"And on the earth you shall sleep": Talmud torah and rabbinic asceticism

Journal of Religion

Volumn 83, Issue 2, 2003, Pages 204-225

  Satlow, Michael L ^a  

^a BROWN UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 61249404750     PISSN: 00224189     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/491277     Document Type: Article

References (189)

1. Mishnah Avot 6:4(Ch. Albeck, ed., The Mishnah, 6 vols. 1958-59
2. reprint, Jerusalem and Tel Aviv: Bialik Institute and Dvir, 1988], 4:383-84)
3. M. Avot 6:5(ed. Albeck, 4:383). Chapter 6 of Af. Avot(perek kinyan torah) is generally thought to be post-tannaitic. Since I use this and the previous text heuristically and as examples of a broader phenomenon for which I will argue throughout this essay, such a dating does not effect my argument
4. See the parallel at Derek Eretz Zuta 5:1(cf. 7:2)
5. and the commentary of Daniel Sperber, A Commentary on Derech Erez Zula, Chapters Five to Eight(Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 1990), pp.17-23
6. Genesis Rabba 92:1(J. Theodor and Ch. Albeck, eds., Midrash Bereshit Rabba: Critical Edition with Notes and Commentary [Jerusalem: Wahrmann, 1965], p. 1137)
7. Susan Ashbrook Harvey, "Asceticism," in Late Antiquity: Guide to the Postclassical World, ed. G. W. Bowersock, Peter Brown, and Oleg Grabar(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999), pp. 317-18, p. 317
8. Steven D. Fraade, "Ascetical Aspects of Ancient Judaism," in Jewish Spirituality: From the Bible through the Middle Ages, ed. Arthur Green(New York: Crossroads, 1986), pp. 253-88, p. 257. "In the philosophical tradition dominated by Stoicism, askēsis means not renunciation but the progressive consideration of self, or mastery over oneself, obtained not through the renunciation of reality but through the acquisition and assimilation of truth"
9. Michel Foucault, "Technologies of the Self," in Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault, ed. Luther H. Martin, Huck Gutman, and Patrick H. Hutton(Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1988), pp. 16-49, p. 35
10. Bringing God's presence to earth: M. Avot 3:6; Palestinian Talamud(hereafter K) Ta'anit. 4:2, 68a. Replacing the sacrifices: Leviticus Rabba 7:3(M. Margulies, ed., Midrash Wayyikra Rabbah 1953-60
11. reprint, New York and Jerusalem: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1993], pp. 155-56)
12. On some of the confusion that using "asceticism" as a conceptual category can create, see Elizabeth A. Clark, "The Ascetic Impulse in Religious Life: A General Response," in Asceticism, ed. Vincent L. Wimbush and Richard Valantasis(New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 505-10
13. For discussions of this positive rabbinic view of pleasure and sexuality, see David Biale, Eros and the Jews: From Biblical Israel to Contemporary America(New York: Basic Books, 1992), pp. 33-59
14. Tikva Frymer-Kensky, In the Wake of the Goddesses: Women, Culture, and the Biblical Transformation of Pagan Myth(New York: Free Press, 1992), p. 210
15. Daniel Boyarin, Carnal Israel: Reading Sex in Talmudic Culture(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), pp. 107-33
16. Yitzhak Fritz Baer, Yisra'el Ba-'Amim(Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1955), pp. 38-57(in Hebrew); Ephraim E. Urbach, "Ascesis and Suffering in Talmudic and Midrashic Sources," in Yitzhak F. Baer Jubilee Volume(hereafter cited as Jubilee Volume), ed. S
17. W. Baron, B. Pinur, S. Ettinger, and I. Halpern(Jerusalem: Historical Society of Israel, 1960), pp. 48-68, reprinted in Ephraim E. Urbach, The World of the Sages: Collected Studies(Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1988), pp. 437-58(in Hebrew)
