Heresy and the Formation of the Rabbinic Community 3161551478, 9783161551475

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Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism Texte und Studien zum Antiken Judentum Edited by Maren Niehoff (Jerusalem) Annette Y. Reed (Philadelphia, PA) Seth Schwartz (New York, NY) Moulie Vidas (Princeton, NJ)

168

David M. Grossberg

Heresy and the Formation of the Rabbinic Community

Mohr Siebeck

David M. Grossberg, born 1965; 2014 PhD in Religion at Princeton University; currently Visiting Scholar in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at Cornell University.

e-ISBN PDF 978-3-16-155334-9 ISBN 978-3-16-155147-5 ISSN 0721-8753 (Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism) Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliographie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2017 by Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, Germany. www.mohr.de This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, in any form (beyond that permitted by copyright law) without the publisher’s written permission. This applies particularly to reproductions, translations, microfilms and storage and processing in electronic systems. The book was typeset by Martin Fischer in Tübingen using Times typeface, printed by GuldeDruck in Tübingen on non-aging paper and bound by Buchbinderei Spinner in Ottersweier. Printed in Germany.

To Chaim Ber Grossberg, z"l – mi-ka’n ve-’eilakh torah meḥazzeret ‘al ’akhsanya shellah

Contents Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . IX Introduction: The Formation of the Rabbinic Community . . . . . . . . . . . . . I. Yavneh and the Myth of Origins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . II. The Sage Idea and the Development of a Collective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . III. Heresy and the Formation of Community . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . IV. A Note on Style and Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .



1 4 8 14 19

Chapter 1: The Meaning and End of Heresy in Rabbinic Literature . . . . . . I. Heresy in Rabbinic Literature? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . II. Heresy as a Category . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . III. Heresy as hairesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . IV. Heresy as Heresiological Discourse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . V. Heresy and Boundary Rhetoric in the Ancient World . . . . . . . . . . . . . .



27 28 32 37 41 48

Chapter 2: Varieties of Minim in the Second Temple and Rabbinic Period . I. Heresy and Minut . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . II. Minim as Insiders in the Late Second Temple and Early Rabbinic Periods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . III. Minim as Hybrids in the Early Christian Period . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . IV. Minim as Outsiders in the Late Rabbinic Period . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

50 51 57 72 88

Chapter 3: Co-opting the Sinners of Israel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I. The Sinners of Israel and the Sinners of the Nations of the World . . . . II. Sinners, Pomegranates, and Good Deeds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . III. An Israelite Who Sins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . IV. All Israel Have a Portion in the World to Come . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

92 92 98 106 110

Chapter 4: Meshummadim Who Provoke the Rabbis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I. Meshummadim, Apostates, and “The Time of Persecutions” . . . . . . . . . II. Flagrant Meshummadim . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . III. Meshummadim From Appetite and To Provoke . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . IV. Provoking the Torah and the Rabbis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

116 117 127 132 139

VIII

Contents

Chapter 5: Apiqorsim Who Disrespect the Rabbis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I. Epicureans, Sadducees, and Divine Providence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . II. Disrespecting the Rabbis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . III. Apiqorsim and Irreverence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . IV. Apiqorsim, minim, and Dangerous Verses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . V. Know How to Avoid an Apiqoros . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

144 145 152 156 158 162

Chapter 6: Two Powers and the Ascent of Rabbi Elisha . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I. Elisha ben Abuyah as an Absolute Other . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . II. Elisha ben Abuyah as a Failed Rabbi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . III. Elisha’s Ascent and Divine Multiplicity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . IV. Metatron’s Transgression and Heavenly Proscriptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . V. Elisha’s Transgression and the Heavenly Voice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

167 168 171 176 185 187

Chapter 7: The Failed Rabbi and Those Who Cause the Public to Sin . . . . I. The Mechanics of Atonement in Rabbinic Tradition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . II. Gehazi as a Failed Rabbi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . III. The Failed Rabbi in the Babylonian Talmud . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

193 194 200 206

Conclusion: Boundary Rhetoric, Community Formation, and Rabbinic Judaism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217 Appendix: Synoptic Presentation of b. Hagigah 15a and 3 Enoch for Chapter Six . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225 Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227 Index of Primary Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249 Index of Modern Authors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261 Index of Subjects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 266

Acknowledgements I am pleased to express my thanks to Peter Schäfer for his warmth, collegiality, and dedication to the study of ancient Judaism and to his students. I am fortunate to have had the opportunity to undertake my graduate studies in the Department of Religion at Princeton University under his guidance. As this book is a comprehensive revision of my Princeton dissertation, I would also like to thank the readers on that dissertation, Martha Himmelfarb and Moulie Vidas, and also AnneMarie Luijendijk and Naphtali Meshel, for their valuable comments and suggestions; and the Princeton faculty with whom I was engaged throughout my graduate studies: Brent Shaw, Stephen Teiser, Peter Brown, John Gager, Elaine Pagels, Leora Batnitzky, Jeff Stout, and Wallace Best. I am grateful as well to Princeton’s Department of Religion and Program in Judaic Studies for their financial support; and to Patricia Bogdziewicz, the Graduate Administrator of the Religion Department, and Baru Saul, the Program Manager of Judaic Studies, for their patience, availability, and always helpful advice. I would also like to acknowledge Jonathan Boyarin and Lauren Monroe of Cornell University’s Department of Near Eastern Studies and Jewish Studies Program. I completed work on this book while a Visiting Scholar at Cornell, and its inspiring intellectual environment no less than its inspiring vistas were a constant support to my efforts. The research underlying this book began several years ago with my master’s studies at the University of Connecticut. I  thank Stuart Miller, who advised my studies there, and Sam Wheeler and Sara Johnson, the readers on my master’s thesis. Thanks as well to Arnold Dashefsky, the Director of the Center for Judaic Studies during my time at UConn. I am also grateful for the comprehensive and trenchant critique of peer-reviewers who read and offered detailed criticism on the entire manuscript of this book. The book in its final form owes much to this criticism, though the deficits that remain are entirely my own doing. This book is based on “The Meaning and End of Heresy in Rabbinic Literature” (Ph.D. diss.; Princeton University, 2014), though it is a complete revision, and the material herein significantly extends my earlier findings. Much of the material in chapter six, sections three through five, was published as part of my article, “Between 3 Enoch and Bavli Hagigah: Heresiology and Orthopraxy in the Ascent of Elisha ben Abuyah,” in Hekhalot Literature in Context: Between Byzantium and Babylonia, edited by Ra‘anan Boustan, Martha Himmelfarb,

X

Acknowledgements

and Peter Schäfer (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013), 117–140. My thanks to the editors of that volume for their helpful comments, criticism, and corrections on that paper. And finally, my thanks to Henning Ziebritzki at Mohr Siebeck and to the editorial board of the Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism series for their support of this work. And thanks to Klaus Hermannstädter, Kendra Mäschke, and ­Bettina Gade at Mohr Siebeck for their effort and care in seeing it through to press. Ithaca, NY, January, 2017

David M. Grossberg

Introduction

The Formation of the Rabbinic Community In the year 70 C. E., when the Roman legions surrounded Jerusalem in the final days of a desperate siege, a sage named Yohanan ben Zakkai had himself smuggled out of the besieged city. Yohanan approached the Roman General Vespasian,1 gained his favor by prophesying his impending coronation as Emperor, and begged a boon in return: “Give me Yavneh and its sages and the Gamlielian dynasty.”2 Vespasian agreed to spare Yavneh, a small coastal city south of modern Jaffa, and Yohanan gathered there a group of sages and the family of Rabban Gamliel, from whom would come the line of Patriarchs who would rule Roman Palestine in the coming years. At Yavneh, Yohanan quickly succeeded in forging a unified community of sages out of the chaos of Second Temple era sectarianism and the tragedy of the failed revolt against Rome, giving birth to the group that scholars refer to as the rabbis or the rabbinic community. This new community of rabbis reconvened the great Sanhedrin that used to sit in the Temple in Jerusalem, now destroyed by the Romans.3 They cleansed Judaism of ideological deviants by inserting a curse against heretics in the daily Jewish liturgy.4 And, they ensured Judaism’s survival by compiling the ancient traditions of the Oral Torah that the first century B. C. E. sages Hillel and Shammai had received from a chain of transmission going back to Moses himself.5 A heavenly voice blessed this work, declaring, “These and these – the words of Hillel and

1  So the story appears in the Babylonian Talmud. In fact, it would have been Titus leading the siege at this stage, Vespasian having been recalled to Rome and proclaimed as Emperor. See n. 17, below. 2 See n. 17, below, for the Aramaic text and parallels in the rabbinic literature. “Gamlielian” here follows my preferred spelling of Gamliel. More common in the literature is “Gamalielian.” 3 All of these purported occurrences are, of course, legendary, as I will explain. But even the actual role and constitution of the Second Temple period Sanhedrin is itself a complicated matter involving a good deal of legend. See David M. Goodblatt, The Monarchic Principle: Studies in Jewish Self-Government in Antiquity (Texte und Studien zum Antiken Judentum 38; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1994), 77–130. 4 See n. 19, below. 5 The idea that a corpus of orally preserved traditions exists that is equal in authority and antiquity with the Hebrew Bible is characteristic of rabbinic literature, though the idea develops over time. The Bible itself (and especially its first five books) is thought of as the Written Torah and this oral corpus is referred to as the Oral Torah. See my discussion at the start of chapter three, section two and the notes there.

2

Introduction: The Formation of the Rabbinic Community

the words of Shammai, even where they contradict one another – are the words of the living God!”6 This familiar narrative of the rabbinic community’s formation is, of course, a myth.7 It is a myth of rabbinic origins that developed in the centuries subsequent to the period that it purports to describe. It appears in its full detail only in the Babylonian Talmud in approximately the sixth century.8 Although a previous generation of scholars accepted that this tale’s “historical kernel” preserved details of actual events that occurred in the first century, more recent scholarship has grown increasingly skeptical regarding almost all aspects of this relatively late story’s historical accuracy.9 But in the wake of the collapse of this scholarly consensus on the rabbinic community’s origins in 70 C. E. Yavneh, we are left with no clear consensus or even generally accepted outline of how the rabbinic community did in fact come to be. Given the historical importance of the literary corpus attributed to these rabbis, known as the rabbinic literature, which became the ideological basis for almost all subsequent forms of Judaism up until modern times, this lack is very problematic. This book aims to address this lack through a reexamination of the formation of the rabbinic community. Rather than supposing, however, as previous studies have, that the rabbinic community’s formation was an event that occurred in a discrete period before which there was not a rabbinic community and after which there was,10 my   6 See

n. 20, below. Schäfer, The History of the Jews in the Greco-Roman World, Revised Edition (New York: Routledge, 2003), 138, refers to it as “a founding myth of rabbinic Judaism.”   8 This date for the Babylonian Talmud’s editing is more or less conventional in contemporary scholarship, though the mechanics of the Talmud’s composition and editing are complex and remain contentious. See my discussion of style and method in section four of this chapter and nn. 61–64, there.   9 The specific matter of Yavneh is just one part of a more general increase in both skepticism and methodological sophistication in regard to the use of rabbinic texts for the study of ancient history over the last few decades. The most recent and best representative of the traditional approach is Gedalyahu Alon, The Jews in Their Land in the Talmudic Age (70–640 C. E.) (2 vols.; ed. and trans. Gershon Levi; Jerusalem: Magnes, 1984). Important works critical of this approach include Catherine Hezser, The Social Structure of the Rabbinic Movement in Roman Palestine (Texte und Studien zum Antiken Judentum 66; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1997); Seth Schwartz, Imperialism and Jewish Society: 200 B. C. E. to 640 C. E. (Jews, Christians, and Muslims, from the Ancient to the Modern World; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001); and Hayim Lapin, Rabbis as Romans: The Rabbinic Movement in Palestine, 100–400 CE (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). See also Erwin R. Goodenough, Jewish Symbols in the Greco-Roman Period. (12 vols.; New York: Pantheon, 1952–1968), 12.184–198; Michael Avi-Yonah, Jews of Palestine: A Political History from the Bar Kokhba War to the Arab Conquest (Oxford: Blackwell, 1976); Lee I. Levine, The Rabbinic Class of Roman Palestine in Late Antiquity (Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi, 1989); Goodblatt, Monarchic Principle; and Martin Goodman, State and Society in Roman Galilee: A. D. 132–212, Second Edition (London: Vallentine Mitchell, 2000). 10 See Shaye J. D. Cohen, “The Significance of Yavneh: Pharisees, Rabbis, and the End of Jewish Sectarianism,” Hebrew Union College Annual 55 (1984): 27–53, and n. 9, above.   7 Peter

Introduction: The Formation of the Rabbinic Community

3

analysis examines the development of the idea of a rabbinic collective. This is not an idea that appears fully formed at any specifiable moment, rather it evolves gradually. This gradual evolution is reflected in the kinds of polemical strategies that the various rabbinic texts deploy in constructing rhetorical boundaries between themselves and others. Diachronic trends in polemical strategies mirror developments in collective self-conception. The tool that I have chosen for this analysis is rabbinic textual polemic against marginal or threating figures within the broader Jewish community such as sinners, sectarians, and perceived deviants of various sorts. My argument in brief is that as the rabbis developed from diverse, fractious, and loosely organized local circles of sages, scribes, and judges into a centralized, institutionalized, and authoritative community,11 they recast the kinds of rhetorical boundaries that they inscribed between themselves and the opponents discussed in their texts and traditions. As the rabbis’ awareness of themselves as a distinctive community developed, they strategically redeployed named polemical targets from earlier texts such as Epicureans and the “sinners of Israel” in ways that highlighted their relationship to the rabbis as a group rather than stressing specific misdeeds in belief or practice as was typical in the earlier texts. An important methodological implication of my approach is that the targets of rabbinic polemics will no longer be effectively analyzable using the oversimplified and potentially anachronistic category of heresy as has been standard in previous studies.12 Typological “heretics” such as the “sinners of Israel,” who are sharply rejected in earlier texts, might be enthusiastically praised in later texts. And even quintessential opponents such as the well-studied but still obscure minim, which I  will discuss at length in chapter two, are continuously recast in complex ways that are flattened and distorted by thinking of them merely as heretics. Through its study of the role of boundary rhetoric in the rabbinic community’s formation,13 this book also critically reexamines and demonstrates the inadequacy of the entire category of heresy in the study of rabbinic literature. 11 On the idea of institutionalization, see Hezser, Social Structure, 185, “By institutionalization scholars mean that the rabbinic movement had fixed, permanent judicial and/or educational bodies in the form of a central court or sanhedrin and/or academies,” and see the summary of the scholarship on this issue there. David M. Goodblatt, Rabbinic Instruction in Sasanian Babylonia (Studies in Judaism of Late Antiquity 9; Leiden: Brill, 1975), 267, defines an academy as “an institution which transcends its principles. It has a staff, a curriculum, and most important, a life of its own, a corporate identity. Students come and go, teachers leave and are replaced, the head of the school dies and a new one is appointed – the institution goes on.” This is in contrast to a disciple circle in which “when the master dies, the disciple circle disbands.” 12 I will discuss this matter in detail in chapter one. 13 On the idea of boundary rhetoric, see the extended discussion in Judith M. Lieu, Christian Identity in the Jewish and Graeco-Roman World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 98–146; Daniel Boyarin, Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004); and the suggestion of a trend towards a generalized “boundary theory” in Jonathan Boyarin, “Responsive Thinking: Cultural Studies and Jewish

4

Introduction: The Formation of the Rabbinic Community

I. Yavneh and the Myth of Origins Modern historical studies of the rabbis have been interested in the Yavneh narrative for several decades.14 This narrative’s latest and most fully developed version, which appears in tractate Gittin of the Babylonian Talmud,15 still forms the basis of the common understanding of how the rabbinic community was formed. Scholars of a previous generation accepted this story’s key elements, what they called its “historical core,” as accurate.16 But more recent scholarship has demonstrated that all of the narrative’s critical dramatic elements – Yohanan’s request to Vespasian,17 the reestablishment of the Sanhedrin,18 and the liturgical curse on deviants19 no less than the heavenly voice’s declaration that both Hillel and Shammai spoke the words of the living God20 – are not actually associated with Yavneh until the time of the Jerusalem and Babylonian Talmuds, edited in Roman Palestine and Persian Babylonia, respectively, around the fifth and sixth centuries. Earlier strands of rabbinic literature, known as the tannaitic literature, provide the story’s smaller details that the later Talmuds build up into a foundation myth. The great collections of biblical interpretation known as midrash written around the time of the Talmuds’ editing – Genesis Rabbah, Leviticus Rabbah, Lamentations Rabbah, and the Pesiqta of Rav Kahana – barely mention Yavneh at all. That something memorable to the incipient rabbinic movement Historiography,” in Modern Judaism and Historical Consciousness: Identities, Encounters, Perspectives (ed. Andreas Gotzmann and Christian Wiese; Leiden: Brill, 2007), 475–493, at 491. 14 For a convenient bibliography see Adiel Schremer, “Stammaitic Historiography,” in Creation and Composition: The Contribution of the Bavli Redactors (Stammaim) to the Aggada (ed. Jeffrey L. Rubenstein; Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism 114; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005), 219–236, at 228–229 n. 34. 15 In b. Gittin 55b–56b. See section four of this chapter for a note on the style of citation of rabbinic texts. 16 See n. 9, above. 17 As mentioned in n. 1, above, the Babylonian Talmud has Vespasian leading the siege on Jerusalem at a time when he had, in fact, already been recalled to Rome and proclaimed as Emperor. The likely reason for this confusion is that the Bavli’s narrative is based, at least in some indirect way, on a similar story that Josephus relates about himself in The Jewish War 3.399–408, which is set earlier, during the siege of Jotapata in 67 C. E. See Peter Schäfer, “Die Flucht Johanan b. Zakkais aus Jerusalem und die Gründung des ‚Lehrhauses‘ in Jabne,” Aufstieg und Niedergang der Römischen Welt II.19.2 (1979): 43–101, at 85–86; and Hezser, Social Structure, 294–295. The request in b. Gittin 56b is: ‫תן לי יבנה וחכמיה ושושילתא דרבן גמליאל‬. The text continues: ‫ואסוותא דמסיין ליה לרבי צדוק‬. Variants of this story occur in b. Gittin 55b–56b, Lamentations Rabbah 1:31, and Avot of Rabbi Natan A 4, though the specific request made varies. 18 See Goodblatt, Monarchic Principle, 232–276. 19 I refer here to the birkat ha-minim, the “curse on the minim,” which I discuss in chapter two, section two (see n. 58, there, for scholarship and relevant texts) and chapter three, section one (and, see nn. 12 and 13, there). 20 This appears in b. Eruvin 13b (ed. Vilna): ‫אלו ואלו דברי אלהים חיים הן‬. The Bavli text does not explicitly associate this legend with Yavneh, but the Yerushalmi does in its discussion in y. Berakhot 1:4, 3c. See section four on the style of citation of rabbinic texts.

I. Yavneh and the Myth of Origins

5

actually did happen in Yavneh is clear enough from its frequent mention in the earliest rabbinic texts. But it is also clear that the event’s importance was given additional weight over time, and it gradually accreted significance until it became the rabbis’ birthplace. The rabbis certainly did eventually become a recognizable community with institutions of study and accreditation, a process of ordination, established courts with authority on behalf of the sovereign rulers, and a system of enforcing their judicial decisions and transmitting them to diaspora Jewish communities. But the scholarship has clearly demonstrated that this was not the case in the first century. Indeed, it may not have been the case until the end of Late Antiquity or even into the early medieval period. As the scholarly consensus of a rabbinic community inventing itself and emerging triumphant after the Second Temple’s destruction has given way to increasing skepticism about whether rabbinic sources are of much use for illuminating this early historical period,21 we are left without a clear model of this community’s formation between the first and sixth centuries C. E. Somehow a diverse collection of Pharisees and Sadducees, scribes and priests, sages with their discipleship circles, wonder-workers with their devotees,22 and wealthy aristocratic dynasties23 developed into a recognizable and circumscribed community. But there is still no definitive scholarly consensus in regard to whether we can specify a narrow timeframe for when this transition from diversity to collectivity occurred. A growing contingent of scholars is now inclined to skepticism about whether it makes sense to talk about the existence of a rabbinic community at all before the third century. And perhaps even into the fourth century, what we think of as the rabbinic community was still in fact rather a loose network of circles of authority centered around individual sages and their students and close colleagues.24 This proposed dating, however, leads to a very peculiar situation. If the rabbinic community did not exist until the third or fourth century, then the corpus of classical rabbinic literature’s earliest texts, starting with the first rabbinic text, the Mishnah, which was compiled around the year 200 C. E., existed before the rabbinic community did. Indeed, all of the tradents of the traditions that appear in the earliest rabbinic works, the Mishnah, the Tosefta, the Sifra, the Sifre Numbers and Sifre Deuteronomy, and the Mekhilta, lived before the 21 See n. 9, above, and nn. 60, 61, and 63, below, and see my discussion of style and method in section four of this chapter. 22 These are various groups, categories, or professions that existed in the ancient world, some unique to the Jewish ethnicity and some merely Jewish versions of larger Greco-Roman phenomena. They are part of the diverse intellectual culture of the first century that formed the intellectual and traditional basis of the rabbinic culture and the rabbinic traditions. 23 I have in mind most importantly the Gamlielian line that eventually gave rise to the patriarchate. See Goodblatt, Monarchic Principle, 143–146. 24 This position has been convincingly argued by Hezser, Social Structure. I rely on many of Hezser’s findings for the following analysis.

6

Introduction: The Formation of the Rabbinic Community

rabbinic community’s formation. In other words, the literature that these early rabbis produced, which is certainly the foundation of all of rabbinic literature, was not produced by “the rabbinic community” at all! This is not an especially tenable conclusion, which suggests that the lack of a precise scholarly model for the formation of a unified rabbinic community is a significant hindrance to further progress in the study of the rabbinic corpus. To address this problem is one of the present study’s major aims. I suggest that rather than looking for an occasion of rabbinic self-invention, rather than seeking a narrow date-range before which there was not a rabbinic community and after which there was, we would be better off supposing that the formation of a unified rabbinic self-conception was a process that occurred only gradually and unevenly over this entire period. And if so, there would be no need, from the perspective of our analysis of the rabbinic corpus, to imagine sharp divisions between the first and second centuries – marked by two momentous events, the Second Temple’s destruction in 70 C. E. and the Bar Kokhba revolt in the 130s C. E. – or between the second and the third centuries – marked by the Mishnah’s composition and promulgation around 200 C. E. Rather, we can approach this corpus with the assumption that the Pharisees, scribes, sages, and sectarians of the first century were indeed tradents of the traditions that form the foundation of the later rabbinic works. Of course, the process of collection and preservation involved distortion and intentional adaptation or reinvention of these earlier traditions. And this process of innovating, preserving, adapting, promulgating, reimagining, and redeploying of traditions was ongoing throughout the first to the sixth century, whether we refer to the tradents of these traditions as Pharisees, scribes, sages, or rabbis. We will therefore approach the various collections of traditions that we will be examining in what follows – the tannaitic literature, including the Mishnah, the Tosefta, the Sifra, Sifre Numbers, Sifre Deuteronomy, and the Mekhilta of Rabbi Yishmael (the Mekhilta);25 and the amoraic literature including the Pesiqta of Rav Kahana (the Pesiqta), Genesis Rabbah, Leviticus Rabbah, and Lamentations Rabbah (these four works are known collectively as the classical Palestinian midrash),26 and the Palestinian Talmud (the Yerushalmi) and the Babylonian 25 Scholars have endeavored to reconstruct a number of other tannaitic collections, the Mekhilta of Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai, Sifre Zutta on Numbers, and Midrash Tannaim on Deuteronomy. These texts are generally considered not as reliable as the other tannaitic texts enumerated here, though I will refer to them where appropriate. For a convenient introduction to these works, see Günter Stemberger, Einleitung in Talmud und Midrasch, Ninth Edition (Munich: Beck, 2011), 284–287, 298–299, and 303–304; for an earlier version of this book in English translation, see H. L. Strack and Günter Stemberger, Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash, Second Edition (trans. Markus Bockmuehl; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996), 257–259, 268–270, and 273–275. 26 Later works of midrash will also be relevant, especially when they contain variants of traditions from these earlier works, but the later the work the more suspect it is often considered

I. Yavneh and the Myth of Origins

7

Talmud (the Bavli) – as repositories collected at various periods from the third to the sixth century of traditions that date from the Second Temple period until the start of the medieval period. Yet we will also recognize that the earliest forms of the earliest strata of these traditions might be so modified as to be unrecoverable. As a scholarly convention, we refer to this material collectively as “rabbinic literature” and to the tradents of these traditions that are named in this literature as “the rabbis.” The tradents of the tannaitic literature are also referred to as the tannaim (singular tanna, plural tannaim, lit. “repeaters” of tradition) and the tradents of the amoraic literature are also referred to as the amoraim (sg. amora, pl. amoraim, lit. “expounders” of tradition). But this is not to say that the tradents of these traditions would have thought of themselves in such neat collective terms. Rather, it appears that many of the figures that appear in the classical rabbinic corpus would have thought of themselves primarily as the members of the people Israel.27 However, they were not commoners among this people, but its intellectual elite. They were the “sages,” or, more modestly, the “disciples of sages,” of the traditions of Israel. Over time, the idea of the sage developed from an individual ideal to an identifiable and circumscribed group, and this development was accompanied by an increasing tendency to rhetorical representation of collective self-conceptualization in the texts themselves. The gradual development of the foundational Yavneh myth is a good example of this process. But in the current study, we will be examining how this evolving rhetorical representation is reflected in polemical efforts to inscribe boundaries between the rabbis and others. It must be stressed that the methodological starting point for all scholarly reference to this period is a corpus of medieval manuscripts containing the texts that I just enumerated. These manuscripts are all collections of traditions, some attributed and some not, and collections of commentary or elaboration on these traditions that sometimes place them in discursive frameworks of various sorts. It is modern scholars who, following conventions established already in the medieval period, have come to refer to the tradents named in these traditions as “the rabbis.” And it is these scholars who typically treat these rabbis in their studies as if they were a circumscribed group throughout the period of our concern. So in each generation from the first to the sixth century, scholars can list the rabbis of that generation, where they lived, what they taught, and how they thought about themselves as Jews. Scholars call this corpus of texts “rabbinic literature” and the five or six centuries of the flourishing of its tradents “the rabbinic period.” And scholars attempt to abstract a uniform ideological approach to the rabbis’ religion across all of these texts and refer to this constructed system as “rabbinic to be in regard to its accurate preservation of early tradition. See the discussion of style and method in section four of this chapter. 27 On the various ethnonyms for the Jewish ethnicity, see my discussion in section four, below, and in nn. 68 and 69, there.

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Introduction: The Formation of the Rabbinic Community

Judaism,” even though such a unified system of thought never existed in any single time and place in antiquity. All of these scholarly abstractions, the rabbis, the rabbinic period, rabbinic literature, and rabbinic Judaism, are anachronistic and heuristic. They need not be rejected, and I adopt many of them in this study, so that I will use the term “the rabbis” to refer generally to the tradents of the traditions that appear in the classical rabbinic corpus. Yet it must always be kept in mind that these are just modern ideas that help us make sense of the past. No one alive at that time would have used these terms in the sense in which we use them or would have thought of themselves or their religion in this fashion. As we shall see, especially for the early part of this period, the rabbis had no special group designation for themselves,28 they had no unique mode of dress or behavior that would have enabled an observer to pick them out of a crowd,29 they had no formal process for ordination or determining membership,30 they had no fixed and recognized institutions neither of learning nor of carrying out judicial functions,31 and they had no imperial authority whatsoever.32 Indeed, one might ask in what sense were they a group at all?

II. The Sage Idea and the Development of a Collective As scholars have become increasingly cognizant that the model of 70 C. E. Yavneh as the geographical and temporal moment of rabbinic self-invention cannot be sustained in light of a critical examination of the evidence, the need for an alternative model of the development of a rabbinic collective has become increasingly more urgent. Scholars have therefore come up with various models to explain the rabbis’ existence. The assumptions underlying these models are reflected in the remarkable variety of conceptual descriptors for the rabbinic collective that these scholars have utilized. The most common approach continues to refer to the named tradents who appear in the rabbinic literature as “the rabbinic community,” but acknowledges that this community was formed somewhat later than 70 C. E., perhaps around the third century. Another approach, either skeptical that a recognizable “community” existed that early but still needing to account for the fact that at least some of the traditions included in the tannaitic literature likely predate the third century or based on the conjectured ideological 28 See

nn. 42–44, below. Social Structure, 123–130. 30 See nn. 42–44, below. 31 On the beit midrash, see n. 42, below; on the Sanhedrin see nn. 3 and 18, above; and on institutionalization, see n. 11, above. 32 See Schwartz, Imperialism and Jewish Society, 175: “The rabbis were not authorized by the state and had little glamor after the revolts.” 29 Hezser,

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or social contours of an early collective have adopted other naming strategies to refer to these tradents, such as the “rabbinic party” (Sanders),33 “rabbinic class” (Levine),34 “rabbinic movement” (Hezser),35 “or rabbinic guild” (Lightstone).36 In these studies, the ideas of community, party, class, movement, or guild are typically contrasted to one another or to other collective designations such as sect or even “church.” A third approach recognizes the potential distortion involved in applying these modern concepts to antiquity and so proposes alternatives more appropriate to the ancient world, such as philosophical school (Saldarini)37 or voluntary association (Lapin).38 However, it is clear that all of these models, whether phrased in contemporary or ancient terms, are still in fact modern scholarly approximations. Although the works of the scholars just mentioned all represent important advances in our understanding of the rabbis, and the present study is best seen as an extension and refinement of their findings, I believe that it is important to consider more carefully the fact that the rabbis do not refer to themselves as a community or a class or a movement; they do not refer to themselves as a voluntary association or a philosophical school.39 In fact, examining the rabbinic literature, one is 33 E. P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism: A Comparison of Patterns of Religion (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977), 156 n. 52: “On the basis of present evidence, the Pharisees are better called a party than a sect, and the Rabbis were certainly motivated by the party spirit rather than by sectarianism. A party is a group which believes itself to be right and which wishes others to obey or agree, but which does not exclude dissenters from ‘Israel.’” See also Levine, Rabbinic Class, 13–14. 34 Levine, Rabbinic Class, 14: “A ‘class’ refers to a group for whom social and religious issues are of prime importance, yet it differs from a ‘party’ primarily with respect to its political involvements or, more precisely, lack thereof.” Cf. Hezser, Social Structure, 33. 35 Hezser, Social Structure, 1 n. 1. See Lee I. Levine, “The Social Structure of the Rabbinic Movement in Roman Palestine by Catherine Hezser,” Jewish Quarterly Review 90 (2000): 483–488, at 484–485, for a criticism of Hezser’s terminology. 36 Jack N. Lightstone, Mishnah and the Social Formation of the Early Rabbinic Guild: A Socio-Rhetorical Approach (with an Appendix by Vernon K. Robbins; Studies in Christianity and Judaism 11; Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2002). 37 Anthony J. Saldarini, Scholastic Rabbinism: A Literary Study of the Fathers According to Rabbi Nathan (Chico: Scholars, 1982). Also, see Jonathan Wyn Schofer, The Making of a Sage: A Study in Rabbinic Ethics (Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 2005). 38 Lapin, Rabbis as Romans, 7, 64, 91–92, 97. Cf. Hezser, Social Structure, 319–320, who discusses voluntary associations while discussing rabbinic ḥavurot, which she does not see as best compared to voluntary associations. Rather, she suggests a comparison of the rabbinic ḥavura to the philosophical circles of friends (filoi). 39 See Schwartz, Imperialism and Jewish Society, 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 similarities 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. One reason these parallels … have not proved convincing is that the rabbis combined elements of all of these functions in a way that no one else in the Greco-Roman world did, except, mutatis mutandis, Christian bishops. This, in turn, is because the rabbis were unique in deriving their self-understanding from the Torah, which in their view was the repository of everything

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Introduction: The Formation of the Rabbinic Community

struck by the fact that they did not have seem to have any consistent, clear, and explicit self-designation for themselves as a collective at all.40 Of course many, but not all, of the tradents of rabbinic traditions bear the title “rabbi.” But this was a title of respect that, at least in the first few centuries C. E., accorded no official authority,41 entailed no fixed process or locus of ordination,42 and which pre-existed the rabbinic community and continued to be used outside of it.43 Indeed, in the vast majority of instances where this term is encountered outside of rabbinic literature it would seem to be applied to figures that scholars would worthwhile. Although in reality their wisdom may sometimes have had a Stoic or Cynical tinge, their legislation may have owed something to Roman civil law, and their miracles (or miracle stories) resembled those performed by (or told about) such figures as Apollonius of Tyana, as far as the rabbis themselves were concerned, the source of all wisdom, law, and numinosity was the Torah alone. In this way they closely resembled their predecessors in the Second Temple period and rabbinic colleagues in Mesopotamia, and they were at odds with their nonrabbinic contemporaries and counterparts in the Greco-Roman cities.” 40 The scholarship on groups in the sociological literature is extensive. For a convenient summary, see Hezser, Social Structure, 233–237. Rather than relying on modern sociological concepts and categories that may or may not be appropriate to the ancient world, I prefer in the following discussion to compare rabbinic concepts based on their own usage. From this perspective, it is clear that individual designations such as “rabbi” and “sage” do not function in the rabbinic texts as group designations such as “Sadducee” or “Israel” do. They are, rather, more like individual designations such as “righteous person” or “meshummad” in the sense that the latter pick out aggregates of individuals rather than corporate groups. See n. 46, below. 41 On rabbinic authority, see n. 32, above; and see Hezser, Social Structure, 454: “Rabbinic authority may rather be defined as personal authority based on each rabbi’s individual reputation combined with authority based on his role as Torah teacher and sage. At least from the third century onwards, but probably already earlier, rabbis tried to legitimize this role by recurring to the supernatural origin of rabbinic teachings.” 42 See Hezser, Social Structure, 55–68, 111–121. Although various types of “appointments” exist in the rabbinic corpus, it is not typical to appoint someone explicitly as a “rabbi” (on b. Bava Metzia 85a, see Hezser, Social Structure, 91–92). Lawrence A. Hoffman, “The Origins of Ordination,” in Rabbinic Authority: Papers Presented Before the Ninety-First Annual Convention of the Central Conference of Rabbis (ed. Elliot L. Stevens; New York: Central Conference of American Rabbis, 1982), 71–94, at 89, writes, “The amazing thing is that we have not a single instance of a man actually receiving the title ‘Rabbi.’ In other words, we know that there were rabbis from the year 70 onward, but no source tells us explicitly about them. True, we have Palestinian accounts involving the root mnh, and some seem to be about rabbis; but never is the word mnh coupled explicitly with the word ‘rabbi.’” Moreover, at least in the early period, there does not seem to have been any fixed institution for granting such an ordination, but rather only study circles or discipleship circles. Scholars disagree regarding the function of the beit midrash. See Levine, Rabbinic Class, 25–29, and Hezser, Social Structure, 195–214. On the archaeological evidence, in particular a lintel that mentions “the beit midrash of Rabbi Eliezer ha-Qapper,” see Levine, Rabbinic Class, 29, Hezser, Social Structure, 205, and Goodman, State and Society, 76. 43 See Hershel Shanks, “Origins of the Title, ‘Rabbi,’” Jewish Quarterly Review 59 (1969): 152–157; S. Zeitlin, “The Title ‘Rabbi’ in the Gospels is Anachronistic,” Jewish Quarterly Review 59 (1968): 158–160; Hershel Shanks, “Is the Title ‘Rabbi’ Anachronistic in the Gospels?” Jewish Quarterly Review 53 (1963): 337–345; and Shaye J. D. Cohen, “Epigraphical Rabbis,” Jewish Quarterly Review 72 (1981): 1–17. And see n. 2, in the conclusion.

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not consider part of the rabbinic community at all.44 Moreover, rabbinic texts do not typically use the term rabbi as an abstract substantive as scholars tend to use it today, though this type of usage does occur in later texts. Its major function is as a title of respect, like “Mister” (or perhaps better, “Master”) or “Sir” in modern usage. More relevantly, the tradents of rabbinic traditions do consistently refer to themselves as sages or as the “disciples of sages,” and some scholars eschew the expression “the rabbis” preferring instead to refer to “the sages.”45 But the rabbis did not invent the idea of a sage, nor was it, in its common usage, primarily a group designation. The sage-idea was already ancient by the first century C. E. The designation did not refer to a circumscribed group like designations such as “Pharisees” or “Sadducees,” or “Stoics” or “Epicureans,” or even “Christians,” “Jews,” or “Israel” did. As an appellation, the term “sage” had more in common with terms such as “sinner” or “righteous person” that picked out an aggregate of individuals based on personal failings or achievements rather than specifying a collective based on ideological conformity with a corporate group.46 For this reason, the Tosefta in t. Qiddushin 3:8 (see section four of this chapter for a note on citation style for rabbinic texts) can state that if a person makes an oath on the condition that he is a sage, then that oath will be binding if he is considered wise according to the standards of the town in which he lives. He is not held up to the standards of revered sages of the imagined rabbinic past such as Shimon ben Azzai and Shimon ben Zoma nor is he measured against a fixed standard of achievement or an institutionalized ordination. And the sage idea was not limited to Jews. The Palestinian Talmud recognizes that there are sages among the gentiles as well as among Israel.47 The concept of a sage in Judea in the first centuries before and after the Common Era was widespread and commonly understood, though no doubt what it entailed specifically was a matter of debate and disagreement. It was, in any case, neither a fixed ideal nor a circumscribed collective designation. Rather it was a marker of individual achievement that 44 Cohen, “Epigraphical Rabbis,” 12, writes, “Even in antiquity not all rabbis were Rabbis.” And see n. 43, above, and n. 2, in the conclusion. 45 See, for example, Shmuel Safrai, ed., The Literature of the Sages, First Part: Oral Tora, Halakha, Mishna, Tosefta, Talmud, External Tractates (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1987). 46 Hezser, Social Structure, 325, cites the Italian sociologist Francesco Alberoni in this regard: “Alberoni distinguishes between ‘aggregative collective phenomena’ and ‘group collective phenomena.’ Aggregative collective phenomena ‘are characterized by the fact that a large number of people behave in the same way’ by, for example, dressing alike or spending their money alike. They act independently of each other and do not form any organization or group: ‘every individual, though behaving in the same way as the others, acts in reality for himself and for himself alone. All those who behave in a given way … do not form a higher-order social entity with which they identify themselves; in other words, they cannot be considered a group.” See Francesco Alberoni, Movement and Institution (trans. Patricia C. Arden Delmoro; New York: Columbia University Press, 1984), 16. 47 Y. Bava Batra 8:1, 16a.

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Introduction: The Formation of the Rabbinic Community

others might or might not acknowledge. One might compare it very loosely to the modern idea of an “intellectual,” in the sense that there seems to be a vague community-wide standard of the kinds of things that an intellectual ought to know but no fixed standard is forthcoming. I suggest, therefore, that we think about the rabbinic community’s formation not as the time when a corporate group invented itself but rather as a gradual evolution and expansion of the ancient idea of a sage. A sage was a Jew distinguished by his learning and as such was a community-wide ideal. It would seem that the curriculum that a sage was required to have mastered was not formalized, at least not until an institutionalized rabbinic community had clearly established itself through a fixed process of ordination. Before this time, however, the types of texts or areas of expertise that characterized a sage’s mastery were likely to have been rather fluid. Over time one would expect, not consensus but increasing agreement regarding an expanding collection of especially significant texts or subjects. So, for example, no doubt mastery of the ancient biblical texts would have been a common denominator of the sage-idea already in the Hellenistic period. By the first century C. E., we might imagine Hellenistic era texts like the book of Ben Sira increasingly to have been considered important knowledge for a sage. More importantly, the types of judicial hermeneutics that worked to expand the applicability of biblical precepts that we see in works such as Jubilees and the Dead Sea Scrolls would likely have been recognized as a form of general expertise required of a sage. From this perspective, schools such as those of Hillel and Shammai or those of Yishmael and Akiva in the centuries around the turn of the era would be understood as circles of study and expertise consuming and producing a curriculum for sages, not necessarily in an intentional and formal way, but by the fact of their own work and their own aspirations to realize the sage ideal. As these schools produced collections of traditions that circulated through elite Jewish society, ideas about what a person must know in order to make a legitimate claim to be a sage expanded. A pivotal moment in this process would have been the production of the Mishnah. As a text that presents itself in a well-organized and comprehensive fashion as the core curriculum of a sage,48 it appears quickly to have become widely distributed and accepted. Perhaps its success led to the production of related collections such as the Tosefta and the 48 Goodman, State and Society, 6, notes, “[The Mishnah] does not prescribe correct behavior, but rather describes that behavior as if it is normal.” He sees this as “a not uncommon technique for importing solemnity into a law code.” Perhaps as well, this style is appropriate to a document that was aiming to lay out a core curriculum for a sage, that is, what a sage ought to be. Generally speaking, scholarship on the question of the Mishnah’s purpose suggests three possibilities: a collection of sources, a teaching manual, or a practical code of law. See David M. Grossberg, “Orthopraxy in Tannaitic Literature,” Journal for the Study of Judaism 41 (2010): 517–561, at 552 n. 82. The idea of a core curriculum for a sage is along the lines of the first and second of these three.

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tannaitic collections of midrash mentioned above, the Sifre, Sifra, and the Mekhilta. As these collections were produced and consumed, the program of study for a sage both grew and became more strongly established. In short, I am proposing that an important driving factor in the development of the rabbinic community was the idea of the sage itself. As this idea was increasingly formalized through the production and mastery of texts, the unified community of sages that the texts only imagine as part of their rhetorical landscape became increasingly established in actuality among the diverse circles of scholars and scribes that studied and promulgated these texts. Such a process would involve a complex and incremental interplay between text and collective, between sage and curriculum, that in time led to the institutionalized and authoritative group of sages that scholars now refer to as the rabbinic community, which was well established by the sixth century in Sasanian Persia. For the purposes of the present study, what is important is that the formation of the rabbinic community was an extended process and not a discrete occasion. This process was ongoing for centuries and embraces much of the period during which the rabbinic corpus’ foundational texts were produced. Over this period, the tradents of the traditions in this corpus developed new ideas about what it meant to be a rabbi and who the rabbis were as a collective. We would expect, therefore, that as these ideas changed we should see corresponding changes in the traditions themselves. We would expect that the way that these traditions discuss collective boundaries, whether boundaries between the pious and impious, boundaries between rabbis and others, or boundaries among the rabbis themselves, should change in consistent ways that map out developments in rabbinic self-conception. We will undertake a careful study of these changes in the coming chapters. It bears repeating that the foregoing review of various scholarly approaches to rabbinic community formation was not intended as a criticism of these important studies. My work relies on and extends these studies’ most significant findings, relying especially on Catherine Hezser’s The Social Structure of the Rabbinic Community in Roman Palestine. There appears to be an increasing recognition in the field that the formation of the rabbinic community was a longer and more uneven process than what scholars would have thought even two decades ago. My study taken in isolation does not aim to prove all the controversial details of this emerging consensus. Rather, I bring to bear the tool of analyzing stylistic developments in rabbinic boundary rhetoric to show how the rabbinic corpus reflects this gradual process in unexpected ways in its polemical and narrative texts. Thus, although as just discussed I am uncertain whether common terms for describing the rabbis, whether as a “collective,” “group,” “movement,” or “community,” can ever attain a high level of precision, I do adopt these terms in this book. Just as at the end of the last section, I acknowledged using the terms “the rabbis” and “rabbinic literature” in a purely conventional sense, here also

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I will use the terms “collective” or “group,” and “movement” or “community” in a conventional sense. I use these terms only comparatively to highlight stages of a relatively less or more identifiable or unified entity. I am not aiming to discover when a rabbinic “movement” turned into a rabbinic “community.” However, when I need to compare a relatively less unified to a relatively more unified stage of development, I might refer in the earlier stage to the “rabbinic movement” and in the later to the “rabbinic community.” But other terms would do just as well. By way of illustration of my use of these terms, I might say that we are examining a period from the first century – during which time there were, perhaps, merely individual sages and their disciples with no significant collective characteristics, a period which predated the beginnings of the “rabbinic movement” – to the sixth century, when there likely was an ideologically unified and institutionalized group of rabbis, easily identifiable as a “rabbinic community.” Thus, even if precise stages of absolute development cannot be reconstructed, I will use these comparative concepts to point out where the texts can shed light on key moments of relative development.

III. Heresy and the Formation of Community Much good scholarship has already been done examining the rabbis through studying the ideas that they had about themselves.49 In this book, we will examine the formation of the rabbinic community in large part through studying the ideas that the rabbis had about others. Because the formation of community entails the rhetorical construction of a boundary, those that are imagined to be outside of this boundary are as important as those that are imagined to be within. Recent scholarship has been increasingly interested in this kind of rabbinic boundary rhetoric, and my work owes much to these efforts.50 But I believe that a critical reexamination of the convention to approach this subject with the allpurpose category of heresy has become necessary.51 In the following chapters, I will analyze strategies for rhetorical construction of boundaries in the rabbinic literature as they change and develop chronologically. I will examine how the exclusion and inclusion of perceived deviants and marginal figures functions in the construction of a boundary defining the rabbis as a collective. And I will demonstrate how rabbinic traditions constantly reimagine such boundaries in complex and changing ways. An opponent that an 49 See

n. 9, above. for example, Boyarin, Border Lines; Adiel Schremer, Brothers Estranged: Heresy, Christianity, and Jewish Identity in Late Antiquity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010); and Peter Schäfer, The Jewish Jesus: How Judaism and Christianity Shaped Each Other (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012). 51 See my extended discussion and bibliography in chapter one. 50 See,

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earlier tradition treats in an exclusionary fashion, a later iteration of that same tradition might treat in an inclusionary fashion. A polemical target imagined as a kind of Jewish insider might be remimagined as a non-Jewish outsider. A group treated as impious might be split into two groups, one sinful and one normalized, in effect subtly shifting an established boundary between rabbis and others or within the rabbinic collective itself. Scholarly application of heresy as a concept to rabbinic polemics has tended to focus attention too narrowly on the exclusion of deviants. This focus takes insufficient account of such rhetorical shifts and captures only part of the characteristics and contours of these texts. My research suggests that such strategic redeployment is integral to the fluid collection of discrete traditions that is so characteristic of the rabbinic corpus. Relying on fixed standards imported from other period literary genres can at times hinder more nuanced readings of the rhetorical intent of rabbinic polemics. Greater precision in our analysis is necessary if we are to come to a clearer understanding of the rabbinic community’s formation because the drawing of boundaries and community formation are intrinsically linked. Relying on overly schematic representations of the rabbis’ rhetorical development can impose limits on our understanding of their social development. For instance, one influential early study of rabbinic origins proposed, apparently based on literal readings of the Babylonian Talmud, what might be thought of an “ecclesiastical narrative” of rabbinic history.52 I refer to it in this way because of its similarity to the narrative of early Christian history that the fourth century Church historian Eusebius popularized. Eusebius writes that until the end of the first century the church was like “a pure and uncorrupted virgin,”53 in the sense that it had maintained a single doctrine that was directly attributable to Jesus. It was only after the first disciples died that this doctrine was corrupted through the “folly of heretical teachers.”54 In other words, this narrative claims that Christian orthodoxy came first, and only later the corrupting influence of demonic powers 52 I refer to Marcel Simon, Verus Israel: A Study of the Relations Between Christians and Jews in the Roman Empire (135–425) (trans. H. McKeating; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986). See also Marcel Simon, “From Greek Hairesis to Christian Heresy,” in Early Christian Literature and the Classical Intellectual Tradition (ed. William R. Schoedel and Robert L. Wilken; Théologie Historique 54; Paris: Éditions Beauchesne, 1979), 101–116. 53 These words are attributed to the second century heresiologist Hegesippus. Eusebius, Church History 3.32:7–8 (ed. Schaff): “the Church up to [the last decades of the first century] had remained a pure and uncorrupted virgin, since, if there were any that attempted to corrupt the sound norm of the preaching of salvation, they lay until then concealed in obscure darkness. But when the sacred college of apostles had suffered death in various forms, and the generation of those that had been deemed worthy to hear the inspired wisdom with their own ears had passed away, then the league of godless error took its rise as a result of the folly of heretical teachers, who, because none of the apostles was still living, attempted henceforth, with a bold face, to proclaim, in opposition to the preaching of the truth, the ‘knowledge which is falsely so-called.’” 54 Ibid.

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brought about the distortion of this original doctrine, and the result was heresy. This bit of polemical historiography is neat and even seductive in its simplicity, and it has proved tenacious in its hold. However, as historians of early Christian heresiology have demonstrated over the last several decades, the narrative does not stand up to scholarly scrutiny.55 Some of the doctrines that early Christian polemicists labeled as heretical may have actually preceded those represented as orthodox! If so, this would suggest that perhaps the direction of doctrinal development was not from an original unity to a corrupt diversity but from a primordial variety to an artificial and at times violently imposed uniformity. The victorious doctrine is called “orthodox” and the anathematized doctrine is called “heresy,” but these are contested badges of legitimacy rather than descriptive categories of sociological reality. A similar kind of totalizing narrative has been proposed for the rabbis, which builds on the myth of Yavneh already discussed.56 And this narrative as well, not at all coincidently, relies on the ideas of orthodoxy and heresy. It is supposed that following on the purported events at Yavneh in 70 C. E., the newly formed rabbinic community ejected heretics from Israel by establishing a “curse on the heretics” in the daily liturgy obligatory on all Jews. The rabbis then imposed a “Talmudic orthodoxy” on Judaism and this resulted in the formation of a type of Judaism, “rabbinic Judaism,” which predominated until modern times.57 In this narrative, it is the rabbinic community, ancient, medieval, and modern, that acts as the crusaders against heresy. As already discussed, however, this kind of ecclesiastical narrative would appear to be a very poor reconstruction of the events of the first centuries C. E., and it is in some of its details wildly anachronistic. But it does demonstrate how the idea of rabbinic heresy and the idea of rabbinic community formation are closely linked and must be critically reexamined together. This is the approach of the current study. I  will examine the concept of heresy at length in the first chapter and explore both its usage and application in the study of the religions of the ancient world, and the limits of its application to the study of the classical rabbinic corpus. I will argue that heresy, properly contextualized in antiquity, is part of 55 See Walter Bauer, Rechtgläubigkeit und Ketzerei im ältesten Christentum (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1934) – the 1964 second edition of this work was translated as Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity (ed. and trans. Robert A. Kraft and Gerhard Krodel, Philadelphia: Fortress, 1971) – and Alain Le Boulluec, La notion d’hérésie dans la littérature grecque, IIe-IIIe siècles (2 vols.; Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1985). 56 See n. 52, above. 57 Simon, Verus Israel, 61–62: “[After 70] supreme authority belonged to the Patriarch. … the Sanhedrin … as a purely religious academy … was made subordinate to him and served as his council. Patriarchs of provinces and heads of local synagogues derived their powers from him … [his ‘apostles’] organized the struggle against heresies, and in particular against Christianity … and were largely responsible for imposing on Judaism the uniformity that Talmudic orthodoxy required” (Verus Israel, 61–62).

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an early Christian technical lexicon that functions within heresiology as an early Christian polemical literary genre. This genre should be understood as just one manifestation of the larger human endeavor of boundary rhetoric, one typical of early Christianity but not of ancient Judaism. The rabbis certainly do inscribe rhetorical boundaries around themselves and target opponents in an exclusionary and at times in an inclusionary fashion, but they do this using their own characteristic literary genres and polemical lexicon. So, for example, both early Christian heresiology and the very important rabbinic traditions targeting the obscure minim that I will discuss presently, can be understood as strategic approaches to polemical exclusion, but they are not equivalent or interchangeable. As I will demonstrate, the wholesale adoption of what is in fact a narrow early Christian polemical lexicon to study ancient Judaism has stood in the way of progress in our understanding of rabbinic community formation. The approach of this book is to avoid reliance on this narrow early lexicon and to study instead more broadly how rhetoric and polemic and the targets of this rhetoric and polemic, the construction of rhetorical boundaries between insiders and outsiders, and exclusion and inclusion functioned in the formation of the rabbinic community. Having established this book’s methodological approach in the first chapter, I will proceed in the subsequent chapters to analyze diachronic developments in the conceptualization of the most important rabbinic opponents, concentrating on those groups that previous studies devoted to the idea of rabbinic heresy have treated more narrowly. I will show how these polemical opponents are reconceptualized and recast in ways that highlight the drawing of clearer boundaries around the rabbinic community and around the larger ethnic collective that it increasingly aspired to lead, the people of Israel. I will in general be less interested in trying to identify whom precisely these opponents were than in how they function as straw men and polemical tropes, recognizing that they are often mostly imaginary and typically highly unstable. In chapter two, I will analyze the most important of these rabbinic opponents, the minim (sg. min, pl. minim). This term is usually translated as “sectarians” or “heretics,” or even as “Jewish-Christians,”58 but it is one of a very few obscure terms with a range of complex meanings in the rabbinic corpus that must remain untranslated in this work so as to avoid circular argumentation. I will demonstrate how in its earliest usage minim was a narrow appellation for a Jewish sectarian entity that is treated in the texts as the Pharisees and the Sadducees are. Over time, however, the minim as an abstract opponent accreted more characteristics and eventually became associated with binitarian theological beliefs. Finally, in the latest strata of the rabbinic corpus minim function as straw men 58 The category of “Jewish-Christian” is problematic and is of very questionable relevance to the period under consideration in this book. I refer here only to how other scholars have treated the term minim, which I critically reexamine in chapter two. See n. 3, there.

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opponents for the rabbinic collective generally as non-Jews or idolaters shorn of much of their ideological specificity. The movement is therefore from minim as sectarian Jewish insider to minim as a threatening hybrid to minim as a complete outsider, a foil for a rhetorically constructed rabbinic collective. In chapter three, I will examine another category of deviant that is sharply excluded in the earliest strata of rabbinic literature, the sinners of Israel. In this case, the chronological movement will be from sharp exclusion to hyperbolic inclusion in the latest strata, in which the sinners of Israel are said to be full of good deeds. However, I will demonstrate that this rhetorical inclusion serves a purpose in the construction of a rabbinic self-conception that encompasses even sinners and deviants within the community of Israel over whom the rabbis’ teachings have jurisdiction. This development from exclusion to inclusion is thus integral to the process of rabbinic community formation, which functions strategically by co-opting earlier opponents into the larger collective that the rabbis aspired to lead. Where chapter two examines a rhetorical movement from insider to outsider and chapter three examines a movement from exclusion to inclusion, chapters four and five examine subtle shifts of a boundary within targeted opponent groups. These groups tend to be treated in an exclusionary fashion, but I will demonstrate how boundaries are shifted in such a way as to serve an at times inclusionary but still polemical aim. In this context, I will examine the meshummadim (sg. meshummad, pl. meshummadim) and the apiqorsim (sg. apiqoros, pl. apiqorsim), but again I will leave these words untranslated to avoid distorting semantic implications (the convention has been to translate meshummad as “apostate” and apiqoros as “Epicurean”; I will touch more on this book’s approach to specialized scholarly terminology and translation in the following section on style and method). I will demonstrate how subsequent redeployments of these polemic targets reveal a remarkable shift in the conditions or mode of exclusion. In the first case, the rabbis invent the idea that only some types of meshummadim are excluded from the community of pious Jews, yet other meshummadim are in effect included. The second case entails a shift in the fundamental relevance of the apiqoros to the rabbis, expressed in the extent to which active disputations with apiqorsim is encouraged at all. Like the movement from insider to outsider and from exclusion to inclusion to be examined in the first two chapters, in chapters three and four a shift in the line over which one must cross to be considered impious works together with careful exhortations regarding how a pious rabbi ought to respond to such impiety to highlight the rabbis as a group, collectively opposing reconceptualized and regrouped opponents. And finally, chapters six and seven examine two important polemical targets that are unexpectedly closely related in the latest strata of the rabbinic corpus, “those who say that there are two powers” and “those who sin and cause the public to sin.” In both cases, a category sharply excluded in the earlier strata is

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subtly included within the purview of the rabbinic collective in the latest strata. I will demonstrate that these categories are redeployed specifically to highlight the figure of what I refer to as “failed rabbis” and in this way serve to expand and clarify the rabbinic community’s internal boundaries. Where the previous chapters focus on how the inscribing of boundaries between rabbis and non-rabbis served to define the boundaries of the rabbis as a group, the final two chapters focus on how the inscribing of boundaries within the developing rabbinic community itself served a similar aim.

IV. A Note on Style and Method The corpus of classical rabbinic literature presents a unique set of challenges to the researcher for two reasons. First, the texts themselves are not books in the ordinary sense of that word. They are not authored works that proceed linearly from introduction to conclusion. They are, rather, anonymous collections of discrete traditions, collected and organized according to principles that vary from work to work. Later works, most notably the Talmuds, set earlier traditions into larger discursive frameworks by comparing and contrasting them according to logical principles internal to these works. Second, the earliest written attestations of all rabbinic texts are in medieval manuscripts, dating at the earliest from around the ninth century or later, centuries after the close of the rabbinic period itself. Scholars generally suppose that prior to this time the transmission of rabbinic traditions was to a greater or lesser extent oral.59 These two facts present a unique set of challenges because the contents of each individual tradition, the selection of traditions that are included in each textual collection, and the discursive and logical structures in which these traditions are presented were all somewhat fluid over the five or six centuries of the rabbinic period.60

59 The extent to which rabbinic texts were written down at all during the rabbinic period is an open and controversial question. For a recent and influential defense of an entirely oral transmission, see Yaakov Sussmann, “‘torah she-be-‘al peh’ – peshutah ke-mashma’ah: koḥo shel qotzo shel yod,” in Meḥqere Talmud III (ed. Yaakov Sussmann and David Rosenthal; Jerusalem: Magnes, 2005), 209–384. 60 On the fluidity of rabbinic traditions and its implication for method, see Peter Schäfer, “Research into Rabbinic Literature: An Attempt to Define the Status Quaestionis,” Journal of Jewish Studies 37 (1986): 139–152; Chaim Milikowsky, “The Status Quaestionis of Research in Rabbinic Literature,” Journal of Jewish Studies 39 (1988): 201–211; Peter Schäfer, “Once Again the Status Quaestionis of Research in Rabbinic Literature: An Answer to Chaim Milikowsky,” Journal of Jewish Studies 40 (1989): 89–94. And see more recently, Peter Schäfer and Chaim Milikowsky, “Current Views on the Editing of Rabbinic Texts of Late Antiquity: Reflections on a Debate after Twenty Years,” in Rabbinic Texts and the History of Late-Roman Palestine (ed. Martin Goodman and Philip Alexander; Proceedings of the British Academy 165; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 79–88.

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Discrete traditions were preserved, adapted, and promulgated from generation to generation. These traditions were occasionally gathered into collections that were themselves preserved, adapted, and promulgated, a process that occurred concurrently with the continued transmission and adaptation of the individual traditions among the various schools or study circles. For this reason traditions appear in variant versions in various collections, and various manuscripts of each collection vary in regard to which traditions they include. Although scholars have a general knowledge of each collection’s approximate provenance and so a general knowledge of the provenance of the traditions within that collection, this knowledge is at best somewhat tentative. We must always be cognizant of the difficulties in placing a specific tradition in a specific time and place. Moreover, each collection preserves traditions that in fact date to a period earlier than the editing of the collection itself. This is valuable because at least potentially it allows a better understanding of the rabbinic movement’s earliest formative years. But it is clear that the editors of these collections not only preserved earlier traditions but also modified and adapted them to their own needs. Discerning the “original” version of a specific tradition is always challenging and often impracticable. For these reasons, in the coming chapters I will at times be concerned with textual evidence for the relationship of specific traditions’ various versions with one another and will endeavor by comparing such variants to place traditions in an approximate time and place or at least in approximate temporal relationship with one another. This effort will allow me to demonstrate developments in the ideas that motivated the rabbis who collected and edited these traditions. And these developments will form part of the data that I will use to examine the formation of the rabbinic community. I will often speak in terms of the “editors” of a specific collection, particularly when discussing the Babylonian Talmud, which has an especially noticeable and historically significant editorial hand, as I will explain. These editors are always anonymous, and who they actually were is always uncertain. But scholars work to understand their lives and times by uncovering how they read, deployed, and contextualized the traditions that they included in their collections. The scholarly literature on these topics is extensive, and great strides have been made in recent decades in the effective and methodologically sound use of rabbinic literature for understanding the period of our interest. This work’s purpose is not methodological in this sense. But I rely heavily on this scholarship for the methodology by which I examine the chronological development of traditions and the assumptions that I bring to bear regarding what this development can tell us about the ancient world. The two methodological issues that will be most relevant in the following chapters are the reliability of attributions and the identification of the editors’ hand in the Babylonian Talmud. Regarding the first issue, many of the traditions

IV. A Note on Style and Method

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that we will be examining are explicitly attributed to specific rabbis whose period of activity can be reliably determined. Unfortunately, however, these attributions are themselves not always reliable. The dominant trend of contemporary research allows that such attributed dicta are not generally pseudepigraphic but neither are they the ipsissima verba of the rabbis to whom they are attributed. Such dicta, however, can often be relied upon to reflect judicial positions approximately contemporary to a named rabbi’s period of activity, especially in their relationship to positions attributed to later or earlier generations.61 Generally, I will endeavor to allow for a range of dates bounded by an attributed rabbi’s period of activity and the date associated with the redaction of the collection in which a tradition appears. In some cases, however, I will argue that the language used or the ideological position implied in a specific dictum is the work of a collection’s editors, and I will present textual evidence such as variant versions of the same tradition or manuscript evidence to support these claims. In contrast to such fixed dicta, narrative texts, particularly the long stories in the Babylonian Talmud, tend to be more heavily worked and are associated more closely with the redaction date of the collection in which they appear rather than with the date of the rabbis who appear in the narratives.62 61 Jacob Neusner is often credited with being one of the first to argue in a systematic way that “rabbinic documents were not simply repositories of tradition but careful selections of material, shaped by the interests, including the self-interest of tradents and redactors. In his view the documents did not simply reflect reality but constituted attempts to construct it, that is, they are statements of ideology” (Schwartz, Imperialism and Jewish Society, 7–8). Neusner’s corpus of scholarly work is extensive, but for an important early work on this question see Jacob Neusner, In Search of Talmudic Biography: The Problem of the Attributed Saying (Chico: Scholars, 1984). Importantly, however, Schwartz, Imperialism and Jewish Society, 8, stresses that the falsity of the idea that we can read rabbinic texts and attributions of sayings in rabbinic literature as historical in every case does not imply the truth of the opposite position: “that we must assume the falsity of attributions, that therefore (?) the documents are essentially pseudepigraphic and can be assumed to provide evidence only for the interests of their redactors, is no longer a skeptical but a positivist position and is less plausible than the one it replaced.” This is consonant with my approach in this study. See David Weiss Halivni, Midrash, Mishnah, and Gemara: The Jewish Predilection for Justified Law (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986), 103–104; David Kraemer, “On the Reliability of Attributions in the Babylonian Talmud,” Hebrew Union College Annual 60 (1989): 175–190, esp. 106; Jeffrey L. Rubenstein, Talmudic Stories: Narrative Art, Composition, and Culture (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1999), 1–33; Richard Kalmin, “The Formation and Character of the Babylonian Talmud,” in The Cambridge History of Judaism, Volume Four: The Late Roman-Rabbinic Period (ed. Steven T. Katz; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 840–876; Schremer, Brothers Estranged, 23–24; and Shai Secunda, The Iranian Talmud: Reading the Bavli in its Sasanian Context (Divinations: Rereading Late Antiquity; Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), 30–31. See also nn. 9 and 60, above. 62 See Rubenstein, Talmudic Stories, 18–21; Shamma Friedman, “A Good Story Deserves Retelling – The Unfolding of the Akiva Legend,” Jewish Studies, an Internet Journal 3 (2004): 55–93; and Rubenstein, “Criteria of Stammaitic Intervention in Aggada,” in Creation and Composition: The Contribution of the Bavli Redactors (Stammaim) to the Aggada, 417–440.

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Regarding the second issue, the Babylonian Talmud has an especially sophisticated and identifiable editorial hand, which makes it unlike the other rabbinic collections. The Bavli’s layered or stratified nature has been well known since the medieval period. Scholars over the past few decades have invested significant effort into unraveling and attempting to date these strata. Most noticeable is an anonymous layer that narrates and organizes earlier dicta and disputation into complex structures of logical argumentation, traditionally referred to as the stam (literally, “anonymous”) of the Talmud.63 I follow this scholarship both in the methodology that I use to identify this anonymous later, and in associating it with the date of activity of the Bavli’s editors. The overall dating structure that I follow places the editing of the respective collections approximately as follows: the Mishnah around 200 C. E.; the Tosefta and the tannaitic collections of midrash in the third century; the Yerushalmi in the late fourth or early fifth century; the classical Palestinian midrash in the fifth century; and the Bavli in the sixth century.64 An additional challenge in studying the rabbis is the relevance of the category of Judaism itself to antiquity. This is certainly a book about ancient Judaism. Yet, as scholars are well aware, both this term “Judaism,” and the term on which it is based, “Jew,” are, to some extent, anachronistic to the period that we will be studying.65 The rabbis do not have a specific name for what we now think of as 63 Halivni, Midrash, Mishnah, and Gemara, 3, proposed referring to these anonymous editors as the “Stammaim, which is Aramaic for ‘anonyms.’” Many scholars have followed this convention, though in this book I will refer more generally to the Bavli’s “editors.” Other significant works of scholarship on this matter include Shamma Friedman, “A Critical Study of Yevamot X with a Methodological Introduction” [Hebrew], in Meḥqarim u-Meqorot (ed. H. Z. Dimitrovsky; New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1977), 277–441; Yaacov Sussman, “ve-shuv li-yerushalmi neziqin” [Hebrew], in Meḥqerei Talmud I (ed. Yaacov Sussmann and David Rosenthal; Jerusalem: Magness, 1990), 55–134, at 106–114; Friedman, “A Good Story Deserves Retelling  – The Unfolding of the Akiva Legend”; Rubenstein, “Criteria of Stammaitic Intervention in Aggada”; Kalmin, “The Formation and Character of the Babylonian Talmud”; David Weiss Halivni, The Formation of the Babylonian Talmud (Introduced, Translated, and Annotated by Jeffrey L. Rubenstein; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013); and Moulie Vidas, Tradition and the Formation of the Talmud (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014). 64 Some of these dates are the subject of considerable scholarly disagreement. Most notably, some scholars would insist on an earlier date for the Yerushalmi and others on a later date for the Bavli. The structure that I suggest here represents a moderating consensus. For my purposes, the relative dates will be most critical and, on this matter, the consensus is firmer. On the dating of individual rabbinic works, see Stemberger, Einleitung in Talmud und Midrasch, Ninth Edition. An earlier version of this book is available in English as Strack and Stemberger, Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash, Second Edition. 65 I say “to some extent,” because both of these words did in fact exist in Greek in the ancient world, though their meanings were not quite the same as our modern words. In any case, the rabbis did not generally use these words. They used the Hebrew “Israel” to denote the Jewish people and had no specific word for “Judaism,” though their word “Torah” does cover at least some of the same semantic ground. For an excellent review of these issues and a very reasonable approach to them, see Seth Schwartz, “How Many Judaisms Were There? A Critique of Neusner

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their religion.66 They do not even have a word that corresponds precisely to our word “religion” at all.67 The scholarship has debated these topics at length, but my approach in this book is straightforward. I will adapt the approach of a growing contingent of scholars who understand the Jews as a known ethnicity with reasonably clear borders over the period of our interest.68 From this perspective, various terms such as “Jew,” “Israel,” or the “people of Israel,” can all be considered as variant ethnonyms for this same ethnicity, and so I will use these terms synonymously in this book. By “Judaism,” then, I mean the full range of what we would now call religious beliefs and practices that the members of this ethnicity cultivated as an expression of their relationship as an ethnic group to their traditional deity.69 Various groups of Jews manifested various and often contradictory expressions of Judaism, but all are nonetheless still Judaism. Scholars need not declare some of these expressions authentic and some spurious. This definition is essentially tautological, but it is historically sound. More importantly, it does not arbitrarily exclude those forms of ancient Judaism that seem too deviant according to modern standards, as more narrow definitions of Judaism tend to do. Judaism is the religion of the Jews in all of its diversity, and it is this religion that is the subject of this book. In an effort to make this book as readable and widely accessible as possible, I will refrain from relying on scholarly technical terms and non-English termiand Smith on Definition and Mason and Boyarin on Categorization,” Journal of Ancient Judaism 2 (2011): 208–238. 66 Though, as mentioned in n. 65, above, the word “Torah” does fulfill some of the same semantic functions for the rabbis in a general sense. 67 On the category of “religion” in the ancient world, see Wilfred Cantwell Smith, The Meaning and End of Religion: A New Approach to the Religious Traditions of Mankind (New York: Macmillan, 1963); Russell T. McCutcheon, “The Category ‘Religion’ in Recent Publications: A Critical Survey,” Numen 42 (1995): 284–309; and Brent Nongbri, “Dislodging ‘Embedded’ Religion: A Brief Note on a Scholarly Trope,” Numen 55 (2008): 440–460. 68 I say “reasonably clear” because an ethnicity is a rhetorical creation, whose borders are always contested to some extent. On the idea of ethnicity in the ancient world, see Jonathan M. Hall, Between Ethnicity and Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 9–19. Hall, ibid., 9, defines ethnicity as follows: “The ethnic group is a self-ascribing and selfnominating social collectivity that constitutes itself in opposition to other groups of a similar order. … the definitional criteria or ‘core elements’ which determine membership in an ethnic group – and distinguish the ethnic group from other social collectives – are a putative subscription to a myth of common descent and kinship, an association with a specific territory and a sense of shared history.” 69 See Schwartz, “How Many Judaisms?” and Daniel Boyarin, “Beyond Judaisms: Metatron and the Divine Polymorphy of Ancient Judaism,” Journal for the Study of Judaism 41 (2010): 323–365, at 327–329. Boyarin’s contribution here is significant in connection to the scholarship on “Judaisms,” a construction that I have never found satisfactory, even given the importance of the debates surrounding this question. Boyarin writes, ibid., 328–329, “If we think of ‘the Jews’ – anachronistically from a terminological point of view – as an ethonym that includes all the people of Israel, then Judaism is all of the complex of related and contending religious forms comprehended by those folks … [a Judaism] that comprehends all of the forms of religious expression of the Jews without centralizing, marginalizing, or reifying any of its forms”.

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nology. In some cases, however, such terms are necessary because the alternative would undermine the arguments that I am making. Especially significant in this regard are some of the most important rabbinic polemical opponents that I will be dealing with in the following chapters, the plural forms minim, meshummadim, and apiqorsim and the corresponding singular forms min, meshummad, and apiqoros. I will leave these words untranslated, although I hope that their use is frequent enough that their meaning will become clear to the reader. Indeed imparting to the reader an intuitive sense of the remarkable range of meanings that these words can carry and the significance of this fact is an important aspect of the present study’s work. As a starting point of reference, these terms are most commonly translated as heretics, apostates, and Epicureans, respectively, translations that are inadequate for reasons that will become clear as we proceed. The only other non-English scholarly technical terms that I will use are the abstract word for the ideology of the minim, minut in Hebrew, which is traditionally translated as “heresy”; the actual ancient Greek words for heresy and heretic, hairesis and hairetikos; and the Hebrew term that the rabbis use for individual precepts and proscriptions of the Torah, such as not lighting a fire on the Sabbath and wearing fringes on the corners of the garments, mitzvah in the singular or mitzvot in the plural. I will touch on each of these matters once more when I first address each term in its appropriate chapter. In addition, references to rabbinic works will cite the work’s title in Hebrew or Aramaic, following standard scholarly protocol. The Mishnah, Tosefta, Bavli, and Yerushalmi are cited by tractate preceded by the first letter of the work’s title (e. g. b. Shabbat for tractate Shabbat of the Babylonian Talmud or m. Nazir for tractate Nazir of the Mishnah). The Mishnah and the Tosefta are cited by chapter and verse (e. g. t. Shabbat 13:5). The Bavli is cited by page and folio (e. g. b. Gittin 55b) and the Yerushalmi by chapter, verse, page, and column (e. g. y. Sanhedrin 10:5, 29c). For other rabbinic works, the name of the work is followed by chapter (e. g. Sifre Deuteronomy 329) or by chapter and verse (e. g. Genesis Rabbah 1:7) or by a topic heading relevant to the section of the Bible on which the work is commenting followed by chapter (e. g. Sifra nedava 2). This complex system is based on the way that the various texts are organized in the medieval manuscripts, and it enables scholars to locate texts with relative ease. But in no case will the translation of these titles and chapter headings be necessary for understanding the argument at hand, though the relative dating of the various works will be very significant as already mentioned. All references to rabbinic texts will also indicate the edition or manuscript cited as I will explain presently. I will also refrain from excessive citations by name of contemporary scholars, preferring instead to engage in the body of the text with these scholars’ ideas and to provide bibliographical detail in the footnotes. This practice is not intended to understate my reliance on the scholars with whom I engage, but to increase accessibility for readers to whom a proliferation of unfamiliar names might be an

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unnecessary distraction. I will cite by name scholars whose work represents key moments in the development of the ideas under discussion and those scholars on whose work I most rely as the starting point for my own analysis. I will cite all primary texts in translation, though I will almost always include the original language texts in the footnotes. I will sometimes include a transliteration of the original text along with the translation where this will be relevant to the argument that I am making. Hebrew transliterations appear in italics using a slightly modified version of the Society for Biblical Literature’s “general purpose style.”70 For some very common words (such as mishnah), for rabbis’ names (such as Yehoshua and Eliezer), and for titles of rabbinic texts (such as Taanit and Moed Qatan), I use this same transliteration system non-italicized, omitting apostrophes and diacritical marks, with a few exceptions for stylistic reasons (e. g. Akiva and Resh Lakish because they are commonly accepted spellings). The spelling of biblical figures’ names (Cain, Adonijah, etc.) follows the Revised Standard Version translation and the spelling of historical figures (Alexander Jannaeus, etc.) follows common practice. Citations from the Mishnah and the Bavli that include no explicit specification of manuscript are from the standard printed editions of these texts. However, as these are traditional rather than scholarly critical editions, earlier textual witnesses will often have superior readings. Variants from earlier witnesses will therefore be cited, when they are significant for the argument at hand, by edition or by manuscript along with or in place of the standard text. I typically cite the Yerushalmi from ed. Venice, though relevant variants in MS Leiden and other witnesses, where available, will be cited as well. Citations from other rabbinic texts will indicate edition cited, as well as manuscript where appropriate.71 I will 70 The modifications are as follows: I use tz for the letter tzade rather than ts; I use right and left apostrophes to distinguish between ’alef and ‘ayin; I do not distinguish spirants where the pronunciation would be unchanged in Modern Hebrew; and I employ a diacritical mark for the letter ḥet. 71 Much of this material, whether standard editions or many of the most important manuscripts, is available in public or subscription databases. I made frequent use of Bar Ilan University’s “Responsa Project” (responsa.co.il); The Saul Lieberman Institute of Talmudic Research of the Jewish Theological Seminary’s “Saul and Evelyn Henkind Talmud Text Databank” (lieberman-institute.com); Bar Ilan University’s “Primary Textual Witnesses to Tannaitic Literature” (biu.ac.il/JS/tannaim); The National Library of Israel’s “Talmudic Manuscript Treasures” (web.nli.org.il/sites/nli/Hebrew/collections/jewish-collection/Talmud); The Academy of the Hebrew Language’s “Ma’agarim” (maagarim.hebrew-academy.org.il); The Jewish National and University Library, David and Fela Shapell Family Digitization Project, and the Hebrew University Department of Talmud’s “Online Treasury of Talmudic Manuscripts” (jnul.huji.ac.il/ dl/talmud); Jastrow’s Dictionary at “The Tyndale Archive of Biblical Studies” (tyndalearchive. com); and, for traditional texts and editions, “Mechon Mamre” (mechon-mamre.org) and “HebrewBooks, Ryzman Edition” (hebrewbooks.org). For non-rabbinic texts, I made frequent use of the “Thesaurus Linguae Graecae” (stephanus.tlg.uci.edu); “The Online Critical Pseudepigrapha” (ocp.stfx.ca); and “The Book of Ben Sira” (bensira.org). These are all excellent resources for the scholar of the ancient world, and those that develop, maintain, and sponsor

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cite biblical verses from the Masoretic Text with translation from the Revised Standard Version (RSV) unless otherwise indicated. All other translations in this book are mine unless otherwise indicated, though I have consulted in all cases the standard modern translations of rabbinic works. I refrain from abbreviating the titles of most rabbinic works with a few exceptions for particularly cumbersome titles, as I will note when cited.

them have made a tremendous contribution to the advancement of scholarship. Among print resources that I made frequent use of, it is worth highlighting, along with the standard print editions, critical editions, and manuscript reproductions of rabbinic texts cited in the footnotes, the Synopse zum Talmud Yerushalmi (4 vols.; ed. Peter Schäfer and Hans-Jürgen Becker; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1991–2001); Rabbinovicz’s diqduqei sofrim; and, of course, the great Vilna edition of the Babylonian Talmud.

Chapter 1

The Meaning and End of Heresy in Rabbinic Literature One of this book’s major premises is that the institutionalized and authoritative collective of sages, teachers, and judges that was well established by the sixth century and which scholars refer to as “the rabbinic community” developed only gradually over the previous centuries from an earlier Jewish ideal of the sage in interaction with the compilation and promulgation of texts. Over time, this process resulted in an established curriculum for a community of sages. In other words, the idea that there was a rabbinic community was imagined into being by the production and consumption of texts. This may be one of the reasons that rabbinic literature has an oddly solipsistic worldview.1 It imagines a diverse landscape of sages, scribes, elders, priests, and patriarchs interacting with Pharisees and Sadducees, sinners and sectarians, in complex and changing relationships. But many of these groups, such as the Pharisees and the Sadducees, in all likelihood no longer existed by the time of the earliest rabbinic texts’ production. And others, such as the minim and the meshummadim to be discussed in the following chapters, have amorphous boundaries that change over time. My contention is that these groups’ literary function within the rabbinic corpus is not primarily to describe the sociological reality in which the rabbinic tradents named in this literature operated, but rather to work out what it meant to be a rabbi within the larger community of Israel. The rabbinic community imagines itself into being through a process of strategic boundary rhetoric acted out in the textual traditions that the corpus of rabbinic literature preserves. It works out a definition of who it is in large part through defining who it is not. But these rhetorical opponents are often only straw men built on vaguely recalled reflections of past conflict rather than real present sectarian opponents. This kind of rhetorical flexibility allowed the rabbis continually to reimagine or recycle named opponent groups, attributing to them characteristics appropriate to each 1 A number of scholars have described the rabbis as “solipsistic.” I believe that the earliest is Sacha Stern, Jewish Identity in Early Rabbinic Writings (Arbeiten zur Geschichte des Antiken Judentums und des Urchristentums 23; Leiden: Brill, 1994), 199–222. See also, Goodman, State and Society, xiv, and Lieu, Christian Identity, 23 n. 61, 35. My intention is that rabbinic literature creates a textual world that, based on extant material and documentary evidence, often seems to have little in common with the real world that the rabbis lived in day to day.

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subsequent generation of rabbis’ strategic aims. The result is the appearance of continuity overlaying a limitless malleability. It is for this reason that previous studies of rabbinic boundary rhetoric have been hampered by their reliance on the idea of heresy. Each study must define the very broad category of heresy, either explicitly or implicitly, in a fashion appropriate to the study’s methodological assumptions. But this process imposes a selectivity on the rabbinic material that obscures the fundamental instability of rabbinic polemical targets. In the subsequent chapters, I will examine the changing nature of minim, meshummadim, apiqorsim, and sinners of various sorts in rabbinic literature. And, the imprecision entailed in treating these diverse and changing opponents from the perspective of heresy will become clear. In this chapter, I  will examine the concept of heresy itself, both in antiquity and in modernity, in order to demonstrate that, properly considered and contextualized in the ancient world, heresy is not an overarching category encompassing both Jewish and Christian forms of polemical exclusion. Rather it is merely one exemplar of this larger endeavor, one that is characteristic of early Christian thinkers building on Hellenistic Greek philosophical ideas. Both the rabbis and these early Christian thinkers were engaged in boundary discourse and rhetorical exclusion in their texts, but only early Christian thinkers were engaged in heresiology.2

I. Heresy in Rabbinic Literature? Scholars have been interested in heresy in rabbinic literature for over a century.3 Much of the earliest scholarship on this subject attempted to identify who these 2 For

a basic definition of heresiology as a literary genre, see n. 10, below. literature on this topic is extensive. Notable studies include R. Travers Herford, Christianity in the Talmud and Midrash (London: Williams & Norgate, 1903), the second section of which deals extensively with minim and minut in rabbinic literature; Alan F. Segal, Two Powers in Heaven: Early Rabbinic Reports about Christianity and Gnosticism (Leiden: Brill, 1977); Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism; Shaye J. D. Cohen, “A Virgin Defiled: Some Rabbinic and Christian Views on the Origin of Heresy,” Union Seminary Quarterly Review 36 (1980): 1–11; Reuven Kimelman, “Birkat Ha-Minim and the Lack of Evidence for an Anti-Christian Jewish Prayer in Late Antiquity,” in Jewish and Christian Self-Definition, Volume Two: Aspects of Judaism in the Graeco-Roman Period (ed. E. P. Sanders, A. I. Baumgarten, and Alan Mendelson; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1981), 226–244; Lawrence H. Schiffman, “At the Crossroads: Tannaitic Perspectives on the Jewish-Christian Schism,” in Jewish and Christian Self-Definition, Volume Two, 115–156; Simon, Verus Israel; Alan F. Segal, Rebecca’s Children: Judaism and Christianity in the Roman World (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986); Yaakov Sussmann, “The History of Halakha and the Dead Sea Scrolls – Preliminary Observations on Miqṣat Ma‘ase Ha-Torah (4QMMT),” [Hebrew] Tarbiz 59 (1989): 11–76, translated as, “Appendix 1: The History of the Halakha and the Dead Sea Scrolls, Preliminary Talmudic Observations on Miqṣat Ma‘aśe ha-Torah (4QMMT),” in Qumran Cave 4, Volume 5: Miqṣat Ma‘aśe haTorah (ed. Elisha Qimron and John Strugnell; Discoveries in the Judaean Desert 10; Oxford: Clarendon, 1994), 179–200; David Flusser, “Some of the Precepts of the Torah from Qumran 3 The

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supposed heretics might have been, whether so-called gnostics, Jewish or gentile Christians, or conjectured Jewish binitarians. More recently, scholars have been increasingly interested in analyzing rabbinic heresy as a rhetorical construct. Although many of these studies have accepted the concept of heresy in rabbinic literature as unproblematic, a number of scholars have continued to maintain that there is no such concept in rabbinic literature in any meaningful sense.4 The observation that rabbinic literature is primarily occupied with practical precepts and proscriptions rather than the types of soteriological and christological concerns that animate much of the early Christian polemics against heresy often figure prominently in these arguments.5 Critics have questioned this type of (4QMMT) and the Benediction Against the Heretics” [Hebrew], Tarbiz 61 (1992): 333–374; Stuart S. Miller, “The Minim of Sepphoris Reconsidered,” Harvard Theological Review 86 (1993): 377–402; Martin D. Goodman, “The Function of Minim in Early Rabbinic Judaism,” in Geschichte-Tradition-Reflexion: Festschrift für Martin Hengel zum 70 Geburtstag (3 vols.; ed. H. Cancik, H. Lichtenberger, and P. Schäfer; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1996), 1.501–510; Richard Kalmin, “Christians and Heretics in Rabbinic Literature of Late Antiquity,” Harvard Theological Review 87 (1994): 155–169; Christine 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; Studies and Texts in Jewish History and Culture 5; Lanham: University Press of Maryland, 1999), 249–289; Boyarin, Border Lines; Israel Jacob Yuval, Two Nations in Your Womb: Perceptions of Jews and Christians in the Middle Ages (trans. Barbara Harshav and Jonathon Chipman; Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006); Yaakov Y. Teppler, Birkat haMinim: Jews and Christians in Conflict in the Ancient World (trans. Susan Weingarten; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007); Adiel Schremer, “Midrash, Theology, and History: Two Powers in Heaven Revisited,” Journal for the Study of Judaism 39 (2008): 230–254; Alon Goshen-Gottstein, “Jewish-Christian Relations and Rabbinic Literature – Shifting Scholarly and Relational Paradigms: The Case of Two Powers,” in Interaction Between Judaism and Christianity in History, Religion, Art, and Literature (ed. M. Poorthuis, J. Schwartz, and J. Turner; Leiden: Brill, 2008), 15–44; Daniel Boyarin, “Rethinking Jewish Christianity: An Argument for Dismantling a Dubious Category (to which is Appended a Correction of my Border Lines),” Jewish Quarterly Review 99 (2009): 7–36; ibid., “Beyond Judaisms”; Schremer, Brothers Estranged; Schäfer, The Jewish Jesus; Adiel Schremer, “Thinking about Belonging in Early Rabbinic Literature: Proselytes, Apostates, and ‘Children of Israel,’ or: Does It Make Sense to Speak of Early Rabbinic Orthodoxy?” Journal for the Study of Judaism 43 (2012): 249–275; and David M. Grossberg, “The Meaning and End of Heresy in Rabbinic Literature” (Ph.D. diss.; Princeton University, 2014). 4 This position has been defended most vigorously and recently by Adiel Schremer, specifically in regard to the earlier strata of the rabbinic corpus, though scholars whose work significantly limits the applicability of the concept of heresy to rabbinic literature include Lawrence Schiffman, Martin Goodman, Shaye Cohen, Stuart Miller, and Alon Goshen-Gottstein. See the studies enumerated in n. 3, above. 5 Most recently, for example, Adiel Schremer, “Thinking about Belonging in Early Rabbinic Literature,” 249, writes: “[F]or Palestinian rabbis of the first, second, and early third century, Jewish identity was not a matter of belief and doctrine. Rather, it was either a matter of birth and descent, or a matter of loyalty to the covenant”; and, ibid., Brothers Estranged, 181 n. 76, citing a text from Avot of Rabbi Natan, “‘Do not go to the minim, do not listen to their teachings, lest you stumble in their practices.’ The threat is clearly the minim’s practices, not merely their beliefs, as such.” Schremer’s approach is similar to Schiffman’s on this matter; see, for example, “At the Crossroads: Tannaitic Perspectives on the Jewish-Christian Schism,” 139–140: “[T]annaitic Judaism … is primarily a religion of action rather than belief. Only a small number

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argument both on the grounds that the rabbis certainly polemicize against proscribed theological ideas along with their occupation with Torah precepts and, even were this not the case, it is not easy to draw sharp lines between these two areas of rhetorical concern because a wide range of ideological and doctrinal commitments certainly animate both.6 What is lacking is a careful examination of the one objective difference between heresy in early Christian literature and heresy in rabbinic literature. In early Christian literature, heresy, that is, the Greek word hairesis,7 is an important technical term, perhaps the most important technical term, in a number of developing Christian literary genres.8 These genres and their accompanying technical lexicon are themselves developments and adaptations from earlier Hellenistic philosophical genres. The meaning of the Greek hairesis develops and changes over time, and much important scholarship has traced the etymological and historical implications of these changes, as I will discuss presently.9 Hairesis means one thing to the well-known mid-first century evangelist of early Christianity, Paul of Tarsus, another to the unknown late-first century author of the New Testament book of Acts, and yet something else to the second century Christian apologist Justin Martyr. We can thus always ground the study of early Christian heresy in an etymological and literary-generic study of a complex technical term’s developing semantic functioning within a complex and growing body of genealogically interdependent literature.10 of beliefs have ever been seen as mandatory in Jewish life, and when compared with the requirements of action and behaviour, it is easy to see that the primary emphasis of Judaism is on the fulfillment of the commandments and not on faith.”   6 See, most recently, Schäfer, The Jewish Jesus, 8, who criticizes Schremer’s distinction between theology and politics in Brothers Estranged. This distinction is, in Schremer’s work, closely allied to his distinction between belief or doctrine and “loyalty to the covenant.” See n. 5, above, and n. 15, below.   7 Αἵρεσις.   8 The conventions of heresiology as a distinct early Christian literary genre develop over time. Its critical technical vocabulary is developed in polemical dialogues, in early epistles, and in a number of books of the canonical New Testament. See Alain Le Boulluec, La notion d’hérésie, 1.21–36; and see n. 10, below.   9 See John Glucker, Antiochus and the Late Academy (Hypomnemata: Untersuchungen zur Antike und zu ihrem Nachleben 56; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1978), 159–225; Simon, “From Greek Hairesis to Christian Heresy”; Heinrich von Staden, “Hairesis and Heresy: The Case of the haireseis iatrikai,” in Jewish and Christian Self-Definition, Volume Three: Self-Definition in the Greco-Roman World (ed. Ben F. Meyer and E. P. Sanders; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1982), 76–100; Le Boulluec, La notion d’hérésie; Michel Desjardins, “Bauer and Beyond: On Recent Scholarly Discussions of Αἳρεσις in the Early Christian Era,” The Second Century 8 (1991): 65–82; David T. Runia, “Philo of Alexandria and the Greek Hairesis-Model,” Vigiliae Christianae 53 (1999): 117–147; Robert M. Royalty, Jr., The Origin of Heresy: A History of Discourse in Second Temple Judaism and Early Christianity (Routledge Studies in Religion 18; New York: Routledge, 2013). 10 In contrast to the Greek hairesis and hairetikos, which were ancient Greek technical terms, “heresiology” is a modern way of describing ancient texts. It is a scholarly description of a

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Heresy in the rabbinic context, in contrast, is not a technical term used in an established rabbinic literary genre. The rabbis do not use the word hairesis nor do they intentionally adopt the Hellenistic or early Christian genres in which this term develops in the first centuries C. E. The terms that the rabbis do use, such as the minim, meshummadim, and apiqorsim to be discussed at length in the coming chapters,11 have their own complex etymological and literary-generic development and their own complex functions in rabbinic texts that might be similar in some ways to the development and function of hairesis in early Christian literature, but are also, in other ways, very distinct. While heresy set in its proper historical context in early Christian literature is a technical term in an established literary genre with a known and extensive genealogy, heresy in rabbinic literature is something else, though the scholarship has not clearly and convincingly articulated what this something else might be. literary genre that developed among early Christian thinkers such as Justin and Irenaeus in the second century C. E. The scholarship (see n. 9, above) offers various descriptions of precisely the kinds of literary characteristics that should be considered essential to a definition of this genre. However, there is general agreement that, at least in the context of early Christianity, the basic genre is an adaptation of an earlier Hellenistic literary practice of creating taxonomies of the teachings of various philosophical schools, typically referred to as “doxography,” a term which Hermann Diels coined in the 19th century (see David T. Runia, “What is Doxography?” in Ancient Histories of Medicine: Essays in Medical Doxography and Historiography in Classical Antiquity [ed. Philip J. van der Eijk; Studies in Ancient Medicine 20; Leiden: Brill, 1999], 33–55). Early Christian polemicists adapted and developed this Greek literary genre, and they combined it with a shift in the technical vocabulary central to the earlier genre in an increasingly pejorative direction (as I  will describe in section three of this chapter). Thus, lists of “philosophical schools” (haireseis) in the descriptive sense of Hellenistic doxography became lists of heresies in a derogatory sense, and the result was the early Christian literary genre of heresiology. See, David T. Runia’s review of Le Boulluec, La notion d’hérésie, Vigiliae Christianae 42 (1988): 188–192, at 190: “the Fathers obtained powerful polemical instruments by adapting the heresiographical and doxographical methods of Greek philosophy”; and ibid., 188: “[heresiology] is the adaptation of the heresiographical mode of parlance to the specific realities of the Christian situation.” See also Bentley Layton, “The Significance of Basilides in Ancient Christian Thought,” Representations 28 (1989): 135–151 “[Heresiology is a] Christianized version of the doxography genre”; and Le Boulluec, La notion d’hérésie, 1.110–112. Nothing similar to this genre exists in the rabbinic corpus, and the rabbis’ techniques for list formation are very different. See the extended discussion of rabbinic list formation in Grossberg, “The Meaning and End of Heresy in Rabbinic Literature,” 183–241. 11 As discussed in the introduction, I have chosen for the sake of precision to leave the Hebrew min, minim, minut, meshummad, meshummadim, apiqoros, and apiqorsim untranslated throughout this book. The sense of these terms will become clear as I proceed. Min can be provisionally thought of as “sectarian,” minim as “sectarians,” minut as “sectarianism,” meshummad / meshummadim as “apostate” / “apostates” and apiqoros / apiqorsim as “Epicurean” / “Epicureans.” I will discuss these terms at length in the following chapters. The term mumar, which appears in some manuscripts synonymously to meshummad, is a substitution made because of medieval censorship of rabbinic texts. Mumar, meaning something like “convert,” was apparently considered less pejorative than meshummad. I will use the term meshummad in my translations even where I cite a censored text. See my discussion in chapter four, section one, and n. 7, there, for bibliography.

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In his important study of early Christianity heresiology, the contemporary French scholar Alain Le Boulluec discusses scholarly usage of the term “heresy”: The historian must ask what is the exact meaning of terminology used by authors of the second and third centuries and must examine whether it is legitimate to apply to the early days of the Church a concept [such as “heresy” that is] so loaded with meaning from the turmoil that has marked the subsequent development of Christianity.12

Le Boulluec is arguing that we need to reexamine whether the semantic implications of the notion of heresy that derive from its usage subsequent to our period of interest undermine the legitimacy of its use in our analysis of earlier Christian writers, even in regard to those writers who actually use the Greek word hairesis in their treatises. If so, then the need to reexamine this notion’s legitimacy in analysis of the rabbis, in a body of literature that does not use it at all, is even more pressing. In the following sections, I will examine the various ways that we might apply this concept to rabbinic literature with the aim of demonstrating that all fall short of the requirements of rigorous analysis. Rather, I argue that representing competing teachings as heresy is just one strategic approach to polemics against outsiders and deviants among many in antiquity, an approach that is not characteristic of the rabbis.

II. Heresy as a Category Certainly the simplest way to apply the concept of heresy to rabbinic literature is to use the word in its modern sense without extended critical consideration, by explicitly defining it along relatively narrow lines as a basis for analysis. However, I will now demonstrate how assumptions about what heresy is can subtly support the premises that underlie such an analysis, and so implicitly create a circular argument. I will compare the definitions of heresy that underlie several 12 Alain Le Boulluec, La notion d’hérésie, 1.11: “L’historien cependant doit se demander quelle est l’acception exacte des vocables utilisés par les auteurs des II et III siècles et rechercher s’il est légitime d’appliquer aux premiers temps de l’Église un concept si chargé de sens par les troubles qui ont marqué l’évolution ultérieure du christianisme.” Le Boulluec’s work is a good example of the kind of precision that I am advocating in this chapter. He seems to use the term “heresy” only in describing the work of Justin and later heresiologists, preferring expressions such as des représentations des désaccords for early Christian thinkers like Ignatius and Clement of Rome. See, for example, ibid., 1.26: “Les fluctuations de la terminologie d’un auteur à l’autre et chez un même auteur correspondent à des représentations diverses des désaccords. Il n’y a pas encore, à cette époque-là, de conception unifiée, même si certains des éléments de l’hérésiologie ultérieure sont déjà en place”: “Fluctuations in terminology from one author to another and within one author correspond to different representations of disagreements. There is not, at this time, unified design, although some elements of the subsequent heresiology are already in place.”

