’s polemic. On the face of it, CD’s principle equates women with men, whom Scripture represents as active agents and law’s primary subjects. Maxine Grossman, however, cautions against such a reading. She writes that the principle’s inversion of [male] action and [female] passivity is not complete here. [It is true that] the woman “uncovers nakedness,” but it is she, and not the man, who is the forbidden close relation [at the end of passage]. As such, she is the one who is presented as sexually unavailable and unacceptable for marriage.38

The Temple Scroll’s reworked version of the prohibition with its direct address to the man underscores Grossman’s point that the primary subject of the law remains the man. Grossman draws out the implications of the CD’s androcentrism for its polemic: Rather than focusing on women as actors, this text utilizes a slight alteration of its normal gender construction as an exegetical tactic that ultimately confirms the passive and secondary role of women with respect to the normative male covenanter … A covenanter is a righteous man who is in control of his sexuality—and the sexuality of his female partner and his female offspring—while a sinful outsider is someone who is willing to engage in inappropriate sexual or marital behavior, even though scripture clearly shows that such actions are forbidden.39

36 Temple Scroll 66:16–17: “A man shall not take his father’s sister of his mother’s sister, for this is immoral. A man shall not take the daughter of his brother or the daughter of his sister for this is abominable.” Vermes, Complete Dead Sea Scrolls, 220. 37 Shemesh, Halakhah in the Making, 89. 38 Maxine L. Grossman, Reading for History in the Damascus Document: A Methodological Method (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 51. 39 Grossman, Reading for History in the Damascus Document, 52.

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The effect of CD’s polemic then, is to contrast the male sectarian with his nonsectarian male counterpart rather than to link the biblically explicit male subject with an implicit female subject.

Mekilta of R. Ishmael With these observations regarding the rhetorical purposes served by CD’s principle in place, we can now return to R. Ishmael’s principle concerning civil damages. R. Ishmael’s principle is cited in its fullest form when discussing Exod 21:18–19, the first in a series of laws regulating civil damages.40 The principle is invoked to include women as subjects in a specific case: “When men quarrel and one strikes the other with a stone or fist, and he does not die but has to take to his bed—if he then gets up and walks outdoors upon his staff, the assailant shall go unpunished, except that he must pay for his idleness and his cure.” The verse describes a situation in which one man owes another damages to compensate for lost wages and medical expenses as the result of a fight. The Mekilta offers the following commentary on the first three words of the verse: When men quarrel (Exod 21:18). I only have men. From where can I learn women? R. Ishmael used to say: Since all of the civil damages in the Torah are [stated] in a generic manner [stam], and since it [Torah?] specified [parat ] in one of them making women like men, I specify for all of the civil damages in the Torah to make women like men.41

R. Yoshiah says: “Man or woman” [Num 5:6]. What is the import of this phrase [lit. “why is it stated”]? For elsewhere it says, “When a man opens a pit” [Exod 21:33], I know only man. From where can I learn woman? Scripture states, “Man or woman,” (Num 5:6). Scripture [hakatub] came and compared woman to man regarding all of the civil damages in the Torah.

40 The complete unit of civil damages consists of Exod 21:18–22:14. 41 And here, a more literal translation that reflects the qal sense of the verb (p-r-t.): “Since all of the civil damages in the Torah are generic [stam], and since it [Torah?] separated out [parat] one, making women like men, I separate out [poret] all civil damages in the Torah, in order to make women like men.”

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R. Yonatan says: It [Num 5:6] is not needed [to resolve the question regarding Exod 21:33]. Is it not already stated, “the owner of the pit shall pay” [Exod 21:34], “the one who lit the fire shall pay” [Exod 22:5]. What then is the import of “man or woman” [Num 5:6]? It comes to teach a special teaching.42 (Mekilta, Ish., Neziqin 6)43

As a running commentary, the Mekilta comments on scriptural verses in a serial manner, moving from one phrase to the next.44 R. Ishmael’s principle is cited to answer a standard exegetical question: The verse explicitly names men as its subjects; from where (minayin) do we know that women are also subjects? Where CD engages Scripture as an afterthought, formulating its principle to strengthen the force of its polemic about practice, the Mekilta evinces an interest in biblical Scripture for its own sake by taking Scripture as a starting point for its discussion. Scripture is in need of interpretation because the biblical text on its own is not a transparent guide for practice. Note the difference between this posture and that of CD, wherein Scripture’s implication for practice is regarded as self-evident. The Mekilta’s rhetoric assumes that Scripture’s laws undergo a translation process when being applied to the social world, which in and of itself stands at a remove from the biblical text. The use of a general principle to answer the “from where” (minayin) question is atypical, though not entirely unprecedented;45 the most common response to this question is to provide a verse introduced by the formula “Scripture teaches” (talmud lomar). In fact, R. Yoshiah uses this formula to respond to the same question in the next paragraph. R. Ishmael’s principle departs from the usual format by alluding to the scriptural verse on which his principle is based (“since it specified in one case of civil damages making women like men”) without actually citing it. Though he claims the principle as his own, saying “I specify for all the civil damages in the Torah to make women like men,” he relies on scriptural precedent to direct him towards it. Scripture’s explicit inclusion of women in one verse on civil damages justifies his

42 Commentators have little sense of what the content of this teaching is. See Jacob Z. Lauterbach, Mekilta De-Rabbi Ishmael (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 1933), 52, and Menachem Y. Kahana, Sifre on Numbers: An Annotated Edition (in Hebrew) (Jerusalem: Magnes, 2011), 2:36. 43 Oxford - Bodleian Library 151:2, translation my own; transcribed from Maagarim 3.0 (The Academy of the Hebrew Language). Citation corresponds to Horovitz-Rabin, 269. 44 See discussion of the genre of commentary in Fraade, From Tradition to Commentary, 1–3. 45 Kahana lists eleven instances in Sifre Num. where the formula “R. X used to say …” introduces the answer to a question. See Kahana, Sifre, 2:5, n. 22.

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(R. Ishmael’s) including women in other cases where the text is ambiguous. In this regard the Mekilta stands in sharp contrast to CD, where the inclusion of women is conceived as a “law of nature.”46 The Mekilta’s principle, unlike the self-evident one of CD, has a genealogy and a history that can be narrated. R. Ishmael intriguingly refrains from identifying the verse that “specifies” that women are like men, but this information can be deduced from the passage’s next lines. R. Ishmael’s disciples argue about the utility of Num 5:6 when determining the gender of legal subjects in various civil laws in Exod 21–22. At the center of their debate stands Num 5:6, which explicitly includes both men and women as its subjects.47 Clearly, this is the verse to which R. Ishmael alludes: When a man or woman commits any wrong toward another person, thus breaking faith with the Lord, and that person realizes his guilt, he shall confess the wrong that he has done. He shall make restitution in the principal amount and add one-fifth to it, giving it to him whom he wronged. If the man has no kinsman to whom restitution can be made, the amount repaid shall go to the Lord for the priest—in addition to the ram of expiation with which expiation is made on his behalf. (Num 5:6–8)

The verse speaks in general terms about the “wrong” one person may perpetrate against another, failing to specify the nature of the abuse. The fact that the wrong is redressed by monetary payment established as a percentage of a principal loss suggests, however, that the wrong involves property. Unlike Exod 21–22, which groups together diverse laws of civil damages, Num 5:6–8 is the lone law of civil damages in a unit of priestly law. We may surmise that its redactional setting is determined by the fact that damages are paid to the priest when the settlement creditor dies leaving no heirs to claim the payment. In any event, the fact that this law concerning civil damages appears outside of the denser collection of civil law in Exod 21–22 may be what motivates rabbinic interpreters to connect Num 5:6 to Exod 21–22. Not surprisingly, the argument between R. Ishmael’s disciples that appears in the Mekilta is also preserved in Sifre Numbers, where it glosses Num 5:6. Several minor variants suggest that it is the earlier of the two versions, and that Ishmael’s principle was formulated by the Mekilta’s redactors on the basis of the exegesis preserved in Sifre Numbers.48

46 See this characterization of Qumran law in Daniel R. Schwartz, “Law and Truth: On Qumran-Sadducean and Rabbinic Views of Law,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls: Forty Years of Research, ed. Devora Dimant and Uriel Rappaport, STDJ 10 (New York: Magnes, 1992), 229–40, esp. 230–31. 47 Kahana notes that this verse is unique in the Torah insofar as it includes men and women as subjects for civil damages. See Kahana, Sifre, 2:37. 48 Variants: (1) In Sifre Num., R. Yoshiah concludes that Num 5:6 works to include women as subjects for both civil damages and sin-offerings. In contrast, in the Mekilta, R. Yoshiah notes only that the verse serves to designate women as subjects of civil damages. On the basis of lec-

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R. Yoshiah says: “Man or woman” [Num 5:6]. What is the import of this verse [lit. “why is it stated”]? For elsewhere it says, “When a man opens a pit or when a man digs a pit” [Exod 21:33]. I have only man. From where can I learn woman? Scripture states, “Man or woman,” [Num 5:6] in order to compare woman to man in all of the sin-offerings and civil damages in the Torah.

R. Yonatan says: It [Num 5:6] is not needed [to resolve the question regarding Exod 21:33]. Since it already stated, “the owner of the pit shall pay” [Exod 21:34], “the one who lit the fire shall pay” [Exod 22:5]. Why does Scripture state “man or woman” [Num 5:6]? It comes to teach a special teaching. (Sifre Num., Naso 2)49

R. Yoshiah begins by interrogating the phrase “man or woman” in Num 5:6. Why does Scripture specify two subjects in the verse? As in the Mekilta, Sifre Numbers rhetorically presents its exegesis as a response to questions stimulated by local textual concerns; again, exegesis follows from an interest in the text in and of itself. The answer emerges when R. Yoshiah brings Num 5:6 into conversation with laws regarding civil damages from Exod 21–22. R. Yoshiah proposes that Num 5:6 counteracts potential confusion surrounding Exod 21:33: “When a man opens a pit or when a man digs a pit.” Since the legal subject can plausibly be construed in a gender-specific manner, Scripture provides Num 5:6, with its explicit reference to male and female subjects, as a corrective. R. Yonatan’s retort, which argues that the corrective of Num 5:6 is unnecessary for understanding both Exod 21:33 and Exod 22:4–5, suggests that R. Yoshiah assumes that Num 5:6 illumines a whole class of laws, of which Exod 21:33 is simply one illustrative example. R. Yoshiah tio difficilior, it is reasonable to assume that the version with the term “sin-offerings” was earlier and dropped out in the later version. (2) In the Sifre Num., R. Ishmael’s general principle does not appear. As argued below, R. Ishmael’s principle seems to build on R. Yoshiah’s exegesis and abstract from specific verses. It seems more likely that the Mekilta’s abstract principle was added to an earlier version that was missing it (Sifre Num.) than that the later text (Sifre Num.) deleted the principle from an earlier tradition that included it (Mekilta). The priority of the version from Sifre Num. can also be argued from logic. As the disciples’ debate centers on Num 5:6, it makes sense that the exegetical tradition first emerged in connection with that verse. For a slightly differently reconstruction of the relationship between the two sources, see Kahana, Sifre, 2:36–37. 49 Text transcribed from Kahana, Sifre, 1:10; translation is my own.

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concludes by articulating something very close to R. Ishmael’s principle: The double subject (man and woman) in Num 5:6 clarifies that women are subjects alongside men with regard to all sins punishable by a sin-offering and with regard to all civil damages in the Torah. The implications of the verse are broad, but R. Yoshiah stops short of articulating a free-standing principle divorced from exegesis of a specific verse. The verse-centric aspect of R. Yoshiah’s statement is evident from R. Yonatan’s retort. R. Yonatan argues that the import of Num 5:6 is not to include women as subjects in Exod 21–22, since that desideratum can be accomplished by relying on gender-neutral terms from more proximate verses (“the owner of the pit,” “the one who lit the fire”). R. Yonatan’s point is that Num 5:6 has other important work to do, and so “is not available” to accomplish what R. Yoshiah argues it does.50 R. Ishmael’s disciples agree that women should be counted among the legal subjects in Exod 21–22. They disagree on a more limited matter: which verse directs the interpreter towards this conclusion. R. Ishmael’s principle is clearly grounded in R. Yoshiah’s exegesis of Num 5:6, but as recorded in the Mekilta the principle is rhetorically distinct. First, the Mekilta generalizes from R. Yoshiah’s interpretation of Num 5:6. Where R. Yoshiah’s purpose is to explain the significance of Num 5:6, which he does by pointing to an ambiguity in Exod 21:33, R. Ishmael establishes a general interpretive principle that is divorced from both verses. He states that his principle is learned from scriptural precedent (parat bi’ehad mehem) without directing his audience to any specific verse. Second, though R. Yoshiah recognizes the broad applicability of Num 5:6, his discussion remains grounded in and tied to specific texts. By way of contrast, R. Ishmael takes R. Yoshiah’s exegesis and turns it into a full-fledged principle. First, the redactors use R. Ishmael’s principle to illumine a verse (Exod 21:18) that was not part of the initial interpretive framework, and second, they invoke it at the outset, as opposed to R. Yoshiah, who articulates his pseudoprinciple as an aside in the course of discussing a particular verse. A third rhetorical point of difference can be seen in the distinctive ways that R. Yoshiah and R. Ishmael position themselves as interpreters. R. Yoshiah’s engagement with Scripture is rhetorically represented as more passive than R. Ishmael’s. The Mekilta’s version of R. Yoshiah’s remarks states that Scripture (hakatub) equates (note the active verb, hišweh) women to men. Scripture does all the work; R. Yoshiah plays the part of the attentive listener.51 By way of contrast, R. Ishmael understands himself to be an active agent, even while he follows Scripture’s precedent: “Since it has been specified in Scripture that women are like men in one case, I take the liberty to specify that women are like men in all cases of civil damages.” 50 Commentators have little sense of what the content of this teaching is. See Lauterbach, Mekilta De-Rabbi Ishmael, 52, and Kahana, Sifre , 2:36. 51 Yadin-Israel develops the idea that the rabbinic interpreter is an “attentive listener” in Scripture as Logos, 34–47.

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Here R. Ishmael, the human interpreter, makes an interpretive intervention, generalizing from Num 5:6 to all civil damages in the Torah. Coming back full circle to where we started, R. Ishmael’s recognition of his role as an active interpreting agent is a far cry from the CD’s polemical obscuring of its interpretive role when it presents its principle and the resulting interpretation as self-evident.

Final Remarks In conclusion, it bears repeating that the basis for comparing CD and the Mekilta is the fact that both fashion an overarching principle to negotiate biblical androcentrism in a specific area of biblical law. This point of similarity notwithstanding, we can identify a number of differences in the rhetorical purposes served by the framing of such a principle. 1. Where the Mekilta rhetorically frames its interest in the relevant biblical verses as a concern with textual data (“why is it stated?” lamah ne’emar), the rhetoric of CD employs the relevant biblical verses to support a polemic with its opponents. 2. Where the Mekilta recognizes the role of the interpreter in formulating its principle (“I specify,” ’ani poret), CD represents its principle and the ensuing interpretation of Lev 18:13 as self-evident, as a “rule of nature.” 3. Insofar as the Mekilta recognizes the role of the human interpreter in deriving halakic norms from Scripture, the Mekilta makes a conceptual distinction between divine will as communicated in Scripture and the humanly implemented social order. Even as the Mekilta models the latter on the former, it recognizes a gap between them. By way of contrast, CD represents the social order ordained by law (mišpat) as divinely authorized and primary relative to the incidental language of Scripture. 4. It is the Mekilta’s attention to Scripture’s intertextuality that facilitates and authorizes its inclusion of women as legal subjects in the laws of civil damages. The fact that women are included on equal terms with men in Num 5:6 creates a warrant for including women as legal subjects in Exod 21–22. In this regard, the Mekilta can be contrasted with CD, which rhetorically represents women as self-evidently implied by the androcentric text of the Lev 18. CD obscures its own interpretive intervention in seeing women as implied. The Mekilta, on the other hand, grounds its inclusion of women in hard scriptural data. Its interpretive work consists in bringing the two texts into conversation. The interpretive work of the Damascus Document consists in articulating the law it assumes lies behind Scripture. 5. Finally, insofar as the Damascus Document’s principle is articulated to expose an underlying, enduring, and true law (mišpat), it rhetorically supports social stasis. The androcentrism of the biblical heritage is replicated in the andro-

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Elizabeth Shanks Alexander

centrism of the sect, as Grossman points out. By way of contrast, insofar as the Mekilta conceptually distinguishes between divine communication and its human implementation, it rhetorically allows for instability, change, and dynamism in the social world (keep in mind, however, that rhetoric does not necessarily reflect social reality). In the Mekilta, the biblical text is not immediately translatable into gender norms in the social world of the rabbis. We find an example of the perceived dissonance between divine law and the human implementation of social gender in the Sifra (which admittedly does not come from the school of R. Ishmael, in contrast to other rabbinic texts discussed in this paper).52 The phrase “a man, they shall fear his mother and his father” (Lev 19:3) elicits two comments. First, the plural verb “they shall fear” (tira’u) is read to include women alongside men as subjects of this command. Second, the Sifra explains why Scripture nonetheless names “man” as its primary subject if the intent is to include women also: “Since the man has the means and the woman does not have the means, since she is under the authority of others” (Sifra, Kedoshim 1:2).53 This midrashic comment recognizes that gender as is practiced in the social world of humans does not map perfectly onto gender as envisioned by scriptural/divine law. Scripture’s first impulse is to obligate men and women equally to fear their parents (feed, clothe, and otherwise care for them),54 but Scripture also accommodates limitations imposed by a humanly implemented social order that places adult women under the authority of their husbands without an independent means of fulfilling the obligation. The theme of incongruity between gender in the social world and gender as envisioned by God (and reflected in Scripture) also appears in a midrash about the daughters of Zelophehad: When the daughters of Zelophehad heard that the land was being divided amongst the tribes to males and not to females, they rallied together to confer. They said: The mercies of flesh and blood are not like the mercies of God [hamaqom]. The mercies of flesh and blood incline more towards males than towards females, but He Who Spoke and the World Came into Being is not thus. His mercies incline towards males, towards females, and towards all. (Sifre Num. Pinhas 133)55

52 Undoubtedly, important differences exist in the rhetorical framing of exegesis in collections deriving from the schools of Akiva and Ishmael. For a thorough treatment of these differences, see Yadin, Scripture as Logos and Scripture and Tradition. It remains to explore the significance of these differences when discussing the gender of Scripture’s legal subjects. The current paper, in any event, focuses on distinctions between the rabbis and Qumran, and in this limited context materials from the Sifra usefully illumine materials from the school of R. Ishmael. 53 ed. Weiss, 86a; translation my own. 54 These duties are extrapolated on the basis of a textual parallel in t. Qidd. 1:11. 55 ed. Horovitz, 176; translation my own.

Reading for Gender in Ancient Jewish Biblical Interpretation

33

While plotting their strategy to receive an inheritance in their father’s name, the daughters take note of how gender is perceived in divine, as opposed to human, realms. As above, this midrash recognizes a disconnect between gender as divinely envisioned and humanly implemented. We can speculate that R. Ishmael’s principle functions within the broader cultural context suggested by these two traditions regarding the difficulty of translating divinely envisioned gender norms into lived social reality. R. Ishmael’s principle emerges when wrestling with Scripture’s inscrutability as regards lived gender. In the wake of uncertainty, the principle lends rabbinic gender the authoritative imprimatur of Scripture. By juxtaposing the Mekilta and CD, and comparing them in this way, I hope to have alerted us to a new set of questions that offer insight into how the rabbis constructed gender when interpreting grammatically masculine terms. Moving beyond the conventional question that has been put to this material (what vision of gender leads the rabbis to include and exclude women as legal subjects?), I have focused instead on how the rhetorical framing of interpretation constructs a gap between Scripture and the social world of the rabbis, even as it attempts to bridge the gap. The Mekilta’s rhetorical linking of social gender to Scripture creates stability in the face of insecurity. Thank you, Professor Fraade, for giving me the tools to ask questions that yield new kinds of insight.

Aaron Amit

The Knowledgeable and the Weak in 1 Corinthians and Rabbinic Literature

Paul’s epistles to the various churches of the Roman world are an important source for understanding first-century Christianity and its relationship to Judaism. In his first letter to the Corinthians (1 Cor 8 and 10), Paul discusses whether the Christians of Corinth should be eating meat that had been dedicated to idols from pagan temples. These chapters have recently been subject to scholarly scrutiny. Peter Zaas approached research on these chapters “with the trepidation born of attempting once again to map such well-charted territory.”1 This was quite a turnaround from the situation of the early 1980s, when Wendell Lee Willis wrote: “Unlike some topics in Pauline studies, the problem of idol meat in 1 Corinthians has not been the object of extensive study.”2 Numerous books and articles in recent years have been dedicated to the topic of Paul’s view of idol meat—εἰδωλόθυτων as Paul terms it in 1 Corinthians, or ‫ תקרובת עבודה זרה‬as it is called in rabbinic literature.3 This study will focus on one aspect of this issue: the relationship between Paul’s view of the status of this meat for Christians (for Jews it would certainly be prohibited) and the rabbinic attitude toward the status of ‫דברים המותרים ואחרים נהגו בהם איסור‬, “things which are permitted and others have the custom to prohibit them.” In this article we will examine the connection between Paul’s attitude towards εἰδωλόθυτων, which he deems permissible to the knowledgeable and forbidden to the weak, and rabbinic attitudes towards prohibitions taken on by virtue of custom.

1 Peter S. Zaas, “Paul and the Halakhah: Dietary Laws for Gentiles in I Corinthians 8–10,” in Jewish Law Association Studies, vol. 7 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1994), 233. 2 Wendell Lee Willis, Idol Meat in Corinth: The Pauline Argument in 1 Corinthians 8 and 10 (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1985), 2. 3 For example: Peter D. Gooch, Dangerous Food: 1 Corinthians 8–10 in Its Context, Studies in Christianity and Judaism 5 (Ontario: Canadian Corp. for Studies in Religion by Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1993); Khiok-Khng Yeo, Rhetorical Interaction in I Corinthians 8 & 10: A Formal Analysis with Preliminary Suggestions for a Chinese Cross-Cultural Hermeneutic (Leiden: Brill, 1995); Derek Newton, Deity and Diet: The Dilemma of Sacrificial Food at Corinth, JSNTSup 169 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998); Alex T. Cheung, Idol Food in Corinth: Jewish Background and Pauline Legacy, JSNTSup 176 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999); Joop F. M. Smit, “About the Idol Offerings,” in Rhetoric, Social Context and Theology of Paul’s Discourse in First Corinthians 8:1–11:1 (Leuven: Peeters, 2000).

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1. The Passages in 1 Corinthians First, it is useful to review some of the issues that have concerned scholars dealing with these two chapters in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians. In chapter 8 Paul addresses the knowledgeable of Corinth, explaining that while they know that idols are nothing and are aware that there is only one God,4 this is not known by all. In verse 7 Paul explains: But this knowledge [γνῶσις] is not [present] in everyone. On the contrary, there are those who having till now been accustomed [συνηθείᾳ] to idols, eat [the meat] as meat sacrificed to idols [εἰδωλόθυτων], and because their conscience is weak [συνείδησις αὐτῶν ἀσθενὴς], it is defiled. (1 Cor 8:7)

Interestingly, here in one verse we have almost all of the key words that have concerned scholars of Paul in these chapters: “knowledge” (γνῶσις), “idol meat” (εἰδωλόθυτων), and “weak conscience” (συνείδησις ἀσθενὴς).5 The only missing link is “freedom” or “permitted actions” (ἐξουσία), which Paul mentions in 1 Corinthians 8:9, saying “do not let this freedom [i. e. the understanding that idol meat is really permitted] become a stumbling block to the weak [ἀσθενέσιν].” Paul ends chapter 8 dramatically, promising to refrain from eating meat forever (μὴ φάγω κρέα εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα) if it will “cause one of them to fall.” However, Paul’s suggestion of total abstinence is contradicted by his approach in 1 Corinthians 10:23–33, where he says that meat in the market may be purchased and eaten without any problem of conscience. The only caveat to this ruling comes in 10:28, when Paul says that if one is invited by a nonbeliever he may eat in his house anything that is put before him as long as it is not identified as ἱερόθυτόν (temple sacrifice); if it is identified as such it is forbidden to eat it—not for the sake of one’s own conscience but for the sake of the conscience of the “other” (ἑτέρου in Greek). Many have pointed out that Paul uses the term ἱερόθυτόν, which would probably be the pagan terminology in Corinth for what Paul and fellow Jewish Christians would term εἰδωλόθυτων.6

4 Paul stresses the fact that Christians, as opposed to idolaters, worship one God. See verse 6. This article will not address the difference between Jewish and Christian conceptions of monotheism. 5 For a summary of scholarship on these concepts see Anthony Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians: A Commentary on the Greek Text (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), 617–54. 6 For discussion of this word, see The Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, ed. Gerhard Kittel, trans. Geoffrey Bromiley (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1964), 2:378–79. Peter Tomson, Paul and the Jewish Law (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990), 189, argues that the term refers to any food offering, not only meat.

The Knowledgeable and the Weak in 1 Corinthians and Rabbinic Literature

37

What is the relationship between chapters 8 and 10? In chapter 8 Paul said that it would be better to refrain from eating meat altogether; nonetheless, in chapter 10, it suddenly becomes permissible to eat anything without questions of conscience. Early New Testament scholars ascribed parts of these chapters to different epistles;7 however, contemporary scholars like Margaret Mitchell have argued that the concentration of unique vocabulary in this section of Paul’s writing shows that we are dealing with one unified rhetorical argument.8 Whether this is the case or not, one has to ask a further and more basic question: Why is it that we find a concentration of the terms “knowledge” (γνῶσις), “conscience” (συνείδησις), and “freedom” (ἐξουσία) in this particular context? What is the significance of these terms in a discussion of the prohibition of idolatrous meat?9 In my opinion the best explanation offered by scholars for the inconsistencies between the chapters is that suggested by Gordon Fee.10 He argues that chapter 8 refers to idolatrous meals held in temples, while chapter 10 addresses the eating of idol meat in private homes or in the market. In the former case, Paul has no tolerance for deviation, and even though the knowledgeable know that temples are nothing and the deities therein are powerless, it is prohibited for them to eat there since this poses a problem for the weak. However, in 10:23–33 Paul has no problem with idol meat bought in the market or idol meat eaten in private homes, unless the meat is identified with the idol. Therefore, unless it is announced that the meat is sacrificial, there is no problem with eating it. While this could work in the context of 1 Corinthians 10:23–33, it is problematic to argue that chapter 8 only addresses eating in temples, since in verse 4 Paul specifically uses the terminology “food that is sacrificed to idols,” βρώσεως οὖν τῶν εἰδωλοθύτων. Only in verse 10 of that chapter does Paul specifically address the question of eating in the temple (ἐν εἰδωλείω). Moreover, we have yet to explain Paul’s special vocabulary in this context. What exactly does Paul mean by “knowledge” (γνῶσις) and “freedom” here, and how are these terms related to the weak conscience?11 Finally there is the basic question of whether the “weak” were an actual group in Corinth, or as Conzelman has argued, the weak “are not a ‘group,’ 7 For a survey of the different opinions, see Hans Conzelman, 1 Corinthians: A Commentary on the First Epistle to the Corinthians, trans. James Leitch (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1975), 3–5. 8 Margaret Mitchell, Paul and the Rhetoric of Reconciliation: An Exegetical Investigation of the Language and Composition of 1 Corinthians (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1992), 238–40. 9 It should be noted that there is another discussion of food and meat in Paul’s epistle to the Romans 14:13–23, which uses some of the same terms (like ἀσθενής), but has a completely different line of argument. 10 Gordon Fee, “Εἰδωλόθυτα Once Again: 1 Corinthians 8–10,” Biblica 61 (1980): 176–78. 11 Tomson, Paul and the Jewish Law, 195, argues that Paul’s use of the word ἀσθενής in this context should be compared with the rabbinic use of the term ‫אסטניס‬, which usually denotes bodily weakness, which leads Tomson to argue that “it is quite likely that for him [=Paul] the word had a similar specific connotation: ‘infirm, delicate’, stressing a restrictive diet rather than

38

Aaron Amit

but just ‘some.’”12 As I shall explain below, I believe that the weak were a specific group of people who existed in Paul’s community in Corinth. Nonetheless, I agree with Conzelman that the weak cannot be Jewish Christians,13 (a) because Jewish Christians would have known better, that is, they would have had “knowledge” and (b) they themselves would have objected to eating εἰδωλόθυτων. In my opinion, the key to understanding Paul’s argument in this context, and one that has been underutilized by scholars, is to read these chapters in light of rabbinic literature. I do not refer here to rabbinic halakah with regard to ‫תקרובת‬ ‫עבודה זרה‬, pagan offerings—this meat is clearly both nonkosher and strictly prohibited by virtue of its having been connected to pagan worship.14 I refer here specifically to laws regarding vows and minhag, which shed light both on the nature of Paul’s argument and on the unique terminology of this section of the epistle. This is true despite the fact that these laws are preserved in rabbinic corpora that date, at the earliest, well over a century after Paul.

2. Talmudic Parallels It was Saul Lieberman who first noticed the connection between Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians and talmudic literature. In a short note in his book, Greek in Jewish Palestine,15 Lieberman notes that Hermann Strack and Paul Billerbeck16 cited no talmudic parallels to 1 Corinthians 8:9, and then references a parallel to Bavli Pesahim 51a. However, Lieberman does not explain how he believes this text to be parallel to 1 Corinthians, and the explanation is far from obvious. In order to understand the importance of Lieberman’s reference, we must first examine a baraita that appears in Tosefta Nedarim 4:6 and a parallel version of that baraita found in Bavli Nedarim 81b:

a defective faith” (195). Therefore, Tomson translates the term as “delicate.” However, I think it is clear that Paul intends a weakness of understanding and not bodily weakness. See ahead, section 4. 12 Conzelman, Commentary on the First Epistle to the Corinthians, 147, n. 20. This point is then exaggerated by other scholars. See Smit, “About the Idol Offerings,” 86, n. 14: “The weak brothers who Paul introduces in v. 7 are hypothetical and indefinite. They probably are Paul’s invention.” 13 Conzelman is followed by other scholars as well. See for instance Tomson, Paul and the Jewish Law, 188. 14 See, for example, m. ‘Abod. Zar. 2:3. 15 Saul Lieberman, Greek in Jewish Palestine (New York: The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1942), 136, n. 157. 16 Kommentar zum neuen Testament aus Talmud und Midrasch, vol. 3 (Munich: Beck, 1926), commentary to 1 Corinthians, chapter 8, 377–79.

The Knowledgeable and the Weak in 1 Corinthians and Rabbinic Literature

39

Bavli Nedarim 81b

Tosefta Nedarim 4:617

‫דברים המותרים‬ ‫ואחרים נהגו בהן איסו' אי אתה רשאי לנהוג‬ ‫בהם היתר כדי לבטלן‬ "‫משום שנאמ' "לא יחל דברו‬ '‫דבר אחר "לא יחל דברו" מכאן לתלמיד חכ‬ 18 .‫שאי' מפר נדרי עצמו‬

‫ מניין‬,‫אף נדרים שאמרנו מותרין‬ ‫שלא יהא‬ ‫אדם נודר בהן על מנת לבטלן‬ .‫ת"ל "לא יחל דברו" שלא יעשה דבריו חולין‬ ‫'דבר אחר "לא יחל דברו" שאפי‬ .‫חכם אין מפר נדרו לעצמו‬

Things which are permitted, and others have the custom to prohibit [them], you are not allowed to behave as if they are permitted, in order to cancel them [i. e. the prohibitions], since it is stated “he shall not break his pledge” [Num 30:3]. Another interpretation: “he shall not break his pledge,” from here [we learn that] even a sage is not allowed to dissolve his own vows.

Even vows which we said are permitted [i. e. not binding], from whence [do we derive] that one may not vow them in order to cancel them? The verse states: “he shall not break his pledge” [Num 30:3], he shall not make his words meaningless. Another interpretation: “he shall not break his pledge,” even a sage is not allowed to dissolve his own vow.

1718

The Tosefta’s baraita is formulated as a midrash halakah on the verse in Numbers  30:3 “he shall not break his pledge”—these words would seem to be superfluous, since the verse continues “he must carry out all that has crossed his lips.” The Tosefta offers two interpretations, both of which apply the verse to a votary who has intricate knowledge of the laws of vows: the first interpretation warns against using “false” vows—meaning vows that appear to be real but in reality are not binding (see m. Ned. 2:1). The argument is that even if the vow is not binding, the deliberate use and abrogation of a vow that appears valid in order to mislead others is a violation of Numbers 30:3 “he shall not break his pledge.” The second interpretation, introduced by ‫דבר אחר‬, warns a sage against dissolving his own vows. For our purposes, it is important that according to both interpretations the prohibition is directed at one who has knowledge of the law. 17 Saul Lieberman, The Tosefta, According to Codex Vienna (New York: The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1967), 111–12. 18 According to the editio princeps, Venice. The content of the second part of the baraita (introduced by ‫)דבר אחר‬, arguing that a sage is not allowed to dissolve his own vows, is found in all but one of the extant witnesses (this includes the editio princeps, MS Vatican 110, and MS Moscow – Guenzburg 1134). MS Munich 95 does not contain the ‫דבר אחר‬. See The Babylonian Talmud with Variant Readings, Nedarim, vol. 2 (Jerusalem: Yad Harav Herzog, Institute for the Complete Israeli Talmud, 1991), 257, n. 42. In my opinion, we can explain the reading in MS Munich 95 by arguing that the second part of the baraita was deleted because it had already been cited, in a slightly different form, earlier in the discussion. See Saul Lieberman, Tosefta Kifshutah: A Comprehensive Commentary on the Tosefta, Nashim (vol. 7) (New York: The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1967), 459.

40

Aaron Amit

Now let us turn our attention to the parallel in Bavli Nedarim. There we see that the same basic structure of the baraita stands intact. In fact, the second interpretation introduced by ‫ דבר אחר‬is almost word for word the version found in the Tosefta. The difference lies in the first interpretation. In my opinion, the Bavli was aware of, and is dependent on, the earlier version of the baraita, which was incorporated into the Tosefta. Accordingly, the two-part passage now found in the Tosefta has been expanded in the Bavli into a three-part passage. First, and most importantly, the subject has been changed from the Tosefta’s formulation, ‫נדרים שאמרנו מותרין‬ “vows which are permissible,” to a general statement ‫“ דברים המותרים‬things which are permissible”; this is followed by a second explanatory clause: ‫ואחרים נהגו בהן איסור‬ “and others have the custom to prohibit them.” Finally the last clause of both sources is basically the same, since it is clear that the way the vow or custom could be canceled by the votary would be by behaving as if the activity is permissible. In both sources the interpretation is supported by the verse in Numbers “he shall not break his pledge.” However, notice that the Bavli has no mention of the root ‫ר‬-‫ד‬-‫ ;נ‬in the Bavli ‫ נדרים‬have become ‫ דברים‬and the baraita twice uses the root ‫ג‬-‫ה‬-‫ נ‬instead of ‫נדר‬. The development of the tradition found in Tosefta Nedarim from a baraita whose subject was vows into a baraita whose subject is prohibitive custom is what enabled the baraita to be used in the context of the discussion of custom cited by Lieberman, found in Bavli Pesahim 51a. There Abaye and Rav Yosef debate the proper reaction to the problematic custom of the people of Bei H  oza’i of separating hallah from their rice bread. In the context of their discussion, a baraita almost identical in form to the first part of the baraita in Bavli Nedarim is cited: Bavli Nedarim ‫א) דברים המותרים‬ '‫ב) ואחרים נהגו בהן איסו‬ ‫ג) אי אתה רשאי לנהוג בהם היתר כדי לבטלן‬ "‫משום שנאמ' "לא יחל דברו‬ a) Things which are permitted b) and others have the custom to prohibit [them] c) you are not allowed to behave as if they are permitted in order to cancel them since it is stated “he shall not break his pledge.”

Bavli Pesahim ‫א) דברים המותרים‬ ‫ב) ואחרים נהגו בהן איסור‬ ‫ג) אי אתה רשאי להתירן בפניהם‬ a) Things which are permitted b) and others have the custom to prohibit [them] c) you are not allowed to permit them in front of others.

The version of the baraita in Pesahim is almost identical, word for word, to the version in Bavli Nedarim.19 However, at the end there are two important differences.

19 The quote from b. Ned. is from the editio princeps, Venice. I did not quote the second part of the baraita here because it is not relevant to my discussion. For a complete treatment of the

The Knowledgeable and the Weak in 1 Corinthians and Rabbinic Literature

41

First, in the Pesahim version, the verse from Numbers 30:3 about vows is not quoted, and secondly, the baraita stresses that the knowledgeable person is not allowed to permit the activity ‫“ בפניהם‬in front of them.” The “them” refers to the “others” who hold the activity to be forbidden. Despite the significant development that the tradition has undergone in Bavli Nedarim and Bavli Pesahim, the baraita regarding custom in Bavli Pesahim still bears a basic resemblance to the original version found in Tosefta Nedarim. Like the Tosefta’s version, the version in Bavli Pesahim addresses the knowledgeable, who are not allowed to permit an activity that is considered forbidden by others. However, unlike Tosefta Nedarim, which does not characterize any party other than the sage, the version in Bavli Pesahim refers quite clearly to a group that does not have knowledge. They are called ‫ אחרים‬or “others.”

3. 1 Corinthians 10:23–29 and the Baraita in Bavli Pesahim 51a This plea to the knowledgeable to take into consideration “others” who lack knowledge bears striking resemblance to Paul’s argument in 1 Corinthians 8 and 10. Paul’s epistle, like the baraita in the Bavli, asks the knowledgeable to take into consideration the other or the weak. Thus, in chapter 10 Paul stresses that the eating of εἰδωλόθυτων is not a problem for the conscience of the person with knowledge, but for the conscience of the ἑτέρου, the “other.” The comparison between the baraita in the Bavli and 1 Corinthians can be illustrated as follows:20 1 Corinthians 10:23–2920 23) Πάντα ἔξεστιν ἀλλ᾽ οὐ πάντα συμφέρει πάντα ἔξεστιν ἀλλ᾽ οὐ πάντα οἰκοδομεῖ. 23) All things/matters are permitted, but not all things are beneficial, all things are permitted, but not all things build up.

Bavli Pesahim ‫א) דברים המותרים‬ a) Things which are permitted

24) μηδεὶς τὸ ἑαυτοῦ ζητείτω ἀλλὰ τὸ τοῦ ἑτέρου. 25) Πᾶν τὸ ἐν μακέλλῳ πωλούμενον ἐσθίετε μηδὲν ἀνακρίνοντες διὰ τὴν συνείδησιν· [...]

history and context of the baraita in b. Pesah. see Aaron Amit, Talmud Ha’iggud: BT Pesahim Chapter IV with Comprehensive Commentary (in Hebrew) (Jerusalem: Society for the Interpretation of the Talmud, 2009), 65–77. 20 The Greek text of the epistle is quoted according to The Greek New Testament, ed. Kurt Aland, Matthew Black, Carlo Martini, Bruce Metzger, and Allen Wikdren, 2nd ed. (Stuttgart: United Bible Societies, 1968), 601. The English translation follows the New Revised Standard Version.

42

Aaron Amit

24–25) Do not seek your own advantage, but that of the other. Eat whatever is sold in the meat market without raising any question on the ground of conscience, […] 27) εἴ τις καλεῖ ὑμᾶς τῶν ἀπίστων καὶ θέλετε πορεύεσθαι, πᾶν τὸ παρατιθέμενον ὑμῖν ἐσθίετε μηδὲν ἀνακρίνοντες διὰ τὴν συνείδησιν. 28) ἐὰν δέ τις ὑμῖν εἴπῃ· τοῦτο ἱερόθυτόν ἐστιν, μὴ ἐσθίετε δι᾽ ἐκεῖνον τὸν μηνύσαντα καὶ τὴν συνείδησιν·

‫ב) ואחרים נהגו בהן איסור‬

29) συνείδησιν δὲ λέγω οὐχὶ τὴν ἑαυτοῦ ἀλλὰ τὴν τοῦ ἑτέρου. ἱνατί γὰρ ἡ ἐλευθερία μου κρίνεται ὑπὸ ἄλλης συνειδήσεως.

.‫ג) אי אתה רשאי להתירן בפניהם‬

27–28) If an unbeliever invites you to a meal and you are disposed to go, eat whatever is set before you without raising any question on the ground of conscience. But if someone says to you, “This has been offered in sacrifice,” then b) and others have the custom to do not eat it, out of consideration for the ­ rohibit [them]. p one who informed you, and for the sake c) you are not allowed to permit them of conscience 29) I mean the other's conin front of others. science, not your own. For why should my liberty be subject to the judgment of someone else's conscience?

Paul’s argument follows the outline and order of the baraita. This does not mean that Paul was aware of this baraita or that the author/redactor of the baraita was aware of Paul’s epistle, especially considering the fact that this baraita is a development of a baraita that originally concerned vows. Nonetheless, the positions taken by the rabbis and Paul are very similar. They use similar methods to assert their authority over a population that includes the knowledgeable and those who do not possess knowledge. Both rabbinic Judaism and early Christianity were made up of elite groups of people with knowledge of the law, who at times were forced to interact with populations who had little knowledge of the law. The question became how to handle this interaction. How much should the sage respect stringent custom and how should this affect the assertion of authority over the rest of the population? According to the baraita in the Bavli, despite the fact that “all is permissible” (in the topic under discussion) the sage should limit his personal freedom in order to avoid confusing the general population who have less knowledge of the intricacies of the law. In other words, the rabbinic argument comes to the

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conclusion that one who has intricate knowledge of the law should be aware of the effect his behavior has on “others.” Paul’s argument to his knowledgeable disciples comes to the same conclusion: one who has knowledge of the law must be aware of the effect his behavior has on the “other” or the weak.21

4. Astheneis and Kuta’i The continuation of the passage in Bavli Pesahim 51a can further enlighten our understanding of Paul’s epistle: .‫ דברים המותרין ואחרים נהגו בהן איסור אי אתה רשאי להתירן בפניהם‬:‫גופה‬ .‫ בכותאי‬:‫אמ' רב חסדא‬ ?‫וכולי עלמא לא‬ .‫ רוחצין שני אחין כאחד ואין רוחצין שני אחים בכבול‬:‫והתניא‬ ,‫[א] מעשה ביהודה והלל בניו של רבן גמליאל שרחצו שניהם כאחד בכבול‬ .‫ מימינו לא ראינו כך‬:‫ולעזה עליהם מדינה ואמרו‬ .‫ מותרין אתם‬:‫ונשמט הלל ויצא לבית החיצון ולא רצה לומר להם‬ ,‫יוצאין בקורדקסין בשבת ואין יוצאין בקורדקסין בבירי‬ ‫[ב] ומעשה ביהודה והלל בניו של רבן גמליאל שיצאו בקורדקסין בשבת בבירי ולעזה עליהם‬ ‫ מימינו לא ראינו כך ושמטום ונתנום לעבדיהם‬:‫מדינה ואמרו‬ .‫ מותרין אתם‬:‫ולא רצו לומר להם‬ .‫יושבין על גבי ספסלי גוים בשבת ואין יושבין על גבי ספסלי גוים בשבת בעכו‬ ‫[ג] ומעשה ברבן שמעון בן גמליאל שישב על גבי ספסלי גוים בשבת בעכו‬ .‫ מימינו לא ראינו כך‬:‫ולעזה עליו מדינה ואמרו‬ .‫ מותרין אתם‬:‫ונשמט רבן שמעון בן גמליאל וישב על גבי קרקע ולא רצה לומר להם‬ ]...[ .‫ ככותים דמו‬,‫ כיון דלא שכיחי רבנן גביהו‬,‫בני מדינה נמי‬ .‫כי אתא רבה בר בר חנה אכל תרבא דאיתרא‬ ‫על לגביה רב חייא ורבא בר בר חנן כיון דחזינהו כסינהו אתו אמרו ליה לאביי אמ' להו‬ 22 .‫שוינכו ככותאי‬ 21 It should be pointed out that despite the similarities in the two sources and situations described by Paul and the rabbis, there are obviously some differences as well. In the sugya in the Bavli the “others” feel strongly about their stringency, which they have grown up with, and as far as the Bavli is concerned they are not aware that their stringency has no source and is in fact permitted. Therefore, the sage must be careful not to confuse the delicate balance between permitted and forbidden activities and cause confusion and even eventual disregard of other laws. In Corinth the situation was slightly different. There, the knowledgeable also knew that “all is permissible,” however, the “weak” population had not grown up with stringencies. The weak of Corinth, born into a non-Jewish pagan culture, had grown up eating the εἰδωλόθυτων. It was only in their conversion to Christianity that they became aware that the εἰδωλόθυτων were forbidden. Having little knowledge, they did not have the sophistication to understand that in fact eating the εἰδωλόθυτων means nothing. Therefore, the knowledgeable should be careful not to confuse them. 22 The text is cited according to MS Munich 6. On the manuscript tradition of b. Pesah. IV, see Aaron Amit, “The Place of the Yemenite Manuscripts in the Transmission-History of b. Pesahim” (in Hebrew), HUCA 73 (2002): 37–38.

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Gufa’: Things which are permitted and others have the custom to forbid them; you are not allowed to permit them in their presence. Rav H  isda said: [This refers to] Samaritans. And not others? Has it not been taught [in a baraita]: Two brothers may bathe together, but in Kabul [it is the custom] that brothers do not bathe together. [1] It happened that Yehudah and Hillel the sons of Rabban Gamaliel bathed together in Kabul. The whole population there cried out, saying “we have never seen this before!” [As a result,] Hillel retreated and exited to the antechamber, since they did not want to say to them [to the people of Kabul]: you are permitted [to bathe together]. One may go out in oak sandals on the Sabbath, but in Biri it is the custom not to go out in oak sandals on the Sabbath. [2] It happened that Yehudah and Hillel the sons of Rabban Gamaliel went out with oak sandals on the Sabbath in Biri, and the whole population there cried out, saying: “we have never seen this before!” [As a result,] they removed them and gave them to their slaves, since they did not want to say: you are permitted [to wear oak sandals on the Sabbath]. One may sit on the benches of gentiles on the Sabbath, but they have the custom to refrain from sitting on the benches of gentiles on the Sabbath in Akko. [3] It happened that Rabban Shimon ben Gamaliel sat on the benches of gentiles on the Sabbath in Akko, and the whole population there cried out, saying: “we have never seen this before!” [As a result,] he sat on the floor, since he did not want to say you are permitted [to sit on the stools of gentiles on the Sabbath]. [We can explain the contradiction here:] These outlying communities, since they do not have sages who dwell among them, are considered like Samaritans. […] When Rabbah bar bar H  annah came to Babylonia he ate the fat de’aitra [stomach fat that was permitted in the land of Israel but forbidden in Babylonia]. Rav Aviah and Rava bar bar H  anan came upon him. When he saw them, he covered it up. They went and told Abaye. He [Abaye] said to them—“he has equated you with kuta’i [Samaritans]!”

The sugya opens with the baraita that was mentioned first in the context of a discussion between Abaye and Rav Yosef. It is introduced again with the term ‫גופא‬ used by the Talmud to introduce a second sugya that discusses a source mentioned in a cursory fashion in the previous sugya. The short baraita ‫ דברים המותרין‬centers the discussion on the knowledgeable— specifically the sage. He is not allowed to permit a “forbidden” activity in the presence of “others.” This implies that the general population (the ‫ אחרים‬or “others”) lack the knowledge that their custom prohibits permissible activity. Rav H  isda affirms this by saying that the “others” referred to in the baraita are Samaritans, who elsewhere in Tannaitic sources are described as lacking knowledge of the law.23 23 See, for example, m. Demai 3:4, where Samaritans are equated with the ‘am ha’ares with regard to tithes. Regarding the development in the halakic status of Samaritans see Lawrence H. Schiffman, “The Samaritans in Tannaitic Halakhah,” Jewish Quarterly Review 75 (1985): 323–50.

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The assumption that the short baraita refers only to Samaritans is initially challenged and then reinterpreted by the editor of the sugya, all by citing a long baraita24 that describes three visits of sages of the patriarchal family to settlements in the Galilee, where they encountered customs that were more stringent than accepted rabbinic halakah. In the first story25 Yehudah and Hillel, the sons of Rabban Gamaliel, visit Kabul, where the people have a custom forbidding brothers to bathe together. Yehudah and Hillel enter the bathhouse together, only to be told that it is forbidden. Instead of telling the inhabitants of Kabul that brothers are permitted to bathe together, Hillel exits the bath area and goes into the antechamber. Similarly, in the two stories that follow the sages were not prepared to rule that the people in Biri and Akko could abrogate their stringent customs, despite the fact that in theory halakah allowed them to do so. These descriptions are very similar to the reality outlined by Paul in Corinth. In the talmudic baraita the visiting sages were well aware that no prohibition existed, however, the general population who were driven by custom and who lacked knowledge said to them: ‫מימינו לא ראינו‬ ‫“—כך‬in all of our days we have never seen such a thing!” This declaration of ignorance is similar to what we can imagine would have been uttered by the “weak” of Corinth. They were also a real group, recent converts from paganism to Christianity (as opposed to Jewish Christians) who had grown up eating εἰδωλόθυτων; however, after baptism (see 1 Cor 1:12–17) they were expected to distance themselves from their previous practice. They lacked in-depth understanding of the law and therefore, even though the knowledgeable of Corinth knew that εἰδωλόθυτων was nothing, they were expected to refrain from eating it. Like the sages who visited Galilee, Paul advises those with knowledge to have consideration for these weak people and respect the prohibition of εἰδωλόθυτων even if it contradicts what they know to be true. It is also for this reason that Paul hints at the use of a vow (‫)נדר‬ in verse 13 of chapter 8: “Therefore, if food is a cause of their falling, I will never eat meat, so that I may not cause one of them to fall.” For those with knowledge, the vow—rather than custom—is the method by which “freedom” (ἐξουσία, i. e. personal autonomy) can be restricted. As Paul says—probably quoting the slogan of the knowledgeable of Corinth—“all is permitted,” but he adds “not all builds up.” Therefore, Paul says that he would go as far as taking a vow to refrain from eating meat forever in in order to avoid misleading his weak brother.26 It is interesting to note that the Amora Rabbi Abin, in Yerushalmi Pesahim 4:1, 30d, con-

24 For parallels to this baraita, see t. Mo‘ed 2:15–16 (ed. Lieberman, 372) and y. Pesah. 4:1, 30d. 25 In the parallel version of this baraita in t. Mo‘ed the order is different because of the literary context in which it appears. See Amit, Talmud Ha’iggud: BT Pesahim Chapter IV with Comprehensive Commentary, 74–76. 26 Compare Rom 14:21. However, there Paul discusses the broader category of meat and wine. See Wayne Meeks, “Judgment and the Brother: Romans 14:1–15:13,” in In Search of the Early Christians: Selected Essays (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), 157.

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siders restrictive custom to be tantamount to a vow, and considers both subject to dissolution by a sage: Any [matter] which they do not know is permitted and mistakenly make prohibited, they may ask [a sage] and [the matter] is permitted for them [since it was a misunderstanding], however, anything that they know is permitted and they have the practice to make prohibited, they ask [a sage] and [the matter] is not permitted for them.

Thus, we see that a restrictive custom can be similar to a vow; the weak who mistakenly behave according to a prohibition can be released from their restrictive custom on the basis of their lack of knowledge. However, if a person takes on a prohibition with knowledge that it is, in fact, permissible, that person cannot be released, and is obligated to continue that prohibition. Paul’s vow would fall in the latter category. He knows that meat is permitted and would be taking on the prohibition knowingly.27 Returning to the sugya in Pesahim, we see that the editor reinterprets the stories about Galilee in the baraita. He admits that the three episodes described in Galilee are not about Samaritans, but the people there, like Samaritans (and like the weak of Corinth) are apt to confuse things. In the editor’s words: ‫בני מדינה נמי‬ ‫“ כיון דלא שכיחי רבנן גבייהו ככותים דמו‬these outlying communities, since they do not have sages who dwell among them, are considered like Samaritans.” Since the people in these settlements in Galilee did not have sages living among them who could instruct them, they were to be considered in the category of Samaritans— who had no knowledge of the law. The sugya then closes with a story that is closer than all of the previous descriptions to the situation that can be reconstructed in Corinth. It reads as follows: When Rabbah bar bar H  annah came to Babylonia he ate de’aitra [stomach fat that was permitted in the land of Israel but forbidden in Babylonia]. Rav Aviah and Rava bar bar H  anan came upon him. When he saw them he covered it up. They went and told Abaye. He [Abaye] said to them—‫“ שוינכו כותאי‬he has equated you with kuta’i [Samaritans]”!

As Rashi says, de’aitra is the fat that is attached to the straight side of the stomach.28 This type of fat was permitted in the land of Israel and forbidden in Babylo-

27 In his commentary to b. Ned. 81b Rabbeinu Nissim brings the opinion of Rabbeinu Yehudah Hacohen, who argues that “if a person had a custom not to eat meat and drink wine at a certain time, and later they want to eat meat and drink wine at that time they are required to be released [by a sage].” See Amit, Talmud Ha’iggud: BT Pesahim Chapter IV with Comprehensive Commentary, 66, and note 74 there. 28 See Michael Sokoloff, A Dictionary of Jewish Babylonian Aramaic of the Talmudic and Geonic Periods (Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 2002), 548. For a full discussion of the term see Amit, Talmud Ha’iggud: BT Pesahim Chapter IV with Comprehensive Commentary, 81–82.

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nia. The Babylonian Amoraim Rav Aviah and Rava bar bar H  anan were surprised to discover Rabbah bar bar H  annah in the act of eating this fat in Babylonia and reported the incident to Abaye. Instead of criticizing Rabbah bar bar H  annah, Abaye chides his students—telling them that since Rabbah bar bar H  anah had covered up the fat he has shown that he considers the two like Samaritans. Abaye’s comparison to Samaritans is based on Rav H  isda’s interpretation of the baraita in the beginning of the sugya. Samaritans are just an example of people who do not have knowledge of the law; not being surrounded by sages who can explain the minutiae of halakah, they are apt to become confused. If we return to Paul—we have another fascinating parallel—‫ כותאי‬is the term the rabbis use for Paul’s rabbinic term for the ἀσθηνεις. Like the weak of Corinth, the Samaritans’ weakness lies in their inability to distinguish between permissible and forbidden actions. Surely here the students of Abaye should have been expected to be in the category of the knowledgeable, and thus were insulted by Rabbah bar bar H  annah when he treated them like Samaritans or “the weak.” In 1 Corinthians 8 and 10, Paul repeatedly uses the words γνῶσις, ἐξουσία, and συνείδησις: knowledge, freedom, and conscience. In so doing, Paul gives us a picture of the values that were in the air in Corinth of the first century of the Common Era. In Paul’s epistle we can reconstruct a picture of at least two distinct groups. One group is the knowledgeable or the “strong”: they have deep understanding, and on this matter it is important that they understand that the εἰδωλόθυτων are nothing—meaningless sacrifices, and therefore what everyone thought to be forbidden is really permissible. It is not a problem for them to eat idol meat, whether in the house, in the market, or in the temples. The other group, who are called “weak” and who have “weak consciences,” think that it is a problem to eat this meat. Paul has to navigate his way between these two groups and therefore finds a middle position. This is the tension between chapters 8 and 10. Paul agrees that knowledge is important; however, he argues that it is not the be-all and end-all, since one has to take into account the effect that knowledge has on the weak. They cannot make the same distinctions as the strong and therefore can become confused. This is what is meant, in my opinion, by a “weak conscience”—it is in short: weak thought, an inability to understand fine distinctions, a propensity for confusion. Paul argues that while the strong have full freedom to eat what they want, they should limit their freedom, just like a vow can limit personal freedom, and he demonstrates this with a beautiful example: “if eating meat can hurt my brother—so may I never eat meat again if it shall confuse.” This is the center of Paul’s argument to the strong of Corinth and the center of the message of the talmudic passage in Pesahim: “the weak” or “the Samaritans” (or those “like the Samaritans”) can become confused; therefore, it is better to respect their customs.

Carol Bakhos

Transmitting Early Jewish Literature: The Case of Jubilees in Medieval Jewish and Islamic Sources

I vividly recall meeting Steven Fraade for the first time. It was not at a conference or on campus, but on the pages of From Tradition to Commentary, where my long-standing interest in interpretation theory (I had written my undergraduate honors thesis on Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics) and my newfound fascination with the rabbis and midrash converged. Although on a superficial level, it is not a page-turner (what work of such stature is?), From Tradition to Commentary, one of Steven’s greatest scholarly contributions to the field of ancient Judaism, is nonetheless ineluctably scintillating. Reading it sparked an urge to read more, and more, and more. It played a pivotal role in the direction my studies, and eventually my career, would take. Over the years, I have benefited from Steven’s other works that are no less penetrating and influential, and from the lectures he has given on wide-ranging subjects. But the many years of conversations on matters great and small have had the greatest impact on me. Much like his writing, Steven is measured in tone and manner. He is the model of discretion, a mensch, a supportive colleague, an esteemed scholar, and steadfast friend. I hope that what follows exemplifies, perhaps implicitly, a few of the ways his work has contributed to my scholarly formation and interest in the circulatory system of texts that travel through time and traverse cultural, geographic, and religious boundaries. While his gaze is toward earlier midrashic works, mine toward later, we are both interested in, inter alia, the ruptures and continuities that shape and characterize not only the ancient and early medieval sources, but also, in turn, the people who to varying degrees heard, adhered to, wrote, told, and studied them. Our literary artifacts do not always throw great light, or as much light as we hope, on the people, cultures, and societies under examination, but they serve a function in a larger narrative of historical import. By drawing a literary connection between Jubilees and a tradition found in Muhammad ibn ‘Abdallāh al-Kisā’ī’s eleventh-century Tales of the Prophets (Qisas al-anbiyā’), this article makes a modest attempt to contribute to the broad, complicated subject of the relationship between Second Temple sources and medieval literature. Although no concrete connection can be made between the two works, the depiction of Jubilees’s Mastema resonates in al-Kisā’ī’s portrayal of Nimrod. While the shared affinities do not suffice to demonstrate a direct relation-

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ship between the two, they nonetheless contribute to our understanding of how the motif of the archvillain functions in these two accounts of Abraham’s battles against an enemy of God. The relationship between early Jewish pseudepigraphic works and late rabbinic and early medieval literature continues to captivate scholarly attention. Almost four decades ago, Robert Kraft presented a paper entitled “The Pseudepigrapha in Christianity,” later published in 1994, in which he presents obstacles that the material poses for historical analysis, and questions the use of the term “pseudepigrapha.”1 He also considers methodological matters and suggests ways to navigate the sources, noting pitfalls to avoid and directions to take. Since then he and other scholars have addressed the reception and transmission of these texts, have endeavored to better understand their relationship to other ancient sources, and have questioned the assumptions of scholars in the field. How does one account for the appearance of Second Temple literature in medieval Jewish, Christian, and Muslim sources? How did, for example, the author of Pirqe Rabbi Eliezer have access to pseudepigraphic works? Or perhaps we should ask, did the author have access to pseudepigraphic works? If so, in what language were they transmitted? Hebrew and Aramaic? Greek or Latin? Were they transmitted by way of Semitic translations of later recensions? As John Reeves asks, did works like 1 Enoch, Jubilees, and the Testament of Levi re-enter Jewish intellectual life after a long hiatus, due to a fortuitous manuscript discovery or a simple borrowing of intriguing material from neighboring religious communities? Is it possible to trace a continuous “paper trail” leading from Second Temple scribal circles down to the learned aggadists and interpreters of medieval Judaism?2

In a paper delivered at the 2013 International SBL at St. Andrews, Martha Himmelfarb observes how readily, or perhaps not quite readily, parallels between Sec-

1 Robert Kraft, “The Pseudepigrapha in Christianity,” in Tracing the Threads: Studies in the Vitality of Jewish Pseudepigrapha, ed. John C. Reeves (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1994), 55–86. 2 John C. Reeves, “Exploring the Afterlife of Jewish Pseudepigrapha in Medieval Near Eastern Religious Traditions: Some Initial Soundings,” Journal for the Study of Judaism in the Persian, Hellenistic and Roman Period 30 (1999): 148–49. For discussions of the development and transmission of Second Temple literature and medieval Jewish sources, see Martha Himmelfarb, Between Temple and Torah: Essays on Priests, Scribes and Visionaries in the Second Temple Period and Beyond, TSAJ 151 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013). For a good examination of how Christian writers serve as facilitators for the transmission of earlier Jewish sources, see Annette ­Yoshiko Reed, “From Asael and Šemihazah to Uzzah, Azzah, and Azael: 3 Enoch 5 (par. 7–8) and Jewish Reception-History of 1 Enoch,” Jewish Studies Quarterly 8, no. 2 (2001): 105–36, who argues that the Šemihazah and Azael tradition may have made its way into later Jewish exegetical traditions via Christian chronographers.

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ond Temple texts and medieval works fall by the wayside when scrutinized by “more sober standards”:3 In his introduction to his 1940 edition of Bereshit Rabbati, the anthological midrash on Genesis drawn from the work of R. Moses the Preacher, the great scholar of rabbinics Chanokh Albeck provided a list of almost twenty passages from Bereshit Rabbati and Midrash Aggadah, another of R. Moses’ works, that he believed made use of Second Temple works. Some of the alleged parallels melt away on closer examination: The passages are not really that similar. Other parallels can be explained simply by reference to the biblical passage under discussion, and still others involve themes or motifs well attested in rabbinic literature too and thus probably better explained by reference to rabbinic sources. But even when viewed with a more skeptical eye, several of the parallels Albeck noted between passages in R. Moses’ works and the pseudepigrapha deserve careful consideration.4

Let us take another example. In his 1916 introduction to the English translation of Pirqe Rabbi Eliezer, Gerald Friedlander writes: There seems to be reasonable ground for assuming that the author of our book was acquainted not only with Jubilees, but also with the pseduepigraphic Books of Enoch (Ethiopic and Slavonic), and very probably with the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, or with the sources of these books.5

While some have argued, in many instances rightly, for avoiding the parallelomania that Samuel Sandmel cautioned against in the early 1960s, important parallels nonetheless deserve attention.6 The desire to detect continuities between Second Temple period and medieval literature can cloud our perception of what the sources actually yield in terms of understanding their relationship to one another. Be that as it may, we must take seriously the possibility that in some instances there are significant echoes of Second Temple Jewish literature in medieval texts and 3 I thank Professor Himmelfarb for providing me with a hard copy of her paper. See her earlier work on the subject: “R. Moses the Preachers and the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarch,” AJS Review 9 (1984): 55–78; eadem, “Some Echoes of Jubilees in Medieval Hebrew Literature,” in Reeves, Tracing the Threads, 115–41; more recently, “Medieval Jewish Knowledge of Second Temple Texts and Traditions” (forthcoming). 4 Ibid. 5 Pirke de Rabbi Eliezer (New York: Sepher-Hermon, 1981), xxii. Anna Urowitz-Freudenstein, “Pseudiepigraphic Support of Pseudepigraphical Sources: The Case of Pirqe de Rabbi Eliezer,” in Reeves, Tracing the Treads, 35–53, calls into question Friedlander’s assertion that Pirqe Rabbi Eliezer betrays familiarity with the Pseudepigrapha. For a comprehensive analysis of Pirqe Rabbi Eliezer, its textual traditions, and compositional levels, see Eliezer Treitl, Pirke de-Rabbi Eliezer: Text, Redaction and a Sample Synopsis (in Hebrew) (Jerusalem: Hebrew University and Yad Ben-Zvi, 2012). 6 Samuel Sandmel, “Parallelomania,” Journal of Biblical Literature 81 (1962): 1–13. For an assessment of Pirqe Rabbi Eliezer’s sources, see Rachel Adelman, The Return of the Repressed: Pirqe de-Rabbi Eliezer and the Pseudepigrapha (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 4.

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compositions. What conclusions and extrapolations are reasonably possible from those echoes is another, yet related, matter. The current resurgent interest, furthermore, in exploring links between late rabbinic and early Islamic literature also highlights the need to flesh out an understanding of the transmission of motifs and narratives throughout the Near East. One of the many challenges confronting scholars of Near Eastern literature of late antiquity is how to describe the relationship of the Qur’an to its intertexts, without at the same time subsuming the Qur’an under all that is “biblical” or creating a sense that it is derivative. That is, how can one appreciate the ways the Qur’an is part and parcel of the broader scriptural landscape of the late antique Near East and not merely an outgrowth? Past efforts to detect exegetical motifs, narrative plots, and similar stories found in Muslim and Jewish (as well as Muslim and Christian) sources used the term “borrowing,” which implies that elements found in a later tradition belong to the earlier source. Attempts at “source-hunting”7 contribute to the sense that the later tradition, in this case Islam, is a by-product and relies heavily on earlier sources or traditions. As I have argued elsewhere, the idea that all roads lead back to the Bible is exceedingly wrongheaded; it creates the reductionist impression that one tradition owns a host of ideas, stories, or motifs and that the iteration of those ideas, stories, or motifs in a different literary or religious matrix must inevitably involve an attenuated form. But the Qur’an is not simply another interpretation of the Bible, nor is the New Testament for that matter. Philological investigations inform understanding of a word or verse in the Qur’an and explain how literary texts migrated from one locus to another, but descriptive language that assumes that the Qur’an is derivative or that it resides in the biblical penumbra compromises such inquiries.8 More often than not, comparisons are made between aggadic literature and Islamic stories found in h adīth and Qisas al-anbiyā’ (tales of the prophets).9 Given

7 The term “source-hunting” was used by Jonathan Culler, “Intertextuality and Presupposition,” Modern Language Notes 91 (1976): 1383. 8 As I note in Family of Abraham: Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Interpretations (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014), 225, n. 23, in his recent monograph, The Quran and Its Biblical Subtext (London: Routledge, 2010), Gabriel Reynolds employs the term, “biblical subtext,” by which he means not only the Bible but also the Apocrypha and Jewish and Christian exegetical works. As Marilyn Waldman demonstrates in a well-known study on the qur’anic Joseph narrative, readers of the Qur’an must reject the assumption that the Qur’an is just another version of the Bible. See her “New Approaches to ‘Biblical’ Materials in the Qur’ān,” Muslim World 75, no. 1 (1985): 1, reprinted in Studies in Islamic and Judaic Traditions, ed. William M. Brinner and Stephen D. Ricks (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1986), 47–64. 9 This genre of literature includes narratives that share details found in Jewish and Christian sources, fill in the gaps of the qur’anic narrative, and flesh out characters with homiletic and historical flourishes. For an introduction, see William Brinner, trans., and annot., ‘Arā’is al-Majālis

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similarities in the way in which narratives expand, and characters are fleshed out, it is difficult to avoid making comparisons.10 An earlier generation of scholars, however, made wrong-headed assumptions about the influence Jewish traditions exerted over the shaping of Islamic sources.11 They took for granted that influence was unidirectional, and that discrepancies were attributable to errors and confusion in the transition within Muslim circles. Scholarship of the past two decades challenges these assumptions and presents a more nuanced picture of the complicated relationship of texts found in Jewish and Muslim compilations. Efforts to forge a relationship between Jewish and Muslim narrative expansions mainly focus on rabbinic material found in midrashic corpora and the Talmuds. However, in light of the dissemination of Jewish pseudepigraphic works in the medieval period, we should consider expanding our comparisons to include prerabbinic material. As a gesture toward this endeavor, what follows is a preliminary literary analysis that compares the roles of Mastema in Jubilees and Nimrod in al-Kisā’ī’s Tales of the Prophets.

fī Qisas al-Anbiyā’ or Lives of the Prophets: As Recounted by Abū Ishāq Ahmad Ibn Muhammad Ibn Ibrāhīm al-Tha‘labī (Leiden: Brill, 2002), xi–xxxiii, and Roberto Tottoli, Biblical Prophets in the Qur’ān and Muslim Literature, trans. Michael Robertson (London: Routledge, 2002). For a flawed but useful compendium of legends associated with biblical and qur’anic personages, see Haim Schwartzbaum, Biblical and Extra-biblical Legends in Islamic Folk-Literature, Beiträge zur Sprach-und Kulturgeschichte des Orients 30 (Walldorf-Hessen: Verlag für Orientkunde Dr. H. Vorndran, 1982). For an introduction to the stories of the prophets, see Marianna Klar, “Stories of the Prophets,” in The Blackwell Companion to the Qur’ān, ed. Andrew Rippin (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006), 339–49. These stories are also known as the isrā’īliyyāt, a term applied to narratives about the “children of Israel” (banū isrā’īl), that is, the ancient children of Israel. On isrā’īlīyyāt, see Roberto Tottoli, “Origin and Use of the Term Isrā’īliyyāt in Muslim Literature,” Arabica 46 (1999): 193–210; Cornelia Schöck, Adam im Islam: Ein Beitrag zur Ideengeschichte der Sunna (Berlin: K. Schwartz, 1993), 39–54; Camilla Adang, Muslim Writers on Judaism and the Hebrew Bible: From Ibn Rabban to Ibn Hazm (New York: Brill, 1996), 8–10; and Jane Dammen McAuliffe, “Assessing the Isrā’īliyyāt: An Exegetical Conundrum,” in Story-telling in the Framework of Non-fictional Arabic Literature, ed. Stefan Leder (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1998), 345–69. A precise definition of this term has eluded scholars; perhaps it is best defined as Muslim renditions of narratives also found in the Jewish tradition. 10 For a discussion of the relationship between Jewish and Muslim exegetical sources, see my Family of Abraham: Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Interpretations, 22–25, and Shari L. Lowin, The Making of a Forefather: Abraham in Islamic and Jewish Exegetical Narratives (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 33–38. 11 See for example David Sidersky, Les Origines des légends Musulmanes dans le Coran et dans les Vies des Prophètes (Paris: Libraire Orientaliste Paul Geuthner, 1933).

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Mastema Mastema, a personification of evil, means “loathing,” “hating,” and most probably is derived from the verb root ś-t-m, meaning “to despise, to harbor hostility, enmity.”12 He is the chief angel of loathing, śar maśtema, accorded a higher status than the other spirits. Mastema, referred to as Satan in Jubilees 10:11, leads the forces of evil in the world, and like Satan in Job, negotiates with God.13 The reader is first introduced to Mastema in Jubilees 10:8–9, when he asks God to leave a tenth of the evil spirits under his command. This occurs after angels mate with humans and produce giants, the Nephilim.14 The union of angles and humans even corrupts the earth, which requires a “purifying bath,” that is, the flood, in order to restore it to its “prior state.”15 As for the giants (Nephilim), the children of the wicked angels, they are ordered to be killed, in fact to slaughter each other, while their fathers look on, and then the angels are tied up “in the depths of the earth until the great day of judgment.” Demons begin to lead Noah and his children astray (7:27), and pervert Noah’s grandchildren (10).16 Fearful of the corrupt influence of these spirits on his chil12 Adelman, Return of the Repressed, 60, n. 35. 13 According to James Kugel, A Walk through Jubilees: Studies in the Book of Jubilees and the World of Its Creation (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 83, n. 148, translators, VanderKam, for example, often render śar as “prince,” but śar is an angelic title. There seems to be no incompatibility with śar meaning “prince” and śar as an angelic title. After all, this is a senior angel, who acts like a prince over other angels. Yet in Jub. 18:9, “the prince of Mastema,” is better rendered “the angel of Mastema.” 14 Jub. 5: “When mankind began to multiply on the surface of the entire earth and daughters were born to them, the angels of the Lord—in a certain (year) of this Jubilee—saw, that they were beautiful to look at. So they married of them whomever they chose. They gave birth to children for them and they were giants. Wickedness increased on the earth. All animate beings corrupted their way—(every one of them) from people to cattle, animals, birds, and everything that moves about on the ground. All of them corrupted their way and prescribed course. They began to devour one another, and wickedness increased on the earth. The Lord saw that the earth was corrupt.” Unless otherwise specified, I am using the translation of James C. VanderKam, The Book of Jubilees: A Translation, Corpus Scriptorum Christinanorum Orientalium vol. 511; Scriptores Aethiopic 88 (Louvain: Peeters, 1989), in consultation with Kugel’s commentary, A Walk through Jubilees. 15 Kugel, A Walk through Jubilees, 53. Michael Segal, The Book of Jubilees: Rewritten Bible, Redaction, Ideology and Theology, SJSJ 117 (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 108, observes, “The assault on the natural order of the world did not begin with human behavior, but with the fornication of the sons of god with the daughters of men, as described in Jub. 5:1. The cohabitation of the divine beings with the women, which produced the giants, represented a callous violation of the clear boundaries between heaven and earth, and led to destructive results. This behavior then led to the people’s violation of the laws, and in the end brought about the flood.” 16 Jub. 5:7–10 already mentions that God orders the children of the wicked angels to be tied up until the day of judgement, so who are these demons? It seems from the text that the wicked angels had other children, although it is unclear how they were engendered. See Kugel, A Walk through Jubilees, 82.

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dren, Noah beseeches God to place the spirits in captivity. God accedes to Noah’s request, however, Mastema convinces God to leave some of the spirits under his control. As a result, a tenth of the evil spirits remain unbound and Mastema becomes their leader.17 As in other works of the Second Temple period, in Jubilees heavenly beings play an important role in the administration of the world. Angels are divided into good and evil. Good angels serve to instruct humans in the ways that are beneficial to them, as in the case of teaching Adam how to work in the garden of Eden (4:15), and bad angels obstruct human progress physically as well as spiritually. Mastema tempts humans to commit idolatry (Jub. 11:4–6), prompts God to command Abraham to sacrifice Isaac (17:16), and on Moses’s way down to Egypt, he threatens Moses’s life (48:9–10, 12).18 Let us look at a specific example that we will revisit when we examine Nimrod’s encounters with Abraham. Just after Terah’s birth, Mastema sends ravens to devour all the seed before it could be ploughed: Then Prince Mastema sent ravens and birds to eat the seed which would be planted in the ground and to destroy the land in order to rob mankind of their labors. Before they plowed in the seed, the raven would pick [it] from the surface of the ground. … The years began to be unfruitful due to the birds. They would eat all the fruit of the trees from the orchards. During their time, if they were able to save a little of all the fruit of the earth, it was with great effort. … As a cloud of ravens came to eat the seed, Abram would run at them before they could settle on the ground. He would shout at them before they could settle on the ground to eat the seed and would say: “Do not come down; return to the place from which you came!” And they returned. That day he did [this] to the cloud of ravens 70 times. Not a single raven remained in any of the fields where Abram was. All who were with him in any of the fields would see him shouting: then all of the ravens returned [to their place]. His reputation grew

17 According to Segal, The Book of Jubilees, 177, “The connection between the Watchers story and Mastema is an innovation of Jubilees, as Mastema is absent from all of the strata and traditions in 1 Enoch.” Mastema’s role as leader of the divine forces of evil, according to Segal, first appears in Jubilees. So, too, Kugel, A Walk through Jubilees, 83, writes, “The only other narrative text that mentions Mastema is one that is clearly dependent on Jubilees, 4Q216 Pseudo-Jubilees. … I am not aware of a single text (apart from Jubilees) in the various compilations of Old Testament apocrypha and pseudepigrapha that refers to Mastema.” For an analysis of Jub. 1–13 as it relates to other chapters of Jubilees and 1 Enoch, see Segal, The Book of Jubilees, 146–54, and 175–80. 18 Whether he is also responsible for the slaying of the firstborn (49:2) is rather complicated. In 49:2, “All the forces of Mastema killed the Egyptian firstborn.” Mastema does not act alone, but his forces serve as God’s agents. In the previous chapter, however, Mastema serves as the Egyptian ally. God is responsible for killing the Egyptian firstborn (48:5). According to Kugel, A Walk through Jubilees, 198, the divergence may be attributed to the Interpolator, who eschews the idea of angels acting independently. Segal, The Book of Jubilees, 223–27, also discusses the contradiction in light of theological considerations and exegetical motives.

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large throughout the entire land of the Chaldeans. All who were planting seed came to him in this year, and he kept going with them until the seedtime came to an end. They planted their land and that year brought in enough food. So they ate and were filled. (Jub. 11:11, 19–21)19

The passage is without parallel in later Jewish traditions, but as Sebastian Brock demonstrates, it has a curious variant, which is preserved in Syriac sources. Brock argues that the schema of the Syriac form of the tradition is in fact anterior to the basis of the pattern in Jubilees, and in Jubilees it serves to introduce Abraham as the inventor of the seed-plough. Whereas in Syriac texts the ravens are sent by God as punishment for idolatry, in Jubilees they are sent by Mastema.20 Michael Knowles considers the episode an expansion of the biblical narrative (possibly inspired by Gen 15:11) that not only restores the agricultural cycle in the Noahide covenant but also serves to demonstrate Abraham’s success in thwarting Mastema’s endeavors to deprive humans of the fruits of their toil.21 Mastema plays a central role in Jubilees, in a work that through its retelling of the story of Genesis and Exodus focuses on the restoration of Israel. At every turn, his attempts to test faith in God, that is, to take Israel off its course toward restoration, are met with defeat. On the playing field where good and evil battle for the soul of humans, Mastema, the ruler of the evil realm, is God’s quintessential archenemy.

19 This episode is connected to Gen 15:11: “When the birds of prey descended upon the pieces, Abram drove them away.” Scholars have asserted that the passage responds to Mesopotamian traditions dealing with the origin of the seed-plow. For a detailed discussion of the parallels between Gen 15:11 and Jub. 11, as well as an excellent treatment of the function of the ravens episode in Jubilees, see Andrew Teeter, “On ‘Exegetical Function’ in Rewritten Scripture: Inner-Biblical Exegesis and the Abram/Ravens Narrative in Jubilees,” Harvard Theological Review 106, no. 4 (2013): 373–402. 20 Sebastian P. Brock, “Abraham and the Ravens: A Syriac Counterpart to Jubilees 11–12 and Its Implications,” Journal for the Study of Judaism 9, no. 2 (1978): 135–52. 21 Michael P. Knowles, “Abram and the Birds in Jubilees 11: A Subtext for the Parable of the Sower?,” New Testament Studies 41 (1995): 145–51. Michael Stone, Armenian Apocrypha Relating to Abraham, Early Judaism and Its Literature 37 (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2012), 18–20, analyzes the motif found in Armenian apocryphal literature. Scholars have also made connections between the episode in Jubilees and the apocryphal Epistle of Jeremiah. Drawing on the connection Klaus Berger makes in a lengthy footnote to his translation of Jubilees (Das Buch der Jubiläen, JSHRZ 2, no. 3 [Gütersloh: Gerd Mohn, 1981], 388, n. 11e) between Jubilees and the Epistle of Jeremiah, Cory Crawford, “On the Exegetical Function of the Abraham/Ravens Tradition in Jubilees 11,” Harvard Theological Review 97 (2004): 91–97, argues that the epistle may have been in existence before Jubilees. For an alternative point of view, see Andrew Teeter, “On ‘Exegetical Function,’” 383–84, who asserts that the dependence of Jubilees on the Epistle of Jeremiah is tenuous.

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Nimrod In the book of Genesis, Nimrod is the son of Cush, and is a mighty hunter: Cush also begot Nimrod, who was the first man of might on earth. He was a mighty hunter by the grace of the lord; hence the saying, “Like Nimrod a mightier hunter by the grace of the Lord.” The mainstays of his kingdom were Babylon, Erech, Accad, and Calneh in the land of Shinar. From that land Asshur went forth and built Nineveh, Rehoboth-ir, Calah, and Resen between Nineveh and Calah, that is the great city. (Gen 10:8–12)22

Postbiblical and Islamic traditions amplify and develop his character. According to Philo’s commentary on Gen 6:4 (On Giants 65–66 [Colson and Whitaker, LCL]), the sons of the earth surrender to the nature of the flesh instead of to reason. He writes: “For the lawgiver says, ‘he began to be a giant on the earth’ [Gen 10:8], and his name means desertion.”23 Van der Horst maintains that Philo of Alexandria is the earliest postbiblical writer who mentions Nimrod explicitly. He connects the offspring of the sons of God, called the gibborim, the giants (gigantes in the Septuagint) in Gen 6:4, to Nimrod, called a gibbor in Gen 10:8–9. Van der Horst writes: This suggested to the early haggadists that Nimrod may have been one of the giants of Genesis 6. In Gen. 10:10 the beginning of Nimrod’s kingdom is said to have been Babel in the land of Shinar, and in Gen. 11:1–10, the people who settled in the land of Shinar are said to have built a city there that was called Babel (11:9). If that city was the beginning of Nimrod’s kingdom, he could not but have been one of the builders. So Nimrod who was one of the giants mentioned in Gen. 6 was also the one who had built Babel.24

Although the Bible refers to him as a gibbor, it may be Philo’s understanding of Nimrod as connected to the gibborim, the giants in Gen 6:4, that also underlies al-Kisā’ī’s depiction of him. In al-Kisā’ī’s Tales of the Prophets, Nimrod is a tyrant, a giant (jabbār in Arabic), a force of evil much like the gibborim in Gen 6. And in

22 According to Karel van der Toorn, in an article, “Nimrod before and after the Bible,” Harvard Theological Review 83, no. 1 (1990): 1–29, cowritten with Pieter van der Horst, the biblical Nimrod was modeled after the Mesopotamian god Ninurta. 23 According to al-Kisā’ī, he was suckled by a tigress—nimra—hence his name Namrūd: “Upon hearing about the boy, the shepherd’s wife cast him into a flowing river, assuming he would drowned, however, he landed on the bank and God sent a tigress to suckle him. Thus his name is Nimrod, from nimra, tigress.” Wheeler M. Thackston, trans., Tales of the Prophets (Qisas al-anbiyā’) by Muhammad ibn ‘Abd Allāh al-Kisā’ī (Chicago: Great Books of the Islamic World, 1997), 131. 24 Karel van der Toorn and Pieter van der Horst, “Nimrod before and after the Bible,” 18.

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fact, throughout the medieval period, Nimrod was depicted as a giant who built the tower of Babel.25 The image of Nimrod (Namrūd in Arabic) in Islamic literature is a conflation of several characters: Nebuchadnezzar, Pharaoh, Titus, and in the case of al-Kisā’ī’s depiction, I argue, Mastema. He builds a tower to heaven, slays the firstborn male, and dies after a gnat enters his brain and gnaws at it for four hundred years.26 Al-Kisā’ī’s characterization of Nimrod is one of the most elaborate among the stories about Islamic prophets.27 His Nimrod takes on a similar function as Mastema in Jubilees—the unrelenting force of evil that keeps humanity from righteousness. Elements of the story as al-Kisā’ī frames it resonate with Mastema’s attempts to battle against God. This is not to suggest that al-Kisā’ī was familiar with the book of Jubilees, nor is it to suggest that the only model for al-Kisā’ī’s Nimrod is Mastema, but in light of broader considerations of the transmission of motifs and traditions across geographic, religious, and temporal lines, an examination of the depiction of the two characters calls attention to the possibility that aspects of Second Temple literature, such as the personification of evil, might have continued to reverberate many centuries later, even if faintly. In the Qur’an, Abraham has to contend with the idol worshippers around him who cast him into the fire, but he lacks an antagonist.28 Adam is challenged by Satan, Moses by Pharaoh, but Abraham has no evil counterpart mentioned by name. Reference, however, is made to an arrogant, blaspheming ruler who confronts Abraham and contends that he, not God, has power over life and death:

25 Augustine’s City of God, book 16, makes reference to Nimrod the giant, for example, who built the tower of Babel, but earlier we read of this connection in Pseudo-Philo, chapter 6 of Liber antiquitatum biblicarum (LAB) and Josephus, Ant. 1.113–14. 26 That he dies from a gnat entering his nostril and gnawing on his brain is found in many Islamic tales about him, and parallels the well-known aggadic story of Titus’s demise. See Shari L. Lowin, “Narratives of Villainy,” The Lineaments of Islam: Studies in Honor of Fred McGraw Donner, ed. Paul M. Cobb (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 266–74. 27 See, for example, Muqātil b. Sulaymān, Tafsīr Muqātil ibn Sulaymān, ed. ‘Abdallāh Mahmud Shihāta, 5 vols. (Cairo: al-Hay’a al-Misriyya al-‘Āmma lil-Kitāb, 1979–89), 3:613; Muhammad ibn Jarīr al-Tabarī, Jāmi‘ al-bayān ‘an ta’wīl ay al-Qur’ān (Cairo: Sharikat maktabat wa-matba‘at Musatafā al-Bābī al-H  alabī wa-awlādihi, 1954), 17:45; ibid., Ta’rīkh al-rusul wa-l-mulūk (Leiden: Brill, 1879–1901); Ahmad ibn Muhammad al-Tha‘labī, Qisas al-Anbiyā’ al-musamma ‘arā’is al-majālis (Cairo: Matba‘at al-anwār al-Muhammadiyya, n.d.), 93; Abū al-Fidā’ Ismā‘īl ibn Kathīr, Tafsīr al-Qur’ān al-‘azim (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-Islāmiyya, n.d.), 12:33. For an English translation of Abraham’s confrontation with Nimrod in al-Tha‘labī, see Brinner’s translation, with annotations, ‘Arā’is al-Majālis fī Qisas al-Anbiyā’ or “Lives of the Prophets,” 124–33, and for an English translation of Tabarī, see William Brinner, Prophets and Patriarchs, vol. 2 of The History of al-T abarī (New York: SUNY Press, 1987). For a more extensive list of additional sources, see Lowin, “Narratives of Villainy,” 262, n. 3. 28 In Genesis Rabbah 38:13, Nimrod is identified as the one who casts Abraham into a fire.

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Have you not heard of him who argued with Abraham about his Lord because God had bestowed sovereignty upon him? Abraham said, “My Lord is he who has the power of life and death.” “I, too,” replied the other, “have the power of life and death.” “God brings up the sun from the east,” said Abraham. “Bring it up yourself from the West.” The unbeliever was confounded. God does not guide the evil-doers. (Q Baqarah 2:258)

Islamic exegetes and storytellers give the one who contended with Abraham an identity: Nimrod.29 This confrontation, as we will examine shortly, is one of a series between him and Abraham. The Qisas al-anbiyā’ provide ample details that embellish his role as God’s archrival. Nimrod was Abraham’s contemporary, and pretended to have the power to give and take life. Nimrod claims to have created humans and given them sustenance. There is no doubt that al-Kisā’ī had many stories about Abraham and his battles against idolatry at his disposal, as well as depictions of Nimrod, but the development of his character vis-à-vis Abraham is striking and reminiscent of Mastema’s role in Jubilees. Al-Kisā’ī’s Nimrod is a full-blown nemesis, who unremittingly wages war against Abraham’s God.30 Unlike Mastema, who is an angel, a leader of wicked spirits, al-Kisā’ī depicts Nimrod as human, although born accursed. When his mother delivered him at birth, “a thin serpent came out of her womb and entered the boy’s nose.” When she took him into the wilderness to a shepherd to raise him, even the cattle would not go near the boy. The “black, flat-nosed boy” was suckled by a tigress. When he grew up, he became a highway robber, plundered towns

29 Nimrod and Pharaoh in the Qur’an represent the same type, the ruler who defies God’s sovereignty. As Grünbaum points out, in Arabic tradition these two figures become symbolic of the arrogant ruler. In attempts to undertake the building of monuments in order to equal or surpass God, they relentlessly endeavor to undermine the power of God and to lead people away from Him. He is also like Pharaoh in that he ordered all children who were still nursing to be killed when he was informed — either in a dream or by the astrologers—that a child was going to be born who would contest his claim to be God. See Max Grünbaum, Neue Beiträge zur Semistischen Sagenkunde (Leiden: Brill, 1893), 52, as referenced in Gabriel Reynolds, The Quran and Its Biblical Subtext, 103. For an interesting discussion of the role Mastema plays in hardening Pharaoh’s heart in Jubilees, see Segal, The Book of Jubilees, 217–22. 30 By contrast, al-Tha‘labī preserves accounts of Nimrod’s recognition of God’s greatness. After Abraham succeeds in walking through the fire, Nimrod announces his desire to slaughter four thousand cows to God. Abraham tells him that God will not accept his offering unless he abandons his religion, which Nimrod claims he cannot do. He nonetheless slaughters the cattle, forbids anyone to harm Abraham and proclaims, “How excellent is the Lord, your Lord, Abraham” (Brinner, Lives of the Prophets, 134). It is true that in this collection of tales Nimrod suffers for the entire period of his rule—four hundred years—from the gnawing gnat in his brain. The inclusion of this tradition, however, attenuates the depiction of Nimrod as the archvillain of God, which we find in al-Kisā’ī. Similarly, in al-T abarī’s History of Prophets and Patriarchs, Nimrod acknowledges the greatness of Abraham’s God.

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and cities, stole from people and took women captive. Iblis (Satan) taught him the sciences of sorcery and soothsaying.31 He deems himself the creator of all and expects humans to worship him. He distributes food to his subjects, but dismisses without supply those who refuse to confess his deity. The battle between Nimrod and God is fought between Nimrod and God’s most faithful messenger, Abraham. Al-Kisā’ī, for example, expands on the episode in Qur’an 2:260: When Abraham said, “Show me, Lord, how You will raise the dead,” He replied, “Have you no faith?” “Yes,” said Abraham, “but just to assure my heart.” “Take four birds,” said God, “draw them to you, and put a portion of them over the mountain-tops, then call them back. They will come swiftly to you. Know that God is mighty and wise.”

According to al-Kisā’ī: Abraham took a white cock, a black raven, a green dove and a peacock, killed them, cut off their heads, mixed up the blood and feathers and scattered their flesh on four mountain tops. He then called them, and the heads went out of his hands, each returned to its own body, saying, “There is no god but God; Abraham is God’s apostle to Nimrod and his people.”32

In the qur’anic verse, God commands Abraham to put the birds on different hilltops and call them back to him. He does not say to kill them first. Most of the classical exegetes, however, comment that Abraham must have cut up the birds if in fact they were really going to be resurrected. This view of the incident is made explicit here. The image of the birds returning is reminiscent of the Jubilees story of Abraham ordering the ravens to return to the place from which they came after Mastema sent them to eat the seed.33 Abraham develops a reputation for his ability to

31 Quoted material taken from Wheeler M. Thackston’s translation, Tales of the Prophets (Qisas al-anbiyā’) by Muhammad ibn ‘Abd Allah al-Kisā’ī. I use Isaac Eisenberg’s recension of Kisā’ī’s Tales of the Prophets, Vita Prophetarum (Leiden: Brill, 1922). 32 Thackston, Tales of the Prophets, 143 33 In a private correspondence, Tzvi Novick astutely commented that the episode is more reminiscent of the splitting of the birds in Gen 15. In both instances, the splitting of the birds comes after Abraham seeks a sign from God. He furthermore noted the connection between the birds and the motif of Jesus bringing clay birds back to life, found in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas and Qur’an al-Ma’idah 5:110. I am most grateful to him for drawing my attention to these connections and associations. To be sure, the episode conjures up more than one association. On the motif of ravens returning to their place, see Tzvi Novick, “Scripture as Rhetor: A Study in Early Rabbinic Midrash,” Hebrew Union College Annual 82 (2011–12), n. 20. For a discussion of the connection between Gen 15 and the ravens episode in Jubilees, see James C. VanderKam, The Book of Jubilees (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001), 46–47, and Michael P. Knowles, “Abram and the Birds in Jubilees 11.”

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ward off the birds so much so that everyone planting seed would seek his assistance. Abraham is victorious over the forces of Mastema. In al-Kisā’ī, the episode takes place during a contentious contest between Abraham and Nimrod, who boldly asserts that his kingdom is greater than God’s. A debate as to who has greater power ensues. His competition for sovereignty even extends to the nonhuman realm. A beautiful cow proclaims, “Enemy of God, were I given leave by my Lord, I would gore you so that afterwards you would never be able to eat again!”34 He kills the cow but God restores it to life. The extent to which Nimrod goes in order to defeat Abraham’s God, the almighty, creator of all, is captured in the following: “Abraham turned and saw a slave-girl in the palace. She was nursing Nimrod’s small daughter. Suddenly the girl leapt from her mother’s lap, faced Nimrod and said, ‘Father, this is God’s prophet Abraham.’ And Nimrod ordered her cut to pieces.”35 This is in contrast to God who resurrects the dead, which is mentioned several times in Abraham’s encounters with Nimrod, but also throughout the work.

Conclusions Although details of a complex network of Near Eastern stories, maxims, prayers, inter alia, remain sketchy, a comparison of the figures of Mastema and Nimrod affords us an opportunity to appreciate how the role of archvillain plays out in Jubilees and al-Kisāi’ī’s Tales of the Prophets. The differences between Mastema and Nimrod are stark, but both function as similar foils in the retelling of the victory of God’s righteous servant Abraham over the forces of evil. This comparison suggests that the transmission of Second Temple motifs, literary devices, and narrative plots is to some degree palpable in medieval Islamic works. This of course is not to suggest that Jubilees was a source for al-Kisā’ī, or even that he fashioned Nimrod with Mastema in mind. In my studies into Jubilees and al-Kisā’ī’s Tales, I was delighted to discover that Aviva Schussman’s work draws a connection between al-Kisā’ī and Pirqe Rabbi Eliezer (PRE). In her Sipure hanevi’im bamasoret hamuslemit (Stories of the prophets in Muslim tradition), she maintains that there are similarities between Kisā’ī’s Tales and PRE.36 It is debated among scholars whether PRE was familiar with the book of Jubilees, but for our purposes it might be that both works, al-Kisā’ī’s Tales and PRE are familiar with Jubilees’s themes and traditions.

34 Thackston, Tales of the Prophets, 142. 35 Thackston, Tales of the Prophets, 142. 36 Dissertation, Hebrew University, 1981.

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The resonance of the ravens episode in particular calls attention to how both characters repeatedly antagonize Abraham. The birds in Jubilees are used by Mastema to taunt humans, but Abraham commands them to return to the place whence they first came. In al-Kisā’ī, during Nimrod’s battle against Abraham, God commands Abraham to take the four birds in order to prove that God alone gives life and causes death. Abraham makes them return to themselves and in both instances he demonstrates the power of God over evil. The birds appear in the context of Mastema’s attempts to defy and defeat God by starving humans, thus bringing about their demise. In al-Kisā’ī’s Tales of the Prophets it serves as evidence of the all-powerful God who gives life and brings the dead to life. It is one more victory in Abraham’s battle against Nimrod, and idolatry in general. Rabbinic literature is often the starting point for those interested in locating intertexts and establishing relationships between Jewish and Islamic literature. Second Temple literature, however, echoes not only in medieval Jewish texts, but also in Islamic tales about the prophets.

Daniel Boyarin

An Isogloss in First-Century Palestinian Jewry: Josephus and Mark on the Purpose of the Law Introduction In this paper, in honor of a highly honored colleague, I wish to contribute to the further understanding of a crucial point in the interpretation of first-century Palestinian Jewry. I will be using the linguistic concept of the isogloss as a way of specifying the claim that the early Jesus movement in Palestine is and remains within Jewry. I don’t use the term “Judaism,” because I deem it anachronistic, a topic on which I plan to expand greatly in current work. For the record, I find myself quite firmly within the Steve Mason camp on the questions of the meaning of Ioudaios and Ioudaismos, without, however, necessarily accepting all of his interpretations and conclusions.1 The term “isogloss,” which I have just entered into the conversation, refers in historical linguistics to the shared characteristics between different dialects or subdialects (or “languages”) within a given linguistic area. On a map, the isogloss is a circle (of course not strictly circular) surrounding the areas within which a given linguistic phenomenon persists; thus, for instance, the Speyer line (through the Rhineland city of Speyer) divides Germanic languages that use “apple” from those that use “apfel.” One of the interesting characteristics of this form of analysis is the way that it shows that many dialects that we would call dialects of German share features with English or Dutch, for instance. The division of language groups into separate languages is always a historical (and frequently political or juridical) project. In this paper, I will be using the term somewhat metaphorically

1 For the nonce, on this issue, see Steve Mason, “Jews, Judaeans, Judaizing, Judaism: Problems of Categorization in Ancient History,” Journal for the Study of Judaism 38, nos. 4–5 (2007): 457– 512. I will be defending Mason’s position and nuancing it in my forthcoming Daniel Boyarin, Judaism: A Genealogy, Key Words for Jewish Studies (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2016). The term “Jewry,” suggested to me for this usage by Jack Miles, has the advantage of not being a false friend but an archaic stranger, and is meant to indicate only the loose connections that bind Ioudaioi together into one complex entity. This paper is an attempt to understand one of the complexities of that binding.

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(a metaphor that I have already introduced in two earlier books)2 to discuss the early (especially first-century) conformation of the entities that later come to be defined (by Christians) as the religions, Judaism and Christianity. A highly interesting and famous such isogloss can be found explicitly articulated in the writings of the second-century apologist, Justin Martyr: For even if you yourselves have ever met with some so-called Christians, who yet do not acknowledge … [the] resurrection of the dead … do not suppose that they are Christians, any more than if one examined the matter rightly he would acknowledge as Jews those who are Sadducees, or similar sects of Genistae, and Meristae, and Galileans, and Hellelians, and Pharisees and Baptists (pray, do not be vexed with me as I say all I think), but that though called Jews and children of Abraham, and acknowledging God with their lips, as God Himself has cried aloud, yet their heart is far from Him. (Dial. 80.3–4)3

The implication of his last sentence is that Jews who do not deny the resurrection or participate in other “heresies” do, indeed, have their hearts “close to God.” Just as in the Pseudo-Clementine texts, in which there are clearly Jews, identified there as Pharisees, who are deemed close to “orthodox” Christianity, closer indeed than some Christians in their insistence on the resurrection,4 in this moment in Justin’s text, the lines are not clearly drawn between “Jewry” and “the Jesus folk”: some who self-identify as Jews believe in the resurrection (as all those close to God must), while others, the Sadducees and other sectarians, don’t; but some who are called Christians deny the resurrection just as surely as do the sectarian Jews who are far from God; while right-thinking Christians believe in the resurrection just as do right-thinking non-Christian Jews. Instead, in at least this one isogloss, belief in resurrection, which marked the difference between orthodox and here-

2 Daniel Boyarin, Dying for God: Martyrdom and the Making of Christianity and Judaism, The Lancaster/Yarnton Lectures in Judaism and Other Religions for 1998 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999); Daniel Boyarin, Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity, Divinations: Rereading Late Ancient Religion (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004). 3 A. Luykn Williams, ed. and trans., Justin Martyr: The Dialogue with Trypho, Translations of Christian Literature (London: SPCK, 1930), 169–71; Justin, Dialogus Cum Tryphone, Patristische Texte und Studien Bd. 47, ed. Miroslav Marcovich (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1997), 208–9. For the crucial (Platonic) distinction between being called a Jew and being one, see Shaye J. D. Cohen, The Beginnings of Jewishness: Boundaries, Varieties, Uncertainties, Hellenistic Culture and Society 31 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 60–61. See on this passage Alain Le Boulluec, La Notion d’hérésie dans la littérature grecque IIe-IIIe siècles (Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1985), 71, who considers that “La représentation hérésiologique a cependant besoin de déformer la conception juive des divers courants religieux pour attendre son efficacité entière.” 4 Albert I. Baumgarten, “Literary Evidence for Jewish Christianity in the Galilee,” in The Galilee in Late Antiquity, ed. Lee I. Levine (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1992), 39–50.

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tic for the rabbis5 and Justin and the Pseudo-Clementines alike, the line is drawn between Jew and Jew and between Christian and Christian, thus marking a site of overlap and ambiguity between the two “religions” that the text is at pains to construct as different. In this paper, I would like to briefly sketch out another such isogloss, one joining a certain Palestinian non-Jesus-believing Judean, Josephus, and one very much Jesus-believing Palestinian Israelite, the evangelist Mark (or perhaps even the Israelite Jesus). The isogloss on which I focus my attention has to do with the understanding of the relation between nomos as law and nomos as spiritual/ethical formation in these two near-contemporaneous figures.

Nomos and Narration: Against Apion In ancient Greek, the word nomos, evolving from an archaic usage as “custom,” developed the fairly strict sense of “law,” per se, the rules that are obligatory within the society, the breaking of which leads to punishment. It is this sense of law that lies behind Paul’s sustained attack on “The Law,” portraying the Jewish way of life as a rigid, unforgiving, spirit- and soul-lacking obsession with keeping the rules. This misunderstanding was in part caused by the very translation of Torah as nomos in the Greek translations of the Bible. For that contemporary and countryman of the evangelists, Josephus, however, nomos, the Law, was used in a much richer sense, one that brings (at least one passage in) Mark closer to what we might propose as Jewish6 thought in Palestine in the first century. Let us begin—as always—with philology, looking at Josephus’s own usage of nomos and its plural nomoi. These terms are usually translated into English as “law” and “laws,” but that translation significantly misses the point in Josephus. In his remarkable defense of the way of life of the Ioudaioi in Against Apion, the only terms used to describe comprehensively that way of life are nomos and its plural nomoi. We need, therefore, an examination of what Josephus means by nomos, a task easily and profitably accomplished, since he tells us exactly what it comprises for him. In Josephus, as we dare say, in ancient writers in general, the abstractions

5 Christine E. Hayes, “Displaced Self-Perceptions: The Deployment of Mînîm and Romans in B. Sanhedrin 90b–91a,” in Religious and Ethnic Communities in Later Roman Palestine, ed. Hayim Lapin (Lanham, MD: University Press of Maryland, 1999), 249–89. 6 I am not here entering into the question of “Jew” or “Judean,” which I will necessarily have to treat elsewhere. For the nonce, see Adele Reinhartz, “The Vanishing Jews of Antiquity,” Marginalia: A Los Angeles Review of Book Channel, June 24, 2014, http://marginalia.lareviewofbooks.org/vanishing-jews-antiquity-adele-reinhartz/. In my view, neither translation works and since this is a key word, best to use Ioudaioi. The adjective remains problematic.

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and categories of law, politics, and religion are not useful analytic categories.7 The following narrative will begin to show how what we call “law,” nomos in Greek, is imbricated in these complex lexical usages and thus conceptual fields. I submit that the term for Josephus that embraced the Book and the entire way of life was nomos, and that it was equivalent to Hebrew Torah and Aramaic ’orayta. On one level, this point is trivial, since already in the LXX the regular translation of Torah is nomos, but the point here is to emphasize that it was not that the Greek translators misunderstood the import of Torah with this translation but that rather the word nomos in Greek was resignified by being used among Jews as the equivalent of Torah. The best way to see this is to follow Josephus’s description and defense of the Judean nomos in his Against Apion, a text in which he explicitly defends the nomos of the Ioudaioi from attacks on the part of several “pagan” authors, including one Apion.8 Here he gives as full an account of what nomos/Torah means for him as one could hope for: But since Apollonius Molon and Lysimachus and certain others, partly out of ignorance, but mostly from ill-will, have made statements about our legislator Moses and the laws [nomoi] that are neither just nor true—libeling Moses as a charlatan and fraudster, and claiming that the laws are our teachers in vice and not a single virtue—I wish to speak briefly, as best I can, about the whole structure of our constitution [politeuma] and about its individual parts. For I think it will become clear that we possess laws that are extremely well designed with a view to piety, fellowship with one another, and universal benevolence, as well as justice, endurance in labors and contempt for death. I appeal to those who will peruse this text to conduct their reading without envy. For I did not choose to write an encomium of ourselves, but I consider this to be the most just form of defense against the many false accusations against us—a defense derived from the laws in accordance with which we continue to live. (2.145–147)

Although, to be sure, Josephus uses here politeuma, something like “constitution,” and thus a term that we would refer to politics, government, to designate the Torah of Moses, the nomoi are that which make up the politeuma. Moreover, as shall be demonstrated below, he frequently uses nomos in this very sense of the whole uni-

7 See Carlin A. Barton and Daniel Boyarin, Imagine No Religion (Bronx, NY: Fordham University Press, 2016), from which some of the language in the Josephus section of the present paper is borrowed. 8 All translations of Josephus here are from Josephus, Against Apion (Josephus Flavius, translation and commentary, ed. Steve Mason, trans. John Barclay [Leiden: Brill, 2007]).

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fied object, the politeuma.9 Within the politeuma, there are laws, but let us note of what the laws consist: laws regarding piety, fellowship, universal love of humans, justice, perseverance in labor, and contempt for death. Unpacking this, we see that the whole—by whatever name he refers to it, and he has several—consists of what we might call ritual laws, structures of governance that lead to fellowship and benevolence, but also laws in the strict sense (justice), as well as prescribed practices to inculcate personal moral characteristics. Neither could we extract one piece of this whole and call it law, politics, or religion, nor could the whole be named with such an anachronistic covering term or abstraction. Note that the term nomoi includes all of these categories and practices, as well, and even more, as we shall presently see. In a lengthy passage, Josephus argues for the totality of the code of laws of the Ioudaioi, as well as its accessibility to all Ioudaioi. Referring to Greek philosophers, including Plato and the Stoics, who are all recognized by Josephus as followers of the true God, he writes: These, however, confined their philosophy to a few and did not dare to disclose the truth of their doctrine to the masses who were in the grip of opinions. But our legislator, by putting deeds in harmony with words, not only won consent from his contemporaries but also implanted this belief about God in their descendants of all future generations, [such that it is] unchangeable. The reason is that, by the very shape of the legislation, it is always employable by everyone, and has lasted long. For he did not make piety a part of virtue, but recognized and established the others as parts of it—that is, justice, moderation, endurance, and harmony among citizens in relation to one another in all matters. For all practices and occupations, and all speech, have reference to our piety towards God; he did not leave any of these unscrutinized or imprecise. (2.169–71)

We note several things: First of all, the ideas of Plato and the Stoics are designated as “philosophies,” not in contrast to the Torah of Moses but as members of the same class. The legislation of the Torah, as opposed to that of the worthy Greeks, is so perfectly designed as to inculcate in all of its receivers correct doctrine about God as well, which the others fail to do owing to their esotericism. Secondly, the very esotericism of such thinkers as Plato was guaranteed by the fact that they only spoke about ideas, while the Torah also prescribes a whole way of life for all of the people. In this passage, Josephus begins a wide-ranging comparison of the Torah of Moses with the practices of other peoples with regard to inculcating merit according to their lights. Josephus has already designated the form of Judean government (politeuma), via an apparent neologism, as a theocracy (theokratia),

9 See Barclay’s note: “Josephus had portrayed the Judean laws as the Mosaic ‘constitution’ in Antiquities book 4, but here returns to that task with different emphases” (Josephus, Against Apion, ad loc.).

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rule by God (2.165), that is, God as he has expressed himself in the Torah: a rule of law.10 Josephus here explains how the theocracy works by elaborating a theory in which virtues are inculcated by the Torah via a combination of “words” and “practices,” thus rendering it superior to those cultures that seek to transmit their values either by words alone (Athens) or deeds alone (Sparta). Josephus makes the point as well that for the Ioudaioi, eusebeia, reverence toward God is not a virtue among the other virtues but is the master virtue that incorporates and inculcates all of the others, hence theokratia. “Words,” here, it should be emphasized, means precisely the Written Torah, which one studies, as it is glossed in the next sentence,11 while “deeds” is glossed in the next Josephan sentence as “instructing through customs, not words” (2.172). Josephus is clearly relating to the dual practice, so characteristic of later rabbinism, of lives dedicated both to the study of the Torah, logoi, and to the practice of the commandments, erga.12 As Barclay points out, Josephus here is mobilizing ancient topoi and stereotypes, thus: with respect to Roman virtue, Dionysius of Halicarnassus writes, “not by words is it taught but inculcated through deeds.”13 Josephus goes on in the next sentences to write explicitly: But our legislator combined both forms with great care: he neither left character-training mute nor allowed the words from the law to go unpracticed. Rather, starting right from the beginning of their nurture and from the mode of life practiced by each individual in the household, he did not leave anything, even the minutest detail, free to be determined by the wishes of those who would make use of [the laws], but even in relation to food, what they should refrain from and what they should eat, the company they keep in their daily lives, as well as their intensity in work and, conversely, rest, he set the law as their boundary and rule, so that, living under this as a father and master, we might commit no sin either willfully or from ignorance.

