A contribution to the study of martyrdom and identity in the Palestinian Talmud

Journal of Jewish Studies

Volumn 54, Issue 2, 2003, Pages 242-271

  Gray, Alyssa M ^a  

^a Hebrew Union College Jewish Institute of Religion   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 60950326249     PISSN: 00222097     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.18647/2494/jjs-2003     Document Type: Article

References (45)

1. See, e.g., Saul Lieberman, 'The Martyrs of Caesarea', Annuaire de l'Institut de Philologie et d'Histoire Orientates et Slaves 7 (1939-1944): 395-446
2. Yitzchak Baer, "Am Yisrael, ha-Kenisiyya ha-Notzrit, ve-ha-Qesarut ha-Romit Mimei Septimius Severus ve-'ad "Pequdat ha-SavIanut" Shel Shenat 313', Zion 21:1 (1956): 1-49
3. E. E. Urbach, 'Drashot Hazal u-Ferushei Origines le-Shir ha-Shirim ve-ha-Viquah ha-Yehudi/Notzri', Tarbitz 30:2 (1961): 148-170
4. Moshe David Herr, 'Persecutions and Martyrdom in Hadrian's Days', Scripta Hierosolymitana 23 (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1972), pp. 85-125
5. Saul Lieberman, 'Redifat Dat Yisrael', in Salo Wittmayer Baron Jubilee Volume: Hebrew Section (Jerusalem: American Academy for Jewish Research, 1974), pp. 213-245
6. Gerald J. Blidstein, 'Rabbis, Romans, and Martyrdom - Three Views', Tradition 21:3 (Fall 1984): 54-62
7. Arthur J. Droge and James D. Tabor, A Noble Death: Suicide and Martyrdom Among Christians and Jews in Antiquity (San Francisco: Harper, 1992)
8. Daniel Boyarin, 'ha-Midrash ve-ha-Ma'aseh: 'Al ha-Heqer ha-Histori Shel Sifrut Hazal', in Sefer ha-Zikaron le-Rabbi Shaul Lieberman (New York and Jerusalem: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1993), pp. 105-117
9. Tessa Rajak, 'Dying for the Law; The Martyr's Portrait in Jewish-Greek Literature', in M. J. Edwards and Simon Swain, eds, Portraits: Biographical Representation in the Greek and Latin Literature of the Roman Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 39-67
10. Aryeh Cohen, 'Towards an Erotics of Martyrdom', The Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 7 (1998): 227-256
11. Daniel Boyarin, Dying for God: Martyrdom and the Making of Christianity and Judaism (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999)
12. idem, 'Mashehu 'al Toldot ha-Martyrion be-Yisrael', in Menahem Hirshman, et al., eds, 'Atarah la-Hayyim: Mehqarim be-Sifrut ha-Talmudit ve-ha-Rabbanit le-Khvod Professor Hayyim Zalman Dimitrorsky (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1999), pp. 3-27
13. See Boyarin, Dying for God
14. idem, 'Mashehu 'al ha-Martyrion be-Yisrael'
15. Cohen, 'Towards an Erotics of Martyrdom'
16. See also Baer Ratner, Ahavat Tziyon re- Yerushalayim: Shevi'it (Jerusalem: 1967), p. 29, wherein he also prefers the reading meshumad
17. My own translation follows that of Feliks. See also Marcus Jastrow, A Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature (New York: Judaica Press, 1982), p. 1324, wherein he translates kova'atah ('sheaves') as 'clods covering the field after the first ploughing, which require to be broken by being thrown up and scattered'. According to Jastrow, then, the apostate would have seen the people 'throwing up the ploughed clods', and would have asked them if they were permitted to plough and if they were permitted to throw up those ploughed clods
18. R. Yakov b. Zavdi is of the fourth generation, and R. Mana of the fifth generation of Palestinian amoraim. See Hanokh Albeck, Mavo la-Talmudim (Tel Aviv: Devir, 1969), pp. 337 and 398
