Rabbinic universalism in the second and third centuries

Harvard Theological Review

Volumn 93, Issue 2, 2000, Pages 101-115

  Hirshman, Marc ^a  

^a HEBREW UNIVERSITY OF JERUSALEM   (Israel)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 60950487402     PISSN: 00178160     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0017816000016722     Document Type: Review

References (62)

1. See Marc Hirshman, "The Greek Fathers and the Aggada on Ecclesiastes: Formats of Exegesis in Late Antiquity," HUCA 59 (1988) 137-65
2. Most recently, see "The Anthological Imagination in Jewish Literature," Prooftexts 17 (1997 [special issue]) 1-63
3. See Richard L. Kalmin, "Friends and Colleagues, or Barely Acquainted," HUCA 61 (1990) 125-58
4. revised and reprinted in idem, Sages, Stories, Authors, and Editors in Rabbinic Babylonia (Scholars Press, Atlanta, 1994) 175-92
5. No less problematic were the efforts to locate or assess ideas in their historical context. The dating of rabbinic works was arguably the main thrust of Zunz's nineteenth century Wissenschaft des Judentums movement and has occupied Talmudic scholarship ever since. Historical reconstruction is impossible without accurate dating of traditions, as Neusner and his students have hammered home. Yet, 150 years of academic study of the Tannaitic texts holds that the bulk of these works can be attributed reliably to the second or third century. See M. Kahana's persuasive comments on the dating of Mekilta de R. Yishmael in the appendix to his article, "The Critical Editions of Mekilta de Rabbi Ishmael in the Light of the Genizah Fragments," Tarbiz 55 (1986 [Hebrew]) 515-20 and his recently published volume, Parashat Amalek in the Mechiltot (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1999 [Hebrew])
6. Jay Harris's important work, How Do We Know This? (Albany, NY: State University of New York, 1995) casts some doubt on the firm division of the Yishmael and Akiba materials, but Kahana's book and my own research deflect some of his criticisms, at least as far as the Tannaitic midrash is concerned
7. Jonathan Z. Smith, "A Matter of Class: Taxonomies of Religion," HTR 89 (1996) 387-403
8. Jon D. Levenson, "The Universal Horizon of Biblical Particularism," in Mark R. Brett, ed., Ethnicity and the Bible (Leiden: Brill, 1986) 143-69
9. Henry Chadwick, "Christian and Roman Universalism in the Fourth Century," in Lionel R. Wickham and Caroline P. Bammel, eds., Christian Faith and Greek Philosophy in Late Antiquity (Leiden: Brill, 1993) 39
10. David Stern, Midrash and Theory: Ancient Jewish Exegesis and Contemporary Literary Studies (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1996) 31
11. Mekilta de R. Yishmael, Bahodesh 1 (Lauterbach, ed., p. 198), my emphasis
12. See Heinrich Schlier, TDNT 5 (1967) 871-86
13. Jon D. Levenson analyzes the relationship of these two biblical covenants in his "On the Promise to the Rechabites" CBQ 38 (1976) 510
14. I have rendered the third person masculine of the verb "to give a nickname," adding the subject God rather than translating more literally "he" (God) or "it" (scripture) named them
15. The manuscript tradition is divided over whether the second equation begins with "Beloved are priests" or again with "Beloved are Israel." It would seem, however, that even the tradition that reads "priests" alludes to the same possibility that the people of Israel are called priests, if one applies the transitive principle. Since the people of Israel are called priests and priests are called angels, therefore the people of Israel are also called angels
16. A central word in most of the sources cited in this article is the Hebrew "'ādām," word which can mean Adam or a human being. In this article, I have generally translated the word "adam," a person
17. This scriptural prooftext is appended in the margin of the pristine Kaufmann manuscript of the Mishna, p. 341 of the Makor reprint, which is the text I have translated here. A facsimile edition was published by G. Beer, Faksimile-Ausgabe des Mishnacodex Kaufmann A 50 and reprinted by Makor, Jerusalem 1968 (two volumes) p. 341
18. The scriptural prooftexts are probably secondary as noted by Ezra Zion Melammed, Essays in Talmudic Literature (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1988 [Hebrew]) 213-14
19. I refer to 'Avot 3:12-13 following the Kaufmann manuscript reading of kol-rō(')š rather than kol-lěrō(')š. R. Yishmael advocates a joyous, "light headed" bearing, while R. Akiva warns that such behavior might lead to promiscuity