10 This is not rule by priests, as shown by Barclay in Josephus, Against Apion, 262, n. 638. See David C. Flatto, “Theocracy and the Rule of Law: A Novel Josephan Doctrine and Its Modern Misconceptions,” Dine Yisrael 28 (2011): 5–30. As Barclay remarks, the first rule of semantics is that the meaning of words is derived from their context, not from a lexicon! I am grateful to Tzvi Novick for the Flatto reference. 11 Eusebius reads “laws,” not “words” here, but in any case, as mentioned it is so glossed in the next sentence by Josephus, with the result that even without emending the text, that is the sense (Barclay). As Copeland remarks, “the Nomos concept was quite prominent and bore universal connotations both in the Bible and in Greek thought, and because Law and Word were intimately related in both contexts,” E. L. Copeland, “Nomos as a Medium of Revelation—Paralleling Logos—in Ante-Nicene Christianity,” Studia theologica 27 (1973): 51–52. 12 For this dualism within rabbinic culture, see: Rabbi Tarfon and the elders were reclining in the upper room of the house of Natzah in Lydda and the following question was asked of them: Which is greater: Is study greater or the deed? Rabbi Tarfon responded and said, the deed is greater. Rabbi Akiva responded and said, study is greater. All then responded and said, study is greater, as it conduces to the deed. (b. Qiddushin 40b) 13 Josephus, Against Apion, 267, n. 677, citing Ant. rom. 2.28.

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He left no pretext for ignorance, but instituted the law as the finest and most essential teaching-material; so that it would be heard not just once or twice or a number of times, he ordered that every seven days they should abandon their other activities and gather to hear the law, and to learn it thoroughly and in detail. That is something that all [other] legislators seem to have neglected. (2.173–75)

Moses is described as a legislator, nomothetēs. (Of course, Josephus has not forgotten his description of the polity as a theokratia.) Even more striking, the primary purpose for the Sabbath rest here is precisely the opportunity for study of the Torah. Moses combined into a perfect whole the instruction of Israelites in virtue by not leaving any required practices unexpressed (so correctly, Barclay) nor by leaving any words to be theoretical or unpracticed. The nomos is thus the perfect expression and teaching mechanism for all merit of Ioudaioi. The combination of constant hearing of the words and practicing the deeds inscribed in those words achieves excellence: “For us, who are convinced that the law was originally laid down in accordance with God’s will, it would not be pious to fail to maintain it” (2.184). Josephus goes on at this point to detail the merits and virtues inculcated by the nomos. Among the values and orders inculcated by the nomos are some that we in our modern thought world might identify as “political,” some as “religious,” and others as “legal,” without any distinction of these three latter-day abstractions being made by Josephus. Thus the nomos has led to concord among all Ioudaioi (hah!) in their conception of God. Moreover, their commonly held lifestyle (bios) leads them to concord, as well. The nomos organizes the world with God at the top, as governor of the universe, who designates the priests as managers, as overseers, and judges in disputes (187). Josephus follows this with what might appear as a non sequitur, namely that one of the merits of the Ioudaioi is the ability to maintain life at the level of a rite or a mystery at every moment of existence (188–89), “For the whole constitution is organized like a mystic rite [telete]” (188). Everything in the Torah, including the civil law, the rules for government, the rituals, the morals and ethics, all are organized like an initiation ritual into the Mysteries. This both explains the constancy of the Ioudaioi in the maintenance of these laws and practices, as well as revealing at least some of the affect of ardor surrounding them. The details are then given: There are the commandments that speak about God and prohibit other gods, make it illegal to make images of him. Following them, Josephus talks about sacrifices and the rules of sacrifice, prayer, and purification rites. Josephus completes this section by emphasizing that all of these elements are part and parcel of the nomos (198).14 There follows a discussion of sexual practices and marriage rules, purification practices, funerary rites, and honor of parents. Then we

14 Cf. Barclay in Josephus, Against Apion, 282, n. 794.

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are informed (2.207) that the law prescribes how we ought to behave with friends and the requirements for judges, as well as laws having to do with the treatment of enemies in battle (212) and animal welfare (213). The list goes on with laws involving honest business practice (216), and more. By the time Josephus is done, he has certainly encompassed what we call government, ritual, religion, politics, and law under the one rubric, nomos. We could not nail this point down better than by citing Josephus’s own summary: Concerning the laws, there was no need of further comment. For they themselves have been seen, through their own content, teaching not impiety but the truest piety, exhorting not to misanthropy but to the sharing of possessions, opposing injustice, attending to justice, banishing laziness and extravagance, teaching people to be self-sufficient and hard working, deterring from wars of self-aggrandizement, but equipping them to be courageous on their behalf, inexorable in punishment, unsophisticated in verbal tricks, but confirmed always by action; for this we offer [as evidence] clearer than documents. Thus, I would be bold enough to say that we have introduced others to an enormous number of ideals that are, at the same time, extremely fine. For what could be finer than unswerving piety? What could be more just than to obey the laws? What could be more profitable than concord with one another, and neither to fall out in adverse circumstances, nor in favorable ones to become violent and split into factions, but in war to despise death, and in peace to be diligent in crafts and agriculture, and to be convinced that God is in control, watching over everything everywhere? (2.291–94)

Contrary to the frequent stereotype that Greek Jewish writers reduced the Torah to “law,” it is clear from Josephus that he, at any rate, understood nomos in a way far more expansive than our notion of “law” would predict. For him, it incorporates civil and criminal law, the organization of government, plus cultic practice including temple and private observance, and also beliefs about God. This is much more than is captured by the terms “law,” “politics,” or “religion”; nomos incorporates, one might fairly say, all of these terms, and thus demonstrates the falseness of any one of them as a category for describing Josephus’s world.

The Law and Palestinian Judaism For Josephus, therefore, as for Palestinian Ioudaioi in general, including later on the rabbis, nomos is so much more than law. It is the entire corpus of the Judean way of life: morals and ethics, spirituality, the history of God’s saving work with the children of Israel, rules and rites having to do with ritual matters, including eating and sex, Sabbaths and holidays, as well as law proper. The most important

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“take­away” point for my purposes here, however, is the insistence that the Torah as text and the precepts that it enjoins work together in perfect harmony to instill in the Ioudaios spiritual and ethical character, to lead him or her to human perfection. The nomos of the nomothetēs Moses is superior to those of Plato and Lycurgus in that neither of those manifests that perfect harmony between the study and the practice that alone guarantees this human perfection. It will be clear that getting both right and exact is necessary for this system of spiritual education to work. To recapitulate the key passages (from above) that make this point: For all practices and occupations, and all speech, have reference to our piety towards God; he did not leave any of these unscrutinized or imprecise [aoriston, indeterminate]. For I think it will become clear that we possess laws that are extremely well designed with a view to piety, fellowship with one another, and universal benevolence, as well as justice, endurance in labors and contempt for death.

If the law is so precisely designed to inculcate the virtues named by Josephus, it would follow that any change in the precepts would result in the teaching becoming less precise, less accurate, less able to bring the practitioner to the virtues named by Josephus. This consideration leads me to a suggestion (partly adumbrated in earlier publications)15 for a revised interpretation of Mark 7, as it, too, is an expression of the notion of the nomos promulgated by Josephus, Mark’s contemporary compatriot, as it were.

Mark 7 and Devotion to God’s Commandments As read by most commentators, Mark 7 establishes the beginning of the so-called “parting of the ways” between Judaism and Christianity. This is because, according to the traditional and virtually all modern scholarly interpretations, in this chapter Jesus declares a major aspect of the Torah’s laws, the laws of kashrut (keeping kosher), no longer (or even never having been) valid, thus representing a major rupture with the beliefs and practices of virtually all other Jews, whatever their stripe, Pharisaic or not. In his commentary in the time-honored Anchor Bible, Joel Marcus writes that “anyone who did what the Markan Jesus does in our passage, denying this dietary distinction and declaring all food to be permissible (7:19), would immediately be identified as a seducer who led the people’s heart astray from God (cf. 7:6) and from the holy commandment he had given to Moses (cf. 7:8, 9,

15 Daniel Boyarin, The Jewish Gospels: The Story of the Jewish Christ (New York: The New Press, 2012), 102–28. I shall not here rehearse the full argument as presented there.

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13).”16 This view is the commonly held interpretation of the passage in both the pious and scholarly traditions.17 But did the Markan Jesus do this blasphemous thing, and is this passage truly a parting of the ways between Judaism and Christianity? In what follows, I would like to suggest a very different perspective on the chapter from the one that has come to be so dominant. Reading the text backward from later Christian practices and beliefs about the “Law” and its abrogations, interpreters and scholars have found a point of origin, even, dare I say, a legend of origin for their version of Christianity, while I hope to show that the text reads much more smoothly when read as part of an inner-Jewish controversy than when read as an abrogation of the Torah and denial of Judaism. The Josephan reading offered above in the first part of this paper will provide key context for the re-evaluation of the pericope that I suggest here. It will be well to have the entire narrative in mind for my discussion, so let me begin by citing the text from the NRSV translation: Now when the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around him, 2 they noticed that some of his disciples were eating with defiled hands, that is, without washing them. 3 (For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, do not eat unless they thoroughly18 wash their hands, thus observing the tradition of the elders; 4 and they do not eat anything from the market unless they wash it; and there are also many other traditions that they observe, the washing of cups, pots, and bronze kettles.) 5 So the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?” 6 He said to them, “Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written, ‘This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; 7 in vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines.’ 8 You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.” 9 Then he said to them, “You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition! 10 For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother’; and, ‘Whoever curses of father or mother must surely die.’19 11 But you say that if anyone tells father or mother, ‘What16 Joel Marcus, Mark 1–8: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New York: Doubleday, 2000), 450. It should be noted clearly, lest there be anything misleading here, that Marcus does consider Mark a “Jewish Christian,” albeit a much more radical one than Matthew. 17 See too for instance, “Mark, our earliest gospel, offers a more reliable standard [than Paul]; and it says that Jesus abrogated laws of food and purity and violated the Sabbath.” Robert H. Gundry, Mark: A Commentary on His Apology for the Cross (1993; repr., Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), 370. What seems so obvious to Gundry about Jesus’s behavior in Mark is hardly so to me. 18 This translation is probably inaccurate. I would give, “making a fist, they wash their hands.” See discussion in Boyarin, Jewish Gospels, 102–128. 19 Substituting the literal “curses” for the NRSV “speaks evil of.” I may be able to suggest a solution to a hermeneutic problem here. Marcus writes: “But, wrong as it may be to withhold material support from one’s parents, how is it equivalent to cursing them?” (Marcus, Mark 1–8, 444). If we, however, think of the Hebrew this is perhaps less of a problem. In Hebrew the verb for “to honor” is literally “to make heavy,” perhaps something like to treat with gravitas. On the oth-

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ever support you might have had from me is Corban’ (that is, an offering to God)— 12 then you no longer permit doing anything for a father or mother, 13 thus making void the word of God through your tradition that you have handed on. And you do many things like this.” 14 Then he called the crowd again and said to them, “Listen to me, all of you, and understand: 15 there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.” 16 17 When he had left the crowd and entered the house, his disciples asked him about the parable. 18 He said to them, “Then do you also fail to understand? Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile, 19 since it enters, not the heart but the stomach, and goes out into the sewer?” (Thus he declared all foods clean.) 20 And he said, “It is what comes out of a person that defiles. 21 For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, 22 adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. 23 All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”

Rather than beginning, as most interpretations do, with the difficult verse at 19b (printed in parenthesis in the NRSV), I would begin by summarizing the flow of argument of the pericope with a view toward grasping its major thrust. The subject of the contretemps between Jesus and the Pharisees is clearly established at the beginning of the pericope. Pharisees are demanding that the followers of Jesus wash their hands before eating in accord with the Pharisaic “Tradition of the Elders.” Those eating without having washed their hands are named as eating with “defiled” hands. Jesus attacks this proposition as a “human” addition to God’s word as written in the Torah. Moreover, making very effective usage of the verse in Isaiah, he accuses the Pharisees: “This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; 7 in vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines.’ 8 You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.” The Pharisees are accused of abandoning the commandment of God, the Written Torah. Surely anyone reading until this point would not for a moment think that Jesus is about to end up abandoning what is clearly written in the Torah when it is he who denounces the Pharisees for doing just that. He is defending the Torah, not abrogating it. The next section of the pericope supports this interpretation strongly. Jesus accuses the Pharisees of substituting their human precepts for the commandment of God on many occasions and not only this one. To support this he offers the fact that while the Torah demands that a child support his or her mother and er hand, the word for curse is to “make light.” So in Exodus 20, the verse reads literally “Make heavy your father and your mother,” while in 21:17, it reads, “All who make light their father and mother shall surely die.” If “to make heavy” (to honor) is to provide with material support, then “to make light” (to curse) is the opposite, so not feeding one’s parents is tantamount to cursing them. If this interpretation is appealing, then it would be evidence for at least a stratum in Mark that was much closer to the veritas Hebraicas.

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father, the Pharisees argue that if one makes a vow forbidding the parent to have any benefit from the property of the child, not only is the child released from the obligation to support the parent but is forbidden to do so on the strength of his or her vow. Since this precept is certainly not written in the Torah, once again and in a very rhetorically strong fashion, Jesus indicts the Pharisees with abandoning the commandments of the Torah in favor of their human traditions and doctrines. It is absolutely clear, moreover, from this example that the “word of God” consists of the Written Torah as cited with respect to the obligation to support parents. Jesus’s move on returning to the main topic is to assert that that which goes into the body does not defile but only that which comes out. As long ago as Matthew Henry’s commentary on Mark in the seventeenth century and most recently in a carefully argued article by Yair Furstenberg, it has been amply demonstrated that this utterance is a simple statement of halakic fact as explicit in the Torah.20 Nothing that enters the body renders the body defiled, but fluxes that come out of the body do: semen, other genital fluxes, menstrual blood, and the blood of childbirth. Jesus, very plausibly, is simply stating the commandment of God here as it is found in Leviticus and Deuteronomy.21 The Pharisaic insistence that eating with unwashed hands defiles the body stands, then, in contradiction to the word of God. This mode of reading the text renders it a logical, coherent discourse on the part of Jesus. The disciples, however, do not understand the significance of this point from the Torah, referring to it as a parable: 18 He said to them, “Then do you also fail to understand? Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile, 19 since it enters, not the heart but the stomach, and goes out into the sewer?” (Thus he declared all foods clean.) 20 And he said, “It is what comes out of a person that defiles. 21 For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, 22 adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. 23 All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”

The meaning of the Torah’s commandment becomes now clear. God has commanded us that that which goes into the body does not defile the body but only that which comes out, in order to teach us that it is from within the human heart that all these evil things come, and just as genital fluxes that come from within defile the body, these evil things that come from within the human heart defile the person. 20 Yair Furstenberg, “Defilement Penetrating the Body: A New Understanding of Contamination in Mark 7.15,” New Testament Studies 54 (2008): 176–200. 21 According to the Written Torah, it is indeed the case that foods that are impure (that is which have been in contact with dead bodies or touched by people with various fluxes from the body) do not render the body impure; impurity is conveyed upon a human body through things that come out: genital blood, semen, and gonorrheal fluxes. Matthew Henry, writing in the sev-

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In order to render this interpretation cogent, it’s very important that we make some distinctions between different domains of the Torah’s law, and especially the dietary laws, for there has been much confusion on this score. While this was especially relevant when the temple was extant, there are within the Written Torah entire regimes of laws regarding the eating of foods that have nothing to do with whether or not the food is kosher! Indeed, there are kosher foods that in some circumstances and for some Jews are forbidden to be eaten, despite the fact that they are in themselves made of entirely kosher ingredients, cooked in kosher pots, and do not incorporate milk with meat. The answer to this virtual riddle is that they have become impure through some mishap, such as being touched by a person with a flux from his body. While all Jews are forbidden always to eat pork, lobster, milk and meat together, and meat that has not been properly slaughtered, only some Jews, some of the time, are forbidden to eat kosher food that has become contaminated with ritual impurity. While in English they are sometimes confused, the system of purity and impurity and the dietary laws are two different systems within the Torah’s rules for eating. Let us observe an example of this distinction operating as it appears explicitly in a (admittedly much later) passage from the Babylonian Talmud: Mishnah: All dead animals [not properly slaughtered] add up with each other and all creeping creatures add up with each other. Gemara: Rav said: This was not taught but in respect to impurity, but for eating, the pure ones by themselves and the impure ones by themselves. (b. Me‘ilah 15b–16a)

This short passage will illustrate well the point that I am trying to make, but first we need to understand it. According to the halakah, one is only deemed to have eaten something (or touched something) when the piece of forbidden (or required) substance meets the minimum size of an olive. The question at hand is what happens with a piece that is a half-olive of one substance and a half-olive of another. Under what circumstances is one deemed to have eaten (or touched) a full olive? The mishnah tells us that all dead animals add up with each other; in other words, that eating a half-olive of a cow not properly slaughtered and a half-olive of pig at the same time constitutes eating a full olive of forbidden substance or that touching them constitutes having touched a quantity equivalent in size to a full olive. The Amora Rav comments that this precept was not taught except for the matter of impurity, that is, that touching one half-olive of each at the same time would convey impurity, whereas vis-à-vis the question of having eaten a forbidden sub-

enteenth century, got this point: “As by the ceremonial law, whatsoever (almost) comes out of a man, defiles him (Leviticus 15:2, De 23:13), so what comes out from the mind of a man is that which defiles him before God, and calls for a religious washing (Mark 7:21).”

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stance, the “pure” animal, the improperly slaughtered cow, and the “impure” pig have nothing to do with each other and the eater is not culpable after having eaten one half-olive of each. We learn several things from this brief text. First of all: The two systems of impurity and forbidden food are clearly distinguished conceptually. Secondly, despite the use of the terminology of “pure” and “impure” to refer to categories of animals, nonetheless, there is no confusion as to the distinction of the conceptual categories: dead animals convey impurity by touch whether or not they are “impure” animals (only “pure” animals, properly slaughtered, convey no impurity at all) and also neither may be eaten if improperly slaughtered. Although the support is from a later text, I maintain that these distinctions explicitly made within the rabbinic text comprise a good close reading and reconstruction of the biblical system and are likely to have been operative in Jesus’s time as well. We see here the very clear distinction between dead flesh that communicates impurity by touch (not by eating!)22 and dead flesh that may or may not be eaten. While some dead flesh may be eaten, other may not. It is the first category, the communication of impurity and not forbidden foods, to which Jesus refers in this pericope. In the demand to wash hands, we have a Pharisaic extension of the Torah, just as Jesus said. According to the Torah, only that which comes out of the body (fluxes of various types) can contaminate, not foods that go in.23 Thus, if the Pharisees argue that food itself contaminates, that represents a change in the law, and it is to this change that Jesus objects so strenuously. This interpretation has the great advantage of rendering the attack on handwashing consistent with the attack on the vow that releases one from supporting ones’ parents. They both represent instances in which the “Pharisees” apparently supplant the Torah with their “Tradition of the Elders.” Once again, Jesus and Mark have got it exactly right in terms of the Torah and the traditions. For Jesus (Mark) the “Tradition of the Elders” is a human creation as opposed to the Written Torah, which is divine, hence the force of the citation from Isaiah: He said to them, “Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written, ‘This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; 7 in vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines.’ 8 You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.”

From Jesus’s point of view (as well as from the point of view of Qumran and the “Saducees”) the “Tradition of the Elders”—later called the Oral Torah—is exactly “human precepts” being taught as doctrines in precisely the prophetic formula22 Mira Balberg explains: “It is not that the ingestion process obliterates the impurity of the ingested substances; rather, the interior part of the body is conceptually removed from the body, in such a way that the substances within it are seen as though they are residing separately, in an external container.” Cf. Mira Balberg, Purity, Body and Self in Early Rabbinic Literature (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014), 64. 23 Furstenberg, “Defilement Penetrating,” 200.

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tion. For the Pharisees, and later for the rabbis, the “Tradition of the Elders” is divine word and not human precepts, transmitted orally rather than scripturally.24 In this case, moreover, we have an admittedly “Pharisaic” innovation, contested even by some other Pharisees. No wonder that (Markan) Jesus would balk and protest. When Jesus speaks of the purity or impurity of foods, he is not, therefore, speaking about the kosher system but about the “Pharisaic” understanding of purity practices that are part of their “Tradition of the Elders” and not that which is written in the Torah.25 It follows from this that neither Jesus nor the evangelist held, suggested, or implied that the new Jesus movement involved a rejection of traditional Jewish practices around eating, nor that it constituted a step out to form a new “religion.” Mark’s Jesus is defending the sanctity of the Law and its ultimate meaningfulness, not attacking them. It would be absurd to suggest that Jesus first accuses the Pharisees of having abandoned the Torah of Moses via their alleged innovations, such as changing the purity laws or allowing a vow that would abrogate the requirement to support parents, and then he himself, Jesus, abrogates the whole Torah! This absurdity, which constitutes the accepted interpretation, makes Jesus either a fool or a hypocritical knave. The whole context suggests that here Jesus speaks from the position of a traditional Galilean Jew whose community and traditional practices are being criticized and interfered with from outside, that is, from Jerusalem, by the Ioudaioi (as is emphasized in the incipit of the story itself).26 Jesus accuses these Pharisees of introducing practices that are beyond what is written in the Torah, or 24 Adela Y. Collins, Mark: A Commentary, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007), 350. Given, however, that she so precisely articulates this, I cannot understand how on the next page she approves of Claude Montefiore’s statement that “the argument in vv. 6–8 is not compelling.” It is as compelling as can be as described in the body of this argument: Why Pharisees, are you setting aside the commandments of God in favor of the commandments of humans—handwashings, vows—, as the prophet prophesied?! 25 Pace John C. Poirier, “Why Did the Pharisees Wash Their Hands?,” Journal of Jewish Studies 47 (1996): 226, n. 43, a paper that in other ways has moved this discourse forward considerably. He seems clearly correct in his argument against the commonly held position that the Pharisaic commitment to purity rules was understood as the application of priestly rules to eating in general. See also Thomas Kazen, Jesus and Purity Halakhah: Was Jesus Indifferent to Impurity? Coniectanea biblica (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 2002), 86, already cited by Furstenberg along with Menachem Kister, “Law, Morality, and Rhetoric in Some Sayings of Jesus,” in Studies in Ancient Midrash, ed. James L. Kugel (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Center for Jewish Studies: Distributed by Harvard University Press, 2001), 145–54. The main difference between my reading and Kister’s earlier reading is that I suggest that Jesus’s statement was entirely the simple halakic truth and that it is only in Jesus’s interpretation of the words that the ethical teaching of the halakah is brought out, while Kister holds that verse 15b already indicates the anagogical meaning of the Torah’s verse. This is a distinction that makes a difference. 26 “It seems that this is not the only occasion on which Jesus defends a conservative halakic stand. In the woe-sayings in Matt 23, Jesus twice rails against Pharisaic law and offers an alternative halakic opinion. In both matters, that of oaths (vv. 16–22) and the subject of purifying

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even against what is written in the Torah, and fights against their so-called “Tradition of the Elders” (κατὰ τὴν παράδοσιν τῶν πρεσβυτέρων),27 which they take to be as important as the Torah, or sometimes, in the eyes of their opponents such as Jesus, as uprooting or superseding the Torah. I would assert, moreover, that Jesus’s Galilean disciples were following their own accepted traditional practice in their refusal of the (nonbiblical) notion that impure foods could render the body impure and hence their refusal to wash their hands before eating. Jesus’s disciples are upbraided by these upstarts from Jerusalem for not observing the purity strictures that they had introduced and demanded on the basis of the “Traditions of the Elders.” Jesus responds vigorously, accusing them of hypocrisy and of ascribing a self-importance to their own rulings and practices that is greater than that of the Torah. There is, thus, nothing in this passage, even in the Markan version, that suggests that Jesus is calling for abandoning that Torah at all. The Galileans were antipathetic to the urban Judean/Jerusalemite Pharisaic innovations.28 The great advantage of this interpretation, I think, from a purely exegetical point of view, is that the narrative remains coherent from its beginning to its end. It begins with a controversy over a novel “Pharisaic” stringency, continues with Jesus’s attack on the “Tradition of the Elders,” that set of practices and ideas that the Pharisees held and which were not in the Written Torah (and which were the source of sharp controversy among Jews right through the Middle Ages), and ends with a rejection of an entire complex of Pharisaic stringency with regard to eating practices and purity that was the source of the requirement for a ritual handwashing before eating.29

Josephus and Mark The payoff of this rereading for the present argument is that the response of Mark’s Jesus to the innovations of the Pharisees draws the Markan Jesus close to Josephus’s explanation of the Torah itself. Just as Josephus emphasizes that the purpose of the Torah is to teach human virtue through a double practice of study and the precise vessels (vv. 25–26), Jesus objects to the leniency of the Pharisees and offers a stricter ruling. This point is stressed by K. C. G. Newport, The Sources and Sitz im Leben of Matthew 23, (JSNTSup 117; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995), 137–45” (Furstenberg, “Defilement Penetrating,” 178). 27 Albert I. Baumgarten, “The Pharisaic Paradosis,” Harvard Theological Review 80 (1987): 63– 77. 28 This is close to the view of Seán Freyne, Galilee, from Alexander the Great to Hadrian, 323 B.C.E. to 135 C.E.: A Study of Second Temple Judaism, University of Notre Dame Center for the Study of Judaism and Christianity in Antiquity 5 (Wilmington, DE: M. Glazier; Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1980), 316–18, 322. 29 On purely hermeneutic grounds, surely such a reading is preferable to one that must insist that the text is an “artificial” (whatever that might mean) construct, pace E. P. Sanders, Jesus and Judaism (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985), 256, as well as many others.

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fulfillment of the commandments, so too the Markan Jesus insists, on my reading, that the word of God, the commandment, must be fulfilled exactly, precisely in order for its pedagogical function to be discharged. The Pharisees, by introducing their own innovative practices, are, accordingly, making it impossible for the Torah to function in the way that it was intended to function and consequently are substituting their own human precepts for divine doctrine. Not an exhortation, then, to abandon the Torah, but rather to deepen our genuine commitment both to practicing it and incorporating its meanings, Jesus’s famous saying can be seen as entirely within a Jewish spiritual world. In the end, then, what I suggest here is that for Palestinian Jews, even those who were followers of Jesus, nomos was understood as Torah, as Josephus had articulated it: words and deeds together that inculcate reverence, good government, mystical experience, and fellowship between members of the polity. For both Josephus and Mark (’s Jesus) “Moses” is the name of an entity entirely positive and to be supported and protected. Just as, for Justin, the isogloss regarding resurrection of the dead divides some Ioudaioi from other Ioudaioi and binds them with some Christianoi but not others, this isogloss joins Josephus and Mark into one dialect of thought and practice across what would eventually be confessional lines, while other Ioudaioi who might have rejected the notion that the precepts of the Torah inculcate ethics and form character and followers of Jesus who came to believe that he did come to abrogate a cold and spirit-free law would be outside this isogloss.

Appendix: “And thus he purified all foods” Verse 19b is a crux for this interpretation, as it certainly seems to imply that Jesus permitted all foods to be eaten. This conclusion, however, would upend the entire coherence of the text and render Jesus something of a hypocrite, to wit: having accused the Pharisees of not observing God’s commandments, as written in the Torah, it would be deeply inconsistent, to say the least, for Jesus to turn around and declare those very commandments null and void. This conclusion, moreover, would lead us to conclude that a controversy that began on the question of washing hands before eating ended up having to do with the entire subject of the kashrut of foods; apples and oranges as I have shown above. The verse, therefore, represents a deep rupture in the logic and coherence of the pericope. In my earlier publication on this chapter of Mark, cited above, I therefore insisted that “and thus he purified all foods” refers again to the purity/impurity system, indicating in accord with the import of the whole chapter that no foods make the body impure—and “purified” means declared pure ab initio—, but not in any way abrogating the systems of permitted and forbidden foods articulated in the Torah. While I believe that this is still a more than defensible position, there is another possibility. There does seem to be in this chapter a later glossing voice, most clearly

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and explicitly marked as such in the explanations of what the Pharisees “and all of the Jews” do. This remark is so clearly external to the narrative itself as told, as an explanatory gloss on it and from a different cultural location, that many translators and editors, including the NRSV, put it in parenthesis. The same is true for verse 19b, which then could be held to come from a later gentile voice (“all of the Jews”) that has rejected entirely the practices of the Torah. On either philological solution, the meaning of the body of the pericope remains the same; the only difference between these two solutions might be with respect to normative Christian practice, a subject on which, of course, I don’t and ought not comment. Whichever of these explanations suits better, it is clear to me that to disrupt the logic and flow of the entire dominical speech here in order to render it compatible with this one anomalous moment in the text is deeply implausible. Rather we should seek to interpret the bulk of the text as it stands and deal with the anomaly.

John J. Collins

Divorce and Remarriage in the Damascus Document One of the many ways in which the Dead Sea Scrolls have contributed to our knowledge of ancient Judaism is in the light they shed on the early history of halakic exegesis. Prior to the discovery of the scrolls, there was debate as to how far the legal concerns of rabbinic literature could be taken as representative of Second Temple Judaism. Even the discovery of the Damascus Document in the Cairo Genizah at the end of the nineteenth century, and the realization that it dated from the pre-Christian period, did not immediately alert the scholarly world to the importance of halakic debates in this period.1 Indeed, it was only after the publication of the Temple Scroll, and especially 4QMMT, that the role of halakic disputes in the sectarian divisions of the period came to be fully realized.2 The last few decades, however, have seen a new appreciation of this aspect of the scrolls, and also of the Damascus Document, and Steven Fraade has been at the forefront of this discussion. In this essay I propose to make a modest contribution to one halakic issue in the Damascus Document (CD), which has already been discussed exhaustively, but without consensus. This is the bearing of the passage dealing with the nets of Belial in CD 4:20–5:2 on the issue of divorce and remarriage. My discussion will focus primarily on two recent articles, one by Vered Noam that seeks to study the issue in light of early rabbinic halakah,3 and the other by Lutz Doering, who compares and contrasts the use of Genesis in CD with that of the gospels on the subject of marriage.4 At issue is not only the meaning of the passage in CD, but also its relation to rabbinic tradition on the one hand and to the teaching of Jesus as reported in the gospels on the other.

1 See the comments of Steven D. Fraade, “The Dead Sea Scrolls and Rabbinic Judaism after Sixty (Plus) Years: Retrospect and Prospect,” in Legal Fictions. Studies in Law and Narrative in the Discursive Worlds of Ancient Jewish Sectarians and Sages, JSJSup 147 (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 109–24. 2 Lawrence H. Schiffman, Reclaiming the Dead Sea Scrolls (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1994) was a landmark book in this regard. 3 Vered Noam, “Divorce in Qumran in Light of Early Halakhah,” JJS 56 (2005): 206–22. 4 Lutz Doering, “Marriage and Creation in Mark 10 and CD 4–5,” in Echoes from the Caves: Qumran and the New Testament, ed. Florentino García Martínez, STDJ 85 (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 133–63.

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The Nets of Belial The passage in question offers a distinctively sectarian interpretation of Isaiah 24:7 (“terror, a pit, and a snare are upon you O inhabitants of the land”). The verse is said to refer to “the three nets of Belial,” in which he entrapped Israel, making them seem as if they were three types of righteousness. The first is unchastity, the second arrogance, and the third defilement of the temple. The followers of “the Dripper,” the archopponent of the movement of the new covenant represented by CD, are said to be caught in the first and third nets. Of these, the first has proven to be especially controversial. The form of “unchastity” (‫ )זנות‬in which Belial is said to trap people is explained as “taking two women/wives in their lifetime.” Three scriptural passages are adduced to show that this practice is wrong: first, “the foundation of creation is ‘male and female he created them’” (Gen 1:27); second, those who entered the ark went two by two (Gen 7:9); third, it is written of the prince that he should not multiply wives for himself (Deut 17:17).

“In their lifetime” is written with the masculine suffix (‫)בחייהם‬. The prima facie meaning of the passage, then, would seem to be that a man may only have one wife in his lifetime,5 with no allowance for remarriage after divorce or even after the death of his first wife, but scholars have been reluctant to accept that conclusion. In an article published forty years ago, Geza Vermes lists four possible interpretations of this passage:6 1. Both polygamy and remarriage after divorce are forbidden. 2. Polygamy alone is forbidden. 3. Divorce alone is forbidden. 4. Any second marriage is forbidden, even after the death of the first wife. Subsequent scholars have discounted the third of these, a view which Vermes attributed to R. H. Charles.7 All scholars agree that polygamy, or bigamy, is forbidden. Even Charles did not say that divorce alone was forbidden and actually held that the passage forbade both polygamy and divorce.8 What is disputed is whether the text addresses the issue of divorce at all. 5 Since the addressee is plural, the plural suffix may naturally apply to the husbands. 6 Geza Vermes, “Sectarian Matrimonial Halakhah in the Damascus Rule,” JJS 25 (1974): 197–202. 7 R. H. Charles, APOT 2. 796. 8 Charles, APOT 2. 810.

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Polygamy Alone? Two arguments have been adduced in support of the view that the passage in CD is concerned with polygamy alone, and not at all with divorce. Long before the discovery of the scrolls, Louis Ginzberg argued that the verse should be understood as an allusion to Lev 18:18, which forbids taking a woman as a rival to her sister “in her lifetime” (‫)בחייה‬, and therefore as only forbidding polygamy: “The addition of ‫ ]בחייהם] = בחייהן‬in our text is borrowed from Scripture and means only that this prohibition of marriage differs from all the others in so far as it is in force only so long as a man lives with his first wife in marital union.”9 Ginzberg held that “naturally, however, he is permitted to marry a second woman after he is divorced from his first wife, since he thus has only one wife.”10 Similarly, Instone-Brewer concludes that “the text in the Damascus Document has no implications with regard to remarriage after divorce because the text, as the Qumran exegetes specifically state, applies to someone who takes two wives.”11 Doering elaborates: This … interpretation relates ‫ בחייהם‬to the women only. That would require taking ‫ בחייהם‬as an orthographic variant of feminine ‫ ;בחייהן‬but there are several examples of such variants in the Scrolls, as noted by Elisha Qimron. In this perspective, CD 4:20–21 would object to taking two wives in the wives’ lifetime. The issue is therefore polygyny.12

Doering admits that “the text could still be read as a prohibition of ‘successive polygyny’ whilst the former partner is still alive,”13 but argues that the allusion to Lev 18:18 tilts the balance in favor of concomitant, rather than successive polygyny. But while the prohibition of polygyny is not in dispute, it is difficult to see how remarriage after a divorce, while the first wife was alive, would not also be a case of “taking two women in their lifetime.” Ginzberg’s argument, that the woman who was divorced was no longer a wife, begs the question of whether the marriage was truly dissolved in the eyes of the sectarians. The other argument in favor of the view that the passage only refers to polygamy derives from the texts cited to support it. Vermes granted that the citation of

9 Louis Ginzberg, An Unknown Jewish Sect (New York: JTS, 1976), revised and updated translation of Eine Unbekannte jüdische Sekte (New York: published by the author, 1922), 19–20. Ginzberg’s interpretation is endorsed and restated by David Instone-Brewer, Divorce and Remarriage in the Bible: The Social and Literary Context (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 68–72. 10 Ginzberg, Unknown Jewish Sect. 11 Instone-Brewer, Divorce and Remarriage, 72. 12 Doering, “Marriage and Creation,” 153. 13 Doering, “Marriage and Creation,” 153.

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Gen 1:27 could be construed in various ways, but felt that the other two references “point in a single direction.”14 All those who entered the ark did so as monogamous couples. The Law of the King in Deuteronomy 17 is likewise concerned with polygamy. But the point at issue is precisely whether, from the viewpoint of CD, any second marriage while the first wife was alive constituted polygamy. The prooftexts cited in CD 4–5 do not address this issue directly, but they certainly do not preclude such an understanding. Neither does the example of David, who is excused because he had not read the sealed book of the Law. David was polygamous, to be sure, but this meant that he took new wives while his existing wives were alive, and while he may not have divorced Michal, he certainly repudiated her. The arguments in favor of the “polygamy only” interpretation do not show how a person who divorced and remarried while his first wife was alive would not be guilty of “taking two wives in their lifetime.” The range of possible interpretations of CD 4–5 must be narrowed. Either the passage forbids a second marriage while the first wife is alive or it categorically forbids a second marriage in any circumstance.

Categorical Rejection? The argument that the passage categorically forbids a second marriage in any circumstance was stated incisively by Murphy-O’Connor: The suffix should be taken at its face value, unless there are strong reasons to the contrary. This is not the case here; the masculine suffix yields perfect sense. However, to interpret it as a prohibition of polygamy is to introduce a limitation that the text does not contain. The text does not forbid having two wives simultaneously. It goes much further, and forbids two marriages in a single lifetime, be it after the death of a spouse or after divorce.15

He has received strong support from Philip Davies16 and Florentino García Martí­ nez.17 Even Vermes, who preferred the “polygamy only” view, admitted that “from a purely linguistic viewpoint, this thesis is irreproachable.”18 He also allowed that

14 Vermes, “Sectarian Matrimonial Halakhah,” 200. 15 Jerome Murphy-O’Connor, “An Essene Missionary Document? CD II, 14 – VI, 1,” RB 77 (1970): 220. 16 Philip R. Davies, “Marriage and the Essenes,” in Behind the Essenes: History and Ideology in the Dead Sea Scrolls, BJS 94 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1987), 73–85. 17 Florentino García Martínez, “Man and Woman: Halakah Based upon Eden in the Dead Sea Scrolls,” in idem, Qumranica Minora II: Thematic Studies on the Dead Sea Scrolls, ed. Eibert Tigchelaar, STDJ 64 (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 57–76, especially 61–71. 18 Vermes, “Sectarian Matrimonial Halakhah,” 199.

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while such a prohibition was odd in a Jewish setting, it had a possible, if ephemeral, parallel in the Hellenistic churches founded by Paul.19 Against this view, however, we must note the provision in 4Q471 3 10–12 (a fragment of the Damascus Rule from Cave 4) that a widow is unacceptable as a prospective bride only if she “has been slept with since she was widowed,” which implies that widows who have led a blameless life in their widowhood would be suitable candidates for marriage. Judging from the reciprocity of sexual relations assumed in the scrolls elsewhere (see CD 5:9–10 and Jub 1:25–26), we can with some confidence assume that remarriage would generally be possible for the widower as well.20 It would seem then that CD did not categorically forbid a second marriage in the case where the first spouse was no longer alive. The issue therefore turns to the prohibition of remarriage after divorce, which many, perhaps most, interpreters have seen as the main issue at stake in CD.21

Divorce in the Hebrew Bible The Hebrew Bible is notoriously elliptic on the subject of divorce. The laws of the Pentateuch only refer to it obliquely.22 The key text is found in Deut 24:1–4: Suppose a man enters into marriage with a woman, but she does not please him because he finds something objectionable about her [‫]ערות דבר‬, and so he writes her a certificate of divorce, puts it in her hand, and sends her out of his house; she then leaves his house and goes off to become another man’s wife.

The passage goes on to consider the case where the second man also divorces her, and declares that her original husband cannot then take her back. The passage simply assumes that a man could divorce his wife “if she did not please him,” as was the case throughout the ancient Near East. It also assumes that the woman was then free to remarry, as also, presumably, was the man. The debate about this passage in rabbinic tradition focused on the meaning of “something objectionable” that would be considered valid grounds for divorce. The school of Shammai sought to restrict the grounds of divorce to proven adultery, while the school of

19 Vermes, “Sectarian Matrimonial Halakhah,” 199, citing 1 Tim 3:2, 12; 5:9; Tit 1:6. 20 Doering, “Marriage and Creation,” 149. 21 So already Solomon Schechter, Documents of Jewish Sectaries: Fragments of a Zadokite Work (New York: Ktav, 1970; reprint of 1910 Cambridge edition, with a prolegomenon by Joseph A. Fitzmyer), 115–16. See Joseph A. Fitzmyer, “The Matthean Divorce Texts and Some New Palestinian Evidence,” in To Advance the Gospel: New Testament Studies, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 96, n. 84. 22 Instone-Brewer, Marriage and Divorce, 20–33.

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Hillel ruled that divorce was permitted “even if she spoiled a dish for him, for it is written, ‘because he has found an indecency in anything.’”23 Rabbi Akiba went further: “Even if he found another fairer than her, for it is written, ‘And it shall be if she finds no favor in his eyes …’” (m. Git. 9:10). There was no debate, however, about either party’s right to remarry. Similarly, a bill of divorce preserved in P.Mur 19 specifies for the divorced woman that she may marry “any Jewish man that you wish.”24 The right to divorce is never revoked in the Hebrew Bible. Only one passage is critical of the practice, a difficult and corrupt passage in Mal 2:10–16. Mal 2:16 is usually translated “For I hate divorce … and covering one’s garment with violence.” The verb, however, is a participle, and the expression “hate” is the standard term for “repudiate” in marriage contracts from Elephantine. A better translation may be “for one hates [=repudiates], divorces, and covers his garment with violence.”25 Even so, the passage is clearly critical of divorce, but it is exceptional in the Hebrew Bible. The Scroll of the Minor Prophets from Qumran rendered the passage, “but if you hate, divorce,” a translation that is incompatible with the received Hebrew text but fully in line with biblical tradition.26 It is clear that divorce is also accepted in the Damascus Document. CD 13:15– 17 indicates that the permission of the mebaqqer was required for divorce, as for most other activities.27 4Q159 2–4 notes a case where divorce is not permitted (in accordance with Deut 22:19), thereby implying that it is permitted in other cases.28

23 Noam, “Divorce in Qumran,” 212–13. See Ishai Rosen-Zvi, “‘Even If He Found Another One More Beautiful Than Her’: A Fresh Look at the Reasons for Divorce in Tannaitic Literature” (in Hebrew), JSIJ 3 (2004): 1–11; Instone-Brewer, Divorce and Remarriage, 85–132. 24 P. Benoit et al., Les Grottes de Murabbaat, Texte, DJD 2 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1961), 104–9. 25 See my essay, “Marriage, Divorce, and Family in Second Temple Judaism,” in Families in Ancient Israel, ed. Leo G. Perdue et al. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1997), 104–62, especially 122–27. 26 Russell Fuller, “Text-Critical Problems in Malachi 2:10–16,” JBL 110 (1991): 47–57. This text is not necessarily representative of the views of the new covenant, pace Girshon Brin, “Divorce at Qumran,” in Legal Texts and Legal Issues: Proceedings of the Second Meeting of the International Organization for Qumran Studies, Cambridge, 1995, ed. Moshe Bernstein et al., STDJ 23 (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 232–44. 27 The parallel in 4Q266 9 III, 4–7 is unfortunately even more fragmentary than the passage in CD. See Joseph Baumgarten, Qumran Cave 4. XIII. The Damascus Document (4Q266–273), DJD 18 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1996), 70–71. On the reference to divorce, see further Cecilia Wassen, Women in the Damascus Document, SBL Academia Biblica 21 (Atlanta: SBL, 2005), 159–60. 28 Noam, “Divorce in Qumran,” 209; Aharon Shemesh, Halakhah in the Making: The Development of Jewish Law from Qumran to the Rabbis (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009), 118–19.

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The Temple Scroll A new consideration was introduced into the discussion by the publication of the Temple Scroll.29 The Law of the King, in 11QT 57:15–19, says that the king may not marry a foreigner, but must take a wife from his father’s house. “He may not take another wife in addition to her; for she alone shall be with him all the days of her life. But if she dies, he may marry another from his father’s house.” The Temple Scroll does not envision divorce in the case of the king, but it states clearly that the only circumstance in which he may remarry is if his first wife dies. It prohibits not only polygamy, but remarriage while the first wife is alive. The provision in the Temple Scroll is designed for the king, not for every Israelite. Moreover, there is no evidence that the Temple Scroll was written within the community of the new covenant, or that it was considered binding by the author of the Damascus Document. Nonetheless, it has many affinities with the sectarian texts, and it is clearly relevant to the context in which they were composed. It raises the possibility that the Damascus Document too should be understood as prohibiting any second marriage while the first wife is alive. This in fact would explain the plural ‫ חייהם‬in CD 4:21, as an inclusive reference to both the man and the woman: neither may marry again while the other is alive.30 The inclusive formulation would not be necessary if the issue were polygamy, as polyandry is never attested in Israelite or Judean tradition.31 Vered Noam has argued strenuously that it would make no sense to permit divorce but forbid remarriage: Why would there be any need for the institution of divorce if the connection between husband and wife could not be severed and if the writ of divorce did not permit the woman (or even the man!) to marry someone else? The essential formula of the get— ‫גופו של גט‬, as defined in m. Gittin 9.3, is ‫“—הרי את מותרת לכל אדם‬Behold, thou art permitted to any man,” or according to a different version in Aramaic that is presented in that mishnah:

‫“—למהך להתנסבא לכל גבר דתצביין‬that thou mayest be wedded to whatever man though desirest.”32

29 Yigael Yadin, “L’Attitude essénienne envers la polygamie et le divorce,” RB 79 (1972): 98– 99. This article preceded the actual publication of the Temple Scroll. 30 So Lawrence H. Schiffman, “Laws Pertaining to Women in the Temple Scroll,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls: Forty Years of Research, ed. Devorah Dimant and Uriel Rappaport, STDJ 10 (Leiden: Brill, 1992), 217. 31 Instone-Brewer, Divorce and Remarriage, 69, seems to think that the inclusive formulation would be relevant if the issue were concomitant polygamy, but does not explain why. 32 Noam, “Divorce in Qumran,” 211.

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She finds further support in the wording of the get found at Masada and cited above, and in the explanation provided by Josephus for the written get: “for thus will the woman obtain the right to consort with another” (Ant. 4.253).33 The appeal to the standard get in rabbinic tradition, or even to Josephus and Masada, is based on the assumption that the sectarians of the new covenant conformed to general Jewish practice in the matter of divorce. Lutz Doering simply refers to “the Jewish get,” on the assumption of universal consistency.34 But CD 4:16 claims that in this matter, Israel was entrapped in the net of Belial, which made it seem that their sinful practice was a type of righteousness. If the sectarians were adversaries of the Pharisees, and there is continuity between the Pharisees and the Mishnah, as is generally supposed, then we surely cannot assume that the rabbinic understanding of the get was normative for the sectarians, even if it was broadly accepted in late Second Temple Judaism. In fact, neither CD nor any of the nonbiblical scrolls from Qumran ever refer to a get at all.35 Noam also asks: “if marriage after divorce was indeed forbidden in Qumran, how does this prohibition comply with the explicit scriptural statement ‫והלכה והיתה‬ ‫‘—לאיש אחר‬and [she] goeth and becometh another man’s wife’ (Deut. 24:2)?” But Deuteronomy does not say that the divorcée who marries again acts properly, or even lawfully. She too may have been trapped in the net of Belial. The point of the passage in Deuteronomy is that her first husband may not take her back. It need not be construed as a binding precedent on the right of the woman to remarry. Here again, important light is shed on the subject by 4Q271. The passage specifies that no member of the new covenant should marry a woman who has had sexual experience, whether “in the home] of her father or as a widow who had intercourse after she was widowed” (4Q271 3 12). Aharon Shemesh comments: Two women appear as potential mates: a single, never-married woman who still resides with her parents, and a widow. The fact that a widow is considered a potential candidate for marriage indicates that women, like men, are permitted to remarry. On the other hand, the halakhah’s omission of the divorcee attests that sectarian halakhah outlawed remarriage subsequent to divorce as long as the former spouse was still living.36

33 On the writ of divorce as permission to remarry see also David Instone-Brewer, “Deuteronomy 24:1–4 and the Origin of the Jewish Divorce Certificate,” JJS 49 (1998): 230–43. 34 Doering, “Marriage and Creation,” 152. 35 Tzvi Novick directs my attention to m. Yadayim 4:8, where a Galilean sectarian objects to the fact that the Pharisees write in a get the name of the ruler together with the name of Moses. This may imply that the sectarian wrote the get differently, but it does not necessarily imply that the sectarian wrote a get at all (if the get in question is even a bill of divorce specifically). The objection is to linking the name of a ruler with the name of Moses. In any case, there is no reason to think that the “Galilean sectarian” was related in any way to the sectarians of CD. 36 Aharon Shemesh, “4Q271.3: A Key to Sectarian Matrimonial Law,” JJS 49 (1998): 244–63 (246); idem, Halakhah in the Making, 118.

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Doering tries to dismiss this as an argument from silence,37 but in fact it is supported by a very plausible interpretation of the prohibition against marrying two women “in their lifetime” in CD 4. Noam proposes a different explanation for the omission of the divorcée in 4Q271. She suggests that the attitude of the covenanters to divorce was the same as that of the school of Shammai, which permitted divorce only in case of adultery.38 The consultation of the mebaqqer in that case would take the place of the judicial inquiry necessary to establish that the wife was indeed guilty of adultery. Consequently, a divorced woman was supposed to be an adulteress. Noam continues: If indeed, according to the sect, as according to Bet Shammai, the divorcee was necessarily an adulteress, then being married to a divorcee was certainly repugnant, exactly as evidenced in the tannaitic world. This was not due to mythical views of the everlasting nature of marriage, but instead was the inevitable outcome of the practical halakhic circumstances, causing all divorcees to be regarded as adulteresses.39

Noam has to admit that this approach to divorce is never explicit in the texts from Qumran. She finds, however, “echoes of an exegetic interpretation similar to that of Bet Shammai” in 4Q271 3: “Let no man bring [a woman into the ho]ly [covenant] who has had sexual experience.” We might indeed expect that the covenanters would take a strict approach to the subject of divorce, but there is no actual evidence that they permitted it only in case of adultery. We might also expect that they would recoil from marrying a divorcée, and this may be sufficient to explain the absence of the divorcée in 4Q271. The passage in CD 4–5, however, goes further than this. It explicitly prohibits taking two wives “in their lifetime,” that is, while both original partners are still alive. The first grounds given for this ruling is in fact a “mythical view of the everlasting nature of marriage” based on Genesis 1. Danny Schwartz has famously argued that the sectarians, like the Sadducees, had a realistic view of law (i. e. that it was based on the order of nature or creation), while the rabbis were mainly nominalists.40 Whether or not that view holds true as a generalization,41 it seems quite 37 Doering, “Marriage and Creation,” 153. 38 Noam, “Divorce in Qumran,” 219. 39 Noam, “Divorce in Qumran,” 219–20. William Loader, The Dead Sea Scrolls on Sexuality: Attitudes toward Sexuality in Sectarian and Related Literature at Qumran (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009), 117, thinks that there would be an exception if a divorcée were not considered an adulteress. He also thinks that divorced men were free to marry women who were not divorced. 40 Daniel R. Schwartz, “Law and Truth: On Qumran-Sadducean and Rabbinic Views of Law,” in Dimant and Rappaport, The Dead Sea Scrolls: Forty Years of Research, 229–40. 41 See the criticism of Jeffrey L. Rubinstein, “Nominalism and Realism in Qumran and Rabbinic Law: A Reassessment,” DSD 6 (1999): 157–83; Eyal Regev, “Were the Priests All the Same? Qumran Halakah in Comparison with Sadducean Halakhah,” DSD 12 (2005), and the comments of Shemesh, Halakhah in the Making, 108.

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correct in the case at issue in CD 4:21. The text could hardly be more explicit: “the foundation of creation is ‘male and female he created them.’”

The New Testament An argument from creation also figures in the teaching of Jesus on divorce in the gospels. In Mark 10:2, the Pharisees ask Jesus “is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” He responds by asking what Moses taught, and is told that Moses permitted divorce. Jesus responds: Because of your hardness of heart he wrote this commandment for you. But from the beginning of creation, “God made them male and female.” For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate. (Mark 10:5–9)

Afterwards, he elaborates for his disciples: Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.

The controversy with the Pharisees, and citation of Genesis, is also found in Matt 19: 3–9, with the exception that divorce is permitted in case of unchastity.42 The earliest recoverable form of Mark 10:2 does not identify the questioners as Pharisees.43 No one in ancient Judaism, other than Jesus, seems to have questioned the legitimacy of divorce as such. But if he were known to have denied it, we should not be surprised if someone questioned him about it. John Meier grants that the story in Mark 10:2–12 is a literary and theological creation of Mark, but still suspects that a historical dispute may underlie it.44 The controversy story, with its citation of Genesis 1, appears to reject divorce entirely. In contrast, the sayings attested in Matt 5:32 and 19:9, Mark 10:11–12, and Luke 16:18 focus their condemnation on remarriage.45 Here Mark is anomalous in two respects. The man who divorces his wife and marries another is said to commit adultery against his first wife, whereas in Jewish tradition the offence was against the husband.46 Also, it

42 Matt 19:3–9 are “a thorough reworking of Mark 10:2–9.” See Ulrich Luz, Matthew 8–20: A Commentary, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001), 487. 43 Adela Yarbro Collins, Mark: A Commentary, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007), 465; John P. Meier, Law and Love, vol. 4 of A Marginal Jew, AYBRL (New Haven: Yale, 2009), 119–28. 44 Meier, Marginal Jew, 4.123. 45 Meier, Marginal Jew, 4.102–119. 46 Yarbro Collins, Mark, 469.

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was exceptional in ancient Judaism for women to initiate divorce, although there were exceptions.47 In contrast, the form of the saying in the Gospel of Luke reads: “everyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery, and the one who marries a woman divorced by [her] husband commits adultery” (Luke 16:18). Matthew inserts an exception that is found nowhere else in the Jesus tradition: “except on grounds of unchastity” (Matt 5:32) and says that whoever divorces his wife, apart from this exception, “causes her to be involved in adultery.” (Matt 19:9, however, says that the man commits adultery if he marries another.) Paul reports as a word of the Lord “that the wife should not separate from her husband (but if she does separate, let her remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband), and that the husband should not divorce his wife” (1 Cor 7:11; compare Rom 7:2: “thus a married woman is bound by the law to her husband as long as he lives, but if her husband dies, she is discharged from the law concerning the husband.”). The Matthean position, that divorce is permitted in case of unchastity, may conform to that of the school of Shammai, as Noam suggests,48 but it is very unlikely to be the teaching of Jesus.49 The rest of the tradition is unanimous that he forbade divorce and remarriage outright. In Matt 19:10 the scribes object even to the Matthean form of the saying: “If such is the case of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry.” It seems clear that the Matthean exception, like the reading of Mal 2:16 in the Greek Scroll of the Minor Prophets, was an attempt to domesticate a position that was shocking and extreme. If we set aside the Matthean exception, we are still left with two distinct positions attributed to Jesus in the gospels. In most forms of the saying, the objection is not to divorce as such but to remarriage, which is viewed as adultery or polygamy. These sayings conform to what we find in the Damascus Rule, and evidently represent a strict view of marriage and divorce that had some currency in Judaism around the turn of the era. The principle that “what God has joined together, let no man separate” seems to go further, and prohibit even divorce. This position, which is without parallel in non-Christian Jewish sources, is found only in the controversy story in Mark 10 and Matthew 19. These positions are not necessarily incompatible; an absolute prohibition of divorce entails that one may not divorce and remarry. But they are distinguishable positions. Many scholars have assumed that the controversy story is secondary, but the absolute prohibition of divorce is

47 See my essay, “Marriage, Divorce, and Family,” 119–21. The exceptions are found in the Elephantine papyri, in the Herodian royal house as reported by Josephus, and possibly in a papyrus from Nahal H  ever (P.Se’elim 13). 48 Noam, “Divorce in Qumran,” 214. 49 Instone-Brewer, Divorce and Remarriage, 153, grants that the exception was added by Matthew, but argues that it had only been omitted because “its inclusion is so obvious in this context that any intelligent Jew would have mentally supplied it if it were missing.” This is an obvious case of apologetic special pleading.

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the more radical break with Jewish tradition, and so might be attributed to Jesus by the principle of dissimilarity.50 It is of interest that here the appeal to Genesis 1 supports the absolute ban on divorce, whereas in the Damascus Document, if we have interpreted it correctly, it does not preclude divorce, but only remarriage. It seems likely, however, that any position that forbade remarriage, contrary to the precedent of Deuteronomy 24, relied on such an understanding of Genesis. Doering comments: There is no abrogation of “Mosaic” Law, but the provision of Deut 24:1 is seen as an emergency ruling that was not intended and is now no longer expected to be needed. On the other hand, Jesus does not merely negotiate between two scriptural passages but refers to a normative order in force since creation and calls for restoration of a practice that conforms to this order.51

Whether there is a difference between abrogating a law and expecting that it will no longer be needed, is open to question. Both the gospels and CD assume that a new, eschatological, era is dawning. Both also appeal to the order of creation as the ultimate authority.52 As Aharon Shemesh expounds the implications, “The basic concept is that marriage is constituted not by a contract or any other legal agreement, but by the physical union between a man and a woman …. the marital tie is unbreakable and can’t be untied as long as both are alive.”53 On this interpretation the “divorce” permitted in CD is only a separation (for reasons of peace, or financial considerations) but does not dissolve the marriage in the eyes of God. I would argue that this understanding of marriage is found already in Mal 2:15: ‫ולא‬ ‫אחר עשה‬: “and did He not make one?”54 Doering, who holds that CD is only concerned with polygyny, concludes that the gospels and CD cite Gen 1:27 to address different problems.55 On the interpretation offered here, they both address the problem of divorce and remarriage, but do so with different emphases. In the words of John Meier, “The Damascus Document forbids polygyny explicitly and divorce with remarriage implicitly; Jesus

50 Yarbro Collins, Mark, 469; compare Meier, Marginal Jew, 4.116. 51 Doering, “Marriage and Creation,” 145. 52 There is a long tradition in Judaism that questions how far the words of Moses are a human product, rather than a transcript of divine revelation. See Steven Fraade, “Moses and the Commandments: Can Hermeneutics, History, and Rhetoric Be Disentangled?,” in Legal Fictions, 477–99, and Benjamin Sommer, Revelation and Authority. Sinai in Jewish Scripture and Tradition, AYBRL (New Haven: Yale, 2015). The position of CD, however, is not necessarily contradictory to Deuteronomy 24, since the latter does not explicitly say that remarriage after divorce is ever licit, although it could be interpreted in that way, and seems to be taken in this way by Jesus in the gospels. 53 Shemesh, Halakhah in the Making, 112. 54 Collins, “Marriage, Divorce,” 126. 55 Collins, “Marriage, Divorce,” 162.

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forbids divorce with remarriage explicitly and polygyny implicitly.”56 More notably, however, the gospels seem to infer from Gen 1:27 that divorce should not be practiced at all. In CD, it only leads to a prohibition of remarriage. For those who thought that remarriage was the whole point of divorce, as implied in the rabbinic get, the difference between these positions may not have been very significant.

Conclusion The prohibition in CD 4:21 against taking “two women in their lifetime” is not an absolute prohibition of second marriage. Both the formula itself and the context in CD suggest that the restriction only applied while the first wife was alive. The plain sense of the text, however, cannot be restricted to concurrent polygamy. Even though the covenanters permitted divorce, they forbade remarriage in the lifetime of the divorced spouse, in accordance with their belief that marriage was indissoluble according to the order of creation. A similar, if not identical, position is attributed to Jesus in the New Testament, except for the Matthean exception, which allowed divorce and remarriage in the event of adultery, and which conforms rather to the Shammaite position. The Jesus tradition, however, is complicated by the fact that some passages seem to prohibit not only remarriage but even divorce. The attempt of Vered Noam to consider the position of CD in light of Tannaitic debates has enriched the discussion, but it is illuminating mainly for the contrast it reveals. In this case, at least, the view of Danny Schwartz that the covenanters and the rabbis had fundamentally different views of law is well founded. Conversely, while Lutz Doering is right in principle that we should be careful to attend to differences as well as similarities between the scrolls and the New Testament, the argument that Mark 10 and CD 4–5 invoke Gen 1:27c “male and female he created them” for different problems is not entirely convincing. True, the emphases of the two texts are different. The gospel discussion is more narrowly focused on divorce, as distinct from polygamy, and it addresses the apparent tension with Deuteronomy 24 explicitly, unlike CD. Also, the gospels seem to infer a complete ban on divorce from Gen 1:27. But the agreement is significant too. Both CD and the gospels give priority to the order of creation as expounded in Genesis over the precedent of Deuteronomy 24. There are many instances where the gospels and the scrolls represent the opposite ends of the spectrum of Jewish opinion around the turn of the era.57 This is one case where there is substantial agreement between them.

56 Meier, Marginal Jew, 4.116. 57 John J. Collins, The Dead Sea Scrolls: A Biography (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013), 135–36.

Devorah Dimant

Apocalyptic and the Qumran Library Much has been said of apocalyptic at Qumran but still more remains controversial and uncertain. Heir to notions regarding apocalyptic that go back to the eigh­ teenth century, critical inquiry of the subject has yet to digest the new information provided by scores of hitherto unknown Qumran texts that are pertinent to the subject. The novelty and importance of the new evidence from Qumran is readily admitted, but it has never been fully evaluated, as I hope to show below. The present discussion attempts to fill this gap at least partially by treating the subject from the perspective of the Qumran library as a multilayered entity. In order to improve our understanding of the apocalypses preserved at Qumran, the article suggests replacing the linear model that is usually adopted for explaining them with one of historical-thematic clusters. It further proposes that most of the Jewish “historical” apocalypses are related to the circles from which the Qumran community emerged and to which it remained connected.

A. History of Research The relationship between what is labeled “Jewish apocalyptic” and the Qumran library has preoccupied the research into the scrolls from its inception. Frank Cross, writing one of the first and most influential surveys of the Qumran findings, concluded that the authors of the scrolls formed “an apocalyptic community” and were “priestly apocalypticists.”1 Cross based his statements on the eschatological and dualistic notions found mainly in the Damascus Document (CD), the Community Rule (1QS), and the War Scroll (1QM).2 However, his characterization suffers from the same terminological fuzziness typical of early as well as

1 Cf. Frank M. Cross, The Ancient Library of Qumran and Modern Biblical Studies, rev. ed. (Garden City, NY: Anchor, 1961), 78. In the third edition of the book, published some thirty years later, Cross still held the view that the community was “profoundly rooted in older Judaism, specifically in the priestly laws of purity coupled with a thoroughgoing apocalypticism.” See Frank M. Cross, The Ancient Library of Qumran, 3rd ed. (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995), 68. 2 Cross, Ancient Library of Qumran, 1961, 76–78.

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recent treatments of the subject.3 In part, this is due to the debate on the meaning of the terms “apocalyptic” and “apocalypticism” and how they are related to individual apocalypses. The various opinions on the matter span two extremes. On the one end stand scholars such as Jean Carmignac and Hartmut Stegemann, who restrict the adjective “apocalyptic” to literary apocalypses alone. On the other end of the spectrum stand scholars such as Florentino García Martínez and John Collins, who judge that Qumran sectarian texts share ideas with the apocalypses and therefore one should distinguish between the literary genre of individual apocalypses and the core of ideas they share with texts that are not apocalypses.4 This view, held by many scholars, indeed accounts for the undeniable affinity between central notions characteristic of the apocalypses and specific ideas expressed by the Qumran texts. However, while generally plausible, this view rests on vague generalities and all-inclusive definitions that obscure the particularities. When details of specific apocalypses are examined closely, a more nuanced picture of apocalyptic at Qumran comes into focus. Current discussions of the apocalyptic at Qumran suffer from two main flaws: the first is the neglect of the multivalent character of the Qumran library. The various surveys treat the Qumran library en bloc, disregarding its distinct components: sectarian works, Aramaic compositions, and parabiblical nonsectarian writings.5 Each one of these groups relates to the apocalyptic in a different way and therefore must be examined separately. The second flaw lies in the tendency to analyze apocalypses on the basis of an overly large base corpus, which blurs the specifics of the particular historical-thematic context of the early Jewish apocalypses. These flaws are illustrated in a definition of the apocalypse genre proposed by John Collins and a group of collaborators.6 It reads as follows: “‘apocalypse’ is a genre of revelatory literature with a narrative framework, in which a revelation is 3 Cf. the critique of John J. Collins, “Was the Dead Sea Sect an Apocalyptic Movement?,” in Archaeology and History in the Dead Sea Scrolls, ed. Lawrence H. Schiffman, JSOT/ASOR Monographs 2 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1990), 25–51. 4 Florentino García Martínez, “Apocalypticism in the Dead Sea Scrolls,” in Qumranica Minora I: Qumran Origins and Apocalypticism, ed. Eibert J. C. Tigchelaar, STDJ 63 (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 195–226; Collins, “Was the Dead Sea Sect an Apocalyptic Movement?,” 44–45. 5 For the tripartite division of the Qumran texts, see the classification of Devorah Dimant, “The Qumran Manuscripts: Contents and Significance,” in History, Ideology and Bible Interpretation in the Dead Sea Scrolls: Collected Studies, FAT 90 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014), 27–56. The terminology and ideas unique to the sectarian texts were surveyed by eadem, “The Vocabulary of the Qumran Sectarian Texts,” ibid., 57–100. For the Qumran Aramaic corpus specifically, see eadem, “The Qumran Aramaic Texts and the Qumran Community,” ibid., 185–94. 6 John J. Collins, “Introduction: Towards the Morphology of a Genre,” Semeia 14 (1979): 1–19. The definition and its adjacent typological paradigm are used by Collins in other surveys. See idem, The Apocalyptic Imagination, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 4–5 (unless otherwise noted, this edition is quoted throughout); idem, Apocalypticism in the Dead Sea Scrolls (London: Routledge, 1997), 3.

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mediated by an otherworldly being to a human recipient, disclosing a transcendent reality which is both temporal, insofar as it envisages eschatological salvation, and spatial, insofar as it involves another, supernatural world.”7 Extracting features from a wide range of individual Jewish, Christian, Greco-Roman, and Persian apocalypses, the definition is based on a list of elements of form and content, tagged “a paradigm” of the genre.8 However, examining early Jewish apocalypses through the lens of such a definition generates inaccuracies and misconceptions. Firstly, not all the apocalypses are revelations “mediated by an otherworldly being.” For instance, the vision related in the Animal Apocalypse (1 Enoch 85–90) is revealed to Enoch in a dream. Secondly, most of the early apocalypses concern only visionary revelations and not cosmic tours, and therefore providing a single definition for the two themes distorts the picture of the genre, at least when related to the early specimens. Thirdly, the enormous range of base texts covered by the definition is a disadvantage for the purpose of understanding specific sections of the corpus. Particularly detrimental is the stress placed on formal literary features without their historical, cultural, and geographical contexts.9 Eibert Tigchelaar observes that Collins’s definition neither takes into account the evolutionary aspect of the genre, nor its complexity.10 Tigchelaar also proposes replacing the traditional linear development of protoapocalyptic towards apocalyptic with a view of the genre as a historical group with family resemblances.11 A similar idea is proposed below. One of the problems in current reviews of the apocalyptic is their reliance on traditional approaches to apocalypses and the apocalyptic, which mingle together various genres from different origins. This is particularly salient regarding the list of apocalypses considered to be pertinent to the subject. The usual one used by most of the discussions goes back to the collection of pseudepigrapha compiled by the scholar and bibliographer Johann Albert Fabricius (1668–1736),12 and to the anthologies published at the turn of the twentieth century by Emil Kautzsch and

7 Collins, “Introduction: Towards the Morphology,” 9. 8 Even more nebulous is the corrected definition accepted by Collins: “an apocalypse is intended to interpret present earthly circumstances in the light of the supernatural world and of the future, and to influence both the understanding and the behavior of the audience by means of divine authority.” cf. idem, “Genre, Ideology and Social Movements in Jewish Apocalypsticism,” in Seers, Sibyls and Sages in Hellenistic-Roman Judaism, JSJSup 54 (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 19. The definition is taken from Adela Yarbro Collins, “Introduction: Early Christian Apocalypticism,” Semeia 36 (1986): 7. 9 See the critiques of Florentino García Martínez, “Encore l’Apocalyptique,” JSJ 17 (1986): 228; Eibert J. C. Tigchelaar, “More on Apocalyptic and Apocalypses,” JSJ 18 (1987): 142. 10 Tigchelaar, “More on Apocalyptic and Apocalypses,” 139. 11 Tigchelaar, “More on Apocalyptic and Apocalypses,” 141. 12 See Johann Albert Fabricius’s Codex Pseudepigraphus Veteris Testamenti (Hamburg and Leipzig, 1713) and Codicis Pseudepigraphi Veteris Testamenti, Volumen Alterum (Hamburg, 1723).

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Robert Henry Charles.13 Under the heading “Apocalypses,” these collections assembled the following list: 1 Enoch, Jubilees, 2 (Syriac) Baruch and 4 Ezra, 2 Enoch, the Sibylline Oracles, 3 Baruch, the Assumption of Moses, and the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs. The recent and much larger collection assembled by James Charlesworth has a similar roster.14 In surveying Jewish apocalypses, Collins has only slightly deviated from this catalogue. Yet, putting early Jewish apocalypses on a historical footing reveals the artificial character of this inventory, for its various components differ in aim, provenance, and historical setting. This shortcoming comes to the foreground on examination of the list in light of the Qumran evidence. Since the focus of the present investigation is early apocalypses and their relationship to Qumran, the following types, included in the corpus as defined by Collins, stem from different contexts and therefore remain outside the discussion. First, despite their numerous links to Jewish apocalyptic, Christian apocalypses belong to a very different historical sphere.15 This is especially true in relation to apocalyptic in the Qumran documents, the bulk of which precedes the birth of Christianity by at least a century. Hence, for instance, the practice of singling out and comparing the books of Daniel and Revelation as typical representatives of the apocalypse genre just because they are “biblical” distorts the representation of the genre. Second, Greco-Roman and Persian apocalypses stem from a historical and cultural milieu very different from that of the early Jewish apocalypses. Therefore, despite several similarities between the two groups, they cannot be treated on the same level of analysis. On this basis, they are not included in the present survey. Third, the following Jewish apocalypses were originally written in Greek and reflect the Hellenistic sphere: 2 Enoch, 3 Baruch, the Apocalypse of Zepha­ niah,16 and the Sibylline Oracles. They also should remain outside the present con-

13 Cf. Emil Kautzsch, Die Pseudepigraphen des Altes Testaments (Tübingen: Mohr [Siebeck], 1900), bd. 2; Robert H. Charles, The Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament in English, vol. 2 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1913). The two publications bring together commentaries by the most notable scholars of the time. Note also the collection edited and commented on by Paul Riessler, Altjüdisches Shrifttum ausserhalb der Bibel (Augsburg: Benno Filser, 1928). 14 Cf. James H. Charlesworth, ed., The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, vol. 1 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1983). Similar lists underlie Hedley F. D. Sparks, ed., The Apocryphal Old Testament (Oxford: Clarendon, 1984), David Russell, The Method and Message of Jewish Apocalyptic (London: SCM, 1964), 37–38, and Christopher Rowland, The Open Heaven: A Study of Apocalyptic in Judaism and Early Christianity (New York: Crossroad, 1982), 11–15. 15 Klaus Koch, The Rediscovery of Apocalyptic, trans. M. Kohl (London: SCM, 1972), 9–12. 16 On the Greek origins and Hellenistic background of 2 Enoch, see Christfried Böttrich, “The ‘Book of the Secrets of Enoch’ (2 En): Between Jewish Origin and Christian Transmission,” in New Perspectives on 2 Enoch: No Longer Slavonic Only, ed. Andrei A. Orlov and Gabriele Boccaccini, Studia Judaeoslavica 4 (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 58–59; Grant Macaskill, “2 Enoch: Manuscripts, Recensions and Original Language,” in ibid., 101. The same is assumed for 3 Baruch by Alexander Kulik, 3 Baruch: Greek-Slavonic Apocalypse of Baruch, CEJL (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2010), 11, 14.

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sideration for they differ from apocalypses composed in the land of Israel in date, matter, form, and geographical-historical setting. The various traditions they share with earlier Aramaic or Hebrew apocalypses should not obscure this fact. All of them were composed not earlier than the first century CE, namely after the floruit of Qumran literature. Typically, they lack the interest in the history of Israel that was so central to the early Jewish apocalypses. Equally distinctive are their ascents through the seven heavens, a theme absent from early Jewish apocalypses.17 The Apocalypse of Zephaniah, which describes the prophet’s tours of various mythical places, learning about the souls of the dead, was originally written in Egypt in Greek. In both themes and provenance, this text lies outside the framework of the early apocalypses related to Qumran.18 Although the Apocalypse of Abraham is probably of a Semitic origin, its theme of an ascent through the heavens and its first century CE date assign it to the Jewish Greek apocalypses, and therefore it is not considered here.19 Collins notes that it is the only Jewish apocalypse that combines a review of history and what Collins terms an “otherworldly journey.”20 In my opinion, this is a clear marker of its relatively late date, since earlier apocalypses maintain a separation of the two themes. In light of the discussion below, I think that there is much to be said in favor of Martha Himmelfarb’s suggestion that apocalypses of heavenly tours and historical apocalypses are two different genres.21 Given the exclusions noted above, and the constraints of the historical framework relevant to Qumran, the texts pertinent to the group under discussion and surveyed below were written either in Hebrew or Aramaic, and were composed in the land of Israel between the third and first centuries BCE. Consequently, two further compositions contained in Kautzsch’s and Charles’s volumes, the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs and the Testament (Assumption) of Moses, do not belong here. The former is a collection of testaments attributed to the twelve sons of Jacob. They are clearly Christian, and originally written in Greek, but Qumran

17 See the survey of Adela Yarbro Collins, “The Seven Heavens in Jewish and Christian Apocalypses,” in Death, Ecstasy and Other Worldly Journeys, ed. John J. Collins and Michael Fishbane (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), 59–93. 18 On the date, provenance, and original language of this apocalypse, see O. S. Wintermute, “Apocalypse of Zephaniah,” in Charlesworth, The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, 1:500.Martha Himmelfarb associates this apocalypse with the ascent visions in the Testament of Levi and the Apocalypse of Abraham. Cf. eadem, Tours of Hell: An Apocalyptic Form in Jewish and Christian Literature (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983), 61, 65–66. But see, below, the comments on throne visions. 19 The possible Semitic origin of the Apocalypse of Abraham is discussed by Alexander Kulik, Retroverting Slavonic Pseudepigrapha: Towards the Original of the Apocalypse of Abraham (Atlanta: SBL, 2004), 61–76. For the end of the first century CE date of this apocalypse, see Collins, Apocalyptic Imagination, 6. 20 Collins, Apocalyptic Imagination, 6. 21 Himmelfarb, Tours of Hell, 60.

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material has shown that they are probably based on earlier Jewish sources. Only the Testament of Levi is pertinent to our study, including as it does a heavenly vision (chapters 2–5). But its contents will be discussed only in as far as it sheds light on its source, namely the Aramaic Levi Document, fragments of which were discovered among the Qumran Scrolls. Accepting the definition of the apocalypse genre as a revelation of hidden things, we may exclude the Testament (Assumption) of Moses, since it is written as a farewell discourse addressed to Joshua, built on the final chapters of Deuteronomy, particularly chapter 31 (As. Mos. 1:5; 10:11; 11:1).22 Whether or not it was originally composed in a Semitic language is debated.23 Most scholars date it to the beginning of the first century CE.24 Thus, both date and subject matter exclude it from the present examination. As will be shown below, most of the Qumran visionary revelations concern history, whereas throne visions and cosmic travels, also attested at Qumran, form distinct clusters not necessarily related to those with a historical theme. Therefore the term “cluster of themes,” referring to those with a different background and origin, may not be covered by the same definition. So for the purpose of the present analysis, the portion of Collins’s definition to retain is the following: “apocalypse is a revelatory genre, divulging to a human seer hidden temporal realities by means of dream visions or an otherworldly agent.” The divulging of spatial realities is reserved for different literary forms.

B. Apocalypse and Related Genres among the Qumran Aramaic and Nonsectarian Hebrew Texts I. Historical Apocalypses One of the significant facts to emerge from the Qumran Scrolls is the centrality of 1 Enoch to the understanding of apocalyptic and its place at Qumran. Known in its entirety only in an Ethiopic translation, it was recognized already by previous scholarship as consisting of five distinct literary units.25 They are the following: the Book of Watchers (1 Enoch 1–36), Book of Parables (1 Enoch 37–71), Astronomical Book (1 Enoch 72–82), Dream Visions (1 Enoch 83–90), and the Epistle of Enoch (1 Enoch 91–105). Two smaller independent sections are incorporated into

22 Cf. Johannes Tromp, The Assumption of Moses, SVTP 10 (Leiden: Brill, 1993), 119–21. 23 Tromp, Assumption of Moses, 78–85. 24 Cf. Tromp, Assumption of Moses, 116; Norbert J. Hofmann, Die Assumptio Mosis: Studien zur Rezeption massgültiger Überlieferung, JSJSup 67 (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 329. 25 See e. g. Robert H. Charles, The Book of Enoch (Oxford: Clarendon, 1912), xlvi–lii.

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the anthology: 1 Enoch 106–7, with a report on Noah’s birth,26 and the so-called Apocalypse of Weeks, embedded in the Epistle of Enoch (1 Enoch 93:1–10; 91:12– 17).27 However, the eight Qumran copies of the Aramaic original revealed that the five Enochic writings not only differ in literary character, but also had distinct literary careers.28 The Book of Parables is altogether absent from the scrolls, and its later date and character correspond to this fact.29 The Astronomical Book of the Ethiopic translation is apparently a reworked abbreviated version of an older Aramaic composition copied in separate Qumran manuscripts (4Q208, 4Q209, 4Q210, 4Q211).30 The Book of Watchers seemed to have been the most popular among the owners of the Qumran library, since it survived in five fragmentary copies (4Q201, 4Q202, 4Q204, 4Q205, 4Q206), spanning from the second century to the end of the first century BCE. The oldest one, 4Q201, is dated by Milik to the first half of the second century BCE.31 Constituting a compendium of disparate sources, centered around Enoch and his activities with the Watchers, some of the underlying sources must, then, go back to an earlier date, the third century BCE at the latest.32 Commonplace in the critical enquiry is the affirmation that the Book of Watchers is an apocalypse,33 but, as will be shown below, this is a misnomer. Its major 26 Narrative accounts of the same episode appear in other Qumran texts, the Genesis Apocryphon, II–V and 1Q19 2. 27 Chapter 108, presented as a letter of Enoch, is found only in the Ethiopic translation of 1 Enoch and is not attested in the Qumran copies. The writings assembled in the Ethiopic version of 1 Enoch are organized around the sequence of his mythical biography. Cf. the analysis of Devorah Dimant, “The Biography of Enoch and the Books of Enoch,” VT 33 (1983): 14–29. 28 They are first introduced as such by Józef T. Milik, The Books of Enoch (Oxford: Clarendon, 1976), although not all his reconstructed histories are accepted today. 29 This work is dated to the first century CE. Some scholars are in favor of a date in the first part of this century. See, for instance, Jonas C. Greenfield and Michael E. Stone, “The Pentateuch of Enoch and the Date of the Similitudes,” HTR 70 (1977): 55–60; Collins, Apocalyptic Imagination, 178. Others attribute it to the end of the century. See, e. g., Michael A. Knibb, “The Date of the Parables of Enoch: A Critical Review,” in Essays on the Book of Enoch and Other Early Jewish Texts and Traditions, SVTP 22 (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 159. 30 On the relationship between the Ethiopic Astronomical Book to the Qumran Aramaic work, see Milik, Books of Enoch, 19 and the recent conclusion of Henryk Drawnel: “Although the two texts contain the same composition, each represents a different stage of text transmission, with some drastic abbreviations of the Qumran text in the Ethiopic translation.” See idem, The Aramaic Astronomical Book (4Q208–4Q211) from Qumran (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 30. 31 Milik, Books of Enoch, 140. 32 Milik, Books of Enoch, 23–24; James C. VanderKam, Enoch and the Growth of an Apocalyptic Tradition, CBQMS 16 (Washington, DC: The Catholic Biblical Association of America, 1984), 112–13; Florentino García Martínez, Qumran and Apocalyptic: Studies on the Aramaic Texts from Qumran, STDJ 9 (Leiden: Brill, 1992), 71. 33 Cf., e. g., Florentino García Martínez, “Les traditions apocalyptiques à Qumrân,” in Apocalypses et voyages dans l’au-dela, ed. C. Kappler et al. (Paris: Cerf, 1987), 210; Collins, Apocalyptic Imagination, 51.

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revelatory components, the throne vision (1 Enoch 14–15) and the cosmic travels (1 Enoch 17–36), are very different from what is encountered in the historical apocalypses.34 Revelations that divulge the sequence of history are contained in two other sections of 1 Enoch, the Apocalypse of Weeks (1 Enoch 93:1–10; 91:12– 17) and the Animal Apocalypse (1 Enoch 85–90). These two, together with Daniel 7–12 and Jubilees 1 and 23, are the earliest apocalypses of the historical type known to us. Pseudo-Daniel from Qumran is somewhat later, perhaps from the first century BCE.35 The closest links to Qumran are evinced by the two Enochic apocalypses, Daniel, Pseudo-Daniel, and Jubilees, as they are represented in the Qumran library.36 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch are also included in this group due to their thematic content. Although they were composed around 100 CE, namely after Qumran ceased to exist, they contain visions of the historical sequence and have points of contact with Qumran sectarian views of history and so may be considered connected to the Qumran phenomenon.37 The salient feature of all these apocalypses is that they relate revelations about the historical sequence, accorded to ancient biblical figures (Enoch, Moses, Daniel, Baruch, and Ezra). Yet these historical apocalypses share additional features that suggest that they drew on common traditions: a. History as a Sequence of Periods: All the above-listed apocalypses present history as a sequence consisting of calculable temporal units—periods—of determined length that are defined in their character and delimited in their place within the temporal sequence.38 Some visions, such as the Apocalypse 34 John Collins is cognizant of the fundamental difference between historical apocalyptic and the “more cosmic orientation of the heavenly ascents,” but he still includes them in the apocalypse genre. Cf. idem, “Genre, Ideology, and Social Movements,” 16. 35 The date suggested for this composition is somewhere between the second century and the middle of the first century BCE. Cf. John J. Collins and Peter Flint, “Pseudo-Daniel,” in Qumran Cave 4.XVII: Parabiblical Texts, Part 3, DJD 22 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1996), 137–38. But since it is evidently dependent on the biblical Daniel, a date from the end of the second century to the beginning of the first century BCE may be retained. 36 The Apocalypse of Weeks is preserved in the third Qumran copy of 1 Enoch (4Q212 1 III–IV), dated to the middle of the first century BCE (see Milik, Books of Enoch, 246). The Animal Apocalypse is preserved in four Enochic manuscripts: 4Q204, 4Q205, 4Q206, and 4Q207, spanning from an early Hasmonean date (150–125 BCE for 4Q207; cf. Milik, ibid., 244) to the last third of the first century BCE (see Milik, ibid., 178, 217, 225, 244). Passages from Daniel 7–12 are produced in all five Qumran copies of this book (4Q112–4Q116). Manuscripts 4Q243, 4Q244, and 4Q245 are copies of Pseudo-Daniel. 37 Cf. Devorah Dimant, “4 Ezra and 2 Baruch in Light of Qumran Literature,” in Fourth Ezra and Second Baruch: Reconstruction after the Fall, ed. Matthais Henze and Gabriele Boccaccini, with the collaboration of Jason M. Zurawski, JSJSup 164 (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 34–53. 38 Cf. the analysis of this notion of history by Devorah Dimant, “Election and Laws of History in the Apocalyptic Literature” (in Hebrew), in Connected Vessels: The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Literature of the Second Temple Period (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 2010). See also Collins, Apocalyptic Imagination, 63–64; García Martínez, “Apocalypticism in the Dead Sea Scrolls,” 206–7.

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of Weeks, the Animal Apocalypse, 4 Ezra, and 2 Baruch, follow the entire historical course. Others, such as Daniel 7 and Jubilees 1 and 23, describe only parts of it, usually the concluding section. In most of these writings, the precise computation of the periods is obtained by a heptadic chronology, namely, a calculation in terms of seven years and jubilees. In the Apocalypse of Weeks, such a chronology is applied to the entire history, while in the Animal Apocalypse and Daniel 9 it is applied only to the final section. Traces of this chronology are also observed in 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch.39 But the temporal sequence always continues into later times that are better known to the contemporary authors, as though foreseen by the ancient seer, in the manner of vaticinium ex eventu. In this way, the depiction of the course of history is used as a vehicle for treating problems that preoccupied Second Temple authors, such as sin and righteousness, punishment and reward, the fortunes of the people of Israel, and divine providence and justice. In order to obtain an all-encompassing historical perspective these apocalypses attribute their visions to ancient seers, but notably not to the prophets. The only exception to this rule is seen in the Qumran Apocryphon of Jeremiah C (cf. below). This peculiar notion of history is known to us only from the above-mentioned group of Jewish historical apocalypses, thus setting them apart from the biblical prophetic tradition. b. Connection to Qumran: As noted above, all the historical apocalypses under discussion are linked to the Qumran documents in one way or another, a fact that is significant for understanding the nature of the Qumran evidence and that is not sufficiently emphasized by current research. Although not authored by the members of the Qumran community, the presence at Qumran of the early apocalypses indicates their importance to this community. c. Language: Notably, all the historical apocalypses related to Qumran are written in either Aramaic or Hebrew. The older ones were originally composed in Aramaic, namely the Apocalypse of Weeks, the Animal Apocalypse, and Pseudo-Daniel. Daniel 7–12, Jubilees 1 and 23, and the Apocryphon of Jeremiah C were written in Hebrew, as probably were the later 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch. This linguistic fact is another aspect of early apocalyptic that deserves further study. d. Medium of Revelation: The divine character of the information transmitted by the visions of history is imparted through the medium of revelation. It is revealed either by visionary dreams of divine inspiration, as in the Animal Apocalypse (1 Enoch 85:1) and Daniel 7–8, or through direct communication with angels, as in the Apocalypse of Weeks (1 Enoch 93:2), Daniel 9–12, Jubilees 1 and 23, 4 Ezra (2:2), and 2 Baruch (55:3). In the Apocalypse of Weeks, the heavenly tablets are also mentioned as one of the sources of this supernatural knowledge.

39 Cf. Dimant, “4 Ezra and 2 Baruch,” 46–47.

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e. Date: The apocalypses in this group span between the third and first centuries BCE. The Apocalypse of Weeks is one of the earliest compositions of this kind, dated to the beginning of the second century BCE or the end of the preceding century.40 Daniel 7–12 and the Animal Apocalypse were composed around the middle of the second century BCE, related as they are to the events surrounding the abolition of the temple cult by Antiochus IV Epiphanes (167–164 BCE).41 Jubilees 1 and 23 are somewhat earlier.42 Although 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch stem from the end of the first century CE in their approach to history, they are contingent on the earlier apocalypses and the Qumran sectarian documents. A number of fragmentary Aramaic pieces also contain historical reviews and so may also belong to the present category or to that of court tales. Among them are the following Aramaic texts: Four Kingdoms (4Q552, 4Q553, 4Q552a),43 Apocryphon of Daniel (4Q246),44 and Pseudo-Daniel (4Q243, 4Q244, 4Q245).45 The Aramaic so-called Elect of God text (4Q534, 4Q535, 4Q536) perhaps also falls within this category.46 However, these texts are so fragmentary that their precise genre and context cannot be construed. They share two significant features: they all concern historical forecasts and all are composed in Aramaic. Thus, they point to a wide spectrum of Aramaic compositions that may have provided sources and settings for the better-preserved historical apocalypses surveyed above. That the same schematized temporal sequence is espoused by all the historical apocalypses suggests a single underlying concept of history, perhaps of Iranian origin.47 This concept enabled the apocalyptic authors to view the entirety of history

40 Cf. Loren T. Stuckenbruck, 1 Enoch 91–108, CEJL (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2007), 9. 41 For dating Daniel 7–12, see John J. Collins, Daniel, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), 61–65. For the date of the Animal Apocalypse, see George W. E. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001), 361. 42 The dating of Jubilees 23 is dependent on one’s understanding of its historical background. If Michael Segal is correct in arguing that it refers to inner Jewish polemic and not to external events, it may precede the Maccabean crisis. See the analysis and the survey of opinions by idem, The Book of Jubilees, JSJSup 117 (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 319–22. 43 The only passages preserved are of an Aramaic historical vision related in the first person singular, but no name or circumstances of the revelation appear in the extant fragments. 44 4Q246 I, 1–3 suggest that someone is interpreting a dream to a king; the name of Daniel does not appear in the surviving fragments so the title Apocryphon of Daniel is unfortunate. 45 This work is clearly based on biblical Daniel and offers a detailed historical vision. 46 Appearing in historical forecasts, the wondrous figure mentioned in this text is usually identified as Noah, but given its eschatological aspects I have suggested a reversion to the above older title (see Devorah Dimant, History, Ideology and Bible Interpretation in the Dead Sea Scrolls, 360–61). If my suggestion is accepted, the figure referred to in the text may be an eschatological one rather than a person from the remote past. 47 See the considerations of VanderKam, Enoch and the Growth of an Apocalyptic Tradition, 154–55.

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as a meaningful continuum with its own laws and development. The focus placed on the final redemptive stages is but one aspect of the comprehensive temporal perspective. Thus, these historical apocalypses are best described as a particular thematic cluster, at home in the land of Israel during the last centuries BCE and the first century CE.48 Once the distinctiveness of this cluster is recognized, other contemporary Qumran works may be identified as belonging to it, such as the fragmentary ones listed above. While the Apocalypse of Weeks and the Animal Apocalypse are clear examples of historical apocalypses, other Enochic writings do not quite fit this generic definition. This is true of two types of texts: the report of Enoch’s cosmic travels in the company of the angels in the last part of the Book of Watchers (1 Enoch 17–36) and the Astronomical Book (1 Enoch 72–82),49 and Enoch’s throne vision, recorded in the Book of Watchers (1 Enoch 14).50 A close examination of the two types reveals their distinct settings and origins.

II. Enoch’s Cosmic Travels As noted above, the Book of Watchers (1 Enoch 1–36) is a composite work, consisting of an introduction (1 Enoch 1–5), the story of the sinful Watchers (1 Enoch 6–11), the judgment of the Watchers transmitted to Enoch in a throne vision (1 Enoch 12–16), and Enoch’s cosmic travels (1 Enoch 17–36).51 Unlike revelations of history imparted via dreams or visions accompanied by angelic explanations, the cosmic journeys outlined in the Book of Watchers and the Astronomical Book (1 Enoch 72–82) are experienced while awake within the physical world.52 During such travels, information is imparted by an angelic companion concerning concrete 48 In discussing apocalyptic, Hindy Najman uses the term “cluster” from a different perspective: “Generic features often occurred in clusters … Creative writers could reassemble features into new clusters in order to meet their need.” Cf. eadem, “The Inheritance of Prophecy in Apocalypse,” in The Oxford Handbook of Apocalyptic Literature, ed. John J. Collins (Oxford: University Press, 2014), 44. 49 On the inner structure and genesis of this writing, see VanderKam, Enoch and the Growth of an Apocalyptic Tradition, 105–9. 50 Collins, for instance, sees the throne vision and cosmic tours in the Book of Watchers as a single “heavenly” tour (idem, Apocalyptic Imagination, 54–55). 51 On the various units in the Book of Watchers, see Robert H. Charles, Book of Enoch, 1–2; Eibert J. C. Tigchelaar, Prophets of Old and the Day of the End: Zechariah, the Book of Watchers and Apocalyptic, OtSt 35 (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 152–64. See also Devorah Dimant, “1 Enoch 6–11: A Fragment of a Parabiblical Work,” JJS 53 (2002): 223–37. 52 In the Book of Watchers, Enoch states that he was taken to various places (e. g. 1 Enoch 17:1; 22:1). In the Astronomical Book, Enoch reports on what he saw, as is indicated by the repeated phrases “he showed me” (e. g. 1 Enoch 74:2; 75:4; 78:10) and “I saw” (e. g. 1 Enoch 73:1; 74:1; 75:6).

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geographical sites rather than imaginary symbolic scenes. Though mysterious and remote, lying beyond the reach of ordinary humans, these locations are nevertheless situated within the earthly realm. Milik notes that the geographic information provided in 1 Enoch 77:4–8 “points to real, not mythological geography.”53 This is another indication of the real, concrete character of the journeys. So Enoch’s cosmic travels are not visionary in the true sense of the term and thus should not be labeled as apocalypses.54 Nor are they “otherworldly,” as often claimed,55 since they do not cross the boundaries of the physical world. This fact is clearly indicated by the orientation of Enoch’s travels. They take place in a horizontal direction. Of a different type is the viewing of the throne, for Enoch has to ascend in a vertical sense in order to attain the heavenly realm.56 Thus, the two different spheres are plainly indicated by their contrasting orientations.57 Therefore, cosmic tours must be considered a type of description distinct from the throne visions, with both differing from revelations regarding history. Not only is this type of journey unique, but it is attributed to Enoch alone, a fact not emphasized in current research. No other seer in early Jewish apocalypses has these experiences. Enoch’s particular connection to cosmic travels is undoubtedly related to the enigmatic biblical reference to him: “and he walked with Elohim” (Gen 5:22). Early Jewish literature understood it as a reference to Enoch’s cosmic journeys in the company of angels; the Book of Watchers and the Astronomical Book are based on such an understanding. This unusual feature of Enoch’s career, along with others (see Gen 5:21–23), seems to be rooted in the peculiar Mesopo-

53 Milik further suggests that they may be of Persian origin. Cf. idem, Book of Enoch, 18. 54 As rightly concluded by VanderKam, Enoch and the Growth of an Apocalyptic Tradition, 89, 108–9. 55 Collins, “Introduction: Towards the Morphology,” 14–15. However, see the comment of Martha Himmelfarb, who, in her survey of various types of “heavenly tours,” notes that the Book of Watchers differs from all works involving such journeys in that they take place on earth. See eadem, Tours of Hell, 51. 56 As noted by VanderKam, Enoch and the Growth of an Apocalyptic Tradition, 136. In this context VanderKam mentions the throne Enoch sees while traveling to the ends of the earth. The angel explains to him that it is where God will sit at the eschatological final judgment (1 Enoch 18:8; 25:3). Yet this throne is clearly placed on earth, whereas the one viewed by Enoch during his ascent is clearly in the heavenly realm. See the discussion of the throne visions below. 57 In the Enochic and related literature, the garden of Eden is also located in an earthly sphere, “at the confines of the earth” (1 Enoch 106:5), where Enoch sojourns after completing his life among men. See also the Genesis Apocryphon II, 23, and probably in the Book of Giants (4Q530 7 II, 5–6); compare Jubilees 4:23. Enoch visits this place in one of his cosmic travels (cf. 1 Enoch 32:3 [4Q206 1 XXVI, 21]; 1 Enoch 77:3). Helge Kvanvig attempted to locate this mythic site in a geographical region in Mesopotamia. See idem, Roots of the Apocalyptic: The Mesopotamian Background of the Enoch Figure and of the Son of Man, WMANT 61 (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 1988), 246–53.

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tamian background of his personality,58 and perhaps also in Hellenistic antecedents.59 So this background further enhances the special character of Enoch and the motifs related to his career.60 Therefore, we may designate cosmic tours conducted within earthly boundaries as another cluster of motifs that are specifically connected to Enoch. In a certain sense, the Book of Parables (1 Enoch 37–71) also belongs to this cluster, for it, too, depicts Enoch’s visits to hidden places. However, here the distinction between cosmic tours and throne visions (in chapter 46?) is blurred. Also it is not clear whether Enoch saw everything only in vision, as the introductory note (37:1) may suggest. But these combined features are the signature of a later period, as indeed shown in its first century CE date and its absence from Qumran.61 It has been suggested that Ezekiel’s vision of the eschatological temple (Ezek 40–48) served as a model for the cosmic tours motif.62 However, the biblical prophecy specifies that Ezekiel experienced a visionary tour of the temple, not a concrete one (Ezek 40:2). This much also may be gathered from the nature of the vision, namely, the viewing of a nonexistent structure and city. The Aramaic New Jerusalem, found in eight copies among the scrolls (1Q32, 2Q24, 4Q232, 4Q554, 4554a, 4Q555, 5Q15, 11Q18), which seems to offer a description of the eschatological temple and Jerusalem revealed to a seer (Ezekiel?) is built on Ezekiel’s vision. This tour also appears to take place in vision form for the same reasons as does the prophet’s own tour. The biblical prophetic vision and that of New Jerusalem share with Enoch the cosmic tours of earthly scenes. In both works, the seer is accompanied by a guide; in Ezekiel he is clearly angelic (Ezek 40:3 et passim), and this also seems to be the case in the New Jerusalem.63 In the latter, we even find parts of a historical vision (4Q554 13 and 14). However, since it is conducted in a visionary manner, and has an eschatological character, this type of tour is to be associated with historical apocalypses rather than with the cosmic travels of Enoch.

58 VanderKam, Enoch and the Growth of an Apocalyptic Tradition, 23–51; Kvanvig, Roots of the Apocalyptic, 214–342. 59 Pierre Grelot, “La géographie mythique d’Hénoch et ses sources orientales,” RB 65 (1958): 33–69; Milik, Books of Enoch, 15–18, 29–30; VanderKam, Enoch and the Growth of an Apocalyptic Tradition, 137–38; Kvanvig, Roots of the Apocalyptic, 66–68, 246–53; Collins, Apocalyptic Imagination, 26–29, 33–34. 60 Interestingly, the Testament of Abraham attributes similar tours to this patriarch, but it is obviously dependent on the Enoch traditions in the Book of Watchers and of 3 Enoch. Cf. Himmelfarb, Tours of Hell, 61–62. 61 See Greenfield and Stone, “The Pentateuch of Enoch and the Date of the Similitudes”; Collins, Apocalyptic Imagination, 178. 62 Cf. Michael E. Stone, “Apocalyptic Literature,” in Jewish Writings of the Second Temple Period, CRINT II/2 (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1984), 385. 63 As is indicated in 11Q18 18 5; 19 5–6, where exchanges between the seer and his guide are recorded.

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III. The Throne Vision of Enoch Surveys of early apocalypses often consider the throne vision of Enoch, related in the Book of Watchers (1 Enoch 14–16), to be a characteristic feature of apocalypses. Collins, for instance, takes it to constitute part of the “otherworldly journeys.”64 However, Enoch’s throne vision differs from the cosmic journeys in important respects. First of all, it occurs in a dream (1 Enoch 14:1–2) and not in a state of wakefulness as do the cosmic travels. The dream describes an ascent beyond the realm of the earthly world, for Enoch is taken up and crosses the vaulted heaven (1 Enoch 14:8). He then passes “a building made of hailstones” and arrives at a second house “greater than the first one,” all of fire, where the throne is found (1 Enoch 14:15–18). This is clearly a description of the heavenly temple, situated beyond the skies. No trace of the later system of seven firmaments is found here. Thus, Enoch’s throne vision is situated beyond the earthly realm and is experienced in sleep. The difference between wakefulness and dreaming in sleep reflects the different levels of reality, the earthly and the heavenly. That Enoch’s throne vision differs from his cosmic travels is also demonstrated by its distinct provenance. Unlike the cosmic travels that were experienced exclusively by the ancient patriarch, Enoch’s throne vision has two ancient counterparts: the throne vision in Daniel 7:9–10 and a throne vision recorded in the Book of Giants (4Q530 2 ii). The three are not only similar in theme but also share specific literary details. The throne visions of Daniel 7 and 1 Enoch 14 share three unique features:65 the river of fire flowing from beneath the throne, the enthroned figure’s clothing described as being “white like snow,” and the thousands standing before him.66 Both the Enochic vision and that of Daniel take place in a dream (Dan 7:1– 2), and in both 1 Enoch and Daniel it constitutes a scene of judgment (Dan 7:9–10). However, the two visions also betray significant differences, among them the plural

64 Collins, “Introduction: Towards the Morphology,” 15. He also claims that the Apocalypse of Weeks “presupposes” Enoch’s ascent (idem, Apocalyptic Imagination, 63). He probably deduced it from the reference in the Apocalypse to the heavenly tablets as a source of Enoch’s knowledge of the historical sequence (1 Enoch 93:2). However, of the several mentions of the heavenly tablets in the Enochic writings (1 Enoch 81:1–2; 93:2; 103:2; 106:19), only the Astronomic Book (1 Enoch 81:1–2) is explicit about their whereabouts, namely, the heavenly vault. The throne vision of 1 Enoch 14 does not allude to them at all. On the Babylonian origin of these tablets, see Shalom M. Paul, “Heavenly Tablets and the Book of Life,” in Divrei Shalom: Collected Studies of Shalom M. Paul on the Bible and the Ancient Near East, 1967–2005, Culture and History of the Ancient Near East 23 (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 59–70. 65 See the detailed comparisons made by Kvanvig, Roots of the Apocalyptic, 558–71; Jonathan R. Trotter, “The Tradition of the Throne Vision in the Second Temple Period: Daniel 7:9–10, 1 Enoch 14:18–23, and the Book of Giants (4Q530),” RevQ 25 (2012): 452–58. 66 Trotter, “Tradition of the Throne Vision,” 455.

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thrones mentioned by Daniel, compared with the single one in 1 Enoch.67 Also, the Daniel vision is prefaced by a symbolic scene of earthly kingdoms, depicted as four animals, an element absent from the sequence in 1 Enoch 14. Another significant divergence between the two visions is the placement of the throne. While in 1 Enoch it is clearly located in heaven, it seems to be placed on earth in D ­ aniel 7. These differences suggest that, rather than being dependent on each other, the two compositions drew independently on a similar tradition.68 The existence of an independent tradition regarding throne visions is further supported by a third instance of a throne vision found in the Book of Giants (4Q530 2 II). This Aramaic composition, of which ten copies have survived among the scrolls,69 relates the exploits of the giants, the offspring of the sinful union between the angelic Watchers and mortal women (cf. Gen 6:1–4). Probably composed in the early second century BCE,70 it is based on traditions recorded in the Book of Watchers concerning the crimes of the Watchers and their gigantic progeny.71 The work relates the portent dreams of the giants Ohayah and Hahyah, sons of Šemihazah, the leader of the Watchers (cf. 1 Enoch 6:7). The dreams foretell the annihilation awaiting the giants in the flood, another detail based on the Book of Watchers (1 Enoch 10:2, 15). In his dream, the giant Ohayah witnesses a throne scene similar to that depicted in Daniel 7 (4Q530 2 ii, 16–20). Also here the occasion consists of a judgment scene related to the punishment of the Watchers and their huge offspring. Two features are shared by Daniel 7, 1 Enoch 14, and the Book of Giants: namely, the throne on which a figure is seated and his multitudinous attendants. However, the river of fire flowing beneath the throne, found in 1 Enoch 14 and Daniel 7, is missing in the giant’s vision.72 Interestingly, one of the features shared by Daniel 7 and the Book of Giants is the placement of the throne. Daniel 7:10 speaks of thrones (plural) set up (‫ )רמיו‬at an unspecified location that appears to be on earth, as are the preceding animal symbols. In Ohayah’s dream in the Book of Giants, a (single) throne is lowered (‫ )יחיטו‬and God himself descends to earth to dispense justice (4Q530 2 ii, 16–17). In Daniel, the throne features as part of the eschatological scene of the great judgment. This detail fits with a site observed by Enoch during 67 Cf. Trotter, “Tradition of the Throne Vision,” 456–57; he discusses other differences but does not mention the different locations of the thrones. 68 The various opinions are surveyed by Ryan E. Stokes, “The Throne Visions of Daniel 7, 1 Enoch 14, and the Qumran Book of Giants (4Q530),” DSD 15 (2008): 342–45; Trotter, “Tradition of the Throne Vision,” 452–53. 69 1Q23, 1Q24, 2Q26, 4Q203, 4Q206 2–3, 4Q530–4Q533, 6Q8. 70 Thus Émile Puech, Qumrân Grotte 4.XXII: Textes Araméens, première partie, 4Q529–549, DJD XXXI (Oxford: Clarendon, 2001), 14; idem, “Les songes des fils de Šemihazah dans le Livre des Géants de Qumrân,” CRAI 144 (2000): 11. 71 Cf. Puech, Textes Araméens, première partie, 13. 72 Cf. the detailed comparison proposed by Trotter, “Tradition of the Throne Vision,” 462–66.

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his travels to the end of the earth, where he sees the throne that will feature in the final judgment (1 Enoch 18:8; 25:3).73 The judgment described in Ohayah’s dream probably concerns the coming flood but it is also suggestive of the final judgment scene, since it includes the opening of books before the Great Holy (4Q530 2 ii 18).74 Thus, the scene of judgment in both Daniel 7 and the Book of Giants appears to require an earthly location. This is why no ascent is mentioned in these two accounts. Enoch’s experience is different; he ascends to see the throne in the heavenly temple, an episode also alluded to in the Animal Apocalypse (1 Enoch 87:3). Another distinct feature of the Enochic vision is the fact that the message given to the ancient seer concerns only the judgment of the Watchers’ giant progeny, and lacks the eschatological element. However, in contemporary sources, the flood is perceived as analogous to the final judgment and perhaps something of this analogy is also implied here.75 The similarities as well as divergences suggest a common tradition shared by all three throne visions but adapted differently by each one.76 Still, beyond their origins and mutual relations, the three throne visions share significant elements: they all recount judgment scenes, there are striking linguistic agreements in descriptions of the throne,77 and all three are composed in Aramaic. These factors imply a distinct tradition of Aramaic provenance related to the throne vision. Yet a fourth throne vision supports this conclusion. It was, perhaps, included in the Aramaic Levi Document. Fragments of this work were found among the scrolls and in the Cairo Genizah.78 Unfortunately, the sections relevant to the throne vision are very fragmentary. The surviving material, reconstructed with 73 Thus the throne Enoch envisions in heaven differs from the one he saw while travelling with the angels. 74 This is a feature of the final judgment in the Animal Apocalypse (1 Enoch 90:20). 75 Thus, for instance, the Apocalypse of Weeks (1 Enoch 93:4). Compare also the eschatological conclusion of the pronouncement of the Watchers and the giants’ punishment in the section of the Book of Watchers preceding the throne vision (1 Enoch 10:14–11:2). Martha Himmelfarb believes that in mediating for the Watchers, Enoch performs priestly functions. If so, this aspect is also specific to the Enochic ascent. See eadem, “Temple and Priests in the Book of the Watchers, the Animal Apocalypse, and the Apocalypse of Weeks,” in Between Temple and Torah, TSAJ 151 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013), 81–82. 76 This is also the conclusion of Trotter, “Tradition of the Throne Vision,” 466. 77 Milik thought that the Book of Giants is based on Daniel 7. See Józef T. Milik, “Turfan et Qumran: Livre des Géants juif et manichéen,” in Tradition und Glaube: das frühe Christentum in seiner Umwelt: Festgabe Karl Georg Kuhn zum 65 Geburtstag (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1971), 122; idem, Books of Enoch, 305. However, Puech has argued convincingly that the reverse must be the case. At the same time, he also considers the possibility that the same tradition was drawn upon independently by the two accounts. See Puech, “Les songes,” 21, n. 48. For a comparison of Dan 7:9–10 and 1 Enoch 14:13–18, see Stokes, “Throne Visions,” 341–42. Cf. also the comments of Collins, Daniel, 300–301. 78 See the survey of Jonas C. Greenfield, Michael E. Stone, and Esther Eshel, The Aramaic Levi Document, SVTP 19 (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 1–6.

