Judaism in Late Antiquity: Part One : The Literary and Archaeological Sources (001) (HANDBOOK OF ORIENTAL STUDIES/HANDBUCH DER ORIENTALISTIK) [Illustrated] 9004101292, 9789004101296

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JUDAISM IN LATE ANTIQUITY PARTONE

THE LITERARY AND ARCHAEOLOGICAL SOURCES

HANDBUCH DER ORIENTALISTIK HANDBOOK OF ORIENTAL STUDIES ERSTE ABTEILUNG

DER NAHE UND MITTLERE OSTEN THE NEAR AND MIDDLE EAST

HERAUSGEGEBEN VON

H. ALTENMÜLLER, B. HROUDA B.A. LEVINE, K.R. VEENHOF SECHSZEHNTER BAND

JUDAISM IN LATE ANTIQUITY PARTONE

THE LITERARY AND ARCHAEOLOGICAL SOURCES

JUDAISM IN LATE ANTIQUITY EDITEDBY

JACOB NEUSNER PARTONE

THE LITERARY AND ARCHAEOLOGICAL SOURCES

EJ. BRILL LEIDEN· NEW YORK' KÖLN

1995

The planning and organization of this book were supported by the University of South Florida, the Max Richter Foundation and the Tisch Family Foundation. The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data (Revised for vol. I) Judaism in late antiquity. (Handbuch der Orientalistik, Erste Abteilung, der Nahe und Mittlere Osten, 0169-9423; 16.-17. Bd.) Includes bibliographical references and index. Contents: pt. I. The literary and archaeological sources - pt. 2. Historical syntheses. I. Judaism-History-Post-exilic period, I. Neusner, Jacob, 586 B.C.-210 A.D.-Sources. 1932II. Series: Handbuch der Orientalistik. Erste Abteilung, Nahe und der Mittlere Osten; 16.-17. Bd. BM176.J8 1994 296'.09'015 94-30825 ISBN 90-04-10130-6

Die Deutsche Bibliothek - CIP-EinheitsaufnahIne Handbuch der Orientalistik / hrsg. von B. Spuler unter Mitarb. von C. van Dijk ... - Leiden; New York; Köln: Brill. Teilw. hrsg. von H. Altenmüller. - Teilw. mit Parallelt.: Handbook

of oriental studies

Abt. I, Der Nahe und Mittlere Osten = The Near and Middle East / hrsg. von H. Altenmüller ... NE: Spuler, Bertold [Hrsg.); Altenmüller, Hartwig [Hrsg.]; Handbook of oriental studies

Bd. 16.Judaism in late antiquity. Pt. I. The literary and archaeological sources. - 1994

JudaisIn in late antiquity / ed. by Jacob Neusner. - Leiden; New York; Köln: Bril1. Handbook of oriental studies : Abt. 1, The Near and Middle East ;

... ) NE: Neusner,Jacob [Hrsg.]

Pt. I. The literary and archaeological sources. - 1994

(Handbook of oriental studies : Abt. 1, The Near and Middle East ; Bd.16) ISBN 90-04-10 129-2

ISSN 0169-9423 ISBN 9004 101292

© Copyright 1995 by E.J. Brill, Leiden, 7he Netherlands

All rights reseroed. No part qf this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval !jJstem, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission ftom the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items flr internal or personal use is granted by EJ. Brill provided that the appropriate fies are paid direct[y to 7he Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910 Danvers MA 01923, USA. Fees are suiject to change. PRINTED IN THE NETHERLANDS

CONTENTS Preface .......................................................................................

VII

1. Introduction: The Scho1arly Study ofJudaism and its Sources ............. . William Scott Green, University of Rochester JUDAISM OUTSIDE OF RABBINIC SOURCES

2. Non-Rabbinic Literature ..................................................... Günter Stemberger, University of Vienna

13

3. The Targumim .......................................................................... Pau1 Flesher, University of Wyoming

40

4. The Art and Archaeo1ogy of AncientJudaism .................. James F. Strange, University of South F10rida

64

RABBINIC SOURCES

5. Defining Rabbinic Literature and its Principal Parts ....... Jacob Neusner, University of South Florida

117

6. The Mishnah, Tosefta, and the Talmuds .......................... AlanJ. Avery-Peck, College of the Ho1y Cross

173

7. Rabbinic Midrash ................................................................ Gary G. Porton, University of Illinois

217

WRITTEN EVIDENCE OF SYNAGOGUE LIFE

8. Jewish Liturgy andJewish Scholarship .............................. Lawrence Hoffman, Hebrew Union College-:Jewish Institute of Religion, New York

239

Indices ....................................................................................... General Index ...................................................................... Index of Biblical References ...............................................

267 267 274

PREFACE This volume introduces the sources of Judaism in late antiquity to scholars in adjacent fields, such as the study of the Old and New Testaments, ancient history of Classical Antiquity, earliest Christianity, the ancient Near East, and the history of religion. Here, in two volumes, we offer factual answers to the two questions that study of any religion in ancient times must raise. The first is, what are the sources-written and in material culture-that inform us about that religion? The second, treated in a companion volume, is, how do we understand those sources in the reconstruction of the history of various Judaic systems in antiquity. That is, the chapters set forth in intelligible systems the facts the sources provide. Because of the nature of the subject and acute interest in it, in part two, we also raise some questions particular to the study ofJudaism, those dealing with its historical relationship with nascent Christianity. In this part of the series, specialists in each of the types of sources on Judaism set forth the principal sources for the study of the Judaism of the dual Torah in its formative age, the first seven centuries C.E. [=A.D.] In the next part, specialists in the types of Judaism present what they deern to be syntheses of the sources. Further, in the companion volume specialists in the study of formative Christianity provide consensus-views of the character of Judaism in the first century and the relationship of Jesus to that Judaism. We conclude with a proposed periodization of the history of Judaism in its formative age. These essays, by specialists in the field, are addressed to nonspecialists who wish guidance in studying the topics treated here. I

I Readers in need of a bibliographical account of what has been done in the area of special interest to them, will find in the superb updating of Strack by Günter Stemberger, published as H. L. Strack, G. Stemberger, Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash. Foreword by Jacob Neusner (Minneapolis, 1992: Fortress), a compendious and thoughtful, definitive bibliography. Second, for absolutely first dass introductions to the state of numerous specific questions, the current work of Lester Grabbe, Judaismfrom Cyrus to Hadrian. I. 17ze Persian and Creek Periods. H. 17ze Roman Period (Minneapolis, 1992: Fortress Press), provides precisely what one needs to know about issues of sources, syntheses, and methodological considerations, to proceed further. Finally, for annotated bibliographical essays on the special problems of the paramount Judaism treated here, Rabbinic Judaism, now there is available a new printing of the work edited by me, 17ze Study of Ancient Judaism. N.Y., 1981: Ktav. Second printing: Atlanta, 1992: Scholars Press for

VIII

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We mean to open the way to further reading on special problems and to give a broad perspective on the shape of the evidence and current conceptions of its meaning. In these descriptions of the state of the evidence, we therefore provide a first step in guiding readers toward what is known, and how they may examine the evidence. We mean to set forth a starting point for further work on a variety of topics. Our initial problem is to define the subject at hand, and the opening chapter spells out what we think we examine, and how we know evidence pertains to the object of our study when we deal with 'judaism." The introductory chapter reviews the major tendencies in the last seventy-five years of scholarship on Judaism in late antiquity. Only with that survey of strategies for the description of Judaisms in hand, do we turn to the sources that provide information on ancient Judaism. These take three forms, described in Chapters Two through Four: the writings of thatJudaism, archaeological evidence that derives from that Judaism, and references to Judaism in the writings of outsiders. We turn to writings of gentile writers and survey how to find out what observers had to say. We proceed to the archaeological evidence, surveying the main sites and how to gain access to reports on them and their meaning.

South Florida Studies in the History of Judaism. 1. The Stu4J qf Ancient Judaism: Mishnah, Midrash, Siddur. 11. The Stu4J qfAncient Judaism: The Palestinian and Babylonian Talmuds. It remains to note that this writer has edited The MacMillan Dictionary qf Judaism. The Biblical Period (N.Y., 1994: MacMillan Publishing Co.). My systematic introduction to the entire Rabbinic literature has been published in the following: The Doubleday Anchor Rqerence Library Introduction to Rabbinie Literature (N.Y., 1994: Doubleday). For RabbinicJudaism, I call attention also to the following introductions to the literature and religion: John Bowker, The Targums and Rabbinie Literature. An Introduction to Jewish Interpretations qf Scripture (Cambridge, 1969: Cambridge University Press); Hyam Maccoby, Early Rabbinie Writings (Cambridge, 1988: Cambridge University Press). Cambridge Commentaries on Writings qf the Jewish and Christian World, 200 BC to AD 200. Edited by P. R. Ackroyd, A. R. C. Leaney, and J. W. Packer. Volume III; Shmuel Safrai, editor; PeterJ. Tomson, Executive Editor, The Literature qf the Sages. First Part: Oral Tora, Halakha, Mishna, Tosifta, Talmud, External Tractates In the series, Compendia Rerum Iudaicarum ad Novum Testamentum. Section Two. The Literature qf the Jewish People in the Period qf the Second Temple and the Talmud (Assen/Maastricht and Philadelphia, 1987: Van Gorcum and Fortress Press). Note also the announced continuation, Shmuel Safrai, editor; Peter J. Tomson, Executive Editor, The Literature qf the Sages. Second Part. Midrash, ggada, Midrash Collections, Targum, Prayer, which, as of the date of the publication of this book has not yet appeared. A further important starting point is the entries on each document in Enryclopaedia Judaica (N.Y. andJerusalem, 1971: MacMillan and Keter). These are cited under the names of the various authors and cover every document treated here. The entries by M. D. Herr are noteworthy for their consistent plan; the others are haphazard and not always illuminating. Readers will find illuminating the comparison of these various volumes' approach with the one taken in this Handbook.

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IX

The principal literary sources on Judaism, the rabbinic literature forms the largest corpus of writing about Judaism; the Targumim, or translations of the Hebrew Scriptures. We turn finally to the liturgy of Judaism, which has to be examined in its own terms and framework. Finally, we treat the liturgy as evidence only for those who produced and used the prayers now in hand, neither assuming that the prayers stand for RabbinicJudaism in particular nor offering the postulate that they do not. The corresponding volume moves from the sources to statements of the contemporary authoritative syntheses: how these sources serve scholarship in the formation of an intelligible account of Judaism. Matching the account of the sources for the study of Judaism, the several syntheses turn from fact to interpretation. The interpretations that are presented state the prevailing consensus of learning in most academic centers for the study of Judaism in Europe, the USA and Canada, and principal universities in the State of Israel. The contents of the companion volume, Historical Syntheses, are as follows: Major Issues in the Study and Understanding of Jewish Mysticism, Ithamar Gruenwald, Tel Aviv University; [1] JUDAIC SYSTEMS OTHER THAN RABBINIC: Hellenistic Judaism, Lester Grabbe, University of Hull; The Judaic System of the Dead Sea Scrolls, Johann Maier, University of Cologne; The Judaism of the Synagogues [Focusing on the Synagogue of Dura Europos], Jonathan A. Goldstein, University of Iowa; [2] RABBINIC JUDAISM: Rabbinic Judaism: Its History and Hermeneutics, Jacob Neusner, University of South Florida; [3] SPECIAL TOPICS: Judaism in the Land of Israel in the First Century, James Dunn, University of Durham; Jesus within Judaism, Bruce D. Chilton, Bard College; History of Judaism: its Periods in Antiquity, Gabriele Boccaccini, University of Michigan. This book and its companion therefore mean to guide readers in taking the first steps in the study of Judaism in the time of the beginnings of Christianity and the formation of the BibIe, Old and New Testaments together. It does not compete with two other, vaIuabie introductions to the study of ancient J udaism, one bibIiographical, the other centered on "the state ofthe question." Indeed, because these other works are available, we were able to conceive the present book in the way we have, as a fundamental introduction to a considerable subject, a first step for outsiders with special reason to find their way into the field. A brief definition of the terms and premises of this book, including those that have already been used, will help readers grasp the

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conceptual framework of this work. Here we carefully differentiate the various documents and other sources of information on Judaism. So we have at the outset to ask, What, first of all, do we me an by 'judaism" or "aJudaic system" or "a type ofJudaism"? I have further to explain why I regard it as urgent to differentiate the various sources and not to treat them as representative of a single, coherent religion. All descriptive (as distinct from theologieal) sc holarship recognizes out of the diversity of sources not a single Judaism, but a set ofJudaic systems or Judaisms, which ac count for the character of the sources themselves. All of these "systems" or 'judaisms" have to be characterized in their own evidence and terms, as is the case in this introduction to their sources and their synthesis. A Judaism presents a world view (ethos), a way of life (ethics), and an account of the social entity, Israel (ethnos), that appeals to the Pentateuch in setting forth a (to the faithful) self-evidently valid answer to an urgent question. AJudaism addresses its social entity, its "Israel," and identifies its canonical writings, always including the Pentatreueh, commonly extending to the entirety of the Hebrew Scriptures of ancient Israel or "Old Testament." A Judaism will select a central symbol and will present a generative myth, which, in narrative form, accounts for the system as a whole and all of its parts as well. We know one Judaism from some other by comparing and contrasting the generative myth and central symbol that characterizes one hut not another. That definition permits us to accommodate as equally interesting and important all of the types of sources-written, archaeological, and external in originas well as all of the syntheses that the respective sources yield. The conception of 'judaisms" also relieves us of the obligation of harmonizing all of the sourees, on the one side, or eliminating as "inauthentie" or "marginal" sources that do not cohere with the ones we maintain are "normative." That theological account of matters is entirely valid in its context, but that context is not the one defining the work of description and analysis that is undertaken here. The reason that people who are not theologians may think about one unitary, harmonious Judaism, standing in a single, linear relationship with the Hebrew Scriptures ("Sinai"), and forming the incremental statement that is authentie, normative, orthodox, and classical, is simple. Later on, speaking descriptively, we may say that there was only a single unitary, linear, and incremental Judaism ('jewish tradition"). Looking backward, we know that of theJudaisms ofthe time, one turned out to predominate later on. It

PREFACE

XI

is the Judaism that appeals to the symbol of the Torah and relates the myth of the revelation by God to Moses, caHed our rabbi, at Sinai, of the Torah in two media, written and oral. But when that Judaism took shape between the first and the seventh centuries of the Common Era (C.E. = A.D.), other Judaic systems existed, and within the Judaism of the dual Torah accommodation was made for points of emphasis, e.g., mystical religious experience, that the principal systemic documents do not stress. Earliest Christianity falls weH within the definition of (a) Judaism; the Judaism attested by the Dead Sea writings certainly does as weH; and there is no doubt that the HeHenistic Judaic writings adumbrate a distinct system as weH. The approach to the study of ancient Judaism taken in these essays, with its emphasis upon the diversity of Judaic systems of Judaisms, is not the sole current way of viewing matters. Another approach asks all evidence to tell about a single Judaism, which everywhere predominated. That approach begins in the requirement of the theology of Christianity to define that Judaism out of which Christianity emerged. Since, so me hold, to begin with there was one single, harmonious Christianity, so, therefore, we have to describe one single, equally uniformJudaism. Books aboutJudaism in modern times derived first from Protestant, and only later from Judaic theologians, and only now have historians of religion addressed the task. So it is to begin with Christian theological interest that ac counts for interest in the historical description of another religion altogether, namely, Judaism. Since Christianity is seen to emerge as a single religion, so too Judaism is described as a single, unitary religion. That conception then allows historians to compare and contrast one religion with another, a single Christianity with a single Judaism. The reason a different approach, represented in these pages, has taken over is simple. A considerable obstacle to the presentation of one unitary, harmonious Judaism, however, confronts us when we examine the diverse positions concerning a common agenda of topics set forth various Judaic writings. If we ask Philo, the Essenes of Qumran, Josephus, and authors of diverse extant writings-apocalyptic, pseudepigraphic, for instance-of the first centuries B.C. and A.D. to define for us what they me an by the shared categories, e.g., "God," "Torah," and "Israel," each document, whether standing for an individual or an entire community, presents its own answers, and these conflict with those of all others. Since not all can be right, precisely what we mean by a systematic statement about Judaism as a single religion is hardly dear. Describing "theJudaism

XII

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of Jesus," therefore proves exceedingly uncertain. That fact hardly surprises historians of earliest Christianity, who have to conte nd with aJesus fuHy set forth in his life by the Evangelists as against a Jesus with no biography and only a few authoritative sayings defined by Paul; a Church governed by the Torah based inJerusalem and a Church not governed by the Torah and free of locative authority altogether, among numerous contradictory allegations set forth by authoritative writings. Some, including this writer, have formulated matters in terms of a plurality of Judaic or Christian systems, hence speaking of 'judaisms" or "Christianities." To place into correct scholarly context the position taken in these volumes, I have to point out there are other approaches to exactly the same problem. As Green's introduction explains, there are three solutions to the broadly-acknowledged fact that various sources of Judaism conflict now circulate, of which the third forms the basis for the essays here. The first is the nominalist, seeing Judaism as the sum and substance of what diverse Jews said about this and that; the second is essentialist and harmonistic, by definition, often appealing to theological perspectives, seeing Judaism as the lowest common denominator of all evidences; the third Green titles polythetic classification. This builds description ofJudaic religion out of concrete traits rather than essences or self-identified groups. The first is represented by S. J. D. Cohen, whose From the Maccabees to the Mishnah (Library of Early Christianity. Philadephia, 1987: Westminster Press) gives us as many Judaisms as there were Jews; the second position is represented by the well-known names of George Foot Moore, Ephraim E. Urbach, and most currently E. P. Sanders essentialist-harmonistic approach, taken in his Paul and Palestinian Judaism. A Comparison rif Patterns rif Religion. (London: SCM Press, 1977), and the third by this writer's Israel: Judaism and its Social Metaphors (Cambridge, 1988: Cambridge University Press), with the results now fuHy summarized in Rabbinie Judaism: An Historical Introduction (Bethesda, 1995: CDL Press) and in Rabbinie Judaism: Structure and System (Minneapolis, 1995: Fortress Press). Is there no Judaism that transcends the various Judaisms, e.g., represented by the prayers that people said in the synagogues? That is, in this same context, we have to ask ourselves about the interpretation, within the systemic approach, of the liturgy of the synagogue, so far as we have access to it. The brief reference to the problem of classifying the liturgy in relationship to Judaic religious systems requires amplification. The liturgical writings are not so readily classified as other bodies of writings that represent (a) Judaism. On the one hand, it is clear from rabbinic literature, the

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XIII

sages of ancient times took responsibility for the regulation of the liturgy, as they did of much else. But the same sources that portray sages as defining the wording of prayers and the conduct of synagogue life also indicate that the liturgy is broadly accepted and in no way representative of the sages in particular, on the one side, or the result of their authorship, on the other. The recitation of the Shema ("Hear 0 Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one") for example cannot be assigned to either the authorship or the sponsorship of the authorities who produced the Mishnah, but long antedates them. The Targums, or translations of Scriptures into the Aramaic vernacular that Jews in the Near and Middle East spoke, finally, are diverse at least one of them, that of Onqelos, cites the Mishnah and must be dassified as rabbinic in origin and program; the dassification of others is hardly so dear. Therefore the generality of scholarship prefers to take account of the diverse character of the sources and the contradictions in both detail and in general that they yield by formulating our picture in the categories used here: various Judaisms or Judaic systems, the evidence of each to be examined in its own terms. That preference accounts for the character of both parts of this handbook on Judaism. I got the idea for this book when pursuing research on Zoroastrianism in connection with my Judaism and Z,oroastrianism at the Dusk qf Late Antiquiry.2 Working in the substantial collection of Cambridge University Library, I looked in vain for basic, dear introductions to the history, literature, and religion of Zoroastrianism in antiquity. What I found was scattered, diffuse, and often not entirely dear. Few specialists in the field write with outsiders to the field in mind, and much that they produce is incoherent and subjective. Not only so, but interests of historians predominated, and only a few works on Zoroastrianism as a religion are to be found. So the literature abounds in speculation on "the date of Zoroaster," and other pseudo-historical questions, but writing on the character of the religion of Zoroaster proves, if intellectually impressive, sparse and on the whole episodic. In German, English, and French, at this time, perhaps two or three titles per language exhaust the principal bibliography. Asking myself how matters would appear to scholars in fields 2 Judaism and .:{proastrianism at the Dusk of Late Antiquiry. How Two Ancient Faiths Wrote Down 1heir Great Traditions. Atlanta, 1993: Scho1ars Press for South Florida Studies in the History of Judaism.

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adjacent to my own, I realized that, for the study of ancient Judaism too, there is need for an exercise in explanation to scholars in cognate areas now becoming aware of what they need to know concerning Judaic religious life. I turned to specialists on various problems to address colleagues in other fields, as well as lay readers. Their task is defined in a simple, practical way: to provide an entry to a rich and complex body of data, which bears important points of relevance to the study of religion in general, and religion in antiquity, in particular. When I proposed to EJ. Brill a volume to explain precisely what sources tell us about ancient Judaism and how scholars have formed of those sources a clear account of that Judaism, I found a positive response. The ready collaboration of some of the best scholars at work today underlined the widespread recognition that a book such as this would serve a useful purpose. Not only so, but the success of these two volumes has now encouraged me to organize an encyclopaedia of Judaism, the religion, which is now underway. I express my continuing thanks to- the University of South Florida for providing ideal conditions-including a generous research expense fund-in which to pursue my research, and to my colleagues in the Department of Religious Studies and in other departments for their collegiality. They show me the true meaning of honesty, generosity, and sincerity. In the long, prior chapter in my career, now closed, I never knew such people of character and conscience. While a Visiting Fellow at Clare Hall, Cambridge, I planned this book with my editor at E. J. Brill, Elisabeth Erdman-Visser. I found her work professional and responsible. The humble facilities of that research center on the fringes of Cambridge conceal the wealth of spirit and intellect that flourish there; to the President and staff of Clare Hall and to the many friends and colleagues who accorded a warm welcome to my wife and mys elf, I express thanks. My thanks go, also, to the collaborators in this project, who minded deadlines and produced their best work for the book. Jacob Neusner

INTRO DUC TI ON THE SCHOLARLY STUDY OF jUDAISM AND ITS SOURCES William Scott Green (University of Rochester) In 1927, George Foot Moore, in his now classic work,Judaism in the First Centuries of the Christian Era, epitomized the jewish religion of the ancient Mediterranean with the following words:

Of all the religions which at the beginning of the Christian era flourished in the Roman and Parthian EmpiresJudaism alone has survived, and it survived because it succeeded in achieving a unity of belief and observance amongJews in all their wide dispersion then and since. The danger of a widening gulf between Aramaic-speaking Jews and Greekspeaking Jews, which at the beginning of our era was not inconsiderable, was completely overcome .... The ground of this remarkable unity is to be found, not so much in a general agreement in fundamental ideas as in community of observance throughout the whole Jewish world. Wherever a Jew went he found the same system of domestic observance in effect. This was of especial importance in the sphere of wh at are now called dietary laws, because it assured hirn against an unwitting violation of their manifold regulations. If he entered a synagogue he found everywhere substantially the same form of the service with minor variations .... The 'Synagogue of Israel' (Keneset Israe~-we should say the Jewish churchmight with good right have taken to itself the title catholic (universal) Judaism in an inclusive sense, not, like catholic Christianity, with the implied exclusion of a multitude of sects and heresies. This unity and universality, as has been said, was not based upon orthodoxy in theology but upon uniformity of observance. 1

In 1992, E.P. Sanders, in his massive Judaism: Practice and Beliif 63 BCE-66CE, summarized his view of ancient judaism this way: Wehave seen enough to justify speaking of orthopraxy in worldwide Judaism. The five areas of law just enumerated [regular worship of God, Sabbath observance, circumcision, purity observance-primarily dietary restrictions, support of the Temple] establish it, even while no one of them shows absolute uniformity. All over the worldJewish practice was based on the Bible, which constituted common ground. Fur-

I George Foot Moore, Judaism in the First Centuries oJ the Christian Era (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966), Volume I. pp. 110-111.

2

WILLIAM seOTI GREEN

ther, representative Jews from a vast area met one another in Jerusalern, and this too helped to promote certain forms of agreement. AJew could travel from the westernmost part of the Empire to Mesopotamia, go to the synagogue, recognize at least aspects of the service, and perhaps even find a common language. If invited to a meal, he might find the combination of foods and the spices to be entirely new, but there would be no pork and the meat would not be bloody. On the sabbath a few customs might be strange, but the constantly burning lamps, the absence of toil, and the service of prayer and study would be, at least in general terms, the same as the customs which he left so many miles to the west. Jewish solidarity became a great socioreligious fact, one that endured after the temple was destroyed. 2

In contrast to these citations, E.R. Goodenough, in 1957 at the outset of his monumental Jewish !iJmbols in the Creco-Roman Period, raised aseries of questions about the sort of description of ancient Judaism proffered by Moore and again by Sanders. First, he observed that the varied religious writings by Jews in antiquity do not indicate, or even suggest, one another. Our evidence of post-ChristianJudaism comes almost entirely through rabbbinic channels. Ifwe had only the traditions oftheJews themselves as they have survived through the ages, we should hard1y have suspected the existence of a whole body of apocryphal and pseudepigraphicalliterature .... Some passage in rabbinic literature may refer to Josephus, but I have never seen an allusion to such a reference .... no one would have suspected Philo's existence merely from rabbinic sources. If without the text of Philo and the references to hirn and his predecessors in Christian writings anyone had apriori said such a Judaism as Philo's had ever existed, he would have been laughed out of scholarly company.

Second, Goodenough raised the possibi1ity that differentJewish 1iterary sources represented different ways of being religious. He advocated, for examp1e, an analysis of the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha that wou1d bring out several distinct types of Judaism, for the Jews who wrote the apocalypses of Enoch and Adam had a quite different conception of the aim of religion from that of halachic Jews. When we add to these the gnomic Judaism of Sirach, the Zionistic Judaism of the first three books of Maccabees, and the magical or demonic Judaism of Tobit, it is clear that here are a wide variety of what I have to call types of religiosity, many of which may appear in a single individual, but none of which can be eliminated for the sake of simplicity from a total picture of the Judaism of the age. 2 E.P. Sanders, Judaism: Practice and Belief 63BCE-66AD (Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1992).

INTRODUCTION: THE SCHOLARLY STUDY OF JUDAISM

3

Goodenough acknowledged the likelihood of similarity of religious practice amongJews both inside and outside the Land ofIsrael, but he did not suppose that such commonality automatically pointed to a single sort of religion. He insisted that his tory and cultural context mattered. With little or no reference to the rabbis the devotion of Jews in the diaspora to Sabbath, Festivals, monotheism, kosher food, and separatism continued unbroken, and forced itself for recognition even unto Roman law. In the diaspora .. .it is clear thatJews continued to be observant, but it is inconceivable that, from the fourth century B.C. to the seventh century A.D., wh at Jews considered were the laws to be observed, and the method of observance, as weIl as the reason for their observance, were not modified by gentile contacts. Monotheism, circumcision, the Sabbath, the Festivals, the dietary laws, and group segregation were clearly preserved, but what each of these meant, and the reasons why they should be observed, could have been, must have been, modified through the ages ....

Finally, in trenchant observations about the Judaism presented in Justin Martyr's Dialogue with Trypho, Goodenough drew special attention to the complex character ofJudaism outside of the Land of Israel. Trypho and his teachers seem to have much in common with both Philo and the rabbis, but to have been direct pupils of neither. The anti thesis between Philonism (in a sense of immediate literary dependence) and rabbinism (in any equally immediate literary sense) ... has no justification whatever .... Trypho seems to me of great value in showing that no single "norm" or "orthodoxy" dominated Judaism in the diaspora. Simplification-as would be the setting up of a single point of view for all heIlenizedJudaism-is the goal of historians, but is usually done in violation of the data. 3

Writing in 1994, Jacob Neusner drew the following consequences from Goodenough's insights: The issue, how do we define Judaism, is now settled: we do not. We define Judaisms, and the first step in the work of definition requires identifying the particular Judaic community that stands behind a given set of writings or that values and lives by those writings. Listing what characterizes all Judaic systems affords no means of answering the simple question, with so much in common, why do the diverse systems differ, as they do, if not on nearly everything, then, on everything that counts? And yet a striking characteristic of the Judaic

3 Erwin R. Goodenough, Jewish Symbols in the Greco-Roman Period, Volume I (New York: Bollingen Foundation, 1953), pp. 9, 34, 39, 40, 52-53.

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WILLIAM SCOTT GREEN

writings that survive from ancient times is their profound sectarianism. Each system carefully differentiates itself from everybody else, either the rest of "Israel," or the rest of humanity, treating even other Jews as no longer "Israel." But if all that we know about a Judaism is that a given group believed in the Sabbath, one God, and the Torah, we cannot then account for the structure and system of that group's Judaism. We cannot explain anything thatJudaic system deerns definitive of itself, we can only catalogue the things that that system, among all systems, regards as selfevident and systemically inert. There never was, in real, social terms, that single Judaism, there were only the infinite and diverse Judaic systems, as various social entities gave expression to their way oflife, worldview, and theory of the social entity that they formed. Only if we take for gran ted that "all Israel" formed "a people, one people," are we compelled to take seriously a social entity so vast as would sustain the category, Judaism-a single Judaism, one Judaism, for a single people, one people. 4

On the principle that a representative quotation is worth a thousand paraphrases, these long passages merit full citation in an introduction to a handbook on ancientJudaism because they display the major contours of modern scholarly debate about the subject. They illustrate graphically, if schematically, where we have come and where we have not come in nearly seventy-five years of study. The quotations reveal significant differences within scholarship about how ancientJewish religion-and by extension ancientJews themselves-are to be conceived and understood. These differences recently have been described by Shaye J.D. Cohen as a debate between "separators" and "unifiers"-those who read texts and analyze data with an eye towards their "distinctive characteristics" and those whose aim is the harmonization of diverse sources. 5 But the passages cited above suggest that the issue is deeper than the harmonization of sources or types of evidence. Goodenough's reference to "several distinct types ofJudaism," to "types of religiosity," and Neusner's insistence on the plural 'Judaisms" raise a fundamental issue about the nature of Jewish religion in antiquityor at least about how sc hol ars are able to understand that religion. In the line of scholarship represented by the citations from Goodenough and Neusner, the putative commonality of Jewish

4 Jacob Neusner, TheJudaism the Rabbis Takefor Granted (Atlanta: Sc hol ars Press for the University of South F1orida, 1994), pp. 12, 14, 15, 18 . .\ ShayeJ.D. Cohen, "The Modern Study of AncientJudaism," in The State of Jewish Studies, ed. by. Shaye J.D. Cohen and Edward L. Greenstein (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1990), p. 58-66.

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5

practice across the ancient Mediterranean (even if it could be convincingly demonstrated6 ) begs a question rather than answers one. Bluntly, the problem is, given the incommensurability of the sources, both literary and artifactual, does the analytical category 'judaism" represent one religion or many? Does it represent a stable morphology with multiple variants or different, even disparate morpoholgies that share some common elements? To be sure, these questions are interesting in themselves. But beyond that, insofar as contemporary adherants of Judaism and Christianity understand themselves to follow a particular historical development or to imitate a particular historical model, the way we answer the question has siginficant consequences. The similarity of Moore and Sanders notwithstanding (It is hard to discern a significant or substantive difference between Moore's notion of "catholic Judaism" and Sanders's of international 'jewish solidarity."), scholars since Goodenough have increasingly focussed attention on the problem of difference in ancient Judaism. Shemaryahu Talmon, for instance, depicts the early second Temple period Judaism as characterized by "multicentricity," "multiformity," and "heterogeneity."7 In their overview of the field, George Nickelsburg and Robert Kraft suggest how fundamentally the recognition of a "previously unsuspected religious, cultural, and social diversity among the Jewish people of the Greco-Roman period" has affected scholarly imagination about Jewish religion: "Whereas Rabbinic Judaism is dominated by an identifiable perspective that holds together many otherwise diverse elements, early Judaism appears to encompass almost unlimited diversity and variety-indeed, it might be more appropriate to speak of early Judaisms."8 AJ. Saldarini argues that the rabbinic movement gained ascendency over Jews only gradually, and that diversity within Judaism persisted weH into Talmudic times. 9 For much, if not most, of contemporary scholarship on Jewish religion in antiquity, then, the question is not the existence of diver-

See the discussion of Kraabel, below. S. Talmon, "The Internal Diversification of Judaism in the Early Second Temple Period," in S. Talmon, ed., Jewish Civilization in the Hellenistic-Roman Period (Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1991), pp. 16-43. II George W.E. Nickelsburg with Robert A. Kraft, "Introduction: The Modern Study of Early Judaism," in Robert A. Kraft and George W.E. Nickelsburg, eds., Earfy Judaism and Its Modem Interpreters (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1986), pp. I-30, p. 2. ~) AJ. Saldarini, 'Jews and Christians in the First Two Centuries: The Changing Paradigm," ShoJar (1012: Winter 1992), pp. 16-34); Matthew's Jewish-Christian Communiry (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), pp. 11-26. fi

7

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WILLIAM SCOTT GREEN

sity, but its nature, eharaeter, and eonsequenees. Of all the key problems that eonfront researehers, therefore, few are as urgent as those of definition and elassifieation. The remainder of this ehapter offers a neeessarily rapid review of same of the major strategies of defining ancient Judaism and of depieting differenee within it. It hardly needs saying that the two are inextrieably linked. Our definitions of Judaism will open or elose the possibilities of seeing and assessing differenee. Three major modes of definingJudaism pervade the field: essentialism, nominalism, and polythetie elassifieation. Eaeh hangs definition on a different feature. Essentialism seeks the fundamental eharaeteristie; nominalism is identity-eentered; and polythetie elassifieation foeuses on multiple traits. A type of monothetie elassifieation, essentialism eoneeives Judaism in terms of a eore belief or eharaeter or in terms of a foundational metaphor. For the deseription of differenee within Judaism, essentialism is problematie both beeause the trait set out as the marker of distinetiveness often is subjeetive, ungoverned by any prineiple, and beeause essentialism has no eapacity to treat differenee in a nuaneed way that displays pluralism and multiplieity. Essentialism either diminishes differenee or exaggerates it. On the one hand, beeause it seeks out and emphasizes similarity in order to demonstrate a eommon essenee, essentialism tends to obseure differenee or render it seeondary or episodie. On the other hand, because by its nature essentialism cannot admit of degrees, it tends to east differenee in absolute terms. In E.P. Sanders's Paul and Palestinian Judaism,1O for example, the rubrie of "eovenantal nomism" serves to embraee an exeeedingly wide range of texts, and so to diminish their differenees. All the texts of "Palestinian Judaism" are deemed similar beeause they share a fundamental defining eharaeter. At the same time, "eovenantal nomism" exeludes Paul from Palestinian Judaism. Although they have mueh in eommon with Palestinian Jewish texts, beeause Paul's writings are judged not to exhibit eovenantal nomism, they must be analyzed in juxtaposition to Judaism rather than as part of it.

\0 E.P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1977) Also see Alan F. Segal's, Rebecca's Children (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986), which draws heavily on the notions of covenant and Torah as "root metaphors" that signal the "overwhelming similarities" (p. 179) between Judaism and Christianity. Segal's essentialism is tempered, however, by a judicious use of social theory.

INTRODUCTION: THE SCHOLARLY STUOY OF JUDAISM

7

Essentialism is especially weH-suited to the realm of ideas and values, and it usually appears in efforts to account for complex religious behaviors in terms of theological beliefs or "cultural" categories, such as ethnicity. Consider, for example, Daniel Boyarin's contention that an attitude towards the body was the single motivation for rabbinic understandings of peoplehood and scriptural interpretation: Various types of Hellenistic Judaism, apocalyptic groups such as the one at Qumran, and early Christianity were all competing with the Judaism of the Rabbis and their followers for hegemony, and the discourse of the body waas the major arena of contention. For mostJews of late antiquity (as well as for most non:Jews), the human being was conceived of as a spirit housed, clothed, or even trapped and imprisoned in flesh, while for the Rabbis, resisting this notion, the human being was a body animated by a spirit. This definition is what lies at the bottom of such diverse and distinctive rabbinic practices as the insistence on sex and procreation as obligations, the practice of midrashic reading as opposed to allegory, and the focus on the corporate identity of Israel as a particular ethnic unit. 11

Or James Dunn's implication that ethnic exclusivism was the trait that marked early Christianity from Judaism. Christianity began as a movement of renewal breaking through the boundaries first within and then round the Judaism of the first century. At its historie heart Christianity is protest against any and every attempt to claim that God is our God and not yours. Against any and every tendency to designate others as "sinners", as beyond the pale of God's saving graee, or to insist that for sinners to receive forgiveness they must become righteous, that is "righteous" as we eount "righteousness."12

By taking the body as essenee, so to speak, Boyarin marks rabbinism as distinctive and lumps all other Jews, and presumably Judaisms (including Christianity), into a single, non-rabbinic, categorySanders in reverse! Likewise, Dunn's implicit reduction ofJudaism to ethnic exclusivism prevents hirn from seeing how the same trait, in a different form, characterized types of early Christianity as weH. The second sort of definition that operates widely in the study of ancientJudaism is the nominalist, which eschews essence and relies instead on declarations of identity made by various people in antiq-

11 Daniel Boyarin, Camal Israel (Berkeley: U niversity of California Press, 1993), p. 231. 12 James D.G. Dunn, The Partings qf the Wqys between Christianiry and Judaism and their Significance for the Character qf Christianiry (Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1991), p. 259.

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WILLIAM SCOTr GREEN

uity ar by the eontemporary seholar. 13 Nominalist definitions provide no analytie traits to permit either classifieation, eomparison, or generalization. 14 Moreover, "insider" -"outsider" designations, whether self-declared or not, are labile eategories and thus of limited analytieal value. Early rabbis, for instanee, declared the soealled minim ('seetarians') to be outsiders, not-Israel, but the minim appear to have resembled rabbis closely, perhaps too closely far eomfort. 15 Our framing of aneient data does not require the endorsement of the "native's point of view," though that point of view surely is part of the data we study. The question about differenee in aneient Judaism is ours, not theirs, and we possess a breadth of perspeetive-both historical and eultural-that the "natives" laeked. Indeed, if all we do is replieate the native view, we advanee understanding rather little. To be analytieally useful, our studies must draw on terms and eategories other than the native, for, as Durkheim long ago taught us, the natives always tell the truth, and they are always wrong. 16 Nominalism also is at work in most attempts to aeeount for differenee in aneient Judaism in terms of soeial history, primarily by deseribing the different groups (Pharisees, Saddueees, Essenes, the Fourth Philosophy, Samaritans, Zealots, Siearii, popular prophetie

13 See Shaye J.D. Cohen's, From the Maccabees to the Mishnah (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1987), p. 135, which conceives Judaism as " ... the religious behavior of all people who call themselves and are known to others as Jews, Israelites, and Hebrews." Likewise, Lawrence H. Schiffman, From Text to Tradition (Hoboken, NJ.: Ktav, 1991), definesJudaism as "the collective religious, cultural and legal tradition and civilization of the Jewish people as developed and passed down from biblical times until today." To be meaningful, this definition hangs on the identity of "the J ewish people." 14 See Shaye ].D. Cohen, "The Modem Study of Ancient Judaism," p. 67 illustrates the limitations of nominalist conceptions. After abrief discussion of Jewish apocalyptic, the Jewish rebellion against Rome, and rabbinie creativity, Cohen observes, "Insofar as the actors in these situations were Jews that which they were doing was Judaism, but insofar as what they were doing was the co mmon culture of the ancient world it is not jewish,' or at least not distinctively Jewish, at all." 15 W.S. Green, "Otherness Within: Towards a Theory of Difference in RabbinicJudaism," in]. Neusner and E.S. Frerichs, eds., "To See Ourselves as Others See Us": Christians, Jews, "Others" in Late Antiquity (Chico: Scholars Press, 1985), pp. 4969. TheSamaritans also can serve as an instructive illustration. See Ferdinand Dexinger, "Limits of To1erance in Judaism: The Samaritan Examp1e, in E.P. Sanders, A.I. Baumgarten, Alan Mendelson, eds., Jewish and Christian Self-Difinition, Volume T wo, Aspects I!! Judaism in the Graeco-Roman World (Philadelphia: F ortress Press, 1981), pp. 88-114. 16 Also see Talmon's brief remark about "subjective self-understanding and objective classification," in "Internal Diversification," pp. 38-39.

INTRODUCTION: THE SCHOLARLY STUDY OF JUDAISM

9

movements, etc.)Y For the description of difference in ancient Judaism, the social his tory of this period exhibits not only the problems with nominalism raised above, it also suffers from partial and fragmented source material that makes useful social his tory nearly impossible in some cases. For instance, to use the different groups to explain difference in ancientJudaism, we would need to be able to say what made each into a group in the first place and to say something trenchantly descriptive about their group life. In most cases, our knowledge is too sketchy to permit such a description. Whatever their other virtues, neither essentialism nor nominalism can adequately display the kind of diversity withinJudaism that scholarship now seeks to understand. The third approach to definition and differentiation in ancient Judaism is polythetic dassification. First introduced into the study ofJudaism in 1978 by Jonathan Z. Smith,lB polythetic dassification defines and compares by taking a number of traits as definitive of a dass or category and then comparing members of the dass in terms of their possession of those traits. Some may have many, some fewer. Polythetic dassification focuses on particular traits rather than essences or self-prodaimed identities. In the study of ancient Judaism, polythetic dassification has begun modestly, but studies that focus on specific and concrete traits have been effective in displaying difference in ancient Jewish religious life. In his initial proposal, Jonathan Smith showed that the trait of circumcision exhibits divergent meanings across texts. Jacob Neusner's study of social metaphors has demonstrated that the category "Israel" varies with the "generative problematic" of different texts. 19 In a development on the study of discrete traits, A.T. Kraabel has identified a cluster of seven characteristics (lay leadership, scripture in Creek translation, new community organization,

17 For a superb ovelView, see Gary G. Porton, "Diversity in Postbiblical Judaism," in Robert A. Kraft and George W.E. Nickelsburg, eds., Early Judaism and Its Modern Interpreters (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1986), pp. 57-80. Also see AJ. Saldarini, Pharisees, Scribes and Sadducees in Palestinian Sociery (Wilmington, Delaware: Michael Glazier, 1988) and Richard A. Horsley, Bandits Prophets, and Messiahs: Popular Movements at the Time cif Jesus (New York: Winston Press, 1985), Jesus and the Spiral cif Violence: Popular Jewish Resistance in Roman Palestine (San Francisco: Harper & Row, .I 987). 18 Jonathan Z. Smith, "Fences and Neighbors: Some Contours of Early Judaism," in W.S. Green, ed., Approaches to Ancient Judaism (Missoula: Scholars Press, 1980), pp. 2:2-25, and Jonathan Z. Smith, Imagining Religion (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1982), pp. I-IB. 19 Jacob Neusner, Judaism and Its Social Metaphors: Israel in the History cif Jewish Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 207-239.

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essential cultic practices, new architecture, new iconography, funerary practices) that distinguish the "new religion" of the "synagogue Judaism of the Roman disapora" from other Judaisms. 20 Kraabel's work suggests that a useful model for difference in ancient Judaism will allow classification and comparison to be sketched in terms of multiple traits, not just one. Indeed, building on Kraabel's work, I have argued culsters of weighted traits would help display difference inJudaism in terms ofboth resemblance and dissimilarity.21 Such a model could help us depict differences in Judaism in a sustained and systematic, rather than an ad hoc or atomistic, way.22 George Foot Moore and E.R. Goodenough represent two pillars of interpretation in the study of ancientJudaism. The persistence of their respective positions shows that the problem of classification, and hence the problem of difference, remains central to the scholarly study of Judaism and its sources.

20 A.T. Kraabel, "Unity and Diversity Among Diaspora Synagogues," in Lee I. Levine, ed., 7he Synagogue in Late Antiquity (Philadelphia: ASOR, 1987), pp. 219246. JA. Overman locates four of Kraabel's discrete traits in the Land of Israel but does not suggest that the cluster of traits Kraabel thinks distinguishes Roman synagogueJudaism was also present in the Land ofIsrael. SeeJA. Overman, "The Diaspora in the Modern Study of Ancient Judaism," in JA. Overman and R.S. MacLennan, eds., Diaspora lews and ]udaism: Essays in Honor rif, and in Dialogue with, A. Thomas Kraabel (Atlanta: Scholars Press for South Florida Studies in the History '!! Judaism, 1992), pp. 63-78. For additional arguments about the character of Judaism outside the Land of Israel see Jack N. Lightstone, The Commerce '!! the Sacred: Mediation,!! the Divine Among lews in the Creco-Roman Diaspora (Chico: Scholars Press, 1984) and "Christian Anti:Judaism in ItsJudaic Mirror: TheJudaic Context of Early Christianity Revisited," in S.G. Wilson, ed., Anti-Judaism in Ear!Ji Christianity, Vol. 2, Separation and Polemic (Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfred Laurier Press, 1986), pp. 103-32. 21 W.S. Green, "Ancient Judaism: Contours and Complexity," in Samuel E. Balentine andJohn Barton, eds., Language, Theology, and the Bible: EssOJis in Honour '!! ]ames Barr (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), pp. 293-310. This introduction draws on and elaborates sections of that article. 22 I am grateful to Gary G. Porton, Richard Horsley, Anthony Saldarini, and Jacob Neusner, all ofwhom discussed and reviewed aspects ofthis article with me.

JUDAISM OUTSIDE OF RABBINIC SOURCES

NON-RABBINIC LITERATURE G. Stemberger (University of Vienna) Jewish literature after 70 soon came to be dominated by rabbis. After the destruction of the Temple and, more so, after the defeat of the Jews in the second revolt under Bar Kokhba, most intellectual energies and literary activities in Palestine were concentrated in rabbinic circles not interested in preserving the literary production of other authors and groups. Most Jewish communities of the eastern Mediterranean revolted against Rome in the years 115-117. The suppression of these revolts resulted in the destruction of several important diaspora communities, including the Egyptian diaspora where nearly all Jewish Hellenistic literature had been written. The rise of Christianity which claimed mostJewish Hellenistic writings as part of its own heritage and which continued producing works of the same kind is another reason for the discontinuity in J ewish literary history. The historianJosephus Flavius is the only Jewish author after 70 whose name and biography is known. Earlier literary traditions, such as apocalypses and expansions of biblical narratives, seem to have survived the catastrophe of the year 70 for only a few decades. We must, however, be careful, for it is practically impossible to discern the original languages, the provenances and dates of the many documents assembled in collections under the tide "apocrypha and pseudepigrapha" which are normally preserved in secondary translations. If the original language of a work is Hebrew or Aramaie, its Jewish origin is nearly certain with an early date very probable. Semitisms in a writing, however, may be explained in different ways: a Semitic original, use of Semitic sources or the cultivation of a biblical style in a Greek original. In many cases, scholars disagree if a certain work isJewish,Jewish but reworked or interpolated by Christians, Christian but using Jewish sourees, or another possibility between the two extremes. Unless there are clear allusions to historical persons or events which can serve as terminus post quem, dating a work is equally conjectural, often connected with decisions regarding originallanguage andJewish or Christian provenance. The history of research on the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs or the Parables of Henoch may serve to illustrate the problems in the study of these writings. Many other less frequently

14

G. STEMBERGER

studied texts are equally problematic. In this presentation, we limit ourselves to texts which are certain to be Jewish and post-70. The se co nd group of writings to be presented in this chapter is beset with different, but not less difficult, problems. These works are regarded as documents of Jewish mysticism or magic in late antiquity. They are all written in Hebrew or Aramaic; thus,they are certainly Jewish. The question remains, however, as to what the relationship of a particular writing is to Rabbinic Judaism. Does it really still belong to the period under discussion or is it a medieval reworking of earlier ideas and materials? 1 THE EARLY RABBINIC PERIOD

1 Josephus Flavius Josephus, born inJerusalem in the first year ofthe reign ofCaligula (37/38) of a noble priestly family, earned recognition as a member of a successfulJewish delegation to Rome. A few years later, he was much less successful as commander of the Jewish rebels in Galilee du ring the first year of the great revolt. Mter the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple, he spent the rest ofhis life in Rome where he died in about 100 C.E. He is the most important source for the history of the Jews in the first century. Soon after his arrival at Rome and probably commissioned by Vespasian, he started writing an Aramaie history of the Jewish revolt against Rome which was probably intended for the Jews in Babylonia. This text is unfortunately lost. We have only the Greek version produced by Josephus with the help of Greek assistants and presented to the emperor Vespasian who died in 79. Known under the Latin title Bellum Judaicum, this work covers in seven volumes the antecedents of the revolt, starting with the reign of Antiochus IV. Epiphanes, and gives a full description of the revolt and its aftermath. For the earlier period, Josephus relied on a number of sources: the books of the Maccabees (mainly Macc 1), a Hebrew work on the Hasmoneans and the his tory of Nicolaus of Damascus for the Hasmoneans, Herod and his descendants. He describes the last decades as an eye-witness; but, he certainly also has access to official Roman documents about the Jewish war (a "war-diary" of Vespasian and Titus). He began his second work, a history of the J ews from the beginnings until the outbreak of the revolt against Rome in 66, immediately after the completion of the Bellum. Following the example of the Antiquitates Romanae of Dionysos of Halicarnass, he called the

NON-RABBINIC LITERATURE

15

work Antiquitates Judaicae (Ioudaike Archaiologia) and structured it in twenty books. The first part of this voluminous work, which was finished in 93/94, follows the biblical account and embellishes it with many haggadic elements which make the work an important source ofJewish interpretation ofthe Bible in the first century. Due to a lack of sources, he deals only very perfunctorily with the Persian period. From the time of Antiochus IV onward, he is again very weIl informed. In this part, he rewrites his own presentation found in the Bellum Judaicum. The comparison of the parallel accounts offers many insights with regard to his historical method and his intentions. How much he can now rely on additional sources, use material he hirnself had repressed in his earlier version, or where he freely rewrites the history for his own purposes, is a matter of dispute. His own biography, concentrating mainly on his year as commander in Galilee (autumn 66 to summer 67) and defending his conduct in this period against accusations brought forward by Justus of Tiberias (the biographer of Agrippa 1.) and others, has to be used with utmost caution. It is nevertheless very important because of the great number of details which Josephus teIls under pressure. His last work is an apology for the Jews, directed against the anti-Jewish accusations which the Egyptian Apion made public in Rome. This work, called Contra Apionem or "On the Antiquiry rif the Jews," collects many excerpts from ancient non-Jewish writers againstJudaism (especially Manetho) or in praise ofit, about Moses as philosopher and the incomparability oftheJewish laws. The works ofJosephus have never been received inJewish tradition. The single, and very doubtful, exception would be the Aramaie version of the Bellum Judaicum which some authors think to be behind a number of later rabbinie accounts about the first century. The Greek texts have been handed on by Christians and were soon to be translated into Latin. There is only one passage, however, which is suspected of being a Christian interpolation (at least in part), the so-called Testimonium Flavianum about Jesus (AJ 18,63f). Only in the tenth century did Josephus enter the main-stream of Jewish tradition with the popular rewriting ofhis Bellum in Hebrew. The main problems in dealing with the writings of Josephus are his credibility (mainly for the Bellum: how much is it pro-Roman propaganda, distorting the evidence in favour of the Jews; how much is it a defense of his own behaviour?) and his use of sources. How much is the rewriting of history in the Antiquitates determined by Josephus' intention to influence the Roman government with regard to a new Jewish leadership in Palestine? How much was

16

G. STEMBERGER

Josephus infornled about the development in Palestine, about the school of Yavneh and the rise of the rabbis? The last decades have seen a considerable development in research on Josephus, although a new critical edition still remains a desideratum. The best general introduction available at the time for anyone without prior knowledge is a volume by P.Bilde. He competently presents Josephus' life and writings including generous summaries of their contents. He also sketches the main trends in modern Josephus research. This book is the first overall presentation of Josephus since H.St.J. Thackerf!Y (1929). The only thing one might miss is a chapter on manuscripts and editions as well as translations; the short list in the bibliography is certainly not a sufficient guide for a newcomer. People already acquainted with the problems of modern research will be grateful to L.H.Feldman, the undisputed master of contemporary Josephus scholarship, for his long article "Flavius Josephus Revisited," where he deals with all aspects of Josephus, including text, ancient translations and editions. Feldman offers a balanced discussion of the reliability of Josephus regarding his own life and the presentation of the Jewish War. Feldman is not at all uncritical ofJosephus' account, but insists that he is generally a reliable source. A good example of this is his prediction that Vespasian would become emperor (BJ 3,400-402). This has frequently been held in doubt because of a parallel account in the Talmud (Gittin 65a-b) about Yohanan ben Zakkai and Titus. This would have been a good occasion to deal with the general problem of the parallels between Josephus and rabbinic literature. Such a study is frequently mentioned as a desideratum of Josephus research (not in Feldman's list at the end of his article), but as yet we have not even a full list of the parallels. A full scale study of these parallels would be important not only for Josephan research, but even more so for the study of tradition in rabbinic society. Feldman's survey is very strong regarding Josephus' treatment of the biblical period which has frequently been neglected since Josephus hirnself claims to set forth the precise details of what is written in the Bible, neither adding nor omitting anything (AJ 1,17). Every reader who knows the Bible, however, can immediately see how far Josephus deviates from his source. Feldman proposes to understand the word "Scriptures" (anagraphaz) not only of the written Bible but of the general Jewish tradition in general; he thinks ofMidrashic traditions written down by Josephus' time and used by hirn. In re cent years, after having written the general survey we are dealing with here, Feldman has published a long series of extended articles dealing with the treatment of Biblical figures in Josephus. In this series, he demon-

NON-RABBINIC LITERATURE

17

strates in great detail how Josephus deals with the biblical text and how much he is immersed in Midrashic tradition. It is clear that the study of biblical interpretation in Josephus is indispensable for an understanding of rabbinic midrash and the history of its development and tradition. An extensive discussion ofJosephus' treatment of post-biblical Jewish history, the origins of Christianity, and the Jewish War round offthis article and make it the best starting point for anyone having to work on Josephus. In re cent years, a number ofimportant monographs onJosephus have been published. Those by S.J. Gohen, T.Rajak, P. Villalba y Vameda and S.Schwartz should at least be mentioned. Of special interest is the contribution of S.Mason, dealing withJosephus on the Pharisees. He convincingly refutes the gene rally held opinion that Josephus hirnself was a Pharisee, interpreting Vita 12 not as an assertion thatJosephus joined the party of the Pharisees, but simply as a statement about his political tactics, to be translated: "I began to involve myself in public affairs, following the school of the Pharisees." Having cleared this point, Mason is much freer in dealing with Josephus' picture of the Pharisees and needs no longer consider aB negative judgments of the Pharisees in Josephus as copied mechanically from sources negatively disposed toward them, as is maintained by most scholars. His analysis also demonstrates the unfoundedness of a view frequently presented since the publishing of an influential article by M.Smith which states that between writing his Bellum and the Antiquitates, Josephus had changed his attitude toward the Pharisees, being much more positive in the later work where he is supposed to have proposed them to the Romans as the only possible representatives of the Jewish people. In dealing with these points, Mason has not only contributed to a clearer picture of a particular point in Josephus' biography and attitudes; his results are also of importance for the early his tory of the rabbinate. That the rabbis did not dominate Judaism immediately after 70, has become sufficiently clear from a study of the rabbinic sources themselves. The frequently presented counter-argument based on Josephus (combined with some New Testament texts) is no longer a serious chaBenge against this insight.

2 Apoca!Jpses Two closely related works are the Fourth Book of Ezra and the Second (Syriac) Book of Baruch, both reacting to the religious problems resulting from the destruction of Jerusalem and its Temple by the Romans in 70.

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Fourth Ezra The author writes under the name of Ezra, the Scribe who established the authority of the Torah in Israel after the Babylonian Exile. His fictitious situation is the destruction ofJerusalem and its Temple by Nebuchadnezzar in 586 BCE which serves as paradigm for the second destruction of the Temple in 70. The theological problem most urgent in these decades was that of theodicy. The author deals with this in a book composed of seven visions (the first three being dialogues; the book starts with chapter 3, the first two chapters being a later addition in the Latin version). In the first dialogue (3,1-5,20) the origin of sin and evil in the world is discussed; the second dialogue (5,21-6,34) speaks of the secret plans of God with his world. They will be revealed only at the ne ar end; it will then be clear why God abandoned his beloved people to the pagans. Questions regarding the end of time - the judgment on the world, the intermediate state of the deceased, the fate of sinners - determine also the third dialogue (6,35-9,25). The fourth section (9,26-10,60) contains the vision of a mourning woman who teIls her misfortunes. In the end, she is transformed into a splendid city, the Jerusalem of the time of salvation. In the fifth section (11,1-12,51) the prophet sees an eagle rising from the sea; his wings and pinions and his heads are interpreted as Roman rulers preceding the end of foreign rule over Israel. This section, purportedly representing the future, deals with the contemporary history of the writer and serves to date his text. In the sixth vision (13), someone like a man rises from the sea. On the clouds of heaven and supported by a large army, he fights his enemies until they disappear in smoke and ashes. In the last section (14) the prophet is commanded to write twenty-four books, i.e. the canonical books of the Bible, and to publish them; seventy other books which he has to write are to be kept secret. Already in the 19th century there have been proposals to apply source criticism similar to that of the Pentateuch to the book. Five or more sources were detected which were combined by a redactor, but which, according to these authors, are still clearly discernible. Against such theories, H.Gunkel already maintained the essential literary unity of the work; this thesis is now accepted by most authors, although some (like WHamisch) are inclined to see sections 56 as later additions. As most authors agree, the eagle's vision indicates a date of the book in the last year of Domitian's reign, shortly before 96. The indication of the book itself that it is written "in the thirtieth year after the destruction" (3,1), is therefore only approximate. The

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book has survived in a number of versions (Latin, Syriac, Armenian, Georgian, Slavonic, Arabic, fragments in Coptic). They all derive from a Greek text, attested to by a few quotations since the end of the second century which itself goes back to a Semitic original. There were discussions as to whether or not this original was Hebrew or Aramaic. Today, a Hebrew original (influenced by Aramaic as was all Hebrew of the time) seems to be thought the most probable; certainty is never possible when we have to judge on the basis of translations twice removed from the original. If one accepts a Hebrew original, the place of origin is most probably Jerusalem (or generally, Palestine) and not Rome, as might be suggested by the fictitious situation of the writer in Babyion (3,1). Many views presented in the book show elose affinities with rabbinic thought. Attempts to relate the teachings of 4 Ezra to specific rabbinic schools (or, directly, to certain rabbis) in the period ofYavneh have not, however, been accepted by the majority of scholars. The text of 4 Ezra, mainly the Latin version, has been edited several times. There are also a number of recent commentated translations of the text and a host of monographs and articles dealing with the problems of the book. The best guide to an understanding of the book and its problems in the history of research is certainly the great commentary by M.E.Stone in the Hermeneia Series. Stone, who has dedicated a long series of studies to the book in its various versions and also published a textual commentary on the Armenian version of 4 Ezra, draws together the results of decades of research in a dense introduction. The primary introductory questions as to date, original language, place of origin, and the generalliterary unity of the work are nowadays commonly agreed upon. The central problem in dealing with 4 Ezra remains how to coherently explain the general structure of the book. Stone offers a solution which does not impose on the text criteria of Western logic, admits to a good deal of inconsistency acceptable when taking into account the use of oral and written texts adapted by the author for his own purposes, the associational technique of the book, and the development of the seer's positions. H. Gunkel tried to explain apparent inconsistencies of the text through the psychology of the author. This type of argument has long been rejected as being too subjective. M.E.Stone dared to take it up again, but in a novel way and, so it seems, very successfully. The problems have always been how to relate the two main persons, Ezra and the angel, especially in the first three sections, wh at to make of the fourth vision and how to connect the whole with the conelusion in vision 7. If Ezra is the main person, whom

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does the angel represent? Most former interpreters insisted on the leading role of Ezra; only E.Brandenburger and WHamisch saw the first half of the book as dominated by the angel and tried to explain the positions taken there by Ezra as those of some, perhaps heterodox,Jewish group ofthe time which the author opposed. According to these authors, only in the fourth vision is the seer mysteriously transformed, accepting the angel's, i.e. God's, position. Against such an interpretation, M.E.Stone advances his psychological approach. For hirn, "Ezra is the true hero, the dominant persona of the book... Ezra does not accept his own doubts, however, but struggles with them by means of the angel, who represents that part of himself which wishes to accept but is forced to doubt by the impact of events of the history of Israel and the world. Thus it is in the first three visions, Ezra and the angel are both the author but are Janus faces of the author's self' (p.32).

The weeping woman in vision 4 is also an aspect of his own experience, his pain and distress over Zion. Comforting her, he externalizes his pain and is enabled to accept as his own God's or the angel's position which formerly had been outside hirn. This is the conversion of the hero, to be understood as areal religious experience ofthe author. Only now is he able to act as a prophet (12,42), be like Daniel (12,11 "your brother Daniel"), and to receive the esoteric revelations of visions 5 and 6 regarding the end of the times. In vision 7, after a fast offorty days (as the fasts ofthe first six visions taken together), Ezra is commanded to give anew the Scriptures; he be comes a new Moses, and like Moses, is taken up to heaven alive to be with the Messiah and the elect. Esoteric and exoteric knowledge are thus united in the person of Ezra.

Second Baruch The work is also known as Syriac Baruch, because of its preservation in full solely in the Syriac version (an Arabic version was discovered recently in a Sinai manuscript and published in 1986). The work is pseudepigraphally attributed to Baruch, the secretary of the prophet Jeremiah. It deals with the same problems as 4 Ezra and has frequently been understood as areaction to this work. Others, however, regard 2 Baruch as the older work. As a matter of fact, the direction of dependence may not be ascertained; a common source is possible. Most authors are inclined to date 2 Baruch shortly after 4 Ezra. The Syriac text has certainly been translated from a Greek text (a fragment of it has been discovered in Egypt) which probably

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was translated from a Hebrew original written in Palestine (a Palestinian origin of the book is also postulated by P.Bogaert who thinks of a Greek original, written in Palestine for the diaspora). As in 4 Ezra, there are many ideas to be paralleled with rabbinic thought. P.Bogaert even considers the possibility of attributing the book to R.Yehoshua ben Hananyah, a disciple ofYohanan ben Zakkai. No one specializing in the field of rabbinics nowadays would dare such an attribution to any individual rabbi. It is tempting to divide the book in seven parts corresponding to the seven visions of 4 Ezra. In the first section (1-12) God announces to Baruch the coming destruction of Jerusalem. He has to remain in the city whereas Jeremiah goes into exile. In the second part (13-20), introduced and followed by seven days offasting, God announces the judgment over the heathens and the fate of the just and unjust. Part three (21-34) announces the judgment over the godless people before the coming of the Messiah. Zion will be rebuilt, destroyed again, and then finally rebuilt. The fourth section (35-46) contains the vision of a forest and, opposite it, a vine. A fountain submerges the forest; only a great cedar remains which is finally burned; the vine alone remains and thrives. The forest is then interpreted as representing the four empires, whereas the fountain and the vine are the dominion of the Messiah. Part five (47 -52) contains revelations about the end of the times and the resurrection. Avision (53-76) is in part six: from a cloud, alternating streams of black and clear water descend on earth; they are then interpreted as negative and positive periods of history. In the last part (77-87) Baruch assembles the people and admonishes them. He promises to write a letter to the nine and a half tribes deported by the Assyrians and another letter to those exiled by Nebuchadnezzar. The book ends with the text of the letter to the nine and a half tribes. There is no trace of the other letter in manuscript tradition; it probably never formed part of the book. If this division of the text corresponds to the intentions of the author, the parallels to 4 Ezra are very clear, especially with regard to the central role of section four, the periods of history corresponding the the eagle's vision, and the last part where the two letters correspond to the two groups of books to be written by Ezra. The structure of the book is, however, not so clear, and other divisions (most with seven, but some also with six or twelve sections) have also been proposed. One should be careful not to read the book immediately in connection with 4 Ezra. The books are closely related: both deal with the same problem of theodicy in connection with the destruction ofJerusalem and answer it mainly by reference

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to the end of the times. But the works have to be studied separately before they may legitimately be compared. Compared to 4 E;:;ra, 2 Baruch has been somewhat neglected in re cent research. There are, of course, commented translations with introductions in all re cent collections of the "Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha," which are all very useful. The most sustained treatment, however, of all the problems connected with 2 Baruch is still the voluminous introduction and commentary published by P.Bogaert which may be supplemented by the more recent dissertation of F.J.Murphy. Against earlier attempts of source criticism which regarded the man responsible for 2 Baruch as a mere redactor, Bogaert with practically all modern students of the book insists on its unity created on the basis of earlier sources and literary forms by areal author. Contrasting 2 Bar l, 1 ("in the twenty-fifth year of Jeconiah") with the dating of 4 Ezra 3,1 ("in the thirtieth year after the destruction"), Bogaert pleads for the priority of 2 Baruch and a date around the year 95. The argument is not quite convincing, but it forces the author to study 2 Baruch in its own terms, not as a book reacting to 4 Ezra. The main contribution of Bogaert's introduction is the detailed study of several themes and literary genres in the context of rabbinic tradition. A whole chapter is dedicated to the comparison of 2 Baruch with Pesiqta Rabbati 26, a text which stands very isolated within rabbinic tradition. The closeness of 2 Baruch to rabbinic thought has been emphasized quite frequently, but is has never been so amply documented as by Bogaert. Although in the past 25 years methods in dealing with rabbinic literature have been very much refined and many of his datings no longer seem acceptable, his analyses help considerably to see the continuity between late apocalyptic thought and rabbinic theology; Bogaert has assembled a great deal of material which should be studied, analyzed and supplemented by a specialist in rabbinic literature. The detailed analysis of the theology of 2 Baruch which Bogaert considers to be profoundly Pharisaic is also important. The former concentration on Temple and sacrifices has been replaced for the author of 2 Baruch by the new emphasis on the Law: "Zion has been taken away from us, and we have nothing now apart from the Mighty One and his Law" (85,3). This is in sharp contrast with 4 Ezra 14,21 where the Law has been burned and has to be restored by Ezra as the new Moses. Consistent with the substitution of the Temple by the Law is the insistence in 2 Baruch on the free will of man (54,15; 85,7) against the notion of the cor malignum which made transgression a permanent disease in 4 Ezra (3,21f.26). Compared

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to 4 Ezra, the theology of 2 Baruch is much more optimistic. As to the eschatology of 2 Baruch, Bogaert does not try to impose any system on apparently contradictory assertions, but seeks to explain the tensions within the text by the efforts of the author to subordinate the traditional national eschatology with its messianism to a personal eschatology insisting on the heavenly Jerusalem in the coming world. A very rich commentary on the book in volume 2 is the most extensive treatment of the text existing thus far. The dissertation of F.J.Murphy is on a much smaller scale, but manages to relate weIl the structure of the book to its theology: "the intention of the author is to draw the attention of the people away from the loss of Zion and away from a preoccupation with the punishment of the destroyers ofJerusalem. Through references to the Mosaic covenant, and by paralleling Baruch with Moses, the author seeks to recall the people to covenantal obedience. In his use of the two-word schema, he manages to relativize the importance of the Temple and land in Judaism and to reorient the People away from a this-worldly attitude to an other-worldly one" (p. 28).

2 Baruch might thus be considered a pacifist work, in contrast with the contemporaneous Apocalypse of Abraham which "looks for a restoration of the Temple through the militant action of the faithful Jews" (p. 137). The author of 2 Baruch "wants to put the Law at the center of Judaism and to establish the teachers of that Law as the guides to the future life" (p. 142). This sounds more rabbinic than the book really is, but certainly emphasizes an important point. It is clear that there are many points of contact between the latest products of apocalyptic literature and rabbinic theology. It would certainly be wrong to interpret 4 Ezra and even more so 2 Baruch from possible rabbinic parallels or even to identify rabbis as the authors of these books; but, it would be equally wrong to separate the two worlds too strictly and to overlook the possible interactions and contacts between them. The above-mentioned Apocalypse qf Abraham which survived only in a Slavonic version, has many parallels with 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch and is normally considered to derive from the same period. Its Hebrew original is supposed to have been written in Palestine around the year 80, again as a response to the destruction ofJerusalem and the Temple. The framework of the book, however, is very different from that of 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch. The transmission of the book in the Slavonic tradition alone makes it problematic to use for our purposes since many apocryphal works have been rewritten by the Bogomils in the Middle Ages.