20. Note that this is the same verse from the Sifre above, a verse rarely cited in all of Tannaitic literature
21. R. Yirmiyah, a sage mentioned only a few times in Tannaitic literature, is identified by Jacob Nahum Epstein (Prolegomena ad Litteras Tannaiticas [Jerusalem: Magnus, 1957] 572) as possibly belonging to the school of R. Yishmael
22. Some commentators (Tosafot, 'Aboda Zar. 3a) locate the basis of this comparison in a homily on a different verse. We might speculate that the trigger for the comparison was the proximity of Lev 16, which is the elaborate description of the service of the high priest on the Day of Atonement, and our statutes at the beginning of Leviticus 18
23. Elisha Qimron and John Strugnell, miqsāt ma 'ǎsê tôrâ (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994). See especially p. 139 and n. 42 on the word ma 'ǎśê
24. The only catch here is that R. Yirmiya is echoing the words used in Leviticus, which certainly informed his own usage. The context in scripture is fulfillment of the laws
25. Other versions read "that you should not take leave of them," but the intent of both versions is that one's study should only be in the words of Torah to the exclusion of all else
26. This intense polemic of this section of the Mekilta d' Arayot against association with the Gentile ethos, wisdom and laws, contrasts neatly with the preceding section of the Sifra, attributed to the Akiva school, which exegetes the same verses but limits itself to the stated scriptural theme of sexual mores. Because of the literary juxtaposition of two distinct sources on Leviticus 18, that of the Mechilta and that of the Sifra, we have a double introduction to this same biblical injunction against the ways of the non-Jews. The Sifra, usually attributed to the Akiva school, limits itself to a harangue against the sexual mores of the nations. The Mekilta d' Arayot, attributed to the school of Yishmael, was inserted into the Sifra here, since it contains a complete exegesis of the laws of illicit relation, which the Akiva school thought to be a restricted subject of study, pursued only in very small groups. See M. Hag. 2.1
27. Ramsay Macmullen, Paganism in the Roman Empire (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981) 97-99
28. Marc Hirshman, A Rivalry of Genius: Jewish and Christian Biblical Interpretation in Late Antiquity (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1996) 114-15
29. A. Marmorstein, Studies in Jewish Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1950) 77-92 [Hebrew section]
30. The literature on this is extensive. See Saul Lieberman, Greek in Jewish Palestine (New York: Feldheim, 1965) 81-90
31. It is Lieberman and Marmorstein who present a vivid portrayal of Gentile participation in Jewish ritual, while the former concentrates on the Rabbinic response to the phenomenon; Louis Feldman, Jew and Gentile in the Ancient World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993) 342-82
32. S. J. D. Cohen, "Crossing the Boundary and Becoming a Jew," HTR 82 (1989) 14-33. Joshua Levinson shared his thoughts with me on this subject, which will appear in a forthcoming article entitled, "Bodies and Bo(a)rders," to be published in HTR later this year
33. This is the reading of the Oxford MS 151.2 of the Mekilta
34. I point out that the "bringing to Torah" is an unusual phrase used only here and in one other place
35. Sifra Hova 1
36. Tsav 10
37. Sh'mini 4
38. Emor 14
39. Sifre Deut 76. 343
40. Midrash Tannaim 32. 28
41. The single appearance in the Yishmael midrashic corpus is in a non-legal passage and is attributed to a sage from the last generation of Tannaim, Shimon b. Elazar, at Mekilta de R. Yishmael (Bahodesh 5; Lauterbach, ed., 235-36)
42. Compare b. Sanh. 57b, which attributes the category to Lieberman's brief but provocative account of the Noahide laws in Greek in Jewish Palestine, 81-82
43. D. Novak's, The Image of the Non-Jew in Judaism: An Historical and Constructive Study of the Noahide Laws (New York: Mellen Press, 1983) attempts to conceptualize the category especially in light of medieval sources
44. More recently, see S. Fraade, "Navigating the Anomalous: Non-Jews at the Intersection of Early Rabbinic Law and Narrative," in Laurence J. Silberstein and Robert L. Cohn, eds., The Other in Jewish Thought (NY: New York University Press, 1994) 145-65, especially n. 2
45. See Pierre Bourdieu's strictures on the detemporalization of scientific practice in idem, Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977) 3-10
