Orthopraxy Tannaitic Literature

Journal for the Study of Judaism
Journal for the Study of Judaism 41 (2010) 517-561
brill.nl/jsj
Orthopraxy in Tannaitic Literature*

David M. Grossberg
Judaic Studies, University of Connecticut, 405 Babbidge Road Unit 1205, Storrs, CT 06269-1205, USA dgrossberg@hotmail.com
Abstract M. Sanhedrin 10:1 is well-known as a succinct statement of rabbinic doctrine. Yet as a statement of doctrine, this mishnahs language is remarkably pragmatic: it proscribes saying certain things but does not explicitly proscribe believing them. I propose that this use of practical rather than doctrinal phraseology was an intentional editorial stance of the Mishnahs compilers. A close philological examination of parallel texts in the Tosefta and Seder Olam reveals that earlier generations of the textual tradition underlying this mishnah phrased these same prohibitions using doctrinal terms such as denying or not acknowledging. Moreover, this choice of pragmatic language is evident throughout the Mishnah, even when fundamentals of Judaic faith such as belief in one God and in the oral Torah are being addressed. The Mishnahs compilers, perhaps in response to trends like early Christian antinomianism and heresiology, chose to produce a work dedicated to orthopraxy rather than orthodoxy. Keywords heresy, tannaim, Late Antique Judaism, Mishnah, orthodoxy, orthopraxy
The purpose of this paper is to examine m. Sanh. 10:1, the supposed locus classicus of tannaitic heresiology. This mishnah enumerates what might be construed as a list of heresies against rabbinic Judaism: denying the resurrection, denying the Torah, and Epicureanism.1 That this list is an
*) I would like to thank Stuart S. Miller, Pamela Weathers, and the readers at JSJ for their comments and corrections on earlier versions of this paper. 1) I use Epicurean for apiqoros here and elsewhere in this paper for the sake of simplicity. It is generally accepted that the word derives from the Greek (the Greek philosopher Epicurus); see Jenny R. Labendz, Know What to Answer the Epicurean: A
Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2010 DOI: 10.1163/157006310X503621
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D. M. Grossberg / Journal for the Study of Judaism 41 (2010) 517-561
oddity in a corpus otherwise concerned primarily with practical and legal matterswith praxis rather than doctrineis widely recognized.2 Perhaps for this reason, m. Sanh. 10:1 has been the focus of so much attention; it gives us a glimpse into what the tannaim believed rather than into what they did. And yet, as a statement of doctrine, m. Sanh. 10:1 is remarkably pragmatic. Read literally, its first two proscriptions, the one who says
Diachronic Study of the Apiqoros in Rabbinic Literature, HUCA 74 (2003): 175-214, esp. 177. However, there is some debate regarding to what extent the rabbis were aware of the actual teachings of Epicurus. See n. 51, below. It has also been suggested that the word is derived from the root .. meaning putting off in the sense of putting off the yoke of Torah. Thus, Maimonides writes in his commentary to m. Sanh.10:1 (ed. Qafih; repr. in 3 vols.; Jerusalem: Mosad ha-Rav Kook, 2006-2007) [Hebrew only; my translation]: , , : And the word apiqoros: it is an Aramaic word; its idea is disrespect and contempt for the Torah or for Sages of the Torah; and, therefore, this name is placed in general on one who does not believe in the principles of the Torah or who disparages the Sages, or anyone learned in the Torah, or his teacher. Similarly, see Marcus Jastrow, A Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature, 1:104 s.v. . However, the root .. dates from the rabbinic period and seems likely to have been derived from the Biblical root .. which means putting off in the more literal sense of putting down a burden. This transposition of root letters may have come about under the influence of the connection in rabbinic thinking between Epicureanism and heresy in general. That is, the Hebrew which is derived from the Greek may have gone on to cause a modification to the Hebrew root .. into a form that serves as a plausible Hebrew derivation for the Greek term. See Avraham Even-Shoshan, Millon Even Shoshan (ed. Moshe Azar et al.; 6 vols.; Tel Aviv: ha-Millon he-H adash, 2003), 5:1523 s.v. . 2) Thus, William Scott Green in Approaches to Ancient Judaism: Theory and Practice (ed. William Scott Green; Missoula: Scholars Press, 1978), 78, quotes Jacob Neusner, A History of the Mishnaic Law of Purities Part Ten, Parah: Literary and Historical Problems (Leiden: Brill, 1976), 230: [T]he Mishnaic rabbis express their primary cognitive statements, their judgments upon large matters, through ritual law, not through myth or theology, neither of which is articulated at all. Similarly, E. P. Sanders writes in Paul and Palestinian Judaism: A Comparison of Patterns of Religion (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977), 151: We should observe the curious character of the exclusion [of m. Sanh. 10:1]: it excludes on the basis of a belief. This is both striking and odd in a religion which generally insists far more on orthopraxy than on orthodoxy. Also, see Adiel Schremer, Midrash, Theology, and History: Two Powers in Heaven Revisited, JSJ 39 (2008): 230-54, esp. 231 and nn. 5-6, where he criticizes the presumption that doctrine was the primary concern of rabbinic religious thought. Cf. however, Alan F. Segal, Two Powers in Heaven: Early Rabbinic Reports about Christianity and Gnosticism (Leiden: Brill, 2002), x, where he stresses the rabbinic concern with theological orthodoxy.
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there is no resurrection of the dead and there is no Torah from heaven, mention nothing about what a person must believe. They specify what a person must refrain from doing.3 Believing in the resurrection and in the Torah are not, apparently, required; what is required is refraining from saying certain things about them.4 And this is not merely an incidental matter of phraseology. A close study of parallel tannaitic texts in both the Tosefta and Seder Olam reveals that the predecessors of the textual tradition underlying m. Sanh. 10:1 used phraseology more consistent with addressing matters of doctrine, such as denying or not acknowledging. Furthermore, a detailed examination of the entire Mishnah shows that ostensibly doctrinal matters are consistently addressed in the language of praxis. The reasons for this choice of practical over doctrinal phraseology are difficult to determine with any certainty, although I will suggest a number of possibilities in the conclusion to this paper.5 However, my main objective is to establish that the Mishnahs editors intentionally standardized pragmatic phraseology whenever doctrinal matters are at issue. And thus the Mishnah, strictly speaking, has no doctrinal content at all; it is, consistently, a work of orthopraxy rather than of orthodoxy.6
The third proscription, Epicureanism, is simply obscure (as mentioned above) and will be examined in the course of this paper. In the interest of brevity, I will refer to the subject of the first proscription as the resurrection or (literally from the Hebrew but somewhat redundantly) the resurrection of the dead rather than the resurrection of the dead from the Torah. See n. 7, below. 4) See Menachem Kellner, Must a Jew Believe Anything? (London: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 1999), 33-38. Based on this distinction between saying and believing and other evidence, Kellner concludes that this mishnah is not a statement of dogma but part of a tannaitic polemic against various opponents. 5) I discuss two possibilities in the conclusion. Briefly, I suggest that the pragmatic tone of the Mishnah may have developed in tension with trends such as early Christian antinomianism, for example in the teachings of Paul and his successors. It is possible that the rabbis chose to focus exclusively on the practical observance of Torah partly as a rejection of ideas like the Pauline concept of justification by faith. Alternatively, the Mishnah itself may never have been intended as a guide to practical Judaic observance at all: much of it is concerned with issues such as Temple sacrifice and purity laws, which were no longer practicable in the tannaitic period, and it frequently presents contradictory opinions without determining which is binding. If, for example, the Mishnah was intended as a study guide in abstract legal methodologies, as some scholars have concluded, it may be that theological or doctrinal issues were not stylistically or thematically relevant. See n. 82, below. 6) By orthopraxy, I mean only that the Mishnah intends to establish correct practice rather than correct belief. This is not necessarily to say that there are no foundational beliefs
3)
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1. Diachronic Study of Tannaitic Texts In this section, I examine the evolution of the textual tradition that underlies m. Sanh. 10:1.7 While there are no tannaitic texts that precisely parallel this mishnah, there is a text which broadly parallels and expands on m. Sanh. 10:1-3 in t. Sanh. 12:9-13:12. There is also a text in Seder Olam that parallels t. Sanh. 13:4-5.8 The purpose of this study is to establish that m. Sanh. 10:1 is actually a highly edited version of t. Sanh. 13:5 and the parallel text in Seder Olam. Yet, these earlier generations of this
underlying tannaitic Judaism. As I will discuss, practices such as the reciting of the Shema seem to imply specific beliefs (in this case, the belief in one God). However, whenever the Mishnah addresses beliefs, it carefully does so through the establishment or proscription of specific practices rather than the establishment of doctrine. I will address why this may have been the case in the third section of this paper. 7) There are some notable textual variants of m. Sanh. 10:1, none of which are especially important for my thesis. ms Kaufmann is generally considered to be the most reliable of the available manuscripts. See H. L. Strack and G. Stemberger, Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash (trans. Markus Bockmuehl; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1991), 158. There are two main differences between ms Kaufmann and modern printed texts of the Mishnah and the Bavli. The latter typically begin All Israel has a portion in the world to come as it is said, Thy people also shall be all righteous: they shall inherit the land for ever, the branch of my planting, the work of my hands, that I may be glorified (Isa 60:21, KJV) and have the words from the Torah after the phrase the one who says there is no resurrection of the dead. The opening sentence all Israel has a portion up to inherit the land forever (the complete quote from Isaiah is only present in the printed texts) is missing entirely from mss Kaufmann and Cambridge, but it is present in whole or in part in others. See Herbert Danby, Tractate Sanhedrin Mishnah and Tosefta: The Judicial Procedure of the Jews as Codified Towards the End of the Second Century A.D.: Translated from the Hebrew with Brief Annotations (New York: MacMillan, 1919), 120 n. 2; Louis Finkelstein, Mavo leMassekhtot Avot ve-Avot de-Rabbi Natan (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1950), 104-5 and n. 159. ms Parma and the Yerushalmi have All Israel has a portion in the world to come but leave off the quote from Isaiah (ibid.). The Naples edition, the editio princeps of the Mishnah, includes the full sentence (Samuel Krauss, The Mishnah Treatise Sanhedrin: Edited with an Introduction, Notes and Glossary [Leiden: Brill, 1909], ix, 25). See Finkelstein, Mavo, 104-11, for an interesting discussion of these textual variants. Also, see Charles Taylor, An Appendix to Sayings of the Jewish Fathers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1900), 132. I am using ed. Albeck (6 vols.; Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 1988) for m. Sanh. and ed. Zuckermandel (Jerusalem: Wahrmann, 1963) for t. Sanh. 8) I will only consider parallel texts that appear in tannaitic works. I do this in order to limit the scope of this paper and to avoid difficult and contentious questions regarding the dating of tannaitic material cited in amoraic texts. Parallel texts also appear in the following post-tannaitic works: Avot de-Rabbi Natan A 36 and 41, b. Ro Ha. 16b-17a, y. Sanh. 10:1, 27c, and y. Peah 1:1, 16b.
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textual tradition use what I will refer to as the language of doctrine, the one who denies or the one who does not acknowledge, rather than m. Sanh. 10:1s language of praxis, the one who says. I take this as implying an intentional choice by the editors of this mishnah to reject the earlier language of doctrine in preference to its own language of praxis. I will start with a synoptic comparison of m. Sanh. 10:1-3 and t. Sanh. 12:913:12. Refer to the appendix for a formatted parallel presentation of the relevant texts. A tradition dating to at least the tenth century Iggeret Rav Sherira Gaon explains that the Tosefta was written later than the Mishnah as a commentary and expansion of it.9 Contemporary scholarship, however, has revealed a more complex picture of mutual influences and parallel development between the two works.10 In the case of these two texts, a
9) Sherira Gaon writes in his letter: : : Regarding the Tosefta of Rabbi Hiyya: certainly he arranged it; but, we do not know if in the days of Rabbi [Yehudah the Patriarch] he arranged it or afterwards. However, without a doubt, after the laws of our Mishnah were arranged, the Tosefta was arranged, and the words of the Tosefta are clarifications after the Mishnah and were taught on it. (Iggeret Rav Sherira Gaon [ed. B. M. Lewin; Haifa, 1921], 34, my translation of the Spanish recension). 10) Sheriras letter is the first known written explanation for the existence of the Tosefta, and it is the basis for the traditional account of its relationship to the Mishnah (Strack and Stemberger, Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash, 138-39). The 19th-century German scholar of the Tosefta, Moses Zuckermandel, was one of the first modern scholars to offer a radical alternative to this traditional theory, suggesting that the Tosefta was the remnant of an original Palestinian Mishnah (ibid., 171-72; Alberdina Houtman, Mishnah and Tosefta: A Synoptic Comparison of the Tractates Berakhot and Shebiit [Tbingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1996], 12-13). More recently, scholars have expressed a number of divergent opinions on the matter. Jacob Epstein, for example, sees our current Tosefta as being based on an earlier Tosefta that was written by Rabbi Nehemiah as a commentary on an earlier version of the Mishnah that his teacher Rabbi Akiva wrote. See Abraham Goldberg, The ToseftaCompanion to the Mishna, in The Literature of the Sages, First Part: Oral Tora, Halakha, Mishna, Tosefta, Talmud, External Tractates (ed. Shmuel Safrai; Assen: Van Gorcum, 1987), 283-302, esp. 292; J. N. Epstein, Mevoot le-Sifrut ha-Tannaim: Mishnah, Tosefta, u-Midreshei Halakhah (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1957), 242-46. Judith Hauptman, Rereading the Mishnah: A New Approach to Ancient Jewish Texts (Tbingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005), 14-16, offers a succinct summary of other recent scholarship, as follows. Albeck places the Tosefta in the amoraic period and says that it both supplements and contains parallel materials to the Mishnah. The well-known Tosefta commentator Saul Lieberman apparently never directly expressed a position on the issue, but his works seem to imply an opinion similar to Sheriras, that the Tosefta is an addition to or commentary