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supplements from a Genizah manuscript, relates how Levi went to a place named Abel Mayyin, fell asleep, and had a vision of an angel opening the gates of heaven (4Q213a 2 14–18). The Genizah evidence speaks of the information Levi received during this vision regarding the fate of his future progeny.79 The original version perhaps also told of his priestly investiture. The vision of the throne itself has not been preserved in the Qumran and Genizah manuscripts, but a section that corresponds to the reference in 4Q213a is found in the Greek Testament of Levi 5:1–2.80 This passage gives a very short account of the angel opening the gates of heaven, and of Levi viewing the heavenly temple, the Most High, and the throne. On this occasion, he is also invested with priesthood. Since the concise description fits well with the character of the lines surviving in the Qumran fragment, the Greek manuscript seems to have preserved a version very close to the original Aramaic Levi Document. Significantly, this short version makes no allusion to more than one heaven,81 and thematically it is unconnected to the long preceding report of Levi’s ascent to the seven heavens in the preceding chapters 2–4 of the Greek Testament of Levi. The system of seven heavens appears, in fact, only in compositions from the first century CE onwards,82 and so is a marker of a relatively late provenance. This long depiction appears therefore to be an elaboration by a late editor.83 In the Aramaic Levi Document, the patriarch sees only a single heaven. For our purpose, it is significant that Levi’s vision was experienced in sleep, and it is recorded in an Aramaic source. It thus confirms and supplements the existence of an old Aramaic tradition of throne visions, appropriated by various visionary Aramaic writings of the third and second centuries BCE.84 Originally, they did not

79 See the passage reconstructed by Greenfield, Stone, and Eshel, Aramaic Levi Document 66–68. 80 Cf. the comments of Harm W. Hollander and Marinus de Jonge, The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, SVTP 8 (Leiden: Brill, 1985), 143–45. 81 As noted by Hollander and De Jonge, Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, 144, in a comment on 5:1. De Jonge notes that “the Aramaic text does not necessarily presuppose more than one heaven.” See Marinus de Jonge, “Notes on the Testament of Levi II–VII,” in Studies on the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, SVTP 3 (Leiden: Brill, 1975), 253. Cf. also Martha Himmelfarb, Ascent to Heaven in Jewish and Christian Apocalypses (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 31–32, and n. 7 on 126–27. 82 As rightly emphasized by Robert A. Kugler, From Patriarch to Priest: The Levi-Priestly Tradition from Aramaic Levi to Testament of Levi, SBLEJL 9 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1996), 47. So the elaborate vision of chapters 2:5–5:1 “may not be attributed also to Aramaic Levi,” concludes Kugler (ibid.). Adela Yarbro Collins’s assignment of the origins of the Jewish belief in more than one heaven to the second century BCE (cf. eadem, “Seven Heavens,” 63) is, in fact, not supported by the Aramaic Levi Document or any other early Jewish text. 83 Some forty years ago, De Jonge proposed that chapters 2:7–5:1a of the Greek Testament of Levi may be an interpolation. Cf. idem, “Notes on the Testament of Levi II–VII,” 254. 84 VanderKam, Enoch and the Growth of an Apocalyptic Tradition, 131, and Kvanvig, Roots of the Apocalyptic, 245–46 suggest a Babylonian background to this tradition.

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appear together with cosmic travels or, for that matter, with early historical apocalypses, although they were known and used by them.85 Since they speak of scenes that take place beyond the earthly realm, throne visions may indeed be defined as “otherworldly.” Their supernatural character is experienced during sleep. Specially gifted and elected humans may view the throne but only in dreams. Thus, throne visions differ significantly from cosmic journeys, which take place in the earthly realm in a state of wakefulness. We may conclude by suggesting that we are dealing here with two distinct thematic clusters, one which relates Enoch’s cosmic travels and one which recounts the throne visions. Together with the historical apocalypses, three thematic clusters have been identified thus far: historical reviews, cosmic journeys, and throne visions. Each one appears in a specific literary context.

IV. Related Court Tales In connection with the early historical apocalypses, a word must be said of a group of Aramaic texts that appears to have had a significant impact on them, namely the court tales. As has been noted above, historical apocalypses give prominence to dreams as a means of transmitting divine knowledge regarding the course of events. This cluster of themes betrays an affinity in subject matter and context to Aramaic court tales. Belonging to a genre common in antiquity, such tales tell of wise (Jewish) courtiers in the courts of great kings, who interpret their rulers’ enigmatic dreams of future events. The stories of Joseph (Gen 39–41) and Daniel (Dan 2, 4–5, 7) provide the most famous examples of such stories, but other Jewish adaptations of this model are also extant.86 Qumran yielded a number of additional samples of this type of tales, such as the Prayer of Nabonidus (4Q242), the Four Kingdoms (4Q552, 4Q553, 4Q552a), and Pseudo-Daniel (4Q243, 4Q244, 4Q245). As it happens, all three are related to the traditions of the book of Daniel. The Prayer of Nabonidus describes a situation very similar to Nebuchadnezzar’s madness in Daniel 4, the Four Kingdoms text offers a four-empires scheme similar to that of Daniel 2, and Pseudo-Daniel explicitly interprets the historical visions of Daniel. Demonstrating the centrality and importance of the Daniel traditions, these fragmentary works also attest to a rich literature of court tales thriving in the land of Israel during the last centuries of the Second Temple era. That all the texts listed here are written in Aramaic assigns them as well to this repository of apocalyptic and related traditions, which seems to have originated in a Jewish Aramaic milieu. 85 As noted above, the heavenly ascent is mentioned in the Animal Apocalypse (1 Enoch 87:3–4) and the cosmic travels are probably alluded to in the Apocalypse of Weeks (1 Enoch 93:2). 86 Cf. the survey of Lawrence M. Will, The Jew in the Court of the Foreign King, HDR 26 (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990).

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The contribution of such court tales to the apocalyptic and apocalypses is already evidenced by the unique combination of apocalypses and court tales in Daniel. The role played by such tales in the formation of other apocalypses and apocalyptic in general is yet to be thoroughly investigated.87

V. Concluding Remarks on the Early Apocalypses The most salient feature of apocalypses linked to Qumran is their preoccupation with the meaning and progress of history. Themes that are usually considered “apocalyptic,” such as eschatology and interest in the final events of the historical course, are in fact aspects of this fundamental notion of history, whether explicitly stated or just implied. This is true only of texts that are defined as historical apocalypses. Of different character are the earthly cosmic journeys recorded by the Enochic literature. They are exclusive to this corpus and to this figure but are quite different from the ascents through several heavens described by later apocalypses of Hellenistic background. In addition, the throne vision should be considered a different literary form with distinct topics and provenance. Finally, it should be stressed that although the various forms considered above—historical apocalypses, cosmic travels, and throne visions—were read and perhaps copied by the owners of the Qumran library, they do not employ the particular terminology that is characteristic of the Qumran sectarian literature. Neither do they evoke any of the organizational patterns specific to the Qumran community. Consequently, they cannot be classified as sectarian texts and were not composed by the members of the Qumran community. The fact that a good number of these visionary texts are written in Aramaic also excludes them from the sectarian corpus, which is penned exclusively in Hebrew. In reality, they fall neatly into the two other categories that constitute the Qumran library, namely, the Aramaic and Hebrew nonsectarian texts. Thus, the members of the Qumran community may be said to have been the guardians of the various apocalypses, but not their authors.88 In fact, the Aramaic dominance suggests an altogether different provenance for the apocalyptic texts, which were nurtured and appropriated by the authors of the Hebrew sectarian writings.

87 On the relationship of the apocalypses to divination and dream interpretation, see at present VanderKam, Enoch and the Growth of an Apocalyptic Tradition, 52–75. 88 There is no basis for Florentino García Martínez’s claim that fragmentary Aramaic apocalypses such as the Apocryphon of Daniel (4Q246) and Pseudo-Daniel (4Q243, 4Q244, 4Q245) were composed by the members of the Qumran community. Cf. idem, “Les traditions apocalyptiques,” 206–7.

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C. Apocalyptic Themes in the Qumran Documents I. Apocalyptic Notions in the Sectarian Texts While no true apocalypses and related forms appear in the Hebrew sectarian literature, it abounds with notions cultivated by the apocalypses, most prominently the idea of history consisting of a string of periods. The notion is not presented in vision form but is referred to by specific nomenclature, thus suggesting the same underlying idea of historical time. The central term that conveys this notion is the plural of the word ‫קץ‬, “period,” viz. ‫קצים‬, “periods.” The singular means “end, completion” but the contemporary Daniel 9:26 and 12:6 already uses the singular in the sense of “period, time span.”89 The plural found in the scrolls clearly indicates that the meaning of “end” is not intended but rather, a temporal unit. The concise character of the term and its frequent use in a variety of sectarian contexts suggest a known concept.90 Yet only one text, the Pesher of the Periods, explains in detail the nature of the historical periods: “Pesher concerning the periods made by God, [each] period in order to complete [all that is] and all that will be. Before he created them he set up [their] activi[ties to the exact meaning of their periods] one period after another” (4Q180 1 1–4).91 The term “periods” marks cosmic time (1QM X, 15), as well as the chronology of human history (1QS X, 1, 5; 1QHa XX, 11). In the sectarian view, the sequence of periods is predetermined by the divine blueprint for the created world, an idea intimated by the expressions ‫קיצי‬ ‫אל‬, “periods of God” (1QpHab VII, 13), and ‫( קצי נצח‬QHa IX, 26), ‫( קצי עולם‬1QHa V, 26), and ‫( קצי עד‬1QM X, 15), all meaning “eternal periods.” Other usages reflect the struggle between good and evil. Beside the expression ‫קצי שלום‬, “periods of peace” (1QHa XXI, 16) stands the contrastive ‫( קצי חרון‬periods of wrath; 4Q266 11 19; 4Q270 7 ii 13; 1QHa XXII, 9; 4Q166 i 12 [Pesher of Hosea]). It implies God’s anger and a period of punishment for Israel. The phrases ‫( קץ הרשע‬CD VI, 10, 14; XV, 7; 4Q269 8 ii 5; 4Q271 2 12) and ‫( קץ הרשעה‬CD XII, 23; 1QpHab V, 7–8), both meaning “the period of wickedness,” indicate the rule of wickedness prevalent in the community’s own times.

89 The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew, ed. D. J. A. Clines (Sheffield: Phoenix, 2010), 7:276–78. 90 Cf. 1QS I, 14; III, 15; IV, 13, 16; 1QSb IV, 26; V, 18; CD II, 9–10; XVI, 2; 1QHa V, 22; IX, 18; the Melchizedek Pesher (11Q13 ii 20). See the survey of Devorah Dimant, “The Vocabulary of the Qumran Sectarian Texts,” in History, Ideology and Bible Interpretation in the Dead Sea Scrolls, 84–85. 91 Cf. Devorah Dimant, “The ‘Pesher on the Periods’ (4Q180) and 4Q181,” History, Ideology and Bible Interpretation in the Dead Sea Scrolls, 385–404. See also Pesher of Habakkuk VII, 13–14.

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Obviously, the use made by the sectarian literature of the term ‫קצים‬, “periods,” involves a whole string of ideas central to the thinking of the community: predestination, the prominence of evil during the closing stages of history, and the final judgment. When examined as a complex of interrelated themes, it becomes clear that they are aspects of the notion of history. What is more remarkable is the fact that in their essentials all these themes are present in the individual historical apocalypses stored in the Qumran library. However, in adopting the major ideas of the apocalypses, the Qumranites developed and considerably expanded them. These borrowed ideas may then be appropriately called “apocalyptic” since they stem from traditions that created the older individual apocalypses. According to the sectarian understanding, the configuration of the temporal sequence in periods constitutes a principle of the premeditated divine plan—it is mysterious and may be unveiled only through divine revelation. This perception of history is shared by the apocalypses and the sectarian literature, but they differ regarding the intermediary of such a disclosure. The apocalypses attribute it to ancient seers whereas the sectarians viewed their contemporary leader, the Teacher of Righteousness, as the one who earned such a distinction. Apocalypses and sectarian texts also vary in the manner in which this revelation was imparted. While the apocalypses speak of visions and dream-visions, or communication with angels, for the sectarian texts it was channeled through decoding the mysteries embedded in the biblical prophecies, the key to which was accorded to the Teacher of Righteousness.92 This significant disparity tells much about the character and orientation of the individual apocalypses as distinct from those of the Qumran community. Thus, major sectarian themes such as a dualistic outlook, predestination, and the end of days may be seen as aspects of a single cluster of traditions related to history that were developed by the sectarian literature but already found in nuce in the historical apocalypses. Hence, they may be defined as “apocalyptic” elements in the sectarian literature. Other notions viewed as typical apocalyptic, such as the belief in angels, resurrection, and messianism, are disseminated in writings that are not apocalypses and consequently cannot be considered constitutive of the

92 Cf. Pesher of Habakkuk II, 7–10; VII, 4–5. See Devorah Dimant, “Time, Torah and Prophecy at Qumran,” in History, Ideology and Bible Interpretation in the Dead Sea Scrolls, 301–14. A few sectarian authors (e. g. 4Q228 1 i) describe a sequence of temporal units using another plural term, ‫עתים‬, “occasions; times,” from the singular ‫( עת‬cf. HALOT, 900). It appears to convey a meaning similar to that of periods. Cf. Devorah Dimant, “What is the ‘Book of the Divisions of the Times’?,” ibid., 374–79. Annette Steudel treats the apocalyptic at Qumran from the narrower perspective of the eschatological notions expressed by the pesharim. Therefore her conclusion that the Qumranites’ interest in eschatology took place chiefly after 100 BCE is to be qualified. Cf. eadem, “The Development of Essenic Eschatology,” in Apocalyptic Time, ed. Albert I. Baumgarten, NBS 86 (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 79–86.

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apocalypses or of apocalypticism.93 Nevertheless, it should be remembered that the apocalypses are composite and eclectic, having used a range of traditions and sources. However, the notion of periodized history is fundamental to all the early historical apocalypses. Together with its visionary character, this notion may be considered a constituent of this literary form and the central concept that integrates and organizes all others. It is this idea that is shared by both the historical apocalypses and the Qumran sectarian texts. Before leaving this topic, a word must be said about dualism as an apocalyptic characteristic. The dualistic worldview of the sectarian texts is explicit and pronounced.94 However, in apocalypses such as the Apocalypse of Weeks and the Animal Apocalypse these views are less prominent. Both emphasize growing human sinfulness. Even though at a certain point the Animal Apocalypse introduces demonic evil angels to play a part in some of the events, no all-embracing battle between good and evil is detected here.95 As for the Book of Watchers, it usually speaks of the Watchers and their giant offspring as primordial sinners (1 Enoch 6–11; 19:196) as do other Enochic writings (1 Enoch 86:6; 106:13–15). The tradition developed in chapters 12–16, regarding the spirits of the dead giants becoming demons that pester humans on earth (1 Enoch 15:9–16:197), is the exception. For most of the Enochic literature, the story of the Watchers is one of sin and punishment rather than an explanation of the origins of evil as so often claimed.98 It is therefore worthwhile to reflect on the real origin and background of the far-reaching dualism espoused by the Qumran sectarian texts. The early apocalypses furnish only a pale reflection of it and so cannot be the source of the sectarian dualism; neither can the two be compared in this respect.

93 Cf. Carmignac, “Qu’est-ce que l’Apocalyptique?,” 13–15. For this reason, the connection made by Florentino García Martínez between angels in apocalypses such as 1 Enoch and various references to the angelic world in the sectarian texts, such as Rule of the Sabbath Songs, is problematic. See idem, “Apocalypticism in the Dead Sea Scrolls,” 213–19. 94 Cf. Devorah Dimant, “The Demonic Realm in Qumran Sectarian Literature,” in Gut und Böse in Mensch und Welt, ed. Heinz-Günther Nesselrath and Florian Wilk, ORA 10 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013), 103–17. 95 See the analysis in Devorah Dimant, “Israel’s Subjugation to the Gentiles as an Expression of Demonic Power in Qumran Documents and Related Literature,” RevQ 22 (2006): 373–88. 96 Notably, 1 Enoch 19:1 refers to the spirits of the sinful angels, not the giants, who will plague men. See the comments of Matthew Black, The Book of Enoch or 1 Enoch, SVTP 7 (Leiden: Brill, 1985), 161. 97 This version is also referred in unit 6–11 (cf. 10:15), although the remaining sections of this narrative are silent about it. 98 Thus, the overarching generalization of Paolo Sacchi that the Book of Watchers is the early source of the apocalyptic views on the origin of evil is problematic; cf. idem, Jewish Apocalyptic and Its History, trans. William J. Short, JSPSup 20 (Sheffield: Academic Press, 1990), 54–55 et passim.

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II. Apocalyptic in Other Sections of the Qumran Library The foregoing survey has shown clearly that apocalypses and apocalyptic concepts are concentrated in Aramaic and sectarian texts. The Hebrew parabiblical texts, the third component of the Qumran library, rework various biblical passages and so are less prone to apocalyptic speculations. Still, there are important exceptions to this general rule: Jubilees, originally written in Hebrew, contains chapters 1 and 23, which may be defined as apocalypses; various Hebrew pieces that are too fragmentary for any meaningful consideration seem to produce passages from forecasts, visions, and historical reviews.99 While their details and general framework are obscure, they show the vigor and productivity of this kind of literary form even in Hebrew. Of particular interest are two Hebrew writings related to biblical prophets, Pseudo-Ezekiel and the Apocryphon of Jeremiah C, which have survived in relatively substantial fragments.100 As noted above, the Apocryphon of Jeremiah C may be defined as a historical apocalypse.101 It contains a historical survey revealed to Jeremiah (4Q385a 18 i 2), includes a periodized sequence of history according to the heptadic principle (e. g. 4Q387 2 ii 3–4; 4Q390 1 7), and expresses eschatological hopes (4Q387 3 9). It is then the first example of a historical apocalypse attributed to a biblical prophet. Interestingly, the case of Pseudo-Ezekiel is significantly different. Advancing notions that feature in other apocalypses (e. g. resurrection and time curtailing), Pseudo-Ezekiel nevertheless lacks historical sequence in periods, at least in the extant fragments,102 but it offers a most intriguing instance of the rewriting of passages from a biblical prophet.103 It has yet to be studied as an instance of the evolution from prophecy to its later apocalyptic interpretation.

  99 Cf. 1Q25, 2Q23, 6Q12, 4Q247, 4Q410, and 4Q521. 100 Published by Devorah Dimant, Qumran Cave 4.XXI: Parabiblical Texts, Part 4: Pseudo-Prophetic Texts, DJD 30 (Oxford: Clarendon, 2001). 101 Cf. Matthias Henze, “4QApocryphon of Jeremiah C and 4QPseudo-Ezekiel: Two ‘Historical’ Apocalypses,” in Prophecy after the Prophets? The Contribution of the Dead Sea Scrolls to the Understanding of Biblical and Extra-Biblical Prophecy, ed. Kristin de Troyer and Armin Lange (Leuven: Peeters, 2009), 34–39. 102 Among the extant fragments of Pseudo-Ezekiel, there is one forecast (4Q386 1 ii–iii). Perhaps the original work contained more passages of this type. 103 This composition reworks prophetic passages according to themes and not to their biblical sequence. Cf. Devorah Dimant, “Hebrew Pseudepigrapha at Qumran,” in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha and the Scriptures, ed. Eibert Tigchelaar, BETL 270 (Leuven: Peeters, 2014), 89–103.

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D. General Conclusions The above survey detected three thematic clusters: proper historical apocalypses, cosmic journeys, and throne visions. The different sources and settings of these clusters are perhaps indicated also by their distinct configuration within the Qumran library. The earliest apocalypses belong to the Aramaic corpus, as do the related cosmic journeys and throne visions. Some apocalypses probably of somewhat later date, such as Jubilees 1 and 23, the Apocryphon of Jeremiah C, and some other fragmentary pieces, are categorized as Hebrew nonsectarian texts, as is Daniel 8–12. These three clusters do not pertain to the sectarian literature, unlike various themes shared with the apocalypses. Especially significant is the prominent place assigned by the sectarian texts to the notion of the periodized history. So, as proposed at the outset of this article, the historical apocalypses are perhaps related to the circles from which the Qumran community emerged and with which it remained connected. What may be learned from the above outline of apocalyptic at Qumran? Once again it underscores the complexity of the issues discussed here and of the multifaceted nature of the Qumran library. Once again it exposes the vast terrain revealed by the scrolls that still remains to be explored.

Charlotte Hempel

The Theatre of the Written Word: Reading the Community Rule with Steven Fraade*

Even if many details remain debatable, the significance of the Dead Sea Scrolls as a much more integrative part of the wider literary legacy of the Second Temple period is increasingly emerging. Whereas the nine hundred or so fragmentary manuscripts from the vicinity of Qumran were copied in the Second Temple period, much more of the literary heritage of this age is preserved in later manuscripts preserved by various faith traditions.1 In addition, an unknown quantity of literature is simply lost to us.2 Moreover, the authors, editors, and tradents of Second Temple literature were themselves readers and interpreters of earlier texts. Some of their inherited traditions as well as new creations would eventually enter into the canons of Jewish and Christian communities.3 In spite of the penchant of both ancient and contemporary historians to segment the Second Temple social milieu, the extremely learned nature of most of this ancient Jewish literary heritage suggests a limited stratum of elite scholars and

* I would like to thank Prof. Tzvi Novick for his close editorial attention and engagement. 1 Michael E. Stone, Ancient Judaism: New Visions and Views (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011), 1–30. 2 Michael E. Stone, “The Scrolls and the Literary Landscape of Second Temple Judaism,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls: Texts and Context, ed. Charlotte Hempel, STDJ 90 (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 15–30, and Joan E. Taylor, “Buried Manuscripts and Empty Tombs: The Qumran Genizah Theory Revisited,” in “Go Out and Study the Land” (Judges 18:2): Archaeological, Historical and Textual Studies in Honor of Hanan Eshel, ed. Aren M. Maeir, Jodi Magness, and Lawrence H. Schiffman, JSJSup 148 (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 269–315. 3 See, e. g., Moshe Bernstein, Reading and Re-Reading Scripture at Qumran, 2 vols., STDJ 107 (Leiden: Brill, 2013); George J. Brooke, Reading the Dead Sea Scrolls: Essays in Method (Atlanta: SBL, 2013); Reinhard G. Kratz, Das Judentum im Zeitalter des Zweiten Tempels, FAT 42 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004), 123–56; idem, “Friend of God, Brother of Sarah, and Father of Isaac: Abraham in the Hebrew Bible and in Qumran,” in The Dynamics of Language and Exegesis at Qumran, ed. Devorah Dimant and Reinhard G. Kratz, FAT 35 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009), 79–105; idem, “Biblical Scholarship and Qumran Studies,” in The T&T Clark Companion to the Dead Sea Scrolls, ed. George J. Brooke and Charlotte Hempel (London: T&T Clark, forthcoming); and Hindy Najman, Seconding Sinai: The Development of Mosaic Discourse in Second Temple Judaism, JSJSup 77 (Leiden: Brill, 2003; Atlanta: SBL, 2009).

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scribes behind a great deal of what we have.4 Before it is possible to take a position on a particular issue of legal debate, one must have the leisure to spend one’s day(s) reflecting on and debating the issue, be educated enough to appreciate the debate, and have the authority to be listened to and recorded. The latter privileges unite our diverse authors and editors beyond any divisions articulated in the primary and secondary literature. This relative social cohesiveness was most recently noted by Steven Fraade when he referred to ancient Jewish literature, including inscriptions, as “the creations of a limited subset of the larger Jewish population.”5

1. Dispensing with Dichotomies Fraade’s wide-ranging work consistently focuses on challenging prominent scholarly dichotomies and exploiting the hermeneutical capital to be gained by allowing for a trajectory that moves beyond them. In one particularly striking instance, to which I will return below, he bridges the dichotomy of the real and the imagined by adding the perspective of the “imagined as real.”6 Recent research on the Dead Sea Scrolls is characterised by a similar interest in challenging long-held dichotomies such as “sectarian/nonsectarian” and even “biblical/nonbiblical,” with a preference emerging among several scholars to speak instead of “clusters” of texts that form intricate and complex relationships to each other and are best positioned along trajectories rather than at either side of various supposed dividing lines.7 Fraade’s substantial contribution to the ongoing and lively debate on legitimate ways of reading Second Temple legal texts alongside rabbinic literature is particularly noteworthy. He speaks of “the traversing of the boundaries of Second Temple

4 Cf. Charlotte Hempel, The Qumran Rule Texts in Context: Collected Studies, TSAJ 154 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013), 289–90. 5 Steven D. Fraade, “The Rehov Inscriptions and Rabbinic Literature—Matters of Language,” in Talmuda de-Eretz Israel: Archaeology and the Rabbis in Late Antique Palestine, ed. Steven Fine and Aaron Koller, SJ 17 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2014), 225–238, 229. 6 Steven D. Fraade, Legal Fictions: Studies of Law and Narrative in the Discursive Worlds of Ancient Jewish Sectarians and Sages, JSJSup 147 (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 15. 7 See, e. g., David Chalcraft, ed., Sectarianism in Early Judaism: Sociological Advances (London: Equinox, 2007); Florentino García Martínez, “¿Sectario, no-sectario, o qué? Problemas de una taxonomía correcta de los textos qumránicos,” RQ 23 (2008): 383–94; Jutta Jokiranta, Social Identity and Sectarianism in the Qumran Movement, STDJ 105 (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 1–109; Eibert J. C. Tigchelaar, “The Dead Sea Scrolls,” in The Eerdmans Dictionary of Early Judaism, ed. John J. Collins and Dan Harlow (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010), 163–80; and George J. Brooke, “From Jesus to the Early Christian Communities: Trajectories towards Sectarianism in the Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls and Contemporary Culture, ed. Adolfo Roitman, Lawrence H. Schiffman, and Shani Tzoref, STDJ 93 (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 413–34.

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and rabbinic Judaisms.”8 He identifies the “chronological barrier”9 between both bodies of literature as an issue to be addressed, leaving room, if I understand him correctly, for the possibility that traditions were contemporaneous even if their “textual incorporation” occurred at different times.10 While he grants the possibility that traditions now found in rabbinic texts may predate their “textual embodiment” by a significant period of time—perhaps even centuries—he notes that “the same can be said of the Qumran texts.”11 Fraade then critically reflects on several modes of bridging the divide. His suggestion that we should allow for “a subterranean fount of Jewish tradition … which irrigated both corpora (among others), regardless of chronological and cultural divides,”12 is preferable to attempts to divvy up halakic positions among groups that are more or less reliably attested in our sources.13 In this context Fraade eloquently speaks of the scrolls and early rabbinic literature as two ancient cultures “enormous in their textual footprints.”14 I sense room for fruitful further discussion, especially with reference to the scrolls, about the shape and size of the bearer of that enormous foot—“the creature” that left the footprint for us—and the genetic relationship between this “creature” and the perhaps somewhat evolved but closely related “creature” that imprinted the rabbinic tracks.15 8 Fraade, Legal Fictions, 116.   9 Fraade, Legal Fictions, 118. 10 Fraade, Legal Fictions, 117–18. See also Joseph M. Baumgarten, Studies in Qumran Law, Studies in Judaism and Christianity 24 (Leiden: Brill, 1977); Vered Noam, “Traces of Secatarian Halakhah in the Rabbinic World,” in Rabbinic Perspectives: Rabbinic Literature and the Dead Sea Scrolls: Proceedings of the Eighth International Symposium of the Orion Center for the Study of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Associated Literature, ed. Steven Fraade, Aharon Shemesh, and Ruth Shemesh, STDJ 62 (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 67–85; eadem, “Halakhah,” in Brooke and Hempel, T&T Clark Companion (forthcoming); Lawrence Schiffman, The Halakhah at Qumran, SJLA 16 (Leiden: Brill, 1975); Aharon Shemesh, Halakhah in the Making: The Development of Jewish Law from Qumran to the Rabbis (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009); and Yaakov Sussman, “The History of the Halakhah and the Dead Sea Scrolls: Preliminary Talmudic Observations on Miqsat Ma’aśe ha-Torah (4QMMT),” in Qumran Cave 4.5: Miqsat Ma’aśe ha-Torah, ed. Elisha Qimron and John Strugnell, DJD 10 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994), 179–200. 11 Fraade, Legal Fictions, 118. 12 Fraade, Legal Fictions, 119. 13 See also Fraade, Legal Fictions, 163, n. 56, where he observes that, “… given the paucity of contemporary Jewish legal literature outside the Dead Sea Scrolls, we have little way of knowing which of the sectarian laws found in the scrolls were the product of the Qumran community and which had been inherited from previous, pre-Qumranic contexts, or were shared with other Jewish groups.” Cf. Sussman, “History of the Halakhah.” For a cautious assessment of the risk of being blinkered by our frequently fragmented evidence base see Martin Goodman, “A Note on the Qumran Sectarians, the Essenes and Josephus,” JJS 46 (1995): 161–66. 14 Fraade, Legal Fictions, 15. 15 For the terminology of a “genetic link” between the yahad and habura see Steven D. Fraade, “Qumran Yahad and Rabbinic H  ăbûrâ: A Comparison Reconsidered,” DSD 16 (2009): 433–453, 452 (reprinted in Legal Fictions, 143).

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2. Texts or History? The full publication of the texts of the Dead Sea Scrolls over the last twenty years has revealed a richer and less monolithic literary profile than previously apparent. This is manifested by the shrinking proportion of material that is widely considered as authored by the movement that lived for a time at Qumran. Moreover, issues that seemed central to the ideology and practice of the movement, such as a close adherence to the solar calendar,16 appear much more complex in view of the full spread of calendrical lore to have come out of Cave 4.17 In particular, the full array of calendrical learning has challenged the once-predominant notion of a dichotomy of the role of the sun and the moon in calendrical traditions from Qumran. In this connection Fraade has noted the learned rather than applied character of recently published Qumran calendrical texts: “Where we find multiple calendars, calendrical polemic, at least explicit, is noticeably absent. Such texts display an interest in astronomical and calendrical calculations for, in a sense, their own sake.”18 Here we have another important example of ways in which the scrolls have “complicated”19 our appreciation of Second Temple period reality and literature. Another area where Fraade’s cautious approach bears fruit is the role attributed to the Teacher of Righteousness in the Damascus Document and in the biblical commentaries (pesharim). Fraade distanced himself early on from the view that the so-called “Halakic Letter,” 4QMMT, should be pegged to the Teacher, proposing instead that this text is better seen as an “intramural” pedagogic composition.20 A comparable explanation, suggesting the preservation of different copies of the

16 See Shemaryahu Talmon’s influential pioneering essays “Yom Hakkippurim in the Habakkuk Scroll,” Biblica 32 (1951): 549–63 and The Calendar Reckoning of the Sect from the Judaean Desert (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1958), 162–99. 17 Uwe Glessmer, “Calendars in the Qumran Scrolls,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls after Fifty Years: A Comprehensive Assessment, ed. Peter W. Flint and James C. VanderKam (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 2:213–78; Hempel, Qumran Rule Texts in Context, 319–29; Sacha Stern, “The ‘Sectarian’ Calendar of Qumran,” in Sects and Sectarianism in Jewish History, ed. Sacha Stern, IJS Studies in Judaica 12 (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 39–62; idem, “Qumran Calendars and Sectarianism,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Dead Sea Scrolls, ed. Timothy H. Lim and John J. Collins (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 232–53; Jonathan Ben-Dov, Head of All Years: Astronomy and Calendars at Qumran in Their Ancient Context, STDJ 78 (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 44–47; James C. VanderKam, Calendars in the Dead Sea Scrolls: Measuring Time, Literature of the Dead Sea Scrolls (London: Routledge, 1998), 46–47. 18 Fraade, Legal Fictions, 282. See also Hempel, Qumran Rule Texts in Context, 319–29, for a fuller discussion and bibliography. 19 Fraade, Legal Fictions, 123. 20 Steven D. Fraade, “To Whom It May Concern: 4QMMT and Its Addressee(s),” RQ 19 (2000): 507–26 (reprinted in Legal Fictions, 69–91).

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Community Rule for educational purposes, has been put forward by Sarianna Metso in a paper delivered at the 2012 Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature in Chicago.21 Fraade further cautions against the popular assumption that the community’s interpretation of Torah originates with the Teacher by noting the limited references to the Teacher and the association of his inspired gifts of interpretation with prophetic literature in particular.22 Recent scholarship on the Teacher has continued to question the pivotal role attributed to this figure in earlier studies.23

21 See also Sarianna Metso, “In Search of the Sitz im Leben of the Community Rule,” in The Provo International Conference on the Dead Sea Scrolls: Technological Innovations, New Texts, and Reformulated Issues, STDJ 30 (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 306–15, and eadem, “Methodological Problems in Reconstructing History from Rule Texts Found at Qumran,” DSD 11 (2004): 315–35. 22 Fraade, Legal Fictions, 41–43, originally published in 1993. See further Alex Jassen, Mediating the Divine: Prophecy and Revelation in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Second Temple Judaism, STDJ 68 (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 348–53. 23 George J. Brooke, “The ‘Apocalyptic’ Community, the Matrix of the Teacher and Rewriting Scripture,” in Authoritative Scriptures in Ancient Judaism, ed. Mladen Popović, JSJSup 141 (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 37–53; Florentino García Martínez, “Beyond the Sectarian Divide: The ‘Voice of the Teacher’ as an Authority-Conferring Strategy in Some Qumran Texts,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls: Transmission of Traditions and Production of Texts, ed. Sarianna Metso, Hindy Najman, and Eileen Schuller, STDJ 92 (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 227–44; Maxine Grossman, “Roland Barthes and the Teacher of Righteousness: The Death of the Author of the Dead Sea Scrolls,” in Lim and Collins, Oxford Handbook of the Dead Sea Scrolls, 709–22; Angela Kim Harkins, “Who Is the Teacher of the Teacher Hymns? Re-Examining the Teacher Hymns Hypothesis Fifty Years Later,” in A Teacher for All Generations: Essays in Honor of James C. VanderKam, ed. Eric Mason et al., JSJSup 153 (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 449–67; Jutta Jokiranta, “Qumran—The Prototypical Teacher in the Qumran Pesharim: A Social-Identity Approach,” in Ancient Israel: The Old Testament in Its Social Context, ed. Philip F. Esler (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2006), 254–63; Michael A. Knibb, “Teacher of Righteousness,” in Encyclopedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls, ed. Lawrence H. Schiffman and James C. VanderKam (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 2:918–21; Loren T. Stuckenbruck, “The Legacy of the Teacher of Righteousness in the Dead Sea Scrolls,” in New Perspectives on Old Texts: Proceedings of the Tenth International Symposium of the Orion Center for the Study of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Associated Literature, 9–11 January, 2005, ed. Esther G. Chazon, Betsy Halpern-Amaru, and Ruth A. Clements, STDJ 88 (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 23–49; idem, “The Teacher of Righteousness Remembered: From Fragmentary Sources to Collective Memory in the Dead Sea Scrolls,” in Memory in the Bible and Antiquity: The Fifth Durham-Tübingen Research Symposium (Durham, September 2004), ed. Stephen Barton, Loren Stuckenbruck, and Benjamin Wold, WUNT 212 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007), 75–94. For a more confident assessment of the crucial role played by the historical Teacher in shaping the community, see most recently John J. Collins, review of Social Identity and Sectarianism in the Qumran Movement, by Jutta Jokiranta, DSD 21, no. 2 (2014): 241–44. Collins considers the Teacher of Righteousness “the de facto founder, in the sense that he gave (or was credited with giving) the movement its distinctive character” (244). Collins’s addition of “or was credited with giving” in parentheses reflects a considerable current in contemporary scholarship. Similarly Émile Puech considers the Teacher the author of 1QS I–IV and the Final Hymn, La croyance des Esséniens en la vie future: Immortalité, resurrection, et vie éternelle (Paris: Gabalda, 1993), 2:422.

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In a similar vein and also with reference to the scrolls, Hayim Lapin has counselled a “hermeneutic of suspicion to help keep us from reproducing what our texts claim as our sole knowledge about them.”24 Touching more closely on the evidence of the Community Rule, in reflecting on comparative investigations of the yahad and the habura, in a 2009 study Fraade astutely asks: What precisely are we comparing, the historical yah ad and the historical hăbûrâ, or their rhetorical constructions according to their respective literary sources, that is the yahad of the Community Rule and the hăbûrâ of the Mishnah and the Tosefta?25

Recent research has challenged the real or perceived reality claims of Qumran texts with like caution. The full publication of the Dead Sea Scrolls has contributed to the demise of the notion that the community behind the scrolls was a small, idiosyncratic group localized around Khirbet Qumran. Even the Community Rule (1QS; 4QS) can no longer be understood straightforwardly as a product of the Khirbet Qumran community specifically. The window for the communal occupation of the settlement excavated at Khirbet Qumran proposed by the site’s excavator Roland de Vaux, i. e. 130 BCE – 68 CE,26 tallied reasonably well with the assumption that the life cycle of the community described in the Community Rule, especially 1QS, corresponded with the occupation of the site, but this “fit” no longer stands. Jodi Magness’s widely accepted revised chronology points instead to the early first century BCE (100–70 BCE) as the start of the community’s occupation of the site.27 This revised chronology leaves us with a date range for the initial occupation of the site by a community that more or less overlaps with the time during which 1QS was copied (100–75 BCE). It is unlikely, therefore, that 1QS can be associated with life at Qumran from the beginning, since the document allows for a considerable time to have elapsed in the movement’s life. Note, for instance, the reference in the Community Rule’s penal code to a member of the movement who turns his back on the community after ten full years (1QS VII, 22–24 // 4Q259 II, 5b–7a).28

24 Hayim Lapin, “Dead Sea Scrolls and the Historiography of Ancient Judaism,” in Rediscovering the Dead Sea Scrolls: An Assessment of Old and New Approaches and Methods, ed. Maxine L. Grossman (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010), 108–27, 127. 25 Fraade, “Qumran Yahad and Rabbinic H  ăbûrâ,” 452 (reprinted in Legal Fictions, 142). 26 Roland de Vaux, Archaeology and the Dead Sea Scrolls, rev. ed. (London: Oxford University Press, 1973), 3–5. 27 Jodi Magness, The Archaeology of Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 47–72. For a comprehensive and up-to-date discussion see Dennis Mizzi, “Qumran Period I Reconsidered: An Evaluation of Several Competing Theories,” DSD 22 (2015): 1–42. 28 See also Alison Schofield, “Rereading S: A New Model of Textual Development in Light of the Cave 4 Serekh Copies,” DSD 15 (2008): 96–120, and Torleif Elgvin, “The Yahad Is More Than Qumran,” in Enoch and Qumran Origins: New Light on a Forgotten Connection, ed. Gabriele Boccaccini et al. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), 273–79.

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Fraade himself foreshadows several of these developments in a cautious caveat on his use of the term “Qumran community” in 1993. By … “Qumran community” I refer not just to those who lived at or around the ancient encampment at Khirbet Qumran on the western shore of the Dead Sea, the yahad of the Community Rule (1QS) (emphasis mine), but the larger movement of which scholars believe this settlement was the center. It has long been acknowledged (as early as the first century historian Flavius Josephus) that the center and its satellites were not alike in all aspects of their practice. Nor, for that matter, were they static over time. Furthermore, certain texts or parts of texts may be reflective either of different “branches” of the movement or of its different stages, including perhaps pre-settlement at Qumran.29

Fraade’s nuanced conceptualisation of the social make-up reflected in the Dead Sea Scrolls in terms of a movement whose literary output evolved in complex ways over a considerable period of time anticipated a great deal of subsequent research on the Community Rule and related texts. Thus, Jutta Jokiranta and John Collins have promoted the notion of a movement over against a single community at Qumran, an idea that is gaining ground.30 Similarly, both Collins and Alison Schofield have reflected on what they would consider “the center and the periphery” attested by various Rule manuscripts.31 Even though Fraade’s thoughtful reflections on the Qumran movement and its literature more than twenty years ago anticipated today’s studies on the Community Rule, he himself brackets this particular composition as a special case that is perhaps more straightforward and does pertain to the single yahad resident at Qumran, as indicated by the words emphasized in the quotation above. However, I will demonstrate below that the full evidence of the Rule manuscripts can also be fruitfully analyzed in light of the methodological insights that Fraade has developed with reference to other texts and corpora. For a long time there has been a tendency not to allow for the possibility of the “imagined as real” to the same degree in the Dead Sea Scrolls as in biblical or rabbinic texts. In the presence of original ancient manuscripts alongside more or less contemporary archaeological remnants of communal life, texts like the Community Rule were for some time regarded, rather understandably, as what I have

29 Steven D. Fraade, “Interpretative Authority in the Studying Community at Qumran,” JJS 44 (1993): 46, n. 1 (reprinted in Legal Fictions, 37, n. 1). 30 Jutta Jokiranta, “Identity on a Continuum: Constructing and Expressing Sectarian Social Identity in Qumran Serakhim and Pesharim” (PhD diss., University of Helsinki, 2005), 54; and note the very title of John Collins’s monograph, Beyond the Qumran Community: The Sectarian Movement of the Dead Sea Scrolls (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009). 31 Collins, Beyond the Qumran Community, and Alison Schofield, From Qumran to the Yahad: A New Paradigm of Textual Development for the Community Rule, STDJ 77 (Leiden: Brill, 2009).

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called “reality literature.”32 The degree of confidence with which scholars thought text and history converged here has left its mark more widely on the rather ill-defined use of “Rules” as a literary genre to have emerged from Qumran.33 We have already noted that the revised chronology of the communal occupation of Khirbet Qumran and the presence of divergent manuscripts of the Rule have challenged important elements of this neat alignment of text and reality. In addition, I have argued elsewhere that even within one and the same long-known manuscript of the Community Rule from Cave 1 (1QS), close scrutiny reveals several counternarratives that subvert the dominant reading. Thus, for example, I have drawn attention to 1QS VI, 2c–4a, which offers an account of small-scale fellowship groups that meet to eat, pray, and exchange counsel. On my reading of this passage, it preserves for us some traces of how like-minded Jews congregated outside of the much more elaborately regimented communal assemblies described in 1QS VI, 8b–13a.34 Fraade’s insights offer further nuance by drawing attention to the prevalent tendency in ancient Jewish literature to portray the “imagined as real.” This is not to say there is nothing real to be recovered from the scrolls, or from the Community Rule tradition in particular, but simply to stress that the sorts of ideologies we see driving the agenda in the production and promulgation of other ancient Jewish literature are almost certainly also present here. In sum, recent scholarship on the scrolls has problematized our approach to texts that once seemed to prescribe and testify to beliefs and practices “on the ground,” as it were. If the plethora of Rule manuscripts and calendrical texts to have emerged from the Qumran caves can no longer be considered windows into life at Qumran, what are we to make of them? The next section will offer some reflections in response.

3. The Written Word as the Stage As scholarly confidence in the status of many texts from Qumran as “reality literature” has faded, the significance of the manuscripts for the insights they offer about the skills and techniques of late Second Temple period scribes and scholars —two categories that are often difficult to distinguish—is becoming increasingly apparent.35 In this context the rich evidence of the eleven Community Rule

32 Hempel, Qumran Rule Texts in Context, 8. 33 See Hempel, “Rules,” in Brooke and Hempel, T&T Clark Companion (forthcoming). 34 Hempel, Qumran Rule Texts in Context, 79–105. 35 See, e. g., George J. Brooke, “The Qumran Scrolls and the Demise of the Distinction between Higher and Lower Criticism,” in New Directions in Qumran Studies, ed. Jonathan G. Campbell, William J. Lyons, and Lloyd K. Pietersen, LSTS 52 (London: T&T Clark, 2005), 26–42; David M. Carr, Writing on the Tablet of the Heart: Origins of Scripture and Literature (Oxford: Oxford

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manuscripts from Qumran Caves 1 and 4, in particular, has attracted the attention of scholars.36 Rather than the once-predominant interest in the Community Rule as a direct window into “the” Qumran community, the full spectrum of Rule manuscripts exposes a vibrant ancient textual panorama that frequently brings us face to face with first-hand evidence of how ancient scribes/authors/editors went about their business. The recent work of Alison Schofield and John Collins has embraced this textual plurality while maintaining an interpretation that still considers individual manuscripts or manuscript clusters as windows into a set of related communities spread over a number of localities. In other words, both Schofield and Collins conceive of the plurality of Community Rule manuscripts as an expression of varied lived realities. Thus Collins maintains that the term yahad refers not to a single community but a geographically dispersed “umbrella organization.”37 Schofield proposes a Jerusalemite provenance for the Community Rule before the text was revised at Qumran and in scattered related communities.38 Collins’s and Schofield’s “geographical approach” takes each manuscript as a discrete window into the lived reality of a local community in a larger network. Others have questioned the premise that every manuscript faithfully reflects a particular (though geographically diverse) lived reality and have pointed instead to evidence for the cumulative literary growth of individual manuscripts that are rarely even internally consistent.39 Thus, based on a close study of the available evidence Metso argues that “… there never existed a single, legitimate and up-to-date

University Press, 2005); Martin Jaffe, Torah in the Mouth: Writing and Oral Tradition in Palestinian Judaism, 200 BCE–400 CE (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001); Reinhard G. Kratz, “Biblical Scholarship and Qumran Studies,” and Eibert Tigchelaar, “The Scribes of the Scrolls,” both in Brooke and Hempel, T&T Clark Companion (forthcoming); Karel van der Toorn, Scribal Culture and the Making of the Hebrew Bible (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007); Emanuel Tov, Scribal Practices and Approaches Reflected in the Texts Found in the Judean Desert, STDJ 54 (Leiden: Brill, 2004). 36 For a concise and judicious overview of the evidence see Michael A. Knibb, “Rule of the Community,” in Encyclopedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls, 2:793–97; further, Philip S. Alexander, “The Redaction-History of Serekh ha-Yahad: A Proposal,” RQ 17 (1996): 437–53; Hempel, Qumran Rule Texts in Context, 109–19; Sarianna Metso, The Serekh Texts, CQS 9 / LSTS 62 (London: T&T Clark, 2007); Schofield, From Qumran to the Yahad; and further literature referred to in the above. 37 John J. Collins, Beyond the Qumran Community; idem, “Forms of Community in the Dead Sea Scrolls,” in Emanuel: Studies in Hebrew Bible, Septuagint, and the Dead Sea Scrolls in Honor of Emanuel Tov, ed. Shalom M. Paul et al., VTSup 94 (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 97–111, esp. 99; and idem, “The Yahad and ‘The Qumran Community,’” in Biblical Traditions in Transmission: Essays in Honour of Michael A. Knibb, ed. Charlotte Hempel and Judith M. Lieu, JSJSup 111 (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 81–96. 38 Schofield, From Qumran to the Yahad. 39 Cf. Hempel, Qumran Rule Texts in Context, 109–19.

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version of the Community Rule that supplanted all other versions.”40 My own interpretation of the pluriform manuscript tradition of the Community Rule emphasises the existence side by side of a variety of textual traditions, also in emerging biblical texts. This correspondence strongly suggests that textual pluriformity was a “hallmark” of evolving ancient Jewish textual traditions.41 Given that a series of pluriform manuscripts of S were found in one location, the vicinity of Qumran, rather than across a geographical area, the evidence is best accounted for in the context of a penchant for preserving and shaping multiform texts in one place— be they manuscripts of Jeremiah (attested at Qumran in Hebrew reflecting both the LXX and MT)42 or S. We know that Second Temple scribes, including those of the Qumran movement, produced and preserved pluriform textual traditions without discarding previous iterations. Fraade reflects on legal texts as “theatres of significant contentions and contradictions”43 rather than as mirrors of historical practice, a conception that suggests a more fruitful strategy of closely reading the often complex literary evidence.

4. Performative Aspects of the Written Word In addition to his suggestion that 4QMMT be considered a “performative script”44 to be employed intramurally within the community that gave rise to the text, Fraade has drawn attention to how performative perspectives may illuminate the relationship between the admonition and the legal portions of the Damascus Document.45 He concludes his analysis of the Damascus Document by suggesting that the composition is best conceived of as “an anthology that was drawn upon so as to provide performative ‘scripts’ … for the annual covenant renewal ceremony ….”46 The to and fro between stipulations to be obeyed and liturgy is also a characteristic feature of what I have called the “Long Text” of the Community Rule, that is, those manuscripts of S that include material from 1QS I–IV along-

40 Metso, Serekh Texts, 69. 41 Hempel, Qumran Rule Texts in Context, 286. 42 For a concise presentation of the evidence see James C. VanderKam, The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Bible, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012), 12–15. 43 Fraade, Legal Fictions, 122. 44 Fraade, “To Whom It May Concern” (reprinted in Legal Fictions, 69–91). See also Maxine Grossman, “Reading 4QMMT: Genre and History,” RQ 20 (2001): 3–22, and Charlotte Hempel, “The Context of 4QMMT and Comfortable Theories,” in Hempel, The Dead Sea Scrolls: Texts and Context, 275–92. 45 Steven D. Fraade, “Ancient Jewish Law and Narrative in Comparative Perspective: The Damascus Document and the Mishnah,” Diné Israel: An Annual of Jewish Law 24 (2007): 65–99 (reprinted in Legal Fictions, 227–54). 46 Fraade, “Ancient Jewish Law,” 87 (reprinted in Legal Fictions, 245).

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side 1QS V–XI, as represented most clearly by 1QS and 4Q256 (Sb).47 The presence of a ceremony of admission and reaffirmation of the covenant in the opening columns of S (1QS I, 16 – III, 12 // 4Q255 II, 1–9 // 4Q256 II, 1–13; III, 1–4 // 4Q257 II, 1–8; III, 1–14 // 4Q262 I, 1–4 // 5Q11 1i), and the Final Hymn in 1QS IX (1QS IX, 26b – XI, 22 // 4Q256 IXX, 1–7; XX, 1–7; XXIII, 1–3 // 4Q258 VIII, 10 – X, 8; XII, 4; XIII, 1–3 // 4Q260 II, 1–5–; III, 1–3; IV, 1–10; V, 1–7 // 4Q264 I, 1–10) further reinforces the importance of performative aspects in the presentation of several manuscripts of the Community Rule.48 To this we may add performative elements legislated within the central columns of 1QS and widely represented across the manuscript spectrum, such as the injunctions to eat, pray, and exchange council in every place where ten are gathered (1QS VI, 1c–3a; 4Q258 II, 6b–7a; 4Q261 2a–c: 1–2a; 4Q263 2b–3), the subsequent request to ensure the presence of a person who continuously studies the law day and night (1QS VI, 6–7a),49 and the related rule that the many devote a third of each night to communal reading, study, and prayer (1QS VI, 7b–8a; 4Q258 II, 10). The question of the provenance of the diverse regulations found in 1QS VI, 1–8 has been heavily debated in recent scholarship.50 In the 1993 article mentioned above, Fraade recognized the performative elements implied in 1QS VI, 6–8 as referring to ritualized common study in the community. He rightly notes that “concluding of the nightly study sessions with a liturgical practice suggests that communal study was itself a religious performance ….”51 In sum, many of Fraade’s methodological insights and case studies can fruitfully be applied to the evidence of the Community Rule manuscripts and their recent scholarly reception. Whereas earlier scholarship was marked by much more confidence in our ability to access the (hi)story of a particular idiosyncratic community from the columns of 1QS, the full spectrum of sometimes contradictory and 47 Charlotte Hempel, “Shared Traditions: Points of Contact between S and D,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls: Transmission of Traditions and Production of Texts, ed. Sarianna Metso, Hindy ­Najman, and Eileen Schuller, STDJ 92 (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 115–31 (reprinted in Qumran Rule Texts in Context, 137–50), and eadem, “The Long Text of the Serekh as Crisis Literature,” RQ 27 (2015): 3–24. 48 It is important to note, however, that the single fragment of 4Q264 may belong to a liturgical anthology (DJD 26:201) rather than constitute the remains of a Community Rule manuscript. 49 See Steven D. Fraade, “Hagu, Book of,” in Encyclopedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls, 327, and Charlotte Hempel, “The Social Matrix That Shaped the Hebrew Bible and Gave Us the Dead Sea Scrolls,” in Studies on the Text and Versions of the Hebrew Bible in Honour of Robert Gordon, ed. Geoffrey Khan and Diana Lipton, VTSup 149 (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 221–37 (reprinted in Qumran Rule Texts in Context, 285–99). 4Q258 does not preserve these lines and considerations of space suggest it contained a shorter text. See Philip S. Alexander and Geza Vermes, Qumran Cave 4.26: Serekh Ha-Yahad and Two Related Texts, DJD 26 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1998), 99–101. 50 See Hempel, Qumran Rule Texts in Context, 79–105, 285–99, and further literature cited there. 51 Fraade, “Interpretive Authority,” 57–58 (reprinted in Legal Fictions, 52); see further Legal Fictions, 152–54.

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divergent Rule manuscripts has moved the hermeneutical landscape much closer to what Fraade, with characteristic caution, calls a “nomo-narrative world.”52 It is becoming clear that the “nomo-narrative world” attested in the legal texts from Qumran, including the Community Rule, poses hermeneutical challenges similar to those faced by biblical and rabbinic scholars, more so than had previously been appreciated. Steven Fraade’s scholarship has contributed immeasurably to a fruitful interdisciplinary dialogue and, as I hope to have shown above, his insights present scholars with hermeneutical capital to be exploited more broadly in future research.

52 Fraade, Legal Fictions, 32.

Jan Joosten

“A Gift of Arms”: The Greek Translation of Sirach 7:31 and the Interpretive Process Underlying the Septuagint

The first translator of the book of Ben Sira, the grandson of the author according to the Greek prologue, faced a formidable task. The author of the Hebrew book appears to have found special delight in tracking down rare words and expressions and using them in unprecedented ways. His sayings draw not only on traditional wisdom motifs, but also on passages from practically the entire Hebrew Bible, of which he seems to have known interpretations that were already traditional in his time. Modern scholars, who have concordances, dictionaries, and biblical commentaries at their disposal, nevertheless struggle to understand what Ben Sira may have meant. Presumably the grandson had similar difficulties. Certainly the Greek translation as it has come down to us diverges significantly from the Hebrew texts attested in the manuscripts in many passages. It has occasionally been mooted that the Hebrew text lying before the translator was different from what has come down to us. The Hebrew of Ben Sira is attested in several manuscripts, and where they overlap they at times exhibit various textual forms. It is not always possible in this case to reconstruct a Hebrew archetype from which the attested forms descend. Where the Hebrew and Greek texts diverge, the translator may well have had access to a textual form unavailable to us today. This type of explanation should not be pressed too much, however. When the first manuscripts of Hebrew Ben Sira came to light from the Cairo Genizah, some scholars dismissed them as late and indirect witnesses, retroverted perhaps on the basis of the Syriac or Persian translation. The discovery of the Masada manuscript showed this type of approach to be hypercritical. Where Masada overlaps with manuscript B from the Genizah, the two textual forms are rather similar. Moreover, where they diverge, the Genizah material is not always obviously inferior. The available Hebrew manuscript evidence is on the whole of high quality. The translation technique underlying the Greek version was not consistently literal.1 Basing a reconstruction of the Hebrew text on the Greek text is therefore

1 Benjamin G. Wright, No Small Difference: Sirach’s Relationship to Its Hebrew Parent Text, SCS 26 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989).

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generally considered unsafe. However, where a Hebrew text is attested, it is legitimate to inquire how and to what extent the Greek text may be understood as a translation of it: [T]he extant Hebrew should only be considered at variance with the parent text of the Greek when a clear exegetical path cannot be constructed between the Hebrew and the Greek (as long as the Greek itself cannot be considered corrupt due to the process of transmission of the text), or when the presence of Hebrew variants makes the Hebrew textual situation clear.2

In what follows, a short segment of the Greek version of Ben Sira will be studied and an “exegetical path” will be retraced that accounts for the rendering on the basis of the attested Hebrew reading. The results of the analysis, however tentative they must remain, will then be made the starting point for a brief general reflection on the translation process underlying the Septuagint as a whole.

The Hebrew and Greek Texts of Sir 7:31 The Hebrew text of Sir 7:31 is attested in two Genizah manuscripts with slight lacunas and unimportant variation:3 A

D

‫כבד אל והדר כהן ות[ן ח]לקם כאשר צוותה‬ ‫לחם אבירים ותרומת י֯ ֯ד ז֯ ֯ב ֯חי֯ צדק ותרומת קדש׃‬ ‫כב[ד אל והדר כהן] ות[ן] חלקם כאשר צויתה‬ ‫לחם אבירי[ם ותר]ומת יד …]דק [ותרו]מת [קו]דש׃‬

Honor God and venerate the priests, and give them their portion as you have been commanded: the food of mighty ones, and heave offerings of your hand, sacrifices of righteousness, and heave offerings for the sanctuary (B: “his sanctuary”). φοβοῦ τὸν κύριον καὶ δόξασον ἱερέα καὶ δὸς τὴν μερίδα αὐτῷ, καθὼς ἐντέταλταί σοι, ἀπαρχὴν καὶ περὶ πλημμελείας καὶ δόσιν βραχιόνων καὶ θυσίαν ἁγιασμοῦ καὶ ἀπαρχὴν ἁγίων. Fear the Lord, and honor the priest, and give him his portion, as it is commanded thee; the firstfruits, and the trespass offering, and the gift of arms, and the sacrifice of sanctification, and the firstfruits of the holy things.

2 Wright, No Small Difference, 132–33. 3 For the readings, see Jean-Sébastien Rey, “Un nouveau feuillet du manuscrit D de Ben Sira: notes de philologie et de critique textuelle,” Revue de Qumrân 99 (2012): 395–422.

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The relation of the Greek version to the attested Hebrew is rather straightforward in the first half of the verse, but less so in the second half.4 The Hebrew enumerates four different kinds of gifts. The first one is designated as ‫לחם אבירים‬, “bread of mighty ones,” a phrase borrowed from Ps 78:25 but applied to a different referent. This appears to be rendered somewhat approximately as ἀπαρχὴν καὶ περὶ πλημμελείας, “firstfruits and trespass offering,” with the second element reflecting perhaps a form of the root ‫עבר‬, “to trespass.”5 The third and fourth gifts are rendered recognizably, although not entirely literally. This leaves the second gift: ‫תרומת יד‬, “offering of the hand” in the Hebrew text. The expression is known from Deut 12:6, 11, and 17 where it figures in a long list of sacrifices that are to be brought to the central sanctuary.6 This is rendered, in our passage, as δόσιν βραχιόνων “a gift of arms.”7 This is a surprising rendering. Hebrew ‫ יד‬designates the hand in a loose way that may at times include part of the arm.8 Where this is the case, ‫ יד‬is occasionally rendered with βραχίων in the Septuagint.9 In the present passage, however, the change from “hand” to “arm” seems to involve a complete transformation of the meaning of the passage. In the “offering of the hand” the hand of the giver is meant, but the arms in the “gift of arms” are most probably to be taken as the object of the act of giving.

“Arms” for the Priest While there is no special connection between “arms” and the general notion of “giving” in the Septuagint, the “arm,” or rather the “shoulder” of an animal is frequently assigned as a special gift to the priest. In one passage, the Greek version simply follows the Hebrew in stipulating that the priest receives “the shoulder, and the two cheeks, and the maw” (Deut 18:3).10 In twelve other passages, the Hebrew text designates the “hind leg” (‫ )שוק‬as the part of the priest, but the Greek version changes this into the “foreleg” (βραχίων):

4 Rey, “Nouveau feuillet,” 411–13 (with references to earlier editions and commentaries). 5 For other possibilities see Rey, “Nouveau feuillet,” 412–13. 6 As a cultic term, ‫ תרומה‬usually designates an offering or part of an offering set aside for God or for the priest; see Samuel R. Driver, Deuteronomy, ICC (Edinburgh: T& T Clark, 1913), 142. According to Jewish halakah the phrase in Deut 12:6, 11, and 17 refers to firstfruits (‫)בכורים‬, see Sifre Deuteronomy 63 (ed. Finkelstein, 130), Rashi ad loc., and Aharon Mirsky, Sefer Devarim (Jerusalem: Harav Kook Institute, 2001), 184. The halakic interpretation appears to be reflected in the Syriac rendering rešita dîdayâ “firstfruits of hands.” 7 The variation between singular and plural is trivial in this phrase. A minority reading in the Greek tradition has the singular βραχίονος. 8 See e. g. Gen 27:16 (Rachel covers Jacob’s “hands/arms”); 24:18; Judg 15:14. 9 See Rey, “Nouveau feuillet,” 413. 10 See also Num 6:19–20, the “shoulder of the Levite.”

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Lev 7:34 MT For I have taken the breast of the elevation offering, and the thigh [‫ ]שוק‬that is offered from the people of Israel, from their sacrifices of well-being, and have given them to Aaron the priest and to his sons, as a perpetual due from the people of Israel. (NRSV) LXX For I have taken the breast of the addition, and the shoulder [βραχίων] of the advance deduction from the sons of Israel, from your sacrifices of deliverance, and I have given them to Aaron the priest and to his sons as a perpetual precept from the sons of Israel. (NETS)

The other passages are: Exod 29:22, 27; Lev 7:32, 33; 8:25, 26; 9:21; 10:15; and Num 6:20; 18:18.11 Thus, the “gift of shoulders” in Sir 7:31 is almost certainly to be understood in light of these passages in the Pentateuch.12 In a context that speaks of gifts for the priest, the Greek text of the passage is naturally interpreted as referring to the portion of the sacrifice Israelites are to allocate to the priest according to the law. The inference is so natural that one is led to attribute it to the intention of the translator. The translator can hardly have been unaware of the connection he was creating. Moreover, the only perceivable motive for changing “gift of hand” to “gift of arms” is precisely the desire to identify the third element in the list of gifts as the priests’ portion as defined by Scripture. Although one now understands the Greek version of Sir 7:31 better, the process of translation remains puzzling. Translators do not usually abandon the plain sense of an expression in their source text unless they have a good reason for doing so. Perhaps the rendering of ‫ תרומת יד‬as δόσιν βραχιόνων could be considered an exegetical rendering. The translator knew that the ‫ תרומה‬allocated to the priest was, according to the Greek Bible, the “shoulder” and therefore rendered the somewhat nondescript “gift of hands” as “gift of arms.” Exegetical renderings are frequent in the Septuagint, including the Greek version of Ben Sira. But transformations of the type exemplified in Sir 7:31 are uncommon. One wonders what triggered the interpretation.

11 In two passages, Exod 29:22 and Lev 8:25–26, the thigh is offered as a burnt offering to God. This is done, however, in the context of the priestly consecration, with the thigh representing the priest’s personal part in the offering. 12 Note, however, the Old Latin reading datum brachiorum tuorum, “the gift of your arms.”

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From “Hand” to “Shoulder” A possible trigger for the surprising rendering in Sir 7:31 is found in Tannaitic Hebrew. In the Mishnah, Hebrew ‫ יד‬is at times used with the meaning “foreleg of an animal.”13 The second lottery [decided] who would slaughter [the daily sacrifice], who would throw the blood [onto the altar], who would remove the ashes from the inner altar, who would remove the ashes from the candelabra, and who would bring the limbs to the ramp: the head and the [left] hind-leg, the two fore-legs [‫]ושתי היידים‬, the tail and the [right] hind-leg, the chest and the throat, the two sides, the innards, the flour [for the accompanying meal-offering], the cakes, and the wine. (m. Yoma 2:3)

While in the biblical corpus the hind leg of a sacrificial animal is designated as ‫ שוק‬and the foreleg as ‫זרוע‬, in Mishnaic Hebrew the terminology changes: the hind leg is ‫ רגל‬and the foreleg is ‫יד‬. The latter terminology may already have been known when the Greek version of Ben Sira came into being. Linguists agree that Mishnaic Hebrew has its roots in a Hebrew dialect of the Second Temple period.14 Several Qumran scrolls appear to polemicize against the use of this nonbiblical variety of Hebrew in legal teaching and debate.15 Last but not least, the Septuagint indicates in several other passages that Mishnaic Hebrew terms and expressions were already circulating when the Greek version was produced.16 If the translator knew the terminology attested in the Mishnah, his interpretation of the expression ‫ תרומת יד‬becomes easy to understand. Since ‫ יד‬could designate the foreleg of a sacrificial animal, it made sense to interpret it so in a verse speaking of sacrifice. The translator did not, in fact, consciously diverge from his Hebrew source text at all. Instead, it would seem, he interpreted the second element in the expression, ‫יד‬, from the start as a designation of the given object: ‫ תרומת יד‬is the “gift of a shoulder” of a sacrificial victim. What remains striking is that the Greek translator mentally associated the meaning of the Hebrew phrase with data from the Greek Pentateuch, while neglecting data from the Hebrew Pentateuch. The attestation of the phrase ‫ תרומת יד‬in the MT of Deut 12:6, 11, and 17 could have led the translator to give a more general

13 I thank Daniel Stoekl Ben Ezra for pointing out the existence of this meaning in the Mishnah. As far as I’ve been able to ascertain, it is not signaled in the standard dictionaries. 14 Moshe Bar-Asher, “Mishnaic Hebrew: An Introductory Survey,” in Studies in Classical Hebrew (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014), 229–61, and other studies in the same volume. 15 William M. Schniedewind, A Social History of Hebrew (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013), 175. 16 Jan Joosten, “Biblical Hebrew as Mirrored in the Septuagint: The Question of Influence from Spoken Hebrew,” Textus 21 (2002): 1–19.

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rendering. Instead, his interpretation seems to have been guided by the passages in the Septuagint where the special portion of the priest includes the βραχίων “shoulder.” The latter association was possible only in Greek, since the Hebrew text in most of the passages defining the priestly portion refers not to the “shoulder” but to the “hind leg” (‫)שוק‬.17

The Rendering “Gift of Arms” as a Parable of Greek Translation Processes If what has been said so far is more or less accurate, two principal factors guided the translational process transforming ‫“ תרומת יד‬a gift of the hand” into δόσιν βραχιόνων “a gift of arms”: knowledge of terminology that will later turn up in the Mishnah, and familiarity with the cultic rules spelled out in the Septuagint Pentateuch. The first of these factors orients our attention to Palestine. The living practice of Hebrew in a variety of dialects is a reality of the homeland, as is the adoption of one of these dialects by the proto-Pharisaic movement for purposes of teaching of the law. How this input reached Ben Sira’s grandson is impossible to say. He may have spent time in Palestine and received the oral instruction of Pharisaic teachers, or he may have heard about it indirectly, in Egypt. But whatever the channels through which the information reached him, the Palestinian ingredient influenced his interpretation of the Hebrew text of his grandfather’s book. The second factor is, in contrast, to be located in the diaspora. The definition of the priestly prebends as including the “shoulder” in the Septuagint, instead of the “hind leg” as in the Hebrew text is hard to explain.18 Since it affects twelve passages in three different Septuagint books, it can hardly be attributed to accident. It seems rather to reflect a distinct cultic tradition known among Egyptian Jews. As the grandson explicitly states in the prologue to his Greek version, the translation was made in Egypt. Whether the Egyptian diaspora was the place where the translator grew up or not, he must have spent enough time there to have been impacted by local traditions. Indeed, as we saw above, the translator’s understanding of the Hebrew source text was, at least in the present case, guided more by his knowledge of the Greek Pentateuch than by that of the Hebrew Pentateuch.

17 This fact makes it impossible to think that the interpretation of the Greek version corresponds to the intention of the Hebrew author. 18 Jan Joosten, “Divergent Cultic Practices in the Septuagint: The ‘Shoulder’ (βραχίων) of the Priest,” JSCS 48 (2015), 27–38.

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Although the Greek version of Ben Sira belongs to the Septuagint “canon,” it occupies a somewhat marginal position there. Nevertheless, the composite translational process retraced in the present instance may be considered paradigmatic for the way the entire corpus of translated books came into being. The Septuagint translators drew upon two cultural reservoirs, that of Palestinian Judaism, and that of diaspora Judaism in Egypt. From Palestine came much of their knowledge of Hebrew, as well as some interpretive traditions and translation equivalents.19 From the translation of the Pentateuch onward, one observes the interference of postbiblical Hebrew in the understanding of the source text.20 Theologically sensitive passages are interpreted in standard ways attested also, though according to our documentation much later, in targumim and midrashic literature. But not all the inputs come from Palestine. The Septuagint in all its different parts also attests to the existence of local Jewish traditions. When the Septuagint began to be translated Jews had been in Egypt for several centuries already, and had had the time to develop and express their own specific sensitivities.21 In many passages the Greek text reflects particular doctrines and practices that must have emerged in the diaspora. Of course it is not always possible to retrace individual renderings to these cultural backgrounds. Only occasionally is it possible to connect a particular detail in the translation to distinctive phenomena known from either Palestinian or Egyptian Judaism. Finding the traces of both cultural backgrounds in a single rendering is highly exceptional. In minimal compass, the Greek version of Sir 7:31 captures the interpretive dynamics underlying the Septuagint version as a whole.

Conclusion Constructing an exegetical path between the Hebrew source text and the ancient Greek translation is a hazardous undertaking, in Ben Sira as in the other books of the Septuagint. One can never be certain as to what went on in the minds of the translators. Nevertheless, with patience, caution, and knowhow it is often possible to formulate reasonable hypotheses retracing the translational process underlying the goal text, whether in regard to single expressions or to wider stretches of

19 Z. Frankel, Ueber den Einfluss der palästinischen Exegese auf die alexandrinische Her­ meneutik (Leipzig: Barth, 1851); David A. Teeter, Scribal Laws: Exegetical Variation in the Tex­tual Transmission of Biblical Law in the Late Second Temple Period, FAT 92 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014). 20 Schniedewind, A Social History of Hebrew. 21 See e. g. Jan Joosten, “The Aramaic Background of the Seventy: Language, Culture and History,” Bulletin of the International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies 43 (2010): 53–72.

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text. The approach may seem speculative to many, but those who deal with ancient versions of the Hebrew Bible know that it is a necessary operation if one is to gain information from the versions about the history of interpretation and, ultimately, the history of religion in antiquity. I hope therefore that this very short and limited “gift of arms” will be to the liking of the honoree of the present volume.

James Kugel

With a Little Help from the Rabbis: The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs and Rabbinic Exegetical Traditions To Steven Fraade, with gratitude for thirty-five years of friendship and scholarly collaboration

Second Temple period writings sometimes reveal specific connections to later rabbinic writings. For example, it is now a commonplace that, in matters of legal practice, the Qumran scrolls demonstrate an awareness of (though often in opposition to) positions later associated with rabbinic Judaism.1 Somewhat less well known, the book of Jubilees in its present form contains at least ten different exegetical motifs or ideas later associated specifically with the rabbis.2 In general one might say that, well before our actual rabbinic works were compiled and committed to

1 This area of research has flourished in recent years, so much so that it would be quite impossible here to survey all the works that have, in one form or another, supported this conclusion. It is worth noting, however, that the honoree of the present volume, along with Joseph Baumgarten and Lawrence Schiffman, can be counted among the early students of the connection between Qumran legal practices and rabbinic halakah. See also the collection of studies edited by Steven Fraade (along with Aharon Shemesh and Ruth Clements), Rabbinic Perspectives: Rabbinic Literature and the Dead Sea Scrolls, Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah 62 (Leiden: Brill, 2006). 2 These include: (a) the idea that the Day of Atonement requires people to “turn away” from their sins and “turn to Him in the right way” (Jub. 5:17–18), elements that are highlighted in rabbinic writings but are quite lacking in the biblical description of the day (Lev 16:29–30); (b) that the Festival of Weeks commemorates the granting of a great covenant (Jub. 6:17–22); (c) that the Festival of Booths involves the taking up of the lulab cluster—the rabbinic term; (d) that Abraham underwent precisely ten tests (Jub. 19:8–9); (e) that the prohibition of “giving one’s seed to Molech” in Lev 18:21 was sometimes interpreted as referring to intermarriage (Jub. 30:10); (f) that there is a practice to “tithe the tithe” (Jub. 32:10); (g) that angelic powers, whether they help or harm, are not truly independent actors but are wholly subservient to God (Jub. 49:2 and 4); (h) that the place and time of the paschal sacrifice were the subject of controversy (Jub. 49:10–12); (i) that wine is a necessary part of the Passover celebration (Jub. 49:6); and (j) that the heavenly tablets, like the Torah in rabbinic midrash, contain laws and practices that had always been in heaven, apparently even preceding the creation of the world. It is certainly interesting that all these instances of ideas and themes that overlap with rabbinic writings are found in passages that were apparently interpolated by a writer who came after Jubilees’ original author, but not long after: he apparently created his insertions around the middle of the second century BCE. See on all these James Kugel, A Walk through Jubilees (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 292–93.

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writing, the traditions underlying them were apparently well known—and reacted to—in different Jewish communities, both within and outside of the land of Israel. One relatively early composition that demonstrates numerous connections to rabbinic Judaism—and specifically, to rabbinic biblical exegesis—is the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs. This is hardly surprising since, whichever theory of the Testaments’ composition one adopts,3 direct or indirect contact between the author(s) of the Testaments and the predecessors or founders of rabbinic Judaism and its traditions of exegesis seems altogether likely. Indeed, to discuss all the areas of overlap between the Testaments and rabbinic writings is well beyond the scope of the present article. Rather, what I wish to focus on in the following are three passages in the Testaments that would probably be quite incomprehensible, or at least incompletely understood, were it not for the availability of parallels in rabbinic writings. These instances are of interest not only in themselves, but in what they may suggest about the process of composition of the Testaments.

Cast into a Fiery Furnace and Secret Words One puzzling passage in the Testaments comes in its retelling of the story of Judah and Tamar (Gen 38) in the Testament of Judah.4 As in the biblical narrative, Tamar, Judah’s daughter-in-law, disguises herself as a prostitute and Judah ends up sleeping with her. Having given Tamar three pledged items in lieu of payment, he departs. Sometime later, Judah learns that Tamar is pregnant. In T. Jud., he recounts what happened next as follows: Not knowing what she had done, I wished to kill her; but she sent me the pledged items secretly and put me to shame. And when I asked her to come and see me, I heard [i. e., she told me] also the secret words that I had said to her privately while I was lying with her in my drunken stupor; and [so] I could not kill her, for it was the Lord’s doing. And I said perhaps it was a trick and she had gotten the pledges from someone else. But I did not approach her any more until my death, because I had done something that all Israelites regard as an abomination. And the people in the city said there had been no temple prostitute in the city (because she came from somewhere else and sat at the

3 That is, that the Testaments evolved over a period of centuries, starting in perhaps the late second century BCE, or that the Testaments were a de novo composition of a Christian author who incorporated much material from earlier sources, presumably written in Hebrew or Aramaic. See on this Robert Kugler, The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs (Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001), 31–38. 4 The reworking of the biblical story in the Testament of Judah has been discussed in Avigdor Shinan and Yair Zakovitch, The Story of Judah and Tamar (in Hebrew), Hebrew University Research Projects of the Institute of Jewish Studies Monograph Series 15 (Jerusalem: Hebrew University, 1992), passim; and Esther Menn Judah and Tamar (Genesis 38) in Ancient Jewish Exegesis (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 107–65.

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gate for only a little while). And I thought that no one knew that I had slept with her. And after this we went to Egypt, to Joseph, because of the famine. (T. Jud. 12:5–12)5

The biblical story is straightforward enough, but this retelling raises numerous questions. Why does Judah say that Tamar sent him the pledged items “secretly”—an element not present in the biblical narrative—and what does this secrecy have to do with Judah being shamed? By the same token, what are the “secret words” that Judah had spoken to her? Here again is an assertion with no apparent basis in the biblical text and no apparent function in the retelling: after all, Tamar has already told Judah that he is responsible for her pregnancy and proved it by showing him the pledged items—what need was there for her to recount whatever secrets Judah told her at the time? Finally, what does Judah mean by saying that he “thought that no one knew that I had slept with her”? Of course he thought that! Who else could have known? The first question is easily answered. A well-known rabbinic midrash focuses on the fact that, when Judah discovers Tamar is pregnant, he orders, “Take her out and let her be burned!” (Gen 38:24). The biblical text continues: “When she was taken out, she sent to her father-in-law, saying, ‘The man to whom these items belong is the one by whom I am pregnant.’” Rabbinic exegetes focused on the fact that Tamar did not accuse Judah directly and by name, but rather phrased her accusation anonymously: it was “the man to whom these items belong” who made her pregnant. Thus: It is proper for one to cast oneself into a fiery furnace rather than to put someone else to shame in public. Whence do we know this? From the case of Tamar, since she was even set on fire, yet she still did not put Judah to shame in public. (b. Ber. 43b)6

Tamar was actually set on fire, according to this reading, because the words “she was taken out” (‫ )מוצאת‬in Gen 38:25 can be understood punningly as “she was set on fire” (‫)מוצת‬. Yet even under those extreme circumstances, she was still careful not to put her father-in-law to shame in public, but phrased her accusation in this anonymous form: “The man to whom these items belong is the one by whom I am pregnant.” The lesson imparted by Tamar’s exemplary behavior is thus indeed that “it is proper for one to cast oneself into a fiery furnace rather than to put someone else to shame in public.” In the light of all this, it is obvious that the version in T. Jud. is simply in error. The first verse in the passage cited, T. Jud. 12:5, should read: “Not knowing what she had done, I wished to kill her; but she sent me the pledged items secretly and did not put me to shame.” “Secretly” (ἐν κρυπτῷ) here means without revealing Judah’s name. 5 All translations of the Testaments are mine, based on the edition of M. de Jonge, The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs: A Critical Edition of the Greek Text (Leiden: Brill, 1978). 6 Florence II-1–7. All translations of rabbinic texts are mine. For this passage, see also ­Paris 671 and b. Sotah in Vatican 110.

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The reason for the “secret words” is somewhat less obvious. Although the biblical account says nothing of the circumstances in which Judah barked out his order, “Take her out and let her be burned!,” it seemed quite unlikely to exegetes that he could issue such a decree on his own authority; Tamar could only be executed by decision of some sort of rabbinic-style court, one in which Judah must have been serving as one of the judges. This courtroom setting would also fit with another small detail in the biblical account: in the verse just discussed, Tamar sends Judah the pledged items along with her indirect accusation, but in the next breath she apparently addresses Judah directly (that is, she says): “Recognize to whom [these items] belong” (Gen 38:25). In the interim, she has apparently come to appear in Judah’s courtroom to testify on her own behalf. In the somewhat garbled version of the events that follow in T. Jud., Judah is apparently still not convinced by Tamar’s story. After all, he reasons, he may have slept with a real prostitute, one who then gave or sold his pledged items to Tamar. (“I said perhaps it was a trick and she had gotten the pledges from someone else.”) It is, according to this account, only the fact that Tamar knows some “secret words” that Judah spoke at the time that convinces him that it was indeed Tamar whom he slept with. But this is quite illogical. If a real prostitute could have given Tamar the pledged items, the same prostitute could also have told her about Judah’s “secret words.” Tamar’s knowledge of them proves nothing. The secret words were actually generated by Judah’s reaction to Tamar’s accusation in the biblical account. In the biblical text, Tamar produces the personal items that Judah had pledged and Judah replies with an idiomatic phrase: “She is more righteous than me” (‫)צדקה ממני‬. This expression reappears elsewhere (Ezek 16:52, Job 4:17), where its meaning is, as here, “to get the better of.” In other words, Judah says: “She wins,” “She got the better of me.” But it was also possible, in the context of Tamar’s accusation, to read these two words as two independent utterances: “She’s right” (‫)צדקה‬, Judah says. “[Her pregnancy is] from me” (‫)ממני‬. This is the reading proposed by Targum Onqelos and other sources: And Judah recognized them [the pledged items] and said, “She is right. She is pregnant from me, on account of the fact that I did not give her to my son Shelah.” (Tg. Onq. Gen 38:26)

This was a clever bit of exegesis, but if adopted it raised a new problem. How could Judah be sure that he was the father? True, he may indeed have slept with Tamar, but perhaps she was already pregnant at the time. How could he testify in court that he was the father? One rabbinic answer had it that God Himself (or a heavenly voice, a ‫ בת קול‬or ‫ )רוח הקודש‬intervened in the proceedings: R. Jeremiah in the name of R. Samuel son of R. Isaac [said]: In three places did God appear [in court]:… In the courtroom of Shem [as it says], “And Judah acknowledged and said, ‘She is right. From me.’” R. Jeremiah in the name of R. Samuel son of

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R. Isaac [said]: God said to them [i. e. Judah and Tamar]: “You testify about what happened in public and I will testify about what happened in private. (Gen. Rab. 85:12)7

In other words, God rebuked Judah and told him to testify only about things that he knew for sure; the rest, God Himself would testify to. This same motif of divine intervention in Judah’s court appearance is found in slightly different form: And Judah acknowledged and said, “She is right. From me.” R. Jeremiah in the name of R. Samuel son of R. Isaac [said]: A heavenly voice said to them, “From Me came the secret matters [‫]כבושים‬.” (Gen. Rab. 85:12)8

According to this version, the only words that Judah spoke were “She is right.” Then a heavenly voice adds, “From Me alone can come any testimony about the secret matters [that is, who in fact is the father].” Similarly: [Judah said:] “She is right—[the pregnancy] is from me.” But how did he know? A heavenly voice came forth and said, “By Me will the secret matters [‫ ]כבושים‬come forth.” (b. Sotah 10b)9

In T. Jud., the phrase “secret matters” (‫ )דברים כבושים‬has clearly been transformed into the “secret words” (τοὺς ἐν μυστηρίῳ λόγους) that Judah allegedly spoke to Tamar in the account of the events presented in T. Jud. The author, apparently reading or remembering this phrase but not understanding the courtroom setting in which they were originally said to have been spoken, transformed these secret words into some sort of pillow talk between Judah and Tamar at the time of his sleeping with her. As we have seen, however, such secrets words could prove nothing that the pledged items had not already proven; their presence in the T. Jud. retelling was just a mistake. Indeed, Judah’s observation that “it was the Lord’s doing” in T. Jud. seems itself to be a transformation of the original motif, whereby God or the heavenly voice asserts that true testimony can only come “from Me.”

A Look at the Author Let us now go back and, on the basis of T. Jud.’s version of the whole incident, try to reconstruct the original midrash that underlies its account. It contained the following elements: 1. Tamar did not put Judah to shame, but phrased her accusation indirectly (based on Gen 38:25).

7 Oxford 147. 8 Paris 149, Munich 97, Oxford 2355. 9 Vatican 110.

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2. She subsequently appeared in court and, indicating the pledged items, charged Judah directly: “Recognize that these items are yours” (based on Gen 38:25). 3. Judah, still unconvinced that it was Tamar whom he had slept with, says she may have gotten the items from someone else, a real prostitute. In T. Jud.’s words: “And I said perhaps it was a trick and she had gotten the pledges from someone else.” 4. After all, he reasons, “the people in the city [had] said there had been no temple prostitute in the city (because she came from somewhere else and sat at the gate for only a little while)” (based on Gen 38:19, 21). 5. Thus, there was no way to prove Tamar’s guilt for sure, since “I thought that no one knew [for sure] that I had slept with her” (based on Gen 38:22–23). 6. Judah therefore says, as in the biblical account, “She is right,” that is, innocent (based on Gen 38:26). 7. At that point a heavenly voice cried out and said: “From Me will come testimony about secret things” (that is, things you, Judah, cannot know for sure). The voice then confirms: “You are indeed the father.” 8. Judah is now convinced by this heavenly voice, since “It came from the Lord.” 9. Judah further reports that “I did not approach her any more until my death, because I had done something that all Israelites regard as an abomination” (based on Gen 38:26). What is interesting is how thoroughly the author of T. Jud. has jumbled the order of these different elements of the midrash. He presents them as follows: 1. Tamar put Judah to shame (element #1, albeit garbled). 2. Judah heard the secret words (element #7, with “secret things” [‫]דברים כבושים‬ being transformed into “secret words”). 3. Judah realizes that he cannot have Tamar killed, “for it was the Lord’s doing” (element #8). 4. Somehow, however, Judah still has his doubts: “And I said perhaps it was a trick and she had gotten the pledges from someone else” (element #3). 5. Nevertheless, “I did not approach her any more until my death, because I had done something that all Israelites regard as an abomination” (element #9). 6. But on second thought, “the people in the city said there had been no temple prostitute in the city (because she came from somewhere else and sat at the gate for only a little while)” (element #4). 7. As a consequence, “I thought that no one knew [for sure] that I had slept with her” (element #5). 8. Quite missing in T. Jud.’s account is Tamar’s direct accusation: “Recognize that these items are yours” (element #2), as well as Judah’s assertion “She is right,” that is, innocent (element #6).

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What can all this tell us about the author of T. Jud.? At the risk of stating the obvious: this jumbled order is not the mistake of a copyist. It is not parablepsis or homoteleuton that could have caused a copyist to present the different elements of this midrash in so confused a fashion, nor did a mere copyist misunderstand the reference to “secret things” as “words spoken in secret” and then come up with the pillow-talk scenario that he presents. These are not the mistakes of a copyist, but of an author. On the other hand, the author obviously did not start from zero: the elements jumbled in his recounting all belong to an earlier, altogether logical midrash. At the same time, it does not seem likely that the author actually had such a midrashic text in front of him and still managed to jumble its contents so thoroughly. Rather, it would appear that at one point he had heard, or read, such a midrash and remembered a few of its distinct phrases—“put to shame,” “secret words/things,” “it was from the Lord,” and so forth—which he now tried as best he could to fit into some order, even though the result did not make a great deal of sense. The very fact that he was content to do so may indicate that the things that he had heard or read seemed to him altogether authoritative; that is why, even if they did not all come together into a coherent tale, he was unwilling to part with them.

For Children, Not for the Mandrakes The recounting of the Judah and Tamar episode in T. Jud. may be an extreme example of how rabbinic material can explain a puzzling passage in the Testaments, but it is not altogether unique. A no less surprising example is the account of Issachar’s birth in the Testament of Issachar. The biblical passage from which it derives reads as follows: At the time of the wheat harvest, Reuben went and found mandrakes in the field, and brought them to his mother Leah. Rachel said to Leah, “Give me some of your son’s mandrakes.” But she said to her, “Was it a trifling matter that you took away my husband? Now do you want to take away my son’s mandrakes as well?!” Rachel said, “All right; he can sleep with you tonight in exchange for your son’s mandrakes.” When Jacob came from the field in the evening, Leah went out to meet him, and said, “You’re coming to me! I’ve hired you [‫ ]שכר שכרתיך‬with my son’s mandrakes.” So he slept with her that night. And God heeded Leah, and she conceived and bore Jacob a fifth son. Leah said, “God has given me my hire [‫ ]שכרי‬for having given my maid to my husband”; so she named him Issachar [‫]יששכר‬. (Gen 30:14–18)10

The biblical story seems fairly straightforward: Leah, eager for a night with Jacob, offers her son’s mandrakes to Rachel in exchange for him. Rachel agrees, and the

10 My translation of the MT.

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child that Leah bears as a result is called Issachar, since Jacob was “hired” to bring about his conception.11 It should not be surprising that this biblical story proved profoundly shocking to later readers. The very idea that Jacob was hired out for sexual favors hardly seemed to fit with fundamental notions of modesty, indeed, proper conduct in general; moreover, Leah’s triumphant announcement to Jacob, “You’re coming to me,” seemed one of exceptional crudity. Rachel fares hardly better in the biblical narrative, casually surrendering her bedmate to satisfy a mere food craving. In any case, the story as it is recounted in the Testaments turns all this on its head. Here is Issachar’s own version of the events: 1:2 I was born the fifth son of Jacob, in exchange for the mandrakes. 1:3 Reuben had been bringing some mandrakes from the field when Rachel came across him and took them away. 1:4 So Reuben started to cry, and Leah his mother came out at the sound [of his voice]. 1:5 Now these [mandrakes] are fragrant apples that the land of Aram produces on a high place below a watery ravine. 1:6 Rachel said [to Leah], “I won’t give them to you—let them be mine instead of children.” 1:7 There were two apples. And Leah said, “Let it be enough for you that you took away the husband of my virginity! Will you also take these?” 1:8 Rachel said: “Well then, let Jacob be yours tonight—in exchange for your son’s mandrakes.”…12 1:14 And Rachel said, “Take one mandrake, and in exchange for this I will hire Jacob out to you for one night.” 1:15 And Jacob knew Leah, and she conceived and gave birth to me, and I was called Issachar because of the hire. 2:1 Afterwards, an angel of the Lord appeared to Jacob, saying “Rachel will give birth to two children, since she disdained sleeping with her husband and has preferred continence.” 2:2 And if my mother Leah had not sold the two apples in exchange for sexual relations, she would have given birth to eight sons. That is why she gave birth to six and Rachel gave birth to two, because the Lord visited her on account of the mandrakes. 2:3 For He

11 The sentence at the end, which states that Leah was rewarded for “having given my maid to my husband,” has puzzled some interpreters. Clearly it refers to Leah’s offering her maid Zilpah to Jacob, an act that resulted in the birth of another son, Asher (Gen 30:9–13). Since Asher’s birth just preceded that of Issachar, the phrase in question would seem to represent an alternate explanation of Issachar’s name: Leah was rewarded with another son after her having generously offered Zilpah to Jacob. 12 For brevity’s sake, I have omitted the two sisters’ argument about what happened on the wedding night (which clearly interrupts the narrative flow); for the curious, it reads as follows: 1:9 But Leah said, “Don’t be so arrogant or boastful! Jacob [rightfully] belongs to me—I am the wife of his youth.” 1:10 Rachel said, “Oh really? He was engaged to me first, and it was because of me that he worked for our father for fourteen years. 1:11 But what can I do for you? People’s deception and trickiness are just too much, indeed, deception leads the way on earth. If this were not so, you wouldn’t even be seeing Jacob’s face! 1:12 Because you’re not [really] his wife! You were only put in my place through deception. 1:13 My father cheated me and stuck me somewhere else that night and I couldn’t see it—because if I had been there, none of this would have happened.”

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saw that it was for the sake of [having] children that she wished to sleep with Jacob, and not because of lust. 2:4 For she gave up Jacob on the next day as well in order to take the other mandrake; thus it was because of the mandrakes that God listened to Rachel. 2:5 But then, even though she desired them, she did not eat them, but dedicated them in the house of the Lord and offered them to the priest of the Most High, who was there at that time.

The intention behind this extraordinary recasting of the mandrakes episode is quite clear: the author seeks to use the biblical tale to argue that continence and self-control (ἐγκράτεια, here specifically sexual sublimation) are altogether laudable, the triumph of willpower over lustful desires. This is what the angel says at the end of the narrative: “Rachel will give birth to two children, since she disdained sleeping with her husband and has preferred continence.” To this Issachar then adds that God “saw that it was for the sake of [having] children that she [Rachel] wished to sleep with Jacob, and not because of lust.” In other words, the desire for sexual relations is bad if it is motivated by lust; this is what Leah is being condemned for. Rachel, on the other hand, wanted to sleep with Jacob only for the purpose of having children and was therefore subsequently rewarded.13 But how can such an account square with the biblical text? There, the situation is precisely the opposite: Rachel, the preferred wife, seems to be regularly enjoying her husband’s company, while Leah is systematically deprived (which is why she needs to bargain with Rachel in order to have a single night with Jacob). How then can Rachel be said to have “preferred continence”? Moreover, if Rachel’s great virtue is that she “disdained sleeping with her husband,” then why should she be

13 It might be tempting to conclude that this championing of sexual continence was the work of an early Christian, perhaps one inspired by 1 Cor 7 and/or other early writings. However, such continence was hardly a Christian theme alone; indeed, Steven Fraade’s early essay, “Ascetical Aspects of Ancient Judaism,” in Jewish Spirituality from the Bible to the Middle Ages, ed. Arthur Green (New York: Crossroad, 1986), 253–88, has been of great influence in the study of Jewish asceticism in its different manifestations, including “sexual continence (temporary or permanent),” p. 262. See among many subsequent contributions: Gary Anderson, “Celibacy or Consummation in the Garden?,” HTR 82 (1989), 121–48; Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989); Joseph M. Baumgarten, “The Qumran Restraints on Marriage,” in Archaeology and History in the Dead Sea Scrolls, ed. Lawrence H. Schiffman, JSPSup 8 (Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic Press, 1990), 13–24; Elisha Qimron, “Celibacy in the DSS and the Two Kinds of Sectarians,” in The Madrid Qumran Congress, ed. Julio Trebolle Barrera and Luis Vegas Montaner (Leiden: Brill, 1992), 287–94; Daniel Boyarin, Carnal Israel (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993); Naomi Koltun-Fromm, “Zipporah’s Complaint,” in The Ways That Never Parted: Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, ed. Adam Becker and Anette Yoshiko Reed (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003), 283–96, and the recent series of studies on ancient sexuality by William Loader, particularly Philo, Josephus, and the Testaments on Sexuality (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011), 411–13.

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rewarded by giving birth to two children—how were they conceived if not by her abandoning such disdain? By the same token, the text adds that if only Leah had been a champion of self-restraint like her sister, she would have given birth to eight sons. (One wonders about the mechanics of this!) But wouldn’t this mean that, since there are to be exactly twelve tribes, Rachel would have had her self-restraint rewarded by not having any children at all? Is this a fit outcome for Rachel, about whom the same passage says that “it was for the sake of [having] children that she wished to sleep with Jacob”? Did she wish to have children or didn’t she? It is certainly true that midrashic reworkings of biblical material often radically change the original sense of the text. Still, this recasting of Rachel as the pious champion of self-restraint and Leah as the opposite seems to run completely counter to the biblical narrative—and for no reason. Would it not have been far more straightforward to say that it was Leah who sought out sexual relations with Jacob solely for the purpose of having children—she was the fertile sister, after all—but disdained sexual pleasure, whereas Rachel, the beautiful sister (Gen 29:16–17), was a hedonistic exponent of sexual pleasure and therefore was Jacob’s regular bedmate? The author could then have claimed that the mandrakes episode fit the same pattern: the oft-disdained Leah gave up her mandrakes to Rachel solely for the purpose of once again conceiving a child, and she was rewarded with Issachar. Rachel rented her husband out for that night only to satisfy another hedonistic craving, her love of mandrakes. Why should the author of the Testaments so needlessly turn things around? In addition, there is the role of the number two in this reworking. Where did it come from? The biblical account does not specify any number of mandrakes, but here, there are exactly two, and in taking the two from Leah (one each for one night, two nights in a row), Rachel is ultimately rewarded with two sons. But this too clashes with the biblical story. There, Leah gives up the mandrakes and gets to sleep with Jacob; she is rewarded with the birth of Issachar. The number two has no role in this. True, immediately after Issachar’s birth, the biblical text reports that Leah subsequently gave birth to another son, Zebulon (Gen 30:19), but this second birth cannot have come about as a result of her sleeping with Jacob on the night of the mandrakes incident (unless one were to say that Zebulon, too, was a later part of the same “reward” that God gave Leah for virtuously surrendering the mandrakes to her sister; a year or two later, Jacob again slept with Leah and Zebulon was the result). In any case, the birth of Rachel’s two sons, Joseph and Benjamin, occurs still later (Gen 30:23 and 35:19), so to say that the mandrakes incident was the reason for Rachel having two sons certainly seems forced. T. Iss. then goes on to assert that if Leah had kept the mandrakes and left Jacob to Rachel, then Leah would have had eight sons instead of six. But at the time of the incident, Leah had only four sons. In that case, T. Iss. seems to be saying that keeping the two mandrakes would somehow have added four sons to her total, not two. This cannot be right.

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The explanation for all these oddities is reflected in a set of widely disseminated midrashic traditions.14 Thus: R. Lazar says: This one [i. e., Leah] lost out and the other [Rachel] lost out, while this one was rewarded and the other was rewarded. Leah lost out on the mandrakes [but] was rewarded with tribes and burial;15 Rachel was rewarded with the mandrakes but lost out on tribes and burial. (Gen. Rab. 72:3)16

Here, it would seem, the plural ‫( שבטים‬tribes) indicates that Leah’s reward was not merely the birth of Issachar, but that of Zebulon as well. Similarly, if this midrash maintains that Rachel lost out on tribes (again, ‫ שבטים‬in the plural), this must mean that, had she acted differently about the mandrakes, she would have been the one rewarded with two extra sons (in addition to Joseph and Benjamin), making her total (four sons) equal to that of her sister.17 In the same vein, the compilation Midrash Sekel Tob18 records a slightly different wording: R. Samuel bar Nahmani said: Leah lost out on the mandrakes and was rewarded with two tribes plus burial. Rachel was rewarded with mandrakes but lost out on [two tribes plus] burial. (Midrash Sekel T ob, Vayyese’ 30)

Another midrash, citing Leah’s apparently immodest words to Jacob, “You’re coming to me,” explains: Said R. Abbahu: The Holy One saw that her intention was strictly for the purpose of bringing sons/tribes [‫ ]שבטים‬into the world—that is why the text found it necessary to say, “And she said ‘You’re coming to me.’” R. Levi said: Consider how well the man-

14 Some of these were surveyed in Yair Zakovitch and Avigdor Shinan, The Mandrakes Episode: Genesis 30:14–18 in the Bible, Ancient Translations, and Ancient Jewish Literature (Jerusalem: Publications of the Bible Project of the Institute of Jewish Studies of the Hebrew University, 1986). 15 The word “tribes” is clearly a shorthand reference to sons-who-will-found-tribes. As for “burial,” this refers to Leah’s burial in the Cave of Makhpelah (Gen 49:31), where she was laid to rest with her husband and family. Rachel, by contrast, was buried apart from her husband and family, in a grave on the road to Ephrath (Gen 35:19). 16 Genesis Rabbah cited from the text of MS Vatican 30, slightly revised in the light of its apparent Vorlage, the palimpsest found on a Christian Aramaic manuscript and published as “MS 2” by Michael Sokoloff, The Genizah Fragments of Bereshit Rabba (in Hebrew) (Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1982), 157–58 (=838–39). My translation. 17 On this theme see Louis Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), 1:367: “She [Rachel] gained the dudaim [mandrakes], but she lost two tribes. If she had acted otherwise, she would have borne four sons instead of two”: Cf. Gen. Rab. 72:1: “‘Until the barren woman bore seven [children]’ [1 Sam 2:5]: Leah had been infertile but bore seven [six sons and a daughter]; but ‘the one with many is bereft’ [1 Sam 2:5]: Rachel, who rightly should have brought forth a multitude of children, was bereft.” 18 Not a rabbinic text proper, but a twelfth-century collection of midrashim on the Pentateuch by R. Menahem b. Solomon, an Italian exegete, lexicographer, and grammarian. Cited from S. Buber, Midrash Sekhel Tob on Genesis and Exodus (Berlin: H. Itzkowski, 1880), 147.

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drakes deal turned out! Thanks to the mandrakes, two great tribes in Israel, Issachar and Zebulon, came into existence …. (Gen. Rab. 72:5)19

Thus, in all these passages the mandrakes are directly connected to the birth of Leah’s two last sons, Issachar and Zebulon (whereas in the biblical account, the mandrakes are connected only to Issachar’s birth). Note also that the phrase “for the purpose of bringing sons/tribes [‫ ]שבטים‬into the world” in this last passage matches what T. Iss. says about Rachel: “For He saw that it was for the sake of [having] children that she wished to sleep with Jacob, and not because of lust.” It is not hard, in the light of these traditions, to piece together the original apologetic midrash that has been reworked in T. Iss. The point of departure of this original midrash was Leah’s unseemly bargaining for a night with Jacob, along with her immodest announcement, “You’re coming to me.” These, the midrash sought to claim, actually attested to Leah’s virtue, since she had made the deal with her sister strictly out of the laudable motive of bringing forth children. The proof was that her giving up the mandrakes had been divinely rewarded with two sons (rather than just one, Issachar, whose birth was the result of that one night’s encounter, as the biblical tale seems to say). Indeed, this original midrash continued, if Rachel had not made the mistake of trading Jacob for the mandrakes, she would have been the one to have two extra sons, balancing her sister’s and hers at four apiece.

Back to the Author Once again, the account in the Testaments may provide a further glimpse of the author in his workshop. At first glance, one might suppose that the version of the mandrakes episode in T. Iss. was simply made up out of whole cloth: the author, familiar in some vague way with the midrashic material, must have decided to create a whole new counternarrative that celebrated Rachel’s continence rather than Leah’s desire to bear more children—a 180-degree turnabout! But in fact, his version of the events was not composed de novo; it was accomplished by modifying an existing text, the original version of T. Iss. (Without the reviser realizing it, however, the changes he introduced left a few telltale clues as to the original opening of Issachar’s testament.) The original beginning of T. Iss. still had the midrashic version praising Leah for swapping mandrakes for more children. The reviser of this original text left much of it unchanged; the proof is that one may still read almost all of the first chapter as preparation for the rabbinic explanation of the incident (that is, Leah

19 Vatican 30.

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gave up the mandrakes for the laudable purpose of having more children). But one significant modification was introduced, verses 1:5–7a: 1:5 Now these [mandrakes] are fragrant apples that the land of Aram produces on a high place below a watery ravine. 1:6 Rachel said [to Leah], “I won’t give them to you —let them be mine instead of children.” 1:7 There were two apples. And Leah said, “Let it be enough for you that you took away the husband of my virginity! Will you also take these?”

The reviser (perhaps rightly) supposed that his readers might not know what mandrakes were, so he introduced the parenthetical gloss of 1:5. The next sentence (1:6) was also inserted by him; it announces his main theme, that Rachel was actually the hero of this episode because she disdained sexual intercourse, preferring continence. But a careful consideration of this sentence reveals its problems. Rachel’s words “let them be mine instead of children” contradicts what is said of her in 2:3, that God “saw that it was for the sake of [having] children that she wished to sleep with Jacob, and not because of lust.” Did she want children or didn’t she? (The reason for this dissonance, as we shall see, is that 2:3 was part of the original midrash and left unchanged by the reviser.) Moreover, the first words of 1:7, “There were two apples,” were also introduced by the reviser.20 The original midrash, like the biblical account, never specified how many mandrakes there were (and of course never called them “apples,” μῆλα). It had said only that both of Leah’s last two children, Issachar and Zebulon, were the reward that she got for giving up the mandrakes. In transferring this reward from Leah to Rachel, however, the reviser had a problem: if, in the biblical story, there had been an unspecified number of mandrakes—presumably five or ten, or even twenty—why should Rachel have been rewarded with precisely two children? The reviser had inherited from the midrashic motif cited above the idea that Leah’s virtuous behavior resulted in the birth of two children. The two children made sense in the case of Leah, since the births of Issachar and Zebulon were narrated immediately following the mandrakes incident—post hoc propter hoc, no matter how many mandrakes there had been. But the birth of neither of Rachel’s two children had any direct connection with the mandrakes story. If Rachel had virtuously disdained intercourse and received five or ten mandrakes, or an unspecified number, why should she have later given birth to only two children—let her be the mother of five or ten! So the reviser introduced the formula, 1 mandrake = 1 child. There were only two mandrakes, so Rachel had only two children. He also specified in 2:4 that these two mandrakes had been given out on two suc20 The rest of this sentence and the next were part of the original midrash, namely, “And Leah said, ‘Let it be enough for you that you took away the husband of my virginity! Will you also take these?’ 1:8 Rachel said: ‘Well then, let Jacob be yours tonight—in exchange for your son’s mandrakes.’”

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cessive nights rather than as a onetime swap—whereas in the biblical account, it was a one-night occurrence. The reviser apparently added the second night in order to credit Rachel with two separate acts of continence, each of which would be rewarded with a child. He then added 2:5, asserting that Rachel really wasn’t interested in the mandrakes themselves, having subsequently transferred them to some “priest of the Most High” in an undesignated “house of the Lord”—clearly an apologetic bit of pietism. It is, however, in vv. 2:1–3 that one can most clearly see the reviser at work, altering his Ur-text by switching, in the most mechanical way, “Leah” or “my mother” to “Rachel,” and vice versa. These, along with other changes, are indicated in the following, with the crossed-out words representing the original text and the words printed in boldface indicating the later substitutions: 2:1 Afterwards, an angel of the Lord appeared to Jacob, saying “Leah will give birth to two children, since she traded the mandrakes for sleeping with her husband ” 2:2 And if my mother Leah had not sold the two apples in exchange for sexual relations, Rachel she would have given birth to four sons. That is why she gave birth to six and Rachel gave birth to two, because the Lord visited her on account of the mandrakes. 2:3 For He saw that it was for the sake of [having] children that she wished to sleep with Jacob, and not because of lust. 2:4 ; thus it was because of the mandrakes that God listened to my mother .

What is particularly striking in this reconstruction is the way the reviser left untouched the second sentence of v. 2:2 and all of 2:3. Read on their own, these two sentences perfectly correspond to the rabbinic midrash: Leah wasn’t lustful, she just wanted children. These same two sentences could be (and were) retained and applied to Rachel without compromising the reviser’s overall scenario—but they really do not fit. After all, why should Rachel have given up Jacob for the mandrakes if “it was for the sake of [having] children that she wished to sleep with Jacob”? How could her swapping Jacob for the mandrakes demonstrate that she wanted to have any children at all? Nevertheless, since applying these sentences to Rachel instead of Leah did not openly contradict his theme of self-restraint and sexual sublimation, the reviser left them unchanged. A consideration of these two opening chapters of T. Iss. points to a question often asked about the Testaments in general: Is this book the work of an original author, a relatively late writer who was also a collector of earlier midrashic traditions, some of which he incorporated into his de novo composition; or were parts of the Testaments inserted by a later editor or editors who had inherited a complete, twelve-testament work and who sought simply to modify the text here and there in order to suit it to his/their own ideology? In the present instance, at least, I believe that the evidence points unambiguously to the latter hypothesis. After

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all, why should the author of a de novo composition have arranged to make Issachar start off his testament with a retelling that so blatantly contradicts the biblical text, as well as one in which Issachar begins by besmirching his own mother? And why include such paradoxical assertions as those seen above: if only Leah had valued continence, she would have had more children, while Rachel, who “disdained sleeping with her husband and has preferred continence,” at the same time “wished to sleep with Jacob”? On balance, an original author would probably have been content to skip the whole mandrakes incident and save his praise of sexual self-restraint for later on in this testament,21 or for that prime example of sublimation, the encounter between Joseph and Potiphar’s wife.22 An editor, on the other hand, faced with an already completed Testament of Issachar, might well have been disturbed by its first chapter’s apologetic praise of Leah’s desire to sleep with Jacob. After all, he was a champion of self-restraint! To be sure, he could have simply eliminated that first chapter, but that would have meant sacrificing the whole connection of Issachar’s testament to this biblical story. So instead, he resolved to turn the opening section of that testament on its head: with a few deft touches, he could claim that it was Rachel who was the real hero of the story for having preferred mandrakes to sexual intercourse. All this required was introducing the theme of ἐγκράτεια in chapter 1 and switching around a few words in four successive verses of chapter 2. This, it seems to me, is the most likely explanation for the puzzling opening of the Testament of Issachar and a plausible model for how the Testaments came to be the book that we know it today.

Heavenly Hierarchy In his tour of heaven, Levi is informed about its various levels and the different angels who reside in them: 3:5 In the highest heaven resides the Great Glory in the holy of holies [of the heavenly temple], high above all [other] holiness. In it, next in rank to Him, are the angels of the Lord’s Presence, who serve and make atonement before the Lord for all the unwitting sins of the righteous; 3:6 offering to the Lord a sweet savor, a reasonable and bloodless sacrifice. 3:7 And in the lower heaven are the angels who carry the answers to the angels of the Lord’s Presence. 3:8 And in the one next to these are thrones and dominions, in which praises are always offered to God.

