JUDAISM JUDAISM In the First Centuries of the Christian Era: The Age of Tannaim VOLUME I GEORGE FOOT MOORE Jfel HENDRICKSON Hendrickson Publishers, Inc. RO. Box 3473 Peabody, Massachusetts 1960 ISBN 1-56563-286-9 Printed in the United States of America First printing Hendrickson Publishers7 edition, March 1997 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the original publisher. Volume 1, JUDAISM IN THE FIRST CENTURIES OF THE CHRISTIAN ERA, THE AGE OF THE TANNAIM, by George Foot Moore, © 1927 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Reprinted by arrangement with Harvard University Press. IN MEMORIAM OBIIT MDCCCCXXIV PREFACE THE aim of these volumes is to represent Judaism in the centuries in which it assumed definitive form, as it presents itself in the tradition which it has always regarded as authentic. These primary sources come to us as they were compiled and set in order in the second century of the Christian era, embodying the interpretation of the legislative parts of the Pentateuch and the definition and formulation of the Law, written and unwritten, in the schools, in the century and a half between the reorganiza­ tion at Jamnia under Johanan ben Zakkai and his associates, after the fall of Jerusalem in the year 70, and the promulgation of the Mishnah of the Patriarch Judah. i\.bout the schools of the preceding century, especially about the two great masters, Hillel and Shammai, and the distinctive differences of their disciples, our knowledge comes incidentally through their suc­ cessors. The whole period, from the time of Herod to that of the Patriarch Judah is the age of the "Tannaim," the represen­ tatives of authoritative tradition. The learned study of the two-fold law is, however, much older, and other sources of various kinds disclose not only the continu­ ity of development in the direction of the normative Judaism of the second century, but many divergent trends — the conflict of parties over fundamental issues, the idiosyncrasies of sects, the rise of apocalyptic with its exorbitant interest in eschatology — a knowledge of all of which is necessary to a historical under­ standing of the Judaism which it is the principal object of this work to describe. In the Introduction I have sketched the external and internal history of the centuries with which we are concerned so far as religion was affected by it, and have given a summary account of the sources on which the presentation is based. The chapters on Revealed Religion are meant to make plain at the outset the PREFACE Vlll fundamental principle of Judaism and some of the ways in which it was applied. The succeeding parts treat of the Idea of God; the Nature of Man, and his relation to God; the Observ­ ances of Religion; Morals; Piety; and the Hereafter. I have avoided imposing on the matter a systematic disposi­ tion which is foreign to it and to the Jewish thought of the times. The few comprehensive divisions under which it is arranged are not sharply bounded, and the same subject often naturally be­ longs in more than one of them. In such cases repetition has seemed preferable to cross-references. The nature of the sources makes simple citation insufficient, and large room has therefore been given to quotations from them or paraphrases of them, thus, so far as possible, letting Judaism speak for itself in its own way. The translations keep as close as may be to the expression of the original, even at some sacrifice of English idiom. A peculiar difficulty arises in the biblical quotations, which rabbinical exegesis, following its own rules or giving rein to the ingenuity of the interpreter, frequently takes in a way quite different from the familiar versions of the Bible or our philological commentators. But when the meaning or the application hinges on the turn given — at least for the nonce — to the words, the translation must try to convey the peculiar interpretation, however strange it may be. References are given in the footnotes to the sources from which the quotations are taken or on which the statements in the text are based. In many cases these references are a selection from a large array of different age, character, and authority. It has seemed desirable to represent this range and variety of attesta­ tion even by what might otherwise appear a superfluity of learn­ ing. The homiletical Midrashim, for example, illustrate the popularization of the teaching of the schools as well as the fertil­ ity of the homilists, and give evidence of the perpetuation of the tradition in later centuries. For the rest, I have confined the footnotes to things necessary to immediate understanding, reserving all discussions for an PREFACE IX eventual volume of detached notes and excursuses. In the first volume anticipatory references to such detached notes are made in full-faced type; in order not unduly to delay the publication of the work itself, similar references are not made in the second volume. The transliteration of Hebrew words and names follows, with slight adaptation, the simplified system adopted in the Jewish Encyclopedia. Proper names familiar to English readers are left as they are in the Authorized Version. These volumes are the outcome of studies which have ex­ tended over more than thirty years and ranged over a wide variety of sources. The plan of the present work was conceived ten years since; the execution has taken much more time than I foresaw, but I venture to hope that the presentation has gained thereby in maturity as well as in completness. When I projected it, I contemplated a similar work on Hellenistic Judaism; the occasional parallels and comparisons in these volumes may serve at least to illustrate the fundamental unity of Judaism, as well as to indicate the influence of Greek thought on the religious conceptions of men like Philo. The material in these volumes is drawn in great part from ex­ tensive collections made in the course of my own reading, but it will be evident on every page that I have availed myself largely of the work of others, especially of the mustering and critical sift­ ing of tradition in Wilhelm Bacher's Agada der ^annaiten. Exhaustiveness I have not aimed at; inerrancy is the last thing I should pretend to; but I trust that no essential point has been altogether overlooked, and I am confident that those who know the material best will be the most considerate in their judgment. My colleague, Professor Harry A. Wolfson, has taken upon him the onerous task of verifying in the proof-sheets the thous­ ands of references to the Talmuds and Midrashim, and by his painstaking examination of the passages quoted or cited has contributed much to the accuracy of the text as well as to the correctness of the references.