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studies of this subject published over the last few decades to show both the range of meanings that this idea can bear and how the choice of definition along this range can support a study’s conclusions. In his recent work on “Heresy, Christianity, and Jewish Identity in Late Antiquity,”13 Adiel Schremer undertakes an important challenge to some wellentrenched scholarly approaches to this subject. He appears to rely on a basic definition of heretics as “people who hold false doctrines … concerning God.”14 With this definition in mind, Schremer proceeds to demonstrate how early rabbinic polemical texts often centered on matters of “social-national loyalty” or “loyalty to the covenant,” by which I believe that he means Jewish ethnic identity and the observance of Torah precepts and proscriptions, which are in his view not “doctrines concerning God,” and therefore the targets of these texts are not heretics.15 This definition closely adheres to a well-known earlier study on the “Jewish-Christian schism” by Lawrence Schiffman: “A heretic is one whose beliefs do not accord with those of the established religion to which he claims adherence. An apostate is one whose actions are not consonant with the standards of behaviour set by his religious group.”16 In both of these cases, I would argue that the definition of heresy is configured in such a way as to best facilitate the aims of the analyses, both of which set out to demonstrate that heresy is not an especially significant concept in our understanding of the rabbis. 13 Schremer, Brothers Estranged; ibid., “Thinking about Belonging in Early Rabbinic Literature.” 14 Schremer, Brothers Estranged, 14. 15 Schremer does mention a rabbinic discourse on heresy and articulates a distinction between two types of heresy, “intellectual heresy” and “emotional heresy,” allowing that that the latter is more relevant to the rabbis than the former. However, discourse on “emotional heresy” is apparently more of a “social discourse” than a heresiological one per se (Brothers Estranged, 25–26). Yet for the most part, Schremer sets up the rabbinic discourse on minut against the Christian discourse on heresy: “This … is the perspective from which we need to approach the early rabbinic discourse of minut. In contrast to Justin, for example, for whom ‘heresy’ was a matter of false belief, minut was constructed by second-century Palestinian rabbis in terms of social-national loyalty no less than through the perspective of doctrine and theological thought” (Brothers Estranged, 66). This is expressed more clearly in Schremer’s more recent article, “Thinking about Belonging in Early Rabbinic Literature,” which contrasts “belief and doctrine” to “birth and descent” and “loyalty to the covenant” (ibid., 249): “when Tannaitic texts do ‘reflect’ on the question of belonging in the Jewish people, ‘heresy,’ or ‘heretics,’ do not appear as categories informing their thought. Instead, they formulate the issue with respect either to descent, or to adherence to the law, and this indicates that dogmas and beliefs were not the main focus of the rabbinic thinking about Jewish identity” (253–254). And, see n. 5, above. Schremer’s main argument, however, is that early rabbinic texts are not as focused on polemicizing against Christianity as much earlier scholarship has presumed, which I would agree with. But basing this argument on a narrow definition for the category of heresy does not, I think, help his analysis. 16 Schiffman, “At the Crossroads: Tannaitic Perspectives on the Jewish-Christian Schism”; ibid., Who was a Jew?: Rabbinic and Halakhic Perspectives on the Jewish Christian Schism (Hoboken, New Jersey: Ktav, 1985), 41. The idea of a Jewish-Christian schism is itself problematic. See my discussion in the conclusion and in nn. 6 and 12, there.

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We can compare these definitions to those of a few other contemporary scholars, whose analytical aims differ from Schremer’s and Schiffman’s. For example, Alan Segal, in his groundbreaking 1977 monograph on this subject, defines a heretic not in terms of “belief,” as such, but in terms of the broader and potentially more flexible category of “orthodoxy.” For Segal, a heretic is “someone who began in the parent group but who has put himself beyond the pale with respect to some canon of orthodoxy.”17 Alternatively, the Oxford historian Martin Goodman, in a frequently cited article on the minim published in 1996, defines a heretic in relation to an apostate as Schiffman does, but his basic assumptions are different from Schiffman’s: A heretic is differentiated from an apostate by his claim to present another, better version of the theological system than that found in the mainstream. By contrast, an apostate may simply reject the system, offering nothing else in its place. If Judaism is categorised as a system of covenantal nomism, the distinction between types of sinner should be clear. All Jews are bound by the covenant between God and Israel. Ordinary sinners are those who try to observe the covenant but do so badly; apostates are those who deny the covenant explicitly; heretics are those who (in the eyes of others) break the covenant by willful misinterpretation of its meaning.18

I would suggest that Schremer and Schiffman, by defining heresy in terms of proscribed belief, are able to remove from their analyses the idea of what Goodman calls “breaking the covenant” between God and the Jews by failing to observe its practical precepts. For Segal, heresy also involves belief generally, but he defines the concept in terms of orthodoxy, which in his study primarily means rabbinic notions of monotheism. So, for Segal, heresy is defined explicitly in terms of the subject of his book, “two powers in heaven,” the rabbinic phrase for theological speculations on divine multiplicity that I will discuss in chapters two and six.19 Goodman brings theology and the practical observance of the Torah together in his definition, so that heretics are so named by their failure to “observe the covenant” because they reinterpret it in such a way as to present an alternate theological system. Likewise, an important 2004 study of rabbinic boundary rhetoric by Daniel Boyarin does something similar to if more sophisticated than Goodman by arguing that there is no practical difference between “rules of faith” and “rules that faith makes for practice,” so that a heretic can be, at least in theory, defined solely in terms of judicial disagreements on, for example, details of the rules prescribing ritual purity.20 Two Powers, 5. “Function of Minim,” 503. The reference to “covenantal nomism” is to E. P. Sander’s idea, as discussed in Paul and Palestinian Judaism. 19 Segal, Two Powers, 267 writes that “[‘Two powers’] seems to have been one of the primary rabbinic categories for describing heresy.” He suggests, ibid., 262, that “‘Two powers’ seems to be one of the basic issues over which Judaism and Christianity separated.” 20 Boyarin, Border Lines, 55 defines a “rule of faith” as “both a rule for faith and the rules faith makes for practice that distinguishes the orthodox from the heretic.” In my reading, this 17 Segal,

18 Goodman,

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We see in these works a range of possible definitions of heresy: a definition in terms of belief or in terms of theological orthodoxy, a definition that attempts to bridge the conceptual categories of belief and practice through the theological concept of covenantal nomism, and a definition in terms of practice. It is not my intention to reject any of these approaches completely or to prefer one over another, so I will not address the questions of whether the distinction between belief and practice has theoretical validity or if it is sensible to define heresy purely in terms of judicial disagreements.21 I review these diverse approaches to highlight the semantic ambiguity implicit in the concept of rabbinic heresy. It would seem that because these studies cannot be anchored in an analysis of a historically contextualized literary genre and its accompanying technical terminology, they have a fair amount of latitude regarding what the analytical terms that they use mean in the context of their studies. I am also not suggesting that this range of definitions stems from lack of rigor or tendentiousness. Rather, I believe that this difficulty is an almost inevitable result of the semantic range implicit in the word heresy itself, if the word is to be used without further qualification in its modern sense.22 The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) includes a range of definitions for heresy, which it arranges in a hierarchy of increasing generality. It defines heresy first in terms of “theological or religious opinion or doctrine maintained in opposition, or held to be implies that a heretic may also be defined purely in terms of, say, a person who declares the “wrong” kind of blood impure or puts on the “wrong” kind of phylacteries. Thus, Boyarin, ibid., 29, defines “rules of faith” in a Foucauldian sense as “practices of discourse expressed both in language and in action that serve to set the bounds of who is in and who is out of the religious group.” See ibid., 60 and 64–65, for Boyarin’s discussion of the Sadducee’s purity practices and of Akavya ben Mahalalel. 21 Emile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, A New Translation by Carol Cosman (ed. Mark Sydney Cladis; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 36, famously suggested that belief and practice are two distinct modes of religious expression: “Religious phenomena fall quite naturally into two basic categories: beliefs and rites.” Scholars such as Catherine Bell have criticized this position, Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 48–49: “In the final analysis the results of such a differentiation between thought and action cannot be presumed to provide an adequate position vis-à-vis human activity as such. Naturally, as many others have argued before, the differentiation tends to distort not only the nature of so-called physical activities, but the nature of mental ones as well. Yet the more subtle and far-reaching distortion is not the obvious bifurcation of a single, complex reality into dichotomous aspects that can exist in theory only. Rather, it is the far more powerful act of subordination disguised in such differentiation, the subordination of act to thought, or actors to thinkers.” It must be observed, however, that scholars do still routinely rely on this distinction to some degree. 22 Michael Allen Williams’ observation in Rethinking “Gnosticism”: An Argument for Dismantling a Dubious Category (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), 3, is apropos: “A good argument could be made that the very function of categories should be to make things clearer and easier to sort out, and that if it proves to be the case that researchers have difficulty agreeing on the definition of a category itself, then that category should be the very first thing shoved out the door to make way for better ones before we get on with the business of sorting.”

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contrary, to the ‘catholic’ or orthodox doctrine of the Christian Church.” Secondly, by extension, the OED contrasts “religious opinion or doctrine” to “any church, creed, or religious system, considered as orthodox.” And finally, again by extension, heresy is defined as “Opinion or doctrine in philosophy, politics, science, art, etc., at variance with those generally accepted as authoritative.”23 It is remarkable, but I believe that it is an accurate reflection of this term’s complexity, that in the definition of this single word, the OED appeals first to “theology” and “Christian orthodoxy” in a very narrow sense, then to “orthodoxy” decontextualized from the Christian Church, and finally to “authoritative opinion” decontextualized from any idea of orthodoxy or theology at all.24 It is worth emphasizing the obvious: if heresy is defined in terms of the “orthodox doctrine of the Christian Church” then there cannot by definition be such a thing as rabbinic heresy. If, on the other hand, heresy is defined in terms of “opinion” at variance with what is “generally accepted as authoritative,” then there certainly is heresy in rabbinic literature, but the concept of heresy has been so decontextualized historically that this fact tells us nothing that is especially interesting about rabbinic social-history in the ancient world. I would therefore suggest that Schremer is able to carry out his analysis and conclude essentially that there is no heresy in rabbinic literature, to some extent because his definition for the term heresy is placed on the continuum from the highly contextualized “Christian orthodoxy” to the completely decontextualized “authoritative opinion” quite a bit nearer the former than the latter.25 Segal places his definition somewhere in the middle of these two poles. And, Goodman and Boyarin are somewhat nearer the side of “authoritative opinion.” It should be clear that precision and commensurability across various studies would be better served were we able to appeal to something other than such a loose usage of the idea of heresy in our analysis of rabbinic polemical strategies and rhetorical styles. Basing one’s analysis on a definition that captures only part of what is in fact a very wide ranging and historically loaded technical term can too easily lead to unclarity or incomplete readings of the data. For this reason, we would do better if we could think in terms of the ancient rather than the modern concept of heresy in our study of the rabbis. This ancient concept developed among writers in Greek in the first centuries C. E., right around the formative period of the traditions that would be collected in the earliest rabbinic texts. In 23 The Oxford English Dictionary, Second Edition (20 vols.; ed. John Simpson and Edmund Weiner; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989). 24 As Robert M. Royalty, Jr., The Origin of Heresy, 3, observes, “One can commit heresy by serving the wrong wine at dinner, breaking with your political party on a policy, running on third-and-long, or changing a business plan. Every business, group, club, and organization seems to have its ‘heretics’ who challenge the ‘reigning orthodoxy’ of the system.” And, see n. 48, below. 25 See nn. 5 and 15, above. To be precise, Schremer’s recent work focuses on the earlier strata of rabbinic literature, up to around the fourth century.

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the following section, we will examine this ancient idea and its relevance to early Judaism generally and the rabbis specifically.

III. Heresy as hairesis The modern English word heresy ultimately derives from the Greek hairesis. As the key technical term in early Christian heresiology, the word hairesis has a well-studied etymological history stretching back several hundred years before Justin Martyr and other early Christian heresiologists used the word in an innovative and sharply pejorative sense starting in the mid-second century C. E.26 By this time, the word had already started taking on shades of its later meaning, invoking associations with deviancy and false doctrine. Surprisingly, however, the word’s etymological roots start with a Greek verb, hairew, that means simply, “to take” or “to choose.” In this section, I will review this term’s development in Jewish and Christian literature leading up to the rabbinic period. I will show that in its earlier meanings, it is found in both Jewish and Christian circles. But its derivative pejorative sense is found only among the early Christian heresiologists.27 As early as the fifth century B. C. E., some 600 years before the first heresiologists, the Greek historian Herodotus used the term hairesis in the very concrete sense of “taking”: “After taking (hairesin) Babylon, Darius himself marched against the Scythians.”28 A millennium after Herodotus, the Spanish Archbishop Isidore of Seville explicitly defines the Latin haeresis in a fashion that shows an awareness of both its earlier neutral Greek usage and its derivative pejorative Christian sense: Heresy is so called in Greek from ‘choice,’ doubtless because each person chooses for himself that which seems best to him, as did the Peripatetic, Academic, Epicurean, and Stoic philosophers. Or, just as others who, pondering perverse teachings, have withdrawn from the Church by their own will.29

Behind this remarkable 1000 years of documented literary development stands a fascinating incremental semantic evolution. One contemporary scholarly analysis enumerates the following diachronic elements as key to understanding this 26 For studies tracing this development and for a basic definition of heresiology as a literary genre, see nn. 9–10, above. 27 And related literature such as the Epistles of Ignatius and perhaps in some books of the Christian New Testament, as I will explain. 28 Μετὰ δὲ τὴν Βαβυλῶνος αἵρεσιν ἐγένετο ἐπὶ Σκύθας αὐτοῦ Δαρείου ἔλασις (trans. A. D. Godley, ed. Loeb). 29 Isidore of Seville, Etymologies, 8.3.1. Translation from Stephen A. Barney, W. J. Lewis, J. A. Beach, and Oliver Berghοf, ed. and trans., The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville, Translated with Introduction and Notes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 174, slightly modified. See Simon, “From Greek Hairesis to Christian Heresy,” 104.

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term’s evolution from the earliest classic period into Late Antiquity: 1. “the taking or seizure of something”; 2. “the selection or choice of something or somebody”; 3. “the choice of a course or action”; 4. “a disposition or inclination based on the repeated taking of certain choices”; 5. “a direction of thought or action, a school of thought”; 6. “a group of people, a party or sect marked by common ideas and aims”; and, finally, 7. “a party or sect that stands outside established or recognized tradition, a heretical group that propounds false doctrine in the form of a heresy.”30 This term in all of its various senses is ubiquitous among writers in Greek in the classical period and throughout the first centuries C. E. into Late Antiquity. This ubiquity can be contrasted with the relative scarcity of the term in Jewish literature, and its complete absence in its pejorative second century meaning. The rabbis, writing in Hebrew and Aramaic, do not use the Greek term at all nor do they endeavor to import a Greek loan word to signify this concept.31 Texts are extant, however, from three earlier Jewish writers, writing in Greek in the period of our interest, that do use it: the turn of the era Alexandrian Jewish philosopher Philo, the first century Jewish historian Josephus, and the evangelist Paul in his first epistle to the Corinthians and in his epistle to the Galatians.32 Only Paul uses the term in a sense that tends clearly to the pejorative. And, none of these ancient writers uses the term in its fully developed sense of “a party or sect that stands outside established or recognized tradition, a heretical group that propounds false doctrine in the form of a heresy.” There is, in fact, no extant literature by any Jewish writer in antiquity that uses the term in this sense at all nor is there any explicit reference by any ancient writer to the existence of such literature.33 30 David

T. Runia, “Philo of Alexandria and the Greek Hairesis-Model,” 118. my discussion of minut in chapter two, section one for my response to suggestions along these lines in recent scholarship. 32 Josephus uses the term, significantly, in reference to Jewish sects such as the Pharisees and Sadducees in The Jewish War and the Antiquities, presenting them to the Hellenistic world as if they were philosophical schools. On Philo’s use of the term, see Runia “Philo of Alexandria and the Greek Hairesis-Model.” Paul uses the term in the sense of “factions” in 1 Corinthians 11:19 and Galatians 5:20. 33 The claim that has been made in recent scholarship that Justin, Dialogue with Trypho 62, indicates that some Jews did use the Greek hairesis to describe the beliefs of other Jews is based on translating a phrase in Justin as “what you call an heretical party among you” (trans. Williams). But this phrase is better translated as “the so-called sect among you” (trans. Runia) or “that heresy (n. ‘heresy or sect’) which is said to be among you” (ed. Schaff). In other words, it is Justin that is characterizing the teachers of this belief as a hairesis, not the Jews, just as it is Justin that is disagreeing with it. Indeed, part of the belief in question, an interpretation of the plural of Genesis 1:26 (“let us make man”) is presented as a more or less acceptable reading of the verse in Genesis Rabbah 8:8. Justin’s intent here is certainly not to tell us the technical terms that Jews were using to describe deviance in his time. See Grossberg, “The Meaning and End of Heresy in Rabbinic Literature,” 220–240, for a full discussion of this text and of a number of other texts in Justin and Acts that scholars have appealed to in this regard. And, see the discussion of Genesis 1:26 in chapter five, section four and n. 48, there. It is also worth pointing out that there is no obvious explanatory gap between Justin’s usage of hairesis and that of the 31 See

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This fact must be stressed clearly because of a persistent tendency in the scholarship to assume that Jews were conversant with the ancient Greek technical language of heresy. For example, the important French scholar of early Christianity Marcel Simon, best known for his groundbreaking study Verus Israel, first published in French in 1948 with a revised French edition in 1964 and appearing in English translation in 1986,34 writes: [T]he term hairesis has undergone in Judaism an evolution identical to, and parallel with, the one it underwent in Christianity. This is no doubt due to the triumph of Pharisaism which, after the catastrophe of 70 C. E. established precise norms of orthodoxy unknown in Israel before that time. Pharisaism had been one heresy among many: now it is identified with authentic Judaism and the term hairesis, now given a pejorative sense, designates anything that deviates from the Pharisaic way.35

As I discussed in the introduction, recent scholarship has completely overturned the model of the triumphant post-destruction Pharisees taking over all of Judaism. But even so, it is remarkable that Simon draws his conclusions about changes in the meaning of the term hairesis in Jewish literature without actually citing a single work of literature written by a Jewish author that uses the word in this new sense. He relies on the book of Acts and Justin only. Simon’s narrative of ancient Judaism is a good example of the type of overly schematic ecclesiastical narrative that I discussed in the introduction, and which continues to be a hindrance to progress in our understanding of the formation of the rabbinic community. It is based on a subtle conflation of meanings between the modern concept of heresy and the ancient Greek hairesis. And this model has continued to influence scholarly discussion of ancient Judaism. A more recent study of early Christian heresiology, clearly depending on Simon, mentions in passing: extant period literature that he is known to have relied on that is crying out to be filled in order to account for his innovations. As von Staden, “Hairesis and Heresy: The Case of the haireseis iatrikai,” 100, notes: “From the ‘factiousness’ and ‘factions’ deplored in the New Testament it is neither an impossibly long nor a very tortuous road to the ‘heretical sects’ and ‘heresies’ so elaborately defined, classified, and condemned in Christian orthodoxy.” Hellenistic doxography and the New Testament provide no insufficiency of data to account for Justin’s heresiology (on doxography and heresiology, see n. 10, above). 34 The subject of Verus Israel was, of course, not heresy as such, but relations between Judaism and Christianity in the Roman Empire. However, I believe that Simon’s work in this book and in his articles about heresy (such as “From Greek Hairesis to Christian Heresy”) are foundational to the study of rabbinic heresy over the last several decades because of Simon’s tendency to equate the rabbis as the purported representatives of synagogue orthodoxy with the Roman ecclesiastical authorities as the representatives of Christian orthodoxy, a tendency that I believe is representative in a general sense of the issues that I am addressing in this chapter. Simon’s model is of a post-destruction triumphant Pharisaism imposing orthodoxy on Judaism and fighting heresy through the power of the patriarchate. See n. 57, in the introduction. More directly, as well, Simon’s chapter on “The Christians in the Talmud” and its discussion of the minim is still frequently cited in the literature on this subject. 35 Simon, “From Greek Hairesis to Christian Heresy,” 106.

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For Christians and Jews, the term [hairesis] soon came to mean, with few exceptions, “wrong choice,” and “a harmful choice which must be exposed and rooted out”; hence hairesis became “heresy.” In the first and second centuries, then, this term tended to have a very different “feel” to it in Christian and Jewish circles than it did among others.36

Again, this study refers casually to Christian and Jewish usage of a term in a sense that there is no actual evidence that Jews were using. I am not taking issue with the possibility that there may have been changes in Jewish polemic styles that were similar to changes occurring among the early Christian heresiologists. However, I believe that it is important to be explicit about the fact that there is no Jewish literature that provides evidence that such changes, if they were occurring, were reflected in changes in the way that Jews used the word hairesis. There is a strong potential for confusion in conflating the study of a key Greek technical term’s changing meaning within the developing early Christian literary genre of heresiology with the broader question of similarities, differences, and possible mutual influences in polemical styles and strategies among Christians and Jews in the first centuries C. E. The second question can be examined by studying and comparing actual extant texts written by Christians and by Jews throughout the period of our interest. The first question can be studied only by reading extant texts written by Christians, and none of these texts explicitly informs us of how or even if Jews were using the term hairesis in this period.37 Moreover, it is important to stress that when writers such as the early Christian heresiologists, who were educated in the Hellenistic tradition, used the word hairesis in the first centuries C. E., the word’s semantic resonances for both the writer and the reader would have been rich, complex, and ancient. This is so even when the term’s meaning had already shifted decisively from its earlier neutral sense of “choice” to its later pejorative sense of “false doctrine.” As one scholar writes, “the primary Greek understanding of hairesis [had] not changed: ‘the change is to be found in the moral overtones: the choice cannot be anything other than a bad choice.’”38 It would seem that even well into Late Antiquity, an educated Roman hearing the word hairesis would think in terms of its range of meanings  – good and bad choices, philosophical schools, and religious sects – along with whatever the immediate context might suggest of 36 Desjardins,

“Bauer and Beyond,” 65, slightly modified. of course, from the examples just cited, Philo, Josephus, and Paul, the first two of which use the term in a manner similar to its standard Hellenistic Greek sense. For texts in Justin and the books of Acts that some recent studies have cited in an attempt to find evidence of a similar kind of usage among Jews around the second century C. E., see n. 33, above, and Grossberg, “The Meaning and End of Heresy in Rabbinic Literature,” 220–240. 38 Desjardins, “Bauer and Beyond,” 75, citing Simon, “From Greek Hairesis to Christian Heresy,” 114–115. 37 Apart,

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false doctrine.39 This kind of complexity and antiquity should serve as a caution against too generalized comparisons with the technical vocabulary characteristic of rabbinic polemics. Even if some of terms to be discussed in the coming chapters might function on occasion and in some limited ways similarly to the way hairesis functions in Christian literature, they could not have had the same set of resonances or the same type of antiquity. An analysis of rabbinic polemics must always remain cognizant of the weight of tradition implicit in technical terms and the literary-generic history that these terms evoke when used. This is necessary in order to avoid suggesting the existence of cognate concepts based on one or two points of similarity, while deemphasizing significant differences. It is clear, therefore, that the ancient concept of heresy as such is part of an early Christian polemical lexicon that does not shed much light on developments in rabbinic polemics. And, as discussed in the previous section, the modern concept of heresy is just too multivalent and imprecise to be of much use in the study of the ancient world. We will now turn to a third possible approach to rabbinic boundary rhetoric that endeavors to categorize and find broad equivalencies in strategies among ancient polemicists and so to bridge the gap between the ancient and modern concepts of heresy, the idea of “heresiological discourse.”

IV. Heresy as Heresiological Discourse According to traditional narratives of orthodoxy and heresy, it is supposed that orthodoxy represents a set of pristine teachings. Heresy is a derivative phenomenon that is a distortion of orthodoxy. In other words, heresy and orthodoxy are supposed to be real things, they are supposed to be factual descriptions of stages of doctrinal development. Scholarship in early Christian heresiology over the last few decades has demonstrated that these narratives do not stand up well

39 See von Staden, “Hairesis and Heresy: The Case of the haireseis iatrikai,” 76: “The use of ‘heresy’ to refer to an opinion or a doctrine at variance with orthodox beliefs seems to have its proximate roots in early Christian uses of the Greek word hairesis (plural, haireseis). In most phases of post-classical antiquity, however, hairesis had a considerably broader semantic spectrum than ‘heresy’ might suggest. Its classical meanings – ‘taking,’ ‘choice,’ ‘course of action,’ ‘election,’ ‘decision’  – all continued to survive throughout the Hellenistic and later ancient periods of Greek culture. But hairesis also served to refer – positively, negatively, or neutrally – to any group of people perceived to have a clear doctrinal identity.” Also see Eduard Iricinschi and Holger M. Zellentin, “Making Selves and Marking Others: Identity in Late Antique Heresiologies,” Heresy and Identity in Late Antiquity (ed. Eduard Iricinschi and Holger M. Zellentin; Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism 119; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008), 1–28, at 4: “Semantically, hairesis remained an open term all through third century CE … Yet the consequences of such ‘choice’ varied from case to case. … Even after hairesis developed into ‘heresy’ in early Christianity, one of the term’s most important denotations remained Hellenistic philosophy and its numerous schools.”

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to critical scrutiny.40 Rather, we might better understand orthodoxy and heresy as contested rhetorical badges of legitimacy. Heresy is not so called because it is in fact derivative and distorted. Heresy is so called as a way of undermining a doctrine’s legitimacy even if in fact a doctrine that is called heretical existed prior to one that is called orthodox. If this is correct, however, it has important implications for how scholars discuss ancient doctrine. If we refer to a specific teaching as “heretical” and to another as “orthodox,” then we are taking sides in a polemical contest rather than studying the development of these teachings in a non-biased fashion. It is to avoid this kind of tendentiousness that the concept of “heresiological discourse” has become prominent in the study of ancient religion over the past few decades.41 The idea of heresiological discourse derives from Alain Le Boulluec’s work on early Christian heresiology mentioned above. Le Boulluec applied the contemporary French philosopher Michel Foucault’s concept of “discourse” to the study of the second century heresiologists Justin Martyr and Irenaeus.42 His aim was to shift the focus of scholarly attention away from the question of whom the so-called “heretics” actually were and whether so-called “heresy” preceded so-called “orthodoxy” or vice-versa, and to concentrate instead on the “notion of heresy.”43 Rather than attempting to identify heretics and heresies, Le Boulluec analyzes how these concepts function rhetorically in early Christian heresiological literature. Thus, the abstraction of “heresiological discourse” or the “notion of heresy” serves a very definite and salutary purpose in scholarship on early Christianity,44 it serves to shift focus away from the sociological reality of a conjectured group of “heretics” to an analysis of how and why a particular 40 See

n. 55 in the introduction. Le Boulluec, La notion d’hérésie; Boyarin, Border Lines; Karen King, “Social and Theological Effects of Heresiological Discourse,” in Heresy and Identity in Late Antiquity, 28–49; and Royalty, Origin of Heresy. 42 For an introduction to some of Foucault’s ideas, see Arnold I. Davidson, The Emergence of Sexuality: Historical Epistemology and the Emergence of Concepts (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001). 43 Earlier generations of scholarship tended to adopt in one form or another the type of ecclesiastical narrative found in Eusebius, discussed in section three of the introduction, which supposed an original church teaching attributable to Jesus and the first generations of apostles that became corrupted over time into any number of heresies. This standard narrative began to be overturned in the scholarship of the previous century, most notably in the work of Walter Bauer, Rechtgläubigkeit und Ketzerei im ältesten Christentum. The 1964 second edition of this work was translated as Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity. Le Boulluec, La notion d’hérésie, 1.19, writes on this matter: “En choisissant de parier de « représentations hérésiologiques », nous essayons de sortir du cercle des jugements de valeur impliqués par le terme « hérésie » et de l’abstraction de l’antithèse entre « hétérodoxie » et « orthodoxie ».” : “By choosing to rely on ‘heresiological representations,’ we try to break the cycle of value judgments implied by the term ‘heresy’ and the abstraction of the antithesis between ‘heterodoxy’ and ‘orthodoxy.’” 44 Le Boulluec uses both of these expressions: du discours hérésiologique and la notion d’hérésie, as well as les représentations hérésiologiques. 41 See

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polemicist targets opponents in this way.45 Although Le Boulluec’s “notion of heresy” is an abstraction, it is an abstraction firmly grounded in the texts of the period. As a third and final possible approach to heresy in rabbinic literature, I will now consider whether we might apply this idea of heresiological discourse to ancient Judaism. I will preface this discussion with an acknowledgement of the scholar whose work has been most significant in this regard, Daniel Boyarin, especially in his comprehensive and rigorous study Border Lines. My reliance on Boyarin’s approach to rabbinic boundary rhetoric will be discernable in the following chapters, even where I propose refinements or alternative approaches to some of the basic concepts on which he relies. This being said, I would like to propose that the primary shortcoming of the idea of a rabbinic “heresiological discourse” follows from the conclusions of the foregoing discussion. In the context of early Christian literature, analysis of both the conjectured sociological reality of heresy and the “notion of heresy” are based in actual textual references to heresy. But what does it mean to have a notion of heresy in a text that does not actually refer to heresy at all? The value of Le Boulluec’s approach is clear, but what is the value of applying this concept to rabbinic literature? I believe that creating a double abstraction for an entire category “the notion of heresy in rabbinic literature” creates an ahistorical entity whose contours are too flexible to allow for precise analysis. I would argue that “heresiological discourse,” when applied to the rabbis, is not firmly enough anchored in the texts to be a sufficiently precise analytical tool. It would be misleading to acknowledge that heresiology as a literary genre does not exist in rabbinic literature, while assuming that heresiological discourse as a polemical style does exist.46 Where Le Boulluec’s approach to early Christian literature 45 See Iricinschi and Zellentin, “Making Selves and Marking Others: Identity in Late Antique Heresiologies,” 7: “Le Boulluec also took Bauer’s efforts to de-legitimize the ecclesiastical position on the origins of heresy one step further and confined his analysis to the sole study of ‘heresiological representations.’ This approach reduces the risks of value judgments and, at the same time, makes clear the constructed character of ‘heresy.’ When seen from this new perspective, ‘heresy’ becomes a discursive structure rather than an historical object.” 46 On heresiology as a literary genre, see n. 10, above. On heresiology as a polemical style, see Royalty, Origin of Heresy, 26, who defines heresiology broadly as “a discourse that negotiates difference within religious communities by seeking ideological hegemony”; and, ibid., 8, “The discursive practice of heresiology precedes Justin, even if the word hairesis is not used,” as I will discuss presently. Boyarin’s approach is similar, but he also acknowledges distinct rabbinic “modes of textuality”: Border Lines, 66: “Both Justin and the Mishna were engaged in the construction of the borders of orthodoxy via the production of others who are outside them. These are the heretics, the minim. The difference between the two types of heresiological text is no more than the general difference between the modes of rabbinic and of Christian textuality”; and ibid., 311 n. 50, “It might be objected at this point that there is really no comparability between the Christian and rabbinic situations, since the former is engaged with questions of theology, the latter with questions of practice. This difference is, to be sure, significant in itself but not at the level of analysis which I adopt here, the level of analysis of the history of

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serves to shift attention away from sociological reality to rhetorical strategy, applying this approach to rabbinic literature tends to shift attention away from the actual content and historical periodization of the texts themselves to abstract conceptions distinct from their textual manifestations. More precision is called for because if “heresiological discourse” is to be a useful tool for studying the rabbinic and early Christian period comparatively, it must be defined as a period-specific phenomenon. However, as anthropologists have long argued, the binary pair “We-They” is ubiquitous among ancient and so-called primitive human cultures.47 Conceptually, then, textually constructing and opposing whichever group a specific “We” is imagining as a reified “They” is certainly not unique to this period. If heresiological discourse is defined in such a way that it could be found in world religious literature in periods and geographical areas with no plausible genealogical connection to Roman Palestine in the first centuries C. E., then the value of this concept as a comparative tool is greatly diminished.48 Several scholars of early Christianity have articulated systems of thought per se. Foucault already remarked that the systematicity characteristic of discursive practices and the shifts in such systematicity transcend particular disciplines.” I agree with Boyarin that Justin and the Mishnah were engaged in the construction of boundaries, but I do not think that much is gained by thinking of these as two types of heresiological texts. So, where Boyarin notes significant literary-generic distinctions, ibid., 43, “I rather doubt that any rabbinic circle ever had such a list of Jewish heresies as Justin cites for them; it feels just so ‘Christian,’” I would suggest, rather, that this list feels so heresiological, not so Christian, and heresiology as a literary-generic practice is not known from any Jewish sources. See Grossberg, “The Meaning and End of Heresy in Rabbinic Literature,” 183–241. 47 See Robert Redfield, “Primitive World View and Civilization,” in The Primitive World and its Transformations (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1953), 84–110, and Jonathan Z. Smith, “Adde Parvum Parvo Magnus Acervus Erit,” History of Religions 11 (1971): 67–90. See also, Redfield, “The Primitive World View,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 96 (1952): 30–36. 48 As I  will discuss, Royalty, by defining the concept of “heresiological discourse” more broadly than Boyarin, is able to push its genesis back into the second Temple period, though I will argue that examples could be found even earlier of this style of rhetoric. This same difficulty is encountered in the concept of “heresy” more broadly, which has been so divorced from historical context as to be found in far flung geographical and historical periods. For example, Daniel Jeremy Silver, “Heresy,” in Encyclopaedia Judaica, Second Edition (22 vols.; ed. Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik; Detroit: Macmillan Reference, 2007), 9.20–22, at 9.20, writes: “The Bible, although it does not have a specific term for heretic, regards as a heretic one who ‘whores after strange gods.’” It seems odd to suppose that the Bible can have a concept of “heretic” but no word for one. A brief survey of scholarship on world religious literature resulted in the following similar loose applications of the concept, though I am certain a more serious study would be even more fruitful. In a discussion of first century China, Joseph A. Adler, “Chinese Religion: An Overview,” in Encyclopedia of Religion, Second Edition (ed. Lindsay Jones; Detroit: Macmillan Reference, 2005), 1580–1613, at 1588, writes: “Xunzi’s epistemology also set up the intellectual framework for a critique of heresy, conceived as inventing words and titles beyond those employed by general consensus and sanctioned by the state.” David J. Kalupahana, Buddhist Philosophy: A Historical Analysis (Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii, 1976), 9, writes: “But one should not forget that in his own day the Buddha was considered a heretic of the worst kind by the orthodox religious teacher.” And see Wendy

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models of the kinds of rhetorical characteristics that typify the early Christian heresiologists, but these are too specific to be directly applicable to rabbinic literature.49 Scholars of early Judaism have attempted to broaden the concept of heresiology by focusing on a more limited set of definitional characteristics, but in so doing they create a concept less closely bound to the historical period being studied. For instance, in his work on rabbinic boundary rhetoric mentioned earlier, Boyarin relies on the early 19th century German sociologists Max Weber and Ernst Troeltsch’s distinction between church and sect. Boyarin emphasizes such discursive traits as the idea of a “church” representing itself as always having been the one true representative of the faith and representing its polemical opponents as later and derivative distortions and corruptions of that truth.50 This style of discursive representation is set up in distinction to a sectarian discourse, in which a “sect” represents itself as a faithful splinter group that has broken off from a larger entity that has become corrupted. Armed with this distinction, Boyarin is able to argue that the early Christians and the rabbis were simultaneously innovating the same type of heresiological discourse, a style of discourse characteristic of groups that represent themselves as a “church.” Earlier groups known for their trenchant polemics against outsiders like the Johannine community and the Dead Sea Sect, in contrast, are typified rather by a sectarian style of discourse. This is an interesting approach, but I suggest that applying this same definition to other historical periods would find instances of this style of rhetoric much earlier than the first century, as I will explain presently. A more ambitious recent study by Robert Royalty attempts a complete “genealogy of heresy,” which tries to trace the supposed origins of heresy in ancient Judaism by analyzing “the development of a cluster of rhetorical forms.”51 These rhetorical forms include such general themes as the concept that “membership depends on belief or ideas”; the concept that “disagreement was satanic or deDoniger O’Flaherty, “The Origins of Heresy in Hindu Mythology,” History of Religions 10 (1971): 271–333. The point is that if “heresy” can mean little more than, say, “proscribed ideology,” it can surely develop independently in many locations and times. See Ugo Bianchi, “History of Religions,” in Encyclopedia of Religion, Second Edition, 4060–4068, at 4063: “It will often be difficult to decide whether a given pattern is to be explained on the basis of diffusion or parallelism. What is important is to avoid an a priori theoretical option in favor of either … The fact is that one of the major gains in the field of comparative-historical research has been the discovery of partly similar cultural achievements in the field of religion and culture that are not due to phenomena of diffusion, not even stimulus diffusion. A typical example is the birth and diffusion of polytheism.” 49 Runia, “Philo of Alexandria and the Greek Hairesis-Model,” 119–124; Desjardin, “Bauer and Beyond,” 75. 50 See Boyarin, Border Lines, 49–54. For an overview of Church-Sect theory and some if its later developments see Lorne Dawson, “Church/Sect Theory: Getting it Straight,” North American Religion 1 (1992): 5–28, and Williams, Rethinking Gnosticism, 109–113. 51 Royalty, The Origin of Heresy, 26–27.

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monic”; and the “doxography of opposing belief.”52 The problem with this approach is that successfully tracing such general ideas genealogically through the extant literary evidence entails some loose readings. On the face of it, it might be suggested that broad concepts such as “disagreement is satanic or demonic” could easily arise simultaneously and independently in otherwise unconnected literary traditions. Likewise, the word “ideology” in the suggested rhetorical form that “membership depends on ideas” is so broad as to include almost any mode of rhetorical exclusion. For example, Royalty describes the biblical narrative of the sixth century B. C. E. prophet Jeremiah’s conflict with false prophecy as non-heresiological in nature because “blasphemy does not challenge the beliefs or ideology of the opponent, as heresy does.”53 His argument is that the narrative in the biblical book of Jeremiah represents both Jeremiah and his Jewish opponents as accepting a shared ideological complex involving the authority of the “word of God” and the “Deuteronomic law.” But even so, he is drawing a rather fine line. Surely, it is precisely ideology that determines the difference between a legitimate utterance of the divine name and a blasphemous one. A person that a polemical text represents as blasphemous would, presumably, not suppose himself to be so. The difference depends on ideological commitments regarding the nature or content of the divine will. More importantly, however, Royalty does not address a section of the book of Jeremiah that deploys a rhetorical strategy that fits neatly into these abstract definitions of heresiological discourse, Jeremiah’s conflict with the Jewish exiles to Egypt in chapter 44.54 The events described in that chapter recount the period after Nebuchadnezzar’s destruction of Jerusalem, when many Jews had fled to Egypt. Jeremiah, speaking for God and representing himself as the voice of what scholars who adopt the sociological model just discussed might call a “church,” accuses the exiles of idolatrously worshiping the queen of heaven. The exiles reply: We will do everything that we have vowed, burn incense to the queen of heaven and pour out libations to her, as we did, both we and our fathers, our kings and our princes, in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem; for then we had plenty of food, and prospered, and saw no evil. But since we left off burning incense to the queen of heaven and pouring out libations to her, we have lacked everything and have been consumed by the sword and by famine.55 52 See

n. 10, above, on doxography. The Origin of Heresy, 35, on Jeremiah 7:1–34 and 26:1–6. 54 Jeremiah 44:1–30. For a good introduction to scholarship on the book of Jeremiah and its redactional structure, see William W. Holladay, Jeremiah: A Commentary on the Book of the Prophet Jeremiah (2 vols.; Hermeneia: A Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986–1989). 55 Jeremiah 44:17–18. 53 Royalty,

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The exiles are claiming in effect that the worship of the queen of heaven is not idolatrous at all. It is an authentic form of Judean religion as practiced by their ancestors in Jerusalem. That is, they are claiming that they are practicing a legitimate and ancient form of what we would now call “Judaism,” in its broadest sense of the religion of the Jews.56 And indeed, the evidence, such as it is, would tend to support their claim. A remarkable collection of sixth century B. C. E. Aramaic papyri found on the island of Elephantine in the Egyptian Nile, which document the lives of Jews living in a military outpost on the island, demonstrates that such a practice likely existed at the temple that they build there to the God of the Jews.57 Moreover, inscriptions found in the Sinai in Kuntillet Ajrud and in Khirbet el-Qom near ancient Hebron that date from around the eighth century B. C. E. suggest a similar form of worship among the ancient Israelites.58 Unless we take the ideological position of Jeremiah and the deuteronomistic historian that the worship of the Lord alone is the one true “always already-given” form of legitimate Jewish religion, to borrow a phrase that I will cite presently, there is no reason to privilege Jeremiah’s faith over that of the exiles. From this perspective, Jeremiah is rhetorically taking control of and delegitimizing a practice whose legitimacy predates his own prophetic calling.59 Thus, Boyarin’s description of second century C. E. heresiological discourse is arguably apropos to this earlier period as well: An innovative religious discourse claims hegemony and excludes traditional religiosity, as well as the modes of authority that preceded it, thus naming them as heresy. Moreover it portrays the ‘heresy’ as a deviation from the always already-given originary orthodoxy.60

Boyarin describes this as an innovation in Justin and in the tannaitic literature and so argues for the origins of heresiological discourse around the second century. Royalty pushes this origin back further, to the texts of the New Testament and Dead Sea sect. Yet the presence of such strategies already in the Hebrew Bi56 Of course, neither the exiles’ beliefs and practices nor Jeremiah’s would have been referred to as “Judaism” at that time as this word was not coined until centuries later and even then its meaning was significantly different than the modern concept. See my discussion in section four of the introduction. 57 See Bezalel Porten, The Elephantine Papyri in English: Three Millennia of Cross-Cultural Continuity and Change (Documenta Et Monumenta Orientis Antiquiti 23; Leiden: Brill, 1996). 58 See Mark S. Smith, The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel (second edition with a forward by Patrick D. Miller; The Biblical Resource Series; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002). 59 See Ronald S. Hendel, “Israel among the Nations: Biblical Culture in the Ancient Near East,” in Cultures of the Jews: A New History (ed. David Biale; New York: Schocken, 2002), 43–75, at 65: “The old religious practices and ideas – which shared features with neighboring cultures – were derided as alien, foreign, and corrupting. The new religious elite developed a critique that at times extended to all traditional forms of religious ritual.” 60 Boyarin, Border Lines, 59.

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ble suggests that a concerted effort would succeed in finding similar approaches to polemical exclusion among works of world religious literature from its earliest manifestations with no plausible genealogical connections between them.61 One problem with this approach is that an abstract notion can take any number of actual textual forms when manifested in a specific work of literature. Successfully tracing the same idea through variant manifestations in various texts therefore depends at least in part on the amount of latitude we apply to our readings and interpretations. Although these analyses are certainly illuminating and have been important in developing more sophisticated scholarly models, I would suggest that the analytical tools that they employ cannot quite fulfill the requirements of a rigorous historically contextualized analysis of heresy in the early Christian and rabbinic periods.

V. Heresy and Boundary Rhetoric in the Ancient World Although the notion of “heresiological discourse” can be misleading when applied to the rabbinic literature, it is nonetheless valuable in that it stresses the discursive or rhetorical aspects of the early Christian idea of heresy. Scholars of heresy now recognize that heresy and orthodoxy are not objective descriptions of social phenomena, but rather are implicit claims to legitimacy and deviance that are contested between ideological opponents. Heresy is not described by being named, it is brought into being by being named. From this perspective, heresiology is just one specific technology in a broader human endeavor of polemical boundary rhetoric. And the ideas of heresy and orthodoxy are just part of a specific technical lexicon that function within that technology. The specific technology of heresiology is therefore an early Christian literary genre that undertakes to draw boundaries through targeting opponents as doctrinal deviants and deploying various strategies of exclusionary and inclusionary rhetoric. That is, heresy, heretics, and heresiology are just one historically local and culturally narrow manifestation of boundary rhetoric more broadly. Both early Christian heresy and rabbinic ideas such as apiqorsut and minut that we will discuss in the coming chapters are part of their respective ancient lexicons of exclusionary polemic but they are not equivalent or interchangeable. A study of the rabbis should focus on the latter rather than the former. The methodological approach that I undertake in this book is thus commensurable across the spectrum of ancient religiosity, applicable to the rabbis and early Christians as well as to Greco-Roman religion more broadly. In what follows, I use ideas such as polemic, rhetoric, exclusion, and inclusion in a modern sense 61 See n. 48, above, for discussion and examples of this phenomenon in scholarship on world religions.

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without drawing absolute lines between what is and is not polemical and without insisting that rhetorically drawn boundaries are fixed and objective. Rather than trying to fit rabbinic polemical targets such as minim, meshummadim, and apiqorsim into categories of only questionable relevance drawn from early Christian heresiological literature, I will endeavor to treat them on their own terms. This approach will facilitate a new perspective on how relative shifts in the exclusion or inclusion of these stock rabbinic opponents function in the development of the idea of a rabbinic community. Of course, the mission to excommunicate, as it were, “heresy” entirely from all future rabbinics scholarship would be a quixotic one. It is not on the success of such a mission that the success of this book depends. Yet the reader will perceive that “heresy” and its derivations do not make even a single appearance in my analyses of ancient Judaism in the remainder of this book, beyond the continued critique primarily in the next section. If no lack or ambiguity is perceived in my analyses as a result of this practice and, if my foregoing demonstration of the imprecision of some recent studies in this regard is convincing, I would hope at least that the scholarship will reflect more carefully on whether this idea deserves its privileged place in our thinking about rabbinic boundary rhetoric. The following chapters will demonstrate that this practice is in no way necessary and that its reconsideration is of significant benefit to our understanding of the classical rabbinic literature.

Chapter 2

Varieties of Minim in the Second Temple and Rabbinic Period In this and the following chapters, we will examine several different named groups that the rabbinic literature sets up as opponents to the pious sage. Most of these groups  – meshummadim and the “sinners of Israel,” apiqorsim and “those who say that there are two powers” – are in some sense obscure, so that in each case past scholarship has invested significant effort in figuring out their identity. But in no case have these efforts met with much success. I believe that the primary reason for this lack of success is that these groups are in large part merely straw men. They are open rhetorical opponents that play various roles in rabbinic boundary rhetoric, allowing the rabbis to work out who they are in each subsequent generation. Yet no group is more obscure or more quintessentially rabbinic than the minim.1 Although the Hebrew word min (sg. min, pl. minim) dates from an earlier period with a generic meaning of “type” or “kind,” as I will discuss in what follows, the min as a sectarian opponent is unique to the rabbinic literature. The minim are common already in the earliest rabbinic texts, but they do not appear at all in earlier literature nor do they appear in non-rabbinic literature until the fifth century.2 The minim are the preeminent rabbinic opponents, yet their identity remains uncertain. 1 Most of the studies enumerated in n. 3, chapter one, discuss the minim to a greater or lesser extent. For recent significant discussions of the minim, see Boyarin, Border Lines, 37–73; Schremer, Brothers Estranged, 11–19; and Schäfer, Jewish Jesus, 1–20. These important studies are interested in what polemics against minim in the rabbinic corpus can tell us about the varieties of Judaism, Christianity, and Greco-Roman religions in antiquity and how they interacted and influenced one another. They disagree in many details regarding the extent and the nature of this influence and interaction, especially in regard to Judaism and Christianity. In the following analysis, I will be more concerned with how minim traditions evolve as they move through various strata of rabbinic literature and what this tells us about the development of the rabbinic collective. 2 A Latinized version of the Hebrew appears in Jerome’s c. 403 letter to Augustine. Justin writes: Usque hodie per totas Orientis synagogas inter Iudaeos haeresis est, quae dicitur Mineorum, et a Pharisaeis nunc usque damnatur: “Up to the present in all the synagogues of the East among the Jews there is a heresy, which is called [the heresy] of the Minim, and it is condemned by the Pharisees to this day” (augustinus.it, my translation). In addition, it appears that Justin Martyr cites a Greek calque on the Hebrew in the Dialogue With Trypho 80, where he lists Jewish sects, among which he includes the Genistae, as I will discuss below. See Miroslav Marcovich, Iustini Martyris: Dialogus cum Tryphone (Patristische Texte und Studien 47; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1997).

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This uncertainty has allowed for a very flexible treatment of minim in the scholarship, in which minim can mean “heretics,” generally, when it suits a particular argument, “Jewish-Christians,”3 when it suits some other argument, and “sectarians” when it suits yet another. Although the current scholarly consensus avers that it is implausible to suppose that the term minim refers to the same group throughout the entire corpus of rabbinic literature,4 in this chapter I will argue that even in the tannaitic literature the term minim is already multivalent. I will suggest that the term may well have been coined as an offhand pejorative for a Jewish sectarian group that seems not to have survived the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 C. E. The sectarian pejorative remained, however, as a flexible polemical target to play against various opponents and gradually expanded in signification. I will demonstrate how, studied diachronically throughout the rabbinic corpus, the rabbinic deployment of the minim as a rhetorical opponent evolves in a way that reflects the rabbis’ evolving self-conception as a distinct collective. In the earliest strata, the minim are a sectarian group like the Sadducees and Pharisees, and function as a foil for judicial arguments. They are treated as an opposed Jewish insider just as the Sadducees and (occasionally) the Pharisees are.5 In the amoraic period, the minim become conflated with what was originally a distinct opponent, “those who say that there are two powers.” In this way, the minim change from an opposed insider to an excluded hybrid that challenges the rhetorical boundaries that the developing rabbinic movement is working to construct. Finally, by the latest strata of the rabbinic texts, the minim become full outsiders, functioning essentially as non-Jews and idolaters, as empty antagonists for rabbinic disputations. The minim are, then, quintessential rabbinic opponents in more way than one. By working out the rhetorical boundaries around the minim, the rabbis more clearly constructed a rhetorical boundary around their own distinct community.

I. Heresy and Minut In the previous chapter, I considered from various perspectives the concept of heresy’s applicability to rabbinic literature, including the modern idea of heresiological discourse and the ancient Greek hairesis in all of its changing mean3 “Jewish-Christian” is a problematic category, on which see Boyarin, “Rethinking Jewish Christianity.” My reference here is to how the term minim has been treated in the scholarship. 4 See Kimelman, “Birkat Ha-Minim and the Lack of Evidence for an Anti-Christian Jewish Prayer in Late Antiquity,” 228, and the several studies cited in n. 35, below, on the meaning of the term min. 5 The Pharisees are generally accorded respect in the rabbinic literature but not always, as I will explain.

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ings. There is one additional possibility that I did not consider there because the appropriate place for its consideration was in this chapter. I have emphasized that the rabbis do not use the Greek hairesis and that this fact is a significant datum in our analysis of the idea of rabbinic heresy. Several scholars have suggested, however, that the Hebrew minim and the abstract noun that developed from it, minut, are actually equivalent to the Greek hairesis (heresy) and hairetikos (heretic).6 Indeed, some have gone so far as to propose that the Hebrew is merely a calque on the Greek.7 The oft-cited reference work for the study of early Christianity, the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, states the matter plainly that minut is the “exact equivalent” of hairesis.8 Were this the case, of course, then the question of what heresy means in rabbinic literature would be unproblematically answered. I will begin in this section, therefore, with a semantic comparison of these two word-pairs in order to demonstrate that this kind of broad equivalence is not well supported by the evidence. The possibility that the pair minim/minut is a Hebrew calque on the Greek hairesis/hairetikos is contradicted by their opposite diachronic development. The development of the term hairesis, reviewed in the previous chapter, is clear from the literature: a word meaning “taking” in a physical sense develops into an abstract sense of “taking a decision,” “choosing.” This abstraction becomes passivized as “choice.” The term then comes to designate an abstract school of thought characterized by some degree of uniformity of ideological choices, then a concrete sect, then a false sect, then the doctrine of false sects more generally, then false doctrine most broadly. It is also clear that the substantive hairetikos and earlier cognate terms developed from the abstract hairesis.9 And expectedly, in the extant literature in Greek written by Jews in the late Second Temple period and in the first generations of early Christian literature, hairesis is used much more frequently than hairetikos: Philo uses hairesis some 32 times, and cognates to hairetikos only twice.10 Josephus uses hairesis 31 times and does not use hairetikos. The canonical New Testament uses hairesis nine times and hairetikos once.11 The first-century early   6 See

nn. 7–8, below. Rabbis as Romans, 96.   8 Gerhard Kittel and Gerhard Friedrich, ed., and Geoffrey W. Bromley, ed. and trans., Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (10 vols.; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974), s.v αἵρεσις. See also, Desjardins, “Bauer and Beyond,” 76; Goodman, “Function of Minim,” 503–504; and Boyarin, Border Lines, 55.   9 Hairetikos has a number of earlier cognate terms such as αἱρεσιώτης in Justin, which for the sake of the following analysis I consider as equivalent. 10 Though, according to Runia, “Philo of Alexandria and the Greek Hairesis-Model,” most of the instances of hairesis in Philo are not in the sense of “school of thought.” Philo does not use αἱρετικός, but he uses αἱρεσιόμαχος twice. 11 Hairesis: Acts 5:17, Acts 15:5, Acts 24:5, Acts 24:14, Acts 26:5, Acts 28:22, 1 Corinthians 11:19, Galatians 5:20, 2 Peter 2:1. Hairetikos: Titus 3:10.   7 Lapin,

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Christian apologist Ignatius uses hairesis twice and does not use hairetikos.12 Justin use hairesis six times and a cognate of hairetikos once. And, Justin’s near-contemporary Hegesippus uses hairesis five times and hairetikos once.13 From the late second century onward, the term hairetikos appears to become more frequent in early Christian literature, perhaps parallel to the process of the secondary meaning of hairesis as “false doctrine” starting to overshadow its primary meaning of “choice.” Just the opposite is the case for the Hebrew minim and minut: the concrete minim came first and the abstraction minut, meaning something like the teaching or the ideology of the minim, was derived from the concrete term.14 This conclusion is suggested by the most likely etymology of the term. By scholarly consensus and by the sheer implausibility of any of the suggested alternatives, we must conclude that the rabbinic Hebrew minim ultimately derives from the biblical Hebrew min meaning “type” or “kind.”15 The uniformity of agree12 I refer

here to the epistles that are generally considered genuine. The references occur in Ephesians 6:2: ἐν ὑμῖν οὐδεμία αἵρεσις κατοικεῖ: “no sect has any dwelling-place among you,” and Trallians 6:1: ἀλλοτρίας δὲ βοτάνης ἀπέχεσθε, ἥτις ἐστὶν αἵρεσις: “abstain from herbage of a different kind; I mean heresy” (ed. Schaff). See Le Boulluec, La notion d’hérésie, 1.22–26, for a discussion of these texts. A search in the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae including pseudepigraphically attributed epistles for αἵρεσις shows 6 instances, including the two just mentioned. A search on αἱρετικός and αἱρεσιώτης shows one each. 13 Based, of course, on citations from Eusebius, and referring only to text presented as direct quotes of Hegesippus rather than Eusebius’ introductory words to such quotations. Church History 2.23:8: τινὲς οὖν τῶν ἑπτὰ αἱρέσεων τῶν ἐν τῷ λαῷ: “Now some of the seven sects, which existed among the people”; 2.23:9: αἱ δὲ αἱρέσεις αἱ προειρημέναι οὐκ ἐπίστευον: “But the sects mentioned above did not believe”; 2.23:21: αἵρεσιν δὲ μετῄει τὴν Σαδδουκαίων: “He belonged, moreover, to the sect of the Sadducees”; 3.32:6: Σίμων υἱὸς Κλωπᾶ, συκοφαντηθεὶς ὑπὸ τῶν αἱρέσεων: “and until the above-mentioned Symeon, son of Clopas … was informed against by the [sects]”; 4.22:5: ἀπὸ τῶν ἑπτὰ αἱρέσεων, ὧν καὶ αὐτὸς ἦν, ἐν τῷ λαῷ: “He also was sprung from the seven sects among the people”; and 3.32:3: ἀπὸ τούτων δηλαδὴ τῶν αἱρετικῶν κατηγοροῦσί τινες Σίμωνος τοῦ Κλωπᾶ: “Certain of these heretics brought accusation against Symeon , the son of Clopas” (ed. Schaff). 14 Most scholars assume this to be correct self-evidently. See, for example, Simon, Verus Israel, 181. It will be worthwhile here, however, to examine the evidence more carefully and more explicitly. Simon’s suggested development of min from a term meaning “heretics” in general (a conclusion that he draws by reading y. Sanhedrin 10:5, 29c as a Second Temple text) to a more specific sense of “Nazarenes” (based on Jerome) cannot be correct. Simon appears to be endeavoring to understand minut based on an assumed connection to the later idea of heresy, as is reflected in his use of the ungrammatical expression the “min of the Sadducees” (ibid., 182) and his suggested but unattested reading of a text of the birkat ha-minim from the Cairo genizah as if it said, “the Nazarenes and other minim” (ibid., 198). I discuss the importance of y. Sanhedrin 10:5, 29c below. 15 See Segal, Two Powers, 5 n. 2; Boyarin, Border Lines, 54–55; and Schäfer, The Jewish Jesus, 3. It is important to note, however, that my concern here is with the reception and development of the Hebrew min in the Second Temple and rabbinic periods, not with the early biblical period itself. The status of the root underlying this word in the biblical period itself is uncertain and somewhat controversial. See Chaim Rabin, “Etymological Miscellanea,” in Studies in the Bible (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1961), 384–400, at 392–393, who argues that the nominal form did

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ment on this fact needs to be stated clearly because, as recently as 2007, the entry on the minim in the standard reference work for the study of Judaism, the Encyclopedia Judaica, says that “no truly convincing etymology has yet been found for the term.”16 This can be contrasted with Marcel Simon’s observation several decades earlier that, “There is almost complete agreement now about its etymology.”17 Simon is certainly correct on this matter. It is true that scholars from the early part of the last century had suggested a wide array of possible derivations. But I see no need to continue considering as realistic possibilities the more ambitiously speculative suggestions that Robert Herford so succinctly reviewed (and rejected) more than a century ago in one of the first modern critical studies of the minim in rabbinic literature: min as a contraction from ma’amin, “believe”; min as acronym for ma’aminei yeshu ha-notzri, “believers in Jesus the Nazarene”; min from Manes, the founder of Manichaeism; or min from me’en in the sense of deny.18 Nor are the additional speculations that Alan Segal reviewed (and rejected) more recently any more realistic.19 Thus, surely the biblical Hebrew min is the ultimate source of the rabbinic usage in the most general sense of a “kind” of Jew or a “sectarian.”20 This fact itself strongly indicates that minut was derived as a nominal abstraction from the rabbinic Hebrew signification of the word minim. It would not make much sense to adapt the earlier Hebrew minim meaning “kinds” into the later abstract rabbinic Hebrew minut without first having adapted the earlier noun into the rabbinic meaning of “sectarians,” a process I  will discuss further in the next section. Another fact supporting this conclusion is that the relative frequency of minut compared to minim in the tannaitic literature is just the opposite to that of hairesis and hairetikos in Greek reviewed above. Of course, word frequencies in extant literature are not probative in themselves, but they are suggestive, and their clear explication will help set up our further exploration of these terms’ development in the rest of this chapter. As the greater frequency of hairesis in Second Temple Jewish and the earliest Christian literature at least reflects the later derivation of hairetikos, so the greater frequency of minim in tannaitic literature reflects the later derivation of minut. The concrete minim appears seven not actually exist in the biblical period. It is clear, however, that by the Hellenistic period, the nominal form was received as biblical based on the idiom le-mino, which the Septuagint translates as kata genos, “according to kind.” See my extended discussion of this matter in section two of this chapter and especially in n. 37, below. 16 Daniel Sperber, “Min,” in Encyclopaedia Judaica, Second Edition, 14.263–264. 17 Simon, Verus Israel, 181. 18 Herford, Christianity in the Talmud and Midrash, 365. 19 Segal, Two Powers, 5 n. 2. Scholars have also sought derivations from roots in other Semitic languages, on which see my discussion in section two of this chapter and in n. 37, there. 20 See n. 15, above.

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times in the Mishnah,21 sixteen times in the Tosefta,22 nine times in the tannaitic midrash,23 and once in the early rabbinic chronology Seder Olam,24 for a total of 33 times. Minut appears nine times in tannaitic literature; however, several of these instances are rapid repetitions in a well-edited narrative tale from the Tosefta.25 If counted in terms of unique occurrences, minim appears in 29 places and minut in only four.26 The foregoing discussion indicates that the diachronic development of the pair minim/minut is opposite to that of hairesis/hairetikos. It seems unlikely, therefore, that in the first or second century, the very rare Greek concrete term hairetikos, which developed from the abstract but more common hairesis that itself was just in the process of taking on a pejorative shading, should somehow be transformed into the rabbinic Hebrew concrete sectarian pejorative minim, ignoring the more common Greek term. And then subsequently, this Hebrew coinage would have resulted in the creation of an abstract Hebrew minut from the Hebrew minim, parallel to but apparently distinct from the existence of the more common abstract Greek term hairesis. This thoroughly implausible reconstruction indicates that these two word-pairs had independent developments.27 21  M. Berakhot 9:5, m. Rosh Hashanah 2:1, m. Sanhedrin 4:5, m. Hullin 2:9, m. Parah 3:3, m. Yadayim 4:8 (twice). 22 T. Berakhot 3:25, t. Berakhot 6:21, t. Shabbat 13:5 (twice), t. Yoma 2:10, t. Megillah 3:37, t. Bava Metzia 2:33, t. Sanhedrin 8:7, t. Sanhedrin 13:5, t. Hullin 1:1, t. Hullin 2:19, t. Hullin 2:20 (twice), t. Hullin 2:24, t. Parah 3:3, t. Yadayim 2:13. Excluding t. Taanit 1:10, on which see n. 26, below. 23 Mekhilta ba-ḥodesh 5, Sifra nedava 2, Sifre Numbers 16 (twice), Sifre Numbers 143, Sifre Deuteronomy 48, Sifre Deuteronomy 126, Sifre Deuteronomy 320, Sifre Deuteronomy 331. Excluding Sifre Numbers 112, Sifre Deuteronomy 218, and the reconstructed Midrash Tannaim on Deuteronomy, on which see n. 26, below. 24 Seder Olam 3. 25 M. Megillah 4:8–9 (twice), t. Hullin 2:24 (five times), Mekhilta kaspa 20, Sifre Numbers 115. Excluding m. Sotah 9:15, on which see n. 26, below. The narrative is from t. Hullin 2:24, in a story about Rabbi Eliezer being arrested for minut. See n. 128, below. 26 This count does not include texts generally recognized as later interpolations (minut in m. Sotah 9:15 and minim in t. Taanit 1:10), poorly attested readings (minim in Sifre Numbers 112), or untenable scholarly reconstructions (min in Sifre Deuteronomy 218, on which see Schremer, Brothers Estranged, 191–192 n. 63). I have omitted as of uncertain provenance four minim instances in the reconstructed Midrash Tannaim on Deuteronomy (on Deuteronomy 11:22, 15:23, 32:21, and 32:41) , which closely parallel those from Sifre Deuteronomy, and one (on Deuteronomy 6:9), which closely parallels a text in b. Gittin 45b and b. Menahot 42a–42b, taken from the late medieval compilation Midrash Hagadol. Their inclusion would not change my arguments in this chapter. 27 I have discussed at length elsewhere the possibility of the coinage of minut as an abstraction from minim on the model of zenut based on the false etymology of zan-zenut and the linguistic equivalence of zan-min. The likelihood of this reconstruction is supported by the fact that in all but one of the tannaitic occurrences of minut, the text connects the word either explicitly or implicitly with the idea of zenut meaning faithlessness or licentiousness in a metaphorical or spiritual sense. See Grossberg, “The Meaning and End of Heresy in Rabbinic Literature,” 47–51.

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However, even discarding the implausible conjecture of the Hebrew being a calque on the Greek, we still must consider the possibility of a close equivalence of these two ideas in their respective languages in terms of lexical function. But even this lesser claim cannot be sustained. Although hairesis is a complex term with a rapidly changing semantic sense in the early Christian period, in one of its primary functions it is an implicitly differentiated term: many varieties of haireseis (plural) exist, and each one is an instance of a particular hairesis (singular). Minim, in sharp contrast, is quite as thoroughly non-differentiated.28 None of the named groups that the rabbis target polemically – for example, Sadducees, Boethusians, Samaritans, and Hemerobaptists – are ever referred to as minim in tannaitic literature nor are their teachings generally referred to as minut. No rabbinic opponents are described as minim apart from minim themselves.29 The minim, on the other hand, are placed in conversation with Pharisees and are lined up in parallel traditions alongside Samaritans, Sadducees, and similar groups; and, like these other named groups, the minim speak with a unified voice, and distinctive liturgical and judicial practices are attributed to them.30 These facts are especially striking because early Christian heresiologists such as Justin and his near-contemporary Hegesippus, who in the mid-second century innovated the creation of lists of various heresies that became so prevalent in later Christianity, enumerate lists of what they call Jewish haireseis along with the better known lists of Christian heresies. These Jewish lists include many of the groups just mentioned, yet the rabbis themselves never enumerate them as types of minim. Justin even includes the minim themselves in his list – referring to them with the otherwise obscure Greek Genistae, which appears to be a calque on the Hebrew minim – as an example of a specific sect rather than as the semantic equivalent of hairesis.31 28 At least this is so in the tannaitic literature. As I will discuss below (see n. 131), it does appear to take on some sense of naming multiple instances of a general type in the later literature. 29 The term minim is often interchanged with terms such as Sadducees in textual variants, especially in printed and censored editions, but this only strengthens my argument about the parallel functioning of such designations. 30 In m. Yadayim 4:8, a min argues with the Pharisees; in m. Yadayim 4:6–8, m. Rosh Hashanah 2:1–2:2, m. Parah 3:3 and 3:7 (in all major manuscripts), and Sifre Deuteronomy 331, minim are lined up in parallel traditions with various sects; in m. Berakhot 9:5, m. Sanhedrin 4:5, m. Parah 3:3, t. Yoma 2:10, t. Megillah 3:37, t. Sanhedrin 8:7, and Mekhilta ba-ḥodesh 5, just to cite a few examples, minim express ideological stances or speak with a unified voice; in m. Hullin 2:9, m. Megillah 4:8–9, t. Shabbat 13:5, and t. Yadayim 2:13, minim are said to observe distinctive judicial and liturgical practices and to have their own scripture. I discuss these texts in more detail in the next section. This type of construction can be usefully contrasted to more generalized rabbinic designations such as meshummadim, who are represented as an aggregate of individual Jewish transgressors. They never speak with a unified voice and are not lined up in parallel traditions with named sects. They are only compared with gentiles or Samaritans in the limited sense of being judicially equivalent to non-Jews or semi-Jews. 31 As mentioned in n. 2, above, Justin includes in his list of Jewish haireseis in the Dialogue with Trypho 80 the obscure Greek Genistae and Meristae, a pair that is very likely to be a Greek

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Furthermore, one of the most important and earliest rabbinic texts targeting deviant Jews, m. Sanhedrin 10:1, which I will touch on in the next chapter and discuss more thoroughly in chapter five, enumerates those excluded from the “world to come,” rabbinic parlance for heaven or the afterlife, and it does not mention minim. A similar list in the Tosefta does include minim, but alongside minim appear apiqorsim, those who deny the resurrection of the dead, and those who deny the Torah.32 Apparently, these latter three categories are not minim, but would it therefore be correct to say that they should not be considered heretics?33 The importance of these distinctions must be stressed. From the perspective of prevalent definitions of heresy both ancient and modern, surely at least some of these several groups might be considered heretics. And yet the rabbis never refer to these groups as minim. We must conclude, therefore, that there is no direct connection between the respective development of these two word-pairs, at least through the tannaitic period. Up to this time, the terms minim/minut occupy a semantic space distinct from the Greek hairesis/hairetikos specifically and the concept of heresy more broadly. I will suggest in section three of this chapter, however, that there may be evidence of some overlap in the later amoraic period. But before examining this development, we must endeavor to determine how the minim became such quintessential rabbinic opponents in the first place.

II. Minim as Insiders in the Late Second Temple and Early Rabbinic Periods It is clear from the previous section’s analysis that is unprofitable to understand the minim simply as “heretics.” That being said, we are still left with the important question, who were the minim? In this section, I will address this question by reconstructing the social-historical and etymological circumstances of the rabbinic Hebrew minim’s coinage. I will argue that the term likely emerged as a sectarian pejorative in the divisive and revolutionary atmosphere of the first decades of first century Roman Palestine. By the early third century editing of the first rabbinic texts, however, when its original referents had long since ceased to exist, the term had already developed into a flexible category for polemics against a sectarian straw man. Yet even so, true to its coinage, the term minim calque on the Hebrew minim and perushim, sectarian pejoratives that are paired in connection with the birkat ha-minim in t. Berakhot 3:25, as I will discuss in what follows. See the extensive discussion of Dialogue with Trypho 80 and its relevance to the problematic idea of a “rabbinic heresiology” in Grossberg, “The Meaning and End of Heresy in Rabbinic Literature,” 220–241. 32 T. Sanhedrin 13:5. 33 See my discussion of these texts in chapter three, section four and chapter five, section one. For a more extended analysis, see also Grossberg, “Orthopraxy in Tannaitic Literature.”

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remains throughout the tannaitic literature a category of Jewish sectarian insider, a situation that will change in later strata of rabbinic texts. Scholarship on the question, “Who were the minim?” has primarily taken one of two approaches. Many scholars have attempted to abstract characteristics of the minim based on polemics against them in rabbinic literature and then tried to match these characteristics with descriptions of groups known from other period literature.34 This approach has been unsuccessful because the full range of characteristics attributable to the minim in rabbinic texts, even if we consider only the tannaitic texts, does not in fact match up very well with any group known from period sources. Others scholars concentrate on the word minim itself and draw conclusions based either on etymological analysis or on the conjectured historical circumstances of the word’s coinage, supposing that this occurred around 200 C. E. when the earliest rabbinic text, the Mishnah, was compiled.35 This approach is more promising, and it is the approach that I will take in what follows. However, I  believe that there is no reason to assume that the term was coined in 200 C. E. just because the Mishnah was edited around this time. Rather, I would argue that the fact that the word minim is already widely used even in the rabbinic literature’s earliest strata and that its meaning is taken as if it is generally understood indicates that its coinage must significantly predate its appearance there. Yet scholars have not looked closely enough at possible prerabbinic precedents for this rabbinic usage. 34 Herford, Christianity in the Talmud and Midrash, is the classic example of this approach. But see, for a more recent example, Teppler, Birkat HaMinim. 35 See Goodman, “Function of Minim,” 503–504, and Boyarin, Border Lines, 55. Most scholars have concluded that min is a general term for deviance. For example, Simon, Verus Israel, 181–182, writes, “Minim designated simply any dissident body whatever its particular characteristics, which rejected in any respect the thought or practice of Jewish orthodoxy”; Cohen, “Virgin Defiled,” 3: “The rabbis lumped together all those who questioned rabbinic Judaism. It made no difference to the rabbis whether their opponents were Gentile Christians, Jewish Christians, Gnostics of any variety, pagans, or dissident Jews; all of them, to the exasperation of later scholars, were called minim. From the rabbinic perspective they are all the same”; Goodman, “Function of Minim,” 507: “the rabbis who compiled these rabbinic documents used the term [min] in a vague way.” Sussmann, “The History of Halakha and the Dead Sea Scrolls,” 54 n. 176: “‫ משמש בעיקר ככינוי לכופר במובן הרחב ביותר של‬,‫ המונח מינים‬,‫על כל פנים‬ ‫ בין שהוא כופר סתם ובין שהוא שייך לכת‬,‫ כופר בכול או כופר באמונות שלומי אמוני חכמים‬:‫הביטוי‬ ‫מוגדרת בימי הבית … כגון צדוקים ובייתוסים … קנאים … וכותים … וכן נוצרים … וגנוסטיקאים למיניהם‬ ‫ מינים ממינים שונים‬,‫ ;”… וכנראה גם עובדי עבודה־זרה … ובעלי דתות והשפעות דתיות‬Schremer, Brothers Estranged, ix: “In early rabbinic parlance, minim is a broad term for different Jewish groups who were considered by the rabbis as having secluded themselves from the community, and social separatism (or any indication of a tendency toward separatism) is termed minut”; Schäfer, Jewish Jesus, 3, “minim, literally, “kinds (of belief), that is, all kinds of people with divergent beliefs.” As in the case of the definition of heresy discussed in chapter one, these definitions vary in emphasis (“orthodoxy,” “social separation,” “divergent beliefs”) based in large part on the theoretical assumptions of each study. In what follows, I will show how the term came to be used as a general signifier for a range of groups (real or imaginary), and I will discuss the limits and parameters of this usage and the implications of this development.

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Starting, therefore, with the assumption that minim in its rabbinic sense of “sectarians” is derived from the biblical Hebrew min, as explained in the previous section, our first step will be to examine the biblical sources. A relevant fact that the scholarship has not stressed often enough is that the word min does not appear at all in the Hebrew Bible as a simple noun. Rather, it appears only in the idiomatic expressions le-mino / le-minehu, le-minah, and le-minehem, meaning “according to its kind” in male and female singular and plural forms. It appears this way 31 times in the Bible, almost exclusively in the Pentateuch itself, and once in the book of Ezekiel. For example, in Genesis 1:11, God says, “Let the earth put forth vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, upon the earth.” If this biblical expression is indeed the source of the rabbinic Hebrew minim, then it stands to reason that there should be an intermediate usage between the neutral biblical prepositional phrase le-mino, “according to its kind,” and the pejorative nominal rabbinic Hebrew min, meaning a “type” or “kind” of Jew in the sense of a “sectarian.” That is, along with its biblical idiom, the word min should also function in the pre-rabbinic literature as a stand-alone noun meaning “type” or “kind” in a neutral sense, and this usage would lead to the development of its innovative pejorative rabbinic sense as a sectarian designation. This former sense, of course, does continue to be the primary meaning of min even in rabbinic Hebrew. For example, the Mishnah in Berakhot 6:4 discusses a person who has before him many kinds (minim) of foods.36 But I am arguing that to get to the coinage of the word minim in its rabbinic sense, we must look not to the biblical idiom directly but to a usage intermediate to the neutral biblical prepositional phrase and the pejorative nominal rabbinic usage, in which the word functions as an ordinary noun yet only in a neutral sense.37 Fortunately, texts do survive in the post-biblical Jewish literature of the Second Temple period in which the word functions this way. For example, it ap36 M. Berakhot

6:4 (ed. Vilna): ‫היו לפניו מינים הרבה‬. scholar of the Hebrew Bible, Chaim Rabin, “Etymological Miscellanea,” 392–393, suggests that there was no noun min in biblical Hebrew and sees the biblical idiom le-mino, the Middle Hebrew noun min, and the rabbinic sectarian min as having distinct derivations. I am not sure if the first point is correct, as his argument is very brief, but it is clear that by the period of our interest, the biblical Hebrew was connected, if only by folk etymology, to the nominal form, as demonstrated by the fact that le-mino is translated in the Septuagint as kata genos, “according to kind,” and genos is used to translate min in Ben Sira. Moreover, as already mentioned, it appears that a form of genos, Genistae, is used as a Greek calque on minim in Justin (see n. 31, above). A connection between these forms in terms of historical development, then, seems most likely. The need to seek a pejorative source for the rabbinic Hebrew minim (for example from the Ethiopic mīn, “falsehood” or the Arabic māna, “invented,” and related to the Hebrew temunah, “likeness,” on which see Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament [Oxford: Clarendon, 1952; repr.], 568) is obviated by the connection with perushim and the Pharisees, as I will explain. Minim need not have started out with a pejorative sense any more than perushim did. See, also, n. 15, above. On the Christian Palestinian Aramaic mina, meaning “nation” or “people,” see n. 133, below. 37 The

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pears at least twice in the Book of Jubilees, originally composed in Hebrew in the second century B. C. E. but which survives in its entirety only in the Ge’ez language in the canon of the Ethiopian Orthodox church.38 In Jubilees 2:14, where the Ethiopic text has “And these four kinds he made on the sixth day,” and 2:18, “all of the angels of the presence and all of the angels of sanctification, these two great kinds,” it would appear based on fragments from Qumran that the original Hebrew read ha-minim ha-’elah, “these kinds.”39 The word appears as well in a number of fragments of sectarian texts from Qumran, though not very commonly. It is more common, however, in the second century B. C. E. book of Ben Sira. And, in this book, I believe that we can find a likely candidate for the type of text that would be a very plausible source of its later pejorative usage. Unfortunately, we have no early manuscript material for the original Hebrew of Ben Sira beyond fragments found at Qumran and Masada. But one of the most important medieval Hebrew manuscripts of Ben Sira 13:14–17 reads as follows: Qol ha-basar ye’ehov mino ve-qol ’adam ha-domeh lo; min qol basar ’etzlo ve-’el mino ye-ḥubar ’adam. Mah ye-ḥubar ze’ev ’el keves, kakh rasha‘ le-tzadiq ve-ken ‘ashir ’el ’ish ne’etzal.40 All beings love their own min and every man what is like him. Every min among beings stays together, and every man joins to his min. Just as if a wolf would join with a sheep, so a wicked man to a righteous man and so a rich man to a poor man.41

38 See O. S. Wintermute, “Jubilees: A New Translation and Introduction,” in James H. Char­ les­worth, ed., The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (2 vols.; Garden City: Doubleday, 1985), 2.35–142, at 35–50. 39 English translation from Wintermute, “Jubilees: A New Translation and Introduction,” 57. For the Hebrew, see Jonathan Stökl, “A List of the Extant Hebrew Text of the Book of Jubilees, Their Relation to the Hebrew Bible and Some Preliminary Comments,” Henoch 28 (2006): 97–124. There would appear to be differences between the Ethiopic text and the Hebrew. I am suggesting only that ha-minim ha-’elah appears in the text at approximately these two places not that the precise phrases “these four kinds” and “these two great kinds” appeared in the original Hebrew. 40 Ben Sira 13:14–17 (ed. Beentjes): ‫כל הבשר יאהב מינו וכל אדם את הדומה לו מין כל בשר אצלו‬ ‫ואל מינו יחובר אדם מה יחובר זאב אל כבש כך רשע לצדיק וכן עשיר אל איש נאצל‬. 41 Hebrew from Pancratius C. Beentjes, The Book of Ben Sira in Hebrew: A Text Edition of All Extent Hebrew Manuscripts and a Synopsis of all Parallel Hebrew Ben Sira Texts (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 41, checked against the digitized version of MS A available on the public database, “The Book of Ben Sira” (bensira.org; developed by Gary A. Rendsburg and Jacob Binstein, Rutgers University). Although some early scholarship argued that the medieval manuscripts are a secondary translation from the Greek or Syriac, it seems to be generally agreed now that they reflect a Hebrew transmission of the text. For a convenient short summary of the issues, see Seth Schwartz’s discussion in Were the Jews a Mediterranean Society? Reciprocity and Solidarity in Ancient Judaism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010), 45–46. See also, Pancratius C. Beentjes, ed., The Book of Ben Sira in Modern Research: Proceedings of the First International Ben Sira Conference 28–31 July 1996 Soesterberg, Netherlands (Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1997).

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The word min in these verses is a simple noun with the neutral meaning of “type” or “kind.” The text makes the straightforward observation that people of a similar type tend to associate with one another. But the implication is that all of the wicked kinds of people, that is, all of the wicked minim, join themselves together. I propose that verses such as these would make a very plausible scriptural source for the pejorative usage that we see in the later rabbinic literature. We know that the rabbis were reading Ben Sira, and it did have some influence with them as a book of wisdom if not as a work of scripture.42 But one could easily imagine a general expression such as min qol basar ’etzlo – literally “every kind of being stays together” but idiomatically similar to the modern saying “birds of a feather flock together” – gaining currency even in the late Second Temple period among sectarian Jews as a reproachful and then increasingly aggressive rebuke for ideological opponents.43 The term min would then come to be taken as a synecdoche for the whole expression and “the minim” would come to designate these opponents as a group. That the expression is not pejorative in context does not argue against my reconstruction. I am suggesting that any pejorative implications would have come about by applying this neutral expression to a specific group in a reproachful sense, just like the expression “birds of a feather flock together,” which, although literally neutral, tends to be idiomatically reproachful. In just this fashion, the Bavli itself cites a somewhat distorted version of these verses in a pejorative sense in b. Bava Qamma 92b: “All birds dwell with their kind, and a person with those like him.”44 The problem remains that the only extant witness to these verses in Ben Sira in Hebrew dates to no earlier than the medieval period. However, their ancient Greek translation (in the Septuagint as Ecclesiasticus 13:15–18) reads as follows: 15. πᾶν ζῶον ἀγαπᾷ τὸ ὅμοιον αὐτῷ, καὶ πᾶς ἄνθρωπος ἀγαπᾷ τὸν πλησίον αὐτοῦ. 16. πᾶσα σὰρξ κατὰ γένος συνάγεται, καὶ τῷ ὁμοίῳ αὐτοῦ προσκολληθήσεται ἀνήρ. 17. τί κοινωνήσει λύκος ἀμνῷ ; οὕτως ἁμαρτωλὸς πρὸς εὐσεβῆ. 18. τίς εἰρήνη ὑαίνῃ πρὸς κύνα ; καὶ τίς εἰρήνη πλουσίῳ πρὸς πένητα.45

42 See Jenny R. Labendz, “The Book of Ben Sira in Rabbinic Literature,” AJS Review 30 (2006): 347–392. 43 As I will now mention, a version of these verses from Ben Sira did make it into the Babylonian Talmud in b. Bava Qamma 92b, where it is cited as if it were a scriptural source: ‫כל עוף‬ ‫למינו ישכון ובני אדם לדומה לו‬. As M. H. Segal, “The Evolution of the Hebrew Text of Ben Sira,” Jewish Quarterly Review 25 (1934): 91–149, at 135, suggests, this seems to combine elements of 13:15 with 27:9: “Birds will nest with those like them, and truth will come back to those that practice it” (translation from ed. Oxford, 2007). 44 See n. 43, above. The Bavli’s usage does not, of course, prove earlier usage. It just demonstrates how a neutral expression of this sort can function idiomatically. 45 Greek text from J. H. A. Hart, Ecclesiasticus: The Greek Text of Codex 248, Edited with a Textual Commentary and Prolegomena (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1909).

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15. Every living thing loves what is like to it, and every person his fellow. 16. All flesh congregates according to kind, and with one like himself will a man cleave. 17. What will a wolf have in common with a lamb? – so is a sinner to a pious person. 18. What peace is there between a hyena and a dog? And what peace between a rich person and a needy person?46

Significant for our purposes is verse 16, pasa sarx kata genos synagetai, “All flesh congregates according to kind.” The Greek genos has a literal meaning similar to the Hebrew min, and, as discussed in the previous section, is later used (in at least one instance) as a Greek calque on the word minim in its rabbinic sense.47 This Greek translation suggests that the original Hebrew Vorlage of at least Ben Sira 13:15 cited above from a medieval source, “Every min among beings stays together,” likely did have min in a nominal form here even in the lost ancient sources.48 I propose, therefore, the following as very plausible first steps to the coinage of minim in its rabbinic signification. A biblical Hebrew idiom comes into more common use as an ordinary noun in the Second Temple period, which afterwards, through a stylistic usage in an influential work of Second Temple literature, takes on a slightly pejorative connotation that is subsequently adopted as a way of dismissing and delegitimizing opponents by labeling them as deviants, the “wicked minim.” Having established a possible etymological source for the rabbinic sense of the term minim, our next step will be to seek texts that shed light on how this Second Temple period noun with its pejorative shading of “wicked minim” came to be applied to a specific group. For this endeavor, we have no other recourse than the tannaitic literature because only there is the term used in this sense. I argued in section one, above, that the term minim always appears in the tannaitic literature as a sectarian designation. It is never a variegated term the way “heretic” or even “sectarian” is. There are no lists of minim in the tannaitic literature and no types of minim. Minim always functions lexically as a proper noun in a fashion parallel to terms such as Pharisee and Sadducee.49 It is this usage that indicates to me the likelihood that a specific group was originally targeted by being pejoratively named minim. If the term was used as a general pejorative as “sectarian” or “deviant” then we would expect to see it used that way in the literature. We would expect wicked Jews generally to be called minim or different types of minim to be discussed. The fact that minim always functions in the 46 Translation from Albert Pietersma and Benjamin G. Wright, ed., A New English Translation of the Septuagint and the Other Greek Translations Traditionally Included Under That Title (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 729. 47 See n. 31, above. 48 The somewhat distorted version of this saying that appears in the Bavli also has the Hebrew min. See n. 43, above. 49 See discussion in the previous section and in n. 30, there, for many examples from the tannaitic literature.

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tannaitic literature as a sectarian designation for a conceptually circumscribed although otherwise unknown sect suggests that the term was originally coined in reference to a specific sect.50 Moreover, the process that I am proposing of a general designation being applied to an incipient sectarian movement may also have a very obvious precedent already in the Second Temple period, that of the Pharisees themselves. In what is to my mind the most plausible scholarly explanation for the coinage of the term Pharisee, an existing Hebrew root parash meaning “to separate” is applied to a group as a way of criticizing them for keeping aloof from other Jews. The name sticks, and this group eventually embraces it as a self-designation. And thus the perushim, the Pharisees, literally “separatists,” are born.51 Evidence in support of this process in the case of the Pharisees is not lacking in the tannaitic literature. The pejorative sense of the verb parash is well known. For example, Hillel in m. Avot 2:4 warns to not “separate from the community” and t. Sanhedrin 13:5 warns that those who “separate from community norms” have no portion in the world to come.52 I believe that we might go even further and see traces of the originally pejorative sense of the term Pharisee in a number of tannaitic texts that present the Pharisees in a negative light. For example, m. Sotah 3:4 specifies that the “plague of Pharisees” wears out the world.53 A previous generation of scholars 50 As I  will discuss below, the word minim does take on additional signification in later amoraic texts. A text from the Jerusalem Talmud even mentions “twenty four groups of minim” (see n. 131). But this is a later development. 51 As Shaye J. D. Cohen, From the Maccabees to the Mishnah, Second Edition (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2006), 121, writes, “The name ‘Pharisee,’ in all likelihood, was originally an opprobrious epithet meaning ‘separatist.’” See A. I. Baumgarten, “The Name of the Pharisees,” Journal of Biblical Literature 102 (1983): 411–428, at 411 n. 1 for a review of early scholarship on this question. 52 M. Avot 2:4 (ed. Vilna): ‫ ;הלל אומר אל תפרוש מן הצבור‬t. Sanhedrin 13:5 (ed. Zucker­ mandel): ‫ושפורשין מדרכי ציבור… גיהנם נינעלת בפניהם ונידונין בה לדורי דורות‬. 53 M. Sotah 3:4 (MS Parma): ‫… מכלי עולם‬ ‫מכת הפרושים‬. MS Kaufmann has … ‫מכת הפרושים‬ ‫מכליה עולם‬. This text appears in a longer saying attributed to Rabbi Yehoshua. In both of these manuscripts, the Hebrew consonants have makat in the singular, and so I translate as “plague of Pharisees.” However, it would appear that MS Kaufmann is vocalized makot, and the standard text is written male’, and so this text is sometimes translated in the plural as “wounds of the Pharisees.” But MS Kaufmann’s vocalization is a later addition to the manuscript, and it would be unusual for the plural form of this verb to be written ḥaser. The manuscripts, therefore, strongly support the singular makat. The pejorative reading is supported by the context in m. Sotah 3:4, which includes a list other pejorative categories: “a foolish pious person,” “a cunning wicked person,” and “a woman Pharisee.” The full saying attributed to Rabbi Yehoshua appears in the standard text as follows: ‫רבי יהושע אומר רוצה אשה בקב ותפלות מתשעה‬ ‫קבין ופרישות הוא היה אומר חסיד שוטה ורשע ערום ואשה פרושה ומכות פרושין הרי אלו מכלי עולם‬: “Rabbi Yehoshua says, women prefer one measure [of sustenance] with licentiousness to nine measures with chastity. He says, A foolish pious person, a cunning wicked person, a woman Pharisee, and the plague of Pharisees: these wear out the world.” On this text, see Ishay RosenZvi, “The Ritual of the Suspected Adulteress (Sotah) in Tannaitic Literature: Textual and

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found texts such as this troublesome because they assumed that the rabbis were the historical continuation of the Pharisees. These scholars were therefore obligated to propose alternative readings or to argue that in such cases perushim does not refer to the historical Pharisees but is used in a general sense to refer to “separatists.”54 However, this is circular reasoning. It is assumed, based on the outdated model of the rabbinic community’s development from a Pharisaic class emerging triumphant after the Temple’s destruction, that the rabbis are more or less a later incarnation of the Pharisees.55 Therefore, so this argument goes, all references to Pharisees in the rabbinic literature that are not neutral or positive must be to separatists generally rather than to the historical sect. And yet it is well known that the rabbis do not in fact refer to themselves as Pharisees or explicitly present themselves as their historical continuation. It would be more rigorous and more methodologically sound to read perushim consistently wherever it appears in the tannaitic corpus and to conclude that this sectarian designation did in fact function at times pejoratively and at times positively. This inconsistent usage is entirely consistent with the possibility that the word originally had a pejorative sense that became less prominent when the incipient Pharisees adopted it as a self-designation. It is certainly possible that owing to this historical circumstance, the tannaitic literature, as a repository for older traditions, retains at least remnants of the original pejorative usage along with the later more common descriptive or positive usage. If this is a correct model of the term Pharisee’s coinage and development in the Second Temple and early rabbinic periods, then perhaps we can apply this same model to at least part of the process of the term minim’s coinage. In other words, just as Pharisees was a pejorative appellation that opponents applied to a group that they considered too “separatist” in their behavior, so minim was a pejorative appellation that opponents applied to a group considered too “sectarian.” If so, then the original coinage of minim as a way of delegitimizing a specific sect would have been parallel to the coinage of Pharisee. Of course, it would seem that the minim never adopted this term as self-designation and so it remained consistently pejorative throughout the tannaitic literature. Theoretical Perspectives” (Ph.D. diss.; Tel Aviv University, 2004), 166–169. See also Tal Ilan, Silencing the Queen: The Literary Histories of Shelamzion and Other Jewish Women (Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism 115; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006), 74–97, esp. 95–97. 54 See Ellis Rivkin, “Defining the Pharisees: The Tannaitic Sources,” Hebrew Union College Annual 40 (1969): 205–249; Ellis Rivkin, “Who Were the Pharisees?” in Judaism in Late Antiquity Part 3 Volume 3, Where We Stand: Issues & Debates in Ancient Judaism (ed. Alan J. Avery-Peck and Jacob Neusner; Handbook of Oriental Studies 53; Leiden: Brill, 2000), 1–34; Baumgarten, “The Name of the Pharisees.” 55 See Simon, Verus Israel, 61–62; and Shaye J. D. Cohen, “The Significance of Yavneh.” For more recent discussions of the rabbinic community’s structure over the centuries subsequent to the destruction, see Hezser, Social Structure; Schwartz, Imperialism and Jewish Society; and Lapin, Rabbis as Romans.