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Sibylline Orades Closely connected with the apocalyptic tradition, but deriving from the Greek tradition and adapted to the ideas of the Jewish diaspora already in the 2nd century BCE, are the Sibylline Orades, written in Greek hexameters as their pagan predecessors. Already in the Greek tradition, Sibylline orades predict mainly disasters which are to come on mankind because of the wrath of the Gods, and the coming destruction of the world. J ewish authors had no difficulty adapting this model to the eschatological perspective of the prophets and Jewish apocalyptic literature and to let the Sibyl speak in the name "of the great God, whom no hands of men fashioned" (4,6). The earliestJewish Sibyl is book 3, normally dated into the 2nd century BCE; however, its first part (3,1-96) seems to have been part of another book. 1t may refer to the expectation of a Nero redivivus (3,63-74) and would thus have to be dated after 70 (some scholars prefer to see only these verses as a later addition). Certainly post-70 is book 4 which refers to the destruction of Jerusalern and also to the eruption ofVesuvius in 79 CE (4,130-136). The text was probably written shortly after this date, using an older hellenistic orade on four kingdoms, lasting ten generations (Assyrians: six; Medes: two; Persians: one; Macedonians: one). The Jewish author who made use of this material introduced his work by contrasting the true God with the idols; "he does not have a house, a stone set up as a temple," The loss ofthe Temple does not affiict the author; it rather helps hirn better to understand the true spiritual essence of God. The announcement of the coming judgment leads to the traditional vision of history which must be extended until the time of the author. The book therefore adds, after the Macedonians, a summary of Roman history up to the destruction ofJerusalern and the Temple. The events of the years after 70 announce already the coming fall of Rome which will have to pay back to Asia everything once taken in plunder. There will be aperiod of wickedness; only if men do penance and wash "their whole bodies in perennial rivers" (4,165), God will not destroy everything by a great conflagration. The appeal seems to be without result, for it is followed by the description of the complete destruction of the world by fire. Only when everything is already ashes does God extinguish the fire and resurrect all men for the final judgment. Some scholars assurne that this book, like most Sibylline orades, was redacted in Egypt; but most take the reference to baptism in 4,165 as an indication that the book originated in the Jordan valley or in Syria.

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Book Five of the Sibylline Orades also starts with a survey of history, but concentrates from the beginning on the "Latin race" (5,1); it dearly speaks of Nero whose return is announced, and Vespasian, "a certain great destroyer of pious men" (5,36). Surprising is the praise of Hadrian, "a most excellent man" (5,48), which a Jew would hardly have uttered after the outbreak of the Bar Kokhba revolt. The reference to Hadrian's three successors in 5,51 must thus be a later addition. The book continues with the announcement of the destruction of Egypt, several long passages on the return of N ero and aseries of orades against Rome, Egypt and other nations, contrasted with the praise of the J ews who will in the future once again serve God with "all sorts of sacrifices" (5,268). "A certain insignificant and impious king" (5,408) has destroyed the Temple, but it will be rebuilt by a "blessed man from the expanses of heaven," the saviour in the end of times. The book is an important document of EgyptianJudaism in the early years of Hadrian's reign and the sharp anti-Roman religious propaganda after the fall of J erusalem. 1t is not certain if Sibylline Orades 8,1-216 are Jewish or Christian. There are good reasons, however, to assurne aJewish author who wrote in the late second century, perhaps in Egypt. The text takes up most of the motifs known from earlier Sibylline texts, the N erD legend and the description of the eschatological upheavals, far example. The even more violent attack on Rome and the extremely negative judgment about Hadrian who "will open up the mysteries of error to all" (8,58) is of interest. Books 12 and 13 (or parts of them) might also be Jewish and would thus be an important document für EgyptianJudaism in the early third century, aperiod from which hardly any evidence about Jews in Egypt survived. An excellent guide to the comp1icated and, at first sight, confusing world of the Sibylline books is J.J. Collins who since his dissertation pub1ished in 1974 has repeatedly dealt with this 1iterature. The most accessib1e and mature statement of his views is to be found in his treatment of the Sibylline Orades in the "Old Testament Pseudepigrapha" edited by J.H. Charlesworth. He analyzes the relationship between the pagan orades andJewish apocalyptic, pointing to the common elements of pseudonymity, ex eventu prophecy, eschatology and surveys of history, but also insisting on important differences, as the lack of visions, of interest in angels or the heavenly world. The heritage of Persian tradition common with the Sibylline orades and to Jewish apocalypticism certainly helped to appropriate the Sibyl for Jewish purposes. When a Jewish author first decided to make use of the literary form of the Sibylline orades, he

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certainly wanted to be taken for a pagan author in order to attract pagan readers and could not, therefore, introduce any drastic innovations. The adaptation to J ewish beliefs had to be very careful and is sometimes, even for the modern scholar, not absolutely certain. Typical of the Jewish use of the Sibylline orades is the combination of eschatology with moral exhortations (mainly attacks on idolatry, sexualoffences, injustice, violence and greed of the Romans), the insistence on mo no thei sm and the centrality of events concerning Judaism in general, or Jerusalem and its Temple in the surveys of history. That the Jewish Sibylline texts have no uniform interests, but derive from quite different groups, is made dear especially by their different views regarding the Temple inJerusalem. The cultic piety of the certainly Egyptian books 3 and 5 (the latter even acknowledges aTempie ofthe true God in Egypt - 5,501-3 probably refers to the destruction of the Temple of Leontopolis) stands in sharp contrast to the position of book 4, localized in Palestine or Syria, whose author maintains that the true cult of the one God does not need aTempie. Combined with the verse on baptism, this is frequently seen as hinting to Jewish baptist cirdes whose beliefs parallel those of the Christian Ebionites and Elcasaites. Collins also accepts this view. It is dear that this attribution as weIl as the localization of the book is not more than a possiblity, accepted for lack of better explanations. But it certainly shows the diversity in the Judaism of the period after 70, as is also documented by the variety of views regarding non:Jews and especially the Romans, against whom the religious and political propaganda of the orades is directed. Except in texts which are patently Christian, it is frequently difficult to decide if a text is still Jewish or already Christian. Collins opts, wherever possible, even in those books which are in final redaction dearly Christian, for a Jewish basis (as, for example, in books 1-2). The borderline between what is certainly Christian and what may still be Jewish is not easily to be drawn, since Christian authors also had to adhere to the rules of the genre and the fiction of Sibylline authorship. But the fluidity of the borders is also an important fact when considering the religious reality of late antiquity.

3 Pseudo-Philo: Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum Pseudo-Philo brings us back again to the Palestinian J udaism of the decades after 70. The book survived only in a Latin version

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which goes back to a Greek text translated from the Hebrew. It was first published by J.Sichardus in 1527 together with works of Philo, but neglected by scholarship until the twentieth century. It is closely related with 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch with regard to many religious ideas and expressions (especially regarding the state of man after death), but does not share the anxiety and near-despair expressed in these books and their quest for a theodicy after 70. As to its literary genre, it is not an apocalypse, but "rewritten Bible," on the surface an edifying re-telling of Biblical history from the beginning of the world up to the death of Saul. The book expands so me the biblical stories quite extensively (e.g. Abraham in the fiery furnice, the infancy of Moses and Samson, the history of judge Kenaz, who in the Bible is barely mentioned: Jdg 1,13); and, on the other hand, passes by lengthy passages (e.g. Gen 12-50; Ex 3-13) or simply summarizes them. Many of the expansions or interpretations of the Biblical text are also attested in Josephus Flavius and in rabbinic literature. The theological message of the book is to be sought in many speeches and prayers from the lips of Israel's leaders. It was suggested that the book should have continued up to the destruction of the Temple in 586, corresponding to that of the Second Temple, but the reasons given for this are not compelling. Some suppose that the author was prevented from finishing his work; others think that, ending with the death of Saul, the author wanted to direct his readers' thoughts toward David, not the historical person, but the "Son of David," the Messiah. In recent years, the book has attracted intensive research and is now available in a number of commentated translations. The fullest presentation of the book is the two-volume edition and commentary in the Sources Chretiennes series, published in cooperation by D.].Harrington (edition of the text), J.Cazeaux (translation), c.Perrot and P.M.Bogaert (introduction and commentary). An English translation with a short introduction by D.].Harrington (as a matter of fact, an updated summary of the great edition) may be found in the "Old Testament Pseudepigrapha" edited by Charlesworth. The French edition offers for the first time a full survey of the manuscript tradition and a critical text, much closer to that of the editio princeps than the 1949 edition by G.Kisch which brought the book back to the attention of the scholarly world. The second volume offers an extensive literary introduction to the book and a full commentary. c.Perrot argues that the abrupt ending of the book was intended by the author, the final call for God's pardon being an excellent conclusion. Perrot, known for his studies of the ancient Palestinian lec-

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tionary, maintains that the book might have been used in the context of the synagogue, perhaps as an aid for the preacher. As to the date of the book, P.M.Bogaert pleads for a date before 70; Harrington (Pseudo-Philo 299) is even more precise: "A date around the time of Jesus seems most likely." The thesis that the book is to be seen in the context of the synagogue, remains open to doubt, especially if we are to accept the early date of the book. It is this point which has provoked most criticism in a work which gene rally and rightly has been highly praised. The elose relationship of the book with Josephus' 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch has convinced most authors that it must stem from roughly the same period; the many points where Pseudo-Philo is paralleled only in much later rabbinic literature, might, on the other hand, let one think of a much later date, were it not for the problem of its transmission in the Christian tradition which would hardly have taken over a later Jewish work. There are other authors who consider the book to represent Essene ideas and to go back to the pre-Christian period. This shows elearly how problematic the dating of the book still remains. A systematic analysis of all traditions which the book has in common with rabbinic midrash might contribute not only to a better appreciation of this book, but also help better to understand the early his tory of midrash and of rabbinic Judaism in general. II THE LATER RABBINIC PERIOD

Jewish literature of the post-Tannaitic period is almost exelusively Hebrew or Aramaic. The only notable exception is the Collatio legum Mosaicarum et Romanarum, a short and unsystematic comparison of Biblical and Roman law; it is still disputed as to whether its author was aJew or a Christian and at what time he wrote. It is most likely that he was a Roman Jew active toward the end of the fourth century (the time of Dioeletian would be the other possibility). Two groups of texts are not ineluded in this short survey. Liturgical poetry of this period will be dealt with in another chapter. Hebrew apocalypses like the Sefer Zerubbabel which was written in the decades before the Arab invasion, are exeluded because of limits of space. Another writing which has recently been elaimed for this period, should at least be mentioned: the Wisdom Text from the Cairo Genizah, published already in 1902-4 by A.E.Harkavy and S.Schechter as a medieval text, has recently attracted much attention: KBerger re-published the text with a comprehensive commentary and dated it to the period about 100 CE. H.P.Rüger reacted imme-

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diately with another monograph, reaffirming the medieval dating proposed by Schechter. G. WNebe continued the debate with another extensive commentary, concluding that the sixth or seventh century is the most probable date. Here, we cannot enter into the debate which will certainly continue for some time since the text caught the interest of New Testament scholars; as yet, an early medieval date still seems to be the most likely.

1 Sifer Ye#rah The "Book of Creation" presents the origin and constitution of the world. It enumerates the "thirty-two paths of wisdom" which God carved out to create his universe. The first part of the very coneise text is about the ten sefirot, the basic numbers and, at the same time, basic principles of the world: these are composed of the four basic elements (divine spirit, ether, water and fire) and the six dimensions (north, south, east and west, height and depth). The second part is on the letters of the Hebrew alphabet which uphold creation. They are divided into three groups: the three "mothers" Alef, Mem, and Shin; the seven "double" (twice pronounced) letters, and the three remaining letters. Each group of letters is interpreted both cosmologically and in relation to man. Everything exists by the combination of these letters. How the letters are related to the sefirot of the first part, is nowhere indicated. The book should become immensely popular and one of the most impartant texts of medieval Jewish cosmology. It is not attested to before the early tenth century, but then immediately in three farms: a short version was commented upon by Dunash b. Tamim around 956; a long one underlies the commentary of S.Donnolo; aversion related to the latter is contained in Saadya's commentary of 931. Most authors agree that the book goes back to the Talmudic period, but there is no agreement if it belongs to its beginnings or rather to its later parts. The book is so difficult to date because it has only very few contacts with other Jewish writings. It almost never refers explicity to the Bible and quotes no rabbinic text; neither is it quoted by the rabbis. Of course, there are points in common with rabbinic cosmogony and cosmology, but they are rather accidental. In the beginning, it could not be read without a commentary, and even today it remains full of riddles. Enormous efforts have been invested in the elucidation of this small book. The most accessible and authoritative presentation of all the problems connected with it is still the substantial article "Yezirah, Sefer" by G.Scholem. He believes that the book was writ-

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ten in Palestine between the third and sixth centuries, but also contains post-Talmudic additions. Its author was a devoutJew with leanings toward mysticism who tried to 'Judaize" non-Jewish speculations. This article should be supplemented by a more detailed textual study by LGruenwald who also published a "Preliminary Critical Edition", the best text available at present. Gruenwald emphasizes the "spiritual isolation that is positively unique in the history of Hebrew literature" (p. 477). To classifY the book as either philosophical, or mystical, or even magical, seems to hirn impossible; everything is deliberately blended. One comprehensive theory to explain all the doctrines of the book, their origin and their combination, would still be too speculative. He rather prefers to insist on the heterogeneous character of the book. He assurnes as a methodological principle that the two parts of the book, the one on the Stjirot and the other on the letters, are two distinct sections possibly composed at different times, and seeks to analyze the editorial work done to bring the two parts together. This, however, is not done in order to reconstruct the original text, an enterprise which would be highly speculative and lead to confusion, but in order to throw light on the inner development of the text and to lead toward a better understanding of its peculiar terminology. It may seem disasppointing not to get a general theory on the book and its doctrine; but it is exactly Gruenwalrfs restraint and caution which became paradigmatic for subsequent research into related Jewish texts as the Hekhalot literature.

2 Hekhalot Literature and Related Texts Early Jewish mysticism consists of two main branches: the Work of Creation (MaCaseh Bereshit), represented mainly by the Srfor r~irah, and the Work of the Chariot (MaCaseh Merkavah) which found its literary expression in the Hekhalot literature, the writings about the "throne halls" or heavenly "palaces"; these books prepare for or describe the mystical ascent to God's throne chariot. Considering the prominence of R.Yishmael and R.Aqiva in these texts which are frequently attributed to one of them, one might question the inclusion of these texts in the "non-rabbinic literature"; but apart from some obvious contacts between these texts and the classical rabbinic literature, literary forms, contents and concerns of these texts make it quite clear that they stern from and were transmitted in very different circles. The Greater Hekhalot (Hekhalot Rabbatz), the most extensive text of this literature, starts with the question of R.Yishmael, what songs

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one has to recite who wants to behold the vision of the Merkavah. The songs that follow, however, are praises of the greatness and distinction of the Merkavah mystics. Only the next seetion offers songs to be recited by those who descend to the Merkavah, poetic texts which all end with the threefold "Holy" ofIs 6,3. Then follows aversion of the Story if the Yen Martyrs known also as a separate text and in other contexts. As R. Yishmael learns before the heavenly throne, ten rabbis are to be put to death by the Romans to expiate the sin of the ten brothers who sold Joseph, but in the end Rome herself will not escape punishment. This is an occasion to add other apocalyptic texts in the name of R.Yishmael: the coming affiictions of Israel ending with the inthronization of David, an interpretation ofthe seventy weeks ofDan 9, and a text on the messianic end. The following section is an extensive account of the angelic liturgy with many songs of praise. Then follows a description of the ascent unto the Merkavah and the text of hymns recited in praise of God. A section on the "Prince of the Torah" (sar ha-Yorah) instructs the mystic how he can master the secrets of the Torah, study and memorize it without forgetting it again. This is illustrated with the story of R.Yishmael who learnt the secret of the Torah from his master Nehuniah ben ha-Qanah. A long prayer ends the text of Hekhalot Rabbati. That this work is composed of very different components and not a carefully built redactional unity, will be clear from this short summary. An even greater mixture of different literary units are the Lesser Hekhalot (Hekhalot Zutratt) in which the Hebrew is mixed with Aramaie passages and R.Aqiva is the dominant figure. The text begins with several short passages on the ascent to the Merkavah (Moses, Aqiva, the four rabbis); then it offers a description of the throne and the l:Iayyot around it as weIl as a long list of names of God, mostly nomina barbara. A section on the shi'ur qomah ("The measure of the body") which is also the object of aseparate work follows; magical traditions, incantations and prayers conclude this very heterogeneous book. Sifer Hekhalot, called the Third Book of Enoch by H. Odeberg in his weIl-known edition of the text, gives an account of the ascent of R.Yishmael to the Merkavah. At the entrance of the seventh palace he is received by the archangel Metatron who reveals to him that he is none other than Enoch who has been translated to heaven and transformed into an angel.· Metatron shows R. Yishmael the seven princes of heaven and all the angels under them with their many functions; he also lets him participate in a session of the heavenly court and take part in the angelic liturgy which culminates

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in the threefold "Holy" of 1s 6,3. Yishmael is also aIlowed to see the letters by which heaven and earth were created, the souls of the deceased, and also the heavenly curtain on which the whole his tory of mankind until the coming of the Messiah is engraved. As with other Hekhalot texts, however, this work too is evidently composed of many different traditions which have been worked into a rather coherent whole. Ma'aseh Merkavah sets in with a prayer which R.Aqiva teaches R.Yishmael, and then briefly describes Aqiva's ascent to see God's power. As in other Hekhalot texts, here too the angelic liturgy in the heavenly palaces and a long adjuratipn of the Sar ha- Torah are described. What distinguishes this text from other Hekhalot writings is the dominance of prayers closely related to the Qedushahpoems of the prayer book. These prayers form perhaps the kernel, around which the book developed. Merkavah Rabbah is a composite work, partly in Hebrew, partly in Aramaie. 1t is disputed as to whether the passage in which R.Eliezer teIls R.Aqiva how to adjure the Angel of the Presence to come down and reveal the secrets of heaven and earth is the first part of the text or belongs to so me other work. The next part deals with the "great seal" and "the awesome crown" and the prayers one has to recite when making use of them. Of central interest in the book is again the adjuration of the Sar ha- Torah and the means how to acquire the "great secret" of the Torah. Many other topics are also included, as for example magical prescriptions for different feasts of the year. The book ends with a long seetion describing the "measurement of God's body," the Shi'ur Qgmah. Shi'ur Qgmah sections, however, are not only components of several texts belonging to the Hekhalot literature; the Shi'ur Qgmah is also the topic of aseparate book in several recensions. According to G.Scholem this book was written not later than the second century. Others, however, prefer a much later date or deny that it is at aIl possible to date the book or even to recover its original form. The work is mainly derived from a mystical interpretation of the Song of Songs, the description of the lover in 5, 10-16. R. Yishmael quotes Metatron with a first summary of the measurements of God's body and his names. Everyone who knows this secret will have a share in the world to come. This is foIlowed by severallitanies, praising God as king. Then the text gives the enormous measurements of each part of God's body and the names inscribed upon it. A seetion in the name of R.Natan insists more on the proportions between the different parts of the body and quotes in fuIl the text of Song of Songs 5,1 Off. Aseries of prayers and litanies praising God and his

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name conclude this book which, because of its anthropomorphism, in the Middle Ages aroused the opposition ofmany Jewish scholars; nevertheless, they remained very influential in mystical circles. There is hardly a field in Jewish studies which has undergone greater changes in the last decade than the Hekhalot literature. Many of the assumptions proposed by G.Scholem, the great pioneer in the wide field of Jewish mysticism, have been questioned as the manuscript tradition of these writings became better known. Most of his early datings of these works, their relative chronology and even their literary identity have become doubtful. In spite of these developments the classical presentation of the Hekhalot literature by 1. Gruenwald, "Apocalyptic and Merkavah Mysticism," published just before the new era of Hekhalot studies set in, may still be regarded as the best starting point for anybody wanting to get acquainted with this literature and its problems. As the tide of his book indicates, Gruenwald presents the Hekhalot literature in the larger context of Jewish apocalyptic (including Christian texts) and the mystical elements (mainly Merkavah visions) contained therein. He proceeds with a survey of the rabbinic stories about mystical experiences of the rabbis, mainly the well known story of the four sages who entered the Pardes (Hagiga II in Tosefta and Talmudim), and discusses the attitudes of the rabbis towards Merkavah speculations. Against this background, he presents the general characteristics of the Hekhalot literature, heavenly ascensions, the revelation of cosmological and other secrets, and the secret methods of studying and memorizing the Torah. He considers the Hekhalot literature as technical guides for mystics who are told how to bring about a mystical experience by magico-theurgic practices: special prayers, fasts, diets, cleansing one's body, the use of magical names and seals. Gruenwald also discusses the problem whether there are any connections between ancient Jewish mysticism and gnosticism; he re he is much more cautious and reticent than G.Scholem and does not reach any firm conclusions. With a large amount of parallels from a great range of literature, Gruenwald emphasizes the basic continuity inJewish mysticism from the time of the Second Temple until the redaction of the latest Hekhalot texts. What is openly discussed in apocalyptic texts, recedes to the background in rabbinic literature where much of it can be found only in allusions, but comes again out into the open in Hekhalot literature. This kind of presentation which insists so much on continuity over the centuries by uncovering common elements in texts and traditions which are far apart from each other, certainly risks not showing sufficiendy the historical development, the

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discontinuities and the changes in attitudes and literary expression which naturally also took place. On the other hand, it is important to see the common elements in this difficult and often seemingly incoherent literature. The second half of the book consists of aseries of introductions to several Hekhalot books. In general, I. Gruenwald offers a summary of each text, sometimes quoting the text or paraphrasing it extensively on the basis of manuscripts. The discussion of some texts is very ddailed (as for Hekhalot Rabbati), in other cases it is very short (as for Shicur Qomah, which - as he rightly insists - is so difficult to summarize). Wherever he believes it possible, he gives an approximate date ofthe writing, frequently following G.Scholem, and indicates the Palestinian or Babylonian origin of a book. Only a year after the publication of Gruenwald's book, P.Schäfer presented his "Synopse zur Hekhalot-Literatur' which for the first time offered in full the textual evidence of several of the most important manuscripts containing Hekhalot material. On the basis of these texts, soon supplemented by an edition of Genizah fragments and a concordance, a new stage in the study of Hekhalot literature was opened. How radically most assumptions of earlier research were questioned, may readily be seen in P.Schäfer's "Hekhalot-Studien." Until a systematic new introduction replaces Gruenwald's book, this collection of thirteen articles (some of them summarized and supplemented in the substantial introductions to the three volumes of translations of the Synopsis) will serve as an introduction to the whole corpus of Hekhalot literature and its problems. In the introduction to his Hekhalot-Studien, P'Schäfer already emphasizes the preeminence of literary problems against the history of motifs and ideas (so prominent in Gruenwald's book) and insists on the extreme fluidity of the textual material over a long period. This allows only the delimitation of macro- and microforms, but not of clearly independent writings with their own redactional identity. After abrief survey of the texts presented by Gruenwald compared with the manuscript evidence, Schäfer concludes that it is a false presupposition to reconstruct individual "works" of Hekhalot literature and to establish the age of these "works" as finalliterary products. In reality, individual traditions have been combined into variable literary units which may not be reduced to assumed "original" forms. It is therefore impossible to produce critical editions in the classical sense. "Any edition of texts of Hekhalot literature has to take into consideration that the one text is an illusion" (p. 16). The following chapters document these positions with concrete examples. Merkavah Rabba is considered to be a late compilation

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35

of relatively small independent pie ces which for a long time have been handed on separately. As to Hekhalot Zutrati, there is no elear and uniform demarcation of this text from other traditions. This combined with the lack of unity as to literary forms and language leads to the conelusion that the work never existed as a coherendy redacted work. To look for the "Urtext," is nothing but amisied textual positivism. But even the relatively uniform character of Hekhalot Rabbati does not point to one author and redactor; it is impossible to reconstruct the development of the text from a short form to a long one or viceversa. We have to posit several forms of Hekhalot Rabbati which stand in a dynamic relationship to each other form. The same is true with regard to Shi'ur Qomah: the theory of an "Urtext" is problematic and methodically obsolete. The notion of separate Hekhalot texts to be clearly distinguished must be abandoned. The long list of Hekhalot manuscripts and the detailed description oftheir contents makes this perfectly clear. These arguments, based on a elose study of the manuscript evidence and repeated time and again for the different writings of the Hekhalot literature, are summed up and drawn together in a programmatic statement on "The Aim and Purpose of Early Jewish mysticism," the last artiele in this important collection. G.Scholem's thesis was that the Merkavah mystics aimed mainly at the ascent to heaven and the vision of God, the cognition of the mysteries of the celestial throne-world; theirs was an ecstatic mysticism, infiltrated by magical elements only later on. Against this position, Schäfer emphasizes that the Hekhalot literature certainly contains numerous descriptions of the heavenly journey, but few reports of the ascent as actually carried out. The ascent to the Merkavah does not form the centre of interest in this literature. It rather consists of "eminendy magical texts which deal with forceful adjurations ... the purpose of the adjuration is elear. It is to bring the angel down to earth .. .instead of the mystic ascending to heaven, the angel descends to earth" (p. 282). He has to bestow on the mystic a comprehensive knowledge of the Torah, never to be forgotten again. All the preparatory rites described in these texts are connected with these adjurations and not with the heavenly journey which does not, moreover, culminate in avision, but in the mystic's participation in the heavenly liturgy. Not the mystic joins in the singing of the angels; rather, the angels answer ·his own singing: "The heavenly liturgy is thus nothing but the liturgy which is performed on the earth in synagogues" (p. 287). "The central elements ofJewish life-worship and the study of the Torah-are determined, in these mystics' understanding of the

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world, by the power of magic" (p. 290). Rather than insisting with Scholem on the connections between the rabbinic and the Hekhalot literatures, we should insist on the differences between them. The Hekhalot literature is "not a literature of the rabbis, yet it seeks to stand in continuity with the Rabbinic literature" (p. 293); this literature is deeply pseudepigraphical and as such post-rabbinical. There is no way to get behind the literary state of the Hekhalot texts to an historical phenomenon of an ecstatic mysticism in the rabbinic period. It is perfectly clear that these positions of P.Schiifer completely change our view of Jewish mysticism in the rabbinic period and stand in stark contrast to the positions advocated by G.Scholem and 1. Gruenwald. If they are accepted in full, the whole section on Hekhalot literature would be out of place in this volume with its time limits. The enormous increase in our knowledge of the manuscript tradition of this literature makes it impossible to maintain any longer the coherent picture of a Jewish mysticism in the rabbinic period and in wide agreement with the ofIicial rabbinic movement. Refined methods of literary analysis will, perhaps, allow us in the future to reconstruct the antecedents of the Hekhalot literature, but our present knowledge does not admit any precise dating and 10calization of these texts.

3 Magic Classical rabbinic literature eondemns magie; but, on the other hand, it contains a good deal of magic itself. It is not always easy, therefore, to say wh at would still be possible in a strictly rabbinic context and what would be considered as heretical. It seems that only in the Geonic period and with the Karaite attack on magical practices in rabbinicJudaism, a clearer distinction between allowed theurgy and forbidden magic was drawn. P'Schiifer in his treatment of the Hekhalot literature strongly insists on its magic component which cannot be attributed only to its latest layers, as has frequently been attempted. A clear division between allowed theurgy and incantations of angels for allowed purposes (e.g. the Sar ha-Panim sections in Hekhalot writings) and magic in the narrower sense of the word is hardly possible. Dating magical texts is even more difIicult than is the case with the Hekhalot literature. One frequently refers to the conservatism of magical practices in order to overcome this problem. Greek magical papyri andJewish amulets and magic bowls from the Byzantine period show many points of contact with Hebrew or Aramaic books of magic; this proves at least the existence of certain

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ideas in the late Talmudic period. One must still be very careful, however, when claiming magical writings for the rabbinic period. It is only with greatest reserve, therefore, that at least two magical texts are briefly presented within this context. In 1966, M.Margalioth published an edition of a Hebrew "Book of Secrets" (Sifer ha-Razim) which he thought to have been written in Palestine perhaps already in the third or fourth century. Gruenwald (p. 226) is more cautious, proposing the sixth or seventh century. Margalioth's text itself is very problematic, being reconstructed on the basis of some fragments from the Genizah supplemented by much later manuscripts. The text starts with a short his tory of the transmission of a book of magic since the days of Noah (who, according to Jubilees 10,1014, received a book of magical prescriptions) until the time of King Solomon whom already Josephus associates with magical knowledge. The seven parts of the book correspond to the seven heavens. For the first six heavens, the book enumerates their angels and their secret names; it describes the magical practices associated with them and gives the texts of their adjurations. The description of the seventh heaven contains no magical material, but avision of God on his throne and the text of Merkavah hymns to be recited in his presence. Many Greek elements in the text suggest its origin in a Greek-speaking surrounding and point to the Byzantine period. Of special interest is a Greek hymn to Helios in the description of the fourth heaven. The text is transliterated into Hebrew and should be recited if one wishes to see the sun rising in her chariot. Another magical text whose tide is first mentiod by Hai Gaon, is the "Sword qf Mases" (Harba de-Mashe) , first published by M. Gaster and also included in the "Synopse zur Hekhalot-Literatur," edited by P.Schäfer, in two versions, one mainly in Hebrew, the other in Aramaic. The "sword" is the secret name of God which can be used for magical purposes. The book contains long strings of names (the "sword" proper), 1ists of angels and their spheres of influence, combined with incantations and magical recipes for all kinds of possibilities (how to catch fish, walk on water, win in a horse race, obtain the love of a woman, cause damage, destroy enemies etc.). The practical recipes contain many points of contact with the aforementioned Book of Mysteries. It may be that the Hebrew version originated in Palestine, the Aramaic one in Babylonia; to date the book is hardly possible since even the quotation by Hai Gaon may give a terminus ante quem only for the part quoted by hirn. Other texts like the Havdalah de-R. Aqiva, which has points of contact with Hekhalot Zutrati, might also be mentioned in this

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eontext. 1t is a eomposite work, partly in Hebrew, partly in Aramaie, and presents magical material and ineantations in a liturgical eontext. Here again it is praetieally impossible to say what goes baek to the rabbinie period and what are later additions. The diffieulties eonneeted with this kind of material should not, however, elose our eyes to it, sinee magie eertainly was part ofJewish religion of the rabbinie period, and surely not only a fringe phenomenon among the unedueated am ha-are$.

*** This short survey of non-rabbinie Jewish literature in the rabbinie period is far from eomplete. Many texts eould not be dealt with in these pages, e.g. the revisions of the Greek Bible by men like Aquila and Symmaehus (his Jewishness is, however, a matter of dispute) or the problems eonneeted with the origin of the Syriae Bible, aeeording to some authors the work of Jewish translators. Other books eounted among the Pseudepigrapha were not ineluded beeause their Jewishness and/or their date of origin is open to dispute. There is no doubt thatJewish literary aetivity in the rabbinie period was mueh rieher than wh at may be seen from the writings whieh have survived the eenturies. The vieissitudes of history, the usurpation ofmany Jewish writings by Christians, but above all the vietory of the rabbinie movement have eontributed to it that we know so little about late antique Judaism outside the sphere of influenee of the rabbis.

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LITERATURE DrsCUSSED IN THE ARTICLE

Berger K., Die Weisheitsschrift aus der Kairoer Geniza (Tübingen: 1989). Bilde P. Flavius Josephus between Jerusalem and Rome. His Life, his Works, and their Importance (Sheffield: 1988). Bogaert P., Apocalypse de Baruch. Introduction, traduction du Syriaque et commentaire, 2 vols (Sources Chretiennes, Paris: 1969). Cohen SJ., Josephus in Galilee and Rome: His Vita and Development as a Historian (Leiden: 1979). CollinsJJ., The Sibylline Orades of EgyptianJudaism (Missoula: 1974). CollinsJJ., Sibylline Orades, in: The 01d Testament Pseudepigrapha vol. I, ed. by JH.Charlesworth (London: 1983) 317-472. Feldman L.H., FlaviusJosephus Revisited: the Man, his Writings, and his Significance, in Aufstieg und Niedergang der Römischen Welt, II 21/ 2, edited by W. Haase (Berlin-New York: 1988) 763-862. Gruenwald 1., Some Critical Notes on the First Part of Sefer Yq:ira, Revue des EtudesJuives 132 (1973) 475-512. Gruenwald 1., Apocalyptic and Merkavah Mysticism (Leiden: 1980). Harrington DJ., Pseudo-Philo, in: The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha vol. II, ed. by JH. Charlesworth (London: 1985) 297-377. Harrington DJ., CazeauxJ Perrot C., Bogaert P.-M., Pseudo-Philon. Les antiquites bibliques, 2 vols. (Sources Chn':tiennes, Paris: 1976). Mason S., FlaviusJosephus on the Pharisees (Leiden: 1991). Murphy FJ., The Structure and Meaning of Second Baruch (Atlanta: 1985). Nebe G.W., Text und Sprache der hebräischen Weisheitsschrift aus der Kairoer Geniza (Frankfurt am Main: 1993). Rajak T., Josephus. The Historian and his Society (Philadelphia 1983). Rüger H.P., Die Weisheitsschrift aus der Kairoer Geniza (Tübingen: 1991 ). Schäfer P., Hekhalot.~Studien (Tübingen: 1988). Schäfer P., ed., Ubersetzung der Hekhalot-Literatur, vols. lI-IV (Tübingen: 1987-91). Scholem G., Ye~irah, Sefer, in: EncydopaediaJudaica Oerusalem: 1971) 16, 782-8. Schwartz S., Josephus and Judaean Politics (Leiden: 1990). Stone M.E., Fourth Ezra. A Commentary on the Book of Fourth Ezra (Hermeneia) (Minneapolis: 1990). Villalba y Varneda P., The Historical Method ofFlaviusJosephus (Leiden: 1986).

THE TARGUMIM

Paul V. M. Flesher (University of Wyoming 1) The Hebrew word targum (pI. targumim) has two meanings, "translation" and "explanation." This double meaning makes it ideally suited to designate the Aramaic translations of the Hebrew Bible, for targumim combine literal translation with explanation-additional words and sentences that address questions left unanswered by the translation. Targum Neofiti of the Pentateuch, for example, interweaves a highly literal translation with copious amounts of additional material. The translation proceeds word-for-word through the text, often representing not just every Hebrew word, but also every particle, prefix, and suffix. Into this literal rendering, the targumist has inserted interpretive material. These additions, or expansions, sometimes comprise only a word or two, other times a paragraph or more. Neofiti's targumist wove most of the expansions into the translation so that they fit without interruption or break. This approach enables the additions to masquerade as translation, disguising them from all but the most learned. The hidden character of the interpretive material, in turn, enables the targumist to add details, change the meaning, and even rewrite a story without the Aramaic-speaking audience being aware of it. Targum authors, then, provided their audience with a text that adhered to the original Hebrew, but at the same time presented accepted interpretations. The targumim, with their emphasis on translation and interpretation, provide modern scholars with a window into the theological and mythic world of the Jews who wrote them, who read them in the schools, and who heard them read aloud in the synagogue. Targums shed light not on just one group of Jews, but on many different groups, for targums were written and used by Jews living in Palestine, Egypt, Syria and Babylonia; they were composed as early as the second century B.C.E. and as late as the medieval period. 1 For the purposes ofthis article, I have abbreviated the following bibliographie referenees: M. MeNamara and D. R. G. Beattie (Eds.), The Aramaie Bible: Targums in their Historical Context, Proceedings qf the Royal lrish Academy Conftrence on the Aramaie Bible, Dublin 1992 (Sheffield: Sheffield Aeademie Press, fortheoming 1994)-herein after, MeNamara and Beattie; Paul V. M. Flesher (Ed.), Targum Studies, vol. 1 (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1992)-hereinafter, Targum Studies.

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Despite their obvious value for the religious history ofJudaism, the targums remain an under-utilized source; scholars of Second-TempIe Judaism, Rabbinic Judaism, and early Christianity have only begun to delve into them. These "beginnings" have generated much new and exciting research. Since the 1950's, scholarly interest in targums has increased steadily: scholars of Second-Temple and RabbinicJudaism have used the targums to shed light on matters of halakah (law) and aggadah (myth), as well as to investigate aspects of early Jewish synagogues and schools. Scholars of early Christianity have discovered extensive similarities between theological concepts in the targums and those in the New Testament and other early Christian writings. The most prominent of these are: messiah, Torah ("Law"), God (even God the Father), the kingdom of God, Israel, and the Ho1y Spirit. The targumic use of the Aramaic memra ("word") and other surrogate terms for God, to take another example, has helped scholars understandJohn's use of logos at the start of his gospel. As with any other field of inquiry, using the targums requires preparation. Scholars who wish to use the targums need to acquire a basic understanding of them. Tobegin with, they need to know the date and provenance of the targum they intend to study, the manner in which it was composed, and its relations to-and perhaps dependence upon-other targums and Jewish writings. This essay provides the rudiments of such knowledge and points to scholarly works providing further explanation. I have divided my discussion into two parts. In the first, I set out a historica1 framework showing the growth and development of the targums. In the second section, I identifY ten areas of study that will help scholars understand the issues, questions, and fields of knowledge that shape targum studies. THE HISTORY OF TARGUM COMPOSITION

The link between Jews and Aramaic begins with the Persian Empire. Although the Persians held politica1 hegemony over the mideast for litde more than two centuries (550-330 B.C.E.), their linguistic impact lasted far longer. The Empire used Aramaic as its administrative language, making it the language of communication from the Persian Gulf to Egypt, an area including both Palestine and Syria. After Alexander conquered the Persian Empire and Greek became the new officiallanguage, Aramaic continued to be spoken as a locallanguage. Indeed, over than a millennium later, Aramaic still comprised the dominant spoken language in many

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regions. In the centuries following 330 B.C.E., Aramaic-as the language of many Jewish populations-had an important influence on Jewish religious practices. During the post-Persian period, holy books became an important part ofJewish worship and belief, especially the Pentateuch and the Prophets. The rise of Aramaic as the lingua franca of J ews in Palestine and elsewhere-accompanied by the demise of Hebrew-prevented many Jews from understanding these new scriptures. To address this problem, biblical books began to be translated into Aramaic; targumim came into existence. The pI ace of Greek as the international administrative language after Alexander had additional implications for the development of Aramaic, and for the composition of targums. When Aramaicspeaking people had contact with bureaucrats or people from other regions, they spoke Greek. Since those who used Aramaic as a local language had no contact with other Aramaic speakers, the oncestandard form of Aramaic (under the Persians) splintered into local dialects. Targums developed in these different regions were written in these different dialects. This situation has proved a boon to targum scholars, enabling them to develop a geographical picture of the targum distribution to accompany the historical one. Within the area once covered by the Persian Empire, the history of targum writing falls into four stages-that is, four time periods which are linked to four geographicallocations. The first stage consists of the first century B.C.E. and the first century C.E .. The evidence for it comes from the Dead Sea region of Palestine. The second stage begins in the second century C.E. (perhaps late first century) and extends into the third; sc hol ars locate it primarily in Galilee. In stage three, the focus shifts to Babylonia and its Jewish community between the late second century and the fourth century. Finally, the fourth stage occurred in the regions of Syria and Galilee. It perhaps began as early as the fourth century and extended into the seventh century and beyond. Of these four stages, the later three belong to the rabbinic period of Judaism. These three stages are linked together, for targums composed in one period often provide the basis for those written in later periods. Stage one, by contrast, appears primarily at Qumran, and has no discernible links to the other stages; the Qumran targums play no role in the composition of targums in later periods.

Stage One: Targums at QJLmran Most of the documents and fragments found at Qumran were written in Hebrew, but a few were written in Aramaic. While several

THE TARGUMIM

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texts contain biblical passages in Aramaic, only one targum has been identified for certain, namely, a targum ofJob. A large section of one manuscript was found (coveringJob 37:10-42:11, plus fragments starting in 17: 14), whi1e pieces of a second were also discovered (coveringJob 3:4-5, 4:16-5:4).2 The translation in this targum provides a word-for-word rendering of the Hebrew. It reveals no link to the rabbinic targum ofJob. Archaeologists also found a few fragments of Leviticus 16:12-15 & 16:18-21 in Aramaic. Unfortunately, the brevity of these pieces makes it difficult to ascertain whether they constitute a targum or simply form a biblical quotation in another type of work, such as a prayer or a theological text. In addition to these items, excavations unearthed a few Aramaic fragments of the book of Tobit. Joseph Fitzmyer, who is preparing these pieces for publication, thinks that they constitute remains of Tobit in its originallanguage, and thus do not stern from a targum. The Genesis Apocryphon was one of the earliest texts to be published from Qumran. 3 It comprises an Aramaic rewriting of Genesis, of which we now possess portions of the manuscript covering Gen. 12-15. Its free treatment of the subject matter places the document into the category of Rewritten Bible-along with Josephus' Jewish Antiquities and the book of Jubilees. In places, however, it produces a translation that adheres closely to the Hebrew, suggesting some connections to the targum genre.

Stage T wo: Galilee in the Second and Third Century During the rabbinic period, the most popular biblical books for translating were those of the Pentateuch. These books received new targums in aB three rabbinic stages outlined above. Scholars divide the Pentateuchal targums into two groups: the Palestinian targums-which include Targum Neofiti, Targum PseudoJonathan, the Fragmentary Targums, the targum fragments from the Cairo Geniza, and the targumic tosrftot-and the sole Babylonian targum, Targum Onkelos. Two groups of Palestinian Targums were composed in Palestine during stage two, namely, Targum Neofiti and the Cairo Geniza targum fragments. Targum Onkelos was written in Babylonia in stage three, while the remain-

2 F or discussion of the Job targum at Qumran and other questions of Aramaie at Qumran and in Palestine, see Joseph A. Fitzmyer, A Wandering Aramean: Collected Aramaie Essays (Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1979). 3 For discussion and translation of this text, see Geza Vermes, The Dead Sea Scrolls in English, 3rd ed. (London: Penguin, 1987) 252-59.

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ing Palestinian Targums were composed in stage four. Let me describe the targums of stage two. Alexandro Diez Macho discovered Targum Neofiti in 1956 in the Vatican Library, where it had lain miscatalogued for a century. The manuscript constitutes a sixteenth-century copy of a targum originally composed sometime in the second or third century. It was written in the dialect of Jewish Palestinian Aramaic and provides a continuous translation of every verse of the five pentateuchal books, except for a few that are missing because of copyist errors or erasures by a censor. The targum combines, as I mentioned, a highly literal translation with additional interpretive material. Often these two aspects are woven together so skillfully that the additions can only be identified through comparison with the Hebrew text. The Cairo Geniza targum fragments were originally found by Solomon Schechter who, at the turn of the century, discovered that the Ibn Ezra Synagogue in Cairo had been depositing its worn-out religious texts-indeed, any document containing the divine name-in an attic storeroom. This room-called a geniza--had served theJewish community for over a millennium. Schechter obtained permission to ship its contents to the Cambridge Library. Schechter never knew the wide variety of material he had discovered, for shortly afterwards he moved to the United States to become the Chancellor oftheJewish Theological Seminary, while the onset of World War I halted cataloguing efforts by others. Only within the past few years, has Michael L. Klein completed a multiyear search which sought to identify every targum fragment. The fragments of the continuous, non-Onkelos targums from the Cairo Geniza belong to the rubric of the Palestinian Targums. Fragments from seven different targums have been found. Like Neofiti, they are written inJewish Palestinian Aramaic. The manuscripts themselves date from the ninth to the fourteenth centuries, but they copy Palestinian targums written before the fourth century. Unfortunately, the fragments are few; none of the manuscripts comprise even half of Genesis-the book most frequently represented-let alone the whole Pentateuch. Nevertheless, enough remains from the different targums to reveal that they were composed in the same manner as Neofiti; they combine a ward-for-word translation with interwoven expansions. Furthermore, wherever extant, the Cairo Geniza fragments contain the same expansions as Targum Neofiti. With few exceptions, we can say that where Neofiti has an expansion, so do any extant Geniza fragments, and where Neofiti just translates, so do the existing Geniza fragments.

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Targum Neofiti and the Cairo Geniza fragments contain the same expansions because they acquired those expansions from the same source. This source, called Proto-PT, supplies the sizable expansions-those more than just a few words-to every targum classed as a Palestinian Targum to the Pentateuch. 4 It may supply many of the smaller units of additional material and so me translation as weH, but at this stage of research, this possibility has not received serious investigation. Neofiti and the Cairo Geniza fragments are not the only targums originating in stage two. Scholars trace the origins of Targum Onkelos to the Pentateuch and Targum Jonathan to the Prophets to this stage, as weH. However, no direct manuscript evidence exists linking them to this period. I shaH therefore postpone discussion of them until stage three.

Stage Three: Babylonia in the Second through Fourth Centuries Targum Onkelos as we know it derives from Babylonia. For the Babylonian rabbinic scholars, it constituted the official Pentateuchal targum. In the Babylonian Talmud, the rabbis refer to it as "our targum" (BT Qj.d. 49a). Whenever an Aramaic translation of a pentateuchal passage appears in the Talmud, the quote matches that of Targum Onkelos. The rabbis even considered its exegesis valid for deciding questions of halakah. Evidence for Babylonian origins of Onkelos also comes from its language; its Aramaic contains eastern grammatical forms and vocabulary. In addition to this eastern identification, Targum Onkelos contains features that link it to the west and, specifically, to the Palestinian Targums. First, Onkelos contains many elements suggesting a Palestinian dialect of Aramaic-specifically, that of Qumran Aramaic. Second, despite its highly literal approach to translation, Targum Onkelos occasionally adds a few words to its translation or renders a verse in an interpretive manner. These divergences from literal translation often occur at places where the Palestinian Targums contain additional material. Indeed, to the extent permitted by the insertion's brevity, Onkelos' additional material often echoes or aHudes to larger Palestinian expansions found in the same verses. T 0 explain the evidence for both western and eastern features, scholars suggest that Targum Onkelos originated in Palestine and 4 For a fuller discussion of the sources underlying the Palestinian Targums to the Pentateuch, see Paul V. M. Flesher, "Exploring the Sources of the Synoptic Targums to the Pentateuch," in Targum Studies, pp. 101-34.

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then was thoroughly revised in Babylonia. The first stage of what became Targum Onkelos was probably written in Palestine prior to 135 C.E. This accounts for the Qumran-like aspects of its Aramaic. The exact nature of this text, sometimes designated Proto-Onkelos, is undear. Its links with the expansive material of the Palestinian Targums suggest that Proto-Onkelos might have been Proto-PT or a Palestinian Targum based upon it. The second stage of Targum Onkelos came about when this text was brought to Babylonia. There, sometime prior to the end of the fourth century, it was revised, with the targumist removing most of the non-translation material and recasting the Aramaie into a more eastern dialect. This revised version became authoritative among BabylonianJewry and comprised the text we know today as Targum Onkelos. The importance of Targum Onkelos inspired the Babylonian scholars to devise a masorah for it, to help ensure ace urate copying of the text. This gave Targum Onkelos a more stable textual tradition than the Palestinian Targums. The compositional history of Targum Jonathan to the Prophets-apocryphally attributed to Jonathan b. Uziel (BT Meg. 3a)parallels that of Targum Onkelos. Written in Babylonia, Targum Jonathan's translation tends to be literal, but it contains more expansive material than Onkelos. In addition, like Onkelos' rendition of the Pentateuch, Targum Jonathan became the authoritative Babylonian targum to the prophetie books, both the Former and the Latter Prophets. At several places, the Babylonian Talmud cites averse from Targum Jonathan to give the correct rendering of a biblical passage. Indeed, in BT Moed Qatan 28b, Targum Jonathan's rendering provides the correct interpretation of Zech. 12:11, which R. Joseph claims would be unknown without the targum. The strongest parallel between Targum Onkelos and Targum Jonathan lies in the condusion that Jonathan, like Onkelos, was composed in two stages. The first was composed in Palestine about the same time as Proto-Onkelos, probably between 70 and 135. During the second stage, this early prophetie targum was taken to Babylonia, where in the third or fourth century it was extensively revised. These revisions enabled it to become the authoritative translation of the Prophets among Babylonian Jewry. Two types of evidence coincide to support the condusion of a two-stage development of Targum Jonathan. First, the targum combines two dialects of Aramaic: a Palestinian form dose to that found in the Qumran Aramaie texts and the Bar Kochba letters, and a Babylonian form. This dialectical mix directly parallels that

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of Targum Onkelos. 5 Second, Bruce Chilton's study of key theological terms in the Targum to Isaiah reveals that the targum was composed in two stages. The first stage was done in Palestine between 70 and 135 (the early tannaitic period), and the second in Babylonia between the third and fifth centuries (the amoraic period). 6 The convergence of these two types of evidence supports the conclusion that Targum Jonathan took shape in two stages and in different geographical locations. Stage Four: Greater

~ria

in the Fourth Century and Beyond

The story of the interrelationships between the Palestinian and Babylonian targums does not stop here. After their acceptance among BabylonianJewry, Targum Onkelos and TargumJonathan moved westward into the eastern Mediterranean region (i.e. Syria, Palestine and Egypt) , perhaps accompanying the spread of the Babylonian Talmud. Here, both targums established themselves as predominant and ultimately supplanted the Palestinian Targums. This movement began sometime between the fourth century and the seventh century; it was probably complete by the ninth century. Let me begin my discussion with the Pentateuchal targums. Among Jews in the eastern Mediterranean region, there were several different reactions to the rising ascendancy of Targum Onkelos. These reactions can be seen the different Palestinian Targums that developed. First, aversion of the Palestinian Targums was developed that could be used alongside Onkelos without competing with it, namely, the so-called Fragmentary Targums. These targums are not continuous, but appear to contain "extracts" from one. These extracts are arranged in the order of the Pentateuch-sometimes including words or phrases from a few verses in a chapter, other times skipping several chapters at once. 7 The larg-

; For an alternate and intriguing interpretation of the linguistic conundrum, see E. M. Cook, "A New Perspective on the Language of Onqeios andJonathan" in McNamara and Beattie. 6 B. D. Chilton, 1he Glory rif Israel (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1983). Chilton does not emphasize the geographical provenance of his comparative material. But even a cursory reading shows that the early texts he uses are mostly Palestinian and that among the later ones, the Babylonian Talmud figures most prominently. In the introduction to his translation, 1he Isaiah Targum, in the 1he Aramaie Bible series (Wilmington: Michael Glazier, 1987), Chilton expands the early period from 70135 to the tannaitic period (70-200). 7 These should not be confused with the Cairo Geniza targum fragments which are remains of once complete texts.

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est number of extracts derive from the Proto-PT source, while the remainder explain technical terms, define hapax legomena, or correct "errors." Although most of the literal translation has been left out, a few extracts contain just a translation of averse. Like Neofiti, the two main recensions of the Fragmentary Targums-represented by manuscripts in the Paris and Vatican libraries-are written inJewish Palestinian Aramaic. They constitute areaction to Targum Onkelos' importance-presenting material not found in it. Thus, with Onkelos supplying the literal translation and the Fragmentary Targum supplying the interpretive material, the two targums could be used together without competition. There exists a second "fragmentary" response to Targum Onkelos. While the Fragmentary Targums contain extracts arranged in pentateuchal order, other collections of Proto-PT expansions-called Festival Collections-were organized according to liturgical criteria. They bring together expansions of the ProtoPT type that would have been read on specific holidays. For example, one collection found in the Cairo Geniza (Klein, MS J) contains readings for Shavuot, Purim and the Seventh day of Passover, while another (Klein, MS Y) has readings for Shavuot, Passover and Rosh HaShanah. These collections apparently comprise the forerunners of the medieval Ma}:lzorim-prayer books for the holidays, some of which contain targums to the biblical readings. Ma}:lzor Vitry even presents the readings for the Passover liturgy (Ex. 13:17-15:26 and Ex. 19:1-20:26) by interweaving the literal translation of Onkelos with the Proto-PT expansions as found in the Paris Fragmentary Targum. The Festival Collections were probably organized sometime after the seventh century. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan comprises the third reaction to the new importance of Targum Onkelos in the West. It combines an Onkelos-like translation with Proto-PT additions and with other interpretive material. This results in a complete targum to the Pentateuch with significantly more expansive material than Targum Neofiti. Some new additions derive from known rabbinic writings, such as Sifra and the Babylonian Talmud, while other additions are unparalleled. Usually, the new material is simply placed into the targum, but Pseudo:Jonathan's targumist occasionally uses it to recast the older Proto-PT material. The combination of these sources results in a targum containing three different types of Aramaic: the Eastern dialect ofOnkelos, the Palestinian dialect ofProto-PT, with most of the newer additions written in Late Jewish Literary Aramaic-a dialect similar to Syriac. The exact date of this targum is

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unclear, with scholars arguing for dates rangmg from the midfourth up to the late eighth century.8 The fourth re action to Onkelos' ascendancy appears in the Tosefta targums, also known as targumic tosiftot. These are individual Proto-PT expansions-usually fairly large-that have been recast into an Onkelos-like dialect. They appear in manuscripts of Targum Onkelos-either in the text, written into the margins, or placed at the end. Some have been brought together into independent collections. The dating for this material is uncertain; apart from the suggestion that they were created in the medieval period, there is little else to say. Targum Jonathan of the Prophets accompanied Onkelos in its westward movement. Following Onkelos' example, it supplanted the Palestinian Targum of the Prophets among eastern Mediterranean Jewry. More successful than Onkelos, Jonathan essentially eliminated the Palestinian Targum. Only one body of evidence remains to indicate that such a targum ever existed, namely, the targumic tosiftot of the prophets found in Targum Jonathan manuscripts. Just as the Palestinian Targum of the Pentateuch provided non-translation material that was transformed into targumic tosiftot, so the Palestinian Targum of the Prophets provided material that was likewise transformed. Some eighty of these tosiftot-Iabeled "Targum Yerushalmi" or "Another Targum"-appear in Codex Reuchlinianus' text of Targum Jonathan. 9 Other tosiftot appear in other manuscripts. Like the Pentateuchal tosiftot, these are Palestinian expansions recast into a dialect matching that of Targums Onkelos and Jonathan. Unlike the Pentateuchal and Prophetie books, the books of the Writings apparently were not translated until stage four. In general, most of the targums to the Writings are late, probably composed between the sixth and the ninth centuries. Most contain material borrowed from the Babylonian Talmud and other rabbinie texts. In fact, whereas the Talmud speaks of targums to the Pentateuch and the Prophets, it explicitly states that no targum of the Writings exists (BT Meg. 3a). Furthermore, many of the Writings targums

8 For a discussion of the dating of Pseudo:Jonathan, see S. A. Kaufman, "Dating the Language of the Palestinian Targurns and their use in the Studyof First Century CE Texts," in McNarnaFa and Beattie. The author would like to thank Professor Kaufman for his helpful answers to inquiries concerning linguistic rnatters. FOF a contrary view, see Robert Rayward, "Red Reifer and Golden Calf: Dating Targurn Pseudo:Jonathan," in Targum Studies, pp. 9-32. 9 Codex Reuchlinianus sterns frorn the late medieval period and has been dated to 1105.

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have been influenced by both Pentateuchal Targums, and occasionally even by Targum Jonathan to the Prophets. Finally, the Writings targums blend characteristics from both eastern and western dialects of Aramaic. Most frequently these features derive from the dialects of the Palestinian Targums to the Pentateuch (western) and Targum Onkelos (eastern), but they often include aspects found in the Aramaie of the Babylonian Talmud. All these factors point to the conclusion that the different Writings Targums were composed in the eastern Mediterranean region after the Babylonian Talmud and the Babylonian targums of Onkelos andJonathan came westthat is, du ring the fourth century or later. Nearly every book of the Writings has a targum; only Ezra, Nehemiah and Daniel do not. Each book has its own, individual targum; no single targum covers all the Writings as does Targum Onkelos for the Pentateuch and TargumJonathan for the Prophets. We can divide the targums to the Writings into three general categories: (I) the Five Megillot, (2)Job and Psalms, and (3) Proverbs and Chronicles. lo The Five Megillot-Qohelet, Song of Songs, Lamentations, Ruth and Esther-all have targums. Esther, in fact, has twO. 11 These targums are quite expansive, with each containing several times the amount of material found in the Hebrew. They possess additions borrowed from the Babylonian Talmud and other rabbinic texts. Most of them also share material with the Midrash Rabbah to their book (Targum to Qohelet with Qohelet Rabbah,

Targum to Ruth with Ruth Rabbah, and so on). While revealing Palestinian features in their language, they also contain elements of eastern dialects-elements found in Targum Onkelos or the Babylonian Talmud. The targums to Job and Psalms mix literal translation with expansive material, somewhat like the Palestinian Pentateuchal targums. But they also show a midrashic influence in their style. In several verses, these targums present two or more different translations and/or interpretations. Each one is marked by the words, "another targum," or "another wording (literally, language)." This echoes the midrashic phrase for introducing multiple midrashic in10 These groupings should not be taken to imply common authorship. They merely indicate shared characteristics. 11 Although some scholars have argued that there are three targums to Esther, arecent study has shown that the so-called third targum constitutes a renaissanceera reworking of the first targum. See R. Le Deaut and B. Grossfeld, "The Origin and Nature of the Esther Targum in the Antwerp Polyglot: Exit Targum Esther III?" Textus 16 (1991): 95-115.

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terpretations, namely, "another matter." These constitute the only targums that interrupt the text's narrative flow and intro du ce to the reader an awareness that the targum does not present a single, seamless translation. In other words, instead of hiding the additions by interweaving them with the translation, these targums identify the different translations and interpretations. Finally, the targums are written in the dialect of Late Jewish Literary Aramaic, which is also found in Targum Pseudo:Jonathan. The targums to Proverbs and Chronicles fit together because both show evidence of links to the Peshitta versions of these books (Christian translations into the Aramaic dialect of Syriac). This appears most pronounced in the Proverbs Targum, where nearly a third of the verses are word-for-word identical to the Peshitta. It has no rabbinic exegesis at all, not even any material identifying wisdom as Torah-a theme prevalent in rabbinic literature and emphasized in most other targums. The Targum to Chronicles also shows signs of links with the Peshitta, but these are not as extensive as those in the Targum to Proverbs. While consisting of a literal translation, the Targum to Chronicles occasionally incorporates expansive material, often borrowed from the Babylonian Talmud. Furthermore, it frequently happens that wherever the Hebrew Chronicles shares material with the books of Samuel and Kings, the base translation of the Chronicles Targum copied from their targums. The Chronicles Targum also has borrowed some material from a Palestinian Targum to the Pentateuch, probably PseudoJonathan. UNDERSTANDING TARGUM STUDIES:

A

SELECTIVE GUIDE

The framework of targumic development just outlined derives from numerous scholarly studies. Parts of the framework come from decades-old classical studies which scholars treat as "common knowledge"; other aspects stern from recent work so hot-off-the-press that it has yet to undergo analysis and debate. These studies depend on differing assumptions about the nature of targums in general and about individual targums in particular. This eclectic picture of targumic his tory should not be used uncritically, without scholars understanding the presuppositions, issues, and questions underlying it. The difficulty facing newcomers to this field lies in gaining such an understanding; if my own early experience is any guide, it becomes a convoluted process of wandering through pages of detailed research, often heavy on philological analysis and short on theoretical explanation and articulation of results. It also includes many

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false starts and wrong turns. Moreover, as in other fields, targum scholars talk to themselves in their own idiosyncratic language and identify their issues and questions in shorthand, thus erecting a high initial barrier for anyone wishing to enter the field. In the remainder of this essay, I hope to point out the doors and gates for passing through this scholarly barrier. Instead of forcing newcomers to scale the heights by trial and error, I will set out a path of study showing scholars specific areas that have important bearing on the field's investigative processes. My hope is that this will simplify entrance into the field and enable scholars to gain a foundational understanding without unnecessary difficulty. To accomplish this goal, I will set out ten areas that form the building blocks of our present understanding of the targums, and identify the best scholarly works in each. The readings will provide an initial understanding of each area and supply direction for further study. We will begin at the beginning, with introductory works. (1) Introductions

Introductory works should explain a field's central issues and the progress being made to resolve them. Unfortunately, targum studies has undergone such rapid advancement in the past few decades that no introductions remain current. No book-length studies presently available provide an introduction to the field as it now stands; most are more than two decades old. Even when we turn to introductory articles, nearly all have been overtaken by developments in the field. Of the articles currently published, for instance, only one has been written since the inception of a major translation project, The Aramaie Bible, which is translating all the targums into English. Given this caveat, the best introductions currently available are two essays by Philip Alexander: 'Jewish Aramaic Translations of Hebrew Scriptures," and "Targum, Targumim" in the The Anchor Bible Dictionary.12 While the essays cover similar material, each has its own focus. Alexander introduces the different targumim, their manuscripts and critical editions, as weIl as their literary character. He also discusses the social context for which the targums are thought to have been written, namely, the synagogue and the school. Other introductory essays may be worth reading. Roger Le Alexander, P. S., ':Jewish Aramaie Translations ofHebrew Scriptures" in M. Mulder & H. Sysling (Eds.), Mikra: Text, Translation, Reading and Interpretations ofthe Hebrew Bible in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1990) 217-254; and "Targum, Targumim" in The Anchor Bible Dictionary (New York: Doubleday, 1992) 6:320-331.

J.

12

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Deaut wrote an intraductory chapter appearing in the Cambridge History cif Judaism. 13 Unfortunately, it has not weathered the test of time as weIl as Alexander's pieces. The interested reader can also consult an expanded version of the first half of this article; it can be found in Introduction to Rabbinie Literature by Jacob Neusner. 14

(2) The Nature

cif Ancient Translations

Targums are first and foremost translations. To be sure, nearly all targums contain additional material, but that material usually appears in the context of a surprisingly literal translation. To understand the character of the targums, then, one must understand the pI ace of translation in the ancient Mediterranean world. Sebastian Brock's article, "Aspects of Translation Technique in Antiquity," provides a good introduction to that practice. 15 Brock explains the differences between translating the meaning of words (literal translation) and translating the meaning of sentences and paragraphs (free translation). Both approaches were linked to particular political or cultural situations. Literal translation was practiced in legal and governmental contexts and assumed that someone competent in both languages would be present to interpret the document if necessary. Free translation, by contrast, constituted a literary practice and aimed to produce a readable-and if possible, artistictranslated text. Biblical translation, Brack argues, followed the former practice, which suggests important implications for translations' cultural and religious use. In making his argument, Brack details the specific techniques of literal translation used by targums and other translations such as the Septuagint: word order, formal and lexical correspondence, analogy, and technical terms. James Barr, in his article "The Typology of Literalism in ancient biblical translations," likewise focuses on the features of literal translation, but he extends his discussion beyond that of Brock. 16 Barr shows that translations can be both literal and free at the same time. Translations have different levels or registers in their conver-

l:l Le Deaut, R., "The Targumim" in W. D. Davies and L. Finke1stein (Eds.), The Cambridge History of Judaism (Cambridge: Cambridge U niversity Press, 1989) 2:563-590. 14 FIesher, Paul V. M., "The Targumim in the Context of Rabbinic Literature" in J. Neusner, Introduction to Rabbinie Literature (New York: Doubleday, 1994) 1., Brock, S., "Aspects of Translation Technique in Antiquity" in Creek, Roman, and By;::antine Studies, 20 (1979): 69-87. lli Barr, J., "The Typology of Literalism in ancient biblical translations" In Mitteilungen des Septuaginta-Unternehmens, 15 (1979): 279-325.

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sion from one language to another. In so me of these levels, a translator may take pains to provide a literal rendering, while in others he may alter the literal character significantly. Barr in fact argues that biblical translation in antiquity was never "free" in the modern sense, but consisted of different degrees of literalness. In addition, Barr analyzes the two sides of the translation process. On the one hand, he studies the features of a source text (vorlage) which provide impetus for particular types of translation. An uninterpretable phrase, to take the most obvious example, will impel the translator to make a guess rather than a translation. On the other hand, Barr turns to the translation side of the process and looks at how a translator decides to address particular translation problems. Barr analyzes, for instance, how a translator approaches metaphors. Does the translator render the surface meaning, the deeper meaning, or attempt to include both? Taken together, the articles by Brock and Barr provide an important foundation for understanding the practice of translation at the time when the targums were written. (3) Aramaie and the Targumic Dialects

Since the targums are translations, a scholar needs to understand the language into which they were translated, namely, Aramaic. To read the targums themselves, a scholar must obviously learn Aramaic. This constitutes a labor of months and years, preferably under the guidance of an expert teacher; it is far beyond this essay to provide even the beginnings of such a task. However, sc hol ars who only intend to read the targums in English should still understand the dialects in which they were composed and the interrelationships among those dialects. Stephen Kaufman, one of the foremost scholars of Aramaic, has written two pie ces which together provide an introduction to Aramaic and its place in targum studies. The first is an entry in the Anchor Bible Dictionary.17 In this article, Kaufman provides abrief overview of the history of Aramaic and its dialects, from its beginnings about a millennium B.C.E. to the modern period. In a second article, which appears in the proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy Conference on the Aramaic Bible, Kaufman describes how the major targumim fit into, and provide evidence for, the history of

17 Kaufman, S. A., "Languages (Aramaie)" in The Anchor Bible Dictionary (New York: Doub1eday, 1992) 4: 173-178.

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Aramaic dialects. 18 He identifies the extent of scholarly knowledge, explicates some of the remaining problems, and suggests ways for solving them.

(4) 17ze Targums as Texts If the targums were merely translations, then the character of targums as texts would be clear and the process of their composition straightforward. But their combination of exactingly literal translation with additional material constitutes a puzzle; the two types of writing seem diametrically opposed. While scholars have suggested several models of composition to explain this situation, three main ones stand out. Most others form a variation on these. The key distinction among the models lies in how they picture a targum's authorship; were targums composed by a single person (or group of people), by a limited succession of individuals (or groups) whose separate activities can be identified, or were they subjected to modification every time they were copied? The answer to this question may differ from targum to targum. To explain these models, let me address them in reverse order and recommend three scholarly works which use and explain each one. Walter Aufrect, in his article "Some Observations on the Überliiferungsgeschichte of the Targums," takes the stand that the Pentateuchal targums result from changes introduced by aseries of creative copyists-copyists who were not afraid to alter the text for their own purposes. 19 Focusing his analysis on terms used to avoid direct mention of God, Aufrecht holds that different copyists favored different terms. As they copied a targum, they would replace the terms they did not like with those they did. Sometimes they did this more consistently than at other times. By studying the patterns of the terms' usage, Aufrecht identifies a pattern of change that fits with theological developments in the rabbinic literature. This pattern can then be used for dating the targums and placing them into the development of rabbinism. Bruce Chilton puts forth a second view of targum composition in his baok, 17ze Glory rif Israel. He argues that the Isaiah Targum was composed in two identifiable stages. 20 Chilton looks at the theologi18 Kaufman, S. A., "Dating the Language of the Palestinian Targums and their use in the Study of First Century CE Texts" in McNaJ?ara and Beattie. 19 Aufrecht, W. E., "Some Observations on the Oberlieferungsgeschichte of the Targums" in Targum Studies, pp. 77-88. 20 Chilton, B. D., The Glory I!! Israel, The Theology and Provenience I!! the Isaiah Targum. (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1982).

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cal concepts imbedded in several different terms, including Jerusalern, Holy Spirit, Law, and Messiah. He isolates two different layers of thought on these matters. One layer sterns from the tannaitic period and consistently reflects theological understandings of these terms found in documents from this period. The other layer is amoraic (post-200). Its concepts can be found in latter rabbinic documents, most frequently the Babylonian Talmud. The third position is best represented by one of my own articles, "Exploring the Sources of the Synoptic Targums to the Pentateuch."21 In it, I argue that there is a single source for most of the larger, additional material in the Palestinian Targums to the Pentateuch, namely, the Proto-PT source. All of the Palestinian Targums contain this material (where extant) and only Targum PseudoJonathan contains a significant amount of additional material in addition to this source. Thus Targum Neofiti, the targum fragments from the Cairo Geniza, the Fragmentary Targums and PseudoJonathan derive most of their material from this source. Sometimes the source material appears verbatim in several targums, other times the wording varies, but not its form, structure or content. Sometimes one targum, typically Pseudo:Jonathan, will develop an addition beyond the version found in other Palestinian Targums. These three different views of targum composition have all played a role in explaining one targum or another. They are not necessarily mutually exclusive, but can be combined to reflect different stages of development. The single-source theory, for exampIe, explains Targum Neofiti, but a two-stage process must be used to explain Targum Pseudo:Jonathan.

(5) 7he Interrelationships among the Targums In addition to the issues discussed above, scholars interested in the Pentateuchal targums face another hotly debated issue: that of the links among the different targums. Targum scholars agree that the different Palestinian Targums are related to each other; most also think that the Babylonian targum, Targum Onkelos, reveals links to them. But scholars have yet to agree on the character of these interrelationships. Several different approaches exist to explaining the links between the targums. In the article mentioned above, Kaufman explains them by appealing to matters of language and dialect. 22 My own previously cited piece argues that source criticism unveils the 21 Besher, Pau1 V. M., "Exp1oring the Sources of the Synoptic Targums to the Pentateuch" inTargum Studies, pp. 101-134. 22 See footnote 18.

