Analogy, Empire and Political Conflict in a Rabbinic Midrash

Journal of Jewish Studies

Volumn 53, Issue 2, 2002, Pages 273-297

  Dohrmann, Natalie B ^a  

^a NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 60949784937     PISSN: 00222097     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.18647/2427/JJS-2002     Document Type: Review

References (40)

1. The Hebrew will be quoted from the Lauterbach edition unless otherwise noted-Jacob Z. Lauterbach (ed.), The Mekilta de-Rabbi Ishmael (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1933-35). Henceforth JZL followed by volume and page number(s). I will also key each passage to the Horowitz-Rabin-H. S. Horowitz and I. A. Rabin, Mechilta d'Rabbi Ismael cum variis lectionibus et adnotationibus (Jerusalem: Bamberger et Wahrman, 1960), henceforth H-R followed by page number(s). All translations are my own
2. See the introduction to M. Fishbane, The Exegetical Imagination (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998), esp. pp. 2-4, 11-15, where he discusses the theologically significant impulse toward 'similarity' as a thread connecting pluriform hermeneutical moves
3. For two studies of tannaitic material in a similar vein see Moshe Halbertal, 'Coexisting with the Enemy: Jews and Pagans in the Mishnah', in G. Stanton and G. Stroumsa (eds), Tolerance and Intolerance in Early Christianity and Judaism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 159-172
4. Steven D. Fraade, 'Navigating the Anomalous: Non-Jews at the Intersection of Early Rabbinic Law and Narrative', in L. Silberstein and R. Cohen (eds), The Other in Jewish Thought and History (New York: New York University Press, 1994), pp. 145-165
5. also J. Lightstone, 'Form as Meaning in Halakhic Midrash: A Programmatic Statement', Semeia 27(1983), pp. 23-35
6. D. W. Halivni, Midrash, Mishnah, and Gemara: The Jewish Predilection for Justified Law (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986), pp. 53-55
7. The question of guilt here is tricky. See the discussion by J. H. Tigay, 'The Ceremony of the Broken-Necked Heifer', in Deuteronomy (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1996), pp. 472-476
8. also Sifre Dt. 210; mSotah 45ab; bYoma 67b; Saul Lieberman, 'Some Aspects of After Life in Early Rabbinic Literature', in Texts and Studies (New York: Ktav, 1974), p. 254
9. Alternately, harsh or stony land. Cf. Pv. 13:15; also mSotah 9:5 and Sifre Dt. 207 which gloss as 'stony' ()
10. Many non-biblical assumptions are in place in this passage (four modes of execution, categorization of crimes and methods in analogous cases, etc.) most of which are shared by the Mishnah (mSan.7:1). This raises the question of the Mekilta's relation to the Mishnah. Melamed notes the disproportionate citation of or at least connection with the Mishnah in Pisha and Nezikin (as compared to its virtual absence in the other tractates), Introduction, 249. I follow Hayim Lapin's reading, especially on the likelihood that tractates Pisha and Nezikin are related to the Mishnah through some common source, and not directly in most cases. The evidence is too spotty to secure a single direction or source of transmission. Early Rabbinic and Civil Law (Atlanta: Scholar's Press, 1995), pp. 311-329
11. See also M. Kahana, 'The Critical Editions of Mekhilta', Tarbiz 55 (1985), pp. 515-520 [Heb.]
12. See C. Carmichael, The Laws of Deuteronomy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1974), pp. 261-262. There he notes that the use of the word 'city' instead of 'gate' in regards to the subverted city, marks this a type of justice that was understood to have been applied from without, on an external problem. This relates to the connection of sword with aliens or foreigners. Similarly, hanging gets biblical mention, though usually deemed a form of execution for foreigners (Gen. 40:22; Est. 7:9)
13. On the possible Roman and Biblical antecedent for this method of stoning see Haim H. Cohn, 'The Penology of the Talmud', Israel Law Review 5 (1970), pp. 56, esp. nn. 14 and 15
14. Aharon Oppenheimer, 'Jewish Penal Authority in Roman Judea', Jews in a Greco-Roman World, ed. Martin Goodman (Oxford: Clarendon, 1998), p. 189
15. Also instructive here is Shaye J. D. Cohen's 'The Place of the Rabbi in Jewish Society of the Second Century'. Here Cohen has collected the evidence of the taqqanot of the tannaim, which describe a sharply limited sphere of legal influence for these rabbis, in The Galilee in Late Antiquity, ed. Lee I. Levine (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1992), pp. 160-164
16. see also Catherine Hezser, The Social Structure of the Rabbinic Movement in Roman Palestine (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1997), pp. 188-195, 475-479
17. A. M. Rabello, 'The Lex de Templo Heirosolymitana prohibiting gentiles from entering Jerusalem's sanctuary', Christian News from IsraelXXI:3/4 (1970), pp. 28-32