21 See T. Iss. 3:5, 4:4, 7:2; also T. Ben. 6:3. 22 “Self-restraint” or “self-denial” (σωφροσύνη) is indeed the great theme of T. Jos., just as avoiding women’s wiles is of T. Reu.

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The angels of the Presence23 serve in the heavenly temple like the priests in the earthly temple, offering sacrifices to God; here it is specified that they make atonement for unintentional sins (since intentional sins cannot usually be forgiven);24 unlike the offerings made in the earthly temple, those offered in heaven are a “bloodless sacrifice.” Below the highest heaven are other angels “who carry the answers to the angels of the Lord’s Presence.” This arrangement reflects the heavenly hierarchy: since these lower angels are not authorized to behold the divine countenance, they have to be met at some point by the angels who are so authorized, to whom they hand off “the answers” (τὰς ἀποκρίσεις). One is left to wonder what these “answers” might be. Have human sinners perhaps been interrogated by these lower angels, who then pass on the answers they received to the higher angels, who might then, if they indicate unintentional sinning, atone for them on high? But if so, why was there no prior mention of any questions or answers? In truth, this is a simple translation error, but one that can be discovered only in the context of a central theme in rabbinic Judaism, repentance (‫)תשובה‬. What happens when a person repents of his sins? This might seem like an entirely interior process, but a number of rabbinic texts suggest that once a person repents, his or her repentance actually travels (or is carried) upward, until it ascends to God’s throne in heaven: Said R. Levi: Great is repentance, which reaches to the heavenly throne, as it is said, “Repent, O Israel, all the way [‫ ]עד‬to the Lord your God” [Hos 14:2]. (b. Yoma 86a)25 Hosea’s use of the preposition ‫ עד‬suggests that the sinner’s repentance actually travels all the way to the divine throne. Still more explicit is the saying attributed to R. Judah, of the last generation of Tannaim: Said [R. Judah], our holy teacher: Great is the power of repentance, for as soon as a person considers repentance in his heart, at once it [the repentance] rises upward— not for ten miles and not for twenty and not for a hundred, but for a distance [that would require] five hundred years [to walk]—and not to the first heaven but to the second; and not [merely] to the second heaven, but [from there] it [gets to] stand before the heavenly throne; it is thus that Hosea says, “Repent, O Israel, all the way to the Lord your God.” (Pesiqta Rabbati 44 [Friedmann ed., 185])

This is precisely the picture presented in T. Lev.: There are three levels of heaven (T. Lev. 3:1–5); “in the lower heaven are the angels who carry upward the repent23 Presumably ‫מלאכי הפנים‬, “angels of the countenance,” so called because they are actually allowed to behold the divine countenance. 24 Gary Anderson, “Intentional and Unintentional Sin in the Dead Sea Scrolls,” in Pomegranates and Golden Bells: Studies in Biblical, Jewish, and Near Eastern Ritual, Law, and Literature in Honor of Jacob Milgrom, ed. David P. Wright et al. (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1995), 49–64. 25 London – BL Harl. 5508 (400).

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ances [‫ ]תשובות‬of sinners.” But given heaven’s hierarchy, these lower angels are not allowed to make the journey all the way to the heavenly throne. Instead, they hand off “the repentances to the angels of the Lord’s Presence,” who can then bring them directly before God’s throne. This example is particularly suggestive, since its underlying Hebrew text must have used the word ‫תשובה‬, which, in the sense of “repentance,” is basically a rabbinic creation.26 If so, that Hebrew text likely did not stem from any period earlier than the second century CE. This of course does not tell us anything definitive about the overall development of the text of the Testaments as a whole, but it does suggest that at least some parts of it were translated (and sometimes misunderstood) from Hebrew texts of a relatively late date.

Conclusion I have focused in the foregoing on three passages whose sense would probably not be understood without the help of rabbinic writings. However, these three hardly exhaust the instances of rabbinic themes and phrases found in the Testaments. For example, the mention of serving a wise man in order to “hear the Torah from his mouth” in T. Lev. 13:4 certainly corresponds to the rabbinic picture of students ‫( משמשים את הרב‬m. ’Abot 1:3), just as the same verse’s mention of “gain[ing] many friends” is reminiscent of the advice in m. ’Abot 1:6, “Appoint a teacher for yourself and acquire a friend for yourself.”27 The suggestion in T. Gad 1:5 that Joseph told his father that “the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah are slaying the best [of the flock] and eating them” echoes Gen. Rab. 84:7. The connection of Joseph’s sufferings with the catalogue of Ps 146:7–9 (T. Jos. 1:4–7, cf. 8:5) is paralleled by Gen. Rab. 87:10. The assertion by Pentephres (Potiphar) that “It is not the Egyptians’ custom to take away what belongs to others before there is proof ” (T. Jos. 14:5) sounds like an ironic28 adoption of the rabbinic axiom, “The burden of proof is on the one who would take away from his fellow” (‫המוציא מחברו עליו הראיה‬, m. Bab. Qam. 3:11). Joseph’s assertion that “I was like Jacob in all things” (T. Jos. 18:4) echoes the same

26 Ephraim E. Urbach, The Sages: Their Concepts and Beliefs (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987), 462 and 891, n. 68. Of course the word appears in the Hebrew Bible and later texts, including various Qumran writings but always in the sense of “return” or “reply.” See 1QHodayota XIX, 20; 4Q418 Instructiond 69:6, and 4Q427 Hodayota 1:3. See also D. Lambert, “Was the Dead Sea Sect a Penitential Movement?,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Dead Sea Scrolls, ed. John J. Collins and Timothy Lim (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010). 27 Cf. Sifre Deut 305. 28 It seems ironic because the custom here attributed to the Egyptians is actually a principle of Jewish law.

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statement in Gen. Rab. 84:6. These are just a few further examples of connections of rabbinic writings to the Testaments. As for the three above examples of garbled or deliberately altered rabbinic-like motifs, it is noteworthy that these three passages actually offer three rather different pictures of the Testaments’ incorporation of such material. Some parts of the Testaments, like the retelling of the story of Judah and Tamar, seem to have been creatively (and faultily) assembled from a few pithy phrases of rabbinic midrash (or some predecessor thereof). Other parts, like Issachar’s account of the mandrakes episode, are the result of a conscious rewriting of specific passages already found in an existent, twelve-testament work, passages that contained bits of exegesis known to us elsewhere from rabbinic works. Still others, like the repentances that travel all the way to highest heaven, represent the translation into Greek of a Hebrew text from a relatively late period, one that could scarcely go back much before rabbinic times. Of course, these examples of exegetical borrowings say nothing about large sections of the Testaments that know nothing of rabbinic exegesis but depend in large measure on earlier works, especially the book of Jubilees, whose influence is felt on almost every page of the Testaments.29

29 R. H. Charles, The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1908), 238.

Vered Noam

Why Did the Heavenly Voice Speak Aramaic? Ancient Layers in Rabbinic Literature ,‫ עשה תורתך קבע‬:'‫שמי אומ‬ ,‫אמור מעט ועשה הרבה‬ .‫והווי מקבל את כל האדם בסבר פנים יפות‬ )‫(אבות א טו‬

To Steven, With gratitude and esteem.

A. “Linguistic Code-Switching” as a Means to Discovering Lost Prerabbinic Sources In his current intriguing research on language and multilingualism in late antique Jewish society, Steven Fraade has noted three categories of internal Jewish bilingualism displayed by rabbinic literature, and by nonrabbinic documents and inscriptions. These categories are “interpenetration,” “internal translation,” and “linguistic code-switching.”1 “Code-switching” is a constant movement between Hebrew and Aramaic, whereby each language is assigned particular discursive tasks.2 In this article, I would like to explore a rabbinic tradition in which the interplay between Hebrew and Aramaic serves as a literary tool to create a distinction between the ordinary narrative account, on the one hand, and the solemn words of a heavenly voice, on the other. Deeper inspection reveals that the language shift is more than a mere stylistic device. Rather, it can serve as a means to unravel later literary layers, discover lost prerabbinic sources that they employed, and reconstruct the manner in which these prerabbinic materials were adapted and inte-

* The following discussion is based on a chapter in the future Hebrew volume by Tal Ilan and Vered Noam, in collaboration with Daphne Baratz, Meir Ben Shahar, and Yael Fisch, Josephus and the Rabbis (forthcoming from Yad Ben-Zvi), which creates a complete corpus of the parallel historical traditions found both in the writings of the historian Josephus and in rabbinic literature. 1 Steven D. Fraade, “Language Mix and Multilingualism in Ancient Palestine: Literary and Inscriptional Evidence,” Jewish Studies 48 (2012): 1–40, esp. 15–21. 2 Fraade, “Language Mix,” 19.

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grated into later narrative. The prerabbinic source I am going to discuss was also preserved in Josephus’s work, thus introducing another agent, as well as a third language—Greek—into the complicated interplay of languages and literary strata.

B. John Hyrcanus and the Heavenly Voice The tradition describes a miraculous event involving John Hyrcanus, the Hasmonean high priest and ruler who reigned from 134–104 BCE. Rabbinic literature designates John Hyrcanus as “Yohanan the High Priest,” and he is treated with respect in the majority of the sources.3 According to the tradition under discussion, while in the temple, John Hyrcanus hears a heavenly voice proclaim that some “children,” or young men, had achieved victory in battle. It subsequently turned out that these youngsters had indeed been victorious on that very day, at that precise hour: T. Sotah 13:54 ‫ טליא דאזלון לאגחא‬7)‫ (מרא‬6‫ נצחון‬,‫ מבית קדש הקדשים‬5‫יוחנן כהן גדול שמע דבר‬ 8.‫ וכיונו ואותה שעה היתה שנצחו‬,‫ וכתבו אותה שעה ואותו היום‬,‫קרבא באנטכיא‬ Yoh anan the High Priest heard a word from the house of the holy of holies: “The young men who went to wage war against Antioch have been victorious,” and they wrote down the time and the day. And they checked, and the victory was at that very hour. 3 M. Ma‘aś. Š. 5:15=m. Sotah 9:10; m. Parah 3:5; m. Yad. 4:6; Scholion P on Meg. Ta‘an., 3 Tishri (see Vered Noam, Megillat Ta‘anit: Versions, Interpretation, History [in Hebrew] [Jerusalem: Yad Ben-Zvi, 2003], 94, 235–38)=b. Roš Haš. 18b. It happens only later, in post-Tannaitic sources, that some reservations regarding this figure and his actions are voiced (y. Ma‘aś. Š. 5:8, 56d; y. Sotah 9:11, 24a; b. Ber. 29a). See Gedalyahu Alon, “The Attitude of the Pharisees to Roman Rule and the House of Herod,” in Jews, Judaism, and the Classical World, trans. I. Abrahams (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1977), 27–28 n. 22. Interestingly, Josephus presents a similar ambivalence. Whereas his overall approach to Hyrcanus is extremely positive, he recounts one exceptional tradition, probably cited from an earlier, Jewish-Pharisaic source, that criticizes Hyrcanus. See, e. g., Steve Mason, Flavius Josephus on the Pharisees: A Composition-Critical Study (Leiden: Brill, 1991), 213–45; Richard Kalmin, Jewish Babylonia between Persia and Roman Palestine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 53–59, 160–67. This tradition also appears in rabbinic literature (b. Qidd. 66a), but there it is associated with his son, King Jannaeus. See Vered Noam, “The Story of King Jannaeus (b. Qiddu­ shin 66a): A Pharisaic Reply to Sectarian Polemic,” HTR 107, no. 1 (2014): 31–58. 4 Saul Lieberman, Tosefta, 4 vols., 2nd ed. (Jerusalem: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1992–95), Nashim, 3:231–32. The base text is according to MS Vienna. Selected alternative readings are given from E=Erfurt; D=editio princeps (Vienna 1521). The tradition is cited in later rabbinic sources. See y. Sotah 19:12, 24b; b. Sotah 33a; Song of Songs Rabbah 5. 5 ‫ ]דבר‬missing in E. 6 ‫ דאזלון‬,‫ דאזלו נצחון‬,‫ נצחו‬E. 7 (‫ ])מרא‬missing in ED, probably an error. 8 ‫את אותה השעה וכיוונו שנצחו אותה שעה ו‬ E.

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Intriguingly, this very same tradition appears in Jewish Antiquities 13.282–283. From the Josephan context it is clear that the direct historical background for this tradition touches on John Hyrcanus’s conquest of the city of Samaria in 107 BCE following a lengthy siege. The reference is to John’s sons Antigonus and Aristobulus, who engaged the forces of Antiochus IX Cyzicenus9 at Samaria (Ant. 13.277– 279, 282): (282) Now about the high priest Hyrcanus an extraordinary story [παράδοξον] is told [lit.: λέγεται, they tell] how the Deity communicated with him, for they say [φασὶν] that on the very day [ὅτι κατ᾽ ἐκείνην τὴν ἡμέραν] on which his sons fought with C ­ yzicenus, Hyrcanus, who was alone in the Temple, burning incense as a high priest, heard a voice saying that his sons had just defeated Antiochus [οἱ παῖδες αὐτοῦ νενικήκασιν ἀρτίως τὸν Ἀντίοχον]. (283) And on coming out of the Temple he revealed this to the entire multitude, and so it actually happened. This, then, was how the affairs of Hyrcanus were going. (Ant. 7.368–71 [Marcus, LCL])

This legend belongs to a known topos in contemporary literature. Similar stories were recounted by Roman historians regarding an individual who saw in spirit dramatic events at the very moment of their occurrence, testimonies regarding a heavenly voice that proclaimed a Roman victory, and oracles that foretold the future appointment of Vespasian as emperor (69 CE).10 Moreover, this is not the sole attribution of the gift of prophecy to John Hyrcanus in Jewish sources: it appears elsewhere in Josephus,11 and Qumran scholars have suggested that a negative echo of the tradition attributing prophecy to John Hyrcanus may have survived in 4QTestimonia (4Q175).12 Additional allusions to Hyrcanus’s prophetic powers might be found in the mentions of a prophet from the seed of Levi in the Testament of Levi 8:15 and 18:2.13 9 Although in J.W. 1.65, Josephus mistakenly thinks that this refers to Antiochus VIII. 10 Saul Lieberman, Tosefta Ki-fshutah (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1955–88), 8:739, 989–90; Izhak Brand, “The ‘Oven of Achnai’ and Polemics” (in Hebrew), Tarbiz 75 (2006): 438, n. 4. 11 Ant. 13.299–300, 322; J.W. 1.68–69. See also Ant. 3.218 and Rebecca Gray, Prophetic Figures in Late Second Temple Jewish Palestine: The Evidence from Josephus (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 17–19. On Josephus’s exceptional use of the term προφητείας (Ant. 13.299), see Josephus in Ten Volumes: Jewish Antiquities, books 12–14, trans. R. Marcus, LCL (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1961), 7:378, note a; and Louis H. Feldman, “Prophets and Prophecy in Josephus,” JTS 41 (1990): 386–422. 12 For details, bibliography, and a comprehensive discussion, see Hanan Eshel, The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Hasmonean State (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans; Jerusalem: Yad Ben-Zvi, 2008), 63–89. 13 Marinus de Jonge, The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs: A Critical Edition of the Greek Text, PVTG 1.2 (Leiden: Brill, 1978), 34, 45. R. H. Charles actually links T. Levi’s description of the voice heard by the priest from the temple (18:6) with our story of the heavenly voice in Josephus and rabbinic sources (Robert Henry Charles, ed., The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of

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Vered Noam

C. Linguistic Features The Josephan and Toseftan versions of this brief aggadah are nearly identical.14 This applies not just to content, but also to language. Even though preserved in different languages, the two versions display discernible linguistic affinities. A striking similarity between the versions inheres in the Aramaic word used by the heavenly voice in the Tosefta: ‫טליא‬, “young men” or “children.” This term was preserved by the rabbis even though its original sense had been lost; rabbinic tradition no longer recalls that the message concerned John’s two sons. Interestingly, traces of this phrasing were also preserved in the Josephan version of this story in Antiquities, which uses the expression παῖδες αὐτοῦ “his children.” The use of this same word in the two disparate contexts attests to the existence of an earlier source that predated both of them. A second linguistic parallel is found in Josephus’s use of the name “Antiochus.” Even though Josephus opens his narrative by noting that the event took place on the day that the sons faced “Cyzicenus,” in reporting the message of the heavenly voice heard by Hyrcanus he refers to “Antiochus.” This evidently reflects the wording in the version of the early Hebrew/Aramaic source that was available to him; note that in the extant Hebrew sources the voice says ‫—באנטכיא‬naming the Seleucid city of Antioch in Syria (present-day southern Turkey). The shared mention of Antioch by all the rabbinic sources is certainly an early corruption of the name Antiochus, as the Hasmoneans never fought at Antioch.15 In this instance as well, the persistence of this incongruous place name shows that, although the rabbis were not cognizant of the underlying historical or geographical circumstances, the version they possessed preserved a frozen echo of the ancient wording. Once the the Old Testament in English, 2 vols. [Oxford: Clarendon, 1913], 2:309); see also Clemens Thoma, “John Hyrcanus I as Seen by Josephus and Other Jewish Sources,” in Josephus and the History of the Greco-Roman Period: Essays in Memory of Morton Smith, ed. Fausto Parente and Joseph Sievers (Leiden: Brill, 1994), 127–40, at 136–39. But see Harm W. Hollander and Marinus de Jonge, The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs: A Commentary, SVTP 8 (Leiden: Brill, 1985), 179–80, who identify Christian motifs in this passage. 14 See Shaye J. D. Cohen, “Parallel Historical Traditions in Josephus and Rabbinic Literature,” in Proceedings of the Ninth World Congress of Jewish Studies, ed. David Asaf (Jerusalem: World Union of Jewish Studies, 1986), 2.1:7–14 (9). Compare the marginal notation in MS Vatican of the Yerushalmi (y. Sotah 9:14, 24b), near our story: “And this is found in Joseph ben Gorion’s book.” The scribe has apparently noticed the existence of a parallel to this rabbinic tradition in Josippon. (Prior to modern times, Jews were not familiar with the works of Josephus, but rather erroneously believed that medieval Josippon was the original Josephus.) 15 Joseph Derenbourg, Essai sur l’histoire et la géographie de la Palestine, d’après les Thalmuds et les autres sources rabbiniques (Paris: Imprimerie Imperiale, 1867), 74, n. 1. A trace of the variant ‫ אנטיוכוס‬was preserved in MS Vatican, y. Sotah 9:14, 24b, where it states in one place: ‫]באנדוכי(ס)[ה‬. (The samek at the end of the word was at a second stage corrected to he.)

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original name “Antiochus” is restored in the rabbinic tradition, the two traditions share the literal message of the heavenly voice in its entirety: >‫נצחון טליא דאזלון לאגחא קרבא ‫יז) שמא לא אכל יתום ממנה אתמ' ). The words ‫לא תתן‬ ‫“ מכשול‬you shall not place a stumbling block” are not addressed until the second paraphrase. By contrast, in all of the earlier passages, from the school of R. Ishmael, the initial paraphrase encompasses an entire sentence. This subtle difference may—again, tentativeness is in order—give expression to an important rhetorical difference. When an entire sentence is paraphrased, as in the Ishmaelian cases, the paraphrase comes across as the voice of Scripture. When, however, only select words are paraphrased, we hear it as the voice of the exegete interpreting Scripture. To rewrite an entire sentence is to make Scripture speak again, whereas to rewrite a select phrase is to highlight something about the phrase. But sentential paraphrases do occur in Akivan texts, and even more commonly, one encounters numerous paraphrases of select words in Ishmaelian midrash.26 The second way in which the classification of the iterative paraphrase as Ishmaelian must be qualified is that a number of cases occur in the aggadic material that appears to trace to a substratum that is neither Ishmaelian or Akivan.27 The following passages come from Mek. R. Ish. Širah 2 (ed. Horovitz-Rabin, 121) (text 12) and Mek. R. Sh. to Ex 15:1 (ed. Epstein-Melamed, 74) (text 13). 25 See also, e. g., Mek. R. Sh. to Exod 12:2 (ed. Epstein-Melamed, 9, ll. 8–9), the Akivan equivalent of text 6. 26 Akivan sentential paraphrases: e. g., Sifre Deut. 110 (ed. Finkelstein, 171) = Sifre Deut. 303 [321]. Ishmaelian paraphrases of select words: e. g., Mek. R. Ish. Bahodeš 11 (ed. Horovitz-Rabin, 242) and Neziqin 2 (ed. Horovitz-Rabin, 250) (and note that both passages focus on the possessive pronoun [‫ לו‬,‫]לי‬.). 27 See Kahana, Two Mekhiltot, passim.

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‫ כי גאה גאה מתגאה הוא על כל המתגאים שבמה שאומות העולם מתגאים לפניו בו נפרע מהן‬.21 12. “For he has gloried gloriously” (Ex 15:1). He glories over all of the glorified. For by that through which the nations of the world are glorified before him does he exact from them. ‫ כי גאה גאה מתגאה הוא על כל הגאים במה שאומות העולם מתגאין לפניו בו נפרע מהן‬.31 13. “For he has gloried gloriously” (Ex 15:1). He glories over all of the gloried. By that through which the nations of the world are glorified does he exact from them.

In these two almost identical passages, the comment proceeds in the familiar two stages. An initial paraphrase takes advantage of the double occurrence of the root ‫ה‬-‫א‬-‫ ג‬to craft a claim that mirrors the language and some of the grammar (the third person singular) of the lemma. The second paraphrase clarifies the first, but at the cost of distancing itself from the lemma. It retains one instance of ‫ה‬-‫א‬-‫ג‬, referring to the impious (‫“ מתגאים‬are glorified”), but replaces the other instance of ‫ה‬-‫א‬-‫ג‬, referring to God (‫“ מתגאה הוא‬he glories”), with a more concrete claim (‫“ נפרע מהן‬does he exact from them”). Even in the aggadic material, there are iterative paraphrases that we may with some confidence attribute specifically to the school of R. Ishmael. Consider, for example, Mek. R., Ish. Širah 3 (ed. Horovitz-Rabin, 127), which comments on Exod 15:2, ‫“ זה אלי ואנוהו‬This is my God and I will beautify him.” ‫ ואנוהו ר' ישמעאל אומר וכי איפשר לבשר ודם להנוות לקוניו אלא אנוה לו במצוות אעשה‬.41 ‫לפניו לולב נאה סוכה נאה ציצית נאה תפילה נאה‬ 14. “And I will beautify him.” R. Ishmael says: And is it possible for flesh and blood to beautify his creator? Rather, I will beautify before him through commandments. I will make before him a beautiful palm branch, a beautiful hut, beautiful fringes, a beautiful phylactery.28

The movement from the lemma to the first, closer paraphrase and then to the second, more distant paraphrase requires little explication. Notably, the passage hews to the iterative paraphrase form even though a question (“And is it possible, etc.”) interjects between the lemma and the comment. For our immediate purposes, what is most important about text 14 is that the exegesis is explicitly attributed to R. Ishmael, and that there is no parallel in the Mekilta of R. Shimon bar Yohai. Thus, even though the passage is aggadic, we may confidently classify it as Ishmaelian.

28 On this text see David Daube, “Duty and Beauty,” in Talmudic Law, vol. 1 of Collected Works of David Daube, ed. Calum M. Carmichael (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 449–54.

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Tzvi Novick

A full account of formal mirroring should attend to its relationship to targum and to rewritten Bible, and of iterative paraphrase, to the ways in which it disturbs the Mishnah/midrash dichotomy.29 Here I wish only to return briefly, in conclusion, to the matter of rhetorical intent. In my analysis of the cases of iterative paraphrase above, I have assumed that the first element of the comment, the initial paraphrase, originates in situ, as an ad hoc way of bridging from the lemma to the second element (a second, looser paraphrase in the paradigmatic case), and thus showing, rather than (or in addition to) arguing for, the relationship between the second element and the lemma. But other reconstructions are preferable in some cases. The following passage occurs in a story in b. Git. 7a about Mar Uqbah and R. Eleazar. Mar Uqbah, antagonized by a local, is tempted to dispatch him to the government for imprisonment and punishment. He sends to R. Eleazar for advice. R. Eleazar counsels restraint by invoking a biblical verse. ‫ דום ליי'י והתחולל לו דום ליי'י והוא יפיל לך חללים השכם והערב לבית המדרש והן כלין‬.51 ‫מאיליהן‬ 15. “Be silent for the Lord and wait for him” (Ps 37:7). Be silent for the Lord and he will make corpses fall for you. Go early and late to the house of study and they will come to an end of themselves.30

As in other cases of iterative paraphrase, here, too, the first paraphrase hews closely to the lemma, repeating the first half verbatim and massaging the second by transforming ‫“ והתחולל‬and wait” into ‫“ חללים‬corpses,” while the second paraphrase works further changes that sever all ties to the lemma except the second person singular imperative form. The reader naturally infers that R. Eleazar introduces the first paraphrase as a conduit to the second. But a more complicated account is suggested by the exegesis of Ps 37:7 in b. Zebah. 115b. Here the verse is applied to the situation of Aaron, who accepted his sons’ deaths in silence. ‫ וכן בדוד הוא אומ' דום ליי' והתחולל לו אע"פ שמפיל לך חללים חללים אתה דום‬.61 16. And likewise in connection with David it says: “Be silent for the Lord and wait for him” (Ps 37:7). Even though he will make corpses fall for you, be patient.31

29 Rosen-Zvi (“Can the Homilists,” 226–27, n. 43) makes reference to the link to rewritten Bible. On the Mishnah/midrash dichotomy see Azzan Yadin, “Resistance to Midrash? Midrash and Halakhah in the Halakhic Midrashim,” in Current Trends in the Study of Midrash, ed. Carol Bakhos (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 35–58. 30 The text is from the Vatican 130 manuscript, as transcribed in Maagarim. 31 The text is from Vatican 121, as transcribed in the online database of the Saul Lieberman Institute of Talmudic Research of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America.

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This paraphrase uses almost precisely the same words as R. Eleazar’s (‫מפיל לך‬ ‫“ חללים חללים‬he will make corpses fall for you”), but to convey something else entirely: not that God will punish the addressee’s oppressor, but that he has caused the addressee to suffer. The interpretation in b. Zebah. 115b is in line with others elsewhere that also make ‫ והתחולל לו‬refer to the addressee’s suffering (Deut. Rab., Debarim [ed. Lieberman, 18]). It is likely that b. Git. 7a modified an already existing paraphrase (‫> אע"פ שמפיל לך חללים חללים אתה דום‬i‫)דום ליי'י והוא יפיל לך חללים‬, then further cemented the revision with a second paraphrase. Whether or not this reconstruction is correct in the case of b. Git. 7a, it elucidates the difference between iterative paraphrases in which the first stage is introduced as a rhetorical step on the way to the second, and ones in which a second paraphrase is appended to a preexisting stand-alone paraphrase. A reader with even passing familiarity with the work of Steven Fraade will recognize his inspiration in the above analysis, with its attentiveness to ways in which Tannaitic midrash does things with words. It was in fact as a graduate student at Yale that I first took notice of the phenomena of formal mirroring and the iterative paraphrase. When I presented an earlier version of this paper at the Association for Jewish Studies annual meeting in 2007, Steven attended the talk, and it is his practice to support all of his graduate students in this way when he can. It is my great pleasure to offer this essay to Steven in gratitude for the myriad ways— as a scholar and mentor, and as a model of scholarship and mentoring—that he has helped and inspired me.

Ishay Rosen-Zvi

Is the Mishnah a Roman Composition? In the past few decades the abundance of comparative studies on “Romanization” in the provinces, both eastern and western, has stimulated historians of Roman Palestine. The place formerly reserved in scholarship for “Hellenization” has been increasingly occupied by searches for specific manifestations of Roman-ness.1 Scholars now examine the extent and character of Roman influence on the Jewish population in Judea and the Galilee, and on the rabbinic movement in particular, measuring it in light of other provinces and populations—in order to determine not only the character of Jewish and rabbinic reaction to the Roman presence but also how “normal” it was in a comparative context. A central expression of the newfound interest in the Roman-ness of the rabbis is the reading of Palestinian compositions in a Roman context. Several different claims are current: Shaye J. D. Cohen considers the Roman context as one of the “legal traditions” that influenced the rabbis, together with ancient Near Eastern law, Hellenic law, and more.2 This sounds probable enough, but in fact scholars have been hard pressed to find explicit traces of Roman law in the Mishnah or in rabbinic literature in general. The polemic around Mishnah Qiddushin 3:12 is exemplary in this regard. Cohen claims that the matrilineal principle, explicated at the end of this mishnah, is an echo of Roman law, which ruled that the status of offspring of a citizen man and a noncitizen woman is like his mother.3 Ranon Katzoff contests Cohen’s claim, showing that this law does not resemble the mishnaic one, and was in any case superseded in the first century BCE by the lex minicia, which established the status

1 Νatalie B. Dohrmann and Annette Y. Reed, eds., introduction to Jews, Christians and the Roman Empire: The Poetics of Power in Late Antiquity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), 1–21, 7–9; See the scholars listed there on p. 8. 2 Shaye J. D. Cohen, “The Judaean Legal Tradition and the ‘Halakhah’ of the Mishnah,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Talmud and Rabbinic Literature, ed. Charlotte E. Fonrobert and Martin Jaffee (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 121–43, 126–27. 3 Shaye J. D. Cohen, The Beginnings of Jewishness (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 293–98. Cohen offers seven different sources for the matrilineal principle in the Mishnah, but prefers the last two: Roman law, and the regulations of mixed species (kil’ayim; m. Kil. 8:4).

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of the offspring of a mixed union as the lower of the two involved in the union.4 In a recent paper presented at the World Congress for Jewish Studies, Yair Furstenberg agreed with Katzoff ’s claim, but maintained that although the mishnah’s matrilineal principle is not Roman in substance, its strange form is nicely explained as an attempt to make the law sound like a Roman law.5 This formal claim is quite plausible and additional examples can be offered to support it.6 Comparisons of form and rhetoric may go further. Leib Moskovitz compares the Tannaitic neologism ke-’ilu, “as if,” which appears in the Mishnah no less than fifty-five times,7 to fictiones current in Roman law that use the very same terminology.8 And yet we must admit that in general—and despite several decades of complex comparative studies by Boaz Cohen, Reuven Yaron, Zeev Falk, David Daube, Bernard Jackson, and many others9—scholarship has yet to show a significant con4 Ranon Katzoff, “Children of Intermarriage: Roman and Jewish Conceptions,” in Rabbinic Law in Its Roman and Near Eastern Context, ed. Catherine Hezser (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003), 277–86. 5 Yair Furstenberg, “Jewish Citizenship in Roman Form” (Paper presented in the World Congress for Jewish Studies; Jerusalem 2013). Furstenberg suggests that this resolves the tension between rules and examples in this mishnah. The latter are early, while the former, developed under the influence of Roman law, shifted the focus from forbidden intercourse to permitted marriage. 6 Cf. Gaius, Inst., 105–8, which enumerates three types of marriages: usus, confarreatio, and coemptio (cohabitation, a ceremony, and an imaginary sale), is remarkably similar to m. Qidd. 1:1. Boaz Cohen compares the details of these two lists (especially the fact that in both cohabitation is considered as usus, ‫)חזקה‬, but their shared format is no less striking. See Boaz Cohen, Jewish and Roman Law: A Comparative Study, 2 vols. (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America), 1:290–91. 7 Of which twenty-five are “considered as if ” (ro’in ke-’ilu) and its counterpart “he is enumerated as if ” (ma‘alin ‘alaw ke-’ilu). The term is most current in m. ‘Erub., Zev., Miqw., and B. Qam., all of which are grounded on certain fictions. The aggadic occurrences of the term, such as “as if he saved the entire world,” are expansions of the halakhic usage. 8 Leib Moskowitz, “Legal Fictions in Rabbinic Law and Roman Law: Some Comparative Observations,” in Hezser, Rabbinic Law, 105–32. Moskowitz avoids influence claims (116, 119, 132) and instead prefers ascribing these similarities to a shared concept of law (131). But he nonetheless acknowledges the need to account for the emergence of this term and the legal logic it entails in such a widespread manner in the Mishnah, with no precedent in pre-Tannaitic halakah. 9 Mordecai Rabello, “Jewish and Roman Jurisdiction,” in An Introduction to the History and Sources of Jewish Law, ed. N. S. Hecht et al. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 142–53; Reuven Yaron, Gifts in Contemplation of Death: In Jewish and Roman Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1960); Cohen, Jewish and Roman Law; Bernard Jackson, Essays in Jewish and Comparative Legal History (Leiden: Brill, 1975), chaps. 9–10; idem, “Foreign Influence in the Early Jewish Law of Theft,” Revue Internationale des Droits de l’Antiquité 18 (1971): 25–42; idem, Theft in Early Jewish Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972); idem, “On the Problem of Roman Influence on the Halakha and Normative Self-Definition in Judaism,” in Aspects of Judaism in the Greco-Roman Period, ed. E. P. Sanders with A. I. Baumgarten and A. Mendelson, vol. 2 of

Is the Mishnah a Roman Composition?

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nection between specific Roman laws and mishnaic ones. Thus Katzoff (admittedly the most skeptical of all these scholars) can summarize his review of Sperber’s Lehnwörter by saying that “not a single Latin legal term seems to have entered the rabbis’ active legal vocabulary.”10 Another track offered by scholars is to see the redaction of the Mishnah as similar to contemporaneous Roman legal codifications, such as those of Julian, Ulpian, Gaius, Rufinus, and Paul.11 They dispute, however, what may lie behind the correspondence. While Catharine Heszer invokes influence, and Yaakov Elman remains agnostic, Amram Tropper and Moshe Simon-Shoshan attribute the developments to a shared intellectual climate. Thus Tropper writes: “As a scholar nearing the end of the era, Ulpian summarized his intellectual discipline just as his contemporaries, Diogenes Laertius, Philostratus, and R. Judah Hanasi, reviewed their own respective traditions.”12 Martin Goodman and others claim that the Tannaim were jurists in the Roman fashion,13 a thesis developed by Naftali Cohn.14 While previous scholars used the comparison to explain the cultural backdrop against which the rabbis were able to flourish, Cohn’s thesis is literary in nature: the rabbis’ claim to authority was grounded in the fact that they depicted themselves as jurists in their own litera-

Jewish and Christian Self-Definition, ed. E. P. Sanders (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1981), 157–203; Martin Goodman, State and Society in Roman Galilee, A.D. 132–212 (Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Allanheld, 1983), 155–71; Christine Hayes, “The Abrogation of Torah Law: Rabbinic ‘Taqqanah’ and Praetorian Edict,” in The Talmud Yerushalmi and Graeco-Roman Culture, ed. Peter Schäfer (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1998), 1:643–74; idem, “Genealogy, Illegitimacy, and Personal Status: The Yerushalmi in Comparative Perspective,” in Schäfer, Talmud Yerushalmi, 3:73–89. See also the papers collected in Hezser, Rabbinic Law, and the bibliographic note in Catharine Hezser, “Roman Law and Rabbinic Legal Composition,” in Fonrobert and Jaffee, Cambridge Companion to the Talmud, 144–64, 161. 10 Ranon Katzoff, “Sperber’s Dictionary of Greek and Latin Terms in Rabbinic Literature—A Review Essay,” JSJ 29 (1989): 195–206, 204–5. Cf. Leib Moskovitz, The Terminology of the Yerusahlmi (in Hebrew) (Jerusalem: Magnes, 2010), 132, and Amram D. Tropper, Wisdom, Politics, and Historiography: Tractate Avot in the Context of the Graeco-Roman Near East (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 190, n. 4. 11 Yaakov Elman, “Order, Sequence and Selection: The Mishnah’s Anthological Choices,” in The Anthology in Jewish Literature, ed. David Stern (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 53–80; Tropper, Wisdom, 196; Hezser, “Roman Law”; Moshe Simon-Shoshan, Stories of the Law: Narrative Discourse and the Construction of Authority in the Mishnah (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 81–82. Cf. Catharine Hezser, “The Codification of Legal Knowledge in Late Antiquity: The Talmud Yerushalmi and Roman Law Codes,” in Schäfer, The Talmud Yerushalmi, 1:581–641. 12 Tropper, Wisdom, 196. 13 Goodman, State and Society, 127; Hezser, “Roman Law,” 147–51; Tropper, Wisdom, 192– 94. 14 Naftali Cohn, The Memory of the Temple and the Making of the Rabbis (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), 17–37.

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ture. Thus: “In asserting jurisprudential authority over Judaean ritual law, the rabbis (or at least the Mishnah, in its depiction of the rabbis) were laying claim to the only area of law left available by the Romans and thus that they could have controlled.”15 But this alleged division of labor—law to the Romans, ritual to the rabbis—relies on the mishnaic case stories alone, while ignoring the much stronger and all-encompassing claim of authority manifested in the Mishnah as a whole, as we shall see below.16 Natalie Dohrmann recently offered that the legal language epitomized in the Mishnah is itself an adaptation of Roman legalism.17 This is a stimulating thesis, but it is so general and abstract that it is utterly impossible to falsify (and thus verify). True, the Mishnah offers a new model of legalist imperialism, different from previous modes of legal discourse; but is the Roman context key to understanding this innovation? Several scholars, among them our honoree Steven Fraade, recently discussed differences between the Mishnah and prerabbinic legal discourse (mostly in Qumran) without needing the Roman parallels.18 Jacob Neusner, with typical vehemence, criticizes the use of Roman models to understand the Mishnah. The comparison of the Mishnah to Roman law, per Neusner, completely ignores the religious character of the Mishnah and forcibly extracts any theology from it. He suggests that scholars focus on comparisons with legal elements in the gospels instead, pointing out that both works are interested in building holy communities.19 In general, the explicatory power of the Roman model, as revealed in existing scholarship, is somewhat limited. But the problem goes deeper, since these comparisons ignore a more basic question: Why is the Mishnah so deeply different from everything else around it? Why can it not, to paraphrase Seth Schwartz, be “readily normalized”?20 In what follows, I will attempt to recontextualize the effort 15 Cohn, Memory, 24. 16 This claim is fantastic, to be sure, but so is, according to Cohn, the more limited claim of authority over “Judaean ritual practice” alone (Memory, 35). Simon-Shoshan, in Stories, does not fall into this pit. Cf. Hezser’s pointed presentation, “Roman Law,” 151. 17 Natalie B. Dohrmann, “Law and Imperial Idioms: Rabbinic Legalism in a Roman World,” in idem and Reed, Jews, Christians and the Roman Empire, 63–78. 18 Steven Fraade, “Ancient Jewish Law and Narrative in Comparative Perspective: The Damascus Document and the Mishnah,” Diné Israel 24 (2007): 65–99; Aharon Shemesh, Halakhah in the Making: The Development of Jewish Law from Qumran to the Rabbis (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009); Moshe Halbertal, “Toledot hahalakah vehofa’at hahalakah,” Diné Israel 29 (2013): 1–23. 19 Jacob Neusner, “The Mishnah in Roman and Christian Contexts,” in The Mishnah in Contemporary Perspective, ed. Alan J. Avery-Peck and Jacob Neusner (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 121–48, 121–34. 20 Seth Schwartz, Imperialism and Jewish Society (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 163: “But the rabbis were emphatically not normal elites or subelites of the eastern part of the Roman Empire. All the efforts of scholars over the last 150 years to detect significant sim-

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to read the Mishnah as a piece of Roman literature as part of the larger attempt to read the rabbis “as Romans.” To this end I would like to utilize a valuable categorization that Haim Lapin proposes in his introduction to his recent Rabbis as Romans.21 Lapin points out that the scholarly term “Romanization”22 can mean at least three different things: (a) “embeddedness of subjects of the empire within an asymmetric fabric … largely not their own making,” (b) participation in the dominant culture and adoption of various chunks of it, large or small,23 and (c) the measure of identifying yourself with the system. The latter is the most slippery and confusing meaning, which refers to, in Lapin’s words, “identification of one’s social or legal persona with one’s place within the dominant political system.” Things could be cut differently of course, and the first and second definitions partially overlap,24 but the distinction itself is of great importance, at least heuristically. Palestinian rabbis were an integral part of provincial urban life. They were affected by imperial processes and populations (soldiers, officials, and citizens); they used the roads and witnessed the exercise of the imperial cult, as rabbinic literature well attests. After the Edict of Caracalla in 212 CE they too became Roman citizens. Like other subelites they “simultaneously subverted, absorbed, and manip-

ilarities in social role and status between rabbis and sophists, philosophers, iurisprudentes, or other easily recognizable high imperial types have only highlighted the fact that the rabbis were not sophists, philosophers or iurisprudentes. …The rabbis cannot readily be normalized.” 21 Hayim Lapin, Rabbis as Romans: The Rabbinic Movement in Palestine, 100–400 CE (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). See my critique in the Marginalia Review of Books (http:// themarginaliareview.com/archives/3494) and my forthcoming “Rabbis and Romanization: A Re�view Essay.” 22 I agree with Lapin that the continuous assaults on the term, in the last fifteen years or so (if we begin counting, for example, from Greg Woolf, “Beyond Romans and Natives,” World Archaeology 28 [1997]: 339–50), as manifesting simplistic colonial views, do not render it unusable, but only demand more nuanced and reflective uses. See Jane Webster, “Creolizing the Roman Provinces,” American Journal of Archeology 105 (2001): 209–25; David J. Mattingly, “Vulgar and Weak ‘Romanization’ or Time for a Paradigm Shift?,” Journal of Roman Archeology 15 (2002): 536–40; idem, Imperialism, Power, and Identity: Experiencing the Roman Empire (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011), 38–41; Andrew Merryweather and Jonathan Prag, “‘Romanization’? or, Why Flog a Dead Horse?,” Digressus 2 (2002): 8–10; and the sound discussion of (and useful bibliography in) Leonard A. Curchin, The Romanization of Central Spain: Complexity, Diversity, and Change in a Provincial Hinterland (New York: Routledge, 2003), 8–14. 23 Acculturation is the traditional, and still most popular, meaning of Romanization. See Greg Woolf, Becoming Roman: The Origin of Provincial Civilization in Gaul (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 6. 24 If the term is used to describe processes of integration into the empire, then the cultural and the political cannot be fully separated (pace Ramsay MacMullen, Romanization in the Time of Augustus [New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000], 136). In what follows I shall try to highlight some of the complicated relationships between culture and politics in the local context of the Palestinian rabbis.

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ulated Roman norms.”25 They were, therefore, Romans according to both the first and, to some extent, second meanings discussed above. In a certain sense this is trivial. No movement, countercultural as it may be, can escape its larger political and cultural context. It is in this sense that the Maccabees were part of Palestinian Hellenization, and nineteenth-century Jewish Orthodoxy was a modern movement, a facet of European nationalism and secularization. But we are dealing here with the delicate business of minute measuring—“the cumulative effect of a multitude of tiny shifts which … produced significant differences”:26 the calendar, the landscape, the legal system,27 religious rituals,28 imperial cult,29 ­leisure culture,30 and, of course, the military31—searching for the way all these penetrated everyday life as well as the consciousness of individuals. To be sure, one should not expect any simple consensus. Other scholars are much more minimalistic than Lapin in their assessment of the measure of political and cultural Romanization in Roman Palestine.32

25 Dohrmann and Reed, introduction, 2. 26 Kennedy, “Review,” 11. Cf. David Kennedy, “Greek, Roman and Native Cultures in the Roman Near East,” in Some New Archaeological Research, vol. 2 of The Roman and Byzantine Near East, Journal of Roman Archaeology Supplementary Series 31, ed. J. H. Humphrey (Portsmouth RI: Journal of Roman Archaeology, 1999), 77–106, 91: “by mechanisms largely unknown to us, merely being part of the Roman Empire exposed people to things that would alter their culture.” 27 On the conflict of jurisdiction between Roman and local courts see Goodman, State and Society, 155–71. Goodman claims that while the conflict between rabbinic and Roman jurisdiction was, at least in the Tannaitic period, imaginary—for de facto they were at best voluntary arbitrators—the conflict with the local (Jewish but nonrabbinic) village and city courts was real. 28 Nicole Belayche, Iudaea-Palaestina: The Pagan Cults in Roman Palestine (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001), chap. 1. 29 For participation in the Roman imperial cult as a sign of Romanization see Simon R. F. Price, Rituals of Power: The Roman Imperial Cult in Asia Minor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 78–100. 30 Zeev Weiss, “The Jews in the Land of Israel and Roman Leisure Culture” (in Hebrew), Zion 66 (2001): 427–50. 31 Fergus Millar, The Roman Near East 31 BC–AD 337 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), 527: “By far the most substantial of all non-local influences on the Near East.” On the Roman army in the Galilee see Goodman, State and Society, 141–44; for Judea in general see Werner Eck, Rom und Judea (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007), 105–55. 32 Fergus Millar presents Judea as a glaring exception to his “Hellenization as erasing local traditions” thesis (Roman Near East, 337–86). Similarly, Ramsay MacMullen (Romanization, 1–29), who admittedly pays little attention to Roman Palestine in his chapter on Romanization in the East, concludes that, culturally speaking, not much changed in this area under the Romans. (For a critique of this point see Kennedy, “Review.”) A similar assessment was reached by Martin Goodman, (State and Society, 154, cf. 175–76), with regard to the Galilee: “Rome left Galilee to develop her economy and culture in peace.” (Interestingly enough in his preface to the second edition [London, 2000], xiv, Goodman restated this as a matter of rabbinic perception rather than reality.) Cf. Stephen G. Wilson, Related Strangers: Jews and Christians 70–170 C.E. (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995), 19. Seth Schwartz represents the opposite side. For him everything

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But were the rabbis Romanized also in the third meaning of this scheme? Did they adopt Roman hierarchies and relations to the world? Did they see themselves as Romans? Before discussing this, we should note two things: first, we are dealing specifically with the rabbis, the one group that did not disintegrate or assimilate, even according to those who believe that all the rest of Jewish society did.33 Evidently, other segments of Jewish society adopted Roman models quite willingly, as shown for example by inscriptions and coins from Jewish-majority towns like Tiberias and Sepphoris,34 as well as the Judean Desert documents and other findings. Second, we should limit the inquiry to the question of Romanization—the influence of Roman political structure and the ideologies associated with it—and not Hellenization, which is a much wider, and older, phenomenon.35 We should always keep in mind that in the area we are discussing Hellenization and Romanization were far from identical. This is true for the East in general,36 and particularly for the Near East.37 The rabbinic movement took root during a period of rapid urbanization, which entailed a wide exposure to all facets of the Roman world. At least from the beginning of the third century, most rabbis lived in cities and were tied to the urban “wealthy and literate stratum.”38 This does not say very much: ultra-Orthodox comchanges when the Romans applied their “more energetic imperialism” after the destruction of the temple and the failure of the Jewish revolts (Imperialism, 107). For the vague manner in which Schwartz uses “imperialism” see Stuart S. Miller, “Roman Imperialism, Jewish Self-Definition and Rabbinic Society,” AJS Review 31 (2007): 329–62, 346, 349. 33 Schwartz, Imperialism, 163. Thus the continuing debate regarding the centrality of the rabbis in larger Jewish society in not relevant to this inquiry. For a fresh perspective on this matter see Adiel Schremer, “The Religious Orientation of Non-Rabbis in Second-Century Palestine: a Rabbinic perspective,” in Follow the Wise: Studies in Jewish History and Culture in Honor of Lee I. Levine, ed. Zeev Weiss et al. (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2010), 319–41. Cf. Hillel I. Newman “The Normativity of Rabbinic Judaism: Obstacles on the Path to a New Consensus,” in Jewish Identities in Antiquity: Studies in Memory of Menahem Stern, ed. Lee I. Levine and Daniel R. Schwartz (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009), 165–71. 34 See the vast bibliography collected in Cohn, Memory, 150–53, nn. 57–63. 35 For Hellenization in the rabbinic cycle see Lee I. Levine, Judaism and Hellenism in Antiquity: Conflict or Confluence (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1998), chap. 3; Schwartz, Imperialism, 162–76; Fergus Millar, “Transformations in Judaism under Graeco-Roman Rule: Responses to Seth Schwartz’s ‘Imperialism and Jewish Society,’” JJS 57 (2006): 139–58, 150–54. 36 Even if “it was Rome which first helped ‘Hellenism’ to its real victory in the East” (Martin Hengel, Jews, Greeks, and Barbarians: Aspects of the Hellenization of Judaism in the Pre-Christian Period [Philadelphia: Fortress, 1980], 53). Compare Hannah M. Cotton, “Change and Continuity in Late Legal Papyri from Palaestina Tertia,” in Dohrmann and Reed, Jews, Christians and the Roman Empire, 209–21, 210. On Hellenization and Romanization see Kennedy, “Review,” 9; Woolf, “Roman Provincial Cultures,” 13–16. 37 Millar, Roman Near East, 234–35. 38 Lapin, Rabbis as Romans, 72–73. On the rabbinic urban setting see Hayim Lapin, “Rabbis and Cities: The Literary Evidence,” JJS 50 (1999): 187–207; idem, “Rabbis and Cities: Some Aspects of the Rabbinic Movement in Its Graeco-Roman Environment,” in The Talmud Yerushalmi and Graeco-Roman Culture, vol. 2, ed. Peter Schäfer and Catherine Hezser (Tübingen: Mohr Sie-

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munities in Borough Park also live in a city, adapt and manipulate urban practices, and are intimately connected to local moneyed elites. Were the sages Roman only in the same sense that Belzer Hasidim are American? In order to move further we have to go beyond rabbinic habitus and ask about the rabbis’ self-perception and consciousness. Does rabbinic literature, or some parts of it, betray a provincial consciousness? Does it reflect an awareness of being part of the Roman tapestry? A comparison with another known provincial movement or trend, the Second Sophistic, can serve as a litmus test. A combination of native designation and a scholarly construct,39 the Second Sophistic is a collective appellation given to orators who operated in the Greek East, under Rome, at around the same time and place as the Tannaim. The speeches made by these late antique sophists were neither forensic nor political, and are classified by Philostratus as epideictic oratory—a kind of entertainment. Those performances famously share one main characteristic: classicism. The orators return time and again to the great days of classical Athens, both in topic (meletē, speaking for or with characters from Attic mythology, philosophy, or politics),40 and language (using the Attic dialect). This context is so central to their occupation that in his Lives of the Sophists Philostratus calls these practitioners simply “Greeks.” Evan Bowie,41 Simon Swain,42 and others uncovered the variegated manner in which these works preserve, promote, and examine Greek identity. The Tannaim too used their textual creativity to preserve a distinct identity. Like their Hellenic counterparts, they discuss an idyllic past in their works —the world of the temple and its rituals.43 Literature and politics are intertwined in both groups. Like the sophists, the rabbis imagined themselves as a local aristocracy

beck, 2000), 51–80. For dissenting views see Stuart Miller, Sages and Commoners in Late Antique ’Erez Israel (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005); Catherine Hezser, The Social Structure of the Rabbinic Movement in Roman Palestine (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1997) and her critique of Lapin’s view in Theologishe Literaturzeitung 138 (2013): 428–30, 429. 39 The term is found in Philostratus, Lives of the Sophists, 48. There, however, Second Sophistic is a second type of sophistic practice, different from the philosopher-sophists. He does not use the term to denote a renaissance of sophistry under Rome. See Graham Anderson, “The Pepaideumenos in Action: Sophists and Their Outlook in the Early Empire,” ANRW II.33.1 (1989):79–208, 82–83. 40 On the historical themes discussed in these works see Simon Swain, Hellenism and Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1996), 92–96; Tim Whitmarsh, The Second Sophistic (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 14, n. 35. 41 Evan L. Bowie, “The Greeks and Their Past in the Second Sophistic,” in Studies in Ancient Society, ed. M. I. Finley (Abingdon, Routledge, 1974), 166–209. 42 Swain dedicates the first half of his Hellenism and Empire to the sophists’ attitude towards classical Greece and the second half to their relations with Rome.­ 43 See Ishay Rosen-Zvi, The Mishnaic Sotah Ritual: Temple, Gender and Midrash (Leiden: Brill, 2012); Cohn, Memory.

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(though this surely is not to be taken at face value).44 Like the sophists, they functioned as emissaries, representing their people abroad (if we are to accept any of the many stories of rabbis travelling to Rome),45 and operated politically under Roman aegis. And just as the rabbis used biblical imagery and nomenclature (Esau, Edom, the Fourth Kingdom of Daniel) to describe their own political world, the sophists used the Persian wars to an anti-imperialist end.46 Both corpora are occupied with the tortured labor of developing a “national” culture after the loss of any remnant of political power. While classical sophists and rhetors were training statesmen, the “second” sophists, like their contemporaneous rabbinic mythmakers, focused on historical and literary oratory. Both phenomena are also inherently oral (though the sophists, unlike the Tannaim, took care to write their performances down).47 Lastly, it is worth noting that there were also sophists in Roman Palestine, in close proximity to the rabbis.48 It is thus clear why scholars see in this phenomenon “a fruitful, if still-understudied parallel for the provincial culture of the rabbis.”49 Accordingly, Amram Tropper explicitly suggests that the rabbis be seen as part of this larger trend: “The development of rabbinic Judaism may be seen in a broad sense as the replacement of political nationalism with cultural self-expression and a more accommodating stance to Rome.”50 And yet I would claim that the comparison is misleading and that the rabbis cannot be included in this phenomenon, no matter how broadly we label it. I wish to substantiate this claim with the aid of the Mishnah. As Fergus Millar emphasizes in his critique of Seth Schwartz’s Imperialism and Jewish Society, the Mishnah is a historical document of the highest degree. Not, granted, owing to the historical

44 Graham Anderson, The Second Sophistic: A Cultural Phenomenon in the Roman Empire (London: Routledge, 1993), 27. 45 See Shmuel Safrai, “Journeys of the Sages to Rome,” in Sefer zikkaron liShelomo Umberto Nakhon, ed. R. Bonfil et al. (Jerusalem: Mosad Samuel Meir and Mosad Raphael Cantoni, 1978), 151–67. On sophists as ambassadors see Naphthali Lewis, “Literati in the Service of Roman Emperors: Politics before Culture,” in Coins, Culture and History in the Ancient World: Numismatic and Other Studies in Honor of Bluma L. Trell, ed. L. Carson and M. Price (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1981), 149–66. See also Glen W. Bowersock, Greek Sophists in the Roman Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969), who emphasized their role as intermediaries. 46 Whitmarsh, Second Sophistic, 67–70. 47 On the performativity of Mishnah see Martin S. Jaffee, Torah in the Mouth: Writing and Oral Tradition in Palestinian Judaism 200 BCE–400 CE (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001) and Elisabeth Shanks Alexander, Transmitting Mishnah: The Shaping Influence of Oral Tradition (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006). 48 Joseph Geiger, The Tents of Japhet: Greek Intellectuals in Ancient Palestine (in Hebrew) (Jerusalem: Yad Ben-Zvi, 2012), 45–65. 49 Dohrmann, “Law and Imperial Idioms,” 74. 50 Tropper, Wisdom, 153. Tropper’s focus on tractate Avot, however, prevented him from noticing the main point of comparison: the dwelling on the greatness of the past—the Greek poleis and the Jerusalem temple.

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reliability of its statements, but to the testimony of the enterprise itself. “The fact” he writes “that a work in Hebrew of the scale and nature of the Mishnah could be compiled … in an area largely covered by Greek cities and their territories, is in itself of enormous significance.”51 It is this evidence that I wish to uncover below; not so much because of what it says about the rabbis’ external conditions, as per Millar, but as testimony to rabbinic self-consciousness.52 The Mishnah has an imperial consciousness. Unlike the sophists, it does not accept the Roman division of labor that, to borrow Tim Whitmarsh’s phrase, “rigorously apportioned culture to the Greeks and power to the Romans,”53 but offers a complete alternative to Rome. The comparison is not totally fair: unlike sophists who speak in public, in the language of the empire,54 the Mishnah is an internal text, and thus is able to offer an explicit narrative about Rome without resorting to subaltern devices and “hidden transcripts.”55 But the difference goes deeper than that. Rabbinic literature, and particularly the Mishnah, does not make do with the spaces the empire leaves for the provincials, but purports to create an alternative space, which offers an entire world to inhabit. It is a profound alternative to the Roman world, which encompasses metaphysics, religion, culture, and politics.56 Unlike the sophists, the Mishnah does not seem to “recognize” its political limitations. There is no space it does not occupy. It legislates an autonomous kingdom into being, including laws of war and capital punishment (the two spheres reserved

51 Millar, “Transformations,” 150. Cf. idem, “Roman Imperialism,” 337. 52 On the application of “self ” and “self-consciousness” to anonymous, collective rabbinic compositions see Dina Stein, Textual Mirrors: Reflexivity, Midrash, and the Rabbinic Self (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012). 53 Whitmarsh, Second Sophistic, 13–14. Cf. Bruce Chilton, The Temple of Jesus: His Sacrificial Program within a Cultural History of Sacrifice (Philadelphia: Penn State University Press, 1992), 71, where he writes that Josephus too holds that “Rome should rule, while Jerusalem is permitted to worship.” 54 Tim Whitmarsh, Greek Literature and the Roman Empire: The Politics of Imitation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 59–63, 186–88, 325–27. To avoid problems, Greek writers simply skipped over Rome, devoting themselves solely to the Greek past. Gerhard van den Heever, “Novel and Mystery,” in Ancient Fiction: The Matrix of Early Christian and Jewish Narrative, ed. J. Brant et al. (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 2005), 107, n. 70. 55 James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990). On the application of Scott’s “hidden transcripts” to rabbinic literature see Daniel Boyarin, “Tricksters, Martyrs, and Collaborators,” in Powers of Diaspora: Two Essays on the Relevance of Jewish Culture, ed. Jonathan Boyarin and idem (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2002).‫‏‬ 56 This of course has a clear resonance to Jacob Neusner’s reading of the Mishnah. For him, however, the Mishnah stands in opposition not only to the political realm, but to any realm. It is a virtual reality “alien to the world of the people who made the Mishnah itself.” Jacob Neusner, Ancient Israel after Catastrophe: The Religious World View of the Mishnah (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1983), 2. On Neusner’s thesis and its critique see Rosen-Zvi, Sotah Ritual, 247–48.

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for the emperor and his legates), king, Sanhedrin (senate), and temple. While the Mishnah has famously little space for metaphysics, its cosmos is centered in Jerusalem, the temple, and the Holy of Holies (Kelim 1:6–9). Israel is nominally ruled by a king, priests, and bet din (court), but actually by the rabbis, who populate the Sanhedrin, and to whom king and priests are effectively subordinated.57 Nothing is beyond mishnaic jurisdiction. All authorities—king, court, priests— are discussed in the Mishnah and subjected both to rabbinic laws and to the sages. The Mishnah includes discussions of the most severe sins, and all possible penalties, including capital punishment. It discusses laws that pertain only abroad, in places both closer (“Syria”) and remote (hus la’ares; see e.g. H  al. 4:8–11).58 It discusses cases related to the richest and the poorest. One cannot possibly assume that all these cases are directed at their own students. Other systems of law are rarely acknowledged in the Mishnah (see Git. 1:5), which usually recognizes no regulation but its own. Thus we never find the rabbis declining to resolve a certain question on the grounds that it is none of their business, or that other authorities were more capable of handling it than they. Such a response would have constituted an admission that the Torah had nothing to teach on the question at hand, and such an admission was simply inconceivable.59

It is therefore hard to accept Shaye Cohen’s blanket assertion that “in the second century the rabbinate neither was, nor had any interest in being, the leaders of Jewry.”60 While the first half is probably right, the second is contradicted by almost every page of the Mishnah. 57 For rabbinic limitations on the king see m. Sanh. 2:2–5 and Yair Lorberbaum, Poor King— Kingship in Early Rabbinic Literature and Its Biblical Background (Hebrew) (Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 2009). On rabbinic supervision of the high priest see m. Sanh. 2:1; Yoma 1:3–6. On rabbinic control of priestly pedigree see m. Mid. 5:4 and Ishay Rosen-Zvi, “Bodies and Temple: The List of Priestly Bodily Defects in Mishnah Bekhorot, Chapter 7,” Jewish Studies 43 (2006): 49–87. 58 On rabbinic geography see Eyal Ben-Eliyahu, Between Borders: The Borders of Eretz Israel in Jewish Consciousness in the Second Temple and Talmudic Eras (in Hebrew) (Jerusalem: Yad Ben-Zvi, 2013). 59 Robert Goldenberg, “Commandment and Consciousness in Talmudic Thought,” HTR 68 (1975): 261–71, 262. 60 Shaye J. D. Cohen, “The Place of the Rabbi in Jewish Society of the Second Century,” in The Galilee in Late Antiquity, ed. Lee I. Levine (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1992), 157–73, 157 (emphasis added). Similarly, and more radically, Seth Schwartz (Imperialism, 113): “they were unconcerned with and of no concern to Jews outside their own pietistic circles.” See, however, his more recent claim in Were the Jews a Mediterranean Society? Reciprocity and Solidarity in Ancient Judaism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010), 118, that “the rabbis had a vested interest … in viewing their version of the law of the Torah as the only legal system under which Jews could legitimately live.” Since “Jews” does not seem to be confined to the rabbis’ “own pietistic circles,” I do not see how these two statements could possibly both be true.

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Gentiles are not subject to the mishnaic law,61 and are not part of its “acculturation” project. While they too, as everything else, are objects of legal discussion, they are not subjects of it.62 Unlike the Roman concept of jurisdiction, based on citizenship rather than ethnos,63 rabbinic halakah is directed at Jews alone. But, critically, it is not confined to the politeuma, a communitarian autonomy that the central government allocates. Rather, it legislates and regulates a Jewish “empire” that rules all Jews wherever they may be.64 This consciousness is reflected not only in halakah but also in aggadah: Israel and the empire (malkut) are cast as binary opposites, as are God and Caesar, Jerusalem and Rome (or Caesarea, where the provincial government had its seat), and Jacob and Esau. Such homilies point out not only the antagonism Jews harbored

61 Even the famous Noahide laws are not discussed in the Mishnah, but only at an addendum to Tosefta Avodah Zarah. 62 Gentiles are discussed mostly in their interactions with Jews (impurity, eruv, idolatry, the Sabbath, etc.). See e.g. m. Neg. 3:1 (houses of gentiles not subject to house-leprosy); ’Ohal. 18:7 (all houses of gentiles are impure); ‘Abod. Zar. 4:8 (once grape juice is collected, gentiles render it forbidden by touching it). For a list of laws of gentiles in the Mishnah see Gary Porton, Goyim: Gentiles and Israelites in Mishnah-Tosefta (Providence: Brown Judaic Studies, 1988), 158–68. Only rarely is their own piety discussed, especially in relation to the temple (‘Arak. 1:2 and Šeqal. 1:5, 7:9), and, of course, conversion. See further: Ishay Rosen Zvi and Adi Ophir, “Goy: Toward a Genealogy” (in Hebrew) Diné Israel 28 (2011): 69–122. 63 On the institutionalization of relationships between citizens and foreigners in Roman law see Clifford Ando, Law, Language, and Empire in the Roman Tradition (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011). Ando emphasizes the legal pluralism this system creates (Cf. idem, “The Administration of the Provinces,” in A Companion to the Roman Empire, ed. D. S. Potter [Oxford: Blackwell, 2006], 177–92; idem, Imperial Rome AD 193 to 284: The Critical Century [Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press, 2012], 78–85). Compare this to R. Ishmael’s rule that diverse legal systems be applied to make sure that a Jew will always win a case against a gentile (Sifre Deut. 16). Goodman (State and Society, 160) cites this source as a parallel phenomenon to Roman legal pluralism, but in fact it seems as a caricature of it. Cf. t. B. Qam. 4:2 (two gentiles judged before a Jew according to “their” laws), and the very liberal (in both senses) interpretation offered to it in Bernard Jackson, “On the Problem of Roman Influence,” 168–69. Cf. Rabbi Elazar b. Azariah’s statement in Mek. R. Ish., Neziqin 1 (ed. Horovitz-Rabin, 246) and its analysis in Natalie B. Dohrman, “The Boundaries of the Law and the Problem of Jurisdiction in an Early Palestinian Midrash,” in Hezser, Rabbinic Law, 83–103. 64 True, “locations in the western diaspora were apparently not on the halakhic radar screen of the author of the Mishnah” (Aryeh Edrei and Doron Mendels, “The Split Jewish Diaspora: Its Dramatic Consequences,” Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha 16 [2007]: 91–137, 107). The Mishnah tends to “forget” the West: the new month is announced with bonfires to the East (Roš. Haš. 2:4); tithing is discussed (Yad. 4:3) for the Transjordan and Egypt, and assumed for Syria, but not for the West. The mishnaic mental map covered the East first, then North, up to Syria (and a bit further) and South, down to Egypt—but not the West. Cf. t. Šabb. 2:3, in which R. Yohanan b. Nuri lists the oils used by Jews of Babylon and Media (East), Alexandria (South), and Cappadocia (North)—but not the West. However, even if de facto the West falls off the rabbis’ mental map, de jure they see themselves responsible for the entire world, as can be seen from the common reference in the Mishnah to the “Sea Country” (medinat hayam) to the West.

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towards Rome, but—and more importantly—that Jewry and the empire are equal adversaries. The rabbis could not place themselves within the Roman civilization exactly because they belonged to an alternative, better, one, which, even if impoverished now, would have its day in the future. Dio Chrysostom, Plutarch, Lucian, Philostratus, and their compatriots in the first centuries CE did indeed live in the constraints of such dialectic—feeling, at one and the same time, both comfortable in the Roman world and estranged from it.65 Not so the rabbis. For them Rome is not such a dialectic symbol, to be both identified with and distinguished from; it is the ultimate Other. In this regard the rabbis are most similar to another Jew who operated in the eastern reaches of the empire, Paul. His biography also befits a local provincial grandee: a Hellenistic Jew from Tarsus (and Jerusalem) who turns to the provincial fringes and peddles his wares in synagogues (if Acts is to be believed), house churches, and voluntary associations. He did not come from the metropolitan centers of the empire, and he uses popular charisma rather than any formal authority. He is, in short, a classic provincial figure. And yet, as Pauline scholarship has shown time and again in recent years, Paul sees the ekklēsia of believers not as an integral part of the empire but as a complete alternative to it.66 “Paul too,” write Crossan and Reed, “proclaimed one who was Lord, Savior, Redeemer, and Liberator. He announced one who was Divine, Son of God, God, and God from God. But Paul’s new Divinity was Christ, not Caesar. His was a radically divergent but equally global theology.”67 Similarly, Neil Elliott writes: “Paul declared that he was charged by God with securing ‘faithful obedience among the nations’ … the obedience of nations was the prerogative claimed by the Roman emperor”; “His vision of the nations united under a single ruler echoed, and was probably shaped in response

65 This dialectic is most vividly presented in the papers collected in Simon Goldhill, ed., Being Greek under Rome: Cultural Identity, the Second Sophistic and the Development of Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). Cf. Greg Woolf, “Becoming Roman, Staying Greek: Culture, Identity and the Civilizing Process in the Roman East,” Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society 40 (1994): 116–43. 66 For the anti-imperial trend, “the most exciting developments today in the study of Paul,” (N. Thomas Wright, “Paul’s Gospel and Caesar’s Empire,” in Paul and Politics, ed. R. A. Horsley [Harrisburg: Bloomsbury, 2000], 160–83, 160); see Klaus Wengst, Pax Romana and the Peace of Jesus Christ, trans. J. Bowden (London: SCM, 1987); Neil Elliott, Liberating Paul: The Justice of God and the Politics of the Apostle (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005); and the three volumes edited by R. A. Horsley, Paul and Empire (Harrisburg: Bloomsbury, 1997), Paul and Politics (Harrisburg: Bloomsbury, 2000), and Paul and the Roman Imperial Order (Harrisburg: Bloomsbury, 2004). 67 John D. Crossan and Jonathan L. Reed, In Search of Paul (London: SPCK, 2005), 10. Cf. Sung-Chul Hong, “The Imperial Ideology of Rome and the Principalities and Powers in Romans 8:31–39,” Scripture & Interpretation 1 (2008): 85–101, who emphasizes the metaphysical, cosmic nature of the struggle against Rome’s divine powers.

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to, the imperial ideology of universal rule.”68 “These two ritual strategies,” he adds “did not coexist peacefully. That is they did not keep to neatly segregated ‘political’ and ‘religious,’ or public and private spheres. Instead, Paul’s apostolic performance constituted a rival representation of power.”69 And William Arnal concludes, in a passage that could be copied and pasted to describe the Mishnah: “the politeuma to which Paul refers is not subordinated to that of the city or the imperial order, is not constructed as familial or otherwise as a constituent of this larger order, but is presented as itself the larger order to which all other identities are subordinated.”70 True, those who do not preach the end of days to all peoples, exhorting them to abandon their gods (because of an aversion to missionizing or a more minimalist eschatology), have smaller chances of achieving martyrdom in Rome. But Roman sensitivities are a poor indicator of Jewish self-consciousness. The rabbis were being realistic when they chose not to rebel against Rome. They understood the limits of their power, at least after it was tested in three large-scale revolts. From the third century on, the Patriarch—a member of the rabbinic movement for the most part—became a part of the Roman system, and did not challenge it. But realpolitik—of the kind we find also in both Mishnah Avot 3:271 and Romans 13:1–772—is not to be confused with acceptance of Roman mores.73 As Martin Goodman justly notes, “passive acceptance of a Roman administration, consisting largely of tax col-

68 Neil Elliott, The Arrogance of Nations: Reading Romans in the Shadow of Empire (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2008), 25, 46. 69 Neil Elliott, “The Apostle Paul’s Self-Presentation as Anti-Imperial Performance,” in Horsley, Paul and the Roman Imperial Order, 67–68. Compare the symbolic significance of Spain in Roman propaganda—“by conquering the very shores of the Atlantic, the Romans could claim that their empire extended to the edge of the world” (Curchin, Romanization of Spain, 61–62)— with Paul’s own wish to reach Spain (Rom 16:28), thus spreading his gospel to the end of the inhabited world. 70 William E. Arnal, “Doxa, Heresy, and Self-Construction: The Pauline Ekklesiai and the Boundaries of Urban Identities,” in Heresy and Identity in Late Antiquity, ed. Eduard Iricinschi and Holger Zellentin (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008), 50–101, 88–89, n. 109. Cf. Hippolytus’s claim that the Roman Empire learned cosmopolitanism from Christ; Judith Perkins, Roman Imperial Identities in the Early Christian Period (Abingdon: Routledge, 2009), 17. 71 Does “praying for the wellbeing of the kingdom” refer to the annual prayer for the health of the reigning emperor (see Ando, Ideology, 359–60)? 72 “Advocating judicious restraint in certain volatile circumstances did not in any way lessen the general opposition to the Roman imperial regime” (Horsley, Paul and Empire, 146–47). 73 For the rabbinic modus vivendi with Rome see Mirelle Hadas-Lebel, Jerusalem against Rome, trans. R. Fréchet (Leuven: Peeters, 2006), 265–99. This state of “mild opposition” was analyzed by Martin Goodman, “Opponents of Rome: Jews and Others,” in Images of Empire, ed. Loveday Alexander (Sheffield: JSOT, 1991), 222–38. See especially his conclusion: “it is unwarranted to assume that most, realizing the folly of opposition, assimilated into the dominant culture and society.”

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lection, was a different matter from active participation in the Empire.”74 Indeed, when MacMullen says that “In the East the Emperor’s enemies fought chiefly with words” he refers first and foremost to Jews and Christians.75 In his Imperial Ideology and Provincial Loyalty in the Roman Empire (Berkeley: University of California, 2000), Clifford Ando reopened the debate about provincial collaboration. How did so many conquered peoples, from Greece to Egypt and from Gaul to Asia Minor, accept Roman-ness with open arms? Ando reiterates Gibbon’s claim that it was this acceptance, rather than sheer violence, that allowed the empire to survive for as long as it did. Greg Woolf and others further complicate the matter by showing that just as direct Roman force cannot be a satisfactory account for Romanization, so too the local elites’ self-interest is not, in and of itself, a sufficient explanation.76 The main key, claims Ando, is imperial ideology. Rome’s energy was directed not just to conquering the provinces and holding them, but to integrating them into the orbis Romanus—to creating a universal consensus. Paraphrasing Gramsci, he writes: “the rulers of the empire perpetually sought to found their actions on the consensus of their subjects, making them active participants in their own subjugation by urging them to iterate the principles of the ruling order.”77 Compliance with Roman rule came not just out of fear or opportunism, but from “faith

74 Goodman, State and Society, 148; cf. idem, Rome and Jerusalem: The Clash of Ancient Civilizations (New York: Vintage, 2008), 480. 75 Ramsay MacMullen, Enemies of the Roman Order: Treason, Unrest and Alienation in the Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966), 223. In one respect the early rabbis were more pretentious than Paul and his followers. The latter bridged the gap between ekklēsia and empire by differentiating between this world and the coming eschaton, thus advocating a doctrine of status quo (1 Cor 7). Cf. Neil Elliott’s analysis of the link between Paul’s conservative politics in Romans 13:1–7 and his imminent eschatology in vv. 11–14 (Neil Elliott, “Romans 13:1–7 in the Context of Imperial Propaganda,” in Horsley, Paul and Empire, 184–204; cf. John Marshall, “Hybridity and Reading Romans 13,” Journal for the Study of the New Testament 31 [2008]: 157–78). On the legacy of Paul’s collaborative attitude toward Rome see Heikki Räisänen, The Rise of Christian Beliefs: The Thought World of Early Christians (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2010), 295–96. In contrast, the early rabbis did not go further than tactical realpolitik. Only the Babylonian sages developed a more strategic mechanism of legitimation, teaching that “the law of the kingdom is valid.” See Schwartz, Mediterranean Society, 114, n. 12; 119–21 (pace Hadas-­ Lebel, Jerusalem, 285). 76 As per Martin Millett, The Romanization of Britain: An Essay in Archeological Interpretation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). Greg Woolf (“The Formation of Roman Provincial Cultures,” in Integration in the Early Roman West: The Role of Culture and Ideology, ed. J. Metzler, M. Millett, N. Roymans, and J. Slofstra [Luxembourg: Musée National d’Histoire et d’Art, 1995], 9–18, 11) criticizes the local elite’s model for its inability to account for the synchronic processes of Romanization in various provinces. Extension of imperial power must thus be taken into consideration—not as a direct initiator of Romanization, but rather as what makes it possible, meaningful, and worthwhile. 77 Ando, Imperial Ideology, 338.

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in the system”78 and in the emperor who personified it.79 The ruled did not simply replicate Rome,80 they became integral part of it. That imperialism, ideology, and rhetoric cannot be separated is clear enough; Ando, meticulously analyzing both Roman propaganda and provincial compliance, shows how successful this effort was and by what means it was achieved. While one can debate the centeredness of the subjects’ identification and consent,81 Ando’s analysis of mechanisms of legitimation—the manner in which Roman ideology was actualized and internalized —is salutary. As Ando himself acknowledges (but avoids developing),82 despite Roman universalizing ambitions, provinces and subgroups are different from each other. This remains true even when we concentrate on the East alone. Judea is not Syria, and the Jews themselves were not united in their reactions.83 Some (maybe many)84 accepted Roman-ness quite openly, as is shown from the Judean Desert papyri.85 78 Ando, Imperial Ideology, 374. 79 Ando, Imperial Ideology, 362–73. 80 Compare Ramsay MacMullen’s account of Romanization (published at the same year as Ando’s), as a simple process of replication: “once its essential content has been more or less decided on, early in Augustus’ time, the imposing of it on a fresh population was as easy as putting up work-forms for a wall: pouring the population into it was as quickly done; and the hardening of their habits of at least partial conformity could be expected to yield durable set of institutions” (Romanization, 126). The process was entirely bottom-up motivated; “the pull of that rich class,” not the “push” of the empire (134–37). No ideological energy was needed on the side of the conquerors; none was invested. On the limitations of “imitation” as a (sole) explanatory tool see Woolf, Becoming Roman, 15–16 and passim. 81 For a critique of Ando’s “political naïveté” see Mattingly, Imperialism, Power, and Identity, 14, 18; Elliott, Arrogance, 27–28. 82 See the critique of Perkins, Identities, 8–10. 83 For archeological evidence see Andrea M. Berlin, “Romanization and Anti-Romanization in Pre-Revolt Galilee,” in The First Jewish Revolt: Archeology, History, and Ideology, ed. eadem and J. Overman (London: Routledge, 2002), 57–73, 68. 84 The rabbis were obviously not the only ones to espouse anti-Roman sentiments, as the three revolts evidently show. For the prerevolt anti-Roman sentiments (“overt resistance”) see the provocative thesis of Andrea M. Berlin, “Romanization and Anti-Romanization”; eadem, “Jewish Life before the Revolt: The Archaeological Evidence,” JSJ 36 (2005): 417–70; eadem, “Identity Politics in Early Roman Galilee,” in The Jewish Revolt against Rome: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, ed. M. Popovic (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 69–106. For a different evaluation see Jodi Magness, Stone and Dung, Oil and Spit: Jewish Daily Life in the Time of Jesus (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011), 59–62. 85 Hannah M. Cotton, “The Impact of the Documentary Papyri from the Judaean Desert on the Study of Jewish History from 70 to 135 CE,” in Judische Geschichte in hellenistisch-romischer Zeit: Wege der Forschung: vom alten zum neuen Schurer, ed. E. Muller-Luckner and A. Oppenheimer (Munchen: Schriften des Historischen Kollegs, 1999), 221–36, 233: “Without coercion or attempts to impose uniformity, the simple presence of the Romans as the supreme authority in the province invited appeals to their authority, to their courts as well as to their laws … the documents from the Judaean Desert reveal to us a facet of the Roman-Jewish relationship not often in evidence … a day-to-day routine of good working relations”; see also eadem, “The Rab-

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There is thus no need to view Judea as an exception (as per Fergus Millar),86 and it may well be that Babatha and her peers are to be judged as “representative of provincials in general” as Hannah Cotton holds.87 But we are dealing with the rabbis! And they, we may safely say, never perceived themselves as Romans (and never mentioned the fact that they were, after 212, cives Romani).88 The rabbis were not part of a “culture of loyalism” celebrated by Ando; 89they did not compete for “esteem within the Roman order”;90 and nothing could describe them less than Gibbon’s assertion91 that the provincials “scarcely considered their own existence as distinct from the existence of Rome.” They definitely did not, to quote Ando

bis and the Documents,” in Jews in a Graeco-Roman World, ed. Martin Goodman (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1998), 167–79. Compare Ando’s general observation, in “Administration,” 189: “… the mechanisms available to a governor for achieving quietude were rudimentary at best. The astonishing popularity of Roman means for settling disputes is, therefore, an historical problem of the first rank.” Others are more skeptical with regard to the significance of the Judean Desert findings to Jewish-Roman relations, as Zeev Safrai writes in “Halakhic Observance in the Judaean Desert,” Law in the Documents of the Judaean Desert, ed. Ranon Katzoff and David Schaps (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 205–36, 225: “Since there was no nearby Jewish court … If a Jew wanted a document between him and his fellow to have legal validity, he was forced to write the document in Greek, and in a manner that would meet the requirements of the court in Petra or in Rabbah.” For Roman legal authorities and the documents see Jackson, “Roman Influence,” 164–66; Hannah M. Cotton and W. Eck, “Roman Officials in Judaea and Arabia and Civil Jurisdiction,” in Katzoff and Schaps, Law in the Documents, 23–44. 86 Millar, Roman Near East, 337–41; cf. Kennedy, “Greek, Roman and Native Cultures,” 86. 87 Cotton, “Documentary Papyri,” 233. Cf. Martin Goodman, “Jews, Greeks and Romans,” in idem, Jews in a Graeco-Roman World, 1–14, 4. Note that even if Roman Palestine did become an ordinary Roman province in the second and third centuries, this does not tell us much if we assume a laissez-faire policy, be it out of ideological pluralism (“Rome governed through the cultivation and management of difference and not through a universalization of some national culture,” Ando, Imperial Rome, 81) or sheer cynicism (“the fabric of Roman civilization was never ripped apart by such methodical hatred, in part because the purpose of the rulers was more limited. They wanted taxes,” MacMullen, Enemies, 218). 88 Goodman, Rome and Jerusalem, 483. This silence caused some scholars to suspect that the Jews were altogether excluded from the Constitutio Antoniniana (see Jackson, “Roman Influence,” 166, and the references there in 360–61, n. 82). Paul, in his letters, also does not mention his Roman citizenship (if we are to trust Acts 16:37; 22:25, 28, since for him: “our citizenship is in heaven” [Phil 3:20]). Later Christians “could speak of themselves as Romans” (Jeremy Schott, Christianity, Empire and the Making of Religion in Late Antiquity [Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008], 1), but always in a dialectical and conflicted manner (Perkins, Identities, 28–41). Compare Ando’s discussion of “citizenship’s inability to engender loyalty” especially when it ceased reflecting loyalty rewarded (Imperial Ideology, 10–11). 89 Pace Feldman, “Observations,” 46, who reads rabbinic “ambivalence” (or a “love-hate relationship,” 59) toward Rome as characterizing many contemporary writers, both Christians and pagans. 90 Ando, “Administration,” 182. 91 Quoted favorably by Ando, Imperial Ideology, 4, 9.

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again, “view the ideals and aims of their government as their own.”92 After all, the imperial propaganda of labeling Rome as, plainly, “the world”93 could not easily work for a group whose closest associates—the Babylonian rabbis—lived outside the limits of the empire.94 The most basic sign of loyalty in the East, the imperial cult, was intolerable for the rabbis. E. E. Urbach has noticed that this was the one form of idolatry the rabbis were not willing to accommodate. This is, he observes, what lies behind the ruling of the sages in m. ‘Abod. Zar. 3:1 that: “[statues] are not forbidden except those that hold a stick or a ball or a bird.”95 The same antagonism holds true for other elements marked by Ando as interpellating provincials as subjects, by bringing “the existence of both the emperor and empire” before their minds:96 the imperial calendar, the emperor’s images, annual oaths of loyalty, tax collections, birth registrations, census, and, above all, Roman law, with its judicial proceedings, edicts, decisions, appeals, etc. Two clear examples, both taken from the first chapter of Mishnah Avodah Zarah, are the imperial calendar and justice. The emperor’s anniversaries (days of crowning, birth, and death), which Ando marks as a central element in the for-

92 Ando continues (Imperial Ideology, 337): “many victims of Roman aggression agreed with the Romans themselves that success in war was proof of divine favor toward Rome.” On the active polemic against such claims in rabbinic literature see Schremer, “Orientation.” Even in the single source in which such a claim appears in the name of a rabbi—“this nation was crowned by heaven” (b. ‘Abod. Zar. 18a)—it appears only in the Bavli and serves there to negate an open rebellion and nothing more. Contrast the much more far-reaching function of this claim in Agrippa’s speech in Josephus, J.W. 2:390, as well as in Josephus’s own speech in J.W. 5:367; and compare also its usage by Paul in Romans 13:4. Cf. Daniel Boyarin, Dying for God: Martyrdom and the Making of Christianity and Judaism (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999), 42–66. 93 Ando, Imperial Ideology, 327. 94 See b. Pesah. 87b; Isaiah Gafni, Land, Center and Diaspora: Jewish Constructs in Late Antiquity (Sheffield: A&C Black, 1997), 31–32. The midrashic assertion that Rome ruled “from one end of the world to the other” (Mek. R. Ish., Beshalah 1 [ed. Horovitz-Rabin, 87]) simply means that they were a world power, as is proven from the fact that this designation applies there for all past empires too. Only a world power is entitled by God to enslave the Jews “for the sake of the honor of Israel.” 95 Ephraim E. Urbach, “The Laws of Idolatry and the Archaeological and Historical Reality of the Second and Third Centuries” (in Hebrew), in From the World of the Sages (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1987), 125–78. See the doubts regarding the precise type of statues referred to in this Mishnah (emperors, gods, or both) in Gerald J. Blidstein, “Rabbinic Legislation on Idolatry— Tractate Abodah Zarah, Chapter 1,” (PhD diss., Yeshiva University, 1962), 336–37 and the sound reply of Yair Furstenberg, “The Rabbinic View of Idolatry and the Roman Political Conception of Divinity,” Journal of Religion 90 (2010): 335–66, 347, n. 25. For comparison with Christian attitudes see Glen W. Bowersock, “The Imperial Cult: Perspective and Persistence,” in Self-Definition in the Greco-Roman World, vol. 3 of Jewish and Christian Self-Definition, ed. B. F. Meyer and E. P. Sanders (Philadelphia: Fortress 1982), 171–82, 174–76. 96 Ando, Imperial Ideology, 362, 408.

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mation of the imperial consensus,97 stand at the center of the list of forbidden holidays in ‘Abod. Zar. 1:3.98 Ando similarly emphasizes the importance (and high visibility) of the governors’ assize and trials, functioning as legal rituals through which the idea of Roman law and justice was realized in the provinces.99 ‘Abod. Zar. 1:7 can indeed meticulously enumerate the places of Roman trials and executions—the basilica, the bema, and the gradus—and yet refuses to distinguish between these and the stadium, in which death was part of popular amusement.100 All four monuments are equally considered by this mishnah as places of bloodshed,101 and one is thus forbidden from participating in their construction, even though no law of idolatry is involved. In seems that the Mishnah, for one, did not buy into the Roman propaganda of universal justice. Other cases of halakic anti-imperialism in the Mishnah include:102 the permission to swear a false vow in order to avoid taxes (Ned. 3:4); the prohibition to hand over women to be “defiled” by gentiles (Ter. 8:12);103 the invalidity of a bill of divorce forced by a gentile court (Git. 9:8); or the illegitimacy of buying land confiscated by Roman authorities (Git. 5:6).104 I have elaborated on these two specific examples because it is exactly these spheres—the figure of the emperor and the claim for rational and just governance—that facilitate, according to Ando, the provincial consensus.105 It was not simply monotheism and the prohibitions of idols that estranged the rabbis from the empire.106 Nor should we look for the reasons in memories of rebellion cruelly stomped out or conditions specific to Roman Palestine.107 The roots of estrangement go much deeper. While scholars highlight resistance (always mixed   97 Ando, Imperial Ideology, 407.   98 See F. Graf, “Roman Festivals in Syria Palaestina,” in Schäfer, Talmud Yerushalmi, 3:435–51; G. Veltri “Römische Religion an der Peripherie des Reiches. Ein Kapitel rabbinischer Rhetorik,” Schäfer and Hezser, Talmud Yerushalmi 2:104–32.   99 Ando, Imperial Ideology, 373–78; 408–10 Cf. Ando, Law, 19–36. 100 On the rabbinic attitude toward the stadium see Rosen-Zvi, Sotah Ritual, 219–22. 101 See the beginning of this mishnah: “It is forbidden to sell them bears and lions and any­ thing that can harm the public.” 102 But not too many! The Mishnah, as seen above, forms its own empire, only rarely discussing (and thus acknowledging) foreign ones. The mishnaic sovereign is the Davidic king, and gentiles are discussed for the most part as individuals, not as powerful rulers. 103 See David Daube, Collaboration with Tyranny in Rabbinic Law (London: Oxford University Press, 1965), 69–84. 104 For the latter case see Schwartz, Mediterranean Society, 115 and n. 15. 105 Ando, Imperial Ideology, 338; 392; 397. 106 The rabbis knew how to mitigate idolatry when they so wished. See Ishay Rosen-Zvi, “Idolatry and the Biblical Concept of Herem in Tannaitic Midrash,” in The Gift of the Land and the Fate of the Canaanites in the History of Jewish Thought, ed. Katell Berthelot, Joseph E. David, and Marc Hirshman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). Special compromises were offered when Roman authorities were involved. See e.g. t. ‘Abod. Zar. 6:1. 107 As per Schwartz, Mediterranean Society, 120.

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with adaptation) to the religious/cultural/political order,108 there is another factor to note: the formation of an alternative to it. The rabbis, as at least some early Christians,109 could not see themselves as integral parts of a Roman whole because they offered a complete alternative to the empire; a system, indeed a universe, of their own making. True, this alternative—in which the Jewish God is pictured as a super-emperor—can itself be read as a clear sign of cultural mimicry,110 but this is hardly the kind of conscious Roman-ness we are looking for. The world of the Mishnah is an alternative empire encapsulated in a text. Despite the fact that most of this empire (the laws of the temple and its cult, and most of the civil and criminal code) has no application in reality, 111the mishnaic utopia is set in everyday life, not in some imaginary “Sophistopolis” beyond time and place.112 It is this mundane nature of the mishnaic law that forms it as an alternative, textual and yet real, to Rome. Thus when “[Gedalyahu] Alon and his followers regarded post-70 Palestinian Jews not primarily as Roman subjects, and after 212 as citizens, but fundamentally as members of a separate nation, one that possessed fully functioning national institutions …,” as Seth Schwartz critically

108 Urbach, “Laws of Idolatry”; Moshe Halbertal, “Coexisting with the Enemy: Jews and Pagans in the Mishnah,” in Tolerance and Intolerance in Early Judaism and Christianity, ed. Graham Stanton and Guy Strounsa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 158–72; Noam Zohar, “Idolatry and Its Nullification” (in Hebrew), Sidra 17 (2001–2): 63–77. 109 Donald L. Jones, “Christianity and the Roman Imperial Cult,” ANRW II.23.2 (1980): 1023–54; Price, Rituals of Power, 122–26; Robert L. Wilken, The Christians as the Romans Saw Them (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984), 48–67; Robin Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians (New York: Knopf, 1987), 419–34; Goodman, Rome and Jerusalem, 488–522; Räisänen, Rise of Christian Beliefs, 283–96. 110 For mimicry of empire’s hierarchy in rabbinic literature see Alan Appelbaum, The Rabbis’ King-Parables (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias, 2013). For similar phenomena in the later Byzantine period see Aleksei M. Sivertsev, Judaism and Imperial Ideology in Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). Even when the homilists attempt to create an opposition between God and the emperor they might find themselves imitating Roman propaganda. Compare Mek. R. Ish., Shirata 4 (ed. Horovitz-Rabin, 130–31) with Ando, Ideology, 362–73 and 386–90, with regard to the expectations from the emperor to deal justice to, and provide for, all his subjects. This penetrates rabbinic legal discourse itself, as is shown, for example, in the addition of the idiom “king of the universe” to the regular benediction formula by early Amoraim (y. Ber. 9:1, 12d; b. Ber. 40a). For the imperial context of this formula see Reuven Kimelman, “Blessing Formulae and Divine Sovereignty in Rabbinic Liturgy,” in Liturgy in the Life of the Synagogue: Studies in the History of Jewish Prayer (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2005), 1–39. One wonders whether such imitations necessarily testify to “knowledge of and respect for those institutions” as Ando insists (Ideology, 382; emphasis added). 111 See Shaye J. D. Cohen, “The Rabbi in Second Century Jewish Society,” in The Cambridge History of Judaism, ed. William Horbury, W. D. Davies, and John Sturdy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 3:922–90; Rosen-Zvi, Sotah Ritual, 239–54. 112 For this term see Donald A. Russell, Greek Declamation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 21–39.

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(and correctly) notes,113 they severely distorted historical reality, but captured quite accurately (and were reflecting) rabbinic self-conception. Imagination is an inseparable part of any political system.114 While modern imaginations concentrate on the ruled as forming a unified community,115 the Roman one focused on the political system as the generator of this community. A lion’s share of Rome’s ideological work was dedicated to cause the ruled to imagine the empire as a (the) whole, to learn to identify this whole in each of its local, multiple, and (necessarily) partial manifestations—from tax collectors to the governor’s statutes, from local rituals to provincial monuments—and to imagine themselves as an integral part of this whole.116 In the beginning of the second century, Ephesians regularly carried statues of Trajan and Artemis together in procession.117 This signified not only a deification of the emperor or an acknowledgement of his ultimate power, but also incorporated the local myth and tradition into the narrative of the greater Roman cosmos. This is what makes the imperial cult so fundamental.118 Rabbinic literature disables this imaginer, by creating an alternative, competing, and no less exclusive, cosmos. By rejecting the Roman claim of being the whole in which all parts find their place, and refusing the division of labor it entails, they rejected a major part of Roman-ness itself. I would thus like to suggest a middle way between uniqueness and paralellomania.119 We do not have to assume that the centrality of the Bible made the Jews fundamentally different in their reactions, as per Fergus Millar.120 But certain Jewish groups, along with their followers (and their numbers are unimportant) were indeed different, not just because they resented Roman imperium (although they surely did) but because they offered a complete alternative to it. In Christianity, Empire and the Making of Religion in Late Antiquity Jeremy Schott analyzes the attitude of early Christian apologists toward Roman imperialism.121 While uncovering the complexity and multifaceted nature of the negotiation which 113 Seth Schwartz, “The Political Geography of Rabbinic Texts,” in Fonrobert and Jaffee, Cambridge Companion to the Talmud, 75–96, 84–85. 114 Yaron Ezrahi, Imagined Democracies: Necessary Political Fictions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 37–59. 115 Benedict R. Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983). 116 Ando, Ideology, 11, 408 and passim. 117 Price, Rituals of Power, 130–31. 118 Cf. Elliott, “The Apostle Paul’s Self-Presentation,” 67–88, esp. 69–70. 119 For the former term, see E. P. Sanders, The Question of Uniqueness in the Teaching of Jesus (The Ethel M. Wood Lecture, The University of London, February 15, 1990); for the latter, Samuel Sandmel, “Parallelomania,” Journal of Biblical Literature 81 (1962): 1–13. 120 Millar, Roman Near East, 337. Millar adds Samaritans to the list in idem, “Ethnic Identity in the Roman Near East, A.D. 325–450: Language, Religion, and Culture,” Mediterranean Archeology 11 (1998): 159–76. 121 Schott, Christianity.

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Justin, Tertullian, or Lactantius had with the empire, Schott shows that it was indeed a negotiation. When Tatian asks “Which of your costumes has not originated from the barbarians?” (Or. Graec. 1.1) he is no less critical of Hellenic wisdom than the rabbis. But even he, the most anti-Greek of all apologists, speaks in the language (i.e. rhetoric, ideology, discourse) of empire, and invites his audience to read him as part of a shared Roman conversation on universalism, imperialism, and ecumenical philosophy.122 This conversation was also shared by Jewish apologists such as Philo and Josephus, but not by the rabbis.123 Nothing in their literature lends itself to a similar analysis. Their alternative is non-negotiable. No apologies are offered.124 If “becoming Roman was not a matter of acquiring a ready-made package, so much as joining the insiders’ debate about what that package did or ought to consist of,”125 we have to admit that the rabbis were not part of this debate. To conclude: scholars are hard pressed to find parallels between the Mishnah and Roman law. Such parallels may be analyzed on various levels: knowledge of language, level of acquaintance with the Roman legal material, sources of the mishnaic law, and chronological issues. I have offered a more general context to this somewhat unsuccessful scholarly endeavor, suggesting to treat it as part of the question of Romanization at large. Seeing the Mishnah as an alternative to Rome does not contradict all sorts of undeliberate influences, but it does significantly reduce the openness to Roman legal models, whether in the context of specific laws or in the composition at large. When discussing this issue we should thus always bear in mind that the rabbis formed a sophisticated, stubborn (if latent), antagonistic movement, developing a creative alternative order, on the fringes of the Roman universe.

122 Thus, for example, Celsus’s answer to Justin’s Logos theology reveals that “Christian mimesis of ecumenical philosophy among the early apologists threatened Roman imperialism as well as Greek Philosophical hegemony” (Schott, Christianity, 48). 123 For a similar evaluation see Schwartz, Mediterranean Society, 112–16. I wholeheartedly agree with Schwartz’s assertion that “the rabbis proclaimed their alienation from normative Roman culture in every line they wrote” (114). I also accept his subsequent statement that “Rabbinic resistance is only part of the story, though one that requires emphasis to counterbalance the simplistically integrationist account accepted, especially in the past, by so many American rabbinists” (116). His study then shows that the rabbis internalized (ambivalently) Roman concepts of honor and deference. While convincing, it does not actually contradict the alienation thesis. Compare his conclusion: “At the moment, then, that the rabbis were striving to extricate themselves from the Roman system, to provide for the Jews a coherent and apparently radical alternative, they were also demonstrating their commitment to some its core values” (164; cf. 174–75). This phenomenon, I think, would be better explained by inverting the order of the sentence: at the same moment that the rabbis were internalizing Roman values, they used them to form a radical alternative to the Roman system. I would also, as the analysis above makes clear, date this phenomenon to the second, rather than third or fourth, century. 124 Cf. Chaim Milikowsky, Seder Olam: Critical Edition, Commentary and Introduction (in Hebrew) (Jerusalem: Yad Ben-Zvi, 2013), 1:17. 125 Woolf, Becoming Roman, 11.

Jeffrey Rubenstein

Hero, Saint, and Sage: The Life of R. Elazar b. R. Shimon in Pesiqta de Rab Kahana 11 Dr. Steven Fraade’s prodigious contributions to scholarship span many diverse fields: Bible, rabbinics, Dead Sea Scrolls, the literature and history of the Second Temple period, linguistics, epigraphy, Aramaic, Targum, asceticism, liturgy, legal theory and more. Apart from this remarkable scholarship, he is the most generous and supportive colleague, mentor, advisor, and friend—a true credit to the academic profession.

The stories of R. Elazar b. R. Shimon bar Yohai (henceforth REbRS) are among the most colorful rabbinic biographical traditions. A collection of these stories appears in Pesiqta de Rab Kahana 11 (henceforth PRK) and within a lengthy Bavli aggadic passage in b. B. Mes . 83b–86a. Shamma Friedman has shown that the Bavli passage is based on the PRK collection (or a collection very similar to that now found in PRK), which was received whole cloth in Babylonia and then glossed, augmented, supplemented with other traditions, and otherwise reworked.1 This Bavli passage has received copious scholarly attention in recent years due to its thematics, which include the male body, sex, reproduction, beauty, and death.2 The more original passage in PRK 11 has been relatively neglected, discussed primarily to shed light on what is distinctly Babylonian in the Talmud’s version of the collection, on how the Bavli aggadists reworked their sources. With the exception of a brief article by Marc Hirshman, it has not received concentrated attention in its own right.3 The

* I would like to thank Marc Hirshman, Yonatan Feintuch, David Stern, Jay Rovner, Tzvi Novick, Michal Bar-Asher Siegal, and Adam Becker for their comments on preliminary versions of this paper. 1 Shamma Friedman, “La’aggadah hahistorit batalmud babli,” in Saul Lieberman Memorial Volume, ed. Shamma Friedman (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1993), 119–64. 2 Daniel Boyarin, Carnal Israel: Reading Sex in Talmudic Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 197–225; Ronit Shoshany, “Rabbi Elazar ben Shimon and the Thieves: A Story of Sin and Atonement” (in Hebrew), JSIJ 4 (2005): 1–21, with further references. I would also like to thank David Stern for sharing his forthcoming article on the Bavli parallel with me, and for fertile discussion of this text. 3 Marc Hirshman, “Paideia and the Pesiqta de Rab Kahana” (in Hebrew), in Higayon Leyonah: New Aspects in the Study of Midrash, ed. Joshua Levinson et al. (Jerusalem: Magnes, 2006), 165–78.

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present article aims to fill this scholarly lacuna by offering some thoughts about the disparate cultural influences that feature in this collection o­ f biographical traditions. The PRK passage is distinctive by rabbinic standards in that it is among the longest sequences of biographical anecdotes about a single sage. In his study of “story cycles” in rabbinic literature, Eli Yassif writes, “We found no biographical story cycle in rabbinic literature that could be categorized as hagiography. Nor is there even a single story cycle that orders biographical legends chronologically and reflects a continuous progression of the hero’s life.”4 The organizing principle of collections of sage stories is generally thematic, such as the long series of “stories of destruction” in b. Git . 55a–57a. Biographical collections are much more limited in scope, typically containing two or three stories. Yassif finds only two possible exceptions: “The only two biographical cycles to come very close to being edited according to biographical logic are those concerning Rabbi Judah the Patriarch (PT, Kilayim 9, 3) and the tales of R. Eleazar ben Simeon (Bava Mezia 83b–84b).”5 Here too one sees the predilection for the Bavli mentioned above, as Yassif omits mention of the more original collection of these tales of REbRS in PRK and offers some analyses of the Bavli passage, which he claims is “the largest biographical grouping of tales in rabbinic literature.”6 The reason these two cycles— and I assume Yassif would say the same for the PRK version—“come very close” but do not quite qualify as rabbinic biography and hagiography is that the editors are more interested in showing “the connection and causal relationship between various events in the life of the hero,” such as transgression and punishment, than “the life of the hero” itself.7 This is probably a false dichotomy: classical and late antique hagiographers too were specifically interested in “the life of the hero” not as an object of interest in and of itself, but precisely because of the “connection and causal relationship between various events” in the life of their subjects and the didactic impact on their audiences.8 For the present it suffices to recognize 4 Eli Yassif, The Hebrew Folktale: History, Genre, Meaning, trans. Jacqueline S. Teitelbaum (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), 218. 5 Yassif, Hebrew Folktale, 221. Yassif notes that there are also two “biographical cycles of broader scope, the character of whose tales indicate that they were culled from folk tradition,” namely the stories of R. Pinhas b. Ya’ir (y. Demai 3:1) and R. Bena’ah (b. B. Bat. 59a). In other words, rabbinic compilers received these biographical cycles as a unit and included them in rabbinic works, but did not themselves compose or produce these cycles organized by biographical principle. 6 This is odd, as the same Bavli passage, b. B. Mes. 84b–86a, continues with a parallel to the series of stories of R. Judah Hanasi from y. Kil. 9:3 that Yassif mentions, but he refers to the original Palestinian version of that collection and the Bavli version of the stories of REbRS. Perhaps this is because the Bavli redactors repeatedly interrupt the stories of R. Judah Hanasi with other narratives stories and traditions, such that the passage is less cohesive. 7 Yassif, Hebrew Folktale, 221. 8 Jeffrey L. Rubenstein, Talmudic Stories: Narrative Art, Composition, and Culture (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), 6–7 and the references there.

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this PRK collection as exceptional, not just in length or form, as Yassif describes, but in content too. How can we account for this compilation? Marc Hirshman, the one scholar who has focused on the PRK collection itself, suggests that given its exceptional biographical concentration, a comparison to similar biographical writings from the ambient culture is “riveting.”9 He turns to the biography of Origen by Eusebius (Ecclesiastical History, book 6) and that of Plotinus by Porphyry (Enneads, book 1). Hirshman is undoubtedly correct to set this biographically organized PRK collection in the context of nonrabbinic biographical tradition. But why Hirshman chose these two biographies is never explained or justified,10 and his comparison with the stories of REbRS in the PRK yields more points of contrast and difference than contact and similarity.11 For example, Hirshman finds a significant difference in attitudes to the body of the holy man, with the rabbinic perspective more positive than the Christian and pagan views. In addition, both of these biographies were written considerably earlier than the editing of PRK, generally dated to the late fifth century; Porphyry died c. 305 CE and Eusebius c. 340 CE, although Plotinus, Origin, and REbRS all lived in third century. I propose that the PRK biographical collection be understood as a product of the influences of two streams of late antique biographical writing on the rabbinic sage tale, namely Greco-Roman biographical traditions of the hero athlete and Christian hagiographical tales of ascetics, martyrs, and “holy men.”12 Or to put it in slightly different terms: this collection combines three types of late antique biographical writing (or oral storytelling): Greco-Roman biography of the hero athlete, Christian hagiography of the holy man, and the rabbinic biographical anecdote of the sage. An awkward mingling of these related but different genres

9 Hirshman, “Paideia,” 169. 10 Except insofar as they were the subject “of excellent research by Patricia Cox” in her widely respected Biography in Late Antiquity: A Quest for the Holy Man (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), which is mentioned by Hirshman, “Paideia,” 169 and n. 15. Hirshman’s interests, however, relate to the PRK as a whole, of which the biographical narratives are but one element. 11 Hirshman, “Paideia,” 171, notes that Eusebius describes Origen as intellectually oriented from his youth, asking deep questions about Scripture at a young age, “in contrast to this, R. Eleazar is described as being graced with prodigious physical powers in his youth, whereas special spiritual powers are not mentioned.” He also underscores “the most prominent point distinguishing the two Greek biographies from that of R. Eleazar” is that Plotinus was ashamed of all bodily things, and Eusebius adopted ascetic practices and reportedly castrated himself, whereas R. Eleazar’s “biography” begins with a description of his great physical strength (172–73). 12 Here is not the forum for a lengthy discussion grappling with the complexities of “influence,” as opposed to “cultural intertextuality,” “ecotypification,” “shared narratives,” etc. At minimum rabbis and Christians were part of the same matrix of late antique Greco-Roman religion and grappled with asceticism, the nature of the holy man/sage, and other concerns in similar ways.

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of biographical tradition, the PRK’s “Life of REbRS” reflects the complex relationship of rabbinic Judaism and its ambient cultures. In producing the collection, rabbinic compilers appropriated, adapted, and also resisted elements of the various late antique biographical traditions.

The PRK Collection and Its Context Before discussing the different cultural influences that contributed to the REbRS collection, a few words are required concerning its redactional setting and general content. The collection is found in PRK Vayehi bešalah (Exod 13:17; “And it came to pass that Pharaoh let the people go”), the pisqa for the seventh day of Passover (ed. Mandlebaum, chapter 11, sections 18–24).13 An outline of the contents is as follows: 11:18. Donkey drivers come to buy corn, see REbRS eating an entire troughful of bread, and suggest that a snake is in his stomach (consuming the bread such that he remains hungry). He lifts their donkeys onto the roof. They complain to RSbY, who suggests that they apologize, whereupon REbRS retrieves their donkeys, bringing them down two at a time. 11:19. REbRS is appointed ‫=( ארכן ליפרין‬archiriparios [?], “chief of customs” or perhaps “chief of police”)14 apparently by the Romans, to act as executioner of those sentenced to die. He is rebuked by R. Joshua b. Qorha, who calls him “vinegar, son of wine.” 11:20. REbRS visits his father-in-law, R. Shimon b. Laqonia, who prepares an ox, a troughful of bread, and a cask of wine. REbRS drinks a prodigious quantity of wine. 11:21. REbRS asks R. Shimon b. Laqonia five questions about the clothes of the Israelites in the desert, based on Deut 8:4, “The clothes upon you did not wear out.” 11:22. REbRS is appointed (by the Romans?) in charge of forced labor (’angaria’). Elijah appears to him as an old man requesting a beast to carry him, but REbRS ends up carrying Elijah on his own back. Eventually he puts Elijah down to rest, and Elijah suggests he abandon this “labor” (tripta’), i. e. this way of life, and adopt the “vocation” (’omanut) of his fathers. He agrees, and Elijah spends thirteen years teaching him the Sifra. When he finishes studying REbRS is so weakened that he cannot even

13 Pesiqta de Rab Kahana, ed. Bernard Mandelbaum (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1962). English translation: William Braude and Israel Kapstein, Pesiqta de Rab Kahana (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1975), 218–22. 14 Mandelbaum, followed by Braude/Kapstein, offers “chief of customs,” but from the context the job seems more violent, whatever the philology. Cf. Buber’s edition of PRK, 91b, n. 205.

