Between Alexandria And Jerusalem: The Dynamic of Jewish And Hellenistic Culture (The Brill Reference Library of Judaism)

Between Alexandria and Jerusalem The Dynamic of Jewish and Hellenic Culture

The Brill Reference Library of Judaism Editors

J. Neusner (Bard College) H. Basser (Queens University) A.J. Avery-Peck (College of the Holy Cross) Wm. S. Green (University of Rochester) G. Stemberger (University of Vienna) I. Gruenwald (Tel Aviv University) M.I. Gruber (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev) G.G. Porton (University of Illinois) J. Faur (Bar Ilan University)

VOLUME 21

Between Alexandria and Jerusalem The Dynamic of Jewish and Hellenistic Culture by

Arkady Kovelman

BRILL LEIDEN • BOSTON 2005

This book is printed on acid-free paper. The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on http://catalog.loc.gov

ISSN 1571-5000 ISBN 90 04 14402 1 © Copyright 2005 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill Academic Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Brill provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. printed in the netherlands

CONTENTS

Preface ........................................................................................

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Chapter 1. A Quest for Historicism and the Rhetoric of Petitions ..................................................................................

1

Chapter 2. Laughter, Fantasy, and Eroticism: From the Scroll of Esther to Esther Midrash ..........................................

39

Chapter 3. Exegesis and Midrash ............................................

67

Chapter 4. Typology and Pesher in the “Letter of Aristeas” ......................................................................................

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Chapter 5. The Sages and the Crowd: Society behind the Culture ........................................................................................

135

List of Works Cited .................................................................. 155 Index of Names and Subjects .................................................. 167 Index of Scriptures and Ancient Sources ................................ 170

PREFACE

It would not be an oversimplification to say that Wissenschaft des Judentums was born out of Hegelianism. From Hegelianism the members of the Verein für Kultur und Wissenschaft der Juden (Eduard Gans, Leopold Zunz, and others) took the basic contradiction characteristic of their thought. On the one hand, Hegel provided a fruitful idea of development. To his mind “the most important changes in history have involved shifts in the categories through which human beings understand their world, but . . . these have not been mere shifts in historical convention. They have been shifts brought about by humanity’s growing self awareness.”1 Hence, “the attempt to establish the spiritual history of the Jewish people on unified factors and laws made possible a comprehensive survey of Jewish history, which otherwise would be nothing more than a series of particular opinions and viewpoints, whether of individuals or of groups.”2 On the other hand, Hegel reified Judaism, considering it to be a single station on the way of Absolute Spirit to Itself. As a civilization it could not develop but only degrade or regenerate. Nahman Krochmal was among those who fought in vain with this basic impediment. In his unfinished Guide to the Perplexed of Our Time (according to Julius Guttmann), he “interpreted the outer history of the Jews as the outcome of the inner relation between the Jewish people and the absolute spirit. Because of this relationship, the existence of the Jewish people is not bounded by time, as is true of other nations, but after periods of decay and degeneration, the Jewish people again and again revive with the strength of youth.”3 With Nietzsche and Spengler, historical pessimism prevailed. The growth of self-awareness and reflectivity was perceived as the corruption

1 Stephen Houlgate, Freedom, Truth and History: An Introduction to Hegel’s Philosophy (London, etc., 1991), p. 18. 2 Julius Guttmann, Philosophies of Judaism: The History of Jewish Philosophy from Biblical Times to Franz Rosenzweig, trans. David W. Silverman (Philadelphia, etc., 1964), p. 323. 3 Ibid., p. 338. Interestingly, Krochmal (with his holistic vision of Jewish history) was among the first to notice the influence of the Alexandrians on the Talmud and Midrashim (op. cit., p. 343).

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of organic culture and society. It is this pessimistic vision of development that can be seen in the books of Max Kadushin, Yitzhak Heinemann, and Yitzhak Baer. In the words of Israel Jacob Yuval, the “‘organism’ metaphor influenced a whole generation of Israeli historians, who eagerly used it to justify such turns of speech as ‘the unity of Jewish history,’ despite the geographical, political, and cultural diversity of the various Jewish communities. The same metaphor had been popular in the historiography of the nineteenth-century German romantic movement.”4 Baer’s speculation was the most extravagant. According to Yakov Shavit, Baer, “motivated by his organic approach to the social and cultural history of the Jewish people, drew a startling comparison between Jewish society and the Greek polis. . . . What is more astonishing is that he compares Jewish society at the time of the Mishna with the fifth-century Greek polis: in each case one can find a natural and prerationalistic society, governed by laws and civic ethics that stem from the real experience of life and not from rationalistic or theoretical considerations. In other words, Jewish society and the polis were two organic societies, where ‘law’ and ‘life’ constituted a living whole.”5 David N. Myers noted that Baer’s organicist language “borrowed from the lexicon of his mentor in Berlin, Eugen Täubler, and more generally from the German academic culture in which he was trained.”6 I believe that the source of Baer’s ideas can be found in Spengler’s The Decline of the West. Spengler created a poetic metaphor of “Civilization in the Place of Culture, external mechanism in place of internal organism.”7 Each culture (e.g., the Apollonian culture of the Greeks, the Faustian culture of the Germans) had its own organic form, which in due time degenerated into civilization—corrupt, rationalistic, and vulgar. The Greek polis gave way to the Roman Empire. It was easy for Baer to find organic culture and rotten civilization

4 Israel Jacob Yuval, “Yitzhak Baer and the Search for Authentic Judaism,” in The Jewish Past Revisited: Reflections on Modern Jewish Historians, ed. David N. Myers and David B. Ruderman (New Haven, etc., 1998), p. 79. 5 Yakov Shavit, Athens in Jerusalem: Classical Antiquity and Hellenism in the Making of the Modern Secular Jew, trans. Chaya Naor and Niki Werner (London, etc., 1997), p. 175. 6 David N. Myers, Re-Inventing the Jewish Past: European Jewish Intellectuals and the Zionist Return to History (New York, etc., 1995), p. 127. 7 Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West: Form and Actuality, trans. Charles Francis Atkinson. Vol. 1 (New York, 1947), p. 354.

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in Jewish history. The only obstacle was chronology: Philo (a civilized man) evidently preceded the rabbis (organic culture representatives). To overcome this difficulty, Baer introduced mysterious rabbinic academies into the early Second Temple period. Their members studied Plato (a product of the organic polis culture). Moreover, they incorporated Platonism into the foundation of Halakhah. Eventually, according to Baer, Philo (a corrupt Diaspora Jew) borrowed his Platonic interpretations of the Bible from Palestinian Rabbinic academies and spoiled them. The same pessimistic vision of progress looms behind Y. Heinemann’s The Methods of Aggadah.8 According to Heinemann, rationality marks the departure of Aggadah from the genuine organic thinking of the Bible. Yet this departure was not complete. It was still a long way from Aggadic rationalism to the really scientific mode of thinking present in medieval Jewish philosophy (and to a certain degree in Alexandrians). This blend of play and seriousness evidenced an intermediary state of mind (between primitive and rationalistic) that is imminent in art. While a “civilized person,” looking for the remnants of harmonious life, escapes into art, the Rabbis did not leave paradise. They preserved a harmonious organic vision. Kadushin also assigned rabbinic culture to a stage between science and art. Though “a haggadic statement, therefore, is not art, is not poetry,”9 “there is a certain kinship between Haggadah and poetry.”10 He also differentiated between rabbinic and biblical Judaism. To his mind, “rabbinic thought represents a development out of biblical thought. . . . Rabbinic value concepts do differ from biblical concepts. . . . The changes that have taken place either have made the rabbinic concept more applicable than its biblical antecedent, or else have given the rabbinic concept greater range and universality.”11 This optimistic Hegelian vision of “development” is stated forcefully: “The presence of the conceptual terms in the rabbinic complex, however, spells a certain development against the antecedents of the Bible. Symbolized by an abstract term, the concepts can now be used to abstract and to classify; as a result, they are now more applicable, have a wider function, inform and interpret everyday 8 9 10 11

See below, pp. 39–40, 70–71. Max Kadushin, The Rabbinic Mind, 3d ed. (New York, 1972), p. 112. Ibid., p. 113. Ibid., p. 288.

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phenomena.”12 Yet further evolution (from Talmudic culture to pure rationalism) is perceived as the rise of “cold logic” at the expense of existential value-concepts: “Particularly since the Middle Ages, thinkers worked to achieve an integrated philosophy, a system of ideas compelling assent by the force of its logic. Many thinkers today have a similar ideal, and they would doubtless stigmatize value-concepts answering to our description as nothing but naïve, unsophisticated ideas. It is not a question, however, as to whether value-concepts are ‘naïve’ as compared to philosophical concepts, but rather as to which type can actually function in the ever shifting situation of life. . . . The fact of the matter is that our basic attitudes, our valueconcepts, are not logically ordered because they are not the outcome, and not the product of cold logic.”13 “A value-pattern or a value-complex is not the same as a Weltanschauung. It is not achieved by an individual as the result of taking thought, or after years of experience; it is not something added, so to speak, to a personality. The rabbinic value-complex, by supplying the means for experiencing in everyday life, also supplied the means for the expression of personality, and this from earliest childhood.”14 In the second half of the twentieth century, the idea of development was altogether rejected by post-modernist scholars. This happened due to the rise of feminism, anticolonialism, and the human rights movement. Any notion of advancement “from naïve to sophisticated” was passionately rejected as racism. Daniel Boyarin, for example, expressed his disgust with “the arrogance of cultural Darwinism, the idea that culture evolves from less advanced to more advanced forms.”15 It was actually Hegel who believed that one’s civilization’s self-understanding was more advanced—more free—that that of another.16 Hegel’s estimation of Asian cultures was strongly attacked by Edward W. Said in his Orientalism. Hegel’s view of Judaism was certainly opposed by the postmodern generation of Jewish scholars. Moreover, Judaism was perceived as a paradigmatic anti-Hegelian (anti-globalistic) civilization. According to Boyarin, “the genius of

12

Ibid., p. 289. Ibid., pp. 5–6. 14 Ibid., p. 15. 15 Daniel Boyarin, Carnal Israel: Reading Sex in Talmudic Culture (Berkeley, etc., 1993), p. 21. 16 Houlgate, op. cit., p. 36. 13

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Christianity is its concern for all of the Peoples of the world; the genius of Judaism is its ability to leave other people alone.”17 Boyarin called his mode of cultural critique “generous critique, a practice that seeks to criticize practice of the Other from the perspective of the desires and needs of here and now, without reifying that Other or placing myself in judgment over him or her in his or her there and then.”18 I would rather call this approach “historical multiculturalism.” Paradoxically, however, Hegelian historicism was not discarded. On the contrary, multiculturalism introduced a Hegelian (even Marxist) historical dialectic based on relationships between dominant (hegemonic, male, imperialist) cultures and subjected (minority, female, colonial) ones. Fighting one another and borrowing from one another, these cultures transform themselves permanently and in revolutionary ways. This dialectic is probably rooted in the Marxist theory of class struggle. In that theory (specifically in its “Proletkult” version), the cultures of ruling and suppressed classes are engaged in permanent warfare. Foucault’s theory of knowledge-power, extremely influential at the end of the last century, certainly borrowed from Marxism. In the case of late antiquity, the struggle could have taken place between Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism, between paganism and the new religions, between mainstream religion and the sects, between male and female ideologies, between Platonizing and carnal trends. Seth Schwartz19 and Israel Jacob Yuval20 put forward an idea of Rabbinic Judaism forged by both the influence of and struggle with Christianity. Boyarin understands the dynamic relationship between Rabbinic Judaism and Christianity as a system whose internal opposing forces give rise to continual change. “The Rabbis, by defining elements from within their own religious heritage as not Jewish, were, in effect, producing Christianity, just as Christian heresiologists were, by defining traditional elements of their own religious heritage as being not Christian, thereby producing Judaism.” 21 Boyarin strongly opposes reification of Judaism or 17 Daniel Boyarin, Sparks of the Logos: Essays in Rabbinic Hermeneutics (Leiden, etc., 2003), p. 207. 18 Boyarin, Carnal Israel, p. 21. 19 Seth Schwartz, Imperialism and Jewish Society from 200 B.C.E. to 640 C.E. (Princeton, 2001) pp. 177–289. 20 Israel Jacob Yuval, Two Nations in Your Womb: Perceptions of Jews and Christians [Hebrew]. (Tel-Aviv: Alma/Am Oved, 2000) pp. 46–107. 21 Daniel Boyarin, Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity (Philadelphia, 2004), p. 130.

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Christianity “as if it were always and everywhere . . . ‘dogmatic and hierarchical.’ The description of Christianity . . . has to be . . . dynamized and historicized.”22 Multiculturalism thus renders history a huge ludus mundi with cultures playing the parts of Freudian characters. Personified and even hypostatized, the latter are seduced and frustrated; overcoming their frustration, they try on male and female costumes, fight one another, and borrow from one another. Yet they never “advance” or “decay” or “develop.” Therefore, it becomes nearly impossible “to establish the spiritual history of the Jewish people on unified factors and laws.” An alternative approach may be found in the works of Jacob Neusner. His is a very strong avowal of progressive development. He insists on a powerful move to philosophical sophistication in the age of tannaim, on a growing historical self-awareness in the age of amoraim. Moreover, he emphasizes the systemic character of change. Thus the Halakhic system viewed as a coherent statement does not originate in Scripture. At issue for Neusner is the origin of the comprehensive structure comprised by the Halakhic category-formations. He protests against taking for granted that “where we find the belief in such systemic details . . . as last judgment or the cosmic dimensions of the Torah, there we find . . . ‘roots’ of rabbinic Judaism. . . . Rabbinic Judaism, like any other Judaic system, requires description in its own terms and framework: its generative logic, its native category-formations, its primary myth. . . .”23 In this book, I approach Jewish cultures of the Second Temple and Talmudic periods as stylistic systems. To my mind, the alteration of styles manifests the collapse of an old literature and the creation of a new one. The ruptures and transformations of Greco-Roman and Jewish cultures certainly were provoked by intra- and intercultural struggle. Yet in the end, Mediterranean society followed a general trend toward the growth of self-awareness due to various political, social, and economic causes. In the first chapter, I endeavor to apprehend the transformations of Jewish culture against the foil of Greek papyri from Roman and Byzantine Egypt. In my opinion, the papyri testify to revolutions in public consciousness occurring in the second and fifth centuries C.E. 22

Ibid., p. 155. Jacob Neusner, Review of Gabriele Boccaccini, “Roots of Rabbinic Judaism” in Review of Rabbinic Judaism Ancient, Medieval and Modern 5.3 (2002), p. 453. 23

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If the evidence of the papyri is trustworthy, we can see the appearance of Mishnah not just as a codification of oral material but as an entire transformation of mass mentality typical of the Early Empire. Likewise, the transition “from the Mishnah to the Genesis Rabbah” in the fourth and fifth centuries happened as part of a general alteration of self-awareness in the wake of the collapse of the “Evil Kingdom.” In the second chapter, I deal with the differences of style between late Biblical and early Rabbinic literatures. I believe that the birth of Aggadah was part of a general literary revolution taking place in the Roman Empire during the first and second centuries C.E. In the course of this revolution, seriocomic literature (“secular scripture” in the terms of Northrop Frye) took the place of old classical genres. What often is supposed to be the specificity of Jewish thinking (versus Hellenistic and Christian forms of thought) was in fact a general seriocomic tendency. The third chapter is devoted to relationships between Alexandrian exegesis and rabbinic midrash. I endeavor to prove that Alexandrian exegesis played a crucial role in the transition from Biblical culture to early Rabbinic literature. To my mind, the latter, though rejecting the philosophical stance of the Alexandrians, inherited the Alexandrian rationalistic approach to the Bible. On the other hand, Philo and his predecessors were acquainted with the oral seriocomic aggadic tradition (which existed before the appearance of Aggadic literature per se). That tradition, in turn, capitalized on the elitist Platonic exegesis of Alexandrian Jewish philosophers. In the fourth chapter, the historical consciousness of Alexandrian Jewish culture is researched. I analyze the composition and the ideas of the Letter of Aristias against the foil of Aggadic Midrash and early Christian literature. The Letter can be read as “the Gospel according to Aristeas” and as a “historical midrash” on the Book of Genesis. In the fifth and last chapter, I return to popular mentality as a foundation of literary styles. Which social changes gave birth to the literary revolution of the first centuries C.E.? I believe that the birth of the crowd and the appearance of new preaching scholarly communities were the major causes of the changes. That social phenomenon brought forth the spread and vulgarization of philosophical ideas as well as popular knowledge of the Bible. Synagogues and concert halls were frequented by people versed in Greek rhetoric and biblical exegesis. Seriocomic literature combined learned academic

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matters with vulgar Rabelaisian laughter. “The crowd” was both an audience and a character of this literature. Quasi-urban (municipal) late antique society acquired its own appropriate culture. The title of this book combines two contradictory ideas. On the one hand, I would love to identify two cultures (Greco-Roman and Jewish) as one developing system. To this end I devote nearly an entire chapter to researching popular mentality in Roman and Byzantine Egypt. On the other hand, I use the metaphor of Alexandria versus Jerusalem.24 I do this, actually, not only to introduce the encounter of Hellenistic, Jewish-Hellenistic, and Rabbinic cultures, but also to follow the course of development from early Hellenism to Late Antiquity. Alexandria stands here for the world of the Septuagint and the Letter of Aristeas, while Jerusalem signifies Byzantine and Talmudic civilizations. The Jews lost a great deal during these centuries, yet they also created a lot. Notwithstanding the losses, these were centuries of great intellectual and cultural progress, starting with the rise of philosophical thinking and ending with the comic familiarization of the epic past and the vulgarization of philosophy. It is hard to say which elements of this development were essential and which were accessory. To a certain extent, every ingredient contributed to the development, which was a manifestation of the inner logic of cultural history.

24

On this metaphor see Yakov Shavit, op. cit., p. 283.

CHAPTER ONE

A QUEST FOR HISTORICISM AND THE RHETORIC OF PETITIONS*

The last quarter of the twentieth century witnessed a huge enlargement and “post-modernization” of rabbinic studies. Yet on the brink of this impressive movement two prominent scholars uttered very grim “caveats” which were hardly listened to—though the works of these scholars generated massive feedback. Jacob Neusner published his paper “Method and Substance in the History of Judaic Ideas: An Exercise” in 1976.1 This paper was a manifesto promoting historicism in the study of Judaism. Neusner described the situation in this area of knowledge as dire. “Works called studies in the history of ideas do little more than collect sayings relevant to a given topic and comment unsystematically and episodically upon them.”2 As an example of such an approach he named Ephraim E. Urbach’s The Sages: Their Concepts and Beliefs, “which casually cites biblical and Talmudic materials on the same topic in the supposition that the latter flows naturally and without mediation from the former. There is scarcely any awareness that one set of evidence testifies to one period or circle, another to a different period or circle, and that we cannot take for granted unilinear progression from biblical to Talmudic times, as if nothing happened inbetween. Urbach writes as if the latter’s claim authentically to carry * Papyri in this and following chapters are cited according to John F. Oates et al., Checklist of Editions of Greek, Latin, Demotic, and Coptic Papyri, Ostraca, and Tables, 5th ed. (Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists Suppl. 9, 2001). In addition, I have used the following abbreviations for papyri and inscriptions: P. Naldini=Mario Naldini, Il Cristianesimo in Egitto: lettere private nei papiri di secoli II–IV (Firenze, 1968); P. Tibiletti=G. Tibiletti, Le Lettere privati nei papyri greci del III e IV secolo J.C.: Tra paganesimo e cristianesimo (Milano, 1979); In. Métr=Étienne Bernard, Inscriptions métrique de L’Egypte gréco-romaine: Recherches sur la poésie épigrammatique des grecs en Egypte. Thèse (Paris, 1969). 1 Jacob Neusner, “Method and Substance in the History of Judaic Ideas: An Exercise,” in Jews, Greeks and Christians: Religious Cultures in Late Antiquity, Essays in Honor of William David Davies, ed. Robert Hamerton-Kelly and Robin Scroggs (Leiden, 1976), pp. 89–111. 2 Ibid., p. 95.

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forward precisely the meaning and message of the former were a historical fact, not a contemporary theological conviction of Orthodox Judaism.”3 In a few words Neusner revealed the problem of belated Jewish historicism, a century and a half after Wissenschaft des Judentums started. Persistent claims for authenticity were incompatible with any notion of transformation or substantial change. Zakhor by Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi (first published in 1982)4 followed the vicissitudes of Jewish historical consciousness from the Bible to the author’s lifetime. While demonstrating the ahistorical stance of the Jews from the destruction of Jerusalem to Spinoza, Yerushalmi touched slightly upon the rise of historicism in the nineteenth century, only to come to the disavowal of historicism by prominent Jewish thinkers (like S. R. Hirsh, D. Luzatto, and F. Rosenzweig) and the fallacies of modern Jewish historiography. “Gone is that optimistic assurance with which a Graetz or a Dubnow could feel that the whole of Jewish history can yield, if only in secular terms, a meaningful unified structure or a clear pattern of development. The Jewish past unfolds before the historian not as unity but, to an extent unanticipated by his nineteenth-century predecessors, as multiplicity and relativity.”5 Yerushalmi also wrote, “The notion that everything in the past is worth knowing ‘for its own sake,’ is a mythology of modern historians, as is the lingering suspicion that a conscious responsibility toward the living concerns of the group must result in history that is somehow less scholarly or ‘scientific.’ Both stances lead not to a science, but to antiquarianism.”6 To address “the living concerns” of modern Jewry, a historian should “look more closely at ruptures, breaches, breaks, to identify them more precisely, to see how Jews endured them, to understand that not everything of value that existed before a break was either salvaged or metamorphosed, but was lost, and that often some of what fell by the wayside can become, through our retrieval, meaningful to us.”7 Both Yerushalmi and Neusner proclaimed the necessity to acknowledge the catastrophic changes in Jewish history, not just undisturbed

3

Ibid., pp. 89–90. Further references are to the following edition: Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory (New York, 1989). 5 Ibid., pp. 95–96. 6 Ibid., p. 100. 7 Ibid., p. 101. 4

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unilinear progression. The inability to see catastrophic changes turns history into anthropology or antiquarianism and shatters it into multiple unconnected fragments. If there is no change from one period to another, the periods cannot be connected in a reasonable way. They just fall apart. The idea of “ruptures” was strongly supported by Harold Bloom in his introduction to Yerushalmi’s Zakhor. “I would suggest,” he wrote, “that the discontinuities always have been there, throughout Jewish history, and that the difference now centers upon our consciousness of disruption.”8 For Bloom, a way to retrieve the ruptures runs through Freudian or Nietzschean thought. In his judgment, Yerushalmi adopts “the Nietzschean, or strong poetic stance toward the contingency of what might be called modern Jewish selfhood. Rather than seeing that selfhood as being dependent upon an inherited vision of contingency, Yerushalmi insists upon our freedom to know that the essential aspect of our Jewish contingency is rupture, or what Nietzsche would have called a trope of self-overcoming. Nietzsche understood how frightening such rupture is, but it is difficult for Jews not to see their own contingency as being peculiarly terrifying.”9 As it is, “the Jews, now as before, remain fundamentally ahistorical.”10 Sacha Stern’s critique of Jacob Neusner’s works is useful in understanding modern attitudes to rabbinic history. Stern calls Neusner’s approach “soft” diachronic. In Stern’s words, “This approach concedes, on the one hand, that early rabbinic works can only be treated as whole, redacted entities, and are only representative of rabbinic Judaism at the time of their final redaction. On the other hand, it proposes to compare different works with one another so as to trace, on the basis of their different putative dates of redaction, some form of diachronic, historical evolution between them.”11 That comparison, Stern believes, brings Neusner to the assumption “that the early rabbinic period can be segmented into well-defined sub-periods—e.g., pre-70 C.E., 70 C.E., post-135 C.E., pre- and post-300 C.E., etc. This segmental, chronological scheme is justifiable as a useful working

8

Harold Bloom, “Foreword” to Yerushalmi, Zakhor, p. xxii. Ibid., p. xxi. 10 Ibid., pp. xix–xx. 11 Sacha Stern, Jewish Identity in Early Rabbinic Writings (Leiden, etc., 1994), pp. xxvii–xxviii. 9

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model, although it gives the false illusion of changelessness within a given period and, on the contrary, of a sudden ‘quantum leap’ in the year which marks the transition from one period to the next. As a historical reality, therefore, this model must be handled with some care . . . Neusner . . . distinguishes between an earlier period, 70–300 C.E., where ‘Israel’ was only viewed, in rabbinic sources, as a taxonomic abstraction which hardly represented a social reality, and the post-Constantinian period of circa 300–600 C.E., where Neusner suggests that in reaction against Christianity, ‘Israel’ took on the vividness of a real social group, as a family, a chosen people, or as a nation.”12 Stern rejects this model. To his mind, “such piece-meal findings are limited in scope and not necessarily pertinent to the experience of Jewish identity as a whole.”13 Instead, he adopts a global synchronic approach. In line with this approach, “areas and schools . . . cannot be labeled as static, independent, and well-defined entities. Because of their mutual interdependence, they must have been themselves subject to constant re-adjustment and change. It is thus likely that Jewish identity was not static in its diversity, but a dynamic, everresilient process.”14 Indeed, this critique indicates much more than mere discontent with regard to a specific methodological problem. What Stern calls “changelessness within a given period” is nothing other than a steady quantitative development, while “a sudden ‘quantum leap’ ” may be described as a qualitative development, or rupture. While insisting on “constant re-adjustment and change,” Stern evidently adheres to a Positivist and anti-Hegelian viewpoint. Of course, “the limits of rabbinic sources” do exist. It is certain that “Tannaitic and Amoraic traditions underwent, around the time of their redaction, some degree of ‘homogenization,’ leading to an illusory image of consistency and continuity in the rabbinic view of ‘Israel.’ ”15 It could be (as Stern states) that “the concepts, sayings and passages which are of most relevance to the general experience of Jewish identity are often repeated with little or no significant

12 13 14 15

Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Ibid.,

p. p. p. p.

xxxi. xxxiii. xxxi. xxxv.