18. Urbach, Jubilee Volume, p. 51
19. For a useful summary of the debate between Baer and Urbach, see Fraade, "Ascetical Aspects," pp. 258-61
20. Baer, p. 40
21. Compare Foucault, "Technologies of the Self."
22. Urbach himself elsewhere acknowledges the complexity of rabbinic anthropology. Ephraim E. Urbach, The Sages: Their Concepts and Beliefs, trans. Israel Abrahams(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987), pp. 214-54
23. Both Urbach, The Sages, and Rubin argue for a shift in rabbinic anthropology, although they attribute this shift to different causes(Nissan Rubin, "The Sages' Conception of the Body and Soul," in Essays in the Social Scientific Study of Judaism and Jewish Society, ed. Jack N. Lightstone and Simcha Fishbane [Montreal: Concordia University, 1990], pp. 79-92)
24. There have been several treatments of rabbinic anthropology. Compare Urbach, The Sages, pp. 214-54; Boyarin, Carnal Israel, pp. 31-35
25. George Foot Mooxe,Judaism in the First Centuries of the Christian Era: The Age of the Tannaim, 2 vols.(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1927-30), 1:445-59
26. Emero Stiegman, "Rabbinic Anthropology," Aufstieg und Niedergang der Rbmischen Welt 2, no. 2(1979): 487-579
27. Rubin; Émile Puech.La croyance des Esséniens en la vie future: Immortalité, résurrection, vie étemellel 2 vols.(Paris: J. Gabalda, 1993), 1:209-20. My discussion comes closest to that of Urbach. A new, comprchensive discussion of rabbinic anthropology is a desideratum
28. Boyarin, Carnal Israel. Compare Urbach, The Sages, pp. 226-32; Stiegman, pp. 508-12
29. Compare Y. Kilayim 8:4, 31c(parallel at Babylonian Talamud [hereafter B.] Nidda 31a), which posits three partners of human creation: the man(who contributes the "white stuff" of the body), the woman(who contributes the "red stuff" of the body), and God(who contributes the vivifying force [ruah], the soul [neshamah], and the spirit [nefesh])
30. Compare B. Nidda 31a
31. Lev. Rab. 4:5(ed. Margulies, pp. 97-99). Another version of the story can be found at Mekilta d'Rashbi ad Exod. 15:1(J. N. Epstein and E. Z. Melamed, eds., Mekhilta d'Rabbi Shim'on b.Jochai [reprint, Jerusalem: Hillel Press, n.d.], pp. 76-77)
32. B. Sanhedrin 91a-b. The story may have been so well known that some manuscripts of the Mekilla d'Rabbi Yishmael merely allude to it(Beshelah, d'shirah, 2 [H. S. Horovitz and I. A. Rabin, eds., Mechilta d'Rabbi Ismael(1930; reprint, Jerusalem: Wahrmann, 1970), p. 125])
33. Compare Rubin, pp. 53-55
34. Compare Frank Chamberlin Porter, "The Yeçer Hara: A Study in the Jewish Doctrine of Sin," in Biblical and Semitic Studies: Critical and Historical Essays by the Members of the Semitic and Biblical Faculty of Yale University(New York: Scribner's, 1901), pp. 93-156
35. Solomon Schechter, Aspects of Rabbinic Theology(1909; reprint, Woodstock, Vt.: Jewish Lights, 1993), pp. 242-63; Boyarin, Carnal Israel(n. 8 above), pp. 64-67
36. Compare Schechter, pp. 24-46
37. See n. 67 below
38. Compare Michael L. Satlow, Tasting the Dish: Rabbinic Rhetorics of Sexuality(Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1995), pp. 158-60, and the sources cited there
39. Y. Sanhedrin 10:2, 28d. Compare B. Sanhedrin 106a
40. This assertion is provisional. While there is no direct evidence for it, the sources adduced above, and the parallels adduced below, do point in this direction. Compare Porter, pp. 110-11
41. Y. Berakot 4:2, 7d(in the name of R. Tanhum bar Iskolastica). A similar prayer, attributed at B. Berakot 17a to R. Alexandrai, omits reference to the evil inclination
42. Compare Urbach, The Sages(n. 14 above), pp. 214-17. Scholars have perhaps overemphasized the monistic anthropology of the Hebrew Bible, but for the sake of this argument biblical anthropology is certainly far from that of the rabbis. Compare Stiegman(n. 16 above), pp. 512-15
43. For the interpretation that Ben Sirah's use of the term yeser(15:14) parallels that of the rabbis, see Porter, pp. 136-46. Against this interpretation