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bonds linking the Palestinian Targums to the Pentateuch. 23 Most approaches to the question, however, use intensive philological examination of the targums to investigate the question. Two studies illustrate how this approach has been practiced. While neither study has proved definitive, they both discuss earlier studies and have stimulated further debate on this question. The first of these is Geza Vermes' article "The Targumic Versions of Genesis 4:3-16."24 In the first part ofthis article, Vermes compares versions of this passage found in the different targums and charts their verbal agreements and disagreements. He finds that his results suggest that Targum Onkelos depends on Pseudo:Jonathan, or more precisely, on a source of Pseudo-Jonathan. In the second investigation into this question, Gerard Kuiper devotes a book-length study, The Pseudo-Jonathan Targum and fts Relationship to Targum Onkelos, which draws upon more extensive data than V ermes. 25 He also asks a slightly broader question, whether the Palestinian targums are related to Onkelos and whether they are prior to or a product of Onkelos? He concludes that the Palestinian Targums, of which Pseudo-Jonathan forms apart, were "known to Onkelos and were used in its composition."26 This particular conclusion has become part of the scholarly understanding of these links, but other results of Kuiper have been questioned. His book remains, however, an extensive illustration of the philological approach to targumic interrelationships.27

(6) The Targums in their Social and Religious Context Scholars have long argued that the main purpose of the targums was for use in the liturgical reading of Scripture in the synagogue. Recently, the role of targums in study-both in private and in organized schools-has received attention. Arecent article by Steven Fraade, "Rabbinic Views on the Practice of Targum, and Multilingualism in the Jewish Galilee of the Third-Sixth Centuries," provides the best discussion of these different contexts. 28 See footnote 21. Vermes, G., "The Targumic Versions of Genesis 4:3-16" in G. Vermes, PostBiblicalJewish Studies (Leiden: E.j. BrilI, 1975) 92-126. 25 Kuiper, G. j., The Pseudo-Jonathan Targum and Its Relationship to Targum Onkelos (Rome: Gregorian University Press for Institutum Patristicum "Augustinianum", 1972). 26 Kuiper, p. 102, brackets mine. 27 For a critique of Kuiper's book, see S. A. Kaufman, Journal qf Near Eastern Studies, 35 (1976): 61-62. 28 Fraade, S. D., "Rabbinie Views on the Practice of Targum and Multilingualism in theJewish Galilee ofthe Third-Sixth Centuries" in L. 1. Levine (Ed.), Studies on the Galilee in Late Antiqui0J (New York: JTSA, 1992): 253-85. 23

24

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Fraade sets out the classic picture focusing on the synagogue as the targum's social context and then brings in new information to reevaluate that focus. He argues that the targums' synagogue role has been over-emphasized and that the targums, at least those which we now possess, were more likely to have been designed for use in schools.

(7) Jewish Literature and the Targums From the earliest studies of the targums, it has been clear that these translations have important connections with other Jewish literature. For one targumic passage or another, scholars have a parallel in nearly every text of rabbinic Judaism. Parallels also have been discovered in earlier Jewish writings (Josephus, Philo, Pseudo-Philo, as well as texts of the apocrypha and pseudepigrapha, such as Enoch and Jubilees). The problem facing scholars, therefore, lies not in the question ofwhether the targums are part ofJewish literature. Instead, scholarly research focuses on how to identify a passage's exegetical links with different documents and how to trace the development of an exegetical tradition across different documents. In recent decades, these questions have been approached through a method known as tradition history. In a nutshell, the approach consists of finding all the versions of a particular theme or interpretation, and then studying them within a historical context, either synchronic or diachronic. The best theoretical statement of this method was set out in the 1950's by Renee Bloch. 29 Her article, now available in English as "Methodological Note for the Study of Rabbinic Literature," provided an clear abstract discussion of the method and its goals, articulating the intellectual basis of previous studies and shaping a theoretical foundation for future work. For targum studies, this method has the advantage of placing a targum into a diachronic pattern of development, rather than merely identifying individual parallel passages. Geza Vermes has perhaps been the most influential practitioner and developer of Bloch's methodological scheme. In the articles

~9 Bloch, R., "Methological Note for the Study of Rabbinic Literature," in W. S. Green (Ed.), Approaches to Ancient Judaism: Theory and Practice, vol. I (Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1978) 51-76. This is a translation of Bloch, R., "Note methodologique pour I'etude de la litterature rabbinique," Recherehes de Science Religieuse, 43 (1955): 194-227.

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collected in his Scripture and Tradition in Judaism, he has used tradition history to open up new understandings of biblical interpretation in early Judaism. 30 In the first group of articles, Vermes uses the targums to explicate biblical words that have developed a symbolic meaning beyond their dictionary definition. The second section of articles emphasizes the parallels between particular targums and the works of the rewritten Bible-Philo, Pseudo-Philo, Josephus, andJubilees. Vermes also focuses on the Balaam story in the targums and uses it to explore the links between the targums and rabbinic literature. The book concludes with studies that investigate theological questions and show how targumic interpretations lay the groundwork for early Christian beliefs. Although the tradition history approach remains the most popular method for investigating parallels among targums and early Jewish literature, it unfortunately remains hampered by a severe limitation. Even though it can identifY parallel passages, it cannot identifY those passages' direction of dependence. If, far instance, a passage in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan shows strong similarities to one in the Babylonian Talmud, it remains impossible at present to show whether the talmud depends on the targum or vice versa. This inability does not come from want of trying; over the decades scholars have formulated a number of rules to describe how traditions change across texts. Unfortunately, none of them have proved reliable. But the problem lies less in the method than in the texts themselves. Rabbinic texts are notoriously difficult to date, with scholarly estimates for most texts ranging across a century and, for several texts, across several centuries. This lack of knowledge introduces a concomitant uncertainty into the application of tradition history.

(8) Early Christianiry and the Targums The use of targums in the study of early Christianity constitutes an important subset of the study of targums in early Jewish literature. Gospel scholars in particular have shown a broad interest in using the targums as evidence for understanding the cultural and religious world in which Jesus lived, thought and taught. They have also drawn upon it for help in understanding how the gospel writers interpreted Scripture and shaped their portrayal of Jesus. The use

30

Vermes, G., Scripture and Tradition in Judaism, 2nd edition (Leiden: Brill, 1973).

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of targums in New Testament has been one of the most prolific areas of targumic research, so any selection of important works will leave out important studies. I have chosen two warks which provide an initial depiction of this area's issues and methods. Martin McNamara's Targum and Testament provides asolid introduction to the issues and questions of New Testament studies on which the targums may shed light. 31 The book comprises an. introduction both to the targums themselves and to their use in the study of the New Testament. Although the introduction to the targums on their own has been overtaken, the discussion of the use of targums in New Testament studies remains helpful. McNamara looks at the ways in which the targums speak of God-such as calling hirn Father-that find paraHels in the New Testament. He also analyzes notions of the holy spirit, the eschaton and the messiah, as weH as certain targums' understanding of sin and virtue, which has surprising similarities to gospel concepts. McNamara further devotes a chapter to what he sees as the special relationship between the johannine writings and the targums. Bruce Chilton's A Galilean Rabbi and His Bible offers an important study of a single targum and its importance for understanding the gospels' portraits of jesus. 32 Chilton shows how material in the Targum to Isaiah can be used to elucidate and explicate some of jesus' parables and other teachings. Chilton approaches his task in a subtle and carefuHy nuanced manner, which enables hirn to demonstrate theological links between gospel interpretations and those found in the Isaiah targum. From both the standpoint of methodology and the results of its application, this book makes an important contribution to the use of the targums in the study of the New Testament.

(9) Dating the Targums At times it seems that every article or book about the targums develops arguments or makes pronouncements concerning the date of one targum or another. This certainly holds true far many of the works mentioned in this essay. The reason for this ongoing discussion lies in the difficulty of determining a solid date for most targums. Although sc hol ars have developed a number of different

31 McNamara, M., Targum and Testament: Aramaie Paraphrases rifthe Hebrew Bible: A Light on the New Testament (Shannon: Irish U niversity Press, 1972). 32 Chilton, B. D., A Galilean Rabbi and His Bible, Jesus' Use rif the Interpreted Scripture rif His Time (Wilmington, DE: Michael Glazier, 1984).

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methods for ascertaining dates of composition, they have app1ied them in different ways to different targums and even to different parts of the same targum. A debate between two respected targum scholars concerning the date of Targum Pseudo-Jonathan reveals how similar methods applied in different ways can lead to widely divergent results. In aseries of exchanges, Avigdor Shinan argues that Pseudo-Jonathan constitutes a post-Islamic (early medieval) document, while Robert Hayward argues against Sl:tinan, rebutting Shinan's arguments and finally putting forth his own position for an early date of Pseudo:Jonathan. 33 The vigor of Shinan's and Hayward's debate reveals the morass of claims and counter-claims a newcomer to this field immediately encounters. Without years of training, it appears impossible to evaluate the claims and arguments of the two sides. But the waters are not as muddied as they seem. There are a limited number of methods used in dating targums and I have selected three articles which together provide a programmatic introduction to those methods and their limitations. The first article is a classic by A. Diez Macho in which he argues for a first-century date for the (then) newly discovered targum, Neofiti. 34 Diez Macho marshals a number of arguments for his position, most of which constitute standard approaches to dating. Many of these were used by Shinan and Hayward, and have been used and continue to be used by targum scholars. The next two articles provide critical assessments of the different arguments Diez Macho uses, discussing their 33 For Shinan's position, see Shinan, A., The Aggadah in the Aramaic Targums to the Pentateuch. (Jerusalem: Maqor, 1979), in Hebrew, esp. 1:119-146; "The 'Palestinian' Targums - Repetitions, Intemal Unity, Contradictions" in Journal qfJewish Studies 36 (1985): 77-87; "Pseudo:Jonathan Targum-Its Nature and Date," in Proceedings qf the Ninth World Congress qfJewish Studies (Jerusalem: 1986) 109-16, in Hebrew; and "Dating Targum Pseudo-Jonathan: Some More Comments," Journal qf Jewish Studies, 41 (1990): 57-61. See also Shinan's new book, The Embroidered Targum: The Aggadah in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan qf the Pentateuch (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1992), in Hebrew. For Hayward's position, see Hayward, C.T.R., "The Date of Targum PseudoJonathan: Some Comments," Journal qf Jewish Studies, 40 (1989): 7-30; "Targum Pseudo:Jonathan and Anti-Islamic Polemic," Journal qfJewish Studies, 40 (1989): 7793; 'jacob's Second Visit to Bethel in Targum Pseudo:Jonathan' in P. R. Davies and R. T. White (Eds.), A Tribute to Geza Vermes: Essays on Jewish and Christian Literature and History (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1990) 175-92; "Inconsistencies and Contradictions in Targum Pseudo:Jonathan: The Case of Eliezer and Nimrod," Journal qf Semitic Studies, 37 (1992): 31-55; "Pirqe de Rabbi Eliezer and Targum Pseudo:J onathan," Journal rifJewish Studies, 42 (1991): 215-46; and "Red Heifer and Golden Calf: Dating Targum Pseudo:Jonathan," in Targum Studies, pp. 9-32. 34 Diez Macho, A., "The Recendy Discovered Palestinian Targum: Its Antiquity and Relationship with the other Targums," Vetus Testamentum Supplement, 7 (1960): 222-245.

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strengths, limitations and failures. The first article is by Anthony D. York, "The Dating of Targumic Literature."35 In it, York works methodically through Diez Macho's methods and shows the strengths and limitations of each one. The second article is by P. Wernberg-M0Her, who addresses just one of Diez Macho's arguments, the text -critical approach. 36 In a lengthy, technical discussion, Wernberg-M011er shows that what seemed to be the strongest of Diez Macho's arguments actually constitutes one of the weakest.

(10) Translations, Critical Editions, and Other Tools In 1980, Martin McNamara became the head of a project to translate aH the rabbinic targums into English. At this moment, 7he Aramaie Bible series is weH on its way to accomplishing this goal; more than ten volumes are in print. OriginaHy published by Michael Glazier, the series has since been adopted by the Liturgical Press of CollegeviHe, Minnesota. The translators list reads like a "who's who in targum studies"; it includes B. Chilton, C. T. R. Hayward, and B. Grossfeld, as weH as McNamara himself. Each translation is accompanied by an introduction and copious footnotes. Most of the targums have been supplied with a reliable, critical text. Alexander Sperber is single-handedly responsible for the majority of critical editions of targum manuscripts. His five-volume 7he Bible in Aramaie provides critical editions of Targum Onkelos to the Pentateuch and TargumJonathan to the Prophets, as weH as of most targums to the WritingsY Of the Writings, only the targums of Job, Psalms, Proverbs and the second targum to Esther did not receive a critical edition. The Palestinian Targums to the Pentateuch also have received critical editions. Alexandro Diez Macho, the discoverer of Codex Neophyti 1, has published a six-volume edition of its text. 38 The text is accompanied by facing translation into Spanish, with English and French translations in the rear of the volumes. Extensive introductions and reviews of scholarship also appear in each volume.

35 York, A. D., "The Dating of Targumic Literature," Journal for the Stu4J of Judaism, 5 (1974): 49-62. 36 Wernberg-MI'lller, P., "An Inquiry into the Validity of the Text-Critical Argument for an Early Dating ofthe Recently Discovered Pa1estinian Targum," Vetus Testamentum, 12 (1962): 312-30. 37 Sperber, A., 7he Bible in Aramaie, vo1s. 1-4b (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1959-73). 38 Diez Macho, A., Neophyti 1. Targum Palestinense Ms de la Biblioteca Vaticana. (Barcelona-Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas, 1968-79).

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Michael L. Klein has produced critical editions and English translations of the Fragmentary Targums and the targum fragments found in the Cairo Geniza. 39 Targum Pseudo-Jonathan has been supplied with a critical edition and a concordance by a team under the leadership of Ernest Clark. 40 A concordance to Targum Neofiti is also being published by Kaufman out of the Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon project (CAL) Y For further guidance in locating scholarly studies, Bernard Grossfeld's bibliographies are helpfu1. 42 The CAL project also has been producing bibliographies, primarily focused on issues of the Aramaic language. These are being published by Johns Hopkins University Press. The NewsletterJOr Targumic and Cognate Studies, which appears twice a year, provides a current guide to the new publications in the field. 1t is presently edited by Ernest G. Clarke, Professor Emeritus at the University of Toronto. The Newsletter, the CAL publications, and the series Targum Studies should be regularly watched for new developments in the field.

39 Klein, M. L., The Fragment- Targums qf the Pentateuch: According to their Extant Sources, 2 vols. (Rome: Biblical Institute Press, 1980); and Genizah Manuscripts qf Palestinian Targum to the Pentateuch, 2 vols. (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1986). 40 E. G. Clarke, W. E. Aufrecht, et. al., Targum Pseudo-Jonathan qf the Pentateuch. (Hoboken, NJ: KTAV, 1984). 41 S. A. Kaufman and M. Sokoloffwith E. M. Cook (Eds.), A Key-Word-In-Context Concordance to Targum Nerifiti. (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993). 42 Grossfeld, B., A Bibliography qf Targum Literature, 3 vols. (New York: SeferHermon Press, 1972-90).

THE ART AND ARCHAEOLOGY OF ANCIENT JUDAISM James F. Strange (University of South Florida) INTRODUCTION Jewish Art and Archaeology have become a topic of some note, particularly in the course of the twentieth century. The figure that dominated discussions ofJewish art was Michael Avi-Yonah of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. His Oriental Art in Roman Palestine, wh ich first appeared in English in 1961, was the standard wark. Many others worked diligently in the field, but it was Erwin Goodenough at Yale University who gained notoriety by publishing Jewish Symbols in the Greco-Roman Period in thirteen volumes from 1953-1968. Recently Jacob Neusner has re-issued a one-volume abridgement of Goodenough with a foreword (Goodenough 1988). Other general studies in Jewish art and archaeology that the student will find useful includeJoseph Gutman (1964, 1971), Geofrey Wigoder (1972), C.C. Vermeule (1981), R. Wischnitzer (1990), and Jacob Neusner (1991). The most comprehensive and useful is still that of Rachel Hachlili (1988). IJEWISH CrrIEs AND CITY PLANNING There is very little analysis ofJewish cities in the Persian and Hellenistic periods, for the simple reason that little is known. A model far a hellenistic, Jewish city might be ancient Marisa, biblical Mareshah, some twenty-six kilometers southwest of Jerusalem. Whether this was a fully Jewish city remains to be seen, but we know fromJosephus (Ant 14.364; JW 1.269) that the city was captured with all ofIdumea byJohn Hyrcanus I (134-104 BCE). Greek and Aramaic inscriptions from Marisa give us many Jewish proper names, so there was a substantial Jewish population. The wall of the small city is laid out in straight lines as a simple four-sided irregular polygon with square towers. There is no attempt at symmetry (there are five external towers on the west and two on the east). The city street system is not laid out in a hippodamian grid like the hellenistic cities of Asia Minor, or even like Dura Europos in Syria. Rather we see an organic pattern of three north-south streets and two east-west streets. None of the

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streets proceed in straight lines nor with the same width across the city from wall to wall. The streets are only roughly at right angles to one another, and some zigzagging occurs at all intersections. On the other hand we do see organization, even imposed geometry, though it is an organic, functional geometry which apparently takes into consideration the topography. A lower city extends 400 to 500 m from the walled city, but nothing is known of its plan. With the arrival of the Romans, traditionally dated from Pompey's march intoJerusalem in 63 BCE, city planning in ancient Palestine takes on a decidedly Roman appearance. There is much less regard for topography, and a rigid Hippodamian grid supplants the old, organic grid. The architectural markers of tradition al Roman culture are also to be found everywhere: colonnaded streets, extensive waterworks such as aqueducts and pools, porticoes, hippodromes, amphitheaters, theaters, gymnasia, baths,· and so forth. A Jernsalem

In the case of Jerusalem we can discern little of Hasmonean city planning. We know from Josephus and the intertestamentalliterature that the Hasmoneans placed the seat of their government in the Upper City west of the Temple Mount. They joined the two quarters of the city with a monumental bridge, one arch of which survives today (Wilson's Arch). On the other hand we can detect Herodian city-planning in the form of three patterns: (1) The first is a hippodamian grid made up of blocks of houses about 300 by 300 Greek feet (90 by 90 meters) around the temple mount and oriented with the western wall of the Temple Mount. (2) A second hippodamian grid is to be found around Herod's palace on the western hill and oriented on Herod's palace. It is formed on blocks ofhouses about 250 by 300 Greek feet (75 by 90 meters). (3) A third pattern is formed of mainly straight, stepped streets defined more by the steep terrain south and west of the Temple Mount than by geometry or grid. These streets lead down from the second grid into the Tyropoeon Valley and the Hinnom Valley. (Wilson 1978: 62) These three grids appear to function more or less as originally constructed until the Arab conquest early in the seventh century. As time unfolds the streets became progressively narrower as buildings encroached on either side of broad, Roman period streets. Jerusalem changed its plan over time. A large quarter was added to Jerusalem in the north-west before the late fifth century. It is clear from the Madaba mosaic map of the sixth century CE that two

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colonnaded streets traversedJerusalem from north to south beginning at what today is called in Hebrew the Shechem Gate or in Arabic the Gate of the Column, apparently a memory of a column that once graced the open, paved plaza just inside the gate dating from the second century CE (Donner 1992).

B Caesarea and its Harbor This was Herod's show-case city, and it shows far more of Rome than of the indigenous population. Although the city-wall is laid out as a semi-circle, the interior city-planning is the rigid grid system dear to Rome. The grid appears to be based on blocks of houses and public buildings measuring about 275 by 325 Roman feet (83 x 97 meters). C ather Cities Sepphoris and Tiberias were both built by Herod Antipas, son of Herod the Great by his wife Malthace. Neither of their city plans have been traced in detail, though Sepphoris reveals one block measuring 150 by 200 Roman feet (45 by 65 m.). The city plans of Bethsaida and Paneas or Caesarea Philippi are also not known. These cities were built up as show-places by Herod Philip and are undergoing excavation even as this material is written. II

ARCHITECTURE

A Public Space 1 The Temple

The literary sources for understanding the Second Temple are largely Josephus (Ant 15.38-425 and JW 5.184-227), the Mishnah (Middoth and Tamirf), and the New Testament (Mark 13: 1 and Luke 21:5). The Second Temple was Herod's main building project in Israel, begun about 20 BCE and dedicated ten years later, though work on the structure continued until 62-64 CE (JW 1.408). This structure amounted to a political statement that he was the Jewish king par excellence not unlike Solomon. Herod erected a stunning, lofty wall around the hill of the temple in a roughly rectangular area of about 35 acres, i.e, a Hellenistic temenos. This wall was built

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without mortar of stones quarried in Jerusalem. Some of the stones exceed 12 m. in length where they were visible to passers by (BenDov 1982: 88). Others unseen were even larger. By erecting the wall and filling it in, Herod built a huge, raised platform or plinth, itself a major religious and political statement and twice the area of the previous Mount. Ifwe rely upon Captain Charles Wilson's survey, we find that the south wall of the Temple Mount measures about 275 m. east-west and the north wall about 309 m east-west. The eastern wall of the Temple Mount measures 457.5 m north to south, and the western wall 485 m. north to south (Wilson 1871: "Plan of the Noble Sanctuary" after p. 8). The modern "Western Wall" is about 10% of the Temple Platform. The southeast corner of the Temple Mount is the only true right angle in the entire platform. At the southeast corner the platform stood some 48 meters above the Kidron Valley. This raised platform or plinth featured on the outside a row of projecting pilasters. Similar pilasters are visible on the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron, another building project of Herod the Great. Fragments of these pilasters have been recovered by archaeologists. A fragment from the top of the southwest tower was inscribed in Hebrew "[Belonging] to the place of trumpeting to proclaim ... " (Ben-Dov 82: 95). Modern archaeology has given us invaluable evidence about the western and southern walls of the Temple Mount. "Robinson's Arch" near the southwest corner of the Mount supported a footbridge that lead west to astairease that turned south and descended to the Herodian street that followed the Tyropoeon Valley south to the City of David. A mirror twin to this bridge and staircase existed near the southeast corner of the Temple Mount. Another twin to the Robinson's Arch staircase existed at "Wilson's Arch", replacing the Hasmonean bridge to the Upper City. Excavations along the south wall of the Temple Mount discovered a monumental staircase 61 meters wide with 30 steps which lead worshippers to the Huldah Gates, a double gate near the west end of the stairs and a tripie gate ne ar the east end of the stairs. Ritual baths existed in numbers cut into the bedrock below the level of the staircase at the south end of the Temple Mount. As one entered the Temple Mount from the passages ascending from the Tripie Gate, one entered beneath domes inside the gates-still extant-beautifully decorated with floral and geometrie motifs in low relief. One ascended through a passage to the outer court sometimes called by modern scholars "The court of the Gentiles." This court gave access to four porticoes 15 meters high and

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Decorated Stone Dome oj the Hulda Gates. Source: Rachel Hachlili, Ancient jewish Art and Archaeology in the Land oj Israel. Leiden and New York, EJ. Brill, 1988, p. 74.

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15 meters broad on three sides with a double row of columns each 12.5 m. high. The "Royal Basilica" stood on the south. It was also a portico one stadium or 185 m. long and 30 meters high which stood on 162 columns (Ant 15.414). Two of the end columns have been found on the ground south of the platform. The others may be built into the EI-Aksa Mosque that now stands on the south end of the Temple Mount. The platform beneath the Royal Basilica was not simply filled with earth but stood upon arched and vaulted structures ("Solomon's Stables"). Modern archaeologists have recovered stone-carved fragments, believed to be from this basilica, also decorated with floral and geometrie motifs in low relief (Maz ar 1975: 25). In the middle of the outer court stood a barrier or balustrade (soreg) of low pillars joined with stone slabs. There were 13 openings in the balustrade with inscriptions in Latin and Greek warning Gentiles of their ensuing death, should they enter these portals. Two examples of the Greek inscriptions have been found (Iliffe 1938: 6). As one walked through the balustrade he or she walked up steps to the rampart and then through a wall with gates (]W 5.198200) into the Court of Women. The Court of Women was cruciform in plan, 135 by 135 cubits (60.75 by 60.75 m.), but with one chamber in each of four corners designated for lepers, oil, Nazirites, and wood. At the far west end of this court stood a three-portal gate called the Nicanor Gate for the Alexandrian Jew who donated it. (His ossuary may have been found in Jerusalem inscribed in Greek "The bones of Nicanor of Alexandria who made the gates", see Harboury and Noy 1992: 243-5.) Levites stood on the steps that lead up to the Nicanor Gate to sing and play instruments. Within the Nicanor Gate men entered into the Court of Israel, which measured 135 by 11 cubits (60.75 by 5 m.). From this vantage one could see into the Court of the Priests, in which stood the Altar and the House of Slaughter. The Court of Israel, like the Court of Women, was surrounded by beautifully decorated colonnades or porticoes with gates, most of the gates covered by gold and silver. According to Josephus, Alexander ben Tiberius cast the gold (]W 5.205). In like manner the Court of the Priests, which completely surrounded the Sanctuary, contained rooms devoted to many rituals. It was also surrounded by porticoes. Thus those standing in the Court of Israel who wished to watch the ritual acts in the Court of Priests had to look through a balustrade of columns.

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The facade of the Second Temple is depicted on coins of Bar Kochba of 125 CE and is represented in a fresco in the synagogue of Dura-Europos of 250 CE. Apparently its porch (Culam) was built with four co1umns in antis, two on either side of the door, re semb1ing the facades of Greco-Roman temples. On the other hand its roof was flat, un1ike a Greco-Roman temple. We have no archaeologica1 remains of the sanctuary or of its furniture. On the other hand the tab1e of Show Bread (the Bread of the Presence) may be represented on coins of Bar Kochba (Barag 1989: 217-222, but cf. Meshorer 1990-1: 111).

Coin of Bar Kochba showing the Facade of the Temple. Source: F.W. Madden, History ofJewish Coinage and of Money in the Old and New Testament. NY: KTAV, 1967 (reprint), p. 17l.

The Temple Facade according to the Fresco at Dura-Europos. Source: Hachlili, JAALI, p. 27, illustration 7b.

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2 Other T ernples a The Hellenistic Temple at E1ephantine The Jewish temple on the island of Elephantine in the Nile nearly 500 miles south of Memphis has never been found, though references to it exist in the Elephantine Papyri (Rubensohn 1907). The temple in question, atempie to Yahweh, was built prior to 410 BCE. Local Egyptians, in open conflict with theJewish community at Elephantine, destroyed the temple. In the papyri, specifically in the archive ofJ edaniah bar Gemariah, it is possible to deduce that the temple was built after the destruction of Judea in 587 and was left untouched by Cambyses when he "entered Egypt" about 530 BCE. It is also possible to infer that it included at least acedar roof, stone columns, and five great gateways of finished stone (Porten 1979). b The Hellenistic Jewish Temple at Beer Sheba In the course of the 3rd century BCE a syncrestic temple was built at Beer Sheba, presumably for a mixed local population. Images of the Egyptian deities Ba, Horus, Neith, and Serapis were found within the sanctuary with the Hellenistic deities Demeter and Persephone along with the Semitic deity Astarte. A dolphin figurine may have represented the Nabatean deity Delphinios (thirteen Nabatean coins were also found in the temple). The building measured about 13 by 25.5 m., with an open courtyard taking up most of the interior space, about 10 by 18 meters. The building was oriented on the summer solstice, or about north 50 degrees east. This sanctuary was destroyed no later than 126 BCE according to its excavators, probably by John Hyrcanus I. The temple was then re-established, presumably for Yahwistic worship. In the interests of the new worship a new floor was laid down in the central courtyard covering over all evidences of the earlier worship. A stone altar was established in the central courtyard measuring the tradition al 5 by 5 cubits or 2.25 by 2.25 m. (Exodus 27:1ff.). With the renovation of the courtyard came renovation of the combined sanctuary and holy of holies, which may have resembled that of the earlier Arad temple. This temple continued in use until the intervention of Rome in the Negev about 63 or 62 BCE. (Derfler 1993).

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3 Synagogues The research on the ongms of the synagogue has not come to unanimity, although the traditions are dear. The standard assertion is that the synagogue originated in the Babylonian exile (Sandmel 1978: 143). While this is plausible, it is unproven. More recently some have argued for a Pharisaic and second century BCE origin of the synagogue (Gutman 1981: 3-4). Whatever may be the case of origins, our earliest archaeological evidences of synagogues are from the Diaspora. The earliest synagogue building is from the Samaritan Diaspora in Delos and is dated from the 1st century BCE to the end of the 2nd century CE (Bruneau 1982; Meyers and Kraabel 1986: 186; Kraabel 1987: 51; Kraabel 1984). Greek inscriptions mentioning synagogues are known from the Fayyum in Egypt. These inscriptions may date to the 2rd century BCE (Lifschitz 1967; Nos. 86, 92-96, & 99). Other Diaspora synagogues date to the 1st century CE at Ostia, 2nd and 3rd century CE at Sardis and Dura, the 3rd century CE at Priene, Stobi (the Polycharmos synagogue), and the 4th century CE at Ostia (the later synagogue) and again Stobi (the later synagogue). The rich Greek vocabulary for Second Temple synagogues in the Diaspora surely reflects wh at goes on within them and how they are understood by their communities and on occasion by outsiders (Levine 1987: 13f. and Oster 1993: 186). The Greek term most commonly found outside Palestine for "synagogue" is proseuche or "pI ace of prayer," which we find about thirty times in inscriptions and in papyri. Other synonyms occur. For example at least once in the papyri it is called a "eucheion," and at least once in Philo it is called a "proseukterion." These terms imply aspace for congregational prayer, whether set or free. The word "amphitheater" is used for a synagogue four times in inscriptions in North Africa. This name may suggest that the seating was arranged in a cirde or ellipse. Philo calls the synagogue a "didaskaleion" or "school" twice, indicating a second major function of the institution. Josephus uses the word "hieron" or "holy [placeJ" four times. Once in Philo and once in an Egyptian papyrus the term "hieros peribolos" appears, which appears to mean "holy space" or "holy endosure." These two terms and "hagios topos" (holy place) which appears twice in inscriptions, suggest that the space is set aside for ritual purposes. In archaeological terms, this need mean no more than it is endosed so that outsiders may not enter at awkward moments. The word "topos" or "place," which appears three times

THE ART AND ARCHAEOLOGY OF ANCIENT JUDAISM

73

inJosephus, onee in Phi10, and perhaps onee in 3 Maeeabees, may be shorthand for "hagios topos" (ho1y p1aee). The term "sabbateion" oeeurs onee in Josephus, onee in a papyrus, and onee in an inseription. The word eonfirms that the gathering took p1aee on a sabbath, but not the speeifie aetivities within. Onee inJosephus the word "oikema" (dwelling p1aee) oeeurs. The Latin word "templum" oeeurs onee, whieh refleets the eultura1 pereeption of a p1aee of worship. In the New Testament the most eommon word is "synagoge', usually translated "synagogue." The word appears more than fifty times in the four gospels and inAets. In these eontexts it represents arehiteeture, even though some have argued that the use of the word in the gospels for arehiteeture is anaehronistie (Kee 1990). A Greek inseription in North Afriea uses the term synagoge onee to mean the "eongregation" and onee to mean the "bui1ding." Therefore the word synagoge ean indeed refer to arehiteeture in the first eentury CE. (Oster 1993). The inseription in question, from Bereniee of Cyrenaiea, reads as follows: "In the second year of the emperor Nero Claudius Caesar Drusus Germanicus [56 CE], on the 16th of Chorach, it was resolved by the congregation of the Jews (rYNArnrH TnN IOUDAInN) in Berenice that [the names of] those who donated to the repairs of the synagogue (IYNArnrHI) be inscribed on a stele of Parian marble." (Oster 1993:187; Reynolds 1977: n. 16).

We ean deduee some of the aetions that took p1aee in synagogues from literature. Phi10 has informed us that on the Sabbath inJewish schools of virtue in every city the congregation sat in a seemly fashion while a person knowledgeab1e in the task stood to instruct (Spec. Leg. 2.62). Josephus also contends that reading and study of scripture was an important part of Jewish 1ife (Contra Apion 1.42). The Gospel ofLuke (14:16-20) hasJesus in a synagogue.Jesus stood up to read (4: 16), ascroll of Isaiah was at hand (4: 17), and an attendant was present to give and receive the seroll (4:20). Apparently Jesus and the congregation had been seated. Thus we infer that synagogues made provision for mass seating while at least one leader stood. We also expect to find space for the congregation to stand for mass prayer, whether the prayers were set or free. It is important to notice that much that is taken for granted in later synagogues is missing from these texts: There is no understanding that the building was deeorated in any specific fashion. As long as the Temple is standing with its ritual equipment, there is no need to draw or carve representations of this equipment on the

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JAMES F. STRANGE

architectural members of the synagogue. Not even the menorah is mentioned. There is also no provision for gendered space, i.e., no gallery for women and no separate entrance for women. There is no bima, no seat of Moses, and no specific orientation. Furthermore there is no necessary connection with a ritual bath in our texts, although any or all of these items may be presupposed. It seems that the debate about the plausibility of calling the structures of Gamala, Masada, Magdala, and Herodium "synagogues" in some narrow sense is not resolving one way or the other.

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THE ART AND ARCHAEOLOGY OF ANCIENT JUDAISM

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All these halls were identified as synagogues because of their general resemblance to later synagogues in the land of Israel, because of their orientation toward Jerusalem, or because they were found at Jewish sites and were clearly designed for gatherings, ergo a "synagogue." On the other hand these four possible synagogue buildings all seem to meet the requirements for space just mentioned. Furthermore, they have more commonalities than difTerences: (a) These buildings organize innermost space in a similar manner, namely, it is rectangular. The central, rectangular space is surrounded first by rows of columns, then by ranges of benches on one, three, or four sides. (b) One must step down the benches as steps from the top bench or landing. This calls to mind a saying attributed to R. Simeon ben 'Azai (about second century CE, but preserved in a much later context), "Descend from your pI ace two or three steps and sit down. It is better that you should be told 'ascend' than 'descend.'" (Aboth de R. Nathan 25.4) It also recalls texts in the gospels that speak of preferred seating in synagogues (Mark 12:39 and par.) This organization of inner space requires those seated on benches to look through a balustrade of columns to see what is going on centrally. (c) I;:lements of these buildings that resemble a Council Chamber (bouleuterion) are concentric, square ranges ofbenches for mass seating and a central, rectangular space, presumably for the leader or leaders. That which resembles a basilica is space divided on the interior into a nave and aisles by columnation and principal entrances on the narrow end of the building. (d) The Jewishness of these structures is given by their context, not by their building elements, with the possible exception of the palm tree decoration on the lintel at Gamala. (e) Since these four buildings are more like one another than not, then these may represent a type (Foerster 1973, 1977; but see Chiat 1981). This commonality also suggests strongly that their builders were seeing some structure or structures that gave them the idea of arranging seating between the columns and the walls. (f) The most obvious source of this idea is the "Royal Portico" which stood at the south end of the temple mount. Also the Court of Women, the Court of Israel, and the Court of the Priests were surrounded by colonnaded porticoes, according to Josephus. Furthermore, one would pass through the Nicanor Gate, a gate with three portals, into space surrounded with porticoes and columns. Although we know nothing of seating in the colonnades, the similarities of the buildings of Gamala, Masada, Magdala, and Herodium with colonnaded spaces on the Temple Mount strongly suggest that the synagogue building, as erected in Israel, is a Jewish invention based upon the colon-

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JAMES F. STRANGE

naded spaces of the Temple, especially the Nicanor Gate and the Court ofIsrael. At this writing it is important to point out that these first century halls were sometimes used for ritual purposes and sometimes for non-ritual purposes, such as community meetings. More than fifty synagogues from the second to the seventh century CE have been excavated or surveyed in Israel and Jordan as well as in the diaspora. The greatest density of synagogues is to be found in the Galilee and in the Golan Heights. Most of these appear to have been founded about the middle of the third century CE. Some of them go out of use by the fourth century CE, others are in use through the seventh or eighth century CE. They seem to follow no set plan, except most of them place rows of columns between the benches and the central space. The central space is usually understood as the area where worshippers stood to pray. The columns are most commonly Ionic, though the Corinthian and Doric orders are represented. Most synagogues are rectangular in plan. About one-fourth of the synagogues (often sixth century CE) have an apse at the focus of interest, and about half are built so that their facades are oriented on Jerusalem (Chiat 1982). Often synagogues of the third and fourth centuries have a facade furnished with three portals, reminiscent of the Tripie Gate, one of the two Hulda Gates in south side of the Temple Mount, or reminiscent of the Nicanor Gate on the Temple Mount (Hachlili 1988: 156). In this arrangement the central and tallest portal lets directly into the nave between the columns. The two side portals let into the side aisles. This arrangement is sometimes called a "Tripie Portal" and describes about three-fourths of published synagogue plans. On occasion this "Tripie Portal" forms a major entrance from the side. Ordinarily the door posts and lintels of these portals are decorated with elaborate multiple moldings. Most of the synagogues of the Golan Heights are entered through a single door in the facade. This door lets directly into the nave between the two rows of columns. A few synagogue buildings are entered on the long side, giving rise to the term "broadhouse" synagogue. This is true at Khirbet Shema in Upper Galilee, for example, but also at Ma'oz Hayim east of Beth She'an. Often synagogues were decorated on the facade with richJewish art in the form of geometrie or floral carvings in relief, carvings in the round, sometimes of lions and eagles, incised designs, sometimes repeating what was carved in relief, or carved and incised inscriptions on lintels. Lintels often are decorated with garlands, palms, palm fronds, flowers, nikes or genii, birds, and other artistic motifs (see below Seetion IH.7). Usually the stones of the facade,

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though not necessarily all of the building, are very carefully chiseled to present a finished face to approaching worshippers. Floors of these prayer halls are about equally divided between those paved with stone slabs and those paved with mosaics. The mosaics form a study of their own and will presented separately (Section III.l). Suffice to say here that mosaics often depict biblical scenes, but also animals, the zodiac and four seasons, menorahs with a Holy Ark, and other such motifs. The interiors of the buildings range from those trimmed to a pleasing but plain interior to those elaborately decorated with painted pIaster in fresco or seccho or decorated with elaborate carvings, Corinthian or Ionic capitals, and other art. A few synagogues in the Diaspora and in Palestine feature a special stone chair to the side of the ark and with its back against the wall which the congregation faces, though at Delos the stone chair formed part of the congregational seating. These chairs have been found at Delos, Dura-Europos, Hammath-Tiberias, Chorazin, and En-Geddi (Rachmani 1990). The example from Chorazin has hand-rests decorated with a lion and an eagle. Rachmani argues that the Delos stone chair is for a synagogue official, but that the others are for a fourth century CE ritual of enthronement of the Torah during worship (Rachmani 1990: 209-213). By far the most important artifact in the synagogue, however, and the architectural focal point of worship, was the Torah Shrine.

The Torah Shrine from the Mosaic Floor of the Synagogue of Hammath Tiberias. Source: Hachlili, JAAll, p. 186, upper right corner.

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JAMES F. STRANGE

The general form of such a shrine has been known to scholarship for some time, as they are found inJewish art depicted in gold glass, molded on ceramic lamps, molded on glass vessels, incised on a bowl, carved in low relief on ossuaries and sarcophagi, set into mosaic floors, carved on stone plaques, and carved in relief or incised on lintels (Goodenough 1953: vol. 3, index under "Torah Shrine.") In general the Torah Shrine stands on a raised platform or Bema. Those that survive are of stone, though wood platforms are not impossible. On top of the bema stood an aedicula of two columns (sometimes four) in antis, sometimes with a lintel above the columns, the whole fitted with a roof, and with a shell ("conch") carved into the pediment. Inside the aedicula stood a chest with double-leafed doors, which, when the doors are open, show the ends of scrolls on shelves. Often two heraldic lions stand rampart on the ground on either side ofthe shrine, though on the Nabratein pediment they crouch on either side of the top. Only the pediment from the aedicula of the Nabratein synagogue was identified as such by its excavators (Meyers, Meyers, and Strange 1981 a, 1981 b). In earlier surveys and excavations virtually identical architectura1 fragments have been found, but were usually identified as window lintels. Fragments of co1umns about 30 cm. in diameter, also found in synagogue excavations, may have been from an aeducula, though they mayaiso have decorated windows. Fragments of 1ions scu1pted in the round at Capernaum and other sites mayaiso have been from those guarding the aedicula and its ark. Apparendy one portable aedicula was represented on a lintel at Capernaum. It is decorated with simple shell motif in front and with Ionic co1umns down the long side. A few synagogues have been reconstructed from the evidence of their own fragmented remains with two aedicu1ae, one on either side of the main entrance. It is tempting to surmise that one contained the ark or chest for scrolls and the other held a menorah. Mosaic floors often depict a menorah on either side of an aedicula with its ark, the who1e often covered by a curtain (parokhet). In later synagogues of the Byzantine and Arab periods the ark seems to have stood by itself in an apse. The portals of the facade and other architectural features are not depicted in these mosaic floors.

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4 Palaces a The Hasmonean Palace atJericho Herodian Palaces are weIl represented in the archaeology of ancient Palestine. The sole surviving example of a Hasmonean palace is to be found at Jericho, an oasis in the Judean desert and an economic center (basalm and dates) from the time of Alexander J annaeus (103-76 BCE; N etzer 1975a, 1983). The principal building of this palace was a square about 50 by 50 m. with square towers on each corner built largely of mud brick. This is in the tradition ofIron Age fortresses or those built by the kinds ofJudah. The central building was surrounded by a moat on the north, west, and east sides. Interior to the building were rooms with beautifully painted stucco. West of the central building were two small swimming pools about 8 x by 8 meters. The presence of the pools indicates that, even in this early period, this building had features of a winter palace. Less than a generation later the palace was enlarged on the northeast with a peristyle garden, two much larger swimming pools, and a pavilion. By the time of Queen Alexandra Shlomzion (76-67 BCE) the palace experienced a second enlargement. Now were added on the south two twin, central courtyard palaces about 25 by 25 meters each. Three more swimming pools were added. Within the new complex the excavators found rooms decorated with frescoes, a bath house, and ritual baths or miqvaoth (Netzer 1982a 1982b). b Herod's Palace at Jericho

In the time of Herod the Great the Hasmonean palace was destroyed by the earthquake of 31 BCE. Herod built a single, large building atJericho south of the Hasmonean palace as his first winter palace. Later he rebuilt and enlarged the Hasmonean complex, adding a personal villa, a bath house, palatial rooms around peristyle courtyards, and service areas. This rebuilt palace was his second winter palace atJericho. Near the middle ofhis reign, about 15 BCE, Herod built his third winter palace atJericho in such a way that the three structures functioned as a single, large winter palace. The third palace occupied both sides of the Wadi Qelt and covered about seven and one-half acres. The excavators revealed a large triclinium with columns on three sides, a sunken garden, a long

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c Hyrcania About 10 km south ofJerusalem stands the fortress of Hyrcania in the Judean desert. This fortress is probably named for John Hyrcanus I. Excavations revealed a water system, walls and towers, and a centrClJ courtyard surrounded by rooms (Wright 1961). d Machaerus This fortress stands east of the Dead Sea in the territory of Perea. Josephus records that Alexander Jannaeus built a fortress here about 90 BCE which the Roman general Gabinius destroyed in 57 BCE (JW 7.171). Herod built a fortress here about 97 by 61 m. with projecting towers on the west, south, and east. Excavations revealed a paved peristyle court 25 by 9.5 m. which may have served as a garden. South of this peristyle stood a triclinium with two other rooms. The east end of the fortress was dominated by a paved courtyard on the south side of which stood a bath, and on the north side of which stood store rooms. This fortress passed to Roman control in 44 CE but was taken the rebels in the First Revolt. Machaerus return to Roman control in 72 CE after a siege. The circling wall and camps of the Romans still stand (JW 7.209) (Corbo 1978, 1979, 1980, Corbo and Loffreda 1981, Loffreda 1981, Piccirillo 1979, Strobel 1974). e Masada (see above "4 Palaces") Masada is often understood to be Herod's work, but now it is clear that there were Hasmonean building activities here, though not all agree what these might be. The 'Apartment' or Garrison Building" or "Caserna" (building IX) has spaces more like Hasmonean villas than Herodian. This is also true of the Western palace and the three small palaces in its vicinity (buildings XI, XII, and XIII). Other features that may be Hasmonean include the three columbaria, several of the largest cisterns, the south swimming pool, and palace VII. Herod visited the site when it had been under siege by Antigonus and before he built it as his own (JW 1.236-9). Herod renovated and rebuilt Masada for his own needs, making sure that he had ample water in the twelve enormous cisterns carved out of the bedrock. His palaces on Masada have been discussed above. He also built a large bathhouse in the north, a large storehouse nearby, additional storage rooms and administrative offices, and 1,400 m. of defensive wall, a casemate wall. The wall contained 70 rooms between the parallel walls and 30 towers, in-

87

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JAMES F. STRANGE

cluding a watch tower in the south. There was ample space around the buildings where wheat and other crops could be grown under protracted siege. The wall, water system, and stored food made the fortress-palace of Masada virtually impregnable. The Roman siege took three years to complete. (Yadin 1965, 1966; Netzer 1991). f Herodium (see above "4 palaces") The fortress of Herodium is the only circular fortress which Herod built. It stood on top a hilI near Bethlehem. Herod's engineers surrounded the wh oIe with a double wall with a 3.5 m. wide corridor between the walls. A fill added to the outside made the walls impervious to battering rams. Approach to the interior of the fortress was through a stepped tunnel some 140 m. long, cut into the bedrock, that ascended to the wall on the northeast side. The interior of the fortress was built as a palace, as discussed above (Corbo 1963,1967; Netzer 1981a; Netzer and Arzi 1985). g Doq or Docus (Dagon in Josephus]W 13.230) This was a small fort built by Ptolemy, son-in-law of Simon Maccabeus. Ptolemy murdered three of the Maccabees there (I Macc 16:11-15). It is mentioned in the Copper SeroB (3Q15) and usually identified with a hilI about two miles north ofJericho. Not yet excavated. hOther Desert Fortresses Herod built a 1ine of smalI, fortified settlements in Idumea to protect travelers and caravans approaching from the south, probab1y in cooperation with the Nabatean kings. His defensive line extended along the vaBeys of Besor, Beer Sheba, and to the Zohar (Gichon 1967). i Jerusalem The Akra was a citadel erected by Antiochus IV in 168 BCE just south of the temple mount. Excavations about 40 m. south of the Hulda Gate revealed multiple rooms with a basement carved out of bedrock. A roofed-over pool formed a courtyard. Around the courtyard were rooms with finds datable to the middle of the 2nd century BCE. This appears to have been a remnant of the long soughtfor Akra. It was destroyed down to its foundation and the space re-

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used for ritual baths in the time of Herod the Great (Ant 12.252; Ben-Dov 1982: 65-71). The Baris was the predecessor of the Antonia Fortress at the northwest corner of the Temple Mount, separated from the preHerodian mount by a great defensive ditch. No remains of the Baris are known. The Antonia Fortress was built first by the Hasmoneans and called simply "the Tower" depositing the vestments of the High Priest there, according to Josephus (Ant 15.403). Later Herod rebuilt it and named it the "Antonia" in honor of Mark Anthony. Although its exact location is in dispute, it is known that a large pool called the "Strouthion" was connected with it and became a means of siege of the Temple Mount by the Romans in the First Revolt. Josephus explains that the interior was luxuriously appointed, rather like a palace (]W 5.238-45). 6 Baths

The baths of Roman and Byzantine Palestine were constructed after the familiar pattern of baths everywhere in their territories. Typically a bath contained a hot room or caldarium, and tepid room or tepidarium, and a cold room or frigidarium. There are facilities for disrobing, the apodyterium. A furnace supplies he at for the caldarium. An open courtyard or palestrum provides space for exercise and lounging. Bath houses are known everywhere, from private residences to palaces. Public bath houses are also known, the most famous and largest of which is likely Hammath-Gader on the eastern shore of the Jordan just south of the Kinneret (Sea of Galilee). Herod's palaces were never without a bath. 7 Ritual Baths

Because of the requirement for purity, ritual baths became architecturally important to ancient Judaisms. These are most visible as public ritual baths at the south end of the Temple Mount, where nearly fifty have been found. Other examples are known from Hasmonean and Herodian structures in all parts of the country. They are also part of family life, and they have been identified beneath houses in Jerusalem and elsewhere. The debate is whether and to what extent these small eh ambers mayaiso have been simply baths.

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The ritual requirements in later Jewish literature are well known, but the precise requirements for a ritual bath in the Hasmonean period or even the Herodian period are not so easily established.

8 Cemeteries Every city, town, and village had its own cemetery. Following requirements of Jewish law these were located outside the city. Jerusalem is simply surrounded by Jewish cemeteries of all eras, sometimes in later periods competing for space with Byzantine Christian cemeteries. A typical tomb of the Hasmonean and Herodian period was equipped with a small opening more like a small window than a door though which a family member or other visitor would have to worm they way feet first or head first. One would then be in the main chamber of the tomb, sometimes with a rectangular depression cut into the floor so that one could stand. The ceiling was most often arched or vaulted. Around the three walls apart from the entrance was a low bench formed by cutting away the central depression. Slots the size of a human being were cut into these walls into which one deposited the body of a family member. Burials without coffins are the rule, though coffin burials are known at Jericho in this period. Reburial was the rule in Jewish tombs for centuries. In the period from about 50 BCE to 150 CE family members re-entered the tomb a year after burial and gathered the deceased's bones into a small, stone box called an ossuary. These ossuaries might be inscribed with various motifs of jewish art (see below) and were sometimes inscribed in Creek, Aramaie, or Hebrew with the name of the deceased. In the periods before 50 BCE gathered bones were placed in a common depository carved within the tomb, sometimes beneath one of the benches.

91

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Menorah Panel of the Mosaic Floor of the Beth Alpha Synagogue. Source: Hachlili, JAAU, p. 248 (item b).

In some cases the menorah panel shows a curtain tied back to the left and right as though the artist understood that often a curtain would conceal this ritual equipment. Sometimes the curtain hangs from rings and a curtain rod.

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p. 311 . Inhabited Scroll Mosaic Floor from Ma 'on. Source: Hachlili , JAALI,

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4 Inhabited Scrolls In the sixth century synagogues ofBeth Shean B, Gaza, and Ma'on

there appears a design popular in churches of the period, the "inhabited scroll." In this case we ordinarily have rows of medallions containing animals looking toward the long axis of the room. For example, the floor at Ma'on contained fifty medallions arranged five by ten, with the five medallions stretching across the width of the room. Several of the central medallions contain baskets and other vessels, and the central medallion at the back of the room, that is, at the focus of worship, contains a menorah with two lions rampart left and right.

B Wall Painting PIaster painted in bright colors either wet (fresco) or dry (seecho) is well known in the ancient world from the Hellenistic period onward, but also intermittently in earlier periods. Painted scenes appe ar in tombs, houses, palaces, and public buildings. It is not always clear that this should be called 'jewish art," as it is more or less indistinguishable from Greco-Roman forms.

1 Figurative Art-Biblieal Seenes The Binding of Isaac, already mentioned from the mosaic floor of the Beth Alpha synagogue, appears as a wall painting in the Dura Europos synagogue (Kraeling 1979). The wall paintings of biblical scenes from Dura Europos were unexpected and spectacular finds. In one scene Orpheus in Persian clothing plays the harp or lyre. This is usually interpreted as David playing the harp. Many other biblical scenes appear, but without inscriptions, so some are difficult to interpret. All wear costume of the third century CE, no matter what biblical era is depicted.

2 Decoration Painted decoration on walls is also quite common, again doubtless because of Greco-Roman cultural norms. For example, at Herod's fortress of Masada painted panels of pIaster resemble exotic marbles. Wall fragments from the bath house revealed bright primary colors in geometrie patterns. On the other hand the so called "House of Caiaphas" in Jerusalem includes birds in its wall paint-

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ings (Broshi 1975). Other motifs include eolored stripes in diagonally arranged geometrie forms, floral motifs, grapes, and flowers.

The Binding o/Isaac in the Wall PaintingfromDura-Europos. Source: Kraeling, C.H., ed., The Excavation at Dura-Europos: The Synagogue. New York: Ktav, 1979. Also Hachlili, JAALl, p. 290.

3 Stone Carving Although stone earving was never regarded as a high art, Jewish eraftsmen nevertheless developed stone earving teehniques in step with those in the rest of the Creco-Roman world. Distinetively Jewish motifs include those borrowed from the Jewish eult (menorah, lulab, ethrog, and ineense shovel, synagogue ark, ete.), representations of eagles and lions (also known as decorations on the eurtains of the Seeond Temple, Lieberman 1962: 167-9), lion guardians of the ark in the synagogue (Meyers, Meyers and Strange 1981 a, 1981 b), and the wide panoply of motifs from funerary art, espe-

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cially at Beth She'arim (Avigad 1976). Some of these stone carvings are cut in the round and therefore qualify as sculpture.

4 Art Motifs on Lamps, Stone, Glass, Coins, ete. The MENORAH is the symbol par excellence in ancientJudaism after the destruction of the Second Temple. Although it appeared in 40 BCE on coins of Mattathias, it is never seen again in Jewish art until 70 CE. Most often it is depicted much like a modern Hanukkah menorah with seven branches, though menorahs with five, seven, and nine branches are known. It also commonly appears with ethrog (citron), shofar (ram's horn), and lulab (bound branch).

Menamh Incised on Piaster jrom a First Century jewish Hause in jerusalem. Source: Hachlili, jAAll, p. 237.

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The EAGLE is an important motif in ancientJewish art, especially in synagogue art. The eagle is usually represented in the "oriental" or "Syrian" tradition: wings outstretched, body rounded, legs stout, and head turned to one side. Feathers are not usually depicted realistically but resemble petals of flowers. Eagles sometimes have garlands in their beaks, but the eagles in the synagogue art of the Golan Heights often attack snakes or have snakes in their beaks. An eagle with folded wings also appears on coins of Herod the Great, perhaps following his attempt to erect a great golden eagle over the main gate of the temple. Eagles also appear in mosaic floors of synagogues and on lamps. In Midrash Rabbah Exodus 23:14 the eagle is identified as the most exalted of the birds. GRAPES, GRAPE CLUSTERS, GRAPE TENDRILS, and GRAPE LEAVES are also very common indeed on buildings and artifacts of the periods under discussion. On Jewish coins of Herod the Great, Herod Archelaus, the First Jewish War, the Second Jewish War (Bar Kochba), and on certain city coins with large Jewish populations, appear grapes, grape clusters, and grape vines. The grape vine and its products are a natural symbol of prosperity, though one can make other associations. The grape vine or grape cluster also figure largely in synagogue art, in mosaic floors and in stone carving. The PALM TREE, PALM FROND, and DATES also appear as a common motif in Jewish art. These motifs appear in synagogue art, but it is not yet clear that they adorned the Second Temple. Various parts ofthe tree or its fruit appear on coins ofJohn Hyrcanus I, Alexander J anaeus, Herod the Great, Herod Antipas, the First and Second Jewish Wars, and certain city coins. On coins of Herod Antipas it appears on his largest denomination (Meshorer 1982). In synagogue

Coin ofthe First Revolt showing Palm Tree. Source: Madden, History ofJewish Coinage, p. 47 (top).

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art at Capernaum palm trees appear virtually in the round in stone on consoles. Baskets of dates are common in mosaics and are to be associated withJewish festivals. It can be argued that the date palm became a national symbol because of its appearance on coins of the SecondJewish revolt (Meshorer 1982). Interestingly enough, when Rome wished to commemorate the defeat oftheJews after the First Revolt, they used a female captive in mourning sitting beneath a date palm and the inscription IUDEA CAPTA.

Coin ofthe Second]ewish Revolt showing Palm Tree. Source: Madden, History of]ewish Coinage, p. 209.

The AMPHORA, which is often depicted as a two-handled vase, often with long neck and pointed base or with a stand for a base, was an important motif in Jewish and other art. Amphorae are portrayed in Jewish art on coins, lamps, gold glass, plates, and on ossuaries. They are also known to have been painted in tombs and carved in relief in synagogue art. Often the amphora is combined with vine tendrils or grape clusters growing out of its neck. The first amphorae on coins appear on coins nf tht' First Rc\olc They are usually

Coin of the First Revolt showing an Amphora. Source: Madden, History of ]ewish Coinage, p. 205 (top).

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interpreted as vessels from the temple cult used to hold water or wine. Amphorae also figure as decorative elements in Jewish epitaphs. They also appear in relief in synagogue art, as for example on lintels or on a frieze, but not commonly with the menorah. The TABLE may seem to be an unlikely candidate for a motif in Jewish Art, but arecent find of a coin with the table of showbread shown within the facade of the Second Temple reminded scholars that a four-legged table appeared on coins of Mattathias Antigonus during his regnal years 40-37 BCE. Since this Jewish mler is the only one to depict the temple menorah on his coins, it strengthens the case that the table in question is also the table of showbread. Herod the Great also used a three-legged table on his coins, which is either the same table or the silver table in the temple used to hold the vessels of Service (Meshorer 1990-1). Many other minor motifs inJewish art occur in the course ofthe periods in question. These include the clover, the circlet, rosette, pillar, portal, the centaur, various animals and fish (especially the dolphin), five or six-point stars (rarely), genii, and many geometrie forms including lozenges and spirals. One can also name the garland, pomegranate, wreath, lyre or harp, anchor, and flower. Simply to state the motifs in a list does no justice to them, but it does underscore an important characteristic of Jewish art in these periods, which is that it is vital, flexible, wide-ranging, and is to be found associated with the most humble of artifacts but also with the most grand of architectural projects. No one can understand ancient Jewish society without an acquaintance with the art of the period.

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BIßLIOGRAPHY

Avigad, N. . 1976 Beth She'arim: 7he Excavations 1953-58. Vol. 3,Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society. 1980 Discovering Jerusalem. NashviIle: Thomas Nelson and Sons. Bahat, D. and Broshi, M. 1975 Excavations in the Armenian Garden. Pp. 55-56 in Jerusalem Revealed, edited by Y. Yadin. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society. Barag, D. 1989 New Evidence for the identification of the showbread table on the coins of the Bar Kokhba War, Proceedings of the 10th International Congress of Numismatics London, 1986. London: 217-222 Ben-Dov, M. 1982 In the Shadow of the Temple: 7he Discovery of Ancient Jerusalem. Jerusalern: Keter. Broshi, M. 1975 Excavation in the House of Caiaphas, Mount Zion. Pp. 55-70 in Jerusalem Revealed, edited by Y. Yadin. Jerusalern: Israel Exploration Society. Bruneau, P. 1982 Les Israelites de Delos et la juiverie delienne. Bulletin de Correspondance Hellenique 106: 465-504. Chiat, MJ. 1981 First-Century Synagogue Architecture: Methodological Problems. Pp. 49-60 in Gutman, 1981. 1982 Handbook of Synagogue Architecture. Brown U niversity Judaic Studies. Chico: Scholars Press. Corbo, S. 1978 La Fortezza di Macheronte: Rapporto preliminare della prima campagna di scavo: 8 settembre-28 ottobre 1978, Liber Annuus Studium Biblicum Franciscanum 28: 217-38. . 1979 Macheronte: La Reggi-Fortezza Erodiana. Rapporto preliminare all seconda campagna di scavo: 3 settembre-20 ottobre 1979, Liber Annuus Studium Biblicum Franciscanum 29: 315-26. 1980 La Fortezza di Macheronte (Al Mishnaqa): Rapporto preliminare all terza campagna di scavo: 8 settembre-ll ottobre 1980, Liber Annuus Studium Biblicum Franciscanum 30: 365-76. Corbo, V. and Loffredo, S. 1981 Nuove Scoperte all Fortezza di Macheronte. Rapporto Preliminare all quarta campagna di scavo: 7 settembre-l0 ottobre 1981, Liber Annuus Studium Biblicum Franciscanum 31: 257-86. De Vaux, R. 1973 Archaeology and the Dead Sea Serolls. The Schweich Lectures 1959. London: Oxford University Press. Derfler, S. 1993 7he Hellenistic Temple at Tel Beersheva. Lewiston: Edwen Meilen Press. Donner, H. 1992 7he Mosaic Map of Madaba: An Introductory Guide. Palesltina Antiqua 7. Kampen: Kok Pharos Publishing House. Fiensy, D.A. 1991 The Social History of Palestine in the Herodian Period: The Land is Mine. Lewiston: Edwin MeIlen Press.

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Foerster, G. 1973 The Synagogues of Masada and Herodian, Eretz Israel 11: 224-28. 1977 The Synagogues of Masada and Herodian, Journal rifJewish Art 3/4: 6-11. Frey, J.-B. 1975 Corpus rifJewish Inscriptions. N ew York: Gichon, M. 1967 Idumea and the Herodian Limes, Israel Exploration Journal 17: 27-42. Goodenough, E.R. 1953-64 Jewish Symbols in the Creco-Roman Period. (Vol. 3: Illustrations). Bollingen Series XXXVII. NY: Pantheon Books. 1988 Jewish Symbols in the Greco-Roman Period. Abridged and edited by Jacob Neusner. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Gutman,J. 1964 Jewish Ceremonial Art. N ew York: T. Yos eloff. 1971 No Graven Images: Studies in Art and the Hebrew Bible. New York: Ktav. 1981 Ancient Synagogues: 1he State rif Research. Brown Judaic Studies 22. Chico: Scholars Press. Hach1ili, R. 1988 Ancient Jewish Art and Archaeology in the Land rif Israel. Handbuch der Orientalistik, 7: Kunst und Archaeo1ogie. Leiden: EJ. Brill. Harboury, W. and Noy, D. 1992 Jewish Inscriptions rif Craeco-Roman Egypt. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Ilan, Z. and Damati, E. 1985 The Mosaic from the Synagogue at Ancient Meroth. 1he Israel Museum Journal 4: 51-6. !liffe 1938 Oy,arterly rif the Department rif Antiquities rif Palestine 6: 6 Kee, H.C. 1990 The Transformation of the Synagogue after 70 C.E.: Its Import for Early Christianity, NTS 36: 1-24. Kraabel, A. T. 1984 New Evidence of the Samaritan Diaspora has been found on Delos BA 47 (84): 44-46 1987 Unity and Diversity Among Diaspora Synagogues in Levine 1987 Kraeling, C.H., ed. 1979 1he Excavation at Dura-Europos: 1he Synagogue. New York: Ktav. Levine, L.I., editor. 1981 Ancient Synagogues Revealed. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society. 1987 1he Synagogue in Late Antiquiry. A Centennial Pub1ication of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. Philadelphia: The American Schools of Oriental Research. Lifschitz, B. 1967 Donateurs et Fondateurs dans les Synagogues Juives. Cahiers de La Revue Biblique, 7. Paris: Garibaldi. Loffreda, S. 1981 Preliminary Report on the Second Season of Excavations at Qal' at el-Mishnawa: Machaerus. Annual rif the Department rif Antiquities rifJordan 25: 85-94. Loffredo, S. and Corbo, V. 1976 La Citta Roma di Magda1a. Studi Archeologici I· Studii Biblici

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Franciscani, Collection Major 22. Jerusalem: Franciscan, pp. 355ff. Ma'oz, Z. 1981 The Synagogue of Gamala and the Typology of Second-Temple Synagogues, Ancient Synagogues Revealed, ed. L.I. Levine. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society. Ma'oz, Z. 1992 The Synagogue in the Second Temple Period, Eretz Israel 23. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society: 331-334, English summary p. 157*158*. Meshorer, Y. 1982 Ancient Jewish Coinage. Two vols. NY: Amphora Books. 1990-1 Ancient J ewish Coinage: Addendum I, Israel Numismatic Journalll: 104-132, pIs. 17-32. Meyers, E.M. and Kraabel, A.T. 1986 Archaeology, Iconography, and non-literary Written Remains. Pp. 175-210 in Earl:Ji Judaism and its Modern Interpreters, ed. R.A. Kraft and G.W.E. Nickelsburg, Atlanta 1986. Meyers, E.M., Kraabel, A.T., and Strange, J.F. 1976 Ancient Synagogue Excavations at Khirbet Shema', Upper Galilee, Israel, 1972. The Annual of the American Schools of Oriental Research, Volume XUI, ed. David Noel Freedman. American Schools of Oriental Research by Duke University Press, Durham. Meyers, E.M., Meyers, C.L., and Strange, J.F. 1981a The Ark of Nabratein-A First Glance, Biblical Archaeologist 44: 237-43. 1981 b Preliminary Report of the 1980 Excavations at enNabratein, Israel. Bulletin qf the American Schools qf Oriental Research 244: 125. 1990 1he Excavations at the Ancient Synagogue qf Gush Halav, Israel. The Meiron Excavation Project, Vol. V. Eisenbraun's. Meyers, E.M. and Strange, J.F. 1981 Archaeology, the Rabbis, and Earl:Ji Christianiry, Nashville, Abingdon Press. Meyers, E.M., Strange, J.F., and Meyers, C.L. 1981 Excavations at Ancient Meiron, Upper Galilee, Israel, 1971-72, 1974-75. Annual qf the American Schools qf Oriental Research 45, Ann Arbor. Netzer, E. 1975a The Hasmonean and Herodian Winter Palaces at Jericho, IEJ 25: 89-100. 1975b Cypros, Qg.dmoniot 8: 54-61 (Hebrew). 1977 The Winter Palaces of the Judean Kings at Jericho at the End of the Second Temple Period, BASOR 228: 1-13 1980 The Hippodrome that Herod Built at Jericho, Qadmoniot 13: 104-7 (Hebrew). 1981 Greater Herodium. Qedem 13. Jerusalem: The Hebrew University. 1982a Ancient Ritual Baths (Miqvaot) inJericho. Pp. 106-119 in 1he Jerusalem Cathedra: Studies in the History, Archaeology, Geography and Ethnography ofthe Land ofIsrael. L.I. Levine, editor. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. 1982b Recent Discoveries in the Winter Palaces of the Second Temple Period atJericho, Qadmoniot 15: 22-29 (Hebrew). 1983 The Winter Palaces and the King's Estate in Jericho. Pp. 95-112 in Jericho (Kadom series) (Hebrew).

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1991 Masada IIl- The Yigael Yadin Excavations 1963-1965, final reports; the buildings, stratigraphy and architecture. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, The Hebrew University. Neusner,J. 1991 Symbol and Theology in Early Judaism. Minneapo1is: Fortress. Oster, R. 1993 Supposed Anachronism in Luke-Acts' use of ~YNArQrH: A Rejoinder to H.C. Kee, NTS 36, pp. 178-208. Piccirillo, M. 1979 First Excavation Campaign at Qal'at el-Mishnaqa-Meqawer 1978, Annual rif the Department rif Antiquities rifJordan 23: 177 -83. Porten, B. 1979 Aramaie Papyri and Parchments: A New Look, BA 42: 74-104. Rachmani, L.Y. 1990 Stone Synagogue Chairs: Their Identification, Use and Significance, Israel Exploration Journal 40/23: 192-214. Reyno1ds, J.M. 1977 Excavations at Sidi Khrebish Benghazi (Berenice) Vol. 1: Buildings, Coins, Inscriptions, Architectural Decoration (Supplements to Libya Antiqua 5. edited by J.A. Uoyd. Hertford: Stephen Austin and Sons. Rubensohn, O. 1907 Elephantine-Papyri. BGU Sonderheft. Berlin: Sandme1, S. 1978 Judaism and Christian Beginnings. New York: Oxford University Press. Strobel, A. 1974 Das römische Belagerunswerk um Macharus: Topographische Untersuchungen, ZDPV90: 128-84. Tsafrir, Y. and Magen, Y. 1984 Two Seasons of Excavation at the Sartaba/ Alexandrium Fortress, Qgdmoniot 17: 26-32 (Hebrew). Vermeu1e, C.C. 1981 Jewish Relationships with the Art rif Ancient Greece and Rome. Boston: Department of C1assical Art, Museum of Fine Art. Wigoder, G. 1972 Jewish Art and Civilization. 2 vo1s. New York: Walker. Wright, G.R.H. 1961 The Archaeological Remains at el-Mird in the Wilderness of Judaea, Biblica 42: 1-21. Yadin, Y. 1966 Masada: Herod's Fortress and the Zealots' Last Stand. New York: Random House.

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THE ART AND ARCHAEOLOGY OF ANCIENT JUDAISM LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Page 68. Decorated Stone Dome if the Huida Gates. Source: Rache! Hachlili, Ancient Jewish Art and Archaeology in the Land if Israel. Leiden and New York, EJ. Brill, 1988, p. 74. Page 70. Coin if Bar Kochba showing the Facade if the Temple. Source: F.W. Madden, History if Jewish Coinage and if Money in the Oid and New Testament. NY: KTAV, 1967 (reprint), p. 171. Page 70. 1he Temple Facade according to the Fresco at Dura-Europos. Source: Hachlili, JAAll, p. 27, illustration 7b. Page 74. Plans if the Putative ~nagogues if Herodium, Masada, Gamala, and Magdala. Source: Hachlili, JAAll, p. 85, Fig. 1. Page 77. 1he Torah Shrine ]rom the Mosaic Floor if the ~nagogue Source: Hachlili, JAAll, p. 186, upper right corner.

if Hammath

Tiberias.

Page 80. 1he Hasmonean Palace Complex at Jericho. Source: Hachlili, JAAll, p. 10. Page 81. Plan if Herod's Palace at Jericho. Source: Hachlili, JAAll, p. 35. Page 84. Plan if the Remains at Alexandrium. Source: Hachlili, JAALI, p. 47. Page 85. Plan if the Herodian Fortress

if Cypros.

Page 87. Plan if the Herodian Fortress

if Machaerus.

Page 91. Reconstruction 110.

if aBurial

Tomb

Source: Hachlili, JAAll, p. 48.

if Herod's

Source: Hachlili, JAAll, p. 50.

Day. Source: Hachlili, JAAll, p.

Page 97. Coin if Alexander Jannaeus. Source: Madden, History oJJewish Coinage, p. 72. Page 98. Facade oJ a Jewish Tomb ]rom Jerusalem. Source: Hachlili, JAAll, p. 105 (item 6.) Page 99. 1he Binding oJ Isaac ]rom the Mosaic Floor oJ the Beth Alpha Synagogue. Source: Hachlili, JAAll, p. 289.