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We can find proof for this possibility of a parallel process in the coinage of Pharisee and minim in the Tosefta in Berakhot 3:25, which pairs the two words in a sharply pejorative sense by cursing them collectively: kolal shel minim be-shel perushim:56 “We include [the curse] on the minim [in the curse] on the Pharisees.” Naturally here as well, scholars have long wanted to read this as referring in a general sense to sectarians and separatists rather than to the historical Pharisees.57 But I would argue instead that this text preserves a tradition that recalls a time when both the Pharisees and the minim were being cursed by others, a time before the term Pharisee became normalized as a self-designation for a group that had become more widespread and maybe less controversial. Indeed, the Tosefta might well recall here a very early stage, shortly after the coinage of the term minim in its rabbinic sense, if it can be read as implying that a curse against the Pharisees had already existed and now a new curse against the minim should be added to it.58 56 T. Berakhot

3:25 (ed. Lieberman): ‫כולל של מינים בשל פרושין‬. Saul Lieberman, Tosefta ki-Fshuṭah: A Comprehensive Commentary on the Tosefta [Hebrew] (10 vols.; New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1955–1988), 1.53–54. See also Boyarin, Border Lines, 69–70; and, cf. David Flusser, “Some of the Precepts of the Torah from Qumran (4QMMT) and the Benediction Against the Heretics.” I would take issue with Boyarin’s suggestion there that because the term minim is only attested in rabbinic texts, it must not have existed earlier. As Boyarin himself recognizes, Justin’s mid-second century reference to Genistae and Meristae in Dialogue with Trypho 80 (discussed above, see n. 31) is most plausibly explained as a Greek calque on minim ve-perushim. And, as I suggest in what follows, the term’s ubiquity, broad semantic range, and apparently self-explanatory signification (were the word a third century coinage we would expect confusion or attempts to explain its meaning) suggest that its coinage must have significantly pre-dated its inclusion in the earliest rabbinic collections. 58 Such a curse is, of course, known in the Talmud as the birkat ha-minim, the “curse (lit. ‘blessing’) on the minim,” which I discuss in chapter three, section one, and in nn. 12 and 13, there. Schremer, Brothers Estranged, 59, argues (against Flusser, “Some of the Precepts of the Torah from Qumran (4QMMT) and the Benediction Against the Heretics”) that it is unlikely that the birkat ha-minim existed before the destruction of the Temple, noting that Talmuds associate its composition with a later period. However, I am uncertain that the late legends in the Talmuds can be thought of as especially helpful in this regard. Relevant texts from the rabbinic corpus include: t. Berakhot 3:25 (there are 18 blessings, and the curse on the minim should be included in that for the perushim); t. Taanit 1:10 (blessings for the fast are added after the seventh prayer, ‘he humbles the proud’ [‫ ;]משפיל הרמים‬some witnesses add “that is birkat ha-minim,” but this does not appear in MS Erfurt; it is likely a scribal addition); y. Berakhot 4:3, 7d–8a and y. Taanit 2:2, 65c (discussion of 17, 18, or 19 blessings; here is the first mention of the addition at Yavneh); y. Berakhot 5:3, 9c (Shemuel the younger skips “humbles the proud”); b. Berakhot 28b–29a (Gamliel institutes birkat ha-minim, apparently as a 19th prayer, and Shemuel the younger composes and then later forgets it). These texts seem to reflect an incrementally developing legend regarding the addition of a curse against the minim rather than an accurate historical recollection. And, as I argued in the introduction, this legend is integral to the Yavneh myth that evolved only gradually as part of the rabbinic project of self-invention. In any case, I am not arguing for a specific dating for the birkat haminim itself or the amidah but rather that cursing the minim and the perushim collectively, if the latter is read as “Pharisees” rather than “separatists,” is most plausibly read as recalling a 57 See

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One other tannaitic text may as well preserve a memory of an early moment in this coinage. In m. Yadayim 4:8, a Galilean min debates with the Pharisees: “A Galilean min said, ‘I take issue with you, Pharisees, because you write the name of the governor together with the name of Moses in a bill of divorce.’”59 This text is remarkable because it is part of a series of traditions preserved at the end of tractate Yadayim of the Mishnah and the Tosefta, and it presents this Galilean min as arguing alongside Pharisees, Sadducees, and other named sects as equal partners in debate.60 The scholarship has convincingly argued that the Second Temple era tradition rather than a later composition. For additional scholarship on the birkat ha-minim, see Kimelman, “Birkat Ha-Minim and the Lack of Evidence for an AntiChristian Jewish Prayer in Late Antiquity”; Flusser, “Some of the Precepts of the Torah from Qumran (4QMMT) and the Benediction Against the Heretics”; Boyarin, Border Lines, 67–73; Teppler, Birkat HaMinim; Schremer, Brothers Estranged, 57–65, and esp. 177–178 nn. 55 and 56; and Ruth Langer, Cursing the Christians? A History of the Birkat HaMinim (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). 59  See full text in n. 73, below. This appears as a Galilean Sadducee in standard printed editions of the Mishnah, but it is min in the manuscripts. See n. 63, below, for discussion of the designation “Galilean.” 60 The relevant literature is extensive. Several studies cite these texts as data on the first century C. E. Pharisees: Rivkin, “Defining the Pharisees”; idem, “Who Were the Pharisees?”; Jacob Neusner, The Rabbinic Traditions about the Pharisees before 70 (3 vols.; Leiden: Brill, 1971), 1.2–4, 1.161–162, 166, 3.164; Martin Jaffee, Torah in the Mouth: Writing and Oral Tradition in Palestinian Judaism 200 BCE–400 CE (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 55–57; Aharon Shemesh, “King Manasseh and the Halakhah of the Sadducees,” Journal of Jewish Studies 52 (2001): 27–39, at 33–39; Menahem Kister, “Law, Morality, and Rhetoric in Some Sayings of Jesus,” in Studies in Ancient Midrash (ed. James Kugel; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001), 145–154; and Jack K. Lightstone, “The Pharisees and the Sadducees in the Earliest Rabbinic Documents,” in In Quest of the Historical Pharisees (ed. Jacob Neusner and Bruce D. Chilton; Waco: Baylor University Press, 2007), 255–295. Other studies read these texts on the background of mid-second century C. E. Christian heresiology, on which see my discussion in Grossberg, “The Meaning and End of Heresy in Rabbinic Literature,” 220–231. But most of the relevant scholarship is concerned with purported similarities to texts from Qumran, which is very controversial (see n. 61, below): Saul Lieberman, Tosefeth Rishonim: A Commentary based on Manuscripts of the Tosefta and Works of the Rishonim and Midrashim in Manuscripts and Rare Editions (4 vols.; Jerusalem: Bamberger & Wahrman  / Mossad Rabbi Kook, 1937–1939) , 4.159–160; idem, “Light on the Cave Scrolls from Rabbinic Sources,” Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 20 (1951): 395–404; Joseph M. Baumgarten, “The Pharisaic-Sadducean Controversies about Purity and the Qumran Texts,” Journal of Jewish Studies 31 (1980): 157–170; Joseph Patrich, “The Aqueduct from Etam to the Temple and a Sadducean Halakhah” [Hebrew], Cathedra: For the History of Eretz Israel and its Yishuv 17 (1980): 11–24; Sussmann, “The History of Halakha and the Dead Sea Scrolls”; Lawrence H. Schiffman, “The New Halakhic Letter (4QMMT) and the Origins of the Dead Sea Sect,” The Biblical Archaeologist 53 (1990): 64–73; Daniel R. Schwartz, “Law and Truth: On Qumran-Sadducean and Rabbinic Views of Law,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls: Forty Years of Research (ed. Devorah Dimant and Uriel Rappaport; Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah 10; Leiden: Brill, 1992), 229–240; Yaakov Elman, “Some Remarks on 4QMMT and the Rabbinic Tradition, Or, When is a Parallel not a Parallel,” in Reading 4QMMT: New Perspectives on Qumran Law and History (ed. John Kampen and Moshe J. Bernstein; SBL Symposium Series 2; Atlanta: Scholars, 1996), 99–128; Jeffrey L. Rubenstein, “Nominalism and Realism in Qumranic and Rabbinic Law: A Reas-

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arrangement and editing of these traditions suggest that the Mishnah and Tosefta preserve here an early collection of sectarian disputes that was imported and adapted into these tannaitic works.61 Although these disputes are arranged and edited in such a way as to give preference to the Pharisees’ judicial position in each case, the preference is not decisive nor is the tone of the disagreements any more polemical than a disagreement between rabbinic sages would be elsewhere in the classical rabbinic literature. Indeed, in one of these traditions, Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai, the later hero and imagined progenitor of the post-destruction rabbinic movement, is made as least provisionally to take the side of the Sadducees against the Pharisees: The Sadducees say, “We take issue with you Pharisees because you say that scripture makes the hands impure, but the books of Homer do not make the hands impure!” Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai said, “Do we not have anything about which to argue sessment,” Dead Sea Discoveries 6 (1999): 157–183; Lawrence H. Schiffman, “Halakhah and Sectarianism in the Dead Sea Scrolls,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls in Their Historical Context (ed. Timothy H. Lim, with Larry W. Hurtado, A. Graeme Auld, and Alison Jack; London: T & T Clark, 2000; repr. 2004), 123–142; Eyal Regev, “Differences in Halakhic Perceptions Between the Qumran Sectarians and the Pharisees-Rabbis: Dynamic Holiness Versus Static Holiness” [Hebrew], Tarbiz 72 (2002–2003): 113–132; Martha Himmelfarb, “The Polemic Against the Tevul Yom: A Reexamination,” 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 and Betsy HalpernAmaru, in collaboration with Ruth A. Clements; Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah 88; Leiden: Brill, 2010), 199–214; Yair Furstenberg, “‘We Protest Against You, Pharisees’: The Shaping of Pharisaic Worldview in the Mishnah” [Hebrew], in Halakhah: Explicit and Implied Theoretical and Ideological Aspects (ed. Avinoam Rosenak and Dafna Schreiber; Philosophy of Halakhah; Jerusalem: Magnes, 2012), 283–311. 61 The traditions appear in m. Yadayim 4:6–8 and t. Yadayim 2:20. As I will explain, taken collectively they include five named sectarian groups in debate on six judicial issues. These texts have been extensively treated in the scholarship because such a large array of named sects debating on relatively equal footing such a wide variety of issues is otherwise unprecedented in the classical rabbinic corpus. It is this fact together with the consistent and unusual rhetorical format (especially the repeated formula, “we take issue with you”; see Kister, “Law, Morality, and Rhetoric”) that suggest a collection which existed independently of and was adapted and imported into the Mishnah and the Tosefta. Almost all of the scholars who have dealt with these texts do treat them as early, whether reflecting the mid-second century C. E., the late Second Temple period, or a period as early as the second century B. C. E. See n. 60, above, for bibliography. However, as Lightstone, “The Pharisees and the Sadducees in the Earliest Rabbinic Documents,” 467–468 n. 12, and Himmelfarb, “The Polemic Against the Tevul Yom,” 213, have argued, caution is called for. These texts as they appear in the Mishnah and the Tosefta clearly have been edited and adapted, and the extensive scholarship that endeavors to read these texts on the background of the Dead Sea Scrolls relies on relatively loose readings and generalizing assumptions about the historical continuity of the “halakhah,” a rather vague conceptual entity that apparently predates the rabbis by several centuries. See Schiffman, “Halakhah and Sectarianism in the Dead Sea Scrolls,” 123–126, for a defense of this approach. I agree with Lightstone and Himmelfarb that a more cautious approach is called for. I argue here only that these texts reflect, indirectly and through a second or third century filter, the sectarian landscape in the first century C. E.

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against the Pharisees but this? Indeed, they also say that the bones of an ass are pure and the bones of Yohanan the high priest are impure!”62

This unusual affiliation along with the lack of a decisive rejection of the minority opinion in each case strengthens the likelihood of a relatively early collection. These traditions in the Mishnah and the Tosefta include disagreements on six different matters among five named interlocutors. The interlocutors include the Pharisees, Sadducees, Hemerobaptists, Boethusians, and our Galilean min. In each of the six disagreements, one of these last four interlocutors takes issue with the Pharisees on a specific matter, and the Pharisees respond. The min is thus treated exactly like all of these other named groups, as representing a specific sect with judicial positions to be defended in public disputation. Yet, unlike the better known group designations in the rest of the collection this tradition refers to what seems to be an individual or, what I would argue better fits the context, a sectarian leader. Indeed, that all textual witnesses of m. Yadayim 4:8 vacillate between the singular and the plural in reference to this min reflects the text’s basic structure as a sectarian argument. Taken collectively, these traditions appear to reflect a period of sectarian disagreements where the minim were conceptualized as a sect with enough equality of standing and authority to debate seriously on judicial matters with the Pharisees and the Sadducees. Yet if this tradition recalls a sectarian leader, the purported head of the minim, it is notable that he is further specified with a geographical designation as a Galilean.63 It is compelling to suppose that the Mishnah recalls here a moment of in62 M. Yadayim 4:6 (ed. Vilna): ‫אומרים צדוקים קובלין אנו עליכ׳ פרושים שאתם אומרים כתבי הקודש‬ ‫מטמאין את הידים וספרי הומריס אינו מטמא את הידים א״ר יוחנן בן זכאי וכי אין לנו על הפרושים אלא זו‬ ‫בלבד הרי הם אומרים עצמות חמור טהורים ועצמות יוחנן כהן גדול טמאים‬. Yohanan’s statement is rhetorical, intended to elicit a response that he then uses to demonstrate an inconsistency in the Sadducee’s position. Even so, however, Yohanan’s language (“Do we not have … they say”), especially when compared to the several other rhetorically parallel arguments in m. Yadayim 4:7–8 and t. Yadayim 2:20, does on the face of it identify with the Sadducees rather than against them. Many of the scholars mentioned in n. 60, above, notice this and offer various explanations involving possible editorial layering in the text. See Cohen, “The Significance of Yavneh,” 39; Jaffee, Torah in the Mouth, 56; Furstenberg, “We Protest Against You, Pharisees,” 290 n. 22; and Lapin, Rabbis as Romans, 47. Cf. Baumgarten, “The Pharisaic-Sadducean Controversies about Purity,” 162–163; and Lightstone, “The Pharisees and the Sadducees in the Earliest Rabbinic Documents,” 277. 63 Lieberman, Tosefeth Rishonim, 4.160, and “Light on the Cave Scrolls from Rabbinic Sources,” 401–402, argues that this is a reference to an obscure sect called the “Galileans,” which Justin Martyr, Dialogue With Trypho 80 includes among a list of Jewish sects including the Pharisees and Sadducees. However, the Hebrew ‫ גלילי‬does not function here as a nominal sectarian designation. Rather, it is an adjective modifying min (thus Galilean Sadducee in the standard printed version of this text is semantically equivalent – min and Sadducee function as nominal sectarian designations and Galilean as an adjectival ethnic moniker modifying that designation). Justin may well have misinterpreted or misrepresented a tradition of this sort in order to fit it into his doxographic schema of seven Jewish haireseis, as I argue in Grossberg, “The Meaning and End of Heresy in Rabbinic Literature,” 220–231, but I see no reason to read Galilean here in any sense other than as an ethnicity. See Shaye J. D. Cohen, The Beginnings of

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terpellation, in which a subject is substantiated by naming.64 A Galilean sectarian leader is called a min, which had by this time taken on the pejorative coloring of “wicked minim” influenced by a text such as the verse in Ben Sira just discussed, thus implicitly treating his group as a fixed sect that can be opposed and rejected just as the Sadducees are. The word min then sticks as a sectarian designation and this obscure Galilean’s group becomes known as the minim. Concerning the identity of these Galilean sectarians, it is difficult to do more than speculate. Yet it would be worthwhile to consider as a possibility the only group that Josephus specifically associates with the Galilee, the so-called “Fourth Philosophy,” founded by Judas the Galilean in the first decade of the first century. At least one contemporary scholar connects our text in m. Yadayim 4:8 to this sect, though surprisingly he does this by relying on the printed editions of the text that have “Galilean Sadducee.” He thus translates the text as “Zadok of Galilee,” referencing Josephus’ discussion of “Zadok, who, along with Judas of Galilee, was a founder of the fourth philosophy.”65 The correct text of the Mishnah, however, has “Galilean min,” so if the connection is to be made, Judas of Galilee seems a more likely candidate than Zadok his compatriot.66 Josephus says that this “Fourth Philosophy” was a sect or philosophical school (Gk. hairesis, philosophia) just like the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes.67 And, the book of Jewishness: Boundaries, Varieties, Uncertainties (Hellenistic Culture and Society 31; Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 72–73, and n. 12, there. The term Galiliean appears as well in a letter from the first half of the first century written by the Jewish revolutionary Bar Kokhba (“Let every man keep apart from the Galileans whom you rescued” [trans. Teicher]); and in the Discourses of Epictetus 4.7 (“Therefore, if madness can produce this attitude of mind [that is, fearlessness] … and also habit, as with the Galilaeans, cannot reason and demonstration teach a man that God has made all things in the universe, and the whole universe itself, to be free from hindrance, and to contain its end in itself, and the parts of it to serve the needs of the whole?” [trans. Oldfather, ed. Loeb]); and, in the fourth century, the Roman Emperor Julian uses the term as a pejorative designation for Christians in his polemical essay Against the Galileans. While scholars have endeavored to read the earlier texts as referring to Christians, this does not seem justified. Justin clearly has a Jewish group in mind and there is no reason to suppose differently for Bar Kokhba and Epictetus. See J. T. Milik, “Une Lettre de Siméon Bar Kokheba,” Revue Biblique 60 (1953): 276–294; J. L. Teicher, “Documents of the Bar-Kochba Period,” Journal of Jewish Studies 4 (1953): 132–134; Arie Rubinstein, “The Appellation ‘Galileans’ in Ben Kosebha’s Letter to Ben Galgola,” Journal of Jewish Studies 6 (1955): 26– 34; and Hanan Eshel, “The Bar Kochba Revolt: 132–135” in The Cambridge History of Judaism, Volume Four, 105–127, at 114–115. 64 Scholars of early Christianity have applied Louis Althusser’s concept of interpellation to the ways in which heresiologists label their opponents. See Virginia Burrus, “Hailing Zenobia: Anti-Judaism, Trinitarianism, and John Henry Newman,” Culture and Religion 3 (2002): 163–177; and Iricinschi and Zellentin, “Making Selves and Marking Others: Identity in Late Antique Heresiologies,” 19–20. 65 Elias Rivkin, “Defining the Pharisees,” 211, and n. 2, there, referencing Josephus, Antiquities 18.3–10, slightly modified (I changed Sadok to Zadok for consistency with my usage later in this chapter). 66 In fact, Josephus explicitly says that Zadok was a Pharisee, as I will discuss shortly. 67 Jewish War 2.118; Antiquities 18.23.

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Acts has Gamliel the Pharisee mention them in passing as a historical movement among the Jews just like the sect of the early Christians.68 These references, together with Josephus’ description of Judas of Galilee as a “sage” (Gk. sophistēs), suggest an active sect with a scribal or scholastic orientation that makes the sort of debates with the Pharisees and Sadducees seen in m. Yadayim plausible.69 Unfortunately, Josephus says little more about the “Fourth Philosophy,” beyond blaming them for inciting the Jews against Rome and describing them as “[having] an invincible passion for liberty and [taking] God for their only leader and Lord.”70 Although in The Jewish War 2.118 Josephus claims that they have “nothing in common with the [other sects],” in Antiquities 18.23 he writes that they “agree in all other respects with the Pharisees.”71 Notable, however, for a possible connection of this group with the minim is that Josephus does treat them in a rather negative light, in sharp contrast to how he treats the other sects that he discusses. The historian and scholar of Josephus, Martin Goodman, goes so far as to say that although Josephus is typically irenic with regard to Jewish sectarianism, he comes closest to condemning a Jewish sect in his description of the “Fourth Philosophy.”72 If other Jews of the time saw the “Fourth Philosophy” as especially ideologically deviant, then the coinage of a special pejorative to describe them becomes even more likely. Perhaps then, the term minim was originally coined in offhand pejorative references to this sect already at the start of the first century C. E. Two additional textual details provide further support for this notion. First is that m. Yadayim 4:8, reads in full as follows: A Galilean min said, “I take issue with you, Pharisees, because you write the name of the governor together with the name of Moses in a bill of divorce.” The Pharisees said, “We take issue with you, Galilean min, because you write the name of God together with the name of the governor on a single page. And not only that but you write the governor’s name above and God’s name below: ‘But Pharaoh said, Who is the Lord, that I should heed his voice and let Israel go?’”73 68 Acts 5:37: “After him Judas the Galilean arose in the days of the census and drew away some of the people after him; he also perished, and all who followed him were scattered.” 69 See Richard Horsley and John. S. Hanson, Bandits, Prophets, and Messiahs: Popular Movements in the Time of Jesus (Harrisburg: Trinity, 1999), 190–199. 70 Antiquities 18.23. Trans. Thackery, ed. Loeb. 71 Trans. Thackery, ed. Loeb. 72 Goodman, “Function of Minim,” 502. 73 M. Yadayim 4:8 (MS Kaufmann): ‫אמ׳ מין גלילי׳ קובל אני עליכן פרושין שאתם כותבין את המושל‬ ‫עם משה בגט אומ׳ פרושין קובלין אנו עליך מין גלילי שאתה כותב את השם עם המושל בדף ולא עוד אלא‬ ‫שאתם כותבין את המושל מלמעלן ואת השם מלמטן ויאמר פרעה מי יי אשר אשמע בקולו לשלח את‬ ‫ישראל‬. As mentioned, the standard text has Sadducee in place of min. The biblical verse cited at the end of the text is Exodus 5:2. The Mishnah continues: ‫וכשלקה מהו או׳ יי הצדיק‬, “But when he was smitten, what did he say? ‘The Lord is in the right!’ (Exodus 9:27).” This is apparently in order not to end the tractate on an inauspicious note and is not relevant to the import of the mishnah itself.

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In this mishnah, the Galilean min accuses the Pharisees of impiety because the Pharisees write a bill of divorce using the standard ancient Roman formula for dating a contract, which involves citing the name of the Roman governor. Following this heading, the document would include the standard formulaic phrase for a Jewish bill of divorce, “according to the laws of Moses and the Jews.”74 According to this min’s notion of propriety, this formulation subordinates Moses to the governor and is therefore unacceptable. The Pharisees’ apparently ironic response implies that there is no impropriety in this at all. Even the Torah (a document of greater holiness than a bill of divorce) writes Pharaoh’s name before God’s (a figure of greater holiness than Moses): “But Pharaoh said, Who is the Lord.” The issues underlying this debate, both the sanctity of Moses’ name and the Pharisees’ response regarding God’s name, fit in a general way Josephus’ claim that the “Fourth Philosophy” “take God for their only leader and Lord.” Subordinating God or Moses to a Roman governor even in such an indirect way would seem especially impious to such a group. Second, the “Fourth Philosophy” appears to have been associated with the Pharisees, as seen both in Josephus’ claim of their general ideological agreement with the Pharisees and in his claim that Zadok the Pharisee was one of Judas’ associates. This fact might help to explain why many of the references to minim in the Mishnah and the Tosefta seem to address a group that has much in common with the Pharisees, for example, putting on phylacteries and reciting a fixed prayer liturgy.75 This association would also explain the pairing of minim and Pharisees in t. Berakhot 3:25’s curse, cited above. Josephus places Judas the Galilean in the time of Coponius, the first governor of Judea as a Roman province in the first decade of the first century C. E.76 Perhaps, then, this curse was originally composed at that time by a group in ideological conformity with the Sadducees against the Pharisees and their close compatriots in the “Fourth Philosophy.” It subsequently made its way into the Tosefta in the middle of the third century, after the passage of time had obscured its actual original referents. I need to be clear about the parameters and limits of what I am suggesting here. If a text such as the verse in Ben Sira cited earlier is the source of the rabbis’ pejorative usage of minim, then it is reasonable to suppose that this term began to be used in this manner already in the Second Temple period. Yet if the tannaitic literature recalls traditions relevant to the historical coinage of this pejorative, the events being recalled would have occurred as long as two centuries 74 See Yigael Yadin, Jonas C. Greenfield, and Ada Yardeni, “Babatha’s Ketubba,” Israel Exploration Journal 44 (1994): 75–101; and Yair Furstenberg, “We Protest Against You, Pharisees,” 298–299, and nn. 42–46, there, for discussion and additional bibliography. 75 See Matthew 23:5 on phylacteries, and Josephus, Antiquities 18.15, Matthew 6:5, and m. Berakhot 4:3–4 on prayer. 76 Jewish War 117. Coponius was recalled to Rome in 9 C. E. Acts 5:37 places him “in the days of the census,” presumably the Census of Quirinius in c. 6 C. E.

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before the Mishnah’s compilation. If the actual group to which this term originally referred was a revolutionary group such as Josephus’ “Fourth philosophy,” this group would have come to an abrupt and spectacular demise immediately after the first revolt if not much earlier (unlike the Pharisees and Sadducees, who might well have held on for a time after the destruction – the Pharisees likely for a longer period than the Sadducees77). By the early third century, therefore, the term minim, although still functioning lexically as a proper noun and a pejorative sectarian designation true to its coinage, would already have started to shed historical specificity and was becoming an increasingly general denunciation.78 This more flexible sectarian pejorative could by this time also be applied to other real or imagined groups, such as the minim who say that there are “two powers in heaven,” who I will discuss presently, a charge that seems unlikely to have been wielded against the “Fourth Philosophy” as Josephus described it. My aim in this section was to get at the coinage of the term in the centuries before it appears in the earliest tannaitic texts. The fact that when it does appear in these texts it already has a broad range of usages and is used without further clarification indicates that it had in fact been in relatively wide use (at least among the incipient rabbinic movement) for some time before the early third century. A coinage as a sectarian designation early in the first century is thus certainly plausible from an etymological and social-historical perspective. If so, minim began not as a Hebrew version of the Greek hairesis, that is, neither as “heretics” nor as non-Jewish outsiders, but as contentious Jewish insiders just like the Pharisees and Sadducees. The minim traditions collected in the earliest strata of the rabbinic literature consistently treat the minim as religious deviants to some degree, but as ordinary Jewish deviants. In its earliest stages, the pejorative designation minim picks out a sectarian group of Jewish insiders who are the consistent target of a polemical effort. However, these earliest stages all seem to predate the stirrings of the incipient rabbinic movement in the second and third centuries. But I will now argue that over time, the minim were gradually transformed from a criticized Jewish insider into a threatening hybrid, increasingly functioning as an existential threat to the developing self-conception of the collection of sages who would become the rabbinic community.

III. Minim as Hybrids in the Early Christian Period In his monumental twelfth century codification of the Talmud, the Mishneh Torah, the medieval Jewish philosopher Maimonides defines the minim as follows: 77 But

cf. n. 15, chapter five. Goodman, State and Society, 105: “It is anyway more likely that the rabbis conflated different groups in their attack on the theological opposition.” 78 See

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Five types are called minim: One who says that there is no God and that the world does not have a ruler; one who says that the world has a ruler but that there are two or more; one who says that there is one Lord but that he has a body and form; one who says that God is not the sole first foundation of everything; and one who worships planets or stars or such things as if there were an intermediary between him and the Lord of the world. Each of these five is a min.79

The minim for Maimonides are clearly theological deviants: atheists, binitarians, or idolaters.80 If my thesis in the previous section is correct, however, this is a surprising development. How did a pejorative designation originally wielded against the “Fourth Philosophy,” a group whose rallying cry took “God for their only leader and Lord,” become associated centuries later with, of all things, the worship of “two or more” gods? I will argue in this section that because the coinage of the term minim predated the production of the first rabbinic collections by hundreds of years and because the group originally most closely associated with this term did not survive the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 C. E., traditions associated with the minim remained but memory of who precisely they were rapidly faded. They therefore became, in the context of early rabbinic tradition-making, a convenient but somewhat amorphous category that served as a rhetorical foil for a coalescing rabbinic self-conception and started taking on characteristics of prominent real opponents in each subsequent generation. One such opponent was, apparently, 79 Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, hilkhot teshuvah 3:7 (standard edition; Jerusalem, 1974): ‫חמשה הן הנקראים מינים האומר שאין שם אלוה ואין לעולם מנהיג והאומר שיש שם מנהיג אבל הן שנים‬ ‫או יותר והאומר שיש שם רבון אחד אבל שהוא גוף ובעל תמונה וכן האומר שאינו לבדו הראשון וצור לכל‬ ‫וכן העובד כוכב או מזל וזולתו כדי להיות מליץ בינו ובין רבון העולמים כל אחד מחמשה אלו הוא מין‬. 80 This is the predominant approach of much modern scholarship, for example, Goodman, State and Society, 104: “The minim were Jews whose sin was theological,” in support of which he cites m. Megillah 4:9 and Sifre Deuteronomy 86, 218, 320, and 331. See also Goodman, ibid., 105: “It is noticeable that the sort of heretical belief that the rabbis envisaged seems to involve in some cases a system of two or more powers in heaven.” But cf. there, “This is, after all, precisely the period in which Christian self-definition was achieved through the exclusion of theological concepts defined by patristic writers as heretical. The rabbis were not interested in doing the same thing: the dualism that they opposed was too unorganized and vague to evoke concentrated attention.” Regarding the texts that Goodman cites, the import of m. Megillah 4:9 is far from certain, and there is certainly nothing in it that refers directly to “two powers,” as I will discuss presently. Sifre Deuteronomy 218 is not in fact a text that refers to minim. See n. 26, above. The other texts that he cites are not explicitly about “two powers” and some can easily be read as suggesting general impiety. See n. 91, below. In any case, perhaps this misconception is the main reason that minim is so often translated as “heretics.” Heretics among early Christian heresiologists were often, though in no way exclusively, theological deviants, defined by differences in their soteriology or christology. This is not so with the minim, as I will explain. For a discussion of the scholarship on this matter, see Schremer, Brothers Estranged, 14–16. I would agree with Schremer that to characterize the minim exclusively by their ideas about God would be a mistake, but I do not agree with his reasoning and his categorization. Some texts targeting the minim imagine them as theological deviants, other texts do not. This diverse type of treatment came about over an extended period as the minim were reimagined and reconceptualized in rabbinic tradition-making.

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Jews who engaged in theological speculations regarding the nature of divine immanence, which, I will suggest, early tannaitic tradition referred to generically as “those who say that there are two powers.” Another opponent, at least by the early fourth century, was Christianity with its preoccupation with christology. Both of these groups seem to have influenced the types of characteristics that were associated with these obscure minim. In other words, from an opposed sectarian Jewish insider in the first decades of the first century, the minim became by the fourth century a shadowy and threatening hybrid: perhaps Jewish, perhaps not; perhaps associated with “two powers” theologies, perhaps associated with Christianity. This redeployment of the minim as a stock rabbinic opponent was therefore critical to the developing rabbinic movement as it served to clarify the most dangerous boundaries of deviance between piety and impiety regarding ideas about God and between Jew and Christian more generally.81 My approach in this section owes much to a foundational 1994 article by Richard Kalmin on “Christians and Heretics in Rabbinic Literature of Late Antiquity,” which considered the changing meaning of minim in the classical rabbinic corpus.82 And, as mentioned in the previous chapter, my work in this section relies on Boyarin’s most important findings in Border Lines, especially in regard to hybridity and the function of the minim in the rabbinic texts.83 Let us begin with a brief excursus on the expression “two powers in heaven” or “two powers” for short. This expression is general rabbinic parlance for a range of ideas about God that the rabbis criticized as a compromise on strict monotheism. Scholars refer to such ideas as binitarianism. Binitarian theologies started developing among Jews in the Second Temple period in order to deal with logical contradictions inherent in speculations about divine transcendence and divine immanence. For God to be one and sufficiently majestic, it was thought that he ought to transcend the world. But for God to judge individual deeds and misdeeds, it was thought that he must be immanent within the world. One way 81 On the idea of hybridity applied to the study of ancient religion, see Boyarin, Border Lines, 14–22, 207–220. Border Lines focuses on the mutually implicated development of Christianity and Judaism, whereas I am aiming to illuminate how polemics against straw men such as the minim from the earliest to the latest texts and textual strata reflect the formation of a collective rabbinic self-conception. Schremer, Brothers Estranged, also argues that the signification of minim gradually expanded to include Christians; but, his thesis is directed against those scholars who see Christians as the primary opponents of rabbinic literature, whereas Schremer, ibid., ix, argues that “Throughout late antiquity, the ‘significant other’ for Palestinian rabbis remained the Roman Empire.” I will argue in what follows that the term minim emerged earlier and in a different set of circumstances than what Schremer supposes and that the opponents that appear in rabbinic traditions tell us more about the rabbis themselves than about any real significant other. 82 Kalmin, “Christians and Heretics in Rabbinic Literature of Late Antiquity.” 83 See n. 81, above. Also worth highlighting is Christine Hayes’ well-known article, “Displaced Self-Perceptions: The Deployment of Mînîm and Romans in B. Sanhedrin 90b–91a,” as it anticipates my approach (and preferred terminology) to the rabbinic use of polemical opponents, although its concern is with modes of exegesis and rabbinic authority as interpreters of the Bible in the Talmud.

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to solve this contradiction is to suppose the existence of a divine manifestation that can be immanent while the divine essence remains transcendent. The turn of the era Jewish philosopher Philo, who lived in Alexandria, wrote in Greek, and was influenced by Plato, referred to this immanent manifestation as the logos.84 A similar type of logos-theology later made its way into early Christianity as a way of explaining Jesus’ relationship to God.85 My claim in this section is that early tannaitic polemical traditions against Jewish proponents of logos theologies referred to these Jews as “those who say that there are two powers.”86 Over time, these Jewish opponents became conflated with the minim. This conflation was so effective that readers of rabbinic literature from Maimonides to modern scholars have often failed to differentiate between these two groups. Yet, as I will now demonstrate, of the dozens of texts that mention the minim or minut in the tannaitic literature, only two traditions (one with two variants) associate this category of deviance specifically with binitarian theological beliefs, and only one of these two specifically associate it with “those who say that there are two powers.” Moreover, both of these traditions evince at least some 84 On Philo’s logos theology, see Segal, Two Powers, 159–181. Segal, ibid., 164–165, writes that Philo “is reluctant to conceive of a pure, eternal God who participates directly in the affairs of the corruptible world. So he employs a system of mediation by which God is able to reach into the transient world, act in it, fill it, as well as transcend material existence, without implying a change in His essence. In these passages, Philo has suggested that the mediation is effected by the logos, who is the sum total of all the forms of the intelligible world and equal to the mind of God.” For an introduction to Philo’s thought, see Harry Austryn Wolfson, Philo: Foundations of Religious Philosophy in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, Third Printing, Revised (2 vols.; Harvard: Harvard University Press, 1962); and see David T. Runia, Philo of Alexandria and the Timaeus of Plato (Philosophia Antiqua 44; Leiden: Brill, 1986), esp. 412–475. 85 See for example, the start of the Gospel of John. It has been suggested that this text was originally a Jewish composition. See Daniel Boyarin, “The Gospel of the Memra: Jewish Binitarianism and the Prologue to John,” The Harvard Theological Review 94 (2001): 243–284. 86 The standard work on “two powers” is Segal, Two Powers, which contains an excellent survey of rabbinic “two powers” texts and relevant concepts in other period literature. Segal places great emphasis on whether the two powers involved are complementary, as in early binitarian christology, or opposing. He concludes that the earliest rabbinic “two powers” traditions targeted both Jewish “apocalyptic or mystical groups” (ibid., 262) and early Christian groups in the former category, but later polemic targeted a group that Segal refers to as “gnostics,” who are in the latter category. However, Segal’s assumptions regarding the “consolidation of rabbinic authority at Yavneh and the attempt at a new Jewish orthodoxy” (ibid., 263–264) and regarding the rabbis “asserting … control over the synagogue” (ibid., 263–264) have since been proved faulty as already discussed. And, the entire category of “gnostics” is likewise problematic (see Michael Allen Williams, Rethinking “Gnosticism”, and Karen L. King, What is Gnosticism? [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003]). Absent these assumptions, his chronology becomes difficult to sustain. Moreover, my analysis indicates that these stock rabbinic opponents rapidly became little more than straw men as rabbinic traditions moved through the process of encapsulation, preservation, promulgation, and performance (performance which was, of course, by rabbis for rabbis), which suggests that recovering the original historical debates underlying them using the method that Segal applies (attributions, interest in the same biblical verses in various sources, etc.) is unlikely, especially over the narrow period of his primary interest.

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textual problems. I believe, therefore, that although the tannaitic literature does accuse the minim of impiety along with their many other faults, this accusation was no more prominent than were any of the other accusations that I will discuss presently. And, the specific accusation of minim “saying that there are two powers” was a mid-third century development. In the following discussion, I will concentrate on minim and minut texts from the tannaitic literature. The majority of these texts are unattributed, but many are attributed to second century sages. The datings of these traditions, therefore, seem likely to range from the second to the mid-third century or perhaps a bit later. Although I cannot definitely prove that the one tradition that associates minim with “those who say that there are two powers” is on the later end of this spectrum, the evidence I will now present suggests this as a plausible hypothesis. I will start with the tradition that explicitly associates the minim with binitarian theological beliefs, generally, and I will address the one explicit minim “two powers” text later in this section.87 The first tradition appears in variant versions in m. Sanhedrin 4:5 and t. Sanhedrin 8:7, though I will argue below that the latter would appear to be primary and the former a derivative and somewhat later tradition: For this reason Adam was created alone … so the minim would not say ‘‘there are many powers in heaven.’’88 Adam was created last. And why was he created last? So that the minim would not say that God had a partner in his deeds.89

The many other misdeeds associated with the minim in the Mishnah and the Tosefta are concerned with a range of other issues such as rejecting the world to come, disputes about the calendar, putting phylacteries on incorrectly, divergences in liturgy, differences in the manner of the slaughter of animals, disagreements in purity rules, complaints regarding contracts, and questions as to whether their books should be considered as works of scripture.90 Elsewhere 87 The one tannaitic tradition that explicitly associates minim with “two powers” is from Mekhilta ba-ḥodesh 5, and I discuss its significance below. I discuss other tannaitic traditions in nn. 90 and 91, below. 88 M. Sanhedrin 4:5 (ed. Vilna): ‫… שלא יהו מינין אומרים הרבה רשויות‬ ‫לפיכך נברא אדם יחידי‬ ‫בשמים‬. 89 T. Sanhedrin 8:7 (ed. Zuckermandel): ‫אדם נברא באחרונה ולמה נברא באחרונה שלא יהו המינין‬ ‫אומרין שותף היה עמו במעשהו‬. In both of these texts, the word translated as “Adam” might also be translated generally as “man.” 90 These issues appear, respectively, in m. Berakhot 9:5  / t. Berakhot 6:21 (also, in Sifre Numbers 112, in some manuscripts, the minim are said to deny the resurrection of the dead; cf. Schremer, Brothers Estranged, 35–36 and n. 56, there, who argues that the minim are not the ones saying “there is only one world” in the Mishnah version; Schremer’s reading seems a bit forced to me, but, in any case, in the parallel in the Tosefta, it is clearly the minim saying this and Schremer does not dispute the substance of the text; cf. Lieberman, Tosefta ki-Fshuṭah, 1.123); m. Rosh Hashanah 2:1; m. Megillah 4:8; m. Megillah 4:9; m. Hullin 2:9 / t. Hullin 2:19 / Sifre

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in the tannaitic literature, but not in the Mishnah, the minim are accused of “denying God” and associated with idolatry, but these are best read as general denunciations for impiety rather than as specifically binitarian ideas.91 Furthermore, in a number of places where one might expect minim to be associated with binitarianism were this association widespread in the tannaitic period, they are not. For example, m. Megillah 4:9 enumerates several proscribed liturgical formulations, all of which are of uncertain import: Deuteronomy 126; m. Parah 3:3 / t. Parah 3:3; m. Yadayim 4:8; and t. Shabbat 13:5 / t. Yadayim 2:13. In addition, t. Yoma 2:10 apparently reflects some issue with the ceremony of the Day of Atonement (this text has been read, implausibly to my mind, as related to “two powers”; see Lieberman, Tosefta ki-Fshuṭah, 4.766, but cf. Kalmin, “Christians and Heretics in Rabbinic Literature of Late Antiquity,” 168). The issue involved in t. Megillah 3:37 is unclear, but it seems unlikely to be theological in a narrow sense (see Schremer, Brothers Estranged, 61–62). 91 The specific accusations mentioned are made in t. Shabbat 13:5, t. Hullin 1:1, and t. Hullin 2:20; but the same could be said of other tannaitic texts that denounce the minim in very general terms regarding their falsity or enmity to God such as Mekhilta kaspa 20, Sifre Numbers 16, Sifre Numbers 115, Sifre Deuteronomy 48, and Sifre Deuteronomy 331. The claim in t. Shabbat 13:5 that the minim “recognize God but deny him” suggests no more than that they are Jews (impious Jews, to be sure), as contrasted to those who “do not recognize God and deny him,” who are non-Jews. “Denying” God here need not be read as more than a general denunciation for impiety (see Schremer, Brothers Estranged, 44–45). Other tannaitic texts outside of the Mishnah and the Tosefta that might be read as suggesting theological issues in connection to the minim include Sifre Deuteronomy 320 and Sifre Numbers 143 / Sifra nedava 2. The theological issues involved in these texts are not at all clear, however, and they are certainly not explicitly part of the “two powers” traditions that I will discuss presently. Jacob Neusner, Sifra: An Analytical Translation (3 vols.; Atlanta: Scholars, 1988), 1.79, and Louis Finkelstein, ed., Sifra on Leviticus [Hebrew] (5 vols.; New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1983–1991), 2.22, read the latter as targeting non-Christian non-Jews who believe in God but call him by a different name. But, Schremer, Brothers Estranged, 82, and Schäfer, Jewish Jesus, 22–24, do read this tradition as targeting believers in divine multiplicity because Sifre Numbers 143 lists names of God that take a plural form (elohim, etc.). I see nothing that demands this reading, however, for why would a text that is concerned with divine multiplicity focus especially on sacrifices as this tradition does? In addition, Sifra nedava 2 does not present a list of alternative names of God and not all of the names listed in Sifre Numbers 143 are clearly plural (as Schäfer, ibid., 277 n. 4 recognizes; the version in b. Menahot 110a includes only el and elohim, and the opponent there is not a min at all – the Bavli certainly does not see this tradition as related to divine multiplicity). Better, I think, to read these texts as concerned with sectarian debates about whether it is God’s mercy or God’s justice, as reflected in the divine name used, that is most active in the act of sacrifice (although ideas about divine attributes emerge most clearly in the Talmud and amoraic midrash, there are earlier intimations as well; see Mekhilta ba-ḥodesh 4 and Mekhilta of Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai 20, which discuss elohim as God’s name of justice and the tetragrammaton as God’s name of mercy; and see Segal, Two Powers, 44–59). I will discuss Mekhilta ba-ḥodesh 5, in which the minim are made to say that there are “two powers,” presently. I discuss m. Sotah 9:15 and t. Hullin 2:24 later in this section. Other tannaitic texts that mention the minim include t. Berakhot 3:25, which I discussed in the previous section (a related but less relevant text appears in MS Vienna of t. Taanit 1:10); t. Bava Metzia 2:33, which I will discuss in chapter four, section one; and, t. Sanhedrin 13:5 / Seder Olam 3, which I discuss in chapter two, section two, chapter four, section one, and chapter five, section one. On Sifre Deuteronomy 218, which does not mention the minim at all, and on the minim texts from the reconstructed Midrash Tannaim on Deuteronomy, see n. 26, above.

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The one who says, “Good men shall bless you” – this is the way of minut. [The one who says,] “Your compassion extends even to a bird’s nest,” “Your name shall be recalled for good,” “We give thanks, we give thanks” – he is to be silenced.92

Of these formulations, the one that seems most likely to be related to binitarianism is repeating “We give thanks, we give thanks,” as if each thanksgiving is aimed at a distinct divine power. Yet this formulation is not referred to as minut. Only the very obscure “Good men shall bless you” is.93 This obscure expression seems unrelated to binitarianism, but perhaps it could reflect the sort of prayer we might expect from the minim as an early separatist sectarian group that sees itself as the “Good men” blessing God.94 Similarly, a narrative text from the Tosefta, in t. Hullin 2:24, associates minut with the teachings of “Jesus ben Pantiri,” which is certainly a reference to Jesus of Nazareth.95 This association would have been an excellent opportunity to connect minut with early christology and binitarianism were this type of connection widespread at the time. Yet the only teaching cited in this connection (in the Bavli’s version of this tradition) is a judicial issue about how one might use illicit funds for Temple offerings.96 But no kind of specifically theological deviance is mentioned. The association of minim with binitarian theology is thus very rare in the tannaitic literature. And even in the one case cited above, it must be noted that some scholars consider the version of the tradition that appears in m. Sanhedrin 4:5 to be an editorial addition.97 It is from this perspective notable that this version of the tradition is not against “two powers in heaven” but rather “many powers in heaven.” This expression does not appear elsewhere in the rabbinic corpus apart from in the Bavli in discussion of this mishnah, suggesting a possible source for this tradition.98 Even the important polemical text against “those who say that there are two powers” from the Sifre on Deuteronomy that I will cite below, which enumerates arguments against a range of theological opponents – “those 92 M. Megillah 4:9 (ed. Vilna): ‫האומר יברכוך טובים הרי זו דרך המינות על קן צפור יגיעו רחמיך‬ ‫ועל טוב יזכר שמך מודים מודים משתקין אותו‬. 93 The Yerushalmi does later explain this text in terms of “two powers” in y. Megillah 4:10, 75c. The Bavli, more plausibly, in b. Megillah 25a and b. Berakhot 33b, explains “we give thanks, we give thanks” this way. The parallel in m. Berakhot 5:3 does not mention the “Good men” or minut. The issue with “Your name shall be recalled for good” might be associated with m. Berakhot 9:5 (ed. Vilna): ‫חייב אדם לברך על הרעה כשם שהוא מברך על הטובה‬: “A person is obligated to bless on evil as he blesses on good.” 94 As Segal, Two Powers, 173, writes (in a different context), “most sectarian groups believed themselves better than the common variety of men.” 95 On the dating of this text, see n. 128, below. 96 B. Avodah Zarah 16b–17a. 97 See Jacob Nahum Epstein, Mevo’ot le-Sifrut ha-Tana’im: Mishneh, Tosefta’, ve-Midrashei Halakhah (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1957), 418; and Schäfer, Jewish Jesus, 200 (Schäfer does not say much on this question but suggests parenthetically that a later editor of the Mishnah may have been responsible for this text. He notes as well that the context here is “far-fetched”). 98 B. Sanhedrin 38a.

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who say that there is no power in heaven,” “those who say that there are two powers,” and “those who say that God has no potency to kill and resurrect” – does not include the dubious category of “those who say that there are many powers” and it does not mention the minim at all. These facts, together with the fact that the version of this text from the Tosefta does not use an expression referring to multiple “powers,” undermines the likelihood that this text from the Mishnah is part of the early traditions against “those who say that there are two powers” that I will now examine.99 It is reasonable, therefore, to suppose that this tradition is a secondary adaptation from the Tosefta text and is part of the process of conflation that I am suggesting began in the third century. It is certainly clear, on the other hand, that a category of Jewish deviant distinct from the minim did exist in the tannaitic texts, specifically associated with binitarian theological beliefs. The texts do not name this polemical target as a specific group but refer to it generically as “those who say that there are two powers.” This category first appears in the tannaitic midrash, for example, in Sifre Deuteronomy 329, commenting on God’s words in Deuteronomy 32:39: “See now that I, even I, am he [, and there is no god beside me; I  kill and I  make alive]” – This is an answer to those who say that there are no powers in heaven. For one who says that there are two powers in heaven, answer him saying, “Yet was it not already written, ‘and there is no god beside me.’” And [for one who says] that God has no potency, neither to kill nor to resurrect nor to do evil or good, this is why the full verse says, “See now that I, even I, am he [, and there is no god beside me; I kill and I make alive].” And also it says [in Isaiah 44:6]: “Thus says the Lord, the King of Israel and his Redeemer, the Lord of hosts: ‘I am the first and I am the last; besides me there is no god.’”100

This text looks like a guide to argumentation against various types of theological deviants, a phenomenon known among early Christian polemicists and from later rabbinic literature.101 Who it is specifically that is championing these threat  99 Much of the scholarship on this text glosses over the difference between “two powers” and “many powers.” Herford, Christianity in the Talmud and Midrash, 292, writes that “many” here means just “more than one” thus two. Segal, Two Powers, 111, and Teppler, Birkat HaMinim, 332, follow Herford. Schäfer, Jewish Jesus, 200–201, however, points out that that expression “many powers” stands in “sharp contrast to the much more common ‘two powers.’” See also, Adiel Schremer, “Midrash, Theology, and History,” 233 n. 11. In any case, I am not supposing as scholars such as Herford, Segal, and Teppler did that these texts reflect a systematic theological exposition about binitarianism. Rather, I see these expressions as recycled polemical tropes, and from that perspective, the specific language used is significant primarily in terms of chains of transmission. In this case, we can reasonably suppose that divergent language reflects outliers or innovations in the transmission of tradition. 100 Sifre Deuteronomy 329 (ed. Finkelstein): ‫ראו עתה כי אני אני הוא זו תשובה לאומרים אין רשות‬ ‫בשמים האומר שתי רשויות בשמים משיבים אותו ואומרים לו והלא כבר כתוב ואין אלהים עמדי או כענין‬ ‫שאין בו כח לא להמית ולא להחיות ולא להרע ולא להטיב תלמוד לומר ראו עתה כי אני אני הוא אני אמית‬ ‫ואחיה ואומר כה אמר ה׳ מלך ישראל וגואלו ה׳ צבאות אני ראשון ואני אחרון ומבלעדי אין אלהים‬. 101 Scholars of early Christianity refer to such sources as testimonia, but there is some controversy regarding their nature and provenance. See Oskar Skarsaune, The Proof from Prophecy,

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ening ideas is not at all important to this text. “One who says that there are two powers” is just a stock opponent to be responded to in theological disputation by wielding the proper verses. Yet there is no reason to think that the “two powers” opponent in this text is anyone but a Jew, just as in the cases of the one who says that there is no God and the one who says that God has no potency.102 This range of theological ideas fits Jewish theological opponents better than it would fit Roman pagans, who would be less convinced by citation of biblical prooftexts,103 or Christians, who would not be relevant to these other complaints.104 Another important tannaitic text that opposes “those who say that there are two powers” is similar to this one in that it enumerates biblical proof-texts in response to a binitarian belief. But in this case, the source of the belief itself is presented as a number of biblical verses that present God in an anthropomorphic fashion, Exodus 15:3, Exodus 24:10, and Daniel 7:9. Exodus 15:3 is part of the “Song of the Sea,” which the Israelites sing in celebration of God’s victory over Pharaoh at the Red Sea. The verse praises God as a warrior triumphant: “The Lord is a man of war; the Lord is his name.” Exodus 24:10 is part of the revelation at Sinai, where Moses and his companions have a vision of God: “And they saw the God of Israel; and there was under his feet as it were a pavement A Study in Justin Martyr’s Proof-Text Tradition: Text-Type, Provenance, Theological Profile (Supplements to Novum Testamentum 56; Leiden: Brill, 1987), 21–23; and Stuart E. Parsons, Ancient Apologetic Exegesis: Introducing and Recovering Theophilus’ World (Cambridge: James Clarke, 2015), 125–129. See also my discussion of the rabbinic list of “dangerous verses” in chapter five, section four. 102 Interestingly, Schäfer, Jewish Jesus, 175, points out that Philo refers generically to God’s “assistants in the creation of man” as “powers.” This supports the likelihood that the expression “two powers” originally developed as a condemnation of Jews who believed in a similar type of logos theology. As Schäfer, Jewish Jesus, 176, writes, for Philo these powers “were facets of the unknowable, unattainable, transcendent God; as such, they are (at least in their essence) unknowable as well but nevertheless embody and enable the transition from the transcendent God (through many stages) down to our visible world.” 103 As noted already by Adolph Büchler, “The Minim of Sepphoris and Tiberias in the Second and Third Centuries,” in Studies in Jewish History: The Adolph Büchler Memorial Volume (ed. I. Brodie and J. Rabbinowitz; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1956), 245–274, at 267. And, see Segal, Two Powers, 85. 104 Segal, Two Powers, 84–89, sees this text as targeting “Samaritans, gnostics and Jewish apocalyptic groups,” along with, possibly, so-called Jewish-Christians (relying on Herford and Büchler for the latter). I remain skeptical that such specific opponents can be discerned behind texts such as these. Schremer, “Midrash, Theology, and History,” 234–239, reads this text in terms of God’s effectiveness and potency rather than in terms of binitarianism, though to justify this reading he appeals to some relatively late texts. I agree with Schremer’s assertion that the target of this polemic “need not necessarily be a view held by a specific group.” His main point seems to be that the opponents that this text imagines need not necessarily be Christians or “gnostics,” which I would also agree with. However, it might be suggested that the distinction that he is making between “theological content” on the one hand and “doubting God’s sovereignty” on the other needs to be better theorized for his argument to present a convincing alternative reading of “two powers” as a category. Whether the issue is God’s “significance in the present world” or God’s singularity, surely both are theological issues.

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of sapphire stone, like the very heaven for clearness.” Daniel 7:9 is part of the biblical prophet Daniel’s heavenly vision: As I looked, thrones were placed and one that was ancient of days took his seat; his raiment was white as snow, and the hair of his head like pure wool; his throne was fiery flames.

The “one that was ancient of days” is God seated on his throne in heaven, depicted as an old man with white hair. The contrast between Exodus 15:3 and Daniel 7:9 is clear: Exodus 15:3 describes God in terms appropriate to a young man, a triumphant warrior; Daniel 7:9 describes God in terms appropriate to an old man, a king sitting on his throne. The implications of Exodus 24:10 in regard to God’s appearance are less clear, though its anthropomorphism is obvious.105 In any case, the variations in God’s appearance might be taken as suggesting the existence of more than one divinity. Moreover, the Daniel verse contains an additional potential problem in that the verse specifies that multiple “thrones” are set up rather than just a single throne for God. In context, it is clear that the plural “thrones” mentioned in the verse would be intended for some kind of heavenly retinue seated around God. However, because the continuation of this vision also mentions a figure “like a son of man” who is presented before the “ancient of days” and is given “dominion and glory and kingdom,” this text became, in the first centuries C. E., an important proof-text for binitarian and christological ideas, as if the thrones were intended for distinct divine manifestations.106 Several variant versions of rabbinic traditions responding to these verses exist in the rabbinic corpus.107 I will cite first a version from a partially reconstructed 105 See

nn. 106 and 107, below. Segal, Two Powers, 224–225, referring to Justin Martyr. Scholars have disagreed regarding whether this matter is relevant to this text. See the extended discussion in Segal, Two Powers, 33–57; Daniel Boyarin, “Two Powers in Heaven; Or, the Making of a Heresy,” in The Idea of Biblical Interpretation: Essays in Honor of James L. Kugel (ed. Hindy Najman and Judith H. Newman; Supplements to the Journal for the Study of Judaism 83; Leiden: Brill, 2004), 331–370; Schremer, “Midrash, Theology, and History,” 239–252; and Schäfer, Jewish Jesus, 37–102. And see n. 107, below, and my discussion of b. Sanhedrin 38b in chapter five, section four. 107 For a full list of parallels to the tradition that I will cite presently, see Schäfer, Jewish Jesus, 283 n. 1. To be precise, this tradition in its various versions is contextualized as a commentary on a number of different verses initially, and the Daniel verse comes in along the way as part of the exegesis. The version cited comments on Exodus 15:3 (other versions comment on Exodus 20:2 and Deuteronomy 5:4). In all versions, the primary matter of concern is that the Bible sometimes describes God in terms appropriate to an old man and sometimes in terms appropriate to a young man. However, Segal, Two Powers, 35–36, and Daniel Boyarin, “Two Powers in Heaven; Or, the Making of a Heresy,” 343–344, have suggested that the verse from Daniel is at the center of the exegesis. But, Schremer, “Midrash, Theology, and History,” 244–248, and Schäfer, Jewish Jesus, 64–67, see the verse from Daniel serving only as another example of God being described in terms appropriate to an old man. I am only concerned with the way that the opponent is named as “those who say that there are two powers,” rather than 106 See

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tannaitic collection that scholars refer to as the Mekhilta of Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai, which in this case seems to represent an authentic tannaitic tradition:108 “The Lord is a man of war, the Lord is his name” – For when the Holy One blessed be he was revealed at the Red Sea, he seemed to [the Israelites] to be a young man waging war. “The Lord is his name” – He was revealed to them at Sinai as an old man full of mercy: “As I looked[, thrones were placed and one that was ancient of days took his seat.]109 – So as not to give an opportunity to those who say that there are two powers in heaven, rather, “The Lord is a man of war, [the Lord is his name].” Another interpretation: “The Lord is a man of war” – He gave battle in Egypt; “the Lord is his name” – He gave battle on the sea. He is at the Jordan and he is at the valleys of Arnon; He is in this world and he is in the world to come; He was in the past and he will be in the future, as it is said, “See now that I, even I, am he …”;110 “Thus says the Lord, the King of Israel …”;111 “I, the Lord, the first …”;112 “I am He, I am the first, and I am the last.”113

The various versions of this tradition appeal to different verses to highlight the same underlying issue regarding the multiplicity of God’s appearances. None of the versions is especially clear, and scholars have disagreed regarding the precise details of the hermeneutics at work in the various versions.114 The simplest way to read the version cited is that the verse from Exodus 15:3 proves there is one with the intricacies of the complicated and multi-layered exegesis at work in this tradition (which is likely an amalgam of more than one earlier traditions, see n. 108, below). 108 See W. David Nelson, “The Reconstruction of the Mekhilta of Rabbi Shimon b. Yoḥai: A Reexamination ,” Hebrew Union College Annual 70/71 (1999–2000): 261–302. The Mekhilta of Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai is not always very reliable, and, in this case, the relationship of its version of the tradition that I cite presently to the versions that appears in the Mekhilta of Rabbi Yishmael that I will cite below is difficult to determine. Segal, Two Powers, 36, 37–38, notes that neither is likely to be the “earliest version” of the midrash as both have textual problems. Boyarin, “Two Powers in Heaven; Or, the Making of a Heresy,” 345 n. 44, seems inclined to trust the latter version. It seems to me most likely that both are highly worked and somewhat confused and may well combine various strands of earlier interpretation. As my analysis in this section suggests that, as a stock opponent, the generic “those who say that there are two powers” is primary to specific named figures saying that there are two powers (see n. 121, below), the section that I cite, at least, of the former version is likely to be primary. Schäfer, Jewish Jesus, notes that this version’s contrast of God’s appearances as a young versus an a old man rather than in terms of a warrior versus an old man is likely to be primary as well. 109 This version seems to use the verse from Daniel to clarify God’s appearance at Sinai, but it does not cite Exodus 24:10, which describes the appearance itself. See Schremer, “Midrash, Theology, and History,” 247–248. 110 Deuteronomy 32:39. 111 Isaiah 44:6. 112 Isaiah 41:4. 113 Isaiah 48:12. Mekhilta of Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai (ed. Epstein-Melamed) 15: ‫ייי איש‬ ‫מלחמה ייי … שמו לפי שכשנגלה ה[קב״ה על הים] נראה להן כבחור עושה מלחמה ייי שמו נגל[ה עליהן‬ ‫בסיני] כזקן מלא רחמים חזה הווית וגומ׳ שלא ליתן פתחון פ[ה] לומר שתי רשויות יש בשמים אלא ייי איש‬ ‫מלחמה [ד״א] ייי איש מלחמה הוא נלחם במצ׳ ייי שמו הוא [נלחם על] הים והוא על הירדן והוא על נחלי‬ ‫ארנון הוא בעולם הזה והוא לעולם הבא הוא לשעבר הוא לעתיד לבוא שנא׳ ראו עתה כי אני אני הוא‬ ‫וגומ׳ כה אמ׳ ייי מלך יש׳ וגומ׳ אני ייי ראשון וגומ׳ אני הוא אני ראשון אף אני אחרון‬. 114 See nn. 106, 107, and 108, above.

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God (“the Lord is a man of war; the Lord is his name) even if there are multiple appearances. In any case, it is enough for my purpose to note that this text is similar to the text just cited from Sifre Deuteronomy in that it presents a series of biblical verses that emphasize God’s singularity as a way of responding to those who say that God is in some sense multiple. Yet again, this text responds generically to “those who say that there are two powers” rather than to any named opponent group.115 This stock generic opponent continues to function into the amoraic period, appearing for instance in Genesis Rabbah 1:7: And no one can argue saying, “Two powers gave the Torah” or “Two powers created the world” because “And gods spoke [all these words]” is not written [in Exodus 20:1], rather “And God spoke”; “In the beginning gods created” is not written [in Genesis 1:1], rather “In the beginning God created.”116

Similar polemical responses against generic opponents related to “two powers” show up elsewhere in the rabbinic corpus. They appear in the later collections of midrash, Ecclesiastes Rabbah and Deuteronomy Rabbah, and in the medieval compilations known as Pesiqta Rabbati and the Tanhuma.117 It is my contention that these texts demonstrate that “those who say that there are two powers” was a distinct target of rabbinic polemics associated with a distinct set of traditions quite apart from the minim traditions, which were originally concerned with other matters.118 My argument in the foregoing discussion, then, has been that the minim and “those who say that there are two powers” were originally two distinct polemical opponents in early rabbinic tradition-making. Yet it is also clear that already in the tannaitic collections, the ones saying “there are two powers” began to be associated more specifically with named groups. In the case of the tannaitic tradition just cited, a variant in Mekhilta has the “nations of the world” saying that there are “two powers,”119 and a late variant in Pesiqta Rabbati has a “son 115 Variants do fill in a name for this generic opponent, however, as I will discuss, below; and see n. 121, there. 116 Genesis Rabbah 1:7 (ed. Theodor-Albeck): ‫ואין כל ברייה חלוקה לומר ב׳ רשויות נתנו את‬ ‫התורה ב׳ רשויות בראו את העולם וידברו אלהים אין כת׳ כאן אלא וידבר אלהים בראשית בראו אין כת׳‬ ‫כאן אלא בראשית ברא‬. On this text, see Schäfer, Jewish Jesus, 24–27. 117 Ecclesiastes Rabbah 2:15, Deuteronomy Rabbah 2:33, Pesiqta Rabbati 20, Tanhuma bereshit 8. 118 See n. 121, below. 119 Mekhilta ba-ḥodesh 5 (ed. Horowitz-Rabin; parallel in shirata 4): ‫שלא ליתן פתחון פה‬ ‫לאומות העולם לומר שתי רשויות הן‬. On the signification of the “nations of the world” here, see Segal, Two Powers, 41, who sees them as gentiles; Boyarin, “Two Powers in Heaven; Or, the Making of a Heresy,” 342 n. 39, 347, who sees them as Christians; and Schremer, Brothers Estranged, 83–84, who sees them as Romans (or other ethnicities; see, also, ibid., “Midrash, Theology, and History,” 249–250). I would suggest that the process of conflation of various specific others into the generic “those who say there are two powers” allows for a good deal of blurriness in this regard.

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of a whore” saying this.120 I suggest that as part of this process of associating various groups with “those who say that there are two powers,” the minim also become associated with this transgression. And this association, as would be expected in such a case, is more common in later rabbinic collections than it is in earlier collections.121 Some evidence for this process of conflation may remain in the rabbinic literature in the only tannaitic text, alluded to at the start of this section, that explicitly connects the minim with “two powers.” A second tradition following immediately on the Mekhilta passage just mentioned repeats the same general hermeneutical theme but rather than having “the nations of the world” saying that there are “two powers,” it is minim saying this: “Who has performed and done this, calling the generations from the beginning? I, the Lord, the first, and with the last; I am He” – Rabbi Natan says, This verse is a refutation to the minim who say that there are two powers.122 120 Pesiqta

Rabbati 21 (ed. Friedmann): ‫אם יאמר לך ברא דזניתא תרין אלהים אינון‬. It is, in this late tradition, “two gods” rather than “two powers” so it is perhaps less convincing as a proof. The “son of a whore” here has also been read as referring to Christians; see n. 119, above, and Boyarin, “Two Powers in Heaven; Or, the Making of a Heresy,” 345–346. William G. Braude, Pesikta Rabbati: Discourses for Feasts, Fasts, and Special Sabbaths (2 vols.; Yale Judaica Series 18; New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968), 1.422 n. 24, reads this expression as referring to “a heathen or a renegade Israelite.” 121 Segal, in his well-known monograph on “two powers,” cites twelve passages in which the expression “two powers” appears, some of which appear in several variants. In almost all cases, the one saying that there are two powers is anonymous, in a stock expression like “those who say that there are two powers in heaven.” As mentioned, there is in one case a variant in which the “nations of the world” or a “son of a whore” is speaking (in the Mekhilta and Pesiqta Rabbati, respectively; also, in b. Hagigah 15a, Elisha ben Abuyah uses this expression, on which see chapter six). In only one passage from a tannaitic text, in Mekhilta ba-ḥodesh 5, cited presently, is it the minim saying that there are “two powers.” This suggests both that “those who say that there are two powers” was originally a generic rather than a named opponent and that the association with specific named groups such as the nations of the world and the minim is secondary. However, the association of minim with “two powers” becomes somewhat more common in later collections. In y. Megillah 4:10, 75c the obscure liturgical formulation from m. Megillah 4:9, “Good men shall bless you,” which is associated with minut and seems in its original context to have no connection with “two powers,” is explained as if it were a “two powers” formulation. The Bavli, in contrast and more reasonably I think, in b. Megillah 25a and b. Berakhot 33b, explains a formulation that is not called minut in m. Megillah 4:9 (parallel in m. Berakhot 5:3), “We give thanks, We give thanks,” as “two powers.” In addition, the medieval midrash collection Tanhuma in qedoshim 4 includes a partial version of the well-known list of “dangerous verses” from Genesis Rabbah 8:9, y. Berakhot 9:1,12a–13a, and b. Sanhedrin 38b (I will discuss these texts in chapter five), which has the minim saying that there are “two powers.” These other versions of this list of verses, however, all clearly do connect the minim with binitarianism even though they do not use the expression “two powers.” 122 Mekhilta ba-ḥodesh 5 (ed. Horowitz-Rabin): ‫ואומר מי פעל ועשה קורא הדורות מראש אני ה׳‬ ‫ראשון ואת אחרונים אני הוא ר׳ נתן אומר מכאן תשובה למינין שאומרים שתי רשויות הן‬. The biblical verse is Isaiah 41:4. The text continues: ‫שכשעמד הב״ה ואמר אנכי ה׳ אלהיך מי עמד ומיחה כנגדו‬. Schäfer, Jewish Jesus, 62, reads this text on the background of the idea that the nations of the world were present at Sinai, though he points out, ibid., 284 n. 7, that this reading would work better were it

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A version of this text that appears in the late compilation known as Midrash Hakhamim has the more typical “those who say that there are two powers.”123 Moreover, this second tradition that appears in the Mekhilta does not appear at all in the close parallels already mentioned.124 Therefore, although this text appears in a tannaitic collection and is attributed to a second century sage, I suggest that it may well originally have read, “Rabbi Natan says, This verse is a refutation to those who say that there are two powers,” as in the version from Midrash Hakhamim. In other words, I propose that this one early text where it is specifically minim who say that there are “two powers” is a secondary development from the anonymous polemical opponent who says there are “two powers,” just as in the case of the “son of a whore” and “the nations of the world.” Because “those who say that there are two powers” was originally just an empty opponent against whom to throw biblical proof-texts, over time this empty space was filled in with non-Jews and minim. Again, I cannot definitively prove this suggestion, and the witness of Midrash Hakhamim is of questionable value as no early manuscript of the Mekhilta supports it. But, as a hypothesis, it does explain why only one text among dozens of minim and minut texts in the tannaitic corpus has the minim saying “there are two powers” and why one other tradition has the minim saying not that there are “two powers” but “many powers,” an expression that appears nowhere else in the classical rabbinic corpus. It also explains why the association of minim with “two powers” is more common in later rabbinic collections, why in the vast majority of the cases those saying that there are “two powers” are anonymous, and why in a few cases various other figures replace this anonymous speaker.125 If, in the second and third centuries, minim were accused of many faults, among them impiety in a general sense, and one of these accusations in t. Sanhedrin 8:7 accused them of believing that God has a partner in creation, then perhaps sometime in the mid-third century, this Tosefta tradition evolved into attributing to the minim a belief in “many powers” and this led to traditions where the minim filled in the place of the anonymous “those who say that there are two powers,” which was originally a distinct polemical category. the nations saying there are two powers rather than the minim. Perhaps this also can be taken as supporting the likelihood that the minim are secondary in this text as I argue presently. 123 This compilation exists in only one manuscript, on which Jacob Z. Lauterbach, Mekhilta De-Rabbi Ishmael: A Critical Edition Based on the Manuscripts and Early Editions, with an English Translation, and Notes, Second Edition (2 vols.; Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2004), 1.xxxv n. 35, writes, “This manuscript, formerly in the possession of the late Abraham Epstein of Vienna, now belongs to Prof. Dr. V. Aptowitzer of Vienna.” The manuscript is currently at the Jewish Theological Seminary as MS 4937a, but it is, unfortunately, inaccessible, and the relevant page is unavailable in the digital scan. Lauterbach does not note this variant in his critical apparatus (ibid., 2.315). I rely on the critical apparatus in ed. HorowitzRabin on p. 220. 124 See n. 107, above. 125 See n. 121, above.

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Thus, I  am proposing that the minim, who were originally conceived as a standard Jewish Second Temple sectarian opponent on the model of the Pharisees and Sadducees, a kind of contentious insider, eventually started taking on characteristics associated with Jewish theological deviants. Yet none of the texts already discussed, and indeed none of the references to the minim in the tannaitic literature, are in any obvious or explicit way concerned with Christianity.126 The same is true of all but two of the references to minut.127 Two references to minut in the tannaitic literature, however, are certainly concerned with Christianity. But both of these texts are relatively late. One of these minut texts, m. Sotah 9:15, is generally recognized as a fourth century interpolation into the Mishnah. The other is a narrative text in t. Hullin 2:24, which would appear to be from a relatively late stratum of the Tosefta.128 These two texts suggest that, subsequently to the conflation of minim with Jews “who say that there are two powers,” a broader conflation occurred between minim and non-Jewish Christians. It is in this way, I suggest, that the minim were gradually transformed into a kind of shadowy hybrid with dangerous ideas about God that fulfilled the rhetorical function of representing an existential threat to the developing rabbinic movement. To briefly review these two minut texts, m. Sotah 9:15 states: “With the footprints of the Messiah presumption shall increase and dearth reach its height; the vine shall yield its fruit but the wine shall be costly; and the empire shall fall into minut and there shall be none to utter reproof.”129 Although presented in the style of prophesy, this text certainly does appear to be ex eventu and to be referring to events around the conversion of Constantine in the early fourth century.130 In 126 See nn. 21–24, above, for a complete list of these texts, and see discussion above and in nn. 90 and 91, there. 127 See n. 25, above, for the complete list. I discuss m. Sotah 9:15 and t. Hullin 2:24 presently. I discussed m. Megillah 4:8–9, which is concerned with putting phylacteries on incorrectly and divergences in liturgy, already in this section (see above and n. 90, there). Mekhilta kaspa 20 and Sifre Numbers 115 (which I discussed in n. 91, above) connect minut with zenut (harlotry) and/or the harlot in Ecclesiastes 7:26. This connection is also made in m. Sotah 9:15. I have argued elsewhere that these texts support the scholarly conjecture of a direction of derivation of minut from min on the model of zenut. See n. 27, above. 128 As a well-edited narrative, with no specific attribution, this text in its current form cannot reliably be dated earlier than the editing of the Tosefta. See the discussion of dating of rabbinic texts in the section on style and method in the introduction and in n. 61, there. Daniel Boyarin, Dying for God: Martyrdom and the Making of Christianity and Judaism (Figurae: Reading Medieval Culture; Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999), 26–41, reads this story on the background “of the complexities of the relationship between rabbinic Judaism and Christianity in the era leading up to the fourth century” (ibid., 32). See Schremer, Brothers Estranged, 87–99 for an extended analysis of this narrative. 129 M. Sotah 9:15 (ed. Vilna): ‫בעקבות משיחא חוצפא יסגא ויוקר יאמיר הגפן תתן פריה והיין ביוקר‬ ‫והמלכות תהפך למינות ואין תוכחה‬. Trans. Danby, slightly modified. 130 This is not to say that the Roman Empire actually became Christian in fact at this time, as Seth Schwartz, Imperialism and Jewish Society, 179, notes, “it must be emphasized that christianization was a process, not a moment, which cannot be regarded as in any sense complete

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addition, in t. Hullin 2:24, the Romans arrest Rabbi Eliezer for minut. The narrative makes it clear that Eliezer’s arrest was caused by an indirect association with the teachings of Jesus, though not, as mentioned above, with “two powers.” These texts appear to reflect the initial stages of an association between minut and the christianization of the Roman Empire. These associations may also have brought about an expansion in the lexical function of the word minim, so that at least on one occasion in the later literature it takes on a differentiated sense unlike its earlier usage. The Yerushalmi in tractate Sanhedrin attributes to Rabbi Yohanan the saying, “Israel was not sent into exile until it split into 24 groups of minim.”131 This is a remarkable text, and it is significant evidence of a notable shift in the term minim’s semantic range. Accepting this statement’s attribution to Rabbi Yohanan would place this shift in the third century. It is also possible that, even if the attribution is reliable, this specific linguistic usage reflects a development closer to the time of the Yerushalmi’s redaction, as late as the early fifth century.132 In any case, this is the first time that the classical rabbinic literature explicitly mentions the idea that there may be different kinds of minim. As the minim traditions expanded to include Jewish and Christian theological deviants, the sense of the word expanded as well to a more general signification, and it shed some of its earlier sectarian overtones. I stated earlier that the minim were the quintessential rabbinic opponent in the sense that by constantly reinventing the minim, the rabbis were successively able to reinvent themselves. When the incipient rabbinic movement was just a loose network of teachers and scholars striving for the sage ideal, the minim could remain just one Jewish sectarian group among many in repeated traditions. But as these sages began to think of themselves in more collective terms, the minim developed into a different kind of entity, one designed to threaten and therefore to reify the boundaries around this developing collective. In this way, the minim as a category of opposed Jewish insider developed into a hybrid category, occupying the liminal space between Jew and Christian and between normative and deviant theology. But the development did not stop there. As the rabbinic community became better established into the fifth and sixth centuries, the need for a conceptual threat to their boundaries seems to have become less pressing. The rabbis therefore again reimagined the minim, this time as complete outsiders, as we shall we will see in the next section. before the reign of Justinian [527–565], if then.” See Peter Brown, Authority and the Sacred: Aspects of the Christianisation of the Roman World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). 131 Y. Sanhedrin 10:5, 29c (ed. Venice): ‫אמר רבי יוחנן לא גלו ישראל עד שנעשו עשרים וארבע‬ ‫כיתות של מינים‬. 132 See the discussion of attributions in rabbinic literature in the section on style and method in the introduction and in n. 61, there.

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IV. Minim as Outsiders in the Late Rabbinic Period By the time of the Babylonian Talmud in the sixth century, an interesting transformation had taken place. The Bavli, along with retaining earlier traditions in which the term minim can function in the various ways already described, also deploys the figure of a min in a fashion that functions essentially as a stock nonJewish opponent for rabbinic disputation.133 For example, in b. Pesahim 87b, Rabbi Hanina encounters a min who is clearly a Roman, maybe specifically a Roman Christian: A min said to Rabbi Hanina, “We are better than you are! For it is written about you [in 1 Kings 11:16] that ‘[All Israel] remained there six months [until they had cut off every male in Edom].’ Whereas we – you have been with us for many years, and we have done you no harm!”134

This text is striking in the clear dichotomy it sets up between “us,” meaning the non-Jews, and “you,” meaning the Jews, a distinction that is not seen in earlier texts in which minim appear. Furthermore, the contrast of Israel and Edom in the verse that the min cites suggests that he is an Edomite, which by the amoraic period had come to mean a Roman and, later, a Roman Christian.135 This type of usage for the term minim would not have been possible in earlier texts. This innovative usage is especially characteristic of the Bavli. A variant on this story that appears in the medieval midrash compilation known as Tanna de-Vei Eliyahu features not a min, but a Roman commander and not even necessarily a Christian one: 133 On the min as gentile in the Bavli, see Kimelman, “Birkat Ha-Minim and the Lack of Evidence for an Anti-Christian Jewish Prayer in Late Antiquity,” 229; Boyarin, Border Lines, 221–223; and Langer, Cursing the Christians?, 26. Boyarin, Border Lines, 222–223, writes, “In the Babylon Talmud, the term min no longer refers to a difference within Judaism, an excluded heretical other, but has come to mean Gentiles and especially Gentile Christians.” Kimelman and Langer point out that the term mina in Christian Palestinian Aramaic (CPA) can mean something like “gentile” so this may have influenced rabbinic usage. However, it seems to me that the source of this idiosyncratic usage in CPA is late and uncertain. The word is not used this way in other Aramaic dialects or in Syriac. And, it is attested in CPA primarily in translations from the Greek, where it is used in a somewhat mechanical or formulaic way to translate the Greek ethnos. Perhaps, then, CPA’s mina developed under influence of Jewish usage rather than the other way round (see Rabin, “Etymological Miscellanea,” 393 n. 29). On the story form of rabbinic disputations, see Hezser, Social Structure, 438. 134 B. Pesahim 87b (ed. Vilna): ‫והיינו דאמר ליה ההוא מינא לרבי חנינא אנן מעלינן מינייכו כתיב בכו‬ ‫כי ששת חדשים ישב שם וגו׳ ואלו אנן איתינכו גבן כמה שני ולא קא עבדינן לכו מידי‬. On this text, see Saul Lieberman, Greek in Jewish Palestine: Studies in the Life and Manners of Jewish Palestine in the II–IV Centuries C. E., Second Edition (New York: Feldheim, 1965), 141 and nn. 194–196, there. 135 See Boyarin, Dying for God, 3: “In the midrash of the Rabbis … Edom is frequently simply an eponym for Rome. After 312, Esau, or Edom, his descendants, are most often read as the Christian Church.” But cf. Schremer, Brothers Estranged, 53–57, 131–134, 227 n. 61.

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It so happened that a hegemon and Rabbi Yehudah the Patriarch were eating and drinking together. When they had satisfied their appetites, the hegemon said to Rabbi Yehudah the Patriarch, “We are more compassionate than you are, for when you were given power over Edom to destroy them you left none alive among them but a pregnant woman, as it is said, ‘All Israel remained there six months until they had cut off every male in Edom.’”136

Although this version appears in a late collection of midrash, the fact that the figure of a Roman commander makes much more sense in context suggests that this story might well reflect an earlier form of this tradition that the Bavli modified, transforming the Roman into a min.137 Not only can the minim function as complete outsiders in the Bavli, they are even not consistently treated as evildoers. For example, in b. Hullin 87a, the protagonists of a tale about an encounter between a min and a rabbi include both a wicked min and a righteous min: A certain min said to Rabbi, “The one who created the mountains did not create the wind, and the one who created the wind did not create the mountains” as it is said, ‘For lo, he who forms the mountains and creates the wind’” (Amos 4:13). [Rabbi] said to him, “Most foolish man!138 Go to the end of the verse, where it is written, ‘the Lord, the God of hosts, is his name!’” [The min] said to him, give me three days, and I will return you a refutation. Rabbi sat for three days of fasting. When [the time came] that he had appointed to break his fast, he was told, “A min is standing at the gate.” He said, “They gave me poison for food, and for my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink!” (Psalms 69:21). [The min] said to him, “Rabbi, I speak to you good tidings! Your opponent fell from a roof and died!” [Rabbi] said to him, “Would you like to dine with me?” [The min] said, “Yes.” After they had eaten and drank, [Rabbi] said to him, “Would you [choose] to drink the cup of [wine] blessing [the meal] or would you [choose] to receive a reward of 40 gold coins.” [The min] said, “I will drink the cup of blessing.” A heavenly voice rang out and said, “The cup of blessing is worth 40 gold coins!” Rabbi Yitzhak said, “And the family [of that min] still remains, and they are called the family of Bar Luianus.”139 136 Tanna de-Vei Eliyahu, Eliyahu Rabbah 11 (ed. Friedmann): ‫מעשה בהגמון אחד ור׳ יהודה‬ ‫הנשיא שהיו אוכלין ושותין וכשהיטיבו את ליבם אמר לו אותו הגמון לר׳ יהודה הנשיא אנו רחמנים יותר‬ ‫מכם כשניתן לכם רשות על אדום להכריתה לא שיירתם בתוכה אלא מעוברת בלבד שנאמר כי ששת חדשים‬ ‫ישב שם יואב וכל ישראל עד הכרית כל זכר באדום‬. 137 See Lieberman, Greek in Jewish Palestine, 141 and nn. 194–196, there; Kimelman, “Birkat Ha-Minim and the Lack of Evidence for an Anti-Christian Jewish Prayer in Late Antiquity,” 228–232, esp. 230; and Langer, Cursing the Christians?, 25–26. 138 ‫שוטה שבעולם‬. I follow Soncino in translating this phrase. 139 B. Hullin 87a (MS Munich 95; ed. Vilna has Sadducee in place of min, and it along with one other manuscript has the first min committing suicide because he could not find an answer): ‫א״ל ההוא מינא לר׳ מי שיצר הרים לא ברא רוח ומי שברא רוח לא יצר הרים שנ׳ כי יוצר הרים ובורא רוח‬ ‫א״ל שוטה שבעולם שפיל לסיפיה דקרא יי׳ צבאות שמו א״ל נקוט לי זמנא תלת׳ יומי ומהדרנא לך תיובתא‬ ‫יתיב ר׳ תלתא יומין בתענית׳ כי הוה קבעי למיברי אמרו ליה מינא קאי אבבא א׳ ויתנו בברותי ראש ולצמאי‬ ‫ישקוני חומץ א״ל ר׳ בשורות טובו׳ אני אומ׳ לך אויבך נפל מן הגג ומת א״ל רצונך שתסעוד אצלי א״ל הן‬ ‫לאחר שאכלו ושתו א״ל כוס של ברכ׳ אתה שותה או ארבעים זהובים אתה נוטל בשכרך א״ל כוס של ברכה‬ ‫אני שותה יצתה בת קול ואמרה כוס של ברכה שוה ארבעים זהובים א״ר יצחק ועדיין ישנה לאותה משפחה‬

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This text is a standard type of Bavli disputation between a rabbi and a min.140 The min challenges the rabbi with a biblical verse and the rabbi responds. The min then promises to return in three days, during which time the rabbi fasts, apparently to gather merit in order successfully to oppose this evildoer. In the second half of the story, after some confusion and distress for the rabbi (the citation of the verse from Psalms is symbolic of the rabbi’s distress at the min’s presence), it turns out that a different min has arrived, and this second min is invited to dinner. After the meal, the rabbi offers this min a choice of a monetary reward or a drink from a cup of blessed wine, apparently as a test of his piety, and he chooses the latter. Min surely does not carry here the sharply pejorative overtones that were so characteristic of the earlier texts. It would be difficult to imagine an inherently wicked person in an obviously polemical tale displaying sufficient piety to choose a blessing over forty gold coins. The term min’s semantic range has become broad enough to encompass a meaning like “gentile.” Moreover, in this text as well, a variant version of the start of the narrative that the Bavli preserves in b. Sanhedrin 39a features a Roman Emperor in place of the min: “The Emperor said to Rabban Gamliel, ‘The one who created the mountains did not create the wind, as it is said, ‘For lo, he who forms the mountains and creates the wind.’”141 And finally, a story about an idolater giving a coin to a rabbi appears in both y. Avodah Zarah 1:1, 39b and b. Avodah Zarah 6b. In the former, the idolater is a procurator,142 in the latter, he is a min.143 I cite the former: A procurator honored Rabbi Yudan the Patriarch with a plate filled with gold coins. He took one and sent the rest back. He inquired of Rabbi Shimon ben Lakish [about whether he should keep the coin], who said, “cast what benefit comes from it into the Dead Sea.”144

These texts indicate that in the classical rabbinic corpus’ latest strata, the minim, who had started out as Jewish sectarian insiders and were transformed in the early Christian period into an uncertain hybrid, became by the sixth century ‫וקורין לה משפחת בר לוינוס‬. See Segal, Two Powers, 115–120, and Schäfer, Jewish Jesus, 38–40, for more detailed analysis. 140 See the discussion of b. Sanhedrin 38b in chapter five, section four, for another example. 141 B. Sanhedrin 39a (ed. Vilna): ‫אמר ליה קיסר לרבן גמליאל מי שברא הרים לא ברא רוח שנאמר‬ ‫כי הנה יוצר הרים וברא רוח‬. Only the first sentences of these texts are parallel; the continuation of b. Sanhedrin 39a is not at all similar to b. Hullin 87a. On this text, see Segal, Two Powers, 116. 142 Hebrew: doqinar; Greek: δουκηνάριος: “procurator” following Marcus Jastrow, A Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli, and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature (2 vols.; London: Luzac, 1903). 143 See Lieberman, Greek in Jewish Palestine, 141 n. 196. 144 Y. Avodah Zarah 1:1, 39b (ed. Venice): ‫חד דוקינר אוקיר לר׳ יודן נשייא חד דיסקוס מלא דינרין‬ ‫נסב חד מינהון ושלח ליה שארא שאל לרבי שמעון בן לקיש אמר יוליך הנייה לים המלח‬.

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a general straw man for insider/outsider polemics.145 In these latest strata, the word min functions very similarly to a word like goy in its pejorative rabbinic sense, indicating either a non-Jew or more often stereotypically representing a non-Jew as an idolater. I am arguing that this development came about precisely because the minim were the preeminent opponents of rabbinic tradition-making from the earliest period, but at the same time there was no actual living group of minim still functioning in this period. The fact that this category was both essential as a foil to the developing rabbinic self-conception but was also cast loose from its historical moorings, makes its developing contours and characteristics an excellent mirror for the formative rabbinic movement’s sense of itself as a distinct collective. As diverse circles of elites and scholars striving to realize the sage ideal, at times competing and at times cooperating, increasingly gave way to rhetorical representations and then to a gradually realized material institutionalization of a rabbinic collective, insider denunciations that might occasionally be deployed at opponents among these elite Jewish circles were redeployed as a foil to rhetorically construct a community rallied around opposing it, a collective community of rabbis. The min as a shadowy and threatening hybrid reflects a developmental stage in the amoraic period as the rabbinic movement began to conceive itself increasingly as a circumscribed group. The min as a fully non-Jewish outsider reflects the social reality by the sixth century of a well-established and institutionalized corporate rabbinic community against whom competing ideologies represented a less prominent real threat and so to whom trenchant polemics were of decreasing importance.146

145 Although these narratives feature various early rabbis as interlocutors, the fact that versions outside of the Bavli cite specific named opponents in place of the min, typically more plausibly and with more culturally specific detail, suggests that the systematic replacement of such opponents with an anonymous min was part of the standardizing of such traditions during the Bavli’s editing. See n. 133, above, for scholarship on this aspect of the Bavli. 146 Boyarin, Border Lines, 221–225, makes a similar argument regarding the Bavli, but he is interested in competition with Christianity and the “Christian definition of religion” in the time of the Bavli’s editing, rather than in the formation of the rabbis as a corporate group. See n. 81, above.

Chapter 3

Co-opting the Sinners of Israel In the previous chapter, we examined texts that showed how a stylized rabbinic opponent was reconceptualized over time so that a contentious Jewish sectarian insider was transformed into a generic non-Jewish outsider. Let us characterize this development broadly as a rhetorical redeployment from insider to outsider. This is just one type of strategic redefinition that came about through the textual formation of a rabbinic collective. Another characteristic form of diachronic redeployment seen in the rabbinic corpus is from exclusion to inclusion. In this case, a Jewish polemical target that earlier texts treat as an excluded deviant is co-opted, not into the rabbinic community in a narrow sense, but into the community of pious Jews over whom the coalescing rabbinic corpus of teachings aimed to have direct jurisdiction. So, for example, a category of excluded sinner that is denied a place in heaven in an earlier stratum of rabbinic literature can be reimagined as if full of good deeds and granted a heavenly reward in the later strata. I argued in the previous chapter that the minim’s redeployment from insiders to outsiders reflected the developing rabbinic movement’s sense of itself as a collective. In this chapter, I will argue that the process of later texts co-opting earlier sinful figures as pious Jews reflects the start of the rabbinic collective’s institutional establishment. The earlier period was marked by frequent direct conflicts between elites and so drawing boundaries that excluded threatening figures was of primary importance. In the later period, a clearer boundary had been drawn around the rabbinic community, and it was free to work at expanding this boundary. This expansion took the form of extending the reach of their community by insisting that even Jewish sinners were bound by the rabbis’ teachings.

I. The Sinners of Israel and the Sinners of the Nations of the World The book of Isaiah optimistically declares of the people Israel, that they “shall all be righteous.”1 The idea that all Jews are pious, that the Jews should be a “kingdom of priests and a holy nation,”2 continued to have resonance through1 Isaiah

60:21. 19:6. On this idea of a “kingdom of priests” in the Second Temple and rabbinic periods, see Martha Himmelfarb, A Kingdom of Priests: Ancestry and Merit in Ancient Israel (Jewish Culture and Contexts; Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006). 2 Exodus

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out the rabbinic period.3 And yet the fact is that measured by the standards to which the developing rabbinic movement aspired, most Jews of the time would have to be considered unrighteous.4 Throughout the classical rabbinic corpus, we find a tension between these two ideals. Some texts extoll Israel collectively, insisting that even the simplest among the Jews are pious, but other texts emphasize that there are indeed Jewish sinners and treat them as essentially equivalent to non-Jewish sinners.5 One text that I will discuss presently goes so far as to deny Jewish and non-Jewish sinners collectively a place in heaven, suggesting that there is no significant difference between Jews and non-Jews in regard to righteousness. However, the idea of a “sinner,” by which I mean any figure that rabbinic texts single out generically for a tendency to commit misdeeds, can be signified with a number of Hebrew terms, as in English we might use the word “sinner,” “transgressor,” or “evil-doer” to mean essentially the same thing. And so “Jewish sinners” generally, the overall concern of this chapter, is not a very well formed collective designation. These two facts, both the inconsistent treatment of Jewish sinners and the inherent vagueness of its boundaries as a collective signifier, make this rabbinic category a somewhat challenging one to study diachronically. And yet, the Jewish sinners’ place in the developing rabbinic movement’s worldview is especially important because it reflects not only the rabbis’ ideas about themselves but also their ideas about on whom the teachings that they promulgated were incumbent. Fortunately, there is a characteristic rabbinic collective designation that first appears early in the rabbinic corpus and is recycled in such a way as to allow us to trace developing rabbinic attitudes towards Jewish sinners broadly: the synonymous and interchangeable expressions “sinners 3 See Stern, Jewish Identity in Early Rabbinic Writings, 30–33, 120–123. Stern suggests that the rabbinic literature tends to treat the “sinners of Israel” in a conciliatory manner, though he does not concentrate on diachronic developments in this regard as is the focus of the current chapter. 4 The extent to which rabbinic teachings and even biblical precepts were observed in the rabbinic period is a matter of scholarly contention, though in regard to the former, it is safe to say that the majority of Jews did not observe the full range of precepts and prohibitions laid out in the rabbinic texts. See Schwartz, Imperialism and Jewish Society, for a minimalist perspective; for a maximalist perspective see: 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; Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism 130; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009), 165–171; Ze’ev Safrai and Chana Safrai, “To What Extent Did the Rabbis Determine Public Norms? The Internal Evidence,” in Jewish Identities in Antiquity, 172–194; and Moshe David Herr, “The Identity of the Jewish People Before and After the Destruction of the Second Temple: Continuity or Change?” in Jewish Identities in Antiquity, 211–236. 5 See Stern, Jewish Identity in Early Rabbinic Writings, 120–123, for a review of texts. Generally, these texts praise simple Jews, but not wicked ones. I will be concentrating on the latter in this chapter.

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of Israel” or “wicked of Israel,” posh‘ei yisra’el or rish‘ei yisra’el in Hebrew.6 Although it has been argued that the term “sinners of Israel” was an oblique reference to a specific historical sect, this is certainly not correct.7 It is a collective designation that picks out an aggregate of individuals based on a perceived tendency to moral failures, but nowhere does it function as if its referent were a corporate group like the Sadducees or Pharisees.8 But, importantly for our purposes, the sinners of Israel are a standardized polemical target that is deployed early and redeployed in incrementally later traditions in such a way as to suggest the change in attitudes for which I will argue in this chapter. We will begin in this section with an examination of this category generally and its treatment in the earlier strata of the rabbinic corpus. The sinners of Israel are certainly Jews, therefore rhetorical insiders from the rabbinic perspective. However, the earliest and I would say paradigmatic uses of the term appear in a collection of polemical texts in t. Sanhedrin 13:1–5. In t. Sanhedrin 13:4, for instance, it has the very negative and sharply exclusionary sense that one would expect from such an expression: Sinners of Israel with their bodies and sinners of the nations of the world with their bodies go down to gehinnom and are judged there twelve months. After twelve months, their souls are annihilated and their bodies are burnt, gehinnom regurgitates them and they become ashes, and the wind disperses them and scatters them under the feet of the righteous, as it is said, “And you shall tread down the wicked, for they will be ashes under the soles of your feet, on the day when I act, says the Lord of hosts.”9

Here, the sinners of Israel are condemned to gehinnom, a place of punishment after death, together with non-Jewish sinners. It is notable that although both these sinners and the sinners among the non-Jews, the “sinners of the nations of the world,” suffer the same punishment, they retain their distinct ethnic appellations. I will return to this matter later when I discuss the claim in some recent scholarship that the rabbis deny the name “Israel” to their Jewish opponents. For our current purposes, it is enough to note that this text excludes the sinners of Israel conceptually in the sharpest way possible by denying them a place in heaven.

6 That these expressions are synonymous is demonstrated by parallels that use one term or the other. See, for example, Leviticus Rabbah 2:9 (rish‘ei) = b. Eruvin 69b / b. Hullin 5a (posh‘ei); t. Sanhedrin 13:2 (rish‘ei) = b. Sanhedrin 105a (posh‘ei); and y. Berakhot 2:4, 5a (rish‘ei) = y. Berakhot 4:3, 8a / y. Taanit 2:2, 65c (posh‘ei). See also t. Sanhedrin 13:4 / Seder Olam 3, which equate them. Cf. Stern, Jewish Identity in Early Rabbinic Writings, 120 n. 244. 7 Arthur Marmorstein, “Judaism and Christianity in the Middle of the Third Century,” Hebrew Union College Annual 10 (1935): 223–263. 8 See n. 46 in the introduction. 9 Malachi 3:21. T. Sanhedrin 13:4 (ed. Zuckermandel; parallels in Seder Olam 3 and b. Rosh Hashanah 17a): ‫פושעי ישראל בגופן ופושעי אומות העולם בגופן יורדין לגיהנם ונידונין בה שנים עשר חודש‬ ‫ולאחר שנים עשר חודש נפשותן כלה וגופן נשרף וגיהנם פולטתו ונעשין אפר והרוח זורה אותן ומפזרתן תחת‬ ‫כפות רגלי הצדיקים שנ׳ ועשותם רשעים כי יהיו אפר תחת כפות רגלי צדיקים ליום אני עושה אמר י״י צבאות‬.

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A similar text in t. Sanhedrin 13:2 applies Psalms 9:17, “The wicked shall depart to Sheol,” to the sinners of Israel, thereby stressing their wickedness and exclusion. This text also includes a fascinating debate among early sages as to whether it is only the sinners among the nations who are excluded from heaven or if even the righteous among the nations are.10 Fortunately, the conclusion favors the first opinion, and the import for our purposes is an unsurprising exclusionary attitude towards both Jewish and non-Jewish sinners. A text in t. Sanhedrin 13:1 goes so far in this attitude as to consider the possibility that even the minor children of the sinners of Israel have no portion in the world to come, though again here a second opinion categorically rejects this possibility.11 Another notable text that targets Jewish sinners in a sharply exclusionary fashion is a version of the curse on the minim mentioned in the introduction and in the previous chapter. This curse apparently was added sometime in antiquity into an already existing practice of reciting 18 blessings as part of a daily liturgy. This prayer of 18 blessings is referred to as the amidah, which means “standing” in Hebrew, because it is recited standing up. It is also called the shemoneh esrei, Hebrew for the number 18, because it originally entailed 18 blessings. The curse on the minim is structured as a 19th blessing in this prayer, so it is generally referred to somewhat confusingly as the birkat ha-minim, literally the “blessing on the minim.”12 I will refer to this as the “curse on the minim,” though “blessing on the minim” would also be fine as long as we keep in mind that it is God that is being blessed for cursing the minim! Scholarship of a previous generation tried to connect this curse with a reconstructed history of early Christianity, imagining that Jewish followers of Jesus were cast out of the synagogues through the expedient of inserting a curse against them into the daily liturgy. More recent scholarship has demonstrated that this is an entirely untenable reconstruction.13 10 T. Sanhedrin 13:2 (ed. Zuckermandel; parallel in b. Sanhedrin 105a): ‫ר׳ אליעזר אומ׳ כל גוים‬ ‫אין להם חלק לעולם הבא שנ׳ ישובו רשעים לשאול׳ כל גוים שכחי אלהים ישובו רשעים לשאולה אילו רשעי‬ ‫ישראל אמר לו ר׳ יהושע אילו א׳ הכת׳ ישובו רשעים לשאולה כל גויים ושותק הייתי או׳ כדבריך עכשיו שא׳‬ ‫הכתוב שכחי אלהים הא יש צדיקים באומות שיש להם חלק לעולם הבא‬. This version of the text has rish‘ei yisra’el rather than posh‘ei yisra’el, although a variant preserved in the Bavli (in b. Sanhedrin 105a) has posh‘ei yisra’el. These expressions are synonymous as mentioned above. 11 T. Sanhedrin 13:1 (ed. Zuckermandel; parallel in b. Sanhedrin 110b): ‫קטנים בני רשעי ארץ‬ ‫אין להם חלק לעולם הבא שנ׳ הנה היום בא בוער כתנור והיו כל זידים וכל עושי רשעה קש דברי רבן גמל׳‬ ‫ר׳ יהושע אומ׳ באין הן לעולם הבא להלן הוא אומ׳ שומר פתאים י״י ולהלן הוא אומ׳ גודו אילנא וחבלוהי‬ ‫ברם עיקר שרשוהי בארעא שבוקו אמ׳ רבן גמליאל מה אני מקיים אשר לא ישאיר להן שורש וענף א׳ לו‬ ‫שאין המקום מניח להן מצוה ושירי מצוה להם ולאבותיהם לעולם‬. It is “sinners of the land” (presumably “the Land of Israel”) in t. Sanhedrin 13:1, but the variant in b. Sanhedrin 110b has “sinners of Israel” (again in its synonymous form, rish‘ei yisra’el). 12 See my discussion in chapter two, section two, and n. 58, there, for relevant texts and additional bibliography. 13 See Kimelman, “Birkat Ha-Minim and the Lack of Evidence for an Anti-Christian Jewish Prayer in Late Antiquity,” and Langer, Cursing the Christians? See n. 58, chapter two, for relevant texts and additional bibliography on the birkat ha-minim.