44. see Moshe Zvi Siegel, Seper Ben Sira Hashalem(Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1953), p. 97(in Hebrew)
45. The most coherent statement on the nature of the human in the Dead Sea documents is IQS 3:13-4:1(Garcia Martínez Florentino and Eibert J. C. Tigchelaar, eds., The Dead Sea Scrolls Study Edition, 2 vols. [Leiden: Brill, 1997-98], 1:75-77). On this passage
46. see G. G. Stroumsa, "The Manichees and the Two Souls," in G. G. Stroumsa and Paula Frederiksen, "Two Souls and the Divided Will," in Self, Soul and Body in Religious Experience, ed. J. Assman, A. I. Baumgarten, and G. G. Stroumsa(Leiden: Brill, 1998), pp. 198-217, pp. 202-3. For similar interpretations of 1QS 4:23-24
47. see Shmuel Safrai and David Flusser, "The Slave of Two Masters," Immanuel 6(1976): 30-33, 32
48. Michael Edward Stone, Fourth Ezra: A Commentary on the Book of Fourth Ezra, Hermeneia-a Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible(Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1990), p. 74. Puech comments passim throughout vol. 2 on the place of the soul in the Dead Sea Scrolls
49. Compare Porter(n. 22 above), pp. 146-52. On the language and dating of 4 Ezra, see Stone, pp. 9-11
50. 4 Ezra 3:20-21(trans. Stone, p. 59)
51. Philo, Legum Allegoria 2.2, 6(trans. F. H. Colson and G. H. Whitaker, Loeb Classic Library [hereafter cited as LCL] 1:225, 229)
52. Harry Austryn Wolfson, Philo: Foundations of Religious Philosophy in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, 2 vols.(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1947), 1:360-423
53. David Winston, "Philo and the Contemplative Life," in Green, ed.(n. 5 above), pp. 211-15
54. Boyarin, Carnal Israel(n. 8 above), pp. 31-32; Philo, Legum Allegoria 1.103, 106, 2.10
55. Philo, Quaestiones ad Gen. 2.62. Compare Sobrietate 18
56. Wolfson, 1:426
57. Wisdom of Solomon 9:15; Josephus, War 3.362, 372-78; 7.344-48
58. T.Asher 1:3-9. Compare Boyarin, Carnal Israel, pp. 67-70. Collins, however, suggests that this passage should be seen as a statement of metaphysical(rather than anthropological) dualism. Compare John J. Collins, Between Athens and Jerusalem: Jewish Identity in the Hellenistic Diaspora, 2d ed.(Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2000), pp. 182-83. On Paul, cf. Gal. 5:16-17
59. Rom. 7:14-25. Joel Marcus argues that James has a notion of the "evil inclination" in its background. Compare Joel Marcus, "The Evil Inclination in the Epistle of James," Catholic Biblical Quarterly 44(1982): 606-21
60. Plato, Republic 442A-B(trans. Paul Shorey, LCL 1:406-9)
61. Plato's understanding of the soul is not consistent, either in his works as a whole or even within Republic(cf. 61IB-612A)
62. E. R. Dodds, Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety: Some Aspects of Religious Experience from Marcus Aurelius to Constantine(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965), p. 35. The main sources for this assertion, as it applies to paganism, are on pp. 29-30 and are very weak. In support of Dodds, however
63. see Julian, Oration 225D-226C, a description of a Cynic way of life that despises the body
64. This is obviously an oversimplified assertion, made for limitations of space. For some supporting evidence, see Musonius Rufus, Discourse VI(Musonius Rufus, Musonius Rufus: "The Roman Socrates,"trans. Cora Lutz, Yale Classical Studies, vol. 10 [New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1947], pp. 53, 55)
65. Plutarch, Moralia 442A; Plotinus, Ennead 1.1.10, 1.2.5; Origen, Peri Archon 1.3.8,3.4,4.2.4. Compare John Dillon, The Middle Platonists: 80 B.C. to A.D. 220(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1996), pp. 290-93
66. Carlos G. Steel, The Changing Self: A Study on the Soul in Later Neoplatonism: lamblichus, Damascius and Priscianus(Brussels: Paleis der Acadamiën, 1978), pp. 34-38, 63-66
