The Mishnah in Contemporary Perspective, Pt. 1 (Handbook of Oriental Studies/Handbuch Der Orientalistik)

289 Pages·2002·25.882 MB·English

by  Alan Avery-Peck, Professor of Religion Jacob Neusner PhD

THE MISHNAH IN CONTEMPORARY PERSPECTIVE
HANDBOOK OF ORIENTAL STUDIES
HANDBUCH DER ORIENTALISTIK
SECTION ONE
THE NEAR AND MIDDLE EAST
EDITED BY
H. ALTENMOLLER . B. HROUDA . B.A. LEVINE . R.S. O'FAHEY
K.R. VEENHOF . C.H.M. VERSTEEGH
VOLUME SIXTY-FIVE
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THEMISHNAH
IN CONTEMPORARY PERSPECTIVE
EDITED BY
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BRILL
LEIDEN • BOSTON • KOLN
2002
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The Mishnah in contemporary perspective I edited by AlanJ. Avery-Peck
and Jacob Neusner.
p. cm. - (Handbook of oriental studies. Section one, The Near and
Middle East; v. 65)
Includes index.
ISBN 9004125159 (alk. paper)
I. Mishnah-Criticism, interpretation, etc.-History. I. Avery-Peck, Alan J.
(AlanJeffery), 1953- 11. Neusner,Jacob, 1932- Ill. Handbuch der Orientalistik.
Erste Abteilung, Nahe und der Mittlere Osten ; Bd. 65.
BM497.8.M55 2002
296.1 '2306-dc21 2002025415
Die Deutsche Bibliothek - CIP-Einheitsaufnalune
Handbuch der Orientalistik. - Leiden ; Boston ; Koln : Brill.
Teilw. hrsg. von H. Altenmiiller. - Teilw. hrsg. von B. Spuler. -
Literaturangaben
Teilw. mit Parallelt.; Handbook of oriental studies
Abt. I. Der Nahe und Mittlere Osten = The Near and Middle East I
hrsg. von H. Altenmiiller ...
Teilw. hrsg. von B. Spuler
Bd. 65. The Mishnah in contemporary perspective I ed. by Alan]. Avery-Peck and
Jacob Neusner. 2002
ISBN 90-04-12515 9
ISSN 0169-9423
ISBN 90 04125159
© Copyright 2002 by Koninklijke Brill m; Leiden, The Netherlands
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface vu
INTRODUCTION
THE MISHNAH VIEWED WHOLE
jACOB NEUSNER 3
PART ONE
THE MISHNAH IN HISTORICAL AND RELIGIOUS
CONTEXT
THE DIVISION OF AGRICULTURE AND SECOND CENTURY jUDAISM:
THE HOLINESS OF THE DEVASTATED LAND
ALANJ. AVERy-PECK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
THE MISHNAH IN RABBINIC CONTEXT: TOSEFTA AND SIFRA
jACOB NEUSNER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
THE MISHNAH IN ROMAN AND CHRISTIAN CONTEXTS
jACOB NEUSNER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 121
APPENDIX: ROMAN LEGAL CODIFICATION IN THE SECOND CENTURY ..
STEPHEN A. STERTZ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 149
PART TWO
THE MISHNAH IN LITERARY AND AESTHETIC CONTEXT
THE MISHNAH AND ANCIENT BOOK PRODUCTION
CATHERINE HEZSER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 167
THE MISHNAH IN THE LATER MIDRASHIM
RIVKA ULMER ..................................... 193
AN AESTHETIC USAGE OF SCRIPTURES IN THE ANCIENT RABBINIC
LEGAL CODES
HERBERT W. BASSER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 235
VI TABLE OF CONTENTS
PART THREE
THE MISHNAH IN SOCIAL CONTEXT
MASTER AND PARENT: COMPARATIVE ASPECTS OF A DUAL
LOYALTY (MISHNAH BABA MEZIAH 2:11 AND MARK 3:31-35)
J.
GERALD BLIDSTEIN ................••............... 255
General Index ....................................... 267
PREFACE
In this and the succeeding volumes, the editors place on display a
broad selection of approaches to the study of the Mishnah in the
contemporary academy. The work derives in the main from North
American and European centers of learning and shows the intellec
tual vitality of scholarship there. What we prove in diverse ways is
that the Mishnah forms a critical focus of the study of Judaism.
Why from the beginning has Mishnah-study formed the center
of the curriculum ofJudaism? The reason is that the document has
earned its place. In the entire history of civilization, only a few tra
ditions of learning set forth in singular documents have for more
than a brief time sustained the life of a society. But the Mishnah
has defined the life ofIsrael, the Jewish people throughout the world,
from the time it was promulgated, at the end of the second century,
to the present day. To find parallels to the astonishing power of that
book to define the meaning of the life of the society to which it speaks,
we should have to point, in India, to the Vedas, in Iran and India,
to the Zoroastrian Scriptures, in Islam, to the Quran, and, in the
Christian West, to the Bible, that is, the Old and New Testaments
as Christianity put them together. The Quran, the Vedas, the Zo
roastrian Avesta, above all, the Bible~these few writings still enjoy
a paramount place. But among all the many other writings that have
told entire societies what it meant to live in community, we cannot
count very many that still deliver the same message, with the same
authority, to the same world that they originally addressed. And
among the enduring, world-defining documents that humanity has
known, the Mishnah is surely the one of which fewest people have
heard.
The Vedas, Quran, and Bible form part of common culture. So
too, everyone knows the Hebrew Scriptures, the Old Testament of
Christianity. They are easy to enter. But, even if it is known as the
first document of the Oral part of the Torah of Sinai, the Mishnah
is hardly accessible. Falling into the hands of someone who has never