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The curse on the minim continued to exist in various versions as part of the daily Jewish prayer liturgy into the medieval and modern periods, even though the actual targets of the curse changed over time, and eventually it no longer included the minim. One contemporary version runs as follows, “And for slanderers let there be no hope; and may all wickedness perish in an instant; and may all Your enemies be cut down speedily. May You speedily uproot, smash, cast down, and humble the wanton sinners – speedily in our days. Blessed are You, Lord, Who breaks enemies and humbles wanton sinners.”14 It would appear, however, that the earliest version of this text cursed the Pharisees and the minim, as discussed in the previous chapter, along, presumably, with other deviants such as informers and slanderers.15 A text that appears in the Yerushalmi was apparently troubled by the existence of a curse on the Pharisees because later rabbinic tradition recalled the Pharisees in a generally positive light. The Yerushalmi therefore modifies this early curse from “Pharisees and minim,” “perushim and minim” in Hebrew, to “posh‘im and minim,” that is “sinners and minim.”16 Of course here it is just “sinners” and not the “sinners of Israel,” so it might be a bit less relevant than the other texts mentioned. But because “sinners” here fills the place of Pharisees as a collective category paired with minim it can be taken as having a similarly collective rhetorical function. These texts reflect the standard treatment throughout the rabbinic period of the sinners of Israel, who are most typically presented in a negative and exclusionary fashion. Similar texts appear regularly in the Babylonian Talmud and in the later midrash.17 However, along with this standard negative treatment, one 14 The Complete Artscroll Siddur, Third Edition (ed. and trans. Nosson Scherman and Meir Zlotowitz; Brooklyn: Mesorah, 1990), 107 (slightly modified). 15 See n. 58, chapter two. 16 Y. Berakhot 4:3, 8a (ed. Venice): ‫כולל של מינים ושל פושעים במכניע זידים‬. It is ‫כולל של מינים‬ ‫ בשל פרושין‬in t. Berakhot 3:25 (ed. Lieberman). Variants of this text appear in the Yerushalmi in y. Berakhot 2:4, 5a, y. Berakhot 4:3, 8a, and y. Taanit 2:2, 65c. It is rish‘im in y. Berakhot 2:4, 5a, clearly derivative from posh‘im, which is clearly an adaptation of perushim. This type of adaptation of early tradition to reflect later sensibilities favors a later dating, perhaps as late as the fifth century editing of the Yerushalmi. 17 Some of these texts hope for the repentance of the sinners of Israel or the amelioration of their punishment after death, but none treat them in an inclusive fashion while they are still alive as do the texts to be discussed presently. Texts that use this expression in the standard negative way (apart from parallels to the tannaitic texts already discussed that appear in b. Rosh Hashanah 17a, b. Sanhedrin 105a, and b. Sanhedrin 110b, along with the parallel in Seder Olam 3) include: b. Sotah 14a, where Moses prays that the sinners of Israel should repent; b. Sotah 48b–49a, in which the departed children of the sinners of Israel complain about their parents’ judgment in gehinnom; b. Gittin 57a, where both the sinners of Israel and idolatrous prophets of the nations are said to receive similar punishments in the world to come (though they react somewhat differently; “sinners of Israel” appears twice in printed texts, the first time owing to the censor); and texts in Song of Songs Rabbah 2:30, Exodus Rabbah 14:3, and Numbers Rabbah 15:12, which refer to the sinners of Israel dying during the plague of darkness in Egypt. As mentioned in this start of this chapter, the many texts that refer to sinners generally using various synonyms for a person who commits misdeeds or that praise simple but not necessarily

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strand of tradition unexpectedly departs from this trend. The first intimations of this somewhat inclusionary attitude appear in the classical Palestinian midrash, in Leviticus Rabbah 2:9, which comments on Leviticus 1:2: “When any man of you brings an offering to the Lord, you shall bring your offering of cattle from the herd or from the flock.” The midrash reads the repetitiveness of the phrase “of cattle from the herd” as indicating an extension to the general permission to bring offerings: “Of cattle from the herd …” – If it is already said, “Of cattle,” why does it say, “from the herd or from the flock”? From this it was learned that we accept various types of offerings from the wicked of Israel in order to bring them in under the wings of the divine presence, apart from a meshummad, one who offers libations of wine, and one who desecrates the Sabbath publically.18

We can see here the start of a surprising trend to treat the sinners of Israel in an increasingly inclusionary fashion. In this text, a hermeneutical comparison to herd beasts allows the sinners of Israel to make sacrificial offerings in the hope of bringing them nearer to God. The comparison to beasts is merely suggested in Leviticus Rabbah, but it is made explicit in the Bavli version, which adds after the citation of the verse “of cattle,” that “this is to include people who are similar to cattle.”19 Although there is some suggestion of inclusiveness in this text, the normative evaluation that these Jewish sinners are like beasts is still quite negative. And, the inclusiveness is limited and conditional. An amoraic dictum that appears in b. Keritot 6b in the name of Rabbi Hana bar Bizna, a Babylonian rabbi of the third or fourth century, is somewhat more inclusive: sinful Jews (such as Leviticus Rabbah 30:12 and b. Menahot 27a, which speak inclusively of Jews that are not especially righteous or learned but are not said to be active sinners) are not directly relevant to my diachronic analysis of the development of “sinners of Israel,” posh‘ei yisra’el or rish‘ei yisra’el, as a polemical collective designation. See nn. 3 and 5, above. 18 Leviticus Rabbah 2:9 (ed. Margaliot; parallels in b. Hullin 5a and b. Eruvin 69b; and see Sifra nedava 2, y. Sheqalim 1:4, 46b, and b. Hullin 13b): ‫מן הבהמה מן הבקר וגו׳ אם נאמר מן‬ ‫הבהמה למה נאמר מן הבקר ומן הצאן מיכאן אמרו מקבלין מיני זבחים מרשעי ישראל כדי להכניסן תחת‬ ‫כנפי השכינה חוץ מן המשומד והמנסך את היין ומחלל שבתות בפרהסיא‬. This version of the text has rish‘ei yisra’el rather than posh‘ei yisra’el, although variants preserved in the Bavli (in b. Hullin 5a and b. Eruvin 69b) have posh‘ei yisra’el. These expressions are synonymous as mentioned above. 19 B. Hullin 5a (ed. Vilna): ‫מכם ולא כולכם להוציא את המומר מכם בכם חלקתי ולא באומות מן‬ ‫הבהמה להביא בני אדם שדומים לבהמה מכאן אמרו מקבלין קרבנות מפושעי ישראל כדי שיחזרו בהן‬ ‫בתשובה חוץ מן המומר ומנסך את היין ומחלל שבתות בפרהסיא‬: “‘Of you’ – but not all of you. This excepts a meshummad. However, ‘Of you’ [can also mean] ‘with you’ – [The verse] makes a distinction for the nations. ‘Of cattle’ – this is to include people who are similar to cattle. Thus [the sages] said, We accept sacrifices from the sinners of Israel, in order to bring them to repentance except for a meshummad, one who offers libations of wine, and one who desecrates the Sabbath publicly” (on mumar in censored texts, see n. 7, in chapter four, and the discussion in section one, there).

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Rabbi Hana bar Bizna said in the name of Shimon the Hasid, Any [public] fast that does not include some of the sinners of Israel is no fast, like as to galbanum, which has an unpleasant odor, yet scripture enumerates it among the ingredients of the incense.20

Exodus 30:34–35 lists the ingredients for a special incense to be burnt in the tent of meeting, which was also used later in the Temple in Jerusalem: “And the Lord said to Moses, ‘Take sweet spices, stacte, and onycha, and galbanum, sweet spices with pure frankincense (of each shall there be an equal part), and make an incense blended as by the perfumer, seasoned with salt, pure and holy.’” Galbanum, a plant resin, is said by the Talmud to have an unpleasant odor yet even so it is included in this incense that the Bible describes as “most holy.” This is compared to the sinners of Israel: although they have a distinctly unpleasant spiritual odor because of their sinfulness, they are still considered an integral part of the Jewish people. As an unelaborated dictum preserved in the Bavli, this saying can reasonably be dated to a period earlier than the Talmud’s editing in the sixth century. If we accept the attribution to Hana bar Bizna, it might be dated as early as the late third or early fourth century.21 The text from Leviticus Rabbah, as an unattributed interpretation in a collection of midrash, at least pre-dates the collection’s editing in the fifth century. Yet it likely post-dates the third century because although represented as an anonymous tannaic tradition in the Bavli, a version that actually appears in a third century tannaitic text does not include the sinners of Israel, suggesting a later accretion.22 These two texts would thus seem to reflect developments of the fourth and fifth centuries, or possibly a bit earlier. Perhaps, therefore, they evince initial intimations of a trend that, as we will see, becomes clearer in the Bavli’s latest strata to count Jewish sinners as a necessary part of the developing rabbinic community’s larger sphere of responsibility.

II. Sinners, Pomegranates, and Good Deeds In all of the texts considered so far in this chapter, the sinners of Israel are of course still thought of primarily as sinners. The treatment remains pejorative and exclusionary but there is a trend towards a kind of paternalistic and somewhat begrudging inclusion. It is only in the latest strata of the Babylonian Talmud that we see a sharp turn towards full inclusion. In b. Hagigah 27a, the third century 20 B. Keritot 6b (ed. Vilna): ‫א״ר חנא בר בזנא א״ר שמעון חסידא כל תענית שאין בה מפושעי ישראל‬ ‫אינה תענית שהרי חלבנה ריחה רע ומנאה הכתוב עם סממני קטרת‬. The text continues: ‫אביי אמר מהכא‬ ‫ואגודתו על ארץ יסדה‬: “Abaye learns this from [Amos 9:6]: ‘and he founds his vault upon the earth.’” 21 See the discussion of attributions in rabbinic literature in the section on style and method in the introduction and in n. 61, there. 22 Ibid. Indeed, that version, in Sifra nedava 2, cites Proverbs 21:27, “The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination,” contradicting Leviticus Rabbah’s “wicked of Israel,” who can offer sacrifice.

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rabbi of Roman Palestine Resh Lakish is said to praise the sinners of Israel in a hyperbolic and even logically inconsistent manner: Resh Lakish says, The fire of gehinnom has no power over the sinners of Israel. This is learned a minori ad majus from the Golden Altar [near the entrance to the Holy of Holies in the Jerusalem Temple]. Just as the Golden Alter that had on it only the width of a dinar of gold, and for so many years the fire [of the burning incense] had not destroyed it, so also the sinners of Israel, who are as full of mitzvot as a pomegranate [is full of seeds] – as it is written, “Your cheeks are like halves of a pomegranate behind your veil (Song of Songs 4:323),” do not read “your cheeks” (raqqatekh) but rather the “empty ones” (reiqanin) among you – how much more so is this true!24

This is a complex text incorporating several textual references and metaphors so it will be worth taking the time to unpack it all. First, I should state parenthetically that I leave the Hebrew word mitzvot (sg. mitzvah, pl. mitzvot) untranslated for reasons that will become clear presently. In short, a mitzvah for the rabbis is any individual precept or proscription of their teachings, such as pronouncing a blessing over a meal or not lighting a fire on the Sabbath. The rabbis referred to their teachings collectively as “Torah,” a word that can also be used to refer to the Pentateuch or even to the entire Hebrew Bible. They distinguished between “Written Torah,” precepts and proscriptions either explicitly written or implied in the Pentateuch, and “Oral Torah,” extra-biblical traditions that were nonetheless thought of as deriving from the same divine authority as the Bible itself.25 The term “Torah” used without qualification in rabbinic texts typically means both Oral and Written Torah, that is, the entire corpus of rabbinic teachings. The term mitzvah was used to refer to each individual Torah precept or proscription within this corpus. Living according to the Torah was the highest rabbinic ideal, so the fact that this text praises the sinners of Israel as being packed full of mitzvot is high praise. 23 Also

in Song of Songs 6:7. 27a (ed. Vilna; parallel in b. Eruvin 19a): ‫אמר ריש לקיש אין אור של גיהנם שולטת‬ ‫בפושעי ישראל קל וחומר ממזבח הזהב מה מזבח הזהב שאין עליו אלא כעובי דינר זהב כמה שנים אין האור‬ ‫שולטת בו פושעי ישראל שמלאין מצות כרמון דכתיב כפלח הרמון רקתך אל תקרי רקתך אלא רקנין שבך‬ ‫על אחת כמה וכמה‬. 25 I simplify the issues involved somewhat for the sake of brevity. In truth, even within the rabbinic corpus, these ideas develop over time in complex ways. The Mishnah does not use the expression “Oral Torah,” torah be-feh or torah she-be-‘al peh, which first appear in the tannaitic midrash. The Mishnah does, however, use the expression, “a statute to Moses from Sinai,” halakhah le-mosheh mi-sinai, which implies the existence of authoritative extra-biblical traditions. In the amoraic literature, the implications of “Oral Torah” become more encompassing so that by the time of the Yerushalmi, “Even the opinions that an experienced student will express before his teacher were already spoken to Moses at Sinai” (y. Peah 2:4, 17a / y. Hagigah 1:8, 76d [ed. Venice]: ‫)אפילו מה שתלמיד וותיק עתיד להורות לפני רבו כבר נאמר למשה בסיני‬. See my summary of this development with bibliography in Grossberg, “Orthopraxy in Tannaitic Literature,” 548–549 n. 77; and see, also, Stuart S. Miller, Sages and Commoners in Late Antique ’Ereẓ Israel: A Philological Inquiry into Local Traditions in Talmud Yerushalmi (Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism 111; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006), 207–208 n. 224. 24 B. Hagigah

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The text sets up a comparison to the golden altar that used to stand outside of the holy of holies, the inner sanctum of the Second Temple in Jerusalem. As the thin layer of gold protected the alter from the fires of the incense that was burned on it, even more so will the very thick layers of merit earned from observing mitzvot protect all Jews, even the sinners of Israel. A verse from the Song of Songs facilitates this comparison: “Your cheeks are like halves of a pomegranate behind your veil.” The Hebrew word translated “cheeks,” raqqah, is rather obscure and is vaguely similar to the Hebrew word for empty, req. So, where the biblical verse is praising the narrator’s beloved by comparing the redness of her cheeks to a pomegranate, the Bavli praises “empty ones” by a comparison to a pomegranate, not to its redness but to its abundance of seeds. As a pomegranate is full of seeds, so Jewish “empty ones,” here explained as the sinners of Israel, are full of mitzvot. As I have argued at length elsewhere, however, although this text is attributed to Resh Lakish, the evidence indicates that the editors of the Babylonian Talmud have modified or adapted the text.26 In context in b. Hagigah 27a, this text appears as a creative variant on a very similar tradition in the name of Rabbi Abbahu that immediately precedes it in the tractate. The Abbahu tradition avers more reasonably, “the fire of gehinnom has no power over sages,” whose piety offers them protection. Moreover, the second half of the Resh Lakish text, which begins, “The sinners of Israel, who are as full of mitzvot as a pomegranate,” appears by itself elsewhere in the Bavli as a short midrash on Song of Songs 4:3, also attributed to Resh Lakish.27 But this short midrash does not mention the “sinners of Israel” at all; it is discussing “empty ones” of Israel in the sense of Jewish commoners.28 Many variants of this same midrash, attributed to several different rabbis, are preserved in the Palestinian collections of midrash, and all of these variants are discussing “empty ones” in the sense of simple or relatively unlearned Jews rather than sinners; these simple Jews are found to be filled with mitzvot or Torah knowledge as a pomegranate is full of seeds.29 In fact, 26 A full treatment of the development of this text, which is composed of two distinct halves, the latter of which has a complex tradition history encompassing a dozen variants throughout the classical rabbinic corpus, would distract from the main line of my argument here. See the extended discussion of this matter in Grossberg, “The Meaning and End of Heresy in Rabbinic Literature,” 76–122. 27 B. Sanhedrin 37a. It also appears in b. Berakhot 57a, unattributed in the standard edition but attributed to Resh Lakish in two manuscripts. 28 The full expression, “empty ones of Israel,” does not appear in the standard edition of the short midrash attributed to Resh Lakish in b. Sanhedrin 37a, which just speaks of “empty ones” in general. “Empty ones of Israel” does appear in manuscript variants and other texts associated with Resh Lakish, however, on which, see the continuing discussion and n. 33, below. 29 Versions of this midrash appear in Genesis Rabbah and Song of Songs Rabbah connecting the idea of “empty ones” as simple or unlearned Jews to the Song of the Sea (Song of Songs Rabbah 4:4), the giving of Torah on Mount Sinai (Song of Songs Rabbah 4:5), the war with Midian (Song of Songs Rabbah 4:6 / 6:17–18), the crossing of the Jordan at the time of Joshua (Song of Songs Rabbah 4:7), and the Sanhedrin (Song of Songs Rabbah 4:12). It also appears in a narrative associated variously with two different rabbis (Genesis Rabbah 32:10 / Song of Songs Rab-

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nowhere else in the classical rabbinic corpus does “empty ones” mean sinners: this association is made only in this longer Resh Lakish text and, more precisely, only in its first half.30 I am arguing, therefore, that this text is composed of two distinct halves that do not fit together very well and retain textual indications of an imperfect join, which suggests an editorial hand at work in the first half of the text.31 The entire first half could be a late composition based on the similar tradition preserved in Abbahu’s name that precedes it in b. Hagigah 27a combined with the short midrash preserved in Resh Lakish’s name elsewhere in the Bavli. But a more conservative conclusion would be that the complete Resh Lakish text is early, but its original version read, “The fire of gehinnom has no power over the empty ones of Israel … so also the empty ones of Israel.”32 In other words, it originally discussed Jewish commoners rather than Jewish sinners. The latter possibility is supported by manuscript witnesses that use the uncommon expression “empty ones of Israel” in the second half of the text.33 In bah 4:8 with a variant in Genesis Rabbah 81:3) where the “empty one” is a Jewish commoner. The rabbis who are associated with these traditions as tradents include Resh Lakish, Rabbi Yohanan, Rabbi Yitzhak, Huna, Abba bar Kahana, and Aha, along with unattributed instances and the one narrative, which tells the same story about Rabbi Yonatan and Rabbi Yishmael, on which see David M. Grossberg, “On Plane Trees and the Palatine Hill: Rabbi Yishmael and the Samaritan in Genesis Rabbah and the later Palestinian Rabbinic Tradition,” in Genesis Rabbah in Text and Context (ed. Sarit Kattan Gribetz, David M. Grossberg, Martha Himmelfarb, and Peter Schäfer; Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism 166; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016),195–211. 30 The related expression reiq or reiqa can mean a foolish or empty-headed person, especially in Bavli Aramaic, but reiqan does not carry even this much of pejorative association anywhere else in the classical rabbinic corpus. Reiqan means literary empty (as an empty bucket or an empty handed person) or figuratively empty of knowledge. That is, it means an unlearned Jew but not a wicked one. See Jastrow, Dictionary, s. v. ‫ ;ריקן‬Michael Sokoloff, A Dictionary of Jewish Palestinian Aramaic of the Byzantine Period, Second Edition (RamatGan: Bar Ilan University Press, 2002), s. v. ‫ ;ריקן‬and Michael Sokoloff, A Dictionary of Jewish Babylonian Aramaic of the Talmudic and Geonic Periods (Ramat-Gan: Bar Ilan University Press, 2002), s. v. ‫ריקן‬. 31 The second half of the text is more reliably early because it appears in about a dozen variants and parallels in various rabbinic collections attributed to several rabbis including Resh Lakish. All of these variants use the expression “empty ones” correctly as “commoners.” The first half appears only in the Bavli, and it is clearly a linguistic innovation. 32 Such a version of b. Hagigah 27a is, of course, not attested. But indirect textual and manuscript evidence supports such a conjectural reconstruction as I will explain presently. This type of small change in the polemical target of an earlier dictum is well attested elsewhere in the Talmuds as I demonstrated in chapter two, section four (from hegemon to mina) and in the previous section in this chapter (from perushim to posh‘im). That the Bavli, particularly, adapted the language used in preserved dicta for stylistic and ideological reasons is well supported by the scholarship on attributions in the Talmuds. See my discussion of attributions in rabbinic literature in the section on style and method in the introduction and in n. 61, there. 33 In one manuscript, the second half of b. Hagigah 27a uses the expression “empty ones of Israel” in Resh Lakish’s interpretation of the verse from the Song of Songs as does the short midrash on the verse in b. Sanhedrin 37a in one manuscript and in b. Berakhot 57a in two manuscripts (the latter is unattributed in the standard edition but is attributed to Resh Lakish in these two manuscripts). In addition, a dictum attributed to Resh Lakish in b. Hullin 92a uses

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either case, however, the key theme of the text, that Jewish sinners are actually pious Jews, an exaggerated claim that is contradicted many times in the classic rabbinic corpus even by other statements attributed to Resh Lakish himself,34 is the work of the Bavli’s editors and reflects a sixth century rather than a third century conception of these sinners. In the last section, we discussed a somewhat less exclusionary tendency towards the sinners of Israel in amoraic traditions, but this text takes this trend much further. While these earlier traditions recognize that such sinners are not entirely wicked or that they must be conditionally included among the rest of Israel in certain situations, they nonetheless treat them pejoratively. And, none of the traditions praises these sinners, especially not as effusively as claiming that they are packed full with mitzvot. My contention is that these texts reveal a gradual shift in the exclusionary rhetorical presentation of Jewish sinners throughout the fourth and fifth centuries that becomes increasingly inclusionary into the time of the editing of the Babylonian Talmud in the sixth century. We can see another indication of this shift in polemical style by comparing this text in the Bavli, which was edited in Sasanian Persia, with another, likely somewhat earlier, text that deploys this same metaphor about a pomegranate’s seeds, which appears in the midrash to the Song of Songs, composed in Roman Palestine.35 This is one of the many variants on this text that I mentioned above. Song of Songs Rabbah 4:6 expands on the behavior of the Israelite soldiers in the war against Midian described in Numbers 31. In the biblical narrative, Moses becomes angry with the soldiers for not having killed the Midianite women along with the men. In the narrative as it appears in Song of Songs the expression “empty ones of Israel” in another context. The only other place in the entire classical rabbinic corpus that the expression “empty ones of Israel” appears is in Song of Songs Rabbah 4:8 in a variant of this same midrash. These witnesses are direct textual evidence of the existence of an authentic dictum attributed to Resh Lakish of the form, “Even the empty ones of Israel (reiqanin she-bi-yisra’el) are as full of mitzvot as a pomegranate [is full of seeds] – as it is written, ‘your cheeks are like a pomegranate split open,’ do not read ‘your cheeks’ (raqqatekh) but rather ‘your empty ones’ (reiqatekh): even the ‘empty ones’ (reiqanin) among you are as full of mitzvot as a pomegranate [is full of seeds],” which appears in MS Paris 671 and MS Oxford Opp. Add. fol. 23 of b. Berakhot 57a. MS Vatican 171 of b. Hagigah 27a and MS Yad Harav Herzog 1 of b. Sanhedrin 37a read similarly starting from the citation of the verse: “‘your cheeks are like a pomegranate split open,’ do not read ‘your cheeks’ but rather ‘your empty ones’: even the empty ones of Israel (reiqanin she-bi-yisra’el), etc.” 34 Especially in the parallel in b. Eruvin 19a. The Bavli’s editors there work to harmonize this contradiction. 35 This text, from Song of Songs Rabbah 4:6, is of uncertain attribution. It appears in a series of interpretations attributed to Rabbi Yitzhak, but other rabbis are associated with individual interpretations within the series. A parallel text in Song of Songs Rabbah 6:18 is unattributed. However, most of the rabbis named in these same verses’ larger cycle of interpretations in Song of Songs Rabbah are associated with third or early fourth century Roman Palestine, so this text might be as early as that, or as late as the fifth or sixth century. See n. 29, above, and the discussion, there.

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Rabbah,36 however, the soldiers are praised for their restraint. Yet they also are said to admit the possibility that they experienced at least some small bit of passion when encountering the Midianite women, although they did not act on this passion. For this minor indiscretion they request to bring a sin offering as specified in Numbers 31:50: “And we have brought the Lord’s offering … to make atonement for ourselves before the Lord”:37 [The soldiers admitted,] “Is it possible that our desire was not excited even a little bit? It is for this small excitement of our desire that we seek to bring an offering.” At that time, Moses began to praise them saying, “‘Your cheeks are like the halves of a pomegranate’38 – the “empty ones” among you are as full of mitzvot and good deeds as this pomegranate [is full of seeds]. Because anyone to whom an opportunity to sin comes and he overcomes it does a great mitzvah!”39

This text is similar to the Bavli text in that both praise Jews for being as full of Torah as a pomegranate is full of seeds. But where the Bavli praises the sinners of Israel, this text praises pious Jews. Although the praise includes the phrase “empty ones,” which in the Bavli is interpreted to mean sinners, the “empty ones” here are ordinary Jews, Jewish soldiers and commoners. One might wish to read the emptiness here as emptiness of virtue in the limited sense that even one who is not especially virtuous can perform a pious act by refraining from vice. Yet in context, the soldiers are not said to be empty of virtue. Just the opposite, they are earlier in the narrative praised for being exceptionally righteous.40 I would like to concentrate on one difference between these two texts that I  believe reflects a larger systemic difference between texts edited in Roman Palestine and the Babylonian Talmud. And this difference supports my suggestion of a shift to a rhetorically more inclusionary attitude among the Bavli’s editors. In the text from Song of Songs Rabbah, the soldiers are praised because 36 Parallel in Song of Songs Rabbah 6:17–18 with a partial parallel in Song of Songs Rabbah 1:40. 37 Numbers 31:50. 38 Song of Songs 4:3. 39 The text continues to interpret the rest of the verse, “And there is thus no need to mention ‘behind your veil’ – regarding the most modest and self-restrained among you,” but this is irrelevant for my argument here. Song of Songs Rabbah 4:6 (ed. Vilna): ‫אפשר שלא הזיע יצר הרע‬ ‫ באותה שעה התחיל משה משבחן כפלח‬,‫ על אותה הזיעה של יצר הרע אנו אומרים להביא קרבן‬,‫קימעה‬ ‫ שכל מי שבא עבירה לידו וניצל ממנה‬,‫ רקנין שבכם רצופין מצות ומעשים טובים כרמון הזה‬,‫הרמון רקתך‬ ‫ ואין צריך לומר מבעד לצמתך על הצנועין ועל המצומתין שבכם‬,‫ולא עשה אותה מצוה גדולה עשה‬. MS Vatican Ebr. 76 has no significant variation. The attribution of this text is unclear in context; see n. 35, above. 40 Song of Songs Rabbah 4:6 (ed. Vilna): ‫שעלו מן הרחצה רבי הונא אמר שלא הקדים אחד מהן‬ ‫תפילין של ראש לתפילין של יד שאלו הקדים אחד מהן תפילין של ראש לתפילין של יד לא היה משה משבחן‬ ‫ולא היו עולין משם בשלום הוי אומר שהיו צדיקים ביותר‬: “‘That have come up from the washing’ – Rabbi Huna said, Not one of them put on the phylactery of the head before the phylactery of the hand, for if even one of them had put on the phylactery of the head before the phylactery of the hand, Moses would not have praised them, and they would not have come up from there in peace, which is to say that they were exceptionally righteous.”

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“the ‘empty ones’ among you are as full of mitzvot and good deeds as this pomegranate [is full of seeds].”41 In the text from the Bavli, the sinners are praised as being “full of mitzvot” only. The difference between the expression “mitzvot and good deeds” and merely “mitzvot” might seem at first glance insignificant, but I believe that it is an important piece of additional evidence of this difference between earlier Palestinian and later Babylonian traditions. The expression “mitzvot and good deeds” is very common in Palestinian texts. It appears 23 times in Genesis Rabbah alone in various contexts of praise and condemnation, in connection with “the righteous and the wicked” generally,42 Noah,43 Asshur,44 Abraham,45 Shem,46 Sarah,47 Job,48 Keturah,49 the city Luz,50 and Jacob.51 It appears as well, commonly, in the other classical Palestinian rabbinic works: seven times in Leviticus Rabbah,52 seven times in Lamentations Rabbah,53 five times in Pesiqta de-Rav Kahana,54 and three times in the Yerushalmi.55 And yet, on careful consideration, this expression’s meaning is unclear. What, precisely, is the difference between a mitzvah and a “good deed”? Might it not be argued that from the rabbinic perspective, a “good deed” is a type of mitzvah or that mitzvot are themselves “good deeds”? I suggest that this distinction is relevant to my analysis because an examination of the entire rabbinic corpus reveals that expressions pairing mitzvot with various idioms signifying correct or pious behavior such as “good deeds” or “acts of kindness”56 are characteristic 41 ‫הזה‬

‫רקנין שבכם רצופין מצות ומעשים טובים כרמון‬. times in Genesis Rabbah (ed. Theodor-Albeck) 9:5–10 in the course of a long series of exegetical explanations of Genesis 1:31: “And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.” 43 Genesis Rabbah 30:6, 35:3. 44 Genesis Rabbah 37:4. 45 Genesis Rabbah 39:3 (twice), 44:5 (twice), 61:2 (twice). 46 Genesis Rabbah 44:7. 47 Genesis Rabbah 53:5 (twice). 48 Genesis Rabbah 57:4. 49 Genesis Rabbah 61:4. 50 Genesis Rabbah 69:8, 81:4. 51 Genesis Rabbah 97:6. 52 Leviticus Rabbah (ed. Margaliot): 4:2 (three times), 22:2, 23:6, 28:1 (twice). 53 Lamentations Rabbah (ed. Buber): prologue 1, prologue 7, prologue 31, prologue 32, 1:54, 2:17, 3:1. 54 Pesiqta de-Rav Kahana (ed. Mandelbaum): 8:1 (twice, parallel to Leviticus Rabbah 28:1), 13:1 (parallel to Lamentations Rabbah prologue 1), 18:2 (parallel to Lamentations Rabbah prologue 1 and 3:1), supplement 2. 55 Yersuhalmi (ed. Venice): y. Hagigah 2:1, 77b, y. Maaser Sheni 5:5, 56c–56d, and y. Taanit 3:10, 67a. 56 ‫ מעשים טובים‬or ‫גמילות חסדים‬. For my purposes, these expressions can be treated as synonymous. Also relevant to the discussion is the expression ‫צדקות‬, when it appears in the sense of “righteous acts” (thus ed. Soncino of the Midrash, or “charitable acts” according to Jastrow, Dictionary) and ‫דרך ארץ‬, derekh ‘eretz, which has a very wide and developing semantic range throughout rabbinic literature but includes among its meanings something similar to “decency” or “good manners” (the latter according to Jastrow, Dictionary). Thus, at least four expressions 42 Six

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of the Palestinian rather than the Babylonian textual tradition. Such expressions do not typically appear in the Bavli.57 The Bavli, in contrast to the Palestinian sources, tends rather to pair mitzvot (or alternatively “good deeds” or “acts of kindness”) with the study of Torah or repentance. Moreover, there are indications that in similar traditions appearing in both corpora, such as these texts from Song of Songs Rabbah 4:6 and b. Hagigah 27a, “mitzvot and good deeds” in the Palestinian tradition becomes merely mitzvot in the Bavli. I would not want to push this point too far, as such expressions might well appear in one of the many manuscript variants of the many instances of these expressions in the Bavli, but they do not appear at all in the standard edition, with one exception where “Torah, mitzvot, and acts of kindness” appears, although in this case most manuscript witnesses read “Torah and acts of kindness.”58 Even so, however, the difference between the Bavli and the Palestinian texts in this regard is surely significant. I do not suggest that any inference should be drawn regarding this type of expression’s frequent usage in the Palestinian texts. Rather, I believe that the usage there is entirely conventional, and it means “good deeds” generally. Its repetitiveness can be considered imprecise but not especially laden with meaning. However, in Bavli parlance, this imprecision has a peculiar feel. Stylistically, it is uncharacteristic of the Bavli to make a distinction, even in such a loose way, between “good deeds” and mitzvot. Rather, in the Bavli, mitzvot tends to have a broad sense that includes good deeds or acts of kindness. If this observation is correct, I would suggest that the most likely reason for this development is that the term mitzvot had, by the time of the Bavli’s editing, taken on a very broad semantic range that included the concept of “good deeds” generally. Indeed, this broader meaning seems to have continued to dominate the idea of a mitzvah as a “good deed” in later Judaism. serve at various places in rabbinic literature to describe correct behavior or right action: ‫מעשים‬ ‫ דרך ארץ‬,‫ צדקות‬,‫ גמילות חסדים‬,‫“( טובים‬good deeds,” “acts of kindness,” “righteous acts,” and “good manners”). All four appear at various places outside of the Bavli in combination with the word “mitzvah” (some only in very late midrash collections). By far most common is “mitzvot and good deeds” in Genesis Rabbah. To the very best of my knowledge, none of these combinations appears in the standard printed edition of the Bavli with the singular exception of b. Yoma 9b, but even there the reading is contradicted by several important manuscripts. 57 With the important qualification and exception that I will discuss presently. 58 B. Yoma 9b (ed. Vilna): ‫אבל מקדש שני שהיו עוסקין בתורה ובמצות וגמילות חסדים מפני מה חרב‬ ‫מפני שהיתה בו שנאת חנם ללמדך ששקולה שנאת חנם כנגד שלש עבירות עבודה זרה גלוי עריות ושפיכות‬ ‫דמים‬. MSS Munich 6, NY JTS 1623/2, NY JTS 217, Oxford Opp. Add. fol. 23, and St. Petersburg 293/1 have ‫בתורה ובגמילות חסדים‬. MSS London 400, Munich 95, Vatican 134, and the editio princeps (ed. Bomberg, Venice, c. 1520) are closer to ed. Vilna. In addition, the Bavli, following the Mishnah, does make a distinction between “mitzvot,” which are obligatory, and certain types of actions that are considered merely “permissible” from a judicial standpoint, devar reshut. However, the latter are often presented as if they were more or less value neutral, in contrast to a “good deed” or “act of kindness,” which is by definition a worthy type of action to perform.

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I would like to suggest, therefore, that the Bavli has a tendency to conflate what are actually two distinct concepts: a mitzvah in the sense of a biblically or rabbinically mandated religious obligation and a “good deed” in the sense of non-legislated societal norms of correct behavior. The former is a precise category made up of the contents of actual collections of judicial rulings. The latter is a vague normative category and not explicitly part of any authoritative collection. Perhaps the Bavli’s tendency to conflate these two distinct categories serves the aims of the type of inclusionary polemic that I am arguing is characteristic of the later more developed rabbinic community. This conflation serves rhetorically to construct a textual landscape that includes all Jews within the jurisdiction of the rabbis’ teachings, whether willingly or merely implicitly. According to the worldview that the Bavli promotes, piety is not conceivable outside of the practice of Torah. It is not possible to do “good deeds” that are not also mitzvot. Or, to express the same idea in the opposite way, mitzvot as taught by the rabbis encompass all manner of behavior whether strictly speaking “religious” or not, so that “good deeds” are simply another type of mitzvah. Thus the concept of a sinner, which naturally in the earlier texts is implicitly exclusionary, is remarkably transformed into an inclusionary category by subsuming all manner of deeds, whether pious or impious, into the overarching category of Torah. Goodness and wickedness, piety and impiety, are not definable outside of rabbinic teachings. According to the fully developed selfconception of the rabbis as an institutionalized collective, there is nothing for a Jew outside of Torah and there is no Torah outside of the rabbis’ Torah. It is this Torah that sets up boundaries of inclusion and exclusion and it is in this sense that the sinners of Israel are included within the community of pious Jews, so that the boundaries of “the sinners of Israel” as a collective designation itself both expands and reifies the jurisdictional boundaries of the rabbis’ teachings.

III. An Israelite Who Sins The sinners of Israel’s treatment in the rabbinic corpus suggests that an increasingly inclusionary rhetoric towards Jewish sinners emerged over the later rabbinic period, culminating around the sixth century with the editing of the Babylonian Talmud. This corresponds to a time when the rabbinic collective was becoming an increasingly recognizable, institutionalized, and authoritative community. I am arguing that this change in rhetoric reflects this community’s changing aims over this period to extend the reach of their teachings. In this section and the following, I will deal with two other texts attributable to the Bavli’s editors that treat Israel collectively, both of which support the same historical trend. Although these texts do not use the expression “sinners of Israel,” they

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both explicitly and very surprisingly insist that even Jewish sinners are fully included in the community of pious Israel. In b. Sanhedrin 44a, the Bavli comments on the biblical Israelite Achan’s stealing of consecrated objects and his subsequent confession and punishment as narrated in the biblical book of Joshua.59 The Bavli text reflects a tension between a hermeneutical inclination to multiply Achan’s transgressions, which is typical of the Talmud’s representation of impious biblical figures,60 and at the same time a desire to stress rhetorically that he is still included within the Jewish people. The text is organized as a commentary on Joshua 7:11 and 7:15, where God responds to Achan’s theft: Israel has sinned; and they have also transgressed my covenant which I commanded them; and they have also taken some of the devoted things; and they have also stolen, and also lied, and also put them among their own stuff … And he who is taken with the devoted things shall be burned with fire, he and all that he has, because he has transgressed the covenant of the Lord, and because he has done a shameful thing in Israel.61

The Bavli cites these verses part by part, with comments interspersed, some of which are attributed to named rabbis and some of which are anonymous: “Israel has sinned”62 – Rabbi Abba bar Zavda said, And though they sinned, they remain Israel! Rabbi Abba said, Thus people say, “a myrtle that stands among willows is still called a myrtle.” “And they have also transgressed my covenant which I commanded them; and they have also taken some of the devoted things; and they also have stolen, and also lied, and also put them among their own stuff.”63 – Rabbi Ilai said in the name of Rabbi Yehudah bar Masparta, This teaches that Achan transgressed all of the five books of the Torah because “also” is said five times! And Rabbi Ilai also said in the name of Rabbi Yehudah bar Masparta, Achan stretched his foreskin: here it is written, “And they have also transgressed my covenant,” and there it is written, “[Any uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin shall be cut off from his people;] he has broken my covenant.”64 This is obvious! On the contrary, this was taught because otherwise you would have thought that he would not have behaved so wantonly in regard to the precepts of the body. “And because he has done a shameful thing in Israel”65 – Rabbi Abba bar Zavda said, This teaches that Achan had relations with a betrothed young woman: here it is written, “And because he has done a shameful thing in Israel,” and there it is written, “Because she has done a shameful thing in 59 Joshua 7. On this text in the Bavli, see Jacob Katz, “Though He Sinned, He Remains an Israelite” [Hebrew], Tarbiz 27 (1958): 203–217; Boyarin, Border Lines, 224; and Schiffman, “At the Crossroads: Tannaitic Perspectives on the Jewish-Christian Schism,” 351 n. 207, and the bibliography there. 60 There are several examples of this in Bavli. For one important instance, see my discussion of Gehazi in chapter seven, whose sins are also multiplied beyond what the Bible relates. 61 RSV, modified to repeat the Hebrew word gam, “also,” which is referred to in the Bavli commentary. 62 Joshua 7:11. 63 Joshua 7:11 (RSV, slightly modified). 64 Genesis 17:14. 65 Joshua 7:15.

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Israel.”66 This is obvious! On the contrary, this was taught because otherwise you would have thought that he would not have behaved so wantonly in regard to his own soul.67

This complex text is partially in Hebrew and partially in Aramaic. A close analysis suggests that the Hebrew sections taken by themselves preserve part of an otherwise unattested earlier midrash on Joshua 7, into which the Bavli’s editors have woven their own ideas, which they wrote in Aramaic.68 This Hebrew text is cited in the names of Abba bar Zavda and Ilai, who were third century amoraim from Roman Palestine, so perhaps this core midrash can be dated to this period. Following, I repeat the text excluding the Aramaic additions. It clearly reads as a simple commentary on God’s response to Achan’s theft in Joshua 7:11 and 7:15: “Israel has sinned” – Rabbi Abba bar Zavda said, And though they sinned, they remain Israel! “And they have also transgressed my covenant which I commanded them; and they have also taken some of the devoted things; and they also have stolen, and also lied, and also put them among their own stuff.” – Rabbi Ilai said in the name of Rabbi Yehudah bar Masparta, This teaches that Achan transgressed all of the five books of the Torah because “also” is said five times! And Rabbi Ilai also said in the name of Rabbi Yehudah bar Masparta, Achan stretched his foreskin: here it is written, “And they have also transgressed my covenant,” and there it is written, “[Any uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin shall be cut off from his people;] he has broken my covenant.” “And because he has done a shameful thing in Israel” – Rabbi Abba bar Zavda said, This teaches that Achan had relations with a betrothed young woman: here it is written, “And because he has done a shameful thing in Israel,” and there it is written, “Because she has done a shameful thing in Israel.”

This Hebrew text is a straightforward midrash, a hermeneutical expansion on the biblical verses.69 It starts with a comment on the expression “Israel has sinned.” In context in the book of Joshua, this expression refers to all of the Israelites, as 66 Deuteronomy 22:21 (RSV, modified to match the language of Joshua 7:15). This text appears in regard to a man who claims that his betrothed was not a virgin. 67 B. Sanhedrin 44a (ed. Vilna): ‫חטא ישראל אמר רבי אבא בר זבדא אף על פי שחטא ישראל הוא‬ ‫אמר רבי אבא היינו דאמרי אינשי אסא דקאי ביני חילפי אסא שמיה ואסא קרו ליה וגם עברו את בריתי‬ ‫אשר צויתי אותם גם לקחו מן החרם גם גנבו גם כחשו גם שמו בכליהם אמר רבי אילעא משום רבי יהודה‬ ‫בר מספרתא מלמד שעבר עכן על חמשה חומשי תורה שנאמר חמשה גם ואמר רבי אילעא משום רבי יהודה‬ ‫בר מספרתא עכן מושך בערלתו היה כתיב הכא וגם עברו את בריתי וכתיב התם את בריתי הפר פשיטא‬ ‫מהו דתימא במצוה גופיה לא פקר קא משמע לן וכי עשה נבלה בישראל אמר רבי אבא בר זבדא מלמד‬ ‫שבעל עכן נערה המאורסה כתיב הכא וכי עשה נבלה וכתיב התם כי עשתה נבלה בישראל פשיטא מהו‬ ‫דתימא כולי האי לא פקר נפשיה קא משמע לן‬. See n. 71, below, on some significant manuscript variants. 68 See n. 71, below. 69 The only slight peculiarity is that the text “he has done a shameful thing in Israel” is discontinuous from Joshua 7:11. It may thus be that the editor joined together a number of distinct midrash traditions. However, as the first half Joshua 7:15 has, “he has transgressed the covenant of the Lord,” which is almost verbatim to the text from Joshua 7:11, “they have transgressed my covenant which I commanded them,” perhaps the original midrash connected them together in its hermeneutical efforts to find a scriptural basis for some additional sins that Achan committed.

III. An Israelite Who Sins

109

God responds to Achan’s sin initially by accusing Israel collectively. Rabbi Abba bar Zavda comments on this expression by saying “And though they sinned, they remain Israel.” There is no reason to think that Abba bar Zavda was referring to Achan specifically when he said ’af ‘al pi she-ḥata’ yisra’el hu’, 70 which could be translated either collectively referring to Israel as “And though they sinned, they remain Israel” or individually referring to Achan as “And though he sinned, he remains an Israelite.” The more natural reading is that Abba bar Zavda is interpreting the verse as referring to Israel’s collective guilt but also to their collective redemption – even though some among the people might sin, the people collectively remain Israel. The rest of the midrash then goes on to discuss Achan specifically, but it discusses him only to increase his culpability by accusing him of sins that the biblical narrative does not mention. In the book of Joshua, Achan misappropriates consecrated items, but he does not commit these other transgressions. The midrash’s overall impetus to present Achan as a more severe sinner would stand in tension with Abba bar Zavda’s saying, if we were inclined to read its original intent as referring to Achan individually. Rather it is more plausible to suppose that Abba bar Zavda’s saying in the original midrash refers, as the biblical verse does, to Israel collectively. The Aramaic text that follows on Abba bar Zavda’s Hebrew saying, placed in Abba’s mouth but surely an addition by the Bavli’s editors,71 seems at first glance to be an attempt to explain the saying’s meaning: Rabbi Abba said, “Thus people say, ‘a myrtle that stands among willows is still called a myrtle.’” This explanation is certainly a bit opaque, but its most likely reading would seem to change the meaning of Abba bar Zavda’s saying in a significant fashion. Because metaphors comparing a man to a tree are well established in rabbinic tradition, the most natural referent of the myrtle in the explanation would be Achan rather than Israel.72 The implication would therefore be that as an individual myrtle standing among many willows is still called a myrtle, so also the Israelite sinner Achan, even reckoned among other sinners, is still called an Israelite. Just as being a myrtle is unchangeable so being an Israelite is unchangeable, regardless 70 ‫הוא‬

‫אף על פי שחטא ישראל‬. editorial hand in this text is clearly demonstrated by the systematic and orderly shift between attributed dicta in Hebrew and interspersed anonymous commentary in Aramaic. This first Aramaic comment that I  am analyzing here is attributed in the standard text, but manuscripts vary between being anonymous and being attributed to Abba, Abba bar Zavda, Rav Papa, and Rav Papi. The Aramaic text therefore has all of the classic hallmarks of the anonymous layer of the Bavli, traditionally known as the stam of the Talmud. See Friedman, “A Critical Study of Yevamot X with a Methodological Introduction”; and see the discussion and bibliography in the section on style and method in the introduction and in nn. 61–64, there. 72 So, for example, Deuteronomy 20:19, discussing the biblical prohibition on cutting down fruit-bearing trees during a siege, asks rhetorically, “Are the trees in the field men that they should be besieged by you?” Rabbinic tradition reads the first part of this sentence out of context declaratively to mean, “Man is like a tree in the field.” See Sifre Deuteronomy 203, Genesis Rabbah 26:6, Ecclesiastes Rabbah 8:12, and b. Taanit 7a. 71 The

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of one’s deeds. The meaning is thus changed from “Though Israel sinned, they remain Israel” to “Though an individual Israelite sins, he remains an Israelite.”73 The resultant tension in the edited text is striking and significant. The original midrash works very hard to multiply Achan’s sins, and the editor of the Babylonian Talmud does nothing to temper this part of the text. So one outcome of the collective effort is a more severely excluded figure of Achan as a serial transgressor. At the same time, however, the editor slips into the heart of this midrash a text that has the opposite rhetorical effect. Even given the severity of his many sins, Achan is still included within the people Israel. I suggest that this text is another example of the inclusionary rhetorical tendencies of the later strata of the rabbinic corpus. As the rabbis developed into a more firmly established corporate group, they placed increasing emphasis on expanding the conceptual boundaries of the implicitly pious community on whom their teachings were incumbent. Even Jewish sinners remained within those boundaries.

IV. All Israel Have a Portion in the World to Come One of the most important and well-studied rabbinic polemical texts against Jewish opponents appears in m. Sanhedrin 10:1.74 This text is important because it directly addresses issues central to the rabbis’ religious ideology, the idea of the Oral Torah and the idea of the resurrection of the dead. I will deal with this text more fully in chapter five. But in the present context it will be most relevant for us to examine how later editors treat this text, which I will argue reflects this same shift from exclusionary to inclusionary rhetorical strategies discussed in the previous sections. The text as it appears in the Mishnah begins: And these have no portion in the world to come: the one who says, “There is no resurrection of the dead” and “There is no Torah from heaven,” and an apiqoros.75

73 Katz, “Though He Sinned, He Remains an Israelite,” 204, 208–209, points out that in its original context the text certainly refers to Israel collectively, though by the medieval period some Jewish thinkers interpreted it in terms of the individual Jew. Katz’s main concern is with the use of the dictum in medieval jurisprudence. For a response to Katz, see Schiffman, “At the Crossroads: Tannaitic Perspectives on the Jewish-Christian Schism,” 351 n. 207. Boyarin, Border Lines, 224, reads the Bavli text straightforwardly as referring to the individual Jew. 74 For a discussion of this text with bibliography see Grossberg, “Orthopraxy in Tannaitic Literature” and nn. 77 and 81, below. 75 M Sanhedrin 10:1 (MS Kaufmann): ‫ואילו שאין להן חלק לעולם הבא האומר אין תחיית המתים‬ ‫ואין תורה מן השמים ואפיקורוס‬. The text from the standard edition has: ‫האומר אין תחיית המתים מן‬ ‫התורה‬: “There is no resurrection of the dead from the Torah.” Early manuscripts do not include the phrase, “from the Torah.” See Grossberg, “Orthopraxy in Tannaitic Literature,” 520 n. 7. For a discussion of the apiqoros (usually translated “Epicurean”), see chapter five.

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The text as it appears in the Bavli includes this sentence, but precedes it with this general introductory statement: All Israel have a portion in the world to come, as it is said, “Your people shall all be righteous; they shall possess the land for ever, the shoot of my planting, the work of my hands, that I might be glorified (Isaiah 60:21).”76

Scholars have long noticed the contradiction inherent in these two parts of the text. If all Israel have a portion in the world to come, how can it be that some among Israel do not have a portion in the world to come? Based on this contradiction, some scholars have argued that this text intends to declare that Jewish sinners are no longer part of Israel, that is, they are no longer Jewish.77 Such an intention would be very surprising because rabbinic literature typically adopts the biblical model of a corporate Israel that includes both sinners and righteous people.78 I will demonstrate in this section that not only is this text not an exception to this rule, but it actually furthers the editorial ideology that I am arguing for in this chapter, that even the sinners in Israel are in some sense pious Jews. It will be instructive to begin by examining how previous scholarship has often read this text, as if it denies the name Israel to impious Jews. As I will demonstrate below, this reading is not especially convincing, so much so that we ought to inquire why scholars have focused on this text seeking a rabbinic claim that Jewish sinners are not really Jews. One likely reason for this cluster of interest is that early Christian polemicists such as Ignatius and Justin were very concerned with the question of on whom the name “Christian” ought to be legitimately bestowed.79 Conjectured similarities in this regard between the rabbis and 76 B. Sanhedrin 90a (ed. Vilna): ‫כל ישראל יש להם חלק לעולם הבא שנאמר ועמך כלם צדיקים‬ ‫לעולם יירשו ארץ נצר מטעי מעשה ידי להתפאר‬. 77 See, for just a few examples, Louis Finkelstein, Introduction to the Treatises Abot and Abot of Rabbi Nathan [Hebrew] (Texts and Studies of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America 16; New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1950), 226 n. 4: ‫כאמור נלע״ד לפרש משנה זו שלפיה‬ ‫ ;אלה המעטים שהודחו מחיי העולם הבא אינם נחשבים על עם ישראל לגמרי‬Hayes, “Displaced SelfPerceptions: The Deployment of Mînîm and Romans in B. Sanhedrin 90b–91a,” at 276: “[T]he mishnah’s formulation makes it clear that those who doubt resurrection are those outside the community of Israel, and they are by definition mînîm of various types”; Boyarin, Border Lines, 252 n. 128: “According to the versions preserved in the textus receptus of the Sanhedrin Mishna, it would be the case that there too the deviants are excluded from the name ‘Israel.’” Other scholars have contested this reading. See Schiffman, “At the Crossroads: Tannaitic Perspectives on the Jewish-Christian Schism,” 144: “The fact that certain heretics or non-believers are excluded from the world to come in no way implies expulsion from the Jewish people”; and, most recently, Adiel Schremer, “Thinking about Belonging in Early Rabbinic Literature,” 269: “this mishnah says nothing about belonging in the Jewish people, and it does not deny the name ‘Israel’ from a Jew who espouses these theological opinions.” 78 See Himmelfarb, Kingdom of Priests, 160–185, esp. 174–175. 79 See, for example, Royalty, The Origins of Hersey, 6: “[N]ames were important to [Justin], particularly the use of the name ‘Christian.’” Royalty notes how Justin complains in the Apology that Christians are condemned merely for this name. On Christian identity in Antiquity, see

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the early Christian heresiologists would thus support claims of mutual influence between their respective corpora. But the scholarly focus on this matter at times imbues it with more normative significance than it actually has. My analysis in the current study demonstrates that there are any number of exclusionary rhetorical strategies that a polemicist might adopt in the literary construction of groups that he wishes to represent as “other.” One strategy common among early Christian polemicists is to deny the name “Christian” to their opponents. I will argue in what follows that the rabbis do not deploy this specific technique. Even the worst sinners, those who lose their portion in the world to come, are still called “Israel.” Indeed, t. Sanhedrin 13:4, which I discussed earlier, collectively denies a portion in the world to come to the sinners of Israel and to the sinners of the nations, yet even so, each group retains its distinctive ethnic appellation. However, there is no reason that, as a rhetorical strategy, focusing on exclusion by denying the name of one’s own preferred affiliation to one’s opponents ought to be considered any more exclusionary or any “worse” (or, indeed, any better!) than denying them a portion in the world to come. I would argue that these differences are not normatively distinct polemical modes. They are, rather, stylistic variants of exclusionary polemical techniques adopted for complex social-historical reasons or to meet specific short-term political aims.80 There is no value for scholars in seeking a strategy characteristic of one corpus in another as if this endeavor would place the two corpora in some sort of normative balance. Moreover, as demonstrated in the first chapter, it is methodologically unsound to base the examination of rabbinic literature on the rhetorical modes that drove the early Christian heresiologists. In any case, the full text of m. Sanhedrin 10:1 as it appears in standard printed editions of the Bavli begins with the introductory statement that “All Israel have a portion in the world to come” and then goes on to enumerate various types of transgressors who have no portion in the world to come. It is now generally recognized that this introductory statement is not part of the original tannaitic text but is a later addition.81 The introduction does not appear in the best Mishnah manuscripts, MSS Kaufmann and Cambridge, which begin directly with “These have no portion in the world to come …” Moreover, the first two words Judith Lieu, Christian Identity, and Denise Kimber Buell, Why This New Race: Ethnic Reasoning in Early Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005). 80 Of course, the question of why this difference may have come about from a socialhistorical perspective is certainly an interesting one. See Himmelfarb, A Kingdom of Priests, 160–185; Kimber-Buell, Why this New Race. Also, see Goodman, “Function of Minim,” 506: “In the history of early Christianity, theology and practice both developed to a large extent through polemic against deviants.” And, n. 23, there: “One of the corollaries of the present study is that transfer of the same assumptions to self-definition by rabbinic Jews may be mistaken.” 81 See, most recently, Schremer, “Thinking about Belonging in Early Rabbinic Literature,” 269–270 n. 64. For additional bibliography, see n. 77, above, and Grossberg, “Orthopraxy in Tannaitic Literature,” 520 n. 7.

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in this sentence match the formulaic pattern of previous and subsequent texts in the Mishnah, m. Sanhedrin 7:4, 9:1, and 11:1, each of which serves as a subject heading for the various topics under consideration. The introductory statement interrupts this pattern. So this introductory statement is certainly a late editorial addition. Yet even so, it remains oddly self-contradictory. The text that the editors produced, at least, says that all Israel have a portion in the world to come and then immediately lists those who do not. The proposed solution to this contradiction already mentioned, that at least these later editors’ intention was to imply that those who do not have a portion in the world to come do not merit the name Israel, is not especially convincing. The terms of the contest in rabbinic polemic against other Jews never explicitly involves denying that they are Jews, whereas even very severe sinners are still seen as Jews as a matter of course. In order to support this reading, we would have to suppose that one or two texts in an entire corpus diverge radically from the predominant rhetoric that it adopts almost universally. Another solution to this contradiction has been proposed, essentially that “all Israel have a portion in the world to come … but, they can lose it!”82 Both of these solutions require adding to what is written. However, the latter reading has the advantage of being consistent with the ubiquitous rabbinic conceptualization of a corporate Israel rather than a mostly unprecedented and therefore surprising denial of the name “Israel” to Jewish sinners. Moreover and more importantly, I would argue that it is not necessary to assume that the editors responsible for this addition had such a narrow ideological expression in mind. There is some evidence, although it is admittedly not very extensive, that this tradition regarding all Israel having a portion in the world to come may have circulated as an independent midrash on the verse from Isaiah 60:21: “Your people shall all be righteous; they shall possess the land for ever, the shoot of my planting, the work of my hands, that I might be glorified.”83 The late collection Yalqut Shimoni includes a text that is essentially the same as the addition to m. Sanhedrin 10:1 as a short stand-alone midrash on the book of Isaiah unconnected to the Mishnah.84 At some point in the development of these traditions, this short midrash also became joined with m. Avot 1:1 as an introduction to that chapter. It appears in this way in the early siddur (prayer book) Boyarin, Border Lines, 252 n. 128. 60:21. 84 Yalqut Shimoni on Isaiah 60: ‫ועמך כלם צדיקים לעולם יירשו ארץ שנו רבותינו כל ישראל יש להם‬ ‫חלק לעוה״ב שנאמר ועמך כלם צדיקים וגו׳‬. Of course, this may well be the partial citation of a Bavli text that includes this mishnah with the addition rather than the preservation of an independent tradition, especially in light of its formulaic introduction. Given the certainty that the first line of m. Sanhedrin 10:1 is a post-tannaitic addition and, at the same time, the lack of significant evidence regarding the source and timing of the addition, I offer this only as a conjectural but plausible reconstruction. 82 See

83 Isaiah

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known as Mahzor Vitri and in the text of m. Avot that appears in MS Munich 95, a medieval manuscript of the entire Babylonian Talmud. It is certainly plausible that these editors may have joined together two independent traditions because they both discuss having a “portion in the world to come,” without having a carefully considered ideological aim and without being overly concerned with the logical contradiction that the pairing entailed. This would not be atypical of the editorial style of rabbinic collections. For instance, in y. Sanhedrin 10:1, 27c, commenting on this very mishnah, the Yerushalmi brings a tradition that immediately contradicts the text it is commenting on.85 Contradictions at the seams of editorially joined traditions are not at all uncommon in rabbinic literature. If we must seek for rhetorical intention in the final version of m. Sanhedrin 10:1, the simplest solution would be a desire on the part of the editors to add an optimistic message to the rather judgmental tone of chapter ten of the Mishnah.86 I would argue that this solution is most likely given the scant evidence available. And this as well further supports and is supported by my overall claim that one of the notable aims of the Bavli’s editors was an expansion of the Torah’s jurisdiction through a subtly inclusionary mode of polemic. This addition is certainly post-tannaitic because it does not appear in the best Mishnah manuscripts, but it is likely predates the early medieval period because it does appear in the best Bavli manuscripts.87 If it is a late addition to this mishnah by the Bavli’s editors, the expression “All Israel have a portion in the world to come” would be best understood as part of the shift from exclusionary to inclusionary rhetorical strategies that I have been arguing throughout this chapter is characteristic of the later strata of the classical rabbinic corpus.88 As in the case of the sinners of 85 In this case, the contradiction is a redundancy that the Yerushalmi corrects by modifying the tradition it cites. 86 Solomon Luria already suggests this in the 16th century. He writes in his commentary on the Talmud, ḥokhmat shelomoh: ‫הך בבא אינו מזו המשנה אלא אגדה בעלמא וכתובה כאן כדי להתחיל‬ ‫הפרק בדבר טוב‬. 87 It appears, for example, in MS Munich 95 (in an inset block of larger script), in MS Florence II-I-9 (in a separate section that includes the whole chapter of the Mishnah preceding the gemara, and in headwords introducing the gemara), and in MS Yad Harav Herzog 1 (with the individual mishnah introducing the gemara as in the printed texts). 88 It is worth noting at least parenthetically that I am not claiming that exclusionary polemical styles do not exist at all in the Bavli. For example, one especially important exclusionary category in the Bavli is the ‘am ha-’aretz, literally “the people of the land.” As will become clear in the following chapters, my argument is not that the editors of the Bavli do not exclude others, but that they tend to shift the borders of exclusion from a wide range of transgressions and ideological divergences to relatively narrow issues concerning the rabbis and their teachings. Thus, for example, an important text that appears only in the Bavli in b. Berakhot 47b (ed. Vilna; with a similar but not precisely parallel text in b. Sotah 22a) defines the ‘am ha-’aretz in terms that suggest this ideological concern: “Who is an ‘am ha-’aretz? Anyone who does not recite the Shema in the evening and in the morning – these are the words of Rabbi Eliezer. Rabbi Yehoshua says, Anyone who does not put on phylacteries. Ben Azzai says, Anyone who

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Israel who are as full of mitzvot as a pomegranate is full of seeds, and as in the case of an Israelite who sins yet remains an Israelite, the Bavli’s editors would here be insisting that all Jews, even Jewish sinners, are, nonetheless, bound by the rabbis’ teachings.

does not have fringes on his clothing. Rabbi Natan says, Anyone who does not have a mezuzah on his entrance. Rabbi Natan ben Yosef says, Anyone who has sons and does not raise them up to the study of Torah. Others say, Even if one studied scripture and Mishnah yet did not attend the sages, this is an ‘am ha-’aretz.” This can be contrasted with texts from the tannaitic collections that tend to define the ‘am ha-’aretz primarily in terms of tithing and purity concerns. The sharpest exclusionary polemic, as well, against the ‘am ha-’aretz occurs in the Bavli’s editorial layer, for example, in b. Pesahim 49a–49b. See Jeffrey L. Rubenstein, The Culture of The Babylonian Talmud (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), 123–142. Indeed, it has been suggested that amoraic texts from Roman Palestine are hardly negative at all and are occasionally even positive about the ‘am ha-’aretz. See Rachel A. Anisfeld, Sustain Me with Raisin-Cakes: Pesikta deRav Kahana and the Popularization of Rabbinic Judaism (Supplements to the Journal for the Study of Judaism 133; Leiden: Brill, 2009), at 148–162. For more on the ‘am ha-’aretz, see Ephraim E. Urbach, The Sages: Their Concepts and Beliefs (2 vols.; trans. Israel Abrahams, Jerusalem: Magnes, 1975), 630–648; Aharon Oppenheimer, The ‘Am Ha-aretz: A Study in the Social History of the Jewish People in the Hellenistic-Roman Period (trans. I. H. Levine; Arbeiten zur Geschichte des Antiken Judentums und des Urchristentums 8; Leiden: Brill, 1977).

Chapter 4

Meshummadim Who Provoke the Rabbis Along with reconceptualizing and redeploying categories of deviants as polemical insiders or outsiders, or along exclusionary and inclusionary lines, another set of strategies that emerges from the rabbinic collective’s rhetorical efforts to define itself involve subtle shifts of boundary in the internal lines that demarcate the pious from the impious. Such shifts are discernible in regard to polemical targets that are imagined to be within the rabbinic community itself or at its periphery, as we will be discussing in chapters six and seven. And they are discernible in regard to non-rabbinic Jews whom the rabbis categorized as religious deviants such as the meshummadim (sg. meshummad, pl. meshummadim) and the apiqorsim (sg. apiqoros, pl. apiqorsim), as we will be discussing in this and the next chapter. In this chapter, we will examine the meshummad. The meshummad is a category of Jewish sinner, conventionally translated as “apostate,” that is characterized by failure to observe Torah precepts such as refraing from forbidden food or refraining from work on the Sabbath, whether for practical or ideological reasons. It is the reason for the non-observance that becomes the crux on which later rabbinic rhetoric is able to shift boundaries in such a way that some meshummadim are acceptable within the bounds of rabbinic jurisdiction and some are not. I will demonstrate in this chapter how the rabbis bifurcate the meshummadim in such a way as to create two distinct polemical targets, one wicked and one more or less acceptable. The wicked category of meshummad is defined in such a fashion so that its direct opponent is not righteousness in the abstract but a rabbinic collective imagined as a unified group. The acceptable category of meshummad believes in rabbinic teachings, but it is unable to resist the temptations of misdeeds such as eating forbidden food. I will suggest that this bifurcation accomplishes two related aims. First, by setting themselves up as a fixed group opposed to an impious group of Jews, the rabbis define more strongly the boundaries around themselves as a developing community. And second, by creating a new category of non-rabbinic Jews aspiring to rabbinic ideals, they expand the reach of their teachings to encompass ordinary Jews who are imagined as admiring rabbinic piety but falling short because of ordinary human failings rather than an ideological rejection of the rabbis’ teachings. Taken together, these two rhetorical moves conflate the rabbis as a collective and their teachings in such a way that rejecting either is tantamount to rejecting both. And rejecting both means rejecting the Torah itself, which by

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this time had become a central symbol of Jewish piety, the rejection of which meant a fundamental rejection of Judaism. This type of rhetorical conflation of the rabbis as a group with the Torah as a broader symbol of Jewish piety is similar to what we already discussed in the previous chapter, where the idea of a mitzvah was conflated with the idea of a “good deed.” And, as we shall see, it will be an important aspect of the rhetorical strategies that we will analyze in this and the subsequent chapters.

I. Meshummadim, Apostates, and “The Time of Persecutions” Like the term min considered in chapter two, the term meshummad is unique to the rabbinic literature and its original meaning is somewhat obscure. The conventional translation as “apostate” is misleading because it misrepresents the range of meanings that this term can bear and, especially important for our purposes, obscures the important changes that occurred over time as this idea was reconceptualized.1 Moreover, the rabbis treat the meshummad as ethnically Jewish, so associations that the term “apostate” might carry of converting from one religion to another are mostly anachronistic to the rabbinic period. Scholars have tended to interpret this term either as one who voluntarily rejects the observance of the Torah’s precepts or as one who is forced through persecution to give up this observance.2 I will argue in this section that its original meaning was somewhere midway between those two positions. The earliest extant usage of the term suggests that its meaning was connected to a rejection of the Torah in a time of political troubles generally, but not necessarily limited to force or persecution. Perhaps, then, its original referent was a Jew who violated the Torah’s precepts in a time of unrest, whether because he was forced to or because it was personally advantageous to do so. Only in a later period does the word take on a 1 See Langer, Cursing the Christians?, 45–55; and Moti Arad, Sabbath Desecrator with Παρρησία (Parresia): A Talmudic Legal Term and Its Context [Hebrew] (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 2009), 238–251. Langer, ibid, 53, writes, “Clearly, the heritage constructed in the rabbinic texts for subsequent generations presents meshummadim … as a much broader category than ‘apostates.’” I  agree with Langer that the meshummad is a complex category in the rabbinic texts though I disagree with her reading of the stratification of this term. See n. 35, below. Arad recognizes these developments, especially in the latest strata of the rabbinic corpus, but at times he seems to subsume various uses of this term to the overall subject of his monograph, on which see n. 38, below. 2 Lieberman, Tosefta ki-Fshuṭah, 3.402 n. 45, and S. Zeitlin, “Mumar and Meshumad,” Jewish Quarterly Review 54 (1963): 84–86, at 86, argue that the term originally referred to a Jew who was forced to transgress the Torah. See n. 12, below. And see Moshe David Herr, “Persecutions and Martyrdom in Hadrian’s Days,” in Studies in Jewish History in the Mishna and Talmud Period (ed. Isaiah M. Gafni; Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center, 1994), 137–177, at 169. Many scholars deemphasize this aspect of the term, as Schiffman, Who was a Jew?, 105–109; and Langer, Cursing the Christians?, 50.

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more general sense, signifying any Jew who does not observe the Torah, without a specific connotation regarding the circumstances. The meshummad is common already in the tannaitic literature, and it is clearly a category of Jewish deviant.3 Indeed, it would seem that the term meshummad itself was originally an adjectival passive participle modifying the word “Israel.” The expression “Israel meshummad” is common in the earliest rabbinic texts and appears to be the original expression that led to the substantive meshummad used independently.4 The term meshummad’s etymology and even its precise meaning are not completely certain. It has a phonological similarity to a biblical Hebrew word meaning “destruction,” which would suggest a ruined or destroyed Israelite, a Jew who was destroyed or ruined by abandoning the Torah. However, many scholars reject a direct etymological connection between these two words.5 A similar term mumar, “convert,” appears, apparently synonymously with meshummad, in printed editions of the Talmuds (along with the related expression le-hamir ’et ha-dat, “to change one’s religion”). Some earlier scholarship had endeavored to explain the difference between a mumar and a meshummad.6 However, mumar appears only in printed editions of rabbinic texts starting from the early-modern period and is not actually rabbinic Hebrew at all. It is, rather, a substitution for the word meshummad that Christian censors forced on printers. Apparently, mumar, “convert,” was considered less pejorative than meshummad, particularly if the term is to be used of Jews who convert to Christianity.7 In 3 It

does not appear, interestingly, in the Mishnah or Sifre. half of the usages of meshummad in the tannaitic literature are in the expression yisra’el meshummad, yet this expression appears only very rarely in later rabbinic literature. These facts, together with the fact that the word meshummad is a passive participle that functions as an adjective, suggest that it functioned as an ordinary adjective before it developed into a substantive. See t. Demai 2:4, t. Hullin 1:1, Mekhilta pisḥa 15, Mekhilta kaspa 20, and Mekhilta of Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai 12. See Stern, Jewish Identity in Early Rabbinic Writings, 107. 5 Most scholars assume that the meaning is “destroyed,” as Finkelstein, Introduction to the Treatises Abot and Abot of Rabbi Nathan, xxxix; Saul Lieberman, “redifat dat yisra’el,” in Sefer ha-Yovel Likhvod Shalom Baron (3 vols.; ed. Saul Lieberman and Arthur Hyman; Jerusalem: American Academy for Jewish Research, 1974), 3.213–245, at 228–229; and Schiffman, Who Was a Jew?, 47. Langer, Cursing the Christians?, 45, suggests that the sense of the word is of a person who is worthy of being destroyed because of his or her misdeeds, apparently relying on Arad, Sabbath Desecrator, 241–242. But cf. Menahem Moreshet, A Lexicon of the New Verbs in Tannaitic Hebrew [Hebrew] (Ramat-Gan: Bar-Ilan University, 1980), 370–371 n. 28, and Chaim Milikowsky, “Gehenna and ‘Sinners of Israel’ in Light of Seder ‘Olam” [Hebrew], Tarbiz 55 (1985–1986): 311–344, at 333 n. 94. And See Langer’s discussion of medieval commentators in Cursing the Christians?, 48. 6 See Jakob J. Petuchowski, “The Mumar: A Study in Rabbinic Psychology,” Hebrew Union College Annual 30 (1959): 179–190, esp. 179 n. 3. 7 See Zeitlin, “Mumar and Meshumad”; and Saul Lieberman, “Some Aspects of After Life in Early Rabbinic Literature,” in Harry Austryn Wolfson Jubilee Volume, Volume Two (Jerusalem: American Academy for Jewish Research, 1965), 495–532, at 531–532. Zeitlin argues that, although the Hebrew mumar does not in fact appear in the rabbinic literature, the word did exist at 4 Some

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citing rabbinic texts, I will always use meshummad even if the printed editions have mumar. The earliest rabbinic traditions consistently connect the idea of a meshummad with the intentional rejection of biblical precepts such as observing the Sabbath or dietary rules. For example, t. Horayot 1:5 says that a meshummad transgresses prohibitions such as eating carrion and drinking libation wine even though he does not crave such things; Sifra nedava 2 says that a meshummad does not accept the covenant with God; and Sifra ḥova 7 says that unlike a person who sins unintentionally, a meshummad does not refrain from transgression even though he knows that what he is doing is wrong. However, the idea of a meshummad is also closely connected to the term shemad, “persecution,” and the expression, “a time of persecutions” or “the time/generation of persecutions.”8 The latter expression often refers to an extensive persecution of Jews and prohibitions against Jewish religious observances that is supposed to have occurred under the Roman Emperor Hadrian in the second century C. E.9 But shemad can also refer to Jewish adversity generally. The expression “a time of persecutions” can refer to any time when Jewish practices are outlawed,10 and perhaps the root may be that time and even pre-dates the word meshummad. He attempts to prove this by citing Second Temple period Jewish texts in Greek that use μεταβάλλω, “change,” in the sense (generally) of changing one’s religious commitments. Arad, “Sabbath Desecrator,” 242–246, makes a similar argument in reference to the biblical Hebrew heimer. However, even if a word meaning, “to change” was occasionally used in this way, this does not prove that such a person was actually referred to as a mumar. In this case, the absence of even a single attested usage of mumar in this sense must lead us to conclude that this word is not ancient at all.   8 Langer, Cursing the Christians?, 50, points out that there is little obvious conceptual connection between the general usage in the rabbinic texts of shemad as referring to persecution and meshummad as referring to a person who rejects Torah observance, though it seems to me very unlikely that these two words are unconnected etymologically. My argument in this chapter is that these words were originally closely connected but the meaning of the term meshummad broadened over time until the original connected with shemad was not prevalent. Cf. n. 17, below.   9 See nn. 12 and 16, below. A related expression, “time of danger,” which appears in the tannaitic literature, is also very relevant to the scholarship on this question. As my concern is only with the semantic range of the term meshummad in the earliest strata of rabbinic literature, this expression must remain out of my scope. But see Richard Kalmin, “Rabbinic Traditions about Roman Persecutions of the Jews: A Reconsideration,” Journal of Jewish Studies 54 (2003): 21–51, at 23, and n. 6, there. 10 See t. Shabbat 15:17 (ed. Lieberman): ‫אין כל דבר עומד בפני פקוח נפש חוץ מע״ז וגלוי עריות‬ ‫ושפיכות דמים במי דברים אמורים שלא בשעת השמד אבל בשעת השמד אפי׳ מצוה קלה שבקלות אדם‬ ‫נותן נפשו עליה‬: “Nothing stands before preserving life apart from idolatry, incest, and spilling blood. In which circumstance was this said? When not in a time of persecutions. But in a time of persecutions, a person must give up his life for even the least important mitzvah.” The fact that this text is worded as a prohibition with future relevance rather than merely a report of a past event (as seems to be the case in t. Avodah Zarah 5:6, which mentions “the time of persecutions”) suggests reading “a time of persecutions” in a general sense here (and so Neusner translates ‫ בשעת השמד‬in t. Shabbat 15:17 as “a time of persecutions” and in t. Avodah Zarah 5:6 as “the persecutions [by Hadrian]”). Scholars have debated, however, the extent to which the expressions “time of shemad” and “time of danger” should be read generally as technical

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connected more broadly to any time when there is a heightened political advantage for Jews adopting the religious or cultural practice of the dominant culture.11 It would seem unlikely that the term meshummad was originally used in connection to the time of Hadrian, as scholars have argued.12 The earliest extant use of the term (in its Aramaic form) would appear to be in a short text known as the “Scroll of Fasting,” which lists semi-festive days on which fasting is prohibited. One of these semi-festive days is the 22nd of the Hebrew month of Elul. The text specifies that “on the twenty-second of [Elul], they began again to kill the meshummadim.”13 The historical reference is uncertain here, but likely events during which Jews killing Jewish opponents might feasibly be recalled as worthy occasions include the Maccabees killing Jewish Hellenists collaborating with the Seleucids in the second century B. C. E.14 and Jewish revolutionaries asserting terms referring specifically to the period of Hadrian. See Kalmin, “Rabbinic Traditions about Roman Persecutions of the Jews,” 23, and n. 6, there. 11  This connection is suggested by the text in the “Scroll of Fasting” to be discussed presently, which most scholars connect to periods of the latter rather than the former. See Vered Noam, Megillat Ta‘anit: Versions, Interpretation, History, with a Critical Edition (Jerusalem: Yad Ben-Zvi, 2003), 232. E. S. Drowser and R. Macuch, A Mandaic Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon, 1963), 469, allow “mislead” for the Mandaic verb shamad, citing a text that reads, “So that they are not misled by heretical rites.” See Moreshet, Lexicon, 370–371 n. 28. And see nn. 14–15, below. 12 See Zeitlin, “Mumar and Meshumad,” 86; and Herr, “Persecutions and Martyrdom in Hadrian’s Days,” 169, and n. 115, there. Lieberman, Tosefta ki-Fshuṭah, 3.402, writes: ‫ומובנו‬ ‫ כלשון‬,‫ ישראל ששימדו אותו‬,‫ ישראל שאנסו אותו לעבור על הדת‬,‫העיקרו הוא ישראל שעבד ע״ז באונס‬ ‫ כמו שהוא במקבילה בסנהדרין פ״ג‬,‫ לא אתכוון משמדהון (כצ״ל שם‬:‫ ל״ה ע״א‬,‫הירושלמי שביעית פ״ד ה״ב‬ ‫ ולא אתכוון אלא מיכול פיתא‬,‫ לא אתכוון משמדתון‬,'‫ ולא אחכוון אלא מיגבי ארנונין וכו‬,)‫ כ״א ע״ב‬,‫ה״ו‬ ‫ ולפני תקופות‬.‫ ועיי״ש בשנו״ס‬,‫ הריני משמד אתכם וכו׳‬,‫ ואם לאו‬:985 ‫ עמ׳‬,‫ ח׳‬,‫ וכן בב״ר פפ״ב‬.‫חמימא‬ ‫ ואח״כ כינוי זה גם למזידים ועושה‬.‫ מחללי שבת וכדומה‬,‫השמד לא היו ״משומדים״ אלא עובדי עבודה זרה‬ ‫ברצונם‬. These comments would seem to suggest a similar stance, and, thus Milikowsky, “Gehenna and ‘Sinners of Israel,’” 332–333, and n. 94, there, reads Lieberman here. However, cf. Lieberman, “redifat dat yisra’el,” 228–229, and nn. 103 and 106, there. In any case, as Milikowsky points out, if this position is correct, then all of these texts would have to be after Hadrian, which seems unlikely. Moreover, if so then the extent of the persecutions would be very relevant, on which see n. 16, below. 13 Megillat Taanit (ed. Noam): ‫בעשרין ותרין ביה תבו לקטלא משמדיא‬. Translation from Vered Noam, “Megillat Taanit – The Scroll of Fasting,” in The Literature of the Sages Second Part: Midrash and Targum, Liturgy, Poetry, Mysticism, Contracts, Inscriptions, Ancient Science and the Languages of Rabbinic Literature (ed. by Shmuel Safrai, Zeev Safrai, Joshua Schwartz, and Peter J. Tomson; Compendia Rerum Iudaicarum ad Novum Testamentum; Assen: Van Gorcum, 2006), 339–362, at 343, modified to replace “apostates” with meshummadim (the Aramaic text has ‫)משמדיא‬. 14 Noam, Megillat Ta‘anit, 232, writes that several scholars “‫קושרים את המועד בפעולות הטיהור‬ ‫שעשה שמעון החשמונאי נגד אוכלוסין הלניסטיים ונגד מתייוונים‬,” relying on verses such as 1 Maccabees 14:14, “He strengthened all the humble of his people; he sought out the law, and did away with every lawless and wicked man.” These “lawless and wicked men” (ἂνομον καὶ πονηρον) are apparently Jews who adopted Greek cultural practices. Emil Schürer, The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ (175 B. C. – A. D. 135) (revised edition; 3 vols.; ed. and trans. Geza Vermes and Fergus Millar, et al.; Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1973–1987), 1.193, cites this verse and suggests in n. 12, there, that these “lawless and wicked men” were

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their independence at the start of the revolt against Rome.15 The “Scroll of Fasting” may well date as early as the first century C. E. And this, together with the common usage of the expression meshummad in the tannaitic literature, would suggest that it is unlikely to have arisen specifically in reference to events in the second century C. E. Moreover, while the extent of prohibitions on Jewish practices during Hadrian’s reign is uncertain, it is fair to say that later rabbinic traditions regarding “the time of persecutions” grew in the telling and expanded the extent of any prohibitions that may have existed at that time. References to meshummadim and “the time of persecutions” in the tannaitic literature do not seem specific to Roman legislation regarding circumcision, the one prohibition against Jewish practices that is definitely authentically associated with this period.16

the “apostates” referred to in megillat ta‘anit. Similarly, 1 Maccabees 1:11 describes such “lawless” Jews: “In those days lawless men (παράνομοι) came forth from Israel, and misled many, saying, ‘Let us go and make a covenant with the Gentiles round about us, for since we separated from them many evils have come upon us.’” Ido Hampel, “Megillat Ta‘anit” (Ph.D. diss.; Tel Aviv University, 1976), 157, writes, “‫ שמעון כובש‬.‫יתכן מאד כי ה׳משמדיא׳ שלפנינו הם המתיוונים‬ ‫) ולזכרון‬11 ‫ ביום זה נערך כנראה הרג רב ב׳מרשיעי הברית׳ (מקב״א א׳‬.‫את החקרא ומטהר את ירושלים‬ ‫נקבע יום זה כיום טוב ב׳מגילת תענית׳‬.” The marshi‘ei ha-brit that Hampel refers to here are the “lawless men,” the παράνομοι, from 1 Maccabees 1:11. 15 Noam, Megillat Ta‘anit, 232–234, surveys the scholarship on this text. She notes that most scholars connect the text to one of these two periods. On the former possibility, see n. 14, above. On the latter possibility, Hans Lichtenstein, “Die Fastenrolle: eine Untersuchung zur jüdisch-hellenistischen Geschichte,” Hebrew Union College Annual 8/9 (1931–1932): 257–351, at 306, suggests that there was a restoration of Jewish authority to carry out the death penalty in the early days of the revolt against Rome, and this text recalls this event: “Es kann sich nur auf die Wiederherstellung der Blutgerichtsbarkeit beziehen (so, wenn auch zögernd, Dalman). Bekanntlich hatten die Prokuratoren das ius gladii. Fünf Tage nach dem Abzug der römischen Beamten ist demnach von einem jüdischen Gericht das erste Todesurteil gefällt worden, und der Erinnerung hieran ist unser Tag gewidmet.” However, Hampel, “Megillat Ta‘anit,” 157, criticizes this supposition, which does seem speculative. Josephus, Jewish War, 2.449–456, discusses the defeat of the Roman garrison in Jerusalem, which Thackeray (ed. Loeb) connects to the “Scroll of Fasting,” to the text previous to this one, which states that “On the seventeenth of [Elul], the Romans left Jerusalem” (trans. Noam; and see Vered Noam, “The Seventeenth of Elul in Megillat Ta‘anit” [Hebrew], Zion 49 [1994]: 433–444). A connection to this period, therefore, if not to a conjectured reinstating of the death penalty at that time does seem plausible. 16 Lieberman and Herr argue for extensive prohibitions. Peter Schäfer argues against this position. The ban on circumcision, however, is widely attested. Schäfer, The History of the Jews in the Greco-Roman World, 160, writes, “The historical basis of the traditions concerning persecution is probably only the ban on circumcision.” See also Goodman, State and Society, 138: “The ban on circumcision is widely attested and likely to have been a cause rather than an effect of the revolt, for even though it was almost certainly not originally aimed against Jews in particular, and by the time of Antoninus Pius effectively enforced only against smaller minorities like the Samaritans and those gentiles trying to convert to Judaism, nonetheless, the relaxation of the ban by Antoninus Pius was certainly needed, for it struck at a part of Judaism universally observed.” See also, Richard Kalmin, Jewish Babylonia between Persia and Roman Palestine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 19–37.

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If, therefore, the term meshummad was not originally connected specifically to the time of Hadrian then there is also no reason to assume that the term would have initially referred only to someone who was forced to violate the Torah’s precepts but not to someone who violated them voluntarily. Yet the association of the meshummad to political unrest generally, if not to forced conversion specifically, is indicated both by its connection to the idea of shemad and by its earliest extant use in the “Scroll of Fasting,” which would seem to be referring to such a period.17 An additional clue connecting the meshummad to political unrest may be found in the early pairing of the term meshummad with minim and informers. I argued in the second chapter that the term minim may have arisen as a pejorative reference to a revolutionary group during the early Roman hegemony over Judea. And informers are clearly some kind of collaborationist. The grouping of minim, meshummadim, and informers might be taken as indicating a typological list, all elements of which are connected to troublesome relationships with the dominant culture.18 These three are grouped together in a well-known text from t. Sanhedrin 13:5, which I mentioned already in chapter two: The minim, and the meshummadim, and the informers, and apiqorsim, and those who deny the Torah, and those who separated from community norms, and those who deny the resurrection of the dead, and everyone who sinned and caused the public to sin … gehinnom is locked before them, and they are judged there for generation after generation.19

Of course, in this case minim, meshummadim, and informers are merely the first three elements in a long list of polemical targets. However, there is reason to think that these three formed a mini-list that had its own history in rabbinic tradition-making before its inclusion in this longer list from the Tosefta. This 17 See n. 11, above. Arad’s argument, Sabbath Persecutions, 238–246, that shemad and meshummad were new coinages in the tannaitic period based on the Aramaic cognate that appears in the “Scroll of Fasting” is not far from my position, though Arad argues for a greater discontinuity in meaning and ties his argument to a discussion of texts relevant to the word hemir, which do not, in my opinion, support his claims (see n. 7, above). Arad is also not specific regarding when this coinage occurred; a dating to the time of Hadrian would still require that all of these traditions post-date this period. It is more plausible, I think, to suppose gradually shifting meanings throughout this period and a closer connection between the Aramaic and the various forms of the Hebrew. 18 Schremer, Brothers Estranged, 61, notes the importance of the grouping of these three related categories, though his concern is to prove that the minim were primarily seen as “separatists”: “This indicates that [the minim] are constructed as Jews who separated themselves from the community and collaborate with the enemy, that is, with the Romans.” 19 T. Sanhedrin 13:5 (ed. Zuckermandel): ‫אבל המינין והמשומדים והמסורות ואפיקורסין ושכפרו‬ ‫… גיהנם נינעלת‬ ‫בתורה ושפורשין מדרכי ציבור ושכפרו בתחיית המתים וכל מי שחטא והחטיא את הרבים‬ ‫בפניהם ונידונין בה לדורי דורות‬. For a comprehensive analysis of this text see Milikowsky, “Gehenna and ‘Sinners of Israel.’” For its relationship to m. Sanhedrin 10:1, see my discussion in chapter five, section one, and n. 18, there.

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likelihood is suggested by the fact that these same three elements appear independently elsewhere, and especially, in a radically different context in another tractate of the Tosefta, which I believe is a likely source for the first three elements of the longer list in t. Sanhedrin 13:5.20 Towards the end of chapter two of t. Bava Metzia, there is a discussion of who takes priority when seeking after and returning lost objects as mandated by Deuteronomy 22:1–3. If, for instance, a person’s father and his teacher had lost something, whose lost object should be sought first? At the end of this discussion, the Tosefta adds in t. Bava Metzia 2:33: Gentiles and those who shepherd and breed small cattle are not raised and are not lowered. The minim, the meshummadim, and the informers are lowered and are not raised.21

The language here is opaque. It is difficult to understand what lowering and raising mean in this context and what their relevance is to lost objects. In order to understand why I suggest this as a likely source for the longer list in t. Sanhedrin 13:5, it will be necessary to analyze this text a bit more closely. Scholars have typically translated t. Bava Metzia 2:33 as if it were discussing whether or not the various groups mentioned should be helped out of a pit if they accidentally fell in.22 According to this reading, a sage is only obligated to help Jews of a high moral standing in such a situation, but he is not obligated to help 20 The same list of three appears in Avot of Rabbi Natan and in some manuscripts of tractate Semahot, in an addition to the tractate, which is known as Baraitot mi-Evel Rabbati. Avot of Rabbi Natan 16 (ed. Schechter, version A): ‫ושנאת הבריות כיצד מלמד שלא יכוין אדם לומר אהוב את‬ ‫החכמים ושנא את התלמידים אהוב את התלמידים ושנא את עמי הארץ אלא אהוב את כולם ושנא את‬ ‫המינין ואת המשומדים ואת המסורות‬: “[‘Rabbi Yehoshua says, The evil eye, the evil inclination, and hatred of humanity, these drive a person out of the world’] – What does ‘hatred of humanity’ mean? It teaches that a person should not intend to say, ‘love the sage but hate the disciple’; ‘love the disciple but hate the commoner’; rather, love them all, but hate the minim, the meshummadim, and the informers.” Baraitot mi-Evel Rabbati 3:5 (ed. Higger): ‫כל הפורשים מדרכי צבור‬ ‫והם שעושי׳ עצמן בני חורין ממצוה וכבוד המועדות ושיבת כנסיות ומדרשות והמינין והמשומדין והמוסרין‬ ‫לא די שאין מתאבלין עליהם אלא קרוביהם ישמחו וילבשו לבנים ויאכלו בשמחה שמת שונאו של הק׳‬: “Everyone who separates from community norms – and these are those who make themselves free from mitzvot and observing the holidays and joining synagogues and houses of study, and the minim, the meshummadim, and the informers – it is not sufficient to not mourn for them; rather even their near relatives should rejoice, wear white, and feast in celebration that such as these died.” On Baraitot mi-Evel Rabbati, see Michael Higger, Treatise Semaḥot and Treatise Semaḥot of R. Ḥiyya and Sefer Ḥibbuṭ ha-Ḳeber and Additions to the Seven Minor Treatises and to Treatise Soferim II, Edited from Manuscripts with an Introduction, Notes, and Variants (Jerusalem: Makor, 1969–1970), at 72. 21 T. Bava Metzia 2:33 (ed. Lieberman): ‫הגוים והרועים בהמה דקה ומגדליה לא מעלין ולא מורידין‬ ‫המינין והמשומדין והמסורות מורידין ולא מעלין‬. 22 See Lieberman, Tosefta ki-Fshuṭah, 9.169. See also, ibid., 6.23–24; Langer, Cursing the Christians? 49; and Schremer, Brothers Estranged, 61. However, cf. Schremer, Brothers Estranged, 179 n. 64, where he acknowledges Neusner’s interpretation that I will discuss presently. Schremer’s suggestion that this text be “transferred to another location in the chapter” is not satisfying. Rather, I think that Neusner’s reading is to be preferred and the entire issue of pits is to be seen as secondary. I disagree with Schremer’s statement that the “antithesis,” ‫מורידין‬

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non-Jews or Jews that are in any sense impious. And for Jews that are especially impious, not only is there no obligation to help, but one is actually obligated to actively seek their harm and throw them into a pit should opportunity arise. The first sentence – “Gentiles and those who shepherd and raise small cattle are not raised and are not lowered” – includes non-Jews and shepherds of small cattle in the category of not being helped (small cattle such as goats were considered a nuisance because they damage property and so owning them is treated as a moral failure). The second sentence – “The minim, the meshummadim, and the informers are lowered and are not raised” – includes our mini-list of three in the category of being actively harmed. It must be acknowledged that this interpretation is very peculiar in context. What does throwing in or helping out of pits have to do with the larger discussion in tractate Bava Metzia of returning lost objects? Furthermore, the text does not actually mention pits at all. And, the Hebrew morid in the key expression, lo’ ma‘alin ve-lo moridin,23 “are not raised and are not lowered,” does not actually mean “to throw.” It means “to lower,” exactly the opposite of ma‘aleh, which means “to raise.” If we read the first part of the expression to mean “to help out of pit,” we ought to read the second part as “to help down into a pit,” which makes little sense.24 The common interpretation of this text is certainly not based on reading the Tosefta in context. Rather, it is based on how the Bavli handles these traditions in various places in tractates Avodah Zarah, Sanhedrin, and Hullin.25 But there is reason to think that the Bavli is actually reinterpreting this earlier tradition, and, in fact, the Bavli is not even consistent on its interpretation.26 Jacob Neusner’s translation of the Tosefta provides a better understanding of this tradition in its original context: Gentiles and shepherds of small cattle and those who raise them do not make a difference one way or the other [in figuring out whose lost objects to seek first]. Minim, meshummadim, and informers are regarded as subordinate and in no way can be regarded as taking priority.27

Neusner apparently reads this text as concerned with raising and lowering the priority of various groups in regard to seeking lost objects. A Jew may seek the ‫ולא מעלין‬, disables the idiomatic meaning of ‫ לא מעלין ולא מורידין‬. The former is simply a play on words, but it is to be read non-idiomatically as Neusner suggests. 23 ‫לא מעלין ולא מורידין‬. 24 The expected Hebrew verb for “to throw” is ‫השליח‬, as in m. Gittin 6:6 (ed. Vilna): ‫מי שהיה‬ ‫מושלך לבור‬: “If a person was thrown into a pit … ” 25 In b. Avodah Zarah 13b, b. Avodah Zarah 26a–b, b. Avodah Zarah 26b, b. Sanhedrin 57a, and b. Hullin 13b. 26 It is not certain that the Talmud always interprets this text in terms of pits, as I will discuss below. Many of the texts, however, are explicit in this interpretation. 27 Jacob Neusner, et al., ed. and trans., The Tosefta, Translated from the Hebrew (6 vols.; New York: Ktav, 1977–1986), 4.85, slightly modified to match the terminology that I have been employing. Neusner translates as “Minim, apostates, and renegades.”

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lost objects of gentiles and shepherds but not before seeking such objects that belong to parents, teachers, or other groups discussed previously in chapter two of Tosefta Bava Metzia. For minim, meshummadim, and informers, however, not only do they not take priority, but they are even subordinated further, maybe to not seeking their lost objects at all or to returning them in a desultory fashion should one happen to come across them. This seems like a reasonable enough understanding of the Tosefta.28 And, it is certain that the expression “are not raised and are not lowered” is an idiomatic expression in the Tosefta that typically means something like “it makes no difference one way or the other” as in Neusner’s translation. For example, t. Maaser Sheni 5:9 says that “words spoken in a dream make no difference (lit. are not raised and are not lowered)”29 and t. Demai 5:2 says that “words spoken by a gentile make no difference (lit. are not raised and are not lowered).”30 If Neusner’s reading of t. Bava Metzia 2:33 is correct, it suggests an interesting possibility for the textual development of the list of those destined for gehinnom in t. Sanhedrin 13:5. That list begins with these same three elements from t. Bava Metzia 2:33. But, rather than having them “lowered and not raised” in the sense of their priority for returning lost objects, they are lowered and not raised in a significantly more consequential fashion. They are lowered to gehinnom and not raised up from there: “minim, meshummadim, and informers … gehinnom is locked before them, and they are judged there for generation after generation.” A closer examination of this text’s contextualization in the Tosefta suggests the remarkable possibility that this similarity is no coincidence. The text immediately before t. Sanhedrin 13:5 considers various types of transgressions and their consequences according to various opinions. In t. Sanhedrin 13:3, it is said of one middling group of sinners that they “go down to gehinnom and seethe and come up from there and are healed.”31 In t. Sanhedrin 13:4, a more severe group is discussed who “go down to gehinnom and are judged there twelve months,” but they do not come up from there because they are subsequently destroyed.32 Finally, in t. Sanhedrin 13:5, in the case of the worst group: “gehinnom is locked before them, and they are judged there for generation after generation.”33 The

28 However, this reading is not without its own problems. See Schremer, Brothers Estranged, 179 n. 64. It seems very unlikely, in any case, that this Tosefta was originally discussing pits at all. 29 T. Maaser Sheni 5:9 (ed. Lieberman): ‫דברי חלומות לא מעלין ולא מורידין‬. 30 T. Demai 5:2 (ed. Lieberman): ‫דברי הגוי לא מעלין ולא מורידין‬. 31 T. Sanhedrin 13:3 (ed. Zuckermandel): ‫יורדין לגיהנם ומצטפצפין ועולין הימנה ומתרפאין‬. 32 T. Sanhedrin 13:4 (ed. Zuckermandel): ‫יורדין לגיהנם ונידונין בה שנים עשר חודש‬. The text continues: ‫ולאחר שנים עשר חודש נפשותן כלה וגופן נשרף וגיהנם פולטתו ונעשין אפר והרוח זורה אותן‬ ‫ומפזרתן תחת כפות רגלי הצדיקים שנ׳ ועשותם רשעים כי יהיו אפר תחת כפות רגלי צדיקים ליום אני עושה‬ ‫אמר י״י צבאות‬. 33 T Sanhedrin 13:5 (ed. Zuckermandel): ‫גיהנם נינעלת בפניהם ונידונין בה לדורי דורות‬.

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language of going down to or coming up from gehinnom in these texts is the same as in t. Bava Metzia, morid and ma‘aleh. It is plausible, then, that the first three elements of this list in t. Sanhedrin 13:5, minim, meshummadim, and informers, who are lowered to and are not raised up from gehinnom, were imported into this list from t. Bava Metzia, where it is also said of these three that they are lowered and not raised. In t. Bava Metzia, the meaning is rather benign: they are lowered in terms of priority for returning lost objects and not raised. A later tradition, apparently reading this raising and lowering more literally, lowered these same three sinners to gehinnom. Although this textual reconstruction is a bit speculative, it does suggest a very complex picture of the formation of this list in t. Sanhedrin 13:5. And, more importantly for our purposes, it helps to place the term meshummad into a clearer historical context. If these three elements pre-existed the Tosefta’s editing as an independent list of related categories, then this list’s original context would date to first or second century. Furthermore, as mentioned earlier, all three elements can be related typologically by their connection to polemics against Roman authorities. Minim would be Jews who were resisting the Romans too strongly, meshummadim would be Jews who were not resisting them strongly enough, and informers would be Jews with mixed loyalties. Perhaps, then, this list was put together as a collection of Jewish political opponents in the early days of Roman rule over Judea.34 The data adduced in the foregoing discussion supports the thesis that a meshummad was originally a Jew who rejected the observance of the Torah’s precepts, perhaps in a time of adversity, perhaps under duress or even voluntarily for personal advantage. And if so, then a meshummad was never only a Jew who was forced to violate the Torah’s precepts nor was a meshummad originally any Jew who voluntary chose to violate them. Its original signification encompassed a range of meanings intermediate to these two endpoints, although the latter does eventually emerge as its primary meaning as we will discuss presently. Like the minim, however, the meshummadim quickly became a more general stock polemical target in the rabbinic texts as this list and its elements where redeployed in new contexts. It is to an examination of these later developments and their implications for our understanding of the rabbinic community’s formation that we will now turn.

34 I suggested in chapter two, section two that the association of the term minim with a specific group could well date to the first decade of the first century C. E. The events associated with the earliest attested use of the term meshummad in the “Scroll of Fasting,” if they do date to the early days of the revolt, would put them around the mid-60s C. E. or earlier. See n. 15, above.