67. Pierre Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault, trans. Michael Chase(Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1995), p. 100, and The Inner Citadel: The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, trans. Michael Chase(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998), pp. 82-100
68. Jacques Dupuis, "Lesprit de I'homme": Élude sur I'anthropologie religieuse d'Origène(Paris: Desclee de Brouwer, 1967)
69. Henri Crouzel, Origen, trans. A. S. Worrall(San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1989), pp. 87-91
70. Hal Koch, Pronoia und Paideusis: Studien uber Origenes und sein Verhältnis zum Platonismus(Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1932), pp. 163-304
71. Compare Ludwig Bieler, Theos Aner: Das Bild des "göttlichen Menschen" in Spätantike und Frühchristentum, 2 vols.(Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1967), 1:63-73
72. For many of these Greek and Roman philosophers, according to Bieler, asceticism has an "erzieherische Wert ⋯ für die Stärkung des Charakters"(original emphasis, 1:66)
73. See the useful survey in Johannes Leipoldt, Griechische Philosophic und frühchristliche Askese(Berlin: Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig, 1960), pp. 3-31, who argues that ancient philosophers linked askēsis to godliness
74. Compare Porphyry, Life of Plotinus 2,8. Plotinus praises Rogatianus for his abandonment of his wealth and his moderate eating(Life of Porphyry 7). It is unclear in this passage, however, precisely why Plotinus thought him worthy of emulation
75. Daniel A. Dombrowski, "Asceticism as Athletic Training in Plotinus," Aufstieg und Niedergangder Römischen Welt 36(1987): 708
76. Compare Plotinus Ennead 1.2.3; 1.2.5; 4.7.10; 5.1.3
77. Plotinus, Ennead 1.1.10
78. Compare John Dillon, "Rejecting the Body, Refining the Body: Some Remarks on the Development of Platonist Asceticism," in Wimbush and Valantasis, eds. p. 87, n. 9: "Plotinus's own position, though thoroughly ascetic, is on the whole world-affirming to a greater degree than was that of Plato."
79. Compare Epictetus 3.2.1-2
80. George B. Kerferd, "The Sage in Hellenistic Philosophical Literature(399 B.C.E.-199 C.E.," in The Sage in Israel and the Ancient Near East, ed
81. John G. Gammie and Leo G. Perdue(Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1990), pp. 320-22. The model of the Cynic sage offers an even better model of how the body-one's concrete way of life-is deeply implicated in the philosophical quest for the ultimate
82. Plutarch, Moralia, 441C-D, cited in Hadot, Inner Citadel, p. 89. Stoics, among other philosophical movements, allowed for the training of women. Compare Musonius Rufus, Discourse IV
83. Porphyry, Ad Marcella(ed. Porphyry, To Marcella, trans. Kathleen O'Brien Wicker [Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1987])
84. Richard Valentasis, "Musonius Rufus and Greco-Roman Ascetical Theory," Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 40(1999): 207-31, at 224
85. Hadot, Inner Citadel(n. 42 above), pp. 35-53
86. Compare Diogenes Laertius 6.70; Marie-Odile Goulet-Caze, Lascèse cynique: Un commentaire de Diogène Laërce Vi 70-71(Paris: Libraire PhilosophiqueJ. Vrin, 1986), esp. pp. 210-22:"Nous parlerions certainement d'une asèse corporelle à finalité spirituelle"(p. 212)
87. lamblichus, De vitapythagorica 187(lamb\ichs, On the Pythagorean Way of Life, trans. John Dillon [Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 1991], p. 197)
88. G. W. Bowersock, Julian the Apostate(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1978), pp. 79-93
89. Crouzel, Origen(n. 42 above), p. 166
90. Compare Origen, Peri Archon, preface 3, where he states that the apostles left investigation of the reasons for their assertions to the intellectual elite
91. See also 1.3.8; 1.1.6(Henri Crouzel and Manilo Simonetti, eds., Traite des principes [Sources Chretiennes 252
92. Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 1978]), 1:102: "sed eruditionibus atque exercitiis adhibitis acumen quidem elimatur ingenii, quaeque sunt ei insita ad intellegentiam prouocantur, et capax maioris efficitur intellectus non corporalibus incrementis aucta, sed eruditionis exercitiis elimata." Compare Henri Crouzel, "Qu'a voulu faire Origène en composant le traité des principes?" Bulletin de Liltérature Ecclésiastique 76(1975): 245-50
93. Karen Jo Torjesen, Hermeneutical Procedure and Theological Method in Origen's Exegesis(Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1986), p. 43. Compare Koch(n. 42 above), pp. 86-89
94. Origen, Peri Archon 3.1.4(ed. Crouzel and Simonetti, 3:28)
95. Compare Koch, pp. 36-46. More expansively, Leipoldt(n. 44 above), pp. 3-67, esp. pp. 60-67, argues that Christian asceticism as a whole sprung from Greek philosophical influence
96. For an excellent description of this term, see Dillon, "Rejecting the Body"(n. 48 above)
97. Compare Michel Foucault, The Use of Pleasure, trans. Robert Hurley(New York: Random House, 1985), esp. pp. 95-139
98. Helen North, Sophrosyne: Self-Knowledge and Self-Restraint in Greek Literature(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1966)
99. Vincent L. Wimbush, "Sophrosyne: Greco-Roman Origins of a Type of Ascetic Behavior," in Gnosticism and the Early Christian World, ed
100. James E. Goehring and James McConkey Robinson(Sonoma, Calif: Polebridge, 1990), pp. 89-102. For Suetonius, the "good" emperors all display moderate appetites, e.g., Aug. 72-77
101. A. D. Nock, Conversion: The Old and the New in Religion from Alexander the Great to Augustine of Hippo(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1933), p. 167
102. Schechter(n. 22 above), pp. 273-78, errs when he identifies ascetic practice as an independent antidote to the evil inclination. Compare Porter(n. 22 above), pp. 127-59
103. Sipre on Deuteronomy 45(ed. L. Finkelstein [reprint, New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1969], pp. 103-4). For other rabbinic comments on the efficacy of Torah study
104. see B. Berakot 5a; B. Sukka 52a-b
105. B. Qiddushin 30b; B. Sanhedrin 107a
106. M. Avot 6:2(ed. Albeck, 4:382)
107. Lev. Rab. 35:5(ed. Margulies, pp. 822-23)(parallel at Song Rabba 6:11 [ed. Vilna, 35a])
108. On the use of athletic metaphors to describe this inner struggle, see Dombrowski(n. 46 above)
109. Compare Sipre Deut. 321(ed. Finkelstein, p. 370)
110. B. Megilla 15b(ascribed here to R. Eleazar in the name of Rabbi Hanina)
111. Song Rabba 5.14.3(ed. Vilna32a). For a discussion of this theme in a Babylonian rabbinic text
112. see Daniel Boyarin, Unheroic Conduct: The Rise of Heterosexualily and the Invention of the Jewish Man(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), pp. 127-50
113. Gen. Rab. 22:6(ed. Theodor and Albeck, pp. 210-11)
114. B. Qidushin 30b
115. Mekilta d'Rabbi Yishmael Yilro d'Amalek 2(ed. Horowitz and Rabin, p. 201)(cf. B. Temura I6a)
116. Y. Mo'ed Qatan 3:7, 83b. Compare Steven D. Fraade, From. Tradition to Commentary: Torah and Its Interpretation in the Midrash Sifre to Deuteronomy(Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991), pp. 69-121
117. Martin Jaffee, "The Oral-Cultural Context of the Talmud Yerushalmi: Greco-Roman Rhetorical Paideia, Discipleship, and the Concept of Oral Torah," in The Talmud Yerushalmi and Graeco-Roman Culture, ed
118. Peter Schafer(Tubingen: J. C. B. Mohr/Paul Siebeck, 1998), pp. 27-61
119. I leave aside here the image of the rabbi as "holy man," in the sense that Peter Brown and some scholars of late antiquity understand the term. Compare Peter Brown, The Making of Late Antiquity(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1978)(with the modifications in Peter Brown, Authority and the Sacred: Aspects of Christianisalion of 'the Roman I World [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995], pp. 57-78, and the articles in the Journal of Early Christian Studies 6, no. 3 [1998]). On the rabbinic applications of this concept
120. see Catherine Hezser, The Social Structure of the Rabbinic Movement in Roman Palestine(Tubingen: J. C. B. Mohr/Paul Siebeck, 1997), pp. 462-66