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variation in rabbinic works of very different putative date and provenance. . . .”16 As a matter of fact, Neusner also takes these factors into consideration. Yet his approach is substantially holistic. Thus the idea that in 70–300 C.E. “Israel” was viewed as a taxonomic abstraction and only in 300–600 C.E. took on the aspect of a real social group stems from his comprehensive vision of the two periods.17 In Judaism and Christianity he writes: “The Mishnah, promulgated two hundred years prior to the composition of Genesis Rabbah, set forth a theory of how events are to be interpreted and what meaning is to be inferred from them. . . . The framers of Mishnah explicitly refer to very few events, treating those they do not mention with a focus quite separate from the unfolding events themselves. They rarely create narratives; historical events do not supply organizing categories or taxonomic classifications. . . . The Mishnah absorbs into its encompassing system all events, small and large. With them the sages accomplish what they accomplish in everything else: a vast labor of taxonomy, an immense construction of the order and rules governing the classification of everything on earth and in heaven. The disruptive character of history—one-time events of ineluctable significance—scarcely impresses the philosophers represented by Mishna.”18 In the fourth century things change. “The events of the fourth century directed attention to trends and patterns, just as the framers of the Mishnah would have wanted. But in search of those trends, the detailed record of history . . . demanded close study. . . . The sedulous indifference to concrete events, except for taxonomic purposes, characteristic of the Mishnaic authorship, provided no useful model. Concrete, immediate, and significant events now made a difference.”19 In another book, Neusner summarizes: “The Mishnah then proposed to build an Israelite world view and way of life that ignored the immediate apocalyptic and historical terrors of the age. The Mishnah’s heirs and continuators, who produced the other sector of the formative canon, did two things. They preserved that original policy for Israelite society. But they also accommodated an

16

Ibid., p. xxxiv. S. Stern mostly refers to J. Neusner’s book, Judaism and its Social Metaphors: Israel in the History of Jewish Thought (Cambridge, 1989). 18 Jacob Neusner, Judaism and Christianity in the Age of Constantine: Issues of Initial Confrontation (Chicago, 1987), p. 37. 19 Ibid., p. 38. 17

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ongoing social and psychological reality: the presence of terror, the foreboding of doom, and Israel’s ironclad faith in the God who saves. Israel remained the old Israel of history, suffering, and hope. The Mishnah’s fantasy of an Israel beyond time, an Israel living in nature and supernature, faded away.”20 What Neusner describes is a revolutionary change of mentality in the fourth century C.E. This is precisely what Stern is unwilling to accept. He argues: “The evidence which Neusner draws from his first (70–300 C.E.) period consists exclusively of Halakhic material from the Mishna, the Tosefta, and Halakhik Midrashim. His second period (300–600 C.E.), on the other hand, is documented exclusively with aggadic materials from Yerushalmi, Genesis Rabbah and Leviticus Rabbah, which, admittedly, were not redacted before this period. This leads Neusner to the illusion that the earlier concept of ‘Israel’ was only abstract and taxonomic, and that ‘Israel’ came to be perceived as a concrete reality only in the post-Constantinian period. In actual fact, this ‘change’ may not reflect a historical development, as Neusner concludes, but rather a literary, generic difference between his sources. . . .”21 Yet it is precisely this difference, the change of genres and styles, that actually reflects the rupture. Even according to Stern, “the fact that aggadic works appear not to have been redacted before 300 C.E. may suggest that aggada was less important than halakha in this period. . . .” However, he writes, “it would be absurd to conclude that aggada, and hence the aggadic concept of ‘Israel,’ did not exist in this period. The virtual absence of references in the Mishna to ‘Israel’ as a real people does not imply that the authors of the Mishna were unaware of this notion.”22 There is no doubt that certain beliefs cited by Stern (the identification of Israel as “the righteous” and the nations as “the wicked,” reference to the Jewish people as “Israel,” a monolithic and collective entity, the idea that Israel is holy) are “pervasive in all our sources, Halakhic, aggadic and even liturgical.”23 Still, how these beliefs functioned could be different. Genres and styles could be different.

20 Jacob Neusner, Formative Judaism: Religious, Historical and Literary Studies. Third Series: Torah, Pharisees, and Rabbis (Chico, 1983), p. 192. 21 S. Stern, op. cit., p. xxxii. 22 Ibid. 23 Ibid., p. xxxiv.

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Style is ideologically meaningful. Russian scholar Lydia Y. Ginzburg has pointed to so-called “stable styles” that presuppose “a permanent and indissoluble connection between the theme (also permanent) and the poetical phraseology.”24 Romanticism, classicism, and symbolism each had their stock-in-trade. The words “storm,” “fiery passions,” or “wrath”—characteristic of Romantic poetry—would probably lead us to the topic of a Satanic or Byronic hero. Shifts of style could be the result of literary revolutions interrupting periods of smooth cultural development. Such shifts usually reveal profound alterations of mood and mentality, since any style is based on a system of ideas. The notion of literary revolution entails the collapse of old genres and the birth of new ones. The transition from classicism to sentimentalism is an example of a minor literary revolution. The transition from medieval to modern literatures was much more radical: in the course of that revolution, not only styles but also languages changed (from Latin and Church Slavonic to “modern languages”). But a literary revolution involves more than literature. It either follows or initiates a revolution in popular mentality. *

*

*

There is a unique opportunity to test Neusner’s theory with sources that do not belong to Jewish literature at all. These are Greek petitions, documentary papyri written in Ptolemaic, Roman, and Byzantine Egypt over nearly a millennium. In the second and fifth centuries C.E. this single genre experienced radical changes of style (while within these periods the styles remained stable and solid). Looking into these changes, we can see behind them modes of thought and consciousness highly reminiscent of Mishnaic and Post-Mishnaic mentality.25 In the second century, the upsurge of rhetoric is considered a characteristic feature of the “Greek Renaissance,” the much-praised revival of Greek literature. The rhetorical style of Second Sophistic is deemed to represent an elitist Hellenism, designed to unite and inspire the Greek civic elite.26 “Ever since the early empire, a common 24

Lydia Y. Ginzburg, On Lyric Poetry (Moscow, etc., 1974), pp. 26–27. This paragraph is based on my paper “The Rhetoric of Petitions and Its Influence on Popular Social Awareness in Roman Egypt,” in Russian, Vestnik Drevney Istorii (1984) 2:180–84. See also ch. 2 in my book Rhetoric in the Shade of Pyramids: The Mass Consciousness in Roman Egypt, in Russian (Moscow, 1988), pp. 30–61. 26 Graham Anderson, The Second Sophistic: A Cultural Phenomenon in the Roman Empire (London, New York, 1993); Simon Swain, Hellenism and Empire: Language, Classicism, and Power in the Greek World AD 50–250 (Oxford, 1996). 25

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culture had provided a language that enabled members of the educated class from as far apart as Arles and Arabia to meet as equal devotees of Greek rhetoric. The very standardization of this rhetoric, which is so tedious to a modern reader, explains its attraction in the first and second centuries A.D. Formalized, elevated, reassuringly predictable, and invariably fulsome, rhetoric provided permanent background music to the consensus in favor of Roman rule skillfully fostered among the civic notables of the Greek world.”27 The change in style of petitions (as well as private letters) in the second century C.E. followed the general change of style. The simple and functional manner of Ptolemaic and Early Roman documents became rhetorical. The only explanation offered in scholarly works is the rhetorical education of the scribes or the influence of epistolary theory on the authors of the letters.28 The ideology of the petitions did not in general attract the attention of classicists. One exception was the famous German papyrologist Wilhelm Schubart. He saw in the distinction of the rhetorical petitions a deification of the Law. In the eyes of the common masses, the force of the Law was comparable to the force and justice of the emperor. “I have failed to detect the origin of this viewpoint,” wrote Schubart, “but I hold that the idea of the importance of the Law is rooted in Greek ideas.”29 Having come to this conclusion the scholar declared: “I am not satisfied with this answer. Nevertheless, although I am still incapable of answering this question I find it useful to put it.”30 What was the cause of Schubart’s dissatisfaction? 27 Peter Brown, Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Towards a Christian Empire (Madison, 1992), pp. 39–40. 28 Hjalmar Frisk, Bankakten aus dem Faijûm nebst anderen Berliner Papyri (Göteborg, 1931), p. 91; Henrik Zilliacus, Sesbstgefühl und Servilität: Studien zum unregelmässigen Numerusgebrauch im Griechischen (Copenhagen, Helsinki, 1953), pp. 76–78; A. Moscadi, “Le lettere dell’ archivo di Teofane,” Aegyptus 50 (1970): 98–99; H. Koskenniemi, Studien zur Idee und Phraseologie der griechischen Briefes bis 400 n. Chr. (Helsinki, 1956), p. 70; Herbert Hayyim Youtie, Scriptiunculae posteriores, pt. 1 (Bonn, 1981), pp. 331–334. 29 Wilhelm Schubart, “Das Gesetz und der Kaiser in griechischen Urkunden,” Klio 30 (1937) p. 69. 30 Ibid., pp. 58–59. Cf. also: R. L. B. Morris, “Reflections of Citizen Attitudes in Petitions from Oxyrhinchus,” Proceedings of the Sixteenth International Congress of Papyrology (Chico, 1981), pp. 363–370. Morris does not analyze the style of the petitions at all. He tries to find in the sources straight reflections of popular attitudes, namely the signs of disillusionment with the government. In his opinion, in the first century the inhabitants of Oxyrhichus complained against one another, while in the second century they moaned about the burden of taxes and the abuse

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Probably, it was the fact that the popularity of a philosophical idea among the scribes and their clients needed to be somehow explained. The mere reference to rhetorical education did not seem adequate. Neither would it have been compelling to explain the “deification of the Law” in the second through fourth centuries by the litigious character of society. As Roger S. Bagnall noted, it is not easy “to decide if Roman Egypt was a lawless or violent society, as upperclass Romans who had never been there seem to have thought.”31 According to Deborah W. Hobson, “the problems brought to the light” by the petitions illuminate “the values and standards of behavior of rural society.”32 This, however, is hardly consistent with her reference to Demosthenes in regard to the notion of “insolence” (hybris) in the papyri. Let us try to approach the petitions through stylistic analysis, following the system of clichés and commonplaces. The idea of the Law, singled out by Schubart, is a good starting point. The Law appeared in the petitions neither by chance nor incidentally. It came in a package with two standard figures of rhetorical declamation: the rich man, the poor man. The notoriously litigious fellow Aurelius Isidoros, a kind of a gentleman-farmer, proclaimed: “The laws forbid actions aimed at ruining us, the people of small means, and driving us into flight. Now, I myself, who am in every way a man of small means, am suffering violence and injustice . . .”33 “The laws have repeatedly enjoined that no one be made to suffer oppressions or illegal exaction, and that no one be deprived of his lawful rights in any way. . . . And if the unruly were successful in this kind of thing, no man of small means would have survived long since.”34 “We, who are small farmers, suffer severely at the hands of the praepositus of the pagus Theodorus and of the comarchs. They terrorize us, and this reveals the character of

of officials. I am not sure that the data permit drawing such conclusions. Statistics concerning the petitions are ambiguous. Besides, it is difficult to imagine any illusions among the Egyptians with regard to local authorities, let alone disillusionment. Central authorities in the second century were more used to being flattered than before, as is apparent from the rhetoric of the papyri. 31 Roger S. Bagnall, Egypt in Late Antiquity (Princeton, 1993), p. 161. 32 Deborah W. Hobson, “The Impact of Law on Village Life in Roman Egypt,” in Law, Politics and Society in the Ancient Mediterranean World (Sheffield, 1993): p. 215. 33 P. Cair. Isid. 68, 4–8, 309/310 C.E. 34 P. Cair. Isid. 69, 3–5, 25–27, 310 C.E.

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these utterly wicked men, these men who play the dynast locally. . . .”35 The underlying concept is that of the rich and the powerful oppressing the weak and the poor. This sad situation requires a Law. Other plaintiffs emphasize the same idea: “If rather powerful people succeed in carrying through their schemes and if the laws are not obeyed, then the life of the poor becomes intolerable.”36 It is a simple matter to detect here the elements of social protest. Such social protest per se characterized petitions from at least the ancient Egyptian Diatribes of the eloquent peasant onward. It fills Ptolemaic petitions as well. The Zeno archive abounds in complaints and even threats of the poor directed against the rich and the powerful. However, in Ptolemaic and Early Roman times every petitioner reported only his individual case. He did not consider himself the representative of all offended human beings, he did not connect his offender with any specific group of wrongdoers, and he failed to analyze the causes of the conflict. Isidoros offended Petesouchos, that was all, and there was nothing more to it. It was only in the early second century that the miracle occurred. The magic was done by a commonplace, rhetorical cliché so often laughed at. A world of typicality was discovered behind the world of chance. The individual royal peasant or military settler was replaced by one “powerful” or “poor.” The appearance of the very terms “poor” and “rich” was the first step toward typifying the conflict. As Marc Bloch has noted, “the advent of the name is always a great event even though the thing named has preceded it; for it signifies the decisive movement of conscious awareness. What a forward stride was taken the day the initiates of a new faith first called themselves Christians!”37 What name, then, was found by the Egyptian scribes? Strange as it may seem, the Christian vocabulary, rather extensive in this area, went almost unused. We come across such typical New Testament words as p°nhw (a poor man) and ptoxÚw (a beggar) mostly in those papyri that carry liturgical texts and citations from the Bible. Yet another Christian term, ésyenØw (weak), as an adjective, appeared in some Ptolemaic petitions, that is, before Christianity. For instance, a petition dating back to 61–60 B.C.E. was submitted by “the weak

35 36 37

P. Cair. Isid. 73, 3–4, 314 C.E. SB XII 11220, 4–7, 223 C.E. Marc Bloch, The Historian’s Craft (New York, 1953), p. 168.

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peasants residing in the village of Machor and paying taxes to the Royal treasury.”38 Other plaintiffs, also peasants, wrote that “they are so weak, they have reached the limit.”39 Being an adjective, the term does not imply that all peasants are weak. It just describes the degree of misfortune of some peasants. In the Christian letter of 330–340 A.D. the word ésyenØw became a substantive. A wine dealer suffered from “pitiless and Godless men.” Help should be given him “remembering the blessed Apostle who tells us not to neglect those who are weak, not only in the faith but also in the affairs of this world.”40 The reference is to Paul’s epistle to the Romans (14:1) or his first letter to the Thessalonians (5:14). We would expect “the weak” to become the term for all the poor. However, this did not happen. Instead, the language of the papyri performed a trick, surprising both in its complexity and artificiality. The word m°triow came to designate the poor. This word had a completely different meaning in literary usage. In Athens orators applied it to the middle class, while philosophers applied it to persons moderate in desires. Now we read in a petition: “Pity me, the poor man (o‡kteira me tÚn m°trion).”41 It is impossible to translate this as: “Pity me, the moderate (or the man of the middle fortune).” In another petition the plaintiff begs an official to feel sorry for his poverty ([! ?]ele[hs]aw t[. .].m.[.m]etriÒt[ht ! ?]): this is impossible to translate as moderation.42 The superintendents of the golden statue of Athena-Thoeris pleaded to pity them, because they were poor (m°trioi) and could hardly make ends meet.43 The residents of the village of Theadelphia called themselves “poor (m°trioi) and solitary,”44 while the author of a letter allegedly belonged to “the poor and unfortunate by birth (metr¤vn går ka‹ dustux«n g°nesin ¶xontew).”45 Finally, the Greek-Latin epistolary handbook of the third-fourth centuries directly translates m°triow as pauper.46

38

BGU VIII 1815, 5–9. BGU VIII 1843, 50–49 B.C.E. 40 P. Tibiletti 25=Sel. Pap. I, 160. Cf. the same term in a Christian letter: P. Herm. 17, 2, fifth to sixth centuries C.E. 41 P. Herm. 19, 13, 392 C.E. 42 P. Panop. 26=SB XII 11219, 2, 322 C.E. 43 P. Oxy. VIII 1117, 8–9, 19–20, circa 178 C.E. 44 P. Thead. 17=Sel. Pap. II 295, 15, 322 C.E. 45 P. Oxy. I 120R, 4–9=P. Naldini 62=Sel. Pap. I 162, fourth century C.E. 46 P. Bon. 5, IX–X, 17. 39

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Héléne Cadell attributed this linguistic phenomenon to the heavy burden of taxes and the economic difficulties of the fourth century. The growing poverty brought forth appropriate words.47 If this were the case, why did the scribes choose a term with another import? Why did the words with the direct meaning (p°nhw, for example) not suit them? And besides, m°triow came into papyri not in the troublesome fourth, but in the prosperous second, century. The rhetorical newcomer brought with it all its philosophical and moral luggage. The very meaning of moderation has never disappeared from the word. The above mentioned gentleman-farmer Aurelius Isidoros solemnly supplicated: “Your universal solicitude is accustomed to be of help to all, my Lord Praeses, and especially to us, the people of small means and decent ways (§jair°tvw d¢ ≤m›n to›w metr¤oiw ka‹] kal«[w] eÔ bioËntew). . . . I therefore hastened to flee to your feet, my Lord, begging and beseeching, as a man of most restricted means (m°triow) and almost in need of necessary . . . food.”48 So apparently to be poor means to be decent. Further, the blend of meanings (“the poor” and “the moderate”) appears in the petition of an athlete, asking to appoint him, “a moderate man who worked much,” a herald, for the previous emperors had given this post only to gymnasts “whose life was spent in labor and exercises.”49 One of these athletes was entitled to an epitaph with the following verses: “While I lived I was moderate (m°triow), a respectful teacher of gymnastics in a gymnasium.”50 The criminals and rascals came to the papyri as tyrants, dynasts, and the mighty ones (dunato¤). Again, these names are not without their own significance. They carry a long tail of philosophical and rhetorical connotations. A certain woman from Rome complains of extortion: “You know about impudence and outrages of Ababiceion whom you earlier struck for his outrages. Now he attempted to establish tyranny.”51 Aurelius Anteus complains against “the robberies and /deeds of/ greediness committed in the localities by the more strong.”52

47 Hélène Cadell, “Le renouvellement du vocabulaire au IVe siècle de notre ère d’après les papyrus,” in Akten des XIII. Internationaler Papyrologenkongresses (Munich, 1974), p. 66. 48 P. Cair. Isid. 74=P. Mert. II 91, 316 C.E. 49 PSI XIV 1422, third century C.E. 50 In. Métr. 22, IV, 3–4, late second to early third century C.E. 51 SB VI 9105, 8–15, second century C.E. 52 P. Abinn. 50, 16=17, 346 C.E.

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Peasants are deprived of their land by the people who use their “wealth and local tyranny for the purpose.”53 Officials “play the dynast locally and while we show them due respect, do us the greatest mischief.” “We” are “small farmers.”54 The conflict in the petitions is between “we” (poor, weak, and moderate) and “them” (rich, mighty, and tyrannical). Wealth drives people to the violation of the Law. For instance, a group of men attacked the house of Aurelius Isidoros “because they were heavily intoxicated with wine and emboldened by their wealth.”55 The major vice of the mighty is their greediness (pleonej¤a). Aurelius Anteus mentions robberies and deeds of greediness committed by the more strong.56 Another plaintiff cries out: “Manifold are the deeds of greediness of men; but when they are detected therein, it remains for His Highness’ severity to punish what they have dared to do.”57 The greediness is supplemented by arrogance. Who oppresses the poor people? Those who “do not have in their hearts the fear of judgment and who consider their own strength greater then that of the Laws.”58 In contrast, the poor person “acts with the fear of judgment in his heart.”59 Offenders are acting “senselessly and recklessly adopting a bold plan contrary to the Laws and having in their hearts little fear of my Lord.” They attack “people of small means and decent ways.”60 In a rhetorical preamble to a petition Aurelia Demetria states: “It is necessary that those who have experienced the magistrate’s attention and fear of him should be wise in the future and never do any wrong to anybody.” However, the fear of the magistrate failed to stop her offender and he acted as “no barbarians do with respect to the Law.”61 Finally, the fear of the official is equated with the fear of God. At least, Aurelius Anteus believed that his offenders acted “having neither the fear of God, nor of you, my Lord.”62 53

P. Amh. II 142, 15, fourth century C.E. P. Cair. Isid. 73, 3–4, 314 C.E. 55 P. Cair. Isid. 75, 9–10, 316 C.E. 56 P. Abinn. 50, 16, 346 C.E. 57 P. Cair. Isid. 62, 5–7, 296 C.E. 58 SB XII 11220, 14–16, 323 C.E. 59 P. Herm. 19, 3, 392 C.E. 60 P. Cair. Isid. 74=P. Mert. II, 91, 6, 11–12, 316 C.E. 61 P. Lips. 39=M.Chr. 127, 5–7, 11–12, 390 C.E. 62 P. Abinn. 50. According to R. S. Bagnall, when “petitions and other texts . . . refer to ‘the fear of your Highness’ or similar thoughts, a fear is not entirely rhetorical in character. Though documentary evidence for official violence is relatively scarce, it is not nonexistent” (pp. 15–17). 54

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In the early Ptolemaic period (third century B.C.E.) some plaintiffs complained that their offenders despised their physical weakness, old age, widowhood, and orphan hood.63 Now, in the second through fourth century C.E., the powerful and influential despise (katafrone›n) not physical, but social disabilities, that is, poverty and meekness.64 This is exactly the sin that Jesus cautioned his disciples against: “Take heed that ye despise not (mØ katafron°shte) one of these little ones . . .” (Matt. 18:10). The disdain for poverty and meekness by the rich and powerful leads us to another quality of the poor. Meekness (épragmosÊnh) represented one of the major philosophical virtues, while its antonym filopragmosÊnh (vain disposition, meddlesomeness) was a major vice.65 Plutarch devoted a whole treatise to this subject (De curiositate) and Philo of Alexandria was also expansive in this area (cf. Abr. 20–22; Flacc. 41). Their not-so-famous colleague from Egypt submitted a petition in the third century. He writes that his life is full of studies and speeches, for he is a philosopher. So it does not suit him, a man devoting his leisure to learning, to engage in litigation (polupragmone› [n.]). And above all he considers himself m°triow, which could imply both meanings: the poor and the moderate.66 In the fourth century petition meekness (épragmosÊnh) became a Christian quality. The dying son of deacon Aurelius Zoilos was robbed of his property and wife. After the death of the miserable creature, the deacon forgave the robbers, “exercising himself in meek life.” When his other son tried to restore justice, the robbers nearly killed him “despising our times, full of Law, and our meekness.” The petition begins with a rhetorical address to the magistrate: “Those who have chosen the road of shame and robbery, oh the most pure of men, should experience the punishing force of the Law.”67 A peasant who was deprived

63

P. Enteux. 9R, 6; 25, 8–9; 26, 9–10; 29, 11; 44, 4. P. Oxy. XXIV 2410, 4–5, 120 C.E.; I 71, I, 14; II, 16, 303 C.E.; SB VI 9622, 18–19, fourth century C.E. 65 Victor Ehrenberg, “Polypragmosune: A Study in Greek Politics,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 67 (1947): 59; Kenneth James Dover, Greek Popular Morality in the Time of Plato and Aristotle (Oxford, 1974), p. 188; Arthur W. H. Adkins, “Polyprogmosune and ‘Minding One’s Own Business’: A Study in Greek Social and Political Values,” Classical Philology 71 (1976): 89–102. 66 PSI XIII 1337, third century C.E. 67 SB VI 9622, fourth century C.E. Cf. J. W. H. Barnes, “Fourth Century Deacon’s Petition from Theadelphia,” Studia patristica 1 (1957): 3–9. 64

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of his land by the whim of “wealthy local tyrants” writes of his meekness.68 A rich neighbor robs the peasants of their land, despising them for their meekness.69 Finally, Aurelius Isidoros writes that he was “not involved with any persons in the village but kept to himself.”70 Indeed, the mere submission of the petition contradicts the pretense of peacefulness and meekness. Moreover, people like Aurelius Isidoros, who had a passion for litigation, would appear ridiculous making such a claim. With idyllic pathos Aurelius Isidoros, as usual referring to his poverty, states: “Although I possess a great deal of land and am occupied with its cultivation . . . I am not involved with any person in the village but keep to myself.”71 Another plaintiff writes: “I was designated some time ago to the duty of a guard, which I discharged blamelessly, and I have besides paid my annual personal dues living a quiet cultivator’s life.”72 While the poor are meek cultivators, the rich are arrogant usurers seeking money and advancement. According to one of the petitions, ex-gymnasiarch Ptolemaios, son of Pappos, “lives a life of an usurer, is arrogant by nature and has a tendency toward violence, for he considers himself a high-ranking person: he is so zealous in his business affairs that one might think all the villages’ exactors are subordinated to him. . . . He puts pressure to bear on debtors cruelly and with insulting arrogance.”73 Ex-exegetes Heron, son of Amatius, acts in a similar manner. “Relying on the strength of his power and being a rather influential man locally he constantly insults me and acts unjustly towards me, although he fully receives the stater’s worth of interest which he forced me to promise him, as a result of which the interest payments are 50 percent higher than the capital itself,” writes Sempronius, son of Eutychius, about his creditor.74 Where did the scribes borrow their ideas? It is difficult to imagine them reading Plato or Seneca. Collections of rhetorical exercises (meletai, declamationes) would be more likely. These collections were peopled by standard figures, the rich man and the poor man among them. 68 69 70 71 72 73 74

P. Amh. II 142, 14, fourth century C.E. P. Oxy. XXIV, 2410, 4–5, 120 C.E. P. Cair. Isid. 75, 4–5, 316 C.E. Ibid. Sel. Pap. II 290, 9–10, 207 C.E. PSI XIII 1323, 4–9, 147–48 C.E. P. Fouad 26, 157–59 C.E.