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II. Flagrant Meshummadim In all of the texts discussed in the previous section, the meshummadim, like the minim and the sinners of Israel discussed in the previous chapters, are a unified category of deviant. Over time, however, the idea of a meshummad was reimagined in such a way as to allow a shift in boundary and a conditional rehabilitation of at least some meshummadim. This shift is most clearly evident in the Babylonian Talmud, as we shall see in sections three and four. But intimations of this process are discernible already in the Palestinian Talmud. In all earlier references to meshummadim, the term is unqualified. There are no types of meshummadim and there are no boundaries that separate meshummadim one from another.35 It is in the Yerushalmi that we see the first indications of a change in meaning that enables a shift of boundary within this category. In the Yerushalmi, we encounter two qualifications for the meshummad, a “flagrant meshummad” and a “meshummad in regard to the instruction of the court.” We will examine these qualifications and their implications for rabbinic community formation in this section. The sixth chapter of tractate Eruvin discusses a courtyard that is shared between a Jew who observes the Sabbath according to rabbinic practice and a 35 Langer, Cursing the Christians?, 48–49, suggests that there are “vast variations in how serious [the] marginality” of the meshummad is already in the tannaitic literature. To prove this, she cites t. Hullin 1:1 and t. Demai 2:4. In t. Hullin 1:1, the min is presented as more severely marginal than the meshummad is. But this fact does not prove that the meshummad is not itself a severe category, and this treatment is not inconsistent with the meshummad’s treatment elsewhere in the tannaitic texts. In t. Demai 2:4, a convert who is suspected of violating one Torah precept is said to be like a meshummad. Langer reads this to say that a convert who accepted all of the Torah except one precept is like a meshummad, which I believe is a misreading (indeed, MS Erfurt of t. Demai 2:5 says just the opposite; whether it is “convert” or “gentile” here is not relevant to this point). Based on this reading, however, Langer concludes that meshummadim can be Jews who “simply sin deliberately regarding one particular commandment.” But it is clearly the convert in this text who is suspected on one precept or (perhaps) on the entire Torah. Although the text as is stands is somewhat unclear, the simplest reading is that a convert who is suspected on one precept or even on the entire Torah does not thereby become a gentile again, but rather he or she is like any other Jew. Thus, Lieberman, Tosefta ki-Fshuṭah, 1.212, reads this text and thus reads the parallel in b. Bekhorot 30b. However, even if one does not accept Lieberman’s reading, it is very difficult to argue that the Tosefta’s underlying assumption is that a meshummad is a person who violates one precept. The idea of a meshummad who violates one precept appears only in the amoraic period, and it is necessary then to indicate this innovation using qualifications such as a meshummad le-dever eḥad (pace Langer, ibid., 50, there is no evidence that this a “tannaitic category”; qualifications to the meshummad do not appear at all before the Yerushalmi, and the meshummad le-dever eḥad appears for the first time in the Bavli; see Arad, Sabbath Desecrator, xiii). As I will argue in what follows, the variation that Langer senses appears only after the earliest rabbinic strata and is evinced by various qualifications to the term meshummad that I will discuss. Absent the two texts that Langer adduces as proof from the tannaitic literature, her understanding of the term’s stratification becomes difficult to sustain, as does her suggestion of a tendency in later texts to treat the meshummadim generally as more marginal. It must be noted, however, that Langer’s main concern is the medieval period and the reception of these traditions in the birkat ha-minim.

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person who does not. At issue is whether the observant Jew can carry items from his house to the courtyard and within the courtyard on the Sabbath, activities that rabbinic tradition would forbid were the house to open directly into a public street. Whether the courtyard is considered a private domain or a public domain depends on the judicial status of those that dwell around it. The specific details involved are not especially important for our purposes. What is relevant is that various categories of non-observer are discussed, such as a Sadducee, a non-Jew, and a meshummad. Regarding the latter, the Yerushalmi specifies the following in y. Eruvin 6:2, 23b: A resident alien, a resident slave, and a flagrant meshummad are like gentiles in all rulings [connected to a shared courtyard].36

The resident alien or slave here is a non-Jew who observes a minimal subset of the Torah’s precepts and accepts the Torah’s authority as binding. The meshummad, apparently because he rejects Sabbath observance, is grouped together with these two categories, and all are treated as gentiles in regard to the shared courtyard. What is important for our purposes is the “flagrant” meshummad’s existence as a category. Flagrant here means public: a flagrant meshummad is a person who violates the Torah’s precepts in public.37 Yet if my argument in the previous section is correct, the meshummad was originally a public figure by definition! Whether the Roman authorities forced a person to transgress the Torah or a person transgressed intentionally, seeking personal benefit by allying him- or herself with Roman values, in either case it is the transgression’s public performance that served its political purpose. The fact that a special category of a flagrant transgressor needed to be invented suggests that the term meshummad without such a qualification had, at some stage in its development, started to take on 36 Y. Eruvin 6:2, 23b (ed. Venice): ‫גר תושב ועבד תושב משומד בגילוי פני׳ הרי הוא כגוי לכל דבר‬. I follow trans. Neusner in translating ‫ גר תושב‬and ‫עבד תושב‬. B. Eruvin 69a references a “flagrant sinner” and connects the idea to a flagrant meshummad. Perhaps there was some confusion about the category there because ‫( משומד וגילוי פנים‬a meshummad and a flagrant sinner) seems to be confused with ‫( משומד בגילוי פנים‬a flagrant meshummad): ‫מומר וגילוי פנים הרי זה אינו מבטל‬ ‫רשות גילוי פנים מומר הוי אלא מומר בגילוי פנים אינו יכול לבטל רשות‬: “a meshummad or a flagrant sinner is not allowed to renounce his share. But a flagrant sinner is a meshummad! Rather, a flagrant meshummad is not allowed to renounce his share” (“renounce his share,” following ed. Soncino; on mumar in censored texts, see n. 7, above, and the discussion in section one, there). Mekhilta amaleq 1 (ed. Horowitz-Rabin) contrasts ‫ גילוי פנים‬with ‫מטמוניות‬, suggesting the translation of “flagrant” in the sense of public (versus secretly or hidden for ‫)מטמוניות‬: ‫רבי‬ ‫אליעזר אומר ויבא עמלק שבא בגלוי פנים לפי שכל הביאות שבא לא בא אלא במטמוניות שנאמר אשר‬ ‫קרך בדרך וגו׳ אבל ביאה זו לא בא אלא בגילוי פנים לכך נאמר ויבא עמלק שבא בגלוי פנים‬: “Rabbi Eliezer says, ‘Then came Amalek’ – He came flagrantly: all of the other times that he came, he always came secretly, as it is written, ‘How he attacked you on the way.’ But this time he came flagrantly, as it is written ‘Then came Amalek’ – He came flagrantly.” See Saul Lieberman, Ha-yerushalmi Ki-feshuto (Jerusalem: Darom, 1935), 306. And see n. 38, below. 37 See n. 36, above.

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the more general connotation of any Jew who decides not to observe the Torah, without implying a specific social context or ideological stance.38 Unfortunately, this text is difficult to date. The Yerushalmi presents it as an unattributed dictum yet not explicitly with the standard language specifying a tannaitic tradition.39 A partial and somewhat confused parallel in b. Eruvin 69a, however, is specified as a tannaitic tradition.40 A very similar text elsewhere in the Yerushalmi, lacking only the reference to the meshummad, is more clearly treated as an early text.41 It seems most likely, therefore, that the “flagrant meshummad” in this dictum is an amoraic addition to an earlier tradition.42 As this expression appears only once in the Yerushalmi and once in the Bavli, it could date anywhere from the third to the fifth century. It is possible, but unprovable, that this new idea of a flagrant meshummad, which emphasizes the transgression’s public aspect, might be read as an adaptation to changing circumstances in third or fourth century Roman Palestine. At this time, the public performance of the Torah’s rituals was not as strong of a binding force on the entire Jewish community as it had been previously or was subsequently.43 Although no doubt Jews still considered themselves to be part of the Jewish ethnicity, the ability of 38 Arad, Sabbath Desecrator, attempts to find the implications and historical targets behind “an Israelite who profanes the Sabbath in public” (‫)ישראל המחלל את השבת בפרהסיא‬, a concept that appears as early at the Tosefta in Eruvin 5:18. He concludes, ibid., v, that its targets were Jews “like the Apostle Paul” who rejected traditional Sabbath observance and Jews “who violated the Sabbath as a formal act of apostasy, with the purpose of escaping a Roman imperial decree of taxation and/or deportation.” It may be so that the earliest strata of rabbinic texts have a clear target of this sort in mind, but I do not agree that this carries forward in the fashion that Arad suggests so that the “flagrant meshummad” in y. Eruvin 6:2, 23b is taken as a reference to this same real historical target (ibid., 31–35). My analysis suggests rather that the meshummad as a polemical target moves through rabbinic traditions and is adapted in various, often inconsistent, ways to changing circumstances. At times, it may encompass meanings shared by concepts signified in an earlier period with other terminology, and, at times, it may refer to unrelated concepts. 39 The dictum follows on an attributed saying, but the surrounding text is not structured so as to suggest that it is part of this saying, and the existence of at least partial parallels argues against this reading. See the discussion on dating and attributions in the section on style and method in the introduction to this book and in nn. 61–64, there. 40 See n. 36, above. Because the language there is confused, and it is actually the Bavli’s editors who correct the text to read “flagrant meshummad,” this text cannot prove an early dating for this expression. 41 Y. Yevamot 8:1, 8d (ed. Venice): ‫עבד תושב לעולם גר תושב הרי הוא כגוי לכל דבר‬. 42 Thus, Arad, Sabbath Desecrator, 33, understands the layering of this text. But, he attributes the dictum to Rav – because it follows on a saying in the name of Rabbi Yermiyah in the name of Rav – and interprets the “flagrant meshummad” as equivalent to one who desecrates the Sabbath publically. See n. 38, above. 43 See Schwartz, Imperialism and Jewish Society, 103–176. But cf. Stuart S. Miller’s response, “Review Essay, Roman Imperialism, Jewish Self-Definition, and Rabbinic Society: Belayche’s Iudaea-Palaestina, Schwartz’s Imperialism and Jewish Society, and Boyarin’s Border Lines Reconsidered,” AJS Review 31 (2007): 329–362. And, see Schwartz’s response to his critics in “Was There a Common Judaism after the Destruction?” in Envisioning Judaism: Studies in Honor of Peter Schäfer on the Occasion of his Seventieth Birthday (2 vols.; ed.

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the legally enforced, ritualized public observance of Torah to have a widespread influence on Jewish norms would likely have been less strong in comparison to the earlier period when the Temple still stood and in comparison to the subsequent period, which seems to have seen an increasing tendency in the construction of purpose-built public synagogues.44 Absent such conspicuous public institutionalization of the practice of Torah, more Jews would likely have been apt to wander away from its consistent day-to-day observance based wholly on their own initiative and ideological commitment. Such Jews, who might casually disregard the Sabbath in public simply because its observance was not strongly enforced by public taboos, might be characterized by a person with a stronger ideological commitment as “flagrant meshummadim” even though they would see nothing flagrant in their actions. The second innovation that emerges in the Yerushalmi is a “meshummad in regard to the instruction of a court,” as seen in y. Pesahim 7:6, 34c: Rabbi Zeira said, Regarding a person rendered impure by a genital discharge, he is treated as a meshummad in regard to the instruction of a court: as was taught in that case that a meshummad in regard to the instruction of a court has no effect [on the calculation of a majority of the community], so a person rendered impure by a genital discharge has no effect [on the calculation of a majority of the community].45

This text is discussing how to calculate a majority of the Jewish community in regard to the community purity status for the offering of the Passover sacrifice. Again, the details will not be relevant to our analysis, but the text is specifying that the type of impurity caused by genital discharge must be included in the count of ritually pure Jews. Only impurity caused by contact with a corpse is excluded. This calculation is compared in passing to another instance in which a majority of the Jewish community is required, a case in which a majority of the community sins because of a court’s erroneous ruling. In that case, a person who habitually disregards the court’s rulings is not included in the calculation of the majority because he did not sin through the court’s error but through his

Ra‘anan S. Boustan, Klaus Herrmann, Reimund Leicht, Annette Yoshiko Reed, and Guiseppe Veltri, with the collaboration of Alex Ramos; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013), 1.3–21. 44 See Lee I. Levine, “Jewish Archaeology in Late Antiquity: Art, Architecture, and Inscriptions,” in The Cambridge History of Judaism, Volume Four, 519–555, at 535–542; Schwartz, Imperialism and Jewish Society, 203–206; and Jodi Magness, “The Question of the Synagogue: The Problem of Typology,” in Judaism in Late Antiquity Part 3 Volume 4, Where We Stand: Issues and Debates in Ancient Judaism, The Special Problem of the Synagogue (ed. Alan J. Avery-Peck and Jacob Neusner; Handbook of Oriental Studies 55; Leiden: Brill, 2001), 1–48. 45 Y. Pesahim 7:6, 34c (ed. Venice): ‫אמר רבי זעורה הזב עשו אותו כמשומד בהורייה כמה דתימ׳‬ ‫תמן המשומד בהורייה אינו לא מעלה ולא מוריד אוף הכא אינו לא מעלה ולא מוריד‬. The oblique reference is apparently to the idea of one who resists the court in y. Horayot 1:5, 46a, with a similar idea in b. Horayot 2b. In the Yerushalmi, there, the expression is ‫בעט בהורייה‬. It is ‫מבעט בהוראה‬ in the Bavli.

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own initiative. What is relevant for us is how such a person is described, as a “meshummad in regard to the instruction of a court.” If we accept the attribution to Rabbi Zeira, this would place the text in Roman Palestine in the late third to early fourth century, roughly contemporaneous with my suggested reading of the “flagrant meshummad.”46 It is clear that the idea of meshummad in the Rabbi Zeira text has become indefinite. The person that this text describes need not be an apostate in any sense of the word and might well be ideologically committed to the observance of biblical precepts such as the Sabbath and purity rules. What makes a person a meshummad in this case is the habitual rejection of one specific source of authority rather than rejection of the Torah. I contend that this text reflects an important development in the term meshummad’s semantic range: the term here has a general sense of a “nonobserver” so that this text has in mind a “non-observer of a court’s instruction.” The original connotation of a rejection of the Torah broadly or collaboration with the dominant culture appears to be deemphasized. This development is significant for two reasons. First, this more general signification of a meshummad as a “non-observer” enables the rehabilitation of some types of meshummadim that we will examine in the next two sections because it suggests that a meshummad is not categorically deviant. The circumstances of the non-observance must be taken into account. In addition, I would suggest that we can detect in these Yerushalmi texts at least intimations of a rabbinic movement starting to imagine itself as a corporate collective authorized with establishing what universal Jewish practice ought to be. The Yerushalmi’s idea that a person who rejects the instruction of a court – a court at this time would not have entailed more than a few sages sitting to offer ad-hoc rulings – should be thought of as a meshummad is extraordinarily innovative. The tannaitic literature most typically describes the meshummad as rejecting explicit biblical precepts. The “meshummad in regard to the instruction of a court,” in contrast, is defined specifically by his rejection of judicial rulings. Taking this idea together with the idea of a “flagrant,” that is public, meshummad, which implies that transgressing in private might be less of a problem than transgressing in public, suggests that a rhetorical focus on the ideological acceptance of the rabbis’ rulings as binding might well be a factor in these innovations. In other words, these ideas intimate a tendency to emphasize the essential validity and jurisdiction of the rabbis’ teachings as a primary polemical concern, a polemical focus that comes out more strongly in the Bavli, as we will see in the next section.

46 See the discussion on dating and attributions in the section on style and method in the introduction to this book and in nn. 61–64, there.

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III. Meshummadim From Appetite and To Provoke Throughout the foregoing analysis, even given the Yerushalmi’s innovations, we can see that the meshummad remains for the most part a rhetorically excluded figure. The Yerushalmi’s qualifications that suggest changes in conceptualization and formative developments in the rabbinic movement do not entail any explicit inclusionary or exclusionary moves. Yet, the fact that a meshummad was already starting to be conceived in more neutral terms as a “non-observer” rather than as an implicitly deviant category facilitated a shift of boundary so that some meshummadim could be definitively rehabilitated and some definitively rejected. In this section, I will examine how this process unfolds in the various strata of the Babylonian Talmud, which introduce new qualifications between two types of meshummadim: a “meshummad [who sins] in order to satisfy his appetite” and a “meshummad [who sins] in order to provoke.” I will argue that this differentiation first emerges in Sasanian Persia in the amoraic period in regard to a number of fine judicial distinctions but its normative implications were still developing. It is the Bavli’s editors that establish the idea that a meshummad from appetite could actually be treated in an inclusionary sense, as a more or less good Jew who would prefer to observe Torah precepts but occasionally transgresses them out of craving. The meshummad to provoke, however, remains excluded. This effort to create a definitive normative shift within a single category of Jewish sinners reflects the significant historical developments in the rabbinic community’s formation that I will explain as I proceed. Although the distinction between a meshummad to provoke and a meshummad from appetite emerges in the Babylonian Talmud, the general concept of committing a transgression in order to provoke is biblical. The expression is especially characteristic of the deuteronomistic historian, and the target of the provocation is generally God. Throughout the Bible, the Jewish people or specific Jews provoke God to anger by their various misdeeds, and God typically responds by bringing misfortune. The idea of committing a transgression from appetite, in contrast, is rabbinic not biblical. It appears already in the tannaitic period, in t. Horayot 1:5, although it is not yet conceived explicitly as the opposite of transgressing to provoke. There, an early attempt to define the word meshummad includes the idea of appetite: A person who eats vermin is a meshummad; [likewise] a person who eats carcasses or carrion, vermin or worms, who eats swine’s flesh or drinks libation wine, or who desecrates the Sabbath or stretched [his foreskin]. Rabbi Yehudah says, Even one who wears wool and linen mixed. Rabbi Shimon ben Eleazar says, Even one who does anything that the soul does not have an appetite for.47 47 T. Horayot 1:5 (ed. Zuckermandel): ‫האוכל שקצים הרי זה משומד אכל נבילות וטריפות שקצים‬ ‫ורמשים האוכל בשר חזיר והשותה יין נסך והמחלל את השבת והמשוך ר׳ יוסי בר׳ יהודה אומ׳ אף הלבוש‬ ‫כלאים ר׳ שמעון בן אלעז׳ אומ׳ אף העושה דבר שאין היצר תאב לו‬. Cf. the section of b. Horayot 11a

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This text lists several transgressions, focusing primarily on practices that the Bible explicitly forbids such as eating vermin and wearing cloth made from a mixture of wool and linen. It adds as a general principle any person who commits a transgression without having a specific appetite for it, suggesting that the transgression is motivated by some other, perhaps ideological, reason. Along these lines, m. Makkot 3:15 also considers the role of appetite in transgression, though not specifically regarding a meshummad: Just as the person who abstains from eating blood, which in any case the soul has no appetite for, receives a reward, thievery and incest, for which a person’s soul has an appetite and desires, the person who abstains from them, how much more of a reward shall he receive? And also his descendants and the descendants of his descendants [shall receive a reward] until the end of all generations.48

This text considers it to be especially praiseworthy to refrain from a biblically proscribed action if it is the type of deed that people have a desire to do, such as thieving and incest. It is less praiseworthy to refrain from actions that people do not generally desire, such as eating blood. These tannaitic texts only indicate that appetite has a role in how we might think about precepts and proscriptions. But the explicit distinction between a transgression committed from appetite and one committed in order to provoke first appears in the rabbinic literature in amoraic Babylonia. The distinction is based on dicta attributed to two pairs of rabbis, Abaye and Rava and Rav Aha and Ravina, whose provenance I will discuss shortly. Both of these dicta recall disagreements that turn on the difference between the two types of meshummad. Interestingly, however, the normative implications of these sayings are opposite to one another. The disagreement between Abaye and Rava involves who is considered a valid witness, and it appears in b. Sanhedrin 27a: Regarding a meshummad who eats carcasses from appetite, all agree that he is invalid as a witness. Regarding a meshummad who eats carcasses to provoke, Abaye says that he is invalid and Rava says that he is valid. Abaye says that he is invalid because he is wicked and the Merciful One said, “You shall not join [hands] with a wicked man, to be a [malicious] witness.”49 Rava says that he is valid because only “a malicious wicked man” [is invalid and a meshummad to provoke is not malicious].50 that I will discuss in section four, below, where a version of this text appears as a tannaitic tradition. Schiffman, “At the Crossroads: Tannaitic Perspectives on the Jewish-Christian Schism,” 349 n. 169, suggests that the Tosefta version seems corrupt. See ibid., 145–146, on this Tosefta generally. 48 M. Makkot 3:15 (ed. Vilna): ‫מה אם הדם שנפשו של אדם קצה ממנו הפורש ממנו מקבל שכר גזל‬ ‫ועריות שנפשו של אדם מתאוה להן ומחמדתן הפורש מהן על אחת כמה וכמה שיזכה לו ולדורותיו ולדורות‬ ‫דורותיו עד סוף כל הדורות‬. 49 Exodus 23:1: ‫… עד‬ ‫… רשע‬ ‫אל תשת‬ … (only discontinuous words of the verse are actually cited; the full verse reads: ‫)אל תשת ידך עם רשע להית עד חמס‬. 50 B. Sanhedrin 27a (ed. Vilna): ‫מומר אוכל נבילות לתיאבון דברי הכל פסול להכעיס אביי אמר פסול‬ ‫רבא אמר כשר אביי אמר פסול דהוה ליה רשע ורחמנא אמר אל תשת רשע עד ורבא אמר כשר רשע דחמס‬

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At issue is whether a person who transgresses the Torah can be a witness in a trial, the details about which Abaye and Rava disagree. Their disagreement presumes but not does not elaborate on a distinction between transgressing because one has an appetite or desire for the forbidden thing and transgressing to provoke, that is, out of some kind of ill will or rebelliousness. The specific type of transgression cited is eating an animal that has not been properly slaughtered, though presumably the disagreement would also apply to other transgressions. Both Abaye and Rava agree that a meshummad from appetite cannot be a witness. They disagree only on a meshummad to provoke. Their disagreement is based on differing interpretations of Exodus 23:1, “You shall not join hands with a wicked man, to be a malicious witness.” The details of the dispute are somewhat obscure, but the Bavli proceeds to explain that Rava is arguing that when Exodus 23:1 specifies that a “malicious” witness be prohibited, it means to exclude only one type of person. Rava understands the Hebrew word translated here as “malicious,” ḥamas, as also implying avariciousness. Because a meshummad from appetite is greedy, he cannot be witness. But a meshummad to provoke, who is wicked but not necessarily greedy, can be a witness. Abaye focuses on the first part of the verse, “You shall not join hands with a wicked man,” which would exclude all types of meshummadim because all of them are wicked. I will return to Abaye and Rava presently, but first, let us consider the second dictum, attributed to the Rav Aha and Ravina, which appears in b. Avodah Zarah 26b and b. Horayot 11a: Rav Aha and Ravina disagree: one says that a meshummad [is a person who sins] from appetite, and a min [is a person who sins] to provoke; and one says that a meshummad also [is a person who sins] to provoke, and who is a min? An idolater.51

This text is based on a normative hierarchy according to which an idolater and a min are worse than a meshummad. One of these two rabbis, which one is uncertain, teaches that a person who sins to provoke and a person who sins from appetite are normatively comparable. The other rabbi believes that sinning to ‫בעינן‬. The text continues: ‫מיתיבי אל תשת רשע עד אל תשת חמס עד אלו גזלנין ומועלין בשבועות מאי‬ ‫לאו אחד שבועת שוא ואחד שבועת ממון לא אידי ואידי שבועת ממון ומאי שבועות שבועות דעלמא מיתיבי‬ ‫אל תשת רשע עד אל תשת חמס עד אלו גזלנין ומלוי רביות תיובתא דאביי תיובתא‬. On the appearance of the term mumar in censored texts, see n. 7, above. For a Sasanian Persian legal perspective on this text, see Yaakov Elman, “Middle Persian Culture and Babylonian Sages: Accommodation and Resistance in the Shaping of Rabbinic Legal Tradition,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Talmud and Rabbinic Literature (ed. Charlotte Elisheva Fonrobert and Martin S. Jaffee; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 165–197, at 189–190. 51 B. Horayot 11a (MS Paris 1337): ‫פליגי בה רב אחא ורבינא חד אמ׳ לתאבון הרי זה משומד‬ ‫להכעיס הרי זה מין וחד אמ׳ אפילו להכעיס נמי הרי זה משומד אלא אי זהו מין העובד ע׳ז‬. Other witnesses read similarly here, but are problematic in an earlier section of the text that references this same distinction, which I will discuss in section four of this chapter; see nn. 55 and 72, below. Censored texts vary between mumar and meshummad, and between min, Sadducee, and apiqoros. On the appearance of the term mumar in censored texts, see n. 7, above.

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provoke is a more severe transgression, and is thus equal not to a meshummad but to a min. The one who believes that both kinds of meshummad are equivalent equates the more serious transgression of the min with that of an idolater. These two sets of disagreements, between Abaye and Rava and between Aha and Ravina, are similar because they both entail disagreements that turn on an explicit differentiation between sinning from appetite and sinning to provoke, a differentiation that first appears in the rabbinic corpus in these dicta. However, the disagreements seem to be based on different normative assumptions. In the second text, a meshummad to provoke is clearly worse than a meshummad from appetite. In the first text, it is the meshummad from appetite who is in some sense worse, at least to the extent of being considered less trustworthy, than a person who sins to provoke because according to Rava only the latter can give testimony in court while the former cannot. In addition, the first text explicitly considers both of these sinners to be meshummadim, whereas the second text is defining which of these two should be considered a meshummad and which should be put into another, more severe, category. The dating of these two sets of sayings depends on how reliable the attributions are. Abaye and Rava were active in fourth century Sasanian Persia and Rav Aha and Ravina more than a century later in the same region. The Bavli treats both of these texts as amoraic dicta, as sayings preserved from an earlier period that the editorial layer of the Talmud is now commenting on. The former is presented in Hebrew and is followed by commentary in Aramaic, which in some cases suggests the preservation of earlier dicta.52 In addition, the disagreement between Abaye and Rava is one of a series of six disagreements between them that are treated as a standard pre-existing set of case rulings in several places in the Talmud, which might also support an earlier dating.53 Moreover, another judicial dictum based on the idea of a meshummad from appetite appears elsewhere in the Talmud in name of Rava alone.54 The disagreement between Rav Aha and Ravina appears in two different places in the Talmud though perhaps

52 This anonymous layer of the Bavli is traditionally known as the stam of the Talmud. See Friedman, “A Critical Study of Yevamot X with a Methodological Introduction”; and see the discussion and bibliography in the section on style and method in the introduction and in nn. 61–64, there. 53 These are a set of cases where the ruling is supposed to be according to Abaye’s opinion. It is referred to by the acronym ‫יע״ל קג״ם‬. See Rashi on this text in b. Sanhedrin 27a and also on b. Qiddushin 52a s. v. ‫יע״ל קג״ם‬. 54 In b. Hullin 3a, allowing slaughtering for a meshummad from appetite in certain circumstances: ‫אמר רבא ישראל משומד אוכל נבילות לתיאבון בודק סכין ונותן לו ומותר לאכול משחיטתו‬. Note that here Rava is allowing such a person to slaughter, so if the implication is that a meshummad to provoke would not be allowed then this implies the opposite normative hierarchy than the one just discussed. The text there does not make this distinction explicit, however, so it is hard to be certain of Rava’s intent.

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less clearly treated as fixed dicta.55 I believe that both of these sayings can safely be considered to reflect the state of the categories of meshummadim throughout the fourth and fifth centuries in Sasanian Persia, the former as early as the fourth century and the latter as late as the end of the fifth century. But this suggests a set of categories emerging and in flux over this period. By this time, as we discussed in the previous section, meshummad could have a general sense of “non-observer,” that is, any Jew who rejects observation of the Torah’s precepts. This non-observance could be qualified according to whether it was flagrant or limited to judicial rulings. In these Bavli texts, a new distinction has been introduced. There are now two kinds of meshummadim or two types of sinners that might potentially be considered meshummadim. It would seem that the exact normative relationship between these two types was still being worked out in these two sets of dicta, though their most likely temporal relationship might suggest a trend towards normalizing the meshummad from appetite. It is in the editorial layer of the Babylonian Talmud, in its attempt to apply the argument between Rav Aha and Ravina to another case (most scholars agree that this layer post-dates even this last generation of named amoraim56), that a decisive normative distinction between two types of meshummadim emerges. And this will be the distinction that survives most prominently into the post-rabbinic period. B. Avodah Zarah 26a–b says: Rabbi Abbahu repeated the following tannaitic tradition before Rabbi Yohanan: idolaters and shepherds of small cattle are not raised and are not lowered, but minim, informers, and meshummadim are lowered and are not raised. [Rabbi Yohanan] said to him, “I interpret ‘so you shall do with any lost thing of your brother’s (Deuteronomy 22:3)’ to include the meshummad, yet you said that they are lowered.” [Rabbi Abbahu replied,] “Remove the meshummad from [my list].” Yet he could have replied, “[Your case] concerns a meshummad who eats carcasses from appetite and [my case] concerns a meshummad who eats carcasses to provoke.” However, he was of the opinion that one who eats carcasses to provoke is a min.57 55 The distinction attributed to Rav Aha and Ravina is associated with an earlier sage, Rabbah bar bar Hanah, in ed. Vilna and MS Munich 95 of b. Horayot 11a, though the text there is problematic and the attribution is unsupported by three other important early witnesses. See the discussion in the next section where I cite the fuller context of this text and in n. 72, there. It cannot be completely ruled out that Aha’s and Ravina’s distinction emerged earlier but it is very unlikely. 56 See Friedman, “A Critical Study of Yevamot X with a Methodological Introduction,” in its English introduction, “The anonymous framework of most (if not all) Talmudic passages is of later provenance than the Amoraitic statements imbedded therein.” See also Rubenstein, Talmudic Stories, 16; Kalmin, “The Formation and Character of the Babylonian Talmud,” 840; and the fuller discussion of the stam and relevant scholarship in the section on style and method in the introduction to this book and in nn. 61–64, there. 57 B. Avodah Zarah 26a–b (ed. Vilna): ‫תני רבי אבהו קמיה דר׳ יוחנן העובדי כוכבים ורועי בהמה‬ ‫דקה לא מעלין ולא מורידין אבל המינין והמסורות והמומרים היו מורידין ולא מעלין א״ל אני שונה לכל אבידת‬ ‫אחיך לרבות את המומר ואת אמרת היו מורידין סמי מכאן מומר ולישני ליה כאן במומר אוכל נבילות‬

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This text comments on the Tosefta tradition that discusses minim, meshummadim, and informers that we discussed in the first section of this chapter. As explained there, the tradition from the Tosefta would seem in its original context to be concerned with a hierarchy of priority for returning lost objects, though the Bavli later interprets it in terms of helping people out of pits or aggressively throwing them in. Scholars have also read this text in the Bavli as being concerned with pits, and, to be sure, the Bavli’s editors do explain the Tosefta tradition in this way a bit further down on the same page.58 However, there is nothing that I can see indicating this reading here. Rather, we can understand that Rabbi Abbahu was reciting in Rabbi Yohanan’s presence the tradition that non-Jews and herdsmen of small cattle are considered sufficiently impious that returning their lost objects should have a relatively low priority.59 For more serious categories of impiety, such as minim, meshummadim, and informers, there is no specific requirement to return their lost objects at all. Rabbi Yohanan objects based on a tannaitic tradition that he had heard, which includes meshummadim under the explicit biblical injunction from Deuteronomy 22:3 to return lost objects to one’s “brother,” that is, a fellow Israelite. According to Yohanan, meshummadim count as one’s brothers and so they should be removed from the list.60 It is the Bavli’s editors in the continuation of the text (following the words, “Yet he could have replied…”) that attempt to harmonize these positions by suggesting that the meshummad in Rabbi Abbahu’s tradition is a meshummad to provoke. It is only this more severe type of transgression that is part of the more severe category. The less severe meshummad from appetite is still considered “one’s brother.” This is an innovation of these sixth century ‫לתיאבון כאן במומר אוכל נבילות להכעיס קסבר אוכל נבילות להכעיס מין הוא‬. On the appearance of the term mumar in censored texts, see n. 7, above. 58 See Boyarin, Border Lines, 197–200, and Schremer, Brothers Estranged, 140. 59 Relevant texts include b. Avodah Zarah 13b, b. Avodah Zarah 26a–b, b. Avodah Zarah 26b, b. Sanhedrin 57a, and b. Hullin 13b. The rabbis apparently considered herding of small cattle, such as goats, to be a moral failing because these kinds of animals are liable to damage personal property. 60 Cf. the opinion regarding a meshummad attributed to Rabbi Yitzhak in Mekhilta kaspa 20 (ed. Horowitz-Rabin), which comments on Exodus 23:4 (“If you meet your enemy’s ox or his ass going astray, you shall bring it back to him”): ‫שור אויבך זהו גוי עובד אלילים דברי רבי יאשיה‬ ‫וכן מצינו שעובדי אלילים קרויים אויבים לישראל בכל מקום שנאמר כי תצא מחנה על אויביך כי תצא‬ ‫למלחמה על אויביך רבי אליעזר אומר בגר שחזר לסורו הכתוב מדבר רבי יצחק אומר בישראל משומד‬ ‫הכתוב מדבר ר׳ נתן אומר בישראל עצמו הכתוב מדבר אלא מה תלמוד לומר אויבך אלא אם הכה את בנך‬ ‫או שעשה עמך מריבה נעשה אויב לשעה‬: “‘Your enemy’s ox’ – This is a non-Jewish idolater, the words of Rabbi Josiah, and so you find that idolaters are called enemies of Israel in many places [in scripture], as it is said, ‘When you go forth against your enemies and are in camp’; ‘When you go forth to war against your enemies.’ Rabbi Eliezer says, The verse is speaking of a convert that returned to his former life. Rabbi Yitzhak says, The verse is speaking of a Jewish meshummad. Rabbi Natan says, The verse is speaking of a Jew; and why does it say “your enemy”? Because if he struck your son or had an argument with you, he becomes your enemy for a while.”

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editors, reading a later idea back into the opinions of Yohanan and Abbahu, who were active in the third century.61 Here we see a fully emerged normative distinction between two types of meshummadim. A meshummad to provoke is an impious figure, excluded from the pious community on whom the rabbis’ teachings are incumbent, no longer a brother to the rabbis. A meshummad from appetite is still the rabbis’ brother, if perhaps a wayward brother, and so is included in the family of the pious. Thus, the Bavli’s editors turn around an uncertain distinction from an earlier period based on subsequent precedent and give it ideologically and judicially binding implications. A meshummad is still considered one’s brother and one is obligated to help him, but only if his transgression derives from appetite. Not so a meshummad to provoke. I suggest that this innovation serves a significant rhetorical function in the developing rabbinic self-conception. Although it shifts the borders of those rhetorically included within the rabbinic community’s larger jurisdiction to include a severe category of transgressor that earlier texts tended to treat in an exclusionary fashion, this inclusion is predicated on an aspiration to rabbinic ideals. At the same time, the line over which one must cross to be rhetorically excluded from the community of pious Jews is shifted from observing the practical precepts and proscriptions of the Torah as such, to accepting their essential validity and jurisdiction conceptually. The meshummad to provoke is not excluded because he fails to observe the Torah (which is also true of a meshummad from appetite) but because he fails to acknowledge it. Moreover, as I will argue in the next section, by defining the meshummad to provoke as a Jew who rejects the Torah’s validity, the Bavli suggests that this meshummad’s opponent is not God as in the biblical idiom but the Torah itself. And for the rabbis, the idea of Torah encompasses the entire corpus of their teachings so that rejecting rejecting the Torah is equated with rejecting rabbinic teachings. But because the rabbis’ central purpose as a collective was to be proponents of Torah, an opponent of rabbinic teachings is easily made out to be an opponent of the rabbis themselves. Both the pious meshummad’s role model and the impious meshummad’s opponent is, in this manner, set up as the rabbis themselves inseparably from their teachings, which has the rhetorical effect of drawing a sharper boundary around the developing rabbinic collective as a community and extending the boundaries of their teachings over the broader community of Jews outside of their collective. 61 Although the Bavli’s editors both propose and respond to their own harmonization, the two possibilities that remain in the final text are functionally equivalent. Either the meshummad remains in Abbahu’s list but only means a meshummad to provoke, or the meshummad is omitted from the list but only means a meshummad from appetite. In either case, the meshummad from appetite gets to have his lost items returned and the meshummad to provoke (or min) does not. I should also note that although Yohanan’s opinion is by itself inclusionary, it is the conditional shift in boundary between inclusion and exclusion that I am analyzing in this chapter.

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IV. Provoking the Torah and the Rabbis As discussed at the start of the previous section, two texts from the tannaitic period anticipate the meshummad from appetite as a concept, though they do not use the phrase itself. It is the meshummad to provoke and the distinction between two types of meshummadim that is the critical innovation of the later texts. In this section, we will further examine the meshummad to provoke and how the Babylonian Talmud’s later strata contextualize this idea. I will demonstrate that this expression’s usage suggests an additional reconceptualization that further supports my analysis of the shift discussed in the previous sections. As a verb, the Hebrew word for “anger,” ka‘as, appears in the Bible some 53 times, starting in the book of Deuteronomy, mostly in the causative sense of “to cause someone to get angry,” “to provoke.”62 It is usually a transitive verb with the direct object specified, and in most cases that direct object is God. Typically, the Jewish people or specific Jews provoke God to anger by their sins. For example, in Deuteronomy 4:25, Moses warns the Israelites about the potential consequences of future misdeeds: When you beget children and children’s children, and have grown old in the land, if you act corruptly by making a graven image in the form of anything, and by doing what is evil in the sight of the Lord your God, so as to provoke him to anger.

The intransitive use of this expression – just “to provoke” with no specification of who is being provoked – first appears in the book of Kings, in connection to the sinful kings of Judah in the time of the First Temple, around the eighth and seventh centuries B. C. E. Thus, 2 Kings 21:6 accuses Manasseh of wickedness: And he burned his son as an offering, and practiced soothsaying and augury, and dealt with mediums and with wizards. He did much evil in the sight of the Lord, provoking him to anger.

The final phrase of this verse in Hebrew does not actually say “provoking him to anger.” It merely says, “He did much evil in the sight of the Lord, provoking,” la-‘asot ha-ra‘ be-‘einei yhvh le-hakh‘is. Here and in 2 Kings 23:19, the infinitive le-hakh‘is, “to provoke,” appears with no direct object, but the context makes

62 See Kari Latvus, God, Anger, and Ideology: The Anger of God in Joshua and Judges in Relation to Deuteronomy and the Priestly Writings (Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series 279; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998), 25 n. 43. Most of the scholarly studies on this theme are from a theological perspective; see Dennis J. McCarthy, “The Wrath of Yahweh and the Structural Unity of the Deuteronomistic History” in Essays in Old Testament Ethics (J. Philip Hyatt, In Memoriam) (ed. James L. Crenshaw and John T. Willis; New York: Ktav, 1974), 97–110; and Samantha Joo, Provocation and Punishment: The Anger of God in the Book of Jeremiah and Deuteronomistic Theology (Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 361; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2006).

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it clear that its implied direct object is God.63 These kings are said to be doing wicked deeds intentionally, in order to provoke God. The rabbinic literature continues to use this idiomatic expression, “to provoke” with no direct object, and, as in the Bible, in most cases it is clear from context that the direct object is God. For example, Mekhilta ba-ḥodesh 1 comments on Exodus 2:25, “And God saw the people of Israel, and God knew their condition”: Rabbi Eleazar the son of Rabbi Yossi says in the name of Abba Yossi the son of Dormasqit,64 Scripture says, “And God saw the people of Israel” – that in the future they would provoke (she-hem ‘atidin le-hakh‘is).65

Rabbi Eleazar interprets the verse from Exodus, which refers to God seeing the Israelite slaves’ miserable condition in Egypt, as if it were prophesying a future time during which the Jews would provoke God by their transgressions. As in the verse just cited from 2 Kings, the expression “to provoke” appears here with no direct object, but the context makes clear that the object is God. Only in the case of the “meshummad to provoke” does this infinitive expression appear in the Talmud with no direct object yet without mentioning God or a biblical verse to establish who, exactly, is being provoked. I would argue that this unprecedented usage reflects the same rhetorical aims that we have been discussing. In these later strata of the Bavli, the use of “to provoke” intransitively has strong resonances of a shift in implication from the biblical sense of “to provoke God” to a new sense of “to provoke the Torah,” implying a conceptual rejection of the Torah’s authority. So the well-known mid-20th century translation of the entire Babylonian Talmud edited by Isidore Epstein, known as the Soncino Talmud, translates the expression, “in defiance of the [Torah],” or, “if his purpose is provocative,” noting, “i. e., to defy, and show his contempt for, the [Torah].”66 And, implicitly, provoking the Torah entails provoking those teachers of Torah whose highest aim was to be its very embodiment. In this way, there are intimations in the expression “to provoke,” at least to some extent, of offering a provocation to the rabbis by rejecting their role as interpreters of the practice of Torah. At least one modern reader, the contemporary Israeli rabbi Shlomo Aviner, in his traditionalist commentary to Mishnah Avot, spells this out explicitly, by defining a meshummad to provoke as “one who eats food that is not fit intentionally, to provoke the rabbis.”67 63 Cf.

1 Kings 21:22 and Hosea 12:14. ‫דורמסקית‬, “of Damascus,” according to Jastrow, Dictionary. 65 Mekhilta ba-ḥodesh 1 (ed. Horowitz-Rabin): ‫ר׳ אלעזר ב״ר יוסי אומר משום אבא יוסי בן‬ ‫דורמסקית הרי הוא אומר וירא אלהים את בני ישראל שהם עתידין להכעיס‬. 66 Ed. Soncino, b. Horayot 11a and b. Sanhedrin 27a, respectively, slightly modified. The Soncino translation has “the law,” by which, of course, the Torah is meant. 67 Shlomo Chaim Aviner, Pirkqei ’Avot: Peirush (2 vols.; Beit El: Sifriyat Havah, 2007), 2.26: ‫ להכעיס את הרבנים‬,‫– אוכל דווקא לא כשרות‬ ‫מומר להכעיס‬. On the term mumar, see n. 7, above. 64 Heb.

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The Bavli’s editors themselves at times seem to encourage this kind of impression. We began our analysis in the previous section with a text from the Tosefta, t. Horayot 1:5, which lists various types of transgressions that make a person into a meshummad. A very similar text appears in the Babylonian Talmud, in b. Horayot 11a (preceding the section of text from the same page in b. Horayot discussed earlier). The Bavli presents this text as a tannaitic tradition, which the Bavli’s editors then analyze:68 The rabbis have taught, A person who eats forbidden fat is a meshummad. …69 [Also,] a person who eats carcasses or carrion, vermin or worms, or who drinks libation wine. Rabbi Yossi the son of Rabbi Yehudah says,70 Even a person who wears wool and linen mixed. …71 On what [practical matter] do [Rabbi Yossi and the first opinion] disagree? They disagree in a case of a type of wool and linen mixture that is forbidden only by the rabbis. The first opinion states that regarding biblical proscriptions he is culpable but regarding rabbinical proscriptions he is not culpable. And the second opinion states that because the prohibition against mixing wool and linen is so well known it is treated as if it is a biblical proscription.72

The Bavli’s editors are endeavoring to explain the relationship of the first part of the tradition that is attributed to “the rabbis” generally to the second part that is attributed to the late-second century Rabbi Yossi. The first part lists several transgressions that make a person into a meshummad, and the second part adds the 68 This is typical of the Bavli, both that it presents traditions that appear in variant versions in the Tosefta and that it analyzes earlier traditions looking for disagreements and contradictions. The Bavli’s distinct editorial voice, traditionally referred to as the stam, is clear in this text in its logical structure, in its use of expressions such as “the master said,” and in the usage of Hebrew and Aramaic. See the discussion on dating and attributions in the section on style and method in the introduction to this book and in nn. 61–64, there. 69 I omit what is not relevant to my argument, as I will explain. See n. 72, below, for the full text. 70 Manuscripts vary between Yehudah and Yossi the son of Yehudah. The Tosefta has Yossi. 71 I omit what is not relevant to my argument, as I will explain. See n. 72, below, for the full text. 72 B. Horayot 11a (MS Paris 1337). MS Munich 95 and ed. Vilna would seem to be corrupted here with extraneous and problematic insertions: the former inserts a ‫ מאי ביניהו‬before the ‫אמר מר‬, and both insert an attribution between ‫ מאי קאמר‬and ‫( הכי קאמר‬see n. 55, above). The Paris text is unproblematic, and it is supported by two genizah fragments (Modena – Archivio Storico Comunale 26.1 and Bologna – Archivio di Stato Fr. ebr. 143.2; in the latter, the relevant section falls within a lacuna, but there is insufficient space for the insertion). I cite here the full text but only translate what is immediately relevant to the subsequent discussion (see n. 74, below, on the omitted sections): ‫ת׳ר אכל חלב הרי זה משומד אי זהו משומד אוכל נבלו׳ וטרפות‬ ‫ ר׳ יוסי בר׳ יהודה אומר] אף הלובש כלאים אמ׳ מר‬:‫שקצים ורמשים ושותה יין נסך ר׳ יהודה אומ׳ [תוספתא‬ ‫אכל חלב הרי זה משומד ואי זהו משומד מאי קאמ׳ הכי קאמ׳ אכל חלב לתאבון הר?י? זה משומד להכעיס‬ ‫הרי זה מין ואי זהו משומד דבסתמיה הוי מין אכל נבלות וטרפו׳ שקצים ורמשים והשותה יין נסך ר׳ יוסי בר׳‬ ‫יהודה אומ׳ הלובש כלאים מאי ביניהו איכא ביניהו כלאים דרבנן מר סבר אד אוריתא הוא דמיחייב אדרבנן‬ ‫לא מיחייב ומר סבר שאני כלאים כיון דמיפרסמא מילתא כדאוריתא דמי פליגי בה רב אחא ורבינא חד אמ׳‬ ‫לתאבון הרי זה משומד להכעיס הרי זה מין וחד אמ׳ אפילו להכעיס נמי הרי זה משומד אלא אי זהו מין העובד‬ ‫ע׳ז מיתיבי אכל פרעוש אחד או יתוש אחד הרי זה משומד והא הכא דלהכעיס הוא וקא קרי ליה משומד‬ ‫התם נמי קא בעי למיטעם טעמא דאיסורא‬.

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prohibition against wearing wool and linen mixed. As is typical for the Bavli’s editors, they read these two parts of the tradition as if they reflect a disagreement among early sages, even though there is nothing in the tradition that explicitly indicates a disagreement. Just the opposite, it would also be natural to read the second part of the text as simply adding an additional element to the list that appears in the first part. According to the Bavli’s editors, however, the first opinion states in effect that only a person who does something clearly forbidden by explicit biblical precept should be considered a meshummad (the omitted sections nuance this a bit, as I will explain). Rabbi Yossi appears at first glance to just add another biblical precept, wearing wool and linen together, which the Bible also clearly forbids (e. g. Deuteronomy 22:11, “You shall not wear a mingled stuff, wool and linen together”). But the Bavli’s editors explain that Yossi was not referring to the biblical precept, for the first opinion would agree that a person who wears wool and linen together in a way that the Bible prohibits is a meshummad; Rabbi Yossi was referring to one who wears wool and linen together in a way that the Bible permits but rabbinic tradition forbids in an additional stricture, such as wearing wool and linen that is not woven together but felted together.73 Such a person would be called a meshummad according to the second opinion but not according to the first opinion. This complex logical structure is deliberately crafted because, in fact, the Bible does not make these distinctions at all. It is rabbinic tradition that read the Bible and explained: 1. that the Bible intended to prohibit only woven wool and linen but not felted wool and linen; 2. that, even so, felted wool and linen should in fact be prohibited just to be safe; and 3. that the latter prohibition, even though equally binding, is only rabbinic and not biblical. These three interpretations were not developed one after another based on incremental analysis and adaptation to circumstance, rather they all came about at the same time mutually implicated and mutually dependent on one another. In other words, the limits placed on the biblical precept are predicated on its expansion based on rabbinic precept rather than preceded by it. This kind of intricate logical structure for interpreting the Bible and determining gradations of ritual practice is very typical of rabbinic judicial reasoning. For our purposes, what is important is that, according to the Bavli’s editors, even a person who wears a type of mixed wool and linen that it permitted by the Bible and is only prohibited by rabbinical decree can be called a meshummad because the prohibition is said to be well known. Although, I omitted for simplicity 73 In b. Niddah 61b, the rabbis interpret the word from Deuteronomy 22:11, ‫שעטנז‬, “mingled stuff,” as indicating that the prohibition is only on wool and linen that has been carded, spun, and woven together. Only doing one of these three, for example carding and pressing wool and linen together to make felt, is prohibited only by the rabbis. See Rashi on b. Niddah 61b and here on b. Horayot 11a.

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a section of the text where the Bavli discusses the distinction between a meshummad from appetite and a meshummad to provoke (the precursor to the argument between Rav Aha and Ravina already discussed), the context suggests that this meshummad who wears a rabbinically prohibited wool and linen mixture also includes a meshummad to provoke.74 Yet the Bavli’s editors are certainly not claiming that an ordinary sixth century Jew in Sasanian Persia who transgressed the intricate details of the rabbinic interpretations of a Torah precept would be doing it willfully and intentionally to provoke God in the way that the biblical King Manasseh provoked God by burning his son as an offering in 2 Kings 21:6. Rather, I would suggest that there is an impression here that because the rabbis and their teachings are being challenged ideologically, the rabbis and their teachings are the object of this provocation. In this way, by inscribing sharper ideological boundaries between themselves and their opponents through a subtle shift in implication of a biblical idiom, the developing rabbinic community is able to draw sharper lines both around their opponents and around themselves. This reading strengthens my overall analysis of the distinction between a meshummad from appetite and a meshummad to provoke from the previous section, and it therefore strengthens my overall contention in this chapter. I am arguing in this chapter that the meshummad’s diachronic redeployment as a stock rhetorical opponent throughout the corpus of rabbinic literature reveals an incremental evolution that accomplishes a subtle shift in boundaries. This shift creates two categories, one of which reflects a polemically exclusionary strategy and one of which reflects an inclusionary strategy. The former sets up the terms of exclusion so that the rabbis themselves as a well-formed collective become the explicit opponent of the excluded group. The latter sets up the terms of inclusion so that acknowledging the fundamental legitimacy of the rabbis’ teachings becomes the standard of acceptability. This shift taken as a whole reflects the rabbinic movement’s gradually developing sense of itself as a collective tasked with establishing a set of universal teachings whose jurisdiction extends implicitly and by necessity over all Jews.

74 The omitted sections analyze an apparently unnecessary repetition in the tannaitic tradition’s language to argue that a person who eats forbidden fat from appetite is a meshummad, and a person who eats forbidden fat to provoke is a min. A person who eats carcasses or carrion, vermin or worms, or who drinks libation wine, is considered by default to be doing so to provoke. The discussion of rabbinically forbidden mixed wool and linen immediately follows and so is easily read as falling under the category of being done by default to provoke or, at least, allowing for the likelihood of it being done for this reason. Rav Aha and Ravina’s argument then follows and therefore encompasses all of the discussed categories, including rabbinically forbidden mixed wool and linen.

Chapter 5

Apiqorsim Who Disrespect the Rabbis Along with the minim, meshummadim, and sinners that we have considered in the previous chapters, the apiqorsim (sg. apiqoros, pl. apiqorsim) are among the most well-known of rabbinic opponents. They appear in the rabbinic literature from the earliest to the latest texts. And, “learn what to answer an apiqoros,” a saying attributed to the first century Rabbi Eleazar in tractate Avot of the Mishnah, might be thought of as a programmatic statement of early rabbinic polemics against ideological deviants.1 Scholars have tried for generations to connect these rabbinic apiqorsim to the Hellenistic philosophy, Epicureanism, one of the schools of classical Greek philosophy, named after the semi-legendary Epicurus who taught in Athens in the fourth and third centuries B. C. E.2 However, while it is certain that the Hebrew word apiqoros originally derived from the Greek, it must be acknowledged that there is nothing in any of the apiqorsim traditions in the classical rabbinic corpus that explicitly references that school’s philosophical worldview. For this reason, I will leave the term untranslated in what follows instead of following the convention to translate it as “Epicurean.” For, as will become clear, the Jewish apiqoros in the rabbinic literature, whatever he was, was certainly not an adherent of Greek philosophy. Rather, in this chapter I  will argue that the apiqoros in rabbinic traditionmaking often functioned as a fundamentally empty category in that it was almost entirely unburdened of concrete historical associations. Yet for this same reason, a study of this category will be an especially interesting laboratory for examining how polemics against outsiders were instrumental to the formation of a unified 1 See

n. 6, below, for the full text from m. Avot 2:14. Saul Lieberman, “How Much Greek in Jewish Palestine?” in Texts and Studies (New York: Ktav, 1974), 216–234; and Jenny R. Labendz, “‘Know What to Answer the Epicurean’: A Diachronic Study of the ’Apiqoros in Rabbinic Literature,” Hebrew Union College Annual 74 (2003): 175–214. See, also, n. 7, below; Joseph Geiger, “To the History of the Term Apikoros” [Hebrew], Tarbiz 42 (1973): 499–500; and Milikowsky, “Gehenna and ‘Sinners of Israel,’” 335 n. 102. Labendz, “Know What to Answer the Epicurean,” 175, writes, “When tannaim refer to the ’apiqoros there is little doubt that they have in mind followers of the ancient philosophical school of Epicureanism, flourishing at that time in Palestine and elsewhere” (and see n. 1, there). As will become clear, I would disagree with this assertion because nothing in the few relevant tannaitic texts makes this explicit; see the discussion that follows and n. 14, below. I agree, of course, that the Hebrew word is connected to the Greek, but this is not the same as arguing that tannaitic texts have real Epicureans in mind. Even so, however, my approach in this chapter benefits from Labendz’s influential article. 2 See

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rabbinic self-conception. Because there never were any real apiqorsim against whom the rabbis where struggling, the imagining and reimagining of this empty category tells us little about the rabbis’ real opponents. But it does tell us how the rabbinic community was imagining itself as a collective. I will suggest that early remnants of rabbinic Epicurean traditions might be connected to disputations against the Sadducees in the Second Temple period, but, in the earliest rabbinic texts, the apiqoros emerges as a vague and de-historicized ideological deviant. By the amoraic period, the category started to function first as a stock opponent against sages or scribes and by the late amoraic period as a stock opponent defined explicitly as one who disrespects the rabbis as a community. In other words, from an early period where apiqorsim were targeted as deviants guilty of faulty ideology generically, in the later texts their deviance is defined explicitly and entirely as disrespecting the rabbis as a collective. The redeployment of the apiqoros in the rabbinic literature, therefore, follows the contours of the meshummad to provoke discussed in the previous chapter, where the definition of an opponent actual serves to reify the rabbis’ own sense of themselves as a group. Moreover, as in the case of the meshummadim, the rabbis also seem to shift a boundary between themselves and the apiqorsim by in effect moving them outside of the purview of the rabbis’ teachings. In the case of the meshummad, a shift in rhetorical boundary is accomplished by dividing the category itself. In the case of the apiqoros, the shift is accomplished by discouraging rabbis from discourse with apiqorsim at all. Where Mishnah Avot encourages the rabbis to engage in disputation and to “learn what to answer an apiqoros,” I will suggest that the Bavli’s editors at times exhort its community to avoid such disputation and to focus instead on the practical business of being a rabbi. I believe that this shift reflects the structure and aims of a more firmly established and institutionalized rabbinic community in the late rabbinic period, where furthering the purview of rabbinic institutions was becoming a primary concern and divisive ideological arguments between rabbinic and non-rabbinic elites were a less pressing matter.

I. Epicureans, Sadducees, and Divine Providence One of the most important scholars of the Talmud from a previous generation, Saul Lieberman, argued that the rabbis likely knew little of Greek philosophy beyond “current general phrases.”3 He suggests as such a popular summary of 3 Lieberman, “How Much Greek in Jewish Palestine?”, 223. Wolfson, Philo, 1.92–93, writes, “In the entire Greek vocabulary that is embodied in the Midrash, Mishnah, and Talmud there is not a single technical philosophic term. Moreover, of those Greek terms embodied in them, which in Greek literature have a philosophic meaning in addition to their popular meaning,

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Epicurean philosophy, the Greek ton kosmon automaton einai, “the universe is an automaton.”4 Lieberman writes, “The Epicurean doctrine that the gods care about nothing and nobody, thereby denying reward and punishment for men’s actions, was regarded by the Rabbis as worse than atheism.”5 Because in this work I am supposing that the developing rabbinic movement was, especially in its early stages, marked more by diversity than by uniformity, I will refrain from generalizations about the extent to which the rabbis collectively knew about various aspects of Greek philosophy. Yet some of the tradents of the traditions that made their way into the tannaitic collections in the third century may well have taken the time to familiarize themselves with such matters, although others may well not have. Whatever knowledge may have existed in this regard, however, none of it is explicitly referenced by the term apiqoros in the early rabbinic traditions. Whatever signification this term had for these early sages, there is no reason to think based on tannaitic usage alone that it was associated with real Hellenistic Epicureans at all. Perhaps Hebrew speakers who needed to refer to actual Epicureans would resort to the Greek, but the Hebrew word derived from the Greek does not have these associations in any of the extant rabbinic texts. Therefore, although I do not think that the rabbis’ use of the term apiqoros was a direct reference to the Epicureans’ rejection of divine providence as Lieberman suggests, I do think that Lieberman’s insight may be the key to understanding how the term became part of our motley collection of stock rabbinic opponents. In this section, I will suggest that the term apiqoros may have entered rabbinic tradition-making as a pejorative reference to the historical Sadducees, who, although not followers of Epicurus, did reject divine providence. But this connection would have dated to centuries before the editing of the Mishnah and so its significance seems over time to have become deemphasized in the sources. By the early third century, the apiqoros as a stock figure in repeated traditions had no real historical context and little implicit meaning and so it became a convenient straw man for rabbinic boundary rhetoric. The apiqoros appears in only two places in the Mishnah. One, the text in m. Avot 2:14 just mentioned, encourages sages to debate with apiqorsim, “Rabbi Eleazar says, Be diligent to learn what to answer an apiqoros, and know before

none is used in its philosophic meaning. Nor are there to be found in them Hebrew or Aramaic terms which may be taken with certainty as direct translations of Greek philosophic terms.” 4 Τὸν κόσμον αὐτομάτον εἶναι. A very nice, though certainly very late, midrash comments on the second half of Proverbs 15:7, “The lips of the wise spread knowledge; not so the minds of fools”: “These are the minim who say that the world is an automaton,” (Midrash Psalms 1:21 [ed. Buber]: ‫)ולב כסילים לא כן אלו המינין שאומרים טמטום הוא העולם‬. See Urbach, Sages, 1.29; and Lieberman, “How Much Greek in Jewish Palestine?”, 223. 5 Lieberman, “How Much Greek in Jewish Palestine?”, 223.

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whom you are laboring and who is the overseer of your work.”6 Knowing what to answer an apiqoros is mentioned here in the same sentence as believing in divine providence, expressed as “knowing before whom you are laboring” (i. e. before God). Yet even so, I do not think that this text provides any information about what these apiqorsim believed as some scholars have argued.7 Maybe they reject this idea of divine providence, but this text does not say that. “To know before whom one labors” is, in a general sense, the subject of texts that precede and follow this one, and indeed, is the primary concern of Avot as a whole.8 That divine providence is mentioned in the same sentence as “learn what to answer an apiqoros” therefore tells us very little. This text in Avot implies little beyond that apiqorsim are ideological opponents and that a sage needs correct knowledge in order to oppose them in disputation. More important for our purposes is the well-known text in m. Sanhedrin 10:1, which I discussed in chapters two and three, the only other text in the Mishnah that mentions the apiqoros: And these have no portion in the world to come: the one who says, “There is no resurrection of the dead” and “There is no Torah from heaven,” and an apiqoros.9

The apiqoros appears at the end of a list of three categories that are denied a portion in the world to come. On the face of it, this text also provides no information regarding what these apiqorsim believe or why they are denied a portion in the world to come. So again we learn nothing explicit from this text beyond the 6 M. Avot 2:14 (MS Kaufmann): ‫ר׳ אליעזר אומ׳ הווי שקד ללמד מה שהשיב לאפיקורוס ודע לפני‬ ‫מי אתה עמל ומי הוא בעל מלאכתך‬. The standard edition begins with an extra phrase: ‫הוי שקוד‬ ‫… ללמוד תורה ודע מה שתשיב לאפיקורוס ודע לפני מי אתה עמל‬. 7 See Urbach, Sages, 1.28–29; Judah Goldin, “A Philosophical Session in a Tannaite Academy,” Traditio 21 (1965): 1–21, at 4–6; and Labendz, “Know What to Answer the Epicurean,” 179–180. 8 M. Avot 2:15 (ed. Vilna): ‫רבי טרפון אומר היום קצר והמלאכה מרובה והפועלים עצלים והשכר‬ ‫הרבה ובעל הבית דוחק‬: “Rabbi Tarfon says, The day is short, and the work is abundant, and the laborers are lazy, and the wages are great, and the master of the house is pressing”; m. Avot 2:12 (ed. Vilna): ‫רבי יוסי אומר יהי ממון חברך חביב עליך כשלך והתקן עצמך ללמוד תורה שאינה ירושה לך‬ ‫וכל מעשיך יהיו לשם שמים‬: “Rabbi Yossi says, Let your fellow’s property be as dear to you as you own, and prepare yourself to learn Torah for it is not yours by inheritance, and let all of your deeds be for the sake of heaven ”; and the first mishnah in the chapter, m. Avot 2:1 (ed. Vilna): ‫רבי אומר איזוהי דרך ישרה שיבור לו האדם כל שהיא תפארת לעושה ותפארת לו מן האדם והוי זהיר במצוה‬ ‫קלה כבחמורה שאין אתה יודע מתן שכרן של מצות והוי מחשב הפסד מצוה כנגד שכרה ושכר עבירה כנגד‬ ‫הפסדה‬: “Rabbi says, Which is the straight path that a person should choose? All that is an honor to be done and honor to him from mankind. And take care with the least mitzvah as with the greatest, for you do not know the wages given for mitzvot. And weigh the loss of a mitzvah against its wage and the wage of a sin against its loss.” Divine reward and punishment are clearly of major concern to Mishnah Avot. 9 M Sanhedrin 10:1 (MS Kaufmann): ‫ואילו שאין להן חלק לעולם הבא האומר אין תחיית המתים‬ ‫ואין תורה מן השמים ואפיקורוס‬. The text from the standard edition has: ‫האומר אין תחיית המתים מן‬ ‫התורה‬: “There is no resurrection of the dead from the Torah.” Early manuscripts do not include the phrase, “from the Torah.” See Grossberg, “Orthopraxy in Tannaitic Literature,” 520 n. 7.

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fact that whoever composed it felt that the apiqorsim were an especially heinous opponent. Yet a closer analysis of this text’s possible pre-history might provide some indication of historical context. Taken as a whole, m. Sanhedrin 10:1’s most obvious polemical target would be the Sadducees as described in first century literary sources, as the consensus of scholarship has long maintained.10 Josephus and the New Testament stress the Sadducees’ rejection of the resurrection of the dead and their rejection of the “traditions of the fathers” as among their primary ideological disagreements with the Pharisees.11 “Traditions of the fathers” refers to extra-biblical precepts that the Pharisees believed to be as binding on the Jews as those precepts written explicitly in the Bible. The phrase “Torah from heaven” in this mishnah would seem to be referring to Torah broadly, including these traditions, which the Sadducees rejected.12 In addition, Josephus stresses the Sadducees’ rejection of fate.13 This would explain the term apiqoros in this mishnah as well, recalling its etymological source in philosophical Epicureanism, which, as just mentioned, rejected such ideas. In other words, the word apiqoros in this mishnah would have been intended as a pejorative reference to the Sadducees themselves rather than to Jewish followers of Epicurus. This mishnah calls the Sadducees apiqorsim as a mocking insult, not because they were followers of actual Greek philosophy.14 But if m. Sanhedrin 10:1 was directed against the Sadducees, then this tradition’s core would have to trace back to the Second Temple period because there 10 See, for just a few examples, Finkelstein, Introduction to the Treatises Abot and Abot of Rabbi Nathan, 106; Epstein, Mevo’ot le-Sifrut ha-Tana’im, 56; Judah Goldin, “The Three Pillars of Simeon the Righteous,” Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 27 (1958): 43–58, at 49; Schiffman, Who Was a Jew?, 41–46; and Boyarin, Border Lines, 58. 11 Josephus, Jewish War 2.162–166, Antiquities 13.297–298, 18.12–17; Matthew 15:1–3; Mark 7:1–5, 12:18; Luke 20:17; Acts 23:6–8. And, see Albert I. Baumgarten, The Flourishing of Jewish Sects in the Maccabean Era: An Interpretation (Supplements to the Journal for the Study of Judaism 55; Leiden: Brill, 1997), 114–136. 12 This is not the same as arguing that Torah here means “Oral Torah,” which as a named concept post-dates the Mishnah’s editing. See n. 25, chapter three. Intimations of this concept, however, do exist in the Mishnah, and, more broadly, the idea that “Torah” includes the rabbis’ teachings and the extra-biblical traditions that they promulgated is certainly early. It is this broader concept of Torah, beyond merely the Pentateuch or the Hebrew Bible, which would seem to be the referent here. And, see Baumgarten, The Flourishing of Jewish Sects in the Maccabean Era, 114. 13 Josephus, Jewish War 2.162–166, Antiquities 13.171–173, 18.12–17. 14 See Boyarin, Border Lines, 58, “The reference would then be not to actual adherents of the Epicurean school, but to Jews who appeared to the ‘Pharisaic’ group promulgating the eternity of the soul as a central tenet of Judaic orthodoxy, as if they had been contaminated and were adherents of that school”; and see ibid., 249–250 n. 118. I would not, of course, adopt Boyarin’s chosen technical lexicon here, but I agree that the early proponents of this tradition were using the word apiqoros in this kind of mocking fashion. However, as I argue presently, the relationship of this text to the rest of the Mishnah and to the larger tannaitic corpus is more complex, less systematized and more ad hoc, than Boyarin’s subsequent analysis suggests.

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is little reason to think that the Sadducees were still active by the time of the Mishnah’s compilation.15 Moreover, based on the types of concerns that animate the rest of the Mishnah, the Sadducees’ specific ideas about the resurrection of the dead as such no longer seemed to be a major polemical occupation of those who put together this early collection of traditions. I would say that the Mishnah’s main ideological concerns are that its teachings are authoritative  – are themselves “Torah” in a manner essentially equivalent to the explicit precepts and proscriptions written in the Bible – and that that there is reward and punishment after death based on this Torah.16 Certainly, the Mishnah reflects a belief in life after death generally and therefore presumes some kind of resurrection whether spiritual or physical. And yet debates between Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes about the specific mechanics of this concept that were so important in the late Second Temple period and continued to be so among early Christian thinkers do not seem to be a major concern of the Mishnah.17 Therefore, although the possibility that m. Sanhedrin 10:1’s original historical context was a Second Temple era polemic against Sadducees would help to explain its form and content, it is still difficult to account for why it is in the Mishnah at all and how it came to be there. Perhaps we might find the answer to this question by appealing to the conservative editorial approach of the Mishnah’s compilers and by noting a similar tradition that the rabbinic corpus preserves, which seems to reflect an earlier version of m. Sanhedrin 10:1. This similar tradition appears in the early rabbinic chronology, Seder Olam, and there is reason to think that m. Sanhedrin 10:1 is actually based on a tradition of this sort:18 15 Most scholars believe that the Sadducees did not survive the Temple’s destruction based on the assumption that the Temple was their power base and the fact that there is no direct evidence of their survival. But cf. Martin Goodman, “Sadducees and Essenes after 70 CE,” in Crossing the Boundaries: Essays in Biblical Interpretation in Honour of Michael D. Goulder (ed. Stanley E. Porter, Paul Joyce, David E. Orton; Leiden: Brill, 1994), 347–356; and Martin Goodman, “Religious Variety and the Temple in the Late Second Temple Period and its Aftermath,” in Sects and Sectarianism in Jewish History (ed. Sacha Stern; IJS Studies in Judaica 12; Leiden: Brill, 2011), 21–37. 16 This concern comes out most strongly in Avot. Some scholars have questioned Avot’s dating and its connection with the rest of the Mishnah, starting with Alexander Guttmann in 1950 and, following his work, Günter Stemberger in a series of articles, most recently in 2005. See Alexander Guttmann, “Tractate Abot – Its Place in Rabbinic Judaism,” Jewish Quarterly Review 41 (1950): 181–193, and Günter Stemberger, “Die innerrabbinische Überlieferung von Mischna Abot,” in Geschichte-Tradition-Reflexion, 1.511–527. For a successful critique of this position, see Amram Tropper, Wisdom, Politics, and Historiography: Tractate Avot in the Context of the Graeco-Roman Near East (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 88–107. As no extant Mishnah manuscript excludes Avot and no period text suggests that it is not part of Mishnah, almost all scholars do treat Avot as an integral part of the Mishnah. 17 For a comprehensive review of relevant texts, see Alan Segal, Life After Death: A History of the Afterlife in the Religions of the West (New York: Doubleday, 2004). 18 See Milikowsky, “Gehenna and ‘Sinners of Israel,’” 335 n. 104; and Grossberg, “Orthopraxy in Tannaitic Literature,” 530–535. On Seder Olam generally see Chaim Milikowsky,

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But the ones who separated from community norms, for example, the minim, and the meshummadim, and the informers, and the flatterers, and the apiqorsim who denied the resurrection of the dead and who said, “There is no Torah from heaven”: gehinnom is locked before them and they are judged within it forever and for all eternity.19

Important for our purposes are the “apiqorsim who denied the resurrection of the dead and who said, ‘there is no Torah from heaven.’” This phrase appears as well in a parallel of this text preserved in b. Rosh Hashanah 17a. There is also a parallel text in t. Sanhedrin 13:5, which we discussed in the previous chapter, but that text has a slightly different phraseology: it condemns to gehinnom: “apiqorsim … and those who deny the Torah … and those who deny the resurrection of the dead.”20 I have argued elsewhere that the awkward Hebrew syntax of this last text supports the likelihood that it is a secondary adaptation from a phrase like the one that appears in Seder Olam and b. Rosh Hashanah.21 In other words, I am suggesting that what is structured as a list of three categories in the Tosefta – “apiqorsim, deniers of Torah, and deniers of the resurrection” – was a modification of an earlier phrase that defined who an apiqoros is: “apiqorsim who deny the Torah and the resurrection.” This type of modification of early stock phrases into mini-lists and the movement of mini-lists into various contexts is very characteristic of the development of rabbinic traditions as I have demonstrated elsewhere at length and as seen in our analysis of the minim, meshummadim and informers in the previous chapter.22 For our purposes, then, the similarity between Seder Olam’s “apiqorsim who denied the resurrection of the dead and who said, ‘there is no Torah from heaven’” and m. Sanhedrin’s “one who says, “There is no resurrection of the dead” and “There is no Torah from heaven,” and an apiqoros” is clear. I am suggesting that the phrase “apiqorsim who deny the resurrection and the Torah” may originally have been a circa first century C. E. anti-Sadducee slogan that slowly and incrementally made its way into the various lists preserved in the classical rabbinic corpus. That a phrase about “apiqorsim who deny the resurrection and the Torah” becomes a list of three, “apiqorsim, and those who deny the resurrection, and those why deny the Torah,” which is then rearranged to, “Those who deny

Seder Olam: Critical Edition, Commentary, and Introductin (2 vols.; Jerusalem: Yad Yitzhaq ben Tzevi, 2013). 19 Seder Olam 3 (ed. Milikowsky): ‫אבל מי שפרשו מדרכי ציבור כגון המינים והמשומדין והמוסורות‬ ‫והחניפין והאפקרסין שכפרו בתחי(ת) המי(תים) ושאמרו אין תו(רה) מן השמים גהינם נינעלת בפניהם ונידונין‬ )‫בתוכה לעו(לם) ולעולמי עול(מים‬. 20 T. Sanhedrin 13:5 (ed. Zuckermandel): ‫… ושכפרו בתחיית המתים‬ ‫אפיקורסין ושכפרו בתורה‬. 21 Literally, the text reads, “apiqorsim  … and who deny the Torah  … and who deny the resurrection of the dead.” See Grossberg, “Orthopraxy in Tannaitic Literature,” 530–535. See also Milikowsky, “Gehenna and ‘Sinners of Israel,’” 335 n. 104. 22 See Grossberg, “The Meaning and End of Heresy in Rabbinic Literature,” 183–241.

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the resurrection, those why deny the Torah, and apiqorsim,” would be typical of the classical rabbinic corpus’ chaotic and ad-hoc process of list formation.23 This conjectural reconstruction also has the advantage of explaining why the Mishnah’s compilers chose to preserve this text when its original opponents, the Sadducees, had long since ceased to be a significant opponent and when at least one of the main ideological debates underlying it was no longer of most pressing importance. As just mentioned, although the Mishnah is not especially concerned with the details of resurrection, it is very concerned with reward and punishment after death and with the idea that the Mishnah’s precepts are a legitimate expression of Torah. By the simple expedient of rearrangement, an early anti-Sadducee slogan is in large part preserved, reflecting an editorial conservatism and respect for tradition, but repurposed to emphasize the ideological purposes of the Mishnah’s editors. This reconstruction would also explain how the apiqoros became such an unusually empty category in repeated rabbinic traditions. The Mishnah’s compilers left the apiqoros tacked on to the end of an artificially constructed list, a rearrangement that obscured the term’s original context in anti-Sadducee polemic. This rearrangement left almost no textual constraints on the term’s signification, though it, together with Rabbi Eleazar’s saying preserved in m. Avot about “learning what to answer an apiqoros,” gave this polemical target at least some degree of prominence. These remnants of tradition, together with an interesting etymological coincidence that I will discuss in what follows, set the stage for the strategic redeployment of the apiqoros as a central part of the rabbinic project of self-definition. Again, as I stated at the start of this section, this is not to say that no one among the rabbis who repeated these traditions was acquainted with Greek philosophy or Roman polemics on Epicureanism, but, as will become clear, rabbis performing these apiqoros texts in their study circles seem to have been less influenced by these things than by the content of their own traditions.24 23 See Grossberg, “The Meaning and End of Heresy in Rabbinic Literature,” 183–241 on rabbinic list formation. The diachronic development that I suggest would imply that a version of this phrase similar to the one preserved in the Tosefta would be primary to the version preserved in the Mishnah. However, although the Tosefta does post-date the Mishnah and at times serves as a commentary on it, it has been conclusively demonstrated that the Tosefta often preserves earlier versions of traditions that appear in the Mishnah. See the detailed discussion with relevant primary texts and bibliography in Grossberg, “Orthopraxy in Tannaitic Literature,” 521–522; and see Epstein, Mevo’ot le-Sifrut ha-Tana’im, 242–246; Abraham Goldberg, “The Tosefta – Companion to the Mishna,” in The Literature of the Sages, First Part: Oral Tora, Halakha, Mishna, Tosefta, Talmud, External Tractates, 283–302, esp. 292; Alberdina Houtman, Mishnah and Tosefta: A Synoptic Comparison of the Tractates Berakhot and Shebiit (Texte und Studien zum Antiken Judentum 59; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1996), esp. 12–13; and Judith Hauptman, Rereading the Mishnah: A New Approach to Ancient Jewish Texts (Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism 109; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005), esp. 14–16. 24 This is a good example of the rabbinic solipsism mentioned in chapter one. See n. 1, there. It is also relevant, however, that for most of the rabbinic period, Epicureanism was no longer an active movement, as Michael Frede, “Epilogue,” in The Cambridge History of Hellenistic

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II. Disrespecting the Rabbis By the first rabbinic texts, then, it would seem that the apiqoros’ original context in earlier tradition had become deemphasized. The term is not very common in these texts, and neither the Mishnah nor the Tosefta attempts to interpret it or to expand its polemical usage. A text in the Sifre associates an apiqoros in passing with the phrase “he has broken his commandment” from Numbers 15:30–31: “But the person who does anything with a high hand … reviles the Lord, and that person shall be cut off from among his people. Because he has despised the word of the Lord, and has broken his commandment, that person shall be utterly cut off.” The Sifre records this as one interpretation among several for these verses, but provides no specific information.25 The apiqoros appears in only one other place in the tannaitic literature, where it seems to carry a vague meaning of “troublemaker,” and once in the classical Palestinian midrash, in a passing reference to the serpent in the Garden of Eden.26 It is the Yerushalmi that first explicitly attempts to define the term, in its comments on the word apiqoros from the mishnah discussed in the previous section: Rabbi Yohanan and Rabbi Eleazar, one of them said that [an apiqoros] is one who says, “That scribe!” and the other said that [an apiqoros] is one who says, “Those rabbis!”27 Philosophy (ed. Keimpe Algra, Jonathan Barnes, Jaap Mansfield, and Malcolm Schofield; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 771–797, at 793, writes, “What characterizes the philosophy of late antiquity from the second part of the third century AD onwards is the fact that philosophers invariably espouse one form of Platonism or other: Aristotelianism, Stoicism, Epicureanism, and scepticism are no longer active movements.” 25 Sifre Numbers 112. See the detailed analysis of this text in Grossberg, “The Meaning and End of Heresy in Rabbinic Literature,” 186–211. 26 Sifre Deuteronomy 12 and Genesis Rabbah 19:1. The text from Genesis Rabbah refers to the serpent as an apiqoros, but provides no specific information beyond the connection to the verse, “Now the serpent was more subtle than any other wild creature that the Lord God had made.” Cf. Marc Hirshman, “The Greek Words in the Midrash Genesis Rabbah” [Hebrew], in Tiferet Leyisrael: Jubilee Volume in Honour of Israel Francus (ed. Joel Roth, Menahem Schmelzer, and Yaacov Francus; New York: The Jewish Theological Seminary, 2010), 21–33, at 32–33. A text from the reconstructed Midrash Tannaim on Deuteronomy 1:12 closely parallels the text in Sifre Deuteronomy 12. 27 Y. Sanhedrin 10:1, 27d (ed. Venice): ‫ר׳ יוחנן ורבי לעזר חד אמר כהן דאמר אהן ספרא וחרנה‬ ‫אמר כהן דאמר אילין רבנין‬. Neusner translates ‫ כהן דאמר‬as “a priest who said,” but this would seem to be a misreading. See Jastrow, Dictionary, s. v. ‫ ;הן‬and Sokoloff, A Dictionary of Jewish Palestinian Aramaic of the Byzantine Period, s. v. ‫אהן‬. The text continues: ‫רבי אלעזר ורבי שמואל‬ ‫בר׳ נחמן חד אמר לכיפה של אבנים כיון שנתרועעה אחת מהן נתרועעו כולן וחרנה אמר לבית שהוא מלא‬ ‫תבן אף על גב דאת מעבר ליה מינה אהן מוצא דבגויה הוא מרערע כתליא‬: “Rabbi Eleazar and Rabbi Shemuel bar Nahman, one of them said, This is like a dome of stones from which one becomes loose and so all become loose, and the other said, This is like a house full of straw that even if you remove it you find that [straw] in the walls destabilize them.” This text and the following, which has Korach challenging Moses’ authority to interpret the Torah, all seem to reflect the same polemical concern. Parallels to the Korach text in Numbers Rabbah 18:3, Midrash Proverbs 11:27, and the Tanhuma qoraḥ 4 do not use the word apiqoros, so the Yerushalmi’s placement here seems intended to strengthen the idea of an apiqoros as one who rejects scribal and

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The expressions “that scribe” and “those rabbis” are meant, apparently, to suggest dismissiveness and disrespect: an apiqoros is a person who is dismissive and disrespectful of scribes and rabbis. This is a remarkable and important development. In the previous chapters, we have been analyzing various categories such as minim and meshummadim that have a range of significations in earlier strata of rabbinic texts, which later texts intentionally reconceptualized and redeployed with changing meanings. We saw how analyzing the significance of these changing meanings can help to illuminate the gradual formation of the idea of a rabbinic collective. But all of the categories that we have been studying up to now were bound to some extent by earlier definitions or by explicit characteristics associated with them in the earlier texts. In the case of an apiqoros, in contrast, we have a fundamentally empty category that, possibly owing to the circumstances discussed in the previous section, remained almost entirely free of traditional definitional characteristics well into the third century. The Yerushalmi’s initial attempts to define the apiqoros were unburdened by earlier precedent and almost completely unconstrained. It is, therefore, especially significant that the first unambiguous ideological deviance that the Yerushalmi associates here with the apiqoros is a dismissiveness of scribes and rabbis. The apiqoros is not deviant because he believes in the “wrong” kind of God or has the “wrong” ideas about the afterlife. The apiqoros is deviant for no reason other than that he is not a scribe or rabbi! I suggest that this Yerushalmi text evinces initial intimations of the intentional creation of an “anti-rabbi.” This figure is a straw man that can stand opposed to the rabbis as a collective rather than one that is defined by an opposing ideological position among a range of potential positions. That is, the apiqorsim are not like we might imagine sects such as the Sadducees to have been, rejecting specific ideas that scribes and rabbis could have adhered to, for example the resurrection of the dead and the “traditions of the fathers.” They just reject scribes and rabbis entirely. This is an unusual and innovate polemical strategy for the rabbinic corpus. And I believe that it reflects a growing sense among the formative rabbinic movement of its own uniqueness as a group, a collective that must be supported or opposed collectively. And yet, it is significant that the Yerushalmi’s apiqoros does not reject “the rabbis” as a corporate group but rabbis and scribes in a very general fashion. It would seem that this figure is rejecting more a type of scholastic approach to the Torah’s study and observance than a specifically rabbinic collective.28 I contend, therefore, that we see here just one rabbinic scholasticism, and Korach’s declaration, which is not in the parallels, that “there is no Torah from heaven” also connects the apiqoros to the one who says “there is no Torah from heaven” from the mishnah (see discussion in section one) on which the Yerushalmi is commenting. 28 See n. 27, above.

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stage in the development of a rhetorically collective self-conception, but it is not very finely drawn. It is up to the Babylonian Talmud at a later stage to draw this self-conception more firmly. And it is to an analysis of these texts that we will now turn. The first text that we will consider is a variant on the text just considered from the Yerushalmi. Significantly, when the Bavli reproduces this tradition in b. Sanhedrin 100a, it leaves out the scribes entirely, “Rav Papa said, “[An apiqoros] is one who says, ‘those rabbis!”29 The Yerushalmi’s version of this text is attributed to rabbis of mid‑ to late third century Roman Palestine. The Bavli’s version is attributed to a late fourth century Babylonian rabbi. Whether or not these attributions are reliable, their temporal relationship is significant. At least by the time of the editing of the Bavli, a century or more after the editing of the Yerushalmi, the rabbinic community itself is more firmly established and much more conscious of itself as a unique community. It is less the scribal and scholastic approach to Judaism characteristic of the rabbis that is at issue in the Bavli version of the Yerushalmi text than it is the rabbinic community itself as a community. The matter is made even more explicit in the Bavli’s other attempts to define the apiqoros in b. Sanhedrin 99b–100a. These pages amount to an extended rumination on the nature of an apiqoros, and I would argue that it reflects the perspectives of the Bavli’s editors. Most of the texts cited are narrative or anecdotal rather than attributed dicta,30 and their presentation here as a collection is certainly editorial. Moreover, the anecdotes and dicta themselves rarely mention apiqorsim at all, preferring instead a more general term for irreverence, afqiruta, which I will discuss in the next section.31 It is the Bavli’s editorial comments that create the thematic unity. This is a long text, but it is mostly self-explanatory, so it will be worthwhile to reproduce most of it here: An apiqoros: Rabbi and Rabbi Hanina both said, This is one who disrespects a sage.32 Rabbi Yohanan and Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi said, This is one who disrespects his fellow in the presence of a sage. …33 29 B. Sanhedrin

100a (ed. Vilna): ‫רב פפא אמר כגון דאמר הני רבנן‬. attributions of the dicta that open the collection vary somewhat between Rabbi / Rav, Yohanan / Yonatan, and Yehoshua ben Levi / Yehoshua. 31 In point of fact, they never use the word apiqoros, though perhaps some of the attributed dicta may have in their original context. The sayings cited above concerning “those rabbis,” also do not use the word apiqoros. It appears there, as here, as a heading for variant opinions. The omission in the Bavli is more pronounced and significant given the length of the section and given the fact that the word does appear in an attributed anecdote in the continuation of the Yerushalmi text. See n. 27, above. 32 It is talmid ḥakham, a “disciple of a sage,” here, but the intent is a sage. 33 B. Sanhedrin 99b (ed. Vilna): ‫רבי ורבי חנינא אמרי תרוייה זה המבזה תלמיד חכם רבי יוחנן ורבי‬ ‫יהושע בן לוי אמרי זה המבזה חבירו בפני תלמיד חכם‬. I omit the subsequent rather lengthy excursus of the difference between an apiqoros and a megalleh panim ba-torah, on which see Vidas, Tradition and the Formation of the Talmud, 133–136. From the perspective of the following analysis, the omitted section’s conclusions on what an apiqoros is are not different from the text 30 The

II. Disrespecting the Rabbis

155

Levi bar Shemuel and Rav Huna bar Hiyya were repairing the mantles on the scrolls of Rabbi Yehudah’s house of study.34 When they came to the scroll of Esther, they said, “The scroll of Esther does not require a mantel.” [Rabbi Yehudah] said to them, “This sort of talk is like being an apiqoros (afqiruta).”35 Rav Nahman said, [An apiqoros is] one who refers to his teacher by name …36 Rabbi Yermiyah sat before Rabbi Zeira and said, In the future, the Holy One blessed be he, will send forth a river from the Holy of Holies in the Temple in Jerusalem and on its banks will be all manner of fine fruits, as it is said [in Ezekiel 47:12], “And on the banks, on both sides of the river, there will grow all kinds of trees for food. Their leaves will not wither nor their fruit fail, but they will bear fresh fruit every month, because the water for them flows from the sanctuary. Their fruit will be for food, and their leaves for healing.” An old man said, “Well said! And Rabbi Yohanan also taught this.”37 Rabbi Yermiyah said to Rabbi Zeira, “This sort of talk is like being an apiqoros (afqiruta).” [Rabbi Zeira] said, “But he was agreeing with you!”38 Rather, if you have heard of something [like being an apiqoros] it is this: Rabbi Yohanan sat and expounded, In the future, the Holy One blessed be he will bring forth precious stones and pearls that are thirty handbreadths wide and thirty handbreadths tall, and engraving on them ten handbreadths of a height of twenty. And, he will stand them up at the gates of Jerusalem, as it is said [in Isaiah 54:12], “I will make your pinnacles of agate, your gates of carbuncles …” One student mocked him saying, “We have never seen a jewel even as big as a dove’s egg – shall we ever see jewels of such size?” Sometime later, this student took a journey by sea, and he had a vision of ministering angels cutting precious stones and pearls. He said to them, “What are these for?” They said to him, “In the future, the Holy One blessed be he will set these up at the gates of Jerusalem.” When the student returned, he found Rabbi Yohanan, who was sitting and expounding. He said to him, “Rabbi, expound as you will and well do you expound! As you said, so I saw!” Rabbi Yohanan said to him, “Empty one! If you had not seen, you would not believe?” You mock the words of sages!” [Rabbi Yohanan] set his eyes upon [the student] and turned him into a heap of bones.39 that follows. For a Sasanian Persian legal perspective on this text, see Yaakov Elman, “Middle Persian Culture,” 176–179. 34 I  follow Soncino translating mitpaḥot as “mantles.” These are apparently coverings or wrappings for scrolls containing works of scripture. 35 B. Sanhedrin 100a (ed. Vilna): ‫לוי בר שמואל ורב הונא בר חייא הוו קא מתקני מטפחות ספרי‬ ‫דבי רב יהודה כי מטו מגילת אסתר אמרי הא [מגילת אסתר] לא בעי מטפחת אמר להו כי האי גוונא נמי‬ ‫מיחזי כי אפקירותא‬. 36 B. Sanhedrin 100a (ed. Vilna): ‫רב נחמן אמר זה הקורא רבו בשמו‬. I omit the subsequent anecdote. 37 I follow trans. Soncino here. 38 B. Sanhedrin 100a (ed. Vilna): ‫יתיב רבי ירמיה קמיה דרבי זירא ויתיב וקאמר עתיד הקדוש ברוך‬ ‫הוא להוציא נחל מבית קדשי הקדשים ועליו כל מיני מגדים שנאמר ועל הנחל יעלה על שפתו מזה ומזה כל‬ ‫עץ מאכל לא יבול עלהו ולא יתם פריו לחדשיו יבכר כי מימיו מן המקדש [המה] יוצאים והיה פריו למאכל‬ ‫ועלהו לתרופה אמר ליה ההוא סבא יישר וכן אמר רבי יוחנן אמר ליה רבי ירמיהו לרבי זירא כי האי גונא‬ ‫מיחזי אפקרותא אמר ליה האי סיועי קא מסייע לך‬. 39 B. Sanhedrin 100a (ed. Vilna): ‫אלא אי שמיע לך הא שמיע לך כי הא דיתיב רבי יוחנן וקא דריש‬ ‫עתיד הקדוש ברוך הוא להביא אבנים טובות ומרגליות שהן שלשים על שלשים אמות וחוקק בהם עשר ברום‬ ‫עשרים ומעמידן בשערי ירושלים שנאמר ושמתי כדכד שמשתיך ושעריך לאבני אקדח וגו׳ לגלג עליו אותו‬ ‫תלמיד אמר השתא כביעתא דצילצלא לא משכחינן כולי האי משכחינן לימים הפליגה ספינתו בים חזינהו‬

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In this text, we see the Bavli working out what an apiqoros ought to be. It is clear that there is no ideological issue underlying this entire discussion beyond the extent to which Jews are obligated to respect the rabbis. The possibilities range from actually insulting a rabbi to speaking disrespectfully of another person in the presence of a rabbi to questioning or even not sufficiently valuing the rabbis’ teachings. This extended discussion in the Bavli is in no way burdened by any previous ideas of what an apiqoros might be, not by its etymological roots in Hellenistic philosophical schools, nor by its possible appropriation as a pejorative appellation for Sadducees who reject the resurrection and the Torah in the Second Temple period, nor by hermeneutic associations with biblical texts in the tannaitic literature.40 By the time of the Babylonian Talmud’s editing, by which time a well-formed rabbinic collective certainly does exist, the apiqoros serves only as a straw man for anyone who does not acknowledge this community regardless of the motivation such a person might have. The apiqoros’ perceived disrespect might be motivated by an opposing ideology, it might be motivated by a personal moral failing, or it might be motivated by mere carelessness. But this is not of primary concern. Rather, the apiqoros as a straw man serves as a convenient foil, an anti-rabbi against which to delineate the fixed idea of a rabbinic community out of the earlier collections of sage traditions upon which this community’s selfconception was constructed.

III. Apiqorsim and Irreverence Two historical facts facilitated the Bavli’s complete appropriation of the apiqoros for its own exercise in rhetorical community formation: first, the emptiness of the term as just discussed; and second, what appears to be a curious etymological coincidence that allowed the rabbis to connect the idea of an apiqoros with another word that sounds similar but is actually unrelated. In this section, I will digress briefly to examine the latter issue more closely even though it entails a somewhat technical philological analysis. I will then return to my analysis of the apiqoros in the Bavli in the subsequent sections. In the text from Bavli Sanhedrin discussed in the previous section, the phrase, “This sort of talk is like being an apiqoros,” appears twice in describing rela‫למלאכי השרת דקא מנסרי אבנים טובות ומרגליות אמר להו הני למאן אמרי עתיד הקדוש ברוך הוא‬ ‫להעמידן בשערי ירושלים כי הדר אשכחיה לרבי יוחנן דיתיב וקא דריש אמר ליה רבי דרוש ולך נאה לדרוש‬ ‫כשם שאמרת כך ראיתי אמר לו ריקה אם לא ראית לא האמנת מלגלג על דברי חכמים אתה יהב ביה עיניה‬ ‫ועשאו גל של עצמות‬. 40 Cf. Labendz, “Know What to Answer the Epicurean,” esp. 18–20. As already discussed, I see no reference to actual Epicureans in the use of this term polemically anywhere in the rabbinic corpus.

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tively minor acts of disrespect such as talking back to a rabbi. The word that I translated with the somewhat awkward but relatively clear phrase “being an apiqoros” is actually more complicated than this translation implies. Rabbinic literature uses two different words to express an apiqoros’ ideology or behavior in the abstract. One of these words is the Hebrew abstract noun apiqorsut, which clearly derives from apiqoros. Scholars that translate apiqoros as “Epicurean,” would translate apiqorsut as “Epicureanism.” This abstract noun is very uncommon, appearing to the best of my knowledge only once in the classical rabbinic corpus.41 It derives from the Hebrew apiqoros, which in turn derives from the Greek Epikouros, “Epicurus.” However, rabbinic literature also uses another word to express an apiqoros’ ideology or behavior. This is the word that appears in the text from b. Sanhedrin, which I translated as “being an apiqoros,” the Aramaic word afqiruta. This is also an abstract noun, but it is not formed from the Hebrew word apiqoros. Rather, it is formed from a distinct and unrelated root, p.q.r., a root that some scholars trace back to ancient Akkadian.42 P.q.r. and its derivative forms carry a range of meanings associated with two related concepts: first, property that has no owner and, second, a person who is not sufficiently governed by norms of proper behavior. Thus, the word carries a sense of being ownerless or of moral wildness, and might be translated in this context as irreverence. The later strata of the rabbinic literature essentially combine these two words so that the abstract noun meaning irreverence, afqiruta, is conflated with the idea of being an apiqoros. In this way, an apiqoros comes to mean one who is irreverent, irreverent specifically of the rabbis. So we see that it is mere phonological coincidence – the fact that the two otherwise unrelated words sound similar  – that brings together the Hebraicized Greek term apiqoros and the Semitic term for irreverence afqiruta. But this coincidence helps support the formative rabbinic idea that behaving in an apiqoros-like way means disrespecting the rabbis. This convoluted process underscores my claim that this reconceptualization did not serve to define the apiqorsim at all, who never actually existed. It served only to define the rabbis as a group. The apiqoros’ reconceptualization is predicated on the idea that a collective of rabbis exists and that it is distinct from other groups so that it can be opposed or supported collectively. In this matter, the apiqoros in the later strata of the rabbinic literature is similar to the meshummad to provoke considered in the last chapter, insofar as we can understand that it is the rabbinic 41 B. Qiddushin

66a. Stephen A. Kaufman, The Akkadian Influences on Aramaic (The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, Assyriological Studies 19; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974), 80 and n. 252, there; Moreshet, Lexicon, 114, 289; and Shamma Friedman, “The Scholars’ Dictionary of Tannaitic Hebrew, A Critique of the Entry: Hefqer / Hevker,” Sidra 12 (1997): 113–127. 42 See

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community ultimately that this type of meshummad is provoking. Both the apiqoros and the meshummad to provoke function to draw a rhetorical boundary around the rabbinic collective.

IV. Apiqorsim, minim, and Dangerous Verses The etymological coincidence just discussed that facilitated the reimaging of the apiqoros in such a way as to circumscribe a stronger boundary around the rabbis as a group also facilitated a shift of boundary between the rabbis and non-rabbinic Jews. In the previous chapter, we discussed a shift in boundary that rhetorically extended the reach of the rabbis’ teachings over Jews outside of their collective. In the final two sections of this chapter, we will analyze a shift in boundary concerned with the role of the rabbis and rabbinic institutions more broadly as public figures at work in the larger Jewish community. My analysis will concentrate on a collection of texts that appears in the Babylonian Talmud, which includes several traditions of disputations with theological deviants. Although these traditions have been well studied each individually in the scholarship, I will argue that they are intentionally organized as a collection in such a way as to subvert the message of each taken in isolation.43 The individual traditions promote disputations on theological matters, but the Bavli’s editors work to exhort the rabbis to avoid such disputations. It is my contention that, although the traditions underlying this collection may reflect a time when public disputes among sages and their opponents on theological matters were common, the edited collection reflects the social circumstances of a well-established rabbinic community. This later community was less concerned with such divisive and disruptive debates among elites and was more concerned with their practical role as teachers and judges over the larger Jewish community. A well-known text in b. Sanhedrin 38b is concerned with “minim who say that there are two powers,” the hybrid category that we discussed in chapter two.44 It lays out a strategy for responding to such opponents who read binitarian theologies into biblical verses: 43 The relevant scholarship on the texts that I will examine in what follows is extensive, including many of the studies cited in n. 3, chapter one. For just a few examples, see Segal, Two Powers, 68–71, 74–83, 121–134; Boyarin, “Beyond Judaisms”; ibid., “Two Powers in Heaven; Or, the Making of a Heresy”; and Schäfer, Jewish Jesus, 27–54, 68–102. My concern will be less with the content of each tradition considered in isolation, as many of these studies have analyzed, and more with the implications of a remarkable grouping of several traditions in the Bavli under a general heading related to the apiqoros, which has not been as closely considered. 44 Although the minim do not say “there are two powers” in this text, it is clear that the minim are presented here as “two powers” deviants as I discussed in chapter two, above.

