When women walk in the way of their fathers: On gendering the rabbinic claim for authority

Journal of the History of Sexuality

Volumn 10, Issue 3-4, 2001, Pages 398-414

  Fonrobert, Charlotte Elisheva ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 0035567329     PISSN: 10434070     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/sex.2001.0059     Document Type: Article

References (66)

1. The references are too numerous to be listed here. For a complete list with references, see M. Herr, "Martyrdom and Its Historical Background in the Second Century," in Holy War and Martyrology (Jerusalem, 1967), 77-79 (in Hebrew).
2. See, for example, Gedaliah Alon, The Jews in Their Land in the Talmudic Age (Cambridge, 1984), 649-53.
3. For a complete list of the individual items supposedly outlawed at various times by the Roman government, see Herr, 77-79. These variations of course frustrate historicists in their attempt to construct a coherent narrative; this frustration is palpable in Alon's discussion (652-53).
4. This is the general target date of the redaction of the text, which does not mean that the text may not contain earlier sources. For a historical-philological discussion of the text, see G. Stemberger, Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash (Minneapolis, 1996), 255.
5. Mekhilta de Rabbi Ishmael, "Tractate Shabbata," 1, my emphasis. I am using the edition and translation of Jacob Z. Lauterbach (Philadelphia, 1976), 204, with slight emendations. The literal translation of the locution "gave their lives" would be "gave their souls." Lauterbach translates "[the commandments] to which they were devoted with their whole souls" but changes the formulation to "for which they laid down their lives" for one of the occurrences. Implied in this Hebrew is the notion of martyring themselves, which is clearly indicated by textual parallels in Louis Finkelstein, ed., Sifrei ad Deuteronomy, pisqa 76 (New York, 1993), 140, and b. Shabbat 130b. The version in Sifrei adds "during the time of persecution," the Babylonian Talmud adds "at the time of a decree by the government."
6. Sacha Stern, Jewish Identity in Early Rabbinic Writing (Leiden, 1994), writes that "the exclusion of the non-Jews [from the experience of 'being Israel'] is most articulately expressed in those commandments which are specifically related to Jewish identity - circumcision, Shabbat, and Torah learning" (206). For a more recent account, see S. J. D. Cohen, The Beginnings of Jewishness: Boundaries, Varieties, Uncertainties (Berkeley, 1999). Cohen is generally much more considerate in his account of the role of women and gender difference in the historical evolution of Jewish identity. On page 39 he at least prefaces his discussion of circumcision with "stating the obvious": "even if circumcision is an indication of Jewishness, it is a marker for only half the Jewish population. How you would know a Jewish woman when you saw one remains open." In one of the early studies of late antique culture influenced by Foucault's work, Daniel Boyarin wrote: "For the Jews of late antiquity, I claim, the rite of circumcision became the most contested site of the contention around the body, precisely because of the way that it concentrates in one moment representations of the significance of sexuality, genealogy, and ethnic specificity in bodily practice(Carnal Israel [Berkeley, 1993], 7). This statement is certainly correct as far as the concerns of our mostly male authored rabbinic sources are concerned. However, the perspective of the sources needs to be critiqued and supplemented as to reading the historical-cultural situation of the emergence of rabbinic Judaism. For Boyarin's most recent argument, see "A Tale of Two Synods: Nicea, Yavneh, and Rabbinic Ecclesiology," Exemplaria 12 (2000): 21-62, in particular the section "Women's Bodies and the Rise of the Rabbis" (30-46), as well as his essay "Women's Bodies and the Rise of the Rabbis: The Case of Sotah," in Jews and Gender: The Challenge to Hierarchy, Studies in Contemporary Jewry Annual 16 (Oxford, 2000), 88-101.
