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 " ~' 9 E Gib< " 11 .... ...:I < ,.. t- ,.... ? ,... '<' -4 • C, 168"} . THEMISHNAH IN CONTEMPORARY PERSPECTIVE EDITED BY ALANJ. AVERY-PECK AND jACOB NEUSNER ~<Qftt- E G '0«, .., ..0 < ,>...-. I-'" ,... ? ~ '<' c, . /68"} . 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 All rights reserved. No part qf this publication mqy be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in aID' form or by aID' means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Brill provided that the appropriate .fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers MA 01923, USA. Fees are su£?ject to change. PRINTED IN THE NETHERLANDS 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