Making History: Studies in Rabbinic History, Literature, and Culture in Honor of Richard L. Kalmin (Brown Judaic Studies) 1951498941, 9781951498948

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Making History

Essays in this volume honor Richard L. Kalmin, one of the leading scholars of rabbinic literature. Volume contributors explore a variety of topics related to Kalmin’s wide-ranging work from the development of the Talmud to rabbinic storytelling, from the transmission of tales across geographic and cultural boundaries to ancient Jewish and Iranian interactions. Many of the essays reflect current trends in how scholars use ancient Jewish literary sources to address questions of historical import. Contributors include Carol Bakhos, Beth A. Berkowitz, Noah Bickart, Robert Brody, Joshua Cahan, Shaye J. D. Cohen, Steven D. Fraade, Shamma Friedman, Alyssa M. Gray, Judith Hauptman, Christine Hayes, Catherine Hezser, Marc Hirshman, David Kraemer, Marjorie Lehman, Kristen Lindbeck, Jonathan S. Milgram, Chaim Milikowsky, Michael L. Satlow, Marcus Mordecai Schwartz, Seth Schwartz, Burton L. Visotzky, and Sarah Wolf.

Making History

CAROL BAKHOS is Professor of the Study of Religion and of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures and Director of the Center for the Study of Religion at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Studies in Rabbinic History, Literature, and Culture in Honor of Richard L. Kalmin

ALYSSA M. GRAY is the Emily S. and Rabbi Bernard H. Mehlman Chair in Rabbinics and Professor of Codes and Responsa Literature at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York.

BAKHOS AND GRAY EDITED BY CAROL BAKHOS AND ALYSSA M. GRAY

Making History

Program in Judaic Studies Brown University Box 1826 Providence, RI 02912 BROWN JUDAIC STUDIES Edited by Katharina Galor Jae Han David C. Jacobson Paul Nahme Saul M. Olyan Rachel Rojanski Michael L. Satlow Adam Teller

Number 372 MAKING HISTORY

edited by Carol Bakhos and Alyssa M. Gray

MAK ING HISTORY ST U DIES IN R ABBINIC HISTORY, LITER AT U RE, AND CU LT U RE IN HONOR OF R ICHARD L. K ALMIN

Edited by

Carol Bakhos and Alyssa M. Gray

Brown Judaic Studies Providence, Rhode Island

© 2024 Brown University. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by means of any information storage or retrieval system, except as may be expressly permitted by the 1976 Copyright Act or in writing from the publisher. Requests for permission should be addressed in writing to the Rights and Permissions Office, Program in Judaic Studies, Brown University, Box 1826, Providence, RI 02912, USA. Library of Congress Control Number: 2024932818

Contents Abbreviations

ix

Introductionxi I. “Migrating Tales” The Tall Tales of Babylonian Talmud Bekhorot 57b: Zombie Mothers, Angry Birds, and Egg Drop Soup  Beth A. Berkowitz

3

Who Owns the Treasure? Alexander the Great and Apollonius of Tyana  Shaye J. D. Cohen

25

The Book of Adam  Shamma Friedman

33

Seas of Ink and Reeds for Pens: The Migrations of a Topos of Inexhaustibility  Christine Hayes

43

II. Rabbis in Context David’s Bravado in Light of Sasanian Cultural Practices  Carol Bakhos

85

Translation and Authority: Three (Very Different) Cases  Steven D. Fraade

97

The Impact of the Jewish Revolts on the Jews of Asia Minor  Seth Schwartz 111 A Life in the Balance: Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai’s Compliment  Burton L. Visotzky

v

143

vi  Contents III. The Bavli’s Inner Workings Gufei Sanhedrin: An Analysis of the Term ‫ גופא‬in Tractate Sanhedrin  Noah Bickart

155

Hidden Traditions  Robert Brody 199 Amoraic Memrot as Reworkings of Older Sources: Women and Qiddush  Joshua Cahan 209 Eiteveih as an Indicator of Halakhic Change: A Sample Study and a Proposal for Further Research  Judith Hauptman

235

The Late Amoraim: A Digital Analysis  Michael L. Satlow

257

Who’s on First? A Methodological Note on Determining Whether the Bavli Refers to Rabbah or Rava in a Specific Passage  Marcus Mordecai Schwartz

277

IV. The Bavli and the Land of Israel Sodom between the Rivers? Revisiting B. Sanhedrin 109a–b  Alyssa M. Gray

283

Not from Zion: More on the Bavli’s Arrogation of Prerogative in the Jewish World  David Kraemer

313

Anna Whistler and the Talmudic Mothers of Yerushalmi Qiddushin  Marjorie Lehman

331

Abraham as Hero in the Synagogue and Study House: The Aqedah in Genesis R ­ abbah and the Babylonian Talmud  Kristen Lindbeck

355

Contents  vii V. Textual Transmission and Ideational Transformation in Ancient Judaism Plurisignation in Biblical and Rabbinic Law: The Meaning and Punishment of “Rape”  Catherine Hezser

383

Havai and G’zuma: Hyperbole and Aggadic Midrash  Marc Hirshman

407

Pidyon Ha-Ben, Rabbi Akiva, and the Diffusion of the Principle: Ha-Motzi Me-Chavero Alav Ha-Reaya in Tannaitic Literature  Jonathan S. Milgram

415

Looking at the Past from the Bible to the Mishnah: Toward a History of Jewish Historiography, with Emphasis on Demetrius the Chronographer  Chaim Milikowsky

425

“Between Her and Others”: The “Spirit of Jealousy” in Numbers 5:14 and Its Ancient Jewish Reception  Sarah Wolf

459

Abbreviations AB AGJU

Anchor Bible Arbeiten zur Geschichte des antiken Judentums und des Urchristentums AJS Review Association for Jewish Studies Review BibInt Biblical Interpretation BIS Biblical Interpretation Series BJS Brown Judaic Studies BZAW Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft CBET Contributions to Biblical Exegesis and Theology CBQ Catholic Biblical Quarterly CHANE Culture and History of the Ancient Near East CRINT Compendia Rerum Iudaicarum ad Novum Testamentum DCLS Deuterocanonical and Cognate Literature Studies DS (Rabb. ) Rabbinowicz Diḳduḳé Sof’rim, 16 vols. (Variæ Lectiones &c.;  D. S. Munich: H. Roesl, 1867–97) DSD Dead Sea Discoveries HUCA Hebrew Union College Annual JAAR Journal of the American Academy of Religion JAJ Journal of Ancient Judaism JAJSup Jounal of Ancient Judaism Supplements JAOS Journal of the Ancient Oriental society JBL Journal of Biblical Literature JETS Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society JJS Journal of Jewish Studies JQR Jewish Quarterly Review JRS Journal of Roman Studies JSJ Journal for the Study of Judaism in the Persian, Hellenistic, and Roman Period JSJSup Journal for the Study of Judaism Supplements JSOT Journal for the Study of the Old Testament JSOTSup Journal for the Study of the Old Testament: Supplement Series ix

x  Abbreviations JSP JSQ LCL LSJ NovT NovTSup OTP PAAJR PMLA RAC SJLA SJOT STDJ TSAJ VC VCSup WUNT ZAW

Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha Jewish Studies Quarterly Loeb Classical Library Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, and Henry Stuart Jones, A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed., with revised supplement (Oxford: Clarendon, 1996) Novum Testamentum Supplements to Novum Testamentum James H. Charlesworth, ed., The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, 2 vols. (New York: Doubleday, 1983, 1985) Proceedings of the American Academy of Jewish Research Publications of the Modern Language Association Theodor Klauser et al., eds., Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum (Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 1950–) Studies in Judaism in Late Antiquity Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah Texte und Studien zum antiken Judentum Vigiliae Christianae Vigiliae Christianae Supplements Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft

Introduction Making History: Studies in Rabbinic History, Literature, and Culture in Honor of Richard L. Kalmin celebrates the career and wide-ranging impact of our teacher and mentor, Richard L. Kalmin, one of the leading figures in the study of rabbinic literature. Many years ago, we (co-editors Carol Bakhos and Alyssa M. Gray), agreed that someday the time would be right for us to collaborate on a festschrift in our teacher’s honor. That time has come, and the resulting volume is a rich sampling of fruits of Kalmin’s years of patient work “making history” in the study of rabbinic literature. The number and range of contributors, methodological approaches, and texts and historical trends under study in this book show that the contemporary study of rabbinics would not be what it is without his scholarship. Some of the scholars who have contributed to this volume worked under Kalmin’s direct mentorship or teach with him at the Jewish Theological Seminary, where he has taught since 1982. Others are his colleagues in the field who heard his papers at conferences in America, Israel, and Europe, or pored over his numerous articles and monograph publications. His impact on the way we read rabbinic texts from literary and historical vantage points, how we tease out the various voices that make up a passage of the Talmud, and how we detect the transmission of texts over geographic and cultural boundaries cannot be overstated. Through his steadfast commitment to teaching, mentoring, and research, Kalmin has played a remarkable wide-ranging role in shaping the field of rabbinics. For this, we all—rabbinicists and other scholars of late ancient Mediterranean religions who consult rabbinics scholarship—owe him a great debt of gratitude. The title Making History is doubly significant. From the beginning of his career, Kalmin forcefully pushed back against the notion that scholars cannot do historical reconstruction or draw historical conclusions from rabbinic texts. He has continuously pointed out that the question is not can historical conclusions be derived from rabbinic texts, but how can this be done and what sorts of conclusions may be drawn. His interest in this sort of “making history” grew as his research moved from source- and redaction-critical reflection on who was responsible for the Babylonian Talmud to reflection on what the Talmud itself can tell us about the pre-redactional

xi

xii  Introduction world of the Amoraim in both rabbinic centers. Always a prolific scholar, Kalmin has produced scores of book chapters and articles, as well as five books, each of which marks a turning point in his research. Kalmin’s first book, The Redaction of the Babylonian Talmud: Amoraic or Saboraic, published in 1989, examines modern scholarly theories regarding the redaction of the Babylonian Talmud. Questions about the identity of the final redactors, when they lived, and how they edited their sources animate the work. Is the Talmud a product of the Amoraim of the late fifth century, or the Saboraim, who flourished during the following two centuries? His scrupulous textual analysis leads him to conclude that the Talmud was redacted sometime during the Saboraic period and not earlier. The Redaction of the Babylonian Talmud set the stage not only for his later work but also for any scholar interested in the inner workings of the Babylonian Talmud. Considered a classic in the field, Sages, Stories, Authors, and Editors in Rabbinic Babylonia (1994) challenges the notion that the Babylonian Talmud is by and large a product of a late process of redaction. By locating the different sources of the Talmud and how and when they were woven together, this monumental monograph not only succeeds in this endeavor but also demonstrates the Talmud’s usefulness for historical reconstruction. The historical information that emerges from Kalmin’s painstaking analyses sheds light on, for example, a decentralized rabbinic movement. The Sage in Jewish Society of Late Antiquity (1999) continues this inquiry by noting key differences between the social settings of the sages of Palestine and Babylonia and exploring examples of their religious and ideological differences. Kalmin’s award-winning Jewish Babylonia between Persia and Roman Palestine (2006) also situates the rabbis in their social contexts. The work seeks to address the question of the degree to which living under Sasanian Persian rule impacted the rabbis and the role that both Persian and Roman Palestine played in shaping rabbinic culture. What do we know of rabbinic culture of late antique Babylonia? His close examination of several rabbinic texts offers fresh insight into how rabbis interacted with the nonrabbinic world. Migrating Tales: The Talmud’s Narratives and Their Historical Context (2014) reflects Kalmin’s long-standing fascination with the stories of the Bavli and how its variegated motifs throw light on the extent to which and the ways in which its transmitters engage with the broader world of Greeks, Romans, Christians, and Persians. He redirects our attention to traditions from the Roman East and the crucial part they play in the Talmud and in doing so he further underscores the need for scholars to examine stories within multicultural contexts. Moreover, his detailed analyses

Introduction  xiii of specific motifs and passages highlights the important role of language switching in determining a tale’s migration pattern. Readers will find that most of the chapters in this volume build on the methodological approaches or scholarly findings of Kalmin’s books. Through­out, the contributors illustrate the enduring influence on them of Kalmin’s key scholarly contribution: that, carefully and judiciously read and interpreted, the late ancient rabbinic compilations are capable—in so many ways!—of “making history.”

I. “Migrating Tales”

The Tall Tales of Babylonian Talmud Bekhorot 57b Zombie Mothers, Angry Birds, and Egg Drop Soup BETH A. BERKOWITZ

Bar Yokhani bird, Northern French Miscellany, late thirteenth century. British Museum MS Add. 11639, folio 517v1

1. For full manuscript information and relevant bibliography, see “Add MS 111639,” British Library Digitised Manuscripts, n.d., http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay. aspx?Source=BrowseScribes&letter=A&ref=Add_MS_11639. For the digitized manuscript, see “Add Ms 11639 Folio 517v” (n.d.), http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=add_ ms_11639_f517v.

3

4  Making History

Introduction: In a Land Far, Far Away … Richard Kalmin’s Migrating Tales tracks the path of stories from the Roman East and, at times, Christian and pagan Mesopotamia, as they find their way into the Babylonian Talmud.2 Migrating Tales spins its own tale of imperial conquest, forced resettlement, and religious convergence and competition as it examines selected narratives within the Babylonian Talmud to identify their origins and consider their adaptation of already circulating stories. Migrating Tales is equal parts literary criticism, historiography, comparative religion, and detective work. The following essay takes its inspiration from Kalmin’s Migrating Tales by throwing light on a different talmudic tale, this one in b. Bekhorot 57b, and considering it within its cultural and literary contexts. I too will explore the migrations— from Roman imperial, Christian, and Zoroastrian settings—that made the tale possible and that help to make sense of it. But the tale I treat relies on distance, on a feeling of farawayness, rather than on the geographic connection that migration creates. The tale from Bekhorot falls within the rubric of what Dan Ben-Amos called the talmudic tall tale, which, according to Ben-Amos, is typically situated away from the storyteller’s listeners, distanced from them in either space or time.3 Such distancing is a signal strategy of the tall tale, whose art lies in presenting falsehood as truth while at the same time making sure it is not mistaken for reality—a contradiction in terms, says Ben-Amos, since the tall tale is required to “mask as fact, yet constantly to point at the existence of the mask.”4 In b. Bekhorot 57b, the tall tale that is told is presented by the storyteller as personal testimony, yet the descriptions and anecdotes that follow are clearly meant to strain credulity. The story is introduced by Bekhorot in order to illuminate a dispute in the Mishnah about the definition of an orphaned animal. An obscure rabbi tells of a faraway city with phantasmagoric features whose practice regarding orphan animals dovetails with an enigmatic element of the Mishnah. The story is short, but its subject is of colossal scale. These are literal tall tales, where the lettuces grow to the size of trees and the trees to the size of roads. In this essay, I take up the fantastic features of the story one by one—the ghostly practice of taxidermy that the story describes, the 2. Richard Lee Kalmin, Migrating Tales: The Talmud’s Narratives and Their Historical Context (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014). 3. Dan Ben-Amos, “Talmudic Tall-Tales,” in Folklore Today: A Festschrift for Richard M. Dorson, ed. Linda Dégh, Henry Glassie, and Felix J. Oinas (Bloomington: Indiana University, Research Center for Language and Semiotic Studies, 1976), 32–34. On the significance of the “farawayness” of the place to talmudic tall tales, see also Dina Stein, Textual Mirrors: Reflexivity, Midrash, and the Rabbinic Self, Divinations (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), 62. 4. Ben-Amos, “Talmudic Tall-Tales,” 28.

Berkowitz: Tall Tales of Babylonian Talmud Bekhorot 57  5 story’s geography, the gigantic scale of the flora and fauna and, finally, the mass destruction with which the story closes. I read the story in light of the similar folk stories about Rabbah bar bar Hana in Bava Batra and the scholarship on them that situates them within late ancient storytelling traditions, and I engage the story’s intertexts in Genesis, Numbers, Deuteronomy, and Job. Going farther afield, I connect the phenomena found in the talmudic stories to the use of taxidermy in contemporary art and to the colossal sculptures of Claes Oldenburg. Putting the pieces together, I suggest that the story’s features and design convey the haunting of rabbinic culture by animal orphans and fragmented animal families. Drawing on critical perspectives on rabbinic folklore as well as on the concerns of critical animal studies, I propose that this story in Bekhorot plays a subversive cultural role in centering interest on the baby animal bereaved of its mother and situating that infant within a dystopian world in which plants and animals overwhelm and destroy the humans who live among them. It is by no means novel for the plight of the orphan to generate pathos in rabbinic literature and Jewish culture more broadly. Because the orphan’s cry, according to Mekilta of Rashbi on Exod 22:21, has no parent to hear it, it goes straight to God.5 The traumas of war, persecution, migration, and disease have given the Jewish orphan a tragically long life in Jewish history.6 But the animal orphan has drawn little attention, even though, as this essay will show, that figure is not absent from the classical literature. The bereaved baby animal, far from being invisible, captures the rabbinic imagination. In Migrating Tales, Kalmin echoes Claude Lévi-Strauss in proposing that Christians and Christianity are a tool for the Babylonian rabbis to think with.7 Echoing Kalmin, in turn, I propose here that animal orphans are a tool for the rabbis to think with. They are also good to fantasize around, good to grieve, and good to haunt.8 They are also good for 5. “… Why does Scripture state, ‘widow or orphan’ (Exod. 22:21)? [God is saying,] ‘I will be quick to exact punishment on behalf of the widow and orphan more than for any person! For the wife receives [support] from her husband, and the child receives [support] from his father. But these have no one who will support them, except for Me alone!” See W. David Nelson, ed., Mekhilta De-Rabbi Shimon Bar Yoḥai (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2006), 249. 6. “‘Hear Their Cry’: Understanding the Jewish Orphan Experience” was the theme of the Center for Jewish History’s 2020/2021 working group. 7. On the iconic statement by Claude Lévi-Strauss that animals are good to think with, see Marjorie Garber, “Good to Think With,” Profession (2008): 11–20. 8. Also echoing Jane Desmond, “Vivacious Remains: An Afterword on Taxidermy’s Forms, Fictions, Facticity, and Futures,” Configurations 27.2 (2019): 257–66, here 262: “As anthropologist Levi-Strauss put it long ago now, ‘Animals are good to think (with),’ and it seems that recently, especially, dead animals and their bodily remains are especially good to think with too.”

6  Making History t­ roubling the distinction between truth and falsehood, and for testing reality, as we shall see in the tall tales of b. Bekhorot 57b.

Defining the Animal Orphan in Mishnah Bekhorot Leviticus 27:32 is unique within the Pentateuch in its description of a tithe for animals. Mishnah Bekhorot 9:4 lists the animals who are exempt:9 9. The basis for exemption of these animals is Lev 22:27 according to the Sifra and Bavli: “A bull or a sheep” excludes the cross-bred; “or a goat” excludes the one who resembles [another, e.g., a sheep that is the offspring of two sheep but which looks like a goat, or vice versa]; “when … is born” excludes the one born by Caesarean section; “then he shall be seven days” excludes the one lacking time; “under his mother” excludes an orphan.  Rabbi Yishmael, son of Rabbi Yoḥanan ben Beroqah, says: It is stated here [with regard to animal tithe: “Whatever passes under the rod” (Leviticus 27:32)], and it is stated there [with regard to all offerings] “Under his mother” (Leviticus 22:27). Just as “under” stated here excludes the cross-bred, the one born of C-section, the one lacking time, and the orphan, so too “under” stated there excludes the cross-bred, the one born of C-section, the one lacking time, and the orphan. Just as “under” stated there excludes the terefah, so too “under” stated here excludes the terefah. ‫שור או כשב פרט לכלאים‬ ‫או עז פרט לנדמה‬ ‫כי יולד פרט ליוצא דופן‬ ‫והיה שבעת ימים פרט למחוסר זמן‬ ‫תחת אמו פרט ליתום‬ ‫ר ישמעאל בנו של ר' יוחנן בן ברוקה אומר נאמר כאן תחת ונאמר להלן תחת מה תחת אמור כאן פרט לכלאים‬ ‫וליוצא דופן ולמחוסר זמן וליתום אף תחת האמור להלן פרט לכלאים וליוצא דופן ולמחוסר זמן וליתום ומה‬ ‫תחת האמור להלן פרט לטריפה אף תחת האמור כאן פרט לטריפה‬ Sifra Emor Parashah 8 Perek 7 (text from Isaac Hirsch Weiss, ed., Sifra Deve Rav: Hu Sefer Torat Kohanim [New York: Om, 1946); b. Bekh. 57a. The categories are the same in the Mishnah and Sifra with the exception of the one “who resembles” (nidmeh), which appears in the Sifra—though not in Sifra Vatican MS 66—but not in the Mishnah, and the terefah, which appears in the Mishnah but not in the Sifra. This midrash is multistep. Leviticus 22:27 is the basis for invalidation of not only the infant animal as the simple sense of the verse dictates, but also the mixed species, the animal “who resembles” (a species different from the one he was born as), the animal born of a C-section, and the orphan. Through a gezerah shavah, or textual bridge, the disqualifications are extended from sacrifices to tithes, based on common use of the word tahat (“under”) in Lev 22:27, where it refers to the baby animal remaining “under” the mother, and in Lev 27:32, where it refers to the animals passing “under” the staff as they are counted for the tithe. Oddly, m. Zevahim never explicitly disqualifies the orphan animal from sacrifice even though this midrash halakhah shows tithe disqualification to be based on sacrifice disqualification. See the extensive discussion by Ovadiah Bartenura on m. Bekh. 9:4, entry “veyatom.”

Berkowitz: Tall Tales of Babylonian Talmud Bekhorot 57  7 All enter to be tithed except the cross-bred, and the terefah, and the one born by Caesarian section (literally: one who emerges from the side), the one lacking time,10 and an orphan. Which is an orphan? Anyone whose mother has died or has been slaughtered. Rabbi Joshua says: Even if his mother was slaughtered, if the hide is intact, this one is not an orphan.11

‫ ויתום‬13‫ להתעשר חוץ מכלאים [וטריפה ויוצא דופן ומחוסר זמן] ומן‬12‫הכל ניכנס‬ ‫אי זה הוא יתום כל שמתה אמו או ששחטה‬ ‫ר יהשוע או אפילו נשחטה אמו והשלח קיים אין זה יתום‬

14

The definition of the orphan that appears here in m. Bekhorot 9:4—“anyone whose mother has died or has been slaughtered”—is absent from the Toseftan parallel, which, curiously, defines other categories (the mixed breed, the one born of a C-section, and the infant in the first week of life), but not this one (t. Bekh. 7:6).15 Let me first discuss the Mishnah’s definition of orphanhood, and then the exception made by Rabbi Joshua for when the mother’s skin remains intact after her death. Why is a definition necessary to begin with? It is most likely intended to exclude the father—only the mother’s death and not the father’s defines orphan ­status. If so, the definition contrasts with that for humans, where the father’s death is of equal or greater weight.16 The other possibility is that the Mishnah means to include 10. The baby animal in the first week of life. See Exod 22:29 and Lev 22:27. 11. I have consulted and modified Chaya Halberstam’s translation of this mishnah as found in volume 3 of the Oxford Annotated Mishnah: A New Translation of the Mishnah. With Introductions and Notes, ed. Shaye J. D. Cohen, Robert Goldenberg, and Hayim Lapin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022), 209. 12. In the printed edition: “All enter the fold [la-dir] to be tithed.” 13. This preposition appears to be a scribal error. 14. Cited from the Kaufmann A50 manuscript as found in “Dávid Kaufmann and His Collection,” Mishnah: MS A50, Italy, late eleventh–mid-twelfth century, n.d., http:// kaufmann.mtak.hu/en/ms50/ms50-coll1.htm, and transcribed on “‫מפעל המילון ההיסטורי‬,” Ma’agarim: The Historical Dictionary Project, n.d., https://maagarim.hebrew-academy.org. il/Pages/PMain.aspx. This mishnah is misnumbered 2 in Kaufmann even though by Kaufmann’s own numbering it should be 4. 15. The formulation of the mishnah in the Bavli seems to be influenced by b. Hul. 38b: “or has been slaughtered and afterwards gave birth.” In Mishneh Torah, Laws of Things Forbidden on the Altar 3:4, Maimonides follows this formulation, omitting the natural death scenario, as does Rabbi Joshua in the Mishnah itself (see note below). See Kesef Mishnah: ‫ משנה בפרק בתרא דבכורות (דף נ''ז) איזהו יתום כל שמתה אמו או נשחטה ואחר כך ילדה‬.‫ומ''ש שנולד אחר שנשחטה אמו‬ ‫ואיני יודע למה השמיט רבינו שמתה אמו‬, “And that which he wrote, ‘that he was born after his mother was slaughtered,’ is a mishnah in the last chapter of Bekhorot (57): ‘Which is an orphan? ­Anyone whose mother has died or has been slaughtered and afterwards gave birth.’ But I do not know why our Rabbi deleted ‘whose mother has died.’” 16. “Whether orphaned from the father or orphaned from the mother” (‫אחד יתום מאב ואחד‬ ‫)יתום מאם‬, Mek. of R. Shimon bar Yoḥai on Exod 22:21, in the manuscript of the Hoffmann

8  Making History both natural death and slaughter as qualifying circumstances for orphanhood, but that distinction seems more a narrative moment within the Mishnah, a nod to the reality of how animal mothers actually die, rather than a point of legal significance. A related passage in b. Hullin 38b shrinks the scope of animal orphanhood only to cases when the mother dies right at the moment of birth and not afterwards (“this one withdrew for death and this one withdrew for life”), but, in fact, the Mishnah’s definition could theoretically include an animal at a more mature age, not only the newborn. Like b. Hullin 38b, though not to the same extent, Rabbi Joshua restricts the scope of orphanhood, saying that it does not apply when the mother’s shelah, or skin, exists.17 That the mother’s disembodied skin should be considered a substitute for the mother herself and, by law, stands in for her, is surely a strange claim that requires explication.18 The term shelah for skin is less common than the Hebrew term or and refers, as in m. Makhshirin 5:6 and Shabbat 4:2, to when skin is no longer part of the living body but is stripped off and put to some other purpose.19 In m. ­Bekh­orot, no purpose is mentioned, but the Talmud’s commentary in b. Bekh­orot 57b suggests that it is to wrap the infant: Rabbi Yishmael ben Satriel from Arqat Leveinah testified before Rabbi: In our locale, they flay the dead and clothe the living. Rabbi said: The reason for our mishnah is revealed.

‫ מערקת לבינה לפני רבי במקומנו מפשיטין את המתה‬20‫העיד רבי ישמעאל בן סתריאל‬ ‫ומלבישין את החי אמר רבי נתגלה טעמא של משנתינו‬ edition (David Hoffmann, ed., Mekhilta De-Rabi Shimon Ben Yoḥai al Sefer Shemot [Frankfurt am Main: Kauffmann, 1905], 150). See Olympia Bobou, “Orphans,” in The Encyclopedia of Ancient History, ed. Roger S. Bagnall et al. (New York: Wiley & Sons, 2013), 4944: “In the Greco-­Roman world, an orphan was any child who had lost a parent, especially his or her father. Only from the time of Justinian did the term signify a child who had lost both parents.” See also John T. Fitzgerald, “Orphans in Mediterranean Antiquity and Early Christianity,” Acta Theologica 36 (1 January 2016): 29–48, here 29. 17. Rabbi Joshua mentions the mother’s death only by slaughter and not by childbirth or illness perhaps because the skin is most likely to be preserved if the death occurs while someone is already holding a knife and engaged in the act of slaughter. Or perhaps the word “even” suggests that slaughter is the less likely but still viable scenario, and that the more predictable scenario is, as Bartenura writes and the Gemara will presume, the mother’s death in childbirth. 18. Maia Kotrosits’s question is helpful here: “So the question is not only, How does objectification happen? It is also … What is happening when one carves up or cordons off dimensions of that forest of elements composing selfhood into distinguishable parts—a mouth from its voice, the voice from its speaker, the flesh from that which keeps its warm?” (The Lives of Objects: Material Culture, Experience, and the Real in the History of Early Christianity, Class 200: New Studies in Religion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2020), 14. 19. M. Avodah Zarah 2:7 uses the term in a conceptually similar way to refer to an olive stripped of its skin. 20. The rabbi’s name in the Oxford manuscript is Rabbi Yehoshua ben Satriel; in ­Vatican

Berkowitz: Tall Tales of Babylonian Talmud Bekhorot 57  9 Rabbi Yishmael ben Satriel of the city Arqat Leveinah testifies to a practice of flaying the dead—presumably the animal mother who has died in childbirth—and using the fresh hide to “clothe” the survivor, presumably the child. In point of fact, Rabbi Yishmael does not explicitly mention animals, mothers, or children, only “the dead” (feminine grammar) and “the living” (masculine grammar).21 It is Rabbi’s response (“the reason for our mishnah is revealed”) that connects Yishmael’s testimony to the Mishnah.22 Unraveling that connection is my next concern, which takes me to contemporary art’s turn to taxidermy.

Taxidermy: A Certificate of Presence The practice of taxidermy, though seemingly remote, helps to illuminate the approach to animal orphanhood taken by these texts.23 Whether one speaks of the history of the practice or its recent referencing in modern art, taxidermy—the Greek refers literally to the arrangement (“taxi”-) of skin (“-dermy”)—requires “the presence of a bit of body, preferably the outer layer of skin, fur, feathers, or scales” in order to symbolize the natural, and “it must be ‘real.’” 24 Inspired by Donna Haraway’s natureculture, Jane Desmond uses the term naturalreal to characterize the qualities of nature and realness that inhere in the taxidermied animal. Out of all bodily organs, the skin is especially effective for achieving this “reality effect” since, as Steve Baker suggests, the skin possesses a distinctive “aura of authenticity” and seems to bear more than any other part of the body “the trace of a life lived.”25 Anthony Purdy and Helen Gregory’s description of the “troubling authenticity derived from the recycling of animal bodies”—they coin the term “dermography”—captures the uncanny quality of the Talmud’s practice of clothing the newborn baby in the dead mother’s hide.26 The 119 it is Rabbi Yishmael ben Baterah. Manuscript variants are cited from the Saul Lieberman Institute for Talmudic Research and CDI Systems (Firm), eds., Sol and Evelyn Henkind Talmud text databank, electronic resource (Jerusalem: CDI Systems, n.d.). 21. All the manuscripts have not only “the dead” but also “the living”—the newborn— in feminine grammar. 22. Rashi: “Since the skin benefits the baby, he is like one whose mother exists.” In a manuscript variant of Rashi, he explains that the skin is intended to warm the infant—an observation many other Mishnah and Talmud commentators make. 23. The touchstone for recent scholarship on taxidermy is Donna Haraway, “Teddy Bear Patriarchy: Taxidermy in the Garden of Eden, New York City, 1908–1936,” Social Text, no. 11 (1 January 1984): 20; see also Steve Baker, The Postmodern Animal, Essays in Art and Culture (London: Reaktion, 2000). 24. Desmond, “Vivacious Remains,” 261. 25. Baker is discussed by Helen Gregory and Anthony Purdy, “Present Signs, Dead Things: Indexical Authenticity and Taxidermy’s Nonabsent Animal,” Configurations 23.1 (2015): 61–92, here 71. 26. Gregory and Purdy, “Present Signs, Dead Things,” 61, 64.

10  Making History hide is the paradoxical “present sign of a dead thing,” a notion Purdy and Gregory borrow from Roland Barthes.27 The hide, on the one hand, is a testament to the mother’s death, a “ghostly object” like the cowhide in artist Nandipha Mntambo’s 2013 work Umfanekiso wesibuko (Mirror Image), reshaped into the form of a female human body.28

Nandipha Mntambo, Umfanekiso wesibuko (Mirror image), 201329 Death is, after all, the precondition of taxidermy.30 The animal skin speaks not only to the death of the one who wore it but also to the animal’s transformation into a thing, a surface. In the Cartesian philosophical tradition, that is the quintessential state of being of the animal, observes Ron Broglio—the animal lacks “depth of being,” their world flattened within human thinking.31 Different here, however, is the simultaneous claim to life made by Rabbi Joshua. As Giovanni Aloi writes, “The animal skin, the animal-made-object, the rendered surface that cannot be silenced, becomes a destabilizer of affirmation on the account that the animal-livingness that characterized it, along with its otherness, ontologically sets it apart from any other inert artistic/mechanically produced material.”32 The mother’s skin referred to by Rabbi Joshua speaks to the “animal-livingness” with which it was once associated and that, according to Rabbi Joshua, continues on with it. While the skin exists, says Rabbi Joshua, the newborn baby 27. Ibid. (Gregory and Purdy), 90. 28. Giovanni Aloi, “Speculative Taxidermy: Inscribing Vulnerability,” Configurations 27.2 (2019): 187–209, here 202. 29. Ibid., 200. Installation view, Andréhn-Schiptjenko, Stockholm, 2013. Photo: Jean-­ Baptiste Beranger. Collection 21c Museum, Louisville, Kentucky, USA. Courtesy Andréhn-Schiptjenko, Stockholm. 30. See Gregory and Purdy, “Present Signs, Dead Things,” 73. 31. Ron Broglio, Surface Encounters: Thinking with Animals and Art, Posthumanities 17 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011), 1. 32. Giovanni Aloi, Speculative Taxidermy: Natural History, Animal Surfaces, and Art in the Anthropocene, Critical Life Studies (New York: Columbia University Press, 2018), 224.

Berkowitz: Tall Tales of Babylonian Talmud Bekhorot 57  11 is said still to have their mother. While the skin exists, the mother exists. Rabbi Joshua claims an “impossibility of dying” for the slaughtered mother, an impossibility that Aloi sees as both cause and effect of animal commodification.33 In the practice from Arqat Leveinah attested by Rabbi Yishmael ben Satriel, the mother’s hide performs motherhood through its supposed reanimation. In the “nexus of death and resurrection, deconstruction and reconstruction” that characterizes the talmudic practice, the reanimated skin simultaneously points to and resists the animal’s death.34 The skin is a “certificate of presence” that “is at one and the same time a certificate of death.”35 The reanimated hide works similarly to the relic—a body part or possessed object that embodies the person who once lived and confers upon them continuing life—or even to the souvenir, “a token of authenticity from a lived experience that lingers only in memory.”36 The hide, according to Rabbi Yishmael ben Satriel, becomes at the most basic level an item of clothing—it clothes or dresses (malbishin) the newborn like a swaddling blanket. Unlike the classic transitional object of the baby blanket, however, the mother’s hide both substitutes for the mother and is the mother.

Rabbinic Geographies The zombification of the animal mother is offered to Rabbi Judah the Patriarch as testimony, though it is received by him as revelation: “Rabbi Yishmael ben Satriel from Arqat Leveinah testified before Rabbi: In our locale, they flay the dead and clothe the living. Rabbi said: The reason for our mishnah is revealed [nitgalah].”37 Indeed, Rabbi Yishmael ben Satriel, who appears only once in rabbinic literature, sounds like a mystical being one would expect to encounter in the Zohar. The root s-t-r referring to hiding or overturning, and the ending -el to an association with the divine, Satriel is found also among the angelic names inscribed onto the Aramaic 33. Aloi, Speculative Taxidermy, 67, 70. 34. Desmond, “Vivacious Remains,” 260. 35. Gregory and Purdy, “Present Signs, Dead Things,” 74. 36. Rachel Poliquin, The Breathless Zoo: Taxidermy and the Cultures of Longing (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012), 7. On the connection between taxidermy and relics, see Gregory and Purdy, “Present Signs, Dead Things,” 63. 37. From Rabbi’s response one can make the curious inference that before he heard this testimony he did not understand his own mishnah. See the discussion of this passage’s implications for Rabbi’s editing of the Mishnah as well as the talmudic portrayal of him in Jacob Nahum Epstein, Mevoot Le-Sifrut Ha-Tanaim: Mishnah, Tosefta u-Midreshe-Halakhah (Tel Aviv: Devir, 1957), 188; Ezra Zion Melamed, Pirḳe Mavo Le-Sifrut Ha-Talmud (Jerusalem: n.p., 1973), 119; Ofra Meir, Rabi Yehudah Ha-Naśi: Deyoḳno Shel Manhig Bi-Mesorot Erets-Yiśrael u-Vavel (Tel-Aviv: Ha-Ḳibuts Ha-Meuḥad, 1999), 204.

12  Making History magic bowls.38 That which Yishmael offers to Rabbi is less a revelation, though, than what one might call a mini- or micro-ethnography. It falls squarely into the genre of rabbinic folklore described by Galit HasanRokem and Haim Weiss: “The preferred folk narrative genre is the legend with its demonstrable roots in the experienced and known reality.”39 That reality is, in this case, a municipal or regional one—called “our locale” (meqomenu) by Rabbi Yishmael—and geographically anchored in the city name Arqat Leveinah. A bit of digging into the identity of this city suggests that it bears ancient biblical as well as contemporaneous associations for the rabbis. Arqat Leveinah is elsewhere known as Arca Caesarea, or Caesarea Libani, and lies at the northwestern foot of Mount Lebanon.40 Today it is equated with Tel Arqa near the coast, 32 kilometers southwest of Arod and 124 kilometers northwest of Sidon. The city is mentioned in old Egyptian records.41 Genesis Rabbah links the city of Arqa to the Arqites mentioned in the “Table of Nations” found in Genesis 10 (and 1 Chronicles 1), where Arqa is one of five city names used to refer to an offshoot of the primeval family.42 The city thus has resonances of hoary antiquity for the rabbis, but it may also have carried resonances of imperial Rome and the institutionalization of Christianity. Arqa was the birthplace of the last of the Severan emperors, who was born there in 208 CE, and it was also the seat of a Christian bishop in the 300s CE. The city seems to have had supernatural or magical associations as well, according to Josephus’s description of the city, which he mentions as having fallen under Agrippa’s rule: In the course of his march he [Titus Caesar] saw a river, the nature of which deserves record. It runs between Arcea, a town within Agrippa’s realm, and Raphanea, and has an astonishing peculiarity. For, when it flows, it is a copious stream with a current far from sluggish; then all at once its sources fail and for the space of six days it presents the spectacle of a dry bed; again, as though no change had occurred, it pours forth on 38. For example, the magical divorce decree of M103 in Dan Levene, A Corpus of Magic Bowls: Incantation Texts in Jewish Aramaic from Late Antiquity (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 2003), 51. 39. Galit Hasan-Rokem and Haim Weiss, “Folklore in Antiquity,” Humanities 7, no. 2 (2018): 47. 40. Other variants: Caesarea Arca; Caesarea ad Libanum. See Pinchas Neaman, Encyclopedia of Talmudical Geography (Tel Aviv: Joshua Chachik, 1972), 2:301–2. The entry in Jastrow is spelled with aleph: Marcus Jastrow, Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature, 2 vols. (New York: Pardes, 1950), 1:125, http://www. tyndalearchive.com/TABS/Jastrow/. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arqa. 41. See Neaman, Encyclopedia, 302: Arqa is mentioned in the list of cities conquered by Thutmose III and is mentioned also in the Amarna letters. 42. Gen 10:17, 1 Chr 1:15, and Gen. Rab. 37:8.

Berkowitz: Tall Tales of Babylonian Talmud Bekhorot 57  13 the seventh day just as before. And it has always been observed to keep strictly to this order; whence they have called it the Sabbatical river, so naming it after the sacred seventh day of the Jews. (J.W. 7.97; Thackeray, LCL)

Arqa’s river flows only on the Sabbath! Arqa is no normal place when it comes to the workings of nature.

Colossal Flora and Fauna The marvels of Arqa make their way into the Talmud as well, as seen in the continuation of Rabbi Yishmael ben Satriel’s report: The lettuces in our locale have 600,000 leaves in their omasum (i.e., core). Once one cedar tree fell in our locale, and sixteen wagons passed over its back [as] one. Once an egg of bar yokhani fell and drowned sixty cities and broke three hundred cedar trees. (b. Bekh. 57b)

‫ פעם אחת נפל ארז‬44‫ שלו‬43‫חזירין שבמקומנו יש להם ששים רבוא קלפים בבית המסס‬ ‫אחד שבמקומנו ועברו שש עשרה קרונות על חודו אחת פעם אחת נפלה ביצת בר יוכני‬ ‫וטבעה ששים כרכים ושברה שלש מאות ארזים‬ Rabbi Yishmael ben Satriel regales Rabbi with tales of Arqa, describing lettuces with 600,000 leaves, cedars the width of superhighways, and giant birds whose eggs can kill cities and forests. Most of the manuscripts add giant mosquitoes, strengthening the already dark tone of Arqa’s marvels.45 Just what relevance any of these features have for the original one mentioned by Yishmael ben Satriel, that is, the taxidermied mother, is a subject to which I will return in my conclusion. 43. On the beit ha-meses, or omasum, as the stomach of a ruminant, see m. Hul. 3:1–2. The omasum is absent from the Oxford, London, and Vatican 120 manuscripts: “the lettuces in our locale have 600,000 leaves on them.” Munich and Florence omit the word “leaves” as well: “the lettuces in our locale have 600,000 on them.” The standard printed version with omasum would seem to be a more hyperbolic form since it describes the lettuces as having 600,000 leaves just in their cores. 44. At this point most of the manuscripts (Munich, Florence, London, Oxford, and Vatican 120) have an additional section describing giant mosquitoes very similar to the one about lettuces. This is the Munich manuscript version: “Mosquitoes in our locale have 600,000 on them, in its omasum” (‫)יתושין שבמקומינו יש להן ששים ריבוא עלין בבית המסס שלו‬. London and Oxford use the word for leaves, qelafim, that described lettuce leaves in the previous section. That word can also refer to scales or scabs, suggesting an image of mosquitoes with an enormous number of wings. 45. See previous note.

14  Making History Impossible physical dimensions are found in other rabbinic tales as well.46 The giant proportions of ancient Canaan are a theme already in the Bible, in Num 13:21–24, which describes a single cluster of grapes found by the spies needing to be mounted on poles in order to be transported (picture the logo of modern Israel’s ministry of tourism). The grapes are large but not of colossal proportions, but a little later in the Numbers narrative (vv. 25–33), the spies spread fearful reports of giant people who inhabit the land. The Talmud runs with the motif of colossal Canaan, such as in b. Hullin 60b, which pictures sixteen rows of teeth possessed by the Avvim, gigantic inhabitants of Canaan, and in b. Ketubbot 111b, which describes Canaan’s turnips weighing sixty litra and mustard branches that produce nine kavs of mustard, and b. Hullin 59b, which depicts ancient Canaan inhabited by giant animals.47 The Talmud does not reserve colossal-scale flora, fauna, and people for the land of Israel alone. B. Megillah 6b describes the gigantic proportions of the city of Rome and the colossal scale of its produce. In the story cycle of Rabbah bar bar Hana in b. Bava Batra 73–75, Rabbah bar bar Hana offers similar though far more expansive reports than those of Yishmael ben Satriel in his nautical-themed tales, recounting giant waves, snakes, frogs, ravens, trees, fishes, and birds, and concluding with the mythological behemoth and Leviathan. Rabbah bar bar Hana’s tall tales resemble those in Bekhorot also in their number schemes of threes and sixes, and in the particular motif of the destruction of sixty cities, which is shared between the two story cycles: Rabbah bar bar Hana in Bava Batra reports sixty districts destroyed by a giant fish, while Yishmael ben Satriel in Bekhorot describes the drowning of sixty cities by the yolk of the bar yokhani bird.48 Rabbah bar bar Hana in Bava Batra even has his own version of a giant bird, the Ziz, which some identify with the bar yokhani (if for no reason other than that it would be strange for the Talmud to speak of two different colossal birds). Daniel Frim has offered a helpful description of recent scholarship on the Bava Batra tales, which looks at how they adapt Zoroastrian mythology (Kiperwasser and Shapira), polemicize against Second Temple period apocalyptic (Stemberger); juxtapose empirical knowledge with Bible exegesis (Stein), play with truth and fiction (Ben-Amos), and weave together myths of the Leviathan, broader rabbinic cosmology and eschatology, and

46. “Impossible physical dimensions” is Ben-Amos’s term (“Talmudic Tall-Tales,” 35). 47. On b. Ketub. 111b, see Jeffrey L. Rubenstein, “Grappling with the Merits of the Land of Israel: Analysis of the Sugya in BT Ketubot 110a–112b,” in Merkaz u-tefutsah: Erets Yiśraʼel ṿeha-tefutsot be-yeme Bayit Sheni, ha-mishnah ṿeha-Talmud, ed. Isaiah Gafni (Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center, 2004), 159–88. 48. Deuteronomy 3:4 is likely the origin of the sixty-cities motif, which appears also in b. Qidd. 66a.

Berkowitz: Tall Tales of Babylonian Talmud Bekhorot 57  15 the tall-tale genre (Frim himself).49 Building on these findings, I propose that Rabbi Yishmael ben Satriel’s reports be understood in light of their internal rabbinic framing as well as their Zoroastrian echoes.50 Comparison of Bekhorot with Bava Batra, as well as with the Zoroastrian cosmological collection called the Bundahishn, reveals Bekhorot’s distinctive concern with the destructive dimensions of colossal fauna and flora—the giant cedar comes crashing down, and the bar yokhani’s egg falls, wreaking havoc on life below. Bekhorot’s legal frame for these stories, it should be recalled, is the animal orphan. The context and content, then, are one of death and destruction, not creating and rebuilding, which are the major themes in Bava Batra and the Bundahishn. Pop artist Claes Oldenburg’s colossal sculptures provide some insight into the workings of the colossal imaginary. Oldenburg’s play with scale in his fifty-one-foot spoon cradling a maraschino cherry in Minneapolis, his thirty-eight-foot-tall flashlight in Las Vegas, and his forty-five-foot-tall clothespin in Philadelphia challenges the viewer’s sense of location in the world. Pleasure as well as disquiet attend the recalibration of self evoked by these colossal sculptures, which put us in our place. Philosopher Herbert Marcuse saw in Oldenburg’s sculptures revolutionary potential. Their impact, proposes Marcuse, is that “[p]eople cannot take anything seriously; neither their President, nor the Cabinet, nor the corporation executives.”51 That may be because, with colossal scale imaginings, the human body is no longer the ultimate measure of things.52 This spirit of disorientation may be animating the Gospel of Peter’s giant Jesus, treated 49. Ben-Amos, “Talmudic Tall-Tales”; Reuven Kiperwasser and Dan D. Y. Shapira, “­Irano-Talmudica I: The Three-Legged Ass and Ridyā in B. Ta’anith: Some Observations about Mythic Hydrology in the Babylonian Talmud and in Ancient Iran,” AJS Review 32.1 (2008): 101–16; Reuven Kiperwasser and Dan D. Y. Shapira, “Irano-Talmudica II: Leviathan, Behemoth and the ‘Domestication’of Iranian Mythological Creatures in Eschatological Narratives of the Babylonian Talmud,” in Shoshannat Yaakov: Jewish and Iranian Studies in Honor of Yaakov Elman, ed. Shai Secunda and Steven Fine (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 203–35; Reuven Kiperwasser and Dan D. Y. Shapira, “Irano-Talmudica III: Giant Mythological Creatures in Transition from the Avesta to the Babylonian Talmud,” in Orality and Textuality in the Iranian World, ed. Julia Rubanovich, Jerusalem Studies in Religion and Culture 19 (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 63–92; Günter Stemberger, “Münchhausen und die Apokalyptik,” JSJ 20.1 (1989): 61–83; Stein, Textual Mirrors, 58–83; Daniel J. Frim, “‘Those Who Descend upon the Sea Told Me …’: Myth and Tall Tale in Baba Batra 73a–74b,” JQR 107.1 (2017): 1–37. 50. Note that the Bekhorot stories are set in the Tannaitic period and narrated in Hebrew but they likely emerge from the Bavli context, given the number schemes built on threes and the echoes of Iranian myth. 51. Beth Py-Lieberman and Attilio Maranzano, “The Really Big Art of Claes Oldenburg,” Smithsonian 26.5 (1 August 1995): 78. 52. The human body as a method of measure is “one of the oldest and most solid notions”; see Joan Kee and Emanuele Lugli, “Scale to Size: An Introduction,” Art History 38.2 (1 April 2015): 250–67, here 251, quoting Gregoire Muller (“The Scale of Man,” Arts Magazine, May 1970, 42–43, here 42). See pp. 254–55 on Derrida’s preference for the term “colossal”

16  Making History by Maia Kotrosits, and Rabbi Yishmael’s reports about Arqat Leveinah that irrupt into the Talmud’s legal discourse.53 Rabbi Yishmael’s stories of colossal plants, trees, birds, and eggs abruptly shift the talmudic frame, making people and their vehicles seem tiny and vulnerable next to the awesome, awful flora and fauna said to dominate the Lebanese landscape.

Ethnographies of Scale The structure of Yishmael ben Satriel’s reports is complex. They move from static description to anecdote. There is first the lettuce of 600,000 leaves, then the single cedar tree falling, and then the egg falling.54 The reports also move from absolute to relative size, a distinction that art critics Joan Kee and Emanuele Lugli see as essential to considerations of scale, which is defined as the relationship between physical magnitude and the way that magnitude is represented.55 In Yishmael ben Satriel’s narration, the lettuce is described by its absolute size—it has 600,000 leaves—while the giant size of the cedar tree and the egg are illustrated through their relationship to other features of the landscape: the sixteen wagons that can roll side by side along the length of the fallen tree, and the egg insides capable of drowning sixty cities and breaking three hundred cedar trees. Rabbi Yishmael’s anecdotes also move from productive to destructive. The fallen cedar turns into a mass transportation hub, but the fallen egg inflicts mass carnage and chaos. Rabbi Yishmael’s anecdotes also move from colossal scale to super-colossal scale. A single cedar can accommodate sixteen wagons, but a bar yokhani egg can, in turn, break three hundred cedars (if one does the math, that’s a lot of wagons that the egg yolk could destroy). Let me at this point “drop” into the discussion an intertext that may here be lurking behind the final climactic anecdote of the bar yokhani’s egg, which is the mother bird mitzvah in Deuteronomy. In Deuteronomy, a person shoos away the mother bird in order to take her eggs; here the mother bird drops her own egg in an infanticidal and genocidal act of mass destruction. In the two other places in the Talmud in which the bar yokhani appears, b. Yoma 80a and b. Sukkah 5a, the bar yokhani exemplifies

over “monumental,” the more common term in art criticism, for its association with trans­ human dimensions. 53. Kotrosits, Lives of Objects, 27–28. 54. Ben-Amos describes a structure common to talmudic tall tales according to which the phenomena described grow increasingly implausible and then are capped by an ironic coda that contracts the narrative’s exaggeration (“Talmudic Tall-Tales,” 35–40). The Bekhorot structure conforms to this pattern. 55. Kee and Lugli, “Scale to Size,” 252.

Berkowitz: Tall Tales of Babylonian Talmud Bekhorot 57  17 a large-species bird, but not a colossal one.56 In these parallels, the bar yokhani is essentially similar to an ostrich or eagle or some other large but perfectly realistic bird whose large size exemplifies, for the Talmud, the difficulties of speaking of objects as having an average size. These two other talmudic references to the bar yokhani recall Pliny’s treatment of the ostrich, whom Pliny describes as exceeding in height a man sitting on horseback, and whose eggs are prized on account of their large size (Nat. 10.1.1).57 In Bekhorot, by contrast, the bar yokhani has grown into a monstrous creature whose eggs are not just larger than those of other birds but are supernaturally colossal.58 The Bekhorot storyteller may here be inspired by Iranian myth, which features an entire cast of colossal birds—the Simorg, Sen, Camros, Karsift, Baskuc, Zorbarag, and Rukk.59 The Camros bears some similarity to the bar yokhani in causing mass destruction, with its periodic forays into non-Iranian lands to pluck up people like specks of grain. It is the Rukk, though, who comes closest to the bar yokhani. Known from the Arabian tales of One Thousand and One Nights, the Rukk’s story centers on its colossal egg and the destructive fallout from it.60 After sailors break the Rukk’s egg, steal the fetus, and hide it aboard their ship, the Rukk drops a huge

56. “Even if we claim that the measure for impure foods is an egg-bulk, one could say it is referring to the giant egg-bulk of the bird called bar yokhani” (b. Yoma 80a). The aim is to determine measurements by egg-bulk, and the problem is the variability of egg size, with the bar yokhani representing the large end of the spectrum. In the parallel in Sukkah, the measurement is not of impure foods but of the thickness of the ark cover, and the basis is not egg size but face size, but the principle is the same: the bar yokhani is invoked to contest rough measurements by analogy. These talmudic passages’ destabilization of methods of measurement have social and political implications that deserve further consideration; for discussion of measurement along these lines, see Kee and Lugli, “Scale to Size,” 259. 57. See http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=urn:cts:latinLit:phi0978.phi 001.perseus-eng1:10.1, chapter 1, “The Ostrich.” 58. That being said, the portrait in Bekhorot of the bar yokhani weaponizing its large eggs bears echoes of Pliny’s ostrich, who likewise is described as an aggressive creature prone to throwing things at people. 59. In Pahlavi texts, the Simorg nests on a tree whose shoots drop seeds that rain down upon the earth and form its plant life. In the Rivayat accompanying the Dadestan i Denig, the Simorg also plays a cosmos-creating role, but in the Bundahishn, the Simorg is destructive, causing the tree on which his nest rests to wither. The Simorg is in the Bundahishn paired with the Kamak, who causes drought and death and devours men and animals, and the Sen bird, who seems closer to a real bird, perhaps the ostrich, black vulture, or golden eagle. See Hanns-Peter Schmidt, “Simorḡ,” in Encyclopaedia Iranica, 2002, https://iranicaonline.org/articles/simorg; Kiperwasser and Shapira, “Irano-Talmudica II,” 209, 212–13; Kiperwasser and Shapira, “Irano-Talmudica III,” passim. The key chapter from the Bundahishn—chapter 24— can be found in translation in Domenico Agostini and Samuel Thrope, eds., The Bundahišn: A New Translation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020), 120–24. 60. See Christa A. Tuczay, “Motifs in The Arabian Nights and in Ancient and Medieval European Literature: A Comparison,” Folklore 116.3 (2005): 276.

18  Making History rock on the ship in retaliation but misses.61 Closer to the Talmud’s time and place are the demonic eggs featured in the Aramaic magic bowls and the writing of spells on eggshells.62 Then as now, eggs carry rich symbolism; they were associated with fertility, as one would expect, but also with other magical powers.

Infertility and Irony Does the bar yokhani, like the Rukk, intend all the destruction she causes? Impossible, challenges the Stam, in a final back-and-forth—the text shifts here from Hebrew to Aramaic—that caps off Rabbi Yishmael ben Satriel’s reports: And does (the bar yokhani) throw it? But it is written: “The kenaf renanim rejoices (continuation: Are her pinions and plumage like the stork’s? She leaves her eggs on the ground, letting them warm in the dirt)” (Job 39:13– 14)? Rav Ashi said: That (egg) was rotten.

‫ ליה והא כתיב כנף רננים נעלסה‬63‫ומי שדיא‬ ‫אמר רב אשי ההוא מוזרתא הואי‬ A notoriously obscure biblical passage invoked by the Stam, Job 39:13–14, would seem to suggest that the bar yokhani is a good mother, incapable of the infanticide that Rabbi Yishmael ben Satriel attributes to her.64 B. Menahot 66b further reveals the Stam’s thinking here in Bekhorot. 61. See Frim, “‘Those Who Descend upon the Sea Told Me …,’” 28–29. 62. On demonic eggs, see Joseph Naveh and Shaul Shaked, Magic Spells and Formulae: Aramaic Incantations of Late Antiquity (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1993), 127–30; Siam Bhayro et al., Aramaic Magic Bowls in the Vorderasiatisches Museum in Berlin: Descriptive List and Edition of Selected Texts, Magical and Religious Literature of Late Antiquity 7 (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 60–61. Eggs are represented in these incantations as forces that threaten the client. On inscribed egg shells used for magical purposes, see Bhayro et al., Aramaic Magic Bowls, 66; Ortal-Paz Saar, Jewish Love Magic: From Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages, Magical and Religious Literature of Late Antiquity 6 (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 101–8. 63. Most manuscripts (Venice, Florence, London, Vatican) read sharya (“is permitted”) instead of shadya (“throw”), an understandable variant given the similarity of the letters resh and dalet. Both versions propose that it goes against the nature of the kenaf renanim for her to have dropped the egg. 64. I am presuming that the bar yokhani in the story is female and a mother—the grammar of shadya is feminine, as is the grammar used for the kenaf renanim of Job—but the masculine bar in the name bar yokhani does point potentially to a masculine meaning. In that case, we have here not a mother but a father bird. Bar yokhani may operate, alternatively, more as a proper noun that would apply to both female and male of the species. In sum, there is some gender ambiguity surrounding the bird in this story.

Berkowitz: Tall Tales of Babylonian Talmud Bekhorot 57  19 Using the exegetical method of notariqon, the Stam takes the enigmatic verb ne’elasah in the Job verse to be an acronym or mash-up of three words:65 And it says, “The kenaf renanim rejoices (ne’elasah)” (Job 39:13). [The word ne’elasah is a combination of the words:] Carries (nos’e), goes up (oleh), and places down (venit’ḥata). [The bird carries the egg, flies upward, and places the egg down.]

‫ואומר כנף רננים נעלסה נושא עולה ונתחטא‬ In this midrashic reading, the kenaf renanim bird—which Bekhorot identifies with the bar yokhani, though really Job is probably referring to an ostrich—“carries, goes up, and places down,” presumably relocating the egg from one nest to another or to the ground.66 (Moving eggs around from one nest to another is not something birds typically do, but real avian behavior may not be of much concern here.67) If it is the case, challenges the Stam of Bekhorot, that kenaf renanim birds take such painstaking care with their eggs as the Job verse would indicate, then why would the bar yokhani have dropped her egg while in flight, as Rabbi Yishmael ben Satriel recounts? In fact, when read in its plain sense, Job 39:13–18 offers an indictment of the kenaf renanim bird: The kenaf renanim rejoices; Are her pinions and plumage like the stork’s? She leaves her eggs on the ground, Letting them warm in the dirt, Forgetting they may be crushed underfoot, Or trampled by a wild beast. Her young are cruelly abandoned as if they were not hers; Her labor is in vain for lack of concern. For God deprived her of wisdom, Gave her no share of understanding, 65. On notariqon, see Yonah Frenḳel, Darkhe Ha-Agadah Ṿeha-Midrash (Givatayim, Israel: Yad LaTalmud, 1991), 1:125–32. He discusses this passage on p. 129. 66. According to Robert Alter, “Modern scholars are generally agreed that the bird in question is an ostrich, though the term used here is not the usual bat ya’anah but rather a kind of poetic epithet, ‘wing of song,’ or perhaps, better, ‘screech wing,’ a designation alluding to the loud sounds the ostrich makes” (The Wisdom Books: Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes: A Translation with Commentary (New York: W. W. Norton, 2010), 165. Verse 18 seems to be describing the bird in flight, and ostriches don’t fly, which leaves exegesis—along with the Stam’s employment of the verse—challenging. 67. Personal communication with evolutionary biologist Jon Regosin: Most birds don’t or can’t fly with their eggs and wouldn’t know if an egg was unfertilized unless perhaps the others have hatched.

20  Making History Else she would soar on high, Scoffing at the horse and its rider. (NJPS, with modification)

‫ידה וְ נֹ ָ ֽצה׃‬ ֥ ָ ‫ַף־רנ ִָנ֥ים ֶנעֱלָ ֑סָ ה ִאם־אֶ֝ בְ ָ ֗רה ח ֲִס‬ ְ ‫ּכְ נ‬ ‫ּכִ י־תַ ע ֲֹ֣זב ל ָ ָ֣א ֶרץ ּבֵ ֶצ֑יהָ ְ ֽועַל־עָפָ ֥ר ְּתחַ ֵ ּֽמם׃‬ ‫דּוׁשהָ ׃‬ ֽ ֶ ‫זּורהָ וְ חַ ּיַ ֖ת הַ ּׂשָ ֶ ֣דה ְת‬ ֑ ֶ ‫י־רגֶל ְּת‬ ֣ ֶ ִ‫ַ֭ו ִּת ְׁשּכַח ּכ‬ ‫י־פחַ ד׃‬ ֽ ָ ִ‫הִ קְ ִ ׁ֣שיחַ ּבָ נֶ ֣יהָ ּלְ ל ֹא־לָ ּ֑ה לְ ִ ֖ריק יְ גִ יעָ ּ֣ה ּבְ ל‬ ‫ֹא־חלַק ֝ ֗ ָלּה ּבַ ּבִ ָינֽה׃‬ ֥ ָ ‫ּכִ י־הִ ָ ּׁ֣שּה אֱל֣ ֹוּהַ חׇ כְ ָ ֑מה וְ ל‬ ‫ָּ֭כעֵת ּבַ ּמָ ֣רֹום ּתַ ְמ ִ ֑ריא ִ ּֽת ְׂש ַח֥ק ֝ ַל ּ֗סּוס ּולְ רֹ כְ ֽבֹו׃‬ Job takes the bird’s placement of her eggs on the ground to be an indication that she has abandoned them, and that she is inattentive, foolish, and ignorant.68 For the Stam, on the other hand, the kenaf renanim exemplifies maternal care. The irony on top of irony, though, is that the bar yokhani of the Bekhorot story seems to be just the kind of inattentive mother bird that Job censures. The Stam instead uses the Job verse as a counterpoint to the Bekhorot tall tales, however, even if it is in fact excellent exegetical support. The Stam’s question ultimately produces two contradictory ways of thinking about the bar yokhani: the careless mother portrayed by Rabbi Yishmael ben Satriel and the attentive one (but not!) portrayed by Job. Which is correct? That is the Stam’s question. Rav Ashi evades the dilemma altogether with his proposal that the egg was rotten.69 (Just how the bar yokhani mother would have known that her egg was rotten is clearly not a question the audience is meant to ask; perhaps she saw her other eggs hatch first, and only this one was left in the nest.) The mother bird tossed it away, elaborates Rashi, because she knew no chicks would be born from it. The language of rottenness is muzarta, a term employed in the Talmud with eggs usually for sexual imagery.70 While the language Rabbi Yishmael ben Satriel uses is that of dropping—“the egg dropped”—the language used by the Stam is throwing: “did she throw?!” The implicit answer to that last question is yes, but the bar yokhani proves to be neither the careless bird we may have originally thought nor the attentive one of the Stam’s ironic midrashic reading of Job. She is, rather, an angry bird, frustrated in pursuit of motherhood,

68. Alter comments, “This notion that the ostrich abandons all the eggs she lays and does not stay to hatch them is no more than ancient folk zoology” (Wisdom Books, 165). 69. Michael Sokoloff translates it here as rotten and associates it with the adjective madur (A Dictionary of Jewish Babylonian Aramaic of the Talmudic and Geonic Periods [Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002], 646). 70. In a baraita on b. Sanh. 82, the biblical Zimri is said to have had sex so many times— sixty (like the number of cities destroyed by bar yokhani’s yolk!)—that he became like a rotten egg (ke-vetzah ha-muzeret), while b. Nid. 35b compares seminal discharge to the rotten egg. See the earlier reference to Saar, Jewish Love Magic, 101–8 on associations between bird eggs and sex.

Berkowitz: Tall Tales of Babylonian Talmud Bekhorot 57  21 hurling her egg down to earth and drowning the people below in apparent exasperation that it will not bear fruit for her.71

Conclusion: Empty Shells, Empty Nests Rabbi Yishmael’s tall tales give new meaning to the metaphor of the empty shell. The stories begin with the disembodied skin of a slaughtered animal and end with the colossal cracked egg of the bar yokhani. I turn now, in closing, to the stitching of law to story, of one story to the next, and of story to the Stam. Let me propose that the empty shell is the image that brings together the component parts—animal orphan, taxidermied mother, colossal flora, genocidal bird—and that frames the whole. The empty shell marks the development in the power dynamics of the narrative from slaughtered mother to angry (potential) mother and from orphaned baby to weaponized egg. The affective register of the stories is difficult to discern. Are they meant to evoke wonder, horror, laughter, disbelief, disgust, delight, fear, or melancholia? Colossal proportions are often intended to convey overwhelming emotion, observe Kee and Lugli.72 The legal frame of the animal orphans suggests, at the very least, a haunting by the generations of traumatized animal families separated by slaughter, sacrifices, and tithes. The stories supply an answer to the uncomfortable question that is implicitly posed by Deuteronomy’s mother bird mitzvah: What happens when the mother bird gets back to her nest? Colossal flora and fauna turn against the humans in Rabbi Yishmael ben Satriel’s stories, “revealing” to the audience the skeletons in the Jewish ritual closet, even while Rabbi Joshua’s practice of reanimating the slaughtered mother is designed to deny animal deaths. In b. Bekhorot 53a, the animal orphan is said to be the reason that animal tithes ceased after the destruction of the temple: “In the presence of the Temple and not in the presence of the Temple” (quoting the Mishnah): If so, now too! It is like Rav Huna, as Rav Huna said: It is a decree because of the orphan. If so, originally (in biblical times) also no! Rather, it was possible with an announcement.

‫בפני הבית ושלא בפני הבית אי הכי אפי' האידנא נמי‬ ‫כדרב הונא דאמר רב הונא גזירה משום יתום‬ 71. Dan Ben-Amos observes that only one rabbinic passage, b. Bekh. 8b, explicitly names the tall tale, and it does so in connection with a story about a mule giving birth, which is impossible (“Talmudic Tall-Tales,” 28). It is striking that, when the tall tale is identified explicitly within the Talmud as a literary genre, it is associated with animal motherhood thwarted, a central theme in the stories I have discussed here. 72. Kee and Lugli, “Scale to Size,” 255.

22  Making History ‫אי הכי מעיקרא נמי לא‬ ‫אלא אפשר בהכרזה‬ A decree was made to stop the tithe so as not to risk accidentally including animal orphans. The animal orphan stops the law in its tracks, as it were, creating a rift between ancient Israelite practice and contemporary rabbinic life, putting on hold the old practices that separate animals from each other and that send them off to the Temple. Even in temple times, the Gemara goes on to say, the practice of tithes relied on public announcement of the orphans. The systems of animal donation that support Temple life must not catch up the orphan into them. Turning to other texts, one sees that those systems depended on the bond between animal mother and child. According to t. Bekhorot 7:10, the new animals are separated for the tithe by manipulating that bond: How do they tithe? They place the mothers outside, lowing, and the children exit towards them.73

‫כיצד מעשרין מעמיד אימהות מבחוץ והן גועות והבנים יוצאין לקראתן‬

74

Any schoolteacher knows the difficulty of getting a group of children to stand in line. Here the task is to move the young animals along so that every tenth can be tapped and removed. The strategy developed by the farmers to direct their young flocks, says the Tosefta, was to display the bleating mothers on the other side of the fence. Far from suppressing the mother–child bond among animals, the rabbis use its power to drive the tithe procedure. The effect of separation, though, would have been all too apparent as every tenth animal was removed before reunion with their waiting mother. The Talmud asks, “Throw them a vegetable and let them go out towards it!” (b. Bekh. 58b). Why didn’t they just use vegetables to lure the animals—a literal carrot and stick. The answer offered by Rav Huna is that the “mother and stick” method was instituted to make sure that orphan animals (and purchased animals) were not counted toward the tithe. With no mothers to call to them, the orphan animal, it is presumed, would just stay in the pen. In the Bava Batra story cycle that I discussed earlier, Rabbah bar bar Hana at one point tells a story about a time he was traveling in the desert 73. In what manner does one tithe? He gathers them in a pen and provides them with a small opening so that two animals will not be able to emerge together. Their mothers stand outside, and they are inside. And they (the mothers) bleat and they (the young ones) emerge toward their mothers (also in b. Bekh. 58b). ‫באי זה צד מעשר כונסן לדיר ועושה להם פתח קטן כדי שלא יהו שנים יכולין לצאת כאחד אימותיהם מבחוץ‬ ‫והם מבפנים וגועות ויוצאות לקראת אמן‬ 74. Moses Samuel Zuckermandel, ed., Tosephta: Based on the Erfurt and Vienna codices (Tosefta al-pi Kitve-yad Erfurṭ Ṿinah) (Jerusalem: Wahrman, 1970), 542.

Berkowitz: Tall Tales of Babylonian Talmud Bekhorot 57  23 with some companions (b. B. Bat. 73b). The group of travelers saw flying above them some unusually plump geese: And Rabba bar bar Ḥana said: Once we were traveling in the desert and we saw these geese whose wings were sloping because they were so fat, and streams of oil flowed beneath them. I said to them: Shall we have a portion of you in the World-to-Come? One raised a wing, and one raised a leg. When I came before Rabbi Elazar, he said to me: Israel will be held accountable for them.

‫ואמר רבה בר בר חנה זימנא חדא הוה קא אזלינן במדברא וחזינן הנהו אווזי דשמטי‬ ‫גדפייהו משמנייהו וקא נגדי נחלי דמשחא מתותייהו אמינא להו אית לן בגוייכו חלקא‬ ‫לעלמא דאתי חדא דלי גדפא וחדא דלי אטמא כי אתאי לקמיה דרבי אלעזר אמר לי עתי־‬ ‫דין ישראל ליתן עליהן את הדין‬ Rabbah bar bar Hana asks the sumptuous geese whether he will someday have the chance to eat them. The geese respond in body language (human rather than avian). One of the geese raises a wing, the other a leg, seemingly saying yes, in the world to come you will eat your fill of us. Rabbah bar bar Hana relays the story to Rabbi Elazar who, instead of congratulating his colleague on the feast he will one day enjoy, warns him enigmatically of the consequences: “Israel will be held accountable for them.” Rashbam (Samuel ben Meir, grandson of Rashi) explains that Israel’s sins will delay the messianic era, requiring the birds to bear their heavy fat until that time (not unlike the overstuffed birds readied for foie gras today). This story from Bava Batra is a suggestive intertext for the one in Bekhorot. In this tale from Bava Batra, the birds consent to their fate of consumption. Bekhorot, by contrast, begins with complicity, with the orphaning of animals and faked survival of their mothers, but it ends with angry bird homicide. Yet even in Rabbah bar bar Hana’s story, accounts must be settled. The geese may be complicit, but Rabbi Elazar is not. The stories of Bekhorot are, we might suppose, one way to imagine the settling of accounts of which Rabbi Elazar warns. Dina Stein writes that rabbinic tall tales call existing order into question.75 What order is called into question by the tall tales of Bekhorot? The full gamut of animal practices found in Seder Qodashim, one could say—tithing, sacrifice, and slaughter, each of which appears in rabbinic treatments of the animal orphan. Accounts are settled in Arqat Leveinah, even if the laws of Seder Qodashim will inevitably go on making new animal orphans. 75. Stein, Textual Mirrors, 58; Stein is drawing upon Georges Van den Abbeele, Travel as Metaphor: From Montaigne to Rousseau (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992), xiii.

Who Owns the Treasure? Alexander the Great and Apollonius of Tyana SHAYE J. D. COHEN

T

ractate Tamid of the Babylonian Talmud (the Bavli) contains a cycle of stories about Alexander the Macedonian, whom we moderns call Alexander the Great (b. Tamid 31b–32a).1 In his Migrating Tales, our honoree, Richard Kalmin, has a wonderful discussion of this wonderful material, showing its literary and ideological connections with other Near Eastern versions of the Alexander Romance.2 In this brief article I would like to discuss a different talmudic story about Alexander, this one from the Talmud of the land of Israel (the Yerushalmi). This story has numerous parallels in the classic rabbinic literature of the land of Israel, but no parallels in the Bavli and no parallels anywhere outside rabbinic literature before the tenth century CE, when the story gets translated into Arabic, from there into Spanish, from there into Latin, French, Provençal, and English.3 This

1. On Alexander traditions in the Talmud, see especially Israel J. Kazis, The Book of the Gests of Alexander of Macedon: A Mediaeval Hebrew Version of the Alexander Romance, Mediaeval Academy of America 75 (Cambridge, MA: Mediaeval Academy of America, 1962), 2–25. The classic study is by Israel Lévi, “Alexander the Great in Jewish Legend,” in the old Jewish Encyclopedia, available online at JewishEncyclopedia.com. For a good general survey, see Richard Stoneman, “Jewish Traditions on Alexander the Great,” Studia Philonica Annual 6 (1994): 37–53. 2. Richard Kalmin, Migrating Tales: The Talmud’s Narratives and Their Historical Context (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014). 3. Y. Bava Metzi’a 2:4 (8c). Parallels can be found in the following: Gen. Rab. 33:1 (­Theodor-Albeck, ed., Midrash Bereschit Rabba: Critical Edition with Notes and Commentary, 3 vols. [Jerusalem: Wahrmann, 1965], 301–3); Pesiq. Rab Kah. 9:24 (ed. B. Mandelbaum, Pesikta de Rav Kahana [New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1965], 148–49); Lev. Rab. 27:1; Midr. Tanh. Emor 6; Yal. Shimoni on Psalm 36, sec. 727; Midr. haGadol, Bereishit pp. 144–45 on Gen 6:7; Moses Gaster, The Exempla of the Rabbis: Being a Collection of Exempla, Apologues and Tales Culled from Hebrew Manuscripts and Rare Hebrew Books (1924; repr., New York: Ktav, 1968),

25

26  Making History Yerushalmi story, however, has remarkable affinities with a story from a Greek biography featuring not Alexander the Great but Apollonius of ­Tyana.4 I am not arguing that one story has influenced the other, or that one story is a source for the other; my argument rather is that comparison of the two stories allows us to see what is distinctive about each.

Yerushalmi Bava Metzi’a 2:4 (8c) I begin with the Yerushalmi passage, Bava Metzi’a 2:4 (8c); I present the translation by Jeffrey Rubenstein, slightly revised by me.5 The talmudic passage is anonymous, that is, the story is not attributed to any named storyteller, so we have little evidence by which to determine its origin or date.6 The Yerushalmi itself is usually dated to the mid-fourth century CE. I shall refer to this story throughout as the Jewish story or the rabbinic story. [A] Alexander Macedon traveled to the Far-away King.7 The king showed him much gold. He showed him much silver. Alexander said, “I do not need your silver, I do not need your gold. I have come here only to see your practices: how you conduct business, how you judge.” [B] While they were occupied one with the other, a man came who had a dispute with his fellow. He had bought a ruin [or: dung heap] [or: field], and while digging in it had found a treasure of denars. The buyer said, “I purchased a ruin, I did not purchase a treasure.” The seller said, “I sold you a ruin and all that is in it.”

186–87 no. 5a; Micah J. Berdichevsky, Mimekor Yisrael: Classical Jewish Folktales, trans. I. M. Lask, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1976); vol. 1 (translation) and vol. 3 (sources), nos. 114 and 115. Kazis carefully compares the rabbinic versions of our story (Book of the Gests of Alexander of Macedon, 21–22). Stoneman summarizes our story albeit inaccurately (“Jewish Traditions,” 50–51). Gaster lists some of the parallels in European languages. The most detailed scholarly study is Luitpold Wallach, “Alexander the Great and the Indian Gymno­ sophists in Hebrew Tradition,” Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 11 (1941): 47–83, esp. 63–75. 4. The affinity of the two stories has been noticed; see, e.g., John Dominic Crossan, Finding Is the First Act: Trove Folktales and Jesus’ Treasure Parable, Semeia Supplements (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979), 67–70. 5. Jeffrey L. Rubenstein, Rabbinic Stories, Classics of Western Spirituality (New York: Paulist, 2002), 161–62. 6. Wallach conjectures that the earliest stratum of the rabbinic story goes back to the earliest strata of the Hellenistic Alexander Romance (“Alexander the Great”). 7. There has been some discussion whether the king’s name in fact means “Far-away” or something else. Some parallel accounts locate the story in Afriqi, others “beyond the mountains of darkness.” See David M. Goldenberg, The Curse of Ham: Race and Slavery in Early Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, Jews, Christians, and Muslims from the Ancient to the Modern World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), 61–67 with the notes.

Cohen: Who Owns the Treasure?  27 While they were disputing one with the other, the king said to one of them, “Do you have a son, a male?” He said, “Yes.” The king said to the other, “Do you have a daughter, a female?” He said, “Yes.” He said to them, “Marry them one to the other and the treasure shall go to the two of them.” [C] Alexander laughed. The king said to him, “You are laughing? Did I not judge well?” He said, “Yes.” The king said to him, “If this case had come before you in your country, how would you have judged?” He said, “We would remove the head of this one and the head of that one, and the treasure would go to the kingdom.” [D] He [the King] said to him, “Then you love gold and silver so much?” He [Alexander] said. “Yes.” When he saw that he loved gold and silver so much, he made him a meal. He brought before him bread [made] of gold, meat [made] of gold, radishes [made] of gold, and fowl [made] of gold. He [Alexander] said to him, “Do I eat gold?” He said to him, “Blast your bones!” If you do not eat gold, then why do you love it so much? [E] [The king replied], “Does the sun shine in your country?” [“Yes.’] “Do the dew and the rain fall upon you?” [“Yes.”] “Perhaps there are small cattle in your country?” Alexander said, “Yes.” The king said, “May your breath expire! It is only by the merit of the small cattle that the sun shines upon you; the dew and the rain fall upon you only by merit of the small cattle among you. Your nation lives only by merit of the small cattle, as it is written, O Lord, you save man and beast (Psalms 36:7).”

The context of this story in the Yerushalmi is a discussion of the obligation to return lost objects to their rightful owners, especially, as evidenced in four brief anecdotes, the obligation to return lost objects to their rightful gentile owners. The righteous behavior of the Jew causes the gentile to venerate the Jewish God.8 Simeon b. Shetah returns a lost pearl; some anonymous rabbis return some lost denars; Abba Oshaya returns some bath clothes, and R. Shmuel b. Sosratai returns a necklace. In the first of these Simeon b. Shetah says to the gentile: Do you think that Simeon b. Shetah is a barbarian? Simeon b. Shetah wants to hear a gentile say “blessed is the God of the Jews.” In the next three stories, the gentiles actually do say “blessed is the God of the Jews.” Now in fifth position comes our Alexander story, which demonstrates the Macedonian’s greed and avarice. In the eyes of the Greeks, non-Greeks are “barbarians,“ but our rabbinic story shows that it is Alexander who is the avaricious bloodthirsty barbarian. In contrast, the Jewish heroes of these stories, and the Far-away King as well, are models of probity.9 Alexander’s insatiable 8. On the theme of gentile veneration of the Jewish God, see my “Alexander the Great and Jaddus the High Priest according to Josephus,” The Significance of Yavneh and Other Essays in Jewish Hellenism, TSAJ 136 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010), 162–86. 9. Catherine Hezser, Form, Function, and Historical Significance of the Rabbinic Story in Yerushalmi Neziqin, TSAJ 37 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1993), 59.

28  Making History greed, which is highlighted in paragraph [D], is a common motif in Jewish and non-Jewish stories about Alexander.10 In paragraph [A] Alexander claims that he is interested only in ethnography, the customs and practices of various nations; this is obviously a lie. Alexander is interested only in enriching himself. Alexander’s evilness is demonstrated further by the King’s remarks in paragraph [E].11 The narrator assumes that the Far-away King knows the book of Psalms, either because the Far-away King is Jewish or because, as often in rabbinic stories, even gentiles can quote the Bible. A country ruled by such a wicked ruler, says the King, must be a wicked place; if the sun shines and the rains fall it must be because the Lord has pity on the animals. Surely the likes of Alexander do not deserve the blessings of heaven.12 In contrast, the Far-away King and the citizens of his magic kingdom scorn those who, like Alexander, love gold. The litigation at the center of the story also shows scorn for gold since neither the seller nor the purchaser claims the treasure. The judge sidesteps the legal issue completely (who really does own the treasure?) and instead proposes a humorous solution featuring a wedding. (As in the plays of Shakespeare, if it ends with a wedding it’s a comedy; so too the novels of Jane Austen.)

Life of Apollonius of Tyana 2:39 I turn now to our comparand, an episode from The Life of Apollonius of Tyana by Flavius Philostratus.13 The story is set in the mid-first century CE; the date of composition is ca. 220 CE. Apollonius was an itinerant philosopher, magician, holy man, and sage. There is endless scholarly debate 10. Paragraph [D] is almost certainly an interpolation: it interrupts the narrative flow; in some versions the meal-of-gold episode appears in paragraph [A], rather than [D]; it is paralleled in Bavli Tamid, although no other part of our story appears in the Bavli; in ancient and medieval exempla collections the meal of gold is a free-standing piece (e.g., Boccaccio, Decameron 1.5). Although it is not an organic part of the story, paragraph [D] shows that the story of the Far-away King is meant as evidence of Alexander’s greed. On this motif see Wallach, “Alexander the Great,” 66; Kalmin, Migrating Tales, 203–4 and 226–28. 11. In [C] Alexander laughs. I assume that the laughter marks Alexander as a villain. If this were an opera, the role of Alexander would be played by a bass-baritone, the Far-Away King by a tenor. 12. That the rains fall on the wicked and righteous alike is proverbial: b. Ta’an. 7a, Matt 5:45; Acts 14:17; for a collection of ancient sententiae on this theme, see Hans Dieter Betz, The Sermon on the Mount: A Commentary on the Sermon on the Mount, Including the Sermon on the Plain (Matthew 5:3–7:27 and Luke 6:20–49), Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995;), 317 n. 938. 13. Flavius Philostratus, The Life of Apollonius of Tyana, vol. 1, trans. Frederick C. Conybeare, LCL (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1912) 218–21. There is a newer Loeb edition of the Life of Apollonius by Christopher P. Jones, but I do not currently have ready access to it.

Cohen: Who Owns the Treasure?  29 about the degree of historicity of this biography. In the third and fourth centuries, pagans used the figure of Apollonius in anti-Christian polemic, seeking to prove that he was an even greater wonder-worker and healer than Jesus. In this episode, Apollonius meets the king of India and gives him advice. I shall refer to this as the Greek story. [A] “I admit,” said the king [to Apollonius], “that I am perplexed; and that is why I want your advice; for one man has sold to another land in which there lay a treasure as yet undiscovered, and some time afterwards the land, being broken up, revealed a certain chest, which the person who sold the land says belongs to him rather than to the other, for that he would never have sold the land, if he had known beforehand that he had a fortune thereon; but the purchaser claims that he acquired everything that he found in the land, which thenceforth was his. And both of their contentions are just; and I shall seem ridiculous if I order them to share the gold between them, for any old woman could settle the matter in that way.” [B] Apollonius thereupon replied as follows: “The fact that they are quarreling about gold shows that these two men are no philosophers; and you will, in my opinion, give the best verdict if you bear this in mind, that the gods attach the first importance and have most care for those who live a life of philosophy together with moral excellence, and only pay secondary attention to those who have committed no faults and were never yet found unjust. Now they entrust to philosophers the task of rightly discerning things divine and human as they should be discerned, but to those who merely are of good character they give enough to live upon, so that they may never be rendered unjust by actual lack of the necessaries of life. [C] “It seems then to me, O king, right to weigh these men in the balance, as it were, and to examine their respective lives; for I cannot believe that the gods would deprive the one even of his land, unless he was a bad man, or that they would, on the other hand, bestow on the other even what was under the land, unless he was better than the man who sold it.” [D] The two claimants came back the next day, and the seller was convicted of being a ruffian who had neglected the sacrifices, which it was his bounden duty to sacrifice to the gods on that land [or: the gods of the underworld]; but the other was found to be a decent man and a most devout worshipper of the gods. Accordingly, the opinion of Apollonius prevailed, and the better of the two men quitted the court as one on whom the gods had bestowed this boon.

The plot of the rabbinic story is similar to that of the Greek: a distinguished visitor (Apollonius, Alexander) comes to a distant place (India,14 a Far-away place), there to advise the king regarding a lawsuit about a treasure. The stories are mirror images of each other. In the Greek story the visitor is wise; 14. The rabbinic story too may allude to the sages of India, who were sometimes confused with the Jews by Hellenistic historiographers; see Wallach, “Alexander the Great.”

30  Making History in the rabbinic story the visitor is wicked. In the Greek story both litigants claim the treasure; in the rabbinic story neither litigant claims the treasure. In the rabbinic story the litigants behave as philosophers should behave according to Apollonius: neither wants the treasure and neither is prepared to litigate for it. In the Greek story neither is a philosopher; both covet the treasure.

Comparisons In both stories the litigants advance legal arguments. In the Greek story the seller says, I would never have sold the field had I known that there was a treasure in it. The buyer says, I bought a field and all that is in it. In the rabbinic story the seller says, I sold a field and all that is in it. The buyer says, I bought a field; I did not buy a treasure. These legal arguments mirror each other precisely. Apollonius and the Far-away King tacitly agree that the ownership of a recovered lost object, in this instance a treasure trove, is to be determined not in accordance with rules and laws of the sort that fill the pages of tractate Bava Metzi’a. The judges do not make inquiries to discover the precise circumstances when and how the treasure found its way to the field. The judges do not consult law books in order to determine which laws apply and which do not. Instead the goal of the judges is to do the right thing, what God or the gods would demand. The question is one of ethics, not law. In other words, the Far-away King and Apollonius are following the advice of Plato. Do not, Plato says, pray for, or pick up, treasures in the ground, unless they be treasures placed there by your ancestors. If a treasure is found, the finder may not keep the treasure; rather “the city shall send to Delphi, and, whatever the God answers about the money and the remover of the money, that the city shall do in obedience to the oracle” (Plato, Laws 11.913–914).15 The oracle determines who deserves the treasure. Similarly, the Far-away King and Apollonius determine who gets the treasure not by law but by deserving it. The two litigants who stand before the Far-away King clearly are righteous individuals, and we can only assume that their children, who are soon to wed, are righteous as well. As part of his ethical schema by which to determine who deserves the treasure, Apollonius proposes the following tripartite hierarchy: at the top is the philosopher, who of course cares nothing for gold; in the middle are 15. This passage of Plato is cited and discussed by George. F. Hill, “Treasure Trove: The Law and Practice of Antiquity,” Proceedings of the British Academy 19 (1933): 4ff; also Wallach, “Alexander the Great,” 69–70.

Cohen: Who Owns the Treasure?  31 people of good character, who respect the gods, behave properly, and are rewarded by the gods with sufficient goods so that they can live clean lives and abstain from wickedness; and at the bottom are bad people, who do not respect the gods, do not behave properly, and therefore are punished by the gods. It is only right that the treasure should go to a philosopher, except that a true philosopher would not want it, or at least would not attempt to win it in a suit at court. The church writer Eusebius (early fourth century) observes that Apollonius’s arguments are theologically absurd and logically circular. According to Apollonius, if you have wealth, it must be because you are beloved of the gods; therefore, a discovered treasure might be coming your way. If you don’t have wealth, it must be because you are not beloved of the gods, so don’t expect to discover treasure any time soon. In other words, one who has money will receive more money, and one who doesn’t have money will not receive any. Eusebius has no trouble punching holes in Apollonius’s argument.16

Apollonius and the Rabbinic Sages As a philosopher, Apollonius would prefer that the treasure be bestowed upon a philosopher; similarly in some legal situations, the rabbinic sages would prefer to bestow contested property upon a rabbinic sage. Here is the classic example. A man without heirs lies on his deathbed and declares that he wishes to bequeath all his property to Toviah (Tobias). Before we can inquire as to the identity of this Toviah, he dies. Two Toviahs promptly present themselves in court, each one claiming the legacy. What do we do? All the dying man said was “My property goes to Toviah.” The Talmud rules as follows. If one of the two Toviahs is a rabbinic sage, and the other a neighbor, the sage takes the property. Similarly, if one of the two Toviahs is a sage and the other a relative, once again the sage takes the property. These rabbinic rulings, which appear to be shamefully self-serving, are based not on law but on a sense of what is right. They are predicated on the assumption that a God-fearing Jew would, everything else being equal, prefer to bestow deathbed gifts on a rabbinic sage rather than on anyone else, presumably in order to find favor with God in the hereafter. Rabbinic sages prefer rabbinic sages, philosophers prefer philosophers (b. Ketub. 85b [and parallels]).17 16. Eusebius, Against Hierocles 15, in Philostratus, Life of Apollonius of Tyana, Vol. 2, trans. F. C. Conybeare, LCL (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1912) 523–25. 17. See Rashi and Tosafot ad loc. The Yerushalmi seems to have the same idea in Ketub. 10:4 33d–34a. This paragraph derives from my essay in Why Study Talmud in the Twenty-First

32  Making History Rabbinic literature well illustrates another aspect of our Greek story. According to Apollonius, the very fact that the seller sold his land demonstrates that he is not worthy to receive the treasure that had been buried in it. Selling land is a mark of sin or failure, or both. In classical Greece, being called “a man who sells his ancestral land” is an insult.18 In the Life of Apollonius 6.39 is a story similar to ours: a god-fearing man who regularly sacrifices to the goddess Gê, is guided by Apollonius to purchase an olive-tree estate. The seller is an evil sort, so we are not surprised when, with Apollonius’s help, the purchaser finds a treasure in the estate he has just bought. In this story, the wicked seller sells a field and thereby loses his treasure; the righteous purchaser gains a treasure.19 Selling a field does not end well for the seller. On the rabbinic side, the Yerushalmi has a brief but remarkable description of a ritual of public shaming if a family member sells ancestral land. What is qetsitsah (or qetsatsah)? If someone sells an ancestral field, his relatives would fill jars with snacks and nuts and smash them in front of the children. The children would gather up [the pieces, eat them] and say: “So-and-so has been cut off (niqtsats) from his inheritance.” When the field would return to him, they would do the same thing and say, “So-and-so has returned to his inheritance.”20

A Short Conclusion The Alexander Romance and traditions about Alexander were one of the meeting grounds of the storytellers of the ancient and medieval worlds. Jews, Christians, and Muslims, rich and poor, city folk and country folk— all were entertained by stories about Alexander. The Jewish story analyzed here is first attested in Jewish sources in antiquity, but it will make its way gradually into the repertoire of medieval storytellers. Ours is a story that criticizes Alexander for his greed, but the seriousness of the criticism does not prevent the storyteller from including some comic touches. A completely different story from a completely different literary tradition is curiously parallel to the Alexander story and helps us to see some cultural norms that the rabbis had in common with other inhabitants of the ancient world.

Century? The Relevance of the Ancient Jewish Text to Our World ed. Paul Socken (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2009), 125–34. 18. W. K. Lacey, The Family in Classical Greece, Aspects of Greek and Roman Life (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1968), 23. 19. My thanks to Christopher P. Jones for bringing this passage to my attention. 20. Y. Ketub. 2:10d; y. Qidd. 1:5 60c; cf. b. Ketub. 28b.

The Book of Adam SHAMMA FRIEDMAN

To Richard Kalmin Eminent scholar and steadfast colleague

T

his article deals with the primordial Book of Adam as described in rabbinic literature, parallels, and its source in ancient Babylonia. Our point of departure is the well-known account of the Amora Shemuel, the only human, or, if so interpreted, the only person after Adam, said to have read from the Book of Adam (b. B. Metz. 85b). In this account Shemuel, who is introduced with the surname Yarḥina’a,1 is uniquely described as the private physician of Rabbi (Yehuda ha-Nasi), and thus as having resided in Palestine. All of these details are unknown elsewhere. Nonetheless, they were accepted uncritically by the early historians.2 The Talmud’s account rests on information regarding Shemuel found elsewhere. He was a renowned physician, and his eye salve was in great demand, even having been ordered in Palestine to be sent from Babylonia (b. Shabb. 108b). He claimed, “I know the cure for all diseases except for these three…” (b. B. Metz. 113b). The fact that Shemuel was not ordained is well known. He is even called Mar Shemuel in place of the missing “Rav.” One of the building blocks for the assertion that Rabbi tried to ordain him is the account of This research was supported by the Israel Science Foundation (grant No. 1671/13). 1.  Rashi and the Arukh (Alexander Kohut, Aruch Completum, 4 [Vienna (published by the author), 1845], 161) explain this name in connection with Shemuel’s knowledge of “the secret of intercalation.” Perhaps, as has been suggested, the surname is related to the fact that Shemuel was an accomplished astronomer, who claimed knowledge of the paths of heaven equal to his knowledge of the streets of his homeown Neharde‘a (b. Ber. 58b). He was referred to as “an astronomer and great in Tora” (Midrash Debarim Rabbah, ed. Saul Lieberman, 2nd ed. [Jerusalem: Shalem Books, 1992], 118). 2. Even Jacob N. Epstein describes Shemuel as having gone to Palestine to serve Rabbi (Introduction to the Mishnaic Text [Hebrew] [Jerusalem: Published by the author, 1948], 212). Much scholarly literature exists on this subject. Yaakov Sussman rightly questions this assertion, based as it is on “one aggadic passage” (“Babylonian Sugiyot to the Orders Zera‘im and Tohorot” [Hebrew] [PhD diss., Hebrew University, 1969], 277 n. 131). In his introduction to the Mishneh Torah, Maimonides included Shemuel among the sages who served on Rabbi’s court, most likely on the basis of our passage; Raavad rejected this.

33

34  Making History other sages for whom the attempt to ordain them was not successful (b. Sanh. 14a, 30b). I will present Shemuel’s account of the Book of Adam as a mythological concept related to themes in the Bible and ancient Near Eastern literature, rather than as an actual book that existed in the rabbinic era, as has been suggested by some.3

Book of Adam Several passages in talmudic literature refer to the Book of Adam. In b. Bava Metzi’a 85b, when Rabbi’s attempts to ordain Shemuel were unsuccessful, Shemuel is said to have consoled Rabbi by reporting that he saw in the Book of Adam that he (Shemuel) was not destined to be ordained:

Rabbi troubled himself to invest Shemuel with the title “Rabbi,” but never had the opportunity, and Shemuel said to him: Let the master not be so sorry. I have seen the book of Adam the First, and there it is written: “Shemuel Yarḥina’a will be named a sage, but not a rabbi, and Rabbi will be cured through him.” Rabbi and R. Natan mark the end of Mishnah; Ravina and Rav Ashi the end of “teaching.”

b. Bava Metzi’a 85b–86a (cod. Hamburg 165) ‫הוה קא מצטער ר' למסמכיה ולא קא מסתייע' מלתא‬ ‫אמ' ליה לא ליצטער מר כולי האי לדידי חזי לי‬ ‫סיפרא דאדם הראשון וכת' ביה שמואל ירחינאה‬ ‫חכים יהוי ור' לא יתקרי ואסותיה דר' על ידיה תהא‬ ‫ר' ור' נתן סוף משנה רבינא ורב אשי סוף הוראה‬

Shemuel’s looking into the future with the aid of the Book of Adam can be associated with a cluster of rabbinic passages portraying Adam as being 3. See Leopold Zunz (weighing both possibilities): “[…Buche Adams, sagen, das man schon zu Anfang des 3. Säculums gekannt haben soll, und das offenbar apokryphisch war, wenn man nicht die ganze Erzählung als Allegorie betrachten will” (Die gottesdienstlichen Vorträge der Juden [Frankfurt a. M.: J. Kauffmann, 1892], 136); Jeffrey Rubenstein observes, “A brief anecdote relates that Shmuel found a tradition recorded in the ‘Book of Primordial Adam,’ apparently a compendium of esoteric lore” (The Culture of the Babylonian Talmud [Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003], 5). A responsum by Rav Hai Gaon (A. Harkavy, Teshuvot Ha-Geonim [Berlin: H. Itzkowski, 1887], §219, 103–4) contains such an opinion: ‫ ספרו‬.'‫ודשאל‬ ‫ אנחנא לא חזי לנא מעולם ולא שכיח השתא כל עיקר ומעולם לא דבר שנוי היה אלא מהוייא‬.‫שלאדם הראשון מאי אית ביה‬ ‫“( מילתא דאית ביה פירוש הדורות וחכמיהן‬And as to what you asked, ‘the book of Adam the First, what does it contain?,’ we have never seen it, and it is currently not known at all, and it was never recited, but it was something that contains enumeration of the generations and their sages”).

Friedman: The Book of Adam  35 shown the fate of all humanity—his offspring—for all future generations. The belief that Adam predicted future cataclysmic destructions is already recorded by Josephus (A.J. 1.70). The earliest rabbinic passage is Seder Olam 30:4 ‫ואו' בטרם אצרך בבטן ידעתיך וגו' (ירמיה א ה) יכול בעתו תלמוד לומ' זה ספר תולדות‬ ‫ דור‬,‫ דור דור ומנהיגיו‬,‫ מלמד שהראהו הקב"ה לאדם הראשון‬,)‫אדם (בראשית ה א‬ ‫ חכמי דור‬,‫ דור דור ושופטיו‬,‫ דור דור וחכמיו ופרנסיו‬,‫ דור דור ודורשיו‬,‫דור ונביאיו‬ ,‫ חשבון שעותיהן‬,‫ מניין ימותיהן‬,‫ מספר שמותיהן‬,‫ צדיקי דור דור‬,‫ נביאי דור דור‬,‫דור‬ '‫ ואומר ותקטן זאת בעיני ה‬,)‫ שנ' כי עתה צעדי תספור וגו' (איוב יד טז‬,‫סכום פסיעותיהן‬ ,)‫ּתֹורת הָ אָ דָ ם וכו'] (שמואל ב ז יט‬ ַ ‫אלהים וגו' [ו ְַּתדַ ּבֵ ר ּגַם אֶ ל ּבֵ ית עַבְ ְּדָך לְ מֵ ָרחֹוק וְ ז ֹאת‬ ‫ ואו' ולי מה יקרו‬,)‫ואו' גלמי ראו עיניך וגו' [וְ עַל ִספְ ְרָך ֻּכּלָם יִ ּכָתֵ בּו] (תהלים קלט טז‬ ,326–325 '‫ עמ‬,‫ אספרם מחול ירבון וגו' (תהלים קלט יח) (מיליקובסקי‬,'‫רעיך אל וגו‬ .)‫ושם ציוני מקבילות למדרשים המאוחרים‬ It says: “Before I created you in the womb, I selected you” etc. (Jer 1:5). Is it possible this happened at that actual time?! It should be understood to mean: “This is the book of Adam’s line (Gen 5:1)—from this we learn that God showed to Adam: every generation and its leaders, every generation and its prophets, every generation and its exegetes, every generation and its sages and officials, every generation and its judges, the sages of every generation, the prophets of every generation, the righteous of every generation, all their names, the number of their years, the calculation of their hours, the sum total of their paces, as it is written: “Then You would not count my steps” (Job 14:16); and it says: “Yet even this, O Lord GOD, has seemed too little to You; for You have spoken of Your servant’s house also for the future. May that be the law for the people, O Lord GOD” (2 Sam 7:19). And it says: “Your eyes saw my unformed limbs; [they were all recorded in Your book]” etc. (Ps 139:16). And it says: “How weighty Your thoughts seem to me, O God, how great their number!” (Ps 139:18). (trans. Sara P. Friedman)

The point of departure of this derasha is God’s knowledge of Jeremiah before his birth, supported by Gen 5:1: ‫זֶה סֵ פֶר ּתֹולְ דֹ ת אָ דָ ם‬, “This is the list of the descendants of Adam” (NRSV).5 The verse is taken as teaching that God showed Adam the leaders of all future generations, down to the tiniest details of their lives. This point requires fine-tuning, which proves to be elusive. Was Adam shown the book itself, from which he read (!) about the people and events, or was he shown these in a vision? Chaim Milikow-

4. Chaim Milikowsky, ed., Seder Olam: Critical Edition, Commentary, and Introduction [Hebrew], 2 vols. (Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi, 2013), 325–26. See Milikowsky’s commentary on pp. 557–58, 560–62. 5. A key verse to which we will return to later.

36  Making History sky, addressing Seder Olam and its midrashic parallels,6 suggests that the mention of the book is a metaphor.7 I will explore the belief in a primordial book on high. It is possible that “the Book of Adam’s line” in Seder Olam refers to God’s book, according to the content of which God showed Adam visions. As we shall see immediately, this is consistent with the parallel in Bereshit Rabbah: ‫ר' תנחומ' בשם ר' בניה ר' ברכיה בשם ר' אלעזר] גולם בראו והיה מוטל מסוף העולם‬ ‫ אמר ר' יודה בר' סימון עד שאדם‬.)‫ועד סופו הה"ד גלמי ראו עיניך (תהלים קלט טז‬ ‫מוטל גולם לפני מי שאמר והיה העולם הראה לו דור דור וחכמיו דור דור ושופטיו‬ ‫ גולמה שראו עיניך כבר הם כתובים‬.‫וסופריו ודורשיו ומנהיגיו אמר לו גלמי ראו עיניך‬ 8 .‫על ספרו שלאדם זה ספר תולדות אדם‬ R. Tanhuma in R. Banayah’s name, and R. Berekiah in R. Eleazar’s name said: He created him a shapeless mass, and he lay stretching from one end of the world to the other; as it is written: “Thine eyes did see my shapeless mass.” R. Judah b. R. Simon said: While Adam lay a shapeless mass before Him at whose decree the world came into existence, He showed him every generation and its Sages, every generation and its judges, scribes, interpreters, and leaders. Said He to him; “Thine eyes did see unformed substance”: the unformed substance [viz. thy potential descendants] which thine eyes did see have already been written in the book of Adam: viz. This is the Book of the Generations of Adam. (trans. Soncino)

A key phrase in the last line (‫גולמה שראו עיניך‬, “the unformed substance which thine eyes did see”) poses a difficulty of interpretation.9 The sense in context seems to require: “all that your eyes have seen is already written in the Book of Adam.”10 Bereshit Rabbah repairs the ambiguity of Seder Olam: Adam was not shown a book, but rather revelations of the future in a vision, revelations that are recorded in God’s book, which is called

6. Milikowsky, Seder Olam, 1:325–26, lines 45–47. 7. ‫( לפי רוב המקורות הספר הנזכר בפסוקים הוא מטפורה לסיפור תולדותיה של האנושות ולא ספר ממש‬ibid., 2:561). 8. Midrash Bereshit Rabba: Critical Edition with Notes and Commentary, ed. Julius Theodor and Chanoch Albeck [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Wahrmann, 1965), §24, 230–31. 9. Theodor’s comment (ibid., 213, bottom) is insufficient. The readings of the major witnesses are ‫( גול מה ראו עיניך וכבר הן כתובין‬Vat. ebr. 30); ‫( גולמי מה שראו עיניך וכבר הן כתובין‬Vat. ebr. 60); ‫( גולמה שראו עיניך וכבר הם כתובים‬Michael Sokoloff, ed., The Geniza Fragments of Bereshit Rabba [Hebrew] [Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1982], MS 6, p. 112), and see Theodor’s apparatus. 10. The sense being: ‫כל מה שראו עיניך = גולמה ראו עיניך‬. It may be necessary to reconstruct the text, ‫ גולמה‬being influenced by the language above. Alternatively, ‫ גול‬is read in the sense of ‫כל‬. The rabbinic interchange of kaf and gimel has been documented (see Epstein, Introduction to the Mishnaic Text, 1,226 n. 2) and would serve here for homiletic purposes, as we have found with other pairs of similar consonants; see y. Shabb. 7:2; 9b.

Friedman: The Book of Adam  37 Adam’s book in scripture.11 The first account of a mortal reading directly from this heavenly book (and quoting its language verbatim) is the Bavli’s account of Shemuel (‫“—)חזי לי סיפרא דאדם הראשון‬I have seen the Book of Adam the First!” The Midrash portrays the newly created Adam still lying on the ground from which he was formed, viewing all the future generations of his progeny. The derasha is reported in the Bavli in the name of Resh Laqish: b. Sanhedrin 38b b. Avodah Zarah 5a (cod. JTSAL Rab. 15) ‫ מאי דכתיב זה ספר תולדת והאמ' ריש לקיש מאי דכתי' זה ספר תולדות אדם‬:‫והיינו דאמר ריש לקיש‬ ‫ מלמד שהראהו הקדוש ברוך הוא דור דור‬- ‫אדם‬ ‫וכי ספר היה לו לאדם הראשון אלא מלמד‬ ‫ כיון שהגיע לדורו של‬.‫ דור דור וחכמיו‬,‫ודורשיו‬ ‫שהראהו הקב"ה לאדם הראשון דור דור ודורשיו‬ ‫ אמר ולי דור דור וחכמיו דור דור ופרנסיו כיון שהגיע לדורו‬,‫רבי עקיבא שמח בתורתו ונתעצב במיתתו‬ .)‫מה יקרו רעיך אל (תהלים קלט יח‬ '‫של ר' עקיבה שמח בתורתו ונתעצב במיתתו אמ‬ .]‫ולי מה יקרו רעיך אל [מה עצמו ראשיהם‬ b. Avodah Zarah 5a (Soncino) But did not Resh Lakish [himself] say: What is the meaning of the verse “This is the book of the generations of Adam”? Did Adam have a book? What it implies is that the Holy One, blessed be He, showed to Adam every [coming] generation with its expositors, every generation with its sages, every generation with its leaders; when he reached the generation of R. Akiba he rejoiced at his teaching, but was grieved about his death

b. Sanhedrin 38b (Soncino) And that is what Resh Lakish meant when he said: What is the meaning of the verse, “This is the book of the generations of Adam”? It is to intimate that the Holy One, blessed be He, showed him [Adam] every generation and its thinkers, every generation and its sages. When he came to the generation of Rabbi Akiba, he [Adam] rejoiced at his learning but was grieved at his death, and said: How weighty are Thy friends to me, O God (Ps 139:18).

In Avodah Zarah, the rhetorical question is added: “Did Adam have a book?,”12 meaning “of course not,” thus clarifying, in the spirit of Bereshit Rabbah, that he was shown a vision of the leaders of future generations 11. Cf. in Avot of Rabbi Nathan B (S. Schechter, ed., Avot de-Rabbi Natan [Vienna: Pub­ lished by the author, 1887], chap. 8, p. 22) parallel: ‫שנאמר ועל ספרך כולם יכתבו (תהלים קל"ט ט"ז) איזה‬ )'‫“( (ספר) [ספרך] זה ספרו [של] אדם הראשון שנאמר זה ספר תולדות אדם (בראשית ה' א‬As it says, ‘and upon your book they are all written.’ What is ‘your book’? This is the book of Adam the First, as it is written, ‘this is the book of the generations of Adam.’” 12. The additional phrase in Avodah Zarah vis-à-vis Sanhedrin does not appear in MS Cambridge T-S F1(2) 11. Variations in the witnesses also indicate that this is added to the text. In any case, it arguably supplies the correct meaning.

38  Making History and not a book. Finally, we have found an unequivocal determination that Adam did not see the book itself. The explicit anticipation of R. Akiva is reminiscent of Rav’s account of Moses being transported to the Beit Midrash of R. Akiva, and Moses’s esteem of his [R. Akiva’s] scholarship and grievance over his martyrdom (b. Menah. 29b). The anticipation of R. Akiva also resembles the mention of Rabbi etc. by Shemuel, reading from the book.13 The verse cited from Psalms is a continuation of the Seder Olam tradition. The convention of mentioning sages surfaces once more in this Avot of Rabbi Nathan parallel: ‫רבי יהושע בן קרחה אומר הרי הוא אומר גלמי ראו עיניך ועל ספרך כולם יכתבו‬ .‫(תהלים קל"ט ט"ז) מלמד שהראהו הקדוש ברוך הוא לאדם הראשון דור דור ודורשיו‬ ‫ דור דור ופו־‬.‫ דור דור וגבוריו‬.‫ דור דור ונביאיו‬.‫ דור דור ומנהיגיו‬.‫דור דור ופרנסיו‬ ‫ בדור פלוני עתיד להיות‬.‫ בדור פלוני עתיד להיות מלך פלוני‬.‫ דור דור וחסידיו‬.‫שעיו‬ 14 .‫חכם פלוני‬ Rabbi Joshua ben Korhah says: Lo, it says, “Thine eyes did see mine unformed substance, and in Thine book they were all written” (Ps 139:16): this teaches that the Holy One, blessed be He, showed to Adam every generation and its teachers, every generation and its administrators, every generation and its leaders, every generation and its prophets, every generation and its heroes, every generation and its sinners, every generation and its saints; (and He told him that) in this generation so-and-so was destined to be king, in that generation so-and-so was destined to be a sage. (trans. Judah Goldin)

Another passage in Bereshit Rabbah (Parasha 24)15 and parallels views the Book of Adam as recording not only the leaders of each generation, but indeed every soul that will be born until the end of all time. ‫ר' תנחום ואמ' לה בשם רבנין לעולם אין מלך המשיח בא עד שיבראו כל הנפשות שעלו‬ ‫במחשבה להיבראות מה טעם ונשמות אני עשיתי (ישעיה נז טז) בשביל נשמות אני‬ .]‫עשיתי [ואלו הן הנשמות האמורות בספרו של אדם זה ספר תולדות אדם‬ R. Tanhum—others state this in the name of the Rabbis—said: The royal Messiah will not come until all the souls which [God] contemplated 13. Whether the final sentence in b. B. Metz. 86a is or is not an addition of the later glossator. 14. Avot of Rabbi Nathan A, chapter 31 (p. 91), and see above there. A vision of all generations shown to Moses, independent of the idea of a “book,” is recorded in Sifre Devarim 357: ‫ מלמד שהראהו כל‬,‫ אל תהי קורא עד הים האחרון אלא עד היום האחרון‬,)‫עד הים האחרון (דברים לד ב‬ ‫העולם כולו מיום שנברא ועד שיחיו המתים‬, “‘As far as the Western Sea’ [Deut 34:2]. Don't read ‘as far as the Western Sea’ but ‘until the final day.’ This teaches that he showed him all the entire world from the day it was created until the revival of the dead.” 15. See Theodor’s notes, Midrash Bereshit Rabba, 233–34.

Friedman: The Book of Adam  39 c­ reating have been created. What is the proof? “And the souls which I have made” (Isa. 57:16), i.e. for the sake of the souls which I have made. And the souls are those referred to in the book of Adam, viz. This is the book of the generations of Adam. (Soncino)

As indicated, the Book of Generations called “Adam’s Book” is in fact God’s book on high. The existence of a heavenly book of life is an ancient concept recorded in several scriptural passages, for example, Exod 32:32: ָ‫“( ְמחֵ נִ י נָא ִמ ִּספְ ְרָך אֲׁשֶ ר ּכָתָ בְ ּת‬blot me out of the book you have written”); Ps 69:29 (Eng. 69:28): ‫“( יִ ּמָ חּו ִמּסֵ פֶר חַ ּיִ ים וְ עִ ם צַ ִּדיקִ ים אַ ל יִ ּכָתֵ בּו‬Let them be blotted out of the book of the living; let them not be enrolled among the righteous”), and the Psalms passage cited in the Midrashim.16 The Book of Adam, being a Book of Generations, is comparable to the Qumranic doctrine of all future generations being engraved by God on tablets before creation. According to the book of Jubilees, God’s words and commandments are eternally written on celestial tablets.

4Q180 f1:1 ‫קץ‬ ֯ 17‫פשר על הקצים אשר עשה אל‬ ]‫להתה[לך‬ ֯ ]‫פעולות[יהם‬ ֯ ‫ונהיה בטרם בראם הכין‬ ]....[ ‫֯קץ לקצו והוא חרות על לחו֯ ת‬ 18 .‫[ לכל] קצי ממשלותם‬

16. See Shalom M. Paul, “Heavenly Tablets and the Book of Life,” in Divrei Shalom: Collected Studies of Shalom M. Paul on the Bible and the Ancient Near East 1967–2005, CHANE 23 (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 59–70, esp. 61–65; Leslie Baynes, The Heavenly Book Motif in Judeo-Christian Apocalypses, 200 B.C.E.–200 C.E., JSJSup 152 (Leiden: Brill, 2012); Martha Himmelfarb, Between Temple and Torah: Essays on Priests, Scribes, and Visionaries in the Second Temple Period and Beyond, TSAJ 151 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013), 49–60; Zeev Elitzur, “Sinai between Oral and Written Revelation from Jubilees to the Amoraim” [Hebrew], Zion 79 (2014): 291– 325, esp. 292–93. 17. This word, being a divine name, is written in Paleo-Hebrew. For this phenomenon, see George J. Brooke, “Some Scribal Features of the Thematic Commentaries from Qumran,” in Writing the Bible: Scribes, Scribalism and Script, ed. Philip R. Davies and Thomas Römer, BibleWorld (Durham: Acumen, 2013), 132–33. 18. From Accordance, with corrections. ‫ל[כל] קצי‬, perhaps ‫לקצי‬.

40  Making History In translation:19 Interpretation concerning the ages which God has made: An age to conclude [all that there is] 2 and all that will be. Before creating them he determined [their] operations [according to the precise sequence of the ages,] 3 one age after another age. And this is engraved on the [heavenly] tablets [for the sons of men,] 4 [for] / [a]ll the ages of their dominion.

The author of the pesher20 registers two postulates: God determined all the deeds of humankind before creation; and the content of this predetermination is engraved upon tablets. The word after ‫ לחות‬is missing. Dimant proposed ‫“( השמים‬the heavens”), although the phrase is otherwise not encountered at Qumran.21 The language is clearly patterned after Exod 32:16: ‫וְ הַ ּלֻחֹ ת מַ עֲׂשֵ ה אֱֹלהִ ים הֵ ּמָ ה וְ הַ ִּמכְ ּתָ ב ִמכְ ּתַ ב אֱֹלהִ ים הּוא חָ רּות עַל הַ ּלֻחֹ ת‬, “The tablets were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God, engraved upon the tablets” (NRSV), suggesting a possible restoration of ‫האל‬. The similarity of the pesher to the concept of the Book of Adam is unmistakable (see also Rev 13:8). The Tablets of Ages, according to the pesher and the rabbinic Book of Adam, represents a heavenly text that contains neither the judgment nor the laws and commandments, but rather the determination of all that will happen in the future, a book of generations. As such, the concept is a throwback to the ancient Babylonian ṭuppi šīmāti22 (“tablets of fate/destinies”), according to which all future happenings are determined, tablets given by Tiamat to Kingu, according to Enuma Elish.23 Possession of these tablets passes from hand to hand among the gods as the drama unfolds. Returning to the point of departure for the rabbinic texts, the plain meaning of Gen 5:1 is still to be addressed. ‫ ָזכָר ּונְ קֵ בָ ה ּבְ ָראָ ם‬:‫זֶה סֵ פֶר ּתֹולְ דֹ ת אָ דָ ם ּבְ יֹום ּבְ ר ֹא אֱֹלהִ ים אָ דָ ם ּבִ ְדמּות אֱֹלהִ ים עָׂשָ ה אֹ תֹו‬ ‫ּומאַ ת ׁשָ נָה וַּיֹולֶד ּבִ ְד־‬ ְ ‫ֹלׁשים‬ ִ ‫ וַיְ חִ י אָ דָ ם ְׁש‬:‫וַיְ בָ ֶרְך אֹ תָ ם וַּיִ קְ ָרא אֶ ת ְׁשמָ ם אָ דָ ם ּבְ יֹום הִ ּבָ ְראָ ם‬ .)‫ג‬-‫מּותֹו ּכְ צַ לְ מֹו וַּיִ קְ ָרא אֶ ת ְׁשמֹו ׁשֵ ת (בראשית ה א‬ This is the list of the descendants of Adam. When God created humankind, he made them in the likeness of God. Male and female he created

19. Eibert J. C. Tigchelaar and Florentino García Martínez, eds., The Dead Sea Scrolls Study Edition, 2 vols. (Leiden: Brill; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 1:371. Cf. 4Q180f2, 4Q181. 20. See Devorah Dimant, “The Pesher on the Periods (4Q180) and 4Q181,” Israel Oriental Studies 9 (1979): 77–102; Shani Tzoref, “Pesher and Periodization,” DSD 18 (2011): 129–54. 21. Martin G. Abegg Jr., James E. Bowley, and Edward M. Cook, The Dead Sea Scrolls Concordance, 3 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 2003), vol. 1. 22. CAD 19 (Ṭ):135. 23. ANET, 65.

Friedman: The Book of Adam  41 them, and he blessed them and named them “Humankind” when they were created. When Adam had lived one hundred thirty years, he became the father of a son in his likeness, according to his image, and named him Seth. (NRSV)

Why is the genealogical list that follows called ‫“( ספר‬book”)? Moshe Weinfeld wrote: “Sefer in the Bible, like the Akkadian ṭuppu refers to anything written, from an engraved monument … to a letter.… Here it means a written list (cf. Josh 18:9; Neh 7:5 etc.).”24 In those passages, however, the reference is to a written list mentioned in the plot, in contrast to the usage here for the following passage in the biblical text. Nahum Sarna explains, “This is the record of Adam’s line. This is most likely the title of an ancient genealogical work that served as the source for the data provided in the present chapter.”25 According to Sarna, the word sefer is an introduction to the following list presenting its source. However, the oblique use of a term from an unknown literary source is still an uncomfortable fit. A well-known phenomenon is the biblical use of Mesopotamian terms and concepts in a recycled demythologized form. The Mesopotamian concept here is that in prehistory the details of destiny are recorded in a primordial document. Those ṭuppi šīmāti (“tablets of destiny”) come to mind, but in the Torah they are replaced by a standard genealogical list, although maintaining its status as a ṭuppu: ‫ספר‬. As often happens, only in the literature of the sages does this Mesopotamian concept reemerge in its fullblown form as the Book of Adam, finally mentioned as the heavenly document in which the Amora Shemuel found his destiny already inscribed.

24. See Moshe Weinfeld, ‫ חמשה חמשי תורה עם‬:‫ מאת משה ויינפלד (בתוך‬... ‫ספר בראשית עם פרוש חדש‬ )]1975 ,‫ גורדון‬.‫ל‬.‫ הוצאת ש‬:‫פרוש חדש [תל אביב‬ 25. Nahum M. Sarna, Genesis ‫בראשית‬: The Traditional Hebrew Text with the New JPS Translation, JPS Torah Commentary (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1989), 41 (emphasis mine).

Seas of Ink and Reeds for Pens The Migrations of a Topos of Inexhaustibility CHRISTINE HAYES

Introduction An evocative rhetorical figure that describes something so vast that it cannot be exhaustively expressed in even the most voluminous writing appears in the literature of numerous premodern cultures. The figure refers variously to the oceans as ink; trees, reeds, or even bird feathers as pens; the earth or heavens as parchment; and humans as scribes. It occurs in rabbinic literature and, in a shorter form, in the Qur’an.1 Most of the six rabbinic attestations2 employ the figure to describe the vast knowledge of a revered rabbinic authority. Thus, in Avot of Rabbi Nathan A 25, R. Eliezer (first century CE) describes his own knowledge this way: If all the seas were ink, and all the reeds were pens, and every person were a scribe, they still could not write down all that I have read and taught.3

In the two qur’anic verses the figure is applied to the words of Allah: Say, “If the sea were ink for the Words of my Lord, the sea would be exhausted before the Words of my Lord were exhausted, even if We brought the like thereof to replenish it.” (Q Al-Kahf 18:109) 1. Indeed, the figure continues to appear in world literature into the modern period, but here I am interested in its early occurrences. 2. Variations of the figure appear in Song Rab. 1:3, 1; Avot R. Nat. A 25; b. Shabb. 11a; Massekhet Kallah Rabbati 6:4; Massekhet Soferim 16:6; and the Scholion to Megillat Ta’anit to Adar 28. 3. Following the text of the Venice printed edition. This passage, its full context, and its variants will be discussed in depth below. Unless otherwise indicated, all translations of rabbinic texts are my own.

43

44  Making History And if all the trees on earth were pens, and if the sea and seven more added to it [were ink], the Words of God would not be exhausted. (Q Luqmān 31:27)4

In his 1938 survey of the appearance and diffusion of this trope across world literatures from antiquity to the modern period, Irving Linn rejected Reinhold Köhler’s claim of the trope’s rabbinic origin and pointed to early Indian literature as preserving the figure in an unembellished form (mentioning only ink and paper), which in his view most nearly represented its ultimate source.5 Acknowledging that classical Indian literature is notoriously difficult to date, Linn turned to Hebrew literature, where he found the figure of an inky sea—now with the addition of pens—attributed to Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai, a Tanna of the Yavneh period (the latter part of the first century CE). Taking the attribution to Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai as historically reliable, Linn viewed the rabbinic case as an early (first-century CE) instance of Hebrew culture’s eclectic incorporation of features taken from the cultures of other lands.6 Next, relying on the general assumption of direct literary borrowing from Judaism to Islam, Linn argued that the figure passed to the Qur’an.7 It also traveled westward, appearing in the Akdamut, an Aramaic mystical poem composed by Meir ben Isaac Nehorai in eleventh-century Worms. According to Linn, this poem played a special role in the figure’s transmission into Western literature.8 Variations of the figure crop up in a popular fifteenth-century Latin sermon by a Dominican friar in Nuremberg that circulated widely and was translated into Hungarian, German, and Slavonic; a fifteenth-century Latin text from northern Italy; an eighteenth-century English-language hymn by Isaac Watts; and a twentieth-century hymn by F. H. Lehman. In these and in additional religious works from France, Germany, and

4. Citations of the Qur’an are taken from The Study Quran: A New Translation and Commentary, ed. Seyyed Hossein Nasr (New York: HarperCollins, 2015). The qur’anic texts will also be discussed in greater depth below. 5. Irving Linn, “If All the Sky were Parchment,” PMLA 53.4 (1938): 851–970. Linn refers to the German folklorist Reinhold Köhler, whose paper “Und wenn der Himmel wär Papier,” Orient und Occident 2 (1863): 546–59, collects a number of examples of the figure’s appearance in world literature. Köhler’s paper and another containing additional references were reprinted as “Und wenn der Himmel wär Papier” in vol. 3 of Köhler’s Kleinere Schriften (Berlin: Emil Felber, 1900), 293–318. Further notes were published posthumously. For details, see Linn, “If All the Sky,” 957. 6. Linn, “If All the Sky,” 954. Thus, because he was aware of the Sanskrit parallels, Linn avoids Köhler’s mistake of identifying R. Yohanan ben Zakkai as the author of the trope, though he accepts that it was uttered by him. 7. Linn, “If All the Sky,” 955: “The close and extensive contacts between Judaism and Islam are so well known that instances of direct literary influences awaken no surprise.” 8. He proposes a separate path of transmission to Spain in view of the fact that the Akdamut was known in medieval Ashkenaz and not Sephardic Spain. See next note.

Hayes: Seas of Ink and Reeds for Pens  45 ­ enmark, the figure describes the vast and inexhaustible quality of some D aspect of the divine—such as God’s love, or the joys of heaven, or the vision there of Jesus or the virgin Mary. But the trope is applied to secular topics as well, as in a medieval Latin work from Italy that praises the art of oratory, and in Spanish, German, Czech, Hungarian, and English works that bemoan the evils of women as too numerous to record. In the modern era we may mention the figure’s parodic use by the American jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes.9 Thus, while Linn accepts the theory of Eastern origins as established, he rejects older hypotheses concerning the figure’s transmission from India to Western Europe via Crusaders, Mongols, or Arabs, proposing instead that early rabbinic tradition and medieval Hebrew literature served as the primary conduit for the figure’s movement from East to West.10 Yet there is reason to doubt at least two key elements of this reconstruction: first, the ascription of the trope to first-century CE rabbinic 9. For details and full quotations of these extraordinary and often soaringly beautiful texts, as well as an appendix listing examples of the figure in the popular literature of various countries, see Linn, “If All the Sky.” Linn maintained that the earliest known misogynistic application of the trope appears in the 1253 Castilian translation of an Arabic version of the generally anti-woman Book of Sindebad (962). As noted by Morris Epstein, the figure is absent from the extant Syriac, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, and Persian versions of the story (“‘Mishle Sendebar’: New Light on the Transmission of Folklore from East to West,” PAAJR 27 [1958]: 1–17). Moreover, in the Spanish version it appears at the very end of the final story of the collection, a story that appears to have been added by the translator (Linn, “If All the Sky,” 962). For his part, Epstein, who held that the Book of Sindebad in its current form is Hebraic in origin (indeed he posited an ur-Hebrew text from as early as 300–100 BCE as the intermediary from older Sanskrit models, though the work is not attested with certainty before the twelfth century), was aware that the figure does not appear in the Hebrew version. He assumed, however, that the figure was present in the Arabic version that served as the basis for the Old Spanish translation, and that it was taken from the Qur’an, which in turn was dependent on the Talmud. This hypothesis allowed him to maintain that Jewish tradition served as a conduit for the trope despite its absence from the extant Hebrew version of the work. Epstein’s argument that the Book of Sindibad was Hebraic (rather than Indian) in origin; that it was absorbed into Persian culture and appeared in Pahlavi in the sixth–seventh century; that it was translated into Arabic and embraced by the Arabic world; that it was carried by early medieval Jewish merchants to Europe, arriving as an “indigenous Arab work,” where it reached the medieval Jewish community and was retranslated into Hebrew; and that it was subsequently disseminated into medieval European literature through Latin translation and oral transmission, is a somewhat tenuous attempt to maintain a claim of Hebrew origin. Nevertheless, his suggestion that the trope may have been present in the Arabic version that served as the basis for the Castilian version cannot be dismissed. If so, however, it must have appeared in a fuller form than is found in the Qur’an and likely signals the broader circulation of the full trope in West Asian culture more generally, for which a Jewish intermediary is not required, as will be suggested below. 10. Linn, “If All the Sky,” 952 and 966–67. Here Linn confirms a similar suggestion made by Carleton Brown, “Chaucer’s ‘Wreched Engendring,’” PMLA 50 (1935): 997–1011, here 1000.

46  Making History sages, and, second, the assumption of direct qur’anic borrowing from a talmudic source. In the spirit of the scholarship of Richard Kalmin, I revisit the question of this fascinating figure’s provenance, track its appearance in various ancient literatures, and analyze its adoption and adaptation in relatively late rabbinic texts. I will argue that, from its first attested appearance in Indian Buddhist texts, the figure’s migrations took it northeastward to China and westward along the Silk Road. I will also argue that a comparative study of the rabbinic and qur’anic attestations of the figure does not support a model of direct borrowing from the former to the latter, even though the figure was likely adopted by Muhammad in a context of intercultural polemics. To conduct such an investigation requires a facility with some languages and/or textual traditions that I do not possess. I therefore enlisted the aid of a number of colleagues with expertise in the classics, Egyptology, Assyriology, Syriac Christianity, Middle Persian studies, Qur’an, early Islam, Indian literature, and Buddhist studies. These individuals generously and enthusiastically joined me in my search for ancient references to enormous quantities of ink, pen, and parchment, and even those who came up empty provided important negative data. I will thank each one by name in due course, but I would like to highlight here the contribution of Professor Eric Greene, who pointed to the Chinese Buddhist translations of older Sanskrit texts that provide the earliest securely datable evidence for our figure. I thank Professor Greene for his explanation of these texts, which I have incorporated almost wholesale, as indicated below.

Figuring Inexhaustibility through the Vast Elements of Nature Before proceeding, an analysis of the function and rhetorical structure of our figure is in order. Our figure bears a general resemblance to the class of “inexpressibility topoi” as defined by Ernst Robert Curtius: The root of the topoi to which I have given the above name is “emphasis upon inability to cope with the subject.” From the time of Homer onwards, there are examples in all ages. In panegyric, the orator “finds no words” which can fitly praise the person celebrated. This is a standard topos in the eulogy of rulers [basilikos logos]. From this beginning the topos already ramifies in Antiquity: “Homer and Orpheus and others too would fail, did they attempt to praise him.” The Middle Ages, in turn, multiplies the names of famous authors who would be unequal to the subject. Included among the “inexpressibility topoi” is the author’s

Hayes: Seas of Ink and Reeds for Pens  47 assurance that he sets down only a small part of what he has to say [pauca e multis].11

In one important respect, however, our figure differs from this general class. Inexpressibility topoi place emphasis on the speaker and the speaker’s deficiency or inability of expression. Our figure places emphasis on the object that can(not) be related and emphasizes its vast and inexhaustible character. The two are not unrelated, of course; it is a question of emphasis: inexhaustibility topoi (the term is my own) direct greater attention to the immeasurable size of that which is being related by declaring it too numerous or too extensive to record. A common topos of inexhaustibility in the Hebrew Bible as well as other ancient literatures, compares an object that cannot be counted or related to the stars in the heavens (Gen 15:5; 26:4) or to grains of sand (Gen 22:17; 26:4).12 Our figure, however, employs a much more complex image in order to express the immeasurable, and thus inexhaustible, character of the object in question (which we shall call X). Instead of simply comparing the object directly to something large or vast (e.g., “X cannot be recounted because X is as vast as the sea or as numerous as the reeds”) our figure communicates its vastness indirectly. It does so by constructing a compound rhetorical image that lists and correlates items taken from two distinct experiential domains—writing (ink, pen, parchment/paper), on the one hand, and nature (sea, reeds, heaven, earth), on the other. Thus, our figure does not say that X eludes exhaustive expression because it is as vast as the sea or the reeds; rather, our figure indicates the vastness of X indirectly, by asserting that an army of scribes that depletes a supply of writing materials, whose own immeasurability is demonstrated by their correlation with vast natural elements, would still not render an exhaustive account of X. The correlation between the two lists of items taken from these two domains—writing and nature—is not random, unlike other “measures”

11. Ernst Robert Curtius, “Poetry and Rhetoric,” in European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, trans. Willard R. Trask, Bollingen Series 36 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953) 159–60. 12. According to William F. Hansen, the motif of impossible counting was widespread in antiquity, and there are many examples in Greek and Latin literature in which grains of sand, the dust of the earth, the stars in the sky, and/or the waves of the sea serve (paradoxically) as “counters” for the uncountable (Ariadne’s Thread: A Guide to International Tales Found in Classical Literature, Myth and Poetics [Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002], 97–99). See, e.g., Homer’s Iliad 9.470–71, where Achilleus refuses Agamemnon’s gifts even if they be as many as the sands and the dust; and the Alexander Romance 1.36, where troops are said to be, like the grains of sand, beyond counting. Other examples and further literature are cited by Hansen. Notably “counting the waves was proverbial among the Greeks as an impossible and therefore useless activity” (98), and the expression “You’re counting waves” was used to describe a futile or useless task. The aspect of futility is not apparent in our figure.

48  Making History of immeasurability. For example, offspring may be as numerous as grains of sand or stars but there is no inherent relationship of similarity between children and grains of sand or stars; the latter are simply standard natural “counters” that could be used to indicate a large quantity of anything (children, gifts, troops, doughnuts). By contrast, the poetic power of our figure resides in the inherent symmetry between the two lists of elements correlated in the compound image that lies at its core: ink is correlated to the sea because of its fluid nature; pens are correlated to reeds because they are long and thin; parchment is correlated to the heaven and earth because each is a flat expanse.13 These shared attributes prompt the listener to visualize an enormous cosmic scriptorium in which all humankind is busily and inexhaustibly scribbling, with giant reeds dipped in an inky ocean, on the “sheet” of heaven and earth. As we shall see, this doubled image, which assumes both a familiarity with technologies of writing and a literary tradition in which specific elements of nature are used as “counters” of great size, is unique and holds the key to the figure’s likely provenance.

The Rabbinic Sources The attribution of our figure to a rabbinic sage or sages of the first century CE—an attribution that underwrites the claim of Hebraic origins (Köhler) or at least Jewish antiquity (Linn, Epstein), as well as the claim of direct transmission from the Talmud to the Qur’an (Linn, Epstein)—is questionable on at least two grounds. First, the figure is anomalous for the decidedly oral culture of rabbinic Judaism.14 Rabbinic learning took place in an oral-performative context. The verbs that describe the study and transmission of rabbinic wisdom—to say, to testify, to hear, to remember, to repeat, to ask, to object—underscore its oral nature: disciples acquired wisdom through listening to the teachings spoken by a living teacher and engaging in dialectical argumentation. The core oral text of rabbinic legal tradition, the Mishnah (ca. 220 CE) was “stored” not in written texts but in

13. The symmetry between the two parallel domains in our figure—technologies of writing and elements of the natural world—may be contrasted with the lack of symmetry in such expressions as “he will have as many offspring as there are grains of sand.” 14. Catherine Hezser comments, “Both the writing of texts and the teaching of elementary reading skills, sometimes carried out by one and the same person, were paid professions, which did not confer a higher social status on the scribe. On the contrary, scribes were commonly looked down upon in both Greco-Roman and rabbinic society. As writing technicians, they were considered unable to compete with the higher intellectual skills claimed by rabbis and philosophers whose discussions and transfer of knowledge were conducted orally” (“Scribes/scribality,” in The Dictionary of the Bible and Ancient Media, ed. Tom Thatcher et al. [London: Bloomsbury, 2017], 355–59, here 355).

Hayes: Seas of Ink and Reeds for Pens  49 “living books,” that is, official memorizers known as Tannaim, who would be consulted about the “text” of a particular teaching.15 The absence of books of rabbinic learning explains rabbinic expressions of anxiety over the loss of tradition through forgetting (b. Tem. 16a; b. Sukkah 20a; b. Qidd. 66a; b. B. Bat. 21a), and rabbis with prodigious memories and exact recall are objects of praise and admiration.16 Yaakov Susman argues that “the ‘Oral Torah’ (torah she-be’al peh) was precisely as its name implies: a Torah that was exclusively oral, in the most absolute sense, in its creation, transmission, study, and development throughout the rabbinic period until the eighth century CE.”17 He attributes this fact to the rabbinic ideology of one—and only one—sealed, complete, and authoritative written Torah

15. For Tannaim as “living books,” see Saul Lieberman, Hellenism in Jewish Palestine: Studies in the Literary Transmission, Beliefs and Manners of Palestine in the I Century B.C.E.–IV Century C.E., Texts and Studies of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America 18 (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1950), 90–93. Y. N. Epstein maintained that even though study of the Mishnah was conducted orally, the Mishnah was promulgated in writing by Rabbi Yehuda ha-Nasi (Mavo le-Nusah ha-Mishnah, 3rd ed. [Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2001], 692–706), but there is no evidence to support this claim, as demonstrated recently by Yaakov Sussman, “Torah she-be’al Peh – Peshuta ke-Mashma’a – Koḥo she qotso shel yod,” in Meḥqere Talmud, vol III, ed. Yaakov Sussman and David Rosenthal (Jerusalem, Magnes Press, 2005) 209–384. Scholars informed by recent advances in orality studies as well as Hellenistic models of learning assert the coexistence of written texts/notes and oral performance (see Martin S. Jaffee, Torah in the Mouth: Writing and Oral Tradition in Palestinian Judaism, 200 BCE-400 CE [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001]), but the sources themselves never refer to such writings. This suggests that, even if they existed, these writings were purely utilitarian and of little cultural or ideological importance. This view is supported by the many studies on the topic of Jewish literacy, orality, and textuality by Catherine Hezser. For more on the limited spread and specific uses of writing especially in Palestinian rabbinic circles, see Catherine Hezser, Jewish Literacy in Roman Palestine, TSAJ 81 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001). See also Hezser, “Jewish Literacy and the Use of Writing in Late Roman Palestine” in Jewish Culture and Society under the Christian Roman Empire, ed. Richard Kalmin and Seth Schwartz, Interdisciplinary Studies in Ancient Culture and Religion 3 (Leuven: Peeters, 2003), 149–95. In “Bookish Circles? The Use of Written Texts in Rabbinic Oral Culture,” Temas Medievales 25 (2017): 63–81, Hezser notes: “There is scarce evidence of a rabbinic use of written texts, whether rabbinic or biblical … there is no evidence that such written texts were used regularly in rabbinic study sessions or that they were considered more authoritative than orally transmitted traditions and memorized Torah verses. As embodied repositories of the Written and Oral Torah, rabbis would not have needed to recur to written texts. On the contrary, they seem to have valued memory and oral transmission more” (81). 16. R. Eliezer ben Hyrkanos is praised as a “plastered cistern that loses not a drop,” in m. Avot 2:9. Rav Hiyya bar Abba and Rav Huna are praised for their scrupulous and exact transmission of oral teachings, in b. Ber. 33b, and b. Pesah. 52b, respectively. For more on the precarity of oral learning, as well as a discussion of the use of written communications in Amoraic times, primarily in quasi-official contexts (court appeals, threats of excommunication, exchanges between the patriarch and exilarch), rather than halakhic discussion, see Catherine Hezser, “Oral and Written Communication and Transmission of Knowledge in Ancient Judaism and Christianity,” Oral Tradition 25.1 (2010): 75–92. 17. Sussman, “Torah she-be’al Peh,” 355.

50  Making History (the Hebrew Bible, or torah shebiktav).18 In order to distinguish the divinely revealed and written biblical text from the subsequent rabbinic tradition, the rabbis insisted on the oral character of the latter, resulting in what Ishay Rosen-Zvi has described as the unique phenomenon of “a thoroughly literate culture whose literary production is nonetheless exclusively oral.”19 There is a second reason to doubt the figure’s presence in first-century rabbinic circles. While it is true that the figure is attributed in four instances to early Tannaim of the first century, these attributions occur in contexts and/or sources that cannot be securely dated earlier than the fourth–seventh centuries, and in some cases must be dated later. The single attribution to an early third-century Amora (b. Shabb. 11a) also cannot be taken at face value. A sixth attestation, in the Scholion to Megillat Ta’anit, is also almost certainly late. In the next section, I analyze all six occurrences of our figure in rabbinic literature in order to ascertain—as far as the evidence allows—when the figure might have entered rabbinic circles. In subsequent sections, I trace—again, as far as the evidence allows—our figure’s pathway into rabbinic sources. I conclude with a very brief reflection on the figure’s appearance in the Qur’an.

Who Said What, When? The attribution of our figure to the first-century Tanna R. Yohanan ben Zakkai occurs only once and in a late “external tractate”—Massekhet Soferim:20 ‫אמרו עליו על רבן יוחנן בן זכאי שלא הניח פרשה אחת בתורה שלא למדה ולמד במקרא‬ ‫ותרגום מדרש הלכות ואגדות ומשלו הכל למד וכן אמרו עליו שאמר אם יהיו כל השמים‬ ‫יריעות וכל האילנות קולמוסין וכל הימים דיו אינן כדי לכתוב את חכמתי שלמדתי‬ ‫מרבותי ולא אצלתי מחכמתן אלא כשם שהזבוב הזו הטובלת בים הגדול ומשהו מחסרה‬

18. Ibid., 284. 19. Ishay Rosen-Zvi, “Orality, Narrative, Rhetoric: New Directions in Mishnah Research,” AJS Review 32 (2008): 235–49, here 241. 20. The external tractates are a set of independent compilations, some halakhic and some aggadic, that with the possible exception of Avot of Rabbi Nathan, were produced in the post-talmudic period (eighth–ninth centuries or later). Some were printed with the first edition of the Babylonian Talmud in 1523. For more on the external tractates, see Myron Lerner, “The External Tractates,” in The Literature of the Sages, part 1, Oral Tora, Halakha, Mishna, Tosefta, Talmud, External Tractates, ed. Shmuel Safrai, CRINT, Section 2, Literature of the Jewish People in the Period of the Second Temple and the Talmud 3 (Assen: Van Gorcum; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987), 367–403. Lerner suggests that the original title of Masseket Soferim was Sefarim (397).

Hayes: Seas of Ink and Reeds for Pens  51 It was said of R. Yohanan ben Zakkai that he left not a single passage of Torah unstudied and that he learned Scripture, Targum, midrash, halakot and aggadot and fables. He learned everything. Thus, it was said of him that he said, “If all the heavens were parchment and all the trees were pens and all the seas were ink, it would not be enough to write the wisdom that I have learned from my teachers, and yet I have set apart from their wisdom only as much as a fly who dips itself in the great sea and removes a tiny amount from it.” (Mas. Sof. 16:6)21

Scholars note that Massekhet Soferim is the earliest rabbinic text to systematically present the laws of writing and reading Scripture. The tractate combines these laws from the Mishnah, Tosefta, and two Talmuds with some independent materials. Deborah Reed Blank writes, “The work as a whole is unified by the topic of scrolls—writing them, reading them, and reciting attendant liturgies.”22 The cited passage is part of a digression in chapters 15 and 16 on the relative importance of the various works of Written and Oral Torah and the value of study. The passage first praises the immense learning of R. Yohanan ben Zakkai, who is said to have neglected no item in the rabbinic curriculum of Written Torah (Scripture), Oral Torah, and even fables. The passage then states that R. Yohanan ben Zakkai applied our figure to himself and his own vast learning. The immodesty of this self-praise is moderated by the addition of a further rhetorical image that converts the boast into a “humble brag”: although his wisdom is vast, R. Yohanan ben Zakkai declares, it is but a drop in the ocean compared to the wisdom of his teachers. The phrase that introduces R. Yohanan’s self-praise, ‫וכן אמרו עליו שאמר‬ (“Thus it was said of him that he said”), is an awkward combination of two distinct introductory formulae: -‫]“( [וכן] אמרו עליו ש‬thus[ it was said of him that …”), which typically introduces a third-person narrative rather than direct speech, and ‫“( אמר‬he said”), which is used to introduce direct speech. This peculiar compound formula, which begins as if introducing a third-person narrative (-‫ )[וכן] אמרו עליו ש‬but then adds a term that introduces direct speech (‫)אמר‬, occurs only here in all of rabbinic literature.23 The standard formula -‫“( וכן אמרו עליו ש‬it was said of him”) may be seen in the immediately preceding sentence, which reads (literally), “Thus it was said of him, of R. Yohanan ben Zakkai, that he left not a single passage unstudied,” and in the passage immediately following, which reads “It was said of him, of Hillel, that he did not leave off studying…” (Mas. Sof. 16:7). However, our rhetorical figure of parchment, pen, and ink, could 21. Trans. Hayes, based on the text in Michael Higger, Masekhet Sofrim (New York: ­Hotsa’at de-ve-Rabanan, 1937). 22. Debra Reed Blank, “It’s Time to Take Another Look at ‘Our Little Sister’ Soferim: A Bibliographical Essay,” JQR 90 (1999): 1–26, here 3–4. 23. As indicated by a search of the Bar Ilan Responsa database.

52  Making History not be introduced by the standard formula for a third-person narration since it is formulated in the first person (a vast quantity of writing materials would be insufficient to record “the wisdom that I have learned”). In order to present this trope as a first-person statement by R. Yohanan ben Zakkai while retaining the third-person narrative style established by the previous sentence (“it was said of him”), the compiler/redactor was forced to add the introductory formula for first-person speech (“he said”) creating the hapax legomenon: ‫“( וכן אמרו עליו שאמר‬Thus it was said of him that he said”). This awkward and unprecedented construction is evidence that our figure’s attribution to R. Yohanan ben Zakkai is a late and rather forced interpolation. It is particularly fitting that our figure, which draws upon the tools of the scribal arts, should appear in a work devoted to scrolls. It is also telling: Massekhet Soferim is quite clearly a product of the post-talmudic period24 when writing was becoming an accepted medium for the study and transmission of rabbinic learning and the figure would have been less anomalous. I will return to this point below. Attribution of our inky trope to another early Tanna—R. Eliezer— appears in three works (Avot R. Nat.; Kallah Rab.; Song Rab.), two of which are also grouped among the “external tractates” (Avot R. Nat.; Kallah Rab.). In both of these works, our figure appears to be a late insertion into an earlier story depicting the death of R. Eliezer found in the Babylonian Talmud (b. Sanh. 68a).25 That earlier talmudic story contains the following elements: R. Eliezer, who had been placed under a ban of excommunication (b. B. Metz. 59a), enters his final illness and R. Akiva and his companions go to visit him. There is some question as to whether R. Eliezer is of sound mind, but the concern is quickly laid to rest by his halakhic acuity. R. Eliezer chastises his visitors for their failure to come and learn from him earlier and predicts their untimely deaths, singling out R. Akiva in particular. He then places his arms over his chest and utters a lament. 24. Lerner places the work’s redaction in the geonic period (“External Tractates,” 399). However, the lack of gaonic references to the material in chapters 10–21 is noted by Blank, who suggests that the work may not have enjoyed a single uniform redaction (“It’s Time to Take Another Look,” 4 n. 10). Blank also notes the surprising absence of Soferim from the Genizah findings, which one might expect for a work believed to be of Palestinian provenance. Blank surmises that our text of Soferim was not generally available in the areas of Palestine and Egypt, and she points to manuscript evidence and citations by commentators that attest to its presence and availability in eleventh-century Ashkenaz. Ultimately, she hypothesizes that chapters 10–21 were written in Europe and there appended to chapters 1–9 (26 and references there). 25. That Avot R. Nat. A 25 borrows from b. Sanh. 68a is noted already by Lerner, “External Tractates,” 377. The Bavli’s story is an expanded version of a structurally similar story in y. Shabb. 2:7, 5b, without the encomium to R. Eliezer’s wisdom and its inclusion of our figure.