7. Megillat Ta'anit (Scroll of fasting), ed. Hans Lichtenstein, HUCA 8 (1931): 350. See also b. Taanit 18a and b. Rosh Hashanah 19a. The Megillat Ta'anit is comprised of a list of thirty-six days from the period of the Second Temple on which it is forbidden to fast because of some joyful occasion. The Aramaic part of the scroll stems from the first and second centuries, whereas the Hebrew commentary is post-talmudic. For a discussion of the text, see Stemberger, Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash, 34. In this quotation, the first sentence is in Aramaic followed by the explanation in Hebrew, most likely a citation from the talmudic sources. Here the commentator in the Megillat Ta'anit specifies the government as wicked Edom, a signifier for Rome. See Gerson D. Cohen, "Esau as Symbol in Early Medieval Thought," in Jewish Medieval and Renaissance Studies, ed. Alexander Altmann (Cambridge, MA, 1967), 19-48.
8. Megillat Ta'anit (Scroll of fasting), ed. Hans Lichtenstein, HUCA 8 (1931): 350. See also b. Taanit 18a and b. Rosh Hashanah 19a. The Megillat Ta'anit is comprised of a list of thirty-six days from the period of the Second Temple on which it is forbidden to fast because of some joyful occasion. The Aramaic part of the scroll stems from the first and second centuries, whereas the Hebrew commentary is post-talmudic. For a discussion of the text, see Stemberger, Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash, 34. In this quotation, the first sentence is in Aramaic followed by the explanation in Hebrew, most likely a citation from the talmudic sources. Here the commentator in the Megillat Ta'anit specifies the government as wicked Edom, a signifier for Rome. See Gerson D. Cohen, "Esau as Symbol in Early Medieval Thought," in Jewish Medieval and Renaissance Studies, ed. Alexander Altmann (Cambridge, MA, 1967), 19-48.
9. For a discussion of the contested deployment of this term in the early rabbinic period, see Graham Harvey, The True Israel: Uses of the Names Jew, Hebrew and Israel in Ancient Jewish and Early Christian Literature (Leiden, 1996) and Stern, 10-13. For the struggle over ownership of this referent between Jews and Christians, see Marcel Simon, Verus Israel: A Study of Relations between Christians and Jews in the Roman Empire A.D. 135-425 (London, 1996).
10. For a discussion of the contested deployment of this term in the early rabbinic period, see Graham Harvey, The True Israel: Uses of the Names Jew, Hebrew and Israel in Ancient Jewish and Early Christian Literature (Leiden, 1996) and Stern, 10-13. For the struggle over ownership of this referent between Jews and Christians, see Marcel Simon, Verus Israel: A Study of Relations between Christians and Jews in the Roman Empire A.D. 135-425 (London, 1996).
11. Amy Richlin, "Foucault's History of Sexuality. A Useful Theory for Women?" in Rethinking Sexuality: Foucault and Classical Antiquity, ed. David H. J. Larmour, Paul Allen Miller, and Charles Platter (Princeton, 1998), 139. See also Lin Foxhall, "Pandora Unbound: A Feminist Critique of Foucault's History of Sexuality," in ibid., 122-38.
12. Amy Richlin, "Foucault's History of Sexuality. A Useful Theory for Women?" in Rethinking Sexuality: Foucault and Classical Antiquity, ed. David H. J. Larmour, Paul Allen Miller, and Charles Platter (Princeton, 1998), 139. See also Lin Foxhall, "Pandora Unbound: A Feminist Critique of Foucault's History of Sexuality," in ibid., 122-38.
13. Richlin, 143. Richlin, therefore, concludes that feminist historians of sexuality should move beyond our "unnecessary and unproductive" preoccupation with Foucault (169). See, however, Page duBois's critique of Richlin on this point in "The Subject in Antiquity after Foucault," in ibid., 89. Even though she equally finds her greatest problem with Foucault's work in his gender blindness, she correctly insists that feminist historians depend on his notions of discourse and disciplinary genealogies (85) and that he keeps us from reifying the category "woman" (96).
14. Stern, 242.
15. Ibid., 240.
16. Richlin, 150.
17. I capitalize Mishnah when referring to the text as a whole. When discussing an individual section, I employ the lower case.
18. Judith Hauptman, Rereading the Rabbis: A Woman's Voice (Boulder, 1998), 147-77.
19. For a more extensive discussion of this issue, see Charlotte Fonrobert, Menstrual Purity: Rabbinic and Christian Reconstructions of Biblical Gender (Stanford, 2000).