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cursory comparison shows that they are clearly dealing with the same material. And for the most part, it looks like the Tosefta is aware of our Mishnah and is either commenting on it or presenting variant material. The Tosefta passage begins with the expression They added to these, hosifu in Hebrew, which indicates awareness of an earlier list that is being added to; and there is no reason to suppose that this earlier list is anything other than the list in m. Sanh. 10:1. Epstein sees this type of language as classically indicative of the function of the Tosefta, hence its etymological connection:
Already in the Mishnah it is said regarding tannaim like Rabbi Akiva, hosif rabbi aqiva. And also hosafot to the Mishnah that later tannaim added (she-hosifu) are brought in the Tosefta in this language: hosifu aleihem.11
Epstein is explaining that the Tosefta functions as a tosefet, an addition, to the Mishnah and that the term hosifu appears several times in the Tosefta indicating this function. Among several examples, Epstein cites t. Sanh. 12:9. And indeed, the Yerushalmi ( y. Sanh. 10:1, 27c) explicitly comments on m. Sanh. 10:1 with a text that differs only slightly from t. Sanh. 12:9. There, the passage clearly intends to add to the list in m. Sanh. 10:1. Thus, at least regarding t. Sanh. 12:9-11, it seems reasonable to suppose that the Tosefta postdates and is aware of the Mishnah. A similar kind of relationship is apparent between m. Sanh. 10:3 and t. Sanh. 13:6-12. The Tosefta includes parallels for all of the instances of those who have no portion in the world to come that appear in the Mishnah, typically in variant versions and with additional commentary. Again, it seems reasonable to suppose that the Tosefta here is aware of and expanding on the Mishnah. This would mean, of course, that at least regarding these passages, the text of the Mishnah is primary and the Tosefta is commenting on it, which accords with the traditional conception of the relationship of the Tosefta to the Mishnah. This is true regarding all of the Tosefta passage except for t. Sanh. 13:1-5. This section has no parallel in m. Sanh. 10:1-3, and it appears to be out of place in the flow of what comes previously and subsequently in
on the Mishnah. Goldberg and Neusner present similar opinions in their works on the matter. Friedman and Houtman allow a more nuanced intertextual relationship with some mutual influence of material. Hauptman sees the Tosefta as a commentary on a third, unknown, work, which roughly parallels our current Mishnah. 11) Epstein, Mevoot le-Sifrut ha-Tannaim, 241, my translation.
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the Tosefta. T. Sanh. 12:9, the hosifu text, matches m. Sanh. 10:1 both in style (it ends have no portion in the world to come) and thematically (it begins hosifu, indicating that it is adding to a previously known list of those without a portion in the world to come). Similarly, t. Sanh. 12:10-11 parallels m. Sanh. 10:1-2 closely in substance and style. At this point in the Tosefta text, however, something peculiar occurs. T. Sanh. 13:1-5 begins a discussion that is broadly related thematically but unprecedented in its specifics. After this digression, t. Sanh. 13:6-12 again picks up closely paralleling the Mishnah. This seems to indicate either an aggadic expansion or perhaps an interpolation of thematically related material from another source. I would like to suggest that t. Sanh. 13:1-5 is neither a commentary on m. Sanh. 10:1-3 nor an aggadic expansion of t. Sanh. 12:9-11 but represents an earlier generation text, which the editors of the Tosefta inserted into their composition. One indication of this is the fact that a text which closely parallels t. Sanh. 13:3-5 appears by itself in b. Ro Ha. 16b-17a yet does not appear in b. Sanh. ch. 11 where m. Sanh. 10:1-3 is discussed at length. This may indicate an independent tradition that did not circulate with the mishnayot of m. Sanh. 10:1-3. Additionally, both m. Sanh. 10:1-3 and t. Sanh. 12:9-11 and 13:6-12 follow a consistent layering structure, which is abruptly interrupted by t. Sanh. 13:1-5. A close analysis of the layering structure of the parallel sections of the Mishnah and Tosefta reveals a scheme in line with that explained by Abraham Goldberg.12 According to Goldberg, although the Mishnah as it now stands was edited by Rabbi Yehudah in the third century, the teachings of earlier generations of tannaim can still be discerned as layers in the text. The first layer contains late Second Temple teachings as formulated by the first Yavne generation,13 for example Gamliel, Eliezer, and Yehoshua. The second layer, representing the second Yavneh generation, contains Akivas formulation of the teachings of these first generation tannaim. The third layer contains Akivas teachings as formulated by the first Usha generation, primarily Akivas students, for example, Yehudah, Nehemiah, and Abba Saul. And the fourth and final layer contains the teachings of the disciples of R. Akiva, as formulated under the
Abraham Goldberg, The MishnaA Study Book of Halakha, in Safrai, The Literature of the Sages, 211-62, esp. 216-22, 235-38. 13) Ibid., 216.
12)
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aegis of R. Yehuda the Patriarch.14 Thus, the Mishnah is essentially the book of R. Akiva,15 as it contains primarily either his formulations of earlier teachings or the teachings of his students. While Goldbergs conclusions are not entirely acceptable to many scholars,16 they do offer an excellent paradigm with which to analyze the texts under discussion. As I will now demonstrate, this pattern of layers and this focus on Akivas teachings is clearly discernible both in m. Sanh. 10:1-3 and in t. Sanh. 12:9-11 and 13:6-12. Tosefta Sanh. 13:1-5, in contrast, breaks this pattern and returns to teachings in the name of first generation Yavneh sages. In order to clearly discern the layers of these mishnayot, it must be noted that m. Sanh. 10:1 and m. Sanh. 10:2 each contain one distinct judgment regarding groups that have no portion in the world to come. Mishnah Sanh. 10:3, although construed as one mishnah in ed. Albeck, actually contains seven judgments of groups that have no portion (the generation of the flood, the generation of the dispersion, etc., shown as separate paragraphs in the appended translation). mss Kaufmann and Parma have most of these judgments as individual mishnayot.17 Considered individually, each of these nine judgments follows a similar pattern: first, either an anonymous opinion or the opinion of Rabbi Akiva is presented. Then, in response, an argument or expansion is often presented either in the name of one of Akivas students18 or in the name of Eliezer ben Hyrcanus, Akivas older contemporary and teacher who argues here
Ibid., 217. Ibid., 236. 16) For example, see Yaakov Elman, Order, Sequence, and Selection: The Mishnahs Anthological Choices, in The Anthology in Jewish Literature (ed. David Stern; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 53-80, at 65: In a large sense, Goldbergs scheme is merely an adaptation of R. Yohanans principle that the major tannaitic compilations, as he and we know them, were all according to the opinion of R. Akiva [b. Sanh. 86a]. Whether the solution works as an explanation of the Mishnahs purpose and arrangement is another question. 17) Note, however, that neither of these manuscripts have the generation of the dispersion or the spies. The third mishnah in both of these manuscripts deals with both the generation of the flood and the men of Sodom, which fits with the fact that Nehemiahs response addresses only these two judgments. The fourth mishnah then goes on to discuss the generation of the desert. The editio princeps, the 1492 Naples edition, has all nine sections, though the generation of the dispersion comes after the spies (Krauss, The Mishnah Treatise Sanhedrin, 26). The Romm Vilna Bavli is similar to ed. Albeck. 18) Abba Saul, Rabbi Yehudah, and Rabbi Nehemiah. In two cases, unnamed sages respond to Akivas students.
15) 14)
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in each case against Akiva. Thus, m. Sanh. 10:1-3 is focused around the teachings of Akiva, primarily representing the third or fourth layers in Goldbergs scheme. Tosefta Sanh. 12:9-11 and 13:6-12 follow this same pattern. Most of the material that is presented anonymously in the Mishnah is also presented anonymously in its parallel material in the Tosefta; and most of the material that is presented in Akivas name in the Mishnah is also presented in Akivas name in its parallel material in the Tosefta.19 The Tosefta material that responds to this anonymous/Akiva layer is, for the most part, not attributed to the well-known second and third generation sages presented in the Mishnah but to less common later generation tannaim.20 The fourth generation of tannaim, according to Goldberg, figures most prominently in the Tosefta.21 Still, this material serves the same purpose in the layering structure as does the parallel material in the Mishnah of responding to the Akiva layer, and the same overall layering scheme is preserved. Tosefta Sanh. 13:1-5 diverges from this pattern, presenting opinions in the name of earlier generation sages exclusively and not preserving any consistent layering throughout. First, opinions are presented by Gamliel, Yehoshua, and Eliezer, then by the schools of Shammai and Hillel, and finally, a lengthy anonymous section is presented. Inasmuch as these attributions can be trusted, this section represents an earlier layer than the preceding and subsequent material and is thus unlikely to represent an expansion of that material. More importantly, although perhaps no single consistent layering structure can be imposed on the entire Mishnah or Tosefta, the fact that m. Sanh. 10:1-3 and t. Sanh. 12:9-11 and 13:6-12 follow each other so closely in this regard, with only t. Sanh. 13:1-5
19) The one exception to this is the ten tribes, which is presented anonymously in the Tosefta and in the name of Akiva in the Mishnah. 20) Rabbi Yehudah ben Beteira: third/fourth generation (presumably, as the second generation tanna of the same name is often mentioned with Yavneh sages, whereas in this case the next opinion is brought in the name of a fifth generation tanna; Shulamis Frieman, Whos Who in the Talmud [Northvale, N.J.: Aronson, 1995], 347), Rabbi Menahem ben Rabbi Yose (ben Halafta): fifth generation (ibid., 208-9), Rabbi Yehoshua ben Korhah: fourth generation (ibid., 340-41), Rabbi Shimon ben Menasya: fifth generation (ibid., 283), Rabbi Shimon ben Yehudah ish kefar akus: fifth generation (ibid., 287). Rabbi Yehudah ben Peteira of t. Sanh. 13:9 is likely a variant spelling of Rabbi Yehudah ben Beteira from t. Sanh. 13:6 (cf. Danbys translation of t. Sanh. 13:9 in Tractate Sanhedrin Mishnah and Tosefta, 127). 21) Goldberg, The MishnaA Study Book of Halakha, 236.
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abruptly diverging from this pattern, is suggestive of an interpolation from an external textual source. Also suggestive is the fact that this section of the Tosefta discusses gehinnom, a word which does not appear anywhere else in the discussion.22 Elsewhere, the discussion revolves around the world to come, or the resurrection of the dead, or standing in judgment.23 Gehinnom is only brought up in t. Sanh. 13:1-5 (more precisely, t. Sanh. 13:3-5; it is also worth noting that this section does not use the term world to come, which returns again at t. Sanh. 13:6 with the text that picks up paralleling the Mishnah). Were this section a commentary on m. Sanh. 10:1-3 or an aggadic expansion of t. Sanh. 12:9-11, it would have been expected to make use of the language of the texts on which it was based. Finally, t. Sanh. 13:4-5 contains redundant information. In its list of those who are locked up in gehinnom, it includes the apiqoros,24 the person who denies the Torah,25 and the person who denies the resurrection. Yet, these were already enumerated in the Mishnah on which the Tosefta is ostensibly commenting. It has been suggested that the second list is meant to add an additional severity to the first but, as I will explain below, this understanding is not sustainable. For these reasons, I suggest that t. Sanh. 13:1-5 represents a distinct textual tradition, which the editors of the Tosefta inserted into the exegetical material that makes up most of t. Sanh. 12:9-13:12.26 Moreover, the evidence just presented does not point to a heterogeneous text. Only in
The term gehinnom does appear elsewhere in the Mishnah and the Tosefta: m. Abot 1:5, m. Abot 5:19, 20, m. Ed. 2:10, m. Qidd. 4:14, and t. Ber. 6:11. 23) Several terms referring to the world to come appear throughout these texts: olam ha-ba, h eleq la-olam ha-ba, h ayyei ha-olam ha-ba, h ayyei olam, h ayyin la-olam ha-ba, lo h ayyin ve-lo niddonin, h arafot le-diron olam, gehinnom, yordin le-gehinnom ve-niddonin bah, gehinnom ninelet bifneihem ve-niddonin bah. The two central categories that seem to come out of these variants are living in the world to come versus standing in judgment. See n. 53, below. 24) See n. 1, above, and n. 51, below, for a discussion of the term apiqoros. 25) Note that t. Sanh. 13:5 does not have the phrase from heaven, which appears in m. Sanh. 10:1 but, considering the other parallels and similarity of concept, it should be considered a parallel phrase. 26) See Chaim Milikowsky, Gehinnom u-Foshei Yisrael al pi Seder Olam, Tarbiz 55 (1986): 311-43, esp. 328 n. 69 and 335 n. 104, where he states that t. Sanh. 13:4-5 is clearly not a continuation of what came previously and argues against Lawrence H. Schiffman assuming so in Who Was a Jew? Rabbinic and Halakhic Perspectives on the Jewish Christian Schism (Hoboken: Ktav, 1985).
22)
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t. Sanh. 13:3-5 is the term gehinnom used in the place of world to come.27 And, parallel texts to t. Sanh. 13:3-5 and t. Sanh. 13:4-5 appear independently in the Bavli and Seder Olam respectively. Also, t. Sanh. 13:4-5 is entirely anonymous and divergent from both the preceding layering structure of the Mishnah and the preceding and subsequent sections of the Tosefta. It appears, then, that t. Sanh. 12:9-11 and 13:6-12 are indeed exegetical expansions on m. Sanh. 10:1-3 but t. Sanh. 13:1-5 is not. Rather, it seems to have been cobbled together from more than one independent textual tradition inserted into the exegetical material. For the purposes of this paper, I am primarily concerned with t. Sanh. 13:5 because of its similarity with m. Sanh. 10:1. What is the relationship between this text and m. Sanh. 10:1?