19. Did middle or late generation Palestinian amoraim edit sugyot? This example suggests that further inquiry into this issue would be useful. For evidence of middle-generation Babylonian amoraim functioning as editors, see Richard Kalmin, Sages, Stories, Authors, and Editors in Rabbinic Babylonia (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1994), pp. 169-173
20. See Albeck, Mavo la-Talmudim, pp. 340-342
21. For more on Lulianus and Pappus, see Lieberman, 'The Martyrs of Caesarea', pp. 413-414
22. Jonathan A. Goldstein maintains that 2 Maccabees cannot have been written earlier than the period 134 to 104 BCE, and not later than Pompey's conquest of Jerusalem in 63 BCE. See Jonathan A. Goldstein, trans., The Anchor Bible: II Maccabees (New York: Doubleday, 1983), p. 71
23. See also 4 Maccabees 5:19-20, in which the elderly scribe Eleazar rebukes Antiochus by saying: 'Accordingly, you must not regard it as a minor sin for us to eat unclean food; minor sins are just as weighty as great sins, for in each case the Law is despised.' Taken together, 2 and 4 Maccabees illustrate a perspective on martyrdom different from our sugya; one in which the nature of the Torah violation demanded by the Gentile persecutor is immaterial. See James H. Charlesworth, The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, vol. 2 (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday and Co., Inc., 1985), p. 550
24. Hayim Shaul Horovitz and Yisrael Avraham Rabin, eds, Mekhilta de-R. Yishmael, 2nd ed. (Jerusalem: Shalem Hafatzat Sefarim, 1998), p. 227
25. Louis Finkelstein, ed., Sifre on Deuteronomy (Jerusalem: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1993), p. 346
26. At Semahot 8:12, R. Hanina b. Teradyon is said to have been 'seized on account of heresy' (minut). Although this charge is missing from the R. Hanina b. Teradyon stories in the Sifre and in the Bavli, the very phrase is used at b. A.Z. 16b with reference to the tanna R. Eliezer. The view that R. Hanina b. Teradyon was seized for heresy is also missing from the accounts of his martyrdom at the end of tractate Kallah, Heikhalot Rabbati 6, and Midrash Eleh Ezkerah
27. For interactions between R. Abbahu and R. Yirmiya, see, e.g., b. Baba Batra 140a; b. Shab. 112a; b. Shevuot 37b; y. Ket. 9:1, 32d
28. It is interesting that the story attributes to a Gentile the words that vindicate R. Abba b. Zemina's choice. This may be another example of the phenomenon studied by Christine Hayes, to wit, that the Rabbis attribute to Gentiles sentiments they hold but do not wish to speak aloud themselves. See her 'Displaced Self-Perceptions: The Deployment of Minim and Romans in Bavli Sanhedrin 90b-91a', in Hayim Lapin, ed., Religious and Ethnic Communities in Later Roman Palestine (Lanham, MD: University Press of Maryland, 1998), pp. 249-289
29. See, e.g., Daniel Boyarin, 'ha-Midrash ve-ha-Ma'aseh', idem, 'Mashehu 'al Toldot ha-Martyrion be-Yisrael'
30. See Shmuel Safrai, 'Mitzvot Shevi'it be-Metziut she-le-Ahar Hurban Bayit Sheni', parts 1 and 2, Tarbitz 35:3 (1966): 304-328; 36:1 (1967): 1-21. Safrai presents a comprehensive literary survey of the laws of Shevi'it from what he describes as the Yavnean layer of the Mishnah through the period of the amoraim. His presentation is methodologically flawed by his assumption that
31. It is noteworthy that R. Yishmael's role at t. Hullin 2:22-23 (=y. A.Z. 2:2, 40d-41a) is fulfilled elsewhere by a heavenly voice. In both rabbinic and non-rabbinic Jewish tradition, R. Yishmael (b. Elisha) was understood as having a particular connection to the divine. At b. Brakh. 7a, he is represented as witnessing God's prayer while standing to offer incense in the Holy of Holies of the Jerusalem Temple, and in the non-rabbinic work 3 Enoch (entitled 'The Book of Enoch by Rabbi Ishmael the High Priest'), R. Yishmael is the protagonist whose visit to the heavenly realm is described in vivid detail. The placement in R. Yishmael's mouth of a statement one would otherwise expect from a heavenly figure is thus a small reminder of the place that important tanna held in the Jewish imagination among some circles in Late Antiquity. See James H. Charlesworth, The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, vol. 1, pp. 223-302