Hayes: Seas of Ink and Reeds for Pens  53 He said: 1. “Woe to you, these two arms of mine, that are like two rolled up [and unread] Torah scrolls. 2. I have learned much Torah and I have taught much Torah. 3. I have learned much Torah and yet I have skimmed from my teachers [only] as much as a dog laps from the sea. I have taught much Torah yet my students have skimmed from me [only] as much as the painting stick draws from the tube. 4. Moreover, I have studied 300 laws about [the purity status of] a bright spot [on the skin] but no one has ever asked me about them; and not only that, but I have studied 300 laws (and some say 3000 laws) about the planting of cucumbers [by magic] and no one has ever asked me about them, except for Akiva ben Yosef.” (b. Sanh. 68a)

Following some further halakhic instruction, R. Eliezer’s soul departs, and his death is met with excessive mourning, especially by R. Akiva. R. Eliezer’s lament contains four distinct elements that have been numbered in the cited text for convenience, and may be paraphrased as follows: (1) a comparison of his arms to Torah scrolls; (2) an assertion of his great learning (“I have learned much Torah and I have taught much Torah”); (3) a rhetorical image or images suggesting that this great learning is but a tiny portion of a greater whole (no more than what a dog laps from the sea or what a painting stick holds); and (4) a boast about studying 300 or 3000 laws about which he has never been asked. The versions of this talmudic story that appear in Avot of Rabbi Nathan A 25 and Kallah Rabbah 6:4 include our trope of ink and pens. In the version that appears in Kallah Rabbah 6:4 our figure is inserted between the third and fourth elements of the lament. ‫בשעת פטירתו נשק שני אצבעותיו זו בזו ואמר אוי לי על שני ספרי תורות אלו הרבה‬ ‫תורה למדתי והרבה תורה למדתי ולא חסרתי מרבותי אלא ככלב המלקק מן הים ולא‬ ‫חסרוני תלמידו כמכחול בשפופרת אילמלא נעשי' כן האילנות קולמסים וכל הימים דיו‬ ‫לא היו מספיקין לכתוב כל מה שדרשתי ולא עוד אלא שאני שונה שלש מאות הלכות‬ ‫בבהרת עזה ושלש מאות הלכות פ׳וקות במכשפה לא תחיה ולא היה אדם ששאלני בהם‬ 26 ‫דבר חוץ מעקיבא בן יוסף‬ As he was dying, R. Eliezer touched his two fingers to one another and said: 1. Woe to me, for these two Torah scrolls. 2. I have learned much Torah 3. and yet I have skimmed from my teachers [only] as much as a dog laps from the sea and my students have skimmed from me [only] as much as the painting stick draws from the tube. 26. Text taken from Naḥman Coronel, ed., Ḥamishah Kunteresim (Vienna: A. della Torre, 1864) 12a–13b.

54  Making History If all the trees were made into pens, and all the seas into ink, they would not suffice for writing down all that I have expounded. 4. Moreover, I have studied 300 laws about [the purity status of] a bright spot [on the skin] but no one has ever asked me about them; and not only that, but I have studied 300 laws (and some say 3000 laws) about the planting of cucumbers [by magic] and no one has ever asked me about them, except for Akiva ben Yosef.

Similarly, in the version of the story that appears in Avot of Rabbi Nathan A 25, our figure is again inserted into R. Eliezer’s lament. This time, however, it simply replaces the second element’s assertion of his great learning: ‫באותה שעת הגביה ר' אליעזר שתי זרועותיו והניחן על חזה שלו ואמ' אוי לי על שתי‬ ‫זרועותי שני ספר תורו' שנפטרין מן העולם שאם יהיו כל הימים דיו וכל קנין קולמוסים‬ 27 ‫וכל בני אדם לבלרין אינן יכולין לכתוב כל מה שקריתי ושניתי‬ At that time [as he was dying], R. Eliezer raised his two arms and placed them on his chest and said: 1. Woe to me, for these two arms of mine, [like] two Torah scrolls that are departing from the world. 2. For if all the seas were ink, and all the reeds were pens, and every person were a scribe, they still could not write down all that I have read and taught, etc.

Following this insertion, the story continues with elements 3 and 4: two rhetorical images describing R. Eliezer’s vast knowledge as no more than the water “sprinkled from a finger” or the small amount extracted by a “painting stick dipped into a paint tube,”28 and the boast about 300 or 3000 laws. The fact that our figure appears in different locations in these two late texts (and its location in Kallah Rabbah is not entirely logical) suggests that it is an interpolation into the story taken from b. San­hedrin 68a, carried out by the compilers/redactors of these works. In other words, our trope is a late addition to a passage found in two works that already date as redacted wholes to the post-talmudic period29 when writ27. This is the text of the Venice printed edition as found in Hans-Jürgen Becker and Christoph Berner, eds., Avot de-Rabbi Natan: Synoptische Edition beider Versionen, TSAJ 116 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006). 28. In the two Oxford manuscripts there is only one image—that of the painting stick. See Becker and Berner, Avot de-Rabbi Natan, 204–5. 29. A note on the late date of these works is in order. Schechter’s critical edition, Avot de-Rabbi Natan [Hebrew] (Vienna, 1887), distinguished two versions of the text, which Schechter dubbed versions A and B. Schechter saw B as the more original form, a view endorsed by Lerner, who described A as the product of the late seventh or eighth century (“External Tractates,” 376, 378). More recently, Menahem Kister has pointed to the complex transmission history of Avot R. Nat. A (Studies in Avot de-Rabbi Nathan: Text, Redaction, and Interpretation [Hebrew] [Jerusalem: Hebrew University and Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi, 1998]), while

Hayes: Seas of Ink and Reeds for Pens  55 ing was increasingly the medium for the study and transmission of rabbinic learning. The fourth rabbinic passage to contain our figure, and the third attribution of our figure to R. Eliezer, alongside an attribution to R. Joshua, another early Tanna, is found in the Palestinian midrash Song of Songs Rabbah.30 The passage comments on Song 1:3 “Your ointments have a goodly fragrance, your name is as ointment poured forth.” The verse’s implied contrast between the goodly fragrance of an ointment and the ointment itself provides a third-century Amora, R. Yannai, with an opportunity to contrast the pre-Sinaitic generations with his own post-Sinaitic generation. R. Yannai declares that the praises and deeds of the patriarchs are like the goodly and pleasing fragrance of an ointment, but the praises and deeds of current generations who perform all 613 commandments are like the actual ointment itself, which is even more pleasing to God. It is following this comparison that our figure makes an appearance: R. Eliezer, and R. Joshua, and R. Akiva. R. Eliezer says, “If all the seas were ink, and the [reeds of the] swamps pens and the heavens and earth parchment and all people were scribes, they would not suffice for writing down the Torah I have learned and yet

Becker and Berner reject the idea of an “original text” lying behind the thicket of versions (for details and citations see Holger Zellentin’s review of Becker and Berner’s synoptic edition in Hebrew Studies 49 [2008]: 363–65). As for Mas. Kallah Rab. 6:4, in A Bride without a Blessing: A Study in the Redaction and Content of Massekhet Kallah and Its Gemara, TSAJ 118 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006), David Brodsky provides convincing linguistic evidence for the Amoraic redaction of chapters 1–2 and the post-Amoraic redaction of chapters 3–9 (182– 200). Additional evidence supports the separate and later redaction of chapters 3–9: chapters 1–2 are a gemara on the earlier Massekhet Kallah, while chapters 3–9 comment on different base texts; no medieval commentator before the fifteenth and possibly the fourteenth century refers to chapters 3–9 as Massekhet Kallah; two Moscow manuscripts conclude chapter 2 with the words “the end of Massekhet Kallah, Mishnah and Gemara”; manuscripts of chapters 3–9 show greater variation and disorder than those of chapters 1–2; and chapter 4 refers to chapter 3 as “the first chapter” and “the other chapter” suggesting that chapters 3–4 once formed an independent unit that was then attached to chapters 1–2. Of particular interest is the fact that Kallah Rab. 3:8 uses di-khetiv beih (“as it is written in it”) to introduce a quotation from a rabbinic text, a phenomenon that is not found in Kallah Rab. 1–2. Brodsky writes, “As Yaakov Elman has pointed out, Babylonian rabbinic texts of the talmudic period do not use words of writing to introduce quotations from rabbinic texts. Instead, they use words of speaking (i.e., ‘as it is taught,’ or ‘as Rabbi X said’). This is another indication that KR 3 (if not KR 3–9) is post-talmudic, and from a period in which rabbinic material was starting to be found in written form.” For all of these points, see Brodsky, Bride without a Blessing, 185–200. Brodsky concludes that “KR 1–2 and 3–9 are distinct texts redacted in distinct periods” (200). In short, the evidence for a post-talmudic date for Kallah Rab. 6:4 is overwhelming. 30. The first printed edition (Cassuto), the Vatican and Oxford Bodeleian manuscripts, as well as the fragmentary Parma manuscript, contain the attribution to both Tannaim, but R. Joshua is omitted in the Frankfurt and Munich manuscripts.

56  Making History I have skimmed of it only as much as one who dips his painting stick in the sea.” R. Joshua says, “If all the seas were ink, and the [reeds of the] swamps pens and the heavens and earth parchment and all people were scribes, they would not suffice for writing down the Torah I have learned and yet I have skimmed of it only as much as one who dips his painting stick in the sea.” R. Akiba says, “I lack the ability to say as my teachers have said, for my teachers did skim something from it, while I have taken like one who smells a citron—the one who smells enjoys it while the citron loses nothing—or like one who fills [his container] from a water channel, or one who lights one lamp from another.”31 (Song Rab. 1:3, 1)

Here again, our figure is applied by a Tanna to his own vast knowledge and then moderated by a rhetorical image that describes this vast knowledge as, in fact, no more than a drop. The passage is a little jarring given the larger theme of the unit which is to affirm that the current generation with its praises and performance of mitzvot is precious to God, more so than the gentiles and even the patriarchs. It is possible, therefore, that this focus on specific rabbis and their learning is a late insertion, though this cannot be proven and, in general, conclusions about the date of this work are necessarily tentative. While Song Rabbah certainly borrows material from third–sixth century texts and is itself a source for the ninth-century Pesiqta Rabbati, scholarly opinion on the date of its redaction varies, with most placing it in the sixth or seventh century. Recent studies by Tamar Kadari suggest a long process of textual formation rather than a single point of late redaction.32

31. The translation, omitting a clear error of reduplication, is based on the text of the first printed edition as found in the synoptic edition being prepared by Tamar Kadari and available in electronic form at https://schechter.ac.il/midrash/shir-hashirim-raba/. For the only significant variants, see the preceding note. 32. Generally speaking, the concept of a single point of redaction is inapt as a model for understanding the production of rabbinic works. According to Myron Lerner, the fluidity of the textual tradition characteristic of many aggadic midrashim enabled copyists to include new material, a phenomenon that has been observed in the case of Song Rab. (“The Works of Aggadic Midrash and the Esther Midrashim,” in Literature of the Sages, Second Part: Midrash and Targum, Liturgy, Poetry, Mysticism, Contracts, Inscriptions, Ancient Science, and the Languages of Rabbinic Literature, ed. Shmuel Safrai, Zeev Safrai, Joshua Schwartz, Peter J. Tomson, CRINT, Section 2, Literature of the Jewish People in the Period of the Second Temple and the Talmud 3 [Assen: Van Gorcum; Philadelphia: Fortress 2006], 133–230, here 163, 165). For the late date of the five opening proems of Song Rab., see Tamar Kadari, “‘Behold a Man Skilled at His Work’: On the Origins of the Proems Which Introduce Song of Songs Rabbah” [Hebrew], Tarbiz, 75.1–2 (2006): 155–74; and for the Amoraic contribution to the redaction of Song Rab., see Tamar Kadari, “Transferred Petirot in Midrash Song of Songs Rabbah” [Hebrew], Tarbiz 80.3 (2012): 363–85. Lerner assigns Song Rab. to the seventh century (“Works of Aggadic Midrash,” 150).

Hayes: Seas of Ink and Reeds for Pens  57 The final two sources to employ our figure use it independently and do not combine it with additional rhetorical images that exert a moderating force. The reason is simple. Neither of these two sources introduces the figure as a first-person boast, a use that, arguably, requires moderation for the sake of modesty. What these two final sources have in common is their application of the phrase to describe the inexhaustibility of a negative or at least ambiguous phenomenon. We consider first the figure’s appearance in the Scholion to Megillat Ta’anit. Megillat Ta’anit is notable both as the earliest known Pharisaic document, and the earliest written rabbinic text, reaching its final form in the three decades prior to the destruction in 70 CE.33 Both Tannaitic and Amoraic sources refer to the scroll and exhibit familiarity with it as a written text. Written in Aramaic, the scroll lists thirty-five dates in calendrical order on which it is forbidden for Jews to fast or eulogize the dead. The reason for the prohibition is found in the Palestinian Talmud (y. Ta’an. 2:13, 66a [= y. Meg. 1:6, 70c]): miraculous events—some of which are only hinted at—occurred for Israel on these days and they should therefore be celebrated as joyous occasions. The events that scholars have identified with certainty range from the early Second Temple period to the time of Caligula, with approximately one-third dating certainly or probably to the Hasmonean era. Nevertheless, nearly half remain obscure since the scroll itself provides no more than the date and a very brief mention of the event to be commemorated.34 Already in ancient times, attempts to explain and elaborate on the dates in the scroll were attached to the Megillah, as a kind of “scholion.” As noted by Vered Noam, the current Scholion, written in Hebrew and incorporating stories, legends, and homilies directly or indirectly relevant to the events listed in the scroll, is a hybrid version created in the ninth or tenth century by combining two older versions, represented by the Oxford and Parma manuscripts (which Noam dubs Scholion O and Scholion P, respectively). She has further demonstrated that Scholion P’s traditions are closer to the Babylonian Talmud, while those of Scholion O bear a greater similarity to the Yerushalmi and Genesis Rabbah.35 Our rhetorical figure appears in the concluding lines of Scholion P and the hybrid version. Here, too, our figure is inserted into an earlier rabbinic passage—in this case, a baraita taken from the Babylonian Talmud (b. Shabb. 13b) and slightly reworked. In its talmudic context in tractate Shabbat, the original baraita reads:

33. Vered Noam, “Megillat Taanit—The Scroll of Fasting,” in Shmuel et al., Literature of the Sages, Second Part, 339–62, here 339, 350. 34. Ibid., 345. 35. Ibid., 353.

58  Making History The rabbis taught: Who wrote Megillat Ta’anit? They said, “Hanania ben Hizkia and his faction, who cherished [the deliverance from] troubles.” Rabban Shimeon ben Gamliel said, “We also cherish troubles, but what can we do? For if we were to try to write, we would not manage [eyn maspiqin] [to record them].” Another explanation: A fool is never hurt. Another explanation: The flesh of a dead person does not feel the scalpel. (b. Shabb. 13b).

As Noam explains, R. Shimeon ben Gamliel views the scroll as a fixed and written list to which no new “troubles” (and the miraculous deliverances from them) are to be added. Whether this is because there are so many troubles that it is impossible to write them, as R. Shimeon ben Gamliel himself suggests, or because the current generation has suffered so much it has become desensitized to the pain, is disputed in the next few lines.36 The Scholion’s concluding lines rework this baraita, expanding on the idea that the troubles of the current generation are too numerous to write into the scroll of Megillat Ta’anit by inserting our figure (see italicized text).37 ‫סיעתו של ר אליעזר בן חנינא בן חזקיהו איש גוריון הם כתבו מגילת תענית‬ ‫מפני שאין למדים בצרות ואין הצרות מצויות לבא עליהם‬ ‫לפיכך אם יהיו כל הימים דיו וכל הנחלים קנים וכל העולם לבלריים אין מספיקים‬ ‫לכתוב צרות הבאות עליהם ותשועות השותה נפגע ואין בשר המת מרגיש באזמל‬ ‫נגמרה מגלת תענית‬ The faction of R. Eleazar ben Haninah ben Hizkia of Goron38 wrote Megillat Ta’anit because they were not schooled in troubles and troubles did not often come upon them. And therefore39 if all the seas were ink and all the streams were reed [pens] and all the [inhabitants] of the world were scribes, they would not suffice [eyn maspiqin] to write the troubles that have come upon them and the deliverances that were done for them.40

36. Ibid., 357. 37. Following the text of the P Scholion as found text in Vered Noam, Megillat Taanit: Versions, Interpretation, and History, (Jerusalem: Yad Yitzhaq ben-Tsevi, 2003 [Heb]). The Hybrid Version’s alternative readings are indicated in the notes. 38. In the Scholion the name is Elazar ben Hananiah ben Hizkiah ben Goron (Hybrid version), or ish Goron (P), or just Hananiah ben Hizkiah (O) 39. The Hybrid version reads “But in these days when they are schooled in troubles and troubles often come upon them” instead of “And therefore.” 40. The Hybrid version reads “each and every year” instead of “and the deliverances that were done for them.”

Hayes: Seas of Ink and Reeds for Pens  59 A fool is never hurt. The flesh of a dead person does not feel the scalpel. So ends the Scroll of Fasts.42

41

The insertion of our rhetorical trope was likely inspired by the term eyn maspiqin, “one/we/they would not manage/suffice,” which appears both in our trope and in the original baraita from b. Shabbat 13b. Once again, our figure occurs as a late (post-talmudic) insertion that reworks an earlier tradition in a context that has a very particular connection to writing. What might have brought our rhetorical figure to the attention of the compiler of the P Scholion so as to insert it into the baraita taken from b. Shabbat 13b? As it happens, the figure appears just a few pages earlier in the same talmudic tractate, on b. Shabbat 11a, which contains the one and only talmudic occurrence of our phrase. It is likely that the compiler of the P Scholion combined our figure from b. Shabbat 11a with the nearby baraita on b. Shabbat 13b, inspired by the common term eyn maspiqin43 and by the shared—and rabbinically rare—reference to writing. We turn now to the final, and most iconic, attestation of our figure in rabbinic literature— the passage just mentioned as the source for the Scholion’s interpolation: b. Shabbat 11a.

Babylonian Talmud Shabbat 11a—The Machinations of the Governmental Authority As in the Scholion to Megillat Ta’anit, b. Shabbat 11a’s application of the figure has a negative valence.44 ‫ואמר רבא בר מחסיא אמר רב חמא בר גוריא אמר רב‬ ‫אם יהיו כל הימים דיו ואגמים קולמוסים ושמים יריעות וכל בני אדם לבלרין אין מספי־‬ ‫קים לכתוב חללה של רשות‬ ‫מאי קראה אמר רב משרשיא {משלי כה} שמים לרום וארץ לעומק ולב מלכים אין חקר‬ Rava bar Meḥasya said that R. Ḥama bar Gurya said that Rav said “If all the seas were ink, the [reeds] of the swamps pens, the heavens

41. The Hybrid version introduces this line and the next with davar aḥer, “another explanation.” 42. The Hybrid version does not contain this closing line. 43. This point was made already by Noam, Megillat Ta’anit, 347 n. 120. Noam further notes that the version of the baraita that appears in Halakhot Gedolot contains our figure. 44. Even though troubles are remembered because of the deliverance that follows, they are not unambiguously good in the way that knowledge and learning are unambiguously good in the earlier examples.

60  Making History parchment, and all humans scribes, they would not suffice to write down the machinations [‫חללה‬, ḥalalah] of the governmental authority.” And what is the verse? Rav Mesharshaya said “the height of the heavens and the depth of the earth and the mind of kings are unsearchable [eyn ḥeqer]” (Prov 25:3).

A full understanding of this passage and its likely provenance requires an examination of its larger context. The passage appears in a lengthy sugya (talmudic discussion) that extends from b. Shabbat 10b to 11a. The sugya contains ten statements by Rav conveyed by Rava bar Meḥasya citing R. Ḥama bar Gorya (henceforth RbM/RHbG/Rav).45 These statements exhibit both literary similarity and literary difference, contributing to a sense of disunity within an overall unity. For example, no statement is halakhic in character, but, while the first six address matters of etiquette, proper conduct, or prudent behavior, the last four might be described as popular proverbs or folk sayings focused on avoiding or warding off various evils.46 There is linguistic difference: eight of the ten are presented as direct quotations in Hebrew, while two appear to be Aramaic reformulations presented as indirect speech. There are also differences in the manner of presentation: the first three statements and a repetition of the tenth statement are embedded in stories while the remaining statements are presented in a simple list form. In addition, four statements include an integrated biblical exemplum or proof text, five have none, and one (our passage, cited above) has a biblical proof text that is not an integral part of the teaching but is added by a later sage. Finally, some of the statements become the basis for a dialectical discussion featuring Babylonian Amoraim of the fourth and fifth centuries CE, while others are not subjected to further discussion or analysis at all. Based on these many differences, the sugya can be divided into three parts containing three, three, and four statements, respectively. The three statements in Part I concern proper behavior and are presented within narratives (the first and third) or in a dialectical exchange (the second). Part II abandons the narrative presentation and simply lists three statements by Rav that counsel a prudent course of action and feature an inte-

45. In one case R. Ḥama bar Gorya is omitted. 46. For more on folk sayings in rabbinic literature, see Jonathan Pomeranz, “‘Seven Pits for the Good Man’: Torah and Popular Wisdom in Rabbinic Babylonia,” JSQ 23 (2016): 22–46. The term “folk-saying” is intended to point not to the origins of the saying but to its character, and follows the definition of folk-saying, or proverb, provided by Wolfgang Mieder, “Proverbs Speak Louder than Words”: Folk Wisdom in Art, Culture, Folklore, History, Literature and Mass Media (New York: P. Lang, 2008), 11, as cited in Pomeranz, “Seven Pits,” 24: “a short, generally known sentence of the folk which contains wisdom, truth, morals, and traditional views in a metaphorical, fixed and memorizable form and which is handed down from generation to generation.”

Hayes: Seas of Ink and Reeds for Pens  61 grated biblical example or proof text. The latter two draw comments by Amoraim and some dialectical exchange. Part III retains the list format of Part II, but its four statements are of a wholly different character. Below is a summary outline of the sugya that notes these many differences. Each of Rav’s statements is quoted and italicized for easy identification. Part I: Three Statements concerning Etiquette or Proper Behavior Statement 1—This statement attributed to RbM/RHbG/Rav is presented in the form of an Aramaic paraphrase by the Stam.47 It is embedded in a dialectical discussion of bathroom etiquette which runs as follows: If, as R. Hamnuna teaches, one may not say the word “shalom” in the bathhouse or bathroom (manuscripts vary) because “shalom” is a divine epithet, then surely one may not say “by faith!” since faith is also a divine epithet and yet: didn’t Rava bar Meḥasya 48 say that R. Ḥama b. Gorya said Rab said, “‘By faith!’ may be mentioned in a privy.”

Statement 2—Having introduced in the course of its discussion one teaching about proper conduct by RbM/RHbG/Rav, the gemara then presents another, this time as a direct quotation in Hebrew. The statement includes an integrated proof text concerning God’s gift of the Sabbath that is introduced by shene’amar (“as it is said,” i.e., in Scripture). “Rava bar Meḥasya said R. Ḥama b. Gorya said Rab said, “If one makes a gift to his fellow, he must inform him [first], as it is said, ‘that you may know that I the Lord sanctify you’ (Exod 31:13).”

The statement is followed immediately by a baraita making the same point while relying on a different biblical proof. The statement draws comments by Abaye and Rav Pappa (fourth century) which in turn generate some brief stammaitic dialectic. Statement 3—A story is related in which R. Ḥisda offers a gift to anyone who can teach a new statement by Rav. Rava bar Meḥasya responds by reciting Statement 2 and is rewarded with a gift. Surprised that R. Ḥisda is so enamored of the statements of Rav, Rava

47. The Stam is the anonymous voice of the Talmud. In this particular sugya, the Stam often manipulates traditions of late Babylonian Amoraim (such as R. Pappa), suggesting that the sugya as a whole is the product of a later, post-Amoraic redaction. 48. Reading with all manuscripts and Genizah fragments against the printed edition.

62  Making History bar Meḥasya notes that R. Ḥisda’s enthusiasm is an example of something else Rav said, that “A garment is precious to its wearer.”

This is the only statement to lack the full citation chain (R. Ḥama b. Gorya is omitted) because it is reported by Rava bar Meḥasya in the context of a story. Like Statement 1, it is likely in Aramaic because it is a paraphrase. Part II: Three Prudent Recommendations with Biblical Exemplars/ Proof Texts Statement 4—The previous statement’s reference to fine wool (melata) is a catchword that creates a linguistic link to the next statement, which also mentions fine wool (melat). This is the first of three statements in Hebrew that offer prudent counsel and integrate a biblical exemplar or proof text. Rava bar Meḥasya said R. Ḥama b. Gorya said Rab said, “A man should never single out one son among his other sons, for on account of the two sela’s weight of fine wool that Jacob gave Joseph over that which he gave his other sons, his [Joseph’s] brothers became jealous of him which led to our forefathers descending into Egypt.

Statement 5—This statement follows the literary pattern and general tenor of the previous statement: Hebrew language, prudent advice, integrated biblical proof text. The statement is followed by a stammaitic discussion of the proof text as well as a teaching by a fourth-century Babylonian Amora that offers a different proof. Rava bar Meḥasya said R. Ḥama b. Gorya said Rab said, “A man should always seek to dwell in a city that is only recently [qerova] inhabited, for since it is only recently inhabited its sins are few as it is said, ‘This city is nearby [qerova] to flee to, and it is a little one’” (Gen 19:20).

Statement 6—This statement continues the literary pattern and general tenor of the previous statement: Hebrew language, prudent advice, integrated biblical proof text. The statement is followed by a dialectical exchange orchestrated by the Stam and featuring a statement by the fourth–fifth century Babylonian Amora Rav Ashi, which is subjected to further dialectical treatment. Rava bar Meḥasya said R. Ḥama b. Gorya said Rab said, “Any city in which the roofs [of the houses] are higher than the synagogue will ultimately be destroyed as it is said, ‘to exalt the house of our god, and to repair its ruins’” (Ezra 9:9).

Hayes: Seas of Ink and Reeds for Pens  63 Part III: Four Folk-Sayings Describing Various Evils without Integrated Biblical Proofs Statement 7—This Hebrew-language statement signals a dramatic switch in tone, content, and literary form. While the previous six statements contained teachings on matters of proper conduct, or prudent advice with integrated proof texts, the four statements in Part III are aphorisms that one might find in any cultural context (complaints about various disliked groups, the government, physical pains, bad wives, and bad dreams). They are not subjected to dialectical discussion, though a brief Amoraic proof or gloss is added to two of them. Rava bar Meḥasya said R. Ḥama b. Gorya said Rab said, “Better to be under the [rule of] Ishmael than [the rule of] the Gentiles [Rome?], under the Gentiles than under the Zoroastrian priests [ḥabar], under the Zoroastrian priest and not under a rabbinic sage [talmid ḥaḥam], under a rabbinic sage and not under an orphan or widow.” 49

Statement 8—This statement is a Hebrew-language aphorism with subunits that follow the pattern of the previous statement— better X than Y. Rava bar Meḥasya said R. Ḥama b. Gorya said Rab said, “Better any illness than an illness of the bowels, any pain but not heart pain, any ache but not headache, any evil but not an evil wife.”

Statement 9—This statement is none other than our trope, in Hebrew, to which is attached a biblical derivation in the name of a later fourth-century Babylonian Amora. Rava bar Meḥasya said R. Ḥama bar Gurya said that Rav said, “If all the seas were ink, the [reeds] of the swamps pens, the heavens and earth50 parchment, and all humans scribes, they would not suffice to write down the machinations [‫חללה‬, ḥalalah] of the governmental authority.”

49. Following Munich 95, Vatican 127, and at least one Genizah fragment, which contain the following hierarchy: Ishmael, goy (translated here as “Gentiles” but perhaps an allusion to Rome?), ḥabar (Zoroastrian priest), rabbinic sage, and orphan and widow. Oxford Opp. Add. fol. 23 lists: man, woman, Ishmael, goy, ḥabar, rabbinic sage, and orphan and widow (punning on ish, ishah, Ishmael). One Genizah fragment has two lists: first, Ishmael, goy, ḥabar, followed by a second list consisting of Ishmael, Israel, rabbinic sages, orphans and widows. 50. Following all manuscripts and Genizah fragments against the printed editions, which omit “earth.”

64  Making History And what is the verse? Rav Mesharshaya said “the height of the heavens and the depth of the earth and the mind of kings are unsearchable [eyn ḥeqer]” (Prov 25:3).51

Statement 10 – The final statement is a simple recommendation for warding off bad dreams, followed by two two-word glosses attributed to two Babylonian Amoraim of the third–fourth century. Rava bar Meḥasya said R. Ḥama bar Gurya said that Rav said, “A fast is effective against a dream as fire is effective against chaff.”

The long sugya closes with a brief story about two fourth–fifth century Babylonian Amoraim in which statement 10 with its two Amoraic glosses is cited. The sugya as a whole is clearly a composite work. The inclusion of glosses and memrot (teachings) by later Babylonian rabbis (including from the fifth century), and the further discussion of these memrot by the Stam are indications that the sugya was not completed before the fifth century.52 Since Rav’s first statement has an organic connection to the tractate’s halakhic discussion of the proper times and places for the recitation of prayers and divine epithets, it is likely that Part I grew around the first statement. The narrative and dialectical presentation of three statements attributed to RbM/RHbG/Rav in Part I likely attracted the three statements attributed to RbM/RHbG/Rav in Part II, which, based on their internal coherence in form and tenor, may have existed already as a unit. Parts I and II were subjected to further expansion by the insertion of Amoraic glosses and memrot as well as stammaitic dialectic. At some point the folk aphorisms in Part III were appended. The aphorisms in Part III are in Hebrew, in conformity with the other statements attributed to Rav.53 Although popular folk-sayings incorporated in the Talmud are more typically formulated in Babylonian Jewish Aramaic, these statements exhibit other characteristic features of folk-sayings. Specifically, they address universally popular themes of folk literature, such as the suspicion of authority figures, resistance to elite norms, anxiety in the face of physical ailments and bad dreams, and misogyny.54 51. In one Genizah fragment (Cambridge T-S NS 329.470) statements 8 and 9 are reversed and Rav Mesharshaya’s biblical derivation follows statement 8. 52. Bearing in mind that, for rabbinic texts generally, redaction should be understood not as a point in time but as a process. 53. With the exception of the two statements that are presented as paraphrases rather than direct reports. 54. For more on folk traditions in the Babylonian Talmud, including the increased incorporation and rabbinization of folk stories and folk-sayings by later Babylonian Amor-

Hayes: Seas of Ink and Reeds for Pens  65 While no sharp line can be drawn between the rabbis and “the folk,” and rabbis are known to make statements of a folk character,55 Part III’s dramatic shift in tone and theme suggests that the sugya’s redactor may have attached the introductory formula “RbM/RHbG/Rav” to a series of literarily and topically distinct proverbs, at least some of which may have originated from outside rabbinic circles, in order to append them to the preceding six statements. Statement 7 is clearly of Babylonian origin since it mentions Zoroastrian priests. If the reference to Zoroastrian priests reflects the period of their rise to power (the latter part of the third century), then the attribution to Rav, who predates this period, is suspect. Moreover, if “Ishmael” is intended as a reference to the establishment of Islamic rule in the seventh century, then statement 7 is a very late addition to the text and certainly cannot be attributed to Rav.56 Does the late date of statement 7 mean that all four statements in Part III were formulated and/or appended to the sugya in the mid- to late-seventh century after the rise of Islam? The question cannot be answered definitively. Even if statement 7 bears indicators of seventh-century formulation, and Part III as a whole was inserted at a late date, the provenance of the other statements within Part III remains an aim (mid-fourth century on), and the general linguistic, stylistic, and thematic characteristics of folk-sayings, see Jonathan Pomeranz, “Ordinary Jews in the Babylonian Talmud: Rabbinic Representations and Historical Interpretation” (PhD diss., Yale University, 2016); see also, Pomeranz, “Seven Pits.” 55. Indeed, in a story in b. Yoma 20b Rav is portrayed as uttering two pithy proverbs, one of which he introduces explicitly as a folk-saying (“people say”). 56. Two other traditions in the Babylonian Talmud link the rabbis with Zoroastrian priests. In b. Pesah. 113b both rabbis and Zoroastrian priests are disparaged for their infighting and mutual hatred, but in b. Qidd. 72a Zoroastrian priests and Ishmaelites are compared to destroying angels and harmful demons respectively and the sages to ministering angels. Our passage is unique in its negative attitude to all three. It is possible, of course, that the terms Ishmael, goy, ḥabar, and even rabbinic sage refer not to “regimes” or general authorities but to individual persons: one does not want to fall under the authority of, or be beholden to, an individual Ishmaelite; or worse, a goy; or worse, a ḥabar; or worse (!), a rabbinic sage; and worst of all, a widow or orphan, presumably because the demands of the latter are the most burdensome. While the question cannot be determined definitively, it is unlikely that the statement refers to individual Ishmaelites, gentiles, and Zoroastrain priests rather than entire regimes. Like many folk statements, this statement is a hyperbolic rejection of a conventional religious value (the support of widows and orphans). That rejection is all the more powerful if the burden of supporting widows and orphans is compared to the burden imposed by oppressive regimes and authority structures and not merely to oppressive individuals. Understood this way, the statement’s radical claim is that it is better to be under the harsh rule of various foreign regimes than to be under the authority of the rabbis and their oppressive demands for piety, which lead to the worst oppression of all—caring for widows and orphans! For more on Babylonian talmudic attitudes to Zoroastrian priests, including comparisons of rabbis to Zoroastrian priests, see Shai Secunda, The Iranian Talmud: Reading the Bavli in Its Sasanian Context, Divinations (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), chapter 4.

66  Making History open question. Here, it may be possible to say more about statement 9, the statement that contains our trope. Statement 9 is an anomaly in an already anomalous unit. As we have argued, the other three statements in Part III break with the previous six statements by virtue of being proverbs with a strong folk character. Statement 9, containing our trope, does not possess a strong folk character. It is a rhetorical trope invoking the seas, the reeds of the lakes, the heavens and earth as hyperbolic references to a practice associated with elites (writing). How did it come to be included in this unit of folk-sayings? It is likely that our trope’s application to the popular theme of suspicion of governmental authority recommended it to either the compiler of Part III, who combined it with the other folk-sayings because one of them (7) addresses this theme, or to the redactor of the sugya, who knew of it independently and added it to this received collection of three folk-sayings because of its thematic suitability. In order to interpolate it smoothly into the existing unit, the introductory tradent chain RbM/RHbG/Rav was added.57 Nevertheless, despite this thematic link, the statement’s stylistic deviation from the other statements in Part III is obvious and suggests not only that it circulated as an independent literary trope58 before being combined with the other three statements by a compiler or final redactor, but also that its provenance is more elite than popular (using these terms stylistically rather than sociologically). For the stylistic considerations just mentioned there is reason to doubt that the attribution of our figure to the third-century sage Rav can be taken at face value. Perhaps more helpful for determining the date of the figure is the fact that it is glossed by a later fourth-century Babylonian Amora (Rav Mesharshaya). While attributions cannot be accepted without further ado, as we have just argued, in this case there is no textual or stylistic reason for skepticism. If the attribution of the gloss to Rav Mesharshaya is reliable and not simply the addition of a later redactor, it is testimony that our trope was known in Babylonia in the second half of the fourth century.59 57. We cannot know who was responsible for adding the RbM/RHbG/Rav tradent chain. The compiler may have compiled these four statements as a unit with no tradent chain. A final redactor, wishing to attach this unit of four statements to the end of the sugya in b. Shabb. 11a may have added the introductory formula, RbM/RHbG/Rav, to each individual statement. Alternatively, the other three statements were added to the sugya at a penultimate stage by means of attribution to RbM/RHbG/Rav. Inspired by its thematic connection to statement 7, the final redactor inserted statement 9, which required adding the tradent chain. 58. To be clear, the term “literary” does not presume circulation in writing. It is intended to designate circulation in an elite and learned context, which can be oral in nature. 59. For this sage, see Hanokh Albeck, Mavo la-Talmudim (Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1969), 414. We cannot rule out the possibility, however, that the gloss was supplied by the late fifth-century sage of the same name; see ibid., 446. According to tradition, this R. Mesharshaya was killed by the Sasanian authorities.

Hayes: Seas of Ink and Reeds for Pens  67 We may tentatively conclude, then, that the earliest rabbinic attestations of the hyperbolic trope involving ink, pen, parchment, and scribe most likely date to (1) mid- to late fourth-century Babylonia at the earliest (possibly later if the figure and its biblical gloss were inserted by the redactor of the sugya in b. Shabbat 11a, and possibly earlier if we accept the attribution to the third-century sage Rav, which is uncertain); and (2) fifth– seventh century Palestine at the latest (possibly earlier since Song Rab. is an anthological work whose sources cannot be dated with complete confidence). The remaining four references in rabbinic literature appear to be secondary and even post-talmudic and are not germane to our investigation. As noted above, the figure is anomalous for such a decidedly oral culture, supporting the claim by Linn that it is not indigenous to rabbinic tradition, but borrowed. The questions we must now consider are the following: If it is not an indigenous rabbinic trope, where did it most likely originate and what was its most likely port of entry into rabbinic sources? Did it enter Palestine and travel to Babylonia? Or did it enter Babylonia and travel to Palestine?

A Migrating Topos from …? A search of other ancient and late-ancient literatures indicates that our trope’s rhetorical invocation of the technologies of writing—not to mention its correlation of those technologies with immeasurable natural elements—is unprecedented in the literatures of the cultures of the ancient Near East and late-antique Mediterranean world generally. Assyriologist Eckart Frahm notes that, although metaphors connecting cuneiform writing and its media to cosmological ideas and divinatory practices were in use in ancient Mesopotamia, there is nothing that comes close to our trope.60 Kathryn Slanski observes that, because cuneiform is written with a stylus pressed into clay rather than with a pen that deposits ink on a two-dimensional surface of parchment, paper, papyrus, or vellum, our trope is unlikely to be found in cuneiform literary culture.61 60. Eckart Frahm, written communication (March 26, 2021). Frahm goes on to note that the stars and other heavenly bodies were called šiṭir šamê/burūmê, i.e., “heavenly writing,” and haruspices referred to the liver they inspected as ṭuppi ilāni, “the tablet of the gods.” In addition, there are Babylonian expressions indicating that it is impossible to fully grasp the greatness of the divine creation; a famous one (“Who is so tall as to ascend to heaven? / Who is so broad as to encompass the entire world?”) is found in the so-called “Dialogue of Pessimism” from the first millennium BCE, but none of this resembles our figure. I am grateful to Professor Frahm for his assistance with the Mesopotamian corpus. 61. Kathryn Slanski, written communication. Slanski points to the image of the night sky as a tablet of lapis inscribed with stars and wielded by divine figures in Gudea Cylinder

68  Making History My colleagues in Classics confirm that there is also no such figure in ancient Greek or Latin literature. While “writing on wind and water” is a known topos in classical sources, it expresses the futility of an act or speech and does not function as an indicator of vast scale or number. Certainly, stars and grains of sand are used to indicate an uncountable or vast number in Greek (and Latin) writing (see n. 12 above), but Greek literature does not in general use other elements of the natural world as “counters.” More important, it does not correlate them with technologies of writing. In fact, reeds are associated with shepherd pipes, speaking, and/or singing, not writing.62 Notably, the only comparable idiom to appear in classical sources, is an inexpressibility topos that relies on “the tools” of oral communication (mouth, tongue, lips, lungs)—unsurprising in light of the oral character of ancient Greek literature. Thus, in Homer’s Iliad, the poet declares the impossibility of enumerating all of the heroes fighting around Troy as follows: I could not recount their numbers nor name them, Not if I had ten tongues and ten mouths,  And an unbreakable voice and a brazen chest within,  Unless the Olympian Muses, daughters of aegis-bearing  Zeus, would remind me how many came under Ilium. (Iliad 2:489–92)63

The motif of “many mouths” (whether ten or one hundred) was picked up by other epic poets, both Greek and Latin, and became something of a cliché.64 It traveled to the eastern provinces of the empire, as suggested by A. The text relates that Gudea (ca. 2150–2125), ruler of the city-state Lagash, has undertaken to (re)build the temple of Ningirsu, god of Lagash, and has a vision in a dream in which a female divinity holds a tablet inscribed with stars that augur well for the building project, and a male divinity holds a tablet on which he inscribes the plan of the temple. While the passage represents the heavens as a writing surface, the “scribes” are divine, not human, and the implement is a stylus on a clay tablet, not a pen dipped in ink. Moreover, although the Gudea image conveys the idea of a divine knowledge beyond human ken, it contains no hyperbolic expression of inexhaustibility. I am grateful to Professor Slanski for her assistance with the Mesopotamian corpus. 62. I thank Christina Kraus and Pauline LeVen for the various points in this paragraph, conveyed in written communications (March 27, 2021, and March 26, 2021, respectively). 63. I am grateful to Egbert Bakker, Christina Kraus, and Pauline LeVen for this reference. 64. I thank Christina Kraus for bringing later uses of the Homeric figure to my attention, especially Vergil’s Aeneid 6.625–627, where the Sibyl of Cumae tells Aeneas that she cannot complete the catalogue of the torments of Tarturus that she has witnessed: “If I had a hundred tongues and a hundred mouths and an iron voice, I could not take in every form of crime or go through every punishment by name.” For more on this “cliché,” see Emily ­Gowers, “Virgil’s Sibyl and the ‘Many Mouths’ Cliché (Aen. 6.625–7), Classical Quarterly 55.1 (2005): 170–82.

Hayes: Seas of Ink and Reeds for Pens  69 its appearance in 2 Baruch, a Syriac translation of a Jewish work written in late first-century CE Palestine.65 For if my members were mouths and the hairs of my head voices, even so I could not repay you the glory, nor praise you as is befitting, nor would I be able to relate your glory, nor speak of the splendor of your beauty. (2 Bar. 54:8; trans. Henze, 120)

What is new in this formulation is the correlation of the “tools” of oral communication (mouth, voice) with impossible “counters.” Instead of specifying a large quantity of mouths and voices (ten or one hundred), 2 Baruch correlates the number of mouths with the number of Baruch’s body members, and the number of voices with the number of hairs on his head. Structurally speaking, this passage is quite similar to our figure. It is, in fact, an “inexhaustibility topos,” that indirectly signals the vastness of its subject (God’s praise, glory, and splendor) by means of a compound image that correlates tools of communication (mouth, voice) with an impossible natural counter (body members, hairs). The difference between our figure and the figure in 2 Baruch is that our figure correlates tools of written communication with immeasurable aspects of the natural world, while the figure in 2 Baruch correlates the tools of oral communication with prodigious (not necessarily uncountable) aspects of the human body.66 One final Jewish text—a blessing or prayer—comes one step closer to our image by correlating the “tools” of oral communication not with aspects of the human body, as in 2 Baruch, but with such immeasurably vast natural elements as the sea, the waves, the heavens, and the heavenly bodies. Unfortunately, the alleged antiquity of the blessing and the full form of its image cannot be ascertained. The Babylonian Talmud contains only a brief allusion to the blessing, which is to be recited as thanksgiving for rain: R. Yehuda said, “We give thanks to You for every drop which You have caused to fall for us” and R. Yohanan (third-century CE) concluded thus, “If our mouths were full of song like the sea we could not sufficiently give thanks to You, O Lord our God” and continuing up to “shall prostrate 65. On the date and provenance of 2 Baruch, see Michael F. Stone and Matthias Henze, 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch: Translations, Introductions, and Notes (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2013), 10–11. The work is attested in a single Syriac manuscript, the oldest complete manuscript of the Old Testament Peshitta (sixth–seventh centuries CE) and is likely a daughter version of a Greek version that is in turn a translation from a Hebrew original. I am grateful to my colleague Maria Doerfler for bringing this passage to my attention. 66. We note with irony that the biblical Baruch, to whom this work is pseudepigraphically attributed, was a scribe, who recorded in writing the oral prophecies of Jeremiah. It is tempting to suppose that the author of 2 Baruch would have put our figure, with its invocation of the scribal arts, into Baruch’s mouth had it been current in first-century CE Palestine.

70  Making History itself before You. Blessed are You, O Lord, to whom abundant thanks are due.” (b. Ber. 59b)

R. Yehuda identifies the blessing to be said in the event of rain. The third-century Palestinian Amora R. Yohanan adds a concluding section that begins “If our mouths were full of song, etc.” and ends with “to whom abundant thanks are due.” How much of this concluding section has been omitted? It is unclear whether R. Yohanan gives the entire first and last line of the concluding section of the blessing, or whether the “mouth full of song” is only the first in a series of such images. In b. Pesahim 118a, the same R. Yohanan is said to have mentioned a thanksgiving prayer known as “Nishmat kol ḥai.” No information about this prayer is provided other than its name. Some have identified the “Nishmat kol ḥai” mentioned in b. Pesahim 118a with the blessing whose opening and closing lines are presented by R. Yohanan in b. Berakhot 59a, and have further concluded that R. Yohanan’s “Nishmat kol ḥai” prayer is none other than the “Nishmat kol ḥai” attested since the Geonic period (beginning ca. 800 CE).67 That prayer, which became a regular part of the liturgy, reads: Were our mouths as full of song as the sea, and our tongues as full of joyous song as its waves, and our lips [as full of] praise as the expanse of the heavens, and our eyes as brilliant as the sun and the moon, and our hands as outspread as the eagles of the sky and our feet as fleet as hinds—we still could not thank You sufficiently [eyn anaḥnu maspiqin], O Lord our God and God of our forefathers, and to bless Your Name for even one of the thousand thousand, thousands of thousands and myriad myriads of favors that you have performed for our ancestors and for us.68

In this image, the inability to adequately express thanks and praise is again figured in terms of the “tools” of oral, rather than written, communication: the mouth, the tongue, the lips, the expressive eyes, and the outstretched hands of the speaker rather than the ink, pen, and writing sheet of the scribe. Now, however, each of these body parts is associated with an immeasurable element of nature. Moreover, it is not their number that is immeasurably large (i.e., the image is not of a vast quantity of mouths, tongues, and lips); rather, it is their capacity that is immeasurably large (i.e., the mouths, tongues, and lips can hold as much song and praise as the sea, the waves, and the heavens can hold. There is one instance of an inexhaustibility formula in late first-century CE Roman Palestine that does refer to the writing of books. It is found in the Gospel of John 21:25: 67. See Lawrence A. Hoffman, ed., My People’s Prayer Book: Traditional Prayers, Modern Commentaries (Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights, 2007), 10:59. 68. From the standard shaḥarit service for Sabbaths and festivals (my translation).

Hayes: Seas of Ink and Reeds for Pens  71 But there are also many other things that Jesus did; if every one of them were written down, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written. (NRSV)

A written record of Jesus’s works would fill more books than the world can contain—an assertion of the inexhaustibility of the subject, rather than the expressive incapacity of the speaker. The passage is reminiscent of Eccl 12:12 (“there is no end to the making of many books”) though without the note of futility. Stylistically and structurally, however, the image is simple and almost natural—the list of deeds is so long that it would fill an almost infinite number of books. Thus, while the verse is extremely close to our figure in meaning, it contains none of the rhetorical embellishments of our figure that correlate the tools of writing with “counters” of immeasurability taken from the natural world. It is these rhetorical embellishments that mark our figure as part of a larger literary tradition. This survey of ancient Near Eastern, classical, and Roman-period Jewish sources reveals no clear precedent for our trope. The single reference to a written inventory too long to be contained in a world of books (John 21:25) is similar in meaning but rhetorically and stylistically remote. All of the inexpressibility topoi attested in Greek and Latin sources are based on oral communication and lack the element of correlation to “counters” of immeasurability. The early nonrabbinic Jewish work 2 Baruch does correlate the “tools” of oral communication (mouth, voice) with “counters” but these counters are keyed to the human body. A further correlation of the “tools” of oral communication with vast elements of nature (sea, waves, heavens, heavenly bodies) appears in a gaonic era (ca. eighth century CE) blessing that may have roots in the talmudic period (third century CE).69 None of these topoi, however, contains all of the distinctive rhetorical elements of our figure: an indirect indication of the inexhaustibility of a subject that constructs a double image that correlates the tools of written communication (ink, pen, parchment/paper) with impossibly vast “counters” of the natural world to which they bear an inherent resemblance (sea, reeds, heaven, earth). The absence of our figure in the ancient Near Eastern and classical literary traditions, suggests that its origins, as well as its port of entry into rabbinic literature, must be sought elsewhere.

69. To this we may add a gaonic-era piyyut, attested in a Genizah fragment, in which the two tropes are combined—the “tools” of oral communication as found in the “Nishmat kol ḥai” prayer are listed, followed by the tools of written communication. All are deemed insufficient for conveying the thanksgiving and praises inspired by the miracles God has performed. See Stephen Reif, “‘We-’ilu Finu’: A Poetic Aramaic Version,” in Kenesset Ezra: Literature and Life in the Synagogue;Studies Presented to Ezra Fleischer [Hebrew], ed. Shulamit Elitzur et al. (Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi, 1994) 269–83.

72  Making History

Eastward, ho! We turn now to cultures further to the east. Irving Linn pointed to the presence of our trope in the “early literature of India.” Yet, of the two works he cites, one dates to no earlier than the sixth century and the other appears in the writing of a seventeenth-century Dutch ethnographer whose sources are unclear.70 Thanks to the efforts of my colleague Eric 70. Specifically, Linn identifies the Malabar version of a Sanskrit legend of the Ten Avatars as the earliest known appearance of our figure. The legend praises the kind acts of Krishna as so numerous “that in case the whole sea was filled with ink, and the earth made of paper, and all the inhabitants of the terrestrial globe were only imploy’d in writing, they would not be sufficient to give an exact account of all the miracles wrought by Kisna [= Krishna] in one hundred years time, in the third period of the world called Duapersinge, containing 864,000 years.” (In a private communication (March 27, 2021), Richard Salomon suggests that the mangled term Duapersinge for dvāpara can be traced to Theodor Zachariae’s paper “Und wenn der Himmel wär Papier,” Zeitschrift des Vereins für Volkskunde 11 [1901]: 331; reprinted in Kleiner Schriften [Bonn: Kurt Schroeder, 1920], 205–6.) This legend is found in Philip Baldaeus, The Idolatry of the East-India Pagans, translated from the High Dutch by Awnsham Churchill and appearing in Awnsham and John Churchill, A Collection of Voyages and Travels … (London: Printed for Awnsham and John Churchill, 1704), 3:888 (although Linn cites the 1745 edition, which I could not access during the 2021 pandemic). Linn does not offer a date for this passage, nor does Baldaeus, the seventeenth-century Dutch minister who lived in the north of Ceylon and whose volume describing the life, language, and culture of East Indian countries such as Malabar, Coromondel, and Ceylon contains the legend of the Ten Avatars. Baldaeus states that his account “of the idolatry of the pagans in the East Indies … [was] taken partly from their own Vedam, or law-book, and authentick [sic] manuscripts, partly from frequent conversation with their priests and divines,” but the actual source (oral? written?) of the passage in question is not clear. Thus, we cannot assume, based on Baldaeus’s lively retelling of the story of Krishna, that our trope is an ancient one. The second “early” source identified by Linn is the Vāsavadattā, by Subandhu, who was active in the sixth century CE: “The pain that hath been felt by this maiden for thy sake might be written or told in some wise or in some way in many thousands of ages if the sky became paper, the sea an ink-well, the scribe Brāhma, (and) the narrator the Lord of Serpents” (taken from Vāsavadattā: A Sanskrit Romance by Subandhu, trans.Louis Gray [New York: Columbia University Press, 1913], §238, p. 115). As Linn notes, the passage is described by A. Berriedale Keith, A History of Sanskrit Literature (Oxford: Clarendon, 1928), 312, as an example of the rhetorical form known as Sambhāvana, a literary supposition that relies on a mental picture. Here at least the date of the figure is secure—the sixth century. Finally, Linn points to an occurrence of our figure in a West Asian context, in a story from the Bohtis of Kurdistan. The story is found in a collection of (oral?) Kurdish stories and songs assembled by Eugen Prym and Albert Socin as Kurdische Sammlungen (2 vols., St. Petersburg: Eggers & Glasounof, 1887– 90), 2:202. This particular story appears to consist of fragments from various works, and features the talking skull of a deceased king. In the final line, and in response to a question from Jesus, the skull employs a truncated form of our figure (seas = ink, leaves = paper) to signal his inability to describe the horrors of hell. Again, Linn offers no date for this passage (nor, as far as I can tell, do Prym and Socin), but an “early” date is highly questionable. Bohtan (or Buhtan or Bokhti) was a medieval Kurdish principality in southeastern Anatolia. The passage is clearly post-Islamic and likely reflects an awareness of the qur’anic use of our figure. In short, the three applications of our figure detailed by Linn do not count among its

Hayes: Seas of Ink and Reeds for Pens  73 Greene, it is now apparent that our trope appeared in an Indic Buddhist text dating to ca. 200 CE, as well as fourth-century CE Chinese Buddhist translations of older Indian texts. I am indebted to Professor Greene for the following summary of the evidence from the Buddhist texts, which I have lightly edited. In extant Indic Buddhist literature, the figure appears in the Gaṇḍavyūha, an extremely widely known Mahāyāna scripture whose dating is not completely certain, but which is usually placed ca. 200 CE. The context is the story of a seeker of Buddhist wisdom who goes to different teachers to learn various teachings (“dharma discourses”). He learns a particularly amazing and extensive one, whose breadth is described using this figure:

earliest applications, as will be argued below. For examples of the trope in South Asia, see the Sivamahimnah Stotram, a Sanskrit liturgical hymn of devotion to Shiva by Puspadanta, dated to the tenth century by Elaine M. Fisher, Hindu Pluralism: Religion and the Public Sphere in Early Modern South India, South Asia across the Disciplines (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2017), 206 n. 2. The passage is translated in Puspadanta The Mahimnastava: or, Praise of Shiva’s Greatness, ed. W. Norman Brown, American Institute of Indian Studies, Publication 1 (Poona: American Institute of Indian Studies, 1965), 19, as follows: “Were there inkpowder equal to Mount Asita in an inkpot like the ocean, the pen a branch from the [five] best trees of the gods, and the leaf (on which to write) the wide earth, if Sāradā (Sarasvatī) should take the pen and write for eternity, still, O lord, she would not encompass your qualities.” However, the trope does not appear in the earliest attested version of the text, a stone inscription that dates to the eleventh or twelfth century CE (the inscription’s date is damaged; ibid., 21 n. 1). Moreover, Madhusūdana’s Sarasvatī’s commentary on the ­Mahimnastotra ends at verse 31 (ibid., 7) suggesting that the ink trope in verse 32 was a later addition to the text (Shankar Nair in a written communication [forwarded April 3, 2021] states that the addition might be as late as the sixteenth century). Louis Fenech, in a written communication (forwarded March 29, 2021), points to the trope’s appearance in Sikh sacred texts, the Adi Granth and the Dasam Granth, though these are relatively late works (early seventeenth century CE). See also Tyler Williams, “If the Whole World Were Paper: A History of Writing in the Vernacular,” History and Themes, Theme Issue 56 (2018): 81–101, for interesting insights into the relationship among changes in language (e.g., the commitment of the vernacular to writing), material practices of writing, and ideologies of writing that suggest a future avenue of inquiry regarding the rabbinic materials that is beyond the immediate purpose of this article. Tyler’s article points to the use of our trope by a fifteenth-century, “low-caste” weaver and saint named Kabir. Kabir was one of a number of illiterate subaltern poet-saints who challenged the epistemic and cultural privilege accorded to writing by highlighting its materiality, banality, and mundane character, and asserting the superiority of learning through direct cultivated experience rather than the study of texts (Tyler, “If the Whole World Were Paper,” 81, 88). Yet, despite this attitude, these poet-saints lived in a postliterate society, and, as a result, metaphors of writing structured their thinking. Thus, Kabir—who claimed never to have touched ink or paper—employs our trope as follows: “If I were to turn the seven seas to ink, and make a pen of all the forests, and if I were to turn the whole earth into paper, still Hari’s virtues could not be [fully] written” (Tyler, 93). Tyler plans in a future work to discuss our trope’s appearance in early Hindi. I am grateful to Professor Supriya Gandhi for bringing the scholarship on the use of our figure in South Asian contexts to my attention.

74  Making History taṃ cāhaṃ samantanetraṃ dharmaparyāyam udgṛhṇāmi . . . yasya likhyamānasya mahāsamudrāpskandhapramāṇā ca maṣiḥ, sumeruparvatarājamātrakalamasaṃcayaḥ kṣayaṃ vrajet / na ca tasya dharmaparyāyasya ekaikasmāt parivartād ­ekaikasmād dharmadvārā ‘kaikasmād dharmanayād ekaikasmād dharma­ yoneḥ ekaikasmād dharmapadaprabhedāt kṣaya upalabhyate, na ūnatvaṃ vā paryādānaṃ vā paryavasthānaṃ vā paryantaniṣṭhā vā71 I then took up, etc., that dharma discourse named “Universal Eye,” the exhaustion, diminishment, containment, completion, or boundary of each of whose chapters, teachings, methods, deliveries, and verses would not be reached even if written down using ink in measure equal to the waters of the great ocean and reed [pens] in a collection as big as Sumeru king of mountains.

A Chinese translation of a version of this text was made in the early 400s (supplying a firm date for its existence) and is basically identical, with a few small variations. That source is the Hua yan jing, T.278, p. 961 b20-23.72 Greene was unable to find other examples of this figure in extant Sanskrit Buddhist texts. Nevertheless, what is clear to Greene is that by no later than 400 CE, the figure was a common trope in Indian Buddhist literature because it shows up in several other Chinese translations of Buddhist texts made around this time. These other translations, which employ the trope to express the vast wisdom of the Buddha or one of his disciples, are: 1. T no. 129, the Sanmojie jing, which is a Chinese translation of the Sumāgadhâvadāna (Story of Sumāgadha). Here is the passage with Greene’s translation: 佛言： 以一天下樹枝及與鳥毛 作筆書佛經，樹枝鳥毛悉皆可盡，佛智不可盡； 大如須彌山墨磨研四海水沾筆，須彌山墨、四海水皆可盡，佛智終不可盡。

(T.129, p. 845 b14-18) The Buddha said: “If one were to make all the trees and bird feathers of the world into pens and with them write down the Buddhist scriptures, then even if one were to use up all those trees and bird feathers the Buddha’s wisdom would still not be completely exhausted [in that writing]. If one were to grind up an inkstone as large as Mt. Sumeru [king of mountains] in the waters of the four great oceans and use that for ink, then even if that Sumeru-sized inkstone and the waters of the four oceans were used up entirely the Buddha’s wisdom would in the end not be exhausted [in that writing].”

71. P. L. Vaidya, ed. Gaṇḍavyūhasūtram (Darbhanga: Mithila Institute, 1960), 53. 72. “T” is the Chinese Buddhist canon. All references to “T” are to Taishō shinshū daizōkyō, ed. Takakusu Junjirō and Watanabe Kaigyoku (Tokyo: Taishō issaikyō kankōkai, 1924–1932). Texts are indicated by text number (T) followed by page, register, and line number(s).

Hayes: Seas of Ink and Reeds for Pens  75 According to Greene, there are several other versions of this story in Chinese translation, but this particular passage does not appear in those other versions as far as can be determined. The dating of this translation is uncertain. It was definitely in existence before the year 500 CE, and, based on its language and style, it probably dates to earlier than 400 CE, though this also remains to be determined. Noteworthy here is the reference to an “inkstone,” which is definitely a distinctly Chinese way of making ink. Presumably this was a creative translation of whatever was in the original Indic text. 2. The translation Zeng yi Ahan jing, which is a Chinese translation of Ekottarika-āgama. This translation was made ca. 400 CE. The particular chapter here is a version of the famous Mahāparinirvāṇa-sūtra (the story of the Buddha’s death), but, again, there does not appear to be any equivalent passage in the various other (Chinese, Sanskrit, or Pāli) versions of this text. This version runs: 以四大海水為墨，以須彌山為樹皮，現閻浮地草木作筆，復使三千大千剎 土人民盡能書，欲寫舍利弗比丘智慧之業，然童子當知，四大海水墨、 筆、人之漸漸命終，不能使舍利弗比丘智慧竭盡。(T.125, p. 750 b3-7) If one were to take the waters of the four great oceans and make them into ink, take Mt. Sumeru and make it into tree-bark on which to write,73 take the trees and grass of this [entire continent of] Jambudvīpa and make them into pens, and then further employ all the people living within all of the worlds of the entire universe and seek to have written down the wisdom possessed by the monk Śāriputra [who is the Buddha’s disciple foremost in wisdom], then, O child, you should know that those oceans of ink, the pens, and the lives of those people would come to an end but they still would not be able to exhaust [in that writing] the wisdom possessed by the monk Śāriputra.

3. The Fo ben xing jing, a biography of the Buddha, written in verse and translated into Chinese between 424 and 453 CE.                  

其此四方域, 諸生草樹木, 盡以用作筆, 三十六萬里, 以水和書墨, 須彌山入地, 三十六萬里, 齊水以上現, 亦復有三百, 北方以黃金, 東方以白銀, 南方紺琉璃, 皆使為素帛, 書盡樹木筆, 盡竭諸海水, 舍利弗智慧。(T.193, p. 104 c11-23)

大海所有水, 下至金剛際, 三十六萬里, 西方以水精, 遍書此素帛,

深廣長三百, 亦復有三百, 四方四寶成, 猶如須彌山, 不盡一弟子,

73. “Tree bark” reflects the Indian use of birch-bark as a writing material which is attested from ca. 1 in Gandhāra (northwest India). In this translation, the figure is not modified to reflect the Chinese use of paper (the invention of paper is widely attributed to the Chinese in the early second century CE). By contrast, the reference to an inkstone in the previous passage, may represent a localized variation of our trope that reflects Chinese writing technology.

76  Making History [Imagine if] one took all the grasses and trees of the entire world and made them into pens; and all the waters of the great ocean, which is 3,360,000 miles deep and broad, and made them into ink; and then took Mt Sumeru—which extends 3,360,000 miles down into the earth down to the adamantine extremity [of the world], the part above water-level also [going up] 3,360,000 miles, its four sides made of jewels, namely, the north side made of gold, the east of silver, the south of purple beryl, and the west of crystal—and made it into silk [for writing]. If one were to write to the exhaustion of these forests of pens, and this ocean of ink, and completely cover the silk with writing, then one would not exhaust the wisdom possessed by the Buddha’s one disciple Śāriputra.

Greene notes that the trope appears with numerous variations in the ­Chinese texts. For example, text 1 invokes bird feathers and text 2 enrolls all people as scribes. This prompts him to offer the following hypothesis: Since some of these variations have additional elements of comparison, one might suspect that, rather than serving as the figure’s source, the Gaṇḍavyūha (ca. 200 CE) adopted an already circulating image that was subject to variation. This hypothesis, therefore, would place our figure even earlier than the year 200 CE. Is there circumstantial evidence to support the hypothesis of the origin of our trope in Indian sources of the first or second century CE? Greene observes that this kind of trope is exceedingly common in very early Indian Buddhist (and indeed non-Buddhist) literature; that is to say, a literary trope whereby an impossibly large number/time/space/distance, etc., is “visualized” by using the natural world as a kind of counter. Thus, the never-beginning and never-ending cycle of death and rebirth (samsāra) is “measured” in the oldest strata of Buddhist scripture (ca. 200 BCE) as follows: Suppose, bhikkus, a man would cut up whatever grass, sticks, branches, and foliage there are in this Jambudīpa and collect them together in a single heap. Having done so, he would put them down, saying [for each one]: “This is my mother, this is my mother’s mother.” The sequence of that man’s mothers and grandmothers would not come to an end, yet the grass, wood, branches, and foliage in this Jambudīpa would be used up and exhausted.74

In another ancient passage, when asked about the length of an aeon, the Buddha responds that it is not easy to measure and provides a simile based on an element of nature instead: 74. From Bhikku Bodhi, The Connected Discourses of the Buddha: A New Translation of the Saṃyutta Nikāya; Translated from the Pāli, 2 vols., Teachings of the Buddha (Somerville, MA: Wisdom, 2000), 651.

Hayes: Seas of Ink and Reeds for Pens  77 Suppose, bhikku, there was a great stone mountain a yojana long, a yojana wide, and a yojana high, without holes or crevices, one solid mass of rock. At the end of every hundred years a man would stroke it once with a piece of Kāsian cloth. That great stone mountain might by this effort be worn away and eliminated but the aeon would still not have come to an end.75

As noted, however, in the case of our figure, each of the natural elements invoked is correlated to some aspect of the activity of writing. As a result, the vastness of the natural elements is transferred to the activity of writing in service of the claim that even a vast quantity of writing is inadequate for the task at hand. I submit that our figure’s unique correlation of vast elements of nature with the tools of writing (ink, pens, and paper/parchment), holds the key to our figure’s provenance. As Greene notes, even though writing was known in India from at least the third century BCE, it did not become widely used for the preservation of religious or other texts until around the turn of the Common Era, a date that corresponds roughly to the emergence of specifically Mahāyāna Buddhist literature in which writing (and in particular, the importance of copying religious texts in writing) is discussed often and ad nauseum. We may speculate then, that our trope, which combines the older Buddhist rhetorical form of natural “counters” with the newer tools of writing, arose within the Buddhist literature of India in the first centuries of the Common Era (with the Gaṇḍavyūha dating to ca. 200 CE serving as but one example). From there, it spread northeastward to China and westward along the Silk Road, entering rabbinic circles in Babylonia by the fourth century CE (judging by its appearance in b. Shabb. 11a) and in Palestine by the fourth–fifth century CE (judging by its appearance in Song Rab. 1:3, 1). Given the quite disparate applications of the figure in these two contexts, it is possible that it did not pass from one to the other but entered the two sites independently where it was then adapted to the needs and purpose of the local context.76 Our figure was not otherwise employed in rabbinic sources of the talmudic period, a fact that is not altogether surprising given the valorization of orality in talmudic culture. The figure pops up with slightly more frequency in the post-talmudic period, when writing was increasingly accepted as a medium for the study and transmission of rabbinic learning. 75. Ibid., 654. 76. The positive application of our figure in Song Rabbah in praise of great wisdom, more nearly resembles its use in the Indian sources, than does the negative application of our figure in b. Shabb. 11a to describe the unsearchable machinations of the government. At the very least, this suggests that the figure’s arrival in Palestine was direct. It is possible that the figure traveled from Palestine to Babylon, where it was employed negatively. But it is equally possible that the two centers received the figure independently as it traveled from the East.

78  Making History

Our Figure in the Qur’an Finally, I offer some brief reflections on the appearance of our figure in the Qur’an. Say, “If the sea were ink for the Words of my Lord, the sea would be exhausted before the Words of my Lord were exhausted, even if We brought the like thereof to replenish it.” (Q Al-Kahf 18:109) And if all the trees on earth were pens, and if the sea and seven more added to it [were ink], the Words of God would not be exhausted. (Q Luqmān 31:27)

The Qur’an preserves our trope in its most basic form: seas/ink and trees/ pens. Ink and pens are the only two items to appear in the oldest known attestation of our figure (the Gaṇḍavyūha) and they are constant and invariant elements appearing in all uses of our figure.77 To this basic pair, some texts add a writing surface (paper, parchment, silk), and some add human scribes, but the latter are clearly embellishments of the basic pairing of ink and pens. The Qur’an employs this unembellished form to describe the words of Allah as inexhaustible. How did our figure find its way into the Qur’an? For nearly two centuries, historical-critical scholars have labored to understand the Qur’an as the product of its late antique cultural context informed by the intellectual and literary traditions attested in the pre-Islamic Arabian Peninsula. Highlighting the Qur’an’s indebtedness to Jewish tradition, the early nineteenth-century scholar Abraham Geiger identified parallels in the Qur’an and rabbinic literature,78 and a century later Heinrich Speyer collected biblical and Jewish traditions reflected in the Qur’an.79 As Angelika Neuwirth observes, this groundbreaking scholarship freed the Qur’an from its later framing in Islam and relocated it in the late-antique context of its original hearers;80 at the same time, however, it contributed to a view of the Qur’an 77. As noted, the pens are correlated with various natural elements. In the Gaṇḍavyūha, they are correlated with reeds but in the Chinese translations with trees, grasses, and even bird feathers. 78. Abraham Geiger, Was hat Mohammed aus dem Judenthume aufgenommen? (What did Muhammad adopt from Judaism?) (Bonn: F. Baden, 1833). 79. Heinrich Speyer, Die biblischen Erzählungen im Qoran (Gräfenhainichen, 1931 [1935]; repr., Hildesheim: G. Olms, 1971). 80. Indeed, Neuwirth has been a leading voice in this effort, approaching the Qur’an as a text that arose alongside a community of hearers exposed to the pluricultural traditions of the Byzantine and Sasanian empires, including the rich intellectual traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Gnosticism. See Angelika Neuwirth, The Qur’an and Late Antiquity: A Shared Heritage, trans. Samuel Wilder, Oxford Studies in Late Antiquity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019).

Hayes: Seas of Ink and Reeds for Pens  79 as an epigonal work produced by an unoriginal author slavishly dependent on (and often distorting) older traditions.81 Geiger and other early scholars assumed that parallels between rabbinic tradition and the Qur’an were examples of direct borrowing from the former to the latter. Although neither Geiger nor Speyer noted the parallel use of our trope in the Qur’an and rabbinic sources, Linn did. Like other scholars of the era, he assumed the parallel was the result of direct borrowing, remarking that, “[t]he close and extensive contacts between Judaism and Islam are so well known that instances of direct literary influences awaken no surprise.”82 And yet there is reason to doubt the claim of direct borrowing in this case. First, five of the six rabbinic attestations of our figure are embellished versions that add to the basic formula of ink and pens, either parchment (Mas. Sof.), or scribes (Avot R. Nat. and Schol. Meg. Ta’an.), or in two cases, both parchment and scribes (Song Rab. and b. Shabb. 11a). It is more reasonable to suppose that the basic form of the figure (ink and pens) entered rabbinic tradition where it was embellished, than that the embellished form was adopted from rabbinic sources and stripped of its embellishments by the poetically and rhetorically inclined composer of the Qur’an.83 In addition, there are interesting differences between the qur’anic version and the embellished rabbinic versions that argue against direct dependence of the Qur’an on the rabbinic sources. Indeed, as we will now argue, it appears that regarding two of the rabbinic attestations, the direction of dependence may run from the Qur’an to the rabbinic sources. In the Qur’an’s figure, pens precede ink and are associated with trees. By contrast, in four of the embellished rabbinic versions, ink precedes pens, and pens are associated with swamp or river reeds, not trees. The following chart makes this clear. b. Shabb. 11a

Ink/seas

Pens/swamp [reeds]

Parchment/heaven

Scribes/humanity

Song Rab.

Ink/seas

Pens/swamp [reeds]

Scrolls/heaven, earth

Scribes/humanity

Avot R. Nat.

Ink/seas

Pens/reeds

Scribes/humanity

Schol. Meg. Ta’an

Ink/seas

Reeds/rivers

Scribes/world

The differences between the embellished rabbinic formulations in this chart and the qur’anic formulation suggest that our figure was independently absorbed and applied by both corpora. As argued above, our fig-

81. Ibid., 36–39. 82. Linn, “If All the Sky Were Parchment,” 957. 83. For more on the poetic and rhetorical qualities of the Qur’an, see Neuwirth, Qur’an and Late Antiquity, chapter 12 (“The Qur’an and Poetry”) and chapter 13 (“The Rhetorical Qur’an”).

80  Making History ure appears to have entered rabbinic tradition in Babylonia and Palestine in the pre-Islamic period (ca. fourth century), where it was adapted, embellished, and applied in culturally specific ways by the tradents or compilers of b. Shabbat 11a and Song Rabbah 1:13, 1. These sites served as the basis for the trope’s very similar appearances in Avot of Rabbi Nathan and Scholion to Megillat Ta’anit. Quite independently, a basic form of our figure referring only to pens and ink found its way into the Qur’an, where it was applied in a culturally specific way—to describe the words of Allah as inexhaustible. That the figure was not further embellished or proliferated may reflect an ambivalent attitude, if not outright aversion, to writing.84 In contrast to the four rabbinic sources just discussed, the remaining two rabbinic attestations of our figure place pens before ink and associate pens with trees rather than reeds, exactly as the Qur’an does. Only one of these two sources adds an additional element (parchment). The following chart illustrates this point. Mas. Soferim Kallah Rabbati

Parchment/heavens

Pens/trees

Ink/seas

Pens/trees

Ink/seas

The rabbinic formulations in this second chart are much closer to the qur’anic version of our figure than they are to the other rabbinic formulations in the first chart suggesting a connection to the former rather than the latter. Moreover, unlike the four sources listed in the first chart, Massekhet Soferim 16 and Kallah Rabbati 6 can be securely dated to the post-Islamic period. Thus, in light of the post-Islamic dates of these two sources, and the very close match between their version of our figure and the qur’anic version, it is highly likely that the pen-and-ink trope made its way into these sources either directly or indirectly from the Qur’an. This conclusion is not as farfetched as it may sound. In recent years, scholars have become increasingly attuned to the contribution of the Qur’an to post-talmudic Jewish 84. The Qur’an was composed and transmitted orally. According to my colleague, ­ ravis Zadeh (written communication, March 19, 2021), early pietistic Muslims, many taken T up with the collection of Hadith, were famously averse to writing during the first two centuries of Islamic history, for which see Michael Cook “The Opponents of the Writing of Tradition in Early Islam” in Arabica 44 (1997): 437–530; Gregor Schoeler, “Mündliche Thora und Hadīt: Überlieferung, Schreibverbot, Redaktion,” Der Islam 66 (1989): 213–51; Schoeler, The Oral and the Written in Early Islam, ed. James E. Montgomery (New York: Routledge, 2006); and Schoeler, The Genesis of Literature in Islam: From the Aural to the Read, in collaboration with and translated by Shawkat M. Toorawa, rev. ed., New Edinburgh Islamic Surveys (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009). This aversion also appears to have extended in some measure to qur’anic codices and manifested in the early resistance to a so-called scriptio plena for the Qur’an, for which see Travis Zadeh, “Touching and Ingesting: Early Debates over the Material Qur’an” in JAOS 129.3 (2009): 443–66. I am indebted to Professor Zadeh for these observations and references.

Hayes: Seas of Ink and Reeds for Pens  81 tradition. As Michael Pregill has demonstrated, “Rabbinic tradition was permeable to claims and ideas circulating in a near Eastern world dominated by Islam after the seventh and eighth centuries.”85 A final note regarding the qur’anic contexts of our figure is in order. The two suras that contain our figure are known for their engagement with extra-qur’anic lore. Q Al-Kahf 18, for example, contains the story of the Companions of the Cave, known in Christian tradition as The Seven Sleepers of Ephesus,86 and the story of Duhl-Qarnayn, which bears similarities to the Alexander Romance.87 Q Luqmān 31 contains the wisdom of a pre-Islamic Arabian sage known as Luqman, whose sayings may be connected with the Aḥiqar tradition.88 The incorporation of literary motifs and images from an array of cultural sources is thus a feature of these suras. Moreover, according to the earliest sīra (biographical) collections on the life of the prophet, including the famed sīra of Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq (d. 768), and Qur’an commentaries (tafsīr),89 Q Luqmān 31:27 was revealed in the context of the prophet’s disputations with the Jews of Medina. al-Ṭabarī, writes in his commentary that a group of Jewish leaders chal85. In this connection, see Michael E. Pregill, “A Calf, a Body that Lows”: The Golden Calf from Late Antiquity to Classical Islam,” in Golden Calf Traditions in Early Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, ed. Eric F. Mason and Edmondo F. Lupieri, Themes in Biblical Narrative (Leiden: Brill, 2019), 264–96. Pregill, notes that “a recognition that some major midrashic sources were redacted after the rise of Islam and thus contain traditions that were not only addressing Muslim claims but actually informed by some knowledge of the early Islamic tradition has been slow in coming” (280). Pregill examines qur’anic and Jewish traditions concerning the golden calf and concludes that “in the case before us … what appear to be midrashic precursors to material in the Qur’an itself are actually Jewish responses to Muslim exegesis of the Qur’an that emerged significantly after the rise of Islam” (280). 86. Preserved in a Syriac version dating to the early sixth century CE, though deriving from a Greek original. See Pieter W. van der Horst, “Pious Long-Sleepers in Greek, Jewish, and Christian Antiquity,” in Tradition, Transmission, and Transformation from Second Temple Literature through Judaism and Christianity in Late Antiquity: Proceedings of the Thirteenth ­International Symposium of the Orion Center for the Study of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Associated Literature, Jointly Sponsored by the Hebrew University Center for the Study of Christianity, 22–24 February, 2011, ed. Menahem Kister et al., STDJ 113 (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 93–111, here 106–8. 87. See Rebecca Edwards, “Two Horns, Three Religions. How Alexander the Great ended up in the Quran” (Paper presented at the American Philological Association Annual Meeting in 2002 but supplied to the author in a private communication. An abstract of the presentation is available at https://classicalstudies.org/sites/default/files/documents/abstracts/edwardsr. pdf.) 88. See Dimitri Gutas, “Classical Arabic Wisdom Literature: Nature and Scope,” JAOS 101.1 (1981): 49–86, especially 55–58. 89. This collection forms the basis of the slightly later collection by Ibn Hishām (d. ca. 833), al-Sīra al-nabawiyya, ed.Umar Abd al-Salām Tadmurī, 4 vols., 3rd ed. (Beirut: Dār al-Kitāb al-Arabī, 1990), 1:335–36 (on Q 31:27). It is also cited by al- Abū Jafar al-Ṭabarī (d. 923), al-Jāmi al-bayān fī tawīl al-Qurān, ed. Abd Allāh ibn Abd al-Muḥsin al-Turkī, 26 vols. (Cairo: Hajar, 2001), whose comprehensive Qur’an commentary is considered one of the best examples of the genre.

82  Making History lenged the prophet by asserting that the already revealed Torah contained the complete divine revelation. The prophet is said to have responded with our trope in order to indicate that the Jews do not possess all divine wisdom, because the words of God are inexhaustible. Neuwirth argues that the Qur’an is “evidence of the ‘drama of argumentation’ that played out between the community and the contemporary representatives of the contemporaneous traditions.”90 It was as an “integral part of the debate culture of late antiquity,”91 emerging out of an engagement with the already extant Jewish and Christian traditions, and creatively responding to central questions of its time.” How might such an understanding of the Qur’an shed light on Q Luqmān 31:27? Let us grant, following early Islamic tradition, that Q Luqmān 31:27 arose in response to the Jewish claim that the written Torah of the Jews represents the complete divine revelation. What better way to refute a claim of exhaustive written revelation than with a counterclaim asserting that an exhaustive written revelation of the words of God is an impossibility? To meet the exigencies of this debate, Muhammad adopted and adapted a known, pan-cultural trope of inexhaustibility, applying it to the words of God. He did so in order to rebut a serious external challenge to the authenticity of his own revelation leveled by his Jewish contemporaries. In short, our figure, indigenous to neither of these highly oral cultures, proved eminently useful in the “drama of argumentation” over the exhaustive character of the written revelation, that played out between them.92 As noted in the introduction, the migrations of our writerly trope would continue across the centuries, a topic for other scholars to pursue. The purpose of this study was to accompany our trope in the earliest stages of its journey in order to gain a richer understanding of the pluricultural environment of late antiquity and its network of intercultural exchange. Like any traveler, I have had to rely on the assistance and advice of those more familiar with the terrain than I, and I am keenly aware that I will never be able to express the full measure of my gratitude, not if all the seas were ink …

90. Neuwirth, Qur'an and Late Antiquity, 10. 91. Ibid., 1. 92. After writing this paper, I learned of a presentation given by Shari Lowin at the 2019 conference of the Association of Jewish Studies, entitled “If All the Seas Were Ink: Tracking the Evolution of a Motif across Classical Islamic and Jewish Literature.” I requested a copy of the paper and was delighted to see that Professor Lowin reaches similar conclusions regarding the polemical context of the trope’s appearance in the Qur’an. Professor Lowin also rejects the standard “dependence” model, although for reasons different from those presented here.

II. Rabbis in Context

David’s Bravado in Light of Sasanian Cultural Practices CAROL BAKHOS

T

hroughout his prolific career, Richard Kalmin has demonstrated time and again the need to explore the various contexts in which rabbinic stories were constructed, circulated, adapted, and appropriated. Moreover, his keen attentiveness to situating rabbinic literature vis-à-vis other texts has contributed not only to our understanding of specific rabbinic narratives but also to our broader understanding of rabbinic literature, as well as to the cultural and historical contexts that shape and situate rabbinic storytelling. From a bird’s-eye perspective, Kalmin’s work goes a long way toward overcoming the artificial disciplinary dichotomies between philology and history, and underscores the ways in which literary texts are cultural and historical artifacts. To be sure, Kalmin’s work is a product of its time, a time when the study of rabbinic literature advanced on the heels of other fields, and in turn contributed to the study of the New Testament, patristic exegesis, and late antique Judaism. Scholarship in rabbinics has also made its presence felt in other circles such as literary theory and Iranian Studies.1 More and more, rabbinic narratives are not only analyzed in terms of their literary quality but are also considered artifacts that function as

1. Richard Sarason aptly describes the current state of rabbinic studies, in particular midrash: “The cautious, methodologically self-conscious juxtaposition and interweaving of multiple textual loci; of texts and a variety of contexts; of literary, historical, and religious-­ cultural perspectives and methodologies—all provide the contemporary scholar with fruitful lenses for the interpretation of what more and more is understood to be a dense, richly layered, multiform, and overdetermined (in the Freudian sense of being generated by multiple causal factors) literary corpus bearing witness to a complex and dynamic culture that produced and lies behind it. Under these circumstances, no single reading or interpretive lens will suffice to do justice to this rich complexity” (“Introduction,” in How Should Rabbinic Literature Be Read in the Modern World, ed. Matthew Kraus, Judaism in Context [Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias, 2006], 9).

85

86  Making History c­ onveyors and mediators of rabbinic culture.2 As Kalmin’s prodigious scholarly output demonstrates, rabbinic narratives yield insight into the milieu of those who recorded, transmitted, and lived by them. In tribute to Kalmin, I will take as my starting point a subject he explored over two decades ago, that is, the image of King David in Palestinian and Babylonian sources. My conclusion about the importance of reading b. Pesahim 119b in light of Iranian cultural concerns owes a debt to Kalmin’s approach to the Talmud in its Iranian context.3 And, indeed the past two decades of rabbinic scholarship have abundantly demonstrated that in order to comprehend Sasanian Jewry more fully, especially the rabbis and the heritage they bequeath in the Babylonian Talmud, we need to situate it geographically, socially, intellectually, and culturally within its broader Iranian context.4 My analysis of b. Pesahim 119b in no 2. Studies on the subject abound. A few examples: Jeffrey L. Rubenstein, The Culture of the Babylonian Talmud (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004); Rubenstein, Talmudic Stories: Narrative Art, Composition, and Culture (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003); Alyssa M. Gray, Charity in Rabbinic Judaism: Atonement, Rewards, and Righteousness, Routledge Jewish Studies (New York: Routledge, 2019); Dina Stein, Textual Mirrors: Reflexivity, Midrash, and the Rabbinic Self, Divinations (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014); Mira Balberg, Purity, Body, and Self in Early Rabbinic Literature (Oakland: University of California Press, 2014); Jason Sion Mokhtarian, Rabbis, Sorcerers, Kings, and Priests: The Culture of the Talmud in Ancient Iran (Oakland: University of California Press, 2015). And in the present volume, see Beth Berkowitz, “The Tall Tales of Babylonian Talmud Bekhorot 57b: Zombie Mothers, Angry Birds, and Egg Drop Soup,” on how the story of the animal orphan is culturally subversive; and Sarah Wolf, “‘Between Her and Others’: The ‘Spirit of Jealousy’ in Numbers 5:14 and Its Ancient Jewish Reception,” on how emotions, in particular qinah, are constructed within rabbinic culture. For a list of recent studies on emotions in rabbinic literature, see Wolf, n. 1. 3. See, e.g., Richard Kalmin, “Talmudic Attitudes toward Dream Interpreters: Preliminary Thoughts on Their Iranian Cultural Context,” in The Talmud in Its Iranian Context, ed. Carol Bakhos and M. Rahim Shayegan, TSAJ 135 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010), 83–99; and Kalmin, Migrating Tales: The Talmud’s Narratives and Their Historical Context (Oakland: University of California Press, 2014), which includes several revised chapters of articles published elsewhere on the subject. 4. One cannot overstate the impact Yaakov Elman’s work has had in propelling the field in this direction. A few of his studies include the following: “Acculturation to Elite Persian Norms and Modes of Thought in the Babylonian Jewish Community of Late Antiquity,” in Neṭi‘ot le-Daṿid: Jubilee Volume for David Weiss Halivni, ed. Ephraim B. Halivni, Zvi A. Steinfeld, and Yaakov Elman (Jerusalem: Orhot, 2004), 31–56; “Middle Persian Culture and Babylonian Sages: Accommodation and Resistance in the Shaping of Rabbinic Legal Tradition,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Talmud and Rabbinic Literature, ed. Charlotte Elisheva Fonrobert and Martin S. Jaffee (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 165–97; “The Other in the Mirror: Iranians and Jews View One Another—Questions of Identity, Conversion, and Exogamy in the Fifth-Century Iranian Empire (Part One),” in Iranian and Zoroastrian Studies in Honor of Prods Oktor Skjaervo, ed. Carol Altman Bromberg, Nicholas Sims-Williams, and Ursula Sims-Williams, Bulletin of the Asia Institute special issue 19 (2009): 15–25, and “Toward an Intellectual History of Sasanian Law: An Intergenerational Dispute in Hērbedestān 9 and

Bakhos: David’s Bravado  87 way exemplifies the necessary immersion in the study of the language, culture, society, and ethos of the Sasanian Empire required for a full and proper investigation. Nonetheless, I hope that those far better equipped than I will explore the ways in which ancient Iranian notions of shame and humility contribute to our reading of the text.

The Figure of David in Rabbinic Literature One need not look beyond the Bible to discover the multifarious depictions of King David, son of Jesse: slayer of Goliath, conqueror of Jerusalem, lover of women, king of Israel, passionate poet, national hero, savvy statesman.5 Charming and charismatic, a narcissist par excellence, he toyed with the hearts of men and women alike. As Harold Bloom observes, “Like everyone else, from Samuel, Saul, and Jonathan down to the present, Yahweh is charmed by David.”6 He also plays a significant role in Christian theology and is an important figure in the Qur’an.7 The image of David looms large in Israel’s national narrative, but this image is far more

Its Rabbinic and Roman Parallels,” in Bakhos and Shayegan, Talmud in Its Iranian Context, 21–57. Indeed, over the past decade scholars of late antique Judaism have increasingly turned to Sasanian society, history, and culture in order to throw light on Babylonian Jewry. A few examples include the following: Yishai Kiel, “Selected Topics in Laws of Ritual Defilement: Between the Babylonian Talmud and Pahlavi Literature” (PhD diss., Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2011); Shai Secunda and Steven Fine, eds., Shoshannat Yaakov: Jewish and Iranian Studies in Honor of Yaakov Elman, Brill Reference Library of Judaism 35 (Leiden: Brill, 2012); Geoffrey Herman, A Prince without a Kingdom: The Exilarch in the Sasanian Era, TSAJ 150 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2012); Shai Secunda, The Iranian Talmud: Reading the Bavli in Its Sasanian Context, Divinations (Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press, 2013); and Jason Sion Mokhtarian, Rabbis, Sorcerers, Kings, and Priests: The Culture of the Talmud in Ancient Iran (Oakland: University of California Press, 2015). For an important reassessment of the field’s turn to Middle Persian, see Simcha Gross, “Irano-Talmudica and Beyond: Next Steps in the Contextualization of the Babylonian Talmud,” JQR 106.2 (2016): 248–55; and Gross, “Rethinking Babylonian Rabbinic Acculturation in the Sasanian Empire,” JAJ 9.2 (2018): 280– 310. Geoffrey Herman and Jeffrey L. Rubenstein, ed., The Aggadah of the Bavli and Its Cultural World, BJS 362 (Providence, RI: Brown Judaic Studies, 2018), is an excellent collection of articles exploring aggadic stories through an intercultural lens. 5. See Yair Zakovitch, ed., Dovid: mi-roeh l’Meshiach (Jerusalem: Yad Yitshaq ben Tsvi, 1995); Robert Alter, The David Story: A Translation with Commentary of 1 and 2 Samuel (New York: W. W. Norton, 1999), ix–xxxv; David Wolpe, David: The Divided Heart, Jewish Lives (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014); Joel Baden, The Historical David: The Real Life of an Invented Hero (New York: HarperOne, 2014). 6. Harold Bloom, The Book of J (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1990), 41-42. 7. See Marzena Zawanowska and Mateusz Wilk, eds., The Character of David in Judaism, Christianity and Islam: Warrior, Poet, Prophet and King, Themes in Biblical Narrative (Leiden: Brill, 2021).

88  Making History uniform and positive than that found in the Bible.8 Even the rabbinic portrayal of David is less monolithic. In The Sage in Jewish Society in Late Antiquity, Kalmin argues that Palestinian rabbis tend to whitewash David’s character; his behavior is rendered as comporting with the acts of saints, not sinners.9 The Babylonian sages, on the other hand, have no vested interest in diminishing David’s scandalous behavior and are willing to criticize him.10 Adding further evidence to his argument, in “Midrash and Social History,” Kalmin surveys additional material to support his conclusion about fundamental differences between Palestinian and Babylonian rabbinic statements about Kind David: Palestinian and Babylonian rabbinic statements about David are not diametrically opposed, but they do exhibit clearly opposing tendencies. Palestinian rabbis praise David and downplay his sins more frequently than do Babylonian rabbis, and Babylonian rabbis exhibit a much greater tendency to acknowledge David’s sins than do Palestinian rabbis. Palestinian rabbis, furthermore, tend to acknowledge what are from the rabbinic perspective only minor sins, while Babylonian rabbis acknowledge his most serious crimes.11

Nevertheless, Kalmin notes exceptions to this tendency such as b. Pesahim 119b, which he maintains is a favorable depiction of David. ­Similarly,

8. Compare the more critical treatment of David in Samuel–Kings to that in Chronicles. For a compelling reading of David as the beloved in Song of Songs, see Sheila Tuller Keiter, Perils of Wisdom: The Scriptural Solomon in Jewish Tradition, Judaism in Context (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias, 2021), 144–55. 9. Richard Kalmin, The Sage in Jewish Society in Late Antiquity (London: Routledge, 1999). 10. Kalmin’s argument is part of a broader thesis based on an examination of a large group of Babylonian and Palestinian traditions. He draws our attention to how different cultural currents between rabbinic communities impacted each community’s depiction of biblical heroes. As he compellingly observes, whereas Babylonian rabbis are drawn to Ezra, a Babylonian who travels to Israel only to discover that the Israelite men married non-Israelite women, and hail their native son a hero, Palestinian Amoraim diminish his importance. Palestinian texts are not, however, uniform. Earlier sources, namely, Tannaitic literature, demonstrate no aversion to Ezra. Kalmin attributes the difference between Tannaitic and Amoraic Palestinian evidence to the emerging prominence of Babylonia. He writes: “… during the Tannaitic period, Babylonia had not yet emerged as a competitor to Palestine for preeminence in the rabbinic world of late antiquity. A biblical character who hails from Persia, therefore, and who presupposes the superiority of Babylonian Jewry is not perceived as a threat by Palestinian Tannaim, since there was no significant Babylonian rabbinic threat to their hegemony. Babylonia emerges as a major competitor only during the Amoraic period and it is at this point that we begin to see the use of Ezra in polemical contexts” (Sage in Jewish Society, 17). 11. Richard Kalmin, “Midrash and Social History,” in Current Trends in the Study of Midrash, ed. Carol Bakhos, JSJSup 106 (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 135–59, here 135–36.

Bakhos: David’s Bravado  89 Avigdor Shinan considers it an approbation of David’s character.12 What at first appears as laudatory, however, giving David pride of place among Israel’s patriarchs, is an ironic parody that implicitly features his many misdeeds. Rather than reading it at face value, as a rabbinic rehabilitation of David’s character, it should be read as a parody.13 It is not only a parody that denigrates David, however. It also operates on another level, calling into question the righteous character of the patriarchs of Israel.

David’s Blessing in b. Pesahim 119b B. Pesahim 119b relates an exegetical narrative about a future feast the Holy One Blessed Be He prepares for the righteous. The narrative is an interpretation of Gen 21:8: Rav Avira taught this in the name of Rav Ami and sometimes in the name of Rav Asi. What is meant by the verse, “And the child grew and was weaned [va-yiggamel]” (Gen 21:8)?  The Holy One Blessed be He will make a great banquet for the righteous on the day He shows [sheyigmol] his love to the descendants of Isaac. After they eat and drink, they give Abraham our father the cup of blessing. He says to them, “I cannot bless for Ishmael issued from me.” They give the cup to Isaac. He says to them, “I cannot bless, for Esau issued from me.” They give the cup to Jacob who says to them, “I cannot bless, for I married two sisters in their lifetimes that in the future the Torah will forbid them to me.” [They give it] to Moses. He says to them, “I cannot bless for I did not merit entrance into the land of Israel, during neither life nor death.” Joshua says to them, “I cannot bless because I have no sons.” [They give the cup] to David. He says, “I will bless and it is fitting for me to bless, as it is written, ‘I will lift up the cup of salvation, and call upon the name of the Lord.’” (Ps 116:13)14

12. Avigdor Shinan, “Ha-Melech David be-Sifrut Hazal,” in Dovid: mi-roeh l’Meshiach, ed Yair Zakovitch (Jerusalem: Yad Yitshaq ben Tsvi, 1995), 181–99, especially185–86. See also his “King David of the Sages,” in From Bible to Midrash: Portrayals and Interpretative Practices, ed. Hanne Trautner-Kromann (Lund: Arcus, 2005), 53–78. 13. James A. Diamond comes to a similar conclusion regarding the parodic aspects of the story (“King of the Sages: Rabbinic Rehabilitation or Ironic Parody,” Prooftexts 27.3 [2007]: 373–426). Whereas his reading is embedded in a purely literary context, my conclusions also consider the Iranian cultural context of etiquette. Moreover, Diamond does not deal with the way in which the story also parodies Israel’s election. 14. According to manuscript Munich 6 (unless otherwise noted, all translations are my own): :‫ וזימנין אמ' לה משמיה דר' אסי‬,‫דרש רב עוירא זימנין אמ' לה משמיה דר' אמי‬ .‫מאי דכת' "ויגדל הילד ויגמל"? עתיד הקב"ה לעשות סעודה לצדיקים ביום שיגמול חסד לזרעו של יצחק‬ ,‫ אומר להם איני מברך שיצא ממני ישמעאל‬,‫לאחר שיאכלו וישתו יתנו כוס לאברהם‬ ,‫יתנו כוס ליצחק אומר להם איני מברך שיצא ממני עשו‬ ,‫יתנו כוס ליעקב או' להם איני מברך שנשאתי שתי אחיות שעתידה תורה לאסרן עלי‬

90  Making History The passage describes Israel’s great patriarchs and leaders from Abraham to David assembled at a messianic feast for the righteous hosted by God. At the end of the banquet, one of the guests is expected to offer the traditional after-meal blessing. When the cup of wine is offered to the guests preceding David, each shows deference and humility. They express their limitations, which are not immoral or necessarily a fault of their own, but nonetheless cause them to decline the great honor. By sharp contrast, David, as James Diamond avers, “chronologically places last, and is therefore the youngest of the group that has gathered, ignores the model of self-deprecation projected by his cohorts and hurriedly accepts the privilege they have denied themselves.”15 Because Abraham and Isaac have produced blemished offspring, they consider themselves unworthy of the honor. This is not the case for Jacob. He also deems himself unworthy but for another reason—he marries two sisters, Leah and Rachel, an act that the Torah prohibits.16 Moses disqualifies himself because he did not merit entering the promised land and Joshua has no male descendants. One by one, each exposes his unworthiness, except for David, who presumptuously picks up the cup and does the honors. In the very act of praising David, however, the passage highlights his character flaws, making him the least worthy to raise the cup and say Grace. One is hard-pressed to accept each guest’s humble demurral. After all, why are Abraham and Isaac at fault for Ishmael and Esau, who, relative to David’s sons, are rather innocuous? David’s eldest son Amnon rapes his ,‫למשה אומר להם איני מברך שלא זכיתי ליכנס לארץ‬ ,‫יהושע אומר להם איני מברך שלא זכיתי לבנים‬ ."‫ יתנו לו כוס לדוד שנ' "כוס ישועות אשא ובשם יי אקרא‬,‫לדוד אומר אני מברך ולי נאה לברך‬ Textual variants are minor and do not impact the thrust of my argument. 15. Diamond, “King of the Sages,” 394–95. 16. The notion that Abraham and Isaac produced unfit (pesolet) offspring is fairly common in both Tannaitic and Amoraic literature. Only righteous Jacob is the Lord’s portion: “For the Lord’s portion is his people, Jacob is the lot of his inheritance” (Deut 32:9). See Sifre Deut. on this verse (Ha’azinu 312). Sifre Deut. 343 on Deut 33:2, “The Lord came from Sinai” is noteworthy given that b. Pesah. 119b explicitly refers to Jacob breaking a Torah prohibition. The midrash reads as follows: “When the Holy One Blessed be He is about to exact punishment from Seir, he will shake the entire world with its inhabitants just as he shook it with the giving of Torah.… The matter may be compared to a king who wanted to give a gift to one of his children but the king was afraid on account of his brothers, his friends, and his relatives. What did the son do? He stood and dolled himself up and cut his hair. The king said to him, “To you, I am giving a gift.” Thus, when Abraham our father came into the world, something unfit came from him, Ishmael and the sons of Keturah. They became eviler than the previous ones. And when Isaac came, something unfit came from him, Esau and all the chieftains of Edom. They became eviler than the previous ones. When Jacob came, nothing unfit came from him, but rather all the children born to him were perfect, as it is said, “And Jacob was a perfect man dwelling in tents” (Gen 25:25). The Holy One, Blessed be He said to him, “I am giving the Torah to you,” as it is said, “The Lord came from Sinai; he rose upon them from Seir.”

Bakhos: David’s Bravado  91 half-sister Tamar. David’s third and favorite son Absalom, takes David’s ten concubines for himself in his attempt to gain power over his father. His fourth son Adonijah also stages a coup during his father’s waning years. At every turn, David’s sons rebel against him. And this is compared to Joshua who has no sons? And what of Jacob transgressing the Torah before the Torah is even revealed? David, on the other hand, violates basic commandments writ large. He covets his loyal soldier’s wife Bathsheba, and, after impregnating her, he has him killed in battle. In the scenario before us, one cannot help but compare humble Moses to arrogant David, who states, “It is fitting for me to bless.” Contrary to Shinan, who reads the narrative at face value as a favorable depiction of David, it should be read ironically, as an indictment of his character.17 The hallmark of irony, as Alan R. Thompson notes, is the kind of discrepancy “between expression and meaning, appearance and reality, or expectation and event … artfully arranged to draw attention to itself.”18 The narrative establishes the expectation that David will behave as his predecessors and refuse to say the blessing. Thus, David’s proclamation, “I will bless and it is fitting for me to bless” is surprising, and all the more so given the discrepancy between his own unworthiness vis-à-vis the others. His hutzpah is particularly noteworthy in light of b. Berakhot 34a regarding taking a lead role in prayer: “‘If one is asked to pass before the Ark, he should refuse and if he doesn’t, he resembles a dish without salt.’ Acceptance of a communal honor must be preceded by a gesture of humility. The other guests’ behavior is consistent with this rule. David’s is not.”19

Sasanian Social Norms Sasanian society maintained hierarchical divisions and placed a premium on status. Kalmin’s work comparing rabbis in Roman and Babylonian 17. In his limited, yet useful, examination of rabbinic comparisons between Moses and David, Shinan observes that Moses is deemed “worthier of the two; at best, it is said that David is as good as Moses.” (“King David of the Sages,” 69). According to Shinan, rabbinic literature—Tosefta, the Babylonian and Palestinian Talmuds, and the midrashic corpora— mentions David and Moses together more than three hundred times. Shinan suggests that the rabbis saw themselves as “the Moses of their generation.” Preference for Moses also reflects their attitude toward “members of the Patriarch’s family, David’s descendants.” There is something to Shinan’s argument; however, we also know that David is viewed favorably in Palestinian sources. It may very well be that, on balance, despite rabbinic attempts to contort biblical figures for their own purposes, it is much harder to make the case for David over Moses. That is, Moses is simply a more reputable and important biblical figure than David. 18. Alan R. Thompson, The Dry Mock: A Study of Irony in Drama (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1948), 10. 19. Diamond, “King of the Sages,” 422.

92  Making History societies attests to the premium Sasanian society placed on lineage and hierarchy.20 And, indeed, b. Pesahim 119b reflects this. The cup is offered to the chronologically oldest, the first of the Israelite patriarchs, then finally to the youngest guest David. Proper social etiquette would dictate that each decline the honor to say Grace. Given the Iranian context, the audience would assume that David would follow suit and demur, perhaps even more strongly than his predecessors. His response is thus highly unexpected and an indictment of David’s character. The Iranian context further illuminates the passage’s parodic dimensions. Readers familiar with modern Persian cultural norms cannot help but be reminded of ta‘ārof, the fascinating form of Persian civility emphasizing both deference and social rank. Ta‘ārof (an Arabic term, literally “becoming acquainted”) encompasses “a broad complex of behaviors in Iranian life that mark and underscore differences in social status.”21 Although it is difficult to pinpoint the term’s development prior to the early modern period—the paucity of sources regarding codes of conduct make it difficult to establish what is pre-Sasanian, Sasanian and post-­ Sasanian—medieval sources attest to ways in which the concept reflects aspects of Sasanian societal behavior. The concept is akin to adab, broadly understood as politeness, good behavior. As understood in the Iranian context, in addition to a genre of literature, “adab may be defined as refinement of thought, word, and deed.”22 Codes of conduct are preserved in pre-­Islamic sources known as andarz literature. For example, it “was important to know one’s place at any meeting and not rise above one’s station (Andarzî Âdurbâd, n. 88; Ebn al-Moqaffa’).23 Later Persian and Arabic works based on Pahlavi sources discuss details of rules pertaining to etiquette at meals, and it is a subject addressed in Qābūs-nāma, a recapitulation of Sasanian adab.24 But even adab must be historicized. For example, according to Michael 20. Kalmin, Sage in Jewish Society. 21. William Beeman, “TAĀROF,” Encyclopædia Iranica, online edition, 2017, available at http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/taarof. 22. Dj. Khaleghi-Motlagh, “ADAB i. Adab in Iran,” Encyclopaedia Iranica, online edition, 1982, available at http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/adab-i-iran. I thank Professors Domenico Ingenito and Jason Mokhtarian for their helpful suggestions. 23. This Middle and New Persian term “overlaps at times with the Middle Persian term frahang, the proper meaning of which is “education, upbringing,” but which also denotes, by extension, “civilized behavior” and “chastisement.” See S. Shaked, Z. Safa, “ANDARZ,” Encyclopædia Iranica, II/1, pp. 11-22, available online at http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/ andarz-precept-instruction-advice. 24. Dj. Khaleghi-Motlagh, “ADAB i. Adab in Iran,” Encyclopaedia Iranica, online edition, 1982, available at http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/adab-i-iran. For a survey of a few examples dealing with etiquette in Sasanian culture, see Djalal Khaleqi-Motlaq, “Iranian Etiquette in the Sasanian Period” (The Circle of Ancient Iranian Studies – CAIS)© (cais-soas. com).

Bakhos: David’s Bravado  93 Cooperson, during the period of Abbasid rule, it did not convey a vague sense of etiquette, but rather “was a form of disciplined self-presentation that draws on (1) the Sasanian idea of āyīn or how to do things (hence, adab al-kātib, how to be a scribe); (2) the Greek idea of paideia or self-perfection through education; and (3) the late-antique idea of the skill set necessary to survive at court and––ideally––entertain the ruler if called upon to do so.”25 The parodic dimensions of b. Pesahim 119b are absent in a version of our story found in Exodus Rabbah, a later Palestinian midrashic compilation: Who will say Grace first? All will show respect to God by requesting that he order someone to say Grace. He will command Michael to say it and he in turn will ask Gabriel. Gabriel will ask the forefathers and they will give honor to Moses and Aaron, they in turn will ask the elders. They will give the honor to David, saying, “It befits the earthly king of the earth to bless the heavenly king.” They will give the cup to David who will say, “I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord” (Ps 116:13).26 (based on Mirkin edition, vol. 1, 282)

The passage imagines God in the future providing sustenance to righteous Israel. He will bring them food from the Garden of Eden and will feed them from the tree of life. God decides who will say Grace, and thus turns to Michael, who refuses. He then turns to Gabriel. Unlike in b. Pesahim 119b, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are not mentioned, nor is Joshua, but Moses and Aaron, along with the elders are. They turn to David because “it befits the earthly king of the earth to bless the heavenly king.” David’s boastful reply, “it is fitting for me,” is absent here. In the Exodus Rabbah version, David is offered the cup because of his position as king. His worthiness has more to do with the office of kingship than with the king himself. The angels, Moses, Aaron, and the elders all refuse not because they are inadequate, unworthy people, but because they are not kings.27

A Parody within a Parody If we step back for a moment and return to the beginning of b. Pesahim 119b to the image of Abraham preparing a feast of thanksgiving for Isaac 25. Email correspondence dated August 15, 2022. 26. Printed edition of Exod. Rab. 25:8 (based on Mirkin edition, vol. 1, 282): ‫ והוא אומר‬,‫ והקב"ה אומר למיכאל ברך‬,‫ומי מברך תחלה הכל חולקין כבוד להקב"ה שהוא יצוה לברך‬ ‫ והם חולקין כבוד לדוד‬,‫ והן חולקין כבוד למשה ולאהרן והם לזקנים‬,‫ וגבריאל לאבות העולם‬,‫לגבריאל‬ '‫ ונותנין לדוד הכוס ואומר "ּכֹוס־יְ ׁשּוע֥ ֹות אֶ ָ ּׂ֑שא ּובְ ֵ ׁ֖שם ה‬,‫ואומרים המלך שבארץ יברך את המלך שבשמים‬ .)‫יג‬:‫אֶ קְ ָ ֽרא" (מזמור קטז‬ 27. This is an interesting case where in fact David clearly outranks Moses.

94  Making History when he was weaned (va-yiggamel), we discover that the exegetical narrative is a double parody. The depiction of David vis-à-vis the great patriarchs and hoary heroes is a parody within a parody. That is to say, the entire exegetical narrative appears to celebrate Israel and in fact calls its distinction into question. The philological linchpin here is the yiggamel, weaning, and God’s demonstrating or repaying his love for the seed of Isaac (yigmol) and Ps 116:12, the verse preceding David’s prideful proclamation that he will raise the cup: “How can I repay the Lord for all His bounties [tagmulohi] to me?” David’s announcement is all the more audacious in light of this verse which conveys a sense of (false?) humility. The narrative builds a parallel between Abraham and God. Abraham holds a feast for Isaac when he is weaned. He repays God for Isaac, the son of promise, and God repays the seed of Isaac for their righteousness. But, as the narrative nears completion we are presented with a litany of seeming imperfections that betray the participants’ unworthiness. Compared to David’s flaws, these might be considered rather venial. They are, however, announced and turn the listener’s attention to patriarchal imperfections. Abraham, who has a feast for God on the day Isaac is weaned, puts in stark relief the banquet that God arranges for Isaac’s seed, but by the end of the story, while we may laugh at David’s boastfulness, we are left with a sense of uneasiness. Is Isaac’s seed—the people of Israel, the Jewish people—meritorious, deserving of the feast, deserving of God’s unconditional love? The “righteous” called to God’s banquet are compromised characters.

Conclusions This reading of b. Pesahim 119b assumes that the rabbis are well attuned to the various vectors on which the narrative operates—generally speaking the overt and covert lines of communication. Cognizant of the ludic possibilities of the text, the rabbis were “aware of the covert-signal information,” that is, the intertextual connections and ruptures that continually relativize the overt line of communication.28 The parodic aspect of our text is the ironic attitude that, as Patrick O’Neill writes, “is characterized by an oppositional or disjunctive structure, by a play on difference.”29 If we consider parody “the most overtly ludic form of literature,” a form that at its core is intertextual, then in this sense all rabbinic texts are 28. Patrick O’Neill, The Comedy of Entropy: Humour, Narrative, Reading (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1990), 114–15. 29. Ibid.

Bakhos: David’s Bravado  95 parodies, and indeed all writing, as Roland Barthes observes, becomes parody.30 The aspect of parody, however, that is of most interest to me in this interrogation of b. Pesahim 119b is “the perception of incongruity, a discrepancy, between the parodied text and the new context.”31 In this sense, I also call attention to self-reflexivity, which is inherent in the rabbinic intertextual enterprise. “Two texts rather than a single text,” writes O’Neill, “are offered within one work, in other words, balancing identity and difference, sympathy and criticism, playing off the evocation of audience expectations.”32 Read with various contexts in mind—the biblical, Iranian, and rabbinic—b. Pesahim 119b does just that. Not only does our hero David make us laugh and wince at the same time, but Israel’s “righteousness” stirs a sense of unease. This brief examination of b. Pesahim 119b also leaves us with several unanswerable questions. After all, can we be certain that b. Pesahim 119b was formulated to be a parody, or is it merely a longer, more dramatic version of what is found in Exodus Rabbah that made its way into the Bavli? In other words, is it a text of Palestinian provenance that was intended to praise David, but, now that it is in the Bavli, its intent is to disparage him? With an audience attuned to Sasanian conventions in mind, was it redacted into the Bavli with the intention of serving a parodic function? The paucity of textual evidence makes it impossible to determine the origin of our narrative, but it is worth reiterating that narratives of Palestinian origin that would have been taken at face value by Palestinian rabbis should not necessarily be taken at face value once incorporated into the Bavli, which is the product of a very different cultural environment. Once incorporated into the Bavli, midrashic material and rabbinic narratives need to be read in light of the broader cultural context. As Richard Kalmin’s work over the decades has demonstrated, cultural, social, and religious contexts must play a role in our reading of rabbinic texts, and our rabbinic texts, in turn, contribute to our understanding of those ancient and medieval contexts. With Sasanian social norms and codes of conduct in mind, the parodic aspects of b. Pesahim 119b are put in bold relief and feature the ways in which the rabbis were playfully reverent and even critical of their own great heroes. Reading b. Pesahim 119b as a positive reflection of David shortchanges rabbinic literary creativity as well as the importance of considering the Sasanian context when reading talmudic narratives.

30. Roland Barthes, The Pleasure of the Text, trans. Richard Miller (New York: Hill & Wang, 1975), 31. 31. O’Neill, Comedy of Entropy, 114. 32. Ibid., 114–15.

Translation and Authority Three (Very Different) Cases1 STEVEN D. FRAADE

Introduction

D

oes the translation of a text into another language enhance or diminish thereby its status or authority, whether within the source or the target language and culture? Conversely, does the target language or text thereby confer authority upon the source language or text? In either direction, does it matter whether the source language and text are considered “sacred” and/or revealed (that is, Scripture), or are otherwise privileged by their adherents in either or both cultures? These questions, though posed as if reducible to having either/or answers, are intended instead as being bipolar (rather than binary), being mappable as gradients along multiple, seemingly inconsistent vectors, in short, being dynamically dialectical.

The Letter of Aristeas Ground zero, as it were, for any discussion of the authority (or authorization) of scriptural translation of the Hebrew Bible (initially the Torah or 1. I offer these reflections in honor of my esteemed colleague and friend of many years Richard Kalmin, who has contributed to the subject of scriptural translation (targum) in rabbinic literature in several important writings of his own: Richard Kalmin, “The Miracle of the Septuagint in Ancient Rabbinic and Christian Literature,” in Follow the Wise: Studies in Jewish History and Culture in Honor of Lee I. Levine, ed. Zeev Weiss et al. (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2010), 241–53; “Targum in the Babylonian Talmud,” in Envisioning Judaism: Studies in Honor of Peter Schäfer on the Occasion of his Seventieth Birthday, ed. Raanan S. Boustan et al., with the collaboration of Alex Ramos, 2. vols. (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013), 1:501– 25; and Migrating Tales: The Talmud’s Narratives and Their Historical Context (Oakland: University of California Press, 2014), 80–94 (update of Kalmin, “The Miracle of the Septuagint”).

97

98  Making History Pentateuch) is the story of the origins of the Septuagint in mid-third century BCE Alexandria, as enshrined in the pseudepigraphic Letter of Aristeas (about a century later), the general outline of which I will assume is familiar to the reader. In ancient times it was similarly well known, including within the rabbinic circles that produced the Tannaitic midrashim in the early to mid-third century CE.2 Although the bulk of the letter is not about translation at all, but rather narrates the lengthy philosophical symposium between King Ptolemy II and the seventy-two Jerusalem elders, as well as Eleazar the Jerusalem high priest’s apologia for the Torah law, its narrative framing is the occasion for the translation, the description of which brackets the overall account. There are several select elements of authorization that I would here emphasize:  1. The translation into Greek of the Hebrew laws of the Jews is undertaken at the command, that is, under the authority, of the Egyptian king so as to complete the royal library (9–12).  2. It is reciprocally authorized by the exemplary character and radiance of the high priest Eleazar (96, 122–23).  3. The translation is overseen by Demetrius of Phalerum, chief librarian of the king’s library.  4. The king’s magnanimity and beneficence are demonstrated by his freeing of the Jews held as prisoners in Egypt so as to dispose the Jews well toward him (12–27).  5. Returning to the translation, it is to be made from the most accurate Hebrew originals, as determined by the scribal experts (30– 32).  6. The bilingual elders are to be “men of the most exemplary lives and mature experience, skilled in matters pertaining to their

2. I do not treat here other versions of the story, especially that of Philo of Alexandria, or its history of reception, including rabbinic, but do so elsewhere, for which, and for many bibliographic recommendations, see Steven D. Fraade, Multilingualism and Translation in Ancient Judaism: Before and after Babel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023), 165 nn. 2, 3; see also 66 n. 31). Here I would add two recent articles that question the presumption of Alexandrian Jews having been monolingual (Greek), whereas the opposite presumption would open additional possibilities for how the Septuagint would have functioned culturally within the Jewish community there and elsewhere: René Bloch, “How Much Hebrew in Jewish Alexandria?,” in Alexandria: Hub of the Hellenistic World, ed. Benjamin Schliesser et al., with the assistance of Daniel Herrmann, WUNT 460 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2020); Dries De Crom, “A Polysystemic Perspective on Ancient Hebrew-Greek Translation,” JAJ 11 (2020): 163–99. For rabbinic texts that show familiarity with this Hellenistic account, but take it in a different direction, emphasizing the specifics of how the Greek translators emended the Hebrew text of Scripture, see the following: Mek. of R. Ishmael Pisḥa 14 (ed. Lauterbach, 1:111–12; ed. Horovitz-Rabin, 50–51); y. Meg. 1:9, 71d; b. Meg. 9a–b; Mas. Sof. 1:7 (ed. Higger, 100–105); Mas. Sep. Torah 1:6 (ed. Higger, 22–24).

Fraade: Translation and Authority  99 Laws” (32; OTP 2:15); “elders of exemplary lives, with experience of the Law and ability to translate it” (39).3  7. “Eleazar selected men of the highest merit and of excellent education due to the distinction of their parentage; they had not only mastered the Jewish literature, but had made a serious study of that of the Greeks as well” (121; OTP 2:21).  8. Abundant gifts, sacrifices, and vessels are offered by both parties in mutual appreciation (40, 45, 172, 176, 319–20).  9. There is a royal reception for the translators in Alexandria (178– 186). 10. Aristeas praises the translators, emphasizing the accuracy of his account (295–300). 11. Lodging and provisions are provided by Demetrius for the translators in an ideal setting without disruptions or intrusions (301, 303–307). 12. The translation itself is achieved by “reaching agreement among themselves on each by comparing versions” (302; OTP 2:32). 13. The translation is completed in seventy-two days, “just as if such a result was achieved by some deliberate design” (307; OTP 33). 14. The translation is read in public at a crowded assembly in the company of the translators, who receive a standing ovation (308). 15. After the transcription of the translation is completed, it is given to the Jewish leaders (309). 16. While the translation is publicly read, the priests, translators, and other elders stand (310). 17. A curse is proclaimed against anyone who would revise the text of the translation, “to ensure that the words were preserved completely and permanently in perpetuity” (311, OTP 2:33). 18. The king rejoices greatly, comparing this glorious translation to its sorrowful (unauthorized) predecessors (312–16); that is, this was not the first such attempt. Note well the multiple forms of public ratification and royal/priestly authorization. Many of these bring to mind the public ratification of the Sinaitic covenant and its written obligations in Exod 24:1–18, and its renewal in Exod 34:1–35. The production and proclamation of the Septuagint are a reenactment of the revelation of Torah (as later imagined) at Mount Sinai, with the king and librarian as latter-day Moseses (if not God), the high priest Eleazar as the successor to Aaron, the elders playing the roles of the elders, and the people serving as the people.4 Finally, in 3. R. J. H. Shutt, “Letter of Aristeas,” OTP 2:7–34, here 15. 4. For Aaron as a meturgeman, albeit of a different sort, see the targums to Exod 7:1 (and 4:16), as treated in depth by me in Multilingualism and Translation, chapter 6, section 7.

100  Making History order that the authorized Greek version remain fixed without alterations, a curse is placed on anyone who would so violate the authorized Greek version (310–311), echoing what had been announced by Moses for the book of Deuteronomy (Deut 4:2; 13:11) and, by extension, for the Hebrew Torah as a whole. Notwithstanding this curse, in later times other Jewish Greek translations, for example, Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion, circulated—in the case of that of Aquila with rabbinic approval. The translation (and through it the Jewish nomos) is publicly endorsed, and hence authorized, from both above and below. There would seem to be little room for ambivalence or second thoughts.

Targum as Reading: Whose Targum Is It? Translation theorists argue that the sharp line that we sometimes draw between source (or “original”) text and its target translation, that is, between reading and translating, is not as sharp or clear as we might like to think: reading as translation; translation as reading.5 The confluence of the two can be seen in the following baraita (actually two), in Hebrew, and accompanying editorial glosses, in Aramaic, from b. Qiddushin 49a, the passage as a whole thereby being itself bilingual (according to Venice Printing, 1520): ‫ כיון שקרא שלשה פסוקים בבית הכנסת – הרי זו‬,‫ על מנת שאני קריינא‬:‫תנו רבנן‬ :‫ ר' יהודה אומר‬,‫ יתרגם מדעתיה? והתניא‬.‫ עד שיקרא ויתרגם‬:‫ ר' יהודה אומר‬.‫מקודשת‬ ‫ והמוסיף עליו – הרי זה מחרף ומגדף! אלא מאי‬,‫המתרגם פסוק כצורתו – הרי זה בדאי‬ ‫ עד דקרי אורייתא‬,‫ אבל אמר לה קרא אנא‬,‫ והני מילי דא"ל קריינא‬.‫תרגום? תרגום דידן‬ .‫נביאי וכתובי בדיוקא‬ Our Rabbis taught: [If he says, “I will betroth you] on condition that I am a karyana”:6 Once he has read three verses [of the Pentateuch] in the synagogue, she is betrothed. R. Judah [bar Ilai] [ca. 150 CE] said: He must be able to read and translate it. Even if he translates it according to his own understanding? But it was taught: R. Judah said: If one translates a verse

5. See Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “The Politics of Translation,” in Spivak, Outside in the Teaching Machine (London: Routledge, 1993), 180: “Translation is the most intimate act of reading” (in a section titled, “Translation as reading,” followed by “Reading as translation”). 6. The talmudic manuscripts vary on the exact term, but the meaning is the same, as it is below. For this term for “reader,” see Michael Sokoloff, A Dictionary of Jewish Babylonian Aramaic of the Talmudic and Geonic Periods (Ramat-Gan, Israel: Bar Ilan University Press, 2002), 1042–43. On this term, see also Shlomo Naeh, “‫קריינא דאיגרתא‬: Notes on Talmudic Diplomatics,” in Shaarei Lashon: Studies in Hebrew, Aramaic and Jewish Languages Presented to Moshe BarAsher, vol. 2: Rabbinic Hebrew and Aramaic [Hebrew], ed. Aharon Maman, Steven E. Fassberg, and Yochanan Breuer (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 2007), 228–55.

Fraade: Translation and Authority  101 literally, he is a liar; if he adds thereto, he is a blasphemer and a libeler.7 Then what is meant by “translation”? Our [authorized] translation.8 Now, that is only if he said to her “karyana.” But if he says: “I am a kara,” he must be able to read the Pentateuch, Prophets and Hagiographa with exactitude.9 (trans. Soncino modified)

What defines a “karyana ” or “reader” for purposes of a man’s fulfilling this as his condition for betrothing a woman? Two opinions are given, the first being anonymous (but attributed to R. Meir in some talmudic manuscripts) and the second being attributed to R. Judah bar Ilai: (1) Read three verses of Scripture, presumably in Hebrew as part of the synagogue lection for that day, or (2) read and translate, presumably into Aramaic and also three verses. According to the second view, “reading” incorporates both reading and translating.10 The anonymous voice of the Gemara (switching from the Hebrew of the baraita to the Aramaic of the editorial layer) rhetorically asks whether he can fulfill the condition of betrothal by translating according to his own possibly spontaneous understanding of the Hebrew, for to do so risks the dual (universal) pitfalls of translating too literally or too freely, as expressed in the other baraitot attributed to R. Judah. This presumes that there are at least some bilingual auditors present who can judge the relation of the Aramaic translation to its Hebrew source text. Rather than run these risks of both too free and too literal translation, according to the anonymous voice of the Gemara, we should assume that, according to this objection, the translator does not translate

 7. For the same statement by R. Judah, see t. Meg. 3:41. Later commentators, for example, Rashi and Tosafot, give targumic examples of each extreme. Defining the happy medium is more difficult. According to Tosafot, when Onqelos appears to add to the verse in translating it, he is not adding of his own accord but doing so “from Sinai,” that is, he is restoring what was revealed at Mount Sinai but forgotten in the interim, and restored by Onqelos (as had previously been done by Ezra). See b. Meg. 3a, treated below, and Fraade, Multilingualism and Translation, 90 n. 10, 99, nn. 28, 29; 99–100 n. 30.  8. I take this to denote Targum Onqelos to the Pentateuch or Targum Jonathan to the Prophets, or their antecedents, which acquired authoritative status in the Babylonian rabbinic academies, in contrast to the more paraphrastic and numerous “Palestinian” targumim of the land of Israel. So far as I have been able to discern, this is the only appearance of this phrase in early rabbinic literature. Much more frequently used, especially in the Babylonian Talmud and aggadic midrashim, are forms of ‫ הכי דמתרגמינן‬/ ‫“( היינו‬thus / as we translate”). See Sokoloff, Dictionary of Jewish Babylonian Aramaic, 1231–32.  9. I understand “exactitude” (‫ )בדיוקא‬to mean “with precision, clearly enunciated.” 10. It is not clear whether this is performed in the synagogue or in private. Mishnaic law states that the same person cannot both read and translate during the same public synagogue service, but that might not reflect actual practice. See Steven D. Fraade, “Rabbinic Views on the Practice of Targum, and Multilingualism in the Jewish Galilee of the ThirdSixth Centuries,” in The Galilee in Late Antiquity, ed. Lee I. Levine (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1992), 253–86, here 257 n. 9, 258–59 n. 12. The Soncino translation translates loosely: “He must be able to read and translate it.”

102  Making History spontaneously but does so from “our [authorized] translation,” that being Targum Onqelos for the Pentateuch (and Targum Jonathan for the Prophets) in Babylonia. I would argue, however, that this does not express the view of the opening baraita, reflecting Palestinian rabbinic norms, which understands the translation to be “according to his own understanding,” notwithstanding the risks of the second baraita. Targum is viewed, at least by the anonymous voice of the opening baraita, to be a spontaneous product of its performer, which is not to deny the possibility that some mixture of memorization or familiarity with targumic tradition is in play.11 We end up here, as well as elsewhere, with opposing attitudes toward the fixed versus fluid styles of targumic performance, with the former predominating in the Babylonian rabbinic schools (and possibly synagogues) and the latter in Palestinian rabbinic circles (and possibly synagogues). There are clearly advantages and disadvantages to both, even as somewhat greater predictability is attained by targum in rabbinic Babylonia compared to greater spontaneity and variety of targumic practice in rabbinic Palestine, where we also find many more targumic versions in circulation, perhaps as a reflection of the looser reins.

(How) Was the Targum Revealed? The question of the relation of targum to sources of authority, especially by way of the privileging of the antiquity of origins, is taken up several times in the following unique composite passage from the Babylonian Talmud. The preceding context is the claim that certain things that might be thought to have been relative latecomers were there all along, but only suspended (or forgotten) and eventually restored12 (as well as the link of repeated tradents).13 As we shall see, claims for antiquity, at least in traditional societies, are claims for authority (old is better than new; stability is better than innovation; even though pretenses of the former might simply mask the latter). To the extent that the antiquity of something is challenged, so is its authority.14 What is “lost in (English) translation” in the 11. For a similar understanding of this passage, see Kalmin, “Targum in the Babylonian Talmud,” 512–13. For targumic spontaneity in Palestinian synagogues, see Avigdor Shinan, “Live Translation: On the Nature of the Aramaic Targums to the Pentateuch,” Prooftexts 3 (1983): 41–49. 12. On memory loss and restoration, see n. 24 below. 13. Both here and in the preceding unit we find the attribution: “R. Jeremiah—or some say R. Hiyya bar Abba—also said.” 14. See Judah Goldin, “On Change and Adaptation in Judaism,” in Studies in Midrash and Related Literature, ed. Barry L. Eichler and Jeffrey H. Tigay, JPS Scholar of Distinction Series (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1988), 215–37.

Fraade: Translation and Authority  103 following is the way in which the composite text switches back and forth between Hebrew and Aramaic, as is common textual/rhetorical practice in both Talmuds.15 B. Megillah 3a (according to MS Munich 95)16 ‫ תרגום של תורה – אונקלוס הגר אמרו‬:‫] ואמר רבי ירמיה ואיתימא רבי חייא בר אבא‬A[ ‫] תרגום של נביאים – יונתן בן עוזיאל אמרו מפי חגי‬B[ .‫מפי רבי אליעזר ורבי יהושע‬ ‫] באותה שניה ונזדעזעה ארץ ישראל ארבע מאות פרסה על ארבע‬C[ ,‫זכריה ומלאכי‬ ‫] עמד יונתן‬D] ?‫ מי הוא זה שגילה סתריי לבני אדם‬:‫ יצתה בת קול ואמרה‬.‫מאות פרסה‬ ‫ אני הוא שגליתי סתריך לבני אדם; גלוי וידוע לפניך שלא‬:‫בן עוזיאל על רגליו ואמר‬ .‫ אלא לכבודך עשיתי שלא ירבו מחלוקת בישראל‬,‫ ולא לכבוד בית אבא‬,‫לכבודי עשיתי‬ ‫ דייך! מאי טעמא‬:‫ יצתה בת קול ואמרה לו‬,‫] ועוד ביקש לגלות תרגום של כתובים‬E[ ‫] ותרגום של תורה אונקלוס הגר אמרו? והא אמר רב‬F[ .‫– משום דאית ביה קץ משיח‬ ‫ח] ויקראו בספר תורת‬:‫ מאי דכתיב [נחמיה ח‬:‫איקא בר אבין אמר רב חננאל אמר רב‬ ,‫ ויקראו בספר תורת האלהים – זה מקרא‬.‫האלהים מפרש ושום שכל ויבינו במקרא‬ ,‫ ויבינו במקרא – אלו פיסקי טעמים‬,‫ ושום שכל – אלו הפסוקין‬,‫מפרש – זה תרגום‬ ‫] מאי שנא דאורייתא דלא‬G[– .‫ – שכחום וחזרו ויסדום‬.‫ אלו המסורת‬:‫ואמרי לה‬ ‫ דנביאי איכא מילי‬,‫ ואדנביאי אזדעזעה? – דאורייתא מיפרשא מלתא‬,‫אזדעזעה‬ ‫יא] ביום ההוא יגדל המספד‬:‫] דכתיב [זכריה יב‬H[ .‫ ואיכא מילי דמסתמן‬,‫דמיפרשן‬ ‫ אלמלא תרגומא דהאי קרא לא‬:‫ ואמר רב יוסף‬,‫בירושלם כמספד הדדרמון בבקעת מגדון‬ ‫ ביומא ההוא יסגי מספדא בירושלים כמספדא דאחאב בר עמרי דקטל‬:‫ידענא מאי קאמר‬ ‫ וכמספדא דיאשיה בר אמון דקטל יתיה פרעה‬,‫יתיה הדדרימון בן טברימון ברמות גלעד‬ .‫חגירא בבקעת מגידו‬ [A] R. Jeremiah [ca. 350 CE]—or some say R. Hiyya bar Abba [ca. 300 CE]— also said: The targum of the Pentateuch was composed by Onqelos the proselyte from the “mouth” of R. Eliezer (b. Hyrcanus) and R. Joshua (b. Hananiah) [both ca. 100 CE]. [B] The Targum of the Prophets was composed by Jonathan ben Uzziel [ca. 50 CE] from the “mouth” of Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi [ca. 500 BCE].17 [C] At that moment, the land of Israel quaked over an area of four hundred parasangs18 by four hundred parasangs, and a heavenly voice [bat

15. For such linguistic code-switching more broadly, see Fraade, Multilingualism and Translation, 1–19, with abundant reference to previous scholarship. 16. Cf. y. Meg. 1:8 (9), 71b. Many have commented on this passage. Among them, I would recommend Willem Smelik, “Translation as Innovation in BT Meg. 3A,” in Recent Developments in Midrash Research: Proceedings of the 2002 and 2003 SBL Consultation on Midrash, ed. Lieve M. Teugels and Rivka Ulmer, Judaism in Context 2 (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias, 2005), 25–49; Kalmin, “Targum in the Babylonian Talmud.” 17. Other traditions (e.g., b. Sukkah 28a) identify him as a student of Hillel (ca. 50 CE). 18. A Persian measure of distance, equaling about four miles or six kilometers each.

104  Making History qol] came forth and exclaimed, “Who is this that has revealed19 my secrets to humankind?” [D] Jonathan ben Uzziel [ca. 50 CE] thereupon arose and said, “It is I who have revealed your secrets to humankind.20 It is fully known to you that I have not done this for my own honor or for the honor of my father ‘s house, but for your honor l have done it, that dissension may not increase in Israel.”21 [E] He further sought to reveal [by] a targum [the inner meaning] of the Writings, but a heavenly voice [bat qol] went forth and said, “Enough!” What was the reason?—Because the end-time of the Messiah is foretold in it.22 [F] But did Onqelos the proselyte compose the targum to the Pentateuch? Has not R. Ika bar Abin [ca. 350 CE] said in the name of R. Hananel [ca. 300 CE], who had it from Rab [ca. 250 CE]: What is meant by the text, “And they read in the book, in the Torah of God, with interpretation, and they gave the sense, and caused them to understand the reading?” (Neh 8:8).23 “And they read in the book, in the Torah of God”: this refers to the [Hebrew] text of Scripture; “with interpretation”: this refers to the targum; “and they gave the sense”: this refers to the verse stops; “and caused them to understand the reading”: this refers to the accentuation, or, according to another version, the masoretic notes?—These had been forgotten, and were now established again [by Ezra].24 19. Note the use of revelatory language (the verb ‫ גלה‬in the piel stem), emphasized here by editorial italics, as twice more below. 20. On secret wisdom not to be shared with humankind as a whole or the unworthy among them, somewhat like the myth of Prometheus, see Deut 29:28 (29) (as understood in the Dead Sea Scrolls): “The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the revealed things belong to us and to our children forever to observe all the words of this Law” [NRSV]); Sir 3:21–24; 1 En. 6–10; Let. Aris. 315; 4 Ezra 14:45–47; Pesiq. Rab. 5 (ed. Friedmann, 4b), the last referring to the rabbinic oral teaching (mishnah) as “mysteries” vis-à-vis the non-Jews (Christians), on which see Fraade, Multilingualism and Translation, 166–70. 21. For the same or similar expressions, see b. Taan. 20a; b. B. Metz. 59b; Avot R. Nat. A 6 (ed. Schechter, 32); Yal. Šimoni Devarim 809; Midr. Haggadol Lev 11:35 (ed. Steinsaltz, 283). 22. Possibly referring to the book of Daniel, which in Christian Bibles (presumably going back to the Jewish Greek Scriptures) is included in the Prophets, whereas in Jewish (rabbinic) Bibles it is included in the Writings. 23. For similar understandings of this verse, see y. Meg. 4:1, 74d (ed. Academy of the Hebrew Language, 768); Gen. Rab. 36:8 (ed. Theodor-Albeck, 1:342). 24. For other uses of the idea of lost and recovered tradition in the time of Ezra and others, see the top of the column of b. Meg. 3a; 18a; b. Shabb. 104a; b. Yoma 80a; b. Sukkah 44a; y. Shabb. 1:4, 3d; y. Sukkah 4:1, 54b; y. Ketub. 1:8 (11), 32c; Yal. Šimoni Beḥuqqotai 682 (2x). For discussion, see Steven D. Fraade, “4 Ezra and 2 Baruch with the (Dis-)Advantage of Rabbinic Hindsight,” in Fourth Ezra and Second Baruch: Reconstruction after the Fall, ed. Matthias Henze and Gabriele Boccaccini, JSJSup 164 (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 366–71; Fraade, “Biblical Law and Rabbinic Literature,” in The Cambridge Companion to Law and the Hebrew Bible, ed. Bruce Wells (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming), section on “Memory Loss”; Fraade, Multilingualism and Translation, 82–101. This is a fear frequently expressed in Tannaitic texts, especially in Sifre Deuteronomy. See Shlomo Naeh, “Omanut

Fraade: Translation and Authority  105 [G] How was it that the land did not quake because of the [translation of the] Pentateuch, while it did quake because of that of the Prophets?—The meaning of the Pentateuch is expressed clearly, but the meaning of the Prophets is in some things expressed clearly and in others enigmatically. [H] [For example,] it is written, “In that day there will be a great mourning in Jerusalem, as the mourning of Hadadrimmon in the valley of Megiddon (Zech 12:11).25 Rav Joseph [ca. 330] [commenting on this] said: “Were it not for the targum of this verse, we should not know what it means.”26 [It runs as follows in Aramaic]: “On that day there will be great mourning in Jerusalem like the mourning of Ahab son of Omri who was killed by Hadadrimmon son of Rimmon in Ramoth Gilead (see 1 Kgs 22:34–36) and like the mourning of Josiah son of Ammon who was killed by Pharaoh the Lame in the plain of Megiddo [see 2 Kgs 23:29–30; 2 Chr 35:20–27].” (trans. Soncino modified)

Let us break it down. Section [A] identifies the “author” of the targum to the Pentateuch as the proselyte Onqelos, who was taught/directed/ authorized by Rabbis Eliezer (b. Hyrcanus) and Joshua (b. Hananiah), two leading Tannaim, who lived around the end of the first century CE. In a sense, Onqelos’s translation is an extension of their teaching. Although these two are known for their extensive learning (although meeting very different ends), and hence might be thought to lend authority to Onqelos’s translation, they are relatively “recent” with respect to other claims of translation pedigree. The passage shows no familiarity with the fact that

ha-zikkaron: mivnim shel zikkaron ve-tavniyot shel tekst be-sifrut ḥazal,” in Meḥqerei Talmud III: Talmudic Studies Dedicated to the Memory of Professor Ephraim E. Urbach, ed. Yaakov Sussmann and David Rosenthal (Jerusalem: Magnes, 2005), 543–89; Steven D. Fraade, From Tradition to Commentary: Torah and Its Interpretation in the Midrash Sifre to Deuteronomy (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991), 105–19 (on Sifre Deut. 48); Marc Hirshman, The Stabilization of Rabbinic Culture, 100 C.E.–350 C.E.: Texts on Education and Their Late Antique Context (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 31–48 (“Sifre Deuteronomy: The Precariousness of Oral Torah”). Most recently and astutely, see Alyssa M. Gray, “The Motif of the Forgetting and Restoration of Law: An Inter-Talmudic Difference about the Divine Role in Rabbinic Law,” in Land and Spirituality in Rabbinic Literature: A Memorial Volume for Yaakov Elman, z"l, ed. Shana Strauch Schick, Brill Reference Library of Judaism 71 (Leiden: Brill, 2022), 175–207. 25. It is not clear what mourning of Hadadrimmon is being referenced, since none by that description is to be found in Scripture. 26. A parallel appears in b. Mo’ed Qat. 28b. The same statement is attributed to Rav Joseph in b. Sanh. 94b, similarly in interpreting a verse from the Prophets (Isa 8:6). Rav Joseph, a Babylonian sage, is often said to cite targumic renderings in support of an argument, even though his targumic proof texts are rarely successful in determining the outcome and could be detached from their editorial contexts without effect. See n. 29 below. He does so twelve times in the Babylonian Talmud (and four times in parallels in Yal. Šimoni): Ber. 28a; Pesah. 68a; Yoma 32b, 77b; Mo’ed Qat. 26a; Ned. 38a; Nez. 3a; Qidd. 13a, 72b; B. Qam. 3b; Avod. Zar. 44a; Menah. 110a.

106  Making History there were other targumim to the Pentateuch circulating in Palestine, whether in writing or orally or some combination of the two. Moving from the highest sanctity (Pentateuch) to somewhat less sanctity (Prophets), if only gauged by the frequency and amount of text recited in the synagogue, assuming a degree of coherence between rabbinic rules and synagogue practice, the question of the origins of the targum to the Prophets is next raised in section [B]. The proposed answer is anachronistic: the targum to the Prophets is said to have been composed by Jonathan ben Uzziel from the “mouth” of Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, the last of the classical prophets roughly around the time of Ezra (500 BCE), even though, as previously noted, he is elsewhere said to have been a disciple of Hillel’s (ca. 50 CE), a rather large chronological gap to bridge. Perhaps, in effect, the claim is being made for direct continuity between the end of the prophets and the beginning of the targumic composition, transmission, and interpretation. Being inspired by the (inspired) prophets is of a higher or more direct line of authority than being inspired by two Tannaim, however much esteemed they were. Alternatively, the two sources of authority (rabbinic and prophetic) are being metonymically associated with one another. In section [C] the heavenly and earthly reactions to the act of prophetic targumic disclosure are, well, literally earthshaking, causing a heavenly divine voice [bat qol] to intervene: Who is responsible for this breach of prophetic esotericism, revealing the heavenly, divine “secrets” to humankind, with potentially catastrophic consequences?27 Like Jonah (Jonah 1:7–15) before him, Jonathan ben Uzziel (section [D]) owns up to being the source of the catastrophic (even cosmic) response, but protests that his motives are pure. He is not in it for personal or family gain or fame. Like Amos’s protest to Amaziah (Amos 7:14), he is not a professional prophet (or prophet’s son). Rather, Jonathan translated the Prophets for God’s honor so as to minimize interpretive conflict within Israel, that is, to establish a reliable, normative rendering of the Prophets that would be consensually followed, in large part due to his prophetic teachers and seemingly heavenly assent.28 It would appear that no targum, or authorized targum, of the Writings existed at this time and that targum more generally was accorded relatively little importance and legal authority in Babylonia.29 27. For other ancient sources, see n. 20 above. 28. For similar apologetic arguments employing the same or much the same language, see n. 21 above. 29. This is the view of Kalmin, “Targum in the Babylonian Talmud,” 502–3, 508, 515. However, the Babylonian Talmud is familiar with earlier disagreements regarding the status of a targum to the book of Job (part of the Writings). See b. Shabb. 115a, based on earlier traditions in t. Shabb. 13:2–3 and y. Shabb. 16:1, 15 b–c. For an in-depth discussion, see Fraade, Multilingualism and Translation, chapter 5.

Fraade: Translation and Authority  107 Next in sequence are the Writings, which Jonathan ben Uzziel intends to translate as well ([E]), perhaps assuming that he has convinced God (the bat qol) of his pure intentions in translation as a means to achieving peace within Israel. Once again, the heavenly voice intervenes forcefully, saying enough is enough! That is, permission denied. The anonymous (Aramaic) voice of the Talmud (stam) asks, “How come?,” thereupon responding to its own rhetorical question: Because the Writings (perhaps referring to the book of Daniel) contain hints of the end of historical time and the advent of the Messiah. Were such hints to be disclosed (whether truly or falsely) via targum, surely messianic internecine disputes would only increase in Israel (as attested to in the not-too-distant history, viz., Bar Kokhba). Returning to the role of Onqelos in composing the targum to the Pentateuch [F], the Talmud rhetorically asks whether, in fact, Onqelos had been the (first) composer of the pentateuchal targum, citing a tradition that traces the origins of targum back to Ezra’s public reading of the Torah according to Neh 8:1–8, long before Onqelos.30 According to that tradition, the word ‫( ְמפֹ ָרשׁ‬Neh 8:8) refers to targum.31 That targum could not have been the work of Onqelos, since it predates him by some five hundred years. The seeming contradiction is not resolved, except if we presume that the “historical” Onqelos was not the originator of the targum to the Pentateuch, but the composer of what would become its authorized edition. The targum to the Pentateuch is thus given a dual pedigree or authorization: it goes back to Ezra’s reading and explication of the Torah, and with the attribution to Onqelos, it goes back to the teachings and/or inspiration of two leading Tannaim: R. Eliezer and R. Joshua. Perhaps, just as with other fine points in the reading of the Torah Ezra simply restored what had previously been forgotten, so too Onqelos restored the (official) targum to the Pentateuch to its rightful authoritative place, from which it had been lost, perhaps forgotten, after Ezra.32 Next ([G]) the anonymous (Aramaic) voice of the Talmud, returning to a previous section ([C]), asks why the translation of the Prophets into Aramaic by Jonathan ben Uzziel caused the land to shake (and the bat qol to intervene), but there was no such negative heavenly response to the translation of the Pentateuch by Onqelos. The answer is that the Pentateuch is fairly straightforward to read and translate, whereas the Prophets 30. For parallels, see n. 23 above. Originally, this interpretation of Neh 8:8 had nothing to do with the specific targum to the Torah that is attributed to Onqelos, but with the practice and process of spontaneous oral translation. Only later, as in our passage from the Babylonian Talmud, is this verse understood to refer to the specific corpus, whether written or oral, of a particular translation attributed to Onqelos. 31. For the history of this understanding, among both traditional tradents and modern critical scholars, see Fraade, Multilingualism and Translation, chapter 4, especially nn. 5, 10. 32. For this motif of loss and restoration because of failed memory, see above, n. 24.

108  Making History are more commonly difficult to understand and, hence, to translate in an authoritative manner. Perhaps the Christian employment of verses from the Prophets so as to prefigure the advent of Jesus lies here in the unspoken background. Such “sectarian” understandings are best left untranslated, or only translated in a (rabbinically) authorized translation, with all others being, in rhetorical effect, banned. In short, with respect to the targum of the Prophets at least, proceed with great caution! Finally (for us), the Talmud ([H]) provides an example of a verse from the Prophets (Zech 12:11) whose seeming inscrutability, according to Rav Joseph, requires the targum of the same verse, with information derived from other prophetic verses, for its meaning to be clear: “Were it not for the targum of this verse, we should not know what it means.”33 The prophetic verse of Zechariah mysteriously refers to “the mourning of Hadadrimmon in the valley of Megiddo,” which is nowhere else referenced in Scripture. The targum, according to Rav Joseph, draws on events of mourning for Josiah son of Ammon in 1 Kgs 22:34–36, and for Josiah son of Ammon in 2 Kgs 23:29–30 (and 2 Chr 35:20–27) to fill out the allusion in Zech 12:11. While this targum might provide contexts for the mourning of Zech 12:11, it does not appear to be revealing any divine secrets as suggested above, both by the heavenly voice (bat qol) ([C]) and by Jonathan ben Uzziel ([D]). Given the composite nature of the talmudic text, such internal consistency might be too much to expect. In sum, this passage presents several authorizing strategies, with varying degrees of explicitness and with varying degrees of certainty (roughly in order of appearance): 1. Onqelos is authorized to translate the Pentateuch by two leading Tannaim, R. Eliezer and R. Joshua, ca. 100 CE ([A]). 2. Jonathan b. Uzziel is authorized to translate the Prophets by the last of the classical prophets, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, ca. 500 BCE ([B]). 3. While the bat qol (speaking for God) initially objects to Jonathan b. Uzziel’s translation of the Prophets, it would appear to accede to his argument that he did so for the honor of God and for the sake of peace among Israel, ca. 100 CE ([C] and [D]). 4. The translation of the Writings is not authorized, or barely so ([E]).34 5. The earliest translation of the Pentateuch into Aramaic is understood to have been performed in conjunction with Ezra’s public, ceremonial reading of the Pentateuch in Neh 8:8 (ca. 500 BCE), thereby, implicitly at least, authorizing Onqelos’s translation as the successor to the same around 100 CE [F]. 33. See n. 26 above. 34. See n. 29 above.

Fraade: Translation and Authority  109 6. The unique value of the targum to the Prophets for understanding their sometimes inscrutable meanings is affirmed by Rav Joseph, ca. 350 CE ([H]).