M. Sanh. 10:1. And these have no portion in the world to come: the one who says, There is no resurrection of the dead from the Torah and There is no Torah from heaven, and an Epicurean. T. Sanh. 13:5. But, the sectarians, and the apostates, and the informers, and Epicureans, and [those] who denied the Torah, and [those] who separated from community norms, and [those] who denied the resurrection of the dead, and everyone who sinned and caused many to sinfor example, Jeroboam and Ahaband who set their terror on the land of the living, and who reached out their hand against the Temple: gehinnom is locked before them, and they are judged there for generation after generation.
These two texts are obviously related; but the evidence just adduced points away from the likelihood that one is commenting on the other, most obviously because they contain redundant information. Although, as stated earlier, the simplest reading of t. Sanh. 12:9 is that it is aware of m. Sanh. 10:1 and is adding additional instances of those with no portion in the world to come, it seems unlikely that the Tosefta would proceed in 13:5 to gloss the Mishnah with a commentary which so overlaps the Mishnahs content. Against this, and according to the traditional understanding of
27) Later, I will address and reject the possibility that this change of terminology is meant to express a more severe punishment.
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the Tosefta as a commentary on the Mishnah, some scholars have tried to read t. Sanh. 13:5 as commenting on m. Sanh. 10:1. Thus Lawrence Schiffman suggests that this list in the Tosefta represents an expansion of the list found in the Mishnah, adding certain offenders whose transgressions had such major consequences as to cause the loss of their portion in the world to come and to bring upon them eternal punishment.28 That is, the Mishnah presents a list of those who lose their portion in the world to come (they presumably are annihilated after death), and the Tosefta presents a list of those who not only lose their portion in the world to come but also receive an eternal punishment. This suggestion must be rejected for two reasons. First, the toseftan list repeats items from the Mishnah. Second, the transgressions listed in the toseftan list do not add to the severity of the transgressions listed in the Mishnah in any clear and consistent way. On the first point, both lists contain the apiqoros. Moreover, both lists contain the one who denies the resurrection and the Torah (with the important modifications that I will now discuss). These repetitions mean that the additional punishment of the second list cannot be a commentary on the first. Were it not for the apiqoros, perhaps the claim could be made that the two other ostensible repetitions are actually an additional severity. As mentioned earlier, the phraseology of the Mishnah is quite precise: ha-omer, the one who says there is no resurrection of the dead and there is no Torah from heaven. The Mishnah is proscribing a verbal act rather than belief in a heterodox bit of dogma. The Tosefta, on the other hand, speaks of the ones who do not acknowledge (she-ein-modim) or the ones who denied (she-kafru) the resurrection and the ones who denied (she-kafru) the Torah. The Toseftas phraseology is more indicative of an obligation to believe.29
Schiffman, Who Was a Jew? 46. The ones who denied the resurrection of the dead is according to ms Erfurt. ms Vienna and the editio princeps of the Tosefta have ve-she-ein modin/modim bi-teh iyyat ha-metim: the ones who do not acknowledge the resurrection of the dead. See ed. Zuckermandel, 434. The latter is to be preferred as the Erfurt ms is marred more than the others by adaptations to the Babylonian Talmud, and the Vienna ms is superior (Goldberg, The ToseftaCompanion to the Mishna, 298). Note that the Hebrew word kofer means to deny or to reject but is often used in the specific context of rejecting religious beliefs. In the context of the Tosefta here, the sense of kofer is clearly the denial of a principle of doctrine. The sense of the word omer, in contrast, is entirely neutral, meaning to say with no other connotation. Furthermore, while the Mishnah never uses the expressions kofer or ein modeh in this sense, these expressions do appear in baraitot in both the
29) 28)
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In order to read the list in the Tosefta as indicating a more severe punishment resulting from a more serious transgression, we would have to consider this difference in terminology as specifying a more heinous sin. That is, merely saying there is no resurrection of the dead, which results in a loss of ones portion in the world to come, would have to be considered less severe than disbelieving or not acknowledging the resurrection, which results in a portion in gehinnom. This is certainly not self-evident and even if this could be established, other elements of the second list, for example separating oneself from the community, do not seem to be more severe transgressions. And even were this possible to establish, the problem with the repetition of apiqoros would remain. Thus, my earlier question remains unanswered. What is the relationship between m. Sanh. 10:1 and t. Sanh. 13:5? As it is self-evident that the texts are related, and as the evidence indicates that one is neither a commentary on nor an exegetical expansion of the other, these two texts must represent stages in the evolution of a single textual tradition.30 That is, one text may be an edited version of the other, or, more likely, both evolved from an earlier text. Given the number of manuscript variations on the basic themes presented in these two texts, it is not possible to reconstruct a precise development of this tradition. However, it is possible to ask which of the texts is likely to be primary, which is likely to represent the earlier version.
Yerushalmi and the Bavli. See, for example, y. Sanh. 10:2, 29b (my translation): : Gehazi was a man mighty in Torah, but he had three [faults]: a lack of generosity, lewdness, and he did not acknowledge the resurrection of the dead. See also b. Sanh. 90a (my translation): : he denied the resurrection of the dead, therefore he will not have a portion in the resurrection of the dead. The latter is especially notable as it is the Gemaras initial response to m. Sanh. 10:1; the Mishnahs choice of the language of praxis stands in contrast to the Gemaras language of doctrine. 30) While the possibility must be allowed that these are entirely independent formulations on the general theme of heresy which circulated in the first centuries of the common era, their close similarity is most reasonably taken as indicating some kind of dependency. All three of the proscriptions enumerated in m. Sanh. 10:1 are mentioned in t. Sanh. 13:5 using very similar language. It is also to be noted that the relationship of these texts was clear to the editor of the Tosefta, who positioned the latter as an ostensible commentary on or expansion of the former. Another possibility is that, although related, their temporal sequence is not indicated in the language of these texts in such a way as to be amenable to philological or historiographical analysis. I endeavor in what follows to argue that it is. See n. 33, below, on Milikowskys analysis of these texts and his conclusions.
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T. Sanh. 13:5 is paralleled by a text in the third chapter of Seder Olam, an examination of which will help reveal a possible avenue of evolution of this textual tradition (actually, all of t. Sanh. 13:4-5 is paralleled, but my primary concern is 13:5).
)( )( )( .( )( ) But the ones who separated from community norms, for example, the sectarians, and the apostates, and the informers, and the flatterers, and the apiqorsin who denied the resurrection of the dead and who said, there is no Torah from heaven: gehinnom is locked before them and they are judged within it forever and for all eternity.31
Seder Olam is generally recognized as a tannaitic text, but the precise relationship between Seder Olam, the Tosefta, and the Mishnah is uncertain.32 It is clear that this material from Seder Olam 3 is very similar to t. Sanh. 13:5 and that m. Sanh. 10:1 contains only a small portion of this material. It seems, in any case, that m. Sanh. 10:1, t. Sanh. 13:5, and Seder Olam 3 represent variant versions of a single textual tradition in various phases of
31) Chaim Joseph Milikowsky, Seder Olam: A Rabbinic Chronography (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1981), 230-31, my translation. Cf. Heinrich W. Guggenheimer, Seder Olam: The Rabbinic View of Biblical Chronology: Translated and with Commentary (Northvale, N.J.: Aronson, 1998), 42-43. 32) See Judah M. Rosenthal, Seder Olam, Encyclopaedia Judaica 2nd ed. (ed. Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik; 22 vols.; Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007), 18:235-36. See also, Milikowsky, Seder Olam, abstract: In the Babylonian Talmud Seder Olam is ascribed to Rabi Yose ben H alaphta (2nd century C.E.). After an analysis of internal and external evidence the historicity of this statement is accepted. Guggenheimer writes, The text of the Tosephta is not derived from Seder Olam, neither is Seder Olam from the Tosephta (Seder Olam, 45). However, he points to m. Ed. 2:10 as the source for the concept of twelve months of punishment, which appears in both the Tosefta and Seder Olam: The entire theory of 12 months punishment is due to Rebbi Aqiba who is reported in Mishnah Idiut [sic] 2:10 to have declared: . . . the judgment of evildoers in hell is 12 months . . . (ibid.). Dov Ber Ratner dates this Tosefta as post-Talmudic: In my opinion, the Tosefta before us was edited after the closing of the Gemara. And thus we always find in the Tosefta later additions according to the conclusions of the amoraim (Samuel K. Mirsky, Midrash Seder Olam: A Photostatic Reproduction of Ber Ratners Edition of the Text, Notes, and Introduction [New York: Talmudic Research Institute, 1966], 82, my translation). Milikowsky tends to see Seder Olam as predating the Tosefta (Milikowsky, Seder Olam, 13).
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its evolution. Based on a close examination of these variants, it is possible to speculate on the general parameters of this evolution.33 Tosefta ms Erfurt34 has:
...
One possible translation of this text as it stands is: But the sectarians, and the apostates, and the informers, and apiqorosin,35 and those who denied the Torah, and those who separate from community norms, and those who denied the resurrection . . .36 As it stands, however, the text is grammatically problematic; a precise translation would be syntactically awkward:
But the sectarians, and the apostates, and the informers, and apiqorosin, and who denied the Torah, and who separate from community norms, and who denied the resurrection . . .
The difficulty is with the prefix she in Mishnaic Hebrew (ve-she-kafru . . . ve-she-porshin . . . ve-she-kafru: and who denied . . . and who separate . . .
33) Milikowskys concise yet comprehensive analysis of these texts in Gehinnom u-Foshei Yisrael, 335 n. 104, lays the groundwork for the following argument. I build on his work by adding a somewhat more systematic look at the grammatical anomaly under discussion and by adducing additional arguments in support of his conclusion that m. Sanh. 10:1 is secondary. Milikowskys main points are that this text in Seder Olam 3 may provide us with a tannaitic definition of Epicureanism and that any thematic analysis of texts such as these can only be done after a careful examination of textual development reveals what the original content might have been. My interest in Milikowskys work is what it may reveal regarding changes in the phraseology of these prohibitions between the various strata of this textual tradition. 34) Tosefta textual variants from Bar Ilan Universitys public database: . 35) The manuscripts vary in how they render the term apiqorsim. My translations are faithful to the manuscripts, but in the discussion I will consistently use apiqoros or apiqorsim. See n. 1, above and n. 51, below, for a discussion of the term apiqoros. 36) My translation. Cf. Danby, Tractate Sanhedrin Mishnah and Tosefta, 123: But the heretics and renegades and traitors and Epicureans, and those who denied the Law, or separated themselves from the ways of the congregation, or denied the resurrection of the dead. Danbys translation of the Mishnah and the Tosefta of tractate Sanhedrin is based on ed. Zuckermandel, which is based on ms Erfurt.
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and who denied), which is serving an ambiguous purpose. It may be acting as a relative pronoun with an implied antecedent, intending:
... But the sectarians, and the apostates, and the informers, and apiqorosin, and those who denied the Torah, and those who separate from community norms, and those who denied the resurrection . . .
As a relative pronoun, however, the she prefix typically has an explicit antecedent, such as I inserted into the text here but which does not appear in ms Erfurt.37 Alternatively, she may be referring back to the word apiqoros, intending something like:
... But the sectarians, and the apostates, and the informers, and apiqorosin who denied the Torah, who separate from community norms, and who denied the resurrection . . .38
In this case, denying the Torah, separating from the community, and denying the resurrection are specific attributes of the more general appellation,
37) Thus, M. H. Segal, A Grammar of Mishnaic Hebrew (Oxford: Clarendon, 1979), 205, writes: In [Mishnaic Hebrew, she] must always have an antecedent. Even so, it would probably not be entirely correct to say that this is a grammatical error, especially seeing as this type of usage does occur elsewhere in tannaitic literature, for example, m. H ul. 3:5 (ed. Albeck, 5:125, my translation): , , , , , : [An animal] that is attacked by congestion, one that was exposed to smoke, one that became chilled, one that ate hardufni, or one that ate chicken manure or drank bad water: [these are] kosher. However, here also mss vary between ve-she and she. In biblical Hebrew, this type of construct occurs with the relative pronoun asher, for example Judg 1:12 (my translation): - , , - -- : And Caleb said the one that strikes Kiryat Sefer and captures it, I will give Achsah my daughter to him as a wife. With an explicit antecedent, we might expect something like: - , . See Ronald J. Williams and John C. Beckman, Williams Hebrew Syntax: Third Edition (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007), 164-65. 38) My translation.
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apiqoros, rather than distinct individual categories of transgressors. This second possibility is almost precisely what we see in b. Ro Ha. 17a:39
... But the sectarians, and the informers, and the apiqorsim who denied the Torah, denied the resurrection of the dead, and separated from community norms . . .40
The simple addition of a vav before the first she-kafru changes the text considerably. With no vav, what follows the shin are a series of attributes of the apiqoros. With a vav, the text is grammatically problematic and seems to be a much longer list of proscribed beliefs and behaviors. This grammatical awkwardness may have resulted in a number of interesting manuscript variations. For example, Tosefta ms Vienna has:
... But the sectarians, and the apostates, and the informers, and apiqorosiim and the ones who deny the Torah and separators from community norms and that do not acknowledge the resurrection . . .41
And the editio princeps42 has:

...
39) Ed. Vilna and other printed editions of the Talmud have she-kafru; ms Munich and other mss have ve-she-kafru. See Rabbinovicz, diqduqei sofrim (Munich, 1871). Rabbinovicz cites several textual witness to the latter and notes that he believes the printed editions to be incorrect. Cf. Milikowsky, Gehinnom u-Foshei Yisrael, 335 n.104, who offers support for ed. Vilna. 40) My translation. 41) My translation; the clumsy expression separators from community norms and the awkward final phrase and that do not acknowledge are literal translations of the text as it stands. 42) The editio princeps of the Tosefta is from the 1521-22 Venice edition of Alfasi on the Talmud (Strack and Stemberger, Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash, 178; Goldberg, The ToseftaCompanion to the Mishna, 298).
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But the sectarians, and the apostates, and the informers, and the piqorosin, and the ones who deny the Torah and separators from community norms and that do not acknowledge the resurrection . . .43
Between the Bavli and the various editions of the Tosefta both of the possible readings (either the relative pronoun has an implied antecedent or it is referring explicitly to apiqorsim) of the non-standard grammatical usage in ms Erfurt are represented in odd and suggestive combinations, which I will discuss shortly. The parallel text in Milikowskys critical edition of Seder Olam, cited above, is similar to the Bavli.
... )( )( )( But the ones who separated from community norms, for example, the sectarians, and the apostates, and the informers, and the flatterers, and the apiqorsin who denied the resurrection of the dead and who said, there is no Torah from heaven . . .44
A close examination of these variants will indicate that the original version of this textual tradition was probably similar to Seder Olam and to the Bavli.45 First, it seems unlikely that a non-standard grammatical usage such as that seen in Tosefta ms Erfurt is primary.46 On the other hand, it is reasonable to suppose that it represents a corruption of an earlier text similar to Seder Olam. The corruption would require nothing more than the addition of a single vav. This vav would then transform the text into something suggestive of a longer list of transgressors, which subsequent generations would try to correct, the results of which are seen in ms Vienna and in the editio princeps. In both of these texts, we see ha-kofrim,
See n. 41, above. My translation. 45) Though, of course, the Bavli text is likely rather late and Seder Olam primary among the two. 46) Thus, Milikowsky notes that he believes ve-ha-apiqorsin she-kafru, etc. is the correct text for Seder Olam 3 although it only appears in ms Leningrad. One of the reasons he cites is the grammatical anomaly under discussion. See Milikowsky, Gehinnom u-Foshei Yisrael, 335 n. 104. Of course, the opposite argument could also be made, that later texts would impose grammatical uniformity on variant textual traditions. In this case, given the additional evidence adduced, it seems more likely that the grammatical anomaly here is secondary.
44) 43)
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the ones who deny, rather than she-kafru, thus correcting the ambiguous she prefix and making the list clearly contain additional elements.47 Also suggestive is the fact that the initial elements of the list up to apiqorsim in ms Erfurt and ms Vienna are all definite, but apiqorsim is indefinite. It is an anomaly that the editio princeps corrects by making the initial alef of apiqorsim into a he, transforming the Greek apiqoros into the corrupted piqoros.48 However, if apiqorsim is a general appellation followed by a list of specific attributes, the indefinite grammatical form of apiqorsim is fine. With apiqorsim indefinite, it would read: But the Sectarians, the Apostates, the Informers, and apiqorsim who denied the Torah, separated from community norms, and denied the resurrection. In this reading, the indefinite form is used because the term requires additional definition. With apiqorsim definite (as in the Bavli and Seder Olam), it would read But the Sectarians, the Apostates, the Informers, and the Apiqorsim, who denied the Torah, separated from the ways of the community, and denied the resurrection . . . In this reading the additional definitions are a parenthetical gloss. Both possible readings are fine. In ms Erfurt and ms Vienna, on the other hand, the indefinite grammatical form of apiqorsim is merely anomalous. It is also reasonable to suppose that the term apiqoros, unlike the other terms in the list, was in need of a series of definitive attributes. All of the other terms in the list are Hebrew and would likely have had clearly defined meanings to the rabbis and their contemporaries (although the implications of some of these terms are not clear to modern readers; the precise meaning of the term min, for example, has been the subject of generations of lively, and as of yet unresolved, scholarly disagreement).49 Apiqoros, in contrast,
Note that both of the texts retain the second she prefix, which still presents a grammatical awkwardness, as seen in my translations, above. 48) See n. 1, above. 49) See Daniel Sperber, Min, Encyclopaedia Judaica 2nd ed., 14:263-64. The Hebrew word min is related to the word for species or kind, so sectarian seems a fair enough translation. Though if so, then the implication would be a Jewish sectarian, yet the term is not used exclusively of Jews. Thus, the word is sometimes translated more generally as heretic. As this term is used in rabbinic literature over several centuries, it is unlikely on the face of it that it refers consistently to a single group throughout this period. See Segal, Two Powers in Heaven, 4-7. Much of the debate has focused around whether minim were Jewish Christians, particularly in connection with birkat ha-minim. See Reuven Kimelman, Birkat Ha-Minim and the Lack of Evidence for an Anti-Christian Jewish Prayer in Late Antiquity, in Jewish and Christian Self-Definition, Volume Two: Aspects of Judaism in the Graeco-Roman Period (ed. E. P. Sanders, A. I. Baumgarten, and Alan Mendelson;
47)
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derives from the Greek philosophical school, Epicureanism.50 Its exact offense against rabbinic teachings may not have been immediately obvious, thus the need for a list of details specifying their misdeeds. Furthermore, as Epicureanism was a philosophical school, it is consistent to attribute to them doctrinal positions such as denying the Torah and the resurrection. The Greek philosopher Epicurus is known primarily for his denial of divine providence, a position consistent with the denial of a divinely written Torah and the divine reward or punishment implied by resurrection.51 The most reasonable conclusion, therefore, is that the primary reading has those who deny the Torah and the resurrection not as additional categories of transgressors but as details of the general transgression of Epicureanism. If this is correct, then any text which separates apiqoros and what follows into distinct categories, most importantly m. Sanh. 10:1, is a later generation text. The primary text was corrupted, perhaps by the simple addition of a single letter vav, and went through a number of versions that attempted to correct the resultant grammatical peculiarity. Eventually, the editors of the Mishnah received this text and edited it down to the three categories which we see in m. Sanh. 10:1: the one who says that there is no resurrection, the one who says that there is no Torah from Heaven, and the apiqoros.
Philadelphia: Fortress, 1981), 226-44. Also, see Schiffman, Who Was a Jew? 53-61; Marcel Simon, Verus Israel: A Study of the Relations between Christians and Jews in the Roman Empire (AD 135-425) (trans. H. McKeating; London: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 1996), 179-201; Stuart S. Miller, The Minim of Sepphoris Reconsidered, HTR 86 (1993): 377-402, esp. 400-401. For a recent extended study of the subject, see Yaakov Y. Teppler, Birkat haMinim: Jews and Christians in Conflict in the Ancient World (trans. Susan Weingarten; Tbingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007). 50) See n. 1, above. 51) Epicurus . . . endorsed religious observance but denied earthly involvement of the perfect gods and with it providence, presage, punishment, and penitential prayer (Henry Albert Fischel, Epicureanism, Encyclopaedia Judaica 2nd ed., 6:463). Cf. Labendz, Know What to Answer the Epicurean, 179: This understanding of Epicureanism corresponds to Liebermans assertion that the most blatant disagreement between Epicurean and Jewish theologies seems to have been the formers denial of divine providence. Also, cf. Saul Lieberman, Texts and Studies (New York: Ktav, 1974), 223: [T]he Rabbis probably heard that the Epicureans said: and The Epicurean doctrine that the gods care about nothing and nobody, thereby denying reward and punishment for mens actions, was regarded by the Rabbis as worse than atheism. Liebermans point is that the rabbis probably knew very little about the teachings of Epicurus beyond these current general phrases.
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The main purpose of this extended analysis of the possible diachronic evolution of our textual tradition, apart from its inherent interest, is to establish that m. Sanh. 10:1 represents a later, rather heavily edited version of the earlier generations of this tradition that we see represented in the various versions of the Tosefta and Seder Olam. The editors of the Mishnah cleaned up a long and unruly list of those destined for gehinnom into a compact list of three who are denied their portion in the world to come. For my purposes, the editorial decision that I wish to stress is the fact that m. Sanh. 10:1 has the one who says that there is no resurrection and no Torah from heaven. In the several other texts that we have examined, most have the one who denies or the one who does not acknowledge. Of the extant versions of this textual tradition,52 only the Mishnah leaves off all mention of denying and not acknowledging and chooses only the phrase the one who says. Thus, m. Sanh. 10:1 displays a significant stylistic innovation. Instead of the heresiological language of denying or not acknowledging that appears in the Tosefta and Seder Olam, the Mishnah uses the pragmatic language of the one who says.53 The former is consistent with the type of language that we might expect for a document describing a proscribed doctrine. The latter, however, is an expression of praxis. As I will demonstrate below, the Mishnah never uses terms such as kofer and ein modeh in this regard. It always chooses to use terms descriptive of action such as
Encompassing the well-known Tosefta manuscripts and printed editions, cited above, and the Seder Olam manuscripts and fragments that Milikowsky cites (Seder Olam, 231). 53) Another significant stylistic difference between m. Sanh. 10:1 and t. Sanh. 13:5 is that the Tosefta uses the term gehinnom rather than world to come, as mentioned earlier. The latter term is more ambiguous than the former. Olam ha-ba may refer to a world where disembodied souls go immediately after an individuals death, something like our concept of heaven. Or it may refer to an additional physical life that may or may not be eternal, which the individual is said to experience after being resurrected from the dead in the messianic age. Among the rishonim, Maimonides expressed the former interpretation and Saadia Gaon expressed the latter. See Finkelstein, Mavo, 213-20. Finkelstein also sees evidence of a similar argument between Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Yehoshua in m. Sanh. 10:1-3 and its parallel texts (especially Avot de-Rabbi Natan A 36) based on variations such as olam ha-ba, h ayyin la-olam ha-ba, lo h ayyin ve-lo niddonin, etc. See n. 23, above. If earlier generation texts used the term gehinnom and this evolved into the phrase world to come in the Mishnah, this could have implications regarding tannaitic Weltanschauung. For example, Finkelstein (ibid.) sees the ambiguity in the term olam ha-ba as being an intentional choice by the earliest generations of sages, who accepted both possible interpretations of the term as authoritative. Of course, I am not making such a claim and the entire issue is beyond the scope of this paper.
52)
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ha-omer. The Tosefta, Seder Olam, and even the Sifre and baraitot that appear in the Talmuds, in contrast, tend to use the more heresiological terms.54 For some reason (I will suggest two possibilities in section 3, below), the editors of the Mishnah chose to standardize phrases indicative of praxis such as the one who says even when discussing questions that are ostensibly concerned with doctrine.
2. Synchronic Study of the Mishnah Having established that the use of the phrase the one who says in m. Sanh. 10:1 represents an intentional modification of an earlier text which used a phrase such as the one who denies or the one who does not acknowledge, I will now demonstrate that the phrase the one who says also appears in the Mishnah in other contexts relevant to doctrine and heresy. I suggest that the editors of the Mishnah standardized this specific phraseology as a way of expressing doctrinal issues in terms of praxis. Indeed, the Mishnah, in contrast to other tannaitic works, never uses terms such as kofer and ein modeh in connection to matters of doctrine. One example of this is m. Meg. 4:9. This mishnah enumerates a number of forbidden liturgical practices divided into three categories, apparently indicating levels of severity.55
, ; , : : . , . ,
54) See n. 29, above, for examples from the Bavli and Yerushalmi (b. Sanh. 90a and y. Sanh. 10:2, 29b). See the discussion of idolatry, below and in n. 67, for examples from Sifre (Sifre Deuteronomy 54 and Sifre Numbers 111). Cf. Maimonides, hilkhot teshuvah 3:14 (Mishneh Torah [ed. Qafih; Kiryat Ono: Mekhon Misnhat ha-Rambam, 1983-96], my translation): , , , , , . , , , , , , , , , ,: And these have no portion in the world to come, they are cut off and lost, judged because of their great wickedness and sins forever and for all eternity: heretics, Epicureans, those who deny the Torah, those who deny the resurrection of the dead, those who deny the coming of the redeemer, apostates, those who cause the multitude to sin, those who separate themselves from community norms, those who sin arrogantly in public like Jehoiakim, informers, those who terrify the community not for the sake of heaven, murderers, slanders, and a person who submits to epispasm. 55) Ed. Albeck, 2:367-68, my translation.
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, , , . The one who says, good ones shall bless youthis is the way of minut. [The one who says,] your compassion extends even to a birds nest, your name shall be recalled for good, we give thanks, we give thankshe is to be silenced. The one who allegorizes [the biblical texts] of forbidden relationshipshe is to be silenced. The one who [interprets the biblical verse] Do not give of your offspring to take across to Molekh [as] Do not give of your offspring to take across to the ways of the Arameanshe is to be silenced with a rebuke.
Several practices, some obscure, are described. The first is rejected as minut, the next four are punished by being silenced, and the last is punished by a rebuke. The first practice involves a statement, presumably said in prayer, the meaning of which is unclear: Good ones shall bless you. Who are the good ones, and who is being blessed? Rashi explains that the good ones are righteous people and God is being blessed; the reason this is denounced is that it does not include the wicked in the praising of the omnipresent. That is, it implies that only the righteous can praise God. Arguably, this idea is somewhat contradictory to the generally inclusive nature of Judaism;56 yet it is hard to understand why it should be described as minut, a term usually used to describe somewhat more aberrant heterodoxy.57 The Mishnah does not clearly indicate whether this prayer is to be considered a more or a less severe transgression than what follows; it is the only practice described as minut and the only one not silenced or punished. According to Rashis reading, it seems that this is to be understood as a less severe transgression; thus minut, although not desirable, does not require silencing or rebuke. Tosefot offers an alternate reading: Because it appears as if there are two powers, that is, good gods.58 Tosefot is reading the statement as may the Good Ones bless you, where the Good Ones are some kind of a divine multiplicity.59 This prayer is forbidden, obviously, because it contradicts a
Inclusive in the sense that all Jews are considered to be bound by its authority. See n. 49, above, and n. 61, below. 58) On the accuracy of the translation of as two powers, see Segal, Two Powers in Heaven, 7-8 n. 8. 59) Rabbi Hananel ben Hushiel (11th c.) and Rabbi Nissim ben Reuben (14th c., in his commentary to Rabbi Isaac ben Jacob Alfasi) read this passage the same way. Similarly, see Simon, Verus Israel, 199, and Teppler, Birkat haMinim, 329-36, who both read this
57) 56)
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basic principle of Judaic faith, the belief in one God. This reading is compelling in light of m. Sanh. 4:5: For this reason Adam was created alone . . . so the minin will not say there are many powers in heaven, 60 which explicitly connects minim to the concept of divine multiplicity. Although there has been much scholarly debate regarding whom the term min refers to, or if, indeed, it consistently refers to a single group, it is reasonable to suppose that the Mishnah, at least, consistently has a more or less well-defined set of beliefs and practices in mind.61 Our ambiguous