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carry his own cloak. (There follows a similar story of a member of Rabban Gamaliel’s household who became weak merely after hearing it suggested that he study Torah.) 11:23. The death and burial of REbRS. He tells his wife worms will not have power over his body, except for one that will nibble his ear as punishment for a sin of omission. He dies and is buried in Gush H  alav, but RSbY appears to the Meronites requesting that they bury REbRS with him in Meron. The people of Gush H  alav fight off the Meronites, who eventually return on the night following Yom Kippur, spirit away the body and bury it. 11.24. R. Judah Hanasi worried when REbRS entered the house of study, because he was an inferior scholar. When REbRS died, R. Judah Hanasi proposed to REbRS’s widow, who rejected him, on the grounds that “a vessel used for a sacred purpose may not be used for a profane [purpose].” She explains that REbRS used to call upon himself the sufferings of all Israel each night and dismiss them in the morning. When R. Judah Hanasi tried to do the same, the sufferings do not leave him.

This collection of traditions of REbRS is preceded by several brief stories about his father RSbY in 11:15–17, which contain one mention of REbRS in the well-known story of RSbY and his thirteen-year sojourn in the cave (11:16). RSbY is the protagonist of this story, and REbRS simply mentioned as being in the cave with his father.15 In some respects we can describe the whole series of stories as a single unit encompassing both RSbY and his son REbRS, spanning PRK 11:15–11:24.16 Yet there are fewer stories of RSbY, and the stories are somewhat less thematically focused than those of REbRS. It may be more accurate to characterize the stories of RSbY as an ordinary collection of rabbinic sage stories (in keeping with Yassif ’s observations cited above), followed by an extraordinary collection of REbRS stories. The stories of RSbY function as a segue to the REbRS collection, as REbRS makes that minor cameo in the cave story. Nevertheless, the juxtaposition of series of stories about a father and son is important as we consider the genre and sources of this literary complex. The first thirteen sections of the pisqa (PRK 11:1–13) follow the standard form and structure of many chapters of PRK and of Leviticus Rabbah, the classical

15 REbRS is only mentioned by name at the outset and not referenced again, except in the statement introduced as “they said” when they emerge from the cave, which presumably refers to both, although it could be the “royal we”; see Michal Bar-Asher Siegal, Early Christian Monastic Literature and the Babylonian Talmud (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 140. Nor does REbRS appear in the version of this story in y. Šeb. 9:1, 38d. Perhaps the PRK editor added him into the cave story to create a segue to the collection that follows, although REbRS also appears in the parallels to the cave story in Gen Rab. 79:6, Qoh Rab. 10:11, Esther Rab. 3:7 and b. Šabb. 33b–34a. 16 So Abraham Goldberg, in his review of Mandelbaum’s edition, Kiryat seper 43 (1967): 76.

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Amoraic midrashim, as described by Joseph Heinemann.17 The first six sections, PRK 11:1–6, are proems, or petih  ta’ot, which begin with a “remote” verse and conclude with the base-verse or petihta’-verse, Exod 13:17. There follow “exegetical comments,” or what Heinemann called “the body of the sermon” (gup haparašah), beginning with Exod 13:17 (PRK 11:7–10) and continuing with Exod 13:18 (PRK 11:11) and Exod 13:19 (PRK 11:12).18 Exod 13:19 mentions that Moses took Joseph’s bones with him, and PRK 11:12 contains the famous tradition of Moses “magically” raising up Joseph’s coffin from the Nile so that it could be brought to the Land of Israel for burial, which may connect to the REbRS traditions (see below). The next section, PRK 11:13, contains a tradition attributed to R. Yohanan about how the water stood like a wall for the Israelites. It is based on Exod 14:29, “And the waters were a wall unto them” (although the verse is not cited), and is thus consistent with the focus of the pisqa on the exodus, and also refers to the raising of Joseph’s coffin, the subject of PRK 11:12. PRK 11:14 offers a tradition about King David based on Ps 25:1, whose relationship to the previous sections is unclear.19 The final section, PRK 11:25, which follows the REbRS stories, returns to Exod 13:19 with exegetical comments, picking up from PRK 11:12, and makes a very modest gesture at the “messianic peroration” that Heinemann claimed concludes the homilies of Leviticus Rabbah and PRK.20 Thus PRK 11:1–14 + 11:25 constitute a typical pisqa, into which the stories of RSbY and REbRS (11:15–17, 11:18–24) have been inserted. Comprehensive analysis of the relationship between these stories and the redactional context in PRK 11 requires an independent study.21 But there is a consensus of scholarly opinion that the REbRS collection constitutes a preexisting, independent unit that was included intact in this chapter of PRK. Indeed, several scholars have despaired of

17 Joseph Heinemann, “The Proem in the Aggadic Midrashim,” Scripta Hierosolymitana 22 (1971): 100–122; idem, “The Art of Composition in Leviticus Rabbah” (in Hebrew), Hasifrut 2 (1969–71): 809–34; idem, “Profile of a Midrash: The Art of Composition in Leviticus Rabbah,” JAAR 39 (1971): 141–50. For revision of some of Heinemann’s claims, and comments on the structure of the PRK, see Burton L. Vizotsky, “The Misnomers ‘Petihah’ and ‘Homiletic Midrash’ as Descriptions for Leviticus Rabbah and Pesikta De-Rav Kahana,” JSQ 18 (2011): 19–31. 18 See Avraham Goldberg, Kiryat seper 43 (1967): 76, for a discussion of the structure of the pisqa. PRK does not use the term gupa’. I mean that beginning with 11:7 we no longer have the petihta’ (or base-verse/target-verse) form (whatever we make of its Sitz im Leben). 19 There is no obvious connection between this paragraph and what precedes or follows. Its appearance here requires further study. In his review of Mandelbaum’s edition in Kiryat seper 43 (1967), Goldberg suggests it functions as an “introduction” to the stories, but does not explain the connection. 20 There is a brief mention of “two visitations [peqidot], a visitation in Egypt and a visitation in the world to come.” 21 The connection between the RSbY stories and the pisqa is problematic, as there is no clear point of contact. The parallel to PRK 11:15 at Gen Rab. 35:2, however, includes an exegesis of Exod 14:19, which might explain the contextualization here.

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finding a substantive connection between the rest of PRK 11 and these sage stories.22 Marc Hirshman, however, suggests that the reason for its inclusion is the parallel between the story of Joseph’s bones retrieved and taken to the “graves of his forefathers” (PRK 11:12) and the retrieval of REbRS’s body and reburial in his father’s grave (PRK 11:23).23 To support this observation we might add that in both accounts, supernatural events occur,24 a woman helps retrieve the body,25 and the pious attend to the reburial while others are said to be otherwise busy.26 Even if Hirshman’s theory is correct, the gap between the Joseph story in 11:12 and the burial of REbRS in 11:23 suggests the PRK editor encountered the story cycle as a unit and did not compose it himself, else he would have juxtaposed the corresponding burial stories directly.27 This conclusion is supported by the fact that several of the episodes appear independently of the others in the PT and in other Palestinian sources, including the tradition of the member of Rabban Gamaliel’s household who also lost his strength after Torah study, which is completely out of place in 11:22, and was presumably transferred from Song Rab. 5:14.28

22 Julius Theodor, “Zur Composition der agadischen Homolien,” MGWJ 28 (1870): 503–15, considered the inclusion of this narrative material “puzzling” (rätselhaft), and wondered whether it might be an interpolation, which was also suggested by Yonah Fraenkel, Midrash and Aggadah (in Hebrew) (Tel Aviv: Ha’unibersitah Hapetuhah, 1997), 801. Avraham Goldberg speculated on a connection to Lag Ba‘omer, which is unlikely; Kiryat seper 43 (1967): 76–77. Jacob Neusner, Pesikta de-Rav Kahana: An Analytical Translation (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1987), 190, notes: “The biography now comes to an end, the whole simply parachuted into our composition. Who thought the document appropriate to the present theme and why I cannot say.” 23 Hirshman, “Paideia,” 173, n. 27. 24 Moses raises up Joseph’s coffin from the Nile where it was hidden, some say by writing the name of God on a shard and throwing it in; fiery snakes accompany the Meronites to retrieve the body and stand guard at the cave. 25 Serah b. Asher told Moses that Joseph was buried in the Nile; REbRS’s wife goes into the burial vault to identify and bring out his body. 26 All of Israel were busy despoiling the Egyptians while Moses busied himself with the bones of Joseph; the men of Gush H  alav occupied themselves eating after the fast while the Meronites retrieved REbRS’s body. (Michael Sokoloff, A Dictionary of Jewish Palestinian Amoraic of the Byzantine Period [Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 1990], 443, s.v. ‫פקי‬, based on a MS variant, understands the meal to be that following the fast. Mandelbaum’s text, 199, reads “the eve of the day of atonement,” i. e. the meal before the fast. I thank Tzvi Novick for this reference.) In addition two magical dogs appear in the story of Joseph, and two supernatural snakes in that of REbRS. 27 PRK 11:13 can be considered a unit with 11:12, which contains the account of Joseph’s coffin, as it has Serah b. Asher mention that she was responsible for returning “the faithful one” (= Joseph) to Moses. 28 Song Rab. 5:14 (ed. Vilna 32a). It is possible that the story was transferred from some more original context, now lost, to both Song Rab. 5:14 and PRK 11:22. The story of REbRS losing his strength is much abbreviated in Song Rab. 5:14. A parallel to PRK 11:24 appears in y. Šabb. 10:5, 12c.

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Thematics The compiler of this unit has assembled a series of biographical anecdotes featuring REbRS that do not amount to a full biography, but sketch the general contours of a sage’s youth, transformation into a sage, and death. There is no account of his birth, and the narrative jumps from his becoming a sage in 11:22 to his death in 11:23, omitting completely his career as a respected sage, teacher, and rabbi. This part of his life we learn of only in a flashback in 11:24, which discloses that his academic ability surpassed that of R. Judah Hanasi.29 It appears after the narration of his death in 11:23 because the story continues with his former colleague asking to marry his widow. Nor are we told of his marriage, although in 11:20 he visits his father-in-law, which implies he was already married, and the (unnamed) wife features prominently in 11:23–24. The cave story of 11:16 presumably takes place (in the fabula) between 11:22 and 11:23, but is narrated first because the protagonist is RSbY.30 Nevertheless, the collection imparts to the audience a general sense of REbRS’s persona, distinctive character, and experiences. The main story line or plot concerns REbRS’s transformation from strongman to sage. The turning point takes place in 11:22, where REbRS studies Torah with Elijah for thirteen years and consequently loses his strength. The episodes before this turning point portray his remarkable power and appetite, for the most part behavior not expected of a sage or even a son of a great sage: he consumes a great quantity of bread in the presence of donkey drivers (11:18), while his father-inlaw prepares an enormous amount of meat, bread, and wine for him (11:20). He lifts donkeys onto the roof (11:18), and carries Elijah a great distance on his back (11:22). His appointments as “chief of customs” in charge of executions (11:19), and “chief of forced labor” (11:22) seem to be a function of his great strength, as E. E. Halevi suggests.31 The one section that does not fit in very well with this development is 11:21, where REbRS asks his father a series of questions about Deut 8:4 and the Israelites’ clothes in the desert, which portrays him more as a student of Torah than a Roman employee and strongman. But we could say that even in his youth he knew something of the Torah, the Written Law, as is befitting of any Jew, and that he simply asks basic questions, and does not provide answers or engage in

29 Assuming that is the sense of calling REbRS a “lion son of a lion,” as opposed to a “lion son of a fox.” 30 However, it is possible that the sojourn in the cave takes place earlier (in the compilers’ view), as there is no explicit mention of the two studying Torah, as we find in b. Šabb. 33b–34a. 31 E. E. Halevi, Ha’aggadah hahistorit biograpit (Tel Aviv: Niv, 1975), 531. However, this point requires further consideration, as strength/athletics need not be correlated with official appointments. Fraenkel, Midrash and aggadah, 801, seems to suggest that the position of “chief of forced labor” was REbRS’s means of supporting himself, apparently freely chosen.

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deep analysis. His questions deal with material and physical matters (food, water, clothing), and he reads the text literally. He was not yet a sage, but neither was he a complete ignoramus.32 We do not learn much of his postordination career, as the story jumps to an account of his death, as noted above. What we do learn, however, is unusual by rabbinic standards. The episodes do not describe him studying, teaching, making rulings, preaching, or engaging in the typical activities of a sage—except, again, in that flashback to R. Judah Hanasi’s anxiety when REbRS enters the study house, which appears primarily to explain the widow’s refusal to remarry. Rather, he describes himself as possessing a “righteous body,” and for this reason he deems his wife extremely fortunate (11:23). The righteousness is why worms (with one exception) do not affect his body after his death (11:23), and features prominently in the account of his reburial, as it is how the wife recognizes his corpse among the others. He would also call “all of Israel’s afflictions” upon himself every night, and these personified afflictions would “come” upon him and “go” when he dismissed them in the morning (11:24). While there is no doubt, then, that the compiler portrays REbRS as among the greatest of the sages, the greatness is more a function of his righteousness and holiness than of his Torah. His righteousness and holiness, moreover, are connected to his body, what we might call “the righteous body” (11:23), suffering body (11:24), and posthumous intact body immune to decomposition (11:23). The superstrong body of his youth is transformed into a holy rabbinic body, but an atypical one.33

The Classical Hero Athlete The depiction of REbRS’s strength and appetite seems to be modeled on classical traditions of hero athletes, many of which were identified by E. E. Halevi.34 Hero athletes, who sought to emulate Herakles and other mythic figures, were renowned not only for incredible feats of strength but also for remarkable feats of consumption.35 Many of the examples to which Halevi refers appear in a long passage in 32 He also quotes a rabbinic tradition in his father’s name in 11:20. 33 Thus the Bavli’s reworking, which has a great deal to do with bodily concerns, has some roots in the PRK, although the Bavli’s focus on reproduction and sex is almost absent (almost, because there are some allusions to sex with the wife, and her refusal to marry/have sex with R. Judah Hanasi). Cf. Ishay Rosen-Zvi, “Hyper-Sexualization in the Bavli: An Initial Survey,” in Midrash and the Exegetical Mind, ed. Lieve Teugels and Rivka Ulmer (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias, 2010), 193–210. 34 Halevi, Ha’aggadah, 53–34; cited by Hirshman, “Paidea,” 172–73. 35 Joseph Fontenrose, “The Hero as Athlete,” California Studies in Classical Antiquity 1 (1968): 87–99; David J. Lunt, “The Heroic Athlete in Ancient Greece,” Journal of Sport History 36 (2009): 374–92.

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Deipnosophists of Athenaeus (c. 200 CE), which is worth quoting at length because of its relevance:36 Come, then, let us here take up what naturally follows the preceding discussion, and explain that Heracles also was a glutton. Almost all the poets and historians make this plain. Epicharmus, for example, says in Busiris: “First, if you should see him eating you would die. His gullet thunders inside, his jaw rattles, his molar crackles, his canine tooth gnashes, he sizzles at the nostrils, he waggles his ears.” And Ion, after dilating on his gluttony in Omphale, adds: “In his ravenous hunger he gulped down the joints and the coals as well.” Ion has taken this idea from Pindar, who said: “Two steaming carcasses of oxen he heaped upon the coals, crackling in the fire; then did I perceive the shrieking of flesh and the heavy moan of bones; short was the time allowed for one to see and discern it fittingly.” … Heracles is also represented as competing with Lepreus in an eating-contest; Lepreus challenged him, and Heracles won. … After this Lepreus contended with Heracles in throwing the discus, in bailing water, and in determining who should consume a bull quicker, and he was beaten in all. He then put on a breastplate and challenged Heracles, and was killed in the fight. Matris, in his Eulogy of Heracles, says that Heracles was also challenged to a drinking-contest by Lepreus, and again he was beaten. The same stories are told by the Chian orator Caucalus, brother of the historian Theopompus, in his Eulogy of Heracles. Theagenes, the athlete from Thasos, devoured a bull all alone, as Poseidippus says in his Epigrams … Milon of Croton, as Theodorus of Hierapolis says in his work On Athletic Contests, used to eat twenty pounds of meat and as many of bread, and he drank three pitchers of wine. And at Olympia he put a four-year-old bull on his shoulders and carried it round the subdue; after which he cut it up and ate it all alone in a single day. Titormus of Aetolia ate an ox in competition with him at breakfast, as Alexander of Aetolia records. And Phylarchus, in the third book of his Histories, says that Milon devoured a bull reclining in front of the altar of Zeus; wherefore the poet Dorieus wrote these lines in his honour: “Such was Milon, when he lifted the weight from the ground, a four-year-old steer, at the feast of Zeus, and on his shoulders he bore the monstrous beast, as lightly as though it were a new-born lamb, through the entire assemblage. And that was wonder enough; but a greater marvel than this, stranger, he wrought before the Pisan altar; for the ox, unbroken to the yoke, that he had carried in the procession, even that ox he cut up and ate all alone.” Astyanax of Miletus, thrice victor at Olympia in successive contests in the pancratium, was once invited to dinner by the Persian Ariobarzanes, and on his arrival he promised to eat all the food prepared for all the guests, and actually did so …

36 Athanaeus, The Deipnosophists 9.1.411, trans. Charles B. Gulick (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1930), 4:365–71. http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Athe� naeus/10A*.html

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Amarantus of Alexandria, in his work On the Theatre, says that Herodorus, the trumpeter of Megara, was only three and a half cubits tall, but strong in his ribs; he would eat six pints of wheat bread and twenty pounds of whatever meat he could find; he would drink two pitchers of wine, and could sound two trumpets at one and the same time. Lityersas was a bastard son of Midas and king of the Celaenians, in Phrygia; he was a man fierce of aspect and cruel, and terribly gluttonous. The tragic poet Sositheus tells about him in his play Daphnis or Lityersas as follows: “He eats three loaves of bread, three pack-asses in one brief day; and he drinks the ten-amphora cask, calling it but a single measure.”

These feats of consumption typically include a bull or ox, as is told of REbRS. The trio of great quantities of meat, bread, and wine consumed by Milon of Croton, Herodorus of Megara, Lityersas and others, closely parallels the ox, bread, and wine that REbRS consumes in PRK 11:20. These accounts of gluttony are closely connected to accounts of strength and also involve hoisting animals, as in PRK 11:18, where REbRS lifts the donkeys onto the roof and brings them down. Similarly, the various stories of Milon have him lifting a mature steer, ox, or bull. This connection reveals that the ability to eat or drink prodigious quantities was a type of “athletic” competition that showcased one aspect of an athlete’s power. Victory demonstrates superiority to competitors, as when Herakles bested Lepreus in eating and drinking conquests. Jan Bazant, in a study of such accounts, suggests that the aim of the ancient Greek athletics was always tangible and practical. The point was to beat one’s opponents and thus to demonstrate one’s place in the social hierarchy. For ancient Greeks, at least till classical times, athletics were above all a symbolical duel. Consequently, there was no difference in principle between a boxing match (or any other sports discipline) and a contest in eating or in male beauty. … [G]luttony, together with a beautiful and strong body was, as a matter of fact, an unfailing sign of a great athlete, real “associate of Herakles.”37

At first glance the positive valence placed on gluttony in these traditions is surprising, given the term’s pejorative associations. But it is mostly the classification of gluttony among the seven deadly sins in Christian tradition that has colored our views. While there is some ambivalence to gluttony in classical culture,38 it is not clear that overeating was considered immoral or problematic, and perhaps we should call this prodigious eating “appetite” to avoid such connotations. In a philological study of the word later used for gluttony, adephagia, David Whitehead

37 Jan Bazant, “On the Gluttony of Ancient Greek Athletes,” Listy filologické/Folia philologica 105 (1982): 131. Male beauty is not thematized in PRK 11, but features prominently in the Bavli parallel, and perhaps should also be considered in the context of athletic competitions. 38 Susan Hill, Eating to Excess: The Meaning of Gluttony and the Fat Body in the Ancient World (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2011), 10.

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argues that it does not have negative connotations in early Greek texts.39 There was in fact a shrine to an eponymous goddess who personified gluttony in Sicily, though nothing more is known of this cult.40 To find (what we would call) gluttony an admirable talent in the context of the Greek competitive ethos thus need not be problematic. The REbRS of PRK 11, like these gluttonous athletes, can fairly be called “an associate of Herakles” too, depicted with an enormous appetite and phenomenal strength. This depiction is remarkable to find in a rabbinic text, as the rabbis typically consider gluttony depraved, if not sinful, as in biblical and Christian traditions.41 There is almost no hint of criticism in the PRK, however. The donkey drivers who observe REbRS eating a troughful of bread think that an evil snake in his stomach is responsible, that it is an illness, not a sin.42 This suggestion seems to be discourteous, as RSbY asks them, “Perhaps you said something insulting [milah biša’] to him” and defends his son’s conduct, “Was he then eating from your [food]? He who created him created food for him.” But the offense is apparently the speculation that an evil snake afflicts him, not his morals or character or sinful “gluttony.”43 Indeed, this defense of RSbY in and of itself is astonishing, as it could be taken to exonerate any glutton. In 11:20 REbRS’s father-in-law responds to his voracious drinking by asking if REbRS heard from RSbY “what is the [appropriate] measure of a cup [ši’uro šel kos],” which perhaps suggests he drinks in an inappropriate way, but REbRS answers with his father’s teaching and adds that it does not apply “to your cup which is small, nor to your wine which is good, nor to my stomach which is wide.” So REbRS parries whatever criticism is implied, and is given the last word. The only explicit criticism is for REbRS acting as “chief of customs” and executioner in 11:19, where R. Joshua b. Qorha calls him “vinegar son of wine.” But here working with the Romans/authorities is the offensive behavior, not gluttony or feats of strength per se. This depiction of the

39 David Whitehead, “Observations on ΑΔΗΦΑГІΑ,” Rheinisches Museum für Philologie, Neue Folge 145 (2002): 175–86. 40 Whitehead, “Observations,” 184. 41 See e. g. Deut 21:20, Prov 23:20–22, 28:7; b. Pesah. 49a: “Every scholar who eats a great meal in every place [‫ ]המרבה סעודתו בכל מקום‬in the end will destroy his household, and make his wife a widow, and his offspring orphans, and his learning will be forgotten….” In y. Ma‘aś. 3:2, 3d, R. Meir in fact rebukes REbRS for eating in the market (though the issue here seems to be the public setting, not the quantity). However, gluttony receives much less of a focus in rabbinic sources than other sins and inappropriate behaviors. See Ishay Rosen- Zvi, Demonic Desires: Yetzer Hara and the Making of Rabbinic Anthropology (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), 159, n. 44. “Unlike in monastic discourse, gluttony is not a central theme in rabbinic literature.” (My thanks to Michal Bar-Asher Siegal for this reference.) 42 Except perhaps insofar as illness and sin were connected. 43 Cf. the parallel in Song Rab. 5:14, 32a where the donkey drivers speculate that REbRS may cause famine.

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sage as glutton and the absence of criticism, to my mind, can only be understood as reflecting a profound influence from those classical sources. The turning point of the story of REbRS is perhaps predicated on a Greek model too. Halevi refers to accounts of the philosopher Protagoras, who in his youth worked as a “porter and wood-carrier” according to Athenaeus, and as “a hired laborer and often carried heavy burdens on his back” according to Aulus Gellius (much as REbRS carries Elijah on his back in 11:22).44 The philosopher Democritus saw his skill in arranging wood blocks, recognized his intelligence, took him home and taught him philosophy, thus making him “the great man he afterwards became.”45 Similarly, Elijah taught REbRS Torah, and made him a great sage. Halevi also refers to Cicero’s comment about the philosopher Pythagoras, “What would you prefer be given to you—the physical strength of Milon or the mental powers of Pythagoras?”46 We have here the antithesis between the power of the body and the power of the mind, an implied trade-off between physical and mental strength, which the rabbinic story dramatizes in its typical hyperbolic way as the complete loss of physical strength once the life of the mind—in this case Torah and not philosophy—is embraced.47 REbRS, perhaps modeled on Milon (or his like), as noted above, becomes the intellectual Torah scholar, the rabbinic analog of the philosopher. It also bears noting that the genre of these accounts in Athenaeus resembles that of the brief biographical anecdotes so characteristic of rabbinic sage stories. To be sure, the Deipnosophists is anecdotal throughout, as Athenaeus culls material from hundreds of authors, organizes it thematically (for the most part), and presents it as “table talk” of his learned assembly of guests. But even the writers from whom he borrows these accounts were not the original authors in our sense of the term. They too received traditions that circulated widely, presumably in oral form, and recorded them for their own purposes in their works. Athenaeus here quotes from three authors’ anecdotes of Milon of Croton—anecdotes that closely resemble each other, and point to the existence of many and diverse versions of

44 Athenaeus, Deipnosophists 8.50; Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights 5.3; Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers 9.53, cited by Halevi, Ha’aggadah, 172; Hirshman, “Paideia,” 172. The motif of carrying Elijah, in the guise of an “old man,” on his back may evoke the legend of Sinbad the Sailor, who in the fifth voyage is tricked into carrying the Old Man of the Sea on his back, and the Old Man will not release him. Perhaps both devolve from a common folkloristic trope. 45 Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights 5.3. In the Bavli parallel, b. B. Mes. 84a, R. Yohanan makes Resh Laqish a “great man” (gabra’ rabba’) by teaching him Torah. 46 Halevi, Ha’aggadah, 172; Hirshman, “Paideia,” 172. 47 B. Sanh. 26b states that Torah weakens the strength of a man. Cf. Boyarin, Carnal Israel, 216, n. 31 and 205, n. 9 and his discussion of the same motif in the story of R. Yohanan and Resh Laqish in the Bavli parallel. See too Bar-Asher Siegal, Early Christian Monastic Literature, 123–26.

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such accounts.48 Athenaeus mentions that “almost all the poets and historians,” tell tales of Herakles’s gluttony, and of course many hundreds more biographical traditions were told of this legendary hero. There are parallels to some of the traditions quoted by Athenaeus transmitted by other classical authors, so they clearly circulated widely.49

The Christian Holy Man After thirteen years of study with Elijah, REbRS loses his strength such that he cannot even lift his cloak, and becomes a Torah scholar. At this point the narrative shifts from portrayal of REbRS in the model of the Greek hero athlete to the model of an ascetic Christian “holy man.” The atypical descriptions and stories of REbRS noted above owe a great deal to Christian accounts of monks, ascetics, and holy men.50 First, the odd practice of REbRS that his wife recounts, that REbRS called sufferings upon himself every night as he lay down to sleep and dismissed them every day, recalls the ascetic practices of these late antique holy men. Descriptions abound of holy men wearing chains and other uncomfortable garments, self-flagellating, fasting, afflicting, and neglecting the body, and so forth. Many of the ascetic practices were specifically designated for night time, including, “vigils,” watches, prayer in uncomfortable postures or standing, avoiding sleep, and night fasting.51 Moreover, this vicarious suffering may be a (rabbinic version of a) type of imitatio Christi: REbRS takes “all (!) the sufferings of Israel” (‫ )כל ייסוריהן דישראל‬upon himself, and presumably this alleviates the suffering of all of his fellow Jews. Even if this suggestion goes too far, this kind of vicarious suffering is more common in

48 David Matz, Greek and Roman Sport, A Dictionary of Athletes and Events from the Eighth Century B.C. to the Third Century A. D. (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1991), 72–73, who provides references to traditions about Milon from more than ten authors. 49 In Frogs Aristophanes portrays Herakles as a drunken fool, whom the hostess accuses of eating sixteen loaves of bread, twenty pounds of roast beef, and cheese without paying. 50 Peter Brown, The Cult of Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998); idem, “The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity,” in Society and the Holy in Late Antiquity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), 103–53. 51 Michal Bar-Asher Siegal has commented to me that the goal of the ascetic practices of Christian holy men and monks was spiritual discipline, taming the body and subduing its urges, unlike REbRS’s purpose, to alleviate the sufferings of Israel. This observation is well taken, but does not obviate my point. The rabbis have adapted the practice (in literary form) to their cultural matrix. And the motif of vicarious suffering itself may reflect Christian influence; see below.

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late antique Christianity than in rabbinic Judaism.52 Second, that the saint’s body remains intact after his death, neither putrefying nor subject to worms, is a commonplace of hagiographic literature.53 That REbRS is afflicted by one worm (as punishment for a single sin of omission), which a heavenly voice even cautions the wife not to remove, may be a parody of such accounts, as if the rabbinic storyteller wished to insist that even the holiest “holy man” could not be completely sin-free, and therefore worm-free, as the hagiographers claim. Third and most importantly, the entire description of the reburial of REbRS in 11:23 is modelled on accounts of the “translation of relics” often associated with the death of a Christian martyr or holy man, as I have argued in detail elsewhere.54 Most strikingly, the conflict over possession of REbRS’s body is very unusual, if not unattested, in rabbinic accounts: when the men of Meron try to remove the body from its initial burial in Gush H  alav to rebury it in their town, the men of Gush H  alav “go after them with sticks and spears.” In such Christian accounts, however, conflict over the body of the saint or martyr is routine, as different communities often fought to have the body interred or reinterred in their locale in order to benefit from its protective powers. For example, the Syriac version of the Passion of Sts. Sergius and Bacchus, composed 450–500 CE, reports that after the burial of St. Sergius, some residents from a nearby settlement attempted to steal the body. But the martyr himself asked God to set a fire on the spot as a signal.

52 On vicarious suffering in rabbinic sources, see Ra’anan Boustan, From Martyr to Mystic (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 156–62, and the sources cited there, and Eliezer Diamond, Holy Men and Hunger Artists (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 104–06. The idea that the death of the righteous (and sometimes children) vicariously atones for sin, or that the righteous die because of the sins of the wicked, is not uncommon. But voluntarily to practice suffering on behalf of others is elusive. The closest parallels are the account of R. Judah Hanasi that immediately follows here in PRK 11:24 (the parallel in y. Kil. 9:3, 32b [=y. Ketub. 12:3, 35a] adds that as long as he suffered, no woman miscarried or died in childbirth, and the parallel in b. B. Mes. 85b claims that there was no drought) and a tradition in b. Ta‘an. 24b–25a that R. H  anina b. Dosa would eat only one kab of carobs from one Sabbath eve to the next and “the whole world is sustained because of H  anina.” 53 Boyarin, Carnal Israel, 209. Thus Cyril of Scythopolis, The Lives of the Monks of Palestine, trans. A. M. Price (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian, 1991), “Life of Sabas,” #78, reports that when the grave was later opened to bury another man, “I descended in order to venerate the body of the godly old man and found it have remained sound and incorrupt.” Evagrius Scholasticus (534– 600 CE) in his “Life of Simon the Stylite,” relates that the body of the saint, who died in the midfifth century, “has been preserved nearly entire to my time: and in company with many priests, I enjoyed the sight of his sacred head…. And strange as is the circumstance, the hair of his head had not perished, but is in the same state of preservation as when he was alive and sojourning with mankind” (from The Ecclesiastical History of Evagrius: A History of the Church from AD 431 to AD 594, trans. Edward Walford [London: S. Bagster, 1846], 1:13 [pp. 19–20]). 54 Jeffrey L. Rubenstein, “A Rabbinic Translation of Relics,” in Crossing Boundaries in Early Judaism and Christianity: Ambiguities, Complexities, and Half-Forgotten Adversaries: Essays in Honor of Alan F. Segal, ed. Kimberly B. Stratton and Andrea Lieber (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 314–332.

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At this point the townsmen “thought that the enemies had come against them to destroy them with burning fire. Whereupon they raised their voices in shouts, and the soldiers of the castle armed themselves and went out with swords and spears, and they pursued those who wished to steal the bones of the martyr.”55 The Syriac version of the Life of Simeon Stylites relates that after Simeon’s death his disciples “were afraid of the populace lest the villages gather and come to snatch him away and there might be strife and murder,” and they take precautionary measures to avoid the conflict.56 The PRK does not explicitly mention the protective powers of the body (although the Bavli parallel adds this element).57 Here the motivation for the Meronites seeking the body is RSbY’s revelation in dreams that he desires his son buried with him. Yet a dream revelation (technically called an inventio) disclosing the location of the relics or encouraging their retrieval and reburial in a more appropriate location is also common in Christian accounts. Thus the historian Sozomen (d. 448) writes of the famous “forty martyrs of Sebaste”: Thyrsus, the martyr, appeared to her [=the empress Pulcheria, 399–453] three times, and revealed to her that the relics of the martyrs were concealed beneath the earth; and commanded that they should be deposited near his tomb, in order that the same honour might be rendered to him. The forty martyrs themselves also appeared to her, arrayed in shining robes, and made the same communication to her.58

Typically the martyr himself appears in the dream and commissions the discovery and/or translation of his relics, as do the forty martyrs here. In this case an earlier martyr, Thyrsus, first directs the empress to move the relics of these martyrs to his own tomb because he believes the presence of their bones will contribute to his honor. This is not far from what RSbY laments to the Meronites—that he “did not merit [his son] be placed with me” (‫ )לא זכית תתיהב גבי‬and now wishes they honor him by reinterring the body. Descriptions of relic translations typically involve miracles and supernatural portents. In our passage “two snakes of fire” walk before the procession and station themselves on the sides of the burial cave when the people arrive. These snakes are somewhat enigmatic, although they are clearly a favorable omen and sign of divine

55 Acta Martyrum et Sanctorum, ed. Paul Bedjan (Paris: Via dicta de Sèvres, 1890–97), 2:321. One manuscript here reads “sticks [hutrei] and spears [romhei],” the same phrase found in the PRK. 56 “The Syriac Life,” in Robert Doran, The Lives of Simeon Stylites (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian, 1989), section 118, p. 187. 57 B. B. Mes. 84b reports that no wild animal entered the village while the body of REbRS was there. 58 The Ecclesiastical History of Sozomen, trans. Edward Walford (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1855), 9:2, pp. 407–8.

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approval: the Meronites observe “it is clear that this is the [propitious] time for us to bring him” (‫)חכימא היא שעתא דאנן מייתי ליה‬. In sum: several elements in this account of the reburial of REbRS— the dream revelation authorizing the reburial in a more appropriate location, the body that does not decompose, the strife over the body, the accompanying miracles—are rare or unattested in rabbinic accounts but routine in Christian sources. It is also worth noting that the story of REbRS and RSbY in the cave in 11:16, though more about RSbY than REbRS, also seems to be connected to Christian accounts of ascetics and holy men, as has been argued by Holger Zellentin and Michal Bar-Asher Siegal.59 Long years spent residing in a cave is of course a staple of stories of ascetics and holy men who withdrew from society in their quest for spiritual perfection.60 The reason for RSbY and REbRS hiding in the cave is not clear in the PRK, as noted above. But even if we attribute it to Roman persecution, the literary motif may be a result of Christian influence, as sojourns in a cave are rare in rabbinic accounts.61 Their only food is carobs, an ascetic diet; carobs are specifically associated with the food of animals, rather than humans, hence resembling the natural diet often preferred by ascetics.62 The PRK reports that their bodies became covered with sores (haludot, literally, “rust”), which also resembles the descriptions of holy men and ascetics, whose skin and limbs are rou-

59 Holger Zellentin, Rabbinic Parodies of Jewish and Christian Literature (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011), 188: “The Rashbi story opens with an image of two rabbis fasting like Christian ascetics, subsisting on food ‘that is not eaten,’ and experiencing a very Christian epiphany recalling the birds in Matthew and paralleling the themes of Gregory’s [=Gregory of Nazianzus] sermon.” Michal Bar-Asher Siegel, Early Christian Monastic Literature, 138, has made a compelling argument that the Bavli parallel in b. Šabb. 33b–34a contains many similarities to Christian monastic sources, although she suggests that it is the Bavli’s additions and changes to the Palestinian versions that mainly reflect the influence of Christian traditions—that “a constellation of monastic literary elements contributes to the rabbinic portrayal of Rashbi in the BT version.” But some of the elements she discusses are found in the Palestinian versions too. See too Ben-Zion Rosenfeld, “R. Simeon B. Yohai—Wonder-Worker and Magician,” REJ 158 (1999): 350–86. 60 For some sources, see Zellentin, Parodies, 193, n. 83; Bar-Asher Siegal, 154–55. Zellentin, however, following Lee Levine, “R. Simeon B. Yohai and the Purification of Tiberias: History and Tradition” (in Hebrew), Cathedra 22 (1982): 9–42, suggests the cave dwelling is modeled on the Greek story of Epimenides. If so, this is another example of a classical Greek motif. See too Charlotte Elisheva Fonrobert, “Plato in Rabbi Shimeon Bar Yohai’s Cave (B. Shabbat 33B–34A): The Talmudic Inversion of Plato’s Politics of Philosophy,” AJS Review 31 (2007): 277–96. 61 There is perhaps one exception in y. Ned. 11:1, 42c. See Bar-Asher Siegal, Early Christian Monastic Literature, 165. H  oni Hame‘agel falls asleep for seventy years in a cave in y. Ta‘an. 3:10, 66d. 62 On carobs signifying poverty, see Zellentin, Parodies, 176 and n. 25. See the sources cited by Bar-Asher Siegal, Early Christian Monastic Literature, 154–55, on monks occupying caves and subsisting on dates.

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tinely described as wasted, diseased, and infected due to their ascetic practices.63 The account of the heavenly voice determining the fate of birds, as scholars have noted, seems to derive from Matthew 6:26, though it again may have a parodic coloring.64 When they leave the cave to return to society they bathe themselves in the waters of a spring or aqueduct,65 as do many Christian ascetics upon leaving caves or deserts.66 And RSbY’s powers to “see with the holy spirit” what the Samaritan has secretly done and to cause death by his deadly gaze are common characteristics of Christian holy men, though also attested in rabbinic stories.67 Awareness of these Christian influences should lead to a reconsideration of Yassif ’s assertion quoted above that there is “no biographical story cycle in rabbinic literature that could be categorized as hagiography,” primarily for the reason that rabbinic story cycles do not offer “a continuous progression through the hero’s life.”68 Many Christian hagiographies are compiled from disparate anecdotes and fall short of a comprehensive or “continuous progress” through an entire life. Once again, comprehensive discussion cannot be provided here, but a cursory reading of A History of the Monks of Syria by Theodoret of Cyrrhus (393–466), with accounts of thirty ascetics, and The Lausaic History by Palladius (born c. 363), which recalls seventy-one holy men and women, reveals many examples that make no effort to depict the full life. Palladius in particular often provides no more than a few anecdotes about his subjects. Similarly, The Lives of the Eastern Saints, by John of Ephesus (507–86), composed in Syriac, contains accounts of fifty-eight martyrs, ascetics, and holy men and women. Some of these are quite lengthy, but others are only a paragraph or two.69 Defining the genre of “hagiography” has always been tricky, but I would not exclude the REbRS collection without more detailed discussion. 63 See e. g., John Rufus, The Lives of Peter the Iberian, Theodosius of Jerusalem, and the Monk Romanus, ed. and trans. Cornelia Horn and Robert Phenix Jr. (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 171: “The Saint went to Arabia to take a cure by bathing in thermal waters, since he had bruised his body and tormented it, so his flesh had wasted away and only his skin—and a thin one at that—was stretched over his dried up bones.” The recourse to baths of course parallels the move from the cave to the baths in PRK 11:16. 64 Zellentin, Parodies, 180–88, and the literature cited there. This observation goes back to Strack-Billerbeck. 65 The text is difficult. See Mandelbaum’s translation, PRK, 192, and Michael Sokoloff, Dictionary of Jewish Palestinian Aramaic (Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 1990), 326, s.v. ‫מקור‬ #2; Zellentin, Parodies, 174 and n. 19. 66 John Rufus, Lives, 171. There are also accounts of Christian holy men purifying cities when they emerge from their caves. See Zellentin, Parodies, 194. 67 For literature on the deadly gaze, see Bar-Asher Siegal, Early Christian Monastic Literature, 144–45, nn. 35–36. 68 Yassif, Hebrew Folktale, 218. 69 E. W. Brooks, “John of Ephesus. Lives of the Eastern Saints,” Patrologia Orientalis 17 (1923), 1–308, and 18 (1925), 543–760. See e. g. #11 Harfat, pp. 159–66; #34 Simeon the Old, pp. 601–6; #39 Leonitus, pp. 645–46; #40 Abraham the Presbyter,” pp. 647–48; #42 Mari, Daniel, and Sergius, pp. 656–58, and others.

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The Rabbinic Sage In addition to the biographical motifs associated with Greco-Roman athletes and Christian holy men, we find those characteristic of the rabbinic sage, including expected, if incidental, references to Torah study, rabbinic tradition, the synagogue, and the house of study.70 In keeping with rabbinic values, REbRS is married, unlike the Christian holy man. However, the reluctance of his wife to remarry is again unusual. Though justified on the basis of rabbinic principles (“Shall a vessel used for a holy purpose …,” “We may go up in holiness …”), the motif is anything but a normative rabbinic view. Tosfeta Ketubbot 12:4 claims, “More than the man wants to marry, a woman wants to be married,” and Resh Laqish reportedly explained why a woman is satisfied with just about any husband, “It is better to dwell with two bodies [i. e. married] than to dwell in widowhood.”71 But this woman, REbRS’s widow, does not want to get married, despite a very holy and prestigious scholar seeking her hand, and seems to prefer widowhood.72 I would tentatively suggest that her anomalous refusal is also a product of Christian influence, as a prominent stream of early Christian thought frowned on widows remarrying: “the church fathers applied Paul’s admonition not to remarry (1 Cor 7:39–40) to widows of all ages and social stations. … It was meritorious for a widow not only to abstain from a second marriage but to take a vow of continence and wear special dress.”73 As Michel Verdon has observed, “from the third century and culminating in the fourth century the Fathers of the Church take[e] an increasingly intolerant stance, not against this or that type of remarriage, but against the remarriage of widows per se” such that it became “an aversion to remarriage that verged on prohibition.”74

70 In 11:20 REbRS refers to a rabbinic tradition about drinking wine; in 11:23 REbRS tells his wife “as I entered a synagogue …”; 11:24 mentions the house of study. 71 Resh Laqish is a Palestinian, although this saying appears only in the Bavli (Qidd. 7a, 41a; Ketub. 75a, Yebam. 118b). See Michael Satlow, Jewish Marriage in Antiquity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 39–40. Cf. (about the Middle Ages) Avraham Grossman, Pious and Rebellious: Jewish Women in Medieval Europe, trans. Jonathan Chipman (Lebanon, NH: Brandeis University Press, 2004), 255: “The intense desire of the widow to remarry is also emphasized in Rabbinic homilies, which saw it in a positive light, and even praised those who assist her to do so.” 72 I think this is the point of having her reject the great R. Judah, Patriarch (Nasi) and editor of the Mishnah. It is hard to imagine a more prestigious match. We should not think that R. Judah Hanasi is unworthy, nor that she desperately wants to marry someone else, but rather that no one is worthy after REbRS, hence she will remain a widow forever. The Christian idea is adapted to a cultural logic that makes sense (at least more sense) in the rabbinic worldview. 73 Encyclopedia of Early Christianity, ed. Everett Ferguson, 2nd ed. (New York: Garland, 1990), 1178. 74 Michel Verdon, “Virgins and Widows: European Kinship and Early Christianity,” Man, n.s., 23 (1988): 489.

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Conclusion On the one hand, it is no great surprise to find Greco-Roman and Christian influences in a rabbinic midrashic compilation probably edited around 500 CE in Byzantine Palestine.75 It is a commonplace of scholarship that all Judaisms of the late Second Temple period and of late antiquity were Hellenized, the only issues being to what degree and in what respects. A great deal of recent scholarship has made a case for the influence of, and responses to, Christianity in rabbinic works. On the other hand, it is striking to see these influences so prominently featured in the portrayal of a sage—a portrayal that includes many anomalous aspects when compared with the typical depiction of the sages. In addition, the extended sequence of biographical anecdotes of REbRS, so unusual by rabbinic standards, might reflect the influence of the genre of Christian hagiography. A detailed reading and literary analysis of this passage is beyond the scope of this study. In brief, the stories center on the transition of the body from that of a hero athlete to that of a sage. The strong and gluttonous body becomes a “righteous body” that studies Torah (apparently by day), suffers (by night), and ultimately defeats death, as evidenced by the posthumous state of preservation.76 There may even be tension between the conception of a sage who bestows merit on Israel through Torah study and the sage who merits Israel through his vicarious suffering. As noted, there is little emphasis on Torah study as the defining characteristic or ultimate goal of REbRS. Torah study is the prerequisite for becoming a sage (his years of study with Elijah), and his abilities are acknowledged in passing, but it is not the focus of the passage, as is typical of rabbinic sage stories. The passage perhaps grapples with a vision of the ultimate body of a sage, whether a holy body or a rabbinic body, or both, and to what extent the two can be realized in one figure.

75 Cf. Zellentin, Rabbinic Parodies, 167–213, and especially 212, for attempts to identify connections to Greek and Christian literature in the story of RSbY in the cave. 76 Nor is there any indication that he loses the fatness, the “wide belly” acquired through the period of gluttony (11:20), as we might expect in Christian accounts of ascetic holy men whose bodies waste away because of fasting and other ascetic practices.

Adiel Schremer

“Most Beautiful of Women”: Story and History in Sifre Deuteronomy Introduction Recognition of the difficulty of using midrashic traditions for historical purposes has been one of the cornerstones of Steven Fraade’s scholarly work. In his 1983 article on section 26 of Sifre Deuteronomy, Fraade emphasizes that “the historical study of rabbinic midrash is not only the tracing of the journeys of selected, abstracted midrashic motifs, but also the locating of midrashic texts and their contained exegeses within the historical contexts which presumably influenced their creators and to which these texts may bear some witness.”1 Yet, as he went on to note, “Herein lies a seeming paradox. Midrashic activity by its very nature demands that we view its exegesis in historical context if we are to understand its motivation and social function, while the extant midrashic literature defies such historical contextualization.”2 One of the major reasons it is difficult to contextualize midrashic traditions has to do with the editorial activity of their transmitters and redactors. As Fraade reminds us, “The critical study of rabbinic midrash collections needs to take seriously the possibility that whoever redacted these texts did more than simply collect pre-existent traditions of exegesis, but gave new meaning to such traditions in significantly reshaping and recombining them.”3 Fraade, however, refuses to give up on a historical approach to midrashic texts; rather he stresses that “the critical student of midrash must at least attempt to discern” the contexts that presumably influenced the creators of midrashic traditions, “turning for possible guidance to the historical (in a broad sense) milieu in which the rabbinic creators of this literature lived and taught.”4 Yet, recognizing the possible contribution of the redactors of midrashic works to the very meaning of the traditions they received and 1 Steven D. Fraade, “Sifre Deuteronomy 26 (ad Deut. 3:23): How Conscious the Composition?,” HUCA 54 (1983): 248. See also idem, From Tradition to Commentary: Torah and Its Interpretation in the Midrash Sifre to Deuteronomy (Albany: SUNY Press, 1991), 71–74. 2 Fraade, “Sifre Deuteronomy 26,” 249. 3 Fraade, “Sifre Deuteronomy 26,” 245. 4 Fraade, “Sifre Deuteronomy 26,” 248.

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embedded in their compilations inevitably raises the questions: To whom shall we ascribe the text as it currently stands? And consequently, which historical period (and its particular concerns) does the text echo? Important as these methodological considerations may be, the preliminary problem is always the literary meaning of the text. In order to see midrashic texts as their authors’ attempts to respond to difficulties facing the Jewish community— whether social, political, or spiritual—that is, to view them as documents providing historical evidence of some sort, we need first to establish the concerns of the texts. This, however, is a matter of interpretation, of its nature an indeterminate enterprise, resisting definitive judgment. Hence, the use of midrashic texts as historical evidence for the existential struggles and concerns of late antique Palestinian rabbis must be recognized as speculative in its very nature. This paper is a modest attempt at using a midrashic source for historical purposes, with these methodological concerns in mind. My aim is to show that a close reading of that source, sensitive to its possible transformation in the course of its incorporation into its current literary context, may affect our understanding of the problem that its author attempted to address. This new light can accordingly influence the text’s potential use as historical evidence for rabbinic concerns in second- and third-century Palestine. As such, I offer it with true friendship, in recognition of Steven Fraade, with whom I share the historical interest in studying early rabbinic literature.

I. Reading the Text A famous story about a meeting between Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai and a young Jewish woman, sometime after the fall of Jerusalem in 70 CE, appears in section 305 of the Sifre on Deuteronomy: ]![‫ ראה רובה‬.‫ומעשה ברבן יוחנן בן זכיי שהיה רכוב על חמור והיו תלמידין מהלכין אחריו‬ .‫ נתעטפה בשערה ועמדה לפניו‬.‫אחת מלקטת שעורין מתחת גללי בהמתם שלערביין‬ :‫ אמ' לו‬.‫ בן גוריון‬5]![‫ בתו של נקורימון‬:‫ בת מי את? אמ' לו‬:‫ אמ' לה‬.‫ ר' פרנסני‬:‫אמ' לו‬ ‫ אני‬:‫ זכור אתה כשחתמתה[!] על כתובתי? אמ' להן רבן יוחנן בן זכי[!] לתלמידיו‬,‫רבי‬ ‫ לא היה נכנס‬6‫ ואביה‬,‫חתמתי על כתובתה שלזו אלף אלפים דינרי זהב שלבית חמיה‬ 5 Read: ‫נקודימון‬, which is a good transliteration of the Greek proper name Nikodimos. All other witnesses read: ‫נקדימון‬, as is the form prevalent in the Babylonian Talmud. 6 Sic. In all other text witnesses the sentence refers to the woman’s family and the verbs accordingly are all in the plural: ‫ושל בית ריבה זו לא היו נכנסים להשתחוות בהר הבית עד שהיו פורסים‬ ‫ ;להם כלי מילת תחת רגליהם נכנסים ומשתחוים וחוזרים‬see the variants in Finkelstein’s edition, ad lines 9–10. However, the reading of MS Vatican, too, is consistent: it refers to the woman’s father, and the verbs are all in the singular. The coherence of the latter reading indicates that it is not a result of a simple scribal error. Admittedly, it is not impossible to speculate that it began with

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‫ נכנס ומשתחוה‬,‫ מילת תחת רגליו‬7‫להשתחוות בהר הבית עד שהיו פורסין לו פילאי‬ ‫ "אם לא תדעי לך‬:‫ כל ימיי[?] ביקשתי את המקרא הזה ומצאתיו‬.‫וחוזר לביתו בשמחה‬ '‫ שכל זמן שיש‬.‫ח]—אל תהי קורא גדיותיך אלא גויותיך‬:‫היפה בנשים" [שיר השירים א‬ ‫עושין רצונו שלמקו' אין כל אומה ומלכות שולטת בהן; כשאין עוש' רצו' שלמ' מוסרן‬ .‫ ולא ביד אומה שפ' אלא ביד בהמתן שלאומה שפלה‬,‫ביד אומה שפלה שבאומות‬ A story about Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai, who was once riding on an ass, and the disciples were walking behind him. He saw a young woman collecting [grains of] barley from under the feet of animals belonging to Arabs. She covered herself with her hair and stood before him. She said to him: My master, give me provisions. He said to her: Whose daughter are you? She said to him: I am the daughter of Nakodimon ben Gurion. She said to him: My master, do you recall that you signed my ketubah [marital payment pledge]? Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai said to his disciples: I did sign the ketubah of this woman, [which was] a thousand thousands gold dinars from her father-in-law’s family. And her father would not enter to worship at the Temple Mount until fine woolen carpets were spread out under his feet. Thus he would enter, worship, and return to his home in joy. All my life I sought [to understand] this verse: “If you do not know, O fairest of women [go follow the tracks of the sheep, and graze your kids by the tents of the shepherds]” [Song 1:8]. Read not your kids [‫]גדיותיך‬, but your corpses [‫ !]גויותיך‬When Israel fulfills the will of God no nation or kingdom can rule over them, but when Israel does not fulfill the will of God, he delivers them into the hand of a lowly nation. Not even into the hands of a lowly nation, but under the feet of animals belonging to a lowly nation.8

a scribal error (‫ושל בית‬i> ‫)ואביה של‬, followed by a revision of the rest of the sentence, but such speculation can work both ways, and there is no intrinsic advantage to the vulgar reading. Quite the contrary: the vulgar reading may be explained as influenced by the parallel in the Babylonian Talmud (b. Ketub. 66b), while the reading of MS Vatican is very unique. On the implications of this question see below. 7 Sic. This reading is attested also by MS London 341.4 (British Library Add. 16.406). The precise meaning of the word, however, in not clear. Other witnesses read: ‫כלי‬, which is easier to understand, of course, but precisely for this reason I suspect it reflects an emendation. See also Menahem Kister, “Study of Avot of Rabbi Nathan A:17: Redaction and the Transformation of Traditions“ (in Hebrew), Mehqere Talmud 3 (2005): 723, n. 98. 8 Sifre Deut. 305 (ed. Finkelstein, 325; translation mine—A. S.), according to the reading of MS Vatican Ebr. 32.3, which is the best text witness of the Sifre. See Menahem Kahana, Manuscripts of the Halakhic Midrashim: An Annotated Catalogue (Jerusalem: The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities and Yad Ben-Zvi, 1995), 92–93. A different version of this story appears in Mek. R. Ish., Bahodeš 1 (ed. Horovitz-Rabin, 203; ed. Lauterbach, 2.193–94): Once Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai was going up to Emmaus in Judea and he saw a girl who was picking barely-corn out of the excrement of a horse. Said Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai to his disciples: Who is the girl? They said to him: She is a Jewish girl. And to whom does this horse belong? They said to him: To an Arabian horseman. Said Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai to them, to his disciples: All my life I have been reading this verse and I have not realized its meaning: “If you do not know, O fairest of women” etc.—you were unwilling to be subject to God, behold now you are subjected to the most inferior of the nations, the Arabs. You were unwilling to pay the head-tax to God, “a beqa‘ a head” (Exod 38:26), now

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Because the protagonists of this story are Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai, the hero of the rabbinic legends of the fall of Jerusalem in 70 CE, and the daughter of Nakdimon ben Gurion, one of the richest men of Jerusalem in that same period,9 a widespread, intuitive assumption reads it as relating to the horrible socioeconomic consequences of the destruction of the Second Temple, and as responding to that religious-existential challenge with theodicy. On such a reading, the story’s main thrust is to communicate the religious idea of sin and punishment, well known from many biblical, rabbinic, and other Jewish texts from antiquity, and to emphasize that the Jews’ inferior status vis-à-vis their enemies is a result of divine punishment for their sins. Because the moral-religious lesson is seen as the heart of the story, readers have traditionally read it as the explication of RYBZ’s dramatic quotation of Song 1:8. To do so, however, one must assume that RYBZ found the idea of sin and punishment in the biblical verse. But how precisely? If, as Naomi G. Cohen has argued, “The keys to the theological content of this Midrash—and almost certainly its central core—are its accompanying Biblical quotations,”10 one needs to explain RYBZ’s midrashic reading of the biblical verse. Yet modern scholars rarely explicitly address this question. Instead, it is frequently claimed that the text in its current form is secondary, and that originally the verse that gave rise to the story you are paying a head-tax of fifteen shekels under a government of your enemies. You were unwilling to repair the roads and streets leading up to the temple, now you have to keep in repair the posts and stations on the road to the royal cities … (Lauterbach’s translation with minor modifications). In addition, the story is found in two post-Tannaitic works: ’Abot R. Nat. A:17 (ed. Schechter, 33a [but note Kister, “Study,” 708, concerning the textual evidence of MS JTS Rab. 25!]), and b. Ketub. 66b. A different story (which may, nevertheless, be founded on the same tradition) is the one about Rabbi Elazar ben Sadok, who testifies that he “saw her picking out pieces of barley from under the hoofs of horses in Akko, and concerning her I pronounced this verse: ‘If you do not know O fairest of women.’” That story is found in t. Ketub. 5:9 (ed. Lieberman, 74), and in several post-Tannaitic works (see y. Ketub. 5:9, 30b–c [two versions!]; b. Ketub. 67a; Lam. Rab. 1:16 [ed. Buber, 43b–44a]; Pesiqta Rabbati 29 [ed. Friedmann, 140a]). The differences and the similarities between the various sources have been much discussed in scholarly literature. See, among others: Naomi G. Cohen, “The Theological Stratum of the Martha b. Boethos Tradition,” HTR 69 (1976): 187–95; Ofra Meir, “The Story as a Hermeneutic Device,” AJS Review 7–8 (1982): 231–62; Burton L. Visotzky, “Most Tender and Fairest of Women: A Study in the Transmission of Aggada,” HTR 76 (1983): 403–18; Kister, “Study,” 703–39. From the perspective of their present literary form, however, it is clear that these are two distinct stories, and therefore they should be treated separately, although it is reasonable to assume that they stem from one and the same oral tradition. 9 Anat Yisraeli-Taran, The Legends of the Destruction (in Hebrew) (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1997), 30–32. Most of the information concerning the wealth of Nakdimon is based on legends found in Amoraic literature, but our story in the Sifre indicates that it is of Tannaitic origin. 10 Cohen, “Martha b. Boethos Tradition,” 188.

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was a different one altogether, that is, Deut 28:56 (“The most tender and delicately bred woman among you, who would not venture to set the sole of her foot upon the ground”), not Song 1:8. Thus, for example, Burton L. Visotzky writes: The verse itself fits the story of the girl foraging, but it does not express the depth of horrors of the siege. In order to achieve that emphasis the narrator suggests a different rendering of the verse reading “corpses” instead of “kids.” The irony here is that this adjustment is necessary so that the Cant 1:8 verse may have the force of the original Scripture which gave rise to the story, Deut 28:56. The second adjustment links the moral about Israel more clearly to the story of the girl. Not only will Israel be delivered into the hand of their enemies (as in Deut 28:47), but, like the woman foraging, will be under the feet of their beasts. These adjustments make it clear that the narrator of the Sipre[!] felt the lack of congruence between the story of the woman foraging based on Cant 1:8 and the moral for Israel based on Deut 28:47. To finally adjust the story and its moral, he eliminated the obscure invocation of Deut 28:47–48 altogether. Its relationship to Cant 1:8 was unclear and its prominence in shaping the moral to the story seemed clumsy. The elimination of the verse from the moral, however, severed the last tie the story and moral had to Deuteronomy 28. Instead of a sermon on Deut 28:47 and 56, there was a story with a proof text from Cant 1:8 which had a moral attached. The exegesis of Deut 28:56 had reached its fullest development—the relationship of the verse to its exegesis had vanished entirely.11

Visotzky’s assumption, that the original biblical verse that gave rise to the story was Deut 28:56, is based on the parallels of the story, found in much later Amoraic works, primarily that in the Babylonian Talmud (b. Git. 56b), which Visotzky considers its most original version. Methodologically, however, this procedure is problematic: not only is the assumption that a very late work can be seen as preserving the earliest form of a text highly questionable, moreover, the attempt to read one tradition into another can hardly be justified. There may be two distinct traditions, one using a verse from Deuteronomy, the other a verse from Song of Songs. The interpreter’s task is to explain each tradition on its own terms, that is, to explain how the scriptural prooftext was read in each tradition, but not to impose a single view on both of them. Menahem Kister, too, maintains that Deut 28:56 stands behind the story in the Sifre (and its parallel in Avot of Rabbi Nathan), although that verse is not quoted in the story at all.12 According to Kister, the description of the young woman’s

11 Visotzky, “Most Tender,” 417–18. 12 Kister, “Study,” 721.

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father’s13 habit not to enter the Temple Mount “until fine woolen carpets were spread out under his feet,” echoes the words of that verse: “The most tender and delicately bred woman among you, who would not venture to set the sole of her foot upon the ground because she is so delicate and tender.” This brilliant suggestion may well be true (and in fact, it is entirely possible that Kister was anticipated by the ancient rabbinic authors, who, in some of the later parallels, indeed quoted that verse), but our task is not to rewrite the story in accordance with what we believe had been its original form, but rather first to explain its logic in its current form. On how Song 1:8 was understood by RYBZ according to our story—Kister, like Visotzky, says virtually nothing. Since the internal logic of the text requires that RYBZ understood Song 1:8 as an expression of the theology of sin and punishment, it would seem that RYBZ read its conditional clause (“If you do not know”) as saying: “If you do not know [God],” that is, if you do not follow God’s commandments. The following words of the verse are read, then, as an expression of the result: “Go follow the tracks of the sheep and graze your kids, read not ‘your kids,’ but ‘your corpses.’” If Israel does not follow God’s commandments they will become as corpses, that is, they will die. 13 I refer to “the young woman’s father,” in accordance with the reading of MS Vatican 32 of the Sifre, presented above. As noted above, in the reading of other text witnesses the story refers to “those [belonging to] this young woman’s household” (‫)ושל בית ריבה זו‬. However, the precise reading is disputed: some read ‫ושל‬, with a consecutive waw (thus reads the first printed edition, as well as MS Oxford 151 of the Sifre), but other witnesses read ‫של‬, without a waw (so, for example, reads MS London). The reading with a waw facilitates Kister’s suggestion to punctuate the sentence such that we are told how both the young woman’s family and the family of her father-in-law would enter the Temple Mount: “I did sign the ketubah of this woman, [which was] a thousand thousands gold dinars. Those of her father-in-law’s family and those of her [own] family would not enter …” (‫ של בית חמיה ושל‬.‫אני חתמתי על כתובתה של זו אלף אלפים דינרי זהב‬ ‫)… בית ריבה זו לא היו נכנסים‬. This reading enables him to view the parallel tradition found in b. Ketub. 66b as a secondary, erroneous rendering of the text as is found in the Sifre: “This tradition related (incorrectly), therefore, ‘her father’s household’ to what is said above (that is: ‘thousand thousands gold dinars of her father-in-law’s family and of her [own] family’).” See Kister, “Study,” 723–24. Although this ingenious suggestion may well be correct, it must be noted that the reading of MS Vatican, according to which the story refers to “the young woman’s father,” obstructs Kister’s suggested punctuation, and it indicates that even in those witnesses that refer to her father’s household (‫)של בית ריבה זו‬, in plural, this is the beginning of a new sentence. A grammatical consideration supports this assumption: one expects a clause with a possessive suffix to appear after a clause that contains an explicit demonstrative pronoun, and not vice versa. In other words, had it been correct that the clause ‫ ושל בית ריבה זו‬was meant to be read together with the clause ‫של בית חמיה‬, which precedes it, we would expect either a reversal of the order of the two clauses (‫)של בית ריבה זו ושל בית חמיה‬, or the omission of the demonstrative pronoun “this” (‫ )זו‬from the second clause (something like: ‫ושל ביתה‬, or ‫)ושל בית אביה‬. For this reason (and with strong support from the reading of MS Vatican) I consider the words: “And the father of this young woman” (‫ )ואביה של ריבה זו‬as the beginning of a new sentence. See also Adiel Schremer, Male and Female He Created Them: Jewish Marriage in Late Second Temple, Mishnah and Talmud Periods (in Hebrew) (Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Center, 2003), 237–38, n. 35.

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To use the midrash’s own words: “When Israel does not fulfill the will of God, he delivers them into the hand of a lowly nation.” The verse, however, does not mention Israel; it rather refers to a beautiful woman (“O fairest of women”). Clearly, then, RYBZ read that phrase metaphorically, as a reference to the Jewish people. What invoked this interpretation was the scene of a young Jewish woman, who had previously been “beautiful” (rich),14 but now in a miserable situation of extreme poverty. The actual young Jewish woman, the daughter of Nakdimon ben Gurion, has thus lost her individual identity and turned into a symbol of her nation.15 However, this transformation is not as smooth as one would hope; for it to work, it is necessary to assume that the young lady was sinful, while nothing in the story itself really leads in this direction! Only in the story’s parallels does the image of the young woman receive negative qualities. Thus, in t. Ketub. 5:9 and its much later parallels in post-Tannaitic works, we read of the daughter of Nakdimon ben Gurion that: The sages fixed her the amount of 500 gold dinars for a fund for spices daily … yet she cursed them and said, “So you should give to your own daughters!” Said Rabbi Elazar ben Sadok: May I see consolation [‫ ]אראה בנחמה‬if I did not see her collecting barley-corns from beneath the hooves of horses in Akko! I recited this verse, “If you do not know, O fairest of women” [Song 1:8].16

14 Schremer, Male and Female, 144. 15 Cf. Kister, “Study,” 721. 16 T. Ketub. 5:9 (ed. Lieberman, 74; translation mine—A. S.). In the parallel in y. Ketub. 5:9, 30b–c, there are two consecutive versions of this story, neither of which is identical with that found in the Tosefta. (1) The first version refers to Martha daughter of Baithos; the second to Miriam daughter of Shimon ben Gurion. (2) In the first version the sages are said to have fixed her the amount of two se’ah of wine for a day (‫)סאתיים יין בכל יום‬, rather than five hundred dinars for spices, as we read in the Tosefta (and in the second version). (3) In the second version Rabbi Elazar ben Sadok testifies that he saw the woman tied with her hair to a horse’s tail (‫אראה בנחמה‬ ‫)אם לא ראיתיה קשורה בשערה בזנב הסוס בעכו‬, rather than collecting barley-corns from beneath the hooves of horses, as we read in the Tosefta (and in the first version). (4) Most significant is the verse recited by Rabbi Elazar upon seeing the woman: in the second version Rabbi Elazar ben Sadok quotes Deut 26:56, rather than Song 1:8! In the first version, too, reference is made to the former verse, although the latter is also quoted: “And I recited concerning her this verse: ‘The most tender and delicately bred woman among you’ [Deut 28:56], ‘If you do not know, O fairest of women, go follow the tracks of the sheep’ [Song 1:8].” As the introductory phrase, “this verse” requires a single verse, it is clear that the citation of two distinct verses is corrupt, and that originally only one verse was quoted. Without the support of additional text witnesses it is difficult to decide with certainty which of the two is the original, but it seems to me that the latter fits better, as the woman is described as having collected barley-corns from beneath the hooves of horses, which can explain Rabbi Elazar’s association with the scriptural expression “footsteps of the sheep” (‫)בעקבי הצאן‬. In the second version, however, she is said to have been tied to a horse’s tail, which would require her to stand with her feet on the ground (or even worse, to lie completely on the ground), and such a scene could cause Rabbi Elazar to recall the words of Deut 28:56: “who would not venture to set the sole of her foot upon the ground.” At any event, from

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Here Nakdimon ben Gurion’s daughter is presented in a most negative manner, as an arrogant and spoiled woman. In contrast, in the Sifre, as Kister correctly observes, “the image of the young woman lost its negative characteristics, which are the heart of the Tosefta and its parallels: the insolence, the rudeness and the pampering in its most negative sense. In the Sifre and Avot de-Rabbi Nathan we may [even] sympathize with Nakdimon ben Gurion’s daughter as a positive character.”17 But if so, what was it that led RYBZ to interpret the scene as the fulfilment of the divine scheme of sin and punishment? Where is the sin? These difficulties vanish once we realize that the concluding religious moral is not a genuine part of the story, but rather a redactional supplement to it. As Ephraim E. Urbach has written: An impartial examination of the story indicates that the entire issue of “You did not wish to subjugate yourselves” etc. is a later addition. Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai recited, as a response to what his eyes saw, the verse “If you do not know go follow the tracks of the sheep.” The glossator draws the conclusion from the story, but this addition is absent from all the parallel sources.18

Similarly, Jacob Neusner observed that: “The sermon itself exhibits no relationship to the story. Once the setting is completed the sermon follows without much reference to it or its details.”19 True, both Urbach and Neusner made this point with

a literary point of view neither of these versions of Rabbi Elazar ben Sadok’s testimony should be considered a parallel of the story about RYBZ in the Sifre. The latter is indeed a “story”; the former only a personal testimony. 17 Kister, “Study,” 721. Kister writes “lost” because he assumes that the story as it appears in the Sifre (and ’Abot R. Nat.) is based on the tradition found in the Tosefta (ibid.). This is not impossible, of course, but methodologically I think we first need to address each story on its own terms. It would be better, therefore, to say that in the Sifre “the image of the young woman lacks the negative characteristics,” which are so prominent in the story about Rabbi Elazar ben Sadok in the Tosefta. 18 Ephraim E. Urbach, “The Jews in Their Land in the Tannaitic Period” (in Hebrew), Behinot 4 (1953): 70. Urbach made this comment in response to Alon’s reliance on the story (as it appears in the Mek. R. Ish.) as evidence for “forced labor” that the Romans allegedly imposed on Palestinian Jews in the wake of the Great Revolt. See Gedalyahu Alon, The Jews in their Land in the Talmudic Age, trans. and ed. Gershon Levi (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1980), 62. Alon was followed by Shmuel Safrai, “The Recovery of the Jewish Population in the Yavne Generation” (in Hebrew), in Political, Social and Cultural History, vol. 1 of Eretz Israel from the Destruction of the Second Temple to the Muslim Conquest, ed. Zvi Baras et al. (Jerusalem: Yad Ben-Zvi, 1982), 21–22; idem, In Times of Temple and Mishnah: Studies in Jewish History (in Hebrew) (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1994), 2:322–23. As Oppenheimer noted, however, Urbach’s analysis of the text should be preferred. See Aharon Oppenheimer, “Gedalyahu Alon Fifty Years On” (in Hebrew), Zion 69 (2004): 471–72. 19 Jacob Neusner, Development of a Legend: Studies on the Traditions Concerning Yohanan ben Zakkai (Leiden: Brill, 1970), 16.

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respect to the version of the story as found in the Mekilta of Rabbi Ishmael, but it is equally applicable to the version in the Sifre.20 If the concluding religious moral is indeed a later supplement that should be detached from the story itself, this provides an opening to consider an alternative interpretation of RYBZ’s reference to Song 1:8 and the story’s ideological thrust. To this I shall turn now.

II. Reading in Context To pave the way for a different understanding of the story, let us have a look at the context in which it is placed, and ask: How is it related to the concerns of section 305 of the Sifre, in which it is currently found? Surprisingly, this question has rarely been addressed by modern scholars.21 However, awareness of the context may prove crucial for a proper understanding of the story’s message. Sections 304–5 of Sifre Deuteronomy are, in fact, one literary unit that comprises the entire commentary of the Sifre on Parashat Nisabim (Deut 29:9–30:20). This unit comments on God’s address to Moses before his death, as narrated in Deut 31:14: “And the Lord said to Moses: Behold, the days approach when you must die; call Joshua and present yourselves in the tent of meeting, that I may commission him.” The Sifre interprets this as a commandment to appoint Joshua as Moses’s successor, and it reads into the biblical verse a conversation between Moses and God concerning the need to appoint a suitable leader for the people of Israel: “And the Lord said to Moses: Behold, the days approach when you must die” [Deut 31:14]—Moses replies before the Holy One, blessed be He: Master of the Universe, since I depart this world with great agony, show me a trustworthy man who will take charge of Israel so that I can take leave of them in peace. As it is said: “Who shall go out before them and come in before them. …22 so that the Lord’s community may not be like sheep that have no shepherd” [Num 27:17].

20 Pace Kister, who concedes that “the theological conclusion is an addition” (Kister, “Study,” 722, n. 92), but nevertheless maintains that: “it stands at the basis of the story in the Sifre Deuteronomy … and gives the story its meaning” (ibid.). 21 Kister, apparently, was aware of the question, although he does not address it in such a manner. See Kister, “Study,” 714–15. 22 I skipped the following editorial remark: “And it also says: ‘We have a little sister and she has no breasts’ [Song 8:8] … Four kingships are destined to rule over Israel, yet there is no wise man, nor a smart one among them. In the days of Ahab, king of Israel, and in the days of Jehoshaphat, king of Judah, Israel was spread over the mountains as sheep that has no shepherd.” This remark claims that although Israel was ruled by a Jewish king, it lacked wise men, and it seems that the text equates “wise men” with rabbis. Thus, the editor who inserted this remark transformed the demand to appoint a political leader into a demand to appoint a rabbinic sage.

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“And the Lord said to Moses: Take for yourself Joshua, the son of Nun” [Num 27:18]— “Take for yourself ” [means] heroic as yourself … The Holy One, blessed be He, replies to Moses and says to him: Give Joshua a spokesman and let him propound a question, expound and convey instructions during your lifetime, so that when you depart this world Israel will not say to him, “During the lifetime of your master you did not dare speak, and now you speak?”23

The Sifre reads into Deut 31:14 a dialogue between God and Moses, by relating this verse to Num 27:15–23. There, Moses, as a response to God’s command that he make the preparations for his death, approached God, saying: Let the Lord, the God of the spirits of all flesh, appoint a man over the congregation, who shall go out before them and come in before them, who shall lead them out and bring them in, so that the congregation of the Lord may not be as a sheep which have no shepherd. And the Lord said to Moses: Take Joshua the son of Nun, a man in whom is the spirit, and lay your hand upon him. Cause him to stand before Elazar the priest and all the congregation, and you shall commission him in their sight. (Num 27:16–19)

Because in Deut 31:14 “the Lord said to Moses: Behold, the days approach when you must die,” the Sifre could read the verses from Num 27:15–19 in connection with this verse. The Sifre’s exposition constructs an answer to the question of the virtues required from an ideal leader. It emphasizes, first, that a proper leader for the Jewish people should be “heroic” (‫)גברתן‬.24 However, he should also have the spiritual qualities that would make him a teacher of Torah, that is, a rabbinic sage. Joshua, according to the Sifre, was expected to “propound a question, expound and convey instructions,” which are the skills expected from a halakic authority in the rabbinic world. Yet, the Sifre also puts in Moses’s mouth an admonition to the future leader of Israel to consider his people’s nature and treat them gently: At that moment Moses’s strength increased and he encouraged Joshua in the sight of all Israel, as it is said: “Then Moses summoned Joshua and said to him in the sight of all Israel” [Deut 31:7]. He said to him: This people that I am delivering to you, they are still like kids; they are still infants. Do not be strict with them concerning everything that they do. For their Master, too, was not overly strict concerning all that they had done. As is it said: “For Israel is a child, and I love him” [Hos 11:1].25

23 Sifre Deut.304 (ed. Finkelstein, 323–24). 24 Marcus Jastrow, A Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature (New York: Putnam, 1903), 209, s.v. ‫גברתן‬. 25 Sifre Deut. 304 (ed. Finkelstein, 324).

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This is the context in which the story about RYBZ meeting the daughter of Nakdimon ben Gurion appears in the Sifre. The story, then, should be understood as related to the issue of leadership.26 But how? A look at the parallel midrashic passage in the Sifre on Num 27:17 may provide the key to solving this riddle: “So that the Lord’s community may not [be like sheep that have no shepherd]” [Num 27:17]—and concerning him it is explicated in the Hagiographa: “Tell me, you whom my soul loves [where you pasture your flock, where you make it lie down at the noon, for why should I be like one who is veiled]” [Song 1:7], as it is said: “He shall wrap himself up in the land of Egypt as a shepherd wraps himself up in his cloak” etc. [Jer 43:12]. “For why should I be like one who is veiled beside the flocks [of your fellows” (Song, ibid.)—beside the flocks] of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Come and observe what the Holy One replied to him: “If you do not know, O fairest of women” [Song 1:8], most excellent of all creatures, most excellent of all men, “go follow the tracks of the sheep” [ibid.], in the end27 I will be with them, “and graze your kids” [ibid.].

26 Kister’s explanation for the placement of the story here, at section 305 of Sifre Deut., follows a different path. In his opinion, the connection between the story and the preceding midrashic section is not thematic, but rather technical: because the preceding midrash is based on Song 1:8, which is the same verse RYBZ quotes in the story, the editor of the Sifre brought the story in sequence with the preceding midrashic passage. See Kister, “Study,” 714–15. The obvious problem with this suggestion is that Song 1:8 is not quoted at all in that midrashic passage! Kister, therefore, conjectures that in an earlier, more original form of the Sifre (such as the one found in the parallel in ’Abot R. Nat.), that verse was part of the midrashic passage, but in the course of the transmission of the “tradition” it was lost. See also Louis Finkelstein, “The Transmission of Early Rabbinic Tradition,” HUCA 16 (1941): 132–35. Although such speculations should not entirely be ruled out, I find this suggestion difficult to accept in the present case for two main reasons: (1) It assumes that a very late rabbinic work preserves the earlier form of a text, more authentic than the one found in a Tannaitic work, without considering the opposite possibility, that is, that the text was reworked by the later editors of ’Abot R. Nat., who supplemented the verse. (2) It fails to offer any explanation for the “disappearance” of the relevant verse from the text of the Sifre. The truth of the matter is that, there is no need to assume that the preceding midrashic passage is indeed based on Song 1:8, and the connection between the story and the midrash can be explained differently, as I shall immediately explain. 27 The Hebrew here is: ‫( בעקיב אני עושה עמהן‬read: ‫)בעקב‬. The meaning of the expression (as Shlomo Naeh suggested to me), is “in the end.” This suggestion is strongly corroborated by the midrash in Song Rab. 1:44 on Song 1:8 (ed. Donski, 36), as is found in a Genizah fragment: “Go follow the tracks of the sheep”—Rabbi Eliezer, Rabbi Akiva, and the sages [dispute]: Rabbi Eliezer says: from the burnt cake that they took in their hands from Egypt, and which they ate for thirty one days … you can know what I will do for them in the end [‫]מה אני עושה להם בעקב‬: “May there be abundance of grain” etc. [Ps 72:16]. Rabbi Akiva says: from the fact that I surrounded them with the clouds of honor in the desert … you can know what I will do for them in the end [‫]מה אני עושה להם בעקב‬: “It will be for a shade by day from the heat” [Isa 4:6]; “Their King will pass on before them” [Mic 2:13]. And the sages say: from the fact that I fed them manna in the desert, which is sweeter than honey and milk, you can know what I will do for them in the end [‫]מה אני עושה להם בעקב‬: “And in that day the mountains shall drip sweet wine” [Joel 4:18].

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Whence do you say that the Omnipresent revealed to Moses all the leaders that are destined to serve Israel from the day the world was created until the dead will be resurrected? For it is said: “go follow the tracks of the sheep” [ibid].28

The Sifre maintains that the verses in Num 27:15–23 are the explication of the verses in Song 1:7–8.29 The first of the latter two verses—“Tell me, You whom my soul loves, how [‫ ]איכה‬will You pasture Your flock?”—should be read as Moses’s address to God, and his request that God tell him how He will lead Israel after his death, as it is explicitly stated in Num 27:17. The expression, “Your flock,” is thus interpreted as a reference to the children of Israel, God’s people. The second verse, Song 1:8, is God’s reply: “If you do not know, O fairest of women, go follow the tracks of the sheep.” God promises to Moses that “in the end” (‫ )בעקב‬He will be their leader. According to this midrashic reading, the “fairest of women” is a reference to Moses, as the Sifre indeed explicitly says: “O fairest of women [Song 1:8]—most excellent of all creatures, most excellent of all men.” And, on the basis of this reading the Sifre could go a step further and claim that: “The Omnipresent revealed to Moses all the leaders [‫ ]פרנסים‬that are destined to serve Israel.” This gender transformation surprised even the ancient rabbis, who indeed asked regarding that very verse: “Why were the prophets referred to as women?”30 Their answer (“To tell: just as a woman does not hesitate to demand her needs from her husband, so too the prophets do not hesitate to demand Israel’s needs before their Father in heaven.”) need not concern us here; rather, what is significant is the recognition that early rabbinic tradition was willing to view the phrase, “O fairest of women” in Song 1:8 as a reference to Moses, and in fact to all leaders of the Jewish people.

See Zvi Meir Rabinovitz, Ginzé Midrash: The Oldest Forms of Rabbinic Midrashim According to Geniza Manuscripts (in Hebrew) (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University Press, 1976), 94. In MS Vatican 72 of Song Rab. the reading in Rabbi Akiva’s suggestion is explicitly: ‫את יודע מה אני עושה להן בסוף‬ ‫בעקב‬. This is a conflation of two equivalent words, and ‫ בסוף‬is probably a marginal gloss that made its way into the text, but it reveals the meaning of ‫בעקב‬. See also Lev. Rab. 12:1 (ed. Margulies, 252), and Margulies’s comment ad loc. Perhaps the enigmatic statement in ’Abot R. Nat. A:31 (ed. Schechter, 92), ‫מלאך המות באדם זה עקיביו של אדם‬, too, is based on the same meaning. 28 Sifre Num. 139 (ed. Horovitz, 186), according to the reading of MS Vatican 32, which is the best text witness of the Sifre. See Kahana, Manuscripts, 89–90. Compare the later parallel in Song Rab. 1:7 (ed. Dunski, 36). 29 My view of the midrashic move here is in tension with that suggested by Daniel Boyarin, “Two Introductions to the Midrash on the Song of Songs” (in Hebrew), Tarbiz 56 (1987): 489– 91; idem, Intertextuality and the Reading of Midrash (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), 105–16. Boyarin maintains that Song of Songs was seen by the ancient rabbis as the key with which they could better interpret the Torah. I, in contrast, understand the midrash as doing the complete opposite: by relating the enigmatic verses of Song 1:7–8 to the much more explicit ones in Num 27:16–18, the text being illuminated is the former, not the latter. 30 Song Rab. 1:44.

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One of these leaders (‫)פרנסים‬, according to the Sifre on Deuteronomy 34:7, was none other than Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai: “Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai engaged in business for forty years, and served the sages for forty years, and led [‫ ]ופרנס‬Israel for forty years.”31 The term used by the Sifre on Deuteronomy and the Sifre on Numbers to designate the leader and his communal activity is one and the same: parnas,32 and this indicates that the two sources share the same discourse and reflect a similar milieu. In light of the midrashic reading of the phrase “O fairest of women” in Song 1:8 as a reference to Israel’s leaders, as seen in the Sifre on Num 27:17, we may now consider a new understanding of RYBZ’s reference to Song 1:8 in his encounter with the young Jewish woman, as narrated in the story that is the focus of this study. As we have seen, the context in which the story appears deals with the qualities expected from Israel’s leader, so we should try to offer a reading of the story that would connect to that issue. I would suggest, therefore, that the phrase “O fairest of women” was understood by RYBZ as a reference to himself! His dramatic invocation of Song 1:8 was meant, accordingly, as self-criticism for not knowing the living conditions of those for whom he was expected to be a provider (parnas), and as a call for any rabbinic leader to “go out” of the rabbinic academy and be involved in the lives of the rest of the community.33

III. History The interpretation suggested above views the story as a self-critique of the rabbis’ detachment from the rest of Jewish society, and their ignorance and disregard of the conditions in which their fellow Jews lived. Its main thrust is to rebuke the rabbis themselves, and to change their approach to the rest of the Jewish community. According to this interpretation, the story can be used as evidence for the rabbis’ awareness of the isolation of the rabbinic world and their problematic relationship with the rest of Jewish society. We may assume that, if some rabbinic authors allowed themselves to criticize the rabbinic leadership for not being involved

31 Sifre Deut. 357 (ed. Finkelstein, 429). 32 See also Sifre Zuta on Numbers 27:17 (ed. Horovitz, 320), which also uses the same term. On the parnas in Tannaitic literature see Steven D. Fraade, “Local Jewish Leadership in Roman Palestine: The Case of the ‘Parnas’ in Early Rabbinic Sources in Light of Extra-Rabbinic Evidence,” in Halakhah in Light of Epigraphy, ed. Albert I. Baumgarten et al. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2011), 155–73. 33 This reading fits not only the context, but also the story itself. Let us recall, RYBZ did not recognize the young woman, although, as a witness to her highly unusual and exceptional marriage contract, one could expect him to be able to identify her.

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enough in the lives of others Jews, this was indeed a current concern among Palestinian rabbis of Tannaitic times. “Tannaitic times,” however, is a broad term, referring to a period of nearly two hundred years, spanning from the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE to the presumed date of the Sifre’s editing, sometime during the third century.34 Can we assign the story—and the concerns to which it gives voice, according to the suggested interpretation—to a more specific period? Many historians read the story as a description of an actual event, and date it to the immediate years following the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Second Temple. Thus, for example, Adolph Büchler writes: “R. Johanan b. Zakkai saw the daughter of Nakdimon b. Gorjon, one of the wealthiest men in Jerusalem, in Ma‘on in abject poverty.”35 For Büchler, it is clear that the story is a realistic description of a concrete historical event that actually took place in the days of RYBZ. Moshe D. Herr, in contrast, emphasizes that, “This story, which is repeated in early rabbinic literature in various forms, is obviously replete with aggadic elements.” However, he too asserts that “there is no doubt that at its basis stands a difficult social-economic reality of decline in the wake of the Destruction.”36 Gedalyahu Alon, quoting the parallel version of the story in the Mekilta of Rabbi Ishmael to support his claim about forced labor that the Romans imposed on Palestinian Jews in the wake of the failure of the Great Revolt in 70 CE, dates it to “a time not long after the Destruction.”37 Ephraim E. Urbach and David Flusser also date the story to the “time after the destruction of the Temple.”38 However, a story, as a literary artifact, need not necessarily be composed at the time it appears to describe; it can be the product of a later period, using the past to communicate the message the author wishes to convey. The story in the Sifre, therefore, cannot be assumed, without specific evidence, to have been created at the time of its hero, Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai, for it could have been composed

34 Daniel Boyarin, “On the Status of the Tannaitic Midrashim,” JAOS 112 (1992): 455–65; Menahem I. Kahana, “The Halakhic Midrashim,” in The Literature of the Sages, ed. Shmuel Safrai et al. (Assen: Royal Van Gorcum and Fortress Press, 2006), 2:60–62. 35 Adolph Büchler, The Economic Condition of Judaea after the Destruction of the Second Temple (London: Jews College, 1912), 14. 36 Moshe D. Herr, “From the Destruction to the Ben Kosba Revolt (70–135 CE)” (in Hebrew), in The Roman Byzantine Period—The Roman Period from the Conquest to the Ben Kozba War (63 BCE–135 CE), vol. 4 of The History of Eretz Israel, ed. Menahem Stern (Jerusalem: Keter and Yad Ben-Zvi, 1984), 291. 37 Alon, Jews in Their Land, 68–69. 38 Ephraim E. Urbach, “The Homiletical Interpretations of the Sages and the Expositions of Origen on Canticles,” Scripta Hierosolymitana 22 (1971): 248–49; David Flusser, “The Dead of Massada in the Eyes of Their Contemporaries,” in Jews and Judaism in the Second Temple, Mishna and Talmud Period: Studies in Honor of Shmuel Safrai, ed. Isaiah Gafni, Aharon Oppenheimer, and Menahem Stern (Jerusalem: Yad Ben-Zvi, 1993), 122.

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at any moment between the time of RYBZ and the time of the final editing of the Sifre. Yet, the fact that a different version of that story is found in another Tannaitic work, the Mekilta of Rabbi Ishmael, seems to indicate that it did not originate with the editor of the Sifre himself, but rather circulated in Palestine even earlier. Furthermore, as we have seen, the story was appended with a religious-moral teaching, which, according to the interpretation I suggest, has nothing to do with the concerns of the entire midrashic passage into which the story is presently incorporated. It is counterintuitive to assume, therefore, that the moral was penned by the editor of the Sifre; rather, it was probably part of the source that the editor received. This consideration pushes the dating of the story itself even earlier, but how early we cannot know. Because of our inability to date the story with more precision, we must admit that our ability to use it as a historical source is more limited than we would like it to be. However, we can still view it as giving voice to an important concern of Palestinian rabbis of the Tannaitic era, which had to do with their self-perception of their role as social leaders of Palestinian Jewish society of their time.

David Stern

Just Stories: Fictionality and the Ma‘aśeh, from the Mishnah to Ma‘aśeh Yerušalmi

Steven Fraade and I are exact contemporaries. In the late 1970s, when we first met, we were probably the only two graduate students in America—Steve at Penn, myself at Harvard—writing doctoral dissertations on midrash, and we quickly bonded over our common subject. Since then, we have remained good friends and close colleagues. Steve’s intellectual generosity, his personal graciousness, his discerning intelligence and massive erudition, along with his plain good sense and decency, have repeatedly served me and many others in our field as a mainstay of our professional lives. Over the same period, while we have both remained involved in the study of midrash, our paths have also diverged in somewhat different directions—in Steve’s case, back towards the Second Temple period and to the intersection of law and narrative; in my own case, forward to the Middle Ages and the history of the book. In the spirit of both our common and diverging interests, I offer the following small contribution, a study of a specific subgenre of legal fiction that, in the course of its history from the early to the postclassical rabbinic periods, became a medium of imaginative fiction. Over the past two or three decades, scholarly interest in narrative in rabbinic literature has grown exponentially. The sheer importance of these narratives within rabbinic discourse, the critical position they occupy in that literature in all its genres, and the contribution these narratives make to legal discourse in particular have been increasingly recognized. Even so, crucial aspects of the phenomenon of narrative in rabbinic literature remain to be explored, and none more so than the nature of fictionality in the rabbinic narrative imagination. Did the rabbis believe in their narratives? Did they believe the stories they told actually took place, or were they able to recognize a tale as invented, or partly invented? Did imagined narrative, fiction, have a place in rabbinic discourse? In this article, I wish to explore these questions by looking at one specific genre of rabbinic narrative, the ma‘aśeh, particularly as it figures in legal discourse, and trace its development as a narrative form from the Mishnah through the gaonic period, with special attention in the later period to a novella-length narrative entitled Ma‘aśeh Yerušalmi. Before beginning this journey, however, a few background words are necessary about the subject of fictionality in rabbinic literature and about the various stances towards fictionality taken in different types of rabbinic narrative.

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We can begin with the observation that Rabbinic Hebrew has no word for fiction. The closest one comes to an explicit discussion of the fictionality of a narrative—in this case, a biblical narrative—is the brief discussion about Ezekiel’s vision of the resurrection of the dead bones (Ezek 37) in b. Sanhedrin 92b, where the Babylonian sages R. Judah and R. Nehemiah explore the question as to whether the prophetic vision was ’emet, “reality,” an actual occurrence, or a mašal—usually translated as “allegory,” “parable,” or “proverb”—but, when juxtaposed with ’emet, a term that has more of the meaning of an invented tale, a fiction.1 The same word is used in a similar fashion in b. Bava Batra 15a in a discussion over whether Job was an actual historical figure or a mašal. In both cases, however, the primary subject of discussion is the ontology of the biblical story—whether the event or person discussed in the text actually occurred or lived—and not the generic status of the text itself. The fact that Rabbinic Hebrew does not possess a word for “fiction” does not mean, of course, that the rabbis did not imagine such narratives. At least as seen from our perspective today, it is clear that imagined or invented (or partly imagined or partly invented) narrative existed as part of rabbinic literature virtually from the moment of its inception. Furthermore, there were several different genres of such narratives—the mašal, the narrative parable (as distinct from the word as used for a fiction, as just discussed); the sippur daršani, or exegetical narrative; and the ma‘aśeh or anecdote.2 Each of these genres takes a somewhat different stance towards the question of its fictionality. The mašal is the easiest to discuss because it is the only one of these genres to self-consciously acknowledge its fictionality, even if that fictionality is a source of ambivalence.3 Thus, a famous passage in Song of Songs Rabbah (1.1.8) describes the purpose of the mašal—by (typically) using the literary form of the mašal— as follows: Do not consider the mašal a trivial thing, for it is by means of the mašal that a man is able to arrive at the words of Torah. It is like [mašal le‑] a king who lost a gold‑piece or a precious gem. Does he not find it with a penny‑candle?4

The mašal has the value of a penny-candle. Its worth is trivial, and the source of that triviality is its fictionality: what validates the literary form and rescues it from triviality is the mašal’s utility as a tool for understanding Torah, namely, its exeget-

1 David Stern, Parables in Midrash: Narrative and Exegesis in Rabbinic Literature (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991), 9–13. 2 As my colleague Dan Ben-Amos has pointed out to me, these three generic categories are not entirely equivalent. The sages themselves use the terms mašal and ma‘aśeh. The term sippur daršani is a modern term invented by scholars. 3 Stern, Parables in Midrash, 63–71. 4 The text translated here is based on Midrash Rabbah Shir Ha-Shirim: Midrash H  azit, ed. Shimshon Dunsky (Jerusalem: Dvir, 1980), 6. The translation is mine.

Just Stories: Fictionality and the Ma‘aśeh, from the Mishnah to Ma‘aśeh Yerušalmi 547

ical function. But in fact, as any reader knows, the mašal’s literary power derives as much from its imaginative force as from its exegetical acumen. The rabbis, however, do not acknowledge that force as a source of any value. The fictionality of the sippur daršani—the many tiny exegetical narratives and strands and fragments of narrative that can be found throughout rabbinic literature, and particularly midrash—is tied to the ontological status of those narratives, and specifically their historicity. The sippur daršani exists in a kind of nether space between the biblical narrative and the sphere of the imagination of the exegete.5 Did the rabbis consider these extrabiblical legends as historically authentic as the biblical narrative? We do not have a clear answer to this question, but the status occupied by these narratives may be most akin to the one occupied by myth in Greco-Roman late antiquity, an area that Paul Veyne has explored and defined as possessing a reality inherently different from that of the world in which we live but which is nonetheless “real” in its own terms, with a kind of plasticity that makes it infinitely adaptable to different purposes.6 While Veyne’s exploration of the “constitutive” status of myth (or rabbinic aggadah) is far from satisfying, his approach does suggest that our contemporary terms—“fiction,” “history,” “reality”—may not be the most helpful categories for considering the status of these narratives. The ontological status of the sippur daršani may have resided precisely in its “traditionality,” the fact that it was acknowledged to be aggadah, transmitted tradition, and that its tradent-authors believed that the narratives or exegetical narratives they recounted were not invented by themselves but received from past tradition or derived from the biblical text as acceptable midrashim. Insofar as they believed that they were not themselves the original authors of the traditions, they could not have believed them to be invented fictions. They were either “in” the biblical text (the way all midrashim are “in” the Bible) or the fact that they were traditional meant that they were not simply made up by the sages who transmitted them. In contrast to both the mašal and the sippur daršani, the ma‘aśeh largely avoids the question of its invented status by, explicitly or implicitly, claiming to have taken place exactly as it is narrated. This claim must not be confused with the entirely separate question as to whether or not these narratives actually did take place as they claimed. In contrast to the other narrative genres, the author of a ma‘aśeh 5 The most recent consideration of this question is by Chaim Milikowsky, in “Midrash as Fiction and Midrash as History: What Did the Rabbis Mean?,” in Ancient Fiction: The Matrix of Early Christian and Jewish Narrative, ed. Jo-Ann A. Brant, Charles W. Hedrick, and Chris Shea (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 117–28; as Milikowsky’s title indicates, he juxtaposes “fiction” and “history” as opposites, but he never inspects or justifies that opposition, which, in fact, may not be a helpful categorization of the alternatives in play. See also my comments on the question in Midrash and Theory: Ancient Jewish Exegesis and Contemporary Literary Studies (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1996), 91–93. 6 Paul Veyne, Did the Greeks Believe in Their Myths? An Essay on the Constitutive Imagination, trans. Paula Wissing (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988).

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makes a radical assertion of his narrative’s authenticity and historicity, and utterly denies its fictionality or inventedness. In some cases, as we shall see, that claim can be problematized but it always characterizes the ma‘aśeh. As an identifiable genre of rabbinic discourse, the ma‘aśeh first appears in the Mishnah. Frequently, though not always, the subgenre can be identified by the fact that its narrative begins with the formula ma‘aśeh be-, which can be translated freely as “The following incident actually happened to …”7 In a recent work, Moshe Simon-Shoshan has expertly categorized the two main types of ma‘aśim found in the Mishnah. The first of these, the case story, describes a particular situation in which (typically) a halakic problem arose, to which a sage (or sages) offered a ruling in the form of a pronouncement; the second, the exemplum, is a narrative that relates how a sage acted in a particular situation, usually one that posed a halakic problem to which the sage responded by acting as he did.8 As a device of legal discourse, the ma‘aśeh has partial analogues in Roman legal discourse.9 The genre also has parallels in the chreia, anecdotal stories told about Greco-­Roman sages and philosophers, which were used as subjects of rhetorical exercises.10 Most ma‘aśim in the Mishnah are very brief, and nearly all presumably appear as illustrations or exemplifications or extensions of the halakot discussed in the Mishnah.11 As Simon-Shoshan shows, however, ma‘aśim are rarely transparent illustrations or unambiguous demonstrations of the halakot that they accompany. There nearly always exist disparities between the narratives and their textual legal contexts. 7 For the closest thing to a catalogue of the ma‘aśim in the Mishnah, see Shaye J. D. Cohen, “The Rabbi in Second-Century Jewish Society, Appendix 29:2, Interaction between Rabbis and Jews: The Tannaitic Evidence,” in The Early Roman Period, vol. 3 of The Cambridge History of Judaism, ed. William Horbury, W. D. Davies, and John Sturdy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 980–90. As noted, not every ma‘aśeh begins with the formulaic ma‘aśeh be-. Some are first-person narratives; others simply begin with the narration of the event. 8 Moshe Simon-Shoshan, Stories of the Law: Narrative Discourse and the Construction of Authority in the Mishnah (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012); on case stories, see in particular 130–66; on exempla, 167–93. 9 Simon-Shoshan, Stories, 80–83. 10 On the chreia, see the classic article of Henry A. Fischel, “Story and History: Observations on Greco-Roman Rhetoric and Pharisaism,” in American Oriental Society Middle West Branch Semi-Centennial Volume, ed. D. Sinor (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1969), 59–88. 11 Probably the best-known ma‘aśeh of this sort is the one about the sons of Rabban Gamaliel in m. Ber. 1:1. On the structure of this Mishnah, see Burton L. Visotzky, “So Why Did the Sages Say, ‘Until Midnight’?: On M. Berakhot 1:1,” in Tiferet LeYisrael: Jubilee Volume in Honor of Israel Francus, ed. Joel Roth, Menahem Schmelzer, Yaacov Francus (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 2010). This ma‘aśeh is also a good example of the kinds of problems raised by many ma‘aśim in the Mishnah—described in the next paragraph—inasmuch as it supplies too much information and thereby raises questions that go far beyond the task of exemplification for which the anecdote is presumably cited, e. g.: What were Rabban Gamaliel’s sons doing before they came home? Why hadn’t they said the Shema at a more reasonable hour? What was the tone of Rabban Gamaliel’s statement to his sons?

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Either the ma‘aśim provide too much information or detail—an excess that undermines their transparency—or they present significant lacunae, slippages, and other gaps and discontinuities within the ma‘aśim themselves or between the narratives and their halakic contexts so as to raise more questions than they answer. As a result, the ma‘aśim can rarely be read as simple applications or unmediated illustrations or transparent extensions of the more propositional parts of mishnaic discourse.12 There is no easy and obvious way to resolve or explain away these discontinuities, nor do we know how the author(s) or editor(s) of the Mishnah viewed them, or whether they were even fully aware of the problems these disparities introduce into the text. Paradoxically, the discontinuities and incongruities within ma‘aśim and between the narratives and their contexts actually serve to confirm their verisimilitude and claim to historicity inasmuch as they provide for the reader visible proof that the Mishnah’s redactor did not tamper with the ma‘aśim in order to make them fit their legal context more perfectly. Typically, the disparities are noticeable—that is, if one is prepared to recognize them. The fact that they are recognizable may also help us appreciate the memorability of the ma‘aśeh as a literary form in the Mishnah. Perhaps their very incongruity—the fact that their disparities called for attention and interpretation—was part of their memorability. For all their manifold incongruities, however, the narratives of the ma‘aśim in the Mishnah rarely raise issues of credibility, or stray into the realm of the fantastic or the unbelievable. The ma‘aśim that come closest to being incredible (in the literal sense) are probably those about H  oni Hame‘agel (the Circle Maker) in m. Ta‘anit 3:8, but even there what is at issue is H  oni’s own status in the rabbis’ eyes (specifically, within the Mishnah itself, Shimon ben Shetah’s), not the historicity of the miracles that H  oni is able to work, which seems to be taken for granted.13 In Amoraic literature, particularly in the Babylonian Talmud, the ma‘aśeh expands as a genre to include not only “halakic narratives” but also far lengthier and ambitious stories including “historical” accounts (like those concerning the destruction of the temple and the founding of Yavneh) as well as many tales about sages that have no halakic connection or implication. In many of these narratives, the claim to historicity becomes problematized. Supernatural figures—Elijah, angels, and demons (šedim)—appear in them (although the mere fact of these figures’ presence in these narratives does not necessarily weaken their claim to historicity, since there is no question that the rabbis believed in their existence).14 More

12 Simon-Shoshan, Stories, 225–31, where he also uses the term “undermine” to describe the relationship of some ma‘aśim to their “normative” contexts. 13 H  oni’s story has been discussed extensively in scholarship over the last century; for a summary and bibliography, see Simon-Shoshan, Stories, 149–66. 14 On rabbinic beliefs in supernatural creatures, see Joshua Trachtenberg, Jewish Magic and Superstition (1939; repr. New York: Atheneum, 1970), 15–44 in particular and passim; and now Gideon Bohak, Ancient Jewish Magic: A History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008),

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important for our concerns, the narratives themselves, with or without supernatural characters, begin to stretch the limits of credibility, if not utterly transgress them. The result of these challenges to verisimilitude is not, however, the abdication of the claim to historicity or an acknowledgement of the invented nature of the ma‘aśim but, rather, an intensification of the claim to veracity. This is especially true of halakic ma‘aśim, which will remain our focus here. The more unlikely the narrative, the stronger its claim to have taken place exactly as narrated. And the stronger that claim, the more powerfully does the narrative enforce the halakah it either illustrates or exemplifies. In other words, in these halakic narratives the claim to historicity is used for both substantive and rhetorical purposes. Consider the following passage from the Babylonian Talmud (Ber. 53b), which comments on the Mishnah in Berakhot 8:7. The Mishnah builds upon the basic halakah (never stated explicitly in the Mishnah) that a person must recite the Grace after Meals in the place where s/he ate. The Mishnah itself explicitly deals with the case of a person who ate a meal and forgot (šakah) to say grace, and then left the place where s/he ate and later remembered that s/he had not recited the prayer. According to the house of Shammai, the person must return to the place where s/he ate; according to the house of Hillel, the person can say grace wherever s/he remembers that s/he had forgotten. The Mishnah does not explain the rationale behind either house’s opinion. The following is the gemara:15 A. R. Zevid, and some say R. Dimi bar Abba,16 said: The dispute [between the houses of Hillel and Shammai] is only in a case where the person genuinely forgot [to say grace]. But where the person acted deliberately [bemezid] [and did not say grace, and then regretted his omission and wished to say it], everyone agrees that s/he must go back to the place where s/he ate and bless. This is obvious! The Mishnah taught: “and forgot.” [No!] For you might have said that it’s the same [namely, that the two houses disagree] even where he acted deliberately [bemezid], and that the reason why the Mishnah said “and forgot” was to demonstrate to you the stringency [kohan] of the house of Shammai [in making the person go back even in a case where the omission was unintentional]. Therefore, [Rav Zevid’s qualification of] “and forgot” was necessary [so as to make it clear that the house of Hillel says that the person does not need to go back only in a case where he actually forgot].

143–226 and 351–425. For readings of many texts dealing with magic, Daniel Sperber, Magic and Folklore in Rabbinic Literature (Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 1994). 15 My translation is based on the text in the editio princeps (Soncino, 1484); all significant variants will be noted. 16 Munich 95: R. Yehudah bar ’Avin; Florence II-I-7, Paris 671, Oxford Opp. Add. Fol. 23: Rav Zevid, and some say R. ’Idi bar ’Avin.

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B. It was taught: The house of Hillel said to the house of Shammai: “According to your opinion, a person who ate at the top of a castle [roš habirah] and then forgot and descended without saying grace—will he return to the top of the castle17 and say grace?!” The house of Shammai responded to the house of Hillel: “And according to your opinion, would not a person who forgot his [or her] purse on the top of a castle18 go back and retrieve it? If a person will go back for his own sake, then all the more so should he go back for the sake of Heaven!”19 C. There were two disciples. One acted accidently [bešogeg]20 [and forgot to say grace], followed the house of Shammai, [and went back to where he had eaten, and said grace], and found a purse of gold!21 The other disciple acted deliberately [bemezid]22 [and omitted the grace], followed the house of Hillel [and did not return], and a lion ate him! D. Rabbah bar bar H  annah was traveling in a caravan [šayyarta].23 He ate and was sated [’ištale],24 and did not say grace. He said: “What shall I do? If I tell them that I forgot to say grace, they will tell me, ‘Bless here. Wherever you say the blessing, you are blessing the Merciful One.’ It is better that I tell them that I forgot a golden dove.” He said to them, “Wait for me, for I have forgotten a golden dove.” He went back and said grace, and found a golden dove.25 And why a dove? Because the community of Israel is likened to a dove, as it is written, “The wings of the dove are covered with silver, and her pinions with the shimmer of gold” [Ps 68:14]. Just as the dove is saved only by her wings, so Israel is saved only by the commandments.26

This gemara is remarkable for several reasons. In the first place, it clearly privileges the view of the house of Shammai, thereby violating the general rabbinic rule of following the house of Hillel.27 Furthermore, this privileging is essentially accomplished through the narratives in the sugya, two of which, sections C and D, are

17 Oxford: “to his place” (limeqomo). 18 Oxford: “on top of a mountain” (roš hehar). 19 Oxford: “for the honor of his Creator” (likebod qono). 20 Munich 95 has “on account of an accident” (mišum ’ones). 21 Oxford: “of dinars” (dedinari). 22 Paris 671 and Oxford Opp. Add. Fol. 23 lack bemezid. 23 Oxford: “was traveling on the road” (hawe qa’ ’azil be’urha’). 24 Oxford: “and forgot” (’inše). 25 Munich 95 lacks this line. Florence II-1–7 places this line after the midrash on Ps 68:14 and adds (as do Paris 671 and Oxford Opp. Add. Fol. 23(: “and a miracle happened, and he found a golden dove.” 26 Florence II-1–7 adds: “Just as the wings of a dove protect, so do the commandments protect Israel.” 27 b. ‘Erub. 13b.

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recognizable ma‘aśim. B is not formally a ma‘aśeh but it nonetheless contains a great deal of what Simon-Shoshan calls “narrativity,” the specificity and dynamism that are elemental to narrative.28 This section, an exchange between the two houses, follows upon the opening statement of R. Zevid that redefines the disagreement between the two houses and effectively makes the house of Hillel concede to the house of Shammai in all but one case (where the person actually forgot). The exchange between the two houses stages a mock dialogue in which each school posits a hypothetical case. First, the Hillelites, with apparent incredulity, question the Shammaites as to whether they would actually require a person who had honestly forgotten to say grace to climb all the way back to the top of the castle Mount solely in order to fulfill the requirement. To which the house of Shammai responds, with thoroughly unrhetorical curtness: If a person would “willingly” return all the way up the castle to retrieve a forgotten wallet, is it not “fair” to require her/him to do so when it is religiously incumbent? Aside from giving the Shammaites the last word, the response introduces into the sugya the motif of a valuable object that is found by the party that returns to say grace—here, a wallet; in the next narrative, a wallet of gold; and in the third, a golden dove. This recurring object eventually becomes the climactic linchpin of the entire sugya, not only unifying the three narrative sections, but also giving them a concluding homiletical point, a lesson about the importance of correctly observing the commandments. The third section (C) of the gemara recounts a two-part ma‘aśeh about two anonymous students who did not say grace. One of them honestly forgot to say it, acted in accordance with the house of Shammai and returned to where he had eaten, and found a purse of gold. The other student deliberately neglected to say grace, and later, pretending that he had unintentionally forgotten and, following the revised position of the Hillelites, did not return, and was eaten by a lion.29 The poetic justice refracted in the fates of the two students is so hyperbolic it begins to challenge credibility. Yet the force of this ma‘aśeh—and its humor— builds on its hyperbolic rhetoric, and even if the two students’ fates are too perfect, too neat, to have happened, the ma‘aśeh is only effective if its claim to have taken place exactly as narrated is accepted by the reader. (If the ma‘aśeh were acknowledged to be a joke, it would have no point.) While the ma’aśeh does not prove that everyone who follows the house of Shammai will always find a golden purse—though it does follow from the narrative’s logic that if a person does not go back, s/he will never find one—it does demonstrate that following the more lenient position, particularly under false pretenses, may lead to a fatal punishment, 28 Simon-Shoshan, Stories, 16–22. 29 According to those MSS that omit bemezid, the incrimination behind the second student’s fate is even more extreme. He does not return and is eaten by a lion, even if it was a case where he honestly forgot to say grace.