Conclusions We have seen a wide range of strategies for lending authority or legitimacy to scriptural translation, in some cases through attributions of inspired origins, although even these are sometimes challenged or qualified. Expressions of ambivalence regarding scriptural translation are products or by-products of translation’s liminal status as being not quite Scripture, yet integrally tied to it. In other words, does it claim, if only implicitly, to be a form of Scripture (Written Torah) or only a vehicle for orally clarifying Scripture’s meaning, whether as a component of public lectionary worship or of private study? Interestingly, although in some contexts targum might be included within the category of “oral teaching” (mishnah), in others it is a bridge (or buffer) between Scripture and mishnah.35 In no case, however, so far as I am aware, is targum claimed to have its origins at Sinai via Moses, as such a claim is made for mishnah (and halakhah), as is implied by m. Avot 1:1.36 Targum, like all translation, can be seen either/both as an extension of reading or/and a segue to commentary.37 As a result, perhaps, of its liminal status as translation, its authority, especially in Babylonia, is very soft, as its text becomes increasingly hard (and “official”). It is, nevertheless, no less illuminating as an important form of scriptural reading. This is in sharp difference from the enthusiastic reception accorded to the Septuagint by the Letter of Aristeas and others, especially Philo, and 35. On targum’s liminality between Scripture and oral teaching, see Fraade, “Rabbinic Views on the Practice of Targum,” 253–86; Fraade, “Scripture, Targum, and Talmud as Instruction: A Complex Textual Story from the Sifra,” in Hesed ve-Emet: Studies in Honor of Ernest S. Frerichs, ed. Jodi Magness and Seymour Gitin, BJS 320 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1998), 109–22; Fraade, Multilingualism and Translation, chapters 3, 5, and 6. 36. More explicitly see, e.g., t. Sotah 7:11–12 (b. Hag. 3b); b. Eruv. 54b. On the first two, see Steven D. Fraade, “‘A Heart of Many Chambers’: The Theological Hermeneutics of Legal Multivocality,” HTR 108 (2015): 113–28. Note, however, that in one tradition, Moses is said to have known all “seventy” languages and to have used them in instructing the Israelites during their journey to the promised land. However, it does not go so far as to claim Sinaitic origins for targum per se. See Steven D. Fraade, “Moses and Adam as Polyglots,” in Boustan et al., Envisioning Judaism, 1:185–94. In another context, the Deuteronomic king’s reading of Torah (Deut 17:19) is accompanied by his recitation of its targum. See Fraade, Multilingualism and Translation, chapter 6; and for the rabbinic interpretation of Deut 27:8 as referring to the rendering of the Torah in seventy languages, see chapter 3. But here, too, the focus is not the origin of targum per se. 37. See especially, Multilingualism and Translation, chapter 6.

110  Making History the resulting authority, overall, that it long enjoyed in Hellenistic Judaism and in what would become Christianity. By contrast, the Aramaic targum never acquired an unambiguous revelatory status, neither in Palestine nor in Babylonia, that would allow it to supplant Hebrew Scripture as happened with the Septuagint, beginning in Hellenistic Alexandria and continuing through Christendom.38

38. For an expression of fear of such possibly dire consequences of translation, see Pesiq. Rab. 5 (ed. Friedmann, 4b), as discussed also with regard to other later rabbinic texts, see Fraade, Multilingualism and Translation, chapter 7.

The Impact of the Jewish Revolts on the Jews of Asia Minor SETH SCHWARTZ

The Impact of 70 CE It is generally supposed, with some justification, that the Jews experienced less corporate trauma in Roman imperial Asia Minor (including but not limited to the province of Asia proper) than in any other eastern province or region. Unlike the non-Jewish inhabitants of Egypt, Palestine, and Syria, those of Asia supposedly had little predisposition to hate the Jews living among them; the practices and policies of the Roman state, so damaging to Jews in former Ptolemaic territories, may actually have seemed friendly to Jews in former Seleucid and Attalid territories; and the evidence for some periods is consistent with the common hypothesis that the Jews of Asia attained some measure of security and stability without sacrificing their corporate adherence to some form of Jewish norms. Though I have argued and will continue to argue that this narrative can be challenged in almost every detail and replaced with a more realistic one that, furthermore, fits the evidence better, several facts cannot be denied: notwithstanding evidence for Asian Jews’ dedication to the Jerusalem Temple, there is no hint of widespread violence in Asia—unlike in Syria and Egypt—associated with the Great Revolt (66–70 CE), nor any direct evidence of Asian Jews’—unlike Mesopotamian and Egyptian Jews’—participation in events in Judea. A generation later, the Jews of formerly Ptolemaic North Africa and Cyprus endured the cataclysmic suppression of a mass rising or string of civic conflicts, which conceivably resulted in their near-annihilation in those places. The Jews in Asia endured no such fate. Finally, the only direct, datable evidence for Asian Jewry in the reign of Hadrian, when Judean Jewry was itself being annihilated, appears to be an inscription on a monument base or statue base I chose to honor Richard with this paper because I feel that this Festschrift should include at least one essay that lacks even a single reference to a rabbinic text.

111

112  Making History marking the participation of a synagōgē Ioudaiōn in an unidentified city near Kyzikos in Mysia (northwestern Turkey) in the cult of that emperor, though the reading of the text is debatable (see below).1 If Justin’s Dialogue with Trypho really was set in Ephesus, as Eusebius plausibly claimed, then it follows that Justin considered the main city of Roman Asia an appropriate place of refuge for a Judean fleeing the Bar Kokhba Revolt. But it is equally clear that the Asian Jews, like all other Jews in the empire, were affected by the failure of the revolts in more or less tangible ways. The documents Josephus quoted in Antiquities 16 (many of them dated to around 14 BCE) were largely concerned with municipal interference in Asian Jews’ efforts to raise funds to send to the Jerusalem Temple—already a theme fifty years earlier, in Cicero’s defense of the proconsul Asiae Lucius Valerius Flaccus against charges of repetundae (peculation/ extortion). The outbreak of the Great Revolt in 66 may have already made the transmission of funds impossible, but the destruction of the Temple in 70 meant that a material expression of the Asian Jews’ solidarity with one another and with Judea and Judaism ceased forever. And if there was lingering doubt about the permanence of the situation after the summer of 70, the foundation of Aelia Capitolina on the ruins of Jerusalem around 129/130 and the crushing of the last Jewish revolt, which had erupted as a consequence, surely removed it. Relatedly, and more tangibly still, in 70 all Jews in the empire were subjected to the two-drachma per annum tax to the “Jewish fisc.” This imposition was given various interpretations even in antiquity: it replaced, practically and symbolically, the half-sheqel that the Torah required all adult male Israelites to pay to the Tabernacle/Temple, and/or, as Tertullian claimed, it was a fine levied for continued adherence to the religiones of the Jews. We do not know how Asian Jews had been raising funds for the Jerusalem Temple before 66–70. Did communities levy them as a tax from their constituents? Were the donations voluntary, and not limited to the sum of a half-sheqel (= two denarii)? Cicero suggested that the funds might be collected in the dioiketic (subprovincial) capitals, though the Asian Jews might have done this defensively, specifically in 63 BCE, to keep the funds safe while the governor Flaccus adjudicated their fate.2 Be this as it may, we

1. See Cumhur Tanriver, Mysia’dan Yeni Epigrafik Buluntular (Bornova, Izmir: Ege Üniversitesi, 2013), #41 = Année Epigraphique 2016/2013 #1517. The inscription postdates 128 CE and may have been made in anticipation of the emperor’s eastern tour of 131/132. I am grateful to my colleagues John Ma and Ahmed Tunç Şen for help reading the original publication. See below for discussion of the “former Jews” inscription from Hadrianic Smyrna. 2. On the charges against Flaccus and Cicero’s defense, see Y. (H.), Lewy, “Cicero on the Jews in His Speech for the Defense of Flaccus” [Hebrew] Zion 7 (1941/1942) 109–34; some of the same ground is covered, in English, by Miriam Pucci Ben Zeev, “The Myth of Cicero’s Anti-Judaism,” in Religio Licita? Rom und die Juden, ed. Görge K. Hasselhoff and Meret Strothmann, Studia Judaica 84 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2017), 105–34.

Schwartz: The Impact of the Jewish Revolt  113 can be pretty certain that the post-70 tax was collected differently. Most importantly, it was a proper tax, not a gift or a mitzvah (to use the slightly anachronistic language of late-antique Palestinian epigraphy). Furthermore, it was collected from every member of a Jewish household including children and slaves—as opposed to the half-sheqel, paid only by adult males—so it was not a trivial burden (see below).3 It is impossible to assume that there were no consequences beyond the most obvious and tangible. The failed rebellions generated structural changes in Jewish life under Rome, including ideational and religious changes. In this essay I will describe some of these and what they meant for the Jews of Asia, acknowledging that most of the impact is unrecoverable for lack of evidence and due to the problems hard-wired into any effort to recover group mentalité, even in the presence of evidence. In order to proceed I will present brief “before-and-after” shots of Jewish life in Asia, which is not as simple as the unwary reader may think. There is little terra firma. Acts of the Apostles appears to give a usefully detailed account of aspects of Jewish life in mid first-century Asia, but as I have argued in detail elsewhere, there are reasons to believe the account ill-founded.4 The “after” picture must be aggregated from chronologically stratified hints— while exercising utmost caution not to introduce evidence from late antiquity. The resulting time-lapse sequence, with all its fuzziness, is no more than suggestive—but it does suggest a religious, social, and political landscape transformed.

Jewish Life in Imperial Asia before 70 CE While there is very little epigraphical or archaeological evidence for Asian Jews before 70 CE, there are some illuminating literary sources, on which all accounts of the subject must ultimately depend. Chronologically prior, 3. On the tax to the “Jewish fisc,” or the “didrachmon,” see Willy Clarysse, Sofie Remijsen, and Mark Depauw, “Observing the Sabbath in the Roman Empire: A Case Study,” Scripta Classica Israelica 29 (2010): 51–57; for the evolution of Goodman’s thought on the subject, not necessarily a story of progress, see Martin Goodman, “Nerva, the Fiscus Judaicus and Jewish Identity,” JRS 79 (1989): 40–44; Goodman, “The Fiscus Iudaicus and Gentile Attitudes to Judaism in Flavian Rome,” in Flavius Josephus and Flavian Rome, ed. Jonathan Edmondson, Steve Mason, and James Rives (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 167–77, presented in greater detail in Goodman’s, Rome and Jerusalem: The Clash of Ancient Civilizations (London: Allen Lane, 2007); and “The Roman State and the Jewish Diaspora Communities in the Antonine Age,” in Jewish and Christian Communal Identities in the Roman World, ed. Yair Furstenberg, Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity 94 (Leiden: Brill, 2016) 75–83. Note also the recent survey of Sven Günther, “The Fiscus Iudaicus: A Hypothetical Scholarly Construct,” in Hasselhoff and Strothmann, Religio Licita?, 175–89. 4. Seth Schwartz, “Did First-Century Asian Jews Live in ‘Communities’?,” forthcoming in D. Friedman and K. Czajkowski, eds., Festschrift for Martin Goodman (Oxford: Oxford ­University Press, 2023).

114  Making History assuming that the consensual view that the material for all its problems is roughly authentic is correct, are the collections of documents that Josephus quoted in Ant. 14.185–267 and 16.160–178.5 The first set dates from the period of the civil wars that marked the transition from Roman Republic to Empire, roughly 49–40 BCE, though some of the texts may conceivably be considerably earlier.6 The second set dates from the reign of Augustus, mainly the years around 14 BCE, coinciding with the visit of the emperor’s deputy and son-in-law, Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, to the Asian provinces, though some texts are later.7 In the course of the visit he received a delegation of Asian Jews at Ephesus, complaining about mistreatment in their cities, and, with the intervention of Herod and his representative Nikolaos of Damascus, issued decrees in their favor (Ant. 16.27–61; perhaps related to the decree Josephus quotes at Ant. 16.167–8).8 The second source is the New Testament book of Acts of the Apostles, the second of a two-volume work on the origins and spread of Christianity, whose first volume is the Gospel of Luke. “Luke” was probably a rough contemporary of Josephus, and his history may have been published around the same time as Antiquities, though there are defenders of a much later date, ca. 120–140 CE, which would make Luke a contemporary more of Justin Martyr than of Josephus (born 38 CE).9 Be this as it may, much of the action of Acts is set in the Jewish communities of mid-first-century Asia Minor and Greece. While the historicity of LukeActs in general has been subjected to withering and, in my view, entirely convincing critique,10 with a few exceptions scholars have taken aspects of Luke’s account of Jewish life in Asia very seriously if not always at face value.11

5. The fundamental treatment of all these documents remains Miriam Pucci Ben Zeev, Jewish Rights in the Roman World: The Greek and Roman Documents Quoted by Josephus Flavius, TSAJ 74 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1998). Readers should consult this work for comments on all documents cited below. 6. See Claude Eilers, “Josephus’s Caesarian Acta: A History of a Dossier,” SBL 2003 Seminar Papers 42:189–213. 7. Claude Eilers dates the important text mentioned in the title of his paper to 3/2 BCE (“The Date of Augustus’ Edict on the Jews [Jos. AJ 16.162–165] and the Career of C. Marcius Censorinus,” Phoenix 58 [2004]: 86–95). 8. See the comments of Ben Zeev, Jewish Rights, 262–72. 9. For a survey of the question of dating and of the related question of whether LukeActs could be anti-Marcionite, see most recently I. Oliver, “Are Luke and Acts Anti-Marcionite,” in Wisdom Poured Out like Water: Studies on Jewish and Christian Antiquity in Honor of Gabriele Boccaccini, ed. J. Harold Ellens et al., DCLS 38 [Berlin: de Gruyter, 2018], 499–525). 10. E.g., Clare K. Rothschild, “Pisidian Antioch in Acts 13: The Denouement of the South Galatian Hypothesis,” NovT 54 (2012): 334–53. 11. See Jack T. Sanders, The Jews in Luke-Acts (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987), not unaware of Luke’s errors but on the whole positivistic. For a more skeptical voice, note A. T. Kraabel, “The Disappearance of the God-Fearers,” Numen 28 (1981): 113–26.

Schwartz: The Impact of the Jewish Revolt  115 I have written in detail about this elsewhere and need only summarize here.12 Josephus’s documents in the aggregate paint a picture of groups of Jews in cities in Ionia, Caria, Aeolis, Mysia, and Sardis in Lydia, attempting to organize, claiming not the right of citizenship but at most a privilege of following their own laws for some purposes. Many of Josephus’s documents show that the cities did not accept these claims—or, at any rate, not all of them. The details of Roman intervention changed over time, but at least in the documents cited in Antiquities the Romans were more or less disposed to grant the Jews some of the privileges they requested. The first senatorial decree, issued by the consul of 49 BCE, L. Cornelius Lentulus Crus (Ant. 14.228–229), was of severely limited application, though apparently, given the number of different versions of it Josephus cites, of great symbolic importance: young Jewish men residing in Asian cities who were also Roman citizens were exempt from legionary conscription provided they could demonstrate to a magistrate their adherence to those Jewish rites (presumably Sabbath and food laws) that would interfere with military service. A later version of this law changed to make the presumption of Jews’ adherence to their native laws and thus their need to be exempted from conscription automatic (Ant. 14.223–227).13 This was due to the intervention of envoys of the Judean prince Hyrcanus II with members of the Caesarean faction, decisively in control after the defeat of Pompey in 48 BCE (Lentulus Crus was a Pompeian with few connections to the Judean leadership). City councils contested Jews’ claims of the privilege of following their own laws even after such privileges were officially confirmed by Julius Caesar. Indeed, some of these same issues returned to the agenda in the high Principate, at the time of the Asian Jews’ embassy to Marcus Agrippa at Ephesus in 14 BCE. So, tensions in at least some cities between Jews and Greeks were significant and enduring, but, if we follow Josephus, the Jews could rely on the protection of the Roman state, thereby anticipating a pattern familiar from later periods of Jewish history—Jews in alliance with central authorities against local municipalities or rural communes. And the main thing the Roman state allowed the Jews to do was to organize to observe and preserve their ancestral rites, including fundraising, public feasts, and in some cases gathering on Sabbaths. The diffusion of the synagogue-based Jewish religious community, attested to in Acts, rested on the firm foundation of imperial decree.

12. See n. 4 above. 13. On this decree, issued by P. Cornelius Dolabella, see Anne-Valérie Pont, “Cités grecques et l’administration romaine en Asie Mineure à l’époque augustéenne: L’interaction des normes civiques grecques et des dispositions romaines à travers la question des ‘droits’ des Juifs,” in Auguste et l’Asie Mineure, ed. Laurence Cavalier, Marie-Claire Ferriès, and ­Fabrice Delrieux, Scripta antiqua 97 (Bordeaux: Ausonius, 2017), 117–26. Pont notes that in 43 BCE the senate declared Dolabella a public enemy and his decrees invalid.

116  Making History While there is a kernel of truth in this narrative, it must be refined and qualified, nearly though not quite to the point of extinction. Josephus’s documents probably came from dossiers of material gathered by Jewish leaders to press their claims of the privilege to gather and organize without molestation by the city councils. They are thus highly selective. A comprehensive collection of senatorial and imperial decrees, letters, and rescripts concerning the Jews in Greek cities would indubitably look very different and might tell a less happy story.14 Indeed, Josephus tells us just enough to demonstrate that the Julio-Claudian emperors did not always support the Jews’ claims. Tiberius expelled the Jews from Rome,15 while Gaius (Caligula) simply ignored his ancestors’ decrees affirming the Jews’ privileges. His uncle Claudius did not, but had a pedantic and minimalistic understanding of them (despite explicitly declaring them valid throughout the empire) and little patience for the Jewish side in their conflict with the Greeks of Alexandria in 38–41 CE. For his part, Nero rejected the Jews’ insistence on isopoliteia in a location where we would have expected their claims to be especially strong, Caesarea Maritima, even apart from the fact that the army that he sent to Judea in 67 was so overwhelmingly large that he clearly intended not merely to quell the revolt but to crush the Judeans altogether.16 We need to consider other qualifications as well. To be sure, the privileges that Caesar and Augustus granted the Jews—even if, as the behavior of their descendants demonstrates, the grants were not regarded as eternally or automatically binding—were not trivial. Roman law in the late Republic, the Principate, and the early Empire, took a dim view of subgroups of urban populations forming associations and clubs (collegia, or thiasoi)—indeed, the emperors largely prohibited collegia, though they could not stamp them out completely.17 That the Jews were permitted to form separate corporations within cities was important, but both Caesar 14. See Tessa Rajak, “Was There a Roman Charter for the Jews,” JRS 74 (1984): 107–23; Rajak, “Jewish Rights in the Greek Cities under Roman Rule: A New Approach,” in Approaches to Ancient Judaism V, ed. William Scott Green (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1978), 19–35; Benedikt Eckhardt, “Zur römischen Sicht auf die Iudaei in später Republik und frühen Prinzipat,” in Hasselhoff and Strothmann, Religio Licita, 13–53. But Eckhardt plays down the importance of this qualification; see his “Associations beyond the City: Jews, Actors and Empire in the Roman Period,” in Private Associations and Jewish Communities in the Hellenistic and Roman Cities, ed. Benedikt Eckhardt, JSJSup 191 (Leiden: Brill, 2019), 115–56. 15. This expulsion is a fact that is well attested if not well understood: see Philo, Legat. 159–161; Josephus, Ant. 18.63ff.; Tacitus, Ann. 2.85.4–5; Suetonius, Tiberius 36.1; Cassius Dio, Hist. 57.18.5a. For discussion, see Leonard Victor Rutgers, “Roman Policy towards the Jews: Expulsions from the City of Rome during the First Century C.E.,” Classical Antiquity 13 (1994): 56–74. 16. See Gil Gambash, “Foreign Enemies of the Empire: The Great Jewish Revolt and the Roman Perception of the Jews,” Scripta Classica Israelica 32 (2013): 173–94. 17. On the Roman attitude to collegia/thiasoi and the question of whether the Jewish

Schwartz: The Impact of the Jewish Revolt  117 and Augustus made it very clear that the reason for the concession was not that the Jews were an inherently privileged segment of the citizen bodies of the cities of Asia, Greece, Syria, and Egypt, but precisely because they were citizens of a foreign nation whose leaders (the late Hasmoneans and, presumably, Herod) were friends and allies of Rome. Both Caesar and Augustus framed their privilege as an exceptional personal favor. In the one later document that survives in full, Claudius’s letter to the Alexandrians preserved on papyrus, the emperor no longer mentions an alliance with the Jews’ leaders, merely the precedent of his grandfather the divine Augustus. But he also states very clearly that the Jews are a foreign group in Alexandria, not natives or citizens, so the Caesarian legal theory behind the Jews’ privileges (the Jews are privileged peregrini) remained intact. But he also singles the Jews out for special abuse accompanied by grave threats, whereas he simply asks the Greeks to behave gently toward the Jews and not interfere with their rites.18 We will have to wonder whether their privileges remained intact after 70 CE, when the Jews were members of a defeated enemy nation, or even a deconstituted one.

Acts There is a partial geographical misfit between Josephus’s documents and Acts’ Jewish communities. Except for the vivid but clearly largely imaginary piece set in Ephesus (Acts 19:8–40),19 the action of the book takes place far from the venerable cities of Ionia and its neighbors. The world of Acts is that of the relatively recently founded, heavily Romanized cities of communities were thought to count among them, see Eckhardt, “Associations beyond the City.” 18. See Victor Tcherikover and Alexander Fuks, eds., Corpus Papyrorum Judaicarum, 3 vols. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; Jerusalem: Magnes, 1957–1964), vol. 2, #153; and Josephus, Ant. 19.280–285, with comments of Pucci Ben Zeev, Jewish Rights, 294– 342. Though Pucci Ben Zeev makes a strong case for the basic authenticity of Claudius’s decree in Josephus’s version, the tone is so starkly different from that of the papyrus that it seems overwhelmingly likely that Josephus or his source softened the emperor’s language. In any case the letter illustrates as clearly as possible the fact that Roman rule in the east was coming to depend exclusively on the intermediation of urban Greeks, even under the Julio-Claudians who retained the practice, increasingly vestigial in some places, of patronizing native non-Greek aristocracies. Claudius’s much-vaunted friendship with Agrippa I and Herod of Chalcis did nothing to soften his rhetoric toward the Jews, whether or not it influenced his legislation. 19. Even the highly positivistic Paul R. Trebilco acknowledges some exaggeration and tendentiousness in Acts’ Ephesus pericope, though arguing for its basic historicity (The Early Christians in Ephesus from Paul to Ignatius, WUNT 166 [Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004], 104– 70). Ernst Haenchen provides a full account of the implausibilities of the story (The Acts of the Apostles: A Commentary, trans. Bernard Noble and Gerald Shinn; English translation revised by R. McL. Wilson [Philadelphia: Westminster, 1971], 576–79).

118  Making History central and interior Asia Minor, and northern Greece. Luke imagined that ca. 50 CE the Jews were a well-established and well-integrated presence in these cities whose good relationships with the Greek municipal leadership is bolstered by the fact that some Greeks attend the Jews’ synagogues and even have a sort of role, ill-defined as it is, in the Jews’ communal life, as “God-fearers.” The exception is Ephesus, where the Jews and Greeks seem unusually separate, no God-fearers are mentioned, and a Jew who tries to express to the city council his solidarity with the idolatrous Greeks against Paul is shouted down by the Greek citizenry with what amounts to a religious-nationalistic slogan that automatically excludes the Jews (“Great is Artemis of the Ephesians”; Acts 19:33–34, with comments of Haenchen). Some modern commentators have claimed to find evidence of “local color” in Acts, which would, if present, contribute to its realism, if not demonstrate its reliability.20 But actually Acts is rife with stereotypical and discernible misinformation, particularly when it comes to the Jews.21 The one realistic effect may come in the most fantastic episode of all, the Ephesus pericope, which features, in the hint of hostility between Jews and Greeks, a trace of the old tensions that underlie Josephus’s documents from sixty to one hundred years earlier. It is, similarly, possible that Jews desiring to lead a corporate life in accordance with their own laws had in fact an easier time in the newer and more Roman cities inland and farther east: indeed, Josephus’s documents once again hint that Sardis—a city hellenized only in the third century BCE and conceivably home to a small Judahite population even under the Achaemenids, when it was the Lydo-Persian city Sparda—was usually more hospitable to Jews than Ephesus or Smyrna or Tralles. But we also may be witnessing the effects of Lukan apologetics—Paul ran into trouble in Galatia and elsewhere because the Jews and the Greeks were in cahoots. While it remains interesting that Luke imagined that things had worked differently at Ephesus, we should not take his happy (if not for Paul!) picture of Jewish–Greek coexistence at face value. Nor can we be sure that the Jewish religious community, buffered by groups of sympathetic Greeks—God-fearers among others—were quite as common in interior Asia as Luke thought. The details are figments of his imagination. The one possible first-century community known to us from epigraphy—at any rate a group of Jews who possessed a synagogue—was in the small Phrygian city of Acmonia, 20. See, e.g., Cilliers Breytenbach, Paulus und Barnabas in der Provinz Galatien: Studien zu Apostelgeschichte 13f.; 16,6; 18,23 und den Adressaten des Galaterbriefes, AGJU 38 (Leiden: Brill, 1996) for powerful advocacy for the Lokalkolorit hypothesis. 21. On which see the helpful but incomplete account of Lester Grabbe, “What Did the Author of Acts Know about Pre-70 Judaism,” in Ellens et al., Wisdom Poured Out like Water, 450–62; for a less forgiving view, see Sanders, Jews in Luke-Acts, 4–5, with n. 11.

Schwartz: The Impact of the Jewish Revolt  119 a place not unlike Ikonion and Antioch in Pisidia. But its synagogue was the foundation of Julia Severa, a grand local Greek (or Italian colonist) aristocratic woman, mother of senators, high priestess of the imperial cult, so possibly more a monument to her unusually catholic piety than an organic expression of local Jewish religious autonomy.22 Its relevance to Acts is not straightforward.

From the Revolts to the Constitutio Antoniniana, 70–212 CE Even the mirage of evidentiary terra firma evaporates for the post-70 period in Asia, yet there remain suggestive details, and literary sources are not wholly lacking when we remember that Josephus presented his dossier of pro-Jewish decrees in a work published around the year 90, and Luke composed his vividly novelistic account of Paul’s impact on Jewish and Greek life in Asia and Greece at some point between 90 and 140. In Josephus’s explanations for his motives in presenting the decrees (in Ant. 14.185–189, 265–267; 16.174–178) he insists on the Greeks’ hostility to the Jews in the wake of the revolt, and in one passage implies also the unreliability of the state in supporting the Jews. Two stories that Josephus narrates in Jewish War, set in Damascus (J.W. 2.560–61) and Antioch (J.W. 7.43–62, 100–115), not in, but in the second case near, Asia, buttress these claims; he makes it clear that the Judean rebellion frightened the Greeks— even as far away as Antioch, over three hundred miles from Jerusalem as the crow flies—so that in Damascus they massacred all the Jews and in Antioch massacred some, temporarily canceled the traditional privileges of the rest, and unsuccessfully petitioned Titus to expel the Jews from the city in late 70. In both cities, according to Josephus, the Jews had previously benefited from exceptionally friendly relations with segments of the Greek populace, reminding us of Luke’s Greek buffer populations in Asia, but these friendships had not weathered the crisis of the revolt. Thus, Josephus’s comments about the Greeks’ hatred of the Jews in the wake of the revolt should not be understood as mere boilerplate.23 By contrast, though in Antiquities 14 and 16 he does not claim that the Roman state currently 22. On the rather well-attested Julia Severa, see, in addition to W. Ameling, Inscriptiones Judaicae Orientis, II, Kleinasien (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004), #168, with commentary, A. R. R. Sheppard, “R.E.C.A.M. Notes and Studies No. 6: Jews, Christians and Heretics in Acmonia and Eumeneia,” Anatolian Studies 29 (1979): 169–80. Ameling, #44, a small square marble plaque with an inscription dated to “the early empire,” nach Buchstabenform, memorializes Loukios Lollios Iousstos, “scribe of the laos in Zmyrna.” He is not called Ioudaios, nor is there any Jewish iconography (we would not expect any on an “early” inscription), but laos is a word often used to designate Jewish communities. 23. Likewise, in J.W. 7.43, Josephus says that the Antiochene Jews’ long history as ben-

120  Making History shows goodwill to the Jews, he insists that it is a well-established precedent—in a way meant probably to convince Roman officials, warn Greeks, and console and encourage Jews among his readers. In his account of the conflicts in Antioch in 70, he says simply, with no explanation, that Titus rejected the Greeks’ request to strip the Jews of their privileges, adducing this as a case of the Flavians’ continued goodwill and/or endorsement of Julio-Claudian precedent, though in reality, if Josephus described the episode correctly, the prince would have been motivated by the desire to keep things as calm as possible in a center of Jewish population and a flashpoint, second only to Alexandria, of Jewish–Greek tensions. As far as Acts is concerned, Luke’s story is complex: on the one hand, everywhere Paul goes he wins both Jewish and gentile converts; on the other hand, the Jews especially and the Greeks secondarily end up treating Paul with hostility, and Luke repeatedly claims that “the Jews” rejected the gospel, often only a few verses after describing the masses of Jews who had been won over. Luke also presses the claim that the Jews (and some of the Greeks) were stasiasts, fomenting civic disturbances, whereas Paul himself was a loyal Roman who enjoyed excellent relations with the Roman authorities, a claim, that, once again, coexists uncomfortably with Acts’ vivid—and most assuredly false—accounts of Paul’s sowing of discord wherever he went without ever getting in trouble for it. Luke certainly imagined a time when the Jews and Greeks in Asia had lived in harmony as beneficiaries of Roman largesse but perhaps felt that the elements of his narrative that suggested Jewish-fomented conflict would be effective in the post-Revolt world, in which the Jews’ position was damaged. Luke’s assumption and Josephus’s claims seem mutually confirmatory. Is there additional evidence that they were right?

Staseis? There is evidence for staseis (civic conflicts) in the province of Asia in the early years of Vespasian’s reign, involving even the installation of a small garrison detached from the Legio XII Fulminata, which had served under Titus in Judea, at the eastern frontier of the province in Eumeneia (Phrygia). Although we should not exclude the possibility, there is no strong reason to think that the staseis in question involved hostilities between Jews and Greeks.24 Nor are we aware of any noteworthy warlike activity eficiaries of royal favor had allowed them, before 66 CE, to live “without fear,” implying that this was not the norm for Jews in eastern Roman cities. 24. See Peter Thonemann, The Maeander Valley: A Historical Geography from Antiquity to Byzantium, Greek Culture in the Roman World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 151–52. The one highly debatable piece of evidence for Jews at Eumeneia is the early-

Schwartz: The Impact of the Jewish Revolt  121 between Jews and Romans in Asia in the period of the rebellions, in contrast to well attested disturbances in Syria and Egypt and Libya at the time of the Great Revolt, and in North Africa, Cyprus and, somewhat less certainly, Roman Mesopotamia and again Palestine in 115–116 CE. Why? We do not have enough information to know, but can probably exclude the possibility that there were major episodes of which we are ignorant: Josephus would not have failed to mention them if he had known of them, and we would expect to find echoes in Acts. We can of course be less certain about the Diaspora Revolt, but even then stasis would have left traces, if not in historiography, then in epigraphical evidence for the impact of the rising—comparable to the inscriptions from Cyrene concerning the tumultus Iudaicus—or for troop movements. Western and central Asia had a very small military presence,25 and we would know if large numbers of troops had been transferred from the Euphrates frontier, which was itself perhaps in a state of disturbance in 115. With respect to 115, William Horbury observes that the main theater of the revolt—excluding its possible Mesopotamian and Judean reflexes— consisted of former Ptolemaic territories, which may hint at one reason Asian Jews did not rebel. 26 The rebellions in Egypt and Cyrene in 70 and 115 were, to be sure, due in part to the activities of radical Judean refugees but were also the product of internal political dynamics. The most obvious issue has already been briefly mentioned: for the Asian Jews, Roman rule constituted a benefit—limited but real: it improved their status and enabled the development of communal institutions of a limited type. For the Jews in Libya and Egypt, by contrast, the arrival of Rome meant disaster—the end of the Jews’ Hellenic status and so of their full imbrication in the social and political fabric—unusually, as Jews—and their transformation into xenoi whose toleration was the grudging gift of the emperors but to-mid-third-century epitaph marking the grave of a family of curial status—hardly a group of revolutionaries though this tells us nothing about their ancestors 150 years earlier. The area in general—Acmonia, Philadelphia, Hierapolis—contains much similarly ambiguous evidence from the same period, or in some cases evidence not per se ambiguous but demonstrating profound Romanization. On the Eumeneian text (= Ameling, #186), see Sheppard, “R.E.C.A.M. Notes and Studies No. 6,” relying on Louis Robert’s judgment in identifying texts as “Jewish.” One could indeed argue that profound Romanization—at the expense of Jewish law—ca. 220 CE argues for equally profound rupture in the generation starting in 70 CE, though other explanations are possible. On this point, see Seth Schwartz, Imperialism and Jewish Society, 200 B.C.E. to 640 C.E., Jews, Christians, and Muslims from the Ancient to the Modern World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001). In any case the transfer of a vexillatio to a part of Phrygia with attested Jewish presence (in contrast to northern Phrygia, which was both less Romanized and less hellenized) is suggestive. 25. See Christian Marek, In the Land of a Thousand Gods: A History of Asia Minor in the Ancient World, trans. Steven Rendall (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016), 381–86. 26. See William Horbury, Jewish War under Trajan and Hadrian (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 182–88.

122  Making History was increasingly contested by practitioners of a politicized and toxic Hellenism.27 Horbury suggests that the staseis involved inner Jewish conflict, between wealthier “integrationists” and the radicalized poor,28 but what is noteworthy in Egypt and Cyrenaica, as it had been a few years earlier in Caesarea Maritima, was Rome’s hostility precisely to the integrationists: both Gaius and Claudius humiliated them in their different ways, and if Josephus can be believed, Catullus, governor of Cyrenaica ca. 72 CE, presided over the judicial massacre of a mass of wealthy local Jews implausibly accused by a highly untrustworthy source of plotting against the state. Though Josephus attributes to Catullus treasonous motivations (“so that he too might be thought to have won a Judaic war” [J.W. 7.443]), Vespasian did not punish him, only God did. This is the final event narrated in Josephus’s Jewish War (451–453). Whatever precipitated the poorly attested and understood events of 115–116, the hostile turn of the Roman state in an environment already characterized by great intercommunal stress due to ham-fisted Roman intervention, cannot but be part of the causal structure. The fact that Roman intervention had not harmed the Jews of Asia as it had those of Africa surely helped to keep things relatively calm in Asia, though it is worth remembering just how much provincial violence was necessary for the historiographic tradition to register it—even the Diaspora Revolt itself is barely noticed. A somewhat more speculative factor may be population size/density. We have no idea how many Jews lived in Libya, Egypt, Cyprus, Asia, Bithynia, and so on. Both literary and papyrological sources give the impression—and it is truly no more than that—that Egyptian Jewry was numerous and densely settled at least in some nomes and in Alexandria. Certainly in the latter they were not negligible or there could not have been what by all accounts was a significant thorybos in 38 CE. One can likewise speculate that Jews were not as numerous anywhere in Asia. No doubt Sardis, Smyrna, and Ephesus had at some periods a substantial Jewish presence but, outside the imagination of Luke, it seems unlikely that they could ever have constituted a serious threat to the Roman or local municipal order. Indeed, Josephus’s documents and reports demonstrate that they were readily available for victimization.29 27. On Jews in the Ptolemaic realm as Hellenes, see Joseph Mélèze-Modrzejewski, The Jews of Egypt: From Rameses II to Emperor Hadrian (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1995). 28. See Horbury, Jewish War, 182–88. 29. Conceivably, the special attention the revenge fantasist(s) who composed the Fifth Sibylline Oracle lavished on these cities among some others—for example, Miletus—testifies to heightened tensions between Jews and Greeks in Ionia as elsewhere in Asia, since the text also curses Phrygia, Lydia, Lycia, and Caria among other places, after the revolts. For an account of some of the problems with using this text as a historical source, see Stephen

Schwartz: The Impact of the Jewish Revolt  123 In sum, we should posit for Asia in the period of the revolts heightened tensions between Jews and Greeks, progressive alienation of the Jews from the Roman state, and in general a turn for the worse. Outbreaks of rioting and violence had an excellent chance of escaping the notice of the sources, if they had occurred, even if they were locally or regionally significant for a time, but apparently nothing happened that exceeded the capacity of the locally based auxiliary cohorts to handle (eastern Anatolia may have been a different story). Let me briefly summarize the impacts of the revolts, both the certain and the hypothetical ones, before scrutinizing the second-century evidence for traces of these impacts in the final part of the paper: 1. Notwithstanding Titus’s temporizing move at Antioch, there is reason to think that imperial support for the Jews, and not just in Palestine, was in accelerated decline.30 There is excellent evidence that the state continued to think of all the empire’s Jews as constituting one entity, but that entity could no longer be regarded as a nation in alliance or a state of loyal subjection. The evidence for this is the imposition of the special tax to the fiscus Iudaicus collected from all Jews in the empire. Let us not underestimate the signifiFelder, “What Is ‘The Fifth Sibylline Oracle’?,” JSJ 33 (2002): 363–85. Be this as it may, the peculiar hostility to Asia is present; the text is (probably) post-destruction and at least in large part definitely Jewish, so its desire for revenge against places apart from the standard Egypt and Rome must have some explanation. 30. For an especially stark account, see Goodman, “ ‘Fiscus Iudaicus,’” 167–77, presented in greater detail in Goodman’s, Rome and Jerusalem. More recently, Goodman has argued for the endurance, or perhaps rather revival, of some basic form of the traditional Jewish privileges in the aftermath of all the revolts, out of a combination of governmental inertia and recognition of the utility of local Jewish communities for collecting the Jewish tax (“Roman State and the Jewish Diaspora,” 75–83). (In reality the best evidence for state inertia might be thought to be a decontextualized fragment of a law of Severus and Caracalla quoted by Ulpian (Digest 50.2.3) allowing Jews to serve on curiae but exempting them from aspects of the job that might harm their superstitio; but the issue here may be a bit different. Jews eligible for curial service would have been wealthy citizens of both their cities and the empire and so would have had a special competence to press their privileges—like the late Republican Jewish Roman citizens who could claim exemption from legionary conscription due to their ethē. The law need not imply that all Jews automatically had the right to have their religious preferences respected). Still, governmental inertia is certainly worth considering, but Goodman does not register here the implications of the Edfu ostraca as analyzed by Clarysse et al. that the Jewish tax could be effectively collected even in the absence of traditional privileges, simply by entrusting collection to local rich Jews (“Observing the Sabbath”). An interesting feature of Goodman’s 2005 and 2007 publications is his rejection of his older interpretation of Nerva’s coin legend, FISCI IUDAICI CALUMNIA SUBLATA; in 1989 he had argued for the interpretation adopted below. The coin celebrates the prohibition of denunciation of alleged evaders (“Nerva, the Fiscus Judaicus”). His subsequent view was that the coin type celebrates the elimination of the tax altogether, though, in his view, Trajan soon revived it. The earlier view has proved more popular than the later.

124  Making History cance of this from the perspective of Rome. One of the most important privileges the Romans had conceded to the Jews from the time of Augustus at latest was the permission to collect silver and gold (whether the Jews outside Judea thought of it as a tax or a donation) for the temple and send it to Jerusalem without interference. This was now reconceived as a two-denarius tax or indemnification transmitted to Rome to benefit Jupiter Optimus Maximus, chief god of the Roman pantheon.31 (See below on the economic implications of the tax.) While consciousness of this purpose probably faded over time, it remained that the Jews, still a nation, had been recategorized from allies to indemnity-paying tributaries, regardless of whether they had supported the revolt and even, so it seems, if they were also Roman citizens—an internal tension that mainly serves to warn us against an excessively constitutionalist approach to the problem.32 This does not mean that no Jewish community anywhere could ever expect to lobby the local governor to preserve its ancient privileges, but it indubitably reduced the chance of such an action’s success. The Diaspora Revolt of 116–117 would have enhanced the Jews’ declining status in the imperial court and among its local representatives. 2. City councils and citizen bodies: Josephus, writing after 70 CE, supposed that “the Greeks” in general—which must mean the citizens of Greek cities in Palestine, Syria (sometimes also called, by abjection, Syrians), Asia, Greece, plus Alexandria in Egypt— were automatically hostile to the Jews who lived among them. The older evidence he cites, in the form of documents and stories, tells more complex and variegated stories, featuring untrammeled hostility in Ionia and Caria and perhaps Alexandria, but in Damascus and Antioch, and perhaps by extension in the Greek cities of Palestine, attitudes that were internally divided and changed in accordance with historical contingencies—thus, throngs of “sympathizers” in the Syrian cities, but intense, murderous hostility at the time of the revolt. Josephus’s own editorial interventions may indeed inform us that in the aftermath of the Great Revolt (Ant. 14 and 16 were written around 90 CE) the mood soured for quite a while, and here, too, the Diaspora Revolt must have increased tensions and suspi31. See the recent survey of Günther, “Fiscus Iudaicus.” 32. In any case, Goodman’s conclusion in 1989 that the post-Domitianic Jewish tax rested on a redefinition of Jews as members of a religious rather than a national group (since the tax was now supposedly collected only from “professing” Jews, not “ethnic” Jews) should be resisted. As we have seen above, even the very earliest Roman legislation about Jews, the Lentulan decree of 49 BCE, relied on a religious definition of Jewishness, while being part of a larger dossier in the which the Jews’ nationhood is explicit. Such a redefinition of Jewishness—still only partial—was achieved only in the Christian codes.

Schwartz: The Impact of the Jewish Revolt  125 cions everywhere, especially if it had echoes in Palestine and Mesopotamia, as some think, even leaving aside the fact that the revolt resulted in the near extermination of the Jewish communities of Egypt, Libya, and Cyprus. 3. The Jewish communities: If we take seriously the hypothesis of a decline in both the “constitutional” status and the local standing of the Jewish communities in Asia (and elsewhere) in the wake of the revolts, and the impacts of the revolts themselves, then several conclusions follow inexorably. Tessa Rajak argued convincingly that the Jewish communities of Asia and elsewhere were able to constitute information-sharing networks that could in the best cases be mobilized for defense of local privileges.33 Probably one factor that made the emergence of such networks possible was pilgrimage to Jerusalem, a central place where individuals from widely scattered Jewish communities could meet, and also lobby local Jewish authorities; another may have been the centrality of metropolitan diaspora communities like that of Alexandria. With the disappearance of such centers, the networks would have loosened if not unraveled completely. Similarly, the effective deconstitution of the Jews as a nation with a central leadership—however notional it may have been for most purposes—eliminated what had formerly, at least sporadically, been an important source of advocacy for the Jews of the empire. With their general standing impaired, the Jews’ institutions would have become harder to maintain. They would have been more vulnerable to interference, less able to raise money or keep the money that they had raised. This effect might have been enhanced by the imposition of the tax to the fiscus Iudaicus in 70 CE. To be sure, we have little direct evidence for the impact of the didrachmon, as the tax was sometimes called, but we know enough about it to be able to engage in some minimalistic speculation. First, unlike the mahazit ha-sheqel, which it in effect replaced, the didrachmon was collected not only from adult males but from all members of a Jewish household including slaves. Let us assume for the moment that Jews in Asia, Greece, and Syria had paid the halfsheqel before 66 CE. In this case, a small household of the “lower middle class,” consisting of two adults, two children, and two slaves, which would before 66 have paid two denarii to the Jerusalem temple, would, after 70 have paid twelve denarii to the Jewish fisc earmarked for the reconstruction and maintenance of the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus on the Capitol. To make matters worse, though the “temple tax” was understood as a religious obli33. Rajak, “Was There a Roman Charter for the Jews,?” 107–23; Rajak, “Jewish Rights,” 19–35).

126  Making History gation and ostensibly permitted by various decrees and rescripts of Augustus, there existed in the final analysis no mechanisms to enforce its collection. Presumably in some places there was strong social pressure to pay, but no legal penalties were attached to non-payment. This obviously applies a fortiori if the Asian Jews, among others, regarded the funds they raised for the temple simply as voluntary contributions, with the wealthy donating more than two denarii but many donating nothing. The didrachmon, by contrast, was a proper tax paid into a Roman treasury. Failure to pay was a serious crime—hence the importance of denunciation of alleged evaders, a practice whose prohibition Nerva celebrated with a famous coin issue. Furthermore, the tax was not financially negligible. Our hypothetical small household had to remit the equivalent of about two weeks of wages to Rome on top of its regular taxes.34 Before and after Domitian, unrecognizable, disaffiliated, or apostate Jews could avoid payment and this in addition to the economic burden borne by “professing” Jews would have played some role in weakening Jewish institutions. There is evidence from Egypt that Jews themselves were responsible for collecting the didrachmon (except, again, presumably, under Domitian), as of course they had been for collecting the temple tax.35 We may reasonably extrapolate from the Egyptian case to the empire in general because this would obviously have been the most efficient way of collecting the tax from a group that otherwise lacked meaningful legal personality or definition from the perspective of the Roman state. But we may briefly wonder about the impact of this development on the social structure of Jewish communities. Taxes were naturally collected by the wealthiest members of communities. Managing the temple tax or temple-related fund-raising had been an act of piety, however much individuals may privately resent being dunned for cash even for a meritorious cause. After 70 CE, the same Jews were often collecting larger sums, but on behalf of the Roman state, turning them from piety to collaboration—one thinks of the hostility implicit in the New Testament’s characterization of the common Jewish view of telōnai (“publicans”), which Jesus subverts. Conceivably, some wealthy Jews might use their wealth to help their communities shoulder their additional burden, 34. This would have held true until the inflation of the later third century, which may have rendered the tax moot. There is no evidence for its continued collection under the Christian emperors. 35. This is the clear implication of the analysis in Clarysse et al., “Observing the Sabbath.” Eckhardt dismisses the implications of the evidence from Edfu (“Associations beyond the City,” 145 n. 116), but I do not understand his reasoning.

Schwartz: The Impact of the Jewish Revolt  127 but one should resist pious sentimentality: in general, the shift will have had at least for a time a more or less corrosive impact on inner-Jewish social relations. One can easily think of parallels from other periods of Jewish history, when increased financial pressure from the state brought communities to the brink of crisis and beyond.36 These considerations would have contributed to the sense that, in some settings, maintenance of public institutions like synagogues felt politically risky or socially undesirable, not to mention financially burdensome, and may explain the evidence to be discussed below of Jews finding means of corporate social expression not through particular institutions of their own, but through not-specifically-Jewish components of the general social fabric of the city—theaters, trade guilds, perhaps even the imperial cult, and so on. What did this mean for the persistence of specific Jewish practices?

Communities With and Without Judaism? Judaism With and Without Communities? The idea that the local religious community was the default normative mode of organization for Jews in the Roman diaspora has been qualified, jabbed at, occasionally locally challenged, but not dislodged. Rajak began her treatment of the subject on a revisionist note37 and ended with a very brief acknowledgment that there may have been other forms of association; but she focused on the varied terminology that the Jews applied to their religious communities, thought to be basically similar sorts of organizations notwithstanding the diverse names. An equally hardheaded scholar, Benedikt Eckhardt, does not, in an otherwise seminal contribution to the study of the diaspora Jewish community, even stop to worry about its diffusion, at least not explicitly.38 It might first of all have been worth reflecting a bit more deeply on the implications of the diverse terminology: starting in very late antiquity the terminology of community underwent a process of standardization, coincident with the revival of Hebrew as a liturgical language: the synagōgai and laoi and stemmata and 36. See, e.g., Robert C. Stacey, “The Conversion of the Jews to Christianity in Thirteenth-Century England,” Speculum 67 (1992): 263–83, here 270; Stacey, “Royal Taxation and the Social Structure of Medieval Anglo-Jewry: The Tallages of 1239–42,” HUCA 56 (1985): 175–249. This was a particularly extreme intervention with corrosive results. 37. Tessa Rajak, “Synagogue and Community in the Graeco-Roman Diaspora,” in Jews in the Hellenistic and Roman Cities, ed. John R. Bartlett (London: Routledge, 2002) 22–38. 38. Eckhardt, “Associations beyond the City.”

128  Making History katoikiai and politeumata were all transformed in qehilot (singular, qehilah) or qehalim (singular, qahal)—not, it is worth emphasizing, kenasot/kene­ siyyot (singular, keneset), the Hebrew for synagogue39—and remained that way more or less to the present. The variety that had prevailed earlier may point to different principles of organization featuring different types of institutions. Scholars of cautious and skeptical temperament, like Rajak, Eckhardt, and Walter Ameling,40 who nevertheless ended by embracing positivism with respect to the diffusion of the Jewish religious community, might have paused to consider the methodological foundations of their positivism: all three scholars aggregate geographically and chronologically scattered evidence and by-pass sites that have provided evidence for presence of Jews but none for the existence of institutions, which in turn makes it easier to downplay the implications of drastically non-normative bits of evidence from places like Aphrodisias and Hierapolis, and even the complexity and strangeness of the evidence from the most institutionalized of Asian communities, that of Smyrna. Since some of the evidence falls into patterns, it would be counterintuitive to insist that it must all be disaggregated in the radical sense of treating each item only in the context of the hyperlocal and not that of the generally Jewish. But as a thought experiment at the very least, disaggregation may in the end contribute to a more realistic, more historical, more dynamic picture of identifiably Jewish life in Asia. This is obviously not the place for a comprehensive treatment, but it is worth noting a few items that can undermine the sense of the normativity of the local religious community as the “natural” form of Jewish organization.

Acmonia The mid-first-century ktistis (founder-benefactress) of a synagogue in Acmonia, Phrygia, was a local aristocratic pagan woman, Julia Severa, high priestess of the imperial cult. The building’s renovators, later in the first century or early in the second, were three presumably Jewish men at least two of whom already possessed Roman citizenship—indicated by their names—and so were of relatively high standing (Ameling #168). In reality, they could have been freedmen, but prosperous liberti in small provincial towns, with distinguished former owners/patroni, still counted 39. The use of the term kenesiyyah to mean “church” (presumably since it coincidentally sounds like ecclesia) is modern. In premodern Hebrew it could refer to any assembly, including one in a synagogue. See Even-Shoshan Dictionary, s.v. “kenessiyah.” 40. See Walter Amerling’s important paper, “The Epigraphic Habit and the Jewish Diasporas of Asia Minor and Syria,” in From Hellenism to Islam: Cultural and Linguistic Change in the Roman Near East, ed. Hannah M. Cotton et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 203–34.

Schwartz: The Impact of the Jewish Revolt  129 as men of substance.41 In sum, epigraphy provides us with two quick snapshots of a first-century Jewish community with strong local and imperial connections—integrated, as the saying goes, both in the political fabric of the city and in broader imperial structures—in other words, very much the picture of success that we would expect from having read Josephus and Acts, though an aristocratic pagan ktistis is unusual even in the most optimistic construction of the history of the Jews in Roman Asia. It is not completely unparalleled, however: in the middle of the third century, an elderly Trallian woman, Claudia Capitolina, whose family was even more distinguished than that of Julia Severa—her father-in-law had been suffect consul, and three of her own ancestors/kinsmen were likewise of consular rank—made a donation, together with her children and grandchildren, to the Trallian synagogue in fulfillment of an oath. Was she Jewish? Presumably she was not. She is designated theosebēs in the inscription, but we know that her husband was a priest of Zeus Larasios, like his male ancestors (Ameling #27 with extensive commentary). She was also not the founder of the synagogue but one among presumably many pious donors. For those touters of the Asian-Jewish convivencia, the Capitolina dossier is especially poignant since in the Caesarean era Tralles had been a hotbed of anti-Jewish agitation. Here, at least, things had clearly changed, though let us remember that three centuries separate the issuance of the documents quoted in Antiquities 14 and the death of Claudia Capitolina (and two centuries separate Capitolina and Severa of Acmonia). The temptation to join these episodes into a neat narrative of integrative progress obviously must be resisted. Be this as it may, the story of Acmonia’s Jewry in the second and especially third centuries is murky (most of the texts are dated using a local era and fall in a span of a few decades in the mid-third century). In particular, after the synagogue rededication, perhaps in the late first or early second century, there is no further evidence of any sort of communal organization until, very uncertainly, late antiquity.42 We know about what may be

41. In addition to Sheppard, cited above, see Tessa Rajak, “The Synagogue in the ­ reco-Roman City,” in her The Jewish Dialogue with Greece and Rome: Studies in Cultural and G Social Interaction, AGJU 48 (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 463–78. Rajak notes that the “archisynagogue for life,” P. Turronius Klados, who was one of the restorers of the synagogue, has the same nomen as a local aristocrat mentioned on an Acmonian coin alongside Severa, and suggests that like Severa herself Klados was a non-Jewish member of the locally prominent gens ­Turronia; but she admits it is perhaps more likely that he was a freedman of the family. 42. Ameling #169, a lost stone described by William R. Ramsay, surely late antique but of unascertainable date, decorated with the image of a menorah, commemorates a gift given to the whole patris (from the context necessarily meaning community though this is an ­otherwise unattested term) due to an oath. Ameling #170, a fragment found in secondary use in a wall in a house in Ahat (= Acmoneia) containing a few letters of Greek and a legible phrase in Hebrew, of uncertain function, surely fifth century or later.

130  Making History high imperial Acmonian Jewry solely from a set of inscribed funerary altars, lacking iconographic indications of Jewishness and commemorating people whose epitaphs provide no direct evidence of their having been Jewish (Ameling ##171–178): there is not a single biblical name, and not one of the deceased or their relatives is designated Ioudaios/Ioudaia or provided with a normally Jewish title like archisynagōgos. Inscriptions that require those who disturb or reuse graves to pay a fine do not specify the Jewish community or the synagogue as recipient of the payment, as Jewish inscriptions elsewhere do. The evidence for their Jewishness consists entirely of the content of the curse formulas. Funerary curses or threats were a specialty of Asia Minor. Many ancient graves there threatened anyone who dared to disturb them with divine retribution and/or with fines, meant to be paid usually to a city treasury or the imperial fisc. Modern scholars have associated various curse formulas with specific religious communities. For example, the “Eumeneian formula” (“If anyone disturbs this grave, God will deal with him”—estai autoi pros ton theon) is often taken as Christian.43 The Acmonian texts refer either to “the written curses” or, more specifically, “the curses written in Deuteronomy [en deuteronomioi].” One curse formula alludes to the Septuagint version of the book of Zechariah. The people commemorated in these texts are unusual also, even in the context of Asian Jewry. The absence of specifically Jewish names is standard for the period; biblical/Jewish names became much more common in late antiquity. We may adduce as comparison the larger, nearly contemporaneous, epigraphical dossier from nearby Hierapolis (Ameling ##187–209), where the deceased are identified as Ioudaioi, but few or no Ioudaioi have distinctive names. There was, to be sure, Hikesios-also-called-Ioudas, but he was not designated Ioudaios, and indeed his most notable accomplishments were repeated victories in the “sacred games” (endoxotatou hieronikou plei­ stonikou; Ameling #189). Aurelios Heortasios (Ameling #191)—whose unusual name is attested almost exclusively among Jews and is plausibly assumed to be a Greek translation of Haggai—was a Tripolitan (Tripoleitou Ioudeou) who settled in Hierapolis. In fact, Jewish names were rare among Jews in high imperial Asia, where Jews often chose to advertise onomasti43. See the discussion in Stephen Mitchell, who draws a distinction between the explicitly Christian pre-Constantinian texts of northern Phrygia and those containing definitely Christian content but identifiable as such only by cognoscenti, including the “Eumeneian” texts (“Epigraphic Display and the Emergence of Christian Identity in the Epigraphy of Rural Asia Minor,” in Öffentlichkeit-Monumentum-Text: XIV Congressus Internationalis Epigraphiae Graecae et Latinae, 27–31. Augusti MMXII: Akten, ed. Werner Eck and Peter Funke, Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum: Auctarium NS 4 [Berlin: de Gruyter, 2014], 275– 97); see also Édouard Chiricat, “The ‘Crypto-Christian’ Inscriptions of Phrygia,” in Roman Phrygia: Culture and Society, ed. Peter Thonemann, Greek Culture in the Roman World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 198–217.

Schwartz: The Impact of the Jewish Revolt  131 cally not only their Hellenism but also their Romanness.44 The fact that several of the deceased Acmonians belonged to the highest levels of the curial class of the city is more noteworthy.45 There are few parallels among Jews in the high empire—the best come from the dekania of Aphrodisias and the synagogue of Sardis, but both of these are late imperial, not high imperial institutions, dating in all likelihood to around the year 400; and in both cases the bouleutai—whose curial service occurred at a time when it had come to be regarded more as a burden than an honor—tend to be identified as theosebeis: one supposes, wealthy, still pagan (as opposed to Christian), supporters of the local Jews. At Acmonia, the distinguished members of the city council are not so identified. Furthermore, one of the dedicants has two close relatives named directly for Olympian deities, a brother Hermes and a nephew Parthenios (for Athena Parthenos, the tutelary goddess of Athens), not unparalleled for Jews but not common either. We must also wonder about an issue that has never been resolved: at a certain moment the (all? most?) Jews ceased using the Septuagint: by the Middle Ages even Byzantine Jews had returned to the Hebrew, but before that there were other Greek translations that Jews came to prefer, as the Septuagint became ever more identified as the Christian Bible. The blatancy of the Acmonian texts’ dependence on the Septuagint is noteworthy: what does it mean? Though it has become conventional to regard these texts as “Jewish,” the hypothesis is surprisingly weak. We might instead consider the possibility that the Acmonian dead were pagans, and the curse formulae on their epitaphs are just that: they were locally regarded as powerful, because they were mystifying, and came to be broadly adopted. Like the name Noah and the image of his ark that appears on the third-century coinage of the neighboring pagan city Apamea Kelainai (Kibotos), we may debate whether it was Christians or Jews who were responsible for introducing biblical language and imagery into local folklore, but in itself it may not provide much evidence about either a local Jewish or Christian 44. The relevant Acmonian names tend more toward Greek, but use of Latin nomina seems to have been emphatically embraced, a strong expression of identification with the civic values of the empire. Thus: Aristea daughter of Apollonios; T. Flavius Alexandros and his wife Gaiane; Aurelius Phrougianos son of Menokritos, Aurelia Iouliane, Makaria, Alexandria; Domna, Alexandria; Trophime, Titedios Amerimnos, his wife Aurelia Onesime, daughter of Euelpistos; Aurelios Rouphinos, Hermes, Rouphine, Euelpiste, Parthenios; Catilia Eutychi(ane?), P. Catilius Hermias, Hermione—so, not counting nomina gentilicia, 70 percent Greek, 30 percent Latin. By my count, the figures at Hierapolis are not significantly different. 45. So, T. Flavius Alexander, who constructed his tomb during his lifetime, in 243 CE, was bouleutēs and archōn, having served also as eirenarch (chief of police), sitōnēs (supervisor of grain supply), boularch (head of the boulē), agoranomos (market supervisor) and stratēgos (chief magistrate; Ameling #172); likewise, Aurelios Phrougianos (248 CE), despite his apparently late acquisition of citizenship, “fulfilled all offices and liturgies,” including agoranomia, sitōneia, police-chiefdom and stratēgia (#173).

132  Making History community. Indeed, a third-century epitaph from the same Apamea features an unusual and poignant warning (Ameling #179): “whoever places another body in this heroon … he knows the Law of the Jews [ton nomon oiden ton ioudeon]!”. It is reasonable to follow Ameling, and Ramsay before him, by seeing here an oblique reference to the curses of Deuteronomy 28. The idea that “everyone” knows the Law/these curses supports the view that they had simply entered local folklore. Ameling notes that the Jewishness of the decedent is not assured. Even so, the penetration of some Jewish lore into local folk culture is noteworthy, though we should not translate it too quickly into a story of successful integration into an open society. Cultural borrowing, social exclusion, and political animus coexist in all complex societies. We might also consider other options: the inscriptions are simply Jewish, but produced by people who used Greek and Roman but almost never Hebrew personal names (comparable to the self-identified Jews of Hierapolis), who had not yet developed the familiar type of funerary piety that a century or two later would lead Jews regularly to mark graves with a small set of Jewish symbols and use a small set of readily recognizable pious Jewish formulas (en eirenei he koimesis autou; shalom, etc.) presumably derived from a recently disseminated funerary liturgy related to the one still in use today. Perhaps elements of the Jewish community in third-century Acmonia were wealthy and active in the political life of the city. Hermes and Parthenios might be Jewish but need not be even if their kinsman was. We do not actually know for certain what version of the Bible Phrygian Jews are likely to have used (a third-century Jewish inscription from Palestinian Caesarea quotes the Septuagint), so the specific allusions to the Septuagint are not a decisive refutation of the Jewish background of the curse formulae. In sum, incidental references to biblical books may be about as much evidence for Jewishness as we should expect. Finally, the very same argument can be used to demonstrate that the texts are Christian. We are left in the dark about Acmonian Jewry after the early second century, though it is worth noting that someone around the town, possibly Jewish or possibly Christian, at least knew that Deuteronomy (ch. 28) contained fearsome curses and had curiously specific knowledge of a passage from Zechariah. Perhaps behind both was the notoriously voracious and boundary-free world of high and late antique magic, practiced by all alike and containing elements drawn from a multiplicity of sources. There are here, as elsewhere in Asia, fragmentary indications of a late antique shift: a broken tablet containing part of a line in Greek and part of a line in Hebrew, the latter probably to be read as something like the familiar blessing shalom ‘al] Yisrael (Ameling #170). The other item found in reuse near the site of Acmonia is an Ionian column with a menorah crudely carved on its capital (Ameling, p. 345). These items are almost certain to be late antique and indicate a shift toward what we may call

Schwartz: The Impact of the Jewish Revolt  133 normativity, at least in the local Jews’ religious materiality. Like so many Jews all over the late Roman Empire, they adopted standardized iconographic and epigraphical languages, which, to be sure, presumably concealed enduring local variation, but still are in themselves culturally significant. However confusing high imperial Jewish material culture may be, its late imperial counterpart is usually unambiguously marked.

Smyrna Other cities provide similarly murky evidence. Smyrna provides little early or high imperial epigraphy—four texts in all (Ameling #40; ##43–45). These brief texts paint, as we should have come to expect by now, a complex and contradictory picture. The most famous of them, datable to 123/124 CE, mentioned briefly above, lists “the former Jews” (hoi pote Ioudaioi) among the donors—all the rest individuals of very high status— who gave a large sum of money to maintain their city’s general expenses. The pledges or gifts are somehow connected to the imperial cult since the inscription concludes with the note that, the pledges having been fulfilled, Hadrian granted Smyrna a second neōkoria (= right to possess an imperial temple, normally accompanied by other imperial gifts). Ameling notes (#40=I. Smyrna 697) that this is a unique—or rather unusual; see below— case in Asia of Jews participating in the euergetistic economy, the complication being that these are “former Jews” and not plain Jews. This text has generated bafflement among scholars and has attracted correspondingly implausible interpretations: according to an old suggestion, it actually means “former Judeans,” in other words immigrants, and has no bearing on religious identity; a recent paper—otherwise an excellent discussion of the inscription—emends the text to read hoi tote Ioudaioi (the Jews of that time), meaning, in effect, the Jews who were present when the fund-raising drive took place.46 The problem with the first option is that it posits for Ioudaios a theoretically possible but unattested meaning, and with the latter, that the inscription clearly reads pote, and the emended phrase is awkward. But is the phrase “the former Jews” really problematic? It is if one begins from the supposition that Judaism/Jewishness was a humiliating condition from which one might seek to escape in a way that entailed turning one’s back on the past. This might make sense if municipal paganism were an exclusivist religion to which one could convert. It would make even more sense in the context of the mass conversions to Christian46. Martin Hallmannsecker, “Heracles Hoplophylax, Iudaioi, and a Palm Grove. A Fresh Look at I. Smyrna 697,” Epigraphica Anatolica 50 (2017): 109–27. I. Smyrna is Georg Petzl, Die Inschriften von Smyrna, Inscriften griechischcer Städte aus Kleinasien 23–24 (Bonn: Habelt, 1982–1990).

134  Making History ity characteristic of nineteenth-century Europe, whose point was precisely to overcome the social stigma of Judaism and to escape the group, or at least wish or appear to do so. In an ancient and pre-Christian context, a group of former Jews might well not shrink from referring to themselves as such, and abandonment of Judaism might not automatically lead to subsumption of residual in-group social ties under other classifications (like Freemasons, in the nineteenth century). In other words, “the former Jews” of Smyrna are just what they seem—a group of former Jews participating, as a group, in their venerable city’s euergetistic economy. This lends support to Ameling’s argument that “non-former” Jews seem rarely to have done so.47 There is some more high imperial evidence, though, for an Acts-like religious community: a wealthy Jewish woman, Rufina, who bears the ungendered title archisynagōgos, commemorates the construction of a grave for her slaves and freedmen. Anyone who disturbs this grave must pay one fine to the imperial fisc and another, smaller one to the ethnos of the Jews (Ameling #43). This probably third-century text confirms the implication of the Martyrdom of Pionios that the Jews then had a communal organization. Indeed, two different terms are implied, synagōgē and ethnos. Were these synonymous? What appears to be the earliest Jewish text from Smyrna, probably roughly contemporary with the dramatic date of Acts (so, mid-first century), marks the grave of a Roman citizen, Lucius Lollius Justus, who was the scribe of the “laos” of Smyrna (ho en Zmurnei laos), which is overwhelmingly likely to be the Jewish community (Ameling #44; see above). Two or three late antique texts seem to commemorate synagogue dedications, but the dedicator in one case has an unparalleled title, pater tou stemmatos. In sum, the evidence for communal structures of some sort at Smyrna is relatively rich, but we should not fail to note a two-century gap: between Justus the scribe and Rufina the archisynagogue, a contemporary of Pionios, martyred in the Decian persecution (249/250),48 the only evidence for Jews consists of the Hadri47. See Ameling, “Epigraphic Habit,” 212–19. 48. For the text of the Martyrdom of Pionios, see Louis Robert, Le martyre de Pionios, prêtre de Smyrne, ed.G. W. Bowersock and C. P. Jones (Washington: Dumbarton Oaks, 1994). Martyrdom of Pionios, in contrast to Maryrdom of Polycarp, is rich in circumstantial detail, including about the Jews. Before his death, the hero warns what is left of his flock not to seek refuge from state-imposed idolatry by accepting the invitation of the Jews to join them, an invitation presumably extended not to Christians but to lapsi, Christians who had escaped martyrdom by (under duress) cursing Christ and offering a libation to the genius of the emperor. The idea that there was by the mid- or later third century a Jewish community at Smyrna offering itself as a refuge to ex-Christians is worth taking seriously and is of great interest, as is the implication of Pionios’s address that it is better for the lapsi to practice idolatry than Judaism. See Walter Ameling, “The Christian Lapsi in Smyrna, A.D. 250 (Martyrium Pionii 12–14),” VC 62 (2008): 133–60.

Schwartz: The Impact of the Jewish Revolt  135 anic ex-Jewish municipal benefactors, and the straw-man Jews of Polycarp.49 Discontinuities must be registered: were Justus’s laos, Rufina’s ethnos and Eirenpoios’s fifth-century stemma a continuous communal institution, or do the shifts in name suggest a repeated pattern of rise and fall? The detail-rich story of the death of Pionios—written in the later third century at earliest—with its strong suggestion that Smyrna was home to a Jewish community that was prepared to exploit the Christians’ travails by offering lapsi (of Jewish origin?), if we follow Ameling, a protective home among the Jews, points toward an answer, at least for Smyrna but possibly more generally. I would argue that the revival of Jewish communal life, so strongly evident in the fourth century and following, had as one of its causes the introduction of empire-wide persecution of Christians in the third, which could have forced some previously loosely or non-normatively organized Jewish groups—like the non-specific Ioudaioi of Polycarp—into the position of lobbying for their exemption from the Christian tests, which could otherwise have caught many Jews too. That is, in many places a vague and weakly felt set of religious scruples now needed definition and political defense. Jewish numbers may have been strengthened in places by baptized Jews returning to the fold, as perhaps happened at Smyrna. The threat emanating from the state may have forced the Jews to begin to revive communal structures that had originated in the first century BCE in response to threats from the city councils.

49. The Martyrdom of Polycarp, narrating an event of the mid-second century, was most likely composed only in the mid-third century and has little claim to historicity, despite the charitable readings of so many critics (for a history of the debate, see Otto Zwierlein, Die Urfassungen der Martyria Polycarpi et Pionii und das Corpus Polycarpianum, Band 2: Textgeschichte und Rekonstruktion: Polykarp, Ignatius und der Redaktor Ps.-Pionius, Untersuchungen zur antiken Literatur und Geschichte 116.2 [Berlin: de Gruyter, 2014] 102–6). Its Jews in particular are in blatant ways merely a textual phenomenon and even so, unlike the Jews in Acts, one of Polycarp’s intertexts, are provided with no meaningful traces of communal organization. They are simply present and speak as a chorus, sometimes saying things appropriate to Greeks (e.g., in 12.2 the Jews and the Greeks together denounce Polycarp as “destroyer of our gods, the one who taught many not to sacrifice”), and sometimes saying things appropriate to Christians (17.1–2). For the text of the Martyrdom of Polycarp, see Bart Ehrman in The Apostolic Fathers, volume 1, LCL (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003); and Paul Hartog, ed., Polycarp’s Epistle to the Philippians and the Martyrdom of Polycarp: Introduction, Text, and Commentary, Oxford Apostolic Fathers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). Both Ehrman and Hartog are positivistic with respect to both the text’s dating near the time of the event and its basic historicity. But these views are untenable. See Candida R. Moss, “On the Dating of Polycarp: Rethinking the Place of the Martyrdom of Polycarp in the History of Christianity,” Early Christianity 1 (2010): 539–74; cf. Ari Bryen, “Martyrdom, Rhetoric, and the Politics of Procedure,” Classical Antiquity 33 (2014): 243–80, especially 257–59.

136  Making History

City X, Mysia Other cities provide evidence for some type of Jewish corporate organization before late antiquity too, but in ways even harder to reconcile with our normativizing expectations than evidence from Smyrna. A recently published inscription, from an unidentified Mysian city, seems to record the dedication of a statue or monument in honor of Hadrian Olympios by a group called hē synagōgē tōn Ioudaiōn.50 This is the closest approximation yet discovered to evidence for the participation of a Jewish corporation in, or at very least its support for, the imperial cult—even more so than the Severan-era dedicatory inscription from Qazion (Kh. Keisun), in upper Galilee.51 Here, then, is a Jewish group that had overcome not only a presumed aversion to “Gottmenschentum,” but even that to paganism tout court, unself-consciously (to all appearances) acknowledging the emperor’s identification with Zeus. A fly in the ointment is that the reading of the incriminating line is not easily confirmed by the photograph published with the edition of the text. But if the editor’s reading and restoration are correct, how are we to understand the phenomenon? This and some of the other items so far discussed would at one time have been explained as evidence for “syncretism,” for the meeting of, reciprocal interchange between, and even merging of different religious systems and ideas. But this explains too little and does so on too lofty a plane, even aside from the fact that old schol50. See Tanriver, Mysia’dan Yeni Epigrafik Buluntular, #41=Année Epigraphique 2016/2013 #1517. 51. The site was quickly surveyed, with some soundings, for several seasons in the 1990s. The survey was seemingly sufficient to disprove the hypothesis that the site was a synagogue complex but, despite the discovery of a small altar in a side building, it could not easily be categorized as a temple either. Ann E. Killebrew’s description is evasive, though even on her account it offers striking evidence for the participation of Jews in a version of the imperial cult ca. 199 CE. (“Qazion: A Late Second- Early Third-Century Cultic Complex in the Upper Galilee Dedicated to Septimius Severus and His Family,” Journal of Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology and Heritage Studies 1 [2013]: 113–60). (The Mysian text is more explicit about the emperor’s divine status.) Rachel Hachlili argues that Qazion was a Jewish temple serving Upper Galilee, founded and staffed by priestly refugees from Jerusalem after the Great Revolt, whose descendants were simply proclaiming their loyalty to the Severan dynasty! (“Qezion—A Jewish Cult Site in the Upper Galilee,” Qadmoniot 147 [2014]: 32–38). The significant area of agreement between Killebrew and Hachlili is that the Qazion complex was a central place, not an institution based in the village itself. This seems intuitively correct, but, more to the point, the language of the inscription supports it: the site was built hyper eukhes Ioudaion—in accordance with the oath of Jews, no definite article, implying not a specific corporation but a larger assemblage. There seems no evidence for an ancient village at Kh. Keisun, and it has indeed rarely been inhabited—apparently only briefly under the Mamluks. In this sense it is radically unlike synagogues, which seemed always to belong to specific local corporations. There is much more to be said on the implications of the archaeology of the site.

Schwartz: The Impact of the Jewish Revolt  137 arly accounts of syncretism described it not as accommodation by the ruled to the religion of the rulers, but as religious systems—understood nonpolitically and nonhierarchically—in a condition of reciprocal exchange. It lacks the grit of lived experience. What is more likely going on is highly localized adaptive small-scale tinkering and hole-plugging. The synagōgē of City X in Mysia did what it did because its leaders presumably sensed some advantage in gesturing toward or even embracing the worship of Hadrian (we know the inscription postdates 128 but would like to know its timing in relation to the Bar Kokhba revolt). About the internal and external politics that shaped their decision we have no way of knowing but should not assume they did not exist; nor should we assume that the “synagogal” leaders of City X were cheerful or cavalier about their decision. It could as easily have emerged from a sense of threat or fear. It could have been an attempt to defuse local intercommunal conflict at a moment—due to renewed revolutionary violence in Palestine—of exquisite tension.

Apamea Kelainai and Phrygian Hierapolis By contrast (if the pessimistic understanding of the Mysian text is correct), the third-century city councilors of Apamea Kelainai (or Kibotos) heard of Jewish and Christian stories associating Noah’s flood with their city and did not refrain from celebrating this bit of local color on their city coins.52 Did some councilors oppose this on principle? In old Greek cities like Ephesus, and in centers of politicized Hellenism like Alexandria and Antioch, Jewish lore might not have been so welcome. Was its utilization uncontroversial in the more peripheral, newer, and frequently more Roman and therefore necessarily already more hybridized cities of Phrygia and other parts of the Anatolian interior? Perhaps, and perhaps this explains why so much evidence for both Jews and Christians comes precisely from such cities, and indeed why in parts of Phrygia even at the height of the third-century persecutions Christians felt free to identify themselves and their relatives in publicly displayed texts. The material remains of Phrygian Hierapolis (Ameling ##187–209— the largest assemblage of Jewish texts in Asia) tell a differently murky story. As at Akmoneia, evidence consists mainly of a large number of inscribed sarcophagi, erected for and by people with Greco-Roman, not Hebrew, names.53 Many of those named are Aurelii, which in all likeli52. For brief discussion, see Ameling, 382–83; the one conceivably Jewish text from Apamea has been discussed above. 53. One exception may be Aurelios Sanbathios Ioudaios, Ameling #200; but he was a secondary user of the sarcophagus—the inscription naming him is in a different hand than

138  Making History hood means that they had received Roman citizenship through the Antoninian Constitution, a law of 212 CE that granted citizenship to all free subjects of Rome: the new citizens, following standard practice, received the names of their official patron, the emperor Caracalla, whose first names were Marcus Aurelius.54 Thus, many of these burials can be dated to the third century after 212 (by sometime in the fourth century most descendants of the Antoninian citizens no longer bothered with their full nomenclature). But some of the deceased have different, non-Aurelian Roman names, indicating citizenship held before 212: once again, the Jews commemorated in these burials advertised their Romanness in more or less publicly displayed texts. In Hierapolis too, as at Acmonia, the inscriptions bear no traces of the Jewish iconography that would become typical a century later. But there are important differences: The Hierapolitans identify themselves as Ioudaioi. Not infrequently only one member of a family commemorated in an epitaph will be so identified, leaving us to wonder whether the others were automatically assumed to be Jewish too and so required no identification, or whether only the identified Ioudaios was a Jew but not his relatives. Another peculiarity is the frequency of names containing the element Gluk- (= sweet). This was in general a common name element at Hierapolis and in surrounding cities in Phrygia and Lydia, but it is so common among the Ioudaioi that I am inclined to wonder whether all the texts might not belong to a single extended family. Did the Jews of Hierapolis constitute a community in the high empire and, if so, of what sort? There is little evidence and that is confusing. As at Acmonia (aside from the inscription honoring the restorers of the synagogue of Julia Severa), no inscription names a communal official. The best known Hierapolitan Jewish inscription (Ameling #196) notes that the deceased left a modest legacy to one of the city’s several textile workers’ guild, known to have had non-Jewish members—enough to provide them with a small feast and the means to crown their benefactor’s grave three times a year, at Sukkot, the Kalends of January, and Shavuot—a peculiar mix, then, of traditional Jewish piety, Roman-tinged civic religion, and identity expressed through trade association membership, something that may ring a bell for those who know something about immigrant life in New York at the turn of the twentieth century.55 that naming the primary users, Markos Aurelios Gaios Theodorianos and his wife Aurelia Zenonis—and it is not clear how much later Sanbathios was than his predecessors; possibly substantially so. 54. See Alex Imrie, The Antonine Constitution: An Edict for the Caracallan Empire, Impact of Empire 29 (Leiden: Brill, 2018); Kostas Buraselis, Theia Dōrea: Das göttlich-kaiserliche ­Geschenk: Studien zur Politik der Severer und zur Constitutio Antoniniana, Akten der Gesellschaft für Griechische und Hellenistische Rechtsgeschichte 18 (Vienna: Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2007). 55. On this text, see Philip A. Harland, “Acculturation and Identity in the Diaspora: A

Schwartz: The Impact of the Jewish Revolt  139 The custom at Hierapolis, unlike at Acmonia, was not to pronounce curses but to prescribe fines for disturbance of graves. In the large majority of cases, the fines were to be paid either to a civic body, the gerousia (one case), a common beneficiary of fines at Hierapolis, or to the imperial treasury (eight cases). One text (Ameling #191) prescribes an unusual fine, unique in being measured by weight (2 litrai), rather than by currency (usually between 500 and 2,500 denarii), but also in instructing that it be paid to the “most holy synagōgē.” This inscription is also unusual in containing the only, or one of two, mentions of a decedent with a Jewish name: Heortasios. Heortasios, the text is careful to note, was a Tripolitan residing at Hierapolis, rather than a citizen of the latter. Two other texts also prescribe fines to apparently Jewish bodies. Ameling #205, the sarcophagus of Aurelia Augusta and her husband Glukonianos (no nomen provided) also called Hagnos, remarkably, demands payment of 300 denarii to the katoikia tōn en Hierapolei katoikountōn Ioudaiōn, and an additional 100 denarii to the conductor of the investigation, presumably demonstrating misuse of the sarcophagus, thus some sort of communal secretary. A copy of these stipulations is deposited in the arkheion tōn Ioudaiōn. Everything about this text is odd. The title of the Jewish community, if that is what it is, is peculiarly fussy and archaic-sounding and furthermore implies that the Jews were not citizens of the city, which is somewhat surprising for the third century when they were without apparent exception Roman citizens. Indeed, Ameling takes Glukonianos’s lack of a nomen to imply a pre-212 date for the text. The unparalleled name here assigned to the Jewish association is manifestly modeled on the names of associations of “Roman” or “Italian” businessmen in Asian cities including Hierapolis. Such associations had started in the Hellenistic period as agents of an extractive imperialism aborning, but persisted into the high empire as respectable, domesticated civic associations whose linkage to the imperial center was insignificant.56 Was such a Jewish association indeed extant in the third century CE? Was Aurelia Augusta remembering an ancient Jewish association that had tried to

Jewish Family and ‘Pagan’ Guilds at Hierapolis,” JJS 57 (2006): 222–44; on trade associations at Hierapolis, see Ilias N. Arnaoutoglou, “Hierapolis and Its Professional Associations: A Comparative Analysis,” in Urban Craftsmen and Traders in the Roman World, ed. Andrew Wilson and Miko Flohr, Oxford Studies on the Roman Economy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 278–98. That Glykon was a member of the porphyrobapheis is not certain. The unusual practice of funerary endowments provided to trade guilds for care of the tomb and memory of the deceased is very well attested for third-century Hierapolis. 56. See Benedikt Eckhardt, “Romanization and Isomorphic Change in Phrygia: The Case of Private Associations,” JRS 106 (2016): 147–71; Taco T. Terpstra, Trading Communities in the Roman World: A Micro-Economic and Institutional Perspective, Columbia Studies in the Classical Tradition 37 (Leiden: Brill, 2013).

140  Making History draw on an association with Romans as a way of enhancing its prestige? We have no way of knowing. The Jewish archive likewise comes as a surprise, especially since it is not mentioned in any other Hierapolitan text. The specification of payment to the investigator of the sarcophagus robbery is also unparalleled. Glukonianos’s by-name, Hagnos, suggests a family especially devoted to piety and perhaps this—enhanced tribalism, dedication to archaic, specifically Hellenistic, Greek, forms of expression of communal identity, a fussiness about the integrity of burial extreme even for Roman Asia, where such fussiness was the rule for all who could afford a “proper” burial—is what Asian Jewish piety entailed before late antiquity. Less strange is Ameling #206, the sarcophagus of Aurelia Glukonis and her husband Markos Aurelios Alexandros Theophilos also called Aphelios: they order the two-thousand-denarius fine to be paid to the laos tōn Ioudaiōn and indicate that a copy of the inscription is to be deposited in the town archives. Here, then, an expression of devotion to Jewish institutions is expressed in more conventional language, and there is no trace of a separate Jewish archive. One wonders if a Jewish archive even existed at Hierapolis, or whether Aurelia Augusta simply used the expression to refer to Jewish-related documents deposited in the town archives. Or perhaps it had existed before 212, when Jews might still be thought peregrini, but not after, when they were citizens. As at Smyrna, we confront at Hierapolis Jewish institutions of unknown function called—in this case synchronically, since all the sarcophagi were used sometime in the late second-third century—by a multiplicity of names. Heortasios’s synagōgē can be dismissed as the ignorance of an outsider, or a vague generalization. Laos and katoikia, though, seem very different, with the former having been commonplace but the latter sounding peculiarly like the name of a pre-Roman ethnic corporation. Why, to step back, do so few of the texts mention these bodies? Why are no communal officials mentioned, aside from the implied investigator of grave robbery in Ameling 205—contrast here the Roman Jewish catacombs, some of which at least are somewhat later, where communal functionaries are ubiquitous. In late antique texts in general, including in Asia, devotion to Judaism is overdetermined, expressed by an increasingly distinctive nomenclature, constant reference to communal institutions and officials, a language increasingly saturated with biblically based piety, a distinctive iconography (an anepigraphic plaque featuring the standard iconography has been found at Hierapolis; presumably it is late antique), even occasional use of Hebrew words or phrases. It is hard to resist the conclusion that in some places—perhaps especially Phrygia and vicinity?—in the third century, to the extent that Jewish communal bodies existed, they were weak, exerted little influence on the lives of their constituents, were far from the totalizing organizations they would become

Schwartz: The Impact of the Jewish Revolt  141 and may already have begun to be in the first century—when some a­ rchontes and archisynagōgoi are attested—when the Jews were not yet quite as integrated into municipal life. What most Jews emphasized on their tombstones was their Roman citizenship, their prosperity, their piety toward their deceased relatives, and at most the mere fact of their Jewish affiliation. Only a tiny minority went beyond that, but they appear to have expressed their piety in ways not immediately familiar to us. And yet they retained some sense of separation: by the third century at any rate they did not participate in all aspects of municipal life. As has been noted, following Ameling, evidence for Jewish participation in high imperial euergetism is all but invisible. Did they participate in municipal religions? We cannot tell. Aside from the Mysian evidence for corporate Jewish participation in the imperial cult, and the Hierapolitan case of Ikesios Ioudas the hieronikes, the evidence fails us, perhaps meaningfully.

Conclusion There is an inevitable lack of focus in both of our time-lapse images of Jewish life in Roman Asia, pre- and post-70 CE, but patterns indubitably emerge. The sparse pre-70 epigraphy offers hints that the assumptions behind Luke’s account in Acts—that Asian Jews normally lived in synagogue-based religious communities headed by communal officials, communities that cultivated friendly relations with the cities in which they were situated by welcoming Greeks into their synagogues—is not totally misleading: such communities did exist in Asia, in a variety of conditions. They were not necessarily the sole organizational model, but it is noteworthy that no other models are attested for the first century. The evidence for the second and third centuries is more abundant and massively more complex. Organizational structures are attested in some cities, but the confusing multiplicity of names for such structures, even contemporaneously within individual cities, raises questions about their nature and function. In contrast to the first century, on one side, and the fourth–sixth centuries, on the other, remarkably few synagogue officials are ever named. People advertised their own and their relatives’ Roman status and civic belonging on tombstones but almost never in these centuries their Jewish piety or Jewish communal activities. Much of the evidence from the high empire is strangely ambiguous: we cannot in the final analysis tell whether the Acmonians (and one Philadelphian) who protected the integrity of their tombs by invoking the curses of Deuteronomy were Jewish or not, or whether the town fathers of Apamea Kelainai learned about Noah’s flood from Jews, Christians, or someone else. Somewhat similarly, the Smyrnaean corporation that generously supported a fund-raising drive whose result was their city’s receipt of a second neōkoria

142  Making History (eligibility to establish a second imperial cult) from Hadrian were precisely former Jews, but their precise contemporaries from an unknown city in Mysia, who supported the imperial cult even more blatantly, were still called, if the text has been correctly read, the synagōgē Ioudaiōn. This was also a period of galloping Romanization in Palestine, and there I argued that, following the ruptures of the revolts, Jewish institutions collapsed for a time. The situation in Asia was slightly different: the process of Romanization had begun as early as the second century BCE— though it was not uni-directional—and had gone as far as it would go by the middle of the first century. The local Jewish religious community may have been better established in Asia, where it had enjoyed the support of the Roman state, than in Palestine, where it was in competition with stronger Jewish institutions. But we can still see a change in the high empire. The standardization arguably characteristic of the first century was shattered. In some places, some types of communal structures persisted, but we hear little about synagogues in the sense of places set aside for worship and/or Torah study (even in a text like the Martyrdom of Polycarp, set in the mid-second century), and next to nothing about the religious values associated with such places. Yet some Jews cultivated or assented to—no doubt with the help of the city councils and the government, which still exacted a special tax from the Jews—a sense of separation, and if they did regularly participate in the euergetistic economies of their cities, the evidence is invisible. So the Jews of Asia in the second century and most of the third existed in a twilight condition, their Jewishness having lost much of its earlier institutional heft, but even after 212 CE, not yet completely integrated into the fabric of their cities, except for those who opted to be so and thus in most cases are no longer discernible to us. Was the price of full integration disaffiliation? Presumably it was because it would have entailed exemption from the Jewish tax, secured only by some recognizable act of renunciation. We have, it must be admitted, very little access to the subjectivity of the Jews of high imperial Asia. As observers, we can easily see the constraints under which they lived in the second and third centuries. Whether they experienced their lives in this way we cannot say, but the answer would have depended in part on local conditions. The silence of the sources does not demonstrate that the Jews of Asia had settled into a peaceful state of equilibrium.57

57. Notwithstanding the claims of Pieter W. van der Horst, “Jewish Epigraphy and Diaspora: The Case of Asia Minor,” in his Saxa Judaica Loquuntur: Lessons from Early Jewish Inscriptions; Radboud Prestige Lectures 2014, BIS 134 (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 27–45, here 28; and Walter Ameling, “Die jüdische Diaspora Kleinasiens und der ‘Epigraphic Habit,’” in Jewish Identity in the Graeco-Roman World / Jüdische Identität in der griechisch-römischen Welt, ed. Jörg Frey, Daniel R. Schwartz, and Stephanie Gripentrog, Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity 71 (Leiden: Brill, 2007) 253–82, here 255.

A Life in the Balance Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai’s Compliment BURTON L. VISOTZKY



For Richard, ‫מכריע את כולם‬ ,‫הוא (ר' יוחנן בן זכאי) היה אומר‬ ,‫ ואליעזר בן הורקנוס בכף שניה‬,‫אם יהיו כל חכמי ישראל בכף מאזנים‬ .‫מכריע את כולם‬ ,‫אבא שאול אומר משמו‬ ,‫ ורבי אליעזר בן הורקנוס אף עמהם‬,‫אם יהיו כל חכמי ישראל בכף מאזנים‬ )‫ מכריע את כולם (משנה אבות פרק ב‬,‫ורבי אלעזר בכף שניה‬ Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai used to say, “If all the sages of the Jews were on one pan [lit., palm] of a scale, and Eliezer ben Hyrcanus on the second pan, he would outweigh them all.”  Abba Shaul said in his name,  “If all the sages of the Jews were on one pan of a scale, and even were Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus among them, and Rabbi Elazar (ben Arakh) on the second pan, he would outweigh them all.” (m. Avot 2)

A Matter of Scale Once at a Jewish Theological Seminary Talmud faculty meeting, we asked our teacher Rabbi Israel Francus if, for just one semester, he might teach “easy Gemara.” His memorable reply was, “There is no easy Gemara.” I think this is true of the Mishnah as well, even for the pithy statements of Pirqe Avot. The text in the epigraph above requires exegesis, both of the figurative image that R. Yohanan employs as a metaphor and for the ambiguity regarding whom the rabbi was complimenting.

143

144  Making History Let us begin with the two students who may or may not have been praised. My suspicion is that, if Rabbi1 Yohanan actually said this, he might have referred to the student simply as “Lazar,” all but guaranteeing the confusion. No doubt, the friends of ben Hyrcanus thought that he was the object of the compliment, while those of ben Arakh thought that it was he who was being praised. It was common in early rabbinic Hebrew to drop an initial aleph in a word or name, for instance: Lazarus or Lazar Wolf the butcher, depending on which canon you prefer.2 And there’s that earnest student (and ben Arakh’s partisan) Abba Shaul. It is clear from the Mishnah that he knew the earlier ben Hyrcanus tradition, which he seeks to refute. It is helpful to have clear testimony as to which is the earlier mishnaic tradition (in our case, the one praising ben Hyrcanus, to which Abba Shaul responds). But what of the name Abba Shaul? Shaul is attested in Biblical Hebrew. But Abba? The Gospel of Matthew says, “Call no man Abba” (23:9), implying that it is a title, rather than a name. Our Abba was a second-century Tanna, so it could yet have been a title, eventually replaced with “rabbi.” But it might have been a proper name, too.3 To summarize thus far, Rabban or Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai praised Eliezer or Elazar,4 saying that if he were placed on the pan of a balance-scale, he would outweigh all the other sages of the Jews. Even if there were very few other sages (Yohanan had but four other disciples), Lazar was one “seriously heavy dude.” Was he immensely fat, like R. Ishmael son of R. Yose and R. Elazar son of R. Shimeon?5 Or perhaps he appeared to be normal but had very dense 1. In some texts Rabban, a title referring to the patriarch. This title properly belongs to the Gamalielite dynasty. See Rav Sherira Gaon, on the title: rabban (not in the famous Iggeret, but in another letter to Jacob b. Nissim of Kairowan, cited in the Arukh [see n. 15 below] vol. 1, p. 6, s.v. ‫)אביי‬. See too, among others, David Goodblatt, The Monarchic Principle: Studies in Jewish Self-Government in Antiquity, TSAJ 38 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1994); Martin Jacobs, Die Institution des jüdischen Patriarchen: Eine quellen- und traditionskritische Studie zur Geschichte der Juden in der Spätantike, TSAJ 52 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1995); Alan Appelbaum, The Dynasty of the Jewish Patriarchs, TSAJ 156 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013); and Lee I. Levine, “The Emergence of the Patriarchate in the Third Century,” in Envisioning Judaism: Studies in Honor of Peter Schäfer on the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday, ed. Ra‘anan S. Boustan, et al., 2 vols. (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013), 1:235–64. The title Rabban was given to Yohanan ben Zakkai by scribes and printers, and perhaps even his students, as a sign of respect for their leader. 2. ‫ מבוא לנוסח המשנה‬,‫ אפשטיין‬.‫נ‬.‫ י‬p. 1266. For Lazarus, see the Gospel of John, chapter 11, passim; and Luke 16:19–31. Lazar Wolf is “tradition, tradition!” 3. For more on Abba/father, see Burton Visotzky, Fathers of the World: Essays in Rabbinic and Patristic Literatures, WUNT 80 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1995), 1–2. For what it’s worth, my son Alex had a classmate at the Heschel School named Abba. 4. Both Biblical Hebrew names. 5. See Daniel Boyarin’s exceptionally erudite Socrates and the Fat Rabbis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 178–86.

Visotzky: A Life in the Balanc  145 body mass. I ask these klutz kashes, because given the rabbis’ choice of oral Torah rather than written expression, they arguably were more inclined to refer to concrete images than to create abstract ones,6 which is to say that written expression sustains a more abstract discourse. To understand this, think of two mathematicians or physicists speaking with one another about a new concept. It’s very likely they will need a blackboard and chalk to illustrate their point or formula, rather than rely on sheer oral/aural apprehension. How does this apply to our rabbis? They were better able to offer metaphor if they could see an actual object in front of them rather than imagine one. For instance, the rabbis do not have an abstract, technical theological vocabulary, but rather propose concrete analogies to a king of flesh and blood, as we will soon see.7 One must ask, then, about our Pirqe Avot analogy: Did they see something like a human image perched on the pan of a scale? To begin with the scale, here’s a recent example (see p. 146): Note the two pans in balance. On one side: the object to be weighed was placed. On the other, the merchant placed presumably reliable weights for proper measure. These scales haven’t changed much since late antiquity. Below is a representation of a similar scale depicted in the roundel of the zodiac in a mosaic from the fourth-century CE synagogue at Sepphoris in the Galilee. Note the Hebrew label for the scale, ‫ מאזנים‬, right there in the mosaic, as in our Pirqe Avot text. 6. See, among others, Brian Stock, The Implications of Literacy: Written Language and Models of Interpretation in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983); Walter J.  Ong, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (London: Methuen, 1982); Ruth H. Finnegan, Oral Poetry: Its Nature, Significance, and Social Context (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977). See also the theories of Jean Piaget on cognitive developmental stage theory, what he calls “concrete operations” versus “formal operations” (or abstract thought) (The Psychology of Intelligence, trans. Malcolm Piercy and D. E. Berlyne [1950; repr., London: Routledge, 2001]; Bärbel Inhelder and Jean Piaget, The Growth of Logical Thinking from Childhood to Adolescence: An Essay on the Construction of Formal Operational Structures [London: Routledge, 1958]). For the application of this distinction between oral = concrete and written = abstract in rabbinic literature, see Isaac Heinemann, Methods of Aggadah [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1954), particularly on “concretization.” See also the list by Avigdor Shinan, The Biblical Story as Reflected in Its Aramaic Translations [Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: HaKibbutz HaMeuhad, 1993), 152–53; and Martin S. Jaffee, Torah in the Mouth: Writing and Oral Tradition in Palestinian Judaism, 200 BCE—400 CE (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). An interesting counterargument may be inferred from Max Kadushin, The Rabbinic Mind, Classics in Judaic Studies (1952; repr., Binghamton, NY: Global Publications, 2001); and Kadushin, Organic Thinking: A Study in Rabbinic Thought (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1938). 7. George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980); see also Gail Labovitz, Marriage and Metaphor: Constructions of Gender in Rabbinic Literature (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2009). For king analogies, see the still classic work by Ignaz Ziegler, Die Königsgleichnisse des Midrasch, beleuchtet durch die römische Kaiserzeit (Breslau: S. Schottlaender, 1903).

146  Making History

Wikimedia commons: Naval History and Heritage Command. https://.commons.m. wikimedia.org/.wiki/.Category: Pharmacy_scales#/media/. File:2013.144.022_Scale,_ Pharmacy_(11715228076).jpg

Sepphoris Synagogue mosaic, fifth century CE (photo: BV)

Even so, there are no rabbis perched on the pan. In fact, nothing is on these pans. What did the weights look like that they used in the Roman world? What might Rabbi Yohanan have had in his mind’s eye? The counterweights could have been coins, which were, after all, guaranteed weights of precious metals like gold or silver (think: sheqel). More likely, the scale weights were of lead or brass and graduated in sizes so that a seller could quickly determine the total weight on the pan. It is worth noting that these weights were fashioned so that they could be placed on a pan or suspended by a hook. It was not uncommon for Roman scales to have one side with a pan, while the other side had an

Visotzky: A Life in the Balanc  147 extended arm from which weights could be hung at various distances from the fulcrum. These kinds of scales are called steelyard or stilyard.8 What interests me here is that the steelyard weights were often fashioned as busts of Roman grandees, local characters (such as a popular wrestler), gods and goddesses, or perhaps even the town’s authority in charge of weights and measures: the agoranomos. Below is a Roman steelyard from the Lyon Museum of Gallo-Roman Civilization. Note both the hanging weight and the second, smaller weight below it.

Lyon Museum of Gallo-Roman Civilisation, ca. first century CE (photo: BV)

I have seen such Roman steelyard weights in the National Archeological Museum in Naples, Italy; the Fogg Art Museum in Cambridge, ­Massachusetts, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; and in the Museum of Gallo-Roman Civilisation in Lyon, France (above).9 The example in Naples is from Pompeii, firmly datable no later than 79 CE, when it 8. A brief ancient discussion of the Roman scale may be found in Vitruvius (ca. first century BCE), De Architectura 10.3.3. 9. The scale in the Naples Museum is illustrated in my Sage Tales: Wisdom and Wonder from the Rabbis of the Talmud (Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights, 2011), 22. For more examples and scholarly literature, see Jutta Frings with Helen Willinghöfer, Byzanz: Pracht und Alltag; Kunst und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Bonn, 26 Februar bis 13. Juni 2010 (Munich: Hirmer , 2010), with illustration at 277. See, too, Norbert Franken, “Zur Typologie Antiker Schnellwaagen,” in Bonner Jahrbücher 193 (1993): 69–120, with illustration at p. 193; and Franken, Aequipondia: Figürliche Laufgewichte römischer und frühbyzantinischer Schnellwaagen (Alfter: VDG Verlag und Datenbank für Geisteswissenschaften, 1994), passim. See also Liz James, “Who’s That Girl? Personifications of the Byzantine Empress,” in Through a Glass Brightly: Studies in Byzantine and Medieval Art and Archaeology Presented to David Buckton, ed. Chris Entwistle (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2003), 51–56. My thanks to Avinoam Shalem, director of the American Academy in Rome, for the German and Liz James references.

148  Making History was buried in ash by an eruption of Mount Vesuvius. In other words, a scale with a bust of a human character is among the material remains of an archeological site from exactly the era of Rabbi Yohanan and his boy Lazar. These busts were ubiquitous for centuries and popular with the agoranomos, as at a glance he could tell whether they had been tampered with. Were they missing an ear? Was the nose flatter today than yesterday? Perhaps the chin now receded. An intact bust was an honest weight. I am all but certain, although I have yet to see one identified as such by a museum curator, that there were busts made in the image of the agoranomos himself. Still, we do have weights inscribed with the names of various agoranomoι, including two from Roman Palestine in our period.10 In addition to not seeing specifically identified agoranomos busts, I confess I also have not seen a rabbi-weight fashioned for a Roman steelyard scale. But at least now we have a much better idea of what Rabbi Yohanan was thinking about when he complimented his student.

The Agoranomos Above I refer to the agoranomos as a town’s authority on weights and measures. The agoranomos held an imperial appointment. We may therefore assume that he was, practically by definition, highly susceptible to bribery. But what could be a more delightful way of nevertheless checking the accuracy of weights in the market than looking at a bust of himself? It is also likely that, from the time of the emperor Diocletian’s “Edict on Prices” (301 CE), the agoranomos would regulate the market pricing.11 10. See Shraga Qedar, “Two Lead Weights of Herod Antipas and Agrippa II and the Early History of Tiberias,” Israel Numismatic Journal 9 (1986): 29–30; Alla Stein, “Gaius Julius, an Agoranomos from Tiberias,” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 93 (1992):144–48, esp. nn. 1–3. And for inscriptions, see Ya`akov Kaplan, “Evidence of the Trajanic Period at Jaffa,” Eretz-Israel 15 (1981–1982): 412–16; Shimon Appelbaum, “The Status of Jaffa in the First Century of the Current Era,” Scripta Classica Israelica 89 (1985–1988): 138–44, esp. nn. 1–2. 11. For Diocletian’s edict, see E. R. Grasser, “The Edict of Diocletian on Maximum Prices,” in An Economic Survey of Ancient Rome, vol. 5: Rome and Italy of the Empire, ed. Tenney Frank (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1940), 305–421. For the agoranomos, see the thorough study by Daniel Sperber, “On the Office of the Agoranomos in Roman Palestine,” Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 127 (1977): 227–43. Sperber mixes together early and late texts, along with reports from the Babylonian Talmud. See, too, the entry by Menahem Stern and Gérald Finkielsztejn in Encyclopaedia Judaica [2nd ed]. The Online Liddell-Scott-Jones Greek-English Lexicon renders the etymology as αγορα (market)/ νεμος (clerk); but it is all but certain that the rabbis heard the second part of the title as Greek νομος (law), viz., the man was the law of the marketplace. Thus, in our Leviticus Rabbah passage below, Moses is lawgiver. This reading is further reinforced by the Genesis Rabbah text (also cited below), which substitutes Torah for Moses.

Visotzky: A Life in the Balanc  149 We see this even earlier in t. B. Metz. 6:14, where acknowledgment is made of both the supervisory role of prices, as well as weights and measures.12 This is hinted at in a late-fourth-/early-fifth-century text (viz. post-­ Diocletian) from Leviticus Rabbah:13 ‫ עם מי‬.‫ [אמשול לך משל] למה הדבר דומה? למלך שנכנס למדינה‬.‫ויקרא אל משה‬ ‫ כך‬.‫מדבר תחילה? לא עם אגרנומון שלמדינה? למה? שהוא עוסק בחייה שלמדינה‬ .‫משה עוסק בטרחותן שלישראל‬ “Then [the Lord] called to Moses” (Lev 1:1). [I will give you an analogy,] to what may this matter be likened? To a king who enters a city. To whom does he speak first? Is it not to the agoranomos of the city? Why so? For he is engaged in the livelihood of the city. So, Moses is engaged in the burdens14 of the Jews.15

This text shows us the agoranomos as a central figure in the daily life of the town marketplace, whom the “king” consults. Mordecai Margulies is correct in his commentary in interpreting the Moses portion of the mashal (i.e., the nimshal) as referring to the economic well-being of the Jews, particularly as it refers to food laws. The analogy is a good introduction to the variety of rules in Leviticus regarding what is fit and what is unfit to con12. So, t. B. Metz. 6:14, Tosefta Kifshutah, ed. Saul Lieberman (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 2012) ad loc., pp. 240–41 at lines 36–37. Lieberman also discusses this in “Roman Legal Institutions in Early Rabbinics and in the Acta Martyrum,” JQR 35 (1944): 1–57, here 37–38, esp. n. 241. 13. Lev. Rab. 1:8, ed. Mordecai Margulies, Midrash Wayyikra Rabbah: A Critical Edition Based on Manuscripts and Genizah Fragments with Variants and Notes [Hebrew] (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1993), vol.1, p. 22. A curious text may be found in y. B. Bat. 5 (ed. Venice 15a–b); with a parallel in b. B. Bat. 89a. In the Yerushalmi text, the Exilarch (!) appoints Rav ‫אנגרמוס‬. In the Bavli, an appointment is made of an ‫ אגרדמין‬by the house of the patriarch. See the excellent discussion of the terms, their (mis)spellings, the functions of the agoranomos, and the historicity of the reports in Geoffrey Herman, “Trade Supervision and the Appointment of Agoranomoi,” in his A Prince without a Kingdom: The Exilarch in the Sasaian Era, TSAJ 150 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2012), 162–72. 14. ‫טרחותן‬. Note that the variant in Yalqut Shimoni and a Genizah fragment (Margulies fasc. V, p. 12, line 21): ‫טהרתן‬, “their ritual fitness,” which is apposite to Leviticus and food laws. 15. My translation follows Margulies’s commentary, pp. 22–23, which focuses on the economic earnings (‫ )פרנסה וכלכלה‬of the community. More witness to the agoranomos may be found in Alexander Kohut, Aruch Completum /Arukh HaShalem, 8 vols. (Vienna: Menorah, 1880–1937), 1:28–29, s.v. agoranomos, agorademos. See also Samuel Krauss, Griechische und Lateinische Lehnwörter in Talmud und Midrasch (Berlin: S. Calvary, 1898) 2:11, s.v. agorademos, agoranomos. For the Genesis Rabbah passage below, see ibid., 205–6, s.v, demosia. Agorademos, attested in many rabbinic texts, seems to be an error for agoranomos. See Herman, “Trade Supervision,” 162–72. It is not attested in Greek and may have fallen into our texts through the Genesis Rabbah passage, which brings in the demosia. There may well have been Greek in Jewish Palestine, but that does not mean it was good or proper Greek.

150  Making History sume. As such, it answers the (implied) question of why the book of priestly rulings, Torat Kohanim, opens with a call to Moses. The role of the agoranomos in supervising prices in the market is further implied by a text in Genesis Rabbah about the creation of the world. Unfortunately, the text as we have it does not refer to the agoranomos. More unfortunately, it makes no sense at all as it stands in the printed versions of Genesis Rabbah.16 But perhaps with a judicious bit of emendation, inspired by the Leviticus Rabbah text above, we might make sense of the text and learn a bit more about the agoranomos. '‫חמא בר' חנינא פתח הזאת ידעתה מני עד מני שים אדם עלי ארץ (איוב כ ד) אמר ר‬ ‫ והיו אלו שואלים לאלו מה‬,‫חמא בר' חנינא משל למדינה שהיתה מסתפקת מן החמרים‬ ,'‫ ושלד' שלג‬,'‫ ושלה' שלד‬,‫ שלשישי היו שואלים שלחמישי‬,‫שיברון נעשה במדינה היום‬ ‫ לא לבני המדינה אתמהא שהן‬,‫ ושלא' למי היה להם לשאול‬,'‫ ושלב' שלא‬,'‫ושלג' שלב‬ ,‫עסוקין בדימוסייה שלמדינה אתמהא‬ '‫ שלו‬,‫כך מעשה כל יום ויום היו שואלים אלו לאלו מה בריות ברא הקב"ה בכם היום‬ ‫ וא' למי היה שואל לא‬,'‫ ושלב' לא‬,'‫ ושלג' לב‬,'‫ ולשד' לג‬,'‫ ושלה' לד‬,'‫היו שואלים לה‬ ‫לתורה אתמהא‬ Rabbi Hama ber’ Hanina opened, “Do you not know this from of old, from the time humanity was placed upon earth?” (Job 20:4). Rabbi Hama ber’ Hanina said, [Let me offer an] analogy to a city that was supplied by muleteers. Each asked the other what the market price was in the city that day. The Friday [trader] asked the Thursday, who asked the Wednesday, who asked the Tuesday, who asked the Monday, who asked the Sunday [trader]. But from whom could the Sunday [trader] inquire?17 Would he not ask the townsfolk?! For they are engaged in the public-business [demosia]18 of the town! Thus the works [of creation] asked one another what the Blessed Holy One had created each day. Friday asked Thursday, who asked Wednesday, who asked Tuesday, who asked Monday, who asked Sunday. And whom did Sunday ask? Did it not ask Torah?!

This makes no sense whatsoever. No food-supplying ass-driver would ever ask the customers what price they were paying for fear of being lowballed and cheated on the actual trading prices. Whom would they ask? Why the market supervisor, of course, for it was the agoranomos who monitored those prices.

16. Gen. Rab. 8:2, ed. Julius Theodor, Midrasch Bereschit Rabbah (Berlin: Itzkowsky, 1912) 57. 17. Presuming the market is closed on Shabbat. 18. Demosia as public business seems to be a particular usage of the rabbis. Demos/ δῆμος, demosia/δημοσία in Koine Greek refers to the public or to things public. See the dictionaries listed in n. 15 above.

Visotzky: A Life in the Balanc  151 So, I suggest that based on both common sense and the quasi-parallel with the Leviticus Rabbah text above, we emend the Genesis Rabbah text so that instead of “townsfolk” we read, agoranomos: .‫ לא לאגורנומוס המדינה‬,‫למי היה להם לשאול‬ “But from whom could the [traders] inquire? Would they not ask the agoranomos of the town?!”

Our text now makes sense in terms of whom the muleteers would ask for the current market pricing. The way we have the midrash in print simply indicates that a copyist or typesetter did not know the Greek term and punted, guessing that the foreign word meant townsfolk. But the emended text is likely original, and so it offers would-be-testimony to the agoranomos’s role in regulating prices. Finally, the analogy here is to Torah herself as agoranomos. Torah as nomos, law, is well established, all the way back to the usage of the Septuagint.19 In conclusion, Yohanan ben Zakkai praised his student Lazar by envisioning him on the pan of a scale, much like the humanoid weights he saw in the marketplace. And just as the agoranomos regulated those weights in order that there be fair law and justice in the public market, so Yohanan hoped that his disciples, too, would learn and teach Torah in order that there would be fair law and justice among the people Israel.

19. See A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, ed. Frederick William Danker et al., 3rd ed. (Chicago: University of Press, 2001) 677–78, s.v. νόμος. My thanks to Benjamin Kamine for his meticulous bibliographic and research assistance on this article.

III. The Bavli’s Inner Workings

Gufei Sanhedrin An Analysis of the Term ‫גופא‬ in Tractate Sanhedrin NOAH BICKART

T

he honoree to whom this volume is dedicated is perhaps best known in the community of scholars of rabbinics as a historian. But anyone who has ever read his articles or monographs knows that his presentation of rabbinic history is always based on careful analysis of rabbinic texts and especially on the precise language used in these texts. As such, Professor Kalmin is part of a long line of scholars whose broader research goals are not only informed by the technical terminology of the Talmud, but whose scholarship is, in many ways, driven by it. When I was a doctoral student, Professor Kalmin encouraged me to focus on the analysis of talmudic terminology, and it is a distinct honor to present this small study of such a term in his honor. The term gufa, which appears hundreds of times in the Babylonian Talmud, is “traditionally” understood as signaling a full treatment of a topic or statement previously mentioned in passing, and is thus seen as postdating, at least literarily, the initial discussion of the topic or term. This, at least, is how the vast majority of classical commentators understand it. For instance, in b. Nazir 18b,1 the commentary of the Tosafot reads:

1. Translations of classical and medieval Hebrew texts, unless otherwise noted, are my own. E. E. Urbach argues that the author/editor of Tosafot to Nazir was R. Isaac of Évreux (The Tosaphists: Their History, Writing, and Methods [Hebrew] [Jerusalem: Bialik, 1980], 397–98, 495–96). Notably, Asher b. Yechiel, the Rosh, notes that the term ‫ גופא‬in Nazir differs from all others in the Talmud.

155

156  Making History ‫תוספות נזיר יח ע"ב‬ ‫ בכולה הש"ס לא גרסינן גופא אלא כשהש"ס‬... ‫הביא מימרא או ברייתא תחילה ומייתי אותה אגב‬ ‫גררא אז חוזר ואומר גופא לפרש המימרא או‬ ‫הברייתא‬

Tosafot to Nazir 18b In the entire Talmud the [term] gufa is used only [in cases in which] the Talmud first brings a memra or a baraita, and when it does so, it does so “by the way,” and now returns, saying gufa to explain the memra or baraita.

It is not exactly clear what the contours of ‫“( אגב גררא‬by the way”) are, and the Talmud is replete with occasions in which a source of one kind or another is addressed in multiple locations. Yet it appears that Tosafot understand the initial instance of the quotation of a memra or a baraita to be one in which the tradition has somehow been plucked from its rightful context for the editorial need of a passage to which it had no previous connection. Conversely, the second presentation, being more authentic, is also older. This leaves open the possibility that the Tosafot are well aware of the editorial work performed by late editors.2 Yehoshua ben Yosef HaLevi, a fifteenth-century Spanish Talmudist, the author (?) of Halikhot Olam,3 one of the earliest and best examples of the genre of sifrei kelallei ha-Talmud, adds a little more detail, basing it on the Tosafistic explanation. He writes: ‫הליכות עולם על גופא‬ ‫כל היכא דאמרינן גופא לחדש דבר וזו שיטת הגמרא‬ ‫בכל מקום שמביא מימרא או ברייתא אגב גררא‬ ‫והדר בעי לחדושי בה מידי לפרושי או לאקשרי עלה‬ ‫מהדר לה זימנא אחרנא ואומר גופא כלומר מעיקרא‬ ‫אגב גררא הוא והכא גופא ועיקרא‬

Halikhot Olam s.v. ‫גופא‬ Everywhere we [i.e. the editors of the Talmud] say gufa [the purpose is] to present a novelty of some kind. And this is the method of the Talmud in all places—it cites an Amoraic or Tannaitic statement by the way, but then returns to it shortly thereafter to explain it or challenge it, returning to it a second time. It introduces [this procedure] by saying gufa, that is to say the initial instance was by the way and now is the body [gufa] and essential [presentation]

2. See Shamma Friedman, “Pereq Ha-Isha Rabba in the Babylonian Talmud: A Critical Study of Yevamot X with a Methodological Introduction” [Hebrew], in Texts and Studies: Analecta Judaica I, ed. H. Z. Dimitrovsky (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1977), 275–442, here 292–93. 3. I base my analysis of this text on the edition printed in Constantinople in 1509, a facsimile of which is available online at: https://www.hebrewbooks.org/44719.

Bickart: Gufei Sanhedrin  157 Here, however, the chronology is much less clear. In the Halikhot Olam’s estimation, the chronology of the units seems to match the literary presentation, in which the “by the way” treatment, though less full than the gufa presentation, is not only literarily primary, but chronologically primary as well. It is as if the Talmud, having quoted something, now returns to it to provide a fuller analysis of it. The approach of Halikhot Olam seems to have been adopted by the world of traditional Talmud study up until the present. Yitzhak Frank, for example, claims, “This term regularly introduces the text of an Amoraic statement, or a baraita, or occasionally a mishna, that has been quoted in part during the course of a previous Talmudic discussion. Now the Talmud quotes the text in full and discusses it further.”4 We will see below examples of gufa passages which do not fit Frank’s assessment, but we see from Frank’s explanation that he sees the process of development as a simple one. The Talmud first cites something in part, and only after does it quote it in full. The modern scholar who, more than any other, pioneered an approach to understanding the process of the development of the Talmud specifically through the lens of its technical terminology was Avraham Weiss. Weiss’s first book, Le-korot hithavut ha-Bavli,5 in which he develops this “inside-outside approach,” is devoted primarily to two technical terms, one of which is gufa (‫)גופא‬. The other is the similar term amar mar (‫)אמר מר‬.6 Weiss draws heavily both on the commentary literature of the classical medieval authorities and on the kelallei ha-Talmud literature, arguing that these premodern thinkers were aware of many of the source-critical problems that garner the attention of modern scholars.7 Weiss’s approach to these terms is quite instructive, for he goes far beyond simply defining the term as a lexicographer might, or even describing its usage and place within the sugya. He first notes that most of the “traditional” commentators, like those quoted above, assume that ‫ גופא‬indicates a desire on the part of the editor to explain something mentioned earlier. Yet Weiss notes that this is not always the case. Instead, he attempts to look at all the places in which gufa or amar mar appears, and he creates a taxonomy for them. First, he divides all the gufa pericopes into two broad categories: those in which gufa introduces a Tannaitic source, and those in which gufa introduces an Amoraic source. Within these, he further divides the examples into subcategories, noting when gufa introduces the “full” text, only part of which had been quoted above, and when both sugyot, the original, and the gufa section contain the same transmitted text in full. Weiss pays spe4. Yitzhak Frank, The Practical Talmud Dictionary (Jerusalem: Ariel, 1994), 59. 5. Avraham Weiss, Le-korot hithavut ha-Bavli [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Maḳor 1970). 6. Ibid., 4. 7. Ibid., 5.

158  Making History cial attention to the presence or absence of anonymous material to further subdivide the cases. He lists which gufa sugyot belong in which category and selects some examples to analyze in full.8 As a result of this analysis, Weiss makes a radical claim. In general,9 a passage introduced by the term gufa is actually an older, more original piece of redacted text than the section that preceded it, whereas with regard to passages introduced by amar mar the chronology is the reverse.10 The word gufa, meaning “body,” is illustrative. The original body is the second one, signaling that the text that comes first, ironically, is actually a later literary creation. In this article, I will treat all the instances of the term gufa in b. Sanhedrin in an attempt to subject Weiss’s claims to closer scrutiny. I have selected this tractate for a number of reasons. First of all, while the term is scattered throughout the Talmud, absent only in tractates Hagigah, and Horayot, two exceptionally short tractates,11 there are nine instances in Sanhedrin.12 Second, whereas Weiss uses the printed text of the Talmud, using only Raphael Nathan Rabinovitch’s Dikdukei Sofrim for lower criticism,13 we possess an excellent Yemenite witness to the tractate, MS Jerusalem, in the collection of Yad Harav Hertzog in Jerusalem,14 which allows us to analyze the usage of this term in a text that reflects a far older version of the talmudic text.15 Finally, Sanhedrin is a tractate that is of special importance to Professor Kalmin, one that I had the distinct pleasure of studying under his tutelage.

 8. How he decides which sugyot to analyze and which to list is unclear to me.  9. Weiss does note that there are exceptions to his general theory, especially when both the earlier and the gufa sections possess a lot of anonymous material. See Weiss, Le-korot hithavut ha-Bavli, 131–48. 10. Ibid., 127. 11. Ibid., 10 n. 3 12. In the pagination of the standard printed edition, they may be found at: 5b (2 instances), 25a, 62b (2 instances), 23a (2 instances), 69a, and 73a. See below for extensive analysis of these passages. 13. Nathan Rabbinovicz, Dikdukei Sofrim im hagahot niḳraot Divre sofrim: Variae lectiones in Mischnam et in Talmud babylonicum, quum ex aliis antiquissimis et scriptis et impressis tum e Codice mona collectae, annotationibus instructae, 16 vols. (Munich: H. Roesl, 1867– 1897). 14. Yaacov Sussmann (with Yoav Rosenthal and Aharon Shweka), Thesaurus of Talmudic Manuscripts [Hebrew], 3 vols. (Jerusalem: Ben-Zvi Institute, 2012), #7837. On this manuscript, see Mordekhai Sabato, The Yemenite Manuscript of Tractate Sanhedrin (Bavli) and Its Place in the Transmission of the Text [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1996). See below for the treatment of a gufa passage that appears only in this witness to the text. I have quoted and translated this witness exclusively; evidence from other witnesses is brought in the notes. 15. Indeed, it is noteworthy that, whereas the printed editions and the extant textual witnesses tend to present this term as ‫גופא‬, MS Jerusalem always reads ‫גופה‬.

Bickart: Gufei Sanhedrin  159

Sanhedrin 5b #1 and #2 The first two instances of the term gufa in b. Sanhedrin concern statements of Shemuel and Rabbi Abahu, both integral elements of the first sugya in the chapter. This pericope, unlike many others that are placed at the beginning of talmudic chapters, does not appear to be a late creation of the ­Talmud’s redactor/editors created to serve as an overture-like introduction to the content of the chapter as a whole, though it does display a significant degree of editorial activity.16 At its core, it presents a dispute between R. Ahabu and Rava about how many judges are required in monetary cases. This dispute appears nowhere else in the tractate and has a direct parallel in the Talmud of the West, as will be shown below. The thrust of the sugya is as follows: The Mishnah appears, at least at first blush, to be confusingly redundant. While it first states that all civil cases are to be judged by a court of three, the Mishnah then goes on to enumerate that, in cases concerning theft of and damage to property, three judges are likewise required. In an attempt to explain away this apparent redundancy, the Talmud cites Rabbi Abahu’s suggestion that theft of and damage to property are examples of civil cases:17  ?‫נינהו‬ ‫ממונות‬ ‫דיני‬ ‫לאו‬ ‫וחבלות‬ ‫גזילות‬ ‫ אטו‬Is that to say robbery and injury are not monetary cases?  .‫תני‬ ‫קא‬ ‫הן‬ ‫מה‬ ‫אבהו‬ '‫ר‬ '‫ אמ‬Rabbi Abbahu says: [The Mishnah  ‫וחבלות‬ ‫ממונות? גזילות‬ ‫דיני‬ ‫הן‬ ‫ מה‬uses this formulation to] teach what these [are and should be read as .‫לא‬ ‫והלואות‬ ‫הודאות‬ ‫ אבל‬follows:] What are monetary cases? Robbery and injury. But admissions [of debt] and loans [are] not [included in the definition].

16. See Nehemia Brill, “Toldot Yisodo shel Talmud Habavli Keyetzira Sifrutit,” Netuim 11/12 (2004): 204–8. See also Shamma Friedman, Talmud Aruch: BT Bava Mezi’a VI: Critical Edition with Comprehensive Commentary [Hebrew] (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1996), 2:1 n.1. 17. Each passage has been presented in a typological fashion, in both the Hebrew and English columns such that the reader can easily distinguish between the three basic layers of the talmudic text: Tannaitic Material, Amoraitic Material, and editorial (e.g., “stammaitic” material). Tannaitic material is presented in italics, Amoraitic material in boldface, and the editorial material in plain font. These divisions are, one must admit, subjective to a large degree. Furthermore, the mere separation of the Amoraitic material from the anonymous material in which it is embedded does not necessarily indicate any significant chronological gap between the statements of named authorities and the anonymous material. This presentation of the internal divisions of the text, which must always be the first step in analyzing a talmudic passage, is such a useful aid to the reader, that, despite the potential pitfalls it presents, it is included for every passage. In each case, a detailed translation is provided in a parallel column.

160  Making History How much of this statement can be reliably attributed to R. Abahu? David Weiss Halivni, for example, maintains that the last four words of the statement do not belong to him and have only been added by the editor/redactor of the passage. He argues that they were added in order to allow for a clear distinction between R. Abahu’s argument that the Mishnah gives examples (‫תני‬ ‫קא‬ ‫הן‬ ‫ )מה‬and Rava’s claim that the Mishnah is speaking of different kinds of cases (‫)תרתי קא תני‬.18 With the help of the editor’s addition, Rabbi Abahu’s position is extended to mean something like this: these kinds of cases require three ordained judges, whereas in other cases three laypeople may serve as judges. Having set up the dispute this way, the Talmud deems R. Abahu to be consistent, and in order to show this, brings in another one of his statements:19 ‫הכל‬ ‫ לדברי‬20 ]‫[בהלואות‬ ‫שדנו‬ ‫ שנים‬Two who [attempt to] judge monetary ‫דין‬ ‫ אין דיניהם‬cases, all agree that their “judgment” is not law.

With regard to this detail, we are introduced to the opinions of both R. Aha, the son of R. Ika, and Rava. The former argues that the requirement to have three judges is (only) a rabbinic decree, and that, according to biblical law, a single judge is sufficient. The latter, however, maintains that even biblical law requires three judges. Therefore, there seems to be no practical difference between the two positions, as both maintain that a three-judge panel is required. As a way of exploring the theoretical underpinnings of these two diverging opinions, the memra of Shemuel (which properly belongs to the pericope at 5b) is quoted:  ‫דין‬ ‫בית‬ ‫שנקראו‬ ‫אלא‬ ‫דין‬ ‫דיניהם‬ ‫שדנו‬ ‫ שנים‬Two who judge—their judgment is ‫ חצוף‬valid, but they are called a hutzpadik court.

18. David Weiss Halivni, “Sources and Traditions to the First Two Chapters of Sanhedrin” [Hebrew], in Torah Lishmah: Essays in Jewish Studies in Honor of Professor Shamma Friedman, ed. David Golinkin et al. (Jerusalem: Schechter Institute, 2007), 79–119, here 79-80. 19. I will argue below that the “original” context of this statement is the pericope at 6b–6a. 20. Here the Yemenite MS reads ‫ הלואות‬against all other textual witnesses: ‫>ם דין‬..< ‫אין‬ ‫הכל‬ ‫לדברי‬ ‫שנים שדנו דיני ממונות‬ >...< '‫ והאמ‬T-S NS 329.955 ‫אין דיניהם דין‬ ‫הכל‬ ‫בהלואות לדברי‬ ‫והא אמ' ר' אבהו שנים שדנו‬ Yemenite ‫אין דיניהן דין‬ ‫הכל‬ ‫לדברי‬ ‫שנים שדנו דיני ממונות‬ ‫ והאמ' ר' אבהו‬Florence II-I-9 ‫אין דיניה' דין‬ ‫הכל‬ ‫דברי‬ ‫שני' שדנו דיני ממונות‬ ‫והא"ר אבהו‬ m95 ‫אין דיניהם דין‬ ‫הכל‬ ‫לדברי‬ ‫והאמר רבי אבהו שנים שדנו בדיני ממונות‬ EP

Bickart: Gufei Sanhedrin  161 Shemuel’s memra states that, while the judgment that results from a court constituted by only two judges is indeed legally efficacious, it is nonetheless ethically dubious to constitute a court in such a way. The dispute between R. Abahu and Shemuel has a clear and direct parallel in the Talmud of the West:21 )‫א (יח ט"א‬:‫ ירושלמי סנהדרין פרק א‬Y. Sanhedrin 1:1 (18a) ‫ שמואל אמר שנים שדנו דיניהם דין אלא שנקראו‬Shemuel says: Two who judge—their ‫ ב"ד חצוף‬judgment is valid, but they are called a hutzpadik court. ‫ ר' יוחנן וריש לקיש תריהון מרין אפילו שנים שדנו‬R. Yohannan and Resh Laqish both .‫ אין דיניהן דין‬state: Even (after the fact,22) two who judge, their judgment is no judgment.

Despite the difference in tradents, we get a glimpse of a systemic dispute between early Babylonian and Palestinian Amoraim; the former, while frowning on judicial panels of fewer than three judges, allow them. The latter do not. These two statements, that of R. Abahu and Shemuel, are each the subject of a gufa formulation. As such, Weiss includes this passage in his list of those gufa pericopes in which “[t]he first sugya contains only part of the statement and the Talmud requotes it in its fullness in order to add a [full] sugya or comment.”23 Yet he performs no extensive analysis on this section. The gufa formulation that treats Shemuel’s statement is as follows: ‫ גופה אמר שמואל שנים שדנו דיניהם דין אלא‬Gufa: Shemuel said: Two who ‫ שנקראו בית דין חצוף‬judge—their judgment is valid, but they are called a hutzpadik court. ‫ יתיב רב נחמן וקא אמר לה להא שמעתא‬Rav Nahman sat and cited this statement [of Shemuel]. ‫ אותיביה רבא לרב נחמן‬Rava challenged Rav Nahman[’s ‫ ואפלו שנים מזכין ושנים מחייבין ואחד אומ' איני יודע‬citation of Shemuel on the basis of ‫ יוסיפו הדיינים‬m. Sanhedrin 3:6] Even if two [judges vote to] acquit and one [judge] says: I don’t know, [additional] judges are added.

21. It appears at ‫א‬:‫ ירושלמי ברכות ז‬as well. 22. The translation here follows the approach of R. Moses Margalit. See Penei Moshe to y. Sanhedrin ad loc. 23. Weiss, “Le-korot hithavut ha-Bavli,” 45.

162  Making History ‫ ואם איתה ליהוו כשנים שדנו‬If indeed [Shemuel was correct,] let [the two who voted to acquit] be as two who judged! ‫[ אמ' ליה שאני התם דמעיקרא דכי יתבי אדעתא‬Rav Nahman] said: That is different. ‫ דבי תלתא הוא דיתבי הכא מעיקרא לאו אדעתא‬For, when they first sat [in judgment], ‫ דבי תלתה יתיבו‬it was under the assumption that they sat as a group of three [judges]. But here when they first sat [in judgment], it was under the assumption that they sat as a group of [only] two. ‫[ אותיביה רבן שמעון בן גמליאל אומ' הדין בשלשה‬Rava] challenged [Rav Nahman’s ‫ פשרה בשנים יפה כח פשרה מכח הדין ששנים שדנו‬citation of Shemuel on the basis of the ‫ בעלי דינין יכולין לחזור בהם ושנים שעשו פשרה אין‬following baraita]: Rabban Shimon ben )‫ בעלי דינין יכולין לחזור בהן (ו ע"א‬Gamaliel said: Judgment is with three [judges]; arbitration is with two [judges]. [thus] The power of arbitration is greater than that of judgment, for when two judges judge, the claimants may contest it, but when two perform arbitration the claimants may not contest it. ‫ וכי תימא משום דפליגי רבנן עליה דרבן שמעון בן‬And if you should say that the sages ‫ גמליאל ומי פליגי והא אמ' רב בהו שנים שדנו‬disagree with Rabban Shimon ben ‫ דיני ממונות לדברי הכל אין דיניהם דין‬Gamaliel, did not Rav Bahu say: According to all, two who judge monetary cases, their judgment is invalid! ‫ אמ' ליה גברא אגברא קא ראמית מר סבר פליגי‬He said to him: Are you challenging ‫ ומר סבר לא פליגי‬from one to the other?! [Shemuel] assumes a dispute, and [Rav Bahu] does not!

This section is remarkable for the scholastic setting it presents.24 Crucially, the text informs us that the statement of Shemuel was a topic for instruction in the disciple circle of Rav Nahman at the turn of the fourth century, and that part of the way in which these Amoraim studied traditional material was to subject it to rigorous cross-examination from Tannaitic texts.

24. That the texts insist that he “sat” while teaching this intimates that this was in an official scholastic setting.

Bickart: Gufei Sanhedrin  163 R. Nahman quotes Shemuel’s dictum, and he defends it against two challenges from his student Rava.25 The first comes from m. Sanhedrin 3:6, which, as R. Nahman deftly points out, is no challenge to Shemuel whatsoever. Court cases in which two of the judges are willing to acquit and one declines to vote, thereby requiring additional judges to join the court, is a fundamentally different situation from one in which two judges attempt to constitute a court from the outset. The second challenge, however, is more serious. Rava/Raba quotes Rabban Shimon ben Gamaliel’s assertion that arbitration, which requires “only” two judges, is greater than that of judgment, which requires three. The operative section here is the phrase, “when two judges judge, the claimants may contest it,” demonstrating that, at least according to the Tosefta, and unlike Shemuel’s approach, the verdict rendered by a court of two is deeply problematic. Furthermore, this line of argumentation, whether a product of Rava/Raba or of some later redactor,26 anticipates and rejects a likely challenge, asserting that there is complete unanimity among the sages on this point, and thus no room to argue that Shemuel might be relying on a Tannaitic opinion that differs from this Tosefta! Rav Nahman however, replies that the fact that Rabbi Abahu asserts that there was unanimity among the sages is not dispositive at all. Indeed, Rav Nahman argues, it is precisely this point on which the two disagree: Shemuel believes the sages disagree with Rabban Shimon ben Gamaliel, whereas Rabbi Abahu asserts that they do not. David Weiss Halivni suggests that this dispute between the Amoraim might reflect the existence of two versions of this baraita,27 one quoted by both Talmuds in which Rabban Shimon ben Gamaliel claims that, while judgment requires three judges, arbitration requires only two. As such, Rabban Shimon ben Gamaliel argues for the superiority of arbitration, “for when two judges judge, the claimants may contest it, but when two perform arbitration the claimants may not contest it.” Yet the version found in the Tosefta has Rabban Shimon ben Gamaliel claiming that both judgment and arbitration require three!

25. As always, it is all but impossible to distinguish between the sages ‫ רבא‬and ‫רבה‬. See Shamma Y. Friedman, “The Writing of the Names ‫ רבא‬and ‫ רבה‬in the Babylonian Talmud” [Hebrew], Sinai 101 (1991–1992): 140–64. For more on distinguishing ‫ רבא‬from ‫רבה‬, see also Marcus Mordecai Schwartz’s essay in this volume. 26. See Halivni, “Sources and Traditions,” 7 n. 9. 27. Ibid., 7–8. It appears that this variant was transmitted in the Middle Ages as well; see Or Zarua Part 4, Laws of Sanhedrin section 2.

164  Making History )‫בבלי סנהדרין ה ע"ב (כי"ת‬ ‫רבן שמעון בן גמליאל אומ' הדין‬ ‫בשלשה פשרה בשנים יפה כח‬ ‫פשרה מכח הדין ששנים שדנו‬ ‫בעלי דינין יכולין לחזור בהם‬ ‫ושנים שעשו פשרה אין בעלי‬ ‫דינין יכולין לחזור בהן‬ Bavli 5b Rabban Shimon ben Gamaliel said: Judgment is with three [judges]; arbitration is with two [judges]. [Thus] the power of arbitration is greater than that of judgment, for when two judges judge, the claimants may contest it, but when two perform arbitration the claimants may not contest it.

‫א‬:‫ירושלמי סנהדרין א‬ 28 )‫(יח ע"ב‬ ‫רשב'ג או' הדין בשלשה ופשרה‬ ‫ יפה כח הפשרה מכח‬.‫בשנים‬ ‫ ששנים שדנו יכולין לחזור‬.‫הדין‬ ‫בהן ושנים שפישרו אין יכולין‬ .‫לחזור בהן‬

Yerushalmi Sanhedrin 1:1 (18b) Rabban Shimon ben Gamaliel said: Judgment is with three [judges]; arbitration is with two [judges]. [Thus] the power of arbitration is greater than that of judgment, for when two judges judge, the claimants may contest it, but when two perform arbitration the claimants may not contest it.

29

)‫ט (כי"ו‬:‫תוספתא סנהדרין א‬

‫רבן שמעון בן גמליאל או' כשם‬ ‫שהדיין בשלשה [דן] כך פשרה‬ ‫בשלשה יפה כח פשרה מכח‬ ‫הדיין כיצד שנים שדנו יכולין‬ ‫לחזור בהן ושנים שפישרו אין‬ ‫יכולין לחזור בהן‬ Tosefta Sanhedrin 1:9 Rabban Shimon ben Gamaliel said: Judgment is with three [judges]; so too arbitration is with three [judges]. [However] the power of arbitration is greater than that of judgment, for when two judges judge, the claimants may contest it; when two perform arbitration the claimants may not contest it.

As a result, the following line must be understood as meaning something entirely different. Instead of a silent but clear “thus,” we need to see a silent “however,” meaning something like: Despite the fact that three judges are required for each procedure, the power of arbitration is nonetheless greater than that of judgment, for when two judges judge, the claimants may contest it, but when two perform arbitration the claimants may not contest it. This notion that judgment and arbitration both require three judges is anything but universally held. Therefore, it may have been the case that this difference in the text caused the ensuing dispute. Both Rabbi Abahu 28. Yaakov Sussman, ed., Talmud Yerushalmi, Edition Ms Or. 4720 (Scal. 3) (Jerusalem: Academy of Hebrew Language, 2001), 1265. 29. The Witnesses of the Tosefta are consistent: ‫בשלשה [דן] כך פשרה בשלשה‬ ‫כשם שהדיין‬ '‫ רבן שמעון בן גמליאל או‬Vienna ‫כך פשרה בשלשה‬ ‫בשלשה‬ ‫כשם שהדין‬ '‫אומ‬ '‫רבן שמע' בן גמל‬ Erfort ‫כך פשרה בשלשה‬ ‫כשם שהדיין דן בשלשה‬ ‫רבן שמעון בן גמליאל אומר‬ E.P.

Bickart: Gufei Sanhedrin  165 and Shemuel assumed that the sages disagreed with Rabban Shimon ben Gamaliel. However, Shemuel, who had something like the Talmuds’ version (‫)הדין בשלשה ופשרה בשנים‬, assumed that the sages disagreed and held that two judges were likewise sufficient for judgment, and he agreed with them. But Rabbi Abahu had something like the text as we see it in the Tosefta (‫)כשם שהדיין בשלשה [דן] כך פשרה בשלשה‬. In this text the second half of the statement is radically different, for while ideally arbitration ought to have three judges, Rabban Shimon ben Gamaliel says that post-facto arbitration by two is binding. Rabbi Abahu may well have assumed that the sages disagreed in part, but if they did so, the only point on which they disagreed was this second point, arguing that, even post facto, arbitration by two judges is invalid. Thus, Rabbi Abahu saw no dispute whatsoever about judgment. It is clear from both Talmuds that Shemuel, a Babylonian sage, disagreed on this matter with Palestinian interlocutors Rabbi Abahu in the Bavli and R. Yohanan and Resh Laqish in the Yerushalmi. If this dispute came about as a result of the differing texts of Rabban Shimon ben Gamaliel’s statement, it is clear that Rav Nahman had no access to the Tosefta’s variant version and did the best he could, arguing that Rabbi Abahu and Shemuel must simply have disagreed on whether there was an opinion of the sages at all.30 At this point, the gufa section which treats Shemuel’s memra abruptly ends. The Talmud now turns its attention to Rabbi Abahu: ‫ גופה אמ' רב בהו שנים שדנו דיני ממונות לדברי‬Gufa: Rav Bahu says: According to all, ‫ הכל אין דיניהם דין‬two who judge monetary cases, their judgment is invalid. ‫ אותיביה רב אבה לרב בהו דן את הדין זיכה את‬R. Abba challenged Rav Bahu [on the ‫ החייב וחייב את הזכאי טימא את הטהור וטיהר את‬basis of the m. Bekhorot 4:4:] If one has ‫ הטמא מה שעשה עשוי ומשלם מתוך ביתו‬judged a case and pronounced the guilty “guiltless” and the guiltless “guilty,” clean “unclean,” or the unclean “clean,” what’s done is done but [the judge] has to pay from his own estate.

30. On the usage of the strange formulation ‫גברא אגברא קא ראמית‬, see below.

166  Making History ‫אמ' ליה הכא במאי עסיקינן כגון דקבלוה עילאויהו‬ ‫אי הכי אמאי משלם מביתו‬ ‫דאמרין ליה כי קבילנא לך עלון אדעתא דדיינת לן‬ ‫דינא דאוריתא‬

[Rav Bahu] said: what are we dealing with here? A case where [the parties] accepted [the judge] upon them. If so, why make him pay from his own estate? For [the parties] said to him: We accept you upon us on the understanding that you judge us in accordance with the Torah.

Here, Rabbi Abahu’s memra is challenged by Rabbi Abba on the basis of m. Bekhorot 4:4, which implies that, despite the fact that a single judge made a mistake, “what’s done is done,” the judgment is valid, and any negative consequences of this improper judgment are resolved when the mistaken judge literally pays the price of the mistake. It follows that, if a single judge’s mistaken judgment remains valid, so too should the judgment of a pair of judges. Rabbi Abahu defends himself against this attack by asserting that the case to which the Mishnah in Bekhorot must refer is one in which the parties accepted this single judge, despite the fact that a single judge would not otherwise be a valid judge. These two gufa sections appear to be preexisting, redacted units. Neither the one focused on Shemuel’s statement nor the one focused on Rabbi Abahu’s statement seems to be particularly aware of the other. Indeed, as the two tradents were in different locations, each seems to more or less to reflect a redacted unit which preserves the actual scholastic setting of the original promulgation of the idea. In each unit, the senior sage makes a statement that is then subject to attack on the basis of Tannaitic sources at the hands of his students, and the concomitant defense of the opinion is then made by the senior sage. These two units indeed seem to predate the redaction of the broader sugya, which incorporates these statements as part of the long introduction to the chapter. The author/redactors of the long first sugya were the ones who wove these two positions together, and they constructed a pericope based on pitting them against one another. In this case the gufa sections do seem to be good examples of the way that early edited material was reworked again and again,31 generation after generation in the Bavli, and thus they are good examples of Weiss’s theory about the term.

31. Compare David Rosenthal, “Ancient Redactions in the Babylonian Talmud” [Hebrew], in Talmudic Studies I, ed. Y. Sussmann and D. Rosenthal (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1990), 155–204.

Bickart: Gufei Sanhedrin  167

Sanhedrin 23a #1 The next instance of gufa is found in conjunction with the first mishnah in the third chapter. There, the sages and R. Meir disagree on the process by which panels of three judges are chosen for monetary cases. All agree that two of the three judges are selected by the litigants, each of whom is permitted to select a single judge. Where they disagree is with regard to the third judge on the panel: )‫א (כי"ק‬:‫משנה סנהדרין ג‬ ‫דיני ממונות בשלשה זה בורר לו אחד וזה בורר לו‬ ‫אחד ושניהם בוררים להם עוד אחד דברי ר' מאיר‬ ‫וחכמ' אומ' שני דיינין בוררין להן עוד‬

M. Sanhedrin 3:1 (MS Kauffman A50) Monetary Cases [are to be tried in a court of] three [Judges]. One [claimant] chooses one [judge, the] other [claimant] chooses one, and the two of them choose another one—these are the words of Rabbi Meir. But the sages say: the two judges [chosen by the claimants] choose another judge.

The memra that is subject of the gufa formulation is cited in an attempt to explain the underlying logic of these two positions: ‫ נימא בדרב יהודה אמ' רב קא מי פלגי‬Let us suppose that [Rabbi Meir and the Sages] disagree about the principle expressed by R. Yehuda in Rav’s name: ‫ דאמ' רב יהודה אמ' רב אין עדים חותמין על‬For Rav Yehuda said in Rav’s name: ‫ השטר אלא אם כן יודעין מי חותם עמהן‬Witnesses may not sign documents unless they know with whom they sign. ‫ ור' מאיר לית ליה דרב יהודה אמ' רב‬R. Meir does not agree with [what] ‫ ורבנן אית להו דרב יהודה אמ' רב‬Rav Yehuda said in Rav’s name. ‫ לא דכולי עלמא אית להו דרב יהודה אמ' רב ודעת‬The sages do agree with [what] Rav ‫ הדיינין כולי עלמא לא פליגי דבענן כי פליגי בדעת‬Yehuda said in Rav’s name. No! Both ‫ בעלי דינין‬agree with [what] Rav Yehuda said in Rav’s name. With regard to knowledge on the part of the judges [about with whom they are to be empaneled] there is no disagreement. Where they disagree is with regard to knowledge on the part of the litigants.

168  Making History ‫ דר' מאיר סבר דעת בעלי דינין נמי בענן‬R. Meir holds that knowledge on the part of the litigants is also required. ‫ ורבנן סברי דעת הדיינין בענן דעת בעלי דינין לא‬The sages hold that knowledge on the ‫ בענן‬part of the litigants is not required.

This pericope appears, at least at first glance, to be straightforward. The whole sugya is an attempt to explain the conceptual underpinnings of the Tannaitic debate. Rav’s opinion seems to present the answer, at least for the sages: in the same way that witnesses may not sign a document unless they know who their fellow witness may be, so too judges may not be empaneled unless they know with whom they will sit.32 Yet the anonymous voice of the Talmud rejects the notion that Rav’s view holds the key to this Tannaitic debate, and, more surprisingly, declines to provide any support whatsoever for its counterclaim that the sages’ dispute hinges instead on the “knowledge on the part of the litigants.”33 Indeed, it seems more plausible that this section is more interested in fitting Rav into the Tannaitic debate than it is in using his memra to explain the debate.34 Comparing this sugya to its parallel in the Talmud of the West shows how a direct analysis of this Tannaitic dispute might have looked in some proto version of our pericope: )‫א (כא ט"א‬:‫ירושלמי סנהדרין ג‬ ‫ כדי שיתבררו שלשתן מדעת‬.‫מא' טע' דר' מאיר‬ .‫אחת‬ ‫ לאו כולא מינך מיבחר ומיסב מה‬.‫ומאי טע' דרבנן‬ ‫דאת בעי אלא אנא ואת מבחרין ומסבין מה דנן בעיין‬ 35

Y. Sanhedrin 3:1 (21a) What is Rabbi Meir’s reason? That the three [judges] should [be] selected unanimously. What is the Rabbis’ reason? “I will not allow you to select and seat whom you want! Rather you and I together shall select and empanel whom we want.”

Unlike in the Bavli, the anonymous voice of the Yerushalmi explicitly provides the underlying logic behind each side. Here, both R. Meir and the

32. Two textual witnesses, MS Firenze BNC: II.1.8–9. and MS Karlsruhe: Reuchlin 2 include a fuller list in the gufa’s repetition of Rav’s memra, including the explicit mention of the notion that judges may not be empaneled unless they know with whom they will sit. This is best explained, however, as a result of scribal miscopying of the baraita to which it is connected. 33. See Abraham Weiss, Court Procedure: Studies in Talmudic Law [Hebrew] (New York: Horeb, 1957), 7. See also Mordekhai Sabato, Talmud Bavli, Sanhedrin Chapter 3: Critical Edition And Commentary [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 2018), 87. 34. Sabato, Talmud Bavli, 87. 35. Yerushalmi, Sussman edition, 1279–80.