mishnah as referring to two powers. Schremer, Midrash, Theology, and History, 233 n. 11, seems less certain; I attempt to address one of his concerns, below. Note that my point here is not to determine which specific permutation of belief in divine multiplicity is at issue. It could be an early Christian, gnostic, or even Zoroastrian binitarianism, a later Christian trinitarianism, or a pagan polytheism (not that all of these are equally likely!). The only point is that this prayer compromises the belief in one God. 60) Ed. Albeck, 4:182, my translation. That is, had God created many people all at once rather than just creating Adam (this word could also be translated generically as man), it would have been possible to conjecture that there are many gods, each of which created its own human being. Note that the problem here is many powers, not specifically two or three. 61) See n. 49, above. While there is general agreement that the term min does not refer to a single group throughout all of the several centuries of rabbinic literature, in the narrow time-frame of the early third century when the Mishnah was edited, the term likely had a more specific and generally understood connotation. There are only seven relevant references to minim in the Mishnah (excluding Sota h 9:15, which is thought to be a later interpolation; see Kimelman, Birkat Ha-Minim, 392 n. 18): m. Ber. 9:5, m. Ro Ha. 2:1, m. Meg. 4:8-9 (I count this as a single reference as 4:9 is clearly a continuation of 4:8), m. Sanh. 4:5, m. H ul. 2:9, m. Parah 3:3, and m. Yad. 4:8 (ed. Albeck and other printed editions have Sadducee for the latter two references, ms Kaufmann and other mss have min). The meaning of many of these references is obscure and open to interpretation, but most of them imply a circumscribed set of beliefs and practices: belief in only one world (m. Ber. 9:5), heterodoxy in regard to the lunar calendar (m. Ro Ha. 2:1), belief in some form of a divine multiplicity and a heterodox method of putting on tefillin (m. Meg. 4:8-9, m. Sanh. 4:5), heterodoxy regarding the slaughter of animals (m. H ul. 2:9), etc. This kind of specificity does not point to the conclusion that the term was being used in the general sense of heretics, irrespective of whether the heretics in question were Jewish or non-Jewish, whether gnostic, Christian, or pagan. On the other hand, given the generally amorphous borderlines of religious affiliations and the rapidly changing political and social circumstances at the time of the Mishnahs editing, it is also possible that a number of related groups or a heterodox tendency expressed in these beliefs and practices by loosely affiliated Jews outside of the sphere of the rabbis is being addressed. The important point is that the Mishnah is addressing a circumscribed set of beliefs through the establishment of a uniform practice rather than through the establishment of a uniform doctrine. As Segal, Two Powers in Heaven, 98, writes on m. Meg. 4:9 and m. Ber. 5:3: The
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reference to a practice of minut in m. Meg. 4:9 is best understood in terms of the beliefs of the minim of m. Sanh. 4:5. Mishnah Meg. 4:9 is condemning the theological beliefs of a specific sect or of a set of related sects by condemning a liturgical practice that reflects these beliefs. Furthermore, the Mishnah itself seems to indicate that the prayer being described here was part of an established sectarian liturgical form. Mishnah Meg. 4:9 is a continuation of the previous mishnah, which ends with the condemnation of another practice as minut: the placement of tefillin in ways other than those dictated by the rabbis.62 It appears as if we have a series of known practices and beliefs which were associated with sects that the rabbis are rejecting. The possibility that the practice of saying may the Good Ones bless you is being condemned because of a suspected association with sectarian liturgical formulations is made more compelling by the prohibited practice of saying modim modim, we give thanks, we give thanks. According to b. Meg. 25a, the problem with this practice is that it may be taken as asserting two powers (the repeated phrases might be taken as being addressed each to a distinct god). Yet this is not rejected as minut but merely silenced, perhaps owing to it not being associated with heterodox practices but merely suggestive. Thus, in y. Ber. 5:3, 9c, Rabbi Shmuel rules that saying we give thanks, we give thanks is forbidden only in public, but in private it is just a supplicatory prayer. Adiel Schremer comments that Rabbi Shmuels ruling casts serious doubt on the assumption that this saying was forbidden because it reflects a belief in two powers because if so it would not be allowed even in private.63 On the contrary, perhaps it is condemned only if said in public because it is similar to the liturgy of sectarian groups which were already infamous for holding such views. According to this reading, then, this practice would be less severe than the
mishnayot describe relevant heretical practices under the rubric of forbidden prayer. There, Segal examines these two mishnayot at length. See Teppler, Birkat haMinim, 187230, for an extended discussion of minim in the Mishnah. Teppler concludes that these minim are early Christians: [A]lthough every one of the sources in the Mishnah dealing with these bans and restrictions can be explained in various ways, together these bans can only be understood as reflections of the polemic with the early developments in Christianity (Teppler, Birkat haMinim, 229). I expect that this conclusion will not be met with widespread agreement. 62) See Teppler, Birkat haMinim, 193-203. 63) Schremer, Midrash, Theology, and History, 233 n. 11.
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previous one, requiring silencing only but not considered full fledged minut. In any case, it does seem clear that the issues involved in a number of the liturgical proscriptions of this mishnah are doctrinal. There are certain definite beliefs, most likely involving compromising the belief in divine unity, which this mishnah is setting out to condemn. And yet, to return to the point with which I started this section, although the Mishnah is ostensibly concerned with preventing the entertainment of heretical doctrine, it actually only proscribes specific liturgical practices. The Mishnah does not explicitly forbid believing that there are many powers in heaven. Such a blatant prohibition would be the establishment of doctrine, which is inconsistent with the tone of the Mishnah. Rather, prohibited is the one who says may the Good Ones bless you. Presumably, this liturgical practice is being suppressed in order to prevent heresy, yet the heresy itself is not explicitly forbidden or even directly addressed. Mishnah Ber. 5:3 contains a section of the same text which makes the same point, so it is not necessary to discuss at length.64
, , . , . . ? The one who says, your compassion extends even to a birds nest, your name shall be recalled for good, we give thanks, we give thankshe is to be silenced. One who passes before the ark and makes an error, another shall pass in his stead; and do not demur in such an instance. From where shall he begin? From the beginning of the blessing in which [the other] made an error.
For our purposes, this mishnahs salient points repeat those of m. Meg. 4:9. Again, the same point is being made: an ostensibly heterodox belief is being proscribed through a proscription of heterodox practice. Thus we see the same phrase the one who says that appears in m. Sanh. 10:1 (which was, according to my reading, intentionally changed from an earlier text that directly forbade the entertainment of forbidden doctrine) also appears in both m. Meg. 4:9 and m. Ber. 5:3 in a similar context of heterodoxy, yet it forbids practice rather than doctrine. Again, rather than
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Ed. Albeck, 1:22-23, my translation.
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choosing to address beliefs directly, the tannaim chose to address actions. This suggests an overall tannaitic orientation towards orthopraxy and away from orthodoxy. Against this suggestion, it might be claimed that the point of these two mishnayot is liturgical rather than doctrinal and for this reason they discuss verbal acts rather than belief; liturgy obviously involves articulating specific prayers. However, this is exactly my point. The fault underlying the proscribed liturgy is doctrinal; it expresses a binitarian or otherwise polytheistic belief. These mishnayot seem designed to prevent this type of belief from spreading. Had the rabbis been prepared to impose doctrine directly through the establishment of creedsas we see in the case of the church fathers in Late Antiquity, most notably in the establishment of the Nicene Creed in the early fourth centurythis would have been a more direct way to bring about the desired outcome.65 Indeed, this was Maimonides approach to a similar problem centuries later (and, it is to be noted, his attempt was markedly unsuccessful for several subsequent centuries). The editors of the Mishnah chose a different approach, an approach that marks the entire Mishnah, an approach that focuses on praxis rather than doctrine.
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Thus, contrast the 325 c.e. Nicene Creed: , : We believe in one GOD
FATHER almighty, maker of everything both visible and invisible (Philip Schaff, The Creeds of Christendom, Volume 2 [repr., Grand Rapids: Baker, 1966], 60); with a contemporary version of the ani maamin: : I believe with complete faith that the creator, may his name be blessed, he creates and directs all creation and he alone did, does, and will do all deeds (Siddur Yitzchak Yair Hashalem [Brooklyn: Mesorah, 2000], my translation); with the first halakhah of the Mishneh Torah: . . : to know that there is a first existing; and he causes the existence of all that exists; and all that exists from the heaven and earth and what is between them, does not exist apart from the truth of his existing (ed. Qafih; my translation; cf. hilkhot teshuvah 3:14 in n. 54, above); with pragmatic liturgical formulations such the Shema, which include no explicit statement of belief and only minimal predication of God (see n. 79, below). Among possible differences between believing, believing with complete faith, knowing, and saying are the amount of latitude they allow for individual interpretation and the extent to which they constrain freedom of rational inquiry. It is, of course, difficult to know exactly what the Mishnahs editors had in mind, and my intention is neither to overstate mishnaic tolerance for doctrinal heterodoxy nor to impose modern concepts on ancient thinkers. But, given the Mishnahs precision of language, choices such as these are surely significant.
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Another example of orthopraxy in the Mishnah can be seen in connection to idolatry. A rejection of idolatry has been the definitive characteristic of Judaic law since the time of the ancient Israelites.66 This rejection finds its most succinct expression in tannaitic literature in the Sifre (Sifre Deuteronomy 54):67
. All who acknowledge idolatry, deny the entire Torah; all who deny idolatry, acknowledge the entire Torah.
This text uses the sort of language we might expect to find in connection with what has always been, arguably, the central and perhaps only true doctrine in Judaism. It is self-evident that a theological stance underlies this rejection of idolatry: at the very least a belief that there is one God. Acknowledging idolatry in the Sifre means rejecting this belief and thus rejecting the entire Torah, which is based on this belief. The approach of the Sifre can be sharply contrasted to the approach of the Mishnah in m. Sanh. 7:6:68
, , , , . : , , . , ,
See Ephraim E. Urbach, The Sages: Their Concepts and Beliefs (trans. Israel Abrahams; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979), 19, 21: The monotheistic concept of One God, beside whom there is no other, was at the beginning of our epoch the heritage of the whole Jewish people and The belief in the One God finds expression in the complete negation of every other deityin Rabbinic phraseology, of strange service (i.e. idolatry) this is to say, of any form of worship that is not unqualified service, which means service of the Lord. 67) Ed. Finkelstein (repr., New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1969), 122, my translation. Cf. Sifre Numbers 111 (ed. Horovitz; Leipzig, 1917), 116: . 68) Ed. Albeck, 4:192, my translation. This mishnah is a continuation of m. Sanh. 7:4, which begins: These are those who are [liable to the death penalty by] stoning. The mishnah then proceeds to enumerate an extended list of sins liable to the death penalty, among which is the one who commits idolatry. The subsequent mishnayot to the end of m. Sanh. 8 expand on these categories. M. Sanh. 7:6, then, is the explanation of the category the one who commits idolatry from m. Sanh. 7:4.
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, . , , . , . The one who commits idolatryit is the same [punishment of the death penalty for] the one who worships, the one who sacrifices, the one who offers incense, the one who offers a libation, the one who bows down, and the one who accepts it upon himself as a god, saying to it you are my god. But, the one who caresses, the one who kisses, the one who honors, the one who washes, the one who anoints, the one who dresses, and the one who shoes [an idol], [only] transgresses a negative commandment. The one who makes a vow in its name or fulfills [a vow] in its name, transgresses a negative commandment. The one who opens himself wide69 to baal peor, this is its proper worship. The one who throws a stone at marqulis, this is its proper worship.
Even though the problem underlying idolatry is doctrinal, this mishnah only addresses praxis. It defines idolatry in terms of specific practices, establishing a hierarchy of severity. The obligation to believe that there is one God or to reject the belief that the idol is a god is not explicitly addressed.70 The closest this mishnah comes to addressing the doctrinal issue is again done in the language of praxis, the one who says. After a long list of idolatrous practicessacrificing, prostrating, etc.the first section of the mishnah ends with: The one who accepts [the idol] upon himself as a god, saying to it you are my god. Belief is not directly addressed; only the practice of saying you are my god is prohibited. Believing that an idol is a god is not clearly specified as a forbidden doctrine, but the one who says to an idol you are my god is undertaking a forbidden practice.
Opens himself wide is a literal translation. This appears to be a play on words: peor, the name of this idol, is similar to the Hebrew poer meaning to open wide. Rashi explains this as defecating in front of the idol. See also, b. Sanh. 64a and Rashi there. 70) It is not addressed here, nor is it addressed in m. Abod. Zar. As explained in n. 68, above, this mishnah details the meaning of the phrase the one who commits idolatry from m. Sanh. 7:4, which enumerates misdeeds for which the punishment is death by stoning. M. Abod. Zar. addresses practical and business dealings with idolaters and their possessions. Although it might be argued that both m. Sanh. and m. Abod. Zar. only set out to rule on a few practical details of the laws of idolatry, so issues of belief do not need to be addressed, m. Sanh. 7:6 does specify saying as a type of idolatry, which is only practical in the sense that I am arguing here. It would not have been inherently inconsistent for the Mishnah instead to have specified acknowledging or not denying idolatry as we see in the Sifre.
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One point which might argue against my thesis is the fact that according to some interpretations of this mishnah, accepting an idol as a god, even without any further action, is considered idolatry. This is one possible reading of ha-meqabbelo alav le-eloah ve-ha-omer lo eli attah (the one who accepts it upon himself as a god, and the one who says to it you are my god): that it is discussing two distinct transgressions. The first is accepting an idol as a god, and the second is saying to the idol you are my god. Thus, the first might conceivably be construed as involving only a belief with no act.71 However, this reading is problematic because the distinction being drawn between the two is not at all clear. It seems unlikely on the face of it that the mishnah wants to forbid both accepting an idol as a god and saying that you accept it as a god while perhaps not really accepting it.72 It may have been this difficulty that led Rashi to read this line as a single phrase, one who accepts [the idol] as a god, saying to it you are my god. The second part of the sentence explains the first. Rashi offers two possible interpretations for this somewhat redundant grammatical structure: either the second part of the sentence is specifying how one accepts an idol as a god or the second part of the sentence is referring to saying you are my god in the idols presence, and the first part of the sentence is referring to saying, presumably, this idol is my god, while not actually in the idols presence.73 The former explanation is more faithful to the plain meaning of the text.
71) Thus, Rodkinson (Boston: New Talmud Publishing, 1903) translates this as, or accepts it as a god, even without any other act. And also if he only says: Thou art my god. Cf. ed. Soncino (London: Soncino, 1994): [A]ccept it as a god, or say to it, thou art my god. In contrast, see ed. Neusner (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988): [A]nd the one who accepts it upon himself as a god, saying to it you are my god. 72) Also supporting my reading is the repeated word eh ad in Hebrew (eh ad ha-oved, eh ad ha-zoveah , etc.), which stands as a marker before each category, indicating that each of these categories has the same punishment: literally, it is one [punishment] for one who worships, one who sacrifices, etc. This marker only appears once before the entire phrase ve-eh ad ha-meqabbelo alav le-eloah ve-ha-omer lo eli attah, which indicates that this is to be read as a single transgression. Otherwise, we should expect ve-eh ad ha-meqabbelo alav le-eloah ve-eh ad ha-omer lo eli attah. Interestingly, mss Kaufmann and Parma have ve-eh ad ha-mishtah aveh ve-ha-meqabbelo alav le-eloah ve-ha-omer lo eli attah which, according to this reading, would mean that accepting as a god and saying you are my god are all details of the transgression of bowing down to the idol: the one who bows down, accepting it upon himself as a god and saying to it you are my god. 73) Thus Rashi on b. Sanh. 60b comments on the phrase ha-meqabbelo alav le-eloah (my translation): And even merely speaking, for example, ha-omer lo eli attah, because