20. Ibid., chap. 4: "The Hermeneutics of Colors and Stains: The Rabbinic Science of Women's Blood," 103-28.
21. I use this term for lack of a better one, even though it is imprecise.
22. This is derived from the biblical statement that "everything she lies upon during her menstrual period shall become impure" (Lev. 15:20). The same applies biblically to the man who has a genital emission (Lev. 15:4). The rabbis understand this to mean that no matter how many mattresses he or she may lie upon, the lowest one, just like the upper one, becomes impure. The phrase has been variously interpreted to mean either that the sheet below a person and the cover will be rendered impure (b. Niddah 32b) or that if a person is lying on a stack of mattresses, the lowest one just as the uppermost one are rendered impure, even though one may not have touched the lowest one.
23. This phenomenon is a common feature of the Tosefta and only corroborates the problem of reading these texts as historicists, that is, toward a reconstruction of history "wie es denn eigentlich gewesen ist."
24. Some manuscripts read: "He went and asked his wife," with the referent presumably being the high priest. Lieberman dismisses the reading of the Maharsha based on this version, according to which the high priest asks his own wife; see S. Lieberman, Tosefet Rishonim: Seder Tohorot (New York, 1999), 268 (in Hebrew).
25. This statement is somewhat confusing; see below. I believe that this is how the confusion in the transmission of the text can be explained (see ibid., 268).
26. This story is cited, with slight but not insignificant changes, in the Babylonian Talmud, b. Niddah 33b.
27. Roots of the mishnaic term kutim can be found in 2 Kings 17:24-41, where the Assyrians deport the ten northern tribes of Israel from Samaria, replacing them with people from Babylon and from Kuta. For a more extensive discussion, see Lawrence Schiffman, "The Samaritans in Tannaitic Halakhah," Jewish Quarterly Review 75 (1985): 323-50; Stern, 99-105; and Ferdinand Dexinger and Reinhard Pummer, eds., Die Samaritaner (Darmstadt, 1992).
28. Roots of the mishnaic term kutim can be found in 2 Kings 17:24-41, where the Assyrians deport the ten northern tribes of Israel from Samaria, replacing them with people from Babylon and from Kuta. For a more extensive discussion, see Lawrence Schiffman, "The Samaritans in Tannaitic Halakhah," Jewish Quarterly Review 75 (1985): 323-50; Stern, 99-105; and Ferdinand Dexinger and Reinhard Pummer, eds., Die Samaritaner (Darmstadt, 1992).
29. Roots of the mishnaic term kutim can be found in 2 Kings 17:24-41, where the Assyrians deport the ten northern tribes of Israel from Samaria, replacing them with people from Babylon and from Kuta. For a more extensive discussion, see Lawrence Schiffman, "The Samaritans in Tannaitic Halakhah," Jewish Quarterly Review 75 (1985): 323-50; Stern, 99-105; and Ferdinand Dexinger and Reinhard Pummer, eds., Die Samaritaner (Darmstadt, 1992).
30. Thus Stern, 100. However, he ignores m. Niddah 4:1.
31. The Babylonian Talmud is quite puzzled by this halakhically problematic use of the category of menstrual impurity: "how is this to be imagined? If [the mishnah refers only to the case when] they do indeed observe a blood flow - then this should apply to our [women] also. But if the mishnah refers [even] to those [Samaritan girls] who do not observe a blood-flow - should theirs [Samaritan girls] not also be considered accordingly [like ours]" (b. Niddah 3Ib). This puzzlement engenders a fascinating discussion that cannot be dealt with in the framework of this essay.
32. For a careful historical assessment of the sources, see G. Stemberger, Pharisäer, Sadduzäer, Essener (Stuttgart, 1991). am leaving aside the complicated question of identifying some texts among the Dead Sea Scrolls to Sadducean views as we know them from rabbinic writings. For this question, see Lawrence H. Schiffman, "Pharisaic and Sadducean Halakhah in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls: The Case of Tevul Yom," Dead Sea Discoveries 1, no. 3 (1994): 285-99.