Bickart: Gufei Sanhedrin  169 sages are seen to assume that each litigant will select a judge inclined to rule in his favor, and thus it is the third judge alone who must be impartial. R. Meir assumes that the two litigants will be able to agree on such a judge, but the sages assume that whoever first proposes a name for the third judge will be immediately challenged by the other party, saying, “I will not allow you to select and seat whom you want!” Thus, the only equitable way to ensure impartiality is to allow the first two judges to agree on the third. The Yerushalmi, unconcerned with, or, more likely, ignorant of, Rav’s memra is content to focus on what the Bavli calls “knowledge on the part of the litigants.” This gufa section, unlike the other in this tractate, does not present a different sugya in which the memra appears. Indeed,36 it does nothing but attach a complementary baraita to Rav’s memra by means of the ‫תניא נמי הכי‬ (“the same thing”) formula: ‫ גופה אמ' רב יהודה אמ' רב אין עדים חותמין על‬Gufa Rav Yehuda said in Rav’s name: ‫ השטר אלא אם כן יודעין מי חותם עמהן‬Witnesses may not sign documents unless they know with whom they sign. ‫תניא נמי הכי כך היו נקיי הדעת שבירושלם עושין כן‬ ‫לא היו חותמין על השטר אלא אם כן יודעין מי חותם‬ ‫עמהן ולא היו יושבין בבית דין אלא אם כן יודעין מי‬ ‫ישב עמהן ולא היו נכנסין לסעודה אלא אם כן יודעין‬ ‫מי מיסב עמהן‬

[The same thing] is also in a baraita: Diligent Jerusalemites would not sign a document unless they knew with whom they were signing with them, [nor] sit in judgment unless they knew who was sitting with them, [nor] join a meal unless they knew with whom they would recline

Many scholars have attempted to explain this phenomenon. Jonah Frankel understands these Amoraic statements as explanations of a mishnah that the talmudic editors misunderstood as meimrot in their own right, and not simply quotations of baraitot that preceded the redaction of the Mishnah.37 Similarly, Avraham Weiss sees these as the product of an Amora quoting a baraita without explicitly identifying it as such.38 Judith Hauptman’s monumental “horizontal” study of the term yields a more nuanced approach.39 She argues that the baraitot quoted in sugyot which contain the tanya nami hachi formula entered in one of two ways. 36. Of note is the fact that both pericopes appear to be from the anonymous voice of the Talmud. See Weiss, Le-korot hithavut ha-Bavli, 59. 37. Jonah Frenkel, “Methodologies and Methods in Teaching Talmud,” Netivot 15 (1979): 120–46 38. Avraham Weiss, LeHeqer HaTalmud (New York: Feldheim, 1956), 50, 5. 39. Judith Hauptman, Development of the Talmudic Sugya: Relationship between Tannaitic

170  Making History Sometimes, she argues, baraitot that initially were connected to the mishnah formed the earliest redacted layer of the sugya. Amoraim then commented on these proto-sugyot, and, when they did so, their own words were “interpolated between the baraitot.”40 In other words, a memra comes to interpret the mishnah on the basis of the seemingly identical baraita, but it adds some detail not to be found in the baraita. Alternatively, the baraita may have entered the sugya because it served “as the basis of the preceding memra and was therefore introduced into the sugya along with the memra.”41 In both cases Hauptman insists that the baraita was not added to the sugya at a late date of the development of the sugya by the anonymous editors, but at an early date, either as part of the proto-sugya or by an Amora. With regard to the near identical formulation of the two, she argues that the formulation of the baraita was adapted to match the formulation of the memra. In contrast, Simcha Goldsmith argues for a simpler model in which the memra was simply the quotation of a part of the baraita, all of which was then cited in full in the tanya nami hachi formulation.42 In this instance, Goldsmith’s approach has a number of significant advantages.43 It perfectly explains the original purpose and context of Rav’s memra. Originally, Rav must have cited this baraita as a way of supporting the position of the sages. Rav likely focused, not on the baraita’s first clause about signing documents, but on the second clause, which explicitly speaks of sitting together in judgment, and thus likely quoted the entire baraita because of that middle section. Only in the course of a long transmission history was this more obviously connected piece of the baraita replaced with the initial clause of the baraita.44 It was likely this very realization that led the scribes who were responsible for MS Firenze BNC:II.1.8–9 and MS Karlsruhe and/or their Vorlagen to include all three cases (documents, courts, tables) in Rav’s memra in the gufa section. As Weiss himself notes,45 since both sugyot that contain Rav’s memra are sugyot presented by the anonymous voice of the Talmud without later Amoraic material attached, it can be difficult to establish the chronology of these units. But if we adopt Goldsmith’s approach to this tanya nami hachi baraita, we can see that the gufa section here functions much the way the traditional understanding of the term would have us understand it. and Amoraitic Sources, Studies in Judaism (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1988). For Hauptman’s response to Weiss, see 8–19. 40. Ibid., 94. 41. Ibid., 216. 42. Simcha Goldsmith, “The Role of the Tanya nami hakhi baraita,” HUCA 73 (2002): 133–56. 43. It is a shame he did not choose this as one of his examples. 44. See n. 17 above. 45. Weiss, LeHeqer Ha Talmud, 59.

Bickart: Gufei Sanhedrin  171 The second sugya returns to something stated in the first mention, and subsequently it doubles back in order to flesh out the ideas therein. Thus, this sugya is a strong challenge to Weiss’s general rule.

Sanhedrin 23a #2 The next gufa sugya appears on the same page of the Talmud, in connection with the third of the interrelated clauses of the Mishnah:46 '‫זה פוסל עדיו שלזה וזה פוסל עדיו שלזה דברי ר‬ ‫מאיר וחכמ' א'ו אימתיי בזמן שהוא מביא עליהם‬ ‫ראייה שהן קרובים או פסולין אבל אם היו כשירים‬ ‫אינו יכול לפוסלן‬

One [claimant] may render unfit the witness the other [claimant] chooses. The [other claimant] may render unfit the witness the other [claimant] chooses]—these are the words of Rabbi Meir. But the sages say: When [is this the case]? When he brings proof that [the witnesses] are close relatives or [legally] unfit. But if they are fit he may not render them unfit.

Rabbi Meir’s claim is certainly a difficult one to understand. After all, this chapter of the Mishnah provides detailed lists of those who, owing either to their familial connections to either of the parties, or to their ontological lack of credibility, are forbidden to serve as witnesses. Why then does Rabbi Meir allow each claimant to disallow one of his opponent’s witnesses, seemingly without proof? While both Talmuds provide potential answers, our gufa section is based on the opinion of R. Shimon b. Laqish, who essentially rewrites the text of the Mishnah in order to make Rabbi Meir’s claim make more sense. In each Talmud,47 R. Shimon b. Laqish insists that Rabbi Meir should be understood as allowing each claimant to render unfit a single of his opponent’s witnesses: )‫ג (כא ט"א‬:‫ירושלמי סנהדרין ג‬ ‫זה פוסל עדיו של זה כו' ריש לקיש אמר כיני‬ ‫מתניתא עדו הא עידיו לא‬

‫בבלי סנהדרין כג ע"א‬ ‫הא איתמר עלה אמ' ריש לקיש פה קדוש יאמר דבר‬ ‫זה תני עידו‬

46. M. Sanh. 3:2; the text, taken from MS Kauffman A50, is presented below. 47. Indeed, this sugya is a nice example of a Bavli/Yerushalmi parallel in which each Amoraic position is found in both Talmuds. See Sabato, Talmud Bavli, Sanhendrin Chapter 3, 126–27.

172  Making History Y. Sanhedrin 3:3 (21a, p. 1280) One [claimant] may render unfit the witness of the other, etc. R. Shimon b. Laqish says: This is how the mishnah should read:48 His witness, not his witnesses.

B. Sanhedrin 23a It was stated in connection with this [mishnah]: R. Shimon b. Laqish says: Would the holy mouth say this? [Instead] teach: “his witness”

It is this statement of R. Shimon b. Laqish that is the subject of the gufa formulation: ‫ בבלי סנהדרין כד ע"א‬B. Sanhedrin 24a ‫ גופה אמ' ריש לקיש פה קדוש יאמר דבר זה תני‬Gufa: R. Shimon b. Laqish says: ‫ עידו איני‬Would the holy mouth say this? [Instead] teach: “his witness” ‫ הרואה את ראש לקיש‬49‫‘ והא אמ' עולא והלא‬Ulla said: Really?! Anyone who ‫ כשהוא יושב בבית המדרש כאלו עוקר הרים‬would see Resh Laqish sitting in the ‫ וטוחנן זה בזה‬study house would think that he was uprooting mountains and grinding them against one another other! ‫ מתקיף ליה רבינא והלא הרואה את ר' מאיר‬Ravina attacked this [saying]: ‫ כשהוא יושב בבית המדרש כאלו עוקר הרי הרים‬Anyone who would see R. Meir ‫ וטוחנן זה בזה‬sitting in the study house would think that he was uprooting mountains of mountains and grinding them against one another other. ‫ אלא הכי קא אמ' עולא בוא וראה כמה מחבבין זה‬What he meant was: Come and see ‫ את זה‬how [Palestinian rabbis] love one another!

This gufa section is strikingly different from those we have explored so far. There is no serious discussion here of the legal ramifications of Resh Laqish’s emendation of the text of the Mishnah, treated fully in the first instance in Resh Laqish’s memra on 23a. Instead, this gufa seems to focus on the form as opposed to the content of Resh Laqish’s emendation. The core question for Ulla50 seems to be the utter kindness with which Resh Laqish responds to R. Meir’s position, given his penchant for intense, or even violent engagement in halakhic debate. This is, in and of itself quite strange; why should the fact of a sage’s ferocity in study prevent him from

48. See Leib Moskovitz, The Terminology of the Yerushalmi: The Principal Terms [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Magnes, 2009), 276–80. 49. The word ‫ והא‬is absent in all the other textual witnesses; see Sabato, Talmud Bavli, Sanhedrin Chapter 3,135 n. 1. 50. Or the anonymous voice of the Talmud in all the other textual witnesses.

Bickart: Gufei Sanhedrin  173 speaking kindly about a sage of the previous period?51 After all, a basic premise of talmudic debate is that Amoraim must acknowledge the logic of their Tannaitic forebears.52 The next step, similarly, escapes easy explanation. Ravina seems to respond to Ulla by arguing (?) that R. Meir was even more ferocious in his learning. Why should the fact of R. Meir’s even more ferocious learning require Resh Laqish to use such honorific language? The confusion continues as the anonymous editor then rereads (?) Ulla as having praised Resh Laqish for embodying the Palestinian predilection for kindness among rabbinic sages, in contradistinction to their Babylonian co-religionists. The Talmud then returns to the topic, bringing a number of examples demonstrating a predilection among Palestinian sages for expressing excessive kindness to one another in direct contrast to the more bombastic or aggressive tendency that so defines the Babylonian style of Torah study.53 It would appear that what drives the editor of this pericope is the goal of saying, “Come and see how [Palestinian rabbis] love one another!” Since the editor holds both this idea and Ulla’s statement at the same time, he designs the sugya here so as to be able to use this statement as an answer to a rather farfetched question about Resh Laqish’s behavior. If this is correct, it would appear that this gufa section is far later than the original sugya, which contains Resh Laqish’s emendation of the Mishnah. Once again, we see that this sugya challenges Weiss’s generalization about gufa.

Sanhedrin 25a The next sugya to contain the phrase gufa is notable for the fact that it exists in a section that appears only in the Yemenite MS of the Talmud.54 The topic at hand is the Mishnah’s list of those professions that preclude one from acting as a witness: gambling, loaning at interest, pigeon racing, and trading in seventh-year produce: ‫ג‬:‫ משנה סנהדרין ג‬M. Sanhedrin 3:3 (MS Kauffman a50) ‫ ואלו הן הפסולין המשחק בקוביא והמלוה בריבית‬These are those who are disqualified ...‫ ומפריחי יונים וסוחרי שביעית‬from being witnesses: dice players, lenders at interest, falconers, and 7th year produce sellers.

51. See Baruch Kahat, “The Babylonian Talmud against Itself” [Hebrew], Asufot 5 [2015/2016]: 187–94, here 189. 52. Ibid. 53. See Rubenstein, Culture of the Babylonian Talmud, 54–66. 54. See Sabato, Yemenite Manuscript, 169, 97–201.

174  Making History ‫ אמר רבי יהודה אימתי בזמן שאין להם אומנות אלא‬R. Yehuda says: When? If they have no :‫ הוא אבל יש להן אומנות שלא הוא כשרין‬other occupation, but if they have another occupation, they are valid.

Rabbi Yehuda maintains that people should be prohibited from acting as witnesses only if their sole occupation is one of these enumerated; however, if they only dabble in this behavior and have another occupation, they may serve as witnesses. Our sugya’s goal is to determine precisely what it is about these behaviors that precludes persons who engage in them from acting as witnesses and thus the practical difference, if any, between R. Yehuda and the anonymous voice which begins the Mishnah: ‫המשחק בקוביא מאי עביד‬ ‫אמ' ראמי בר חמא דהוה ליה אסמכתא ואסמכתא‬ ‫לא קניא‬ ‫רב ששת אמר כל כי האיי גוונא לאו אסמכתא‬ ‫הוא דהא מדעתיה קא יהיב ליה אלא לפי שאין‬ ‫עוסקין בישובו שלעולם‬ ‫)[ת]י‬..(‫מאי ביניהו איכא ביניהו דגמיר אומנות אחרי‬

What does a dice player do? Rami b. Hama said: it is asmakta, and asmakta does not purchase. R. Shesheth said: Such cases do not come under the category of asmakta; for he gives [money] willingly. [Instead] they are not concerned with the general welfare. What is the [­practical] difference between them? If he has another occupation.

‫[ תנן אמ' ר' יהודה אימתי בזמן שאין לו אומנות אלא‬But it is] taught [in a baraita] R. Judah ‫ היא אבל יש לו אומנות שלא היא דברי הכל כשר‬said: when is this so? If they have no other occupation but this. But if they have other means of livelihood, they are eligible. ‫ אלמא טעמא דמתניתין לפי שעסיקין ביישובו של‬This proves that the ruling of the ‫ עולם הוא קשיא לראמי בר חמא‬Mishnah is for the sake of general welfare and is a difficulty for Rami b. Hama. ‫וכי תימא פליגי רבנן עליה דר' יהודה‬ '‫והא אמ' ר' יהושע בן לוי כל מקום שאמ' ר‬ ‫יהודה (כה ע"א) אימתי ובמה אינו אלא לפרש‬ '‫דברי חכמי‬

‫ור' יוחנן אמ' אימתי לפרש ובמה לחלוק‬ ‫עד כאן לא פליגי רבנן התם אלא בבמה אבל אימתי‬ ‫דברי הכל מיהת לפרש הוא‬ ‫אמ' ליה אימתי לפרש ובמה לחלוק‬

And should you say: The rabbis disagree with R. Judah! R. Joshua b. Levi said, Wherever R. Judah says (25a), “When is this so” or “In what case,” he is explaining the words of the sages! R. Yohanan said: “When is this so” is to explain but “In what case” is to disagree. So while [R. Joshua b. Levi and R. Yohanan] disagree about “In

Bickart: Gufei Sanhedrin  175 ‫ עד כאן לא פליגי אלא בבמה אבל באימתי דברי הכל‬what case,” they both agree that 55 ‫“ מיהת לפרש הוא‬When is this so” means to explain. ‫ גברא אגברא קא רמית מר סבר פליגי ומר סבר לא‬Do you oppose one against another? [Rami b. Hama] holds that they [the rabbis and R. Judah] disagree; while [R. Joshua b. Levi] holds that they do not. '‫ גופה אמ' ר' יהושע בן לוי כל מקום שאמ' ר‬Gufa: R. Joshua b. Levi said: wherever ‫ יהודה אימתי ובמה אינו אלא לפרש דברי חכמים‬R. Judah says “When is this so” or ‫“ ור' יוחנן אמ' אימתי לפרש ובמה לחלוק‬In what case,” he is explaining the words of the sages. R. Yohanan said: “When is this so” is to explain but “In what case” is to disagree. ‫[ ולא פליגי‬And you say] they do not disagree? ‫ והא קאתני סיפא וחכמ' אומרים בין שיש לו אֻמנות‬But the latter half [is as follows:] ‫ שלא היא ובין שאין לו אומנות אלא היא דברי הכל‬Whether he has another occupation or ‫ פסול‬not, he is disqualified? ....‫[ ההוא דר' יהודה שאמ' משום ר' טרפון‬No.] That is the view of R. Judah, stated in the name of R. Tarfon…

Whereas Rami b. Hama assumes that the psychology of gambling is inherently problematic, R. Shesheth’s concern is that gamblers are not invested in the general welfare of the community, and thus his concern seems to be directly related to R. Yehuda’s addendum in the Mishnah. What is the relationship between R. Yehuda’s addendum and the anonymous voice? If he is simply explaining the first position, as seems to be assumed by both R. Joshua b. Levi and R. Yohanan, Rami b. Hama no longer has any proverbial legs on which to stand. But the Talmud rejects this approach, asserting that each Amora may interpret the Mishnah and its authors as he sees fit. Simply because both R. Joshua b. Levi and R. Yohanan feel that there is unanimity in the Mishnah does not make it so. Rami b. Hama is well within his rights to intuit a dispute between the sages and R. Yehuda and to decide in favor of the sages. It is here that the Yemenite text brings in a Gufa section, one not found in any other textual witness to Sanhedrin.

55. This section is homoioteleuton and thus not translated.

176  Making History MS Yemen  ‫לא‬ ‫סבר‬ ‫ומר‬ ‫פליגי‬ ‫סבר‬ ‫מר‬ ‫רמית‬ ‫קא‬ ‫אגברא‬ ‫גברא‬ ‫פליגי‬

MS Florence ‫גבר' אגברא קא רמית מר סבר פליגי ומר סבר לא‬ ‫פליגי‬

'‫גופה אמ' ר' יהושע בן לוי כל מקום שאמ' ר‬ ‫יהודה אימתי ובמה אינו אלא לפרש דברי חכמים‬ ‫ור' יוחנן אמ' אימתי לפרש ובמה לחלוק‬ ‫ולא פליגי והא קאתני סיפא וחכמ' אומרים בין שיש‬ ‫לו אֻמנות שלא היא ובין שאין לו אומנות אלא היא‬ ‫דברי הכל פסול‬ '‫ההוא דר' יהודה שאמ‬ ...‫משום ר' טרפון‬ Do you oppose one against another? [Rami b. Hama] holds that they [the rabbis and R. Judah] disagree; while [R. Joshua b. Levi] holds that they do not.

‫ולא פליגי והתניא וחכמ' אומ' בין שיש אומנות שלא‬ ‫הוא ובין שאין לו אומנות אלא הוא הרי זה פסול‬ '‫[ההיא] ר' יהוד' (או)משו' ר' טרפו' היא דתניא ר‬ ...'‫יהוד' אומ' משום ר' טרפו‬

Do you oppose one against another? [Rami b. Hama] holds that they [the rabbis and R. Judah] disagree; while [R. Joshua b. Levi] holds that they do not.

Gufa: R. Joshua b. Levi said, Wherever R. Judah says (25a), “When is this so” or “In what case,” he is explaining the words of the sages! R. Yohanan said: “When is this so” is to explain but “In what case” is to disagree. Do they not disagree? But the end [of the Mishnah] reads: Whether or not one has another occupation, he is disqualified.

Do they not disagree? But it was taught [in a baraita] Whether or not one has another occupation, he is disqualified.

[No.] That is the view of R. Judah, stated in the name of R. Tarfon…

[No.] that is the view of R. Judah, quoting the authority of R. Tarfon…

The presence or absence of the gufa section does not dramatically alter the meaning of the passage. Having quoted the debate between R. Joshua b. Levi and R. Yohanan, which raises the possibility (at least for R. Joshua b. Levi) that there is no dispute between the anonymous voice of the Mishnah and R. Yehuda, the Talmud returns to challenge this claim on the basis of a Tannaitic text that states explicitly, “Whether or not one has another

Bickart: Gufei Sanhedrin  177 occupation, he is disqualified.”56 As such, how then can R. Joshua b. Levi claim that there is no dispute? The Talmud answers, somewhat implausibly, that whereas R. Yehuda was merely explaining the position of the sages in our Mishnah, he agrees in fact with a third (!) opinion in this case, that of R. Tarfon, whose views R. Yehuda is known to promulgate as in an example from tractate Nazir. The presence or absence of the gufa only serves to accentuate the fact that the pericope is returning to probe this question. This section has a clear parallel in tractate Eruvin, which needs to be analyzed in order to assess the function of the gufa in our passage. There, the final Mishnah in the seventh chapter reads as follows: )a50 ‫יא (כי"ק‬:‫עירובין ז‬ ‫נותן אדם מעותיו לחנוני או לנחתום‬ '‫כדי שיזכה לו בעירוב דברי ר' אליעז‬ ‫וחכמ' או' לא זכו לו מעותיו מודים‬ ‫בשאר כל האדם שזכו לו מעותיו שאין‬ ‫מערבין לאדם אלא לדעתו אמ' ר' יהודה‬ ‫במי דברים אמֻ' בעירובי התחומין אבל‬ ‫בעירובי חצירות מערבין לדעתו ושלא‬ ‫לדעתו לפי שזכין לאדם שלא בפניו ואין‬ :‫חבין לו‬

b. Eruvin 7:11 (MS Kauffman a50) A person may give one’s money to a shopkeeper or a baker so that one might merit to be part of the shared [courtyard], so says Rabbi Eliezer. But the rabbis say: One’s money does not confer possession. [But they] concede with regard to all [other kinds of] people that money confers possession, for a joined [courtyard] may only be constructed for someone with consent. R. Yehuda said: In what case is this statement said? With regard to a joining of [Shabbat] boundaries, but with regard to a joining of courtyards, one may establish [a] joined [courtyard] with or without knowledge because one may act for a [another] person’s benefit in their absence, but not to obligate them.

Here, R. Yehuda responds to the anonymous voice of the Mishnah in precisely the same way as he does in our mishnah; he seeks to provide the context in which the sages’ opinion obtains. In the ensuing Amoraic period, however, when it comes to interpreting this source, the question of 56. There is some confusion in the witnesses as to which source here is being marshaled against R. Joshua b. Levi. Whereas MS Yemen reads ‫והא קאתני סיפא‬, indicating that it is the latter part of our Mishnah which is being quoted, despite the fact that this line does not appear therein. All the other witnesses read, ‫דתניא‬, which, contrary to popular opinion, can refer to either a mishnah or a baraita. See J. N. Epstein, Introduction to the Mishnaic Text [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1948), 817.

178  Making History whether R. Yehuda is merely explaining the words of the sages with which he agrees, or actively modifying them such that he expresses his own conflicting opinion is the central question for the Talmud’s treatment of the section. b. Eruvin 81a-82b (Oxford 366) )‫מתני' נותן אדם מעה לחנוני וכו' (פא ע"ב‬ ‫וא"ר יהודה בד"א וכו' אמ' רב יהודה אמ' שמואל‬ '‫הלכה כר' יהודה ולא עוד אלא כל מקום ששנה ר‬ ‫יהודה בעירובין הלכה כמותו‬

b. Eruvin 81a-82b (Oxford 366). Mishnah: A person may give his money to a shopkeeper… R. Yehuda said: In what case is this statement said… R. Yehuda quoted Shemuel as saying: The law is in accordance with R. Yehuda. And not only that, but in every case about eruvin in which R. Yehuda’s position is taught, the law is in accordance with him

‫ א"ל רב אחא בריה דרבא לרב אשי הלכה מכלל‬R. Aha the son of Rava said to R. ‫ דפליגי‬Ashi: [adjudication of] “The Law” indicates that there is a dispute! ‫ האמ' ר' יהושע בן לוי כל מקום שאמ' ר' יהודה‬But did not R. Joshua b. Levi say: ‫ אימתי ובמה במשנתינו אינו אלא לפרש דברי‬Wherever R. Judah says “When is ‫ חכמים ולא פליגי‬this so” or “In what case,” he is explaining the words of the sages? ‫ והא תנן ניתוספו עליהן מוסיף ומזכה וצריך‬But it is taught: If the number of ‫ להודיע‬residents increase [food must be] added and [new residents] must have [possession] conferred [upon them], and they must be informed of the fact? '‫ התם בחצר שבין שני מבואות והאמ' רב שיזבי אמ‬There it is a case of a courtyard '‫ רב חסדא זאת אומרת חלוקין עליו חביריו על ר‬between two alleys. But did not R. ‫ יהודה‬Shezbi state in the name of R. Hisda: “This implies that R. Judah’s colleagues differ from him”? ‫[ אמ' ליה (פב ע"א) גברא אגברא קא רמית מר סבר‬R. Ashi] said to [R. Aha the son of ‫ פליגי ומר סבר לא פליגי‬Rava] Do you oppose one against another? [Shemuel] holds that they [the rabbis and R. Judah] disagree; while [R. Joshua b. Levi] holds that they do not.

Bickart: Gufei Sanhedrin  179 ‫גופה‬ ‫אמ' ר' יהושע בן לוי כל מקום ששנה ר' יהודה‬ ‫אימתי ובמה [ב]משנתינו אינו אלא לפרש דברי‬ ‫חכמים‬

Gufa: R. Joshua b. Levi said, Wherever R. Judah says (25a), “When is this so” or “In what case,” he is explaining the words of the sages!

‫ ור' יוחנן אמ' אימתי לפרש ובמה לחלוק אימתי‬R. Yohanan said: “When is this so” is ‫ לפרש‬to explain but “In what case” is to disagree. ‫ והתנן אלו הן הפסולין המשחק בקוב?י?א ומלוה‬But [m. Sanhedrin 3:3] reads: These are ‫ ברבית ומפריחי יונים וסוחרי שביעית אמ' ר' יהודה‬those who are disqualified from being ‫ אימתי בזמן שאין לו אומנות אלא היא אבל יש לו‬witnesses: dice players, lenders at interest, ‫ אומנות שלא היא הרי זה כשר‬falconers, and seventh year produce sellers. R. Yehuda says: When? If they have no other occupation, but if they have another occupation, they are valid. ‫ ותני עלה בברית' וחכמים אומ' בין שאין לו אומנות‬It is taught in conjunction with this: ‫ שלא היא הרי זה פסול‬The sages say whether or not they have ‫ ההיא ר' יהודה אליבא דר' טרפון היא‬another occupation, they are disqualified [No.] That is the view of R. Judah, stated in the name of R. Tarfon…

In Eruvin as in Sanhedrin, the question is “resolved” in classic talmudic fashion; while some Amoraim understand R. Judah to be explaining the opinion of the sages, other Amoraim understand him to be disagreeing with them. This, of course, is the prerogative of Amoraim; as long as they confine themselves within Tannaitic parameters, they can do what they want to do. At this stage we see the similarity of these sugyot. In each case, there is an Amoraic dispute about R. Yehuda’s comment in the Mishnah; in each case R. Yehuda’s tendency to explain the Mishnah Rishonah is the subject of Amoraic dispute.57 But in each of these pericopes, the discussion then contains a gufa that specifically addresses R. Yehuda’s tendency. In each tractate the passage is all but identical: MS Yemen  ‫לא‬ ‫סבר‬ ‫ומר‬ ‫פליגי‬ ‫סבר‬ ‫מר‬ ‫רמית‬ ‫קא‬ ‫אגברא‬ ‫גברא‬ ‫פליגי‬

b. Eruvin 81a-82b (MS Oxford) )‫אמ' ליה (פב ע"א‬ ‫גברא אגברא קא רמית מר סבר פליגי ומר סבר לא‬ ‫פליגי‬

57. On the very notion of ‫משנה ראשונה‬, see David Henshke, The Original Mishna in the Discourse of Later Tanna’im [Hebrew] (Ramat-Gan: Bar-Ilan University, 1997), 27–28.

180  Making History ‫גופה אמ' ר' יהושע בן לוי כל מקום שאמ' ר' יהודה‬ ‫אימתי ובמה אינו אלא לפרש דברי חכמים‬ ‫ור' יוחנן אמ' אימתי לפרש ובמה לחלוק‬ ‫ולא פליגי‬ ‫והא קאתני סיפא וחכמ' אומרים בין שיש לו אֻמנות‬ ‫שלא היא ובין שאין לו אומנות אלא היא דברי הכל‬ ‫פסול‬

...‫ההוא דר' יהודה שאמ' משום ר' טרפון‬

Do you oppose one against another? [Rami b. Hama] holds that they [the rabbis and R. Judah] disagree; while [R. Joshua b. Levi] holds that they do not. Gufa: R. Joshua b. Levi said, Wherever R. Judah says (25a), “When is this so” or “In what case,” he is explaining the words of the sages! R. Yohanan said: “When is this so” is to explain but “In what case” is to disagree.

Do they not disagree? But the end [of the Mishnah] reads: Whether or not one has another occupation, he is disqualified. [No.] That is the view of R. Judah, stated in the name of R. Tarfon…

‫גופה אמ' ר' יהושע בן לוי כל מקום ששנה ר' יהודה‬ ‫אימתי ובמה [ב]משנתינו אינו אלא לפרש דברי‬ ‫חכמים‬ ‫ור' יוחנן אמ' אימתי לפרש ובמה לחלוק‬

‫אימתי לפרש‬ ‫והתנן אלו הן הפסולין המשחק בקוב?י?א ומלוה‬ ‫ברבית ומפריחי יונים וסוחרי שביעית אמ' ר' יהודה‬ ‫אימתי בזמן שאין לו אומנות אלא‬ ‫היא אבל יש לו אומנות שלא היא הרי זה כשר ותני‬ ‫עלה בברית' וחכמים אומ' בין שאין לו אומנות שלא‬ ‫היא הרי זה פסול‬ ‫ההיא ר' יהודה אליבא דר' טרפון היא‬ [R. Ashi] said to [R. Aha the son of Rava] Do you oppose one against another? [Shemuel] holds that they [the rabbis and R. Judah] disagree; while [R. Joshua b. Levi] holds that they do not.

Gufa: R. Joshua b. Levi said, Wherever R. Judah says “When is this so” or “In what case,” he is explaining the words of the sages! R. Yohanan said: “When is this so” is to explain but “In what case” is to disagree. But [m. Sanhedrin 3:3] reads: These are those who are disqualified from being witnesses: dice players, lenders at interest, falconers, and seventh year produce sellers. R. Yehuda says: When? If they have no other occupation, but if they have another occupation, they are valid. It is taught in conjunction with this: The sages say whether or not they have another occupation, they are disqualified [No.] That is the view of R. Judah, stated in the name of R. Tarfon…

Bickart: Gufei Sanhedrin  181 As with all so called “parallels” in the talmudic corpus, it is much more likely that one derives from the other rather than that each derives from some third location. Furthermore, the determination of the original place of such a sugya is important not only for its own sake, but it may also contribute to the solution of other problems in the given sugya.58 In order to determine the dating of the gufa passage relative to the rest of the pericope in Sanhedrin, we must establish the original location of the gufa section. Both Weiss and Halivni, neither of whom seems to have had access to MS Yemen, and thus had access only to textual witnesses that lack the phrase gufa,59 nonetheless assume that this section originated in Sanhedrin and was transferred from there to Eruvin.60 For Weiss, the absence of gufa in Sanhedrin is part of why he assumes that an editor took it from Sanhedrin and placed it in Eruvin, asserting that the gufa in Eruvin is evidence of this editorial process, and was added there by the editors.61 The fact that the word is present in MS Yemen complicates this claim somewhat. Nonetheless, it is certainly possible that the gufa is indeed original to Sanhedrin and that the whole section was transferred as a complete unit from Sanhedrin to Eruvin.62 This discussion only further demonstrates the importance of addressing the core question of the meaning and usage of the term gufa. In this case, the dispute between R. Joshua b. Levi and R. Yohanan about how to understand R. Yehuda’s predilection for commenting on the Mishnah ­Rishonah seems indeed to be an authentically old dispute between these third-century Palestinian scholars. As such, given that the first citation of R. Joshua b. Levi includes his position alone, it makes perfect sense that the editor would then attach the fuller, original context from which that position was quoted. In this case, it seems quite clear that the gufa section is an older redacted unit that was appended by the editor to this pericope. Thus, despite the fact that Weiss was unaware of this passage in San­ hedrin, it supports his thesis. 58. See Israel Francus, “Establishing the Original Location of Doubled Sugyot” [Hebrew], Tarbiz 38.4 (1970): 338–53. 59. See the synopsis of MS Yemen and MS Florence above. 60. In his treatment of the Eruvin parallel, Halivni does not mention the parallel, beyond referring to the Mishnah in Sanhedrin that is quoted there. However, in a footnote he argues that the source of the gufa section in Eruvin is taken from Sanhedrin; see David Weiss Halivni, Sources and Traditions: A Source Critical Commentary on the Talmud: Tractates Erubin and Pesahim, [Hebrew] (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1982), 212 n. 2. In his treatment of the Sanhedrin passage, he makes no mention of the parallel; see Halivni, Sources and Traditions: A Source Critical Commentary on the Talmud: Tractates Sanhedrin–Horayot, [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Magnes, 2012), 44–45. Weiss, however, makes the compelling argument that, whereas the Eruvin sugya focuses on “In what case,” Sanhedrin focuses on “When is this so.” See Weiss, LeHeqer HaTalmud, 48. 61. Weiss, LeHeqer HaTalmud, 48. 62. Sabato, Talmud Bavli, Sanhedrin Chapter 3, 232

182  Making History

Sanhedrin 62b #1 The long talmudic commentary to m. Sanhedrin 7:6 delineates the precise behaviors that constitute the capital crime of idol worship. As part of an exceedingly intricate three-part sugya,63 we find two Amoraic statements, the reanalyzation of which is introduced by the gufa formula. As part of the discussion, R. Zachai, a third-century Palestinian sage, is reported to have quoted a Tannaitic statement in the presence of his teacher R. Yohanan. This prompts the latter to exclaim, ‫פוק תני לברא‬, literally, “go teach [this tradition] outside!” The way this phrase tends to be used by named Amoraim in the Talmud is to indicate that, while the statement is internally consistent, it does not represent settled law and thus should be taught “outside” the boundaries of the Mishnah.64 Here, however, the anonymous voice seems to understand the phrase, the content of which will be discussed below, as having no place within the scholastic setting, arguing that it ought to be expunged from the canon of Tannaitic teachings. The initial assumption is that the source taught by R. Zachai concerned idol worship, hence the placement of this content here in the seventh chapter of Sanhedrin. However, the second section of this long sugya is fully devoted to an alternative Palestinian tradition regarding the content of R. Zachai’s problematic source, arguing instead that R. Zachai sought to teach that penalties connected to the violation of the Sabbath can be simultaneously more and less severe than with violations of other commandments: ‫ כי אתא רב שמואל בר יהודה אמ' (סב ע"ב) הכי‬When R. Samuel b. Judah came, he ‫ תנא קמיה‬said: This is the teaching which [R. Zakkai] recited to [R. Yohanan]: ‫ חומר בשבת משאר מצוות חומר בשאר מצוות‬The Sabbath is both more and less ‫ מבשבת‬stringent than the other commandments. ‫ חומ' בשבת שהשבת עשה שתים בהעלם אחד חייב‬The Sabbath is more stringent than the ‫ מה שאין כאן בשאר מצוות‬other commandments in that if one performed two [acts of prohibited

63. Weiss gives a detailed analysis of this long and complicated sugya on account of the fact that this section also included an appearance of the term ‫אמר מר‬, the companion term to ‫גופא‬. See Weiss, LeHeqer HaTalmud, 95–98. On the predilection for the numbers 3, 7, and 10, see Yitzhak Avishor, “Darkei HaHazara BMisparei Hashlamot (3,7,10) bMikra uv’sifrut Hashemit Hakeduma,” Beer Sheva 1 (1972): 1–55. See also Shamma Friedman, Talmudic Studies: Investigating the Sugya, Variant Readings and Aggada (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 2010), 33–34. 64. See, e.g., b. Betzah 12b. See Halivni’s treatment of this sugya in Sources and Traditions, 115–16.

Bickart: Gufei Sanhedrin  183 labor] in a single state of unawareness, he is liable [for each] which is not the case for other commandments. ‫ חומר בשאר מצות ששאר מצוות מי ששגג בלא‬Other commandments are more stringent ‫ מתכוין חייב מה שאין כן בשבת‬than the Sabbath. If one both unknowingly and unintentionally [violated a commandment] she is liable, which is not the case for the Sabbath.

The Talmud then seeks to delineate the precise cases whereby this can be said to be true, and, failing to do so, argues that this is precisely why R. Yohanan kicked his student out of the Beit Midrash. At this point, the opinion of R. Ammi is introduced which allows for a return to the topic of idolatry, showing that at least in theory, and in accordance with Abaye’s approach to the topic, idolatrous worship as a result of either love or fear indeed provides an example of a violation of Jewish law that simultaneously has nothing to do with Shabbat, and may be performed both unknowingly and unintentionally: ‫ מאי קשיא דלמא לעולם אימא לך דעבד קצירה‬What is the problem? Perhaps the ‫[ וטחינה‬Shabbat] case in question [in which one can be held liable for performing two actions] is indeed one of harvesting and grinding, ‫ ומה שאין כן בשאר מצוות אתן לע'ז וכדר' אמי‬whereas the “this is not so in the case of other commandments” case refers to idolatry as in the [following] example of R. Ammi: ‫ דאמ' ר' אמי זיבח וקיטר וניסך בהעלם אחד אינו‬For R. Ammi said, If one sacrificed, ‫ חייב אלא אחת‬burnt incense, and poured libations in a single state of being unaware, one is only obligated for one of them. ‫[ לא מיתוקמא ליה בע'ז דקתאני סיפא חומר בשאר‬No, actually] this cannot be idolatry! ‫ מצות ששאר מצות שגג בלא מתכוין חייב מה‬The second clause [of the Tannaitic ‫ שאין כאן בשבת‬statement quoted by R. Zachai] states: Other commandments are more stringent than the Sabbath. If one both unknowingly and unintentionally [violated a commandment] she is liable, which is not the case for the Sabbath.

184  Making History ‫ והאיי שגג בלא מתכוין דע'ז היכי דמי‬How could there be an unknowing and unintentional violation of idolatry possible? ‫[ אי קא סבר בית הכנס' הוא והשתחוה הרי לבו‬Actually it could:] If one thought [a ‫ לשמים‬pagan temple] were a synagogue, and bowed down, his heart was to heaven! ‫ ואלא דחזא אנדראטא וסגיד ליה אי קבלה עליה מזיד‬Rather he saw a [non “religious”] ‫ הוא ואי לא קבלה עליה ולא כלום הוא‬statue,65 and bowed to it. If he accepted it as a god, it was on purpose, but if he did not accept it as a god, he has not committed idolatry at all! ‫ אלא מאהבה ומיראה‬Hence it must mean that he worshiped it idolatrously through love or fear. ‫ הניחא לאביי דאמ' חייב אלא לרבא דאמ' פטור מאי‬Now this agrees with Abaye’s view ‫ איכא למימר‬that a penalty is incurred; but on Raba’s view that there is no liability, what can you say?…

This quotation of R. Ammi is the subject of a gufa section at the end of this long sugya: ‫ גופה (סג ע"א) אמ' ר' אמי זיבח וקיטר וניסך‬Gufa: R. Ammi said, If one sacrificed, ‫ בעלם אחד אינו חייב אלא אחת‬burnt incense, and poured libations in a single state of being unaware, one is only obligated for one of them. ‫ אמ' אביי מאי טעמיה דר' אמי אמ' קרא ולא‬Abaye says: What is the reason for ‫ תעבדם הכת' עשאן כולן עבודה אחת‬the opinion of Rabbi Ammi? [Scripture] states: “Nor worship them.”66 The verse renders all the various modes of [idolatrous] worship as one [mode] of worship.

65. From ἀνδριάς, meaning a statue or bust of a human figure. See Michael Sokoloff, A Dictionary of Jewish Babylonian Aramaic of the Talmudic and Geonic Periods (Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University Press, 2002), 144. On the question of the rabbinic notion of the “purely decorative” statue as opposed to a “religious” idol, see Seth Schwartz, Imperialism and Jewish Society, 200 B.C.E. to 640 C.E., Jews, Christians, and Muslims from the Ancient to the Modern World 14 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), 162–76. 66. This may refer to Exod 20:5; 23:24; or Deut 5:9, all of which contain the phrase ‫וְ ֣ל ֹא‬ ‫תָ עָבְ ֵ ֑ד ֒ם‬.

Bickart: Gufei Sanhedrin  185 ‫ ומי אמ' אביי הכי‬Does Abaye actually say this? ‫[ והא אמר אביי שלש השתחואות בע"ז למה אחת‬For] Abaye says: Why [is the ‫ לכדרכה ואח' לשלא כדרכה ואח' לחלק‬prohibition against] bowing [in conjunction with] idol worship [mentioned] three [times in the Torah {Exod 20:5; 23:24; and 34:14}]? One for its standard manner of worship, one even if bowing is not its standard manner of worship, and one mention is to divide idol worship into multiple categories! '‫[ לדבריו דר' אמי קא אמ‬Above, Abaye] was explaining R. Ammi’s approach [while nonetheless disagreeing with him].

This is a much simpler, and, more significantly, older, sugya. Here, R. Ammi, a third-century Palestinian Amora, is quoted as stating that multiple idolatrous actions performed in a single state of unawareness of the problematic nature of this kind of worship are only punished as one violation. Abaye, a scholar of the following generation in Babylonia, then provides scriptural support for R. Ammi’s claim. When the anonymous editor questions this approach, noting that Abaye seems to read deep midrashic meaning into the Torah’s repetition of the prohibition on idolatry, the same editor provides the response: while Abaye does not himself agree with this interpretation, he was nonetheless providing one for R. Ammi. This simplicity of this sugya makes it likely that it is indeed an earlier context than that which is brought above; the editor of the earlier passage likely took R. Ammi’s statement from this preexisting unit, making it a clear example of Weiss’s model that gufa can frequently mean, “here is the original context for this statement.”

Sanhedrin 62b #2 Yet this pericope is followed by yet another example of the gufa in which the term needs to be understood in precisely the opposite way: ‫ גופה אמ' אביי שלש השתחואו' בע"ז למה אחת‬Gufa: Abaye says: Why [is the ‫ לכדרכה ואחת לשלא כדרכה ואח' לחלק‬prohibition against] bowing [in conjunction with] idol worship

186  Making History [mentioned] three [times in the Torah {Exod 20:5; 23:24; and 34:14}]? One for its standard manner of worship, one even if bowing is not its standard manner of worship, and one mention is to divide idol worship into multiple categories! ‫ לדרכה מאֵ י ָ֨כה ַיעַבְ ד֜ ּו נפקא‬But isn’t the standard manner of worship derived from [Deut 12:30] How [these nations] served [their gods]? ‫[ אלא‬Abaye must therefore have meant the ‫ אח' לשלא כדרכה ואחת לכדרכה ולשלא כדרכה‬following:] ‫ ואח' לחלק‬One teaches that bowing is forbidden [when it is not] the normal mode of worship; one that forbids it when it both is and is not the normal mode of service;67 and the third is to divide idol worship into multiple categories.

This section seems largely to be a “mopping up operation” in which the anonymous editor, whose skills with a biblical concordance are as least as good as the Amoraim he quotes, is able to find another potential pentateuchal source for a prohibition against worshiping idols. In actuality, this verse was raised as part of the long discussion above, on 61a. Now the redactor of this final passage feels the need to incorporate the earlier discussion with this final treatment of Abaye, and he finds a way to reinterpret him so as to fit with the earlier discussion. Here, we see that gufa means something like, “here is something quoted earlier which needs explanation,” and is therefore not consistent with Weiss’s model.

Sanhedrin 69a The eighth chapter of Sanhedrin is largely devoted to the laws regarding the “stubborn and rebellious son” of Deuteronomy 21. The Mishnah, uncharacteristically,68 engages in direct midrash on the biblical verses: 67. Rashi provides an example of what the Talmud might be hinting at here, suggesting that when the “normal” mode of worship is what he calls ‫לעבוד דרך כבוד‬, or worshiping by means of acts of honorific behavior which might, but do not necessarily, include bowing, bowing is nonetheless prohibited. See Rashi ad loc. s.v. ‫לכדרכה ולשלא כדרכה‬. Yad Ramah quotes Rabbenu Hannanel as suggesting that when the normal mode of worship is a full prostration, bowing from the waist is nonetheless prohibited, see Yad Ramah ad loc. 68. See Jason Kalman, “Building Houses on Sand: The Analysis of Scriptural Citation in the Mishnah,” Journal for Semitics 13.2 (2004): 186–244.

Bickart: Gufei Sanhedrin  187 )‫א (כי"ק‬:‫משנה סנהדרין ח‬ ‫בן סורר ומורה מאמתי הוא נעשה בן סורר ומורה‬ ‫משיביא שתי סערות עד שיקיף זקן התחתון לא את‬ ‫העליון אלא שדיברו חכמ' בלשון נקייה ש'נ כי יהיה‬ ‫לאיש בן לא בת בן לא איש הקטן פטור שלא בא‬ ‫לכלל המצות‬

M. Sanhedrin 8:1 (MS Kauffman a50) The “stubborn and rebellious son—” at what point can he become a “stubborn and rebellious son?” [In the period in between when] he produces two [pubic] hairs and when his beard grows—the “lower beard” [i.e., pubic hair becomes fully grown] not the upper beard, but the sages speak in euphemism, as it is written [in Deuteronomy 21:18]: If a man should have a son—and not a daughter, and not [yet] a man, and a child is exempt as he has not yet become obligated by the commandments

The Mishnah focuses on the word ‫איׁש‬, ִ֗ “man,” in the biblical verse and determines that the word is specifically placed so as to exclude three categories of people from becoming “stubborn and rebellious sons”: women, minors, and fully grown men, leaving only adolescent boys as those subject to this biblical commandment.69 The ensuing talmudic discussion therefore touches on the basic question of when “boys” become “men,” citing a midrash on Exod 21:14 that is also found in the Mekilta of R. Shimon b. Yochai: ‫בבלי סנהדרין סט ע"א‬ '‫דבי חזקיה תאנא וכי יזיד איש על רע‬ ‫להרגו בערמה‬

‫מכילתא דרשב"י פרק כא פסוק יד‬70

‫איש מזיד ומזריע ואין קטן מזיד ומזריע‬

‫ר' יהו' אומ' מה האיש מיוחד שהוא מיזיד ומזריע‬ .‫יצא קטן שאינו מיזיד ומזריע‬

‫כי יזיד איש פרט לקטן‬

69. Yitzhak Gilat shows convincingly that the notion that Jewish boys become subject to the Torah’s laws on their thirteenth birthdays postdates the Mishnah, which assesses the applicability of each mitzvah on a case-by-case basis. See Gilat, “Age 13 for the Commandments?” [Hebrew] in Talmudic Studies I, ed. Y. Sussmann and D. Rosenthal (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1990), 39–54. As such, it is curious both that the Mishnah here seems to assume a particular age at which a male ceases to be a minor, and also that this is a global phenomenon, and not, as Gilat argues, something which is determined on a case by case basis. Separately, Halivni suggests, without evidence, that the phrase ‫ הקטן פטור שלא בא לכלל המצות‬may not have appeared in the “text” of the Mishnah to which the third century sage Rav responds, while noting that it does appear in all textual witnesses to the Mishnah. See Halivni, Sources and Traditions, 124. 70. Mekhilta d’Rabbi Šim’on b. Jochai, ed. Ezra Z.Melamed and J. N. Epstein (Jerusalem:

188  Making History Bavli In the house of Hezekiah [the following was] taught [about Exod 21:14]: If a man should intentionally [yazid] rise up against his neighbor to kill him treacherously—a man can inflame [himself] and ejaculate semen, but a minor cannot inflame [himself] and ejaculate semen.

Mekilta If a man should intentionally [rise up against his neighbor to kill him treacherously] This excludes a minor. R. Yehuda says: In the way that a man is unique, in that he can inflame [himself] and ejaculate semen, this excludes a minor who does not inflame [himself] and ejaculate semen.

The basic argument here is that the ability to ejaculate (and impregnate) is a sine qua non of adulthood and therefore culpability, not only for the laws of Exod 21 but also for the laws of Deut 21 and thus for the rest of the Torah as well. This, however, runs afoul of other data the talmudic editor possesses with regard to the “stubborn and rebellious son”: ‫ איני והא תאנא דבי ר' ישמעאל בן ולא אב‬Really? But the school of Ishmael taught [regarding Deut 21:18: If a man should have a son] a son but not [one who is also] a father. ‫ היכי דמי אי לימא דאיעבר בתר דאיתי שתי שערות‬How could this happen? If we should ‫ ואוליד מיקמי דלקיף זקן התחתון מי איכא שהות‬propose that he impregnated [a ‫ כולי האי‬woman] after producing two pubic hairs, and fathered [the child] before his pubic hair was fully grown, is there enough time [for gestation]?

The school of Ishmael’s assertion that only an adolescent who has not yet fathered children can become a “stubborn and rebellious son” is provisionally understood to mean that the individual in question is not yet able to produce children. So, on the one hand, the upshot from the midrash on Exodus is that the adolescent must be able to become a parent, but, on the other hand, the midrash on Deuteronomy is understood to mean that the adolescent must be unable to become a parent! And, the Talmud continues, should one propose a solution involving a theoretical sex act between this adolescent and a woman immediately after growing his first two pubic hairs but before the full development of his pubic hair, this would not leave enough time for the gestation of the ensuing child, a notion supMikize Nirdamim, 1955), 170–71. A much shorter version appears in the Mekilta of R. ­Ishmael as well; see Mek. of Rabbi Ishmael, Nezikin 9 (ed. Horowitz-Rabin,263 ).

Bickart: Gufei Sanhedrin  189 ported by the quotation of a memra of R. Keruspedai, which will become the subject of a gufa formulation below.71 R. Keruspedai, a Palestinian sage of the third century is quoted as saying the following: ‫והא אמ' ר' כרוספדי אמ' רב שבתי‬ ‫כל ימיו שלבן סורר ומורה אינן אלא‬ ‫שלשה חדשים בלבד‬

As R. Keruspedai said in R. Shabtai’s name: the time period during which a son can become a “stubborn and rebellious son” is only three months.

Indeed it would appear that this memra was a part of an older, authentically Palestinian sugya, as can be seen by a clear parallel in the Talmud of the West: )‫א (כו ט"א‬:‫ירושלמי סנהדרין ח‬ ‫ ר' זעירא ר' אבהו ר' יוסי בן‬.'‫"בן סורר ומורה" כול‬ ‫ כתיב "וכי יזיד איש‬.‫חנינה בשם ר' שמעון בן לקיש‬ .‫ מאימתי הוא נעשה איש‬."‫על רעהו להורגו בערמה‬ .‫ משתתפשט הכף‬.‫ מאימתי הוא מזיד‬.‫משיזיד‬

.‫משל בשל הזרע מבפנים השחירה הקדירה מבחוץ‬

‫ "כי יהיה‬.‫ תנא ר' שילא בר בינא‬.‫אמ' ר' זעירא‬ ‫ מכיון שהוא ראוי‬.‫ לא שיהא הבן אב‬."‫לאיש בן‬ .‫לבוא על אשה ולעברה היי די ליה אב ולא בן‬ .‫ "בן" ולא אב‬.‫ואמרה התורה‬

Y. Sanhedrin 8:1 (26b) The “stubborn and rebellious son” etc. R. Zeira, R. Abahu, and R. Yose b. Hanina reported the following in the name of R. Shimon b. Laqish. [Exod 21:14] reads If a man should intentionally [yazid] rise up against his neighbor to kill him treacherously—At what point does one become a “man?” When he is yazid. And when is he yazid? When the “glans” [of the penis] becomes extended.72 A metaphor: One cooks the inside of the seed but the pot becomes blackened on the outside. R. Zeira said: R. Shila b. Bina taught [regarding Deut 21:18:] If a man should have a son—that son should not [also] be a father—Since he is able to penetrate and impregnate a woman therefore let [his identity be primarily] father and not son. But the Torah delineates son and not father.

71. For a more complete treatment of pubic hair in the Talmud, see Noah Bickart, “He Found a Hair and It Bothered Him: Female Pubic Hair Removal in the Talmud,” Nashim: A Journal of Jewish Women’s Studies & Gender Issues 35 (2019): 128–52. 72. Compare t. Nid. 6:4–5 (ed. Zuckermandel, 647), in which a similar phrase, ‫משתפשט‬ ‫את הכף‬, is used by R. Shimon to determine the point at which a Jewish girl becomes a ‫בוגרת‬.

190  Making History ‫ כל ימיו של‬.‫ דמר ר' יסא בשם ר' שבתי‬:‫ ואתיא כיי‬This accords with the following: The .‫ בן סורר ומורה אינן אלא ששה חדשים בלבד‬Master R. Yosa said in the name of R. Shabtai: the time period during which a son can become a “stubborn and rebellious son” is only six months.

We can see that this is essentially the same sugya with the same three basic elements: a midrash on Exod 21:14, a midrash on Deut 21:18, and an Amoraic statement delineating the window of time during which an adolescent boy may become a “stubborn and rebellious son.” Despite the obvious similarity, there are three notable differences. The first is the tradents. Whereas the Yerushalmi presents R. Shimon b. Laqish as the author of the midrash on Exodus, R. Shila b. Bina as the author of the midrash on Deuteronomy; and R. Shabtai as the tradent for the memra, the Bavli quotes the house of Hezekiah on Exodus and the school of Ishmael on Deuteronomy and R. Keruspedai as the author of the memra. The second difference is especially emblematic of the differences between the Talmuds. The Yerushalmi presents these three pieces as essentially congruous, all supporting the notion that the window during which an adolescent boy may become a “stubborn and rebellious son” is quite narrow.73 Conversely, the Bavli intentionally misunderstands the first midrash, so as to present the second midrash and the memra of R. Keruspedai as evidence of a potential contradiction within the rabbinic corpus of authoritative traditions, which in turn requires elucidation and harmonization. Finally, we see that, whereas the Yerushalmi’s version of the memra delineates a six-month period during which an adolescent boy may become a “stubborn and rebellious son,” the Bavli thinks this is but a three-month window.74 The Bavli solves the problem it has created for itself by arguing that R. Keruspedai’s statement, when understood as it is by the Palestinian rabbinic community, is perfectly congruous with Deut 21:18:

The development of precisely which anatomical feature of the genitalia of either gender during puberty is key to this issue is unclear. See Charlotte Elisheva Fonrobert, “Regulating the Human Body: Rabbinic Legal Discourse and the Making of Jewish Gender,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Talmud and Rabbinic Literature, ed. Charlotte Elisheva Fonrobert and Martin S. Jaffe, Cambridge Companions to Religion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 274–80. See also Daniel Boyarin, Carnal Israel: Reading Sex in Talmudic Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 197–227. 73. In translating this passage, I have followed Leib Moskovitz’s understanding of the term, ‫ואתיא כיי‬, see Moscovitz, Terminology of the Yerushalmi, 102–9. 74. It is possible that this difference can be explained by means of lower textual criticism; the difference between the numbers 6, ‫שש‬, and 3, ‫שלש‬, is a single letter.

Bickart: Gufei Sanhedrin  191 ‫ אלא לאו דאיעבר מיקמי דליתי שתי שערות ואוליד‬Rather, is it not that he impregnated [a ‫ בתר דאקיף זקן התחתון‬woman] before producing two hairs, ‫ ושמע מינה קטן מוליד‬and fathered [the child] before the hair was fully grown; thus proving that a minor can beget children! ‫ לא לעולם דאיעבר בתר דאיתי שתי שערות ואוליד‬No. In truth, he impregnated [a ‫ בתר דאקיף זקן התחתון‬woman] after the producing two hairs, and fathered [the child] after his pubic hair was fully grown. '‫ ודקא קשיא לך דר' כרוספדי כי אתא רב דימי אמ‬But as for the difficulty raised by R. ‫ אמרי במערבא בן ולא הראוי לקרותו אב‬Keruspedai’s statement—when R. Dimi came (to Babylonia from Palestine), he said: In the west they explain [Deut 21:18] as follows—a son, but not one who is fit to be called a father.

In as much as there is a three-month period during which an adolescent boy may become a “stubborn and rebellious son,” that is, the time in between the production of the first two pubic hairs and the production of hair on the rest of the pubic region, so Deut 21:18 should be understood as delineating that a “man”—one with a full complement of pubic hairs—is unable to become a “stubborn and rebellious son.”75 The Talmud first suggests that R. Keruspedai’s position can be integrated into the midrash by suggesting that the sex act in question must have taken place before the production of two pubic hairs and that the resulting child was born before the father reached full maturity. But this approach would negate the consensus opinion that minors are physiologically unable to impregnate.76 Therefore, the Talmud retracts this suggestion, preferring to accept R. Dimi’s alternate understanding of the R. Keruspedai so as to obviate the need for harmonization. It is only after the conclusion of this sugya that the Bavli’s editors introduce the gufa formulation, which revisits a potential conflict between R. Keruspedai and the Mishnah: ‫ גופה א"ר כרוספדי אמ' רב שבתי כל ימיו שלבן‬Gufa: R. Keruspedai said in R. ‫ סורר ומורה אינן אלא שלשה חדשים בלבד‬Shabtai’s name: the time period during which a son can become a “stubborn and rebellious son” is only three months.

75. Following Rashi and Yad Ramah ad loc. 76. Biologically speaking, the average age of spermarche is harder to estimate than menarche. See Merete Jorgensen, Niels Keiding, and Niels Erik Skakkebaek, “Estimation of Spermarche from Longitudinal Spermaturia Data,” Biometrics 47.1 (1991): 177–93.

192  Making History ‫ והא אנן תנן משיביא שתי שערות עד שיקיף זקן‬But we teach [in the Mishnah]: From ‫ התחתון‬the time he grows two [pubic] hairs until his pubic hair surrounds [his genitalia]! [the statement can be reconciled as follows: ‫ הקיף א'ע'ג' דלא מאלו שלשה חדשים מאלו שלשה‬If his pubic hair] surrounds [his ‫ חדשים א'ע'ג' דלא הקיף‬genitalia], even if three months have not elapsed, or if three months have elapsed, even if his pubic hair] does not surround [his genitalia] [he cannot become a “stubborn and rebellious son”].

From R. Keruspedai’s statement, it would appear that the crucial metric for assessing whether a young man can become a “stubborn and rebellious son” is time.77 But the Mishnah focuses on the young man’s physiology, regardless of how long it takes him to develop a full patch of pubic hair. How then are these two metrics to be harmonized? The anonymous voice of the Talmud, characteristically, states that there is no contradiction between these two metrics; they are combined. If either three months have passed since the appearance of his first two pubic hairs or, even before the three months are up, his penis is fully encompassed by pubic hair, he cannot become a “stubborn and rebellious son.”78 This passage bears all the marks of the anonymous voice of the Talmud, which seeks to harmonize the disparate units of traditional material it has already addressed separately. This passage does not appear to predate the earlier sugya, which was authentically an old Palestinian sugya. Though Weiss does not treat this passage specifically, this appears to match the kind of gufa that is best explained by the “traditional” explanation of the term. Having treated the statement of R. Keruspedai as part of the original sugya, the anonymous editors of the Talmud indeed return to treat it anew. This is thus a fine counterexample to Weiss’s model.

Sanhedrin 73a The m. Sanhedrin 73a presents what seem to be two complete, distinct, and mutually exclusive classes of cases: those who are prevented from

77. See Sarit Kattan Gribetz, Time and Difference in Rabbinic Judaism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020). 78. Again, following Rashi and Yad Ramah ad loc. See also Maimonides, Laws of ­Rebels 7:6.

Bickart: Gufei Sanhedrin  193 doing a forbidden act at the cost of their lives,79 and those who must be allowed to perform a prohibited act before the legal system may respond: )‫ז (כי"ק‬:‫משנה סנהדרין ח‬ ‫ואלו הן שמצילין אותן בנפשן הרודף אחר חבירו‬ ‫להרגו אחר הזכור ואחר הנערה המאורסה אבל‬ ‫הרודף אחר בהמה והמחלל את השבת והעובד ע"ז‬ :‫אין מצילין אותן בנפשן‬

M. Sanhedrin 8:7 (MS Kauffman a50) These are those whom we save at the cost of their lives: One who chases another to murder them, one who chases another [man, to rape], or an engaged woman [to rape her]. However, one who chases an animal [to have sex with] or one who violates the sabbath or engages in idolatry, we do not save them at the cost of their lives.

The talmudic pericope, as is so often the case, searches for the biblical source of what is assumed to be a midrashically derived law and quotes a baraita that parallels a passage from the Sifra that presents Lev 19:16’s injunction to “not stand idly by the blood of your neighbor” as the source for the Mishnah’s law.80 This presentation of Lev 19:16 seems to be as good a source as any.81 The literal meaning of the verse demands activity in the face of potential death, and the Mishnah’s case matches fairly closely. However, the Gemara knows what any reader of the Sifra knows, that this verse is also taken to be the source for something else in the very next section in the Sifra. The Talmud, assuming that each verse may be the source of a single law,82 asks how this verse can teach that the “pursuer” of his fellow should be killed when another baraita understands that same verse to be the source of a separate law: the requirement to save one’s fel79. The precise way to understand (and therefore to translate) ‫ מצילין אותן בנפשן‬is a matter of serious dispute in the commentary literature. Whom does the Mishnah command to save? At issue is the identification of the antecedent of the pronominal suffixes of the words ‫נפשן‬ and ‫אותן‬. There are two plausible ways of reading the first half of the text: either the victim is saved by killing the attacker, or the attackers are saved from doing these acts at the cost of their own lives. Rashi (‫)ד"ה ואלו שמצילין אותן‬, and Meir HaLevi Abulafia (ad loc.) prefer the former, while Tosafot (‫)ד"ה להצילו בנפשו‬, Maimonides (commentary on the Mishnah ad loc.), and Meiri (ad loc.) seem to prefer the latter. Nissim of Gerondi (ad loc.) appears to have been alone in arguing that the antecedent of the pronominal suffixes in the first half of the Mishnah is not the same in each half of the text, arguing that Mishnah only presents them as if they were for the sake of style. 80. See Sifra Kodashim, 2:4 (ed. Weiss, Vienna, 1862, p. 89a). 81. However, see in ‫שאילתות שמות לח‬, in which another verse (Lev 25:36) might be another source for this concept. 82. This assumption is universal in neither rabbinic literature as a whole nor within the Bavli. At b. Sanh. 34a, Abaye reads Ps 62:12 as asserting that a single biblical verse may have more than one meaning.

194  Making History low from a dangerous situation. Strikingly, this passage is completely devoid of Amoraic material. It is the anonymous voice of the Talmud that quotes both baraitot, and the anonymous voice of the Talmud which rejects the first in favor of the second. There is no indication that either the question of which verse is the source for the Mishnah, or the preference of one baraita over another was considered in the disciple circles of the named sages of the Talmud. As the pericope continues, the second baraita is accepted, and it is once again the anonymous voice which suggests that the Mishnah’s rule ought to be seen as the product of an a fortiori argument made in comparison with the case of the attempted rape of a betrothed woman (cf. Deut 22:25–27), whose attacker must be killed despite the pursuer not wishing to kill his victim. Again it is the anonymous voice which then protests against this claim, asserting that capital punishment may never be applied to laws derived from logic (‫)וכי עונשין מן הדין‬.83 Instead, the anonymous editor suggests yet another baraita, this time associated with the school of Judah the Prince,84 ‫בבלי סנהדרין עג ע"א‬ ‫ כי כאשר יקום איש על‬,‫ הקישא הוא‬:‫דבי רבי תנא‬ ‫ הרי‬,‫ וכי מה למדנו מרוצח? מעתה‬,‫רעהו ורצחו נפש‬ ‫ מקיש רוצח לנערה‬,‫זה בא ללמד ונמצא למד‬ ‫ מה נערה המאורסה ניתן להצילה‬:‫המאורסה‬ .‫ אף רוצח ניתן להצילו בנפשו‬- ‫בנפשו‬

B. Sanhedrin73 a The school of Rabbi taught, It is an analogy [expressed by Deut 22:26]: “For as when a man rises up against his fellow to kill him…” What do we learn from a murderer? This comes to teach and is itself taught—The murderer is analogized to a betrothed woman—just as a betrothed woman must be saved at the cost of his life, so in the case of a murderer, [the victim] must be saved at the cost of his life.

In this text, which analyzes Deut 22:26, the baraita notes the explicit comparison between a rape victim and a murder victim. The biblical verse makes clear that, in precisely the same way in which a murder victim is not blamed for the crime that results in his death, so too the rape victim bears no responsibility for the crime. It seems clear, therefore, that if there exists such a requirement to save a rape victim, that requirement should apply to the potential murder victim as well. 83. Whether the system operates this way is a matter of a dispute between Rava and Abaye in b. Sanh. 54a. Furthermore, Rabbi Yitzhaq argues that such a move may indeed be made at b. Ker. 3a. See Haim H. Cohn, “Capital Punishment —a Jewish Value?” [Hebrew], Democratic Culture 1 (1999): 37–70, here 40–41. 84. Compare the parallel in Sifrei Deuteronomy 243.

Bickart: Gufei Sanhedrin  195 The final piece of this pericope treats this final question. Again, it is the anonymous voice that drives the thrust of the argument, asking for the source of the requirement to save the rape victim at the cost of the attacker’s life. A baraita attributed to the school of Rabbi Yishmael is brought which focuses on the clause “and there is no one to rescue her (ַ‫מֹוׁשיע‬ ֖ ִ ‫וְ ֵ ֥אין‬ ‫”)לּה‬ ֽ ָ in Deut 22:27. A new reading flows from the contrapositive: since the verse deals with a situation in which there is no one to rescue the victim from her assailant, we must suppose that had there been one to save her, that person ought to use any and all available methods, up to and including killing the assailant. It is here that the Talmud places the term gufa, which reintroduces the baraita, paralleled in the sifra above, which asserts that the phrase from Lev 19:16, “Do not stand idly by the blood of your neighbor” (‫ַל־ּדם‬ ֣ ַ ‫֥ל ֹא תַ עֲמֹ֖ ד ע‬ ‫)רעֶ ָ֑ך‬ ֵ ought to be taken as the scriptural source for the insistence that those who see people drowning or about to be attacked by wild animals have an obligation to save them: )‫ בבלי סנהדרין עג ע"א (כי"ת‬B. Sanhedrin 73a (MS Ha Rav H ­ ertzog) ‫ גופה מנין לרואה את חבירו שהוא טובע בנהר או‬Gufa: What is the [scriptural source] for ‫ חייה גוררתו או לסטים באין עליו שהוא חייב להצילו‬the requirement to save one who is ‫ בנפשו ת"ל לא תעמ' על דם רעך הא מהכא נפקא‬drowning or about to mauled by beasts or ‫ מהתם נפקא אבידת גופו מנין ת"ל והשבתו לו אי‬attacked by robbers? From [Lev19:16], ‫ מהתם הוה אמינא הני מילי עשה אבל לאו לא ולאו‬You shall not stand idly by the blood of ‫ נמי מלא תוכל להתעלם נפקא או מהתם הוה אמינא‬your neighbor. But is it derived from ‫ הני מילי בנפשיה אבל מיטרח ומיגר אגורי לא קא‬this verse? Perhaps it comes from this ‫[ משמע לן‬baraita]: What is the [scriptural source] for the requirement to [save someone from] loss of oneself? From Deut 22:2: You shall restore him to himself! [No!] From that verse I learn only that there is a positive injunction [to intercede], but do not derive the notion that it is forbidden to abstain. Or, conversely, from Deut 22:2 I might mistakenly think that it is only incumbent to save [the victim] one’s self, but not that one must trouble oneself and hire others [to save the victim]. Therefore, Lev 19:16 teaches [that one must].

196  Making History Here, however, unlike in the discussion above in which an anonymous challenge is brought against the acceptance of this baraita on the basis that the same verse is also used as the source for another law, here the inverse is the case. The anonymous voice argues that a different verse, Deut 22:2, is the source for such a principle. This challenge is resolved by the assertion that there is both a positive commandment to save such people and a prohibition against refraining from saving such people when possible. Each verse, therefore, teaches a different side of this equation. Weiss includes this passage among those that contain the identical Tannaitic unit,85 and classifies this pericope as one in which it is difficult, if not impossible, to tell, noting also that, in this section, both units derive from the anonymous voice of the Talmud.86 This final instance neither supports nor challenges Weiss’s model.

Conclusions Having analyzed the nine passages that contain the term gufa, we see only partial support for Weiss’s claim that gufa introduces a previously redacted “text.” While four instances (5b #1, 5b #2, 25a, and 62b #1) are stunning examples of the phenomenon he identifies, an equal number (23a #1 and 2, 62b #2, and 69a) challenge his rule. In a final example (73a), as Weiss himself notes, it is impossible to assign relative dating to either passage. Of course, nine examples are insufficient to prove or disprove Weiss’s ­theory, but it is clear from this brief survey that more work is warranted.87 One way, however, to shed light on the phenomenon by which gufa frequently but not always, introduces older material, is to alter Weiss’s assumptions about the function of the technical terminology of the Talmud. Weiss insists that, while terms like gufa and amar mar have a technical function in each talmudic pericope in which they appear, they nonetheless derive from the living language, Babylonian Aramaic, spoken by the author/editors who composed these sugyot.88 However, recent trends in scholarship have emphasized the scholastic nature of broader Babylonian society.89 Gufa, by its very nature, is a redactional term—yes, its 85. Weiss, Le-korot hithavut ha-Bavli, 26. 86. Ibid., 36. 87. See Weiss’s own treatment of counterexamples, Le-korot hithavut ha-Bavli, 131–48. Tantalizingly, Yaakov Sussman argues that those examples of gufa sugyot that introduce topics in the Orders of Zeraim and Tohorot are mostly late anonymous Babylonian sugyot. See Sussman, “Babylonian Sugiyot to the Orders Zera’im and Tohorot” [Hebrew] (PhD diss., Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1969), 144. 88. Weiss, Le-korot hithavut ha-Bavli, 152. 89. Adam H. Becker, “The Comparative Study of ‘Scholasticism’ in Late Antique Mesopotamia: Rabbis and East Syrians,” AJS Review 34.1 (2010): 91–113; and especially, Becker,

Bickart: Gufei Sanhedrin  197 etymology is “body,” but the way it functions in the Talmud is very specifically tied to the method of study employed in the academies from which the Talmud emanated.90 I have argued elsewhere that the technical terminology of the Talmud was employed specifically by those who studied in a particular scholastic setting: the siyyuma. Mentioned with great frequency in geonic literature, the siyyuma was a setting for the memorization of sugyot in that period.91 In the talmudic period itself, however, the siyyuma was a place in which earlier material was not only memorized, studied, and analyzed, but now arranged into literary units like those that would eventually become the Babylonian Talmud.92 As the process of the creation of talmudic sugyot extended across many centuries, it is possible that while gufa originated as a term that introduced older redacted units, it eventually became a kind of trope, a term that could be employed to present a new literary form.

Fear of God and the Beginning of Wisdom: The School of Nisibis and the Christian Scholastic Culture in Late Antique Mesopotamia, Divinations (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006), 12–17. 90. See David M. Goodblatt, Rabbinic Instruction in Sasanian Babylonia, SJLA 9 (Leiden: Brill, 1975); Rubenstein, Culture of the Babylonian Talmud; and especially David Rosenthal, “Rabbanan D’Siyumma and Benei Siyumei” [Hebrew], Tarbiz 49a–b (1979): 52–61. 91. Neil Danzig, “From Oral Talmud to Written Talmud: On the Methods of Transmission of the Babylonian Talmud and Its Study in the Middle Ages” [Hebrew], Bar-Ilan Annual 30–31 (2006): 49–112, here 91. 92. Noah Benjamin Bickart, The Scholastic Culture of the Babylonian Talmud, Judaism in Context, vol. 31 (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2022); David Rosenthal, “Lishnah D’Kallah,” Tarbiz 52 (1982): 273–308.

Hidden Traditions ROBERT BRODY

O

ver the last few decades numerous scholars have expressed an often exaggerated skepticism about the reliability of the attributions found in classical rabbinic literature, with some suggesting that dicta contained in a given composition—although attributed to specific rabbis who lived much earlier—could effectively be dated only to the period in which the work in question was redacted. Much of Richard Kalmin’s work over the years has been dedicated inter alia to combating this trend.1 He has also contributed, especially in his most recent book Migrating Tales: The Talmud’s Narratives and Their Historical Context, to what may be seen to be its diametric opposite, namely, the realization that material cited in the name of a given rabbi may have a substantial prehistory and be considerably older than the attribution found in talmudic literature would suggest. It is to this side of the coin that the present article is devoted. A famous rabbinic dictum lays great stress on the importance of attributing sayings to their authors:2 Torah is greater than priesthood or kingship because kingship is acquired by thirty prerogatives and priesthood by twenty-four but Torah is acquired by forty-eight things … and one who says a thing in the name of the one who said it. So you learn that whoever says a thing in the name of the one who said it brings deliverance to the world, as Scripture says: and Esther told the king in the name of Mordechai.

1. This has been a recurring theme, implicitly or explicitly, in most of Kalmin’s published work. For a succinct summary with ample bibliographical references, see Richard Kalmin, Jewish Babylonia between Persia and Roman Palestine (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 4, 15–17, 189–90 (nn. 8–9). 2. Qinyan Torah (so-called “Mishnah Avot 6”) 5–6, citing Esth 2:22. The importance attached to accurate attribution is reflected in other rabbinic sources as well; see, e.g., b. ­Betzah 28b and parallels.

199

200  Making History It is clear nonetheless that this prescription was not always honored, for whatever reason or reasons. In some cases a rabbi neglected to mention the name of the person from whom he had heard a particular dictum; it is likely that in other cases a rabbi named his source but some of his auditors remembered (or transmitted) only the name of the person from whom they had heard the dictum in question.3 In yet other cases a saying may have been considered part of a common tradition that need not or should not be cited in the name of a particular individual; in fact, citing a dictum anonymously may in certain circumstances have conferred upon it greater authority than it would have had if reported in the name of an individual, however great his prestige.4 A few straightforward examples may suffice to illustrate these possibilities. Mishnah Avot 4:19 attributes to Samuel the Little the saying “Do not be happy when your enemy falls and let your heart not rejoice when he stumbles, lest God hear and be displeased and withdraw His wrath from him.” This is actually a biblical quotation (Prov 24:17–18), presumably attributed to Samuel because he was in the habit of citing it. R. Elazar was famously criticized by R. Yohanan and others for repeating the latter’s dicta without attributing them to him; he defended himself by arguing that his auditors were well aware they should assume that anything they heard from R. Elazar he had learned from R. Yohanan.5 In other cases auditors were not sure whether a rabbi’s statement was the product of his own reasoning or of a tradition; see, for example, m.Yevamot 8:3: Ammonites and Moabites are prohibited (from marrying into the Jewish community) and their prohibition is an eternal prohibition but their females are permitted immediately. Egyptians and Edomites are prohibited for three generations only, whether males or females. R. Shimon permitted the females immediately. Said R. Shimon: the matter is (established by) an a fortiori argument.… They said to him: if it is a (received) halakhah we will accept (it) but if (the product of) logical reasoning, there is a refutation. He said to them: No, for I say a halakhah.6

3. See Avraham Weiss, Le-Ḥeqer ha-Talmud (New York: Feldheim, 1954), 35–63, especially 59–60; Hanoch Albeck, Meḥqarim bi-Baraita uve-Tosefta (Jerusalem: Mossad Ha-Rav Kook, 1969), 130, 137. 4. Consider the authority attributed in the Talmud to the anonymous portions of the Mishnah (stam Mishnah); perhaps this is true of certain anonymous portions of the Talmud as well, for example, the decisions beginning vehilkheta, which conclude hundreds of talmudic discussions. For a similar situation in the geonic period, see Robert Brody, The Geonim of Babylonia and the Shaping of Medieval Jewish Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 149–50, 171–75. 5. See b. Yevam. 96b and y. Ber. 2:1 (4b, cols. 13–14 in the Academy of the Hebrew Language edition), cited by Albeck, Meḥqarim bi-Baraita uve-Tosefta, 136, and b. Ketub. 25a and b. Mak. 5b. 6. For additional examples, see b. Betzah 34b, b. Naz. 39a and b. B. Bat. 77a, all cited by

Brody: Hidden Traditions  201 Given this background, it is not surprising to discover a similar phenomenon at work in cases where it is not explicit. Hanoch Albeck brought this argument to bear, in my opinion correctly, in dealing with a large group of cases in which material that appears in a baraita is cited elsewhere in the name of an Amora. He argues that the Amora was dependent on a baraita but that his auditors did not realize this and therefore attributed the material in question to the person from whom they had heard it.7 The purpose of this article is to adduce additional groups of cases in which an explanation based on this phenomenon is likely or at least plausible. One such category comprises cases in which the putative author criticizes “his own” dictum, which is described as “what we have heard,” that is, a received tradition.8 But my focus in this article will be on a group of cases that require further analysis, specifically examples of attempts to defend dicta against criticism while preserving as much as possible of the wording, or at least of the sense, of the dictum as originally transmitted. My first example is drawn from a long and complex sugya in Ketubbot 72b–74a, commenting on Mishnah 7:7: “If a man betroths a woman on condition that she is unencumbered by vows and it transpires that she is encumbered by vows, she is not betrothed. If he brought her in (to nisu’in) without specifying and it transpires that she is encumbered by vows, she goes out (i.e., may be divorced) without a ketubbah (payment).” The sugya begins by presenting a dispute between the leading Babylonian Amoraim of the first generation: “(If a man) betrothed her subject to a condition and brought her in (i.e., concluded the marriage) without specifying (any condition), Rav said she needs a writ of divorce from him and Samuel said she does not need a writ of divorce from him.” In other words: if a man stipulates that the first stage of marriage (qiddushin) is valid only if a certain condition is met and fails to repeat this stipulation at the second stage of marriage (nisu’in), and the condition is not in fact met, Rav holds that the marriage is valid and so the woman cannot marry someone else until this marriage is dissolved by means of a writ of divorce, whereas Samuel holds that the marriage is invalid and so there is no need for the woman to receive a writ of divorce in order to permit her to (re)marry. There is no need to enter here into a full analysis of the ensuing sugya and its complexities, which I have discussed at length in my comAlbeck, Meḥqarim bi-Baraita uve-Tosefta. I am, however, less convinced by Albeck’s analysis of b. Ketub. 42a–b. 7. Albeck, Meḥqarim bi-Baraita uve-Tosefta, 130–37. Cf. Weiss, Le-Ḥeqer ha-Talmud, 35–60 versus Judith Hauptman, Development of the Talmudic Sugya: Relationship between Tannaitic and Amoraic Sources, Studies in Judaism (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1988), especially 8–13, 72–73, 214–17. 8. The expression in question is ‫ ;ומותבינן אשמעתין‬see b. Ber. 33a, b. Shabb. 125b; b. Eruv. 9b, 88a; b. Git. 38b; b. Qidd. 50b; b. Menah. 49a; and cf. b. Ber. 36a, where Samuel is quoted as telling R. Judah that his opinion is more plausible than the one cited as Samuel’s own.

202  Making History mentary on tractate Ketubbot of the Babylonian Talmud;9 for present purposes we may skip to a section of the sugya on folio 73b. Here too I will concentrate on a single aspect of the discussion and not deal with the very considerable exegetical difficulties it raises, which I have discussed at length in my commentary. The structure of this section is as follows.10 It begins with a dictum of Rabbah: “The dispute (between Rav and Samuel) concerns an error involving two women, but in the case of an error involving one woman all agree that she does not need a writ of divorce from him.” Abaye challenged him on the basis of an anonymous discussion preserved in an earlier section of the sugya, according to which the Mishnah, which concerns a case involving only one woman, was brought to bear on this dispute. If the dispute was restricted to a case concerning two women, as Rabbah claimed, the Mishnah would have been irrelevant. In response, Rabbah presented a “corrected” version of his original dictum: “the dispute concerns an error involving one woman which is/are like two women [‫]כעין שתי נשים‬, but in the case of an error involving one woman only all agree that she does not need a writ of divorce from him.” Abaye continued to challenge Rabbah with a series of three questions, each based on a different baraita, and each of these challenges was deflected, seemingly by Rabbah himself. The point I wish to emphasize is that Rabbah responded to Abaye’s original challenge by presenting an emended version of his original dictum while adhering as closely as possible to the original wording: “The dispute concerns an error involving [one woman which is/are like] two women but in the case of an error involving one woman [only] all agree that she does not need a writ of divorce from him.” A possible explanation would be that Rabbah was troubled by a fundamental question—how is it possible that a marriage based on an act of qiddushin that was rendered null by the failure to meet a stipulated condition could nevertheless be valid?—and therefore set out to restrict the scope of Rav’s and Samuel’s dispute. When his first attempt failed in the face of Abaye’s challenge, he tried once more by suggesting a less stringent restriction. I propose, however, that the close connection between the two formulations of Rabbah’s  9. Robert Brody, Commentary on Tractate Ketubbot of the Babylonian Talmud [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Yad Harav Nissim, 2021). 10. According to the reading of the great majority of textual witnesses, which should also be preferred as the lectio difficilior. See Moshe Hershler, ed., The Babylonian Talmud—Tractate Kethubot with Variant Readings from Manuscripts, “Genizah fragments,” with Quotations from Early Rabbinic Literature [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Mechon Ha-Talmud Ha-Yisraeli Ha-Shalem, 1972–1975), 2:184–85, variant readings to lines 11, 12, and notes 19, 23. Most textual witnesses read “he said to him”; the word ‫“( ליה‬to him”) was erased by R. Solomon Luria, who also added the words ‫ אי אתמר הכי אתמר‬found in late editions and very few other witnesses. He and others were obviously troubled by Rabbah’s response according to the majority reading, which I will address shortly.

Brody: Hidden Traditions  203 dictum suggests that another explanation is more plausible. To wit: Rabbah was transmitting a dictum that he had received from earlier scholars, and when Abaye demonstrated that this dictum in its original form was indefensible, he concluded either that he had received an imprecise formulation or that this formulation should not be understood literally. Thus, he presented an improved version which he believed to be the correct version of the tradition he had received. My second example is drawn from b. Sanhedrin 58b: R. Elazar said (that) R. Ḥanina said: “A Noahide who has unnatural (i.e., anal) intercourse with his wife is liable, for it is said (Gen 2: 24) “and cleave (to his wife),” and not unnaturally. Rava said: Is there anything for which an Israelite is not liable and a Gentile is liable?! Rather, said Rava: “a Noahide who cohabits unnaturally with his fellow’s wife is not liable”. Why? “(and cleave) to his wife” and not to his fellow’s wife—“and cleave” and not unnaturally.

Rava rejects the statement attributed to R. Ḥanina as reported by R. Elazar11 but he formulates a “replacement” dictum while retaining central elements of R. Hanina’s dictum as transmitted: the idea that the word ‫ודבק‬ (“and cleave”) refers exclusively to vaginal intercourse and the Torah’s rules governing sexual behavior among gentiles distinguish between vaginal and anal intercourse. For R. Ḥanina, the distinction concerns sexual behavior between husband and wife, while for Rava it concerns an adulterous relationship. Prima facie, this could be a case of Rava correcting the dictum transmitted in the name of R. Ḥanina and claiming that R. Ḥanina must have said X rather than Y, but the “corrected” dictum is presented as Rava’s own. Why, if Rava rejected R. Ḥanina’s dictum, would he have formulated one of his own that preserves as much as possible of the rejected dictum? I submit the likely explanation is that Rava hypothesized that there was an earlier tradition that reached R. Ḥanina in a corrupt form and he offered a conjecture as to its original form. My third example comes from a sugya in Shabbat 95b,12 on Mishnah 10:6: “One who picks from a planter with a hole is liable (for profaning the Sabbath by harvesting) but (one who picks from a planter) which has no hole is not liable. R. Shimon acquits of liability in this (case) and that.” The Talmud presents the following narrative: This old man asked R. Zera: “(if) a root is opposite the hole, what would R. Shimon say?” and he was silent. One (later) time he (the old man) 11. From the context, it appears likely that there was an additional tradent involved, with R. Dimi reporting on what R. Elazar said. 12. Cf. Weiss, Le-Ḥeqer ha-Talmud, 192; Hanoch Albeck, Mavo la-Talmudim, I (Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1969), 530.

204  Making History found him (R. Zera) sitting and saying: “and R. Shimon concedes that if (the planter) has a hole such that it is rendered insusceptible to impurity (someone who picks from it on the Sabbath is liable). He said to him: “Now I asked you (about the case of a) root opposite the hole and you said nothing to me—(is the case of a planter) which has a hole such that it is rendered insusceptible to impurity necessary?! Abaye said: if this (dictum) of R. Zera is (valid),13 it was said thus: “and R. Shimon concedes that if it has a hole below a quarter (of a log, someone who picks from it on the Sabbath is liable).”

This account requires some unpacking. According to the Mishnah (and as made explicit by the first part of the talmudic sugya), at least for the purpose of Sabbath law, R. Shimon treats any plant growing in a planter, regardless of whether the planter has an opening, not as if the plant were growing in the ground but as if it had already been picked. As a result, someone who picks part of such a plant has not violated the prohibition of harvesting on the Sabbath. The anonymous elderly questioner asked R. Zera whether R. Shimon would maintain this position even if the plant’s roots reached the hole in the planter, so that (assuming the hole was in the bottom of the pot) if the pot were placed on the ground the root could obtain nutrition from the soil. R. Zera did not answer, presumably because he was unsure what R. Shimon would have said about such a case. On a later occasion, the same questioner found R. Zera asserting that R. Shimon would have agreed that a plant growing in a planter with a sufficiently large opening should be treated as if it were growing in the ground. The questioner challenged R. Zera on the grounds that if the latter was unwilling to make such an assertion on behalf of R. Shimon with regard to the case of a plant with roots reaching the hole in the planter, he should certainly not have made such an assertion with regard to the case of a planter with a relatively large hole.14 In other words, the questioner assumes that if R. Shimon would treat any plant growing in a planter with a hole of a certain size as if it were growing in the ground, a fortiori, he would treat a plant with roots reaching a hole in a planter, even if the hole is smaller, as if it were growing in the ground. R. Zera’s response, if any, is not preserved. Abaye commented that, if R. Zera’s comment could be rescued, so to speak, it would be in the form “and R. Shimon concedes that if it has a hole below a quarter (of a log, someone who picks from it on the Sabbath is liable).” Abaye apparently agreed with the reasoning of the anonymous questioner, namely, that the case of a plant with roots reaching a small 13. According to the reading ‫ איתא‬or ‫ איתה‬found in all the manuscripts and early printed editions; later editions have banalized this to the familiar ‫( איתמר‬see below). See Weiss, Le-Heqer ha-Talmud, 192; and Albeck, Mavo la-Talmudim, I, 530. 14. According to the commentators, this means a hole that an olive could fit through although it may conceivably mean a smaller one. See m. Kelim 3:1–2; 8:2; 9:8.

Brody: Hidden Traditions  205 hole in a planter more closely resembles that of a plant growing in the ground than does the case of a plant growing in a planter with a slightly larger hole but without its roots reaching the hole. He therefore proposed an emended version of R. Zera’s teaching: the case in which R. Shimon would concede that a plant growing in the planter is comparable to one growing in the ground is one in which the hole is at the very bottom of the planter, so that if one were to remove the soil and pour liquid into the planter, it would not retain so much as a quarter of a log. This version references a different rule from the sphere of impurity law, which concerns not a mostly intact vessel with a hole (in which case susceptibility to impurity depends on the hole being sufficiently small) but a broken vessel (in which case susceptibility to impurity depends on the volume of a given piece of the original vessel being sufficiently large).15 Abaye apparently believes that this case is more similar to the case of a plant growing in the ground than is the case of a plant whose roots reach an opening higher in the planter’s side. Therefore, saying that R. Shimon would treat one case as if the plant were growing in the ground would not imply that he would treat the other case in the same fashion. But what was Abaye trying to accomplish with this remark? Presumably he was not asserting that R. Zera’s dictum had been transmitted inaccurately and that what R. Zera had actually said was Abaye’s corrected version, because the anonymous questioner’s objection would not hold if this were the case. Rather, I suggest that Abaye offered a conjectural version of a dictum that R. Zera might have transmitted inaccurately but which might explain his reluctance to take a stand with regard to the question he was asked. A possible scenario would be that on the earlier occasion, R. Zera remembered this dictum more accurately and so was unwilling to draw conclusions about the hypothetical case presented to him by the questioner. The last example leads us to consider a large category of cases that have received considerable scholarly attention, namely, those in which a dictum is emended by means of the formula ‫אלא אי איתמר הכי איתמר‬, which literally means “rather, if it was said, it was said thus” and implies an attempt at restoring the original version of a dictum that had been corrupted in the course of transmission.16 Despite this, it is clear that not all instances of this formula can be taken literally. Perhaps the best example is the following. b. Ketubbot 2a:17

2:2.

15. A quarter log is the appropriate amount for a wide range of vessels, see m. Kelim

16. There is reason to think that at least in some cases such a reconstruction was successful. See Weiss, Le-Ḥeqer ha-Talmud, 186–87; Albeck, Mavo la-Talmudim I, 528–29. 17. See Weiss, Le-Ḥeqer ha-Talmud, 95–96, 190–91; Albeck, Mavo la-Talmudim I, 488, 530.

206  Making History Said R. Joseph said R. Judah said Samuel: why did they say that a virgin is married on Wednesday? Because we learned “if the time (for nisu’in) arrives and they were not married, she eats of his (provision) and (if her husband is a priest, even though she is not of a priestly family) eats terumah … therefore we learned “a virgin is married on Wednesday.” Said R. Joseph: Lord of Abraham! He makes what is taught in a Tannaitic source dependent on what is not taught in a Tannaitic source!… Rather, if it was said it was said thus: Said R. Joseph said R. Judah said Samuel: why did they say that a virgin is married on Wednesday? So that if he had a claim concerning virginity he would proceed early to court. Let her be married on Sunday, and if he had a claim concerning virginity he would proceed early to court!… Now that we have learned … if the time (of nisu’in) arrives on a Sunday he does not provide her with food.

Without going into all the complexities of this sugya, we may say that, on the face of things, the revised version of Samuel’s dictum reverses the relationship between m. Ketubbot 1:1 and m. Ketubbot 5:2. Rather than 5:2 explaining 1:1, 1:1 “explains” 5:2 by circumscribing its application. The crucial point for our current purpose, however, is that this revised version is formulated with the introduction “said R. Joseph said R. Judah said Samuel,” although R. Joseph’s objection to the tradition he himself had transmitted (“Lord of Abraham! He makes what is taught in a Tannaitic source dependent on what is not taught in a Tannaitic source!”) makes it clear that the first version of the dictum, and not the revised version, is the one he actually transmitted. The contradiction is so glaring that some textual witnesses omitted R. Joseph’s name from the attribution of the revised version, but the evidence supporting the reading that includes his name, along with the principle of lectio difficilior potior, makes it abundantly clear that his name is part of the original talmudic sugya.18 We must conclude that the meaning of ‫ אלא אי איתמר הכי איתמר‬in this case is not that R. Joseph actually said the words that the sugya, as it were, puts in his mouth, but that this is what he ought to have said. I would argue that, in this case, the sugya posits a corruption preceding R. Joseph and nevertheless credits him, as it were, with transmitting the putatively correct version. This example is exceptional in that the dictum that is emended was reported along with a chain of transmission including more than one rabbi. In the vast majority of cases in which this formula is used, the dic-

A similar analysis applies to b. B. Bat. 134b, although in this case the evidence for the reading that includes R. Joseph’s name is less overwhelming. 18. See Hershler, Babylonian Talmud—Tractate Kethubot, 1:2, variant readings to line 9 (and notes 13–14); 2:576–77, and add the Genizah fragment New York, Jewish Theological Seminary of America, ENA 2943.6. R. Joseph’s name is found in most of the later manuscripts and all three of the Genizah fragments in which this passage is found, and this reading is also supported by various secondary witnesses.

Brody: Hidden Traditions  207 tum in question is simply attributed to Rabbi X, and it is at least possible that the sugya means to claim—rightly or wrongly—that Rabbi X actually uttered the words attributed to him in the emended version of his dictum and not those in the version first reported. But in view of our analysis of the last example, we should consider the possibility that in some at least of the cases in which an emended dictum is attributed to Rabbi X, the sugya meant to say that this is what Rabbi X ought to have said but he repeated a tradition that had reached him in a corrupted version.19 I suggest that the phenomenon of “hidden traditions” was considerably more widespread than is generally recognized and that a heightened awareness of this possibility is likely to lead to the discovery of additional instances in classical rabbinic literature.20 Even when there is no specific evidence that a given dictum reported in the name of a particular rabbi was only transmitted by him, we should not reject this possibility out of hand.

19. Prima facie, b. Ketub. 18b (discussed by Weiss, Le-Ḥeqer ha-Talmud, 287, and Albeck, Mavo la-Talmudim I, 531–32) is also an excellent example. But in the only Genizah fragment in which this passage is attested (Manchester, John Rylands Library, B 2670), it is clear, despite extensive damage to the manuscript, that Rava’s comment was not addressed to Rami bar Ḥama in person; according to this reading, we would have a standard case in which Rami’s dictum was emended in his absence and very possibly after his death. 20. For possible additional instances in the Babylonian Talmud, see b. Sukkah 41a; b. Betzah 21a; b. Naz. 38b–39a; b. Qidd. 52a, 63b, and 80a; b. B. Qam. 66b, b; B. Bat. 37b, 50b–51a and 139b; b. Sanh. 58b; b. Hullin 32a; and compare b. B. Metz. 82b.

Amoraic Memrot as Reworkings of Older Sources Women and Qiddush JOSHUA CAHAN

T

here has been a profound shift in recent decades in how scholars approach and analyze texts in the Babylonian Talmud (Bavli). While there is lively debate about the details, most scholars broadly accept that many discussions in both Talmuds can be separated into chronological layers, and that distinguishing those layers allows us to make sense of features of the text that otherwise appear obscure. They also accept that individual sources and sometimes an entire discussion may have parallels or antecedents in other rabbinic collections, and that a comparison of those parallels can provide key insights that enable a fuller understanding of those texts and a more accurate reconstruction of the stages by which it reached its present form.1 As this methodology has developed, it has had to be refined and revised. Early source-critical work often took the attributions of source material, particularly in the Babylonian Talmud, which clearly identifies those sources, as definitive, and worked from the assumption that, apart from exceptional cases, baraitot are authentically Tannaitic, memrot represent novel teachings by the Amoraim, and the discursive, anonymous material represents the voice of the editors and compilers working in the latter stages of the Talmud’s development.2 This was accurate enough to yield significant results and to take hold as the new scholarly consensus 1. For an excellent summary of this approach, see the Introduction to Joshua Kulp and Jason Rogoff, Reconstructing the Talmud: An Introduction to the Academic Study of Rabbinic Literature (New York: Mechon Hadar, 2014). 2. For example, see David Weiss Halivni, Midrash, Mishnah, and Gemara: The Jewish Predilection for Justified Law (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986), 76–92. See also the summary of these views in Richard Kalmin, “The Formation and Character of the Babylonian Talmud,” in The Cambridge History of Judaism, vol. 4: The Late Roman-Rabbinic Period, ed. Steven T. Katz (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 843–47.

209

210  Making History for some time, but it has itself proven to be overly credulous. Moulie Vidas brilliantly illustrates that this reading is far from “against the grain.”3 It was easy to apply this lens because the compilers of the Bavli intended their work to be read diachronically, as evidenced by the overt language signals identifying sources and distinguishing them from their discursive framing; and it is how early Sephardic commentators like the Rif and Maimonides read the Talmud. It appeared revolutionary in the twentieth century only because these features of the text were whitewashed by the scholastic-influenced commentators of medieval northern Europe who set the agenda for Talmud study in Europe for the next nine hundred years. Subsequent scholarship has approached the various elements of the Talmuds with greater skepticism while, for the most part, preserving the core idea that it is both valid and essential to discern, to the extent possible, earlier and later versions of both individual teachings and whole sugyot.4 Richard Kalmin elicits historical insight by noting trends across large numbers of teachings to avoid relying on the accuracy of any individual source.5 Shamma Friedman shows how the Babylonian rabbis regularly revise and expand earlier teachings, sometimes dramatically, but usually do so in certain limited and predictable ways, thus accounting for many of the discrepancies between earlier and later versions.6 Jeffrey Rubenstein shows how a similar dynamic drives the gradual expansion and elaboration of rabbinic narratives.7 Alyssa Gray shows that the use and revision by the Babylonian Talmud of earlier traditions is not limited to individual sources but often involves incorporating and reworking entire sugyot from the Palestinian Talmud (Yerushalmi), often in ways that (whether by intention or not) obscure their connection to those sources.8

3. Moulie Vidas, Tradition and the Formation of the Talmud (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014). 4. Jacob Neusner is a notable exception. He was an important early champion of treating attributions in the Talmuds with skepticism, but he went on to decide that all attributions were essentially unreliable and thus could be ignored, essentially dismissing the entire project of reconstructing the development of these texts with a stroke of his very prolific pen. 5. Richard Kalmin, Jewish Babylonia between Persia and Roman Palestine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). 6. Shamma Friedman, “Uncovering Literary Dependencies in the Talmudic Corpus,” in The Synoptic Problem in Rabbinic Literature, ed. Shaye J. D. Cohen, BJS 326 (Providence, RI: Brown Judaic Studies, 2000), 35–57. 7. Jeffrey L. Rubenstein, Creation and Composition: The Contribution of the Bavli Redactors (Stammaim) to the Aggadah, TSAJ 114 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005). 8. Alyssa M. Gray, A Talmud in Exile: The Influence of Yerushalmi Avodah Zarah on the Formation of Bavli Avodah Zarah, BJS 342 (Providence, RI: Brown Judaic Studies, 2005; 2nd digital ed., Brown Judaic Studies, 2020). See also the work of Christine Hayes and Martin Jaffee building the case that the Bavli editors must have known and worked from or with, at minimum, whole passages or even chapters of Yerushalmi material (Christine Elizabeth Hayes, Between the Babylonian and Palestinian Talmuds: Accounting for Halakhic Difference in

Cahan: Amoraic Memrot  211 Taken together, this work has amply demonstrated that the highly formalized structure of the Babylonian Talmud can serve to mask its sources as often as it reveals them. On the other hand, by demonstrating the freedom with which the Bavli reframes and edits its sources and describing some of the typical ways it does so, these scholars have made it possible to identify more of those sources and thus to go much further than was previously possible to accurately trace both the original sources of a sugya and its stages of development and to isolate and describe the unique voice and methods of the editors. These methods have been successfully applied to the analysis of a wide range of texts and have often led to clearer and less speculative reconstructions and more measured claims about what we do and do not know about the beliefs and methods of the sages who developed this tradition. The goal of the following discussion is to expand our view of how often seemingly new Amoraic teachings were generated and shaped by extant source material. Mostly, when looking for possible antecedents to talmudic sugyot, we look in two directions. We identify direct sources, earlier versions of all or part of a particular teaching that were incorporated either directly or through a process of revision into the passage under scrutiny; and transfers, traditions that were originally taught in one context but then replicated in a new one. I will argue that many Amoraic teachings are the products of a more fluid and dynamic generative process of borrowing and recombining known traditions. Specifically, I will show how seemingly novel teachings draw on established forms and logical structures into which they insert new content; and how they recombine and reframe familiar midrashic motifs into new rules. Recognizing these patterns will contribute to our understanding of the intellectual culture of the Amoraim and the process by which they generated new teachings and should lead to more nuance in discerning the role of social and ideological versus literary interests in creating these traditions. I also hope to make a small but significant contribution to the particular field of gender studies in rabbinic literature, specifically to the rich literature exploring the development and function of the rule exempting women from positive time-bound commandments. Elizabeth Shanks Alexander argues persuasively that this rule, found in m. Qiddushin 1:7, was understood as descriptive of a particular cluster of exemptions, each of which had its own origin, and was never used to generate new exemp-

Selected Sugyot from Tractate Avodah Zarah [New York: Oxford University Press, 1997]; Martin Jaffee, “The Babylonian Appropriation of the Talmud Yerushalmi: Redactional Studies in the Horayot Tractates,” in The Literature of Early Rabbinic Judaism: Issues in Talmudic Redaction and Interpretation, ed. Alan J. Avery-Peck, New Perspectives on Ancient Judaism 4 [Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1989] 3–27).

212  Making History tions that lacked midrashic basis.9 There are several mitzvot in this category in which Tannaitic texts explicitly obligate women fully, but there are also other “exceptions” added by the Amoraim, suggesting that they also did not feel bound by this rule. Yet of the five Amoraic rules obligating women in such mitzvot, two are unique cases of the Bavli adapting and simplifying complex discussions in the Yerushalmi. The other three, including the present case, are secondary transfers by redactors of those two teachings to conceptually related topics rather than independent Amoraic teachings. While I do not offer definite conclusions about how this changes their significance, this observation should shift our view of how this group of teachings fits into the larger story of women’s obligation in mitzvot. My approach is in large measure modeled on James Kugel’s idea of the “afterlife of midrashic motifs,”10 so I will take a brief detour to present the outline of his thesis. Kugel, exploring the body of midrashic traditions around the Joseph story, is trying to account for the development over time of midrashim that grow increasingly fanciful and even wild-eyed, and appear less and less tethered to any features of the biblical texts they purport to interpret. He shows how the earliest traditions, sometimes prerabbinic, tend to be simple readings that are generated by specific words in the Bible and by specific problems of interpretation. Once created, though, a midrashic motif can become part of the communal understanding of the story and thus start to function as source material in its own right. That is, once a particular midrashic formulation or trope has been created in one context, it becomes a part of the rabbinic lexicon and may be freely repurposed and deployed in other contexts, sometimes closely related and sometimes far removed, in what he calls its “afterlife.” There are three characteristics in particular that Kugel describes that map very closely onto the process laid out in the analysis below. First, some such traditions travel in several stages. Each stage creates a new teaching that looks like midrash but which, since it is generated not directly through interpretation but by repackaging extant materials, has less grounding in the biblical text. Second, such later, derivative midrashic teachings tend to address less obvious textual problems and/or offer less direct or obvious answers, as their formulations were not created in response to the particular verse or problem they purport to address.11 And, third, earlier midrashic traditions are, in later uses, often combined with other known midrashic tropes to create teachings that are new but nonetheless feel quite familiar. 9. Elizabeth Shanks Alexander, Gender and Timebound Commandments in Judaism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). 10. James L. Kugel, In Potiphar’s House: The Interpretive Life of Biblical Texts (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990), 247–68. 11. Ibid., 1, 255–56, 259–61.

Cahan: Amoraic Memrot  213

The End Product: Women and Qiddush Hayom The focus of the following discussion is this brief passage found at b. Berakhot 20b about the obligation of women to recite the qiddush (blessing over wine) on the Sabbath. Here is our text, from b. Berakhot 20b12: .‫ נשים חייבות בקדוש היום דבר תורה‬:‫ אמר רב אדא בר אהבה‬.1 !‫ וכל מצות עשה שהזמן גרמא נשים פטורות‬,‫ אמאי? מצות עשה שהזמן גרמא הוא‬.2 .‫ מדרבנן‬:‫ אמר אביי‬.3 !‫ כל מצות עשה נחייבינהו מדרבנן‬,‫ והא דבר תורה קאמר! ועוד‬:‫ אמר ליה רבא‬.4 ‫ כל שישנו בשמירה‬- ‫ אמר קרא (שמות כ') זכור (דברים ה') ושמור‬:‫ אלא אמר רבא‬.5 .‫ישנו בזכירה‬ .‫ איתנהו בזכירה‬- ‫ הואיל ואיתנהו בשמירה‬,‫ והני נשי‬.6 1. R. Ada bar Ahava said: Women are obligated in qiddush hayom from the Torah. 2. Why? It is a positive, time-bound commandment, and women are exempt from all positive time-bound commandments! 3. Abaye said: From the Rabbis. 4. Rava said to him: But it says “from the Torah”! And also, [if the Rabbis obligated women in this mitzvah from which they are biblically exempt,] why wouldn’t they obligate them rabbinically in all positive commandments? 5. Rather Rava said: The Torah said “Remember” and “Observe”– all who are obligated in observing are also obligated in remembering. 6. And these women, since they are obligated in observing, they are also obligated in remembering. R. Ada bar Ahava, an early Babylonian Amora, states (1) that women are biblically obligated in the mitzvah of qiddush hayom. An objection is brought (2), prompting Abaye (3) to propose a “revision” that contradicts the original statement13 and is immediately rejected by Rava (4). This prepares us for the conclusion of the sugya: Rava’s midrash (5) states that the words zakhor (remember) and shamor (observe) in the two versions of the Sabbath commandment of the Decalogue14 teach that all who are obligated

12. Texts from the Babylonian Talmud are cited from the standard printed edition. Any significant variants in manuscripts will be noted in the footnotes. Translations are my own. 13. In MS Oxford, R. Ada himself is cited as saying “rabbinically,” thus more explicitly presenting this as a revision of the initial statement rather than an interpretation, as Rava understands it. 14. The Sabbath commandment in Exod 20:8 reads, “Remember [zakhor] the sabbath day to sanctify it,” while Deut 5:11 reads, “Observe [shamor] the sabbath day to sanctify it.”

214  Making History in shamor, understood to refer to the Sabbath prohibitions (particularly the thirty-nine categories of melakha, forbidden labor), are also obligated in zakhor, specifically the recitation of qiddush over wine.15 In terms of its content, the passage is not controversial. It presents an Amoraic ruling followed by a brief debate over the relevance of the general exemption of women from positive, time-bound commandments, leading to a second memra that derives the rule through midrashic exegesis. It consists entirely of statements attributed to Babylonian Amoraim and lacks the glaring logical stretches that are easy signposts of editorial reworking16. It is the only talmudic text that addresses this question, and the legal conclusion is unambiguous. It fits into the context, echoing the question about the general exemption raised in the prior two segments and exploring a distinction between biblical and rabbinic obligations that is central to the following section. There are, however, several indicators that call for further investigation. First, the passage appears out of place. The Mishnah lists five specific rituals from which women are exempt or in which they are obligated. The ensuing discussion focuses only on questions about these five rituals except for this short piece. Second, the midrashic reasoning used is strange. It uses language normally used to link phrases that are juxtaposed in the text (heqesh) to draw a legal conclusion from words that appear at some distance, and it presumes meanings that are not actually implied by those words. Most notably, b. Qiddushin 34–35 presents what Jay Rovner describes as a comprehensive list of exceptions to the rule that women are exempt from positive, time-bound commandments that have midrashic roots. Qiddush hayom is the only such “exception” absent from that list.17 Discussions of women’s obligation in ritual commandments appear in numerous places in the Bavli, but none addresses either qiddush hayom or any aspect of the Sabbath.18 If the Gemara wanted to show that the rule about positive time-bound commandments is overridden in some cases, other well-established examples were readily available. In fact, outside of this short passage, a specific obligation on anyone to recite qiddush (as Since the two texts are purportedly accounts of the same event, this duality was the source for much rabbinic comment. See below. 15. The statements of R. Ada bar Ahava and Rava are condensed into a single statement attributed to R. Ada bar Ahava on b. Shev. 20b. 16. See David Weiss Halivni, Mekorot uMesorot Bava Kamma (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1993), Introduction. 17. Jay Rovner, “Rhetorical Strategy and Dialectical Necessity in the Babylonian Talmud,” HUCA 65 (1994): 193–203. 18. For a thorough analysis of the relationship between the specific cases of women’s exemption/obligation and the general rule about positive time-bound commandments, see Alexander, Gender and Timebound Commandments; see especially her discussion of the Bavli’s effort to understand the relationship between the rule and the specific midrashic derivations both of laws that violate the rule and of others that follow it (128–34).

Cahan: Amoraic Memrot  215 opposed to general Sabbath observance) is not mentioned in any rabbinic text apart from a brief comment in the Mekilta on Exodus 20:8, which I will examine in detail below. Despite this, the passage feels strangely familiar, as if it came up in numerous contexts. The reason for this is that, while the teaching itself is new, it is a product of the process of recycling and recombining extant material to generate new traditions, so that each element has a parallel in other, earlier traditions. Seeing this process fully, though, requires telling two separate stories. So the ensuing discussion will be divided accordingly. The next section will trace the evolution of the form and logic of the Rav Ada b. Ahava/Rava tradition, which is the longer and more unexpected journey. The following section will then look at the familiar midrashic motifs that have been merged and given new meaning by being fit into that form, and will try to account for the genesis of this particular teaching.

Form: Women’s Obligation to Eat Matza The basic form ‫ ישנו ב‬... ‫“( כל שישנו ב‬all who are obligated in … are also obligated in …”), and the parallel formulation ‫ הרי הוא ב‬... ‫“( את שהוא ב‬one who is obligated in … is also obligated in …”), appear in a variety of other contexts. However, there is one parallel that is far more precise than the others, both in the form and in the type of reasoning it presents—the argument that women are obligated to eat matza on Passover. As we will see, several of the awkward features of our sugya are clarified once we see it as a secondary reworking based directly on this specific parallel text. Here is the sugya, from b. Pesahim 43b, teaching that women are obligated to eat matza on the first night of Passover, attributed to R. Elazar, a Palestinian Amora roughly contemporary with R. Ada bar Ahava. .‫ נשים חייבות באכילת מצה דבר תורה‬:19‫ דאמר רבי אלעזר‬.1 .‫ כל שישנו בבל תאכל חמץ–ישנו באכילת מצה‬,'‫ שנאמר לא תאכל עליו חמץ וגו‬.2 20 .‫ הואיל וישנן בבל תאכל חמץ–ישנן בקום אכול מצה‬,‫ והני נשי נמי‬.3 1. R. Elazar said: Women are obligated in eating matza [on the first night of Passover] from the Torah, 2. As it is written “You shall not eat any hametz with it (the Pesach sacrifice), [for seven days you shall eat matza]” (Deut 16:3). All 19. The Vilna printing reads “Eliezer,” but the parallel on b. Pesah. 91b and most manuscripts read “Elazar.” 20. On Pesah. 91b, the Bavli assumes that the Tanna R. Shimon must have known this view of the Amora R. Elazar, but clearly presents R. Elazar’s statement as a memra, not a baraita; contra Judith Hauptman, “Women in Tractate Pesachim,” in Atara l’Haim [Hebrew], ed., Daniel Boyarin et al., (Jerusalem: Magnes, 2000), 66–67.

216  Making History who are obligated in not eating hametz are obligated in eating matza. 3. And these women also, since they are obligated in not eating hametz, they are obligated in eating matza. The rabbis deduced from Exod 12:18, “in the evening you shall eat matzot,” that there is a positive obligation to eat matza on the first night of Pesach.21 It is thus a positive time-bound commandment, and one might assume that women would be exempt. Furthermore, some Tannaim exempted women from the qorban Pesach (the paschal offering) itself, and matza could be considered part of that exemption.22 In this passage, then, R. Elazar rules (1) that women are indeed obligated in matza, and he bases his view (2) on an exegesis of Deut 16:3, “You shall not eat hametz on it [‫]עליו‬, for seven days you shall eat matza on it.” He claims that the juxtaposition of these two phrases, a prohibition on hametz and a positive command to eat matza, is meant to take one legal aspect of the first, who is obligated, and apply it to the second. He then identifies (3) women as a group who, because they are unquestionably obligated in the prohibition on hametz, must also have the obligation to eat matza. The parallel between this memra and the sugya about qiddush hayom is precise down to the wording. Each line of this passage has matching wording in Berakhot. In line 1, both passages read ‫ דבר תורה‬... ‫ ;נשים חייבות‬in line 2 (line 5 in the Berakhot text), ‫ ישנו‬... ‫ ;כל שישנו‬and in line 3 (line 6 in Berakhot), ‫ והני נשי הואיל ו‬.... The content of the two teachings is also parallel. Each teaches that women are obligated in a positive, time-bound commandment from which we might assume that they are exempt. Each supports this claim by citing verses that link positive and negative commandments associated with the same occasion (Shabbat or Pesach), arguing that all (generally, without specifying women) who are obligated in the negative command are also obligated in the positive command. Each then maps that reasoning onto women, leading to the ruling presented at the beginning. Pesahim is clearly the original context of the teaching. First, the Pesahim text has antecedents in the Palestinian Talmud and the Tosefta, which the Berakhot text lacks, and it appears in other lists of exceptions to the rule about women’s exemptions. Second, there is a clear link between verse and exegesis. The two sources are part of the same verse, and the two parts of the verse are about precisely the same laws under discussion, hametz and matza.23 By contrast, the terms in Berakhot, zakhor and shamor, 21. Mekilta of R. Ishmael, Bo, Pisha sect. 8. 22. Matza was originally eaten on the night of 15 Nisan as an accompaniment to the meat of the paschal offering. See Exod 12:8 and Num 9:11. 23. Note also that many (but not all) of the other occurrences of the ‫ כל שישנו‬form in the

Cahan: Amoraic Memrot  217 are general terms that can refer to multiple aspects of Sabbath observance, and indeed they are given a range of interpretations in midrashic texts.24 Third, while the Pesahim version matches two specific and closely related mitzvot, the Berakhot version awkwardly pairs a general prohibition on all Sabbath labors with a specific positive obligation in a single ritual.25 Finally, the point proven by the textual support in Pesahim is exactly the point R. Elazar makes initially—women are obligated in matza because they are obligated in hametz. In Berakhot, the initial claim is about qiddush hayom, but both the proof text (line 5) and the explanation (line 6) refer only to zekhira (remembering), not to qiddush hayom itself. To review, we can see that these two passages are directly related and do not simply share common rabbinic language by the precise parallel of wording in multiple statements and the close parallel between the cases. We can see that the Berakhot passage is secondary because the form fits the Pesahim case more closely, while the Berakhot case shows inconsistencies that cohere with the imperfect adaptation of an older teaching. The earlier version shows more of the characteristics of a genuine engagement with the biblical verse that are lost when this form is transposed to a new context. So our Berakhot sugya expresses a new idea by consciously adapting a form originally from Pesahim, even though the form does not fit the new context as well.

The Antecedent to R. Elazar: Y. Pesahim 8:1 But the Pesahim midrash is itself a product of several stages of reworking. The Bavli version condenses a complex, multipart discussion found in y. Pesahim 8:1 by presenting only its conclusions.26 And from that Yerushalmi sugya we can see clearer evidence of both the source that lies at the core of this midrash, itself borrowed from a related context, and how that source has been adapted in a way that significantly changes its meaning while making almost no change to its wording.27 We will give a brief overview Bavli draw an inference based on two parts of a single verse. See b. Hag. 4b; b. Qidd. 35b; and b. Bekh. 4a. 24. E.g., Mekilta of R. Ishmael, Bahodesh sect. 7; Mekilta of R. Shimon bar Yohai on Exod 20:8. See below under “Content: A Collection of Midrashic Ideas.” 25. In later medieval commentaries and codes it becomes customary to speak of zekhira in this passage as referring to all positive obligations of the Sabbath. There is, however, no source for this reading in the Talmud or among the gaonim or early medieval commentators. The earliest statement that seems to imply this broad reading is the comment of Ramban (d. 1263) to Exod 20:8. 26. This phenomenon is discussed at length by Gray, Talmud in Exile, 149–73. 27. The concluding statement of R. Mana (line 8) is itself a rewriting of an earlier principle, but its inclusion in our sugya appears to be inadvertent.

218  Making History of the Yerushalmi passage and then focus on the adaptation and changes in meaning of those texts.28 The Palestinian Talmud sugya begins by asking whether women are obligated to eat the pesach offering or are merely permitted to do so. I will present the text of the sugya here, with the acknowledgment that some pieces are obscure and would require further work to fully clarify. .‫ אמר רבי לעזר פיסחן של נשים [חובה] ודוחין עליו את השבת‬.1 ‫ ר' יעקב בר אחא בשם ר' אלעזר פיסחן של נשים ושל עבדי' [חובה] כל שכן דוחין‬.2 .‫עליו את השבת‬ .‫ מצתן מה היא? ר' לעז' אמ' חובה‬.3 .‫ ר' הילא אמר דברי הכל‬,]‫ ר' זעורא אמר [מחלוקת‬.4 .‫ מתניתא מסייעא לדין ומתניתא מסייעא לדין‬.5 ‫ מתניתא מסייעא לרבי זעירא חזרת מצה ופסח לילה הראשון חובה ושאר כל הימים‬.6 .‫רשות‬ ‫ מתני' מסייעא לרבי הילא לא תאכל עליו חמץ שבעת ימים תאכל עליו מצות לחם‬.7 ‫ ונשים הואיל והן בבל‬,‫ את שהוא בבל תאכל חמץ הרי הוא בקום אכול מצה‬.‫עוני‬ .‫תאכל חמץ הרי הן בקום אכול מצה‬ !‫ והא תנינן כל מצות עשה שהזמן גרמא האנשים חייבין והנשים פטורות‬.8 .‫ אמר רבי מנא חומר היא מצות עשה שהיא באה מכח בלא תעשה‬.9 1. R. Elazar said: Women’s Pesach is an obligation29 and overrides the Sabbath. 2. R. Yaakov bar Aha in the name of R. Elazar: The Pesach of women and slaves is an obligation30 and certainly overrides the Sabbath. 28. Jay Rovner presents a masterful analysis of this question, showing that women’s obligation to eat matza was not a question for the Tannaim. They debated women’s obligation to eat the pesach meat, and that question was transferred onto matza in the Yerushalmi because, as the pesach offering receded from memory, matza took its place as the central eating obligation of the Seder (“Rhetorical Strategy and Dialectical Necessity,” 199 n. 47). 29. The printed edition, both here and in the parallel in Qiddushin, reads ‫“( רשות‬permission”), rather than ‫“( חובה‬obligation”). The reasons to accept this emendation, proposed by the korban ha’edah (ad loc.) and accepted by Saul Lieberman, Yerushalmi Kifshuto (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1998), 498, are outlined in n. 20. 30. The text, both here and in the parallel passage in Qiddushin, reads ‫—רשות‬they are not obligated but their sacrifices nevertheless override the Sabbath. This is surprising—there should be a word of contrast such as “but despite that …”—but possible. However, R. Elazar then declares them in line 3 to be obligated to eat matza, at which point R. Zeira and R. Hila argue about whether even those who consider women exempt from pesach would obligate them in matza. R. Elazar’s position must therefore be that they are obligated in pesach. Thus, the emendation proposed by the Qorban Ha’edah, reading R. Elazar’s initial statement to obligate women in matza, is preferable. While it is common to prefer a less understandable version on the principle of lectio difficilior, this principle presumes that the copyists understand the texts they are copying and thus change words they do not understand to things they do understand. In the Palestinian Talmud, where the few copyists who worked with it had never studied it, this is not the case. We often find words substituted for their opposites (‫אית‬

Cahan: Amoraic Memrot  219 3. What about their matza? R. Elazar said: Obligatory. 4. R. Zeira said: This is a dispute. R. Hila said: All agree. 5. A baraita supports this one and a baraita supports that one. 6. A baraita supports R. Zeira: Hazeret, matza, and pesach are obligatory on the first night, optional on all other days (of the festival). 7. A baraita supports R. Hila: “You shall not eat hametz over it, for seven days you shall eat over it matzot, the bread of affliction” (Deut 16:3). Those who are forbidden from hametz are obligated in matza, so women, who are forbidden from hametz, are thus obligated in matza. 8. But we learn: All positive time-bound commandments, men are obligated and women exempt! 9. R. Mana said: There is a stringency regarding positive commands that are built on negative commands. In (1–2), R. Elazar rules that women are obligated to eat the pesach31 and so an offering made for a group of women overrides the Sabbath, a question that was debated by the Tannaim.32 Why might women be exempt? This view is likely based on either the reading of Num 9:13 found in Sifre Numbers 7033 (in the context of pesach sheni, the alternate date for the offering on 14 Iyar), or the derivation proposed in the Yerushalmi section immediately following our passage, based on Exod 12:3, “Each man shall take a lamb to a family, a lamb to a household.” If the source of this view is exegesis, the ruling would be limited to this single case and would not be transferrable to others. The end of the passage raises the possibility that it could be based on the general exemption of women from positive time-bound commandments, but, as Alexander has shown, that is likely a response to R. Hila’s baraita but not the source for the alternative view.34 for ‫ אסור‬,‫ לית‬for ‫מותר‬, etc.) where the new version makes no sense at all. See Saul Lieberman, Al Hayerushalmi (Jerusalem: Darom, 1929). 31. The term pesach is used here to refer to the actual paschal offering. The festival is referred to as “Passover.” 32. Sifre Numbers 70 and t. Pesah. 8:10. 33. The midrash presents a dispute between the anonymous voice and R. Shimon bar Yohai as to whether the phrase ‫חטאו ישא האיש ההוא‬, “that man shall carry his guilt,” comes to exclude women from Pesach Sheni, or whether they are “re-included” by the phrase earlier in the same verse ‫ונכרתה הנפש ההיא‬, “that soul will be cut off,” which is in the feminine (due to the gender of the word ‫)נפש‬. The position that they are not obligated is the view of R. Shimon, whose son, R. Elazar b. R. Shimon, takes the corresponding view in the Tosefta. 34. Alexander, Gender and Timebound Commandments, 125–28. Alexander shows that this is the only place in which the Palestinian Talmud considers the possibility that the rule should function prescriptively, and it appears to be a new idea for the editors of the Yerushalmi. It is only in the later stratum of the Babylonian Talmud that this is turned into a general principle necessitating the reexamination of all traditions about women’s obligation in time-bound rituals.

220  Making History R. Elazar, who obligated women in the pesach, then rules (3) that they are also obligated in matza on that same night. Two Amoraim, R. Zeira and R. Hila, discuss (4) whether this ruling was subject to the same debate as that regarding the pesach (‫ )מחלוקת‬or was accepted by those who disagreed with his first ruling (‫)דברי הכל‬.35 Baraitot are adduced to support each position, one (6) suggesting that pesach and matza should have the same rule, the other (7) that women’s obligation in matza has its own independent exegetical source. In response to a challenge to R. Elazar’s ruling (8) based on the general exemption of women from positive time-bound commandments, R. Mana (9) says that the exemption does not apply to positive commandments linked to negative ones. The Babylonian Talmud accepts R. Hila’s view that all support R. Elazar’s ruling about matza and teaches it (uncoupled from his disputed ruling about the pesach) together with its supporting baraita. It has been adapted in typical ways. The ruling is stated as a full statement rather than a question and a one-word answer. More interesting is that the support is not marked in the Bavli as a baraita, while in the Yerushalmi it is. But it otherwise seems to be a typical type of Bavli-Yerushalmi relationship. What makes this case stand out is the two baraitot adduced in lines 6 and 7 of the Yerushalmi. These texts are both midrashim that have parallels in Tannaitic collections, but both originally addressed questions about when one is obligated in the pesach and matza, not who is obligated. In other words, in their original contexts, neither baraita addresses women’s obligation in matza. I will dwell briefly on the first, but my main focus will be the second. The first baraita supports R. Zeira’s view that the dispute about women’s obligation in the pesach extends to matza. Its original form, found at t. Pesahim 2:22, addresses when the obligations of pesach, matza, and hazeret apply. Here is the text: .‫החזרת והמצה והפסח לילי יום טוב הראשון חובה ושאר ימים רשות‬ .‫ר' שמעון או' לאנשים חובה לנשים רשות‬ Hazeret, matza, and Pesach are obligatory on the first night and optional on the rest. R. Shimon says: It is obligatory for men, optional for women.

The first line states that three symbolic foods are obligatory on the first night of pesach but not on the remaining nights, while R. Shimon claims that something is obligatory for men but optional for women. It is tempt-

35. The text as it appears in Pesahim is corrupt, as the terms ‫ רשות‬and ‫ דברי הכל‬cannot be alternative answers to the same question. Since ‫ דברי הכל‬appears both here and in the parallel in Qiddushin, the correct version of R. Zeira’s answer is clearly ‫מחלוקת‬, as it appears in Qiddushin.

Cahan: Amoraic Memrot  221 ing to say that his distinction applies to all three obligations, as this would be direct proof that there was Tannaitic debate about women’s obligation in matza even though the Yerushalmi leaves out R. Shimon. But it is more likely, based on both internal and external evidence, that his statement applies only to the pesach.36 If this is correct, then the baraita tells us when the obligation to eat matza applies, but not to whom, and so does not provide direct support for R. Zeira’s claim. The Palestinian Talmud uses this text only because it groups pesach and matza together under one rubric. It is in essence inferring that because these obligations share one rule, they must share others as well; thus, just as they are the same in terms of when they are obligatory, so too are they the same in terms of who is obligated. This fits R. Zeira’s claim not that women are exempt, but that those who disagree about their status regarding pesach disagree about matza as well. Our sugya has pulled off a remarkable feat—it has extended the meaning of the baraita by placing it in the context of a debate about gender without altering the actual words of the text. What makes this reading more convincing is that this is exactly the shift that characterizes the second baraita.37

The Beginnings: When does the Prohibition on Hametz Begin? The support for R. Hila’s position, that all would accept women’s obligation in matza, is a midrash on Deut 16:3, which has a parallel in the Sifre on Deuteronomy. Let us revisit the text of the baraita in order to compare it to the Sifre version. Here is the text in our sugya: .‫לא תאכל עליו חמץ שבעת ימים תאכל עליו מצות לחם עוני‬ 36. Leib Moscovitz argues that R. Shimon does mean to exempt women from all three obligations and that the Palestinian Talmud is indeed pointing to that statement as support for R. Zeira. He sees this as an example of the pattern of Yerushalmi sugyot quoting only parts of baraitot and omitting the relevant part (“Od Al Habaraitot Hahaserot Biyerushalmi,” PAAJR 21 [1995]: Heb. section, 9–10). This explanation is, however, unlikely. If it refers solely to the pesach, it would match R. Shimon’s own position in Sifre Numbers 70 (which derives this exemption from a verse) and his son’s position in t. Pesah. 8:10. This is also the way the Bavli (b. Pesah. 91b) understands the statement, and the reading accepted by Saul Lieberman, Tosefta Kifshuta (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1973), 4:510. Matza is never mentioned in connection to R. Shimon and is never included in lists of mitzvot covered by R. Shimon’s own rule exempting women from positive time-bound commandments (Sifre Numbers 115). Moscovitz does not address the alternative possibility that R. Shimon was ruling only on pesach, not matza. On the larger principle, see Rovner, “Rhetorical Strategy and Dialectical Necessity,” 177–231; and Elizabeth Shanks Alexander, “From Whence the Phrase ‘Positive Time-Bound Commandments?,” JQR 97.3 (2007): 317–46. 37. For a different reading of this passage, see Hauptman, “Women in Tractate Pesachim,” 66-67.

222  Making History ,‫את שהוא בבל תאכל חמץ הרי הוא בקום אכול מצה‬ .‫ונשים הואיל והן בבל תאכל חמץ הרי הן בקום אכול מצה‬ “You shall not eat hametz over it, for seven days you shall eat over it ­matzot, the bread of affliction” (Deut 16:3). Those who are forbidden from hametz are obligated in matza, so women, who are forbidden from hametz, are thus obligated in matza.

The baraita has three parts. It first quotes the verse, then it makes a general statement linking the prohibition on hametz to the obligation in matza, and finally it explains that women are an example of a group that is obligated in the first and thus must be obligated in the second as well. A comparison with the Sifre reveals that only the first two segments are part of the original midrash, which addresses only when the biblical prohibition on hametz begins. Here is the Sifre passage: ‫ רבי יהודה אומר מנין לאוכל חמץ משש שעות ולמעלה שעובר בלא‬,‫לא תאכל עליו חמץ‬ .‫תעשה תלמוד לומר לא תאכל עליו חמץ‬ ‫ תלמוד לומר לא תאכל עליו חמץ שבעת ימים תאכל‬,‫אמר רבי שמעון יכול כן הוא הדבר‬ ‫ את שאינו בקום אכול‬,‫ את שהוא בקום אכול מצה הרי הוא בבל תאכל חמץ‬.‫עליו מצות‬ .‫מצה אינו בבל תאכל חמץ‬ You shall not eat hametz over it. R. Yehuda says: How do we know that one who eats hametz past noon (on 14 Nisan) violates a biblical prohibition? From the verse, You shall not eat hametz over it.  R. Shimon said: This could be the case. But the verse says “You shall not eat hametz over it, for seven days you shall eat matzot over it.” When one is obligated to eat matza one is forbidden from eating hametz, when one is not obligated to eat matza one is not forbidden from eating hametz.

We will delve briefly into the original midrash in order to understand how R. Hila in the Palestinian Talmud shifts its meaning. It is explicit in Exod 12:15 that one is liable for the punishment of karet, excommunication, only for eating hametz during the seven days of Passover, “from the first day to the seventh day.” There is not, however, a similarly explicit instruction defining the beginning of the prohibition itself; it could theoretically start earlier, absent the specific punishment. R. Yehuda indeed claims that it begins at noon on 14 Nisan, while R. Shimon claims that the prohibition and its punishment begin simultaneously, at nightfall on 15 Nisan.38 This debate centers on how to read an ambiguity in the presentation of this prohibition in Deut 16:3. Here is the biblical passage, Deut 16:2–3.

38. See also the parallel debate in t. Pesah. 1:8. The view of the sages there corresponds to the view of R. Shimon in our text.

Cahan: Amoraic Memrot  223 ‫וְ זָבַ חְ ּתָ ּפֶסַ ח לַה' אֱֹלהֶ יָך צ ֹאן ּובָ קָ ר … ל ֹא ת ֹאכַל ָעלָיו חָ מֵ ץ ִׁשבְ עַת י ִָמים ּת ֹאכַל ָעלָיו מַ ּצֹות‬ .‫לֶחֶ ם עֹ נִ י‬ You shall offer the pesach to the Lord your God, sheep or cattle.… You shall not eat hametz with it, for seven days you shall eat with it matzot, the bread of affliction.

Verse 3 has rules about both hametz and matza. But the time period it specifies, seven days, is part of the clause about matza. Verse 2, meanwhile, describes the slaughter of the pesach, which is done on day 14 as early as noon, before the start of those seven days. The Tannaim in the Sifre debate whether the prohibition on hametz applies only during the festival, as in the following phrase, or begins during the day of day 14, as in the preceding verse. Key to the debate is the meaning of the word ‫עליו‬, meaning “over/ upon it.” In R. Yehuda’s reading, the word ‫ עליו‬refers back to the offering of the pesach on day 14, and so hametz is forbidden from the time the pesach can be offered, that is, the afternoon of day 14 . R. Shimon challenges this reading based on the juxtaposition of the phrases about hametz and matza. Both phrases, he argues, contain the word ‫עליו‬. It is certain that the requirement to eat matza takes effect only at the time that one eats the pesach, not while one is offering it, since it says “seven days.” Since the two commands appear to be one—you shall not eat hametz over it but shall rather eat matza over it—we must conclude that both are forbidden only after nightfall of day 15. This also resolves another problem: the statement about matza, which does not teach any obligation (there is no obligation to eat matza after the first night), would otherwise be extraneous. He shows that it is needed to teach us about hametz.39 This passage has all of the hallmarks of original Tannaitic exegesis. It is close to the actual meaning of the verse in two ways. First, rather than just relying on juxtaposition, it makes the logically compelling argument that a single term, ‫עליו‬, used in two consecutive, interconnected phrases, should be assumed to mean the same thing both times it appears. Second,

39. Though it is not clear in the text itself whether R. Shimon would permit eating hametz until nightfall or would in fact prohibit it rabbinically, his view is identified in y. Pesah. 1:4 with the view of R. Meir in m. Pesah. 1:4, who forbids eating hametz all afternoon on the fourteenth but is slightly more lenient than R. Yehuda regarding when the prohibition begins. R. Meir’s leniency is understood in the Yerushalmi to be based on the view, following R. Shimon, that the prohibition on hametz for the entire afternoon is rabbinic and thus less in need of additional caution. The Yerushalmi passage also makes explicit, without quoting the Sifre (which attributes this view to R. Shimon), that these positions depend on a dispute over how to understand the word ‫ עליו‬in the verse: ‫ רבי יודה אומר‬,‫רבי מאיר אומר לא תאכל עליו חמץ על אכילתו‬ ‫—לא תאכל עליו חמץ על עשייתו‬R. Meir applies the word ‫ עליו‬to eating the pesach; R. Yehuda applies it to offering it.

224  Making History it addresses a real ambiguity in the verse; that is, the prohibition on hametz seems to refer back to the command to offer the pesach, which takes place during the day of the fourteenth, but it shares a key word with the following phrase, which can only be referring to the night. In other words, this is genuine exegesis; it is generated by the need to resolve an ambiguity in the verses themselves, and it does so through a close and nuanced reading of the words in the verse. It is clear both why this reading is proposed and on what words in the verse it is based. R. Hila in the Palestinian Talmud gives this midrash a new interpretation by quoting it in the context of the discussion about gender. He does not change the words of the original text at all, but he does make two changes. He reverses the order of the inference; instead of taking something known about matza and applying it to hametz, the midrash now suggests a transfer in the opposite direction, from hametz to matza. He also presumes that it represents a general rule, and he infers that this rule would naturally apply to women, who are unquestionably obligated in the prohibition on hametz. This extension of the midrash is, as exegesis, much weaker than the original. There is nothing in the passage that refers to women or any other subgroup; the source for the claim that women are not obligated in pesach is Num 9:13. Nor does the verse refer to the obligation to eat matza; rather, it refers to a period of time (seven days) when one may eat matza, while the obligation to eat matza on the first night is derived from Exod 12:18. The original midrash, by contrast, addresses only the specific question addressed by the verse—when one may not eat hametz. The weakness of the exegesis and the exact parallel to the Sifre text clearly mark it as derivative. In its first appearance it is a strong midrash firmly grounded in the words and context of the verse, but in its adapted form it retains only a tenuous link to its source.

The Iterations of the Sifre We can now review the stages of adaptation that take us from the Sifre to b. Berakhot. In the original exegesis of Deut 16:3, R. Shimon derives from the linguistic connection between the parts of the verse, the word ‫עליו‬, that the prohibition on hametz applies only to the seven days of hag hamatzot, not to the fourteenth. In y. Pesahim 8:1, R. Elazar rules that women are obligated in matza on the first night of Passover. Since there is no direct Tannaitic support for this ruling, R. Hila looks elsewhere. He borrows and adapts the exegesis in Sifre Deuteronomy 130. The new teaching shares the precise language of the original midrash, but the order of the inference is reversed, and the Palestinian Talmud adds a gloss inferring that women would be a prime example of this rule. This allows the Yerushalmi to alter the content without changing the words of the original. It relies on the

Cahan: Amoraic Memrot  225 multiple meanings of the phrase ‫ את שהוא‬as “that which” and “he who,” and it reserves the explicit mapping of this claim onto the case of women for a separate statement.40 The b. Pesahim memra of R. Elazar is simply a condensing of the three key elements of the Yerushalmi sugya into a single statement. For ease of reference, we will reproduce it here: .‫ נשים חייבות באכילת מצה דבר תורה‬:‫ דאמר רבי אלעזר‬.1 ]‫ כל שישנו בבל תאכל חמץ–ישנו [בקום אכול‬,'‫ שנאמר לא תאכל עליו חמץ וגו‬.2 .‫מצה‬ .‫ הואיל וישנן בבל תאכל חמץ–ישנן בקום אכול מצה‬,‫ והני נשי נמי‬.3 1. R. Elazar said: Women are obligated in eating matza [on the first night of Passover] from the Torah, 2. As it is written “You shall not eat any hametz with it (the pesach sacrifice), [for seven days you shall eat matza]” (Deut 16:3). All who are obligated in not eating hametz are obligated in eating matza. 3. And these women also, since they are obligated in not eating hametz, they are obligated in eating matza. It presents a single statement comprising R. Elazar’s ruling (women are obligated in matza), expanded from the single word ‫ חובה‬in the Palestinian Talmud to a full, freestanding statement;41 the midrash linking the obligations in hametz and matza based on Deut 16:3, the support for R. Hila’s understanding of R. Elazar; and the gloss on the midrash explicitly mapping the linkage onto women’s obligation. The dependence of the Babylonian Talmud on the Palestinian Talmud here is clear. The baraita appears in the same modified form as in the Palestinian Talmud, together with parallel Amoraic explanations mapping the ruling onto women, and in the name of the same Amora. But here the origins of the midrash are obscured: since it has been collapsed into a single source beginning with R. Elazar’s ruling, it is no longer possible to separate out the midrash from the gloss linking it to women’s obligation. 40. This transfer may have been made easier by the unusual use of the phrase ‫את שהוא‬ in the Sifre. The term normally means “the one who is” and differentiates between two separate people, as it does in the Yerushalmi revision, whereas the Sifre uses it to indicate the status of the same person at two different times. The Bavli’s version of the original Sifre text (b. Pesah. 28b) replaces the phrase ‫ את שהוא‬with the much clearer ‫בשעה‬, “at the time.” 41. It is quite plausible that the Babylonian Talmud preserves the full, original form of R. Elazar’s statement and the Palestinian Talmud merely paraphrases it. This would fit with a common pattern that can be seen more clearly in quotations of the Tosefta. See Joshua Cahan, “Sources and Innovation: How the Rabbis’ Relationship to Received Teachings Shaped their Legal Thinking” (PhD diss., Jewish Theological Seminary, 2012), chapter 2.

226  Making History There are also several interesting changes. The first is that the passage is condensed. The Bavli attributes to R. Elazar an entire chain of reasoning which in the Yerushalmi comprises three levels: R. Elazar’s ruling, R. Hila’s claim that it is universally accepted, and the baraita brought anonymously in his support. It seems to simply present the conclusion of the Yerushalmi discussion; the Yerushalmi debates whether R. Elazar’s view was universally accepted and cites baraitot to support each side, where, in contrast, in the Bavli, R. Elazar’s view stands undisputed when taught together with the midrash, which in the Yerushalmi supports his claim. And while it largely preserves the Yerushalmi’s wording, including the key phrases ‫בל תאכל חמץ‬, “you may not eat hametz,” and ‫קום אכול מצה‬, “you must eat matza,” the terminology of the Sifre, ‫את שהוא‬, has been replaced by ‫כל שישנו‬, a change that clarifies the meaning of the exegesis but further obscures the dependence of this passage on the Sifre text. We can finally turn back to the b. Berakhot sugya about qiddush hayom with which we started. The initial statement matches the wording in b. Pesahim, and the midrashic statement uses the Babylonian Talmud’s ‫ כל שישנו‬rather than the Palestinian Talmud’s ‫את שהוא‬. It simply swaps in the key words for the new context. Here are the key lines of the Berakhot text: .‫ נשים חייבות בקדוש היום דבר תורה‬:‫ אמר רב אדא בר אהבה‬.1 ‫ כל שישנו בשמירה‬- ‫ אמר קרא (שמות כ') זכור (דברים ה') ושמור‬:‫  אלא אמר רבא‬.5 .‫ישנו בזכירה‬ .‫ איתנהו בזכירה‬- ‫ הואיל ואיתנהו בשמירה‬,‫ והני נשי‬.6 1. R. Ada bar Ahava said: Women are obligated in qiddush hayom from the Torah. 5. Rather Rava said: The Torah said “Remember” and “Observe”— all who are obligated in observing are also obligated in remembering. 6. And these women, since they are obligated in observing, they are also obligated in remembering. The form of the b. Berakhot sugya parallels the statement of R. Elazar about matza. The main difference is that the Berakhot version is in a slightly fuller form, with the midrash and the analogy to women framed as a response to a challenge on R. Ada bar Ahava’s ruling. But the wording matches precisely in all three components. This makes the Berakhot text a third-generation transfer of this teaching—from the Sifre’s focus on when one is forbidden to eat matza, to Pesahim’s focus on who must eat matza, and ultimately to this entirely new context and proof texts. However, unlike the move from the Sifre to y. Pesahim, this is not a case of a simple transfer of an extant text. The content is entirely new, and it is in the names of different teachers. Rather, here we have a case where R. Ada

Cahan: Amoraic Memrot  227 b. Ahava and Rava are presenting a new teaching, but they have formulated it using a frame borrowed from Pesahim. And as we will now see, they draw on earlier materials to shape not only the form but the content of their new idea.

Content: A Collection of Midrashic Ideas One key departure of our passage from the y. Pesahim parallel is that the initial challenge to R. Ada b. Ahava’s claim that women’s obligation in qiddush hayom is biblical is based on the general exemption of women from positive time-bound commandments. The result is that the Babylonian Talmud makes explicit something that was stated less clearly in the Palestinian Talmud: the direct derivation of women’s obligation from a verse overrides the general rule and thus makes the case of qiddush hayom an exception.42 This points to the most likely reason that this teaching is given here: to show that there are exceptions to the rule about women’s exemption. In the Palestinian Talmud discussion of our mishnah (y. Ber. 3:3), each item from the Mishnah is supported by a verse and/or explanation. An objection is then brought43 from t. Qiddushin 1:10, which lists several positive commandments that are time-bound and several that are not, to ask why individual supports are needed for each component of the mishnah when they can be explained by the general principle. The Bavli incorporates this critique. It challenges women’s obligation in prayer and the grace after meals based on the general rule, and it deflects the challenge by stating that they are not in fact time-bound. The implication is that, were these mitzvot indeed time-bound, the rule on its own would be sufficient to exempt women. Our sugya then comes to counter that suggestion by demonstrating that there are in fact cases where the rule is overruled by a specific scriptural directive. To make the point clear, R. Ada bar Ahava’s ruling is challenged from the general rule, setting the stage for the scriptural decree that overrides it. Where does our sugya get the specific example of qiddush hayom? Why not simply use the example of matza itself or any of the several other examples of exceptions to this rule presented in b. Qiddushin? On this point the evidence is less clear, as is often the case with authorial intent, so I will offer a few clues without suggesting that this constitutes a full explication. Rava claims that the link between the terms shamor and zakhor serves to

42. It is possible that the Babylonian Talmud sugya’s use of this mishnah is due to the fact that it appears in the source in y. Pesahim, but it is equally likely that it is included because of the prominence of the principle in the context in Berakhot. 43. Here I follow the reading of Louis Ginzberg, Perushim v’hiddushim biyerushalmi 2 (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1941), 158.

228  Making History teach that a law (women’s obligation) relating to one of the terms, shamor, relates to the other, zakhor, as well. Shamor, in this reading, signifies all of the prohibitions of the Sabbath, while zakhor signifies qiddush hayom. This particular legal claim is novel. Yet Rava’s statement is constructed from several individual elements, each of which is present in earlier texts. The idea that the terms shamor and zakhor are bound together appears in several Tannaitic texts, and, based on this linkage, the terms are given a range of interrelated meanings. The starting point for this association is the claim, found in the Mekilta (Bahodesh 7), that “zakhor and shamor were said in a single speech act.” This is a purely exegetical claim. Given that the text in Deuteronomy purports to be an exact recounting of what took place at Sinai, God must have said both of these words simultaneously, an act that is then put forward as a demonstration of divine power. The Mekilta goes on to propose, separately, that the two terms could be complementary, with zakhor signifying the time added to the beginning of the Sabbath and shamor the time added to its end. Mekilta of Rashbi (on Exod 20:8) identifies zakhor with the preparations made prior to the Sabbath and shamor with the actual observance once it arrives, and the Sifra (Behukotai 1:3) links shamor to keeping the Sabbath in one’s heart (‫ )שמירת לב‬and zakhor to declaring it verbally (‫)שתהא שונה בפיך‬. The idea that the obligation to recite qiddush hayom derives from Exod 20:8 is also present in Tannaitic texts, though not explicitly linked to the word zakhor. The Mekilta connects the idea that one should sanctify the Sabbath with a blessing over wine to the word lekadesho, to sanctify it, also in Exod 20:8. The Sifra does identify zakhor with the requirement to “declare the Sabbath verbally,” and while it may or may not have qiddush hayom in mind, that is in fact the primary way that this is done. The association of zakhor with qiddush is made directly in a baraita on b. Pesahim 106a identifying zakhor, not lekadesho, as the source for the requirement that the Sabbath be recalled over wine. The association of shamor with the prohibited labors is even more obvious, as the root ‫ שמר‬often indicates prohibitions, in both biblical and rabbinic texts.44 Thus, each of the elements of our sugya is found in earlier sources: the pairing of the two terms and the identification of shamor with prohibited labors and zakhor with qiddush hayom. However, they are not found together in those sources. The link between the terms points to the pairings of before/after and preparation/observance, but never of qiddush hayom/prohibitions or even the more general pairing of actions/prohibitions. Even if we were to take “keep in 44. See, e.g., b. Eruv. 96a. Midrash Tannaim to Deut 5:12 may also be a source for this association, as it explicitly explains zakhor to refer to qiddush hayom and shamor to prohibited labors, but it is impossible to establish the dating of the traditions in that collection. See David Zvi Hoffman’s Introduction in Midrasch Tannaim zum Deuteronomium (Berlin: H. ­Itzkowski, 1908).

Cahan: Amoraic Memrot  229 your heart” in the Sifra text to point to the prohibitions and “recite with your mouth” to indicate qiddush hayom, it makes no attempt to derive any legal conclusion from it. There is certainly no source that speaks about who is obligated to do this. Indeed, no earlier statement even mentions the existence of such an obligation. The only extant text that is aware of this obligation is our passage from the Babylonian Talmud. Why was Rabbi Elazar’s teaching about matza replicated as a teaching about qiddush hayom? It cannot simply be that they needed a counterexample to the preceding passage that seemed to affirm the prescriptive power of the rule. If so, they had other, well-established examples available, and even without that, qiddush hayom is an exceptionally odd choice. The impetus must have been the other tradition that refers to qiddush over wine as a Shabbat ritual, the midrash we saw above, and specifically the version that attached it to the word zakhor. Someone clearly saw a conceptual parallel between the duality of shamor and zakhor as representing the negative and positive mitzvot of Shabbat, and the coupling of the prohibition on hametz with the obligation to eat matza, and thus applied a tradition building on that duality in Passover to Shabbat as well. Qiddush hayom is the only specific action that is associated with zakhor and thus becomes the focus. This could have been motivated by the needs of its present context, or by the Bavli’s idea that an established link between two terms ought to have a legal implication, as suggested by its context in b. Shevu’ot. Or it could simply have been part of the editors’ general expansion of the talmudic corpus by reusing traditions in new contexts. What is clear is that it stems from the conceptual parallel between the dyads of zakhor/shamor and hametz/matza, rather than from an independent interest in the mitzvah of qiddush hayom or women’s obligation in it.