121. Richard Kalmin, The Sage in Jewish Society of Late Antiquity(London: Routledge, 1999), pp. 75-77. The extent to which Palestinian rabbis gained authority from their status as "holy" or "wonder-workers" merits further investigation but, in any case, is not exclusive of their image as "sages." On the idea of the Greco-Roman philosopher being considered a holy man
122. see Bieler(n. 43 above), esp. 1:17-20, 141-43; Nock(n. 64 above), pp. 175-76
123. M. Avot 4:10(ed. Albeck, 4:370-71)
124. Sipre Deut. 41(ed. Finkelstein, pp. 84-86), 42(ed. Finkelstein, p. 90)
125. See further the illuminating discussion in Eliezer Diamond, Holy Men and Hunger Artists: Fasting and Asceticism in Rabbinic Culture(Oxford: Oxford University Press, in press), chap. 1.1 am grateful to Professor Diamond for sharing his manuscript with me
126. Lev. Rab. 15:2(ed. Margulies, p. 322). This list of topics is also found, in different contexts, at Y. Pea 2:4, 17a
127. Gen. Rab. 15:4(ed. Theodor and Albeck, p. 147)
128. Compare Y. Horayot. 3:9, 48c(parallel at Y. Shabbat 16:1, 15c). This tradition debates the precedence of the study of mishnah and talmud, ultimately deciding that today, after the compilation of the Mishnah by R. Judah the Patriarch, talmud is preferred. This debate appears to underlie M. Avot 2:8(ed. Albeck, 4:360), which debates whether the ideal sage is one who retains all of his learning or one who can add to it. Compare M. Avot 4:12(ed. Albeck, 4:371), which advocates diligence in talmud, which here might simply mean the study of received traditions
129. M. Avot 5:15(ed. Albeck, 4:379)
130. Compare Tosepta(hereafter T.) 'Avodah Zara 1:20(ed. Zuckermandel, p. 461) that understands Joshua 1:8("Let not this Book of the Teaching cease from your lips, but recite it day and night") literally. Compare Urbach, The Sages(n. 14 above), pp. 606-8
131. Lev. Rab. 19:1(ed. Margulies, p. 415). The statement is attributed to the Babylonian amora Rava at B. 'Eruvin 22a
132. Compare Boyarin, Carnal Israel(n. 8 above), pp. 134-66
133. Michael L. Satlow, Jewish Marriage in Antiquity(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2001), pp. 30-34
134. Song Rabba 1:5(ed. Vilna 8b)
135. Compare Diamond, chap. 4. Lamentations Rabba 1:31(ed. Vilna 14b-15a) links R. Zadok's holiness to both his fasting and his Torah study
136. Just as I am not claiming that this particular aspect of talmud torah is exclusive of others, so too I do not claim that all examples of rabbinic asceticism are connected to talmud torah or disciplining the self. Other motives for ascetic behavior include purity(especially in preparation for mystical ascent), mourning, penance, and substitution for the discontinued Temple sacrifices
137. See S. Lowy, "The Motivation of Fasting in Talmudic Literature,"Journal of Jewish Studies 9(1958): 19-38
138. Michael D. Swartz, '"Like the Ministering Angels': Ritual and Purity in Early Jewish Mysticism and Magic," AJS Review 19(1994): 135-67. Compare Herbert Musurillo, "The Problem of Ascetical Fasting in the Greek Patristic Writers," Traditio 12(1956): 1-64
139. Compare T. Berakot 6:18(ed. Lieberman, 1:38)
140. Y. Berakot 9:2, 13b
141. M. Avot 2:5(ed. Albeck, 4:358)
142. Y. Shabbat 14:3, 14c
143. The connection between Torah study and proper conduct is demonstrated most vividly in the later text, Derekh Erez Zuta, which derives from many earlier sources. Compare Sperber(n. 2 above)
144. M.Avot 5:14(ed. Albeck, 4:378-79)
145. M. Avol 3:17(ed. Albeck, 4:368)
146. Sipre Deut. 41(ed. Finkelstein, pp. 85-86), and the parallel at B. Qiddushin 40b. Compare Urbach, The Sages(n. 14 above), pp. 608-11
147. Common Jews may well have known Torah. Philo(Legatione 206, 210) and Josephus(Contra Apion 1.60, 2.178) both testify, for an earlier time, to Jewish training in the Torah
148. Y. Berakot 4:2, 7d
149. Compare Lev. Rab. 19:1(ed. Margulies, p. 415)
150. Y. Berakot 5:1, 8d, in which Rav Yirmiyah credits one who engages in communal needs "as if" he was engaged in talmud torah