33. For a careful historical assessment of the sources, see G. Stemberger, Pharisäer, Sadduzäer, Essener (Stuttgart, 1991). am leaving aside the complicated question of identifying some texts among the Dead Sea Scrolls to Sadducean views as we know them from rabbinic writings. For this question, see Lawrence H. Schiffman, "Pharisaic and Sadducean Halakhah in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls: The Case of Tevul Yom," Dead Sea Discoveries 1, no. 3 (1994): 285-99.
34. Stemberger, 129. Stemberger here refers to S. J. D. Cohen's famous thesis that "Jewish society from the end of the first century until the rise of the Karaites, was not torn by sectarianism," which he articulated in his now famous essay "The Significance of Yavneh: Pharisees, Rabbis and the End of Jewish Sectarianism," Hebrew Union College Annual 55 (1984): 36. The supposedly historical picture of rabbinic Judaism as "a society which tolerates disputes without producing sects" (29) has been challenged more recently, notably by Boyarin ("A Tale of Two Synods," see n. 6). Noting the existence of parallels between early medieval Karaite and supposed first-century Sadducean ideas, Stemberger raises the interesting albeit somewhat speculative question of whether such parallels do not indeed disturb the harmonious image: "Can such parallels be explained without positing any historical dependence, or are they at least in part textually transmitted (by early findings of Qumran texts), or do they indicate a resistance against rabbinic views that continued to smolder for centuries and only found more explicit articulation in the Islamic world?" (Pharisäer, 130).
35. See Stemberger, Pharisäer, and A. Saldarini, Pharisees, Scribes and Sadducees: A Sociological Approach (Edinburgh, 1989). The first mishnah is usually ignored, even though both mishnayot appear to function as a pair. But see Cohen, "The Significance of Yavneh," 32, n. 10.
36. See Stemberger, Pharisäer, and A. Saldarini, Pharisees, Scribes and Sadducees: A Sociological Approach (Edinburgh, 1989). The first mishnah is usually ignored, even though both mishnayot appear to function as a pair. But see Cohen, "The Significance of Yavneh," 32, n. 10.
37. See Stemberger, Pharisäer, and A. Saldarini, Pharisees, Scribes and Sadducees: A Sociological Approach (Edinburgh, 1989). The first mishnah is usually ignored, even though both mishnayot appear to function as a pair. But see Cohen, "The Significance of Yavneh," 32, n. 10.
38. Tal Ilan, Jewish Women in Greco-Roman Palestine (Peabody, MA, 1996), 100-105.
39. So, for instance, Tal Ilan, who claims the Rabbi Yossi certainly had never seen a Sadducee in his life (ibid., 104-5). See also Stemberger's assessment (Pharisäer, 129).
40. So, for instance, Tal Ilan, who claims the Rabbi Yossi certainly had never seen a Sadducee in his life (ibid., 104-5). See also Stemberger's assessment (Pharisäer, 129).
41. Cohen, "The Significance of Yavneh," 33.
42. Ibid., 33-34, with reference to t. Niddah 5:3.
43. The relevance of this pertains to the Temple only, meaning the priest would have had to undergo ritual purification before being able to perform any functions in the Temple or before eating any priestly food. This is corroborated by the numerous parallels of the story motif (y. Megillah 1:12, 72a; y. Horayot 3:5, 47d; Leviticus Rabbah 20:11, M.470, etc.) in which the high priest is rendered impure by the spittle of an Arabian king right before Yom Kippur and therefore cannot perform the service. See Stemberger (Pharisäer, 59, n. 56), who suggests that perhaps the shift of the story motif to a Sadducean in our case story is only secondary. This seems somewhat contrived to me considering that the Tosefta provides most likely an earlier version. The narrative motif, however, and the interchangeability of the non-Jew and the Sadducean only underline the difficulty of reading these stories as sources for the historical character of the Sadducees. Cynthia Baker, A Well-Ordered House: The Architecture of Gender in Jewish Antiquity (Stanford, forthcoming) will provide a detailed discussion of the parallel versions of this story.