seen it before, the Mishnah must cause puzzlement. It provides naked
information~contents out of context. It presents disputes about facts
scarcely explained, facts hardly urgent outside of a circle of faceless
Vlll PREFACE
disputants. The opening lines (famous among the students of the
document) suffice to make the point (M. Ber. I: I):
A. From what time do they recite the Shema in the evening?
B. From the hour that the priests [who had immersed after unclean
ness and awaited sunset to complete the process of purification]
enter [a state of cleanness, the sun having set, so as] to eat their
heave offering-
C. "until the end of the first watch," the words of R. Eliezer.
D. And sages say, "Until midnight."
E. Rabban Gamaliel says, "Until the rise of dawn."
It would require many paragraphs to explain the meaning of these
seventy-five words, and it would take many more to place the whole
into its theological and religious context. Here is a fine example of
the Mishnah's opacity, how its radical assumption that its audience
brings to the document a vast corpus oflearning shapes its discourse.
On its own, out of all context, that well-known passage is simply
incomprehensible, taking for granted, as it does, a considerable body
of information. The issues and the argument presuppose modes of
thought and analysis in no way articulated; nor is what is at stake
self-evident. Consequently, we start with the impression that we join
a conversation already long under way about topics we can never
grasp anyhow.
No one can take for granted that what is before us makes sense
in any context but the Mishnah's own, inaccessible world. The
Mishnah in many tractates does not discuss topics of common in
terest. For before us is a remarkable statement of concerns for matters
not only wholly remote from our own world, but, in the main, al
ien to the world of the people who made the Mishnah itself. It is as
if people set out to write letters about things they had never seen,
to people they did not know-letters from an unknown city to an
undefined and unimagined world: the Mishnah is a letter, written
on blank paper, from no one special, located in utopia, to whom it
may concern, at an indeterminate time and no where in particular.
Perhaps its very power to speak from deep to deep is its lack of
locative specificity. But internal evidence within the Mishnah cer
tainly proves mute about all questions of authorship: where, when,
why, for what purpose, to which audience? We have no answers to
such basic questions as these.
Equally surprising, the Mishnah is a book without an author. No
where in its pages does it identify its authorities or sponsorship. It
PREFACE IX
permits only slight variations, if any, in its authorities' patterns of
language and speech, so there is no place for individual character
istics of expression. It nowhere tells us when it speaks. It does not
address a particular place or time and rarely speaks of events in its
own day. It never identifies its prospective audience. In the entire
mass of sayings and rules, there is scarcely an "I" or a "you." The
Mishnah begins nowhere. It ends abruptly. There is no predicting
where it will commence or explaining why it is done. Where, when,
why the document is laid out and set forth are questions not deemed
urgent and not answered.
While the Mishnah clearly addresses Israel, the Jewish people, it
is remarkably indifferent to the Hebrew Scriptures. It makes no effort
at imitating the Hebrew of the Hebrew Bible, as do the writers of
the Dead Sea Scrolls. It does not attribute its sayings to biblical
heroes, prophets, or holy men, as do the writings of the pseudepi
graphs of the Hebrew Scriptures. It does not claim to emerge from
a fresh encounter with God through revelation, as is not uncom
mon in Israelite writings of the preceding four hundred years; the
Holy Spirit is not alleged to speak here. So all the devices by which
other Israelite writers gain credence for their messages are ignored.
Perhaps the authority of the Mishnah was self-evident to its authors.
But, self-evident or not, they in no way take the trouble to explain
to their audience why people should conform to the descriptive
statements contained in their holy book.
If we turn to the contents of the document, we are helped not at
all in determining the place of the Mishnah's origination, the pur
pose of its formation, the reasons for its anonymous and collective
plane of discourse and monotonous tone of voice. For the Mishnah
covers a carefully defined program of topics. But it never tells us
why one topic is introduced and another is omitted or what the
agglutination of these particular topics is meant to accomplish in the
formation of a system or imaginative construction. Discourse on a
theme begins and ends as if all things are self-evident-including,
as we said, the reason for beginning at one point and ending at some
other.
One might imagine upon first glance that the Mishnah is a sim
ple rulebook. It appears on the surface to lack all traces of eloquence
and style, revealing no evidence of system and reflection. First glance
indicates that in hand is yet another shard from remote antiquity
no different from king-lists inscribed on ancient shards, the random