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The poor are always honest; the rich invariably cruel. We can also assume that the scribes used some collections of preambles to petitions based on these declamations. Popular epistolary handbooks suggest a source as well. The connection between petitions and state legislation is also visible. A broad new social division entered Roman law largely in the second century, at the same time the petitions soared into rhetoric. It went beyond traditional distinctions between citizens and non-citizens, Roman citizens and foreigners and the like. And this is exactly what we find in the papyri. The word m°trioi corresponds to humiliores (more humble), while dunato¤ of the petitions are literally potentiores (more strong) of imperial constitutions. The coercion of the weak by the powerful was a commonplace of imperial constitutions as well. The constitution of Diocletian and Maximian expresses concern about “the weak (tenuiores) who are often oppressed by the unfortunate interference of the strong ( potentium)” (CJ II, 12:1). The state declares its duty to protect the former. The post of “popular defender” (defensor plebis, defensor civitatis) is established by Valentinian and Valence so “that all the plebeians of Illyricum shall be defended . . . against the outrages of the strong ( potentium)” (CTh I, 29:1). It might be argued that protection of the poor is as old as royal propaganda itself. The Ptolemies were accustomed to proclaiming their concern about royal peasants and local Egyptians, etc. Already Hammurabi, the king of Babylon, in the preamble to his Code, pointed out his concern that “the powerful did not offend the weak.” However, neither Hammurabi nor the Ptolemies listed the virtues of the weak. They delivered protection simply because the weak needed it, not because the weak were moderate and decent, industrious and meek. Yet when the Roman emperors Diocletian and Maximian published their constitution in 294 A.D., they referred to the diligence of the poor first of all: “Neither industry, nor the increase of their property which is obtained by their labor or in many other ways should be forbidden to the poor” (CJ V, 51:10). Valentinian and Valence in 370–73 considered it necessary that “innocent and peaceful rustics (innocens et quieta rusticitas) shall enjoy the benefit of a special protection” and “not be exhausted by the fraudulent practices of court trials” (CTh I, 29:5). They actually spoke about the épragmosÊnh of the peasants. All this varied ideology would probably come to the head of an Egyptian scribe. However, neither imperial legislation nor collections

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of rhetorical samples would mold his mind automatically. The scribe was not a mechanical robot taking dictation. His way of thinking, character, and religious affiliation found their way into the documents. Moreover, he was not isolated from his client. The copyists of official papers belonged to the middle or lower middle class, and had close relations with their illiterate friends and relatives.75 It seems likely that the ideology of the petitions expressed the thoughts and moods of numerous strata. Who were the plaintiffs, ostensibly represented by rhetorical petitions? They pretended to be “the poor” and they claimed their offenders to number among “the strong.” This did not coincide with the actual state of affairs, however. Both petitioners and their enemies usually derived from the same lower middle class of Egyptian society. People like Areion, son of Dioscoros, Aurelius Isidoros, Aurelius Anteus, or Aurelius Zoilus belonged to the cream of small Egyptian towns’ elite. They quarreled with others of the same strata.76 What made a well-to-do person describe himself as poor? Was there any reason other than winning the sympathy of a magistrate? Of great interest are the ideas of Peter Brown on the alleged retreat of Aurelius Isidoros from the world. Brown is resolutely against the notion of Eric R. Dodds concerning the alienation of man in the Roman Empire.77 In the opinion of Brown, it was not solitude but the discomforts of life in a close-knit community that made the people unhappy. They lived in small towns and were members of corporations in which everybody knew each other.78 An especially acute crisis of solidarity was characteristic of the Egyptian village. The late third century was characterized by the growing opportunities for

75 Herbert Hayyim Youtie, Scriptiunculae 2 (Amsterdam, 1973), pp. 165, 173; Colin H. Roberts, Manuscript, Society, and Belief in Early Christian Egypt (London, 1979), p. 25. 76 Roger S. Bagnall has noted that “Isidoros and Sakaon both belonged to the upper crust of village society” (op. cit., pp. 167–68) and “a survey of other preserved petitions originating with villagers confirms the impression that they come from the propertied class” (p. 168). As for the term metrios and its derivatives (moderate, modest, neither wealthy not poor), Bagnall generally refers it to “the middle ground.” Yet he also understands that “its vagueness of reference made it rhetorically attractive, because it might be used of anyone in the vast range above true poverty and below the equestrian order. One’s opponent, of course, was powerful, while one was oneself of modest means” (p. 227). 77 Eric R. Dodds, Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety: Some Aspects of Religious Experience from Marcus Aurelius to Constantine (Cambridge, 1965), pp. 20–21. 78 Peter Brown, The Making of Late Antiquity (Cambridge, etc., 1978), p. 4.

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making an individual career, on the one hand, and the increased burden of taxes caused by the mutual guarantee system, on the other. In such conditions, people like Aurelius Isidoros chose the road of alienation. It is exactly among these “successful middle landowners” that we should look for the sources of monasticism.79 I would contend, however, that it was not the specific situation of the third century but the transition from Ptolemaic to Roman rule that changed the mentality of the middle and lower middle classes. In the Ptolemaic kingdom nobody deliberated on the conditions of human existence. Royal peasants and military settlers, state officials and architects, even the head of the famous library, all belonged to a certain branch or department and thought of themselves as cogs in a machine, not as abstract human beings. Their mentality and their verbal style were functional and instrumental. Not abstract entities but specific positions and actions bothered them, and most of all they worried about the integrity of the Royal treasury or their own material well-being. The Roman invasion brought about a radical change. During the first century C.E. the land and industry were mostly privatized. In 202 the regional centers (metropolises) received councils. In the fourth century the Romans introduced the municipal system in Egypt. The new rulers seemed to want to build civil society, not Oriental monarchy. In this environment, even lower middle class people indulged themselves in feelings of privacy, to reflect, to generalize, and to make statements. They were no longer the cogs of state machinery but abstract human beings with abstract virtues and vices; and abstract Law, not the king, guaranteed their conditions of life. In this situation, rhetoric came to make such a mentality normative and abstract. Through rhetorical clichés people at large mastered certain elements of reflective and abstract thought, the beginnings of philosophical doctrines. For them these clichés and commonplaces became an instrument for understanding the social structure, its moral dimensions, and their own place in it. Quite naturally, it was not ordinary peasants but the town elite, scribes and the like, who absorbed this vulgar teaching. They picked up the most primitive and the most vital (for them) elements of popular philosophy, ideas, for example, about the dignity of the poor and the importance of

79

Ibid., pp. 81–84.

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the law. These elements applied to their own lives, though they derived from very elitist sources, such as Plato and Seneca. Not folk tradition, but vulgarized philosophy, nurtured the new way of thinking. Massive vulgarization of philosophy was a mark of the time and place. Dio Chrysostom tells of numerous cynics posting themselves on street corners in Alexandria, in alleyways and at temple gates, trying to attract the passers-by with rough jokes, while those who belonged to other schools addressed the public in concert halls (Orationes XXXII, 8–9). In a sense, the petitions witness the birth of a new mass philosophic (or ideological) audience. The success of Christianity can be apprehended only against this background. Hence, I would like to cast doubt on the traditional view of Second Sophistic as an elitist Greek cultural movement. What we see in the treatises of Aelius Aristeidus or Flavius Philostratus is but the tip of an iceberg. Down to Oxyrhynchus or Panopolis the Second Sophistic seems not to be an elitist movement but an obsession of the middle and lower middle classes with popular moral philosophy. It combines with Early Christianity in creating the spiritual climate. *

*

*

In the fifth century there was another immense change of style.80 The rhetoric of Early Byzantine documents (fifth to seventh centuries) has usually been considered a manifestation of Eastern servility and Christian humility. Features of this style, like verbosity, poeticisms, and archaisms, have been seen to testify to a drop in the value of the word in an atmosphere where legality and order failed to guarantee every letter of a document. Scholars thus saw the substantivized forms of Byzantine Greek as designed to reduce responsibility either for the word or for the deed. All this reputedly stemmed from a decrease in civic spirit and self-respect, from the influence of Egyptian, Persian, and Babylonian traditions, and from the victory of “Byzantinism.”81

80 This paragraph is based on my paper “From Logos to Myth: Egyptian Petitions of the Fifth to Seventh Centuries,” Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists 28.3–4 (1991): 135–52. 81 E. Vernay, “Note sur le changement de style dans les constitutions imperiales de Diocletien a Constantin,” Etudes d’histoire juridique offerts a P.-F. Girard (Paris, 1913) 263ff.; Wilhelm Schubart, Justinian und Theodora (Munich, 1943), pp. 245–48; Henrik Zilliacus, Untersuchungen zu den abstraklen Anredenformen und Hoflichkeitslisten im Griechischen,

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The “sociopolitical” explanation of Byzantine rhetoric was challenged by Leslie S. B. MacCoull, who devoted a book to a midsixth-century bilingual Egyptian jurist and poet, Dioscorus of Aprodito.82 On the one hand, according to MacCoull, “the growing rhetorisation of legal acts reflected a combination of the classical training required by society and the permeation of language by scriptural and patristic echoes.”83 As we have seen, similar reasons (the rhetorical education of the scribes and the influence of epistolary theory) were used to explain the rise of rhetoric much earlier, in the second century C.E. On the other hand, MacCoull looked to the Coptic identity of Dioscorus to grasp the features of his style. In his words, “to understand Dioscorus’s world, one must become, if only for a moment, that old-fashioned believer in the Zeitgeist . . .”84 “The happy unity of classical and Christian imagery in his documentary phraseology and in his poems testifies to the high level of civilization attained by the Coptic leisured class during its period of optimum development.”85 Yet there was “a kind of anti-intellectualism, a devaluing of learning in Coptic culture.”86 Beneath the surface of Dioscorus’s Greek lies Coptic syntax fraught with a Coptic mentality. In the end, “the essence remains hard to formulate.”87 “In Coptic letters we see at work the mind of the Society Dioscorus embodied. In the tones of feeling that pervade Coptic culture as it flourished from the mid-fourth to the mid-seventh century, and even a little after, we sense why it was a culture founded on and structured around praise.”88 This impressionistic approach leaves us with uncertainty. It is hardly possible to see a historical phenomenon without comparing it to a previous state of events. To recognize the style (as well as its major attributes) we need to recognize stylistic changes. What is the difference between the style of Dioscorus and the style of Aurelius

Societas scientiarum fennica. Commentationes humanarum litterarum, Bd. 15, Hft. 3 (1949); idem, “Zum Stil und Wortschatz der byzantinischen Urkunden und Briefe,” in Akten des VIII. Internationaler Kongresses fur Papyrologie (Vienna, 1956), pp. 157–165. 82 Leslie S. B. MacCoull, Dioscorus of Aphrodito, His Work and His World (Berkeley, etc., 1988). 83 Ibid., pp. 16–17. 84 Ibid., p. 147. 85 Ibid., p. 152. 86 Ibid., p. 15. 87 Ibid., p. 158. 88 Ibid., p. 159.

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Isidoros? How did mentality alter from the fourth to the fifth/sixth centuries C.E.? MacCoull totally rejected “empty servility” as characteristic of Dioscorus’s rhetoric.89 Yet in his words Coptic culture was “a culture founded and structured around praise.” True, in proems and conclusions, the petitioner addresses the official in a humble way, crawling before him; but the body of the petition demonstrates not the author’s servility but his courage and honesty. What, then, did Egyptian peasants complain about in the Roman period? They complained about abuses, insults and so on. The offenders were the same land tillers and petty officials (although they were called dynatoi ). In the Byzantine epoch the offenders are important officials and large landowners, whose crimes, often extraordinary and involving a large number of victims, make the blood curdle. Petitions like these have been found, for example, in the archive of Dioscorus. Two generations of villagers fought against the pagarchs, the nome’s chief financial officials. Their basic aim was to obtain autopragia, the right to collect taxes independently (bypassing the pagarch) and to hand them over directly to the treasury. Officially the villagers had that right. Nonetheless, the pagarch Julian and his successor, Menas, persisted in their attempts to subject the villagers to their authority. They extorted money, captured cattle, threw people into prison, tortured them, attacked the village with a group of armed men, and raped women. One Sarapammon, a man with the rank of illustris, extracts gold from the Aphrodito inhabitants and organizes the assassination of two persons.90 This is recorded not in a petition but in a report of court proceedings; yet plaintiffs’ speeches are identical to petitions. Citizens of the town of Antaeopolis protest against Florentios, a military chief or a soldier, using the coarsest language, comparing, for instance, his speeches with the nighttime radiance of manure.91 A woman accuses a certain landowner, Senouthes, saying that he killed her husband, took away her child, threw her and her family into prison, and tortured her with the sole aim of forcing her to become his mistress.92 Lastly, in the highest manifestation of courage and 89 90 91 92

Ibid., p. 151. P. Mich. XIII 660–61. P. Cair. Masp. I 67009.10 ff. P. Cair. Masp. I 67005.

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honesty, the petitioners call their village, their town, and even their province (the Thebaid) “wretched.”93 For four hundred years imperial propaganda insisted on the high living standards and prosperity in Egypt; and the petitions of the first through fourth centuries did not contradict this concept: they just dealt with separate violations of the law. But out of the blue, at the height of “servility” and “Byzantinism,” comes a blunt reference to the “wretched country.” It was not only the Greek scribes of Egypt who were so honest. Back at the turn of the fourth century, Synesius, first a philosopher and then a Christian bishop, publicly declared that Cyrene, a province close to Egypt, was wretched. The texts of Synesius und Dioscorus have many points in common. Both describe the rise of barbarians and officials’ crimes. It would be easy to ascribe the changed tone of the petitions to the horrors of the epoch: when Cyrene was flourishing, nobody called it a desert; when there were no private prisons and no arbitrary rules, there was no need to declare that the Thebaid was a wretched country. Those petitions, however, were official documents addressed to the authorities, just like Synesius’ speeches. This means that the authorities permitted the denunciation of high officials and the depiction of the Empire in grim colors. No longer were misfortunes extraordinary violations of the norm. What was needed was a way of expressing a situation that would not offend the feelings of high authorities. This is where rhetoric with its rationalism came into play. The old methods of comprehension, such as social-moral typifying and classifying, were of no use, for the world appropriate to such typification and classification had disappeared. New methods appeared: analogy (historical-literary typification) and allegory. Officials are identified with the barbarians and barbarian arrivals and raids.94 The residents of Antaeopolis compare the actions of the military chief Florentios with the raids of Blemmyes, who once captured and robbed the town.95 The herdsmen of the village of Phthla every year reap the crop in Dioscorus’ fields, just like Midianites who every year took away the harvest grown by the children of Israel.96 One Kollouthos is identified with

93 94 95 96

P. P. P. P.

Cair. Cair. Cair. Cair.

Masp. Masp. Masp. Masp.

I I I I

67004.3; 67005.5–6; 67009.12; III 67279.8–10. 67002 II.24, III.3; III 67283.5; P. Lond. V 1674.22. 67009 V.16ff. 670002 I.18.

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Jeroboam. Just like Jeroboam, who rebelled against the House of David and made two calves of gold, Kollouthos, in conspiracy with the Blemmyes, became a pagan again and took the evil road of “autonomy.”97 And finally, just like sinners in hell awaiting the advent of Christ, the petitioners await the favors of the Duke of the Thebaid.98 The same is true for the future. For the petitioner, the historic terminus is the advent ( parousia) of the Duke of the Thebaid or some other official. The elders of the village of Omboi openly declare to the Duke that they have tied their “hope and a path to salvation” to his “glorious advent,” for “if not for Your Excellency, the business would not be saved and redeemed.”99 His Excellency, Fl. Marianos, is declared a savior and redeemer. It is clear why the elders dared to call the province entrusted to Marianos a “wretched country.” This is simply a comparison to the world before the arrival of Christ. The past is also involved in the analogies. Eden, paradise on Earth, existed in the past. Similarly, the ancestors of the Aphrodito residents “to please God lived in great wealth and diligently and humbly paid the royal taxes due from them.”100 This “noble and free life” was disturbed by those who “envied it.” The pagarchs strove to “enslave us and, naturally, did so. . . . They prevented us from getting the necessary food. . . . Heavily opressed, we were forced to look for work from that time on.”101 The lost paradise would in the end return, so that “all the people could live in peace and humbly bear the holy taxes,”102 “have cattle, implements and all the wealth,”103 “be diligent in performing . . . common duties, and live in calmness, humbly praying to God, the guard of salvation and well-being.”104 What was happening in Aphrodito, Omboi, Antaeopolis and the whole of the Thebaid was a typical peripeteia, a dramatic reversal, “a change of the kind described from one state of things within the play to its opposite.”105 The notary from Aphrodito, Dioscorus son of Apollos, himself used the term peripeteia twice.106 And was it not 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106

P. Cair. Masp. I 67004.11–12. P. Cair. Masp. I 67002 I.2; 67009 V.3–4; P. Lond. V 1675.6. P. Cair. Masp. I 67004.3–5. P. Cair. Masp. I 67002 III.4–8; 67019.1–6. P. Lond. V 1674.15–21. P. Cair. Masp. I 67019.26–27; 67002 111.23. P. Cair. Masp. III 67283.7–18, 14. P. Cair. Masp. I 67004.19–20. Aristotle, Poet. 1452a22. P. Cair. Masp. I 67002,1.7–8; 67009.7–9.

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peripeteia that was taking place throughout the entire Byzantine Empire in the fifth to seventh centuries? Back in his day Aristotle had written that “the most powerful element of attraction in tragedy, the Peripeties and Discoveries, are the parts of the plot” which are “the life and soul . . . of tragedy . . . and the characters come second.”107 But the method of classifying social-moral types by reference to vices and virtues was unsuitable for describing this peripety of the late Empire. Therefore, in late antiquity, social-moral typology (moderate/strong) was replaced by historical-literary typology or analogy (sometime/now), which better suited the contemporary historical perception of the world. Social-moral types, characters, were replaced by roles. Types are stable, always the same. The virtuous poor man is always poor and virtuous. The arrogant rich man is always rich and arrogant. In contrast, roles are changeable. A repentant whore traverses a path from resplendence to poverty and from vice to virtue. Here is the essence of peripety. The most popular role in the fifth to seventh centuries was the role of martyr. The experience of Christ had already shown the possibility of martyrdom for a little man. This experience, however, found no reflection in the consciousness of the Egyptian petitioners of the second to fourth centuries. We find descriptions of pangs and passions only in the documentary papyri of the fifth to seventh centuries. Either before the Byzantine epoch a little man had had no chance of being crucified, or it was not customary to write about such things. It was only six centuries after Jesus’ crucifixion that scribes ventured to identify with him the ordinary inhabitants of the Thebaid. Note, for example, the description in court by a woman named Maria of her husband’s murder, committed on the instructions of the soldier Menas and the illustrious Sarapammon: The kephalaiotai of my village Aphrodito together with others who are in its service, after having arrested my husband Heraclius, put him in the watch-house of my village, Aphrodito, and after having taken wine to the same watch-house they drank with him, and when the evening had come they beat my same husband Heraclius and killed him with their swords and thereafter they gave his remains to the fire and they did this to him on the eighth of the month Phaophi of the past sixth indiction at setting of the sun. Being asked why they murdered my husband they said: “The most illustrious Sarapammon and Menas

107

Aristotle, Poet. 1450a34.

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wrote us to kill him,” and I reserve against them the law suiting me regarding the death of my wretched husband. When Heraclius, my wretched husband, had been killed and his remains had been given to the fire so that they might be burned, they again poured water on the same remains and they threw his bones in a basket and buried them I do not know where. I ask, therefore, that they be given to me so that I can bury them. For concerning just this matter I already approached the most illustrious Sarapammon and it was agreed that they be given to me, but they were not given.108

Analogies are clearly visible through the fabric of this story. Before death, Heraclius is given wine, while Jesus (Matt. 27:34) was given vinegar mingled with gall. Heraclius is killed “when the evening had come,” while Joseph of Arimathea (Matt. 27:57; Mark 15:42) came to fetch the body of Jesus “when the evening had come.” The illustrious Sarapammon is as persistent in his role as the high priest Caiaphas. In court Sarapammon declares: “I did discover that some persons from the village of Aphrodito made a conspiracy and wanted to make the village (?) desolate.”109 But Caiaphas too, concerned with the security of the country and the people, reckoned “that it is expedient for us, that one man should die for the people and the whole nation perish not” ( John 11:49ff.). No doubt, the illustrious Sarapammon identifies himself with Caiaphas unintentionally. He simply enters into the logic of a drama in which the roles are already distributed and the speeches are determined by the epoch’s whole way of thinking. In addition to the Bible, Greek prose romances served as a source of plots and roles. With sinking hearts, many generations of Egyptians read stories of wretched lovers enduring their tragic reversals. Fate separates Leucippe and Cleitophon, Chaereas and Callirhoe. Insidious ravishers try to kill the hero or make a traitor out of him; they try to force the heroine to become their mistress. Up to the fourth century, however, all this remained within the boundaries of literature and seemed unlikely to happen to the reader himself. “Plots” like these are thus not found in Egyptian petitions of the second to fourth centuries. But consider the sixth-century petition of the widow Sophia, written by the same Dioscorus, son of Apollos.110 108 P. Mich. XIII 660.13–19. Further discussion of this case: Leslie S. B. MacCoull, “The Aphrodito Murder Mystery,” Journal of Juristic Papyrology 20 (1990), pp. 103–7. 109 P. Mich. XIII 660.4–5. 110 P. Cair. Masp. I 67005.17–18.

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Sophia’s first husband died, leaving her with a small child. The brothers of the deceased and the village tax-collectors managed to deprive the widow of the inheritance. The poor woman remarried, but her new life did not last long. A certain Senouthes seized her husband and, after mercilessly torturing him, killed him. Senouthes did all this because, according to Sophia, [he wanted] through perfidy to destroy my widowhood and freedom and to outrage my noble feelings. When I refused to yield to his persuasions and his unbridled craving for delights, he threw me into his private prison and ordered me to be beaten with sticks all day through, my legs to be lashed and me to be hung up without mercy.

When reading this petition one clearly hears the voice of the main character of a novel, Leucippe: “Go on, torture me. Bring the wheel. Here are my hands, pull them out. Bring the lashes; here is my back, lash it.”111 Senouthes, naturally, figures as Thersander, a rich and noble citizen of Ephesus. Thersander first tried “to win Leucippe’s love by acting as her slave, but seeing that he failed,”112 he was outraged and used lashes in an attempt to force the woman to submit. In addition, he tried to do away with Cleitophon, Leucippe’s beloved, but here he was much less successful than the real character Senouthes. Let us consider what Sophia wants. In fact the whole story about the death of her first husband and the intrigues of his relatives, about the love and violence of Senouthes, is largely rhetorical ornamentation designed to touch the heart of the Duke of the Thebaid. It is clear that Sophia does not demand either the punishment of the offender and murderer or the return of her first inheritance. All she wants is her small son and the inheritance left her by her second husband. Let us compare Sophia’s petition with a similar petition of an earlier period. In 300–301 a certain Aurelia Serenilla, daughter of an ex-gymnasiarch, petitioned the prefect for protection against tax-collectors. Apparently, some persons who had tried to keep her out of her inheritance and had been ordered to make restitution were now trying to make her liable for taxes on property for the period in which she had not enjoyed the income. The petition was written when Serenilla was in prison for debts. Instead of heart-rending details about tortures and hardships of prison life, Serenilla delivers

111 112

Achilles Tat. VI, 21. Ibid. VI, 20.

