From mythic motifs to sustained myth: The revision of rabbinic traditions in medieval midrashim

Harvard Theological Review

Volumn 89, Issue 2, 1996, Pages 131-159

  Rubenstein, Jeffrey L ^a  

^a NEW YORK UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 67650218207     PISSN: 00178160     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0017816000031953     Document Type: Review

References (35)

1. Efraim E. Urbach (The Sages: Their Concepts and Beliefs [Jerusalem: Magnes, 1979] 193) recognized that certain sages transmitted "mythological teachings concerning the creation of the world" and "introduced remnants" of ancient biblical myths (pp. 194, 230; compare pp. 171, 198, 201 n. 175).
2. In an extensive discussion of Torah, Urbach (ibid., 198-99, 287) notes sources of a mythic character, but does not pursue the matter in depth. See also Louis Ginzberg (On Jewish Law and Lore [Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1955] 63) on "mythological elements" in rabbinic literature: "The hostility of the Jew to myth was continuously on the increase, and that which was objectionable to Israel in Biblical times became still more so in the rabbinic period. We shall not err greatly if we maintain, therefore, that they are faded fragments of very old myths." Yitzhak Baer (Yisra'el Ba'amim [Jerusalem: Bialik, 1955] 103-12) argues that rabbinic halakha was of "mythic-magical" character.
3. Gershom Scholem (On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism [New York: Schocken, 1969] 88) wrote: "Judaism strove to open up a region, that of monotheistic revelation, from which mythology would be excluded. the tendency of the classical Jewish tradition to liquidate myth as a central spiritual power is not diminished by such quasi-mythical vestiges transformed into metaphors." He wrote again (On the Kabbalah, 94-95): "For what in rabbinical Judaism, separated the Law from myth? The answer is clear: the disassociation of the Law from cosmic events." On Scholem's position, see Moshe Idel, Kabbala: New Perspectives (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988) 156-57;
4. Idel, Kabbala, 170-72.
5. See, for example, Michael Fishbane, "'The Holy One Sits and Roars': Mythopoesis and the Midrashic Imagination," Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 1 (1991) 1-21;
6. and Elliot R. Wolfson, "Images of God's Feet: Some Observations on the Divine Body in Judaism," in Howard Eilberg-Schwartz, ed., Jews and Judaism from an Embodied Perspective (Albany: SUNY Press, 1992) 143-80.
7. See also the numerous rabbinic traditions cited in Jon Levenson, Sinai and Zion (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1985).
8. See Joseph Dan, Hasipur Ha'ivri Bimei Habeinayim (Jerusalem: Keter, 1974) 21, 135-36 (although Dan tends to attribute the resurgence of myth in these texts to external influences).
9. And see Gershom Scholem, Origins of the Kabbalah (1962; reprinted; ed. R. J. Zwi Werblowsky; trans. Allan Arkush; Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1987) 17.
10. Efraim E. Urbach and others proposed that these compilations drew from an earlier source, but copyists/editors treated the texts freely - adding, subtracting, and changing at will. That is, Tanhcombining dot belowuma traditions represent a genre rather than a specific document. See Efraim E. Urbach, "Tanhcombining dot belowuma-Yelammedenu Fragments," Qobeş'al yad 16 (1966) 3 [Hebrew]; and Chaim Milikowsky, "The Status Quaestionis of Research in Rabbinic Literature," JJS 39 (1988) 209-10.
11. idem, "From Sermon to Story: The Transformation of the Akedah," Prooftexts 6 (1986) 97-117;
12. idem, "Rhetoric, Motif and Subject-Matter - Toward an Analysis of Narrative Technique in Pirke de-Rabbi Eliezer," Jerujalem Studies in Jewish Folklore 13/14 (1991-92) 99-126 [Hebrew];
13. and Ofra Meir, "Hasipur Hadarshani Bemidrash Qadum Ume'uhcombining dot belowar," Sinai 86 (1980) 246-66.
14. Other valuable studies include Norman J. Cohen, "Structure and Editing in the Homiletic Midrashim," AJS Review 6 (1981) 5-6;
15. Chaim Milikowsky, "Jacob's Punishment - A Study in the Redactional Process of Midrash Tanhcombining dot belowuma," Bar-Ilan University Year Book 18/19 (1981) 144-49 [Hebrew];
16. Avigdor Shinan, "Aggadic Motifs between Midrash and Story," Jerusalem Studies in Hebrew Literature 5 (1984) 211-20 [Hebrew].
17. The development of narrative may, of course, have been influenced by outside cultures. See Dan, Hasipur Ha'ivri, 135-36.
18. For similar approaches, see Benedikt Otzen, Hans Gottlieb, and Knud Jeppesen, Myths in the Old Testament (London: SCM, 1980);
19. Kees Bolle, "Myth," Encyclopedia of Religion 10 (1987) 261-62;
20. Brevard Childs, Myth and Reality in the Old Testament (Naperville, IL: Allenson, 1960).
21. Buber, Midrash Tanhcombining dot belowuma, 78.
22. On the variants and their implications, see Saul Lieberman, Tosefta Kifshuta: A Comprehensive Commentary on the Tosefta (8 vols.; Jerusalem: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1955-88) 5. 772-73.
23. See Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane, 36-47;
24. Levenson, Sinai and Zion, 115-22.
25. and Jellinek, "Midrash Tadshei," in idem, Beit Hamidrash, 3. 164-67.
26. and Kensky, Midrash Tanhcombining dot belowuma, 1. 97-148.
27. See Idei, Kabbalah, 170-72, who cites several of these sources.
28. Meir ("Hasipur Hadarshani," 260) calls the genre of the Tanhcombining dot belowuma material "the homiletical story" to reflect both its homiletical-exegetical and narrative character. She points to the "expansion of the narrative fabric" and the "replacement of short, fragmentary stories and the awareness of the verses of the biblical story with a unified and expanded composition." See her analysis of a paradigmatic Tanhcombining dot belowuma passage (ibid., 256-66).
29. See also Elbaum, "From Sermon to Story," 105-9.
30. Compare Fishbane, "The Holy One Sits and Roars," 11.
31. See Elbaum, "On the Character of the Late Midrashic Literature," 59;
32. and Kensky, Midrash Tanhcombining dot belowuma, 30.
33. See Heinemann, Aggadot Vetoldotehem, 182-83, for another example.
34. and idem, "The 'Control of Rain' in Ancient Palestine," HUCA 14 (1939) 251-86.
35. On Pirqe de-Rabbi Eli'ezer's tendency to repeat the same tradition while attempting to treat comprehensively one subject, see Elbaum, "Rhetoric, Motif and Subject-Matter," 103, 106-7.