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Rabbi Yohanan said, Regarding all [biblical verses] about which the minim have behaved like apiqorsim,45 their refutation is near at hand: “Let us make (pl.) man in our image” – “So God created (sg.) man in his own image.”46

This text is apparently responding to a hermeneutical practice of deriving theological conclusions about God’s nature by appealing to plural pronouns associated with God in the Bible. This practice developed among Jews during the Second Temple period, and it later became popular among early Christians as a way of explaining their own developing binitarian and christological theologies.47 The biblical verse in this case is Genesis 1:26, “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.’” In context in the book of Genesis, there is no reason to suppose that the plural pronoun in the verse, “let us make,” is laden with esoteric significance regarding God’s nature. Yet starting at least from the turn of the era and into the early Christian and rabbinic periods, readers came up with a range of explanations for this plural pronoun: maybe God was speaking to others who assisted him in creation – whether angels or some kind of demiurge or lesser divinity – or maybe God is using a plural pronoun in reference to himself, suggesting some sort of divine plurality.48 As a general hermeneutical key, this approach to close readings of biblical verses became very common, and this verse was an especially important locus for theological speculation. Philo and early Christian thinkers, as well as the rabbinic literature itself, cite the verse in this way.49 In the case of the Bavli text just cited, however, Rabbi Yohanan endeavors to prove that the plural pronoun does not imply any kind of divine plurality or a partner in creation by appealing to the next verse where a singular verb is used in reference to God’s actual creating: “So God created man in his own image.” What is interesting for our purposes is that the minim here are said to “behave like apiqorsim.” The word that I am translating in this awkward way is an discuss my translation of the verb paqar here presently. 38b (ed. Vilna): ‫אמר רבי יוחנן כל מקום שפקרו המינים תשובתן בצידן נעשה אדם‬ ‫בצלמנו ויברא אלהים את האדם בצלמו‬. For scholarship on this text, see n. 43, above. 47 See my discussion of binitarianism in chapter two. 48 See, for example, Philo, On the Creation of the World 24; Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 62; and Genesis Rabbah 8:8. For a discussion of these texts, see Urbach, Sages, 203– 208; David T. Runia, “‘Where, Tell Me, Is the Jew …?’: Basil, Philo and Isidore of Pelusium,” Vigiliae Christianae 46 (1992): 172–189; Marc Hirshman, A Rivalry of Genius: Jewish and Christian Biblical Interpretation in Late Antiquity (trans. Batya Stein; SUNY Series in Judaica; New York: State University of New York Press, 1996), 31–66; Menahem Kister, “Some Early Jewish and Christian Exegetical Problems and the Dynamics of Monotheism,” Journal for the Study of Judaism 37 (2006): 548–593, esp. 563–589; and Schäfer, The Jewish Jesus, 42–54, 165–178. 49 See n. 48, above. 45 I will

46 B. Sanhedrin

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uncommon verb, paqar, derived, like the word afqiruta discussed in the previous section, not from the Greek word for Epicureanism that led to the Hebrew apiqoros, but from the Semitic root p.q.r. As mentioned, this root is associated with irreverence or licentiousness, and so the Bavli here might also be translated as, “regarding all biblical verses about which the minim were irreverent.” But its later derivative associations with apiqoros justifies my translating as, “regarding all biblical verses about which the minim have behaved like apiqorsim” as does the immediate context, which, as I will demonstrate in what follows, shows how this unusual word came to be used here. This Bavli text is actually a variant version of a similar text that appears in the midrash on the book of Genesis, Genesis Rabbah, in the name of a different rabbi: Rabbi Simlai said, Regarding all [biblical verses] about which you find a disputation of the minim, its palliative is near at hand. The [minim] returned and asked him, “What is this that is written, ‘Then God said, Let us make man [in our image, after our likeness].’” He said to them, “Read what follows, ‘So gods created man’ is not written here, but rather, ‘So God created [man].’”50

Both this text and the text in the Bavli are part of a list of “dangerous verses,” which seems to have had something of an independent life as a list of refutations for theological deviants.51 A similar text also appears in the Yerushalmi, in y. Berakhot 9:1, 12d. Collections of biblical verses to be used in theological controversies were known in the early Christian world.52 Such collections would be a source of study for those wishing to engage with theological opponents who could be expected to appeal to specific verses to justify their opinions. A disputant would prepare by studying verses that could be used to counter and disprove these interpretations. Perhaps this list of verses in the Bavli, Genesis Rabbah, and the Yerushalmi originally served a similar purpose. The attributions to Yohanan and Simlai, if they are reliable, would suggest that these traditions originate in mid‑ to late‑ third century Roman Palestine. However, there are differences between the traditions that indicate an editorial hand in their current presentation, particularly regarding this uncommon verb paqar, “to behave like an apiqoros.” The full list of dangerous verses, of which I cited only a small part, that appears in Genesis Rabbah and the Yerushalmi match each other closely in attribution, structure and content.53 The Bavli ver50 Genesis Rabbah (ed. Theodor-Albeck) 8:9: ‫אמר ר׳ שמלאי בכל מקום שאתה מוצא תשובה‬ ‫למינים אתה מוצא רפואתה בצידה חזרו ושאלו אותו מהו דכת׳ ויאמר אלהים נעשה אדם וגו׳ אמר להון קרון‬ ‫דבתריה ויבראו אלהים את האדם אין כת׳ אלא ויברא אלהים‬. For scholarship on this text, see n. 43, above. 51 I borrow Peter Schäfer’s characterization of this list of verses from Jewish Jesus, 27–54. 52 See n. 101, chapter two. 53 Though the Yerushalmi text is considerably longer, including several additional polemical encounters not included in Genesis Rabbah.

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sion diverges considerably in several ways, though its core surely traces back to these same traditions. Only in one line, the line already cited, “Regarding all [biblical verses] about which the minim have behaved like apiqorsim,” does the Yerushalmi text parallel the Bavli against Genesis Rabbah, which reads here, “Regarding all [biblical verses] about which you find a disputation of the minim.” And furthermore, this one line varies in the extant manuscript witnesses of the Yerushalmi.54 Perhaps this suggests that the Yerushalmi text should read more closely to Genesis Rabbah here, and one early manuscript of the Yerushalmi supports this reading.55 Moreover, this verb paqar, used in this sense, intransitively and in its simple form, is otherwise unprecedented in the classical rabbinic literature outside of the Bavli.56 And, in the one other place in the Bavli where this specific expression, “the minim have behaved like apiqorsim” (paqru ha-minim) appears, the text is a modification of an earlier version that appears in the Tosefta as “the minim separated themselves” (parshu ha-minim).57 These considerations suggest that at least this expression in the Bavli’s list of dangerous verses is a secondary development, the significance of which I will discuss in the next section.

54 Y. Berakhot 9:1, 12d: MS Vatican Ebr. 133 (13th c.) reads like Genesis Rabbah: ‫כל תשובה‬ ‫ ;שיש למינים תשובתה בצדה‬MS Leiden (c. 1289) and MS London British Library Or. 2822 / MS Paris Bibliothèque Nationale Heb. 1389 (with the commentary of Sirillo, 16th c.) read like the Bavli: ‫( כל מקום שפקרו המינין תשובתן בצידן‬Leiden) and ‫( כל מקום שפקרו המינין תשובתן בצדן‬London / Paris ); Ed. Venice is problematic: ‫כל מקום שפרקו המינין תשובתן בצידן‬, but this may be a scribal error. In all witnesses the attribution is to Simlai as in Genesis Rabbah. 55 MS Vatican Ebr. 133. See n. 54, above. This manuscript does not seem to be influenced by Genesis Rabbah here in any obvious way, whereas the almost letter for letter correspondence of MS Leiden and the early-modern Sirillo manuscripts with the Bavli along with the philological considerations that I will now mention are suspicious. Strack and Stemberger, Introduction, 181, note that the “[the] few surviving MSS of [the Palestinian Talmud] are strongly influenced by the text and language of the [Babylonian Talmud].” 56 The verb paqar appears intransitively in its qal form in the Bavli (in Hebrew or in Aramaic) in b. Megillah 25b, twice in b. Sanhedrin 38b, b. Sanhedrin 44a, and b. Sanhedrin 60a. It appears transitively in b. Sanhedrin 44a and in y. Sanhedrin: 2:3, 20b. The latter is, to the best of my knowledge, the only instance of the verb in its qal form in the classical rabbinic corpus outside of the Bavli. B. Yevamot 52a has a form of paqar in ed. Vilna but not in the manuscripts. It seems likely that this specific usage is a Babylonian development, though other forms (such as the causative) of this verb and of the related root b.q.r. are common throughout the rabbinic literature. See Sokoloff, A Dictionary of Jewish Palestinian Aramaic of the Byzantine Period, s. v. ‫ ;פקר‬and Moreshet, Lexicon, 114, 289, and esp. 114 nn. 22 and 13*, there; and see n. 42, above. 57 B. Megillah 25b (MS Munich 95): ‫ר׳ שמעון בן אלעזר או׳ לעולם יהא אדם זהיר בתשובתו שמתוך‬ ‫תשובה שהשיב אהרן למשה פקרו המינין‬. The standard edition has me‘ar‘arim, “disputants,” in place of minim, but all available mansuscripts have minim. T. Megillah 3:37 (ed. Lieberman): ‫אמ׳ ר׳‬ ‫שמעון בן לעזר אין אדם רשיי להשיב על הקלקלה שמתשובה שהשיבו אהרן למשה פרשו המינין‬. On t. Megillah 3:37, see n. 90, chapter two.

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V. Know How to Avoid an Apiqoros The list of dangerous verses appears in the Bavli in the midst of a large collection of texts related to minim, “two powers in heaven,” and disputations with deviants of various sorts. It appears in a sub-section of this larger collection that contains four related texts introduced with the text mentioned earlier from m. Avot 2:14, “know what to answer an apiqoros.”58 The intent of this exhortation in Avot is clear, that you should study in order to be prepared to debate with apiqorsim and to disprove their faulty ideas. But, surprisingly, the Bavli goes on to gloss this text with a significant qualification, “Rabbi Yohanan said, This was only taught in regard to a non-Jewish apiqoros, but regarding a Jewish apiqoros it would only cause him to behave even more like an apiqoros” (peqar tefei).59 It is clear that this saying’s phrasing emphasizes non-disputation over disputation, even while it seems to allow disputations with non-Jews. But even this gesture to a distinction between a Jewish and a non-Jewish apiqoros seems artificial in this context, especially in light of the Bavli apiqoros texts discussed in section two of this chapter, which were all concerned with Jews not sufficiently respecting the rabbis, and the fact that no earlier texts refer to non-Jewish apiqorsim at all. In effect, this qualification seems less to limit the applicability of the statement from Avot than to nullify it. This reading is supported by the fact that Yohanan’s comment is used to preface three other texts, which I will discuss in what follows, all of which enforce this same message with more or less subtlety. For these reasons, I am inclined to be skeptical of the attribution here, and, indeed, the few available manuscript witnesses are inconsistent in this regard.60 But, even if the attribution is reliable, the comment’s placement at the head of this collection of texts is certainly editorial, and at least the phrase peqar tefei seems unlikely to be from third century Roman Palestine.61 Immediately following this comment is the text from the Bavli’s version of the list of dangerous verses discussed in the last section. It is notable that in the text that appears in the earlier collections, Genesis Rabbah and the Yerushalmi, the list is attributed to Rabbi Simlai, a sage who was active, as mentioned, in Roman Palestine in the second half of the third century. The Bavli’s version is attributed to this same Rabbi Yohanan, who was a slightly earlier and more prominent sage than Simlai.62 I would suggest that placing this list of verses in Yohanan’s name immediately following his qualification about disputations changes its mean58 See n. 6, above for the text from the Mishnah. It appears in the Bavli in b. Sanhedrin 38b as: ‫… תנן התם רבי אליעזר אומר הוי שקוד ללמוד תורה ודע מה שתשיב לאפיקורוס‬. 59 B. Sanhedrin 38b (ed. Vilna): ‫אמר רבי יוחנן לא שנו אלא אפיקורוס נכרי אבל אפיקורוס ישראל‬ ‫כל שכן דפקר טפי‬. 60 MS Yad Harav Herzog 1 has Rabbi Yehudah, MSS Munich 95 and Florence II-I-9 have Yohanan. 61 See n. 56, above. 62 Schäfer, Jewish Jesus, 37, points out that Yohanan was Simlai’s teacher.

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ing in a striking fashion. When Genesis Rabbah says, “Regarding all [biblical verses] about which you find a disputation of the minim, its palliative is near at hand,” the aim is to encourage sages to wield the verses listed as easy refutations in public disputation with these minim. However, when the Bavli follows up Yohanan’s exhortation to avoid debating Jewish apiqorsim because they would “behave even more like an apiqoros” (peqar tefei) with a statement in his name using this same unusual language of the minim that they “behave like apiqorsim” (paqar ha-minim), the minim must be read here as being included within Yohanan’s ban on disputation.63 And if so, his assurance that “their refutation is near at hand” is naturally read in this context as, “their refutation is so easy that you should not even bother refuting them”: if these apiqorsim or minim wanted to know the truth they would just look to the end of the verse and see it! The fact that the Bavli introduces the list of verses with the idea of their refutation being near at hand strengthens this reading; this idea appears only in the middle of the collection of verses in Genesis Rabbah and the Yerushalmi. This reading is further strengthened by the fact that the larger collection of texts in the Bavli continues with two other texts that have the same effect on the reader. I will discuss the third text first because the second text is a bit more complex. This third text is a relatively straightforward debate between an obscure rabbi named Rav Idit and a min on a “two-powers” related matter.64 Like the list of dangerous verses, this text appears elsewhere in the rabbinic literature, and its content is not especially relevant to us.65 What is important is that the Bavli’s editors add an introductory clause that, again, turns its meaning around: “Rav Nahman said, One who is as skillful in disputing minim as is Rav Idit, let him dispute; but if not, he should not dispute. A min said to Rav Idit …”66 The text then continues with a standard disputation between Rav Idit and a min, in which the min advocates a “two powers” interpretation of a biblical verse and Rav Idit confounds him by citing other verses. In its original context, without the introduction, the text encourages disputations of this sort. However, the Bavli, by specifying that only an especially skilled disputer should dare such an encounter, actively discourages them. The attribution of this introduction is to 63 Of course, as already discussed in chapter one, the minim are not always Jews in the Bavli. In this case, however, the structure of the language strongly suggests including them within the category of those with whom one must not debate. Whether or not the minim in the list of dangerous verses in its original context or in the earlier parallel texts should be seen as Jewish or not is not material to my argument. Moreover, as I will demonstrate, the two following texts explicitly return to this same theme of refraining from debates, so I suggest that this is the common thread uniting these four texts. 64 Apparently, the correct reading is actually “Idi.” See Boyarin, “Beyond Judaisms,” 329. 65 See n. 67, below, for parallels in the rabbinic corpus. 66 B. Sanhedrin 38b (ed. Vilna): ‫אמר רב נחמן האי מאן דידע לאהדורי למינים כרב אידית ליהדר ואי‬ ‫… לא לא ליהדר אמר ההוא מינא לרב אידית‬. On the full Bavli text, see Segal, Two Powers, 68–71, Boyarin, “Beyond Judaisms,” 329–333, and Schäfer, Jewish Jesus, 104–115.

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an early fourth century Babylonian sage, but, again, its placement here both as an unnecessary comment on the anecdote about Rav Idit and within this collection of related texts is the work of the Bavli’s editors.67 Remarkably then, this important collection of texts describing polemical encounters between rabbis and others in Bavli Sanhedrin, although introduced with “know how to answer an apiqoros,” is actually working hard to deliver just the opposite advice, “know how to avoid an apiqoros”! And finally, subsequent to the list of dangerous verses but preceding the text about Rav Idit and the min, the Bavli includes an explanation for the last of the verses that appear in the list. The form of this explanation provides additional evidence for my reading. The last verse in the Bavli’s list is from Daniel 7:9, a verse that I discussed already in chapter two: “As I looked, thrones were placed and one that was ancient of days took his seat; his raiment was white as snow, and the hair of his head like pure wool.” This verse describes one of Daniel’s visions, which includes a vision of God as a divine king seated on a throne. The minim are trying to prove a divine multiplicity from the fact that multiple “thrones” are set up rather than a single throne. Yohanan’s suggested answer to this argument is that the continuation of the verse, when it says that God “took his seat,” uses a singular verb. This verse from the book of Daniel does not appear in the lists of dangerous verses from Genesis Rabbah and the Yerushalmi. And even in the Bavli it does not fit well with the other verses listed, which all involve a plural verb used with God as the subject.68 The verse from Daniel feels like it was tacked on to the end of this list to facilitate placing the explanation that follows, which explores why the plural verb is necessary generally in biblical verses, but focuses especially on the question of why two thrones were needed in the book of Daniel: Rabbi Akiva said, One [throne] was for [God] and one for David. Rabbi Yossi said to him, “Akiva! For how long shall you continue to profane the divine presence! Rather say, One [throne] for Justice and one for Charity!” Did [Akiva] accept this [censure] from [Yossi] or not? Hear how it was taught [afterward]: Rabbi Akiva said, One [throne] for Justice and one for Charity. Rabbi Eleazar ben Azariah said to him, “Akiva! What business do you have with homiletics? Confine yourself to the study of blemishes and impurity!69 Rather say, One for a chair and one for a stool: a chair to sit on and a stool for a footrest.”70 67 A parallel text is in Yalqut Shimoni mishpatim 359, where it appears without the introductory sentence, demonstrating, at least, that this sentence is superfluous. There is also a somewhat similar text in Exodus Rabbah 32:4. See Schäfer, Jewish Jesus, 115. 68 See Schäfer, Jewish Jesus, 37, 68–70, who notes that the Daniel verse is different than the others and also enumerates other differences in the verses cited in Bavli version. 69 ‫כלך אצל נגעים ואהלות‬. “Confine yourself,” following trans. Soncino; “blemishes and impurity” as a loose translation of the Hebrew, on which see n. 73, below. 70 B. Sanhedrin 38b (ed. Vilna): ‫אחד לו ואחד לדוד דברי רבי עקיבא אמר לו רבי יוסי עקיבא עד‬ ‫מתי אתה עושה שכינה חול אלא אחד לדין ואחד לצדקה קבלה מיניה או לא קבלה מיניה תא שמע דתניא‬ ‫אחד לדין ואחד לצדקה דברי רבי עקיבא אמר לו רבי אלעזר בן עזריא עקיבא מה לך אצל הגדה כלך אצל‬

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This text considers a number of possible answers to the question of why there was more than one throne in Daniel’s vision, and it settles on the idea that one was for God himself as a seat and the other was a footstool for God’s feet. The other answers it considers involve somewhat less unified views of God, first that there were two thrones each for one of God’s personified attributes and second that one was for God and the other for David, presumably intending the future messiah that is supposed to come from the line of David. What is important for our purposes is the way that Akiva is consistently attacked for his responses. Akiva gamely tries two different answers yet both are ultimately rejected. This is so even though his second answer was at first accepted after Rabbi Yossi attacked him for his first answer! I would argue that these attacks on Akiva, rather than the specific explanation for the plural “thrones” that the Bavli settles on, is the Bavli’s main purpose for including this text in this context. The constant attacks on Akiva’s failed attempts to “know what to answer an apiqoros” in the context of Yohanan’s preceding advice to avoid such disputation against Jews in all cases and Nahman’s subsequent advice to avoid such disputes unless you are as skilled as Idit demand the conclusion that Akiva is not as skilled as Idit and should refrain from such disputation.71 If even Rabbi Akiva, one of the great heroes of the classical rabbinic corpus, is not skilled enough to answer an apiqoros, then surely the rabbis hearing this text in the period of the Bavli’s editing would understand that they should refrain from such activity. What is more, I would argue that the particular form of the second rebuke against Akiva lays out what these rabbis should be involved with instead of such public disputations against apiqorsim: “What business do you have with homiletics? Confine yourself to the study of blemishes and impurity!”72 The Bavli’s editors are exhorting their colleagues in the well-established rabbinic community in sixth century Sasanian Persia to avoid arguing with deviants and

‫נגעים ואהלות אלא אחד לכסא ואחד לשרפרף כסא לישב עליו שרפרף להדום רגליו‬. This text also appears in b. Hagigah 14a, where it seems better to fit the context. On this text, see Segal, Two Powers, 47–50; Boyarin, “Two Powers in Heaven; Or, the Making of a Heresy,” 351–360; and Schäfer, Jewish Jesus, 70–85. Boyarin and Schäfer disagree regarding the provenance of this text and, especially, regarding its relationship to the text from the Mekhilta discussed in chapter two, section three, and to other traditions, both within and outside of the classical rabbinic literature about Enoch, Metatron, and the figure like a son of man from the Daniel 7:13. As mentioned earlier, my concern is for what the Bavli’s editors do with this tradition in context of this larger collection of texts in b. Sanhedrin rather than the earlier circumstances of its composition, so these issues remain out of my scope. 71 It is the placing of the text in this position that demands this reading. It does not necessarily read the same way in the parallel in b. Hagigah 14a, which is a much more natural context for this text. As I suggested above, the placing of this text here follows on Daniel 7:9 as an addition to the Bavli’s list of “dangerous verses,” which itself seems rather forced. See n., 68, above, and n. 73, below. 72 See n. 73, below, on my translation of this expression.

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dabbling in theological speculations and instead to focus on the practical business of being a rabbi.73 Thus I am arguing in this chapter that the gradual redefinition of the apiqoros reflects two historical developments comparable to the process of redefining the meshummad analyzed in the last chapter. First, the gradual sketching of a boundary around apiqorsim delineated primarily by their rejection of the rabbis as a collective rather than for other ideological positions allowed the rabbis to construct more firmly a boundary around their own community. And second, rhetorically turning away from interactions with these apiqorsim shifted a boundary within the non-rabbinic community by deemphasizing other concerns and focusing primarily on the rabbis’ practical role as judges and teachers whose aim was not to dispute with deviants but to lead all Jews who aspired to piety. As the rabbis become increasingly well-established as an institutionalized and judicially authoritative collective in Sasanian Persia in the sixth century, they were less concerned with the ideological debates so characteristic of earlier struggles of sages, minim, and apiqorsim, and were much more concerned with expanding their position as judges and interpreters of the Torah for all Jews willing to accept them in this role.

73 The expression that I translate loosely as “blemishes and impurity” actually refers to two tractates of the Mishnah, nega‘im and ’ohalot. The former deals with the signs of leprosy as described in Leviticus 13–14, and the latter deals with the transmission of corpse impurity within the confines or overshadowing of a covered or roofed structure. The expression “nega‘im and’ohalot” appears in several places in the rabbinic corpus to signify especially difficult tractates of the Mishnah (see b. Pesahim 50a and b. Bava Metzia 58b–59a, the latter as interpreted by some commentators, though a parallel in b. Sanhedrin 107a and some manuscripts of b. Bava Metzia 58b–59a have “four types of death penalty” instead of “nega‘im and’ohalot”; b. Hagigah 11a uses the expression in a somewhat different context). This expression as a rebuke to Akiva also appears elsewhere (b. Sanhedrin 67a and Exodus Rabbah 10:4) in connection to Akiva’s apparent lack of prowess in biblical interpretation, generally, without any connection to the kind of theological issues that some scholars argue are at work in this text. My reading here follows from the somewhat forced placing of this text in this context, which, I am arguing, imbues the expression with additional significance. See n. 71, above.

Chapter 6

Two Powers and the Ascent of Rabbi Elisha In the previous chapters, we have been discussing the construction of rhetorical boundaries around the developing rabbinic movement through an analysis of polemics against perceived deviants that were not considered internal to that movement. We have analyzed strategies for the exclusion of perceived deviants and strategies for the inclusion of marginal figures within the purview of rabbinic jurisdiction. In other words, we have been studying the inscribing of boundaries and the shifting of boundaries around non-rabbinic targets, though this study has shown how the rabbis gradually came to conceive of themselves as a collective and at the same time to define more clearly the community of Jews that they aspired to lead. In this chapter and the following, we will continue to look at how polemical targets are rhetorically constructed, but the targets of the polemics that we will study will all be within the rabbinic community itself. They are presented as what I believe is best described as “failed rabbis.” Our aim will be to examine how the rabbis imagine themselves by imagining the deviants among them. We saw in chapter two how the category of “those who say that there are two powers” became conflated with the category of minim and, at the same time, the minim were transformed from a category of contentious Jewish insiders to a category of rejected outsiders. By the time of the Babylonian Talmud’s editing, the min is a complex category, but it is mostly treated as sharply excluded, often as a non-Jewish idolater, and also associated with theological deviance. The category of “those who say that there are two powers,” in contrast, is throughout the classical rabbinic corpus a thoroughly deviant category owing to the perceived severity of this transgression. In this chapter, therefore, rather than focusing on this idea’s diachronic evolution in the rabbinic corpus, we will focus instead on the later treatment of an important figure associated with “two powers,” Elisha ben Abuyah. I  will demonstrate how a series of narratives emerge around the fifth century that associate Elisha with “those who say that there are two powers” and present him as violently opposed to rabbinic teachings. However, the Bavli’s editors work to present a different narrative, in which Elisha is not associated with “two powers” at all nor does he oppose the rabbis or stand outside of their collective. Rather he is presented as an ordinary sinner, like a meshummad who transgresses the Sabbath and norms of sexual propriety. Yet, unlike the meshummad, Elisha transgresses neither from appetite nor to provoke the rabbis. In

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fact, his transgressions have no clear ideological basis, though they ultimately result from a misapprehension of the nature of the rabbinic collective, a theme that we will explore further in the next chapter. The Bavli constructs Elisha ben Abuyah not as “one who says that there are two powers” but as a failed rabbi, and this construction facilities the efforts of the established rabbinic community in Sasanian Persia to work out what it means to be a member in good standing of this community. The contemporary scholar whose work has been most important in connection with using Bavli narratives to gain a better understanding of the late rabbinic community in Sasanian Persia is Jeffrey Rubenstein.1 My work in this chapter and the next relies heavily on Rubenstein’s approach to reading rabbinic narratives and on many of his specific findings in regard to the Bavli’s Elisha narratives.2 Also significant is Alon Goshen-Gottstein’s work on the Elisha texts in the rabbinic corpus. Although I rely less on and disagree more with GoshenGottstein, at least one key moment in my reading of the narratives is anticipated by his comprehensive study.3

I. Elisha ben Abuyah as an Absolute Other Given the scholarly attention that Elisha ben Abuyah has attracted over the last century, it will be worthwhile to begin with a general discussion. Scholars of a previous generation, reflecting the interest prevalent at that time in writing biographies of specific rabbis, attempted to get at the supposed “historical kernel” behind the Elisha narratives that we will be discussing in what follows. But it is now generally accepted that this is not a profitable enterprise in the rabbinic corpus generally and especially not so in the case of Elisha ben Abuyah.4 Stories about individual rabbis, particularly those that appear in the Babylonian Talmud, are often fantastic and mythological, and would seem to have been written for hortative rather than historical-descriptive purposes. This is not to say that these 1 See especially Rubenstein’s trilogy of studies of the Babylonian Talmud: Talmudic Stories; The Culture of The Babylonian Talmud; and Stories of the Babylonian Talmud (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2010). 2 See Rubenstein, Talmudic Stories, 18–21, on rabbinic narratives generally, and his reading of the Elisha story, ibid., 64–104. 3 See n. 46, below. 4 On rabbinic biography generally, see, Neusner, In Search of Talmudic Biography; and William Scott Green, “What’s in a Name?  – The Problematic of Rabbinic ‘Biography,’” in Approaches to Ancient Judaism: Theory and Practice (ed. William Scott Green; Missoula: Scholars, 1978), 77–96. For studies of Elisha, specifically, see the reviews of scholarship in Alon Goshen-Gottstein, The Sinner and the Amnesiac: The Rabbinic Invention of Elisha ben Abuya and Eleazar ben Arach (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000), 22–34, and in Albert Assaraf, L’Hérétique: Elicha ben Abouya ou l’autre absolu (Paris: Balland, 1991), 129–148, and the discussion starting in section three of this chapter.

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rabbis were not real historical personages, rather that many of the tales preserved about them in the literature that remains to us are simply not historical narratives. The subject of this chapter, Elisha ben Abuyah, was also a real historical person, a second century C. E. sage of Roman Palestine. He was contemporary to Rabbi Akiva, whose name has come up several times in the previous chapters. The rabbinic corpus preserves a number of ordinary and admirable traditions in Elisha’s name, and there is little reason to think from the earliest traditions associated with him that he was considered an exceptionally deviant figure in his own lifetime.5 This is to say that in all likelihood none of the fantastic narratives or negative actions associated with Elisha that we will be examining in this chapter have any basis in real historical events. The Elisha that we will be examining would seem to be a literary construction cut almost entirely from whole cloth and based primarily on an obscure tale of a mystical ascent that appears in the Tosefta. However, in later rabbinic texts, Elisha certainly does emerge as a significant deviant born from within the heart of the rabbinic community. Indeed his deviance is such that he earns, primarily in the Babylonian Talmud, a special pejorative appellation, “The Other,” Aher in Hebrew, signaling the importance of his transgression. It is perhaps the attractiveness of finding such an extreme deviant within the rabbinic community that has given rise to generalizations in his treatment in the scholarship. For example, in his pioneering work on “two powers in heaven” that I discussed in chapter one, Alan Segal writes of Elisha ben Abuyah that he “functions as the heretic par excellence, as Simon Magus does in Christian anti-heresiological tracts.”6 Simon Magus, that is Simon the magician, was a mythical figure that early Christian heresiologists imagined to be the progenitor of all schools of heresy. He is apparently based on an obscure 5 Elisha appears in a number of sources in the classical rabbinic literature, and not always as a polemical target. For example, m. Avot 4:20 and b. Moed Qatan 20a cite a wisdom saying and legal ruling, respectively, in his name. In Avot of Rabbi Natan A 40 and Avot of Rabbi Natan B 46, Elisha’s appearance in a dream is said to be a sign of impending disaster. Traditions directly related to Elisha’s estrangement appear in various forms in t. Hagigah 2:3–4, b. Hagigah 15a–b, b. Qiddushin 39b, and y. Hagigah 2:1, 77b–c, and in midrashic sources parallel to y. Hagigah. For relevant references to Elisha in the Hekhalot corpus see n. 27, below. 6 Segal, Two Powers, 62. Most scholars have followed Segal in seeing Elisha as a “heretic” (see n. 4, above, for references to the reviews of scholarship in Goshen-Gottstein and in Assaraf; and see Grossberg, “The Meaning and End of Heresy in Rabbinic Literature,” 134 n. 13, where I discuss Hai Gaon connecting Elisha to Zoroastrian theological dualism in B. M. Lewin, ed., Otsar ha-Geonim: Thesaurus of the Gaonic Responsa and Commentaries [13 vols.; Jerusalem: Hebrew University Press, 1928–1943], Hagigah, 15, and Henry A. Fischel, Rabbinic Literature and Greco-Roman Philosophy [Studia Post Biblica 21; Leiden: Brill, 1973], 1–34, connecting Elisha to Epicureanism), but this is not universal. Scholem comments that “cutting the shoots” in the narrative discussed below (see n. 32) implies transgressing the Torah’s precepts. More relevantly, Rubenstein, Talmudic Stories, 74, writes that Elisha’s exclamation about “two powers” in b. Hagigah 15a was “an unfortunate error, that he never subscribed to dualistic beliefs or heresy.”

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reference in the book of Acts to “a man named Simon who had previously practiced magic in the city and amazed the nation of Samaritans.”7 If Elisha ben Abuyah were actually similar to Simon Magus, this would be a very interesting observation on Segal’s part. Yet, Segal makes this far-reaching statement of identity without much substantiation. It would seem that the claim is based on the fact that both Elisha and Simon are important figures that appear frequently in the respective corpora and that both are, at least to Segal’s thinking, “heretics.” It must be allowed that Segal makes this statement about Elisha only in passing, and it is not the basis of any significant argumentation on his important monograph’s thesis. I cite it only as an illustration of the need for caution when undertaking such comparisons. Although Simon Magus is certainly a complicated character in early Christian literature and although the way that he functions in that corpus may be similar in some ways to how Elisha functions in rabbinic literature, it would not be an easy task to demonstrate broadly that their primary functions overlap significantly enough to make such a comparison hold up to scrutiny. By way of similarities, one might seek parallels in accusations of immorality or lawlessness against Simon or his followers and one of Elisha’s important characteristics that I will discuss in what follows. However, as one scholar of early Christianity points out, “Early Christian writers are unanimous in seeing [Simon Magus] ‘as the father of all heresy.’”8 That is, one very important role that Simon Magus plays in early Christian heresiology is as a heresiarch: he is the founder of heterodox teachings that took root among his students and led to the various schools of heresy that the heresiologists eventually become so involved in cataloging. Elisha’s student, in remarkably sharp contrast, is Rabbi Meir, one of the greatest sages of the second century, who even continues to study with Elisha after Elisha’s transgression. Elisha continues to encourage Meir to study and observe the same rabbinic traditions that he himself abandoned. Moreover, Elisha’s own teachings continued to be repeated among the rabbis and are preserved, as just mentioned, in his name in several rabbinic collections.9 7 Acts

8:9. Simon, “From Greek Hairesis to Christian Heresy,” 103 n. 3 (he cites Eusebius Church History 2.13:6: πάσης μὲν οὖν ἀρχηγὸν αἱρέσεως πρῶτον γενέσθαι τὸν Σίμωνα παρειλήφαμεν: “We have understood that Simon was the author of all heresy,” ed. Schaff). See also Desjardins, “Bauer and Beyond,” 75: “opponents are placed on heretical trajectories which are traced back to founding figures (e. g. Simon Magus) and Greek philosophical schools.” Runia, “Philo of Alexandria and the Greek Hairesis-Model,” 122, suggests that this idea of succession is essential to the “Greek hairesis-model” on which early Christian heresiology is founded: “Each of the haireseis had its own tradition of disciples and followers of the founder, stretching back in succession to the beginning of the movement. Hairesis thus implies and involves a διαδοχή, a passing on of the tradition from the one generation to the next.” 9 As mentioned in n. 5, above, traditions are repeated in Elisha’s name in m. Avot 4:20 and b. Moed Qatan 20a, with no pejorative context at all (also, perhaps, in Avot of Rabbi Natan in 8 Marcel

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Far from being a heresiarch, we might better characterize Elisha, as one study describes him, as an “absolute other.”10 He is a special exception to the rules; an exception that begins and ends with him. As a heavenly voice in the narrative to be discussed in this chapter announces, “‘Repent, faithless children’ – except [Elisha]!” The Elisha narratives do not function to explain the genealogy of deviance in the rabbinic community as the Simon Magus narratives do in early Christianity. Rather, in what follows I will argue that the most important of these narratives actually works hard to present Elisha as a failed rabbi whose failure stems from no specific ideological commitments beyond a personal commitment to his own failure. Both his estrangement from and his eventual reintegration into the rabbinic community are little more than a rhetorical exercise of imagining the nature of the rabbinic identity and what it means to be a member of this community.

II. Elisha ben Abuyah as a Failed Rabbi My main interest in this chapter will be Elisha’s treatment in the Babylonian Talmud as compared to his treatment in a work known as 3 Enoch. But before I can turn to this analysis, I must briefly review the process by which Elisha was transformed into an archetypal rabbinic deviant in the first place. Tales explicating the details of a mystical ascent that Elisha ben Abuyah was reputed to have undertaken apparently started to emerge in Sasanian Persia around the fifth century. The earlier core of these tales is found in an enigmatic passage in t. Hagigah 2:3–2:4: Four entered the Garden (pardes): One had a glimpse and died, one had a glimpse and was smitten, one had a glimpse and cut the shoots, one ascended in peace and descended in peace. Ben [Azzai] had a glimpse and died – of him scripture says [in Psalms 116:15]: “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints.” Ben [Zoma] had a glimpse and was smitten – of him scripture says [in Proverbs 25:16], “If you have found honey, eat only enough for you, lest you be sated with it and vomit it.” Elisha had a glimpse and cut the shoots – of him scripture says [in Ecclesiastes 5:5], “Let not your mouth lead you into sin.” Rabbi Akiva ascended in peace and descended in peace – of him scripture says [in Song of Songs 1:4], “Draw me after you, let us make haste. [The king has brought me into his chambers.]”11 variants in both versions of the text), apart from the traditions that he is said to teach Meir in the long narrative of Elisha’s transgression in its various versions in the Talmuds and the midrash. 10 Assaraf, L’Hérétique. 11 T. Hagigah 2:3–2:4 (MS London): ‫ארבעה נכנסו לפרדס אחד הציץ ומת אחד הציץ ונפגע אחד‬ ‫הציץ וקיצץ בנטעיות אחד עלה בשלום וירד בשלום בן זומא הציץ ומת עליו הכתו׳ אומ׳ יקר בעיני יי׳ המותה‬ ‫לחסידיו בן עזאי הציץ ונפגע עליו הכתו׳ אומ׳ דבש מצאת אכול דייך פן תשבענו והקאתו אלישע הציץ וקיצץ‬ ‫בנטעיות עליו הכתו׳ אומ׳ אל תתן את פיך לחטיא את בשריך ר׳ עקיבא עלה בשלום וירד בשלום עליו הכתו׳‬ ‫או׳ משכני אחריך נרוצה וגו׳‬. I follow MS London here, which seems to have the best reading, though I put Azzai before Zoma as in the other witnesses. See E. E. Urbach, “ha-mesorot ‘al

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This passage’s precise meaning is unclear, although it would seem to be discussing some sort of mystical journey that these four sages were supposed to have attempted.12 The idea that a pious person with the proper skills could ascend to heavenly realms was not uncommon in antiquity, and it became associated with these four early-rabbinic figures.13 The Tosefta refers to the locus of this ascent, the heavenly realm itself, as the “Garden,” pardes in Hebrew, a word connected etymologically to the word that leads to the modern English word “paradise.” I refer to the journey as an “ascent” using the Tosefta’s terminology in regard to Akiva, who “ascended in peace.”14 This terminology becomes common in a later corpus of literature dedicated to this kind of mystical journey, which I will discuss presently.15 It is not surprising that Akiva, who is prominent throughout the rabbinic corpus, is the hero of this brief account. All of the other three sages failed in their attempts, though there is nothing to say that their failure was thought of as a fundamentally deviant act or that these sages were thought of in this early period as severe sinners of the sort that we have been considering up to now.16 As alluded to above, a wisdom saying attributed to Elisha appears in m. Avot 4:20, which contains no indication of pejorative associations: “Elisha ben Abuyah says, One who learns as a child, what is he like? Like ink written on fresh paper. One who learns when he is old, what is he like? Like ink written on paper that has been erased.”17 So there is no reason to think that he was thought of in a negative way at this time. The only hint of what will emerge later is the mention of “sin” in the proof-text from the book of Ecclesiastes associated with Elisha in t. Hagigah 2:3, “Let not your mouth lead you into sin,” which seems to be the basis for much of the later legends. torat ha-sod bi-tequfat ha-tanna’im” in Studies in Mysticism and Religion: Presented to Gershom G. Scholem on his Seventieth Birthday (ed. E. E. Urbach, R. J. Z. Werblowsky, and Chaim Wirszubski; Jerusalem: Magnes, 1967), 1–28, at 12; and Goshen-Gottstein, The Sinner and the Amnesiac, 47–48. On the London Manuscript of the Tosefta, see Robert Brody, Mishnah and Tosefta Studies (Jerusalem: Magnes, 2014), 63–78. 12 For an important alternate reading of this narrative, see Peter Schäfer, The Origins of Jewish Mysticism (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009), 196–202. I am concerned with Elisha’s role in this narrative and its later reception rather than with the origins of Jewish mysticism that Schäfer is addressing. 13 See the collection of articles in April D. DeConick, ed., Paradise Now: Essays on Early Jewish and Christian Mysticism (Society of Biblical Literature Symposium Series 11; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2006). 14 But, see Schäfer, The Origins of Jewish Mysticism, 197–198, for significant variants in this terminology. 15 The Hekhalot corpus, in which the ascent is typically referred to paradoxically as a “descent.” See Peter Schäfer, The Hidden and Manifest God: Some Major Themes in Early Jewish Mysticism (trans. Aubrey Pomerance; SUNY Series in Judaica: Hermeneutics, Mysticism, and Religion; New York: State University of New York Press, 1992), 2–3, and esp., n. 4, there. 16 The text does, of course, associate a biblical verse about sin with Elisha, which suggests some kind of misdeed, as I will explain. 17 M. Avot 4:20 (ed. Vilna): ‫אלישע בן אבויה אומר הלומד ילד למה הוא דומה לדיו כתובה על נייר‬ ‫חדש והלומד זקן למה הוא דומה לדיו כתובה על נייר מחוק‬.

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Traditions explaining the Tosefta’s account of Elisha’s failed ascent in such a way as to present him as a moral deviant show up for the first time in the Yerushalmi. It would seem as well that not until this later period does the pejorative nickname mentioned earlier, Aher, “The Other,” become associated with Elisha. Although scholars have come up with some very creative explanations for this appellation, most plausible to my mind is simply that after Elisha came to be perceived as an especially heinous deviant, tradents repeating the earlier tradition of the four who entered the Garden took to omitting his name from the list: ben azzai, ben zoma, aqiva, ve-aher: “Ben Azzai, Ben Zoma, Akiva, and one other one.” 18 A version of this sort made it in to most of the manuscripts of the Tosefta, though the London manuscript of the Tosefta (cited above) as well as the citation of this text in the Yerushalmi preserve what some scholars have argued is the best reading, in which Elisha is not singled out.19 The appellation, in itself, need not be read as originally having any other hidden implications regarding “otherness.” The Yerushalmi attributes several types of wicked behavior to Elisha, most importantly a violent and dedicated opposition to rabbinic teachings, but it does not associate him with “two powers,” which is the subject of this chapter.20 This latter association appears to have arisen subsequent to the Yerushalmi accounts, together with narratives expanding on the Tosefta’s enigmatic ascent tradition. By this time, Elisha had become well established as an archetypal rabbinic deviant, so it would appear that various traditions arose to explain the Tosefta in terms of a failure of piety rather than just as a failed mystical ascent. Versions of the ascent narrative appear in the Babylonian Talmud as well as in a somewhat obscure corpus of literature that emerged from within or maybe from the margins 18 The Hebrew word aḥer, ‫אחר‬, is an adjective meaning “other” or “different.” The sense that I am suggesting of “another person” appears, e. g., in m. Maaser Sheni 4:3 (ed. Vilna): ‫בעל‬ ‫הבית אומר בסלע ואחר אומר בסלע‬: “If the householder bids one sela and another bids one sela.” The significance of this name as a pejorative appellation has been discussed at least since the geonic period. For example, Nissim Gaon, Sefer ha-Mafteaḥ, Berakhot, refers to Elisha as ahor: ‫נקרא אלישע אחור מפני שחזר לאחוריו‬: “Elisha was called Ahor because he turned to things behind him.” See Lieberman, Tosefta ki-Fshuṭah, 5.1289. All extant Bavli witness, however, have aher not ahor (two instances of the name at the start of the narrative in a genizah fragment, MS Oxford heb. d. 63/32, have aheir, with a yud, though the rest of the several instances in that fragment have aher). For a comprehensive review of scholarship on this question, see GoshenGottstein, The Sinner and the Amnesiac, 62–64, and the notes, there (and see ibid., 32, where he cites some recent scholarship that tries to explain this in terms of social self-identify). Goshen-Gottstein’s explanation, ibid., 64–69, of the appellation seems unnecessarily complicated. My explanation is based on similar assumptions but is much simpler and, I think, more plausible (and cf. Goshen-Gottstein’s discussion, ibid. 64, of Samuel Back, Elischa ben AbujaAcher [Frankfurt am Main: Kaufmann, 1891]). 19 On the London manuscript of the Tosefta and an argument for its superiority here, see the bibliography in n. 11, above. 20 Y. Hagigah 2:1, 77b–c. This violent opposition to rabbinic teachings is not part of the Bavli Elisha narratives that we will discuss in what follows, which, as I will argue, aim to keep Elisha within the rabbinic fold, at least as a failed rabbi.

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of rabbinic circles in fifth or sixth century Sasanian Persia, which scholars refer to as the Hekhalot literature.21 The corpus is referred to in this way because it is frequently concerned with a mystical ascent to the entrance hall of the divine dwelling, which is called in Hebrew the hekhal.22 The Hekhalot corpus is an unusually fluid body of literature with a very unstable manuscript tradition, so it can be very difficult and often impossible to reconstruct “original versions” of specific works or compositions. Rather, one of the most influential contemporary scholars of this corpus, Peter Schäfer, prefers to speak in terms of “microforms” and “macroforms.”23 Microforms are smaller units of texts that are arranged with great variety in the various manuscripts into larger collections, or macroforms. Sometimes macroforms are given titles in the manuscripts and sometimes they are not. But scholars tend to refer to “works” such as Hekhalot Rabbati (“The Greater Hekhalot”), Hekhalot Zutarti (“The Lesser Hekhalot”), and Merkavah Rabbah (“The Great Chariot”) as if they were distinct books that circulated in antiquity, though the process of preserving and transmitting these traditions was much more complex than such simple nomenclature suggests. For our purposes, we need not be concerned with the complexities and vagaries of the Hekhalot corpus. We will focus only on variants of the story of Elisha’s ascent that appear in several places in this corpus. Given the nature of the corpus, however, it will be very difficult to determine their precise temporal relationship to one another and to the version that appears in the Babylonian Talmud. All of these various versions appear to have emerged around the same time and place, and they share enough elements in common to ensure that they are all related. Scholars have attempted to determine whether the Hekhalot versions are subsequent in time to the Bavli version and depend on it, or perhaps vice versa.24 The results of these efforts have been mostly inconclusive, though 21 The pioneer of modern research into this corpus is Gershom Scholem, who saw these texts as entirely rabbinic. See Gershom G. Scholem, Jewish Gnosticism, Merkabah Mysticism, and Talmudic Tradition (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1960), 12: “[The] writers [of these texts] lived near the center of rabbinic Judaism, not on its fringes.” Similarly: “[T]here exists a whole chain of Hebrew and Aramaic texts, preserved, not on the outer fringes of Judaism, but in circles highly conscious of their attachment to rabbinic Judaism” (ibid., 5). Cf. Ithamar Gruenwald, Apocalyptic and Merkavah Mysticism (Arbeiten zur Geschichte des Antiken Judentums und des Urchristentums 14; Leiden: Brill, 1980), vii: “[T]he Hekhalot (‘Divine Palaces’) literature [was] mainly composed in Eretz-Yisrael at the time of the Talmud and the beginning of the Ge’onic period (circa 200–700) C. E. Other traces of such mysticism are found in rabbinic writings.” But, see E. E. Urbach, “ha-mesorot ‘al torat ha-sod,” for one of the early arguments against Scholem’s conclusions. For more recent responses, see David Halperin, The Faces of the Chariot: Early Jewish Responses to Ezekiel’s Vision (Texte und Studien zum Antiken Judentum 16; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1988) and Schäfer, The Origins of Jewish Mysticism. 22 Though, as mentioned in n. 15, above, the ascent is often referred to as a “descent.” 23 See Peter Schäfer, The Hidden and Manifest God, 5–8. 24 Scholem, Jewish Gnosticism, 43–55, traces a rather complicated development of Metatron in various sources and concludes on pp. 50–51 that the version of the Elisha ascent that appears

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the Bavli version seems to have a reasonable claim to priority. It is clear, in any case, that all of the extant versions are based in a shared universe of tales about Elisha that emerged around the fifth century in Sasanian Persia and that each of the various versions’ editors shaped these tales according to their particular ideological purposes. These facts make the Elisha narrative very useful for our purposes of understanding how the developing rabbinic movement in this period comes to shape itself as a collective. Elisha is certainly treated as a rabbi in all of these traditions, and he would seem to have been considered a generally admirable one in the earliest strata of rabbinic texts. He becomes an excluded figure in the amoraic period, and he becomes associated with the severe transgression of “two powers” in the later ascent narratives. Yet in what follows, I will argue that the editors of the Bavli actually work to distance Elisha from a “two powers” transgression and shift focus instead to more practical transgressions, in this way ensuring that he is treated as a rabbinic insider rather than as a “two powers” outsider. I will contrast the Bavli’s treatment to the most comprehensive and clearest version of Elisha’s ascent that appears in the Hekhalot literature, in the work known as 3 Enoch, in which Elisha is clearly presented as “one who says that there are two powers.” I will suggest that the Bavli preserves Elisha within the rabbinic collective in order to work out what it means to be part of this collective and to explore what ideological basis might stand behind an estranged rabbi’s estrangement. We will see that, remarkably, the Bavli associates no ideology with Elisha’s transgressions beyond a commitment to his own failure. From this perspective, we can contrast this rhetorical construction of Elisha to the meshummad to provoke and the apiqoros discussed in chapters four and five, respectively. I  explained in those chapters how later textual strata reconceptualize these two categories so that their only ideological fault is a rejection of the rabbis. The Bavli’s Elisha, in the Hekhalot corpus in 3 Enoch belongs to the late end of this development, after the Bavli. P. S. Alexander, “3 Enoch and the Talmud,” Journal for the Study of Judaism 18 (1987): 40–68, at 54–66, carries out a comprehensive analysis and concludes that 3 Enoch relies on b. Hagigah 15a. Also, see P. S. Alexander, “3 (Hebrew Apocalypse of) Enoch: A New Translation and Introduction,” in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, 1.223–315, at 268 n. 16. Fischel’s analysis of the Elisha narrative in Rabbinic Literature and Greco-Roman Philosophy, 1–34, would seem to imply an earlier Bavli based on the fact that he sees the mystical element as a later reinterpretation. Schäfer, The Origins of Jewish Mysticism, 234–237, does not explicitly stake out a position on priority, but his general conclusions about the dating and provenance of 3 Enoch (700–900 C. E. in Babylonia) tend to support a reliance on the Bavli. He remarks that it has long been noticed that the Bavli version “may well have been the origin of this story and that the version in 3 Enoch is a secondary addition aiming at minimizing Metatron’s role” (ibid., 322). Cf. C. R. A. Morray-Jones, “Hekhalot Literature and Talmud Tradition: Alexander’s Three Test Cases,” Journal for the Study of Judaism 22 (1991): 1–39, esp. 29–39, and Nathaniel Deutsch, Guardians of the Gate: Angelic Vice Regency in Late Antiquity (Brill’s Series in Jewish Studies 22; Leiden: Brill, 1999), 48–77, esp. 67, who see the version in 3 Enoch as prior.

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as a rabbi himself, does not actually reject the rabbis, he merely rejects himself as a rabbi! My contention is that by making despair over being a member of the rabbinic collective the primary locus of Elisha’s deviance, the rabbis are able to more firmly establish the importance of a primarily rabbinic self-definition and thus to more firmly establish their collective control over the internal boundaries of their own community.

III. Elisha’s Ascent and Divine Multiplicity25 In brief, all of the versions of Elisha’s ascent that appear in the Bavli and in the Hekhalot corpus relate the same basic story: Elisha ascends to a mystical realm where he sees the mythical archangel Metatron, who appears to Elisha as a semi-divine being. Elisha reacts to this divine appearance with an exclamation that includes the phrase “two powers.” Afterwards, both Elisha and Metatron are punished. There are, however, important differences in the way that these narrative elements are arranged and phrased in each of the two corpora, and these differences will provide the data for my analysis. As well-edited narratives, I treat these texts as most strongly reflecting the ideology of the editors of the respective corpora rather than as reflecting the milieu of the rabbis who appear in the narratives.26 The Bavli and 3 Enoch versions of this story follow in synoptic comparison arranged according to their parallel elements. In the following three sections, I  will proceed through this synoptic comparison systematically, and I will analyze and explain the significance of these elements. As I proceed, I will discuss manuscript variants of the Bavli narrative and versions of the narrative from elsewhere in the Hekhalot corpus (a version of this narrative appears in the composition known as Merkavah Rabbah and in one isolated passage; references to the Hekhalot corpus are by paragraph number and manuscript number27). Note that the Bavli narrative frequently refers to Elisha using his pejorative nickname Aher, the significance of which in the context of this narrative I will discuss in section five. 25 An earlier version of the following sections appeared as David M. Grossberg, “Between 3 Enoch and Bavli Hagigah: Heresiology and Orthopraxy in the Ascent of Elisha ben Abuyah,” in Hekhalot Literature in Context: Between Byzantium and Babylonia (ed. Ra‘anan Boustan, Martha Himmelfarb, and Peter Schäfer; Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism 153; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013), 117–140. 26 This approach to Bavli narratives is standard in the scholarship. See Rubenstein, Talmudic Stories, 18–21, and the discussion of dating of rabbinic texts in the section on style and method in the introduction and in nn. 61–64, there. 27 All citations from the Hekhalot corpus are from Peter Schäfer, ed., with Margarete Schlüter and Hans Georg von Mutius, Synopse zur Hekhalot-Literatur (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1981). Variants of the Elisha narrative appear in the Hekhalot corpus in Merkavah Rabbah § 672, 3 Enoch § 20 (V228), and § 856 (M40), and an isolated passage in MSS N8128 and O1531 § 597 (where the meeting is with “Akatri’el YH, the God of Israel”).

III. Elisha’s Ascent and Divine Multiplicity

b. Hagigah 15a28

3 Enoch29

Aher cut the shoots. About him the verse says, “Let not your mouth lead you into sin.” What is this? He saw Metatron to whom permission was given to sit and to write the merits of Israel.

And since one30 came to look at the ­vision of the Merkavah

He said, “It is taught that above there is no sitting and no competition and no turning around and no weariness” “Perhaps God Forbid there are two powers!” {Note that the following two narrative ­elements appear in both texts, but in ­inverted sequence.} They took Metatron out and smote him with 60 pulses of fire. They said to him, “What is the reason that when you saw him you did not rise before him?” Permission was given him to wipe out Aher’s merits. A heavenly voice rang out and said, “‘Repent, faithless children’ – ­except Aher!”

177

And he laid eyes on me, and he was awed and shocked before me. And his soul was distressed enough to depart from him because of my fearfulness and terribleness and awesomeness when he saw me, that I sat on a throne like a king and the ministering angels were waiting upon me like servants, and all the ministers of the court were wearing crowns around me. At that time, he opened his mouth and said, “Certainly there are two powers in heaven!”

Immediately, a heavenly voice rang out from before the divine presence saying, “‘Repent, faithless children’ – except Aher that not!” At that time, Anafi’el YVY, the honored and exalted and beloved and wonderful and awesome and admired prince came on a mission from the Holy One blessed be he and smote me with 60 pulses of fire and stood me on my feet.

He said, “Because this person has been ­harried from that world, let him go out and enjoy in this world.” Aher turned to bad manners.31 He went out and found a prostitute. He propositioned her. She said to him, “Are you not Elisha ben Abuyah?” He uprooted a radish from its row on the Sabbath and gave it to her. She said, “He is Aher.” 28 See

the Appendix for the Hebrew/Aramaic text. Enoch § 20 V228. See the Appendix for the Hebrew text. 30 ‫אחד‬, “one,” is likely a scribal error. It probably should read ‫אחר‬, “Aher.” 31 I follow Jastrow, Dictionary, for the translation of the obscure expression ‫תרבות רעה‬, though Jastrow translates the expression here as “became an infidel.” Other recent scholarship translates variously as “evil culture,” “evil courses,” “evil ways,” “bad ways,” etc. 29 3

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The Bavli version of the story begins with a reference to the ascent tradition from the Tosefta mentioned earlier: “Four entered the Garden (pardes): One had a glimpse and died, one had a glimpse and was smitten, one had a glimpse and cut the shoots, one ascended in peace and descended in peace.” The Tosefta goes on to name each of the four and to cite a biblical verse associated with each one. About Elisha the Tosefta says, “Elisha had a glimpse and cut the shoots – of him scripture says [in Ecclesiastes 5:5], ‘Let not your mouth lead you into sin.’” The phrase “cut the shoots” has no clear symbolic meaning and no explicit referent anywhere in the early literature.32 Likewise, early rabbinic tradition provides no information regarding why the verse from Ecclesiastes is associated with Elisha. It would seem, however, that the obscurity of these two associations is precisely what gave rise to the later ascent narratives. That is, considering the content of the Bavli narrative as a whole, it seems clear that it was in fact composed in an attempt to explain the meaning of this obscure phrase “to cut the shoots” and the connection of Elisha to the biblical verse.33 32 As will become clear, I prefer to interpret this phrase as referring to transgressing the precepts of the Torah. Thus, the editor’s intention in b. Hagigah was to exemplify its meaning with the incident of Elisha’s uprooting a radish on the Sabbath, which I will claim is Elisha’s first real transgression. Along these lines, see Scholem, Jewish Gnosticism, 16 n. 6, where he quotes A. Marmorstein: “Wie sie denjenigen verdammten, der den Zaun einreisst, so warnten sie stets vor der Beschädigung der Pflanzen,” explaining that as uprooting plants follows from breaking through the fence so “cutting the shoots” implies breaking through the seyag la-torah, the fence around the Torah referred to in m. Avot 1:1. That is, one possible interpretation of “cutting the shoots” is violating the mitzvot. Goshen-Gottstein, Sinner, 92, also interprets the phrase this way (as “not fulfilling the commandments”). Similarly, see Rubenstein, Talmudic Stories, 71: “Elisha uprooting the radish interprets the Toseftan phrase ‘cut the shoots.’” Peter Schäfer, “New Testament and Hekhalot Literature: The Journey into Heaven in Paul and in Merkavah Mysticism,” Journal of Jewish Studies 35 (1984): 19–35, at 27–28, points out that this seems to be the gist of the redactor’s understanding of the phrase in a parallel in the Yerushalmi: “The only pointer is given in the continuation of the story in the Jerusalem Talmud concerning Aher = Elisha b. Avuya, where it appears that the redactor at least understood the ‘sin’ of Elisha, and therewith the ‘cutting down of the shoots’, as sins against the Torah: or in concrete terms, as sins against the young Torah students (Aher’s ‘mouth’ leads his ‘flesh’, i. e., the ‘shoots’ of his people into, ‘sin’).” However, perhaps the more common trend in scholarship is to try to connect the phrase to Elisha’s “heretical” exclamation. For example, see Urbach, “ha-mesorot ‘al torat ha-sod,” 14: ,‫בעוד שבן עזאי ובן זומא רק הזינו את עיניהם בנטיעות או נגע בהן‬ ‫ ולכן קראו עליו את הפסוק אל תתן את פיך‬,‫ כלומר הוא גילה במפורש את מה שראה‬,‫אלישע קיצץ אותן‬ ‫ פי הכשילו‬:‫לחטיא את בשרך‬: “While Ben Azzai and Ben Zoma only feasted their eyes on the shoots or touched them, Elisha cut them, that is, he revealed explicitly what he saw. Therefore they recited about him the verse, ‘Let not your mouth lead you into sin,’ His mouth thwarted him.” See, more recently, Daniel Abrams, “The Boundaries of Divine Ontology: The Inclusion and Exclusion of Metatron in the Godhead,” Harvard Theological Review 87 (1994): 291–321, at 293: “Elisha’s response is considered blasphemous and from this moment on Elisha is deemed a heretic, and named Aher, ‘the other.’ While the precise nature of his heresy is never fully explained in this context, he is accused of ‘cutting the shoots.’” 33 Cf. Rubenstein, Talmudic Stories, 64: “This unfavorable picture of Elisha is a composite produced from interpretations of the Tosfetan tradition  … , the curious epithet ‘Aher,’ later traditions of Elisha from the two Talmuds and midrashic collections, and … folk imagination.”

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Although only part of Ecclesiastes 5:5 is quoted in most manuscripts,34 the entire verse is necessary to fully understand this connection: “Let not your mouth lead you into sin, and do not say before the messenger that it was a mistake; why should God be angry at your voice, and destroy the work of your hands?”35 In its original context in the book of Ecclesiastes, this verse is referring to paying in a timely fashion monetary pledges made to the service of God in the Temple cult. This specific matter has nothing to do with the Elisha ascent narratives, which isolate the verse from its original context. At least three obvious parallels can be drawn between the verse as it stands and the Bavli narrative: first, the connection with “destroy the work of your hands” and “cutting the shoots” (literally, a type of manual labor or work); second, “do not say before the messenger that it was a mistake” connected to Elisha’s “mistake” comparing Metatron to a divine power; and finally, “Let not your mouth lead you into sin” in connection to Elisha’s exclamation.36 I will analyze this verse’s significance in comparison to the beginning of the 3 Enoch narrative in the final section of this chapter when I  discuss Elisha’s transgression and punishment. For now, I will focus on Elisha’s meeting with Metatron and the idea of “two powers.” The immediate result of this meeting is Elisha’s famous exclamation, “Perhaps, God forbid, there are two powers!” In the following pages, I  will argue that this full exclamation represents the correct critical text for the Bavli in response to scholars who explain the phrase “Perhaps, God forbid” as an interpolation. I will then demonstrate that the Bavli presents this exclamation as an implicit rebuke of Metatron, in contrast to the variations in 3 Enoch and other Hekhalot texts that present this as a standard “two powers” transgression. That is, where 3 Enoch presents Elisha as “one who says that there are two powers,” the Bavli works hard to distance Elisha from this category. If this argument is correct, this would mean that Elisha must have become associated with this most heinous of transgressions from the rabbinic perspective before the time of the Bavli’s editing. I believe that the editors of 3 Enoch had no problem with this association, but the Bavli’s editors preferred to Also, see Alexander, “3 Enoch and the Talmud,” 55, 56: “That Eccl. 5:5 is integral to the story is shown by its occurrence in Tosefta Hagigah 2:3 and T. P. Hagigah II, 77b. [The rest] is offered as some sort of a commentary”; “That story, which occurs in its purest form in Tosefta Hagigah 2:3–4, probably originated in Tannaitic times, but already in the Amoraic period its sense was no longer clear and its meaning had to be guessed at.” 34 Ed. Vilna, the editio princeps (ed. Bomberg, Venice, c. 1520), Göttingen 3, and London 400 (Harley 5508) cite only the first part of the verse, “Let not your mouth lead you into sin.” Munich 95, Vatican 134, and Vatican 171 cite up to “… it was a mistake.” Only Munich 6 quotes the entire verse. 35 Ecclesiastes 5:5: ‫אל תיתן את פיך לחטיא את בשרך ואל תאמר לפני המלאך כי שגגה היא למה‬ ‫יקצוף האלוהים על קולך וחיבל את מעשה ידיך‬. 36 Cf. Rubenstein, Talmudic Stories, 71, where he lines up each part of the story with the various parts of the verse from Ecclesiastes.

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keep Elisha within the rabbinic fold as a failed rabbi. Presenting him as a “two powers” deviant would have been far too extreme of a transgression.37 On this matter, the text in 3 Enoch is clear. Elisha sees Metatron, “[sitting] on a throne like a king and the ministering angels were waiting upon [him] like servants, and all the ministers of the court were wearing crowns around [him].” Elisha is so in awe of Metatron that he takes him for a second divine power and exclaims, “Certainly there are two powers in heaven!” Immediately, a heavenly voice cries out, “‘Repent, faithless children’ – except Aher that not!” The first part of this exclamation is from Jeremiah 3:22, “Repent, faithless children, I will heal your faithlessness.”38 The verse is a call to repentance, but the heavenly voice excludes Elisha from that call. Apparently, the intention is that Elisha’s sin of believing that there are “two powers in heaven” is so severe that he can longer repent. Much of the previous scholarship on this narrative has taken for granted that the Bavli is also presenting Elisha as “one who says that there are two powers,” just as 3 Enoch is. But I believe that a reconsideration of the significance of the qualifying phrase, “Perhaps, God forbid” in the Bavli’s version of Elisha’s exclamation, supports an alternate reading. I believe that this phrase is essential to understanding the editors’ intention, and it must be taken as part of the original text of the Bavli. As I discussed in the note on style and method in the introduction, all of the extant manuscripts of the Babylonian Talmud date from centuries after the rabbinic period itself. It is, therefore, always difficult to ascertain what a specific tradition that appears in these later manuscripts might have looked like in the earlier period. Fortunately, in this case, all extant manuscript witnesses and all the modern printed editions agree regarding the language of Elisha’s response to his glimpse of Metatron: shema’ ḥas ve-shalom shtei reshuyot hen: “Perhaps, God forbid, there are two powers.”39 37 As mentioned in n. 20, above, it is also notable in this regard that the violent opposition to rabbinic teachings that is a feature of the Yerushalmi narrative in y. Hagigah 2:1, 77b–c is not part of this Bavli narrative at all. 38  My translation, based closely on the RSV, which I modified for the sake of the exegetical context in this narrative. 39 ‫שמא חס ושלום ב׳ רשויות הן‬. Printed editions include ed. Vilna and the editio princeps (ed. Bomberg, Venice, c. 1520). Important manuscript witnesses for b. Hagigah 15a include Göttingen 3, London 400 (Harley 5508), Vatican 134, Vatican 171, Munich 6, and Munich 95. Digitized images of the Bavli MSS Göttingen 3, London 400 (Harley 5508), Munich 6, Munich 95, and Vatican 134 are available from the Hebrew University Department of Talmud’s “Online Treasury of Talmudic Manuscripts” (jnul.huji.ac.il/dl/talmud). Also, see Alexander, “3 Enoch and the Talmud,” 54–63, and Rubenstein, Talmudic Stories, 66–69, 102–104, and diqduqei sofrim. Alexander copies out Bomberg, Vatican 134, and Munch 95. Rubenstein translates London 400 (Harley 5508) and cites “major variants” in the others. However, he does warn that “[t]his is not a comprehensive critical edition.” The only variation on this line that Rabbinovicz mentions from the sources that he used for diqduqei sofrim (Munich, 1871) is the insignificant shema’ ḥas ve-shalom shtei reshuyot yesh (MS Vatican 134 has yesh ka’n): ‫ יש כאן‬/ ‫ב׳ רשויות יש‬. See Alexander, “3 Enoch and the Talmud,” 60, for MS Vatican 134. It is worth noting that the

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Methodologically, I  would argue that such wide agreement among textual witnesses should be taken as proof of the correct reading for a critical text. Yet the qualifying phrase, “Perhaps, God forbid,” in Elisha’s exclamation has been explained as “the redactor, or perhaps a pious scribe, trying to soften the blasphemy” and that it “formed no part of Aher’s original utterance.”40 This assumption has at times resulted in the text being quoted without this conjectured insertion,41 or cited as “there are indeed two powers in heaven,” the latter apparently influenced by the 3 Enoch version.42 But, the uniformity among the witnesses argues against such textual emendation. Another scholarly approach has suggested that “Perhaps, God forbid!” should be understood as an oblique reference to a different text in a different rabbinic collection, m. Hagigah 2:1: kol she-lo’ ḥas ‘al kevod qono ratui lo she-lo’ ba’ le-‘olam: “Anyone who does not forbear43 in regard to the honor of his Lord, it would have been a mercy for him not to have come in to the world.”44 That is, the expression ḥas ve-shalom: “God forbid!” would intend to echo ḥas ‘al kevod qono: “forbear in regard to the honor of his Lord.”45 But such a reading would 11th century commentator Hananel ben Hushiel has: ‫שמא שתי רשויות הן‬, though his commentary is only a paraphrase and summary so this does not say anything about the text that he had before him. 40 Alexander, “3 Enoch and the Talmud,” 57. To be precise, Alexander’s comment is on the “God forbid!” not the “Perhaps.” See, as well, Alan F. Segal, Two Powers, 61 n. 4: “This is certainly a gloss occasioned by the rabbinic sensitivity to recording heresy, even in the mouth of a heretic. For a more credible version of the tradition see III Enoch 16:2”; Morray-Jones, “Hekhalot Literature and Talmud Tradition,” 30: “It seems … likely that the talmudic vision represents a ‘softening’ of Aher’s original heretical utterance – and therefore that Sefer Hekhalot preserves the more authentic recension of the original tradition”; Deutsch, Guardians of the Gate, 55: “the talmudic recensions … temper the declaration of Aher/Elisha by adding the word ‘perhaps’ (and in the case of the Talmud, ‘God forbid’).” However, cf. n. 50, below. 41 Alexander, “3 Enoch and the Talmud,” 57. 42 Rebecca Lesses, Ritual Practices to Gain Power: Angels, Incantations, and Revelation in Early Jewish Mysticism (Harvard Theological Studies 44; Harrisburg: Trinity, 1998), 257 n. 426, italics mine. This would seem to be a simple oversite as the text is correctly cited in ibid., 276–277. However even here, Lesses leaves off the “God forbid” in her translation of b. Hagigah 15a although it is in the Hebrew text cited in n. 504. 43 I am translating ‫ חס‬as “forbear” to capture the euphony with “forbid” in the translation of ‫ חס ושלום‬as “God forbid.” ‫ חס ושלום‬is a difficult expression to translate literally, because ‫חס‬ appears to be functioning nominally in the expression, but it is not used this way elsewhere. Avraham Even-Shoshan, Millon ’Even-Shoshan (6 vols.; Moshe Azar, et al., eds.; Israel: haMillon he-Ḥadash, 2003), 5.1523 s. v. ‫חס‬, does not even try to classify ‫ חס‬grammatically or to define it individually, but only defines it as an adverb in the context of the synonymous expressions ‫ חס ושלום‬and ‫חס וחלילה‬. Jastrow, Dictionary, s. v. ‫חס‬, suggests “forbearance” for ‫ חס‬and thus “forbearance and peace” for ‫חס ושלום‬, which captures well the etymological sense of the expression. It is often loosely construed literally as “pity and peace,” based on the standard verbal use of ‫לחוס‬, “to have pity.” The literal meaning of ‫ חס על‬is “have pity on.” But the sense here is “have concern/take care in regard to,” hence “forbear in regard to.” 44 M. Hagigah 2:1 (ed. Vilna): ‫כל שלא חס על כבוד קונו רתוי לו שלא בא לעולם‬. 45 Morray-Jones, “Hekhalot Literature and Talmud Tradition,” 20.

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be difficult to sustain because the word ḥas is used in a very different sense in each case. I suggest, therefore, that we reconsider this qualifying phrase in its context in the Babylonian Talmud and take it is an integral part of the entire narrative. In what follows, I will show how this approach leads to an alternate reading of this story in which Elisha’s exclamation need not be read as a transgression of any kind. The key to this reading is an examination of the rhetorical force of the phrase shema’ ḥas ve-shalom, “perhaps, God forbid,” which appears often enough in the Bavli so as to be considered an idiomatic expression.46 Two examples will suffice to demonstrate how this idiom is used. B. Horayot 12a contains an exegesis of Psalms 133:2–3: “It is like the precious oil upon the head, running down upon the beard, upon the beard of Aaron, running down on the collar of his robes! It is like the dew of Hermon, which falls on the mountains of Zion! For there the Lord has commanded the blessing, life for evermore.” In its plain sense, the psalm is using the image of the first Israelite high priest Aaron’s anointing and the dew of Hermon as symbols of blessing and harmony. The Talmud fashions a folk-narrative from this image. It explains that the “precious oil” running down Aaron’s beard was the oil used to anoint the high priest; two drops of it hung on Aaron’s beard as he spoke to Moses: As two drops of pearls, they were hanging on Aaron’s beard. Rav Papa said, It is taught, as he was speaking they went up and settled on the point of his beard, and concerning this Moses was worried saying, “Perhaps, God forbid, I trespassed against the anointing oil!” A heavenly voice rang out and said, ‘It is like the precious oil, etc., like the dew of Hermon.’ Just as the dew of Hermon cannot be trespassed against, so the anointing oil on Aaron’s beard cannot be trespassed against.”47

Moses is ostensibly worried that he committed a sin by misusing the sacred anointing oil, apparently by using too much so that some remained on Aaron’s beard. Of course, Moses, being as near to sinless as a person can be, did not sin in this somewhat comical way; and this is implicitly understood by the narrative,

46 Goshen-Gottstein, Sinner, 89–124, recognizes the rhetorical force of the expression “perhaps, God forbid” (ibid., 106–108), but concludes that b. Hagigah presents Elisha as having made an unintentional and temporary error of which he is disabused by the punishment of Metatron. Elisha is then punished for “wreaking havoc in heaven” (ibid., 109); and the point of the story is Elisha’s loss of “sonship” and rejection of the commandments yet retention of his Torah. My analysis proceeds in quite a different direction. Daniel Boyarin, “Beyond Judaisms,” 355, accepts Goshen-Gottstein’s basic insight about the rhetorical usage of the phrase, but rejects his conclusions. Boyarin’s main objection to Goshen-Gottstein’s reading is that it fails to account convincingly for Elisha’s punishment. I offer an explanation for this below. 47 B. Horayot 12a (ed. Vilna): ‫כמין שני טפי מרגליות היו תלויות לאהרן בזקנו אמר רב פפא תנא‬ ‫כשהוא מספר עולות ויושבות לו בעיקר זקנו ועל דבר זה היה משה דואג אמר שמא חס ושלום מעלתי בשמן‬ ‫המשחה יצתה בת קול ואמרה כשמן הטוב וגו׳ כטל חרמון מה טל חרמון אין בו מעילה אף שמן המשחה‬ ‫שבזקן אהרן אין בו מעילה‬.

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which goes on to comfort Moses that all is well. “Perhaps, God forbid” here is a literary device that serves as a way of asking a purely rhetorical question. Similarly, b. Megillah 31b has Abraham worried that God will destroy Israel: Abraham said before the Holy One blessed be he, “Master of the universe, perhaps, God forbid, Israel will sin before you and you will do to them like the generation of the flood and like the generation of the scattering.” He said to him, “No!”48

That God will redeem Israel is such a common theme in Jewish literature that this text clearly does not wish to give an impression otherwise. Again, the answer is presumed to be negative and the force of the expression is rhetorical. This phrase appears in the Bavli seven times with this same sense.49 It functions simultaneously as an exclamation of worry and fear that something might be true and an implicit acknowledgement that it is not true. Rather, the person exclaiming is concerned about the matter and perhaps looking for comfort. In the typical form of this usage, God or a heavenly voice answers the person and reassures him of that which the reader already knew: that the feared matter is indeed not the case. Thus, this phrase must be considered in the context of the Bavli as an idiomatic usage with rhetorical force, not as an editorial softening of a pre-existing offensive text. In b. Hagigah, as in the other examples from the Bavli, the editor wishes to communicate that Elisha knows that what he is saying is not true.50 Moreover, as elsewhere, he is answered in a way that confirms what he knows: Metatron is 48 B. Megillah 31b (ed. Vilna): ‫אמר אברהם לפני הקדוש ברוך הוא רבונו של עולם שמא חס ושלום‬ ‫ישראל חוטאים לפניך ואתה עושה להם כדור המבול וכדור הפלגה אמר לו לאו‬. 49 B. Horayot 12a, a parallel text in b. Keritot 5b, b. Hagigah 15a, b. Megillah 31b, b. Menahot 53b, b. Sanhedrin 101a, and b. Pesahim 56a. The related expression ‫ דלמא חס ושלום‬appears seven times: b. Berakhot 28a, b. Horayot 13b, b. Hagigah 4b, b. Yoma 69b, b. Nedarim 22a, b. Sanhedrin 26a, and b. Taanit 22b (in all manuscripts; only eds. Vilna and Pesaro have ‫)שמא חס ושלום‬. Of these, most function rhetorically in a similar fashion to the instances of ‫שמא‬ ‫חס ושלום‬. The narratives in b. Horayot 13b and b. Nedarim 22a are less fantastic than the others, and the use of the expression has a weaker rhetorical sense. B. Yoma 69b (and its parallel in b. Sanhedrin 64a) is a complicated text with significant manuscript variants at this point. I am reading the story as having two personified human traits as its main characters, ‫יצרא דעבודה זרה‬ (Idolatrous Desire) and ‫( יצרא דעבירה‬Sexual Desire). When the crowd cries, “Perhaps, God forbid, they will have compassion on him from Heaven!” the narrative presupposes that this will not happen and, indeed, it does not. Idolatrous Desire is sealed into a lead pot. The crowd then goes on to beg mercy for Sexual Desire, that it be handed over to them as well. It appears that some medieval commentators had a somewhat different reading. In any case, this does not change the usage of “Perhaps, God forbid” in the recensions in which it appears that in the first instance presume that the narrative does not expect mercy from heaven for the one captured. 50 Cf. Segal, Two Powers, 61, where he notes that Elisha does not “present his observation as a challenge to the rabbis.” Rather, he is “horrified” by it. Although Segal does approach Elisha as a doctrinal heretic (see n. 6, above), and he sees “Perhaps, God forbid” as a gloss, he also recognizes that the Bavli text before us is not necessarily representing the matter precisely in this way. Also, Rubenstein, Talmudic Stories, 72, notes that “[t]his is no proclamation of heresy but rather an expression of shock and amazement.”

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immediately punished, apparently for the misdeed of not standing up when he saw Elisha, as I will explain in the next section.51 This immediate punishment confirms both that God is in charge and that there are not two powers in heaven, which Elisha knew to be true all along. The statement in the Bavli narrative carries the rhetorical force of a grammatical subjunctive. In this way, the Bavli narrative shifts focus away from the “two powers” polemics that are the central concern of the parallel narrative in 3 Enoch, in which Elisha states clearly, “Certainly, there are two powers in heaven!” The variants in the textual tradition of this phrase in the Hekhalot sources suggest that it is no coincidence that the Bavli’s idiomatic “perhaps, God forbid” becomes the unambiguous “certainly” in 3 Enoch. It would have been enough in all cases for Elisha simply to declare, “There are two powers in heaven!” Yet every extant version includes some verbal qualifier that modifies the declaration: b. Hagigah 15a has “perhaps, God forbid,”52 3 Enoch has “certainly,”53 Merkavah Rabbah has “he thought perhaps,”54 and an additional extant fragment from 3 Enoch has the presumably corrupted savri’.55 The contrast between 3 Enoch’s and b. Hagigah’s presentations of this phrase clearly reflect divergent concerns. In b. Hagigah, the text is edited to read as if Elisha never truly thought that there are two powers in heaven. Rather, his exclamation serves rhetorically in context as an implicit rebuke to Metatron for giving a false impression that might confuse the unwary. The exclamation implies that because Metatron is sitting, someone might see him and falsely conclude that there are two powers in heaven. Correctly reading the idiomatic expression “perhaps, God forbid” means that there is no reason, at this stage in the Bavli narrative, to think that Elisha committed any misdeed. Elisha in 3 Enoch, in contrast, is presented as “one who says that there are two powers,” a 51 That this is the reason for Metatron’s punishment is not especially clear in many manuscripts, though that his punishment is connected to his posture seems to be implied in most, as I will explain. 52 ‫שמא חס ושלום‬. 53  3 Enoch § 20 (V228): ‫ודאי‬. Goshen-Gottstein, Sinner, 329 n. 65, cites the superfluousness of “certainly” in 3 Enoch as support for the Bavli’s primacy. Boyarin, “Beyond Judaisms,” 355–356 and n. 94, there, recognizes the strength of this argument yet argues for reading 3 Enoch as primary. 54 Merkavah Rabbah § 672: ‫הרהר שמא‬. See n. 60, below, for the full text. 55 3 Enoch § 856 (M40): ‫סוורי׳‬. The Konkordanz zur Hekhalot-Literatur (2 vols.; ed. Peter Schäfer, with Gottfried Reeg and Klaus Herrmann; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1986–1988) takes this word as savarya (‫)סווריא‬, one of the names of the prince of the countenance or an angel. That does not make much sense in context nor does savarya or any of its variants appear elsewhere in an abbreviated form as here. In an earlier version of this chapter (Grossberg, “The Meaning and End of Heresy in Rabbinic Literature,” 147), I suggested that we might read this as a corruption of the Hebrew savri (‫)סברי‬, or better, savorni (‫)סבורני‬, “it seems to me,” as a variation of Merkavah Rabbah’s “he thought perhaps” and as an intermediate stage in the textual development of this phrase between Merkavah Rabbah and 3 Enoch. This is possible, but it is also possible that the text is a corruption of she-vadai (‫)שוודאי‬, “certainly.”

IV. Metatron’s Transgression and Heavenly Proscriptions

185

standard sort of deviant. Elisha in the Bavli is not “one who says that there are two powers”; his transgression is yet to occur in this narrative.

IV. Metatron’s Transgression and Heavenly Proscriptions This understanding sets the context for explicating the next significant difference between these two narratives. In both 3 Enoch and the Bavli, two events follow on Elisha’s utterance, a declaration by a heavenly voice and Metatron being smote by 60 pulses of fire. I will examine the heavenly voice’s declaration more closely in the following section. In this section, I will examine Metatron’s transgression. In 3 Enoch, Elisha’s exclamation results in his own punishment. In the Bavli, it results in Metatron’s punishment. The Bavli thus clearly emphasizes that Metatron rather than Elisha is guilty of a transgression. However, extant manuscripts of the Bavli vary widely at this point, suggesting that the manuscript tradition is confused about what precisely Metatron did wrong. The version cited at the beginning of the previous section is from the standard modern printed edition of the Babylonian Talmud. This version indicates that Metatron should not have remained seated in Elisha’s presence, presumably because only God should be seated in heaven: “They took Metatron out and smote him with 60 pulses of fire. They said to him, “What is the reason that when you saw him you did not rise before him?” 56 Metatron was given permission to sit only so that he might write out Israel’s merits, but when he saw a mere human ascend into heaven he should have stood up. The concern would be that someone seeing a majestic being seated in heaven would confuse that being with God himself. This is clearly what occurs in the 3 Enoch version, and this is the reason that Elisha is immediately punished in that version. Most Bavli manuscripts, however, do not include this explicit explanation. Moreover, where in the standard version of the Bavli narrative when Elisha sees Metatron, he says, “It is taught that above there is no sitting and no competition and no turning around and no weariness,” several early manuscripts have Elisha say, “There is no sitting and no standing and no competition, etc.”! If both sitting and standing are forbidden, this would complicate the idea that Metatron’s transgression was remaining seated. These manuscript variants, together with the fact that almost all of the extant manuscripts say that Metatron was giving permission to sit in

56 Ed. Vilna and Vatican 171 explicitly place the blame for Metatron’s punishment on Metatron himself. In addition, this line appears in a genizah fragment, MS Oxford heb. d. 63/32, which also does not have Metatron being given permission to sit. MS Vatican 171 has ‫לא‬ ‫ קיימתיה מקמיה‬rather than ‫ לא קמת מקמיה‬as in the other witnesses. Rubenstein, Talmudic Stories, 102, suggests that the line may be a gloss. Goshen-Gottstein, Sinner, 328–329 n. 61, also sees this as “a later accretion to the tradition.”

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order to write out Israel’s merits, indicate that there was some confusion in the narrative’s transmission on this issue. It has been suggested that MS Munich 95, one of the most important medieval manuscripts of the entire Talmud, likely preserves the most authentic reading of this part of the narrative for several reasons.57 First, this manuscript does not mention Metatron’s sitting down at all nor does it provide an explicit explanation for his punishment. And, it has Elisha say that there is both “no standing and no sitting” among his litany of heavenly proscriptions: “It is taught that above there is no standing and no sitting and no jealousy and no competition, no turning around and no weariness.” Because it provides no explicit reason as to why Metatron is punished, this manuscript might represent a troublesome original reading that the other texts modified in order to provide a compelling explanation.58 Yet, even granted that Munich 95 is somewhat opaque, all extant Bavli manuscript witnesses of this narrative include Elisha’s litany and all must be understood as saying that Metatron’s behavior falls foul of something in that list. All of the manuscripts other than Munich 95 portray Metatron as sitting and include the act of sitting in Elisha’s list of proscriptions. Sitting, therefore, seems to be Metatron’s most likely fault, although the fact that most manuscripts specify that he is given permission to sit complicates this reading. It is clear, in any case, that Elisha’s exclamation implicitly criticizes Metatron and that Metatron’s punishment stems from a fault on his own part that was revealed by this exclamation. In 3 Enoch, in contrast, the immediate result of Elisha’s exclamation is his own punishment, and Elisha’s exclamation includes no list of proscriptions. In this way, 3 Enoch makes it clear that Elisha is being punished because of what he said, that is, because he is being presented as “one who says that there are two powers.”59 I would argue, therefore, that the crux of the Bavli narrative is not Elisha’s utterance, which is construed as a rebuke of Metatron, nor is it Metatron’s transgression and subsequent punishment of which no more mention is made as the narrative continues. The crux of the narrative is the declaration of the heavenly voice, or, more precisely, Elisha’s reaction to it. This reaction is Elisha’s fault 57 Alexander,

“3 Enoch and the Talmud.” “3 Enoch and the Talmud,” 62–63. 59 This reading is made stronger by the addition of the word “immediately,” which strengthens the temporal-causal connection between Elisha’s utterance and his punishment. It is interesting in this regard that the text from the Hekhalot corpus that most closely parallels b. Hagigah, which appears in Merkavah Rabbah § 672, also adds an “immediately” but adds it to Metatron’s punishment: “Immediately, he took out Metatron.” This strengthens both the connection between Elisha’s exclamation and Metatron’s punishment in Merkavah Rabbah and the connection between Elisha’s exclamation and his own punishment in 3 Enoch. MS London 400 (Harley 5508) and Vatican 171 read similarly, “immediately, they took out Metatron,” thus implicitly connecting Elisha’s exclamation to Metatron’s punishment in the Bavli as well. 58 Alexander,

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and the cause of his transgression. Only after hearing the heavenly voice declaring, “‘Repent, faithless children’ – except Aher!”, does Elisha leave the path of righteousness. And he does this is a very explicit way from the perspective of rabbinic ideas of piety, by violating the Sabbath and propositioning a prostitute, as we will discuss in the next section.

V. Elisha’s Transgression and the Heavenly Voice That the crux of the entire Bavli story is Elisha’s explicit transgressions at the end of the narrative is supported by the proof-text with which the Bavli introduces the narrative. As mentioned earlier, there are aspects of the narrative that mirror the entire verse from Ecclesiastes 5:5, “Let not your mouth lead you into sin, and do not say before the messenger that it was a mistake; why should God be angry at your voice, and destroy the work of your hands?” However, it is clear that the start of the verse, the section that is quoted in all extant Bavli manuscripts and the only section quoted in the Tosefta, is the most significant: “Let not your mouth lead you [lit. ‘your flesh’] into sin.” Where does Elisha’s flesh sin in this narrative? At the end, when he propositions a prostitute and violates the Sabbath. Reading the verse in Ecclesiastes literally, Elisha’s mouth, that is his exclamation, is not sinful in itself. Rather, it is merely the proximate cause of his sin, which is actually a sin of the flesh. This, I propose, is the reason that this part of the Bavli narrative ends as it does, with an example of Elisha transgressing a rabbinic precept. And if so, it is also significant that this conclusion does not appear in 3 Enoch because that narrative is not concerned with transgressions of practical precepts but with the content of Elisha’s exclamation. As already discussed, the Bavli narrative is best understood as based on or explaining the connection of this biblical verse to Elisha. If so, then the fact that it does not appear in 3 Enoch is significant from an editorial point of view, especially considering that it does appear in another version of this narrative from the Hekhalot corpus, in Merkavah Rabbah.60 These facts would tend to indicate that this proof-text was available to the editor of 3 Enoch as part of his universe of tales associated with Elisha, yet he chose to leave it out. In my view, then, the Bavli’s Elisha did nothing morally wrong when “his mouth led his flesh into sin.” The words of his mouth were actually a reasonable response to Metatron’s incorrect behavior. Metatron was sitting when he should 60 Merkavah Rabbah § 672: ‫ אמרו‬.‫אלישע בן אבויה קצץ את הנטיעות עליו הכתו׳ או׳ אל תתן פיך וגו׳‬ .‫כשירד אלישע {ב}למרכבה ראה מטטרון שנתנה לו רשות שע' אחת ביום לישב ולכתוב זכיות של ישראל‬ ‫ הרהר שמא שתי‬.‫ למעלה אין עמידה ואין ישיב׳ לא קנאה ולא תחרות ולא עורף ולא עינוי‬.‫אמ׳ שנו חכמי׳‬ ‫ מיד הוציא למטטרון לחוץ ספרגוד ותכוהו ששים פוליסי אש ונתנו רשות למטטרון לשרוף‬.‫רשויו׳ יש בשמים‬ ‫ ואמרו שובו בנים שובבים חוץ מאחר‬.‫ יצתה בת קול‬.‫זכיות אלישע‬. See n. 27, above, on edition cited.

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have stood, and so Metatron was correctly punished. Elisha’s words, unfortunately, had their mortal effect. Through carelessness, the others who entered the Garden (pardes) died or were smitten.61 Elisha had his merits erased and was told by a heavenly voice that he cannot repent. At that moment, no laws applied except the esoteric physics that rule the pardes.62 Only when Elisha despairs and abandons the practical obligations of the Torah does the sin occur. Only then “his mouth led his flesh into sin.” And indeed it is literally a sin of the flesh that he first resorts to by visiting a prostitute. When she refuses to believe that such a righteous man would come to her, he then violates the Sabbath in public by uprooting a radish. Not until this deed, however, did Elisha become Aher, “The Other.” Not until this point did he “cut the shoots” by uprooting his observance of Torah. Even the pejorative name Aher, which, in the Bavli, symbolizes Elisha’s turn to sinful ways, is given to him not as a result of his exclamation but as a result of his plucking a radish on the Sabbath. This further demonstrates that the latter rather than the former is the moment of his first transgression. It would seem that the Bavli narrative wishes us to understand that the prostitute gave him this name: “She said to him, ‘Are you not Elisha ben Abuyah?’ He uprooted a radish from its row on the Sabbath and gave it to her. She said, ‘He is Aher.’”63 This is the only time in this part of the narrative that Elisha’s actual name is used. Presumably, the reason for this switch is to contrast his real name with the name the prostitute gives him in response to his sin. Where one scholar suggests, therefore, that, “Elisha’s [two-powers] response is considered blasphemous and from this moment on Elisha is deemed a heretic, and named Aher, ‘the other,’”64 I would propose an alternate reading of the narrative on this matter. I would suggest that Elisha is not named Aher from the moment of this utterance, which is not presented as blasphemous. Rather, he is named Aher from the moment that he actually commits a sin, when he trans61 The fates of Elisha’s unfortunate companions in the pardes mentioned earlier, Ben Azzai and Ben Zoma, respectively, as described in the Tosefta. See n. 11, above. 62 I mean to suggest by this phrase that normative cause and effect is not necessarily operative in the mystical ascent. This idea is less relevant to the classical rabbinic literature than to Hekhalot literature, but it is perhaps not totally out of place in this narrative, which unlike most of rabbinic literature may evince “a sprinkling of Merkavah ‘mysticism’ in the technical sense of the word” (Schäfer, The Origins of Jewish Mysticism, 241–42). More broadly, attributing the impetus of the entire incident to Metatron’s authority perhaps obviates the need to seek a fair, “measure for measure” type of normative justice here. 63 “On the Sabbath,” following most manuscripts. I accept this is as the correct reading; perhaps its omission can be attributed to haplography based on the similarities of the pair of words: ‫ממשרא בשבתא‬. “He is Aher” does not appear in Munich 95. It (or the variant “You are Aher”) appears in ed. Vilna, the editio princeps, Göttingen 3, London 400 (Harley 5508), Vatican 134, Vatican 171, and Munich 6, though the latter moves the entire incident with the prostitute later in the narrative. 64 Abrams, “The Boundaries of Divine Ontology,” 293.

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gresses a rabbinic precept by plucking a radish on the Sabbath.65 In 3 Enoch, where Elisha’s exclamation is his sin and the cause of his punishment, this entire episode is not present. This leads us to the difficult question of the cause of Elisha’s ostensible punishment in b. Hagigah, which, according to my reading, precedes his actual transgression. The punishment itself is, apparently, exclusion from repentance and thus from the world to come: “‘Repent, faithless children’ – except Aher!” The cause of this punishment is clear enough in 3 Enoch: he is punished because of his exclamation. But why is he punished in b. Hagigah? Scholars have concentrated on the connection between Metatron’s permission “to sit and to write the merits of Israel” and his subsequent permission to erase Elisha’s merits, “permission was given him to wipe out Aher’s merits.” For example, one scholar avers, “There is a certain amount of irony intended here. It is the same recording angel whose behavior leads to Aher’s disastrous mistake, who is ordered to strike out Aher’s merits. Aher is totally excommunicated from Israel.”66 And yet, I would point out that the text does not say that Metatron is ordered to do anything. It says that he was given permission to do something.67 I believe that this is best read not as an order from above but as a request from Metatron.68 This language does not suggest that Elisha is being punished because of his exclamation, nor does it suggest that the impetus is coming from God. Rather, it suggests that Metatron was angry at Elisha and wanted revenge. Being given permission implies a previously made request. The most logical reason to suppose that Metatron would make such a request is out of a desire for revenge because his own punishment, although his own fault, was occasioned by Elisha’s words.69 Moreover, the idea of his retribution being “ironic” is not precise. Metatron is presented in the Bavli as having power over the merits of Israel but not over its transgressions. The text specifies that he is writing out merits, so when he seeks retribution he has the authority to erase those merits. However, he clearly does not have the authority to judge or to write out sins; his role is a very limited one, and so his retribution is merely peevish and of no irreparable 65 Fischel, Rabbinic Literature and Greco-Roman Philosophy, 12, also points out that the occasion of the plucking of the radish in b. Hagigah is to be read as the moment of Elisha receiving the name Aher, though his explanation of the incident is problematic. Cf. Goshen-Gottstein, The Sinner and the Amnesiac, 63. My argument here, of course, is only that the Bavli narrative sets up this incident as the moment of Elisha’s naming, not that the appellation did not exist earlier in fact. See my suggestion of a likely original source for this name in section two, above, and, see n. 18, there, for relevant scholarship. 66 Alexander, “3 Enoch and the Talmud,” 57. 67 ‫איתיהיבא ליה רשותא למימחק זכוותא דאחר‬. 68 Cf. Rubenstein, Talmudic Stories, 72: “Whatever God’s opinion about the severity of Elisha’s sin, God must allow Metatron his measure-for-measure revenge, and so Elisha loses all merit.” 69 Cf. Rubenstein, Talmudic Stories, 74: “[T]he punishment was due to the injury he caused Metatron, not retribution for disobedience or sin.”