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the following deliberation: “It was not right that on top of those accidents that have occurred, contrary to my hopes, as a result of my own destiny, someone should burden me with rough treatment.”113 Serenilla’s petition is reminiscent of a philosophical treatise, Sophia’s of a novel. There is another point of contrast. In all epochs women complained about the debauchery and arrogance of their husbands, but the style of the petitions in which they did so changed radically. In 200–201 a certain Heraclea, in her petition to the centurion Gallus, wrote: Several years ago, my lord, I was united in marriage to Hermes son of . . ., of the village of Theogonis, during the lifetime of my parents, and brought him on (the occasion of ) the marriage, in accordance with the contract made between us, a dowry amounting to 5000 drachmae. I have also had two children by him and have no thought of another man (?). But he after my parents’ death carried off all that was left me by them, and took it to his house at Theogonis and is using it up . . .114

Here we do not find bloody reversals or unsavory details or violent passions. These kinds of things were introduced by a new epoch, the Byzantine. Note, for example, the following petition from the late fourth to early fifth centuries: From Aurelia Attiaena from the city of the Oxyrhynchites. A certain Paul, coming from the same city, behaving recklessly carried me off by force and compulsion and cohabitated with me in marriage . . . leaving me with my infant daughter, too, . . . he cohabitated with another woman and left me bereft. After some time again he beguiled (me) through presbyters until I should again take him into our house, agreeing in writing that the marriage was abiding and that if he wished to indulge in the same vile behavior he would forfeit two ounces of gold, and his father stood written surety for him. I took him into our house, and he tried to behave in a way that was worse than his first misdeeds, scorning my orphan state, not only in that he ravaged my house but when soldiers were billeted in my house he robbed them and fled, and I endured insults and punishments to within an inch of my life. So taking care lest I again run such risks on account of him, I sent him through the tabularius a deed of divorce through the tabularius civitatis in accordance with imperial law. Once more behaving recklessly, 113

P. Oxy. XLVI 3302. P. Tebt. II 334.4–12. P. Oxy. II 281.6–23, a century and a half earlier, is in much the same vein. 114

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chapter one and having his woman in his house, he brought with him a crowd of lawless men and carried me off and shut me up in his house for (not?) a few days. When I became pregnant, he abandoned me once more and cohabitated with his same so-called wife and now tells me he will stir up malice against me.115

According to the editor’s introduction (p. 202), “the details of the case are reminiscent of sensational journalism.” From an ancient point of view, however, they are more like Greek prose romance with its endless abductions, violence, and dramatic reversals. Also characteristic of the Greek novel is the theme of riot, of attack by robbers. One finds a riot described, according to the editors, “in . . . highflown language, apparently modelled on that of the romance-writers,”116 in a Byzantine letter of the late fifth century: I still see in imagination the riots and madness at Lycopolis, still I dream of myriad attacking missile-throwings of the instruments of pillage, and like one in misfortune or under sentence I feel my head dazed, my reasoning faculties confused and my understanding disordered. And while my soul is tempest-tossed and surging amid dangers, they (i.e., the sights I have seen) float before my eyes: myself I see long lost, even though against expectation I survive, my wife, a free woman, even though fortune favors us, still besieged, and my little gently nurtured daughter, saved indeed (?), but by reason of the perils that beset her in woe and lamentation.117

Similar letters of the previous epoch emphasized not the fairytalenarrative but the ethical side of the matter. For instance in the third century a certain Arei wrote to his parents about the internecine wars in Alexandria: “Things have happened the like of which haven’t happened before. Now it’s cannibalism, not war . . .”118 Many plots of petitions are based on stories—for instance, the story about the son of rich and noble parents who became poor. Given below is an example of such a story from a sixth-century petition: I inform your Excellency that my father (God rest his soul), when he was still alive, abandoned me, then a little child, and preferred the

115 P. Oxy. L 3581.1–21. Bagnall (op. cit., p. 194, n. 78) generally agrees with the dating based on the handwriting (fourth or fifth century). To my mind, the style of this document is different from the style of petitions of the second to fourth centuries. Rather it belongs to the fifth to sixth century’s Byzantine rhetoric. 116 P. Oxy. XVI 1873 intro. (p. 64). 117 Lines 1–10. Cf. SB IV 7436, fourth century (reports about peasant riots). 118 P. Oxy. XLII 3065.7–9; cf. P. Ross. Georg. III 1.

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life of a monk to the life of the Antaeopolite defensor. He sent me away from Antaeopolis with few things to my uncle from the mother’s side. Later on, when I grew up, my uncle became my father-in-law, for he married me to his daughter, and gave me, as is customary, some property according to a dowry contract, for he was a kind man. Some time later, by cession, this property was separated together with the incomes it brought; so I went to my house where I lived with my uncle’s daughter. My father-in-law himself, whose name is Kollouthos, son of Victor Ision, became gravely ill with gout fever, which left him half-dead and completely helpless; together with his servants he was in need of daily bread, for he had no person to supervise his meager property. The malice and intrigues of tax-collectors increased his discomfort and fever, and he craved for death before his time, for everywhere he saw oppression both for his suffering body and for his soul suffering from hunger and thirst. The situation was aggravated by the tax-payment difficulties. Realizing that his children would be penniless, finally he was forced to give the greater part of his property to Peter, illustrious and glorious scriniarius . . .119

Then, in a few words, the petitioner describes the gist of the matter: the illustrious Peter attempted to shift the responsibility for the property taxes to the petitioner as incumbent on the dowry of his wife. Even in the dry style of fifth to seventh century contracts one can come across romantic narrations, hitherto an impossibility. A contract on the division of an inheritance is written in the form of an autobiographical narrative of a mother, her apology: Before Apamias, my happy husband and most blessed father of you, Maria, my sweetest daughter born of him, passed away, he left you, the aforementioned Maria, and Ann, Phoibammon and Eucharistia, your sisters and brothers from both parents. And I worked with diligence day and night . . .120

A husband addresses his wife in a divorce paper: Earlier, I was joined to you in marriage and for a life in common based on worthy expectations and begetting children, expecting to complete with you a peaceful, honorable union; but from enemies of unknown origin, from some jealous base demon, a most stubborn unkindliness arose between us both and compelled us to be separated from one another from our common union and no longer continuously to live together with one another.121 119

P. Lond. V 1676.1–31, 556–573 C.E. P. Cair. Masp. II 67156.9–11, 570 C.E. 121 P. Cair. Masp. II 67153.8–15, 566 C.E. See also P. Cair. Masp. 67154 R. 7–11; P.Flor. I 9.10–15, 597 C.E. 120

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Here too, we witness a little novel, a little myth. But neither the novel, the Bible nor the lives of saints sufficed for a Byzantine to identify himself, especially if the Byzantine was as well-educated in poetry as Dioscorus, the son of Apollos. Dioscorus is the author of a masterpiece, a petition in verse. In this petition he obviously compares himself to Odysseus and other epic figures.122 Now we approach the most difficult point of our argument. The majority of petitions mentioned above were written for himself and his clients by Dioscorus, a notary and prolific writer.123 Is it possible to draw any conclusions from a body of material that might be idiosyncratic? Does not viewing the Egyptians’ way of thinking through the prism of Dioscorus’ writings make it seem too literary? To refute this accusation it is necessary to demonstrate that Dioscorus is characteristic of his place and time. Is it by chance that he combined in himself a passion for writing verses, compiling dictionaries, and learning the law, while living in such a small Egyptian town? Probably not, for according to Jean Maspero, “in the Byzantine period the whole of Egypt, and especially the Thebaid, were the location of a curious literary Renaissance.”124 In the fifth century such prominent literary figures as Nonnus, Olympiodorus, Claudianus and many others worked there. According to Sergey S. Averintsev, it was only at the end of the Roman epoch that Egypt came to be deeply Hellenized.125 The flourishing of poetry replaced the flourishing of philosophical and theological prose. In the first to fourth centuries this prose in Egypt was written by such persons as Philo Judaeus, Ammonius Saccas, Plotinus, Clement of Alexandria and Origen. So it is not by chance that Roman petitions mostly resemble treatises, while Byzantine petitions resemble novels or poems. It was not only in Egypt that

122

P. Cair. Masp. I 67117.19–28. See on Dioscorus: Jean Maspero, “Un dernier poete grec d’Égypte, Dioscore fils d’Apollos,” Revue des études grecques 24 (1911): 426–81; Harold I. Bell, “An Egyptian Village in the Age of Justinian,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 64 (1944): 21–36; Barry Baldwin, “Dioscorus of Aphrodito and the Circus Factions,” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 42 (1981): 285–86; idem, “Dioscorus of Aphrodito: the Worst Poet of Antiquity?” Atti di XVII Congresso Internazionale di Papirologia (Naples, 1984). Vol. 2, pp. 327–31; Leslie S. B. MacCoull, Dioscorus of Aphrodito. 124 Maspero, op. cit., p. 458. 125 Sergey S. Averintsev, Poetic Features of Early Byzantine Literature (Moscow, 1971), pp. 134–35. 123

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the flourishing of poetry replaced the flourishing of philosophical and theological prose. At the same time in Jewish Palestine, sermons developed greatly and liturgical poetry ( piyyut) was born. Poeticalmythical-historical sensitivity replaced the abstract moral stance of the previous age.126 Romantic cavils by Dioscorus are not a unique phenomenon, they are just an imitation of more important writers. The notary’s archives contain a petition to the riparius (police official) of the village of Phenebootis of the Panopolite Nome from Horapollon.127 This Horapollon is none other than the famous author of a treatise on hieroglyphs, professor of the Museum, son and grandson of philosophers. He complains against his wife, the daughter of his uncle (also a philosopher), who has run away with a man whose name Horapollon does not know. The gist of the matter concerns the claims on property by the Alexandrian professor, on the one hand, and his runaway wife and former father-in-law, on the other. The petitioner of the Roman epoch would have limited himself to these matters, after adding a couple of maxims on the beneficial role of law. But as a true Byzantine, Horapollon writes an entire novel, the plot of which very much resembles those of Apuleius with their perfidious wives and deceived husbands. The novel’s setup anticipates that of Dioscorus’ petitions: there is, to start with, a golden age (blissful existence in the Mouseion, ideal relations and scientific studies by relatives), then a fall, then hopes for salvation. The philosopher is not at all ashamed to publicize the unsavory details of his private life. Just as in their time Cicero and Pliny the Younger published their correspondence, now the petition is designed to be published and imitated. So it is not really surprising that the style of Dioscorus’ petitions is so literary. What he did was to imitate and revise the romantic model. His archives contain examples of letters (real examples, and books of letters with their dry letter models).128 In fact, the examples of letters and the petition by Horapollon constituted one manuscript, one

126 In the words of Oded Irshai, this happened because “the cultural center of gravity shifted over time from the intellectual elite of the academy to the ‘masses’ in the synagogues.” See Irshai, “Confronting a Christian Empire: Jewish Culture in the World of Byzantium,” in Cultures of the Jews: A New History ed. David Biale (New York, 2002), p. 182. 127 P. Cair. Masp. III 67295, I–II, about 425 C.E. 128 P. Cair. Masp. III 67295.

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anthology. Thus the petition, alongside the letter, had become a literary genre in its own right. Dioscorus therefore approached petitions as literature. In sending a petition to the Duke on behalf of Aphrodito’s residents, he hoped that the Duke would be able “fully to comprehend the fine style and the reversal (perip°teian), up to the highest comprehension.”129 In his other masterpiece, Dioscorus put the following words in the mouths of Antaeopolis residents: “When for the first time we appeared before your high fear-arousing court, we, fearful of your grandeur, failed to express the reversal (tØn perip°teian).”130 The reversal ( peripeteia) requires fine apprehension and a professional, highly artistic rendering. Thanks to reversal the petitionary style became very complicated. The petitioner of the Roman epoch identifies himself with a social-moral type and bases his case on a stable situation. A Byzantine sees in himself an allegorical character from an epic or a drama. In the history of his native village he sees a repetition of the history of humankind. Thus, Dimitry S. Likhachev writes: This historicism of consciousness has stylistic points of contact with a new literary manner. Nothing is so low-governed that it cannot be expressed in words: time is elusive. It can be partially reproduced only through a flow of speech, through a dynamic and eloquent style, the abundance of synonyms, overtones of sense, associative rows created by means of intertwining words, and sometimes through intentionally incomprehensible but deeply emotional heaps of words.131

Although Likhachev is referring to quite another literature and quite another time (the second South-Slavonic influence of the fourteenth to fifteenth centuries), the formal signs of Russian-type intertwining words (synonyms, emotional character, eloquence, abstract forms) practically coincide with the formal signs of the fifth to seventh century Greek rhetoric discussed in the first part of this article. I have pointed to important elements that coincide: the historic character of perception, associativeness, the striving to rise above everyday cares and to see the macrocosm behind the microcosm—the eternal

129

P. Cair. Masp. I 67002 1.7–8. P. Cair. Masp. I 67009.7–9. 131 Dimitry S. Likhachev, Selected Works in Three Volumes (Leningrad, 1987). Vol. 1, p. 145. 130

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sense of events.132 One can discern the crucified Jesus in the guiltlessly killed resident of Aphrodito, Jeroboam in the rioter Kollouthos, Midianites in the herdsmen of the village of Phthla. In his private life the Byzantine finds either the passions and deeds of a saint or the adventures of a hero in a romantic novel. This method of identification and allegory makes it possible for a man to elevate himself above his former level and to stand firmly grounded just when the ground is slipping from under his feet. The place of the totem was thus taken by a literary or biblical character, and the place of myth by a historical or romantic plot, the life of a saint, or the entire history of creation from Eden to the end of the world. The basic difference in the primeval way of thinking lay in the rational reflective approach. It could not be otherwise. The style of the fifth to seventh centuries is still rhetorical. Quite consciously and rationally, Dioscorus was building up his associative rows, his analogies and allegories. The professional attitude to the peripeteia (peripety) has been mentioned above. An associative way of thinking was substituted for strict logic and was accompanied by a sober rationalism. Ultimately, this path led to an impasse. After petitions in verse, there was nowhere else to go. In an attempt to embrace the entire changing world and to reflect the new way of thinking, the style had become vastly complicated. In this development the figure of Dioscorus is deeply symbolic. Also symbolic are the Panhellenia, groups of philosophers and amateurs who became extremely widespread in Egypt and in other provinces. Numerous semi-literate scribes, brought up on rhetorical clichés and topoi in vulgar Greek philosophy, were replaced by a small group of professional writers. The situation changed radically following a change in the class composition of Egyptian society. The scribes of the second to fourth centuries were backed by a powerful stratum of municipal and village rich. In the 5th to 7th century this stratum suffered from severe blows of fate. For instance, the town of Aphroditopolis was reduced to the rank of a village, Aphrodito. We have already mentioned the resolute struggle of the villagers against the pagarchs. The struggle was waged by the “best houses” in the village, the former municipal elite. Although these

132

Ibid. Vol. 1, p. 639; Vol. 2, p. 315.

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people called themselves “wretched smallholders,” they were far from being really poor and could afford to travel to Constantinople to hand in petitions.133 Probably, the notary Dioscorus and the like wrote their clerkly masterpieces for such people. Now what about ordinary people? Did their mentality change over the centuries, and if so, how? We would more likely find the answer to this question in the Coptic sources than in the Greek. Nevertheless, the following two Greek petitions, which are out of the ordinary, contain some suggestive hints. The first petition, P. Oxy. I 131 (fifth to sixth centuries), was submitted by a certain Sousneus. The document reads: When my father was alive, he summoned me and my brothers and sisters and said, “One of you shall possess the land of your mother . . . while the others get their livelihood from my land;” and he raised up David, my younger brother, and assigned to him the estate of my mother. And when he was on the point of death my father ordered David to be given half an aroura out of his own land, saying that was enough for him since he had his mother’s estate. And lo, it is today three years since he died. Immediately after his death I went to Abraham, the overseer of Claudianus, and he brought the witnesses who were appointed to act for my father, that is, Julius the elder and Apollos. And he caused everything to be done in accordance with the word of my father; and year by year I sowed my land and David my brother sowed the land of my mother and his own half-aroura. But today Abraham suborned (?) by this David lay in wait for me, and said that my brother must have for himself my mother’s land and the half-aroura which my father gave him, and that all that my father left me must be divided again between himself and me.

Here we have absolutely no rhetoric. Instead, this is a detailed story with the kind of plot that is also characteristic of the rhetorical petitions of the Byzantine epoch. As in the rhetorical petitions, here too biblical characters and plots can be easily discerned. The “elevation” of the younger brother resembles the elevation of Joseph, whom Jacob loved more than all his children, because he was the son of his old age (Gen. 27.3), as well as the elevation of Jacob himself over Esau, of Isaac over Ismael, of Abel over Cain and Ephraim over Manasseh. The petitioner speaks about the elevation of his younger brother as something natural, in a serious and solemn way. The petition, however,

133 J. G. Keenan, “Aurelius Apollos and the Aphrodite Village Elite,” Atti del XVII Congresso Internazionale di Papirologia (Naples, 1984). Vol. 3, pp. 957–63.

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has been written by the elder brother, while David is obviously a negative character. If the petition had been written by Dioscorus, he would from the very beginning have described David as a nasty character. In such a way the unknown scribe who wrote the petition for Aurelia Attiaena (see above) began by describing her husband as a rapist who even married her by abduction. Peculiar to rhetoric is the rigid moral orientation, the classification of virtues and vices. But the search for the same in the Pentateuch would be in vain. Is Esau good or bad? Was Jacob right in refusing to give him his blessing? For a rhetorician it would have served as a ground for analyzing the behavior of Jacob and Esau and for appraising it. The second petition, P. Oxy. XXVII 2479, is technically not a petition at all. It is the private letter of a serf to his master. Nonetheless, in its content and style it is a typical petition written by a professional. The literary merits of the document are on a par with the masterpieces of Dioscorus and Horapollon. It is sufficient to read only the introduction to establish this point. What makes one cautious is a certain freedom of analogy: The world rings with the fame of your love for the poor and Jesus Christ, making many kneel before you asking for justice and various favours. I, colonus adscripticius of your glorious authority, also kneel before you in tears and testify that three years ago my cattle perished, and I abandoned land-tilling three years ago, as I have already said, and went to a foreign land.

The fugitive colonus refers to himself as to Abraham who “went down to Egypt” (Gen. 12:10) or to Isaac, who “went into Gerar” (Gen. 16:1) because there “was a famine in the land.” There is not an ounce of regret, not a word about renouncing treachery, although the theme of treachery and repentance is the most popular one in the Egyptian letters of the previous epoch (as well as in the New Testament). For instance, in a letter-petition to the well-known Abinnaeus (P. Abinn. 36) was written in the middle of the fourth century: “I am your slave again and won’t desert you as before” (lines 20–21). Now, in the sixth century, violent emotions and moral assessments are replaced by a narration that borrows whole paragraphs from the Bible. Subsequently, the serf in P. Oxy. 2479 asks to be returned to his farm “so that I can work this land and feed my little children.” Then the request changes into a complaint: the manager demands service and threatens to confiscate property by way of payment. “But how, my Lord, can I pay duty from the field which I did not sow?

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Only those who sow can pay,” reasons the colonus. Here again we can discern some analogies and allegories (“and Pharaoh commanded . . . saying, ye shall no more give the people straw to make bricks as heretofore . . . and the tale of the bricks, which they make heretofore, ye shall lay upon them; ye shall not diminish ought thereof ” (Exod. 5:6–8). However, these analogies, if accurately identified, are not direct and conscious. The main thing here is the same biblical intonation. The proverb that was rather fearlessly cited by the colonus to his master was required not for its moral content (of which there is, in fact, none) but as an example of typical Eastern wisdom. Thus it seems that the ways of thinking of the masses and the elite went two different ways. The elite tried to squeeze the increasingly illogical world into the Procrustean bed of antique rhetoric. As a result the rhetorical style became deformed and complicated. The popular masses returned to the ancient Egyptian and Bible fairy-tale style, to the mythological way of thinking. They renounced rhetoric, as well as what they had inherited from antiquity, for the sake of kinship with the authors of the “One Thousand and One Nights.” *

*

*

There is striking compatibility between the data of the papyri and the theory of Jacob Neusner. In both cases we have a segmental, chronological scheme. Indeed within three periods (third century B.C.E. to first century C.E., second to fourth century C.E., and fifth to seventh C.E.) we may see “changelessness” in style and mentality. We may also notice “quantum leaps” from one period to the next. Typification characterized both the work of the framers of the Mishna and the style of the Second Sophistic. The deification of the Law in the papyri resembles the Mishnah’s vast labor of taxonomy. The taxonomic abstractions did represent social reality, though in social reality “the strong” and “the moderate” may have belonged to the same strata. Typifying the conflicts, patterns of behavior, moral types, and rules of the Law was the ultimate expression of social awareness in the second to fourth centuries. In contrast, both the Mishnah’s heirs and the scribes of the fifth to seventh centuries focused their attention on the events of contemporary history, which they interpreted in the light of the past by way of analogy (historical typology). Novelistic plots and models could be found in the papyri of this later period as well as in Palestinian Talmud and Leviticus Rabbah.

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While Byzantine petitions and rabbinic literature of the Byzantine age show historicism of consciousness, the Mishnah and the petitions of the Second Sophistic style look deeply ahistorical. That ahistorical, even anti-historical stance was immanent in popular teachings of the Early Roman Empire, first of all in stoicism. Marc Aurelius expressed it best of all. In his Meditations the emperorphilosopher wrote: “He who has seen present things has seen all, both everything which has taken place from all eternity and everything which will be for time without end; for all things are of one kin and of one form” (VI, 37:1).134 “As it happens to thee in the amphitheatre and such places, that the continual sight of the same things and the uniformity make the spectacle wearisome, so it is in the whole of life; for all things above, below, are the same and from the same. How long then?” (VI, 46:1).135 “Consider, for example, the times of Vespasian. Thou wilt see all these things, people marrying, bringing up children, sick, dying, warring, feasting, trafficking, cultivating the ground, flattering, obstinately arrogant, suspecting, plotting, wishing for some to die, grumbling about the present, loving, heaping up treasure, desiring counsulship, kingly power. Well then, that life of these people no longer exists at all. Again, remove to the times of Trajan. Again, all is the same. Their life too is gone. In like manner view also the other epochs of time and of whole nations, and see how many after great efforts soon fell and were resolved into the elements. But chiefly thou shouldst think of those whom thou hast thyself known distracting themselves about idle things, neglecting to do what was in accordance with their proper constitution, and to hold firmly to this and to be content with it” (IV, 32:1–2).136 What does matter, if history matters not? “Thoughts just, and acts social, and words which never lie . . .” (IV, 33:1).137 Or, in the words of petitions, be modest and meek, do not despise these little ones, fear the law and avoid violence. Virtues and vices have nothing to do with specific events or periods of time. Therefore, since the emperor “had an inclination to philosophy,” he “did not waste . . . time on writers of histories (suggrafåw)” (I, 17:9).138

134 135 136 137 138

Marc Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Ibid.,

Aurelius, Meditations. Trans. G. Long (New York, 1991), p. 57. p. 59. p. 35. p. 36. p. 16.

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Of course, there was no collapse of historiography in Greco-Roman culture comparable to the total disappearance of Jewish historical writing. Yet the tendency was there. Philosophy of History became Philosophy against History. This persisted until Eusebius and Augustine anew created Philosophy of History in the wake of great events. That philosophy actually derived from the Jewish historical-typological vision of the Second Temple period (see chapter 4). With Christianization of the Empire and the fall of Rome the age of stagnation was over. History proved to be alive.

CHAPTER TWO

LAUGHTER, FANTASY, AND EROTICISM: FROM THE SCROLL OF ESTHER TO ESTHER MIDRASH

A quantum leap from the Mishnah to the Talmud would be difficult to detect. After all, both the Mishnah and the Talmud belong to the subject area of “Early Rabbinic Literature.” Much easier to recognize is the quantum leap from Second Temple to Talmudic literature. This entailed great change, including the collapse of old genres and styles, and even the transformation of literary languages. In short, a full-scale literary revolution occurred. Even the sages themselves recognized stylistic innovations “from the Bible to the Mishnah.” In the words of Sh. Talmon, “rabbinic tradition considered the category of biblical books to be totally different in tenor from the works of the sages. They were distinguished from each other by the distinct ‘language’ in which they are severally clothed: ‘the language of Torah (i.e., the books of the Bible) is one matter; the language of the (teaching of the) sages is another matter’ (B. A.Z. 58b; B. Men. 65a). In this context the term ‘language’ should not be taken to connote only the linguistic medium in which one or the other complex of writings was cast. Its meaning also extends to the terminology in which they were couched, to style and conceptual content. In short, the above pronouncement declares the biblical literature in its totality to be essentially different from the rabbinic writings.”1 How different? Where is the stylistic border between the Scripture and Aggadah? Y. Heinemann put this question in the last chapter of his Methods of Aggadah.2 As a key stylistic category of aggadic literature, he identified skhok (laughter, play). The rabbis themselves spoke about the laughing (or playful) face of Aggadah, distinguishing

1 Shemaryahu Talmon, “Between the Bible and the Mishnah: Qumran from Within,” in Jewish Civilization in the Hellenistic-Roman Period (Philadelphia, 1991), p. 230. Talmon refers to the works of Jacob Neusner “for the style and formulation of mishnaic legal literature.” 2 Yitzhak Heinemann, The Methods of Aggadah [Hebrew], 3d ed. (Givatayyim, 1970), pp. 165–95.