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Page 100 . .:(pdiac flom the Central Panel of the Mosaic Floor of the Beth Alpha Synagogue. Source: Hachlili, ]AAIJ, p. 304. Page 101. Menorah Panel of the Mosaic Floor of the Beth Alpha Synagogue. Source: Hach1i1i, ]AAIJ, p. 248 (item b.) Page 102. Inhabited Seroll Mosaic Floor flom Ma'on. Source: Hachlili, ]AAIJ, p. 311. Page 104. 7he Binding of Isaac in the Wall Paintingflom Dura-Europos. Source: Kraeling, C.H., ed., 7he ExcOlJation at Dura-Europos: 7he Synagogue. New York: Ktav, 1979. Also Hachlili, ]AAIJ, p. 290. Page 105. Menorah Incised on Plaster flom a First Century ]ewish House in ]erusalem. Source: Hach1i1i, ]AAIJ, p. 237. Page 106. Coin of the First Revolt showing Palm Tree. Source: Madden, History of ]ewish Coinage, p. 47 (top ofpage). Page 107. Coin of the Second ]ewish Revolt showing Palm Tree. Source: Madden, History of ]ewish Coinage, p. 209. Page 107. Coin of the First Revolt showing an Amphora. Source: Madden, History of]ewish Coinage, p. 205 (top).

RABBINIC SOURCES

DEFINING RABBINIC LITERATURE AND ITS PRINCIPAL PARTS Jacob Neusner (University of South Florida) TheJudaism ofthe dual Torah, which took shape in the first seven centuries C.E., rests upon the conception of Torah, meaning revelation. Rabbinic literature forms part of that Torah and is valued because of that conviction; that is why, in its Judaism, Rabbinic literature is important. What God reveals ("gives") in the Torah is God's self-manifestation in one aspect: God's will, expressed in particular in an account of the covenant between God and Israel. That refers to the identification of the contracting parties, on the one side, and what the covenant entails for the life of Israel with God, on the other. That is the religious context defined by the Judaism of the dual Torah in which the literature of rabbinic Judaism is written, valued and studied. While one among several Judaic systems of antiquity, in fact the Judaism of the dual Torah set forth the most important canon of a Judaism to emerge from ancient times. l That is because it is the I

For further discussion ofthe definition ofRabbinic literature, see the following: H. L. Strack and Günter Stemberger, Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash (Minneapolis, 1992: Fortress Press), translated by Markus Bockmuehl. General Introduction, pp. 1-118; on oral and written tradition, pp. 35-50. John Bowker, The Targums and Rabbinie Literature. An Introduction to Jewish Interpretations rif Scripture (Cambridge, 1969: Cambridge University Press), pp. 4093: abrief introduction to rabbinic literature; halakah and haggadah, Midrash and Mishnah, pp. 40-48; the transmission ofOral 'Torah, pp. 4853; Rabbinic literature in general, pp. 53ff. Bowker also treats medieval Midrash-compilations; Megillat Ta'anit; Seder 'Olam; Tanna debe Eliyyahu; etC. Y. Gafni, "The Historical Background" (defining the Rabbinic period, Second Temple institutions and the sages, the Pharisaic movement, Hillel and the House of Hillel, Hasidim and Zealots, destruction and the Yavne Period, Bar Kokhba and the later Tannaitic period, the Amoraic period in the land of Israel, the Amoraic period in Babylonia), in Safrai, Literature rif the Sages, pp. 1-34. On the dates of the Rabbinic period: "While rabbbinic literature may have taken on a literary format in the first five centuries of the common era, the contents of this material may at tim es reflect ideas, practices, and even statements handed down from earlier phases ofJewish development, most particularly the days of the second Jerwish commonwealth, which commenced with the return to Zion (548 B.C.E.) and building of the Second Temple (c. 516 B.C.E.), and concluded with the dstruction of Jerusalem by Titus (70 C.E.) ... by the first century C.E. there already existed within the Jewish community a significant body of oral tradition, both in the form of biblical commentary as weil as 'regulations

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Judaism that proved normative from its formative centuries to our own day and produced most of the Judaic systems that now flourhanded down by former generations and not recorde din the Laws of Moses.' Rabbinic literature thus frequently serves as a conduit for the transmission of ideas and statements whose genesis preceded the rabbinic era by decades or even hundreds of years. For the student of rabbinic his tory the fact that a statement issuing--in literature-from the mouth of R. Aqiba may have its roots in the teachings of an anonymous sage hundreds of yeras earlier is indeed inhibiting, but it is only after we accept this basic premise that rabbinic literary development can be placed in its proper perspective." The same applies in his view to Midrash-compilations as weil: "Midrashim redacted at a later date frequently preserve much earlier material, the antiquity of which may be established through a co mparison with early non-rabbinic J ewish or Christian literature. " Maccoby, Hyam Maccoby, Ear!J Rabbinic Writings (Cambridge, 1988: Cambridge U niversity Press). Cambridge Commentaries on Writings rif the Jewish and Christian World, 200 BC to AD 200. Edited by P. R. Ackroyd, A. R. C. Leaney, and J. W. Packer. Volume III, pp. 1-30: "a corporate literary effort, in which a large number of experts ... is engaged in a common enterprise: the clarification of Scripture and the application of it to everyday life;" the oral Torah, pp. 3-5; canonicity, pp. 5-7; the style of Rabbinic writings, pp. 8-9; Pharisees and Sadducees, pp. 9-11; Pharisees and rabbis, pp. 11-16; historical background; halakhah and haggadah, pp. 16-22; haggadah and Midrash, pp. 22-25; Mishnah and Midrash, pp. 25-29; the Targums, pp. 29-30. Note also under "miscellaneous works," Maccoby discusses Seder Olam and "the mystical literature," pp. 38-39; the main rabbinic figures, pp. 39-46; "the main ideas of the early Rabbinic literature," e.g., the nature of God, the covenant-people, the Land, the pro mise of a transformed world, pp. 46-48. General characterization (p. 48): "Thus the rabbinical literature, though wholly subordinating itself to Scripture, which it endeavors to 'search' and explicate, in fact contains great originality arising from the struggle to make biblical values actual in the times in which the rbbis found themselves." Maccoby treats in the rubric of Rabbinic literature the synagogue liturgy as weil, pp. 204-217; "history," pp. 218-229, gives sampies of Megillat Ta'anit and Seder 'Olam Rabbah. Shmuel Safrai, editor; Peter J. Tomson, Executive Editor, 7he Literature rif the Sages. First Part: Oral Tora, Halakha, Mishna, Tosifta, Talmud, External Tractates In the series, Compendia Rerum Iudaicarum ad Novum Testamentum. Section Two. 7he Literature rif the Jewish People in the Period rif the Second Temple and the Talmud (Assen/Maastricht and Philadelphia, 1987: Van Gorcum and Fortress Press). See especially "Halakhah" (general characteristics, origins of the halakhah, the origin of independent halakhah, sources of the halakha ofthe sages, stages in the history ofTannaitic halakhah), in Safrai, Literature rif the Sages, pp. 121-210. And "Oral Tora" (the scope of oral Tora, origin and nature of oral Tara, ways of literary creation, oral Tora and rabbinic literature, terminology of oral Torah, central religious concepts developed in oral Tora), in Safrai, Literature rifthe Sages, pp. 35-120. On the topic ofJudaism as a scriptural religion, see William Scott Green, "Writing with Scripture," in my Writing with Scripture: 7he Authoriry and Uses rifthe Hebrew Bible in the Torah rif Formative Judaism. Philadelphia, 1989: Fortress Press, pp. 7-23. On the formation of the Rabbinic literature out of the compilation of available compositions, see this writer's Making the Classics in Judaism: 7he 7hree Stages rif Literary Formation. Atlanta, 1990: Scholars Press for Brown Judaic Studies; and for the distinction between the composition and the composite, see 7he Rules rif Composition rif the Talmud rif Babylonia. 7he Cogency rif the Bavli's Composite. Atlanta, 1991: Scholars Press for South Florida Studies in the History of Judaism.

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ish. That Judaism, drawing upon 01der materials of course, be ginning with the Old Testament itself, finds its definitive symbol in the Torah, written and oral. Its distinctive myth appeals to the story that at Sinai God revealed revelation, or "Torah," to Moses in two media. One medium for revelation was in writing, hence "the written Torah," Torah shebikhtab, corresponding to the Old Testament of Christianity. The other medium for revelation was through oral formulation and oral transmission, hence through memorization, hence "the oral Torah," Torah she be'al peh, the memorized Torah. Rabbinic literature therefore comprises the writings of "our sages of blessed memory," that is to say, the authorities who represented the entire Torah, written and oral, that was supposed to have been revealed by God to Moses at Mount Sinai. The Judaism of the dual Torah bestows upon its authorities, or sages, the tide of "rabbi," hence is called rabbinic Judaism; it appeals for its ultimate authority to the Talmud of Babylonia, or Bavli, hence is called talmudic Judaism; it enjoys the status of orthodoxy, hence is called "normative" or "classical" Judaism. Today, the Rabbinic literature valued as canonical by the Judaism of the dual Torah forms the court offinal appeal to allJudaisms, from Orthodoxy both integrationist and segregationist, to Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist, and all other known Judaic systems of a religious character. Each invokes in its own way and for its own purposes the received writings of the Judaism of the dual Torah. DEFINING RABBINIC LITERATURE

A simple definition follows from wh at has been said. Rabbinic 1iterature is the corpus of writing produced in the first seven centuries C.E. by sages who claimed to stand in the chain of tradition from Sinai and uniquely to possess the oral part of the Torah, revealed by God to Moses at Sinai for oral formulation and oral transmission, in addition to the written part of the Torah possessed by all Israel. Among the many, diverse documents produced by Jews in late antiquity, the first seven centuries of the Common Era (C.E. = A. D.), only a small group cohere and form a distinctive corpus, called "rabbinic literature." Three traits together suffice to distinguish rabbinic literature from all other Jewish (ethnic) and Judaic (religious) writing of that age. [1] These writings of law and exegesis, revered as holy books, copiously cite the Hebrew Scriptures of ancient Israel ("written Torah"). [2] They acknowledge the authority, and even the existence, of

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no other Judaic (or gentile) books but the ancient Israelite Scriptures. [3] These writings promiscuously and ubiquitously cite sayings attributed to named authorities, unique to those books themselves, most of them bearing the tide "rabbi." Other writings ofJews, e.g.,Josephus, to begin with do not claim to set forth religious systems or to form holy books. Other Judaic writings ordinarily qualif)r under the first plank of the definition, and the same is to be said for Christian counterparts. The second element in the definition excludes all Christian documents. The third dismisses all writings of all Judaisms other than the one of the dual Torah. Other Judaisms' writings cite Scriptural heroes or refer to a particular authority; none except those of this Judaism sets forth, as does every rabbinic document, extensive accounts of wh at a large number of diverse authorities say, let alone disputes among them. "Rabbinic" is therefore an appropriate qualifier for this Judaism, since wh at distinguishes it from all other is the character of its authorities (the matter of tide being a mere detail) and the myth that accounts for its distinctive character. Any book out of Judaic antiquity that exhibits these three traits-focus upon law and exegesis of the Hebrew Scriptures, exclusion of all prior tradition except for Scripture, and appealing to named sages called rabbis, falls into the category of rabbinic literature. All other Jewish writings in varying proportions exhibit the first trait, and some the second as weH, but none aH three. It goes without saying that no named authority in any rabbinic writing, except for scriptural ones, occurs in any other Judaic document in antiquity (excluding Gamaliel in Acts), or in another Jewish one either (excluding Simeon b. Gamaliel in Josephus's histories). Rabbinic literature is divided into two large parts, each part formed as a commentary to a received part of the Torah, one oral, the other written. The written part requires no attention here: it is simply Scripture (Hebrew: "the written Torah," TaNaKH, Torah, Nebi'im, Ketubim, a.k.a. "the Old Testament" part of the Bible). The oral part begins with the Mishnah, a philosophical law code that reached closure at the end of the second century, the written part of course comprises the Pentateuch and other books of ancient Israelite Scripture. Promulgated under the sponsorship of the Roman-appointed Jewish authority of the Land ofIsrael ("Palestine"), Judah the Patriarch, the Mishnah formed the first document of rabbinic literature and therefore of the Judaic system, "Rabbinic Judaism," or "the Judaism of the dual Torah," that took shape in this period. The attributed statements of its authorities, named sages or rabbis called Tannaites ("repeaters," "memorizers," for the

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form in which the sayings were formulated and transmitted), enjoyed the standing of traditions beginning at Sinai. Numerous anonymous sayings, alongside the attributed ones and bearing upon the same controverted questions, appear as weIl. THE MISHNAH AND THE ExEGETICAL TRADITION OF THE

ORAL

TORAH

Comprising six divisions, dealing with agriculture, holy seasons, women and family affairs, civillaw and politics, everyday offerings, and cultic purity, the Mishnah served as the written code of the Patriarch's administration in the Land of Israel, and of that of his counterpart, the Exilarch, in Iranian-ruled Babylonia as weIl. Alongside the Mishnah's compilation of sages' sayings into wellcrafted divisions, tractates, and chapters, other sayings of the same authorities circulated, so me of them finding their way, marked as deriving from Tannaite authority, into the Tosefta and the two Talmuds. Three exegetical documents formed around parts of the Mishnah. These were, specificaIly, [1] the Tosefta, a compilation of supplementary sayings organized around nearly the whole of the Mishnah as citation and gloss, secondary paraphrase, and freestanding complement thereto, of no determinate date but probably concluded about a century after the closure of the Mishnah, hence ca. 300; and two Talmuds, or sustained and systematic commentaries to the Mishnah, [2] the Talmud of the Land of Israel, which reached closure in ca. 400, a commentary to most of the tractates of the Mishnah's first four divisions, [3] the Talmud of Babylonia, concluded in ca. 600, providing a sustained exegesis to most of the tractates of the Mishnah's second through fifth divisions. The Tosefta's materials occasionally form the basis for exegetical compositions in the two Talmuds, but the second Talmud's framers know nothing about the compositions, let alone compositions, of the prior Talmud, even though they frequently do cite sayings attributed to authorities of the Land of Israel as much as of Babylonia. So the li ne of the exegesis and extension of the Mishnah extends in an inverted Y, through the Tosefta, to the two, autonomous Talmuds. Mishnah Tosefta Talmud of Babylonia Talmud of the Land of Israel (Bavii) (Yerushalmi)

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SCRIPTURE AND THE EXEGETICAL TRADITION OF THE WRITTEN TORAH

Parts of the written T orah attracted sustained commentary as well, and, altogether, these commentaries, called Midrash-compilations, form the counterpart to the writings of Mishnah-exegesis. 1t should be noted that both Talmuds, in addition, contain large composites of Midrash-exegesis, but they are not organized around books or large selections of Scripture. The part of rabbinic literature that takes Scripture, rather than the Mishnah, as its organizing structure covers the Pentateuch al books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, and some of the writings important in synagogue liturgy, particularly Ruth, Esther, Lamentations, and Song of Songs, all read on special occasions in the sacred calendar. Numbering for late antiquity twelve compilations in all, the earliest compilations of exegesis, called midrash, were produced in the third century, the latest in the sixth or seventh. SAGES AND THE EXEMPLARY TORAH

There is a third, small type of writing in rabbinic literature, which concerns teachings of sages on theological and moral questions. This comprises a very small, freestanding corpus, tractate Abot ("the fathers," or founders) and Abot deRabbi Nathan ("the fathers according to Rabbi Nathan"). The former collects sayings of sages, and the later contributes in addition stories about them. But the bulk of rabbinic literature consists of works of exegesis of the Mishnah and Scripture, which is to say, the principal documents of the Torah, oral and written respectively. But throughout the documents of the oral Torah also are collected compositions and large compi1ations that are devoted to the sayings and exemplary deeds of named sages. No documents took shape to be made up out of that kind of writing, which, nonetheless, was abundant. MISHNAH AND MIDRASH, HALAKHAH AND AGGADAH

Viewed as a whole, therefore, we see that the stream of exegesis of the Mishnah and exploration of its themes of law and philosophy flowed side by side with exegesis of Scripture. Since the Mishnah concerns itself with normative rules of behavior, it and the documents of exegesis flowing from it ordinarily are comprised of discussion of matters oflaw, or, in Hebrew, halakhah. Much of the exegesis of Scripture in the Midrash-compilations concerns itself with norms of belief, right attitude, virtue and proper motivation. Encased in

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narrative form, these teachings of an ethical and moral character are called aggadah, or lore. Midrash-exegesis of Israelite Scripture in no way was particular to the Rabbinic literature. To the contrary, the exegesis of the Hebrew Scriptures had defined a convention of all systems of Judaism from before the conelusion of Scripture itself; no one, ineluding the sages who stand behind rabbinic literature, began anywhere but in the encounter with the Written Torah. But collecting and organizing documents of exegeses of Scripture in a systematic way developed in a quite distinct circumstance. For rabbinic literature, the circumstance was defined by the requirement of Mishnah-exegesis. The Mishnah's character itself defined a principal task of Scripture-exegesis. Standing by itself, providing few proof texts to Scripture to back up its rules, the Mishnah bore no explanation of why Israel should obey its rules. Brought into relations hip to Scriptures, by contrast, the Mishnah gained access to the source of authority by definition operative in Israel, the Jewish people. Accordingly, the work of relating the Mishnah's rules to those of Scripture got under way alongside the formation of the Mishnah's rules themselves. It follows that explanations of the sense of the document, ineluding its authority and sources, would draw attention to the written part of the Torah. We may elassify the Midrash-compilations in three successive groups: exegetical, propositional, and exegetical-propositional (theological).

1 Exegetical Discourse and the Pentateuch One important dimension, therefore, of the earliest documents of Scripture-exegesis, the Midrash-compilations that deal with Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, measures the distance between the Mishnah and Scripture and aims to elose it. The question is persistently addressed in analyzing Scripture: precisely how does a rule of the Mishnah relate to, or rest upon, a rule of Scripture? That question demanded an answer, so that the status of the Mishnah's rules, and, right alongside, of the Mishnah itself, could find a elear definition. Collecting and arranging exegeses of Scripture as these related to passages of the Mishnah first reached literary form in Sifra, to Leviticus, and in two books, both called Sifre, one to Numbers, the other Deuteronomy. All three compositions accomplished much else. For, even at that early stage, exegeses of passages of Scripture in their own context and not only for the sake of Mishnah-exegesis attracted attention. But a principal motif

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in all three books concerned the issue of Mishnah-Scripture relationships. A second, still more fruitful path in formulating Midrash-clarifications of Scripture also emerged from the labor of Mishnah-exegesis. As the work of Mishnah-exegesis got under way, in the third century, exegetes of the Mishnah and others alongside undertook a parallel labor. They took an interest in reading Scripture in the way in which they were reading the Mishnah itself. That is to say, they began to work through verses of Scripture in exactly the same way-word for word, phrase for phrase, line for line-in which, to begin with, the exegetes of the Mishnah pursued the interpretation and explanation of the Mishnah. Precisely the types of exegesis that dictated the way in which sages read the Mishnah now guided their reading of Scripture as weIl. And, as people began to collect and organize comments in accord with the order of sentences and paragraphs of the Mishnah, they found the stimulation to collect and organize comments on clauses and verses of Scripture. This kind of verse-by-verse exegetical work got under way in the Sifra and the two Sifres, but reached fulfillment in Genesis Rabbah presents a line-for-line reading of the book of Genesis. Characteristic of the narrowly-exegetical phase of Midrash-compilation is the absence of a single, governing proposition, running through the details. 1t is not possible, for example, to state the main point, expressed through countless cases, in Sifra or Sifre to Deuteronomy.

2 From Exegesis to Proposition A further group of Midrash-compilations altogether transcends the limits of formal exegesis. Beyond these two modes of exegesissearch for the sources of the Mishnah in Scripture, line-by-line reading of Scripture as of the Mishnah-lies yet a third, an approach we may call "writing with Scripture," meaning, using verses of Scripture in a context established by a propositional program independent of Scripture itself. To understand it, we have to know how the first of the two Talmuds read the Mishnah. The Yerushalmi's authors not only explained phrases or sentences of the Mishnah in the manner of Mishnah- and Scripture-exegetes. They also investigated the principles and large-scale conceptual problems of the document and of the law given only in cases in the Mishnah itself. That is to say, they dealt not alone with a given topic, a subject and its rule, the cases that yield the rule, but with an encompassing problem, a principle and its implications for a number of topics and rules.

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This far more discursive and philosophical mode of thought produced for Mishnah-exegesis sustained essays on principles cutting across specific rules. Predictably, this same intellectual work extended from the Mishnah to Scripture. Exegesis of Scripture beyond that focused on words, phrases, and sentences produced discursive essays on great principles or problems of theology and morality. Discursive exegesis is represented, to begin with, in Leviticus Rabbah, a document that reached closure, people generally suppose, sometime after Genesis Rabbah, thus ca. 450 and that marked the shift from verse-by-verse to syllogistic reading of verses of Scripture. It was continued in Pesiqta deRab Kahana, organized around themes pertinent to various holy days through the liturgical year, and Pesiqta Rabbati, a derivative and imitative work. Typical of discursive exegesis of Scripture, Leviticus Rabbah presents not phrase-by-phrase systematic exegeses of verses in the book of Leviticus, but a set of thirty-seven topical essays. These essays, syllogistic in purpose, take the form of citations and comments on verses of Scripture to be sure. But the compositions range widely over the far reaches of the Hebrew Scriptures while focusing narrowly upon a given theme. They moreover make quite distinctive points about that theme. Their essays constitute compositions, not merely composites. Whether devoted to God's favor to the poor and humble or to the dangers of drunkenness, the essays, exegetical in form, discursive in character, correspond to the equivalent, legal essays, amply represented in the Yerushalmi. The framers of Pesiqta deRab Kahana carried forward a still more abstract and discursive mode of discourse, one in which verses of Scripture play a subordinated role to the framing of an implicit syllogism, which predominates throughout, both formally and in argument. 3 Saying One Thing through Many Things

Writing with Scripture reached its climax in the theological Midrash-compilations formed at the end of the development of rabbinic literature. A fusion of the two approaches to Midrash-exegesis, the verse-by-verse amplification of successive chapters of Scripture and the syllogistic presentation of propositions, arguments, and proofs deriving from the facts of Scripture, was accomplished in the third body of Midrash-compilations: Ruth Rabbah, Esther Rabbah Part I, Lamentations Rabbah, and Song of Songs Rabbah. Here we find the verse-by-verse reading of scriptural books. But at the same time, a highly propositional program governs the exegesis, each of the compilations meaning to prove a

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single, fundamental theological point through the accumulation of detailed comments. HALAKHAH AND AGGADAH, MISHNAH AND MIDRASH IN A SINGLE DEFINITIVE DOCUMENT

The Talmud of Babylonia, or Bavli, which was the final document of rabbinic literature also formed the climax and conclusion of the entire canon and defined this Judaism from its time to the present. The Talmud of Babylonia forms the conclusion and the summary of rabbinic literature, the most impartant document of the entire collection. One of its principal traits is the fusion of Mishnah- and Scripture-exegesis in a single compilation. The authors of units of discourse collected in the Talmud of Babylonia or Bavli drew together the two, up-to-then distinct, modes of organizing thought, either around the Mishnah or around Scripture. They treated both Torahs, oral and written, as equally available in the work of organizing large-scale exercises of sustained inquiry. So we find in the Bavli a systematic treatment of some tractates of the Mishnah. And within the same aggregates of discourse, we also find (in somewhat smaller proportion to be sure, roughly 60% to roughly 40% in a sampie made of three tractates) a second principle of organizing and redaction. That principle dictates that ideas be laid out in li ne with verses of Scripture, themselves dealt with in cogent sequence, one by one, just as the Mishnah's sentences and paragraphs come under analysis, in cogent order and one by one. DATING RABBINIC DOCUMENTS

While we have no exact dates for the closure of any of the documents of rabbinic literature,-all the dates we have are mere guesses-we have solid grounds on setting them forth in the sequence [1] Mishnah, Tosefta, [2] Yerushalmi, [3] Bavli far the exegetical writings on the Mishnah, and the three corresponding, and successive groups-[l] Sifra and the two Sifres, [2] Leviticus Rabbah, Pesiqta deRab Kahana, Pesiqta Rabbati, then [3] Ruth Rabbah, Esther Rabbah Part One, Lamentations Rabbah, and Song of Songs Rabbah-for the exegetical writings on Scripture. The basis in the case of the sequence from the Mishnah is citation by one compilation of another, in which case, the cited document is to be dated prior to the document that does the citing. The basis in the case of the sequence from Scripture is less certain; we assign a post-Mishnah date to Sifra and the two Sifres because of the large-

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scale citation of the former in the latter. The rest of the sequence given here rests upon presently-accepted and conventional dates and therefore cannot be regarded as final. Study of the history of rabbinic Judaism through the literature just now set forth must proceed document by document, in the sequence presently established for their respective dates of closure. In such a study of documentary sequences, e.g., how a given topic or theme is set forth in one writing after another, we leam the order in which ideas came to expression in the canon. We therefore commence at the Mishnah, the starting point of the originally-oral part of the canon. We proceed systematically to work our way through tractate Abot, the Mishnah's first apologetic, then the Tosefta, the Yerushalmi, and the Bavli at the end. Along the same lines, the sequence of Midrash-compilations is to be examined and the results, if possible, correlated with those of the Mishnah and its companions. In tracing the order in which ideas make their appearance, we ask about the components in sequence so far as we can trace the sequence. The traits of documents govem, and the boundaries that separate one from another also distinguish sayings from one another. The upshot is the study of the documents one by one, with emphasis on their distinguishing traits. When properly analyzed data are in hand, the work of forming of the facts a coherent, historical account of the whole may get underway. A further, theological task, withinJudaism, is to form of the facts a cogent system and structure. ATTRIBUTIONS OF SAYlNGS TO SAGES AND THEIR PLACE IN RABBINIC LITERATURE

The documentary examination of the rabbinic literature is not the only way taken to describe the writings. Another approach to the examination of rabbinic literature takes as the units of study not the successive documents and their definitive qualities, but rather, the sayings attributed to named authorities. This approach to the examination of rabbinic literature treats as inconsequential the task of describing the documents in their own terms, one by one. It deals with the themes of the literature read as a single corpus, rather than the traits of documents inclusive of their topical programs. The topical-biographical reading of rabbinic literature rests on the (definitive) fact that nearly every composition in rabbinic literature will contain an attributed statement, as weIl as anonymous ones. Some therefore suppose that instead of reading rabbinic literature docume nt by document, we should coIlect all the sayings assigned to a

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given authority and provide an account of the 1iterature solely in terms of its contents. These sayings found in diverse documents then are to be classified as to time and place by the names associated with given compositions, rather than classified as to sequence by the presently-assumed order of closure of the writings themselves. The result is that a principal mode of describing Rabbinic literature alternative to the one followed he re is biographical. 2 It would follow that the traits of documents might take subordinate position, attributions of sayings defining the correct modes of categorization and ordering of the literature. Without regard to the documentary origin of those assigned sayings, such an approach to the study of Rabbinic literature then would work out the intellectual-biographical sequences, e.g., all the sayings given to a given authority, or topicaiones, assuming the validity of the attribution of a saying to a sage who lived at a given time and therefore assigning that opinion to the age in which that sage lived. This approach ignores the lines of structure and order set forth by the documents themselves and takes for granted that the compilers of documents played no role in the shaping of the compositions that they collected. Documents then are taken to represent random points of compilation, not purposive and deliberate statements. Examining attributions of sayings to named authorities, by contrast, and ignoring the documentary traits of individual writings present problems. The decisive one is that we cannot demonstrate, and therefore cannot take as fact, that what is attributed to a given sage really was said by hirn. The facticity of the documents is beyond question; the reliability of attributions is not. The reason is simple. No tests of validation or falsification of attributions have yet been devised to indicate which attributions are reliable, which not. The kind of internal evidence that would suffice-authenticated writings of said authority in his own style and on his own accountsuch as we have for earliest figures in Christianity, such as Paul or Justin, Origen or Augustine-does not exist. The rabbinic documents rarely assign to named authorities sayings that exhibit traits of an individual character; most sayings exhibit the stylistic traits that predominate in the document that contains them. That means traits of individual style and form are obliterated, and that fact raises the question of how reliable what is attributed to that name is going to be. 2 This is the way taken by Strack-Stemberger, which devotes to "the rabbis" half of the general introduction to biographies (sixty-two out 118 pages), pp. 62118. By contrast, in this Introduction to exacdy the same literature, we entirely bypass the matter of named authorities, for reasons explained presendy.

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Tests of falsification of the entire body of attributions, by contrast, yield positive results. When we seek evidence that attributions served a purpose other than factually assigning a given saying to a given name, we find ample indication that that was the case. What is attributed to a given name is not consistently assigned to that name; or we may find attributed to a given name both a statement and its very opposite. A saying assigned to a given authority in one document is assigned to someone else in another; a saying that is assigned to a given authority in one document occurs in different form altogether in his name in some other; and it is routine in the two Talmuds to revise attributions, reversing the sponsorship of a given position, for instance, so that R X, originally thought to have said A, is given opinion B, and Rabbi Y, who is supposed to have said B, is given opinion A. It follows that whatever the semiotic meaning of attributing sayings to named authorities, considerations of historical accuracy in the contemporary sense figured only in a li mi ted way. While the writings before us are characterized by the attribution of numerous sayings to named authorities, those attributions do not provide secure evidence that the named authority really said what was attributed to hirn. Sayings of individual sages come down to us in collective compositions, so we cannot demonstrate that Rabbi X wrote a book in which his views are given, preserved by his immediate disciples for instance. We do not know that a given rabbi really said what is imputed to hirn at all, since there are no external witnesses to any attribution. All we have in hand is that the framers of document A have assigned diverse sayings to various names. Some facts make us wonder whether those assignments rest on the facts of a given figure's actual statements. First, the same saying may occur in more than a single name. What document A gives to Rabbi X, document B gives to Rabbi Y. Second, the actual wording of sayings assigned to individuals rarely bears distinctive traits and most commonly conforms to an overall pattern, imposed, in a given document, upon all sayings. These specific negative factors join a general one. In the picture we have of the formation of the documents and of the sayings in them, we cannot point to evidence of processes of individual writing, e.g., Rabbi X wrote book Y, or even to a program of preserving the very words of Rabbi X on the part of his disciples. The collective character of the writings before us testifies to a different purpose altogether from one which would preserve the particular views of a given individual. In rabbinic literature we have in hand something other than minutes of meetings, actual words spoken by particular authorities, that is, the results, for conditions per-

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taining in antiquity, of the counterpart of careful observations by trained reporters, with tape recorders or TV cameras. Not only so, but the documents formalize whatever they use and impose their own distinctive, documentary-rhetorical preferences on nearly everything in hand. Some maintain that while we do not have in hand the actual words, we do have the gist of what someone said. They suppose that, while we do not know exactly what he said, he do know what he was thinking. But that carries us onto still more dubious ground. For attributions even of the gist of what is said by themselves cannot be shown to be reliable. We have no way of demonstrating that a given authority really maintained the views assigned to hirn - even if not in the actual words attributed to hirn. There are no sources in which we can check what is attributed, e.g., a given authority's own writings, preserved by his disciples; diaries, notes, personal reflections of any kind. We have only the judgment and record provided by the collectivity of sages represented by a given authorship: that is, the document and that alone. What we cannot show we do not know. Since the various compositions of the canon of formative Judaism derive not from named, individual authors but from collective decisions of schools or academies, we cannot take for gran ted that attributions of sayings to individuals provide facts. We cannot show that if a given rabbi is alleged to have made astatement, he really did say what is assigned to hirn. We do not have a book or a letter he wrote such as we have, for example, for Paul or Augustine or other important Christian counterparts to the great rabbis of late antiquity. We also do not know that if a story was told, things really happened in the way the storyteller says, in some other way, or not at all. Accordingly, we cannot identify as historical in a narrow and exact sense sayings or stories that come down to us in the canon of Judaism. Attributions of sayings, narratives of stories-these tell us only what those who assigned the sayings approved, on the one side, or what they believed ought to have happened, on the other. Sayings and stories therefore attest to the viewpoint of the framers of the documents who collected the sayings and stories and gave them a position of authority in the compilations they produced. What is absolutely firm and factual, therefore, is that these books represent views held by the authorship behind them. At the point at which a document reached conclusion and redaction, views of a given group of people reached the form at that moment of closure in which we now have them (taking ac count of variations of wording). That is why we do not know with any certainty what people

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were thinking prior to the point at which, it is generally assumed, a given document was redacted. Accordingly, if we wish to know the sequence in which views reached their current expression, we have recourse to the conventional order and rough dating assigned by modern scholarship to the several documents, from the Mishnah through the Bavli. All of the rabbinic compilations are collective, official writings of their institutional sponsors, and none of them speaks for an individual authority. We examine rabbinic literature document by document because the documents alone form solid facts, starting points for further study of history, religion, and the literature of Judaism itself. THE RELATIONSHIPS AMONG THE DOCUMENTS OF RABBINIC LrrERATURE

If, however, we read documents one by one, as autonomous of one another, we have also to know how they interrelate. Describing the documents one by one therefore marks only the first step in the analysis of rabbinic literature. Only when we know to wh at degree a document speaks for its authorship and to what degree it carries forward a received position can we come to an estimate of the character of that document's testimony to the unfolding of the system of Rabbinic Judaism as a whole: [1] essentially its own and representative of the authorship of its stage in the unfolding of the canon,-or [2] essentially continuous with what has gone before-or [3] somewhere in the middle. Seen one by one, moreover, documents stand in three relationships to one another and to the system of which they form part, that is, to Judaism, as a whole. Three stages, therefore, mark the analysis of documents, corresponding to the three possible relationships that can characterize the canonical writings as a whole. [1] Each document is to be seen all by itself, that is, as autonomous of all others (though all documents may well concur on some basic, commonly inert facts, e.g., the unity of God). [2] Each document is to be examined for its connections or relationships with other documents universally regarded as falling into the same classification, as Torah. [3] And, finally, in the theology of Judaism each document is to be allowed to take its place as part of the undifferentiated aggregation of documents that, all together, constitute the canon of, in the case of Judaism, the "one whole Torah revealed by God to Moses at Mount Sinai."

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These several relationships that situate the documents of rabbinic literature may now be described in the terms of [1] autonomy, the stage of description; [2] connection, the stage of analysis, comparison and contrast; and [3] continuity, the stage of interpretation (whether historicalor theological). That is to say, each of the writings is to be read as an autonomous statement in its own terms, with dose attention to its distinctive, definitive traits of rhetoric, logic, and topic. Each further has to be brought into relationship with other writings of its species, e.g., exposition of the Mishnah or of Scripture, and sayings found in more than a single document are to be compared and contrasted as well. Finally, all writings are to be seen as part of a single coherent literature, a canon, meant to make a statement, elements of which derive from all of the documents equally. The first stage is descriptive, defining each writing; the second is analytical, comparing one writing with another; the third is synthetic, joining all the documents into a whole statement. The three stages of documentary study may be characterized as follows: [1] AUTONOMY: if a document comes down to us within its own framework, exhibiting its own distinctive traits of rhetoric, topic, and logic, as a complete book with a beginning, middle, and end, in preserving that book, the canon presents us with a document on its own and not solely as part of a larger composition or construct. So we too see the document as it reaches us, that is, as autonomous. [2] CONNECTION: if, second, a document contains materials shared verbatim or in substantial content with other documents of its dassification, or if one document refers to the contents of other documents, then the several documents that dearly wish to engage in conversation with one another have to address one another. That is to say, we have to seek for the marks oe connectedness, asking for the meaning of those connections. [3] CONTINUITY: finally, since the community of the faithful of Judaism, in all of the contemporary expressions ofJudaism, concur that documents held to be authoritative constitute one whole, seamless "Torah," that is, a complete and exhaustive statement of God's will for Israel and humanity, we take as a further appropriate task, if one not to be done here, the description of the whole out of the undifferentiated testimony of all of its parts. These components in the theological context are viewed, as is dear, as equally authoritative for the composition of the whole: one, continuous system. In taking up such a question, we address a problem not of theology alone, though it is a correct

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theological conviction, but one of description, analysis, and interpretation of an entirely historical order. The several documents that make up rabbinic literature relate to one another in yet three other important ways. [1] All of them refer to the same basic writing, the Hebrew Scriptures. Many of them draw upon the Mishnah and quote it. So the components of the canon join at their foundations. [2] As the documents reached closure in sequence, the later authorship can be shown to have drawn upon earlier, completed documents. So the writings of the rabbis of the talmudic corpus accumulate and build from layer to layer. [3] Among two or more documents some completed units of discourse, and many brief, discrete sayings, circulated, for instance, sentences or episodic homilies or fixed sayings (e.g., moral maxims) of various kinds. So in some (indeterminate) measure the several documents draw not only upon one another, as we can show, but also upon a common corpus of materials that might serve diverse editorial and redactional purposes. The extent of this common corpus of floating sayings can never be fully known. We know only what we have, not wh at we do not have. So we cannot say what has been omitted, or whether sayings that occur in only one document derive from materials available to the editors or compilers of some or all other documents. That is something we never can know. INTERTEXTUALITY OR INTRATEXTUALITY: RABBINIC LrTERATURE AS A COMMUNITY OF TEXTS

Since the several rabbinic documents stand distinct from one another, each with its own rhetorical, logical, and topical program, they relate not "intertextually" but "intratextually." That is to say, when the framers of a composition wish to allude to another document, e.g., Scripture, they say so in so many words. They ordinarily give a clear signal that that document is cited, ordinarily using such citation-language as "as it is said," or "as it is written." The accepted definitions of intertextuality, which emphasize the implicit bonds that form an invisible web holding together all writings, therefore do not apply. Rabbinic literature farms a library, in which a common collection unites discrete items, rather than an undifferentiated body of writing. To clarify this perspective, consider the analogy of a library. Books brought together form a library. Each title addresses its own

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pro gram and makes its own points. But books produced by a cogent community constitute not merely a library but a canon: a set of compositions each of which contributes to a statement that transcends its own pages. The books exhibit intrinsic traits that make of them all a communiry of texts. We should know on the basis of those characteristics that the texts form a community even if we knew nothing more than the texts themselves. In the Judaic writings, moreover, the documents at hand are held by Judaism to form a canon. Seeing the whole as continuous, which is quite natural, later theology maintains that all of the documents of rabbinic literature find a place in "the Torah." But that is an imputed, and theological, not an inductive and intrinsic fact. It is something we know only on the basis of information-theological convictions about the one whole T orah God gave to Moses in two media-deriving from sources other than the texts at hand, which, on their own, do not link each to all and all to every line of each. Extrinsic traits, that is imputed ones, make of the discrete writings a single and continuous, uniform statement: one whole Torah in the mythic language of Judaism. The community of Judaism imputes those traits, sees commonalities, uniformities, deep harmonies: one Torah of one God. In secular language, that community expresses its system-its world view, its way of life, its sense of itself as a society-by these choices, and finds its definition in them. Hence, in the nature of things, the community of Judaism forms a textual communiry. That cogent community that forms a canon out of a selection of books therefore participates in the process of authorship, just as the books exist in at least two dimensions. Let us turn to the problem of the community of texts, utilizing the dimensions just now defined in our description of the canon. We take the measure of two of the three dimensions just now introduced, autonomy, on the one side, and connection, on the second. (Continuity among all documents intro duces theological, not literary problems for analysis.) That is to say, a book enjoys its own autonomous standing, but it also situates itself in relationship to other books of the same classification. Each book bears its own statement and purpose, and each relates to others of the same classification. The community of texts therefore encompasses individuals who (singly or collectively) comprise (for the authorships: compose) books. But there is a set of facts that indicates how a book does not stand in isolation. These facts fall into several categories. Books may go over the same ground or make use in some measure

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of the same materials. The linkages between and among them therefore connect them. Traits of rhetoric, logic, and topic may place into a single classification a number of diverse writings. Then there is the larger consensus of members who see relationships between one book and another and so join them together on a list of authoritative writings. So, as is clear, a book exists in the dimensions formed of its own contents and covers, but it also takes its place in the second and third dimensions of relationship to other books. Then the relationships in which a given document stands may be expressed in the prepositions between and among. That is to say, in its intellectual traits a document bears relationship, to begin with, to some other, hence we describe relationships between two documents. These constitute formal and intrinsic matters: traits of grammar, arrangements of words and resonances as to their local meaning, structures of syntax of expression and thought. But in its social setting a document finds bonds among three or more documents, with all of which it is joined in the imagination and mind of a community. These range widely and freely, bound by limits not of form and language, but of public policy in behavior and belief. Documents because of their traits of rhetoric, logic, and topic form a community of texts. Documents because of their audience and authority express the intellect of a textual community. The principal issue worked out in establishing a community of texts is hermeneutical, the chief outcome of defining a textual community, social and cultural. The former teaches us how to read the texts on their own. The latter teIls us how to interpret texts in context. When we define and classify the relationships between texts, we learn how to read the components-words, cogent thoughts formed of phrases, sentences, paragraphs-of those texts in the broader context defined by shared conventions of intellect: rhetoric, logic, topic. More concretely, hermeneutical principles tell how, in light of like documents we have seen many times, to approach a document we have never before seen. Hermeneutics teaches the grammar and syntax of thought. Memorizing a passage of a complex text will teach the rhythms of expression and thought that make of the sounds of some other document an intelligible music. Not only so, but documents joined into a common classification may share specific contents, not only definitive traits of expression-meaning and not solely method.

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Any introduction to Rabbinic literature must answer the question, what about the materials upon which the various documents draw? The question concerns sources or traditions utilized by framers of rabbinic documents but not made up by those compilers. The documents give ample evidence that before the work of compilation got underway, a process of composition had gone forward and in some passages had reached conclusion That is not by reason of the citations, of indeterminate reliability, of sayings to named figures, even though these have to be addressed, if not treated as irreducible historical facts. It is because the literary traits of the documents themselves ordinarily permit us to identifY compositions that are quite distinct in indicative traits from the larger composite of which they now form a component. For example, a given document defines for us its definitive structure-the paramount literary forms, the rhetorical preferences of the editors, the modes of logical coherence, even the topical program. Then materials clearly not put together in conformity with the document's protocol present themselves as candidates for inclusion in a list of compositions utilized, but not made up, by the document's own framers. Most of the Rabbinic writings exhibit the character of compilations, and only few of them appear to conform to a single convention of thought and expression, beginning to end. The Mishnah and Sifra typifY the latter kind of document, Tosefta, the two Talmuds, and most of the Midrash-compilations, the former. In the composite-documents one principle of coherent discourse, that of propositional logic, serves in compositions, while another, that of fixed association to a set of statements (e.g., verses of Scripture or clauses of the Mishnah), molds compositions into composites. It follows that Rabbinic documents on the very surface implicitly attest to the availability of statements-whether writings or oral traditions-made up prior to inclusion in the documents in which they now occur. Internal evidence within the documents themselves guides us toward an answer to the question of the prehistory of rabbinic documents. Specifically, we may categorize the completed units of thought that comprise each of the documents by appeal to external, redactional traits. Some of those completed units of thought, which we may call compositions, clearly serve the purposes of the framers of the document in which they occur; others accomplish the goals of compilers of a kind of document we do have, hut not the docu-

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me nt in which we now find them. And still others present the anomaly of writings composed for a kind of compilation that we simply do not have at all. It is a fact that the rabbinic writings make occasional use of freestanding individual sayings that circulated in ways we cannot now define. But, to a much more considerable extent, they all utilize for the formation of their composites sizable numbers of previously completed compositions and even composites of such compositions, and any account of the rabbinic literature requires attention to the materials that contribute to the formation ofthose books. We know that that is a fact, because, while each of the documents that make up the canon of Judaism exhibits distinctive traits in logic, rhetoric, and topic, so that we may identify the purposes and traits of form and intellect of the authorship of that document, they also use compositions and even composites that do not exhibit those distinctive traits at all. Most rabbinic documents in various proportion contain so me completed units of thought-propositional arguments, sayings, and stories for instance. A few of these may travel from one document to another. It follows that the several documents intersect through shared materials. Furthermore, these completed compositions compiled in two or more documents by definition do not carry out the rhetorical, logical, and topical pro gram of a particular document. So while documents are autonomous but also connected through such shared materials, therefore, we must account for the history of not only the documents in hand but also the completed pieces of writing that move from he re to there. Three stages mark the formation of rabbinic documcnts, viewed individually. We work from the finished writing backward to the freestanding compositions that framers or compilers or authors of those documents utilized. [1] Moving from the latest to the earliest, one stage is marked by the definition of a document, its topical program, its rhetorical medium, its logical message. These are definitive traits we have now explained, and some of the compositions compiled in a document exhibit the traits of the document as a whole. The document as we know it in its basic structure and main lines therefore comes at the end of the process. It follows that writings that clearly serve the pro gram of that document and carry out the purposes of its authorship were made up in connection with the formation of that document. [2] Another, prior stage is marked by the preparation of writings that do not serve the needs of a particular document now in our

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hands, but can have carried out the purposes of an authorship working on a document of a !ype we now have. The existing documents then form a model for defining other kinds of writings worked out to meet the program of a documentary authorship. [3] But-and now we come to the heart of the matter-there are other types of writings that in no way serve the needs or plans of any document we now have, and that, furthermore, also cannot find a place in any document of a type that we now have. These writings, as a matter of fact, very commonly prove peripatetic, traveling from one writing to another, equally at ho me in, or alien to, the program of the documents in which they end up. These writings therefore were carried out without regard to a documentary pro gram of any kind exemplified by the canonical books of the Judaism of the dual Torah. They form the earliest in the three stages of the writing of the units of completed thought that in the aggregate form the canonicalliterature of the Judaism of the dual Torah of late antiquity. As a matter of fact, therefore, a given canonical document of the Judaism of the dual Torah draws upon three dasses of materials, and these were framed in temporal order. Last comes the final dass, the one that the redactors themselves defined and wrote; prior is the penultimate dass that can have served other redactors but did not serve these in particular; and earliest of all in the order of composition (at least, from the perspective of the ultimate redaction of the documents we now have) is the writing that circulated autonomously and served no redactional purpose we can now identify within the canonical documents. Let us consider a concrete exampIe of the distinction between writings that conform to the purposes of a document we now have and those that do not, with the Mishnah and the Talmud of Babylonia as our illustrative cases. 1 The Mishnah

A document that is written down essentially in its penultimate and ultimate stages, taking shape within the redactional process and principally there, is the Mishnah. In that writing, the patterns of language, e.g., syntactic stmctures, of the apodosis and protasis of the Mishnah's smallest whole units of discourse are framed in formal, mnemonic patterns. They follow a few simple mIes. These mIes, once known, apply nearly everywhere and form stunning evidence for the document's cogency. They permit anyone to reconstruct, out of a few key phrases, an entire cognitive unit, and even complete intermediate units of discourse. Working downward from

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the surface, therefore, anyone can penetrate into the deeper layers of meaning of the Mishnah. Then and at the same time, while discovering the principle behind the cases, one can easily memorize the whole by mastering the recurrent rhetorical pattern dictating the expression of the cogent set of cases. For it is easy to note the shift from one rhetorical pattern to another and to follow the repeated cases, articulated in the new pattern downward to its logical substrate. So syllogistic propositions, in the Mishnah's authors' hands, come to full expression not only in what people wish to state but also in how they choose to say it. The limits of rhetoric define the arena of topical articulation. The Mishnah's formal traits of rhetoric indicate that the bulk of the document has been formulated all at once, and not in an incremental, linear process extending into a remote past. These traits, common to aseries of distinct cognitive units, are redactional, because they are imposed at that point at which someone intended to join together discrete (finished) units on a given theme. The varieties of traits particular to the discrete units and the diversity of authorities cited therein, including masters of two or three or even four strata from the turn of the first century to the end of the second, make it highly improbable that the several units were formulated in a common pattern and then preserved, until, later on, still further units, on the same theme and in the same pattern, were worked out and added. The entire indifference, moreover, to historicalorder of authorities and concentration on the logical unfolding of a given theme or problem without reference to the sequence of authorities, confirm the supposition that the work of formulation and that of redaction go forward together. The principal framework of formulation and forma1ization in the Mishnah is the intermediate division rather than the cognitive unit. The least-formalized formulary pattern, the simple declarative sentence, turns out to yield many examples of acute formalization, in which a single distinctive pattern is imposed upon two or more (very commonly, groups of three or groups of five) cognitive units. While an intermediate division of a tractate may be composed of several such conglomerates of cognitive units, it is rare indeed for cognitive units formally to stand wholly by themselves. Normally, cognitive units share formal or formulary traits with others to which they are juxtaposed and the theme of which they share. 1t follows that the principal unit of formulary formalization is the intermediate division and not the cognitive unit. And what that means for our inquiry, is simple: we can tell when it is that the ultimate or penultimate redactors of a document do the writing.

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Now let us see that vast collection ofwritings that exhibits precisely the opposite trait: a literature in which, while doing some writing of their own, the redactors collected and arranged available materials.

2 The Talmud rif Babylonia In the pages of this document, a kind of writing that in no way defines a document now in our hands or even a type of document we can now imagine, that is, one that in its particulars we do not have but that conforms in its definitive traits to those that we do have mayaiso be identified. The final organizers of the Talmud of Babylonia had in hand a tripartite corpus of inherited materials awaiting composition into a final, closed document. First, in the initial type of material, in various states and stages of completion, sages addressed the Mishnah or took up the principles of laws that the Mishnah had originally brought to articulation. These compositions the framers of the Bavli organized in accord with the order of those Mishnah-tractates that they selected for sustained attention. Second, they had in hand received materials, again in various conditions, pertinent to Scripture, both as Scripture related to the Mishnah and also as Scripture laid forth its own narratives. These they set forth as Scripture-commentary. In this way, the penultimate and ultimate redactors of the Bavli laid out a systematic presentation of the two Torahs, the oral, represented by the Mishnah, and the written, represented by Scripture. And, third, the framers of the Bavli also had in hand materials focused on sages. These in the received form, attested in the Bavli's pages, were framed around twin biographical principles, either as strings of stories about great sages of the past or as collections of sayings and comments drawn together solely because the same name stands behind all the collected sayings. These can easily have been composed into biographies. This is writing that is utterly outside of the documentary framework in which it is now preserved; nearly all narratives in the rabbinic literature, not only the biographical ones, indeed prove remote from any documentary program exhibited by the canonical documents in which they now occur. The Bavli as a whole lays itself out as a commentary to the Mishnah. So the framers wished us to think that whatever they wanted to tell us would take the form ofMishnah commentary. But a second glance indicates that the Bavli is made up of enormous composites, themselves closed prior to inclusion in the Bavli. Some

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of these composites-around 40% of Bavli's whole-were selected and arranged along lines dictated by a logic other than that deriving from the requirements of Mishnah commentary. The components of the canon of the Judaism of the dual Torah prior to the Bavli had encompassed amplifications of the Mishnah, in the Tosefta and in the Yerushalmi, as weH as the same for Scripture. These are found in such documents as Sifra to Leviticus, Sifre to Numbers, another Sifre, to Deuteronomy, Genesis Rabbah, Leviticus Rabbah, and the like. But there was no entire document, nowextant, organized around the life and teachings of a particular sage. Even The Fathers According to Rabbi Nathan, which contains a good sampie of stories about sages, is not so organized as to yield a life of a sage, or even a systematic biography of any kind. Where events in the lives of sages do occur, they are thematic and not biographical in organization, e.g., stories about the origins, as to Torah-study, of diverse sages; death-scenes of various sages. The sage as such, whether Aqiba or Yohanan ben Zakkai or Eliezer b. Hyrcanus, never in that document defines the appropriate organizing principle for sequences of stories or sayings. And there is no other in which the sage forms an organizing category for any material purpose. Accordingly, the decision that the framers of the Bavli reached was to adopt the two redactional principles inherited from the antecedent century or so and to reject the one already rejected by their predecessors, even while honoring it. [1] They organized the Bavli around the Mishnah. [2] They adapted and included vast tracts of antecedent materials organized as scriptural commentary. These they inserted whole and complete, not at aH in response to the Mishnah's program. [3] While making provision for smaH-scale compositions built upon biographical principles, preserving both strings of sayings from a given master (and often a given tradent-a disciple responsible to memorize sayings of a given master) as weH as tales about authorities of the preceding half millennium, they never created redactional compositions, of a sizable order, that focused upon given authorities. But sufficient materials certainly lay at hand to aHow doing so. While we cannot date these freestanding writings, we may come to a theory on their place in the unfolding of the rabbinic literature. We ask in particular about the compositions and even large scale composites that stand autonomous of any redactional pro-

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gram we have in an existing compilation or of any we can even imagine on the foundations of said writings. Compositions of this kind, as a matter of hypothesis, are to be assigned to a stage in the formation of classics prior to the framing of the now-available documents. For, as a matter of fact, all of our now extant writings adhere to a single pro gram of conglomeration and agglutination, and all are served by composites of one sort, rather than some other. Hence we may suppose that at some point prior to the decision to make writings in the model that we now have people also made up completed units of thought to serve other kinds of writings. These persist, now, in documents that they do not serve at all well. And we can fairly easily identify the kinds of documents that they can and should have served quite nicely indeed. These then are the three stages of literary formation in the making of the classics of J udaism. Of the relative temporal or ordinal position of writings that stand autonomous of any redactional program we have in an existing compilation or of any we can even imagine on the foundations of said writings we can say nothing. These writings prove episodic; they are commonly singletons. They serve equally well everywhere, because they demand no traits of form and redaction in order to endow them with sense and meaning. We can understand these compositions entirely within the information their authors have given us; no context in some larger document or even composite is required to make sense of what is before uso So these kinds of compositions are essentially freestanding and episodic, not referential and allusive. They are stories that contain their own point and do not invoke, in the making of that point, a given verse of Scripture. They are sayings that are utterly ad hoc. A variety of materials fall into this-from a redactional perspective-unassigned, and unassignable, type of writing. They do not belong in books at all. Whoever made up these pie ces of writing did not imagine that what he was forming required a setting beyond the limits of his own piece of writing; the story is not only complete in itself but could stand entirely on its own; the saying spoke for itself and required no nurturing context; the proposition and its associated proofs in no way were meant to draw nourishment from roots-penetrating nutriments outside of its own literary limits. Where we have utterly hermetic writing, able to define its own limits and sustain its point without regard to anything outside itself, we know that here we are in the presence of authorships that had no larger redactional plan in mind, no intent on the making of books out of their little pie ces of writing. We may note that, among

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the "unimaginab1e" compilations is not a collection of parab1es, since parables rarely stand free and never are inserted for their own sake. Whenever in the rabbinic canon we find a parable, it is meant to serve the purpose of an authorship engaged in making its own point; and the point of a parable is rarely, if ever, left unarticulated. Normally it is put into words, but occasionally the point is made simply by redactional setting. It must follow that, in this canon, the parable cannot have constituted the generative or agglutinative principle of a large-scale compilation. The three stages in the formation of materials ultimately compiled in the rabbinic documents in our hand correspond, as a matter of fact, to a taxic structure, that is, three types of writing. [1] The first type-and last in assumed temporal order-is writing carried out in the context of the making, or compilation, of a classic. That writing responds to the redactional pro gram and plan of the authorship of a classic. [2] The second type-penultimate in order-is writing that can appear in a given document but better serves a document other than the one in which it (singularly) occurs. This kind of writing does not likely fall within the same period of redaction as the first. For while it is a type of writing under the identical conditions, it also is writing that presupposes redactional pro grams in no way in play in the ultimate, and definitive, period of the formation of the canon: when people did things this way, and not in some other. That is why it is a kind of writing that was done prior to the period in which people limited their redactional work and associated labor of composition to the program that yielded the books we now have. [3] The third kind of writing originates in an indeterminate period, probably prior to the other two-before the documentary norms had reached definition. It is carried on in a mann er independent of all redactional considerations such as are known to uso Then it should derive from a time when redactional considerations played no paramount role in the making of compositions. A brief essay, rather than a sustained composition, was then the dominant mode of writing. People can have written both long and short compositions-compositions and composites-at one and the same time. But writing that does not presuppose a secondary labor of redaction, e.g., in a composite, probably originated when authors or authorships did not anticipate any fate for their writing beyond their labor of composition itself.

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Along these same lines of argument, this writing may or may not travel from one document to another. What that me ans is that the author or authorship does not imagine a future for his writing. What fits anywhere is composed to go nowhere in particular. Accordingly, what matters is not whether a writing fits one document or another, but whether, as the author or authorship has composed a piece of writing, that writing meets the requirements of any docume nt we now have or can even imagine. If it does not, then we deal with a literary period in which the main kind of writing was ad hoc and episodic, not sustained and documentary. The upshot is simple: whether the classification of writing be given a temporal or merely taxonomie valence, the issue is the same: have these writers done their work with documentary considerations in mind? In these cases it is clear that they have not. Then where did they expect their work to make its way? Anywhere it might, because, so they assumed, fitting in nowhere in particular, it found a suitable locus everywhere it turned up. But I think temporal, not merely taxonomie, considerations pertain. Now extra- and non-documentary kinds of writing derive from either [1] aperiod prior to the work of the making of Midrashcompilations and the two Talmuds alike; or [2] a labor of composition not subject to the mIes and considerations that operated in the work of the making of Midrash-compilations and the two Talmuds. As a matter of hypothesis, non-documentary writing is more likely to come prior to making any kind of documents of consequence, and extra-documentary writing comes prior to the period in which the specificities of the documents we now have were defined. That is to say, writing that can fit anywhere or nowhere is to be situated at a time prior to writing that can fit somewhere but does not fit anywhere now accessible to us, and both kinds of writing are prior to the kind that fits only in the documents in which it is now 10cated. And given the documentary propositions and theses that we can locate in aB of our compilations, we can only ass urne that the nondocumentary writings enjoyed, and were assumed to enjoy, ecumenical acceptance. That means, very simply, when we wish to know the consensus of the entire textual (or canonical) community, we turn not to the distinctive perspective of documents, but the (apparently universaBy acceptable) perspective of the extra-documentary compositions. Non-documentary compositions took shape not only separated from, but in time before, the documentary ones did. Non-documentary writings in general focus on matters of very general interest.

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These matters may be assembled into two very large mbrics: virtue, on the one side, reason, on the other. Stories about sages fall into the former category; all of them set forth in concrete form the right living that sages exempliry. Essays on right thinking, the role of reason, the taxonomie priority of Scripture, the power of analogy, the exemplary character of cases and precedents in the expression of general and encompassing mIes-all of these intellectually coercive writings set forth mIes of thought as universally applicable, in their way, as are the mIes of conduct contained in stories about sages, in theirs. A great labor of generalization is contained in both kinds of non-documentary and extra-documentary writing. And the results of that labor are then given concrete expression in the documentary writings in hand; for these, after all, do say in the setting of specific passages or problems precisely what, in a highly general way, emerges from the writing that moves hither and yon, never with ahorne, always finding a suitable resting-place. Now, admittedly, that rather general characterization of the non-documentary writing is subject to considerable qualification and clarification. But it does provide a reason to assign temporal priority, not solely taxonomie distinction, to the non-documentary compositions. We can have had commentaries of a sustained and systematic sort on Psalms or Chronicles, which we do not in fact have from late antiquity, on the one side, or treatises on virtue, such as Torah-study or the master-disciple-relationship, which we also do not have, on the second, or biographies ("gospels") on the third-to complete the triangle. The materials that can have comprised such documents are abundant in the rabbinic literature. But we da not have these kinds of baoks. The books we do have not only preserve the evidences of the possibility of commentaries and biographies. More than that, they also bring to rich expression the messages that such books will have set forth. And most important, they also express in fresh and unanticipated contexts those virtues and values that commentaries and biographies ("gospels") meant to bring to realization, and they do so in accord with the modes of thought that sophisticated reflection on right thinking has exemplified in its way as well. So when people went about the work of making documents, they did something fresh with something familiar. They made cogent compositions, documents, texts enjoying integrity and autonomy. But they did so in such a way as to form of their distinct documents a coherent body of writing, of books a canon, of documents a system. And this they did in such a way as to say, in distinctive and specific ways, things that, in former times, people had expressed in general and

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broadly-app1icable ways. Now that we have examined the canon as a whole and identified its principal parts, let us turn to the differentiation of those parts: the criteria that distinguish one document from all others. RHETORIC, LOGIc, TOPIC: THE DIFFERENTIATING TRAITS OF RABBlNIC DOCUMENTS

Three definitive traits permit differentiating one document from another in Rabbinic literature, and correct translation of a Rabbinic document makes possible the identification of these traits: 3 [1] the rhetoric or formal preferences of a piece of writing, which dictate, without respect to meaning, how sentences will be composed; [2] the logic of coherent discourse, which determines how one sentence will be joined to others in context; and how groups of sentences will cohere and form completed units of thought, and, finally, how said units of thought agglutinate or are otherwise held together in large-scale components of complete documents; [3] the topical program of the writing, which indicates the subject and may also indicate the problematic-what we wish to know about the subject-of that same writing. By invoking these three criteria, which are entirely familiar in the analysis of literature in antiquity, we may distinguish each docu-

ment from all others and establish a clear definition for every piece of writing in the literature. The reason is simple. A received discipline of thought and expression governed all writing that has survived in Rabbinic literature. 1 Rhetoric

Writers in this literature followed formal conventions, making choices never particular to a given author but always set forth, to begin with, by a repertoire of commonly-understood fixed arrange3 The other Introductions to Rabbinic literature do not address the matters of rhetoric, logic, and topic. For further reading and bibliography on the form-analysis of Rabbinic literature, see my A History of the Mishnaic Law of Purities. Leiden, 1977: BrilI. XXI. The Redaction and Formulation ofthe Order of Purities in the Mishnah and Tosifla. That is where I layout the basic definitions and inquiries pursued throughout. The explanation of the necessity of form-analytical translation is given in Translating the Classics of Judaism. In Theory and in Practice. Atlanta, 1989: Scholars Press for Brown Judaic Studies. The matter of form-criticism and the problem of appropriate translation are not treated in the other introductions to Rabbinic literature.

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ments of words. These fixed arrangements, transcending particular meanings, signaled the purpose and even the context of a given set of sentences; following one form, rather than another, therefore dictated to the reader of a passage the character and intent of that passage: its classification. Correct translation will underscore the regularities of form and formulation.

2 Logic of Coherent Discourse Since the Rabbinic writings ordinarily set forth not discrete sentences-aphorisms that stand, each in lapidary splendor-but cogent sets of sentences forming whole units of coherent thought ("paragraphs") in our language, we also have to identify the principIes of logic that connect one sentence to another. That logic of coherent discourse has the power to make of a group of sentences a whole that is greater than the sum of the parts. Proper translation will point up the distinct small whole units of thought ("sentences") and further show how these units of thought coalesce in completed units of thought (paragraphs), and how sets of paragraphs hold together to make coherent statements ("chapters" or major parts thereof). We shall return to this matter at length, since it is both complex and probative of the singularity of the several documents.

3 Topic, Proposition Every document treats a specific topic. Moreover, many documents set forth sustained exercises in the analysis of a concrete problem pertinent to a given topic. Some entire documents, early and late in the formation of the literature, are so set forth as to demonstrate propositions we are able to identifY and define. Few books in Rabbinic literature aim merely at collecting and arranging information. Nearly all documents, to the contrary, work on not a topic in general but a specific problem concerning that topic, that is, a problematic; most of the documents set forth propositions .that emerge out of masses of detail and may co me to concrete expression through diverse details. The governing protocols served because no document in Rabbinic literature ever accommodated idiosyncratic preference. Not a single one comes to us from an individual writer or author (e.g., Paul, Josephus, Philo); none collects the sayings or composites formulated in a single school (e.g., Matthew). All documents enjoy the sponsorship of sages as a group, whether we call the group an authorship, or redactors or compilers or editors. Not only so, but

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the compositions of which the composites are comprised themselves follow rigid rules of formulation and expression. When, therefore, we identify those ruIes, we can dassify documents by differentiating among a Iimited repertoire of avaiIable choices. Each document requires dose analysis within its own limits, then comparison with other documents, first, those of its species, then, those not of its species. When compared as to rhetoric, topic, and logic of coherent discourse, nearly all of the documents will yield ample evidence that a restricted formal repertoire dictated to writers how they were to formulate their ideas if those ideas were to find a place in this particular document. Some forms appear in more than one document, others are unique to the writings in which they appear. Two examples of the former are the exegetical form and the dispute. [1] EXEGETICAL FORM. The exegetical form requires two elements only: citation of a phrase of Scripture or a dause of the Mishnah, followed by a few words of paraphrase or other explanation. [2] THE DISPUTE. The dispute form requires the presentation in a single syntactic pattern of two or more conflicting opinions on a given problem. The form will commonly have a topic sentences that implicitly conveys a problem and two or more elliptical solutions to the problem, each bearing attribution to a named authority. An alternative will have a problem and solution assigned to one authority, or given anonymously, followed by, And Rabbi X says ... , with a contrary opinion. Dominant in the Midrash-compilations but paramount also in the two Talmuds' treatment of the Mishnah, the exegetical form commonly defines the smallest whole unit of thought ("sentence") in a Iarger composition or composite ("paragraph," "chapter," respectively). No Midrash-compilation relies solelyon the exegetical form for the formulation of its materials; every one of them uses that form as a building block. The dispute-form serves both legal and exegetical writers, the Mishnah and Talmuds and Midrash-compilations as weIl. 1t proves definitive in some. documents, the Mishnah and Tosefta in particuIar, sub ordinate in others, Midrash-compilations, the two Talmuds. These two forms exemplity the character of rhetoric of Rabbinic literature as a whole, showing us how a Iimited repertoire of syntactical conventions governed throughout. Fixed patterns of rhetoric, for example, the arrangement of words in recurrent syntactic patterns chosen out of a much larger repertoire of possibilities, provide

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the dues on distinguishing one document from another, since preferences of one set of writers and compositors differed from those of another, and explaining the basis for choices leads us deep into the definition of the respective documents as a whole. TOPICAL CRITERIA OF DOCUMENTARY DIFFERENTIATION

We already have noticed that the Mishnah is laid out in accord with a well-articulated topical program. That is not the only docume nt in Rabbinic literature that is distinguished from others by the subjects that it treats and even the propositions that, throughout, its framers wish to set forth. Topical considerations differentiate nearly every document from all others; only a few documents, such as the Tosefta, are not immediately distinguished by their subject-matter. It is the simple fact that each Midrash-compilation differs from all others by reason of its choice of a book of Scripture for dose reading and analysis. Only one book, Leviticus, is the subject of two distinct Midrash-compilations, Sifra and Leviticus Rabbah, and these compilations inte-rsect only in their choice of subject. In rhetoric, topic, and logic, they have nothing in common, each writing raising its own questions, neither addressing a single issue important to the other, even on the rare occasion that both documents examine the same verse of Leviticus. Not only so, but the various Midrash-compilations may be divided into groups, early, middle, and late, distinguished by their definition of the tasks of exegesis: dose reading of verses, syllogistic constructions made up of facts provided by verses, and large-scale demonstration of a few simple propositions, respectively. Distinguishing the successive documents of Mishnah-exegesis, Tosefta and the two Talmuds, by contrast, is not so simple, since, as a matter of simple fact, all of them address the Mishnah. But any careful reading allows us to distinguish the Tosefta's interests in the Mishnah from those of the Yerushalmi, and the differentiation of the Yerushalmi from the Bavli is readily undertaken. In the latter case, a dearly defined problematic, definitive in the Bavli and absent in the Yerushalmi, validates the notion that we may differentiate documents by appeal to topic or problematic. We proceed to the more complex problem, in examining the matter of documentary coherence and differentiation, of the logics of coherent discourse and how, from one document to another, they vary.

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The word "logic" he re stands for the determinative principle of intelligibility of discourse and cogency of thought. 4 Logic is what tells people that one thing connects, or intersects, with another, while something else does not, hence, making connections between this and that, but not this and the other thing. And logic further tells people what follows from the connections that they make, generating the conclusions that they are to draw. Governing logic tells us what is thinkable and what is not, what can be said intelligibly and what cannot. Accordingly, the first thing we want to know about any any piece of writing is its logic of cogent discourse. Logic is what joins one sentence to the next and forms the whole into paragraphs of meaning, intelligible propositions, each with its place and sense in astillIarger, accessible system. And logic as a matter of fact makes possible the sharing of propositions of general intelligibility and therefore forms the ce me nt of a whole literature, such as the one under examination in this book. The matter of defining the governing logic shades be ars more than formal consequence. It also introduces the social side of a literature. Specifically, because of shared logic, one mind connects to another, yielding self-evidence, so that, in writing or in orally formulated and orally transmitted te ac hing , public discourse becomes possible. Because of logic debate on issues of general interest takes place. Still more to the point, because of logic a me re anthology of statements about a single subject becomes a composition of theorems about that subject, so that facts serve to demonstrate and convey propositions. Through logic the parts, bits and pieces of information, add up to a sum greater than themselves, generate information or insight beyond what they contain. What people think-exegesis of discrete facts in accord with a fixed hermeneutic of the intellect-knows no limit. How they think makes all the difference. Since, as we shall see in the shank of this book, each of the documents of Rabbinic literature sets forth a cogent statement, a clear picture of the conventions of logic that permits cogent discourse is required.

4 The question of how documents' compositions and composites cohere is not raised in the other introductions. On the analysis of 10gics of coherent discourse, see my The Making qfthe Mind qfJudaism. Adanta, 1987: Scho1ars Press for Brown Judaic Studies and The Formation qf the Jewish Intellect. Making Connections and Drawing Conclusions in the Traditional System qf Judaism. Adanta, 1988: Scho1ars Press for Brown Judaic Studies. The other introductions to Rabbinie 1iterature do not discuss this question.