Amoraic Rulings That Override the Rule It is worth a pause here to ask how much of a difference this makes in terms of how we approach a passage like this one. After all, the bottom line is that the idea that women are obligated in qiddush is an Amoraic innovation, which is what we thought at the outset. The fact that this teaching was crafted by piecing together elements of older traditions may clarify why it feels more familiar than it is, and the influence of the two sets of sources explains why it is presented in the language of midrash halakhah even though it is not Tannaitic or based in a direct way on the biblical sources. But it is still a law that the Amoraim chose to teach and thus it seems meaningful to ask why they did so. To see why this is not so clear, we need to digress to look at a closely related example of the phenomenon of Amoraim replicating known forms with new content. Joshua Kulp and Jason Rogoff briefly touch on our

230  Making History sugya in their chapter on the question of women’s obligation in the grace after meals.45 Jay Rovner had noted that qiddush hayom is the only midrashically derived exception to the positive time-bound mitzvot rule not noted in other sources. Elizabeth Alexander addresses all five cases in which Amoraim add new exceptions to this rule without apparent concern over the conflict. In addition to the cases of qiddush and matza, there are three statements of Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi obligating women in a mitzvah (Megillah, Hanukkah candles, and four cups of wine on Passover) because ‫אַ ף הֵ ן הָ יּו ּבְ אֹותֹו הַ ּנֵס‬, “they were also saved by the miracle.” Alexander concludes that “the rule was not viewed as having prescriptive force to determine women’s ritual exemption.”46 Or, as Kulp and Rogoff note, “It does not seem that these Amoraim considered the mishnah from Kiddushin, which exempts women from positive timebound commandments, to be fully encompassing.”47 These cases serve, in other words, to establish that the Amoraim had no problem adding new exceptions to this rule. In a footnote (!),48 Kulp and Rogoff note that these are not three separate exceptions to the rule. Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi’s original memra was about reading the Megillah, and it was replicated only at a later point in the other two contexts. This observation, it turns out, is no mere curiosity. It is another case where one teaching was generated by the Bavli clarifying a specific ambiguity in the Yerushalmi, and that teaching, once established, was then replicated in two related contexts mainly by association. Women’s obligation in the mitzvah of reading the Megillah is the subject of a tension between Mishnah and Tosefta Megillah. The Tosefta states that women are exempt from the mitzvah and cannot perform it for others, then presents a debate about whether a child can read for others. The Mishnah, though, declares that ‫ וְ קָ טָ ן‬,‫ ׁשֹוטֶ ה‬,‫הַ ּכֹ ל ּכְ ׁשֵ ִרין לִ קְ רֹות אֶ ת הַ ְּמגִ ּלָה חּוץ מֵ חֵ ֵרׁש‬, “All are permitted to read the Megillah except a deaf-mute, one who is mentally impaired, and a child,” with no mention of women. This need not be a problem; Tosefta and Mishnah Rosh Hashanah parallel these almost exactly, and in the Palestinian Talmud shofar is already absorbed into t. Qiddushin’s list of exceptions. But regarding the Megillah, the Palestinian Talmud moves in a different direction. It first quotes the Tosefta’s debate about children, without the line exempting women. That is followed by this remarkable statement by the late Tanna Bar Qappara:  .‫בר קפרא אמר צריך לקרותה לפני נשים ולפני קטנים שאף אותם הוו בספק‬ 45. Kulp and Rogoff, Reconstructing the Talmud, 182–84. 46. Alexander, Gender and Timebound Commandments, 122. 47. Kulp and Rogoff, Reconstructing the Talmud, 184. 48. Ibid., 184 n. 15.

Cahan: Amoraic Memrot  231 Bar Qappara said: One must read it for women and children because they too were in danger.

Bar Qappara’s mention of women may reflect his awareness of their exemption, but his inclusion of children shows that he does not mean to challenge it. Rather, his point is that, despite being exempt, women and children deserve to be told the story because it impacts them. It then reports that Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi took this mandate seriously and did just as Bar Qappara instructed. In a step almost identical to its treatment of the Palestinian Talmud sugya about matza, the Babylonian Talmud condenses the statement of Bar Qappara and the story about Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi into a single statement, attributed to Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi, that women are, contrary to the Tosefta, obligated in the Megillah reading for the reason Bar Qappara had adduced, that they were involved in the miracle (children are omitted, since they could not themselves be obligated). The Babylonian Talmud teaching of ‫ אַ ף הֵ ן הָ יּו ּבְ אֹותֹו הַ ּנֵס‬transforms Bar Qappara’s mandate to tell women and children the story of the Megillah because they deserve to know about it into a legal statement that they are themselves obligated, thus inverting its original meaning, reversing the Tosefta’s rule and becoming a new exception to the rule about positive time-bound commandments. As for the two parallels, it is clear that they are secondary reworkings of the teaching about Megillah. This is true not only because only the Megillah version has clear antecedents but because, as is common with such cases, the later versions are less logical. While the Tannaim directly address who is obligated in reading Megillah, there are no earlier texts about the other two rituals that even raise the question of individual obligation. Hanukkah candles are a group obligation that can be discharged by any family member, and the four cups of wine are not described elsewhere as a mitzvah in the traditional sense; there is no apparent reason that anyone would see a need to address women’s obligation in these cases. They are, though, connected by being the three mitzvot performed solely to acknowledge a miracle, unconnected to women’s involvement.49 It is most likely that these derivative teachings are generated by the editors mainly because the concept of ‫ אַ ף הֵ ן הָ יּו ּבְ אֹותֹו הַ ּנֵס‬seemed fitting for these other stories of miracle as well. To be clear, I am not questioning Alexander’s conclusion that the Amoraim did not understand the rule about positive timebound mitzvot to be prescriptive. Rather, I do not believe that the Amoraim saw any need

49. Moshe Liechtenstein makes essentially this point, arguing that attempts by commentators to tie this rule to women’s involvement in these stories are implausible, and the real connection is that these mitzvot have the recognition of miracles as their sole purpose. “They too were part of the miracle” [Hebrew], Shana b’Shana (2002): 29–121.

232  Making History to address women’s obligation in these mitzvot precisely because the rule was never thought to apply to anything other than the already established cases. It does, though, force us to revise the claim that Amoraim actively added to the list of exceptions to the rule. There are exactly five apparent Amoraic additions. Of these, matza and Megillah stem from questions in the Palestinian Talmud particular to those mitzvot; while qiddush, Hanukkah, and the four cups of wine are products of the editors replicating those teachings in other, related contexts. These look like new, original Amoraic teachings, but in fact they reflect the recognized tendency of the Bavli editors to transfer memrot from one context to another, which, despite the change in content, should not be seen as independent Amoraic traditions.

Conclusions It is not my claim that the argument above has definitively uncovered all of the considerations and influences that shaped the sugya in Berakhot 20b as we have it. Nor do I claim to have proven anything about the frequency of the phenomena presented here. I have two main goals: (1) to demonstrate how a single passage that appears to be both early and exclusively Babylonian in provenance in fact appropriates and reworks earlier, Palestinian materials; and (2) to show that the appropriation of earlier sources and giving them new meanings is present in all layers of rabbinic literature. By way of conclusion I want to make explicit a few of the most important phenomena illustrated above that I believe are common and easily overlooked in exploring textual development. First, the fact that our sugya adapts earlier traditions does not lead to the conclusion that it is stammaitic, that is, post-Amoraic, and that the attributions are fabricated. I am rather suggesting that many authentic Amoraic dicta in both the Babylonian Talmud and the Palestinian Talmud are rewritings and recombinations of earlier material. Secondary reworking of the kind generally associated with the Stam is more prevalent in the Amoraic stratum of the Babylonian Talmud and the Palestinian Talmud than is often assumed. Statements that share form or language with other statements even from seemingly unrelated areas must be examined for signs of influence or dependence. These relationships may be present even when the language is changed; that is, the exegesis in our passage draws on Tannaitic exegesis of shamor and zakhor, but it gives that Tannaitic exegesis new meaning by fitting it into the formal structure taken from Pesahim. A corollary of this point is that original Babylonian teachings that in no way draw on or respond to Palestinian sources are less common than it appears. This follows the understanding advocated by Shamma Friedman that the Babylonian Amoraim emend earlier sources with a much freer hand than do Palestinian rabbis and much more freely

Cahan: Amoraic Memrot  233 than earlier scholars assumed. Conversely, though, they are also heavily dependent on those inherited sources. I hope to show in future work that this is a common feature of many seemingly original Babylonian passages. Their creativity and originality are focused on how they use their sources much more than on generating wholly original issues and discussions. The several iterations of the original Sifre teaching illustrate a key indicator of the direction of literary dependence between midrashic parallels: the relative strength of the exegesis, meaning their grounding in the texts they purport to explain. In our example, the original midrash responds to an actual ambiguity in the text about the timing of the prohibition on hametz. It builds on a clear linguistic link and addresses a concrete problem in the wording of the verse. The second form of the exegesis is on the topic of matza, but it does not address any inherent problems in the verse and is applied to an issue (who is obligated) not relevant to it. The third form is farthest removed from its sources, since it is only by piecing together several independent rabbinic interpretations of the relevant verses that we can make sense of the association of the words shamor and zakhor with negative and positive Sabbath obligations or the assertion that they are conceptually linked, let alone a connection to questions of gender. This pattern also illustrates how Kugel’s notion of an “afterlife” for midrashic motifs can be applied to midrash halakhah and to early legal traditions more generally. The transfer of teachings and ideas from one context to another, resituating the materials and thus giving them new meanings, is a significant component of Amoraic activity in both the Palestinian Talmud and the Babylonian Talmud. The prevalence of entire Yerushalmi passages copied unchanged from place to place (mostly post­ redactorial) often obscures the editorial work and active borrowing that shaped the character of the corpus. The radically new forms such teachings are sometimes given in the Babylonian Talmud often obscures the close relationships they have with source material. Teachings originally taught in one context are transferred and given new meanings in relation to a new set of issues, often with only minimal changes to the actual text itself. In their own way, Palestinian Amoraim, faced with new questions and challenges, mined the trove of extant rabbinic material for teachings that could be used, with some reinterpretation, to address them. These acts of resituating are sometimes clearly intentional, using a known phrase or idiom to address a new and unexplored issue. And they are sometimes unintentional, arising from a misreading of or obscurity in a source. But they can also in many cases be seen as subconscious; these texts, having become so familiar as to be part of the basic vocabulary of the culture, form part of the store of linguistic building blocks through which the rabbis communicate. This type of citation reflects a type of “syntagmatic citation,” the creation of new/old meaning by resituating familiar

234  Making History texts in new frameworks, a term by which Daniel Boyarin describes the midrashist’s use of Scripture.50 Once a linkage between particular verses becomes part of the rabbinic dialogue, it gets used in a variety of contexts, some of which are only tenuously connected to its original usage. Once a logical argument takes shape, that structure becomes a building block that can be appropriated for new concepts. In the passage discussed here, the original exegetical point reflects direct engagement with specific problems in the text. But once this linkage between the two parts of that verse has been taught, it becomes part of the rabbinic lexicon. Y. Pesahim chooses to address a question about women’s obligation in matza by using a familiar midrashic link, anchored in this verse, between hametz and matza. It is insignificant that the verse is not germane to the question, because this sugya is not drawing on the biblical source. It draws on the corpus of rabbinic teachings that has itself become the material for further reworking. We see a similar phenomenon regarding shamor and zakhor. The original elements reflect several attempts to address a concrete problem in the biblical text, the intertextual tension between Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5. Here the earliest link seems to be exclusively exegetical: an observation that they must have been uttered simultaneously and thus miraculously. Once this midrash is formulated, it itself becomes the subject of investigation. The two terms are now understood to refer to distinct but connected aspects of the Sabbath. In some places we even see them linked by attaching to two opposite aspects. Rava, then, is not primarily interpreting two biblical verses. His intertext is not the biblical but the rabbinic corpus. He draws together the familiar linkage between the two terms, particular meanings attached to each of the terms in other places, and a logical form drawn from y. Pesahim, to create this new teaching. His idea does not emerge from the verses themselves, and thus might appear to be a foregone conclusion attached ex post facto to a verse (asmakhta). But this misses the real point: Rava is indeed doing midrash, the art of exploring intertextual links and of creating new Torah by refashioning the old, engaging in what might be termed “midrash on midrash.”

50. Daniel Boyarin, Intertextuality and the Reading of Midrash, Indiana Studies in Biblical Literature (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), 26–38.

Eiteveih as an Indicator of Halakhic Change A Sample Study and a Proposal for Further Research JUDITH HAUPTMAN

I

t is commonplace in the Bavli for one Amora to object to the halakhic ruling of another by citing a Tannaitic text that conflicts with the other Amora’s ruling. The term eiteveih (“he refuted him”) describes this phenomenon. It implies that both the challenger and the challenged regard Tannaitic texts as more authoritative than their own Amoraic pronouncements.1 This phenomenon is of interest because traditionally, when encountering the term eiteveih, one interprets it as a straightforward challenge. That is, it appears that one Amora is suggesting to a second that a

1. Adin Steinsaltz, Reference Guide to the Talmud (New Milford, CT: Koren Publishers Jerusalem, 1989), 103: “Eiteveih, He objected to him. An expression used to introduce an objection raised by one amora, based on a Tannaitic source, to the viewpoint of another amora.” Yitzhak Frank, The Practical Talmud Dictionary (New Milford, CT: Koren Publishers Jerusalem2016), 24: “Eiteveih, . . . , he raised a difficulty against him. This term introduces a difficulty raised by an amora against the halakhah of another amora because of a contradiction from a more authoritative source—a pasuk, a Mishnah, a baraitha.…” Yitzchak Feigenbaum, Understanding the Talmud: A Systematic Guide to Talmudic Structure and Methodology (Spring Valley, NY: Feldheim, 1988), 19: “Eiteveih . . . an attack question asked by one or more Amoraim against another Amora. The attack is usually based on a Tannaitic source (an Amora cannot, of course, argue with a Tanna), but may also be based on the Torah. Eiteveih . . . always introduce(s) a contradiction from a more authoritative source against a less authoritative source.…” Moses Mielziner, Introduction to the Talmud (Cincinnati: American Hebrew Publishing House, 1894), 228: “Finding the memra to be colliding with a Mishnah or a Baraitha. The objection is raised against the author of the Memra that the latter is in conflict with an undisputed Mishna or Baraita, the authority of which is generally introduced either by the phrase meteivei or eiteveih. . . . Mostly, however, the objection is removed by showing that the Mishna or Baraita referred to treats of a different case or different circumstances.…”

235

236  Making History statement issued by the first was found by his student or colleague to be unacceptable. My goal in this essay is to offer a proposal for further research based on analyses of selected eiteveih sugyot that suggest that eiteveih may be communicating a more complex message.2 According to the Bar Ilan data base, there are 460 appearances of this term in the Bavli. I have limited my investigation to its frequent use in reference to Abaye. This fourth-generation Babylonian Amora challenged a colleague’s statement with a Tannaitic text in sixty-nine instances, far more than any other Amora.3 Rava is second with forty-three and Ravina third with fifteen. Most often Abaye challenged his mentors Rabbah and R. Yosef, but also occasionally his colleague Rava.4 Upon examining half of these sugyot, I found that, in at least four instances, Abaye is not simply saying that his mentor’s ruling conflicts with a baraita, which is problematic in and of itself. Rather, he is trying, by means of a baraita, to eliminate the rule his mentor is introducing.5 In some cases, Abaye has to interpret the baraita he cites in implausible and even tortured ways to mount his challenge. This leads me to suspect that the mentor or colleague against whom Abaye directs a challenge did not issue a halakhah that invited criticism because it was clearly at odds with a given Tannaitic text. Rather, Abaye “invents” a conflict between the proposed memra and a baraita with the express purpose of blocking the new rule. Also supporting my hypothesis about Abaye’s modus operandi is that, at times, the tractate and chapter from which he draws the challenging baraita is not the parallel one within which the Bavli sugya is located. Rather, he employs a text from a different chapter or tractate. This implies,

2. The term eiteveih is different from meitevei (i.e., they challenge or refute), in which the presumably Amoraic challengers are not named. 3. Often a second eiteveih by Abaye, in the same sugya, does not indicate his name. Therefore, the total is actually higher. 4. I am indebted to the groundbreaking studies of Richard Kalmin for many keen observations regarding Amoraic interaction. It is Kalmin who points out that Amoraim who interact with each other are usually of different ranks, one “inferior” and the other “superior.” For example, conversations between Abaye and his teacher R. Yosef, or Abaye and his teacher Rabbah, far outnumber conversations between Abaye and Rava, his colleague and contemporary, even though the Talmud is called “havayot (investigations) d’Abaye v’Rava.” See Kalmin’s volume, Sages, Stories, Authors, and Editors in Rabbinic Babylonia, BJS 300 (Providence, RI: Brown Judaic Studies, 1994,) 209. 5. Since most eiteveih objections are launched by a junior scholar against a senior scholar, and are resolved in favor of the senior scholar, it appears that this is a technique of the editor(s) of the Bavli, or a time-honored technique of rabbinic deliberation, to show that it is not just acceptable for a student to issue such objections but even incumbent upon him to do so. That the objections are nearly always resolved indicates that a proposed halakhah of a senior scholar was appropriately vetted and that its author successfully warded off all challenges. See Conclusions.

Hauptman: Eiteveih as an Indicator of Halakhic Change  237 of course, that Abaye had a collection of baraitot, a “Tosefta” of sorts, from which he drew the texts he used for his challenges. To state this point more clearly: many of the baraitot that Abaye cites in his various challenges appear in “our” Tosefta, but not in the chapter, or even tractate, in which he launches his challenge. I am claiming that the local baraitot, those studied along with the Mishnah, were known by Abaye and constituted a Tannaitic substratum of the sugya.6 For the most part, Rabbah, R. Yosef, and Rava did not issue halakhot that would conflict with those baraitot. That is, their new pronouncements were not in direct conflict with any baraita associated with the local Mishnah. Abaye, therefore, had to look “far and wide” for a Tannaitic text he could interpret as conflicting with his mentor’s or colleague’s statement. Abaye, it seems, on occasion “manufactured” challenges from more distant Tannaitic texts. In response to Abaye’s challenge, the attacked senior scholar, or perhaps a later Stam, interprets the usually nonlocal baraita according to its plain-sense meaning. In this way, he resolves the conflict. With the challenge resolved, the senior scholar’s halakhic change stands. Thus, the newly introduced rulings of Rabbah, R. Yosef, and Rava are upheld. I found that in nearly every case of “eiteveih Abaye” there is a response to the challenge: either the Amora whom Abaye attacked defends his own position, or a Stam defends it for him, or another Amora defends his position for him. In only a very small number of cases does the challenge stand, that is, does the text say “teyuvta” (“refuted”), meaning the challenge to a memra from a Tannaitic text was upheld. On rare occasions, however, Abaye does utilize a local baraita to challenge his colleague. This can happen if the plain sense of a local baraita clearly conflicts with the new rule the senior Amora is presenting. In such a case, the challenged colleague reinterprets the baraita away from its plain sense meaning to make it accord with his own halakhah. (We will see two examples of this below.) Even so, the new rule is upheld, despite the less-than-likely interpretation of the “challenging” baraita. The upshot of eiteveih sugyot, in particular of “eiteveih Abaye” sugyot, is that the proposed new rule of Abaye’s interlocutor survives the attack. What does the addition to “eiteveih Abaye” of the phrase [l’amora X] imply? It is possible that when an Amora’s name appears in a sugya as the object of criticism, it means that the defense, even if presented as anonymous, is actually coming from the Amora himself. I think it possible, and even likely, that when the text says that Abaye (for instance) refutes Rabbah (eiteveih Abaye l’Rabbah), the response to the refutation is from Rabbah 6. See my article, “The Three Basic Components of the Sugya: The Tannaitic Passages, the Amoraic Statements and the Anonymous Commentary” [Hebrew], in Melekhet Mahshevet: Studies in the Redaction and Development of Talmudic Literature, ed. Aharon Amit and Aharon Shemesh (Ramat-Gan: Bar Ilan University Press, 2011), 39–53.

238  Making History himself, even if the response is not preceded by the words “he answered him.” It might be considered redundant for the text to say that Rabbah responded, because the phrase “[Abaye] attacked him, Rabbah” already implies that the response will be issued by the one who—that is, the “him” who—was attacked. The different possible answers to the question of who responded to the eiteveih challenge—the Amora himself or a later Stam—result in very different theories as to what the editor of the sugya is trying to communicate. If the attacked Amora himself issues a defense to Abaye’s challenge, thereby justifying his own halakhic modification, then the larger point the Talmud is making is that Amoraim may introduce halakhic innovations. However, if the Amora himself did not respond to the challenge—that is, if a later Stam answers it for him—then the message of the earlier, Amoraic layer of the Talmud, prior to the insertion of the Stam, is that an Amora may not introduce halakhic innovations. Abaye is therefore understood as correctly pointing out to his mentor or colleague the error of his ways, in response to which the mentor or colleague himself does not attempt to justify his proposed halakhic innovation. If that is in fact the message of the Amoraic layer of the Talmud, then it is the Stam who later subverts an earlier (Amoraic) concept that Amoraim may not introduce halakhic innovations because the Stam, in most instances, defends the earlier Amora’s proposed halakhic innovation. If so, it is the Stam who endorses the possibility that Amoraim may modify Tannaitic rules. Further studies of eiteveh sugyot will need to grapple with the question of whether the Amora or the Stam is responsible for the response to the challenge and hence for the implication that halakhic innovation is allowable. I will illustrate this phenomenon with four sugyot. For each example I will provide the full Hebrew or Aramaic text. Alongside the Hebrew or Aramaic, I will paraphrase each section of the sugya in English and indicate its role in the evolving discussion. A detailed explanation of the sugya will follow.

B. Eruvin 104a, Producing Sounds on the Sabbath ".‫"ממלאין מבור הגולה‬ ‫ מאן האי? ליתחל גופיה‬:‫ אמר‬.‫ אתא ההוא גברא טרף אבבא‬,‫עולא איקלע לבי רב מנשה‬ .‫דקא מחיל ליה לשבתא‬ .‫ לא אסרו אלא קול של שיר‬:‫אמר ליה רבה‬ ‫ היכי‬,‫ לבריא לא‬,‫ לחולה אין‬.‫ מעלין בדיופי ומטיפין מיארק לחולה בשבת‬:‫איתיביה אביי‬ !‫ אולודי קלא אסיר‬:‫דמי? לאו דנים וקא בעי דליתער? שמע מינה‬ .‫ דמשתמע כי קלא דזמזומי‬,‫לא דתיר וקא בעי דלינים‬ ‫ ובלבד‬,‫ המשמר פירותיו מפני העופות ודלעיו מפני החיה משמר כדרכו בשבת‬:‫איתיביה‬

Hauptman: Eiteveih as an Indicator of Halakhic Change  239 ,‫ מאי טעמא לאו דקמוליד קלא‬.‫שלא יספק ולא יטפח ולא ירקד כדרך שהן עושין בחול‬ !‫וכל אולודי קלא אסיר‬ .‫ גזירה שמא יטול צרור‬:‫אמר רב אחא בר יעקב‬ 1 Ulla, a visitor from the land of Israel, claims no sounds at all may be produced on the Sabbath. He curses a man who knocked on a door on the Sabbath.

‫ אתא ההוא גברא‬,‫ עולא איקלע לבי רב מנשה‬1 ‫ מאן האי? ליתחל גופיה דקא‬:‫ אמר‬.‫טרף אבבא‬ .‫מחיל ליה לשבתא‬

2 Rabbah disagrees and tells Ulla that the production of most sounds on the Sabbath is permitted, just not the sound of music.

.‫ לא אסרו אלא קול של שיר‬:‫ אמר ליה רבה‬2

3 Abaye attempts to derail Rabbah’s leniency by interpreting a baraita from a different tractate not according to the simple meaning of its words (t. Shabb. 2:7). He claims that it permits making sounds on the Sabbath only for someone sick, to help him wake up, not for someone healthy.

‫ מעלין בדיופי ומטיפין מיארק‬:‫ איתיביה אביי‬3 ?‫ היכי דמי‬,‫ לבריא לא‬,‫ לחולה אין‬.‫לחולה בשבת‬ ‫ אולודי‬:‫לאו דנים וקא בעי דליתער? שמע מינה‬ !‫קלא אסיר‬

4 Rabbah reinterprets the baraita so that it does not contradict his leniency. It does not speak of helping someone wake up, as Abaye claims, but instead of helping a sick person go to sleep. The noise is not noise but a barely audible rustle.

‫ דמשתמע כי קלא‬,‫ דתיר וקא בעי דלינים‬,‫ לא‬4 .‫דזמזומי‬

5 Abaye cites another baraita, again from a different tractate, to challenge Rabbah and interprets it, again, not according to the simple meaning of its words (t. Shabb. 17:25). One may not guard his produce on the Sabbath in the same way as on an ordinary day. He may not slap his thigh or clap his hands or jump up and down, presumably because those actions produce sounds.

‫ ודלעיו‬,‫ המשמר פירותיו מפני העופות‬:‫ איתיביה‬5 ‫ ובלבד שלא יספק‬,‫ משמר כדרכו בשבת‬,‫מפני החיה‬ ‫ מאי‬.‫ולא יטפח ולא ירקד כדרך שהן עושין בחול‬ !‫ וכל אולודי קלא אסיר‬,‫ לאו דקמוליד קלא‬,‫טעמא‬

240  Making History 6 R. Aha bar Ya’akov, a contemporary of Rabbah, reinterprets the baraita so that it does not conflict with Rabbah’s permission to produce sounds on the Sabbath. He says that the baraita bans clapping, and so on, to stop a person from throwing a rock at the birds or animals.

.‫ גזירה שמא יטול צרור‬:‫ אמר רב אחא בר יעקב‬6

The bottom line is that Ulla bans all sound production on the Sabbath. Abaye attempts to uphold Ulla’s stringency but fails. Only sounds of music are prohibited on the Sabbath, as ruled by Rabbah.

Explanation M. Eruvin 10:14, on B. Eruvin 104a, states that one may draw water on the Sabbath from the well of the Golah, located in the Temple. By implication, one may not draw water on the Sabbath from a well anywhere else. The reason for the ban appears to be that making noise on the Sabbath—which necessarily occurs when drawing water from a well—is prohibited.7 The sugya begins with an anecdote. Ulla, an Amora of the land of Israel, is a Sabbath guest in the home of R. Menashe, a lesser-known Babylonian Amora of the third or fourth generation. While there, a visitor comes and knocks on the door. Ulla asks, “Who is there?” and then adds, “may the body of the man who desecrates the Sabbath be itself desecrated.” Ulla clearly holds that knocking, that is, producing sounds, is forbidden on the Sabbath. Rabbah, who also appears to be a guest at that same home, criticizes Ulla, noting that “they,” that is, the rabbis who outlawed making noise on the Sabbath, only prohibited sounds of music. If so, making a sound by knocking on the door is permitted. At a later time,8 Abaye challenges his mentor Rabbah from a baraita (t. Shabb. 2:7).9 It states that one may bring up from the diyofi (ledge) in order to drip from 7. See the continuation of the sugya for a different explanation of the prohibition. 8. It is not clear if the challenge was lodged on that same Sabbath or at a later time. If Abaye spent Sabbaths with Rabbah, as is possible and even likely, then if Rabbah was visiting R. Menashe, Abaye was also there to serve his teacher/mentor Rabbah. 9. The parallel texts in the Tosefta are nearly identical to the ones Abaye cites. There is no reason to think, from their respective contexts in the Tosefta, that the issue they address is producing sounds on the Sabbath. ‫תוספתא מסכת שבת (ליברמן) פרק ב הלכה ז‬ .‫מעלין בדיופי ומטיפין מן הארק לחולה בשבת‬. . . ‫תוספתא מסכת שבת (ליברמן) פרק יז הלכה כה‬

Hauptman: Eiteveih as an Indicator of Halakhic Change  241 the yareq (a particular vessel) for a sick person on the Sabbath.10 This means, according to Abaye, that in order to wake up a sleeping sick person, one may make sounds by bringing water up from the ledge and letting it drip down on him through the small holes of the vessel called “yareq.”11 It follows that one may not engage in these noise-producing activities for a healthy person on the Sabbath. Thus, according to this baraita, all activities that generate any kind of noise, not just musical sounds, are forbidden on the Sabbath. Abaye thus agrees with Ulla and disagrees with Rabbah, who permitted producing sounds other than music on the Sabbath. Note that Abaye cites a baraita from t. Shabbat—not t. Eruvin—to challenge Rabbah’s comment in b. Eruvin. Also note that Abaye needs to derive his halakhic point by inference from the baraita because the plain meaning of the words does not address the issue of producing sounds on the Sabbath. Rabbah (or the Stam) replies to the challenge. He states that the sick person in the baraita is awake (not asleep, as Abaye would have it), and that the sounds, which help him fall asleep, are essentially no more than a rustle. A loud noise would be needed to awaken someone; to put someone to sleep, a noise need be barely audible. Rabbah’s point, then, is that Abaye’s interpretation of the circumstances of the baraita is wrong. The baraita permits generating “white noise” to help a sick person fall asleep and therefore does not conflict with Rabbah’s position that producing non­ musical sounds on the Sabbath is permitted. Abaye then launches a second challenge against Rabbah, again from a ‫ ובלבד שלא יספק ולא ירקד ולא יטפיח כדרך‬,‫ משמר כדרכו בשבת‬,‫ ומקשאות מפני חיה‬,‫המשמר זרעים מפני עופות‬ .‫שעושה בחול‬ T. Shab. 2:7 . . . One may bring up from the diyofi [i.e., ledge] in order to drip [­liquid] from the areq for a sick person on the Sabbath. T. Shab. 17:25 One who wants to protect his [planted] seeds from birds, or his cucumber field from animals, may stand guard in his fields on the Sabbath as he does on weekdays, so long as he does not clap his hands, slap his thighs, or jump up and down as he does on weekdays. 10. See also m. Shabb. 2:5, where one is permitted to extinguish a flame on the Sabbath so that a sick person may fall asleep. 11. According to Rashi (s.v. ma’alin bi-diyofi), this is preferable to waking him up directly. See Saul Lieberman, t. Shabb. 2:7 (The Tosefta, ed. S. Lieberman, Moed, Shabbath [New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1962], 8) who explains the words diyofi and yareq. He says, however, that the point of dripping water onto a sick person is not to wake him up but to help him fall asleep. See continuation of sugya. See also Lieberman’s comments in Tosefta Ki-fshutah (Mo‘ed; New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1962), 32, where he notes that the Yerushalmi has a more correct rendering of these utensils. He notes further that the Yerushalmi, like Ulla, prohibits producing all sounds on the Sabbath, not because one might repair a utensil, as in the Bavli, but because making sounds on the Sabbath is a shevut prohibition on its own accord.

242  Making History nonlocal baraita. T. Shabbat 17:25 says that one who wants to protect his produce from being eaten by birds or other animals may stand guard in his fields on the Sabbath, as he does on ordinary days. But there are Sabbath limitations: he may not clap his hands or slap his thighs or jump up and down to chase away any creatures as he does on weekdays. Again, Abaye has to derive his challenge to Rabbah by inference from the baraita because it is not evident from the baraita’s plain meaning. Abaye claims that the cited activities are forbidden because they involve producing sounds on the Sabbath. This time his challenge is neutralized by a third-generation Amoraic contemporary of Rabbah, R. Aha bar Ya’akov. This Amora claims that the activities of clapping and slapping are prohibited not on the ground of producing sounds on the Sabbath, but due to a concern that this behavior is likely to lead him to violate the Sabbath by picking up a rock to throw at birds or other animals.12 If so, the baraita cannot fairly be interpreted as banning producing sounds on the Sabbath. R. Aha bar Ya’akov’s interpretation is likely the baraita’s plain-sense meaning.13 Is Abaye trying to stop Rabbah’s lenient rule from becoming standard practice, or is he merely examining the leniency in the context of earlier traditions to see if it conflicts with them? The fact that Abaye cites baraitot from t. Shabbat and not t. Eruvin and needs, in both instances, to interpret the baraita other than according to its plain meaning, suggests that his goal (albeit unstated) may be to object to Rabbah’s ruling. That is, it appears that 12. Joseph Caro, in his Kesef Mishneh to Laws of Shabbat 21:3, notes that, even though the text puts this response in the mouth of R. Aha bar Ya’akov, it is actually a response by Rabbah to defend his position that producing sounds is permitted on the Sabbath, except for sounds of music. 13. ‫ וכל‬,‫ מאי טעמא לאו דקא מוליד קלא‬.‫ נשים המשחקות באגוזים אסור‬:‫ואלא הא דאמר רב יהודה אמר רב‬ ?‫אולודי קלא אסיר‬ ‫ התם מאי‬.‫ נשים משחקות בתפוחים אסור‬:‫ דאי לא תימא הכי הא דאמר רב יהודה‬.‫ דלמא אתי לאשוויי גומות‬,‫לא‬ .‫ דילמא אתי לאשוויי גומות‬:‫אולודי קלא איכא? אלא‬ As for what R. Judah said in the name of Rav: women are forbidden to play with nuts [on the Sabbath]. What is the reason? Is it not that the [nuts] make noise, and all noisemaking [on the Sabbath] is forbidden? No, perhaps [women are forbidden to play with nuts] because of [the prohibition of] evening out depressions. For if you do not say thus, [it will conflict with] that which was [also] stated by R. Judah: women are forbidden to play with apples on the Sabbath. There, what noisemaking is there?! Rather, the reason [playing with nuts is forbidden on the Sabbath] is that they [i.e., the women] may come to even out depressions. The sugya continues with a third challenge to Rabbah, not from a baraita. It is not clear if it is articulated by Abaye or by a Stam. It is not introduced by eiteveih. The basis for the challenge is a memra of Rav that women are forbidden to play with nuts on the Sabbath, presumably because such a game can generate sounds. Here, too, the challenge is not evident and needs to be deduced by the interlocutor. And here, too, the challenge is neutralized by a Stam who says that the reason for the ban on women playing with nuts is not that they make noise on the Sabbath but that the women may “even out depressions,” which is forbidden on the Sabbath. The Stam thus upholds Rabbah’s rule that producing sounds, other than sounds of music, is permitted on the Sabbath.

Hauptman: Eiteveih as an Indicator of Halakhic Change  243 he set out to refute Rabbah’s rule and located a baraita or two that he could interpret in a way that would support his objection.14 The Bavli’s assumption is that an Amora may not disagree with a Tannaitic teaching. However, Rabbah (and/or the Stam) has the final word. Responding to each of the three challenges,15 they interpret the two texts Abaye cites according to their plain-sense meaning. Abaye’s challenges all fall away.

B. Megillah 27a, Repurposing Leftover Funds Remaining from the Purchase of a Holy Item 1 The Mishnah speaks of townspeople selling an item of lesser sanctity, such as a town square, and using the moneys to purchase an item of greater sanctity, such as a synagogue. Leftover moneys from the purchase may only be spent in that same way, that is, may only be used to purchase an item of greater sanctity than the one sold. Rava introduces a leniency: if funds were raised from townspeople to purchase a holy item—not left over from a sale as in the mishnah—and some of the raised funds were left over after the purchase, they may be spent on a secular item.

‫ בני העיר שמכרו רחובה של עיר לוקחין בדמיו‬1 ‫ תיבה לוקחין‬,‫ בית הכנסת לוקחין תיבה‬,‫בית הכנסת‬ ‫ ספרים לוקחים‬,‫ מטפחות לוקחין ספרים‬,‫מטפחות‬ ‫ אבל אם מכרו תורה לא יקחו ספרים ספרים‬.‫תורה‬ ‫לא יקחו מטפחות מטפחות לא יקחו תיבה תיבה לא‬ ‫יקחו בית הכנסת בית הכנסת לא יקחו את הרחוב‬ . . . .‫וכן במותריהן‬ ".‫"וכן במותריהן‬

2 Abaye challenges Rava from a local baraita (t. Meg. 2:12). Abaye claims that the baraita does not allow funds to be shifted to a secular item, even if raised for a purchase, and not just left over from a sale. The baraita says that the Mishnah speaks of a case in which no advance stipulation was made as to how to spend leftover funds. But if an advance stipulation were made, leftover funds may be spent even on a

,‫ במה דברים אמורים שלא התנו‬:‫ איתיביה אביי‬2 ?‫ היכי דמי‬.‫אבל התנו אפילו לדוכסוסיא מותר‬ ‫אילימא שמכרו והותירו כי התנו מאי הוי? אלא‬ !‫ הא לא התנו לא‬,‫ טעמא דהתנו‬,‫שגבו והותירו‬

‫ אבל גבו‬,‫ לא שנו אלא שמכרו והותירו‬:‫אמר רבא‬ .‫והותירו מותר‬

14. The question that remains unanswered is why Rabbah did not respond to the second challenge, leaving it to a different colleague to do so. Perhaps the other colleague provided the answer and Rabbah did not need to. 15. The third challenge appears in n. 13.

244  Making History town driver. However, Abaye claims, this baraita refers not to the sale of a holy item but to the purchase of a holy item with money raised from the townspeople. That is, the baraita implies that even if money is raised from the townspeople for a purchase, if no advance stipulation was made about how to spend any leftover funds, they may not be used to purchase an item of lesser sanctity. 3 Rava (or the Stam) reinterprets the baraita so that it speaks only of sales, as does the Mishnah, and apparently the Tosefta as well. As for funds raised to purchase a holy item, a case not addressed by the baraita, leftover funds may be spent on a secular item, even without advance stipulation.

‫ במה דברים‬:‫ שמכרו והותירו והכי קאמר‬16‫ לעולם‬3 ‫אמורים? שלא התנו שבעה טובי העיר במעמד אנשי‬ ‫ אבל התנו שבעה טובי העיר במעמד אנשי‬,‫העיר‬ .‫העיר אפילו לדוכסוסיא נמי מותר‬

The bottom line is that Rava’s leniency stands. Leftover money from funds raised for the purchase of a holy item may be spent on the purchase of a secular item.17

Explanation According to the Mishnah, if townspeople sell a sanctified item, such as Torah wraps (mitpahot), they may use the proceeds of the sale only to purchase an item of greater sanctity. 18 This same limitation also applies to moneys left over after purchasing the replacement item, the one that was bought with the proceeds of the sale of the sanctified item. The excess funds may only be spent on something at least as holy as the item sold. Rava notes that the Mishnah speaks of money left over after the sale of a holy item. But if, from the outset, townspeople raise money to purchase a holy item, and some of the raised funds are left over after the purchase, Rava allows that those leftover funds may be used to buy an item of lesser 16. There is no “amar leih” in MS Vatican 134. The defense against the challenge is presented “stam,” as in the Vilna Shas. 17. Here, too, the parallel baraita in the Tosefta is similar to the one cited by Abaye. See t. Meg. 2:12, cited below in n. 19. 18. Neither the Mishnah nor the Gemara raises the question of purchasing an item of equal sanctity to the one sold.

Hauptman: Eiteveih as an Indicator of Halakhic Change  245 sanctity. Since those funds had never acquired sanctity, there is no “diminution of holiness” should they be spent on something of lesser sanctity or even on a completely secular item. Abaye challenges Rava from a baraita in t. Megillah that pertains directly to this mishnah. The baraita says that, if the town leaders stipulated in advance that they would spend leftover funds on something of lesser sanctity, they may do so—even for such a secular purpose as paying a (town) driver. Without an advance stipulation, however, they may not use leftover moneys to purchase an item of lesser sanctity. Abaye then interprets the baraita in a way that contradicts Rava. The baraita does not speak, he says, of the sale of a holy item (as does the Mishnah). A stipulation would be meaningless regarding moneys leftover from such a sale because those moneys cannot be used to buy an item of lesser sanctity. Rather, the baraita—even though it does not say so explicitly— must be referring to a case in which money was collected to purchase a holy item. Leftover moneys from the purchase of a holy item may only be used to buy an item of lesser sanctity if the town elders made an advance stipulation to this effect with the townspeople—prior to the collection of the moneys. Without such a stipulation, the leftover funds may be spent only on an item of greater sanctity. When the baraita is interpreted in this manner, it conflicts with Rava’s statement that moneys leftover from a purchase, even without advance stipulation, may be spent on items of lesser sanctity. Rava (or the Stam) responds that Abaye has misinterpreted the baraita. Rather, the baraita is saying that if the town elders stipulated in the presence of the townspeople when selling a holy item that leftover funds may be spent on an item of lesser sanctity, then the funds may be spent even on such a secular purpose as hiring a driver. Without such a stipulation, the moneys may not be spent in that way. If this interpretation of the baraita is granted, then there is room for Rava to propose a halakhic innovation: even without an advance stipulation, moneys left over from a collection to raise funds for the purchase of a holy item may be spent on an item of lesser sanctity (or even something secular). It seems clear to me that the baraita is addressing the same case as the Mishnah, that is, the moneys are left over from the sale, not the purchase, of a holy item. The baraita states that, when selling a holy item, town elders may make an advance stipulation that leftover money may be spent on something less holy or even secular. 19 The Mishnah does not mention .‫תוספתא מסכת מגילה (ליברמן) פרק ב הלכה יב ר' מנחם בי ר' יוסה או' בית הכנסת לא יקחו את הרחבה‬ ,‫אמ' ר' יהודה במי דברים אמורי'? בזמן שלא התנו עמהן פרנסי אותה העיר‬ .‫אבל אם התנו עמהן פרנסי אותה העיר משנין אותה לכל דבר שירצו‬ T. Meg 2:12 R. Menahem of the House of R. Yoseh says: [if they sell a synagogue] they may not purchase a town square [with the proceeds]. R. Judah said: to what does this 19. 

246  Making History the possibility of such a stipulation but the baraita does, in the name of R. Judah. R. Judah limits the Mishnah’s rules on spending leftover funds on items of greater sanctity to some cases but not others.20 He introduces the notion that, with an advance stipulation, leftover funds from the sale of a holy item may be spent even on secular items. Rava later goes farther down a path consistent with R. Judah’s position in the baraita. In the case of townspeople’s collecting money to purchase a holy item, any leftover funds may be spent even on secular items, even without advance stipulation. This makes sense since the leftover funds, having only been collected and not used to purchase a sacred item, never acquired sanctity. Abaye’s challenge fails. Rava’s ruling is upheld.

B. Betzah 12b, Crumbling Pods of Grain on a Festival ‫ מהו לפרוכי ומיכל‬:‫ אמר ליה‬,‫אושפזיכניה דרבא בר רב חנן הוה ליה אסורייתא דחרדלא‬ ‫ מוללין מלילות ומפרכין‬:‫ אמר ליה‬.‫ אתא לקמיה דרבא‬,‫מנייהו ביום טוב? לא הוה בידיה‬ .‫קטניות ביום טוב‬ ‫ אבל לא בקנון‬,‫ המולל מלילות מערב שבת למחר מנפח מיד ליד ואוכל‬:‫איתיביה אביי‬ ‫ אפילו‬,‫ המולל מלילות מערב יום טוב למחר מנפח על יד על יד ואוכל‬.‫ולא בתמחוי‬ ‫ ביום‬,‫ מערב יום טוב אין‬.‫ אבל לא בטבלא ולא בנפה ולא בכברה‬,‫בקנון ואפילו בתמחוי‬ !‫טוב לא‬ . . .‫ ואיידי דתנא רישא מערב שבת תנא סיפא נמי מערב יום טוב‬,21‫אפילו תימא ביום טוב‬ 1 As requested by his host, Rava bar R. Hanan (BA 4) asks Rava, may one crumble pods of grain on a festival [to detach the seeds] and eat them? Rava answers that this activity is permitted on the festival.

‫ אושפזיכניה דרבא בר רב חנן הוה ליה אסורייתא‬1 ‫ מהו לפרוכי ומיכל מנייהו ביום‬:‫ אמר ליה‬,‫דחרדלא‬ :‫ אמר ליה‬.‫ אתא לקמיה דרבא‬,‫טוב? לא הוה בידיה‬ .‫מוללין מלילות ומפרכין קטניות ביום טוב‬

2 Abaye challenges this lenient position with a local baraita that states clearly that crumbling pods of grain

‫ המולל מלילות מערב שבת למחר‬:‫ איתיביה אביי‬2 .‫ אבל לא בקנון ולא בתמחוי‬,‫מנפח מיד ליד ואוכל‬ ‫המולל מלילות מערב יום טוב למחר מנפח על יד על‬

refer? To a case in which they did not stipulate [in advance] with them, that town’s managers. But if they stipulated in advance with them, that town’s managers, they may reassign it [the proceeds of the sale] to [purchase] anything they wish. 20. Did the Mishnah oppose that leniency and imply that no advance stipulation is possible when selling a holy item regarding leftover funds? That is, R. Judah’s view does not appear in the Mishnah, perhaps because the Mishnah does not tolerate spending leftover funds, even with a stipulation, on something of lesser sanctity. That seems to be the view of Abaye. 21. MS Vatican 109 does not contain “he answered him.” Wording is slightly different from Vilna Shas.

Hauptman: Eiteveih as an Indicator of Halakhic Change  247 must be performed before the onset of the festival, not on the festival itself (t. Betzah 1:20; t. Shabb. 14:17). In this case, Abaye interprets the baraita according to its plain-sense meaning.

‫ אבל לא‬,‫ אפילו בקנון ואפילו בתמחוי‬,‫יד ואוכל‬ ,‫ מערב יום טוב אין‬.‫בטבלא ולא בנפה ולא בכברה‬ !‫ביום טוב לא‬

‫ ואיידי דתנא רישא מערב‬,22‫ אפילו תימא ביום טוב‬3 3 Rava (or the Stam) deflects the . . .‫שבת תנא סיפא נמי מערב יום טוב‬ challenge by claiming that the baraita’s second clause should not be interpreted as formulated, that the word “eve” appears in that clause only for matters of style and memorization. It is not to be taken literally. If one overlooks that word, the baraita is saying that crumbling pods of grain is even allowed on the festival itself, not just on the eve. Rava thus defends his ruling by offering a less-than-plausible reading of a baraita.

The bottom line is that Rava’s ruling stands, despite his deleting the word “eve” from the second clause of the baraita. One may crumble pods of grain on a festival to detach the seeds.

Explanation The sugya opens with an anecdote. Rava bar R. Hanan’s innkeeper had some bundles of mustard stalks. He asked his rabbinic tenant if he could crush [the pods] on a festival in order to remove [and eat the seeds]. Rava bar R. Hanan did not know the answer and asked Rava, who responded that rubbing ears of grain (to extricate the seeds) is permitted on a festival, as is crumbling pods of legumes. These activities are not, it seems, considered “threshing,” which is forbidden. Abaye challenges Rava’s ruling from a baraita, found in our Tosefta in two places (t. Shabb. 14:16; t. Betzah 1:20).23 22. In MS Vatican 109, the words “he answered him” do not appear. Wording is slightly different from Vilna Shas. 23. ‫תוספתא מסכת שבת (ליברמן) פרק יד הלכה טז‬ ‫אין מרסקין דבילה וגרוגרת וחרובין לפני זקנים בשבת אבל מרסק הוא ביד של סכין בעץ הפרוד ואינו חושש‬ .‫המולל מלילות מערב שבת מנפח על יד על יד ואוכל אבל לא בקנון ולא בתמחוי‬ .‫המולל מלילות מערב יום טוב מנפח בקנון ובתמחוי אבל לא בטבלה ולא בנפה ולא בכברה כדרך שעושה בחול‬ ‫תוספתא מסכת ביצה (יום טוב) (ליברמן) פרק א הלכה כ‬ ‫המולל מלילות מערב שבת מנפח על יד על יד ואוכל אבל לא בקנון ולא בתמחוי‬ ‫המולל מלילות מערב יום טוב מנפח בקנון ובתמחוי אבל לא בטבלה ולא בנפה ולא בכברה כדרך שעושה בחול‬ ‫המולל מלילות בשבת מנפח על יד על יד ואוכל אבל לא בקנון ולא בתמחוי‬

248  Making History It states that one may rub ears of grain on the eve of the Sabbath. On the Sabbath itself, one may winnow them from hand to hand (that is, separate the grain from the chaff by hand) and eat them. But one may not winnow them with a reed basket or a dish. Also, one may rub ears of grain on the eve of a festival. On the next day (i.e., the festival itself) one may winnow the kernels little by little and eat them, even with a reed basket or dish. But one may not winnow them with a tray, winnowing fan, or sieve (as one would do on an ordinary day). The difference between winnowing “hand to hand” and winnowing with a reed basket or a dish is that the former assumes one is winnowing a small amount of grain while the use of a reed basket or dish assumes a large amount. One may only winnow small amounts on a Sabbath for immediate consumption. But on a festival, although rubbing is not allowed, winnowing is permitted with a smallish utensil such as a reed basket or dish but not with a larger utensil, such as a tray or sieve. Abaye’s challenge is direct. According to the baraita that he cites, rubbing ears of grain is permitted on the eve of a festival but not on the festival itself. All that is allowed on a festival is winnowing, separating the grain from the chaff. This rule clearly contradicts Rava’s response to Rava bar R. Hanan, which is that rubbing ears of grain is permitted on the festival itself. Following Abaye’s challenge, either a Stam or Rava himself defends Rava’s position as follows: even according to the baraita, one may rub ears of grain on the festival itself. Rava (or the defending Stam) claims that the word “eve” in the clause about festivals, which implies that rubbing ears of grain is forbidden on the festival itself, is not to be taken literally. The argument is that the author of the baraita included that word only for the sake of symmetry with the first clause of the baraita.24 The

T. Shab. 14:16—One may not crush a cake of pressed figs, or a dried date, or carobs in the presence of elders on the Sabbath. But one may crush [them] with a knife handle, with a pot handle, and not be concerned [that one violates the Sabbath]. One may rub ears of grain on the eve of the Sabbath. [On the Sabbath itself,] one may winnow them [i.e., the kernels] from hand to hand [i.e., separate the grain from the chaff by hand] and eat [the kernels] but not [winnow] with a reed basket or a dish. One may rub ears of grain on the eve of a festival. [On the festival itself] one may winnow [the kernels] with a reed basket or a dish, but not with a tray, a winnowing fan, or sieve as one would do on a weekday. T. Besah 1:20  One may rub ears of grain on the eve of the Sabbath. [On the Sabbath itself,] one may winnow [the kernels] from hand to hand [i.e., separate the grain from the chaff by hand] and eat [the kernels] but not [winnow] with a reed basket or a dish. One may rub ears of grain on the eve of a festival. [On the festival itself] one may winnow [the kernels] with a reed basket or a dish but not with a tray, a winnowing fan, or a sieve as one would do on a weekday. One who rubs ears of grain on the Sabbath may winnow [the kernels] from hand to hand and eat [them], but not with a reed basket or a dish. 24. The first clause permits rubbing grain on the eve of the Sabbath )‫ (מערב שבת‬but, by implication, not on the Sabbath itself. The second clause, as it now reads, also permits

Hauptman: Eiteveih as an Indicator of Halakhic Change  249 second clause, therefore, permits one to rub ears of grain even on the festival itself, not just before. This interpretation of the baraita is far from the simple meaning of the words; it actually reverses the halakhah of the second clause so as to permit what had been forbidden.25 This sugya is an excellent example of Rava’s trying to issue a leniency—permitting the rubbing and crumbling of ears of grain on a festival—and Abaye’s cogently challenging him from a local Toseftan baraita. To my mind, Rava shields his leniency from attack by means of a very unlikely reading of the challenging baraita. He seems to hold that an Amora may disagree with a Tannaitic text, be it a baraita or even a mishnah. But, as he himself demonstrates, an Amora also has to show how it is possible, however unlikely, to align his ruling with the conflicting Tannaitic text.26 r­ ubbing grain on the eve of a festival )‫ (מערב יום טוב‬, but, by implication, not on the festival itself. Rava claims that the word “eve” in the second clause has no halakhic connotation. The baraita includes this word, he says, only to make the phrases of the first and second clauses match, that is, to make them symmetrical. See the full text in previous note. 25. If we now compare Abaye’s version of the baraita to the Tosefta’s version, it is obvious that they are essentially the same. The Bavli version contains the additional word “lemahar” (on the morrow) in two places, making it crystal clear that winnowing is permitted on a Sabbath or festival but rubbing and plucking are not. These two activities are permitted only on the eve of a Sabbath or festival. The Tosefta’s language is slightly harder to parse but makes the same point. Another difference is that the baraita in the Tosefta uses the expression ‫ על יד על יד‬in the first clause about what one may do on the Sabbath. This expression means “slowly,” that one may only winnow slowly in order to winnow enough to eat on the festival, but not prepare extra for afterwards. Abaye’s version of the baraita, however, says ‫ מיד ליד‬in the first clause, which means “from hand to hand.” This phrase appears to be a corruption of ‫על יד על יד‬. The second clause of Abaye’s baraita, about a festival, includes the expression ‫ על יד על יד‬. It is saying that, on a festival, one must winnow slowly, only for the purpose of eating right away. However, the second phrase of the Tosefta’s baraita does not include either ‫על יד על יד‬ or ‫מיד ליד‬, which means that it does not require the winnowing to be slow. Abaye’s baraita thus rules in this regard more stringently than the Toseftan halakhah. It stands to reason that over time the Bavli baraita was “improved” for the sake of clarity. There is no question that the insertion of the word “lemahar,” (the next day) made the baraita easier to understand. At the same time, however, mistakes entered inadvertently. ‫תוספתא מסכת ביצה (יום טוב) (ליברמן) פרק א הלכה כ‬ 26.  ‫המולל מלילות מערב שבת מנפח על יד על יד ואוכל אבל לא בקנון ולא בתמחוי‬ ‫המולל מלילות מערב יום טוב מנפח בקנון ובתמחוי אבל לא בטבלה ולא בנפה ולא בכברה כדרך שעושה בחול‬ ‫המולל מלילות בשבת מנפח על יד על יד ואוכל אבל לא בקנון ולא בתמחוי‬ For English translation, see n. 23, T. Besah 1:20. The last line of this baraita complicates the picture, unless it is a mistaken insertion. It permits rubbing on the Sabbath and winnowing slowly and eating. This implies that rubbing ears is also permitted on a festival and perhaps winnowing can be done on the festival with a reed basket and dish but not a sieve. Such a rule would support Rava, who permitted rubbing ears on a festival! Lieberman writes in Tosefta Ki-fshuta, Yom Tov (937) ‫וכנראה יש כאן נוסחא‬ ‫“( כפולה‬it seems that we have here a mistakenly repeated clause”). He says that this last clause does not make sense, that many Rishonim were not familiar with it, and is apparently a mis-

250  Making History Did Rava not know the baraita and therefore issued a ruling that conflicts with it, or did he know the baraita and issue his lenient ruling nevertheless, only finding it necessary to reinterpret the baraita when challenged? That is, does Rava hold that he has the authority to rule against a baraita? I think the answer is in the affirmative, which renders this example more extreme than the first two. In those two cases, Rava only needed to deflect a challenge from a baraita that Abaye interpreted not according to its plain-sense meaning. In this case, by contrast, Abaye challenges Rava by interpreting a baraita according to its plain-sense meaning. All Rava can do in response is offer his own, fanciful, interpretation of the baraita.

B. Shabbat 123b, Moving Utensils on the Sabbath 1 A baraita states that at first only three utensils could be moved on the Sabbath. However, following several revocations of stringencies, permission was given to move almost all utensils on the Sabbath (t. Shab 14:1).27

‫ בראשונה היו אומרים שלשה כלים‬:‫ תנו רבנן‬1 ‫ וזוהמא ליסטרן‬,‫ מקצוע של דבילה‬:‫ניטלין בשבת‬ ‫ וחזרו‬,‫ התירו‬.‫של קדרה וסכין קטנה שעל גבי שלחן‬ ‫ כל הכלים ניטלין‬:‫ עד שאמרו‬,‫ וחזרו והתירו‬,‫והתירו‬ .‫בשבת חוץ מן מסר הגדול ויתד של מחרישה‬

2 The Stam queries the meaning of the statement, “they permitted, and again permitted, and again permitted.”

?"‫ וחזרו והתירו‬,‫ וחזרו והתירו‬,‫ מאי "התירו‬2

3 Abaye’s interpretation: the statement means that, at first, they allowed utensils with a permitted Sabbath function to be moved for their own sake [that is, to use it to perform a permitted Sabbath activity]. They then allowed those same utensils to be moved for their place (that is, to free up the place they occupy for another use). Finally, they permitted utensils without a permitted Sabbath function to be moved only for their own sake, not for their place. . .

‫ התירו דבר שמלאכתו להיתר לצורך‬:‫ אמר אביי‬3 ‫ וחזרו והתירו דבר שמלאכתו להיתר לצורך‬,‫גופו‬ ‫ וחזרו והתירו דבר שמלאכתו לאיסור לצורך‬,‫מקומו‬ . . . .‫ לצורך מקומו לא‬,‫גופו אין‬

taken insertion. The clause does not appear in either the Leiden MS or the Erfurt MS. It is also not in t. Shab 14:16 where same baraita appears. 27. The subject of “they permitted” is not clear. Presumably it refers to halakhic authorities of the era. This statement may represent an imagined halakhic past. Or we are meant to interpret the active verb “they permitted”" as passive, that is, “it became permitted.”

Hauptman: Eiteveih as an Indicator of Halakhic Change  251 4 Rava challenged Abaye’s interpretation by saying that since the baraita says “they permitted,” without further elaboration, there is no basis on which to differentiate between moving utensils for their own sake or for their place.

‫ מה לי לצורך‬,‫ מכדי התירו קתני‬:‫ אמר ליה רבא‬4 ?‫גופו מה לי לצורך מקומו‬

5 Rather Rava said: they first permitted a utensil with a permitted use to be moved both for its own sake and also for its place. They then permitted such a utensil to be moved from sun to shade. And they further permitted a utensil without a permitted Sabbath use to be moved both for its own sake and for its place but not from sun to shade. Note that Rava’s interpretation of the vague statement of the baraita is more lenient than Abaye’s. According to Rava, even items without a permitted Sabbath use may be moved not just for their own sake but also for their place. And items with a permitted Sabbath use may even be moved from sun to shade. . . .

‫ התירו דבר שמלאכתו להיתר בין‬:‫ אלא אמר רבא‬5 ‫ וחזרו והתירו מחמה‬,‫לצורך גופו ובין לצורך מקומו‬ ‫ וחזרו והתירו דבר שמלאכתו לאיסור לצורך‬,‫לצל‬ . . . .‫ מחמה לצל לא‬,‫גופו ולצורך מקומו אין‬

6 Abaye challenges Rava’s interpretation with a baraita that says that if a mortar has garlic on it, it may be moved on the Sabbath. If it does not have garlic on it, it may not be moved [from its place, i.e., that it may not be handled on the Sabbath].28 The baraita therefore suggests that utensils without a permitted Sabbath use, e.g., a mortar, may not be moved on the Sabbath if there is nothing on it, e.g.,

‫ אם יש בה שום מטלטלין‬,‫ מדוכה‬:‫ איתיביה אביי‬6 !‫ ואם לאו אין מטלטלין אותה‬,‫אותה‬

28. Lieberman, ed., Tosefta, Shabbat, 63, says that, according to both the Yerushalmi and the Bavli, this baraita is old and was taught before the relaxation of the rules of muqzeh, which specifically permitted utensils without a permitted Sabbath use to be moved. See also Lieberman’s comment in Tosefta Ki-fshutah, Shabbat, 223, where he again says that both the Bavli and the Yerushalmi note that the baraita was taught before permission was given to move most utensils on the Sabbath.

252  Making History garlic (t. Shab 13:17).29 Rava holds that utensils, either with or without a permitted Sabbath function, may be moved on the Sabbath. 7 Rava reinterprets the baraita that Abaye cites so that it does not challenge him. It does not say that utensils without a permitted Sabbath use may not be moved, which would conflict with his interpretation, but only that they may not be moved from sun to shade, which Rava, too, would not allow.

.‫ מחמה לצל‬,‫ הכא במאי עסקינן‬7

8 Abaye challenges Rava with another similar baraita (t. Betzah 1:11). It, too, seems to say that utensils without a permitted Sabbath use, e.g., a pestle after it was used for butchering meat, may not be moved, which would, again, conflict, with Rava’s view.30

‫ ושוין שאם קצב עליו בשר שאסור‬:‫ איתיביה‬8 !‫לטלטלו‬

9 Rava offers the same defense as above, that what the baraita prohibits is moving the pestle from sun to shade. He thus reinterprets the baraita so that it does not challenge him.

.‫ מחמה לצל‬,‫ הכא נמי‬9

The bottom line is that Abaye’s attempt to refute Rava’s more lenient interpretation of a statement in the first baraita fails. Rava’s interpretation thus stands.

Explanation The baraita that opens the sugya presents a (likely imagined) historical overview of the laws of muqzeh, that is, the rule that items without a primary permitted Sabbath function may not be handled or moved on the 29. As Rashi notes (s.v. ein metaltelin otah), what the baraita prohibits, according to Abaye, is moving the mortar for its place. Abaye would permit moving the mortar for its own sake but not for its place. Rava would permit moving it either for its place or for its own sake. 30. The language in the Tosefta differs somewhat: ‫מודים שאם קצב על העלי שאסור לטלטלו‬ (They [i.e., the Houses of Shammai and Hillel] concede that if [on a festival] one butchered [meat] on the pestle, it may not [then] be moved).

Hauptman: Eiteveih as an Indicator of Halakhic Change  253 Sabbath. What began as a strict rule of not handling almost any utensil on the Sabbath morphed over time into a rule permitting almost all utensils to be handled on the Sabbath. However, one statement of the baraita is rather vague. What does the text mean when it says that “they permitted, and went back and permitted, and went back again and permitted”? The baraita clearly limns a trend to leniency over time but does not spell out which prohibitions were lifted at each of those three times. Abaye understands the vague line as first saying that “they” allowed utensils with a permitted Sabbath use to be moved for their own sake, and “they” then decided that these same utensils could be moved even to free up their place for a different use, and “they” finally ruled that even utensils without a permitted Sabbath use may be moved for their own sake but not for their place. Rava rejects Abaye’s distinction between “for its own sake” and “for its place” and claims that the sages, over time, allowed utensils with or without a permitted Sabbath use to be moved both for their own sake and for their place. Moreover, utensils with a permitted Sabbath use (and those exclusively) could even be moved from sun to shade. Rava thus offers a more lenient interpretation of the nonspecific line of the baraita. Abaye then challenges Rava with two similar baraitot, each of which appears to prohibit moving a utensil without a permitted Sabbath use. The first states that a mortar without garlic on it may not be moved on the Sabbath. If that means that the mortar may not be moved for its place, the rule agrees with Abaye but conflicts with Rava who would allow a mortar to be moved either for its own sake or for its place. The second baraita speaks of a pestle that may not be moved on the Sabbath. Here, too, Abaye would say that the rule means it may not be moved for its place. Rava would hold that it may be moved for its place. Note that Abaye does not interpret these two baraitot according to their plain-sense meaning, which is that neither the mortar nor the pestle may be moved at all, neither for their own sake nor for their place. Such an interpretation would conflict not just with Rava but also with Abaye himself. He therefore chooses to interpret the two baraitot as prohibiting moving a mortar or pestle for their place only. Such a stance conflicts with Rava who would allow utensils without a permitted Sabbath use to be moved, either for their own sake or for their place. In defense of his own position, Rava then reinterprets the two baraitot Abaye cites, claiming that they prohibit moving such a utensil only from sun to shade but permit moving it either for its own sake or its place. Abaye’s attempt to refute Rava’s more lenient interpretation of the baraita’s vague statement fails. Rava’s interpretation stands. It seems that Abaye attempted to derail Rava’s new ruling by citing two nonlocal baraitot and then interpreting them not according to their plain-sense meaning. Rava defended himself against the two challenges

254  Making History by offering other interpretations of the baraitot that also do not accord with their plain-sense meaning. Note that, had Rava interpreted the baraitot according to their plain-sense meaning, both baraitot would conflict with both Amoraim. Rava instead superimposed his own view onto them, claiming that they prohibited moving utensils without a permitted Sabbath use from sun to shade. In this way he deflects Abaye’s challenge and defends his own interpretation of the rules of muqzeh. A summary of findings based on my analyses of the four sugyot presented above shows the following: 1. Producing sounds on the Sabbath  • Abaye challenges Rabbah from two nonlocal baraitot that he interprets away from their plain-sense meaning, to show that they ban producing sounds on the Sabbath.  • Rabbah responds by interpreting the two baraitot according to their plain-sense meaning.  • Halakhah: one may produce sounds on the Sabbath, just not musical sounds. 2. Repurposing funds raised to purchase a holy item  • Abaye challenges Rava from a local baraita that he interprets away from its plain-sense meaning, claiming that it refers not to a sale but to a purchase.  • Rava responds by interpreting the baraita according to its plainsense meaning, that it does refer to a sale, like the mishnah it comes to comment on  • Halakhah: if one raised money to purchase a holy item but funds were left over, they may be used for a secular purpose. 3. Crumbling pods of grain on a festival  • Abaye challenges Rava from a local baraita that he interprets according to its plain-sense meaning.  • Rava responds by interpreting the local baraita away from its plainsense meaning, dropping the word “eve” from the baraita’s second clause, arguing that one may crumble pods of grain even on a festival and not just before.  • Halakhah: one may crumble pods on the eve of a festival and also on the festival itself. 4. Moving utensils on the Sabbath  • Abaye challenges Rava from two nonlocal baraitot that he interprets away from their plain-sense meaning.  • Rava responds by also interpreting the two nonlocal baraitot away from their plain-sense meaning; had he interpreted them according to their plain-sense meaning, they would conflict with both himself and Abaye.  • Halakhah: on Shabbat one may move utensils for their own sake or

Hauptman: Eiteveih as an Indicator of Halakhic Change  255 to free up their place, regardless of whether they have a permitted Sabbath use; only utensils with a permitted Sabbath use may be moved from sun to shade. We thus see that Abaye cites both local and nonlocal baraitot and that he interprets them both according to their plain-sense meaning and not. In each case, he challenges Rabbah’s or Rava’s new rule. Rava and Rabbah do what is necessary to defend their new rule. They either interpret the baraita according to, or not according to, its plain-sense meaning. That is, in these cases Amoraim resort to interpretive techniques other than plainsense meaning to either challenge a colleague or defend their own point of view. A crucial question remains: Was the defense of the new halakhah offered by the Amora whom Abaye was challenging? If so, then I conclude that Rabbah and Rava already saw themselves as authorized to modify Tannaitic halakhot. Or did Abaye’s challenge go unanswered in the Amoraic period, with the answer provided later by the Stam? If so, it is the Stam—not the Amoraim—who introduce the possibility of Amoraic modification of Tannaitic rules. There is no definitive answer to this question, although I lean toward the former possibility. Having reviewed many eiteveih and other sugyot over the years, I am suggesting that Amoraim felt free to modify Tannaitic rules. My reasoning is that often, when an Amora comments on a mishnah or baraita, he applies the Tannaitic rule to one set of circumstances but decides differently for other sets. In this way, he applies his new, conflicting rule to many cases that were earlier included in the Tannaitic rule. Even stronger evidence is that many anecdotes that describe how a specific Amora carried out a halakhah show that, in the process of doing so, he modified it.31

Conclusions I think these four cases show clearly that Abaye is not merely telling a colleague that his halakhah conflicted with a baraita (as Talmudists have generally assumed). Rather, Abaye searched out baraitot for the express purpose of blocking a rule that a colleague was attempting to introduce. In these instances Abaye sometimes cites a nonlocal baraita and interprets it not according to its plain-sense meaning. That phenomenon suggests that the conflict between Rabbah or Rava’s statement and the baraita was not evident from the words themselves. That is, Abaye deliberately read his objection to Rabbah or Rava into a baraita. 31. See my recent volume, The Stories They Tell: Halakhic Anecdotes in the Babylonian Talmud, Judaism in Context (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias, 2022), 1–43.

256  Making History Methodologically, the question to ask when encountering an eiteveih sugya in the Bavli is: Can the challenge be easily understood from reading the words of the Tannaitic text, or does one have to work hard to understand how the baraita refutes the Amora’s innovative comment? One should also note whether the baraita is local or distant, meaning, does the baraita appear in conjunction with the nearby mishnah, or does it appear in a different tractate in the Tosefta or elsewhere. If the plain language of the baraita does not appear to refute the Amora’s innovative statement, and if the baraita is “distant,” it is quite possible that the challenge to the Amora is not really a challenge from a Tannaitic text but rather a way of saying to the innovating Amora, “I object to your new point.” But since the challenge is nearly always resolved, the Amora’s new halakhah remains viable. Based on the eiteveih sugyot analyzed above, and many other eiteveih sugyot I have reviewed over the years, I am suggesting that the core message of eiteveih sugyot in the Babylonian Talmud is likely to be that an Amora may disagree with a Tannaitic teaching. At the same time, he or others must make an effort to find a way (at least superficially) to align the new Amoraic rule with the older Tannaitic text. Although on the surface the Talmud seems to suggest that halakhot may not be modified, upon reading more deeply, we see that the Talmud is saying that they may. If, almost always, eiteveih challenges are resolved, what is the point of including them in the Babylonian Talmud? My answer is that these eiteveih challenges are introduced in order to endorse innovation. By “vetting” the new rule, by showing that a challenge to it was mounted and resolved, the Talmud gives the new rule its imprimatur. In this article, I have analyzed in detail only four sugyot, in each of which the challenger is Abaye and the defending Amora is either his mentor Rabbah or his colleague Rava. Further, wider research is needed to determine if the technique described above is limited to Abaye or if, as I strongly suspect, it characterizes Amoraim (and even the Stam) across the generations.

The Late Amoraim A Digital Analysis MICHAEL L. SATLOW

S

ince the groundbreaking work of Shamma Friedman and David Weiss Halivni, beginning in the 1970s, most scholars of talmudic literature have come to recognize the importance of the distinctive literary layer in the Bavli known as the “Stam.” The Stam weaves together the Bavli’s diverse sources in a distinctive way. Characterized by its anonymity (whence the name Stam derives), dialectical character, use of Aramaic, and technical terminology, the Stam is really what makes the Bavli the Bavli.1 Yet what is still not clear is exactly how the Stam relates, in history, to the process of the Bavli’s redaction. Who actually wrote the stammaitic layer, and when? Was it continually produced as the Bavli gradually took shape over centuries; was it added all at once by the editors as they sought to create a composite whole out of various sources; or was it added in stages? And who were these editors? Were they the same, named rabbis (Amoraim) whose statements pepper the Bavli writing in an anonymous My thanks to Michael Sperling, who assisted with the data collection, and to Caroline Zhang for help with the figures. 1.  The classic works are David Weiss Halivni, Mekorot u-Masorot: Be’urim Ba-Talmud: Massakhet Bava Kama (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1993), and Mekorot u-Masorot: Be’urim Ba-Talmud: Massakhet Bava Metsi’a (Jerusalem: Magnes, 2003); Shamma Friedman, “Perek Ha-Isha Raba BeBavli be Tziruf Mavo Klali al Derekh Heker Hasugia,” in Mekhkarim UMekorot: Sefer Alef (New York: Bet ha-midrash le-Rabanim be-Amerikah, 5738 [1977]), 275–440. More recent discussions of this thesis can be found in David Weiss Halivni and Jeffrey L. Rubenstein, The Formation of the Babylonian Talmud (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013); Adiel Schremer, “Stammaitic Historiography,” in Creation and Composition: The Contribution of the Bavli Redactors (Stammaim) to the Aggada, ed. Jeffrey L. Rubenstein, TSAJ 114 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005), 219–35. The stammaitic theory is not universally accepted. For the latest challenge, see Robert Brody, “Stam hatalmud v’divrey ha’amoraim,” in Iggud: mivhar ma’amarim b’mada’ey ha’yahadut – krakh aleph; ha’miqra v’olamo, sifrut hazal u’mishpat ivri u’mahshevt yisrael, ed. Baruch Schwartz, Abraham Melamed, and Aharon Shemesh (Jerusalem: Magnes, 2008), 213–32.

257

258  Making History persona or were they a distinct set of people who lived alongside or after the Amoraim? And how do we answer such questions? The Bavli itself provides sparse reflection on the course of its own redaction, really only a cryptic statement that Rav Ashi and Ravina marked “the end of hora’ah” (“Teaching”), which gave rise to the theory that they (especially Rav Ashi) were the primary redactors of the Bavli (b. B. Metz. 86a).2 Otherwise, to answer these questions, we must rely almost entirely on inference from the contents of the Bavli. In the late 1980s, two of Halivni’s students tried to tackle this issue by honing in on Amoraic statements in the Bavli. David Kraemer argued that the statements of Amoraim of each generation (as conventionally reckoned)3 share stylistic features: “While there are only occasional features that characterize the traditions of one Amora in particular, there are patterns that quite clearly characterize the traditions of a generation of Amoraim as a whole.”4 Traditions reported in the names of earlier Amoraim, for example, tend to be brief and in Hebrew, whereas later Amoraim used more Aramaic and are wordier. Richard Kalmin too focused on the stylistic features of Amoraic statements, but his question was more narrowly focused: Can the stylistic features of statements of the later (post–Rav Ashi) Amoraim reveal anything about the nature of the Bavli’s redaction? He concluded that the differences between the stylistic features of these later Amoraim (and the continuity between them and those of the earlier Amoraim) and the Stam are best explained by positing that the stam was authored by the anonymous (and mysterious) Saboraim, who lived after the period of the Amoraim.5 Both Kraemer and Kalmin focus on “stylistic” features of these statements. Some of these features can be objectively determined, such as language and the length of statement. Others require a more subjective judgment, such as whether a statement is an “objection” or “explanatory” or “integrative into the core of the sugya.”6 There is nothing wrong with using such subjective judgments to construct an argument, but it does

2. See also Richard Kalmin, “The Post-Rav Ashi Amoraim: Transition or Continuity? A Study of the Role of the Final Generations of Amoraim in the Redaction of the Talmud,” AJS Review 11 (1986): 157–87, especially 158–61. 3. The traditional, relative dating of the rabbis of the Talmud is based on two gaonic sources, Kalman Kahan, ed., Seder Tannaim ve-Amoraim (Frankfurt am Main: Hermon, 1935) and Benjamin Lewin, ed., Iggeret Rav Sherira Gaon (Haifa, 1921). The limitations of these works have long been recognized. See Kalmin, “Post-Rav Ashi Amoraim,” 158 n. 4. 4. David Charles Kraemer, “Stylistic Characteristics of Amoraic Literature” (PhD diss., Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1984); and “On the Reliability of Attributions in the Babylonian Talmud,” HUCA 60 (1989): 175–90, quotation from 183. 5. Richard Kalmin, The Redaction of the Babylonian Talmud: Amoraic or Saboraic?, Monographs of the Hebrew Union College 12 (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1989). 6. Kalmin, Redaction of the Babylonian Talmud, xv.

Satlow: Late Amoraim  259 raise some sticky methodological questions. What criteria are being used? How well does the final context of a tradition, embedded in an edited sugya, reflect its original function, and to what extent does it matter? What kind of conclusions or knowledge can emerge from counting and comparing such subjective determinations? This essay takes its point of departure from these questions. Over the past thirty years, computer processing power and accessibility have dramatically increased, and a new and constantly developing set of tools, collectively known as the “digital humanities,” has emerged.7 Like many others, I have been intrigued by the potential application of these tools to rabbinic literature.8 My question here is whether such new approaches to the old problem of redaction of the Bavli can extend Kraemer’s and Kalmin’s early work and provide new insights. My own goals in this essay, offered as a tribute to my teacher, Richard Kalmin, are more probative and exploratory: How can one apply these new methods to research into the Talmud, and can such an application provide new insights?

Citation Strings In this article, I focus on a single kind of interaction that involves a later Amora as reported in the Bavli, namely, citation strings. Citation strings— defined as cases in which one rabbi reports a tradition in the name of another (and perhaps another, and another, and so on)—are common throughout late antique rabbinic literature of all kinds. The practice of rabbis reporting traditions in the name of other rabbis was often thought to be related to the explicit rabbinic value of correctly attributing the words of one’s teacher. While this probably remains correct, recent research also shows more complicated and fluid relationships between the rabbis found in any such citation string. For the purpose of this study, neither the nature of the relationship reported nor whether the content of any tradition was reported correctly is important.9 7. Digital humanities is an emerging field (or some might say discipline) and, unsurprisingly, there is no hard and fast sense of its boundaries. For an introduction to this discussion, see Anne Burdick et al., Digital_Humanities (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2012), 1–26. 8. Use of digital technology to enhance study of rabbinic literature goes back decades. For some reflections on producing digital editions of texts, see Chaim Milikowsky, “Scholarly Editions of Three Rabbinic Texts—One Critical and Two Digital,” in Advances in Digital Scholarly Editing: Papers Presented at the DiXiT Conferences in the Hague, Cologne, and Antwerp, ed. Peter Boot et al. (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2017), 149–57. See also Hayim Lapin, “Digital Mishnah,” at http://www.digitalmishnah.org, accessed February 1, 2024; “Thales: Thesaurus Antiquorum Lectionariorum Ecclesiae Synagogaeque,” at http://www.lectionary.eu, accessed February 1, 2024. 9. See, Richard Kalmin, “Quotation Forms in the Babylonian Talmud: Authentically Amoraic or a Later Editorial Construct?,” HUCA 59 (1988): 167–87; and Kalmin, “Collegial

260  Making History These chains are easily identified due to the limited and relatively formulaic way in which they are reported. The vast majority use forms of amr or mshum, often in combination as, for example, ‫אמר רבא בריה דרב יוסף משמיה‬ ‫“( דרבא‬Rava son of Rav Yosef said in the name of Rava,” b. B. Metz. 67b). Sometimes other verbs, such as drsh are used, as in ‫אמר רב כהנה דרש רב נתן בר‬ ‫“( מניומי משמיה דרבי תנחום‬Rav Kahana says that Rav Natan bar Ninyumi taught in the name of Rabbi Tanḥum,” b. B. Bat. 62b). There does not seem to be any consistency or meaning behind differences in this terminology. The formulaic nature of these chains, even if there is some variability, is important for two reasons. First, like identifying the language or number of words in a statement, it is an objective marker; a judgment is rarely needed to identify such a chain. Second, as we will see below, it greatly facilitates machine analysis. Citation chains are not the only, or even most common, way in which the Bavli reports interactions between rabbis. There are frequent reports of rabbis “saying” or “objecting to” their contemporaries. The problem with using such interactions as a basis for reconstructing the relationship between real individuals is that they are frequently editorial constructs. That is, later editors put rabbis into conversation with each other, postulating what one rabbi might have said or would have objected. They thus serve as quite uncertain indicators of real rabbinic interactions. Similarly, it is hard to put much faith in aggadah that reports interaction between rabbis. It is always a highly subjective operation to determine if there is a “historical kernel” to a particular story and, if so, what it might be.10 Other types of interactions, in addition to citation chains, are more promising for recovering rabbinic interactions. There are reports of rabbis who asked questions of, or who came or taught before, other rabbis with unsolved legal questions. It is reasonable (but not certain) to think that these notices report, or at least try to report, genuine interactions. There are far fewer of these than there are citation chains, however, and only a smattering that involve later Amoraim. Any complete study should include and test them against the results of the analysis offered here. Interaction in the Babylonian Talmud,” JQR 82 (1992): 383–415; Avinoam Cohen, “Was Age the Decisive Criterion of Subordination among the Amoraim?,” JQR 92 (2002): 279–313; Barak S. Cohen, “Citation Formulae in the Babylonian Talmud: From Transmission to Authoritative Traditions,” JJS 70 (2019): 24–44. 10. There was massive and painstaking effort about a century ago to produce prosopographies of the rabbis. While these scholarly works remain valuable, their uncritical reading of both aggadah and notices of interactions between rabbis limits their usefulness. For examples, see Wilhelm Bacher, Tradition und Tradenten in den Schulen Palästinas und Babyloniens: Studien und Materialien zur Entstehungsgeschichte des Talmuds (Leipzig: G. Fock, 1914; repr., Berlin: de Gruyter, 1966); Aaron Hyman (Hayman), Sefer Toldot Tana’im ve-Amora’im, 3 vols. (London: Express, 1910). For a more critical appraisal, see Alyssa Gray, “Is Critical Rabbinic Biography Possible?,” Prooftexts 23 (2003): 376–82.

Satlow: Late Amoraim  261 There are, of course, limitations to using citation chain data. Some of the names found in them are inherently ambiguous, as different rabbis sometimes share the same (undifferentiated) name.11 The names found in such chains also sometimes vary across different manuscript versions. One of the most difficult issues with which to grapple is whether and to what extent there was an Ur-text of the Bavli. That is, is the quest for the “correct” version of a citation chain or tradition misguided because such a version never existed? There remains significant debate about this, with many scholars today instead suggesting that the fluid and oral nature of the rabbinic project in the gaonic period was captured in multiple textual artifacts (many of which may no longer survive as one family of those texts triumphed).12 For these reasons, I prefer to let each textual witness stand on its own. The method outlined below could then be repeated on multiple textual versions and the resulting comparison could be illuminating.

The Digital Humanities and Network Analysis Digital humanities remains an emerging “field” that, despite the appearance of many new academic jobs bearing the title, is still very much in flux. While there is no universally agreed-upon definition of the field, its practitioners generally subscribe to three principles. The first principle is the assumption that primary sources can be treated as computer-readable data (although not exclusively so). Computers are good at sorting, finding patterns within, and analyzing (given good instructions) quantities of data so large that they can overwhelm the human mind. A computer analysis of all nineteenth-century English novels, for example, can identify patterns that no human possibly could.13 Another early example of this kind of analysis was the attempt to identify authors of unattributed texts from a digital analysis of writing styles, a technique called stylometrics that is still in use today.14 Second, this approach assumes that digital analyses can produce insights that can be of interest to all humanists; it is 11. For a particularly egregious example, see Avinoam Cohen, Ravina and Contemporary Sages: Studies in the Chronology of Late Babylonian Amoraim [Hebrew] (Ramat-Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 2001). 12. See E. S. Rosenthal, “Iyyunim be-toldot ha-nusah shel ha-talmud habavli,” in Sefer ha-Yovel le-khvot Mordecai Breuer, ed. M. Bar Asher (Jerusalem: Aqademon, 1992), 571–91; and, pushed much further, Talya Fishman, Becoming the People of the Talmud: Oral Torah as Written Tradition in Medieval Jewish Cultures (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), 20–64. 13. See Franco Moretti, Distant Reading (London: Verso, 2013). 14. See, e.g., Idan Dershowitz, Navot Akiva, Moshe Koppel, and Nachum Dershowitz, “Computerized Source Criticism of Biblical Texts,” JBL 134 (2015): 253–71 (especially 255–57

262  Making History a box of tools and approaches that can be tailored to a discipline or traditional humanistic problem, but it is not a discipline in itself. Finally, and more vaguely, this field is a community of practice with its own ethos, which usually includes a commitment to open access of both data and new tools.15 Network analysis is but one of several computational techniques used in the digital humanities. Qualitative network analysis is not new to the social sciences and humanities. Historians have long recognized that theories of networks could help them better describe and understand certain communities, such as a small village or group of intellectuals who maintained ties with each other.16 Ancient historians in particular were sensitive to the importance of networks for the distribution, maintenance, and sometimes collapse of power and the spread of ideas.17 A few scholars, most notably Catherine Hezser, have noted the utility of this theoretical approach for describing the relationship between ancient rabbis.18 Over the last few decades, though, there has also been a significant growth in the application of quantitative approaches to networks. Quantitative network analysis is not exactly new. Fields such as biology and physics, working with very large networks, have long used quantitative approaches to model and visualize their data. With the increased accessibility of data (particularly survey data), computing power, and free and powerful software tools (particularly Pajek and Gephi)—not to mention on earlier work of this nature); Pierre Van Hecke, “Computational Stylometric Approach to the Dead Sea Scrolls: Towards a New Research Agenda,” DSD 25 (2018): 57–82. 15. Matthew K. Gold, “Introduction,” in Debates in the Digital Humanities, ed. Matthew K. Gold (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012). 16. A programmatic plan for applying network theory to history can be found in Barry Wellman and Charles Wetherell, “Social Network Analysis of Historical Communities: Some Questions from the Present for the Past,” The History of the Family 1.1 (1996): 97–121. See also Charles Wetherell, “Historical Social Network Analysis,” International Review of Social History 43 (1998): 125–44. 17. See Carl Knappett, An Archaeology of Interaction: Network Perspectives on Material Culture and Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001); Rebecca J. Sweetman, “The Christianisation of the Peloponnese: The Case for Strategic Change,” Annual of the British School at Athens 110 (2015): 285–319; Richard P. Saller, Personal Patronage under the Early Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982); Greg Woolf, “Only Connect? Network Analysis and Religious Change in the Roman World,” Hélade 2.2 (2016): 43–58. 18. Catherine Hezser, The Social Structure of the Rabbinic Movement in Roman Palestine, TSAJ 66 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1997); Hezser, “Oral and Written Communication and Transmission of Knowledge in Ancient Judaism and Christianity,” Oral Tradition 25.1 (2010): 75–92, http://www.journal.oraltradition.org/wp-content/uploads/files/articles/25i/07_25.1. pdf, accessed February 1, 2024; Hezser, “Crossing Enemy Lines: Network Connections between Palestinian and Babylonian Sages in Late Antiquity,” JSJ 46.2 (2015): 224–50; Hayim Lapin, Rabbis as Romans: The Rabbinic Movement in Palestine, 100–400 CE (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 90–97.

Satlow: Late Amoraim  263 the algorithms being developed by web-searching tools to rate the relative importance of web pages—social scientists increasingly began to use such techniques.19 These quantitative approaches have helped researchers to sift through large datasets in order to better understand the nature of a particular network. Is a particular network, for example, compact or diffuse? Does it break down easily into many sub-communities (i.e., the “small world” effect)? Do multiple ties hold together sub-communities (thus making a network robust as a whole and able to withstand the loss of one or two actors) or are single actors critical in providing such connections? Within a large network, are there particularly important actors, and in what sense are they important? Historians have begun to use these tools to examine human networks. One particularly interesting example is the project that charts the connections between the members of the “republic of letters,” a group of intellectuals from the early modern period.20 A few active projects have sought to apply these tools as well to rabbinic citation networks. While some of those projects are more attuned to the needs of traditional learners of rabbinic texts, I have developed, along with my collaborator Michael Sperling, a dataset and academic analysis of the Bavli’s citation network as a whole.21 The goal of that project is to experiment with quantitative network approaches in order to better understand the network on a macro level. This paper is an experiment in analyzing the connections of a particular subset of rabbis, those who are conventionally understood as working after Rav Ashi. The paper has two goals. The first is to develop a method for using quantitative network approaches to the classical rabbis. The second is to see if the method, when applied to these later rabbis, is useful and/or promising.

19. See, Linton C. Freeman, “The Development of Social Network Analysis—with an Emphasis on Recent Events,” in The SAGE Handbook of Social Network Analysis, ed. John P. Scott and Peter J. Carrington (London: SAGE, 2011), 26–39. 20. “Mapping the Republic of Letters” (http://republicofletters.stanford.edu/publications/index.html, accessed February 1, 2024). See also “Six Degrees of Francis Bacon”(http:// www.sixdegreesoffrancisbacon.com/?ids=10000473&min_confidence=60&type=network, accessed February 1, 2024); J. Bradley et al., “Exploring a Model of the Semantics of Medieval Legal Charters,” International Journal of Humanities and Arts Computing 13 (2017): 136–54. 21. Maayan Zhitomirsky-Geffet and Gila Prebor, “SageBook: Toward a Cross-Generational Social Network for the Jews Sages’ Prosopography,” Digital Scholarship in the Humanities 34.3 (2019): 676–95, http://www.mivami.org, accessed February 1, 2024. A description can be found in Joshua ­Waxman, “A Graph Database of Scholastic Relationships in the Babylonian Talmud,” Digital Humanities Quarterly 36 (2021), supp. 2, 277–89 (https://doi.org/10.1093/llc/ fqab015), accessed February 1, 2024; Michael L. Satlow and Michael Sperling, “The Rabbinic Citation Network,”AJS Review 46 (2022): 291–319. See also http://www.rabbiniccitations. jewishstudies.digitalscholarship.brown. edu/blog, accessed February 1, 2024.

264  Making History

Method Two distinct automated processes were involved in charting the citation network of these later rabbis. The first involved simply finding all of the relevant citation chains. The second was processing them using a network analysis and visualization software package. Understanding the method is important not simply in order to allow others to replicate and apply it to other datasets, but also because it makes explicit our assumptions and some of the inherent limitations (as well as potential) of this approach. We began by creating our own digital list of all rabbis mentioned in all of classical literature. The list was hand-typed, using as a base the names and spellings from Aharon Hyman, Toldot Tannaim ve-Amoraim.22 We then corrected and emended this list using both “The Bonayich Data Base of Personalities in Rabbinic Literature”23 and a list previously compiled by Michael Sperling. Associated with the names of each unique rabbis are unique, numerical identifiers and cross-links to the IDs of other names that seem to refer to the same individual. This list has 5,039 individually named rabbis, with another 823 alternative names for them.24 As mentioned above, there are ambiguities inherent in these names and the individuals to whom they refer. There are conventional, or at least probabilistic, ways for resolving some of these ambiguous names. Rabbi Yose, for example, is Rabbi Yose ben Halafta and not Rabbi Yose ben Dormisqit, but these are usually not accurate in every case. Scribal variations and practices (e.g., the tendency to sometimes abbreviate names) also add to this ambiguity. And underlying these problems is a more fundamental one of whether behind each reported citation chain there was an Ur-text, in this case a single, individual rabbi who actually reported it and whose report then was corrupted in some textual witnesses. Our rabbinic tagging database resolves ambiguities, but it is certain that in any given textual witness some of these resolutions are going to be mistaken. Our next step was to acquire a digital version of the Bavli. We used the Vilna edition that was freely available from Sefaria.25 We did this largely because it was convenient, licensed in a way that we could easily use it, and had certain features that made it easier to process. Our own position 22. Hyman (Hayman), Sefer Toldot Tana’im ve-Amora’im. 23. Our thanks to Pinchas Hayman, who provided this database for our use. He can be reached at [email protected]. The database contains far more information than we supply in our publicly available master node file. 24. This file, which we call the “rabbinic tagging database,” can be freely downloaded at https://github.com/mikegwf1/-Rabbinic_Citation_Network/blob/master/data/Rabbi TaggingDatabase.xlsx, accessed February 1, 2024. 25. http://www.sefaria.org. The API instructions for downloading texts can be found at https://github.com/Sefaria/Sefaria-Project/wiki/API-Documentation#text-api, accessed February 1, 2024.

Satlow: Late Amoraim  265 is to remain agnostic about whether any particular textual witness is “­better” or “worse” or whether they all go back to a single Ur-text. Ideally, the same analyses would be conducted on many different textual witnesses, which would easily flag points of disagreement. We then used a pattern-matching program (written by Michael Sperling and used in our larger project) that would identify all relevant citation chains in our digital version of the Bavli. In this case, we fed in a list of post–Rav Ashi Amoraim (126 total individuals). The program identified each citation chain in which one or more of these names appear.26 Most of these individuals did not appear in a single citation chain. I manually checked all of the citation chains identified by the program, adjusting a few. The final network consists of 56 names appearing in the chains (this includes all names in each chain, not simply post–Rav Ashi Amoraim) in 65 unique interactions (this does not count more than one interaction between two distinct individuals). Once we determined the “node” list (i.e., the rabbis who appear in one or more citation chain) and the “edge” list (i.e., the interaction between two nodes), we fed those files into a network analysis program, Gephi.27 The program calculated the various statistics for the network and generated a draft of the visualization. This visualization was then manually adjusted for clarity, with the nodes arranged so that those who cite are to the right of those that they cite; that is, the relative chronology moves from left (earliest) to right. Note that the pre–Rav Ashi Amoraim who appear in this graph do not include any other connections that they have outside of this particular dataset. Most, especially Rav, are connected to far more rabbis than appear here.

Results Citation Chains. There are approximately 81 citation chains in which at least one later Amora appears. These chains contain 65 unique interactions (i.e., some of the citation chains involve the same rabbis citing each other), each transmitting a unique tradition. It is important to note that, because this network breaks chains longer than two into distinct dyads (e.g., a chain of three is counted as two unique, dyadic interactions), among the 65 unique interactions many do not contain a later Amora. Of the 81 citation chains, a significant majority are simple dyads. Eight 26. The program uses pattern matching, finding each place where the specified name appears with one of the other names from the full rabbinic tagging database, normalized (i.e., stripped of prefixes), and one of several formulae that are used to denote such chains. An independent, manual check of the results of this program has shown it to be highly accurate, containing a few false positives and missing even fewer instances. 27. Gephi is a free and open source network graphing and analysis program: http:// www.gephi.org, accessed February 1, 2024.

266  Making History chains have three names; two chains have four names; and one chain has five: ‫אמר רב שמואל בר אחיתאי אמר רב המנונא סבא אמר ר' יצחק בר אשיאן אמר רב‬ ‫הונא אמר רב המנונא‬ Rav Shmuel bar Aḥittai says that Rav Hamnuna the Elder says that Rav Yitzḥak bar Ashyan says that Rav Huna says that Rav Hamnuna says… (b. Git. 39b)

Of the 11 citation chains of more than two, three terminate with Rav (b. Avod. Zar. 15a; b. Hul. 44a, 63a). Of the 81 citation chains, only a few Palestinian Amoraim appear, once each. These all turn out perhaps to be “false positives,” and are discussed below. Quantitative Measures. The network is represented in figure 1. The nodes have been arranged in relative chronological sequence, with those who are being cited on the left and those who cite them on the right (the arrowheads also point to the rabbi being cited). The thickness of the lines shows for how many unique traditions the rabbi on the right cites the rabbi on the left. Three interactions stand out: Rafram bar Pappa citing Rav Hisda; Mar Zutra citing Rav Pappa; and Ravina citing Rava. One of the striking features of this network, which is also true for the rabbinic citation network of the Bavli as a whole, is its interconnectivity. As figure 1 highlights, nearly every rabbi who appears in a citation chain that contains a late Babylonian Amora is “connected” to all of the others. There are only two lone citation chains in this network. The key statistics of the graph are summarized in table 1. The network diameter is the maximum number of degrees between any two rabbis (not including the two lone chains). The average degree is the average number of connections (in either direction, as citers or the ones being cited) for each rabbi. The average path length is the average degree distance between two connected rabbis; while the maximum is six, the average is a bit more than half of that. The graph density is the measure of how many connections each node has divided by the number of possible connections between all nodes. Table 1. Key Statistics of Graph of Citations of Later Amoraim Network Diameter

6

Average Degree

1.2

Average Path Length

.273

Graph Density

.02

.013

Modularity .651

Figure 1. Network of All Citations in Which a Late Amora Appears

Average Clustering Coefficient

Figure 2. Citation Network Involving Later Amoraim, Sized for In-Degree

Figure 3. Citation Network Involving Later Amoraim, Sized for Out-Degree

270  Making History These averages can obscure the inequality of the distribution. Thirty-­ four rabbis are connected to a single rabbi; 12 are connected to two rabbis; and just a smattering are connected to more than two. One rabbi (Ameimar) has 11 connections. Such lopsided distributions are typical of networks of all kinds. Figures 2 and 3 more clearly indicate “in-degree” and “out-degree” by the size of their nodes. A larger node size means more “in” or “out” connections. In this case, the in-degree (fig. 2) of a rabbi is the number of times that that rabbi cites another rabbi. The out-degree (fig. 3) is the number of times that a rabbi is cited. The rabbis with the highest in-degree scores are Rava, Rav Ashi, Rav Ḥisda, Rav Huna b. Natan, and Rav. The rabbis with the highest out-degree scores are Ameimar, Mar Zutra, Ravina, Rav Ashi, and Rav Ḥisda. The average clustering coefficient is a measure of the degree to which nodes tend to cluster into more tightly bound sub-communities. The ties are measured against a random distribution of ties between nodes. Modularity computes the density of connections within sub-communities (modules). Figure 4 shows the modularity visualization. Using an algorithm, the program, Gephi, sorted the nodes into different modules, each one of which contains a cluster of nodes more densely connected to each other than to the other nodes of the network. One question discussed below is the degree to which these clusters represent “schools” of thought. Modularity is related to the issue of “betweenness centrality.” Betweenness is a measure of how important a particular node is to the network as a whole. Figure 5 shows the network with the size of the nodes adjusted for their betweenness scores: the larger the circle, the more important the role played by that rabbi in holding the network together. Mathematically, the betweenness score of a node is equal to the shortest path from all vertices to all others that pass through that node. Table 2 compares the in-degree, out-degree, and betweenness ratings of the top six rabbis: Table 2. In-Degree, Out-Degree, and Betweenness Scores of Later Amoraim (scores in parentheses) Top In-Degree

Top Out-Degree

Top Betweenness

Rava (9)

Ameimar (8)

Ameimar (171)

Rav Ashi (5)

Mar Zutra (6)

Rav Huna b. Natan (124.8)

Rav (4)

Ravina (5)

Rav Ashi (76.7)

Rav Ḥisda (4)

Rav Ashi (4)

Rav Ḥisda (64.17)

Rav Huna b. Natan (4)

Rav Ḥisda (3)

Mar Zutra (49.33)

Ameimar (3)

Rav Zevid (3)

Ravina (41)

There is a significant overlap among these rabbis, although a few rabbis (e.g., Rava) find themselves with high degree scores but are less important to the network as a whole.

Satlow: Late Amoraim  271

Figure 4. Citation Network Involving Later Amoraim, Arranged by Modularity Class

Discussion Seen as a whole, the rabbinic citations that contain the name of one or more post–Rav Ashi Amoraim are tight-knit and robust. Ameimar turns out to be a central player in this network, but even if he was removed, the network would not fracture. It is important to remember that this network contains only a minority of later Amoraim to begin with, but they may be seen as constituting a connected sub-community. In the absence of analysis of comparable data for other groups of Amoraim, or even other historical intellectual networks, it is difficult to know if this network is relatively dense or “lumpy,” that is, is strongly grouped into sub-communities. Future research will perhaps better allow us to see numbers like Graph Density, Average Clustering Coefficient, and Modularity in relative perspective.

Figure 5. Citation Network Involving Later Amoraim, Sized for Betweenness

Satlow: Late Amoraim  273 The modularity class analysis (fig. 4), though, does show four relatively strong communities. One appears to derive from Rav, the dominant Amora in the Bavli as a whole. Rav Ashi (although see below) is the center of another, and the other two have more than one central figure. Ravina, Rava, and Ameimar, for example, are the dominant figures in a group that include the later Amoraim Rav Zevid, Rav Mesharshaya, Rav Ḥaviva b. Rav Yosef b. Rava (Rava’s grandson?), and Rav Aḥa bar Taḥlifa. Later Amoraim who cite the traditions of earlier Amoraim arise from these different circles. One of the striking features of this network is its nearly complete lack of Palestinians. Those that are present may well be “mistakes,” resulting from the inherent ambiguity of the data. Since a primary concern of this article is methodology, this issue is worth exploring in a bit more detail. There are three citation chains that mention Palestinians: 1. ‫אמר רב יהודה בר שילא אמר רב אשי אמר רבי אלעזר‬ Rav Yehuda bar Sheila says that Rav Ashi says that Rabbi Eleazar says … (b. Nid. 63a). 2. ‫אמר רב כהנא דרש רב נתן בר מניומי משמיה דרבי תנחום‬ Rav Kahana says that Rav Natan bar Minyumi taught in the name of Rabbi Tanḥum … (b. B. Qam. 62b) 3. ‫אמר רב אחא משום רבי לבי‬ Rav Aḥa said in the name of Rabbi Levi … (b. Ber. 60b) All three appear to be “false positives.” (1) is a complete Palestinian chain not involving any late Babylonian Amora (Rav Yehuda bar Sheila is a fourth-generation Palestinian Amora who appears to have moved to Babylonia). Rav Kahana can refer to any number of individuals; the one mentioned in (2) is probably one of the earlier ones.28 Similarly, Rav Aḥa, in (3), probably refers to a Palestinian Amora. The appearance of these false positives raises both methodological and substantive issues. Methodologically, I have made the decision to keep them in the graph, both because they have little effect on the overall statistics and shape of the network and in order to highlight the role that ambiguity plays in such a study. A similar issue arises with respect to the figure of Rav Ashi, who is a central figure of one of the sub-communities. We have already seen once that Rav Ashi seems to be a mistake for Rav Asi, and it is difficult to know how many more of these instances similarly refer to different individuals. Substantively, it is intriguing that, without these chains, there are no Palestinians cited by late Babylonian Amoraim. Scholars have suggested 28. Mordechai Margolioth, Encyclopedia of Talmudic and Geonic Literature [Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Yavneh, 1945–1952), 611–15.

274  Making History that there was perhaps increasing tension between Babylonian and Palestinian Amoraim, a conclusion that the data here buttresses.29 Babylonian Amoraim knew and engaged traditions from Palestine, but they appear to have been hesitant to transmit them in the names of individual Palestinian Amoraim.30

Conclusion This paper has two goals, both of them probative. The first goal is to introduce a new methodology that might be able to shed new light on older problems of the redaction of the Bavli and the social history of the rabbis who contributed to it. Only recently have the tools to conduct quantitative network theory become widely available to humanists, and their application to rabbinic texts is still in its infancy. For a fuller assessment of its utility, we must wait for further analyses of different groups of Amoraim, different interactions (e.g., questions), and different manuscripts. Nevertheless, I hope that I have demonstrated here that it shows enough promise to warrant these further analyses. The second goal is substantive. Any analysis like this raises a fundamental question about whether we are looking at an artifact of redaction, real historical social relationships between rabbis, or some amalgam of the two. I cannot yet fully answer that question, although the last option is probably safest. Nevertheless, the data analyzed here does suggest two hypotheses: 1. At the core of the rabbinic project that resulted in the Bavli were rabbis who emerged from distinct “schools” or social groups that were themselves tied together through multiple links into a tight and robust network. Most of the rabbis who appear in the Bavli were not part of this network, but those who were both may have formed the backbone of both the rabbinic movement (in Babylonia) and contributed and/or transmitted the bulk of the Bavli’s material. The role played by the more “marginal” rabbis deserves further investigation. The later Babylonian Amoraim emerged from a few of these schools, but they were tied to each other intellectually through these ties. 29. Richard Kalmin, Jewish Babylonia between Persia and Roman Palestine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 4–5; Catherine Hezser, “Crossing Enemy Lines: Network Connections between Palestinian and Babylonian Sages in Late Antiquity,” JSJ 46 (2015): 224–50. 30. On the transmission of knowledge, see Hezser, “Crossing Enemy Lines”; Mordecai Schwartz, “As They Journeyed from the East: The Nahotei of the Fourth Century and the Construction of the Rabbinic Diaspora,” HUCA 86 (2015): 63–99; Reuven Kiperwasser, Going West: Migrating Personae and Construction of the Self in Rabbinic Culture, BJS 369 (Providence, RI: Brown Judaic Studies, 2021).

Satlow: Late Amoraim  275 2. The later Babylonian Amoraim did not cite the traditions of Palestinians by their names. This is perhaps due to a developing rift between Babylonian and Palestinian rabbis. It may also, though, support Kalmin’s suggestion that the Saboraim were the final redactors of the Bavli. In their day, the battle may have largely been over, and they did not hesitate to cite named Palestinian Amoraim liberally.

Who’s on First? A Methodological Note on Determining Whether the Bavli Refers to Rabbah or Rava in a Specific Passage MARCUS MORDECAI SCHWARTZ

I

n his 1994 book, Sages, Stories, Authors, and Editors in Rabbinic Babylonia, Richard Kalmin convincingly challenged conventional notions about the unified nature of rabbinic movements in Babylonia. Among the ways he did this was his particularly incisive reexamination of the relationship between Abaye and Rava.1 He argued against the popularly held belief that the Bavli is replete with lengthy direct dispute dialogues between these two rabbis. He presented evidence that the Bavli hardly shows Rava and Abaye talking to one another directly. Of approximately thirty-five hundred cases in text witnesses, he claimed that only two hundred preserve a record of Abaye and Rava directly speaking with one another or appearing in each other’s presence. He further claimed that the vast majority of these two hundred cases result from a confusion between the older Rabbah (‫רבה‬, Abaye’s teacher) and the younger Rava (‫רבא‬, Abaye’s colleague and contemporary). Based on Shamma Friedman’s work,2 Kalmin provided a few criteria for making such a determination. I hope to provide scholars with a checklist that they can use to determine when Rabbah is meant and when Rava is meant. “Rabbah” is conventionally held to be the name the Talmud assigns to the third-generation Babylonian Amora Rav Abba bar Nahmani.3 “Rava” is generally taken to refer to the fourth-generation Rav Abba bereh d’Rav

1. Richard Kalmin, Sages, Stories, Authors, and Editors in Rabbinic Babylonia, BJS 300 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1994), 179–80. 2. Shamma Yehuda Friedman, “Ketiv Ha-Shemot ‘Rabbah’ ve-‘Rava’ Ba-Talmud Ha-Bavli,” Sinai Sivan-Tamuz (1992): 141–65. 3. Chanokh Albeck, Mavo la-Talmudim (Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1969), 307.

277

278  Making History Yosef bar Hamma.4 Friedman demonstrated that these spellings are medieval scribal conventions, and primarily Ashkenazic ones at that.5 Indeed, in Yemenite manuscripts this convention is either largely unknown or is so inconsistent as to be meaningless.6 Friedman drew examples from a wide range of Bavli manuscripts, gaonic and rishonic testimony, and from the Sassoon manuscript of Halakhot Pesuqot.7 This evidence led him to conclude that there was not an early spelling convention for these names. Kalmin gave an excellent English summary and analysis of Friedman’s arguments. Generally, if one finds Abaye in dialogue with and treating as superior a sage with one of these names, Rabbah is intended, not Rava. It is also important to note that talmudic commentators (­rishonim in particular) who suggest, in a specific passage, that a name spelled Rabbah (or Rava) signifies R. Abba bereh d’Rav Yosef bar Hamma (or vice versa) are not correcting the text, but rather explaining it. These suggestions are a matter not of lower-text criticism but of exegesis. We cannot determine from the spelling of the names in manuscripts or early printings whether the Talmud intends to signify Rabbah or Rava.8 We can make such determinations only on a case-by-case basis, using a consistent set of criteria. Friedman suggests six such criteria and implies a seventh. To Friedman’s seven criteria (which I present below), I add Kalmin’s principle that, when Abaye is presented in dialogue with a sage named Rabbah or Rava whom he treats as his master, Rabbah is intended, not Rava. I propose adding a ninth criterion. Yaakov Elman characterized Rava as a “theoretician” of midrash halakhah.9 Elman was aware of Friedman’s cautions about the Rabbah/Rava spelling conventions, as well as Kalmin’s work, and he was careful and discerning in his examples. In example after example, Elman showed Rava making objections or proofs based on a deep grasp of Palestinian techniques of halakhic exegesis, including but not limited to gezera shavah, binyan av, im eno inyan, ribui u-miut,and kelal u-frat. The same cannot be said of Rabbah. Thus, we are on firm ground in advancing the claim that when we are uncertain as to whether “Rabbah” 4. Ibid., 374; Friedman, “Ketiv Ha-Shemot,” 148–64. 5. Friedman, “Ketiv Ha-Shemot,” 140–41. 6. On the importance of these manuscripts as text witnesses to the Bavli, see Aaron Amit, “The Place of the Yemenite Manuscripts in the Transmission History of b. Pesahim,” [Hebrew] HUCA 73 (2002): ‫עז‬-‫לא‬. 7. Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, Friedberg MSS 3-002. 8. For the sake of convenience, I will adopt the accepted spelling convention for the remainder of the chapter. When I write “Rabbah,” I signify R. Abba bar Nahmani. “Rava” will refer to R. Abba bereh d’Rav Yosef bar Hamma. When unsure, I will make a tentative determination and indicate this to the reader. 9. Yaakov Elman, “Rava ve-Darkhei ha-Iyyun ha-Eretz-Yisraelit ba-Midrash Hala­ khah,” in Merkaz u-tefutsah: Erets Yisrael veha-tefutsot be-yeme Bayit Sheni, ha-mishnah veha-­­ Talmud, ed. Isaiah Gafni (Yerushalayim: Merkaz Zalman Shazar le-toldot Yisrael, 2004), 217–42.

Schwartz: Who’s on First  279 or “Rava” is making an argument about abstract principles of midrash halakhah, the sage more likely to be doing so is Rava. I conclude this “Methodological Note” with my comprehensive checklist for making the determination between “Rabbah” and “Rava”:  1. Does Rabbah/Rava appear before Abaye’s name? Rabbah is usually intended, not Rava.  2. Is the formula “Amar leih Rabbah/Rava l’Abbayeh” employed? Rabbah is usually intended, not Rava.  3. Does Rabbah/Rava appear after Abaye’s name? Rava is usually intended, not Rabbah.  4. Is the formula “Amar leih Abbaye l’Rabbah/Rava” employed? Rava is usually intended, not Rabbah.10  5. Does Rabbah/Rava treat third-generation Amoraim as colleagues? Rabbah is usually intended, not Rava.11  6. Does Rabbah/Rava treat third-generation Amoraim as teachers? Rava is usually intended, not Rabbah.  7. Does Rabbah/Rava treat fourth-generation Amoraim as colleagues? Rava is usually intended, not Rabbah.  8. Does Rabbah/Rava treat fourth-generation Amoraim as students? Rabbah is usually intended, not Rava.  9. Does Rabbah/Rava refer to, or makes use of, Palestinian rabbinic materials? Rava is usually intended, not Rabbah.12 10. Is Abaye in direct dialogue with Rabbah/Rava? Rabbah is usually intended, not Rava. 11. Does Rabbah/Rava make an argument about abstract principles of midrash halakhah? Rava is usually intended, not Rabbah.

10. These first four Friedman draws from various Rishonim. Friedman considers these first four criteria to provide support for determination of the intended Amora, but none of these first four by itself can make a dispositive case. 11. Friedman, “Ketiv Ha-Shemot,” 155 n. 101. Rav Nahman b. Yaaqov is a particularly enlightening figure in this regard. If he is treated as a colleague, Rabbah is intended. If he is treated with the deference due a teacher, then Rava is intended. 12. Friedman, “Ketiv Ha-Shemot,” 165 n. 103.

IV. The Bavli and the Land of Israel

Sodom between the Rivers? Revisiting B. Sanhedrin 109a–b ALYSSA M. GRAY

M

uch effort has been devoted—in both scholarly research and ­public-facing religious writing—to identifying the sins of the legendarily wicked biblical cities Sodom and Gomorrah.1 The Talmud Bavli’s own lengthy aggadic anthology about Sodom on b. Sanhedrin 109a–b has been expertly and nearly exhaustively explored in scholarship of the last twenty,

1. According to Gen 14:2, Sodom and Gomorrah were allied with “Admah,” “Zeboiim,” and “Bela, which is Zoar.” Although the eventual divine destruction encompassed more than just Sodom, I will refer throughout to “Sodom,” both for ease of reference and because b. Sanh. 109a–b and earlier rabbinic sources largely refer to “Sodom.” Unless otherwise noted, the Hebrew Bible is cited in accordance with the Jewish Publication Society translation (JPS 1985). For some scholarly studies of Sodom’s sin in the Hebrew Bible and postbiblical Jewish literature, see, e.g., J. A. Loader, “The Prophets and Sodom: The Prophetic Use of the Sodom and Gomorrah theme,” HTS Teologiese Studies 47.1 (1991): 5–25; Loader, A Tale of Two Cities: Sodom and Gomorrah in the Old Testament, Early Jewish and Early Christian Traditions, CBET 1 (Kampen: Kok, 1990); Michael Carden, Sodomy: A History of a Christian Biblical Myth, Bible World (London: Equinox, 2004); Ed Noort and Eibert Tigchelaar, eds., Sodom’s Sin: Genesis 18–19 and Its Interpretation, Themes in Biblical Narrative 7 (Leiden: Brill, 2004); ­Florentino García Martínez, “Sodom and Gomorrah in the Targumim,” in Between Philology and Theology: Contributions to the Study of Ancient Jewish Interpretation, ed. Hindy Najman and Eibert Tigchelaar, JSJSup 162 (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 119–33; Weston W. Fields, Sodom and Gomorrah: History and Motif in Biblical Narrative, JSOTSup 231 (Sheffield; Sheffield Academic, 2009). For studies with a more public-facing or even confessional approach (Jewish and Christian), see, e.g., Steven Greenberg, Wrestling with God and Men: Homosexuality in the Jewish Tradition (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2005), 65–69 and passim; David Brodsky, “eight. Biblical Sex: Parashat Vayishlach (Genesis 32:4–36:43),” in Torah Queeries: Weekly Commentaries on the Hebrew Bible, ed. Gregg Drinkwater, Joshua Lesser, and David Shneer (New York: New York University Press, 2009), 47–52; Jay Michaelson, God vs. Gay? The Religious Case for Equality, Queer Action/Queer Ideas (Boston: Beacon Press, 2012); Brian Neil Peterson, What Was the Sin of Sodom: Homosexuality, Inhospitality, or Something Else? (Eugene, OR: Resource Publications, 2016).

283

284  Making History and especially the last seven, years.2 My contribution to this scholarship is a sharp focus on a relatively unexplored feature of this anthology: b. Sanhedrin 109a–b’s introduction of two novel socioeconomic elements to its exploration of Sodom’s sins. The first is the introduction of Deut 15:9 to the Bavli’s descriptions of Sodom’s mistreatment of the poor and the charitable (“Beware lest you harbor the base thought … so that you are mean to your needy kinsman … he will cry out to the Lord against you, and you will incur guilt”). The second is the Bavli’s colorful description of Sodom’s alleged penchant for a feverish, almost bestial, systematic despoliation of the wealthy. I contend that these unique Bavli contributions to the reconstruction of Sodom’s sins are meant to link the long-lost sinful city to distinctively Babylonian rabbinic approaches to, and concerns about, poverty, charity, and wealth.3 I emphasize the word “link.” I contend that the Bavli uses its Sodom anthology as an ancillary literary context within which to echo contemporaneous socioeconomic concerns that it explores more comprehensively elsewhere. This essay will begin with a survey of pertinent Eretz Israel literature, followed by a source- and redaction-critical analysis of b. Sanhedrin 109a–b. This literary analysis will lay a groundwork for a suggested historical reconstruction of what may be at stake for the Bavli in its focus on both Deut 15:9 and the systematic despoliation of the wealthy.

Tannaitic Perceptions of Sodomite Sin(s) While a thorough examination of the theme of Sodom’s socioeconomic sins from the Hebrew Bible through Second Temple literature and the targumim would be desirable, a brief summary of the Hebrew Bible’s ­evidence will suffice as a background to the Tannaitic material. The Pentateuch tends 2. See Eliezer Segal, “A Funny Thing Happened on My Way to Sodom,” JSJ 46 (2015): 103–29; Julia Watts Belser, “‘Hornets Came and Consumed Her’: Gender, Animality, and Hunger in Bavli Sanhedrin’s Stories of Sodom and Noah,” in Studies in Rabbinic Narratives, Volume 1, ed. Jeffrey L. Rubenstein, BJS 367 (Providence, RI: Brown Judaic Studies, 2021), 1–30; Margaret Sarah Jacobi, “Literary Construction in the Babylonian Talmud: A CaseStudy from Perek Helek” (PhD diss.; University of Birmingham, 2014); Eli Yassif, The Hebrew Folktale: History, Genre, Meaning, Folklore Studies in Translation (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), 212, 217, 235. 3. See my earlier, brief observations in Alyssa Gray, “Wealth and Rabbinic Self-Fashioning in Late Antiquity,” in Wealth and Poverty in Jewish Tradition, ed. Leonard Greenspoon, Studies in Jewish Civilization (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press), 53–81, here 64–65. See also Julia Watts Belser’s recent observation that “[t]he Bavli’s Sodom stories accentuate Ezekiel’s critique” and that “social class” is among the themes of the Bavli Sanhedrin anthology (“‘Hornets Came and Consumed Her,’” 4). “Ezekiel’s critique” refers to Ezekiel 16:49 (“Only this was the sin of your sister Sodom: arrogance! She and her daughters had plenty of bread and untroubled tranquility; yet she did not support the poor and the needy”).

Gray: Sodom Between the Rivers?  285 toward a very general description of Sodom’s sinfulness, while Isaiah, Amos, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel tend toward greater specificity about Sodom’s sins. Genesis 13:13 merely states that “the inhabitants of Sodom were very wicked sinners against the Lord,” a generic assessment echoed in God’s description of “[t]he outrage of Sodom of Gomorrah” and their “great” sin (Gen 18:20). Abraham’s argument with God (Gen 18:22–33) is predicated on his and the Deity’s shared assumption that only a very few righteous souls inhabit the cities, but the nature of the majority’s sins remains undefined. Similar generic descriptions of Sodom’s sinfulness are found in Deut 32:32 (“[t]he grapes for them are poison, a bitter growth their clusters”) and even Lam 4:6 (“[t]he guilt of my poor people exceeded the iniquity of Sodom”). My suggestion that the Pentateuch tends toward a generic description of Sodomite sin might seem to be contradicted by Gen 19:4–11, which famously describes a scene of mob lawlessness outside Lot’s home that incorporates elements of sexual sin and violation of the norms of hospitality. But a close reading of these verses shows that neither sexual sin nor mob violence is the sin for which the city is to be destroyed. The biblical narrator does not identify this bestial behavior as the sin for which God has decided to destroy Sodom; rather, this bad behavior is described in a way that shows it to be the proverbial “last straw” that unmistakably clarifies—for God and the reader—the righteousness of God’s determination to destroy Sodom. Note the abrupt transition from Gen 19:11 (the messengers strike the Sodomites outside Lot’s house with blindness) to Gen 19:12 (“Then the men said to Lot, ‘Whom else have you here?’”). The events of verses 4–11 indeed seem to be a “last straw,” with verse 12 laying the groundwork for the imminent destruction.4 General prophetic descriptions of Sodom’s sinfulness are nestled within literary contexts that suggest greater specificity as to the nature of the sins. Isaiah 1:10 uses “Sodom” and “Gomorrah” as metaphors for the corrupt Jerusalem elite. Verse 17 pleads with the elite to “[d]evote yourselves to justice; aid the wronged. Uphold the rights of the orphan; defend the cause of the widow,” while verses 21–23 single out murder, debasement of silver, diluting of wine, and Judea’s rulers as “rogues and cronies of thieves,” as well as avaricious and neglectful of orphans and widows. Isaiah 3:9 adds the element of “partiality in judgment.” Isaiah’s overall picture, then, is that the Jerusalem elites preside over a corrupt, unjust social order, for which Sodom and Gomorrah are a fitting and foreboding metaphor and precedent. Similarly, Amos 4:11 mentions the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah as a metaphor for the destruction of the northern kingdom of Israel; the chapter begins by excoriating the “cows of Bashan” 4. This seems to be the way Genesis Rabbah and Leviticus Rabbah read these verses. See Gen. Rab. 50:4 (ed. Theodor-Albeck, 522)(= Lev. Rab. 23:9 [ed. Margulies], 540).

286  Making History who “defraud the poor, who rob the needy” (Amos 4:1). Amos’s tacit suggestion is that the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, like that of Samaria, is due to social sins. Jeremiah 23:14 quite explicitly condemns the “prophets of Jerusalem” among whom “adultery,” “false dealing,” and encouragement of evildoers are rampant. God concludes, “to Me they are all like Sodom, and [all] its inhabitants like Gomorrah.” Ezekiel 16:49 also condemns Sodom for not supporting “the poor and the needy” despite its great wealth. Tannaitic literature has little to say about Sodom’s sins, but there are four discernible themes.5 Mistreatment of the poor and charitable and systematic despoliation of the rich are not among them. First, m. Sanhedrin 10:3 deploys Gen 13:13 (“Now the inhabitants of Sodom were very wicked sinners against the Lord”) to teach that the Sodomites were “wicked” in this world and “sinners” in the World to Come. T. Sanhedrin 13:8 echoes m. Sanhedrin 10:3 in denying the Sodomites a portion and life in the World to Come and heightens the Sodomites’ sinfulness by its addition of “another interpretation” based on Gen 13:13: the verse’s word wicked (ra’im) refers to the Sodomites’ wickedness toward each other, sinners (v’hata’im) to their violations of sexual immorality, against the Lord (l’Adonai) to their idolatry, and very (me’od) to their spilling of blood.6 T. Sanhedrin 13:8 alludes here to the formulaic rabbinic triad of sins “idolatry (avodah zarah), sexual immorality (gilu’i arayot), and bloodshed (shefichut damim).”7 T. Sotah 3:11–12 illustrates a second Tannaitic theme: the Sodomites grew arrogant and selfish on account of the goodness God had given them.8 Tosefta Sotah claims that the Sodomites barred travelers and visitors to Sodom out of fear that these people only wanted to take their wealth. Sifra to Leviticus, Sifrei Deuteronomy 43, and Mekilta of Rabbi Ishmael raise a third, related theme: Sodom’s rebellion against God. Sifra to Leviticus interprets Gen 13:13’s against the Lord to mean that “they know their Master and intended to rebel against him.”9 Sifrei Deuteronomy 43 5. See the discussion of Tannaitic literature in Margaret Jacobi, Literary Construction in the Babylonian Talmud, 107–8. 6. T. Sanh. 13:8 (ed. Zuckermandel, 435). 7. This triad is found also in T. Pe’ah 1:2 (ed. Lieberman, 41), and twice in Mekilta of Rabbi Ishmael. The first mention in the latter is in parashat B’shalach (masekhta d’vayehi, petichta) (ed. Horovitz-Rabin, 82), and the second in parashat Yitro (masekhta d’be-hodesh, parashah bet) (ed. Horovitz-Rabin, 207). While later in the Yerushalmi and Bavli a Jew is commanded to avoid these sins even on pain of death, that is not how Tannaitic literature represents these sins. For more on these sins and the martyrdom mandate, see, e.g., Alyssa M. Gray, “A Contribution to the Study of Martyrdom and Identity in the Palestinian Talmud,” JJS 54.2 (2003): 242–72. 8. T. Sotah 3:11–12 (ed. Lieberman, 4:162–63). 9. Sifra to Leviticus (Behoqotai), pereq gimel, parashah bet (ed. Weiss, 111b).

Gray: Sodom Between the Rivers?  287 and Mekilta of Rabbi Ishmael link that rebellion to Sodom’s horror of visitors and neglect of hospitality: “we have food, we have silver and gold, let us arise and allow the concept of travelers to be forgotten from our land.”10 Sifrei Deuteronomy 318 pithily makes a related claim that the Sodomites rebelled against God out of (their abundance of) “food.”11 Fourth (and perhaps surprisingly), m. Avot 5:10 has a rather mild assessment of Sodomite character, observing that “there are those who say” that the declaration “what’s mine is mine and what’s yours is yours” is a “Sodomite characteristic” (midat S’dom). This “Sodomite characteristic” hints at an ungenerous spirit but one that is not necessarily or inherently “wicked” or sinful. It is important to reiterate that while Tannaitic literature highlights Sodom’s inhospitality, it is notably silent on the themes of mistreatment of the poor and charitable and the systematic despoliation of the rich. The former theme is first explicitly raised in Genesis Rabbah and receives added elaboration in the Bavli with the introduction of Deut 15:9. The latter is unique to the Bavli.

Sodom’s Sin in Amoraic Literature of the Land of Israel: The Emergence of the Idea that Sodom Neglected the Poor and (Even) Punished the Charitable Naturally, there is some continuity between Tannaitic literature and Amoraic literature of the land of Israel. T. Sanhedrin 13:8’s alternate “another interpretation” of Gen 13:13 (the Sodomites were wicked to each other and also committed the weighty sins of idolatry, sexual immorality, and murder) recurs in y. Sanhedrin 10:3, 29c and Genesis Rabbah 40:6.12 Genesis Rabbah 50:4 (= Leviticus Rabbah 23:9) highlights Sodom’s sexual sin.13 Here R. Yehoshua ben Levi quotes R. Pedayah (Bar Pedayah in Leviticus Rabbah) as stating that Lot successfully interceded with the (divine) visitors on the Sodomites’ behalf all night, but that when the Sodomites demanded that the visitors be brought out to them for “sexual relations,” the visitors abruptly refused to hear more, asking Lot instead, “Whom else have you here?” (Gen 19:12). Genesis Rabbah 50:6 similarly observes that the Sodomites would sexually abuse visitors to Sodom and take their money, a description of Sodomite sin that

10. Mekilta of Rabbi Ishmael (B’shalach), masekhta d’Shirah parashah 2 (ed. ­Horovitz-Rabin, 122); Sifrei Deuteronomy 43 (ed. Finkelstein, 93). 11. Sifrei Deuteronomy 318 (ed. Finkelstein, 361). 12. Y. Sanh. 10:3, 29c (ed. Academy, 1325); Gen. Rab. 40:6 (ed. Theodor-Albeck, 394). 13. Gen. Rab. 50:4 (ed. Theodor-Albeck, 522); Lev. Rab. 23:9 (ed. Margulies, 540).

288  Making History bridges the sexual and the neglect of hospitality.14 Apropos of the latter, Leviticus Rabbah 4:1 echoes Tosefta Sotah, Sifrei Deuteronomy, and Mekilta of Rabbi Ishmael in identifying the Sodomites’ sin as being that of selfishness and inhospitality.15 Genesis Rabbah 49:6 breaks new ground in its presentation of a now-famous story about Sodom’s cruelty toward a charitable young girl. The story echoes the notion in Ezek 16:49 that Sodom mistreated its own poor, but its description of the charitable girl’s tragic fate goes far beyond the prophet’s denunciation.

Genesis Rabbah 49:6 16 1. R. Levi said: “Even if I (God) wish to be silent [about Sodom’s sins] the case of the young girl [na’arah] does not give me leave to be silent. 2. It once happened that two young girls went down to fill [jugs] with water from a spring. One said to her companion: ‘Why is your face sick?’ She said to her, ‘Our food is exhausted, and we are about to die.’ What did she do? She filled a jug with flour and switched it. This one took that which was in that one’s hand and that one [took] that which was in this one’s hand. 3. Once [the Sodomites] perceived her [actions], they took her and burned her. The Holy Blessed One said: ‘the case of the young girl does not give me leave to be silent.’ This is as it is said: ‘[the verse] does not say ‘their’ outcry [‫]הכצעקתם‬, but rather ‘her’ outcry [‫”]הכצעקתה‬ (Gen 18:21).

R. Levi17 introduces the story of the young girl. To R. Levi, the story of the charitable young girl is God’s proverbial “last straw.” The story does not explain how the starving girl’s family came to their sorry state. Did the Sodomites target the starving girl’s family for abuse? Was their plight due to a Sodomite public policy of deliberately neglecting the poor or to the ravages of chronic poverty, aggravated by passive neglect? Whatever the reason for the starving girl’s family’s distress, this distress is not the reason God decides to destroy Sodom. God destroys Sodom because Sodom burned the charitable girl to death.

14. Gen. Rab. 50:6 (ed. Theodor-Albeck, 523). 15. Lev. Rab. 4:1 (ed. Margulies, 79–80). 16. Gen. Rab. 49:6 (ed. Theodor-Albeck, 504). 17. On R. Levi, see, e.g., Chanoch Albeck, Introduction to the Talmud, Babli and Yerushalmi [Hebrew] (Tel-Aviv: Dvir, 1969), 256; Herman L. Strack and Günter Stemberger, Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992; repr., 1996), 89; Wilhelm Bacher, Die Agada der palästinensischen Amoräer, 3 vols. (Strassburg: Trübner, 1892–1899), 2:296–436 (cited in Strack and Stemberger).

Gray: Sodom Between the Rivers?  289 The charitable girl’s behavior and fate have far-ranging intertextual echoes. Burning is twice proposed in the Hebrew Bible as a punishment for a woman who transgresses sexually; the instances are Gen 38:24 (Judah orders the burning of his allegedly adulterous daughter-in-law Tamar) and Lev 21:9 (the promiscuous daughter of a priest is to be burned). The story’s tacit suggestion, then, is that Sodom saw the charitable girl’s “crime” as equal in its severity to sexual transgression. Just as Tamar’s alleged sexual sin was a betrayal of her husband’s household and that of the priest’s daughter a defilement of her father (as per Lev 21:9), so was the charitable girl’s “crime” a betrayal (defilement!) of Sodom. Her charitable “crime” shows that she lacks the “Sodomite characteristic” described in the unquoted m. Avot 5:10 (“what’s mine is mine and what’s yours is yours”). The girl’s behavior demonstrates that, to the contrary, “what’s mine can be/is (also) yours.” Lacking this “Sodomite characteristic,” she is consequently unentitled to continue living in Sodom, and the Sodomites act on her lack of entitlement by burning her to death. The Sodomites’ removal of the young girl from their midst is a dark echo of the repeated Deuteronomic refrains “you will sweep out evil from your midst” (e.g., Deut 21:21) and “you will sweep away evil from Israel” (e.g., Deut 22:22). These intertextual Deuteronomic echoes highlight Genesis Rabbah’s vision of Sodom as a topsy-turvy world of inverted “values,” in which Sodom sees as “evil” to be removed from its “midst” what other cities— and peoples—might see as virtue.18 Although Genesis Rabbah represents the story as an interpretation of Gen 18:21, it strains credulity to imagine that such a richly detailed story, with so many moving parts completely unrelated to the verse, emerged as an exegesis of the verse. The more reasonable assumption is that the story had an independent existence and was eventually linked to the verse either by R. Levi and/or the fourth-century redactors of Genesis Rabbah. This linkage suggests that Eretz Israel rabbis of the third and fourth centuries saw a purpose to highlighting that Sodom sinned by neglecting the poor and cruelly punishing a charitable young girl. While identifying this rabbinic purpose with precision is not possible, it bears noting that this story’s emergence coincides with the emergence of Amoraic portrayals of Eretz Israel rabbis’ involvement in communal collection and distribution of charity. Tannaitic literature, although it has much to say about charity (e.g., Mishnah and Tosefta Pe’ah) does not portray Tannaim in this way. I have discussed evidence of these Amoraic portrayals in detail elsewhere,

18. Cf. Julia Watts Belser’s insightful gender, race, and class analysis of the Bavli’s version of the story (b. Sanh. 109b), in which she frames the Sodomite view of the young girl as a sort of “race traitor” or “traitor” to her “class” (“‘Hornets Came and Consumed Her,’” 15–17).

290  Making History and so will offer here just one example.19 R. Ya’aqov bar Idi (second- to third-generation Amora) and R. Yizhaq bar Nahman (third-generation Amora), both roughly contemporaneous with R. Levi, are described in Yerushalmi Pe’ah as “parnasim,” a type of communal leader whose responsibilities included social welfare. Although the parnas is discussed in Tannaitic literature, no Tanna is explicitly identified as one.20 My claim is neither that R. Levi was aware of these sages nor that they were aware of the story of the charitable Sodomite girl, but the contemporaneity of the three suggests at the very least that the emerging Amoraic engagement in social welfare is somehow related to the emergence of an Amoraic narrative that Sodom was destroyed because it burned a charitable young girl to death.21 The Amoraic highlighting of mistreatment of the poor and even of the charitable as the proximate cause of Sodom’s fiery destruction could serve as a powerful warning to prospective (or hesitant) charitable donors and their communities of the consequences of what the Amoraim might have considered to be contemporary manifestations of Sodomite-like ungenerous, even cruel, behavior.22 Apropos, the absence from Tannaitic literature of a theme of Sodomite cruelty to the poor (and charitable) may reflect Tannaitic literature’s notable lack of portrayals of Tannaim engaging in the communal collection and distribution of charity.

19. See Alyssa M. Gray, “The Formerly-Wealthy Poor: From Empathy to Ambivalence in Rabbinic Literature of Late Antiquity,” AJS Review 33.1 (2009): 121–23; Gray, Charity in Rabbinic Judaism: Atonement, Rewards, and Righteousness (London: Routledge, 2019), 45–46 and passim. See also Ephraim E. Urbach, “Megamot Datiyot V’hevratiyot B’torat Ha-tzedaqah Shel Hazal,” Zion 16 (1951): 16–27; Lee I. Levine, The Rabbinic Class of Roman Palestine (Jerusalem: Yad Izhak ben Zvi, 1989), 166–67. 20. On the parnas, see Steven D. Fraade, “Local Jewish Leadership in Roman Palestine: The Case of the Parnas in Early Rabbinic Sources in Light of Extra-Rabbinic Evidence,” in Fraade, Legal Fictions: Studies of Law and Narrative in the Discursive Worlds of Ancient Jewish Sectarians and Sages, JSJSup 147 (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 555–76. Fraade cautiously notes on p. 575 that “it is clear that not all rabbis were parnasim, nor were all parnasim rabbis, nor did all parnasim take their instruction from rabbinic rules … [but] we must presume that some rabbis in some locales functioned … as parnasim.” Fraade is undoubtedly right that some Tannaitic sages may have functioned as parnasim, but again, it is not until the Amoraic period that any rabbinic sages are explicitly identified as such. 21. Eretz Israel Amoraic literature is replete with evidence of rabbis grappling with and polemicizing against negative attitudes toward the poor. See, e.g., y. Ber. 9:1, 13b (ed. Academy, 68); Lev. Rab. 34:3 (ed. Margulies, 777–78); Lev. Rab. 34:9 (ed. Margulies, 791–92); and Lev. Rab. 34:4 (ed. Margulies, 779–80). See also Gray, Charity in Rabbinic Judaism, 79–81. 22. Eliezer Segal similarly observes that the rabbinic criticism of Sodom’s “lack of hospitality and … brutal abuse of visitors … and of residents who extended hospitality” was perhaps meant to serve as a biblical precedent “for sermons in which the preachers enjoined their communities to extend more hospitality” lest they be like Sodom (“Funny Thing Happened,” 113–14).

Gray: Sodom Between the Rivers?  291

The Talmud Bavli’s Sodom Anthology and Its Novel Contributions B. Sanhedrin 109a–b, presented here according to MS Jerusalem, Yad Harav Herzog 1, is a tightly organized, well-structured anthology of Eretz Israel and Babylonian Sodom traditions.23 The presentation of the anthology will be followed by “structural observations” and then “source- and redaction-critical, literary, and historical observations.” Translations are provided of those units most salient to this essay’s analysis; summaries are provided of less significant units.  1. (Mishnah:) The people of Sodom have no portion in the World to Come.  2. Our Rabbis taught: The people of Sodom have no portion in the World to Come, as it is said (Gen 13:13): “Now the inhabitants of Sodom were very wicked sinners against the Lord.” “Wicked”—in this world; “sinners”—in the World to Come.  3. Rav Yehudah said: “[The Sodomites were] ‘wicked’ as to their bodies and ‘sinners’ as to their money. ‘Wicked’ as to their bodies, as it is written (Gen 39:9), ‘How then could I do this most wicked thing, and sin before God?,’ and ‘sinners’ with their money, as it is written (Deut 15:9), ‘He will cry out to the Lord against you, and you will incur sin.’24 ‘Against the Lord’ (Gen 13:13)—this is blasphemy. ‘Very’ (Gen 13:13)— for they plan [and] sin.”  4. In a baraita it was taught: “Wicked” as to their money, as it is written (Deut 15:9), ‘so that you are wicked to your needy kinsman.’25 And “sinners” as to their bodies, as it is written (Gen 39:9), “[and shall I] sin before God?” “Against the Lord” (Gen 13:13)—this is idolatry. “Very” (Gen 13:13)—this is murder, as it is said (2 Kgs 21:16), “Moreover, Manasseh put ‘very’26 many innocent persons to death. . . .”  5. Our Rabbis taught: The people of Sodom only became arrogant on account of the goodness that the Holy Blessed One caused to flow upon them. And what is written about them? (Job 28:5–8): “Earth, out 23. MS Jerusalem (a Yemenite manuscript) postdates the three other extant Sanhedrin manuscripts: MS Munich 95, Ms. Florence II-I-9, and Ms. Karlsruhe-Reuchlin 2, but Mordekhai Sabato convincingly argues for the greater reliability of its traditions (A Yemenite Manuscript of Tractate Sanhedrin and Its Place in the Text Tradition [Hebrew] [Jerusalem: Yad Ben-Zvi, 1998]). The composite nature of this anthology has been noted by Margaret Jacobi, Literary Construction in the Babylonian Talmud, 120–32 and passim; Segal, “Funny Thing Happened,” 108–9 and n. 20. 24. I have translated “sin” instead of the JPS “guilt” in order to more clearly demonstrate Rav Yehudah’s scriptural derivation. 25. Again, I have altered the JPS’s “mean” to “wicked” to maintain the logical flow of the baraita’s scriptural exegesis. 26. Once again, I am deviating from JPS to note the exegesis of the key words from Genesis.

292  Making History of which food grows, Is changed below as if into fire. Its rocks are a source of sapphires; It contains gold dust too. No bird of prey knows the path to it; The falcon’s eye has not gazed upon it. The proud beasts have not reached it; The lion has not crossed it.” They said: “Since food grows out of the ground and [the earth] contains gold dust, why do we need travelers? They only come to us to diminish us (our wealth). Come and let us cause the [very] idea of ‘travelers’ to be forgotten from our land,” as it is said (Job 28:4), “They open up a shaft far from where men live, [In places] forgotten by wayfarers, Destitute of men, far removed.”27  6. Rava expounded: “What is the meaning of the verse (Ps 62:4): ‘How long will all of you attack a man, to crush him, as though he were a leaning wall, a tottering fence?’ This teaches that [the Sodomites] would cast their eyes upon masters of wealth, and would feed them, and give them to drink, and seat them under a leaning wall. They would push the wall on them and take their money.”  7. Rava expounded: “What is the meaning of the verse (Job 24:16), ‘In the dark they break into houses; By day they shut themselves in; They do not know the light’? This teaches that [the Sodomites] would cast their eyes upon masters of wealth, and deposit balsam with them for safekeeping. [The wealthy] would put the balsam in their treasuries, and in the evening [the Sodomites] would come and tunnel28 under their houses and sniff it out like dogs, and take their money,29 as it is said (Ps 59:7), ‘They come each evening growling like dogs, roaming the city.’”30  8. ( Job. 24:7)31 “They pass the night naked for lack of clothing, They have no covering against the cold.” (Job 24:3) “They lead away the donkeys of the fatherless, And seize the widow’s bull as a pledge.” (Job 24:2) “People remove boundary-stones; They carry off flocks and pasture them.” (Job 21:32) “He is brought to the grave, While a watch is kept at his tomb.”  9. Rav Yosef32 expounded [Job 24:16] in Sepphoris. That night, [thieves] dug 300 tunnels in Sepphoris. [The people of Sepphoris] came and 27. Cf. Lev. Rab. 4:1 (ed. Margulies, 78–79). 28. MS Florence II-I-9 reads “dig” (hofrin) rather than “tunnel” (hotrim). 29. Cf. Gen. Rab. 50:6 (ed. Theodor-Albeck, 523). 30. Cf. Gen. Rab. 27:2 (= y. Ma’aser Sheni 5:1, 55d [ed. Academy, 304]). 31. Ms. Florence II-I-9 introduces the verses in paragraph 8 with “as it is said,” thus connecting them to Rava’s exposition of Job 24:16. 32. The reading “Rav Yosef” is attested as well in Ms. Munich 95. Ms. Florence II-I-9, Ms. Karlsruhe-Reuchlin 2, and the Barko Print (1497), more sensibly read “R. Yose.” Rabbinowicz in DS (Sanh. 109a) note mem also dismisses “Rav Yosef” as a scribal error, on the logical ground that (the Babylonian) Rav Yosef was never in Sepphoris. The partial parallel at Gen. Rab. 27:2 (ed. Theodor-Albeck, 523) reads “R. Hanina,” as does y. Ma’aser Sheni 5:1, 55d (ed. Academy, 304). This suggests to me that the correct attribution should probably be “R. Hanina,” a sage who was indeed associated with Sepphoris. There is support for my speculation in the attribution to “R. Hanina” in the parallel Gen. Rab. 27:2 (ed. Theodor-­ Albeck, 257) and the latter’s own parallel at y. Ma’aser Sheni 5:1, 55d (ed. Academy, 304). My speculative reconstruction is that the attribution to “R. Hanina” in Babylonia might at some unknown time and place have been rendered as “R. Yose b. R. Hanina” and later shortened to “R. Yose,” a sage who is also associated with Sepphoris. As noted, “R. Yose” (rather than

Gray: Sodom Between the Rivers?  293 troubled him about this. He said, “Did I know that you have thieves among you?”33 [the account of Rav Yosef’s death and its adverse impact on Sepphoris omitted]. 10. (Summary) The “orphan son of a widow” who outwits the Sodomites. 11. (Summary) The one who passes on the ferry pays 1 zuz; the one who doesn’t, pays 2. 12. (Summary) The Sodomites would each take one of a row of bricks set out to dry, thereby effecting a slow-motion despoliation of the brick-maker. 13. (Summary) The Sodomites would each take one of a row of garlic set out to dry, thereby effecting a slow-motion despoliation of the garlic’s owner. 14. (Summary) Six judges of Sodom:   a. Three cases with odd, unjust verdicts   b. Three circumstances in which Eliezer slave of Abraham found himself in Sodom; he outwits the Sodomites each time. 15. When a poor man (anya) happened to be there they would not give him bread. Rather, each and every [Sodomite] would give him a dinar on which [the donor’s] name was written. After three days [the poor man] would die [of hunger] and each and every one would come and take his own [dinar back]. 16. There was a certain young girl (ribita) who was grieved about a particular poor man.34 She brought him out bread in a jug. [The Sodomites] said: ‘What is this that this poor man is getting more than

“Rav Yosef”) is indeed the attribution in Ms. Florence II-I-9 and Ms. Karlsruhe-Reuchlin 2. “R. Yose” might have come to be rendered as “Rav Yosef” in MSS Munich 95 and Jerusalem. 33. MS Florence II-I-9 renders this a bit differently: The tunnels are not said to have been dug “that night,” and the number of tunnels is not given as 300, but the observation is made simply that “a number” of tunnels were dug. The Sepphoreans are not represented as complaining that R. Yose taught thieves how to rob, although he is still represented as having been unaware that people would come to rob as a result of his exposition. 34. MS Jerusalem reads: ‫דכריא לה בהדי ההוא עניא‬. “‫ ”כריא‬bears two meanings that both work in context: “[emotionally] distressed” and “dig.” See Marcus Jastrow, Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Bavli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature, 2 vols. (New York: Pardes, 1950; repr., Judaic Press, 2004), 1:666–67; see also Michael Sokoloff, A Dictionary of Jewish Babylonian Aramaic of the Talmudic and Geonic Periods (Ramat-Gan; Bar-Ilan University Press, 2002), 601, whose rendering of ‫ כריא‬as “grieved” I have adopted above. Watts Belser also opts for the interpretation that ‫ דכריא לה‬means “she worried about” the poor man (“‘Hornets Came and Consumed Her,’” 6–7). This interpretive choice is also echoed in the later version of the story in Pirqe deRabbi Eliezer 25, in which the female protagonist (there named “Plotit, daughter of Lot”) is explicitly said to have been emotionally distressed on the poor man’s account (‫)ועגמה נפשה עליו‬. Yet ‫ דכריא לה‬could also bear the meaning that the girl was digging for herself (‫ )לה‬along with (‫ )בהדי‬the poor man. That is, they were performing the same sort of labor together, and while doing so she became aware of his hunger and the inadequacy of his allotted portion of food. This latter interpretive choice makes the interaction between the young girl and the poor man in the Bavli more structurally similar to that between the two girls in Genesis Rabbah, whose engagement in the same task (the drawing of water) led the

294  Making History [his appropriate] measure [of food] (shi’ura)?’ They investigated her and found her [out]. They smeared her with honey and placed her on the beam of the [city] wall. The hornets came and consumed her. And this is what is written: The outrage of Sodom and Gomorrah is so great (Gen 18:20). And Rav Yehudah said in the name of Rav: “[Gen 18:20 is] About the matters of the rubiyah (young girl).” And this is that which is written, I will go down to see whether they have acted altogether according to the outcry that has reached Me (Gen 18:21)—according to the outcry of the young girl (rubiyah).”

Structural Observations The anthology may be divided into two unequal parts: paragraphs 1–9 and 10–16.35 Paragraphs 1–9 are a thickly scriptural treatment of the sins of Sodom arranged in a rough chronological order: alleged baraita material (paragraphs 2, 4, and 5), a teaching of the second-generation Babylonian sage Rav Yehudah (paragraph 3), and then contributions by the significant fourth-generation sage Rava (paragraphs 6, 7, and possibly 8).36 Paragraphs 10–11, 12–13, and 15–16 are three units of two traditions apiece, for a total of six. Paragraph 14 (the “six judges of Sodom”) also consists of two subunits of three traditions each, again for a total of six (nicely corresponding to the “six judges”). Paragraph 14a describes three absurd judicial scenarios and paragraph 14b presents three situations in which Eliezer slave of Abraham manages to outwit the Sodomites. Paragraphs 15–16 is another unit of two traditions, this one about Sodom’s mistreatment of the poor, with paragraph 16 being the Bavli’s version of the charitable Sodomite girl’s violent end. She is the note on which the entire anthology ends. Paragraphs 1–9, 10–13, 14, and 15–16 appear to be distinct Sodom traditions skillfully woven together by the anthologizer.37 The anthologizer also imposes a semblance of compositional unity by putting Rav Yehudah at the beginning (paragraph 3) and again (this time “in the name of Rav”) at the end (paragraph 16), and by presenting two paragraphs either touching on (3 and 4) or directly engaging (15 and 16) the issue of poverty toward the beginning and end of the passage. All these structural features charitable girl to notice her friend’s plight. For another such use of ‫ כריא‬as “dig” or “pierce,” see b. Ta’an. 24a (the story of R. Yose of Yokrat’s daughter). 35. See also Margaret Jacobi’s structural and literary observations in Literary Construction in the Babylonian Talmud, 123–36. 36. We will attend shortly to Rav Yosef’s (alleged) presence in paragraph 9. 37. I refer to the “anthologizer” in order to maintain neutrality on the issue of whether this passage is an Amoraic or post-Amoraic composition. There is no obvious internal reason to privilege either assumption. On this point, see also Segal, “Funny Thing Happened,” 109 n. 20.