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According to either of Rashis readings, the intent of the last proscription of the first part of m. Sanh. 7:6 is to prevent the practice of idolatry by verbal declarations addressed to an idol. The verbal declaration certainly implies a belief in the idols divinity and thus a rejection of the belief in one God. And even so, the Mishnah chooses to express this concept in terms of praxis rather than doctrine, in terms of saying rather than believing, even where other works of tannaitic literature, for instance the Sifre above, express this concept in terms of doctrine and heresy, employing terms such as deny or acknowledge. One final example in which the phrase the one who says is used to proscribe a specific action even though the issue involved is doctrinal occurs in m. Sanh. 11:3:74
, : . . ,; [Transgressions in regard to] the teachings of the rabbis are more severe than in regard to teachings of the Torah. The one who says, there is no [obligation to put on] tefillin, in order to transgress the teachings of the Torah, he is exempt [from the death penalty]. [The one who says,] [tefillin have] five chambers, in order to add to the teachings of the rabbis [who taught four chambers], he is liable [to the death penalty].
This mishnah is discussing the zaqen mamre, the rebellious elder, one of the transgressors who are liable to death by strangulation enumerated in m. Sanh. 11:1. The rebellious elder is generally understood as a rabbi who teaches in variance with the ruling of the Great Sanhedrin. Here, two rebellious teachings are specified. The first is rejecting the idea that the wearing of phylacteries is commanded in the Torah at all; and the second is teaching that, while the wearing of phylacteries is commanded in the Torah, phylacteries should be constructed differently than the way the
[speaking] is connected to sacrificing as it is written, and have worshiped it, and have sacrificed thereunto, and said, These be thy gods, O Israel. [Exod 32:8, KJV]. Another explanation, ve-ha-meqabbelo le-eloah: not in [the idols] presence and ha-omer lo eli attah: in its presence. And the end [of the phrase] is taught to clarify the beginning. For, if [only] the beginning was taught I would have thought that the words [of the mishnah are applicable] in the [the idols] presence, yet when not in its presence, [the mishnahs words are not applicable]. Therefore, the end [of the phrase] teaches [regarding] in its presence. This implies that the beginning [of the phrase is regarding] when not in its presence and, even so, it is forbidden. 74) Ed. Albeck, 4:207, my translation.
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rabbis say to construct them.75 The former is significant because, by rejecting the idea that the Torah teaches the wearing of phylacteries, the rebellious elder is essentially rejecting the concept of the oral law.76 There has been much scholarly debate concerning the exact meaning of oral law among the tannaim, and it certainly took on a much broader meaning among the amoraim and the stammaim.77 But even in its narrowAccording to the rabbis, the tefillin that is worn on the forehead must have four chambers, each containing a small parchment scroll on which is written a verse from the Torah. Here, the rebellious elder is teaching that the head-tefillin should have five chambers rather than four, but he is not denying the obligation to put on tefillin. 76) Although the rebellious elder in the first case is not liable to death by strangulation, the context makes it clear that this is an instance of : not liable but forbidden. This is a common heuristic characteristic of the Mishnah: an act which is forbidden but nonetheless cannot be punished explicitly owing to some subtle point of Judaic jurisprudence is contrasted to an act which is forbidden and punishable. Cf., for example, b. abb. 3a: : all of the not liable rulings of tractate Shabbat mean not liable but forbidden. The point here seems to be that nullifying the teaching of phylacteries entirely is so extreme that it is not in danger of being accepted as a rabbinic teaching, whereas modifying the teaching slightly is likely to be more influential and thus more disruptive to rabbinic authority. Maimonides explains in his commentary on this mishnah that one who rejects the teaching of phylacteries is not liable as a rebellious elder but is liable to the death penalty as a Sadducee. 77) The contemporary traditionalist conception of the oral law is of a complete body of observances that is said to have been taught to Moses along with the Pentateuch. The Mishnah itself gives no evidence that the tannaim understood their teachings in this way. However, the concept of the existence of some sort of extra-biblical tradition goes back at least to Josephus: [T]he Pharisees had passed on to the people certain regulations handed down by former generations and not recorded in the Laws of Moses. (Josephus, Ant. 13.297 [Marcus, LCL]). The Mishnah does not use the term oral Torah, though it does use a phrase suggestive of an extra-biblical tradition: halakhah to Moses from Sinai. Similarly, m. Abot presents a chain of succession for Torah, which leads from Moses to the tannaim (though the precise meaning of Torah here is uncertain, see Martin S. Jaffee, Torah in the Mouth: Writing and Oral Tradition in Palestinian Judaism, 200 BCE-400 CE [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001], 84-85). M. H ag. 1:8, in contrast, seems to stress the independence of many of the Mishnahs teachings, at least from the text of the Tanakh. It is not clear from these examples whether the tannaim conceived themselves as teaching a received tradition or an innovation based on an ancient chain of authority. See David Weiss Halivni, Revelation Restored: Divine Writ and Critical Responses (Boulder: Westview, 1997), 54-57; Jacob Neusner, What, Exactly, did the Rabbinic Sages Mean by The Oral Torah? An Inductive Answer to the Question of Rabbinic Judaism (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1998), 10; Shmuel Safrai, Halakha, in The Literature of the Sages, 121-209, esp. 180-85. The phrase oral Torah, torah be-feh or torah she-be-al peh, first appears in the tannaitic midrashim, for example, Sifre Deuteronomy 351 and Sifra on Lev. 26:46, though even here it appears that the meaning of the term was still evolving. See Jaffee, Torah in the
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est sense, all of rabbinic Judaism is founded on the notion that the entire body of rabbinic law, whether explicitly expounded in the Tanakh or not, is, in some meaningful way, Torah. This is a fundamental belief of rabbinic Judaism, which groups like the Sadducees rejected. Indeed, one possible reading of m. Sanh. 10:1s proscription against saying there is no Torah from heaven is that it is specifically referring to the oral Torah and that it is directed against this Sadducean belief.78 Thus, the rebellious elder described in m. Sanh. 11:3, by teaching that the wearing of phylacteries is not commanded by the Torah, is rejecting the validity of the oral law and is transgressing the locus classicus of rabbinic doctrine, m. Sanh. 10:1. But again, although m. Sanh. 11:3 is ostensibly addressing doctrinal heterodoxy, it does not talk about acknowledging or denying the oral law. It only addresses the one who says that there is no [obligation to put on] tefillin. Although belief is clearly at issue, it is not directly addressed. The Mishnah consistently works to establish a uniform practice intending to discourage heterodox beliefs rather than establishing creeds forbidding heresy. In all of these five cases, m. Sanh. 10:1, m. Meg. 4:9, m. Ber. 5:3, m. Sanh. 7:6, and m. Sanh. 11:3, although the underlying issues are doctrinal (belief in the divine Torah, the resurrection, the divine unity, rejection of idolatry, and belief in the oral Torah), the discussion revolves around practice and always uses the same expression: the one who says. This, combined with evidence adduced in the last section which indicates that
Mouth, 91-92. And it appears to have continued to evolve throughout the amoraic and stammaitic period, eventually developing into the all-encompassing concept mentioned at the start of this footnote. See Halivni, Revelation Restored, 59-63; Neusner, What, Exactly, did the Rabbinic Sages Mean, 215-17. For a detailed summary of the relevant issues and scholarship, see Stuart S. Miller, Sages and Commoners in Late Antique Erez Israel: A Philological Inquiry into Local Traditions in Talmud Yerushalmi (Tbingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006), 207-8 n. 224. In any case, the tannaim certainly presented their teaching as authoritative and binding, no less so than the written Torah. 78) Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 150-52, and Epstein, Mevoot le-Sifrut ha-Tannaim, 56, both see at least the statement regarding resurrection in m. Sanh. 10:1 as directed against the Sadducees. Also, see Schiffman, Who Was a Jew? 42, and Kellner, Must a Jew Believe Anything? 36. If we read the three proscriptions of m. Sanh. 10:1 as denying the resurrection, denying the oral Torah, and denying divine providence (see n. 51, above) and as being directed specifically against Jews (a reasonable assumption, especially if the opening phrase all Israel is to be accepted as primary), then we have the three main characteristics of the Sadducees as described by Josephus ( J.W. 2.164-65, Ant. 13.173, 297) and the Christian scriptures (Mark 12:18).
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this expression in m. Sanh. 10:1 was an intentional modification of an earlier textual tradition that used heresiological language such as the one who denies or the one who does not acknowledge, convincingly demonstrates that the Mishnahs editors consistently chose to approach problems of heterodoxy through the establishment of orthopraxy rather than through the imposition of orthodoxy. It is worth noting that this orthopraxic approach is evident in tannaitic teachings in a positive as well as a negative sense. Not only is heterodoxy prevented through forbidding specific practices, but orthodoxy is maintained through the obligation to perform specific practices. That is, in general, to the extent that Judaism as described in the Mishnah includes definite beliefs, they must be realized in praxis. A prime example of this tendency is the reciting of the Shema. The obligation to recite the Shema is not a commandment to believe that a certain descriptive term one can be predicated of God.79 Such a commandment would be the establishment of a creed, which the Mishnah carefully avoids. According to what I suggest in this paper regarding the Mishnahs approach to Judaism, the Torah only commands a practitioner of Judaism to declare the Shema; it does not dictate a specific interpretation of these words. These words have been interpreted as a declaration of strict philosophical monotheism as well as
79) Although it would be fair to say that this is the common understanding of the meaning of the declaration, it is not universal. On the theological difficulties inherent in predicating ordinary adjectives (such as one) of God, see Maimonides, Moreh Nevukhim 1.57 (ed. Ibn Tibbon; Vienna, 1828, my translation): , , , , , , , , . .: Indeed, the one who has a necessary existence that is truly simple, whom multiplicity cannot encompass at all: as the predicate multiplicity is a type of falsehood in regard to him, so also the predicate unity is a type of falsehood in regard to him. This is to say that unity is not an additional concept in regard to his essence, but he is one not by virtue of unity. And we cannot examine these ideas, which are so subtle as to be almost inapprehensible by the intellect, in common words, which are the greatest cause of error. For speech in every language is so very constrained so that we can only describe the matter by oversimplifying. And when we endeavored to indicate that the divine is not many, only one can be said, even though unity and plurality are terms that distinguish quantity. By this, then, we can understand the subject, and the intelligence can acknowledge the truth of the matter when we said one not by virtue of unity.
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a declaration of henotheism, binitarianism, and trinitarianism. What is primary is the obligation to make this declaration twice a day. The range of acceptable interpretations of these words, while important and certainly limited, is never clearly specified.80
3. Conclusion In this paper I suggested that the editors of the Mishnah chose to phrase matters in terms of practice that would have more relevantly been expressed in terms of belief and doctrine. Furthermore, they intentionally modified existing textual traditions which were phrased in terms of belief and doctrine to harmonize them with this same pragmatic tone. This stands in contrast to other works of tannaitic literature and baraitot, which tend to use the language of doctrine.81 This reflects the overall orthopraxic character of the Mishnah. This is not to say that the Mishnah avoids doctrinal concerns. Fundamental beliefs that are typically associated with Judaism such as the unity of God, the divinity of the Torah, the resurrection of the dead, the validity of the oral Torah, and the rejection of idolatry are all addressed in the Mishnah. However, they are never addressed directly through the establishment of a creed but indirectly through the proscription of verbal acts, liturgy, and heterodox teaching. Our study of the diachronic development of the textual tradition underlying m. Sanh. 10:1 as well as our synchronic study of the Mishnah as a whole shows that the Mishnahs editors aimed for a document which carefully avoids establishing Judaic doctrine. The texts themselves reveal this fact. The difficult question remains of why they may have chosen this approach. My primary aim has been to establish the functional parameters of Mishnaic orthopraxy rather than to determine the social-historical forces behind this phenomenon; I have been dealing with the what rather than
Cf. Urbach, Sages, 19: The monotheistic concept of One God, beside whom there is no other, was at the beginning of our epoch the heritage of the whole Jewish people. It was not given a new formulation as a dogma, but the duty was introduced to read the verse Deuteronomy vi 4 (Hear, O Israel, etc.) twice a day, and the very act implied the establishment of the belief in the Unity of God as the supreme creed. Also cf. Segal, Two Powers in Heaven, 152: The midrash to Deuteronomy points out that the Shema (Dt. 6:4 f.), together with its antiphonal answer, were also seen as the pronouncements par excellence against binitarian heresy. 81) As in the Tosefta and Seder Olam passages discussed in Sections 1 and 2. See n. 29, 54, and 67, above, for additional examples.
80)
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the why. However, my work will be incomplete if I do not offer some suggestions on the latter, even if more research will be required to place these suggestions on firmer footing. The question, again, is why the Mishnahs editors may have chosen the language of praxis even when dealing with matters of doctrine. The answer to this question will likely be found either in the purpose that the editors of the Mishnah intended for the document itself or in the cultural milieu of second to third century Palestine. On the former point, several scholars have noted that the Mishnah is a peculiar document in that much of it is concerned with issues such as temple sacrifices, which were not practiced in the time of its editing. Moreover, it typically enumerates a number of contradictory opinions on an issue without determining which one is authoritative. This all raises the question as to whether the Mishnah was ever intended to be observed as a practical way of life at all.82 If the Mishnah was merely an academic exercise of some sort or a training manual in a certain type of legal tradition, explicit establishment of doctrine may simply have been stylistically inconsistent with its purpose. A better explanation for the orthopraxic tone of the Mishnah is the religious and cultural background in which the Mishnah was compiled. Given the vehemence with which early Christian thinkers such as Paul and, later, Justin Martyr attacked the idea of practical Torah observance as
82) Strack and Stemberger (Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash, 151-54) have an extended discussion on this question, which offers three possible terms describing the purpose of the Mishnah: a collection of sources, a teaching manual, or a law code of current halakhah. Albeck is cited as being of the first opinion: The redactor collected the sources and clarified the most important readings . . . but he did not change them and did not insert his own opinions. Goldberg is cited as rejecting the possibility of a law code based on repetitions and linguistic irregularities within the Mishnah. Instead, he sees M as a teaching manual designed above all on the basis of pedagogical criteria, which offers the most material in the shortest possible form. According to Goldberg: [The editor of the Mishnahs] aim in choosing a source is always its pedagogic value for the preparation of an official text of study for the academy, regardless of whether the source chosen is the accepted law or not. The editor does not commit himself to any particular point of view, other than a general acceptance of the Akivan line in the Hillelite tradition (Goldberg, The MishnaA Study Book of Halakha, 227). Finally, Strack and Stemberger cite Epstein as holding to the most widespread opinion of M as a legal canon in which the anonymous decisions respectively represent the current halakhah, even if in a given case the legal decision of M may not be immediately apparent. They conclude that Given todays knowledge, it is no longer possible unequivocally to determine whether M was originally conceived as a collection, a teaching manual, or a law code. See also AJSR 32 (2008): 221-97 for a series of recent articles on the question What is (the) Mishnah?