44. Ilan translates "we are all examined by a sage" (Jewish Women, 104), which produces a different nuance not implied in the Hebrew.
45. The version of the story in the Babylonian Talmud adds the phrase "even though they are Sadducean wives they fear the Pharisees and show their blood to the sages" (b. Niddah 33b).
46. It is incomprehensible to me how anybody can take this latter statement at face value. Stemberger attributes the woman's death to rabbinic wishful thinking (Pharisäer, 59). Cohen, however, seems to read Rabbi Yossi's claim as a factual statement, since he writes: "This baraita clearly implies that R. Yosi is referring to contemporary Sadducean women. If this is correct, R. Yosi's statement shows that some Sadducees still existed in the mid-second century" ("The Significance of Yavneh," 33). Even though the version of this story in the Babylonian Talmud "personalizes" Rabbi Yossi's account by adding "[except for one woman] who was in our neighborhood" (b. Niddah 33b), the rhetoric of it all seems so overdrawn to me that I find it next to impossible to read this historically.
47. On the shuq, or marketplace, as a problematic space in terms of gender, see Cynthia Baker, "Bodies, Boundaries, and Domestic Politics in a Late Ancient Marketplace," Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 26 (1996): 391-418.
48. Stern, 242.
49. This scholarly mapping of the juxtaposition of private versus public onto the gender distinction of male and female has been widely contested in recent feminist work in rabbinic literature. A number of recent studies have collected rabbinic textual evidence to the contrary and have thus shown that the claim that rabbinic texts completely confine women to the domestic scene is wrong. See Judith Hauptman, "Feminist Perspectives on Rabbinic Texts," in Feminist Perspectives on Jewish Studies, ed. Lynn Davidman and Shelly Tennenbaum (New Haven, 1994), 40-62, and Tal Ilan, Mine and Yours Are Hers: Retrieving Women's History from Rabbinic Literature (Leiden, 1997), 171-74. Further, Baker critiques this approach in archaeological scholarship in her forthcoming A Well-Ordered House. 41 See also Virginia Burrus, The Making of a Heretic: Gender, Authority, and the Priscillianist Controversy (Berkeley, 1995), 6-12. Burrus reminds us in her discussion of "The Shifting Boundaries of Public and Private Spheres": "The public-private distinction remains useful as an analytical tool that resonates not only with our own habits of thought but also with the self-understanding of the late-ancient cultures with which we are concerned. But at the same time it is itself a cultural construct, which must be contextualized and interpreted in its particularity" (7).
50. This scholarly mapping of the juxtaposition of private versus public onto the gender distinction of male and female has been widely contested in recent feminist work in rabbinic literature. A number of recent studies have collected rabbinic textual evidence to the contrary and have thus shown that the claim that rabbinic texts completely confine women to the domestic scene is wrong. See Judith Hauptman, "Feminist Perspectives on Rabbinic Texts," in Feminist Perspectives on Jewish Studies, ed. Lynn Davidman and Shelly Tennenbaum (New Haven, 1994), 40-62, and Tal Ilan, Mine and Yours Are Hers: Retrieving Women's History from Rabbinic Literature (Leiden, 1997), 171-74. Further, Baker critiques this approach in archaeological scholarship in her forthcoming A Well-Ordered House. 41 See also Virginia Burrus, The Making of a Heretic: Gender, Authority, and the Priscillianist Controversy (Berkeley, 1995), 6-12. Burrus reminds us in her discussion of "The Shifting Boundaries of Public and Private Spheres": "The public-private distinction remains useful as an analytical tool that resonates not only with our own habits of thought but also with the self-understanding of the late-ancient cultures with which we are concerned. But at the same time it is itself a cultural construct, which must be contextualized and interpreted in its particularity" (7).