151. Compare Catherine Hezser, Jewish Literacy in Roman Palestine(Tubingen: J. C. B. Mohr/Paul Siebeck, 2001), pp. 94-95,353-404. Alon argues that the rabbinic movement began somewhat democratically and then became increasingly hierarchical(Gedaliah Alon, The Jews in Their Land in the Talmudic Age [70-640 C.E.], trans. Gershon Levi [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989], pp. 501-6). It is doubtful, however, if even in its earlier period talmud torah was not an elite activity
152. Compare Shaye J. D. Cohen, "The Place of the Rabbi in Jewish Society of the Second Century," in The Galilee in Late Antiquity, ed. Lee I. Levine(New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1992), pp. 165-68
153. See, e.g., Jean Baptiste Frey, Corpus Inscriptionum Iudaicarum(Rome: Pontifico Insututo di Archeologia Cristiana, 1936), colenslegem(CIJ72) ;philonomos(CIJ 111)
154. Compare Pieter W. van der Horst, Ancient Jewish Epitaphs: An Introductory Survey of a Millennium of Jewish Funerary Epigraphy(300 B.C.E.-700 C.E.)(Kampen: Kok Pharos, 1991), pp. 65-68: "It cannot be denied that the number of inscriptions in which these distinctive epithets are used is very small compared to the overwhelmingly great numbers in which the traditional 'pagan' epithets occur"(p. 68)
155. Compare Shaye J. D. Cohen, "Epigraphical Rabbis," Jewish Quarterly Review 72(1981-82): 1-17
156. Hezser, Social Structure(n. 77 above), pp. 119-23
157. Michael Fishbane, The Garments of Torah: Essays in Biblical Hermeneutics(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989), p. 65
158. Obviously space does not allow for a full discussion of biblical wisdom and its continuities(and discontinuities!) with the rabbinic tradition. On meditation on the Torah, see Josh. 1:8, Ps. 1:2, 119:97
159. For evidence that the authors of biblical wisdom literature saw themselves as instructors, see Nili Shupah, Where Can Wisdom Be Found? The Sages' Language in the Bible and in Ancient Egyptian Literature(Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1993), esp. pp. 31-77. On the morality of the biblical sage
160. see Prov. 10-15; and Gerhard von Rad, Wisdom in Israel(Nashville: Abingdon, 1972), pp. 74-96. More generally
161. see James L. Crenshaw, Urgent Advice and Probing Questions: Collected Writings on Old Testament Wisdom(Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1995), pp. 78-89,250-64
162. Joseph Blenkinsopp, Wisdom and Law in the Old Testament, Oxford Bible Series(New York: Oxford University Press, 1995). On the dissimilarities between the biblical sage and the one presented in apocalyptic sources from the Second Temple period
163. see John J. Collins, "The Sage in the Apocalyptic and Pseudepi- graphic Literature," in his Seers, Sybils and Sages in Hellenestic-Roman Judaism, suppl. 54 to the Journal for the Study of Judaism(Leiden: Brill, 1997), pp. 339-50. Collins briefly notes that the rabbinic sage draws more upon the biblical models than the ideal sage in the apocalyptic and pseudepigraphic writings. Henry Fischel, however, has argued for the dissimilarity between rabbinic and biblical wisdom
164. See his "The Transformation of Wisdom in the World of Midrash," in Aspects of Wisdom in Judaism and Early Christianity, ed. Robert L. Wilken(Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1975), pp. 67-101
165. Compare John G. Gammie, "The Sage in Sirach," in Gammie and Perdue, eds.(n. 50 above), pp. 364-70
166. Ben Sira advises bodily moderation, e.g., in order to maintain good health and manners, not because the body is in any way problematic(31:12-21, 38-31)
167. Compare Emil Schurer, The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ, ed. Géza Vermès, Fergus Millar, Mathew Block, and Martin Goodman, 3 vols.(Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1973-87), 3.1:199
168. Gammie, p. 368
169. Hindy Najman, "The Law of Nature and the Authority of Mosaic Law," Sludia Philonica Annual 11(1999): 72