Gray: Sodom Between the Rivers?  295 suggest that the anthology is being presented, and should be read, as a whole composition. I suggested earlier that the story of the charitable girl in Genesis Rabbah 49:6 was more likely an independent story that came to be associated with Gen 18:21 rather than a story created as an exegesis of the verse. Genesis Rabbah’s story is just too complex to have been produced as a commentary on Gen 18:21. I suggest the opposite for the Bavli’s story of the charitable girl in paragraph 16: It was adapted (or perhaps even produced) for this anthology and may not have circulated independently in Babylonia. The Bavli’s paragraph 16 fits snugly into an extended sequence of material presented in Babylonian Jewish Aramaic (paragraphs 10–16), much of which (paragraphs 10–15) is found only in the Bavli. One example of this snug fit (in addition to the structural observations presented above) is how paragraph 16’s starving person is a man (unlike Genesis Rabbah’s young girl and her family), which fits better with the poor man in the preceding paragraph 15. Once paragraph 16’s hungry person is a man, a reference to him (with or without the young girl) as “drawing water” as in Genesis Rabbah would be out of place.38 Second, the Bavli links paragraph 16’s story to Rav Yehudah in the name of Rav, who refers to “the matters of the young girl” (rubiyah) allegedly alluded to by Gen 18:20 (unlike Genesis Rabbah, which links the story to Gen 18:21). But it is not at all clear that Rav’s “the matters of the young girl” is identical to paragraph 16’s version of the story. While it is possible that a version of the story attributable to Rav might have circulated in Babylonia, there is no reason to assume that Rav’s now non-extant story and that of paragraph 16 were the same. Putting these two points together yields the possibility that whatever might have circulated in Babylonia, the current paragraph 16 was either produced for this literary context or is the result of a reworking that fits it so neatly into this literary context that there is no basis or reason for positing its alleged one-time independent existence. Paragraph 9 is an elegant transition between the scripturally rooted treatment of Sodom’s sins (paragraphs 1–9) and the various absurd scenarios described in paragraphs 10–16. Paragraph 9 describes how thieves cleverly exploited Rav Yosef’s exposition of Job 24:16 to craft an innovative approach to burglary. The people of Sepphoris take out their frustration at the ensuing rash of burglaries on Rav Yosef, who himself was taken by surprise at how his scriptural exposition was (mis)used. Paragraph 9 demonstrates how badly motivated people can outwit unwary sages and exploit (even) scriptural teachings to accomplish evil ends. This description of diabolical creativity sets the stage for Sodom’s upside-down world of absurdity and instances of outwitting described in paragraphs 10–16. 38. On the gendered nature of the pitcher and drawing water, see Watts Belser, “‘Hornets Came and Consumed Her,’” 16–17 and n. 49.

296  Making History

Source- and Redaction-Critical, Literary, and Historical Observations Paragraphs 2, 3–4, 15–16 (the Sodomites’ mistreatment of the poor and the charitable girl) Paragraph 2 is a Toseftan baraita according to which the Sodomites were “wicked” in this world and “sinners”—hence without a portion—in the World to Come. This baraita appears to be a streamlined version of t. Sanhedrin 13:8 (= y. Sanhedrin 10:3, 29c), possibly adapted to work better as an introduction to the anthology.39 Paragraph 3 is Rav Yehudah’s interpretation of the sins of Sodom. Rav Yehudah interprets Gen 13:13’s sinners to mean that the Sodomites were “sinners as to their money” (v’hata’im b’mamonam), based on an implicit linguistic equivalence between sinners (hata’im) in Gen 13:13 and sin40 (heit) in Deut 15:9. The introduction of the latter verse is unique to the Bavli. God cautions the Israelites in this verse not to refrain from lending money to the poor as the sabbatical year approaches, warning that “[h]e (the poor person denied a loan) will cry out to the Lord against you, and you will incur guilt.” The larger context provided by verses 7 and 8 is also relevant; the former pertinently warns Israelites not to “harden your heart and shut your hand” against the needy, while verse 8 admonishes Israelites to do precisely the opposite: “open your hand” and “lend [the poor person] sufficient for whatever he needs.” Rav Yehudah’s point is that the Sodomites were sinners (hata’im) as to the heit referred to in Deut 15:9—not using their money to help the poor.41 The unique Babylonian introduction of Deut 15:9 is arguably related to its omission of Ezek 16:49, which appears in some Eretz Israel compila39. Examining the matter further, we note that m. Sanh. 10:3 differs in the Bavli and the Yerushalmi; the former proclaims the Sodomites to have been “wicked” in this world and “sinners” in the World to Come (like this baraita), while the Yerushalmi’s version of the mishnah omits this entirely. That being so, it is also possible that the Bavli’s version of the baraita affected the Bavli’s version of m. Sanh. 10:3. In either case, it is apparent that the baraita as now presented in paragraph 1 functions as an introduction to the aggadic anthology. 40. Here I am translating “sin” instead of the JPS “guilt” to more clearly demonstrate Rav Yehudah’s scriptural derivation. 41. Although Rav Yehudah does not call attention to it, there is another relationship, although not a linguistic equivalence, between Deut 15:9 and another verse relating to Sodom. When God is preparing to investigate the sin of Sodom, he notes that “I will go down to see whether they have acted altogether according to the outcry that has reached Me” (Gen 18:21). “Outcry” (tsa’aqatah) is reminiscent of the crying-out of the poor person in Deut 15:9, although the verb used in Deuteronomy is qara, rather than tsa’aq. Tsa’aq is used to describe the reaction of the oppressed poor in Exod 22:22.

Gray: Sodom Between the Rivers?  297 tions’ treatments of Sodom. The latter verse is the prophet’s “historical” recollection of Sodom’s sin, invoked to make the point that, prior to its destruction and exile, Judah was no better than Sodom, its “younger sister” (16:46). But this shared sinfulness was in the past; ultimately, God promises Judah’s restoration (e.g., Ezek 16:59–63). The Bavli’s quotation of Deut 15:9 implies that Sodom’s misbehavior is abidingly contemporary and of continuing normative significance. But Sodom does not exist; moreover, quoting Deut 15:9 in reference to Sodom is legally incoherent as well as anachronistic, since the Sodomites were not Israelites subject to Deut 15:9. But quoting Deut 15:9 makes perfect sense if the description of Sodomite mistreatment of the poor is meant to have some contemporary relevance— for Babylonian Jews. Elucidating this contemporary relevance requires a closer look at the anthology’s four poverty paragraphs: 3, 4, 15, and 16. I noted earlier that the anthology begins and ends on the theme of poverty; poverty is treated in paragraphs 3–4 and again in paragraphs 15–16. I suggest that paragraph 3 should be read in tandem with paragraph 15 and paragraph 4 with paragraph 16. Let’s begin with the former: Paragraph 3 Rav Yehudah said: “[The Sodomites were] ‘wicked’ as to their bodies and ‘sinners’ as to their money. ‘Wicked’ as to their bodies, as it is written (Gen 39:9), ‘How then could I do this most wicked thing, and sin before God?,’ and ‘sinners’ with their money, as it is written (Deut 15:9), ‘He will cry out to the Lord against you, and you will incur sin.’ ‘Against the Lord’ (Gen 13:13)— this is blasphemy. ‘Very’ (Gen 13:13)— for they plan and sin.”

Paragraph 15 When a poor man (anya) happened to be there they would not give him bread. Rather, each and every [Sodomite] would give him a dinar on which his name was written. After three days [the poor man] would die [of hunger] and each and every one would come and take his own [dinar back].

Rav Yehudah’s interpretation of Gen 13:13’s “very” (paragraph 3) as the Sodomites’ penchant to “plan and sin” echoes the view found in the Sifra to Leviticus42 that the Sodomites were ones who “know their master and intentionally rebel against him.” This “planning” is darkly reflected in paragraph 15’s description of how the Sodomites would subject poor people who happened to be in Sodom (‫כי מיקלע עניא להתם‬, “when a poor person happened to be there”) to a deadly Sodomite dinar ruse. The phrase 42. Sifra to Leviticus (Behoqotai), pereq gimel, parashah bet (ed. Weiss, 111b).

298  Making History ‫ כי מיקלע‬suggests that these poor people were temporary sojourners in Sodom, not native Sodomites. The Sodomites would not give bread to such people. Instead, each Sodomite would give a dinar inscribed with his own name. When, inevitably, the poor person died (after a formulaic “three days”), each Sodomite would return to retrieve his own dinar. The deadly Sodomite dinar ruse implicitly turns Deut 15:7–9 on its head: the Sodomites did indeed “open” their “hands” to the poor—but only to snatch back the dinars they gave. They “lent,” as it were, but these “loans” were useless since the poor to whom they were given were unable to use the coins to buy food. Although the hapless poor of paragraph 15 appear to be silent and inert, paragraph 3’s quotation of Deut 15:9 gives them a voice by its description of the poor’s “cry” to God. There is no precise parallel to paragraph 15 in Eretz Israel compilations, only suggestive echoes. The formulaic “three days” is echoed on y. Shabbat 6:10, 8d, where an impoverished old man pleads for food with two students of R. Hanina on the grounds that he has not tasted anything in three days (and is presumably near death).43 The cruel Sodomite dinar “game” is reminiscent of y. Pe’ah 8:8, 21a, which describes how an impoverished student of R. Judah the Prince was one dinar short of 200 zuz (the amount that would preclude his being able to accept the “poor man’s tithe”).44 Rabbi wished to gain religious merit by giving this student the poor man’s tithe, but his other students cast an “evil eye” on the impoverished student and gave him the missing dinar. The impoverished student was thus left unable to accept the “poor man’s tithe” and Rabbi was unable to gain the religious merit he would earn by giving it. When the impoverished student told Rabbi that he could not accept the poor man’s tithe, Rabbi ambiguously observes: “a blow of perushim has touched him.”45 The story continues with Rabbi’s hint to his other students that they should take the impoverished student to a tavern, where the others took one coin from him. Rabbi was thereupon able to give him the “poor man’s tithe.” Aside from the obvious differences, there are similarities between Yerushalmi Pe’ah’s story of Rabbi’s students and the Sodomites’ cruel dinar “game.” Rabbi’s students give the final coin to their impoverished colleague, which precludes his being able to accept the poor man’s tithe 43. Y. Shabb. 6:10, 8d (ed. Academy, 400). On this story, see Gray, Charity in Rabbinic Judaism, 68–71. 44. Y. Pe’ah 8:8, 21a (ed. Academy, 111). On this story, see Yael Wilfand, “From the School of Shammai to Rabbi Yehuda the Patriarch’s Student: The Evolution of the Poor Man’s Tithe,” JSQ 22 (2015): 36–61. 45. Yael Wilfand explains Yerushalmi Pe’ah’s “a blow of perushim” in light of its appearance in Yerushalmi Sotah: it is the deployment of “legal knowledge … to inflict harm by preventing someone from legitimately receiving life-sustaining support” (“From the School of Shammai,” 58).

Gray: Sodom Between the Rivers?  299 (in-kind produce); the Sodomites would give the poor person (marked) coins but withhold bread, thus rendering their “charity” money worthless. Rabbi’s students pretend to be charitable while taking action that precludes their impoverished colleague from receiving support, and the Sodomites similarly feign charity while precluding their impoverished visitor from receiving support. In both stories, the poor person is the seeming “beneficiary” of charitable giving that leaves him with a sizable amount of cash but without food. Paragraph 4 should likewise be read together with paragraph 16: Paragraph 4 In a baraita it was taught: “Wicked” as to their money, as it is written (Deut 15:9), ‘so that you are wicked to your needy kinsman.’ And “sinners” as to their bodies, as it is written (Gen 39:9), “[and shall I] sin before God?” “Against the Lord” (Gen 13:13)—this is idolatry. “Very” (Gen 13:13)—this is murder, as it is said (2 Kgs 21:16), “Moreover, Manasseh put ‘very’ many innocent persons to death. . . .”

Paragraph 16 There was a certain young girl (ribita) who was grieved about a particular poor man. She brought him out bread in a jug. [The Sodomites] said: ‘What is this that this poor man is getting more than [his appropriate] measure [of food] (shi’ura)?’ They investigated her and found her [out]. They smeared her with honey and placed her on the beam of the [city] wall. The hornets came and consumed her. And this is what is written: The outrage of Sodom and Gomorrah is so great (Gen 18:20). And Rav Yehudah said in the name of Rav: “[Gen 18:20 is] About the matters of the rubiyah (young girl).” And this is that which is written, I will go down to see whether they have acted altogether according to the outcry that has reached Me (Gen 18:21)—according to the outcry of the young girl (rubiyah).”

Paragraph 4 describes the people of Sodom as having been “wicked” (ra’im) with their money, this time relying on a linguistic equivalence between Gen 13:13 and an earlier clause of Deut 15:9: “so that you are mean (v’ra’ah einkha; “your eye is wicked”) to your needy kinsman.” Paragraph 4 also references the murderous reign of the Judahite King Manasseh (2 Kgs 21:16), who was said to have shed the blood of many innocent people. Paragraph 4’s quotation from Deut 15:9 maps neatly onto paragraph 16’s narrative description of the Sodomites’ active “wickedness” to their

300  Making History “needy kinsman,” to whom they would allot a shi’ura of food, one apparently so inadequate that the charitable girl supplemented it. Paragraph 16’s description of her violent end is alluded to by paragraph 4’s interpretation of Gen 13:13’s “very” as a reference to a Sodomite penchant for murder and by 2 Kgs 21:16’s description of the murderous King Manasseh. Both verses hint at the Sodomites’ own murderous inclinations, which they acted on by shedding the blood of at least this one innocent girl. Apropos, the Sodomites’ outrage that paragraph 16’s poor man is receiving more than his “shi’ura” of food suggests that he is a native Sodomite. The (other) Sodomites acknowledge that he is entitled to food— which distinguishes him from paragraph 15’s transient poor man— although they object to the charitable girl’s augmentation of his designated and inadequate ration. Paragraph 16’s description of the poor man’s plight is a Bavli improvement upon Genesis Rabbah 49:6, which leaves entirely unexplained how the distressed girl’s impoverished family had come to their sorry state.46 Taken together, paragraphs 15 and 16 round out the Bavli’s reconstruction of Sodomite policy toward the poor: the non-native poor were tormented with the cruel dinar “game,” while the native poor were allotted an unspecified (but apparently inadequate) shi’ura of food, the augmentation of which was “unlawful.” The charitable Sodomite girl’s punishment in the Bavli is a perverse form of “measure-for-measure justice”: her “crime” was feeding a poor man, and her punishment is that she is turned into food for hornets.47 There is an implied analogy between the poor man whom she feeds and the hornets to whom she is fed. By extension, there is an implied analogy between herself (the provider of food) and Sodom (also a provider of food, however ungenerous). The implied equation of Sodom and the young girl is built into the dialectic between the literal and midrashic interpretations of the “outcry” in Gen 18:21: in the Hebrew Bible the “outcry” is that of Sodom itself, while to the rabbis of both centers, it is that of the young girl. The Bavli’s implicit equation of poor people and hornets suggests that the Sodomites saw even their own native poor as mindless insects who greedily eat their helpless host to death. The Sodomites do to the charitable young girl what they suspect or fear the poor will do to them; they see themselves as victims of the poor—the young girl’s (or their own) “outcry” is one and the same. I now return to the Bavli’s anachronistic introduction of Deut 15:9 to 46. For more discussion of the Bavli’s characteristic tendency to improve upon the presentations of material in Eretz Israel Amoraic sources, see, e.g., Alyssa M. Gray, A Talmud in Exile: The Influence of Yerushalmi Avodah Zarah on the Formation of Bavli Avodah Zarah, BJS 342 (Providence, RI: Brown Judaic Studies, 2005; 2nd digital ed., 2020), 125–36 and passim. 47. Watts Belser also notes the “measure-for-measure” element in the young girl’s punishment (“‘Hornets Came and Consumed Her,’” 8).

Gray: Sodom Between the Rivers?  301 its description of the sin of Sodom. Deuteronomy 15:9 is a gossamer thread linking Bavli Sanhedrin and the Bavli charity anthology on b. Ketubbot 67a–68a. After opening with discussion of marrying off male and female orphans, Bavli Ketubbot moves quickly on 67b to re-present Tannaitic traditions found in Tosefta Pe’ah and Sifrei Deuteronomy about Hillel’s and the people of the upper Galilee’s lavish provisions for formerly wealthy poor men. Although the Bavli does not quote Deut 15:9 in these re-presentations (or verses 7–8 for that matter), t. Pe’ah 4:10 and Sifrei Deuteronomy 116 link versions of these Tannaitic traditions to Deut 15:8.48 Deuteronomy 15:8 is thus present “under erasure” toward the beginning of the anthology (67b), and, as will be shown, Deut 15:9 is quoted explicitly toward its end (68a).49 Among the anthologized stories and traditions in Bavli Ketubbot are the following: the need to provide for the formerly wealthy poor in the manner to which they were accustomed, even despite a reasonable hesitancy to do so (Rava on 67b); the need to balance “lending” or “giving” to the poor as their dignity requires (67b); the importance of recipients and donors not knowing each other’s identity (Mar Uqba and R. Abba on 67b); and, most pertinently, the societal prevalence of frauds who wish to “game the system” and receive charity they don’t deserve (67b–68a). The last unit of the Bavli Ketubbot charity anthology (68a) is about whether and to what extent impoverished charity recipients must divest themselves of certain expensive personal items before accepting communal charity. Frauds, “gaming the system,” and the proper donor response are the subject of an exchange between R. Hanina and his wife (b. Ketub. 67b– 68a). R. Hanina overrules his wife’s hesitancy about giving to an obvious fraud by quoting Deut 15:9 and observing: “were it not for frauds, we would sin (hot’in) every day (were we not to give to one who asks), as it says, “He will cry out to the Lord against you, and you will incur guilt” (heit, literally “sin”).50 To R. Hanina, Deut 15:9 promises immediate divine wrath at one who refuses to give. Only the existence of frauds in the world shields an ungenerous person from Deut 15:9’s otherwise implacable consequences. But how precisely will that divine wrath be manifest? Bavli Ketubbot leaves this unclear. Nowhere in paragraphs 3, 4, 15, or 16 of b. Sanhedrin 109a–b is anyone portrayed as fraudulently feigning poverty in Sodom, and the ungenerous Sodomites were therefore left “unprotected” by frauds. Sodom’s 48. T. Pe’ah 4:10 (ed. Lieberman, 58); Sifrei Deuteronomy 116 (ed. Finkelstein, 175). 49. The Bavli Ketubbot charity anthology is, in a sense, an extended rabbinic commentary and reflection on Deut 15:8–9. Further elaboration of this point requires a different venue. 50. See also a partial parallel on b. B. Bat. 10a. The latter is a more truncated, secondary version of the tradition on b. Ketub. 68a, tailored for that literary context.

302  Making History failings toward the poor (therefore) doomed it in two stages that correspond to its violations of two relevant clauses of Deut 15:9. The conjunction of paragraphs 3 and 15 shows that the Sodomites provoked paragraph 15’s transient poor man to “cry out” (and hence they incurred “sin”). But the conjunction of paragraphs 4 and 16 shows the additional step they took even beyond this particular cruelty: they were also “mean” to their “needy kinsman” (paragraph 4) to whom they gave an inadequate shi’ura of food which the young girl supplemented at the cost of her life (paragraph 16)—which shows that their cruelty ultimately extended even to the poor’s benefactors. The pairing of paragraphs 3 and 15, and 4 and 16, and the progression from paragraphs 15 to 16 thus shows that the Sodomites’ murder of the charitable girl was not an isolated event, as in Genesis Rabbah, but, rather, the endpoint of an evil three-step progression: cruelty to the temporarily sojourning poor (paragraph 15); stinginess toward their native poor (paragraph 16); and ultimately even murderous cruelty to a young Sodomite benefactor of the native Sodomite poor (paragraph 16). The Bavli’s mapping of Sodom’s three-stage moral decline explains better than Genesis Rabbah why the young girl’s fate was the proximate cause of Sodom’s destruction. Sodom’s murder of this young charitable donor presumably happened once and only once—but that one occurrence was (more than) enough; it highlighted Sodom’s irredeemable moral collapse. For God, the young girl’s fate really was the proverbial “last straw.” These source- and redaction-critical observations about Bavli Sanhedrin’s Sodom anthology as a whole compilation lay the groundwork for five discrete historical findings. The first pertains to the Bavli’s construction of the image of the Amora Rav. I noted earlier that, while Genesis Rabbah 49:6 attributes the story of the charitable Sodomite girl to R. Levi, the Bavli loosely links it to Rav after relating her murder: “and this is like that which was written: ‘The outrage of Sodom and Gomorrah is so great [rabbah]’ (Gen 18:20)—and Rav Yehudah said Rav said: ‘concerning the matters of the rubiyah (young girl).’” The Bavli’s framing implies that Rav was aware of a midrash on Genesis 18:20 that fancifully links the verse’s rabbah (“great”) to rubiyah (“young girl”), although (again) it is not at all clear that the story of the charitable Sodomite girl is in fact that midrash. The Bavli’s effort to link the story of the charitable young girl to Rav is significant because the Bavli elsewhere tends to associate Rav with warmth and consideration toward the poor (especially the working poor). For example, Rav famously rules that day laborers can walk off the job in the middle of the day (b. B. Qam. 116b; b. B. Metz. 10a), and he sides with the negligent porters rather than with his rabbinic colleague in a well-known story about broken wine jugs (b. B. Metz. 83a). The anthologizer’s linkage of this story to Rav, therefore, is a small additional bit of evidence supporting a hypothesis that the Bavli constructs Rav as a rabbinic sage with a demonstrated partiality toward the poor.

Gray: Sodom Between the Rivers?  303 The second, third, and fourth historical findings pertain to the young girl’s provision of food to the poor man (paragraph 16). The young girl is burned to death in Genesis Rabbah but smeared with honey and set out for hornets to consume in the Bavli. This gruesome punishment is recognizable as Mithridates’ punishment as described by Plutarch in his Life of Artaxerxes: “they give him a mixture of milk and honey to drink, pouring it into his mouth, and also deluge his face with it. Then they keep his eyes always turned towards the sun, and a swarm of flies settles down upon his face and hides it completely.”51 Watts Belser has comprehensively placed this cruel punishment in historical context. She points out that this cruel mode of punishment “seems to play upon motifs of Persian execution,” quoting Bruce Lincoln’s argument that (in her words) being eaten by vermin “activates a powerful Zoroastrian revulsion toward insects.” Watts Belser opines that the Bavli’s use of this motif either “aims to activate such cultural tropes” or else is a form of Babylonian rabbinic self-distancing from Sodom by “choosing a form of execution that marks such brutality as distinctively Persian.”52 At the very least, I note that this detail is additional evidence of the Babylonian provenance of this version of the story of the charitable young girl. I will return later to this distinctively Persian echo. Third, the girl’s concealment of her provision of food is consistent with the Bavli’s direction not to publicly shame the poor in and by the provision to them of charitable assistance (e.g., b. Hag. 5a). Fourth, the Bavli’s description of the young girl’s giving bread to the poor man echoes the Bavli’s characteristic descriptions of women’s practice of in-kind charity.53 These third and fourth historical observations—especially the fourth—reveal a gendered approach to charity in the Bavli that further links paragraphs 15 and 16 to b. Ketubbot 67a–68a. In a broad sense, both extended passages contrast masculine and feminine modes of charity (in this order) and privilege the latter. On b. Ketubbot 67b, Mar Ukba gives a poor man money every day, but runs from his presence and hides in a recently used oven, where he suffers a burn. His wife runs and hides in the oven with him but explains that she was not burned because her charity is in the form of food, which the poor can enjoy immediately (unlike money). First comes the description of Mar Ukba’s charity and its consequence for him, then his wife’s. Similarly, paragraph 15 is about the Sodomites’ masculine (and illu-

51. Plutarch, Life of Artaxerxes 16.163–65, in Plutarch’s Lives, trans. Bernadotte Perrin, 11 vola., LCL (London: Heinemann; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1914–1926 (11 volumes combined into one pdf, 2014). 52. Watts Belser, “‘Hornets Came and Consumed Her,’” 8–9. 53. On this gendered practice of charity, see most recently Moshe Simon-Shoshan, “A Doorway of Their Own: Female Ethos in Dialogue in the Talmuds,” Nashim: A Journal of Jewish Women’s Studies & Gender Issues 35 (Fall 5780/2019): 97–127.

304  Making History sory) “provision” of money charity, while paragraph 16 is about the young girl’s life-giving provision of food. Mar Ukba is well meaning, but his money charity is inferior to his wife’s and does not protect him from a burn; the (male) Sodomites are not well meaning, and their money “charity” is risible as compared with that of the young girl, on whose account they are destroyed—by fire and brimstone (i.e., burning). Both Bavli Ketubbot and Bavli Sanhedrin signal the superiority of the feminine-gendered practice of charity: the former does so directly while the latter does so by suggesting that the efficacy of the young girl’s charity so enraged the Sodomites that they destroyed her for it. The fifth and final historical observation takes us back to a deeper investigation of Bavli Sanhedrin’s and Bavli Ketubbot’s shared quotation of Deut 15:9. R. Hanina’s quotation of the verse on b. Ketubbot 68a is placed at the end of a lengthy passage that wrestles with Bavli ambivalence about generous support for the formerly wealthy poor and the inherent difficulty of distinguishing the formerly wealthy poor from frauds.54 R. Hanina’s message is that the existence of frauds protects a reluctant donor from Deut 15:9, which warns of dire consequences for failing to give. Open-handed generosity (Deut 15:7–9) is the right policy. As noted earlier, b. Ketubbot 67a–b opens with echoes of Deut 15:8 and nears its conclusion with the quotation of Deut 15:9, rendering the entire passage an extended reflection on those verses. Overall, one message of the Ketubbot charity passage is that, despite understandable ambivalence about the formerly wealthy poor and the difficulty or impossibility of distinguishing them from frauds, the right course of action is to give. By quoting Deut 15:9, b. Sanhedrin 109a–b’s anthologizer enlists Sodom’s “assistance” in advancing Bavli Ketubbot’s agenda. Sodom failed to give, failed to give generously, and even stooped so low as to murder a young girl who gave. Unprotected by frauds (who don’t seem to have existed in Sodom), Sodom bore the full force of the penalty in Deut 15:9: it had to bear its “sin” and it did—it was annihilated. Sodom’s fate is deployed as a concrete illustration of Deut 15:9’s ambiguous warning that the one who fails to give will bear “sin.” Bavli Sanhedrin fills the definitional gap left in Bavli Ketubbot; thanks to Bavli Sanhedrin, we learn that “bearing sin” can mean annihilation. Overall, then, the anthologizer of b. Sanhedrin 109a–b intertextually links it to the charity anthology in Bavli Ketubbot, which polemicizes in favor of open-handed giving. B. Sanhedrin 109a–b is not itself a “charity compilation,” but the availability to its anthologizer of rabbinic traditions about Sodom’s mistreatment of the poor and murder of the charitable provides an opportunity—upon which the anthologizer seizes—to enlist this

54. See my “Formerly-Wealthy Poor.”

Gray: Sodom Between the Rivers?  305 Sodom anthology in service to Bavli Ketubbot’s polemic in favor of openhanded giving. It also bears noting that both Bavli Sanhedrin and Bavli Ketubbot share this perspective on open-handed giving with the charity anthology on b. Bava Batra 8a–11a, although there are hardly any obvious intertextual links between the latter and b. Sanhedrin 109a–b.55 The openhanded giving polemic found in Bavli Ketubbot and Bavli Bava Batra is a perspective discernible at the level of these passages’ final redactions, which contrasts with a demonstrable earlier Babylonian Amoraic ambivalence about giving. Three instructive examples of this earlier rabbinic ambivalence are found on b. Ketubbot 67b (Rava), and b. Bava Batra 9a and 10a (Rav Papa). Rava’s formerly wealthy interlocutor insists upon receiving a lavish meal, prompting the sage to wonder: “Aren’t you concerned about the pressure on the community?” (The man’s negative answer is rooted in a clever scriptural exegesis.) Rava seems concerned that the man’s expensive tastes will drain the community’s resources (much like the Sodomites’ concern about their own resources on b. Sanh. 109b). On b. Bava Batra 9a Rav Papa refuses to give to a beggar. Rav Sama breih de-Rav Yeba rebukes him on the ground that his refusal is tantamount to a death sentence for the beggar since others will follow Rav Papa’s example. It turns out that Rav Papa had misinterpreted the relevant baraita; he mistakenly thought the beggar was not entitled to anything, but the sage should have given him a “small gift” (matanah mu’etet). Barring Rav Sama breih de-Rav Yeba’s intervention, the entire community would have withheld charity and the poor man would have died, a scenario reminiscent of Bavli Sanhedrin’s paragraph 15 (and even 16). On b. Bava Batra 10a Hiyya bar Rav Mi-Difti explains Rav Papa’s near death from a fall from a ladder by speculating that Rav Papa had neglected to give something to a passing poor person. In all three cases the sage’s instinct is not to give, or else not to give lavishly; in all cases he is rebuked, whether by the poor person, another sage, or by providence. (And on b. B. Bat. 10a either the Bavli or Hiyya bar Rav Mi-Difti [more likely the Bavli] quotes a baraita that urges open-handed giving through a quotation of Deut 15:9.) And again, in both b. Ketubbot 67a–68a and b. Bava Batra 8a–11a, these traditions are contextualized within larger anthologies that polemicize in favor of open-handed giving. Babylonian Amoraic ambivalence about giving directly to the poor gives way to a rabbinic emphasis—whether later in the Amoraic period or after it—on the importance of open-handed giving. In sum, then, although b. Sanhedrin 109a–b is not a dedicated charity 55. Apart from the partial parallel in which Deut 15:9 is quoted (b. B. Bat. 10a). For a discussion of Bavli Bava Batra’s overall perspective on giving, see my “The Talmud Bavli’s Intertextual Invention of Benjamin the Tzaddik,” CCAR Journal: The Reform Jewish Quarterly 66.2 (Spring 2019): 95–109.

306  Making History anthology like b. Ketubbot 67a–68a (or b. B. Bat. 8a–11a), the anthologizer’s introduction of Deut 15:9 to paragraphs 3 and 4 links it to Bavli Ketubbot’s polemic about giving, gives concrete definition to the verse’s “bearing sin” and, by extension, enlists the anthology for service alongside Bavli Ketubbot and Bavli Bava Batra in battling an earlier, demonstrable Babylonian rabbinic skepticism about giving. Now, Babylonian Amoraic skepticism about giving is not described as having sunk to a Sodomite level; Rava’s ambivalence is portrayed as understandable (even if mistaken) in the larger context of b. Ketubbot 67b (and he does give lavishly eventually), while Rav Papa’s failure to give is based on a misinterpretation in one case and is entirely unintentional in another. Babylonian rabbis may have had issues with giving but they were not Sodomites; the Bavli’s description in paragraph 16 of Sodom’s imposition of a vile Persian form of execution on the charitable young girl arguably highlights and accentuates that difference.56 But the b. Sanhedrin 109a–b anthologizer arguably hears echoes of Sodom in the Babylonian rabbinic past that it wishes to muffle through its imbrication of Deut 15:9 and Sodom.

Paragraphs 5, 6–9 (the Sodomites’ mistreatment of travelers and despoliation of the wealthy) Paragraph 5 is the Bavli’s version of t. Sotah 3:11–12 and the latter’s parallels in the Mekilta, Sifrei Deuteronomy, and Leviticus Rabbah.57 The Bavli resembles the Mekilta and Sifrei Deuteronomy in its focus on Job 28:5–8 and Job 28:4 but, as noted, omits the quotation of Ezek 16:49 (or 50) found in all these Eretz Israel compilations. Paragraphs 6 and 7 are Rava’s scriptural expositions of Ps 62:4 and Job 24:16 that purportedly relate how the Sodomites despoiled the wealthy. Why the Bavli is uniquely interested in this theme (and why it is linked to Rava) calls for investigation. Paragraph 6 is unattested in Eretz Israel compilations, except for an echo in Genesis Rabbah 50:6.58 Here Rava explains Ps 62:4 as a reference to the Sodomites, who would single out wealthy people, seat them near a “leaning wall,” give them food and drink (thereby lowering their guard), push the wall on top of them, and then take their money. The notion that the Sodomites were interested in taking people’s money echoes Genesis Rabbah 50:6, although the latter refers to travelers to Sodom, while Rava’s wealthy people could even be native Sodomites. Also, unlike in Genesis Rabbah, Rava mentions the “leaning wall” 56. As Watts Belser observes (“‘Hornets Came and Consumed Her,’” 9). 57. Mekilta of Rabbi Ishmael (B’shallach Shirah) 2 (ed. Horovitz-Rabin, 122); Sifrei Deuteronomy 43 (ed. Finkelstein, 93–94); Lev. Rab. 4:1 (ed. Margulies, 78–79). 58. Gen. Rab. 50:6 (ed. Theodor-Albeck, 523).

Gray: Sodom Between the Rivers?  307 (‫)קיר נטוי‬, a phrase found three times only in the Bavli (including this occurrence).59 Absent the precise phrase, the notion that a rickety (or “leaning”) wall is somehow connected to divine punishment also features in two narratives on b. Ta’anit 21a. In the first, two angels contemplate pushing a wall onto Ilfa and R. Yohanan, who had considered alleviating their study-induced poverty by abandoning Torah study for business ventures. In the second, students of Nahum Ish Gam Zu find the hapless sage living in dire straits in a rickety house that collapses as soon as they remove him from it. It emerges that Nahum’s sorry state was the result of his having encountered a poor man who expired before Nahum was able to give him anything to eat. In paragraph 7, Rava quotes and expounds Job 24:16 (“In the dark they break into houses; By day they shut themselves in; They do not know the light”) to mean that the Sodomites would deposit fragrant balsam with wealthy people, who would store it away in their treasure-houses along with their money and other valuables. Further relying on Ps 59:7, Rava explains that “They come each evening growling like dogs, roaming the city”—that is, the Sodomites would sniff out the balsam like dogs, and then tunnel under the rich people’s houses to steal the money and valuables. The Sodomites take the additional step here beyond paragraph 6 of attacking the wealthy by literally tunneling into—invading—the privacy of their homes. A key difference between paragraph 7 and its parallel in Genesis Rabbah 27:2 (= y. Ma’aser Sheni 5:1, 55d) is that in the Eretz Israel compilations the avaricious tunneling offenders are the people of the Flood generation, not the Sodomites.60 Only in the Bavli, by way of Rava, is this behavior attributed to the Sodomites.61

59. B. Ber. 55a and b. Rosh Hash. 16b are repetitions of R. Isaac’s tradition that a “leaning wall” is one of three things that reminds God of a person’s sins. 60. Gen. Rab. 27:2 (ed. Theodor-Albeck, 257); y. Ma’aser Sheni 5:1, 55d (ed. Academy, 304). The Eretz Israel compilations include as part of their scriptural exposition of the flood generation’s behavior a truncated account of how “R. Hanina’s” scriptural exposition led to an explosion of this tunneling practice in Sepphoris. The Bavli’s parallel to this connection between a rabbi’s exposition and a “contemporary” manifestation of the behavior in Sepphoris is attributed to Rav Yosef in paragraph 9; the Bavli separates the two parts of the Eretz Israel tradition by its interpolation of the mysterious, unattributed paragraph 8. To whom should paragraph 8 be attributed? Paragraph 8 consists of four (other) Job verses. The first three are descriptions of unjust behavior, and the last describes someone’s being brought to his grave, with a watch placed at his tomb. It is reasonable to conjecture—certainty being unattainable—that the first three verses are a continuation of Rava’s description of Sodomite social injustice (paragraph 7), while the last introduces paragraph 9’s story about Rav Yosef, which ends with an account of his death and interment. 61. Given that both the flood and Sodom were instances of mass destruction due to sin, it is not surprising that they are linked. For a nonrabbinic linkage of the two, see, e.g., 2 Pet 2:6. For rabbinic linkages, see, e.g., t. Ta’an. 2:13 (ed. Lieberman, 334–35); and Mekilta of R. Ishmael (B’shalach)(masekhta d’vayehi, parashah 4; ed. Horovitz-Rabin, 103).

308  Making History Paragraph 6’s deployment of the characteristically Babylonian motif of the “leaning wall” in light of its intertextual links to other instances of walls falling or threatening to fall on people also suggests that the despoiled Sodomite wealthy were unsympathetic victims who likely deserved their fate. They deserved their fate because of their behavior in paragraphs 3–4 and 15–16: they were cruel or at best heedless of both the peripatetic and native Sodomite poor. The other Sodomites were therefore unknowing instruments of the Sodomite wealthy’s punishment, and they used a technique (the “leaning wall”) that even God uses at times. But just as the Sodomites spiraled downward toward their doom in a three-step progression in their mistreatment of the poor (paragraphs 15–16), they spiral downward toward their doom in a two-step progression due to their despoliation of the wealthy (paragraphs 6–7). Violent yet recognizably human behavior (paragraph 6) devolves into violent behavior described in canine terms (paragraph 7). Having forfeited their humanity in a bestial pursuit of wealth that was not theirs, the Sodomites forfeit their right to live in/as a human society. The Bavli’s implicit negative portrayal of the Sodomite wealthy reflects a demonstrable Babylonian Amoraic tension with and even negativity toward their own nonrabbinic wealthy, some of which precedes Rava.62 One telling example is Rav’s labeling the Babylonian wealthy as “those descending to hell.”63 The Bavli supports Rav’s harsh characterization with the story of Shabtai bar Marenus, whose requests to the rabbis for (first) a business opportunity or (after that) sustenance were refused (b. Betzah 32b). Shabtai angrily identifies those who refused him with the “mixed multitude” who had left Egypt; he further expounds Deut 13:18 as excluding from Abrahamic descent all those (like the rabbis who spurned him!) who fail to show compassion to others. Rava himself is twice associated with negative observations about the wealthy of Mehoza (b. Shabb. 32b–33a; b. Rosh Hash. 17a) and he is portrayed as having had a tense relationship with the wealthy non-rabbi “Benjamin the doctor” (b. Sanh. 99b–100a).64 I have suggested elsewhere that this consistent portrayal of Babylonian rabbinic hostility to the nonrabbinic wealthy may reflect a “historical reality of tense relations” between these groups, as well as a

62. For more discussion of this, see Gray, “Wealth and Rabbinic Self-Fashioning,” especially 65–66, 69 and passim. 63. Rav’s harsh denunciation of the wealthy dovetails with the evidence presented earlier of his partiality toward the poor. Rav appears to be portrayed as a sage who sides with the poor and vulnerable and against the wealthy; further research is needed to establish this portrayal with greater certainty. 64. On this relationship, see also Yaakov Elman, “The Socioeconomics of Babylonian Heresy,” in Studies in Mediaeval Halakhah in Honor of Stephen M. Passamaneck, ed. Alyssa Gray and Bernard Jackson, Jewish Law Association Studies, special issue, 17 (2007): 80–127.

Gray: Sodom Between the Rivers?  309 rabbinic sense that they were “in competition with the nonrabbinic wealthy for social influence.”65 Just as the Sodomites’ murder of the young girl is cast in Persian terms that highlight the difference between Sodom and Babylonia (paragraph 16),66 so is paragraph 7’s description of Sodomite wealth despoliation cast in bestial terms that contrast with portrayals of justifiable instances of Babylonian wealth despoliation. The anthologizer is presumably not interested in fully equating Sodom and Babylonia so much as suggesting points of contact between them, characteristics of Babylonia that are redolent of Sodom. The Bavli also links these justifiable instances of wealth despoliation to Rava (the tradent of paragraph 6 and 7). On b. Avodah Zarah 65a, Rava witnesses the royal abduction of Bar Shishak, who had insisted to Rava that his worldly pleasures were far better than those of Rava’s World to Come. Although the story does not explicitly describe the Sasanian king’s plundering of Bar Shishak’s possessions, the forcible and unexpected removal of that wealthy, pampered person is similar to plunder: instead of the person being deprived of his money and possessions, the money and possessions are deprived of their master. Bar Shishak learned the hard lesson that his worldly pleasures were fleeting. On b. Hagigah 5b, Rava himself is described as having suffered the plundering of his wealth at the hand of the Sasanian king Shapur. The story begins with the rabbis’ questioning why Rava—due to his wealth—did not appear to conform to the “hiding of the Divine face” characteristic of the rest of the people Israel. Rava’s response was that the rabbis did not know how much money he secretly sent to King Shapur, presumably on behalf of Jewish interests. The rabbis responded by “casting their eyes” on Rava (y’havu beih rabbanan einayhu), who was then plundered by royal agents. The phrase y’havu beih . . . einayhu is similar to that employed by Rava himself in paragraph 7 about how the Sodomites cast their eyes on the rich prior to plotting their plunder. The implication is that Rava deserved his despoliation for not exhibiting the “hiding of the Divine face.” Rava himself despoils a rich rabbi’s wealth in a legal context. On b. Bava Batra 8b, he has the distinction of being the only Amora described in the Bavli as having “compelled” (akhpei) another Amora (Rav Nathan bar Ami) to give a large sum of money as charity. Although not necessarily a violent act, the Bavli’s recounting of Rava’s compulsion of Rav Nathan bar Ami follows immediately after Rav’s dictum (quoted by R. Yitshaq b. Shmuel b. Marta) that Jeremiah 30:20’s “And I will deal with all his oppressors” refers to charity collectors, who (presumably on account of their aggressive tactics), are analogized to “oppressors.” By implication, then, Rava’s compul-

65. See Gray, “Wealth and Rabbinic Self-Fashioning,” 72. 66. Again, see also Watts Belser, “‘Hornets Came and Consumed Her,’” 8–9.

310  Making History sion of Rav Nathan bar Ami was also “oppressive” and, one might add, confiscatory—although justified. Paragraphs 6 and 7 and their Bavli intertexts are mutually illuminating. The contemporary Babylonian wealthy—Jewish and not—implicitly deserve despoliation because they too are somehow blameworthy, either because they must be compelled by force to give charity (e.g., Rav Nathan bar Ami), are ungenerous to sages (the story of Shabtai bar Marenus), hedonistically hoard their wealth (e.g., Bar Shishak), or have somehow incurred the wrath of the sages (Rava himself). Whatever the precise historical reality underlying these portrayals, it is clear that Babylonian rabbis were at best ambivalent about, and even hostile toward, the Babylonian nonrabbinic wealthy and (even) willing to justify certain instances of despoiling rabbinic wealth. Rava is the sage by means of whom b. Sanhedrin 109a–b links Sodom to these contemporaneous tensions.

Conclusion B. Sanhedrin 109a–b is the Bavli’s extended exploration of the sins of Sodom. Through two unique interventions—the introductions of Deut 15:9 and the theme of Sodom’s systematic despoliation of the wealthy— the Bavli Sanhedrin anthologizer links this passage to broader Bavli concerns about charitable giving, the blameworthiness of the Babylonian nonrabbinic wealthy, and even certain sages’ deserved loss of their wealth. The passage does not fully equate Sodom and rabbinic Babylonia; it draws a clear contrast between them in its invocation of Persian precedent in describing the young girl’s murder and its description of Sodomite canine behavior in their invasion of homes in pursuit of wealth. But, in this portrayal of similarity and difference, the anthologizer leaves the audience with a basis for comparison and an implicit warning: aspects of Babylonia may indeed potentially render it a “Sodom between the rivers.” Apropos, I close by pointing out another unique and related Babylonian development: its hardening of m. Avot 5:10’s “Sodomite characteristic” (midat S’dom) into a legal norm. In five places the Bavli discusses a dispute about whether “we compel concerning [behavior that is] a Sodomite characteristic”; that is, whether the sages can compel a person who will lose nothing by allowing another to benefit to not stand in the way of the other one’s benefit.67 The source-critical puzzlements in these five places require elucidation elsewhere. What bears noting here is that the 67. In three places (b. B. Bat. 59a, 168a; b. Ketub. 103a), the Bavli itself invokes the norm and the dispute; in another place (b. B. Bat. 12b), there are three invocations of the norm attributed to Amoraim, although the attributions vary in the manuscripts. The attributions are “Rabbah,” “Rava,” “Rav,” and/or “Rav Yosef.” In another place (b. Eruv. 49a) the norm

Gray: Sodom Between the Rivers?  311 demonstrably unique Babylonian concern with the “Sodomite characteristic” and its legal manifestations in Babylonia dovetails with the Bavli’s unique elaborations of the biblical Sodom’s sins on b. Sanh. 109a–b. Through both law and lore, the Bavli signals its concern that aspects of Babylonian Jewish society can potentially render it vulnerable to the charge of being, to some extent, a “Sodom between the rivers.”

may be attributed to an Amora or may be an anonymous Bavli interpolation into an Amoraic tradition; the attributions in this case are to either “Rabbah bar Rav Huna” or “Shmuel.”

Not from Zion More on the Bavli’s Arrogation of Prerogative in the Jewish World DAVID KRAEMER

T

he Bavli’s status as a document of the Babylonian diaspora has been amply remarked upon in recent years, and talmudic deliberations giving voice to that status have been examined and unpacked. In fact, the Talmud’s longest and most detailed consideration of the meaning of ­diaspora-exile (b. Ketubbot 110b and following) has been treated rather exhaustively, first, in isolation, by Jeffrey Rubenstein, and then, in the context of thematically related texts, by Daniel Boyarin. But even with Boyarin’s expanded focus, there is much more to be said, both in analysis of texts that have been discussed and in relation to texts that have not yet been called upon in this connection. Rubenstein’s analysis of the Ketubbot text, for example, is abundantly detailed, and it represents a significant contribution to our understanding of the text and its message. But neither Rubenstein nor Boyarin focuses on a dynamic of the text that I will emphasize here, nor do they note that the dynamic is shared in other talmudic deliberations that respond to Tannaitic teachings privileging the land of Israel. In what follows, I will, through careful analysis, tease out a striking Babylonian approach that seeks to undermine—not merely “neutralize,” as Rubenstein suggests1—the claimed centrality of the biblical Holy Land. This project of undermining is evidenced in various talmudic discourses of place, particularly when the question of privileged place (Zion-exile) is thematized.

1. See Jeffrey Rubenstein, “Addressing the Attributes of the Land of Israel: An Analysis of Bavli Ketubot 110b–112a,” in Center and Diaspora: The Land of Israel and the Diaspora in the Second Temple, Mishna, and Talmud Periods, ed. Isaiah M. Gafni (Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center for Jewish History, 2004), 159–88, here 169. All translations are my own.

313

314  Making History The discussion in Ketubbot begins with consideration of a mishnah that gives priority to the desire of a spouse who wishes to “make Aliyah” (to use the contemporary English phrase) to the land of Israel. The teaching of the mishnah is this: All may coerce their spouses to go up to the land of Israel, but not all may coerce them to leave. All may coerce their spouses to go up to Jerusalem, but not all may coerce them to leave—both men and women. (m. Ketub. 13:11)

The mishnah’s law is obviously designed to support the value of settling the Land, and of Jerusalem in particular. Emerging from a coterie of Palestinian rabbis living in an age when Jewish settlement in the Land had been severely challenged, such an expression comes as no surprise. The Talmud of Babylonia knows of other early Palestinian rabbinic teachings (= baraitot) that support the same value, several of which it quotes. What is most interesting about the Talmud’s discussion, in my view, is the way it quotes many such teachings only to undermine their force by reinterpreting or relativizing them. To help highlight this dynamic, I place in bold, in my own translation below, all the Palestinian teachings. I also emphasize, with italics, some of the most radical of the Babylonian teachings. Talmud Ketubbot 110b–111a Our rabbis have taught: I. Someone should always live in the land of Israel, even in a town the majority of which is gentile, and he should not reside outside the Land, even in a town the majority of which is Jewish. For whoever lives in the land of Israel is as though he has a [true] God, but whoever lives outside the Land is as though he has no God, for scripture says: “To give you the land of Canaan, to be your God” (Lev 25:38). And is it true that anyone who does not live in the land of Israel has no God? Rather, it is to tell you that anyone who lives outside the Land is as though he worships idols … II. R. Zeira was avoiding R. Judah, for [the former] wanted to go up to the land of Israel, while R. Judah said, “Anyone who goes up from Babylonia to the land of Israel violates a positive commandment, for it is said, [111A] ‘They shall be brought to Babylonia and there they shall be until the day that I remember them, says the Lord’ (Jer 27:22).” And R. Zeira? That [verse] is written in reference to the utensils for the temple service. And R. Judah, [doesn’t he recognize that the verse is speaking about the temple vessels]? There is yet another verse written: “I adjure you, daughters of Jeru-

Kraemer: Not from Zion  315 salem, by the gazelles and by the hinds of the field, that you not awaken nor stir up love until it please” (Song 22:7). And R. Zeira, [what does he do with the verse from the Song of Songs]? That verse means that Jews should not go up as a wall [meaning en masse, but it doesn’t mean that Jews shouldn’t go up at all]. And R. Judah, [how does he now learn that Jews should not go up from Babylonia to the Land]? Another “I adjure you” (Song 3:5) is written [which should be understood to forbid leaving Babylonia for the land of Israel]. And R. Zeira [what does he do with this additional “adjure”]? He needs it for the teaching of R. Yosé b. R. Hanina [with which he agrees], for he said, “What are these three oaths for? One is that Jews should not go up like a wall, one is that the Holy One, blessed be He, has imposed an oath on Israel that they not rebel against the nations of the world, and one is that the Holy One, blessed be He, has imposed an oath on the gentiles that they not oppress Israel too much…” III. Said R. Eleazar, “Whoever lives in the land of Israel dwells without sin, for it is said, ‘And the inhabitant shall not say, I am sick, the people that dwell therein shall be forgiven their iniquity’ (Isa 38:24).” Said Raba to R. Ashi, “We repeat this verse with reference to those who bear disease” [in other words, the verse refers not to the atoning power of the Land but to the atoning power of illness]. IV. Said R. Anan, “Whoever is buried in the land of Israel is as though he were buried under the altar. Here it is written, ‘An altar of earth you shall make to me’ (Ex 20:21), and elsewhere, ‘And his land does make expiation for his people’ (Deut 32:42).” Ulla would regularly go up to the land of Israel. He died outside the Land. They came and told R. Eleazar. He said, “You, Ulla – ‘should you die in an unclean field’ (Amos 7:17)?” They told him, “His bier is coming.” He said to them, “Being gathered in [to the Land] when alive is not the same thing as being gathered into the Land after death...” V. Said R. Judah said Samuel, “Just as it is forbidden to go forth from the land of Israel to Babylonia, so it is forbidden to go forth from Babylonia to other lands.” Rabbah and R. Joseph both said, “Even from [the city of] Pumbeditha to Be Cube.” There was a certain person who left from Pumbeditha to Be Cube, and R. Joseph banned him… VI. Rabbah and R. Joseph both said “The truly suitable persons in Babylonia – the land of Israel receives them. The truly fit persons in other countries – Babylonia receives them.” For what purpose [are the lands said to be in this relationship]? Should one say, this is as to genealogy? But did not a master state, “All other countries are like gross dough in comparison to the land of Israel,

316  Making History and the land of Israel is like gross dough by comparison to Babylonia”? So it must have to do with burial. VII. Said R. Judah, “Whoever dwells in Babylonia is as though he dwellt in the land of Israel, as it says: ‘Ho, Zion, escape, you who dwell with the daughter of Babylonia’ (Zech 2:11) …” VIII. Abaye said: We hold that Babylonia will not see the birth-pangs of the Messiah.

This is a rather remarkable sequence, one that pays homage to the land of Israel while at the same time undermining its priority. Let us review this text, section by section. Section I is a baraita, one that unambiguously praises the superiority of the land of Israel and pulls no punches in condemning Jews who live outside the Land. But section II, which stands in “dialogue” with section I, offers a very different perspective.2 This section begins by informing us of a conflict of opinions between two prominent rabbis, R. Judah and R. Zeira. Judah, by far the more prominent of the two, is emphatically represented, here and elsewhere, as a great champion of Babylonia as a Jewish home. In this section, he forbids Jews to leave Babylonia for the land of Israel, a ruling with which his student, Zeira, disagrees. Most of this section is a typical talmudic exercise in which each side (that is, the Talmud speaking for each side) cites scriptural support for their position. For our purposes, it is not the exchange as such that is important but its conclusion. In the end, R. Zeira—the sage who supports Jews moving to the land of Israel and undertakes the journey himself—is said to agree with R. Yosé b. R. Hanina in his declaration that (1) “Jews should not go up like a wall,” that (2) “Jews should not rebel against the nations of the world,” and (3) “that gentiles should not oppress Israel too much.” In other words, even the sage who supports Aliyah agrees that large-scale immigration of Jews to the land of Israel is not permitted. Moreover, he clearly assumes (in points 2 and 3) that many Jews will continue to live in foreign lands, including but not restricted to Babylonia. Contrary to what we saw in section I, this section affirms that Jews are meant to live in diaspora, and only small numbers should leave for the Holy Land. According to R. Judah,

2. Rubenstein sees the Gemara’s response in this section as being motivated by the tension experienced by Babylonian rabbis on account of their exilic residence. Not only do they recognize the sacredness of the Land, which ought to motivate them to resettle there, but, in Rubenstein’s representation, they recognize the challenge of Jewish life in diaspora, where the influence of foreign culture and the danger of syncretism are inevitable. By contrast, life in the Land assures religious constancy (see Rubenstein, “Addressing the Attributes,” 168). Historically speaking, this is unsustainable, as Palestine in the late mishnaic and early talmudic periods was a typical Eastern Roman province, one infused with “foreign” culture and syncretistic religious trends. The claims made by the Tannaitic sources here are just that: highly polemical claims, and not historical descriptions.

Kraemer: Not from Zion  317 of course, even individual Jews—at least those who live in Babylonia, as he does—are forbidden to do so. Sections III and VI begin with teachings highlighting the greatness of the Land—the first declaring that the Land has the power to atone for sin and the latter reporting that “truly suitable” (= “kosher”) Jews in other lands are gathered into the land of Israel (an ambiguous statement if ever there was one). Crucially, each of these teachings is immediately undermined by the Talmud, illustrating well the dynamic to which I referred above. In section III, Raba declares that he does not understand the verse to be speaking of the atoning power of the Land; for him, the verse from Isaiah, which speaks of sickness as well as dwelling in the Land, is teaching about the atoning power of illness. This is a rejection of Eleazar’s interpretation, undermining his claim for the magical atoning powers of the Land.3 In section VI, we learn that the Land’s unique suitability for “kosher” Jews must apply to burial and not to the greater genealogical purity of Jews in the Land. Section IV had earlier spoken of the superiority of the Land for burial, a point with which this latter conclusion agrees. But the story told in IV renders this point somewhat more complex. In the story, R. Eleazar expresses displeasure with Ulla’s coming to the Land after death, as opposed to during life. But while he insists that it would be better to come to the Land before one dies, he grants that burial in the Land is also efficacious, as section VI reiterates. This position holds out the possibility that life in Babylon, followed by burial in the Land, is a good Jewish life path; obviously Ulla believes this to be so. To restate this conclusion in order to sharpen it: in the end—but perhaps only in the end—the land of Israel is to be preferred. Before then, there is no universal assent for such a preference. Central to section VI’s discussion is acceptance of the fact that, with respect to genealogical purity (= avoidance of intermarriage with forbidden partners over the course of generations), Babylonia is superior. This is, it must be said, an absolutely stupendous claim, one that runs counter to stereotype, ancient and modern. It is typically assumed that Jewish–gentile intermarriage is more common in diaspora communities, where Jewish–gentile relations are presumably more common than in Palestine, where the concentration of Jews is greater. This talmudic teaching insists that the opposite is the case. Now, this contrary claim was defensible at the point of its origin, back at the time of return from the Babylonian exile under Ezra. Then, the books of Ezra and Nehemiah suggest (Ezra 8:1–14; Neh 7:6–72), the exiles maintained vigorous genealogical purity, while “Jews” (Judahites) who had remained in the Land were already a mixed

3. Rubenstein makes the same point (“Addressing the Attributes,” 170).

318  Making History multitude (see Ezra 9). But, by the time of the Talmud, centuries later, “history happened,” and the communities were very different from what they had been earlier. Nevertheless, the claim of greater Babylonian purity is maintained, a claim that rests on the assumption that the populations of both lands are diverse (the Tannaitic teaching had earlier spoken of “cities that are majority gentile” in the land of Israel), but the Jews in Babylon maintain more meticulous separation and records. Importantly, this is a claim pertaining to how Jews live, not how they die, and those of Babylon come out as superior on this side of the ledger. Section V is tremendously important as a bridge to the Talmud’s climax in VII. In V, prominent Babylonian rabbis (the same R. Judah, now quoting his teacher Samuel) say that, in terms of Jewish mobility, Babylonia is in the same status with respect to other lands as the land of Israel is with respect to Babylonia; that is, just as a Jew is forbidden to leave the land of Israel for Babylonia (a position intimated, though not stated explicitly, in earlier quoted Tannaitic texts), so too may the Jew not leave Babylonia to go to foreign lands. The reason at the foundation of this restriction is unmistakable: exit is forbidden because of the holiness of the land in which one currently resides. Indeed, the very act of enacting such a restriction constructs the holiness of the place to which it pertains. So this law makes a simple but clear statement—just as the land of Israel is holier than Babylonia (for the moment, in any case), so too is Babylonia holier than all other lands. This assertion of the holiness of Babylonia is further emphasized by the teaching of Rabbah and R. Joseph, who construct a hierarchy to limit movement between different locales in Babylonia itself. This is reminiscent of what the Mishnah had done by making the Land superior to other lands for making a marital home, and then making Jerusalem superior to the rest of the Land. This phenomenological parallel constitutes a further claim for the holiness of Babylonia, a holiness similar to if not (yet) as powerful as that of the land of Israel. But as we will see momentarily, the Talmud has not yet fully accomplished its purpose. Only one more step is necessary to erase any distinction at all. This erasure is accomplished, quickly and simply, in R. Judah’s final teaching, in section VII. In this teaching, Judah asserts that “whoever dwells in Babylonia is as though he dwelt in the Land of Israel.” To support his claim, he quotes Zech. 2:11: “Ho, Zion, escape, you who dwell with the daughter of Babylonia.” Presumably, the “proof” rests on the balance of “Zion” and “daughter of Babylonia” in the verse’s formulation. What is striking about this “proof,” however, is that, as a quick glance at its original context unambiguously shows (and we must always assume that the talmudic teachers knew, and assumed their students would know, the original scriptural expression), the thrust of the verse is actually the exact opposite of what Judah “learns” from it: Zechariah’s vision is of a grand return of

Kraemer: Not from Zion  319 the Babylonian exiles to the Holy Land and Jerusalem, not an affirmation of their dwelling abroad. This dissonance allows us to see the true power of Judah’s teaching, for he asserts, against biblical precedent, that Babylonia is as good as Zion.4 With this teaching, “supported” by biblical authority, Judah has undermined much of what has come before. If Babylonia is just like the land of Israel for purposes of Jewish dwelling, then there is no reason for the Jew to relocate to the latter. In the face of such a position, one cannot sustain the argument that the Jew who lives in Babylon is an idolator, one who effectively worships foreign gods. One can barely admit that the Land has greater holiness, for if the Jew can legitimately live in the one just as in the other, then holiness must be constituted of something other than a biblical promise pertaining to a specific land. Viewed not in its isolated elements but as an argument with a trajectory, the Talmud leads us to an unmistakable conclusion: that, for the Jew, Babylonia is as good as the land of Israel. This conclusion undermines all the Palestinian rabbinic teachings to which the Talmud paid lip service, by means of quotation, earlier in the argument.5 For R. Judah, the once-upon-a-time-exilic-now-turned-diaspora land is just like the “promised land,” the “Holy Land,” the land of the ancestors. How can this be so? How can R. Judah make such an “outrageous” claim? We could surmise an answer now. But reference to several other Babylonian teachings will help us offer a more confident interpretation of the teachings of the Babylonian rabbis concerning their diaspora condition. It is to those that we now turn. The Talmud’s major discussion of synagogues is found in tractate b.

4. I do not agree with Rubenstein’s assessment (“Addressing the Attributes,” 179) that, even here, R. Judah grants the superiority of the land of Israel. He supports this assessment by noting the “as though” in R. Judah’s teaching. To begin with, it is imprudent to hang so much on a single word preserved in the written tradition, the relationship of which to its oral foundations is unknown and irrecoverable. Second, even granting the presence of the term, how we interpret this “as though” (k’ilu) depends on how we hear it. “As though [he dwells in the land of Israel],” expressed as a declaration and without a lilt, suggests no conditionality concerning the two sides it wishes to equate. Spoken with a slightly raised voice, as a mocking teenager might, it would diminish the equation. Given the overall thrust of R. Judah’s teachings, I doubt it is the teen’s voice we should hear here. 5. From this point onward, the Talmud’s deliberation focuses primarily on two matters: (1) the value of the Land—living in it, dying in it—as means of assuring a place in the messianic kingdom and the World to Come, and (2) the magic and majesty of the Land as such. As my interest is the question of Jewish diaspora existence in this world, I will not offer analysis of this text here. But one observation should be made: one might anticipate that, even if Babylonian sages claim equality of their Babylonian home for the Jew in this world, they could grant the superiority of the promised land in connection with the age of redemption. Even here, though, the Bavli diminishes or neutralizes such a conclusion; see Rubenstein, “Addressing the Attributes,” 174–77.

320  Making History Megillah 28a–29a. The deliberation commences with a mishnah and related baraita that restrict the sorts of activities in which one may engage in a synagogue, excluding particularly behaviors that are marked by “frivolousness” (qalut rosh). To begin with, we would assume that these directives apply to all synagogues, wherever they may be, but Rav Assi nods to the possibility that this is not the case, affirming that the restrictions do indeed apply even to synagogues in Babylonia, which “are made conditionally” (Rashi: on the condition that they are used, meaning that once they are no longer used, their sanctity evaporates). Having introduced the notion that Babylonian synagogues do not share the same level of sanctity as those in the land of Israel, the deliberation pursues other matters, returning its focus to the diaspora only on the next page. By way of introduction to the central part of this discussion, the Talmud expounds on the relationship of the Divine Presence (the shekhinah— God’s immanent quality) and Israel, quoting a teaching of Shimon b. Yohai (hence, a baraita): R. Shimon ben Yohai says: Come and see how dear [the nation of] Israel is before The Holy One, Blessed Be He,6 for wherever they were exiled, the Divine Presence was with them. [When] they were exiled to Egypt, the Divine Presence was with them, as is said, “was I not exiled to your father’s house when they were in Egypt” (1 Sam 2:27). [When] they were exiled to Babylonia, the Divine Presence was with them, as is said, “for your sake I sent to Babylonia” (Isa 43:14).7 And even when they will be redeemed in the future, the Divine Presence will be with them, as is said, “and the Lord your God will return your return” (Deut 30:3). It does not say “and He will cause to return” (ve-heshiv) but “and He will return” (ve-shav). This teaches that The Holy One, Blessed Be He, will return with them from among the places of exile. (b. Meg. 29a; emphases added)8

This teaching of R. Shimon b. Yohai—himself, notably, a Palestinian rabbi—declares that, when Israel is exiled, they never go into exile alone. Rather, when Israel is exiled, God (or at least God’s “Presence,” not to be confused with the Divine Emanation bearing this name in later Kabbalah) is exiled with them. This was true when Israel was “exiled” to Egypt (from the time of the descent of Jacob’s sons and their families until the exodus). It was true when they were exiled to Babylonia. And they will even be accompanied by the Divine Presence when they return from their exile at the time of their redemption. 6. “Before the Holy One, Blessed be He,” is missing in the Munich manuscript and elsewhere. 7. Manuscripts and other versions include mention of other diasporas here, including Elam and Edom. The briefer printed version is a product of censorship. 8. The translation is my own.

Kraemer: Not from Zion  321 This is reminiscent, of course, of the claim of the prophet Ezekiel, whose vision suggested the presence of God in Babylon following the original exile (see, e.g., Ezek 3). Ezekiel did not, however, translate his vision of God in exile into a general rule, as does R. Shimon. Shimon’s rule suggests, in fact, that God will accompany Israel through all of her exiles. Thus, all future exiles may be comforted by the notion that wherever they are, God is with them. Furthermore, R. Shimon seems to go beyond Ezekiel in claiming that God Godself—or at least God’s Presence—is actually exiled and will necessitate return from exile when Israel is redeemed. The Talmud now proceeds to literalize its understanding of God’s Presence in exile. It asks, “Where in Babylonia [is the Divine Presence]?,” offering this answer: Said Abaye: In the synagogue of Hotzal, and in the synagogue of Shaf VeYativ in Nehardea.

If you want to meet God in Babylon, Abaye suggests, you need not travel far. If we want to meet God, he says, we should go to the specified synagogues. To buttress Abaye’s claim for at least the latter synagogue, the Talmud here shares a couple of stories: Samuel’s father and Levi9 were sitting in the synagogue of Shaf VeYativ in Nehardea. The Divine Presence came, [and] they heard the sound of the disturbance. They got up and left.  Rav Sheshet was sitting in the synagogue of Shaf VeYativ in Nehardea. The Divine Presence came, and he did not leave. The ministering angels came and scared him [to make way for the Divine Presence]. He [Rav Sheshet, who was blind] said before Him: Master of the World, One who is unfortunate and one who is not unfortunate, who takes precedence over whom? He [God] said to them: Leave him alone.

Don’t think that we are speaking in metaphors, the Talmud says here. The Divine Presence is literally present in the designated synagogue. There is more to these brief stories than meets the eye. The name of the designated synagogue—Shaf VeYativ—is an unusual and meaningful one. The Aramaic words of the name mean, as Daniel Boyarin offers in his discussion of this text,10 “slid and settled” (or, for present purposes, perhaps “floated and settled” would be better)—a very suggestive partial sentence. The Talmud itself does not elaborate on the name. But Rashi repeats a tradition reporting that the synagogue was built using stones and dirt  9. In manuscripts and other versions, Levi is not said to participate in this drama. 10. Daniel Boyarin, A Traveling Homeland: The Babylonian Talmud as Diaspora, Divinations (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), 34–36.

322  Making History brought to Babylonia by the ancient exiles directly from the newly destroyed temple in Jerusalem.11 Hence, it was the stones and dirt of the temple that “slid” from Jerusalem and “settled” in Babylon. So, we may surmise, it is the magic of the stones of the temple that attracts the Divine Presence, all no longer in Jerusalem but surviving physically in Babylon. Now, unlike several of examples in the Ketubbot deliberation discussed above, this teaching does not explicitly undermine a quoted Palestinian tradition. But, I would argue, this is because it does not have to. Biblical traditions broadly establish the temple in Jerusalem, the place where Israel meets God, as the cornerstone of the sacredness of the Land and its centrality. By suggesting that after the destruction—from the Talmud’s perspective, both the first and the second—the substance of the original Jerusalem temple, that of King Solomon, had “slid and settled” in Babylon, where it was joined by God’s Presence, any claim for the ongoing centrality of the Land is fundamentally undermined, for nowhere but Babylon can the temple of Solomon ever again be found. As Boyarin says, “Babylon replaces Palestine, and this synagogue is the new Temple.”12 But, I submit, even this characterization fails to go far enough, for not only is the synagogue the new temple; it is the old, original temple as well. Returning to the deliberation, we see that the Talmud next goes further in making its argument for Babylon as Zion. Referencing Ezekiel’s famous declaration that even in exile “I [= God] will be for them as a small sanctuary” (Ezek 11:16), R. Isaac adds: “These are the synagogues and the academies that are in Babylonia.”13 His claim is that, in the absence of the temple, God’s “little temple” is synagogues and study halls. Of course, synagogues and study halls are potentially ubiquitous, as they can be built everywhere—or convened, even without new building, virtually anywhere. But this recognition, as important as it is, misses what R. Isaac is truly saying, for he is building upon an equation already suggested by Ezekiel in the voice of God. God says here: “I will be their sanctuary.” So God = sanctuary. R. Isaac adds that sanctuary = synagogue/study hall. If A = B and B = C, then A = C, meaning that R. Isaac is claiming that God is promising that God will be in the synagogues and study halls. Synagogues and study halls are not restricted to one land. They may be any place. They are, like the Torah itself, Israel’s portable homeland. But even if the present point is a general one (see n. 13), pertaining to study halls and synagogues anywhere, the context suggests that the focus 11. See also the other teachings cited by Boyarin (ibid., 34–35 and n. 5). 12. Ibid., 34. 13. “That are in Babylonia” (she-be-bavel) is missing in manuscripts. The absence of the geographical modifier suggests that the Talmud here, quoting R. Isaac, means to make a broader point; that is, God will be present with Israel in their synagogues and study halls not only in Babylonia but wherever they are.

Kraemer: Not from Zion  323 is Babylonian synagogues and study halls in particular. What is the foundation of this claim of the sages of Babylon, insisting on God’s special presence in their midst? The sages of Babylonia were well aware of their special powers in matters of Torah, and they explicitly contrasted those powers with what they believed to be the lesser ones of those residing in the Land. Recall the following well-known tradition in b. Sukkah 20a, offered in the name of R. Shimon ben Laqish, himself a Palestinian sage: When the Torah was forgotten from Israel, Ezra came up from Babylonia and refounded it. When it was once again forgotten, Hillel the Babylonian came up and refounded it. When it was forgotten yet again, R. Hiyya and his sons came up and refounded it.

According to the “history” recounted here, Zion (or the land of Israel) is the place of forgetting Torah and Babylonia the source of its recovery.14 Reading the Bible’s history quite well, and arriving shockingly close to the conclusion of modern biblical scholars, R. Shimon notes that the Torah was observed mostly in the breach (“forgotten”) during preexilic times, and that it was Ezra, emerging from the exile, who founded (or refounded) Israel on the foundation of Torah, effectively (at least) for the first time. But this would not be the last time Torah would come forth from Babylon. In this narrative, the great “founding father” of rabbinic Judaism—Hillel himself—was a Babylonian who brought Torah—now rabbinic Torah— from Babylon, at the beginning of the rabbinic era, generations before the Mishnah would be recorded. And then again, in the period of transition from Mishnah to Talmud, the Torah of Palestine would again weaken, making it necessary for the Torah of Babylon to again save the day. This all represents a rejection—an undermining, in the language I used earlier—of the prophet Isaiah’s famous promise that “out of Zion will come Torah” (Isa 2:3). No, the Bavli here asserts, the Torah comes out of Babylon, and even the great Palestinian sage, Shimon ben Laqish, knows this reality. It is impossible to exaggerate how important this overall claim is. For the rabbis, Judaism was not a system focused on temple and cult, as had been the case, thanks to the biblical legacy, in prerabbinic times. For the rabbis, Judaism is and would forever be a system focused on Torah—both its study and its performance, but particularly its study. If Torah owed its health to the Jews of Babylon, then Judaism itself was fundamentally Bab-

14. For a detailed study of the land of Israel as a place of forgetting Torah and Babylonia as the source of its recovery, see also Alyssa M. Gray, “The Motif of the Forgetting and Restoration of Law: An Inter-Talmudic Difference about the Divine Role in Rabbinic Law,” in Land and Spirituality in Rabbinic Literature: A Memorial Volume for Yaakov Elman ‫ז׳׳ל‬, ed. Shana Strauch Schick, Brill Reference Library of Judaism 71 (Leiden: Brill, 2022), 175–207.

324  Making History ylonian. What defines them as Jews, the Babylonian rabbis claim, is their Torah, a Torah that would not exist without them. Of course, if Judaism was a product of diaspora, uniquely fit for diaspora, then it would be viable—a source of strength and reinvigoration—in all diasporas. The portable homeland that is the Torah, strengthened and expanded by the rabbinic Torah, would make it difficult to argue that Judaism relies on a foothold in Zion, itself merely a place. We noted above that the claim for the reliance of Jews of the land of Israel on Babylonia for Torah was repeated in the name of a Palestinian rabbi. Of course, we can’t be sure that R. Shimon b. Laqish actually said the words here attributed to him, or whether the Babylonian sages simply attributed this opinion to him to their own advantage. But we need have no doubt that Palestinian rabbis actually recognized the Torah prowess of their Babylonian counterparts, for the Palestinian midrash, Genesis Rabbah 11, actually teaches the same thing: R. Ishmael the son of R. Yose asked Rebbe, saying to him: By what merit do the Jews of Babylonia survive? He said to him: by the merit of Torah study; and those in the Land of Israel, by the merit of tithes; and those from the diaspora (lit., from outside the land), on account of the fact that they honor the Sabbaths and Holy Days.

Palestinian Jews, say the Palestinian rabbis, are distinguished by their observance of the obligation to separate tithes, but Babylonian Jews are distinguished by their Torah study. In the rabbinic scale of values, there can be no doubt which of these is higher: Torah study. Furthermore, as such study is the only means Jews have to access the revelation of God’s will, contained in “Torah” (both of the written and oral varieties), we may assume that the rabbis believed God to be closer to Israel, in significant respects, in Babylon. The Babylonian rabbinic challenge to the centrality of the Land is found not only in doctrinal assertions, as above, but also in areas of hala­ khah in which geography plays a prominent role. We shall consider two such examples. The first case pertains to the court’s consideration of cases involving damage or loss in Babylonia. In the rabbis’ reading of Scripture, such cases must be brought before elohim, a term they equate with formally ordained judges, and, in the rabbinic view, such ordination could be granted only in the land of Israel. This means that, according to the strict ­letter of the law, many cases could not be judged in Babylonia or other diasporas. How did the Babylonian rabbis deal with this restriction? The Babylonian Talmud (b. B. Qam. 84a–b) first sets up the problem: Raba said, “[Compensation for] damages done to an ox by an ox or to an ox by a human, we collect it in Babylonia, [but compensation for] damage

Kraemer: Not from Zion  325 done to a human by a human or to a human by an ox, we do not collect it in Babylonia.” What distinguishes damages done to a human by a human or damages done to a human by an ox, that may not [be compensated]? [It is because to collect such compensation] “expert judges ...” are needed, but they aren’t [found in Babylonia]. Injuries done to an ox by an ox or to an ox by a human also [84b] require “expert judges” but they are not [found in Babylonia]!

At this early point in the deliberation, the Talmud fails to find a distinction between damages to a human and those done to an ox, a failure that would force us to conclude that no such cases could be adjudicated in Babylonia. But Raba has already suggested a distinction in the status of these two types of cases in Babylonia, so the Talmud presses on, suggesting a second distinction: Rather, what distinguishes injuries done to an ox by an ox or to an ox by a human? We [the rabbis of Babylonia] act as their [= the rabbis of the land of Israel] agents, just as we do with the matters of admissions and loans.

But if it is so that “we act as their agents,” the Talmud retorts, let us do the same with damages caused by a human! Why should the Babylonian rabbis restrict their judicial agency to cases of damages caused by an ox? To this question, the Talmud proposes a first answer: [Perhaps] we act as their agents [only] in matters [of payments] that are clear to us. [But] as to matters [of payments] that are not clear to us, we do not act as their agents.

But, the Talmud challenges, damages to oxen are no clearer than those to humans, as both require an estimated judgment (“go see the worth on the market”). Besides, the double or four- or fivefold payment required in the case of certain fines is a fixed amount, yet, as a fine, it is not collected in Babylonia. The distinction fails, and the Talmud seeks new possibilities. Without reviewing each and every step of the deliberation as it proceeds to conclusion, suffice it to say that its conclusion is that “we act as their agents in a matter that is common and involves an out-of-pocket loss, but in a matter that is common but does not involve an out-of-pocket loss, or a matter that is not common but does involve an out-of-pocket loss, we do not act as their agents.” This would exclude damages caused to humans, which, in the Talmud’s opinion, are not common, as well as payment for embarrassment, which does not involve out-of-pocket loss. Additional deliberation narrows matters even further, restricting cases adjudicated in Babylonia to damages caused by oxen under the categories

326  Making History of “tooth” (= damage caused by the mouth) and “leg” (= trampling and analogous causes). There is no doubt that this deliberation leaves sages/judges in Babylonia in a diminished position in comparison with their colleagues in Palestine, at least in theory. But it is difficult to be sure what prerogative or power rabbinic courts had in the realities of administration and justice in either land, and it is possible that this discussion is mostly, if not entirely, theoretical. At the same time, even if this discussion has actual consequences for the adjudication of real cases, it is important to observe that in the cases of everyday life that probably mattered most—common cases involving monetary loss—the Babylonian sages asserted their authority, whatever their colleagues in Palestine might tell them. Perhaps more important than the actual extent of their claimed power is the Babylonian justification of that power. The Talmud’s justification of Babylonian rabbinic courts hearing certain cases is that “we act as their agents.” Who authorized them to do so? Ordinarily, a legal agent is appointed by the primary party. Did Palestinian sages appoint Babylonian colleagues to serve as their agents? Did Babylonian rabbis ask their colleagues in Palestine if they could serve in such a capacity? There is certainly no record of such a request, nor is there record of a Palestinian rabbinic request for such representation, either here or elsewhere. We need have little doubt, therefore, that this is a legal fiction—an arrogation of power on the part of Babylonian rabbis who claim to serve as agents of the Palestinians in matters of their choosing. Since “a person’s agent is like himself,” their assertion of agency is tantamount to insisting that, in certain crucial categories at least, “we are just like them.” Forget the fact that they have formal ordination and we do not. Our Torah—the Babylonians insist—is all we need to justify our authority. A second relevant talmudic deliberation, concerning questions of divorce law, is at least as much about geography as it is about the law itself. Because precision in matters of personal status is so important— because confused status may lead, legally speaking, to adultery and mamzerut—the rabbis were very demanding in their requirements for a valid bill of divorce. Taking up the burden of this responsibility, the Mishnah at the beginning of tractate Gittin declares that someone who brings a get to the land of Israel from a foreign territory must declare “it was written and signed [by witnesses] in my presence”; within the land of Israel, by contrast, there is no such requirement. To follow this directive, one must know, of course, what counts as Israel and what as foreign land, and the Mishnah is explicitly geographical in delineating the boundaries: The Rabbis say: [concerning a get delivered by an agent] one is required to say, “It was written in my presence and it was signed in my presence,” only if he brings it from an overseas province or delivers it [from the land

Kraemer: Not from Zion  327 of Israel to a country overseas]. And [likewise] one who brings [a bill of divorce] from one region to another region within the overseas provinces is required to say, “It was written in my presence and it was signed in my presence.” Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel says: even to one who takes it from one district to another district [in the same country]. R. Judah says: from Rekem eastward [is considered to be “overseas”] and Rekem itself is like east [of the land of Israel]. From Ashkelon southward [is outside of the Land,] and Ashkelon itself is like south [of the Land]. From Akko northward [is outside the Land,] and Akko is like north [of the Land]. R. Meir says: Akko is like the land of Israel with regard to bills of divorce. And one who delivers a get in the land of Israel need not say, “It was written in my presence and it was signed in my presence.” (m. Git. 1:1-3)

The Mishnah—the authoritative, soon to be canonical, Palestinian rabbinic text—is unambiguous in privileging the Land for purposes of divorce law, and it is quite precise, as these things go, in delineating the boundaries of the Land. From the perspective of the Mishnah, there should be no question concerning the status of Babylonia: it is outside the Land and therefore subject to the restrictions of such territories. But, despite this clarity, the Talmud of Babylonia and its sages have other interests. The Talmud’s discussion of this matter (b. Git. 6a) begins by recording the contradictory opinions of Rav and Samuel: Rav said, “It [= Babylonia] is, as to writs of divorce, like the land of Israel. And Samuel said, “It is outside the Land.” Their rationales are quickly explored, at which point a decision is tentatively proposed: “In Babylonia we made ourselves, with respect to writs of divorce, like the land of Israel from the time that Rab came to Babylonia.” This, in turn, is challenged based on the map outlined in the Mishnah, at which point the discussion ends by declaring that the stringency in the law of divorce applies to all foreign lands “except for Babylonia.” What is perhaps most striking about this deliberation is its bald assertiveness: first the claim, offered without any argument or traditional support, that “we made ourselves … like the land of Israel,”15 and second the insistence, against the literal word of the Mishnah, that the privileging of the Land in divorce law applies to all foreign lands “except for Babylonia”; again, this latter claim is offered without any logical argument or traditional support. Such assertions are rather unusual in the Talmud’s practice, as retorts to authoritative objections are typically offered with at least some lip service paid to the need for logical argument or the support of alternative teachings of equal authority. The absence of such lip service here draws attention to the Talmud’s insistence on a particular conclusion, one claiming equal authority for the rabbinic masters of Babylon. 15. A similar claim is made in a similarly “geographical” law pertaining to damage done by light cattle; see b. B. Qam. 80a.

328  Making History It is important to notice that this conclusion is an argument not only for status but also, effectively, for geography. What it declares is that Babylonia is not, for the Jew, a foreign land. Having reviewed the other Babylonian talmudic texts above, we may now see this as part of a pattern. Simply put, the rabbis of Babylonia will barely grant the primacy of the land of Israel or the exilic status of Babylonia. They are, they insist, at home, not only in fact but also as a matter of law and ideology. Against this background, there is one other significant talmudic “statement” we may cite, one that has generally been underappreciated. I am referring to the fact that the Babylonian Talmud does not systematically comment on mishnaic tractates that discuss laws pertaining to the land of Israel; by contrast, the Palestinian Talmud has full tractates deliberating on those laws. What explains this difference? The most common explanation for the Bavli’s omission of commentaries on these tractates has been that “laws dependent on the Land [of Israel]” for their performance do not apply in Babylonia, and the rabbis who created that Talmud therefore had no reason to comment on those laws. Now, this explanation is deceptively attractive, but it is demonstrably wrong, at least if taken in isolation. The fact is that the Babylonian Talmud comments on many matters that have no practical application, and it has complete tractates of deliberation and commentary on mishnaic laws pertaining to sacrifice and the Jerusalem temple—laws that had no application, in the rabbis’ days, anywhere, even in the land of Israel. So “it wasn’t practiced” simply will not do as an explanation for why the Bavli does or does not comment on something. The Babylonian rabbis’ lack of attention to laws pertaining to the Land must, therefore, be a product of their lack of interest in the Land, at the very least, and perhaps even of a choice (conscious or not) to suppress interest in the Land, denying its centrality and asserting the centrality of laws and practices that could be enacted anywhere. If this is correct, then even the shape of the Talmud is a claim for Babylonian independence, an assertion of a home that needs no other. What makes it possible for Babylonian Jews of late antiquity to make so bold a statement about their status in their diaspora? Against the background of the history and tradition to which the Babylonian rabbis were heirs, the answer is not difficult to identify. In their own view, Jews came to Babylonia very early on in their history by divine command, at the hands of an empire that served as God’s agent. In Babylon they “built homes, planted gardens, and prayed for the welfare of the government” (see Jer 29:5–7). In Babylon, they could enjoy God’s presence and live by God’s ways. What had been threatened as exile became home. This “foreign” home lasted not a few generations but many, and by the time of the rabbis who formulated the Talmud, Jews had been in Babylonia for more than a millennium. There they lived by the law of the

Kraemer: Not from Zion  329 Torah—a Torah that, in its final form, originated in Babylon—and conducted themselves fully as Jewish “citizens” of Babylonian lands. Most of the centuries of this residence left no record, but no news is almost certainly good news, and we have every reason to believe that Jews in Babylonia lived in peace, their welfare assured, during the vast majority of this period. By the time of the rabbis, Jews in Babylonia had synagogues, where they could meet their God. They had study halls, in which they could study God’s words. They did not have a temple, but neither did Jews in the land of Israel. All in all, they were, at least in their own common opinion, in no significant way at a disadvantage in comparison to Jews in the land of Israel. Reflecting their condition and their experience of it, the Talmud of the Babylonian sages declared boldly their “at-homeness,” even despite the fact that there was a viable Jewish community in the land of Israel during most of this same period. These rabbis unhesitatingly asserted their prerogative, yielding greater legitimacy to no one, even to their brethren in the Holy Land. Jewish life in Babylon, they said out loud, was as good as Jewish life in Palestine. This diaspora was not an exile—or so at least some of the rabbis dwelling in this land of their first exile believed. It was as fully a home as any home could be, at least until the Messiah would finally come and the world change irreversibly. Giving support to the notion that life fully lived is self-justifying, the sages of Babylon justified and affirmed their place in the Jewish world, as would other diasporas in the future.

Anna Whistler and the Talmudic Mothers of Yerushalmi Qiddushin MARJORIE LEHMAN

I

n 2015, as I was working on a volume called Mothers in the Jewish Cultural Imagination, I happened upon an exhibition at the Clark Museum in Williamstown, Massachusetts, that featured a portrait of James McNeill Whistler’s mother, Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1 (1871).1 For the museum world, the moment was celebratory. A portrait that had been on display for decades in Europe had arrived home to the artist’s birthplace in Massachusetts. Although James Whistler had spent most of his life in London, Venice, and Paris, as well as a portion of his childhood in Russia, he was viewed as an American artist, and his mother as an icon of American motherhood. Indeed, Anna Whistler was described in the early twentieth century as exuding the “reverence and calm we feel in the presence of our own aging mother.” She was referred to “as a symbol of the mother of all ages and

My career as an academic is intimately tied to motherhood. For the past two decades I have navigated the challenges of trying to negotiate the balance. I bring the wisdom and challenges of motherhood to my work, and the talmudic texts that form the center of that work, home to my family. My husband’s voice as well as that of my sons always seep into my writing and teaching. In truth, it is difficult for me to separate my academic study of mothers from my constant engagement with mothering. I thank the editors of this volume for the opportunity to think about my own career path and profound interest in mothers as I honor my colleague and friend Richard Kalmin. His contribution to the field of Talmud and Rabbinics will be everlasting. Like my family, his voice speaks to me whenever I am engaged in my research and writing, and I am forever grateful for all that I have learned from him. 1. See Marjorie Lehman, Jane Kanarek, and Simon J. Bronner, eds. Mothers in the Jewish Cultural Imagination, Jewish Cultural Studies 5 (Liverpool: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization in association with Liverpool University Press, 2017), 1, where we point out that writers, activists, rabbis, book printers, artists, and poets projected, created, engaged, and contested Jewish culture by relying on the trope of “the Jewish mother.” See also Lehman, “Dressing and Undressing the High Priest: A Talmudic View of Mothers,” Nashim: A Journal of Jewish Women’s Studies and Gender Issues 26 (2014): 52–74.

331

332  Making History lands.”2 In fact, after the painting arrived in the United States for a tour of American cities, President Franklin D. Roosevelt advised the U.S. Postmaster General to create a Mother’s Day postage stamp with Anna Whistler’s portrait on it (1934). No doubt, the power of the mother that is rooted in her cultural stability and familial indispensability had a profound influence in crafting this reception of her, especially in the years when the American public was living through the Great Depression.3 I stood in front of the portrait, then in the throes of thinking about mothers as a scholarly category of needed investigation in Jewish culture, and I was unconvinced by the iconic characterization of her.4 Her largesse, her sideward pose, her severe puritanical appearance, her slouched posture, and her clothing reminiscent of widowhood and old age left me thinking about what Whistler was trying to depict and whether the American reception of the painting resonated with what I saw.5 What is Anna looking at, what does she see, and what is she thinking about?6 Can I connect with her? Looking at Anna Whistler’s imposing presence, I thought about sons, like my own, who heap fears and anxieties onto their mothers in real time and mothers who become the subjects of artistic and literary creations that bring such struggles to the surface. Indeed, it was Anna’s failure to look straight at me that felt like a look of displeasure. I saw ambiguity and messiness where others saw a purity of religious devotion and motherly care.7 Not surprisingly, further investigation into the history of the painting led me to Whistler’s own description of his artistry. Comments he made at the time attest to the fact that he had no intention to paint his mother or had any investment in using the portrait to comment on his relationship 2. Hélène Valance, “Rematriating James McNeill Whistler: The Circulation of Arrangement in Grey and Black No.1: Portrait of the Artist’s Mother,” in Circulation, ed. François ­Brunet, Terra Foundation Essays 3 (Chicago: Terra Foundation for American Art, 2017), 114– 45, here 133. 3. See Daniel E. Sutherland and Georgia Toutziari, Whistler’s Mother: Portrait of an Extraordinary Life (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018), 187–88, on the craze of 1932–34, when France lent the portrait of Whistler’s mother to the United States for a tour amid Depression anxieties. Also see Donald Capps, “Whistler’s Mother: Devotional Center of Male Melancholic Religion,” Pastoral Psychology 56 (2008): 375–401, here 394; and his reference to Kevin Sharp, “Pleasant Dreams: Whistler’s Mother on Tour in America, 1932–4,” in Whistler’s Mother: An American Icon, ed. Margaret F. MacDonald (Burlington, VT: Lund Humphries, 2003), 81–99, here 81. They point out that the American public needed a reassuring mother figure to guide it through the dire days and nights of the Great Depression. Indeed, as Capps asks,“Can it be that in moments of crisis all we want, all we really need are our mothers?” 4. This volume was published in 2017. See Lehman, Kanarek, and Bronner, Mothers in the Jewish Cultural Imagination. See my discussion about mothers in b. Yoma in Bringing Down the Temple House: Engendering Tractate Yoma, HBI Series on Jewish Women (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2022). 5. Sharp, “Pleasant Dreams,” 81–99 6. Sutherland and Toutziari, Whistler’s Mother, 199–200. 7. Ibid., 186.

Lehman: Anna Whistler  333 with her. Certainly, the painting was not intended to make a statement about mothers or mothering, or so he claimed. It happened that in October of 1871 Whistler’s original model took ill. He asked his mother to pose in her place.8 His intention was to explore the use of gray and black in developing his own artistic technique. It was the aesthetic he was interested in, studying artists such as Velázquez and his use of color, not any real-life considerations regarding his relationship with his mother.9 In response to a question about his nondescript titles such as an Arrangement in Grey and Black, Whistler commented, “[It is] an arrangement of line and form and color.” All that mattered to him, he claimed, “was the harmonious ensemble that resulted from the careful selection of the artist, not what the subject matter could possibly represent.”10 But Whistler’s American viewers, even when the painting returned to the United States in 2015, wanted to see the artist’s insight into his relationship with his mother play out before them. They wanted the portrait to capture something universal about motherhood.11 When attempts had been made previously by the French government to purchase the painting, even Whistler could not help but remark, “One cannot sell one’s mother.”12 In fact, the portrait was eventually renamed, Whistler’s Portrait of His Mother or The Mother.13 The history of the reception of Whistler’s portrait was a reminder to me that mothers are everywhere. They are integral to human experience. Yet they are often depicted in art and in literature as shadowy figures. In other words, mothers easily disappear from discourses that explicitly try to account for them, much like sons push their mothers aside but never stop acknowledging their presence.14 According to psychoanalytic theo8. See Valance, who points to a letter written by Whistler’s mother to his sister about how much of a blessing it was that the model took ill (“Rematriating James McNeill Whistler,” 114). Otherwise, he never would have painted her. 9. Sarah Walden, Whistler and His Mother: An Unexpected Relationship; Secrets of an American Masterpiece (London: Gibson Square, 2003), 178–81. 10. Valance, “Rematriating James McNeill Whistler,” 130–31. See also Anna Whistler’s letter to Kate Palmer dated November 3–4, 1871, to which Sutherland and Toutziari refer (Whistler’s Mother, 190 and 220 n. 32), describing the origins of the painting. Walden notes that Whistler resented any suggestion that he was paying homage to his mother (Whistler and His Mother, 87–88). Capps quotes from Whistler’s, The Gentle Art of Making Enemies (1890; repr., New York: Dover, 1967), pointing to the fact that the artist believed in the “poetry of sight” and therefore his portrait was independent of subject matter. He argued that it should stand alone. “To me it [the portrait of my mother] is interesting as a picture of my mother; but what can or ought the public to care about the identity of the portrait?” (Capps, “Whistler’s Mother,” 390–91). 11. Sutherland and Toutziari, Whistler’s Mother, 184. 12. Sutherland and Toutziari, Whistler’s Mother, 183. 13. Elmo Scott Watson, “The Most Famous American Mother,” Eagle Valley Enterprise, May 11, 1934, http://coloradohistoricnewspapers.org. 14. Lisa Baraister, Maternal Encounters: The Ethics of Interruption (London: Routledge, 2008), 4–5.

334  Making History rists, mothers bear the destruction and abandonment of their children, but also remain intact.15 More specifically, as the psychoanalyst Erna Furman has argued, the successful maternal process is one of “being there to be left.”16 It is, thus, not all that surprising that when Whistler was asked to explain the meaning behind the artistic depiction of his mother, he made her disappear. For Whistler, his mother served the purpose he needed her to serve; she was merely present for him as a portrait model.17 The painting was about his need for artistic exploration; it was about his arrangement of grey and black on canvas. Only the reception of the painting brought Whistler’s mother back to the fore, and eventually she was transformed into the iconic American mother. Anna Whistler had never truly vanished. Instead, she inspired, she informed, and also directly challenged mothers to be like her. In Maternal Encounters: The Ethics of Interruption, Lisa Baraister argues that depictions of mothers tend to slip back into “some manifestation of [their] traditional object-position,” and Whistler’s painting was no exception. Anna emerged from the shadows to take her place as the universal symbol of motherhood.18 In the wake of the Depression and the arrival of the portrait on American soil (1932–1934),19 the American public wanted and, therefore, saw a nurturing mother figure who was a symbol of stability. She had emerged to reaffirm American family values in a culture desperately trying to recover from the trauma of economic collapse.20 Yet, in truth, the move to disambiguate Whistler’s depiction of his mother never fully occurred. Many continued to question whether Anna Whistler symbolized the universal mother in portraiture.21 I too was struggling, not only with the portrait, but with my own work—how to read the

15. Baraister, Maternal Encounters, 4-5. 16. Erna Furman, On Being and Having a Mother (Madison, CT: International Universities Press, 2001), 39–50. Furman points out that mastery of the child occurs only when a mother allows herself to miss her child, feel comfortable not being needed, and then to remain lovingly available (ix). See Elena Marchevska, “Maternal Art Practice: An Emerging Field of Artistic Enquiry into Motherhood, Care and Time,” in The Maternal in Creative Work: Intergenerational Discussions on Motherhood and Art., ed. Elena Marchevska and Valerie Walkerdine (New York: Routledge, 2019), 3; and Baraister, Maternal Encounters, 1–10, here 4.  17. Capps, “Whistler’s Mother,” 380–81. 18. Baraister, Maternal Encounters, 5. 19. James McNeill Whistler was born on July 10, 1834, turning the visit of the painting in the United States into a celebration of the artist’s one-hundredth birthday (Watson, “Most Famous American Mother”). 20. Sutherland and Toutziari, Whistler’s Mother, 188. 21. William Vaughn, “A Chance Meeting of Whistler and Freud? Artists and Their Mothers in Modern Times,” in MacDonald, Whistler’s Mother, 100–119; and, in the same volume, Martha Tedeschi, “The Face That Launched a Thousand Images: Whistler’s Mother and Popular Culture,” 121–41, here 138–39. See also Sutherland and Toutziari, Whistler’s Mother, 199–200.

Lehman: Anna Whistler  335 mothers found in talmudic literature. What cultural work were they doing? Was there a recognizable vocabulary or grammar for communicating the maternal experience? How was I to read these sources? Spurred by Anna Whistler’s portrait, I began to think more deeply about why reading for motherhood and for mothering is so difficult. The portrait was a reminder of the ease with which we fall back on stereotypical understandings of mothers as caregivers who deserve their sons’ love and admiration in return. At the same time, the history of the reception of the painting was a call to pay attention to the way mothers are characterized. It enabled me to recognize depictions of mothers in their unique contexts and to notice the array of issues that arise when mothers are the subject. Depictions of mothers reach beyond mothers and mothering, or mothers and their relationships with their sons, serving as a literary trope that illuminates additional issues of deep concern. I have written a lot on mothers in the past several years, but never about the mothers of Qiddushin.22 They have always stood out to me as among the most perplexing. Ensconced within the context of honoring one’s parents, a biblical commandment that is required of both sons and daughters, I somehow expected more straightforward descriptions of honor (kibud). But the stories about sons and their mothers reminded me of Anna Whistler and her son’s utterly complicated depiction of her. Qiddushin’s mothers steal our attention through unexpected and quite bizarre behaviors. These mothers, and their sons’ reactions to them, are quite puzzling, especially in the context of defining the limits and responsibilities of honoring parents. Moving out from the shadows and then back into the background,23 these mothers emerge as both necessary and suspect, present and absent, powerful and not powerful. None are more attention-grabbing than the mothers of Rabbi Tarfon and Rabbi Yishmael, whose stories first appear in Yerushalmi Qiddushin.24 Like Anna Whistler, they are presented as complicated, hard-to read caricatures of mothers. Through them we receive extreme examples of mother– son interactions that communicate that legislating for the parent/child relationship is far from simple. In fact, it is this very relationship that 22. See Anat Israeli and Inbar Raveh, “‘He Did Not Embarrass Her’: Motherhood and Shame in Talmudic Literature,” Nashim 33.1 (2018): 20–37, who also write about the mothers of Qiddushin illuminating the aspects of shame and humiliation that play out between the mothers mentioned here and their sons. Also see Jay Rovner, “Rav Assi Had This Old Mother: The Structure, Meaning, and Formation of a Talmudic Story,” in Creation and Composition: The Contribution of the Bavli Redactors (Stammaim) to the Aggadah, ed. Jeffrey L. Rubenstein, TSAJ 114 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005), 101–24. 23. Baraister, Maternal Encounters, 4–5. 24. Menaḥem Katz, “Eemo shel Rabi Yishmael: veyerushalmi uvebavli” (The Mother of R. Yishmael in the Palestinian and the Babylonia Talmuds), Asupot: Bit’on leinyenei aggadah umidrash 1 (2010): 105–12.

336  Making History threatens to dismantle the strength of the rabbi–disciple relationship, conveying that a significant familial value at the core of a biblical commandment is often at odds with the acquisition of Torah knowledge. If the rabbinic project is to work effectively and Torah knowledge is to be passed down successfully, sons need to leave their mothers (and fathers) for their rabbis and fellow students in houses of study.25 Seeking to culturally reproduce their own culture of Torah study, the rabbis depended on the success of a model in which the strongest social tie was between a rabbi and his pupil and not between a mother and her son.26 In addition, mothers enabled the rabbis to think about the boundaries of gender and sexuality in navigating these relationships. In keeping with Joyce Antler, who sees mothers as vessels into which cultural contradictions of a society are often poured, the mothers of Rabbi Tarfon and Rabbi ­Yishmael bring these tensions to the surface.27 Indeed, if Whistler’s mother teaches us anything, it is that maternal figures are “politically charged and rhetorically flexible”; depictions of mothers are dynamic.28 They continue to reveal insight into the culture of the audiences who, over time, have felt summoned to interact with them, drawn in by the lure of the mother as well as by the female subject. Like Anna Whistler’s portrait, they position us to look to the mother–son relationship and beyond it and ask—what does the painting or the story evoke in others and in ourselves? What notions of motherhood are presented and for what purpose do they appear? Who did the rabbis want these mothers to be and why did they see them as they did?29 Who benefits from such images and who, in the end, is harmed?30

25. See m. Qidd. 4:14, which offers one example that highlights the value of Torah study, as the tractate ends in the name of Rabbi Nehorai. See also Anat Israeli’s discussion in Massekhet Kiddushin Chapter 4: A Feminist Commentary on the Babylonian Talmud (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2021), 14, 72–82. 26. Elizabeth Shanks Alexander, Gender and Timebound Commandments in Judaism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 178; 184–88. See Alexander’s extensive discussion about the value of cultural reproduction via Torah study. 27. Joyce Antler, You Never Call! You Never Write: A History of the Jewish Mother (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 7–9. 28. Kathleen Gallagher Elkins, Mary, Mother of Martyrs: How Motherhood Became Self-­ Sacrifice in Early Christianity (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2018), xv. Also see Lynne Huffer, who argues that structures of thought that were in place about mothers upheld a very limited view of the mother, rather than a dynamic view (Maternal Pasts, Feminist Futures: Nostalgia, Ethics, and the Question of Difference [Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998], 14–15). Additionally, patriarchal perspectives promoted the view that to be a woman is to be a mother. 29. Joan W. Scott, “The Evidence of Experience,” Critical Inquiry 17 (1991): 773–97, here 777–79, 792–93. 30. Elkins, Mary, Mother of Martyrs, 6.

Lehman: Anna Whistler  337

Mothers and Sons: Yerushalmi Qiddushin 1:7, 61b31 The story of Rabbi Yishmael’s mother appears alongside a vignette about Rabbi Tarfon and his mother. Read as a unit, both stories about prominent Tannaim from the land of Israel function to examine the limits and duties of honoring one’s father and mother. Rabbi Tarfon’s behavior is viewed by his mother as beyond the requirements of the biblical commandment in Exod 20:12, Lev 19:3, and Deut 5:16 to honor her. Rabbi Yishmael’s mother, however, thinks her son deserves rebuke for not allowing her to pay homage to him in the way she desires and thus for transgressing the biblical commandment in his treatment of her by rejecting her actions. For the rabbis, who are the arbiters of what constitutes honoring one’s mother, Rabbi Yishmael has not gone far enough. Rabbi Tarfon’s mother fails to understand the honor due her. According to the rabbis who judge their actions, both need to rectify their behavior. Yerushalmi Qiddushin reads as follows: The mother of Rabbi Tarfon went to walk about in her courtyard on Shabbat and her slippers fell off.

‫אמו של רבי טרפון ירדה לטייל לתוך חצירה בשבת‬ ‫ונפסק קורדייקין שלה‬

And Rabbi Tarfon went and placed his two hands beneath her feet and she walked on them until she reached her bed/couch.

‫והלך רבי טרפון והניח שתי ידיו תחת פרסותיה‬ ‫והיתה מהלכת עליהן עד שהגיעה למיטתה‬

One time the sages came to visit. She said to them: Pray for Tarfon, my son, who has treated me with more than enough honor. They said to her: What does he do for you?

‫פעם אחת נכנסו חכמים לבקרו‬ ‫אמרה להן התפללו על טרפון בני שהוא נוהג בי‬ ‫בכיבוד יותר מדאי‬

And she repeated the story [of what he did when she lost her slippers].

‫אמרין לה מה הוא עביד ליך‬

‫ותניית להן עובדא‬

31. See the parallel source in y. Pe’ah 1:1, 15c. Also see the discussion by Shulamit Valler, Nashim venashiyut besipurei hatalmud (Tel-Aviv: Hakibbutz hameuḥad, 1993), 96–110; and Israeli and Raveh, “‘He Did Not Embarrass Her,’” 23.

338  Making History They said to her: Even if he had done this a million [times] he still would not have given you half the honor that the Torah had commanded.

‫אמרין לה אפילו הוא עושה כן אלף אלפיים אדיין‬ ‫לחצי הכיבוד שאמרה התורה לא הגיע‬

The mother of Rabbi Yishmael came and spoke and was welcomed by the rabbis.

‫אמו של רבי ישמעאל באת ואמרה וקבלה עליו‬ ‫לרבותינו‬

She said my son, Yishmael, [deserves] rebuke because he does not treat me with honor.

‫אמרה גערו בישמעאל בני שאינו נוהג בי כבוד‬

At that moment the faces of our rabbis [looked] grieved. They said: Is it possible that Rabbi Yishmael does not treat his parents with honor?

‫באותה שעה נתכרכמו פניהן של רבותינו‬ ‫אמרין איפשר לית רבי ישמעאל נוהג בכבוד אבותיו‬

They said to her: What did he do to you? She said: When he would come back from the House of gathering [study], I would want to wash his feet and drink from them and he would not allow me [to do this].

They said: Since that is her desire [to wash Rabbi Yishmael’s feet and drink the water], that is her honor. Rabbi Mana said: These grinders [of grain] said a good thing: Every man, his worth is inside his own basket.32

‫אמרו לה מהו עביד ליך‬

‫אמרה כד נפיק מבית וועדא אנא בעה משזגה ריגלוי‬ ‫ומישתי מהן ולא שבק לי‬

‫אמרין הואיל והוא רצונה הוא כיבודה‬

‫אמר ר' מנא ויאות אילין טחונייא אמרין כל בר נש‬ ‫ובר נש זכוותיה גו קופתיה‬

32. See commentaries on y. Qidd. 1:7 (Vilna, ed., 21a), Qorban haeidah and Penai Moshe, D”H veyaut … omreen, who argue that for every man, his worth/his merit/his luck has already been dealt to him.

Lehman: Anna Whistler  339 [Therefore] the mother of Rabbi Tarfon said to them in this manner, and they responded in this manner [that is, Rabbi Tarfon’s mother lauded her son for his behavior, but the rabbis criticized it, saying he had not honored his mother enough. He should not worry about humiliating himself for her.]

‫אימיה דר' טרפון אמרה לון אכין ואגיבונתה אכין‬

The mother of Rabbi Yishmael said to them in this manner and they responded in this manner [that is, Rabbi Yishmael’s mother wanted to pour water on her son’s feet and drink it. Her son criticized her actions and so the rabbis reprimanded Rabbi Yishmael and not his mother.]

‫אימיה דרבי ישמעאל אמרה לון אכן ואגיבונה אכן‬

Rabbi Ze’eira was distressed and said: If only I had a father and a mother so dear that I could inherit the Garden of Eden [so that I could be rewarded].

‫רבי זעירא הוה מצטער ואמר הלואי הוה לי אבא‬ ‫ואימא דאוקרינון ואירת גן עדן‬

And [then] when he heard the two stories [about Rabbi Tarfon and Rabbi Yishmael] he said:

—‫כד שמע אילין תרין אולפנייא אמר‬

‫[בריך] רחמנא דלית לי לא אבא ולא אימא לא כרבי‬ Blessed is God that I do not have a ‫ולא כרבי ישמעאל הוינא‬-- ‫טרפון הוינא יכיל עביד‬ father and I do not have a mother. I —‫מקבלה עלוי‬ would not have been able to act like Rabbi Tarfon [placing my hands under my mother’s feet] and I would not have been able to accept what the mother [of Rabbi Yishmael] did for him.

340  Making History Rabbi Abin said: I am exempt from honoring my father and mother. They say [about him]: When his mother was pregnant with him, his father died. When his mother gave birth to him, she died.

‫אמר ר' אבין פטור אני מכיבוד אב ואם‬ ‫אמרין כד עברת ביה אימיה מיית אבוהי כד ילידתיה‬ 33 .‫מיתת‬

By analyzing the relationship between the mothers and their sons here, we find mothers functioning as a type of rhetorical code through which the rabbis bring an anxious power dynamic to the fore.34 Sons honor their mothers, and mothers their sons, in preposterous ways. A rabbi-son crouches down to enable his mother to walk on his hands as he helps her to her bed. A mother drinks the water that she uses to wash the feet of her son, as if to drink from the sacred waters that have touched his body. Rabbi Tarfon’s actions are tinged with sexual innuendo when he touches his mother’s feet and she climbs on him to reach her bed. Are they together in her bedroom? Rabbi Yishmael’s mother, in pouring water on her son’s feet, mimics a household practice performed often by servants who cleaned the feet of their masters or guests as a sign of respect.35 Wives also washed their husbands’ feet instead of relegating the duty to servants, possibly in recognition of their husbands’ authority or as a sign of affection.36 Rabbi Yishmael’s mother’s decision to drink this water presents her as a mother trying to imbibe her son (albeit symbolically) to become as physically close to him as she can.37 Possibly, she wants to have access to his Torah knowledge in keeping with the words of Yosi ben Yoezer of 33. This text of y. Qidd. 1:7, 61b is drawn from the Leiden manuscript. 34. Claude Levi-Strauss, Structural Anthropology (New York: Basic Books, 1963) 61, as cited in Shelly Matthews, “Thinking with Thecla: Issues in Feminist Historiography,” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 17 (2001): 39–55, and also referred to by Elizabeth Clark, “Women, Gender, and the Study of Christian History,” Church History 70.3 (2001): 395–426, here 422 and n. 141. 35. See Thomas O’Loughlin, Washing Feet: Imitating the Example of Jesus in the Liturgy Today (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2015), 24–35. By the first century CE, foot washing was an established trope through which one displayed signs of respect toward the person whose feet one washed. We can also detect that foot washing among early Christians was associated with repentance as well as with signifying a sanctified relationship with Jesus. Luke 7:36–50 narrates the story of a woman who bathes Jesus’s feet with her tears, drying them with her hair and kissing them, in a request for forgiveness from sin. 36. See b. Ketub. 4b and 61a in an Amoraic statement attributed to Rav Yitzḥak bar Ḥanina (4b)/Ḥananyah (61a) indicating that women washed their husbands’ feet. Rashi on 4b, D”H vehatza’at hameetah points to the fact that a woman in niddah should not wash her husband’s feet because this brings her into close proximity with her husband and therefore increases the affection that might lead to sexual relations. 37. See m. Betzah 2:5, where Shammai and Hillel debate whether water used for washing one’s feet can be warmed on a festival. Hillel permits the use of such water if it is not fit

Lehman: Anna Whistler  341 Tzeredah in Mishnah Avot 1:4: “Let your house be a meetinghouse for the sages and sit amid the dust of their feet and drink in their words with thirst.”38 However, a baraita found in b. Horayot 13b lists drinking the water that remains from washing as the cause of forgetting one’s Torah knowledge. Sons go overboard, as do their mothers, presenting relationships that hinge on dysfunctionality in their incestual insinuations. But the sexual overtones operate to accentuate the potential power of the bond between mother and son, at times arising more from the son (as in the case of Rabbi Tarfon) and at times emerging more from the mother (as in the case of Rabbi Yishmael). Nevertheless, these vignettes communicate that the rabbis see themselves in control; they are the arbiters of the mother–son relationship. In the end, mothers turn to rabbis (although not to their rabbinic sons) to negotiate the boundaries of their familial relationships. Both mother and son are aware that they are subject to the rulings of male rabbis who are not related to them. The rabbis monitor the parameters of the biblical commandment to honor one’s mother, allowing for mothers and sons to exhibit absurd and humiliating behavior. Indeed, fulfilling the commandment is more important than any embarrassment that Rabbi Tarfon might feel in allowing his mother to quite literally “walk all over him.” The commandment is also more significant than the image created by a mother who wants to spend time at her son’s feet, drinking him in, so to speak, even if Rabbi Yishmael feels humiliated. The significance of Rabbi Mana’s folkloric reference to “grinders [of grain]” is a metaphor suggesting that the measure of flour produced through grinding is commensurate with the number of kernels brought to the mill. In other words, the more honor a son bestows upon his mother, the more reward to himself. If he is willing to go so far as to humiliate himself in the name of honoring his mother, his reward is still well deserved. Rabbi Yishmael stands out in this passage for ultimately allowing his mother to act as a servant treats a master, by washing his feet, even to humiliate herself in the process by drinking his dirty foot water. At first he refuses such behavior, but ultimately he is instructed to permit her to do it, not for his sake but in the name of honoring her. The notion that a man’s worth is “inside his basket” means that he does not need to rely on his mother for developing a sense of rabbinic self-worth. Both Rabbi Yishmael and Rabbi Tarfon can withstand any discomfiture that ensues in the wake of honoring their mothers, valuing the commandment above all. for drinking. Also note that ‫ֵיה֖ם‬ ֶ ‫ימי ַרגְ ל‬ ֥ ֵ ֵ‫ מ‬can be a reference to urine. See 2 Kgs 18:27, where reference is made to drinking it. See Raveh and Israeli, “‘He Did Not Embarrass Her,’” 29. 38. Also see Luke 22:20, where Jesus passes a cup of wine to the apostles claiming that the wine is his blood poured out and therefore when they imbibe it, it represents a new covenant. I wonder about the extent of cross-cultural dialogue here and its impact on this story.

342  Making History They recognize their mothers. They honor them despite their mothers’ behavior toward them. In other words, it is as if they have brought an abundance of grain to the mill. But their mothers are, at the same time, “there to be left,” so that these rabbis can function as rabbinic figures first and foremost. Sons must also develop identities apart from their mothers. From a psychological perspective, these rabbis must become men who no longer need their mothers while acknowledging them, in spite of any preposterous behavior that might impede the amount of honor they bring to the relationship. For that there is reward.39 Interestingly, when Anat Israeli and Inbar Raveh read this same passage in the Yerushalmi, they see something entirely different in the relationship between a mother and her son as understood through the lens of Rabbi Mana’s statement. The grain is not a metaphor for the sons’ deeds and the measure of flour an indication of the reward he is to receive for honoring her, as I argue above. Rather the grain represents a mother’s complaints. The amount of flour produced symbolizes the responses of the rabbis to these mothers, as these scholars write: The mother who complains about her son’s excessive honoring is apparently deserving of it. Something about her maternal giving and the way in which she raised her son has caused him to admire her and feel a need to repay her with expansive displays of honor and love. Therefore, the Sages approve of the son’s behavior and encourage even more extreme gestures. And R. Ishmael’s mother, in seeking to honor her son through a gesture that involves self-abasement, also appears to feel a need to act as she does. There is something about her motherhood (or her personality in general) that causes her to want to humiliate herself before her son. In approving this behavior, too, the Sages are “filling her basket,” as it were with the flour that she is entitled to receive, in accordance with the quantity of kernels that she brought with her.40

When Israeli and Raveh read y. Qiddushin 1:7, 61b, their feminist approach leads them to explore the nature of the relationships between these mothers and their sons that are built up over time. In their view, such relationships provoke behaviors that might appear humiliating on the surface but are heartfelt reactions or expressions of maternal care. The two stories, as they note, capture an emotional bondedness between

39. See Capps, “Whistler’s Mother,” 392, on Whistler’s need to draw close and pull away at the same time when painting his mother. Also see Svetlana Ristovski-Slijepcevic, who makes a similar argument regarding expressions of mothers in film and television. She argues that mothers are devalued, while the institution of motherhood is simultaneously sanctified (“The Dying Mother: Film Portrayals of Mothering with Incurable Cancer,” Feminist Media Studies 13[4] [2013]: 629–42, here 631). 40. Raveh and Israeli, “‘He Did Not Embarrass Her,’” 29.

Lehman: Anna Whistler  343 mother and son that explains a son’s readiness to place his hands underneath his mother’s feet or a mother’s willingness to drink up her son’s foot water. These mothers are, therefore, presented as worthy of receiving the reward of their sons’ honor. On a certain level, the mere mention of a rabbi and his mother prompts Israeli and Raveh to employ a feminist hermeneutic that locates women’s agency in talmudic texts.41 They are able to bring the two women mentioned in y. Qiddushin 1:7, 61b from the margins to the center, pulling them out from the shadows where they often reside. But, in so doing, they reinvoke the stereotypical mother image so many had utilized as they viewed Anna Whistler. According to their interpretation, these mothers emerge as self-sacrificing caregivers who do everything in their power to bolster their sons’ reputations even if it means humiliating themselves. Therefore, they deserve all the honor their sons can bestow on them.42 I am not doubting that this reading is a possible one. But I wonder if we can “read” the images of mothers for the cultural interrogations they also precipitate. Are we to presume that, if mothers are honored by their sons, they deserve such honor because of the specific and typical maternal responsibilities these mothers take on? Or, as I argue, do these stories present mothers and sons who challenge the very feasibility of the commandment to honor one’s parents? The rabbis use the complexity of the mother–son relationships, refracted through examples of mothers and sons engaging in bizarre behavior, in order to bring the challenges surrounding the fulfillment of this commandment to the fore in the wake of sustaining a rabbi–rabbi culture of Torah study. More specifically, what rises to the surface are the complicated ways in which what mothers stand for—caring and emotional bondedness—interact with the power and authority that mothers inherently possess, and which the rabbis desire. Rabbi Yishmael’s mother might be cleaning her son’s feet, caring for him as he returns from a “house of gathering,” presumably a house of study, but she is also shoring up her son’s reputation, calling attention to his scholarly prowess in her attempt to imbibe all that he has to offer and to highlight her own role in cultivating it. In addition, the rabbis, for their part, want to spotlight Rabbi Yishmael, who draws far less attention when he does not allow his mother to attend to him and more when he is on the receiving end of his mother’s odd form of “son/rabbi-worship.” These texts were written by men and for men, so it is not surprising that they locate a desire to present Rabbi Yishmael as willing to push his mother to the outer boundaries of rabbinic culture, on the one hand, by ignoring her wishes. On the other hand, if he allows his mother to humiliate herself in order to show that he honors her, more likely, he is emphasizing what is 41. Raveh and Israeli, “‘He Did Not Embarrass Her,’” 20–21. 42. Ibid., 30.

344  Making History central to rabbinic culture—the formation of the type of master–disciple relationships that produce rabbis such as Yishmael, who make their mothers want to drink them and their Torah in. Rabbi Yishmael’s mother then becomes someone who has bought into the rabbinic project, fostering rabbi–rabbi relationships over mother–son ones. With bizarre behavior she can, with the help of the rabbis, draw her son into a relationship with her. At the same time, she can signify the need for putting distance between them. Mothers were surely a cultural necessity for the rabbis. But unless these mothers participated wholeheartedly in promoting the goals of rabbinic society, granting full authority to the rabbis, they could be an impediment to the very culture the rabbis wished to sustain. Following Rabbi Mana’s comment, another Amora, Rabbi Ze’eira, is brought to reinforce the tensions that parent–child relationships evoke for the rabbis from another vantage point. In commenting on the stories of mothers and their sons, Rabbi Ze’eira adds a voice of distress—he does not have parents. As a result, he has no chance of fulfilling the commandment of honoring them and thus receiving the promise of life in the world to come, referred to as the Garden of Eden in this passage. Yet, when he is confronted with the stories about Rabbi Tarfon’s and Rabbi Yishmael’s mothers, he changes course. All of a sudden, he feels relieved that his orphan status prevents him from having to make the same difficult choices around honoring parents as these rabbis are required to make. If the point is not clear enough, the Yerushalmi then brings in the opinion of the Amora Rabbi Abin, who points out that, without living parents, one is exempt from the commandment altogether. Through Rabbi Ze’eira and Rabbi Abin, the rabbis can construct images of rabbinic self-sufficiency and independence from motherly care, not to mention a sense of freedom from any responsibility toward their parents. Better not to worry about how to navigate this relationship. Better not to get it wrong in ways that will bring about punishment for transgressing a commandment.43 While the portrait is harsh and happens to surface again in b. Qiddushin in the name of Rabbi Yoḥanan, what it demonstrates is that the rabbis have chosen to disclose a desire for distance from the demands of the parent–child relationship, arguably in favor of the rabbi–disciple relationship. Dismissing the mother and even the father brings relationships between rabbis to the forefront, diminishing the significance of familial bonds. Interestingly, long before there was ever a Freudian psychoanalytic theory to account for the relationship between sons and their mothers, we find the rabbis wishing their mothers away through statements like the ones attributed to Rabbi Ze’eira and

5:16.

43. The reward of observing the commandment is long life; see Exod 20:12 and Deut

Lehman: Anna Whistler  345 Rabbi Abin as if to eliminate the complexities of desiring one’s mother too much or maybe not enough.44 Rabbi Ze’eira and Rabbi Abin also call attention to the notion that familial relationships, such as those between mothers and sons, were probably more jagged and tentative than we might presume. They fluctuated from family to family and from person to person, thus making determinations about the limits and responsibilities of honoring one’s parents a difficult legal task, if not an impossible one.45 Rabbi Tarfon and Rabbi Yishmael and their mothers present two extreme cases. Yet both fall within the boundaries of fulfilling the commandment, despite the sexual overtones of Rabbi Tarfon’s proximity to his mother’s bed and Rabbi Yishmael’s mother’s decision to swallow the water that falls from his body, as if expressing some type of sexual desire for him. However, the sexual innuendo that is surely present in these sources only problematizes these relationships still further by calling into question the rabbis’ struggle over where the lines are drawn in cases necessitating close emotional attachments. How far can one go in terms of expressing honor for one’s mother before exhibiting behaviors that appear wholly inappropriate, either on the part of sons (Rabbi Tarfon) or on the part of the mothers (Rabbi Yishmael’s mother)? More specifically, if the mother–son relationship is presented as threatening the sexual boundaries of mother–son relationships, then in the midst of providing instruction about how to honor mothers, the need for distance will emerge as well.

Bavli Qiddushin 31b Bavli Qiddushin 31b shows signs of editors who reworked the stories found in y. Qiddushin (and y. Pe’ah) in ways that push mothers to the margins still further.46 In the Bavli, Rabbi Tarfon’s relationship with his mother is recharacterized. His action of allowing his mother to walk on his 44. See John Brenkman, Straight Male Modern: A Cultural Critique of Psychoanalysis (New York: Routledge, 1993), 225–47, for his insightful critique of Freud’s psychoanalytic theory. 45. Brenkman, Straight Male Modern, 230. 46. Many scholars have argued that the Bavli reworks parallel sugyot in the Yerushalmi. See Richard L. Kalmin, Sages, Stories, Authors, and Editors in Rabbinic Babylonia, BJS 300 (Providence, RI: Brown Judaic Studies, 1994), 12, esp. n. 32; Martin Jaffee, “The Babylonian Appropriation of the Talmud Yerushalmi: Redactional Studies in the Horayot Tractates,” New Perspectives on Ancient Judaism, vol. 4, ed. Alan J. Avery-Peck (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1989), 3–27, esp. 23–24, where Jaffee argues that “the post-Amoraic editors of the [Bavli] had something much like the extant version of the [Yerushalmi] before them and reflected upon the logic of its construction as they composed their own commentary.” Also see Alyssa M. Gray, A Talmud in Exile: The Influence of Yerushalmi Avodah Zarah on the Formation of Bavli Avodah Zarah, BJS 342 (Providence, RI: Brown Judaic Studies, 2005; 2nd digital ed., 2020).

346  Making History hands is missing and the focus turns to Rabbi Tarfon’s function as a stepstool for his mother to climb into and out of bed. More striking, however, is Rabbi Tarfon’s behavior. He is constructed as a rabbi-son who boasts about the way he honors his mother, only to be called out on his behavior by his fellow rabbis in the Beit Midrash: Rabbi Tarfon had a certain [relationship with his] old mother, that whenever she wished to ascend into bed he would bend over for her to ascend, and whenever she wished to descend [from the bed] she would descend onto him. He came and praised [himself in the] house of study. They said to him: You still have not reached even half of the honor [due to your mother]. Has [it ever happened that] she threw a purse into the sea in front of you, and you did not rebuke her?

‫ דכל אימת‬47,]‫רבי טרפון הוה ליה ההיא אמא [זקינה‬ ‫ וכל‬,‫ גחין וסליק לה‬- ‫דהות בעיא למיסק לפוריא‬ ,‫ נחתת עלויה‬- ‫אימת דהות נחית‬

‫ עדיין לא‬:‫ אמרי ליה‬,‫אתא וקא משתבח בי מדרשא‬ ‫ כלום זרקה ארנקי בפניך לים‬,‫הגעת לחצי כיבוד‬ ?‫ולא הכלמתה‬

As Israeli and Raveh have argued, we are not sure whether Rabbi Tarfon is acting to fulfill the commandment to honor his mother or is more intent on showing off to his fellow rabbis.48 He moves from his mother’s bedroom into the Beit Midrash, spaces that represent the loci of the conflict between allegiances to home and to the Torah academy. The message, however, is that he should feel no self-assurance that he will be rewarded for his behavior. In fact, he is reprimanded for not exhibiting a deeper level of commitment to the law of honoring his mother. The rabbis accuse him of not knowing what it means to honor one’s mother, prompting him to consider that the threshold rests with witnessing one’s mother tossing a money bag into the sea. Despite the loss incurred to her and potentially to her sons, when her sons do not criticize this behavior—this is considered true honor.

47. Note that manuscripts include the word ‫“( זקינה‬old”), which informs the whole tenor of the story. If Rabbi Tarfon’s mother is old and frail, he is merely assisting her to do something she cannot do on her own. If she is “his mother” and is not old (as some of the details suggest), the story reads as though Rabbi Tarfon is helping his mother in a way that might be unnecessary. See b. Qidd. 31b manuscript—Modena, AS: Fr. Ebr. 842; CUL T-S NS 329.1015+; and Oxford: Heb. b. 1/8-8, which include the adjective “old.” It is missing from the Munich manuscript and printed editions of the Bavli. 48. Raveh and Israeli, “‘He Did Not Embarrass Her,’” 26–27.

Lehman: Anna Whistler  347 Sons honor their mothers appropriately when they refrain from rebuking them. The key is to accept a mother’s actions for what they are—her own.49 Somehow the sexual suggestiveness of a mother climbing onto her son and him allowing it to happen is not as honorable an act as allowing for a mother’s economic loss, according to the Bavli. The question therefore arises: Is honoring one’s mother best reflected in performing acts that represent a sense of dependency on sons, such as relying on Rabbi Tarfon to climb into bed? No doubt, by helping his mother, Rabbi Tarfon not only needs to be present and available to her, but he also must presume that she needs him in order to go to sleep. Once his fellow rabbis lodge a critique against Rabbi Tarfon proposing a different definition of honor, they convey that accepting the independent decisions made by a mother, as symbolized by tossing her money bag into the sea, is a better sign of honor. The message seems to be that the highest form of honor is to allow mothers to make decisions for themselves. Criticisms should be held at bay. As a result, honor does not tie a mother to a son in as intimate a way as reflected in the actions of Rabbi Tarfon. Rather, honoring one’s mother means allowing her to make independent decisions. It is about preserving a degree of distance rather than an ongoing intimate relationship where a son treats his mother as she might have treated him as a child. In fact, the Bavli brings the tension surrounding the relationship of mothers and their sons to the fore more clearly in the interchange between Rav Yosef and Rabbi Yoḥanan: When Rav Yosef heard his mother’s footsteps, he [would] say: I will stand before the Shekhinah (Divine Presence) that is coming.

‫ איקום‬:‫ אמר‬,‫רב יוסף כי הוה שמע קל כרעא דאמיה‬ .‫מקמי שכינה דאתיא‬

‫ אשרי מי שלא חמאן‬:‫אמר רבי יוחנן‬

Rabbi Yoḥanan said: Fortunate is one who never saw [his father and mother.] Rabbi Yoḥanan [never saw his parents]. When his mother was pregnant with him, his father died; and when she gave birth to him, his mother died.

‫ מתה‬- ‫ ילדתו‬,‫ כי עברתו אמו מת אביו‬,‫רבי יוחנן‬ ‫אמו‬

On the one hand, mothers receive the highest of compliments; they are compared to the Shekhinah (Divine Presence). Rav Yosef equates his 49. Note the parallel in y. Qidd. 1:7, 61a; b. Qidd. 32a.

348  Making History mother with God. Yet Rabbi Yoḥanan, like Rabbi Ze’eira and Rabbi Abun in the Yerushalmi, counters this description by claiming that one is fortunate if one never knew his parents.50 Once again, mothers (and fathers in the case of Rabbi Yoḥanan) are pushed to the margins—better not to have a mother at all. Better to be merely “of women born,” to borrow Adrienne Rich’s words.51 Better to grow up among rabbinic teachers rather than, possibly, with biological mothers. Interestingly, just as maternal indulgences preoccupied twentieth-century psychologists including Freud and Jung generating anxiety about their effects on a son’s maturation into adulthood, centuries earlier the rabbis appear to be equally uneasy.52 Why would Rabbi Tarfon engage in such intimate behavior, entering his mother’s bedroom to allow her to step onto him? The unsettling nature of this interaction makes the Bavli’s criticism of Rabbi Tarfon understandable.53 The Bavli, in the voice of Rabbi Tarfon’s rabbinic colleagues, reminds him to stand at “the edge of the sea” rather than in his mother’s bed chamber. Long before there was a field of psychology, we find the rabbis pushing back on Carl Jung’s notion that “there is nothing that enfolds us like the mother” in their attempts to drive a wedge between a mother and her adult, Torah-learned son.54 This fear might also explain why the story of Rabbi Yishmael and his mother is absent from the Bavli altogether.

From Absence to Presence: Looking for Rabbi Yishmael’s Mother55 The story about Rabbi Yishmael is not part of the Bavli’s discussion about mothers and the behaviors connected to honoring them. Images of hands

50. B. Qidd. 31b. 51. Adrienne Rich, Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution (London: Virago, 1977). 52. See Ann Taylor Allen, Feminism and Motherhood in Western Europe, 1890–1970: The Maternal Dilemma (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 37–39. 53. See m. Qidd. 4:12, which suggests that a son could sleep alongside his mother “in closeness of flesh.” When sons became older, they had to sleep in their clothes and their mothers with their clothes on, but this does not discount the possibility that they did sleep in close proximity to one another, possibly in the same bed. See Israeli, Massekhet Kiddushin, 60–68. 54. Taylor Allen, Feminism and Motherhood, 37. 55. There is a lot of research available on why literary classics often remove mothers from stories. See, e.g., Berit Aström, “The Symbolic Annihilation of Mothers in Popular Culture: Single Father and the Death of the Mother,” Feminist Media Studies 15(4) (2015): 593–607; and Sylvia Hennenberg, “Moms Do Badly, but Grandmas do Worse: The Nexus of Sexism and Ageism in Children’s Classics, Journal of Aging Studies 24 (2010): 125–34.

Lehman: Anna Whistler  349 and feet that seem to tie the story of Rabbi Yishmael to that of Rabbi Tarfon in the Yerushalmi fall by the wayside in what appears to be an attempt by the Bavli to dilute the allowance, even encouragement, of acts of bodily intimacy between mothers and sons. In the Yerushalmi a mother washes and then drinks the water that rolls off her son’s feet. In the Bavli, much of that physicality is not apparent.56 Instead, a brief interchange between the Babylonian Amoraim Rav Ya’aqov bar Avuhah and Abaye occurs that introduces a different perspective more characteristic of the Bavli’s larger discussion, which is to highlight the importance of the acquisition of Torah knowledge more forcefully than y. Qiddushin. Rav Ya’aqov bar Avuhah returns from the Beit Midrash and receives a cup from his father into which his mother has added water (‫)מזגא‬.57 Should he take the cup from his mother and not his father? Bavli Qiddushin 31b communicates that honor is bestowed on a mother by simply accepting her caring act of preparing the drink for him. Honor, however, is conferred upon a father, who happens to be a Torah scholar, by refusing this offer. A father’s honor is not earned by the care he offers his children; rather it comes from the Torah knowledge he possesses and can pass on to his sons.58 The cup that passes from Rav Ya’aqov bar Ahuvah’s mother to her son bears no trace of the type of sexual intimacy that emerges from Rabbi Yishmael’s mother’s behavior. There is nothing bizarre about Rav Ya’aqov bar Avuhah’s behavior and nothing surprising about Abaye’s instructive words: “Accept [the cup] from your mother, but do not accept it from your father since he is a Torah scholar and will feel dishonored.” A commandment that requires sons to honor both mothers and fathers does not escape the gendered distinctions that are typical of rabbinic literature where men who are Torah

56. Interestingly, this reflects the opposite of what scholars have argued about Babylonian sources as compared to parallel sources compiled in the land of Israel. See Daniel Boyarin, Carnal Israel: Reading Sex in Talmudic Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993). Also see Ishay Rosen-Zvi’s discussion in Demonic Desires: Yetzer Hara and the Problem of Evil in Late Antiquity, Divinations (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), 113–14; he argues that sexuality is the locus of the Bavli’s interests and that sources in the Bavli “see sex all around them,” in a manner unparalleled in Palestinian literature. He expands on Michael L. Satlow’s argument in Tasting the Dish: Rabbinic Rhetorics of Sexuality, BJS 303 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1995), 319. 57. Note that there are manuscripts of b. Qidd. 31b, including, Oxford 367; Modena, AS: Fr. Ebr. 842; and CUL: T-S 329.1015+ that use a form of the word ‫ מזגא‬implying that both the mother and the father poured (possibly) water to serve to their son when he returned from the Beit Midrash, and not ‫דלי‬. Using the word ‫ דלי‬suggests that maybe the actions of the father were different from those of the mother when, in fact, this may be an instance where mother and father performed the same act of bringing the cup to their son, serving him. 58. See Sara Ruddick, Maternal Thinking: Toward a Politics of Peace (Boston: Beacon Press, 1989), 42, on fathers. Fathers represent the world, its language, culture, work and rules, and those are the arbiters of a father’s acceptability to a child. He does not earn authority through care.

350  Making History scholars receive the highest level of honor, whether from their sons or from their students. As a result, gender invokes a type of moral worth that makes fathers who study Torah and mothers who do not categorically different. While both deserve honor, each is acknowledged in different ways depending on their relationship to Torah knowledge. Rav Assi and his relationship with his mother, found in the same passage on b. Qiddushin 31b, accentuates this perspective still further and highlights the focus of the Bavli on the centrality of Torah study.59 After Rav Assi gives in to all of his mother’s bizarre requests—her request for jewelry, her request that Rav Assi finds a man to marry her, not to mention that such a man must be as handsome as Rav Assi—he leaves her to study Torah in the land of Israel. His interchanges with Rabbi Yoḥanan and Rabbi Eleazar about his decision to leave Babylonia suggest that he honors them more than his mother. In fact, his decision to resettle in the land of Israel turns what appears to be dishonorable behavior toward his mother for leaving her, into honorable behavior, that is, Torah study in the land of Israel.60 The story of Rabbi Assi, who leaves his mother, stands out as entirely distinct from what the rabbis expect of Rabbi Yishmael regarding his fulfillment of the commandment to honor his mother in the Yerushalmi’s story about him. The story’s marked absence from the Bavli prompts us to wonder why the Bavli does not go as far as the Yerushalmi in making demands of sons as well as of mothers, like Rabbi Tarfon’s mother, who, in the Yerushalmi, is told not to stand in the way of any form of honor her son wishes to exhibit toward her. In the Yerushalmi, rabbis (who are not the sons of these mothers) interact directly with mothers and engage them in conversation.61 In the Bavli, the rabbis do not speak to mothers directly. Rather, they communicate their positions about honoring one’s mother via other rabbis, as for example, when the rabbis in the Beit Midrash criticize Rabbi Tarfon for boasting about his behavior toward his mother. In the end, it appears as though the actions of Rabbi Yishmael’s mother are

59. Note that b. Qidd. 31b refers to Rabbi Assi’s mother as an old woman. Given that she dies at the end of the story it seems to be a correct reading (although some of the details, like a desire for a husband, suggest otherwise). This does not mean that Rabbi Tarfon’s mother was also old (see n. 47 above). 60. See Joseph ibn Haviva (d. 1420), Nimukei Yosef (Shitat hakadmonim—see standard Vilna edition of the Talmud, Massekhet Kiddushin, ed. R. M. Y. Blau; n.p., 1970), where he makes this point. See Rovner, “Rav Assi Had This Old Mother,” for an extensive analysis of this story in the Bavli. 61. This supports Richard Kalmin’s observations about aggadic stories. He argues that rabbis in the land of Israel interact with nonrabbis more readily as compared to the Bavli where rabbis are more insular and tend to interact only with other rabbis (“The Formation and Character of the Babylonian Talmud,” in The Cambridge History of Judaism, vol. 4 [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006], 840–76, here 849–51).

Lehman: Anna Whistler  351 just too intimate, too reflective of a maternal urgency powerful enough to keep a son emotionally too close to his mother. Intriguingly, despite its absence from the Bavli, the Tosafot on Qiddushin 31b D”H Rabbi Tarfon havya lei eemah reintroduce the story of Rabbi Yishmael, wishing to claim it as an example of parental reverence and as an integral piece to the group of stories included on b. Qiddushin 31b about honoring parents. We do not lack for medieval commentators who, in referring to b. Qiddushin 31b, insert the story of Rabbi Yishmael’s mother directly into their comments as if it was part of the same sugya.62 She was never left on the “cutting room floor.” Yet her reentry is blunted. Details are changed or left out, and the message that she conveys in the Yerushalmi about a son’s treatment of his mother functions instead to teach the lesson of honoring fathers. More to the point, a manuscript of y. Pe’ah 1:1, 15c, where the same story is found, does not mention that Rabbi Yishmael’s mother drank his foot water, suggesting that there were different versions of the story circulating.63 Medieval collections, including Yalqut Shimoni, in referring to this story, lack the less familiar Aramaic word for “washing” (‫)משזגה‬, which is present in the Leiden manuscript of the Yerushalmi. Instead, we find the more common word for mixing wine and water, ‫מזגה‬/‫מזגא‬, which was used in the Talmud to describe the way of preparing wine to drink by diluting it with water.64 In the case of the behavior of Rabbi Yishmael’s mother, the version found in Yalqut Shimoni, which uses the same form of the word reads: ‫אנא מזגה רגלוהי ומזגא מהן‬ ‫ולא שביק לי‬. This seems to suggest that she diluted the water used to clean his feet and then she poured it onto him (possibly) before noting that Rabbi Yishmael would not allow her to act this way. The words are unclear. Possibly interpolated from the story found on Bavli Qiddushin 31b regarding the mother of Rav Yaakov bar Ahuva who ‫( מזגה‬poured water) for her son to drink, the version found in Yalqut Shimoni lacks the clarity of the original reading found in the Leiden manuscript of Qiddushin, but it supports the notion that the behavior attributed to Rabbi Yishmael’s mother was disturbing to some, prompting some emendations.65 62. See Katz, “Eemo shel Rabi Yishmael,” 110–11. 63. See y. Pe’ah 1:1, 15c, as per MS Vat. Ebr. 133; and see Katz, “Eemo shel Rabi Yishmael,” 110–11. 64. Menachem Katz argues that the story in the Bavli where Rav Ya’aqov bar Avuha poses a question to Abaye is a revised version of the Rabbi Yishmael story (“Eemo shel Rabbi Yishmael,” 108–9). To me they look like different stories. 65. Louis Ginzberg, Seridei Yerushalmi. As Menachem Katz notes (“Eemo shel Rabbi Yishmael,” 110), the Leiden manuscript of y. Qidd. 1:7, 61b has the entire phrase and both the detail of Rabbi Yishmael’s mother washing and then drinking from the water used to wash her son’s feet: ‫ כד נפיק מבית וועדא אנא בעה משזגה ריגלוי ומישתי מהן ולא שבק לי‬and the same story on Pe’ah 1:1, 15c has ‫כדו נפק מבית וועדה אנא בעיא משזגה ריגלוי ומישתי מהן ולא שביק לי‬. Manuscript Romi does not mention that Rabbi Yishmael’s mother drank the water and has the following ver-

352  Making History Menachem Meiri (d. 1315) indicates that Rabbi Yishmael’s mother’s act of drinking water from her son’s foot washing is simply not an integral part of the story.66 Meiri suggests that something was corrupted in the transmission of the text, drawing our attention to the possibility that medieval rabbis were bothered by the irreverence of Rabbi Yishmael’s mother’s behavior as well as by the insistence of the rabbis that Rabbi Yishmael honor her this way.67 In this sense, for Meiri, Rabbi Yishmael’s mother belongs to a larger tradition connected to b. Qiddushin 31b, albeit by making a different type of literary appearance. More telling, however, is Nissim Gerondi’s (Ran, d. 1376) remark, in his commentary on Isaac Alfasi’s code of Jewish law (Rif),68 where he too introduces the story of Rabbi Yishmael as if it is an integral part of the larger Bavli Qiddushin tradition, when in fact it is found nowhere else in the Bavli. Commenting on the answer offered by Abaye to Rabbi Ya’aqov bar Avuhah on b. Qiddushin 31b regarding whether he should allow his father to give him a cup or allow his mother to pour water into it and take the cup from his mother, Ran explains that one should accept his mother’s offer over his father’s. The reason is because a father acts out of love for his son, while his mother acts out of concern for fulfilling her son’s continuous needs. In other words, it is more honorable to accept something that acknowledges a mother’s daily labor than it is to take the cup from a father which diminishes his status as someone who is to pass on Torah knowledge. That said, as Ran points out, if a father wants to give his son a drink, despite the fact that accepting it is beneath his honor, a son may accept it. At this point, Ran brings in the case of Rabbi Yishmael’s mother—not to prove something about honoring mothers—but rather to drive home the point that one exhibits honor toward their father simply by accepting the services that he wishes to perform for them. While, on the surface, the son might feel that he is disrespecting his father, he shows honor merely by accepting what his father gives him. Similarly, Rabbi Yishmael’s acceptance of his mother’s desire to wash his feet and drink his foot water is also a sign of honor. In the end, Ran relies on the story of Rabbi Yishmael’s mother to teach something about honoring one’s father. In so doing, Rabbi Yishmael’s mother and the relationship she has with him are overtaken by what she can teach about honoring fathers. For the sake of fathers, her story continues to be told. sion on Pe’ah 1:1, 15c: ‫כד נפק מן בית ועדה אנא בעייא משזגה רגלוי מיהו לא שבק לי‬, “When he would come back from the House of Study I would want to wash his feet but he would not allow me.” 66. Menachem Meiri, Beit Habeḥirah on b. Qidd. 31b. 67. See Israel ben Joseph Al-Nakawa, who was the author of the fourteenth-century work, Menorat HaMaor, ed. Hillel Gershon Enelow (New York: Bloch, 1929–1932), kibud av ve’em, chapter 9, 21, who, in quoting the story about Rabbi Yishmael, mentions his mother’s behavior of washing her son’s feet, but does not mention drinking the water. 68. See Nissim Gerondi (Ran) on Yitzḥak Alfasi’s Sefer hahalakhot, Qiddushin 13a, D”H Hakhi garsinan.

Lehman: Anna Whistler  353

Conclusion: Returning to the Relationship between James Whistler and His Mother Rabbi Yishmael and Rabbi Tarfon highlight the rabbis’ fear of mothers who, without teaching their sons Torah, can develop powerful bonds with their male rabbi-sons. But these mothers also flesh out the complexity of defining what actions constitute parental honor, pointing to the differences between what it means to honor mothers versus fathers. With no legal contracts to enact or break, no property to exchange, and no rituals to perform that mark the beginning or the end of this relationship, as with husbands and wives, the commandment to honor one’s parents has no clear parameters. Yet rabbinic culture is built around the structure of the family, of progeny and regeneration, and of children caring for parents and parents for children. For the rabbis, mothers do the cultural work of allowing them to think about the boundaries of parent–child relationships in a world where rabbis must raise disciples to carry out their mission of passing down and generating more Torah knowledge. Navigating the emotional attachments that can form between mothers and sons suggests a desire for a relationship of dependency of son upon mother and mother upon son. But without sons pulling away from mothers and mothers from sons, the degree of independence needed to cultivate a rabbinic culture with Torah at the center is at risk.69 Just as Whistler’s portrait of his mother drew me to think about the way that mothers are depicted in rabbinic texts—specifically the recognition that sons need their mothers, but that mothers are also “there to be left”—rabbinic texts have helped me to understand the ambiguity present in Whistler’s portrait of his mother. Images of mothers capture irresolvable tensions, specifically, the difficulty of striking just the right balance between dependence and independence, reliance and creativity, respect for one’s mother and a desire for self-actualization on the part of sons. Depicting one’s most beloved subject while also claiming complete independence is a thorny endeavor. Although Whistler claimed to have no investment in painting his mother-as-mother, the complexity of the mother–son relationship appears on this nineteenth-century canvas just as it did for the rabbis in both Yerushalmi and Bavli Qiddushin. The challenges of acting as a creative artist and as an adult son who, in Whistler’s case, was living with his mother when he painted her portrait, yielded an unsurprising paradoxical depiction of Anna Whistler. The rabbis too were devoted to their craft of Torah study but, complicatedly, were both drawn to and needed to pull away from their mothers. Emerging from an anxiety around female influence, the rabbis’ mothers suffer when sons try to 69. Capps, “Whistler’s Mother, 392.

354  Making History c­ onstruct space for themselves to maintain patriarchal communal structures.70 Whistler was no different within artists’ circles of his day. Indeed, Anna Whistler’s popularity and rebirth as an icon in the American public art scene of the early 1930s were about the diminishment of complexity and a desire for the sexless, ageless, religious, eternally caring mother who kept the dynamics and challenges of gender and sexuality at bay.71 This is not unlike Rabbi Yishmael’s mother, whose more complicated story was also shaded. In the early 1930s and in the years following, American viewers saw what they wanted to see. They conjured an image of Anna Whistler as someone who represented a desired political and social order simply because she, as mother, could be described as representing its core values. But, in so doing, the American reception disambiguated Anna Whistler, oversimplifying what mothers are to their sons and what sons are to their mothers. On some level the move was similar to the Bavli’s erasure of Rabbi Yishmael’s mother and the Ran’s decision to use her to teach about honoring fathers, both attempts to reduce the perplexing image of this mother. But each time we attempt to decomplicate mothers and their relationships, we move in the direction of supporting stereotypical understandings of them and fail to acknowledge the nuances. Mother–son relationships are varied and complicated. In literature and in art, their complex depictions operate to contest and reflect the cultural contexts from which they emerge. When the rabbis communicate that the biblical imperative to honor one’s parents resists definition, preventing even the great rabbis such as Rabbi Tarfon and Rabbi Yishmael from acting appropriately, it is their mothers who form the center of the critique. When the rabbis express their fear over the sustainability of the master–disciple relationship, they use mothers and their sons to convey these anxieties. And, finally, when James Whistler presents his mother to the public, she too reflects his burden as an artist trying to assert his artistry. She too exhibits the complicated road of honoring one’s mother while attempting to separate from her as well.