51. This scholarly mapping of the juxtaposition of private versus public onto the gender distinction of male and female has been widely contested in recent feminist work in rabbinic literature. A number of recent studies have collected rabbinic textual evidence to the contrary and have thus shown that the claim that rabbinic texts completely confine women to the domestic scene is wrong. See Judith Hauptman, "Feminist Perspectives on Rabbinic Texts," in Feminist Perspectives on Jewish Studies, ed. Lynn Davidman and Shelly Tennenbaum (New Haven, 1994), 40-62, and Tal Ilan, Mine and Yours Are Hers: Retrieving Women's History from Rabbinic Literature (Leiden, 1997), 171-74. Further, Baker critiques this approach in archaeological scholarship in her forthcoming A Well-Ordered House. 41 See also Virginia Burrus, The Making of a Heretic: Gender, Authority, and the Priscillianist Controversy (Berkeley, 1995), 6-12. Burrus reminds us in her discussion of "The Shifting Boundaries of Public and Private Spheres": "The public-private distinction remains useful as an analytical tool that resonates not only with our own habits of thought but also with the self-understanding of the late-ancient cultures with which we are concerned. But at the same time it is itself a cultural construct, which must be contextualized and interpreted in its particularity" (7).
52. The Babylonian Talmud cites it as such (b. Niddah 33b), and the Tosefta's sequencing seems to suggest as much.
53. A similar argument has been advanced by Boyarin in his reading of a different talmudic text concerning sexual practices during intercourse (b. Nedarim 20a-b). See also Boyarin, "A Tale of Two Synods" and "Women's Bodies."
54. The contrast between the term benot kutim (daughters of the Samaritans) in m. Niddah 4:1 and kutiot (Samaritan) in m. Niddah 4:2 is notable. Cohen only briefly remarks that the two mishnayot differ in style and that this raises the question whether, indeed, they should be examined as a unit ("The Significance of Yahneh," 32, n. 10). I am not sure whether he means by this that the two texts stem from different literary sources. The fact remains that the editors of the Mishnah decided to maintain the contrast in language as they merged both texts into a unified text.
55. Partially inherited from biblical usage, as in benot yerushalayim (daughters of Jerusalem, m. Taanit 4:8) and benot ziyon (daughters of Zion, m. Taanit 4:8), the Mishnah uses benot yisrael (daughters of Israel) elsewhere (see m. Nedarim 9:10, m. Yevamot 13:1, m. Niddah 2:1). Both benot kutim and benot ha-zaduqin are hapax legomenoi in the Mishnah as well as in the Tosefta. The Tosefta uses benot yisrael even more frequently (see t. Terumot 10:14, t. Eruvin 2:11, t. Ketubbot 7:2, t. Gittin 3:5, etc.). See also the expression benot kefarim (daughters of villages) for village women (t. Niddah 6:9).
56. Further, the Sadducean woman in the Toseftan case story uses nashei zaduqiot (Sadducean wives or women, t. Niddah 5:3), which is somewhat ungrammatical and which is cleaned up in the Babylonian Talmud's version to appear as nashei zaduqim (wives of the Sadduceans, b. Niddah 33b). This is replicated in the statement of Rabbi Yossi, who uses zaduqiot (Sadducean women, t. Niddah 5:3), as in "we are experts in zaduqiot."
57. J. R. Wegner, Chattel or Person? The Status of Women in the Mishnah (Oxford, 1988). Wegner argues that this term demeans a woman's personhood because it implies that she is to be treated as a daughter, that is, as a minor: "the demeaning effect of being defined always and only as someone else's daughter is self-evident" (167). This claim is repeatedly cited (see, e.g., Stern, 237, n. 241).
58. On an analysis of these texts, see Charlotte Fonrobert, "The Beginnings of Rabbinic Textuality: Women's Bodies and Paternal Knowledge," in Beginning a Reading/Reading Beginnings: Towards a Hermeneutic of Jewish Texts, ed. Aryeh Cohen and Shaul Magid (New York, forthcoming). In her study of Clement's use of the kinship metaphors, Denise Kimber Buell has called particularly the construction of the Law of the Father a "naturalizing rhetorics," employed toward the goal of creating an "authentic lineage," which allows Clement "to bound his version of Christian identity" (Making Christians: Clement of Alexandria and the Rhetoric of Legitimacy [Princeton, 1999], 181). According to Buell, this strategy masks the actual "organizational, behavioral, and doctrinal diversity among Christians" (181). Analogously, one might argue that a parallel rhetoric masks Jewish behavioral and hermeneutic diversity in the mishnaic case. In both cases, the point is to construct proper lineage of knowledge and behavior rather than to reflect such a lineage. Buell's analysis corroborates my line of reasoning here, even though I think that it is necessary to make the gender politics of the mishnaic claim to hegemony over women's menstrual and sexual practice more explicit.