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it from the angry face of the Scripture, the neutral face of Mishnah, and the friendly face of Talmud.3 According to Heinemann, it is not the case that all Aggadah was comic, or that there was no laughter in the Scripture (there certainly was some, and the rabbis knew it). Yet the rabbis took Aggadah less seriously than the Scripture, and even less seriously than Halakha. Agaddah in the eyes of the rabbis had a right to be playful, though with a blend of seriousness. Hence the abundance of miracles and myths in Agaddah, mixed with a certain amount of rationality. This rationality marks the departure of Aggadah from the genuine organic thinking of the Bible. Yet the departure is not absolute. It is still a long way from aggadic rationalism to the really scientific mode of thinking present in medieval Jewish philosophy (and to a certain degree in Alexandrians). This blend of play and seriousness evidences an intermediate state of mind (between primitive and rationalistic), which is imminent in art. While a “civilized person,” looking for the remnants of harmonious life, escapes into art, the rabbis did not leave paradise. They preserved a harmonious organic vision. Thus in the end of his profound and insightful book Heinemann arrives at a pure reduction. He reduces the specificity of Aggadah to its artistic nature, while a highly artistic form of thought becomes the fruit of an intermediate stage between the organic and scientific (rationalistic) mentalities. At this point Heinemann feels a need to somehow differentiate Aggadah from other forms of art and from play for the sake of play. He suggests that Aggadah was really interpretation for the sake of interpretation, not for educational purposes. However, unlike purely artistic play, this interpretation was the fulfillment of a commandment. God gave Torah to Israel and ordered Israel to interpret it. Heinemann would compare the sages with Aristotle, Plato, and Greek epic, but not with late antique writings. A process that took place in Greek and Roman literature in the first centuries C.E. was not important to him. The changes that happened to Jewish literature in late antiquity seemed to him totally independent of general cultural history. But in fact, the collapse of old genres and the birth of new styles occurred in the first and second centuries C.E. not just in Jewish

3

B. Sophrim 16b; Pesikta de-Rab Kahana, be-Hodesh ha-shlishi 24; Eccl. R. 2:8, 1, etc.

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literature, but in Greek and Roman literatures as well. The rise of the novel as a genre was accompanied by upheaval among the major forms of Greek and Latin epic, lyric and drama, and the codification of old masterpieces. For as Mikhail M. Bakhtin notes, this transformation involved more than just the introduction of the novel into an older stylistic system. In response to this introduction, other genres “become more flexible . . . they become dialogized, permeated with laughter, irony, humor, elements of parody. . . .”4 The novel both joined and helped give rise to “a broad and varied field of ancient literature, one that the ancients themselves expressively labeled spoudogeloion, that is, the field of the seriocomical.”5 Bakhtin characterizes the novel by comparing it with the epic, which has three constitutive features: “the absolute past” serves as its subject, national tradition (not personal experience and the free thought that grows out of it) serves as its source, and an absolute epic distance separates its world from contemporary reality, from the time in which the singer lives. (These characteristics are also fundamental to the other high genres of classical antiquity.) In seriocomical genres everything is different. The subject is portrayed without any distance, on the level of contemporary reality, in a zone of direct and even crude contact with contemporary reality. Even when the past, mythical or real, serves as the subject of representation in these genres, there is no epic distance and contemporary reality provides the point of view. Of special significance with regard to this diminishment of distance is the comical origin of these genres: they derive from often irreverent folklore. For it is precisely laughter that destroys the epic. As it draws an object to itself and makes it familiar, laughter renders this object susceptible to the fearless hands of investigative experiment—both scientific and artistic.6 Northrop Frye describes the birth of the novel in nearly the same terms. While the epic derives from myths, he writes, the novel derives from folktales. The tales are trifling and fantastic—so much so that they were long considered insufficiently serious to be written down. Once recorded, however, they became what Frye calls “secular scripture.” The appearance of this “scripture” in the first centuries C.E.,

4 5 6

Mikhail M. Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays (Austin, 1996), p. 7. Ibid., p. 21. Ibid., pp. 13–23.

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he writes, represented a revolution in literature (though he himself never uses the expression “literary revolution”).7 One of the major features of seriocomical literature was its flourishing (even pornographic) eroticism. This eroticism was explicit in the socalled ideal or erotic novel but even more apparent in the comic romance (e.g., Apuleius, Petronius), which Bakhtin considers the late antique novel par excellence. The comic romance developed out of such collections of anecdotes as Aristides’ Milesiaka (“Milesian Tales”). P. G. Walsh characterizes “Milesian Tales” in the following words: “the dominant type of anecdote reflected the seamier sexual proclivities of humankind, reinforced by spooky accounts of sorcery and witchcraft.” Anecdotes with a sexual theme “have invariably ironical and indeed cynical undertones; their message is that ‘no man’s honesty and no woman’s virtue is unassailable.’ ”8 These characteristics of seriocomic Greco-Roman literature can to a great extent be applied to rabbinic Aggadah. The abundance of folktales (not myths) among aggadic stories is evident. Aggadah combined trifling dialogues and fantastic stories with scholarly discourse. Humor9 and comic familiarization are immanent within rabbinic midrash. In midrash the Bible is read without any distance, on the level of contemporary reality, in a zone of direct and even crude contact. The resulting laughter destroys the distance between the Bible and the actuality of the Roman Empire, delivering the former into the fearless hands of investigative experiment—both scientific and artistic. Finally, rabbinic commentaries on the Bible make for “increased eroticizing of the passage’s narrative,” in the words of David Stern.10 To describe the Talmudic literature as seriocomical we should prove that the aggadic combination of scholarly seriousness with comic and erotic elements was a novelty. At precisely this point we encounter an approach very popular in postmodernist literary critique. 7

Northrop Frye, The Secular Scripture: A Study of the Structure of the Romance (Cambridge, Mass., etc., 1976), pp. 6–17. 8 P. G. Walsh, The Roman Novel: The ‘Satyricon’ of Petronius and the ‘Metamorphoses’ of Apuleius (Cambridge, 1970), p. 11. 9 Cf. Benjamin Engelman, “Announced, Overt and Covert? Humor in the Talmud” [Hebrew] Badad 8 (1999): 5–28. Engelman delivers a formal analysis of humor in the Talmud, starting with a general definition of humor and continuing on to certain forms of humor recognized in literary theory. This synchronistic approach may be very fruitful, yet it cannot take the place of an historical one. 10 David Stern, “The Captive Woman: Hellenization, Greco-Roman Erotic Narrative, and Rabbinic Literature,” Poetics Today 19.1 (1998), p. 110.

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Its practitioners are not looking for stock-in-trade that would have been recognized by the contemporaries of ancient texts as comic features. Instead they perceive specific genres with their own markers and signifiers as eternal entities. According to this approach, satire, farce and comedy are the major elements of the Bible itself. J. William Whedbee, for example, writes about the comedy of Creation (Gen. 1–11), the comedy of Job, and the comedy of Exodus.11 Dan O. Via believes that Pauline texts and the Gospel of Mark contain comedy. To prove this, he uses abstract structuralist tactics. For example, “death and resurrection are the kernel of Paul’s kerygma, and the passion narrative obviously looms large in Mark; death and resurrection are also the generative image which lies at the origin of Greek comedy.”12 Erich S. Gruen finds farce, comedy, and satire in nearly every narrative of Hellenistic Jewish literature, including Greek additions to the Book of Daniel, Greek supplements to the Scroll of Esther, and 3 Maccabees.13 Gruen agrees that “humor, of course, depends on the shared experience of writer and readership.”14 Yet “comedy occurs with too much frequency in Jewish-Hellenistic texts to be the product of modern imagining.”15 Undeniably, as Y. Heinemann noted, Aggadah is not entirely comic, and humor is not entirely absent from the Scripture.16 However, the Scripture (as well as the Iliad ) never plunge into academic seriousness, or soar into playful farcicality. The combination of academic (built on professional research) and farcical (freakish, erotic, fantastic, comic, and grotesque) elements became the core of spoudogeloion. Unlike classical genres (tragedy, lyrics, or comedy), spoudogeloion never drew strict lines between these elements, but mixed them together in philosophical dialogues, works of polymaths, satirical sketches, etc. Yet there remained at the same time clear markers of comic and academic genres. The public was prepared to see comic dialogue or moralistic sermons in the midst of the Satyricon or Lucian’s sketch. We might see a dialogue between God and Abraham in

11

J. William Whedbee, The Bible and the Comic Vision (Cambridge, 1998). Dan O. Via Jr. Kerygma and Comedy in the New Testament: A Structuralist Approach to Hermeneutic (Philadelphia, 1975), p. xi. 13 Erich S. Gruen, Heritage and Hellenism: The Reinvention of Jewish Tradition (Berkeley, etc., 1998), pp. 172–88, 228–34. 14 Ibid., p. 186. 15 Ibid. 16 Y. Heinemann, op. cit., p. 191. 12

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Gen. 18:23–33 as humorous. Yet it would be a problem to prove that the genre of farcical dialogue really existed in the Pentateuch. *

*

*

To see the difference between the “faces,” let us take the Scroll of Esther, one of the latest books of the Bible,17 and compare it to rabbinic commentaries on this book: Palestinian midrash (which came to us in Esther Rabbah18 and other collections of midrashim) and a Babylonian version of the same Palestinian midrash (Masekhet Megillah).19 In the words of J. William Whedbee, “Esther of late has received considerable attention as a comic work of first rank. Several scholars have made the case for a comic interpretation, offering valuable insight into the variety of dynamics that combine to render Esther as a magnificent illustration of the comic vision in ancient Israel.”20 According to Jack M. Sasson, “were it not for its modern pejorative connotation, ‘travesty’ (wherein serious subjects are treated lightly) would suit Esther as a literary category. . . . This is essentially the same literary mode adopted by Hellenistic romances (for example, Apuleius’ Golden Ass), by the medieval fabliaux, and by Voltaire. . . .”21 Interestingly enough, Sasson notes that in the Greek version of the book “the storyteller suppresses all that is comic, delivering his grave lesson in a serious tone; and his stylistic and structural imitation of apocalyptic literature . . . serves his purpose perfectly.”22 Gruen, however, states exactly the opposite. In his opinion, the Greek supplements to the Scroll of Esther are saturated with the sense of “irony and dark humor.” Their authors “exposed the vacuousness and vacillation of the Persian king, they hinted at hypocrisy in the prayers 17 On the dating and provinence of Esther see Michael V. Fox, Character and Ideology in the Book of Esther (South Carolina, 1991), pp. 139–40. Susa, third century B.C.E. seems most likely. 18 On Esther Rabbah see H. L. Stark and G. Stemberger, Inroduction to the Talmud and Midrash (München, 1991), pp. 346–47 and bibliography there. Sections 1–6 of Esther Rabbah originated in Palestine and must be dated to c. 500, while sections 7–10 mix older with more recent material. The combination of the two parts probably took place in the twelfth or thirteenth century. 19 This paragraph is based on my paper “Farce in the Talmud,” The Review of Rabbinic Judaism Ancient, Medieval and Modern 5.1 (Leiden, etc.): 86–92. 20 Ibid., p. 171. 21 Jack M. Sasson, “Esther” in The Literary Guide to the Bible (Cambridge, Mass., 1987), p. 339. See also Samuel Sandmel, The Enjoyment of Scripture: The Law, the Prophets, and the Writings (New York, 1972), p. 36. 22 Ibid.

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of Mordecai and Esther, and they parodied apocalyptic pronouncements in fashioning Mordecai’s dream and its explanations.”23 Kenneth M. Craig applies to the Book of Esther Bakhtin’s ideas. To his mind, the book belongs to seriocomic literature. He seeks “to highlight a folk-carnivalistic base by focusing on the book’s many carnivalesque images: banquets, the open market, the crown, the mask, ‘pregnant death,’ parody, the fool(s), and collective gaiety.”24 I believe that there is a genesis fallacy in this approach. Indeed, there are folk roots in any literary work. The categories of folklore (carnivalesque included) are common to various tribes and times. They can underlie both the plays of Shakespeare and a Chinese medieval novel. Yet specific phenomena of cultural history should not be reduced to folklore categories. Seriocomic genres were born in late antiquity, though their origin may be traced (and was traced by Bakhtin) to the dialogues of Plato. Purim celebrations are certainly based on the Scroll of Esther, which is nevertheless not Purim Spiel. Craig remarks that unlike other megillot, the Scroll of Esther is closely associated with holiday.25 Yet Esther midrash is not the only humorous midrash commenting on the megillot. Lamentation Rabbah (to be read on the Ninth of Ab) is even more comical.26 Yet the humor of Lamentation Rabbah was hardly rooted in the biblical Book of Lamentation. Both Lamentation Rabbah and Esther Rabbah belonged to the seriocomic literature of late antiquity. They derived their comic features foremost from their own time and place. It is a genesis fallacy to confuse a story with later interpretations. Writing about the Scroll of Esther, Whedbee in reality is retelling Esther Midrash. In his opinion, the king demonstrates “an amazing stupidity in his actions. . . . His rebuff from his queen sets off a major crisis which was only caused by the king’s intemperate command to his queen to appear (naked?) before his drunken male guests.”27 Yet the Scroll of Esther sees nothing wrong or foolish in the behavior of

23

Gruen, op. cit., p. 186. Kenneth M. Craig Jr., Reading Esther: A Case of the Literary Carnivalesque (Louisville, Ky., 1995), p. 43. 25 Ibid., p. 157. 26 On the stories about the wise people of Jerusalem see Galit Hasan-Rokem, Web of Life: Folklore and Midrash in Rabbinic Literature (Stanford, 2000), pp. 39–66. I would add that even the most tragic episodes in Lamentation Rabba (like the Fall of Jerusalem and the sufferings of rich women) are fraught with farcicality. 27 Whedbee, op. cit., p. 175. 24

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the king. Further, the command to appear naked before the drunken guests is absent from the Bible. This passage betrays the real source of Whedbee’s description. In the Talmud we may read: “When Israel eat and drink, they begin with words of Torah and praises [of God], but when idolaters eat and drink, they begin with words of foolishness. Thus was the feast of that evildoer. Some said: The Median women were the most beautiful; and some said: The Persian women are the most beautiful. Said Ahasuerus to them: The vessel that I use is neither Median nor Persian, but Chaldean. Do you wish to see her? They said to him: Yes, but only if she is naked.”28 In his dialogue The Judgment of the Goddesses (Dearum judicium 9), Lucian describes a similar beauty contest. A judge (Paris) wants the three goddesses to undress for a thorough examination, so that he can see them naked. Apuleius in Metamorphoses X, 30–31 gives a detailed description of a pantomime on the same subject. The ballerinas who play the goddesses do not undress on the scene, yet Venus comes nearly naked. Both the halakhic-moralistic stance and the explicit eroticism of the Talmud belong to the world of late antiquity. It would be totally anachronistic to look for these attitudes in the Bible. Whedbee suggests that some episodes of the Book of Esther can be understood as a “comedy of errors.”29 The errors indeed start with the famous Steeples Night of Ahasuerus (ch. 6). The king orders Haman to go and honor Mordecai. Now, Haman is chosen for this commission by chance. As a matter of fact, he has come to the palace to urge the king to hang Mordecai. The king does not know about Haman’s intentions, and Haman does not know the name of the man he has been invited to honor. Moreover, he believes himself to be the man. Therefore he offers advice on what should be done for a man whom the king delights to honor. Yet the errors do not signify a “comedy of errors” by themselves, just as the deliverance does not make Esther a “comedy of deliverance” (another of Whedbee’s definitions of the Scroll).30 We may guess that there was comic vision in certain episodes, but all of this “was not brought

28 B. Meg. 12b trans. by J. Neusner in The Talmud of Babylonia: An Academic Commentary 10, Bavli Tractate Megillah (Atlanta, 1995), p. 75. Cf. Esther Rabbah, 3:13. 29 Ibid., p. 181f. 30 Whedbee, op. cit., p. 172.

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into high relief,” in the words of E. Auerbach.31 The Scroll shares the major stylistic features of the Bible: “abruptness, suggestive influence of the unexpressed, ‘background quality,’ multiplicity of meanings and the need for interpretations.”32 It took midrashic interpretation to bring “comedy of errors” into fully externalized description. The implicitly comical collision was grasped and expressed by Josephus in his Jewish Antiquities. Josephus writes: “But God mocked Haman’s wicked hopes ( poneras elpidas), and, knowing what was to happen, rejoiced (eterpeto) at the event” (XI, 247). Actually we have here an allusion to Ps. 2:1–4: “Wherefore do nations rage, and people meditate a vain thing (cf., poneras elpidas) . . . He who dwelleth in the heavens will laugh: the Lord will have them in derision (cf., eterpeto, kategela).” A midrash on the same verse can be found in B. A.Z. 3b, where God’s laughter is discussed. The verse: “He who dwelleth in the heavens will laugh” is explained in the following way: God does not laugh at his creatures except on one day during the last trial, when he pokes fun at heathens. “And since the day of the destruction of the Temple, there is no laughter for the Holy One except on that day.” Josephus adds another episode to the “comedy of errors.” When Haman comes and offers Mordecai the honors, Mordecai, according to Josephus, “not knowing the true state of things and thinking that he was being mocked, said, ‘O basest of all men, is this the way you make sport (epengelas) of our misfortunes?’ ” (ibid., 257). This addition to the biblical story we can find in the Talmud as well: “When Mordecai saw that he (Haman) was coming out towards him and a horse was held in his hand, he became frightened, etc. . . .” (16a, MS. W). We see that in Josephus, an implicitly comical plot is explicitly expressed and retold. However, there is still no comedy in the Jewish Antiquities. The style of Josephus’s targum is as solemn as the style of the Book of Esther itself. The stock-in-trade of mime or farce is absent. That stock-in-trade appears in the most farcical episode of the Talmudic Esther Midrash: the humiliation of Haman. Haman attends Mordecai as a barber, brings him to a bathhouse and bathes him,

31

Erich Auerbach, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature (New York, 1953), p. 19. 32 Ibid.

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bends down for him, and allows him to mount and ride him. As he is mounting, Mordecai kicks Haman. Finally the latter’s own daughter spills the contents of a chamber pot on his head and then hurls herself to her death before his eyes. Eliezer Segal, in his “Critical commentary” to the Babylonian Esther Midrash, explains these additions as needed to satisfy the Jewish congregation. The congregation “demanded more than the summary execution and impalement that are depicted in the biblical tale, so the homilists exploited every possible opportunity to read into the story the details which would slow the pace of the Jewish victory and heap upon the villain all manner of humiliations, discomforts and tribulations.”33 I believe that the demand of the congregation was not due to the hatred of heathens. The demand was created by a new entertainment vogue. The congregation was simultaneously a theatrical audience. As such it demanded a theatrical farcical performance. Let us look at the details of this performance. The most visible detail is the spilling of a chamber pot on Haman’s head. Elimelekh E. Halevy has compiled a list of passages from classical authors in which the spilling of a chamber pot is described (starting with a fragment of Aeschylus’s lost Dionysian drama Ostolopoi (“Bone-Gatherers”).34 However, to my mind, even more important is that the same deed occurs frequently in Talmudic literature. According to B. Yom. 87a, R. Jeremiah was sitting at the threshold of Abba when the servant-maid came out to empty dirty water and bespattered Jeremiah. “He said: They made me a dung,” and he applied unto himself a passage (Ps. 113:7): “From the dung heap he will raise up the poor.” At Y.M.Q. 3:1, we see nearly the same midrash. Eliezer b. Hyrcanus “was going through the market, and he saw one woman cleaning her house, and she threw out [the dirt] and it fell on his head. He said, “It would seem that today my colleagues will bring me near, as it is written, From the dung heap he will raise up the poor.” The farcical episode of humiliation changes the image of Haman. As Eliezer Segal noted, in the Talmud, Haman “frequently comes across more as a comical buffoon than as a terrifying arch-foe.”35

33 Eliezer Segal, The Babylonian Esther Midrash: A Critical Commentary, 3 vols. (Atlanta, 1994), 3:120. 34 Elimelekh E. Halevy. The Values of Aggadah and Galakha in the Light of Greek and Latin Sources. Vol. 2 (Tel Aviv, 1980), p. 160. 35 Ibid., p. 250.

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What kind of comical buffoon? Let us take a famous episode from the Palestinian Esther Midrash, considering that Palestinian midrash preceded the Babylonian and influenced it a great deal. In the famous episode of Esther Rabbah (7:12), Haman is convincing the king to get rid of the Jews. And Haman said to King Ahasuerus: “There is a certain people . . .” (3:8). He said to him: “Their teeth are powerful; they eat and drink much, and say, ‘We have to enjoy the Festival,’ and so they cause a diminution in the wealth of society. Once every seven days they have a Sabbath; every thirty days a New Moon; in Nisan, Passover; in Sivan, Pentecost; in Tishri, New Year and Atonement and the Feast of Tabernacles.”36

In nearly the same way Horace blames the Greeks in his “Roman day” (Epist. II, 1:93–102). They are a “holiday race” whose everyday activities are play, not work. Their agenda is filled with games and levity. Unlike the Greeks, the old Romans were up and about in the early morning, carefully investing money in good-risk creditors, heeding their elders, and teaching the younger generation how to increase their wealth and decrease the ruinous urge to profligacy (ibid., 103–7). Erich Segal (not to be confused with Eliezer Segal) opposed Horace’s “Roman day” to the activities of a “Plautine day.” “Unlike the economical, obedient sons whom Horace eulogizes, the younger generation in Plautus is always in passionate pursuit of damnosa libido (profligate passion). And if Horace epitomizes as ludere all activities that contrast with the duties of a ‘Roman day,’ it is understandable that the Roman festivals were all called ludi . . .”37 According to Segal, the two major conflicting forces in Plautus’s comedy are restraint and release. The restraint is personified by an Agelast (a man that never laughs). This character expresses traditional Roman ethical values, and foremost of all, an excessive industria. He hates laughter and joy. The Shakespearean Malvolio is seen as a descendant of this character. I suggest that the Talmudic and Midrashic Haman has all the features of an Agelast. First, his arguments against the Jews are highly agelastic. They resemble the invectives of Horace against the Greeks.

36 37

Midrash Rabbah, Esther, trans. Maurice Simon (London, 1939), p. 91. Erich Segal, Roman Laughter: The Comedy of Plautus (Cambridge, 1968), p. 43.

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Moreover, the same invectives were hurled against the Jews proper by Seneca (De Superstitione, apud: Augustinus, De Civitate Dei, VI, 11) and Tacitus (Historia, V, 4). The Jewish inclination to celebrating instead of working was commonplace in Roman literature. Second, Haman relies on money and is punished for this. He is surprised when listening to the law of kmiza and learning that a handful of barley flour overpowers his ten thousand talents. As a real agelast in a comedy, he is beaten. The beating of an agelast is the most important point of the comedy. Unlike the biblical Haman, the Talmudic one complains about his humiliation. This is also typical of an agelast in Plautine comedy. He cries: “A man that was more important to the king than all his nobles has been made into a bath attendant and a barber.” The character who pokes fan at Haman is none other than God. The position of God in the episode is very similar to the position of a smart servant in the comedies of Plautus. The servant is usually seen standing unnoticed when the agelast is hurling his invectives. As the agelast is doing this, the servant is telling jokes and laughing at him and promising to destroy his plans. In the same way God follows the words of Haman and makes asides, poking fun at him:38 Said the Holy One, blessed be he, to him: “Wretch, you cast an evil eye on their festivals. Behold, I will overthrow you before them, and they will observe an additional festival for your downfall, namely, the days of Purim;” and so it says, A fool’s mouth is his ruin (Prov. 18:7).

Not only is the plot of the Midrash farcical, its language is farcical as well. It transforms the Hebrew biblical monologue into Aramaic comical dialogue. In the Bible, the king tells Haman: “Make haste, and take the apparel and the horse, as thou hast said, and do even so to Mordecai the Jew, that sitteth at the king’s gate: let nothing fail of all that thou hast spoken” (6:10). The midrash (B. Meg. 16a) divides this sentence into several pieces and inserts the replies of Haman: He [Haman] said to him [Ahasuerus]: Who is Mordecai? He [Ahasuerus] said to him: “The Jew.” He [Haman] said to him: “There are many “Mordecai’s among the Jews.” He [Ahasuerus] said to him: “that one who sits in the king’s gate.”

38

Trans. Maurice Simon, p. 91.