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or at least makes one susceptible to that risk. Here, again, the Shammaites’ more rigorous position is privileged. The escalating incredibility of the sequence of narratives—from the “reasonability” of the hypothetical case narratives proposed by the two houses in section B to the much less credible story of the two students in section C—culminates in the ma‘aśeh in section D with its story about the Amora Rabbah bar bar H  annah. Rabbah was a well-known nahota’—a sage who travelled back and forth between Roman Palestine and Babylonia, carrying and transmitting traditions between the two centers—who is also the subject and narrator of a number of “tall tales” in which he relates various prodigies he witnessed in the desert in the course of his travels—the bones of the ten tribes, the followers of Korah who were swallowed by the earth, a frog the size of a fortress, and so on. Rabbah’s narrative in this section is not a “tall tale,” but it approaches that status inasmuch as, like a tall tale, it masks itself as fact while it also points to the existence of the mask, to paraphrase Dan Ben-Amos’s definition of a tall tale.30 (The same is also true, to some extent, of the ma‘aśeh about the two disciples.) On the one hand, the miraculousness of Rabbah’s discovery of the golden dove (as well as its position as the third in the sequence of three narratives about “found objects”) belies its claim to historicity. On the other hand, the psychological verisimilitude of its characterization of Rabbah (namely, his fear at acknowledging the truth to his fellow caravaneers, who presumably are gentiles, or is it embarrassment?) and the accuracy of his knowledge of what the other caravaneers think and value equally bolster the veracity of the story as a “true” tale. The one thing he does not appear to anticipate is what will happen if he returns without a golden dove, but here, of course, the incredible indeed happens.

30 Dan Ben-Amos, “Talmudic Tall Tales,” in Folklore Today: A Festschrift for Richard M. Dorson, ed. Linda Dégh, Henry Glassie, and Felix J. Oinas (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1976), 25–43, 28 in particular. Rabbah’s “tall tales,” as well as those of other rabbis are collected in a long section in b. B. Bat. 73a–74b. These stories have long fascinated students of Talmud, but in the recent past there has been an explosion of scholarship on them. In addition to Ben-Amos’s seminal article, “Talmudic Tall Tales”—which still remains, in my view, the best treatment of these stories and the complex negotiations through which they engage their audiences—see G. Stemberger, “Münchhausen und die Apokalyptik: Baba Batra 73a–75b als literarische Einheit,” Journal for the Study of Judaism 20 (1989): 61–83; Dina Stein, Textual Mirrors: Reflexivity, Midrash, and the Rabbinic Self (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), 58–83; Reuven Kiperwasser, “Rabbah bar bar H  annah’s Voyages” (in Hebrew), Jerusalem Studies in Hebrew Literature 22 (2008): 215–41; Joshua Schwartz, “Sinai—Mountain and Desert: The Desert Geography and Theology of the Rabbis and Desert Fathers,” in “Follow the Wise”: Studies in Jewish History and Culture in Honor of Lee I. Levine, ed. Zeev Weiss, Oded Irshai, Jodi Magness, and Seth Schwartz (Winona Lake: Eisenbraums, 2010), 355–74; Reuven Kiperwasser and Dan D. Y. Shapira, “Irano-Talmudica II: Leviathan, Behemoth, and the ‘Domestication’ of Iranian Mythological Creatures in Eschatological Narratives of the Babylonian Talmud,” in Shoshanat Yaakov: Jewish and Iranian Studies on Honor of Yaakov Elman, ed. Shai Secunda and Steven Fine (Leid-

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This ma‘aśeh again affirms the Shammaites’ position, but the movement of the passage as a whole exemplifies what we might call the rhetoric of credibility. As increasingly more incredible elements are introduced in the sequence of ma‘aśim— as the purse turns into a golden wallet and then into a golden dove—the claim to historicity is correspondingly intensified; with the effect of repeatedly demonstrating the benefits of following the house of Shammai. This is because the very incredibility of what happens to those who follow the Shammaites’ ruling suggests to the reader that the incredible is actually the providential, that is, the workings of a God who appears to be with, or in accord with, the house of Shammai (and more than he is with the house of Hillel). The final confirmation of the historicity and veracity of the sugya’s narratives comes with the question the gemara asks at its conclusion, “What was the significance of the golden dove?” Why did Rabbah happen to find specifically that object, a golden dove (and not, say, a purse)? The gemara responds by extrapolating the symbolic meaning of the dove from a scriptural verse, Ps 68:14, which shows us that just as a dove is “saved” through (or protected by) her wings, so too the Jewish people are “saved” by observing the commandments in the same way, as proven by the prooftext. This answer is a kind of midrash, but its actual effect is to intensify the historicity of Rabbah’s story by proving that every detail in that story counts,

en: Brill, 2012), 203–35; and most recently, an impressive Harvard College Honors Thesis (2014), “’Those Who Descend upon the Sea Told Me …’: Myth and Tall Tale in Baba Batra 73a–74b,” by Daniel J. Frim; I want to thank Mr. Frim for allowing me to read his thesis. Because these stories are not halakic narratives, they fall beyond the purview of this article, but it should be said that they directly raise the issue of credibility and historicity of the ma‘aśeh, albeit in an inverted fashion. As Ben-Amos shows, these stories use various techniques to validate their veracity—the first person narratives, the citations of verses as prooftexts, the invocations of other sages who confirm the veracity of the reports or who accept them even when they make fun of Rabbah bar bar H  annah. (See, for example, the response of the rabbis to Rabbah’s story about having seen the Israelites who died in the desert, and having failed to steal a corner of their tallitot, presumably to count the number of fringes; they do not challenge Rabbah, they simply make fun of him for not counting them on the spot!) As Dan Ben-Amos has pointed out to me, our story in Berakhot is unique inasmuch as it is not a first-person report, as are nearly all the other Rabbah bar bar H  annah traditions, but a narrative about him. The exact purpose of these stories, and particularly the collection in Bava Batra, remains somewhat unclear, but one possibility (in my view) is that they were collected in order to parody the very process of rabbinic transmission of tradition: as noted above, Rabbah was a well-known nahota’, and therefore an all-too appropriate target for a parody about transmitters of tradition. As literary parodies, they certainly would have drawn on popular traditions of tall-tale telling; they also served to rabbinize various Iranian myths and folk traditions (as Kiperwasser and others have demonstrated); and they entertained talmudists by demonstrating the gullibility of rabbis to believe any tradition just as long as it carried the marks of authority. As parodies of the process of transmission, these stories provide a remarkable reflection of the rabbis’ self-awareness, and insofar as they revolve around the rhetoric of credibility, they also serve to confirm the claim to historicity and authenticity that typical ma‘aśim make.

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has meaning. Why? Because it actually happened, and the life of Rabbah is a text like the Torah, possessed of the same historical veracity, every detail of which can be plumbed for meaning. And indeed, Rabbah is “saved” by the golden dove. The dove literally “saves” Rabbah—from the anger the gentile caravaneers would doubtless have felt if Rabbah had returned without the dove, not to mention saving him from the embarrassment of being exposed as a liar. And more importantly, the golden dove, which began as his white lie, now becomes Rabbah’s reward for following the commandment according to the rigorous ruling of the house of Shammai; it gains him salvation, a life in the world-to-come. None of these meanings would be plausible, let alone possible, unless Rabbah actually found a golden dove.31 As this talmudic passage demonstrates, the ma‘aśeh as a literary form, brief as it may be, is capable of extraordinary complexity. That complexity continued to develop in the postclassical gaonic period when collections of ma‘aśim first began to be compiled.32 The earliest and most famous of these compilations are two works: the first, Nissim ben Jacob ibn Shāhīn’s Sefer hama‘aśiyot, originally composed in Arabic but translated into Hebrew early on and known (in its Hebrew translation) as H  ibbur yapeh mehayešu‘ah (An Elegant Composition Concerning Relief after Adversity); the second, a work of unknown authorship or compilation, Midrash ‘Aseret Hadibrot (The midrash on the Ten Commandments).33 Ibn Shāhīn’s collection was composed in Kairouan, Tunisia, and most scholars agree that Midrash ‘Aseret Hadibrot was also compiled by an author living in the Islamic realm, probably in either Babylonia or Persia in the late ninth

31 This final midrash also seems to explain and justify why the gemara here privileges the house of Shammai’s position over the house of Hillel’s. 32 On the many different types of narrative that begin to appear in the gaonic period and continue through the Middle Ages, see Eli Yassif, The Hebrew Folktale: History, Genre, Meaning, trans. Jacqueline S. Teitelbaum (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), 245–370. 33 For the first composition and its original Hebrew title, H  ibbur yapeh mehayešu‘a, see the English translation, An Elegant Composition Concerning Relief after Adversity, by Nissim ben Jacob ibn Shāhīn, translated from the Arabic with introduction and notes by William M. Brinner (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977); for the Midrash on the Ten Commandments, see now the critical edition Midrash ‘Aśeret Hadibrot (A Midrash on the Ten Commandments): Texts, Sources, and Interpretation (in Hebrew), ed. and compiled with a literary critical commentary by Anat Shapira (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 2005). The other gaonic-period work that is usually mentioned with these two collections of stories is the Alphabet of Ben Sira, which has now been edited by Eli Yassif, Tales of Ben Sira in the Middle Ages (in Hebrew) (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1984). The Alphabet is, however, a different kind of composition: the first half, detailing the birth and education of the wunderkind, is a parody of known talmudic passages, on which see David Stern, “The Alphabet of Ben Sira and the Early History of Parody in Jewish Literature,” in The Idea of Biblical Interpretation, ed. Hindy Najman and Judith Newman (Leiden: Brill, 2004): 423–48. The second half, an account of his exploits in the court of Nebuchadnezzar, where he tells many stories in response to the king’s questions, is a frame for collecting numerous stories and fables.

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or tenth century.34 In the case of both compositions, it was both the popularity of the literary genre of the ma‘aśeh in earlier rabbinic literature and the compilation of comparable story collections in the Islamic world that probably inspired their creation.35 Both works are genuine anthologies that collect and combine exempla, sage stories, ethical exhortations, and midrashic homilies. Midrash ‘Aśeret Hadibrot appears to have been a virtually “open” work, with its various manuscripts and numerous editions each containing different combinations of stories and passages in numbers ranging from thirteen to more than forty; some of the stories and passages are common to all the collections, others are unique to single copies.36 A good number of the passages have parallels in both Middle Eastern and European folkloric traditions, and probably were adapted by Jews in the early Middle Ages and Judaized in the process.37 Even though these collections represent an essentially new type of composition in early medieval Hebrew literature—a more or less free-standing collection of stories—the narratives within these works remain within the generic tradition of the halakic ma‘aśeh inasmuch as they continue to present themselves as illustrations, exemplifications, or extensions of legal or moral teachings. As its title suggests, the stories in the Midrash on the Ten Commandments (the use of the term midrash in the title is more honorific than substantive) all exemplify, in different degrees (some stronger, others weaker), the various commandments of the Decalogue. Even so, most of the stories tend to move beyond mere or simple exemplification, and what appears most memorable about them is almost its opposite: the incongruity between the religious lessons they are supposed to communicate, and the utterly profane social and moral universe the stories actually depict. Consider the following passage from the Midrash on the Ten Commandments. To exemplify the first commandment, “I am the Lord Your God,” the following story is told: 34 Shapira, Midrash ‘Aśeret Hadibrot, 182–86. 35 Eli Yassif, “The Emergence of Hebrew Narrative in the East and Its Transition from the Middle Ages to the Modern Times” (in Hebrew), Pe‘amim 26 (1986): 53–70; cf. the methodological reservations raised by Galit Hasan-Rokem in her response immediately following Yassif ’s article, 71–74. Cf. as well Joseph Dan, The Hebrew Story in the Middle Ages (in Hebrew) (Jerusalem: Keter, 1974), 13–32. 36 Shapira, Midrash ‘Aśeret Hadibrot, 159–86 and 193–245; M. B. Lerner, “On the Midrashim to the Ten Commandments” (in Hebrew), in Mehqere Talmud, ed. Yaakov Sussman and David Rosenthal (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1990) 1:217–36; and idem, “Fragmentary Ma‘aśiyot: A Reconstruction of a Fragmentary Story in a Geniza Remnant from the Midrash ‘Aśeret Hadevarim and Its Earliest Version in the Bavli” (in Hebrew), in Higayon LeYona: New Aspects in the Study of Midrash, Aggadah, and Piyut, ed. Jon Levinson, J. Elbaum, and Galit Hasan-Rokem (Jerusalem: Magnes, 2006), 377–402. I have borrowed the term “open work” from Israel Ta-Shma, “The ‘Open Book’ in Medieval Hebrew Literature: The Problem of Authorized Editions,” in Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester 75 (1993): 17–24. 37 For cross-cultural parallels and its corollary, Judaization, see Yassif, Hebrew Folktale, 265–82.

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It happened that [ma‘aśeh be-] a certain crippled Jew heard of a heathen shrine where any lame person could immediately be made to walk. The Jew said to himself: “I’ll go there; perhaps I’ll be cured.” He went there and spent the night in the shrine with the other crippled persons. At midnight when everyone was sleeping, the Jew awoke and saw a demon [šed] come out of the wall with a flask of oil in his hand. He anointed all the sick, but he ignored the Jew. The Jew said to the demon: “Why don’t you anoint me?” The demon replied: “Are you not a Jew? Why have you come here? Does a Jew go to idolatrous shrines? Don’t you know that heathen rites have nothing in them? It is for this reason that I am misleading the gentiles, so as to strengthen them in their errors, and so that they’ll have no portion in the world-to-come. But you! You’re obligated to detest idolatry and to stand and pray to the Holy One, blessed be he, that he heal you. You should know that your time to be healed was to be tomorrow, but because you have done this, you will never find a cure.” Therefore, a person should trust only in the Holy One, blessed be he, who lives and exists forever.38

The appearance of the demon in this story is not an entirely unexpected feature. In fact, as noted earlier, šedim and other types of demonic figures appear regularly in the Babylonian Talmud (as do other supernatural figures like the prophet Elijah). Widespread popular belief in the existence of šedim is attested not only by literary sources but also by the many Aramaic magic bowls that have been discovered in Babylonia and elsewhere in Mesopotamia dating from the gaonic and early medieval periods, the same period in which Midrash ‘Aseret Hadibrot was compiled.39 It is not the mere presence of the demon in the story that is surprising, but the role he plays in it—on the one hand, his raison d’être, as it were, to mislead the gentiles by curing them so that they will never recognize the true God, and, on the other, his function of serving as precisely the figure in the ma‘aśeh to condemn the hapless Jewish cripple who is so desperate to be healed he is willing even to try a cure in a heathen temple. These anomalies all contribute to a skewed sense of reality that is at odds with the explicitly formulated moral at the conclusion, that a person should trust only in God (a trust that one might expect would exclude belief in the existence of šedim). Nor does this teaching quite prepare the 38 The translation is based on the text of Paris, Bibliotheque nationale de France, Heb. MS 716, transcribed in Shapira, Midrash ‘Aśeret Hadibrot, 47–48. In the Verona 1647 edition the last line reads: “Therefore do not trust in any mortal being, but rather in the Holy One, blessed be he. For he, this kingly God, is a physician who heals for free!” Could this be a jibe at high-charging Italian Jewish physicians? 39 For a general introduction to Jewish demonology, see Trachtenberg, Jewish Magic, 25–54; Bohak, Ancient Jewish Magic, 480, s.v. demons; and Dan Ben-Amos, “On Demons,” in Creation and Re-Creation in Jewish Thought: Festschrift in Honor of Joseph Dan on the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday, ed. Rachel Elior and Peter Schäfer (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005), 27–37. On the magic bowls, see Joseph Naveh and Shaul Shaked, Amulets and Magic Bowls: Aramaic Incantations of Late Antiquity, 2nd ed. (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1987).

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reader for the brutality of the judgment that dooms the poor cripple to remain crippled forever as punishment for not sufficiently trusting in God.40 The other stories in the Midrash on the Ten Commandments, as in other exempla collections, are often equally at odds with themselves, formally and psychologically. This pervasive incongruity has led some scholars to claim that these stories actually represent the beginning of secular narrative in Jewish literature; though cloaked in the garb of homiletical orthodoxy, possibly in order to facilitate publication, these stories—according to this scholarly view—have already freed themselves from the fetters of enforced religion.41 But the moralizing legal framework of these stories is disregarded only at the risk of missing their meaning. Indeed, in some respects, the disparity between the worlds these stories inhabit and their messages seems to be part of their rhetorical strategy. Their function is not to accompany specific laws or rulings, as it is in the Mishnah and even in the Bavli, but to reveal the very nature of the Law, which in these narratives becomes an inescapable presence, reaching out with a long and mighty hand to enforce justice. Thus, many of the ma‘aśim in these collections begin with their protagonist fulfilling or transgressing a commandment. Which commandment that may be is less significant than the fact of obedience or disobedience in itself, and the ultimate punishment or reward that inevitably follows. The underlying subject of these stories is the logic of justice, which moves these stories at its own pace, inexorably but often unpredictably. Once again, however, that movement depends on a claim to historicity, even if that claim has moved from center stage to the peripheries, while the narrative itself has taken the central role. This narrative drive also leads these stories in the direction of the novella, toward lengthier forms of storytelling that can more fully develop the possibilities inherent in improbable punishment, excessive reward, and confused human motivation. This tendency can be seen best in a narrative that is, in my view, one of the great masterworks of all Hebrew literature, even though it is hardly known to most scholars. The narrative is called Ma‘aśeh Yerušalmi (or Ma‘aśeh Hayerušalmi), a title which is usually translated as “The Tale of the Jerusalemite,” even though there is no indication in the story that its protagonist was from Jerusalem or that it took place in that city or had any connection to it.42 40 As Michal Bar-Asher Siegal has pointed out to me, this story is especially remarkable because it illustrates knowledge of incubation practice in contemporaneous Greco-Roman temples (like those of Asclepius). The irony behind the story is that it does not deny the efficacy of the pagan practice; Jews simply are not allowed to use it. Compare the story in t. H  ul. 2:22–23. 41 The most vocal and explicit proponent of this view is Joseph Dan, Hebrew Story, 19–20; cf. as well, Yassif, “Emergence of Hebrew Narrative,” 54–55, who proposes a modified version of Dan’s stance, characterizing works like the Midrash on the Ten Commandments as “transitional.” 42 For the text and its background, see Ma‘aśeh Yerušalmi, Attributed to R. Abraham b. Maimon (in Hebrew), ed. Jehuda L. Zlotnick, with a bibliography and an Arabic version by Nehemiah Aloni, and a preface by Raphael Patai (Jerusalem: Palestine Institute of Folklore and Eth-

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Ma‘aśeh Yerušalmi was probably first composed to be part of a collection of exemplary stories like the Midrash on the Ten Commandments. It was almost certainly compiled somewhere in the Islamic realm between the seventh and eleventh centuries.43 Its modern editor, J. L. Zlotnick, has even suggested that its title may actually have originally meant “a ma‘aśeh from a Jerusalemite (that is, Palestinian) collection of stories,” possibly a Palestinian recension of the Midrash on the

nology, 1946). Zlotnick’s edition contains two synoptic versions of the story, the editio princeps as it appeared in Śeper dibrei yamim šel Moše, Constantinople 1517/18 (?), and that found in an undated Yemenite MS owned by Zlotnick. The latter text was translated by David Stern and Avi Weinstein as “The Story of the Jerusalemite,” in Rabbinic Fantasies: Imaginative Narratives from Classical Hebrew Literature, ed. David Stern and Mark J. Mirsky (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1990; repr., New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 143–66. In its various manuscripts and printed editions, the work has different titles: Zlotnick’s Yemenite MS and other MSS have Ma‘aśeh Yerušalmi; both the Constantinople 1517/18 and Venice 1544 editions call it Ma‘aśeh šel Yerušalmi. See Zlotnick, 17–19, and Nehemiah Aloni’s bibliography in that volume, 92–96. Zlotnick’s edition of the text was also republished in The Knight, the Demon, and the Virgin: An Anthology of Hebrew Stories from the Middle Ages (in Hebrew), ed. H  ayim Pesah and Eli Yassif (Jerusalem: Keter, 1998), 155–73, under the title Ma‘aśeh Biyerusšalmi, on what basis I have not been able to discover. The precise significance of the attribution to Abraham b. Maimon is unclear; he definitely did not compose it, but see Zlotnick’s introduction, 17–18, where he suggests that Abraham may have retranslated the story either from Arabic or Aramaic back into Hebrew. 43 Thus Zlotnick, Ma‘aśeh Yerušalmi, 37, who dates it sometime between the Arab conquest of the Middle East in the mid-seventh century and the time of Sherira Gaon (d. 1006). In both “Five Versions of the Story of the Jerusalemite,” PAAJR 35 (1967): 99–111, and in Hebrew Story, 96, Joseph Dan argues on the basis of other stories about sexual relations between human males and demonesses (succubi) (recorded in Sefer H  asidim and in the Dialogue of Miracles by the thirteenth-century German preacher Caesarius of Heisterbach) that the story originated in Christian Europe, probably in the early thirteenth century, but other than the fact that all the stories share the motif of demon-human sexual relations, the other parallels he draws between the stories are not convincing. The controversy of dating the story to the Islamic realm in the gaonic period partly revolves around an episode at the end of Ma‘aśeh Yerušalmi where Ashmadai’s daughter stops prayers in the synagogue in order to demand that her recalcitrant husband be put on trial to force him to return to her, and its relation to ‘ikub tepillah, the practice of a plaintiff stopping prayer in the synagogue in order to demand that a recalcitrant offender be brought to justice. Zlotnick and other scholars have debated whether or not ‘ikub tepillah was considered permissible and practiced in gaonic Babylonia. Zlotnick (36–37) claims that it was a living custom in Babylonia; Simhah Assaf, in an appendix to Zlotnick’s edition (105–6, and in other works noted in his bibliography), argues that it was not. On the practice in Ashkenaz (and implicitly supporting Assaf ’s position), see the classic study of Abraham Grossman, “The Origins and Essence of the Customs of ‘Stopping-the-Service’” (in Hebrew), in Milet 1 (Tel Aviv: Everyman’s University, 1983), 199–219. More recently, however, Menahem Ben-Sasson, in “Public Outcrying in the Synagogue in Islamic Lands in the Early Middle Ages” (in Hebrew), in Keneset ‘Ezra, ed. Shulamit Elizur et al. (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1994), 327–50, has shown that public outcrying in the synagogue, if not actually ‘ikub tepillah (which involved the threat of stopping synagogue services entirely until the plaintiff ’s demands were met), was widely practiced throughout the Islamic realm in the early and later Middle Ages.

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Ten Commandments.44 The fact that it probably derived from such a collection is borne out by the moral that comes at its conclusion: “A son should always obey his father’s commands, and must never break an oath.” The story may thus have exemplified either the fifth commandment (to obey one’s parents), or the third (never to take a false oath), or possibly both commandments. Like a number of other ma‘aśim, Ma‘aśeh Yerušalmi begins with a death-bed scene.45 A wealthy merchant, on the verge of dying, demands that his son—a figure named Dihon ben Salmon46 whom (we are told) the father has taught Torah, Mishnah, and Talmud, and married off to a woman by whom Dihon has already (by the time the narrative begins) had children—take an oath and swear, at the pain of losing his inheritance, that he will never go to sea. Once his father dies, however, the son is importuned by some sailors to retrieve a fortune his father has left him abroad; after initially resisting their pleas, he finally agrees and goes to sea, thereby transgressing the oath he had made. This transgression, we are told, so incenses God that he immediately punishes the young man by wrecking his ship in a storm. Dihon is nearly drowned, but he is miraculously washed ashore on a strange island where he undergoes several more trials. First, he is almost eaten by a lion; then he escapes by climbing up a tree, but once he reaches the tree top, he discovers there a giant monstrous bird, the qipupa’, which also tries to eat him. Dihon again rescues himself, now by climbing atop the bird’s back. This act, in turn, throws the bird into a panic, and it flies off with Dihon on its back, carrying him over seas and foreign lands. Finally, passing low over a certain province, the young man hears the voices of children studying Torah and, naturally assuming that the inhabitants are Jews, he throws himself to earth, nearly killing himself in the process. Once he recovers, however, Dihon makes his way to the town’s synagogue where the rabbi takes him in, but reveals an even more awful truth: The place to which Dihon has come is not a habitation of humans but of šedim, demons. These šedim, the rabbi tells him, hate humans and will kill him as soon as he is discovered. Indeed, the rabbi himself is a šed, albeit a more benevolent one. Ever resourceful, Dihon manages to win the rabbi’s pity. When the other demons arrive and discover Dihon and hear his story, they indeed wish to kill him, specifically for transgressing the oath he made to his father, but the rabbi saves

44 Zlotnick, Ma‘aśeh Yerušalmi, 19–20. 45 For other ma‘aśim that begin with a death-bed scene, see those in Shapira, Midrash ‘Aśeret Hadibrot, 54 and 64; cf. Yassif, “Emergence,” 59–60. 46 This name appears only in the story, near its conclusion, in Zlotnick, Ma‘aśeh Yerušalmi, 65, and scholars have debated its significance inconclusively. M. Grunwald, in a note in Zlotnick, 104, suggests (among various possibilities) that the word might be derived from the Arabic dihkhan, “a man from a city,” perhaps a reference to Jerusalem. The name Salmon is mentioned in Ruth 4:21 as the father of Boaz, but it might also be understood as cognate to Solomon, the name Dihon gives to his son by Ashmadai’s daughter, who would then be named after his grandfather.

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him. In the process, the young man also wins the favor of Ashmadai, the king of the demons; he becomes the tutor of the demon-king’s son and, eventually, Ashmadai’s top counselor, a Joseph-like figure to whom Ashmadai entrusts the keys to the entire kingdom—save for those to one room, which Ashmadai makes Dihon swear he will never enter. The young man takes an oath to that effect but one day, overcome by curiosity, he peers into the forbidden room, sees Ashmadai’s daughter sitting inside and, at her invitation, enters. It is a trick; she immediately threatens to tell her father—unless the young man agrees to marry her. Dihon agrees, and Ashmadai happily consents to the marriage. Dihon swears ever-lasting fidelity to her, the two wed and, shortly later, the young man and the demon princess have a son whom they name Solomon.47 The family lives happily together until, one day, Dihon suddenly remembers his abandoned “human” family and begins to pine for his former life and desires to return to it. After accusing him of betraying his oath of fidelity, Ashmadai’s daughter finally relents, and with great reluctance agrees to let Dihon visit his former home for one year, after which, the Jerusalemite solemnly swears to her, he will return to live with her forever. But once he arrives home, the Jerusalemite announces that he will never return to the land of demons. When the agreed‑upon year passes, Ashmadai’s daughter sends a one-eyed, one-legged demon to bring him back—the same demon, in fact, who had transported the Jerusalemite from the demon island to the human realm—but Dihon insults him; she then sends other emissaries but he continues to refuse to return until, finally, Ashmadai’s daughter goes herself, with her son and with an army of demons, in order to persuade her wayward husband to return, but to no avail. Finally, she goes to the synagogue, interrupts the prayers, and demands that a court adjudicate her case. The court meets, the judges decide in her favor—after all, Dihon had signed a written agreement vowing to return—but even then he refuses to yield to the court’s decision. Finally, Ashmadai’s daughter surrenders to her husband’s refusal because he so obviously does not wish to be married to her, but she makes a final request: that she be permitted to kiss him goodbye. The court agrees to her request. She kisses her former husband, and strangles him as they embrace. As a last, parting shot, before returning home to the land of demons, she demands—upon pain of death and destruction—that the Jews agree to accept Solomon, her son with Dihon, as their ruler, and she leaves the demon-boy as king over their community.48

47 Why they choose this name is unclear. Perhaps it is simply the Hebrew equivalent of Salmon, Dihon’s late father, whom the child may have been named after. 48 Technically speaking, the child is half-human and half-demon, but according to Tanhuma, ed. S. Buber (1885; repr. Jerusalem: Ortsel, 1963–64), Bereshit 17, p. 12, a child born from a union between a human and a šedah is a full-fledged šed.

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Scholars have shown that the Tale of the Jerusalemite is one of the earliest written versions of the tale of a man who marries a demoness.49 The roots of this theme can probably be traced back to the biblical references to the enigmatic relations between the “sons of God” (bene ’Elohim) and “daughters of men” described in Gen 6; the theme of demonic forces taking the form of sexual seducers appears frequently in postbiblical works like Jubilees, the Testaments of the Twelve Tribes, and 1 Enoch, as well as in many medieval works, including the Zohar. The fantasy of sexual couplings between demons and humans—which could be male or female on either side—continued to exert a strong fascination on Jews through the early modern period. Several different stories dealing with such marriages were composed in Yiddish between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, among them the Mayse fun Vormes and Mayse Pozna.50 Nor is the theme of sexual relations and marriage between humans and demons the sole folkloric or folk element in Ma‘aśeh Yerušalmi. The fantastic qipupa’-bird; the angry one-eyed, one-legged demon who can transport Dihon from the land of the demons to the human world in a single day; the forbidden chamber in which Dihon first sees the daughter of Ashmadai and enters, thereby breaking his oath to her father; the kiss of death by which Ashmadai’s daughter kills Dihon—all these motifs have parallels in other popular folkloric tales throughout the world.51 Ma‘aśeh Yerušalmi is not, however, a folk tale, nor is it simply the story of a marriage between a human and a demon. In my retelling of the story, I deliberately omitted mentioning two related key details, both of which are tokens of the narrative’s extraordinary literary sophistication and its much more expansive interpretive possibilities. The first of these features is the fact that the narrative’s language is packed with the language and diction of the talmudic academy, with allusions to rabbinic literature and to the realia of the world of gaonic Judaism. The narrative brims with recondite allusions to halakah and rabbinic tradition. Virtually every sentence the demons speak carries a biblical or talmudic reference. After the demons discover Dihon in synagogue and wish to kill him for transgressing the oath he made to his father, they cite the statement in b. Bava Metzi‘a 33b that even unintentional deeds should be treated as willful acts (hašegagot ne‘esu lo zedonot). And when 49 For another early reference, see Tanhuma, ed. S. Buber, Bereshit 17, p. 12; for general discussion, Trachtenberg, Jewish Magic, 51–56. Moses Gaster, in “An Ancient Fairy-Tale Translated from the Hebrew,” Folklore 42 (1931): 156–78, claimed that the story was the oldest known fairytale but that claim has by now been widely refuted. 50 On the latter, see Sara Zfatman, The Marriage of a Mortal Man and a She-Demon (in Hebrew) (Jerusalem: Akademon, 1987); and Jeremy Dauber, In the Demon’s Bedroom: Yiddish Literature and the Early Modern (New Haven: Yale, 2010), 140–71. 51 On these motifs, see Zlotnick, Ma‘aśeh Yerušalmi, 34–42, and his references to Stith Thompson, Motif Index of Folk-Literature, for which see the revised and enlarged electronic edition (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993).

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the one-eyed crippled demon returns to warn the recalcitrant Dihon that he has vowed to return to Ashmadai’s daughter, Dihon insults him by asking him why he is blind. To which the demon retorts by quoting Prov 21:23, and then the talmudic passage in b. Bava Metzi‘a 59a that states that whoever publicly embarrasses his fellow man loses his place in the world-to-come. Dihon himself is repeatedly— almost always in the story—referred to as a ben Torah, a traditional designation in rabbinic literature for a student of Torah that connotes not only learnedness but the piety that should come from erudition in Torah.52 Indeed, the sheer density of the language of Ma‘aśeh Yerušalmi, its naive narrative voice, and its paratactic sentence structure with its many biblical and rabbinic quotations, eerily anticipate the modernist fiction of S. Y. Agnon, which similarly harnesses the language of tradition for a cause that is often deeply profane. The second remarkable feature of the story—closely related to the language steeped in rabbinic diction—is that the world of demons in which Dihon finds himself stranded is even more Jewish—that is, rabbinically Jewish—than the world of “human” Jews that he has left behind. As I noted in my plot summary, Dihon initially believes that he has landed among Jews, because he hears children studying verses from the book of Exodus. When the rabbi saves Dihon from the other demons in the synagogue, he hides him under his tallit while the other members of the demon congregation recite pesuqe dezimrah. When Ashmadai hires Dihon to be his son’s tutor, it is to teach him Torah, Mishnah, and Gemara. And after his own son Solomon is born, Dihon circumcises him on the eighth day, just like any Jewish child. Ashmadai’s daughter herself, at the trial to which she calls the Jerusalemite at the story’s conclusion, invokes halakic precedent on her own behalf. As I have already noted, the story’s other demons, too, quote not only Scripture, but Talmud. The idea of Jewish demons is not original to this story. In the Babylonian Talmud (b. Git. 66a), Ashmadai is said to attend the academy (metibta’) in heaven every day and then to descend and study in the academy on earth.53 A certain demon named Joseph Sheda (Yosep Šeda’) is said in one passage (b. Pesah. 110a) to have conversed with R. Joseph and R. Pappa, and in another passage (b. ‘Erub. 43a) to have carried halakot, legal traditions, between the two Babylonian yeshivot in Sura and Pumbedita (and thus to have been a kind of nahota’ like Rabbah bar bar Han-

52 Curiously, according to the Bar-Ilan Responsa Project databank, all fifty-four occurrences of the term ben Torah (in the singular) derive from Palestinian literature, either midrashic documents (mainly Amoraic, although there is a single, somewhat doubtful reference in Sifre Zuta as preserved in Midrash Hagadol) or the Yerušalmi. The Babylonian Talmud only attests the plural form bene Torah, and it appears there usually in descriptive statements. In the Palestinian sources, it is used more in the sense of a vocative. 53 On the following passages, see Zlotnick, Ma‘aśeh Yerušalmi, 27–30; cf. Gershom Scholem, “New Chapters in Regard to Ashmadai and Lilith” (in Hebrew), Tarbiz 19 (1948): 160–75.

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nah!). Another passage (b. Git. 66a; cf. Yebam. 122a) mentions a certain Yonatan Sheda who is said to have taught Torah to R. H  anina. The Zohar describes Jewish šedim, Christian šedim, and Muslim šedim—an idea that, as scholars have noted, can be found as well in the Qur’an and other early Islamic sources.54 In no other Jewish source, however, is a world of Jewish demons so fully imagined in such rich detail as it is in Ma‘aśeh Yerušalmi, where it becomes a virtual alternate reality, a parallel universe to ours. Moreover, the demons who live in that world, more than simply being Jewish and possessing fluency in rabbinic tradition, also possess a kind of native piety that even Dihon lacks. The only thing demonic about these demons is that they have a propensity for killing humans, particularly when they break laws and violate oaths. In contrast, Dihon may be learned, but his behavior is at best legalistic rather than moral. The repeated invocation of the term ben Torah as his designation by the demons becomes in the course of the story a virtual rebuke as the young man proves himself to be anything but a ben Torah. He repeatedly betrays his promises and oaths: first, the oath to his father not to go to sea; later, his promise to Ashmadai not to enter the forbidden chamber; his vow of eternal fidelity to Ashmadai’s daughter before they wed, and later the agreement to return he makes with her; and finally, in the story’s very last scene, at the trial to which his demon-wife brings him, he even tries to renege on the financial promises he made in the ketubah he gave her when they married. Each time Dihon pleads extenuating circumstances, but by the tale’s end he has lost all credibility in the reader’s eye and his treachery has been confirmed. As the demons repeatedly address him as a ben Torah, one hears in the honorific designation not only a rebuke of Dihon personally but an implied criticism of the world out of which Dihon has emerged more generally, the gaonic world, and a sharp critique of all types of legalistic shrewdness that disregard the claims of morality. But Ma‘aśeh Yerušalmi is not mere social criticism; it is an extraordinary attempt to imagine Otherness. In his study of early modern Yiddish demon stories, Jeremy Dauber perceptively remarks that supernatural fiction “often concerns the establishment and transgression of social mores, codes, and boundaries.”55 The most obvious of such boundaries is the one between the natural and the supernatural—or, as in Ma‘aśeh Yerušalmi, the human and the demonic—but the narrative consistently portrays its protagonist as trespassing all sorts of other borders and as constantly being in places he should not be—the forbidden sea; the top of the tree where the qipupa’ perches; the land of the demons, the demons’ synagogue (which is no place for humans to pray); the chamber in Ashmadai’s palace he swears never to enter; even, in the final irony of the story, the human world to

54 Zlotnick, Ma‘aśeh Yerušalmi, 28; Trachtenberg, Jewish Magic. For the sources, see Zlotnick, Ma‘aśeh Yerušalmi, 28; cf. Scholem, “New Chapters,” 160–65. 55 Dauber, In the Demon’s Bedroom, 141.

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which he flees from the land of the demons but from which he has promised to return to his demon-wife—a place, in other words, he had made forbidden for and to himself through his own oath. It is fitting that just as his life among the demons begins inside their synagogue, so his life among humans ends inside their synagogue; in both cases, he never should have gone to shul.56 What is the meaning of all these transgressed and transgressive spaces? When his father first makes Dihon swear never to go to sea, it is presumably to save his son from endangering his life by seeking out treasures that he, the father, left abroad. But in the course of the narrative, it becomes clear that the real danger in going to sea is not death but the possibility of crossing over to another world. In the imaginative universe of Ma‘aśeh Yerušalmi, that other world is, of course, the land of the demons, but it is important to note that, in this narrative, there exist only Jews and demons. With the exception of one stray goy whom Dihon meets when he returns to the land of humans to see his wife and children, there are no human gentiles in this narrative. And given that fact, the line separating demons from gentiles becomes blurred. For all practical purposes, the demons play the role of gentile in the story, and one is tempted to read Dihon’s voyage to the land of the demons allegorically, as the story of a Jew who leaves behind his own world in order to pass over and live among the Other. To be sure, the precious irony behind Dihon’s journey is that this other world, a world of true aliens, turns out in practice to be little different from the world he has left behind. But then, the Jerusalemite himself is no different—no better a person, that is—“there” (in the demon world) than he is “here” (in the human one). In both realms, he shows himself to be a scoundrel, an untrustworthy scamp, a betrayer of others. Indeed, in its empathy for the Other—be it demonic or gentile—Ma‘aśeh Yerušalmi’s achievement is unparalleled in classical Jewish literature. It enlists imaginative narrative as a medium for exploring the possibility of existence beyond the borders of Jewish reality, an existence that must have been all but unimaginable for an ancient or medieval Jew. Ma‘aśeh Yerušalmi does not end, however, in the land of the Other. The narrative concludes in the human—that is, Jewish—world, at the bet din in the synagogue where Ashmadai’s daughter, after strangling Dihon and before she returns to her native demon-land, leaves behind the son she has had by Dihon, Solomon, as the ruler over the Jews. This unexpected conclusion is, I would propose, the ultimate “meaning” of this remarkable narrative. It explains how Jews have come to live under the rule of the Other—be that Other a demonic or gentile ruler (if indeed there was a real difference between the two to the author of Ma‘aśeh Yerušalmi). This conclusion does not explain why Jews are doomed to live under the rule of

56 It is worth noting as well that, in both episodes, one of the protagonists—the rabbi in the first case, Ashmadai’s daughter in the second—employ the same strategy of interrupting the prayers after the completion of pesuqe dezimrah.

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the Other; one could extrapolate from the narrative that the reason is punishment for Dihon’s sins, thereby making the narrative’s conclusion fit the traditional paradigm, but that seems hardly satisfactory as a rationale for the truly unhappy reality of the diaspora in which the authors of this story lived (and we continue to live). Like all great narratives, Ma‘aśeh Yerušalmi was not written to provide an “explanation” for the state of the world; it was composed to tell a compelling story, with a beginning, a middle, and an end. Did the author of Ma‘aśeh Yerušalmi truly believe that the story had taken place exactly as it is narrated? We will never know, but the ma‘aśeh is sufficiently persuasive in its own narrative terms as to make the question beside the point.57

57 I wish to thank Michal Bar-Asher Siegal, Jeremy Dauber, and Dan Ben-Amos for reading earlier versions of this essay, and offering valuable comments and corrections.

Azzan Yadin-Israel

“These and These Are Words of the Living God”: Halakic Pluralism and Its Discontents

The Babylonian Talmud famously teaches: Rabbi Abba said in the name of Samuel: For three years there was a controversy [mah  loqet] between the House of Shammai and the House of Hillel. The former asserted, “halakhah is in accordance with our views,” and the latter asserted, “halakhah is in accordance with our views.” A heavenly voice went forth and said: These and these are the words of the living God. (b. ‘Erub. 13b)1

The assertion that both sides of this halakic dispute are “words of the living God” has been enlisted into the service of two discrete claims concerning halakic pluralism: that the dictum “these and these” represents a programmatic endorsement of legal pluralism on the part of the Talmud, and that it functions in a similar manner in post-talmudic rabbinic jurisprudence. Shlomo Naeh has criticized the former on philological grounds, arguing that the legal-pluralistic interpretation cannot be squared with the original sense of the talmudic passage.2 First, because in early rabbinic sources the term mahloqet, “controversy,” does not refer to a theoretical or doctrinal dispute but rather to political division, its semantics corresponding to that of the Greek stasis. The heavenly voice’s assertion that “these and these are the words of the living God,” then, does not endorse legal pluralism so much as contravene the notion that halakic dispute entails political division.3 Second, the phrase “words of the living God” occurs only once in the Hebrew Bible, in Jeremiah’s attack on the false prophets who “pervert the words of the living God” * My thanks to Tzvi Novick for his incisive comments and helpful suggestions on an earlier draft of this essay. 1 Cited in Hanina Ben-Menahem, Neil S. Hecht, and Shai Wosner, eds., Controversy and Dialogue in the Jewish Tradition: A Reader (London: Routledge, 2005), § 75, p. 102. I have used the translations of Controversy and Dialogue where possible, with some stylistic changes; citations are to the English translation’s section number in the reader, followed by the page number. 2 Shlomo Naeh, “‘Make Yourself Many Rooms’: Another Look at the Utterances of the Sages about Controversy” (in Hebrew), in Renewing Jewish Commitment: The Work and Thought of David Hartman, ed. Avi Sagi and Zvi Zohar (Jerusalem: Shalom Hartman Institute and Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 2001), 851–75. 3 Naeh, “Many Rooms,” 853–57.

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(Jer 23:36). The Talmud, Naeh suggests, cites this singular phrase to distinguish the dispute between the house of Hillel and the house of Shammai from the claims of false prophets. Despite their intractable halakic division, both parties remain part of the community that espouses the words of the living God.4 Though Naeh does not make this point explicitly, the contrast he posits between the rabbinic controversy and Jeremiah’s false prophets suggests that one of the two houses is, in fact, in error: though the erring sages champion an incorrect understanding of God’s teachings, and might, by virtue of this error, be grouped with false prophets, in truth, they remain part of the rabbinic community. The underlying logic of the passage, then, is emphatically not pluralistic, as it seeks to secure the standing of sages who advocate erroneous halakic positions. I will return to Naeh’s argument below. The focus of the present discussion lies with the notion that the repeated invocation of “these and these are the words of the living God” in post-talmudic writings serves as a marker for a rabbinic tendency toward halakic pluralism.5 Before turning to discuss the relevant historical sources, I want to clarify what I take to be the realist notion of legal pluralism that undergirds such claims—namely, that the conflicting halakic views are understood to be statements concerning the fact of the matter, whose truth or falsity is determined by their accuracy vis-à-vis an external, nondiscursive reality. If, for example, the house of Hillel and the house of Shammai were locked in a dispute as to whether an object was pure or impure, respectively, the pluralist reading of the Eruvin passage understands the purity of the object to exist independently of the rabbinic debate. If the object is, as a matter of fact, pure—the house of Hillel is in the right; if it is impure—the house of Shammai. The debate is a zero-sum game; the object is either pure or impure, and so one house is correct and the other in error. A number of considerations favor such an understanding. The extended period of dispute, spanning three years, suggests the issue was intractable—the affirmation of one side’s correctness was tantamount to a denial of the other’s. Moreover, rabbinic literature knows a number of techniques for resolving contradictions, but instead introduces a heavenly voice that allows the contradictory positions to stand. Human ingenuity could have explained away an apparent contradiction; it is for God to affirm mutually exclusive views. Finally, the immediate response to “these and these are the words of the living God” within the Talmud itself corroborates this approach. Immediately after the heavenly voice’s pronouncement,

4 Naeh, “Many Rooms,” 857. 5 For contemporary studies that interpret “these and these” as a programmatic affirmation of pluralism, see the articles cited in Naeh, “Many Rooms,” 853, n. 5; as well as Reuven Kimelman, “Judaism and Pluralism,” Modern Judaism 7 (1987): 131–50; David Kramer, Reading the Rabbis: The Talmud as Literature (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 60–70; see also the sources discussed in Abraham Joshua Heschel, Heavenly Torah as Refracted through the Generations, trans. Gordon Tucker and Leonard Levin (New York: Continuum, 2005), 701–19.

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the anonymous voice of the Talmud asks: “If ‘these and these are the words of the living God,’ on what grounds did the house of Hillel merit to have halakah established in accordance with their view?” (b. ‘Erub. 13b). The Talmud then proceeds to enumerate a series of rationales unrelated to halakic correctness: the sages of the house of Hillel were pleasant and humble, and cited the opposing views of the Shammaites alongside their own. The Talmud, then, understands “these and these” as a divine sanction for mutually exclusive positions that cannot be reconciled by human reason, thereby forcing the rabbis to mobilize nonhalakic criteria by which to decide the matter. The above argument could be taken as a challenge to Naeh: surely, the traditional reading is correct since the Talmud itself understands “these and these are the words of the living God” in terms of legal pluralism. But, of course, it is not “the Talmud” that articulates this understanding, but rather one of the redacted sources within the Talmud. Naeh’s interpretation may be correct and the Talmud’s response merely the first in a long line of misunderstandings that take the phrase in legal-pluralistic terms.6 That is, even if Naeh is right, “these and these” might still have been understood as a pluralist manifesto in post-talmudic sources, as Avi Sagi, among others, has argued.7 My argument in what follows is that this characterization of the post-talmudic career of the dictum does not adequately recognize the ambivalence that attends its citation in many later sources. It is, for one thing, often difficult to distinguish an author’s pluralist rhetoric from his pluralist claims. Rabbi Shem Tov Ibn Gaon, a Spanish sage born in 1287, employs “these and these are the words of the living God” repeatedly in Migdal ‘oz, one of the first commentaries on Maimonides’s codex, as when he states his interpretation of a disputed matter and hastens to add that “irrespective, we do not seek to exclude the views of others, rather we say ‘these and these are the words of the living God’” (‫)ומ„מ לא נרחיק דעות אחרים אלא נאמר אלו ואלו דברי אלהים חיים הם‬.8 Or later in the commentary when he sanguinely welcomes the possibility that others will seek to overturn his view: “And should a disputant dispute my position—

6 I am sympathetic to such an argument, having made it myself regarding the Tannaitic dictum that the Torah was written in seventy languages, and its later transformation into a proclamation of the indeterminate nature of the divine word as such. See my “Hammer on the Rock: Mekhilta Deuteronomy and the Question of Rabbinic Polysemy,” Jewish Studies Quarterly 10 (2003): 1–17. 7 Avi Sagi, “‘Both Are the Words of the Living God’: A Typological Analysis of Halakhic Pluralism,” HUCA 65 (1994): 65–136; idem, “Elu va-elu”: A Study on the Meaning of Halakhic Discourse (in Hebrew) (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1996), and its expanded English version The Open Canon: On the Meaning of Halakhic Discourse, trans. Batya Stein (New York: Continuum, 2007). Though Sagi’s Open Canon was published six years after Naeh’s article, Sagi does not address the article’s claims. 8 Shem T ov Ibn Gaon, Migdal ‘oz, laws of lending (hilkot malweh weloweh), chapter 8, s.v. wa’ani ’omer, printed in the outside margins of Maimonides, Mishneh Torah (Levov: Shelomo Jaris, 1810), 180a.

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what of it? These and these are the words of the living God” (‫ואם חולק יחלוק ומה‬ ‫)בכך אלו ואלו דברים אלהים חיים הם‬.9 But Ibn Gaon is affirming the importance of debate in reaching the right conclusion, rather than the stronger claim that both sides of a debate are halakically correct (even if one must ultimately be preferred on nonhalakic grounds). The twentieth-century scholar Menashe Klein (also known as Menashe Hakatan; interwar Czechoslovakia and the United States) offers a more forceful and more explicit affirmation of the pluralism of “these and these”: And thus when you see me citing the words of commentators or of midrashim that controvert one another, “these and these are the words of the living God,” and even if you find me preferring one, that does not mean that the other views are invalid, but rather that they are not attested in the plain sense [peshat] of Scripture though they are attested in its intimations [remez], while the one I have preferred is in the plain sense of Scripture … since all interpretations are encompassed in our sacred Torah and all things are intimated in it, everyone has a share in it to interpret and explicate according to what appears in their eyes to be intimated in our Torah.10

But for all his exuberant pluralism, Klein addresses the interpretation of Torah, not the legitimacy of conflicting halakic rulings. He endorses hermeneutic, not halakic, pluralism. To be sure, the two may be related, as when scriptural interpretation affects a legal decision, but they remain fundamentally different claims. Interpretive pluralism can coexist alongside halakic monism, for there might be many legitimate approaches to the biblical text, leading to a single, exclusive, conclusion. Shem Tov Ibn Gaon and Menashe Klein, then, are as examples of sages who enthusiastically invoke “these and these are the words of the living God,” but the broader context of their respective discussions have no bearing on the question of halakic pluralism. Even scholars who do cite “these and these” in connection with halakic conclusions often blunt its (potential) pluralistic force. Hayyim Yosef David Azulai (known by the acronym H  ida’; eighteenth-century Italy and Ottoman Palestine) recognizes the difficulties the dictum raises and lists three rabbinic approaches to it: [T]he early scholars said [‫ ]ואמרו הראשונים‬that just as light cannot be discerned without darkness, and truth cannot be discerned without falsehood, so too in this matter the one cannot be understood and resolved on its own, but rather only from its opposite … That is one answer. And another one we learn from Rashi: sometimes

9 Shem Tov Ibn Gaon, Migdal ‘oz, laws of legal disputes (hilkot to‘en wenit‘an), chapter 7, s.v. wa’ani ’omer, Mishneh Torah 213b. 10 Menashe Klein, Sefer mišneh halakot § 169, 17 vols. (New York: Machon Mishneh Halakhot, 2000), 5:226.

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one reason is pertinent and sometimes another reason is pertinent, since the law’s rationale changes according to variations in the circumstances, however minute. And it turns out that the rejected opinion will be pertinent with minute variations, in a different reality. And there is yet a third explanation, which will further explain it, from the mouth of our rabbis, the rabbis of France, that the Holy One, blessed be He, gave Moses forty-nine aspects from which a thing can be declared pure, and forty-nine aspects from which it can be declared impure, and so forth, and told him that the law would be in accordance with the consensus of the scholars of the given generation.11

Azulai’s synopsis suggests that many rabbinic authorities interpreted “these and these are the words of the living God” so as to eschew claims of strong halakic pluralism, in some cases casting the opposing views as not mutually exclusive, in others diminishing the force of the divine sanction. I examine each in turn.

The Contesting Views Can Be Reconciled The pluralistic reading of “these and these are the words of the living God” holds that the positions of the houses of Hillel and Shammai are fundamentally incompatible and yet, in some sense, true.12 However, the “early sages” whom Azulai cites argue otherwise: “… just as light cannot be discerned without darkness, and truth cannot be discerned without falsehood, so too in this matter the one cannot be understood and resolved on its own, but rather only from its opposite.” By framing the halakically rejected position as the backdrop against which truth is visible, the early sages reduce “these and these” to an affirmation of the pedagogic utility of the rejected statement as a foil to the truth. Similar interpretations that deny the disputing views are both true and mutually exclusive appear in a number of forms. Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel, Maharal of Prague (sixteenth century), holds that the b. Eruvin debate was a rare and perhaps unique case of nonmutually exclusive views: [A]ll things have more than one aspect—even if something is impure, it must have some aspect of purity … Sometimes these aspects are equal, and then both [views] are equally of divine origin, and no decision is reached. And this is the case in the controversy between Hillel and Shammai … [‫ולפעמים הבחינות שוים לגמרי מצד עצמן‬ ‫]ואז שניהם מן הש„י בשווה ואין מכריע וזהו מחלוקת הלל ושמאי‬.13

11 Hayyim Yosef David Azulai, Petah  ‘enayyim to b. B. Mes. 59b; Controversy and Dialogue § 110, p. 141. 12 The heavenly voice does not, of course, speak of truth values, but the divine sanction of both positions has traditionally and, as I argued above, plausibly, been understood in these terms. 13 Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel, Be’er hagolah (Prague, 1598), 5b. The passage is discussed in brief by Sagi (Open Canon, 88–89), who identifies Maharal as one of the “advocates of halakhic monism.” Maharal understands the debate between the houses to involve purity

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According to Maharal, the heavenly voice endorses both positions in the dispute because the case under discussion is ontologically indeterminate. Normally, the dominant aspect determines the halakic status of an object, for example, though it contains some aspect of impurity, its dominant aspect is purity and so the object is counted as pure. The dispute between the houses of Hillel and Shammai in b. Eruvin, however, involved an object in which the two aspects were evenly matched. Since the object was simultaneously pure and impure, both halakic views were equally correct and so could count as “the words of the living God.” This interpretation denies the heavenly voice any general significance, since its proclamation addresses a rare, perhaps singular, object whose halakic status is ontologically indeterminate. It is worth noting that Maharal endorses the realist legal view according to which halakic validity is closely correlated to a correspondence theory of truth: a halakic ruling is correct when it adequately represents a state of affairs external to and independent of halakic discourse. The statement “P is impure” is correct if and only if P contains, ontologically, more impurity than purity. On this account, there can be only one correct answer. As I discussed above, these assumptions inform the pluralistic reading of “these and these,” and are, in fact, critical to the wondrous nature of God’s proclamation: though objectively the two claims are mutually exclusive, both receive divine sanction. Maharal accepts this realist logic, but dispenses with the wonder by explaining God’s acceptance of the two halakic positions as the result of their objective correctness. “These and these are the words of the living God” does not legitimize differing views, but rather recognizes the ontological uniqueness of the case under discussion: the views of the house of Hillel and the house of Shammai are both ontologically correct. Baruch Halevi Epstein (nineteenth- to twentieth-century Belarus) tries to explain the pluralistic force of “these and these” by likening the halakic debate to a chorus whose singers sing in different voices, and at first glance they appear like a jumble, and they might be deemed a lawless group or an unruly flock [‫]ויתחשבו חבורה בלתי מנומסת וכעדר לא לומד‬, as though they are vexing one another. But ultimately the truth emerges, for the jumble produces a beautiful melody, pleasing to the ear.14

The analogue, which Epstein spells out explicitly, is Torah study, for even though it might appear that [the controverting sages] cannot agree on a single position, and each view precludes that of the interlocutor, in truth, the conflict of their views leads to a holy and faithful goal, refining halakah toward its telos … it appears, then, that God, as it were, desires such conflict and debate, since ultimately they produce

and impurity because the talmudic discussion preceding the passage in b. ‘Erub. 13b discusses these matters. 14 Barukh Halevi Epstein, Baruk še’amar (Tel Aviv: Am Olam, 1930), 251.

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refined halakah, and this process is referred to rhetorically as … “these and these are the words of the living God.”15

Sagi discusses Epstein’s view, situating it alongside the first view cited by Azulai (likening one side of the controversy to the darkness against which light is visible),16 but misses, I think, two key difficulties in Epstein’s analogy. One, the singers in the chorus know that their voices ultimately result in a harmonious sound, so the musical “truth” is evident to them. Not so with the b. Eruvin controversy (which Epstein cites in his conclusion), whose disputants remain committed to their positions to the end, refusing to yield, never seeing their interlocutors as partners in the production of a euphonic score. Whatever harmonious truth emerges from the disputes of the house of Hillel and the house of Shammai, it is visible to God alone. Furthermore, Epstein, like Shem Tov Ibn Gaon and Menashe Klein, recasts “these and these” as referring to the process of halakic debate rather than the validity of halakic conclusions. This shift is implicit in the chorus analogy, which represents an aggregate of sages joining together to create a single harmonious sound, rather than following contradictory halakic directives. Wolf Halevi Boskowitz (1740–1818, Moravia and Hungary) explains the pluralism that underlies “these and these are the words of the living God” in Seder mishneh, another commentary on Maimonides’s Mishneh Torah, as follows: [B]oth sides were striving toward the truth, the choice [whose position to adopt] was in the hands of the sages, for the final goal and telos of performing the commandments is, so to speak, to be pleasing to God, may He be blessed, regarding that which He commanded. And both were striving to do His will, may He be blessed, the one prohibiting in accord with his logical approach and believing that he thus is doing the will of God, may He be blessed, and the other permitting in accord with his logical approach and believing that he is thus doing the will of God, may He be blessed. And so the decision rests in the hands of the sages, to determine halakah according to their will.17

In the final sentence, Wolf states that halakah lies in the hands of the sage (the third position enumerated by Azulai; see below). But Wolf ’s critique is more thoroughgoing. He identifies “pleasing God” as the ultimate goal of the commandments, and striving to do God’s will as the medium by which this is achieved. Now, since both sides of the debate are making a bona fide effort to interpret halakah correctly and thus “doing the will of God,” both positions are “the words of the living God,” irrespective of their truth value. Indeed, Wolf voids veridical considerations alto15 Epstein, Baruk še’amar, 252. 16 Sagi, Open Canon, 20. 17 Wolf Halevi, Seder mišneh (Prague: Schollschen, 1820), 23c–d. Sagi (Open Canon, 89–90) cites part of this passage

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gether: both sides of the debate may be wrong and still count as words of the living God, while, at least theoretically, the words of a bad-faith interlocutor might communicate the correct halakic position but, since they are not motivated by the desire to do God’s will, not count as such. The second opinion Azulai cites, which he attributes to Rashi, undermines the mutual exclusivity of the disputed positions in a different way: “Sometimes one reason is pertinent and sometimes another reason is pertinent, since the law’s rationale changes according to variations in the circumstances, however minute. And it turns out that the rejected opinion will be pertinent with minute variations, in a different reality.”18 The two legal positions, then, are not truly incompatible; each is valid in different circumstances. This view is difficult to reconcile with the language of b. Eruvin, which recounts that the two houses engaged in the dispute over a period of three years, while living under very similar circumstances. Nonetheless, a number of commentators have sought to explain the difference between the two houses in such terms, an approach reminiscent of the Mishnah’s explanation that the minority view of today may become the majority view of tomorrow (m. ‘Ed. 1:5). For some authors, the different positions are separated temporally, as in this fascinating passage from the great Italian legist and kabbalist, Rabbi Menahem Azariah of Fano (1548–1620): The sages’ dictum “some of them forbid, some of the permit, but they are all the words of the living God” is well known and poorly understood … the Torah explicitly says to decide the law that is to be applied according to the majority … but this does not mean that the rejected minority view is regarded as false … the eternal Guardian of truth judges men’s actions, the proper and the improper, all according to one’s actions at the given time. For what was proper before the sin, namely, Adam and his wife being naked, became improper after the sin. Thus the assessment of what is proper and improper with respect to nakedness is a matter of its time, and these and these are the words of the living God … Hence, the permission and the prohibition are both true …19

Menahem Azariah of Fano’s argument is frankly relativistic. Since God judges actions based on the historical (“at a given time”) context in which they occur, an act may be halakically sanctioned at one time but proscribed at another: Adam and Eve are not held in contempt for their prelapsarian nakedness, since at the time it was not improper, and only became so after they ate of the tree of knowledge

18 Rashi to b. Ketub. 57a, s.v. ha’ qa’ mašma‘ lan; Controversy and Dialogue, § 87, p. 108. 19 Rabbi Menahem Azariah of Fano, ‘Aśarah ma’amarot 2.17 (Amsterdam: Yehudah ben Mordechai & Shmuel bar Moshe, 1649), 42b; Controversy and Dialogue, § 103, p. 126.

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“and their eyes were opened” (Gen 3:7).20 Though at first blush contradictory, the disputing positions address different scenarios, and so are both true. A temporal disruption of a different kind is found in Vaya‘aś ’Abraham by Abraham Landau (the Ciechanower Rebbe; 1784–1875, Poland): And it seems, according to what the kabbalists, of blessed memory, said, that in heaven above the law is in accordance with the view of the House of Shammai, and indeed, in the future the law will be in accordance with the view of the House of Shammai …21

Like Rabbi Menahem Azariah of Fano, the Ciechanower Rebbe (and the kabbalistic sources on which he relies) explains the conflict between the two positions as the result of their reference to different temporal frameworks: the position of the house of Hillel is to be preferred so long as we are within human history, that of the house of Shammai during the end time. Again, what the Talmud presents as an intractable controversy is translated into a framework that upholds both positions. Rabbi Yehudah Meir Shapiro (1887–1933), one of the leaders of Polish Orthodoxy in the first decades of the twentieth century (and the founder of the daf yomi), uses the dictum “these and these are the words of the living God” to explain a controversy that he resolves through reference to different stages in a single process: There is a controversy in the Talmud [b. Roš Haš. 10b–11a] whether the world was created in Nisan or in Tishre, and some books question how they can maintain a controversy regarding external reality, and the explanation is “these and these are the words of the living God.” Nisan was the time of the esoteric doctrine of the birth [of the world], as Scripture states “I passed by you, and saw you flailing about in your blood” [Ezek 16:6], which famously alludes to the blood of childbirth. But Tishre was the time of the impregnation, and that is why we say [in the Rosh Hashanah liturgy]: “Today is the impregnation of the world” [hayyom harat ‘olam].22

The controversy is vexing because, as it deals with the physical world, it is, so to speak, an empirical question that should allow but a single answer—if the world was created in Tishre it was not created in Nisan, and vice versa. Citing “these and these” in this context might appear as an endorsement of an empirically incorrect position and thus of strong halakic pluralism. But Shapiro reverses the argument: though the disputants’ views appear to be mutually exclusive, they are compatible. One side dates creation from the initial stage of the emanatory process that birthed the world—the stage known as the esoteric doctrine of impregnation (sod ha‘ibbur)—which occurred in Nisan; the other side from the completion of the 20 Rabbi Menahem Azaraiah of Fano stands—likely knows that he stands—at the precipice of the proverbial slippery slope: the logic of his argument underlies many Christian claims about the supersession of the ritual commandments. 21 Rabbi Abraham of Ciechanower, Vaya‘aś ’Abraham; Controversy and Dialogue, § 114, p. 149. 22 Rabbi Yehudah Meir Shapiro, ’Or hame’ir to Leviticus, Pesah, s.v. benosah berakot.

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process, the parturition (sod haledah), which occurred in Tishre. The two positions are the words of the living God not despite their mutual exclusivity, but rather because they can, in fact, be reconciled. Elsewhere we find the argument that “these and these are the words of the living God” refers to positions in tension only insofar as they reflect different aspects of the divine. Rabbi Zadok HaKohen of Lublin (1823–1900) cites the dictum often, even as he undermines its pluralistic force: For there is a perspective according to which an individual studying the plain meaning of the holy Torah interprets it according to his own vantage point. If he is of the Emanation of Mercy, his intellect tends to interpret the Torah so as to deem everything pure, permitted, and fit. But if he is connected to the Emanation of Harsh Judgment, the reverse is true. Now, the House of Hillel is characterized by the attribute of Mercy and therefore inclines to leniency, while the House of Shammai is characterized by Harsh Judgment, and hence inclines to stringency. But in fact, each view, according to its own level, constitutes the words of the living God, and thus “These and these are the words of the living God.”23

Rabbi Zadok HaKohen admits that “these and these are the words of the living God” reflects a plurality, but one that is anchored in the splintered reality of the divine realm, allowing the conflicting views to stand as accurate representations of the conflict within the Godhead. Each of the halakic positions corresponds to an aspect of the emanation of the divine, and thus is, almost literally, the word of the living God. This approach is theologically pluralistic—God is subdivided into distinct, often conflicting, hypostases—but undermines the very conditions that make legal pluralism meaningful; if both positions are correct, there is nothing pluralistic in accepting them. On this reading, the heavenly voice of b. Eruvin does not sanction an incorrect legal position, but merely alerts the sages to the fact that neither position is incorrect.

Divine Sanction The third position Azulai enumerates, that of “the rabbis of France,” explains “these and these are the words of the living God” as a reflection of the constitutive power of rabbinic decisions in determining halakah:24

23 Zadok HaCohen of Lublin, Qedušat Levi ‘al hatorah (Warsaw: Israel Razomorski, 1902), 218; Controversy and Dialogue, § 112, p. 144. 24 See Moshe Halbertal, People of the Book: Canon, Meaning, and Authority (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 63–72.

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the Holy One, blessed be He, gave Moses forty-nine aspects from which a thing can be declared pure, and forty-nine aspects from which it can be declared impure, and so forth, and told him that the law would be in accordance with the consensus of the scholars of the given generation.

The notion that rabbinic authority supersedes God’s in matters of halakah has its roots in the Talmud itself, most famously in Rabbi Yehoshua’s refusal of the heavenly voice in the story of the oven of Akhnai (b. B. Mes. 59b),25 and God’s admission of Rabbah’s legal preeminence in the fields of skin impurity and tent impurity (b. B. Mes. 86a).26 Many post-talmudic sages adopt this view, as when Rabbenu Nissim (1320–1376, Spain) states: “Ruling is a prerogative granted to the sages in each generation, and whatever they decide is God’s will.”27 Rabbenu Nissim does not link this theological claim with b. Eruvin 13a, but other scholars do, most prominently the thirteenth-century French sage Rabbenu Avigdor: In the Talmud it is explained that even though some forbid and others permit, “these and these are the words of the living God.” And it is puzzling how this is possible, for if it is forbidden it is not permitted, if it is pure it is not impure … And the matter should be stated as follows: if the majority of the sages of Israel agree to forbid, the Holy One blessed be He would concur with them. For thus it is written in the Torah: “follow a majority” [Exod 23:2], and when another generation arises in which the majority agree to permit, the Holy One blessed be He will also concur with them.28

Rabbenu Avigdor’s argument, like the two Bava Metzi‘a passages and Rabbenu Nissim’s statement, reverses the priority of the immanent and the transcendent. Though God remains, nominally, an authorizing figure, divine will is not an external reality to which rabbinic law must correspond; it merely provides ex post facto legitimation to whatever position the rabbinic court adopts, changing as the court’s rulings change.

25 Controversy and Dialogue, § 5, pp. 55–56. 26 Controversy and Dialogue, § 82, p. 105. 27 Rabbenu Nissim Gerondi, Twelve Derashot (Jerusalem: n.p., 1959), 78. This passage is discussed by Sagi in Open Canon, 59–60. Sagi states that Rabbenu Nissim might appear to hold that “halakhic sages are the ones who determine God’s command” but then states that “[a] closer reading, however, reveals that this is not Nissim’s intention … [since] God also gave the principle through which truth will be known, namely, ‘incline after the majority’” (Open Canon, 59). However, Rabbenu Nissim offers this analysis as commentary to the oven of Akhnai narrative, in which the heavenly voice sides with the minority (Rabbi Eliezer), as Sagi himself notes shortly thereafter: “Nissim does acknowledge … that a majority decision may not disclose the truth … yet, the decision to entrust decision-making powers to the sages is unconditional, since human reason is the only available tool for disclosing the truth” (ibid.). In which case, Rabbenu Nissim does hold that the sages determine God’s command, pace Sagi. 28 Commentary and Rulings of Rabbenu Avigdor, ruling 580; Controversy and Dialogue, § 92.

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This explanation of “these and these,” propagated throughout the Mediterranean Jewish world (it figures prominently in Ritba’s commentary to Eruvin; fourteenth-century Spain),29 is adopted by many scholars, including some of the most prominent halakic figures of the twentieth century. For example, Rabbi Moshe Feinstein states that God gave the Torah to Israel to do as they understand with what was given to them at Sinai, orally and in writing … and [God] agreed ab initio to the understanding and interpretation of the sages … It is thus well said in ‘Erubin 13b about the House of Shammai and the House of Hillel “these and these are words of the living God.”30

Sagi rightly notes the radical nature of this approach, since “the gamut of halakhic options expresses the divine will to endow the sages with the authority to determine Halakhah, but it is not the revelation of God’s word.”31 I would add from a legal-pluralistic perspective that this approach empties the divine sanction bestowed on the houses of Hillel and Shammai of all meaning: sages confer and debate, and their conclusions determine halakic reality. God’s sanction, then, does not confirm the veracity of a rabbinic position (an object is, in fact, pure or impure) so much as broadly affirm that halakic correctness is nothing other than the regnant rabbinic position. This view finds remarkable expression in the writings of Rabbi Menahem Mendel Hayyim Landau (1861–1935), the grandson of the Ciechanower Rebbe: But you must know and understand that halakhic truth is unlike the truth of arithmetic and geometry, wherein there is but a single correct solution. Rather, it is truth that is intelligible and based on reasoning, that is, it is as people understand and reason it out through their comprehension …

This very immanent view of halakic truth explains b. Eruvin 13b: … since both the opinion forbidding and the opinion permitting have a place in human intellection, which God chose as the means by which the uncertainties in the Torah are to be resolved; if so, both are God’s work, and thus both are called “words of the living God.”32

In a single sentence the Hasidic sage displaces the divine sanction traditionally understood in the phrase “the words of the living God”: both houses arrive at their halakic opinions by employing human reason, the tool God designated for clarify-

29 Yom Tov ben Avraham Asevilli, Novellae of Ritba to ‘Erubin (in Hebrew) (Warsaw: Lebensohn, 1899), 11c; Controversy and Dialogue, § 95, pp. 113–14. 30 Moshe Feinstein, ’Iggerot Moshe (New York: n.p., 1959), introduction; Controversy and Dialogue, § 119, p. 161. 31 Sagi, Open Canon, 80. 32 Rabbi Menahem Mendel Hayyim Landau, Quntres peri ha’ares (bound with Landau, Vaya‘aś ’Abraham), 508a–b; Controversy and Dialogue, § 114, pp. 152–54.

“These and These Are Words of the Living God”

579

ing halakic matters, and thus both halakic opinions are “words of the living God.” On Landau’s reading, the Talmud invokes the divine to inform us that the halakic process was conducted by the appropriate human means. Landau’s unflinching logic highlights the jurisprudential and theological difficulty that to some degree attends all the sources cited in this section, namely, the principled marginalization of God’s role in determining halakic truth and, concomitantly, of the revelation that concludes the b. Eruvin passage. God is not the arbiter of halakah, and the revelation can do nothing more than retroactively confirm rabbinic decisions. This diminution of the divine is the inevitable result of the view of the sources discussed in this section—that the validity of a halakic ruling consists in nothing more than the legitimacy of the rabbinic procedures by which it was reached. So long as the legists in question are recognized sages, who have received proper talmudic training, and the debate is conducted in good faith, the majority ruling is the correct halakic view; there is no recourse to external criteria. In contemporary terms, these sources adopt a form of legal positivism, with the aforementioned conditions serving as rules of recognition that distinguish genuine from spurious legal positions.33 God, then, occupies a similar position in these sources as morality does for contemporary positivists: a valued principle that cannot be integrated into a legal system that recognizes only internal criteria (“pedigree”) for the validity of legal positions.34

Conclusion “These and these are the words of the living God” is a remarkable dictum that informs an ongoing discussion of halakic pluralism within rabbinic sources. The present essay argues that many of these sources use the dictum in the service of a pluralism that is much less robust than the language of b. Eruvin 13b might suggest. Indeed, a number of passages embrace a rhetoric of pluralism, but closer investigation reveals the absence of a key component of the talmudic narrative: either the legal positions of the houses of Hillel and Shammai are not mutually exclusive, or 33 The rule of recognition, a key element of H. L. A. Hart’s concept of law, specifies “some feature or features possession of which by a suggested rule is taken as a conclusive affirmative indication that it is a rule of the group to be supported by the social pressure it exerts,” Hart, The Concept of Law (Oxford: Clarendon, 1991), 94. 34 A critique of Azulai’s third position on the ground that it does not recognize God’s will as a principle in formulating halakah (since God will assent retroactively to any decision, so long as it is reached through the proper protocols) would be structurally analogous to Ronald Dworkin’s critique of Hart’s positivism. For a clear discussion of these issues, see Dennis Patterson, Law and Truth (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996). It is worth noting that such a critique cannot be leveled against the first two positions delineated by Azulai, since they offer legal-realist interpretations of “these and these.”

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the debate cannot be meaningfully couched in strong pluralistic terms since the truth of halakic pronouncements is constituted by the sages, with God adapting to their decrees. Rather than a pluralist rallying cry, the dictum is continuously reworked and recast in light of the practical and conceptual difficulties it presents. Its engagement by later scholars is less a testament to an inherent jurisprudential openness among the rabbis, and more an indication of post-talmudic Judaism’s struggle with halakic pluralism and its discontents.

Prayer and the Synagogue

Moshe Bar-Asher

The Presence of Mishnaic Hebrew in the Blessing Formulas Ordained by the Sages Introduction 1. This research follows a first study that I devoted to the subject of “the blessing formulas ordained by the sages.”1 Before I proceed to further examine and elucidate additional aspects of this important topic, I will review some of the main statements that I expressed there, and summarize very briefly the conclusions from that paper. A. I claimed there that the study of the language and the style of the blessings teaches that those that were written in the days of the Tannaim as well as those that were formulated later on, during the Amoraic era and afterwards, reveal uniformity in their language and style traits.2 B. I demonstrated that the Tannaim differentiated clearly between the two types of literature they authored, namely: (a) the mishnaic literature they produced, and (b) the blessing formulas they instituted. They used different languages and style resources in these two types of literature. They wrote the Mishnah and Tannaitic

* This article is based on the keynote address delivered at a conference in honor of Steven Fraade, which took place at Yale University, May 11, 2014. I added footnotes and bibliographic references. It is dedicated to my friend Steven, the scholar and the remarkable person, as a token of friendship. 1 Moshe Bar-Asher, “The Formula of Blessings Ordained by the Sages” (in Hebrew), Kenishta: Studies of the Synagogue World, vol. 4, ed. Yosef Tabori (Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 2000), 27–49. 2 Bar-Asher, “Formula of Blessings,” 29 § 3 and 47 § 43. There is no doubt that with regard to more than a few blessings, the formula coined in the land of Israel precedes the one issued in Babylon (which was partly consolidated during the Amoraic period and later). For example, the difference between the land of Israel version of the opening ‫“ אמת ויציב‬It is truthful and established,” where the validation formula consisted of seven synonyms, ‫ֱא ֶמת וְ יַ ִּציב וְ נָ כֹון וְ ַקּיָ ם וְ יָ ָׁשר‬ ‫“ וְ נֶ ֱא ָמן וְ טֹוב‬true and established, correct and enduring, right and trustworthy, and good,” and the opening of the Babylonian version, which included sixteen words, eight pairs of words, like the formula coined in an early age and the one common in our times (Ezra Fleischer, “The Evening Recitation of Shema According to the Palestinian Rite” [in Hebrew], in Torah Lishma: Essays in Jewish Studies in Honor of Professor Shamma Friedman, ed. David Golinkin et al. [Jerusalem: Bar-Ilan University Press, 2007], 286–94, and also below § 24), is truly remarkable.

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literature in the vernacular of their time, known as Mishnaic Hebrew (MH). This language has a grammar that is different from the grammar of the Bible, and a distinct vocabulary as well. As is well known, MH was full of foreign words borrowed from Aramaic, Greek, Latin, and other languages.3 However, the blessing formulas the sages coined were written in biblical language and style, and did not include foreign words. The affinity with the Bible is reflected also in the long and short quotations, tacit or explicit, including complete verses and verse fragments.4 Resemblance to the style of the Bible also manifests itself in the extensive use of pairs of synonyms, parallel hemistiches, and other stylistic features.5 Moreover, the affinity of the blessings to the Bible is revealed in a marked tendency to introduce rare and unique language usages that appear in the books of the Bible.6 C. Those who coined the blessing formulas did not resort to the use of MH, because they wanted to avoid the vernacular when composing blessings and prayers addressed to the Creator, and instead to confer on them a poetic, exalted character. However, I also noted in a sentence or two that there is some connection between the language of the blessings and MH, and promised to return to this issue.7 It is this promise that I have come to fulfill here.

The Presence of Mishnaic Hebrew in the Formulas of Blessings 2. A comprehensive analysis reveals very little presence of MH in the formulas of the blessings. There are, however, several instances of interest. I will discuss three of them in detail. A. At times, it was compulsory to use a word or a phrase from MH rather than its counterpart in Biblical Hebrew (BH). B. As is known, the language of prayer tends to use synonyms, either in pairs of words connected with or without the conjunction -‫“ ו‬and,” or in parallel hemistiches. For the most part, biblical words equal or close in meaning are chosen for this purpose. But sometimes MH vocabulary provides the answer to the stylistic preference for synonyms. C. There is a special connection to MH in the closing of the blessings on the commandments. 3 Bar-Asher, “Formula of Blessings,” 31, end of § 7 and with further detail pp. 31–47. 4 Bar-Asher, “Formula of Blessings,” 35–40 §§ 17–28 and see below §§ 23–30. 5 Bar-Asher, “Formula of Blessings,” 40–45 §§ 29–39, and also below §§ 5–11. 6 See for example, Bar-Asher, “Formula of Blessings,” 38–40 §§ 26–27, 46 §§ 40–41. 7 Bar-Asher, “Formula of Blessings,” n. 35.

The Presence of Mishnaic Hebrew in the Blessing Formulas Ordained by the Sages 585

A. Mishnaic Hebrew as Compulsory or Necessary Substitute 3. At times we find that in a blessing written entirely in BH, one MH word or phrase is substituted for its biblical counterpart. The substitution is made because of the need or compulsion in the particular context to avoid using the word or the phrase from the Bible that would have been called for in the particular context. I will discuss two examples of this kind, and show what prompted the person who formulated the blessing to utilize a mishnaic word or idiom instead of using the parallel biblical word or idiom.

‫“ ִּד ְּברֹות ָק ְד ֶׁשָך‬Your Holy Commandments” 4. The passage ‫“ אתה נגלית בענן כבודך‬You did reveal yourself in a cloud of glory” opens the Shofarot blessing in the Amidah prayer of the Musaf of the Rosh Hashanah (New Year) service. It appears before the verses related to the Shofarot, and takes the form of a poem in BH. It deals with the revelation at Mount Sinai and the giving of the Torah. The entire passage is based on the biblical text, and there are also some references to midrashic interpretations of the biblical text.8 The passage includes six lines, each with two parallel hemistiches.9 Here is the passage:10 11‫על ַעם ָק ְד ֶׁשָך ְל ַד ֵּבר ִע ָּמ ֶהם‬/‫ָך‬ ַ ‫בֹוד‬ ֶ ‫ית ַּב ֲענַ ן ְּכ‬ ָ ‫ַא ָּתה נִ גְ ֵל‬ ‫יהם ְּב ַע ְר ִּפ ֵלי ט ַֹהר‬ ֶ ‫ית ֲע ֵל‬ ָ ‫וְ נִ גְ ֵל‬/‫קֹולָך‬ ֶ ‫ִמן ַה ָּׁש ַמיִ ם ִה ְׁש ַמ ְע ָּתם‬ ָ‫אׁשית ָח ְרדּו ִמ ֶּמך‬ ִ ‫ּוב ִרּיֹות ְּב ֵר‬/13‫יָך‬ ְ ֶ‫עֹולם ֻּכּלֹו ָחל ִמ ְּל ָפנ‬ ָ ‫ ָה‬12‫וְ גַ ם‬ ‫ּומ ְצוֹות‬ ִ ‫ּתֹורה‬ ָ ‫ל ַל ֵּמד ְל ַע ְּמָך‬/‫י‬ ְ ַ‫לֹותָך ַמ ְל ֵּכנּו ַעל ַהר ִסינ‬ ְ ָ‫ְּב ִהּג‬ ‫וְ ִד ְּברֹות ָק ְד ֶׁשָך ִמ ַּל ֲהבֹות ֵאׁש‬/‫קֹולָך‬ ֶ ‫יעם ֶאת הֹוד‬ ֵ ‫וַ ַּת ְׁש ִמ‬ ‫הֹופ ְע ָּת‬ ַ ‫יהם‬ ֶ ‫ׁשֹופר ֲע ֵל‬ ָ ‫ּובקֹול‬/ ְ ‫ית‬ ָ ‫יהם נִ גְ ֵל‬ ֶ ‫ּוב ָר ִקים ֲע ֵל‬ ְ ‫ְּבקֹולֹות‬

8 For example, within the third line in this paragraph, ‫ובריות בראמ‬/‫וגם העולם כלו חל מלפניך‬ ‫“ שית חרדו ממך‬And also the whole world trembled at Your presence/and the creatures of Genesis shook in awe before You,” are echoes of rabbinic midrashic motifs, e. g., ‫שכשניתנה תורה לישראל‬ ‫“ היה קולו הולך מסוף העולם ועד סופו וכל עובדי כוכבים אחזתן רעדה בהיכליהן‬when the Torah was given to Israel, the sound thereof travelled from one end of the earth to the other, and all the heathen kings were seized with trembling in their palaces” (b. Zevah. 116a); ‫כשנתן הקדוש ברוך הוא‬ ‫ אלא העולם‬,‫ הבריות לא דיברו‬,‫ שור לא געה […] הים לא נזדעזע‬,‫ עוף לא פרח‬,‫ צפור לא צווח‬,‫את התורה‬ ‫“ שותק ומחריש‬When God proclaimed the Torah, no bird twittered, no fowl flew, no ox lowed … the sea did not roar, the creatures did not speak, the whole world was hushed into breathless silence …” (Ex. Rab. 29:9). 9 All the blessings and the portions of the blessings quoted are taken from current prayer books and High Holiday prayer books. Other sources will be cited only as the need arises. 10 This section is quoted from the Sephardic version of the High Holiday prayer book. In the footnotes, I mention several textual variants. 11 Ashkenazic version: ‫ ִע ָּמם‬. 12 Ashkenazic version: ‫ּגַ ם ָּכל‬. 13 Ashkenazic version: ‫מ ָּפנֶ יָך‬. ִ

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Moshe Bar-Asher

You revealed Yourself in Your cloud of glory/to speak to Your holy people You had them hear Your voice from heaven/revealing Yourself to them in fogs of purity. And also the whole world trembled at Your presence/and the creatures of Genesis shook in awe before You, When You, our King, revealed Yourself at Mount Sinai/to teach to Your people the Torah and the commandments. Letting them hear Your majestic voice,/Your holy words out of flashes of fire. Amid thunder and lightning You revealed yourself to them,/amid the blasting of the shofar You appeared to them.

5. It is easy to see that the whole paragraph is full of words and idioms from the Bible, among them also references to verses. For example, the nouns ‫“ אש‬fire” (“out of flashes of fire”), ‫“ ענן‬cloud” (“in Your cloud of glory”), ‫“ ערפל‬fog” (“in fogs of purity”), and ‫“ קול‬voice” (“You had them hear Your voice … Your majestic voice”) in ll. 1, 2, and 5 occur in sequence in the account of the revelation at Mount Sinai in Deut 5:19 ‫את הדברים האלה דבר ה' אל כל קהלכם בהר מתוך האש הענן והערפל קול‬ ‫“ גדול‬These words the Lord spoke unto all your assembly in the mount out of the midst of the fire, of the cloud, and the thick fog, with a great voice.” The last hemistich, ‫“ ובקול שופר עליהם הופעת‬Amid the blasting of the shofar You appeared to them,” joins the phrase ‫“ קול שופר‬the blasting of the shofar” of Ex 19:16 with the verb ‫“ הופעת‬you appeared” from Deut 33:2 ‫“ ה' מסיני בא … הופיע מהר פארן‬The Lord came from Sinai, … and appeared [‫ ]הופיע‬from Mount Paran unto them.” The phrase ‫“ בקולות וברקים‬amid thunder and lightning” in the penultimate hemistich is also an excerpt from the story of the revelation at Mount Sinai (Ex 19:16). 6. The extensive use (four times: ll. 1a, 2b, 4a, 6a) of the verb ‫“ נגלה‬revealed himself ” in this passage should be emphasized: “You revealed Yourself … revealing Yourself to them … You, our King, did reveal Yourself … You revealed Yourself to them.” This verb appears in the Bible when talking about the revelation of the Lord to the forefathers and the prophets, such as ‫( כי שם נגלו אליו האלהים‬Gen 35:7, “because there the Lord revealed Himself to him”), ‫( כי נגלה ה' אל שמואל‬1 Sam 3:21, “that God revealed Himself to Samuel”).14 In the phrase ‫“ אתה נגלית בענן כבודך‬You did reveal yourself in Your cloud of glory,” which opens the passage, the echo of the glory in Isa 40:5, '‫“ ונגלה כבוד ה‬and God’s glory was revealed,” and possibly also in Ex 32:22 ‫“ והיה בעבר כבדי‬and it will be when my glory passed,” also a context of divine revelation, can be heard.

14 There is a difference between the preposition used in the Bible (‫ )אל‬and the one used in the blessing (‫)על‬. There is apparently a reason for this, but this is not the place to discuss it.

The Presence of Mishnaic Hebrew in the Blessing Formulas Ordained by the Sages 587

7. Not only are quotations from the Bible, in their biblical forms or with slight variations, to be found in this paragraph, but new expressions are also created under biblical inspiration. In my earlier study, I already observed that the bless­ ings include new idioms inspired by biblical language, like the closing formula of the blessing ‫בּורה‬ ָ ְ‫“ אֹוזֵ ר יִ ְׂש ָר ִאל ִּבג‬girds Israel with bravery,” which was drawn from the biblical phrase ‫“ נאזר בגבורה‬was girded with bravery” (Ps 65:7),15 and the phrase ‫רּוּמים‬ ִ ‫“ ַמ ְל ִּביׁש ֲע‬clothes the naked,” which was formulated by joining a noun and a verb that appear separately in the tale of creation: ‫ויהיו שניהם ערומים‬ “And they were both naked” (Gen 2:25), and ‫ויעש ה' אלהים לאדם ולאשתו כתנות‬ ‫“ עור וילבשם‬God the Lord made coats of skins for Adam and his wife and clothed them” (Gen 3:21).16 Also in this paragraph, similarly, there are at least two phrases that were inspired by the Bible. 8. First, to create the phrase ‫“ בערפלי טהר‬with fogs of purity” (l. 2b) the author of the passage connected the nouns ‫“ ערפל‬fog” and ‫“ ט ַֹהר‬purity,” which are mentioned in different sections of the narration of the giving of the Torah. The noun ‫ערפל‬ is mentioned three times in the story of the revelation at Mount Sinai (Ex 20:18; Deut 4:11, 5:19), and the rare noun ‫ ט ַֹהר‬is also mentioned in the description of the revelation of the Divine Presence in the tale of the revelation at Mount Sinai, when Moses and Aaron, Nadav and Avihu, and the seventy elders went up Mount Sinai: ‫“ ויראו את אלהי ישראל ותחת רגליו כמעשה לבנת הספיר וכעצם השמים ָלט ַֹהר‬and they saw the God of Israel, and under his feet there was something like a paved work of sapphire, as the color of heaven in its purity [‫( ”]ט ַֹהר‬Ex 24:10). Second, the phrase ‫“ ובריות בראשית‬and the creatures of Genesis” (l. 3b) was inspired by the words ‫“ בראשית ברא‬In the beginning, God created …” (Gen 1:1), which opens the Torah. As in the phrase ‫“ מעשה בראשית‬the story of creation,” here, too, the word ‫ בראשית‬is analyzed as a (proper) noun, the second noun in a genitive construction together with ‫“ בריות‬creatures.” 9. I should also point out that the word ‫בריות‬17 is the equivalent of the word ‫ ְּב ִריאֹות‬in the Bible. This word is attested only once, and then in the singular form ‫יאה‬ ָ ‫ ְּב ִר‬, in the verse: '‫יאה יברא ה‬ ָ ‫“ ואם ְּב ִר‬But if the Lord creates a creature [new thing]” (Num 16:30).18 In the Bible the meaning of ‫בריה‬/‫ בריאה‬is “creation” while in MH it means “creature,” a created person.

15 Bar-Asher, “Formula of Blessings,” 38, § 34. 16 Bar-Asher, “Formula of Blessings,” 43, § 35. 17 There are prayer books where the vocalization ‫ ִּב ְריֹות‬may be found rather than ‫ ְּב ִרּיֹות‬, and even in our generation this pronunciation can be heard. It is a form that was preserved in MH manuscripts (See E. Y. Kutscher, Hebrew and Aramaic Studies [in Hebrew and English] [Jerusalem: Magnes, 1977], 272–77). 18 It should be mentioned that already in the Bible we find the form without the letter aleph, as the feminine form of the word for healthy: ‫“ בין שה ִב ְריָ ה ובין שה רזה‬between a healthy sheep and between a lean sheep” (Ezek 34:20).

588

Moshe Bar-Asher

10. It is not surprising at all that the word ‫ בריות‬is used in the excerpt cited above in its MH meaning, “creatures.” It is common to find in blessings that biblical words are used with the meanings they have in MH. One such example is the noun ‫נשמה‬. In the language of the blessings it predominantly means “soul,” which is almost the only meaning it bears in MH (e. g., ‫“ אלהי נשמה שנתת בי‬My God, the soul which You have placed within me”). Other examples are the nouns ‫מגילה‬, ‫מזוזה‬, and ‫סוכה‬, which are used in the blessings with the meaning they have in MH, as will be discussed below.19 Furthermore, the word ‫ גוי‬is used with the meaning “non-Jew,” as in the closing of the blessing ‫“ ֶׁשלֹא ָע ָשנִ י ּגֹוי‬who did not make me a non-Jew.” 11. After all this, we should wonder: If the language of the Bible and its vocabulary and phrases were the main source of inspiration for the author of the text ‫אתה נגלית‬, why did he use the word ‫“ ִד ְּברֹות‬commandments” as the first word in the phrase ‫“ ודברות קדשך‬Your holy commandments”? Three times the Bible refers to what is known in English as the Ten Commandments, always as ‫ֲע ֶׂש ֶרת ַה ְּד ָב ִרים‬ (Ex 34:28, Deut 4:13, 10:4). Why then did the author of the text abandon the biblical term ‫ ְּד ָב ִרים‬and replace it with the mishnaic ‫ ִּד ְּברֹות‬, the plural form of ‫? ִּד ֵּבר‬20 12. In my view the answer to this question is to be found three times in the three blessings of the Amidah in the New Year Musaf service, the Malkhuyyot (kingships), Zikhronot (remembrances), and Shofarot (ram’s horns) verses. The verses are introduced in this order: three from the Torah, three from the books of Writings/Ketuvim, and three from the Prophets, each one of the series of verses closing with a tenth verse taken also from the Torah. The citation of the Torah verses is preceded by the two words ‫תֹור ֶתָך‬ ָ ‫“ ַכ ָּכתּוב ְּב‬As it is written in your Torah,” the Ketuvim verses quoted are preceded by the phrase ‫ּוב ִד ְב ֵרי ָק ְד ֶׁשָך ָּכתּוב ֵלאמֹר‬ ְ 21 “And in Your Holy Scriptures it is written,” and the verses quoted from the Prophets open with the words ‫יאים ָּכתּוב ֵלאמֹר‬ ִ ‫“ וְ ַעל יְ ֵדי ֲע ָב ֶדיָך ַהּנְ ִב‬By your servants, the prophets, it is written.” The last verse quoted from the Torah is also preceded by an introductory phrase, such as ‫ֹלהינּו ָּכתּוב ֵלאמֹר‬ ֵ ‫תֹור ְתָך ה' ֱא‬ ָ ‫ּוב‬ ְ “And in Your Torah, the Lord, our God, it is written”22 in the Malkhuyyot blessing. 13. We should note that the opening to the Ketuvim verses includes the word ‫ דברים‬in its constructed form ‫דברי‬, in the phrase ‫ובדברי קדשך‬. In other words, the phrase ‫ ִּד ְב ֵרי ָק ְד ֶׁשָך‬refers to the Ketuvim in the three places in which it appears. When the author of the paragraph ‫ אתה נגלית‬decided to interweave in his words

19 See below § 36 and note 57. 20 See the discussion in Nissan Berggrün, Studies in the Hebrew Language (in Hebrew) (Jerusalem: The Academy of the Hebrew Language Press, 1995), 84–89, and Moshe Bar-Asher, Traditions linguistiques des Juifs d’Afrique du Nord (in Hebrew), 2nd ed. (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1999), 171. 21 In our generation Sephardic Jews pronounce qodšak- and in Ashkenazic Jews: qodšek-a. 22 This is the formula in the Sephardic holiday prayer book. In the Ashkenazic version the words ‫“ ה' אלהינו‬God, our Lord” are missing.

The Presence of Mishnaic Hebrew in the Blessing Formulas Ordained by the Sages 589

the ten sayings (‫ )עשרת הדברים‬that God pronounced amidst tongues of fire, and to mention them explicitly, and even saw fit to crown them as holy commandments of the Lord and turn to Him in the second person singular (‫ )קדשך‬as it is customary in prayer, the phrase ‫ ִּד ְב ֵרי ָק ְד ֶׁשָך‬had already been used to mark the Ketuvim. This is why he turned to the parallel MH phrase ‫עשרת הדברות‬, and extracted from it the constructed form of the noun ‫ ִד ְּברֹות‬. In this way, he created the phrase ‫ִּד ְּברֹות‬ ‫ ָק ְד ֶׁשָך‬. That is, in the same context we find two phrases ‫ ִּד ְב ֵרי ָק ְד ֶׁשָך‬and ‫ִּד ְּברֹות ָק ְד ֶׁשָך‬ with differences in meaning between them. 14. Incidentally it should be said that in all the current prayer books, all of the verses from the Ketuvim in the three blessings are taken from Psalms. It seems clear that for the author of the Musaf prayer, who decided to quote verses from the book of Psalms, the phrase ‫ ִּד ְב ֵרי ָק ְד ֶׁשָך‬is a reference to the book of Psalms only, and not to the Ketuvim as a whole.23 This is a poetic term,24 which was given to the Writings in general and to the book of Psalms in particular. The phrase ‫ִּד ְּברֹות‬ ‫ ָק ְד ֶׁשָך‬is also a technical term, this time for the Ten Commandments.25

‫“ ַּב ַעל ִמ ְל ָחמֹות‬A Warrior”26 15. I turn now to another example. In the section ‫“ לאל ברוך נעימות יתנו‬To the blessed God they offer melodies,” which closes the ‫“ יוצר אור‬who creates the light” blessing in the morning service (Shaharit), there is a sequence of eight descriptions of the Lord, each of two words: ,‫זֹור ַע ְצ ָדקֹות‬ ֵ ,‫ ַּב ַעל ִמ ְל ָחמֹות‬,‫עֹוׂשה ֲח ָדׁשֹות‬ ֶ ,‫ּפֹועל ּגְ בּורֹות‬ ֵ ‫ ֲאדֹון ַהּנִ ְפ ָלאֹות‬,‫נֹורא ְּת ִהּלֹות‬ ָ ,‫ּבֹורא ְרפּואֹות‬ ֵ ,‫“ ַמ ְצ ִמ ַיח יְ ׁשּועֹות‬Performs mighty acts, cre-

23 The phrase also appears in the Kedushah of the morning, afternoon, and Musaf prayers for weekdays, Sabbath, and holidays, and here too it introduces a Psalms verse, Ps 146:10. 24 Cf. the use of ‫ יְ ֵפה נֹוף‬and ‫ ָסמּוְך וְ נִ ְר ֶאה‬with reference to Jerusalem (the latter from the laws prescribing the reading of the scroll of Esther). 25 Many phrases in which the word ‫“ ק ֶֹדׁש‬holiness” is used as the second noun in a nominal conjunction are to be found already in the Bible, e. g., ‫“ אדמת קדש‬holy ground” (Ex 3:5), and phrases in which the noun ‫ ק ֶֹדׁש‬refers to God are also found, e. g., ‫“ שם ָק ְד ִׁשי‬My Holy Name” (Lev 20:3), ‫“ הר ָק ְד ִׁשי‬My holy mountain” (Isa 56:7), ‫“ נוה ָק ְד ֶׁשָך‬Your holy habitation” (Ex 15:13), ‫“ עם ָק ְד ֶׁשָך‬Your holy people” (Isa 63:10, 11), ‫“ לשם ָק ְד ֶׁשָך‬for Your Holy Name” (Ps 106:47, 1 Chr 16:35, 29:16), ‫“ רוח ָק ְדׁשֹו‬His Holy Spirit” (Isa 63:10, 11), ‫“ דברי ָק ְדׁשֹו‬His holy words” (Jer 23:9), ‫“ שם ֵָק ְדׁשֹו‬His Holy Name” (Ps 103:1, 145:21). It is natural that in the prayer the word ‫ ָק ְד ֶׁשָך‬is used, since the person praying to God addresses Him in the second person singular, as in the biblical phrase ‫ שם ָק ְד ֶׁשָך‬that was inserted in the sentence: ‫כי בשם קדשך הגדול הגבור והנורא בטחנו‬ “In Your holy, great and revered Name we trust,” which appears in the blessing preceding the Shema in the morning prayers. The two phrases we have discussed here, ‫ דברי קדשך‬and ‫דברות‬ ‫קדשך‬, are similar to all these phrases. 26 A comprehensive discussion of this phrase and of the phrase ‫“ איש מלחמה‬man of war” appears in a paper based on a lecture that I delivered at the Seventh International Symposium on the Hebrew of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Ben Sira, which was held at the University of Strasbourg on June 22–25, 2014. The paper will be published in the proceedings of the symposium.

590

Moshe Bar-Asher

ates new things, is a warrior, sows justice, produces salvation, creates healing, is awesome in praises, is the Lord of wonders.”27 16. Among these phrases, there are some that are slightly modified biblical expressions. This is the case, for instance, in the phrase ‫“ עושה חדשות‬creates new things,” which was formulated based on the expression ‫ עשה חדשה‬in Isa 43:19, ‫“ הנני עשה חדשה עתה תצמח הלא תדעוה‬Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth. Shall you not know it?” This is also true for the phrase ‫זורע צדקות‬ “sows justice,” which was based on the phrase ‫ זורע צדקה‬in Prov 11:18, ‫וזרע צדקה‬ ‫“ שכר אמת‬He who sowed righteousness shall have a sure reward.” There is also a phrase introduced from the Bible without any variation: ‫“ נורא תהלות‬Is abundant in praises,” taken literally from the Song of the Sea (Ex 15:11). 17. Each one of the other five phrases (,‫ מצמיח ישועות‬,‫ בעל מלחמות‬,‫פועל גבורות‬ ‫ אדון הנפלאות‬,‫ )בורא רפואות‬is composed of two joined biblical words. For example, the author of the paragraph split the two words of the biblical phrase ‫ּפ ֵֹעל ישועות‬ “performs salvation” (Ps 74:12) to create two new phrases. The first word he uses in the phrase ‫“ פועל גבורות‬performs mighty acts” and the second word he uses in the phrase ‫“ מצמיח ישועות‬produces salvation.” But in the blessing ‫“ אהבת עולם‬eternal love”/‫“ אהבה רבה‬plentiful love,” which occurs immediately after the ‫יוצר אור‬ blessing, the biblical phrase occurs in its original form, in the sentence: ‫כי אל פועל‬ ‫“ ישועות אתה‬because you are a God who performs salvations.”28 18. Since the paragraph is completely based on BH, we should ask: why didn’t the author of the paragraph choose the biblical phrase ‫“ איש מלחמות‬man of wars” rather than ‫ ?בעל מלחמות‬The phrase ‫ איש מלחמות‬was clearly available to him from the Song of the Sea, Ex 15:3, ‫ ה' שמו‬,‫“ ה' איש מלחמה‬The Lord is a man of war, the Lord is His name.” And though there the second noun appears in the singular (‫)מלחמה‬, we have already seen that the author of the paragraph switched biblical nouns from the singular (‫ צדקה‬,‫ )חדשה‬to the plural (‫ צדקות‬,‫)חדשות‬.29 19. In this case as well, it seems to me that the author had no choice but to reject the use of the biblical phrase ‫איש מלחמות‬. The author of the passage preferred the phrase ‫ בעל מלחמות‬over the phrase ‫ איש מלחמות‬not simply because the latter phrase is employed in the Bible with reference to human beings (1 Chr 28:3)30 but indeed because it includes the word ‫“ איש‬man.” There is a 27 A few phrases are nominal conjunctions (‫ אדון הנפלאות‬,‫ נורא תהלות‬,‫ )בעל מלחמות‬and in a few others the first word is a verb in the qal or hiph‘il (,‫ עושה חדשות‬,‫ זורע צדקות‬,‫פועל גבורות‬ ‫ בורא רפואות‬,‫)מצמיח ישועות‬. The latter may be interpreted as phrases containing a verb and a direct object (and in fact in most prayer books ‫עֹוׂשה‬ ֶ in ‫ עושה חדשות‬is vocalized with a segol, and not with a tsere). They can also be interpreted as nominal conjunctions (in which case the word ‫ עושה‬should be vocalized ‫ֹעושה‬ ֵ , with a tsere). 28 Is the insertion of the biblical phrase in the blessing ‫אהבה רבה‬/‫ אהבת עולם‬the cause for avoiding the use of this phrase in the two contiguous blessings? 29 Above in § 16. 30 ‫ איש מלחמה‬also occurs with reference to human beings (1 Sam 17:33; 2 Sam 17:8).

The Presence of Mishnaic Hebrew in the Blessing Formulas Ordained by the Sages 591

very clear tendency within the rabbinic world—one that represents a dividing line between it and the biblical world—to stay away from anthropomorphism when talking about God. Thus the noun ‫ איש‬is not used even once in rabbinic literature to refer to God. 20. This conclusion is based on examination of all the appearances of the noun ‫ איש‬in rabbinic literature. It turns out that all the cases in which ‫ איש‬refers to God are found in homilies that are related to the verse ‫“ ה' איש מלחמה‬The Lord is a man of war” (Ex 15:3), as in both b. Sanhedrin 93a ‫ "ראיתי‬,‫ מאי דכתיב‬:‫אמר רבי יוחנן‬ ‫הלילה והנה איש רכב על סוס אדם והוא עמד בין ההדסים אשר במצולה" ?… "והנה איש‬ "‫ שנאמר "ה' איש מלחמה‬,‫ אין "איש" אלא הקב"ה‬:"‫רכב‬. “Rabbi Yohanan said: What is that which is written: ‘I saw in the night, and behold, a man [‫ ]איש‬riding on a red horse! He was standing among the myrtle trees in the glen’ [Zech 1:8]? … ‘And behold a man riding’: There is no ‘man’ but God, since it is said, ‘God is a man of war’”; and Genesis Rabbah 92:3 (ed. Theodor-Albeck, 1139–40): ‫רבי יהושע‬ ‫" "ויתן אותם לרחמים לפני‬,‫ "ואל שדי יתן לכם רחמים לפני האיש‬:‫בן לוי פתר קרא בגליות‬ "‫ [שנאמר] "ה' איש מלחמה‬,‫" זה הקב"ה‬,‫" "לפני האיש‬.‫שוביהם‬. “Rabbi Joshua b. Levi explained the verse as referring to the exiles: ‘May God Almighty evoke compassion toward you before the man [‫[ ’]איש‬Gen 43:14]; ‘and He made them be pitied by all those who carried them away captive’ [Ps 106:46]. ‘Before the man’ refers to the Almighty, since it is said, ‘God is a man of war.’”31 Apart from homilies based on scriptural texts, there is not even one instance of the noun ‫ איש‬used as an anthropomorphic reference for God. Because of this, then, the author of the ‫ יוצר אור‬blessing changed the phrase ‫ איש מלחמות‬to ‫בעל מלחמות‬. The word ‫בעל‬ is very common in the Bible and also in MH and in blessings, and is not anthropomorphic. In fact, this noun is used in the second blessing of the Amidah (‫בעל‬ ‫“ גבורות‬Master of mighty deeds”) and also in the phrase ‫“ בעל נחמות‬Consoler” or “Comforter,” which is said of the Almighty in the words of comfort quoted in the Babylonian Talmud (b. Ketub. 8b), and which was formulated as a blessing: ,‫אחינו‬ ‫ ברוך מנחם אבלים‬,‫“ בעל נחמות ינחם אתכם‬Our brothers, may the Consoler console you. Blessed be the One who brings consolation to mourners.” 21. It is worth noting that in the Samaritan Pentateuch, which generally reflects a later stage than the masoretic version, the phrase in the Song of the Sea (Ex 15:3) is ‫“ ה' גבור במלחמה‬God is a war hero.”32 Here ‫ איש מלחמה‬was changed to ‫ גבור במלחמה‬presumably because ‫ איש מלחמה‬was considered inappropriate because of the latter’s anthropomorphic quality. The replacement of ‫ איש‬by ‫ גבור‬in this

31 Both of the quotations are based on the data in Maagarim (the databases of the Historical Dictionary of the Academy of Hebrew Language). 32 See for example The Pentateuch: The Samaritan Version and the Masoretic Version, edited and annotated by Avraham Tal and Moshe Florentin (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University Press, 2010).

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Moshe Bar-Asher

phrase is also attested in Ps 24:4 ‫“ ה' גבור מלחמה‬God is a war hero,”33 where the echo of the phrase from the Song of the Sea can clearly be heard.

B. Synonyms in Double Phrases and Parallel Hemistiches 22. Prayer is immersed in the world of poetry, as implied already in the expression ‫“( לשמֹע אל הרנה ואל התפילה‬to hear the sound of song and prayer” 1 Kgs 8:28; 2 Chr 6:19). In poetry, ideas are not simply stated. The worshiper often says the same thing two, three, even four or more times. This phenomenon is clearly evident in the language of blessings.