59. Already Ben Sira includes a hymn to the 'avot olam (Sirach 44:1) with reference to a line of great biblical men from Enoch via Noah, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to Moses and beyond. Here Abraham is "the great father of a multitude of nations" (Sirach 44:19). Rabbinic literature and liturgy later focus biblical memory on the three patriarchs, as prominently expressed in the first blessing of the Shmoneh Ezreh, the central rabbinic prayer: "Blessed are You, Lord, our God and the God of our fathers, God of Abraham, God of Isaac, and God of Jacob." See also b. Berakhot 16b, where the Babylonian Talmud cites a baraita, according to which "we call only three [men] the fathers and four [women] the mothers." The mishnaic 'avot ha-olam are "new" fathers whose memory is superimposed onto the biblical 'avot.
60. Boyarin, "A Tale of Two Synods," 45.
61. According to Vööbus, "it emanates from the third century and as has been suggested perhaps even from the first part of that time period. Connolly suggested the time before the persecution of Decius" (The Didascalia Apostolorum in Syriac, 2 vols., Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalum 401-2 [Louvain, 1979], 2:23). I have dealt with this text extensively for a different purpose in Charlotte Fonrobert, "The Didascalia Apostolorum: A Mishnah for the Disciples of Christ," Journal of Early Christian Studies (forthcoming); see also Fonrobert, Menstrual Purity, 160-211. Also worthy of mention in connection with the Didascalia is S. J. D. Cohen, "Menstruants and the Sacred in Judaism and Christianity," in Women's History, Ancient History, ed. Sarah B. Pomeroy (Chapel Hill, 1991), 273-99, and more recently, "Purity, Piety, and Polemic: Medieval Rabbinic Denunciations of 'Incorrect' Purification Practices," in Women and Water, ed. Rachel R. Wasserfall (Hanover, NH, 1999), 82-101.
62. According to Vööbus, "it emanates from the third century and as has been suggested perhaps even from the first part of that time period. Connolly suggested the time before the persecution of Decius" (The Didascalia Apostolorum in Syriac, 2 vols., Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalum 401-2 [Louvain, 1979], 2:23). I have dealt with this text extensively for a different purpose in Charlotte Fonrobert, "The Didascalia Apostolorum: A Mishnah for the Disciples of Christ," Journal of Early Christian Studies (forthcoming); see also Fonrobert, Menstrual Purity, 160-211. Also worthy of mention in connection with the Didascalia is S. J. D. Cohen, "Menstruants and the Sacred in Judaism and Christianity," in Women's History, Ancient History, ed. Sarah B. Pomeroy (Chapel Hill, 1991), 273-99, and more recently, "Purity, Piety, and Polemic: Medieval Rabbinic Denunciations of 'Incorrect' Purification Practices," in Women and Water, ed. Rachel R. Wasserfall (Hanover, NH, 1999), 82-101.
63. Vööbus, 2:329.
64. As opposed to the later change in talmudic law, about which see Tirzah Z. Meacham, "Mishnah Tractate Niddah with Introduction: A Critical Edition with Notes on Variants, Commentary, Redaction and Chapters in Legal History and Realia" (Ph.D. diss., Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1989), 154-70 (in Hebrew).
65. Further, Boyarin's analysis of b. Nedarim 20a-b provides a similar instance, in that the rabbis allow couples to engage in sexual practices that are popularly or traditionally feared to produce malformed children ("A Tale of Two Synods," 41).
66. A self-descriptive term that has led Georg Strecker to wonder about the disparity between Catholicism as he knows it and the Didascalia's claim to it. See Georg Strecker, "On the Problem of Jewish Christianity," appendix to Walter Bauer, Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity (Philadelphia, 1971), 241-85.