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He [Haman] said to him: One village is enough for him, or one river [to use as a royal land grant for income]. He [Ahasuerus] said to him: Give him that too; “do not omit anything of what you have mentioned.”39

Halevy compared this dialogue to the dramatic device in Greek tragedy, which Sophocles utilized in Oedipus Rex.40 Actually, the same device was good both for tragedy of errors and for comedy of errors. The short and abrupt phrases of the episode are very much like Plautine dialogue. By its very nature Talmudic language is conversational and not narrative, while the language of the last books of the Bible (including Esther) is still modeled on the narratives of the Pentateuch. This conversational language regularly slips into farcicality. Here is an example (B. Shab. 152a): Said a eunuch to R. Joshua b. Qorhah [that is, bold], “How far is it from here to Baldtown?” “As far as from here to Eunuch-city.” “A castrated goat is worth eight.” He saw he wasn’t wearing shoes and remarked, “He who rides on a horse is king, on an ass, a free man, who walks with shoes on his feet is human; who has none of these—one who is dead and buried is better off.” He said to him, “Eunuch, eunuch, you said three things to me, now hear three things from me: The glory of a face is its beard, the joy of the heart is a wife, ‘the heritage of the Lord is children’ (Ps. 127:3); blessed be the Omnipresent, who denied you all of these things!” “He said to him, ‘Baldy, contentious baldy!’ ” “You’re a castrated buck and you want to pick a fight?”41

The wording of the dialogues is not round. As in speech, many elements are dropped. Here is another typical example (B. Shab. 151b): R. Hanina’s daughter died, but he didn’t weep for her. Said his wife to him, “So did you just kick a chicken out of your house?” He said to her, “Should I undergo two things, first, bereavement, second, blindness?”42

39

Jacob Neusner, Esther Rabbah I: An Analytical Translation (Atlanta, 1989), p. 80. Halevy, op. cit., pp. 158–59. 41 Trans. Neusner in The Talmud of Babylonia: An Academic Commentary 2 Bavly Tactate Shabbat, B. Chs. 13–24 (Atlanta, 1996), p. 720. 42 Ibid., p. 719. 40

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The midrash is explicitly comic; that is, totally aware of itself being comic and conveying a comic message to an audience that would recognize standard and easily understood signifiers of farcicality. Moreover, laughter is a central concern of the midrash, one to be recognized and discussed. I would contend that the very difference between the Book of Esther and Esther Midrash is typical of the difference between the Scripture and Aggadah. *

*

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In the words of Bakhtin, “laughter destroys epic distance.”43 This was exactly what midrash was doing to the Bible—and not only Esther Midrash but most of aggadic midrashim. Unlike the Greco-Roman parody, midrash did not poke fun at the old genres.44 Yet it certainly familiarized the past and the present, making them less solemn. Moshe David Herr has observed that the poetical license of the rabbis went so far as to permit them to expose Lea and Rachel as two whores.45 Paradoxically the familiarization created a great number of miracles and fantastic stories in midrashim. It has been noted that while in the Book of Esther neither God nor angels intervene, in the midrash they are very active. Usually scholars explain this by religious changes.46 However, it can easily be explained by the familiarization of the epic past. “In this world, utterly familiarized, the subject moves with extreme and fantastic freedom, from heaven to earth, from earth to the nether world, from the present into the past, from the past into the future.”47 The result at times closely resembles Lucian’s Dialogues of Gods or Dialogs in Hades. Patriarchs and matriarchs (after their death) meet

43

Bakhtin, op. cit., p. 35. On the comic roman as a parody of old genres see Walsh, op. cit., p. 44ff. J. Levinson believes that there was a parody in aggadic literature (though not a parody of genres). As an example he takes a story from Lev. Rabbah 12:1 (“a drunkard and his suns”). This anecdote, in the mind of Levinson, is a parody of Lev. 10:1–2 (the death of Aaron’s sons). As a folktale it brings counter-discourse and polyglossia into the midrash which belongs to a dominant culture. See Levinson, “Upside-Down World: The Story of the Drunk and His Sons,” Jerusalem Studies in Hebrew Literature 14 (1993): 7–30. 45 Moshe David Herr, “The Conception of History among the Sages” in Proceedings of the 6th World Congress of Jewish Studies 3 ( Jerusalem, 1976), p. 139. 46 Eliezer Segal, op. cit., pp. 254–56. 47 Bakhtin, op. cit., p. 26. 44

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God and angels in the Heavens and get into lively discussions ( just as Greek gods meet philosophers and Roman emperors on Olympus or on the banks of the river Styx). Moses attends the school of R. Akivah. Various characters ascend to the Heavens alive. Some stories of ascension are a form of mystical teaching (maaseh merkavah). Others betray the clear marks of folkloristic rogue tales, such as one about R. Joshua ben Levi, who cheated the angel of death, took his sword and got into Eden (B. Ketub. 77b).48 Folkloristic humiliation of angels looks far fetched from the perspective of serious mysticism. Yet even the most famous mystic “Pardes passage” (B. Hag. 15a) contains an episode involving the lashing of the great angel Metatron with sixty fiery lashes. In Lucian’s Dialogues of Gods and Dialogs in Hades Homeric characters speak the language of Hellenistic rhetoric or the Roman court. This creates a great amount of irony. In the novel of Apuleius “even the deities in the Cupid and Psyche episode show a shrewd awareness of their right in Roman law; the legal threats of Venus are one of the consistently comic motifs which Apuleius has himself introduced into the story.”49 Stylistic anachronisms were extremely important in fictitious declamations of gods, heroes, and people of the past (Greek meletai or Latin declamationes) that appeared as school exercises and developed into a genre of literature. Inventing fantastic judicial cases was a regular practice in Late Antiquity. These cases usually introduced contraversiae, which belonged to genus judicale ( judicial kinds of declamations). The major goal of any declamation was to convince and amuse the audience. Sometimes (in the sketches of Lucian, for example) wit and laughter permeated the speeches.50 Laughter was actually derived from anachronisms. Roman audiences knew the differences between the styles. An emperor talking in the style of Homer, or Zeus pronouncing edicts in the style of an emperor, was very funny. Would it be any different in the Talmud? The rabbis were well aware that “the language of Torah is one matter; the

48 Bella Kushelevsky, “The Function of Humor in Three Versions of the Theme ‘Rabbi Joshua ben Levi and the Angel of Death’,” Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Folklore 19–20 (1998): 329–44. 49 Walsh, op. cit., p. 61f. 50 George Alexander Kennedy, The Art of Rhetoric in the Roman World (Princeton, 1972), pp. 316–17.

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language of the sages is another matter” (see above). Yet they regularly forced God, angels and biblical characters to speak the “language of the sages,” even the language of the Roman court and the Hellenistic school of rhetoric. Let us consider a famous accession story in B. Shab. 88b–89a: And said R. Joshua b. Levi, “When Moses came up on high, the ministering angels said before the Holy One, blessed be He, ‘Lord of the world, what is one born of woman doing among us?” He said to them, ‘He has come to receive the Torah.’ “They said before Him, ‘This secret treasure, hidden by you for nine hundred and seventy-four generations before the world was created, are you now planning to give to a mortal? “What is man, that you are mindful of him, and the son of a man, that you think of him, O Lord our God, how excellent is your name in all the earth! Who has set your glory upon the heavens” (Ps. 8:5, 2)!’ “Said the Holy One, blessed be He, to Moses, ‘Answer them.’ “He said before Him, ‘Lord of the world, I’m afraid lest they burn me with the breath of their mouths.’ “He said to him, ‘Hold on to my throne of glory and answer them.’ ..................... “He said to Him, ‘Lord of the world, the Torah that you are giving me—what is written in it?” “ ‘I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt’ (Exod. 20:2). “He said to the angels, ‘To Egypt have you gone down? To Pharaoh have you been enslaved? Why should the Torah go to you?’ “He again said to Him, ‘Lord of the world, the Torah that you are giving me—what is written in it?’ “ ‘You will have no other gods’ (Exod. 20:3). “ ‘So do you live among the nations who worship idols?’ “He again said to Him, ‘Lord of the world, the Torah that you are giving me—what is written in it?’ “ ‘Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy’ (Exod. 20:8). “So do you work that you need rest?’ “He again said to him, ‘Lord of the world, the Torah that you are giving me—what is written in it?’ “ ‘You shall not take the name of the Lord your god in vain’ (Exod. 20:7). “ ‘So is there any give or take among you?’ “ ‘He again said to Him, ‘Lord of the world, the Torah that you are giving me—what is written in it?’ “ ‘Honor your father and your mother’ (Exod. 20:12). “ ‘So do you have fathers and mothers?’ “He again said to Him, ‘Lord of the world, the Torah that you are giving me—what is written in it?’

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“ ‘You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal’ (Exod. 20:13–15). “ ‘So is there envy among you, is there any lust among you?’ “Forthwith they gave praise to the Holy One, blessed be He: ‘O Lord our God, how excellent is your name’ (Ps. 8:10), but they didn’t add, ‘who has set your glory upon the heavens.’ “On the spot every one of them became friend of his and gave him something: ‘You have ascended on high, you have taken the spoils, you have received gifts on account of man’ (Ps. 68:47). In reparation for their calling you a man, you received gifts.”51

The major elements of the story are two orations, one delivered by the angels, and another delivered by Moses. Evidently, the angels play the role of an accuser, while Moses plays a defender. Both orations are beautifully conjured rhetorically (especially the second one). Moses finds contradictions between the text of the commandments and the existential position of angels. We might suggest that the statements of Moses (angels do not work and do not have parents) looked funny to the audience. Yet the main source of laughter was disagreement between the setting of the story and the style of the orations (exactly as in the dialogues of Lucian). It may be argued that the midrash of R. Joshua b. Levi was modeled on the conversation between God and Satan in the Book of Job. This book, however, does not introduce old biblical characters or episodes to a new anachronistic style. In a word, it is not midrash. How different it is from a midrashic story about Job in B.B.16a. Here we find an exquisite fictitious oration of God who defends Himself against Job, since Job has accused Him in confusing his name (Iov) with oyev (enemy). I would suggest that the anachronisms of midrash should not be regarded as a mark of organic thinking (suggesting the naiveté of the rabbis who supposedly could not differentiate between the present and the past) or of ordinary poetical license. Rather we should see in midrashim the familiarization of the epic past. By its very nature midrash was creating a contradiction (even collision) between styles, which was inherently humorous. It transformed the angry face of the Scripture into the smiling face of Aggada simply because it was midrash. *

51

Trans. Neusner, pp. 387–88.

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In his seminal paper “The Torah as Love Goddess,” Ari Elon calls the Book of Esther “one of the wildest male fantasies ever written.”52 There is no doubt an erotic side to the book. The very name Esther after all means “love goddess” (e.g., Ashtoret, Estahar). Yet all the “wild fantasies” that Elon refers to belong not to the Bible but to midrash. It is rabbinic midrash that compares the anatomy of Esther to the anatomy of a doe ( just as a doe has a narrow womb and is desired by her mate time and time again as if for the first time, so Esther was desired by Ahasuerus every time as if for the first time).53 It is midrash that ensures that Esther might provide the king both with the test of virginity and the test of an experienced woman. Even her name, writes Elon, according to midrash, signified that she was hiding the sexual parts of her body.54 I suggest that Elon makes the same mistake as Whedbee when the latter asserts that the king commanded “to his queen to appear (naked?) before his drunken male guests.” All these “wildest male fantasies” were a feature of aggadic literature (and the Roman comic novel as well). Moreover, midrash went so far as to describe Esther’s sexual affair with Mordecai. Commenting on verse 2:20 (“. . . and Esther did what Mordecai said . . .”) “said Rabbah bar Lima in the name of Rav: [this means] that she used to rise from the bosom of Ahasuerus, immerse herself [in a mikveh to purify herself ], and sit in the bosom of Mordecai.55 Aggadic sexual representation as well as aggadic humor is totally different from, and much more salient than, the eroticism and humor of the Bible. This means that the style of sexual representation changed “from the Bible to the Talmud,” thus reflecting a drastic alteration of mentality. This change has not gone unnoticed. David Stern and Joshua Levinson have suggested that aggadic eroticism came as a reaction to the dominant Greco-Roman culture.56 According to both scholars, the rabbis responded to the Destruction and to the loss of identity by borrowing from this culture the patterns of the

52 Ari Elon, “The Torah as Love Goddess” in Essential Papers on the Talmud (New York, etc., 1994), p. 466. 53 B. Yom. 29a; Elon, op. cit., p. 466. 54 B. Meg. 13a; Elon, op. cit., pp. 466–67. 55 B. Meg. 13b, trans. Neusner, p. 66. 56 Joshua Levinson, “The Tragedy of Romance: A Case of Literary Exile,” Harvard Theological Review 89.3 (1996): 227–44; idem. “An-Other Woman: Joseph and Potiphar’s Wife: Staging the Body Politic,” Jewish Quarterly Review 87 (1997): 269–301; D. Stern, “The Captive Woman,” pp. 91–127.

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erotic novel and adultery mime, which were close to the model of a Christian martyr’s story.57 Israel became either a lad seduced by a whore (alien culture), or a bride of God tortured by a heathen rapist. In the words of Stern, “the rabbis may also have used the erotic narrative as a kind of foundational myth upon which they represented their own relationship to the pagan world in which they lived.”58 Levinson actually proclaims the same: “Through a crosscoding of the gender and cultural codes in the Joseph narrative, the hegemonic discourse of the theater is exploited to denigrate the dominant foreign culture as a form of deviant identity. By founding ethnic differences upon a gendered dichotomy the seduction scene is transformed, and erotic attraction becomes a trope for cultural congress. . . .”59 In the aftermath of the Destruction “the survivors do not even have their own voice, their own story to tell about themselves.”60 Through the Greek erotic novel (the narrative genre of the other) the rabbis expressed their frustration. These ideas are closely connected with Daniel Boyarin’s method of “cultural poetics.” As Boyarin himself wrote, “among the tools that cultural poetics has at hand is the description of cultural or literary practices as forms of resistance or accommodation to the dominant practices of a colonizing culture.”61 “The very allusion to the surrounding culture signals resistance to it.”62 According to the scholar, “for most of the Jews of late antiquity (as well as for most non-Jews), the human being was conceived of as a spirit housed, clothed, or even trapped and imprisoned in flesh, while for the rabbis, resisting this notion, the human being was a body animated by a spirit. This definition is what lies at the bottom of such diverse and distinctive rabbinic practices as the insistence on sex and procreation as obligations. . . .”63 While Hellenistic Jews and most non-Jews preserved a negative orientation to sexual pleasure, sexuality, and procreation, the orientation of rabbinic Judaism towards these values was positive. Rabbinic Judaism was “the cultural formation of most of the

57 On that aspect of aggadic eroticism see also: Daniel Boyarin, Dying for God: Martyrdom and the Making of Christianity and Judaism (Stanford, 1999). 58 D. Stern, “The Captive Woman,” p. 91. 59 Levinson, “An-Other Woman,” p. 269. 60 Levinson, “The Tragedy of Romance,” p. 244. 61 Boyarin, Carnal Israel: Reading Sex in Talmudic Culture (Berkeley, 1993), p. 17. 62 Ibid., p. 43. 63 Ibid., p. 231.

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Hebrew- and Aramaic-speaking Jews of Palestine and Babylonia.”64 Thus, according to Boyarin, the Jews responded to a colonizing culture by strengthening their identity, while according to Stern and Levinson, they exploited and borrowed the hegemonic discourse to express their frustration and loss of identity. To my mind, the eroticism of rabbinic culture was more a feature of spoudogeloion than a result of an intercultural strife. Both the Greeks and the Jews developed this feature together. It came forward as a result of common social development, due to the rise of late antique quasi urban society. How different erotically is the midrash from the Scroll of Esther? The midrash is certainly more anatomically precise and technically oriented. It speaks about the size of Esther’s vagina, her experience in sexual life combined with her seeming virginity, her immersions after sex with one partner and before sex with another. Midrash (in the version of the Talmud) is medically scientific in its explanation of why Esther was so successful with the king: she was taken to his royal palace in the tenth month, which is the month of Tebet, “a month in which one body enjoys another.”65 The body of Esther is diagnosed candidly to the point of scatology: “And the queen became upset . . .” (Esther 4:4). What is [meant by] “became upset”? Said Rav: She became menstrual. And R. Yeremiah said: She needed to relieve herself.66

Esther Rabbah (8:3), while interpreting the same biblical verse, gets into the topic of contraception: Our rabbis there [in Babylon] say that she became menstruous, but our teachers here say that she had a miscarriage, and having had a miscarriage never bore again. R. Judan b. R. Simon said: She had intercourse with a piece of a gauze. R. Judan b. R. Simon said: That last Darius was the son of Esther; he was pure from his mother’s side and impure from his father’s.67

64 Ibid., p. 5. See also the critique of Boyarin’s dichotomy by David Winston in “Philo and the rabbis on Sex and the Body,” Poetics Today: International Journal for Theory and Analysis of Literature and Communication 19.1 (1988): 41–62. According to Winston, the rabbinic attitude to sex and body was not basically different from the attitude of Philo, Plato, and the stoics. 65 B. Meg. 13a, trans. Neusner, p. 64. 66 B. Meg. 15a, trans. Neusner, p. 74. 67 Trans. Maurice Simon, p. 105.

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Starting with the case of Esther, the Talmud goes on to deliberate on other cases of medical sexology: Said R. Isaac: Anyone who says “Rahab, Rahab,” immediately ejaculates. Said Rav Nahman to him: I have said “Rahab, Rahab,” and nothing happened to me. He [Rabbi Isaac] said to him: When I spoke, [I spoke] of one who knows her well.68

“Scientific” eroticism was extremely popular in late antiquity. It became the major feature of what Holt N. Parker believes was Greek pornography. According to Parker, “pornography represents an attempt to place human sexuality, viewed as a natural phenomenon, under intellectual control. To be precise, in the act of analyzing sexuality, pornography creates it.”69 Parker utters that definition to describe the works of an-aiskhunto-graphoi (“writers of shameless things”) that belonged to the late Classical, Hellenistic, and Roman periods. These were “sex manuals,” handbooks whose primary stock-in-trade was a careful listing, enumerating, and limiting of the positions for heterosexual intercourse. According to Parker, in these books “we are given love’s body anatomized. Sexuality is on the same basis as animals, plants, and minerals, as an object of inquiry. The continua of sexual activities are broken down into separate actions, each given a name, a description, and so constituted as a separate ontological category.”70 The works of an-aiskhunto-graphoi were chosen by Parker to represent genuine ancient pornography since “for the Greeks and the Romans, genre is determined principally by form and only secondarily by content. . . . Obscene content did not therefore in itself determine a specific genre. Explicit sexual matter and obscene language are permissible in a wide variety of genres: Old Comedy, satyr plays, mime, iambic verse, hendecasyllabic verse, satire . . . Yet obscene language or sexual material is not a necessary or a defining characteristic of any of these genres. . . . There is little in antiquity corresponding to the modern idea of pornography, as shown by the very word itself, pornographos, which refers not to our general idea of pornography but to a specific subcategory of biography—tales of the 68

B. Meg. 14a, trans. Neusner, p. 74. Holt N. Parker, “Love’s Body Anatomized: The Ancient Erotic Handbooks and the Rhetoric of Sexuality,” in Pornography and Representation in Greece and Rome (New York, etc., 1992), p. 102. 70 Ibid. 69

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lives of the courtesans—which may not contain any obscene material at all . . .”71 The works of an-aiskhunto-graphoi were the only genre “for which the defining characteristic was uniquely its erotic content.”72 The features of Greco-Roman pornography, as Parker describes them, are relevant not only to “sex manuals,” but to seriocomic literature as a whole. The comic romance was specifically obscene. The point was not just the use of coarse language or the open representation of sexual matters. Old comedy was fully qualified for this. However, Classical Greek authors, even Aristophanes, were little disposed to a medical-anatomical understanding of sex. Aristophanes could be obscene but not scholarly. Lucian, on the other hand, “informs us that he is writing for the student at play, whose ideal reading in relaxation will be of literary and witty kind. So he promises a story which will incorporate elements strange, elegant, and mendacious, and adds that each part will subtly and wittily allude to the works of ancient poets, historians and philosophers.”73 Old Comedy used men to play women. Late antiquity not only brought naked women to the stage. It made eroticism truly seriocomic so that farce, philosophy, and anatomic treaties overlapped one another. This occurred not because of moral degeneration. On the contrary, pornography was salient in cynic-stoic moralistic writings and in Christian ascetic literature. Certainly, the rabbis and their audience were not less ethical than the Jews of the biblical or the Second Temple periods. Yet they brought the rationalization of sexual life to its most extreme, to the matters of sexual pleasure. According to the famous anecdotes in T. Ber. 62a, even behavior in a privy and in a spousal bed was to be learned and taught. Paradoxically, the goal of this teaching was modesty, though the means to acquire the teaching (such as hiding under the bed of a teacher) were sometimes considered immodest. In B. Ned. 20a–b there is a careful listing, enumerating, and limiting of the positions for heterosexual intercourse, and a breaking down of the continua of sexual activities into separate actions. This very much resembles the works of an-aiskhunto-graphoi. Moreover, in the words of Boyarin, “. . . we have here a metaphor that apparently

71 72 73

Ibid., p. 91. Ibid. Walsh, op. cit., p. 3.

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compares the woman to a piece of meat or fish, seemingly an object for the satisfaction of the man . . .”74 Yet struggling with a “misogynistic interpretation” of Talmudic literature, the scholar ultimately rejects this: “The eating metaphor here must be read within the context of the rich field of metaphors in which sex and eating are mutually mapped onto each other in the talmudic culture with eating the quintessential signifier of that which is both pleasurable and necessary for health and well-being. Within this field, the notion of consuming or devouring does not seem dominant, and here the primary metaphorical comparison is with the fact that while there are many categories of foods which are forbidden, those that are permitted may be enjoyed in any manner. Similarly, while there are sexual connections that are forbidden, those that are permitted may be enjoyed in any fashion. . . . The food metaphor in itself does not turn women into food. The Talmud also uses the metaphor of eating to refer to the woman’s sexual experience.”75

Boyarin is certainly right when insisting on the halakhic nature of the “eating metaphor.” Indeed, the goal of the discourse is to specify kosher forms of sexual consumption, just as kosher forms of food consumption specified. However, basically this represents the same rationalistic (even scientific) approach to food, sex, and procreation that was imminent in the Greco-Roman culture of late antiquity. As Madeleine M. Henry writes about the work of the famous polymath Athenaeus, “the Deinosophistae gives the implicit understanding that men have the right to obtain and consume food/women, but that this consumption ought to be moderate and ought to take place in communal setting.”76 There is another important point in this fragment: “one may not drink out of one goblet and think of another.” You should not fantasize about another woman when making love to your wife. Even more, the Talmud expresses a harsh opposition to voyeurism and exhibitionism. One should not have sexual intercourse even in front of mice, never mind in front of male and female slaves (B. Nid. 16b–17a). According to Boyarin, this was simply “an attack on the Roman practice of having intercourse in the presence of slaves,

74

Boyarin, Carnal Israel, p. 113. Ibid., pp. 116–17. 76 Madeleine M. Henry, “The Edible Women: Athenaeus’s concept of the Pornographic,” in Pornography and Representation in Greece and Rome (Oxford, 1992), p. 257. 75

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a practice that indeed involved the assumption that slaves are not somehow human. . . . Veyne points out that the Roman practice amounted to constant surveillance. . . . In sharp contrast, the rabbinic reaction to that practice produced (willy-nilly?) an extreme renunciation, once more, of surveillance of the conduct of the marriage bed.”77 In another paper, however, Boyarin writes about “ocular desire in midrashic hermeneutic” and the “erotic visual communication that obtained between God and Israel at Mount Sinai.”78 I would suggest that the very topic of sexual fantasizing and voyeurism in the Talmud came from the depths of the rabbinic mentality and sensitivity, not from a struggle with the “occupying culture.” The rabbis knew that “unchaste imagination is more injurious than the sin itself, your analogy being the odor of meat” (B. Yom. 29a). On the other hand, Resh Lakish commented on Eccl. 6:9 (“Better is the seeing of the eyes than the wandering of the desire”): “Better is the pleasure of looking at a woman than the act itself (B. Yom. 74b).” This statement comes after midrashic deliberations on the suffering of the Jews eating manna. “You cannot compare one who sees what he eats with one who does not see what he is eating.” They found in the manna the taste of every kind of food; however, they could not see these different kinds, but only the same manna. *

*

*

The eroticism of late antiquity was closely connected to scatology. Esther’s menstruation and diarrhea are not casual details. The filth of a woman was to be demonstrated to prevent a man from lasciviousness. In a baraita we read, “Though a woman is a pot full of shit with her mouth full of blood, everybody pursues her” (B. Shab. 152a).79 The Talmud (B. A.Z. 17a) tells about a costly prostitute who farted during her sexual act with R. Eleazar b. Dordia and says: “Just as this fart will not return to its place, so Eleazar b. Dordia will never be accepted in repentance.”80 Similar stylistic features can be found in the Christian ascetic literature of Egypt (fourth and fifth

77

Boyarin, Carnal Israel, pp. 126–27. See Boyarin, Sparks of the Logos: Essays in Rabbinic Hermeneutics (Leiden, etc., 2003), pp. 3–23. First published in Critical Inquiry, Spring 1990: 532–50. 79 Trans. Neusner, p. 721. 80 Trans. Neusner in The Talmud of Babylonia, p. 63. 78

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centuries C.E.). Peter Brown has noted that “the sheer physicality of such stories bruise the modern sensibility. A monk dipped his cloak into the putrefying flesh of a dead woman, so that the smell might banish thoughts about her; a dutiful daughter repelled the advances of a young monk by warning him that he could not imagine the strange and terrible stench of a menstruating woman . . .”81 The obscene representation of a beautiful female body derives from the clichés of Greek cynicism that would counterpoise dazzling exterior to ugly interior. “Intellectual” cynicism would pave the way to the Satyricon by Petronius and to amateur “street” poems like an inscription quoted by A. Richlin: Here I have now fucked a girl beautiful to see, Praised by many, but there was muck inside.82

No strict border can be found between the “serious” moralistic use of obscenities and their comical nature. In fact, laughter and scatology were interconnected both in late Greco-Roman and early Talmudic literature. Boyarin has already found a case of similarity on this point. In Avoda Zara 17a one of the disciples of Jesus the Nazarene, a man by the name of Jacob of Kefar Sekhnina, proves that the wages of a prostitute may be used to build a latrine for a high priest. He refers to Micah 1:17 (“it was gathered from the wages of a prostitute, and to the wages of a prostitute it will return”)— “It comes from a place of filth and to a place of filth it will return.” In the Lives of Caesars by Suetonius (251) we find the following report: “Titus complained of the tax which Vespasian had imposed on the contents of the city urinals. Vespasian handed him a coin which had been part of the first day’s proceeds: ‘Does it smell bad?’ He asked. And when Titus said ‘No,’ he went on: ‘Yet it comes from urine.’ ”83 Another anecdotal resemblance could be added. According to Suetonius, Claudius “is even said to have thought of an edict allowing the privilege of breaking wind quietly or noisily at table, having learned of a man who ran some risk by restraining himself through

81

Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York, 1988), p. 242. 82 Amy Richlin, The Garden of Priapus: Sexuality and Agression in Roman Humor (New York, etc., 1992), p. 82. 83 Boyarin, Dying for God, p. 195, n. 33.