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consequence. Generally speaking, the rabbinic sense of reward and punishment is such that a person is born without merits and accrues them as a result of life deeds.70 At the moment that his merits are erased, Elisha is in no worse shape than a newborn baby, which is not a great state of affairs, but is certainly not as drastic as outright condemnation. Metatron’s action is, therefore, not a divine punishment but an act of personal retribution. But if so, what are we to make of the proclamation of the heavenly voice? It is notable that, while some kind of a justification is provided for Metatron’s punishment (either by the rebuke implicit in Elisha’s litany of proscriptions just discussed or by an explicit explanation) and for Metatron’s wiping out of Elisha’s merits (in that he was given permission) and for Elisha’s decision to go out into a life of sin (“because this person has been harried from that world…”), no explanation at all is provided or implied for the heavenly voice’s proclamation. Rather, it is presented subsequent to Metatron’s wiping out of Elisha’s merits, as if this were a merely formal or mechanical expression of that deed. And then the narrative strongly deemphasizes it by hurrying on to the next major instances of normative judgment: Elisha’s decision to go out into a life of sin, his Torah transgressions, and his naming by a prostitute. I would like to suggest, therefore, that the Bavli narrative is best read as presenting the heavenly proclamation not as an instance of divine judgment distinct from Metatron’s vengeance but rather as a functional consequence of it. In other words, I am arguing that the narrative is not set up in such a way as to indicate that the heavenly voice’s proclamation of “‘Repent, faithless children’ – except Aher!” should be read as a punishment at all. Indeed, the proclamation’s phrasing is opaque and ambiguous enough that the editor of 3 Enoch felt compelled to add an oddly ungrammatical additional phrase: “‘Repent, faithless children’ – except Aher that not!” to emphasize that Elisha is being subjected to a divine judgment.71 B. Hagigah’s heavenly voice, in contrast, is better read on the background of the Bavli’s ambivalence in regard to heavenly voices, such as in the famous “oven of Aknai” incident in b. Bava Metzia 59b:

70 See Urbach, Sages, 420–523, for an in-depth discussion on the topic of reward and punishment in rabbinic literature. See also Adolph Büchler, Studies in Sin and Atonement in the Rabbinic Literature of the First Century (with prefatory note by the chief rabbi and prolegomenon by Fredrick C. Grant; Library of Biblical Studies; New York: Ktav, 1967); Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 117–182; and, more recently, Steven T. Katz, “Man, Sin, and Redemption in Rabbinic Judaism,” in The Cambridge History of Judaism, Volume Four, 925–945. 71 The reading in MS Oxford Opp. Add. fol. 23 of the Bavli and the c. 1480 Spanish print, which add ‫שידע כבודי ומרד בי‬, “Who knew my glory and rebelled against me,” is clearly a very late addition taken from the Yerushalmi (y. Hagigah 2:1, 77b) and is not relevant to the analysis. The Oxford manuscript also modifies the story of Elisha’s encounter with the prostitute in some unusual ways, including borrowing text from the Ben Dordia story that I will discuss in the next section.

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[Rabbi Eliezer] said to [his colleagues], “If my ruling is correct, let it be proved from heaven!” A heavenly voice rang out and said, “What are you in comparison to Rabbi Eliezer, for the ruling is according to him in every case!” Rabbi Yehoshua stood on his feet and said, “It is not in heaven!” What [does this mean], “It is not in heaven”? Rabbi Yermiyah said, “Since the Torah was already given from Mount Sinai, we do not heed a heavenly voice; for it was already written at Mount Sinai in the Torah, ‘After the majority to incline.’”72

This is part of a well-known story detailing a debate between the first century rabbi Eliezer and his colleagues regarding the ritual purity status of a certain type of oven, the details of which are not relevant here. Eliezer invokes a heavenly voice to prove that he is correct and that his colleagues are wrong. Yet the proclamation of a heavenly voice is considered less authoritative than the proclamation of a majority of rabbis. Likewise in the case of Elisha, the narrative implicitly highlights the heavenly voice’s lack of authority. I will demonstrate in the next chapter that it is made very clear as the story continues that Elisha could still have repented regardless of what the heavenly voice declared. Elisha’s devoted student, Rabbi Meir, repeatedly pleads with Elisha to repent, and Elisha stubbornly holds to his erroneous belief that he cannot. And, although Elisha goes to the grave without repenting, he is forgiven after his death by the intercession of Rabbi Meir and Rabbi Yohanan. Elisha is forgiven and so the conclusion of the narrative clearly belies the implications of the heavenly voice’s declaration. It is my contention, therefore, that the declaration of the heavenly voice in the Bavli narrative serves not as a punishment for Elisha’s misdeeds but as a faulty source of wisdom that underlies his personal despair as a failed rabbi. I am arguing in this chapter that there is a clear divergence between 3 Enoch and the Bavli regarding the ideological construction of the targets of their respective polemics. Elisha in 3 Enoch is a “two powers” deviant, a sharply excluded figure of the sort that we have already examined several times. Elisha in the Bavli is a new type of rhetorical construction, especially characteristic of the later strata of the Babylonian Talmud, which I propose is best described as a “failed rabbi.” The failed rabbi does not oppose the rabbis as does the meshummad to provoke and the apiqoros, he only opposes himself as a rabbi. He does not stand outside of the rabbinic collective as an excluded deviant, but remains 72 B. Bava Metzia 59b (ed. Vilna): ‫יצאתה בת קול ואמרה מה לכם אצל רבי אליעזר שהלכה כמותו‬ ‫בכל מקום עמד רבי יהושע על רגליו ואמר לא בשמים היא מאי לא בשמים היא אמר רבי ירמיה שכבר נתנה‬ ‫תורה מהר סיני אין אנו משגיחין בבת קול שכבר כתבת בהר סיני בתורה אחרי רבים להטת‬. The literature on this narrative is extensive. See Rubenstein, Talmudic Stories, 34–63, esp. the bibliography in nn. 1–3; and cf. Christine Hayes, “Rabbinic Contestations of Authority,” Cardozo Law Review 28 (2006): 123–141. On the devaluation of the heavenly voice in rabbinic literature, see Peter Kuhn, Offenbarungsstimmen im Antiken Judentum: Untersuchungen zur Bat Qol und verwandten Phänomenen (Texte und Studien zum Antiken Judentum 20; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1989), 331.

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within it as a testament to failure. The category of a failed rabbi sets up the idea of being a rabbi as a primary self-definition and the internal boundaries of the rabbinic collective as central rhetorical issues. In this way, it allows the rabbis to work out what it means to be part of this collective and what its boundaries ought to be. In the next chapter, we will examine the idea of a failed rabbi in the Babylonian Talmud more closely by examining several examples of this phenomenon. We will see how this category works to further the idea that the rabbis are a collective, a corporate group that thinks and acts with a common purpose. Membership in the group is determined by group decision, and what constitutes the legitimate teachings of the group is determined only by the majority of its members in good standing, rather than by an appeal to heavenly voices, earlier traditions, or other sources of authority.

Chapter 7

The Failed Rabbi and Those Who Cause the Public to Sin In the previous chapter, we discussed Elisha ben Abuyah’s response to the heavenly voice’s proclamation, “Repent, faithless children – except Aher!” Immediately following this proclamation, Elisha decides to go out and sin, and the narrative explains his reasoning. Because he has been denied the ability to repent, he has therefore been denied a portion in the world to come, so he might as well enjoy the pleasures of the flesh in this life: “Because this person has been harried from that world, let him go out and enjoy in this world.” Elisha’s idea of a sin so grievous that a person cannot repent from it has a legitimate basis in a number of early rabbinic traditions, which indicate that a person who “sins and causes the public to sin” is prevented from repentance. This category of “those who sin and cause the public to sin” is included in the well-known list from the Tosefta that we have returned to several times in the preceding chapters:1 “The minim, and the meshummadim, … and apiqorsim, and those who deny the Torah, and those who separated from community norms, and those who deny the resurrection of the dead, and everyone who sinned and caused the public to sin … . gehinnom is locked before them, and they are judged there for generation after generation.” And, remarkably, this same idea appears at the heart of the stories of three other failed rabbis in the Babylonian Talmud: Elisha ben Dordia, an unnamed disciple of Rabbi Yehoshua ben Perahia, and a rabbinized version of the biblical figure Gehazi. In this chapter, we will focus on this category of “those who sin and cause the public to sin” as we continue to examine how the rabbis formed their community rhetorically through the invention of the quintessential deviant insider, a failed rabbi. I will demonstrate that the Bavli develops the idea of a failed rabbi as one who embraces a faulty source of wisdom against the expressed consensus of the current rabbinic collective. The Bavli’s failed rabbis embrace a seemingly authoritative teaching that denies them repentance, and it is this embrace that is the direct cause of their own estrangement. In other words, these rabbis, in their despair, work to exclude themselves by insisting that they cannot repent, an insistence that is ultimately based in legitimate tradition. The Bavli responds through 1 T. Sanhedrin 13:5. The source of the expression is apparently 1 Kings 14:16, which discusses Jeroboam who “sinned and … made Israel to sin.”

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a fascinating rehabilitation of these rabbis that transforms them from excluded deviants into the special inclusionary category of failed rabbis. The Babylonian Talmud rejects the idea that these failed rabbis cannot repent, so their failure becomes one of embracing erroneous teachings. The legitimate rabbis’ rejection of the teachings that the failed rabbis advocate becomes the very means for their rehabilitation and inclusion within the rabbinic fold! But they are included only as testaments to failure, and it is this point of failure that serves the rabbis’ rhetorical aim: the rabbis are a corporate group whose boundaries are clearly demarcated by the collective will. Neither membership in this collective nor which traditions constitute the conditions of exclusion can possibly be determined by the failed rabbis themselves as long as they remain estranged.

I. The Mechanics of Atonement in Rabbinic Tradition The heavenly voice’s suggestion in the Bavli’s Elisha narrative that Elisha is unable to repent or that should he repent his repentance would not be effective is exceedingly peculiar from the perspective of later Jewish formulations of the mechanics of atonement. The idea of sin so grievous as to prevent atonement contradicts at least a popular understanding of the nature of repentance in Judaism. This popular understanding was succinctly expressed already by the medieval period in a well-known liturgical poem, attributed by folk-legend to the otherwise unknown Rabbi Amnon of Mainz, which traditionally observant Jews still recite on the Day of Atonement. Fragments of this text from the Cairo genizah suggest a date of composition in the early medieval period or earlier.2 The poem states, “God does not desire the death of one destined to die but rather that he repents of his ways and lives, and until the day of his death God awaits him; if he repents, God accepts him immediately.”3 According to this liturgical poem, as long as a potential penitent lives, the doors of repentance remain open. Yet an examination of the relevant traditions in the classical rabbinic corpus suggests a more complex picture developing already from tannaitic times. In this section, I will suggest that an ideological disagreement existed within the incipient rabbinic movement on this issue. One authoritative stream of tannaitic opinion maintained that there is a class of transgression, which, if committed, would stand in the way of repentance. I will 2 For scholarship on this piyyut, see Reuven Kimelman, “U-n’taneh Tokef as a Midrashic Poem,” The Experience of Jewish Liturgy: Studies Dedicated to Menahem Schmelzer (ed. Deborah Blank Reed; Leiden: Brill, 2011), 115–146. 3 ‫כי לא תחפוץ במות המת כי אם בשובו מדרכו וחיה ועד יום מותו תחכה לו אם ישוב מיד תקבלו‬ (Hebrew text cited from Kimelman, “U-n’taneh Tokef as a Midrashic Poem,” 117; translation mine). I have translated in the third person for clarity. The text is addressed to God in the second person.

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argue in the following sections, however, that the editors of the Bavli are in fact endeavoring to marginalize this sharply exclusionary tradition in preference to their more inclusionary notions of repentance, whose rhetorical significance I will explain further there. The tannaim developed a hierarchy of forgiveness that included repentance, rituals of atonement of various sorts such as the Temple cult (which by that time existed only in memory) and the Day of Atonement, and the atoning power of suffering and death. One common formulation of this hierarchy is attributed to the second century rabbi of Roman Palestine, Rabbi Yishmael, in t. Yoma 4:6–8:4 Rabbi Yishmael says, There are four divisions of atonement: if a person transgressed a Torah precept and repents, he is forgiven on the spot as it is said, “Repent, faithless children, I will heal your faithlessness”;5 if a person transgressed a Torah prohibition and repents, his repentance suspends punishment and the Day of Atonement brings atonement, as it is said, “For on this day shall atonement be made for you”;6 if a person intentionally transgressed a more severe Torah prohibition warranting extirpation or execution and repents, repentance and the Day of Atonement suspend punishment and suffering that occurs throughout the year cleanses, as it is said, “I will punish their transgression with the rod”;7 however, one through whom intentionally the name of heaven is desecrated and he repents, there is no power in repentance alone to suspend punishment nor in the Day of Atonement alone to bring atonement – rather, repentance and the Day of Atonement bring atonement for a third, and suffering brings atonement for a third, and finally death cleanses with suffering, and in this regard it is said, “Surely this iniquity will not be forgiven you till you die,”8 teaching that the day of death cleanses.9

Yishmael’s hierarchy of atonement is straightforward and comprehensive.10 Yet he mentions no transgressions so terrible as to make atonement impossible, although it becomes increasingly painful to attain as the sin to be atoned for   4 As a tannaitic dictum in a tannaitic text, I accept this attribution, at least provisionally. But it is of little importance to my argument whether or not the attribution is precisely reliable. In any case, the text can safely be dated to at least the late tannaitic period, generally, and I am concerned with opposing streams of ideas in this period. See the discussion of dating of rabbinic texts in the section on style and method in the introduction and in nn. 61–64, there.   5 Jeremiah 3:22.   6 Leviticus 17:30.   7 Psalms 89:32.   8 Isaiah 22:14.  9 T. Yoma 4:6–8 (ed. Lieberman): ‫ר׳ ישמעאל אומ׳ ארבעה חלוקי כפרה הן עבר על מצות עשה‬ ‫ועשה תשובה אין זז ממקומו עד שמוחלין לו שנ׳ שובו בנים שובבים ארפא משובתם עבר על מצות לא תעשה‬ ‫ועשה תשוב׳ תשובה תולה ויום הכפורים מכפר שנ׳ כי ביום הזה יכפר עליכם וגו׳ עבר על כריתות ומיתות‬ ‫בית דין ועשה תשובה תשובה ויום הכפורים תולין ויסורין שבשאר ימות השנה ממרקין שנ׳ ופקדתי בשבט‬ ‫פשעם וגו׳ אבל מי שנתחלל בו שם שמים מזיד ועשה תשובה אין בה לא בתשובה לתלות ולא ביום הכפורים‬ ‫לכפר אלא תשובה ויום הכפורים מכפרין שליש וייסורין מכפרין שליש ומיתה ממרקת עם הייסורין ועל זה‬ ‫נאמ׳ אם יכופר העון הזה וגו׳ מלמד שיום מיתה ממרק‬. 10 For a comprehensive review of this text along with parallels and related texts, see Lieberman, Tosefta ki-Fshuṭah, 4.824–829; and see also Urbach, Sages, 431–436. For a more recent treatment, see Yishai Kiel, “Penitential Theology in East Late Antiquity: Talmudic, Zoroastrian,

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becomes more severe. Clearly, Elisha’s idea that he is barred from repentance does not fit in to this schema. This tradition, however, which is preserved in many parallels throughout the rabbinic corpus, does not represent the only conception of repentance taught in the tannaitic period.11 A number of tannaitic traditions mention another category of transgression, “one who causes the public to sin,” that might stand in the way of repentance.12 The Tosefta includes such a tradition in t. Yoma 4:10–11: Everyone who benefits the public, opportunity is not provided him to sin, so it will not be that his students will inherit the world while he goes down to Sheol, as it is said, “For thou dost not give me up to Sheol.”13 Everyone who causes the public to sin, opportunity is not provided him to repent, so it will not be that his students go down to Sheol while he inherits the world, as it is said, “If a man is burdened with the blood of another let him be a fugitive until death; let no one help him.”14

These traditions are unusual among early rabbinic texts in that they cite a specific transgression that prevents repentance, although other texts do enumerate various types of insincere repentance or repeated transgressions that could have such an effect.15 and East Christian Reflections,” Journal for the Study of Judaism 45 (2014): 551–583, esp. 568–570, 578–579. 11 I will cite the most important of these parallels in what follows. 12 M. Avot 5:18 and t. Sanhedrin 13:5; and see Avot of Rabbi Natan A 40, Semahot 8:13, b. Rosh Hashanah 17a, b. Yoma 87a, b. Sotah 47a, and b. Sanhedrin 107b. 13 Psalms 16:10. 14 Proverbs 28:17. T. Yoma 4:10–11 (ed. Lieberman): ‫כל המזכה את הרבים אין מספיקין בידו‬ ‫לעבר עבירה שלא יהו תלמידיו נוחלין את העולם והוא יורד לשאול שנ׳ כי לא תעזב נפשי לשאול וגו׳ וכל‬ ‫המחטיא את הרבים אין מספיקין בידו לעשות תשובה שלא יהו תלמידיו יורדין לשאול והוא נוחל את העולם‬ ‫שנ׳ אדם עשוק בדם נפש עד בור ינוס לא יתמכו בו‬. See n. 12, above, for parallels and related texts. 15 See, for example, t. Yoma 4:13 (ed. Lieberman): ‫ר׳ יוסה אומ׳ חוטא אדם פעמים ושלש מוחלין‬ ‫לו ארבע אין מוחלין לו שנ׳ נושא עון ופשע וחטאה ונקה עד כאן מנקה מיכן ואילך אין מנקה שנא׳ כה אמר‬ ‫ה׳ על שלשה פשעי ישראל וגו׳ ואו׳ הן כל אלה יפעל אל פעמים ושלש עם גבר ואו׳ הוקר רגלך מבית רעך‬ ‫וגו׳‬: “Rabbi Yose says, A person who sins twice or three times is forgiven; four times, he is not forgiven; as it is says, ‘forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will … clear’ (Exodus 34:7) – up to this point he will clear, but from here onward he will not; as it is said, ‘Thus says the Lord: For three transgressions of Israel’ (Amos 2:6); and it says, ‘Behold, God does all these things, twice, three times, with a man’ (Job 33:29); and it says, ‘Let your foot be seldom in your neighbor’s house, [lest he become weary of you and hate you]’ (Proverbs 25:17)”; and m. Yoma 8:9 (ed. Vilna): ‫האומר אחטא ואשוב אחטא ואשוב אין מספיקין בידו לעשות‬ ‫תשובה אחטא ויום הכפורים מכפר אין יום הכפורים מכפר‬: “A person who says, ‘I will sin and repent, I will sin and repent,’ opportunity is not provided him to repent; ‘I will sin and the Day of Atonement will bring atonement,’ the Day of Atonement does not bring atonement.’” And see also, Avot of Rabbi Natan A 40 (ed. Schechter): ‫האומר אחטא ואשוב אין מספיקין בידו לעשות תשובה‬ ‫אחטא ויום הכפורים מכפר אין יום הכפורים מכפר אחטא ויום המיתה ממרק אין יום המיתה ממרק רבי‬ ‫אליעזר ברבי יוסי אומר החוטא ושב והולך לתומו אינו זז ממקומו עד שמוחלין לו והאומר אחטא ואשוב‬ ‫מוחלין לו עד שלש פעמים ולא יותר‬: “A person who says, ‘I will sin and repent,’ opportunity is not provided him to repent; ‘I will sin and the Day of Atonement will bring atonement,’ the Day of Atonement does not bring atonement; ‘I will sin and the day of my death will cleanse,’ the day of his death does not cleanse. Rabbi Eliezer the son of Rabbi Yossi says, A person who sins and

I. The Mechanics of Atonement in Rabbinic Tradition

197

There is a tradition, however, which appears in a relatively late collection, that also cites a specific transgression that prevents repentance. And, perhaps not coincidentally, its structure parallels the text from t. Yoma 4:10–11. This tradition appears in Avot of Rabbi Natan, a commentary on Mishnah Avot that dates to around the early medieval period.16 Avot of Rabbi Natan exists in two versions, which scholars refer to as “Version A” and Version B.” For convenience, I will cite these versions abbreviated as ARNA or ARNB, followed by chapter number. The text, from ARNB 32, reads as follows: For any student through whom the name of heaven is desecrated, opportunity is not provided him to repent, as it is said, “A brother offended is harder to be won than a strong city”17

The key language of ARNB 32 and t. Yoma 4:10–11 is very similar: kol talmid she-nitḥallel bo shem shamayim ein maspiqin be-yado la-‘asot teshuvah,18 “For any student through whom the name of heaven is desecrated, opportunity is not provided him to repent,” and kol ha-maḥti’ et ha-rabbim ein maspiqim be-yado la-‘asot teshuvah,19 “Everyone who causes the public to sin, opportunity is not provided him to repent.” Moreover, t. Yoma 4:10–11 clearly understands “one who causes the public to sin” as a teacher who leads students to transgression, and this would seem to be the implication of the language in ARNB 32 as well.20 It is possible, therefore, that these two lines of tradition that take this same position can be considered as variations on the same basic theme.21 repents sincerely is forgiven on the spot. A person who says, ‘I will sin and repent’ is forgiven up to three times and no more”; and Avot of Rabbi Natan A 39 (ed. Schechter): ‫חמשה אין להם‬ ‫סליחה המרבה לשוב ומרבה לחטוא והחוטא בדור זכאי וחוטא על מנת לשוב וכל מי שיש בידו חלול השם‬: “Five types have no forgiveness: one who repents too often; one who sins too often; one who sins in a pious generation; one who sins in order to repent; and everyone who is accountable for a desecration of the name of heaven.” This last text, however, has no earlier parallels and its structure as a list of five in the context of Avot of Rabbi Natan A around chapter 39, which includes a number of other such lists, would seem to indicate a late composition. Thus, almost all of the early categories of those who cannot repent are concerned with an insincere form of repentance rather than the severity or type of sin as such. 16  See Strack and Stemberger, Introduction, 225–227. 17 Proverbs 18:19 (ed. Jewish Publication Society, 1917). The RSV has, “A brother helped is like a strong city,” apparently based on the Septuagint’s reading. ARNB 32 (ed. Schechter): ‫כל תלמיד שנתחלל בו שם שמים אין מספיקין בידו לעשות תשובה שנאמר אח נפשע מקרית עוז‬. 18 ‫כל תלמיד שנתחלל בו שם שמים אין מספיקין בידו לעשות תשובה‬. 19 ‫כל המחטיא את הרבים אין מספיקין בידו לעשות תשובה‬. 20 And see also m. Avot 1:11 (ed. Vilna): ‫אבטליון אומר חכמים הזהרו בדבריכם שמא תחובו חובת‬ ‫גלות ותגלו למקום מים הרעים וישתו התלמידים הבאים אחריכם וימותו ונמצא שם שמים מתחלל‬: “Avtalion says, Sages, be careful with your words lest you incur the penalty of exile and you are exiled to a place of bitter waters; and the students that come after you drink and die and thus the name of heaven will be desecrated.” 21 This reading is also suggested by the reference to Proverbs 18:19 in ARNB 32: “A brother offended is harder to be won than a strong city.” See n. 17, above. Some medieval commentators even interpret these two expressions as equivalent. See, for example, Rashi on b. Yoma 86a, s. v. ‫חילול השם‬.

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The passive language of ARNB 32 is also quite similar to the language of Rabbi Yishmael’s hierarchy of repentance from t. Yoma 4:6–8 cited earlier, mi she-nitḥallel bo shem shamayim,22 “one through whom the name of heaven is desecrated.” In both texts, a person does not actively desecrate the name of heaven, but rather the name of heaven is desecrated through him. This same passive form of the expression is used in parallels to Rabbi Yishmael’s saying that appear in three other places in the Yerushalmi (in Yoma, Sanhedrin, and Shevuot23) as well as in ARNB 32. Variants of this expression outside of these traditions in the Tosefta, the Yerushalmi, and ARNB use a more standard active form: either “one who desecrates the name of heaven” (in the Mekhilta and ARNA24) or “one who is accountable for a desecration of the name” (in the Bavli, ARNA, and Midrash Proverbs25). The saying in ARNB 32 is thus similar to Yishmael’s saying in t. Yoma 4:6–8, but disagrees with it concerning the consequences of this most severe class of transgression. Rabbi Yishmael says that such a person can repent. This text indicates that he cannot. However, as stated above, ARNB 32 is from a medieval collection of traditions, so any earlier dating is quite uncertain. Yet taken together with the text from t. Yoma 4:10–11, it seems reasonable to suppose at least that traditions about causing the public to sin and causing the name of heaven to be desecrated preventing repentance represent the same stream of thought opposed to the tradition that the Tosefta cites in the name of Rabbi Yishmael that rejects the idea of any type of sin that cannot be forgiven.26 If so, then the category with which we are concerned in this chapter, “those who sin and cause the public to sin,” is unique because it is part of a common tradition with several parallels going back to the tannaitic period; and, it appears to have been part of an early disagreement as to whether there is such a thing as a class of transgression that places a sinner beyond the pale of repentance. This category would thus reflect a significant ideological divergence that was 22 ‫שמים‬

‫מי שנתחלל בו שם‬. 8:8, 45b–45c, y. Sanhedrin 10:1, 27c–27d, and y. Shevuot 1:9, 33b. 24  Mekhilta ba-ḥodesh 7 (ed. Horowitz-Rabin) and ARNA 29 (ed. Schechter): ‫מי שמחלל שם‬ ‫שמים‬. 25 B. Yoma 86a (ed. Vilna), ARNA 39 (ed. Schechter), Midrash Proverbs 10:1 (ed. Buber): ‫ מי שיש בידו חילול השם‬/ ‫מי שיש חילול השם בידו‬. 26 As I will explain presently, my concern in this chapter is with “those who sin and cause the public to sin” as a polemical category in the Bavli’s narratives of failed rabbis rather than with repentance as such. A full treatment of notions of sin and repentance in ancient religiosity, of “desecrating the name” in rabbinic and Second Temple literature, and of the New Testament texts regarding “blasphemy against the holy spirit,” must remain outside of my scope. On the former, see Urbach, Sages, 420–523; Büchler, Studies in Sin and Atonement in the Rabbinic Literature of the First Century; Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 117–182; Katz, “Man, Sin, and Redemption in Rabbinic Judaism”; and the review of scholarship in Kiel, “Penitential Theology in East Late Antiquity,” 551–555 nn. 1–11. On the latter, see, most recently, Yair Furstenberg, Purity and Community in Antiquity: Traditions of the Law from Second Temple Judaism to the Mishnah [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Magnes: 2016), 57–63. 23 Y. Yoma

I. The Mechanics of Atonement in Rabbinic Tradition

199

current in the early stages of the nascent rabbinic movement about the nature of repentance and forgiveness, which, as I intimated at the start of this section, was eventually decided more or less in favor of Rabbi Yishmael. Generally speaking, no transgression is so severe as to bar the possibility of repentance, although the more severe the transgression the more painful the process of atonement might be. It is, however, very significant for our reading of the Elisha narrative in the Bavli that Elisha is made to take the side of these earlier traditions by placing himself in the category of those barred from repentance. As just mentioned, the most likely interpretation of “those who cause the public to sin” is that it describes a teacher leading students to sin by his false teachings. In historical context, this category is plausibly explained as a polemical response to teachers of opposing sects or discipleship circles around Roman Palestine in the first centuries of the Common Era. I would suggest that those who sin and cause the public to sin are independent circles of sages competing for students, who are represented as being barred from repentance as a way of delegitimizing them. Yet even so, I will demonstrate in what follows that in the Elisha narrative, and, as we shall see, in several other narratives of failed rabbis, the Bavli’s editors later work to marginalize this tradition. In the next two sections, I will turn to an analysis of three other well-known narratives of failed rabbis, Gehazi, Eleazar ben Dordia, and an unnamed student of Rabbi Yehoshua ben Perahia. It is remarkable, but not much discussed in previous scholarship, that these three narratives scattered throughout the Talmud all share with the tale of Elisha ben Abuyah the common element of a protagonist believing that he is barred from repentance.27 I will demonstrate that in all four of these tales, the editors of the Bavli are actually working to marginalize these early traditions about unredeemable sins by placing the idea in the mouth of an unreliable speaker, and in most cases the thrust of the narrative explicitly belies the idea. The opposing opinion, in contrast, is placed in the mouth of an authoritative figure that represents the rabbis themselves. I will suggest that what is at stake in these narratives is not the teachings themselves regarding whether repentance is possible after some types of transgressions but rather what constitutes legitimate tradition and what constitutes the legitimate community of rabbis that are its representatives.28 27 See

n. 50, below. is, I am not arguing for a complete shift in rabbinic ideas about repentance in the later period or even necessarily for a unilateral rejection of the earlier position. The Bavli itself, in b. Yoma 86b–87a, preserves a version of the tannaitic traditions suggesting that repentance is denied in certain cases. This material appears as part of an extended citation of a tannaitic tradition, in which variants of most of the material from chapter four of our Tosefta appears in a different order, interspersed with material that does not appear in our Tosefta. It seems to be mostly early material, with a very few interpolations that look to be the work of later redactors. These traditions in b. Yoma are preserved without any comment or contextualization, 28 That

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II. Gehazi as a Failed Rabbi The first text that I will discuss appears in the Bavli in tractate Sanhedrin and in tractate Sotah and concerns Gehazi, the servant of the ancient Israelite prophet Elisha (not to be confused with Elisha ben Abuyah, the failed rabbi who we are currently discussing).29 Gehazi appears in chapters four, five, and eight of the second book of Kings. Although the Bible does not consistently treat him as a sinful figure, the central biblical narrative that mentions Gehazi does describe an incident in which he commits a transgression and is rebuked for it. In 2 Kings 5:20–27, after the prophet Elisha heals the Syrian captain Naaman of leprosy and refuses offers of gifts saying, “As the Lord lives, whom I serve, I will receive none,” Gehazi runs after Naaman to take the gifts deceptively for himself: “Gehazi, the servant of Elisha the man of God, said, ‘See, my master has spared this Naaman the Syrian, in not accepting from his hand what he brought. As the Lord lives, I will run after him, and get something from him.’”30 On Gehazi’s return, Elisha perceives Gehazi’s transgression and punishes him with the leprosy from which Elisha had healed Naaman: [Gehazi] went in, and stood before his master, and Elisha said to him, “Where have you been, Gehazi?” And [Gehazi] said, “Your servant went nowhere.” But [Elisha] said to him, “Did I not go with you in spirit when the man turned from his chariot to meet you? Was it a time to accept money and garments, olive orchards and vineyards, sheep and oxen, menservants and maidservants? Therefore the leprosy of Naaman shall cleave to you, and to your descendants forever.” So he went out from his presence a leper, as white as snow.31

Although the biblical text accuses Gehazi only of a single transgression, later rabbinic traditions multiply his transgressions in typical rabbinic fashion.32 The however, which might suggest that their inclusion stems primarily from a conservative editorial policy rather than from an active endorsement of their content. See Rubenstein, The Culture of the Babylonian Talmud, 11: “A widely known and authoritative tradition could not be easily changed, no matter how distressing to later sensibilities. Such traditions were reinterpreted, recontextualized, and glossed, but in most cases they were not totally fabricated.” And see Vidas, Tradition and the Formation of the Talmud, 16: “These sugyot challenge us to go beyond the common dichotomy between an uncritical compilation that does not revise or select tradition and the critical authorship that only produces traditions it agrees with and revises all the sources it produces according to its own agenda. The lack of revision or appropriation, as well as the lack of ‘redaction’ in the sense of omitting sources that stand in clear tension with the Talmud’s creators’ agenda, can play a role in critique. Revision and selection are, in a sense, measure of identification; the withdrawal from revision and the production of sources that stand in tension with the values of the Talmud’s creators are measures of distanciation.” 29 For an excellent treatment of the Gehazi narrative, see Rubenstein, Stories of the Babylonian Talmud, 116–149. I will discuss the accompanying tradition regarding the student of Joshua ben Perahia and the relevant scholarship below. 30 2 Kings 5:20. 31 2 Kings 5:25–27. 32 See n. 60, chapter three.

II. Gehazi as a Failed Rabbi

201

biblical text also does not explain what happened to Gehazi after his sin. The Bavli takes up this matter as well, explaining that Elisha later tried unsuccessfully to convince Gehazi to repent. Notable for our purposes is that Gehazi refuses to repent not out of impiety or stubbornness but because of the tradition discussed in the previous section that bars certain types of transgressors from repentance, which Gehazi quotes explicitly. I cite the version from b. Sanhedrin 107b: It is written, “Elisha came to Damascus.”33 Why did he go? Rabbi Yohanan said, He went to convince Gehazi to repent, but Gehazi did not repent. Elisha said to him, “repent!” Gehazi replied, “Thus I have learned from you: everyone who sins and causes the public to sin, opportunity is not provided him to repent.”34 … Our rabbis taught, The left hand should always push away and the right hand draw near, not like Elisha who pushed Gehazi away with both hands … Our rabbis taught, Elisha suffered three illnesses: one when he incited bears against the children,35 one when he pushed Gehazi away with both hands, and one which caused his death.36

This text ascribes itself to various sources, tannaitic and amoraic, attributed and unattributed. But, elements of its underlying narrative structure – that Gehazi was an especially wicked figure and that Elisha rebuked him perhaps too harshly – appear in various forms in earlier rabbinic collections. In this section, I will analyze the development of this Gehazi narrative from the earliest tannaitic traditions through the amoraic period in order to demonstrate that the Bavli’s key themes regarding repentance were late editorial additions. These same themes, of course, also lie at the heart of the Bavli’s presentation of Elisha ben Abuyah, and so both stories taken together reinforce the importance of these matters to the Bavli’s editors. The earliest roots of the developing Gehazi narrative in the rabbinic corpus can be seen in a number of tannaitic texts that include Gehazi in lists of biblical sinners, such as t. Sotah 4:19:

33  2 Kings 8:7. The Bavli cites the verse as ‫וילך אלישע דמשק‬, but the Masoretic Text has ‫ויבא‬ ‫אלישע דמשק‬. 34 What Gehazi did to “cause the public to sin” is not part of the biblical narratives. The Bavli provides a number of inventive explanations as the text continues in b. Sanhedrin and b. Sotah. 35 This incident is related in 2 Kings 2:23–24. 36 B. Sanhedrin 107b (ed. Vilna; parallel in b. Sotah 47a): ‫כתיב וילך אלישע דמשק להיכא אזל‬ ‫אמר רבי יוחנן שהלך להחזיר גחזי בתשובה ולא חזר אמר לו חזור בך אמר לו כך מקובלני ממך החוטא‬ ‫… תנו רבנן לעולם תהא שמאל דוחה וימין מקרבת‬ ‫ומחטיא את הרבים אין מספיקין בידו לעשות תשובה‬ ‫… תנו רבנן שלשה חלאים חלה אלישע אחד שגירה דובים בתינוקות‬ ‫לא כאלישע שדחפו לגחזי בשתי ידים‬ ‫ואחד שדחפו לגחזי בשתי ידים ואחד שמת בו‬. I omit long sections of text that are not paralleled in the Yerushalmi text to which I will compare this in what follows. These omissions are not relevant to the matters that I will discuss below (the theme of repentance, which is unique to the Bavli, and the relationship of this text to the Yerushalmi text and to the earlier text from the Mekhilta). The parallel in b. Sotah 47a presents some of the narrative elements in a different order. I will address the omitted ben Perahia text in the next section.

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And so you find with Cain, Korach, Balaam, Doeg, Ahitophel, Gehazi, Absalom, Adonijah, Uzziah, and Haman, that they set their eyes on what was not fitting for them: what they sought was not given to them and what they already had in their hands was taken from them.37

This text, along with the well-known text in m. Sanhedrin 10:2 that denies the four commoners Balaam, Doeg, Ahitophel, and Gehazi a portion in the world to come, suggests little beyond the existence of early traditions that considered Gehazi as one of several archetypal biblical wrong-doers. The earliest significant rabbinic expansion on the biblical story of Gehazi appears tacked on to the end of a text from the Mekhilta, which comments on a much earlier and otherwise unrelated verse from the book of Exodus 18:6 describing Moses’ father in law Jethro visiting Moses in the desert: “And he said to Moses, ‘I your father-in-law Jethro am coming to you, and your wife, and her two sons with her’”:38 Rabbi Yehoshua says, He wrote this in a letter. Rabbi Eleazar of Modiin says, He sent this by a messenger, who said to Moses, “Do this for me; or if not for me then do this for your wife; and if not, do this for your sons.” This is why it is said, “And he said to Moses.” Rabbi Eliezer says, It was said to Moses, “‘I, I am he that spoke and the world came to be; I am he who draws near and makes distant, as it is said, Am I a God at hand, says the Lord, and not a God afar off?’39 – I am he that that drew Jethro near and did not make him distant; also you, when someone comes to you to convert, and he comes for the sake of heaven, you should also draw him near and not make him distant. From this we learn that a person should push away with the left hand and draw near with the right hand, and not as Elisha did to Gehazi, who pushed him away forever.40

37 T. Sotah 4:19 (ed. Lieberman; parallels in b. Sotah 9b and Genesis Rabbah 20:5): ‫וכן את‬ ‫מוצא בקין וקרח בלעם ודואג אחיתופל וגחזי אבשלם אדניה עוזיהו והמן שנתנו עיניהם בשאין ראוי להם מה‬ ‫שבקשו לא ניתן להם ומה שבידן נטלו מהן‬. 38 Exodus 18:6 (ed. Jewish Publication Society, 1917, slightly modified; the RSV translation does not have Jethro speaking, “Lo, your father-in-law Jethro is coming to you with your wife and her two sons with her,” based, apparently, on the Septuagint; the Masoretic Text has Jethro saying these words). 39 Jeremiah 23:23. 40 Mekhilta ‘amaleq 1 (ed. Horowitz-Rabin; parallels in Mekhilta of Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai 18 and Exodus Rabbah 27:2): ‫ר׳ יהושע אומר כתב לו באגרת ר׳ אלעזר המודעי אומר שלח לו ביד שליח‬ ‫ואמר לו עשה בגיני ואם אין אתה עושה בגיני עשה בגין אשתך ואם לאו עשה בגין בניך לכך נאמר ויאמר אל‬ ‫משה וגו׳ ר׳ אליעזר אומר נאמר למשה אני אני הוא שאמרתי והיה העולם אני הוא המקרב ולא המרחק‬ ‫שנאמר האלוה מקרוב אני נאם ה׳ ולא אלהי מרחוק אני הוא שקרבתי את יתרו ולא רחקתיו אף אתה כשיבא‬ ‫אדם אצלך להתגייר ואינו בא אלא לשום שמים אף אתה קרבהו ולא תרחיקהו מכאן אתה למד שיהא אדם‬ ‫דוחה בשמאל וימין מקרב ולא כשם שעשה אלישע לגחזי ודחפו לעולם‬. On the early tradition history of this text, see Rubenstein, Stories of the Babylonian Talmud, 128. For an analysis of a related text and its parallel in the Mekhilta of Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai, see Menahem Kahana, Two Mekhiltot on the Amalek Portion : The Originality of the Version of the Mekhilta d’Rabbi Ishmaʻel with Respect to the Mekhilta of Rabbi Shimʻon ben Yohay [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1999), 204–208.

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According to traditional commentators, this text is attempting to explain Jethro’s unusual first-person phraseology “I  am coming to you,” which would be an awkward thing to say were Jethro speaking directly to Moses.41 The first two opinions in the Mekhilta therefore explain that Jethro was not in fact standing before Moses but rather had sent Moses a message. The third opinion reads Exodus 18:6 as if God is speaking instead of Jethro, and reframes the entire biblical narrative as if Jethro is coming to convert to Judaism, apparently connecting the first-person pronoun in the verse with the first-person pronoun in Jeremiah 23:23: “Am I a God at hand … and not a God afar off?” The Mekhilta reads the Hebrew adverbs “at hand” and “afar off” in the verse from Jeremiah, mi-qarov and me-raḥoq, as verbs, meqarev and meraḥeq, “drawn near” and “make distant”: “Am I a God that draws near and not a God that makes distant?” It derives from this verse a saying about how a sage should treat a potential convert: “a person should always push away with the left hand and draw near with the right hand.” A sage should encourage a potential convert, but not too much, always making sure that the convert remains committed on his or her own initiative. It is, however, difficult to account for why the Mekhilta then adds an extra sentence that applies this advice about converts to the prophet Elisha’s treatment of Gehazi, “and not like Elisha did, who pushed away Gehazi forever.” The Mekhilta here was not concerned with Gehazi or Elisha at all, nor was Gehazi a convert. The saying, “A person should push away with the left hand and draw near with the right hand,” may originally have been associated with advice on how to treat potential converts.42 Yet the text applies this saying to how a sage should treat his disciple. This ending would appear, therefore, to be a distinct early tradition originally unrelated to the biblical verses about Jethro.43 41 See, for example, Issachar Berman ben Naphtali’s 16th century commentary on the midrash, mattenot kehunah, on the parallel in Exodus Rabbah 27:2: ‫דאל״כ מהו אני חתנך יתרו בא‬ ‫וגו׳‬. 42 This is also the saying’s context in the parallel in the Mekhilta of Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai 18, but not, for example, in a later occurrence of the saying in Midrash Psalms 22:5 (ed. Buber), which connects the saying to Esther 4:14: “And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?”: ‫מכאן אתה למד דרך ארץ שלא יהא אדם דוחה בשתי ידיו אלא יהא‬ ‫דוחה בשמאל ויקרב בימין‬: “From this you learn decency, that a person should not push away with both hands, rather push away with the left hand and draw near with the right hand.” Apparently, this refers to Mordecai’s response to Esther’s initial refusal in 4:11 of Mordecai’s charge in 4:8, “to go to the king to make supplication to him and entreat him for her people.” In verses 4:13–14, Mordecai both criticizes Esther – “Think not that in the king’s palace you will escape any more than all the other Jews” – and encourages her – “And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” See also, b. Sotah 47a (ed. Vilna; parallel in b. Sanhedrin 107b): ‫תניא רבי שמעון בן אלעזר אומר יצר תינוק ואשה תהא שמאל דוחה וימין מקרבת‬: “Rabbi Shimon ben Eleazar says, The [evil] inclination, a child, and a woman: push away with the left hand and draw near with the right hand.” 43 Moreover, the hermeneutics on the biblical verses stress drawing near and not making distant, but the saying at the end indicates that making distant is also appropriate to some extent. This might suggest that the saying is an addition from another source. It does not appear in

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It seems that this early tradition reads the narrative in the second book of Kings as if Elisha’s cursing Gehazi with leprosy was too harsh a punishment for Gehazi’s transgression. That is, although it remains unstated what is intended by saying that Elisha pushed Gehazi away, the obvious connection would be that he pushed him away by cursing him and his descendants with leprosy. Thus, although this early tradition about Gehazi amounts in effect to only a single sentence, three details are notable for our purposes of analyzing the sources of the Bavli’s narrative of Elisha and Gehazi cited at the start of this section: Gehazi’s faults are not mentioned at all, but rather only Elisha is criticized; the tradition does not mention repentance at all; and the saying does not mention the idea of pushing away with “both hands,” as in the Bavli narrative, but rather “pushing away forever.” It is the Yerushalmi that first takes these sparse early traditions as the basis for a story that explains in more detail how Elisha pushed Gehazi away. But, unlike the Bavli, the Yerushalmi does not connect this tradition to repentance explicitly. The Yerushalmi narrative does, however, add the idea of pushing away with “both hands,” which suggests that this is the source of this idea that appears later in the Bavli’s version of this story. The Yerushalmi text appears in a collection of traditions about Gehazi in y. Sanhedrin 10:2, 29b: It is written, “Elisha came to Damascus. Ben-hadad the king of Syria was sick …”44 Why did he go? He went wanting to do something there. He wanted to bring Gehazi back, and he found him completely leprous. From here we learn that one should push away with the left hand and draw near with the right hand. Rabbi Yohanan said, “‘The sojourner has not lodged in the street; I have opened my doors to the wayfarer’45 – from here we learn that you push away with the left hand and draw near with the right hand. This is not like Elisha did, who pushed Gehazi away with both hands. Elisha suffered two illnesses: one from natural causes and the other when he pushed Gehazi away.”46

The text is commenting on a story in 2 Kings chapter 8 where Elisha heals the Syrian King Ben-hadad. The Bible does not say why Elisha came to Syria in the first place. The Yerushalmi explains that he came to help Gehazi, who he had earlier cursed with leprosy. Elisha apparently finds Gehazi beyond his help, and the parallel in Exodus Rabbah 27:2. See, Rubenstein, Stories of the Babylonian Talmud, 128, “Clearly this is not the original context of the baraita … and the encounter between Elisha and Gehazi has nothing to do with conversion. Yet the larger story of Gehazi and Elisha and its original context in Tannaitic literature have been lost, and this recontextualized baraita alone remains.” 44 2 Kings 8:7. The verse continues, “and when it was told him, ‘The man of God has come here.’” 45 Job 31:32. 46 Y. Sanhedrin 10:2, 29b (ed. Venice): ‫כתיב ויבא אלישע דמשק ובן הדד מלך ארם חלה וגו׳ מה‬ ‫אזל בעי מיעבד תמן אזל בעא מקרבא לגיחזי ואשכחיה מוחלט מיכן שדוחין בשמאל ומקרבין בימין אמר רבי‬ ‫יוחנן בחוץ לא ילין גר דלתיי לאורח אפתח מיכן שדוחין בשמאל ומקרבין בימין לא כשם שעשה אלישע‬ ‫שדחה את גיחזי בשתי ידיו שני חלאים חלה אלישע אחד כדרך הארץ ואחד שדחה את גיחזי‬.

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the Yerushalmi criticizes Elisha for his earlier harsh treatment. None of this, of course, appears in the biblical narratives. The Yerushalmi’s narrative is very similar to the Bavli’s, but a number of differences can be highlighted. The Yerushalmi, like the Mekhilta tradition on which it is apparently based, connects the idea of pushing away and drawing near to proselytes or at least to “sojourners” in the general sense implied in the prooftext cited from the book of Job, “The sojourner has not lodged in the street.” The Bavli’s editors leave this aspect of the narrative out completely. In addition, the Yerushalmi merely says that Elisha “wanted to bring Gehazi back.” The Aramaic here, which I translate “bring Gehazi back,” is literally “bring Gehazi near.”47 The Yerushalmi’s language is rather vague, but it adheres closely to the Mekhilta tradition about pushing away and drawing near. The Bavli, in contrast, says that Elisha “went to convince Gehazi to repent.”48 The Bavli, apparently relying on and extending a tradition such as appears in the Yerushalmi, makes “bringing near” into “bring to repentance.”49 It is, therefore, only the Bavli that brings in the theme of repentance at all. And, most importantly for our purposes, Gehazi refusing Elisha based on the idea of his inability to repent is a critical innovative addition of the Bavli. The Bavli’s primary narrative focus is that Elisha wanted to encourage Gehazi to repent and that Gehazi refused. Elisha in the Bavli certainly believes that Gehazi can repent because he explicitly demands this of him.50 Gehazi refuses, citing the authentic rabbinic tradition about “everyone who sins and causes the public to sin,” which Elisha (in the role of the rabbi) should well know.

47 ‫לגיחזי‬

‫בעא מקרבא‬. I follow Jastrow and Neusner on this. ‫שהלך להחזיר גחזי‬. 49 This is not to say that the Bavli’s editors had access to the Yerushalmi as a complete text but that they had access to a tradition such the Yerushalmi preserves here. See Rubenstein, Stories of the Babylonian Talmud, 134: “the Bavli storytellers had access to the [Yerushalmi] passage in essentially its current form … This in turn confirms that those storytellers were Stammaim, not Amoraim, as this type of reworking of sources – the transfer and reuse of a tradition in a new context – characterizes Stammaitic activity”; and, ibid., 135: “Nor is it clear that he solicits Gehazi to repent or simply to return to his retinue and service after the distancing due to leprosy. The Aramaic maqreva, ‘bring near, close,’ does not really mean to ‘bring to repentance’ though it occasionally seems to be used with that sense. In the BT, by contrast, Elisha explicitly exhorts Gehazi ‘to return and repent.’” 50 Cf. Rubenstein, Stories of the Babylonian Talmud, 122: “It is unclear whether Elisha would agree with Gehazi and only beckons his disciple to repent because he does not know the extent of the transgressions, or whether he invites Gehazi to return despite the sins and the ostensible meaning of the tradition. If the latter, then the story involves a secondary theme of tragic misunderstanding: Gehazi has misinterpreted the tradition he learned from his master and mistakenly concluded that he cannot repent.” Rubenstein, ibid., 126, discusses this theme of misunderstanding also in regard to ben Perahia’s student’s misunderstanding of his teacher’s praise of the inn and of his gesture. He connects this in passing, ibid., 266–267 n. 26, to the Elisha story and to the idea of not being able to repent, referring to Talmudic Stories, 71–72. 48 ‫בתשובה‬

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So we see that the Bavli’s editors’ innovative version of the story about the prophet Elisha and Gehazi is quite similar to their version of the Elisha ben Abuyah narrative discussed in the previous chapter. The similarity is not merely in the fact that both Elisha ben Abuyah and Gehazi believe that they are unable to repent. Both narratives also include a voice that at first glance seems authoritative, which states that repentance is impossible. In b. Sanhedrin, that voice is Gehazi, who cites an authentic tannaitic tradition. In b. Hagigah, that voice is a declaration from heaven to the same effect as this tannaitic tradition. However, in both of these narratives this voice is marginalized or contradicted.51 Moreover, both of these narratives also include an even more authoritative voice that demands repentance, but which is unheeded. I suggest that this voice represents the greater authority of the rabbis themselves. In b. Sanhedrin, that voice is Elisha the prophet’s. In b. Hagigah, that voice belongs to Rabbi Meir, whose role in that narrative we have not yet considered at length. I will continue, therefore, in the next section with my analysis of b. Hagigah 15a–b from where I left off in the previous chapter in order to further highlight the themes of repentance and authority in that narrative as compared to the narrative of Gehazi. I  will then conclude this chapter by demonstrating the similarity of these two tales to the stories of two other failed rabbis in the Bavli, Eleazar ben Dordia and the student of Rabbi Yehoshua ben Perahia. I will show how these four narratives taken together illustrate the importance of the failed rabbi to the Bavli as a polemical target and how this category functions from the perspective of rabbinic community formation. Again, as with other well-edited stories from the Talmud, I treat these texts in their final form as reflecting most strongly the ideology of the Bavli’s editors.52

III. The Failed Rabbi in the Babylonian Talmud The continuation of the Bavli’s story of Elisha ben Abuyah after Elisha’s estrangement contains a fascinating series of encounters between Elisha the failed rabbi and Meir his still dedicated student, which center on the theme of repentance.53 In this section of the narrative, Meir repeatedly represents a voice of 51 In the Elisha ben Abuyah narrative, it is explicitly contradicted by the outcome of the narrative itself, as we will see next section. In both narratives, it is implicitly marginalized by the greater authority and moral stature of the figure demanding repentance, Meir and Elisha the prophet respectively, and the lesser stature of the figures defending the idea that repentance is impossible, Elisha ben Abuyah and Gehazi. 52 See Rubenstein, Talmudic Stories, 18–21, and the discussion of dating of rabbinic texts in the section on style and method in the introduction and in nn. 61–64, there. 53 See Rubenstein, Talmudic Stories, 73–77, for additional analysis of this section of the narrative. Rubenstein emphasizes the theme of Elisha’s superior Torah knowledge along with the theme of repentance. Add see the criticism there (ibid., 327 n. 36) of Yonah Fraenkel’s reading

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moderation and the call to repentance, but Elisha repeatedly insists that he is beyond redemption (note that the Bavli consistently refers to Elisha using his pejorative nickname, Aher, as explained in the previous chapter): After he turned to bad manners,54 Aher asked Rabbi Meir, “What is this which is written, ‘God has made the one as well as the other’”?55 [Meir] said to him, “Everything that the Holy One blessed be he created, he created its opposite – he created mountains and he created hills; he created seas and he created rivers.” [Aher] said to him, “Rabbi Akiva your teacher did not teach thus, but rather: He created righteous people and he created wicked people; he created the Garden of Eden and he created gehinnom. Every person has two portions, one in the Garden of Eden and one in gehinnom – should a righteous person merit it, he takes his portion and the portion of his fellow in the Garden of Eden; should a wicked person be found guilty, he takes his portion and the portion of his fellow in gehinnom.”56

Here, both Elisha and Meir offer creative interpretations of Ecclesiastes 7:14, which in context is expressing the idea that God is the author of both human prosperity and human adversity. The tradition that Elisha cites in Akiva’s name is not preserved anywhere else in the rabbinic literature with this attribution, but it does have a partial parallel in the late midrash.57 In any case, Elisha’s approach to interpreting a benign verse to fit his misunderstanding of his own circumstance is striking in contrast to Meir’s more optimistic interpretation. Yet the difference between their thinking becomes even sharper as the narrative continues: After he turned to bad manners, Aher asked Rabbi Meir, “What is this which is written, ‘Gold and glass cannot equal it, nor can it be exchanged for vessels of fine gold.’”58 [Meir] said to him, “These are words of Torah that are as hard to acquire as vessels of fine gold and are as easy to lose as glass vessels.” [Aher] said to him, “Rabbi Akiva your teacher did not teach thus, but rather: Just as vessels of gold and vessels of glass, although they are broken they can be fixed, so also a sage, even if he sinned he can be corrected.” [Meir] said to him, “So you also should repent!” He said him, “I have already heard from behind the pargod, ‘Repent, faithless children – except Aher!’”59 in Darkhei ha-Aggadah ve-ha-Midrash (2 vols.; Givatayim: Yad la-Talmud, 1991), 1.263–266. See also Goshen-Gottstein, Sinner, 125–162. 54 See n. 31, chapter six, on my translation of the obscure expression, ‫תרבות רעה‬. 55 Ecclesiastes 7:14. 56 B. Hagigah 15a (ed. Vilna): ‫שאל אחר את רבי מאיר לאחר שיצא לתרבות רעה אמר ליה מאי‬ ‫דכתיב גם את זה לעמת זה עשה האלהים אמר לו כל מה שברא הקדוש ברוך הוא ברא כנגדו ברא הרים‬ ‫ברא גבעות ברא ימים ברא נהרות אמר לו רבי עקיבא רבך לא אמר כך אלא ברא צדיקים ברא רשעים ברא‬ ‫גן עדן ברא גיהנם כל אחד ואחד יש לו שני חלקים אחד בגן עדן ואחד בגיהנם זכה צדיק נטל חלקו וחלק‬ ‫חברו בגן עדן נתחייב רשע נטל חלקו וחלק חברו בגיהנם‬. 57 The continuation of the Bavli narrative brings proof-texts from Isaiah 61:7 and Jeremiah 17:18. The former is also cited in Midrash Psalms 31:6 (ed. Buber) in a similar, though not precisely the same, fashion. See Goshen-Gottstein, Sinner, 338 nn. 25 and 26. 58 Job 28:17 (RSV, slightly modified). 59 B. Hagigah 15a (ed. Vilna): ‫שאל אחר את רבי מאיר לאחר שיצא לתרבות רעה מאי דכתיב לא‬ ‫יערכנה זהב וזכוכית ותמורתה כלי פז אמר לו אלו דברי תורה שקשין לקנותן ככלי זהב וכלי פז ונוחין לאבדן‬ ‫ככלי זכוכית אמר לו רבי עקיבא רבך לא אמר כך אלא מה כלי זהב וכלי זכוכית אף על פי שנשברו יש להם‬

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This time it is a verse from the book of Job that is being interpreted. Based on Elisha’s interpretation and Meir’s response, both would seem to agree that no one ought to be beyond repentance, and Meir explicitly calls on Elisha to repent. Elisha refuses, even though his refusal explicitly contradicts Akiva’s teaching that he just cited with approval. Elisha cites only the heavenly voice for justification (the pargod is a curtain that separates the heavenly inner sanctum from other precincts). As the narrative continues, Meir again calls on Elisha to repent, and again Elisha refuses: It was taught in a tannaitic tradition, it happened that Aher was riding his horse on the Sabbath and Rabbi Meir walked beside him to learn Torah from him. [Aher] said to him, “Meir turn back, for I have already counted by the steps of my horse that this is the end of the Sabbath boundary.” [Meir] said to him, “You also should turn back in repentance!” He said to him, “Have I have not already told you that I have heard from behind the pargod, ‘Repent, faithless children’ – except Aher!’”60

Elisha and Meir are walking together on the Sabbath. Elisha is violating the Sabbath both by riding a horse and, it is implied, by not keeping to limits that the rabbis set on how far one may walk from his home on the day of rest. Yet even so, Elisha remains cognizant of these limits in order to make sure that Meir observes them. It is very significant that here and throughout the narrative, Elisha does not present any conceptual or ideological opposition to the rabbis. He continues to be dedicated to Meir as a rabbinic disciple, both by teaching him and by making sure that Meir continues to observe properly the Sabbath that he himself has ceased to observe. He continues to be dedicated to rabbinic tradition more broadly by making sure that Meir correctly understands the great Akiva’s teachings. Elisha has no ideological objection to the rabbis or their teachings. He objects only to himself as a rabbi. As I argued last chapter, and as we saw in the case of Gehazi, this type of self-exclusion is a central rhetorical aspect of the Bavli’s construction of the failed rabbi. Furthermore, the contrast between Meir’s appeals to repentance and Elisha’s refusal based on the heavenly voice brings to mind the incident of the oven of Aknai in b. Bava Metzia 59b, discussed at the end the last chapter.61 There, the protagonists are a majority of rabbis and their collective wisdom versus Eliezer ben Hyrcanus and the heavenly voice. But, I would suggest that the same issue is at stake: the rabbis’ collective teachings versus any other source of knowledge or ‫תקנה אף תלמיד חכם אף על פי שסרח יש לו תקנה אמר לו אף אתה חזור בך אמר לו כבר שמעתי מאחורי‬ ‫הפרגוד שובו בנים שובבים חוץ מאחר‬. 60 B. Hagigah 15a (ed. Vilna): ‫תנו רבנן מעשה באחר שהיה רוכב על הסוס בשבת והיה רבי מאיר‬ ‫מהלך אחריו ללמוד תורה מפיו אמר לו מאיר חזור לאחריך שכבר שיערתי בעקבי סוסי עד כאן תחום שבת‬ ‫אמר ליה אף אתה חזור בך אמר ליה ולא כבר אמרתי לך כבר שמעתי מאחורי הפרגוד שובו בנים שובבים‬ ‫חוץ מאחר‬. 61 See n. 72, chapter six.

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insight that an individual might be able to call upon. At issue in this narrative is not whether the heavenly voice as such is authoritative or even whether tradition itself is authoritative.62 As we saw in the Gehazi narrative, Gehazi cites verbatim an authentic tannaitic tradition, but even this is marginalized in the same way that the heavenly voice is marginalized in the narratives of Elisha ben Abuyah and the oven of Aknai. Rather, the crux of the matter is an appeal to any source of authority beyond the present unified rabbinic community. The remarkable conclusion of the narrative in b. Hagigah strongly supports this reading. There, Elisha makes a final appeal to a surprising source of authority to prove his case. Along with relying on heavenly voices and tannaitic traditions, Elisha appeals to what appears to be a version of the ancient practice of reading oracles based on selecting random texts. That is, he appeals in the end to bibliomancy, but this too is ultimately rejected.63 As the Bavli narrative concludes, Elisha goes to thirteen children in thirteen different study halls and has them read out the verse that they are studying. In each case, the verse is eerily relevant to Elisha’s assessment of his own plight: [Elisha] grabbed [Meir] and brought him to the study hall. He said to a student, “Recite your verse to me!” [The student] said to him, “‘There is no peace,’ says the Lord, ‘for the wicked.’”64 He brought [Meir] to another hall and said to a student, “Recite your verse to me!” [The student] said to him, “Though you wash yourself with lye and use much soap, the stain of your guilt is still before me.”65 He brought [Meir] to another hall and said to a student, “Recite your verse to me!” [The student] said to him, “And you, O desolate one, what do you mean that you dress in scarlet, that you deck yourself with ornaments of gold, that you enlarge your eyes with paint? In vain you beautify yourself.”66 He brought [Meir] up to yet another hall until he had brought him to thirteen study halls, and all of [the students] recited a similar kind of verse. At the last one, [Elisha] said, “Recite your verse to me!” [The student] said to him, “But to the wicked God says: ‘What right have you to recite my statutes?’”67 But this student had a stutter and it seemed as if he said, “But to Elisha God says …” Elisha is said to have taken a 62 It is worth noting, however, that the relationship more generally of the Bavli’s editors with the traditions that they cite is itself a complicated matter. See Vidas, Tradition and the Formation of the Talmud. 63 See Rubenstein, Talmudic Stories, 76: “To seek an oracle through the study-verse of a child is a standard technique of talmudic stories, which functions in the same manner as heavenly voices, dream-visions, and messages from Elijah. These methods provide types of divine revelations in the post-biblical world after the cessation of prophecy.” Also see Saul Lieberman, Hellenism in Jewish Palestine: Studies in the Literary Transmission, Beliefs, and Manners of Palestine in the I Century B. C. E. – IV Century C. E. (New York: Jewish Theological Society, 1950), 195–198, and Philip S. Alexander, “Bavli Berakhot 55a–57b: The Talmudic Dreambook in Context,” Journal of Jewish Studies 46 (1995): 230–248, at 233, who mentions the sortes Homericae and sortes Virgilianae in the Greco-Roman world. 64 Isaiah 48:22. 65 Jeremiah 2:22. 66 Jeremiah 4:30. 67 Psalms 50:16.

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knife in his hand and cut the student to pieces and to have sent the pieces to the thirteen study halls.68 But others say that Elisha merely would have done this if he had a knife.69

This section of the narrative is remarkable because you might think that Elisha’s assessment is reasonable and that the information that he seeks in textual oracles is confirmed. A single random attempt at bibliomancy that supports one’s own preconceptions might be considered coincidence. But similar results obtained over a dozen trials would seem to have some independent legitimacy; in just the same way, I suggest, that heavenly voices would seem to have some independent legitimacy. And yet the narrative itself, in its ironic and darkly humorous conclusion, stresses Elisha’s error rather than the authority of bibliomancy or heavenly voices. Elisha mishears a stuttering child and believes that his own name was mentioned. But he is in fact mistaken. And, I would suggest that the narrative would have us understand that he was mistaken all along. Elisha is not beyond the pale of repentance, and his stubborn insistence that he cannot repent is based on seeking out erroneous sources of insight rather than acknowledging Meir as a contemporary representative of the rabbis’ own living tradition. In other words, the Elisha that the Bavli’s editors imagine is actually still a rabbi and an integral part of the rabbinic collective. He remains a rabbi in success or failure, whether willingly or unwillingly. His attempts to remove himself from this collective by insisting on upholding faulty wisdom cannot be successful because such teachings have no independent legitimacy. The unexpectedly optimistic ending of the Elisha cycle in the Bavli provides additional evidence in support of this reading: When Aher died, [the heavenly court] said, “He shall not be judged nor shall he enter into the world to come. He shall not be judged because he was involved in Torah study. He shall not enter into the world to come because he sinned. Rabbi Meir said, “It would be better were he judged [and through this be cleansed] and enter into the world to come. When I die, I will raise up smoke from his grave.” When Rabbi Meir died, smoke arose from Aher’s grave. Rabbi Yohanan said, “Is this a worthy deed, to roast one’s teacher? [Elisha] was one of our own and we are unable to save him? If I shall take his hand, who will take him away from me? Who?70 When I die, I shall extinguish 68 Rubenstein, Talmud Stories, 77, suggests that this first opinion that has Elisha kill the students is a later gloss based on the version that appears in the Yerushalmi. The original reading had Elisha merely angry but not murderous, which seems more consistent with the generally sympathetic portrayal of Elisha in the Bavli’s narrative. 69 B. Hagigah 15a–b (ed. Vilna): ‫תקפיה עייליה לבי מדרשא אמר ליה לינוקא פסוק לי פסוקך אמר‬ ‫לו אין שלום אמר ה׳ לרשעים עייליה לבי כנישתא אחריתי אמר ליה לינוקא פסוק לי פסוקך אמר לו כי אם‬ ‫תכבסי בנתר ותרבי לך ברית נכתם עונך לפני עייליה לבי כנישתא אחריתי אמר ליה לינוקא פסוק לי פסוקך‬ ‫אמר ליה ואת שדוד מה תעשי כי תלבשי שני כי תעדי עדי זהב כי תקרעי בפוך עיניך לשוא תתיפי וגו׳ עייליה‬ ‫לבי כנישתא אחריתי עד דעייליה לתליסר בי כנישתא כולהו פסקו ליה כי האי גוונא לבתרא אמר ליה פסוק‬ ‫לי פסוקך אמר ליה ולרשע אמר אלהים מה לך לספר חקי וגו׳ ההוא ינוקא הוה מגמגם בלישניה אשתמע‬ ‫כמה דאמר ליה ולאלישע אמר אלהים איכא דאמרי סכינא הוה בהדיה וקרעיה ושדריה לתליסר בי כנישתי‬ ‫ואיכא דאמרי אמר אי הואי בידי סכינא הוה קרענא ליה‬. 70 I am following Jastrow here, s. v. ‫רמי‬. The syntax is somewhat unclear.

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the smoke from his grave!” When Rabbi Yohanan died, the smoke rising from Aher’s grave ceased. The mourner said [of Rabbi Yohanan], “Even the guardian of the gate cannot stand before you, our master!”71

The narrative’s conclusion clearly demonstrates that Elisha was in error. He could have repented had he chosen to, and he in fact always remained part of the rabbinic collective. Rabbi Yohanan even explicitly acknowledges that Elisha “was one of our own.” In the end, Elisha is rehabilitated by the collective, but only on its own terms. The several parallels between the Gehazi narrative and the Elisha narrative are striking and significant. In both cases, a voice of dubious authority cites a source of dubious authority to support the same conclusion in contrast to an authoritative voice that defends the opposite conclusion. It makes no difference whether the source of dubious authority is a heavenly voice, bibliomancy, or, most surprisingly, even an authentic tannaitic tradition. The voice of current authority is the voice of rabbinic teachings as spoken by the rabbinic collective itself. I would argue that this same issue is at stake in two other narratives of failed rabbis, the narrative of Eleazar ben Dordia and the narrative of the student of Yehoshua ben Perahia. I will conclude this section with a brief treatment of these two narratives. Ben Dordia is an otherwise unknown sage about whom it was said that he never heard rumor of a prostitute anywhere in the world without having to go to meet with her.72 B. Avodah Zarah 17a narrates a rather bawdy tale of his last such encounter:73 One time [Eleazar ben Dordia] heard about a certain prostitute living in one of the seatowns who demanded a pouch of money for her wages. He took a pouch of money and traveled across seven rivers for her. During their encounter she passed wind. She said,74

71 B. Hagigah 15b (ed. Vilna): ‫כי נח נפשיה דאחר אמרי לא מידן לידייניה ולא לעלמא דאתי ליתי לא‬ ‫מידן לידייניה משום דעסק באורייתא ולא לעלמא דאתי ליתי משום דחטא אמר רבי מאיר מוטב דלידייניה‬ ‫וליתי לעלמא דאתי מתי אמות ואעלה עשן מקברו כי נח נפשיה דרבי מאיר סליק קוטרא מקבריה דאחר‬ ‫אמר רבי יוחנן גבורתא למיקלא רביה חד הוה ביננא ולא מצינן לאצוליה אי נקטיה ביד מאן מרמי ליה מאן‬ ‫אמר מתי אמות ואכבה עשן מקברו כי נח נפשיה דרבי יוחנן פסק קוטרא מקבריה דאחר פתח עליה ההוא‬ ‫ספדנא אפילו שומר הפתח לא עמד לפניך רבינו‬. 72 B. Avodah Zarah 17a (ed. Vilna): ‫שלא הניח זונה אחת בעולם שלא בא עליה‬: “He did not leave aside any prostitute in the world that he did not come to her.” On Eleazar ben Dordia as a “sage,” see nn. 76–77, below. 73 Interestingly, one late and clearly corrupted manuscript witness (MS Oxford Opp. Add. fol. 23) of the section of the Elisha narrative discussed in the previous chapter borrows this last part of the Ben Dordia story and inserts it into Elisha’s encounter with a prostitute. See n. 71, chapter six. This borrowing is not relevant to my analysis. 74 Munich 95 has ‫אמר׳‬, supporting ‫“( אמרה‬she said”) in the standard text over ‫“( אמר‬he said”) in an earlier print. MS Paris 1337 and JTS 15 have ‫( אמ‬modified above in JTS 15 to ‫ ;אמרה‬a note in the margin there records a tradition that has the heavenly voice speaking these words, though this reading is not supported by the other Talmud manuscripts).

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“Just as this wind cannot return to its place, so also Eleazar ben Dordia’s repentance would not be accepted.”75

Again in this narrative, we have an unreliable source, a prostitute, citing what we might describe as a folk version of the tannaitic traditions cited above about a severe transgression from which “no opportunity is provided to repent.” Ben Dordia despairs, and, as the story continues, he appeals to some peculiar sources of authority as intercessors with no effect: he appeals to the mountains and hills, heaven and earth, the sun and the moon, and the stars and constellations. Finally in his despair he weeps bitterly and dies, and, apparently, his death brings about his redemption: “He placed his head between his knees and wept bitterly until his soul left him. A heavenly voice declared, ‘Rabbi Eleazar ben Dordia is summoned to life in the world to come.’”76 The Bavli comments as the text continues: “Rabbi said, Not only are penitents accepted, but they are even called ‘rabbi.”77 Like Elisha ben Abuyah, Eleazar ben Dordia is accepted by the rabbis as “one of their own,” but, again, only on their own terms. Finally, alongside with the Gehazi story cited above, the Bavli relates a tale of a certain student of Yehoshua ben Perahia. This narrative has been extensively treated in the scholarship of the past century, so I will discuss it only very briefly.78 Its themes that are most relevant to the current study adhere closely to the 75 B. Avodah Zarah 17a (ed. Vilna): ‫פעם אחת שמע שיש זונה אחת בכרכי הים והיתה נוטלת כיס‬ ‫דינרין בשכרה נטל כיס דינרין והלך ועבר עליה שבעה נהרות בשעת הרגל דבר הפיחה אמרה כשם שהפיחה‬ ‫זו אינה חוזרת למקומה כך אלעזר בן דורדיא אין מקבלין אותו בתשובה‬. For an extended analysis of this text on the background of early Christian monastic sources, see Michal Bar-Asher Siegal, Early Christian Monastic Literature and the Babylonian Talmud (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 170–199; and see Kiel, “Penitential Theology in East Late Antiquity,” 580–581. I disagree with Siegal’s characterization of the ben Dordia narrative as “non-rabbinic.” As the current study has shown, the sage traditions in the rabbinic corpus represent a wide variety of perspectives and are constantly being reimagined. I agree, however, that it is important to think about how a specific Bavli narrative reflects or challenges ideas most typical of the Bavli’s editors. But I believe that the ben Dordia narrative fits quite well into a Bavli editorial type from the perspective of its common themes with the other failed rabbi stories examined in this chapter. 76 B. Avodah Zarah 17a (ed. Vilna): ‫הניח ראשו בין ברכיו וגעה בבכיה עד שיצתה נשמתו יצתה בת‬ ‫קול ואמרה ר״א בן דורדיא מזומן לחיי העולם הבא‬. In the standard text, Eleazar ben Dordia is referred to using the title “rabbi” also at the start of the narrative, a reading that also appears in one early print and MS Paris 1337. Other witness have just “Eleazar ben Dordia.” All witnesses read “rabbi” at the end of the narrative. 77 B. Avodah Zarah 17a (ed. Vilna): ‫אמר רבי לא דיין לבעלי תשובה שמקבלין אותן אלא שקורין‬ ‫אותן רבי‬. Regarding the attribution here, it would seem improbable that Rabbi Yehudah the Patriarch stated these words at all, but if he did, he certainly did not intend them as a commentary on this late Bavli story. 78 See Rubenstein, Stories of the Babylonian Talmud, 264 n. 1, for references to late 19th and early 20th century studies and 265 n. 3 for more recent works. And, see Johann Maier, Jesus von Nazareth in Der Talmudischen Oberlieferung (Erträge der Forschung 82; Darmstadt: Wissenschaftlicher Buchgesellschaft, 1978), 117–129; Stephen Gero, “The Stern Master and his Wayward Disciple: A ‘Jesus’ Story in the Talmud and in Christian Hagiography,” Journal for

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Gehazi story. This tale appears in the standard printed editions of the Babylonian Talmud in Sotah 47a:79 When Alexander Jannaeus was killing the rabbis, Shimon ben Shetah’s sister hid him80 while Rabbi Yehoshua ben Perahia went and fled to Alexandria in Egypt. When peace returned, Shimon ben Shetah sent to him: “From me Jerusalem the holy city to you Alexandria in Egypt: my sister, my husband dwells in your midst and I sit desolate.” [Rabbi Yehoshua] said, “This means that peace has returned.” When he arrived, he happened upon a certain inn. They rose before him in respect, and they gave him much honor. He set about praising, “How pleasing is this inn!” One of his students, [thinking that he referred to the innkeeper,81] said to him, “Rabbi her eyes are bleary!” He said, “Wicked person! Do you occupy yourself [with such lustful thoughts]?” He blew 400 blasts of the horn and placed him under the ban. [The student] came before [Rabbi Yehoshua] every day, but [Rabbi Yehoshua] did not heed him. One day when [Rabbi Yehoshua] was reading the Shema, he came before him. [Rabbi Yehoshua] resolved to receive him and signaled to him with his hands. But he thought that [Rabbi Yehoshua] was rejecting him. He went and stood up a brick and worshipped it. [Rabbi Yehoshua] said to him, “Repent!” He said to [Rabbi Yehoshua], “Thus I have learned from you: everyone who sins and causes the public to sin, opportunity is not provided him to repent.”82

The story is set in the first century B. C. E. in the time of the Jewish Hasmonean dynasty and addresses a legend about one of these Jewish kings, Alexander Jannaeus, who is said to have persecuted the rabbis. All this is, of course, wildly anachronistic, but the details of the narrative need not concern us here. The matter of our concern is limited to the interaction between Rabbi Yehoshua ben Perahia and his student in the second half of the narrative.

the Study of Judaism 25 (1994): 287–311; Boyarin, Dying for God, 23–26; Schäfer, Jesus in the Talmud; Boyarin’s criticism in “Nostalgia for Christianity: Getting Medieval Again,” Religions and Literature 12 (2010): 49–76; Schäfer’s response to his critics in the afterword of a second edition in German translation, Jesus im Talmud; and Rubenstein, Stories of the Babylonian Talmud, 116–149. 79 The parallel in b. Sanhedrin 107b is omitted in ed. Vilna due to the censor. 80 Shimon ben Shetah’s sister is said in b. Berakhot 48a to have been the wife of Alexander Jannaeus (though the words indicating their relationship are missing in some manuscripts in both places). 81 This is the most common reading of this part of the text. Cf. Gero, “The Stern Master and his Wayward Disciple,” 302–303 n. 37. 82 B. Sotah 47a (ed. Vilna; parallel in b. Sanhedrin 107b): ‫כדהוה קא קטיל ינאי מלכא לרבנן‬ ‫שמעון בן שטח אטמינהו אחתיה ר׳ יהושע בן פרחיה אזל ערק לאלכסנדריא של מצרים כי הוה שלמא שלח‬ ‫ליה שמעון בן שטח מני ירושלים עיר הקודש לך אלכסנדריא של מצרים אחותי בעלי שרוי בתוכך ואני יושבת‬ ‫שוממה אמר ש״מ הוה ליה שלמא כי אתא אקלע לההוא אושפיזא קם קמייהו ביקרא שפיר עבדי ליה יקרא‬ ‫טובא יתיב וקא משתבח כמה נאה אכסניא זו א״ל אחד מתלמידיו רבי עיניה טרוטות א״ל רשע בכך אתה‬ ‫עוסק אפיק ארבע מאה שפורי ושמתיה כל יומא אתא לקמיה ולא קבליה יומא חד הוה קרי קרית שמע אתא‬ ‫לקמיה הוה בדעתיה לקבוליה אחוי ליה בידיה סבר מדחא דחי ליה אזל זקף לבינתא פלחא אמר ליה חזור‬ ‫בך א״ל כך מקובלני ממך כל החוטא ומחטיא את הרבים אין מספיקין בידו לעשות תשובה‬.

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This core narrative as I have cited it here is more or less common to all of the major Bavli manuscripts.83 There are short additions that come before and after this core narrative that, in many manuscripts, associate this otherwise unnamed student with Jesus. Even taken on its own, however, the core text has a complicated redaction history. Its first half is based on an otherwise unrelated story that appears in the Yerushalmi about a trip to Alexandria by Yehudah ben Tabbai and his troubles with a disciple on the way back to Jerusalem.84 The Yerushalmi text does not mention Jesus at all. The second half is based on the Elisha and Gehazi story already discussed. Rabbi Yehoshua ben Perahia, like the prophet Elisha, calls on his student to repent. And his student, like Gehazi, refuses, citing an authentic tannaitic tradition. It is difficult to date precisely when this core narrative was associated with Jesus, but it would seem to have been at a relatively late editorial stage.85 It seems correct, therefore, to suppose that whatever other additional polemical aims might be operating in the fuller narrative as it appears in the printed editions of the Bavli, the common themes that it shares with the story of Gehazi are earlier and are of significance in their own right.86 83 For

149.

a convenient summary of variants, see Rubenstein, Stories of the Babylonian Talmud,

84 Y. Hagigah 2:2, 77d with a parallel in y. Sanhedrin 6:8, 23c. Following is the relevant section of y. Hagigah 2:2, 77d (ed. Venice): ‫אנן תנינן יהודה בן טבאי נשיא ושמעון בן שטח אב בית‬ ‫דין אית תניי תני ומחלף מאן דאמר יהודה בן טבאי נשיא עובדא דאלכסנדרייאה מסייע ליה יהודה בן טבאי‬ ‫הוון בני ירושלם בעון ממניתיה נשיא בירושלם ערק ואזל ליה לאלכסנדריאה והיו בני ירושלם כותבין‬ ‫מירושלים הגדולה לאלכסנדריאה הקטנה עד מתי ארוסי יושב אצלכם ואני יושבת עגומה עליו פירש מיתי גו‬ ‫אילפא אמר דבורה מרתה דביתא דקבלתן מה הוות חסירה אמר ליה חד מן תלמידוי רבי עיינה הוות שברה‬ ‫א״ל הא תרתיי גבך חדא דחשדתני וחדא דאיסתכלת בה מה אמרית יאייא בריוא לא אמרית אלא בעובדא‬ ‫( וכעס עלוי ואזל‬MS Leiden omits ‫ ;הוון בני ירושלם‬it is added in the margin). See discussion in Rubenstein, Stories of the Babylonian Talmud, 128–149. See also, Peter Schäfer, “‘From Jerusalem the Great to Alexandria the Small’: The Relationship between Palestine and Egypt in the Graeco-Roman Period,” in The Talmud Yerushalmi and Graeco-Roman Culture I (ed. Peter Schäfer; Texte und Studien zum Antiken Judentum 71; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1998), 129– 140. For an interesting similar text in fifth century Christian hagiography, see Gero, “The Stern Master and his Wayward Disciple.” The Bavli version of the story as a fully redacted narrative certainly post-dates the Yerushalmi. However, Neusner suggests that the Bavli here retains an earlier tradition than the Yerushalmi. See Neusner, Rabbinic Traditions about the Pharisees before 70, 1.102: “the whole Judah-pericope (b) comes later than, and depends upon, the Joshua-parallel.” Schäfer, “From Jerusalem the Great to Alexandria the Small,” 132, acknowledges the possibility but undertakes a more thorough analysis: “Hence, it may well be that the Bavli version of the teacher-disciple story was the Vorlage of the Yerushalmi version. This does not mean, however, that the Bavli version of the entire composition is superior to the Yerushalmi version.” Schäfer suggests that the letter sent to Alexandria, which underlies all versions of this narrative, may be the historical core. 85 See Gero, “The Stern Master and his Wayward Disciple,” 306: “This identification was firmly part of the written tradition by the time of the definitive fixation of the text of the Babylonian Talmud, though probably not much earlier.” Gero dates the addition to the eighth century and refers to Maier and Stemberger, who also see this as a medieval addition (ibid., nn. 42–43). 86 As Rubenstein, Stories of the Babylonian Talmud, 119, points out, the way the two narratives are presented brings them “together into one unit, directing the interpreter to examine their common ground.” Also, ibid., 127: “here the focus is not Jesus or Christianity as much

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In the ben Perahia story – as in the Gehazi story and the ben Dordia story and as in the Elisha cycle – we have a questionable or marginal figure defending the idea that repentance is impossible. Opposed to this figure is a rabbinic figure who demonstrates just the opposite, thus rejecting all sources of Torah tradition beyond the contemporary rabbinic community. Again, it makes no difference from this perspective whether the dubious source of knowledge is a heavenly voice, bibliomancy, a prostitute, a wayward student, or even an actual tannaitic tradition that we might otherwise assume has its own independent claim to authenticity. Yet I believe that it is significant for our understanding of the rabbinic community’s rhetorical formation that the central idea about repentance underlying all of the narratives is the tannaitic tradition, “Everyone who causes the public to sin, opportunity is not provided him to repent.” I suggested in this chapter’s first section that this tradition in its early Roman Palestinian historical context may have been the product of competition between Jewish elites striving to the sage ideal. A person who “sins and causes the public the sin” is plausibly explained as the teacher of a competing sect, who is being rhetorically delegitimized. Furthermore, I discussed in the introduction to this study that in this early period, the sage idea was a community-wide ideal to which any individual might legitimately strive. There were no fixed institutions authorized with determining who was and who was not an authentic sage. Perhaps, then, in the Bavli’s various narrations of failed rabbis, we see the later rabbis working out what it means to be a member of the rabbinic community. The failed rabbi as a rhetorical construct takes for granted that there is no place for an individual sage outside of the rabbinic collective. For this reason, the failed rabbi cannot object to the rabbis themselves, he can only despair of his inclusion within this collective. Yet his appeals to independent sources of authority, even if only to justify his own exclusion, also cannot succeed because there is no legitimate source of independent authority to which an individual sage can appeal. I am suggesting that the construction of the failed rabbi in these later texts reflects the social circumstances of a community of rabbis who see their role as mediating this legitimacy. The boundaries of inclusion or exclusion within the only legitimate community of sages, the rabbinic community itself, is determined not by the achievements, wisdom, or appeals to independent authority that the individual sage might claim for himself. Rather it is bestowed or as master-disciple relationships and proper deportment of sages.” And again, ibid., 145: “the story functions entirely as a second illustration of the rebuff theme.” Of course, at some stage of development, the additions do make this story into a polemic against Christianity. As these additions do appear in many manuscripts, they would have to be relatively early compared to the medieval manuscript tradition, perhaps at a later stage of the Talmud’s editing or during the early geonic period. The connection of Gehazi to Jesus apparently came about because of a juxtaposition of the two in a midrash on Psalms 144:14 that appears in b. Berakhot 17b.

216

Chapter 7: The Failed Rabbi and Those Who Cause the Public to Sin

denied only by the rabbinic collective itself as a collective. In the earlier chapters, we saw how the rabbis targeted deviants outside of their community as a way of reifying the boundaries around their community and in order to establish boundaries of inclusion and exclusion around the community of the pious that they aimed to lead. In the targeting of rabbinic deviants, I believe that the rabbis are establishing the boundaries of inclusion and exclusion within their own community and denying the very idea of an independent sage.

Conclusion

Boundary Rhetoric, Community Formation, and Rabbinic Judaism In the first chapter of this book, I acknowledged that my aim was not to ban “heresy” entirely from rabbinics scholarship. Yet in the subsequent six chapters, I rigorously analyzed many rabbinic polemical texts that scholars have identified as heresiological, and these chapters have not, I  contend, suffered from any deficit from an almost complete absence of the concept. Moreover, I would suggest that overreliance on this concept has obscured the dynamic reinvention of rabbinic polemical targets that I have been analyzing. And it is this dynamic reinvention that has proved such a valuable tool in shedding light on changes in rabbinic self-conception and thereby on the process of rabbinic community formation. Boundary rhetoric and community formation are intrinsically related. Even a small misreading of the intention of this rhetoric can lead to large misreadings of the process of community formation. I conclude, therefore, that a more precise definition of “heresy,” understanding it as a specific technology of boundary rhetoric invented and practiced in the ancient world among early Christian communities, is of significant benefit to our study of ancient Judaism. By concentrating on rabbinic boundary rhetoric, I have explored a new approach to thinking about and studying the formation of the rabbinic community. Rather than looking for an occasion of origin, we have been studying a process, a process of collective self-conception and a process of the innovation, promulgation, and reimagination of tradition. This process’ end result was a corpus of medieval manuscripts, the classical rabbinic literature, which tells the story of the rabbis and of their ideas about Judaism. Part of this process entailed the actual social formation of the rabbinic community itself. But this community’s formation was not the start of the process, it was one of its results, a result that came to fruition only slowly and unevenly along the way. This approach has had several advantages over more traditional scholarly models and has several implications for future research. I will discuss these briefly in conclusion to this study. As discussed in the introduction, the rabbis have no clear and consistent designation for themselves throughout the classical rabbinic corpus. Although scholars routinely refer to what “the rabbis” did or believed, the texts themselves do not imagine a named rabbinic collective in such neat and easy terms. At least some of the various scholarly strategies discussed in the introduction for thinking about the rabbinic collective’s contours have not been completely success-

218 Conclusion: Boundary Rhetoric, Community Formation, and Rabbinic Judaism ful because they tend to suppose that a well-formed corporate group continued over the greater part of the rabbinic period’s five or so centuries. My work in the present study indicates that we would do better to understand that our scholarly designations for the “rabbinic community” and “rabbinic Judaism” are heuristic approximations that help us to use the collections of traditions at our disposal to study Judaism in this period. But the actual individuals that we are studying had complex, diverse, and changing ways of thinking about themselves and their ethnic and religious affiliations with other Jews. Recognizing this diversity and complexity will affect how we think about the polemical traditions that our texts preserve. The persistent trend in past scholarship has been to seek actual historical targets hidden behind the cast of polemical adversaries, such as the minim and the apiqorsim, that populate rabbinic traditions. The assumption underlying these analyses presumes a straightforward line from originary event to the composition of a specific tradition and a linear process of preservation and transmission.1 My work suggests, however, that the actual social conflict that might originally lie behind a specific tradition or trope – for example, a real Galilean min debating real Pharisees on the proper form of a bill of divorce – may well have occurred generations before the appearance of that tradition or trope in a specific collection. And, as traditions moved through generations of preservation, they were repeatedly adapted and repurposed to meet the requirements of each subsequent generation. A certain amount of tension existed in this process between a conservative editorial tendency that was respectful of tradition, which drove the impetus to preserve faithfully what could be preserved, and a freedom to control traditions and to make them speak to the needs of each generation of tradents. Throughout this process of transmission, however, it was surely rabbis performing these traditions for other rabbis. And each subsequent generation of rabbis’ sense of who they were individually and collectively and of how they were connected to the ancient sages that were the ostensible progenitors of the traditions that they preserved was in constant flux and evolution. In such circumstances, concerns that were internal to the developing rabbinic movement would quickly obscure associations to real events and real opponents. It is for this reason that these traditions can often tell us more about the rabbis’ ideas on matters internal to the rabbinic collective than about their ideas on real living figures outside of that collective. My study is thus part of an emerging scholarly consensus that understands the formation of the rabbinic community as an extended and haphazard process. And this emerging theory of rabbinic development can help to account for some persistent challenges in the scholarship. For example, it helps to explain why 1 On the notion of an “originary event” in connection to the production of memories and thereby systems of thought, see Robert H. Sharf, “Experience,” in Critical Terms for Religious Studies (ed. Mark C. Taylor; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 94–116.

Conclusion: Boundary Rhetoric, Community Formation, and Rabbinic Judaism

219

the rabbis are nearly invisible in the material and documentary evidence until rather late in Late Antiquity. It has been a source of great vexation to scholars of ancient Judaism that the “rabbis” that show up in the epigraphical evidence are not in almost all cases the “rabbis” that show up in the rabbinic literature.2 Likewise regarding the documentary evidence and the literary evidence outside of the rabbinic corpus: perhaps some of the teachers (didaskaloi / διδάσκαλοι), ethnarchs (ethnarchai  / ἐθνάρχαι), sages (sophoi  / σοφοί  / sapientes), priests (hiereis / ἱερεῖς), heads of the synagogue (archisynagōgoi / ἀρχισυνάγωγοι), and elders (presbyteroi / πρεσβύτεροι);3 or the apostles (apostolos), judges (iudices), principles (primates), fathers of synagogues (patribus synagogarum), others who serve in the synagogues (ceteris qui in eodem loco deserviunt), others who stand in the holy service of this religion (ceterisque qui in eius religionis sacramento versantur), or those whom they themselves call apostles (vel quos ipsi apostolos vocant),4 who show up in early Christian and Roman-legal texts are related to the rabbis and patriarchs that we know from the rabbinic literature. But there seems to be a great distance between these scant and far-flung references and the richly drawn protaganists of the rabbinic corpus, not to mention a great

2 See Cohen, “Epigraphical Rabbis”; Stuart S. Miller, “‘Epigraphical’ Rabbis, Helios, and Psalm 19: Were the Synagogues of Archaeology and the Synagogues of the Sages One and the Same?” Jewish Quarterly Review 94 (2004): 27–76; and Hayim Lapin, “Epigraphical Rabbis: A Reconsideration,” Jewish Quarterly Review 101 (2011): 311–346. Archaeological evidence generally for the rabbinic community is limited. Regarding a lintel mentioning “the beit midrash of Rabbi Eliezer ha-Qapper,” see Levine, Rabbinic Class, 29; Hezser, Social Structure, 205; and Goodman, State and Society, 76. Regarding the remarkable sixth century mosaic from Rehov, which Lapin, “Epigraphical Rabbis,” 330, writes “provides the first exemplar of any rabbinic text and constitutes the only unquestionable archaeological evidence of the rabbinic movement,” see Yaakov Sussmann, “A Halakhic Inscription from the Beth-Shean Valley” [Hebrew], Tarbiz 43 (1973): 88–158; ibid., “Additional Notes to ‘A Halakhic Inscription from the Beth-Shean Valley’” [Hebrew], Tarbiz 44 (1974):193–195; and ibid., “The Inscription in the Synagogue at Reḥob,” in Ancient Synagogues Revealed (ed. Lee. I. Levine; Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1981), 146–153. 3 These Greek references to Jewish teachers and leaders are found in various sources. For example, Justin, Dialogue with Trypho 137, refers to διδασκάλοις and ἀρχισυνάγωγοι (μηδὲ Φαρισαίοις πειθόμενοι διδασκάλοις τὸν βασιλέα τοῦ Ἰσραὴλ ἐπισκώψητέ ποτε, ὁποῖα διδάσκουσιν οἱ ἀρχισυνάγωγοι ὑμῶν, μετὰ τὴν προσευχήν); Origen, Against Celsus 1.45, refers to σοφοί (Ἰουδαίων λεγομένους σοφοὺς); Jerome, although he is writing in Latin, refers to the Greek σοφοί in his Letter to Algasia (discipulis suis solent dicere, ‘hoi sophoi deuterosin’); Origen in his Letter to Africanus refers to the ἐθνάρχης (ὅσα συγχωροῦντος Καίσαρος ὁ ἐθνάρχης παρ’ αὐτοῖς δύναται); and the Theodosian Code 16.8.4 and 16.8.13 refer in Latin to the Greek ἱερεῖς and use the Latinized form of the Greek πρεσβυτέροις in reference to Jewish religious authorities (16.8.4: hiereis et archisynagogis et patribus synagogarum et ceteris; 16.8.13: archisynagogis patriarchisque ac presbyteris ceterisque, qui in eius religionis sacramento versantur). 4 These various Latin terms show up in the Roman legal codes. See the Theodosian Code 16.8.2–16.8.14 (see end of n. 3, above, for some citations). The translations of some of these phrases are from Hezser, Social Structure, 416.

220 Conclusion: Boundary Rhetoric, Community Formation, and Rabbinic Judaism deal of confusion in the former regarding who they are and how to refer to them.5 Surely there were Jews and judges, sages and teachers, centers of authority and circles of tradition throughout this period. But it seems to have taken a while before these diverse phenomena coalesced into a recognizable corporate group that could be identified easily as the rabbinic community. In addition, perceiving rabbinic development as more diverse and less linear might help to explain how “rabbinic” themes make their way into “non-rabbinic” corpora, such as the genre of Jewish liturgical poetry that developed in Late Ancient Roman Palestine known as piyyut; the translations of biblical texts into Aramaic known as Targum; and the early tradition of Jewish mysticism known as Hekhalot. Perhaps these are not in fact “rabbinic” themes making their way in to “non-rabbinic” literature because “rabbinic literature” is a scholarly construction, a somewhat anachronistic approximation of a corpus for heuristic purposes that did not exist in such a simple fashion as a body of literature during the rabbinic period itself. Rather, it might be more precise to suppose that various groups of Jews developed and furthered the changing community wide sage-ideal in various ways and expressed it in various genres throughout this period; it never did belong to any one narrow group of Jews in its entirety. The genres of mishnah, talmud, and midrash seem to have been strongly embraced in the circles that we call rabbinic. But the same basic sage-ideas and ancient sage-heroes, and perhaps many of the same basic tradition-units that underlie these genres, made their way into piyyut, Targum, Hekhalot traditions, synagogue homiletics, magic bowls, and perhaps other literary expressions as well. The approach taken to rabbinic community formation in this book also has several important implications for future research in the study of the rabbis and in the study of religions of the ancient world more broadly. Although the many important recent studies on Judaism and Christianity in conversation and competition in antiquity form the firm foundation underlying this book,6 I believe that an over-reliance on the idea of “heresy” as an overarching analytical category has not allowed this important area of research to reach its full potential. My work suggests that a comprehensive comparative project that deemphasizes early Christian polemical vocabulary (not only heresy, heretics, and heresiology, but also other concepts fundamental to the study of ancient religion such 5 See Hezser, Social Structure, 416: “The indeterminacy of references to Jewish communal officials in these texts suggests that the Romans who issued these laws were not well informed about the organizational structure of Jewish communities, and/or that Jewish communities had no clear organizational structure with specific offices and a clear hierarchy.” For further discussion of these references, see Goodblatt, Monarchic Principle, esp. 135–140, 178–179; Goodman, State and Society, 111–118; and Schwartz, Imperialism and Jewish Society, 110–128. 6 Works on this topic that I have cited frequently in this book include Boyarin, Border Lines, Schremer, Brothers Estranged, and Schäfer, Jewish Jesus. For an influential collection of papers, see Adam H. Becker and Annette Yoshiko Reed, ed., The Ways that Never Parted: Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007).

Conclusion: Boundary Rhetoric, Community Formation, and Rabbinic Judaism

221

as orthodoxy, dogma, creed, rule of faith, and even, to some extent, religion and superstition, developed largely as a technical lexicon in service to early Christian polemical aims) and endeavors instead to analyze early Christian and rabbinic religious development each strictly on their own terms would help further to illuminate the mutually implicated development of Christianity as a new religious identity in the ancient world and Judaism as it develops from its earlier forms to its changing expressions within the rabbinic corpus. In addition, although I concentrated in the current work on how the rabbis imagine themselves through a study of how they imagine others, there is still need for a closer examination of how the rabbis’ purely internal rhetoric develops over time. I touched on this matter in the introduction, in my discussion of the Yavneh narrative’s development, and in the sixth and seventh chapters, in my discussion of the failed rabbi as a polemical target. But because my main interest in this book was exclusionary and inclusionary rhetoric on the background of scholarship on rabbinic heresy, a fuller treatment of direct rabbinic rhetorical representations of its own community was out of my scope. A book length project on diachronic changes in rabbinic self-referential language, such as the difference between the mnemonic expressions “sages say” in earlier texts versus “rabbis say” in later texts;7 or syntactical structures such as “a certain (anonymous) rabbi” said or did something, which occur in later strata;8 or the changing meanings of the idea of a “sage” and a “disciple of a sage”9 would help to illuminate the model of a gradually developing community self-conception that I have been analyzing throughout this work. And finally, I believe that the development of a more rigorous model of “rabbinic Judaism” itself, which seems at times to be taken as a real religion that was invented in the third century or so rather than as a scholarly construct developed to help us to better analyze Judaism in this period, would help to facilitate greater progress in our understanding of ancient religions. For one final implication of the approach to rabbinic community formation examined in this book concerns scholarly periodization in the study of religions of the ancient world. The current study does not lead to the conclusion, as some readers might be tempted to sup7 On the usage of “rabbis” vs “sages” in early and later rabbinic literature, see Hezser, Social Structure, 132 and n. 144, there. Hezser cites Hans-Jürgen Becker, Auf der Kathedra des Mose: Rabbinisch-theologisches Denken und antirabbinische Polemik in Matthäus 23, 1–12 (Arbeiten zur neutestamentlichen Theologie und Zeitgeschichte 4; Berlin: Institut Kirche und Judentum, 1990), 17–18. 8 See, for example, y. Gittin 6:2, 48a / y. Qiddushin 2:1, 62b (ed. Venice): ‫חד רב נפק מבית‬ ‫ וועדא‬and b. Yevamot 22a / b. Nedarim 77b (ed. Vilna): ‫חזי מר האי מרבנן דאתא ממערבא‬. Especially in this first text, a “rabbi” seems to be conceived grammatically as a subject, as a substantive with agency, rather than merely as a title of respect. 9 Hezser, Social Structure, 136, writes, “While tannaitic literature seems to distinguish between sages and disciples of sages, amoraic literature occasionally uses the terms synonymously.”