46. M. Weinfeld, "The Universalist Trend and the Isolationist Trend in the Period of the Restoration to Zion" Tarbiz 33 (1964 (Hebrew]) 228-42
47. This article is cited in Levenson, "The Universal Horizon of Biblical Particularism," who refines the notion of biblical universalism. See also B. Wodecki, "Der Heilsuniversalismus bei Trito-Jesaja," VT 33 (1982) 258-59
48. Following again the Kaufmann manuscript. The word for "people" in Hebrew is "b'riot."
49. Gerson D. Cohen, "Esau as Symbol in Early Medieval Thought," in Alexander Altmann, ed., Jewish Medieval and Renaissance Studies (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967)
50. reprinted in Gerson D. Cohen, Studies in the Variety of Rabbinic Cultures (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1991) 247
51. Alan Segal, Rebecca's Children: Judaism and Christianity in the Roman World (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986) 173
52. However, Segal's presentation of rabbinic Judaism is marred by an attempt to present it in a monolithic manner, smoothing out the inherent debate in the academy. Thus Segal introduces R. Yirmiah's position, equating the Gentile who does Torah with the high priest, with the words "the consensus in rabbinic Judaism shortly became ..." (p. 168). There are insufficient grounds for this generalization. If a generalization were to be made, it would probably have to be the opposite: that rabbinic Judaism adopted an isolationist view. So, too, on the following page when Segal states that "most rabbis thought it impossible that whole sections of humanity could be condemned to perdition by a just and merciful God" (p. 169). There is no documentation of this sweeping, if noble, claim. In my book, I have tried to show that this universalist strain is peculiar to one school of Tannaitic thought, and at least in this matter later rabbinic tradition seems to adopt the opposing school's view, that Torah was for Jews alone
53. For a balanced presentation of rabbinic universalism, see George Foote Moore, Judaism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962) 219-34. The very specialized position taken by the midrash Seder Eliyahu Rabbah is outside the purview of this article
54. Compare Mekilta de R. Ishmael, Sliirta 8 (Lauterbach, ed., 59-60), in which all the nations are portrayed as singing God's praise at the sea and abandoning their gods
55. The exegetical flourish here is having the nations say "who is like unto Thee, O Lord, among the gods," (Exod 15:11). Here also the Mekilta foresees a time at the end of history when this recognition will happen once again
56. Thus, if there is any connection between the midrashic sources attributed to the school of R. Yishmael and R. Yishmael himself, the latter is on record as discriminating against the non-Jew on the grounds that the Torah teaches to adjudicate fairly only between one's brethren! (Sifre Deuteronomy piska 16; [Finkelstein ed., pp. 26-27]. This position is disputed by the patriarch Shimon ben Gamliel
57. On the tyranny of universalism, see Isaiah Berlin, The Crooked Timber of Humanity (New York: Knopf, 1991) 14-16, 175-84, 245
58. Henry Chadwick, "Christian and Roman Universalism in the Fourth Century," in Wickham and Bammel, eds., Christian Faith and Greek Philosophy, 34
59. I have presented the full argument and documentation in a volume in Hebrew entitled, Torah for All the World's People (Hakkibutz Hamuchad, 1999)
60. It is clear that the opposing view in Tannaitic times, that Torah was only for the Jews, became the more prevalent view in the later rabbinic era. A recent and interesting overview of this subject is Robert Goldenberg's The Nations That Know Thee Not (New York: New York University Press, 1998)
61. Compare M. Goodman, Mission and Conversion: Proselytizing in the Roman Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994) and Segal, Rebecca's Children, 177. Both attempt to bring the diverse rabbinic sources to speaking in a single voice. Goodman attempts to show that all the sources point to an absence of proselytization while Segal, who turns R. Yirmiah into the consensus, determines that conversion was no longer necessary. It is quite clear to me that at least this strain of rabbinic Judaism was fervently proselytizing
62. I have not developed in this essay the opposing school's view, but alluded to the Akiva position above. In the next centuries we are witness to emphatic statements prohibiting the Gentile from studying Torah or keeping the Sabbath. See Marmorstein, Studies in Jewish Theology, 84-85 (n. 22)