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modesty” (Divus Claudius 32).84 Yerushalmi (Besah 5:2) in its turn introduces the saying of R. Eleazar, “Whatever makes a noise is forbidden on the Sabbath.” This is followed by a story: “R. Abba bar Kahana asked before R. Yosé, ‘What is the law as to patting (maksheh) one’s stomach on the Sabbath?” He said to him, ‘Who permitted you to do it on a weekday?’ Said R. Samuel bar Abodema, ‘rabbis are accustomed on a weekday to do so from the belly button upward, and if one is wearing his clothes, from the belly button and downward, [it also is permitted to pat one’s stomach, as a way of healing a bellyache].”85 This pericope comes after a humoristic story about R. Meir and Rabbi (see below, pp. 81–82). The medical-anatomical interest of late antiquity came hand in hand with the legalistic-moralistic approach. Suetonius and Talmudic literature speak nearly the same language. Similar language is found in the famous parable of Jesus (Mark 7:15–20): “There is nothing from without a man, that entering into him can defile him: but the things which come out of him, those are they that defile the man . . . Do ye not perceive, that whatsoever thing from without entereth into the man, it cannot defile him; Because it entereth not into his heart, but into the belly, and goeth out into the draught, purging all meats? . . . That which cometh out of the man, that defileth the man. For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness: All these evil things come from within, and defile the man.” In my opinion, this parable is rooted in Platonic tradition. Philo (in Opif. 119) refers to the words of Plato (Timaeus 75d–e), speaking about eyes, ears, nostrils, and mouth: “Through this, as Plato says, mortal things have their entrance, immortal their exit; for foods and drinks enter it, perishable nourishment of a perishable body, but words issue from it, undying laws of an undying soul, by means of which the life of reason is guided.” Actually, Plato said something different: “And those who fashioned the features of our mouth fashioned it with teeth and tongue and lips, even as it is fashioned now, for ends both necessary and most good, contriving it as an entrance with a view to necessary ends, and as outlet with a view 84

Suetonius [Works], trans. J. C. Rolfe, (Cambridge, Mass. 1950), Vol. 2: 63. Jacob Neusner, The Talmud of the Land of Israel: An Academic Commentary to the Second, Third, and Fourth Divisions (Atlanta, 1998), p. 88. 85

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to the ends most good. For all that enters in and supplies food to the body is necessary; while the stream of speech which flows out and ministers to intelligence is of all streams the fairest and most good.”86 In Plato’s words, both things entering the mouth and things coming out of the mouth are good, though in different degree. Philo, probably under the influence of stoic thought and looking for an allegorical explanation of the food laws of Leviticus, would call food and drink “perishable nourishment of a perishable body.” For him, mortal things entering the mouth would certainly defile the human being, while things going out of the mouth would not. Mark literally turns this pyramid upside down, making parody of it. In his saying, food enters the mouth and comes out of the anus totally purified, while evil thoughts and deeds come from within, from the human heart, and defile man.87 If we construe Mark’s logion as a parody of a Platonist cliché, we are able to understand the structure of this logion and the discrepancies between Mark 7:15–20 and Matthew 15:11 (“Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man; but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man. Do not ye yet understand, that whatsoever entereth in at the mouth goeth into the belly, and is cast out into the draught? But those things which proceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart; and they defile the man. For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies: These are the things which defile a man: but to eat with unwashen hands defileth not a man”). According to William D. Davies and Dale C. Allison, “Matthew has cut and changed a number of words, increased the parallelism of the two clauses, added ‘the mouth’ (bis), and smoothed out the grammar . . . The result is a shorter, less cryptic, more explicit statement. . . . Why the addition of ‘mouth’ (also added in vv. 17 and 18)? The supplement 86

Plato [Works], trans. Harold North Fowler, vol. 1 (London, etc., 1922), p. 199. Helmut Merkel pointed out another parallel between Philo and Mark 7:15. In Mut. 240 Philo writes that the best and most perfect form of purification is never to admit any heinous thoughts, but to live with fellow citizens in peace and law observance, while the second best is to abstain from sinfulness of word and from aiming at the ruin of others by giving a free rein to the mouth and tongue. See Merkel, “Markus 7,15—das Jesuswort über die innere Verunreinigung,” Zeitschrift für Religions- und Geistesgeschichte, 20 (1968): 358. As a matter of fact, Philo considers here things going out of the mouth as negative and in need of purification. However, unlike Opif. 119, there is no opposition between “in” and “out of the mouth” in this pericope. 87

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not only adds clarity. It also recalls the Q saying in 12.34: ‘For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.’ Perhaps Marks’s ‘things which go out of a man’ (7.15) and ‘out of the heart of man’ (7.21; cf. also the use of ‘heart’ in Isa. 29.13) reminded Matthew of the earlier logion and he formulated in interpreted 15.11 accordingly. . . . That which goes into the mouth is, as the following will elucidate, food and drink; that which comes out of the evil things produced by an evil heart.”88 To my mind, Matthew molded his logion according to the old platonic pattern that introduced things going in and out of the mouth, while Mark skipped the word “mouth” in the second case. Where Plato is mostly “scientific” (treating the parts and functions of the human body) Philo is very much moralistic, decent, and serious, and Mark is cynical and humoristic.89 Yet the very root of Mark’s (and aggadic) cynicism may be found in Philo’s gravity. In De plantatione 35, Philo defies biblical anthropomorphism: “As for God, He stands in no need of food any more than of aught else. For one who uses food must in the first place experience need, and in the next place be equipped with organs by means of which to take the food that comes in, and to discharge that from which he has drawn its goodness.” The notion of God discharging food would never have come into the mind of a “biblical” author. To my mind, aggadic spoudogeloion was deeply rationalistic. It was fraught with the juristic-medical rationalism immanent in late antique ironic and humoristic vision. It was anything but naïve in its attitudes. Moreover, it borrowed some of its rationalism from philosophical exegesis. But that will be the topic of the next chapter.

88

William David Davies and Dale C. Allison, Jr., A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel according to Saint Matthew (Edinburgh, 1994), Vol. 2: 527. 89 On the halakhic meaning of the saying see: Herbert W. Basser, Studies in Exegesis: Christian Critiques of Jewish Law and Rabbinic Responses 70–300 C.E. (Leiden, 2000), pp. 42–43; Menahem Kister, “Law, Morality, and Rhetoric in Some Sayings of Jesus,” in Studies in Ancient Midrash (Cambridge, Mass., 2001), pp. 150–54.

CHAPTER THREE

EXEGESIS AND MIDRASH*

I have written to him many things of my law, but they were counted as strange things. Hosea 8:12

Jewish exegesis created in Alexandria and heavily influenced by Hellenism seems strange and alien—quite different from “indigenous” rabbinic Judaism. Nevertheless, there are multiple parallelisms. Because of these, numerous scholars from the time of Wissenschaft des Judentums onwards spoke for many years about the influence of Palestinian midrash on the Alexandrians. In reality, rabbinic literature (the major depositary of Palestinian midrash) was born only after Alexandrian exegesis had already died. At the same time, the Second Temple Palestinian tradition (e.g., the “rewritten Bible,” the Dead Sea Scrolls) contains nothing comparable to either Alexandrian or Midrashic exegesis in terms of genre and literary technique. The mere fact that extant Alexandrian exegesis is several centuries older than Palestinian midrash, and much closer to Greek rhetoric and philosophy, subsequently brought some scholars to the conclusion that Palestinians borrowed from Alexandrians. In the first volume of his Hellenistische Studien (1874), Jacob Freudenthal suggested that Alexandrian exegesis influenced Palestinian midrash. He argued that the Septuagint and the treatises of Philo preceded the earliest collections of Midrashim. He also argued that the traces of philosophy could not have come to the midrash directly, since the rabbis did not read Plato. Rather, Alexandrian exegesis should be thought of as a mediator between philosophy and midrash.1

* This chapter is based on my papers “Continuity and Change in Hellenistic Jewish Exegesis and in Early Rabbinic Literature,” and “A Clarification of the Hypothesis,” The Review of Rabbinic Judaism Ancient, Medieval and Modern 7.1 (2004): 123–46, 162–68. 1 Jacob Freudental, Hellenistische Studien, Vol. 1 (Breslau, 1875), pp. 65–77.

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In 1949 David Daube published a paper seeking to prove that rabbinic methods of interpretation derived from Hellenistic rhetoric.2 Moreover, he insisted that “there are indeed signs that Hillel’s ideas were partly imported from Egypt.”3 A year later, Saul Lieberman put forward research substantially proving that some of the hermeneutic rules found in Halakha and Aggadah recur almost literally in Greek rhetoric and in the Roman legal system. Unlike Daube, Lieberman insisted that “we have no evidence that the rabbis borrowed their rules of interpretation from the Greeks. . . .” Yet to his mind, the rabbis could have borrowed “formulations, terms, categories and systematization of these rules.”4 At the same time, Lieberman argued that “the early Jewish interpreters of Scripture did not have to embark to Alexandria in order to learn there the rudimentary methods of linguistic research. To make them travel to Egypt for this purpose would be a cruel injustice to the intelligence and acumen of the Palestinian Sages.”5 Samuel Sandmel further noted that “an effect of pointing up the parallels and alleging dependency is to imply that Philo and the Alexandrians were incapable of interpreting the Bible on their own. . . . It would deny to Philo a capacity to do what Gentile Christians were gifted at, but without the Christians requiring a rabbinic basis.”6 For Sandmel the gap between Philo and the rabbis was absolute. In his opinion, “as contrastable with normative, rabbinic Judaism, Philo and his associates reflect a marginal, aberrative version of Judaism which existed at a time when there were many versions of Judaism, of which ultimately only Rabbinism and Christianity have survived to our day.”7 More recently, Philip S. Alexander has suggested that “the parallels between rabbinic hermeneutics and the hermeneutics of the Greco-Roman world” should not be explained “in the terms of direct

2 David Daube, “Rabbinic Methods of Interpretation and Hellenistic Rhetoric,” Hebrew Union College Annual 22.1 (1949): 239–64. 3 Ibid., p. 257. 4 Saul Lieberman, Greek in Jewish Palestine/Hellenism in Jewish Palestine (New York, etc., 1994), p. 78. 5 Ibid., p. 53. 6 Samuel Sandmel, Philo’s Place in Judaism: A Study of Conception of Abraham in Jewish Literature, Augmented ed. (New York, 1971), p. 210. 7 Ibid., p. 211.

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borrowing and influences, though some borrowing is clearly attested.”8 In his opinion, two common factors—“the centrality of canonic texts and the role of the schools—largely defined the framework of hermeneutics both in rabbinic and in Greco-Roman culture.”9 Giving up the notion of direct borrowing and influences eventually produced a theory of common “midrashic process” or “the pool of traditional midrash.” According to Naomi G. Cohen, “the winds of change, both in Philonic and midrashic scholarship, led to the recognition that a pool of traditional midrash had been in existence long before Philo.”10 Within this pool there were no sharp distinctions between Alexandrians and Palestinians; “. . . the same Zeitgeist— spirit of the times—moved the Jewish preacher and the Jewish audience in the Diaspora cities of Alexandria and Antioch on the one hand, and in Caesarea, Tiberias, or even Jerusalem on the other.”11 Moreover, “even the apparently philosophic utterances of Philo reveal themselves on close scrutiny to be sound rabbinic doctrine.”12 This was written twenty years after Jacob Neusner had asked the question, “what happens if we carefully differentiate ideas attributed to rabbis from ideas on the same subject attributed to Philo, instead of assuming that Philo was a rabbi?”13 Certainly, all “Alexandrian-Palestinian” discussion has been heavily fraught with ideologies and prejudices. Yitzhak F. Baer was surely acquainted with Philo’s Platonism better than anybody else of his time. He would also doubtlessly have recognized that historical sources convey no information on Platonic teaching and learning in Palestinian rabbinic Academies of the Second Temple period. Yet Baer suggested that Philo took his exquisite Platonic exegesis from these academies.14 In his view, the Alexandrian simply spoiled old midrashic-Platonic interpretations, drying them out and darkening them,15 changing their 8 Philip S. Alexander, “Quid Athenis et Hierosolymis? rabbinic midrash and Hermeneutics in the Greco-Roman World,” in A Tribute to Geza Vermes: Essays on Jewish and Christian Literature and History (Sheffield, 1990), p. 119. 9 Ibid., p. 120. 10 Naomi G. Cohen, Philo Judaeus: His Universe of Discourse (Frankfurt am Main, etc., 1995), p. 8. 11 Ibid., p. 15. 12 Ibid., p. 28. 13 Neusner, “Method and Substance in the History of Judaic Ideas,” p. 95. 14 Yitzhak F. Baer, Studies in the History of the Jewish People [Hebrew] ( Jerusalem, 1985), pp. 90, 102, 106–7, 109. 15 Ibid., p. 99.

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original poetic Hebrew language into an abstract, philosophic one.16 Moreover, according to Baer, the author of 2 Maccabees took his Platonic theory of the soul’s immortality from Hebrew tradition; the sages had already taken it from Plato in the days of Antiochus IV.17 Indeed Baer enthusiastically sought to prove that Halakhah, starting from the early Hellenistic period, had been built on Platonism.18 This combination of Odium Philonis and Amor Platonis can be explained only as a result of the self-hatred of a European Jew in the wake of the Holocaust. Baer may have been in love with Hellenic culture, but not with the Alexandrian reception of that culture. Diaspora was, probably, cursed in his eyes. Similar sentiment lurks behind the last book of Y. Heinemann, another great Philonic and rabbinic German-Israeli scholar. According to Heinemann, “historical material that Jewish Hellenists took from ‘the elders of the nation’ was methodically close to Jewish Apocrypha and Pseudoepigrapha.” Hellenistic literature though had no “aggadic thought” (aggadic imagination).19 As for exegetical material, there are parallels between the Hellenists and the rabbis. This brings Heinemann to a question: “do these parallels prove that Alexandrian Jews were learning from their Palestinian brethren? This question is important for us since it was not Philo who created these methods; he borrowed them from those exegetes who knew Hebrew and the Bible much better than he did. Therefore Philo is a witness of the generation of Shemaiah and Abtalion.”20 Interestingly enough, David Daube (in the steps of Graetz) suggested that even if these two teachers “were not natives of Alexandria, they studied and taught there long enough to go on using Egyptian measures even after settling in Palestine.”21 In the opinion of Daube, they came to Jerusalem from Alexandria to teach the basics of exegesis. Unlike Baer, Heinemann did not make Philo a disciple of Platonizing Palestinian rabbis. He soberly stated that Philo’s audience was taught Homer and Homeric exegesis. There was a major difference between “students of secular science” (including Jewish Hellenists) and the

16 17 18 19 20 21

Ibid., p. 105. Ibid., p. 95. Ibid., p. 305ff. Y. Heinemann, The Methods of Aggadah, p. 180. Ibid., p. 182. Daube, “Rabbinic Methods,” p. 241.

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lovers of the Torah. Philo built his exegesis on the “logos” while the rabbis were devoted to “organic thinking.” Therefore “the sages (not Philo) brought relevant moral deductions to our own agenda.”22 Philo, however, occupied a middle ground between the clarity of science and the haziness of mysticism. Those who want to understand relationships between aggadah and science, Heinemann contended, must approach not Philo but medieval Jewish philosophers and commentators. Unlike Philo, these philosophers and commentators were devoted to the sanctity of the Scripture. Yet unlike the sages, they were completely serious and logocentric.23 Their seriousness derived from their desire to annihilate contradictions and abstain from sensitive perception for the sake of intellectual cognition.24 In his Hegelian manner, Heinemann perceived philosophic exegesis and aggadic midrash as different stages in the loss of naïve organic thinking. While “laughter” or “serious play” is a key stylistic feature of aggadah (which is related to art), seriousness is a trademark of philosophy. This scheme may look artificial and romantic, derived as it is from presupposed propositions. Yet, in my opinion, the categories of Heinemann, if not precise, reflect historical truth. *

*

*

There is no doubt that Alexandrian exegesis is characterized by the most profound forms of seriousness or solemnity (semnotes). We first meet this term in the Letter of Aristeas (e.g., 144, 171) where it is contrasted to scrupulosity about vain things ( periergia).25 Torah (the Law) is not about mice and weasels. It concerns itself with things solemn and serious, like righteousness. Philo used the same vocabulary to defend Torah. According to Philo, Moses, disdaining the course “full of falsehood and imposture, introduced his laws with admirable and most solemn (semnotaten) exordium” (Opif. 2). As for the anthropomorphic stories in the Scripture, they have a pedagogical purpose (“to provide instruction and teaching for the life of those who lack wisdom”), though at the

22

Ibid., p. 186. Ibid., pp. 186–87. 24 Ibid., p. 191. 25 Cf. Folker Siegert, “Early Jewish Interpretation in a Hellenistic Style,” in Hebrew Bible/Old Testament: The History of Its Interpretation, Vol. 1, From the Beginnings to the Middle Ages (Until 1300), Pt. 1. Antiquity (Göttingen, 1996), p. 152. 23

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same time the sacred word embodies “holier and more august (semnoteron) conceptions of Him” (Somn. I, 234). Similarly, Philo values philosophical austerity (gravity) as opposed to superfluity, frivolity, and extravagance. “Self-control . . . is requisite for a severe and lofty (semno) mode of life; intemperance gives a like welcome to superfluity ( periergian) and extravagance” (Opif. 164; cf. Mos. I, 161). In the best traditions of such gravity, Philo compares solemn behavior (semno pragmati ) to laughable behavior (Mos. I, 302).26 Finally, Philo values the solemnity inherent in poetical “sublimity,” which he finds in the book of Genesis. “Now it is true that no writer in verse or prose could possibly do justice to the beauty of the ideas embodied in this account of the creation of the kosmos. For they transcend our capacity of speech and of hearing, being too great and august (semnotera) to be adjusted to the tongue or ear of any mortal” (Opif. 4). This is actually the “sublimity” of the book of Genesis mentioned by Ps.-Longinus, a contemporary of Philo (De sublimitate 9). Needless to say, neither Torah nor Iliad were serious. Neither were they frivolous. The very division between sublime and ridiculous was alien to the epic. In applying to the Scripture the idea of philosophical gravity or poetical sublimity, Philo and his predecessors inevitably rendered the Scripture frivolous. Hence, they were bound to fight against the literal meaning of Torah, to allegorize it. There was, however, another literature, one that belonged neither to the Scripture nor to serious philosophical writings. This literature was definitely frivolous in the eyes of Jewish philosophers. The author of the Letter of Aristeas criticizes “the books of the tellers of fables” (Arist. 322). Moses Hadas translated this as “the books of the romancers.”27 But this is not necessarily accurate. Under mythologos or mythographos the Greeks mostly grouped historians renowned for their propensity to lie (such as Herodotus, Ctesias, Hellanicus, Theopompus, the historians of Alexander).28 Romancers, in contrast, appeared only gradually as a new stereotype of liar.29 26 On Philo’s gravitas and his critique of the licentious Greeks see Maren R. Niehoff, Philo on Jewish Identity and Culture (Tübingen, 2001), pp. 149–50. 27 Moses Hadas, ed. and trans., Aristeas to Philocrates (Letter of Aristeas) (New York, 1973), p. 227. 28 Strabo XI, 6:3, e.g., Cf. Lucian, Verae hist. 1:2–3. 29 John Robert Morgan, “Make-believe and Make Believe: the Fictionality of the Greek Novels” in Lies and Fiction in the Ancient World (Austin, 1993), p. 177.

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We know a number of Jewish novellas of the Second Temple period, some of them created or translated in Alexandria.30 Philo may have had these novellas or the book of Artapanus in mind when he criticized “the fabulous fiction, the poem without meter or melody.” In the treatise On Flight and Finding (42) he wrote: “Worst is the fabulous fiction, the poem ( poiema) without meter or melody, the conception and persuasion which ignorance has rendered hard and wooden in very deed. From this Esau derives his name.” In another place Philo introduced Esau as a “thing made up ( poiema) because the life that consorts with folly is just fiction and fable, full of the bombast of tragedy on the one hand and of the broad jesting of comedy on the other” (Congr. 61). May we suggest that under the “fabulous fiction” Philo might have had in mind aggadic stories? Scholars have already recognized Philo’s aversion to narrative aggadah. David Instone Brewer has expressed this in the clearest terms: “Much of Philo’s allegorical exegesis is devoted to removing mythological elements from the biblical text, so he would not be expected to be enamored of much of the aggadah preserved in rabbinic and Hellenistic Jewish literature.”31 According to A. Kamesar, it was not the “religiosity” of narrative aggadah that led Philo to neglect it, but a different, literary quality. Philo viewed narrative aggadah as something similar to the “historical” part of grammar. Seen as “historical” commentary, aggadah was criticized for dwelling on genealogical and mythical details and for failing to distinguish between true “history” and myth.32 I myself doubt that Philo identified narrative aggadah with anything as specific as “historical grammar.” Rather, he meant what he said: prosaic fiction and fantasy. That would certainly include “the

30 Lawrence M. Wills, The Jewish Novel in the Ancient World (Ithaca and London, 1995). 31 David Instone Brewer, Techniques and Assumptions in Jewish Exegesis before 70 C.E. (Tübingen, 1992), p. 204. 32 Adam Kamesar, “The Evaluation of the Narrative Aggada in Greek and Latin Patristic Literature,” The Journal of Theological Studies 45.1 (1994): 37–71; idem, “Philo, Grammatike and Narrative Aggada” in Pursuing the Text: Studies in Honor of Ben Zion Wacholder on the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday ( Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, Suppl. Series 184), (Sheffield, 1994), pp. 216–42; idem, “The Literary Genres of the Pentateuch as Seen from the Greek Perspective: The Testimony of Philo of Alexandria,” Studia Philonica Annual 9 (1997): 143–88; idem, “Philo, the Presence of ‘Paideutic’ Myth in the Pentateuch, and the ‘Principles’ or Kephalaia of Mosaic Discourse,” Studia Philonica Annual 10 (1998): 34–65.

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books of romancers” and some (though not all) oral “aggadic” stories and interpretations. Philo quite positively declared his dependence on information taken “from some of the elders of the nation; for I always interwove what I read with what I was told” (Mos. I, 4). To understand his attitude to aggadah, we would need to find him criticizing a specific aggadic story. Unfortunately, he never does this overtly, and thus we must redirect our attention to Philo’s critique of the literal meaning of the Bible. What if it was not the literal meaning of the Bible’s contents, but fantastic aggadic exegesis compiled by “literalists,” whom Philo called the “men of narrow citizenship” (micropolitai ),33 that was the object of his aversion? Let us consider Philo’s commentary on Gen. 2:21 (“And God brought a trance upon Adam, and he fell asleep”) in LA II,19ff.: These words in their literal sense are of the nature of a myth. For how could anyone admit that a woman or a human being at all, came into existence out of a man’s side? And what was there to hinder the First Cause from creating woman, as He created man, out of the earth? For not only was the Maker the same Being, but the material too, out of which every particular kind was fashioned, was practically unlimited. And why, when there were so many parts to choose from, did He form the woman not from some other part but from the side? And which side did he take? For we may assume that only two are indicated, as there is in fact nothing to suggest a large number of them . . .34

Why did the story of Eve’s creation so arouse Philo’s indignation? According to Gerhard Delling, Philo was making every effort to distance biblical narrative from the popular myths of the Greeks. The story about the creation of Eve sounded mythical; hence Philo moved it into the allegorical realm.35 According to Maren R. Niehoff, “Philo’s irritation at Genesis 2:21 rather seems to be connected to the wellknown myth about Prometheus forming man out of clay.”36 Yet Philo

33 Philo, Somn. I, 39. As cosmopolitan, Philo opposed himself to “the people of small towns” not in the sense of real habitation but from the cultural point of view. Interestingly, literally the same term (Schtettele Jews) is applied by Jewish cosmopolitan intellectuals to their “narrow minded” brothers even now. 34 The translations of Philo are taken from the LCL edition: Philo. [Works]. Trans. and eds. R. Marcus, F. H. Colson and G. H. Whitaker. 10 vols and 2 supplementary vols. (London, 1991–95). 35 Gerhard Delling, Studien zum Neuen Testament und zum hellenistischen Judentum: Gesammelte Aufsätze, 1950–68 (Göttingen, 1970), pp. 104–10. 36 Maren R. Niehoff, “Philo’s Views on Paganism,” in Tolerance and Intolerance in Early Judaism and Christianity (Cambridge, 1998), p. 147.