18. 'Jewish and Roman Jurisdiction', in Jewish Law, ed. N.S. Hecht et al (Oxford: Clarendon, 1996), p. 144. A similarly guarded interpretation must be accorded to the statement by Origen (ca. 240 C.E.) that the Jewish Patriarch had full capital jurisdiction, even into the 3rd century. Epistola ad Africanum, 14. In The Ante-Nicene Fathers, IV, eds. A. Roberts, and J. Donaldson (Grand Rapids: W.B. Eerdmans, 1982), p. 392; also Alon, pp. 209-211
19. Jill Harries argues that the Roman notion of punishment as example and deterrent explains the theatrics which so often accompanied execution. This further indicates that Roman practices on this front especially would have been made visible explicitly to the historically recalcitrant Jewish inhabitants of Palestine. Law and Empire in Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 118, 136-37
20. '[T]he Graeco-Roman sources of inspiration [for rabbinic law] appear to divide in accord with the jurisdictional situation. Knowledge of Roman procedures has been perceived chiefly in criminal, especially capital, cases'. In B.S. Jackson, 'On the Problem of Roman Influence', p. 194 (see also p. 194 n. 238)
21. also Saul Lieberman, 'Roman Legal Institutions in Early Rabbinics and in the Acta Martyrum', JQR 35 n.s. (1944-45), p. 37 n. 243
22. Callistratus, a Roman provincial lawyer of the late tannaitic era, implies that decapitation is the most lenient of the execution forms (D. 48.19.28.pr.); O. F. Robinson, 'Criminal Trials', in A Companion to Justinian's Institutes, Ernest Metzger, ed (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998), p. 232
23. Sunstein, Legal Reasoning and Political Conflict (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 62-69
24. Sunstein, Legal Reasoning (as in n. 53), p. 101
25. Sunstein, Legal Reasoning (as in n. 53), p. 91
26. Sunstein, Legal Reasoning (as in n. 53), p. 63
27. Indeed this ability might be said to be midrash's particular genius
28. See for example, Robert Goldenberg, 'Law and Spirit in Talmudic Religion' in Jewish Spirituality, ed. Arthur Green (New York: Crossroads, 1986-87), I.232-252
29. and Nahum Glatzer, 'The Attitude Toward Rome in Third Century Judaism', in Politische Ordnung und Menschliche Existenz, A Dempf, H. Arendt, and F. Engel-Janosi eds. (Munich: Verlag C. H. Beck, 1962), pp. 243-257
30. See also, N. B. Dohrmann, 'Reading as Rhetoric in Halakhic Texts', in Studies in Scripture in Early Judaism and Christianity, ed. C. A. Evans (Sheffield, forthcoming 2002)
31. Jay Harris, How Do We Know This? (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), p. 18
32. Kugel, The Idea of Biblical Poetry (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981), pp. 102-104, and passim
33. The anxiety of the argument over the death penalty reflects a long-standing ambivalence among the rabbis over verbal analogy. The use of the phrase 'he shall surely be put to death' or the rubric of capital crime as a sole bases for comparison are weak indeed. See Dohrmann, 'Analogy and it Limits', in Law and Narrative in The Mekilta de-Rabbi Ishmael: The Problem of Midrashic Coherence (as in n. 11), pp. 215-228
34. Sunstein, Legal Reasoning (as in n. 53), p. 62
35. S. J. D. Cohen, 'The Place of the Rabbi' (as in n. 43), p. 163
36. Martin Goodman, The Roman State and the Jewish Patriarch in the Third Century', in The Galilee in Late Antiquity, ed. Lee I. Levine (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1992), p. 138
37. 'Esau as Symbol in Early Medieval Thought', in Jewish Medieval and Renaissance Studies, ed. Alexander Altmann (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967), p. 20
38. Compare Jewish twinning to Tacitus, who, in The Histories, 5.4, defines Judaism as the perverse inversion of all things Roman. In contrast to the more 'familiar' Germans, the Jewish rebels about which Tacitus writes are the ultimate foreigners. 'To ensure his future hold over the people, Moses introduced a new cult, which was the opposite of all other religions. All that we hold sacred they profane'. Translated by W. H. Fyfe, revised by D. S. Levene (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997)
39. David Stern, 'Midrash and Indeterminacy', Critical Inquiry 15:1 (1988), pp. 154-155
40. Richard Weisberg, in Poethics, argues for the centrality of medium to message and the inseparability of persuasive and elegant rhetoric from legal truth. Further relevant to this argument is the work of Robert Cover who thinks that telling of the law's origins and narrativized justifications within a culture are integral to social justice. 'Nomos and Narrative', Narrative, Violence, and the Law, ed. M. Minow, M. Ryan, A. Sarat (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993), pp. 95-172 [reprint from Harvard Law Review 4:97 (1983)]