222 Conclusion: Boundary Rhetoric, Community Formation, and Rabbinic Judaism pose, that rabbinic Judaism was invented even later than was previously thought, say, in the early medieval period. Scholarly periodization is also heuristic, and we should always remain cognizant of this fact. Rabbinic Judaism was neither invented in the medieval period nor was it invented in antiquity. It simply never existed at all. Yet, that being said, I do think that it seems reasonably likely that the historical Akiva’s ideas about his religious obligations as a Jew in the second century C. E. had more in common with, say, the historical Hillel’s ideas about his obligations as a Jew around the turn of the era than Hillel’s had in common with, say, Ezra’s in the fifth century B. C. E. It is merely our heuristic periodization that insists that Hillel and Ezra’s religion was “Second Temple Judaism” (which also never existed) and Akiva’s religion was “rabbinic Judaism” (or whatever we as scholars wish to call it). I do not think that it makes any more sense to talk about the invention of Akiva’s religion than it would to talk about the invention of Hillel’s or Ezra’s religion.10 Religions are obviously not simply invented; rather they emerge, grow, and evolve over time as they are imagined and reimagined in complex and changing ways from generation to generation.11 10 One might as well suppose that Josephus’ religion in the year 50 C. E. was “Second Temple Judaism” and his religion in the year 90 C. E. was “Post-Destruction Judaism.” But, remarkably, far from imagining such a change in his religious outlook, Josephus, Jewish War 6.109–110, places himself at the Temple just before the destruction with an explanation of why it will be destroyed already prepared and already wielding a historical typology based on the destruction of the first temple: “Who knows not the records of the ancient prophets and that oracle which threatens this poor city and is even now coming true? For they foretold that it would then be taken whensoever one should begin to slaughter his own countrymen. And is not the city, aye and the whole temple, filled with your corpses? God it is then, God Himself, who with the Romans is bringing the fire to purge His temple and exterminating a city so laden with pollutions” (trans. Thackeray, ed. Loeb); and, ibid., 6.267–270: “Deeply as one must mourn for the most marvellous edifice which we have ever seen or heard of, whether we consider its structure, its magnitude, the richness of its every detail, or the reputation of its Holy Places, yet may we draw very great consolation from the thought that there is no escape from Fate, for works of art and places any more than for living beings. And one may well marvel at the exactness of the cycle of Destiny; for, as I said, she waited until the very month and the very day on which in bygone times the temple had been burnt by the Babylonians. From its first foundation by King Solomon up to its present destruction, which took place in the second year of Vespasian’s reign, the total period amounts to one thousand one hundred and thirty years seven months and fifteen days; from its rebuilding by Haggai in the second year of the reign of Cyrus until its fall under Vespasian to six hundred and thirty-nine years and forty-five days” (trans. Thackeray, ed. Loeb). 11 The potential of positing conjectured forms of Judaism for heuristic purposes that are then reified and used to draw firm conclusions about the nature of Judaism in antiquity is taken to its logical extreme in the scholarly creation of “Enochic Judaism,” based primarily on a small number of texts from around the third or second century B. C. E. Perhaps this scholarly creation can serve as a cautionary tale against becoming too attached even to our ideas about “Second Temple Judaism” and “rabbinic Judaism.” See Gabriele Boccaccini, Beyond the Essene Hypothesis: The Parting of the Ways between Qumran and Enochic Judaism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998); and ibid., “Introduction: From the Enoch Literature to Enochic Judaism,” in Gabriele Boccaccini, ed., Enoch and Qumran Origins: New Light on a Forgotten Connection (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), 1–14.

Conclusion: Boundary Rhetoric, Community Formation, and Rabbinic Judaism

223

Yet the existing evidence surely supports the conjecture of a significant degree of ideological continuity from before the turn of the era and throughout the first centuries C. E. in at least one genealogically interconnected approach to Jewish religiosity. In other words, averring that rabbinic Judaism is a scholarly construction is not the same as denying that among the diversity of systems through which Jews expressed their piety as Jews throughout this period were a subset of systems with a degree of similarity and continuity with the imaginary system that scholars call rabbinic Judaism. Expressions of Judaism surely existed that had much in common with this imaginary system, but were never fixed and named in the way that scholars fix and name them. In this sense as well, the now common argument that rabbinic Judaism emerged in Late Antiquity along with early Christianity as two distinct but equally inventive responses to the biblical texts is difficult to sustain.12 Christianity was certainly a new religious identity that emerged in the first centuries C. E. in the very simple sense that it did not exist before then. But this is not the case for rabbinic Judaism. I suggested in the introduction that Judaism in antiquity might be defined as “the full range of what we would now call religious beliefs and practices that the members of the Jewish ethnicity cultivated as an expression of their relationship as an ethnic group to their traditional deity.”13 From this perspective, a belief in a specific messiah would not in itself make such a religious expression not Judaism. Rather, it would be the emergence of the name “Christian” as a moniker for a person who was not claiming to be part of this ethnicity in an ordinary genealogical sense that would mark the emergence of a new religion. However, as scholars have noted, it is very difficult and perhaps not possible to define this new religion in such a way that it is entirely distinct from Judaism.14 We might, for example, endeavor a tautological definition for Christianity of the sort that I suggested for Judaism such as “the full range of what we would now call religious beliefs and practices cultivated by those who believed that the historical Jesus of Nazareth was ‘the Christ.’” But this definition would encompass Jews of the first centuries C. E. who believed that this proposition was true and envisioned this belief as “an expression of their relationship as an ethnic group to their traditional deity.” Yet even so, “Christian” as a signifier, and, especially, the use of this signifier to refer to an identity distinct from (and, indeed, eventually opposite to) “Jew,” was certainly a new development in the first centuries C. E. Nothing parallel to this development exists in the rabbinic corpus. 12 For two major proponents of this idea see Segal, Rebecca’s Children, and Yuval, Two Nations in Your Womb. And see the criticism of the assumptions underlying this idea in Schremer, Brother’s Estranged, 3–11. 13 See n. 69 in the introduction. 14 See the collection of essays in Becker and Reed, The Ways that Never Parted, and see nn. 6 and 12, above.

224 Conclusion: Boundary Rhetoric, Community Formation, and Rabbinic Judaism It is true that the various expressions of Judaism in antiquity, like the various expressions of all the other religions in the ancient Roman world, continued to change, develop, and be reinvented by their proponents from generation to generation. And it is also true that the development of these various expressions of Judaism was significantly influenced by (and significantly influenced) these other religious expressions. Yet insofar as we can talk about continuity and discontinuity in something as ephemeral and dynamic as an ideological system, the expressions of Judaism that are reflected in the rabbinic literature surely have some historical justification in their claim of ordinary genealogical continuity with at least some of the expressions of Judaism that predated the destruction of the Temple and the turn of the era. The formation of what scholars refer to as rabbinic Judaism was also a process, and that process had ancient roots.

‫‪Appendix‬‬

‫‪Synoptic Presentation of b. Hagigah 15a‬‬ ‫‪and 3 Enoch for Chapter Six‬‬ ‫)‪3 Enoch § 20 (V228‬‬ ‫וכיון שבא אחד להסתכל בצפיית המרכבה‬

‫‪b. Hagigah 15a‬‬ ‫אחר קיצץ בנטיעות עליו הכתוב אומר אל תתן‬ ‫את פיך לחטיא את בשרך‬

‫ונתן עיניו בי והוא מתיירא ומזדעזע מלפני ונפשו‬ ‫מבוהלת לצאת ממנו מפני פחדי ואימתי ומוראי‬ ‫כשראה אותי שאני יושב על כסא כמלך ומלאכי‬ ‫השר(ת) היו עומדים עלי כעבדים וכל שרי‬ ‫מלכיות קשורים כתרים סובבים אצלי‬

‫מאי היא חזא מיטטרון דאתיהבא ליה רשותא‬ ‫למיתב למיכתב זכוותא דישראל‬

‫באותו שעה פתח את פיו ואמר‬

‫אמר גמירא דלמעלה לא הוי לא ישיבה ולא‬ ‫תחרות ולא עורף ולא עיפוי‬

‫ודאי שתי רשויות בשמים‬

‫שמא חס ושלום ב׳ רשויות הן‬ ‫‪{Note that the following two narrative‬‬ ‫‪elements appear in both texts, but in‬‬ ‫}‪inverted sequence.‬‬

‫מיד יצאתה בת קול מלפני השכינה אומרת‬ ‫שובו בנים שובבים חוץ מאחר דלא‬

‫אפקוהו למיטטרון ומחיוהו שיתין פולסי דנורא‬ ‫א״ל מ״ט כי חזיתיה לא קמת מקמיה‬

‫באותה שעה בא ענפיאל יוי השר נכבד ונהדר‬ ‫נחמד נפלא נורא נערץ משליחות של ה׳ב׳ה׳‬ ‫והכני ששים פולסאות של אור והעמידני על‬ ‫רגלי‬

‫איתיהיבא ליה רשותא למימחק זכוותא דאחר‬ ‫יצתה בת קול ואמרה שובו בנים שובבים חוץ‬ ‫מאחר‬ ‫אמר הואיל ואיטריד ההוא גברא מההוא עלמא‬ ‫ליפוק ליתהני בהאי עלמא נפק אחר לתרבות‬ ‫רעה נפק אשכח זונה תבעה אמרה ליה ולאו‬ ‫אלישע בן אבויה את עקר פוגלא ממישרא‬ ‫בשבת ויהב לה אמרה אחר הוא‬

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Index of Primary Sources I. Hebrew Bible Genesis 1:1 1:11 1:26 3:1 17:14

83 59 38–39 n. 33, 158–160 152 n. 26 107 n. 64

Exodus 2:25 15:3 18:6 19:6 20:1 20:2 23:1 23:4 24:10 30:34–35 34:7

140 80–81, 81 n. 107 202–203, 202 n. 38 92–93, 92 n. 2 83 81 n. 107 133–134, 133 n. 49 137 n. 60 80–81, 82 n. 109 98 196 n. 15

Leviticus 1:2 13–14 17:30

97 166 n. 73 195, 195 n. 6

Numbers 15:30–31 31 31:50

152 102–103 102–103, 103 n. 37

Deuteronomy 4:25 5:4 20:19 22:1–3 22:3 22:11

139 81 n. 107 109 n. 72 123 136–137 142, 142 n. 73

22:21 32:39 Joshua 7 7:11 7:15 1 Kings 11:16 14:16 21:22 2 Kings 2:23–24 5:20 5:20–27 5:27 8:7 21:6 23:19 Isaiah 22:14 41:4 44:6 48:12 48:22 54:12 60:21 61:7

108 n. 66 79–80, 81–83, 82 n. 110 107, 107 n. 59 107–109, 107 nn. 62– 63, 108 n. 69 107–109, 107–108 nn. 65–66, 108 n. 69 88 193 n. 1 140 n. 63 201 n. 35 200 n. 30 200, 200 n. 31 204 201 n. 33, 204, 204 n. 44 139, 143 139–140 195, 195 n. 8 81–83, 82 n. 112, 84 n. 122 79, 81–83, 82 n. 111 81–83, 82 n. 113 209, 209 n. 64 155 92–93, 92 n. 1, 111, 113–114, 113 n. 83 207 n. 57

250 Jeremiah 2:22 3:22

Index of Primary Sources

31:32 33:29

4:30 7:1–34 17:18 23:23 26:1–6 44:1–30 44:17–18

209, 209 n. 65 171, 177, 180, 187, 189, 190, 195, 195 n. 5 209, 209 n. 66 46 n. 53 207 n. 57 202–203, 202 n. 39 46 n. 53 46 46

Ezekiel 47:12

59 155

Hosea 12:14

Song of Songs 1:4 4:3

140 n. 63

6:7

Amos 2:6 4:13 9:6

196 n. 15 89 98 n. 20

Malachi 3:21

94 n. 9

Psalms 9:17 16:10 50:16 69:21 89:32 116:15 133:2–3 144:14

95 196, 196 n. 13 209, 209 n. 67 89–90 195, 195 n. 7 171 182 214–215 n. 86

Job 28:17

207–208, 207 n. 58

Proverbs 15:7 18:19 21:27 25:16 25:17 28:17

Ecclesiastes 5:5

204, 204 n. 45, 205 196 n. 15 146 n. 4 197, 197 n. 17, 197 n. 21 98 n. 22 171 196 n. 15 196, 196 n. 14 171 98–102, 101–102 n. 33, 103, 103 n. 38 99 n. 23

7:14 7:26

171–172, 178–179, 179 n. 35, 187 207, 207 n. 55, 207 86 n. 127

Esther 4:8 4:11 4:13–14 4:14

203 n. 42 203 n. 42 203 n. 42 203 n. 42

Daniel 7:9 7:13

80–81, 81–83, 82 nn. 107–109, 164–165, 165 n. 68, 165 n. 71 164–165 n. 70

II. Second Temple Period Jewish Literature Ben Sira 13:14–17 13:15

60, 60 n. 40 61 n. 43, 62, 71

13:15–18 (Ecclesiasticus) 61–62 27:9 61 n. 43

5,

251

Index of Primary Sources

1 Maccabees 1:11 14:14

120–121 n. 14 120–121 n. 14

Jubilees 2:14 2:18

60, 60 n. 39 60, 60 n. 39

Philo On the Creation of the World 24 159 n. 48 Josephus The Jewish War 2.118

2.162–166 2.449–456 3.399–408 6.109–110 6.267–270

148 n. 11, 148 n. 13 121 n. 15 4 n. 17 222 n. 10 222 n. 10

Jewish Antiquities 13.171–173 13.297–298 18.3–10 18.12–17 18.15 18.23

38 n. 32 148 n. 13 148 n. 11 69 n. 65 148 n. 11, 148 n. 13 71 n. 75 69 n. 67, 70

38 n. 32 69 n. 67, 70

III. New Testament Matthew 6:5 15:1–3 23:5

71 n. 75 148 n. 11 71 n. 75

Mark 7:1–5 12:18

148 n. 11 148 n. 11

Luke 20:17

148 n. 11

John 1:1–18

75 n. 85

Acts 5:17 5:37

30, 38–39 n. 33, 39, 40 n. 37, 69–70 52 n. 11 70 n. 68

8:9 15:5 23:6–8 24:5 24:14 26:5 28:22

169–170, 170 n. 7 52 n. 11 148 n. 11 52 n. 11 52 n. 11 52 n. 11 52 n. 11

1 Corinthians 11:19

38 n. 32, 52 n. 11

Galatians 5:20

38 n. 32, 52 n. 11

Titus 3:10

52 n. 11

2 Peter 2:1

52 n. 11

IV. Rabbinic Literature Megillat Taanit

120–121, 120–121 nn. 13–15

Seder Olam 3

55 n. 24, 77 n. 91, 94 n. 6, 94 n. 9, 96–97 n. 17, 149–150, 150 n. 19

252

Index of Primary Sources

Mishnah Berakhot 4:3–4 6:4 9:5

Makkot 3:15

Maaser Sheni 4:3

173 n. 18

Avot 1:1 1:11 2:1 2:4 2:12 2:14

Yoma 8:9

196 n. 15

2:15 4:20

Rosh Hashanah 2:1 2:1–2:2

55 n. 21, 76–77 n. 90 56 n. 30

Megillah 4:8 4:8–9 4:9

Hagigah 2:1 Sotah 3:4 9:15 Gittin 6:6 Sanhedrin 4:5 7:4 9:1 10:1 10:2 11:1

71 n. 75 59, 59 n. 36 55 n. 21, 56 n. 30, 76–77 n. 90

76–77 n. 90 55 n. 25, 56 n. 30, 86 n. 127 73 n. 80, 76–77 n. 90, 77–78, 78 n. 92, 84 n. 121 181, 181 n. 43 63–64, 63–64 n. 53 55 nn. 25–26, 77 n. 91, 86–87, 86 n. 127 124 n. 24 55 n. 21, 56 n. 30, 76–77, 76 n. 88, 78–79 112–113 112–113 57, 110–115, 110 n. 75, 122 n. 19, 147–151, 147 n. 9 202 112–113

5:18 Hullin 2:9 Parah 3:3 3:7 Yadayim 4:6 4:6–8 4:7–8 4:8

133, 133 n. 48 140, 149 n. 16 113, 178 n. 32 197 n. 20 147 n. 8 63, 63 n. 52 147 n. 8 144–147, 147 n. 6, 151, 162, 165 147 n. 8 169 n. 5, 170 n. 9, 172, 172 n. 17 196 n. 12 55 n. 21, 56 n. 30, 76–77 n. 90 55 n. 21, 56 n. 30, 76–77 n. 90 56 n. 30 67–68, 68 n. 62 56 n. 30, 67 n. 61 68 n. 62 55 n. 21, 56 n. 30, 66–71, 70 n. 73, 76–77 n. 90

Tosefta Berakhot 3:25 5:3 6:21 9:5

55 n. 22, 56 n. 31, 65, 65 n. 56, 65 n. 58, 71, 77 n. 91, 96 n. 16 78 n. 93, 84 n. 121 55 n. 22, 76–77 n. 90 78 n. 93

Demai 2:4 2:5 5:2

118 n. 4, 127 n. 35 127 n. 35 125, 125 n. 30

,

7

253

Index of Primary Sources

Maaser Sheni 5:9 Shabbat 13:5

125, 125 n. 29

15:17

55 n. 22, 56 n. 30, 76–77 nn. 90–91 119 n. 10

Eruvin 5:18

129 n. 38

Yoma 2:10 4:6–8 4:10–11 4:13 Taanit 1:10 Megillah 3:37 Hagigah 2:3 2:3–2:4

55 n. 22, 56 n. 30, 76–77 n. 90 195, 195 n. 9, 198 196, 196 n. 14, 197, 198 196 n. 15

Horayot 1:5

55 n. 22, 56 n. 30, 76–77 n. 90, 161 n. 57

2:19 2:20 2:24

172, 178 n. 33, 187, 188 n. 61 169 n. 5, 171–172, 171–172 n. 11, 173, 178

Qiddushin 3:8

11

13:1

Avodah Zarah 5:6

Hullin 1:1

201–202, 202 n. 37

Sanhedrin 8:7

13:5

55 n. 22, 55 n. 26, 65 n. 58, 77 n. 91

Sotah 4:19

Bava Metzia 2:33

13:1–5 13:2 13:3 13:4

55 n. 22, 77 n. 91, 123–126, 123 n. 21 55 n. 22, 56 n. 30, 76–77, 76 n. 89, 85 95, 95 n. 11

Parah 3:3 Yadayim 2:13 2:20

94 94 n. 6, 95, 95 n. 10 125–126, 125 n. 31 94 n. 6, 94, 94 n. 9, 112, 125–126, 125 n. 32 55 n. 22, 57, 57 n. 32, 63, 63 n. 52, 77 n. 91, 122–123, 122 n. 19, 125–126, 150, 150 n. 20, 193, 193 n. 1, 196 n. 12 119 n. 10 119, 132–133, 132– 133 n. 47, 141–142 55 n. 22, 77 n. 91, 118 n. 4, 127 n. 35 55 n. 22, 76–77 n. 90 55 n. 22, 77 n. 91 55 n. 22, 55 n. 25, 77 n. 91, 78, 86–87, 86 n. 127 55 n. 22, 76–77 n. 90 55 n. 22, 56 n. 30, 76–77 n. 90 67–68 nn. 61–62

Tannaitic Midrash Mekhilta pisḥa 15 shirata 4 amaleq 1 ba-ḥodesh 1 ba-ḥodesh 4

118 n. 4 83 n. 119 128 n. 36, 201 n. 36, 202–204, 202 n. 40, 205 140, 140 n. 65 77 n. 91

254 ba-ḥodesh 5

ba-ḥodesh 7 kaspa 20

Index of Primary Sources

55 n. 23, 56 n. 30, 76 n. 87, 77 n. 91, 83–85, 83 n. 119, 84 n. 121, 84–85 n. 122, 164–165 n. 70 198, 198 n. 24 55 n. 25, 77 n. 91, 86 n. 127, 118 n. 4, 137 n. 60

Mekhilta of Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai 15 81–83, 82 n. 113 18 202 n. 40, 203 n. 42 20 77 n. 91, 118 n. 4 Sifra ḥova 7 nedava 2 Sifre Numbers 16 112 115 143

119 55 n. 23, 77 n. 91, 97 n. 18, 98, 98 n. 22, 119 55 n. 23, 77 n. 91 55 n. 23, 55 n. 26, 76–77 n. 90, 152, 152 n. 25 55 n. 25, 77 n. 91, 86 n. 127 55 n. 23, 77 n. 91

Sifre Deuteronomy 12 152 n. 26 48 55 n. 23, 77 n. 91 86 73 n. 80 126 55 n. 23, 76–77 n. 90 203 109 n. 72 218 55 n. 23, 55 n. 26, 73 n. 80, 77 n. 91 320 55 n. 23, 73 n. 80, 77 n. 91 329 79–80, 79 n. 100, 81–83 331 55 n. 23, 56 n. 30, 73 n. 80, 77 n. 91 Midrash Tannaim on Deuteronomy 6 n. 25, 55 n. 23, 55 n. 26, 77 n. 91 1:12 152 n. 26

6:9 11:22 15:23 32:21 32:41

55 n. 26 55 n. 26 55 n. 26 55 n. 26 55 n. 26

Palestinian Talmud Berakhot 1:4, 3c 2:4, 5a 4:3, 7d–8a 4:3, 8a 5:3, 9c 9:1, 12a–13a 9:1, 12d

4 n. 20 94 n. 6, 96 n. 16 65 n. 58 94 n. 6, 96 n. 16 65 n. 58 84 n. 121 160–163, 160–161 nn. 53–55, 164

Peah 2:4, 17a

99 n. 25

Maaser Sheni 5:5, 56c–56d

104, 104 n. 55

Eruvin 6:2, 23b

127–128, 128 n. 36, 129 n. 38

Pesahim 7:6, 34c

130–131, 130 n. 45

Yoma 8:8, 45b–45c

198, 198 n. 23

Sheqalim 1:4, 46b

97 n. 18

Taanit 2:2, 65c 3:10, 67a

65 n. 58, 94 n. 6, 96 n. 16 104, 104 n. 55

Megillah 4:10, 75c

78 n. 93, 84 n. 121

Hagigah 1:8, 76d

99 n. 25

255

Index of Primary Sources

2:1, 77b

2:2, 77d

104, 104 n. 55, 178 n. 33, 190 n. 71 169 n. 5, 173, 173 n. 20, 180 n. 37 214, 214 n. 84

Yevamot 8:1, 8d

129, 129 n. 41

Gittin 6:2, 48a

221 n. 8

Qiddushin 2:1, 62b

221 n. 8

Bava Batra 8:1, 16a

11 n. 47

Shevuot 1:9, 33b

198, 198 n. 23

2:1, 77b–c

Sanhedrin 2:3, 20b 6:8, 23c 10:1, 27c 10:1, 27c–27d 10:1, 27d 10:2, 29b 10:5, 29c

161 n. 56 214, 214 n. 84 114 198, 198 n. 23 152–153, 152 n. 27 201 n. 36, 204–205, 204 n. 46 53 n. 14, 87, 87 n. 131

Avodah Zarah 1:1, 39b

90, 90 n. 144

Horayot 1:5, 46a

130 n. 45

Classical Palestinian Midrash Genesis Rabbah 1:7 8:8 8:9 9:5 19:1 20:5

83, 83 n. 116 38–39 n. 33, 159 n. 48 84 n. 121, 160–163, 160 n. 50, 160–161 nn. 53–55, 164 104, 104 n. 42 152 n. 26 202 n. 37

26:6 30:6 35:3 37:4 39:3 44:5 44:7 53:5 57:4 61:2 61:4 69:8 81:4 97:6

109 n. 72 104, 104 n. 43 104, 104 n. 43 104, 104 n. 44 104, 104 n. 45 104, 104 n. 45 104, 104 n. 46 104, 104 n. 47 104, 104 n. 48 104, 104 n. 45 104, 104 n. 49 104, 104 n. 50 104, 104 n. 50 104, 104 n. 51

Leviticus Rabbah 2:9 94 n. 6, 96–98, 97 n. 18, 98 n. 22 4:2 104, 104 n. 52 22:2 104, 104 n. 52 23:6 104, 104 n. 52 28:1 104, 104 n. 52, 104 n. 54 30:12 96–97 n. 17 32:10 100–101 n. 29 81:3 100–101 n. 29 Lamentations Rabbah prologue 1 104, 104 nn. 53–54 prologue 7 104, 104 n. 53 prologue 31 104, 104 n. 53 prologue 32 104, 104 n. 53 1:31 4 n. 17 1:54 104, 104 n. 53 2:17 104, 104 n. 53 3:1 104, 104 nn. 53–54 Pesiqta de-Rav Kahana 8:1 104, 104 n. 54 13:1 104, 104 n. 54 18:2 104, 104 n. 54 supplement 2 104, 104 n. 54

Babylonian Talmud Berakhot 17b 28a

214–215 n. 86 183 n. 49

256 28b–29a 33b 47b 48a 57a Eruvin 13b 19a

Index of Primary Sources

65 n. 58 78 n. 93, 84 n. 121 114–115 n. 88 213 n. 80 100 n. 27, 101–102 n. 33

69a 69b

4 n. 20 99 n. 24, 101–102 n. 33 128 n. 36, 129 94 n. 6, 97 nn. 18–19

Pesahim 50a 56a 87b

166 n. 73 183 n. 49 88, 88 n. 134

14a 15a

15a–b 15b 27a

164–165 n. 70, 165 n. 71 84 n. 121, 174–175 n. 24, 177–192, 181 n. 40, 183 n. 49, 186 n. 59, 189 n. 65, 206–211, 207 n. 56, 207–208 n. 59, 208 n. 60 169 n. 5, 206–211, 210 n. 69 211 n. 71 98–102, 99 n. 24, 101–102 nn. 32–33, 105

Yevamot 22a 52a

221 n. 8 161 n. 56

95 n. 9, 96–97 n. 17, 150, 196 n. 12

Nedarim 22a 77b

183 n. 49 221 n. 8

86b–87a 87a

104–105 n. 56, 105, 105 n. 58 183 n. 49 197 n. 21, 198, 198 n. 25 199 n. 28 196 n. 12

Sotah 9b 14a 22a 47a

Taanit 7a 22b

48b–49a

202 n. 37 96–97 n. 17 114–115 n. 88 196 n. 12, 201 n. 34, 201 n. 36, 203 n. 42, 213, 213 n. 82 96–97 n. 17

109 n. 72 183 n. 49

Megillah 25a 25b 31b

78 n. 93, 84 n. 121 161 nn. 56–57 183, 183 nn. 48–49

Gittin 45b 55b–56b 57a

55 n. 26 4 n. 15, 4 n. 17 96–97 n. 17

Moed Qatan 20a

169 n. 5, 170 n. 9

Qiddushin 39b 52a 66a

169 n. 5 135 n. 53 157 n. 41

Hagigah 4b 11a

183 n. 49 166 n. 73

Bava Qamma 92b

61, 61 n. 43

Bava Metzia 58b–59a

166 n. 73

Rosh Hashanah 17a Yoma 9b 69b 86a

0

257

Index of Primary Sources

59b 85a Sanhedrin 26a 27a 37a 38a 38b

39a 44a 57a 60a 64a 67a 90a 99b 99b–100a 100a 101a 105a 107a 107b

110b Avodah Zarah 6b 13b

190–191, 191 n. 72, 208–209 10 n. 42 183 n. 49 133–134, 133–134 n. 50, 135 n. 53, 140 n. 66 100–102, 100 nn. 27– 28, 101–102 n. 33 78 n. 98 81 n. 106, 84 n. 121, 90 n. 140, 158–166, 159 n. 46, 161 n. 56, 162 nn. 58–59, 163 n. 66, 164 n. 68, 164–165 n. 70, 165 n. 71 90, 90 n. 141 107–109, 108 n. 67, 161 n. 56 124, 124 n. 25, 137 n. 59 161 n. 56 183 n. 49 166 n. 73 111 n. 76 154–155 n. 33 154–157 154, 154 n. 29, 155 nn. 35–36, 155–156 nn. 38–39 183 n. 49 94 n. 6, 95 n. 10, 96–97 n. 17 166 n. 73 196 n. 12, 201, 201 n. 34, 201 n. 36, 203 n. 42, 204–206, 213 n. 79, 213 n. 82 95 n. 11, 96–97 n. 17 90 124, 124 n. 25, 137 n. 59

16b–17a 17a 26a–b 26b Horayot 2b 11a

78 n. 96 211–212, 211 n. 72, 212 nn. 75–77 124, 124 n. 25, 136–137, 136–137 n. 57, 137 n. 59 124, 124 n. 25, 134–135, 137 n. 59

13b

130 n. 45 132–133 n. 47, 134–135, 134 n. 51, 136 n. 55, 140 n. 66, 141–143, 141 n. 72, 142 n. 73 182, 182 n. 47, 183 n. 49 183 n. 49

Menahot 27a 42a–42b 53b 110a

96–97 n. 17 55 n. 26 183 n. 49 77 n. 91

12a

Hullin 3a 5a

92a

135 n. 54 94 n. 6, 97, 97 nn. 18–19 97 n. 18, 124, 124 n. 25, 137 n. 59 89–90, 89–90 n. 139, 90 n. 141 101–102 n. 33

Bekhorot 30b

127 n. 35

Keritot 5b 6b

183 n. 49 97–98

Niddah 61b

142 n. 73

13b 87a

258

Index of Primary Sources

Later Midrash Exodus Rabbah 10:4 14:3 27:2 32:4

166 n. 73 96–97 n. 17 202–203 nn. 40–41, 203 n. 43 164 n. 67

Numbers Rabbah 15:12 96–97 n. 17 18:3 152 n. 27 Deuteronomy Rabbah 2:33 83, 83 n. 117 Midrash Psalms 1:21 22:5 31:6

146 n. 4 203 n. 42 207 n. 57

Midrash Proverbs 10:1 198, 198 n. 25 11:27 152 n. 27 Song of Songs Rabbah 1:40 103 n. 36 2:30 96–97 n. 17 4:4 100–101 n. 29 4:5 100–101 n. 29 4:6 100–101 n. 29, 102–104, 102 n. 35, 103 nn. 39–40, 104 n. 41, 105 4:7 100–101 n. 29 4:8 100–101 n. 29, 101–102 n. 33 4:12 100–101 n. 29 6:17–18 100–101 n. 29, 103 n. 36 6:18 102 n. 35 Ecclesiastes Rabbah 2:15 83, 83 n. 117 8:12 109 n. 72

Pesiqta Rabbati 20 21 Tanhuma bereshit 8 qedoshim 4 qoraḥ 4

83, 83 n. 117 83, 83 n. 117, 83–84, 84 nn. 120–121 83, 83 n. 117 83 n. 117, 84 n. 121 152 n. 27

Tanna de-Vei Eliyahu Eliyahu Rabbah 11 88–89, 89 n. 136 Yalqut Shimoni mishpatim 359 on Isaiah 60:21

164 n. 67 113, 113 n. 84

Midrash Hagadol 55 n. 26 Midrash Hakhamim 84–85, 85 n. 123

Other Rabbinic Texts Avot of Rabbi Natan A 4 4 n. 17 16 123 n. 20 29 198, 198 n. 24 39 196–197 n. 15, 198, 198 n. 25 40 169 n. 5, 170 n. 9, 196 n. 12, 196–197 n. 15 Avot of Rabbi Natan B 32 197–198, 197 n. 17 46 169 n. 5, 170 n. 9 Semahot 8:13

196 n. 12

Baraitot mi-Evel Rabbati 3:5 123 n. 20

259

Index of Primary Sources

V. Greco-Roman and Early Christian Literature Epictetus Discourses 4.7

68–69 n. 63

Ignatius Ephesians 6:2

53 n. 12

Trallians 6:1

53 n. 12

Justin Martyr Dialogue with Trypho 62 38–39 n. 33, 159 n. 48 80 50 n. 2, 56 n. 31, 65 n. 57, 68 n. 63 137 219 n. 3 Hegesippus (see Eusebius, Church History) Origen Against Celsus 1.45

219 n. 3

Letter to Africanus 219 n. 3 Eusebius Church History 3.32:7–8

2.13:6 170 n. 8 2.23:8 (quoting Hegesippus) 53 n. 13 2.23:9 (quoting Hegesippus) 53 n. 13 2.23:21 (quoting Hegesippus) 53 n. 13 3.32:3 (quoting Hegesippus) 53 n. 13 3.32:6 (quoting Hegesippus) 53 n. 13 4.22:5 (quoting Hegesippus) 53 n. 13 Julian Against the Galileans 68–69 n. 63 Jerome Epistola 112 (To Augustine) 50 n. 2 121 (To Algasia) 219 n. 3 Theodosian Code 16.8.2–16.8.14 219 n. 4 16.8.4 219 n. 3 16.8.13 219 n. 3

15, 15 n. 53

VI. Hekhalot and Medieval Jewish Literature 3 Enoch § 20 (V228)

§ 856 (M40)

171, 174–175 n. 24, 175 176 n. 27, 177, 177 n. 29, 179–181, 184–185, 184 n. 53, 184 n. 55, 185–186, 189–191 176 n. 27, 184, 184 n. 55

Hekhalot Rabbati 174 Hekhalot Zutarti

174

Merkavah Rabbah 174, 176 § 672 176 n. 27, 184, 184 nn. 54–55, 186 n. 59, 187, 187 n. 50

260

Index of Primary Sources

Untitled Hekhalot Passage § 597 (N8128 and O1531) 176 n. 27 Nissim Gaon Sefer ha-Mafteaḥ Berakhot 173 n. 18 Hananel ben Hushiel 180–181 n. 39 Amnon of Mainz (attributed) u-Netanneh Toqef 194, 194 n. 3

Maimonides Mishneh Torah hilkhot teshuvah 3:7 72–73, 73 n. 79 Issachar Berman ben Naphtali mattenot kehunah on Exodus Rabbah 27:2 202 n. 40

Index of Modern Authors Abrams, Daniel 178 n. 32, 188 n. 64 Adler, Joseph A. 44–45 n. 48 Albeck, Chanoch 83 n. 116 Alberoni, Francesco 11 n. 46 Alexander, P. S. 174–175 n. 24, 178 n. 33, 180 n. 39, 181 n. 40, 181 n. 41, 186 nn. 57–58, 189 n. 66 Alon, Gedalyahu 2 n. 9 Althusser, Louis 69 n. 64 Anisfeld, Rachel A. 114–115 n. 88 Arad, Moti 117 n. 1, 118 n. 5, 118–119 n. 7, 122 n. 17, 127 n. 35, 129 n. 38, 129 n. 42 Assaraf, Albert 168 n. 4, 169 n. 6, 171 n. 10 Aviner, Shlomo 140, 140 n. 67 Avi-Yonah, Michael 2 n. 9

n. 56, 137 n. 58, 148 n. 10, 148 n. 14, 158 n. 43, 163 n. 64, 163 n. 66, 164–165 n. 70, 182 n. 46, 184 n. 53, 212–213 n. 78, 220 n. 6 Boyarin, Jonathan 3–4 n. 13 Braude, William G. 84 n. 120 Briggs, Charles A. 59 n. 37 Brody, Robert 171–172 n. 11 Bromley, Geoffrey W. 52 n. 8 Brown, Francis 59 n. 37 Brown, Peter 86–87 n. 130 Buber, Salomon 104 n. 53, 146 n. 4, 198 n. 25, 207 n. 57 Büchler, Adolph 80 nn. 103–104, 190 n. 70, 198 n. 26 Buell, Denise Kimber 111–112 nn. 79–80 Burrus, Virginia 69 n. 64

Back, Samuel 173 n. 18 Bauer, Walter 16 n. 55, 42 n. 43 Baumgarten, Albert I. 63 n. 51, 64 n. 54, 66–67 n. 60, 68 n. 62, 148 n. 11 Becker, Adam H. 220 n. 6, 223 n. 14 Becker, Hans-Jur̈ gen 25–26 n. 71 Beentjes, Pancratius C. 60 nn. 40–41 Bell, Catherine 35 n. 21 Bianchi, Ugo 44–45 n. 48 Binstein, Jacob 60 n. 41 Boccaccini, Gabriele 222 n. 11 Boyarin, Daniel 3 n. 13, 14 n. 50, 23 n. 69, 28–29 n. 3, 34, 34–35 n. 20, 36, 42 n. 41, 43, 43–44 n. 46, 44–45 n. 48, 45, 45 n. 50, 47, 47 n. 60, 50 n. 1, 51 n. 3, 52 n. 8, 53 n. 15, 58 n. 35, 65–66 nn. 57–58, 74 n. 81, 74 n. 83, 75 n. 85, 81 nn. 106–107, 82 n. 108, 83–84 nn. 119–120, 86 n. 128, 88 n. 133, 88 n. 135, 91 n. 146, 107 n. 59, 110 n. 73, 111 n. 77, 113 n. 82, 129 n. 43, 136

Charlesworth, James H. 60 n. 38 Cohen, Shaye J. D. 2 n. 10, 10–11 nn. 43– 44, 28–29 nn. 3–4, 58 n. 35, 63 n. 51, 64 n. 55, 68 n. 62, 68–69 n. 63, 219 n. 2 Davidson, Arnold I. 42 n. 42 Dawson, Lorne 45 n. 50 DeConick, April D. 172 n. 13 Desjardins, Michel 30 n. 9, 39–40, 40 n. 38, 45 n. 49, 52 n. 8, 170 n. 8 Deutsch, Nathaniel 174–175 n. 24, 181 n. 40 Diels, Hermann 30–31 n. 10 Driver, S. R. 59 n. 37 Drowser, E. S. 120 n. 11 Durkheim, Emile 35 n. 21 Elman, Yaakov 66–67 n. 60, 133–134 n. 50, 154–155 n. 33 Epstein, Isidore 140 Epstein, Jacob Nahum 78 n. 97, 151 n. 23

262

Index of Modern Authors

Eshel, Hanan 68–69 n. 63 Even-Shoshan, Avraham 181 n. 43 Finkelstein, Louis 77 n. 91, 79 n. 100, 111 n. 77, 118 n. 5, 148 n. 10 Fischel, Henry A. 169 n. 6, 174–175 n. 24, 189 n. 65 Flusser, David 28–29 n. 3, 65–66 nn. 57–58 Foucault, Michel 34–35 n. 20, 42–43, 42 n. 42 Fraenkel, Yonah 206–207 n. 53 Frede, Michael 151 n. 24 Friedman, Shamma 21 n. 62, 22 n. 63, 109 n. 71, 135 n. 52, 136 n. 56, 157 n. 42 Friedmann, Meir (Ish Shalom) 84 n. 120, 89 n. 136 Friedrich, Gerhard 52 n. 8 Furstenberg, Yair 66–67 n. 60, 68 n. 62, 71 n. 74, 198 n. 26 Geiger, Joseph 144 n. 2 Gero, Stephen 212–213 n. 78, 213 n. 81, 214 nn. 84–85 Glucker, John 30 n. 9 Goldberg, Abraham 151 n. 23 Goldin, Judah 147 n. 7 Goodblatt, David M. 1 n. 3, 2 n. 9, 3 n. 11, 4 n. 18, 5 n. 23, 148 n. 10, 220 n. 5 Goodenough, Erwin R. 2 n. 9 Goodman, Martin 2 n. 9, 10 n. 42, 12 n. 48, 27 n. 1, 28–29 nn. 3–4, 34, 34 n. 18, 36, 52 n. 8, 58 n. 35, 70, 70 n. 72, 72 n. 78, 73 n. 80, 112 n. 80, 121 n. 16, 149 n. 15, 219 n. 2, 220 n. 5 Goshen-Gottstein, Alon 28–29 nn. 3–4, 168, 168 n. 4, 169 n. 6, 171–172 n. 11, 173 n. 18, 178 n. 32, 182 n. 46, 184 n. 53, 185 n. 56, 189 n. 65, 206–207 n. 53, 207 n. 57 Green, William Scott 168 n. 4 Greenfield, Jonas C. 71 n. 74 Grossberg, David M. 12 n. 48, 28–29 n. 3, 30–31 n. 10, 38–39 n. 33, 40 n. 37, 43–44 n. 46, 55 n. 27, 56 n. 31, 66–67

n. 60, 68 n. 63, 99 n. 25, 100 n. 26, 100–101 n. 29, 110 nn. 74–75, 112 n. 81, 147 n. 9, 149 n. 18, 150 nn. 21– 22, 151 n. 23, 152 n. 25, 169 n. 6, 176 n. 25, 184 n. 55 Gruenwald, Ithamar 174 n. 21 Guttmann, Alexander 149 n. 16 Halivni, David Weiss 21 n. 61, 22 n. 63 Hall, Jonathan M. 23 n. 68 Halperin, David 174 n. 21 Hampel, Ido 120–121 n. 14 Hanson, John. S. 70 n. 69 Hart, J. H. A. 61 n. 45 Hauptman, Judith 151 n. 23 Hayes, Christine 28–29 n. 3, 74 n. 83, 111 n. 77, 191 n. 72 Hendel, Ronald S. 47 n. 59 Herford, R. Travers 28–29 n. 3, 54, 54 n. 18, 58 n. 34, 79 n. 99, 80 n. 103 Herr, Moshe David 93 n. 4, 117 n. 2, 120 n. 12, 121 n. 16 Hezser, Catherine 2 n. 9, 3 n. 11, 4 n. 17, 5 n. 24, 8 n. 29, 9, 9 nn. 34–35, 9 n. 38, 10 nn. 40–42, 11 n. 46, 13, 64 n. 55, 88 n. 133, 219 n. 2, 219–220 nn. 4–5, 221 n. 9 Higger, Michael 123 n. 20 Himmelfarb, Martha 66–67 nn. 60–61, 92 n. 2, 111 n. 78, 112 n. 80 Hirshman, Marc 152 n. 26, 159 n. 48 Hoffman, Lawrence A. 10 n. 42 Holladay, William W. 46 n. 54 Horowitz, H. Saul 83 n. 119, 84–85 nn. 122–123, 128 n. 36, 137 n. 60, 140 n. 65, 198 n. 24, 202 n. 40 Horsley, Richard 70 n. 69 Houtman, Alberdina 151 n. 23 Ilan, Tal 63–64 n. 53 Iricinschi, Eduard 41 n. 39, 43 n. 45, 69 n. 64 Jaffee, Martin 66–67 n. 60, 68 n. 62 Jastrow, Marcus 90 n. 142, 101 n. 30, 104 n. 56, 140 n. 64, 152 n. 27, 177 n. 31, 181 n. 43, 205 n. 47, 210 n. 70 Joo, Samantha 139 n. 62

1

2

4

Index of Modern Authors

Kahana, Menahem 202 n. 40 Kalmin, Richard 21 n. 61, 22 n. 63, 28–29 n. 3, 74, 74 n. 83, 76–77 n. 90, 119–120 nn. 9–10, 121 n. 16, 136 n. 56 Kalupahana, David J. 44–45 n. 48 Katz, Jacob 107 n. 59, 109 n. 73 Katz, Steven T. 190 n. 70, 198 n. 26 Kaufman, Stephen A. 157 n. 42 Kiel, Yishai 195–196 n. 10, 198 n. 26, 212 n. 75 Kimelman, Reuven 28–29 n. 3, 51 n. 4, 65–66 n. 58, 88 n. 133, 89 n. 137, 95 n. 13, 194 nn. 2–3 King, Karen 42 n. 41, 75 n. 86 Kister, Menahem 66–67 nn. 60–61, 159 n. 48 Kittel, Gerhard 52 n. 8 Kraemer, David 21 n. 61 Kugel, James 66–67 n. 60 Kuhn, Peter 191 n. 72 Labendz, Jenny R. 61 n. 42, 144 n. 2, 147 n. 7, 156 n. 40 Langer, Ruth 65–66 n. 58, 88 n. 133, 89 n. 137, 95 n. 13, 117 nn. 1–2, 118 n. 5, 119 n. 8, 123 n. 22, 127 n. 35 Lapin, Hayim 2 n. 9, 9, 9 n. 38, 52 n. 7, 64 n. 55, 68 n. 62, 219 n. 2 Latvus, Kari 139 n. 62 Lauterbach, Jacob Z. 85 n. 123 Layton, Bentley 30–31 n. 10 Le Boulluec, Alain 16 n. 55, 30–31 nn. 8–10, 32, 32 n. 12, 42 n. 41, 42–44, 42 nn. 43–44, 53 n. 12 Lesses, Rebecca 181 n. 40 Levine, Lee I. 2 n. 9, 9, 9 nn. 33–35, 10 n. 42, 130 n. 44, 219 n. 2 Lewin, B. M. 169 n. 6 Lichtenstein, Hans 121 n. 15 Lieberman, Saul 65 nn. 56–57, 66–67 n. 60, 68 n. 63, 76–77 n. 90, 88 n. 134, 89 n. 137, 90 n. 143, 117 n. 2, 118 n. 5, 118 n. 7, 120 n. 12, 121 n. 16, 123 nn. 21–22, 125 nn. 29–30, 127 n. 35, 128 n. 36, 144 n. 2, 145–146, 145–146 nn. 3–5, 161 n. 57, 173 n. 18, 195 nn. 9–10, 196 nn. 14–15, 202 n. 37

263

Lieu, Judith M. 3 n. 13, 111–112 n. 79 Lightstone, Jack N. 9, 9 n. 36, 66–68 nn. 60–62 Macuch, R. 120 n. 11 Magness, Jodi 130 n. 44 Maier, Johann 212 n. 78, 214 n. 85 Mandelbaum, Bernard 104 n. 54 Marcovich, Miroslav 50 n. 2 Margaliot, Mordecai 97 n. 18, 104 n. 52 Marmorstein, Arthur 94 n. 7, 178 n. 32 McCarthy, Dennis J. 139 n. 62 McCutcheon, Russell T. 23 n. 67 Milik, J. T. 68–69 n. 63 Milikowsky, Chaim 19 n. 60, 118 n. 5, 120 n. 12, 144 n. 2, 149–150 nn. 18–19, 150 n. 21 Miller, Stuart S. 28–29 nn. 3–4, 99 n. 25, 129 n. 43, 219 n. 2 Moreshet, Menahem 118 n. 5, 120 n. 11, 157 n. 42, 161 n. 56 Morray-Jones, C. R. A. 174–175 n. 24, 181 n. 40, 181 n. 44 Nelson, W. David 82 n. 108 Neusner, Jacob 21 n. 61, 66–67 n. 60, 77 n. 91, 119 n. 10, 123 n. 22, 124–125, 124 n. 27, 152 n. 27, 168 n. 4, 205 n. 47, 214 n. 84 Newman, Hillel I. 93 n. 4 Noam, Vered 120 n. 11, 120–121 nn. 13–15 Nongbri, Brent 23 n. 67 O’Flaherty, Wendy Doniger 44–45 n. 48 Oppenheimer, Aharon 114–115 n. 88 Parsons, Stuart E. 79–80 n. 101 Patrich, Joseph 66–67 n. 60 Petuchowski, Jakob J. 118 n. 6 Pietersma, Albert 62 n. 46 Porten, Bezalel 47 n. 57 Rabbinovicz, Raphael 25–26 n. 71, 180 n. 39 Rabin, Chaim 53–54 n. 15, 59 n. 37, 88 n. 133

264

Index of Modern Authors

Rabin, Israel Abraham 83 n. 119, 84–85 nn. 122–123, 128 n. 36, 137 n. 60, 140 n. 65, 198 n. 24, 202 n. 40 Redfield, Robert 44 n. 47 Reed, Annette Yoshiko 220 n. 6, 223 n. 14 Regev, Eyal 66–67 n. 60 Rendsburg, Gary A 60 n. 41 Rivkin, Ellis 64 n. 54, 66–67 n. 60, 69 n. 65 Rosen-Zvi, Ishay 63–64 n. 53 Royalty, Robert M. 30 n. 9, 36 n. 24, 42 n. 41, 43–44 n. 46, 44–45 n. 48, 45–48, 45 n. 51, 46 n. 53, 111 n. 79 Rubenstein, Jeffrey L 4 n. 14, 21 nn. 61–62, 22 n. 63, 66–67 n. 60, 114–115 n. 88, 136 n. 56, 168, 168 n. 1, 169 n. 6, 176 n. 26, 178 nn. 32–33, 179 n. 36, 180 n. 39, 183 n. 50, 185 n. 56, 189 nn. 68–69, 191 n. 72, 199 n. 28, 200 n. 29, 202 n. 40, 203 n. 43, 205 nn. 49–50, 206 n. 52, 206–207 n. 53, 210 n. 68, 212 n. 78, 214 nn. 83–84, 214–215 n. 86 Rubinstein, Arie 68–69 n. 63 Runia, David T. 30–31 nn. 9–10, 38 n. 30, 38–39 n. 33, 45 n. 49, 52 n. 10, 75 n. 84, 159 n. 48, 170 n. 8 Safrai, Chana 93 n. 4 Safrai, Shmuel 11 n. 45 Safrai, Ze’ev 93 n. 4 Saldarini, Anthony J. 9, 9 n. 37 Sanders, E. P. 9, 9 n. 33, 28–29 n. 3, 34 n. 18, 190 n. 70, 198 n. 26 Schäfer, Peter 2 n. 7, 4 n. 17, 14 n. 50, 19 n. 60, 25–26 n. 71, 28–29 n. 3, 30 n. 6, 50 n. 1, 53 n. 15, 58 n. 35, 77 n. 91, 78 n. 97, 79 n. 99, 80 n. 102, 81 n. 106, 82 nn. 107–108, 84–85 n. 122, 89–90 n. 139, 121 n. 16, 158 n. 43, 159 n. 48, 160 n. 51, 162 n. 62, 163–164 nn. 66–67, 164 n. 68, 164–165 n. 70, 171–172 n. 12, 171–172 nn. 14–15, 174, 174 n. 21, 174 n. 23, 174–175 n. 24, 176 n. 27, 178 n. 32, 188 n. 62, 212–213 n. 78, 214 n. 84, 220 n. 6 Schaff, Philip 15 n. 53, 38–39 n. 33, 53 n. 13, 170 n. 8

Schechter, Salomon 123 n. 20, 196–197 n. 15, 197 n. 17, 198 nn. 24–25 Schiffman, Lawrence H. 28–29 nn. 3–5, 33–34, 33 n. 16, 66–67 nn. 60–61, 107 n. 59, 109 n. 73, 111 n. 77, 117 n. 2, 118 n. 5, 132–133 n. 47, 148 n. 10 Schlüter, Margarete 176 n. 27 Schofer, Jonathan Wyn 9 n. 37 Scholem, Gershom 169 n. 6, 174 n. 21, 174–175 n. 24, 178 n. 32 Schremer, Adiel 4 n. 14, 14 n. 50, 21 n. 61, 28–30 nn. 3–6, 33–34, 33 nn. 13–15, 36, 36 n. 25, 50 n. 1, 55 n. 26, 65–66 n. 58, 73 n. 80, 74 n. 81, 76–77 nn. 90–91, 79 n. 99, 80 n. 103, 81 n. 106, 82 nn. 107–108, 83 n. 119, 86 n. 128, 88 n. 135, 111 n. 77, 112 n. 81, 122 n. 18, 123 n. 22, 125 n. 28, 137 n. 58, 220 n. 6 Schürer, Emil 120–121 n. 14 Schwartz, Daniel R. 66–67 n. 60 Schwartz, Seth 2 n. 9, 8 n. 32, 9–10 n. 39, 21 n. 61, 22–23 n. 65, 23 n. 69, 60 n. 41, 64 n. 55, 86–87 n. 130, 93 n. 4, 129–130 nn. 43–44, 220 n. 5 Secunda, Shai 21 n. 61 Segal, Alan F. 28–29 n. 3, 34, 34 n. 17, 34 n. 19, 36, 53–54, 53 n. 15, 54 n. 19, 58 n. 35, 75 nn. 84–85, 78 n. 94, 79 n. 99, 80 nn. 103–104, 81 nn. 106–107, 82 n. 108, 83 n. 119, 84 n. 121, 89–90 n. 139, 90 n. 141, 149 n. 17, 158 n. 43, 163 n. 66, 164–165 n. 70, 169–170, 169 n. 6, 181 n. 40, 183 n. 50, 223 n. 12 Segal, M. H. 61 n. 43 Shanks, Hershel 10 n. 43 Shemesh, Aharon 66–67 n. 60 Siegal Michal Bar-Asher 212 n. 75 Silver, Daniel Jeremy 44–45 n. 48 Skarsaune, Oskar 79–80 n. 101 Smith, Jonathan Z. 44 n. 47 Simon, Marcel 15 n. 52, 16 n. 57, 28–29 n. 3, 30 n. 9, 37 n. 29, 39, 39 nn. 34–35, 40 n. 38, 53–54, 53 n. 14, 54 n. 17, 58 n. 35, 64 n. 55, 170 n. 8 Smith, Mark S. 47 n. 58 Smith, Wilfred Cantwell 23 n. 67

8

6

, , 0

Index of Modern Authors

Sokoloff, Michael 101 n. 30, 152 n. 27, 161 n. 56 Sperber, Daniel 54 n. 16 Stemberger, Günter 6 n. 25, 22 n. 64, 149 n. 16, 161 n. 55, 197 n. 16, 214 n. 85 Stern, Sacha 27 n. 1, 93 n. 3, 93 n. 5, 94 n. 6, 118 n. 4 Stökl, Jonathan 60 n. 39 Strack, H. L. 6 n. 25, 22 n. 64, 161 n. 55, 197 n. 16 Sussmann, Yaakov 19 n. 59, 22 n. 63, 28–29 n. 3, 58 n. 35, 66–67 n. 60, 219 n. 2 Teicher, J. L. 68–69 n. 63 Teppler, Yaakov Y. 28–29 n. 3, 58 n. 34, 65–66 n. 58, 79 n. 99 Thackeray, Henry St. John 121 n. 15, 222 n. 10 Theodor, Julius 83 n. 116 Troeltsch, Ernst 45 Tropper, Amram 149 n. 16 Urbach, Ephraim E. 114–115 n. 88, 146 n. 4, 147 n. 7, 159 n. 48, 171–172 n. 11, 174 n. 21, 178 n. 32, 190 n. 70, 195 n. 10, 198 n. 26

265

Vidas, Moulie 22 n. 63, 154 n. 33, 199 n. 28, 209 n. 62 von Mutius, Hans Georg 176 n. 27 von Staden, Heinrich 30 n. 9, 38–39 n. 33, 41 n. 39 Weber, Max 45 Williams, A. Lukyn 38–39 n. 33 Williams, Michael Allen 35 n. 22, 45 n. 50, 75 n. 86 Wintermute, O. S. 60 nn. 38–39 Wolfson, Harry Austryn 75 n. 84, 145–146 n. 3 Wright, Benjamin G. 62 n. 46 Yadin, Yigael 71 n. 74 Yardeni, Ada 71 n. 74 Yuval, Israel Jacob 28–29 n. 3, 223 n. 12 Zeitlin, S. 10 n. 43, 117 n. 2, 118–119 n. 7, 120 n. 12 Zellentin, Holger M. 41 n. 39, 43 n. 45, 69 n. 64 Zuckermandel, M. S. 63 n. 52, 76 n. 89, 94–95 nn. 9–11, 122 n. 19, 125 nn. 31–33, 132 n. 47, 150 n. 20

Index of Subjects Aaron 182 Abaye 133–136, 135 n. 53 Abba, Rabbi 107–109, 109 n. 71 Abba bar Kahana 100–101 n. 29 Abba bar Zavda, Rabbi 107–110, 109 n. 71 Abba Yossi the son of Dormasqit 140 Abbahu, Rabbi 100–102, 136–138, 138 n. 61 Abraham 104, 183 Absalom 202 Achan 107–110 Adam 76 Adonijah 202 afqiruta 155, 157–158, 159–160 afterlife (see world to come) Aha 100–101 n. 29, 133–136, 136 n. 55, 143, 143 n. 74 Aher (see also Elisha ben Abuyah) – as a pejorative appellation 169, 173, 176–177, 177 n. 30, 178 nn. 32–33, 187–189 – meaning of 169, 173, 173 n. 18 – naming of 187–189, 189 n. 65 Ahitophel 202 Akatri’el 176 n. 27 Akavya ben Mahalalel 34–35 n. 20 Akiva, Rabbi 12, 164–166, 166 n. 73, 169, 171–173, 207–208, 222 Akkadian 157 Alexander Jannaeus 213, 213 n. 80 Alexandria 38, 75, 213–214, 214 n. 84 am ha-’aretz (see commoners) Amalek 128 n. 36 amidah 65–66 n. 58, 95–96 Amnon of Mainz, Rabbi 194 amoraic literature, definition of 6 amoraim, definition of 7 Anafi’el 177

ancient of days 81, 164 angels 60, 155 anthropology 44–45 anthropomorphism 80–81, 159 anti-rabbi 153, 156 Antoninus Pius 121 n. 16 apiqorsim (see also Epicureans) 49, 110, 110 n. 75, 122, 134 n. 51, 144–166, 152 n. 26, 154 n. 31, 154 n. 33, 158 n. 43, 193 – as a pejorative reference to Sadducees 148–149, 148 n. 14 – as heretics 57 – changing signification of 28, 31, 116 – definition of 18, 24, 31 n. 11, 144, 152–153, 154–156 – etymology of 156–158 – identity of 50, 144–151, 156 n. 40, 218 – non-Jewish 162 – who deny the resurrection of the dead and the Torah 149–151 – vs. “failed rabbi” 175–176, 191 apiqorsut 48, 156–157 apostates (see also meshummadim) 33–34, 117, 117 n. 1, 131 apostles 219 Aristotelianism 151 n. 24 Arnon 82 Asshur 104 atheism 72–73, 146 Athens 144 atonement 194–199, 196–197 n. 15, 198 n. 26 – four divisions of 195–196, 198–199 attributions in rabbinic literature – reliability of 7, 20–21 Augustine 50 n. 2 authority, rabbinic 8, 8 n. 32, 10, 10 n. 41, 13

2

,

Index of Subjects

Avot – dating of 149 n. 16 – relationship of to the rest of the Mishnah 149 n. 16 Avtalion 197 n. 20 Babylonian Talmud – dating of 2, 2 n. 8, 22, 22 n. 64 – editors of 22, 22 n. 64, 91 n. 145, 100– 102, 109 n. 71, 113–115, 129 n. 40, 135, 135 n. 52, 136–138, 136 n. 56, 138 n. 61, 141–143, 141 n. 68, 154–156, 163–164, 176, 176 n. 26, 199 n. 28, 205 n. 49, 206, 206 n. 52, 209 n. 62, 212 n. 75 Balaam 202 Bar Kokhba 68–69 n. 63 – revolt of 6 Bar Luianus 89–90 bat qol (see heavenly voice) beit midrash 8 n. 31, 10 n. 42, 123 n. 20, 209–210, 219 n. 2 belief – vs. practice 28–30, 29–30 n. 5, 33–34, 33 n. 15, 35, 35 n. 21 Ben Azzai 11, 114–115 n. 88, 171–173, 171–172 n. 11, 178 n. 32, 188 n. 61 Ben-hadad 204 Ben Sira 12, 59 n. 37, 59–62, 68–69, 71 Ben Zoma 11, 171–173, 171–172 n. 11, 178 n. 32, 188 n. 61 Bible (see also Torah) 1 n. 5, 44–45 n. 48, 47–48, 59, 59 n. 37, 74 n. 83, 81 n. 107, 99, 107 n. 60, 139, 140, 142–143, 148, 148 n. 12, 158–159, 200, 204 bibliomancy 209–210, 211, 215 bill of divorce 66, 70–71, 218 binitarianism (see also two powers) 17, 29, 72–73, 75 n. 86, 75–78, 79 n. 99, 79–81, 80 n. 103, 84 n. 121, 158–159, 169 n. 6 – definition of 74–75 birkat ha-minim (see minim, curse on) blasphemy 46, 188 – against the holy spirit 198 n. 26 Boethusians 56, 68 boundary rhetoric 3, 3 n. 13, 13–15, 17, 27–28, 34, 41, 43, 45, 48–49, 50–51, 92, 116, 146, 167, 193–194, 217

267

Buddhism 44–45 n. 48 Cain 202 censorship, of rabbinic literature 31 n. 11, 96–97 n. 17, 134 n. 51 China – religions of 44–45 n. 48 Christian Palestinian Aramaic (CPA) 59 n. 37, 88 n. 133 Christianity 30–32, 35–36, 44–45, 56, 68–69 n. 63, 75, 79–80, 118, 149, 159, 160, 169–170, 214 n. 84, 214–215 n. 86 – and heresiology (see heresiology) – and heresy (see heresy) – and Judaism / Greco-Roman religions, mutual influences 40, 50 n. 1, 91 n. 146, 111–112, 220–221, 223–224 – as a group designation 11–12 – as a new religious identity 223 – bishops 10 n. 39 – definition of 223 – denial of the name to sinners 111–112 – history of 15–17, 39, 42 n. 43, 95 – in rabbinic literature 33 n. 15, 58 n. 35, 74, 83–84 nn. 119–120, 86, 86 n. 128, 88–89, 88 n. 133, 88 n. 135, 90–91 – Jewish (see Jewish-Christians) christology 29, 73 n. 80, 74, 75, 75 n. 86, 78, 81, 159 church-sect theory 45, 45 n. 50 circumcision – reversal of 107–109, 132–133 – Roman prohibition of 121, 121 n. 16 classical Palestinian midrash (see midrash) Clement of Rome 32 n. 12 collective phenomena – aggregative vs. group 11 n. 46 – scholarly designations for 8–9, 13–14, 217–218 – movement vs. community 13–14 commoners 7, 93, 93 n. 5, 96–97 n. 17, 100–102, 100–101 n. 29, 101 n. 31, 103, 114–115 n. 88, 123 n. 20 Constantine 86–87 conversion / converts 122, 127 n. 35, 137 n. 60, 202–203, 203 n. 43, 203 nn. 42– 43, 205

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Index of Subjects

Coponius 71 covenant 29–30 n. 5, 33, 33 n. 15, 34, 107–109, 119 covenantal nomism 34, 34 n. 18, 35 creed 220–221 Cyrus 222 n. 10 Damascus 201, 201 n. 33, 204 Daniel 81 Day of Atonement 76–77 n. 90, 194, 195, 196 n. 15 Dead Sea 90 Dead Sea Scrolls 12, 60, 67 n. 61 Dead Sea Sect 45, 47 death penalty 121 n. 15, 166 n. 73 demiurge 159 derekh ‘eretz 104–105 n. 56 desecration of the name 195, 196–197 n. 15, 197–198, 197 n. 20, 198 n. 26 deuteronomist 46–47, 132 dietary rules 76, 116, 119, 132–134, 135 n. 54, 141–142, 143 n. 74 dilma’ ḥas ve-shalom 183 n. 49 disciples of sages (see sage, disciples of) discipleship circles 3 n. 11, 199, 220 disputation 79–80, 88, 88 n. 133, 158–166 divine presence (see God, presence of) divine providence (see God, providence of) doctrine (see belief) Doeg 202 dogma (see also belief) 220–221 doxography 30–31 n. 10, 38–39 n. 33, 45–46, 68 n. 63 ecclesiastical narrative (see Christianity, history of) Edom 88, 88 n. 135, 88–89 Egypt 46–47, 82, 96–97 n. 17, 140, 213 elders 27, 219 Eleazar, Rabbi 152, 152 n. 27 Eleazar (ben Arak), Rabbi 144, 146–147, 151 Eleazar ben Azariah, Rabbi 164–165 Eleazar ben Dordia 190 n. 71, 193, 199, 206, 211–212, 211–212 nn. 72–77, 215 Eleazar of Modiin 202

Eleazar the son of Rabbi Yossi, Rabbi 140 Elephantine 47 Eliezer, Rabbi 86–87, 114–115 n. 88, 128 n. 36, 137 n. 60, 191, 202, 208 Eliezer ha-Qapper, Rabbi 10 n. 42, 219 n. 2 Eliezer the son of Rabbi Yossi, Rabbi 196–197 n. 15 Elisha (prophet) 200–201, 202–206, 203 n. 43, 205 nn. 49–50, 206 n. 51, 214 Elisha ben Abuyah (see also Aher) 167–192 – and ascent narratives 169, 171–174, 171–172 n. 12, 176–185, 188, 188 nn. 61–62 – and “cutting the shoots” 169 n. 6, 171–172, 178–179, 178 n. 32, 188 – and Ecclesiastes 5:5 171–172 n. 16, 171–172, 177, 178–179, 178 n. 33, 179 nn. 34–35, 187 – and Metatron 176–177, 179–180, 182 n. 46, 183–190, 184 n. 51, 185 n. 56, 186 n. 59, 188 n. 62 – and “Perhaps, God forbid!” (see shema’ ḥas ve-shalom) – and Rabbi Meir 170, 170 n. 9, 191, 206–211 – and rabbinic biography 168 n. 4 – and repentance 180, 188, 189, 191, 193, 194, 199, 205 n. 50, 206, 206 n. 51, 206–211, 215 – and Simon Magus 169–170 – and the heavenly voice 177, 180, 186, 187–191, 193, 206, 208–210, 211 – and “two powers” 167–168, 173, 175, 176–185, 186, 187 n. 59, 191 – as a failed rabbi 167–168, 175–176, 179–180, 191–192, 193, 200, 206–211 – as a heretic 169–170, 169 n. 6, 178 n. 32, 183 n. 50 – as an “absolute other” 171 – as an Epicurean 169 n. 6 – as non-deviant 169, 169 n. 5, 170, 170 n. 9, 171–172, 175 – estrangement of 169 n. 5, 171, 175–176, 206 – in the Bavli vs. Hekhalot corpus 174–175, 174–175 n. 24

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– in the Yerushalmi vs. Bavli 173, 173 n. 20, 180 n. 37, 210 n. 68 – punishment of 182 n. 46, 185, 187–191 – rehabilitation of 191, 210–211, 212 – transgression of 184–185, 186–191, 190 n. 71 Enoch 164–165 n. 70 “Enochic” Judaism 222 n. 11 Epicureans (see also apiqorsim) 3, 11, 18, 37, 144, 144 n. 2, 145–146, 148 n. 14, 151, 151 n. 24, 156 n. 40, 159–160, 169 n. 6 – definition of 144 Epicurus 144, 146, 148, 157 epigraphical rabbis (see rabbi, in epigraphical evidence) Esau 88 n. 135 Essenes 69, 149 Esther 155, 203 n. 42 Ethiopian Orthodox 59–60 ethnarchs 219 ethnicity 7 n. 27, 17, 23, 23 n. 68, 33, 68–69 n. 63, 83 n. 119, 94, 110–115, 117, 129–130, 223 – definition of 23 n. 68 Eusebius 15, 15 n. 53, 42 n. 43, 53 n. 13 exclusionary rhetoric (see boundary rhetoric) exegesis 74 n. 83 Ezekiel 59 Ezra 222 failed rabbis (see also Elisha ben Abuyah) 18–19, 167, 193–194, 198 n. 26, 199–216, 206, 212 n. 75, 221 – definition of 191–192, 193–194 – examples of 193 faith (see also belief, vs. practice) – rule of 34, 34–35 n. 20, 220–221 First Temple 139 – destruction of 46, 222 n. 10 flatterers 150 “Fourth Philosophy” 69–73 Galileans 66–69, 66 n. 59, 68–69 n. 63, 218 Galilee 69–70 Gamliel I 69–70

269

Gamliel II 1, 65 n. 58, 90 Gamlielian dynasty 1 Garden of Eden 152, 207 Ge’ez 59–60 Gehazi 107 n. 60, 199–206, 200 n. 29, 201 n. 34, 203 n. 43, 208–209, 211–213, 214–215 n. 86 – and repentance 201, 204–206, 205 nn. 49–50, 206 n. 51, 214–215 gehinnom 94, 96–97 n. 17, 99–102, 122, 125–126, 150, 193, 193, 207 gemilut ḥasadim 104–105 n. 56 Genistae 50 n. 2, 56, 56 n. 31, 59 n. 37, 62, 65 n. 57 genizah 53 n. 14, 141 n. 72, 173 n. 18, 185 n. 56, 194 gentiles 56 n. 30, 83 n. 119, 84–85 n. 122, 85, 88 n. 133, 90, 121 n. 16, 123–125, 127 n. 35, 128 – as outsiders 15, 17–18, 51, 90–91 – sages of 11 – sinners of 94, 96–97 n. 17 get (see bill of divorce) gnostics 30, 58 n. 35, 75 n. 86, 80 n. 103 God 95, 97, 107–108, 179, 183–184, 189, 194 n. 3, 202–203, 222 n. 10 – and plural pronouns in the Bible 158–159 – appearance of 80–83, 82 nn. 108–109 – attributes of 77 n. 91, 164–165 – belief in 33, 77 n. 91, 119, 153 – name of 70–71, 77 n. 91 – presence of 97, 164–165 – providence of 145–147, 147 n. 8, 148, 207 – provoking of 132, 138–140, 142–143 – transcendence and immanence of 74–75, 75 n. 84, 80 n. 102 – unity of 34, 72–77, 86, 164–165, 185 – words of 1–2 Golden Alter 99–100 Greco-Roman religions 48–49, 50 n. 1, 80 – and Judaism / Christianity, mutual influences 50 n. 1, 111–112, 220–221, 223–224 Greek – in rabbinic literature 38 groups (see collective phenomena)

270

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Hadrian 119–122, 119–120 n. 10, 120 n. 12, 122 n. 17 Haggai 222 n. 10 Hai Gaon 169 n. 6 hairesis (see also heresy) – as a differentiated term 56 – changing meaning of in antiquity 30–31, 30–31 n. 9, 37–38, 51–52 – frequency of 52–53 – in Jewish literature 38–40, 38–39 nn. 32–33, 51–52 – vs. hairetikos 51–53 – vs. minut (see minut, vs. hairetikos) hairetikos (see also heretics) – frequency of 52–53 – Greek cognates of 52–53, 52 nn. 9–10, 53 n. 12 – vs. hairesis (see hairesis, vs. hairetikos) – vs. minim (see minut, vs. hairetikos) halakhah 67 n. 61 halakhah le-mosheh mi-sinai 99 n. 25 Haman 202 Hana bar Bizna, Rabbi 97–98 Hananel ben Hushiel 180–181 n. 39 Hanina, Rabbi 88, 154 Hasmonean 213 ḥavurot, rabbinic 9 n. 38 heaven (see world to come) heavenly voice (see also Elisha ben Abuyah) 1–2, 89–90, 171, 182–183, 190–191, 191 n. 72, 211 n. 74, 212, 215 Hebron 47 Hegesippus 15 n. 53, 53, 53 n. 13, 56 Hekhalot literature 171–172 n. 15 – ascent vs. descent terminology in 171–172 n. 15, 174 n. 22 – citation style of 176, 176 n. 27 – fluidity of 174 – provenance of 173–174, 174 n. 21 – relationship to rabbinic literature 174 n. 21, 220 Hemerobaptists 56, 68 heresiarchs 170 heresiological discourse 41–48, 51 heresiology 15–16, 56, 66–67 n. 60, 111–112, 169–170, 170 n. 8, 220–221 – definition of 30–31 n. 10, 48

– as a literary genre vs. polemical style 43–44, 43–44 n. 46 – as an early Christian literary genre 16–17, 28, 38–39 n. 33, 40 heresy – as an analytical category 3, 28, 32–37, 217, 220–221 – as an early Christian terminus technicus 16–17, 28, 30–31, 30–31 nn. 8–9, 32 n. 12, 37, 40, 48, 217, 220–221 – definition of 35–36, 44–45, 44–45 n. 48, 217 – vs. orthodoxy 15–16, 34, 35–36, 41–42, 48 heretics (see also minim) 16, 34, 220–221 – curse on (see minim, curse on) Herodotus 37 Hillel 1–2, 4, 12, 63, 222 Hinduism 44–45 n. 48 Holy of Holies 99–100, 155 Homer 67–68 homiletics 164–166, 220 Huna 100–101 n. 29, 103 n. 40 Huna bar Hiyya 155 hybridity 17–18, 51, 72–87, 74 n. 81, 90–91 Idit, Rav 163–165, 163 n. 64 idolatry 17–18, 46–47, 51, 72–73, 76–77, 90–91, 96–97 n. 17, 97, 134–135, 136, 137 n. 60, 139 Ignatius 32 n. 12, 37 n. 27, 52–53, 111–112 Ilai, Rabbi 107–108 incest 119 n. 10, 133 inclusionary rhetoric (see boundary rhetoric) informers 96, 122–126, 123 n. 20, 136–137, 150 institutionalization, definition of 3 n. 11 interpellation 68–69, 69 n. 64 Irenaeus 30–31 n. 10, 42 irreverence (see afqiruta) Isidore of Seville 37, 37 n. 29 Israel (see also sinners of Israel) 7, 11, 17, 27, 80, 107–110, 118, 137, 139, 140, 185 – as an ethnonym 23

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– denial of the name to sinners 94, 110–115 – redemption of 183 – righteousness of 92–93 Issachar Berman ben Naphtali 203 n. 41

kashrut (see dietary rules) Keturah 104 Khirbet el-Qom 47 Korach 152–153 n. 27, 202 Kuntillet Ajrud 47

Jacob 104 Jeremiah 46–47, 46 n. 54, 47 n. 56 Jeroboam 193 n. 1 Jerome 50 n. 2, 53 n. 14 Jerusalem 46–47, 99–100, 121 n. 15, 213–214 – siege of in 70 C. E. 1, 4 n. 17 Jesus of Nazareth 15, 42 n. 43, 54, 75, 78, 86–87, 95, 214, 214–215 n. 86, 223 Jethro 202–203, 202 n. 38 Jewish-Christians 17, 17 n. 58, 30, 51, 51 n. 3, 58 n. 35, 80 n. 103, 95 Jewish Publication Society 197 n. 17, 202 n. 38 Job 104 Johannine community 45 Jordan 100 n. 29 Josephus 4 n. 17, 38, 38 n. 32, 40 n. 37, 52, 69–72, 69 n. 66, 148, 222 n. 10 Joshua 100 n. 29, 107 Josiah, Rabbi 137 n. 60 Jotapata, siege of in 67 C. E. 4 n. 17 Jubilees 12, 59–60, 60 nn. 38–39 Judaism – and Christianity / Greco-Roman religion, mutual influences 40, 50 n. 1, 111–112, 220–221, 223–224 – as “Judaism(s)” 23 n. 69 – definition of 22–23, 23 n. 69, 47, 47 n. 56, 223 – “Enochic” (see “Enochic” Judaism) – rabbinic (see rabbinic Judaism) – relevance of the category to antiquity 22–23, 22–23 nn. 65–66 Judas the Galilean 69–70, 71 Judea 11, 46–47, 71, 122, 126, 139 Justinian 86–87 n. 130 Justin Martyr 30–31, 30–31 n. 10, 32 n. 12, 37, 38–39 n. 33, 39, 40 n. 37, 42, 43–44 n. 46, 47, 50 n. 2, 52–53, 52 n. 9, 56, 56 n. 31, 59 n. 37, 65 n. 57, 68–69 n. 63, 81 n. 106, 111–112

le-hakh‘is 139–140 le-mino / “according to its kind” 53–54, 53–54 n. 15, 59, 59 n. 37 leprosy 164–166, 166 n. 73, 200–201, 204 Levi bar Shemuel 155 list making, in rabbinic literature 30–31 n. 10, 43–44 n. 46, 56 n. 31, 122–126, 123 n. 20, 150–151, 151 n. 23 liturgy 71, 76, 77–78, 86 n. 127, 95–96, 194 logos 74–75, 75 n. 84, 80 n. 102 Luria, Solomon 114 n. 86 Luz 104 Maccabees 120–121 macroforms 174 magic bowls 220 Mahzor Vitri 113–114 Maimonides 72–73, 75 Manasseh 139, 143 Manes 54 Manichaeism 54 manuscripts – of rabbinic literature, methodological issues 7, 19–20, 24–26 – of rabbinic literature, database sources 25–26 n. 71 Masada 60 Masoretic Text 25–26, 201 n. 33, 202 n. 38 megalleh panim ba-torah 154 n. 33 Megillat Taanit (see Scroll of Fasting) Meir, Rabbi 170, 170 n. 9, 191, 206, 206 n. 51, 206–211 Mekhilta of Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai 6 n. 25, 81–83, 82 n. 108 Meristae 56 n. 31, 65 n. 57 Merkavah 177 meshummadim (see also mumar) 49, 50, 116–117, 134 n. 51, 137 n. 60, 144–145, 150, 166, 193

272

Index of Subjects

– as an aggregative collective designation 10 n. 40, 56 n. 30 – as “non-observers” 131–132, 136 – changing signification of 18, 27–28, 31, 153 – etymology of 118, 118 n. 5, 122 n. 17 – definition of 24, 31 n. 11, 116, 117–126 – flagrant 127–131, 128 n. 36, 129 n. 38, 129 n. 42, 136 – from appetite 132–138, 135 n. 54, 139–143, 138 n. 61 – in regard to one precept 127 n. 35 – in regard to the instruction of a court 127, 130–131, 136 – to provoke 132–138, 135 n. 54, 139–143, 138 n. 61, 157–158 – yisra’el meshummad 118, 118 n. 4 – vs. “failed rabbi” 167–168, 175–176, 191 messiah 86–87, 164–165, 223 messianic era 155 Metatron (see also Elisha ben Abuyah) 164–165 n. 70, 174–175 n. 24 mezuzah 114–115 n. 88 microforms 174 Midian 100 n. 29, 102–103 midrash – classical Palestinian, definition of 4, 6 – dating of 22, 22 n. 64 – tannaitic, definition of 12–13 Midrash Hagadol 55 n. 26 Midrash Hakhamim 84–85, 85 n. 123 Midrash Tannaim on Deuteronomy 6 n. 25, 55 n. 23, 55 n. 26 minim 49, 50–51, 144, 146 n. 4, 150, 166, 193 – and disputation (see also disputation) 162–164 – as a non-differentiated term 56, 62–63, 63 n. 50, 87 – as a sectarian designation 56, 56 nn. 29–30, 62–63 – as gentiles 88–91, 163 n. 63 – changing signification of 3, 27–28, 50–51, 153, 167 – coinage of 57–58, 62, 64

– curse on 1, 4, 4 n. 19, 16, 56 n. 31, 65, 65–66 n. 58, 71, 95–96, 95 n. 13, 127 n. 35 – definition of 17–18, 24, 31 n. 11, 58 n. 35 – etymology of 50, 53–54, 53–54 n. 15, 59, 59 n. 37 – frequency of 54–55 – identity of 17, 31, 50–51, 57–72, 122–126, 218 – instability of in manuscript tradition 56 n. 29, 70 n. 73 – references to in tannaitic literature 55 nn. 21–26, 76–77 nn. 90–91 – vs. hairetikos (see minut, vs. hairesis) – vs. meshummadim 127, 127 n. 35, 134–135, 134 n. 51, 136–138, 138 n. 61 – vs. minut (see minut, vs. minim) – vs. “those who say that there are two powers” 72–87, 158, 158 n. 44 – who behave like apiqorsim 158–163 minut 48, 51–55 – coinage of 55 n. 27 – definition of 24, 31 n. 11, 53–54, 58 n. 35 – frequency of 54–55 – references to in tannaitic literature 55 n. 25, 86 n. 127 – vs. hairesis 51–52, 56–57 – vs. minim 53–55 – vs. zenut 55 n. 27, 86 n. 127 Mishnah – as the first rabbinic text 5–6 – composition of 6, 12–13 – conservative editing of 149–150 – dating of 22, 22 n. 64 – ideology of 149, 151 – purpose of 12–13, 12 n. 48 – relationship to Tosefta 151 n. 23 mitzvah / mitzvot 24, 28–30, 33–34, 99–102, 123 n. 20, 132–133, 147 n. 8, 148–149, 151, 178 n. 32, 195 – and meshummadim 116, 117–118, 122, 126, 127 n. 35, 127–128, 131, 136, 138, 142–143 – observance in the rabbinic period 93 n. 4 – vs. “good deeds” 102–106, 117

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monotheism (see God) Mordecai 203 n. 42 Moses 1, 66, 70–71, 80, 96–97 n. 17, 98, 102–103, 139, 152–153 n. 27, 182, 202–203 movement (see collective phenomena) mumar (see also meshummadim) 140 n. 67 – definition of 31 n. 11, 118–119, 118–119 nn. 6–7 – and censorship (see also censorship) 31 n. 11, 97 n. 19, 118–119, 118–119 nn. 6–7, 128 n. 36, 133–134 n. 50, 134 n. 51, 136–137 n. 57 mysticism – and ascent narratives (see also Elisha ben Abuyah) 171–172, 171–172 n. 13, 188 n. 62 Naaman 200–201 Nahman, Rav 155, 163–165 Natan, Rabbi 84–85, 114–115 n. 88, 137 n. 60 Natan ben Yosef, Rabbi 114–115 n. 88 Nazarenes 53 n. 14 Nebuchadnezzar 46–47 New Testament 30–31, 37 n. 27, 47, 52, 148, 198 n. 26 Nile 47 Nissim Gaon 173 n. 18 Noah 104 Oral Torah (see Torah, Oral vs. Written) ordination, rabbinic 8, 10, 10 n. 42, 11 originary event 218 n. 1 orthodoxy (see also heresy, vs. orthodoxy) 15–16, 34–36, 34–35 n. 20, 39, 39 n. 34, 47, 48, 58 n. 35, 75 n. 86, 148 n. 14, 190–191, 208–209, 220–221 Oxford English Dictionary 35–36, 35 n. 23 paganism (see Greco-Roman religion) Palestinian Talmud – dating of 22, 22 n. 64 Papa, Rav 109 n. 71, 154, 182 Papi, Rav 109 n. 71 paqar 157, 159–163, 161 n. 56

273

pardes 171–172, 178, 188 pargod 207–208 Passover 130 patriarchs 1, 27, 39 n. 34, 219 Paul of Tarsus 30–31, 38, 38 n. 32, 40 n. 37, 129 n. 38 Pentateuch 59, 99, 148 n. 12 performance 75 n. 86, 218 Peripatetics 37 persecution (see shemad) perushim (see also Pharisees) 56 n. 31, 59 n. 37 – and the curse on the minim 56 n. 31, 65 – as a pejorative appellation 59 n. 37, 63–65, 63 n. 51 – coinage of 63–65 – definition of 63–65 Pharaoh 70–71, 80 Pharisees (see also perushim) 51 n. 5, 56, 59 n. 37, 66–67 n. 60, 218 – as a group designation 11, 62, 93–94 – as a hairesis 38 n. 32, 69–70 – as a sectarian entity 17, 51, 66–68, 68 n. 63, 70–71, 72, 86 – coinage of 63–64 – curse on 96 – disagreements of with the Sadducees 148–149, 148 n. 14 – non-existence of in the rabbinic period 27, 72 – relationship of to the rabbis 5, 6, 39, 39 n. 34, 50 n. 2, 63–64 – vs. “Fourth Philosophy” 71 Philo 38, 38 n. 32, 40 n. 37, 52, 52 n. 10, 75, 75 n. 84, 80 n. 102, 159, 159 n. 48 philosophy (Greek) 144, 148, 156 – rabbinic knowledge of 144–146, 145–146 n. 3, 148, 151 phylacteries 71, 76, 86 n. 127, 103 n. 40 piyyut 220 plague of darkness 96–97 n. 17 Plato 75 Platonism 151 n. 24 polytheism 44–45 n. 48 practice (see belief, vs. practice) precepts (see mitzvot) priests 5, 27, 92–93, 92 n. 2, 152 n. 27, 182, 219

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prophecy 46 proscriptions (see mitzvot) providence (see God, providence of) purity 34, 34–35 n. 20, 67–68, 76, 114–115 n. 88, 130, 131, 164–166, 164 n. 69, 166 n. 73, 191 queen of heaven 46–47 Qumran 60, 67–68 nn. 60–61 Rabbah bar bar Hanah 136 n. 55 rabbi – as a group designation 9–11, 10 n. 40, 217–218 – as a substantive 10–11, 221, 221 n. 8 – as a title of respect 10–11, 10 n. 43, 221 n. 8 – as sage 11–13, 27, 215–216 – failed (see failed rabbis) – in epigraphical evidence 10 n. 43, 219, 219 n. 2 – in Roman and early Christian sources 218–220 – vs. non-rabbi 18–19 – vs. sage 221, 221 n. 7 rabbinic community – definition of 1, 6–8 – formation of, traditional narrative (see Yavneh) – gradual development of 2–3, 13–14, 27, 87, 91, 92, 217–224 – scholarly models of 8–9, 13–14 rabbinic Judaism 7–8, 16, 218, 221–224, 222 nn. 10–11 rabbinic literature – and biography 168–169, 168 n. 4 – and historiography 2 n. 9, 5, 20, 75 n. 86, 168–169 – censorship of (see censorship) – citation style of 24, 25–26 – database sources for 25–26 n. 71 – dating of 22, 22 n. 64 – definition of 2, 5–8 – editing of 20, 148 n. 12 – in archaeological evidence 219, 219 n. 2 – literary characteristics 19–20, 218 – oral transmission of 19, 19 n. 59

– study of, methodological issues 20–23 – vs. other contemporary Jewish genres 220 rabbinic period, definition of 7–8, 19, 19 n. 59 rabbinic self-conception 3, 6, 7, 13, 18, 51, 72–74, 91, 106, 138, 151, 217 Rashi 135 n. 53, 142 n. 73, 197 n. 21 Rav 129 n. 42 Rava 133–136, 135 n. 54 Ravina 133–136, 136 n. 55, 143, 143 n. 74 Red Sea 80, 82 Rehov 219 n. 2 reiqanin 98–103, 100–101 nn. 29–30, 101–102 n. 33 religion, relevance of the category to antiquity 22–23, 23 n. 67, 220–221 repentance 96–97 n. 17, 105, 198 n. 26, 199 n. 28, 206 n. 53 – sins preventing 180, 193–199, 196–197 n. 15, 199 n. 28, 205–215 Resh Lakish 98–102, 100–101 nn. 27–29, 101 n. 31, 101–102 n. 33 resurrection of the dead 110, 149, 153 – “those who deny” as a polemical target 57, 76–77 n. 90, 110–111, 122, 147–151, 156, 193 Revised Standard Version 25–26 Roman Emperor 90 Roman Empire 9–10 n. 39, 39 n. 34, 74 n. 81 – christianization of 86–87, 86–87 n. 130 – religions of (see Greco-Roman religions) Romans 83 n. 119, 88–89, 122 n. 18, 126, 128, 151 Rome 70, 88 n. 135, 120–121 – first Jewish revolt against 1, 72, 120–121, 121 n. 15 rule of faith (see faith, rule of) Sabbath 97, 99 – and Elisha ben Abuyah 167–168, 177, 187, 188–189, 188 n. 63, 208 – and flagrant meshummadim 127–128, 129 n. 38, 129 n. 42 – and meshummadim 116, 119, 131–133

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Index of Subjects

Sadducees 34–35 n. 20, 53 n. 13, 56, 128 – and Yohanan ben Zakkai 67–68, 68 n. 62 – as a group designation 10 n. 40, 11, 62, 93–94 – as a hairesis 38 n. 32, 69–70 – as a sectarian entity 51, 66–69, 68 n. 63, 72, 86, 153 – as apiqorsim 145–146, 148–151, 156 – disagreements of with the Pharisees 71, 148–151 – non-existence of in the rabbinic period 27, 72, 149 n. 15 – relationship of to the rabbis 5 – vs. minim in the manuscript tradition 56 n. 29, 66 n. 59, 69, 70 n. 73, 89 n. 139, 134 n. 51 sage – as a group designation 10 n. 40 – as an individual ideal 7, 11–13, 27, 87, 91, 215–216, 220, 221 – as rabbi 11–13, 27, 215–216, 218–220 – disciple of 7, 11, 154 n. 32, 221, 221 n. 9 – vs. rabbi 221, 221 n. 7 Samaritans 56, 56 n. 30, 80 n. 103, 121 n. 16 Sanhedrin 1, 1 n. 3, 4, 8 n. 31, 100 n. 29 Sarah 104 savarya 184 n. 55 schism 33, 33 n. 16 scholasticism 69–70, 152–153 n. 27, 153–154 scribes 3, 5, 6, 27, 145, 152–154, 152–153 n. 27 scripture 56 n. 30, 61, 67–68, 76, 98, 140, 114–115 n. 88, 155 n. 34 Scroll of Fasting 120 n. 11, 121–122, 120–121 nn. 13–15 Second Temple 99–100, 129–130, 195 – destruction of 1, 5–6, 39, 51, 64, 65–66 n. 58, 72, 73, 149 n. 15, 222 n. 10 – Judaism 222, 222 n. 11 – literature 59–60, 62 Seder Olam 149–150, 149–150 n. 18 Seleucids 120–121 separatists (see also perushim, as a pejorative appellation) 78, 122, 122 n. 18, 150, 161, 193

275

Septuagint 53–54 n. 15, 57 n. 37, 61–62, 202 n. 38 serpent 152 n. 26 sexual misconduct 177, 187, 188, 211–212, 211 nn. 72–73 Shammai 1–2, 4, 12 shatnez 132–133, 141–143, 142 n. 73, 143 n. 74 shekhinah (see God, presence of) Shem 104 shema’ ḥas ve-shalom 179–184, 180 n. 39, 181 n. 40, 181 n. 43, 182 n. 46, 183 n. 49, 183 n. 50 shemad 117–126, 119–120 nn. 9–10, 122 n. 17 shemoneh esrei 65–66 n. 58, 95–96 Shemuel bar Nahman, Rabbi 152 n. 27 Shemuel the younger 65 n. 58 Sheol 196 shepherds of small cattle 123–125, 136–137, 137 n. 59 Shimon ben Eleazar, Rabbi 132, 203 n. 42 Shimon ben Lakish, Rabbi 90 Shimon ben Shetah 213, 213 n. 80 Shimon the Hasid 98 Sifre Zutta on Numbers 6 n. 25 Simlai, Rabbi 160–163, 161 n. 54 Simon Magus 169–170 sin – those who cause the public to as a polemical target 122, 193–216, 198 n. 26 Sinai 47, 80, 82, 82 n. 109, 84–85 n. 122, 99 n. 25, 100 n. 29, 191 sinners of Israel 3, 18, 50, 92–106, 127 – and exclusionary rhetoric 94–96, 96 n. 17 – as an aggregative collective designation 93–94 – as full of mitzvot 98–102 – identity of 93–94, 94 n. 7 – inclusionary trend of 96–98 – vs. wicked of Israel 93–94, 94 n. 6, 95 nn. 10–11, 96 n. 16, 97 n. 18 Sirillo, Solomon 161 nn. 54–55 skepticism 151 n. 24 slanderers 96

276

Index of Subjects

sociology 10 n. 40, 11 n. 46, 45–47 solipsism 27, 27 n. 1, 151 n. 24 Solomon 222 n. 10 son of man 81, 164–165 n. 70 Soncino Press 89 n. 138, 104 n. 56, 128 n. 36, 140, 140 n. 66, 155 n. 34, 155 n. 37, 164 n. 68 Song of the Sea 80, 100 n. 29 soteriology 29, 73 n. 80 stam (see Babylonian Talmud, editors of) stammaim (see Babylonian Talmud, editors of) Stoicism 151 n. 24 Stoics 11, 37 straw men – rabbinic opponents as 17–18, 27–28, 50, 75 n. 86, 90–91, 146, 153, 156, 218 superstition 220–221 synagogue 39 n. 34, 75 n. 86, 123 n. 20, 129–130 Syria 204 talmid ḥakham (see sage, disciple of) Talmud – Babylonian (see Babylonian Talmud) – Palestinian (see Palestinian Talmud) tannaim, definition of 7 tannaitic literature, definition of 4, 5–7 tannaitic midrash (see midrash) tarbut ra‘ah 177 n. 31, 207 Tarfon, Rabbi 147 n. 8 Targum 220 tent of meeting 98 testimonia 79–80 n. 101, 160 tetragrammaton 77 n. 91 tithing 114–115 n. 88 Titus 1 n. 1 Torah (see also Sinai) 107–108, 114– 115 n. 88, 128–130, 133–134, 147 n. 8, 149, 152–153 n. 27, 207–208, 210, 215 – Oral vs. Written 1, 1 n. 5, 99, 99 n. 25, 110, 148, 148 n. 12 – precepts of (see mitzvot) – proscriptions of (see mitzvot) – provoking of 140, 140 n. 66 – rejection of 116–118, 127 n. 35, 128–131, 138, 188

– “those who deny” as a polemical target 57, 72, 110–111, 122, 147–148, 149–151, 152–153 n. 27, 156, 193 Tosefta – dating of 22, 22 n. 64 – relationship to Mishnah 151 n. 23 traditions of the fathers (see also, Torah, Oral vs. Written) 148, 153 two powers 34, 34 n. 19, 75 n. 86, 158, 162, 163 – definition of 74–75 – “those who say there are” as a polemical target 18–19, 50–51, 72–87 – “those who say there are” vs. minim 72–87, 167 – vs. “many powers” 78–79, 79 n. 99, 85 tzedaqot 104–105 n. 56 Uzziah 202 Vespasian 1, 1 n. 1, 4 n. 17, 222 n. 10 voluntary associations, rabbinic 9, 9 n. 38 wicked of Israel (see sinners of Israel) wonder-workers 5 world to come 82, 210–212 – exclusion from 57, 63, 93, 110–113, 147, 189, 193, 202 – rejection of 76, 76–77 n. 90, 145–146, 149, 153 – reward in 92, 147 n. 8, 189–190, 190 n. 70 ya‘al kagam 135, 135 n. 53 Yalqut Shimoni 113 Yavneh – as birthplace of rabbinic community 1–7, 16, 65 n. 58, 75 n. 86, 221 Yehoshua, Rabbi 63 n. 53, 114–115 n. 88, 123 n. 20, 154 n. 30, 191, 202, 213 Yehoshua ben Levi, Rabbi 154, 154 n. 30 Yehoshua ben Perahia, Rabbi 212–214 – unnamed disciple of 193, 199, 200 n. 29, 201 n. 36, 205 n. 50, 206, 211, 212–215 Yehudah, Rabbi 132, 155, 162 n. 60 Yehudah bar Masparta, Rabbi 107–108 Yehudah ben Tabbai 214

8

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0

Index of Subjects

Yehudah the Patriarch, Rabbi 89–90, 141 n. 70, 147 n. 8, 154, 154 n. 30, 212, 212 n. 77 Yermiyah, Rabbi 129 n. 42, 155, 191 Yishmael, Rabbi 12, 100–101 n. 29, 195–196, 198–199 Yitzhak, Rabbi 89, 100–101 n. 29, 137 n. 60 Yohanan, Rabbi 87, 100–101 n. 29, 136–138, 138 n. 61, 152, 154–155, 154 n. 30, 159–163, 162 n. 60, 165, 191, 201, 204, 210–211

277

Yohanan ben Zakkai, Rabbi 1, 4, 67–68, 68 n. 62 Yonatan, Rabbi 100–101 n. 29, 154 n. 30 Yose, Rabbi 196 n. 15 Yossi, Rabbi 164–165 Yossi (the Priest), Rabbi 147 n. 8 Yossi the son of Rabbi Yehudah, Rabbi 141–142, 141 n. 70 Zadok of Galilee 69, 71 Zeira, Rabbi 130–131, 155 Zoroastrian 169 n. 6