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Modes of patterned thought form propositions out of facts, turning information into knowledge, knowledge into a system of sense and explanation and therefore composing a shared structure of sensibility and meaning for the social order. The logic of coherent discourse exhibited by the writer of a given document is what teIls people about how to make interesting connections between one thing, one fact for instance, and some other, therefore instructing them on what deserves notice, and what can be ignored. Every document in the Rabbinic literature selects a particular means of holding together two or more sentences and forming of them a coherent thought, that is to say, of making the whole more than the sum of the parts. There are, in fact, four such logics, three of them entirely familiar, one of them not. First, let us consider a concrete example of how a logic of coherent discourse turns facts into propositions, information into truth. The simple sequence moves us from two unrelated facts to two connected facts and thence to a proposition. Here is one example of a possible logic of coherent discourse: [1] I threw a rock at a dog. It rained. [2] I threw a rock at a dog, then it rained. [3] If I throw a rock at a dog, it will rain. The first set of sentences contains no link, so no conclusions are to be drawn. No unstated premise teIls me how the two sentences relate, or whether they relate at all. I am mute. The second set presents a temporal, narrative link; this happened, then that happened. Conclusions may or may not be drawn. Two events are juxtaposed, but the "then" carries with it no judgment on causation or other modes of explanation, that is, of coherence between sentences. A narrative line extends from the former to the latter sentence. The third formulation of course establishes a conditionallink between two facts, forming of them an allegation as to what will happen if one does such and so. The "ir' of course may be replaced with a "since," and a variety of other joining language will establish a connection between the two sentences (or clauses of one sentence). The third case shows us how the sum of the whole exceeds the parts. This simple set of sentences shows what I me an when I point out that some facts are inert, others be ar consequence. Facts that fail to intersect with others in general gain slight notice; those that form structures and convey sense gain systematic consequence and ultimately form an encompassing account of how things are and should be, why we do things one way and not another: an ethos, an

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ethics, an account of a "we," altogether, a system. The convention of a shared 10gic of coherent discourse moreover explains to people about the consequences of the connections that they are taught to perceive, yielding conc1usions of one sort, rather than another, based on one mode of drawing conc1usions from the connections that are made, rather than some other. Making connections and drawing conc1usions represent abstractions. Let me give a concrete example of what is under discussion. It is, very simply, what constitutes the "and" and the "equals" of thought, e.g., in the sentence, "two and two equal four." The way in which people add up two and two to make four always requires the appeal to the and, and that is what end ures, that and of the two and two equal four, and, too, the equal, which is to say, the conc1usion yielded by the and. The logic lasts: the and of making connections, the equal of reaching conc1usions. This endures: the certainty that-to shift the symbols that serve to c1arifY this simple point-X + Y are connected and generate conc1usion Z, but that (for purposes of discussion here) the symbol # and the number 4 are not connected and therefore, set side by side, produce a me re nonsensestatement, e.g., # and 4 equal *. The conventions that govern thought and discourse permit us to make one such statement but not the other. THE PROPOSITIONAL LOGIC OF PHILOSOPHICAL DISCOURSE

Propositional and syllogistic logic is the most familiar to us in the West and it also is the most commonplace in the Rabbinic literature, though the forms that convey the proposition or syllogism are unfamiliar to uso Philosophical discourse is built out of propositions and arguments from facts and reasori. The cogency of discoursethe and that joins two sentences together into a cogent statementderives from the argument we wish to make, the fact we wish to establish, the proposition we wish to prove. The tension in this mode of thought arises from the trait of mind that derives from two facts a third, one that transcends the givens. The resolution, then, comes from the satisfying demonstration, out of what we know, of something we did not know but wish to find out, or of something we think we know and wish to prove. The syllogistic character of philosophical discourse is familiar to us all. That is why commonplaces such as "[ 1] All Greeks are li ars, [2] Demosthenes is a Greek, [3] (therefore) Demosthenes is a liar," need not detain uso In that sequence, fact [1] and fact [2] come together to prove a fact that is not contained within either [1] or

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[2]. Syllogistic 10gic yields a sum greater than the parts. From our perspective, we want to identify the connection between two facts. And what matters in the famous syllogism at hand is that the proposition, [3], is what joins fact [1] to fact [2] into joined and co gent sentences, that is, in the language of the preceding chapter, the equal gene rates the and. The idiom is exceedingly odd, which makes all the more valuable the exemplification of what is, in fact, a perfectly routine mode of thought. For the issue at hand is one of connection, the and of the two and two, that is, not of fact (such as is conveyed by the statement of the meaning of averse or a dause of averse) but of the relationship between one fact and another. And at stake in the connection is the proposition, the equal of the two and two equal Jour. The critical point is in the equals, since it is at that result that the point of the connection is both realized but also established. We see a connection between one item and the next because of the third item that the first two generate. In the logic at hand connection rests upon condusion. And let me with emphasis state the central point: that relationship, connection, is shown in a conclusion dijJerentfrom the established facts qf two or more sentences that we propose to draw when we set up as a sequence two or more facts and claim out qf that sequence to propose a proposition dijJerent from, transcending, the facts at hand. We demonstrate propositions in a variety of ways, appealing to both a repertoire of probative facts and also a set of accepted modes of argument. In this way we engage in a kind of discourse that gains its logic from what, in general, we may call philosophy: the rigorous analysis and testing of propositions against the canons of an accepted reason. The connection produced by the cogent discourse of philosophy therefore accomplishes the mirade of making the whole more-or less-than the sum of the parts, that is, in the simple language we have used up to now, showing the connections between fact 1 and fact 2, in such wise as to yield proposition A. Before we move to our concrete example, let me introduce a secondary, but in our context, important, alternative way for conducting philosophical argument-a way at the foundation of all scientific inquiry. It is the demonstration we know, in general, as comparison and contrast, the search for the rules that express the order and sense of diverse facts. We seek to identify what discrete facts have in common and thereby to state the rule common to them all, e.g., to identify a genus, then its species, and on downward. The fundamental logic of cogency here is simple: something is like something else, therefore it follows the rule of that something else; or it is unlike that something else, therefore it follows the

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opposite of the rule governing that something else. The way in which the result is presented tells us the principle of cogency. When we classity, we identify a genus and its species and lay them forth in their nomothetic system. The layout often takes the form of a list. The logic before us on that account is called the science of making lists, that is, ListenwissenschaJt, a way to classify and so establish a set of probative facts, which compel us to reach a given conclusion. These probative facts may derive from the classification df data, all of which point in one direction and not in another. A catalogue of facts, for example, may be so composed that, through the regularities and indicative traits of the entries, the catalogue yields a proposition. A list of parallel items all together point to a simple conclusion; the conclusion may or may not be given at the end of the catalogue, but the catalogue-by definition-is pointed. All of the catalogued facts are taken to bear self-evident connections to one another, established by those pertinent shared traits implicit in the composition of the list, therefore also bearing meaning and pointing through the weight of evidence to an inescapable conclusion. The discrete facts then join together because of some trait common to them all. This is a mode of classification of facts to lead to an identification of what the facts have in common and-it goes without saying-an explanation of their meaning. These and other modes of philosophical argument are entirely familiar to us all. In calling all of them "philosophical," I me an only to distinguish them from the other three logics we shall presently examine. The first document to yield a concrete example for our purposes is not in a readily accessible form, e.g., a propositional argument or a list; it is not an essay or a well-composed philosophical argument, but rather a document in the form of a commentary. The choice of this rather odd way of setting forth a proposition, of joining two facts into a cogent statement or linking two sentences into a paragraph (in literary terms) is critical to my argument. For I maintain that the form, commentary, bears no implications for the logic of discourse contained within that form. Arrangements of words by themselves tell us little about the logic that operates therein. To demonstrate the irrelevance of mere form in the analysis of logic, I choose a commentary. In general, a commentary works its way through discrete entries and does not necessarily propose to prove large-scale propositions. On formal grounds, therefore, we should not anticipate a fine example of propositional argument to emerge from writing in such a form. But we now see that a commentary can put together facts into arguments and propositions, sentences into paragraphs, as much as an essay.

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We turn to Sifre to Deuteronomy, a systematic commentary on much of the book of Deuteronomy,. The pertinent verse is the following: "For the Lord will vindicate his people and repents himself UPS: take revenge] for his servants, when he sees that their might is gone, and neither bond nor free is left" (Dt. 32:36). The proposition is not explicitly stated but it is repeatedly implied: when the Israelites are at the point of despair, then God will vindicate them. We shall now see a systematic demonstration of the proposition that, when things are at their worst and the full punishment impends, God relents and saves Israel. And what is critical is at the pivots and the joinings of sentences. Sifre to Deuteronomy CCCXXVI:II 1. A. " ... when he sees that their might is gone, and neither bond nor free is left": B. When he sees their destruction, on account of the captivity. C. For all of them went off. Let me make explicit, in terms of the first case, how I conceive the connections to be established, the conclusion to be drawn. A represents the conclusion, that is, the proposition to be proved. B, C present the facts that are connected. Cis the first fact, namely, all of them went off into exile. B then is the second fact, that [1] when God saw that they had gone into captivity, and [2] were without arrogance or power, yielding the unstated conclusion, [3] he had mercy on them, and that then validates the proposition, A. Turned around, the second and third of the three sentences work together so as to make a point that neither one of them by itself establishes, and that is how such a syllogism works in general. Then a sequence of syllogisms of the same kind, not all of them fully spelled out and most of them as truncated is the first, make the same point, establishing the besought theorem by setting forth numerous demonstrations of that theorem: "When he sees .... " 2. A. Another teaching concerning the phrase, " ... when he sees": B. When they despaired of redemption. 3. A. Another teaching concerning the phrase, " ... when he sees [that their might is gone, and neither bond nor free is left": B. When he sees that the last penny is gone from the purse, C. in line with this verse: "And when they have made an end of breaking in pieces the power of the holy people, all these things shall be finished" (Dan. 12:7) [Hammer's translation]. 4. A. Another teaching concerning the phrase, " ... when he sees that their might is gone, and neither bond nor free is left":

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B. When he sees that among them there are no men who seek mercy for them as Moses had, C. in line with this verse: "Therefore he said that he would destroy them, had not Moses his chosen one stood before hirn in the breach" (Ps. 106:23) .... 5. A. Another teaching concerning the phrase, " ... when he sees that their might is gone, and neither bond nor free is left": B. When he sees that among there are no men who seek mercy for them as Aaron had, C. in line with this verse: "And he stood between the dead and the living and the plague was stayed" (Num. 17: 13). 6. A. Another teaching concerning the phrase, " ... when he sees that their might is gone, and neither bond nor free is left": B. When he sees that there are no men who seek mercy for them as Phineas had, C. in line with this verse: "Then stood up Phineas and wrought judgment and so the plague was stayed" (Ps. 106:30). Despite the form of a commentary on averse of Scripture, we assuredly can identify the regnant proposition, which, as a matter of fact, joins the individual facts into a cogent exercise of syllogistic proof. Among the avai1able means of linking sentence to sentence in paragraphs, the first, now amply exemplified, is to establish propositions that rest upon philosophical bases, e.g., through the proposal of a thesis and the composition of a list of facts that prove the thesis. This is to us an entirely fami1iar, Western mode of scientific expression, that is, through the classification of data that, in a simple way, as we noted, is called the science of making 1ists (Listenwissenschafi). No philosopher in antiquity will have found unintelligible these types of units of thought, even though the source of facts in the present instance, Scripture, not established social norms or observations of nature, and the mode of appealing to facts, citations of Scripture, rather than allusions to generally prevailing patterns and norms, would have proved alien to such a philosopher. The connection, the process of thought-these seem to me entirely commonplace in the intellectual world at large. THE TELEOLOGICAL LOGIC OF NARRATIVE

In the teleological logic of connection-making and conclusiondrawing, the logic of coherence invokes a fictive tension and its resolution. It appeals for cogency to the purpose and direction of an arrangement of facts, ordinarily in the form of narrative. Teleologi-

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calor narrative logic further serves quite effectively as a mode of making connections between two facts, that is, linking two otherwise unrelated sentences, and presenting conclusions based on the linkage. In this mode of thought, we link fact to fact and also prove (ordinarily implicit) propositions by appeal to teleology, that is, the end or purpose of discussion that makes sense of all detail. The tension of narrative derives from the open-endedness of discourse. We are told aseries of facts, or a problem is set forth, such that, only when we see in the sequence of the series of facts the logical, inevitable outcome do we find aresolution: that sense, that fittingness of connection, which makes of the parts a cogent whole. Accordingly, a proposition (whether or not it is stated explicitly) may be set forth and demonstrated by showing through the telling of a tale (of a variety of kinds, e.g., historical, fictional, parabolic, and the like) that a sequence of events, real or imagined, shows the ineluctable truth of a given proposition. Whence the connection? The logic of connection demonstrated through narrative, rather than philosophy, is simply stated. It is connection attained and explained by invoking so me mode of narrative in which a sequence of events, first this, then that, is understood to yield a proposition, first this, then that-because qf this. That manufactured sequence both states and also establishes a proposition in a way different from the philosophical and argumentative mode of propositional discourse. Whether or not the generalization is stated in so many words rarely matters, because the power of well-crafted narrative is to make unnecessary an author's explicitly drawing the moral. Narrative sees cogency in the purpose and direction and of course outcome, appealing for its thertfore to the necessary order of events understood as causative. That is then a logic or intelligibility of connection attained through teleology: the claim of goal or direction or purpose, therifore cause, commonly joining facts through the fabric of a tale, presenting the telos in the garb of a story of what happened because it had to happen. Narrative-Iogic thus makes connections and draws conclusions and conveys a proposition through the setting forth of happenings in a framework of inevitability, in a sequence that makes a point, e.g., establishes not merely the facts of what happens, but the teleology that explains those facts. Then we speak not only of events-our naked facts-but of their relationship. We claim to account for that relationship teleologically, in the purposive· sequence and necessary order of happenings. In due course we shall see how various kinds of narratives serve to convey highly intelligible and persuasive propositions. For an example of narrative, I turn to another Rabbinic document,

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The Fathers According to Rabbi Nathan. Here we have a parable that supplies a simple example of how narrative links fact to fact in cogent discourse and further conveys with powerful logic a clear proposition: The Fathers According to Rabbi Nathan I:XIII 2. A. R. Simeon b. Yohai says, "I shall draw a parable for you. To what may the first Man be compared? He was like a man who had a wife at horne. What did that man do? He went and brought a jug and put in it a certain number of dates and nuts. He caught a scorpion and put it at the mouth of the jug and sealed it tightly. He left it in the corner of his house. B. "He said to her, 'My daughter, [for husbands referred to wives as daughters], whatever I have in the house is entrusted to you, except for this jar, which under no circumstances should you touch.' What did the woman do? When her husband went off to market, she went and opened the jug and put her hand in it, and the scorpion bit her, and she went and fell into bed. When her husband came horne from the market, he said to her, 'What's going on?' C. "She said to hirn, 'I put my hand into the jug, and a scorpion bit me, and now I'm dying.' D. "He said to her, 'Didn't I tell you to begin with, "Whatever I have in the house is entrusted to you, except for this jar, which under no circumstances should you touch.'" He got mad at her and divorced her. E. "So it was with the first man. F. "When the Holy One, blessed be He, said to hirn, 01 all the trees if the garden you certain{y mqy eat, hutftom the tree if knowledge if good and evil you may not eat, fir on the day on which you eat if it, you will sure{y die (Gen. 2: 17), G. "on that day he was driven out, thereby illustrating the verse, Man does not lodge ovemight in honor (Ps. 49:24)." Simeon's point is that by giving Man the commandment, God aroused his interest in that tree and led man to do what he did.· The explicit proposition is the first point, we sin on account of our obsession. The implicit proposition is that God bears a measure of guilt for the fall of man. The issue of connection should be made explicit. Let us consider the sequence of sentences of the opening unit: 1. A man had a wife at horne 2. He went and brought a jug

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3 .... put in it a certain number of dates and nuts. 4. He caught a scorpion 5 .... put it at the mouth of the jug 6 .... sealed it tightly. 7.... He left it in the corner of his house. Nos. 1, 2, 3, + 4 bear no connection whatsoever. Nos. 4-7, of course, form a single sentence, but that sentence on its own stands utterly unrelated to the earlier ofthe two sentences, Nos. 1-3. However, we realize, the sequence of dauses and sentences, all of them discrete, in fact form a tight fit, since they bear the burden of the narrative. At the end, then, the narrative reaches its point and, retrospectively, establishes a very dose connection between dause and dause, sentence and sentence. It is the goal, the teleology, of the composition, that joins the components of the composition to one another, and that happens only at the end. Our trust in the narrator's purpose is what allows us to suspend our suspicion that we are linking things that stand out of all relationship with one another. The linkage imparted at the end then makes sense of everything from the outset, and that is what I me an by a logic of teleology, as distinct from propositional logic, which results in the making of connections and the drawing of condusions. THE NON-PROPOSITIONAL LOGIC OF FIXED ASSOCIATION

This brings us to an unfamiliar mode of establishing connections between sentences, which I call the logic of fixed association. Though difficult to define in familiar terms, it forms the critical and indicative 10gic of discourse of a variety of Rabbinic documents. It is a logic that to begin with bears a negative trait, in that in this logic we find connection without condusion, that is, the and but not the equals or the 'therefore.' In this logic, the two and the two do not equals anything. Then on what basis do we impute or intro du ce the and at all? The cogency of two or more facts is imputed and extrinsic. The and is not sensible, intrinsic, propositional, or purposive. But in Rabbinic literature document after document appeals to precisely this logic of fixed association. Not only so, but even highly propositional compositions, of considerable dimensions, are linked together not syllogistically but solely through extrinsic, fixed association. It follows that writers of documents of Rabbinic literature do perceive cogency through fixed association without either syllogistic or even teleological proposition. That cogency, the connection lacking all proposition, derives from a sense of the order and proportion of data extrinsic to those at hand.

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What is it that effects connection in the logic of fixed association? Fixed associations derive from an extrinsic and conventional list of items deemed joined for reasons pertinent to those items. Then, each fact or sentence joined together fore and aft with others finds its own relationship to that extrinsic connection, without the slightest connection to other facts or sentences that stand, in writing or in mental sequence, in the same context, fore and aft. Discrete facts, propositions, or sentences hang together because they refer equally to an available protocol of associations. Hence it is a logic that rests upon conventional connections. It appeals, rather, to protocolse.g., lists ofthings, a given text, a sequence offacts-that are known and familiar, rather than on logico-propositional connections that are unknown and subject to discovery. It is meaning imputed, not discovered. The contrast to the logic most familiar to us in the West is readily grasped. In philosophical logic we set up a sequence of two or more facts and claim out of that sequence to propose a proposition different from, transcending, the facts at hand. Here, by contrast, we join two or more facts or sentences without pretending that any proposition whatsoever is to be demonstrated. That is why the sequence that links in one composition sentence 1, then sentence 2, then sentence 3, though there is no propositional connection between 1 and 2 or 2 and 3, rests upon principles of intelligibility practically unknown to uso It is easy to find appropriate illustrations. For an illustration, we return to an already familiar compilation. I give a sustained passage, a sequence of freestanding sentences, bearing no relationship, sequential let alone propositional, to one another. What makes me insist that the sentences are discrete? A simple test suffices. Were the following items given in some other order, viewed in that other sequence, they would make precisely as much, or as little, sense as they do in the order in which we see them. But in syllogistic logic, all the more so in teleological logic, (though not in Listenwissenschqft ), the order of facts bears consequence. Indeed, reversing the order of sentences yields either a proposition exactly contrary to the one that is argued, or mere gibberish. In what folIows, by contrast, the order of sentences has no bearing upon any proposition, and given the power of the correct ordering of facts/ sentences in both syllogistic argument and teleological logic alike, the utter incapacity of order to impart meaning shows us that we have in hand a logic other than the philosophical-syllogistic or the teleological. Now to our passage:

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Sifre to Deuteronomy XXV: I 1. A. "Wh at kind of place are we going to? Our kinsmen have taken the he art out of us, saying, ['We saw there a people stronger and taller than we, large cities with walls sky-high, and even Anakites']" (Dt. 1:25-28): B. They said to hirn, "Moses, our lord, had we heard these things from ordinary people, we should have never believed it. C. "But we have heard it from people whose sons are ours and whose daughters are ours." Sifre to Deuteronomy XXV: 11 1. A. "We saw there a people ... taller than we": B. This teaches that they were tall. 2. A. " ... and greater. .. ": B. This teaches that they were numerous. Sifre to Deuteronomy XXV:III 1. A. " .. .large cities with walls sky-high, and even Anakites": B. Rabban Simeon b. Gamaliel says, "In the present passage, Scriptures speak in exaggerated language: 'Hear, 0 Israel, you are going to pass over the Jordan this day to go in to dispossess nations greater and mightier than yourself, cities great and fortified up to heaven' (Dt. 9: 1). C. "But when God spoke to Abraham, Scripture did not use exaggerated language: 'And we will multiply your seed as the stars of the heaven' (Gen. 26:4), 'And we will make your seed as the dust ofthe earth' (Gen. 13:16)." Sifre to Deuteronomy XXV: IV 1. A. " ... and even Anakites did we see there": B. This teaches that they saw giants on top of giants, in line with this verse: "Therefore pride is as a chain about their neck" (Ps. 73:6). Sifre to Deuteronomy XXV:V 1. A. "And we said to you": B. He stressed to them, "It is not on our own authority that we speak to you, but it is on the authority of the Holy One that we speak to you."

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Sifre to Deuteronomy

XXV:VI

1. A. "Do not be frightened and do not be afraid of them": B. On what account? C. "For the Lord your God is the one who goes before you." D. He said to them, "The one who did miracles for you in Egypt and all these miracles is going to do miracles for you when you enter the land: E. '''According to all that he did for you in Egypt before your eyes' (Dt. 1:30). F. "If you do not believe concerning what is coming, at least believe concerning what has already taken place." That each unit of thought, signified by a Roman numeral, stands by itself hardly needs proof, since it is a self-evident fact. Were we to present the several items in a different order, that shift would have no affect whatsoever upon the meaning of the passage. That proves that the individual sentences bear no relationship to one another. Then it follows that there is no equals. All we have is a sequence of unrelated sentences, not a cogent paragraph; the sentences do not appeal to their neighbors, fore or aft, to prove a proposition beyond themselves; and each one, standing by itself, makes a point that bears no connection to any other in contextexcept for the verse of Deuteronomy, the base-verse, that all of them cite and claim to elucidate in one way or another. I cannot imagine how, apart from the mere statement of the facts, I can show more vividly that a sequence of utterly unrelated sentences has been laid forth before uso They occur in context of sequences of highly propositional units of thought. The third logic therefore rests upon the premise that an established sequence offacts, e.g., holy days, holy persons, holy words, in a manner extrinsic to the sense of what is said joins whatever is attached to those words into a set of cogent statements, even though said sequence does not form of those statements propositions of any kind, implicit or explicit. The protocol of associated items, that is, the established sequence of words, may be made up of names always associated with one another. It may be made up of a received text, with deep meanings of its own, e.g., averse or a clause of Scripture. It may be made up of the sequence of holy days or synagogue lections, which are assumed to be known by everyone and so to connect on their own. The fixed association of these words, whether names, whether formulas such as verses of Scripture, whether lists of facts, serves to link otherwise unrelated statements to one another and to form of them all not a proposition but, nonetheless, an entirely intelligible

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sequence of connected or related sentences. Fixed association forms the antonym of free association. There is no case in Rabbinic 1iterature, among the documents trans1ated by me, in which the contents of one sentence stimulate a compositor to put down the next sentence only because one thing happens to remind the compositor of something else, that is, without any reference to a principle of association external to both sentences (our "fixed association"), and also without any reference to a shared proposition that connects the two (our "propositional cogency"). To show the full power of the logic of fixed association, quite independent of the fixed associations defined by sequences of verses of Scripture and hence in no way serving as a commentary of any kind, I turn to a few lines of Mishnah-tractate Abot, The Fathers, Chapter One. That chapter is made up of three units, first, three names, then five paired names, finally, three more names. The first three names are Moses (and the following), then Simeon the Righteous, then Antigonos. The groups of pairs are the two Y oses, Joshua b. Perahiah and Nittai the Arbelite, Judah b. Tabbai and Simeon b. Shatah, Shemaiah and Abtalion, and finally, Rillel and Shammai. Then at the end come Gamaliel, Simeon his son, and (repetitiously) Simeon b. Gamaliel. That the names are not random but meaningful, that the fixed association of name A with name B, name C with name D, name E with name F, and so on, is deemed cogent-these are the premises of all discourse in Chapter One of The Fathers. The premise rests on the simple fact that these names are announced as sequential, set by set-e.g., the first holds office M, the second, office N-and then in their unfolding, the first group is prior in time to the second, and on down. The order matters and conveys the information, therefore, that the compositor or author wishes to emphasize or rehearse. So when we claim that the logic of fixed association links sentences into meaningful compositions, even though it does not find cogency in the proposition at hand, we believe that claim rests upon the givens of reading the chapter at hand that universally prevail among all interpreters. I present in italics the apodosis-the propositions, the things that people say, which would correspond to the propositions of a syllogistic, philosophical discourse. In plain type is the attributive, or, in the less precise usage introduced earlier, the protasis.

The Fathers Chapter One 1: 1. MOSES received the Torah at Sinai and handed it on to Joshua, Joshua to elders, and elders to prophets. And prophets handed it on to the men of the great assembly. They said three

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things: Be prudent injudgment. Raise up marry disciples. Make afencefor the Torah. 1:2. SIMEON THE RIGHTEOUS was one of the last survivors of the great assembly. He would say: On three things does the world stand: On the Torah, and on the Temple service, and on deeds cif loving-kindness. 1:3. ANTIGONUS OF SOKHO received [the Torah] from Simeon the Righteous. He would say: Do not be like servants who serve the master on condition cif receiving areward, but [be] like servants who serve the master not on condition cif receiving areward. And let the fear cif Heaven be upon you. That the names are intended signals is shown, of course, by the reference of No. 2 to No. 1 and No. 3 to No. 2. The rest of the chapter proceeds along these same lines. No unfolding proposition emerges from what is attributed to the named sages, and, indeed, most of the assigned statements stand autonomous of one another. Now if we ask ourselves what the italicized words have in common, how they form a cogent discourse, the answer is dear. They have nothing in common, and they certainly do not so make connections as to draw a conclusion (though so me may claim they are joined in overall theme), and, standing by themselves, do not establish a proposition in common. As propositions in sequence, they do not form an intelligible discourse. But-and this must stand as a premise of all argument-in the mind of the authorship of The Fathers, which has set matters forth as we see them, those same words serve intelligible discourse. But the principle of cogency, upon which intelligibility rests, does not derive from what is said. A shared topic by itself does not in our view constitute an adequate logic of connection between two otherwise discrete sentences, though, admittedly, a shared topic is better than none at all. To recapitulate: the principle is that things are deemed to form a fixed sequence, specifically, the list of named authorities. The premise that because Rabbi X is linked on a common list-a text, a canon of names-with Rabbi Y, and linked in that order, first X, then Y, accounts (for the authorship at hand) for the intelligibility of the writing before us: this is connected to that. That is to say, the logic joining one sentence to another in The Fathers derives from the premise of fixed associations, or, stated in more general terms, an established or classic text. This formulation of fixed associations, this received text-in this case, a list of names-joins together otherwise unrelated statements. What makes two or more sequential sentences into an intelligible statement overall (or in its principal parts) is not what is said but (in this context) who does the saying. The list of those canonical names, in proper order, imparts cogency to an otherwise unintelligible sequence of statements (any one of

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which, to be sure, is as intelligible as the statement, "all Greeks are philosophers"). The upshot is a statement that relies for intelligibility upon the premise of fixed associations, e.g., an established text. The text does not have to be a holy book and it need not even be in writing. It may consist in a list of names, a passage of Scripture, the known sequence of events, as in the Pesher-writings, or even the wellknown sequence of events in the life of a holy man. But the and of this connection-hence also mode of drawing conclusions if any difTers in its fundamental logic of cogency from one that relies for intelligibility upon either narrative, on the one side, or philosophical and syllogistic thought, on the other. What holds the whole together is knowledge shared among those to whom this writing is addressed, hence the "fixed" part of "fixed association," as distinct from (mere) free association.

Metapropositional Discourse Despite its formidable name, this kind of logic is not difficult to grasp; essentially it amounts to making a point of an abstract character by exemplifying the same concrete fact over and over again. Then the reader can identify out of the cases the proposition that is intended. Metapropositional discourse forms a subspecies of propositional; the former is not articulated, the latter iso That is to say, propositional discourse involves setting forth facts to prove a point, such as the authorship of the Mishnah accomplished, or laying out facts to point to a conclusion, as in the case of narrative. This sort of discourse characterizes philosophy, including of course natural philosophy. Metapropositional discourse proves the unity of diverse cases by imposing a single pro gram of analytical questions-hence "methodical-analytical"-upon a virtually unlimited range of problems. This demonstration of the proposition, within the deep structure of argument, that all things fit into a single pattern, is accomplished through sorting out many and diverse cases and the discourse repeate(ily invokes a fixed set of questions. And that kind of inquiry marks science, natural and social, as we know it today. It is the supreme efTort to put two and two tagether and therefore to explain four. I call this classification of logic in discourse metapropositional because theefTect is to present two propositions, one immediate and at the surface, the other within the subterranean layers of thought, with the latter the more encompassing of the two, of course. The former-propositions concerning the case at hand,-

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may derive from familiar modes of argument, making connections between two facts and drawing a conclusion from them. Or the superficial discourse may present what appears to be merely a simple assertion of fact, with no further conclusion to be drawn or even intended. But the latter-the metapropositional level-always sets forth a fundamental proposition and proves it. For this higher level of discourse manages time and again to make a single point even while examining many points, and it is that capacity to conduct discourse at two levels, the one near at hand, the other at the level of recurrent polemic, that I find remarkable. Metapropositional discourse does not repeat itself; there is no recourse to only one proposItion in every instance. But the propositions indeed prove few, and a survey of the canonical writings underlines he limited program of thought encompassed by this mode of discourse: the propositions are few, but they recur everywhere. That is why the upshot is to prove the unities of diverse things, and to do so in such a way which, time and again, one is able to articulate the proposition that is demonstrated through recurrent proofs of little things. Metapropositional discourse of course forms a subdivision of propositional discourse. What distinguishes this species from its genus is not only that in these cases, the compositors make two points, one on the surface, another underneath. This mode of thought, seeking unity in diversity in a highly particular way, affects a broad range of documents; it is an instance of that process that, in the aggregate, defines traits indicative not of particular documents but of large sectors of the canon as a whole. Indeed, the intellectually highly-structured character of the Mishnah, with its systematic and orderly exposition of the extension or restriction of rules, its rigorous exercise in comparison and contrast, sets the style and defines the task for later authorships, to the end of the formation of the canon in late antiquity. Not only so, but the mind trained in see king unity in diversity, and unity susceptible of statement in proposition, works systematically through an amazingly broad program of topical inquiry and repeatedly produces that single, besought result. Out of this kind of mind, capable of making connections among wildly diverse data, science can have arisen, so far as science seeks connections and draws conclusions to explain connections. But in so stating, I have once more moved too far ahead of my argument. What of the propositional character of metapropositional discourse? The propositions that are proven in each instance are in one case minor and in the other, encompassing. The minor proposition

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is on the surface, the rule prevailing in a detail of law. The encompassing generalization bears global consequence, that is, for exampIe, reason alone bears reliable results, and the like. Commonly, the surface-generalization forms little more than a dause or averse followed by a phrase in amplification thereof. Yet the unit of thought may be enormous, relative to the size-number of wordsof the completed units of thought in our document. Reading the cases of Scripture and transforming them into general rules suitable for restatement in, and as, the Mishnah, the authorship of Sifre to Deuteronomy, for example, accomplished an amazing feat of sheer brilliance: holding many things together within a single theoretical framework. What is critical in holding together discourse in these items therefore is the imposition of a fixed analytical method, rather than the search for a generalization and its demonstration or proof. These items are topically discrete but time and again present the application of a fixed analytical system or structure or produce, in an episodic instance, a recurrent proposition of an analytical character (e.g., extension or restriction of a rule, demonstration that solely through Scripture are firm condusions to be established). One recurring exercise, which fills up much of the discussion of the legal passages of Deuteronomy in Sifre to Deuteronomy, for example, systematically proposes to generalize the case-discourse of the book of Deuteronomy and to reframe the case into the example of a generallaw. The "if a person does such and so," or the details of a case as spelled out in Scripture will be subjected to a sustained exercise of generalization. In this exercise one does two things. Either--in the process of generalization-he will restrict the rule, or he will extend it. If Scripture contains a detail, such as the statement of a case always demands, one should ask whether that detail restricts the rule to a kind of case defined by the detail, or whether that detail represents a more general category of cases and is to be subjected, therefore, to generalization. (In the unfortunate wordchoice of contemporary philosophy, the fixed analytical method at hand investigates issues of generalizabiliry.) Here is an example of many instances in which the authorship of a sustained discourse proposes to turn a case into a law. Sifre to Deuteronomy CLXVI:I 1. A. "[You shall also give hirn] the first fruits of your new grain and wine and oil, [and the first shearing of your sheep. For the Lord your God has chosen hirn and his descendants, out of all your tribes, to be in attendance for service in the name of the Lord for all time]" (Dt. 18: 1-6):

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B. This teaches that offerings are taken up for the priestly rations only from produce of the finest quality. The point applies to more than the case at hand. At issue is whether we extend or restriet the applicability of the rule. Here we restriet it. 2. AJust as we find that as to two varieties of produce of fruitbearing trees, priestly rations are not taken from the one to provide the requisite gift for the other as weIl, B. so in the case of two varieties of produce of grain and vegetables, priestly rations are not taken from the one to provide the requisite gift for the other as weIl. No. 2 is parachuted down and has no bearing upon anything in the cited verse. But the importance is to derive a general rule, as stated at B, which applies to a broad variety of categories of priestly gifts, just as at No. 1.

CLXVI:II 1. A B. 2. A B. 3. A.

" ... the first shearing of your sheep:" not the fleece that falls off when the sheep is dipped. " ... the first shearing ofyour sheep:" exduding a sheep that suffers from a potentially fatal ailment. " ... the first shearing of your sheep:" B. whether in the land or abroad. No. 1 is particular to our verse, Nos. 2, 3 are general rules invoked case by case. These items are not coherent, one by one, and the three sentences in no way state a single proposition, explicit or otherwise. And yet the exercise of analysis is uniform-I could give many dozens of cases in which precisely the same distinctions are made-and the purpose is dear. It is to impose upon the case a set of generalizing issues, which yield either restrictive or expansive definitions. This is a fine instance of what I mean by attaining cogent discourse-linking one sentence to another--through an established methodical analysis of one sort of another.

CLXVI:IV I. A "You shall also give hirn:" B. This indicates that there should be sufficient fleece to constitute a gift. C. On this basis sages have ruled: D. How much does one give to the priest? E. Five selas' weight in Judah, equivalent to ten m Galilee, bleached but not spun, F. sufficient to make a small garment from it, G.as it is said, "You shall also give hirn:"

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H. This indicates that there should be sufficient fleece to constitute a gift. The same pattern recurs as before, and the interest is in an autonomous program. This represents a different kind of methodical analysis. The framer wishes to relate averse of Scripture to a rule in the Mishnah and so asks how C-F are founded on Scripture. GH go over the ground of A-B. The work of restriction or expansion of the rule is now implicit, of course. Metapropositional discourse takes a central place in some documents, e.g., Sifra and the two Talmuds, none at all in many others. To conclude: metapropositional dis course brings to expression a range of logic that shows unity in diversity, demonstrates that many things follow a single rule, and demonstrates how a few simple propositions underlie many complex statements of fact. That mode of thought seeks connections at the deepest structure of thought and proposes to explain by reference to a single rule a various and vast universe of fact. Metapropositional logic makes a single fabric out of the threads of propositionallogic that fill up the 100m comprised by one document after another. Sifra and the two Sifres stood for that large sector of the canonical writings that, all together, serve to make a few fundamental points, applicable to many cases indeed. The two Talmuds present us with the same phenomenon: systemic and generalizing thinking about the discrete proposition al statements presented by the Mishnah. And yet, while the two Sifres and Sifra (among other writings) prove essentially metapropositional in their overall structure, attaining cogency by doing one thing many times and showing the inner simplicity of the outwardly complex propositions at hand, the Yerushalmi-and by extension, the Bavli-does not follow suit. Quite to the contrary, if we had to characterize the paramount logic of cogent discourse of the Yerushalmi, we should have to identifY the prevailing principle of joining one statement to another, that is, of making connection, not with propositional, let alone metapropositional, discourse, but with the connection imposed by fixed association, that alone. For while the several units of completed thought in the two Talmuds systematically connect fact to fact, sentence to sentence, through the shared proposition generated by what is reasoned and syllogistic argument, those units of thought themselves find connection only in their common reference-point, the Mishnah. The two Talmuds, as we shall see, succeed in making enormous statements because they join syllogistic logic, which stands behind the bulk of their compositions, to fixed associative logic, which holds the compositions together in huge composites.

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The prevailing logics in some documents work in both the parts and the whole, in one and the same way, connecting sentence to sentence, and also paragraph to paragraph. In the Mishnah, Genesis Rabbah, and Leviticus Rabbah, the same logic of propositional discourse that links sentence to sentence also links paragraph to paragraph. That is to say, propositions join one fact or sentence to another and make of the whole a single cogent statement. Still broader propositions join one large-scale cogent statement ("paragraph" in the language of the opening sentence) to another cogent statement. The logic of the whole also defines the logic of the parts. And the same is so of the metapropositional discourse that makes the accomplishment of the authorship ofSifra so remarkable and imparts noteworthy force and sustained argument to the discrete statements of the two Sifres as well. In all three documents, the metapropositional program of the parts imparts its character to large stretches of the whole as well. We may therefore conclude that some documents hold together, whole and also in part in one and the same way. They will find connections between their senten ces and among the compositions of sentences either by systematically setting forth propositions, argued along the lines of syllogism, worked out through the analysis accomplished by classification, comparison and contrast, of genus and species, for instance, and this they will do throughout. Or authorships will impose a single subterranean program upon data of unlimited diversity and show, point by point and overall as weH, the unities within diverse facts-documents that persistently make metapropositional points and all together find cogency through those recurrent exercises of deep and methodical analysis. But the Yerushalmi and the Bavli differ in their basic logical structure from all the other documents. For the authorships of these writings compose their completed units of thought principally as propositional, or metapropositional statements. The logic, then, connects one fact to another, one sentence to another, in such a way as to form a proposition. But the joining of one completed unit of thought ("paragraph," "propositional statement") to another finds connection not in a still larger exercise of propositional discourse but rather by appeal to the connection imposed through the fixed association accomplished by the framers of the Mishnah or by the author of Scripture. That mixing of two logics, the proposition al for medium-range discourse, the fixed associative for large-scale composition, differentiates the two Talmuds from all other canonical writings.

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TRADITION, COMMENTARY, AND LOGIC

The 10gic of fixed association clearly serves the purpose of composing in some sort of cogent way the discrete observations about this and that of which a commentary to a fixed text is made up. But, as our survey of the documents of Rabbinic literature will show us, the prevailing logic is not exegetical for the senten ces or fixed associative for the logic of coherent discourse, but highly propositional. Most large-scale and sustained units of co gent discourse except for the Bavli, appeal far cogency to propositions, not to fixed associations, such as characterize commentaries of a certain sort and other compilations of exegeses of verses of Scripture. Strictly speaking, commentary has no need for propositions in order to establish coherence among discrete sentences, though through commentary an authorship may propose to prove propositions (as is the case with methodical-analytical demonstrations via metapropositional logic). A document formed in order to convey exegesis attains cogency and imparts connections to two or more senten ces by appeal to fixed associations. It makes no call upon narrative, does not demand recurrent methodical analyses. The text that is subjected to commentary accomplishes the joining of sentence to sentence, and to that cogency, everything else proves secondary. For, by definition, a commentary appeals for cogency to the text that the commentators propose to illuminate. True, they may frame their commentary in diverse, appropriate ways. For example, they may comment by translating. They may comment by tacking paragraphs-stories, expositions of ideas, and the like-onto constituent structures of the base-verse. But, overall, the genre, commentary, dictates its own rhetoric, such as we have noticed, and its own logic. The logic of commentary, narrowly viewed, is that of fixed-associative compositions. But, as a matter of fact, most of the Rabbinic commentaries to Scripture proved highly propositional, not only in general, but also in detail, not only in proposition, but also in process and in rhetorical pattern. What holds things together in large-scale, sustained discourse does not rely upon the verse at hand to impose order and cogency upon discourse. Writers, as in the middle and late Midrash-compilations we shall examine, ordinarily appeal to propositions to hold two or more sentences together. If, by definition, a commentary appeals for cogency to the text that the commentators propose to illuminate, then far more common is a docume nt that is in no essential way a commentary. The logic is not that of a commentary, and the formal repertoires show strong preference for other than commentary-form. So far as commentary dic-

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tates both its own rhetoric and its own 10gic, the documents have to be described in the aggregate as highly argumentative, profoundly well-crafted and cogent sets of propositions. Authors found a need for propositions to attain cogency or impart connections to two or more sentences, called upon narrative, demanded recurrent analyses of a single sort. Now we turn to introductions to the principal components of the Rabbinic literature: Mishnah, Talmud, Midrash.

THE MISHNAH, TOSEITA, AND THE TALMUDS THE PROBLEM OF TEXT AND CONTEXT

Alan]. Avery-Peck (College of the Holy Cross) Current approaches to and interests in the legal documents of Rabbinic Judaism are diverse, including literary, historical, anthropological, and religio-historical studies. Yet a single conceptual issue demarcates these several approaches into only two scholarly camps. One camp reads the documents of the Rabbinic corpus as independent books, each a complete statement of its authorship's world view. The other claims that the texts of early RabbinicJudaism are best viewed together, as a unitary witness to a single, encompassing Judaism. Application of these two different approaches to the Rabbinic literature has created a field in which the same texts in the hands of different scholars yield contradictory and mutually exclusive pictures of Judaism in late antiquity. At issue is not whether the documents of the Rabbinic corpus are products of redaction, composed of statements collected over a long period of time and formulated for presentation in a particular redactional setting by some unknown editor or editors. With this all concur. At issue rather is the significance of the process of formulation and redaction, the impact upon the collected material of its literary formulation and placement in a particular documentary setting. A growing number of scholars holds that, by collecting, formulating, and organizing antecedent materials, the authorship of each Rabbinic document created a text that was uniquely theirs, expressing their views and speaking to the world in which they lived. While the authorship of each text stood in a close relationship to those who formulated the other documents of the Rabbinic corpus, its particular interests and attitudes yielded an image of Judaism unique to that authorship's own historical setting. At the heart of this approach are the claims l) that those who redacted Rabbinic documents followed an identifiable plan and program, 2) that through their literary work they accomplished a theological purpose, and 3) that the meaning of the inherited statements they incorporated in their work can be determined only within their redactional context, without regard for other settings in which those same statements might appear. In this approach, meaning and significance always are determined by redactional set-

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ting. Each group of redactors expressed through its manipulation of antecedent materials a unique perspective onJudaism, distinct from the approach and understanding of the redactors of other docume nt in the Rabbinic corpus. Proponents of the other view discount the significance of the process of redaction. They focus instead on the dose substantive relationships among Rabbinic documents, on their apparent sharing of underlying sources, on their citing of the same named authorities, and on the fact that they were understood by those who received them to comprise a unitary system. These scholars accordingly describe a unitary, evolving Rabbinic Judaism, expressed through the totality of these texts, early and late. In this approach, the statements encompassed by the redacted documents stand independent of their redactional setting, giving evidence for the thoughts and actions of the cited sages and, ultimately, for a shared Rabbinic ideology. To the extent that the redactors themselves participated in this common culture of Rabbinic thinking, no distinctive purposes or ideologies came to expression through their work of collecting earlier statements and placing them in specific documentary settings. Rather than expressing distinctive understandings of Judaism, the documents together reveal a single, encompassing Judaism, shared by all whose statements are preserved in them. Even while identifying a unitary Judaism, this view accounts for disagreements among rabbis concerning matters of law or theology and allows for the possibility that the law and theology ofJudaism evolved and changed over the period of the creation of the Rabbinic documents. Proponents of this view hold that this developme nt is revealed not through distinctive themes and ideologies expressed by the documents seen as wholes, but, rather, through the individual statements of which those documents are comprised. Thus, the evolution of Rabbinic thinking is found in reference to specific issues of law or theology. It is identifiedby collecting from documents early and late the pertinent views of specific rabbis, which are then to be laid out in chronological order, on the assumption that the named authorities actually said that which is attributed to them. Most important, in this view, even as the approach to specific issues evolved, the larger system of Rabbinic thought and the overriding understanding of the rabbis of the meaning and significance of Judaism remained unchanged. The consequence of this approach is to ignore the ideological purposes or theories that may underlie the creation of whole documents and that might change from period to period. No social need or philosophical perspective led redactors to collect statements on

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specific issues or to choose particular literary or rhetorical approaches in their collection and formulation of inherited statements. The documents present only facts, the data of a single Rabbinic Judaism represented in individual sayings of specific rabbis. But these documents, as literary creations, did not respond to specific historical settings and do not express theories or approaches that can be compared one to another. They are simply collections. A single methodological issue thus demarcates scholarship on Rabbinic legal texts. The question at base concerns whether or not there is such a thing as a Rabbinic "book," a carefully conceived and articulated document created by an authorship that responded to its own particular historical setting. Those who hold that Rabbinic documents comprise independent books work to interpret the documents as wholes, seeing them as standing in opposition to one another, emerging at different times in his tory and making distinctive points important to their own authorships. Those who reject the centrality of the work of redactors argue that these documents define a single emergent Judaism. This Judaism, shared by rabbis who lived over aperiod of generations, is defined by all of the documents taken together, seen as undifferentiated compendia of a unitary Rabbinic law and theology. The schools of thought following each approach are largely demarcated by their intellectual proximity to traditionalJudaism. The notion of a single Judaism expressed through all Rabbinic documents together has emerged from the academies ofJudaic learning and entered contemporary study in seminaries and Israeli universities largely unscathed. The view that Rabbinic documents are to be studied independently, as discrete systems, has most often been argued in the setting of secular universities, and, most forcefully, by Jacob Neusner and his students. As we shall see time and again, Neusner has shaped the agenda for contemporary critical study and in his numerous studies of the Rabbinic literature has established the framework within which this approach will continue to be carried out. To understand and elucidate the view that takes documents to be central, we accordingly need primarily to review Neusner's foundational studies. Evaluating the current application of the other perspective is more difficult. This is because the understanding that there is a single, unitary Judaism represented by t~e Rabbinic corpus emerges from Judaism itself. As a result, its followers have not systematically documented either the foundation for nor implications of this view. An at times intense effort has been mounted to critique and discredit Neusner's approach. For the

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most part, however, the counter theory has been applied uncritically, absent of methodological self-consciousness. This is seen in the dearth of books dedicated to providing evidence for the continuity of Rabbinic documents and, hence, for the existence of a single Rabbinic Judaism that emerged whole and complete in the earliest Rabbinic texts. It is seen as weH in the dearth in the past twenty years of studies that claim to describe such aJudaism. 1 As a result, in the case ofthe Mishnah, Tosefta, and Talmud ofthe Land of Israel, three of the four Rabbinic legal documents reviewed here, the only larger theories to have emerged in the past twenty years are those of Neusner hirns elf. For these documents, his studies largely stand alone, critiqued in articles and book reviews, but not balanced by sustained arguments of some different theory. Matters are different only for the Talmud of Babylonia, in which the source critical approach of David Weiss-Halivni and others has yielded a number of new theories regarding Talmudic formulation, redaction, and, most recently, meaning. But in the case of this document alone can we truly compare and judge the viability of competing interests in and approaches to the texts before uso After briefly introducing the early Rabbinic legal documents, we examine recent scholarship on each of them in turn. We shall see that the approach to each is defined by the document's unique characteristics and place within the unfolding corpus of Rabbinic Judaism. But, at the same time, the central issue dividing scholars remains consistent, concerning whether the document exhibits an authorship's distinctive ideology and plan or whether it is simply a compendium of prior statements. THE CHARACTER OF THE RABBINIC LEGAL LITERATURE

The books of Rabbinic Judaism's "Oral Torah" are conveniently classified into two groups. The exegetical writings take as their organizing principle the interpretation of books of Scripture. In the legal documents, by contrast, interest in and dependence upon Scripture is secondary to the setting out ofJudaic law in the rabbis' I The last such efforts were those of Ephraim Urbach, The Sages: Their Concepts and Beliifs (Jerusalern, 1975) and, before hirn, George Foot Moore's classic study Judaism in the First Centuries oJ the Christian Era, originally published in 1927. No recent studies claim to cover the Rabbinic period as broadly as these books, which describe a normative RabbinicJudaism stretching from late antiquity through the end of the Talmudic period. The methodological problems inherent in such studies are described by Jacob Neusner, The Evidence oJ the Mishnah (Chicago, 1981; second edition: Atlanta, 1988), pp. 5-15.

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own categories. The latter group of writings, which is our focus here, begins with the Mishnah, a philosophical law book redacted in about 200 C.E., which became the foundation of the other documents of the Rabbinic legal corpus. The Mishnah was followed by the Tosefta, in circa 300 C.E., a compilation of supplements to the Mishnah written in the same language and citing for the most part the same Rabbinic authorities as are found in the Mishnah. The next document of the Rabbinic corpus, the Talmud of the Land of Israel, or Yerushalmi, is generally supposed to have been completed around 400 C.E. It was followed by the Talmud of Babylonia, or Bavli, assigned to the late sixth or early seventh century C.E. The Talmuds represent a second stage in the creation of Rabbinic legal texts, for they are comprised of the teachings of post-Mishnaic rabbis who systematically cite and comment upon the Mishnah. They do so to a lesser extent for books of the written Torah, which are cited especially as an aspect of explaining the Mishnah. These texts of the Rabbinic legal corpus-Mishnah, T osefta, and the Talmuds of the Land of Israel and Babylonia-became subjects of analytical interest almost from the moment of their original propagation. Through a process of evaluation and commentary, each sub se quent text imputed to the preceding one a meaning and place within the unfolding culture of Rabbinic Judaism. The Tosefta, completed approximately one generation after the promulgation of the Mishnah, brought to the Mishnah's laws its own set of concerns and interests. In commenting on Mishnaic and Toseftan texts, the Talmuds, in turn, established the way in which, for centuries, those documents would be read and understood, as later post-Talmudic commentators viewed the Mishnah and Tosefta exclusively through the eyes of the Talmuds. Additionally, these later commentators read the Talmuds themselves through the prism of their interest in the decided law and on the basis of their assumptions regarding the uniform and monolithic nature ofRabbinicJudaism. Beginning in the period ofthe creation of these texts, the processes of interpretation thus have brought to the Rabbinic literature issues and concerns that often obscured rather than revealed each document's original meaning and significance. Despite these generations of interest, the entry approximately one hundred years ago of Talmudic study into the university and modern Rabbinical seminary marked the creation of essentially new disciplines of Jewish learning, parallel to the critical study of other religious texts. But despite the perception of the scholars who did the work, until recently the actual research carried out contin-

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ued to encompass questions and issues that, while sometimes pursued through critical method, merely reframed concerns and followed methods familiar from traditional circles. Almost to the present, the central focus in the study of these texts has remained the meaning of individual passages. In addressing exegetical problems, contemporary scholars have used the modern methods of textual criticism and, increasingly, source criticism. But the underlying goal has remained the same, to determine the meaning of individual units of Rabbinic discourse and hence to discern the proper parameters of law and practice that emerge from such units across the literature. In the field of Rabbinic legal studies as a whole, the central issue thus remains very much as Jacob Neusner identified it in 1981,2 concerning what we mean by a Rabbinic document as an object of scholarly study at all. Contemporary scholarship provides three possible answers to this question. As we have seen, the first, most prominent answer carries forward the line of exegetical study and lower criticism familiar from earlier periods of Talmudic scholarship. It sees Rabbinic documents solely as agglutinations of inherited sources. The other two views of Rabbinic documents take seriously the impact of redaction and thus facilitate seeing these texts as more than the sum of their constituent parts. Source critical study direcdy examines the process of redaction, asking in particular how the Talmudic dialectic was created and thereby attempting to understand the meaning both of the original1y discrete statements of law and of the larger Talmudic arguments in which they were placed. The final and, as we shall see, by far more interesting concern is religio-historical. It focuses upon the redacted documents seen as wholes, attempting to identify the theological purposes of those who formulated them and working to uncover the impact this authorship hoped to have upon the audience that received them. In the following we review recent studies of each of the documents of the Rabbinic legal corpus. In each case we shall see the prominence of the issue already identified as central, concerning the very nature of the phenomenon under study. The basic question in each instance is whether or not the text attests to the unique ideals and purposes of its own authorship or whether it is primarily an agglutination of inherited traditions, representing an encompassing Rabbinic Judaism and expressing no distinctive philosophy or world view of its own.

2

The Study qf Ancient Judaism (New York, 1981; reprint: Atlanta, 1992), p. IX.

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THE MISHNAH

In 1973, in introducing the modern study of the Mishnah, Jacob Neusner made two points of particu1ar interest. First, he noted that scholarship to that date had not moved beyond the issues and approach delineated by Sherira Gaon in the ninth century C.E., in his famous letter describing the history of the formulation of Rabbinic texts. Sherira's questions regarding the process of formulation as well as his presuppositions, that all Rabbinic texts from all periods accurately described wh at was said and wh at happened and testified to a unitary and monolithic Judaism, continued to inform the work of the first "critical" scholars of the Mishnah. 3 Second, Neusner noted that even the so-called "modern" scholars of the Mishnah were educated and, in most cases, continued to do their work in institutions of higher Jewish learning, Yeshivot, even if these were, as Neusner explained, the more enlightened ones. 4 The critical questions asked of the Mishnah through 1973 continued to be those of past generations of exegetes and Talmudic historians. These questions concerned how the Mishnah was written down, wh at form its traditions took before their final redaction, and the identification of what each generation of Rabbinic masters had contributed. In carrying out this work, the modern scholars shared with Sherira the assumption that the Mishnah was not to be viewed as an independent document, a product of its own time and place and speaking for its own editors. Instead, the scholars' historical model was based on the assumption that the information recorded in the Mishnah had derived from ancient times and had been accurately preserved and transmitted through the master-discip1e relationship. This meant that all legal statements were everywhere available and, no matter in wh at document of what period they ultimately were recorded, they accurately represented the views or actions of the person in whose name they were trans mitted. The final assumption was that Rabbinic documents were the product of a single redactor, Judah the Patriarch in the case of the Mishnah, just as Ta1mudic sources and Sherira suggested.

3 7he Modem Study rif the Mishnah (Leiden, 1973), p. XVI. Neusner lists two exeeptions,J.N. Epstein, a text eritie who asked whether or not we ean speak of a final "text" of the Mishnah at all, and Saul Lieberman, whom Neusner praises for not drawing larger conclusions until the work of interpretation is eomplete. U nfortunately, Lieberman did not live to publish conclusions based upon the vast amount of material he had interpreted. In the end, he best represents the traditional approach that saw the heart of Talmudie studies in the interpretation of individual passages. 4 Op. eit., p. XXII.

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For the case of the Mishnah, a good example of this approach is Dov Zlotnick, 17ze Iran Pillar-Mishnah: Redaction, Form, and Intent. 5 Zlotnick repeats inherited understandings of the Mishnah, holding, for instance, that an earlier "Mishnah" was "set in order" by Aqiba, while Judah the Patriarch, traditionaHy viewed as the editor of the Mishnah, "taught" what became the authoritative version (p. 24). Zlotnick presents these views absent of any evaluation of the actual evidence provided by the Mishnah itself. He neither examines the Mishnah's redactional traits nor, for instance, attempts to identify a specific role of Aqiba or Judah in establishing those traits. Zlotnick focuses, rather, upon later Talmudic sources, which refer, for instance, to Judah's "teaching." In particular, his conclusions, like those of past students of the Mishnah, depend upon Sherira Gaon's letter of 987, which is explicit aboutJudah's activity in "arranging" the six divisions of the Mishnah. Important for our purposes is recognition of the extent to which, in much of contemporary Rabbinic scholarship, the Rabbinic sources themselves continue to be accepted as historical accounts, accurately depicting the history of the Rabbinic movement. For understanding the formulation of Rabbinic documents, accordingly, Y. Sanhedrin 86a is probative (in Zlotnick's translation; p. 29): The anonymous Mishnah is that of Rabbi Meir; the anonymous Tosefta, Rabbi Nehemiah; the anonymous Sifra, Rabbi Judah; the anonymous Sifre, Rabbi Simeon-and all according to Rabbi Akiba.

The problem is that the documents themselves provide no evidence of the central role in their redaction of these specific individuals. Indeed, the Talmud itself frequently identifies anonymous statements as deriving from authorities other than the ones listed. Thus an account such as that contained in Y. Sanhedrin 86a does not, even in the mind of the Talmud's authorities, completely and fuHy tell the story of how the documents of the Rabbinic canon took shape. Still, based on such statements, Zlotnick details the contributions first of Aqiba and then of Judah the Patriarch. 6

.\ Jerusalem,

1988. A similar approach is found in Abraham Goldberg's article on the Mishnah in Shmuel Safrai, ed., The Literature qfthe Sages. First Part: Oral Tora, Halakha, Mishna, Tosifta, Talmud, External Tractates (Philadelphia, 1987). Goldberg writes (p. 219): We have spoken of four layers of the Mishnah; yet it is hard to find a single mishna with all four layers, or even with three. Most mishnayot consist of a single layer only, or, less frequently, two layers. As the finallayer is by far the largest one, and as single layer mishnayot predominate, it is logical that the fi

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Twenty years after Neusner reviewed the state of the study of the Mishnah, for many scho1ars of that document, things have hardly changed at all. Rather, the study of this seminal text has been advanced almost entirely as a result of the efforts of Neusner and his students. At this method's foundation is the claim that later Talmudic sources used and described the Mishnah for their own polemical purposes. Their claims therefore cannot be uncritical1y used as evidence of the processes and motivations that led to the formulation of the Mishnah. Similarly, this study opens a range of new issues and questions, founded upon the results of recent exegetica1 and literary studies: 1) the Mishnah is best read as the product of the period in which it was created; 2) it is a systematic document, comp1ete in itself; and 3) whatever the traditions and ideas its redactors inherited from previous generations, their work of redaction-both in choosing what to preserve and in shaping that material to meet their own needs-so obscured any past meaning as to make the Mishnah truly and completely an expression of their own world view alone. This attitude, which views the work of the Mishnah's redactors as the key to understanding the Mishnah, is based upon the recognition that the Mishnah's laws are all phrased in a small number of highly formalized and stylized linguistic patterns. These literary conventions occur both in anonymous rules and in the mouths of named authorities, early and late. This means that while the Mishnah cites masters who lived over aperiod of almost 200 years, the form in which those citations appear is the work of a single group of people, working at a single time. These framers of the Mishnah, standing at the end of the law's development, cast an tecedent material into the form in which we now have it. In doing so, they obscured the signs of literary and legal development that would have occurred du ring the period of the Mishnah's named

majority of mishnayot consist of the teachings of the disciples of R. Aqiba alone. Goldberg here describes a literary history and model of redaction that he no where justifies. As Tessa Rajak has written (Journal oJ Jewish Studies, Spring, 1990, vol. XLI, No. 1, pp. 132-133), "Though insistently 'scientific' in their approach to the text.. .. , the studies [in this volume as a whole] tend to take an insider's view of the historical context of the 'Oral Tora,' accepting the sages on their own valuation and readily concluding that already in the Second Temple period 'the teachings of the Sages embodied the social, cultural and religious traditions adhered to by a majority' (p. 36)." Rajak here suggests the extent to which contemporary studies of the Rabbinic literature continue to accept with credulity whatever the ancient texts put forward as fact.

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authorities. As a result, the only meaning that we can discern is that imputed to the laws by their context, the product of the Mishnah's ultimate redaction. In this view of matters, the important task for Mishnaic study is not the delineation of how the text reached its current form. A fundamental premise of this approach is that the very act of redaction so obliterated any prior formal or ideological characteristics as to make their recovery either impossible or, if possible, largely besides the point. Instead, the more appropriate scholarly task is to discern the meaning of the Mishnah as a completed document, to identify the ideology it expresses, to point to its philosophy of law, and to depict its understanding of the meaning and nature of Judaism and its program for the Jewish future. Since this approach sees as fundamental the work of an authorship-redactors or editors-working at a single point in history, scholars following this method have been particularly interested in the historical setting in which the Mishnah was formulated. The document, they argue, neither came into existence nor spoke within a vacuum. Rather, consciously or unconsciously, its authors responded to the setting in which they lived and worked. They expressed through their statement of law a pro gram for Jewish survival appropriate to their own time, the aftermath of the war with Rome that, in 70 C.E., led to the destruction of the Second Temple and the Bar Kokhba revolt that, in 133-135 C.E., obliterated any chance of a return to Jewish sovereignty or the rebuilding of the Temple. Recent studies of the Mishnah have taken as central the creation of this document du ring the devastating events of the first and second centuries C.E. This analysis holds that, consciously or not, the rabbis who lived and worked in this period reacted to the events of their day, creating aJudaism that made sense in the environment in which they lived and in which thatJudaism would be practiced. In the first centuries C.E., the Israelite people found their inherited religious ideologies-no less than themselves-under attack. If Rome ruled over the land of Israel, then what of God's promise that his people would be sovereign in their own land? With the Temple destroyed and clearly not to be rebuilt, what of the previous theological view that only in the Temple could the nation atone for its sins? Mter the loss of all that had signified God's concern for the Israelite people, what proof remained that God continued to rule over and care about the chosen people? To respond to these questions the Mishnah's rabbis presented a system of belief and practice that took into account the reality of their day. They developed aJudaism that placed cultic observance

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in the hands of common Israelites, so that, even though the priestly cult had ceased, the people could continue to see their lives as subject to divine sanction and sanctification. At the same time, the Mishnaic rabbis exhibited a deep conservatism. Their fundamental claim was that God mIes over and moves in response to the Israelite people, just as Scripture promised and just as seemed to be the case while the Temple stood. The covenantal relationship, the rabbis argued, continued unchanged. 7 These conclusions are based upon a systematic reading of the Mishnah as a whole. Unlike previous interpretations, which focused upon the pI ace in the larger Rabbinic corpus of individual legal dicta, this research intends to discern the statement made, first, by tractates as wholes, then, by each of the Mishnah's six divisions, and, finally, by the Mishnah in its entirety.8 The work of exegesis, carried out by Neusner and others in a massive commentary to each Mishnaic tractate, has been followed by studies of the Mishnaic treatment of specific topics: economics, politics, women, slaves, and the role of intention in the Mishnah. 9 7 This understanding of the Mishnah appears in a number of recent studies. See Jacob Neusner, Judaism: The Evidence rif the Mishnah, p. 271. See also Alan Avery-Peck, 'Judaism Without the Temple: The Mishnah," in Harold Attridge and Gohei Hata, eds., Eusebius, Christianiry, and Judaism (Detroit, 1992), pp. 409431, Martin Jaffee, Mishnah's Theology rif Tithing: A Study rif Tractate Maaserot (Chico, 1981), pp. 3-6; Irving Mandelbaum, A History rif the Mishnaic Law rif Agriculture: Kilayim (Chico, 1982), pp. 3-4; Roger Brooks, SupportJor the Poor in the Mishnaic Law rifAgriculture: Tractate Peah (Chico, 1983), pp. 35-36; and Louis Newman, The Sanctiry rif the Seuenth Year: A Study rif Mishnah Tractate Shebiit (Chico, 1983), pp. 17-20. B See Jacob Neusner, A History rif the Mishnaic Law rif Appointed Times, 5 vols. (Leiden, 1981); A History rif the Mishnaic Law rif Damages, 4 vols. (Leiden, 1982); A History rif the Mishnaic Law rif Holy Things, 4 vols. (Leiden, 1978-79); A History rif the Mishnaic Law rif Purities, 22 vols. (Leiden, 1974-77); A History rifthe Mishnaic Law rif Women, 5 vols. (Leiden, 1979-80). Studies by Neusner's students of tractates in the Mishnaic Division of Agriculture include the books by Newman, Brooks, Mandelbaum, andJaffee referred to in the preceding note. See also Tzvee Zahavy, The Mishnaic Law rif Blessings and Prayers: Tractate Berakhot (Atlanta, 1987); Alan [Avery-]Peck, The Priestly Gifl in Mishnah: A Study rifTractate Terumot (Chico, 1981); Richard Sarason, A History rif the Mishnaic Law rif Agriculture: A Study rif Tractate Demai (Leiden, 1979); and Peter Haas, A History rif the Mishnaic Law rif Agriculture: Tractate Maaser Sheni (Chico, 1980). For an overview of the Division of Agriculture, see Alan Avery-Peck, Mishnah's Division rif Agriculture: A History and Theology rif Seder Zeraim (Chico, 1985). 9 See Judith Wegner, Chattel or Person? The Status rif Women in the Mishnah (New York, 1988); Paul FIesher, Oxen, Women or Citizens? Slaues in the ~stem rif the Mishnah (Atlanta, 1988); and Howard Eilberg-Schwartz, The Human Will in Judaism: The Mishnah's Philosophy rif Intention (Atlanta, 1986). For studies of how and why the Mishnah's redactors formulated their attitudes towards economics and politics, see J acob N eusner, Economics rif the Mishnah (Chicago, 1990), which explains how the Mishnah sets forth a classical system of economics and teils why economics was an important medium for the Mishnah's message; and Rabbinie Political Theory: Religion

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At the heart of both the exegesis and the interpretative studies that reveal the Mishnaic world view is the notion that each tractate has a single, generative issue that ac counts for its structure and concerns, and that these individual philosophical expressions come together in the Mishnah to present a unified perspective on the nature and meaning of Israelite existence. Mishnaic tractates, divisions, and, indeed, the Mishnah as a whole, are not simply compendia of all available legislation on a particular topic. This approach distinguishes the recent exegesis from earlier work, which took as the central focus of interpretation the individual law or legal statement, seen in relationship (or contrast) to other legal statements on similar topics found elsewhere in the Mishnah or across the Rabbinic literature. These commentaries, almost exclusively the products of Rabbinic tradition, read the Mishnah as homogeneous with the entire corpus of documents, early and late. All rules within this corpus were read without regard to their origin and provenance, under the assumption that together they comprised a single, transcendentJewish law. The rules of individual documents were interpreted within the framework of this artificial legal construct and not as components of the essay in which they have their redactional meaning. In practical terms this means that previous Mishnaic interpretation, beginning in the Talmuds themselves, was atomistic, proceeding one rule at a time. Its goal was to discern legal principles that link the Mishnah's discrete rules with laws found elsewhere in the Mishnah and in the rest of the Rabbinic literature. Within this framework, the Mishnah's own documentary boundaries were treated as null and void. The recent proponents of this latter theory have produced no sustained studies or interpretations of the Mishnah intended to show exactly what the document means or what it is about. Within this context, rather, the Mishnah serves as a source of data for an encompassing Rabbinic religion, perceived as a monolithic continuation of second Temple Judaism. 10 Mishnaic law is viewed as part of a continuous legal system, beginning in Scripture and evolving through the Rabbinic and then medieval legal compendia. This

and Politus in the Mishnah (Chicago, 1991), which shows how the political theory of the Mishnah conveys an important component of the Mishnah's larger theological scheme. For a fuH account ofthe Mishnah as a philosophical system, see Neusner's 7he Philosophical Mishnah, 4 vols. (Atlanta, 1988-1989) and his Judaism as Philosophy: 7he Method and Message of the Mishnah (Columbia, 1991). ID See, e.g., Shaye Cohen, From the Maccabees to the Mishnah (Philadelphia, 1987), and Lawrence Schiffman, From Text to Tradition. A History of Second Temple and Rabbinic Judaism (New York, 1991).