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a valid expression of religious sentiment, it seems reasonable to suppose that this was a significant point of contention. The tension between praxis and doctrine, between works and faith, between law and grace, eventually became central to Christianitys self-perception. Perhaps, just as Paul and his successors were staking out an early position for Christianity on the side of faith and doctrine, the rabbis were staking out their position on the side of action and practice. The seeds for the much discussed parting of the ways between Judaism and Christianity may have been planted as early as the first and second centuries. And, the primary issue involved may not have been theologicalwhether there are one, two, or three powers in heavenbut practical: the observance of the practice of Torah versus the embracing of religious doctrine. The borderlines that scholars such as Daniel Boyarin see being mutually established between the rabbis and the church fathers in the fifth and sixth centuries on issues concerning the nature of the divine may already have been established in the second and third centuries on more practical issues. Certainly the idea of the old testament as legalistic and works righteousness eventually became central to Christianitys view of Judaism. These concepts are meant pejoratively, but they are not so inherently. As Seth Schwartz writes regarding the theologically loaded debate about whether Judaism was legalistic: the correct answer is, Of course, and what of it?83 Perhaps Judaism was a legalistic religion and proud of it.84 If so, the Mishnahs editors, rather than rejecting traditional observance in favor of the doctrinal adherence that the early Christians were espousing, may have chosen to embrace tradition in a very positive sense, as a spiritual
83)
Seth Schwartz, Imperialism and Jewish Society, 200 B.C.E. to 640 C.E. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 63 n. 36. 84) Cf. E. P. Sanders, Common Judaism Explored, in Common Judaism: Explorations in Second-Temple Judaism (ed. Wayne O. McCready and Adele Reinhartz; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2008), 11-23, at 13: Paul and Palestinian Judaism resulted in a long pause in the Christian assertions that Judaism was a legalistic religion of works-righteousness, though now some scholars wish to resurrect the old depiction of Jewish legalism under the rubric of merit theology. The idea that some scholars would feel that the term merit theology is somehow an improvement on the perhaps more explicitly pejorative term works righteousness shows that these scholars are entirely missing the point. It is only the patristic Christian rejection of the idea of Torah/nomos/practice and the forced dichotomy of law versus grace which created an unpleasant odor around the idea of orthopraxy. Arguably, the Mishnahs ideal of religious observance for its own sake is a higher spiritual aim than grace and salvation because the latter is not, by definition, for its own sake; it is supposed to bring a definite benefit, salvation, to the religionist.
554
practice. The Hellenistic concept of spiritual training, asksis (Gk. ), was part of the cultural background of third century Palestine, and its relevance to Judaic law has been suggested by a number of scholars. Steven Fraade writes: For the ancients, including Jews, asksis was not simply the negative denial of world, body, sense, pleasure, and emotion, but the willful and arduous training and testing, often through abstention from what was generally permitted, of ones creaturely faculties in the positive pursuit of moral and spiritual perfection.85 And Satlow, citing Fraade, maintains that talmud torah is a perfect example of asksis in the context of late antiquity.86 Perhaps the Mishnahs editors were choosing to embrace traditional observance in the positive sense of a spiritual practice (central to which was the study of the various traditions, hence the tendency of the Mishnah to preserve conflicting legal opinions)87 even while the early Christians were choosing to embrace their developing creed, thereby mutually implicitly drawing the borderline between Judaism and Christianity that continues to our day. Thus, the rabbis may have chosen to reject all explicit establishment of doctrine in the Mishnah as a way of staking out their side of the border. And, where it was impossible to avoid addressing doctrineeither because concepts such as the validity of the oral Torah implicitly underlie Judaic practice or because established textual traditions such as that which became m. Sanh. 10:1 could not be excluded entirely the Mishnah chose to phrase even these doctrinal concerns in terms of spiritual practice.
Steven D. Fraade, Ascetical Aspects of Ancient Judaism, in Jewish Spirituality: From the Bible Through the Middle Ages (ed. Arthur Green; New York: Crossroad, 1987), 253-88, at 257. 86) Michael L. Satlow, And on the Earth You Shall Sleep: Talmud Torah and Rabbinic Asceticism, JR 83 (2003): 204-25, at 205. 87) See n. 82, above. For a recent study of this aspect of rabbinic literature, see Steven D. Fraade, Rabbinic Polysemy and Pluralism Revisited: Between Praxis and Thematization, AJS Review 31 (2007): 1-40.
85)
555
AppendixSynoptic Presentation of m. Sanh. 10:1-3 and t. Sanh. 12:9-13:12 Note: one passage of the Tosefta has been rearranged to line up parallel texts.
M. Sanh. 10:1-3 (ed. Albeck, my translation) 10:1 All Israel have a portion in the world to come, as it is said, And your people, all of them are righteous, forever will they inherit the land, a shoot from my groves, the work of my hands, to glorify myself. And these have no portion in the world to come: the one who says, There is no resurrection of the dead from the Torah and There is no Torah from heaven, and an Epicurean. Rabbi Akiva says, Even the one who reads external books, and the one who whispers over an injury and says, Every sickness that I put on Egypt, I will not put on you because I am God your healer. Abba Saul says, Even the one who pronounces the name according to its letters. T. Sanh. 12:9-13:12 (ed. Zuckermandel, my translation) 12:9 They added to these: the one who puts off the yoke, the one who breaches the covenant, the one who reveals aspects of the Torah, and the one who pronounces the Name according to its letters, who have no portion in the world to come.
12:10 Rabbi Akiva says, The one who trills his voice in The Song of Songs in a house of feasting and makes it a kind of song has no portion in the world to come. Abba Saul says in the name of Rabbi Akiva, Even the one who whispers over an injury, As it is said, every sickness that I put on Egypt I will not put on you, and spits, has no portion in the world to come. 12:11 Four kings, Jeroboam, Ahab, Ahaz, and Manasseh, have no portion in the world to come. Rabbi Yehudah says, Manasseh has a portion in the world to come, as it is said, His prayer and His reconciliation to him, and all of his sin and his trespass, and the places in which he built alters and erected the asherim and the statues before his submission: these are written in The Book of the Seer. This teaches that He was reconciled to him and He brought him to life in the world to come.
10:2 Three kings and four commoners have no portion in the world to come. Three kings: Jeroboam, Ahab, and Manasseh. Rabbi Yehudah says, Manasseh has a portion in the world to come, as it is said, And he prayed to Him, and He was reconciled to him and He heard his plea and He returned him to Jerusalem to his kingship. [The sages] said to him, To his kingship He returned him and He did not return him to life in the world to come. Four commoners: Balaam, Doeg, Ahithophel, and Gehazi.
556
(cont.)
M. Sanh. 10:1-3 (ed. Albeck, my translation) [There is no parallel text in the Mishnah.] T. Sanh. 12:9-13:12 (ed. Zuckermandel, my translation) 13:1 Little children, the sons of the evil-doers of the land have no portion in the world to come, as it is said, Behold the day is coming, burning like an oven, and all the unrepentant and everyone that does evil will be [like] straw; [these are] the worlds of Rabban Gamliel. Rabbi Yehoshua says, They come to the world to come. Further on it says, God is a guard of the foolish and further on it says, Cut down the tree and destroy it but leave its primary roots in the ground. Rabban Gamliel said, How then shall I explain in order that root and branch shall not remain to them? He said to him, That the Omnipresent does not leave them a mitzvah or the remains of a mitzvahto them and to their fathers forever. 13:2 Another thing: rootthis is the soul; and branchthis is the body. Children of the evil-doers of the nations do not live and are not judged. Rabbi Eliezer says, None of the nations have a portion in the world to come, as it is said, The evil-doers will return to Sheol, all of the nations that forget God. The evil-doers will return to Sheol these are the evil-doers of Israel. Rabbi Yehoshua said to him, If the verse had said, The evil-doers shall return to Sheol, all of the nations, and was silent, I would have said according to your words. Now that the verse says, that forget God, there must be righteous people among the nations that have a portion in the world to come.
[There is no parallel text in the Mishnah.]
557
(cont.)
M. Sanh. 10:1-3 (ed. Albeck, my translation) [There is no parallel text in the Mishnah.] T. Sanh. 12:9-13:12 (ed. Zuckermandel, my translation) 13:3 Bet Shammai says, There are three groups, one for eternal life; one for shame, for eternal disgrace (these are completely evil); those who are balanced go down to gehinnom and seethe and come up from there and are healed, as it said, And I brought the third-part in fire and I refined them as refining silver and I assayed them as assaying gold. He will call my name and I will be his God. And about them Hannah said, God causes death and resurrects, brings down to Sheol and raises up. Bet Hillel says, most compassionate he tends towards compassion; and concerning them David said, I loved that God will hear; and concerning them, this entire section [of the Psalms] was speaking. 13:4 Transgressors of Israel with their bodies and transgressors of the nations of the world with their bodies go down to gehinnom and are judged there twelve months. After twelve months, their souls are annihilated and their bodies are burnt, gehinnom regurgitates them and they become dust, and the wind disperses them and scatters them under the feet of the righteous, as it is said, You will trample out the evil-doers, for they will be dust under the feet of the righteous in the day that I am making, says God of hosts. 13:5 But, the sectarians, and the apostates, and the informers, and Epicureans, and [those] who denied the Torah, and [those] who separated from community norms, and [those] who denied
558
(cont.)
M. Sanh. 10:1-3 (ed. Albeck, my translation) T. Sanh. 12:9-13:12 (ed. Zuckermandel, my translation) the resurrection of the dead, and everyone who sinned and caused many to sinfor example, Jeroboam and Ahab and who set their terror on the land of the living, and who reached out their hand against the Temple: gehinnom is locked before them, and they are judged there for generation after generation, as it is said, They will go out and see the corpses of the people who transgressed against me, for their worm will not die and their fire will not be extinguished, and they will be a disgrace for all flesh. Sheol wears out and they do not wear out, as it is said, And their form will wear out Sheol. What caused this to them? That they reached out their hands against the Temple, as it is said, from zevul to him. And zevul always means the Temple as it is said, I have certainly built a house of zevul for you, a district for your dwelling forever. 10:3 The generation of the flood has no portion in the world to come and does not stand in judgment, as it is said, My spirit will not judge man foreverneither judgment nor spirit. 13:6 The generation of the flood has no portion in the world to come and does not live in the world to come, as it is said, He wiped out all beings who were on the face of the earthin this world; and they were wiped out from the landin the world to come. Rabbi Yehudah ben Beteira says, God said, My spirit will not judge man foreverneither will he judge nor my spirit for them forever. Another thing, God said . . . will not judge [ yadon] the Omnipresent said, I will not return their spirit to its sheath [nadan]. Rabbi Menahem ben Rabbi Yose says, will
559
(cont.)
M. Sanh. 10:1-3 (ed. Albeck, my translation) T. Sanh. 12:9-13:12 (ed. Zuckermandel, my translation) not judgethe Omnipresent said, I do not judge while I pay good recompense to the righteous, but the spirit of evil-doers is harder on them then anything else, as it is said, Their spirit is a fire that will consume them. The generation of the dispersion has no portion in the world to come, as it is said, And God scattered them from there over all the land. And God scattered themin this world; and from there, God scattered themfor the world to come. The men of Sodom have no portion in the world to come, as it is said, And the men of Sodom were very much evil and sinners to God. Evilin this world; and sinnersfor the world to come. However, they do stand in judgment. Rabbi Nehemiah says, Neither of these stand in judgment, as it is said, Therefore, evil-doers will not stand up in judgment and sinners in the assembly of the righteous. Therefore, evildoers will not stand up in judgment this is the generation of the flood; and sinners in the assembly of the righteousthese are the men of Sodom. [The Sages] said to him, They do not stand in the assembly of the righteous, but they stand in the assembly of the wicked. The spies have no portion in the world to come, as it is said, And the men, the ones who put out evil slander about the land, died in a plague before God. And they diedin this world; in a plaguefor the world to come. 13:7 The generation of the Tower has no portion in the world to come and does not live in the world to come, as it is said, And God scattered them from there over all the landin this world; and they ceased to build the cityin the world to come. 13:8 The men of Sodom have no portion in the world to come and do not live in the world to come, as it is said, And the men of Sodom were evil and sinnersin this world; to God, very muchin the world to come. Another thing: evila man regarding his fellow; sinnersregarding sexual impropriety; to Godregarding idolatry; very muchregarding murder.
13:9a The spies have no portion in the world to come, as it is said, And all the ones that despise me will not see it.
560
(cont.)
M. Sanh. 10:1-3 (ed. Albeck, my translation) T. Sanh. 12:9-13:12 (ed. Zuckermandel, my translation) The following text has been moved from below The generation of the desert has no portion in the world to come and does not stand in judgment, as it is said, In this desert you shall cease and there you will die; [these are] the words of Rabbi Akiva. Rabbi Eliezer says, Concerning them it says, Gather to me my pious ones, the ones who established my covenant over offerings. 13:10 The generation of the desert has no portion in the world to come and does not live in the world to come as it is said, In this desert you shall cease and there you will die. In this desert you shall ceasein this world; and there you will diein the world to come. And it says, Which I swore in my anger lest they will come to my rest; [these are] the words of Rabbi Akiva. Rabbi Eliezer says, They come to the world to come, and concerning them David said, Gather to me my pious ones, the ones who established my covenant over offerings. 13:11 What does it teach saying , I swore in my anger? In my anger I swore, and I repent myself of it. Rabbi Yehoshua ben Korhah says, These words were not said, apart from regarding generations [to come], as it is said, Gather to me my pious onesfor they did with me acts of kindness; the ones who established my covenantfor they were cut because of me; over offeringsfor they exalted me and they were slaughtered because of me. Rabbi Shimon ben Menasya says, They come [to the world to come]. Regarding them it says, And the redeemed of God will return, and they will come to Zion in joy. 13:9b Korah and his assembly have no portion in the world to come and do not live in the world to come, as it is
The assembly of Korah is not destined to rise up, as it is said, And the land covered them upin this world;
561
(cont.)
M. Sanh. 10:1-3 (ed. Albeck, my translation) and they were lost from among the assemblyfor the world to come; [these are] the words of Rabbi Akiva. Rabbi Eliezer says, Concerning them it says, God causes death and resurrects, brings down to Sheol and raises up. T. Sanh. 12:9-13:12 (ed. Zuckermandel, my translation) said, And the land covered them upin this world; and they were lost from among the assemblyin the world to come; [these are] the words of Rabbi Akiva. Rabbi Yehudah ben Peteira says, They come to the world to come, and concerning them it says, I strayed like a lost sheep; seek your servant! It is said here loss and it is said further on loss; just as the loss that is said further on is a loss that is sought, so the loss that is said here is a loss that is sought. [13:10. The generation of the desert has no portion in the world to come, has been moved above to match up with the corresponding text in the Mishnah.] The ten tribes are not destined to return, as it is said, And he sent them to another land as this day. Just as this day goes and does not return, so they go and do not return; [these are] the words of Rabbi Akiva. Rabbi Eliezer says, Just as the day darkens and brightens, so the ten tribes; as it darkened for them, so it is destined to brighten for them. 13:12 The ten tribes have no portion in the world to come and do not live in the world to come, as it is said, And God uprooted them from on their land with anger, fury, and great ragein this world; and he sent them to another landin the world to come. Rabbi Shimon ben Yehudah ish kefar akus says, It said, as this day. If their deeds are as as this day, they come [to the world to come] and if not, they do not come. Rabbi says, Both of these have a portion in the world to come, as it is said, And it will be in that day; and the lost ones will come in the land of Assyria and the exiled ones in the land of Egypt, and they will bow down to God in the holy mountain and in Jerusalem.