70. Hennenberg, “Moms Do Badly,” 126. 71. Brenkman, Straight Male Modern, 230.

Abraham as Hero in the Synagogue and Study House The Aqedah in Genesis ­Rabbah and the Babylonian Talmud KRISTEN LINDBECK

[Samael the wicked angel] said, “Tomorrow He will say to you, you are a shedder of blood, guilty: for you shed his blood. He [Abraham] said, “I understand the consequences.”  (Genesis Rabbah 56:4)

T

his essay analyzes the extended passage on the Binding of Isaac, the Aqedah, in b. Sanhedrin 89b and the passages that parallel it in Genesis Rabbah 55 and 56. Doing so allows us to move beyond generalizations about the rabbinic view of the Aqedah to examine two distinctly different rhetorical and theological perspectives. Comparing these two texts also highlights methodological issues involved in studying midrash as orally derived literature. Furthermore, it illustrates differences in style, and most likely in audience, between the Babylonian Talmud (Bavli) and these particular passages of Genesis Rabbah. We will see that analyzing these texts side by side reinforces the consensus that the Bavli is very much a product of the study house, even in its midrash, whereas many passages in Genesis Rabbah are more closely related to public preaching. The contrast between the texts is particularly evident in he parallel passages in which Abraham is directly tempted by an adversary—Satan himself in the Bavli and Samael1 in Genesis Rabbah—who seeks to dissuade him from sacrificing his son. While both passages employ proof texts from Job, the Bavli uses its texts in complex and apparently paradoxical ways, rewarding careful analysis. In contrast, Genesis Rabbah’s use of 1. See below for more on Samael.

355

356  Making History Job is simpler, contributing to a dramatic dialogue in which Abraham asserts his complete loyalty to God’s command. Furthermore, in the Bavli, Abraham concludes his resistance to Satan with a legal concept that connects the midrash to the halakhic sugya that contains it, whereas Abraham’s courageous refusal of Samael’s temptation in Genesis Rabbah allows, but does not require, a halakhic interpretation. In addition, I will argue that anonymously transmitted passages in Genesis Rabbah, such as Abraham’s resistance to Samael, support a new hypothesis arising from my current research. There has been considerable controversy over the relationship of Genesis Rabbah preaching. Some of its interpretations seem based on technical rabbinic debate, whereas others display rhetoric and messages that appear to have more popular appeal. In analyzing all passages on Abraham (chs. 39–62), I have found that the longer, unattributed units in particular provide compelling narratives and religiously meaningful material suitable as the basis for preaching to a general audience in a synagogue or elsewhere. Genesis Rabbah, of course, lacks the anonymous redactional layer that many identify in the Bavli, so there is no reason to believe that these are later additions as opposed to well-known traditions of unknown authorship. Such passages are not transcribed sermons, but they can be plausibly understood as providing material for preachers, and they were probably influenced by public preaching as well.

Orally Transmitted Midrashim We need a few words of methodological background before we turn to the texts themselves. At first sight, someone unfamiliar with rabbinic literature might well see the midrashim on the Aqedah in Genesis Rabbah 55–56 and b. Sanhedrin 89b as two sets of diverse interpretations whose connections to one another and to the biblical text are far from clear. Closer reading reveals both clear parallels between the texts and also different forms of structure in each of them. The logical and rhetorical flow of the text in the Bavli emerges clearly from careful study, as is well shown by Matthew Hass in an essay that provides an invaluable starting point for this work.2 The sometimes-overlapping structures found in the longer collection of midrashim in Genesis Rabbah 55–56 are harder to grasp and summarize.3 They contain both thematic and rhetorical units that com2. Matthew Hass, “The Aqedah in the Bavli: An Analysis of Sanhedrin 89b,” in From Creation to Redemption: Progressive Approaches to Midrash; Proceedings of the Midrash Section, Society of Biblical Literature, Volume 7, ed. W. David Nelson and Rivka Ulmer, Judaism in Context 20 (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias, 2017), 39–56. 3. These structures will be analyzed in my forthcoming book on the Aqedah in the Bavli.

Lindbeck: Abraham as Hero  357 bine interpretation of specific verses with other traditions known to the redactors. The scope of this piece does not allow full treatment of the Aqedah in Genesis Rabbah, but the discussion of its parallels to the Bavli will at times consider their own textual context, showing how material before and after enhances their meaning. Once it becomes evident that the traditions in these passages were carefully selected and ordered, the question arises how best to understand that process of redaction. It is now widely understood that oral traditions, often memorized word for word in the case of legal material, form the key building blocks of the Bavli.4 Midrashic works, in contrast, were generally constructed more from a mixture of remembered, as well as memorized, traditions and informal written notes.5 The language of “building” and “construction” from smaller units is appropriate. A consensus is emerging that rabbinic texts in general have enough coherence to “to justify the postulate of some sort of governing plan that informs the collection of intermediate units into larger documentary wholes,” while at the same time ruling out a single editorial agenda in anything like the modern (or, I would add, the classical) sense.6 Martin Jaffee emphasizes that one must consider this question for every text in its own right. He also makes clear that all answers will include sensitivity to rabbinic literature’s unique expression of intertextuality (textual and oral) and a keen appreciation of the context of performance, whether in teaching, preaching, or in some sense both.7 While Jaffee also imagines a careful process of composition, he envisions it in the context of everything scholars have concluded about rabbinic learning. Students of the sages studied by memorization of the Mishnah and other formulaic 4. See Yaakov Elman, Authority and Tradition: Toseftan Beraitot in Talmudic Babylonia (Hoboken, NJ: Ktav, 1994), 74–82; and Elman, “Transmitting Tradition: Orality and Textuality in Jewish Cultures,” in Transmitting Jewish Traditions: Orality, Textuality, and Cultural Diffusion, ed. Yaakov Elman, and Israel Gershoni, Studies in Jewish Culture and Society (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 1–26, here 7–9. Note, though, that longer legends of the rabbis were generally transmitted and transcribed with more room for rewording and editorial creativity in general, and this probably applies to extended aggadic midrash as well. See Richard L. Kalmin, Sages, Stories, Authors, and Editors in Rabbinic Babylonia, BJS 300 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1994), 39. 5. Elizabeth Shanks Alexander, “The Orality of Rabbinic Writing,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Talmud and Rabbinic Literature, ed. Martin S. Jaffee and Charlotte Elisheva Fonrobert (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 38–57, here 52–54. See also Martin S. Jaffee, “The Oral-Cultural Context of the Talmud Yerushalmi: Greco-Roman Paideia, Discipleship, and the Concept of Oral Torah,” in Elman and Gershoni, Transmitting Jewish Traditions, 27–73, here 27–28. 6. Martin S. Jaffee, “Rabbinic Authorship as a Collective Enterprise,” in Jaffee and Elisheva, Cambridge Companion to the Talmud and Rabbinic Literature, 37–17, here 32. 7. Martin Jaffee, “What Difference Does the ‘Orality’ of Rabbinic Writing Make for the Interpretation of Rabbinic Writings?,” in How Should Rabbinic Literature Be Read in the Modern World?, ed. Matthew A. Kraus, Judaism in Context 4 (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias, 2006), 12, 20.

358  Making History texts for analysis, cultivating the ability to recall, critique, and expound them with a study partner and before a teacher.8 This ability in turn served to prepare future rabbis for teaching their own students, for engaging in legal debate in civil cases, for making appropriate speeches on public occasions, and for preaching before rabbinic or popular audiences.9 Once one begins to consider the relationship between rabbinic texts and their performance, several more perspectives and possibilities arise. First, as Jaffee writes, the texts themselves are “scripts that provide the mnemonic foundations for returning the text from the written surface back to the oral/aural milieu” preferred for study and teaching.10 This means that in reading them one can be alert for mnemonic formulae and parallelism useful for memorization, as we shall see below for Genesis Rabbah. In addition, as “scripts,” rabbinic texts are what the folklore scholar John Miles Foley calls “libretti,” static and silent cues for performance.11 We cannot reconstruct those performances, but I hold that we will find it easier to understand midrash as literature if we at least try to visualize its performance, and to imagine its audience’s appreciation of clever logic or moving rhetoric. Another valuable way of thinking about the orality of rabbinic writing is to consider teaching as a kind of performance. In a 2019 conversation, Elizabeth Shanks Alexander shared her conjecture that materials that were central to the curriculum are more polished because they were performed often. These materials, therefore, have come down to us with more discernible literary forms and more coherent rhetorical, and at times theological, structure. One can apply this, for example, to the Mishnah, which was constantly performed, as opposed to the Tosefta, which was not. Thus, repeated performance can have the effect of refining structure and increasing thematic coherence.12 Alexander’s insight can also be applied to midrash. In particular, it is likely that the religious importance of the Aqedah would have led the midrash on it to be both taught and preached more often than other parts of the Torah. The idea of teaching as performance will have a bearing on the discussion below on whether unattributed passages in Genesis Rabbah might be more associated with preaching in the synagogue or in preparing rabbis to do so. To conclude, thinking clearly about the unique, and perhaps different, oral contexts and purposes of these passages in the Bavli and Genesis  8. Ibid., 17.  9. See a useful discussion on the use of the peticha form in a public speech praising community leaders in Tzvi Novick, Piyyuṭ and Midrash: Form, Genre, and History, JAJSup 30 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2018), 17–20. 10. Jaffee, “What Difference Does the ‘Orality’ of Rabbinic Writing Make?,” 17. 11. John Miles Foley, The Singer of Tales in Performance, Voices in Performance and Text (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995), 46. 12. Elizabeth Shanks Alexander, personal conversation and email (2019).

Lindbeck: Abraham as Hero  359 Rabbah provides many useful possible ways to compare their treatment of the Aqedah. Both were composed in the context of oral rabbinic teaching, but Genesis Rabbah’s closer relationship to preaching and the greater polish of the Bavli’s final redaction affect their rhetoric and influence their meanings.

Abraham’s Heroism in the Synagogue and the Study House: Blind Faith versus Brilliance The presentation of Abraham’s heroism in our texts finds its roots in two ancient understandings of the Aqedah that arose long before the rabbinic era in Second Temple times, and that are taken up and transformed in different ways by Genesis Rabbah and the Bavli.13 The first understanding is that God’s decision to test Abraham did not arise spontaneously from the divine will but was set in motion by some challenge from one or more supernatural beings.14 The second is that Abraham’s trial echoes that of Job, as we see in Jubilees’ clear parallels between the satanic Mastema’s challenge to Abraham’s obedience and Satan’s challenge to Job’s piety.15 Jubilees’ challenge resembles Satan’s challenge in the Bavli, section (A), probably not because its redactors knew Jubilees, but because they both model themselves on Job. The connection to Job appears only later in Genesis Rabbah, when Samael quotes a verse from Job to Abraham in a dramatic confrontation scene found only in rabbinic texts. In this later motif, found in Genesis Rabbah and later works, a supernatural tempter appears to Abraham on Mount Moriah to dissuade him from carrying out the sacrifice.16 Thus, in employing these shared motifs, Genesis Rabbah and the Bavli are working with widely circulating material of the kind described by James Kugel, that is, material not transmitted by exact or even approximate memorization but shared in broad outline.17 Each of our texts shapes that material to different ends, giving us a “snapshot” of “fluid, dynamic, 13. Moshe J. Bernstein, “Angels at the Aqedah: A Study in the Development of a Midrashic Motif,” DSD 7.3 (2000): 263–91. 14. Ibid., 266–75. See my translation of b. Sanh. 89b section (A) with its parallel in Gen. Rab. 55:4. The passage in 55:4 also has another motivation related to Abraham’s doubts, to which we return briefly below. 15. Bernstein, “Angels at the Aqedah,” 275. 16. See my translation of b. Sanh. 89b section (D), with its parallel in Gen. Rab. 56:5. Bernstein believes that this motif arose independently in rabbinic circles (“Angels at the Aqedah,” 276 n. 30). 17. James L. Kugel, The Bible as It Was (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1997). See also James L. Kugel, In Potiphar’s House: The Interpretive Life of Biblical Texts (San Francisco: Harper, 1990), 256–68.

360  Making History and ever changing” traditions.18 Thus, we cannot say that we have the “Babylonian Talmud’s view of the Aqedah,” much less Genesis Rabbah’s view, in the short passages being analyzed, yet both reveal clear, and different, perspectives on what made Abraham a hero on Mount Moriah.

Genesis Rabbah In two instances Genesis Rabbah reads Gen 22:1 “after these things” as “after these words,” instead of its contextual meaning, as do several other rabbinic sources (see translation in the Appendix below). The angels or the nations (the latter only in the Vatican 30 MS) complain in exactly the same phrase, “This Abraham, he celebrated and had everyone celebrate, [Isaac’s weaning] but he did not set aside for the Holy Blessed One one cow or one ram.” God replies “[He did so] with the understanding that if it were said to him that he should sacrifice his son to me, he would not hesitate” (‫)על מנת שנ' לו שיקריב לי את בנו ולא יעכב‬. This rather odd phrase generally means “on the condition that” in a legal sense, and therefore does not seem to fit the context.19 In every other case I found across multiple texts, al menat sh- (-‫ )על מנת ש‬means “on the condition that,” generally in a legal sense.20 But why does Genesis Rabbah employ this difficult phrase in the first place? The first clue is that the redactors chose to carry over, almost word for word, the lines just prior to this, in which Abraham has troubled thoughts (hirurei devarim)21 and God replies to him. Abraham has troubled thoughts because “I celebrated and had everyone celebrate, but I did not set aside for the Holy Blessed One one cow or one ram,” and God replies, “[You did so] with the understanding that if it were said to you that you should sacrifice your son to Me, you would not hesitate.” There are clear mnemonic advantages in repeating this exchange with slight variations in

18. W. David Nelson, “Oral Orthography: Early Rabbinic Oral and Written Transmission of Parallel Midrashic Tradition in the Mekhilta of Rabbi Shimon B. Yoḥai and the Mekhilta of Rabbi Ishmael,” AJS Review 29.1 (2005): 1–32, here 30. This excellent study builds on Martin Jaffee’s work with close reading of parallel texts from the realm of aggadic midrash. 19. This is probably why it is translated against its plain sense in every instance I have found. H. Freedman, for example, in the classic Soncino translation renders it “Even if we tell him to offer his own son, he will not refuse” (Midrash Rabbah: Genesis, vol. 1. [London: Soncino Press, 1951], 484). 20. See, e.g., y. Qidd. 3, which evaluates the validity of a long list of conditional offers of betrothal, such as, “You are betrothed to me on the condition that I have two hundred zuz,” or “on the condition I own a house,” or “on the condition my father approves,” and so on. Also, y. B. Metz. 5 evaluates conditional sales of real estate, such as “on the condition that if you sell, you offer it to me first at this price,” and so on. 21. This is a play on the phrase in Genesis, “after the things/words” (aḥ ar ha-devarim), found three times in Gen. Rab. MS Vatican 30 and four times in the standard text. Two (or three) times, it is Abraham who worries, and once it is Joseph.

Lindbeck: Abraham as Hero  361 the challenges of the angels and the nations, but if that was the redactor(s) only reason to do so, it would at first sight reveal a puzzling lack of rhetorical or logical skill. Furthermore, even the first instance is difficult to understand. What are we to make of the idea that Abraham was troubled because he did not sacrifice to God at a feast for Isaac’s weaning, and God apparently reassuring him that he did so “with the understanding” that he would not hesitate to sacrifice his son at God’s command? Joshua Levinson provides a possible key. He describes how rabbinic texts, compared to biblical ones, mark an increased (though far from modern) sense of self in their description of conscious emotional states and their understanding of the role of choice in legal responsibilities.22 On a legal level he discusses the evolving importance of intention, which becomes a necessary concept in fulfilling commandments,23 defining transgression of Sabbath law, and even evaluating which objects can suffer ritual impurity because a person would consider them useful.24 In Levinson’s words, “In both the legal and imaginative discourses of the Rabbis, we see again and again that a person’s thoughts and emotions determine the religious significance of his actions.”25 It seems plausible, given the importance of Torah law in the rabbis’ life and education, that their “legal discourse” shaped their “imaginative discourse,” Levinson’s term for aggadah, midrashic and otherwise. In fact, one of his examples can be understood in this light. Genesis Rabbah, in one of its interpretations of Gen 12:1, “Go forth [lekh lekha] … from your father’s house,” imagines Abraham fearing that he will cause people to desecrate God’s name by saying he has behaved badly in abandoning his aged father, and God reassures him that he alone is exempted from the commandment to honor father and mother.26 How, then, can we understand God’s words to Abraham as reassurance? Isaac’s successful weaning was not a random occasion to hold a 22. Joshua Levinson, “Post-Classical Narratology and the Rabbinic Subject,” in Narratology, Hermeneutics, and Midrash: Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Narratives from Late Antiquity Period through to Modern Times, ed. Constanza Cordoni and Gerhard Langer, Poetik, Exegese und Narrative (Vienna: Vienna University Press, 2014), 81–106, here 85. Note that although Levinson here is describing new ideas of self that arose “from the 2nd to the 4th centuries of the common era,” we find the idea of an individual as a self-conscious actor capable of deep emotion far earlier. It is clearly expressed—albeit in dialogue rather than reported thought— in classic Attic drama and the poetic section of Job. Here Levinson and others who follow this approach are building on Jacob Neusner in Judaism: The Evidence of the Mishnah (1981; repr., Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2003). 23. Such as the well-known ruling in m. Rosh Hash. 3:7, that if one hears the shofar on the holiday, even by chance, one fulfills the commandment to hear its sound if one “directs one’s heart/mind” to the religious duty. 24. Levinson, “Post-Classical Narratology,” 85–86. 25. Ibid., 92. 26. Ibid., 94.

362  Making History feast, but rather a joyful recognition that the child had survived infancy and was now in less danger of dying young. Abraham acted as an ordinary man by inviting people to come celebrate the son born to him in old age, but then he had second thoughts. As we see from the midrash above, for the rabbis among others, Abraham takes to heart God’s exhortation to “walk in My ways and be blameless” (Gen 17:1 JPS). While God requires no father—apart from Abraham—to literally sacrifice his son, all parents are called in rabbinic tradition to accept their children’s possible death as God’s will and, thus, in a sense to sacrifice their loving hopes for them. I have not found the death of the children of the righteous discussed explicitly in rabbinic sources from the land of Israel,27 although they do discuss the death of the children of the wicked.28 Nevertheless, the combination of high child mortality and the duty to greet tragic news with “Blessed be the righteous judge” (m. Ber. 9:2), would have been part of the emotional life of any rabbi who was a father. According to Genesis Rabbah, Abraham worries because he focused on family and community and did not remember God with a sacrifice of thanksgiving. God reassures Abraham that He knows his devotion to Himself is total, telling him—ironically, in apparent hyperbole—that He knows he would be willing to sacrifice his son at God’s command. In the next two midrashic units, joined by closely parallel wording, we see why Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice Isaac had to be tested in actual fact. The angels, who were skeptical about humanity’s creation and concerned with the possibility of human sin, question Abraham’s devotion (Gen. Rab. 8:4–5). According to a tradition in Genesis Rabbah 12:9, the very world was created for Abraham’s sake, and here he is, the angels complain, celebrating the son God gave him while forgetting God. Then the nations, portrayed as Israel’s rivals and often persecutors in Genesis Rabbah, including in these chapters on the Aqedah,29 present the same complaint: Why is Abraham deserving of your special favor if he neglected to offer a sacrifice to you at the feast for his son? Understood in the context of other passages in Genesis Rabbah about the angels and the nations, the seemingly awkward repetition of an oddly chosen legal phrase “with the 27. Even the famous tradition of the Palestinian Amora Rabbi Yoḥanan and the bone of his tenth son is found only in the Bavli in b. Ber. 5b. 28. Dov Weiss, “Sins of the Parents in Rabbinic and Early Christian Literature,” Journal of Religion 97.1 (2017): 1–25. We do see the death of children, and how best to accept their death as God’s will, discussed in the extended debate on what constitute “the afflictions of love” in b. Ber. 5b, and in the legend in the early medieval midrash on Prov 31:2 about the death of the sons of Beruriah (unnamed) and her husband R. Meir, in which she encourages him to accept their death as God’s will. 29. See, e.g., Gen. Rab. 55:3; here, in 55:4; 55:7; and 56:5 “Rabbi Ḥanana son of Isaac: Just as Abraham our father bound his son Isaac below, the Holy Blessed One would tie up the angelic princes of the nations of the world on high, and they did not act.”

Lindbeck: Abraham as Hero  363 understanding that” such and such, acquires complex resonance and, with it, increased mnemonic value. Thus, both Abraham’s doubts and the challenges of the angels and the nations show how God’s extreme test of Abraham is vital for Jewish faith and history. Elsewhere in chapters 55 and 56, Genesis Rabbah connects the Aqedah to the temple, to the forgiveness of personal and collective sin on Rosh Hashanah, and to the final messianic redemption. Abraham must know himself, and be known by all, in the heavens and on earth, as capable of uniquely radical obedience and therefore worthy to be the founding father of God’s chosen people. Now we turn to Mount Moriah and Abraham’s confrontation with Samael. Samael, often mentioned as a demonic figure in Second Temple literature, has various guises in Amoraic texts, mostly late ones, with Genesis Rabbah appearing to have the earliest rabbinic use of the name. In some texts, Samael is essentially Satan the adversary by another name, both as heavenly prosecutor (Exod. Rab. 18:5) and “head of all the devils” (Deut. Rab. 11), while in others he is called the “guardian angel” of Esau (and hence of Rome) or, in Pirqe Rabbi Eliezer, of all the nations.30 Any or all of these would be suitable here, as both the force(s) of evil and the jealous angels of the nations have an interest in ensuring that Abraham fails God’s test. This passage has three exchanges between Samael and Abraham, and in all of them Abraham stands firm against temptation. These are followed by two exchanges between Samael and Isaac, the second of which leaves Isaac wavering. The verse that begins the passage is only indirectly connected to the confrontation between Abraham and Samael. Rather, it relates to the end of the quoted section below that addresses a hermeneutical problem: Isaac, while at least a teenager if not a grown man, asks his father a seemingly childlike question.31 The reason he does so, Genesis Rabbah concludes, is that Samael has succeeded in giving him second thoughts, and, while determined not to back out himself, Isaac does hope to arouse his father’s pity and thus induce him to change his mind. Genesis Rabbah 56:4 reads: And Isaac said to Abraham his father [“Father … here is the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?”] (Gen 22:7) [Before Isaac spoke] Samael came to our father Abraham, He said to him,

30. Gershom Scholem, “Samael,” in Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd ed., ed. Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik (Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007), 17:714–15. 31. Genesis Rabbah lacks the later rabbinic tradition which says that Sarah’s death at 127 occurred when she heard about the Aqedah, and which therefore makes Isaac ­thirty-seven.

364  Making History What, old man, have you lost your mind? A son that was given to you at one hundred years, you are going to slaughter him? ‍He said to him, I understand the consequences. ‍He said, And if He tests you more than this can you withstand it? If he tests you with something [more] will you grow impatient? (Job 4:2) He said, [Yes] more than this. He said, Tomorrow He will say to you, you are a shedder of blood, guilty, [for] you shed his blood. He said, I understand the consequences. Since [Samael’s argument] did not succeed against him, he came over to Isaac. He said, “Son of an unfortunate woman, he is going to slaughter you! He said to him, I understand the consequences. He said, If so, will all those fancy tunics your mother made go to Ishmael, the enemy of your house, as an inheritance?” When a word does not succeed, it may succeed in part: This is why “And Isaac spoke to Abraham his father and said [my father …]

Samael has indeed “succeeded in part” by making Isaac his collaborator in tempting Abraham not to go through with the sacrifice. It is possible that Genesis Rabbah combines two traditions here, one the story of Abraham’s temptation by Satan/Samael on Moriah (perhaps including the allusion to Job), and the second explaining Isaac’s naive question. To return in detail to the dialogue between Samael and Abraham, Samael first asserts that Abraham is betraying both reason and human affection: “What, old man, have you lost your mind? A son that was given to you at one hundred years, you are going to slaughter him?” Abraham replies that he is understands the consequences. Samael tries again: “And if He tests you more than this can you withstand it? If he tests you with something [more] will you grow impatient? (Job 4:2). This attack targets Abraham’s trust in God, alluding indirectly to his many trials and implying that Abraham has been tried more than enough already, while perhaps raising the possibility that God intends to test him indefinitely, with more and more terrible trials. The redactor may well have been aware of the ancient tradition linking Abraham’s trials to Job’s. In any case, the allusion is effective here. In quoting the book of Job, Samael invites Abraham to consider whether his trial, like Job’s, might be based on a one-time contest between God and Satan, thus lacking cosmic purpose and also suggesting that more trials may come.32 Abraham replies simply, yes “more than this.” 32. Note that Genesis Rabbah has already demonstrated the Aqedah’s religious and cosmic purpose in 56:1–2 by linking “on the third day” (Gen 22:4) to events in biblical history and final messianic redemption and making it clear that Moriah is the future site of the

Lindbeck: Abraham as Hero  365 Finally, Samael presents his most difficult attack: “Tomorrow He will say to you, you are a shedder of blood, guilty, [for] you shed his blood.” Samael reminds Abraham, “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed” (Gen 9:6 JPS), while stating that God cannot be trusted. If God gave Abraham his son Isaac and then demanded that he sacrifice him, who can say whether God will reverse himself again the next day, and accuse Abraham of murder? How does Abraham reply to Samael? He uses precisely the same words that he used to respond to the first challenge, which is mnemonically useful, but much more besides. I translate them, “with this understanding,” but taken literally they are a very specific legal phrase in a theoretical talmudic dialogue about liability for murder. Here again we have an intense interaction between Abraham and a supernatural being, here his accuser rather than his creator, expressed in the language of halakhah. Samael says that God will say you are a shedder of blood, and Abraham replies that he is going ahead al manat ken, for this very reason, thus perhaps making himself liable for execution in the formulation of y. Sanhedrin.33 The text there reads “they saw him shedding blood and said to him, ‘You know that he is a child of the covenant and the Torah says, Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed’ and even though he says, ‘I know,” he is exempt [from execution] unless he says, ‘for this very reason [al manat ken] I am doing it.’” Abraham’s response has deep resonance and many potential implications. Al manat ken verbally echoes God’s response to Abraham, the angels, and the nations that, while Abraham neglected to sacrifice to God at his feast for his son, he did so “with the understanding” (al manat sh-) that he would be willing to sacrifice Isaac himself if God ordered him to do so. Abraham seems to speak with defiant faith, stating his willingness to go ahead with the sacrifice even if God might accuse him of murder the next day. This interpretation is in keeping with Genesis Rabbah 56:7, where, when the angel comes to say “do not raise your hand against the lad,” Abraham has so thoroughly nerved himself to go through with the sacrifice that—even though his knife has been dissolved by other angels’ tears—he proposes to strangle Isaac. On the other hand, there remains a possibility that Abraham’s response to Samael is instead—or also—extremely clever, revealing his deep grasp of rabbinic law as well as his stubborn faith. Samael does not himself formally caution Abraham but instead threatens him with the post­ emple. As for Job, the death of his children was only his second trial: He lost first his wealth and then his children; finally he was afflicted with a painful disease and the company of so-called friends refusing to believe in his innocence and exhorting him to repent. 33. ‫ראוהו שופך דם אמרו לו הוי יודע שבן ברית הוא והתורה אמרה שופך דם האדם באדם דמו ישפך אע"פ שאמר‬ .‫( יודע אני פטור עד שיאמר על מנת כן אני עושה‬see y. Sanh. 5:1, 22d, almost identical to t. Sanh. 11:1).

366  Making History sibility that God will accuse him of murder after the fact. According to the law referenced by Samael, however, God may not punish Abraham for murder if no one has warned him in advance, and God has done the opposite of warning him, instead clearly ordering him to sacrifice his son. Furthermore, Satan is alone, and not one of at least two witnesses, which both the Yerushalmi and the Tosefta require to be present to formally warn a person intending murder in order to make him guilty of a capital crime. One need not take these as two mutually exclusive interpretations; while they logically contradict one another, the redactor might well have wanted to allude to both. Furthermore, one can speculate that the two possibilities might be seen as a possible description of two competing lines of thought in Abraham’s troubled mind. In its plain sense, however, the text proclaims Abraham to be an ideal hero of faith, depicting his courage with both wit and pathos. Abraham’s responses to Samael prove he is a hero because he is willing to give up everything in order to obey God, including his love for his son, his sense of reason and fairness, and his hopes for his own and Isaac’s future. The added, legal interpretation would have been an extra layer of meaning (and irony) meant particularly for students of the sages. The analysis above attempts to flesh out the bare-bones text of Genesis Rabbah. As well as reading intertextually, I attempt in two ways to take into account the oral antecedents of the text in teaching and preaching. First, in analyzing mnemonic devices, we saw how, in addition to assisting memory, they add unexpected shades of meaning. This complexity hints at the way repeated oral teaching can polish and sharpen content while continuing to employ relatively loose and associative structure. Second, my analysis attempts to bring out the text’s implicit drama, aiming to do so with as little anachronism as possible. The intention was to make palpable that our text was not taken through painstaking drafts by a single author, nor meant to be read silently, but rather intended to provide raw material for declaiming, whether to a class or to a congregation.34

The Babylonian Talmud Turning from Genesis Rabbah to b. Sanhedrin 89b, we find an unquestionably tighter structure, creating what Hass rightly refers to as “an important chapter in the history of the Aqedah” that builds to a carefully crafted

34. In Jaffee’s words, “it is helpful to imagine early rabbinic writing as a kind of ‘text-processing’ activity in which written texts … and remembered texts … could mix together in the literary activity of the scribe as he vocalized texts” while “composing his own version of the received discourse” (“What Difference Does the ‘Orality’ of Rabbinic Writing Make?,” 17).

Lindbeck: Abraham as Hero  367 climax in the verbal duel between Abraham and Satan.35 The midrash is also skillfully woven into the halakhic argument of the sugya, providing a fine example of the Bavli’s anthological virtuosity.36 In the context of how and why one sins by prophesying falsely or disregarding the words of a prophet, the sugya states that an “established” prophet must be obeyed even if he commands something against Jewish law. “For if you do not say so, when Abraham was on the mountain, how did Isaac hearken to him?”37 This brief statement in Aramaic leads into an extended midrashic passage in Hebrew beginning with “And after these things/words” (Gen 22:1). In the Bavli, the words in question are Satan’s challenge to God after Abraham’s feast to celebrate Isaac’s weaning. Satan states sarcastically that, after being blessed with Isaac, “out of all the feast he made, he didn’t have one dove or chick to sacrifice before you.” Hass writes that Satan’s charge against Abraham is “impiety,” as opposed to excessive attachment to Isaac.38 However, Satan’s hyperbolic “one dove or chick” and God’s response, “If I ask him to sacrifice his son before me, he will at once sacrifice him,” can both suggest that the question of whether Abraham was too attached to Isaac was also at issue. The Bavli then moves on to kaḥ -na, “please take your son” (22:2) stating in the name of R. Shimon bar Abba (it is unattributed in Genesis Rabbah) that na means “please.” In Genesis Rabbah, this interpretation may simply gloss a biblical grammatical form, but for the Bavli it is deeply meaningful. It leads to a mashal that likens Abraham to a victorious warrior whom his king implores to win one more great battle. As Hass states, “Abraham … is not a mere after-thought, but God’s prized soldier, whose actions will determine which side emerges victorious.”39 Thus, the contest between God and Satan, and therefore Abraham’s sacrifice, acquires the cosmic resonance that we also see in Genesis Rabbah. Afterwards, the Bavli includes the well-known interpretation of “Take your son, your only son, whom you love, Isaac” (22:2) as describing a dialogue between Abraham and God. It presents God’s slow approach to his command as calculated “not to unsettle” Abraham’s mind, and therefore make him less prepared for his battle against Satan.40 This is in contrast to

35. Hass, “Aqedah in the Bavli,” 41. 36. Eliezer Segal, “Anthological Dimensions of the Babylonian Talmud,” Prooftexts 17.1 (1997): 33–61, here 39. 37. The second example it gives is Elijah’s sacrifice, an event often discussed in rabbinic literature. See David Glatt-Gilad, “Was Elijah Permitted to Make an Offering on Mount Carmel?,” TheTorah.com (2019), https://thetorah.com/article/was-elijah-permitted-to-make-anoffering-on-mount-carmel. 38. Hass, “Aqedah in the Bavli,” 44. 39. Ibid., 47. 40. Ibid., 48.

368  Making History Genesis Rabbah, where it is said to make Isaac more dear to him and to increase the difficulty of the test. In addition to the Bavli’s clearer “plot”—as opposed to Genesis Rabbah’s more thematic structure—which presents Abraham as God’s warrior against Satan, the Bavli’s midrash is also notable for its intellectual complexity. This complexity takes two intertwined forms in the encounter between Abraham and Satan. First, the Bavli creates a dialogue from Job and one verse from Psalms, ignoring Job’s contextual sense both deliberately and elegantly.41 Second, Abraham’s response to Satan’s final challenge relates the midrash back to the sugya, where its legal portion is left off: the statement that only an established prophet must be obeyed. Contrasting Satan’s first two challenges and Abraham’s response in the Bavli (D1)42 to those in Genesis Rabbah, one sees that, on the level of literal meaning, the Talmud emphasizes Abraham’s confidence. In response to Satan’s trying to rouse his self-pity or resentment against God, Abraham simply says “I walk without blame,” echoing God’s command, “Walk in my ways and be blameless.” When Satan asks, “Is not your fear of God your folly?,” Abraham simply reiterates his confidence that the righteous will not ultimately perish. Midrashically, the redactor’s use of Eliphaz’s monologue in Job to create a dialogue lowers, as it were, the emotional temperature for the reader, directing attention to Abraham’s wise cleverness and that of the redactor. In contrast, the Abraham of Genesis Rabbah, in his “I understand the consequences,” expresses his determination with defiance, and perhaps also despair. Satan’s third attempt in the Bavli (D2),43 like his third attempt in Genesis Rabbah, is the most challenging and subtle. Perhaps inspired by Abraham’s confident reply, “What innocent man ever perished? (Job 4:7), Satan says he has heard “from behind the curtain,” that Isaac will be spared. Therefore, Satan implies, Abraham has rightly understood that God’s command to sacrifice Isaac is only a test, and he can stop now. Abraham responds, “This is the punishment of a liar, that even if he speaks the truth, others do not pay attention to him.” This brings us back to the halakhic point that only an established prophet—and certainly not Satan—should be believed. Thus, in the Bavli, Abraham’s responses to Satan prove he is a hero because he remains supremely confident in his faith and in his understanding of rabbinic law. The text may imply that Abraham strongly suspects that God will rescind his terrible command to sacrifice his son, but it clearly states that he believes that one way or the other he will pass the test that God has set him, and that all will ultimately be for the best.44 41. Ibid., 49–51. 42. “D1” refers to the section of the translation so marked in the Appendix below. 43. “D2” refers to the section of the translation so marked in the Appendix below. 44. Abraham’s response might even imply the tradition first found explicitly in Pirqe R.

Lindbeck: Abraham as Hero  369 Finally, the Bavli’s midrashic interlude ends with an added interpretation of “After these words” (22:1), relating them to an argument between Ishmael and Isaac, which ends with Isaac expressing his willingness to sacrifice himself. While it may be that this famous example of sibling rivalry is inserted in part for anthological completeness, the Bavli weaves it in well. First of all, Ishmael’s claim is that he is greater in the commandments, echoing the fact that Abraham succeeds by understanding and obeying the rabbinic mitzvot of prophecy, and reinforcing the Bavli’s picture of the Aqedah as a “halakhic drama.”45 Furthermore, if the midrash about Isaac and Ishmael had been inserted “chronologically” near the start, it would have interrupted the rhetorical flow of the Bavli’s portrait of Abraham as God’s warrior against Satan. Lastly, Isaac’s final statement, “If the Holy Blessed One says to me ‘Sacrifice yourself before mе,’ I [would] sacrifice myself,” returns us perfectly to the halakhic question at the beginning. As we saw, the Talmud introduces this midrashic section on the Aqedah with “when Abraham was on the mountain, how did Isaac hearken to him?,” because Isaac did not, of course, hear God’s command to sacrifice himself directly, but rather he obeyed Abraham’s inspired word. Widening our perspective to consider the oral context of the Aqedah in the Bavli, it appears more suitable for teaching in the study house than preaching in the synagogue. Even though both it and Genesis Rabbah contain material suitable for a nonrabbinic congregation or in a public pirqa,46 the Bavli seems more appropriate to the teaching of students of the sages. Its coherent structure, its careful incorporation into a sugya, and its complex play with the words of Job, all support this impression, as does its modeling of rabbinic ideals in its portrait of Abraham’s heroism on Mount Moriah. Abraham adds to his faith a clear confidence in God, and perhaps in himself, as well as deep knowledge of and fidelity to rabbinic halakhah.47 Comparison with Genesis Rabbah throws these characteristics into even higher relief. Genesis Rabbah recounts Abraham’s trial with drama and pathos, appearing to cite Job simply as a proof text to remind the audience that Abraham’s trial was equal to, and indeed more difficult than, his. For Genesis Rabbah, Abraham succeeds through his raw determination to obey God, whatever the cost.

El. 31:10 that Isaac’s soul fled when the blade touched his throat and returned when the voice “from between the cherubim” came to Abraham, causing Isaac to utter the benediction for the revival of the dead. If so, Abraham expresses his faith that, even if Isaac is sacrificed, he will be resurrected by God, perhaps immediately, but certainly at the end of time. 45. Hass, “Aqedah in the Bavli,” 52. 46. For the pirqa as a public lecture to an unlearned audience, see David M. Goodblatt, Rabbinic Instruction in Sasanian Babylonia SJLA 9 (Leiden: Brill, 1975), 177. 47. On the rabbinization of Abraham in our text, see Hass, “Aqedah in the Bavli,” 53.

370  Making History

Genesis Rabbah and Its Relationship to Preaching Thus, as we have seen, these passages on the Aqedah in Genesis Rabbah seem more suited to appeal to popular audiences as well as students of the sages than do the parallel passages in the Bavli. This is not the case for every section of Genesis Rabbah. It does contain more esoteric and specialized sections, such as the cosmological ponderings of the nature of the firmament (4:5), and the halakhic analysis of what constitutes a “knife” for proper slaughter among midrashim on the Aqedah (56:6). A good question might be: If a passage in Genesis Rabbah appears to contain material useful for public preaching, can it be seen as notes for elaboration or as an outline for expansion in a synagogue or another public venue? Unfortunately, rabbinic literature contains precious few actual homilies, or even passages presented as such, and scholars’ opinions on the question vary widely. A few have argued that forms such as the peticha have no actual relationship to preaching, while others have proposed different theories for its performance, both inside and outside the academy.48 As space allows, we will look at a few clues from archaeology and social history, and then briefly discuss the rhetorical style of many midrashic passages themselves. Archaeology reveals a set of phenomena that arose simultaneously in early Byzantine Palestine. As Lee Levine writes, over a hundred new synagogues were constructed with a widely varying range of styles in decoration and inscription, pointing to thriving and diverse Jewish communities.49 In its first centuries, Christian rule seems to have energized Judaism, both as a religious rival and as a social model,50 at least in areas with Jewish majorities or large Jewish minorities. This led, among other things, to the construction of comparable places of worship in towns and villages and even similar epigraphical titles for religious leaders (rabbi and mari).51 Within this new religious and social environment, rabbis participated in their communities by “serving as or advising rural religious functionaries: judges, schoolteachers, Torah readers and the like”52 including parnasim, 48. For a useful review of literature and summary of current research see Novick, Piyyuṭ and Midrash, 17–20. 49. Lee I. Levine, “Jews and Judaism in Palestine (70–640 CE): A New Historical Paradigm,” in The Faces of Torah: Studies in the Texts and Contexts of Ancient Judaism in Honor of Steven Fraade, ed. Christine Hayes, Tzvi Novick, and Michal Bar-Asher Siegal, JAJSup 22 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2017), 395–412, here 403. 50. Stuart S. Miller, “‘This Is the Beit Midrash of Rabbi Eliezer Ha-Qappar’ (Dabbura Inscription) – Were Epigraphical Rabbis Real Sages or Nothing More Than Donors and Honored Deceased?,” in Talmuda de-Eretz Israel: Archaeology and the Rabbis in Late Antique Palestine, ed. Steven Fine and Aaron Koller, Studia Judaica 73 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2014), 239–73, here 254. 51. Ibid. 52. Seth Schwartz, Imperialism and Jewish Society, 200 B.C.E to 640 C.E., Jews, Christians,

Lindbeck: Abraham as Hero  371 local charity officials.53 Given the existence of synagogues, combined with the rabbis’ goal of serving Jewish society (even in the minimalist view of Seth Schwartz) it would be a reasonable assumption that they engaged in public teaching in the form of sermons or something like them. Levine thus plausibly draws a direct line from the new flourishing of Jewish communities in Byzantine times to “a new genre of rabbinic literature—the aggadic midrash.”54 As for midrash in rhetorical action, Novick shows convincingly how the peticha in particular might have been employed in situations in which a number of rabbis presented petichot. This may have taken the form of two or more “students of the sages” introducing the main sermon of a more experienced homilist, as was done in the churches of the day. Thus, the popularity and usefulness of the form would account for the numerous petichot in texts such as Pesiqta de Rab Kahana and Leviticus Rabbah,55 which would therefore have served as notes or manuals for student preachers. Furthermore, not all petichot are exegetically complex. Some instead seem geared to dramatic declamation. Note, for example, Genesis Rabbah’s first interpretation of “On the third day, Abraham lifted his eyes and saw the place from far off” (Gen 22:4; Gen. Rab. 56:1). It simply cites six “third day” verses beginning with “And he will revive us after two days [and on the third day raise us up]” (Hos 6:2). It then returns to Genesis with “And Joseph said to them on the third day … [do this and live”] (42:18), and afterwards lists verses mentioning “the third day” related to the giving of the Torah, the spies, Jonah’s release from the great fish, the return from exile, and ends with the initial verse: “On the third day of the resurrection of the dead: ‘And he will revive us after two days’” (Hos 6:2). This list, not particularly interesting exegetically, is rhetorically and homiletically powerful. Regardless of whether a sermon containing this sequence of “third days” returned in the end to Genesis, the verses would work well as a messianic climax or conclusion with the addition of some easily imagined elaboration.56 and Muslims from the Ancient to the Modern World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 154. 53. Miller, “‘This Is the Beit Midrash of Rabbi Eliezer Ha-Qappar,’” 252 n. 46, citing Catherine Hezser, The Social Structure of the Rabbinic Movement in Roman Palestine, TSAJ 66 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1997); see also Steven D. Fraade on the parnas in rabbinic literature and Jewish society in Legal Fictions: Studies of Law and Narrative in the Discursive Worlds of Ancient Jewish Sectarians and Sages, JSJSup 147 (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 575. 54. Levine, “Jews and Judaism in Palestine,” 407. 55. Novick, Piyyuṭ and Midrash, 20–23. 56. For this kind of interpretation by quotation, see Daniel Boyarin, Intertextuality and the Reading of Midrash, Indiana Studies in Biblical Literature (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), 26–32. And for its possible role in preaching, see my “Performance and

372  Making History In sum, rabbinic and contemporaneous texts and archaeological evidence combine to make it fairly certain that rabbis were among the Jewish leaders who delivered homilies. This leads to the conclusion that the burden of proof rests upon any scholar who would argue that material suitable for preaching in Genesis Rabbah does not serve that purpose.

Interpreting the Scene in Which Samael Tempts Abraham as an Anonymous Passage While very different in form, the sequence of third-day proof texts cited above shares two things with the passages in Genesis Rabbah we discussed above: All of them are suitable for preaching, and all of them are unattributed. This is an extremely small sample, so before looking at those texts in more detail, it makes sense to enlarge it. In analyzing Genesis Rabbah 55–56 on the Aqedah, I observed a general difference between attributed and unattributed passages, with the unattributed passages often seeming more suitable for public preaching. Overall, the units of tradition ascribed to a named rabbi are more diverse. There are petichot and interpretations whose content made them suitable as sermon notes as well as the halakhic discussion mentioned above on what constitutes a knife fit for slaughter. There are fascinating passages that seem to challenge simple pieties, including two meshalim that indirectly accuse God of unfairness57 and at least one passage that emphasizes the physical and emotional cost of the Aqedah, especially for Isaac.58 In contrast, the unattributed passages tend to fall into two groups: either very brief explanations or material suitable for preaching. The latter include a peticha in praise of Abraham that begins chapter 55, several passages including dialogues or reported speech, and the list of “on the third day” verses described above (56:1). The only tradition among these that might be seen as a critique of the divine is found in the angels’ lamentation above the altar on which Isaac is about to be sacrificed. The angels do accuse God of breaking his covenant with Abraham and say that it is outside natural bounds for a father to kill his son. The human audience who “overhears” these heavenly complaints, however, is made sharply aware that the angels are wrong about God’s plan, creating both irony and Drama in Genesis Rabbah,” paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, November 2021, San Antonio, Texas. 57. One of these meshalim is discussed in part in Dov Weiss, Pious Irreverence: Confronting God in Rabbinic Judaism, Divinations (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017), 159–60. 58. See discussion in Yvonne Sherwood, “Binding-Unbinding: Divided Responses of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam to the ‘Sacrifice’ of Abraham’s Beloved Son,” JAAR 72 (2004): 821–61, here 846–48.

Lindbeck: Abraham as Hero  373 drama. God will call off the sacrifice and Isaac will be saved. This passage therefore emphasizes the extremity of God’s test and, by implication, Abraham’s heroism and the cosmic importance of the Aqedah more than it points to the trial’s unfairness. This trend continues throughout all the chapters on Abraham in Genesis Rabbah. In analyzing all passages on Abraham (chs. 39–62), I have found that in all of them most of the unattributed textual units follow the same pattern: either short comments or material that appears suitable for preaching to a general audience. In Genesis Rabbah 39–41, for example, the anonymous traditions include nine brief comments, four petichot or similar forms, and four other passages. Two include dialogue: One of these portrays Abraham as a friend to God (39:11), and the other is the famous story of Abraham trying to smuggle Sarah into Egypt in a box because of her literally radiant beauty (40:5). The other two are numerical. One lists famines in the Bible, ending on a messianic note that would work well in a sermon: “I will send a famine upon the land: not a hunger for bread or a thirst for water, but for hearing the words of the Lord” (Amos 8:11 JPS). The second one is a complex tradition about the four benefits Abraham gave Lot; the four sins of his descendants, the Ammonites and Moabites, against Israel; and the four prophets who condemned them. This last one, in its complexity and lack of obvious religious content, may be a better fit for study house than the synagogue. Thus, out of the eight longer unattributed traditions in these three chapters of Genesis Rabbah, seven provide material clearly suitable for preaching. My current hypothesis is that these unattributed passages are in general the work of creative redactors who were also teachers of aspiring rabbis, that is to say, Torah scholars, local officials, unappointed and sometimes appointed civil judges, and, increasingly, preachers. Their short comments appear to always follow a verse. Some seem like glosses, for example, “He said ‘kaḥ -na’: ‘please’” (55:7). In other instances, they may be notes for expansion in teaching, for example: “‘And he got up and went to the place [which God had told him]’ (22:3). A reward for getting up, and a reward for going” (55:8). Their longer comments often seem to elaborate on well-known tropes, such as that of a wicked angel coming to Mount Moriah to dissuade Abraham from carrying out the sacrifice, or that of Sarah’s radiant beauty mentioned above. We may recall Jaffee’s picture of an earnest but playful redactor,59 one who knew the Torah by heart, the rest of the Tanakh exceedingly well, and had memorized countless halakhic and aggadic traditions, while also having access to written notes and circulating or semiprivate books of midrash.60 I am beginning to suspect that some longer unattributed passages 59. Jaffee, “What Difference Does the ‘Orality’ of Rabbinic Writing Make?” 17. 60. Goodblatt, Rabbinic Instruction in Sasanian Babylonia, 116.

374  Making History are such a redactor’s intellectual and sometimes theological play with well-known motifs. He took what “everyone” knew about a passage, the standard interpretation, and built on it. To return to the passage we have focused on, since “everyone” knew that Abraham was tested as Job was and that Satan/Samael tempted Abraham on Mount Moriah, this provided freedom to the final redactor(s) of Genesis Rabbah and of the Bavli to elaborate on the scene, each in a different way. Each used legal language, but quite differently. In the Bavli this language was very specialized, referring to a theoretical biblical situation of relevance only as Torah for its own sake. In Genesis Rabbah, in contrast, we can imagine the redactor alluding to a memorable term from criminal law in order to heighten the drama of Abraham’s heroism. One does not know whether a general audience would have been aware of how Abraham’s al manat ken, “for this very reason,” echoed the words of a theoretical first-degree murderer in the Tosefta and y. Sanhedrin. The passage, however, is dramatic enough to provide raw material for a moving homily regardless of whether the unlearned members of the congregation knew the legal terminology, and it would also have added an extra layer of pathos and drama for students of the sages.

Final Note on Possible Religious Meanings This essay has already touched on religious meaning in its close reading of specific passages, especially Abraham’s contest with Samael/Satan on Mount Moriah. This section will briefly engage in a wider-ranging and more speculative analysis. The reader should insert any necessary caveats (perhaps, maybe) in the paragraphs below, as it would be tedious to constantly repeat them. In Genesis Rabbah, the tone of many passages on Abraham may indicate some influence from Christian hagiography or even Christian theology of atonement, particularly in its emphasis on Abraham’s heroism and on the role of the Aqedah in Israel’s forgiveness and eventual redemption. One passage emphasizes that Abraham rose early to saddle his donkey, even though he had slaves and servants, because of his love for God and eagerness to do his will (55:8). Others, such as those we have analyzed in detail, imply his suffering, but emphasize his persistence. Furthermore, his courage and that of Isaac have historical and cosmic resonance. Two rabbis dispute whether Abraham’s splitting the wood for the sacrifice of Isaac caused the Red Sea to split, although Rabbi Levi’s view to the contrary prevails (55:8). Isaac, as many have noted, carries the wood for his sacrifice “like one who carries his cross on his shoulder.” Because of their sacrifice, “the rabbis say all the food that Israel eats in this world is by the

Lindbeck: Abraham as Hero  375 blessing” of Abraham’s slaughtering knife (both 56:3). While the idea of vicarious atonement is fairly common in rabbinic literature—a rabbi’s toothache, for example, prevented Jewish women from miscarrying61— the power of the Aqedah goes farther, binding the angels of the nations and preventing them from harming the Jewish people for centuries (56:5). Nevertheless, and perhaps because of a conscious desire to maintain proper distinctions from Christianity, the cosmic benefit of the Aqedah is not unlimited, and it acts only through God’s ongoing choice. When Israel sinned, the angels of the nations escaped their bonds and began to persecute the Jewish people again. They will not cease until messianic times (56:5). The Aqedah does not automatically forgive the sins of Israel, but rather Abraham asks God to remember how he suppressed his compassion and asks God therefore to have compassion on Isaac’s children if they fall into sin (56:10). Thus, there are many passages—not all mentioned above—that have strong resonances with the Byzantine cult of the saints who ask God for mercy on their followers, or with Christian theologies of atonement through Christ. Many, though far from all of them, are unattributed, and almost all of them would be good material for homilies. Our passage in the Bavli, in contrast, lacks any hint that Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice Isaac or the Aqedah itself has a role in forgiveness of sins. While the Talmud does present Abraham as God’s warrior in the fight against Satan, it does not spell out the particular benefits this brings the Jewish people, apart from having the righteous ancestor necessary for them to come into being. While different passages on Abraham in Genesis Rabbah seem geared to produce awe, compassion, or veneration, the Bavli’s more rabbinic Abraham elicits admiration intended to lead to emulation. In addition, Abraham’s final exchange with Satan raises a fascinating possibility. When Satan tells him that a ram, and not Isaac, will be sacrificed, Abraham replies that it is the punishment of a liar not to be believed. This implies that Abraham had faith that God would call off the sacrifice, or else Isaac would be revived in some manner for, as he says to Satan earlier, “what innocent man ever perished?” (Job 4:6). Nevertheless, he knew that he had to continue until God, and God alone, stopped him. This appears to make the Bavli’s view amazingly close to that of R. Lippman Bodoff’s modern midrash. Bodoff argues: First … God was testing Abraham’s willingness to refuse to commit murder even when commanded by God to do so; second, that Abraham went

61. See b. B. Metz. 85a. The Yerushalmi does not associate vicarious atonement with the toothache (see y. Ketub. 12:3, 66a), but does state in the name of R. Shimon b. Yochai that the Israelite soldiers did not die in battle because of the death of an unnamed prophet killed by lion in 1 Kgs 20:36 (y. Sanh. 30c).

376  Making History along with that command with faith that—in the end—he would not be required to do so … and third, that Abraham was rewarded for his moral stance; and his faith that God really does not need or want child sacrifice, or any violations of His moral law, to prove man’s love or fear of God.62

While it might be too speculative to say that the Talmud agrees with Bodoff on his first and third points, the Bavli’s plain sense supports his second, that “Abraham went along with [God’s] command with faith that—in the end—he would not be required” to sacrifice his son. Bodoff is an Orthodox rabbi, and the core of his argument derives from established Jewish law on the sanctity of human life and on the role of reason in evaluating prophecy.63 Perhaps the redactors who put their final mark on this sugya, who had a similarly encyclopedic grasp of halakhah, could not fully embrace the troubling irrationality of the plain meaning of Genesis, in which a father hastens to kill his son at God’s command. Making Isaac an adult and a willing sacrifice, as all rabbinic interpretation does, softens but does not fully solve the dilemma. Genesis Rabbah, in contrast, embraces the irrationality and extremity of the Aqedah, portraying Abraham as ready to strangle Isaac after the angel’s tears dissolve his knife (56:7). Thus, in this essay, we have seen redactional creativity in midrash taking two distinct forms. In the Bavli, we saw polished structure and a relatively more reserved emotional tone. While different rabbis are cited, there are no alternate interpretations; the Bavli’s characteristic simulation of debate is not on display here. In contrast, Genesis Rabbah’s structure is looser and more associative, and it also includes rabbis presenting alternate interpretations and at times disagreeing with one another. All in all, it reads like a melding of notes for lectures and raw material for homilies, written for rabbis and their students who interpreted Torah for its own sake and also preached in more popular settings. The formal characteristics of the Bavli and Genesis Rabbah are each suited to their differing portraits of Abraham. The Talmud provides a consistent picture of Abraham as a distinctly rabbinic hero, capable of holding his own with Satan by faith and logic. Genesis Rabbah, in contrast, presents Abraham as a more complex figure who experiences varying emotions. Written for both the house of study and the synagogue, Genesis Rabbah contains challenging passages that, for example, explore the apparent unfairness of the Aqedah and also many inspiring passages suit-

62. The online version of R. Lippman Bodoff’s modern midrash lacks page numbers; citation is from near the start of section two of “The Real Test of the Akedah: Blind Obedience Versus Moral Choice,” Judaism 42.1 (1993): 71–92 (Gale Literature Resource Center). 63. Many of his proof texts, in fact, actually come from Sanh. 89b, although he does not cite the midrash we have analyzed.

Lindbeck: Abraham as Hero  377 able for preaching that praise Abraham for his almost superhuman faith and emphasize the importance of the Aqedah for all of Jewish history.

Appendix Babylonian Talmud Sanhedrin 89b My translation, with section (D) based closely on Hass, “Aqedah in the Bavli,” 49–52. Aramaic bridge to the midrashic section: If you do not say [that one is punished for disregarding the words of one known to be a prophet even when he gives no sign], when Abraham was on the mountain, how did Isaac hearken to him? … Rather, the case of one known to be a prophet differs [and one is obligated to obey with no sign]. (A) And after these words God tested Abraham (Gen 22:1) After what? R. Yohanan said in the name of Rabbi Yossi ben Zimra, after the words of Satan. As it is written, the boy grew and was weaned [and Abraham made a great feast], etc. (Gen 21:8). Satan said to the Holy Blessed One, “Master of the Universe, this old man—you favored him with the fruit of the womb at a hundred years old—out of all the feast he made, he didn’t have one dove or chick to sacrifice before you.”

Parallels in Genesis Rabbah 55–56, MS Vatican 30; my translation.

[55.4 on “After these words” (22:1), comparable in meaning to (A)] … And according to the opinion of Rabbi Leazar, who said, [when we do not read] “God” [but rather] “and the God” [‫ והאלהים‬as here, always translated “God tested”], it refers to Him and his court: The ministering angels said, “This Abraham, he celebrated and had everyone celebrate, but he did not set aside for the Holy Blessed One one cow or one ram.” The Holy Blessed One said to them, [He did so] with the understanding that if it were said to him that he should sacrifice his son to me, he would not hesitate.

378  Making History He said to him, “He did it only for the sake of his son. If I ask him to sacrifice his son before me, he will at once sacrifice him.” At once God tested Abraham.

The nations of the world said, “This Abraham, he celebrated and had everyone celebrate, but he did not set aside for the Holy Blessed One one cow or one ram.” The Holy Blessed One said to them, [He did so] with the understanding that if it were said to him that he should sacrifice his son to me, he would not hesitate.

(B.1) And he said, please take [kaḥ-na] your son (22:2). Rabbi Shimon bar Abba said, “na” can mean nothing other than an expression of entreaty. (B.2) There is an analogy (mashal) to a king of flesh and blood who faced many wars, and he had one warrior who was victorious. Once a great war confronted the king. He said to him, “I entreat you to stand up for me in this war, so that they will not say your earlier victories were worth nothing.” (B.3) Even so, the Holy Blessed One said to Abraham, “I have tested you with many trials, and you have stood them all, now stand this trial for me, so that they will not say that the first were worth nothing.”

[55:7, parallel to (B.1)] And he said, please take [kaḥ-na] your son (22:2). He said to him “Kaḥ-na, pray take”— “please.” [The mashal in (B.2) has no parallels in Genesis Rabbah, but is keeping with 55:1, which highlights Abraham’s righteousness and his uniquely extreme test.]

(C) “[Take] your son—” “I have two sons.” “Your only son—” “This one is his mother’s only one, and that one is his mother’s only one. “Whom you love—” “I love them both.” “Isaac.” And why all of this? So as not to unbalance his mind.

[56:11, comparable in meaning to (B.3)] R. Hanin said, Because you have done this thing (Gen 22:16) [This one thing?] Rather, this was the last trial, which outweighed all the rest. Had he not taken upon himself this last trial, he would have lost all he did. [55:7 continuing from above, parallel to (C)] [“Take] your son.” He said to him, Which son? He said, “Your only one.” He said, “This is his mother’s only one, and that is his mother’s only one.” He said, “Whom you love.”

Lindbeck: Abraham as Hero  379

(D.1) Satan stood ahead of him on the way and said to him, “Should he test you with something that will leave you weary? (Job 4:2). See, you have encouraged many; you have strengthened falling hands. Your words have kept him who stumbles from falling. But now it overtakes you, it is too much” (Job 4:3–5. Some parts of some verses omitted).

He said, “There are no boundaries in natural love.” He said, “Isaac.” Why not reveal it to him? To make him dear in his eyes, and to give him a reward for every word. [56:4; loosely parallel to (D)] And Isaac said to Abraham his father [‘Father’… ‘here is the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?’] (22:7) Samael came to our father Abraham, He said to him, “What, old man, have you lost your mind?

A son that was given to you at one hundred years, you are going to slaughter him?” He said to him, “I walk without blame” He said to him, “I understand the consequences.” (Ps. 26:11) He said to him, “Is not your fear of God He said, “And if He tests you more than this can you withstand it?” If he your folly?” (Job 4:6). tests you with something [more] will you He said to him, “Think now, what grow impatient? (Job 4:2). [Both texts innocent man ever perished?” (Job 4:7). understand this verse contrary to its (D.2) When he saw that [Abraham] biblical context, and differently.] was not listening to him, he said “A He said, “[Yes] more than this.” word came to me in stealth (Job 4:12). I He said, “Tomorrow He will say to heard this from behind the curtain, ‘The sheep [will be] for the burnt offering; you, you are a shedder of blood, Isaac will not be a burnt offering’” (as guilty, [for] you shed his blood.” He said, “I understand the conseHass comments, Satan here uses part quences.” of Gen 22:8, “where Abraham tells Since [Samael’s argument] did not Isaac, ‘God will see to the sheep for the burnt offering …’” [“Aqedah in the succeed against him, he came over to Isaac.… Bavli,” 52 n. 49]). [Abraham] said to him, “This is the punishment of a liar, that even if he speaks the truth, others do not pay attention to him.” [55:4, parallel to (E), and in Gen. Rab. immediately following the challenges of the angels and nations comparable to the challenge of Satan above.]

380  Making History (E) Rabbi Levi said, after the words of Ishmael to Isaac. Ishmael said to Isaac, “I am greater than you in the commandments, because you were circumcised at eight days old, and I was thirteen years old.” He replied to him, “You are baiting me about one limb? If the Holy Blessed One says to me ‘Sacrifice yourself before me’ I sacrifice myself.” At once God tested Abraham.

Isaac and Ishmael were arguing with one another. This one said, “I am dearer [to God] than you, for I was circumcised at thirteen years.” And that one said, “I am dearer than you for I was circumcised at eight days.” Ishmael said to him, “I am dearer than you—why? There was uncertainty—I had the opportunity to protest, and I did not protest!” At that moment, Isaac said, “Oh that the Holy Blessed One would reveal Himself to me and say to me that any of my limbs should be cut off—I would not hesitate.” The Holy Blessed One said to him, “[You have spoken] with the understanding that if it were said to that you that you should sacrifice yourself, you would not hesitate.”

V. Textual Transmission and Ideational Transformation in Ancient Judaism

Plurisignation in Biblical and Rabbinic Law The Meaning and Punishment of “Rape” CATHERINE HEZSER

I

n contemporary Western societies, rape is considered a criminal offense. Yet how to define rape and assess whether rape took place in a certain situation still requires complex legal discussions. Definitions of rape vary. Older definitions considered only female victims of rape, whereas newer ones include males.1 Most definitions talk about “forcible” sexual intercourse without the “consent” of the victim, but these terms are murky and can be interpreted in different ways. What does “forcible” mean, what is defined as “sexual intercourse,” and how can the alleged victim’s lack of “consent” be proven?2 In fact, despite the lack of an ancient Hebrew or Aramaic term for “rape,” many of these issues have also already occupied ancient Jewish legal experts. The ways in which biblical and rabbinic texts deal with these issues not only provide interesting insights into ancient Jewish society but also indicate that legal texts have multiple meanings and require constant reinterpretation to be applicable to particular circumstances. In the following, I shall focus on the topic of sexual intercourse with unbetrothed and betrothed women to discuss the relationship between plurisignation and interpretation in ancient Jewish texts.

Plurisignation Plurisignation means that a word, text passage, or whole literary work may have various meanings at different levels, that there is an ambiguity 1. See the updated definition of rape issued by the U.S. Department of Justice at: https:// www.justice.gov/archives/opa/blog/updated-definition-rape. 2. For the United Kingdom, see Laura Perrins, “Did You Know the Legal Definition of Rape and ‘Consent’ Is Changing? Here’s How,” The Telegraph, September 19, 2013, https:// www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/10319902/Did-you-know-the-legal-definitionof-rape-and-consent-is-changing-Heres-how.html.

383

384  Making History of meaning inherent in a text. The term was first used by Philip Wheelwright, who explains that a “single expression carries two or more meanings simultaneously.”3 According to Carl Raschke, “Plurisignation occurs in all types of aesthetic symbolism as well as sacred literature.”4 Julius Stone stressed the importance of the concept for the interpretation of legal discourse. He defines plurisignation as the “many-meaningness of language … according to time, place, and context.”5 His definition is very broad and has important consequences for the understanding of legal texts: The semantic teaching that words have many meanings, so that meaning can only be delimited contextually and syntactically, goes far beyond the commonplace that some words are ambiguous. For it means that no single meaning that is both determinate and stable can usually be fixed on any word; plurisignation (or polysemy) is a pervading quality of words. No doubt there can be an ordinary meaning in any given context …, but the context changes with time, and with all that time changes.6

If all texts have a variety of meanings that change with the specific contexts in which they are expressed, pronounced, and read, how can legal rules be valid beyond the situations in which they were formulated? Would the question of the intention or motivation of the person who issued a law even be useful, given that the circumstances would be different at the time when that law was meant to be applied to a new case? Stone notes that plurisignation becomes problematic in the case of written codified law: “This bears upon the value of the still widely accepted principle of interpretation of legislation, including codes, which would make the legislator’s will or intention the exclusive source of law.”7 In fact, the “original,” “ordinary,” or “objective” meaning can never be clear because we cannot fully reconstruct the circumstances and know the context in which a law was formulated. Furthermore, those to whom a law is applied at a later stage “can only reasonably be held bound by the meaning of its words to them.”8 Not only can a law mean different things to different

3. Philip Wheelwright, The Burning Fountain: A Study in the Language of Symbolism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1954), 106. 4. Carl A. Raschke, “Common Sense and Language of Transcendence: Four Models,” in New Dimensions in the Humanities and Social Sciences, ed. Harry R. Garvin (London: Associated University Presses, 1977), 41–63, here 47. 5. Julius Stone, Precedent and Law: Dynamics of Common Law Growth (London: Butterworths, 1985), 225. 6. Julius Stone, Law and the Social Sciences in the Second Half Century (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1966), 58. 7. Ibid. 8. Ibid., 60.

Hezser: Plurisignation in Biblical and Rabbinic Law  385 people, but some aspects of it may be antiquated and unsuitable for the new circumstances.

Plurisignation in Rabbinic Halakhah As far as rabbinic literature is concerned, the issue of plurisignation/polysemy has mainly been discussed in relation to midrash and rabbinic biblical exegesis. David Stern has suggested that we distinguish polysemy from indeterminacy.9 Although the text of the Hebrew Bible may be poly­ semous, it does not necessarily lead to indeterminate rabbinic interpretations. While this observation is correct, Stern’s use of the term “indeterminacy” seems inappropriate, since it implies that any interpretation is possible and equally valid. This would not fit Stone’s view of plurisignation, where meaning is always linked to specific historical, socioeconomic, and cultural circumstances; that is, these circumstances would delimit meaning but also allow the emergence of new meanings at new places and times. The analysis of plurisignation is equally, if not even more, relevant for rabbinic legal discourse (halakhah), for rabbinic rules were—and still are—supposed to be applied and practiced in daily life.10 If the biblical text itself could be interpreted in a variety of ways, as is evident in rabbinic halakhic discourse, and rabbinic statements themselves gave rise to different interpretations from ancient times until today, should we give up the notion of a “correct” interpretation and “normative” meaning? Is it more appropriate to talk about the meaning of a text for the person who reads or hears it and of a legal rule for the person who applies it and to whom it is applied?11 Should all legal interpretation be historical, trying to reconstruct the circumstances in which a certain rule was expressed, adapted, and (re)interpreted over time? And does taking plurisignation seriously mean that all statements are relative and flexible in their application? Before I examine specific examples, it is important to note the difference between oral transmission and the use of written compilations in this  9. David Stern, Midrash and Theory: Ancient Jewish Exegesis and Contemporary Literary Studies, Rethinking Theory (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1996), 15–38; see also Stern, “Anthology and Polysemy in Classical Midrash,” in The Anthology in Jewish Literature, ed. David Stern (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 108–39. 10. Against Stern, Midrash and Theory, 18, who writes, “If anything, polysemy is more frequent in aggadah than in halakhah.” This understanding of polysemy would differ from Stone’s much broader definition. 11. See the discussion of legal interpretation in Aharon Barak, Purposive Interpretation in Law (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), 8: “A system of interpretation based on authorial intent produces a different meaning than a system that asks how a reasonable reader would understand the text.”

386  Making History connection. It is well known that, throughout the Tannaitic and Amoraic periods, rabbinic law was largely case law in which rules were formulated to provide solutions to specific cases brought to rabbis by fellow Jews who sought their advice.12 During the process of oral transmission, earlier rabbinic case decisions and rules, transmitted by generations of students, could be constantly reformulated and adapted to new circumstances. Accordingly, the generation of rabbinic halakhah would have been a highly flexible and adaptable process, in which each utterance would have been a reinterpretation.13 While an individual rabbi may have been aware of a few other rabbis’ alternative views, he would not have known the full range of opinions held by his contemporaries or earlier sages. The full diversity of views and interpretations would have become evident only once the large anthologies existed and rabbinic study was based on written texts.14 Rabbis seem to have been aware of the phenomenon of plurisignation. The Babylonian Talmud contains a famous tradition that scholars have cited repeatedly to emphasize the rabbinic legitimization of a plurality of views. When the Houses of Hillel and Shammai each claimed that the halakhah was in accordance with their own views, a heavenly voice is said to have come forth, stating: “These and these are the words of the living God” (b. Hag. 3b). The Bavli then gives preference to the opinion of Bet Hillel, however.15 According to Daniel Boyarin, “such declarations are to be found only in the latest layers of classical rabbinic literature, in the Talmuds themselves.”16 He points to the underlying idea of “polynoia, the many-mindedness, as it were, of God.”17 Rabbis who notice different and partly incompatible views among earlier scholars legitimized this variety

12. Catherine Hezser, Form, Function, and Historical Significance of the Rabbinic Story in Yerushalmi Neziqin, TSAJ 37 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1993), 292–303; Hezser, “The Codification of Legal Knowledge in Late Antiquity: The Talmud Yerushalmi and Roman Law Codes,” in The Talmud Yerushalmi and Graeco-Roman Culture, ed. Peter Schäfer, 3 vols. TSAJ 71, 79, 93 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1998–2002), 1:581–641, here 583–95. See also Stuart S. Miller, Sages and Commoners in Late Antique ’Ereẓ Israel: A Philological Inquiry into Local Traditions in Talmud, TSAJ 111 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006), 277. 13. See also Paul Heger, who associates this oral legal flexibility already with Pharisees (The Pluralistic Halakhah: Legal Innovations in the Late Second Commonwealth and Rabbinic ­Periods, Studia Judaica 22 [Berlin; New York: de Gruyter, 2003], 78). 14. See Catherine Hezser, “Bookish Circles? The Use of Written Texts in Rabbinic Oral Culture,” Temas Medievales 25 (2018): 63–81. 15. On this text, see Christine Hayes, “Law in Classical Rabbinic Judaism,” in The Cambridge Companion to Judaism and Law, ed. Christine Hayes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 76–127, here 101; David Kraemer, Reading the Rabbis: The Talmud as Literature (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 65–66; Daniel Boyarin, Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity, Divinations (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 162. 16. Boyarin, Border Lines, 162. 17. Ibid.

Hezser: Plurisignation in Biblical and Rabbinic Law  387 by tracing it back to God himself. If Boyarin were correct in associating this phenomenon with a late layer within the rabbinic tradition, one might assume that the existence of written compilations such as the Mishnah with their many different views caused the late Amoraim to adopt such a position. Yet we also know that the Bavli editors tended to harmonize between opposing views, as the mentioned sugya also shows. An earlier version of the text appears in Tosefta Sotah 7:12. This version is formulated in a more general way, not limited to the controversy of the Houses of Hillel and Shammai and not giving preference to one of them at the end: Perhaps a person says to himself: Since the House of Shammai declares unclean and the House of Hillel declares clean, so-and-so prohibits and so-and-so permits, why should I henceforth learn Torah? Scripture says: “Words … the words … these are the words” [Deut 1:1]: all these words have been given by a single shepherd, one God made them, one Provider gave them, the Lord of all deeds, Blessed Be He, has spoken it. So you, open many chambers in your heart, and bring into it the words of the House of Shammai and the words of the House of Hillel, the words of those who declare unclean and the words of those who declare clean.18

The text suggests that the very purpose of Torah study is to open oneself to a variety of possible interpretations, not to reject any of them outright, and to endure contradictions, since all rabbinic interpretations share a divine origin. Boyarin is therefore wrong in assuming that “there was a declination from an original homonoia” and an earlier assumption that “sufficient investigation could discover the original truth.”19 Tannaitic rabbis seem to have already been aware of a plurality of partly contradictory interpretations of the Torah and halakhic views that could be confusing to the student. The tradition is formulated from the perspective of the more experienced teacher who recommends keeping an open mind for different views. The fact that the variety of rabbinic opinions are all traced back to God also implies a certain equality among rabbis. As Shaye Cohen already stated a long time ago, rabbis agreed to disagree.20

18. For the Hebrew text (Vienna MS), see Saul Lieberman, The Tosefta, The Order of Nashim: Sotah, Gittin, Kiddushin (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1973), 195. 19. Boyarin, Border Lines, 162. 20. Shaye J. D. Cohen, “The Significance of Yavneh: Pharisees, Rabbis, and the End of Jewish Sectarianism,” HUCA 55 (1984): 27–53, here 50. On the differences between Cohen and Boyarin concerning Tannaitic rabbis’ polynoia (Cohen) versus homonoia (Boyarin), see Amran Tropper, “Tractate Avot and Early Christian Succession Lists,” in The Ways That Never Parted: Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, ed. Adam H. Becker and Annette Yoshiko Reed, TSAJ 95 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003), 159–88, here 181.

388  Making History Once rabbinic traditions were collected, edited, and combined in the large written anthologies of the Talmuds, readers would become aware of the variety of views and enter the interpretation process themselves. One may argue that talmudic sugyot are structured in a way that induces discussion and generates diverse interpretations. The reader, who is envisioned as a rabbinic scholar, is invited to figure out the meaning and reason behind each argument and construct the logic of the discourse, that is, to interpret the rabbinic interpretations.21 In this way, interpretation becomes an ongoing process of engagement with the text that leads to ever-new insights and applications to changing circumstances. It is probably due to the constant reinterpretation and flexibility of rabbinic ­halakhah that it is still relevant in Jewish law and ethics today.

Biblical Law Concerning Sexual Intercourse with Unbetrothed Virgins, Betrothed Women, and Married Women The Hebrew Bible distinguishes three stages in a woman’s life: the unbetrothed virgin (that is, the girl before any inchoate marriage agreements have been made), the betrothed girl, and the married woman. Different consequences and punishments are mentioned for men who have sexual relations with women at each of these stages, outside of the institutions of betrothal and marriage. Distinctions are made between sexual intercourse with a virgin who is not yet betrothed (‫ )לא ארשה‬and with a woman who is betrothed (‫ )מארשה‬but not yet married, that is, who is in an intermediary stage between betrothal and marriage, or, to put it another way, is between being under the authority of her father and that of her future husband. Not only do different rules apply in these different cases, but even variant punishments are suggested in the different legal traditions included in the Torah. The first and fundamental question concerning some of the biblical texts is whether they are variant versions of the same issue or deal with different scenarios. Are harmonizations between specific texts, or even explanations that try to rationalize the differences between them, legitimate? Alternatively, one might view the rules as variant legal traditions that circulated alongside each other and were applied by different sets of people. Whether their “original” meanings and intentions can be recon-

21. On the intended reader, see David Kraemer, “The Intended Reader as a Key to Interpreting the Bavli,” Prooftexts 13 (1993): 125–40.

Hezser: Plurisignation in Biblical and Rabbinic Law  389 structed is questionable. It is likely that their meaning changed with each interpretation and application to new circumstances.

Intercourse with an Unbetrothed Virgin The case of a not yet betrothed girl is dealt with in Exod 22:15–16. Obviously, the girl has not yet been promised to any man; thus, there are no legal obligations to anyone, and she is still under her father’s authority. The text states that, as a punishment for his deed, the man is required to pay the bride-price (mohar) to her father and marry her. If her father refuses to give him his daughter in marriage, he shall be made to pay the bride-price of a virgin (mohar habetulah) as a monetary fine. A variant version with interesting differences appears in Deut 22:28– 29. Whereas Exod 22:15 talks about a man who persuades or entices (‫)יפתה‬ the girl to sleep with him, Deut 22:28–29 refers to someone who “seizes” the girl (‫ )תפשה‬and “degrades” her (‫)ענה‬. Does this mean that two different scenarios are envisioned in these texts? The Exodus version may imagine a man who seduces the girl with his words, whereas the Deuteronomy version may assume that the girl was physically grabbed by and made to succumb to the man. Can only the Deuteronomy text be understood in the sense of “rape?”22 The scenario imagined there seems to come closer to the modern understanding of sexual violence, where the woman did not give her permission to have intercourse with the man.23 It all depends on one’s interpretation of the terminology, however. The terms ‫תפס‬/‫תפש‬, 22. For a discussion of whether and to what extent the term “rape” is appropriate for what is described in some narratives in the Hebrew Bible, see Sandie Gravett, “Reading ‘Rape’ in the Hebrew Bible: A Consideration of Language,” JSOT 28 (2004): 279–99. Although “no Hebrew verb or phrase precisely corresponds to contemporary understandings of rape” (ibid., 279) and different cultural attitudes prevailed in biblical times, Gravett maintains that in some instances, where violence is used, the modern term “rape” may be appropriate to convey the meaning of “forcible violation” (ibid.) to the modern reader. She suggests that each text and formulation need to be analyzed separately to determine its meaning. Therefore, general definitions of rape, such as the one suggested by Susan Estrich, Real Rape: How the Legal System Victimizes Women Who Say No (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984), 8, are problematic when unquestioningly applied to biblical texts. 23. On this issue see Karen F. Pierce and Susan Deacy, eds., Rape in Antiquity: Sexual Violence in the Greek and Roman World (London: Duckworth and Classical Press of Wales, 1997); E. M. Harris, “Did Rape Exist in Classical Athens? Further Reflections on the Laws about Sexual Violence,” Dike 7 (2004): 41–83; Elna K. Solvang, “Guarding the House: Conflict, Rape, and David’s Concubines,” in Sex in Antiquity: Exploring Gender and Sexuality in the Ancient World, ed. Mark Masterson, Nancy Sorkin Rabinowitz, and James Robson, Rewriting Antiquity (London:Routledge, 2015), 50–66; Susanne Scholz, Rape Plots: A Feminist Cultural Study of Genesis 34, Studies in Biblical Literature 13 (New York: P. Lang, 2000).

390  Making History ‫אנס‬, and ‫ ענה‬are polysemous, and their meanings are much disputed among scholars. Mary Anna Bader maintains that “this law is descriptive of rape; the man is said to have seized the woman.”24 Similarly, Joseph Fleishman interprets Deut 22:28–29 as referring to someone who “raped” a girl.25 While ‫“( אנס‬to seize”) seems to implies that he used force, Fleishman notes that “the deed was not necessarily rape in the usual meaning of the term”; it can also be interpreted as abduction for purposes of marriage.26 Paul Heger is even more cautious with regard to associating the term with rape. The verb ‫ תפס‬has “a great variety of meanings”; “[t]here is no explicit indication in the biblical text of Deut 22 that this term refers to rape.”27 The term ‫ ענה‬also has a range of meanings: “to act harmfully to another, humiliating and demeaning him.”28 Ellen van Wolde has observed that the Septuagint does not translate the term with reference to violence or rape.29 She concludes that “[t]he widespread opinion that the verb ‘innȃ in the Pi’el refers to ‘rape’ or ‘sexual abuse’ is not acceptable.”30 While ‫ יפתה‬in Exod 22:15 may suggest that the girl cooperated, this text also “covers the wide spectrum of intimate relations outside the framework of marriage.”31 How one translates these terms has important consequences for one’s understanding of the biblical texts. It should also be noted that, in both versions, the focus is on the man and his relation to the father, while the girl remains an object that has been used without its owner’s (i.e., the father’s) permission. Neither the question of the girl’s willing or forced participation in the encounter nor the question of whether she would want to marry the man who violated her is considered relevant from the perspective of the authors of these rules. The issue of consent, so important in contemporary discussions of rape, is absent here.32 Nevertheless, the version in Exodus allows for the possibil24. Mary Anna Bader, Sexual Violation in the Hebrew Bible: A Multi-Methodological Study of Genesis 34 and 2 Samuel 13, Studies in Biblical Literature 87 (New York: P. Lang, 2006), 17. 25. Joseph Fleishman, “Biblical Laws of Marriage vis-à-vis Seduction and Rape: Exodus 22:15–16 and Deuteronomy 22:28–29,” in Looking at the Ancient Near East and the Bible through the Same Eyes: Minha LeAhron, A Tribute to Aaron Skaist, ed. Kathleen Abraham and Joseph Fleishman (Bethesda, MD: CDL, 2012), 87–129, here 87. 26. Ibid., 125. 27. Paul Heger, “The Seducer and the Rapist: Divergent Qumranic and Rabbinic Interpretations of Deut. 22:28–29,” JAJ 6 (2015): 232–52, here 233. 28. Fleishman, “Biblical Laws of Marriage,” 108. See also Heger, “Seducer and the Rapist,” 236–37. 29. Ellen van Wolde, “Does ‘innȃ Denote Rape? A Semantic Analysis of a Controversial Word,” Vetus Testamentum 52 (2002): 528–44, here 528. 30. Ibid., 543. 31. Fleishman, “Biblical Laws of Marriage,” 125. 32. For this difference, see also Carolyn Pressler, who thinks that it is “anachronistic” to read modern issues into the biblical texts (“Sexual Violence and Deuteronomic Law,” in A

Hezser: Plurisignation in Biblical and Rabbinic Law  391 ity that the man was the girl’s lover and that she engaged in the encounter willingly. The ruling that the father may refuse to give his daughter to the man in marriage may have served to prevent young couples from plotting to circumvent the father’s permission through premarital intercourse.33 Another difference in the Deuteronomy version is the mention of witnesses. The verb ‫ מצא‬appears in two different forms in 22:28. It seems that, according to Deuteronomistic law, witnesses were considered necessary to identify the man as a culprit, while nothing could be done on the basis of mere rumors. That Deuteronomy was concerned about witnesses’ testimony is evident also in Deut 5:20 and 19:15–19, where the possibility of false witnesses is mentioned (19:18). As Hagith Sivan has noted, however, “there is no precise procedure of investigation, nor is it clear how either judges or priests are to detect either falsity or false witnesses.”34 As a punishment, the Deuteronomy version mentions the forced marriage and monetary fine only, without giving the father the option to reject the man as his daughter’s husband. In fact, the marriage rule is enforced: the man is to pay the considerable fine of fifty silver sheqels and must remain married to her all his life “because he has violated her.” What seems somewhat strange here is that seizing the girl results in permanent marriage, whereas her seduction does not necessarily lead to marriage. Are these variant rules geared toward similar circumstances, or do they envision different circumstances and therefore suggest different punishments?35 One might argue that the case of seduction, envisioned in Exod 22:15, is a less serious crime than the case of forced intercourse, envisioned in Deut 22:28, and that therefore the punishment of fifty silver sheqels and the inability to divorce the woman, that is, the duty to sustain her throughout her life, was considered the heavier punishment. On the basis of the Qumran Temple Scroll (11Q19 [11QTa] LXVI, 8–11), which integrates the two biblical laws and applies the legal implications of Deuteronomy to the seducer, Heger argues against the common modern understanding of Exod 22:15–16 as referring to seduction and Deut 22:28–29

Feminist Companion to Exodus to Deuteronomy, ed. Athalya Brenner, Feminist Companion to the Bible 6 [Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1994], 102–12, here 102). 33. See also Eckart Otto, Theologische Ethik des Alten Testaments, Theologische Wissenschaft 3.2 (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1994), chapter 2.2: a forced marriage (“Raubehe”) is prevented by requiring the man to pay the bride-price without a guarantee to receive the girl in marriage. 34. Hagith Sivan, Between Woman, Man, and God: A New Interpretation of the Ten Commandments, JSOTSup 401 (London: T&T Clark International, 2004), 73. 35. Carolyn Pressler argues that “Ex. 22:15–16 and Deut. 22:28–29 should be interpreted as variants of the same case; that is, the violation of an unbetrothed girl” (The View of Women Found in the Deuteronomic Family Laws, BZAW 216 [Berlin: de Gruyter, 1993], 40). She maintains that even the Deuteronomy version may imply that the father could withhold his daughter from marriage to the perpetrator.

392  Making History to rape.36 He maintains that Deut 22:28–29 does not necessarily refer to ­ iolent rape but can be understood as a variant of the law in Exod 22:15–16. v This would explain the Temple Scroll’s treatment of the text as dealing with an act of seduction of a virgin, punishable (as in Exod 22:15–16) by marriage: “When a man seduces a virgin who is not betrothed, but is suitable to him according to the rule, and lies with her, and he is found out, he who has lain with her shall give the girl’s father fifty pieces of silver and she shall be his wife. Because he has dishonoured her, he may not divorce her all his days.”37 It seems that the authors of the Qumran text harmonized between the biblical variants and reformulated them for their own purposes. Michael Satlow also seems to conflate the biblical texts in his argument that intercourse may have enabled a young couple to marry despite parental objections, “providing a face-saving way out for the parent.”38 He writes, “In many societies, this role is played by the concepts of ‘seduction’ and ‘rape’. Paradoxically, a man who seduces or ‘rapes’ a woman whom he wants to marry (and who wants to marry him) brings less shame to her family than he would should he simply marry her.”39 While Satlow notices the differences in formulation between Exod 22:15 and Deut 22:28, he nevertheless assumes that both were “staged” by the girl and the man who had intercourse with her: “One might thus suspect that if a woman’s father was strongly against a match, the desperate couple might resort to a staged rape in order to evade his wishes.”40 While this may have been one possible scenario to which the rule applied, another scenario would have been a “real” rape, which would bring the girl under her rapist’s permanent authority. Even nowadays some Islamic countries (such as Jordan) have or had (such as Egypt and Tunisia) laws that allow rapists to marry their victims and force women into marriage relationships with men who violated them. As Hibaaq Osman has recently stated in an article in The Independent: “Article 308 of the Jordanian penal code means that a rapist can escape punishment if he agrees to marry his victim. Only if the marriage lasts for less than three years does he have to serve his time.”41 Interestingly, the biblical rule of a permanent marriage (Deut 22:29) is turned into a minimum of three years 36. Heger, “The Seducer and the Rapist,” 232–52. 37. Translation from Geza Vermes, The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English (London: Penguin, 1962). 38. Michael Satlow, Jewish Marriage in Antiquity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 124. 39. Ibid., 125. 40. Ibid. 41. Hibaaq Osman, “Laws That Allow Rapists to Marry Their Victims Come from ­Colonialism, Not Islam,” The Independent, 19 December 2017, available at https://www. independent.co.uk/voices/rape-conviction-laws-marry-rapist-jordan-egypt-moroccotunisia-came-from-french-colonial-times-ottomon-rule-a7872556.html.

Hezser: Plurisignation in Biblical and Rabbinic Law  393 of marriage here. After protests by women’s rights activists, it is planned that the law will be abolished. Whether and to what extent this law is based on Islamic or Ottoman law, that is, law imported to the Middle East by the colonizers, as the Independent writer claims, its similarity to the Deuteronomistic rule is evident.42 In both the biblical and modern cases, the violated woman’s voice is not taken into consideration. The rapist violated the woman’s father’s honor and property and has to restore both through marriage and a monetary fine. Whether and to what extent the wording of the two biblical rules refers to one and the same or different scenarios thus depends on one’s interpretation. Deuteronomy 22:28–19 could be used to allow young couples to marry against their father’s wishes, but it could also be used to bind the violated woman to her rapist. Exodus 22:15–16 could prevent a woman from having to marry the man who had premarital sex with her, but it could also prevent her from marrying her lover and force her to enter an arranged marriage instead. Since we cannot reconstruct the circumstances in which these rules were first expressed and applied, their “original” meaning and purpose are outside our reach.

Intercourse with a Betrothed Girl The case of a violated girl who is betrothed but not yet married is dealt with in Deut 22:23–27 only, without an analogy in Exodus. Betrothal, as imagined in the Bible, was an intermediary stage in which the woman remained in her father’s house and under her father’s authority but was already bindingly promised to a man as his wife.43 According to Satlow, “betrothal had legal consequences: from the time at which the betrothal was formally concluded (probably with the payment of a mohar, or brideprice), the betrothed woman was considered, in some respects, to be married.”44 Neither she herself nor her father could undo that binding link to her future husband. The text in Deuteronomy distinguishes between two different scenarios and two different reactions of the woman, which are used to determine whether she is guilty and deserves punishment along with the man. The 42. On rape in Islamic law, see Hina Azam, Sexual Violation in Islamic Law: Substance, Evidence, and Procedure, Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015). 43. On betrothal in the Bible, see Esther Fuchs, “Structure and Patriarchal Functions in the Biblical Bethrothal Type-Scene: Some Preliminary Notes,” in Women in the Hebrew Bible: A Reader, ed. Alice Bach (New York: Routledge, 1998), 45–52; Fuchs, Sexual Politics in the Biblical Narrative: Reading the Hebrew Bible as a Woman, JSOTSup 310 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 2000), 91–115; Lieve M. Teugels, Bible and Midrash: The Story of “The Wooing of Rebekah” (Gen. 24), CBET 35 (Leuven: Peeters, 2004), 52–58. 44. Satlow, Jewish Marriage in Antiquity, 69.

394  Making History major distinction is between the different environments in which the action took place. If the intercourse happened in a city, and the woman did not cry out and make herself heard, although people could have helped her, she is believed to be complicit in the crime: both are to be punished with death by stoning (Deut 22:23–24). If, on the other hand, the man “violates” the girl outside of a settled area, in a field, only the man shall receive the death penalty. The girl is considered innocent, since she could not prevent the crime from happening. No one would have been present who could have heard her crying and rescued her from the aggressor (Deut 22:25–27). Kenneth Mathews has suggested that only in the first scenario would the intercourse have been shameful for her family; if the girl could do nothing to prevent the action, no shame was involved.45 By categorically distinguishing between two contexts in which the intercourse might have happened, the text makes assumptions, however, that might have applied in some cases but not in others. In the city scenario, the girl is assumed to be able to cry—the case of a deaf-mute, for example, is not taken into consideration. Furthermore, people are assumed to be nearby and willing to intervene. These conditions may not always have prevailed. In the field scenario, a farmer might have been in hearing distance and might have heard the girl cry. Or the girl might have agreed to have intercourse with her lover in a distant place where they could not be discovered. One may also wonder how the alleged “crime” could have been discovered in either of these scenarios: if the city-girl did not make herself heard; if no one was in the proximity of the couple in an unsettled area. Witnesses are not mentioned in this text—they would not fit the logic of the envisioned scenarios—but how could the unlawful intercourse be detected then? The statement that the man’s deed in the field is equal to the crime of someone who stands up against his fellow and kills him (Deut 22:26) is also problematic. Obviously, the girl was not killed. We do not even know whether she was complicit in the deed. Perhaps the sentence refers to the intentionality of the deed, and the death penalty is thus applied both to the man who slept with a betrothed woman and to the murderer. If we compare Deuteronomy’s rulings about intercourse with an unbetrothed and a betrothed woman, several differences are noticeable. The case of sex with a betrothed woman is considered a more serious crime/sin for which the punishment of the man is more severe (death penalty versus fine and marriage). In the case of the betrothed woman, the woman may be complicit and receive the same punishment, whereas this is not the case with an unbetrothed girl. Interestingly, neither the father nor the prospective husband is mentioned in the laws concerning intercourse with a 45. Kenneth A. Mathews, Genesis, 2 vols., New American Commentary 1A, 1B (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 1996–2005), 2:591.

Hezser: Plurisignation in Biblical and Rabbinic Law  395 betrothed woman. This may be because no fine is to be paid, but one wonders what the consequences would be for the woman, if she is deemed innocent. Are her father and future husband supposed to accept her as if nothing had happened? And what about a possible pregnancy? These lacunae show that, by themselves, without interpretations and expansions, the biblical laws were inadequate for application to actual cases. Legislation always requires jurisdiction and jurisdiction involves interpretation.

Intercourse with a Married Woman Probably the most serious offense dealt with in Deuteronomy is intercourse with a married woman. In Deuteronomy, intercourse between a married woman and a man who is not her husband is always considered adultery. That she might have been seduced or raped is not taken into consideration. There is no discussion of the woman’s possible innocence. The law assumes that she was complicit in the act. Deuteronomy 22:22 rules that as a punishment for such illegitimate intercourse both the man and the woman shall die. The severe punishment is meant to eliminate “evil from Israel” (ibid.). The law of Leviticus is equally strict: “A man who commits adultery with another man’s wife, who commits adultery with his neighbor’s wife, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall be put to death” (Lev 20:10). Here, too, the woman is automatically deemed culpable, and a violent attack is ruled out. Perhaps the assumption is that, unlike a young girl, a married woman should be able to defend herself against a stranger’s approaches. In contrast to the case of a betrothed girl, different circumstances (city or countryside) are not considered here. The book of Numbers, on the other hand, considers the possibility of a wrong accusation. A woman may be wrongly accused of adultery but in fact be innocent. In Num 5:12–31 some issues are taken into consideration that are not mentioned in Leviticus and Deuteronomy: there may not be any witnesses (v. 13); her husband may be jealous and suspicious of her (v. 14). To clarify the question of her guilt, the bitter water ordeal is introduced, a religious (or rather magic) ritual to be carried out by a priest (vv. 17–28).46 In later rabbinic sources the accused wife is called a sotah, and the issues concerning her are expanded and reinterpreted. The biblical legal texts leave many loopholes. One wonders whether and to what extent they could have been applied to actual cases. Perhaps 46. On this ritual see, e.g., William McKane, “Poison, Trial by Ordeal and the Cup of Wrath (Numbers 5, 11–31),” Vetus Testamentum 30 (1980): 474–92; Fred Rosner, “The Ordeal of the Wayward Woman (“sotah”): Miracle or Natural Phenomenon (Num 5:11-31)?,” Koroth 8 (1984): 396–406; Emanuel Rackman, “The Case of the Sotah in Jewish Law: Ordeal or ­Psychodrama?” National Jewish Law Review 3 (1988): 49–64.

396  Making History the texts were meant as warnings only? The use of the term “sin” (‫)חטא‬ indicates the religious and moral nature of the rulings. If they were applied to actual cases, legal experts would have had to reinterpret the rulings to fit the cases that were brought before them. In Deuteronomy, Levites, priests, elders, and judges are mentioned in regard to adjudication.47 There is no evidence, however, of a body of legal interpretations and case decisions before the rabbinic movement developed after 70 CE.

Rabbinic Interpretations of Biblical Rules Concerning Intercourse with Unbetrothed and Betrothed Women Rabbis stepped into the biblical loopholes and generated complex discussions and interpretations of the biblical rules. Palestinian rabbinic halakhah on the issue of women who had intercourse with “third parties” before or after their betrothal indicates that interpretation was necessary to make the rules applicable. However, what rabbis do is not just interpretation. Rather, their discussions generate new legal rules that, in themselves, would require discussion and reinterpretation when new circumstances arose, that is, with any new case in question. The very phenomenon of the biblical texts’ plurisignation allowed rabbis to step in and develop their own halakhic system that was far more complex than its biblical basis. It is important to note at the outset that betrothal as reflected in rabbinic texts differs to some extent from betrothal in the Hebrew Bible. Satlow already noticed that rabbis from the Mishnah onward use the term qiddushin for betrothal rather than the biblical erusin.48 Rather than paying a bride-price (mohar), the prospective husband gave the woman a small symbolic amount of money (cf. m. Qidd. 3:2), and the emphasis was on the eventual ketubbah, or marriage contract, which safeguarded the property that the woman brought into the marriage.49 Marriage became more important than its preceding stage. Satlow even suggests that rabbis 47. See Harald Samuel, “Levi, the Levites and the Law,” in Rewriting and Interpreting the Hebrew Bible: The Biblical Patriarchs in the Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls, ed. Devorah Dimant and Reinhart G. Kratz, BZAW 439 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2013), 215–30, 223: “I see herein a clear line of development from the Levitical priests as (subordinate) legal experts (Deut. 17*) via the late or post-Deuteronomistic equation of priests and judges (Deut. 17; 19) through to the Chronicler’s incorporation of the judges into the Levitical lineage.” 48. Satlow, Jewish Marriage in Antiquity, 76. 49. T. M. Lemos, Marriage Gifts and Social Change in Ancient Palestine, 1200 BCE to 200 CE (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 85; Gail Labovitz, Marriage and Metaphor: Constructions of Gender in Rabbinic Literature (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2009), 37–38.

Hezser: Plurisignation in Biblical and Rabbinic Law  397 hoped that the betrothal period would be as short as possible to avoid all kinds of complications that could arise during that time.50

Intercourse with an Unbetrothed Virgin in Rabbinic Law At the very beginning of Mishnah tractate Qiddushin, the ways in which a woman is “acquired,” that is, the ways in which she becomes the property of a man other than her father, are stated. One of them is sexual intercourse (m. Qidd. 1:1). Based on this rule, one might assume that any man who had intercourse with an unbetrothed virgin was supposed to marry her. Neither the girl’s nor her father’s nor the other man’s intentions are considered here. In the Yerushalmi, the biblical proof text cited for this rule is Deut 22:13 (“If a man takes a woman and comes upon her [i.e., has sexual relations with her] …”). Whereas the rabbis of the Yerushalmi use the biblical verse to support the notion that sex binds a woman to the man who slept with her, the biblical context deals with the case of a man who, after intercourse with the woman, hates her and tries to get rid of her by claiming that she was not a virgin (see Deut 22:13–15), an issue that is not taken up in y. Qiddushin 1:1, 58b. The Yerushalmi (in a statement attributed to R. Abbahu in the name of R. Yohanan) also cites Deut 22:22 (a man who has sexual intercourse with a married woman) to argue that the man who deflowers a virgin is the one who “acquires” her, whereas any man who approaches her afterwards commits a sin (because she is bound to that first man). It seems that the rabbis were the first to clearly distinguish between seduction and rape. Mishnah Ketubbot 3:5 deals with the punishment of a man who seduces versus someone who violates, that is, rapes, a virgin. According to Exod 22:15, someone who “seduces” (‫ )יפתה‬a virgin has to pay the bride-price and marry her. Her father has the option of rejecting him and receiving the bride-price for a virgin as a compensation (Exod 22:16). In Deut 22:28, on the other hand, the man is imagined as having “seized” and “denigrated” the virgin. He is obliged to marry her, to support her throughout her life, and to pay fifty silver sheqels to her father (Deut 22:29). As discussed above, it remains unclear whether and to what extent different scenarios are envisioned by these texts or whether they are variant rules relating to the same situation. The Mishnah clearly distinguishes between the seduction and violation/rape of a virgin. For the seduction, the same verb as in Exod 22:15 is used (‫)המפתה‬. For the one who violates/rapes, the verb ‫ האונס‬is used (m. Ketub. 3:4[5]). That is, the rabbis clarify a matter that was left uncer50. Satlow, Marriage in Antiquity, 79.

398  Making History tain in the Torah. One may also view this distinction as an attempt, however, to harmonize between and combine the variant biblical rules concerning intercourse with an unbetrothed virgin. The Mishnah suggests a more serious penalty for the one who rapes a girl and takes into account the damages suffered by the girl herself rather than her father. Anyone who seduces a girl to sleep with him should pay for her shame and (physical) damage. The rapist should also be accountable for the pain he caused her (ibid.). The second half of the mishnah seems to be based on the laws of Exodus and Deuteronomy without referring to them explicitly. The Mishnah comes up with variant rulings. The one who seduces the girl should pay a fine only “when he puts her away,” that is, if he does not agree to marry her or rejects her after marriage. Unlike the rapist, he has the option of dismissing her, whereas the rapist is bound to support her for life and pay a penalty. Could the rabbis’ knowledge of Roman law have caused them to distinguish more clearly between seduction and rape? It seems that Roman law was concerned only with either the abduction of virgins or adultery committed with married women.51 Corinne J. Saunders writes: The offense of rape entered Roman law comparatively late: early Roman law focused exclusively on devaluation caused by abduction, termed raptus. Roman law declared such raptus punishable by death rather than marriage; if the woman consented to the raptus, she too was subject to the death penalty. There was, however, no mention of sexual violence in Roman laws on raptus until the decrees of Justinian in the sixth century. In his code, Justinian extends the definition of raptus to include sexual violence against women, although only against unmarried women, widows or nuns: they are devalued by rape as they are by abduction: “castitas corrupta restitui non potest” (“chastity once polluted cannot be restored,” AD 533).52

It seems, then, that the rabbis of the Mishnah were the first to use the concept of force or violence in discussions of sexual intercourse with virgins.53 51. On adultery in Roman law, see Thomas Mackenzie, Studies in Roman Law: With Comparative Views of the Laws of France, England, and Scotland, 3rd ed. (Edinburgh: William Blackwood & Sons, 1870), 362; Jane F. Gardner, Women in Roman Law and Society (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995), 119. The rape of a married woman was dealt with in the lex Julia de adulteriis coercendis of 17 BCE. On this law, see Thomas A. J. McGinn, Prostitution, Sexuality, and the Law in Ancient Rome (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 140–214. Whether rape was an issue in the adultery law is disputed, see McGinn, 141. McGinn notes that “[a]dultery was incontestably the main offense.” 52. Corinne Saunders, Rape and Ravishment in the Literature of Medieval England (Rochester, NY: D. S. Brewer, 2001), 34, with reference to Justinian, Corpus Iuris Civilis 9.13.1, “De Raptu Virginum.” 53. On raptus in medieval English law, see Corinne Saunders, “A Matter of Consent:

Hezser: Plurisignation in Biblical and Rabbinic Law  399 Perhaps the Byzantine jurists knew rabbinic discussions or were influenced by Deuteronomistic law. What is not mentioned in m. Ketubbot 3:5 is the bride-price (mohar) mentioned in Exod 22:15, which no longer existed in rabbinic times. Further, as we have seen above, for rabbis, sexual intercourse itself established a marriage, so sex with a virgin would automatically lead to the couple being regarded husband and wife. The father’s possibility of refusal is also absent. Instead, rabbis gave the seducer the option of backing out of the marriage deal. It seems that the Mishnah’s rule supports a young couple eager to marry without the father’s consent. At the same time, the Mishnah explicitly recognizes the “evil” of rape inflicted on a young girl and repeats the punishments of the rapist mentioned in Deut 22:29, albeit without specifying fifty silver sheqels, which was probably seen as too high a fine for anyone to be able to pay. The Mishnah’s sages already reinterpret and adapt the biblical rules to the changed circumstances of their own times (no mohar; no fixed fine; clear distinction between seduction and rape). Whereas the Mishnah’s rulings are straightforward, however, the Yerushalmi (y. Ketub. 3:5, 27c–d) complicates matters and presents the rabbis’ divergent views on the issues involved. The first issue discussed in the Yerushalmi is the Mishnah’s rule that the rapist should pay an extra amount of money to compensate for the girl’s pain. R. Shimon allegedly objected to the rule. He “exempted the rapist from [paying for] the pain” (y. Ketub. 3:5, 27c). R. Shimon’s opinion obviously contradicts the Mishnah as well as Deut 22:29, depending on how one interprets the relationship between the mishnaic and Deuteronomistic stipulations (note that the Mishnah does not refer to any biblical proof texts; different terminology is used; Deut 22:29 does not distinguish a “rapist” from a “seducer”). R. Shimon’s view is subsequently explained: “It is similar to someone who cuts off a wart from his fellow, which he was about to cut off [himself] in the future …; to someone who cuts down the plants of his fellow, which he was about to cut down [himself] in the future” (ibid.). What was at issue here and what was seen as the main “value” whose loss required compensation was the girl’s virginity. R. Shimon’s view was allegedly based on the assumption that, sooner or later, the girl would lose her virginity anyway. His view, as well as the analogies brought forth in this sugya, seem shocking to the modern reader. There is also no distinction between the rapist and the seducer here. It seems as if R. Shimon Middle English Romance and the Law of Raptus,” in Medieval Women and the Law, ed. Noël James Menuge (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2000), 105–24, here 106; Caroline Dunn, “Prosecuting Ravishment in Thirteenth-Century England,” in Thirteenth Century England XIII: Proceedings of the Paris Conference 2009, ed. Janet Burton et al. (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2011), 67–82.

400  Making History wants to exculpate any man who has intercourse with a virgin by arguing that he does her prospective husband a favor by “preparing” her for marital life. The subsequent anonymous argument contradicts R. Shimon and reestablishes the distinction between a seducer and a rapist maintained by the Mishnah: “A girl who has sexual intercourse by force and a girl who has sexual intercourse willingly are not the same [cf. t. Ketub. 3:6]. A girl who has sexual intercourse on a garbage heap is not the same as a girl who has sexual intercourse under the marriage canopy [or: in the marital bed]” (ibid.). The quoted baraita supports the Mishnah’s distinction. The following anonymous sentence carries the distinction further by pointing to the different contexts and circumstances in which the intercourse took place. R. Shimon’s argument that the rapist has done what the husband would do anyway is rejected here, and the Mishnah’s rule that the rapist should pay a higher fine for the pain incurred to the girl is upheld. Since R. Shimon’s understanding of a rapist in contrast to a seducer remains unclear, the Talmud subsequently asks: “How does R. Shimon interpret: ‘because he has violated her’ [Deut 22:29]?” For the first time, the Deuteronomy text on which the Mishnah’s and Yerushalmi’s discussion seems to be based is quoted here. “They said in the name of Rav Hisda: You may interpret [the biblical verse to refer] to someone who came upon her [i.e., had sexual relations with her] on thorns,” which would have inflicted the pain and would require compensation. In this way R. Shimon’s view is harmonized with the rule of the Mishnah. What the rabbinic discussion shows is that the formulation of the biblical verse was polysemous and could be understood in different ways. The terminology, “because he has denigrated her,” was not necessarily seen as different from various other ways in which a man could take advantage of a young girl. Interestingly, the discussions are in some ways similar to modern discussions about a woman’s consent and the murky area of defining what it means and how it is expressed. At the same time, the rabbinic discussions are vastly different because they happened in a much more traditional patriarchal context in which a high value was placed on a girl’s virginity. Its loss not only incurred shame on her family but was also seen as a damage done to her father’s property. A good marriage match in the future would be difficult to achieve. Tannaitic and Amoraic rabbis distinguished but also harmonized between the biblical allusions to intercourse with a virgin. According to the anonymous editor of the Yerushalmi, “to violate [‫ ”]עינה‬meant “to use force [‫]אונס‬.” This understanding resembles modern notions of rape. Yet the Mishnah introduces the additional aspect of “pain [‫ ”]צער‬inflicted on the girl. In the Mishnah, pain becomes the distinguishing mark between seduction and rape and incurs a higher fine. The Yerushalmi discussion focuses on the meaning of “pain,” which has become another instant of plurisignation. The opinion attributed to R. Shimon dismisses the signifi-

Hezser: Plurisignation in Biblical and Rabbinic Law  401 cance of pain. The so-called deflowering of a virgin is, according to this opinion, something that would happen anyway, so why should it result in a fine? The examples (wart; plants) are meant to show that “pain” is not an issue that should be taken into consideration. The consequences of what was done would have eventually occurred without the deed. This negation of “pain” causes the editors of the sugya to focus on what “pain” might mean: does it refer to intercourse “on a garbage heap,” that is, in an unpleasant environment that might cause emotional disturbance? Or is it necessary for the girl to feel the pain physically, for example, when lying on thorns? What is interesting is that all suggested solutions refer to the environment in which the case takes place. None of the rabbis suggests that the forced intercourse itself could inflict pain. Different types of intercourse are not distinguished in the discussion. Whereas the first part of the Yerushalmi’s discussion clarifies what “violation” (Deut 22:29) and “pain” (m. Ketub. 3:5) might mean, the second part (y. Ketub. 3:5, 27d) deals with the punishment of a seducer. According to m. Ketubbot 3:5, a seducer pays only “when he exits” [‫]לכשיוצא‬. What this formulation might mean is, again, not immediately clear. The punishment of the seducer was dealt with in Exod 22:15–16: he shall pay the bride-price (mohar) and marry her; if her father objects, he shall pay the (bride)-price of a virgin only. The custom of paying a brideprice did not exist in rabbinic times. Therefore, Rav Hisda’s explanation in y. Ketubbot 3:5, 27d differs from the biblical ruling: “Rav Hisda said: It [i.e., the Mishnah’s reference to payment] applies to someone who does not want [the marriage] to continue [or: to exist]. But if he wants it to continue [or: exist], he does not give anything” (ibid.). Since the bride-price was abolished and sexual intercourse itself established a marriage, the marriage was the “natural” outcome of intercourse with a virgin. Only if the man refused to marry—that is, to maintain—her would he have to pay compensation to the father of the girl. The bride-price mentioned in Exod 22:15 (but not in the Mishnah and in Rav Hisda’s statement) is brought up in the following statement: “R. Yishmael taught: ‘… money that equals the bride-price [mohar] for a virgin’ [Exod 22:16]: this teaches that he treats it as if it were a mohar.” The meaning of this statement and its relation to Rav Hisda’s preceding statement are not entirely clear. What is probably meant here is that the money that the seducer has to pay in case he is unwilling to marry the girl should equal the amount that would be paid as a bride-price (in earlier biblical times?). Rabbis obviously had problems with the Torah’s equation of the fine with the mohar. How could the amount of a bride-price be explained at a time when a husband no longer paid a mohar to his prospective bride’s father but handed small symbolic amount of money (or none) to the bride herself? It seems that mohar is understood symbolically here, too, in order to align the rabbinic rule with Exod 22:16: the fine that the seducer has to

402  Making History pay if he refuses to marry her symbolizes the mohar of biblical times. The following anonymous quotation of Gen 34:12 serves to support R. Yishmael’s symbolic understanding of the bride-price. Genesis 34 deals with the “rape” of Jacob’s daughter Dinah by the Levite Sichem.54 Sichem implores Jacob to give him his daughter in marriage, promising to pay whatever bride-price (mohar) and gifts Jacob requests. Since this would have been a union between an Israelite woman and a man from another ethnic group, the mohar rule would not have applied. Like the payment Sichem offers Dinah’s father, the fine the seducer is required to pay to the girl’s father is not a mohar but can equal the mohar in its value. Mishnah Ketubbot 4:1 specifies that, in the case of a “girl [‫ ”]נערה‬who was seduced (cf. Exod 22:15–16) or violently seized (Deut 22:28–29), the fine would go to her father. If her father had died, her brothers would receive the money. The Talmud focuses on the term “girl” that is used in the Mishnah in contrast to the biblical term “virgin [‫]בתולה‬.” What could be the reason for the use of this term? It seems to indicate that she is a minor, but minors do not collect fines anyway, so why specify that her father or brothers receive the damages? Furthermore, if “seized” (m. Ketub. 4:1: ‫ )תפוסה‬means “raped” (y. Ketub. 4:1, 28a: ‫)אנוסה‬, R. Shimon has exempted the rapist from having to pay compensation for inflicting pain (28a–b). The talmudic discussion shows that rabbis were aware of the nuances of the terminology of “virgin” and “minor girl,” “seized” and “humiliated,” and discussed the possible reasons why certain terms were used in the Mishnah and the Torah. Sometimes comments can consist of questions and disputes can remain open-ended.

Intercourse with a Betrothed Girl in Rabbinic Law According to m. Sanhedrin 1:1, R. Meir ruled that cases of rape, seduction (‫)האונס והמפתה‬, and wrong accusation should be dealt with by three judges, whereas sages say that in the latter case twenty-three judges would be necessary. The Mishnah neither specifies the status of the woman, that is, whether she is imagined to be betrothed or married, nor are any biblical proof texts quoted. To make sense of the mishnaic rulings, Amoraic rabbis

54. Ellen van Wolde, “The Dinah Story: Rape or Worse?” Old Testament Essays 15 (2002): 225–39. A large number of articles have been published on this narrative. See, e.g., Yael Shemesh, “Rape Is Rape Is Rape: The Story of Dinah and Shechem,” ZAW 119 (2007): 2–21; Tzemah Yoreh, “Shekhem and the So-Called Rape of Dina,” in Vixens Disturbing Vineyards: Embarrassment and Embracement of Scriptures; Festschrift in Honor of Harry Fox (leBeit Yoreh), ed. Tzemah Yorel et al., Judaism and Jewish Life (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2010), 67–78; Gavi S. Ruit, “Rabbinic Commentaries on Genesis 34 and the Construction of Rape Myths,” Journal of Jewish Ethics 3 (2017): 247–66.

Hezser: Plurisignation in Biblical and Rabbinic Law  403 had to suggest contexts to which they might apply. According to a statement attributed to R. Mana (y. Sanh. 1:1, 18b), all three cases mentioned in the Mishnah refer to a betrothed girl (‫)בנערה מאורסה‬, and R. Meir and sages differed about her.55 According to R. Meir, if she is found guilty, she can lose her ketubbah through the decision of three judges and she is condemned to death by stoning by twenty-three judges. Sages, on the other hand, allegedly maintained that only one court of twenty-three judges deals with such a case and that her punishment would be both the loss of her ketubbah and death by stoning. They allegedly agreed that if she was wrongly accused by her (prospective) husband, the false witnesses should be stoned and the (prospective) husband should be flogged and pay her one-hundred sela. The problem with R. Mana’s interpretation of the Mishnah is that the difference between R. Meir and sages (R. Meir: three judges; sages: twenty-three judges) explicitly relates to the issue of wrong accusation only. Furthermore, the biblical text that deals with wrong accusations, Deut 22:13–19, concerns a married woman. Deuteronomy 22:13 states, “If a man took a woman and had sexual intercourse with her [i.e., he became her husband] and [eventually] hated her.…” The envisioned scenario is of a husband who tries to get rid of his wife by wrongly accusing her of not having been a virgin at the time of their marriage.56 In Deuteronomy, the “elders of the town” are supposed to deal with such cases (Deut 22:15–21). The type of evidence that is mentioned as crucial here is not witnesses’ testimony—in fact, witnesses are not even mentioned in the biblical text— but the token of the girl’s virginity (Deut 22:17) that her parents are assumed to have preserved. If they can show it to the elders, the husband’s claim is considered a wrong accusation. He will be punished with lashes and a fine of one hundred silver coins. He must also remain married to the woman and maintain her throughout her life. If, on the other hand, the woman cannot be proven to have been a virgin, she shall be stoned to death (Deut 22:21). One may ask how, without DNA tests of the blood, the cloth could serve as conclusive evidence. It seems that the father’s testimony stood against the testimony of the husband and was considered more reliable. The case of a betrothed woman with whom a third party had sexual intercourse is dealt with only in the next biblical passage (Deut 22:23–27), as we have seen above. In Deuteronomy, this is not a case of wrong accusation by the prospective husband. Witnesses are not mentioned here either. Rather, the question of the girl’s guilt or innocence is decided on the basis of her behavior and the availability of people who could come to 55. The text has a parallel in y. Ketub. 4:4, 28c. 56. On this text, see Bruce Wells, “Sex, Lies, and Virginal Rape: The Slandered Bride and False Accusations in Deuteronomy,” JBL 124 (2005): 41–72.

404  Making History her assistance. As punishments, stoning is mentioned here too, either for both or for the man only. The Mishnah’s reference to a seduced and raped girl (m. Sanh. 1:1) is reminiscent of m. Ketubbot 3:5. In the two Mishnah passages the same terms are used (‫)האונס והמפתה‬, which refer to sexual intercourse with a virgin, mentioned in Exod 22:15–16 and Deut 22:28–19. Mishnah Sanhedrin 1:1 may already conflate the different circumstances, perhaps because it is interested in the number of judges only. That such matters should be dealt with by judges at all is new. As we already saw above, in the Bible sexual intercourse with an unmarried woman is a matter that concerns the man and the girl’s father only. It is solved by marriage and/or a fine. It was probably the monetary fine that led the editors of m. Sanhedrin 1:1 to mention these cases together with that of the (wrongly) accused married woman. In rabbinic times, at least as far as rabbis were concerned, cases concerning fines (‫ )דיני ממונות‬were dealt with by a group of judges. The following statement in the Yerushalmi, attributed to R. Yose b. R. Bun, suggests that R. Mana misunderstood the Mishnah and offers an alternative interpretation. R. Meir and sages only differed over the issue of wrong accusation, that is, whether three or twenty-three judges would be necessary to deal with such a case. According to R. Meir, the husband is sentenced to flogging and a fine by a court of three judges, whereas the witnesses receive the death penalty by a court of twenty-three judges; that is, according to R. Meir, only the death penalty requires twenty-three judges. According to sages, on the other hand, both the husband and the witnesses are subjected to the decision of twenty-three judges. R. Yose b. Bun maintains that R. Meir and sages agree in the case of a betrothed girl: the court that sentences her to stoning also makes her lose her ketubbah. The second interpretation of the Mishnah, attributed to R. Yose b. R. Bun, is also not without problems. On the one hand, this interpretation observes correctly that R. Meir and sages differed only regarding the number of judges necessary in a case of wrong accusation: three as suggested by R. Meir, and twenty three as suggested by sages. R. Yose b. R. Bun attributes to R. Meir a distinction between the sentencing of the husband (by three judges) and the witnesses (twenty-three) that is not mentioned in the Mishnah. In fact, the Mishnah does not mention witnesses at all. The other problematic aspect of this interpretation is the assumption (by both R. Mana and R. Yose b. R. Bun) that the Mishnah relates to a betrothed woman. In fact, as observed above already, the Mishnah does not state which status of womanhood it refers to. The (not mentioned) biblical basis suggests, however, that seduction and rape concern the unbetrothed virgin (Exod 22:15–16 and Deut 22:28–29; cf. m. Ketub. 3:5), whereas wrong accusation concerns the married woman (Deut 22:13–17). R. Meir and sages agree that cases of seduction and rape of a virgin, which may lead to monetary fines, are dealt with by three judges.

Hezser: Plurisignation in Biblical and Rabbinic Law  405 As we have already seen with the biblical texts themselves, the formulation of the Mishnah is also polysemous and therefore leads to variant interpretations, disputes, and objections. The Mishnah is formulated in an elliptic way, without explicating the circumstances it refers to. Furthermore, the biblical rules underlying the Mishnah are not explicitly quoted but are merely alluded to. In Amoraic times, circumstances had changed and the Mishnah was interpreted in the light of new developments (e.g., the question of witnesses). The purpose of rabbinic disputes was not the literal understanding of the Torah but its further development. From the modern perspective, both R. Mana and R. Yose b. R. Bun may have misunderstood the Mishnah and read their own issues into the text. The Mishnah itself has blurred the distinctions between virgins, betrothed girls, and married women maintained in Deut 22. By introducing witnesses, courts, and penalties, Tannaim and Amoraim tried to make biblical rules concerning seduction, rape, and wrong testimony applicable to their own times and places. Their interpretations of the Torah and Mishnah always elicited new rules. The generation of rabbinic halakhah was and still is an ongoing process in which each interpretation leads to a reinterpretation. Plurisignation in legal texts, therefore, generates meaning and enables constant legal innovation and application to new circumstances.

Havai and G’zuma: Hyperbole and Aggadic Midrash MARC HIRSHMAN

I

t is a pleasure to dedicate this reflection on an aspect of the rabbinic project to Richard Kalmin, friend and scholar, who has made such a substantial and meticulous contribution to our understanding of rabbinic literature. Almost two centuries after Zunz’s pioneering work on Midrash, the field has been enriched by generations of critical editions, wonderful monographs, and essays on the nature of aggadic midrash. In this brief essay, I will attempt to shed some light on rabbinic views of language usage in general, specifically hyperbole, and the implications for our understanding of aggadic midrash. I hope to show that there is ample evidence of the sages’ sensitivity to the nature of language and therefore midrash was an art form they created to speak with and through Scripture.

Havai as Hyperbole The word used for hyperbole in the Mishnah and Tannaitic midrash is havai.1 Mishnah Nedarim 3:2 illustrates vows of havai as “one who declares konam [may this food be prohibited to me] if I didn’t see on the road as (the 1. The definition and etymology of havai (‫ )הבאי‬are debated. I consulted with Prof. Moshe Benovitz, who sides with Samuel Krauss’s and Benjamin Murmelstein’s suggestion (Addendum to the Arukh Tosafot Ha’arukh Hashalem [Vienna: Kohut Memorial Press, 1937], 154) that the word is a secondary form of hebel (“vanity”). So too Wilhelm Bacher, Die Exegetische Termino­logie der jüdischen Traditionsliteratur, 2 vols. (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1905), 1:29 and n. 1. He also pointed to Shimon Sharvit’s entry on havaii in his Phonology of Mishnaic Hebrew: Analyzed Materials [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Academy of the Hebrew Language, 2016). Sharvit cites ­Joseph Perles’s suggestion that the word comes from the Syriac for “flowery language.” It is important to note that Eliezer Shimshon Rosenthal translated havai as leroi in

407

408  Making History number of ) those who left Egypt; if I didn’t see a snake like the beam of an olive press.” These two are examples of exaggerating number or size. I will focus on Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel’s use of havai in Sifre Deuteronomy 25.2 We read there: Translation “… great cities with walls sky-high” (Deut 1:28). Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel says: Scriptures spoke language of hyperbole, as it says (Deut 9:1): “great cities with walls sky-high”; But what God said to our father, “I will make your heirs as numerous as the stars of heaven” (Gen 24:4), “I will make your offspring as the dust of the earth” (Gen 13:16), are not words of hyperbole.

Vatican MS 32 ‫ערים גדו' ובצו' בש' רבן שמ' בן גמ' או‬

'‫דברו כתובים לשון הביי שנ' שמע יש' אתה עוב‬ '‫היו' את הירד‬

'‫אבל מה שא' המקום לאבינו והרביתי את זר' ככו‬ ‫הש' ושמתי את זר‬ ‫כע' הא' אינן דברי הביי‬

This is a most curious and provocative passage. Rabban Shimon declares that Scripture resorts to hyperbole in its description of the fortified cities that the people of Israel were to encounter in the land of Israel. Rabban Shimon notes that, rather than rebutting the report of the spies (Deut 1:28) and their “exaggeration,” Scripture itself repeats the phrase eight chapters later (Deut 9:1). Moreover, Rabban Shimon chooses to ascribe the hyperbole to Scripture itself rather than to Moses’s own rhetorical effort. I surmise that Rabban Shimon—scion of the patriarchal house— wished to emphasize that God’s blessings in Scripture are never hyperbolic, as opposed to Scripture’s own exaggerated description of the Canaanite cities.3 Yochanan Muffs’s observation that aggadic midrash employs “hyper-literalization”4 sheds light on Rabban Shimon’s literal interpretation of the Genesis similes. For example, Gen 4:8 reads: “… Cain set upon Greek or pitputim in Hebrew, chatter and “not necessarily” guzma. (Studies in Talmudic Literature, 2 vols. [Jerusalem: Magnes, 2021], 2:760 n. 53 = Tarbiz 63 [1994]: 342). 2. Vatican Manuscript, transcription at Israel Academy of Hebrew Language database Maagarim. Translation is my own. 3. Prof. Michael Kramer rightly pointed out to me that Rabban Shimon might be emphasizing the use of the kaf (“as”) of simile in Scripture’s depiction of God’s promises. This usage would distinguish it from the description of the walls that were sky-high. 4. Oral communication (classroom discussion, 1974–75). Muffs was referring to a midrashic technique where one concretized what is a metaphor or reads it overly literally.

Hirshman: Havai and G’zuma  409 his brother Abel and killed him.”5 “Set upon” is a translation of ‫ויקם קין אל‬, but R. Yochanan’s comment in Genesis Rabbah takes it hyper-literally and glosses the sentence: “Abel was stronger than Cain—‘he rose.’” It teaches that he (Cain) had been underneath him (Abel) “and Abel let him up” (Gen. Rab 22:8).6 Rabbi Yochanan goes on to draw the moral lesson not to act benevolently toward bad people. Rabban Shimon highlights this technique of hyper-literalization by emphasizing that, in general, similes are not to be taken literally. Fortified cities that “reached the heavens” are, simply, cities with very strong or very high walls. But a divine simile should be taken literally, possibly bolstered by the limitation of the word “as.”7 Divine blessings cannot be overstated.

Bacher, Rabban Shimon, and Rhetoric W. Z. Bacher gives prominence to the above comment by Rabban Shimon in his magnificent studies of exegetical terminology and of the aggadic oeuvres of the major sages. He pairs this comment on exaggeration (lashon havai) with another comment made by the same Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel about diminutive language (lashon memuat; Gen. Rab. 22:10).8 Bacher feels that Rabban Shimon was setting out exegetical “rules.”9 Bacher suggests that diminutive language is the opposite of exaggerated language and illustrates the former with three verses, all employing the verb pṣ h (opening the mouth; Gen 4:11; Num 16:30; Judg 11:35). Bacher, echoing the comment of R. Zeev Wolf Einhorn (on Gen. Rab. 22:10), sees pṣ h as minimizing the opening of the mouth of the earth in two of the cases, in which the verb ptḥ might have been used instead.10 If indeed Rabban ­Shimon, who cited the three verses with the formula “in three places Scripture used diminutive language,” meant the three verses where the  5. Unless otherwise noted, biblical translations are taken from the NJPS.  6. Ed. Theodor-Albeck, Midrash Bereschit Rabba: Critical Edition with Notes and Commentary, 3 vols. (Jerusalem: Wahrmann Books, 1965), 1:214.  7. See again n. 3 above.  8. Theodor-Albeck, Midrash Bereschit Rabba, 1:217.  9. Bacher, Die Agada der Taanaiten, 2 vols. (Strassburg: K. J. Trübner, 1884–1890), 2:331. He states, “… seien zwei Ausprüche allgemeiner Art citirt, die man als exegetische Normen be­zeich­nen kann” (“Let me quote two sayings of a general nature, which can be described as exegetical norms”).Concerning the other usage in Genesis Rabbah of the three places where Scripture spoke in minimalizing language about the earth opening its mouth (‫)פצה‬, Bacher states, “es sei das eine verkleinernde Ausdrucksweise” (“It is a diminutive mode of expression”). 10. See Theodor’s extensive commentary on this short statement on p. 217. Theodor prefers seeing diminutive language here as speaking in shorthand and fragmented speech, which elsewhere is called ‫לשון קצר‬. This is Bacher’s view; see Die Agada der Taanaiten, 2:331–32 n. 5.

410  Making History earth opens its mouth, as in the earth that swallows Korah, it seems very likely to be an example of understated language. This would support Bacher’s intuition. Cicero defines hyperbole as “intentional understatements or overstatements [minuendi aut augendi] which are exaggerated to a degree of the astonishing, that passes belief” (De or. 2.66.267). 11Applying this to the above examples, we discern a keen sense of rabbinic appreciation that Scripture contains figurative as well as literal language. This rabbinic awareness dovetails with the flourishing of aggadic midrashic ingenuity and creativity in its interpretation of scriptural language. This being so, let us look more closely at Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel’s aggadic midrash to see if there is any distinction between the rhetorical flourishes he attributes to scriptures and those discernible in his own work. Rabban Shimon’s aggadic output is fairly slim but Bacher’s chapter on it yields two points of interest. The first is the sage’s use of accepted, fairly conservative linguistic techniques to resolve ambiguities in Scripture. For example, he explains the word shalishim in Pharaoh’s chariots (Exod 14:7) as a third rider, using the root šlš as “three.”12 Cain killed Abel with a “stick” (kaneh), as can be inferred from Lamech’s speech at Gen 4:23. Finally, the victim of God’s assault on Moses’s entourage (Exod 4:24– 26) is identified as the baby, rather than Moses himself, since the baby is more likely to be called hatan (b. Ned. 42a).13 It appears that, on the whole, Rabban Shimon did not engage in linguistic acrobatics to advance his interpretations. In those three cases he adhered to conservative linguistic interpretation. Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel’s aggadic statements tend on the whole to be moral exhortations, similar to what we find some fifty years earlier in Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai’s midrashic oeuvre.14 So, by way of example, Rabban Shimon lauds Esau’s service to Isaac his father (Gen. Rab. 65:16).15 He also itemizes Joseph’s restraint of his entire body for which 11. Cicero, On the Orator, Books I–II, trans. E. W. Sutton and H. Rackham, LCL 348 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1942), 400–401. Cited in Charles Cruise, “A Methodology for Detecting and Mitigating Hyperbole in Matthew 5:38–42,” JETS 61.1 (2018): 83–103, here 86. 12. NJPS translates “officers.” LXX translates tristates, the third in line after king and queen. See LSJ supplement, 296, where the idea of the third rider is cited from a scholion. 13. See parallel y. Ned. 3:9 and Menachem M. Kasher, Torah Shelemah: Talmudic-Midrashic Encyclopedia of the Pentateuch, 8 vols. (New York: American Biblical Encyclopedia Society, 1944), 8:202, paragraph 155. 14. See Marc Hirshman, “The Development of Tannaitic Aggadic Midrash and Its Relationship to Christian Readings of the Bible,” in “Written for Our Discipline and Use”: The Construction of Christian and Jewish Identities in Late Ancient Bible Interpretation, ed. Agnethe Siquans (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2021), 19–36, here 20–21, which reiterates a position held previously by Bacher and followed by Jacob Neusner. 15. On the parallel in Pesiqta Rabbati, see Shlomi Efrati’s excellent doctoral disserta-

Hirshman: Havai and G’zuma  411 each limb receives reward (Lev. Rab. 23:9).16 He proclaims that the righteous need no monuments on their graves, as their words are their memorial (y. Sheq. 2:5, 47a; Gen. Rab. 82:10). Is his fairly conservative, aggadic midrash the result of his literary sense for what was and was not scriptural hyperbole? It is instructive to follow a statement of Rabban Shimon about Scripture into Amoraic literature. Shmuel, a first generation Amora, treats Rabban Shimon’s tradition in the same way that Rabban Shimon treats Scripture. Mishnah Sheqalim 8:5 records the following description of the weaving of the curtain, which separated the Holy of Holies from the rest of the sanctuary: Rabban Shimon ben Gamaliel says in the name of Rabbi Shimon the son of the deputy [of the priests]: the curtain was a handbreadth in thickness and was woven on seventy-two cords, and on each cord there were twenty-four threads. It was forty cubits long and twenty cubits broad, and was made by eighty-two young women. Two curtains were made every year, and three hundred priests were needed to immerse it.

‫ַרּבָ ן ִׁש ְמעֹון ּבֶ ן ּג ְַמלִ יאֵ ל אֹומֵ ר ִמּׁשּום ַרּבִ י ִׁש ְמעֹון ּבֶ ן‬ ‫ימין‬ ִ ִ‫ּוׁשּתַ יִ ם נ‬ ְ ‫ וְ עַל ִׁשבְ עִ ים‬,‫ ּפָרֹ כֶת עָבְ יָּה טֶ פַח‬,‫הַ ְּסגַן‬ .‫חּוטין‬ ִ ‫ וְ עַל ּכָל נִ ימָ א וְ נִ ימָ א ע ְֶׂש ִרים וְ אַ ְרּבָ עָה‬,‫ֶנא ֱֶרגֶת‬ ‫ּומ ְּׁשמֹונִ ים‬ ִ ,‫אָ ְרּכָּה אַ ְרּבָ עִ ים אַ ּמָ ה וְ ָרחְ ּבָ ּה ע ְֶׂש ִרים אַ ּמָ ה‬ ‫ּוׁשלׁש‬ ְ ,‫עֹוׂשין ּבְ כָל ׁשָ נָה‬ ִ ‫ּוׁשּתַ יִ ם‬ ְ .‫ּוׁשּתֵ י ִרּבֹוא ַנעֲׂשֵ ית‬ ְ ‫מֵ אֹות ּכֹ הֲנִ ים מַ ְטּבִ ילִ ין אֹותָ ּה‬

Is Rabban Shimon’s colorful narrative of the weaving of the curtain itself hyperbolic? Was it intended to be an accurate portrayal of the manufacturing of the curtain for the temple, which Rabban Shimon is reporting in the name of a pedigreed priest? Were there really eighty-two young women and did it really take three hundred priests to immerse it?

Shmuel and Hyperbole (G’zuma\Guzma) Shmuel, the great sage who straddled the Tannaitic and Amoraic periods, spent time in Palestine in Rabbi Judah the Patriarch’s court, where, according to rabbinic tradition, the Mishnah was redacted. Rabbinic tradition also recounts that he founded the Nehardea learning center in his native tion, “Psiqata of Ten Commandments and Psiqta of Matan Torah: Text, Redaction and Tradition Analysis” [Hebrew] (PhD diss., Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2019), 107. 16. See Mordecai Margulies, Midrash Wayyikra Rabbah: A Critical Edition Based on Manuscripts and Genizah Fragments with Variants and Notes, 5 vols. (Jerusalem: Wahrmann Books, 1972), 3:541, and his comments there. The parallel in Gen. Rab. 90:3 is missing the attribution to Rabban Shimon in the best versions.

412  Making History Babylonia. The Palestinian Talmud Sheqalim (8:5, 51b) records his comments on this Mishnah: “And was made by eighty-two young women, etc.”: R. Yitzchak bar Bizna in the name of Shmuel— exaggeration. We learned there (m. Tamid 2:2): “Sometimes there was 300 kor (of ashes)”: R Yose son of R. Bun in the name of Shmuel—an exaggeration.

‫ ר' יצחק‬:'‫בשמונים ושתים ריבוא היתה נעשית וכו‬ ‫בר ביזנא בשם שמואל גזומא‬ ‫תמן תנינן פעמים היה עליה כשלש מאות כור רבי‬ :‫יוסי בי רבי בון בשם שמואל גזומא‬

Shmuel uses the same literary yardstick to interpret Rabban Shimon’s temple narrative that Rabban Shimon applied to Scripture. Narrative sometimes evokes exaggeration. It is not clear which part of the description elicited Shmuel’s response, but most of the commentators assume he is referring to the three hundred priests needed to immerse the curtain. This accords well with a second example, also involving the number “three hundred.” A mishnaic tradition recounts that sometimes as much as three hundred kor of ashes piled up on the altar, and Shmuel also dubs this tradition as an exaggeration. One nineteenth-century commentator, R. Zvi Hirsch Chajes, goes so far as to say that “three hundred” is always a typological number in the Talmud and is not to be taken literally.17 It is fascinating to note that R. Elijah ben Solomon Zalman (the “Vilna Gaon,” 1720–1797) mathematically calculated the measurements of the curtain in his commentary on this Mishnah and defends the precision of the number “three hundred.”18 I close by noting that the tradition attributed to Shmuel replaces the Hebrew word for exaggeration, havai, with the Aramaic equivalent, guzma. The eleventh-century Arukh expatiates on the word guzma, citing a number of instances in the Babylonian Talmud, which I hope to treat on another occasion. The Arukh defines guzma and what it takes to be its Hebrew synonym havai as “when a person greatly enlarges something and adds to the enlargement.” The entry goes on to quote Deut 1:28, “fortified to the heavens,” which we saw above, and deems its usage “mashal, an illustra17. Zvi Hirsch Chajes says in his commentary on Hul. 90b: “… so all 300 in the Talmud.” See Zvi Hirsch Chajes, Hagahot V’hiddushim L’masekhet Hullin (published in reprints of the Vilna–Romm Talmud). 18. See the wonderful article by Chanan Gafni, “‘Peshat’ and ‘Derash’ in the ‘Mishna’: On the Metamorphosis of a Tradition from the School of R. Elijah of Vilna” [Hebrew],  Sidra: A Journal for the Study of Rabbinic Literature 22 (2007): 5–19, here 8 n. 13. Gafni works out the Gaon’s calculations and records the controversy over the Gaon’s implied rejection of Shmuel’s view that this was an exaggeration. R. Aryeh Leib Yellen in his magnificent commentary Yefe ­Einaim, appended to the Vilna edition of the Babylonian Talmud, rebuts the Gaon’s calculation in a comment on Tamid 29a.

Hirshman: Havai and G’zuma  413 tive comparison.” The entry continues with other examples from the Talmud and Scripture. Finally, quoting a responsum attributed to “Rav Sherira and Rav Hai Gaon, sons of Geonim,” the Arukh engages the thorny question of how one can determine whether a statement is hyperbolic or not, both in Scripture and in rabbinic literature.19

Conclusion I set out to embed methods of aggadic interpretation in a larger framework of rabbinic understanding of language in general. I focused on Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel, who appears acutely aware of the nature of hyperbole in Scripture.20 We saw how Shmuel applied this approach to hyperbole to the Mishnah rather than Scripture. I believe that this sensitivity to the nature of language—distinguishing the literal from the hyperbolic—precludes the view that was so prevalent in the nineteenth century, that midrash showed a lack of exegetical skill or understanding.21 Jay Harris presents Abraham Geiger’s view that “the exegetical sense of the rabbis was getrübt (turbid).”22 Geiger carefully traced the process by which, in his view, the more reasonable and sound biblical exegesis of the Mishnah served as a foundation for the Gemara’s “cloudier” exegetical approach, which held that “everything is possible to find in the Bible.”23 We have noted here that Rabban Shimon’s contribution to Aggadah is mainly moral reflection and exhortation based on Scripture without more creative, fanciful exegesis. His moral exhortations, similar to those of R. Yochanan ben Zakai in his day, were fairly free of scriptural exegesis. Yet creative, agga-

‫גוזמא‬.

19. Arukh Completum, ed. Alexander Kohut (Vienna: Georg Brög, 1880), 2:266–67. s.v.

20. Bacher also notes the famous tradition that Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel remembered that one thousand children studied under Rabban Gamliel’s aegis—five hundred studying Torah and five hundred Greek wisdom, which most likely included some rudimentary rhetoric. See nn. 9 and 10 above. Saul Lieberman begins his Greek in Jewish Palestine: Studies in the Life and Manners of Jewish Palestine in the II–IV Centuries C.E. (1942; repr., New York: Feldheim, 1965), 1, by stating, “This is first-hand evidence that an academy of Greek wisdom existed in Jewish Palestine under the auspices of the Patriarch.” 21. See Jay M. Harris, How Do We Know This? Midrash and the Fragmentation of Modern Judaism, SUNY Series in Judaica (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), chapter 6. 22. Ibid. 162; Harris quotes Geiger’s characterization getrübt (turbid) and contrasts it with views that are gesund (healthy). See David Weiss Halivni, Peshat and Derash: Plain and Applied Meaning in Rabbinic Exegesis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 3. 23. Abraham Geiger, “Das Verhältnis des natürlichen Schrfitsinnes zur thalmudischen Schriftdeutung,” Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift fur Judische Theologie 5 (1844): 53–81, 243–59, here 81. See also Raphael Loewe’s penetrating and still valuable essay, “The ‘Plain’Meaning of Scripture in Early Jewish Exegesis,” in Papers of the Institute of Jewish Studies London, ed. J. G. Weiss (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1964), 141–85, especially 178–79 n. 189.

414  Making History dic midrash did flourish during Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel’s tenure as Patriarch. I hope to explore further other rabbinic understandings of language and Scripture to show that this masterful aggadic creativity was anything but naive or oblivious to accepted canons of interpretation.

Pidyon Ha-Ben, Rabbi Akiva, and the Diffusion of the Principle Ha-Motzi Me-Chavero Alav Ha-Reaya in Tannaitic Literature JONATHAN S. MILGRAM

For Richard, Teacher, Colleague, and Friend But above all, Mensch

Introduction The Tannaitic principle ha-motzi me-chavero alav ha-reaya (“the burden of proof is on the claimant”;1 hereafter, ha-motzi me-chavero) is central to all

Parts of the following essay originated in a paper given at the AJS Conference in Boston in 2003 entitled, “From Sale to Symbol: The Development of the Pidyon Ha-ben Payment in Talmudic Literature.” I am pleased to return to the topic as we honor Richard Kalmin, my first Talmud teacher, whom I met when I enrolled in his undergraduate course at the Jewish Theological Seminary, “The Holidays in the Talmud,” in the fall semester of 1991. Richard later served as the external reader on my PhD dissertation committee at Bar Ilan University and, since 2004, has been my colleague at the Seminary. Over the past thirty years, Richard has seamlessly transitioned from teacher to mentor to colleague and I am forever indebted to him for his encouragement, counsel, and support of my academic endeavors. This piece will appear in expanded form in one chapter of my forthcoming book on pidyon ha-ben. Since the writing of my original paper over twenty years ago, Zeev Safrai has published a commentary to Mishnah Bekhorot (as part of a running commentary to the entire Mishnah) entitled Mishnat Eretz Yisrael im Perush Safrai: Kodashim Masechet Bekhorot (Digital Publication: Kvutzat Yavneh, 2020). I am pleased that Professor Safrai independently made some similar observations. Nevertheless, there remain substantive disagreements between us; these are addressed in the notes. My thanks to Jason Rogoff for reading an earlier draft of this article. 1. This is the English formulation in Menachem Elon, Jewish Law: History, Sources, Principles, trans. Bernard Auerbach and Melvin J. Sykes (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1994), 131. The principle has benefited from two recent treatments by Baruch Kehat: “‘The Burden of Proof Lies with the Claimant’ in Tannaitic Sources and Their Interpretation

415

416  Making History cases of resolution of doubt in financial matters. These include cases of damages as well as other types of lawsuits.2 The principle establishes that if one claims money or property from another, the one making the claim must provide proof that it is his or hers. According to Tannaitic usage, in the absence of such verification by the claimant, the property or money remains in the hands of the party that currently possesses it.3 The principle was transplanted into Tannaitic discourse on priestly gifts, or matenot kehunah,4 and it is among these cases5 that we find its earliest attributed application, in the name of Rabbi Akiva.6 The principle—at times unstated—frames the construction of redemption of the firstborn in the Talmuds” [Hebrew] (Master’s thesis, Bar-Ilan University, 2006) and “‘The Burden of Proof Lies with the Claimant’ in Rabbinic Literature” [Hebrew] (PhD diss., Bar-Ilan University, 2010). An additional recent discussion can be found in Moshe Halbertal, The Birth of Doubt: Confronting Uncertainty in Early Rabbinic Literature, BJS 366 (Providence, RI: Brown Judaic Studies, 2020), 141–70. For Halbertal’s main disagreements with Kehat, see Halbertal, Birth of Doubt, 151 n. 9, 152 n. 11, and 154 n. 13. The principle may originate in the rabbinic interpretation of Deut 1:16 in Sifre Deuteronomy 16 (Louis Finkelstein, ed., Sifre to Deuteronomy [New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1993], 72); see Elizur Avraham Bar-Asher and Yair Furstenberg, “Iyun mechadash besugyat ‘tekafo kohen,’” Sinai 125 (2000): 48–80, here 56 n.18. However, see Kehat, “Burden of Proof” (2006), 10; and Kehat, “Burden of Proof” (2010), 13; as well as Halbertal, Birth of Doubt, 150. 2. Regarding monetary disputes, the formula occurs in m. B. Qam. 3:11 (on this see below); m. B. Bat. 9:6; t. B. Metz. 1:1; 8:22; 8:23–24; 10:6; t. B. Bat. 6:21; t. Shev. 6:1; 6:4; t. Hul. 3:11. On the exceptional case at t. Men. 13:2, see Kehat, “Burden of Proof” (2006), 2 n. 10. And, in general, see the treatment in Kehat, “Burden of Proof” (2006), 10–21, and Kehat, “Burden of Proof” (2010), 13. The concept is also applied in cases without the formulation ha-motzi me-chavero being stated explicitly; see below in the body of the article. 3. Kehat, “Burden of Proof” (2010), 441; according to the Amoraic application, however, the principle comes to declare that, until proof is provided otherwise, there is a legal presumption that the property belongs to the party that currently possesses it; see Kehat, “Burden of Proof” (2010), 441, and English abstract, iv. For a different view, see Halbertal, Birth of Doubt, 152 n. 11. 4. The rabbinic listing of twenty-four priestly gifts appears in t. Hal. 2:7–10; see Saul Lieberman, Tosefta: Zeraim (Jerusalem: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1992), 281–82. The list includes (among other gifts) the gifting of firstborn clean animals (see Lev 27:26) and the foreleg, cheek, and maw of a killed animal (see Deut 18:3 and below in the body of the article). The listing is included in some medieval Mishnah manuscripts; see Saul Lieberman, Tosefta Kifeshutah: Zeraim (Jerusalem: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1992), 811. 5. See m. Bik. 2:10; m. Hul. 10:4, m. Bekh. 2:6, 7, 8; m. Tehar. 4:12; t. Sotah 13:10; t. Hul. 9:1; t. Bekh. 2:8, 9, 10; 6:9. See also 165 (Sifre to Deuteronomy, ed. Finkelstein, 214), and parallels. 6. See m. Bekh. 2:6, 7, 8 and t. Bekh 2:8, 9, 10. On R. Akiva’s usage, see J. S. Zuri, Rabi ‘Aḳiva [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Sifriya le-biyografiyot talmudiyot, 1923), 78; and Kehat, “Burden of Proof” (2006), 2 [according to Hebrew letter numbering] and 20–21. Kehat does not see the occurrence of the principle in t. Sotah 13:10 as authentic to the early context in which it is presented; see ibid., 18–19. On m. Bik. 2:10, see below in the body of the article. Attributed sources earlier than R. Akiva seem not to reflect the concept or the formula; see Kehat, “Burden of Proof” (2006), 10–13; and Kehat, “Burden of Proof” (2010), 27. See now, also, Halbertal, Birth of Doubt, 153.

Milgram: Ha-Motzi Me-Chaver  417 son, or pidyon ha-ben7 (one of the priestly gifts), in m. Bekhorot 8 and t. ­Bekhorot 6.8 Below I suggest that one case in m. Bekhorot 8:6 about pidyon ha-ben (where the concept is operative and is applied by R. Akiva, but the formulation goes unstated) was the access point for the diffusion of ha-motzi me-chavero from the realm of strict monetary matters into the legal sphere of priestly gifts.