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system encompasses all statements of law by Jews in aIl settings, induding even the Dead Sea ScroIls. 11 On the basis of citations from the Mishnah and other Rabbinic documents, scholars thus continue to write about the nature ofJudaism and the character of its law in late antiquity in general, absent of attention to the sources and relative provenance of the variety of Rabbinic and non-Rabbinic documents that evidence that law. 12 Putting the Mishnah to this use, scholars need not, and have not, provided any detailed and systematic explanation of what they think the Mishnah iso Viewed as a repository of law and tradition, it is not susceptible to such study in the first place. The seriousness of this divergence in approaches needs to be made dear. Because of their totally distinctive understandings of the nature of Rabbinic documents, the disputing sides in the controversy cannot make use of each others' researches. At issue are not simply distinct methods, each producing a different perspective, or of scholars interested in different questions, the answers to all of which contribute to an appreciation of the phenomenon at issue. Rather, since the approaches described he re derive from different understandings of the nature of the evidence subject to analysis, their proponents can come together only in debate over who is correct. That debate, recently argued through cogent presentations of each side's view, offers the dearest insight into the state ofMishnaic studies today. The argument against reading the Mishnah as an independent document, susceptible to evaluation within its own documentary framework, has recently been articulated by Craig Evans. 13 At the foundation of Evans' view is the pronouncement of E.P. Sanders,14 that the Mishnah is "a collection of legal debates and opinions," but that "it is not a world view, a philosophy of history, or an apocalypse."15 Evans argues that Neusner and those who foIlow his approach have reached other condusions because they find meaning in what Evans hirnself sees as meaningless: he See Lawrence Schiffman, 7he Halakhah at Qymran (Leiden, 1975). A good example of this is E.P. Sanders, Jewish Law ftom Jesus to the Mishnah (London, 1990). 13 "Mishna and Messiah 'In Context.' Some Comments on Jacob Neusner's Proposal," in Journal rif Biblical Literature, ll2:2, summer 1993, pp. 267-289. The article offers a concurring summary ofpositions expressed primarily by E.P. Sanders, as I indicate in the following. Neusner's response, "The Mishnah in Philosophical Context and Out of Canonical Bounds" is in the same volume, pp. 29l304. 14 Jewish Law ftom Jesus to the Mishnah, pp. 309-33l. 15 See Sanders, p. 3l4; Evans, p. 268. 11

12

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rejects the notion that interpretation can depend upon that which the Mishnah's editors chose to talk about in contrast to the many other possible topics about which they were silent (p. 269). This critique depends upon the presupposition that the Mishnah is simply a collection of legal debates and opinions. If this indeed is the case, then nothing can be made of choices of topic. But, insofar as Evans provides no evidence that the Mishnah is simply an agglutination of debates and opinions, and insofar as he ignores the volumes of research that argue otherwise, his claim is essentially without foundation. The contrary view, that the Mishnah exhibits careful traits of redaction and choice of topic, has been extensively argued. Individual tractates have been shown to evidence signs of careful topical and substantive organization, to cover a select number of issues pertinent to their topics and, through these issues, to express a cogent point. 16 This being the case, contrary to Evans, it appears not to push the evidence to describe the Mishnah as an autonomous document expressing the views of its particular authorshipY Despite the continuting argument on this matter, the issue confronting contemporary scholarship on the Mishnah should no longer concern how to conceptualize the object of study. Based upon the research done to date, it appears clear that the only viable approach is to take seriously the extent to which the Mishnah's framers carefully shaped their document so as to portray a particular world view. The focus of scholarship now must continue to be identification of that world view and its relationship to the context in which the Mishnah's authorship worked. THE TOSEFTA

Of all the documents ofRabbinicJudaism, the Tosefta has been the least studied and therefore the most poorly understood. The reason is implicit in the name Tosefta itself, which means supplement. Based upon this name and the document's literary characteristicsOn this claim, see the bibliography in notes 7-9. Even if the document were intended primarily as a compendium of inherited laws, two facts would be central: I) we do not have everything that was inherited, and 2) what we do have was collected and formulated according to a narrow literary and topical agenda. This makes speaking of the world view of the document thus created a natural and necessary aspect of understanding that document. For a different phrasing of this claim, see Jacob Neusner, Are 77zere Really Tannaitic Parallels to the Gospels? A Rifutation qf Morton Smith (Atlanta, 1993). The volume rejects the claim that Tannaitic documents relate to each other in the same way that the Synoptic Gospels do. 16

17

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it looks like a compendium of statements similar to those found in the Mishnah-the Tosefta has been seen primarily as a "storage house for materials omitted from the Mishnah."18 The apparent choice ofJudah the Patriarch, the presumed editor of the Mishnah, not to include these materials in the Mishnah-the central document ofRabbinicJudaism-and the fact that many ofthem appear and are evaluated within the Talmuds meant that the Tosefta itself was not deserving of independent study. The Tosefta has been viewed simply as a "sort of literary geniza."19 While the Tosefta has been the object of numerous theories regarding its origins, redaction, and relationship to the Mishnah and Talmuds, it accordingly has hardly been an object of critical study at all. The subject of only a few medieval and early modern treatments,20 the document appears in two modern critical editions, that of Moses ZuckermandePl and the masterful study of Saul Lieberman, which includes a critical text 22 and a multi-volume commentary.23 But these text critical and exegetical treatments have only very recently served as the basis of carefully documented theories of the meaning and redaction of the T osefta. Lieberman's Tosefta study deserves our attention because of the way in which it highlights salient characteristics of the modern treatment of Rabbinic legal documents. Lieberman accepted the inherited notion of the Tosefta as a shapeless compendium of Rabbinic law. He neither saw nor looked for a redactional method or substantive message intrinsic to the Tosefta as a completed document. He viewed the Tosefta essentially as a clipboard, holding random scraps of law and legal opinions. Of importance was not how they came to have a place in the compilation called the Tosefta but, rather, their individual meanings, which were to be determined by evaluating their relationship to parallel rules found throughout the Rabbinic corpus. Accordingly, analysis of the Tosefta served as an opportunity for investigation of all Rabbinic texts. The result would be the depiction of an encompassing system

Jacob Neusner, The Tosifta. An Introduction (Atlanta, 1992), p. X. Op. cit., p. X. ~II E.g., from the late eighteenth century, Elijah Gaon's Tosefta emendations, found in the Romm edition of the Babylonian Talmud. ~I Moses Samuel Zuckermandel, Tosifta, Based on the EifUrt and Vienna Codices, with Parallels and Variants. (Trier, 1881-82; revised edition with supplement by Saul Lieberman: J erusalem, 1970). ~~ Saul Lieberman, ed., The Tosifta according to Codex Vienna with Variants fiom Codex Eifurt, Genizah MSS. and Editio Princeps, 4 vols. (New York, 1955-1973). ~:l Saul Lieberman, Tosifta Ki-Fshuta: A Comprehensive Commentary on the Tosifta (New York, 1955-1973). IB

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of intertwined Rabbinic 1aws, representing a single legal code that extended from the time of the Mishnah through the formulation of the Babylonian Talmud. If Lieberman's compendious study pointed to any encompassing issue at all, it appears to have been the question of the relationship between the Tosefta and other texts of the Rabbinic corpus, both earlier and later. This question concerns one of the only detailed studies of the Tosefta written to date. Yaakov Elman, Authority and Tradition: Tosiftan Beraitot in Talmudic Babylonia,24 carefully analyses the literary relationship between the T osefta and the later Rabbinic literature, in particular, the Babylonian Talmud. His question arises out of the precarious relationship between these two texts. While the Talmud appears to cite the Tosefta, the citations are hardly ever exact. Additionally, some 50% of the Tosefta's materials, even those potentially relevant to specific Talmudic arguments, are not cited at all. Accordingly, scholars have asked, does the Bavli actually know the Tosefta? Based on an analysis of Tosefta Pisha and Bavli Pesahim, the tractates on Passover, Elman concludes that Babylonian authorities, at least from the fourth generation and on, did not use as a source the Tosefta as we know it. Statements they cite that are parallel to materials in the Tosefta were not drawn from that document but had aseparate history and transmission. Elman's conclusion depends upon his study of Babylonian authorities' use of materials with Toseftan counterparts, his examination of variant readings, and his identification of signs of oral transmission. He finds such signs in the Tannaitic statements found in the Babylonian Talmud and suggests therefore that the Babylonian authorities did not have before them a fixed literary source at all. Elman's study is significant for its careful methodology, for its conclusions, and for the light that it sheds on the approach to this literature of previous generations of scholars. On linguistic grounds, it seems almost certain that the Tosefta predates the Talmud. The fact that the Talmud appears not to "know" the Tosefta thus is a striking fact. What emerges from Elman's review of prior scholarship is the extent to which attempts to explain this fact have led to confusion. To make sense of the evidence, scholars posited the existence of documents that are not extant and to which there is no reference in the other texts of Rabbinic Judaism. Chanokh Albeck, who argued that the apparent parallels are cases in which the Bavli cites materials antecedent to the-in his view-much later Tosefta, 24 leite the original Ph.D. dissertation (New York University, 1986). The study has recently been published under the same tide (New York, 1992).

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posited a recension of the Tosefta known to the Bavli but different from the version of the Tosefta that we now have. J.N. Epstein argued that the Bavli draws on a proto-Tosefta, elose to, but not exactly the same as, the Tosefta we have received. 25 Other scholars imagined agglomerates of materials floating freely and transmitted in different forms at different times. Elman's own study, the first systematically to examine the relations hip between the Tosefta and a later document, brings an end to the speculation that has characterized evaluation of this question. Elman coneludes that the Bavli did not know the Tosefta. But no more specific conelusions than this regarding the Tosefta's and Bavli's sources appear possible. The impact of the redaction of the Bavli upon all antecedent sources makes determination of the nature of its sources impossible. 26 The question Elman-like the sc hol ars before him-asked is interesting, and the answer he gives is important to an understanding of the interrelationships among the Rabbinic documents. But to the extent that the question leads to no deeper insights into the nature and purpose of the documents before us, it seems also to have brought this line of scholarship to an end. Indeed, Elman's conelusions regarding the Babylonian Talmud suggest the appropriateness of a different line of analysis entirely. If the Talmud's authorship worked independently of at least one other Rabbinic document available in its day, then scholars should be concerned for that authorship's distinctive methods and motivations. Contrary to past research, at issue cannot be primarily the nature and conte nt of the sources to which they turned. The failure of the Bavli's redactors to cite the Tosefta, or at least more materials found in the Tosefta, points to that authorship's utter independence. This realization must lead us to question the thematic and ideational constraints 2, He argued, by contrast, that the Tosefta we have is cited by the Yerushalmi. Elman shows that this view is not viable. The Yerushalmi offers no better evidence for the Tosefta as we know it than does the Bavli. It contains even less of the Toseftan material, and the paralIeIs are no closer (pp. 4-5). 26 Linguistic studies make it almost certain that the Tosefta is early (p. 5). This renders Albeck's theory of a post-Talmudic provenance untenable, and, indeed, almost all contemporary scholars lean to Epstein's view, that the Tosefta is postMishnaic but pre-Talmudic (p. 8). In some ways, Boaz Cohen's solution, which Elman rejects as too simplistic, phrases matters directly and indicates what we can expect to know (Mishnah and Tosifta: A Comparative Stu4J, Part 1. Shabbat (New York, 1935, pp. 56-7): In accordance with our assumption that the Tosefta was redacted shortly after the Mishnah, those baraitot in the Talmud which agree verbatim with the Tosefta are most likely derived from the latter, whereas, the baraitot, which differ considerably from the T[osefta]. .. are to be traced to other sourees.

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under which those individuals worked. Elman's approach thus introduces a line of questioning concerning the nature and purpose of the work of the Bavli's editors but sheds little light on the Tosefta itself. The problem for sc hol ars thus remains the formulation of questions that provide insights into the Tosefta. For Jacob Neusner this has meant questioning the meaning of the Tosefta as a redacted whole, as it was received by its audience in the period following its compilation. Notably, Elman, who sees as the appropriate object of study the individual opinions of the named authorities that comprise the Tosefta, takes issue with Neusner, who argues that we cannot move behind the text as a redacted whole. Elman responds to Neusner's criticism of the source critical method by saying that: The me re possibility that contrary data exists cannot invalidate an hypotheses, only the data itself may do that! The end result of such a methodology [that looks at the document as a whole] is the cessation of all historical inquiry. Wh at it has led Neusner to is the final abandonment, and denial of the worth, of source-critical methods. But the resort to the study of documents instead does not help, for their very dating is ultimately based on literary studies which depends (sie) on the historicity of just those attributions which he rejects, assessed by just those traditional philological and source critical methodsY

Elman overstates the problem with making redacted documents the focus of study. The dating of Rabbinic documents-including the Tosefta-is on far surer grounds than that of any single constituent statement. Further, even if we were certain that specific rabbis said that which is assigned to them, since we do not have access to the context in which the statement was made or to the individual's philosophy that led hirn to say it, we can in no event claim to determine what that individual meant. 28 Most important, we see he re again the centrality of the methodological issue that underlies all recent study of Rabbinic texts, concerning identification of the appropriate object of study, documents as wholes or the individual statements they contain. With this in mind we turn to Jacob Neusner's very different approach to the Tosefta. As in his study of the Mishnah, Neusner focuses upon the work of the Tosefta's redactors, who chose from available material and who, Neusner argues, organized those laws according to a plan and program. The problem is to identifY that 27

Authoriry and Tradition, p. 40.

See William S. Green, "What's in a Name? The Problematic of Rabbinie 'Bibliography'," in W.S. Green, ed., Approaches to AncientJudaism: Theory and Practice (Missoula, 1978), pp. 77-96. 28

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program, to show how the content and organization of the Tosefta conform to a logical scheme, and to point out the larger proposition that the document thereby expresses. Neusner's study of the Tosefta began with his work in interpreting and analyzing the Mishnah. As an aspect of that study, he translated (for the first time into English) and evaluated each Toseftan pericopae in the context of the Mishnaic material to which it is topically related. 29 The Tosefta turned out to be much more than a compendium of independent materials that supplement the Mishnah. In Neusner's estimation, no more than one sixth of the Tosefta contains rules and statements that might have been, but were not, included in the Mishnah itself. 30 Rather, Neusner discovers in the Tosefta two additional types of passages, each of which in its own way comprises an explicit commentary to the Mishnah. 31 The first contains materials in which a paragraph of the Mishnah is cited and augmented. Neusner refers to this as "Tosefta as commentary to the Mishnah." The second type includes passages that do not cite the Mishnah but that cannot be fully and completely understood outside of the framework presented by a corresponding paragraph of the Mishnah. Neusner refers to these materials as "Tosefta as complement." This classification of the Tosefta's laws clarifies the way in which the Tosefta treats the Mishnah, what it understands the Mishnah's importance to be, and the course that it sets for future reading of the Mishnah. The fact that the Tosefta's redactors chose to amplify and explain the Mishnah shows that, for them, the Mishnah already had taken on a canonical status. In this regard, the Tosefta represents a transitional work between the Mishnah and sub se quent Rabbinic legal texts, the Talmuds, which comparably take the form of commentaries on the Mishnah. Through the work of the redactors of the Tosefta, the Mishnah becomes itself a central object of Rabbinic legal analysis, and the form of commentary on it becomes the most salient characteristic of the later Rabbinic documents. Insofar as the Talmuds frequently read the Mishnah 29 The Tosefta translation appears as The Tosifta, 6 vol. (Hoboken, 1977-1986). The tractates in the Division of Agriculture were translated by the authors listed in notes 7-8. 30 See The Tosdf,a. An Introduction (Atlanta, 1992). In this category Neusner p1aces any passage that is "entirely autonomous of the Mishnah ... passages of this kind cannot be distinguished in any important way from counterparts in the Mishnah. They can, therefore have been made up prior to the formulation and closure of the Mishnah, omitted from the Mishnah, and collected for preservation in the Tosefta" (p. x). 31 Ibid.

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through the eyes of the Tosefta, this little-studied document both sets the larger tone of the massive and centrallegal compilations of Rabbinic judaism, which take the shape of commentaries to the Mishnah, and provides the details and specific readings of the Mishnah that those later documents will use to shape all later judaism. 32 Neusner has phrased the issue for the study of the Tosefta and provided a foundation for future work. At the same time, within the agenda of issues established by Neusner, important problems are left to be explored. Elman33 has shown that, at least in the tractates on Passover, the Babylonian Amoraim did not have before them an organized collection of Tannaitic statements in any way comparable to the T osefta as we now have it. This means that notions of the place of the Tosefta in the unfolding Rabbinic corpus, and claims regarding the actual impact of the Tosefta on later Rabbinic thinkers, need evaluation. 34 This requires both additional study of the nature and content of the Tosefta and further evaluation of the availability and use ofprior sources by the redactors ofthe Talmud. Most important, though, Neusner's overall conclusions regarding the purposes of the Tosefta's framers and the care with which they undertook their work mean that Neusner has defined a primary path for critical research on this document. The important questions concern the internal logic, organization, and point of the Tosefta as an independent document in its own right. Insofar as Neusner has shown this to be a carefully organized and formulated work, he has defined the central issues of its study to be the significance the T osefta had for its redactors and the impact they in turn hoped to have upon those who received their document. Indeed, reflecting upon Elman's negative conclusion regarding the relationship between the Tosefta and later Rabbinic documents, we see the extent to which his work points us exactly in the direction taken by Neusner. If, as Elman shows, later texts did not necessarily know or use all earlier ones, then it is on the surface 32 Here Neusner, p. 1, follows Saul Lieberman, who characterized the Tosefta as, in Neusner's words, "the hinge on which the door of the Yerushalmi swings." See also Jacob Neusner, The Bavli that Might Have Been: The Tosifta's Theory oJ Mishnah-Commentary Compared with that oJ the Babylonian Talmud (Atlanta, 1990). 33 Authoriry and Tradition, p. 415'34 This is not to ignore Elman's conclusion (p. 416), following Lieberman, that the Tosefta contains so me late Babylonian materials that are independent of both the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmuds. While the process through which the received text ofthe Tosefta was created clearly was somewhat more "extended and complicated than an early date would allow" (ibid.), it seems equally clear that, on the whole, the Tosefta is a creation of the period in which almost all scholars now place it, post-Mishnaic but pre-Talmudic.

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clear that we cannot speak of a unitary Rabbinic Judaism that emerged whole and is expressed through all of the Rabbinic texts together. Not every authority knew every extant Rabbinic statement, and all later writings did not know or choose to build upon earlier ones. There are clear lines of development, seen, for instance, in the dependence of all sub se quent Rabbinic legal texts upon the Mishnah. But the Talmud's lack of knowledge of, or disregard for, the Tosefta suggests that the Tosefta, and the Talmuds, must be examined as distinctive statements, growing out of their authorships' unique approach to Judaic thinking. THE TALMUD OF THE LAND OF ISRAEL

Until fifteen years ago, the study of the Talmud of the Land of Israel-known also as the Palestinian Talmud or, in Hebrew, the Yerushalmi-was in the same state as that of the Tosefta. Redacted circa 400 G.E., Jews had always deemed the Yerushalmi to be of secondary importance to the Babylonian Talmud, redacted 200 to 300 years later. By virtue of the Bavli's later redaction and larger size, it was understood to present a more advanced and complete picture of Rabbinic law and learning. For this reason, withinJewish legal codification, the Bavli, not the Yerushalmi, was authoritative and, within circles of Jewish learning, the Bavli, but not the Yerushalmi, was studied. 35 This attitude carried over into the early critical study of Rabbinic texts, a concrete manifestation of the notion that Rabbinic documents are primarily important as compendia of individual laws and traditions. To the extent that the Yerushalmi was denigrated as a source of such traditions, there was little reason to study it at all. 36 As was the case for the Tosefta, contemporary study of the Yerushalmi begins with Jacob Neusner who, in 1980, embarked upon an unprecedented program of producing an English translation of and critical commentary to this document. 37 His intention 3.\ Gaonic and medieval writers argued that the editors of the Babylonian Talmud knew but rejected the Yerushalmi and its legal traditions. See Baruch Bokser, "An Annotated Bibliographical Guide to the Study of the Palestinian Talmud," in Jacob Neusner, ed., The Study rif Ancient Judaism. Volume II. The Palestinian and Babylonian Talmuds (Atlanta, 1992), p. 53. 36 As a result, the text of the Yerushalmi is poorly preserved and represented in only a small number of imperfect printed editions and manuscripts. Additionally, few medieval and contemporary commentaries and textual studies exist. For a complete listing and evaluation of available manuscripts, editions, and tools for study of the Yerushalmi, see Bokser's study, referred to in the preceding note. 37 The Talmud rif the Land rif Israel. A Preliminary Translation and Explanation (Chicago, 1982-1993).

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was to make the Yerushalmi generally available for historical and religio-historical study. The initial work of translation now has been completed by Neusner and a number of other scholars. As a result, fundamental new understandings of the Yerushalmi already have been achieved. First, it is now clear that, while the text evidences signs of corruption and is in a worse state of preservation than other Rabbinic documents, contrary to the received view, the vast majority of the Yerushalmi is in perfectly accessible condition, providing asolid foundation for academic study. Second, unlike the traditional view that the Yerushalmi is a rough compilation of inherited sources that did not undergo a careful period of redaction, the text befare us shows every sign of being a weH organized and deliberately redacted document. In Neusner's words: The Yerushalmi speaks about the Mishnah in essentially a single voice, about fundamentally few things. Its mode of speech and thought is uniform throughout. Diverse topics produce slight differentiation in modes of analysis. The same sorts of questions phrased in the same rhetorics-a moving, or dialectical, argument, composed of questions and answers-turn out to pertain equally well to every passage of the Mishnah. It gene rally takes up a single, not very complex or diverse, program of inquiry. The Yerushalmi also utilizes a single, rather limited repertoire of exegetical initiatives and rhetorical choices for whatever discourses about the Mishnah the framers propose to undertake. 38

Neusner accounts for this singularity of form and purpose by arguing for the centrality of the process of redaction. The document was created when a vast corpus of inherited sayings was reworded into a single, cogent, and rhetorically consistent discourse. 39 This accounts for the lack of differentiation in the language, interests, or farms of arguments that appear in passages citing Talmudic authorities who lived over a 200 year period. It further explains the lack of concern shown by the Yerushalmi for the chronology of the unfolding of its own ideas. There is no attention to the sequence in which statements were made because, in Neusner's view, with redaction occurring only at the end, the sequence was quite irrelevant. The same would not be the case if each generation's statements had been organized into arguments in the period in which the statements actually were made. The weight of this argument is that "the point of everything in hand was defined and determined by the people who made it all up 38 Jacob Neusner, The Yerushalmi. An Introduction (Northvale, 1993), pp. 11-12. See also Jacob Neusner,Judaism in Sociery: The Evidence rifthe Yerushalmi. Toward the Natural History rif aReligion. (Chicago, 1983; second printing, Atlanta, 1991). 39 The Yerushalmi. An Introduction, p. 13.

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at the end. The whole shows plan and program."40 Accordingly, the Yerushalmi demands study as a whole and complete document in its own right. Unlike the still widely held view that the Yerushalmi, "is not a literary product with anything like unity of conception,"41 in this description, the Yerushalmi has a unique viewpoint that comprises a most legitimate object of analysis. In 7he r erushalmi. An Introduction, Neusner evaluates that viewpoint by examining the Yerushalmi against the backdrop of the Mishnah, on the one hand, and the historical setting in which the Yerushalmi emerged, on the other. He concludes (p. l): The Yerushalmi, in c. 400 C.E., portrays the chaos of Jews living among Gentiles, governed by a diversity of authorities, lacking all order and arrangement, awaiting a time of salvation for which, through sanctification, they make themselves ready. The Mishnah's Israel in imagination is governed by an Israelite king, high priest, and Sanhedrin. The Yerushalmi's Jews lived under hoth rabbis near at hand, who settled the everyday disputes of the streets and households, and also under distant archons of a nameless state, to be manipulated and placated on earth as in heaven.

Neusner sees in the Mishnah a perfectly formulated and articulated masterpiece, "a noble theory of it all.. .. a fine conception of nowhere in particular, addressed to whom it may concern" (pp. 1-2). The Yerushalmi, by contrast, presents a familiar world of alleyways and courtyards, "an inchoate cathedral in process" (p. l). In responding to and defining Jewish existence in areal world, the Yerushalmi marks the beginning of the Judaism that has come down from late antiquity to our own day, the beginning of the Western epoch in the history of Judaism (p. 2). Neusner evaluates the conte nt ofthat viewpoint by reviewing the Yerushalmi's picture of the sage, its doctrine of the Torah, and its account of history. He suggests in each case that, within the Y erushalmi' s exegesis and amplification of the laws of the Mishnah, it encompasses its own distinctive program and theory (p. 39). This proposal, that the Talmudic text viewed as a whole makes specific points regarding aspects of Judaism, comprises the major step of modern Rabbinic scholarship beyond past approaches, which deOp. cit., p. 14. See Hermann Strack, Introduction to the Talmud and the Midrash (first English edition, Philadelphia, 1931), p. 65. Bokser, p. 54, cites other similar views, including that of I.H. Halevy, Dorot HaRishonim II. Amoraic Period (Frankfurt a.M., 1901), pp. 528f., that the Yerushalmi is completely unedited. Bokser's own view of the matter appears to have been similar (p. 54): "The present disordered arrangement of the text indicates the absence of any real editing. But this absolute judgment imposes standards based upon the character of the b. [Bavii]." 40 41

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nied that the text as a whole has significant coherence at all. The concern with identifYing each Rabbinic document's authorial meaning marks Neusner's work as substantively and conceptually different from all that has come before. Neusner begins with the sage who, as principal authority of the people of Israel, is at the center of the Yerushalmi's picture of areal world. In the view of the Yerushalmi, the sage's power derived not from religious acceptance and moral suasion but from true political authority. In the exercise of this power, the rabbis held themselves to be backed by the government, though they failed to describe how they derived or made use of that authority (p. 40). In all, then, the picture that emerges is contradictory. It describes the sage as part of the administration of the patriarch, who stood at the margins of the Rabbinical estate, and it shows the rabbis to be limited in power by popular will, established custom, and competing authorities. The rabbi thus acted as clerk and bureaucrat over trivialities and in cases in which people simply might choose not to listen. How then could the rabbis imagine themselves as powerful? The answer to this question, in Neusner's view, emerges from their understanding of themselves as embodiments of the Torah and their sense of their place in the process of redemption. At the heart of the Yerushalmi is the des ire to provide the people of Israel with a way to emerge from the nation's unredeemed present to the long awaited, much-desired future (p. 89). The Yerushalmi contributes to the accomplishment of this desire a new theory of salvation. The Yerushalmi's theory differs from that of the Mishnah, which sees a world at the center of which is the Temple, presided over by the priests, and a way of life dominated by the single issue of sanctification. In the Yerushalmi the· question of how to speed the coming of salvation is answered in a very different way. For the first time he re it is seen as a function of the people's adhering fully to the Torah, "in the model of the sage, who even now embodies the Torah" (p. 90). In the system of the Yerushalmi, the T orah is viewed as a model of salvation. The question facing the people standing 200 years beyond any active hope of a new Temple and looking upon a future with no apparent potential for salvation is how and when will things become different. The answer developed in the Yerushalmi is that redemption depends upon the observance by theJews ofthe Torah. Full and complete keeping of the law, in the model of the sage, will lead to salvation (p. 90). Thus, in the Yerushalmi, law is "drawn upward into the highest realm of Israelite consciousness. Keeping the law in the right way is represented as not merely right or expe-

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dient. It is the way to bring the Messiah, the son of David" (p. 90). In Neusner's terms (p. 97): In developing this perspective, the Yerushalmi presents a whole and cogent statement: Since Heaven was conceived in the model of earth, so that the analysis of traditions on earth corresponded to the discovery of the principles of creation, the fuH realization of the teachings of Torah on earth, in the life of Israel, would transform Israel into a replica of heaven on earth. We deal, therefore, with a doctrine of salvation in which the operative symbol, namely, Torah, and the determinative deed, namely, Torah learning, defined not only how to reach salvation but also the very nature of the salvation to be attained. The Yerushalmi thus differs radically from the Mishnah's understanding of what is important in the life of the Israelite people. For the Mishnah, what matters is sanctification, an ongoing process for which the Mishnah's framers envision no particular end and no particular conclusion at a set point in time. In keeping with this approach, in the view of these framers, no events of history, no matter how significant in changing the nature of Israelite existence-e.g., the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple-require or deserve special attention. Such events are important to the extent that they may necessitate a change in legal practices. But narrative his tory, the attempt to derive larger meaning from historical events, has no pi ace at all. The Yerushalmi's system of salvation, which, unlike the Mishnah's, looks forward to an end point in history and to a radical change in the nature of Israelite existence, leads to a wholly different view of and role for history. The Yerushalmi thus returns to the other way of dealing with history, found as weIl in the biblical histories, the prophets, and the apocalyptic writers, für whom events of history matte red deeply and therefore needed individually to be interpreted (p. 143). Like these earlier writers, the Yerushalmi "takes these events seriously and treats them as unique and remarkable. The memories proved real. The hopes evoked by the Mishnah's promise of sanctification of the world in static perfection did not. For they had to compete with the grief of an entire century of mourning" (p. 143). In the three categories of sage, Torah, and history, Neusner finds the key to understanding the meaning of the Yerushalmi as a whole document and to understanding the emergence of the Judaism that came to characterize the Yerushalmi's own time through the present. At base, Neusner sees the importance of the Yerushalmi in its forging the nexus between late antique Judaisms and the medieval period. It does this by creating a new image of the sage as holy man, a character with no precedent in Israelite history. For while

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that history provided evidence of diverse sorts of holy men, at no point had there emerged a class of people with the amalgam of traits that defined the rabbi: "charismatic clerk, savior-sage, lawyermagician and supernatural politician-bureaucrat" (p. 175). This model of holy man, created by the Yerushalmi, is not absent from any later period of Judaism; nor are any of the later holy menwith the exception, briefly, for the founders of Hasidism-out of touch with these earlier rabbis' books. The Yerushalmi thus created the religious authority who would stand at the foundation of all future Judaisms. Based upon an analysis of the rhetoric and substance of the Yerushalmi, Neusner's interpretation of this text sets the stage for all future study. It is now clear that, contrary to past views, the Yerushalmi is a carefully conceived and redacted book that portrays a number of themes central to the unfolding of Rabbinic Judaism. This recognition sets the stage for large scale analyses of the Yerushalmi's individual themes, including, but hardly limited to, those initially explored by Neusner: the Yerushalmi's theory of history, of the sage, and the meaning, for its authorship, of salvation. N eusner has pointed scholars in the direction such research should take, and his work on the Yerushalmi to date provides the exegetical foundation and methodological underpinnings on which such systematic analyses will rest. THE TALMUD OF BABYLONIA

Viewed as the magnum opus of Rabbinic Judaism in its formative age, since its completion the Babylonian Talmud (or Bavli) has been the primary focus of all Rabbinic scholarship. This is the case both within centers of Jewish learning, in which study of the Babylonian Talmud-referred to simply as "the Talmud"-comprises the definitive act of religious piety and dedication, and in circles of critical scholarship, where the Bavli has been seen as a primary key to understanding the history and meaning of Rabbinic Judaism. In countless commentaries and studies, the determination of the meaning of the Bavli's individual legal statements and arguments has taken center stage. 42 For two reasons this interpretation, carried 42 For a complete review and bibliography on the study of the Babylonian Talmud, see David Goodblatt, "The Babylonian Talmud," inJacob Neusner, ed., The Sturfy rif AncientJudaism. The Palestinian and Babylonian Talmuds (New York, 1981), pp. 120-199.

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out initially within the framework of classical Judaism, has constituted an act of religious significance. First, as the capstone document of the Rabbinic legal tradition, the Bavli comprises the primary source for all aspects of Jewish law and practice. Interpretation of the Bavli accordingly plays a central role in the determination of correct and validJewish law for the present as much as for the period in which the document was first compiled. Second, and equally important, interpretation of the Bavli's statements in comparison to parallel or seemingly contradictory mIes from across the Rabbinic literature has served as a context in which to identify overarching legal concepts, understood to connect all of the documents ofRabbinicJudaism. In these two ways, interpretation ofthe Bavli has served to identify a monolithic, encompassing Rabbinic Judaism. A second approach to the study of the Bavli has emerged in the past half century and has its roots in the issues defined by the first approach. The concern for the meaning of individual statements and arguments and the interest in the relationship between materials preserved in the Bavli and those found elsewhere in the Rabbinic literature leads naturally to the investigation of the Bavli's sources and the processes through which those sources were collected and organized so as to produce the text before us today. For the source critics, understanding the processes through which the Bavli was compiled does more than shed light on the way in which the Talmud was created. It additionally allows identification of what is understood to be the original meaning of the Talmud's constituent parts. This yields a more accurate description of the state of the law at any given time and a clear perspective on the ways in which, in the Bavli and the rest of the Rabbinie literature, laws developed within the Judaic system. The source critical approach has presented a serious challenge to hitherto accepted assumptions about the process by which the Talmud came into being. The traditional view, that the Bavli was compiled by Ashi and Ravina, two of the most prominent Talmudic masters in the fifth and early sixth centuries, has given way to a pIe thora of diverse theories. The earliest, represented first and foremost by Chanokh Albeck and Abraham Weiss, holds that the Bavli was redacted continuously through the period of its named masters. Recently, this approach has been replaced with a model in which the Bavli was edited at a single point, at the conclusion of the process of collection of attributed sayings. This editing occurred either in the final generation of named Talmudic masters, towards

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the end ofthe fifth century (David Weiss Halivni)43 or, according to more recent source critical theory, after the period of these rabbis entirely, in the sixth and seventh centuries, at the hands of individuals known as Saboraim. 44 Richard Kalmin 45 recently has argued for Saboraic redaction. At the heart of his argument is the assertion (contrary to Avinoam Cohen)46 that statements of named Talmudic masters never respond to comments made within the anonymous layer of the Talmud (the "stam"). This anonymous layer comprises the redactional framework that creates Talmudic discussions. It presents the joining language that brings otherwise discrete statements of named masters into a dialectical relationship. The fact that named masters do not respond to statements in this anonymous layer suggests to Kalmin that these individuals-even the latest, final generation of Amoraim-simply did not know the anonymous layer. If they did, he argues, they would have commented on it. The "stam"-the redactionallayer of Talmudic discourse-must, accordingly, derive from after the time of all named Talmudic rabbis. Kalmin additionally supports his argument by noting the apparently similar interests and concerns of early and later Amoraic authorities. The mode of questioning and the substantive interests of Talmudic masters do not change from generation to generation. This similarity reflects, he argues, the nature of the document's redaction. The Bavli's redactors had before them all of the statements of earlier authorities, collected over aperiod of centuries. They organized and formulated those statements in li ne with their own uniform agenda of issues and concerns. If, by contrast, redaction had occurred generation-by-generation, in conjunction with the creation of the legal statements themselves, the unique interests and concerns of each generation would have been pre-

4:1 On Halivni's method and approach, see the essays on his Meqorot uMesorot, in Jacob Neusner, ed., The Formation of the Babylonian Talmud: Studies in the Achievements of Late Nineteenth and T wentieth Century Historical and Literary-Critical Research (Leiden, 1970), pp. 134-173. 44 Note additionally the increasing number of studies dedicated to the function of specific formulary patterns in the creation of the Talmudic dialectic. See, e.g., Eliezer Segal, "The Use of the Formula ki hada' in the Citation of Cases in the Babylonian Talmud," in Hebrew Union College Annual, 1980, vol. 50, pp. 199-218; and Judith Hauptman, "An Alternative Solution to the Redundancy Associated with the Phrase Tanya Nami Hakhi," Proceedings qfAmerican Academy Jor Jewish Research, 1984, vol. 51, pp. 73-104. 4.> The Redaction of the Babylonian Talmud: Amoraic or Saboraic (Cincinnati, 1989). 46 Mar Bar Rau Ashi and His Literary Contribution (unpublished dissertation, Yeshiva University, 1980). See Kalmin's discussion, pp. 35-37.

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served and reflected in the redactional activity taking place in that same generation. Kalmin's conclusion, that the Bavli was redacted through a carefully designed program in line with the interests of a single group of editors, parallels the conclusions Jacob Neusner reached for the Talmud of the Land of Israel and other compositions of the Rabbinic corpus. In this regard we see the extent to which source critical work on the Bavli should lead to studies such as Neusner has carried out, which interpret documents as cogent wholes. At the same time, we should be clear of the extent to which Kalmin's work highlights the intrinsic limits of source criticism's attempts to prove very specific claims about the process of Talmudic redaction. For, at base, Kalmin's specific argument, that Talmudic redaction occurred after the final generation of cited authorities, is on a shaky foundation, depending upon unproven and largely unprovable assumptions. Kalmin assumes, first, that the authors of the Talmud's anonymous redactional layer would present their own named statements in a way that would distinguish them from the sayings of authorities who did not engage in editorial activities (pp. 3-4). He further claims that Talmudic masters would of necessity respond to all known Talmudic material, including that found in the anonymous redactionallayer. This me ans that if named masters do not respond to a saying, we can be assured that they do not know it. Both of these claims are conjectural. We need not imagine that the attributed statements of individuals who also served as redactors would appear differently from those of all other Talmudic authorities. Nor must we assurne that named masters should be represented by the Talmud as responding to every Talmudic statement that they knewY Both of these traits would themselves be determined as elements of the document's redactional program. These literary aspects of the Bavli point to wh at the Bavli's authorship did, but they do not help identity who that authorship was. Evidence marshaled by Kalmin, like Neusner, pointing to the unitary literary character of Talmudic argumentation strongly suggests that both Talmuds were edited by authorities who stood at the 47 Having made this claim, Kalmin must explain the reticence of the redactional layer regarding the latest named authorities, whose statements are seldom considered within the Talmud's redactional stratum. Within Kalmin's own schema, this would suggest that those late authorities were themselves involved in editorial activity and did not create an additional level of commentary on their own statements. Kalmin solves this problem by proposing that the anonymous editors consciously decided not to comment extensivelyon late statements (pp. 88-89).

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end of the process of collection of named statements. But this evidence does not conclusively prove that, in the case of the Bavli, these editors were Saboraim. Nor does it finally resolve the question of what editing or compiling of named statements might have occurred previously and been used by these final redactors. 48 Kalmin's study of the redaction of the Talmud stops short of posing a question that is central to all use of the Talmud as a historical document. While Kalmin argues that the Talmud reached its final form as the result of a redactional process that occurred after the period of the document's named authorities, he stops short of considering the impact of this process of redaction upon those sources. At issue is whether we can speak of the his tory ofTalmudic thinking at all or whether the imposition upon all prior sources of the single viewpoint of the Talmud's ultimate editors obscured the distinctive meaning and significance that the traditions they inherited had in their original contexts. The question at base is whether the Talmud in all events is to be viewed as the result of an agglutinative process or whether it is to be seen as a document authored by its editors, who used statements of earlier masters to make their own points and to promote their own program for Judaism. Best exemplified in the work ofJacob Neusner, treatment ofthe Talmud's substantive and rhetorical characteristics has increasingly shown that the latter perspective most accurately represents the nature of the Bavli. 49 The Talmud is best understood as the cogent product of a single voice and vision, a systematic presentation of the 48 The possibility of earlier levels of redaction has been raised by other recent studies that have revived an opposite theory of redaction, that Talmudie argumentation grew by accretion, with new layers of analysis being added generation-bygeneration upon existing layers. This is the view of Abraham Weiss, reflected in the work of Abraham Reisner, "The Character and Construction of a Contrived Sugya: Shevuot 3a-4a," in Alan J. Avery-Peck, ed., New Perspectives on Ancient Judaism. Volume 4. TM Literature rif Earl,y Rabbinie Judaism: Issues in Talmudic Redaction and Interpretation (Lanham, 1989), pp. 47-71. 49 Neusner makes this point in aseries of monographs, the results of which are summarized in his "The Talmud of Babylonia: System or Tradition. AReprise of Seven Monographs," in Hebrew Annual Review (vol. 13, 1991), pp. 89-106. The books covered are: The Bavli and its Sourees: The Qyestion rif Tradition in the Case rif Tractate Sukkah (Atlanta, 1987); Making the Classics in Judaism: Three Stages rif Literary Formation (Atlanta, 1990); Tradition as Selectivi!J: Scripture, Mishnah, Tosqia, and Midrash in the Talmud rif Babylonia. The Case rif Tractate Arakhin (Atlanta, 1990); Language as Taxonomy. The Rules fir Using Hebrew and Aramaie in the Babylonian Talmud (Atlanta, 1990); The Bavli that Might Have Been: The Tosifta's Theory rif Mishnah-Commentary Compared with that rif the Babylonian Talmud (Atlanta, 1990); The Rules rif Composition rifthe Talmud rif Babylonia. The Cogency rifthe Bavli's Composite (Atlanta, 1991). See as weil The Bavli's Unique Voice. A Systematic Comparison rif the Talmud rif Babylonia and the Talmud rif the Land rif Israel, 7 vols. (Atlanta, 1993).

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views of its own editors. This means that the important questions to ask of the document are quite other than those posed by source and redaction criticism. They are, rather, philosophical and religio-historical questions concerning the intentions of the Talmud's framers and the meaning of the document, viewed as a whole, within the religious world of sixth century Babylonian Jewry. One recent response to this line of questioning appears in David Kraemer' s Ihe Mind of the Talmud: An Intellectual History of the Bavli. 50 Kraemer argues that the central interest and focus of the Talmud is not the discerning of principles, the establishment of laws, or the expression some vision of truth. Rather, according to Kraemer, the Talmud-by which he means the anonymous voice that creates the Talmudic dialectic-is concerned only with argumentation itself. This is suggested by the Talmud's interest in extending, rather than limiting, the focus of disputes reported in earlier sources (p. 80),51 and it is indicated by the Talmudic authorship's creation of "fictional argumentation," which places in opposition inherited sources that originally were not in dis agreement at all (pp. 84, 87). According to Kraemer, the Bavli is best understood within the framework of recent studies on the indeterminability of truth. The Talmud is the creation of the perspective that what matters is not truth but the manipulation of inherited traditions according to a fixed set of rules and procedures that define a culture. Argumentation can occur only because the truth is not so self evident as to allow its being confidently asserted. The centrality of argumentation in the Talmud is particularly interesting because this contradicts the usual progression of ideas through which an argument leads to adetermination of truth, a process that normally renders the argument itself of only secondary significance (p. 104). As Kraemer puts it, the preservation of argumentation implies that "clear, undisputed truth is (at least often) unavailable at the end" (p. 103). What do we make of a document such as the Bavli, the editors of which worked explicitly at the preservation (or even creation) of argumentation? Kraemer holds that this characteristic defines a document equally concerned with sources of authority as with the ultimate reasonableness of what the authorities claim. 52 This is beNewYork, 1990. Note, however, that contrary examples are common. See, e.g., the discussion of Mishnah Besah 1:3, at Bavli Besah 9a, where Talmudic interpretations of the Mishnah's Houses-dispute argue that at issue was a much naITower question of practice than the Mishnah's general phrasing suggests. 52 In Kraemer's words (p. 104), "Ifthe opinion or interpretation is true, then, to state it bluntly, who cares who said it?" 50

51

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cause reference to authoritative traditions has a dual, even contradictory effect. The appeal to authority-figures shows that "truth" must compete with tradition. Invoking of sources of authority erodes the status of the "truths" that they provide, since, spoken by a named authority, these truths are not to be viewed entirely as the results of rational thinking. But the process works the other way as weH. When, as in the Talmud, statements made by authoritative sources are subjected to reasoned debate, the influence of the source of authority is itself eroded. Neither authority nor reason stands unaffected by the other (p. 107). Of further importance in Kraemer's construct is the extent to which argumentation takes place within a community of shared presumptions and the fact that deliberation about a named authority's viewpoint serves to lend credence and authority to that viewpoint. In light of these facts, Kraemer sees the Talmud as serving as a foundational document in the creation of a community and the establishment of Rabbinic authority. The result is that (p. 123-124): Pursuit of God's truth is, of course, a pious act. But the Rabbinic system claimed that the fuH truth, buried in the words of scripture, can never fuHy be uncovered. The best we can do is to seek the truth, to approach the truth. Since here, in the process, is where truth now resides, the process itself, and the study if that process, must be the ultimate act of piety.

This formulation allows Kraemer to account for the contradictory statements found within the Bavli (see pp. 127-128). It describes, in Kraemer's formulation, a system in which divine truth emerges from human play and reasoning, such that, in the final analysis, the "human encounter with the divine will" is "of equal value with the divine will itself" (p. 190). Kraemer's reading of the Bavli significantly advances our understanding of the ideology expressed by this text's rhetorical program. His conclusion, that Talmudic rhetoric renders "the human encounter with the divine will" to be "of equal value with the divine will itself" (p. 190), parallels recent interpretations of the ideology of the Mishnah. These focus upon the way in which the Mishnah's authorship empowered individuals to determine what is holy or secular and, in general, to shape a world of order and meaning. 53 At the same time, Kraemer's approach is weakened by his insistence upon seeing a radical distinction between the Talmud's anonymous redactionallayer and the Amoraic statements with which the Tal-

_,3 See the works cited above, note 7.

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mudic authorship worked. 54 As a result of distinguishing between these two elements of the Talmudic dialectic, Kraemer ignores the possibility that argumentation and citation of sources of authority functioned for the Talmud's authorship as normal and expected paths to discerning truth, revealed in the Amoraic statements themselves. The fact that the editors of the Bavli placed these inherited traditions within dialectical contexts does not show that they were not eoncerned with the specific content of these statements or that they did not envision a final truth standing behind their theoretical discussions of the law. Certainly, this authorship viewed as extremely significant the ability to manipulate inherited traditions. But their use of and focus upon these traditions may itself be symbolie of their ultimate desire to establish and promote what they saw as truth, expressed by the Tannaitic and Amoraic statements with which they worked. Another result of his distinguishing the redaetional from the named materials is Kraemer's failure to produce the type of evidence needed finally to prove his supposition that the Talmud is about argumentation alone. To prove this, he would need to show that, in the Talmud as a whole, the issues raised by opposing Amoraic statements normally are left unresolved. Insofar as recent studies have shown that the greatest portion of the Bavli comprises commentary on the Mishnah, he would need, speeifically, to demonstrate that the net result of the Talmud's discourse is to leave in question, rather than to resolve, questions of the meaning of Mishnaic passages. Kraemer's approach is the logical outcome of source critieism, which holds that the anonymous materials may evidence an approach and perspective totally distinct from that of the named sources, which have aseparate provenance and independent meaning. In this view, the anonymous redactionallayer indeed may be seen as independent of the rest, as a distinct voice concerned only with argumentation. But this approach ignores the extent to which the anonymous Talmudic redactors were cognizant of and fundamentally concerned with the content and meaning of the named

54 On this approach, see Kraemer's, "Composition and Meaning in the Bavli," in Proqftexts, 8 (1988), pp. 271-291. See also the foundational studies of H. Klein, "Gemara and Sebara," inJewish Q!wrter(y Review, 1947-48,38, pp. 67-91; "Gemara Quotations in Sebara," in Jewish OJlarter(y Review, 1952-53, 43, pp. 341-363; and "Some General Results of the Separation of Gemara from Sebara in the Babylonian Talmud," in Journal oJ Semitic Studies, 1958, 3, pp. 363-372. All are reprinted inJacob Neusner, ed., Origins oJJudaism, vol. X (New York and London, 1990), pp. 179-238.

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traditions they preserved. Examination of the redactional voice is a critical aspect of determining the meaning and purpose of the Bavli's authorship. But conclusions that do not also take into account the content of the materials preserved by and brought into juxtaposition by that redactional voice cannot accurately represent the meaning of the Talmud as a documentary whole. Much needs to be said about the Talmudic dialectic and the mode of discourse used by the Talmud's framers. But since he speaks only of this one aspect of the Talmudic voice, Kraemer has not proven that, for the Talmud's framers, process was all that mattered. 55 Even as we question Kraemer's conclusions, we must be struck by what the question he asks indicates about the state of the field of Talmudic studies in general. Kraemer wants to know about the character and significance of the Bavli seen whole, as a document that reflects the purposes of its own authorship. While the work is frustrated by the difficulty of moving behind the form and nature of the Talmudic dialectic to an appreciation of the substance presented in that dialectic, Kraemer's study illustrates the changing nature of the field, which is now turning from the inherited interest in exegesis to a concern for the meaning of this Rabbinic document seen as a literary whole. As we have come to expect, this is exactly the approach that informs Jacob Neusner's recent monographs on the Babylonian Talmud. 56 Based upon an evaluation of the formal integrity of the Bavli,57 Neusner has searched for signs of substantive coherence and worked to identifY the Bavli's framers' overall purpose. The answer emerges from severalliterary and substantive aspects of the text: 1) its framers' choice of organizational principles; 2) their use of antecedent documents; 3) the character of their intellectual

55 A second methodological problem concerns the dating of statements attributed to specific Talmudic authorities. This is an issue in particular in Kraemer's second chapter, which offers "A History of Amoraic Literary Expression." Kraemer expresses concerns over accepting at face value attributions to specific authorities, but claims that, while the attributions are questionable, it is at least likely that the statements derived from the same period or circle of disciples of the named master. This claim requires proof, and Kraemer hirns elf refers to his argument as circular (p. 24). See his "On the Reliability of Attributions in the Bavli," in Hebrew Union College Annual60 (1989), pp. 175-190, and cf., Jacob Neusner, 1he erushalmi. An Introduction, pp. 6-~. Neusner argues that, since so much of the Talmud is exegesis of the Mishnah, it exhibits an insufficient intellectual history of ideas to make doing a history of its unfolding interesting. 56 Neusner's work is founded in his production of a new translation of the Bavli, 1he Talmud qf Babylonia. An American Translation (Atlanta, 1984-1993), in seventy-five volumes. 57 See the works cited above, note 48.

r

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agendum; 4) the way in which they formulate their discussions so as to argue propositions; and 5) the actual substance of their legal and theological assertions. For Neusner, all of these aspects of the Bavli are highlighted by that which is unique about it in comparison to its si ster document, the Yerushalmi, which, in so many regards seems similar to the Bavli. At base the issue is, "Does the Bavli bear a message of its own? Or does the document essentially rest upon, and continue, the work of the Yerushalmi?"58 The two Talmuds share an exegetical program focusing upon the Mishnah, and this focus yields very similar appearing documents (p. 63). But despite this similarity of program and purpose, Neusner argues that the Bavli's authors carry out their work in their own way, that they responded to interests "shaped in their distinct context and framework" (p. 75). The connection between the documents, this is to say, derives from their common dependence upon the Mishnah. But the rhetorical and literary program of the Bavli owes alm ost nothing to that of the Yerushalmi or to any other antecedent document. The Bavli differs from the Yerushalmi in that, while both are devoted to Mishnah-exegesis, in the Bavli alone sizable collections of materials are built around a framework deriving from other than the evaluation of the Mishnah. 59 In particular, the authors of the Bavli build large-scale literary and substantive units around the interpretation of Scripture. This means that in many cases in the Bavli, Scripture functions in the same way that, in the rest of the document, the Mishnah functions. Comparably, the Bavli much more frequently than the Yerushalmi presents compositions organized to discuss a specific theme, e.g., concerning a well-established virtue or value (p. 113). In all, for the Bavli's redactors, Scripture, as much as the Mishnah, was accepted as a foundational document that facilitated the making of their points. The result, Neusner argues, was "to form a synthesis of the two available components of the canon, the Mishnah and Scripture" (p. 114). The second difference Neusner identifies between the Bavli and Yerushalmi concerns rhetoric, by which Neusner means the manner in which stories found in earlier documents were reworked and expanded for inclusion in the Bavli. He sees a consistent pattern in which (p. 175): \8 Judaism: The Classical Statement. The Evidence of the Bavli (Chicago, 1986), p. 74. In the following, bracketed page references refer to this book. .\9 The numbers Neusner gives are, in the Yerushalmi, 5.9% of Sotah, .7% of Sukkah, and 6.5% of Sanhedrin; for the Bavli: 32.1 % of Sotah, 2.9% in Sukkah, and 35.3% in Sanhedrin.

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The Bavli's writers made certain that the conclusions implied earlier were made explicit. The stories earlier told in bare-bones fashion now were fuHy exposed in rich detail All things in their hands reached ample and complete expression. The task of completing the inherited corpus and giving it its definitive form demanded provision of that last, missing but ineluctable detail. It required patient polishing and securely fastening upon the pedestal the tableaux and icons made of words that had co me down from earlier components of that canon. To support this claim, Neusner provides a number of examples illustrating the relationship between the Bavli and a range of other documents. 60 The sampie shows is that, when a story appears in a number of sourees, the Bavli always presents the most developed version. It almost always stands at the end of the developmental line, presenting the most sophisticated versions of stories found as weH in earlier Rabbinie compilations. Accordingly, Neusner argues (pp. 191-192): The Bavli's authors imposed the mark of their own minds upon received materials. They did so in such a way as to revise everything that had come before. They placed upon the whole heritage of the past the indelible and distinct, unmistakable stamp of their own minds .... [T]he Bavli is the product not of servility to the past or of dogmatism in the present but of an exceptionaHy critical, autonomous rationalism and an utterly independent spirit. This claim regarding the distinctiveness of the Bavli is proven by isolating the Talmud's unique ideology. What finaHy represents the Bavli as a co gent statement that moves beyond all previous documents of Rabbinie Judaism is its systematic presentation of a fuHy articulated Rabbinie Judaism, comprising Torah as symbol, the sage as the ideal type, and the dual Torah as the definitive holy book. This system, which characterized Judaism from the time of the Bavli and on, emerged whole only in the Bavli; it was not expressed in any earlier Rabbinie document. What makes the Bav1i unique, then, is its reference to the complete world of Rabbinie Judaism as it flourished from the Bavli's time and on. This is represented in the conception of Torah not as a specific book but as Rabbinie knowledge and learning in general, expressed not only in what rabbis te ach but in how they behave, the words they use, their daily actions. Further, as noted above, the

{iO Neusner is conscious of the precariousness of the claim based upon such a sampling (p. 180): "A single example does not constitute a proof, of course. I cannot say precisely what sort of sampie of the whole would be required to establish the simple but critical claim at hand concerning the Bavli's editorial policies and program."

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Bavli's framers moved beyond the system of the Yerushalmi in particular through the creation of units of discourse focused upon Scripture. They thus exploited both aspects of Torah, which the Yerushalmi's framers had neglected. They (p. 223): found a way to surpass all that had gone before. That is to say, by the extensive res ort to units of discourse providing an exegesis of Scripture, the Bavli's framers made provision for ample expression of the system, through the reading of its values into the texts of Scripture. In omitting such units of discourse, the Yerushalmi's authors lost the opportunity to speIl out in a whole and complete way the larger system ofJudaism that both Talmuds portray.

In this interpretation, the Bavli represents the summa of Rabbinic thinking because, in ways not accomplished by the other Talmud, it solved the problem of the Mishnah. Like the Yerushalmi, it viewed the Mishnah as the constitution ofJudaism, placing it at the center of its thematic program. But unlike the Yerushalmi-and unlike the compilations of interpretations of Scripture that existed already in the Bavli's time, most of which ignored the Mishnah-alongside its Mishnah-interpretation, the Bavli provided ample focus upon Scripture and thus proved the unity of Rabbinic teaching with Scripture's presentation of Judaism. The contribution of the Bavli, which marks it as the highest point in the formulation of Rabbinic Judaism, is, in Neusner's view, the way in which it unites the dual Torah, bringing under a single rubric Mishnah and Scripture as the defining documents of Judaic law and theology. At the end, we must be careful to emphasize exactly what Neusner has, and has not, shown. His final conclusions highlight that which is unique about the Bavli. But-perhaps equally important for a characterization of the unfolding of Rabbinic Judaismhis analysis suggests the extent to which the Bavli and Yerushalmi are the same. Neusner finds, first, that in their interpretation of the Mishnah and Scripture (p. 232), the Yerushalmi and Bavli do roughly the same things, responding to the same documents in the same ways.61 Comparably, his evaluation shows that the two documents make use of the same rhetorical forms. In analyzing the contributions of a number of early Rabbinic documents to the understanding of the lives of named Rabbinic authorities, Neusner again finds similarity between the Yerushalmi and Bavli. Both Talmuds differ from earlier Rabbinic collections in the way in

61

ture.

The Bavli difTers only in that it presents much more interpretation of Scrip-

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which their authorships present biographical materials about named sages. 62 Whi1e Neusner appears correct in his assessment of the unique synthesis that emerges in the work of the Bavli's authorship, we must therefore be clear of the extent to which this synthesis stands not in opposition to but in continuity with the developing stream of RabbinicJudaism evidenced already by the Yerushalmi. We must state clearly what we mean when we speak of Rabbinic texts as independent statements of their own particular authorships. Certainly the potential for a radical break from other Rabbinic documents-seen as systems-existed. We have seen, for instance, such a radical shift in ways of looking at the world between the Mishnah and the Yerushalmi. But, at the same time, even the isolation of wh at is unique to the world view of each document's authorship can, and ultimately must, lead to a larger picture not simply of disjointed and distinctive systems but of statements that, in each period and circumstance, reshaped an inherited message according to the needs of a specific group of Rabbinic authorities. The Bavli, in Neusner's own characterization, represents the highest point in the formulation of Rabbinic Judaism, not a radically independent statement, but the perfect expression of a Judaism that, in the period of the Bavli's own authorship, could powerfully respond to the circumstances and needs of the Jewish people. CONCLUSIONS

The central question in recent scholarship on Rabbinic legal texts concerns how to conceive of the Rabbinic documents as objects of study. Are these texts to be read primarily as agglutinations of centuries of independent legal statements, or are they books in areal sense, the reasoned and purposeful creations of their redactors and editors? Recent study of the Mishnah, Tosefta, and the Talmuds of the Land of Israel and Babylonia increasingly· points to this latter understanding as the most fruitful avenue for research. Examination ofthe texts' redactional and ideational traits suggests the extent to which their authorships crafted inherited traditions into carefully

62 On an additional similarity between the Bavli and Yerushalmi, see Martin Jaffee, "The Babylonian Appropriation of the Talmud Yerushalmi: Redactional Studies in the Horayot Tractates," in Alan J. Avery-Peck, ed., New Perspectives on Ancient Judaism. Vol. 4. 7he Literature qf Early Rabbinie Judaism: Issues in Talmudic Redaction and Interpretation (Lanham, 1989), pp. 3-27. Jaffee argues that, in Tractate Horayot, the Yerushalmi and Bavli dedicate similar amounts of space and interest to the same issues, even where they appear to treat those issues differently.

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articulated visions of Judaism. Scholars increasingly have recognized that only within their distinct documentary settings do the inherited statements of which Rabbinic books are composed have meaning and significance. Contrary to previous understandings, the individual Rabbinic statements do not together represent a monolithic Judaism that encompasses all Rabbinic discourse in all documents of all periods. 63 In light of this understanding, scholars must now increasingly focus upon the message and impact of the documents of the Rabbinic corpus seen as redacted wholes. The primary concern is determination of the meaning these documents had for those who created them and for those who, in the time of their original propagation, read them against the events of their own day. But if the proper focus of scholarship is clear, so too must be the methodological and conceptual issues that this scholarship faces. Two interrelated problems must be confronted. First, the anonymous authorships of Rabbinic documents did not make explicit the philosophical points they wished to make. Nor did they formulate their work in ways that made obvious their interpretations of or theological responses to the events of their own day. Especially in the case of the Mishnah and T osefta, they consciously hid all signs of outside influence, crafting works that speak with no historical voice at all. Arguments regarding a Rabbinic authorship's purpose accordingly must depend upon judgments of plausibility and can never be finally proven nor, far that matter, falsified. Related to this first difficulty, second, is a conceptual issue that arises when legal documents are read as reflections of the philosophical outlooks or historical situations of their redactors. Such readings assume that legal thinking should be understood first and foremost as areaction to the life situation of the legislator. But scholars writing on other periods and other legal systems increasingly have noted that "the true causes of legal evolution" can often be discovered more easily "in the legal tradition itself than in the broader (and more remote) social and economic context in which a legal system evolves."64 This has important implications for the

fi3 On this issue, see Jacob Neusner, Are There Realfy Tannaitic Parallels to the Gospels? A RifUtation oJ Morton Smith (Atlanta, 1993). 64 Shael Herman, in a review of Alan Watson, The Making oJ the Civil Law, in Israel Law Review, vol. 18, nos. 3-4 (1983), p. 491. On this issue as a whole as it applies to the study of the Mishnah, see Alan Avery-Peck, "Lawand Society in Early Judaism: Legal Evolution in the Mishnaic Division of Agriculture," inJacob Neusner, et. al., eds., New Perspectives on Ancient Judaism, vol. 1 (Lanham, 1987), pp. 67-87.

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analysis of Rabbinic legal initiatives. At the he art of the study of these texts must stand the determination of the extent to which legal and ideational developments are motivated by an authorship's response to its own particular situation, on the one hand, or by patterns of evolution and growth expected within an evolving legal systems, on the other. In light of these concerns, analysis of the Rabbinic legal corpus must proceed along two interrelated lines of inquiry. The first focus of analysis must be the ways in which each document responds to the internal needs of the evolvingJudaic legal system. This requires a clear picture of the relationship between the documents of the Rabbinic corpus. Only on this foundation can the distinctive way in which each document spoke to the very real world of its authorship be determined. The Rabbinic texts thus will teach first about the cognitive world of the rabbis, as that world is revealed in the specific concerns they address and in the legal theories they develop. On the basis of this understanding their work can be viewed against the backdrop of the historical setting in which it took place. In approaching these issues, contemporary sc hol ars are in a better position than any previous generation. The ideological barriers that buttressed tradition al understandings of the Rabbinic literature have largely collapsed. At the same time, several decades of critical exegesis and inquiries into the nature of the Rabbinic documents' rhetoric and message have provided the descriptions of the texts and their cantent upan which future analytical study can depend. Scholars will now continue to benefit from recognition of the Rabbinic documents as carefully articulated expressions of their authorship's distinctive understandings of the nature of covenant and the relationship between the people of Israel and God.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY OF WORKS CITED

Avery-Peck, Alan, 'judaism without the Temple: The Mishnah," in Attridge, Harold, and Gohei Hata, eds., Eusebius, Christianiry, and Judaism (Detroit, 1992), pp. 409-43l. "Lawand Society in Early Judaism: Legal Evolution in the Mishnaic Division of Agriculture," in Neusner, Jacob, et. al. , eds., New Perspectives on Ancient Judaism, vol. 1 (Lanham, 1987), pp. 67-87. Mishnah's Division rif Agriculture: A History and Theology rif Seder Zeraim (Chico, 1985). [Avery-] Peck, Alan, The Priestly Gift in Mishnah: A Stuc1y rif Tractate T erumot (Chico, 1981). Bokser, Baruch, "An Annotated Bibliographical Guide to the Study of the Palestinian Talmud," in Aujsteig und Niedergang der Roinischen Welt. 11 (Berlin and New York, 1929), pp. 139-256; reprinted in Neusner, Jacob, ed., The Stuc1y rif Ancient Judaism. Volume II. The Palestinian and Babylonian Talmuds (Adanta, 1992). Brooks, Roger, Support Jor the Poor in the Mishnaic Lau; rif Agriculture: Tractate Peah (Chico, 1983). Cohen, Avinoam, Mar Bar Rav Ashi and His Literary Contribution (unpublished dissertation, Yeshiva University, 1980). Cohen, Boaz, Mishnah and Tostjta: A Comparative Stuc1y, Part I. Shabbat (New York, 1935). Cohen, Shaye, From the Maccabees to the Mishnah (Philadelphia, 1987). Eilberg-Schwartz, Howard, The Human Will in Judaism: The Mishnah's Philosophy rif Intention (Adanta, 1986). Elman, Yaakov, Authoriry and Tradition: Tostjtan Beraitot in Talmudic Babylonia (New York, 1992). Evans, Craig, "Mishna and Messiah 'In Context.' Some Comments on Jacob Neusner's Proposal," in Journal rif Biblical Literature, 112:2, Summer 1993, pp. 267-289. FIesher, Paul V.M., Oxen, Women or Citizens? Slaves in the System rifthe Mishnah (Adanta, 1988). Goodblatt, David, "The Baby10nian Talmud," in Aujsteig und Niedergang der Roinischen Welt. II (Berlin and New York, 1929), pp. 257-336; reprinted in Neusner, Jacob, ed., The Stuc1y rif Ancient Judaism. The Palestinian and Babyionian Talmuds (New York, 1981), pp. 120-199. Green, William S., "What's in a Name? The Problematic of Rabbinie 'Bibliography'," in Green, W.S., ed., Approaches to Ancient Judaism: Theory and Practice (Missoula, 1978), pp. 77-96. Haas, Peter, A History rif the Mishnaic Law rif Agriculture: Tractate Maaser Sheni (Chico, 1980). Halevy, I.H., Dorot HaRishonim II. Amoraic Period (Frankfurt a.M., 1901). Hauptman, Judith, "An Alternative Solution to the Redundancy Associated with the Phrase Tanya Nami Hakhi," Proceedings rif American Academy Jor Jewish Research, 1984, vol. 51, pp. 73-104. Herman, Shael, Review of Watson, Alan, The Making rif the Civil Law, in Israel Law Review, vol. 18, nos.·3-4 (1983), p. 490-503. Jaffee, Martin, "The Babylonian Appropriation of the Talmud Yerushalmi: Redactional Studies in the Horayot Tractates," in Avery-Peck, Alan]., ed., New Perspectives on Ancient Judaism. Vol. 4. The Literature rif

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Earry Rabbinic Judaism: Issues in Talmudic Redaction and Interpretation (Lanham, 1989), pp. 3-27. Mishnah's Theology qf Tithing: A Study qf Tractate Maaserot (Chico, 1981). Kalmin, Richard, The Redaction qf the Babylonian Talmud: Amoraic or Saboraic (Cincinnati, 1989). Klein, Hyman, "Gemara and Sebara," in Jewish Qyarterry Review, 1947-48, 38, pp. 67-91; reprinted in Neusner,Jacob, ed., Origins qfJudaism, vol. X (New York and London, 1990), pp. 179-203. "Gemara Quotations in Sebara," in Jewish Qyarterry Review, 1952-53, 43, pp. 341-363; reprinted in Neusner, Jacob, ed., Origins qf Judaism, vol. X (New York and London, 1990), pp. 205-227. "Some General Results of the Separation of Gemara from Sebara in the Babylonian Talmud," in Journal qf Semitic Studies, 1958, 3, pp. 363372; reprinted in Neusner, Jacob, ed., Origins qf Judaism, vol. X (New York and London, 1990), pp. 229-238. Kraemer, David, "Composition and Meaning in the Bavli," in Proqflexts, 8 (1988), pp. 271-291. "On the Reliability of Attributions in the Bavli," in Hebrew Union College Annual 60 (1989), pp. 175-190. The Mind qf the Talmud: An Intellectual History qf the Bavli (New York, 1990). Lieberman, Saul, ed., The Tosifia According to Codex Vienna with Variantsfrom Codex Eifurt, Genizah MSS. and Editio Princeps, 4 vols. (New York, 19551973). Tosifia Ki-Fshuta: A Comprehensive Commentary on the Tosifia (New York, 1955-1973). Mandelbaum, Irving, A History qf the Mishnaic Law qf Agriculture: Kilayim (Chico, 1982). Moore, George Foot, Judaism in the First Centuries qf the Christian Era: The Age qf the Tannaim (Cambridge, 1927-1930, and 1ater editions). Neusner, Jacob, Are There Realry Tannaitic Paralleis to the Gospels? A Rifutation qf Morton Smith (Atlanta, 1993). The Bavli and its Sources: The Qyestion qf Tradition in the Case qf Tractate Sukkah (Atlanta, 1987). The Bavli that Might Have Been: The Tosifia's Theory qf Mishnah-Commentary Compared with that qf the Babylonian Talmud (Atlanta, 1990). The Bavli's Unique Voice. A ~stematic Comparison qf the Talmud qf Babylonia and the Talmud qf the Land qf Israel, 7 vols. (Atlanta, 1993). Economics qf the Mishnah (Chicago, 1990). The Evidence qf the Mishnah (Chicago, 1981; second edition: Atlanta, 1988). ed., The Formation qf the Babylonian Talmud: Studies in the Achievements qf Late Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Historical and Literary-Critical Research (Leiden, 1970). A History qf the Mishnaic Law qf Appointed Times, 5 vols. (Leiden, 1981). A History qf the Mishnaic Law qf Damages, 4 vols. (Leiden, 1982). A History qf the Mishnaic Law qf Hory Things, 4 vols. (Leiden, 1978-79). A History qf the Mishnaic Law qf Purities, 22 vols. (Leiden, 1974-77). A History qf the Mishnaic Law qf Women, 5 vols. (Leiden, 1979-80). Judaism in Sociery: The Evidence qf the Yerushalmi. Toward the Natural History qf aReligion. (Chicago, 1983; second printing, Atlanta, 1991). Judaism: The Classical Statement. The Evidence qf the Bavli (Chicago, 1986).

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Judaism as Philosophy: 7he Method and Message qf the Mishnah (Columbia, 1991 ). Language as T axonomy. 7he Rufes fir Using Hebrew and Aramaie in the Babylonian Talmud (Atlanta, 1990). Making the Classics in Judaism: 7hree Stages qf Literary Formation (Atlanta, 1990). "The Mishnah in Philosophical Context and Out of Canonical Bounds," in Journal qf Biblical Literature, 112:2, summer 1993, pp. 291304. ed., 7he Modem Study qf the Mishnah (Leiden, 1973). 7he Philosophical Mishnah, 4 vols. (Atlanta, 1988-1989). Rabbinie Political 7heory: Religion and Politics in the Mishnah (Chicago, 1991 ). 7he Rules qf Composition qf the Talmud qfBabylonia. 7he Cogency qf the Bavli's Composite (Atlanta, 1991). ed., 7he Study qf Ancient Judaism (New York, 1981; reprint: Atlanta, 1992). 7he Talmud qf Babylonia. An American Translation (Atlanta, 1984-1993), 75 volumes. "The Talmud of Babylonia: System or Tradition. AReprise of Seven Monographs," in Hebrew Annual Review (vol. 13, 1991), pp. 89-106. 7he Talmud qf the Land qf Israel. A Preliminary Translation and Explanation (Chicago, 1982-1993). 7he Tosifia, 6 vol. (Hoboken, 1977-1986). Tradition as Selectiviry: Scripture, Mishnah, Tosifia, and Midrasft in the Talmud qf Babylonia. 7he Case qf Tractate Arakhin (Atlanta, 1990). 7he Tosifia. An Introduction (Atlanta, 1992). 7he Yerushalmi. An Introduction (Northva1e, 1993). Newman, Louis, 7he Sanctiry qf the Seventh Year: A Study qf Mishnah Tractate Shebiit (Chico, 1983). Rajak, Tessa, Review of Safrai, Shmuel, ed., 7he Literature qf the Sages in Journal qfJewish Studies, Spring, 1990, vol. XLI, No. 1, pp. 132-133. Reisner, Abraham, "The Character and Construction of a Contrived Sugya: Shevuot 3a-4a," in Avery-Peck, Alan]., ed., New Perspectives on Ancient Judaism. Volume 4. 7he Literature qf Early Rabbinie Judaism: Issues in Talmudic Redaction and Interpretation (Lanham, 1989), pp. 47-71. Safrai, Shmuel, ed., 7he Literature qf the Sages. First Part: Oral Tora, Halakha, Mishna, Tosifia, Talmud, External Tractates (Philadelphia, 1987). Sanders, E.P., Jewish Law jrom Jesus to the Mishnah (London, 1990). Sarason, Richard, A History qf the Mishnaic Law qf Agriculture: A Study qf Tractate Demai (Leiden, 1979). Schiffman, Lawrence, From Text to Tradition. A History qf Second Temple and Rabbinie Judaism (New Jersey, 1991). 7he Halakhah at Qymran (Leiden, 1975). Segal, Eliezer, "The Use of the Formula ki hada' in the Citation of Cases in the Babylonian Talmud," in Hebrew Union College Annual, 1980, vol. 50, pp. 199-218. Strack, Hermann, Introduction to the Talmud and the Midrash (first English edition, Philadelphia, 1931). Urbach, Ephraim, 7he Sages: 7heir Concepts and Beliifs (Jerusalem, 1975). Wegner, Judith, Chattel or Person? 7he Status qf Women in the Mishnah (New York, 1988).