Connected Synonymous Phrases 23. It is known that the prayers and blessings tend sometimes to use pairs or triads of synonymous or related words and phrases, all biblical in origin, in connected phrases.34 This is true, for example, in the pair ‫“ ַה ֵּלל וְ זִ ְמ ָרה‬praise and song” in the blessing ‫“ ברוך שאמר‬Blessed is the One who said” or in the pair ‫ּומזֹון‬ ָ ‫“ ִמ ְחיָ ה‬livelihood and food” in one of the versions of the first blessing of Birkat Hamazon.35 The same phenomenon is found with verbs, such as ‫“ ַת ְחּפֹץ ָּבנּו וְ ִת ְר ֵצנּו‬you desired us and wanted us” in the Sephardic and Oriental version of the end of the Avodah blessing of the Amidah. Triads can also be found, like ‫“ ַה ְּמ ֻׁש ָּבח וְ ַה ְּמפ ָֹאר וְ ַה ִּמ ְתנַ ֵּׂשא‬the praised, the glorified, and the lifted up,”36 in the ‫ יוצר אור‬blessing in the Shaharit service. Sometimes there is a sequence of phrases that come together without the conjunction “and,” as in ‫“ ִׂש ְמ ָחה ְל ַא ְר ֶצָך ָׂשׂשֹון ְל ִע ֶירָך‬happiness in your land, joy in your city,” from the Amidah prayer for the New Year and the Day of Atonement, and as in the sequence of four phrases, ‫ ִמ ְׂש ַָגב ַּב ֲע ֵדנּו‬,‫ ָמגֵ ן יִ ְׁש ֵענּו‬,‫ צּור ִמ ְׂשּגַ ֵּבנּו‬,‫ֲאדֹון ֻעּזֵ נּו‬ “Master of our strength, rock of our stronghold, shield of our help, our stronghold in perpetuity,” in the ‫ יוצר אור‬morning blessing. 24. Yet sometimes one of the words in a combination of words is not a biblical word, but a mishnaic word, including words borrowed by MH from Aramaic. I found several such combinations, with one biblical word and one mishnaic word. I will mention a few examples. In the sequence of verification (‫ )אמת ויציב‬in the

33 A similar alternation between ‫ איש‬and ‫ גבור‬with reference to brave man is known in later Hebrew: ‫“ אנשי מלחמה‬men of war” (2 Chr 8:9) and ‫“ גבורי מלחמה‬war heroes” (2 Chr 13:3). 34 I stress that their components are from BH. The phrases themselves are not necessarily found in the Bible. 35 The latter is the formula in prayer books following the Sephardic custom. 36 Only the participle ‫ מתנשא‬appears in the Bible (1 Chr 29:11). However, other verbs, such as ‫“ ִׁש ַּבח‬praise” and ‫“ ֵּפ ֵאר‬glorify” in the pi‘el are to be found there, therefore we can assume that their passive participles ‫ ְמפ ָֹאר‬and ‫ ְמ ֻׁש ָּבח‬are potentially biblical.

The Presence of Mishnaic Hebrew in the Blessing Formulas Ordained by the Sages 593

Babylonian version that has reached our times— ,‫ וְ יָ ָׁשר וְ נֶ ֱא ָמן‬,‫ וְ נָ כֹון וְ ַקּיָ ם‬,‫ֱא ֶמת וְ יַ ִּציב‬ ‫ וְ טֹוב וְ יָ ֶפה‬,‫ּומ ֻק ָּבל‬ ְ ‫ּומ ֻת ָּקן‬ ְ ,‫נֹורא וְ ַא ִּדיר‬ ָ ְ‫ ו‬,‫ וְ נֶ ְח ָמד וְ נָ ִעים‬,‫“ וְ ָאהּוב וְ ָח ִביב‬true and established,37 correct and enduring, right and trustworthy, lovable and loved, and desirable and pleasant, terrible and mighty, proper and accepted, and good and beautiful,” in the blessing after the reading of the Shema in the morning service—most pairs are synonyms and for the most part they are composed of biblical words. But the words ‫ קים‬and ‫ חביב‬in the pairs ‫ נכון וקים‬and ‫ אהוב וחביב‬first appeared only in MH. ‫ָח ִביב‬ is borrowed from Aramaic, and so, probably, is ‫ ַקּיָ ם‬. The word ‫ קים‬also occurs in the old sequence in its land of Israel version 38 ‫ וְ טֹוב‬,‫ וְ יָ ָׁשר וְ נֶ ֱא ָמן‬,‫ וְ נָ כֹון וְ ַקּיָ ם‬,‫ ֱא ֶמת וְ יַ ִּציב‬. It was also embedded as the first element in the second of the two pairs of ,“lives forever and endures eternally.” Another example is the pair “nourishes and maintains,” which appears in the first blessing of the Birkat Hamazon and other blessings.39 The verb ‫“ ִּפ ְרנֵ ס‬maintain, support” and the noun ‫“ ַּפ ְרנָ ָסה‬maintenance, subsistence” are MH innovations, derived from the word ‫“ ַּפ ְרנָ ס‬leader,” which was apparently borrowed from Greek, and is well documented in Bar Kokhba documents and in Mishnaic Hebrew.40 25. The following should be noted about the pair ‫ּומ ֻק ָּבל‬ ְ ‫“ ְמ ֻת ָּקן‬proper and accepted,” which appears in the sequence ‫אמת ויציב‬. This is a pair formed by two mishnaic passive participles, and thus, it should be asked: Why was a pair composed entirely of mishnaic words inserted here, with not one biblical word? Apparently the author of this pair had an additional stylistic consideration. He wanted to multiply the praises, which he had crowned with sixteen different words of praise, and for this reason he deviated from the usual practice of using only one mishnaic word per pair.

Synonyms in Parallel Hemistiches 26. In a number of blessings there are parallel clauses, and in those clauses are synonymous terms, such as ‫ּומ ַל ֵּמד ֶל ֱאנֹוׁש ִּבינָ ה‬/‫ת‬ ְ ‫“ ַא ָּתה חֹונֵ ן ְל ָא ָדם ַּד ַע‬you grant men knowledge,/and teach human beings wisdom” in the blessing over knowledge (‫ברכת‬ ‫ )הדעת‬in the weekday Amidah. The author of the blessing incorporated pairs of 37 The word ‫ יציב‬is found in biblical Aramaic. The sages often considered these words to be Hebrew words, especially when they had no distinctive Aramaic features in their phonology or morphology. 38 See note 2 above. The short version subsisted till our days in the western Ashkenazic custom, but an eighth word, ‫ויפה‬, appears after the word ‫וטוב‬. It was evidently added in order to produce four pairs of words. 39 Bar Asher, “Formula of Blessings,” 47–49. 40 See Steven Fraade’s study on the term parnas in chapter 24 of his recently published book (Legal Fictions: Studies of Law and Narrative in the Discursive Worlds of Ancient Jewish Sectarians and Sages [Leiden: Brill, 2011], 555–66), especially paragraph 2, pp. 557–58, and the bibliography in note 5.

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synonyms in both parallel lines: ‫בינה‬/‫ דעת‬,‫אנוש‬/‫אדם‬. Likewise in the sentence that appears in the Zikhronot (remembrances) blessing in the New Year Musaf section, we find: ‫וְ ֶצ ֱא ָצ ָאיו ְּכחֹול ַהּיָ ם‬/‫“ ְל ַה ְרּבֹות זַ ְרעֹו ְּכ ַע ְפרֹות ֵּת ֵבל‬To multiply his seed like the dust of the earth/and his offspring like the sand of the sea.” In these two lines, synonymous or nearly synonymous words and phrases are found: ‫ כעפמ‬,‫צאצאיו‬/‫זרעו‬ ‫כחול הים‬/‫רות תבל‬. Again in the portion of the Shabbat Shaharit prayer, '‫וְ לֹא נְ ַתּתֹו ה‬ )‫(ּפ ִס ִילים‬ ְ ‫עֹוב ֵדי ֱא ִל ִילים‬ ְ ‫וְ לֹא ִהנְ ַח ְלּתֹו ַמ ְל ֵּכנּו ְל‬/‫ֹלהיּנו ְלגֹויֵ י ָה ֲא ָרצֹות‬ ֵ ‫ ֱא‬, “And You, Lord, our God, did not give it to the nations of the earth, and You Our King did not impart it to the statue- (idol-)worshipers.” All three elements of the parallel lines are synonyms or close to synonyms: /‫ לגויי הארצות‬,‫מלכנו‬/‫ ה' אלהינו‬,‫ולא הנחלתו‬/‫ולא נתתו‬ )‫לעובדי אלילים (פסילים‬.41 The same thing is reflected in the parallel lines ‫יקים יִ ְראּו‬ ִ ‫ַצ ִּד‬ ‫וַ ֲח ִס ִידים ְּב ִרּנֶ ה יָ גִ ילּו‬/‫יׁש ִרים יַ ֲעֹלזּו‬ ָ ִ‫ו‬/‫“ וְ יִ ְׂש ָמחּו‬the righteous will see and will be happy/ the honest will rejoice/and the pious in song will be merry,” in the Amidah of the New Year and the Day of Atonement. Here there are three nouns whose meanings are almost identical, i. e., ‫חסידים‬/‫ישרים‬/‫צדיקים‬, and three verbs that have the same meaning, ‫יגילו‬/‫יעלזו‬/‫ישמחו‬. All these synonyms are, as expected, biblical. 27. However, in such structures, sometimes a synonym of a biblical word is a mishnaic word, for example in the two hemistichs ‫מחֹל ָלנּו‬/‫אנּו‬ ְ ‫ְס ַלח ָלנּו ָא ִבינּו ִּכי ָח ָט‬ ‫“ ַמ ְל ֵּכנּו ִּכי ָּפ ַׁש ְענּו‬Forgive us, our Father, for we have sinned./Pardon42 us, our King, for we have transgressed,” from the forgiveness blessing in the weekday Amidah. In both parallel lines we find words that are close in meaning: ‫מלכנו‬/‫“ אבינו‬our Father/our King,” or words that are exact synonyms: ‫מחול לנו‬/‫“ סלח לנו‬forgive us/ pardon us,” ‫כי פשענו‬/‫“ כי חטאנו‬for we have sinned/for we have transgressed.” In the first line we have the biblical verb ‫ סלח‬and in the second line the verb ‫מחול‬, which is a new mishnaic word.43 The same phenomenon is found in a line from the Amidah of the New Year and the Day of Atonement that contains two completely parallel clauses: ‫וְ ִיָבין ָּכל יְ צּור ִּכי ַא ָּתה יְ ַצ ְרּתֹו‬/‫“ וְ יֵ ַדע ָּכל ָּפעּול ִּכי ַא ָּתה ְּפ ַע ְלּתֹו‬And every creature will know that You created him,/and every living thing will understand that You have formed him.” ‫“ ָּפעּול‬creature” in the first clause opposes ‫יְ צּור‬ “living thing” in the second. The passive participle ‫פעול‬, although not attested in the Bible, may be said to be a biblical word, since the root and active participle are

‫ם‬

‫ם‬

41 ‫“ אלילים‬statues” is the Sephardic version, and ‫ פסילים‬the Ashkenazic one. 42 In the Sephardic prayer books the form comes in the p ‘ol form (m hôl “forgive, pardon!”), as it is common in mishnaic grammar. In the version accepted in the Ashkenazic communities, the form is pronounced m hal, as it is customary in the Bible, even though this verb is not biblical. 43 As was proven by H. L. Fleischer. For details see E. Y. Kutscher, “The Present State of Research into Mishnaic Hebrew (Especially Lexicography) and Its Tasks,” and “Some Problems of the Lexicography of Mishnaic Hebrew and Its Comparison with Biblical Hebrew,” in Archive of the New Dictionary of Rabbinical Literature (in Hebrew), vol. 1 (Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 1972), 5 and 66.

The Presence of Mishnaic Hebrew in the Blessing Formulas Ordained by the Sages 595

biblical. (For the verb ‫פע"ל‬, see for instance Job 36:3, ‫ּולפ ֲֹע ַלי אתן צדק‬ ְ “and to my makers I will grant justice.”) Conversely, ‫ יצור‬is a mishnaic word.44 28. In the same way, the occurrence of the biblical verbs ‫ ָׁשב‬and ‫ֵה ִׁשיב‬ “returned” alongside ‫ ֶה ֱחזִ יר‬in two blessings of the Amidah prayer should be explained. First, in the “repentance” blessing of the weekday Amidah we find: ‫ׁשּובה ְׁש ֵל ָמה ְל ָפנֵ יָך‬ ָ ‫וְ ַה ֲחזִ ֵירנּו ִּב ְת‬/‫בֹוד ֶתָך‬ ָ ‫וְ ָק ְר ֵבנּו ַמ ְל ֵּכנּו ַל ֲע‬/‫תֹור ֶתָך‬ ָ ‫“ ֲה ִׁש ֵיבנּו ָא ִבינּו ְל‬Return us, our father, to Your Torah,/and bring us closer, our king, to Your service,/and return us on a complete path of repentance before You.” The three sentences stand in complementary parallelism, but for our discussion, it suffices to note the pair of synonyms ‫החזירנו‬/‫“ השיבנו‬return us/return us.” The same parallelism occurs in the last sentence and the closing formula of the “blessing of service” (‫)ברכת העבודה‬: ‫ּברּוְך ַא ָּתה ה' ַה ַּמ ֲחזִ יר ְׁש ִכינָ תֹו ְל ִצּיֹון‬/‫ים‬ ָ ‫ֹּובָך ְל ִצּיֹון ְּב ַר ֲח ִמ‬ ְ ‫“ וְ ֶת ֱחזֶ ינָ ה ֵעינֵ ינּו ְּבש‬May our eyes behold when You return to Zion in mercy./Blessed are You, our Lord, the One Who returns His Divine Presence to Zion.” The first clause is written in pure BH (including the use of the form tif ‘alna in ‫“ וְ ֶת ֱחזֶ ינָ ה‬may [our eyes] behold,” while the concluding formula, which is parallel to that clause, includes two MH words, ‫“ ַה ַּמ ֲחזִ יר ְׁש ִכינָ תֹו‬the One Who returns His Divine Presence.”45 The parallelism that is clearly reflected in the two phrases that are close in meaning is important to our discussion: ‫המחזיר לציון‬/‫“ בשובך לציון‬When You return to Zion/ the One Who returns to Zion.” There is a complementary parallelism: The first clause speaks of the hope that God will return to Zion, and the second clause expresses the belief that He will return His Divine Presence to Zion. 29. How can the clear and constant tendency of the sages to draw the formulas of the blessings precisely from the biblical language be reconciled with the deviation towards MH described here? It seems to me that the issue has to do with the style of the blessings. It is the style that determined the selection of words from MH in the formulas of these blessings. The use of synonyms is a common and important stylistic phenomenon in the formulas of the blessings, in cases where double, triple, or quadruple phrases or parallel hemistiches are found. For this purpose, pairs (or more) of biblical words were used. But when no synonym was 44 The plural form ‫“ יְ ֻצ ִרים‬members” in the verse ‫“ וִ ֻיצ ַרי כצל כלם‬my members are like a shadow,” (Job 17:7) is not necessarily the plural form of the word ‫יְ צּור‬, as supposed by Avraham Even-Shoshan in the Concordance of the Old Testament. It may well be the plural form of the participle ‫יָ צּור‬, as HALOT supposes (L. Koehler and W. Baumgartner, The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, revised by W. Baumgartner and J. J. Stamm, 5 vols. [Leiden: Brill, 1994–2000]). BDB and Kaddari limit themselves to adducing the plural form without deriving from it a singular form (E. Brown, S. R. Driver and C. A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of The Old Testament [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962] and M. Z. Kaddari, A Dictionary of Biblical Hebrew (Alef – Taw) [in Hebrew] [Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 2006]). 45 The noun ‫ ְׁש ִכינָ ה‬is an innovation of MH, derived from the biblical verb ‫“ ָׁש ַכן‬dwell” in Ex 25:8: ‫“ ועשו לי מקדש וְ ָׁש ַכנְ ִּתי בתוכם‬and they will make a sanctuary for Me, and I will dwell among them.”

596

Moshe Bar-Asher

available from the Bible, the parallel word was taken from MH. And we saw that the tendency to abound in words of praise, which is a characteristic trait of the style of prayer,46 may bring the authors of the blessings to insert a phrase that is written completely in MH, like the phrase 47‫“ מתוקן ומקובל‬proper and accepted.” This is to say that although resorting to the language of the Bible is the dominant principle in the formulation of the blessings, at times the style of biblical poetry induced the authors to deviate from the language of the Bible toward mishnaic language. However, this took place only to a limited extent.

C. Mishnaic Hebrew in the Closing of the Blessings on the Commandments 30. The examination of the relationship between the blessings on the commandments and MH requires an extensive discussion; in this study, I will suffice with some of the central points. As noted above, most of the blessings are formulated using biblical words. This is also true of the language of the closings of the blessings on the commandments, for example in ‫ֹעולם ֲא ֶׁשר ִק ְּד ָשנּו‬ ָ ‫ֹלהינּו ֶמ ֶלְך ָה‬ ֵ ‫ָּברּוְך ַא ַּתה ה' ֱא‬ ‫וֹותיו וְ ִצּוָ נּו ַעל ִּפ ְדיֹון ַה ֵּבן‬ ָ ‫“ ְּב ִמ ְצ‬Blessed are You, our God, King of the Universe, who sanctified us with His commandments and commanded us to redeem the firstborn son.” Here the closing of the blessing clearly expresses the commandment as it is stated in the Torah: ‫“ וכל בכור אדם בבניך ִּת ְפ ֶּדה‬Redeem every firstborn among your sons” (Ex 13:13). Instead of the verbal form ‫“ ִּת ְפ ֶּדה‬redeem,” which is the form in the biblical passage, the noun ‫“ ִּפ ְדיֹון‬redemption,” which is also a biblical word (Ex 21:30),48 is used. Again, in the commandment to make a rail around the roof, the Torah commands (Deut 22:8): ‫“ ועשית ַמ ֲע ֶקה לגגך‬Make a parapet around your roof,” and the blessing closes with the words: ‫“ וְ ִצּוָ נּו ַל ֲעׂשֹות ַמ ֲע ֶקה‬and commanded us to make a parapet.” Here also the blessing follows what is said in the biblical verse. There are many blessings like these.

Verbal Nouns and Infinitives from Mishnaic Hebrew 31. In quite a few of the commandment blessings the closing of the blessing includes a verbal noun that is constructed in a typical Mishnaic Hebrew pattern, like ‫“ ַעל ַה ִּמ ָילה‬on the circumcision,” ‫“ ַעל ַה ְּט ִב ָילה‬on the ritual immersion,” ‫ַעל‬ ‫“ ֲא ִכ ַילת ַמ ָּצה‬on eating matzah,” ‫“ ַעל ֲא ִכ ַילת ָמרֹור‬on eating bitter herbs.” There are

46 Cf. the string of eight phrases that were mentioned above in § 15 from the ‫לאל ברוך נעימות‬ ‫ יתנו‬section. 47 See above, § 25. 48 This noun is not mentioned in the redeeming of the firstborn. There (Num 3:49) it appears with a mem instead of with nun: ‫( ֶּכ ֶסף ַה ִּפ ְדיֹום‬the money of the pidyom, “redemption”).

The Presence of Mishnaic Hebrew in the Blessing Formulas Ordained by the Sages 597

blessings that close with the infinitive, like ‫ ָלמּול ֶאת ַהּגֵ ִרים‬49 “to circumcise the converts,” ‫רּומה‬ ָ ‫“ ְל ַה ְפ ִריׁש ַח ָּלה ְּת‬to separate a portion of the bread dough as a contribution.”50 Still, the presence of MH in the blessings on the commandments is not salient in this linguistic usage.

Necessary Language Variations 32. There are blessings in which the difference between the language of the verse and the language of the blessing was obligatory as a result of changes that took place Hebrew, which prevented the use of biblical language in the bless­ ing. For example, the biblical text (Deut 12:21) commands, ‫וְ זָ ַב ְח ָת מבקרך ומצאנך‬ ­“slaughter animals from your herds and flocks,” from which the sages learned the commandment of ritual slaughtering of animals, beasts, and poultry (b. H  ul. 27a). Whereas the Torah uses the word ‫“ וְ זָ ַב ְח ָת‬you will slaughter,” the blessing is ‫ַעל‬ ‫יטה‬ ָ ‫“ ַה ְּׁש ִח‬on slaughtering.” Here the explanation is simple: the verb ‫“ זָ ַבח‬slaughter” and especially the use of the noun ‫יחה‬ ָ ‫“ זְ ִב‬slaughtering” is reserved in MH for the sacrifices offered in the temple.51 When talking about daily slaughtering, the verb ‫“ ָׁש ַחט‬slaughter” and the verbal noun ‫יטה‬ ָ ‫“ ְׁש ִח‬slaughtering,” and not ‫יחה‬ ָ ‫זְ ִב‬ “slaughtering of a sacrifice,” are used. Therefore, the author of this blessing closed it using the word ‫יטה‬ ָ ‫ ְׁש ִח‬.

The World of Oral Law 33. There are blessings on the commandments that do not simply conclude using MH, but are formulated so there is no clear connection to the biblical verses at all. For example, this is the case in the blessing for putting on phylacteries. The Torah ordains: ‫“ והיה לאות על ידך‬This observance will be for you like a sign on your hand” (Ex 13:9, 16), ‫“ וקשרתם לאות על ידך‬tie them as symbols on your hands” (Deut 6:8), and ‫“ וקשרתם אתם לאות על ידכם‬tie them as symbols on your hands” (Deut 11:18). The authors of the blessings, however, used ‫“ ְל ָהנִ ַיח ְּת ִפ ִּלין‬to lay phylacteries.” This closing uses the verb ‫ ְל ָהנִ ַיח‬and the plural form of the word ‫ ְּת ִפ ָּלה‬with a meaning

49 The Babylonian Talmud states that the mohel (the person performing the circumcision) says the closing formula ‫ ַעל ַה ִּמ ָילה‬as the representative of the father of the child, but one who circumcises a convert closes the blessing with the words ‫ ָלמּול ֶאת ַהּגֵ ִרים‬etc. 50 There are those who only say ‫“ להפריש חלה‬to separate a portion of the bread dough” and those who say ‫“ להפריש חלה תרומה‬to separate a portion of the bread dough as a contribution.” 51 In the Mishnah and in the Talmud, nif ‘al forms (the passive form of the qal) are found: ‫“ נִ זְ ַּבח‬was slaughtered” (m. Zebah. 4:2), ‫“ נִ זְ ְּבחּו‬were slaughtered” (m. Zebah. 1:1). For the verbal noun ‫יחה‬ ָ ‫“ זְ ִב‬slaughtering” see, e. g., b. Sanh. 60b: ‫יחה מיוחדת שהיא עבודת פנים‬ ָ ‫“ זְ ִב‬Slaughtering is distinguished, in that it is a service within the temple precincts.”

598

Moshe Bar-Asher

that was added to it in MH, “a ritual article for prayer,” with no clear link to the language of the biblical verse. 34. Another example is the closing of the blessing on the four species. The Torah commands (Lev 23:40): ‫ולקחתם לכם ביום הראשון פרי עץ הדר ַּכּפֹת תמרים וענף עץ‬ ‫“ ָעבֹת וערבי נחל‬On the first day you will take fruit of a hadar tree, palm branches, boughs of leafy trees, and willows of the brook,” and the closing of the blessing is ‫לּולב‬ ָ ‫“ ַעל נְ ִט ַילת‬on handling the palm branch.” The sages substituted the mishnaic verb ‫“ נָ ַטל‬take” for the biblical verb ‫ ָל ַקח‬because of the difference between BH and MH concerning the meaning of the verb ‫ ָל ַקח‬: “to take in one’s hands” in BH but “to buy” in MH.52 Another question remains, however: why did the sages choose the word ‫לּולב‬ ָ for closing the blessing, when the word has no connection to the words of the biblical verse? 35. Similarly, in the engagement blessing (‫)ברכת האירוסין‬, which is formulated as a blessing on a commandment, a few MH words are used instead of BH: ‫ָּברּוְך‬ ‫ וְ ָא ַסר ָלנּו ֶאת ָה ֲארּוסּות‬,‫וֹותיו וְ ִצּוָ נּו ַעל ָה ֲע ָריֹות‬ ָ ‫ֹעולם ֲא ֶׁשר ִק ְּד ָשנּו ְּב ִמ ְצ‬ ָ ‫ֹלהינּו ֶמ ֶלְך ָה‬ ֵ ‫ַא ַּתה ה' ֱא‬ ‫ ָּברּוְך ַא ָּתה ה' ְמ ַק ֵּדׁש ַעּמֹו יִ ְש ָר ֵאל ַעל יְ ֵדי‬.‫ּדּוׁשין‬ ִ ‫וְ ִה ִּתיר ָלנּו ֶאת ַהּנְ ׂשּואֹות ָלנּו ַעל יְ ֵדי ֻח ָּפה וְ ִק‬ ‫ּדּוׁשין‬ ִ ‫ ֻח ָּפה וְ ִק‬. “Blessed are You, our God, King of the Universe who has sanctified us with His commandments and commanded us about incest, and forbade us the betrothed, and permitted us the woman we married by marriage [literally “canopy”] and betrothal. Blessed are You, God, Who sanctifies His people Israel through marriage and betrothal.” It is not only grammatical and vocabulary changes found here, such as the mishnaic plural form of the noun ‫‘ ֶע ְריָ ה‬erya “nudity/forbidden sexual act,” ‫ ֲע ָריֹות‬, rather than ‫ ֶע ְרוֹות‬from the biblical noun  ; “betrothed” in the qal rather than ‫ ְמא ָֹרסֹות‬in the pu‘al like in the Bible;53 ‫“ נְ ׂשּואֹות‬married” rather than ‫“ ְלקּוחֹות‬taken”;54 but also the coining of a long closing formula, ‫מקדש עמו‬ ‫ּדּוׁשין‬ ִ ‫“ ישראל על ידי ֻח ָּפה וְ ִק‬Who sanctifies His people Israel through marriage and betrothal.” This closing includes a phrase that expresses the two stages of the couple’s relationship: ‫ּדּוׁשין‬ ִ ‫ ִק‬, which indicates the engagement, and ‫ ֻח ָּפה‬, which refers

52 This observation was made by Rabbi Mordechai Breuer, per Yehezkel Kutscher in the introduction to one of his books (Words and Their Histories [in Hebrew] [Jerusalem: Kiryath Sepher, 1960], 7): “I extend thanks to my student, Rabbi M. Breuer.” The attribution appears explicitly elsewhere (Moshe Bar-Asher, “Mishnaic Hebrew: An Introduction” [in Hebrew], in Festschrift for Rabbi Mordechai Breuer: Collected Studies in Jewish Studies, 2 vols. [Jerusalem: Akademon, 1992], 670 n. 46 = Moshe Bar-Asher, Studies in Mishnaic Hebrew: Introductions and Linguistic Investigations, vol. 1 of Studies in Mishnaic Hebrew [in Hebrew] [Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 2009], 15 n. 46), based on what I heard from both Kutscher and Breuer. 53 ‫“ נערה בתולה ְמא ָֹר ָׂשה‬A virgin pledged to be married” (Deut 22:23). 54 This is the way in which the Bible expresses a woman’s marriage, as in Gen 19:14: ‫חתניו‬ ‫ֹלק ֵחי בנתיו‬ ְ “his sons-in-law, who took his daughters”; Gen 34:9: ‫“ ואת בנתינו ִת ְקחּו לכם‬you take our daughters for yourselves” and Deut 24:1: ‫“ כי יִ ַּקח איש אשה‬if a man takes a woman.”

The Presence of Mishnaic Hebrew in the Blessing Formulas Ordained by the Sages 599

to the marriage itself.55 There is a perception here of engagement and matrimony as a holy act, through which God “sanctifies His people Israel.” 36. Let me add one more example, from the closing formula of yet another blessing on a commandment. The Torah commands (Deut 6:9, 11:29): ‫וכתבתם על‬ ‫“ מזזות (מזוזות) ביתך ובשעריך‬And you shall write them upon the doorposts of your house, and on your gates.”56 Yet the blessing does not end with the words ‫ַעל ְּכ ִת ַיבת‬ ‫(מזּוזֹות‬ ְ ‫)מזּוזָ ה‬ ְ “on writing of the doorpost(s)” but with the words ‫ּבֹוע ְמזּוזָ ה‬ ַ ‫“ ִל ְק‬to affix a mezuzah.” Not only does this reflect the difference between the verse and the blessing as related to the meaning of the word ‫ ְמזּוזָ ה‬, which in the Bible means each one of the doorposts and in MH refers to the parchment on which the appropriate Torah portions are written, but the formulation of the blessing also asserts that the commandment is not fulfilled by merely writing on the parchment; the crux of the matter is to affix the mezuzah to the doorposts.57 37. These four examples—‫“ להניח תפלין‬to lay phylacteries,” ‫“ על נטילת לולב‬on handling of the palm branch,” ‫“ מקדש עמו ישראל על ידי חפה וקדושין‬sanctifies His people Israel through marriage and betrothal,” and ‫“ לקבוע מזוזה‬to affix a mezuzah”—reflect not merely a separation from the language of the biblical verses and a preference for MH, but also extralinguistic criteria. In these four commandments as well as in others, the mishnaic tradition of interpretation of the Torah commandments is seen clearly. The sages saw fit to incorporate the Oral Law tra-

55 Shamma Friedman (“The ‘Law of Increasing Members’ in Mishnaic Hebrew” [in Hebrew], Leshonenu 35 [1970–1971]: 201–2) already explained well the reversal in the order of the events. The occurrence of ‫“ ֻח ָּפה‬marriage” before ‫ּדּוׁשין‬ ִ ‫“ ִק‬engagement” responds to the rule ‫כל הקצר קודם‬ “all that is shorter comes first.” 56 The plene spelling ‫ מזוזות‬occurs in Deut 11:29. 57 See also the closing of the blessing for the rabbinic commandment of reading the scroll of Esther, ‫“ ַעל ִמ ְק ָרא ְמגִ ָּלה‬on the reading of the scroll.” This closing uses the biblical verbal noun ‫ִמ ְק ָרא‬ “reading,” e. g., Lev 23:2, 8, which is also employed in a very early Mishnah pericope, m. Ber. 2:1 ‫“ זְ ַמן ַה ִּמ ְק ָרא‬the reading time.” In other places the Mishnah uses the form ‫ק ִריַ ת‬/‫ת‬ ְ ‫יא‬ ַ ‫ ְק ִר‬or ‫ ִק ְריַת‬, as in ‫יאת ְׁש ַמע‬ ַ ‫“ ְק ִר‬the reading of the Shema” (m. Ber. 2:8), and ‫יאת ַה ִּמגִ ָּלה‬ ַ ‫“ ְק ִר‬the reading of the scroll” (m. Meg. 1:4). (The form ‫ ִמ ְק ָרא‬also serves in the Bible as an infinitive: ‫“ ְל ִמ ְק ָרא העדה‬to call the community” [Num 10:2]). The noun ‫ ְמגִ ָּלה‬in the closing of the blessing refers precisely to the scroll of Esther, and this is the name of the tractate in the Mishnah and in the Talmud that deals with the scroll of Esther. This is not the case in the Bible, where the noun ‫( ְמגִ ָּלה‬e. g., Zech 5:1) and the phrase ‫( ְמגִ ַּלת ֵס ֶפר‬e. g., Jer 36:2) mean “a book written on a parchment that is rolled.” (In recent generations, in some Ashkenazic communities, where the four other scrolls are read from parchments, this blessing was also attached to the other scrolls, giving all of them the name ‫) ְמגִ ָּלה‬. Consider likewise ‫“ ֻס ָּכה‬hut” in the closing of the blessing ‫יׁשב ַּב ֻס ָּכה‬ ֵ ‫“ ֵל‬to dwell in the sukkah,” which means specifically the holiday sukkah, in direct connection to Lev 23:42 ‫“ בסכת תשבו שבעת ימים‬In the sukkot [huts] you will dwell for seven days,” and not just any shelter, as in the Bible (e. g., Jon 4:5: ‫“ ויעש לו ֻס ָּכה וישב תחתיה בצל‬And he made a shed for himself and sat under its shade”; Isa 1:8: ‫“ ְּכ ֻס ָּכה בכרם‬like a shed in a vineyard”). In this blessing, the infinitive ‫יׁשב‬ ֵ ‫ ֵל‬also appears in its common form in MH, and not with the form ‫ ָל ֶׁש ֶבת‬as in the ­Bible.

600

Moshe Bar-Asher

dition and the interpretation of the Written Law in the formulas of the blessings that they created. 38. More specifically, the use of MH in these and other blessings is connected to questions of ideology. The rabbinic sages, followers of the Pharisaic tradition, sought to instill in the texts the importance of Oral Law tradition. For example, the blessing over the phylacteries commandment asserts that there is no other legitimate interpretation for the biblical phrase ‫“ והיה לאות על ידך‬and it will be as a sign on your hand” and similar verses, other than laying phylacteries. 39. This is the dividing line between the various sects among the people of Israel during the era of the sages. The world of the Pharisaic sages was the world of Oral Law, in contrast with that of other groups like the Sadducees and the Samaritans, despite the fact that the Samaritans were stricter than the Pharisees in keeping some commandments. In order to understand this exactly, it will suffice to pay attention to the differences between the practices of the Pharisees as reflected in rabbinic literature and the customs of the Samaritans. Samaritans do not lay phylacteries. According to Samaritans, the Torah does not prescribe the holding of the four species, but rather the use of the four species as roofing materials for the sukkah. (They build their huts inside, under a regular roof.) Samaritans do not affix a mezuzah on the doorposts, but instead write the mezuzah paragraphs on a board and hang it on the wall inside the house by the front door.58 And with regard to the laws of marriage as well, the Samaritans differ from rabbinic Judaism. Similarly, the differences between rabbinic Judaism and that of the Karaites could be discussed, but this is not the place for that. 40. In short, all the commandments in the world of the rabbinic sages bear the seal of the Oral Law. This emerges clearly in the mishnaic language used in the closing formulas of the blessings on the commandments. But in this area, the connection to the language of the sages extends beyond the transition from BH to MH: it is rooted in the rabbinic understanding of each commandment. However, as I have already said, the connection to MH is evident even where there is no difference between the rabbinic understanding of a law and the understanding reflected by other Jewish sects, as in the use of the verbal nouns in the blessings ‫ על המילה‬and ‫על השחיטה‬.59 41. In concluding, I should say that there are very few blessings in which there are elements of MH for which I have not found a convincing explanation as to why they were incorporated into the formula of the blessing. But the number of such blessings is negligible.

58 I learned this information from the late Israel Sedaka, who was a great Samaritan sage. 59 See above §§ 31, 32.

The Presence of Mishnaic Hebrew in the Blessing Formulas Ordained by the Sages 601

Summary and Closing Remarks 42. In this study, I intended to show three different aspects of the connection between the language of the blessings and MH: (a) a few points in the text of long blessings in which it was necessary to replace a word or a phrase from the Bible with a parallel one from MH; (b) the use of a MH synonym to fill a stylistic need; and, (c) the particular and special use of MH in quite a large number of blessings on the commandments. 43. I will emphasize once more what I expressed in my opening remarks: With all the importance and evidence of connections between MH and the blessing formulas, blessings are in the main formulated according to the vocabulary and the style of the Bible.60 Moreover, in almost every instance in which MH was employed, I believe the authors of the blessings had a very substantial reason for doing so. For the most part, the reason was linguistic. At times, especially in many blessings on the commandments, the connection to MH was external to the language itself: It involved giving the world of Oral Torah, which was essential to the world of the sages, greater weight in the education of their contemporaries and in establishing their heritage for the generations to come.

60 Another subject unto itself is the grammar of the blessing formulas, and in particular the use of verb tenses therein. Perhaps, if circumstances allow me, I will exhaust this subject as well, as I have already reached clarity on most of the issues involved.

Esther G. Chazon

“The Road Not Taken”: Prayer in Rabbinic and Nonrabbinic Circles

Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken” constantly came to mind as I was writing this paper and contemplating both the topic of alternate liturgical paths1 and the special quality of Steven Fraade’s scholarship. In his stellar scholarship, Fraade astutely assesses the different paths of rabbinic and nonrabbinic Jews in mid-late antiquity, meticulously examines the full range of texts, archaeological data, and social contexts, and carefully considers divergences, convergences, and parallel tracks. Yet another Frost poem, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” conjures up my fond memories of Steven shuttling visiting scholars and students at Yale through the snow in his white Toyota Camry to ensure their safe passage and the unhindered progress of academic pursuits. Taken together, these two Frost-inspired characterizations epitomize Steven Fraade’s distinction as a gentleman and scholar par excellence. It is with great pleasure that I dedicate this article to him and extend to him all good wishes on this special occasion. The road taken by the rabbis in laying down obligatory daily prayer—first and foremost, the Eighteen Benedictions—has chartered the course of Jewish liturgy until the present. This paper considers alternate roads that were available to, but not taken by the rabbis, whose position on daily statutory prayer became normative. That the rabbis were well aware of other paths is eminently clear from the inner-rabbinic debates over this liturgy both in its fundamental principles and in its formulaic details.2 That the rabbis did not create their liturgy ex nihilo but rather drew from a vast reservoir of existing prayers is now clearer than ever thanks to the liturgical texts preserved among the Dead Sea Scrolls and the numerous liturgical formulas and traditions that can be traced from Second Temple sources to rabbinic literature. Some parts of this liturgical pool also come to light in apocry-

1 I extend special thanks to Gary Anderson, Amy-Jill Levine, and Adele Reinhartz for their insightful comments on earlier drafts of this paper. I gratefully acknowledge the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, a Recognized Independent Centre of the University of Oxford, for providing an ideal academic setting for conducting my research during my tenure there as a visiting scholar in spring 2014. 2 A parade example is the disagreement between R. Gamaliel, R. Yehoshua, and R. Eliezer over fixing the daily statutory prayer (m. Ber. 4:3–4).

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phal, pseudepigraphical, epigraphical, and early Christian texts, notably the New Testament, the Didache, and the Apostolic Constitutions. Comparing alternative uses of common liturgical materials—roads not taken by the rabbis—brings the rabbinic usage into relief and can potentially enhance our appreciation of the rabbis’ liturgical choices and the Tendenz implicit in them. Achieving such an enhanced appreciation of rabbinic prayer and rabbinic thought is the ultimate goal of the present study. In this paper I shall examine one of the many alternatives not taken by the rabbis in laying down the daily, statutory prayer of the Eighteen Benedictions (“the Eighteen”). The option I shall consider is the one illustrated by the Lord’s Prayer (“LP”) in Matthew 6, and to a lesser extent by its parallel in Luke 11.3 I will focus particularly on the last two petitions of LP as compared to the first three petitionary benedictions of the Eighteen. By looking at similar petitions from the late Second Temple and early rabbinic/early Christian periods, my analysis will show that such petitions belonged to a well-established liturgical tradition and were part of the liturgical pool from which the respective authors/editors of the Eighteen and LP drew, but with different results. Before embarking on the comparison, I would like to be clear about my methodology, my assumptions, and most pointedly—what I am not assuming: 1. I am not assuming that the authors/editors of LP, the Sermon on the Mount, Luke, or Matthew knew the Eighteen. Matthew, evidently composed near the end of the first century CE, bespeaks awareness of standing in prayer in the synagogue but not necessarily of the Eighteen.4 3 I pay special attention to Matthew’s version of LP because its “extra” final line also belongs to the inherited tradition examined in this paper, and because its introduction brings alternate liturgical paths into view as well as showing familiarity with Jewish liturgical and synagogue practices (see below). For the prevailing consensus that Luke’s shorter form of LP is closer to the original whereas Matthew better preserves some of the original wording see, e. g., John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, 4 vols. (New York: Doubleday, 1994), 2:291–92. For the relationship between the versions of LP in Luke 11:1–4, Matt 6:9b–13, and Did. 8:2 and the place of LP within the “cultic instruction” of Matt 6:1–18 and that of Did. 7–15, see Hans Dieter Betz, The Sermon on the Mount: A Commentary on the Sermon on the Mount, including the Sermon on the Plain (Matthew 5:3–7:27 and Luke 6:20–49), ed. Adela Y. Collins, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995), 329–37, 347–51, 370–77. All quotations of LP in this article cite Betz’s edition. 4 For this widely accepted date see Stephen C. Barton, “The Gospel according to Matthew,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Gospels, ed. Stephen C. Barton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 121–38 and the literature cited there. Matt 6:5 seems to be the oldest attestation of regular prayer in the synagogue. The literary, epigraphic, and archaeological data for Second Temple synagogues, including for those diaspora synagogues called προσευχή, indicate that until the end of the first century CE the synagogue was a multifunctional institution in which the primary religious activity was public Torah study, not regular prayer services. See Lee I. Levine, The Ancient Synagogue: The First Thousand Years, 2nd ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), 1–173. The Mishnah (ca. 220 CE) takes the standing posture for reciting

“The Road Not Taken”: Prayer in Rabbinic and Nonrabbinic Circles

605

2. I am not assuming the rabbis knew LP in any of its versions. 3. I am not assuming that the liturgy of the Eighteen was established at the end of the first century CE as the attribution to R. Gamaliel of Yavneh purports.5 4. I recognize that the earliest direct attestations of the Eighteen are in the Mishnah and Tosefta, at a chronological gap of just over a century from the Gospel of Matthew. However, I do deduce from the way in which these Tannaitic compilations refer to the Eighteen that it was established well before the Mishnah’s final editing (ca. 220 CE). This understanding partially bridges the chronological gap with Matthew and makes it more plausible that the latter’s different mode of prayer would have been a viable option when the rabbis were shaping and establishing the Eighteen. 5. I do not claim that the implications of the comparison with LP apply to other parts of the New Testament, Christian liturgy, or theology. Nor do I purport to address the broader, thorny issue of “the parting of the ways.” 6. Regarding my method, finding precedents from the Second Temple period for constituent parts of LP, on the one hand, and of the Eighteen, on the other, indicates that those elements were part of their common liturgical heritage. This shared pool of material makes each liturgical editor’s awareness of the other option more plausible and shores up that part of the argument made from silence. 7. By a similar method, finding later trajectories of the elements of LP in portions of rabbinic literature other than the Eighteen per se strongly suggests that the rabbis who established the Eighteen were aware of other options like those reflected in LP. In short, I am not arguing for the dependence of one text on the other but rather for their independent use of similar Jewish sources. I hope to show how the choices made by the rabbis in the selection of older traditions and in shaping them into a “new” liturgy have, to paraphrase Frost, “made” a “difference,” albeit not “all the difference.”

the Eighteen (also called Amidah, “standing”) as a given (m. Ber. 1:5, 5:1) and, in regulating the public Torah reading, refers inter alia to the precentor who recites the Amidah by a term that bespeaks a synagogue milieu, namely, ‫“ עובר לפני התיבה‬he steps before the [Torah] cabinet” (m. Meg. 4:5–6). 5 The attribution is found in m. Ber. 4:3, b. Ber. 28b, and b. Meg. 17b. For the scholarly debate over the Eighteen’s origin and development, see Ruth Langer, “Revisiting Early Rabbinic Liturgy: The Recent Contributions of Ezra Fleischer,” Prooftexts 19 (1999): 179–94 and the literature cited there.

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Esther G. Chazon

Part 1: The Last Two Petitions in the Lord’s Prayer The penultimate petition of LP in all its versions is a petition for forgiveness. In Matthew the forgiveness requested is for “our debts” (τὰ ὀϕειλήματα)—a term evidently used there as a metaphor for sins, which also nicely echoes the petition’s justification in the next colon, “as also we forgive/have forgiven our debtors” (τοῖς ὀϕειλέταις). Luke’s version offers the same justification but employs the more explicit language of “forgive us our sins” (τὰς ἁμαρτίας).6 The final petition is famously “Lead us not into temptation” (εἰς πειρασμόν), which can also be rendered “trial” or “test.”7 The Matthean version has a second colon, “but deliver us from [the] evil [one],” which is generally considered a later addition to the Lord’s Prayer but integral to that gospel.8 Both of Matthew’s formulations are examined below, since they are thematically and functionally similar and since both are found, sometimes together, in older prayers. Such petitions to avert evil influences are the distinguishing feature of what David Flusser termed “apotropaic” prayers.9 Four of the eight items in Flusser’s list of characteristic topics of such prayers are variations on this theme: protection against sin, distance from sin, resistance to temptation, and deliverance from Satan; a fifth, saving from troubles, is less distinctive. The other three topics express the positive side of the equation and, although not unique to apotropaic prayer, when counterpoised with the apotropaic language of protection, produce the “dualistic polarity” typical of these prayers.10 A prime example of this polarity is the juxtaposition of the petitions “forgive us our sins” and “do not lead us into temptation” in all versions of the Lord’s Prayer. In his article Flusser included prayers that contain apotropaic sections as well as prayers that are apotropaic in their entirety. I follow this policy here not only because prayers with

6 Joseph A. Fitzmyer, The Gospel According to Luke: Introduction, Translation and Notes, 2 vols. (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1981), 2:906, and Betz, Sermon, 402, among others, view Matthew’s wording of this petition as more original. The Lucan and Matthean versions of this petition are presented as alternatives in Q (James M. Robinson, Paul Hoffmann, and John S. Kloppenborg, eds., The Critical Edition of Q: Synopsis Including the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, Mark and Thomas with English, German and French Translations of Q and Thomas Hermeneia [Minneapolis: Fortress; Leuven: Peeters, 2000], 206–11). For the late biblical and postbiblical development of the concept of sin as debt, including in the New Testament and rabbinic literature, see Gary A. Anderson, Sin: A History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009). 7 LSJ, 1355; BAG, 646. 8 See Betz, Sermon, 405, 411–13 and Meier, Marginal Jew, 356, n. 11. This line is also in Did. 8:2. 9 David Flusser, “Qumran and Jewish ‘Apotropaic’ Prayers,” IEJ 16 (1966): 194–205. 10 The remaining three topics in Flusser’s list (“Apotropaic,” 203) are: “understanding [Torah],” “purification,” and “salvation in the divine interest”; the first of these is treated below. For apotropaic “dualistic polarity” see ibid., 196.

“The Road Not Taken”: Prayer in Rabbinic and Nonrabbinic Circles

607

apotropaic sections are more plentiful and more relevant to the present study but also because it accords with a tendency to incorporate “floating liturgical pieces” into various compositions.11 The dozens of extant Jewish apotropaic texts dating from the end of the First Temple period through the end of the Second Temple period include those written in amulets (Ketef Hinnom), magic books (4Q560), psalmic collections (11QapocPs), sectarian liturgies (covenant ceremonies and Songs of the Sage), and apocryphal and pseudepigraphical works, among them Ben Sira (22:27–23:5) and Jubilees (the prayers of Abraham and Noah). Of these the apotropaic sections in three nonsectarian prayers preserved at Qumran provide the best background against which to view the LP, rabbinic apotropaic prayers, and the Eighteen.12 The first is from Levi’s prayer in the Aramaic Levi Document (ALD). The editors filled out the lacunae in the Aramaic text found at Qumran on the basis of the Athos Greek manuscript of the Testament of Levi. The English translation is from their edition.13 The extant Aramaic text is indicated here in bold print. 3:4 … grant me all the paths of truth. 3:5 Make far from me, my Lord, the unrighteous spirit, and evil thought and fornication, and turn pride away from me … 3:6 Let there be shown to me, O Lord, the holy spirit, and grant me counsel and wisdom and knowledge (‫ )ח]כמה ומנדע‬and strength, 3:7 in order to do that which is pleasing to you and find favour before you, … 3:9 And let not any satan have power over me (‫)אל ישלט בי כל שטן‬, to make me stray from your path, 3:10 And have mercy upon me, my Lord … and bring me forward [lit. near (‫… ])קרבני‬s 3:11 so that the wall of peace is around me, and let the shelter of your power shelter me from every evil. … 3:12 … wipe it [lawlessness] out from under the heaven, and end lawlessness from the face of the earth. 3:13 Purify my heart, Lord, from all impurity … 3:18 And do not remove the son of your servant from your countenance all the days of the world. Levi’s prayer is admittedly literary, but as with so many of the prayers in the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha,14 it seems to be based on existing prayers. Some of its wording finds precise parallels in psalms and prayers that were evidently used liturgically. A good example is the line ‫“ אל ישלט בי שטן‬let not Satan rule over me” in the Plea for Deliverance in 11QPsa, b—a psalmic collection suitable for liturgical use,

11 Regarding “floating liturgical pieces,” see James A. Sanders, The Dead Sea Psalms Scroll (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1967), 129. 12 For the non-Qumranic origin of these three and other prayers from Qumran, see Eileen M. Schuller, “Prayers and Psalms from the Pre-Maccabean Period,” DSD 13 (2006): 306–18. 13 Jonas C. Greenfield, Michael E. Stone, and Esther Eshel, The Aramaic Levi Document: Edition, Translation, Commentary, SVTP 19 (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 60–63. 14 Just a few of the many examples are: the marriage ceremony and exorcism in Tob 7–8, the petitions for national restoration in 2 Macc 1–2 and Sir 36, Sir 51’s hymn of praise, the confessionals and liturgical divine attribute formulas in 4 Ezra 7–8 and the Prayer of Manasseh.

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which juxtaposes biblical and extrabiblical material.15 The Plea’s apotropaic stanza follows the psalmist’s thanksgiving for deliverance from being “near death for my sins” (11QPsa XIX): 13 Forgive my sin, O Lord (‫)סלחה יהוה לחטאתי‬, 14 and purify me from my iniquity. Vouchsafe me a spirit of faith and knowledge (‫)רוח אמונה ודעת חונני‬, and let me not be dishonoured 15 in ruin. Let not Satan rule over me, nor an unclean spirit; neither let pain nor the evil inclination 16 take possession of my bones (‫אל תשלט בי שטן ורוח טמאה מכאוב ויצר רע אל ירשו‬ ‫)בעצמי‬.

The third and final example, also in the 11QPsa collection, is Psalm 155. The fact that this psalm was transmitted for hundreds of years, resurfacing in an early medieval Syriac psalter, is significant. It opens up the possibility that the psalm was used by various Jewish and early Christian groups of whom the Qumran community and Syriac church are the only ones in evidence to date.16 The entire middle section of this alphabetical acrostic psalm is relevant to the discussion, but at this point it will suffice to note the most striking apotropaic lines (XXIV, 10b–13): ‫זכורני ואל תשכחני ואל תביאני בקשות ממני‬ ‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‫חטאת נעורי הרחק ממני ופשעי אל יזכרו לי‬ ‫טהרני יהוה מנגע רע ואל יוסף לשוב אלי יבש‬ .‫שורשיו ממני ואל ינצו ע[ל]יו בי‬

1 0 ‭11‬ 12 13

10 Remember me and forget me not, and lead me not into situations too hard for me. 11 The sins of my youth cast far from me, and let my transgressions not be remembered against me. 12 Purify me, O Lord, from (the) evil scourge and let it not turn again upon me. Dry up 13 its roots from me, and let its le[av]es not flourish within me.

15 Indications of liturgical arrangement include the refrain in Ps 145 and the catenae of psalmic verses (Moshe H. Goshen-Gottstein, “The Psalms Scroll [11QPsa]: A Problem of Canon and Text,” Textus 5 [1966]: 22–33). For the view that 11QPsa is a biblical psalter and for a full record of the data, see Peter W. Flint, The Dead Sea Psalms Scrolls and the Book of Psalms, STDJ 17 (Leiden: Brill, 1997). The text and translation of the Plea for Deliverance and Psalm 155 given here are based on James A. Sanders, The Psalms Scroll of Qumran Cave 11 (11QPsa), DJDJ 4 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1965), 40, 45, 70–73, 76–78; the text of Ps 155 is taken from The Dead Sea Scrolls Electronic Library, ed. Emanuel Tov, rev. ed. (Leiden: Brill, 2006). 16 For Pss 151, 154, and 155 in 11QPsa and a Syriac psalter, see DJD 4:53, 75–76. On the survival of other Second Temple prayers in Syria in late antiquity, see Esther G. Chazon, “A ‘Prayer Alleged to Be Jewish’ in the Apostolic Constitutions,” in Things Revealed: Studies in Early Jewish and Christian Literature in Honor of Michael E. Stone, ed. Esther G. Chazon, David Satran, and Ruth A. Clements, SJSJ 89 (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 261–77.

“The Road Not Taken”: Prayer in Rabbinic and Nonrabbinic Circles

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These apotropaic lines, the first of which Flusser likened to “do not lead us into temptation” in LP,17 are immediately preceded by juxtaposed requests for forgiveness and understanding in Torah/Law (vv. 8–9, quoted below). A similar constellation is found in the Plea for Deliverance. Levi’s prayer includes a petition for knowledge but not one explicitly for forgiveness,18 whereas LP asks for forgiveness but not knowledge. Viewing LP against the broad background of older apotropaic prayers, in general, and of the three closest Second Temple exemplars, in particular, leads to several important observations. First, the precedents for the apotropaic line in all versions of LP are sufficiently numerous and dispersed as to suggest that the author/ editor of LP was acquainted with existing apotropaic prayers and inspired by them in writing the final petition into LP.19 Second, the apotropaic petition to avert evil was readily juxtaposed with a petition for forgiveness from sin as seen especially in Ps 155 and the Plea for Deliverance. Hence, it is possible that apotropaic prayer was also a source of inspiration for the penultimate line of LP, but this is by no means certain given the rampant use of petitions for forgiveness in various other genres, such as penitential prayer, covenant ceremonies, and admission and initiation rites.20 The third and final observation at this juncture is that many apotropaic texts incorporate a request for knowledge in particular, for knowledge of the Torah, or put differently, for the knowledge to do God’s bidding. This is the case for the three exemplars discussed above, for the biblical precursors in Ps 51 and Ps 119:129– 36,21 and for some of the Amoraic personal prayers recited after the Eighteen that I cite in part 2, below. Given the great number of prayers for knowledge in texts from the Second Temple and early rabbinic/early Christian periods—not only in apotropaic prayers 17 Flusser, “Apotropaic,” 201–2. 18 This omission might be because Levi himself is not considered guilty in ALD. Note that Levi does request: “have mercy upon me, my Lord,” (3:10), “end lawlessness from the face of the earth” (3:12), and “purify my heart, Lord, from all impurity” (3:13). 19 The closest parallels to LP’s “Lead us not into temptation” are in Ps 155 (11QPsa XXIV, 10) and the rabbinic prayer for retiring at night recorded in b. Ber. 60b (see below, Flusser, “Apotropaic,” 198–200, and Betz, Sermon, 410–11); Levi’s prayer (ALD 3:9) and the Plea for Deliverance (11QPsa XIX 15) can be seen as forerunners of the “extra” line of LP in Matt 6:13b and Did. 8:2. I suggest below that the rabbinic editor(s) of the Eighteen was (were) also acquainted with apotropaic prayers but did not incorporate them into that statutory prayer. 20 Mark J. Boda, Daniel K. Falk, and Rodney A. Werline, eds., The Development of Penitential Prayer in Second Temple Judaism, vol. 2 of Seeking the Favor of God, EJL 22 (Atlanta: SBL, 2007). 21 For Pss 51 and 119 in this context, see Flusser, “Apotropaic,” 196–97, 203. Ps 51:8 seems to request “wisdom about secret things” (‫)בסתם חכמה תודיעני‬, but the psalmist then promises to teach transgressors God’s ways so that sinners may return to Him (51:15). Psalm 91, arguably the best example of a biblical apotropaic psalm, has neither a petition for knowledge nor for forgiveness.

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but also, for example, in the Torah-reading benedictions, sapiential works, psalms, and what Moshe Weinfeld called “prayers of admission,” to be discussed below— it is plausible to assume that the author/editor of LP was acquainted with such prayers.22 The omission of a petition for knowledge in the ideal Lord’s Prayer is telling, even if—or, perhaps all the more so, if indeed—the intended audiences of LP, Luke, and Matthew were party to prayers for knowledge in other living liturgical contexts. This omission in LP would appear to be deliberate. On the one hand, it would fit Jesus’s polemics against hypocrites, Pharisees, and scribes and their knowledge of (and piety in) the “letter of the law,” as portrayed in Matthew and Luke, including in the context of LP in both gospels.23 On the other, it would suit the distinction drawn in these gospels between the former type of knowledge and Jesus’s revelatory message—for “babes” rather than “the wise”— about the imminent coming of God’s kingdom, as expressed, for example, in Jesus’s thanksgiving in Luke 10:21–22 and Matt 11:25–27 (see also Luke 12:54– 56 and Matt 16:1–4).24 This message resonates with the famous opening pair of petitions in LP.25 In contrast to LP, knowledge opens the petitionary section of the ­Eighteen, to which I now turn.

22 Besides the “prayers for admission” and the psalms cited above, the Torah reading benedictions offer another case in point. The public reading from the Torah (and Prophets) on the Sabbath is well attested in sources from the Second Temple period and the generation after the temple’s destruction in 70 CE, including Josephus and the New Testament. Benedictions over the reading were recited by the second century CE (m. Meg. 4:1–2) and the formula that blesses God for “implanting Torah in our heart” seems to be alluded to inter alia in John 5:38–40 and t. Sotah 7:11 (David Flusser, “He Has Planted It [i. e., The Law] as Eternal Life in Our Midst,” Tarbiz 58 [1989]: 147–53). For the prayers for knowledge in Did. 9–10, see below and for those in Const. ap. 8.6.5, see the discussion of the Eighteen. 23 The hypocrites are notoriously railed against in Matthew’s introduction to LP (6:2, 5, 16; see also Did. 8:1–2); earlier in the sermon (5:20) scribes and Pharisees are mentioned together. Luke’s LP (11:1–4) is followed at the end of that chapter by Jesus’s diatribe against Pharisees, lawyers, and scribes (11:37–54; only 11:53 mentions scribes, whereas the parallel diatribe in Matt 23:1–36 names Pharisees, scribes, and hypocrites repeatedly, cf. Matt 15:1–20; Matthew uses the term “lawyer,” [νομικὸς] only in 22:35; for this term see Fitzmyer, Luke, 1:76). 24 Knowledge is a motif in a few other New Testament prayers and there the reference is also usually to salvific knowledge (Luke 1:77, John 17, and Eph 3:14–21; note also the Eucharist prayers in Did. 9–10; cf. Col 1:9–14, which attaches a this-worldly, “good-works” dimension to the knowledge requested). To be clear, I am not suggesting that the author/editor of LP knew any of the other New Testament and Didache prayers cited here. 25 Meier, Marginal Jew, 2:294, 302. I agree with Meier regarding the significance of the “kingdom come” petition at the beginning of LP but not with his eschatological reading of the subsequent “we” petitions that ask for daily bread, forgiveness, and averting temptation.

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Part 2: The First Three Petitions in the Eighteen Benedictions The Eighteen opens with three doxological benedictions and closes in similar fashion. Its intermediate petitionary section commences with a distinctive unit of spiritual requests for knowledge, repentance, and forgiveness. Moshe Weinfeld identified this trilogy as a liturgical pattern with roots in biblical prophecy and psalmody (especially Ps 51), numerous examples among the Dead Sea Scrolls (examined below), and later trajectories not only in the rabbinic liturgy, but also in the New Testament (Acts 26:18, Col 1:9–14, Eph 1:3–14) and the prayer for the catechumens in Const. ap. 8.6.5–8.26 Attention to the biblical, sectarian, and early Christian contexts of this pattern led Weinfeld to view its Sitz im Leben in various circumstances of repentance, and its raison d’être as seeking admission to God’s presence. In Weinfeld’s assessment this background accounts for the placement of the requests for knowledge, repentance, and forgiveness ahead of the other petitions in the Eighteen. Three sterling examples of this pattern from the Second Temple period suffice to demonstrate a continuous liturgical tradition ultimately institutionalized in the rabbinic liturgy. These are Ps 155 and the prayers for Sunday and Thursday in the pre-Qumranic liturgical text entitled the Words of the Luminaries.27 Interestingly, all three examples are linguistically closer to the short form of the Eighteen known as the Havinenu prayer. This is quite fortunate since the text of Havinenu, ascribed to the third-century Amora Shmuel, is given in both Talmuds (cited below) whereas the long form of the Eighteen is only referred to by key words in rabbinic literature, its complete texts first surfacing in the gaonic period.28 For ease of comparison I first quote from the Havinenu prayer. In y. Ber. 4:3, 8a the prayer begins: ‫הבינינו רצה תשובתינו סלח לנו‬ … “Give us understanding, accept our repentance, forgive us,” and in b. Ber. 29a: ‫הביננו יי אלהינו לדעת דרכיך ומול את‬

26 Moshe Weinfeld, “The Prayers for Knowledge, Repentance, and Forgiveness in the ‘Eighteen Benedictions’—Qumran Parallels, Biblical Antecedents, and Basic Characteristics” (in Hebrew), Tarbiz 48 (1979): 186–200. 27 This liturgical text for the days of the week not only lacks sectarian features but its oldest manuscript (4Q504) was copied ca. 150 BCE and predates the settlement at Qumran. 28 For the rabbinic citations see y. Ber. 2:3, 4d // b. Meg. 17b and m. Ber. 5:2, which already mentions ‫חונן הדעת‬, “He who grants knowledge” (for the latter compare the similar language in the Plea for Deliverance and Levi’s prayer quoted above). The oldest complete texts of the Eighteen are from the Cairo Genizah. See Seder Rab ‘Amram Ga’on, ed. Daniel S. Goldschmidt (Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1971), Siddur R. Saadja Gaon, ed. Israel Davidson, Simha Assaf, and B. Issachar Joel (Jerusalem: Mekise Nirdamim, 1941), and Uri Ehrlich, The Weekday Amidah in Cairo Geniza Prayerbooks: Roots and Transmission (Jerusalem: Yad Ben-Zvi, 2013).

612

Esther G. Chazon

‫לבבינו ליראתך לסלוח לנו‬ … “Give us understanding to know Your ways, and circumcise our heart to fear You, to forgive us.”29 Turning to Ps 155, the apotropaic section that was quoted above (11QPsa XXIV, 10b–13) is directly preceded by a complex of petitions for repentance, forgiveness, and knowledge: ‫בנה נפשי ואל תמגרה ואל תפרע לפני‬ ‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬ ‫רשעים גמולי הרע ישיב ממני דין האמת יהו‬ ‫ה‬ ‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‫אל תשפטני כחטאתי כי לוא יצדק לפניכה כול חי‬ .‫הבינני יהוה בתורתכה ואת משפטיכה למדני‬

5 ‭ 6‬ 7 8

5 Edify my soul, and do not cast it down, and abandon (it) not in the presence of the 6 wicked. May the Judge of Truth remove from me the rewards of evil. 7 O Lord, judge me not according to my sins; for no man living is righteous before You. 8 Grant me understanding, O Lord, in Your law [Torah], and teach me Your ordinances.

A few observations are in order here. First, the sequence of the petitions in Ps 155 is as follows: a request for spiritual edification comparable to repentance, followed by a forgiveness-like request not to be judged according to one’s sins, and finally, a request for understanding in God’s law (Torah). Second, this complex displays some thematic and stylistic overlap, particularly in the request—“edify/do not cast down/do not abandon my soul”—with the apotropaic section of this psalm immediately following it. The confluence points to the affinity between these two types of prayers and the potential for generic crossover between them. Third, the verb of choice for requesting knowledge here is the same one used in the short form of the Eighteen, which lends the later prayer its name, Havinenu. This verb

29 The reading, ‫“ לסלוח‬to forgive,” follows the Munich 95 manuscript; Paris 671 and the Vilna edition have forms of the imperative, respectively ‫ סלח‬and ‫ותסלח‬. B. Ber. 29a indicates that it is knowledge of the Torah that is requested in the Babylonian version of Havinenu. This is also the type of knowledge specified in the prerabbinic precedents for the liturgical pattern of petitions for knowledge, repentance, and forgiveness treated here. The remaining citations of the petition for knowledge in the long and short forms of the Eighteen in rabbinic literature refer only generally to the granting of knowledge (see above), in one instance quoting a petitionary form (‫חנינו‬ ‫“ דיעה‬grant us knowledge,” y. Ber. 2:3, 4d). A different view of the early history of the benediction for knowledge is put forth by Uri Ehrlich (Weekday Amidah, 79–88), who argues that the oldest version of this benediction was pure praise (‫אתה חונן‬, “You grant knowledge …”), that the Palestinian and Babylonian rites that developed from it “in or around the Amoraic period” refer to universal knowledge, and that the word ,‫“ תורתיך‬Your Torah” in the Palestinian rite was a later addition reflecting an ideological shift in the understanding of knowledge (he sees the version of Havinenu in the Babylonian Talmud in a similar way). Both the universal and particularistic conceptions seem to be represented in rabbinic literature.

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is also used in the Thursday prayer of the Words of the Luminaries,30 which will be examined after first considering the Sunday prayer. The petitionary section of Sunday’s prayer reads as follows (4Q504 V, 5–15, overlap in 4Q506 is indicated by inverted parentheses in Hebrew and underlining in English):31 ]‫ ) רחמנו‏‬5 ]‫הר[ע ואשר‏‬ ֯ ‫)תז]כו(ר לנו עוונות‏ )רשונים‏ (בכו)ל ֯גמו֯ (לם‬ ̇ ‫ [(ואל‏‬6 ‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬]‫‏ [ק)שו‏ ]בעורפם‏ (אתה ֯פדי֯ נו וסלח[ נא‏ ]לעווננו ולח)[טתנו‏‬‭7‬ ‫]בי֯ ד‏ מו֯ ֯ש[ה‏‬ ֯ ‫תורה אשר‏ צו֯ [יתה‏‬ ֯ ‫חוי]ק ֯יכה‬ ̇ [ 8 …[‫ […] אשר […] בכ[ו]ל‬9 ] [◦] [ ‫]כוהנים וגוי קדוש‏‬ ̇ ‫ממלכת‏‬ [ 10 ] ‫עורלת[ לבנו‏‬ ֯ ‫בחרת מולה‬ ̇ ‫ א]שר‬11 [‫ע]ו֯ ֯ר[פ‏]נ֯ ו֯ עוד חזק לבנו ֯ל ̇עשות ‏‬ [ 12 ] [ ‫ל‏]לכת בדרכיכה‏‬ [‫ ‬‏‬13 ] ‫ברוך‏ ]אדוני אשר הודי[ענו‏‬ [ 14 ‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬] [ ‫‏‬‭vacat‬ ‫]אמן אמן‏‬ ̇ [ 15 5 … Take pity on us,] 6  and [“rem]ember not to hold against us the iniquities of our forbears” (Ps 79:8) with all their wick[ed] deeds, [those] 7 who were stiff-necked. Redeem us, and [please] forgive our iniquities and our si[ns.] 8 [ ] the Law that [You] commanded through Mos[es Your servant 9 […] which […]in a[l]l[ 10 [ “a dominion of] priests and a holy nation” (Exod 19:6)[ ] [ ] 11 [ w]hom you chose. Circumcise the foreskin of[ our heart ] 12 [ ] yet. Strengthen our heart to do[ ] 13 [ to ]walk in Your ways [ ] 14 [ Blessed is ]the Lord who made know[n to us ] 15 [ ]Amen! Amen! vacat [ ]

The Sunday prayer clearly places the petition for forgiveness first. The concluding benediction thanking God “who has make know[n to us …]” indicates that this prayer also petitioned for knowledge. However, since the verb asking for

30 Ps 119:125 may lie behind the use of this verb in Ps 155, the Thursday Prayer (4Q504 XV, 18), and the rabbinic Havinenu. These three prayers might simply represent the independent use of the same biblical verse. Alternatively, they might attest a particular branch of a liturgical tradition of prayers for knowledge distinct from others, that couch this request differently, for instance, “grant us understanding” (‫)חונן דעת‬, in the long form of the Eighteen and the Plea for Deliverance (cf. ALD). 31 The text is taken from the edition by Maurice Baillet and Esther Chazon in DSS Electronic Library.

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knowledge is not preserved,32 it is difficult to ascertain whether that request came before or after the petition to “circumcise the foreskin of [our heart]” (‫מולה עורלת‬ ‫)[לבנוו‬. The latter finds a close linguistic parallel in the petition for forgiveness in the Havinenu prayer as recorded in the Babylonian Talmud (quoted above). Sunday’s prayer draws upon the moral imperative in Deut 10:16, whereas the rabbinic prayer, which omits the word “foreskin,” seems to draw from God’s covenant promise in Deut 30:6, perhaps additionally alluding to Deut 10:12–16 by its reference to “fearing God.” What is particularly striking in both prayers is the recasting of this Deuteronomic expression as a petition to help the worshippers do God’s bidding. The identical petitionary application of Deut 10:16 in the nonsectarian Festival Prayers from Qumran (4Q509 287 1) as well as that verse’s doxological application in 4QBarkhi Nafshia (4Q434 1i4)33 provide further evidence for a substantial liturgical tradition for this usage already in the Second Temple period. As on Sunday, the petitions in Thursday’s prayer (4Q504 XV) begin with forgiveness but, in this case, the petition for understanding noted above for its havinenu language comes last: ‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬]‫את[ה‏‬ ֯ ‫נ]ש‬ ֯ ‫ ‬אנא ֯א ֯דני̇ עשה נ֯ א ̇כ ̇מו֯ ֯כה כגדול כו֯ ̇ח ֯כה ֯א ֯ש[ר‬ ֯ 8 … ‫בהמרותם ֯את פי֯ כה‬ ֯ ‫ לאבותינו‬9 ‫ … ישוב נא אפכה וחמתכה מעמכה ישראל‏ על‏ כול‏ חט[אתם‏] וזכרתה‬12 … ‫ ֯את נפלאותיכה אשר עשיתה‬13 ‫‏[הש]◦בנו בכול לב ובכול נפש ולטעת תורתכה בלבנו‬ ֯ ‫]ל‬ [‫ ‬‏‬14 ‫]מימין ושמאול כיא תרפאנו משגעון‏ ועורון ותמהון‬ ̇ ‫ [לבלתי סור ממנה ללכת‏‬15 ‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬ ‫בע]ו֯ ו֯ נותינו נ̇ מכרנו ובפשעינו קרתנ ‬ו‬ ‫ [לבב‏‬16 ‫]◦◦ והצלתנו מחטוא לכה‬ [ 17 .‫]◦ת ולהביננו לתעודות‬ ֯ [ 18 8 Please, Lord, act as is Your character, by the measure of Your great power. Fo[r] You [for]gave 9 our fathers when they rebelled against Your command … 12 … May Your anger and fury turn back from Your people Israel at all [their] sin[s]. R­emember 13 the wonders that You performed while the nations looked on … 14 […] that we might [repe]nt with all our heart and all our soul, to plant Your law in our hearts 15 [that we turn not from it, straying] either to the right or the left. Surely You will heal us from such madness, and blindness confusion. 16 […] we were sold [as the price] of our [in]iquity, yet despite our rebellion You have called us. 17 [ ] Deliver us from sinning against You, 18 [ ] and make us understand the testimonies.

32 I suggest reconstructing ‫חו]ק ̊יכה‬ ̇ ‫[“ ]למדנו‬teach us] Your [la]ws,” at the beginning of l. 8. 33 For both of these liturgical collections, consult Schuller’s list in “Pre-Maccabean.”

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Between the opening petition for forgiveness and the final request for knowledge, the worshippers ask for assistance in adhering to the Torah and in not sinning against God. If my restoration of ‫ל[הש]י̊בנו‬ ̊ in this middle section (l. 14) is correct, Thursday’s prayer would have employed the same term for repentance found in the long form of the Eighteen. The verb would be identical to that in the Babylonian rite and correspond to the nominal form, ‫ תשובתנו‬in the Palestinian rite and the Palestinian version of the Havinenu prayer. The continuation of the very same line in Thursday’s prayer, ‫לטעת תורתכה בלבנו‬, “to plant Your Torah in our heart,” unveils yet another forerunner of rabbinic prayer. In this case the linguistic parallel is found in the benediction recited after the Torah reading and evidently also in a version of the Eighteen that served as a source for the prayer for the catechumens in Const. ap. 8.6.5–8.34 Notably, the prayer for the catechumens and the Thursday prayer both use apotropaic-like language to formulate a request to be saved from impiety or sin that differs considerably from the rabbinic petition for repentance.35 This final point is taken into account in drawing out the implications of the comparison between the Second Temple prayers, the Eighteen, and LP.

Implications and Conclusion One major implication is that the rabbis modeled the first three petitions of the Eighteen on a well-established liturgical complex of petitions for repentance, forgiveness, and knowledge; the latter is the order of the motifs found most frequently in the exemplars from the Second Temple period. A second implication is that placing knowledge at the head of the three petitions in the Eighteen represents a shift from the earlier prayers, which began either with repentance as in Levi’s 34 The Torah benediction reads: “Blessed are You, Lord … who gave us the true Torah [and] implanted it [the Torah] within us for eternal life,” ‫ברוך אתה ה' אלהינו מלך העולם אשר נתן לנו תורת‬ ‫( אמת חיי עולם נטעה בתוכנו‬see, e. g., Maimonides’s Mishneh Torah, Sefer ’Ahavah 12:5, ed. Yosef Kapah [Jerusalem: Rambam Institute, 1985], 249). As mentioned above, Flusser (“He Has Planted It”) saw an “echo” of this Torah benediction in t. Sotah 7:11 and John 5:38–40, citing additional early Christian texts including Const. ap. 7.26.3 for the metaphor of implanting the Torah/logos within a person’s heart. Const. ap. 8.6.5–8 puts forward requests for the catechumens’ knowledge, repentance, and forgiveness in the same order as the Eighteen, but it is linguistically closer to the Thursday prayer in its phrasing, “implant in them his pure and saving fear” and “save them from all impiety” (for the latter see below). See further Chazon, “Alleged to Be Jewish.” 35 Thursday’s petition employs the infinitive form for sin, ‫חטוא‬. In the parallel passage the prayer for the catechumens uses the noun ἀσέβεια; this Greek root is one of many translation equivalents for the Hebrew root ‫( חטא‬Takamitsu Muraoka, Hebrew/Aramaic Index to the Septuagint Keyed to the Hatch-Redpath Concordance [Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 1998], 49). The next request in Const. ap. 8.6.6 is also apotropaic, “give place to no adversary against them,” and has precedents inter alia in the Plea for Deliverance, ALD, and LP, as seen in part 1 of this paper. For the petition for repentance in the Eighteen, see the beginning of part 2.

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Prayer, Ps 155, and the Sunday and Thursday prayers in the Words of the Luminaries, or with forgiveness as in the Plea for Deliverance and the older Ps 51. This move seems to bespeak a rabbinic concept that knowledge is a necessary prerequisite to asking for repentance and forgiveness as well as for pronouncing the subsequent petitions for material and national well-being. A similar line of rabbinic thought may be seen, for example, in the opinion attributed to R. Judah the Patriarch in y. Ber. 5:2, 9b regarding placing the Havdalah prayer that marks the distinction between Sabbath and regular days within the benediction for knowledge: Rabbi says: “I am amazed that they eliminated the ‘Grant us understanding blessing’ [‫ ]חונן הדעת‬on the Sabbath [i. e., in the sevenfold Sabbath version of the Eighteen]; Without knowledge, how can there be prayer?! [‫]אם אין דיעה תפילה מניין‬.”

The inclusion of the Havdalah prayer in the benediction for knowledge (in accordance with Shmuel’s opinion in the same talmudic passage) shows how putting this petition ahead of the others set it apart in a way that allowed it to encompass additional aspects of knowledge.36 Furthermore, the pride of place given to knowledge in the Eighteen resonates with the importance of knowledge elsewhere in rabbinic liturgy, law, Torah study, and interpretation.37 It comes into sharper relief when contrasted with the omission of a request for knowledge in LP and the latter’s granting pride of place to the petitions for the coming of God’s kingdom and sanctification of His name.38 The third and final implication of this comparative study is that the rabbis seemingly chose not to regularize apotropaic prayer per se in the Eighteen.39 This 36 Another example of broadening the benediction for knowledge beyond its connection with repentance and forgiveness would be the inclusion of the motif of human discernment attested in the full versions of this benediction since the gaonic period (see Ehrlich, Weekday Amidah, 79). 37 In noting the rabbis’ move to place knowledge first among the intermediate benedictions of the Eighteen (for which see also R. Ami’s statement: “Great is knowledge, since it was placed at the beginning of the weekday blessings,” b. Ber. 33a in Florence II-I-7 and Paris 671 but not Munich 95), I do not wish to suggest that their emphasis on knowledge in other areas is a rabbinic innovation. The rabbis stand in a long tradition of engagement with and valuing of Torah knowledge; their numerous citations from Ben Sira attest familiarity, at the very least, with postbiblical wisdom literature. For the type of knowledge requested in the Eighteen, see, for example, b. Ber. 29a and the discussion of this passage above. 38 See part 1 of this paper; prayers for knowledge elsewhere in the New Testament and Didache are cited in n. 24. As stated in my praeteritio, I am not claiming that my conclusions regarding LP apply to other parts of the New Testament or to “the parting of the ways.” 39 As noted, rabbinic literature records only snippets of the Eighteen and the full text of the shorter Havinenu prayer. In those rabbinic sources the only line that approximates apotropaic prayer is the petition for health (the eighth of the Eighteen) in the Babylonian version of Havinenu: ‫“ ורחקנו ממכאב‬Keep us far from pain” (b. Ber. 29a in Munich 95). In contrast, the Palestinian version of Havinenu (y. Ber. 4:3, 8a) and the Babylonian as well as the Palestinian versions of the Eighteen employ the verb ‫“ רפאינו‬heal us.” The second line of this petition in the Eighteen

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617

appears to have been a deliberate decision on their part, since not only would they have been acquainted with apotropaic prayers from their received liturgical heritage, as demonstrated in part 1 of this paper, but rabbinic literature itself records numerous apotropaic prayers in addition to magical recipes and spells.40 In the Talmud, prayers with apotropaic elements are concentrated in two clusters: (1) liminal circumstances such as entering a bathhouse or privy, retiring at night, or washing one’s face upon awakening from sleep (b. Ber 60a–b, cf. y. Ber. 4:2, 7d; 9:4, 14b)41 and, (2) personal prayers recited after the Eighteen that are attributed to some named rabbis. Of the latter, eleven are recorded in b. Ber. 16b–17a (fewer in y. Ber. 4:2, 7d), and of those eleven, seven include apotropaic-like requests such as “Deliver us from the impudent and impudence … and from the evil inclination [‫]יצר הרע‬ …,”42 “set us a good inclination” (‫)ותקננו יצר טוב‬,43 and “May it be Your will that we/I not sin.”44 All seven as well as three more in this cluster relate to the motif of repentance. Of these ten, two also request forgiveness and two others,

according to the Palestinian rite adds the verb ‫“ העבר‬remove.” See Ehrlich, Weekday Amidah, 115–23. None of the versions of this benediction demonize illness or use dualistically polar language, and the same can be said for the petition for repentance in the Babylonian rite, which supplements the main verb ‫“ השיבנו‬return us” with the verb ‫“ קרבינו‬draw us near” (ibid., 91). 40 Gideon Bohak, Ancient Jewish Magic: A History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008) and idem, “Jewish Exorcisms before and after the Destruction of the Second Temple,” in Was 70 C.E. Really a Watershed? On Jews and Judaism before and after the Destruction of the Second Temple, ed. Daniel R. Schwartz and Zeev Weiss with Ruth A. Clements, AJEC 78 (Leiden, Brill: 2012), 277–300. 41 For example, “On going to bed one says … ‘May it be Your will, Lord, to make me lie down in peace, and set my portion in Your law and accustom me to perform commandment(s) but do not accustom me to transgression; and bring me not into sin nor to shame, nor to temptation [‫]נסיון‬. And let not the evil inclination rule over me [‫]ואל ישלט בי יצר הרע‬ …’” (b. Ber. 60b according to Munich 95 and Paris 671; Soncino and Vilna list additional dangers). 42 This prayer is attributed to Rabbi (R. Judah the Patriarch). ‫ יצר הרע‬is not listed in the oldest extant manuscripts (Florence II-I-7 and Munich 95) but it is in Paris 671. The Soncino and Vilna editions list more evil influences including ‫שטן המשחית‬, “the destructive Satan.” Munich 95 and Paris 671 attest the version of R. Alexandri’s prayer that includes ‫ותשבית יצר הרע ממנו‬ ‫“ ותכניעו מלבנו‬strike the evil inclination from us and annihilate it from our heart.” 43 The quotation is from Paris 671, where the prayer is attributed to R. Yohanan as it is in Munich 95. Other manuscripts (e. g., Florence II-I-7) as well as the print editions attribute this prayer to R. Eleazar. 44 The first person singular is from Rava’s prayer (cf. Florence II-I-7, which attributes it to R. Hamnuna). The prayer formulated in the first person plural is attributed to R. H  iyya in Munich 95 and Paris 671; to R. Zera in Oxford Opp. Add. fol. 23 and the print editions. Besides the five personal prayers cited above, note the “dualistically polar” language in the first of the two prayers ascribed to R. Alexandri: “station us in an illumined corner and do not station us in a darkened corner,” and the request for deliverance from all threatening evils in Mar b. Ravina’s prayer. The request for deliverance from the evil inclination in the printed Talmud editions does not appear in the older manuscripts.

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knowledge.45 The marked thematic overlap with the Eighteen’s opening petitions for knowledge, repentance, and forgiveness does not appear to be coincidental. Moreover, it further highlights the omission of apotropaic elements from this trilogy of petitions in the Eighteen. Although the rabbis do not offer an explanation for this apparently purposeful omission, it does bespeak their reluctance, perhaps for theological and/or sociological reasons, to make apotropaic prayer an integral part of the regular, statutory communal liturgy, which they prescribed for routine, thrice daily recitation by every Jewish adult.46 In conclusion, the comparison between the first three petitions of the Eighteen and the last two of the Lord’s Prayer against the background of their antecedents in the Second Temple period brings into relief some choices made by the rabbis responsible for editing the Eighteen, and points to some roads they chose not to go down in institutionalizing this daily statutory prayer for each and every Jew. Clearly, the path the rabbis took in laying down the Eighteen Benedictions in the way they did—in terms of both content and repeated, thrice-daily ritual performance—has played a role in shaping Jewish identity and Jewish life for centuries upon centuries; it has, to return to Frost, “made a difference.”

45 The two prayers that request forgiveness are Rava’s prayer (see the previous note) and another prayer attributed to R. Eleazar (Munich 95, Paris 671) or to R. Yohanan (Oxford Opp. Add. fol. 23 and the print editions; cf. Rav in Florence II-I-7). The two prayers that request knowledge are those of Mar b. Ravina and the prayer attributed to R. H  iyya in the print editions, but to R. Zera in Florence II-I-7, Munich 95, and Paris 671 (see the previous note for both prayers). R. Safra’s prayer—the only one of the eleven that lacks the motif of repentance and apotropaic elements—focuses on Torah study for its own sake and peace among all students of Torah and among God’s household in heaven and on earth. 46 In a similar vein, Bohak writes: “Reading the Mishnah, which is relatively free of demonand magic-related discussions, and probably deliberately so, we nevertheless learn that …”; Bohak then goes on to cite the Mishnah’s regulation of some magical practices, permitting certain things and outlawing others (“Jewish Exorcism,” 285). He also notes (ibid., 293–96) that although the rabbis claimed at least for some of their circle the power to subdue demons, “the editors of the Babylonian Talmud give away this knowledge to all their hearers and readers” when they write down some magical formulas e. g., “‘For a demon of the privy one (i. e., anyone facing the danger) should say …’ (b. Shabbat 67a)”; cf. the apotropaic prayers for the privy in b. Ber. 60a–b // y. Ber. 9:4, 14b cited above. The rabbinic approach to such dangerous circumstances—even if frequent occurrences—seems to have been very different than the rabbis’ approach in their institutionalization of the regular statutory liturgy.

Bernard Septimus

Who Were the ‫?אנְ ֵשׁי ֲא ָמנָ ה‬ ַ A New Answer from an Ancient Poem

The Mishnah’s classic lament on “the decline of the generations” includes the following tradition:1 ‫ שנ’ "הושיעה י’ כי גמר חסיד כי פסו אמונים מבני‬.‫משחרב בית המקדש … פסקו אנשי אמנה‬ .)‫ ב‬,‫אדם" (תה’ יב‬ With the destruction of the temple … there ceased to be men of ‫אמנה‬. As it is said: “Help O Lord, for the godly are gone, ‫ אמונים‬have vanished from among men” (Ps 12:2).2

‫ ֲא ָמנָ ה‬, the usual mishnaic equivalent of the biblical ‫אמונה‬,3 has a spectrum of meanings, including faith, faithfulness, trust, trustworthiness, steadfastness, loyalty, and reliability,4 whence the Bavli’s question: ‫( מאן נינהו אנשי אמנה‬Who are “men of ‫)?”אמנה‬5 The Bavli responds: ‫ כל מי שיש לו‬:‫ "ר’ אליעזר הגדול אומר‬:‫" תניא‬.‫ "אלו בני אדם שמאמינים בהב’ה‬:‫א’ר יצחק‬ "’.‫פת בסלו ואומ’ "מה [אני] אוכל למחר" הרי זה מקטני אמנה‬

1 Offered to Steven Fraade in friendship and esteem. 2 M. Sotah 9:12, cited according to the Kaufmann MS. 3 The Parma manuscript reads ‫ ;אנשי אמונה‬but a search on Maagarim (http://hebrew-treasures.huji.ac.il) shows early rabbinic texts prefer the form ‫—אמנה‬though ‫ אמונתו‬is well attested at m. B. Bat. 10:8. Moshe Bar-Asher (personal communication) notes two possible explanations: a) uninflected and inflected forms can differ; b) biblical forms are more frequent in Seder Neziqin. ‫ ֲא ָמנָ ה‬is found already in Nehemiah in 10:1 (= “firm pact”) and 11:23 (= “fixed stipulation”). Cf. Ephraim Urbach, The Sages: Their Concepts and Beliefs (in Hebrew) (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1975), 27–28; Norman Cohen, “Analysis of an Exegetic Tradition in the Mekhilta De-Rabbi Ishmael: the Meaning of ’Amanah in the Second and Third Centuries,” AJS Review 9 (1984): 8. 4 See e. g. Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, A Complete Dictionary of Ancient and Modern Hebrew (in Hebrew) (New York: Thomas Yoseloff, 1959), 275; The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew, ed. David Clines (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993), 1:312–13, 314–16, 318. 5 B. Sotah 48b.

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Rabbi Yishaq said: “They are men who trust in the Holy One, blessed be He.” It was taught: “R. Eliezer the Great6 said: ‘Whoever has bread in his basket and says, “What am I going to eat tomorrow?” is among those of little faith.’”7

The interpretation (given anonymously) in the Yerushalmi is more opaque: :‫ כהדא חד ר’ הוה קרי ליה לאחוה בצור והוון צווחין בפרגמטיא והוה אמר‬.‫אנשי אמנה תורה‬ ".‫ אין חמי למיתי מיתי הוא‬.‫"לית אנא מבטלה ענתי‬

‫—אנשי אמנה‬Torah. As in the case of a certain scholar who was teaching his brother

Bible in Tyre when a business opportunity summoned,8 and he said: “I am not going to infringe on my study time. If [the opportunity] was destined to come [to me], it will come [again].”9

The precise sense of ‫ אנשי אמנה תורה‬is unclear. “Torah” appears to be the Yerushalmi’s gloss on ‫אמנה‬. This understanding finds support in subsequent sources, including a piyyut of Qillir, which speaks of God creating the world, ‫( בעבור אמנה‬i. e., for the sake of the Torah). The identification of “Torah” with ‫—אמנה‬in the sense of steadfastness and covenantal loyalty—is nicely illustrated by the Yerushalmi’s exemplum.10

6 In Mekilta R. Ish., Vayassa‘ 2 (Horovitz-Rabin ed., 161), this tradition is attributed to R. Eliezer ha-Moda‘i. 7 B. Sotah 48b, cited according to Oxford – Bodl. heb. d. 20 (2675). (Citations of Talmud manuscripts follow the Talmud Text Databank of the Saul Lieberman Institute.) R. Yishaq was a third-generation Palestinian Amora. It is probably the anonymous editor who interprets R. Yishaq in light of R. Eliezer’s dictum (cf. Urbach, Sages, 28). On this reading, the ‫ אנשי אמנה‬would seem to be radical quietists; but R. J. Z. Werblowsky, “Faith, Hope and Trust: A Study in the Concept of Bittahon,” Papers of the Institute of Jewish Studies London 1 (1964): 110, understands R. Eliezer more moderately. For ‫ אמנה‬as trust in God, cf. the “Yerushalmi” cited by Tosafot at Šabb. 31a, s.v. ’emunat; (more likely a midrash; see e. g. Midrash Tehillim, ed. Solomon Buber [Vilna: Romm, 1891], 19:14, p. 171 and n. 91). 8 More literally: “when they called out for merchandise.” 9 Y. Sotah 9:12, 24b. Using this story to illustrate ‫ אמנה‬may seem odd, since its anonymous avatar was presumably a post-Destruction scholar. But the Mishnah itself illustrates the loss of the ‫ אנשי אמנה‬by citing a (pre-Destruction) verse in Psalms. So the Mishnah’s story of decline was probably conceived in a less rigidly linear way than it sounds. See further below, n. 60. 10 That “Torah” is the Yerushalmi’s gloss on ‫ אמנה‬was suggested by Tzvi Novick (personal communication). Sources supporting that reading are: Rabbi Elazar Berabbi Qillir, Qedushta’ot leyom mattan Torah, ed. Shulamit Elizur (Jerusalem: Mekise Nirdamim, 2000), 99 (‫בעבור‬ ‫ ;)אמנה‬ibid., 224 (using the biblical form): ‫ אתו לסיני מרפידים‬,‫ ;אמונה ליטול בקולות ולפידים‬Midrash Tehillim 119:69 (Buber ed., 502): ‫ אמונה זו תורה… שבה‬,)‫מהו ואמונה מאד (תהילים קיט קלח‬ ‫ שנאמר איה חסדך הראשונים ה’ נשבעת לדוד באמונתך (תהילים פט‬,‫ברא הקב"ה את עולמו ובה נשבע‬ ‫)נ‬. Yaakov Nahum Epstein, Introduction to the Mishnaic Text (in Hebrew) (Jerusalem: Magnes,

Who Were the ‫?אנְ ֵשׁ י ֲא ָמנָ ה‬ ַ

621

Elsewhere, ‫ אנשי אמנה‬are honest men: ’‫ "אפלו בשעת כשלונה של ירושלם לא פסקו ממנה אנשי אמנה"… איני? והאמ‬,‫אמ’ רב קטינא‬ ‫ שוטטו בחוצות ירושלם וראו נא ודעו‬:‫ "לא חרבה ירושלם עד שפסקו ממנה אנשי אמנה‬,‫רבא‬ ". ‫ א‬,‫ובקשו ברחבתיה אם תמצאו איש אם יש עשה משפט מבקש אמונה ואסלח לה’ [ירמיה ה‬ .‫ במשא ומתן לא הוו‬,‫ בדברי תורה הוו‬.‫ הא בדברי תורה הא במשא ומתן‬,‫לא קשיא‬ Said R. Qet ina: “Even during Jerusalem’s downfall, she was not without ‫”אנשי אמנה‬ … Really? Didn’t Rava say: “Jerusalem fell only once she was bereft of ‫אנשי אמנה‬: ‘Roam the streets of Jerusalem, look about, take note, search her public places: You will not find a man, none who acts justly and seeks to be faithful, that I should pardon her’ [Jer 5:1].” No contradiction: one saying refers to words of Torah, the other, to commerce: in Torah there were ‫;אנשי אמנה‬11 in commerce there were not.12

While the Mishnah’s ‫ אנשי אמנה‬vanish in the wake of the Destruction, Rava’s vanish before it, and R. Qetina’s endure it. The sugya seems concerned only with the discrepant Amoraic views, perhaps because it understood the Mishnah’s ‫ אמנה‬to be not honesty, but trust in God. Whatever the case, the precise quality that characterized the Mishnah’s ‫אנשי‬ ‫ אמנה‬remains obscure. So it is intriguing to find them featured in a piyyut, whose opening line, ‫אנשי אמנה אבדו‬, poetically restates the Mishnah’s ‫פסקו אנשי אמנה‬.13 This paper will analyze the piyyut, clarify its understanding of ‫אנשי אמנה‬, and suggest that it may preserve the original sense of the Mishnah’s expression. ***

The piyyut is probably old, stemming from what Ezra Fleischer called the “preclassical” period. Piyyutim of this period lack rhyme, which later became de rigueur.14 Its language is conservative even by preclassical standards: biblical vocabulary,

1960), 2:685, glosses, ‫שאינם מפסיקין מתורתם למסחרם‬, perhaps taking ‫ אנשי אמנה תורה‬elliptically, “men who are unwavering [in their study of] Torah.” Pnei Moshe’s “men who put their trust in God [while devoting themselves to] Torah,” interprets in accordance with the Bavli. 11 I.e. men who honestly admit their ignorance. 12 B. H  ag. 14a–b, cited according to MS Munich 6. A parallel passage (b. Šabb. 119b–120a) begins with Rava, juxtaposes R. Qetina, and reconciles similarly. R. Qetina himself cites Isa 3:6–7, in which people asked to assume leadership roles during a crisis confess to their poverty. This admission is understood by the sugya to refer to poverty in knowledge of the Torah. ‫אמנה‬, in the commercial realm, refers, in particular, to keeping one’s word, as in ‫ מחוסר אמנה‬at b. B. Mes. 49a. Cf. ‫ בעלי אמנה‬at b. Ta‘an. 8a. 13 On this piyyut, see Aharon Mirsky, Hapiyyut: Hitpathuto be-’Eres Yisra’el uvagolah (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1990), 102–12, who notes its allusion to the Mishnah (109, n. 11). 14 Ezra Fleischer, Hebrew Liturgical Poetry in the Middle Ages (in Hebrew) (Jerusalem: Magnes, 2007), 79, 81 f., thinks this happened sometime after the middle of the fifth century.

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with barely perceptible mishnaic intrusions,15 but almost none of the innovations characteristic of payyetanic Hebrew.16 Its mode of expression is simple and direct, though not quite “straight from the heart”: it is artfully wrought and allusive.17 The piyyut was quite popular18 and influenced later poets. When simple, unrhymed piyyutim went out of style, attempts were made to adapt it to more baroque sensibilities.19 But in a triumph of taste over fashion, these “improved versions” could not replace it. Scholars of piyyut have traditionally taken the lack of rhyme to be a definitive marker of antiquity. But a recent study by Shulamit Elizur raises the possibility that there was a significant payyetanic tradition in Babylonia that resisted the demand for rhyme much longer than its Palestinian counterpart—particularly in the realm of selihot, which, she suggests, were nonexistent in early ’Erets. Yisra’el, and originated unrhymed in Babylonia.20 If so, the antiquity of an anonymous, unrhymed piyyut can no longer be taken for granted, since it might be Babylonian.21 But ‫אנשי‬

15 E.g. ‫( גזירות‬l. 4, below), ‫( ראוי‬l. 20), ‫( לרצות‬ll. 10, 20; but cf. Job 20:10). 16 To be specific, it uses just one, or on a variant reading, two; see below nn. 39 and 44. 17 See the notes and discussion below; Mirsky’s formulation (Hapiyyut, 79 f.) requires qualification. 18 There are numerous references in Israel Davidson, Thesaurus of Mediaeval Hebrew Poetry (New York: Ktav, 1970): 1:311 (no. 6850). It was included in Siddur Rav Se‘adyah Ga’on, ed. Israel Davidson et al. (Jerusalem: Rubin Mass, 2000), 338–39, and a good number of Genizah manuscripts are listed on Maagarim (including two with Tiberian vocalization). It survives in most current rites as a free-standing selihah. 19 Mirsky, Hapiyyut, 102–22. Mirsky analyzes two such reworkings, both early enough to have been included in Siddur Rav Se‘adyah Ga’on, ed. Davidson et al., 290, 309, and cites a third (p. 106). For a fourth (partially preserved), see Menahem Zulay, Eretz Israel and Its Poetry (in Hebrew), ed. Ephraim H  azan (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1995), 9 and n. 14. Mirsky’s view that the rhymed reworkings reflect a perceived need to update an old classic in light of new norms seems persuasive. 20 Shulamit Elizur, “The Character and Influence of the Babylonian Center of Poetic Production” (in Hebrew) Tarbiz 79 (2011): 229–48. My thanks to Tzvi Novick for alerting me to this important study. 21 Elizur, “Character,” 245, n. 46. Elizur emphasizes that her thesis is conjectural (ibid., 244); but it is well argued, and demands serious consideration. One aspect of the thesis that needs clarification is the idea that: “the pre-classical period of piyyut … with its unique poetics, ended much earlier in Erets. Yisra’el than in Babylonia” (ibid., 245, n. 64). That may sound as if there was an overlap, when a common preclassical poetics prevailed in both centers. But, as Elizur notes, Babylonian piyyut is first documented centuries after the Palestinian preclassical period (ibid., 239, 245, n. 61). Elizur, in the body of the article (ibid., 245), suggests that Babylonia, which produced poetic elegies and prayers during the talmudic period, later generated unrhymed piyyut independently. Regarding those early prayers, she references (ibid., 245 n. 63) Ezra Flei­scher, Eretz-Israel Prayer and Prayer Rituals as Portrayed in the Genizah Documents (in Hebrew) (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1988), 132. But Fleischer (ibid.) writes “that from the point of view of literary practice, these are not payyetanic texts in the true sense—neither with regard to their meter, which is certainly not reminiscent of payyetanic metrics, nor with regard to their language,

623

Who Were the ‫?אנְ ֵשׁ י ֲא ָמנָ ה‬ ַ

‫אמנה אבדו‬, whatever its provenance,22 was probably adopted within the Palestinian tradition early on. For later heirs of that tradition thought it marred by want of rhyme, and felt impelled to produce “improved” versions no later than the ninth century—something that would have been pointless in Babylonia, which would have embraced it in its pristine, unrhymed state.23 An early date for our piyyut is consistent with, and indeed buttressed by, the primary thesis of this paper, namely: that the payyetan, besides producing a little literary gem, has preserved a cogent alternative to the talmudic understandings of the Mishnah’s ‫אנשי אמנה‬. Following is the text of the piyyut,24 with a rough translation, leaving its as-yetto-be-defined ‫ אנשי אמנה‬untranslated:2526272829 Lost are the ‫אנשי אמנה‬i26 Empowered by their works27 Warriors standing in the breach28 Repelling evil decrees.29

‫ַאנְ ֵׁשי ֲא ָמנָ ה ָא ָבדּו‬ ‫יהם‬ ֶ ‫כֹוח ַמ ֲע ֵׂש‬ ַ ‫ָּב ִאים ְּב‬ ‫ּבֹורים ַל ֲעמֹוד ַּב ֶּפ ֶרץ‬ ִ ִ‫ּג‬ .‫ּדֹוחים ֶאת ַהּגְ זֵ רֹות‬ ִ

.1

which is untouched by the unique usages of ancient piyyut.” Is it plausible, then, that Babylonia would have independently duplicated the “unique” preclassical poetics and payyetanic language that had once prevailed in ’Erets Yisra’el? 22 According to Elizur (“Character,” 247), a Babylonian origin for the selihot “would explain the broad diffusion of unrhymed selihot like ‫ … אנשי אמנה אבדו‬in Sefardic mahazorim: pre-classical Palestinian piyyutim almost never reached the Sefardic mahazorim (with the exception of sidre ‘avodah, possibly by way of the Siddur of Rav Se‘adyah Ga’on).” But ‫ אנשי אמנה אבדו‬was also included in Se‘adyah’s siddur. Nor need it have originated as a selihah: “some of the unrhymed selihot may have been composed in Erets Yisra’el, but served originally as components of qedushta’ot …” (ibid., 246, n. 65). For speculation on a possible origin for our piyyut, see below. 23 It is hard to imagine what could have motivated these awkward reworkings other than an overriding demand for rhyme, which, as Elizur shows, didn’t exist for selihot in Babylonia. 24 Mostly following Mirsky’s sensible eclectic text (Hapiyyut, 109 f.). I will note variants from the version of Siddur Rav Se‘adyah Ga’on adopted as the primary witness in Maagarim. 25 The translation takes occasional liberties in an attempt to preserve something of the concision of the original. 26 In some versions, ‫ אמנה‬has become ‫ ;אמונה‬e. g. the Yemenite Tiklāl ‘ateret ’avot (Benei Beraq: Nusah Teman, 2004), 1:507. For ‫( אבדו‬as opposed to the Mishnah’s ‫)פסקו‬, see Isa 57:1. 27 More literally: “Coming on the strength of their works.” Contemporaries, by contrast, confess: ‫( לא בחסד ולא במעשים באנו לפניך‬Seder haselihot, ed. Daniel Goldschmidt [Jerusalem: Mosad Harav Kook, 1965], 4; here, ‫ = חסד‬merit). Cf. y. Ma‘aś. Š. 5:13, 56d: ‫באין מכח המצות ומעמ‬ ‫שים טובים לפני הקב’ה‬, and Piyyute Yose ben Yose, ed. Aharon Mirsky (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1977), 119, ll. 13, 18. “Coming on the strength of one’s works” need not imply making demands on their strength or even invoking them; cf. the disagreement on this score in y. Ma‘aś. Š., ad loc.; Mirsky’s note at Piyyute Yose ben Yose, 104 l. 22; b. Pesah. 119a; and b. H  ul. 89a. 28 See Ps 106:23: ‫ ;ויאמר להשמידם לולי משה בחירו עמד בפרץ לפניו להשיב חמתו מהשחית‬Ezek 22:30: ‫ואבקש מהם איש גדר גדר ועמד בפרץ לפני בעד הארץ לבלתי שחתה ולא מצאתי‬. Cf. Piyyute Yose ben Yose. ed. Mirsky, 211: ‫ ואין עומד בפרץ‬,‫ ואיך נגדור פרץ‬,‫גודרי פרצות נפרצו באשמינו‬, Mirsky’s note, ad loc., and l. 17 below. 29 The decrees being “repelled” are apparently God’s.

624

Bernard Septimus

They were our ramparts30 And refuge in days of wrath31 Quenching anger with a whisper Staying fury with a cry.32

‫חֹומה‬ ָ ‫ָהיּו ָלנּו ְל‬ ‫ּול ַמ ֲח ֶסה ְּביֹום זָ ַעם‬ ְ ‫זֹוע ִכים ַאף ְּב ַל ֲח ָשׁם‬ ֲ .‫ֵח ָמה ָע ְצרּו ְּב ַׁשוְ ָעם‬

.5

Before they called, You answered33 Well could they plead and placate34 For them, You pitied like a father35 Never refusing their requests.36

‫יתם‬ ָ ִ‫ֶט ֶרם ְק ָראּוָך ֲענ‬ ‫ּול ַר ָּצך‬ ְ ‫יֹוד ִעים ַל ֲעתֹר‬ ְ ‫יח ְמ ָּתה ְל ַמ ֲענָ ם‬ ַ ‫ְּכ ָאב ִר‬ .‫יהם ֵר ָיקם‬ ֶ ֵ‫יבֹותה ְפנ‬ ָ ‫לֹא ֱה ִש‬

.9

For our many sins37 we’ve lost them Taken away for our wrongs38 They’ve gone39 to their rest40 Leaving us to our sighs.41

‫ֵמרֹוב ֲעֹונֵ ינּו ִא ַּב ְדנּום‬ ‫נֶ ֶא ְספּו ִמ ֶּמּנּו ַּב ֲח ָט ֵאינּו‬ ‫ָסעּו ֵה ָּמה ִל ְמנּוחֹות‬ .‫אֹותנו ַל ֲאנָ חֹות‬ ָ ‫ָעזְ בּו‬

.13

303132333435363738394041

30 For protectors as a wall, cf. 1 Sam. 25:15–16: ‫ ;והאנשים טובים לנו מאוד … חומה היו עלינו‬and cf. Cant. Rabbah 8:10–11. 31 God is usually Israel’s ‫( מחסה‬e. g. Isa 25:4, Joel 4:16, Ps 46:2, 62:9). Here the ‫אנשי אמנה‬ are their ‫מחסה‬, in the face of His wrath. For ‫ יום זעם‬as the day of God’s wrath, see Ezek 22:24. 32 ‫ לחש‬and ‫ שועה‬often indicate prayer; e. g. Isa 26:16; 2 Sam 22:7. 33 See Isa 65:24: ‫( והיה טרם יקראו ואני אענה עוד הם מדברים ואני אשמע‬where it is Israel, however, who calls). 34 Literally: “They knew how to plead and propitiate You”; for this reading, see Mirsky, Hapiyyut, 105–106. For the expression ‫יודע לרצות‬, cf. y. Šeqal. 2:5, 47a; Lev. Rabbah 5:8 (ed. Margulies, 122); Deut. Rabbah, Vayelekh, verse 2. 35 Maagarim: ‫( כאב על בן ריחמתם‬less likely: it breaks the pattern of three-word lines). 36 To ll. 11–12, cf. the Genizah version of the ‘Amidah, ‫וריקם מלפניך אל תשיבנו כי אב מלא‬ ‫( רחמים רבים אתה‬Yehezqel Luger, Tefillat ha‘amidah lehol ‘al-pi hagenizah haqahirit [Jerusalem: Orhot, 2001], 167). Line 12 breaks the three-words-per-line pattern (in which even short words count, as in ll. 4, 22). Moreover, while ‫ =( השיב פנים‬to refuse or reject) (e. g. 1 Kings 2:16, 17, 20; 2 Kings 18:24; Ps 132:10) and ‫שב ריקם‬‎(2 Sam 1:22; Jer 50:9) or ‫( ִשלח ריקם‬Gen 31:42; Deut 15:13; Job 22:9) are well attested, the composite ‫ השיב פנים ריקם‬is not. So the line should perhaps read: ‫יהם‬ ֶ ֵ‫יבֹותה ְפנ‬ ָ ‫ לֹא ֱה ִש‬or ‫יבֹותם ֵר ָיקם‬ ָ ‫לֹא ֱה ִש‬. 37 Or: great guilt; see Ezek 28:18. 38 For ll. 13–14, see Isa 57:1 :‫לב ואנשי חסד נאספים באין מבין כי מפני‬-‫הצדיק אבד ואין איש שם על‬ ‫הרעה נאסף הצדיק‬, taking ‫ רעה‬to be sin, as in Pirqe Rabbi Eliezer, ch. 17: ‫ובשביל הרעה שהיו ישראל‬ ‫ שנ’ “כי מפני הרעה נאסף הצדיק״‬,‫( עושין בסתר נאסף הצדיק‬cited according to Maagarim). 39 The short form ‫( סעו‬rather than ‫ )נסעו‬is our poem’s only peculiarly payyetanic form (perhaps adopted in service of the acrostic); but cf. at l. 19. On these shortened verb forms, see Y. Yahalom, Poetic Language in the Early Piyyut (in Hebrew) (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1985), 67–96. 40 See Isa 57:2: ‫יבוא שלום ינוחו על מׁשכבותם הלך נכחו‬. The reading ‫( מנוחה‬Maagarim), rather than ‫מנוחות‬, is isolated and unlikely. 41 For this stanza, see t. Sotah 10:1, cited below, n. 56. Cf. to the ‫אנחות‬/‫ מנוחות‬opposition, the fast-day piyyut published by Shulamit Elizur, “The Ancient Liturgy for Fast Days in Eretz Yisra’el” (in Hebrew), Tarbiz 75 (2006): 179: ‫ אנחה מצאנו‬,‫( מנוחה בקשנו‬following Elizur’s reconstruction of the second word). That piyyut also laments (ibid.): ‫ ואיך יוצק חן בהגיון שפתינו‬,‫אוספו חסידנו‬.