Orthopraxy Tannaitic Literature

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Orthopraxy Tannaitic Literature

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Journal for the Study of Judaism

Journal for the Study of Judaism 41 (2010) 517-561

Orthopraxy in Tannaitic Literature*

D. M. Grossberg / Journal for the Study of Judaism 41 (2010) 517-561

D. M. Grossberg / Journal for the Study of Judaism 41 (2010) 517-561

D. M. Grossberg / Journal for the Study of Judaism 41 (2010) 517-561

D. M. Grossberg / Journal for the Study of Judaism 41 (2010) 517-561

D. M. Grossberg / Journal for the Study of Judaism 41 (2010) 517-561

D. M. Grossberg / Journal for the Study of Judaism 41 (2010) 517-561

D. M. Grossberg / Journal for the Study of Judaism 41 (2010) 517-561

D. M. Grossberg / Journal for the Study of Judaism 41 (2010) 517-561

D. M. Grossberg / Journal for the Study of Judaism 41 (2010) 517-561

D. M. Grossberg / Journal for the Study of Judaism 41 (2010) 517-561

D. M. Grossberg / Journal for the Study of Judaism 41 (2010) 517-561

D. M. Grossberg / Journal for the Study of Judaism 41 (2010) 517-561

D. M. Grossberg / Journal for the Study of Judaism 41 (2010) 517-561

D. M. Grossberg / Journal for the Study of Judaism 41 (2010) 517-561

D. M. Grossberg / Journal for the Study of Judaism 41 (2010) 517-561

D. M. Grossberg / Journal for the Study of Judaism 41 (2010) 517-561

And the editio princeps42 has:

D. M. Grossberg / Journal for the Study of Judaism 41 (2010) 517-561

D. M. Grossberg / Journal for the Study of Judaism 41 (2010) 517-561

D. M. Grossberg / Journal for the Study of Judaism 41 (2010) 517-561

D. M. Grossberg / Journal for the Study of Judaism 41 (2010) 517-561

D. M. Grossberg / Journal for the Study of Judaism 41 (2010) 517-561

D. M. Grossberg / Journal for the Study of Judaism 41 (2010) 517-561

D. M. Grossberg / Journal for the Study of Judaism 41 (2010) 517-561

D. M. Grossberg / Journal for the Study of Judaism 41 (2010) 517-561

D. M. Grossberg / Journal for the Study of Judaism 41 (2010) 517-561

Ed. Albeck, 1:22-23, my translation.

D. M. Grossberg / Journal for the Study of Judaism 41 (2010) 517-561

D. M. Grossberg / Journal for the Study of Judaism 41 (2010) 517-561

D. M. Grossberg / Journal for the Study of Judaism 41 (2010) 517-561

D. M. Grossberg / Journal for the Study of Judaism 41 (2010) 517-561

D. M. Grossberg / Journal for the Study of Judaism 41 (2010) 517-561

D. M. Grossberg / Journal for the Study of Judaism 41 (2010) 517-561

D. M. Grossberg / Journal for the Study of Judaism 41 (2010) 517-561

D. M. Grossberg / Journal for the Study of Judaism 41 (2010) 517-561

D. M. Grossberg / Journal for the Study of Judaism 41 (2010) 517-561

D. M. Grossberg / Journal for the Study of Judaism 41 (2010) 517-561

D. M. Grossberg / Journal for the Study of Judaism 41 (2010) 517-561

D. M. Grossberg / Journal for the Study of Judaism 41 (2010) 517-561

D. M. Grossberg / Journal for the Study of Judaism 41 (2010) 517-561

D. M. Grossberg / Journal for the Study of Judaism 41 (2010) 517-561

[There is no parallel text in the Mishnah.]

D. M. Grossberg / Journal for the Study of Judaism 41 (2010) 517-561

[There is no parallel text in the Mishnah.]

[There is no parallel text in the Mishnah.]

D. M. Grossberg / Journal for the Study of Judaism 41 (2010) 517-561

D. M. Grossberg / Journal for the Study of Judaism 41 (2010) 517-561

D. M. Grossberg / Journal for the Study of Judaism 41 (2010) 517-561

D. M. Grossberg / Journal for the Study of Judaism 41 (2010) 517-561

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