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Zahavy, Tzvee, The Mishnaic Law qf Blessings and Prayers: Tractate Berakhot (Atlanta, 1987). Zlotnick, Dov, The Iran Pilla~Mishnah: Redaction, Form, and Intmt Uerusalern, 1988). Zuckermandel, Moses S., Tosifia, Based on the Erfort and Vienna Codices, with Paralleis and Variants. (Tri er, 1881-82; revised edition with supplement by Saul Lieberman: Jerusalem, 1970).

RABBINIC MIDRASH Gary G. Porton (University of Illinois) I INTRODUCTION

The present essay is an introduction to rabbinic midrash and to the modern study of that material; that is, it discusses a particular type of literature produced by a specific group of J ews who flourished from the first through the seventh centuries of the common era and the work of the more interesting contemporary scholars on those writings. 1 In the traditional texts of Judaism, midrash carries three different technical meanings: 1) It signifies biblical interpretations; 2) it designates the process of that interpretation; and 3) it describes the collections of those interpretations. In all instances, the defining characteristic of midrash is the overt connection of the rabbinic statement to a biblical text. Therefore, midrash is "a type of literature, oral or written, which stands in direct relationship to a fixed, canonical text, considered to be the authoritative and the revealed word of God by the midrashist and his audience, and in which this canonical text is explicitly cited or clearly alluded to." As we shall see below, examples of rabbinic midrash appear in collections solely devoted to that activity and in texts with much broader interests, such as the talmuds. Further, we shall note that midrash is an I There are numerous bibliographies on midrash; unfortunately, they become dated as soon as they are published. See, for example, H.L. Strack and G. Stemberger, Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash, trans., Markus Bockmuehl (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1991), 254-353. John T. Townsend, "Rabbinic Sources," The Study qf ]udaism: Bibliographical Essays, ed., Jacob Neusner (New York: KTAV, 1972), 64-77. Lee Haas, "Bibliography on Midrash," The Study qf Ancient ]udaism Volume 1: Mishnah, Midrash, Siddur, ed.,Jacob Neusner (New York: KTAV, 1981), 93-103. Second Printing (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992). Emil Schürer, The History qf the ]ewish People in the Age qf ]esus Christ (175 B.C.-A.D. 135). A New English Version Revised and Edited by Geza Vermes and Fergus Millar (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1973), I, 90-99. Richard S. Sarason, "A Select Bibliography on Scholarship on Midrashic Literature," Studies in Aggadah, Targum and ]ewish Liturgy in Memory qf ]oseph Heinemann, eds., Jakob J. Petuchowski and Ezra Fleischer (Jerusalern: The Magnes Press, 1981), 71-73.John T. Townsend, "Minor Midrashim," Bibliographical Essays in Medieval ]ewish Studies: The Study qf ]udaism Volume II (New York: KTAV, 1976),331-392.

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integral part of the rabbinic enterprise; it does not represent a unique mind-set or endeavor. The distinguishing trait of the rabbis in late antiquity was their knowledge; they laid claim to a body of information which was unavailable to the rest of the J ewish population. The rabbis taught that masheh rabbenu, Moses our rabbi, had received a dual revelation on Mount Sinai. The Written Torah, the first five books of the Hebrew Bible-Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy-was accessible to all Jews. All they had to do was to open a Torah scroll or to hear it read in the synagogues. However, the Oral Torah, the second element of the revelation at Sinai, was in the possession of the rabbis alone. Each rabbi had received the Oral Torah from his teacher, who had received it from his teacher, and so forth. The unbroken chain stretched back from the rabbis of late antiquity to the first rabbi, Moses, who had conversed with God face to face and who had received the total revelation, contained in both torahs, from YHWH. The Written Torah together with rest of the books of Hebrew Bible stand at the center of rabbinic Judaism. The T aNaKh- Tarah, Nevi'im (Prophets), Ketuvim (Writings)-provides the history, mythology, and symbols upon which and from which the rabbis of late antiquity and subsequent generations constructed what we now call Judaism. And, it is the Oral Torah which interpreted that history, developed the mythology, and explained the symbols, so that the Written Torah which had been revealed in the distant past could serve as the foundation upon which Judaism could be constructed in the present age. The Written Torah was the perfect revelation from the perfect Deity. It was viewed as a faultless document which accurately reflected God's will and expectations for human beings. It theory, at least, it contained all humans needed to know to live their lives in accordance to the Divine Plan. Even though the Written Torah was not always clear or consistent, the Oral Torah gave it clarity, explained its enigmas, solved its contradictions, filled in its lacunas, and defined how its teachings were to be put into practice by theJews oflate antiquity. While some attempts were made during the first two and a half centuries of the common era, found especially in Mishnah, the earliest document produced by the rabbis, to create a system of thought and action whose connections to the Written Torah were tenuous, or at least covert, these soon were replaced by traditions, teachings, and stories whose ties to and supposed or real derivations from the Written Torah were made clear and explicit. In some cases, pericopae were taken directly from Mishnah and recast in terms of the specific biblical passages from

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which they were imagined to have been derived. The practice of connecting what the rabbis taught and thought to specific sections from the Hebrew Bible moves us into the realm of midrash. In one sense, midrash is that category of literature in which the rabbis explicitly and consciously connected the Oral Torah to the Written Torah. THE WORD MIDRASH

The noun "midrash" is derived from a Hebrew verb which me ans "to inquire" or "to investigate." In the Bible, God or a human king are the usual objects of the inquiry or investigation. Ezra 7: 10, however, provides the earliest reference to a written text's being the object of examination, for it states that Ezra dedicated hirnself to investigate the torah of YHWH. By the rabbinic period, the object of midrashic activity is almost exclusively the premier text of Judaism, the Hebrew Bible. INNER-BIBLICAL EXEGESIS

The interpretation of the Hebrew Bible has a long history in the Israelite and Jewish communities, so that rabbinic midrash is merely one aspect of a much larger phenomenon. Interpretation of biblical texts begins within the Hebrew Bible itself; scholars have pointed to Deuteronomy as a re-reading of Exodus and Numbers, to the titles of some of the Psalms as commentaries on those Psalms, to Chronicles as an exegetical rendering of Kings, and the like. However, researchers have also argued that inner-biblical exegeses are different from those which stand outside of the biblical corpus itself. Sibley Towner has written that "the Old Testament is simply not engaged in commenting upon itself in the way in which a literature does when it looks back upon sacred and canonical writings of the past." Michael Fishbane also notes that inner-biblical and nonbiblical exegeses are fundamentally different from each other, if only because in the latter the distinction between the biblical text and its interpretation are easily discernible. Thus, rabbinic midrash is formally and stylistically different from inner-biblical exegesis. RETELLING THE BIBLE

The rabbis did not attempt to rewrite systematically the biblical narrative. Rabbinic midrashic texts, like all other rabbinie documents, are not extended, unified documents composed by one au-

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thor at one time; rather, they are coHections of a variety of views and interpretations compiled over a number of years and cast in a limited number of literary forms, although each text does exhibit its own agenda and purposes. Thus, the rabbis produced nothing comparable to 7he Genesis Apocryphon, Jubilees, or the Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum. These anonymous, sustained retellings of the biblical narratives stand in sharp contrast to the coHections of disparate rabbinie comments on individual letters, verses, or seetions of the Bible which are the heart of the earlier rabbinie exegetical texts or from the later rabbinie essays built upon the themes of the holidays and the special Sabbaths which consist of a variety of related biblical texts woven together into a literary whole. The rabbis did not set out to reteH the biblical story as a coherent and connected narration; rather, they looked at individual elements of the narratives and legal seetions in order to determine the meaning of each part, bit by bit, in accord with the various agenda they had set for themselves. APOCALYPTIC MmRAsH

For the most part, rabbinie texts lack a clear apocalyticism. The apocalyptic assumptions which stand behind the pesharim found at Qumran, a non-rabbinic example of early Jewish biblical interpretation, figure in only a few of the rabbinie passages. The attempts to relate excerpts from the prophets to specific events in the covenantors' history find even fewer parallels in the rabbinie texts. In fact, the Qumran Community's selection of the prophetie books as the focus of their exegetical activity is decidedly different from the earliest rabbis' decision to exegete the Torah-Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy-and to turn to the other books of the Bible primarily in an attempt to demonstrate the internal consistency and integrity of the whole Hebrew Bible by establishing that one should read the prophetie books, the writings, and the first five books of the Bible in terms of one another. The rabbis had no doubt that the TaNaKh spoke to them and about them, but they placed their early interest in the legal passages of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy and in the narratives of Genesis, not in the later historieal, prophetie, or hagiographal books. RENEE BLOCH AND niE MODERN STUDY OF MmRAsH

In 1950, Renee Bloch published her article "Midrash" in the Supplement au Dictionnaire de la Bible;" it was translated into English in 1978.

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The article is important for many reasons, not the least of which is that it urged scholars to appreciate the phenomenon of midrash and to recognize that it had its origins in the Hebrew Bible. Furthermore, she stressed the necessary relationship of midrash to the Hebrew Bible, writing, "Midrash cannot occur outside of Israel because it presupposes faith in the revelation which is recorded in the holy books." The Bible as a whole was God's word, and it had to be understood completely. The goal of the study of the Bible was "to define the lessons for faith and for the religious way of life contained in the biblical text." Midrash, in Bloch's phrase, was an "actualization" of Scripture. Bloch's definition relies too much on the supposed function of midrash, and she most likely over-stressed the role that the lectionary cyde of the reading of the T orah in the synagogue had in the formation of midrash. However, her focus on placing rabbinie midrash in a long line of development beginning with Bible and her emphasis on the midrashists' assumptions concerning the divine nature of the Bible and the need for it to be comprehended in its entirety were important for subsequent scholars of midrash. Furthermore, her recognition that translations such as the Septuagint and the targumin should be viewed as a type of midrash also formed the basis of much later scholarly opinion. Bloch's work laid the foundation for a generation of scholars who worked on rabbinie midrash, most notably Geza Vermes and Roger LeDeaut. GARY PORTON AND A NEW DEFINITION OF RABBINIC MIDRASH

"Midrash: Palestinian Jews and the Hebrew Bible in the GrecoRoman Period" by Gary G. Porton proposes adefinition of midrash which both deals with the larger phenomenon and which distinguishes the rabbis' activities from other Jewish biblical interpretations. That definition, which appears above in the opening paragraph, stresses the overt connection between the interpretation and the biblical text, rejecting those who wish to claim that anything and everything whichJews have written and done is a form of midrash. Porton rejects this position because he brings into doubt the claim that after Ezra the Bible was the constitution or foundational document of post-biblical Judaism in the sense that everything had to be tied to or derived from the biblical text. He argues that until the Maccabean period, the priests were the sole legitimate authority for determining YHWH's will and commands. It was only after the priesthood's legitimacy was undermined by the Maccabean rulers and the Temple was destroyed by the Romans

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that the Bible became the central focus of Jewish thought. The earliest evidence we have for the regular weekly reading of the Torah comes from around the turn of the eras, so that the centrality of the Torah as measured by its public reading cannot have been much earlier. In order to differentiate the rabbis' endeavors from the other exegetical activities in which J ews engaged, Porton lists the following defining traits of rabbinie midrash: I) The rabbinie texts are collections of independent units. The sequential arrangement of the rabbis' midrashic statements which correspond to the biblical sequence are the work of the editors. 2) The rabbinie collections frequently offer more than one interpretation of averse, word, or passage. 3) A large number of rabbinie exegetical comments are assigned to named sages. 4) The rabbinie commentary may be directly connected to the biblical unit or it may be part of a dialogue, a story, or an extended soliloquy. 5) Rabbinie midrash atomizes the biblical text to a larger degree than the other forms of biblical interpretation, with the exception of the translations. 6) The method which forms the basis of the rabbi nie comment is often explicitly mentioned. Porton also argues that the setting in which midrash was created was the rabbinie academy and not the synagogues, suggesting that some midrash may simply be an example of holy men engaging the holy text for their own edification and pleasure; midrash need not be a didactic exercise. JACOB NEUSNER AND THE PLACE OF MIDRASH IN THE RABBINIC CANON

Jacob Neusner's Midrash in Context is one of several books in which he lays out an important new theory concerning the nature of rabbinic midrash and its relationship to other rabbinie activities, explaining how midrash fits into the larger rabbi nie agenda. Neusner alone has succeeded in proposing an interpretation of midrash which not only accounts for the agenda of the individual midrashic collections, but also offers an overall theory which explains the midrashic enterprise undertaken by the rabbis. To state his theory simply, Neusner argues that midrash, like all other rabbinie literature, responds to the crisis precipitated by Mishnah's style, content, and success. He demonstrates that the midrash does to the Bible exactly wh at the Talmud does to the Mishnah. In addition, each midrashic collection should be examined in its own terms; we should form our opinions about each document only from the information that particular texts provides uso

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Mishnah is a unique Jewish composition. Unlike most of the other Jewish documents from the Bible through the second century of the common era, Mishnah does not contain a myth about its origin, its purpose, or the reward for those who would follow its dictates. Mishnah's style sets it apart from other Jewish texts of its time, for it was not attributed to a known, ancient authority, it did not imitate the style or language of the Hebrew Bible, nor did it provide any clear links between its rulings and the Scriptures. Finally, Mishnah was a document from the heart of the Jewish community of late antiquity; it did not originate in a sectarian outpost. It was seen in antiquity as the authoritative law code of the People Israel, produced by their leaders, the rabbis, and sponsored by their internationally recognized leader, the Patriarch, Judah. Furthermore, while Mishnah follows its own carefully designed program, it never explains its agenda. It does not indicate why it chose to deal with one topic and not another, nor why it selected one phrasing of an issue among those which were possible. Like the Bible itself, Mishnah had to be understood and interpreted if its rulings were to be followed in everyday life. In the same way that the sparseness of the Bible's details engendered the writing of midrash, the conte nt and style of Mishnah necessitated the creation of the gemara. Mishnah's infrequent biblical citations leaves the impression that it is independent of the Bible. However, the actual relationship between these two documents is much more complex than the absence ofbiblical quotations would suggest. Neusner notes that some of Mishnah's tractates restate in their own words what is found in the Bible; others take up the Bible's facts, but play them out in unexpected ways; finally, some tractates deal with facts not suggested by the Bible or at best only relevant to the Bible's concerns. In Neusner's words, "[A]ll of Scripture was authoritative. But only some of Scripture was found to be relevant .... [TJhe framers and philosophers of the tradition of the Mishnah ... brought to Scripture a program of questions and inquiries framed essentially among themselves . . . . [TJ hey selected with care and precision what they wanted in Scripture, ignoring what they did not want." A major crisis precipitated by Mishnah was that the rules and modes of thought contained in this authoritative text were presen ted as unrelated to the Hebrew Bible, the recognized legitimate source of YHWH's teachings. If the Hebrew Bible were the ac curate re cord of YHWH's revelation to Moses, should not this be clearly stated in Mishnah's expositions of its teachings? Ways had to be found to bring these two documents into a firm, direct relation-

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ship. Sifra is an early midrash on Leviticus, and Neusner has shown that Sifra's framers set out to demonstrate that Mishnah's assertions actually derive from exegeting the Bible and not from logic alone. Neusner writes, "Sifra . . . proposes a systematic critique of the Mishnah .... For the authors take up one paragraph after another of the Mishnah to indicate how Scripture alone validates what the Mishnah's rule maintains." Like Sifra, the Talmud of the Land of Israel seeks and finds biblical foundations for Mishnah's teachings. In the Talmud's view, the only source for a law found in Mishnah is the Bible. For the Talmud, the Mishnah does not stand as an isolated, autonomous, self-validating authority; rather, it is subordinate to the Bible, and its dependence on the biblical text must be demonstrated. Neusner argues that the midrashim treat the Bible in the same ways in which the Talmud reflects on the Mishnah, and he supports his thesis by comparing the Talmud's units of discourse with those found in midrash. Neusner finds four principal taxa for the Talmud's exegetical units: 1) Citation and gloss of the language of the Mishnah (meaning of a phrase or concrete illustration of a rule); 2) Specification of the meaning of the law of the Mishnah or the reason for it; 3) Secondary implication or application of the law of the Mishnah; 4) the matter of authorities and their views; decided law. In his analysis of Genesis Rabbah, one of the earlier midrashic collections, Neusner finds the same taxa of units of discourse as he does in the Talmud's exegesis of Mishnah, with one exception. While the Talmud contains under taxa 4 some units loosely shaped around a given topic, Neusner calls these anthologies, these do not appear in Genesis Rabbah. On the one hand, Genesis Rabbah does not contain all of the types of units of discourse which we find in the Talmud; on the other hand, it does not contain a unit of discourse which does not appear in the Talmud. Neusner's studies show that midrash is not aseparate and unique rabbinic undertaking. Rather, midrash and talmud represent the same enterprise because they come from the same masters working in the same culture, with the same presuppositions. The difference between talmud's treatment of Mishnah and midrash's exegesis of the Bible is the texts they exegete, not the interpreters' mind-set, the contexts in which the work was done, or the literary styles in which they cast their thoughts. For generations scholars had denigrated the midrashic mind and exalted the talmudic enterprise. Bloch had argued that this was unfair and unjust, and Neusner has demonstrated why this is so. Midrash and talmud are very much the same thing, at least as they have been transmitted to uso

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DAUBE AND UEBERMAN: MIDRASH AND HELLENISTIC RHETORICAL METHODS

A good deal of scholarly interest has focused on the methods employed by the rabbinie biblical exegetes, and some of these studies are important for placing the exegetical exercise into its larger contexts. In 1949, David Daube argued that rabbinic methods of biblical interpretation, specifically those exegetical rules attributed to Hillel, were related to the Hellenistic rhetorical tradition. Daube claims seven ideas underlie Hillel's exegetical program, and he finds parallels for all seven among the Hellenistic rhetorical tradition: 1) Hillel tried to overcome the antithesis between law derived from the authority of tradition and that based on rational considerations; 2) specific modes of reasoning could fill in any gaps found in biblicallaw; 3) interpretations of the biblical text have the same status as the text itself; 4) idea of a written Torah and an oral Torah; 5) the lawgiver, knowing that his statutes would be interpreted, deliberately confined hirns elf to a minimum of expression; 6) the lawgiver needed only to lay down basic principles from which detailed rules could be inferred; 7) a lawgiver needs only to chose the most frequent case of aseries of allied cases, for the others can be derived from analogy. Whether or not these are the only assumptions which one can attribute to the program ascribed to Hillel is beside the point. It is important, however, that Daube was able to show that these proposition could be attributed to Hillel and to any number of the Hellenistic rhetoricians, so that the rabbinic program of biblical exegesis could be viewed as part of a larger cultural phenomenon in whichJewish and non-Jewish scholars of ancient texts participated. Daube bolstered this pcrception by arguing that the seven exegetical principles attributed to Hillel found parallels, sometimes verbal parallels, in the Hellenistic rhetorical tradition. In 1950, Saul Lieberman published his essay "Rabbinic Interpretation of Scripture" which complemented Daube's conclusions. Lieberman's main point was that while the rabbis did not borrow their exegetical rules from the Greeks, they most likely did borrow the "formulation, terms, categories and systematization" of these rules which the Greeks developed. Throughout the essay Lieberman finds the Hebrew equivalents of a number of Greek terms and phrases. Thus, by 1950 it became widely accepted that rabbinic exegetical techniques placed the rabbis squarely within the framework of Hellenistic culture.

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Both Lieberman and Daube take the existence, use, and attribution of the exegetical rules to specific sages as fact. Both accept the rabbinic texts' data as historically accurate and valid. However, re cent work suggests that the situation is more complicated than Lieberman's and Daube's essays would suggest. While their claims that the rabbis participated in the general Hellenistic environment and exegeted the Bible in much the same ways that the rhetoricians expounded upon Homer and Hesiod seem valid, the rabbinic texts' attributions of specific exegetical techniques to individual sages is less certain. In his "Rabbi Ishmael and His Thirteen Middot," Gary G. Porton raises serious questions about Ishmael's relationship to the thirteen exegetical rules attributed to hirn at the opening of Sifra and to the seven principles assigned to Hillel in several rabbinic documents. With regard to Hillel, there are inconsistencies among the three lists of techniques attributed to hirn. Of the three lists of seven exegetical rules, two lists contain eighth rules, and one contains six. Furthermore, only five principles appear in all three lists. Finally, we have no record of Hillel's ever using any of the exegetical techniques attributed to hirn. Similar facts hold true for the thirteen rules attributed to Ishmael. First, the list contains sixteen not thirteen techniques, and they appear in at least four distinct literary styles. Of the items which occur in the list, Ishmael uses only eight of the sixteen principles, and he employs seventeen techniques which do not appear in the list. When Hillel's list and Ishmael's list are compared to Ishmael's exegetical activity as recorded in the rabbinic corpus, we discover that with two exceptions, Ishmael employs only exegetical principles which the two lists have in common. In fact, Ishmael appears as an unoriginal biblical exegete, one who merely employed techniques first attributed to Hillel and those which were most common among the Hellenistic rhetoricians. The attribution of exegetical techniques to Ishmael and Hillel does not conform to their exegetical activity as transmitted to us in the rabbinic corpus. It seems that the only function which the lists have is to make it appear that there were a set of exegetical rules and that these rules were closely connected to the techniques employed by the Hellenistic rhetoricians. FRAADE: MIDRAsH AND MODERN LITERARY THEORY

In recent years, a number of scholars have attempted to bring together contemporary literary theory and midrashic activity. The most interesting of these studies is Steven D. Fraade's From Tradition

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to Commentary: Torah and Its Interpretation in the Midrash Sijre to Deuteronomy. Unlike others who have travelled down this path, Fraade does not burden his readers with incomprehensible literary jargon or theoretical constructs. Fraade concentrates on the category of commentary and demonstrates how Sifre Deuteronomy fits into this grouping. Furthermore, his study approaches the text from two perspectives, its formation and its reception. With regard to its formation, Fraade examines Sifre's use of scripture to interpret scripture, its redactor's interaction with the historical and social context, and its use of rabbinic traditions to interpret the Bible and to interpret one another. By transforming the received material, the redactor produced a polyphonic text, one which contains multiple interpretations of the same passage, and an incomplete text, one which leaves gaps in the exegesis. This draws the audience into the text and necessitates their interaction with it in order to understand both Sifre and the Bible. Fraade argues that the ideal rabbinic sage is the desired reader of Sifre. Fraade shows that Sifre is not a text designed to transmit historical data; rather, it is a carefully designed literary creation whose goal is to engage its readers actively with the text and with Scripture. SUMMARY

Several points are important. 1) Midrash represents the explicit conjunction of a rabbinic comment with a biblical text. It was necessitated by the Bible's sparseness of details, contradictions, repetitions, and ambiguities. This presented problems to the sages because they believed that the Bible was the sole original source of YHWH's communication to them. What is remarkable, as Neusner has shown, is that the rabbinic texts, the Oral Torah, eventually become part of the Jewish canon, taking their place along side the Written Torah. 2) Although the biblical texts have always been interpreted, the rabbinic examples are unique products of the sages' culture and times. 3) The midrashic enterprise is similar to the talmudic endeavor; both seek to explain ambiguous and laconic documents, the Mishnah or the Hebrew Bible. 4) Although the exegetical methods attributed to the early rabbis are similar to those employed by the Creek rhetoricians of their times, rabbinic midrash can be distinguished easily from other Jewish and nonJewish interpretive activity by its literary forms and rhetorical structures. 5) The midrashic collections are not haphazard assemblages of rabbinic comments, nor is midrash a uncontrolled enterprise governed by the fanciful rabbinie imagination. Midrash is a care-

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fully constructed intellectual activity with specific underlying assumptions and goals, and each midrashic document has its own plan and agenda. II Having reviewed the major aspects of the current state of the scholarly study of midrash, we now turn to the major collections of rabbinic midrash. SIFRA

Sifra is an early collection of exegetical statements on Leviticus. Sifra me ans "the book," an early designation for the book of Leviticus. The Sifra we now have comments on the entire book of Leviticus, verse by verse, and often word by word. As Neusner has shown, Sifra's pro gram is to connect Mishnah's teachings to the Bible, often taking passages from Mishnah and connecting them to specific biblical texts. Sifra is either contemporaneous with Mishnah or post-dates it slightly. The Hebrew text most often cited by scholars is LH. Weiss, Sifra deBe Rah. Weiss's text has two columns per page, so that the text is cited by tractate, parasha, chapter, section, and Weiss's column. Thus, Sav parasha 7:1, Weiss 35a is on the inside column of page 35 of Weiss's edition. Louis Finke1stein began a critica1 edition of Sifra, but unfortunately died before much of the work was published. He was able to publish a text which corresponds to the first twenty-eight pages ofWeiss' text. Neusner's Sifra: An Ana(ytical Translation is the only comp1ete English edition of the text. Neusner's translation is faithful to the Hebrew, so that one can generally grasp the original Hebrew text behind the English. The text is divided according to Neusner's method of working from the smallest sense-unit to the paragraph. For the most part, the translation is based on Weiss's edition. However, Sifra is much more than a mere translation, for its structure and the brief commentary are meant to show that Sifra is a coherent book which follows a unified plan of rhetorical, logical, and topical interests, all of which is detailed in the introduction. There is a concordance to Sifra's Hebrew text based on Weiss edition. MEKHILTA

Mekhilta is an exegesis of parts of the book of Exodus, specifically Exodus 12:1-23:19,31:12-17, and 35:1-3. Mekhilta is the Aramaic

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word for "rule" or "norm." In the post-rabbinic age the word caries the meaning of a rule derived from Scripture or of halakhic exegesis. Although "mekhilta" occurs in the Talmuds, it does not refer to our exegetical collection. The earliest clear reference to our present Mekhilta comes from the eleventh century. The work is called the Mekhilta of Rabbi Ishmael because the body of the collection was considered to have begun with Pisha 2, Pisha 1 being considered the introduction, which opens with a reference to Ishmael. Although Mekhilta is classified by some as an halakhic midrash, the designation has little meaning for this document. Mekhilta does not cover all of the legal portions of Exodus, especially omitting the building of the tabernacle, and it contains an exegesis of some of the narrative portions of the biblical book, especially the Song of the Sea, Exodus 15. There is little doubt that Mekhilta as we have it has undergone numerous redactions, beginning in the Amoraic period; therefore, it is difficult to determine the date of its origin as an exegetical collection. Although most scholars would pI ace the origin of Mekhilta somewhere in the second to third centuries of the common era, Ben Zion Wacholder's "The Date ofthe Mekilta de-Rabbi Ishmael" has caused a good deal of scholarly discussion. Wacholder's claim that Mekhilta is a unified work composed by one author shortly before the ninth century has not received broad acceptable within the scholarly community. However, he has noted some curious elements in our present Mekhilta. While virtually ignoring Rabban Gamaliel 11, Mekhilta contains numerous references to Eleazar of Modi'im, a sage mentioned rarely in other texts, as well as citations of other sages who seldom appear in early rabbinic collections and rabbis who are known only from their appearance in Mekhilta. Furthermore, Mekhilta contains numerous anomalies, such as sages quoting rabbis who lived after their time and debates between rabbis who were not contemporaries. Wacholder also claims that the Hebrew of Mekhilta, especially with regard to its technical terms for citing the Bible, reflects Amoraic as weIl as Tannaitic usage. Wacholder also notes that while the Talmuds do not seem to quote Mekhilta, Mekhilta appears to quote them. Whatever one makes of Wacholder's conclusions, he has clearly shown the difficulties with dating midrashic and other rabbinic texts. The standard critical edition of Mekhilta was first published in 1931 by H.S. Horovitz and I. A. Rabin. Jacob Z. Lauterbach published a second critical edition in 1935. Lauterbach's eclected text is drawn from a wider textual base than Horovitz and Rabin; however, Lauterbach does not include a complete critical apparatus.

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Lauterbach's edition is printed with an English translation facing a Hebrew text. The translation is paraphrastic at times, but the idioms represent the Hebrew text well. Jacob Neusner has also published an English translation, which follows his standard mode of dividing the text by sense-units and offering a translation which is close to the original Hebrew. Judah Goldin produce a translation with a superb commentary to Mekhilta on the Song of the Sea. Unfortunately, the concordance to Mekhilta is not based on either of the critical editions. SIFRE NUMBERS

Sifre me ans "books," and in the Babylonian Talmud it refers to a commentary on Exodus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. By the Middle Ages, however, the term was limited to commentaries on only the latter two biblical books. Sifre to Numbers begins with Numbers 5:1, the first legal material in the book. The midrash covers Numbers 5-12, 15, 18-19, 25: 1-13, 26:52-31 :24, 35:9-35:34. The consensus of scholarly opinion is that the midrash dates after the middIe of the third century. In 1917 Horovitz published a critical edition of Sifre Numbers. Paul P. Levertoff published a translation of selections from this midrash in 1926, andJacob Neusner has published a translation of one hundred fifteen of the one hundred sixty-one parashot. Neusner's translation is again faithful to the original text, in contrast to LevertofPs paraphastic translation, and it is much easier to imagine the Hebrew behind the former's English rendition than the latter's. In addition, Neusner has divided the text into sense-units, so that it is easier to follow the text's logic and development in his translation. In his introduction, Neusner lays out the five literary forms which consistently appear in the midrash, and he divides the material into intrinsic exegesis-an interpretation based on the theme or problem in the verse from Numbers-and extrinsie exegesis-an interpretation in terms of a theme or polemic not inherent in the verse from Numbers. Furthermore, Neusner claims that Sifre Numbers makes two points: 1) "Reason unaided by Scripture produces uncertain propositions," and 2) "reason operating within the limits of Scripture produces truth." Neusner concludes that these issues would have been of most concern to the rabbis, the audience he posits for this collection. The concordance to Sifre Numbers is based on Horovitz's text.

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SIFRE DEUTERONOMY

Sifre Deuteronomy is a midrash on Deut. 1:1-30, 3:23-29, 6:4-9, 11:10-26:15,31:14-32:34; therefore, it covers both legal and narrative portions of the biblical book. However, most scholars believe that the exegetical portions at the beginning and the end of the collection are of a different origin from the centrallegal co re of the midrash. The collection is usually dated to the late third century. In 1939, Louis Finkelstein published a critical edition of Sifre Deuteronomy, and the concordance to the midrash is based on this edition. Finkelstein's text is eclectic, containing several emendations. However, the notes, list of parallel sources, and the critical apparatus make it an invaluable edition. There are two recent English translations of Sifre Deuteronomy. Reuven Hammer offers a complete translation of the work, with rather sparse end-notes, which cite important parallel passages, indicate the issues involved in the midrashic passage, offer literal or alternate translations of particular phrases, and the like. Following Abraham Goldberg's conclusion, Hammer argues that Sifre Deuteronomy is a two-part work, with the legal portions reflecting the school of R. Ishmael and the non-legal portions coming from the school of R. Aqiba. However, the work was composed in the latter's school. Although noting that the final redaction of the collection cites Mishnah and attempts to find biblical verses to support Mishnah's rules, Hammer suggests that Sifre Deuteronomy contains some material in an earlier form than we find in Mishnah, for Sifre Deuteronomy's versions often disagree with Mishnah's te achings. Hammer concludes that the basic work of Sifre Deuteronomy was edited in the third century by R. Judah's students. The introduction includes a discussion of some of the technicallanguage and formulas which appear in the text. These are transliterated, explained, and used in examples, making their appearance in the midrash much more comprehensible to the novice. Hammer lists 10 prominent themes found in the collection: 1) The importance of the people of Israel, 2) the nations who have dealt cruelly with Israel will suffer, 3) Jacob is seen as Israel's prototype and receives special praise, 4) Abraham is seen as a revolutionary, but his convenantal relationship with YHWH is de-emphasized in order to elevate Jacob's role, 5) Moses' personality is extensively treated, 6) the merit and worth of the Land of Israel receives prominence, 7) God's nature and God's judgment of peoples and individuals receives a good deal of attention, 8) there is a stress on the importance of justice in human interactions, 9) the Torah and its glory is

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important, 10) observance of the commandments outside of the Land of Israel is discussed. Finally, Hammer notes that messianic expectation plays an important role in the midrash, especially in its later sections. Hammer's translation is very readable and conveys an accurate sense of the text. The notes and translation permit the reader to gain an accurate knowledge of the contents of this midrashic collection. Jacob Neusner prepared a translation of Sifre Deuteronomy in 1987. Neusner's translation follows the pattern found elsewhere. The translation is broken down into sense-units, and it is fairly easy to reconstruct the Hebrew behind the English. There are brief notes following the major sections. The introduction to this volume is significantly different from the others we have reviewed, because Neusner merely speaks about his method, saving his analysis of the text as a whole for aseparate volume. Herbert W. Basser has translated the text of the Song of Moses, sections 306-341 of Sifre Deuteronomy. This translation is also readable, and he provides the reader with a good deal of information about what is going on in the text. As we noted above, Fraade's work also contains a translation and interpretation of large portions of Sifre Deuteronomy. GENESIS RABBAH

Genesis Rabbah is a midrash on the book of Genesis; however, the meaning of the word "Rabbah" in its tide is a matter of dispute. Some have argued that this is the "great" midrash on Genesis, while others have suggested that it relates R. Oshayah Rabbah, a sage cited early in the collection. There is a broad range of exegetical activity evidenced in Genesis Rabbah. The text ineludes everything from elose readings of verses, sometimes word by word, to elaborate expositions which have little connection to the biblical text. A proern, or petihah, appears before all but seven of the parashiyot of the text. The proem is perhaps the most well-studied literary form found in the midrashic collections; however, Martin Jaffee's 1983 artiele "The 'Midrashic' Proern: Towards the Description of Rabbinic Exegesis" moves the discussion in entirely new directions. Instead of viewing the proem as a rabbinic sermon and attempting to find its Sitz im Leben in the synagogue as part of the Torah-reading, Jaffee focuses on the proem as a literary creation whose purpose is to expand the meaning of key biblical verses it contains. Jaffee shows that the proems' redactors create a tension among the various senses which the verses convey. This suggests that the meaning

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of Scripture is "in astate of flux; each verse bears a range of potential meanings that is deli mi ted in principle by another random verse." And, the rabbis alone hold the keys to unlocking the many meanings of the biblical passages. For Jaffee, the proem "is intended to raise problems, not to solve them; it is a riddle to which one may continually return without final solution." The proem does not focus on Scripture's content; rather, it is concerned with a cognitive method of solving its riddle. For this reason, Jaffee concludes, the proem was not an oral creation, but was always a written composition which probably originated in the rabbinic schools. The redactor of Genesis Rabbah seems to have drawn material from a wide range of rabbinic texts. Although direct quotations are difficult to demonstrate, especially given the state of the manuscripts we have available, it does seem that he knew the contents of Mishnah, T osefta, Sifra, Sifre, Mekhilta, and the targums. Because Genesis Rabbah does not quote our present version of the Palestinian Talmud but does know even its most re cent layers of content, the two texts were most likely redacted at about the same time, probably in the first half of the fifth century. The languages of the text indicate that it was edited in Palestine. J. Theodor and eh. Albeck produced the critical edition of Genesis Rabbah from 1912 to 1935. This is an excellent edition which employs most of the manuscripts known at the time and which contains a superb set of notes to the text. An English translation was first published in 1939. This translation tends to be paraphastic, and it is not always clear what in the English has been added by the translator and what is part of the original Hebrew. Also, the notes are rather sparse. Jacob Neusner published a translation in 1985. The translation follows his general pattern of dividing the text according to sense-units and of providing the reader with a carefully constructed reference system. The brief commentary deals with matters of composition, redaction, and sustained polemic. There is only abrief Preface to this translation, for the analysis of the text appears elsewhere. LEVITICUS RABBAH

Leviticus Rabbah is a different kind of commentary from those we have examined to this point. While the other collections move through the biblical text word by word or verse by verse in more or less consecutive order, Leviticus Rabbah and the Pesiqta deRav Kahana are constructed around themes, not following the text verse by verse. These latter two collections are usually described as

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homiletical midrashim, while those we have discussed to this point are often entitled expositional midrashim. Leviticus Rabbah consists of thirty-seven homilies, all of which open with a petihah which Richard Sarason has demonstrated are literary constructions. In fact, it seems clear that the bodies of the homilies are also literary creations. Most scholars agree that Leviticus Rabbah was redacted sometime in the fifth century. The midrash's language, among other things, indicates that it originated in Palestine. The critical edition of Leviticus Rabbah was produced by Mordecai Margulies. J. Israelstam andJudahJ. Slotki prepared the English translations for the Soncino edition of Midrash Rabbah. Jacob Neusner published a translation ofthe text in 1986. This is a new translation based on Margulies' text in which Neusner follows his normal plan of translation and annotation. The edition offers an analysis of the compositional and redactional problems of Leviticus Rabbah. Neusner has also published a separate analysis of Leviticus Rabbah as a whole, with extended examples from the text. PESIQTA DERAB KAHANA

The Pesiqta deRab Kahana is also a homiletical midrash constructed around the biblical readings for the festivals and the special Sabbaths. In addition to sections for the festivals, there are homilies for the four Sabbaths after Hanukkah, the three Sabbaths before the 9th of Av, the seven Sabbaths of comfort after the 9th of Av, and the two Sabbaths after the New Year. The Pesiqta has five chapters in common with Leviticus Rabbah. The manuscript evidence indicates that for a good while the text of this collection was in flux. Most contemporary scholar would date the co re of the midrash to the fifth century, about the same time as the redaction of Leviticus Rabbah. Bernard Mandelbaum published a critical edition of the text in 1962. William Braude and Israel Kapstein published an English translation in 1975. The translation is readab1e and the notes are helpful. Unfortunately, the translation often tends to paraphrase the Hebrew and Aramaic, and it is frequently difficult to imagine exactly what the original text might say. Neusner published a translation in 1987. Neusner's translation is much more faithful to the original text, and it is often easJ to imagine the Hebrew behind his English rendition. Again, Neusner follows his method of dividing the text into sense-units. His brief commentary mainly draws attention to the structural and rhetorical elements of the text. An introduction to the Pesiqta appears at the end ofVol. 2.

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Although there are no concordances to Genesis Rabbah, Leviticus Rabbah, and the Pesiqta deRab Kahana, the Soncino translations of the former two texts do contain indexes, as do the English translations of the latter midrash. More useful for those who own personal computers, however, is the CD-ROM Judaica Classics Library distributed by Davka Corporation of Chicago, IL. The Third Edition includes all of the midrashic collections which we have discussed above and much more. The search program allows one to find anything in these vast collections and makes the printed concordances and indexes obsolete. ENGLISH MIDRASHIC ANTHOLOGIES

For those who wish to experience a taste of the wide variety of rabbinic midrashic texts in single convenient volumes, there are three usable anthologies in English which serve as excellent introductions to our topic. Jacob Neusner's Invitation to Midrash contains an outline of his important new ideas concerning the place of the midrashic enterprise within the rabbinic system. It also includes selections from Sifra, Sifre to Numbers, Genesis Rabbah, Leviticus Rabbah, the Pesiqta deRab Kahana, and the Fathers According to Rabbi Nathan. Each section is introduced by a discussion of the collection. In addition, there are examples of the use of biblical passages in both Talmuds. At the end of the volume, there are selected vocalized Hebrew texts, for those who know the original language. In his A Midrash Reader, Neusner presents selections from Sifre to Numbers, Sifre to Deuteronomy, Sifra, Mekhilta Attributed to R. Ishmael, Genesis Rabbah, Leviticus Rabbah, Pesiqta deRab Kahana, and Song of Songs Rabbah. Again, each document is introduced before the selection. In addition, in both volumes, Neusner has divided the text into sense-units, so that it is extremely easy to follow the development of the individual passages. Gary G. Porton's Understanding Rabbinie Midrash offers another type of anthology. The volume includes an introduction which discusses the rabbis and their interpretation of the Bible. There are translations of extended passages from Sifra, Mekhilta, Sifre to Numbers, Sifre to Deuteronomy, Genesis Rabbah and Leviticus Rabbah. Each selection is introduced by abrief discussion of the collection and a translation of the biblical text upon which the midrash comments. The uninterrupted translations are followed by notes designed to aid the readers' comprehension of the midrashic text, and a discussion of the passage as a whole, its structure and themes. The book is de-

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signed so that the midrashim can be read on their own in an undisturbed manner. The above collections are the only midrashim that the vast majority of scholars would date to the rabbinic period and which are coherent collections. Texts such as the Mekhilta of R. Simeon b. Yohai, Pesiqta Rabbati, Midrash Tannaim seem to be of questionable origin in the rabbinic period, so that I have not dealt with them. Materials on these and later midrashic collections can be found in the bibliographies cited in note 1.

III CONCLUSIONS

This discussion has been designed to highlight a select group of the more important re cent studies of rabbinic midrash, all of which rest on the assumption that midrash deserves careful investigation in its own right. The "modern" study of midrash began in 1832 with Leopold Zunz's investigation into the topic which he undertook to demonstrate to the Prussian authorities that the rabbinic sermon was not a creation of the nineteenth century Prussian rabbinate but had its origins in the ancient period. Much has gone on since Zunz wrote, and the study of midrash has travelled many roads, for the most part leaving Zunz's political agenda in the dust. The works included in this essay share the trait that they ask questions which the texts can answer and shy away from problems whose solutions lie in pure speculation. The studies outlined in this essay uniformly focus on the contents and structures of the individual documents. They seek to comprehend the phenomenon of rabbinic midrash in its own terms, without recourse to conjectures about its pre-history or social settings. The investigations detailed above seek to disentangle the explanations of the midrashic enterprise from the study of other rabbinic activities and documents. They move out from the midrashim to the rest of rabbinic culture and thought, and not from those other materials into the exegetical texts. The works cited above agree that only after each rabbinic text has been investigated in its own terms do we have the raw material with which to build theories about the larger issues which transverse single documents.

WRITTEN EVIDENCE OF SYNAGOGUE LIFE

JEWISH LITURGY AND JEWISH SCHOIARSHIP Lawrence A. Hoffman (Hebrew Union CollegeJewish Institute of Religion, New York) INTRODUCTION: PLAN OF THIS WORK

Section One traces the history of liturgical scholarship, unravelling the ways in which Jewish liturgy has been studied, and providing the backdrop against which claims regardingJewish liturgy must be evaluated. It also intro duces and contextualizes the basic and classic works in the field, so that readers unfamiliar with them can appreciate what their authors sought to accomplish. Sections Two through Five summarize those claims, detailing what scholars have learned over the two hundred or so years since liturgical study began. Finally, Section Six surveys contemporary scholarly debate, suggesting the possibility of current paradigm shifts in the discipline.

1 THE

STUDY OF JEWISH UTURGY

a Liturgists as "Litterateurs"

If the purpose of this volume is to summarize what we know about the various "diseiplines" that eonstitute the study of Judaism, it is not clear that Liturgy even belongs here, for the simple reason that until reeently (and even now, among many), Jewish Liturgy has not been considered its own "discipline." Only this year (1993), for instance, has the influential bibliographie journal Kiryat Sifer published a comprehensive listing of liturgical literature, the appearanee ofwhich marks the fact thatJewish liturgy as a diseipline has come of age. The following autobiographical anecdote demonstrates how recent its maturity as a discipline iso

I Joseph Tabory,Jewish Prayer and the Yearry Cycle: a List qfArticles, Supplement to Kiryat Sifer 64 (1992-1993).

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Twenty-five years ago, when I opted to pursue a doctorate in "the field of liturgy," I was gene rally informed by Jewish scholars that there was no field by that name. Mter I majored in it anyway, the administrative officer who interviewed and hired me wondered aloud at what my academic tide ought to be. He rejected what I considered my sensible suggestion that I might be an Assistant Professor of Liturgy, with the challenge, "But what will you te ach as your second course?" It took ten years to convince the administration that I no longer had to be listed as "Professor of Liturgy and Related Literature." The selection of "related literature" as the most convincing expansion of what was considered too narrow a specialization to justify my academic appointment tells us a great deal about the way Jewish disciplines have traditionally been conceived, Jewish Liturgy among them. The fields ofJudaica are inventions ofthe Wissenschaft school in 19th-century Germany. Their founders were influenced first and foremost by German philology. At its deepest level, philology constituted a kind of ideological cartography, in that it sought to establish a modern map of Jewish culture. But culture was assumed to be reflected best in literature. To the extent that a people preserved a long literary history, it was cultured; to the extent that it approached pre-literacy, it was primitive. Scholars were like curators of a people's literary past, charged with collecting, classifying, labelling and displaying its literary works in a library of the national spirit, through which current members of the culture could meander and marvel at the greatness of their national! cultural! literary history. Such a project entailed first and foremost the successful rescuing of manuscripts from the medieval treasure troves where they had hitherto been classified according to pre-modern and therefore "irrelevant" criteria (usually their religious rather than their scholarly I cultural significance) and shelved without regard to scientific date, provenance, real (as opposed to pseudepigraphic) author, and the like. Wissenschaft sc hol ars were "litterateurs" the way restaurant owners are "restaurateurs." Think of them as opening a literary establishment called, "The Culture of Our People," where cultural consumers could partake of their literary legacy. Scholarly articles about that literature were the functional equivalent of restaurant menus that organize food. They classified the works of the past into relevant categories, dating them like good wine, evaluating as "advanced or superstitious" the periods in which they were produced, differentiating "major" works (the main cultural courses) from "minor" ones (good as a side dish, perhaps,

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but not much more), and, above all, making sure that those who visit the establishment will not misjudge it as a medieval slop house where any old thing gets served without even suitable regard for knowing its age, the garden in which it grew, and how weIl the particular manuscript before you had been preserved. It was natural, therefore, for my institutional guardian of Wissenschaft purity to protect my right to be counted among his faculty by attesting to my expertise in "related literature. " Keeping faith with his German scholarly tradition, he assumed that my discipline (in-the-making) was at least a type of literature, and that (like aliliterature) it could be defined by slotting it into the right latitude and longitude on the cultural map that drew connective lines between it and other literary landmarks like the Babylonian Talmud, the Hebrew Bible, and the Mishnah.

b Liturgy as Text The world of German philology was an especially comfortable adoptive ho me for the father of Jewish liturgical study, Leopold Zunz (1794-1886), a giant of a scholar, whose name will surely turn up again and again in this book. His life's passions were many, but chief among them was the display ofJewish culture on a par with its German equivalent to which he, as a newly emancipatedJew, had only recently been given access. Taking his cue from the cultural hierarchy of German scholarship, he took special interest in poetry, rather than, say, Polish talmudic commentary. To an unbiased observer, the latter is equally as "poetic" as the first, albeit according to different mIes of poetry. But German culture va1ued Goethe and Heine, not some modern-day version of the medieva1 preemancipated Jews who dai1y studied Talmud. So for Zunz, talmudic commentary, while Jewish, was at best an unimportant village on the map oftheJewish spirit, whi1e the grand poets oflate antiquity or medieva1 Spain constituted a 1arge and inviting metropolis on the historica1 map of Jewish cultura1 formation. For similar reasons, Zunz devalued mysticism in the liturgy, but emphasized the appearance of theological ideas that satisfied rational philosophical enquiry. Most of all, he was driven by historicism. More than a provider of deep and lasting understanding of the inner contents of his liturgical texts, he was their historicizing categorizer. Before his work, the liturgy was apre-modern corpus organized according to religious principles of what worshippers were to say, and when and how they were to say it, aIllaid down by talmudic or post-talmudic

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mandate. Mter he was done, the liturgy was re-imaged as a set of literary texts, and a network of lines of influence establishing the relationship of one text to another. What had been a religious thing was now a scientific historical entity. Far from being an ivory tower scholar, Zunz applied his considerable scholarly acumen to the issues of his day. Indeed, his entire output served a political end: the justification of Judaism as a cultural heritage that the romantic era ought to appreciate, and of Jews, therefore, as modern citizens whom other enlightened men and women ought to welcome as their neighbors. Chief among the practical steps taken to accomplish this end was religious reform, an ongoing struggle to recastJewish worship as modern. Zunz was by no me ans enthralled with what the rabbinie liberals were attempting in that regard, but he did share with them the goal of reform, and he participated in it by serving as preacher in a new congregation in Berlin. His sermons were published in 1823. His role as preacher highlighted two issues. First, the lay leaders who founded religious reform were gene rally suspicious of rabbis whom they saw as reactionaries who opposed everything they were doing. They hired Zunz precisely because he was not a rabbi. In addition, however, it is noteworthy that what he was hired to do was to sermonize, not a customary liturgical role within German Jewish services where weekly sermons were not the norm. (To this day, in fact, though Christian seminaries te ach preaching as part of the context of the liturgy, Jewish seminaries-if they te ach preaching at all-do so without reference to the service in which sermons are embedded. Liturgy is still seen as a sub-category of rabbinies, whereas preaching is considered a kind of professional skill akin to counselling, and cIassified as a non-textual, and therefore secondary' discipline.) But GermanJews knew how central preaching was to their Protestant neighbors, and they therefore insisted on hiring preachers like Zunz, who were learned but not ordained rabbis, and therefore not apt to impede lay authority. As a defining hallmark of reform, preaching evoked the ire of traditionalists, and in turn, moved Zunz to compose a lengthy justification of preaching as an authentie Jewish activity reaching all the way back to the prophets and evident still in the midrash. His magnum opus was published in 1832. 2 As was usual with Wissenschaft scholarship, Zunz ranged far and wide in what he saw as a definitive work spanning the gamut of Jewish history and cul-

2 Leopo1d Zunz, Die gottesdienstlichen Vorträge der Juden (Berlin: 1832). Hebrew ed., Chanokh Albeck, trans., Haderashot Beyisra'el (Jerusalem: Bialik Press, 1954).

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ture. And among the contents was a now-famous Chapter 21, in which Zunz turned to the structure of the liturgy unravelling what he could of its history and development. Not that he was particularly interested in liturgy. But he was concerned with preaching and with poetry as the best examples of Jewish culture, and both of these entities showed up in worship. On his way to his major concerns, therefore, he applied his method also to the liturgy, and in so doing, he managed to ask and to answer almost every major question that was to constitute the agenda of philologists for the next hundred and fifty years. To be sure, his answers would be debated by those who followed hirn. But his questions have yet to go away, even though, as we shall see, most scholars today doubt that they are answerable, and to so me extent, even meaningful. Nineteenth-century romanticism was in general in love with a presumed halcyon age ofprimitive purity. Zunz participated in that quest for idealized origins by postulating a process of linear liturgical development. It had begun with a once-upon-a-time true and unadulterated liturgical text penned by perfectly rational rabbinic authors in a hoary age of antiquity, and it had ended in the rather messy version of such texts that we have today. The reasons for liturgical change were many, but chief among them was historical accident. Liturgy was as much a response to history as it was the inner communal search for the divine. Zunz thus drew an imaginary line back into history, and peeled off parts of prayers that he thought he could identify as accretions or alterations after an imaginary Urzeit when the prayers had been composed. Wh at was left when he was done was the presumed Urtext, a basic and original liturgy that he privileged as more authentic because it was closer to, if not identical with, a presumed rabbinic ideal. His work was followed assiduously by the reformers who used his findings to justify their paring of the liturgy to the bare bones of the Urtext that they too saw as primal and true, in a way that secondary emendations were not. Philologists after Zunz merely postulated different versions of the Urtext and different his-. torical events that were held responsible for the additions. Two major exceptions were Ismar Elbogen, whose contribution I shall consider presently, and E.D. Goldschmidt. Elbogen thoroughly treated almost every aspect of the statutory liturgy, and E.D. Goldschmidt did for the Passover Haggadah wh at Elbogen had accomplished for daily, Sabbath, and to some extent Festivalliturgy.3 He also went a great deal further in the study of the High Holy Day 3 E.D. Goldschmidt, Haggadah shel Pesach Vetoldoteha (Jerusalern: Bialik Institute, 1960).

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corpus in particular, but also in the study of the festival of Sukkot and an understanding of the literary development of various rites, a matter to wh ich I will return at the end of this essay.4 Zunz's method reached maturity only with the true master of Jewish liturgy, Ismar Elbogen (1874-1943). Unlike Zunz, Elbogen took an active role in prayerbook reform, serving in 1929 as one of the editors of GermanJewry's Einheitsgebetbuch, a "Book of Common Prayer" far German Jews, intended to standardize liberal German worship. By that time, he had already established his liturgical reputation by aseries of articles and monographs, culminating in 1913 with what is to this day still the masterwork ofJewish liturgy, a complete philological study of every rubric in the service. 5 In large part, subsequent philologicalliterature is essentially aseries of footnotes to Elbogen, arguing with this or that finding, but constituting Judaism's instance of "normal science" rather than a paradigm shift. 6 The major changes within the paradigm owe little to advances in method and insight, but much to the fortuitous discovery of additional manuscripts, particularly the genizah cache from old Cairo, with its Palestinian prayer fragments that were unavailable to Zunz and only partly available to Elbogen. 7 Philology is essentially the liturgical version of the biblical documentary hypothesis. Understandably, therefore, its major critique came from the perspective of form criticism, primarily in an influential book by Joseph Heinemann. 8 The Zunzian paradigm presup4 Cf. E.D. Goldschmidt, Machzor Layamim Hanora'im (Jerusalern and New York: Leo Baeck Institute, 1970); Machzor Lasukkot, Shemini Atseret Vesimchat Torah (Jerusalern and New York: Leo Baeck Institute, 1981); Mechkarei Tifillah Ufryyut (Jerusalern: Magnes Press, 1979). s Ismar Elbogen, Der jüdische Gottesdienst in seiner geschichtlichen Entwicklung (Leipzig: 1913; reprint. ed., Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1962); translated into Hebrew with running commentary and additions by Chaim Schirmann, et. al., eds, Hatifillah Beyisra'el (Tel Aviv: D'vir, 1972); and finally, into English, Raymond Scheindlin, trans., Jewish Liturg)': A Comprehenswe History (Philadelphia and New York: Jewish Publication Society andJewish Theological Seminary of America, 1993). r; Thomas Kuhn, The Structure qf Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962). 7 Earliest classical'studies in the genizah liturgical fragments include Solomon Schechter, "Genizah Specimens," JQ.R, O.s., 10 (1898), and Jacob Mann, "Genizah Fragments of the Palestinian Order of Service," HUCA 2 (1925), both reprinted in Jakob J. Petuchowski, Contributions to the Scientific Study qfJewish Liturg)' (New York: Ktav, 1970). The most recent studies that include a comprehensive consideration of the Genizah material are Ezra Fleischer, T ifillah Uminhagei T ifillah Eretz-Yisra'eliyim Bitekufat'Hagenizah (Jerusalern: Magnes Press, 1988) and Stefan C. Reif, Judaism and Hebrew Prayer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). B Joseph Heinemann, Hatifillah BitekuJat Hatannaim Veha'amoraim (1st ed., 1964, but avai1ab1e primarily in a corrected 2nd ed., J erusa1em: Magnes Press, 1966); Eng. ed., Richard Sarason, ed., Prayer in the Talmud (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1977). The method preceded Heinemann, who claims indebtedness to Arthur Spanier (1884-1944).

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posed that there was a single Urtext to find. 1t also believed that all development went from the simplicity of a single relatively short textual corpus that reflected pure religious spirituality to the complexity of a multi-stratified text abounding in historically conditioned additions and scribal errors. Heinemann reversed philological expectations. He saw the liturgy as beginning with the complexity of many different oral!J perflrmed texts in circulation at one and the same time, and then being slowly but surely edited into the relative simplicity of a single canonized set of wording in what would in time appear as a standard written prayer book. He did not study this final canonization process, which occurred in Babylonia in the geonic period (9th century) and thus fell outside the time frame in which his interests lay; that last step would be detailed by me only in 1979. 9 But he denied that there was any single Urtext at all; rather, early liturgy featured many different verbal variants of every rubric, some (like the Protestant free-prayer tradition today) composed on the spot for a single oral "performance," others repeated until memorized and passed down as fixed versions available for use and reuse. Much of this later material eventually congealed into different versions or rites which were even further synthesized into a Babylonian prayer book (Seder Rav Amram, c. mid-ninth century) that became the basis for the accepted canon worldwide, or a riyal Palestinian tradition that has fallen into disuse, but which is evident in the genizah. Other forms must simply have fallen into desuetude and been lost forever. Over one hundred years of speculation regarding the identification of the original texts was exposed as largely a was te of time. The best that can be said of early liturgy is that certain rubrics are mentioned in the Mishnah, so must have existed in some forms at least by 200 C.E.I0 By chance we know some of the wording by which so me 9 Lawrence A. Hoffman, The Canonization qf the /iynagogue Service (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1979). The prayer book as we know it was compiled as a responsum by Amram Gaon (c. 850) largely as an attempt to enforce local Babylonian cultural hegemony (at the expense ofthe rival Palestinian cultural tradition) on new Jewish communities in western Europe. He is unrelenting in his opposition to Palestinian customs. A further step was taken by Saadiah Gaon (c. 920) whose prayer book was intended to counter Karaite criticism, and to demonstrate rabbinie Judaism's linguistic, structural and philosophical purity - these being aesthetic matters favored by the surrounding Muslim culture. Later geonim, especially Sherira and Hai (c. 1000), adopted a stance of permissiveness regarding liturgical customs that deviated from Babylonian norms, so as to retain the loyalty of outlyingJewish communities that no longer required Babylonian guidance and might have broken off economic and cultural relationships with the aging geonic center. 10 For greater detail on methodology, see Richard Sarason, "On the Use of Method in the Modern Study of Jewish Liturgy," in William Scott Green, ed., Approaches to Ancient Judaism: Theory and Practice, Brown Judaic Series I (Missoula, Montana: Scholars Press, 1978), pp. 97-172.

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people once expressed those rubrics, but there is and never was a single Urtext for them. We can now turn in greater detail to the situation in the year 200, summarizing wh at we know about the institutional origins in which the liturgy flourished; after saying what we can about the historical data regarding liturgical beginnings, we can turn to liturgical structure and theology, and then move on to medieval and modern developments.

2 INSTITUTIONAL

ÜRIGINS

Jewish worship is simultaneously rabbinic worship, that is, worship as defined by the generations of authorities known loosely as "the Rabbis," namely: the Pharisees (circa. 2nd cent. B.C.E. - 70 C.E.); the tannaim (sing. tanna, 70 - 200 C.E.); the amoraim (sing. amora, 200 - circa 6th17th cents); and the geonim (sing. gaon, 757 - 1038). Rabbinic myths of origins date some rabbinic customs as far back as Moses and even the patriarchs, but in fact, it is difficult to posit even elementary rabbinic worship prior to the 1st century B.C.E., and only in the 1st century C.E. does it come clearly into focus. The role of the tannaim is thus formative. It was once believed that the tannaim established rabbinic worship by well-defined general proclarnations reached by central bodies able to enforce a monolithic rabbinic will on a passive population. We now know that the tannaim were a diverse group with ineffective decentralized authority; that despite general agreement on certain principles, variation of interpretation was the rule; and that, consequently, there are no single authoritative "original" prayers to be found. Instead, tannaitic (and even amoraic) worship is characterized by relatively freewheeling expressions of specific worship themes, and an abundance of equally old prayer texts, most of which have been lost to history. Three institutions contributed to nascent rabbinic worship: the Temple, the chavurah and the synagogue. The Temple predated the tannaim who, however, knew its worship forms, which they respected as scripturally ordained. Even after the Temple's fall in 70 C.E., the Rabbis accepted its sacrificial system as paradigmatic for ideal worship, and predicted a rebuilt Temple with a restored cult at the end of time. Until then, they consciously modeled their own worship after real or imaginary cultic blueprints, characterizing prayer itself, for example, as "an offering of the lips," likening the householder's table around which prayers were said to an alter, and announcing that the primary rabbinic prayer, the T qillah, was in li eu of the defunct Tamid or daily sacrifice.

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Nonetheless, two alternative loci for worship, the chavurah, and the synagogue, both of which had predated the Temple's fall, now rose to prominence. The chavurah (pI. chavurot) appears in our records by Pharisaic times. Chavurot are tableship groups emphasizing worship around meals, and featuring purity rules that liken average Israelites to priests, and tables to Temple alters. They began as ad hoc gatherings, but developed into stable associations that celebrated such things as feast days and life-cyde celebrations of members. Out of this milieu grew the Passover seder, benedictions over food, and the Grace after meals (Birkat hamazon). The synagogue too predates the Temple's fall, but not by the many centuries often imagined. Evident in the Gospels, and known both to Paul and to Josephus, the synagogue must have been weIl established by the first century C.E. But neither written nor archeological data indicate origins much prior to that, certainly not before the 2nd century B.C.E. Sources antedating the Hasmonean revolt (167 B.C.E.)-induding Daniel, written on its very eve-are alike in knowing nothing of synagogues, which, therefore can certainly not be dated to the Babylonian exile, as is often daimed. We also have texts purporting to reflect conditions in the 2nd-1 st century B.C.E., and portraying public worship in village squares under the aegis of a ma'amad, an institution said to be an extension of the cult, in that it was a local gathering for worship at the time that the sacrifices were being offered inJerusalem; but we he ar also of worship there (complete with a T ifillah, the rabbinie prayer par excellence) by assemblies seeking relief from drought. It has therefore commonly been theorized that the synagogue developed out of the ma'amad. However, New Testament pericopes as weIl as several tannaitic narratives suggest that even somewhat after the period which the ma'amad texts daim to reflect, rabbinie worship could not have been as developed as those texts imply. We should therefore question the extent to which we ought to credit the ma'amad with a serious role in synagogue and liturgie al formation. The earliest synagogue was more likely a place of communal gathering having litde or nothing to do with the rabbinie dass, whose public liturgy of the hours was being developed in rabbinie study cirdes, and whose table prayers were arising from chavurah meals. Archeological remains of actual synagogues rarely even follow rabbi nie law, in that they do not necessarily face Jerusalern, and at least in the diaspora, they often have inscriptions paying tribute to women who supported them financially and who served as synagogue officers. Whether, therefore, the full-blown system of rabbinie worship described in the Mishnah had already been fully transplanted to the synagogue even

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by the year 200 is a matter of speculation, although eventually, it is clear that rabbinicJudaism did triumph so that the Mishnah's worship prototype triumphed in synagogues as well. Eventually, then, the synagogue and the horne became twin foci for Jewish worship. Though Jews can and do worship elsewhere, worship to this day is normally enacted at set times in either or both of these locales. 3

THE UTURGICAL TEXT AND STRUCTURE

a The Primacy qf the Blessing Rabbinic prayers hark back loosely to biblical prototypes, but they are unique in that they feature a novel prose form known as a berakhah (a blessing or benediction). Stylistic rules for benedictions evolved through the centuries, but were largely in pI ace by the 3rd century C.E. Blessings are either short or long. Short blessings are one-line formulas introduced by, "Blessed art Thou, Lord our God, Ruler ofthe universe ... " and followed by a variable adjectival modi{)ring clause such as "who redeemed Israel" or "who makes peace." Long Blessings may or may not feature the introduction, "Blessed art Thou .... " but they always conclude with a chatimah (lit.: aseal) which sums up the blessing's theme ("Blessed art Thou who .... "); they are "long" in that they contain thematic development in the body of the benediction, so that each one is in essence a small essay on some aspect of rabbinic thought. Worship services are constituted by a variety of verbal material, but primarily by clusters of blessings strung one after the other. Of these, the following two stand out: the blessings that surround the Shema, and those that make up the T ifillah (see below). These "blessing-essays" however are not the product of single authors; they are composite works reflecting centuries of oral transmission and subsequent literary redaction. They thus betray the fact that the rabbinic tradition is far from monolithic. One major strand, for example, is Jewish gnosticism (known generally as the praxis of Yordei Merkavah, the "Chariot" or "Throne" mystics) which, from as early as the 2nd or 3rd centuries C.E., emphasized mantra-like formulas, word strings of synonyms that produced rhythmic regularity without any necessary cognitive enrichment; sometimes accompanied by fasting and body movement, this worship was trance-inducing, the goal being to join the heavenly angels seen by Isaiah (chap. 6), and there to praise God.

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At the same time, other rabbinie strands stressed the cognitive pole of meaning, by mandating regular worship organized according to set themes. Indeed, far centuries, it was this unvarying thematic progression that identified worship as properly rabbinie despite its many verbal manifestations in different synagogues. Generally speaking, each theme was allotted its own blessing, the style of which allowed for great variation, in that even after the basic rules for beginning and ending it were in place, there still remained the blessing's body where the theme could be elaborated freely. Expression of a theme thus varied widely from place to place, and even from time to time in the same place, as prayer leaders exercised considerable imagination in their renditions. Regardless of the vast differences in wording that resulted, however, the same order of blessings, and thus, the same progression of themes, was the rule, so that even a highly unusual version of a worship service would be recognizable as just one more interesting delivery of the appropriate thematic element. b From Unfixed Text to Prayer Book

Somewhere between the third and the eighth centuries the various strands of prayer coalesced into fixed liturgies. Lengthy poetic versions of benedictions known as piyyutim, originally, perhaps, everyday alternatives, were eventually reserved for fast or feast days. The mystical mantra-like strata were combined with information-rich theological expressions of the themes, to produce final formulations of composite texts betraying both the mystical affective side of worship and the theological cognitive pole as well. More than one such amalgam persisted for centuries, with two recognizable clusters taking shape: the Palestinian rite in Palestine and Egypt, and the Babylonian rite in the Tigris-Euphrates basin. The former remained particularly rich in poetry, preferring to continue the ageold tradition of encouraging novel expressions of the mandated blessings at the expense of a single "canonized" prayer text. The latter, however, chose fixity as its goal: it limited poetry to a bare minimum, and established set texts to be recited from beginning to end of the standard worship services. In the middle of the 9th century, Amram Gaon, the titular leader of Babylonian J ewry established his own particular set of texts as incumbent on allJews. His decree, our first known comprehensive prayer book, is known as Seder Rav Amram ("The Seder [or order of prayers according to] Rav Amram"). Accepted as normative by the youngJewish communities in western Europe especially,

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it eventually became the basis for all subsequent rites, particularly in the wake of Palestinian Jewry's destruction at the hands of the Crusaders, and the parallel success of the Babylonian legal tradition in establishing its cultural hegemony over its Palestinian parallel. Seder Rav Amram contained all required prayer texts for horne and synagogue devotion, along with legal (halakhic) regulations for saying them. To be sure, it omitted much more than it included, in that Palestinian alternatives especially were overlooked. But in principle, J ewish worship was henceforth associated with the act of reading one's way through relevant paragraphs of a book, following the requisite halakhic guidelines regarding such things as bodily posture and the preferred performative style of congregation/prayer-leader antiphony. In the centuries that followed, the book expanded with new poetry expressive of this or that community's identity, but before turning to these expansions, we should look briefly at the contents of Seder Rav Amram's basic service, since it was to remain the essential outline ofJewish worship in all branches ofJudaism to this day. c Outline rif Services-Structure and Theology As an apt continuer of rabbinic tradition generally, Seder Rav Amram does not feature the Bible among its prayers. True, three biblical citations (Dt. 6:4-9; 11:13-21; Nu.:15 37-41) constitute the wellknown Shema Yisra'el, which is recited morning and evening; and psalms too appear he re and there in their totality, especially in psalm collections known as Hallel. But the Shema has been recast as only a centerpiece bracketed by introductory and concluding blessings; and psalmody is decidedly insignificant here, relative to the blessing structure that predominates. The theology of rabbinie worship thus reflects the rabbinie doctrine that the written Bible requires interpretation according to the insights of the oral tradition. The most important worship units are 1) the Shema and its benedictions, and 2) the T ijillah, or "The Prayer [par excellence]," which singly or together have constituted the bulk of every synagogue service since the 1st century, at least. The Shema resembles a J ewish creed, in which the assertion of God's unity is elaborated through the accompanying blessings which acknowledge God as 1) Creator of light and darkness, 2) Revealer of Torah = Covenant-maker with Israel, and 3) Redeemer of Israel from Egyptian bondage. God is thus the sole deity, who, moreover, is responsible for creation, revelation, and redemption. Historical recollection is anamnetically linked to eschatological ex-

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pectation, in that God's redeeming act at the Red Sea is merely the archetype for a future act whereby Israel will receive final deliverance at the end of created time, when the covenant's promIse comes ultimately to its fruition. Eschatological hope figures even more prominendy in The T ifillah, aseries of 19 (originally 18) benedictions, largely petitionary, organized at the end of the 1st century. God is asked to grant the necessary insight that leads to repentance, and thus, to divine pardon and salvation. The blessings that follow define the paradigmatic rabbinic doctrine of salvation: God will heal the sick, restore fertility to the Land of Israel, return the exiles to their Land; reestablish the Jewish justice system, punish heretics, reward the righteous, rebuildJerusalem, and bring the messiah son ofDavid to rule in perfect peace. 11 Along with the Shema and the Tifillah, early worship featured the reading of Torah (the first five books of the Bible) on Mondays, Thursdays and holy days. More than one lectionary seems to have been in efTect: Palestinians favored the so-called triennial cyde (actually, a 3 1/2 - 4 year cyde, despite its tide), while Babylonian Jewry developed an annual cyde, which prevails today, as a consequence of the Babylonian cultural victory described above. Saturday mornings saw an additional reading (called Hajtarah) drawn from the prophets (and the narrative books-known also as "prophets" in Jewish tradition), and linked in so me way to the primary T orah text. But scripture was customarily followed by an interpretive homily, which ended with a nechemta (a word of hope), and then, with the Kaddish, a prayer calling for the coming of the reign of God. By the 8th century, the Kaddish was associated with mourning and assumed to be ofbenefit to the dead, but its earliest appearance is as a conduding prayer to the study of Torah. The Rabbis favored private spirituality as weIl, and thus introduced benedictions (usuaIly the short ones) as a means of injecting religious significance into everyday events, as disparate as eating an apple to seeing a rainbow, or even to going to the bathroom (at which time, one was to marvel at the system of ducts and tubes that constitute the human body). Similarly, benedictions preceded the performance of commandments (or mitzvot, sing.: mitzvah) affirming that the act about to be performed-kindling Chanukah lights, perhaps, or performing a circumcision-was of covenantal magnitude. 11 Thesis developed and taught to his students (though never published), by the late Leon Liebreich; and subsequently arrived at independently and in greater detail by Reuven Kimelman, "The Daily Amidah and the Rhetoric of Redemption," ]Q.R 79 (1988/89): 165-198.