32. 'Mashehu 'al ha-Martyrion', pp. 11-13
33. See Boyarin, 'Mashehu "al ha-Martyrion', p. 25
34. See Martin Jaffee, Torah in the Mouth: Writing and Oral Tradition in Palestinian Judaism, 200 BCE-400 CE (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 144-147
35. See also Buber, Midrash Tanhuma (Vayera 6), 1:88
36. Albeck, Mavo la-Talnuidim, p. 395
37. See Eusebius, The Ecclesiastical History and the Martyrs of Palestine (2 vols), trans, and ed. H. J. Lawlor and J. E. L. Oulton (London: The MacMillan Co., 1927), 1:365
38. Shamma Friedman has employed this method in studying differences between Toseftan braitot and their counterparts in the Bavli. See, e.g., 'ha-Braitot she-be-Talmud ha-Bavli ve-Yahasan le-Maqbiloteihen she-be-Tosefta', in Daniel Boyarin, et a!., cds, 'Atarah la-Hayyim: Mehqarim ba-Sifrut ha-Talmudit ve-ha-Rabbanit le-Khvod Professor Hayyim Zalman Dimitrovsky (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2000), pp. 163-201
39. idem, 'Uncovering Literary Dependencies in the Talmudic Corpus', in Shaye J. D. Cohen, ed., The Synoptic Problem in Rabbinic Literature (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 2000), pp. 35-57
40. See also Christine Hayes, Between the Babylonian and Palestinian Talmuds: Accounting for Halachic Difference in Selected Sugyot from the Avodah Zarah Tractates (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997)
41. But see Menahem Katz, 'Yerushalmi Sof Massekhet Avodah Zarah: Shuv 'Al "Hesronot ha-Yerushalmi"', Sidrah 12 (1996): 79-111, who argues that y. A.Z. once included discussion of the Noahide laws, but that the material, known to the rishonim, is lost to us
42. For a detailed study of how aspects of the rabbis' larger environments are reflected in their literatures, see Richard Kalmin, The Sage in Jewish Society of Late Antiquity
43. The fourth-century persecutions under Shapur II resulted in the production of the Syriac 'Acts of the Martyrs'. Generally, however, J. P. Asmussen has this to say about the status of Christians in Iran: '[t]hroughout the whole Sasanian period, Christianity was tolerated and, without reservations on the part of the state, Christians performed war service on an equal footing with their Zoroastrian fellow countrymen.' Asmussen attributed persecution of Christians to the (infrequent) convergences of interest between King and Zoroastrian clerical hierarchy. See J. P. Asmussen, 'Christians in Iran', in Ehsan Yarshater, ed., The Cambridge History of Iran: The Seleuced, Parthian, and Sasanian Periods. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 3(2), pp. 924-948. The quote is from p. 934
44. See Christine Hayes, 'Displaced Self-Perceptions: The Deployment of Minim and Romans in Bavli Sanhedrin 90b-91a'
45. This does not contradict Richard Kalmin's findings that Palestinian rabbis were more likely than Babylonian rabbis to associate with, assist, and intermarry with, non-rabbinic Jews. In this case, the non-rabbinic figure in question is not simply a non-rabbi, but someone who is represented as being part of a movement seen (by R. Yishmael at least) as being antithetical to rabbinic interests. See Richard Kalmin, The Sage in Jewish Society of Late Antiquity (London: Routledge, 1999)