625

Who Were the ‫?אנְ ֵשׁ י ֲא ָמנָ ה‬ ַ

Vanished,42 the bulwark builders Gone the fury fenders43 No one stands in the breach44 None worthy to placate.45

‫ּגֹוד ֵרי ּגֶ ֶדר‬ ְ ‫ַפּסּו‬ ‫ימה‬ ָ ‫צּומתּו ְמ ִׁש ֵיבי ֵח‬ ְ ‫ָק ִמים ַּב ֶּפ ֶרץ ָאיִ ן‬ .‫ּצֹותָך ָא ֵפסּו‬ ְ ‫ְראּויִ ים ְל ַר‬

.17

We’ve searched far and wide46 But found no cure47 So shamefaced we return48 To seek You in our distress.49

.‫ׁשֹוט ְטנּו ְּב ַא ְר ַּבע ִּפּנֹות‬ ַ ‫רּופה לֹא ָמ ָצאנּו‬ ָ ‫ֻּת‬ ‫בֹושת ָּפנִ ים‬ ֶ ‫ַׁש ְבנּו ְּב‬ .‫ְל ַׁש ֶח ְרָך ְּב ֵעת ָצ ָר ֵתנּו‬

.21

4243444546474849

A simple alphabetic acrostic delineates the piyyut’s line divisions.50 The lines are clipped, three words each, establishing a strong, rapid rhythm.51 The lines are naturally coupled, and produce an echoing effect, the second three beats “answering” the first.52 The couplets are themselves paired, forming four-line stanzas.53 These

42 The verb ‫ פסו‬links to the ‫ אנשי אמנה‬via Ps 12:2, ‫ ;פסו אמונים‬see below. 43 For ‫משיבי חמה‬, cf. Ps 106:23 (cited above, n. 28) and Prov 15:1 ‫( מענה רך ישיב חמה‬often applied to prayer). For the appelative, see Sifre Numbers, 131, where Pinhas is called ‫משיב חימה‬ ‫( בן משיב חימה‬based on Num 25:11). 44 For ll. 17–19, see Ezek 22:30–33: ‫ואבקש מהם איש גדר גדר ועמד בפרץ לפני בעד הארץ לבלתי‬ ‫ ואשפך עליהם זעמי‬,‫שחתה ולא מצאתי‬. Cf. Qillir, ‫( בהעצר אוצר‬for a fast when rain is withheld), ll. 138–39: ‫ ולא נמצא גודר לעמוד בפרץ‬,‫( עירך ערו בפרץ על פני פרץ‬cited according to Maagarim), which is reminiscent of the Mishnah’s association of the loss of the ‫ אנשי אמנה‬with the Destruction. ‫( קמים בפרץ‬as opposed to ‫ )עומדים‬preserves the acrostic. The reading in Maagarim, ‫קמי בפרץ‬, would be a second typically payyetanic construction; see Yahalom, Poetic Language, 117–25. 45 More literally: [those] worthy to placate You are gone. 46 Literally: “in the four corners.” 47 See Amos 8:12, ‫ ישוטטו לבקש את דבר ה’ ולא ימצאו‬and the discussion below. 48 Cf. 2 Chr 32:21: ‫וישב בבשת פנים לארצו‬, and below. 49 ‫( ָצ ָר ֵתנּו‬singular) is the reading at the basis of an early reworking; see Mirsky, Hapiyyut, 110, second column. Mirsky (following Siddur Rav Se‘adyah) transcribes ‫צרותינו‬. 50 A common device in early piyyutim, with biblical precedent; see Fleischer, Hebrew Liturgical Poetry, 45. 51 On this form, see Fleischer, Hebrew Liturgical Poetry, 84 (where it is illustrated by our ­piyyut). 52 The echoing can be intensified by parallelism, e. g. ll. 7–8, but kept interesting by syntactic variation (shifting from verb + object to object + verb) or semantic contrast (juxtaposing ‫לחשם‬ to ‫)שועם‬. Likewise in ll. 13–14. But then (in ll. 15–16) parallelism gives way to antithesis, underlined by the rhyming ‫ מנוחות‬and ‫( אנחות‬preclassical rhyme is an occasional device). 53 Thus two lines follow on the exhaustion of the alphabetic acrostic, which complete the final quatrain; see Mirsky, Hapiyyut, 103 f. Mirsky’s view that the final two lines serve solely to complete the quatrain (ibid., 104, if I understand correctly) is odd: thematically, they are essential; see below.

626

Bernard Septimus

stanzas, though obscured in some manuscripts, cohere syntactically and thematically as subunits.54 The piyyut’s first line sounds its central theme, the loss of the ‫אנשי אמנה‬. The rest of the stanza characterizes them in a string of adjectival clauses, as trusty warriors and defenders of their people. Military language lingers in the first two lines of the second stanza, then yields to the lexicon of prayer.55 Still, the ‫ אנשי אמנה‬are foregrounded: God appears as an actor and addressee only in the third stanza. The ‫ אנשי אמנה‬were His intimates, their intercession, unfailing. The fourth stanza is a communal confession: “we” are responsible for losing them, leaving ourselves defenseless and forlorn.56 Then the fifth stanza hammers home the damage done by reprising the piyyut’s opening: its four lines all echo ‫אנשי‬ ‫אמנה אבדו‬.57 The stanza’s opening verb, ‫( פסו‬a biblical hapax), signals the return. The Mishnah links ‫ פסקו אנשי אמנה‬with ‫( פסו אמונים‬Ps 12:2). So by opening with ‫פסו‬, the stanza identifies its lost heroes—those bulwarks who fend off fury as worthy propitiators standing in the breach—with the ‫אנשי אמנה‬.58 The poet’s ‫ אנשי אמנה‬were stalwarts: the nation could count on them for intercession and protection. In their shelter, it was secure; bereft of them, it is helplessly exposed. This profile is our most faithful guide to the poet’s understanding of the term ‫אנשי אמנה‬: not men who trust in God, but men who are trusted by their people—trusted, not to be honest, but to shield them from divine wrath. The poem’s ‫ אנשי אמנה‬are steadfast: bulwarks you can rely on, men who will not fail you. This understanding lies squarely within the semantic range of ‫ אמנה‬and is demanded

54 The familiar ‫אל אדון על כל המעשים‬, also an early piyyut, has a similar structure (Mirsky, Hapiyyut, 103). But the lines of ‫ אל אדון‬have four (rather than three) beats. A still closer parallel, which resembles ‫ אנשי אמנה אבדו‬in its meter, as well as its stanza structure, directness, and simplicity, is the fast-day piyyut ‫איתן לימד דעת‬, which was probably known in the talmudic period. On this piyyut, see Dov Septimus, “‘H  ananto leme’ah peri’: Min hapiyyut haqadum ’el hatalmud habavli,” Leshonenu 71 (2009): 79–95. On its formal similarity to ‫אנשי אמנה אבדו‬, see ibid., 80, n. 7. 55 The ‫ אנשי אמנה‬apparently do battle against God by praying to Him. Cf. b. Pesah. 119a (NY – JTS Rab. 1623/2 [EMC 271]): ‫בשר ודם נוצ מ‬, ‫בוא וראה שלא כמדת הקב’ה מדת בשר ודם‬ .‫הקב’ה נוצחין אותו ושמח שנ’ ויאמר להשמידם לולי משה בחירו עמד בפרץ לפניו‬, ‫חין אותו ועצב‬‎ The prooftext, Ps 106:23, is also central to our piyyut. 56 Cf. to this stanza, t. Sotah 10:1 (Lieberman ed., 213 f.): ‫בזמן שהצדיקים נפטרים מן העוםלם פ�ו‬ ‫ א) [הצדיק אבד] ואין איש שם על לב‬,‫רענות באה לעולם וטובה מסתלקת מן העולם… שנאמר (ישעיה נז‬ ‫ ב) יבא שלום ינוחו על משכבותם‬,‫ ואומר (שם‬.]‫[ואנשי־חסד נאספין באין מבין כי מפני־הרעה נאסף הצדיק‬ ‫ ג) ואתם קרבו הנה בני עוננה וגו‬,‫ ואומר (שם‬.‫ הולך שלום אל הקבר‬.’‫וגו‬. In the Tosefta, this tradition complements the Mishnah’s decline passages; see Saul Lieberman, Tosefta Ki-Fshutah (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1995), 8:718. 57 But ‫( פסו גודרי גדר‬verb first) reverses its (verb-last) syntax, which is restored in the final two lines. The last, ‫ראוים לרצותך אפסו‬, gives the stanza an envelope structure (‫ פסו‬likely seen as short for ‫)אפסו‬. 58 The identification is strengthened via ‫גודרי גדר‬, who, in Ezek 22:30 (cited above), stand in the breach, like the heroes of the first stanza who reappear in the fourth as ‫קמים בפרץ‬.

‫ו‬

Who Were the ‫?אנְ ֵשׁ י ֲא ָמנָ ה‬ ַ

627

by the context. So to fill the lacuna in our translation, ‫ אנשי אמנה אבדו‬might be rendered: “Lost are the men we relied on.”59 ***

In our poet’s historical perception, an era has ended: the age of larger-than-life spiritual heroes who mediated between God and Israel now belongs to the past. It is probably not helpful to ask precisely when he thought it had ended. This sort of perception need not feature crisp chronological boundaries.60 Our payyetan would probably have included a figure like H  oni the Circle Maker61 among the ‫אנשי אמנה‬.62 Indeed, their loss sounds like a fresh wound. So stories about the spiritual heroes of the Second Temple period, and possibly beyond,63 provide context for our piyyut.64 The Mishnah’s declaration, ‫משחרב בית המקדש… פסקו אנשי אמנה‬, is followed, in all our witnesses, by citation of Ps 12:2: ‫הושיעה י’ כי גמר חסיד כי פסו אמונים מבני‬ ‫אדם‬. Epstein thought this verse a later addition, because it doesn’t fit the term’s

59 One could, of course, insist that the poet, like R. Yishaq, understood ‫ אנשי אמנה‬to be men who trust God, and saw that quality as the source of their strength. But sound method requires that we allow the poet’s understanding to emerge from his own words. 60 See above, n. 9. It is not even clear if the Mishnah’s ‫משחרב בית המקדש… פסקו אנשי אמנה‬ refers to the First or Second Temple. The sequence ,‫ בטלו אורים ותומים‬,‫משמתו נביאים הראשונים‬ ‫ ופסקו אנשי אמנה‬,‫ משחרב בית המקדש בטל השמיר ונפת צופים‬seems to suggest the First Temple. But the Mishnah’s sequence is not always chronological: thus ‫ משבטלה סנהדרין‬precedes ‫משמתו‬ ‫נביאים הראשונים‬. And following ‫ משחרב בית המקדש… פסקו אנשי אמנה‬we read: ‫רבן שמעון בן גמליאל‬ ‫ ונוטל טעם‬,‫ ולא ירד הטל לברכה‬,‫ אין יום שאין בו קללה‬,‫ מיום שחרב בית המקדש‬:‫אומר משום רבי יהושע‬ ‫—הפרות‬personal perceptions in the wake of the Second Destruction. Tosafot (Sukkah 49a, s.v. shekol, Git. 68a, ‘Abod. Zar. 23b, Zevah. 54a) take the Mishnah to be referring to the Second Temple, as do Mele’khet Shelomoh and Tife’eret Yisra’el to the Mishnah. 61 We don’t find the expected form, ‫ ַה ְמ ַעּגֵ ל‬, in Kaufmann (‫ ) ַה ַּמ ְעּגָ ל‬or Parma (‫ ) ַה ָּמ ֲעּגָ ל‬at m. Ta‘an. 3:8; see Shimon Sharvit, Studies in Mishnaic Hebrew (in Hebrew) (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 2008), 194–96; cf. Adolph Büchler, Types of Jewish-Palestinian Piety from 70 B.C.E. to 70 C.E.: The Ancient Pious Men (New York: Ktav, 1968), 201 n. 2; Judah Goldin, Studies in Midrash and Related Literature, ed. Barry Eichler and Jeffrey Tigay (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1988), 332, n. 11. 62 In m. Ta‘an. 3:8, H  oni’s prayer begins: ‫בניך שמו פניהם עלי שאני כבן בית לפניך‬. This is not unlike the position ascribed to the ‫ אנשי אמנה‬of our piyyut. Shim‘on ben Shetah’s characterization (ibid.), ‫ שאתה מתחטא לפני המקום ועושה לך רצונך כבן שהוא מתחטא על אביו ועושה לו רצונו‬also accords with our payyetan’s image (esp. ll. 10–11). 63 E.g., figures like R. H  anina ben Dosa and R. Pinhas ben Ya’ir; see e. g. m. Ber. 5:5; b. Ber. 34b; b. Yebam. 121b and y. Demai 1:3, 21d–22a; b. H  ul. 7a. 64 See e. g. Büchler, Types of Jewish-Palestinian Piety; G. B. Sarfatti, “Pious Men, Men of Deeds, and the Early Prophets” (in Hebrew), Tarbiz 26 (1957): 126–53. A hekhalot work, H  anokh 3, ch. 51 (= Peter Schäfer, Synopse zur Hekhalot-Literatur [Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1981], no. 80, p. 39), lists the ‫ אנשי אמנה‬in the chain of tradition through which the secret of the divine names was transmitted. So their image, in mystical circles, may have been one of miracle workers. See also ’Otiyyot de-Rabbi ‘Aqiva (version 1) in Batei midrashot, ed. Shlomo Aharon Wertheimer (Jerusalem: Ktab Wasepher, 1980), 2:355.

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explanation in the Bavli or the Yerushalmi.65 How a prooftext that supports neither infiltrated all our witnesses, he did not explain.66 As we have seen, this prooftext links our piyyut’s fifth and first stanzas, and was clearly on the poet’s mind and in his Mishnah. He undoubtedly understood the verse as a plea for help addressed directly to God because the usually reliable intercessors are gone.67 That, I think, provides the key to the piyyut’s final stanza, about how “we,” the community, have responded to the loss of the ‫אנשי אמנה‬. It is, at first, with a futile search for “a cure,” and finally, in desperation, a “return” to seek out God Himself. This stanza’s first lines are the piyyut’s most opaque: ‫ שוטטנו בארבע פנות‬probably alludes not to the scattering of exile,68 but to Amos 8:12: ’‫ישוטטו לבקש את דבר ה‬ ‫ולא ימצאו‬. That verse begins ‫—ונעו מים עד ים ומצפון ועד מזרח‬the poet’s ‫ארבע פנות‬. So these lines describe a last desperate search for some vague, illusory “cure” that might replace the lost ‫אנשי אמנה‬.69 Only in its last clipped lines does the piyyut allude to repentance: ‫בֹושת ָּפנִ ים‬ ֶ ‫ַׁש ְבנּו ְּב‬ .‫ְל ַׁש ֶח ְרָך ְּב ֵעת ָצ ָר ֵתנּו‬

‫בֹושת ָּפנִ ים‬ ֶ ‫ ַׁש ְבנּו ְּב‬refers, simultaneously, to a return in disgrace from the futile search (reversing ‫)שוטטנו‬,70 and to a shamefaced return to God.71 It may seem strange that our poem should be dominated by longing for lost heroes, with repentance rel-

65 Epstein, Introduction to the Mishainic Text, 2:685. 66 It is also unclear how he thought those who added the verse understood the expression ‫אנשי אמנה‬. 67 So in light of our piyyut, we might invert Epstein’s reasoning and argue that the persistence, in all our witnesses, of a prooftext that fits an early nontalmudic understanding of the Mishnah supports its authenticity.  In Ps 12:2, ‫ אמונים‬parallel ‫( חסיד‬used collectively). So the Mishnah’s exegesis strengthens an association of the ‫ אנשי אמנה‬with the ancient ‫ חסידים‬of Büchler (above, n. 61). Thus the ‫ מעשה בחסיד אחד‬in t. Ta‘an. 3:13 (Lieberman ed., 334) parallels the story about H  oni. Our poet would probably have identified these ‫ חסידים‬with the ‫ אנשי חסד‬of Isa 57:1 (cited above, n. 38). 68 An understanding probably reflected in one of the later reworkings; see Mirsky, Hapiyyut, 110, column 3. 69 Alternatively, as Tzvi Novick (personal communication) suggests, the poet may be alluding to a final futile search for ‫ אנשי אמנה‬who will secure God’s pardon, via Jer 5:1: ‫שוטטו בחוצות‬ ‫ירושלם וראו נא ודעו ובקשו ברחובותיה אם תמצאו איש אם יש עשה משפט מבקש אמונה ואסלח לה‬. That verse might have been suggestive, although, on its plain sense, its ‫ אמונה‬is honesty. 70 As in the poet’s biblical source for this locution, 2 Chr 32:21: ‫( וישב בבשת פנים לארצו‬Note the assonance of ‫ פנים‬and ‫) ִפנות‬. 71 The idea of repentance is clearer in other witnesses; e. g. the one adopted as primary in Siddur Rav Se‘adyah Ga’on, ed. Davidson et al., p. 339 (though not Maagarim) ‫שבנו אליך בבושת‬ ‫ לשחרך אל בעת צרותינו‬,‫פנים‬. Here return to God is made explicit. Mirsky (Hapiyyut, pp. 104 f.) rejects this version because it breaks the pattern of three-word lines. A lengthening could have served to slow the pace as the poem approaches its end; but on balance, preserving the threeword lines seems preferable.

Who Were the ‫?אנְ ֵשׁ י ֲא ָמנָ ה‬ ַ

629

egated to what seems almost like an afterthought. But these themes are hardly unconnected: the poetic sequence suggests a grudging admission by an “orphaned generation” that loss of the ‫ אנשי אמנה‬has forced a measure of maturity on them: Once “we” didn’t need to confront You ourselves: “they,” the steadfast ‫אנשי אמנה‬ did it for us. But now we’ve lost them, and find ourselves without mediators in our time of distress. So we must seek You out ourselves, and humbly beg for Your help.72

The sense of generational decline is interesting because it leads not to paralysis, but to a reluctant self-reliance.73 Faced with the loss of its ‫אנשי אמנה‬, the community must summon its own spiritual resources, however meager they are thought to be. There is a baraita appended to the Mishnah that augments its sketch of generational decline. It is punctuated by a refrain-like line, reminiscent of our piyyut’s conclusion: .‫ על מה לנו להישען? על אבינו שבשמים‬.‫ואין דורש ואין מבקש‬ “No one seeks [Israel’s salvation], no one pleads [for them]” [see Ezek 34:6].74 On what then are we to rely?—On our Father in heaven.75

72 Tzvi Novick calls my attention to a striking parallel in the zikhronot of Yose ben Yose, ‫אפחד במעשי‬. It too bemoans the loss of the heroes who interceded for Israel, then finally turns to God as Israel’s sole remaining recourse; see Piyyute Yose ben Yose, ed. Mirsky, 101–4; Tzvi Novick, “Let Me Flee for Help … Israel as ‘I’ and the Teqi‘ot of Yose ben Yose,” European Journal of Jewish Studies 8 (2014): 145–72, especially 152–53. Yose’s intercessors include priests, atoning for Israel through the temple rites; their absence in ‫ אנשי אמנה אבדו‬is interesting. There may, however, be an allusion to Pinhas in the ‫משיבי חמה‬. In Piyyute Yose ben Yose, ed. Mirsky, 102, l. 10, ‫ שמו לזכרון‬,‫ ויחק לדורות‬,‫ וישיב חימה‬,‫היש מי יפלל‬, the allusion is clearly to Pinhas (as noted by Mirsky, ad loc.). 73 The turn to God sounds less reluctant in Yose ben Yose: ‫ כי הם‬,‫ ולא בנדיבים‬,‫ה אבטח בך‬-‫י‬ ‫ ולנצח שמך לזכרון‬,‫( בקבר‬Piyyute Yose ben Yose, ed. Mirsky, 104, l. 20; see also ll. 21–22). The impression our piyyut gives of a begrudging turn to God is perhaps magnified by its preservation as a self-contained literary unit. If, as I suspect, it was originally part of a larger composition, later components may have balanced its reluctance with more robust petition. 74 The reference in Ezekiel, is to Israel’s faithless shepherds who have abandoned their flock; in the baraita, Israel, the hapless flock, has lost it faithful shepherds. ‫ מבקש אין‬may have been understood to refer to the loss of intercessors. 75 M. Sotah 9:15 (cited according to the Kaufmann MS). The refrain occurs three times, the last, without the phrase from Ezekiel. Other versions read ‫ על מי‬rather than ‫על מה‬. Cf. Piyyute Yose ben Yose, ed. Mirsky, p. 101 (the piyyut, ‫אפחד במעשי‬, mentioned above): ‫בבאוי למשפט במי‬ ‫אשען‬. On “leaning” as reliance, see e. g. Isa 10:20, 50:10; 2 Chr 13:18, 14:10, 16:7–8. ‫ן‬-‫מ‬-‫ א‬too can (in transitive forms) refer to supporting or causing to stand in the literal sense; see Ze’ev Ben-H  ayyim, Literary and Oral Tradition of Hebrew and Aramaic amongst the Samaritans (in Hebrew) (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1967), 3:2:165 (brought to my attention by Menahem Kister). On the additions at the end of Mishnah Sotah, see Epstein, Introduction to the Mishnaic Text, 2:949, 976.

630

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The “life setting” suggested by the conclusion, ‫שבנו… לשחרך בעת צרתנו‬, is the fast-day ritual.76 Our piyyut may have been integrated into the expanded fast-day Amidah described in the Mishnah.77 It is hard to pinpoint a precise location.78 But it is easy to see how the fast-day liturgy, with its emphasis on God’s response to the prayers of various biblical heroes, might have occasioned a poetic expansion bemoaning their loss.79 Our piyyut provides interesting counterpoint to another fast-day motif. Scholars have discerned in the talmudic fast-day rite elements of continuity with the prayer and fasting assemblies led by biblical prophets. They have pointed, in particular, to the search for an exemplary shaliah sibbur, one who is worthy of rep-

76 Fasts are declared ‫( על כל צרה שלא תבוא על הציבור‬m. Ta‘an. 3:8). 77 Ta‘anit, ch. 2. 78 In Siddur Rav Se‘adyah Ga’on, our piyyut (p. 338; cf. note at p. 305) functions as a selihah. On Se‘adyah’s instructions (p. 317), fast-day selihot are included in the repetition of the selihah benediction of the ‘Amidah; see too ’Osar hage’onim, ed. B. M. Lewin (Jerusalem: Hebrew University, 1932), Ta‘anit, Teshuvot, 22. Fleischer (Hebrew Liturgical Poetry, 39, 71 f., 75) considered this their original Palestinian position. As noted above, Elizur thinks the selihah originated only in Babylonia. Whatever the case, it seems doubtful that our piyyut—which says so little of repentance, atonement, or forgiveness—was originally conceived as an independent penitential poem. 79 See m. Ta‘an. 2:4. As noted by Elizur, “Ancient Liturgy for Fast-Days,” 178, we have few surviving examples of piyyutim for the expanded twenty-four-berakhah fast-day ‘Amidah. For another example, see Septimus, “H  ananto leme’ah peri,” 79–95. The latter, like the example studied by Elizur (op. cit., 175–84), was part of the birkat hage’ulah. It is unclear where ‫אנשי אמנה‬ ‫ אבדו‬might have fit. Its concluding words, ‫לשחרך בעת צרתנו‬, could have segued into the berakhah ‫העונה בעת צרה‬. A fragment of a piyyut that did just that was published by A. M. Haberman, “Ancient Poems” (in Hebrew), Tarbiz 14 (1943): 65 (bottom), as shown by Elizur, “Ancient Liturgy for Fast-Days,” 178. Note too the berakhah built on Psalm 120, ‫אלה ה’ בצרתה לי קראתי וי�ע‬ ‫נני‬. Another possibility might be the fast-day zikhronot benediction (m. Ta‘an. 2:3). For like our piyyut, the zikhronot of Yose ben Yose focuses on lost intercessors and the consequent need to turn directly to God. That focus could have been linked to the larger zikhronot genre, although Yose’s piyyut was composed for Rosh Hashanah (Piyyute Yose ben Yose, ed. Mirsky, 101, ll. 1–3). In the late fourteenth century, our piyyut was linked to the expanded fast-day liturgy by Moshe Ibn Gabbai, who composed a poetic ‘avodah for fast-days, modeled on the Yom Kippur ‘avodah (Haberman, “Ancient Poems,” 67–69). Its prologue draws heavily on our piyyut: ‫אפסו‬ …‫)… יודעי לרצותך בעונינו אבדו‬67( ‫ תמו עומדים בפרץ … שוטטנו בכל פנות ואין מחזיק בידינו‬,‫אנשי אמונה‬ ‫( עומדים בפרץ עלינו‬68). Ibn Gabbai was clearly thinking of figures like H  oni, when toward the end of his ‘avodah he wrote (in awkward imitation of his classical model): …‫אשרי עין ראתה כל אלה‬ ‫( ובכן מה נהדר הצדיק המתפלל בצאתו בחדוה מן הגשם‬69)! Note, finally, the possibility raised by Menahem Kister, “The Prayers of the Seventh Book of the ‘Apostolic Constitutions’ and Their Implications for the Formulation of the Synagogue Prayers” (in Hebrew), Tarbiz 77 (2008): 225–27, that fast-day selihot motifs invoking spiritual heroes of old, like ‫מי שענה ל… הוא יעננו‬, were once included in the shomea‘ tefillah benediction. That would provide yet another possible venue for our piyyut.

Who Were the ‫?אנְ ֵשׁ י ֲא ָמנָ ה‬ ַ

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resenting the community before God.80 In our piyyut, the search for surrogates is futile: the community is on its own.81 ***

The payyetan’s understanding of ‫ אמנה‬helps clarify an enigmatic comment in the Mekhilta about Moses’s hands, said to have been ‫( אמונה‬the biblical form), while raised in prayer during the battle against Amaleq (Exod 17:12): :‫ ובידו אחת אמר משה לפני המקום‬,‫" בידו אחת שלא קבל בה מישראל כלום‬.‫"ויהי ידיו אמונה‬ ‫ ועל ידי קרעת להם את הים ועל ידי עשית‬,‫ על ידי הוצאת את ישראל ממצרים‬,‫"רבונו של עולם‬ ".‫ וכך על ידי תעשה להם ניסים וגבורות בשעה הזאת‬,‫להם נסים וגבורות‬ “His hands were ‫[—”אמונה‬Moses invoked] one hand in which he had taken nothing from Israel. Of the other hand, Moses said to the Omnipresent: “Master of the Universe, it was through me [lit., “by my hand”] that You took Israel out of Egypt, through me You split the sea for them, and through me You performed mighty miracles for them. May You perform mighty miracles for them through me [“by my hand”] this time as well.”82

The exegesis is based on the plural ‫ידיו‬, taken to allude to two discrete “hands,”83 each of which was ‫אמונה‬. One was ‫ אמונה‬in the sense of probity: a clean hand that took nothing from Israel. Moses invokes the second “hand” in an appeal to precedent: You’ve always saved Israel through me (‫ )על ידי‬in the past—so save them through me (‫ )על ידי‬once again. But in what sense was that “hand” ‫?אמונה‬84 It was, I suggest, in the sense of dependability: a ‫ יד אמונה‬is that of an intermediary

80 See the insightful essay of Ya‘aqov (Gerald) Blidstein, “Shaliah sibbur,” in From Qumran to Cairo: Studies in the History of Prayer (in Hebrew), ed. Joseph Tabori (Jerusalem: Orhot, 1999), 39–73, especially, 51–59. 81 This is probably more a difference in perspective than a dispute. The qualities sought in the fast-day shaliah sibbur make him a worthy representative, not a heroic intimate of God; see Blidstein, “Shaliah tsibbur,” 51. There are intimations of a more heroic image of the ­shaliah ­tsibbur, as a warrior-priest (ibid., 55–56), which stands in greater tension with our piyyut. Thus another old piyyut (‫ )או"א היה עם פיפיות‬says of these communal representatives: ‫ ­ועיניהם לך‬,‫עיני עמך בם תלויות‬ ‫ לשכך כעס וחימה‬,‫ גשים מול שּו­ר להלחמה‬,‫( תלויות‬cited from the Genizah version at Maagarim): the people look to their intercessors; it is the latter who look to God. They enter the thick of battle (cf. 2 Sam 11:21: ‫ )למה נגשתם אל החומה‬seeking to quell divine wrath. We should not, however, lose sight of our piyyut’s rhetorical aspect: by adopting the voice of an insecure community, bereft of intercessors and struggling to muster its own resources, it seeks to elicit God’s indulgence. 82 The Two Mekhiltot on the Amalek Portion (in Hebrew), ed. Menahem Kahana (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1999), 170 (=Mek. R. Ish., ‘Amaleq, end no. 1, [Horovitz-Rabin ed., 181]) 83 Kahana, Two Mekhiltot, 236 f. 84 As Kahana (Two Mekhiltot, 237 and n. 49) notes, the Mekhilta connects the first hand with ‫ אמונה‬in the sense of fiscal integrity; so it is reasonable to expect that it is connecting the more enigmatic second hand with ‫ אמונה‬as well.

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(hence, ‫ )על ידי‬who has always been a reliable savior and protector—or, to put it differently, an ‫!איש אמנה‬85 Indeed, Moses would seem to be the archetypal ‫איש אמנה‬, a connection suggested by allusion in our piyyut,86 but also by some of the midrashim on his death: ‫… "מי יעמוד לישראל בשעת כעסי? ומי יעמוד‬:‫כיון שהשלים עצמו למיתה פתח הקב"ה ואמר‬ "?‫במלחמתן של בני? מי יבקש רחמים עליהם בשעה שחוטאין לפני‬ When [Moses] had reconciled himself to death, the Holy One declared: … “Who will stand up for Israel when I am angry? Who will do battle for My children? Who will seek mercy for them when they sin before Me?”87

When Metatron wonders why God, who will not be losing Moses, is nevertheless in mourning,88 He responds: ‫לא אני מתאונן על משה בלבד אלא עליו ועל ישראל שהרבה פעמים הכעיסוני וכעסתי עליהם‬ .‫ועמד בפרץ לפני להשיב חמתי מהשחיתם‬ I mourn not just for Moses, but for Israel as well. For many a time they provoked Me to anger, and he stood against Me in the breach to avert My destructive wrath.89

Another passage has Joshua cite Ps 12:2, the verse cited in the Mishnah and used by our payyetan: ‫… וכשבקש יהושע רבו ולא מצאו היה בוכה ואומר “הושיעה ה’ כי גמר חסיד כי פסו אמונים‬ ”.‫מבני אדם‬

85 The midrashic meaning of ‫אמונה‬, on this reading, plays on its plain sense (i. e., “steady”). Good Mekhilta texts prefer ‫ אמנה‬to ‫ ;אמונה‬the latter is used here because the biblical text is cited and explained. 86 Via Ps 106:23: ‫ויאמר להשמידם לולי משה בחירו עמד בפרץ לפניו להשיב חמתו מהשחית‬. Cf. also, to l. 9, Exod. Rab. 21:3: ‫מה תצעק אלי הה"ד והיה טרם יקראו ואני אענה‬. 87 Midrash Tanhuma (Jerusalem: Eshkol, n.d), Va’ethanan, no. 5 (vol. 2, p. 859); Midrash Tanhuma haqadum vehayashan, ed. Solomon Buber (Vilna: Romm, 1885), Va’ethanan, no. 6. This passage is cited in Yochanan Muffs’s impressive essay on prophetic intercession (Love & Joy: Law, Language and Religion in Ancient Israel [New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1992], 9–48, at p. 33), which is appropriately entitled, “Who Will Stand in the Breach?” Muffs connects the clause ‫ ומי יעמוד במלחמתן של בני‬with Ezek 13:5: ‫הוה‬-‫לעמד במלחמה ביום י‬, which he calls “war … with God Himself,” waged through prayer. 88 ‫ ובמותו שלך הוא‬,‫בחייו של משה שלך הוא‬. That is, Moses will remain God’s intimate even in death. Goldin, Studies in Midrash, 185, renders ‫במותו שלך הוא‬, “even in death he’s still … in Your service.” I’m not sure what “service” he had in mind. 89 Tanhuma, Va’ethanan, 5 (vol. 2, p. 859); Tanhuma, ed. Buber, Va’ethanan, 6.

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… And when Joshua sought his master and could not find him he cried: “Help, O Lord for the godly are no more, the faithful have vanished from among men” [Ps 12:2].90 ***

I have argued that our piyyut reflects an otherwise unattested understanding of the Mishnah’s ‫ אנשי אמנה‬as reliable intercessors. It seems to have achieved quasi-canonical status by the end of the preclassical period, so when tastes changed, various attempts were made to “upgrade” it to the new norms. Its nontalmudic understanding of the Mishnah’s ‫ אנשי אמנה‬as dependable intercessors lends further support to the piyyut’s antiquity.91 That understanding probably reflects early tradition. It accords well with the larger context of historical decline lamented in the Mishnah and makes good sense of the Mishnah’s use of Psalm 12:2 as a prooftext. It also helps us decipher the Mekhilta’s exegesis of Moses’s (second) ‫יד אמונה‬. So there is a good chance it preserves the Mishnah’s original sense. But besides shedding light on particular passages, our piyyut illustrates a broader programmatic point: that talmudic literature and early piyyut can be mutually illuminating and should be studied together.92

90 Deut. Rabbah 11:10 (end). This midrash may be behind the curious marginal gloss to our piyyut (Saint Petersburg, National Library, MS Evr. IIA 908, kindly brought to my attention by the late Amos Dodi) that identifies its author as “Joshua son of Nun”! 91 ‫ אנשי אמנה אבדו‬influenced another piyyut, ‫( אנשי חסד נאספו‬published by Haberman, “Ancient Poems,” 54–55) that is itself an unrhymed alphabetic acrostic. Although that piyyut bemoans generational decline in general terms (‫ זכות בדור אין‬,‫ הצדיק אבד ואסף‬,‫)גמר חסיד מן הארץ‬, our piyyut’s focus on the loss of intercessors has left its mark: ‫ טלטלו גודרי גדר‬,‫( חדלו עומדי בפרץ‬and on the thematic, if not linguistic, level, ‫ ; ְּפנֵ ה כי אין מפגיע‬see Isa 59:16 and y. Ber. 5:2, 9b). That piyyut may reflect a different understanding of the Mishnah. Its lines, ‫ דוברי אמונה‬,‫גמר חסיד מן הארץ‬ ‫פסו‬, allude to Ps 12:2: ‫הושיעה ה’ כי גמר חסיד כי פסו אמונים מבני אדם‬, with the Mishnah’s citation quite possibly in mind. If so, the author understood ‫ אנשי אמנה‬to be ‫דוברי אמונה‬, truth speakers. Some of his other lines repeat this theme; e. g., ‫ לא תוכל לבוא נכחה‬,‫כשלה ברחוב אמת‬. A poem by the ninth-century Italian payyetan Zevadyah also betrays the influence of our poem: ‫חסרו אנשי‬ ‫ יודעים לעתר ולהשיב חימה‬,‫ טורדו עומדים כחומה‬,‫ ;אמנה‬see The Poems of Zebadiah (in Hebrew), ed. Yonah David (Jerusalem: Achshav, 1971), 36–37. 92 Saul Lieberman observed that Yannai’s themes are often parallel to, but never derivative of Amoraic literature. Lieberman also remarked that Yannai’s piyyutim ought rightfully “to stand” (presumably on scholars’ bookshelves) alongside the Talmud and classical midrashim; see his “H  azzanut Yannai,” in Studies in Palestinian Talmudic Literature (in Hebrew) (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1991), 152. Preclassical piyyutim are less “intertextual,” but when they do intersect with talmudic sources their interpretive potential is especially significant.

Joseph Yahalom

Early Rhyme Structures in Piyyut and Their Rhetorical Background

From the earliest period, parallelism has served as one of the outstanding structural devices in Hebrew poetry. It is discernible as a characteristic feature already in the Song of the Sea and the song of Ha’azinu, and afterward occurs in the elevated style of the Prophets and the Psalms. In the most basic form, the content of the first stich recurs in the second stich. The distinction between one parallel unit and the other becomes more salient when the idea introduced in the first stich is completed by the second, even as synonyms help to organize the poetic line and mark its borders. Consider for example the opening of Ha’azinu (Deut 32:1): ‫ ותשמע הארץ אמרי פי‬/ ‫האזינו השמים ואדברה‬ Give ear, O heavens, let me speak; / Let the earth hear the words I utter!1

With the words “the words I utter” in the second stich, the meaning of the first stich is completed, while “let … hear” echoes “give ear,” and “earth” parallels “heavens.” In the postbiblical period, the parallel stichs came to be structured, additionally, by stress. In the famous tetrameter line, each of the two stichs consists more or less of four stressed words, which group into two hemistichs of two stresses each. ‫ ליוצר בראשית‬/ ‫ לתת גדולה‬// ‫ לאדון הכול‬/ ‫עלינו לשבח‬ ‫ כמשפחות האדמה‬/ ‫ ולא שמנו‬// ‫ כגויי הארצות‬/ ‫שלא עשנו‬ Praise we must / the Lord of all, // and magnify / him who crafted at first, That he didn’t make us / like the peoples of the lands // and didn’t deem us / like the families of the earth.

The above lines open the famous Teqi‘ata debe Rav (ca. third century CE). ’El ’Adon, from the Sabbath Yoser, is very similarly structured, but further ornamented by an alphabetical acrostic composed of the initial letter of each stich. The poem thus

* Translated by Tzvi Novick (to the words “behind every birth”) and Gabriel Wasserman. 1 All biblical translations are from the NJPS.

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runs eleven lines. The following couplet, encompassing the letters pe, tsade, qoph, and resh, describes the creation of the luminaries. ‫ לזכר מלכותו‬/ ‫ צהלה ורנה‬// ‫ נותנים לשמו‬/ ‫פאר וכבוד‬ ‫ צורת הלבנה‬/ ‫ ראה והתקין‬// ‫ ויזרח אור‬/ ‫קרא לשמש‬ Glory and honor / they render to his name, // and joyous shouting / to his kingship’s fame. He called to the sun / and it shone light. // He saw and affixed / the shape of the moon.

The internal division of the stich in the tetrameter line allowed poets to introduce two independent parallelisms in a single poetic line, the first made up of the two hemistichs of the first stich, and the second, of the two hemistichs of the second stich. The enlarged conceptual capacity of such lines especially served the needs of ambitious narrative genres such as the Day of Atonement ‘Avodah. Indeed, the doubly parallelistic line was employed by the first payyetan known by name, Yose b. Yose, in his ‘Avodah poems. As something like an introduction to their account of the high priest’s service in the temple on the Day of Atonement, these wide-ranging poems recount the story of the creation, the patriarchal succession, Israel’s election, and finally the election from among Israel of one holy tribe, whose holiest representative carries out in the holy place the holiday service that is the ‘Avodah’s topic. When Yose b. Yose arrives at the account of the creation of the luminaries, it is important to him to emphasize their fixed, ordered progress, together with the famous divergence, also fixed from the first, when Joshua, Moses’s attendant (Exod 33:11), constrained their progress in the Amalekite War (Josh 10:12). Before he soars into the future, in the first line the poet is compelled to tunnel back to the distant past, to the primordial light that preceded the creation of the luminaries on the fourth day. Only after God concealed this primordial light (Isa 30:26) did the time arrive for the lamps—the sun and the moon. The first two stichs stand in a relation of contrastive parallelism, although in fact the line describes a sequence of acts. A genuine parallelismus membrorum is preserved only in the third stich. ‫ּוב ָּליְ ָלה‬ ַ ‫ ִל ְמׁשֹול ַּבּיֹום‬/ ‫ וְ ָע ַרְך נֵ רֹות‬// ‫ אֹור ִׁש ְב ָע ַתיִ ם‬/ ‫ּגָ ַמר ְל ַה ֲע ִלים‬ ‫ימם ָּב ֵע ֶמק‬ ֵ ‫ יַ ְד ִמ‬/ ‫ ַעד ְמ ָׁש ֵרת א ֶֹהל‬// ‫ וְ ֶל ֶכת לֹא יְ ַא ֵחרּו‬/ ‫ּגְ בּול לֹא יַ ִּׂשיגּו‬ He finished concealing / the sevenfold light, // and arranged lamps / to rule by day and night, To trespass no boundary / nor postpone their progress // till the tent attendant / should stay them in the valley. (“’Azkir geburot”)2

2 Yose ben Yose: Poems, ed. Aharon Mirsky, 2nd ed. (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1991), 131.

Early Rhyme Structures in Piyyut and Their Rhetorical Background

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The departure from clear parallelism eventually led to the blurring of the boundary between one line and the next. One strategy that emerged for clarifying the boundary is anadiplosis, wherein the same word recurs at the end of one line and at the beginning of the next. In the following example, from the gimel couplet of an acrostic poem (“’Eten tehillah”), not only the first word of the first line but also the last must begin with a gimel, because the last word of the first line recurs as the first word of the second. Because poets do not waste words, the second instance of the enchaining word inevitably carries a different sense from the first, so that the two instances are not so much identical as homonymous. In our example, the first instance of “its bound” (gebulo) indicates territory or place, and the second, task or role. ‫ ִאיׁש ַעל ּגְ בּולֹו‬/ ‫ ּגָ דֹול וְ ָקטֹון‬// ‫ ְׁש ִב ֵיבי ְמאֹורֹות‬/ ‫ּגֶ יא ִה ְב ִהיק ְּבנֹוגַ ּה‬ ‫ ְל ָרץ ִּב ְמ ֵה ָירה ְּד ָברֹו‬/ ‫ּגֹודל ֵּתת‬ ֶ // ‫ ְּכ ִמנְ ַהג יֹום וָ ַליְ ָלה‬/ ‫ּגְ בּולֹו יַ ִּכיר‬ Earth he lit / with flaming luminaries: // the large one and the little, / each in its bound. Its bound each knows: / to direct day and night, // to magnify Him / of the swift-running word.3

The characterization of God as one whose word runs swiftly (after Ps 147:15) plays on the running of the luminaries that magnify and praise their creator. The next line begins, as it must, with “word,” here indicating God’s will: “His word multiplied eagles.” And so the poem continues, each time assigning the repeating word new connotations. Anadiplosis proved especially appropriate for the genre of penitential poems (selihah). Such poems are often constructed out of three-line stanzas, which would in the first place not have been well served by parallelism. The use of anadiplosis as an alternative way of marking line boundaries is illustrated by the following two stanzas from a selihah of the subgenre of “rebuke” (tokehah), from the Day of Atonement morning service.4 ‫ וְ ֶע ְׁשּתֹונֹות ֱאנֹוׁש‬/ ‫ ַס ְר ַע ֵּפי ֵלב‬/ ‫ַא ָּתה ֵמ ִבין‬ ‫ּומוֶ ת ַא ְח ִריתֹו‬ ָ / ‫ ְמח ָֹלל ְּב ָעֹון‬/ ‫ּתֹול ָעה‬ ֵ ‫ֱאנֹוׁש‬ ‫ וְ ַא ָּתה ַחי ְל ַב ֶּדָך‬/ ‫ וְ ִת ְקוָ תֹו ַל ֶה ֶבל‬/ ‫ַא ְח ִריתֹו ַל ָּמוֶ ת‬ ‫יחה‬ ָ ‫ּומ ְר ֶּבה ְס ִל‬ ַ / ‫ ַחּנּון וְ ַרחּום‬/ ‫את‬ ָ ‫ְל ַב ֶּדָך נִ ְק ֵר‬ ‫ וְ ָכל ַמ ֲע ָׂשיו ּב ֶֹׁשת‬/ ‫ ַמ ֲע ָל ָליו ֱאנֹוׁש‬/ ‫ַּב ֶּמה יְ זַ ֶּכה‬ ‫ ִריק וְ גַ ם ֶּב ָה ָלה‬/ ‫יָמיו‬ ָ ‫ ִּכי ָכל‬/ ‫ּב ֶֹׁשת ִמ ְפ ָע ָליו‬

3 Shalom Spiegel, The Fathers of Piyyut, ed. Menahem H. Shmelzer (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1996), 42. “The large one and the little” are the sun and the moon. The word ‫ איש‬is attested in a variant indicated ibid., and I have emended ‫“ רוץ‬to run” to ‫“ רץ‬running.” 4 Daniel Goldschmidt, ed., Mahzor layamim hanora’im lepi minhage ’Aškenaz lekol ‘anpehem (New York: Leo Baeck Institute, 1970), 298.

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‫ וְ ַא ָּתה ַחי ְל ַב ֶּדָך‬/ ‫רּוח יַ ֲחֹלפּו‬ ַ ‫ּוכ‬ ְ / ‫ֶּב ָה ָלה ֵה ָמה‬ ‫יחה‬ ָ ‫ּומ ְר ֶּבה ְס ִל‬ ַ / ‫ ַחּנּון וְ ַרחּום‬/ ‫את‬ ָ ‫ְל ַב ֶּדָך נִ ְק ֵר‬ You know / the heart’s thoughts / and the mind of mortals. Mortals are worms, / conceived in sin, / with death their end. Their end is death, / their hope is vain, / but living is none but you. None but you is called / gracious and merciful / and abundantly forgiving. How can mortals / justify their deeds, / whose acts are all shame? Shame are their doings / for all their days / are vain and empty. Empty are they, / passing as the wind, / but living is none but you. None but you is called / gracious and merciful / and abundantly forgiving.

In this instance the three lines of each stanza begin with the same acrostic letter, while the fourth line is a refrain. Here too one can distinguish between the different connotations of the repeated word, so that, for example, “mortals” at the end of the first line is bound up with the intellectual aspect of human beings, while the second instance at the beginning of the second line concerns the physical body. In an early composition for the New Year preserved in a Genizah fragment vocalized according to the Palestinian tradition, we find a different approach to demarcating the poetic line. This composition, designated according to the header for Musaf teqi‘ot, has each line begin and end with the same word.5 Below is the third poem, for the third blessing of the Amidah, which concerns the forefather Jacob. ‫ ֱהיֹות ַעם ָטהֹור‬/ ‫ יִ ֲח ָדם ְּכ ֶע ְרּכֹו‬// ‫ אֹום ִל ְת ִה ָיּלה‬/ ‫ָטהֹור ִסיּגֵ ל לֹו‬ ‫בּו[ּד]ת יְ ָקר‬ ַ ‫ ְּכ‬/ ‫]ס ָּתה ֶמיּנּו‬ ְ ‫[ח‬ ַ ‫ ִּכ ְמ ַעט‬// ‫ ִּכי ָח ַׁשק ְּב ָאב‬/ ‫יְ ָקר ִהינְ וָ ום‬ ‫ ְׁשמֹו ִל ְפנֵ י ֵכס‬/ ‫ּומ ָאז‬ ֵ ‫ ָל ַעד‬// ‫ ְּבסֹוד ְּת ִהיּלֹות ָּתם‬/ ‫מֹוׁשבֹו‬ ָ ‫ֵּכס‬ The pure one treasured / a people for praise. // He distinguished them like him / to be a nation pure. With glory he adorned them / because he desired the father. // You almost denied him / the honorable glory. His seat’s base / is the assembled praise of the innocent one. // Forever and from then / his name is before the seat.

The first “pure” is a reference to God, the second to the people whom He chose. God crowned them with “glory” because of Jacob their father, who took the bless-

5 See Ezra Fleischer, Hebrew Liturgical Poetry in the Middle Ages (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1975), 285.

Early Rhyme Structures in Piyyut and Their Rhetorical Background

639

ing that was designated for his brother. The third line calls to mind the text always affixed to the third poem in the qedušta, namely: “And you, the holy, sit upon the praises of Israel” (Ps 22:4). God’s seat rests on the tributes uttered by Jacob, “the innocent one who sits in tents” (Gen 25:27), whose name is inscribed on the heavenly throne.6 The wordplay between the recurring words stands on the boundary between this world and the next world and the eschaton, between the holy and the profane. This pronounced rhetorical structure—a line beginning and ending with the same word—was deployed for various purposes in antiquity. In his Guide, written to teach believers how to respond to deniers and preserve Christian truth, Anastasius of Sinai tells of Muslims who, hearing of the birth of a god, conjure images of marriage, reproduction, even intercourse.7 The subject also arose in the synagogue. In the poem “’Adon nora’ot,” an ancient rešut for the ‘Avodah, the poet takes pains to emphasize that God had no need of a woman to bring Adam into the world. The repeating word, “help,” signifies in the first foot (and the second) a helpmeet—that is, a woman—and in the last foot, children to carry on one’s legacy. God, in short, produced helpers without help. ‫ּתֹולדֹות ְלָך ֵעיזֶ ר‬ ָ / ‫ וְ ֶה ֱע ַמ ְד ָּת ְּב ֻעּזְ ָך‬// ‫ ְל ֵעזֶ ר לֹא נֶ ְח ַב ְר ָּת‬/ ‫ֵעזֶ ר לֹא ְק ָד ְמָך‬ A help did not precede you. / To no help were you joined. // And you raised by your strength / children to help you.

The poet Yannai, who lived in the land of Israel before the Muslim conquest, adopted a similar approach. Yannai wrote compositions for the Sabbath morning Amidah in accordance with the (longer than) triennial cycle of the land of Israel. For the Sabbath to the seder of “When a woman produces seed and bears a male” (Lev 12:2), Yannai offers a theological take on the seder’s subject, birth. The Jewish God is not born of woman, and sired no child, but is nevertheless, mirabile dictu, behind every birth. ‫ ַא ָתה ְמיַ ֵלד‬/ ‫ וְ ָכל יְ ִליד ֵל ָידה‬// ‫הֹול ְד ָת‬ ַ ‫ּובן לֹא‬ ֵ / ‫ָאב ַּבל יְ ָל ָדְך‬ No father sired you, / and no son did you sire, // but everyone that is born of birth— / you bring about their birth. (beginning of piyyut 4)8 6 See Gen. Rab. 82:2; Shir. Rab. ad Song 2:9. (“At every praise of the holiness, blessed be He, uttered by Israel, the holiness, blessed be He, sits among them, as it is written, ‘and You, the holy, sit upon the praises of Israel.’”) 7 Anastasius of Sinai, Viae Dux, ed. Karl-Heinz Uthemann (Turnhout: Brespols, 1981), 169–70. 8 The Liturgical Poems of Rabbi Yannai, ed. Zvi M. Rabinowitz, vol. 1 (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University Press, 1985), 388.

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Characteristic of this contrastive structure is that the poet opens and closes it with words that have a strong connection to each other, whether in meaning or in sound, such that the contrast is surrounded by a rhetorical frame: ‫ ְּב ֵכן ֶּב ֶטן ָּבנִ ים ֶּת ְח ַסר‬// ‫רּוחת ָאב ָּת ִמיד‬ ַ ‫ְּב ֵאין ֲא‬ ‫נֹוח‬ ַ ‫ ֵּבית ָמ‬/ ‫ ֵאיפֹה נִ ְמ ָצא‬// ‫אֹור ַח ַּב ָּמלֹון‬ ֵ ‫ ְּכ‬/ ‫ֲאדֹון ַּביִ ת‬ With no continuous feast for the Father, // the belly of the children is lacking. The Master of the House / is like a wayfarer at a lodge; // where can we find / a house for resting? (Musaf for Yom Kippur, “Takfu ‘alenu,” lines 1–2)9

The interrogative word “where” clearly presents the unreasonable situation, and emphasizes the question: if the “Master of the House” is a wayfarer at a lodge, how is there any hope for the guests in the lodge—the universe—to find any tranquility, any “house for resting”? We see the same contrast in the first line, albeit without the interrogative word: if the father has no meals, for the temple sacrifices are no more, how is there any hope for us children to fill our bellies? A eulogy attributed by the Babylonian Talmud to Bar Qippoq, who was commissioned by Rav Ashi (b. Mo‘ed Qat. 25b), makes use of three similes from the same field, constructed in accordance with the qal wahomer (a fortiori) argument. If death has conquered the life of a great saint, all the more so do simple people such as us have no hope to escape from it. The rhetorical structure is emphasized by the words mah ya‘aśu, “what can they do?,” at the beginning of the second stich of each line: )‫יג‬:‫טז; מ''א ה‬:‫זֹובי ַה ִּקיר (אי' א‬ ֵ ‫ ֲא‬/ ‫ ַמה ּיַ ֲעׂשּו‬// ‫ נָ ְפ ָלה ַׁש ְל ֶה ֶבת‬/ ‫ִאם ַּב ֲא ָרזִ ים‬ )‫כה‬:‫טו; איוב מ‬:‫ ְּדגֵ י ְר ָקק (חב' א‬/ ‫ ַמה ּיַ ֲעׂשּו‬// ‫וע ָלה‬ ֳ ‫ ְּב ַח ָּכה ָה‬/ ‫יָתן‬ ָ ְ‫ִלו‬ )‫ג‬:‫כא; יר' יד‬:‫ ַמיִ ם ּגֵ ִבים (שמ' יד‬/ ‫ ַמה ּיַ ֲעׂשּו‬// ‫ נָ ְפ ָלה ַח ָּכה‬/ ‫ׁשֹוטף‬ ֵ ‫ְּבנַ ַחל‬ If among the cedars / flames have fallen; // what can / the weeds on the wall do? (cf. Lam 1:16; 1 Kings 5:13) The Leviathan / has been pulled up with a hook; // what can / the fish in the muck do? (cf. Hab 1:15; Job 40:25) In the raging stream / a hook has fallen; // what can / the puddles of water do? (cf. Exod 14:21; Jer 14:3)

9 Goldschmidt, Mahzor layamim hanora’im, 492.

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We see a similar metaphorical rhetoric in the eulogies recited by the women in Luke 23:31, when Jesus is being led to his crucifixion. In their lament, they say that if this is what happens to supple wood, all the more so to dry wood: ‫ ְמנָ א נֶ ְהוֵ א‬/ ‫יׁשא‬ ָ ‫ ִּב ֵיב‬// ‫ ָה ֵלין ָע ְב ִדין‬/ ‫יסא ְר ִט ָיבא‬ ָ ‫ְּד ִאן ְּב ִק‬ If with the supple wood / they do thus; // with the dry one / what will be?

This lone line very well might be merely the opening of a longer eulogy, like the one that the Babylonian Talmud cites in the name of Bar Qippoq. In each case, the items that are being compared are named at the beginning and end of the line. “Cedars … weeds on the wall”; “Leviathan … fish in the muck”; “Raging stream … puddles of water”; and, in the Gospel, “Supple wood … dry wood.”10 The metaphors of the raging waters and the moistness of the wood naturally belong to the world of the Galilee and the landscape around its lake, the Kinneret; the world of the fishermen was also the home of the first Christians, in northern Palestine. When Bar Qippoq said his words of eulogy in a Babylonian urban setting, they were harshly criticized. According to Rav Avin, it is unthinkable to describe the death of righteous people by using depictions of fishhooks and fires, as if such a death could be described as a mere accident: “Heaven forfend that I would speak of fishhooks and flames when referring to the righteous.” Rav Avin suggests his own alternative, where he, too, uses eloquent words—truly excellent rhetoric: ‫ וְ ָאנּו ַל ֲאנָ ָחה‬/ ‫נּוחה‬ ָ ‫ ֶש ִהיא ִל ְמ‬// ‫ וְ לֹא ָל ֲא ֵב ָדה‬/ ‫ְּבכּו ָל ֲא ֵב ִלים‬ Cry for the mourners / and not for the loss; // for it goes to rest, / but we to anguish.

The dead person is called “the loss” (’abedah), which associates it phonetically with the word “mourners” (’abelim). The first stich serves the same function that a biblical verse serves at the beginning of a homily; and the second stich concludes the homily with two rhyming words, “rest” (menuhah) and “anguish” (’anahah), which relate to the words in the first stich in a chiastic pattern, ABBA: mourners—dead—rest—anguish. We find a similar phenomenon in the prayer Nahem, “Comfort the Mourners of Zion,” for the Ninth of Av: ‫ּׁשֹומ ָמה‬ ֵ ‫ וְ ַה ְּבזּויָ ה וְ ַה‬/ ‫ ָה ֲא ֵב ָלה וְ ַה ֲח ֵר ָבה‬// ‫ וְ ֶאת ָה ִעיר‬/ ‫רּוׁש ַליִ ם‬ ָ ְ‫וְ ֶאת ֲא ֵב ֵלי י‬ ‫יֹוׁשב‬ ֵ ‫ּׁשֹומ ָמה ֵמ ֵאין‬ ֵ ‫ וְ ַה‬/ ‫בֹודּה‬ ָ ‫ וְ ַה ְּבזּויָ ה ִמ ְּכ‬// ‫יה‬ ָ ‫עֹונֹות‬ ֶ ‫ וְ ַה ֲח ֵר ָבה ִמ ְּמ‬/ ‫יה‬ ָ ֶ‫ָה ֲא ֵב ָלה ִמ ְּב ִלי ָבנ‬ And the mourners of Jerusalem / and the city, [which is] // mourning and destroyed, / and spurned and desolate,

10 Thanks to Professor M. Kister for drawing my attention to this instance.

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Mourning for lack of her children, / and destroyed of her habitations, // and spurned from her glory, / and desolate, with no residents.11

In a similar manner, the poet Yannai, the first to use rhyme in Hebrew poetry, concludes the fifth poem in his sequence of poems for the Sabbath reading of the Torah portion “The world all spoke one language” (Gen 11:1), the story of the Tower of Babel, in the Palestinian cycle of reading the Pentateuch. Yannai closes this homiletical poem with the following words: ‫ וְ לֹא ָׁש ְכנּו ָב ָא ֶרץ‬/ ‫ וְ לֹא גָ עּו ַל ָּׁש ַמיִ ם‬// ‫ּוב ָא ֶרץ‬ ָ ‫ ַּב ָּׁש ַמיִ ם‬/ ‫ׁשּותם‬ ָ ‫יָ זְ מּו ֵתת ְר‬ They plotted to impose their dominion / on both heaven and earth; // they did not reach heaven, / nor did they dwell on earth. (poem 5, line 10)12

The generation of the Tower strove to rule not only over earth but also over heaven; not only did they not reach heaven, but they were prevented even from settling the earth. Yannai makes a similar contrast in poem 5 of his composition for the Torah portion “When you sell real estate … it will be only until the Jubilee year” (Lev 25:14). He concludes the ninth line of the poem with a series of four nouns, which he elaborates and explains in the tenth line, thus ending the poem. (In Yannai’s compositions, the fifth poem always contains ten lines, and thus is called ‘aśiriyyah, “decad.”) ‫חֹו[פׁש וְ ֵחרּו]ת‬ ֶ / ‫ יֵ ַׁשע ְּודרֹור‬// ‫י[ֹוב]ל ְל ָכל ָּפנִ ים‬ ֵ ‫ ָהיָ ה‬/ ‫טֹוב ְמאֹד‬ ‫ וְ ֵחרּות ַל ָּב ִּתים‬/ ‫חֹופׁש ַל ָּׂשדֹות‬ ֶ // ]‫[ּׁשבּויִ ים‬ ְ ‫ ְּדרֹור] ַל‬/ ‫ׁשּועה ַל ֲענִ ּיִ י[ם‬ ָ ְ‫י‬ Very good / was the Jubilee for all people, // freedom and liberty, / release and discharge— Freedom for the poor, / liberty for the captive, // release for the fields, / and discharge for the houses. (poem 5, lines 9–10)13

The development of rhetoric, and its diffusion as part of the spiritual life of Palestine, earned it a distinguished place in the field of poetry as well. The poetic line became a boxing arena for ideas. Homiletical devices, such as qal wahomer (a fortiori argument), gezerah šawah (argument based on the use of the same word in two 11 See Aharon Mirsky, Origin of Forms of Early Hebrew Poetry (in Hebrew) (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1989), 81. 12 Poems of Yannai, Rabinowitz, 1:113, poem 5, line 10. 13 Poems of Yannai, Rabinowitz, 1:473.

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passages), and middah keneged middah (measure for measure), were now being expressed, for the first time, in poetry. Thus, we see the emergence of tetrameter lines that open and close not only with the same words (homonyms), nor with words of equivalent meaning (synonyms) and opposite meaning (antonyms, such as in Bar Qippoq’s eulogy), but also words whose sole connection is aural similarity; yet the poet, in his special way, was able to use the rhetoric of his poetry to associate them. This new development shows its traces not only in eulogies, but also in early selihot poems, which use contrast and aural rhetoric to emphasize the sorry state of the Jewish people. In the early selihah “’En lanu kohen gadol,” attributed to Yose b. Yose, the second stich of each line is set off from the first stich with the interrogative word “how” (’ek). In addition, the two stichs scream out with prominent repetitions of certain sounds. In the alphabetical acrostic the pair of lines beginning with the letter samek depends entirely on plays with sibilant sounds. The fine flour (solet) of the temple shewbread is gone, and the poet asks how we can make this flour while the highways (mesillot) to the temple lie desolate. Similarly, in the second line, he mourns that the incense spices (sammim), which the priest used to take by the handful in the temple, are no more; and how can we make these spices, when we are crushed (humasnu) by taxes (missim): ‫ וְ נִ ְל ַּכ ְדנּו ַּב ְמ ִסּלֹות‬/ ‫סֹולת‬ ֶ ‫ וְ ֵאיְך נְ יַ ֶּפה‬// ‫ ִמ ֵּס ֶדר ַחּלֹות‬/ ‫סּוּל ָפה‬ ְ ‫סֹולת‬ ֶ ‫הּומ ְסנּו ְב ִמ ִּסים‬ ַ ְ‫ ו‬/ ‫ וְ ֵאיְך נַ ַעׂש ַס ִּמים‬// ‫ ִמ ְּמלֹוא ָח ְפנַ יִ ם‬/ ]‫הּוסר[ּו‬ ְ ‫ַס ִּמים‬ The fine flour (solet) has been ruined (sullepah) / leaving no arrangement (seder) of loaves, // So how can we make nice fine flour (solet), / when we are entrapped on the highways (mesillot)? The spices (sammim) have been removed / from the fistful measure, // So how can we make spices (sammim) / when we are crushed (humasnu) by taxes (missim)? (“’En lanu kohen gadol,” lines beginning with samek)14

In a similar play with sounds, and the same rhetorical structure, the poet devotes the line of the letter qoph to the sacrifice (qorban) that is no more, the lost chamber of sacrificial lambs in the temple: The sacrifice (qorban) is no more, / no more lambs for the sacrifice (qorban), // So how can we bring a sacrifice (qorban), / when Salem [Jerusalem] is in ruin (hurban)? (ibid., line qoph)15

14 Yose ben Yose: Poems, 214 f. 15 Yose ben Yose: Poems, 216.

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Joseph Yahalom

In addition to the repeated occurrence of the motif word qorban at the ends of the hemistichs, it is important to the poet to close the line as a whole with a word that sounds like the motif word, namely hurban. He uses the same device in the line beginning with the letter lamed: the motif word is lebonah, “frankincense,” and he uses the epithet “beautiful as the moon [lebanah]” (from Song 6:10) to describe the Jewish people. In the first stich, the poet bewails the temple, which is called “the hill of frankincense [lebonah]” (Song 4:6) and “the forest of Lebanon [lebanon]” (1 Kgs 7:2, b. Yoma 39b), for there is no more frankincense being offered there; and in the second stich, he mournfully asks how it is possible any more, without frankincense, to whiten (lelabben) and adorn the Jewish people, who, though beautiful as the moon, has become disheveled: ‫ יָ ָפה ַכ ְּל ָבנָ ה‬/ ‫לּוּבן ֵח ְטא‬ ַ ְ‫ וְ ֵאיְך י‬// ‫ ְּבגִ ְב ַעת ַה ְּל ָבנֹון‬/ ‫ְלבֹונָ ה לֹא ָע ִׂשינּו‬ We prepare no frankincense (lebonah) / in the hill of frankincense (lebanon); // So how can there be any whitening (yelubban) for the sin / of the one beautiful as the moon (lebanah). (ibid., line lamed)16

The style of these lines is characterized by plays of comparison, metaphor, and metonymy of various types; these create associations between diverse words and aid the poet’s efforts to use sound to convince his audience. It is not at all astonishing that the aural side of this poetry grew more and more important over the course of the genre’s development. The first Hebrew liturgical poet to use rhyme was Yannai. His rhymes are usually strophic, that is, they change from stanza to stanza, unlike the monorhymed Arabic poetry that is roughly contemporaneous with him, where a single rhyme runs through the entire poem. We can see how Yannai’s rhetorical effects can be traced back to the earlier poetry. Beyond this, his use of rhyme can be seen in the breadth of its sounds, for it reaches beyond the final syllables of lines, spreading throughout the line. In a number of places, Yannai’s rhyme is based on—and expands—the unorganized sound plays of his great predecessor, Yose b. Yose. Yannai wrote his ‘aśiriyyah for the Sabbath of the Torah portion “When you have come into the land of your habitations, which I give unto you, you shall make an offering by fire unto the Lord” (Num 15) following Yose b. Yose’s method in the selihah “’En lanu kohen gadol,” which we have discussed above. In a string of lines, Yannai presents the problematic nature of various commandments, such as the fire offering, in his day, because it is impossible

16 Cf. a similar usage in a line by Yannai, The Liturgical Poems of Rabbi Yannai, ed. Zvi M. Rabinowitz, vol. 2 (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University Press, 1987), 204: “At the time of the keseh (New Moon), / when the moon is concealed, // to cover over the sin / of the one beautiful as the moon.”

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to perform them. Some of the wordplays are already familiar to us from Yose b. Yose’s poems, but Yannai brings them to particular heights in the last line of his ‘aśiriyyah. The ‘aśiriyyah poem, in all of Yannai’s compositions, is built on a truncated alphabetical acrostic (only the letters aleph through yod), and stands out from all the other elements of the sequence in its structured homiletical course, which leads to a well-crafted conclusion that makes up for the truncation of the alphabetical acrostic. The consistent rhyme also makes it unnecessary to repeat the rhetorical word “and how” at the beginning of the even-numbered stichs (as Yose b. Yose did): ‫זֹוב ַח‬ ֵ ‫ נִ זְ ַּבח‬/ ‫ וְ ַעל ַה ִּמזְ ֵּב ַח‬// ‫ּבֹוח‬ ַ ְ‫ ָאנָ ה נִ יז‬/ ‫עֹולה וָ זֶ ַבח‬ ָ ‫ֵּדי‬ ]‫י[ֹוׁשב ֶח ֶדר‬ ֵ ‫ וְ נִ גְ ָלה‬/ ‫[ס ֶד]ר‬ ֵ ‫ וְ נִ גְ ַּדע‬// ‫ וְ ֵאין ְל ַה ְפלאֹות נֵ ֶדר‬/ ‫הּופ ַרץ ּגֶ ֶדר‬ ְ ‫ֵהן‬ ----------‫ ִא ֵּׁשי ָב ָקר וָ צֹאן‬/ ‫ וְ ָאנָ ה יִ ְהיּו ְל ָרצֹון‬// ‫ ִמזְ ֵּב ַח ַה ִחיצֹון‬/ ‫יּמאּו ַעם ָלצֹון‬ ְ ‫ִט‬ ‫ וְ ָכל ַהר יּוגְ ָּבן‬/ ‫ ַעד ֲא ֶׁשר ִּת ָיּבן‬// ‫]ק ִריב ָק ְר ָּבן‬ ְ ַ‫ וְ ֵא[יְך נ‬/ ‫חּור ָּבן‬ ְ ‫יְ ֵפה נֹוף‬ Sufficient burnt offerings and sacrifices (zebah) / where can we offer (nizboah), // While on the altar (mizbeah) / is sacrificed the sacrificer (zobeah)? Lo, the fence is ruptured (geder), / and no dedication can be made of devotion offering (neder), // Hewed down is the order (seder), / and exposed has been the One dwelling in the chamber (heder). … Profaned by the scornful people (‘am lason) / is the outer altar (mizbeah hahison), // So where can be favorable (lerason) / fire offerings of cattle and sheep (son)? The beautiful landscape is desolate (hurban), / and how can we offer a sacrifice (qorban), // Until it is built (tibban), / and every mountain is lowered (yugban). (Piyyut 5, lines 4–5, 9–10)17

The interrogative and negative words—“where?,” “and where,” “and how,” “and no”—emphasize the rhetorical structure, even though they are not in fixed position, as Yose b. Yose had them. The cultic service in the temple in Jerusalem, the beautiful landscape (cf. Ps 48:3), and the sacrifices that used to be offered on the outside altar in the temple courtyard have been disrupted, and even the Divine Presence in the holy of holies, the inner chamber, has gone into exile— so how can it be possible to fulfill the commandment to bring fire offerings? At the conclusion of the poem, Yannai brings this all to its climax, when he says that one must hope and wait until the temple is rebuilt, and the Temple Mount will be high and prominent over all other peaks, which will be embarrassed and lowered, such that they look like hunchbacks (yugban, from the word gibben,

17 Poems of Yannai, 2:54–55, with corrections and suppletions from MS Cambridge T-S Misc 29/26.

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“hunchback”). Thus the poet brings the depressing situation of the destruction to a positive ending. Plays on the words hurban and qorban are already familiar to us from Yose b. Yose’s selihah, but Yannai, too, cannot pass them up. He also uses them in another place, the conclusion of his ‘aśiriyyah for the Torah portion of Noah’s ark. Here he tells about how Noah left the ark, and understood that when God had told him to bring more ritually clean animals than ritually unclean animals, it was a hint that he should bring sacrifices to God from the ritually clean animals, for God would restore the world for him after its destruction (hurban). The poet’s own thinking on this issue has clearly invented the epithet for God, “the One who restored the world for him from its destruction,” and it allows the poet, in the elaborate conclusion of the poem, to creatively associate between God’s deeds and the thanksgiving offering that Noah was offering to him: ‫חּור ָּבן‬ ְ ‫עֹולם ֵמ‬ ָ / ‫ ִל ְמ ַח ֵּדׁש לֹו‬// ‫ ְל ַה ְק ִריב ָק ְר ָּבן‬/ ‫יָ ָצא וַ ּיִ ְמ ָצא ִמ ֶּמּנָ ה‬ He left [the ark], and found from it, / to offer a sacrifice (qorban), // for the One who restored for him / the world from destruction (hurban). (Piyyut 5, line 10)18

In another poem, on the passage of the adulterous wife (sotah) in Numbers 5, Yannai describes the woman’s punishment in accordance with the Mishnah (Sotah 2:1): “Just as she acted like an animal, so must her offering [of barley, rather than wheat] be animal food.” However, among other things, he continues with formulations that survive only in texts that postdate him, which describe the actions of the priest as corresponding to the acts of the adulteress: “He then brings an Egyptian rope, and ties it above her breasts, in order to remind her that her deeds are like those of [the lechery of] Egypt.”19 Yannai’s formulation is very similar: ‫ ַמ ֲא ַכל ְּב ֵה ָמה‬/ ‫ ָק ְר ָּבנָ ּה יְ ִהי‬// ‫ ַמ ֲע ֵׂשה ְּב ֵה ָמה‬/ ‫ּגַ ם ְּכמֹו ָע ָׂשת‬ ‫ ְּב ֶח ֶבל ִמ ְצ ִרי‬/ ‫יה‬ ָ ֶ‫ יֶ ֱאזֹור ָמ ְתנ‬// ‫ ְּכ ַמ ֲע ֵׂשה ִמ ְצ ִרי‬/ ‫ַּד ְר ָּכּה נָ ֲהגָ ה‬ Just as her behavior / was that of an animal, // so shall her sacrifice be / food of an animal. She acted / like the actions of an Egyptian; // so he belts up her loins / with Egyptian rope. (Piyyut 5, lines 3–4)20

18 Poems of Yannai, Rabinowitz, 1:94. 19 Midrash Hagadol on Num. 5:18 (ed. Rabinowitz, 58); and cf. Mirsky, Origin of Forms of Early Hebrew Poetry, 34–42. 20 Poems of Yannai, Rabinowitz, 2:23, with corrections from MS Adler 3446.3.

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Towards the end of the poem, Yannai seeks to demonstrate the horror of the onlookers in the temple courtyard when it is revealed that the suspected women is indeed an adulteress. In their cries, they supplement the priests’ actions in humiliating the woman, measure for measure, for the deeds of which she is suspected. The poet seeks to demonstrate this with the help of a sophisticated play on the sounds of the language that comes out of the onlookers’ mouths. To this end, he sets up a variegated play on sounds, which is entirely his own invention, in his wonderful conclusion to the ‘aśiriyyah: ‫ ְת ַט ֵּמא ָה ֲעזָ ָרה‬/ ‫ ֶט ֶרם ַעד לֹא‬// ‫יאּוה זֹו זָ ָרה‬ ָ ‫הֹוצ‬ ִ / ‫אמרּו‬ ְ ֹ ‫אּוה וְ י‬ ָ ‫יִ ְר‬ They see her and say: / Take her out, this strange woman! (hosi’uhah zo zarah) // [Immediately], when she has not yet / brought corpse impurity to the courtyard (ha‘azarah). (Piyyut 5, line 10)21

In this example, the cry to remove the impure woman from the pure temple courtyard is based on an especially great series of sound plays: –hah zo zarah and ha‘azarah. The sounds of the word ha‘azarah, the pure courtyard, on the one hand, are rhymed by the sounds of three words that indicate the impurity of the woman: the object suffix -hah, from the end of the word hosi’uhah; the deictic pronoun zo, “this”; and finally the adjective zarah, “strange.” Ultimately, the removal of the woman from the temple courtyard restores the holy, pure equilibrium to the world of the temple, and brings the poem to its positive ending. Just as in his description of punishment, so also in his descriptions of reward, Yannai considers it important to demonstrate the extent to which justice reigns in the universe, measure for measure. Phineas the zealot was rewarded with the priestly gifts—the foreleg, the cheeks, and the stomach of all slaughtered animals— as a reward corresponding to his deeds. Yannai discusses this, too, in an ‘aśiriyyah, in his composition for the Torah portion “Phineas” (Num 25:10). The ‘aśiriyyah dwells on specific details of Phineas’s acts, almost exactly in the order in which they are presented in the midrash Pirqe Rabbi Eliezer, which dates from after the Arab conquest, and whose author seems to have been familiar with Yannai’s work:22 Shimon and Levi were extremely zealous regarding lechery, for they said: “Will he make our sister like a harlot?” (Gen 34:31). Yet the chieftain of the Tribe of Shimon did not remember the deeds of his forefather, and did not rebuke the young men of Israel, but rather he himself publicly committed lechery with the Midianite woman. … Then Phineas saw that Zimri was publicly committing lechery with the Midianite

21 Poems of Yannai, Rabinowitz, 2:24. 22 Eliezer Treitl, Pirke de-Rabbi Eliezer: Text, Redaction and a Sample Synopsis (in Hebrew) (Jerusalem: Yad Ben Zvi, 2012), 262–66.

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woman, and he burned greatly with zealotry, and grabbed a spear out of Moses’s hand, and ran after [Zimri], and stabbed him from the back, through his penis, and the spear went straight through the woman’s vagina. Therefore, God gave him the forearm [of slaughtered animals]. [Phineas] used the strength of his arms to stab the sword into the ground, such that [the two stabbed individuals] were hanging on the top of the sword, the man above the woman. Therefore God gave him the stomach [of slaughtered animals]. The man’s cheeks became separated from the woman’s cheeks. Therefore, God gave [Phineas] the cheeks [of slaughtered animals] to eat, as it is written: And one must give the priest the foreleg, the cheeks, and the stomach (Deut 18:3). He arose properly to judge Israel, as it is written: Phineas stood and brought justice (Ps 106:30).23

Unlike all its sources, this text from Pirqe Rabbi Eliezer arranges the three items in the order forearm, stomach, cheeks24—the order in Yannai’s ‘aśiriyyah. The connection between the homilist and the poet is also evident in the rhetorical reach backwards in history, to the time of Jacob’s sons, who were zealous about lechery. The poet also departs from the flow of the story at the end of the poem, when he leads to the optimistic conclusion; rather than speaking of specific acts, he speaks of the prayer of Phineas the mighty warrior, who wails in tears as he prays. ‫ ְב ָדם ָה ַרג ָר ָמס‬/ ‫ וְ ִעיר ְׁש ֶכם ְּב ִקנְ ָאה‬// ‫ ָעט ְּכ ֵלי ָח ָמס‬/ ‫ָאז ֵמ ָאז ִׁש ְמעֹון‬ ‫יּטים ִעם זֹונָ ה‬ ִ ‫ ַב ִּׁש‬/ ‫ נְ ִׂשיא ִׁש ְבטֹו ֵאיְך זּוּנָ ה‬// ‫ ָעׂשּו ַה ְכזֹונָ ה‬/ ‫ַּב ֲעבּור ִּכי ֲאחֹותֹו‬ -------‫יצ ָמדּו‬ ְ ִ‫ וְ יַ ְח ָּדיו נ‬/ ‫יצ ָעדּו‬ ְ ִ‫ ְל ֵעין ּכֹל נ‬// ‫יצ ָּדדּו‬ ְ ִ‫ ַעד לֹא נ‬/ ‫זֹונֶ ה וְ זֹונָ ה‬ ‫רֹוע‬ ַ ְ‫ וְ נָ ַחל ְמנָ ת ז‬/ ‫רֹוע‬ ַ ְ‫ ְּוד ָק ָרם ְּב ֵחיל ז‬// ‫רֹוע‬ ַ ְ‫ ְּכ ִאיׁש ז‬/ ‫רֹוע ִּפינְ ָחס‬ ַ ְ‫ִחיּזֵ ק ז‬ ‫ וְ נָ ַחל ְמנָ ת ֵק ָיבה‬/ ‫רֹומח ְּב ֵק ָיבה‬ ַ ‫ וְ ִכיּוֵ וין‬// ‫ ַעל זָ ָכר וְ ַעל נְ ֵק ָבה‬/ ‫ּקּובה‬ ָ ‫ָטס ֶאל ַה‬ ‫ ְּבנָ אוּו ְל ָחיָ יִ ם‬/ ‫יּתן לֹו ְל ָחיַ יִ ם‬ ַ ִ‫ נ‬// ‫ וְ גָ ָעה ִב ְיל ָחיָ יִ ם‬/ ‫יַ ַען ִּכי ִפ ֵיּלל‬ Long ago, Shimon / girded violent weapons; // and the city of Shechem, with zealotry, / he slew and trampled, bloodily. Because of his sister, / whom they had treated like a harlot— // so how could the chieftain of his tribe commit harlotry / at Shittim, with a harlot?! …

23 Pirqe R. El., chapter 47, following MS New York JUTS 3847/8, which was written in Yemen in 1653. The manuscript serves as the base text in the Maagarim database of the Academy of the Hebrew Language. See Treitl, Pirke de-Rabbi Eliezer, 285. 24 Cf. Sifre Deuteronomy, Šoptim 165 (ed. Finkelstein, 215): “He gave him the foreleg, corresponding to the hand, as it is said: He arose from the congregation and took a spear in his hand; the cheeks, corresponding to his prayer, as it is said: Phineas stood and prayed; and the stomach corresponding to the innards, as it is said: And the woman, through her innards.” Cf. also b. H  ul.  134b.

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The adulterous man and woman, / before they departed, // in full view they marched, / and together they united. Phineas used the strength of his arm, / like a man of [strong] arm, // and speared them with the might of his arm, / and inherited the portion of the [slaughtered animals’] arm. He flew forward toward the chamber, / upon the male and the female, // and he directed the spear into the stomach, / and inherited the portion of the [slaughtered animals’] stomach. Because he had prayed / and wailed with his cheeks— // he was given the [slaughtered animals’] cheeks / from [the members of the nation called] beautiful of cheeks. (Piyyut 5, lines 1–2, 7–10)25

The poet uses the epithet “she whose cheeks are beautiful” for the Jewish people, in his marvelous conclusion to the poem that tells the ugly story of lechery. This epithet is among the nicest of the beautiful, pure descriptions that the lover in the canticle uses to describe his beloved: How comely are your cheeks in bangles, your neck in spangles (based on Song 1:10); it is particularly fitting to conclude the tale of filthy lechery with a reference to true beauty. The homilist in Pirqe Rabbi Eliezer seeks to make a story out of the order forearm-stomach-cheeks, and he associates all the priestly gifts with the body parts of the sinners, rather than with Phineas’s actions, as Yannai did. Yannai’s rhetorical technique is rooted in older Jewish liturgical writing. In the selihah “’Etan limmed da‘at / t erem lakol muda‘at,” the early anonymous poet seeks to defend his congregation in the merit of the Akedah, the binding of Isaac. In three successive lines, he connects the two stichs of his tetrameter line with the word “therefore” (laken), which stands at the beginning of each second stich. The petition is based on the assonance at the ends of the lines, which gives it more force. The fixed position of the word “therefore” marks this section of the poem, but not the poem as a whole; its effect is to make the two stichs of the line convey cause and effect: ‫יתה ְמ ַׁש ֶּכ ֶלת‬ ָ ‫ ִמ ִּמ‬/ ‫ ָל ֵכן זַ ְר ָעם ַּת ִּציל‬// ‫ וְ ָל ַקח ַמ ֲא ֶכ ֶלת‬/ ]‫[אז‬ ָ ‫ִמ ֵהר‬ ‫עֹולה וָ זֶ ַבח‬ ָ ‫ ְּכ‬/ ‫ ָל ֵכן ְּת ִפ ָּל ֵתנּו ִת ְר ֶצה‬// ‫ ְּכ ֶׂשה ַל ֶּט ַבח‬/ ‫נֶ ֱע ַקד יָ ִחיד‬ ‫ ַהּיֹום לֹא נִ ְת ַּבּיֵ ׁש‬/ ‫ ָל ֵכן ַּב ֲע ִמ ָיד ֵתנּו‬// ‫יהם ֵאׁש‬ ֶ ‫ וְ ִה ִּצית ֲע ֵל‬/ ‫ִס ֵּדר ֵע ִצים‬ He then hastened, / and took a knife (ma’akelet); // Therefore, may you rescue their offspring / from a bereaving death (mitah mešakelet). The only-begat son was bound, / like a lamb to slaughter (tebah), // 25 Poems of Yannai, Rabinowitz, 2:109; cf. Louis Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews, vol. 6 (Philadelphia, The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1946), 138, n. 801.

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Therefore, may you accept our prayer, / like a burnt offering or sacrifice (zebah). [Abraham] set up the wood, / and upon them he kindled fire (’eš), // Therefore, when we stand before you, / today, may we not be ashamed (nitbayyeš). (Printed in the Selihot service for the second weekday of repentance according to the Polish rite, § 58, lines mem – samek)26

In this case, the words are associated not merely by a disembodied commonality in sound, but also by a structural connection, which emphasizes, in a new and creative way, the equality between the consonantal rhymes that associate the words. Even the rhyme ’eš / nitbayyeš, which seems, on the surface, to be rather lame, is grounded by the assonance in previous syllables: ‘alehem ’eš / hayyom lo nitbayyeš. The rhyme associations should be viewed not only in terms of the exact rhymes at ends of lines, but also as part of the broader sound games, which penetrate deep into the poetic line. Thus, in the line beginning with the letter tet, the rhyming words are hananto / hašaqto (“you gave him favor” / “you desired him”), where the final syllables rhyme and the initial letters are alliterative, as well. In the line beginning with the letter vav, the word kabod, “glory,” and me’od, “very,” do not meet even the minimal standards of Hebrew syllable rhyme, for the first begins the syllable with bet (here pronounced [v]), and the second with aleph (the glottal stop)—yet if we look further back in the line, we see that me’od is harbeh me’od, “very much,” which has a bet in it (here pronounced [b]). The word li, “to me,” in the line beginning with zayin, also belongs to a more complex group of words, in which four words are involved, two in each stich: ‫ ׁש ֶֹרש וְ ָענָ ף ֵאין ִלי‬/ ‫זָ ַעק וְ ֵה ִׁשיב ַמה ִּת ֶּתן ִלי‬ [Abraham] cried, and responded: what will You give me? (titten li) / Root or branch— I have none (’en li).

Another area in which the old rhetorical roots of poetry can be seen is in clipped rhyme (harizat notariqon). In this kind of rhyme, one does not even need the final syllables of the lines to be identical. Thus, for example, words that end in an open syllable can rhyme with words that end in a closed syllable: yiš‘o / ša‘ar šim‘on, and wesalvim / ša‘ar levi. All these rhymes are unconcerned about the final consonant, or lack thereof.27 In Yannai’s poetry we find that the play on the dissected syllables of names penetrates deeper into the line. So for instance: “The nation whose name is ‘Jews’ [yehudim], / for to God’s name they give acknowledgment [yah 26 Selihot According to the Rite of Poland and Most Communities in the Land of Israel (in Hebrew), ed. Daniel Goldschmidt (Jerusalem: Mosad Harav Kook, 1965), 153. 27 Ezra Fleischer, “The Antiquity of Dew (and Rain) Poems: A Pre-Yannaitic Qerobah for Dew” (in Hebrew), Qoves ‘Al Yad 8 (1976): 137.

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modim]”; “In accordance with his name, Phineas [pinhas], / your glory turned and had mercy [hepen wehas]”;28 and “Moses who …was called Jekuthiel [yequti’el], / for he brought the children to hope in God [hiqwa la’el].”29 In poem 5 of a composition for the Sabbath Hahodesh (the Sabbath immediately preceding, or falling on, the first day of Nisan, the month of Passover), the poet makes a sophisticated homily on the names of the month of Nisan, the month of spring, the first of the months of the year, the month that is prominent and dignified:30 ‫חּוּסן‬ ַ ְ‫הּוׂשם ו‬ ָ / ‫יּסא‬ ָ ִ‫יסן ְלנֵ יס נ‬ ָ ִ‫ וְ נ‬// ‫ ֱהיֹות ָאב וְ ָח ִביב‬/ ‫ַהּנִ ְק ָרא ָא ִביב‬ It is called ’abib, / for it is a father (’ab) and beloved (habib); // And Nisan, for it is lifted up as a flag (lenes nissa’), / placed and strengthened (hussan).

The poem, in this intense homiletical activity, associates not only between words that do not rhyme perfectly, but even between words that do not sound similar at all, but are related semantically. The phenomenon of using two separate rhymes in a single poetic line is characteristic of this method. Thus, Yannai’s homiletical reading of Moses’s promise to the king of Edom, “we will not pass through field or vineyard, and we will not drink the water of the wells” (Num 20:17), follows the Palestinian Targum: “We will not rape betrothed maidens, nor will we fornicate with virgins, nor will we lie with married women.” In order to give his homily authentic color, Yannai strengthens the words of Scripture, which he is ostensibly citing, with the infinitive absolute forms, which are used for emphasis in Biblical Hebrew, and are quite characteristic of it, for they are absent in Mishnaic Hebrew: ‫ּומ ֶּל ֱאנֹוס ֲארּוסֹות‬ ִ / ‫ ִמ ְל ַפּתֹות ְּבתּולֹות‬// ‫ וְ ָרחֹוק נִ ְר ַחק ִמ ֶּכ ֶרם‬/ ‫ָחדֹול נֶ ְח ַּדל ִמ ָּׂש ֶדה‬ ‫ ְּב ֵמי ְב ֵאר‬/ ‫ ַה ְּבעּולֹות ֲא ֶׁשר ְמׁשּולֹות‬// ‫ימי ְב ֵאר‬ ֵ ‫ ִמ ֵּמ‬/ ‫יט ַעם‬ ְ ִ‫ָטעֹום לֹא נ‬ We shall surely refrain (hadol nehdal) from the field, / and surely keep far away (rahoq nirhaq) from the vineyard, // Not seduce virgins, / and not rape betrothed maidens. We shall surely not taste (ta‘om lo nit‘am) / of the waters of the wells— // The married women, who are compared / to the waters of a well. (Poem 5, lines 8–9)31

The synonyms “vineyard” and “field,” “virgins” and “betrothed women,” appear at the ends of the lines—thus serving the function of rhyming words, even though 28 Poems of Yannai, Rabinowitz, 2:143. 29 Poems of Yannai, Rabinowitz, 2:106. Cf. Jer 46:21. 30 The Poems of Yannai, ed. Menacheme Zulai (Berlin: Schocken, 1938), 394, and Spiegel, Fathers of Piyyut, 241. 31 Poems of Yannai, Rabinowitz, 2:85.

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they do not rhyme in sound! In this way, the poet succeeds in compressing two homiletical interpretations into a single line, while leaving the third homiletical interpretation for the next line, where he spreads the comparison over the two stichs, which allows him to be more explicit, and make it clear that we are dealing with a poetic metaphor. Yannai’s composition for the Torah reading “Take a staff from each of them” (Num 17:16) demonstrates how he can use all the various structural forms in a single poem. The basic homily is based on the contrast between Phineas and Korah, and between kingship and priesthood. The Torah’s double expression, “a staff, a staff from each family … a staff for each chieftain, a staff for each chieftain” (ibid., 17:21) is interpreted as meaning that two tribes have been chosen, that of Levi, for the priesthood, and that of Judah, the lion’s whelp, for the kingship. (The word matt eh, “staff,” also means “tribe” in Biblical Hebrew.) Let us look at a poem preceding the fifth, where the poet signs his name in the initial letters of the lines: ‫ ָּב ַח ְר ָּתה ַמּטֹות ְׁשנָ יִ ם‬/ ‫ ִּכי ִמ ָּכל ַמּטֹות‬// ‫ ִהזְ ַה ְר ָּתה ִּפי ְׁשנָ יִ ם‬/ ‫יַ ַחד ַמ ֶּטה ַמ ֶּטה‬ ‫לּוכה‬ ָ ‫ וְ זֶ ה ִל ְמ‬/ ‫ זֶ ה ִל ְכהּוּנָ ה‬// ‫הּוב ַחר ַמ ֵּטה ָל ִביא‬ ְ ְ‫ ו‬/ ‫נִ ְיב ַחר ַמ ֵּטה ֵלוִ י‬ ‫ וְ ָלזֶ ה ַמ ֶּטה‬/ ‫ ָלזֶ ה ַמ ֶּטה‬// ‫ ָאמּור ָּבזֶ ה‬/ ‫יַ ַען ִּכי ָכל ָאמּור ָּבזֶ ה‬ ‫ וְ יִ ְפ ַרח וְ יָ ִציץ‬/ ‫לּוכה‬ ָ ‫חֹוטר ְמ‬ ֶ ‫ יֵ ֵצא‬// ‫יציץ‬ ִ ‫ּופ ַרח וְ ֵה‬ ָ / ‫חֹוטר ְּכהּוּנָ ה‬ ֶ ‫יָ ָצא‬ )‫א‬:‫ככתוב ויצא חוטר מגזע ישי ונצר משרשיו יפרה (יש' יא‬ Together, “a staff, a staff,” (matteh), / You ordered, twice (šenayim) // For out of all the tribes (mattot), / You chose two tribes (mattot šenayim). Chosen was the tribe of Levi (levi), / and chosen was the tribe of the Lion (lavi’), // One for priesthood, / and one for kingship. For everything that was said about this one (bazeh) / was said [also] about this one (bazeh), // For this one, a staff (matteh), / and for this one, a staff (matteh). The rod of priesthood went forth, / and flowered and blossomed (hesis ) // So may the rod of kingship go forth, / and flower and blossom (yasis ). As it is written: A rod shall go forth from the stalk of Jesse, and a branch shall flourish from his roots (Isa 11:1). (Poem 3)32

In this poem, Yannai uses semantic rhyme (priesthood/kingship), regular soundbased rhyme (levi/lavi’), rhymes that cover only single stichs, and rhymes that cover entire lines. The words matt eh, “staff or tribe,” and hoter, “rod,” appear again and again here, no fewer than ten times, in different variations, sometimes rhyming, sometimes not. The text in the second stich of the second line (“one for priesthood,

32 Poems of Yannai, Rabinowitz, 2:67.

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and one for kingship”), behaves as a kind of scriptural proem that prepares the way for the homily in the fourth line. Having mentioned the priesthood and the monarchy, the poet now has something symmetrical to say about them in the lines that follow. Yet even within the second line, we can see the first stich as a sort of proem that prepares the homily for the second stich. The poem as a whole develops the theme of the double staffs, and the similarity between the two, and concludes with the hope that just as in the past, Aaron’s staff blossomed and produced flowers, so, in the future, the staff of kingship may blossom, in the person of the messiah. The tetrameter line poems originally served as an introduction to the Qedušah prayer; even when they were incorporated into a larger sequence of poems adorning the blessings of the Amidah prayer, Yannai still was careful to preserve the structure of the poems of his predecessors. The most prominent tetrameter line poem that ultimately received its place as the fifth in the qedušta sequence essentially consists of ten lines, with the acrostic of the first ten letters of the alphabet, aleph through yod, running through them. In Yannai’s sequence for the Torah portion “Take a staff from each of them,” which was discussed above, the climax of poem 5 is, characteristically, a pair of semantic “rhymes”: ‫ וְ יָ ָצא ַחי‬/ ‫הּובא ֵמת‬ ָ ‫ּומ ֵּטה ַא ֲהר ֹן‬ ַ // ‫ וְ יָ ְצאּו ֵמ ִתים‬/ ‫יְ ִל ֵידי ַא ֲהר ֹן ָּבאּו ַחּיִ ים‬ Aaron’s children entered alive / and came out dead, // but Aaron’s rod was brought in dead, / and came out alive. (Poem 5, line 10) 33

This early structure is also preserved in the early ’El ’Adon prayer, which is included in the morning prayers of the Sabbath preceding the Qedušat yoser; it, too, is made up of ten tetrametric lines, but it is not rhymed. Its acrostic covers the first twenty letters of the alphabet (through resh), for it contains an acrostic letter not only at the beginning of each line, but also at the beginning of each stich. A supplemental passage at the end, which diverges from the general rhythm of the poem (two stressed words in each hemistich) completes the alphabet: .‫ּקֹודׁש‬ ֶ ‫אֹופּנִ ים וְ ַחּיֹות ַה‬ ַ ְ‫ ִּת ְפ ֶא ֶרת ּוגְ ֻד ָּלה ְׂש ָר ִפים ו‬/ ‫נֹותנִ ים לֹו ָּכל ְצ ָבא ָמרֹום‬ ְ ‫ֶׁש ַבח‬ The whole host of heaven give Him praise; / the Seraphim and Ophannim and holy beings [give Him] glory and greatness.

In the qedušta sequences, too, there is a supplementary piece with an elevated rhythm that regularly accompanies piyyut 5 and completes its alphabet; it is pre-

33 Poems of Yannai, Rabinowitz, 2:69.

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served, through our own day, in the following form, which completes the alphabet through the letters mem to tav: ‫אֹותיו ִׂשיחּו ַס ְּפרּו ֻעּזֹו ָּפ ֲאמ‬ ָ ‫נֹור‬ ְ ‫עֹולם ֻּת ֲע ַרץ … ַמ ְלכּותֹו נֶ ַצח‬ ָ ‫ֵאל נָ א ְל‬ ‫ּתֹוקף ְּת ִהּלֹות ִּת ְפ ַא ְרּתֹו‬ ֶ ‫רֹוממּוהּו רֹון ִׁשיר ֶׁש ַבח‬ ֲ ‫רּוהּו ְצ ָב ָאיו ַק ְּדׁשּוהּו‬ O God, may You eternally be glorified … His kingship is eternal. / Speak of His awesome deeds, / tell of His might, / glorify Him, O his hosts. / Declare His sanctity and highness, / with melodious song [speak of] the strength of his glory.

This arrangement must be compatible with the work of another Palestinian poet, named Judah, whose acrostic in poem 5 reaches the letter lamed, and in this context it makes sense that the supplementary passage, cited above, begins with the next letter, mem, and not with the letter kaph.34 Formalistic attempts to define the rhyme of the payyetanim as “disrupted rhyme” ignore its historical roots. This thesis is rooted in Hebrew morphemics: every lexical morpheme in Hebrew is based on consonants, which are sometimes nonconsecutive, and thus, the thesis goes, payyetanic rhyme depends on the identity of two consonants from the lexical root, even if they are not consecutive— hence, “disrupted rhyme.” For example, scholars cite a stanza by Qallir, from the poem “’Eśśa’ de‘i lemerahoq,” where he rhymes: šanim / šenunim / me‘išunim / še‘unim.35 Aside from the pluralizing suffix -im and the consonant nun that opens the last syllable (thus forming -nim), each word also has a shin in its lexical root, earlier in the word, at various distances from the final syllable, and with various other consonants and vowels intervening; according to this thesis, the shin is part of the rhyme. Benjamin Harshav, the originator of the thesis, was aware that it is common in Yannai’s poetry for the same word, or very similar words, to appear at the end of all four lines of a quatrain. According to Harshav, this kind of rhyme is an easy rhyme, which does not require any effort; according to his notion this is why Qallir, unlike Yannai, rejected the method of using the same word at the end of each line. Yet in fact, there is no need to think that Qallir rejected anything about his distinguished predecessor’s method; rather, he distanced himself from the rhetorical roots of early rhyme. A specific problem for the formalistic thesis is the presence of verbs that contain only two audible root consonants. According to Harshav, in such a situation poets give up on the requirement to have two root consonants in the rhyme, and are content with one. Thus, he is left with the 34 Wout J. van Bekkum, ed., Hebrew Poetry from Late Antiquity: Liturgical Poems of Yehudah (Leiden: Brill, 1998), 18, 27, 60, 90, 97, 105, and 116. 35 Benjamin Harshav, The History of Hebrew Versification: From the Bible to Modernism (Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 2008), 56–59, and originally Harshav, “The Major Systems of Hebrew Rhyme from the Piyut to the Present Day (500 A. D. – 1970): An Essay on Basic Concepts,” Hasifrut 2 (1969–71): 721–61.

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following rule: “All audible consonants of a root, minus one, must be present in a rhyme.” According to our understanding, discussed above, it is all rooted in the old rhetoric, where even semantic rhymes are considered satisfactory. Various creative solutions to structural problems of tetrameter poems arose in the East. R. Sa‘adyah Gaon chose to write his Seder ha‘avodah for Yom Kippur, “’Elohim Yah miqedem,” in ana­diplosis—but the repeated words of the anadiplosis all end in the syllable -lim, and thus the other lines also rhyme with this syllable, such that the entire work is monorhymed. In addition, he chose to indicate the ends of stichs with the rhyme -nah. Thus, for the first time, we see a regular ABAB rhyme: // ‫ וְ ֵאין ְלנֶ גְ ּדֹו ְתמּונָ ה‬/ ‫ֹלהים יָ ּה ִמ ֶּק ֶדם‬ ִ ‫ֱא‬ ‫ ִמי ָכמֹוהּו ְּב ָכל ֵא ִלים‬/ ‫זּולתֹו ָּב ָרא‬ ָ ‫ֶא ֶפס‬ // ‫יתם ָקנָ ה‬ ָ ‫אׁש‬ ִ ‫תֹורה ְב ֵר‬ ָ ְ‫ ו‬/ ‫ֵא ִלים ְמ ָׁש ְר ָתיו ָאז‬ ‫ּובּה יְ סּופּון ָּב ִלים‬ ָ / ‫צּוריו‬ ָ ְ‫ֲא ֶׁשר ָּבּה יִ ְחיּו י‬ … ‫ָּב ִלים‬ God, Yah, from long ago, / with no image can represent Him (-nah), // Nothing aside from Him has done creation, / who is like Him among the gods (’elim)? Gods (’elim) served Him then, / and He created the Torah at their beginning (-nah), // By which His creatures should live, / and through which will end all the fables (balim). All that fade (balim) …36

Yet even this structure was not sufficient to fulfil Sa‘adyah’s desire for symmetry and sophistication; he built up the poetic line even further, turning it into a stanza. Thus, he chose to give each tetrameter line its own rhyme, which is determined by a kind of reverse anadiplosis, by which each stanza begins and ends with the same word, whose final syllable determines the rhyme that associates the two halves of the stanza. Moreover, the short units, which have become longer due to the exigencies of the complex structure, rhyme internally. Thus, rhyme has come to indicate the internal boundaries of the old poetic line, which is now no longer a mere line, but a whole stanza.

36 Siddur R. Saadja Gaon, ed. Israel Davidson, Simcha Assaf, and Issachar Yoel (Jerusalem: Mekise Nirdamim, 1963), appendix, “A collection of piyyutim that R. Sa’adya Gaon did not include in his siddur,” pp. 409–12. And compare Ezra Fleischer, “An Addition to R. Se’edya Gaon’s Second ‘Seder ‘Avodah’” (in Hebrew), Tarbiz 58 (1989): 191–205. In an attempt to connect Sa‘adyah’s long poetic lines to the monorhymed stanzas of Arabic poetry, Fleischer published this passage in a two-column format, utterly ignoring the caesuras. Cf. Fleischer, Hebrew Liturgical Poetry in the Middle Ages (in Hebrew) (Jerusalem: Magnes, 2007), 285, 381–82.

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Joseph Yahalom

Sa‘adyah includes this Seder ‘avodah in his famous prayer book, and, he says, he would not have done so if it had not been “wonderful work.”37 The first stich begins with a declaration of the faith of all that have entered the inner chambers of wisdom, and the second stich confirms this, stating that those who recognize the existence of the Higher Power declare His oneness. This is the content of the first stanza. In addition to the rhyme of identical words (’emet, “truth”), Sa‘adyah also rhymes suffixes (-nai): // ‫ימי ָח ְכ ָמה ִל ְפנָ י‬ ֵ ִ‫ ְּפנ‬/ ‫ַּבאד ֹנָ י יִ ְצ ְּדקּו וְ יֹודּוהּו‬ ‫אֹומ ֵרי יֵ ׁש ֲאד ֹנָ י‬ ְ / ‫ֱאמּונָ תֹו י ִֹדעּו וִ ייַ ֲחדּוהּו‬ // ‫ ֻּכּלֹו זֶ ַרע ֱא ֶמת‬/ ‫ּוב ָת ִמים יְ ַכ ְּבדּוהּו‬ ְ ‫ֶּב ֱא ֶמת‬ ‫ֹלהים ֱא ֶמת‬ ִ ‫ ֲאד ֹנָ י ֱא‬/ ‫ֶא ָחד ְל ַבּדֹו יְ ִעידּוהּו‬ In the Lord (b’adonai) they are right in acknowledging Him (-hu), / Deep inside the chambers of wisdom (-nai), // They acknowledge His faith, and declare His oneness (-hu), Those who say that there is a Lord (’adonai). In truth (be’emet) and uprightness they show Him honor (yekabeduhu), / All descendants in good faith (’emet), // That He is the One alone, they give testimony (ye‘iduhu), The Lord God is truth (’emet).38

It seems that this composition impressed not only its author, Sa‘adyah, but also his followers. R. Joseph Ibn Abitur, one of the early writers of sacred poetry in the Iberian Peninsula, who later went into exile in the Middle East (and died after 1024), wrote his Seder ‘avodah in a similar format, but he added further structural constraints, namely anadiplosis and reverse anadiplosis on top of each other. Thus, each word of the structural elements repeats at least thrice: twice as part of the reverse anadiplosis, and a third time as part of the regular anadiplosis, at the beginning of the following stanza. These stanzas should be illustrative of the structure of this work: // ‫ ָּכל זֶ ַרע יִ ְׂש ָר ֵאל‬/ ‫ֹלהים ְּבָך יִ ְצ ְּדקּו ָצדֹוק‬ ִ ‫ֵאל ֱא‬ ‫עֹולם ַא ָּתה ֵאל‬ ָ ‫עֹולם וְ ַעד‬ ָ ‫ּומ‬ ֵ / ‫ָאז ְּב ֶט ֶרם חּוג וָ דֹוק‬ // ‫רֹומ ֶמּנּו ְב ִלי ַפ ַחד‬ ְ ‫ ֲא‬/ ‫ֵאל ֶא ָחד ּגָ דֹול וָ ַרב‬ ‫ּוׁשמֹו ֶא ָחד‬ ְ ‫ ֲאד ֹנָ י ֶא ָחד‬/ ‫ּומ ַּמ ֲע ָרב‬ ִ ‫ַאף ִמ ִּמזְ ָרח‬

37 Siddur R. Saadja Gaon, 289: ‫ולולא אן הד'א אלפסוק עג'יב אלצנעה לם ארסמה‬. 38 Siddur R. Saadja Gaon, 280.

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// ‫בֹוהים‬ ִ ְ‫ּבֹורא ֲא ָר ִקים ּוג‬ ֵ / ‫יּוחד ְּב ִפי כֹל‬ ָ ‫ֹלהים ְמ‬ ִ ‫ֶא ָחד ֱא‬ ‫ֹלהים‬ ִ ‫ ֶמ ֶלְך ָּכל ָה ָא ֶרץ ֱא‬/ ‫זּולתֹו כֹל יָ כֹול‬ ָ ‫ֶא ֶפס‬ … ‫ֹלהים‬ ִ ‫ֱא‬ God, the God (’el ’elohim), through You are justified (s adoq) / all the descendants of Israel (yisra’el). // Long ago, before heavens and firmament (doq), / and for all eternity, You are God (’el). One God (’el ’ehad), great and formidable (rab), / I praise Him without fear (pahad); // From the East and the West (ma‘arab), / the Lord is one and His name is one (’ehad). One is God (’ehad ’elohim), declared one by all (kol), / creator of earth and the high heavens (gebohim), // There is none but Him, He is all-powerful (yakol), / the king over the whole world is God (’elohim). God (’elohim) …39

Solomon Ibn Gabirol and Isaac Ibn Ghiyyāt followed similar structures in their Seder ‘avodah compositions.40 They demonstrated their indebtedness to the Sa‘adyanic model in the opening words of their compositions: “God, the God [’elohim ’el], first and last” (Ibn Gabirol) and “To God [’el ’el] I turn my thoughts” (Ibn Ghiyyāt). The tetrameter line has a long history, covering an enormous range of developments. From its origins in a structure defined by its inner rhythm, it develops independent units divided from neighboring units by anadiplosis and a kind of reverse anadiplosis. In Yannai’s hands, the line’s inner rhyme scheme divides the line internally and separates it from neighboring lines. Later, with Sa‘adyah, tetrameter lines are united by the general rhyming of the stichs but divided by a kind of reverse anadiplosis. Later still, also with Sa‘adyah, an inner rhyme of the small units unites the lines, even as they are separated by a kind of a reverse anadiplosis combined with the rhyming of the stichs (the AbabA CbcbC pattern). Finally, the tetrameter lines are divided by unique internal and end rhymes as well as by anadiplosis and by a kind of reverse anadiplosis (the ABcbcB BDedeD pattern of Abitur). Along with the structural developments, the small double stressed units became extended into three stressed units. 39 Yehuda Rosenberg, Qoves ma‘aśe yede ge’onim qadmonim (Berlin: Friedländer’sche Buchdrukerei, 1857), 19 ff. 40 Qoves šire haqodeš lerabi Shlomo ibn Gavirol, ed. Dov Jarden, vol. 1 (Jerusalem: 1977), 250 ff.; Poems of Isaac ibn Ghiyyat (1038–1089), ed. Yonah David (Jerusalem: ‘Achsav; Reuven Mas, 1988), 134 ff.

List of Contributors

Aaron Amit, Bar-Ilan University Alan Appelbaum, Yale University Carol Bakhos, University of California, Los Angeles Moshe Bar-Asher, Hebrew University of Jerusalem (emeritus) Elitzur A. Bar-Asher Siegal, Hebrew University of Jerusalem Michal Bar-Asher Siegal, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Albert I. Baumgarten, Bar-Ilan University (emeritus) Beth A. Berkowitz, Barnard College Daniel Boyarin, University of California, Berkeley Marc Bregman, University of North Carolina, Greensboro Robert Brody, Hebrew University of Jerusalem Joshua Ezra Burns, Marquette University Esther G. Chazon, Hebrew University of Jerusalem John J. Collins, Yale University Devorah Dimant, Haifa University (emeritus) Chaya Halberstam, King’s University College Judith Hauptman, Jewish Theological Seminary Charlotte Hempel, University of Birmingham (UK) Martha Himmelfarb, Princeton University Marc Hirshman, Hebrew University of Jerusalem Jan Joosten, University of Oxford Richard Kalmin, Jewish Theological Seminary David Kraemer, Jewish Theological Seminary James Kugel, Bar-Ilan University (emeritus) Lee I. Levine, Hebrew University of Jerusalem (emeritus)

660

List of Contributors

Chaim Milikowsky, Bar-Ilan University Stuart S. Miller, University of Connecticut, Storrs Maren R. Niehoff, Hebrew University of Jerusalem Vered Noam, Tel Aviv University Tzvi Novick, University of Notre Dame Ishay Rosen-Zvi, Tel Aviv University Jeffrey Rubenstein, New York University Adiel Schremer, Bar-Ilan University Bernard Septimus, Harvard University (emeritus) Elizabeth Shanks Alexander, University of Virginia Aharon Shemesh, Bar-Ilan University David Stern, Harvard University Azzan Yadin-Israel, Rutgers University Joseph Yahalom, Hebrew University of Jerusalem (emeritus)