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Perhaps the most significant mitzvah was the study of Torah, understood generically, as the ongoing revelation of God's word, and including both written scripture and oral tradition. Rabbinic spirituality favored such study every morning upon awakening, especially with texts describing the defunct Temple cult, as if reading about sacrifice was the next best thing to doing it. In his Seder, Amram included a particular collection of all such texts-the Bible and the Rabbis on sacrifice, blessings over the mitzvah of Torah study, and benedictions related to the daily miracle ofwaking up to the world-but he appended them to the beginning of his synagogue liturgy, thus transforming horne devotion into preliminary synagogue meditation and study. There it remains to this day, as does a second sort of introductory material Amram included: songs of praise highlighted by a Hallel (Pss. 145-150). We saw above the Rabbis' thematic emphasis on future redemption, as defined in the T ifillah and as represented in the metaphor of the ultimate reign of God (from the Kaddish). But the arrival of God's promised realm presupposes the prior forgiveness of sin. The amoraim thus suggested a daily confession following the T ifillah. Amram went further, including not only the opportunity for private devotion there, but also an official Supplication rubric (the Tachanun), composed of a collection of prayers acknowledging the lowliness of the human condition. These supplications later grew in importance among western European Chasidei Ashkenaz (see below), but were already present in Amram's Seder, as an apt continuation of the amoraic anthropology he inherited. Thus with but one exception (the Alenu-see below) the major prayers of the daily morning service were in place by Amram's day. Beginning with 1) morning blessings and the study of sacrificial texts, the worshipper then recited 2) a Hallel and songs of praise. These introduced the two most important rubrics, namely: 3) the Shema and its blessings, and 4) the T ifillah. The T ifillah, technically areplacement for the Temple Tamid sacrifice, conjured up the cult's penitential function, and thus led to 5) private prayer, especially the supplicatory Tachanun. On appropriate days, 6) scripture and 7) a sermon followed, but in any case, 8) a concluding Kaddish, calling for God's promised reign on earth was the norm. The only important addition over the years has been the Alenu, composed originally as an introduction to Rosh Hashanah's blowing of the Shofar, but by the 14th century, added to the concluding prayers. It too calls for God's ultimate reign on earth. With slight alteration, the above outline of daily morning prayer (shacharit) characterizes every other synagogue service. Mandated

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afternoon (minchah) and evening (arvit or ma'ariv) services featuring similar liturgies have by now coalesced into back-to-back services held at sunset. These daily occasions are suitably alte red for Sabbaths, fasts and festivals, when, in addition, the horne as worship setting usuaBy looms larger than the daily norm. Thus, for exampIe, Passover caBs for additional synagogue poetry on the theme of the Exodus; but it also features the horne seder ritual with family and friends. Horne liturgy for Sabbaths and festivals includes, above aB, 1) the kindling of lights, along with a prayer caBed Kiddush, an announcement of the onset of sacred time; and 2) a Havdalah (or "separation") ceremony marking a "separation" between sacred and secular time, as the Sabbath or festival ends. d Medieval Developments in Europe-Structure and Theology

Seder Rav Amram was foBowed by a second comprehensive prayer book, Siddur Saadiah, a compendium by the renowned 10th-century philosopher, exegete, poet and polemicist: the gaon, Saadiah. Yet a third such book, no longer extant, is attributed to the last gaon of our period, Hai (d. 1038). But Amram, especially, made an impact on aB Europeans, who patterned their worship after his instructions and text. A broad division of rites into "Sefardi" as opposed to "Ashkenazi" differentiates later developments in the Iberian peninsula (Sifarad) from those in Northern Europe (France and Germany, known together as Ashkenaz). In both places, however, the texts grew in bulk as Spanish, French, German and other Jews composed poetic additions, especially for holy days. In l4th-century Ashkenaz, the expanding siddur (or "order" of prayer) was considered too bulky to be practical, and was split into: 1) a siddur for daily and Sabbath use; 2) a Haggadah for the Passover seder; and 3) a machzor for holy day prayers, often aseparate volume for each of the three pilgrim festivals (pesach = Passover; Shavuot = Pentecost; and Sukkot = "Booths" or "Tabernacles") and for the High Holy Day occasions (Rosh Hashanah = New Year, and rom Kippur = Day of Atonement). This prayer book taxonomy (to which I will return in Part 6) is common today. The most important later medieval developments occurred in the mystical tradition that was in part continued, in part revived, and in part newly enriched, first in l2th-century Germany, then in l3th-14th-century Spain, and finaBy, in the l6th-17th-century Ottoman empire, especiaBy in the Land of Israel. Under the influence of medieval piety, reflected also by Christian mendicant orders, the first of these movements (known as Chasidei Ashkenaz-

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"The pietists of northern Europe") favored a severely penitential, even ascetic, attitude to prayer; in addition, they projected mystical meaning onto specific clusters of words and even letters, so that slavish adherence to specific texts of prayers became mandatory. They also imposed rigorous and puritanical rules of gender separation. Their influence was substantial in northern and eastern Europe for centuries, culminating, for example, in the removal of mothers from their own sons' circumcision rite. The Spanish school of Kabbalah-really a philosophy rooted in Provencal neo-platonism, and transferred south over the Pyrenees-spread throughout the Mediterranean, especially to the Land of Israel, with the expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492, where (among other things) they composed an entirely novel service to introduce the Sabbath (Kabbalat Shabbat, which precedes Friday evening-or aroit-worship). They also redefined the very goal of worship, introducing ecstatic practices reminiscent of the tranceinducing customs of earlier times. These included rote recitation of divine names, and the use of music for self-hypnotic purposes. Imp1icit in their worship was a bold theology whereby 1) God and the universe are declared coterminous; 2) the human existential state is thus equivalent to God's; 3) as the dominant metaphor for the fractured state of being on earth (and in God!) we find the sexual image of an androgynous deity, whose male and female elements are divorced from each other and in anxious search for reunification. Worship is nothing less than the most important means to restore God's male and female parts to wholeness. Thus the normative rabbinic theology contained in the manifest conte nt of the benedictions was suppressed, in favor of a hidden mystical meaning assumed to underlie the prayers. Worshippers were instructed to pray with only the secret meaning in mind. To faci1itate that end, introductory meditations called kavvanot (sing.: kavvanah) were composed, sometimes with a prayer's hidden purpose expressly stated, and sometimes with it only alluded to. In the l7th century-and especially in the 18th, under the influence of Polishl Russian Chasidism, a theological outgrowth of Kabbalah-Kabbalistic thought spawned new prayer books replete with mystica1 kavvanot, as weIl as other more exotic innovations, such as diagrams pointing toward the divorced state of God; or to revived gnostic traditions regarding a dual world of light and darkness; and to a new anthropology as weIl, featuring human beings as a reflection of a divided God and a divided world, but yearning in prayer for the unity we call shalom--"peace" and "wholeness."12 12

See survey in LouisJacobs, Hasidic Prayer (New York: Schocken Books, 1973).

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IMPUCIT UTURGICAL THEOLOGY

The message of worship comes from more than its words. The very way of worship prescribed by the Rabbis has theological and ecclesiological presuppositions. The primary expression of tradition al worship is corporate. The Jew may pray privately any time, any place, and with any words, gestures or songs. But theJew must pray with the community three time daily. The assembly must therefore include a quorum (or minyan) of at least ten worshippers, the minimum necessary to represe nt the People Israel. (Orthodox and pre-modern Judaism recognizes only men here. On modern-day attitudes to women in worship, see below.) The text is almost invariably first-person plural, "We," indicative of the corporate covenant being celebrated. The prayer leader is included with the people, for the leader functions technically only as a sheliach tz;ibbur, an "agent of the congregation," presenting the public's praise and petition to God. An implicit social contract underlies the relationship; concerned that they may not achieve the proper spiritual dimension, the people give up their right to pray as they wish, and entrust this "public agent" with the power to represent them on high. If the agent proves inept or unfit in character, a new one is selected. 13 Thus the most important single person in traditionalJewish worship became the chazzan, who grew from humble origins as a general caretaker and prayer leader of the ancient synagogue to become the modern cantor, entrusted with the proper recitation of the liturgy. Without a monastic tradition, Jews did not develop unis on singing as Christianity did, but it did specialize in the solo song, as the prayer leader chanted blessing after blessing, from the beginning to the end of the service. In principal, the chazzan was held accountable for the highest musical, vocal, and textual competence-no small matter, given the growth ofworship traditions over the years. Textual enrichment had gone hand in hand with increased musical sophistication. The Torah-unmarked as to vowels and musical signs-had to be read without error, according to the proper cantillation mode; and even the prayer texts required specific knowledge of nusach-the name given to the musical systemsthat varied with the season of the year and the service of the day. It became customary for Chazzan and congregation to sing the service antiphonally, a custom still to be found in Orthodox congre13 See Lawrence A. Hoffman, "Musical Traditions and Tensions in the American Synagogue," in David Power, Mary Collins, Mellonee Burnim, eds., Music and the Experience qfGod: Concilium 222 (Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, Ltd., 1989): 30-38.

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gations: first, the congregation reads quickly through a prayer, each worshipper at a somewhat different speed, and often, out loud as well-a custom called davvening, the chazzan faces the same way as the congregation of which he-all cantors are male, in this traditional milieu-is an integral part, but the noise dies down, indicating to hirn that everyone has finished the blessing in question. The chazzan then repeats it, all or in part, but with the correct nusach, and, especially in recent Ashkenazi tradition, occasionally in extended melismatic form also, something akin to a jazz musician's improvisation around the melodies and harmonies of traditional tunes. This "dialogic" model, however, is ancient, going back to the very origin of rabbinie worship, the implicit theological model being the angelic "dialogue" in Isaiah's vision, whereby two groups of angels face each other, alternately praising GOd. 14 "Praise" thus emerges as the dominant stance of the Jew before God. Jews may be thankful-indeed, they must be-but they stand in covenantal partnership with God, such that the stance of receiving everything as a gift of pure grace, for which one can respond with nothing but intense gratitude alone, is somewhat alien to Jewish tradition. True, in the famous High Holy Day prayer avinu malkenu (attributed in part to the 2nd-century tanna, Rabbi Akiba) we find the plea, "Have mercy on us ... for we have no works." But a theology of mitzvah could hardly hold that extreme notion; the mitzvot were nothing if not works. So despite human sin, God owes Israel something, under covenantal terms. And Israel turns to God in a characteristically affirmative stance, praising the One from whom blessings flow, and acknowledging God as their origin and source. Turning to private prayer, we see again the communal focus so far described, as well as another aspect of the J ewish world view: its appreciation of the cosmos as something valuable in its own right, an object to be enjoyed. Private prayer, it will be recalled, was established primarily around the memorization of set blessing formulas appropriate to acts of enjoyment or as introductions to performing commandments. In the latter category, we find once again the dominant image of the Jew as a member of a covenanted peopIe, intent on performing covenantal acts with intentional awareness that they are precisely that: mitzvot, divine commands that one 14 For his tory of Jewish music, see Eliyahu Schleifer, 'jewish Liturgical Music from the Bible to Hasidism," and Geoffrey Goldberg, 'jewish Liturgical Music in the Wake of 19th-Century Reform," in Lawrence A. Hoffman and Janet R. Walton, eds., Sacred Sound and Social Change (Notre Dame: University ofNotre Dame Press, 1992), pp. 13-58, 59-83.

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is fortunate enough to do. In the former case, we cannot miss the positive stance toward the world, which persists despite even the heightened penitential consciousness of the Chasidei Ashkenaz, who may have insisted on the sinfulness of humanity, but never imputed such negativity to God's cosmos. Thus men and women are to enjoy the world-its fruit and its rainbows, its sages and its scholars-all of which, among others, are to be greeted with pertinent blessings. Not only the sense of sight, but hearing too and even smell, are positively nuanced by celebrative blessings: for there are blessings on hearing good news (or bad news); and on smelling fragrant flowers or herbs; and so on. The theology of Jewish worship insists that it is a sin to evade the world which God has prepared us to experience. 15

5

CONTEMPORARY DEVELOPMENTS

a Europe l6 By the 19th century, post-Napoleonic Jewry in northern Europe found itself increasingly released from medieval ghettoes. Especially in large commercial and cultural capitals, enlightened Jewish communities faced the fact that their worship seemed still to be reflective of their pre-modern consciousness. Beyond even the outmoded tenets of its troubling content, it was the manner of traditional worship that Jews found disturbing. Services were long, entirely in Hebrew, lacking a sermon in the vernacular, and often, conducted by cantors who were less than what the ideal prescribed. The average service featured a noisy congregation of individualistic worshippers rocking back and forth, and shouting prayers not at all in unison. This davvening hardly accorded with the dominant aesthetic of 19th-century Europe, where worship was assumed to call for quietude, reverence and decorum. Beginning in Alsace, but quickly spreading to Berlin, Hamburg, Vienna, and elsewhere, Jews initiated rapid and sometimes thorough worship reform. Musically, the old modes and sounds were notated according to modern standards, and re cast so that "folk" music came out sounding like western classics. The chazzan was removed in favor of a

1., Cf. Lawrence A. Hoffman, 'jewish Spirituality: the Life ofBlessing" Concilium 229 (1990), and idem., ed., Land qf Israel: Jewish Perspectives (N otre Dame: U niversity of N otre Dame Press, 1986), Introduction. lh Surveyed in great detail by Jakob J. Petuchowski, Prayerbook Riform in Europe (New York: World Union for Progressive Judaism, 1968).

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singer and choir, who would render the tunes without the traditional cantorial embellishment. Rabbis learned to preach in German, and to direct truncated worship services out of translated prayer books, stripped down to a basic liturgy; German translations or paraphrases omitted difficult-to-hold doctrines like the belief in bodily resurrection or an ultimate return from "exile," and emphasized the universalistic strains of Jewish thought at the expense of particularistic ones. Of the two loci for Jewish worship, the horne shrunk in importance, as Judaism shifted to the synagogue, which modern Jews saw as their "church." European reform was not as far-reaching as it would become on American shores. Men gene rally still wore the traditional garb of prayer-a headcovering and prayer shawl (tallit); and though women were granted theoretical equality, and admitted into the main sanctuary, they were by no means equal in practice. But the Reform Movement had been born. Three rabbinic conferences in mid-century featured deliberations of this religious "reformation" of Judaism, including specific tenets of liturgical theology and practice, like the traditional call for a return "horne to Jerusalem" from diasporan "exile," and the use of Hebrew in prayer. In 1819 and again in 1841, a Hamburg congregation pub1ished a liberal prayer book, with resulting charges and counter-charges, condemnations and excommunications, between traditionalists and modernists. But 19th-century European po1itics was increasing1y reactionary, so that the fight for change moved to America. b United States

American J ewish worship has gone through three stages. The first is the period known as Classical Reform, which reached its 1iturgica1 zenith in 1894/95, with the publication of a Union Prayer Book for Reform congregations. Reforms begun in Europe were carried through here, gene rally in a sweeping fashion undreamed of across the ocean. Worship featured short services almost entirely in English; it was dominated by western music sung by a hidden choir, and a sermon similar to what one would he ar in Episcopal or Congregational worship. Folk traditions like specialized worship garb, and old-world customs like carrying the Torah through the congregation were erased. The mood was one of awe, and the congregation was almost comp1etely passive, expected to rise and sit in unison, sometimes to read some responses together, rarely ever to sing, and by and large, to recognize the presence of

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God as a transcendent being suggested by the staid architectural and cultural magnificence which enfolded them. The se co nd stage developed with the migration from 1881 to 1924 of eastern EuropeanJews, for whom classical Reform seemed cold and devoid of Jewish substance or feeling. The new immigrants developed their own Conservative Movement, which remained true to worship styles they had known as Europeans, albeit in a modernized format. By the 1930s eastern Europeans were joining Reform Temples as well, bringing with them a yearning for traditional melodies and the warmth of the folk culture that classical Reform had jettisoned. The depression and then World War 11 delayed rapid evolution for two decades, and the shock of the Holocaust as well as the need to build and then to support the State of Israel readjusted Jewish concern away from local spirituality and toward world politics. But movement to the suburbs brought with it a recognizably different form of Jewish worship, especially for ReformJews, whose classical style had been dependent on huge sanctuaries and pipe organs that no one in suburbia could afford, or, for that matter, even wanted any more. By the 1960s, the third stage, a veritable second reformation for Jews had begun. Unhappiness with suburban worship, and the need to express theologically the loss of the 6,000,000 as well as the miracle of a modem Jewish state led to the publication of new liturgies. In 1972, the Reform Movement began ordaining women as rabbis and investing them as cantors, reforms that eventually were replicated by Conservative and ReconstructionistJews as well. (Reconstructionism, American Judaism's fourth movement, broke away from Conservative Judaism, following the philosophy of Mordecai Kaplan, who emphasizedJudaism as a civilization, held a high regard for tradition, but denounced many traditional Jewish beliefs, including a personal deity and chosen peoplehood.) American Judaism like Christianity has seen itself increasingly polarized into liberal and conservative wings. Predictably, liturgical innovation expresses this growing ideological competitiveness. For instance, finding itself thrown farther and farther to the right, OrthodoxJews increasingly use prayer books that feature ultra-Orthodox interpretations and translations. Parallel developments among Reform and Reconstructionist Jews on the left suggest increased affirmation of egalitarianism in worship, and thus, revised liturgies with inclusive language. Caught in the middle, Conservative Jews vary in practice, some using a new movement liturgy dating from the 1970s, but some preferring the old worship books from the 1940s; some admitting women rabbis and cantors, others not. At

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this writing, the Conservative seminary operates several simultaneous prayer services, expressive of the inability of the middle to find a single ideological expression of religious identity. Musically, the cantor (man or woman) has made a dramatic reappearance in Reform synagogues, as have traditional melodies. But music from Israel and from youth culture has been added to the amalgam, and a new "American sound" is being created by a small but growing cadre of synagogue composers. Following the Six-Day War, heightened ethnicity could be found in synagogue ritual. By the early 1990s, however, the emotional tug of old-world ethnicity was waning, and Jews began accenting spirituality over ethnicity, not only in the synagogue, but in the horne too. The latest novelties in liberal cirdes indude an emphasis on personalized life-cyde liturgies; services of healing; a multiplication of individualistic liturgies (made possible by desk-top publishing); a new emphasis on liturgy serving the individual person per se; and a dichotomy between public formal worship where an official service takes place and a parallel but informal service where small groups of committed Jews experiment with new liturgical forms induding new music, new liturgies, and radical democratic non-hierarchic and egalitarian worship. 6

THE FUTURE OF LITURGICAL STUDY

A variant on Thomas Kuhn's influential introduction of the notion of paradigm shifts comes from Imre Lakatos, who prefers the term "research programs."17 Whereas Kuhn posited linear development within a paradigm and then a sudden quantum leap into another one, Lakatos drew a more measured picture in which scholars work in a variety of research programs (Kuhn's "paradigms") all at the same time. Healthy science is tantamount to healthy competition not only within any paradigm (or program) but also across paradigms, as paradigm representatives demonstrate the power of their own particular conceptualization of the subject. If Lakatos is right, the study of liturgy has been marked through the years by a distinct absence of health. Until Heinemann's critique, only philology counted as matte ring. By contrast, the formcritical exposure of the philologist's holy grail of the Urtext as nonexistent opened the possibility that scholars might do any number

17 See John Worrall and Gregory Currie, The Methodology qf Scientifie Research Programmes: Philosophie Papers, vol. 1, 1mre Lakatos (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978).

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of things that would never have occurred to them as long as the Zunzian paradigm with its privileging of antiquity and supposed rabbinie purity was the be-all and end-all of the scholarly enterpnse. Heinemann's alternative program has itself proved to be a dead end, as I suspect Heinemann hirnself knew. Since there was no Urtext to ferret out, all Heinemann had in his texts from late antiquity were fragments of many equally licit renditions of ancient rubries. None was necessarily based on any of the others, and all of them might weIl have begun as oral material long before the earliest text was even written down. Textual reconstruction seemed to have reached a dead end. Heinemann therefore posed a new set of questions that did not presuppose our ability to reconstruct a text's history. Rather than ask how old a text was, he sought to distinguish formal characteristics of different prayer styles, and then to relate these styles to discrete institutions in Israel's society. But as little as we know about the texts, we know even less about the institutions! And Heinemann hi.nself saw that the prayers as we have them usually display more than one set of formal criteria. Philology, however, did not silently fold up its tents and steal silently away into the night. Even Heinemann's interest in formal style could be put to philological purposes. Perhaps the most influential single article from the philological school, a reconstruction of the history of the T ifillah by Louis Finkelstein, had sought to differentiate blessings stylistically and on that basis to date them on the philologie al time line. 18 But Heinemann attacked Finkelstein directly and in the opinion of most, thereby dealt a death blow to the whole line of philologie al thought from Zunz onward. Still, the quest for origins has not gone away. The late E.D. Goldschmidt (see above) should especially be remembered as holding out for the elusive Urtext and arguing directly with Heinemann on the subject. Of late, others scholars have continued the work of historical reconstruction in antiquity. In 1990, Ezra Fleischer concurred with the conclusions offered above, namely, that before 70 not much can be said at all about Jewish liturgy, most of which probably did not even arise until after that time. 19 Stefan Reif,

18 Louis Finkelstein, "The Development ofthe Amidah," JQ.R, n.s. 16 (1925-26): reprinted inJakobJ. Petuchowski, Contributions to the Scientific Study oJJewish Liturgy (New York: Ktav, 1970): 91-177. 19 Ezra Fleischer, "Lakadmoniut Tefillot Hachovah Beyisrael," Tarbiz 59 (1990): 397-445.

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however, continues to see earlier origins, though he accepts Heinemann's claim that there is no single Urtext to be found. 20 But by and large, at least one major change has occurred even for those who still do historical reconstruction: scholars are at least not privileging the earliest historical period quite as much. The most interesting part of Reifs work surveys medieval ritual development, a field that Zunz had begun and Goldschmidt had pursued. 21 A related new and promising field of research has been opened up by Israel M. Ta-Shma who focuses also on the Middle Ages and sees liturgy as local customs that give communities their continuity and mark them off as different from each other. 22 The study of the piyyutim, long a favorite topic among scholars, points us also beyond the tannaitic era and opens up a moving literary landscape with endless room for exploration. 23 And for those interested purely in textual innovation, the Genizah fragments have yet to be explored in all their fullness. 24 An intriguing new field to be pursued is women's liturgy, an area long ignored by scholars who identified rabbinic writings with the sum total of what Jews did. A significant body of women's liturgy does exist, however, at least for the early modern period in eastern Europe and Italy, and a modest beginning has been made in collecting and studying it. 25 The overarching question about the study of Jewish Liturgyand perhaps about Liturgy as a genus in its own right, without regard to whethet it is Jewish or not-is the prior determination of what kind of thing it iso On what kind of cultural map should it appear? Instead of "related literature," in what relevant web of data 20 Cf. Stefan Reif, "Al Hitpatchut Hatefillah Hakadumah Beyisrael," Tarbiz 60 (1991): 677-681; idem., Judairm and Hebrew Prayer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). 21 Cf. Leopo1d Zunz, Ritus der synagogalen Gottesdienst (Berlin, 1859); Go1dschmidt, Mechkarei Tifzllah Ufiyyut Oerusalem: Magnes, 1978); for summary and critique of Zunz, see Lawrence A. Hoffman, Bl!)iond the Text: a Holirtic Approach to Liturgy (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987): pp. 46-59. 22 Israel M. Ta-Shma, Minhag Ashkenaz Hakadmon Oerusalem: Magnes, 1992). 23 The best summary is Ezra Fleischer, Shirat Hakodesh Ha'ivrit bimei Habenayim Uerusalem: Keter, 1975). For English sampie, see Jakob J. Petuchowsky, Theology and Poetry (London: Roudedge and Kegan Paul, 1978). 24 See summary statement by Ezra Fleischer, Tifzllah Uminhagei Tifzllah Eretzrirra'elit BitekuJat Hagenizah Oerusalem, Magnes, 1988). 25 Cf. the work of Chava Weissler, esp. her summary statement, Traditional riddirh Literature: A SourceJor the Study qfWomen's Religious Lives (TheJacob Pat Memorial Lecture, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1987); and on Italy, the manuscript reproduced in Nina Beth Cardin, Out qf the Depths I Gall to rou (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1992). See also Ellen M. Umansky and Dianne Ashton, Four Genturies qf Jewirh Women's Spirituality: a Sourcebook (Boston: Beacon Press, 1992).

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might liturgy be embedded? That was the question I asked in Beyond the Text: a Holistic Approach to Liturgy.26 It was the issue when Zunz began, and it is the issue now, the only difference being that Zunz can be pardoned for assuming the answer whereas we cannot. My own answer has been to place liturgy in the category of ritual script, and to study it with the interdisciplinary access provided by anthropology, performance criticism, and the like. As Durkheim already knew, shared ritual spells out shared identity. We ought to go about studying J ewish liturgy as if we were field anthropologists inquiring after the meaning that Jewish worship in all its guises has for the Jews who do it. Among other things, that means finally removing the privileged position allotted to talmudic practice, and granting equal status instead to Jewish worship anywhere, any time, and by any group of Jews. On religious grounds that will annoy thoseJewish researchers who favor talmudic forms alone as "authentic." But it is time to recognize the bias built into any Jewish liturgical scholarship that disallows or disparages studies of women, of the marginal, and of the innovative in any time or place. It also me ans attending to such non-textual items as ritual art and ritual action that may tell us much more about what is going on than the textually recorded word does, though commentary by related texts may confirm what we think is going on in the same way that an anthropologist's speculation may be supported by what a given informant says. When, for instance, medieval Italian Jews place a boy about to be circumcised on achair identified as the chair of Elijah, while welcoming hirn with, Barukh Haba, "Blessed be he that cometh," there is reason to believe that they are acting out their hope that he is the long-awaited messiah. Here we havc an interpretation of the ritual-as-drama, similar to what one reads in a review of a new play by Arthur Miller or David Mamet. The critic observes the play and asks what it is about. The interpretation is not to be judged by absolutist criteria of "right" or "wrong" in the same sense that an internally coherent system like mathematics yields correct or incorrect solutions. Rather, the ritual as cultural art form gives us what Suzanne Langer long ago called "presentational truths,"27 akin (as it turns out) to the philosophical category of performative language. The interpretation is either felicitous or it is not, it either works or it doesn't. If it does, it is because it is coherent with whar else we know about the play; it is 26 Lawrence A. Hoffman, Beyond the Text; a Holistic Approach to Liturgy (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987). 27 Suzanne K. Langer, Philosophy in a New Key (New York: Mentor Books, 1942).

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heuristically helpful in making sense out of the performance. This is a kind of functional truth, in the sense used by William J ames. It is not a zero-sum game; interpretations can be more or less true, not just true or false. So the liturgist starts with an interpretation from the performance as a whole and sees how far that view can be pressed without its running out of confirmatory evidence or being forced into a caricature that no longer convinces. Go back to the possibility that the circumcised child is being viewed as the messiah. Is this "reading" useful? We find in addition that Haggadah art, perhaps a century later, conflates the image of the messiah with Elijah. So the child placed on Elijah's chair could indeed be seen also as the messiah. Then we hear of a 14th-century Italian custom of greeting the child as "brother of seven, or father of eight"-an oblique reference to the boy as David or Jesse. So artistic and textual evidence concur in support of our "reading" of the ritual, which we can say is coherent with our knowledge of art, messianism in Italy at the time, and so forth. This is not the place to argue in detail for or against this particular case; I choose the example, however, because it illustrates the holistic study of liturgy that I envision. But the participants in a ritual do not just play-act. What they do ritually is an existential acting-out of who they are. What I am after, then, is not justJewish identity through ritual, but the artistic makeup of the culture to which the ritual participants lend their assent and affirm as mattering in their lives. 28 Part of this is the official meanings that the words of a rite proclaim as its realia. This is what Neusner provides in his Enchantments rif Judaism. 29 In that regard, what we do not yet have at our disposal is a systematic and comprehensive liturgical theology, that is, a coherent study of the official meanings about God, the world, and human nature that the liturgy provides. In addition, however, there are public but unofficial meanings to rituals: the use of wine as blood in early circumcision ceremonies,30 the parallel rabbinic presumption that the blood of circumcision like the blood of the Paschal lamb saves, or the Passover seder, perhaps, as family time, or whatever else a good field worker would come up with in studies ofJewish ritualizing now and in the past. 28 See Lawrence A. Hoffman, "Reconstructing Ritual as Identity and Culture," in Paul F. Bradshaw and Lawrence A. Hoffman, eds., The Making qf Jewish and Christian Worship (Notre Dame: University ofNotre Dame Press, 1991), pp. 22-41. 29 Jacob Neusner, The Enchantments qfJudaism (New York: Basic Books, 1987). 30 See Lawrence A. Hoffman, "How Ritual Means: Ritual Circumcision in Rabbinie Culture and Today," Studia Liturgica 23 (1993): 78-97.

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The debate between the text-centered approach and my own is not over the use of texts to get our information. Often that is all we have. The question is whether prayer books are texts, or whether they only look like texts but should be treated as something else. The issue is not whether we can say a lot about these books as texts; surely we can. But do we want to? Stefan Reif does, and he explains why in his treatment on rites. 31 He writes a lengthy ac count of European rites classifying them the traditional way as Babylonian or Palestinian, based largely on their selection of poetic inclusions. When he is done, he has a map of ritual dissemination from the two classic Jewish centers of influence and a network of criss-crossing lines that connect the various rites by the extent to which any one of them influenced the others. There is nothing wrong with this. It is literary textual study at its best. But is that all we can ask? My own approach, by contrast, treats rites as ritual statements of identification. I thus ask social, not literary questions. For me, it does not matter if community A borrowed a poem from community B, except insofar as it may signify that the members of A and of B shared a specific aspect of Jewish identity. German Reform Jews, for instance, borrowed Spanish poetry. A text-oriented scholar wants to know the extent to which German liturgy is now influenced by Spanish liturgy. I ask wh at it is that attracted German Jews to Spanish poetry, and what they were saying about their own identity as a consequence. In sum, rites look like literature to people who are trained in the study of books. But to worshippers who use them, literature is an irrelevant category. Geography too is only seemingly a determining consideration. The real factor making for ritual differentiation is social, not geographical, distance. Through the way a community prays, it defines who it is, whence it comes, and how it chooses to express its own individuality. The division of literary remnants into geographically relevant piles connected by lines of influence to other piles should be supplemented by observing the liturgical activity of people expressing their religious identity. CONCLUSION: JEWISH LITURGY AS A FJELD

I began by wondering whether Jewish Liturgy is a field. It turns out that it iso But like any healthy field, it is not clear at the moment what kind of field it iso It has gone by turns from being a philological search for an Urtext to a form-critical categorization according 31

Reif, Judaism and Hebrew Prayer, pp. 153-206.

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to formal literary styles, and then to becoming a number of other things ranging from classification of poetry to further literary analysis of rites, or even a non-literary study in ritual as aperformative elaboration of and identification with Jewish culture. The field is certainly not at any crossroads; but after aperiod when its only paradigm, philology, seemed moribund so that liturgy as a whole seemed also to be at a dead end, it now turns out that instead, it has a number of promising avenues where further research may lead to fertile ends.

GENERAL INDEX

Abot deRabbi Nathan 75, 122 Albeck, Chanokh 188-89, 199, 233 Alexander, Philip: 'Jewish Aramaic Translations of Hebrew Scriptures", 52; "Targum, Targum" 52 Amram Gaon: Seder Rav Amram 249-50, 252 Antiochus IV 14-15, 88 Apoca(ypse qf Abraham 23 Apocalypses: in Ist century literature 17-26; in post-Tannaitic period 2838 Aqiva, 30-32; Havdalah de-R. Aqiva 37 Aquila 38 Aramaic: Targumim translation and explanation of Hebrew Bible 40-63 Archaeology and synagogue art 103-108 Biblical scenes in art 99, 103 inhabited scrolls 103 mosaics in designs 97-99 religiosity of art 96-108 social his tory of ancient Palestine 64108 zodiacs in art 100 Architecture of ancient Palestine in Qumran studies 92-94. See also Palaces in aneient Palestine Ashi 199 "Aspects of Translation Technique m Antiquity" (Brock) 53-54 Aufrect, Walter", Some Observations on the Oberliiferungsgeschichte of the Targums" 55 Authoriry and Tradition: Toifian Beraitot in Talmudic Babylonio. (F1man) 188-90, 192 Avigad, N. 95, 97 Avi-Yonah, Michael, Oriental Art in Roman Palestine 64 BabylonianJewry and Targumim writings 42, 45-46 Babylonian Talmud, analysis of text and context 198-210 Bahat, B. 82 Barag, D. 70 Barr, James, "The Typography of Liberalism in ancient biblical translations" 53-54 Baruch, 2nd Book of in Ist century literature 20-23

Basser, Herbert W. 232 Baths and ritual bath houses 89-90 The Bavli. See Babylonian Talmud Ben-Dov, M. 67, 89 Berger, K. 28 Beyond the Text: A Holistic Approach to Liturgy (Hoffman) 263 The Bible in Aramaic (Sperber) 62 Bilde, P. 16 Bloch, Renee, "Methodological Note for the Study of Rabbinic Literature" 58 "Midrash" 220-21, 224 Bogaert, P. 21-23, 27-28 Boyarin, Daniel 7 Book qf Secrets (Margalioth) 37 Brandenburger, E. 20 Braude, William 234 Brock, Sebastian, "Aspects of Translation Technique in Antiquity" 53-54 Broshi, M. 82 Bruneau, P. 72 Cairo Geniza 43-45, 48, 56, 63 Cazeaux,]. 27 Cemeteries in ancient eities 90-92 Charlesworth,]. H. 25, 27 Chiat, M.]. 75, 76 Chilton, Bruce 47, 62 A Galilean Rabbi and His Bible 60 The Glory qf Israel, 55-56 Chronicles, Targum to, 50-51 Circumcision and messianic hope 26364 Clark, Ernest 63 Cohen, Avinoam 200 Cohen, Shaye]. D. 4, 17 Collins, ]. ]., 25-26; "Old Testament Pseudepigrapha" 25-26 Corbo, S. 86, 88 Cosmology, creation and relation to man 29-30 Creation, SifCr Ye$irah, 29-30 "The Date of the Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael" (Wacholder) 229 "The Dating of Targumic Literature", (York) 62 Daube, David 225-26 Derfler, D. 71

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GENERAL INDEX

De Vaux, Roland 92 Dialogue with T rypho (Martyr) 3 Diez Macho, Alexandro 44 dating Targumim, 61-62 Donner, H. 66 Donnolo, S. 29 Dunash b. Tarmim 29 Dunn, J ames 7 Durkheim 8, 263 Elbogen, Ismar 243-44 Eleazar of Modi'im 229 Eliezer 32 Elman, Yaakov, Authoriry and Tradition: Tosifian Beraitot in Talmudic Babylonia 188-90, 192 Enchantments rifJudaism (Neusner) 264 End of time in Ist centm-y apocalyptic writings 17-20, 24 Epstein, J. N. 189 Essentialism, core belief m defining Judaism 6-7, 9 Esther, Targum to 50 Evans, Craig 185-86 Evil and sin in Ist century apocalyptic writings 18 "Exploring the Sources of the Synoptic Targums to the Pentateuch" (FIesher) 56-57 Ezra: Apocalyptic writings 17-20 Book of 4th Ezra in Ist century literature 18-20 "The Fathers According to Rabbi Nathan" 122, 158-59, 163-65 Feldman, L. H. 16 Fiensy, D. A. 96 Finke1stein, Louis 228, 231, 261 Fishbane, Michael 219 Fitzmyer, Joseph 43 Flavius Josephus. See Josephus, Flavius Fleischer, Ezra 261 FIesher, Paul, "Exploring the Sources of the Synoptic Targums to the Pentateuch" 56-57 Foerster, G. 75 Fortresses in ancientJewish cities: Akra 84, 88 Alexandrium 84 Antonia 89 Baris 84, 89 Cypros 84, 85 Doq 84,88 Herodium 84, 88 Hyrcania 84, 86 Jerusalem 84, 88-89 Machaerus 84, 86 Masada 84, 86, 88

Fraade, Steven: From Tradition to Commentary: Torah and Its Interpretation in the Midrash Sifie to Deuteronomy 226-27, 232 Midrash and modern literary theory 226-27 "Rabbinic Views on the Practice of Targum and Multilingualism in the Jewish Galilee of the Third-Sixth Centuries" 5 7-58 From Tradition to Commentary: Torah and its Interpretation in the Midrash Sifie to Deuteronomy (Fraade) 226-27, 232

A Galilean Rabbi and His Bible (Chilton) 60 Galilee and Targumim writings 42 Gamaliel 11 229 Genesis Rabbah 232-33 Glazier, Michael 62 The Glory rif Israel (Chilton) 55-56 Goldberg, Abraham 231 Goldin, Judah 230 Goldschmidt, E. D. 243, 261-62 Goodenough, E. R. Jewish Symbols in the Greco-Roman Period 2-4, 10, 64, 78 Greater Hekhalot (Hekhalot Rabbati) 30-32 Grossfeld, Bernard 62-63 Gruenwald, I. 30, 33-34, 36-37 Apoca?Jptic and Merkavah Mysticism 33 Gunkel, H. 18-19 Gutman, Joseph 64, 72 Hachlili, Rachel 64, 76 Hadrian in Sibylline Orades 25 Hai Gaon, Sword rif Moses 37 Hammer, Reuven 231-32 Harkavy, A E., and S. Schechter, Wisdom Text 28-29 Harnisch W. 18, 20 Harrington, D.J. 27-28 Hayward, C. T. R. 62 Hayward, Robert 61 Heinemann, Joseph 244-45, 260-62 Hekhalot literature 30-36 Hellenistic rhetorical traditions in exegetical rules of Midrash, 225 Hellenistic rhetorical traditions m Midrash exegesis 225-27 Hellenistic writings in first-century Judaism 13 Herod, history of 14 HilleI: exegetical techniques in Midrash 226 Hoffman, Lawrence A, Beyond the Text: A Holistic Approach to Liturgy 263 Horovitz, H. S. 229-30

GENERAL INDEX Introduction to Rabbinic Literature (Neusner) 53 Invitation to Midrash (Neusner) 235 The Iron Pillar-Mishnah: Redaction, Form, and Intent (Zlotnick) 180 Ishmael, exegetical techniques In Midrash 226 Jaffee, Martin, "The Midrashic' Proem: T owards the Description of Rabbinic Exegesis" 232-33 James, William 264 Jedaniah bar Gemariah 71 'jewish Aramaie Translations of Hebrew Scriptures" (Alexander) 52 Jewish cities and city planning archaeological studies 64-66 Bethsaida 66 Caesarea 66 Caesarea Philippi 66 courtyards and houses 94 farm lands 95-96 Jerusalem 65-66 luxm)' housing 94-96 Paneas 66 Ritual baths 89-90 Sepphoris 66 synagogue architecture 72-78 Temple architecture 66-71 Tiberias 66; See also Fortresses in ancient Jewish cities Jewish literature in early rabbinie period 14-17 mysticism in 14 non-rabbinic writings 13-38 in post-Tannaitic period 28-38 relation to J udaism 144; See also Jewish Liturgy, Rabbinie literature, and The Targumim of the Hebrew Bible Jewish Liturgy Alenu 252 avinu malkenu 256 blessings and benedictions 248-50 cantor, role in order of service 25557, 260 and Chasidei Ashkenaz 252-54 communal prayer 255-57 Conservative Movement and folk culture 259 Haftarah 251 Hallel of Psalms 250, 252 Havdalah 253 household liturgy likened to Temple altar 246-48 Kabbalat Shabbat 254 Kaddish, 281-82

269

Kiddush, 253 as literature 239-66 ma'amad, public worship 247 medieval restructure of and theology in 253-57 mitzvot 251-52 nineteenth century revision of order of service 257-58 order of service 250-53 pietists 253-54 prayer book, organization of 249-50 rabbinie origins, 246-48 Reconstructionist Judaism 259 Reform movement 258-59, 265 responsive prayers 250 ritual as indentification 265 Sefardi rites 253-54 Shema 248-52 Siddur Saadiah (Hai Gaon) 253 supplications 252 table communion 247 T iffillah in lieu of Tamid 246, 248-52 Temple worship 246-48 as text 241-46 and structure of literature 248-49 theology implicit in 255-57 Union Prayer Book 258 Jewish Prayer and the Yearry Cycle: A List of Articles (Tabory) 239 Jewish Symbols in the Greco-Roman Period (Goodenough) 2-4, 64 Job, Targum to 50 Josephus, Flavius 27 Contra Apion 15 haggadic style in writings 15 historian and his society 13-1 7 Jewish Antiquities 43 and rabbinie literature in 1st century Judaism 14-17, 120 Judah the Patriarch 120 Judaica Classics Library 235 Judaism: apocalyptic literature in rabbinic theology 23 defining Judaism 3-4 essentialism in 6-7, 9 Ist century rabbinie theology 19-23 nominalism in defining 6-9 polythetic dassification in defining Judaism 6, 9 Sibylline Orades and Egyptian Judaism 25 social groups, differences in understandingJudaism 8 Judaism in the First Centuries of the Christian Era (Moore) 1-2, 5 Judaism: Practice and Beliif 63BCE-66CE (Sanders) 1-2, 5, 7 Justus of Tiberias 15

270

GENERAL INDEX

Kalmin, Richard 200-02 Kaplan, Mordecai 259 Kapstein, Israel 234 Kaufman, Stephen 54-56, 63 Kee, H. C. 73 Kisch, G. 27 Klein, Michael L. 44, 48, 63 Kraabel, A. T. 9-10, 72 Kraemer, David, The Mind if the Talmud: An Intellectual History if the Bavli 203-06 Kraft, Robert 5 Kuhn, Thomas 260 Kuiper, Gerard, The Pseudo-Jonathan Targum and its Relationship to Targum Onkelos 57 Lakatos, Imre 260 Lamentations, Targum to 50 Langer, Suzanne 263 Lauterbach, J acob Z. 229-30 Le Deaut, Roger 52-53, 221 Leontopolis, Temple of 26 Levertoff, Paul P. 230 Levine, L. I. 72 Leviticus Rabbah 233-34 Liebermann, Sau! 187-188 Hellenistic rhetorical traditions In Midrash 225-26 "Rabbinic Interpretation of Scripture" 225 Life after death in Sibylline Orades 26 Lifschitz, B. 72 Loffreda, S. 86 McNamara, Martin 62 Targum and Testament 60 Magic in 1st century literature 36-38 Mandelbaum, Bernard 234 Margalioth, M., Book if Secrets 37 Martyr, Justin, Dialogue with T rypho 3 Mason, S. 17 Mekhilta: exegesis of Exodus 228-30 Menorah in ancient art 96, 97, 99 Mekhilta of Rabbi Ishmael 239 Merkavah Hymns 37 Merkavah Rabbah 32 Meshorer, Y. 70, 96, 107-08 Messianic hope in Midrash 232 Messianism in 1st century literature 27, 31 "Methodological Note for the Study qf Rabbinic Literature" (Bloch) 58 Meyers, C. L. 78 Meyers, E. M. 72, 78 Midrash: commentary in 17 1-72 dating rabbinic documents 126-27 defining rabbinic literature 119-21

explanation and interpretation of Pentateuch 123-24 focus on law and exegesis of Hebrew scripture 119-23 from exegesis to discussion 124-25 halakhah and aggadah 122-23 historical structure of documents 136-46 interrelationship of rabbinic documents 131-33 logic in debates 125, 146-47, 150-63, 171-72 metapropositional discourse in 165170 rhetoric of 146-47 sages explaining and interpreting Torah 122, 127-31 subject matter of 146-49 text and context, analysis of 173-213 tradition in I 71-72 writing with scripture 125-26 Midrash in Context (Neusner), 222 "Midrash: Palestinian Jews and the Hebrew Bible in the Greco-Roman Period" (Porton) 221-22 A Midrash Reader (Neusner) 235 "The Midrashic' Proern: Towards the Description of Rabbinic Exegesis" Gaffee) 232-33 The Mind if the Talmud: An Intellectual History if the Bavli (Kraemer) 203-06 Mishnah: commentary in 171-72 dating rabbinic documents 126-27 defining rabbinic literature 119-21 explanation and interpretation of Pentateuch 123-24 focus on law and exegesis of Hebrew scripture 119-21 from exegesis to discussion 124-25 historical structure of documents 136-46 interrelationship of rabbinic documents 131-33 logic in debates 125, 146-47, 150-63, 171-72 metapropositional discourse in 165170 rhetoric of 146-47 sages explaining and interpreting Torah 122, 127-31 subject matter of 146-49 text and context, analysis of 173-212 tradition in 171-72 understanding of for a unitary rabbinicJudaism 171-212 writing with scripture 125-26 Moore, George Foot, Judaism in the First Centuries if the Christian Era 1-2, 5, 10

GENERAL INDEX

Murphy, F. J. 22-23 Mysticism in Jewish literature 14, 3036, and in Targumim 40-63 Nathan (Rabbi) 32, 75, 122 Nebe, G. W. 29 Nehuniah ben ha-Qanah 31 Netzer, E. 79-88 Neusner, Jaeob 3-4, 64 Babylonian Talmud, analysis of text and eontext 201-02, 206-10 Enchantments qfJudaism 264 Introduction to Rabbinie Literature 53 Invitation to Midrash 235 legal eharacteristics of rabbinic literature 178-79 Midrash in Context 222 A Midrash Reader 235 Mishnah, analysis of text and eontext of 171,173,175 Palestinian Talmud, analysis of text and context 193-98 rabbinie literature and a unitary rabbinicJudaism 175-76 rabbi nie Midrash literature 227, 230, 232-34 Sifra: An Anarytical Translation 228 Tosifta, analysis of text and context 190-92 The Yerushalmi, An Introduction 195 Nickelsburg, George 5 Nicolaus of Damascus 14 Nominalism, identity-centered in defining Judaism 6-9 Ode berg, H. 31 Oral Torah. See Rabbinie Midrash Oriental Art in Roman Palestine (AviYon'lh) 64 Oster, R. 72-73 Palaees in aneient Palestine: Greater Herodium 82 Hasmonean Palace (Jericho) 79, 84 Herod's Palace (Jericho) 79-80, (Jerusalem) 82 Masada 83-84, 86-87 Palestine, communallife. SeeJewish cities and city planning, Palestinian Talmud, text and context, analysis of 193-98 Parables of Henoch 13 Paul and Palestinian Judaism (Sanders) 6 Perrot, c. 27 Pesiqta deRav Kahana 233-35 Pharisees in writings of Josephus 17 Piccirillo, M. 86 Polythetic classification, multiple traits

271

in defining Judaism 6, 9 Porten, B. 71 Porton, Gary G., defining Midrash 22122 "Midrash: Palestinian Jews and the Hebrew Bible in the Greco-Roman Period" 221-22 "Rabbi Ishmael and His Thirteen Middot" 226 Understanding Rabbinie Midrash 235 Prophets and prophesy in Targumim of Hebrew Bible 42 Proverbs, Targum to 50-51 Psalms, Targum to 50 The Pseudo-Jonathan Targum and its Relationship to Targum Onkelos (Kuiper) 57 Pseudo-Philo and Palestinian Judaism 26-28

Qghelet, T argum to 50 Qumran sect: archaeologieal studies 92-94 earthquake and restoration 93 Genesis Apocryphon 43 Roman troops stationed at 94 and Targumim writings 42, 45-46 "Rabbi Ishmael and His Thirteen Middot" (Porton) 226 "Rabbinic Interpretation of Scripture" (Lieberman) 225 Rabbinic literature: Abot deRabbi Nathan 122 Babylonian Talmud 121 commentary in 171-72 dating rabbinic documents 126-27 defining Rabbinie literature 119-21 explanation and interpretation of Pentateuch 123-24 "The Fathers Aeeording to Rabbi Nathan" 122,158-59, 163-65 in Ist eentury Judaism 17 focus on law and exegesis of Hebrew scripture 119-21 from exegesis to discussion 124-25 historical strueture of documents, 136-46 Babylonian Talmud 140-46 and Mishnah 138-40 interrelationship of rabbinic documents 131-33 legal characteristics of 176-79 logic in debates 125, 146-47, 150-63, 171-72 metapropositional discourse in 165170 Midrash, halakhah and aggadah 122-23, 126

272

GENERAL INDEX

Mishnah, and exegetical tradition of Oral Torah 121-22 halakhah and aggadah 122-23, 126 Palestinian Talmud in 121 rhetoric of 146-47 sages explaining and interpreting Torah 122, 127-31 subject matter of 146-49 Tannaites, ("memorizers") 120 text and context, analysis of 173-212 Torah, in dual Torah and canon law 117-172 Tosifta in 121 tradition in 171-72 understanding of for a unitary rabbinicJudaism 173-212 writing with scripture 125-26 Rabbinie Midrash: apocalyptic midrash 220 Bible as central focus ofJewish theology 222 Hellenistic rhetorical traditions in 225-27 interpretation of Biblical texts 21736 Midrash defined 219 modern study of 120-21 prophecy and revelation 220 in rabbinie canon 222-24 retelling the Bible 219-20 similarity to Talmuds 222-24 TaNaKh, interpretations of 218, 220 "Rabbinie Views on the Practice of Targum and Multilingualism in the Jewish Galilee of the Third-Sixth Centuries" (Fraade) 57-58 Rabin, 1. A. 229 Rachmani, L. Y. 77 Rajak, T. 17 Ravina 199 Reynolds, J. M. 73 Ruger, H. P. 28 Ruth, Targum to 50 Saldarini, A. J. 5 Sanders, E. P. 185 Judaism: Practice and Beliif 63BCE66CE 1-2, 5, 7 Paul and Palestinian Judaism 6 Sarason, Richard 234 Schäfer, P. 35-36 Hekhalot-Studien 34 Synopse zur Hekhalot-Literatur 34 Schechter, S. See Harkavy, A. E. Schechter, Solomon 44 Scholem, G. 32-36 The Aim and Purpose rif Early Jewish mysticism 35

"Yezirah Sefer" 29-30 Schwartz, S. 17 Scripture and Tradition in Judaism (Vermes) 50 Seder Rav Amram 249-50, 252 Sifer Ye:;irah 29-30 Sefer Zerubbabel 28 Sherira Gaon 179-80 Shinan, Avigdor 61 Sibylline Orades 24-26 Sichardus, J. 27 Sijra: An Analytical Translation (Neusner) 228 Sijra deBe Rab (Weiss) 228 Sifra to Leviticus 228 Sifre Deuteronomy 231-32 Sifre Numbers 230 Simeon ben 'Azai 72 Smith, Jonathan Z. 9 Smith, M. 17 "Some Observations on the Oberliiferungsgeschichte of the Targum" (Aufreet) 55 Song of the Sea 229-30 Song rif Songs, Targum to 20 Sperber, Alexander 6 The Bible in Aramaie 62 Story rif the Ten Marryrs 31 Strange, J. F. 78 Strobel, A. 86 Symmachus 38 Synagogue art and architecture in aneie nt Palestine 72-78 Beth Shean 76, 103 Chorazin 77 Dura-Europos 70, 72, 77 En-Geddi 77 Gamala 74-75 Gaza 103 Hammath-Tiberias 77 Herodium 74-75, 88 Khirbet Shema 76 Magdala 74-75 Ma'on 103 Ma'oz Hayim 76 Masada 74-75 Ostia 72 Sardis 72 wall paintings 103 Tabory, Joseph, Jewish Pro,yer and the Yearly Cycle: A List rif Articles 239 Talmon, Shemaryahu 5 Talmud of the Land of Israel. See Palestinian Talmud "The Targumic Versions of Genesis 4: 3-16" (Vermes) 57 Targumim of the Hebrew Bible 40-63 on aggadah 41

GENERAL INDEX

ancient translations and free translation 53-54 Aramaic and targumic dialects in 5455 Cairo Geniza 43-45, 48, 56, 63 Christianity, similarities with 41 communallanguage in 42 composition of 41-63 dating of 60-63 and early Christianity 59-60 Festival Collections 48 gospel writers 59-60 their use of Targumim in New Testament study 59-60 on halakah 41, 45 historical inter-relations of 56-57 Isaiah 55 and Jewish literature 58-59 Jonathan 45-47, 49-50, 62 Messianism in 60 Neofiti of the Pentateuch 40, 43-45, 48, 56, 61 Onkelos 43-50, 56-57, 62 Palestinian Talmud 45 Pseudo-Jonathan 43, 48, 51, 56-57, 61,63 social and religious contexts 57-58 as texts 55-56 to T osefta 49 "Targum, Targum" (Alexander) 52 Targum and Testament (McNamara) 60 Ta-Shma, Israel M. 262 Temple architecture in ancient Palestine: Beer Sheba (Hellenistic) 71 Elphantine, (Hellenistic) 71 Courts ofIsrael, Priests, and Women 69, 75-76 Testaments ofthe Twelve Patriarchs 13 Theodor, J. 233 Theology in Targumim 40-63 Titus 16 7he Tosifta, text and context, analysis of 186-93 T owner, Sibley 219

273

"The Typography of Liberalism in ancient biblical translations" (Barr) 5354

Understanding Rabbinie Midrash (Porton) 235 Vermeuile, C. C. 64 Vermes, Geza, 221: Scripture and Tradition in Judaism 58-59 "The Targumic Versions of Genesis 4:3-16" 57 Vespasian: and FlaviusJosephus 14, 16 in Sibylline Orades 25 Villalba, P. y Varneda 17 Wacholder, Ben Zion, "The Date of the Mekhilta deRabbi Ishmael" 229 Weiss, Abraham 199 Weiss, I. H., Sifia deRe Rab 228 Weiss-Halivni, David 176, 200 Wernberg-M011er, P. 62 Wigoder, Geofrey 64 Wilson, Charles 65, 67 Wischnitzer, R. 64 Women and liturgical revisions 262 Yadin, Y. 83,88 Yehoshua ben Hananyah 21 Yerushalmi. See Palestinian Talmud 7he Yerushalmi: An Introduction (Neusner) 195 "Yqirah Sefer" (Scholern) 29-30 Yishmael30 Yohanan ben Zakkai 16, 21 York, Anthony D., "The Dating of Targumic Literature" 62 Zlotnick, Dov, 7he Iran Pillar-Mishnah: Redaction, Form, and Intent 180 Zuckermandel, Moses 187 Zunz, Leopold 236 andJewish liturgy 241-45, 261-63

INDEX TO BIBLICAL REFERENCES

Old

TESTAMENT

Genesis 2: 17 4:3-16 12-15 12-50 13: 16 26:4

158 57 43 27 161 161

Exodus 3-13 IV 23:19 13: cQ5:26 15 19: 1-20:26 27: I 31:12-17 35: 1-3

27 228 48 229-30 48 71 228 228

Leviticus 6:12-15 16:18-21

43 43

Numbers 5: I 5-12 15 15:37-41 18-19 25:1-13 26:52-31 :24 35:9-34

230 230 230 250 230 230 230 230

Deuteronomy I: 1-30 1:25-28 1:30 3:23-29 6:4-9 9: I 11:10-26:15 11:13-21 18: 1-6 31: 14-32:34 32:36

231 161 162 231 231,250 161 231 250 167 231 155

Judges I: 13

27

Ezra 7:10

219

Job 3:4-5 4: 16-5:4 17: 14 37:10-42:11

43 43 43 43

Psalms 49:24 73:6 106:23 106:30 145-150

158 161 156 156 252

Song qf Songs 5:10 5:10-16

32 32

Isaiah 6 6:3

248 31-32

Daniel 9 12:7 12, II

31 155 20

Zechariah 12: II

46

NEW TESTAMENT

Mark 12:39 13: I

75 66

Luke 4:20 14: 16 14:16-20 14: 17 21:5

73 73 73 73 66

275

INDEX TO BIBLICAL REFERENCES

Sifre to

APOCRYPHA

2 Baruch 1,1 54,15 85,7

22 22 22

4 Ezra 1,1-12 2,13-20 3,1 3,1-5 3,20 3,21 3,26 6,25 6,35-9 9,26-10,60 9,60 11,1-12,5 11,5 11,51 12,11 12,42 14,21 3,21-34 4,35-46 5,47-52 6,53-76 7,77-87

21 21 19, 22 18 18 22 22 18 18 18 18 18 18 18 20 20 18, 22 21 21 21 21 21

I Maccabees 16:11-15

88

161 161 161 161 161 162 167-68 168 168-69 155-56

OTHER ANCIENT SOURCES

Aboth de R. Nathan 25,4

75

Dead Sea Scrolls 3Q15

88

The Fathers According to Rabbi Nathan I: 1 163-64 164 1:2 1:3 164 I:XIII 158-59 Josephus

Tosefta

Hagiga 11

Deuteronomy XXV:I XXV: 11 XXV:III XXV: IV XXV:V XXV: VI CLXVI:I CLXVI:I1 CLXVI:IV CCCXXVI:II

33

Baby10nian Talmud

Gittin 65a-b

16

Megillah 3a

46, 49

Moed Qgtan 28b

46

Qjddushin 49a

45

Antiquities 1,17 12.252 14,364 15.38-425 15.403 15.414 16.394 18,63

16 89 64 66 89 69 84 15

Contra Apion 1.42

73

Jewish Wars 1.236-9 1,269 1.408 4.477 V.176-182 5: 184-227 5.198-200 5.205 5.238-45 7.171

86 64 66 94 82 66 69 69 89 86

276

INDEX TO BIBLICAL REFERENCES

Oewish Wars cont'd) 7.209 13.230

86 88

Vita 12

17

Pesiqta Rabbati 26

22

Sibylline Orades 3,1-96 3,63-74 4,6

24 24 24

4,130-136 4,165 5,1 5,36 5,48 5,51 5,268 5,408 5,501-3 8,1-216 8,58

24 24 25 25 25 25 25 25 26 25 25

Sijri Deuteronomy 306-41

232

HANDBUCH DER ORIENTALISTIK Abt. I: DER NAHE UND MITTLERE OSTEN ISSN 0169-9423 Band I. Ägyptologie 1. Ägyptische &hrifi und Sprache. Mit Beiträgen von H. Brunner, H. Kees, S. Morenz, E. Otto, S. Schott. Mit Zusätzen von H. Brunner. Nachdruck der Erstausgabe (1959). 1973. ISBN 90 04 03777 2 2. Literatur. Mit Beiträgen von H. Altenmüller, H. Brunner, G. Fecht, H. Grapow, H. Kees, S. Morenz, E. Otto, S. Schott, J. Spiegel, W. Westendorf. 2. verbesserte und erweiterte Auflage. 1970. ISBN 90 04 00849 7 3. HELCK, W. Geschichte des alten A'gypten. Nachdruck mit Berichtigungen und Ergänzungen. 1981. ISBN 90 04 06497 4 Band 2. Keilschriftforschung und alte Geschichte Vorderasiens 1-2/2. Altkleinasiatische sprachen [und Elamitisch}. Mit Beiträgen von J. Friedrich, E. Reiner, A. Kammenhuber, G. Neumann, A. Heubeck. 1969. ISBN 90 04 008527 3. SCHMÖKEL, H. Geschichte des alten Vorderasien. Reprint. 1979. ISBN 90 04 00853 5 4/2. Orientalische Geschichte von Kyros bis Mohammed. Mit Beiträgen von A. Dietrich, G. Widengren, F. M. Heichelheim. 1966. ISBN 90 04 00854 3 Band 3. Setnitistik Semitistik. Mit Beiträgen von A. Baumstark, C. Brockelmann, E. L. Dietrich, J. Fück, M. Höfner, E. Littmann, A. Rücker, B. Spuler. Nachdruck der Erstausgabe (1953-1954). 1964. ISBN 90 04 00855 1 Band 4. Iranistik 1. Linguistik. Mit Beiträgen von K. Hoffmann, W. B. Henning, H. W. Bailey, G. Morgenstieme, W. Lentz. Nachdruck der Erstausgabe (1958).1967. ISBN 90 04 03017 4 2/1. Literatur. Mit Beiträgen von I. Gershevitch, M. Boyce, O. Hansen, B. Spuler, M. J. Dresden. 1968. ISBN 90 04 00857 8 2/2. History tif Persian Literature ftom ehe Beginning tif ehe Islamic Period to ehe Present Day. With Contributions by G. Morrison,J. Baldick and Sh. KadkanL 1981. ISBN 90 0406481 8 3. KRAUSE, W. Tocharisch. Nachdruck der Erstausgabe (1955) mit Zusätzen und Berichtigungen. 1971. ISBN 90 04 03194 4 Band 5. Altaistik 1. Turkologie. Mit Beiträgen von A. von Gabain, O. Pritsak, J. Benzing, K. H. Menges, A. Temir, Z. V. Togan, F. Taeschner, O. Spies, A. Caferoglu, A. Battal-Tamays. Reprint with additions ofthe 1st (1963) ed. 1982. ISBN 90 04 065555 2. Mongolistik. Mit Beiträgen von N. Poppe, U. Posch, G. Doerfer, P. Aalto, D. Schröder, O. Pritsak, W. Heissig. 1964. ISBN 90 04 00859 4 3. Tungusologie. Mit Beiträgen von W. Fuchs, I. A. Lopatin, K. H. Menges, D. Sinor. 1968. ISBN 90 04 00860 8 Band 6. Geschichte der islanllschen Länder 5/1. Regierung und Verwaltung des Vorderen Orients in islamischer Zeit. Mit Beiträgen von H. R. Idris und K. Röhrbom. 1979. ISBN 90 04 059156 5/2. Regierung und Verwaltung des Vorderen Orients in islamischer Zeit. 2. Mit Beiträgen von D. Sourdei und J. Bosch Viii. 1988. ISBN 90 04 08550 5 6/1. Wirtschafisgeschichte des Vorderen Orients in islamischer Zeit. Mit Beiträgen von B. Lewis, M. Rodinson, G. Baer, H. Müller, A. S. Ehrenkreutz, E. Ashtor, B. Spuler, A. K. S. Lambton, R. C. Cooper, B. Rosenberger, R. Arie, L. Bolens, T. Fahd. 1977. ISBN 90 04 04802 2

Band 7. Armenisch und Kaukasische Sprachen. Mit Beiträgen von G. Deeters, G. R. Solta, V. Inglisian. 1963. ISBN 90 04 00862 4 Band 8. Religion 1/ I. ReligioTISgeschichte des alten Orients. Mit Beiträgen von E. Otto, O. Eissfeldt, H. Otten, J. Hempel. 1964. ISBN 90 04 00863 2 1/2/2/ I. BOYCE, M. AHistory iif :{proastrianism. 7he Early Period. Rev. ed. 1989. ISBN 90 04 08847 4 1/2/2/2. BOYCE, M. A History iif :{proastrianism. Under the AchaemeniaTIS. 1982. ISBN 90 04 06506 7 1/2/2/3. BOYCE, M. and GRENET, F. AHistory iif :{proastrianism. :{proastrianism under Macedonian and Roman Rule. With F. Grenet. Contribution by R. Beck. 1991. ISBN 90 04 09271 4 2. ReligioTISgeschichte des Orients in der Zeit der Weltreligionen. Mit Beiträgen von A. Adam, A. J. Arberry, E. L. Dietrich, J. W. Fück, A. von Gabain, J. Leipoldt, B. Spuler, R. Strothman, G. Widengren. 1961. ISBN 90 04 00864 0 Ergänzungsband 1 I. HINZ, W. Islamische Maße und Gewichte umgerechnet iTIS metrische System. Nachdruck der Erstausgabe (1955) mit Zusätzen und Berichtigungen. 1970. ISBN 900400865 9 Ergänzungsband 2 I. GROHMANN, A. Arabische Chronologie und Arabische Papyruskunde. Mit Beiträgen von J. Mayr und W. C. Til. 1966. ISBN 90 04 00866 7 2. KHOURY, R. G. Chrestomathie de papyrologie arabe. Documents relatifs a la vie privee, sociale et administrative dans les premiers siecles islamiques. 1992. ISBN 90 04 09551 9 Ergänzungsband 3 Orientalisches Recht. Mit Beiträgen von E. Seid!, V. Korok, E. Pritsch, O. Spies, E. Tyan, J. Baz, Ch. Chehata, Ch. Samaran, J. Roussier, J. Lapanne:Joinville, S. S. Ansay. 1964. ISBN 90 0400867 5 Ergänzungsband 5 1/1. BORGER, R. Das zweite Jahrtausend vor Chr. Mit Verbesserungen und Zusätzen. Nachdruck der Erstausgabe (1961). 1964. ISBN 90 04 00869 1 1/2. SCHRAMM, W. [Einleitung in die assyrischen flijnigsiTISchriflen, 2:] 934-722 v. Chr. 1973. ISBN 90 04 03783 7 Ergänzungsband 6 1. ULLMANN, M. Die Medizin im Islam. 1970. ISBN 90 04 00870 5 2. ULLMANN, M. Die Natur- und GeheimwisseTISchqften im Islam. 1972. ISBN 90 04 03423 4 Ergänzungsband 7 GOMAA, I. A Historical Chart

flf the Muslim

World. 1972. ISBN 90 04 03333 5

Ergänzungsband 8 KORNRUMPF, H.-J. Osmanische Bibliographie mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Türkei in Europa. Unter Mitarbeit vonJ. Kornrumpf. 1973. ISBN 90 04 03549 4 Ergänzungsband 9 FIRRO, K. M. AHistory iifthe Druzes. 1992. ISBN 90 04 09437 7 Band 10 STRijP, R. Cultural Anthropology iifthe Middle East. A Bibliography. Vol. 1: 1965-1987. 1992. ISBN 90 04 09604 3

Band 11 ENDRESS, G. & GUTAS, D. (eds.). A Creek and Arabic Lexicon. (GALex) Materials for a Dictionary of the Medi.eval Translations from Greek into Arabic. Fascicle 1. Introduction-Sources-' - '-kh-r. Compiled by G. Endress & D. Gutas, with the assistance ofK. Alshut, R. Amzen, Chr. Hein, St. Pohl, M. Schmeink. 1992. ISBN 90 04 09494 6 Fascicle 2. '-kh-r - '-~-l. Compiled by G. Endress & D. Gutas, with the assistance of K. Alshut, R. Amzen, Chr. Hein, St. Pohl, M. Schmeink. 1993. ISBN 90 04 09893 3 Band 12 JAYYUSI, S. K. (ed.). The Legacy I!! Muslim Spain. Chief consultant to the editor, M. Marin. 2nd ed. 1994. ISBN 90 04 09599 3 Band 13 HUNWICK,J. O. and O'FAHEY, R. S. (eds.). Arabic literature I!! A.frica. Volume I. The Writings I!! Bastern Sudanic A.frica to c. 1900. Compiled by R. S. O'Fahey, with the assistance of M. I. Abu Salim, A. Hofheinz, Y. M. Ibrahim, B. Radtke and K. S. Vikor. 1994. ISBN 90 04 09450 4 Band 14 DECKER, W. und HERB, M. Bildatlas zum Sport im alten A"gypten. Corpus der bildlichen Qyellen zu Leibesübungen, Spiel, Jagd, Tanz und uenvandten Themen. Bd.l: Text. Bd. 2: Abbildungen. 1994. ISBN 90 04 09974 3 (Set) Band 15 HAAS, V. Geschichte der hethitischen Religion. 1994. ISBN 9004097996 Band 16 NEUSNER, J. (ed.). Judaism in Late Antiquiry. Part One: The Literary and Archaeological Sources. 1995. ISBN 90 04 10 129 2 Band 17 NEUSNER, J. (ed.). Judaism in Late Antiquiry. Part Two: Historical Syntheses. 1995. ISBN 9004 101306 Band 18 OREL, V. E. and STOLBOVA, o. V. (eds.). Hamito-Semitic Erymological Dictionary. Materials for a Reconstruction. 1995. ISBN 90 04 10051 2 Band 19 AL-ZWAINI, L. and PETERS, R. A Bibliography ISBN 90 04 10009 I

I!!

Islamic Low, 1980-1993.

1994.