170. Compare Philo, Moses 2.9-14, and 4 Maccabees, which equates the phrases sophron nous with logismos, which in turn includes the idea of rational control of the passions(e.g., 1:35,2:15-18)
171. Philo, Quod omnis probus 80, 88-91; De vita contemplativa
172. Philo, Moses 2.68(trans. Colson, LCL, 6:483)
173. Adiel Schremer, "'[T]he[y] Did Not Read in the Sealed Book': Qumran Halakhic Revolution and the Emergence of Torah Study in Second Temple Judaism," in Historical Perspectives: From the Hasmonans to Bar Kokhba in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls: Proceedings of the Fourth International Symposium of the Orion Center for the Study of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Associated Literature, 27-31 January, 1999, ed
174. David Goodblatt, Avital Pinnick, and Daniel R. Schwartz(Leiden: Brill, 2001), pp. 105-26
175. 1QS 6.6-8(trans. Garcia Martinez, The Dead Sea Scrolls, 1:83)
176. Steven D. Fraade, "Interpretive Authority in the Studying Community at Qumran," Journal of Jewish Studies 44(1993): 46-69
177. Viviano exaggerates the similarity between the Qumranic and rabbinic enterprises of Torah study(Benedict Thomas Viviano, Study as Worship: Aboth and the New Testament [Leiden: Brill, 1978], pp. 146-52)
178. Fraade, "Interpretive Authority," pp. 61-62. See also his comparison of the Qumran community with the rabbis on pp. 66-69
179. Compare Steven D. Fraade, "Shifting from Priestly to Non-priestly Legal Authority: A Comparison of the Damascus Document and the Midrash Sifra," Dead Sea Discoveries 6(1999), esp. 123-25
180. Guillaumont argues that the core of Christian monasticism was an emphasis on the "single heart," which he traces back, in part, to the biblical expression "with all your heart" and the notion of "simplicity," with its associated ascetic practices, found in Jewish Hellenistic texts(A. Guillaumont, "Monachisme et éthique Judéo-Chretienne," in Judéo-Christianisme: Recherches historiques et théologiques offertes en hommage au Cardinal Jean Danielou [Paris: Recherches de Science Religieuse, 1972], pp. 213-18). Ascetic practices in these Jewish texts, in my view, have an entirely different function
181. Saul Lieberman, Hellenism in Jewish Palestine(New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1950), pp. 47-82
182. David Daube, "Alexandrian Methods of Interpretation," in Essays in Greco-Roman and Related Talmudic Literature, ed. Henry A. Fischel(New York: Ktav, 1977), pp. 165-82
183. Compare Judah Goldin, "A Philosophical Session in a Tannaite Academy," Traditio 21(1965), 1-21
184. Hezser, jewish Literacy(n. 96 above), pp. 99-109
185. Shaye J. D. Cohen, "Patriarchs and Scholarchs," Proceedings of the American Academy of Jewish Research 48(1981): 57-85
186. For a more general statement that Jews were similar to their Greco-Roman neighbors, see Martin Goodman, 'Jews, Greeks, and Romans," in his Jews in a Graeco-Roman World(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 3-14
187. Compare B. Berakot 28a, which attributes to R. Gamaliel a statement that "every student whose inside is not like his outside shall not enter the study house." The parallels to non-Jewish philosophical literature are discussed in Cohen, "Patriarchs and Scholarchs," pp. 76-79. On the connection between abstinence and virtue, see Musonius Rufus, "peri askeseos"(Discourse VI); Valerius Maximus 4.3("de abstinentia et continentia"), 4.5("de verecundia")
188. Bieler's conclusions about Greek and Roman philosophers offers a strong, if not identical, parallel to the rabbinic enterprise as sketched above: "Sein Lebenswerk ist Dienst eines Gottes, Zeugnis fur eine gottheit, sein Wissen unmittelbar von Gott gegeben, seine Lehre Of- fenbarung"(n. 43 above), 1:141
189. All of these ascetic praxes fall into the category of "reflective piety" as discussed by Andre-Jean Festugiere, Personal Religion among the Greeks(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1954), pp. 19-36. Festugière, however, seems to exaggerate the importance of "taking flight from the world" in these praxes