Ha-motzi Me-chavero in Cases of Monetary Matters versus Cases of Priestly Gifts In regular cases of doubt about monetary matters, an identifiable claimant (or plaintiff) attempts to obtain money from another (the defendant). The following example deals with a claim for damages; m. Bava Qamma 3:11 reads: If an ox pursued another ox and [the pursued] one was injured, and one [owner] said, “Your ox caused the injury,” and the other [owner] said, “No, rather it injured itself with a rock,” the burden of proof is on the claimant.

In this classic example of the clause’s use in relation to damages, if one ox was chasing another and the latter became injured, in order to collect damages the injured ox’s owner must provide proof that the injury was caused by the other ox.9 Although the principle ha-motzi me-chavero is present in some cases of doubt regarding priestly gifts, these are substantively different from suits regarding monetary matters (see below). The following case deals with the koy,10 a creature that is considered by the law in some ways like a wild animal and in others like a domesticated animal (see m. Bik. 2:8). Mishnah Bikkurim 2:10 states: How is it like a domesticated animal? Its fat is forbidden like the fat of a domesticated animal … and it is liable to the [priestly gift] of the foreleg, the cheeks, and the maw. But R. Elazar11 exempts it since the burden of proof is on the claimant.  7. Redemption of the firstborn son to the mother (the first to break the womb) entailed presenting five sheqels (later five selaim) to a priest after the thirtieth day of birth. According to rabbinic law, the obligation to pay was incumbent upon the father and was fulfilled from the thirty-first day. See Num 18:16; m. Bekh. 8:6, 7, 8.  8. Cf. Safrai, Kodashim Masechet Bekhorot, 252.  9. For more on this case, see Halbertal, Birth of Doubt, 154 n. 14. 10. On the koy, see Yehudah Feliks, Ha-chai ba-mishnah (Jerusalem: Ha-machon le-cheker ha-mishnah, 1972), 76, where the author addresses the question whether this animal is a breed unto itself, a crossbreed between a goat and a female deer, or a type of wild sheep. 11. On “R. Elazar” as the preferred reading (and not R. Eliezer), see J. N. Epstein,

418  Making History Here, because of the koy’s ambiguous status, R. Elazar exempts the animal’s owner from gifting the foreleg, cheeks, and maw to a priest.12 In order for an owner to have to grant these, a priest would have to demonstrate that the koy should be considered a domesticated animal. In his recent study on ha-motzi me-chavero, Baruch Kehat points to important differences between monetary claims and disputes that may arise in cases of doubt regarding priestly gifts.13 Our case regarding the koy, like other cases of doubt concerning priestly gifts is, in fact, not clearcut at all. First, Tannaitic discourse conceptualizes the priestly class as a collective recipient of the gifts. No individual priest has a claim to priestly gifts from a specific family. Since no individual priest can sue, from the perspective of the law (unlike the monetary cases) technically there is no claimant.14 Second, a person can easily reject an individual priest’s attempt to exact the gift by declaring the intention to give the gift to another priest. Consequently, cases of doubt regarding priestly gifts do not follow the model of cases of monetary doubt at all, even though the principle is invoked. Finally, the giving of priestly gifts is intrinsically intertwined with the question of the fulfillment of a religious obligation on the part of the donor. Indeed, as Kehat argues, the principle is presumably directed at the donor and expresses the fact that there should be no concern that the religious obligation has not been fulfilled or that the individual has stolen from the priests what is rightfully theirs, such as the foreleg, cheeks, and maw in our case. Rather, the individual can rely on the principle to know the priests are not entitled to any claims. Significantly, the absence of a claimant in the cases of priestly gifts points to the secondary nature of the priestly cases.15 It is unlikely that the principle would have been fashioned in its current formulation, “the burden of proof is on the claimant,” if it had originally been designed for the adjudication of cases without an identifiable claimant. The use of the prinMavo lenusach hamishnah (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1948), 1170; Kehat, “Burden of Proof” (2006), 30 n. 14. 12. See n. 4 above. 13. See Kehat, “Burden of Proof” (2006), 22–54. 14. According to Kehat the only exception among the cases of priestly gifts may be those of makrei kehunah (“acquaintances of the priesthood”) (“Burden of Proof” (2006), 1 n. 6; and “Burden of Proof” (2010), 2 n. 5). These are individuals who arrange to give their terumah (“heave-offering”) to a specific priest. That priest, in turn, has presumptive ownership of the individual’s terumah. Accordingly, in cases of dispute or doubt, the makrei kehunah could be claimants. None of the cases, however, including ha-motzi me-chavero, expressly state they are cases of makrei kehunah. On the makrei kehunah, see t. Ter. 1:14 (Lieberman, Tosefta: Zeraim, 110, and the commentary in Lieberman, Tosefta Kifeshutah: Zeraim, 306). See also Alan J. Peck, The Priestly Gift in Mishnah: A Study of Tractate Terumot, BJS 20 (Chico, CA: Scholars Press 1981), 45–46. 15. Cf. Kehat, “Burden of Proof” (2006), 20; and Bar-Asher and Furstenberg, “Iyun mechadash besugyat ‘tekafo kohen,” 56 n. 18.

Milgram: Ha-Motzi Me-Chaver  419 ciple in some cases of pidyon ha-ben, one of the twenty-four priestly gifts according to t. Hal. 2:7–10,16 will prove to be important, as we shall see below. For, in three of these cases, the claimant resurfaces.

Ha-motzi Me-chavero in Cases of Pidyon Ha-ben The principle ha-motzi me-chavero is operative in a number of traditions about pidyon ha-ben in m. Bekhorot 8 and t. Bekhorot 6, and beyond. Rabbi Akiva and his students play a pivotal role in promoting the legal concept and its accompanying formula. The axiom is not always explicitly stated, however. Regarding R. Akiva’s students, R. Meir rules in accordance with the principle (although it goes unstated) in m. Bekhorot 8:3 and in t. Bekhorot 6:9. R. Judah expressly mentions the principle.17 The anonymous Mishnah, too, makes use of the concept (and does not cite the formula) to frame cases of doubtful obligation of payment in m. Bekhorot 8:4 and 8:5. Finally, in m. Teharot 4:12, for example, we read, “If there is a doubt about firstborns:18 firstborns of humans and firstborns of animals are [treated] the same, whether clean or unclean [the priest can claim nothing], for ha-motzi me-chavero alav ha-reaya.”19 Significantly, three Tannaitic traditions about the pidyon ha-ben payment are different from those concerning other priestly gifts, as will be illustrated below. The circumstances in these sources frame certain cases of pidyon ha-ben as having an actual claimant, demonstrating that pidyon ha-ben transactions are, at times, framed as cases of regular monetary doubt (even though other cases of priestly gifts are not). That specific cases of doubt about the pidyon ha-ben payment fit into the typical paradigm of Tannaitic monetary transactions is noteworthy and may serve to help distinguish the conceptualization of the pidyon ha-ben payment in Tannaitic literature from that of other priestly gifts (however, this requires further consideration). Finally, interrogating the commonalities and differences

16. See n. 4 above. 17. Safrai suggests viewing the statement at the end of t. Bekh. 6:9, “she-hamotzi me-chavero alav ha-reayah,” as an explanatory gloss added to the halakhah by the redactor (Kodashim Masechet Bekhorot, 252). Safrai provides no linguistic source or other philological criteria for his contention, however. 18. Namely, there is a doubt whether the offspring in each case is actually the firstborn to the mother; a miscarriage (by breaking the womb) would exempt the second child from pidyon ha-ben; see, e.g., m. Bekh. 8:1 and my extensive discussion in Jonathan S. Milgram, “The Talmudic Hermeneutics of Medieval Halakhic Decision-Making: ‘Compound Ambiguities’ and the Reading Practices of the Rishonim,” JJS 65.1 (2014): 88–112. 19. It is explicitly stated in the name of R. Akiva in m. Bekh. 2:6 regarding the redemption of a clean animal.

420  Making History between pure cases of monetary matters, pidyon ha-ben, and other priestly gifts may prove useful for the reconstruction of developments. I will suggest that the entry of the principle into the realm of priestly gifts (from cases of pure monetary doubt) was via its usage in a case of doubt in pidyon ha-ben found at m. Bekh. 8:6. In his work on ha-motzi me-chavero, Kehat notes two cases regarding the payment that defy the construction of the priestly gift model as excluding a claimant.20 In the next section, I point to a third case. In both m. ­Bekhorot 8:5 and its parallel at t. Bekhorot 6:9, the Mishnah’s anonymous voice presents scenarios about two women who had never given birth and, after each giving birth to a son and the boys were confused, the pidyon ha-ben payments were given to a specific priest (or priests). The doubts that arise regarding the status of the payments after the death of one son before day thirty (the onset of the payment obligation; see below) are resolved by the principle of ha-motzi me-chavero alav ha-reaya (although the formula is stated explicitly only in the Tosefta text). The mothers presumably contend they are entitled to their monies back. Since the payment has already been given, the expected roles of the individuals are flipped: the mothers are the claimants and the priests the defendants. The mothers attempt to recover money from the priests. Kehat sharply notes that these two cases, where the possible handing over of the money presents no question of the fulfillment of a religious obligation by a priest, are constructed in a way that conforms to the model of regular monetary cases. There is an identifiable claimant and an identifiable defendant. In the following section, I treat a third occurrence of the same phenomenon.21 Mishnah Bekhorot 8:6 presents a father as the claimant and a priest as the defendant. While the legal maneuver associated with the principle of ha-motzi me-chavero is employed here by R. Akiva, the maxim goes unstated. Our example further demonstrates the embeddedness of the principle in Tannaitic legal discourse on pidyon ha-ben and its association with R. Akiva. In my conclusions, I will suggest that this source marks the point of transplantation of the principle from the laws pertaining to monetary matters to those about priestly gifts.

Mishnah Bekhorot 8:6 The thirtieth day after the birth of the firstborn son is the threshold between obligation and exemption. The onset of the obligation occurs after the thirtieth day.22 Mishnah Bekhorot 8:6 discusses the case of a father who

20. Kehat, “Burden of Proof” (2006), 22 n. 2. See also the comments on this case in Halbertal, Birth of Doubt, 152 n. 12. 21. Not addressed by Kehat. 22. See n. 7 above.

Milgram: Ha-Motzi Me-Chaver  421 gave the five selaim to the priest before the thirtieth day and then the son died on the thirtieth day. The Tannaim debate whether the child’s untimely death should be considered as if he had died on the twenty-ninth day, thereby exempting him from pidyon ha-ben, or on day thirty-one, thereby obligating him. Following is the text of the Mishnah: If the son died on the thirtieth day it is reckoned as if he died the day before. R. Akiva says: If he had paid he cannot exact it [from the priest], and if he had not paid he need not pay.

‫מת ביום שלשים כיום שלפניו רבי עקיבא אומר אם‬ .‫נתן לא יטול ואם לא נתן לא יתן‬

According to the first opinion (the Sages), death on the thirtieth day is calculated as if it had occurred on the twenty-ninth day. Accordingly, if the father gave the money before the thirtieth day, and the son died on day thirty, the father should get the money back from the priest since the son died before the onset of the obligation. R. Akiva disagrees, however, stating that if the father paid before the thirtieth day, the father is not able to get the money back from the priest. And, if the father did not pay, he need not pay. The sages and R. Akiva disagree whether the thirtieth day is included in the injunction to redeem the firstborn “from the age of one month up” (as per the verse in Num 18:16).23 Rabbi Akiva contends it is not clear. The lack of clarity generates a doubt in monetary law, triggering the implementation of the (unstated) principle, ha-motzi me-chavero alav ha-reaya. For R. Akiva, in order for the priest to collect, the priest would need to demonstrate that the thirtieth day should, in fact, be considered like the thirty-first.24 Furthermore, if the father pays before the onset of the obligation, he cannot get his money back unless he demonstrates that the thirtieth day is like the twenty-ninth. The implicit implementation of the principle by R. Akiva25 is appropriate due to its association with him (see above).26 Significantly, here in 23. See n. 7 above. 24. The Babylonian Talmud makes the Tannaitic dispute to be one of midrashic interpretation. For a longer discussion of this mishnah and the talmudic sugya on it, see Jonathan S. Milgram, “Dugmah miperush Bikorti leferek Yesh Bekhor (perek chet demasechet bekh­o­ rot): Sugyat ‘met haben betokh sheloshim,’ Bekhorot 49a,” in The Wisdom of Batsheva: Dr. Beth Samuels Memorial Volume, ed. Barry Wimpfheimer (Hoboken, NJ: Ktav, 2009), 21–45. 25. While Safrai acknowledges that the principle of ha-motzi me-chavero plays a role in the Mishnah’s general framing of pidyon ha-ben, he does not relate the principle to R. Akiva’s position here and simply states, “umisafek, ein motziim mammon miyad hakohen” (“and [in a case of] doubt, monies are not taken from the hand[s] of the priest”) (Safrai, Kodashim Masechet Bekhorot, 258). 26. Safrai implies that the framing of pidyon ha-ben as a financial transaction that operates under the principle of ha-motzi me-chavero is the innovation of the Mishnah’s redactors (Kodashim Masechet Bekhorot, 252). As mentioned, however, the principle, while unstated as in our example, is active here and in traditions said in the name of R. Akiva and his students.

422  Making History m. Bekhorot 8:6, as in t. Bekhorot 6:9 and m. Bekhorot 8:5, the parties in the dispute are inverted. Since the father has already paid, “[i]f he had paid …,” then in any dispute the father would be the claimant and the priest the defendant. If the monies could, in fact, be returned, this would not result in the father’s failure to fulfill the obligation to redeem his son (he would be exempt); nor does it accomplish any fulfillment of a religious obligation on the part of the priest (he is always exempt). Mishnah Bekh­o­ rot 8:6 is another instance, therefore, of a pidyon ha-ben case that follows the strict model of doubt in cases of monetary transactions.

The Role of Mishnah Bekhorot 8:6 in the Diffusion of the Principle from Monetary Law to Priestly Gifts Based on the analysis above, I would like to suggest that the data point to the following: the transfer of the principle of ha-motzi me-chavero went from regular monetary cases to pidyon ha-ben and then spread to the other cases of priestly gifts. That is, from the legal domain of monetary law (for cases of doubt regarding damages and property that included both a claimant and a defendant), to claims to the pidyon ha-ben payment (three cases of which conform to the model of monetary disputes and include an actual claimant), and then to cases of other priestly gifts (where no claimant is present). These developments seem reasonable based on what the formulation “the burden of proof is on the claimant” implies: the existence of a claimant. It should be noted, however, that the five occurrences presented in the mouth of R. Akiva—as already mentioned, the earliest sage to whom the exact formulation is attributed—are all cases of a priestly gift (redemption of clean animals) (m. Bekh. 2:6, 7, 8; t. Bekh. 2:9, 10) and exclude an identifiable claimant. To be clear, what seems to be the latest stage in the transplantation of the legal concept and its accompanying formula is presented in the mouth of the earliest sage to make use of the formula. While it could be argued that this datum problematizes the developments suggested, it would be difficult to maintain that the principle originated with R. Akiva in the legal context of matenot kehunah since, as already mentioned, the formulation “the burden of proof is on the claimant” would be nonsensical in cases without a claimant. I contend, therefore, that, while certainly the principle of ha-motzi me-chavero originated in the field of monetary law, its entry into the realm of priestly gifts was via the laws of pidyon ha-ben, and specifically, m. ­Bekh­o­­rot 8:6. This mishnah is the bridge between the legal categories. It deals with a priestly gift, pidyon ha-ben, yet its case conforms to the model of standard cases of monetary doubt. Moreover, although the principle’s formulary is not cited, the concept behind the principle is itself applied in the name of R. Akiva.

Milgram: Ha-Motzi Me-Chaver  423 In sum, while R. Akiva is the earliest Tanna cited in relation to the principle and its formula, based on the evidence, we conclude that the occurrences of ha-motzi me-chavero in texts about pure monetary law (stated anonymously) would necessarily historically precede the application in R. Akiva’s name. The usage of the legal notion in m. Bekhorot 8:6—albeit without the attending maxim—presents a pivotal moment in the diffusion of the legal concept and its formula within the sphere of priestly gifts. By introducing the concept in a case of doubt about the pidyon ha-ben payment—an example that follows the model of pure monetary cases—the tradition ascribed to R. Akiva serves to engage an entirely new conceptual sphere of law, priestly gifts. From m. Bekhorot 8:6, the idea—along with, at times, its accompanying axiom—spread to other texts about pidyon ha-ben27 that were stated anonymously and eventually beyond.28 The legal notion, the presumed agent of its dissemination (R. Akiva), and its phrasing were so deeply embedded in the legal discourse of the Tannaim that, together, all were explicitly stated in cases even of matenot kehunah (where the principle appears as nonsensical since no claimant is present). The pervasiveness of the operation of the principle of ha-motzi me-chavero regarding pidyon ha-ben among R. Akiva, his students, and Tannaitic literature’s anonymous layers demonstrates the degree to which the Tannaim relied on the principle for the framing of this priestly gift, among others.29

27. See, e.g., t. Bekh. 6:9 and m. Tehar. 4:12. 28. This would mean that the principle’s statement and unstated operation in anonymous Tannaitic layers in monetary cases predate R. Akiva’s usage, while the anonymous literary and conceptual constructions in the field of pidyon ha-ben and other priestly gifts are later than R. Akiva. The only other possible reconstruction of the data, which I reject here due to the absence of documentary evidence, would entail presuming the existence of texts no longer in our possession. That is, one could argue that R. Akiva formulated the principle and applied its operation in texts no longer extant (perhaps even in cases of monetary dispute) and then the principle was employed in m. Bekh. 8:6, only afterwards spreading beyond to other cases of matenot kehunah. For another example of the anonymous layer in a mishnah predating R. Akiva, see Shamma Friedman, “The Plotting Witness and Beyond—A Continuum in Ancient Near Eastern, Biblical, and Talmudic Law,” in Birkat Shalom: Studies in the Bible, Ancient Near Eastern Literature, and Postbiblical Judaism Presented to Shalom M. Paul on the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday, ed. Chaim Cohen et al. (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2008), 801–30, here 824-25. 29. In examining the pidyon ha-ben payment in isolation, one scholar argues that the preponderance of cases where the father is exempted from paying (such as in cases of doubt) are the result of rabbinic responses to concerns about the economic burden the payment caused individuals. That is, the sources reflect a reaction by the rabbis to an identifiable socioeconomic concern (see Nissan Rubin, “Coping with the Value of the pidyon ha’ben Payment in Rabbinic Literature: An Example of a Social Change Process,” Jewish History 10.1 [1996]: 39–61). Observing the framing of the priestly gifts in general, and not of just pidyon ha-ben, as financial transactions employing ha-motzi me-chavero suggests that larger literary and legal processes unrelated to a monetary payment (among the priestly gifts, only required for pidyon ha-ben) are at work here. I hope to address the issue more fully in my monograph.

Looking at the Past from the Bible to the Mishnah Toward a History of Jewish Historiography, with Emphasis on Demetrius the Chronographer CHAIM MILIKOWSKY

T

his paper has three parts. In part 1, I offer a short survey of postbiblical Jewish historiography. In part 2, I focus on the figure of Demetrius, a Jewish chronographer believed to have lived in the third century BCE in Alexandria. I argue that, while Demetrius’s interest in historiography and mode of historiographical composition were generated by the Greek culture that surrounded him, this influence does not manifest itself in the explicit use of Hellenistic cultural markers, such as specific exegetical terminology or modes of interpretation. In part 3, I try to answer the age-old question of why, for the most part, Jews stopped writing history.

Postbiblical Historiography: A Survey Many decades ago, two superb scholars of the previous generation, the biblical scholar James Barr and the historian Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, portrayed in stark terms the contrast between historiographical discourse and articulation in the biblical period and that in the postbiblical period.1 Indeed, the distinctions appear prodigious. Already the medieval poetscholar Moses ibn Ezra in his work on the poetics of Hebrew (and Arabic) poetry refers to the “sin” of the generation of the second exile and the 1. James Barr, Judaism: Its Continuity with the Bible, Montefiore Memorial Lecture 7 (Southampton: University of Southampton 1968), 10; Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory, Samuel and Althea Stroum Lectures in Jewish Studies (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1982), 14–16.

425

426  Making History “negligence” that “adhered to our ancestors” for not “being wise enough … to record our history and remember the past generations.”2 In contrast to this approach, the scholar of early Christianity Martin Hengel saw Jews as extremely interested in their historical traditions during the Hellenistic period.3 His attempt to support this conclusion moved him to view such phenomena as the canonization of the Bible and the writing of wisdom compositions as evidence of a concern with history—dubious suppositions indeed. According to Hengel, this concern with “the past” continued from biblical days through the Hellenistic period until it suddenly ended immediately after 70 CE, when Jews began to focus exclusively on halakhah and (nonhistorical) aggadah. Although some elements of Hengel’s claim—after the exaggerations are pruned—are valid, his overall conclusions cannot be accepted.4 The Bible includes books that describe historical events, are historiographically oriented, and allow the construction of a historiographical continuum from the beginnings of Israelite history to the return from the Babylonian exile. Postbiblical sources, by contrast, do not provide enough historical and chronological information to permit a continuation of this historiographical continuum.5

2. Moshe ibn Ezra, Sefer ha-iyyunim ve-ha-diyyunim (= Kitāb al-muḥāḍarah wa-al-mudhākarah), ed. and trans. Avraham Sh. Halkin (Jerusalem: Hotsaat Meḳitse Nirdamim, 1975), 15. 3. Martin Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism: Studies in Their Encounter in Palestine during the Early Hellenistic Period, 2 vols., trans. John Bowden (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1974), 1:99–100. 4. Indeed, the theory is arguably nothing more than supersessionist theology cloaked as scholarship. Hengel viewed Christianity as the inheritor of what is in his mind the lofty interest in history. He sees this as having been a focus of Jews during the Second Temple period, but not a topic of interest for the subsequent-to-Jesus-and-destruction-of-temple rabbis. On the theological underpinnings guiding Hengel’s scholarship, see the broad allusions of Menahem Stern in his critique of Hengel’s book [Hebrew] (Kiryat Sefer 46 [1970–1971]: 94–99, here 99; and also Fergus Millar, “The Background to the Maccabean Revolution: Reflections on Martin Hengel’s Judaism and Hellenism,” JJS 29 (1978): 1–21; Peter Schäfer, “Introduction,” in The Talmud Yerushalmi and Graeco-Roman Culture, 3 vols., ed. Peter Schäfer, TSAJ 71, 79, 93 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1998–2002), 1:1–23, here 12–13; Todd Penner, In Praise of Christian Origins: Stephen and the Hellenists in Lukan Apologetic Historiography, Emory Studies in Early Christianity 10 (New York: T&T Clark International, 2004), 23–29, 40, 54. 5. This simple fact undercuts the opinion of Marc Zvi Brettler, who posits a continuity between the biblical approach to history and that adopted by the rabbis (The Creation of History in Ancient Israel [London: Routledge, 1995], 2). More importantly, when discussing how historiographical cum narratival compositions approach and relate to history, it is irrelevant whether the events described are “actual events in history,” to use Brettler’s words. The crucial question, rather, is whether the author considered them to be actual events. Especially worthy of note is Arnaldo Momigliano’s emphasis on the centrality of historiography in the intellectual and cultural world of the Bible in comparison with all other cultures until the seventeenth century, including Greek culture (“Remarks on Eastern History Writing,” in Terzo contributo alla storia degli studi classici e del Mondo Antico, 2 vols., Storia et leteratura 108–9 [Rome: Storia e Letteratura, 1966], 229–38, here 236–38; Momigliano, The Classical

Milikowsky: Looking at the Past  427 Furthermore, if history writing is divided into two subgenres, the first dealing with events of the recent past and the second with events of the distant past, it is evident that there are biblical compositions that belong to both subgenres.6 At first glance neither genre seems to be found in extant postbiblical works. Not a single work composed in the first centuries following the biblical period outlines even the most basic facts of the history of this period.7 As opposed to the biblical period, where it is possible to construct a fairly comprehensive history of Israel for the centuries before the destruction of the First Temple through to the subsequent exile and return, sources for the next few centuries tell barely any story or history.8 Large swaths of the Second Temple period are now completely or almost completely unknown. Nor do we have any specific composition that relates the history of the biblical period, as do, for example, the books of Chronicles. The exposition of the place of historiography in postbiblical Judaism that I have just presented, while factually correct, must be modified. I started my discussion by pointing out that there are no extant historiographical works composed in the first centuries following the biblical period. This underlines the lack of continuity between the biblical period and the period immediately following it. But in later centuries the picture changes. First, there are two major compositions that focus on the historiography of the Hasmonean period: the two books of Maccabees, composed during the middle centuries of the Second Temple period. Second, there are the writings of Josephus from the end of the Second Temple period. It is possible, of course, that the existence of these compositions is itself testimony to the general lack of interest in history during this period.9 After Foundations of Modern Historiography, Sather Classical Lectures 54 (Berkeley: University of California Press,1994), 22–23. 6. The difference between historiography of the recent past and that concerned with the distant past is a well-known distinction in Greek historiography, and it will be relevant further in this essay. This was already noted by Thucydides in De bello Peloponnesiaco 1.1.3, and compare these remarks with his slightly different emphasis several paragraphs later (1.21.1). For a discussion of many sources related to this issue, see John Marincola, Authority and Tradition in Ancient Historiography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 95–117; Timothy P. Wiseman, “Practice and Theory in Roman Historiography,” History 66 (1981): 375–89; Thomas Kjeller Johansen, Plato’s Natural Philosophy: A Study of the Timaeus-Critias (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 41–44, as well as the different emphasis in T. J. Luce, “Ancient Views on the Causes of Bias in Historical Writing,” Classical Philology 84 (1989): 16–31. 7. Note my specification here of the “the first centuries following the biblical period”; furthermore, in this matter it is not certain that a distinction should be made between the last generations of the biblical period and the first generations of the postbiblical period. 8. The questions of veracity and facticity are irrelevant to our subject. 9. Emil Schürer writes, “The historiographical impulse seems to have died away in

428  Making History all, if there were no Jewish compositions of a historiographical nature from the days of the concluding monarchs of the Persian Empire until the Hasmonean period, and then, subsequent to the books of Maccabees, no historiographical compositions from the post-Hasmonean period until the Great Revolt in 67–70 CE, it would be necessary to explain only why these particular compositions were composed and survived. But these are not the only Jewish historiographical compositions from the Second Temple period. Other Jewish historians from this period are known to have existed, although their works have not survived in their entirety. They include such figures as Demetrius, Aristeas, Eupolemus, Artapanus, and Cleodemus, all of whom lived during the middle of the Second Temple period, and Justus of Tiberias from the end of the Second Temple period.10

Jewish circles in post-Hasmonaean times” until “the events of A.D. 66–70” (The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ, rev. ed. by Geza Vermes, Fergus Millar, and Martin Goodman, 3 vols. in 4 [Edinburgh; T&T Clark International, 1973–1986] 3:186). While the intent of this passage is not exactly clear, it seems that it is referring to “the historiographical impulse” that existed among Jews writing in Hebrew or Aramaic. This chapter is included in a unit entitled “Jewish Literature Written in Hebrew or Aramaic.” Jewish prose literature about the past written in Greek is considered later in that volume (509–58). 10. Fragments from the writings of the first four were preserved by Eusebius in Praep. ev. 9.21. Eusebius himself was not familiar with these works and quoted them from On the Jews by Alexander Polyhistor, a Hellenistic author who composed works on various peoples based on sources culled from earlier compositions. The fragment from the work of Cleodemus is quoted by Josephus, Ant. 1.240. Concerning Justus of Tiberias, see Chaim Milikowsky, “Justus of Tiberias and the Synchronistic Chronology of Israel,” in Studies in Josephus and the Varieties of Ancient Judaism: Louis H. Feldman Jubilee Volume, ed. Shaye J. D. Cohen and Joshua J. Schwartz, Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity 67 (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 103–26. Jacob Freudenthal discussed the significance of these fragments in a study written well over a hundred years ago but still worthy of attention (Alexander Polyhistor und die von ihm erhaltenem Reste judäischer und samaritanischer Geschichtswerke [Breslau: von Grass, 1874]). For more on Polyhistor and the transmission of these fragments, see Albert-Marie Denis et al., Introduction à la littérature religieuse judéo-hellénistique (Turnhout: Brepols, 2000), 1109–11; David T. Runia, “Caesarea Maritima and the Survival of Hellenistic-Jewish Literature, in Caesarea Maritima: A Retrospective after Two Millennia, ed. Avner Raban and Kenneth G. Holum, Documenta et monumenta Orientis antiqui 21 (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 476–95; William Adler, “Alexander Polyhistor’s Peri Ioudaiōn and Literary Culture in Republican Rome,” in Reconsidering Eusebius: Collected Papers on Literary, Historical, and Theological Issues, ed. Sabina Inowlocki and Claudio Zamagni, VCSup 107 (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 225–40. Convenient collections of these fragments with translation can be found in Carl R. Holladay, ed. and trans., Fragments from Hellenistic Jewish Authors: vol. 1: Historians, Texts and Translations 20 (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1983) (herinafter Holladay, Historians), and in translation in OTP, vol. 2. See also Harold W. Attridge, “Historiography,” in Jewish Writings of the Second Temple Period, ed. Michael E. Stone, CRINT 2.2 (Assen: Van Gorcum; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984), 157–84; Robert Doran, “The Jewish Hellenistic Historians before Josephus,” ANRW II.20.1 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1987), 246–97; Gregory E. Sterling, Historiography and Self-Definition: Josephos, LukeActs, and Apologetic Historiography, NovTSup 64 (Leiden: Brill, 1992), 137–225; Erich S. Gruen, Heritage and Hellenism: The Reinvention of Jewish Tradition, Hellenistic Culture and Society 30

Milikowsky: Looking at the Past  429 And there were surely other Jewish historians whose names have been lost to history.11 It is thus already safe to conclude that Second Temple Judaism contained various streams of history writing. Moving to the rabbinic period— by which I mean the period from the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE until the final editing of the Babylonian Talmud in the seventh century—the situation is much more striking. Aside from Seder Olam, there is no work whose primary function, or even one of its primary functions, is historiographical. Moreover, none of the works included in the rabbinic corpus, not even those that deal almost exclusively with the Bible, shows more than minimal interest in what could be described as historical or historiographical questions. The picture is as follows: From the first few centuries of the postbiblical period, no works of historiography have survived, nor are there any hints that such works existed. From the middle centuries of the Second Temple period there are most of those “lost” historians mentioned above, along with the two books of Maccabees. From the end of the Second Temple period there are the two works of Josephus and the unfortunately lost books by Justus of Tiberias. But from the post-Temple period until the Middle Ages there is no hint of any Jewish historiographical writing other than Seder Olam. It is impossible to ascertain whether historiographical works in addition to those of whose existence we know were written during these centuries. It can be said only that additional historiographical works have not been transmitted. This second claim is as important as the first and may be even more important. The composition of any specific book can be the product of an individual or the initiative of a small grouping, having little to do with the general zeitgeist. But the retention and transmission of a book through the generations, on the other hand, is more plausibly a witness to wide-ranging cultural processes. In this context, it is necessary to highlight some basic facts about the historians mentioned above. Josephus, who wrote his historical works during the several decades following the destruction of the temple in 70 CE, was already unaware of the “lost” historical books mentioned above— Demetrius, Aristeas, Eupolemos, and the rest.12 And, needless to say, the (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), passim; and Denis et al., Introduction à la ­littérature religieuse judéo-hellénistique, 1107–89. 11. See, for example, my remarks concerning the manifold chronographical sources used by Josephus: Seder Olam, Critical Edition with Introduction and Commentary, 2 vols. [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Yad Ben Zvi, 2013), 1:10–13; Schürer, History, 3:557–58, in the section entitled “Lost Greek Histories Written by Jews.” 12. While I have stated this unequivocally, the question of whether Josephus used these sources is not easily resolved, and many scholars have addressed the issue. Inasmuch as I have just argued that transmission and retention are important indicators of a polity’s

430  Making History rabbinic corpus mentions none of these historiographical writings apart from Seder Olam.13 Thus, when discussing the place of historiography in Judaism of the Hellenistic-Roman period, it is essential to make important distinctions. Starting from the end, from the rabbinic perspective, there was no history—and I purposely use the bald term “history” rather than “history-writing”—after the biblical period,14 no history-writing from the end of the biblical period until Seder Olam, and again, none after Seder Olam. Regarding the history of history-writing during the Second Temple period from the perspective of complete extant books, one point stands out prominently. The only complete works of history dating to this period that are extant today were written in close proximity to the appearance of the Jewish people as a major player in world politics. After the conquest of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple by Nebuchadnezzar, the first time the Jewish people attained a high level of political independence was in the days of the Maccabees, when the books of Maccabees were written. The next time after that was during the First Revolt against Rome, soon after which Josephus wrote his books. The logic seems clear. The writing of history is related to significant political activity such as the situations described here—the establishment of an independent kingdom and the declaration of war against the imperial power. It goes without saying that the major historiographical works within the Bible deal primarily—and despite (or perhaps, because of) their theological focus—with the political context. To put it differently, when a people lose their independence and have no political role to play on the stage of world affairs, their interest in their history lessens. The connection between political activity and interest in history plays a significant but not exclusive or even determinative role in Arnaldo Momigliano’s attempts to explain why Jews did not write history in the postbiblical period.15 It is important to compare this suggestion to Ewen Bowie’s work on history-writing in Greece: From the middle of the first c­ oncerns and interests, the fact that Josephus had no access to these works is very significant. For a detailed discussion, see Milikowsky, Seder Olam, 1:25–26 n. 40. 13. Recently, there has been a storm of studies on the possibility that some of Josephus’s traditions in some way reached some rabbis. For a recent discussion with extensive bibliography, see Vered Noam, Shifting Images of the Hasmoneans: Second Temple Legends and Their Reception in Josephus and Rabbinic Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 9–19. 14. For the rabbis, the only sense in which history has meaning (and is not simply a succession of facts) is insofar as it represents the history of the intertwining of God and humans as revealed by God. 15. See Momigliano, “Remarks on Eastern History Writing,” 236–38; Momigliano, “Greek Culture and the Jews,” in The Legacy of Greece: A New Appraisal, ed. Moses I. Finley (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981), 325–46, here 344–45; Momigliano, Classical Foundations, 22–23. We will return to Momigliano’s suggestive hypotheses further in this article. See

Milikowsky: Looking at the Past  431 century CE until the middle of the third century CE, no Greek author composed a history of the Greek world—for in the ancient world, history dealt with independent political entities, and none existed in Greece during this period.16 Franz Rosenthal made a similar suggestion regarding Muslim historiography.17 This explanation does not account for the complete lack of interest in historiography in rabbinic literature. The sages retained and transmitted to future generations only the Bible, and none of the other works we have mentioned.18 Were it not for non-Jewish channels of transmission, we would lack not only those fragmentary historical writings mentioned above but also the two books of Maccabees and all of Josephus’s compositions.19 The sages show not the slightest historiographical interest in that momentous political event of their time, the Bar Kokhba Revolt.20 A simialso Isaiah Gafni, “Concepts of Periodization and Causality in Talmudic Literature,” Jewish History 10 (1996): 21–38, here 21–22. 16. Ewen I. Bowie, “Greeks and Their Past in the Second Sophistic,” in Studies in Ancient Society, ed. Moses I. Finley (London: Routledge, 1974), 166–209, here 180–84. 17. Franz Rosenthal, A History of Muslim Historiography, 2nd rev. ed. (Leiden: Brill, 1968), 140. 18. “Only the Bible” relates to the context on which we are focusing: the transmission of historiographical works about the past. But it is also true of books in general, with some minor exceptions, such as Ben Sira, at times perhaps considered Scripture, and Megillat Taanit. It is worth noting that the latter is emphatically not a historiographical work, but rather a halakhic work. Its raison d’être is to list those days on which it is forbidden to fast and/or to eulogize. True, various historical or semihistorical events are narrated in the expansions to and augmentations upon Megillat Taanit that are often collectively termed the Scholion to Megillat Taanit, but the Scholion is not a historiographical composition. 19. I am not claiming that no specific member of what we could call the fraternity of the sages ever had in his hands any one of these works. My argument focuses on the metaphorically reified totality of rabbinic culture in the second through sixth centuries CE and what it conveyed to the future. The question how representative rabbinic ideology and practice of the time were of general Jewish ideology and practice is irrelevant to the point I am making. Inasmuch as by the high Middle Ages, rabbinic ideology and practice became the theoretical norm in all Jewish centers of life about which we have any significant amount of information (apart from among the anti-rabbinic cultural-intellectual groupings such as the Karaites), clearly the purveyors of their cultural baggage were the rabbis. There seems to be some evidence of nonrabbinic groupings in early medieval days, but our knowledge of them is extremely tenuous. 20. A striking illustration of this attitude is the fact that rabbinic literature preserved for us neither the actual name of Bar Kokhba (which we now know from the caches of documents found in the Judean Desert) nor that he was called Bar Kokhba by his followers (which we know from Justin Martyr, 1 Apol. 31.6 and from other early Christian compositions [see Schürer, History, 1:543 n. 128 for further references]). In rabbinic literature he is known only as Bar Koz(i)ba. According to Schürer, the Munich manuscript of Seder Olam reads Bar Kokhba (History 1:543 n. 128); this claim, already found in the German Schürer (E. Schürer, Geschichte des jüdischen Volkes im Zeitalter Jesu, 3rd–4th ed., 3 vols. [Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1901– 1909], 1:682 n. 98 [with a reference to his extensive analysis of this passage in Seder Olam on

432  Making History lar lack of historical interest is evident in those rabbinic works that purportedly deal extensively with the events of the past, the midrashei aggadah. These books contain hundreds of pages deliberating on the people and events described in the Bible, but of a historical approach there is none. The midrashei aggadah, just like the rabbinic halakhic works, deal with the present and future. In the midrashei aggadah, the events of the past are the vehicle by which the rabbis spoke to the present and the future, but there is no engagement with the past qua past. As Moshe David Herr phrased it in his seminal article “The Conception of History among the Sages,” There is no doubt that the Sages were not at all interested in the real historical figures of the Bible, but rather with the lesson that a famous personality could, or should, teach the future generations.… For it appears that in their world there was no more boring or meaningless subject than the question of the need and utility in describing what actually happened.21

A different approach was adopted by Ephraim Elimelech Urbach, who claimed that, while the rabbis did not write historical compositions, the interest in history did not abate in their days.22 Urbach’s conclusions are difficult to accept. For instance, his discussion of the term “What happened, happened” in b. Yoma 5b leads him to conclude that the passage must have been edited by a historian, for only a historian would interpret verses relevant to a biblical story despite the fact that they lack halakhic ramifications.23 For Urbach, the rabbinic wish to understand God’s words in the Bible necessarily implies a wish to understand the events of the past. To my mind, however, it seems that, for the formulator of this Babylonian passage, biblical exegesis was key, while the wish to know what happened in the past was barely legitimate.24 A passage in b. Bava Batra 91a asks why we need to know the names of Abraham’s mother, David’s mother, and other women whose names pp. 668–670 (lacking in the English revised Schürer)]), is incorrect; see Milikowsky, Seder Olam, 1:323 for text and apparatus; 2:546 for commentary. 21. Moshe David Herr, “The Conception of History among the Sages,” in Proceedings of the Sixth World Congress of Jewish Studies [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: ha-Igud ha-olami le-madae ha Yahadut, 1977), 3:129–42, here 134, 142. 22. Ephraim E. Urbach, “Halakhah and History,” in Jews, Greeks and Christians: Religious Cultures in Late Antiquity; Essays in Honour of William David Davies, ed. Robert Hamerton-Kelly and Robin Scroggs, SJLA 21 (Leiden: Brill, 1966), 112–28. 23. Urbach, “Halakhah and History,” 122–24. 24. Urbach’s approach was discussed by Robert Bonfil, “Jewish Attitudes toward History and Historical Writing in Pre-Modern Times,” Jewish History 11 (1997): 7–40, here 33 n. 6. Urbach, however, does not suggest that there was a rabbinic replacement for historiography (pace Bonfil); rather, Urbach hypothesized that, though the rabbis did not write historical compositions, their interest in history was deep and widespread.

Milikowsky: Looking at the Past  433 are not found in the Bible. It answers by claiming that this knowledge serves as a “response to the heretics.” The passage assumes that, while these names are correct, the facts of the past are worthless in and of themselves. They serve only to show the heretics that these matters are known to Jews, and that Jews know no less than them.25 A similar conclusion can be drawn from the question “What is the practical ramification?” in b. Hagigah 6b. And sharper still is the statement of R. Simon b. Laqish in b. Hullin 60b, “There are many biblical verses worthy of being burned, and they are the body of the Torah,” which negates—or at least strongly probes and interrogates—the value of sentences relating details of the past that are not related to God or to the people of Israel.26 Two verses in Deuteronomy seem to encourage examination of the past, “When you shall inquire about the bygone days that came before you” (4:32), and “Remember the days of old, consider the years of ages past” (32:7), but their rabbinic interpretations follow different paths. According to a Tannaitic source cited in b. Hagigah 11b, the first verse refers to “the act of creation,” that is, the creation of the world.27 And according to Sifre Deuteronomy, the second verse mandates awareness not of the ebb and flow of history but of God’s retributive acts in the early history of humankind, or, according to the second interpretation there, to God’s future kindness and solace.28 My intention here is neither to define the aims of rabbinic midrashic 25. See the comments of the Rashbam on this text, and Robert Travers Herford’s response to these comments (Christianity in Talmud and Midrash [London: Williams and Norgate, 1903], 326–27). Indeed, there was a pronounced tendency in apocryphal and early Christian literature to give names to unnamed biblical characters, especially women; see John Rook, “The Names of the Wives from Adam to Abraham in the Book of Jubilees,” JSP 7 (1990): 105–17; Richard A. Freund, “Naming Names – Some Observations on ‘Nameless Women’: Traditions in the MT, LXX and Hellenistic Literature,” SJOT 6 (1992): 213–32; Tal Ilan, “Biblical Women’s Names in the Apocryphal Traditions,” JSP 11 (1993): 3–67. 26. On this statement and its correct reading, see Saul Lieberman, Hellenism in Jewish Palestine: Studies in the Literary Transmission, Beliefs and Manners of Palestine in the I century B.C.E.–IV century C.E., TSAJ 18 (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1962), 110. 27. See also t. Hag. 2:7 (ed. Lieberman, 382), especially the version preserved in the Erfurt and London manuscripts, which seems to be original (in MS Vienna and the printed editions the words “From the day that God created man on the earth” are interpreted twice), as well as y. Hag. 2:1, 73c; and Gen. Rab. 1:10 (ed. Theodor-Albeck, 8). On the interpretation of this passage in the Sifre, see Steven D. Fraade, From Tradition to Commentary: Torah and Its Interpretation in the Midrash Sifre to Deuteronomy (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991), 75–79. Cf. Albert I. Baumgarten, “The Perception of the Past in the Damascus Document,” in The Damascus Document: A Centennial of Discovery; Proceedings of the Third International Symposium of the Orion Center for the Study of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Associated Literature 4–8 February 1998, ed. Joseph M. Baumgarten, Esther G. Chazon, and Avital Pinnick, STDJ 34 (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 1–15, esp. 11–12. 28. Sifre Deuteronomy, section 310 (ed. Finkelstein, 350–51).

434  Making History discourse, nor to delineate the approach of the rabbis toward the narratives created by the midrashic process.29 Rather, I wish simply to emphasize that their aims were not historiographical, not even in the broadest sense of the word. As noted above, Herr described this phenomenon in the most convincing manner, but he did not set out to account for it. I suggested above that the composition of the two books of Maccabees and of Josephus’s War of the Jews were connected to significant political events that preceded their writing, namely, the foundation of an independent Jewish kingdom by the Hasmoneans and the war against the Romans in 67 CE. Josephus’s other great work, Antiquities of the Jews, does not belong to this same subgenre of historical writing. This historiographical composition does not focus on the immediate past but begins rather with the creation of the world and concludes with the eve of the Great Revolt against Rome. There may have been other Jewish historiographical compositions from antiquity that cover such a broad time span but did not survive in their entirety. In any case, those fragments of “lost” historiographical compositions that have survived deal only with the biblical period. In dealing with the subgenre of historiography that focuses on the immediate past, it is relatively simple methodologically to distinguish between historiographical and nonhistoriographical works. Making such a distinction becomes more problematic when dealing with compositions that focus on the biblical period. This is not the place for a detailed discussion of what constitutes a historiographical composition, but some delineation of the genre is essential. Most obviously, not all compositions that focus on the biblical past can be considered historiographical. For instance, as already noted, aggadic midrashim such as Genesis Rabbah or Exodus Rabbah are not historiographical; they show little interest in elucidating what occurred in the past for the sake of understanding the past. A more challenging case of genre assignment faces us with Jubilees, which retells the biblical story from the creation through the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai. It should be emphasized that this book includes a clear chronological framework for the entire period and dates many events undated in the Bible. Another Second Temple composition that exemplifies the complexity in establishing the boundaries of Jewish historiography during the Greco-Roman period is the drama Exagoge. Fragments of this tragedy, written by a Hellenistic Jew known as Ezekiel, probably during the second century BCE, survive along with fragments of those “lost” historiographical works noted earlier and several additional works.

29. These two questions are unpacked and addressed in the second chapter of my introduction to Seder Olam.

Milikowsky: Looking at the Past  435 Exagogue deals with the exodus from Egypt and is written in the style of the fifth-century BCE Greek dramatists.30 Felix Jacoby did not include Ezekiel the Tragedian in his list of Jewish-Hellenistic historians, but he did include two poets: Philo the Elder and Theodotus.31 I do not see a difference between Ezekiel the Tragedian (a poet who recounts the past through dramatic verse) and Philo the Elder and Theodotus (epic poets) sufficient to justify counting the latter as historians but not the former.32 Both Jubilees and Exagoge, and other compositions like them,33 deal intensively with events from the past. Yet these works are justifiably not considered historiographical. Simply dealing with the past is not enough to make a composition historiographical: it must also inquire into and analyze the past.34 Marcel Detienne views investigation and analysis as the main components in the work of Herodotus, distinguishing him from “men who tell tales.”35 And when Robert Fowler attempted to define Herodotus’s historiography, he noted especially Herodotus’s wish to correlate variant sources.36 Josephus explicitly asserts that one who wants transmit to his readers “the true events” must become familiar with them through either firsthand knowledge or “investigation” (C. Ap. 1.53).37 30. Ezekiel used the Septuagint on the Torah, and his work was quoted by Alexander Polyhistor. Howard Jacobson concludes that Ezekiel lived toward the end of the second century BCE (The Exagoge of Ezekiel [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983], 5–13). The fragments of Ezekiel’s work were edited and translated into English by Carl R. Holladay in Fragments from Hellenistic Jewish Authors, vol. 2: Poets, Texts and Translations 30; Pseudepigrapha 12 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989), 301–529. 31. Felix Jacoby, Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker, part IIIC: Nos. 608a–856, vol. 2 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1958), Nos. 729, 732, 689–694. 32. Clearly, there is some difference. In classical Greece, was Homer considered more of a historian than Aeschylus? Or, to put it differently, did the audience expect Homer’s composition to be truer to the events of the past than that of Aeschylus? 33. Such as Philo the Elder and Theodotus mentioned in the previous paragraph. 34. On the importance of investigation and analysis to historiography, see Gerald A. Press, The Development of the Idea of History in Antiquity (Kingston–Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1982), 22–34; Simon Hornblower, “Introduction,” in Greek Historiography, ed. Simon Hornblower (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 1–72, here 35; Guido Schepens, “History and Historia: Inquiry in the Greek Historians,” in A Companion to Greek and Roman Historiography, 2 vols., ed. John Marincola (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2007), 1:39–55. 35. Marcel Detienne, The Creation of Mythology, trans. Margaret Cook (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 56. 36. Robert L. Fowler, “Herodotos and His Contemporaries,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 116 (1996): 62–87. 37. In the second half of the twentieth century, a line of thinking developed that belied the claim that a primary impulse of ancient historians was the desire to present truthfully and accurately the events of the past. Thus, A. E. Wardman downplays the oft-evoked contrast between Herodotus and Thucydides, emphasizing instead the mythological foundations of both compositions (“Myth in Greek Historiography,” Historia 9 [1960]: 403–13). Even

436  Making History Compositions such as Jubilees, whose main purpose is to retell the events of the past, and Ezekiel’s Exagoge, whose purpose is to recast events of the past in a specific manner, cannot be considered works of historiography.38 In contrast, works such as Seder Olam and Josephus’s Antiquities of the Jews examine and clarify the record of past events. Both Seder Olam and Josephus (in the part of the Antiquities of the Jews that deals with the history of the biblical period), engage deeply with biblical exegesis. They inquire into and examine biblical verses referring to the past and investigate prior exegetical traditions to ascertain and present their accounts of the biblical past. Were the chronological information in Jubilees to exist in an independent composition, perhaps this hypothetical work would be classified as a historiographical work. Jubilees, however, uses these dates as a framework for retelling the biblical story; it is not a work of historiography. This account of what constitutes a historiographical composition excludes not only Jubilees and Exagoge, but also similar works such as Pseudo-Philo’s Biblical Antiquities, the Life of Adam, and many others. Let us now turn to those compositions that can be considered historiographical. The only surviving extant historiographical composition that focuses on the distant past is Josephus’s Antiquities of the Jews. Josephus states explicitly at the outset that he intends the book for a non-Jewish audience: “I took upon myself to compose this book, for I thought it worthy of study by Greeks, for it will include all of our antiquities and the arrangemore extreme, Anthony J. Woodman claims that the presentation of historical truth was not an important value in the eyes of Thucydides and other Greek and Roman historians (“Preconceptions and Practicalities: Thucydides,” in Rhetoric in Classical Historiography: Four Studies [London: Croom Helm, 1988], 1–40). For an aggressive repudiation of the approach presented by Woodman and his followers, see Jon E. Lendon, “Historians without History: Against Roman Historiography,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Historians, ed. Andrew Feldherr (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 41–61. The bibliography on these matters is huge. In addition to the above sources, I have found especially useful Bernard Williams, Truth and Truthfulness: An Essay in Genealogy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), 147–71; Robert L. Fowler, “Mythos and Logos,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 131 (2011): 45–66, and two collections of articles on truth, fiction, and deceit in ancient historiography: Lies and Fiction in the Ancient World, ed. Christopher Gill and Timothy P. Wiseman (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1993); and Truth and History in the Ancient World: Pluralising the Past, ed. Lisa Irene Hau and Ian Ruffell, Routledge Studies in Ancient History (New York: Routledge, 2017). 38. Note the comment of Arnaldo Momigliano: “But what has come to distinguish historical writing from any other type of literature is its being submitted as a whole to the control of evidence. History is no epic, history is no novel … because in these literary genres control of the evidence is optional, not compulsory” (“The Rhetoric of History and the History of Rhetoric,” in Settimo contributo alla storia degli studi classici e del mondo antico, Storia e letteratura: Raccolta di studi e testi 161 (Rome: Storia e letteratura, 1984), 49–59, here 51.

Milikowsky: Looking at the Past  437 ment of our polity, translated from the books of the Hebrews” (Ant. 1.5).39 J­ osephus intends to defend the Jewish nation and elevate its status in the eyes of the intellectual elite of his own time, namely, readers of Greek who lived in Rome or other cosmopolitan cities of the Roman Empire. The composition of the book was instigated by external cultural factors, and, as many scholars have noted, elements of it were influenced by historiographical compositions written in Greek.40 This point must be emphasized: The first postbiblical book still extant that deals extensively with biblical events and can be characterized as a historiographical composition was placed by its own author into a 39. The translation is mine, having perused various other translations. See also Ant. 16.174; 20.262. According to Louis H. Feldman, Josephus intended his work for widespread use also among Jewish audiences (“Use, Authority and Exegesis of Mikra in the Writings of Josephus,” in Mikra: Text, Translation, Reading, and Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity, ed. Martin J. Mulder and Harry Sysling, CRINT 2.1 (Assen: Van Gorcum; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1988), 455–518, here 471; so also Heinz Schreckenberg and Kurt Schubert, Jewish Historiography and Iconography in Early and Medieval Christianity, CRINT 3.2 (Assen: Van Gorcum; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991), 22–23. I find their arguments unconvincing. While Josephus was aware that Antiquities of the Jews might be read by Jews (see, e.g., Ant. 4.197), they do not seem to have been even a secondary target for his work. See also Sterling, Historiography and Self-Definition, 306–7. 40. See the introduction of H. St. J. Thackeray in Josephus, vol. 4: Jewish Antiquities, Books I–IV, ed. and trans. H. St. J. Thackeray, LCL (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,1967) vii–xvii. Louis Feldman’s endeavor to place Josephus’s works within the secondary groupings of historiographical literature based on the often polemical and artificial classifications devised by historians of antiquity is strained and exaggerated (Louis H. Feldman, Josephus’s Interpretation of the Bible, Hellenistic Culture and Society 27 [Berkeley: University of California Press,1998] 2–13). In contrast, Klaus Meister demonstrated that few historians in the ancient world were aware of these divisions, which were created for specific purposes and lacked any real significance (“The Role of Timaeus in Greek Historiography,” Scripta Classica Israelica 10 [1989–1990]: 59–61). An important article detailing the not-insignificant dependence of Josephus on Polybius is Arthur M. Eckstein, “Josephus and Polybius: A Reconsideration,” Classical Antiquity 9 (1990): 175–208. Despite all he shows, it seems that the most important sentence in this article was made offhandedly by Eckstein, that “it is certainly the case that Polybian themes and vocabulary are very prominent specifically in the Jewish War, which is the most Hellenizing of Josephus’s works, and especially in the early books of that work” (190–91). To my mind, the very fact that it is the first composition written by Josephus in Greek—composed not long after he arrived in Rome—which demonstrates the greatest connection to the Hellenistic world should lead us to conclude that, even by the end of his life, Josephus himself did not deeply absorb Hellenistic culture. And the “hellenizing” found in the early books of the War of the Jews is not due to Josephus himself. For an approach to the question of Josephus’s connection to Greek historiography that differs radically from mine, see Steve Mason, “Of Audience and Meaning: Reading Josephus’s Bellum Judaicum in the Context of a Flavian Audience in Josephus and Jewish History,” in Josephus and Jewish History in Flavian Rome and Beyond, ed. Joseph Sievers and Gaia Lembi, JSJSup 104 (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 71–100; Mason, “Figured Speech and Irony in T. Flavius Josephus,” in Flavius Josephus and Flavian Rome, ed. Jonathan Edmondson, Steve Mason, and James B. Rives (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 243–88.

438  Making History non-Jewish intellectual context.41 This perspective on Josephus’s Antiquities of the Jews applies, mutatis mutandis, to all other extant Jewish historiographical compositions dealing with the ancient past from postbiblical antiquity. As already noted, the compositions authored by Demetrius, Aristeas, Eupolemus, Artapanus, Cleodemus, and Justus of Tiberias are known only from references and quotations in other works, especially in Alexander Polyhistor’s On the Jews, which was used by the church father Eusebius before it was lost. Although language itself is not a decisive indication of intellectual context, it is striking that all these works were written in Greek. Furthermore, the signs of cultural affiliation to the Hellenistic world are many and manifest. Inasmuch as I have recently detailed the clear and unambiguous substantiation of this contention, I will not repeat the particulars here, but will take it as given that all these authors, aside from Demetrius and Aristeas, have absorbed and adopted many cultural motifs from the non-Jewish intellectual world—primarily but not exclusively the Hellenistic world—and present to their readers a distinctively hybrid concoction.42

41. According to John Collins, the fact that this pivotal Hellenistic-Jewish author is from Judea and not the diaspora indicates that any distinction between these two locales is of little importance (Between Athens and Jerusalem: Jewish Identity in the Hellenistic Diaspora [New York: Crossroad, 1982], 50). He even goes so far as to posit a long-standing tradition of Greek historiography in Judea, a theory supported by the appearance of two historians, Josephus and Justus at the end of the Second Temple period (43). There is no evidence, however, for such a tradition, and the appearance of two historians at the end of this period says nothing about the previous centuries. Moreover, had Josephus remained in Judea he would not have written his compositions; their composition was a result of his experiences in a Greco-Roman milieu during the second half of his life, and not his upbringing in Judea. Thus, neither of Collins’s assertions is convincing. His suppositions also come to the fore in an article written thirty years later in which he is surprised at the lack of any historiographical composition among the Dead Sea Scrolls (“Historiography in the Dead Sea Scrolls,” DSD 19 [2012]: 159–76). In light of my own analysis in the present article, I would have been surprised if there had been historiographical compositions in this corpus. On the “historical” writings that Collins did locate in Qumran (4Q331–4Q333), see the important study of Shemaryahu Talmon and Johnathan Ben-Dov, “Mišmarot Lists (4Q322–324c) and ‘Historical Texts’ (4Q322a; 4Q331–4Q333) in Qumran Documents,” in Birkat Shalom: Studies in the Bible, Ancient Near Eastern Literature, and Postbiblical Judaism Presented to Shalom M. Paul on the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday, ed. Chaim Cohen et al. (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2008), 927–42. 42. See Chaim Milikowsky, “At the Beginning of Rabbinic Literary Culture: External Sources of Knowledge – Legitimate or Illegitimate,” in The Faces of Torah; Studies in the Texts and Contexts of Ancient Judaism in Honor of Steven Fraade, ed. M. Bar-Asher Siegal, Tzvi Novick, and Christine Hayes, JAJSup 22 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2017), 413–32, here 423–26. For further elaboration, see Milikowsky, Seder Olam, 1:8–10. The term “hybrid” always implies a specific perspective—what is a hybrid cultural artifact for one generation or cultural grouping can be a purebred, unmixed artifact for another.

Milikowsky: Looking at the Past  439

Demetrius the Chronographer The attempt to characterize Demetrius vis-à-vis the regnant Hellenistic culture is extraordinarily complicated.43 Six fragments of Demetrius are extant, ranging from a few lines to a few pages, all almost certainly originating in one composition. Five of these fragments were cited by Alexander Polyhistor and subsequently by Eusebius and one by Clement. On the whole, the chronological component dominates: Demetrius reveals to his readers Jacob’s age when he arrived in Haran, the birth dates of all Jacob’s children, the number of years that Jacob and Rachel were married, the number of years that Joseph spent in prison, and many other similar details. In addition, these fragments incorporate three nonchronological exegetical excursuses or digressions. In marked contrast to the other Jewish-Hellenistic works mentioned above, Demetrius’s retelling of the biblical narrative includes no explicit markers of Hellenistic or non-Jewish culture of any kind. His extant work contains not even an iota of explicit evidence that he used extrabiblical material for the biblical period.44 Is it nonetheless justified to number Demetrius among those Jewish historians who are part of the burgeoning historiographical activity attested in the Hellenistic East and are part and parcel of Hellenistic culture? Or is he simply a Jewish historian-exegete, who just happened to write in Greek? This will become a crucial question in our attempt to map out the various trajectories of Jewish historiography in the Hellenistic-Roman period. For a variety of reasons, there has been a veritable explosion of interest in Demetrius during the second decade of the twenty-first century. In 2011, Maren Niehoff published her Jewish Exegesis and Homeric Scholarship in Alexandria, which includes a twenty-page chapter on Demetrius,45 and in 2015 John Dillery published his Clio’s Other Sons: Berossus and Manetho, with an Afterword on Demetrius containing a thirty-one-page chapter on Demetrius.46 Though there are distinctive differences of opinion between

43. Aristeas, of whose work only a single short paragraph has survived, will not be discussed here; see Milikowsky, Seder Olam, 1:9. For the fragments of Demetrius and an introduction to his composition see Holladay, Historians, 51–91. See also the works of Maren Niehoff and John Dillery cited immediately below. Not all the fragments in Eusebius that are attributed to Demetrius by scholarly consensus are explicitly attributed to Demetrius by Eusebius, but the attributions appear secure; see Holladay, Historians, 80 n. 1. 44. Of course, in his noting the number of years that passed from the captivity of Samaria and from the captivity of Jerusalem until the days of Ptolemy IV, he must have employed postbiblical sources of information of one sort or another. 45. Maren R. Niehoff, Jewish Exegesis and Homeric Scholarship in Alexandria (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 38–57. 46. John Dillery, Clio’s Other Sons: Berossus and Manetho, with an Afterword on Demetrius (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2015), 357–87.

440  Making History Niehoff and Dillery, both authors fundamentally agree that Demetrius was well acquainted with the methods and modes of Hellenistic criticism and the exegesis of Homer. Before turning to the specific claims of Niehoff and Dillery, we must address a few general questions about Demetrius that bear directly upon matters relevant to this article. The first question: Do the surviving fragments stem from one Jewish-Hellenistic author called Demetrius or two? Niehoff asserts that the Demetrius quoted by Clement is not the same author who composed the other fragments, all of which appear in Eusebius’s Praeparatio evangelica.47 But there are several points relevant to the discussion of this question that have not yet been raised and should be. This quote from Demetrius appears in a section of the Stromata that consists of occasionally contradictory chronological statements strung together from a multitude of sources. Clement cites (in close proximity) Demetrius, Philo, and Eupolemos. These same three names appear in one sentence in Contra Apion 1.218;48 and three authors with the same names are quoted in book 9 of Eusebius’s Praeparatio evangelica.49 The chances that these do not refer to the same authors is miniscule. The agreement of Clement and Josephus is especially important.50 In her discussion of this point, Niehoff states that Clement’s Demetrius is said to have written a book concerning the kings of Judea—presumably implying that this cannot be the same as that Demetrius of Eusebius who discusses the patriarchal period. Note, however, that according to Clement, Philo too recorded matters regarding the kings, yet the only biblical figures mentioned in the passages quoted by Eusebius are the patriarchs: clearly, a “king” may refer to more than just “one who reigns.” I suspect that Clement drew the three statements about Deme47. Niehoff, Jewish Exegesis, 55. 48. Not that Josephus has any idea who they were: he has identified Demetrius the comparand of Philo and Eupolemos with Demetrius of Phalerum, the Athenian-Alexandrian statesman-scholar. It has been suggested that this is a deceitful attempt to identify the Jewish historian with that eminent personage; more likely, Josephus, who used the same source as Clement for these three authors (see Milikowsky, Seder Olam, 1:25–26 n. 40), confusedly misidentified the two figures; see Jacoby, Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker, Part I–III, 228 F51 = “Demetrios von Phaleron (228)”; Peter Stork et al. “Demetrius of Phalerum: The Sources, Text and Translation,” in Demetrius of Phalerum: Text, Translation, and Discussion, ed. William W. Fortenbaugh and Eckart Schütrumpf (New York: Routledge, 2017), 1–310, here 127. 49. Eusebius has, of course, taken all the passages in this chapter from Alexander Polyhistor’s On the Jews, which to my mind was not used by Josephus; see Milikowsky, Seder Olam, 1:25–26 n. 40. 50. It is immediately obvious from the contexts that Clement is not using Josephus as his source here. Josephus simply mentions their names and praises their work but cites nothing in their name, while Clement refers to some specific content of each.

Milikowsky: Looking at the Past  441 trius, Philo, and Eupolemos from the same source, and it was that source who initiated the use of the term “king” to signify an “important person at the center of the plotline.” I would not discount the possibility that Demetrius’s work featured the word “kings” in its title because it covered the entirety of biblical history.51 The fragment of Demetrius cited by Clement has a specific point of conjunction and correspondence with one of the fragments of Demetrius cited by Eusebius: both include compound summations of years from central watersheds of biblical and Jewish history until other watersheds and/ or until the author’s own day.52 This is the summation quoted by ­Eusebius: From Adam until the time when the brothers of Joseph came into Egypt there were 3,624 years; from the flood until Jacob’s arrival in Egypt there were 1,360 years; and from the time when Abraham was chosen from among the nations and came from Haran into Canaan until the time when those with him came into Egypt there were 215 years.53

The literary context for this passage is instructive. It is part of our longest extant fragment of Demetrius, which begins with Jacob’s leaving his parents to travel to Haran and ends with the death of Moses’s father Amram; that is to say, it covers the events from Genesis 28 until the beginning of Exodus. The outstanding characteristic of this passage is its chronological focus. For example, Demetrius gives the years and months within which Jacob’s children were born, their ages upon arrival in Canaan, and their ages upon arrival in Egypt. The non-chronological sections are divided between some simple retellings of biblical events and some more elaborate exegetical interventions. The presence of the two features we have just noted—establishing an elaborate and detailed chronological time line for biblical events and summing up the years that have passed between central events in the biblical narrative—leads us to the obvious conclusion that the chronographical aspect of his work is crucial for Demetrius. The fragment of Demetrius cited by Clement is, of course, another example of the second feature, the summing up of years.54 Besides the dozens of chronological calculations, most of which are based on his investigations into the Bible,55 the surviving fragments of Demetrius include three exegetical units with no connection at all to chronological matters. The subjects of these passages are: (1) Why did 51. A rewarding discussion of the titles of the Hellenistic-Jewish historiographical compositions can be found in Joseph Geiger, “Form and Content in Jewish-Hellenistic Historiography,” Scripta Classica Israelitica 8–9 (1985–1988): 120–29. 52. Two such summations exist and will be discussed directly. 53. See Holladay, Historians, 73–74. 54. See ibid., 78–79. 55. By “his” I mean “his or a source that he used.”

442  Making History Joseph not bring his father and brothers to Egypt after he was appointed Pharaoh’s vizier? (2) Why did Joseph give more gifts to Benjamin than to his other brothers? (3) How did Israel obtain the weapons with which they fought in the wilderness? The formal structure of all three passages is exegetical, not narratival. Elsewhere in his work, Demetrius tends not to explain how he reached his chronological conclusions, simply presenting them throughout the narrative without distinguishing information mentioned explicitly in the Bible from results of his own investigations. In contrast, these three passages include a citation of the original source, followed by an explanation of the specific difficulty, and a response to it; this is a manifestly exegetical manner of presentation.56 The sharp difference in form and content between Demetrius’s usual style—a series of chronological statements or a brief retelling of the biblical narrative—and the discourse of question and answer employed in these nonchronological passages leads me to suggest that Demetrius took these exegetical passages from an earlier exegetical composition.57 Presumably he included

56. I wish to emphasize the appearance of these elements, but their order is not identical in all three instances. 57. My emphasis on “an earlier exegetical composition” comes to underscore the use of this hypothetical exegetical composition by a historian-chronographer. My suggestion that Demetrius used an earlier composition (or compositions) is made tentatively: the only evidence is the disparity in styles. Demetrius’s use of this exegetical method was emphasized by Freudenthal in his work Alexander Polyhistor und die von ihm erhaltenem Reste judäischer und samaritanischer Geschichtswerke, 44–46. This literary-exegetical method was used for hundreds of years by the Greeks, Romans, and subsequently by the Christians. There is no good recent survey concerning its use in the earlier period; see Heinrich Dörrie, “Erotapokriseis,” RAC 6:342–47; and the comments of Martin Schmidt, “The Homer of the Scholia: What Is Explained to the Reader?,” in Omero tremila anni dopo, ed. Franco Montanari, Storia e letteratura 210 (Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 2002), 159–83, here 162–65. Concerning the later period, see Adam Kamesar, Jerome, Greek Scholarship, and the Hebrew Bible: A Study of the Quaestiones Hebraicae in Genesim, Oxford Classical Monographs (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993) 82–96; Albert Viciano, “Das Formale Verfahren der Antiochenischen Schriftauslegung: Ein Forschungsüberblick,” in Stimuli: Exegese und ihre Hermeneutik in Antike und Christentum: Festschrift für Ernst Dassmann, ed. Georg Schöllgen and Clemens Scholten, Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum: Ergänzungsband 23 (Münster: Achendorff, 1996), 370–405, here 393–95. See also Erotapokriseis: Early Christian Question-and-Answer Literature in Context, ed. Annelie Volgers and Claudio Zamagni, CBET 37 (Leuven: Peeters, 2004). The title of Niehoff’s article (Maren R. Niehoff, “Questions and Answers in Philo and Genesis Rabbah,” JSJ 39 [2008]: 337–66) is misleading, for she does not cite a single question from Genesis Rabbah that could be categorized as belonging to the genre of questions and answers. The question “From what tree did Adam and Eve eat?” is a simple clarificatory question; questions such as this are not found in Philo’s Questions and Answers compositions, nor are they found in similar compositions by other authors. Similarly, the main part of her work concerning the answers to these questions must be rejected. The distinction she draws between the answers by the Tannaim and those by the Amoraim is incorrect—half of the sages whom she perceives to be Tannaim are actually Amoraim.

Milikowsky: Looking at the Past  443 them in this work because they relate to historical aspects of biblical exegesis, focusing not on meaning and interpretation but on historical events. We need now to touch on the literary-exegetical form of questions and answers, and the simplest way to do so is to summarily describe the relevant elements of Philo’s Questions and Answers on Genesis and Exodus and Porphyry’s Homeric Questions. Philo begins every unit with a question, but only a small percentage of them present a difficulty that needs to be resolved in the biblical text. The majority simply ask questions like “why does Scripture say … [sc. specific words],” “why does … [sc. a specific biblical personage] do … [sc. a specific action],” “what is the meaning of the words ….” In response, Philo gives allegorical interpretations of the words (and occasionally literal and allegorical explanations).58 In Porphyry’s Homeric Questions there generally is a problem that must be resolved or a question that must be answered, but at least in book 1 of the composition “the first sentence of each zētēma [inquiry, question] … is a statement or indirect question but never a direct question.”59 The difference between this less-structured exegetical mode and the more-structured mode as used by Philo in his Questions and Answers compositions is worthy of attention. In an important study, David Runia makes some incisive observations.60 He is surely correct that the literary-exegetical form of “Questions and Answers” preceded Philo. He writes, “Philo’s exegetical procedures [sc. in his two treatises De Gigantibus and Quod Deus sit Immutabilis] grew out of the quaestio et solutio method used … in Jewish exegesis.”61 Also convincing is his claim (pace Valentin Nikiprowetzky) that “an identification of the central quaestio and a caput58. See Ralph Marcus, ed. and trans., Philo. Questions and Answers on Genesis, LCL (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1961); and Philo. Questions and Answers on Exodus, LCL (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970). 59. Jake A. MacPhail Jr., Porphyry’s “Homeric Questions” on the “Iliad”: Text, Translation, Commentary, Texte und Kommentare 36 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2011), 4. Only book 1 exists in independent transmission, in MS Vaticanus graecus 305. All other questions have been collected from scholia and various extracts. For book 1 see Porphyri, Quaestionum Homericarum liber I, ed. A. R. Sodano (Naples: Giannini, 1970); and Porphyry, The Homeric Questions: A Bilingual Edition, trans. Robin R. Schlunk, Lang Classical Studies 2 (New York: P. Lang, 1993). 60. See David T. Runia, “The Structure of Philo’s Allegorical Treatises: A Review of Two Recent Studies and Some Additional Comments,” VC 38 (1984): 209–56, here 226–31, especially his conclusion on 230. 61. See ibid., 230. The phrase skipped—indicated by the ellipsis—is “in the Synagogue and.” The term “the Synagogue” is occasionally found in scholarship antecedent to World War II as meaning “the Jewish collective”; if Runia is using this quaint expression, then his point is correct. I do not, however, think that this form was used in the synagogue, meaning a place of gathering for liturgical or homiletical purposes. It seems more appropriate for an intellectual/pedagogic context, and even more so for a literary context, than it does for a synagogue sermon. A speaker or preacher does not normally present the audience with short, independent literary units. Rather, he tends to employ rhetorical strategies to tie all of his material together.

444  Making History by-caput summary of the contents of the solutio cannot do full justice to the dynamic element in Philo’s exegetical structures.”62 Runia’s analysis is important in this context because he shows how a specific author, Philo, sometimes produces an exegetical composition with a structured question-and-answer format: a question, then a presentation of the argumentation, and finally, a resolution. At other times, however, Philo produces an exegetical composition that contains these three basic elements, but he alters the format and adds additional features, such as commented-upon texts-in-parallel, meandering asides, and major changes of order. Demetrius could easily have addressed his mass of chronological issues in the literary format he uses in nonchronological passages. For instance, instead of declaring that Jacob was seventy-seven when he arrived in Haran, he could have asked how old Jacob was when he arrived in Haran and then provided the exegetical details that led him to the conclusion that Jacob was seventy-seven. In chronological passages, however, Demetrius does not ask questions, nor does he generally cite the exegetical justification for the chronological information. Demetrius has one chronological-exegetical unit with the same level of detail as these three passages: the explicit presentation of the question and the comprehensive presentation of all the steps in its resolution. This unit deals with the number of generations that passed from Abraham until Moses and Zipporah.63 Though the topic of this unit is chronological-genealogical, and thus is more in accord with the general tenor of the extant fragments of Demetrius, I privilege its formal characteristics over its topic and thus include it with the other three units as originating in an exegetical composition. Niehoff focuses solely on these four extended, relatively autonomous, exegetical units. In contrast to my emphasis on the inconsistency between these four units and Demetrius’s general mode of discourse, Niehoff divides them into two groupings of two units. The first grouping are the two units that begin with a question, and that she attributes to Demetrius’s colleagues. Here she includes “Benjamin’s presents” and “the weapons of the Israelites,” both of which begin with a question. In the second grouping, which Niehoff attributes to Demetrius himself, she includes 62. See Runia, “Structure of Philo’s Allegorical Treatises,” 231. He is remarking on ­ alentin Nikiprowetzky, “L’exégèse de Philon d’Alexandrie dans le De Gigantibus et le Quod V Deus sit Immutabilis,” in Two Treatises of Philo of Alexandria: A Commentary on the “De gigantibus” and “Quod Deus sit immutabilis,” ed. David Winston and John M. Dillon, BJS 25 (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1983) 5–75. Runia admires Nikiprowetzky’s work on Philo’s exegesis immensely and sees him as having crucially furthered the field. At the same time, he sees Nikiprowetzky’s approach as presenting a too-structured and too-static portrayal of Philo’s method. 63. Holladay, Historians, 74–78.

Milikowsky: Looking at the Past  445 “Joseph not sending to bring his father to Egypt” and “the disparity in generations from Abraham to Moses and to Zipporah,” neither of which begins with a question. Niehoff focuses on the first grouping, the two passages she attributes to Demetrius’s colleagues and which she may assume must be attributed to different writers (being two questions). So Niehoff writes of “colleagues,” in the plural, and consequently refers to veritable “circles of Jewish Bible exegetes” using “Aristotelian scholarship” as “developed by Aristarchus.”64 The purported Aristotelian tradition of scholarship is crucial to Niehoff: the title of her chapter is “Questions and Answers in Aristotelian Style: Demetrius’s Anonymous Colleagues.” Niehoff does not challenge the consensus that Demetrius lived in Alexandria (by contrast, she does question the consensus that Demetrius lived in the third century BCE). Indeed, her title—Jewish Exegesis and Homeric Scholarship in Alexandria65— emphasizes Alexandria, a place Aristotle is believed never to have visited. Why, then, is Aristotle’s scholarship so important to Niehoff? Niehoff does not explicitly answer this question, although she hints at the answer in her chapter in various ways discernible by someone aware of the scholarly context. The likely answer is that there is no evidence of a question-and-answer genre of exegetical writing in Alexandria. Since Niehoff focuses on Demetrius’s two “Questions and Answers” as the strongest evidence for the impact of Hellenistic scholarship, she has no choice but to import into Alexandria Aristotle’s exegetical writings on Homer, which are written in the question-and-answer genre. Demetrius is thus the sole substantiation of the phenomenon. Niehoff touches on this when she writes that the dominant scholarly paradigm is no longer “Rudolf Pfeiffer’s earlier argument for a significant break between Alexandrian scholarship and the Classical tradition,” and “scholars have increasingly appreciated Aristotle’s enormous influence on the literary activity of Alexandria,” citing a host of secondary sources in a footnote.66 The larger question regarding Aristotle’s influence on Alexandrian literary scholarship has many, multifarious ramifications. But even if it be granted that Pfeiffer’s assertion of an essential discontinuity between the Aristotelian tradition and the Alexandrian scholarly and literary elite is incorrect, this does not necessarily support the hypothesis of an Aristotelian provenance of the question-and-answer genre in Alexandria. We should note Pfeiffer’s substantiated claim that Alexandrian intellectuals of the early Hellenistic period were not enthusiastic about this literary form

64. Niehoff, Jewish Exegesis, 51. Aristarchus was a literary scholar and Homeric exegete active in Alexandria in the first half of the second century BCE. 65. Emphasis mine. 66. Niehoff, Jewish Exegesis, 44 and n. 23.

446  Making History and considered it unserious,67 and that William Slater does not deny the basic validity of this conclusion despite his assessment that it is too strong and his efforts to temper it.68 To summarize our discussion to this point: (1) Given the radically disparate modes of exposition in the extant fragments of Demetrius, I think it likely that all the formally exegetical units in Demetrius are of the same provenance; and (2) given the prominence of the question-and-answer genre in Demetrius and its limited employment among the circle of literary critics and Homeric exegetes associated with the Alexandrian Library, there is already a prima facie basis to question the purported dependence of the former upon the latter. Niehoff deals first with the “the weapons of the Israelites” passage: But someone asked how the Israelites obtained weapons, seeing that they departed from Egypt unarmed—for they said that after they had gone a three days’ journey and had offered a sacrifice, they would return again. It appears, therefore, that those who did not drown appropriated the weapons of those who did drown.69

The section of her chapter dealing with this passage is entitled “A Problem of Contradiction,” and Niehoff uses the discourse of “contradiction” to connect Demetrius’s passage with problems of contradiction found in Aristotle’s comments on Homer and in the extant fragments of Aristarchus. I cannot concur with the supposition that “contradiction” is the proper characterization of the “problem” with which this passage deals. Here are two examples of contradictions. The Bible says in one verse that the Israelites remained in Egypt four hundred years and asserts in another verse that the stay lasted four hundred and thirty years. Or, to cite an example Niehoff mentions a few pages later, Homer says in the Iliad that Crete has one hundred cities, but ninety in the Odyssey.70 Demetrius’s “problem” is the simple clarification-seeking question with which the passage begins—how did the Israelites have sufficient weapons to fight a battle so soon after the exodus? The further delineation of Demetrius’s problem does not prove that they did not have weapons when they battled Amalek, which would indeed be a contradiction. Rather, it disallows the possible response to the initial question that the Israelites took weapons with them from Egypt. Demetrius suggests, 67. Rudolf Pfeiffer, History of Classical Scholarship: From the Beginnings to the End of the Hellenistic Age (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968) 69–71, 263. 68. William J. Slater, “Aristophanes of Byzantium and Problem-Solving in the Museum,” Classical Quarterly 32 (1982): 336–49, here 338 n. 8. 69. Translation from Holladay, Historians, 76–77. 70. Niehoff, Jewish Exegesis, 42.

Milikowsky: Looking at the Past  447 instead, that Exod 5:3 (or 8:27) implies that they did not take weapons with them from Egypt.71 But let us accept, arguendo, Niehoff’s claim that there is “a problem of contradiction” here. This sort of problem—it then follows from Niehoff’s argument—could be raised only by someone using “Aristotelian scholarship” as “developed by Aristarchus.” On the basis of Niehoff’s argument, one must conclude that only Alexandrians would be concerned by the fact that the Bible states, for example, in two different verses that Aaron died in two different places.72 I find such a supposition to be implausible in the extreme. True, it is difficult to identify with or ascertain the nature of the mentality of a society not grounded in or dependent on the analytical and logical examination of events and texts as practiced in what we generally call “Western Civilization.” Nonetheless, I am convinced that certain elements of rationality are innate to the human mind, whatever its cultural context, and an awareness of contradiction is one of them.73 At any rate, as noted, Niehoff constructs her conjectural edifice of Demetrius’s colleagues having been inspired by the literary analyses of Aristotle and Aristarchus on the basis of two questions raised by Demetrius. The first, which was just cited and analyzed, asks how the Israelites attained weapons with which to fight the Amalekites, and the second is why Joseph gave five portions to his brother Benjamin but only single portions to his other brothers (Gen 43:34). I have no doubt that intelligent and savvy readers of the biblical text throughout the generations, even those who never heard of Homer, indeed asked these very questions.74 Regarding the question of the “Israelites’ weapons,” Niehoff rejects 71. The connotation of saying “we will go for a three-day journey into the wilderness” is that they will return after the three days. In point of fact, though, and in spite of what Demetrius says, in no place does the Bible recount that anyone at any time said they would return after the three days. This, of course, diminishes the contradiction even more. Also worth noting is that the logic of having “returning” mean that they would have “no weapons” is not at all compelling: “wilderness” is a place not regularly inhabited by humans, where one could easily expect to encounter bandits and marauders, against whom weapons will assuredly be necessary. Furthermore, merchants could have come and sold them weapons within the more-than-month that passed from the exodus until the battle with Amalek. 72. See Num 33:38 (also 20:28) vs. Deut 10:6. 73. I would add that the non-Western mind will possibly find it easier to accommodate the contradictory data; I see this as a limitation of the Western mind, not the reverse. Questions of universal rationality, and the interplay of the Western rationalistic tradition with this purported universal rationality, have of course been deliberated upon extensively, from many different perspectives. 74. I will also add that the question Demetrius does ask, which is one not of contradiction but of missing information, may possibly be more indicative of Hellenistic stimuli than of contradiction: the desire to systematize and leave no unknowns does not seem to be a necessary aspect of universal rationality, and many exegetes would not be bothered by the lack of knowledge; see further below.

448  Making History Holladay’s pointing to Exod 13:18,75 the Hebrew text of which states that the Israelites went up out of the land of Egypt ḥamušim, a word often translated to mean “armed.” Indeed, it is so rendered twice in the Greek translation of Josh 1:14 and 4:12. But in LXX Exod 13:18, this word is translated as “in the fifth generation.” Niehoff is convinced that no Alexandrian exegete had “access to the Hebrew original”76 and that the verse is thus irrelevant to Demetrius. The extent of knowledge of Hebrew in Alexandria is an open question, and by its very nature will remain so. Clearly, for Demetrius in the third century BCE, the Septuagint was the primary text.77 It should, however, be remembered that the evidence for the use of the Septuagint is often from recensional variation, which generally would have been attested in the Hebrew Vorlage of the Greek. In short, without claiming that Demetrius knew Hebrew well, or even at all, or that most of his Alexandrian contemporaries did, I find it plausible that there were exegetes who had access to the Hebrew original. The assumption that Demetrius’s exegetical point of departure was the correct translation of ḥamušim in Exod 13:18 will illuminate the passage considerably. We have seen that the question in play is one of information: How did the Israelites attain weapons for their battle with the Amalekites? Niehoff interpreted the passage as a problem of contradiction, and for good reason—the citation and interpretation of Exod 5:3 seems to contradict the previous introductory statement (though essentially it does not).78 If, however, the initial exegetical context was the correct translation of Exod 13:18, then the citation of Exod 5:3 makes beautiful sense—ḥamušim in Exod 13:18 cannot mean that the Israelites left Egypt “armed” because we can deduce from Exod 5:3 that they were not armed when they left. The importance of this hypothetical reconstruction is that it indicates that Niehoff’s portrayal of the exegetical context is out of kilter. We are not dealing with a group of Jews who attended seminars in literary criticism at the Alexandrine Library and applied these methods to the text they had been reading all their lives, the Bible. Rather, this sacred text had been the subject of extended study and analysis for many centuries already, certainly in the land of Israel and presumably to some extent in Egypt as well. By the very nature of the exegetical process, there developed among both

75. Niehoff, Jewish Exegesis, 40 n. 6. 76. Ibid. 77. This is true also for the Alexandrian native Philo in the first century CE; see, most recently, Sarah J. K. Pearce, “Philo and the Septuagint,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Septuagint, ed. Alison G. Salvesen and Timothy Michael Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), 405–20. 78. See n. 71 above.

Milikowsky: Looking at the Past  449 Homeric and biblical exegetes certain types of questions with some generic similarity. John Dillery’s thirty-one-page chapter on Demetrius in his monograph Clio’s Other Son appeared in 2015,79 four years after Niehoff’s Jewish Exegesis and Homeric Scholarship in Alexandria,80 and he cites Niehoff a considerable number of times. It is thus noteworthy that Dillery discusses Aristotle, a central figure in Niehoff’s reconstruction of the Weltanschauung of Demetrius’s composition, in only one limited context, and that Aristarchus, the other central figure in Niehoff’s reconstruction, appears only in a secondary context, as the putative source of the Porphyrian dictum “to clarify Homer from Homer.” At the beginning of the chapter Dillery writes of “Greek scholarly methods of critically reading and explaining older texts that Demetrius adapted in his treatment of the Bible” and states that “Greek exegetical methodology is intrinsic to his way of explaining texts.”81 This leads the reader to believe that Greek scholarly methods will be the major focus of the chapter, but Dillery takes up this theme only many pages later. More than Niehoff, Dillery bases himself on specific terminology that appears in Greek exegetical scholarship and in Demetrius. One of his prime examples is διαπορεῖσθαι (“to raise a question”),82 and its cognates, which “were common critical terms in the vocabulary of Greek literary scholarship.”83 However, verbal forms from this root, having the exact same denotation as in Demetrius, also occur extensively in the works of such authors as Polybius and Plutarch, and so I see no necessary reason to associate Demetrius more with Greek literary scholarship than with these authors. The one possible explanation that comes to mind is that both “Greek literary scholarship” and Demetrius are in some sense commenting on texts. But, in fact, Demetrius is more historian and chronographer than exegete.84 79. See n. 46 above. 80. See n. 45 above. 81. Dillery, Clio’s Other Sons, 359. The position of this statement at the beginning of the chapter leads one to think it is a “major focus”; if it would come later, this would be less true. 82. See Holladay, Historians, 70–71. 83. Dillery, Clio’s Other Sons, 377. 84. Another lexical infelicity was caused by Dillery’s (372) misguidedly following the lead of Ben Zion Wacholder, Eupolemos A Study of Judaeo-Greek Literature, Monographs of the Hebrew Union College 3 (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1974), 281: “Wacholder has observed that inasmuch as the injunction prohibits only the consumption of the sinew of “cattle” (τῶν κτηνῶν), Demetrius is, in this case, actually at odds with later Jewish interpretative tradition (here, the Mishnah), which applies the ban to all animals.” In fact, the word κτῆνος in the plural can mean “flocks and herds [of all sorts of livestock],” and is even used in the Septuagint to translate ṣon, a collective noun for sheep and goats. It can also refer to an ass (Josephus, Ant. 4.110). Demetrius is not at odds with later Jewish tradition.

450  Making History Given the four-year gap between the publication of Niehoff’s book and Dillery’s, it is striking that Dillery made relatively little use of ­Niehoff’s arguments. Rather than focusing on structural similarities between Demetrius and Homeric exegetical writings, as Niehoff did, Dillery emphasizes lexical similarities and the use of purported technical terminology. Dillery’s hesitation in using Niehoff’s conclusions may follow in part from his justified rejection of her dating of Demetrius to the late second or first century BCE.85 If Demetrius wrote in the last quarter of the third century BCE, as most scholars agree, he cannot have been influenced by Aristarchus, who was active two generations later.86 Toward the end of his study Dillery presents Erich Gruen’s reservations regarding the claim that Demetrius “had imbibed the exacting principles of Alexandrian scholarship,”87 and responds that Gruen’s comments do “not take account of the exact replication of Greek scholarly terminology in Demetrius’ fragments.”88 But the limited examples of phraseology and terminology that Dillery cites to substantiate his claim seem insufficiently restricted to the world of Greek literary scholarship to justify his far-reaching conclusions. Several scholars have written about the need for caution regarding the significance of vocabulary. Here is René Nünlist in The Ancient Critic at Work: [T]he scholia often comment on questions of literary criticism without recourse to “standard” technical vocabulary. Instead the critic simply gives a periphrastic description of a phenomenon for which others may use a technical term. Or there may be no technical term at all….  In the course of doing research for this book it became increasingly clear that the individual terms are often used with so little consistency that a presentation of the evidence which takes the Greek terms as its primary organising principle does not seem advisable.89

And here is Francesca Schironi in The Best of the Grammarians: Aristarchus of Samothrace on the Iliad: [M]ost of the terms in this field (sc. literary criticism and exegesis) are not, strictly speaking, ‘technical terminology’…. They were also used by Aristotle as well as other Greek authors in literary exegesis, but were not “invented” to express technical notions (as happened for the parts of

85. Niehoff, Jewish Exegesis, 55. 86. So Dillery, Clio’s Other Sons, 262, and the vast majority of scholars. 87. Erich S. Gruen, Heritage and Hellenism: The Reinvention of Jewish Tradition, Hellenistic Culture and Society 30 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 117. 88. Dillery, Clio’s Other Sons, 381. 89. René Nünlist, The Ancient Critic at Work: Terms and Concepts of Literary Criticism in Greek Scholia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 3.

Milikowsky: Looking at the Past  451 speech of the techne grammatike). Nevertheless, even if there is no guarantee that the terms in the Aristonicus scholia are really those utilized by Aristarchus, what really matters is not the “form”, but the “content” of these words, i.e., the concepts that they express.90

If indeed Demetrius had participated in or listened to the discussions of Alexandrian Homeric literary critics and exegetes, what explains his silence on the subject and his avoidance of all extrabiblical sources and events. Dillery writes that he [finds it] inconceivable that a Jew living in Alexandria, say, toward the end of the third-century BC … would not have made use of the techniques of literary analysis then being deployed in the same city by Greek authorities in the exegesis of their own archaic texts.91

My response to Dillery is that the vast majority of Greek-speaking inhabitants of Alexandria, and the Jews among them—including those who had received a classic Greek education focusing on Homer, as well as dramatists and authors of other compositions—were unlikely to have had even a passing familiarity with the doings of the elite literary and textual critics.92 Furthermore, it is quite conceivable that Alexandrian Jews in the first centuries after the conquest of the Middle East by Alexander saw themselves as a cultural and intellectual elite vis-à-vis the incoming Greeks. After all, their cultural production was a millennium old, and that of the Greeks much younger. And while Greek language and Greek gods had begun to enter the Levant several centuries before Alexander, elite Greek culture was much less evident.93 Rejecting Niehoff’s and Dillery’s repositioning of Demetrius at the apogee of elite Hellenistic culture in Ptolemaic Alexandria, we are left with an author who, as noted above, contains no explicit markers of Hellenistic or non-Jewish culture. As opposed to all other Jewish-Hellenistic authors quoted by Polyhistor and then Eusebius, Demetrius’s extant work 90. Francesca Schironi, The Best of the Grammarians: Aristarchus of Samothrace on the Iliad (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2018), 2. 91. Dillery, Clio’s Other Sons, 383. 92. How well does a run-of-the-mill relatively intellectual resident of Boston know what is taught about literature in the department of English at Harvard University or about the Bible at the Harvard Divinity School? 93. The claims of Niehoff and Dillery remind me of a very different but somewhat parallel claim: Joseph Mélèze-Modrzejewski had no doubt that Demetrius was a disciple of Eratosthenes: “[Eratosthenes] was the inventor of mathematical chronology; his writings in this field had brought a measure of order into Greek historiography. Demetrios was obviously his disciple, had studied his works and adopted his methods” (The Jews of Egypt: From Rameses II to Emperor Hadrian, trans. Robert Cornman [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995], 63).

452  Making History contains not an iota of explicit evidence that he used extrabiblical material for the biblical period. Notwithstanding the absence of any immediately visible Hellenistic influence upon Demetrius, several scholars have argued—I think correctly—that, in one specific respect, the Hellenistic world surrounding him did in fact influence him significantly. The shift from the biblical story with Israel’s relationship to God at its center to the nontheological historical retelling of events, the value-free survey of the past, and the central emphasis on genealogy and chronology all testify to some sort of relationship between Demetrius and approaches found in early Hellenistic historiographical traditions. As Elias Bickerman wrote, “the resolving of the epic of the Bible into ordinary history, the purely historical approach to the Torah, the attention to chronology, the rationalization of exegetical difficulties—all that follows the pattern set up by Greek historians such as Hellanicus … for re-telling Greek pre-history.”94 The phrases that Bickerman uses to describe Demetrius could as easily apply to Seder Olam, and indeed the comparison between them is eye-opening. Although there are no points of contact in terms of content, Seder Olam and Demetrius can be said to form a historiographical-exegetical genre of their own. Both deal almost exclusively with chronology, both use similar modes of biblical exegesis, and neither uses extrabiblical sources. The comparison is intriguing because both these works are unique in the literary contexts within which they are generally included: Seder Olam in rabbinic literature and Demetrius among Jewish-Hellenistic historians. That chronography was a well-developed genre of Jewish historiography in Hellenistic-Roman times can be substantiated by good evidence. I have dealt with this matter in my introduction to Seder Olam and in my paper in the Fraade festschrift and so shall provide here only a brief overview of the detailed discussion in those studies.95 Chronological statements are found in all the narrative books of the Bible, and in most of the prophetic books also, but they are generally focused on the date of a specific occurrence, the age of a person when a specific event occurred, or the duration of a specific period, such as the stay in Egypt or the reign of a particular monarch. Such localized chronological statements do not allude to any fundamental concern with chro-

94. Elias J. Bickerman, “The Jewish Historian Demetrios,” in Christianity, Judaism and Other Greco-Roman Cults: Studies for Morton Smith at Sixty, ed. Jacob Neusner, 4 vols., SJLA 12 (Leiden: Brill, 1975), 3:72–84, here 78. See also Geiger, “Form and Content in Jewish-Hellenistic Historiography,” 120–29 (n. 51 above) and Gruen, Heritage and Hellenism (n. 10 above). 95. Milikowsky, Seder Olam, 1:10–17; for my paper in the Fraade festschrift (“At the Beginning of Rabbinic Literary Culture”), see n. 42 above.

Milikowsky: Looking at the Past  453 nography, which would necessarily focus on the chronological continuum, as in the summing up of larger periods of time.96 A famous counterexample is the assertion in 1 Kgs 6:1 that the temple was built in the 480th year from the exodus from Egypt. Such summings up are so few and far between that, as expected, biblical chronology was not a major concern for Jewish biblical commentators in the ensuing millennia. The only period for which this is not true is the Hellenistic-Roman period. I have little doubt that the correct explanation for this phenomenon is exactly what was quoted from Bickerman a few paragraphs earlier. Demetrius thus becomes a central figure in my attempt to create a structured delineation of the historical development of the various genres of Jewish historiographical writing in the Hellenistic-Roman period. The ability to couple Demetrius and Seder Olam—and many other smaller fragments, quotations, and hints of chronographical compositions— within a specific genre of historiographical writing, that is, chronography, and then place this genre within its intellectual context allows for an elegant, and perhaps also accurate, reconstruction of the ebb and flow of Jewish historiography in the Hellenistic-Roman period. To summarize this reconstruction: one cluster of historiographical compositions written during this period was composed in close proximity to the appearance of the Jewish people as a major player in world politics.97 This cluster includes the books of Maccabees in the days of the Maccabees and Josephus’s books in the days after the First Revolt against Rome. The writing of history is related to significant political and military activity, specifically, constituting a sovereign polity and rebelling against Roman imperial dominance. The other cluster of historiographical compositions was generated by the assimilation and integration of Hellenistic modes of presentation and inquiry by various groupings of Jewish intellectual elites. Included within this cluster are Josephus, the majority of the fragmentary authors cited by Polyhistor and Eusebius, and, exemplifying the least degree of Greek-Jewish hybridity, Demetrius and the author of Seder Olam. The implication of this severely condensed and overly schematized historical reconstruction is that, when both these etiologies of historio96. Elias Bickerman asserts that chronography is “the method of establishing time-intervals between events and between them and the present” (Chronology of the Ancient World, 2nd ed., Aspects of Greek and Roman Life [Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1980], 62). In my introduction to Seder Olam, I note that it “does not contain an overall chronological system” (1:4); this point is relevant to the days Seder Olam was composed, when the use of eras and epochs was widespread, but not for early times. 97. The cluster to which I am referring is a phenomenological cluster: there is no temporal affiliation—or affiliation of any sort other than phenomenological—between the members of the cluster.

454  Making History graphical compositions have run their course,98 the anticipated consequence is the absence of historiographical concerns and writings.

Why Did Jewish Historiography Disappear? This brings us to a crucial question (which has been implicit in much of the previous discussion). Given that, as noted in the beginning of this article, the Bible includes books that describe historical events, are historiographically oriented, and allow the construction of a historiographical continuum from the beginnings of Israelite history until the return from the Babylonian exile, why did historiography disappear?99 The eminent Jewish-Italian scholar Arnaldo Momigliano returned to this enigma over and over in his writings, and, in his last foray into the subject, gave what he calls a double answer: On the one hand the postbiblical Jews really thought they had in the Bible all the history that mattered: superevalution of a certain type of history implied undervaluation of all other events. On the other hand the whole development of Judaism led to something unhistorical, eternal, the Law, the Torah. The significance which the Jews came to attach to the Torah killed their interest in general historiography.100

More recently, Amram Tropper devoted much of an article to this topic and presented several different explanations, which he does not consider mutually exclusive, for the disappearance of Jewish historiography.101 98. The end of significant political and military activity is relatively simple to determine, especially when the observer has a two-thousand-year perspective. Much more complicated is the question of the end of Greek-Jewish hybridity. The fact is that we have little literary evidence of this cultural phenomenon from after the first century CE; this does not mean there was none, only that it did not survive. I do not think rabbinic literature exemplifies Greek-Jewish cultural hybridity. 99. Many of the world’s cultures have no significant historiographical component, so the question why postbiblical Judaism in general and rabbinic Judaism in particular have such a small historiographical component, would not trouble us were it not for the cultural antecedent we find in the Bible. 100. Momigliano, Classical Foundations, 23 (see also 20–23). Still worth looking at are his earlier ponderings on the matter: “Remarks on Eastern History Writing,” 236–38; and, “Greek Culture and the Jews,” 344–45. I will return to this just-quoted final statement of Momigliano on the subject toward the end of this article. 101. Amram D. Tropper, “The Fate of Jewish Historiography after the Bible: A New Interpretation,” History and Theory 43 (2004): 179–97; quotation from 189. After his citation of Momigliano, he turns to Jacob Neusner’s article from 1966: “The Religious Uses of History: Judaism in First-Century A.D. Palestine and Third-Century Babylonia,” History and Theory 5 (1966): 153–71. We should be reluctant to see this as Neusner’s final word on the subject, since he returned to it three more times (that I know of), each time ignoring what he had

Milikowsky: Looking at the Past  455 The last explanation he cites, seemingly the one he considers the most significant, is the putative similarity of the rabbis on this point to the Greek-speaking intellectuals identified in modern discussion as part of the Second Sophistic. Due to their similar historical settings, the rabbis and many Greek-speaking intellectuals in the east developed an idealized, as opposed to historical, view of the past, while elaborating their respective cultural and spiritual identities.  [T]he rabbis and Greek-speaking litterateurs presented themselves as masters of the classics, masters of the literary heritage that served as the source for cultural and spiritual self-expression…. In this manner, rabbis, like sophists, offered their communities a positive self-image linked to a glorious past while simultaneously legitimating their own role as cultural authorities and masters of the classics. Thus, for both rabbis and sophists, historiography was for the most part irrelevant.102

I do not find this comparison convincing. For the sophists of the Second Sophistic, historiography was not for the most part irrelevant. I, of course, have no intention of denying the classicism that is such a central part of the Second Sophistic, and which Tropper describes so well.103 But historiography of all periods remained a central intellectual pursuit. I am sympathetic to Tropper’s desire to associate rabbinic homiletical activity with Second Sophistic rhetoric and declamation. Nonetheless, their particularities are as important as their commonalities. True, “the constant attempt to construct a cultural identity through the memory of an idealized past was common to both the rabbis and many Greek-speaking litterateurs of the early common era,”104 but also to just about any cultural entity in the history of humanity. For the sophist, the fictional declamation is understood in the context of historiography and classified in opposition to the historical declamation; for the rabbis, the context of the nonhistorical narrative elaboration of the biblical narrative is hermeneutics: a divinely inspired, biblically generated fiction is presented to the audience by the homilist. written previously. See Neusner, “The Birth of History in Christianity and Judaism,” The Christian and Judaic Invention of History, ed. Jacob Neusner, AAR Studies in Religion 55 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1990) 3–15; Neusner, “From Historical Thinking to Paradigmatic Thinking: Yerushalmi’s Zakhor Revisited,” in Approaches to Ancient Judaism: New Series, ed. Jacob Neusner, South Florida Studies in the History of Judaism 7 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1995) 219–39; note also Neusner, The Presence of the Past, the Pastness of the Present: History, Time, and Paradigm in Rabbinic Judaism (Bethesda, MD: CDL, 1996). 102. Tropper, “Fate of Jewish Historiography,” 190–91. 103. Ibid., 180–84. Our discussion will pass over the succession list, a very minor element in both the Second Sophistic and rabbinic literature. 104. Ibid., 191.

456  Making History Earlier I cited Ewen Bowie on Greek historiography after the loss of Greek sovereignty.105 Here is another observation of his: “The genre attested for the largest number of sophists is historiography—a genre, of course, to which well-educated men from the political élites of both the Greek and the Latin speaking parts of the empire regularly turned their hand.”106 And Paolo Desideri, the eminent Florentine ancient historian, writes, “As is well known, the more-or-less well-preserved Greek historians of the second-century AD make up what can be considered the most impressive group of ancient historians of one and the same period throughout classical antiquity.”107 To my mind, the crucial factor for the abandonment of historiographical interest in the postbiblical period was already alluded to in Momigliano’s explanation I quoted above. Momigliano calls what he writes a double answer, but my own inclination is to combine these two statements into one answer and to add additional elements: the history the Jews had in the Bible—which was the only history that mattered and which made all other history unimportant—was the history found in the unhistorical, eternal Torah. The one thing missing in what Momigliano writes—though it is implicit—is the divine element: the Torah, the Bible, is God’s book, and so the history found in the Torah is God’s telling of history. Why concern yourself with other historical events if God addresses you directly in the biblical narration of events? We can elaborate on this suggestion on the basis of Contra Apion 1.6– 43. Here, Josephus distinguishes between Jewish historical compositions that are indubitably credible since they were written by prophets, and the historical writings of the Greeks based on oral stories and lacking credibility. Regarding the books of Jewish history from the period after King Artaxerxes of Persia, Josephus writes that they are not authoritative as were the earlier writings, for after Artaxerxes there was no “exact continu105. See Bowie, “Greeks and Their Past in the Second Sophistic” (n. 16 above). 106. Ewen Bowie, “The Geography of the Second Sophistic: Cultural Variations,” in Paideia: The World of the Second Sophistic, ed. Barbara E. Borg, Millennium-Studien 2 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2004), 65–83, here 73. 107. Paolo Desideri, “The Meaning of Greek Historiography of the Roman Imperial Age,” in Greek Romans and Roman Greeks: Studies in Cultural Interaction, ed. Erik Nis Ostenfeld, Karin Blomqvist, and Lisa C. Nevett, Aarhus Studies in Mediterranean Antiquity 3 (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 2002) 216–24, here 217; see also the fifty-year-old but still important article of Fergus Millar, “P. Herennius Dexippus: The Greek World and the Third-Century Invasions,” JRS 59 (1969): 12–29, here 12–17; the relatively recent volume by Paweł Janiszewski, The Missing Link: Greek Pagan Historiography in the Second Half of the Third Century and in the Fourth Century AD, Journal of Juristic Papyrology Supplement 6 (Warsaw: Warsaw University, 2006); and Harry Sidebottom, “Severan Historiography: Evidence, Patterns and Arguments,” in Severan Culture, ed. Simon Swain, Stephen Harrison, and Jaś Elsner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 52–82; and, in the same volume, Tim Whitmarsh, “Prose Literature and the Severan Dynasty,” 29–51, here 30–31.

Milikowsky: Looking at the Past  457 ity of prophets” (C. Ap. 1.41). If we transfer Josephus’s words to a nonpolemical internal Jewish context, it follows that authoritative history can be written only by prophets. The observer, in the ancient world as today, knows that regarding each event many versions can exist, and they are sometimes contradictory. Modern historiography, and to some extent Greek historiography, developed methods of trying to distinguish between the versions. The Jews, on the other hand, saw the Bible (after its canonization) as the sole mediating text between God and the people of Israel, since there was no more prophecy. The events recounted in the Bible are all absolutely true, which can be said of nothing else. Any history not written by prophets cannot claim to be true history, so why write a composition on the biblical past, given that the divinely inspired prophet has already told the absolute truth? To summarize and conclude: the waning of Jewish historiography began soon after the scriptural books started to be canonized, and it was a result of the process just described—God’s word is limited to the Bible and only the Bible can contain authoritative history. Any other recounting of events has no importance inasmuch as it is not God’s word and therefore not “true” history. At times of significant Jewish political activity, however, the inherent human temptation to narrate the events in written form was too great to withstand and so we have the books of the Maccabees and Josephus’s Wars of the Jews. In addition, those segments of the Jewish polity that were affected by the Greek-Jewish hybridity followed various models of Greek historiographical writing to produce their compositions. And when both of these historical phenomena receded—there was no significant Jewish political activity, and the Greek-Jewish hybrid culture was extinguished—Jewish historiography in the Hellenistic-­ Roman period ended.108

108. It is again worth emphasizing that we are of course limited in our discussion to writings that have been preserved in one way or another, and it is conceivable that historiographical writing did not end, but no cultural entity had any interest in preserving it for the future. Related to this point is our stark lack of knowledge concerning the termination of Greek-Jewish hybrid culture in the various centers of Jewish life in the Eastern empire.

“Between Her and Others” The “Spirit of Jealousy” in Numbers 5:14 and Its Ancient Jewish Reception SARAH WOLF

Introduction: Considering Qinah as a Cultural Product

A

ccording to the book of Numbers, a public ritual in response to a case of suspected adultery is set into motion by a ruaḥ qinah, a “spirit” or “fit” of what is commonly rendered as “jealousy.” In the Babylonian ­Talmud’s discussion of this ritual in the first chapter of tractate Sotah, however, the suggestion is raised that perhaps it is asur leqanot, that is, forbidden for this “jealousy” (again, as it is frequently rendered) to take place. Why does the Bavli forbid this, and what precisely is being forbidden? In what follows, I will analyze the portrayal of qinah in rabbinic literature as a state that is, if not forbidden, best avoided due to its dangerous consequences. We will see that both its legalization and its reception in rabbinic sources, as well as the rabbinic interpretation of the rite to which it is central, are closely connected to the influence and establishment of gendered norms of emotion in the late ancient world. The category of emotion in rabbinic literature has until recently been understudied.1 In fact, some scholars might question whether it is appro-

The author wishes to thank Beth Berkowitz, Erez DeGolan, Marjorie Lehman, Raphael Magarik, Ishay Rosen-Zvi, and Barry Wimpfheimer for providing helpful feedback on this article at various stages. All errors are, of course, my own. 1. There are, however, several important exceptions. For studies of specific emotions in rabbinic literature, see Shulamit Valler, Sorrow and Distress in the Talmud, Judaism and Jewish Life (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2011); Jonathan Crane, “Shameful Ambivalences: Dimensions of Rabbinic Shame,” AJS Review 35.1 (2011): 61–84; Jeffrey Rubenstein, The Culture of the Babylonian Talmud (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), 67–79; Rubenstein, “The Bavli’s Ethic of Shame,” Conservative Judaism 53.3 (2001): 27–39; and Rubenstein, “The Role of Rabbinic Disgust in Rabbinic Ethics” in Strength to Strength: Essays in Appreciation of Shaye J. D. Cohen, ed. Michael L. Satlow, BJS 363 (Providence, RI: Brown Judaic Studies, 2018), 421-36; Joel Gereboff, “Hate in Early Rabbinic Traditions,” in To Fix Torah in

459

460  Making History priate to talk about “emotions” in rabbinic sources at all. Did premodern cultures have a concept of an internal, private self that is similar enough to our own such that we can use words like “emotion” or “jealousy” with the understanding that these words mean something akin to how we understand them today?2 As for the rabbis specifically, what remains of the affective content of what might look like emotion terms when they are presented within a legal framework? These questions must be taken seriously to avoid anachronism, but they need not preclude the analysis of a category that can yield important insights for cultural historians. Emotions are always to some degree socially constructed as much as they are biological reactions, and thus, regardless of whether a society has a recognizable concept of the self, or even an equivalent to the category of “emotion” at all (which rabbinic literature does not), we can still examine that society’s explication of what types of speech and behavior are associated with specific emotion terms.3 In analyzing qinah and other similar terms, I operate under the assumption that the rabbinic understanding of such terms is likely to be different from both its biblical meaning and its modern Hebrew valence, while still committing to the overall framework of “emotions” for understanding the work such terms are doing in rabbinic thought and culture. So, for example, it may well be that the “spirit” of qinah in both biblical and rabbinic sources is conceptualized as an external force that enters the body rather than as a sense that arises and remains in one’s private thoughts.4 Keeping Their Hearts: Essays on Biblical Interpretation and Jewish Studies in Honor of B. Barry Levy, ed. Jaqueline S. du Toit, Jason Kalman, Hartley Lachter, and Vanessa R. Sasson (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 2018), 59–83. On emotions in the Second Temple period, see Françoise Mirguet, An Early History of Compassion: Emotion and Imagination in Hellenistic Judaism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017); and Ari Mermelstein, Power and Emotion in Ancient Judaism: Community and Identity in Formation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021). See also a forthcoming issue of the Journal of Textual Reasoning on emotions and halakah (vol. 14, no. 1 [2023]). 2. Though the category of “emotions” has not played a large role in these debates, the question of a rabbinic concept of an internal self, the extent to which it exists at all, and whether it developed during the rabbinic period itself has been widely addressed. See, e.g., Joshua Levinson, “From Narrative Practice to Cultural Poetics: Literary Anthropology and the Rabbinic Sense of Self,” in Homer and the Bible in the Eyes of Ancient Interpreters: Between Literary and Religious Concerns, ed. Maren R. Niehoff, Jerusalem Studies in Religion and Culture 16 (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 345–68; Mira Balberg, Purity, Body, and Self in Early Rabbinic Literature (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014); Ishay Rosen-Zvi, “The Mishnaic Mental Revolution: A Reassessment,” JJS 56.1 (2015): 36–58, and Ayelet Hoffmann Libson, Law and Self-Knowledge in the Talmud (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018). 3. See, e.g., William M. Reddy, “Against Constructionism,” Current Anthropology 38.3 (1997): 327–51; Barbara Rosenwein, “Problems and Methods in the History of Emotions,” Passions in Context 1.1 (2010): 1–31. 4. On spirit/demon possession and emotion in rabbinic literature, see Ishay Rosen-Zvi, Demonic Desires: Yetzer Hara and the Problem of Evil in Late Antiquity, Divinations (Philadel-

Wolf: “Between Her and Others”  461 this important difference in mind, we can then discuss what types of people were considered to be susceptible to qinah, what effects it was thought to have on one’s behavior, and whether it was culturally encouraged, discouraged, or neutral—just as one might ask those questions about “jealousy” in contemporary culture. By examining how emotions are constructed in rabbinic texts, we can thus gain greater insight into the assumptions and beliefs about human beings that operated within rabbinic culture. One element of the social construction of emotions that will receive particular attention here is the way in which emotions are associated with gender. This lens is particularly important for the analysis of qinah, given its association, both in Numbers and elsewhere, with interactions in which gender plays a key role. In looking at this aspect of qinah, I draw on contemporary theorists of emotion, particularly Sianne Ngai, whose work shows how cultural texts draw on and establish gendered norms of emotion, particularly in regard to negative emotions, in contemporary Western culture.5 To take an example that is adjacent to our topic, Ngai argues that the emotion of envy has been gendered female and is seen as problematic— or, to use Ngai’s term, “ugly”—since Freud’s postulation of penis envy.6 Following Melanie Klein, Ngai notes that envy is a twofold emotion, including both a sense of lack in oneself and an element of aggression toward another party who possesses the desired object or quality. Because women more often tend to be the lacking parties in society, and because aggression in women is viewed as dangerous, envy in contemporary culture is commonly viewed as a negative emotion that reveals something “ugly” about the woman who feels it, rather than as a sign of the woman’s perhaps justified hostility toward others who are part of a system that is keeping her subjugated. Though modern envy and ancient qinah are by no means the same, Ngai’s approach raises some valuable considerations for the study of emotions in any period. If an emotion is considered to be not just unpleasant for those who experience it but actually dangerous for society, how might that play out in cultural and legal representations of that affect? Does the perceived negativity of the emotion change, based on the identity of its subject or object? How does the construction of an emotion as negative either respond to or reinforce gendered emotional norms? In what follows, we will pursue some of Ngai’s questions of gender phia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011). On the ancient conceptualization of emotion as something that can enter the body from the outside, see Ruth Padel, In and Out of the Mind: Greek Images of the Tragic Self (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992). 5. Sianne Ngai, Ugly Feelings (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005). 6. Ibid., 126–73.

462  Making History and “ugly” emotions as they apply to late-ancient reception and representation of qinah. I will explore some of the ways in which the emotion of qinah was gendered, presented as negative, and regulated in late-antique Jewish sources, with results quite different from those of the modern construction of envy. By centering emotions in our analysis, we will also come to a more nuanced understanding of the role the sotah ritual played in the rabbinic legal imagination. We will see that the sotah ritual served not only as a locus for discourse and imagined control over female behavior but also as a site for the regulation of male emotion as well.

Biblical Qinah The ritual to be performed on the body of the suspected adulteress is now commonly referred to as the sotah ritual, which translates as the ritual of the straying wife. Yet it is the qinah of the husband, not the behavior of the wife, that is at the center of the biblical rite. The passage that describes the procedure, Num 5:11–31, begins: If any man’s wife has gone astray and broken faith with him in that a man has had carnal relations with her unbeknown to her husband, and she keeps secret the fact that she has defiled herself without being forced, and there is no witness against her—but the spirit of qinah comes over him and he is qineh the wife who has defiled herself; or if the spirit of qinah comes over one and he is qineh his wife although she has not defiled herself—the man shall bring his wife to the priest. (Num 5:12–15)7

Here and elsewhere, the biblical text emphasizes that the ritual may take place in two possible cases: in one case, the husband has the spirit of qinah because his wife has had sex with someone else in secret, and, in the other, the man has the spirit of qinah but the wife has not had sex with anyone else. The husband’s qinah is thus the one element of sotah that is certain, even if the woman’s past actions are not.8 The passage then details the ordeal, in which a priest forces the woman to drink bitter waters, after which she will suffer physical symptoms—distention of her belly and thigh—if she has committed adultery, but will 7. Translation from JPS, with two modifications: I have left the word qinah and its other verb forms untranslated, and I have translated ruah as “spirit” instead of “fit.” 8. Tikvah Frymer-Kensky argues that the emphasis of the qinah and the uncertainty at both the beginning and end of this passage are intentional and form a chiasmus (“The Strange Case of the Suspected Sotah [Numbers V 11-31]),” Vetus Testamentum 34.1 [1984]: 11–26). Against this argument, see Sarah Shectman, “Bearing Guilt In Numbers 5:12–31,” in Gazing on the Deep: Ancient Near Eastern and Other Studies in Honor of Tsvi Abusch, ed. Jeffrey Stackert, Barbara Nevling Porter, and David P. Wright (Bethesda, MD: CDL, 2010).

Wolf: “Between Her and Others”  463 emerge unscathed and apparently pregnant if she is innocent.9 Variations of the word qinah are repeated several more times in Num 5. In addition to the bitter waters, the ritual also includes a meal offering provided by the husband and offered by the priest on the couple’s behalf. In verses 16 and 25, this sacrifice is referred to as a meal-offering of qena’ot (the plural of qinah). Finally, the verses that conclude this ritual, verses 29–31, refer to it in its entirety as the law of q’na’ot, “when a woman goes astray while married to her husband and defiles herself, or when the spirit of qinah comes over a man and he is wrought up over his wife.” Again, the ritual is summarized as something that occurs because of the husband’s qinah, perhaps when the wife has strayed, but perhaps not. The biblical ceremony is incontrovertibly framed primarily as a sanctioned public response to qinah.10 But what is this qinah that is so central to this priestly ritual? Is the ritual meant to lend credence and power to a desire for justice, or is its goal to diffuse a potentially destructive force? Though qinah in Num 5 is often translated as “jealousy,” it is important for our purposes to determine whether “jealousy” is indeed the best translation here, and what the resonances of this term would have been for the biblical author(s) and readers.11 In his discussion of the term in the context of the Num 5 passage, Michael Fishbane argues for understanding qinah as a parallel of the Akkadian na’âdu, whose meanings also include “attention” and “scrupulous concern,” including “human attention to the will and prerogatives of a God.”12 He thus suggests interpreting torat haqena’ot as “the jurisprudence 9. Following Baruch A. Levine, Numbers 1–20: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, AB 4 (New York: Doubleday, 1993), 198. As Levine points out, however, it is not entirely clear from the passage whether she is intended to suffer a miscarriage in the case of guilt or some other ailment. 10. See also Bonna Devora Haberman, “The Suspected Adulteress: A Study of Textual Embodiment,” Prooftexts 20 (2000): 12–42, here 18: “The sotah ritual is not only, or even primarily, concerned with determining the innocence or guilt of the woman. The water of instruction is not simply a lie detector, a mechanism to solve a legal ambiguity. Feelings that the man experiences are publicly acknowledged and vindicated.” 11. I am operating under the assumption that, while people in the ancient Near East did not have the same concept of the self as moderns or even late-antique rabbis had, and while there are important philological differences to attend to in our translations of contemporary emotion words that appear as biblical terms, it is nonetheless still possible and indeed desirable to use the category of “emotion” to describe certain words such as qinah, ahavah, and so on, despite some scholarly arguments to the contrary. On the question of the history of emotions in the Bible, see William L. Moran, “The Ancient Near Eastern Background of the Love of God in Deuteronomy,” The Catholic Biblical Quarterly 25:1 (1963): 77-87; Yohanan Muffs, Love and Joy: Law, Language, and Religion in Ancient Israel (New York: The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1992); Jacqueline Lapsley, “Feeling Our Way: Love for God in Deuteronomy,” CBQ 65 (2003): 350–69; and David Lambert, “Refreshing Philology: James Barr, Supersessionism, and the State of Biblical Words,” BibInt 24 (2016): 332–56. 12. Michael Fishbane, “Accusations of Adultery: A Study of Law and Scribal Practice in Numbers 5:11–31,” HUCA 45 (1974): 25–45, here 36.

464  Making History regarding (personal) zeal (or attention to honor),”13 which he suggests helps us understand the entire proceeding by helping us see “the motivation whereby the husband goes to trial … viz. his zealous concern for both his wife’s adjudication and his own exoneration.”14 According to Fishbane’s reading, then, qinah is honorable and upstanding, an expression of “concern” for reaching a favorable legal outcome. Other scholars, however, take a different view of qinah here, interpreting it as “jealousy” rather than “scrupulousness” or “personal zeal.” After all, the husband in this passage does not seem to be especially motivated by his general concern for the law as much as by a response to his belief that his wife has been cheating on him. Those who follow this interpretation might then see the purpose of the ritual as one of diffusion and sublimation of jealousy, rather than as one of vindication of zealousness for law and order. Bonna Devora Haberman, for instance, writes, “One purpose of the ritual is to diffuse male jealousy, which in many cultures throughout the world has wreaked and continues to wreak unmitigated violent punishment of suspected and not even convicted adulteresses.”15 This “diffusing,” for Haberman, takes the form of a ritual that simultaneously offers catharsis for the husband’s jealousy while also protecting the woman from its potentially more harmful manifestations. Thus, she writes, “[t]he procedure validates a potentially excessive and disruptive emotion without allowing it to destabilize society.”16 This reading fits with several other passages in the Hebrew Bible that portray qinah as potentially dangerous, including in the context of a cuckolded husband. Proverbs 6:34 warns the reader not to commit adultery for fear of the consequences: “The qinah of the husband will be passionate; he will show no pity on his day of vengeance.”17 Qinah also appears elsewhere in Proverbs as a “rot to the bones” (14:30) and a force that no one can withstand (27:4). The author of Proverbs would likely be generally in agreement with Haberman’s assessment of qinah’s potentially dangerous and destabilizing consequences. So, too, both the E and J strands of Genesis, in which qinah prompts malicious destruction of wells (Gen 26:14), competition between rival wives Rachel and Leah (Gen 30:1), and mistreatment of the favorite son Joseph by his brothers (37:11). In all these passages, qinah is presented negatively, that is, as something that is a force

13. Ibid. 14. Ibid., 37. 15. Haberman, “Suspected Adulteress,” 17. 16. Ibid., 18. 17. Fishbane claims that this passage in Proverbs functions as an inner-biblical midrash on the prohibition against extramarital coveting in the Decalogue, which I do not address in its own right here because both formulations use the word ḥemed and not qinah (Fishbane, “Accusations of Adultery,” 44).

Wolf: “Between Her and Others”  465 of chaos and disruption, possibly engendered by an enemy, and which ought to be avoided lest it bring unfortunate consequences. Yet qinah elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible is generally represented as a force that brings order to the world. The primary bearer of this force is, of course, God, who is concerned for Israel’s fidelity to the covenant and punishes those who disobey.18 This meaning of the word is not associated only with God, however; sometimes this emotion is exhibited by “zealous” individuals as well: King Saul wishes to attack the Gibeonites out of his qinah for the people of Israel and Judah (2 Sam 21:2), and Phinehas stabs an Israelite man and a Moabite woman due to his qinah on God’s behalf (Num 25:11). In Ezekiel, the word shows up repeatedly as the human and divine portrayals of this type of qinah are merged in a metaphor, in which God is the qinah-filled husband and the idolatrous Israel the straying wife.19 In these examples, qinah, whether best translated as “jealousy” or “zeal,” has a righteous side, and to the extent that it can be punitive or even destructive, it is in the service of maintaining proper law and order in the world. In that respect, these uses of qinah bear a strong similarity to Fishbane’s interpretation of the word as a “zealous concern for the law.” In that sense, this is indeed also the resonance of qinah in Num 5. However, qinah in this context is not, as one might understand Fishbane to be saying, simply a kind of legal-mindedness. Rather, qinah in Num 5, as in Num 25 and the other aforementioned sources, is a powerful force of violence and retribution, albeit also one that is portrayed as legitimate and righteous. Just as the only other story of qinah in the P source, that of Phinehas, portrays qinah as simultaneously brutally destructive and, as Yonatan Miller puts it, “world-making and group-legitimating,” so too should we understand qinah in the context of the sotah ritual as a manifestation of the force of God’s law in all its brutality.20 Its purpose, then, is not to diffuse qinah but to provide an outlet for its righteous power. Now that we have a clearer understanding of the different paradigms of how qinah is best understood in its biblical contexts, we are finally in a position to determine the extent to which rabbinic texts reflect the different biblical portrayals of this emotion. As Ishay Rosen-Zvi has demonstrated, the rabbinic sotah ritual, which is quite different from the biblical one, draws on Hosea, Jeremiah, and especially Ezekiel.21 The rabbis incor18. Examples of this use of the verb abound. See Exod 20:5; 34:14; Deut 4:24; 6:15; 5:9; 29:19; 1 Kgs 14:22; 19:10; 19:14; 2 Kgs 19:31; Joel 2:18; Zeph 1:18; 3:8; Zech 1:14; 8:2; Pss 69:10; 78:58; 119:139; Song 8:6. 19. See Ezek 5:13; 8:3; 16:38, 42; 23:25; 35:11; 36:5–6; 38:19; 39:25. 20. Yonatan Miller, “Phinehas’ Priestly Zeal and the Violence of Contested Identities,” JSQ 26 (2019): 117–45, here 129. 21. Ishay Rosen-Zvi, The Mishnaic Sotah Ritual: Temple, Gender and Midrash, trans. Orr Scharf, JSJSup 160 (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 183–209.

466  Making History porate the prophetic metaphor of Israel as the adulterous wife in their understanding of the ritual, and they therefore portray the sotah procedure itself as a punitive, disciplinary ritual in which the wife is assumed to be guilty.22 According to Rosen-Zvi, Ezekiel’s language also reflects the catharsis this ritual provides for the husband’s qinah: its purpose is to “satisfy [the husband’s] fury” and cause his qinah, having been indulged, to depart (cf. Ezek 16:42).23 Yet rabbinic literature, as I will show, also incorporates the other biblical paradigm of qinah: that of the Genesis sources and Proverbs, which portray qinah as dangerous and difficult to contain.

Qinah in Second Temple and Early Rabbinic Literature In Mishnah and Tosefta, qinah appears in the form of a verb, meqaneh, which is described as the first stage of the multi-step procedure that sets the sotah proceedings in motion.24 The act of qinnui, according to m. Sotah 1:1–2, is a verbal warning issued by the husband to the wife about a specific third party, which must be performed before two witnesses: One who is meqaneh his wife: R. Eliezer says, he must meqaneh her before two witnesses…  How does he meqaneh her? If he says to her before two witnesses, “Do not speak to So-and-so,” and she speaks with him, she is still permitted to her household and to eat terumah. But if she entered a secluded place with him and stayed there enough time to be defiled, she is forbidden to her household and forbidden to eat terumah …

Only if this warning has been issued, and if the wife also then secludes herself with the third party for a sufficient amount of time, does the sotah ordeal take place. At least at first glance, the emotion of qinah appears to have been replaced by a technical requirement that shares its name, as well as its subject, object, and consequences—that is, it is still something

22. On this point, see also Peggy L. Day, “The Bitch Had It Coming to Her: Rhetoric and Interpretation in Ezekiel 16,” BibInt 8 (2000): 231–54. 23. Rosen-Zvi, Mishnaic Sotah Ritual, 204. 24. On m. Sotah, see, in addition to the scholarship cited elsewhere, Adriana Destro, The Law of Jealousy: Anthropology of Sotah, BJS 181 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989); Andrew Durdin, “The Spectacle of the Sotah: A Rabbinic Perspective on Justice and Punishment” (Religious Studies Thesis, Georgia State University, 2007); Sarra Lev, “Sotah: Rabbinic Pornography?,” in The Passionate Torah: Sex and Judaism, ed. Danya Ruttenberg (New York: New York University Press, 2009), 7–23; and Judith Romney Wegner, Chattel or Person? The Status of Women in the Mishnah (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 50–54. Haberman also discusses the mishnah (“Suspected Adulteress,” 21–32).

Wolf: “Between Her and Others”  467 that the husband does to the wife about a third party that sets the sotah ritual in motion—but seemingly little else. Moshe Halbertal and Judith Hauptman have both suggested that the Tannaitic legalization of qinah was a bold interpretive move by the rabbis with the goal of protecting women by changing a potentially arbitrary, emotional element of the process—jealousy—into a carefully regulated process of a formal warning.25 According to Rosen-Zvi, however, the mishnaic sotah ritual is best understood as a fantasy of control over female sexuality, and the Mishnah’s transformation of qinah into qinnui should be understood as basically similar to other Tannaitic reformulations of biblical sources. As Rosen-Zvi points out, rabbinic texts frequently incorporate witnesses and other legal mechanisms into their version of biblical rituals, such as capital cases.26 Furthermore, this legalized version of sotah is not solely a mishnaic innovation; it is discernible in Philo and Qumran texts as well.27 The legalization of qinah in the Mishnah is undoubtedly similar to the process by which other judicial rituals were subsumed into the rabbinic framework of evidence and witnesses. Yet the form that legalization takes, and the way it is further analyzed and limited in later strands of rabbinic literature, nonetheless provides us with important information about what the rabbis thought were the stakes of qinah, what havoc it could wreak, and how it should be channeled and controlled. I want to suggest that the scholarly focus on what the rabbinic reconstruction of the sotah ritual shows about attitudes toward women—which is certainly an important question—may be obscuring another explanation for the Mishnah’s legalization of qinah. In fact, the rabbis may have been just as much concerned with the regulation of male emotions as they were with the regulation of female sexuality. Such a reading of the Mishnah would place it in line with many slightly earlier and contemporaneous texts that portray qinah, or jealousy in general, as a negative emotion, that is, one that has a harmful impact on others and ought to be avoided. This is essentially the attitude toward qinah that was expressed in the Proverbs passage discussed earlier. It is also a view of the emotion of jealousy that was pervasive in the late-antique world, in Jewish as well as non-Jewish sources.28 25. Moshe Halbertal, Interpretive Revolutions in the Making: Values as Interpretive Considerations in Midrashei Halakhah [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1997), 94–112; Judith Hauptman, Rereading the Rabbis: A Woman’s Voice (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1998), 15–29. 26. See, e.g., Beth Berkowitz, Execution and Invention: Death Penalty Discourse in Early Rabbinic and Christian Cultures (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). 27. Rosen-Zvi, Mishnaic Sotah Ritual, 23. 28. On perceptions of jealousy and envy in other cultures in the ancient Mediterranean, see, e.g., Carlin A. Barton, The Sorrows of the Ancient Romans: The Gladiator and the Monster (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 107–75; Margaret R. Graver, Stoicism and Emo-

468  Making History For example, Ben Sira 9:1 admonishes against qinah entirely, advising, “Do not be jealous for the wife of your bosom, lest you teach her to do evil against you.”29 Josephus and Philo also both show aversion toward qinah. Philo avoids referring to anything like qinah (rendered as ζηλώσεως in the Septuagint of Num 5:14) at all in his depiction of the biblical sotah ritual, referring to “suspicion” and even “reasonable doubt” on the part of the husband (Spec. 3.10).30 Likewise, Josephus’s rendering of the biblical ritual initially describes the husband as “suspecting” his wife rather than being jealous of her. Significantly, however, Josephus does mention jealousy (ζηλοτυπία) as the motivating force if the ritual should prove the suspected wife to be innocent: “If she had violated her chastity, her right thigh might be put out of joint; that her belly might swell; and that she might die thus: but that if her husband, by the violence of his affection, and of the jealousy which arose from it, had been rashly moved to this suspicion, that she might bear a male child in the tenth month” (Ant. 3.11.6 §271).31 Josephus thus suggests that jealousy can be nothing but baseless, whereas suspicion, rather than jealousy, is the motivating force for the determination of truth and restoration of order.32 And Philo, though he does not mention it in the context of sotah, does portray the potentially harmful effects of jealousy on the family elsewhere. According to Philo, men are forbidden from marrying their granddaughters, nieces, aunts, grandmothers, ex-aunts, ex-daughters-in-law, ex-sisters-in-law, step-daughters, or the sisters of their wives, “… for from such things as these arise bitter jealousies and quarrels, and enmities which scarcely admit of reconciliation, but which bring on indescribable hosts of misfortunes.… And jealousy, which is the most grievous of all passions, is continually producing new, and terrible, and incurable mischiefs” (Spec. 3.5). Early rabbinic sources also evince wariness of jealousy. For example, in a discussion in Mekilta of God’s description of Godself in Exodus as an tion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 58; Robert Kaster, Emotion, Restraint, and Community in Ancient Rome (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 84–103; and David Konstan, The Emotions of the Ancient Greeks: Studies in Aristotle and Classical Literature, Robson Classical Lectures (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006), 219–43. 29. In his reading of this verse, Rosen-Zvi notes that Ben Sira seems to be commenting on the sotah passage in Numbers and is in part paraphrasing the text there “and he is jealous for his wife.” However, Rosen-Zvi points out that Ben Sira’s “rejection of jealousy comes from a concern for the jealous man, not for the woman for whom he is jealous” (Mishnaic Sotah Ritual, 46). 30. Translations of Philo are from The Works of Philo: Complete and Unabridged, trans. C. D. Yonge, new updated ed. (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1993). 31. Translation from William Whiston, The Works of Josephus (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1987). 32. Lisa Grushcow makes this point as well: “Perhaps for Josephus, it is only the husband who is in the wrong who is jealous, and not simply suspicious” (Writing the Wayward Wife: Rabbinic Interpretations of Sotah, AGJU 62 (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 40.

Wolf: “Between Her and Others”  469 el qana (Exod 34:14), the rabbis show a desire to distance themselves from this portrayal in their reinterpretation, which limits God’s association with qinah and portrays it as dangerous: “I rule over qinah, but qinah does not rule over me.… I exact payment for idolatry with qinah, but I am merciful and compassionate in other matters.”33 The rabbis distinguish between a God who is inherently associated with this emotion, an idea that they reject, and a God who is able to harness qinah when necessary. Moreover, God is uniquely able to do this despite the fact that, according to the logic of the midrash, this emotion is so powerful and dangerous that one might have thought even God could be overcome by it. When read in light of these other sources, then, the Mishnah’s transformation of qinah, a feeling, into qinnui, a legally regulated verbal act, may be seen as part of a more general late-antique move to minimize, regulate, or at least be wary of this affect. This move also fits with the general rabbinic belief, at least in the Bavli if not elsewhere, that men have dangerous emotions that need to be kept in check.34 In several rabbinic stories, the proliferation of male emotions causes harm to those nearby, especially whomever those men perceive to be causing their emotions. As we shall see shortly, qinah, is also portrayed as distinctively harmful in that it has the potential to multiply itself. Though the Mishnah does not explicitly treat the affective dimension of qinah in its description of qinnui, qinah is discussed as an emotion and not just a procedure elsewhere in Tannaitic literature and in both Talmuds. Tosefta and Sifrei Bamidbar both interpret the plural form of qinah that appears in Numbers as raising the possibility that another male subject could be experiencing qinah in addition to the husband: “A meal offering of qena’ot” (Num 5:15): Two qena’ot. Just as there is qinah on the part of the husband, so too is there qinah on the part of the lover; just as there is qinah on earth, so too is there qinah in heaven.35

Qinah is clearly understood as an emotion and not a legal procedure here, especially since it is discussed on the part of the suspected third party, who is never considered a potential participant in any of the sotah proceedings. It is not only the husband, who has a legal recourse, who feels qinah; the lover does so as well. Even as this midrash opens up new possibilities for who might be experiencing this emotion, the hypothetical sub-

33. Mek. Yitro Debachodesh 6; ed. Horowitz, 226. 34. Charlotte Elisheva Fonrobert, “When the Rabbi Weeps: On Reading Gender in Talmudic Aggadah,” Nashim: A Journal of Jewish Women’s Studies and Gender 4 (2001): 56–83; Lynn Kaye, “Protesting Women: A Literary Analysis of Bavli Adjudicatory Narratives,” Nashim: A Journal of Jewish Women’s Studies and Gender 32 (2018): 131–57. 35. Sifrei Bamidbar Naso Pisqa 5; see also t. Sotah 2:4.

470  Making History ject of qinah is still assumed to be a man or, as in the case of God, associated with maleness.36 Qinah here, perhaps in something of a premodern acknowledgment of mimetic desire, is also portrayed as an affect that reverberates and duplicates. The mention of God also may serve as an explanation for why the biblical sotah rite is effective: the husband’s qinah triggers divine qinah, which manifests in the form of the straying woman’s punishment.

Qinah in the Two Talmuds The potential for affective multiplication also manifests in the portrayal of qinah in the Babylonian Talmud, in the context of a dispute between Resh Laqish and Rav Yeimar b. Shelamya about the significance of the word qinnui. This debate also refers to a dispute that is brought up earlier about whether the verb meqaneh in the Mishnah (referred to here in its infinitive form, leqanot) is an action that is mandatory, optional, or forbidden. Resh Laqish said: What is the language of qinnui? A matter that produces qinah between her and others. Therefore he holds that qinnui can be performed by the husband alone, and no one else knows that he has done this, and they say: “What happened that she is ignoring us?” And they will come to have qinah regarding her.  Rav Yeimar b. R. Shelamya in the name of Abaye said: A matter that produces qinah between him and her. Therefore he holds that qinnui must be performed before two witnesses, and everyone knows that he has done this, and he himself will come to have qinah regarding her.  Therefore they hold that it is forbidden leqanot. (b. Sotah 3a)

Both Resh Laqish and Rav Yeimar b. R. Shelamya state that the literal meaning of qinnui, the Bavli’s term for the Mishnah’s legal procedure by which the husband warns (meqaneh) his wife, is “something that produces qinah.” Whereas Rav Yeimar b. Shelamya posits that qinnui produces qinah between the wife and her husband, Resh Laqish suggests that qinnui will produce qinah between the wife and multiple other people, potentially imagining a whole crowd of men with whom the wife was accustomed to interact, and who are upset that she is now ignoring them. The Bavli then ties both of these inferences to the opinion that performing qinnui, that is, doing the procedure in the Mishnah that could set the sotah process in motion, is itself forbidden. If one were trying to come up with justifica-

36. This is not true of all sources, notably Amoraic midrashim on Rachel’s jealousy of Leah in Gen 30:1, though in that case, the rabbis were responding to an explicit biblical female description of jealousy.

Wolf: “Between Her and Others”  471 tions for the opinion that performing qinnui is forbidden, one might think it could be because the rabbis believe the sotah ritual has been abrogated (see m. Sotah 9:9), or perhaps, according to Halbertal and Hauptman, because it is dangerous for the wife. Instead, the Bavli suggests that the prohibition on qinnui is based on the fact that qinnui actually creates qinah— again, only in men—and presumably this in itself is a bad thing. We have now seen portrayals of qinah as a powerfully multiplicative emotion in both Tannaitic and Babylonian Amoraic sources. The characterization of qinah in the Yerushalmi is a somewhat more complicated question. The first line of tractate Sotah in the Yerushalmi states: It is written, “If the spirit of qinah comes over one and he is qineh his wife.” That he should not yeqaneh her neither in laughter nor in conversation nor in light-headedness nor in idleness, but in a matter/word of licentiousness/fear. (y. Sotah 1:1, 16: c, p. 905)

Most commentators read the last word of this passage as “fear” and therefore understand the directive here as having to do with the mental state of the husband: he must not be light-headed or joking, but he must be in a serious, fear-inducing (or induced?) state. As Shlomo Naeh has pointed out, it appears that, in the Leiden manuscript, a later hand corrected the zayin in zima (licentiousness) to an alef, making the word into aima (fear).37 If the word is “licentiousness,” however, then the directive is not about the husband at all but about the type of transgression on the wife’s part—that is, she must have committed a licentious act, and not simply have joked around with somebody else. In medieval and modern commentaries, the Yerushalmi has been read as referring to “fear” and thus to the mental state of the husband. Naeh gives two arguments for why the version that refers to “licentiousness” in fact fits better in this context. First, he notes that the passage goes on to suggest that, if one “transgressed and did warn/qineh her about one of these matters,” this could be a legal obstacle for the entire rest of the proceedings. According to Naeh, it is unlikely for someone’s mental state to hold such weight that it would legally disqualify that person’s actions. Furthermore, he argues, “Even the phrasing of ‘did warn/qineh her about one of these matters’ does not fit with the accepted interpretation, according to which the husband is not mekaneh about a specific matter, but rather from a specific mental state.” I have no qualms about the argument that the zayin in zima is the original version in the Leiden manuscript. However, even granted that a later scribe corrected it to an alef, I disagree with Naeh’s claim that this scribal edit produced a statement that does not fit well in its context. In fact, there 37. Shlomo Naeh, review of Talmud Yerushalmi of The Academy of the Hebrew Language [Hebrew], Tarbitz 71 (2002): 569–603, here 575 (my translation).

472  Making History are a number of compelling reasons why the correction makes much more sense (which were likely also compelling to the scribe who made the correction!), opening the possibility that the zayin, even if original to the Leiden manuscript, may have been a mistake. First, the passage is explicitly framed as an interpretation of Num 5:14: “If the spirit of qinah comes over one and he is qineh his wife.” This makes sense if this passage is claiming that the mention of the “spirit of qinah” in the verse should be understood as dictating a specific mental state on the part of the husband. If one were trying to find a justification for an interpretation of the verse as referring to the wife’s behavior, however, one would have to look to the rest of the verse in its entirety: “The spirit of qinah comes over him and he is meqaneh the wife who has defiled herself; or if the spirit of qinah comes over one and he is meqaneh his wife although she has not defiled herself.” It could be the case that the rabbis did not quote the salient part of the verse here and also ended their reading of the verse in the middle, and that the interpretation of “a matter of licentiousness” hinges exegetically on the phrase “the wife who has defiled herself.” A similar baraita quoted in the Bavli, however, clearly associates this verse with a specific state on the part of the husband—not exactly an internal state, but a state of possession by an outside force, the presumably frightening spirit of qinah.38 The school of R. Yishma’el taught: A person does not meqaneh his wife unless a spirit entered him, as it says, “The spirit of qinah comes over one and he is qineh his wife” (Num 5:14). (b. Sotah 3a)39

Finally, after discussing whether transgression of this edict would make the qinnui invalid, the passage in the Yerushalmi ends with a discussion of whether it is required or merely optional to perform qinah. In this discussion, it is clarified that qinnui would be performed specifically not in a case where someone’s wife had committed a sexual transgression (ervat davar), in which case the person would simply divorce his wife, but only when someone had found “ugly things” (devarim cho’arim) in his wife.40 This

38. Rosen-Zvi, Mishnaic Sotah Ritual, 29: “However, when appearing without an additional characterization, the “entry of spirit” always refers to an evil spirit. It therefore seems that the “spirit” in the above citation is a spirit of madness and obsession.” 39. It is of course also possible that the scribe who emended the zayin to alef was influenced by the Bavli and edited the Yerushalmi to fit better with this quoted baraita of R. Yishmael. Rosen-Zvi, for what it is worth, reads this view of “spirit” entry as distinctly non-Babylonian (Mishnaic Sotah Ritual, 29). 40. The position that qinnui is optional is linked in this passage with the position of Beit Hillel in m. Git. 9:10 that a man may divorce his wife on account of any wrongdoing on her part. The position that it is mandatory is linked with Beit Shammai’s position that divorce may take place only in the case of sexual transgression (ervat davar). According to the

Wolf: “Between Her and Others”  473 explanation of the grounds for qinnui is incompatible with the idea that it is forbidden to perform qinnui for any reason other than a matter of “licentiousness.” Some of the problems Naeh raises could perhaps be addressed by reevaluating our understanding of the word davar, heretofore translated as “matter.” As Naeh himself points out, the construction of this passage is quite similar to the text of t. Berakhot 3:21: “One should not stand to pray from conversation, not from laughter, not from light-headedness, but rather from devarim of wisdom.” Not only is this another strong point in favor of reading this baraita as about the state of the person performing qinah, who is paralleled in this baraita by the person standing to pray, but it also raises the possibility that the term davar in our baraita, as in the toseftan text, refers to words rather than events. Though this entire question is a matter of a difference of only one letter, it is important for our purposes. If we take seriously the possibility of a text that says aima instead of zima, then we must also take seriously that a person’s mental state (even if it is one caused by spirit possession) is indeed a salient legal factor. We must also consider the possibility that what we have here is a script for the consequences of that spirit possession: “terrifying words,” a davar shel aima. In this reading, according to the composers of the Yerushalmi, the legal procedure of qinnui not only may but must be performed in a way that induces fear in its observers, which suits what the rabbis believed to be the realities of qinah the emotion: its frightening, overpowering qualities. The rabbinic reception of qinnui in the Yerushalmi thus works to heighten the stakes by mandating a portrayal of the danger constituted by qinah itself.

Conclusion This look at qinah in the context of the rabbinic understanding of sotah helps us to begin to make some broader claims about how gender, law, and emotions interact in rabbinic literature, a project I hope to continue in further work. First, we have supported and expanded Charlotte Elishiva Fonrobert and others’ claim that the rabbis believed that men had dangerous emotions that needed to be kept in check. Furthermore, we have seen how legalization is an important way for the rabbis to establish an emotional regime, including but not limited to a gendered one. Finally, we have seen how the discussion of the sotah in rabbinic literature offers not Yerushalmi’s reading of Beit Shammai, “If he finds in her ‘ugly things’ [devarim cho’arim], he may not divorce her because he did not find transgression [erva] in her, but he cannot sustain her because he found in her ‘ugly things’; therefore he says [qinnui] is mandatory.” For Beit Hillel, however, qinnui is optional because the husband could choose to divorce instead.

474  Making History only a “fantasy of control” over women’s bodies, as held by Rosen-Zvi, but a site of production and reinscription of knowledge and norms about male emotions.41 Qinah’s associations with violence and disastrous effects are reinforced in its portrayal in rabbinic literature, and these associations in turn also continue to uphold gendered constructions of negative emotions. Indeed, much of the rabbinic interpretation of sotah may have been connected to a shift in the understanding of qinah as a “negative” emotion.42 The legalization of qinnui and the incredibly violent and misogynistic interpretation of the rite in rabbinic literature are, perhaps, two sides of the same coin, one that portrays yet delimits the harm caused by male jealousy. Legalization is a form of controlling emotional expression and limiting its significance; the violent fantasy (Rosen-Zvi’s tekes shelo haya, the rite that never was) is a form of emotional sublimation, portraying the dangers of qinah through text and not through action. Ngai notes that “ugly feelings” are fruitful to study because of their “conjoining predicaments from multiple registers—showing how sociohistorical and ideological dilemmas, in particular, produce formal or representational ones.”43 The paradox of the sotah, the ritual that is both abrogated and turned violent in the Mishnah, and the further ambivalence in the Bavli about the possibly either mandatory or forbidden emotion that starts the whole process, may thus perhaps be best understood through the lens of the dilemma of qinah itself. The rabbinic interpretations of sotah both delimit and exaggerate the dangers of qinah, that ugly emotion of the ancient world.

41. Rosen-Zvi, Mishnaic Sotah Ritual, 226, 228. 42. See Robert C. Solomon, True to Our Feelings: What Our Emotions Are Really Telling Us (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 185–94, on the idea of “positive” and “negative” emotions, and how these are often falsely and unhelpfully perceived as essential categories. 43. Ngai, Ugly Feelings, 12.