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never criticized the story of man’s creation out of earth; had Eve been created out of earth as well, he would have voiced no objections. After all, earth was one of the four elements, along with air, fire and water. God creates miracles (creates His word or provides the Jews with manna) by “changing round the elements” (Mos. II, 267). The Wisdom of Solomon (19:18) demonstrated the same approach to the gift of the manna: “For the elements changed places with one another, as on a harp the notes vary the nature of the rhythm, while each note remains the same.”37 Philo mentioned “changing round the elements” on a number of other occasions as well (Mos. II, 154; 211). In fact, not only was God capable of doing this, but Moses as well. For God “gave into his hands the whole world as a portion well fitted for his heir. Therefore, each element obeyed him as its master, changing its general properties” (Ibid. I, 156). In other words, Philo did not challenge God’s ability to change the natural order of things. Moreover, in his opinion, God changed the natural order out of well-deliberated purposes. During the days of creation the earth put forth plants and bore herbs before the heavens were fully created. God ordained this “to make clear beyond all doubt the mighty sway of His sovereign power. For being aware beforehand of the ways of thinking that would mark the men of future ages, how they would be intent on what looked probable and plausible, . . . ‘let them,’ said He, ‘go back in thought to the original creation of the universe, when, before sun or moon existed, the earth bore plants . . .’ ” (Opif. 45–46). Philo had no objection to breaking the laws of nature per se. What he disapproved of in the miraculous was frivolity. To better understand Philo’s position, let us consider aggadic literature; specifically, let us take a fragment from the Bavli, Shabbat 53b:

37 Julius Guttmann described the posture of the Wisdom as follows: ‘The author uses philosophic and scientific concepts even in his account of the biblical miracles,” op. cit., p. 22; see also John P. M. Sweet, “The Theory of Miracles in the Wisdom of Solomon” in Miracles: Cambridge Studies in their Philosophy and History (London, 1965), pp. 115–26. According to Sweet (p. 115), “The last chapter of the Wisdom of Solomon contains a theory of miracles phrased in the scientific terms of the day.” See, however, R. Decharneux, “Apparitions et miracles des anges et demons chez Philon d’Alexandrie et Plutarque,” in Apparitions et miracles (Bruxelles, 1991), pp. 61–68. Decharneux believes that there were no miracles for Philo, since everything was supposed to be obedient to God, not to nature.

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chapter three Our rabbis have taught on Tannaite authority: There was the case of a man whose wife died, leaving him a suckling child, and he couldn’t afford the fee of a wet-nurse. So a miracle was done for him, and his breasts opened up like the two breasts of a woman, and he nursed his son. Said R. Joseph, “Come and take note of how great this man was, for whom such a miracle was done!” Said to him Abbayye, “To the contrary! How miserable this man was, for whom the natural order of creation was reversed.” Said R. Judah, “Come and take note of how difficult it is to provide people’s need, that the order of creation had to be reversed for him.” Said R. Nahman, “You may know that that is so, for miracles are common, but not to make food.” Our rabbis have taught on Tannaite authority: There was the case of a man who married a woman with a stumped hand, but he never realized it until the day of her death. Said Rabbi, “Come and take note of how modest this woman must have been, that her husband didn’t realize her infirmity.” Said to him R. Hiyya, “For her, that was natural, but how modest must that man have been, that he didn’t inspect his wife.”38

The first part of the fragment embodies a contradiction between a miracle (Nes) and the order of the Creation (sidre Bereshit). Max Kadushin described this contradiction in the following way: “A change in sidre Bereshit is . . . at least a characteristic of a Nes.”39 This resembles Philo’s theory: God intervenes in the natural order to produce miracles. The idea of the fragment is neither naïve nor devoid of “scientific” character. Unlike Philo, however, Abaye did not regard the case as mythical. Rather he recognized it as indecent, lowly ( garua). Why? It violated the border between the masculine and feminine, and in so doing mixed the sexes. Such a mixture would represent a blemish, would make things ritualistically unclear and unclean.

38

Trans. Neusner in The Talmud of Babylonia, pp. 225–26. Kadushin, The Rabbinic Mind, p. 153. On the Kadushin’s theory of Nes see Reuven Kiperwasser, “Sidro shel olam,” Akdamot: A Journal of Jewish Thought (1989): 35–49. See also Dan Ben-Amos, “Historical Poetics and Generic Shift: Niphla"ot veNissim: Terms of a Mysterious Concept,” Fabula: Journal of Folktale Studies 35 (1994): 20–48. According to Ben-Amos (p. 48), “the term nissim became a substitute for niphla"ot, but at the same time it was extended to convey the schism between the natural and supernatural.” Hans-Jürgen Becker endeavors to prove that the rabbis borrowed the Stoic idea of natural order. However, he never refers to the works of Kadushin and Ben Amos. See “Earthquakes, Insects, Miracles, and the Order of Nature,” in The Talmud Yerushalmi and Graeco-Roman Culture, Vol. 1 (Tübingen, 1998), pp. 387–96. 39

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In Genesis Rabbah 30:8 (edition Albeck, p. 275) there is a discussion of a similar miracle involving Mordecai: R. Yudan said, “Mordecai approached all the wet-nurses and found no one to breastfeed Ester, so he breastfed her himself.” R. Berekhiah, R. Abbahu in the name of R. Eleazar, “Milk came to him so he could breastfeed her.” R. Abbahu gave this interpretation in the community and they ridiculed it. He said to them, “But is it not an explicit statement of the Mishnah: Rabbi Simeon b. Eleazar says, Milk of a male is insusceptible to uncleanness (M. Makh. 6:7)?”40

Another objectionable alteration of sidre Bereshit is found in the Bavli, Sota 12b: “And behold the boy wept (Exod. 2:6)—A Tanna taught, ‘He was a child but his voice was like that of a grown boy; such is the view of R. Judah. R Nehemiah said to him, If so, you have made our master Moses into one possessed of a blemish. . . .’ ” A blemish, it should be noted, would disqualify a Levite from the Temple ministry. Nevertheless, among the rabbis, singing babes and sucklings were sometimes acceptable (B. Sot. 30b–31a): Yose the Galilean says, “When the Israelites came up out of the sea and saw their enemies strewn as corpses on the sea shore, they all burst out into song. And how did they recite the song? Even a child lying on his mother’s lap and an infant sucking at its mother’s breast— “When they saw the presence of God, the babe raised his head and the infant took his mouth off his mother’s teat and all responded in song, saying, ‘This is my God and I will glorify him (Exod. 15:2), “For it is said, ‘Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings you have established strength’ (Ps. 8:2).” R. Meir says, “Even fetuses in their mothers’ wombs broke out into song, as it is said, ‘Bless God in the great congregation, the Lord, o you who are of Israel’s fountain’ (Ps. 68:27).”41

While the rabbis indulge in things freakish, outlandish, and unnatural, however, Philo never did so. To make the story of Eve’s creation acceptable, he reinterpreted “sides” as a metaphor (or idiom) for “strength.” “To say that a man has ‘sides’ is equivalent to saying that he is strong” (LA II, 21). In contrast to Philo, R. Jose the 40 Jacob Neusner, Genesis Rabbah: The Judaic Commentary to the Book of Genesis: A New American Translation (Atlanta, 1985), Vol. 3:313. 41 Trans. Neusner in The Talmud of Babylonia, p. 148.

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Galilean and R. Meir demolished biblical metaphors or idioms by taking them literally. God in fact established His strength “out of the mouth of babes and sucklings.” “Fountain of Israel” was nothing but a womb, an abdomen, which had to be transparent to let the babes see the Shechinah. The demolition of an idiom is a very apposite way to make clichéd and “trotted-out things” strange and palpable (as was shown by V. Shklovsky). To my mind, much of Talmudic literature was built on this technique (ostrannenie, in Shklovsky’s terminology, a Russian play on words, a blend of estranging and making strange).42 There is a metaphor (even idiom) in the Book of Proverbs (14:30): “A sound heart is the life of the flesh: but envy the rottenness of the bones.” In the Talmud (B. Shab. 152b) this idiom is read literally: the flesh of a dead person is really alive in the ground, the rottenness does not touch his bones, since he was far from envy. Some grave-diggers were digging in the earth at R. Nahman’s. R. Ahai b. Josiah snorted at them. They came and told R. Nahman, “somebody snorted at us.” He came and said to him, “Who are you?” He said to him, “I am Ahai bar Josiah.” He said to him, “Well, didn’t R. Mari say, ‘The righteous are destined to be dust’?” He said to him, “So who is Mari? I know nothing of him!” He said to him, “But there is a verse of Scripture that makes the point: ‘And the dust returns to the earth as it was’ (Qoh. 12:7).” He said to him, “So whoever taught you the Scriptures of Qohelet didn’t teach you Proverbs, where it is written, ‘But envy is the rottenness of the bones’ (Prov. 14:30): Whoever has envy in his heart—his bones rot. Whoever has no envy in his heart, his bones don’t rot.” [Nahman] touched him and saw that he was substantial . . .43

Things become strange, anecdotal, and even humorous because of this literal reading.44 42 Daniel Boyarin noticed: “Aphoristically, we may say that the direction of Origen’s reading is from the concrete to the abstract, while the direction of midrash is from the abstract to concrete. Or, using Jakobsonian terminology, at least heuristically, we could say that allegorical reading involves the projection of the syntagmatic plane (metonymy) of the text onto a paradigmatic plane of meaning while midrash projects paradigms (metaphor) into a synagmatic plane of narrative history.” See Boyarin, Sparks of the Logos, p. 19. 43 Trans. Jacob Neusner in The Talmud of Babylonia, p. 723. 44 Cf. famous anecdote about the boot of the emperor in B.Git. 56b. It is built on the literal reading Proverbs 15:30 and 17:22 (“a good report maketh the bones fat” and “a broken spirit drieth the bones”). On receiving a good message Vespasian got his foot fatted and could not take his boot off. He had to let someone whom he disliked to pass before him (on the advice of R. Yohanan b. Zakkai) to really dry the bones of his foot.

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There was nothing specifically Jewish in the rabbis’s attitude towards things freakish. All the Roman Empire was obsessed with monsters, freaks, and grotesques.45 Some of the freaks became notorious—for example, an Indian boy with no arms, who used his legs to do all his work.46 This example itself is reminiscent of the Jewish man, who “married a woman with a stumped hand, yet he did not perceive it in her until the day of her death.” The rabbis, like their Greek and Roman contemporaries, were also interested in the cases of twoheaded children (Siamese twins of sorts).47 Aggadah even appropriated Plato’s myth concerning the androgynous, which epitomizes thought erasing the border between masculinity and femininity and mixing the sexes (the famous fragment: Genesis Rabbah 8:1, ed. Albeck, pp. 54–55).48 Philo, in contrast to the aggadic approach, ridiculed this myth while criticizing Plato’s Symposium (Cont. 63: “I pass over the mythical stories of the double-bodied men . . .”).49 Contrary to the myth, he proclaimed that the man who came into existence after the image of God was “incorporeal, neither male nor female” (Opif. 134). That proclamation also contradicted the literal meaning of Genesis 1:27 (In the image of God created he him, male and female created he them); it was the literal meaning of another verse (Gen. 5:2) that the midrash (Gen. R. 8:1) rested upon: “When the Holy one, blessed be he, came to create the first man, he made him androgynous, as it is said, Male and female created he them and called their name man.” In LA II, 13 and in Opif. 76 Philo further stated that the man created after the image, being an idea of a man, contained both the male and the female

45 Carlin A. Barton, The Sorrows of the Ancient Romans: The Gladiator and the Monster (Princeton, 1993); Glen W. Bowersock, Fiction as History: Nero to Julian (Berkeley, etc., 1994), p. 33. 46 Strabo, XV, 1:73; Dio Cassius, LIV, 9:8–10. 47 Daniel Sperber, Magic and Folklore in Rabbinic Literature (Ramat-Gan, 1994), pp. 13–14. 48 The discussion on this place see in Louis Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews (Philadelphia, 1968), 5:88–89, n. 42; Ephraim Urbach, The Sages: Their Concepts and Beliefs, trans. Israel Abrahams (Cambridge, 1979), pp. 228–29, 787–88; David A. Aaron, “Imagery of the Divine and the Human: On the Mythology of Genesis Rabba 8 § 1,” The Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 5.1 (1995): 25–28. 49 On Philo’s treatment of bisexuality and homosexuality see Holger Szesnat, “Pretty Boys in Philo’s De vita contemplativa,” The Studia Philonica Annual 10 (1998): 87–107; idem, “Philo and Female Homoeroticism,” Journal for the Study of Judaism 30.2 (1999): 140–47; Niehoff, op. cit., pp. 148–50.

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genus. This bisexuality was, however, purely spiritual.50 A myth that Plato put in the mouth of Aristophanes was evidently shocking to Philo (as must have been most Old Attic Comedy). Did Philo know the aggadic rendition of Plato’s myth? Interestingly enough, speaking about the creation of Eve, the Alexandrian interpreted the literal meaning of pleura as “side,” not “rib.” Let us compare that interpretation with the story by R. Samuel bar Nahman (who lived, of course, centuries after Philo): “Said R. Samuel bar Nahman, ‘When the Holy One, blessed be he, created the first man, he created him with two faces, then sawed him into two and made a back on one side and a back on the other.’ An objection was raised, And he took one of his ribs (Gen. 2:21). He said to them, ‘It was one of his sides . . .’ ” (Gen. R. 8:1). The very wording of the Septuagint ( pleura, not pleuron) is ambiguous. Though pleura could have meant “rib,” that meaning was rather rare. Philo, at any rate, did not know it. He used pleura to connote a “side.” Plato did the same in his myth (Symposium 189e: pleuras kyklo ekhon). This enticingly suggests that Philo (as well as R. Samuel bar Nahman) perceived the biblical story of Eve’s creation via Plato’s myth.51 While ridiculing the plurality of ribs (“there is in fact nothing to suggest a large number of them,” LA II, 19) he might actually have had in mind Plato’s words ( pleuras kyklo ekhon). This suggestion is arguably supported by Preparatio Euangelica (XII, 12:1–3). There, Eusebius stated that Plato alluded to the Bible in some of his treatises, e.g., in the Symposium. Therefore, the tale of

50 According to Thomas H. Tobin, Philo’s interpretations of Gen. 1:26–27 are Platonic in their thought structure, while the interpretations of Gen. 2:7 are Stoic. See The Creation of Man: Philo and the History of Interpretation (Washington, 1983), pp. 26–28. Cf. also Richard A. Baer, Philo’s Use of the Categories Male and Female (Leiden, 1970) pp. 83–84, 87–88. 51 Waine A. Meeks noticed that the use of “side” in the aggadic tale was the same as in the “Symposium” of Plato. However, he overlooked the use of the same word in the creation of Eva story as told by Philo and Septuagint. See “The Image of the Androgyne: Some Uses of a Symbol in Earliest Christianity,” History of Religions 13.3 (1974): 186, n. 90. David Daube has also made a guess that could support our hypothesis. According to Daube, R. Simeon ben Yohai alluded to the myth of the androgynous when he explained that, in marrying, the man was seeking his lost—the rib (B. Qid. 2b). See The New Testament and Rabbinic Judaism (New York, 1973), p. 82. The whole argument of Daube about the myth of the androgynous in the New Testament (pp. 71–85) is extremely insightful. Yet Daube does not see Philo’s reservations concerning this myth and makes Philo a kind of a passionate believer in the primeval androgynous.

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the androgynous was nothing but an allusion to the story of Eve’s creation, put into the mouth of Aristophanes the scoffer. Eusebius must have taken his exegesis from Alexandrian Jewish literature. This would explain why Philo was so critical of a literal interpretation of this biblical story; that is, he was evaluating the story against both the Symposium and Alexandrian aggadah. It is well known that Philo construed the biblical creation story via Timaeus,52 easily assimilating every detail of Plato’s creation myth. The tale of the androgynous, however, violated his idea of decency. It was too frivolous.53 We might hypothesize that the seriocomical style was present in Alexandrian or Palestinian tradition in the time of Philo and even earlier. However, no extant texts witness it. If it really existed, it was somehow suppressed. Was there a prohibition on writing down Oral Torah, or violating the gravity of learned Alexandrian literature? Whatever, it took a political catastrophe and a literary revolution to “publish” the tale of the androgynous. *

*

*

In the view of Y. Baer, as noted, Philo dried out and darkened the poetical interpretations of Palestinian rabbis. Yet things could have happened the opposite way: the amoraim could have inherited philosophical interpretations and made them poetic and humorous. R. Yehudah ha-Nasi declared in B. Erub. 13b: “The only reason why I am keener than my colleagues is that I saw the back of R. Meir but had I had a front view of him I would have been keener still, for it is written in Scripture: But thine eyes shall see thy teacher (Isa. 30:20).” In the Yerushalmi, Besah 5:2 this saying of Rabbi serves as the point of a hilarious anecdote: Rabbi was marrying off R. Simeon, his son. And on that occasion the people were clapping with the backs of their hands on the Sabbath. R. Meir happened by and heard the noise. He said, “Have our rabbis

52 David T. Runia, Philo of Alexandria and the Timaeus of Plato (Leiden, 1986); Roberto Radice, Platonismo e Creazionismo in Filone di Alessandria (Milan, 1989); idem, “Observations on the Theory of the Ideas as the Thoughts of God in Philo of Alexandria,” The Studia Philonica Annual 3 (1991): 126–34. 53 Cf. also Philo’s critique of Sybaritian tales in Mos. I, 3. This comic licentious genre flourished in the Hellenistic age. On Milesiaka and Sybaritici libelli see Walsh, op. cit., pp. 10–11. On the relationships between Miletian tales and rabbinic stories see Kovelman, “The Miletian Story of Beruria”, Vestnik Evreyskogo Universiteta 1(19), (1999) 8–23.

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chapter three [=Rabbi] declared [this kind of clapping] permitted on the Sabbath?” Rabbi heard his voice and said, ‘Who is this who has come to chastise us in our own home?’ . . . R. Meir heard about it and fled. They [participants in the wedding] went out and hastened after him. The wind picked up [Meir’s] turban from around his neck. Rabbi looked out of the window and saw Meir’s [naked] neck from the back. He said, “I have had the merit of learning Torah only because I saw R. Meir’s naked neck from the back.”54

What is the meaning of the reference to the back of R. Meir? Why would Rabbi be keener had he had a front view of R. Meir? The reference to Isaiah 30:20 hardly answers these questions: to see a teacher would not be the same as to see a back of a teacher. As for the anecdote in Yerushalmi, this is just a typical “etiological” story. Rashi construes the saying of Rabbi as an allusion to the order of sitting: “When I studied under him my seat at the academy was in the row which had a back view of R. Meir.” This is another etiology, which eliminates any possible punch line of the anecdote. The punch line becomes evident once we read Philo’s allusions to Exod. 33:12–23. For Philo the request of Moses—“manifest Thyself to me” (Exod. 33:13)—and the following appeal—“I beseech thee, show me thy glory” answered by “Thou canst not see my face . . . and thou shalt see my back parts; but my face shall not be seen,” (Exod. 33:20–23)—prove that “the God of real Being is apprehensible by no one . . . incapable of being seen” (Post. 15). “That means that all that follows in the wake of God is within the good man’s apprehension, while He Himself alone is beyond it . . .” (Post. 169).55 Of course, Philo would never agree with the literal anthropomorphic reading of the verse: Moses could see God “from behind,” but he could never see God’s “face” ( prosopon). When the Scripture says, “And Cain went out from the face of God,” it does not mean for Philo the face of God proper. “For a face is a piece of a living creature, and God is a whole not a part, so that we shall have to assign to Him the other parts of the body as well, neck, breasts, hands, feet, to say nothing of the belly and genital organs . . .” (Post. 3). Indeed, Rabbi alluded to Exodus 33:12–23. He had a chance to see the back parts of his teacher, but would have been keener still if he had seen his face. Whereas Philo builds serious Platonic 54

Neusner, The Talmud of the Land of Israel, pp. 87–88. The same interpretation of the verse is given in Fug. 165, Mut. 9, Leg. Spec. I, 41–50, Opif. 71. 55

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epistemology, Rabbi makes parody of theophany. Yet to make this parody, he must have been aware of a certain exegetical cliché. Exodus 33:12–23 ought to have been systematically construed even before the anecdote appeared as a demonstration of the capabilities and limits of human cognition. We do not meet this cliché in rabbinic midrash. In rabbinic Judaism, it was Maimodides who interpreted Ex. 33:12–23 in a Philonic way (Guide of the Perplexed, Pt. 1, Ch. 21, 37, 38, 54). Yet similar interpretation could actually be found in the next generation after Philo. In 2 Cor. 3:6–18 Paul suggests that the children of Israel are unable to perceive the ultimate meaning of the Old Testament since their minds are blinded. Paul refers to Exod. 34:27–35. According to Paul, “The children of Israel could not steadfastly behold the face of Moses for the glory of his countenance.” Therefore Moses “put a veil over his face.” The comparison between the glory of Moses’s face and the glory of Jesus becomes the major motive of the pericope. Yet we do not meet “the glory of countenance” of Moses in MT. It is the Septuagint that introduces this motive into Exod. 34:27–35. According to the Septuagint’s version of Exod. 34:29, “Moses wist not that the appearance of the skin of his face was glorified (dedÒjastai).” It looks like the Septuagint builds a parallel ( gezera shavah) between Exod. 33:12–23 and Exod. 34:27–35. It tells about the glory of Moses in Exod. 34:27–35 as it tells about the glory of God in Exod. 33:12–23. Paul brought this analogy even further into an epistemological context. In his words, not only were the children of Israel afraid to see the face of Moses, they “could not steadfastly look to the end of that which is abolished.” Their ability to perceive was hampered by the veil. Interestingly enough, we meet the same gezera shavah in the Targum Onqelos to Exod. 34:29 (“the glory of his face”). While introducing “the glory” of Moses’s face, neither the Septuagint nor Paul speak explicitly about light coming from the face of Moses. According to the MT, it was light that prevented Israel from seeing Moses’s face. Light could have been seen as an equivalent or an attribute of the glory.56 In De Fuga 165 Philo, while commenting 56 That notion is to be found in Isaiah 60:1–2 (“Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee. For, behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the people: but the Lord shall arise upon thee, and his glory shall be seen upon thee”).

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on Exod. 33:23, perceived the glory as light: “For it amply suffices the wise man to come to a knowledge of all that follows on after God in His wake, but the man that wishes to set his gaze upon the Supreme Essence, before he sees Him will be blinded by the rays that beam forth all around Him.” A similar idea of light preventing the human mind from getting “to the Great king himself ” is uttered by Philo in Opif. 71. Evidently, Philo interprets Exod. 33:12–23 via Platonic myths of the cave and chariot. Specifically the myth of the cave (Resp. 518a) contains the same “light” vocabulary in the realm of epistemology.57 According to Exod. 34:32–33, Moses gave the commandments to the children of Israel with his face uncovered. He put a veil on his face after the Torah lesson. In the Talmudic story the turban actually plays the role of the veil. Since the wind removed the turban, Rabbi “had the merit of learning Torah” from R. Meir. The very name Meir may have alluded to the shining face of Moses. According to B. Erub. 13b, R. Meir was called this since he was enlightening (meir) the eyes of the Sages. Having said this, the Talmud recounts the joke of Rabbi: “The only reason why I am keener than my colleagues is that I saw the back of R. Meir . . .” The shining face of another teacher and the fear of his disciples appear in Matt. 17. The anecdote about Rabbi and R. Meir seems to be part of a rich anecdotal tradition.58

57 On Platonic allusions in Opif. 71 see commentaries of David T. Runia in Philo of Alexandria, On the Creation of Cosmos according to Moses, introduction, trans., and comm. David T. Runia (Leiden, 2001), pp. 229–33. 58 2 Cor. 3:6–18 generated a huge amount of construal. Richard B. Hays characterized the major disagreements in the following paragraph: “. . . the majority view of New Testament scholars has been that the veil conceals the disappearance of splendor from Moses’ face, symbolizing the obsolescence of the old covenant. But if the metaphor is read in the way I have suggested, a different interpretation is necessary. Behind the veil is nothing other than the glory of God, which is made visible in Jesus Christ.” See Hays, Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul (New Haven, etc., 1989), p. 146. Very similar understanding was suggested by Morna D. Hooker in her paper “Christ: The End of the Law” in Neotestamentica et Philonica: Studies in Honor of Peder Borgen (Leiden, etc., 2003): 126–46. See, for example, on p. 137: “If Moses veiled his face in order to conceal the fact that the old system had come to an end, then the removal of the veil should lead to the discovery that the glory had faded. Instead, however, its removal means that we see ‘the glory of the lord’— and, like Moses, reflect it.” Daniel Boyarin in his review of Hays’s book construed the “veil” as a metaphor of midrash. In Boyarin’s words: “midrash, the way the Jews read Moses, is a hermeneutics of opacity, while Paul’s allegorical/typological reading is a hermeneutics of transparency.” See Boyarin, Sparks of the Logos, p. 187.

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Philo’s commentary on Exod. 33:13 in Post. 15 is followed by another proof of a creature’s inability to attain “by his own efforts the knowledge of the God Who verily exists.” This point the Alexandrian expounds through his exegesis of Gen. 22:3–4: This must be borne in mind if we are to understand what we read about Abraham, how, on reaching the place of which God had told him, he looked up on the third day and seeth the place from afar. What place? The one which he had reached? And how can it be far off if he is already there? (Post. 17).

In his usual way, Philo finds a problem (aporia) to be solved. Abraham has already reached the place of Akidah, why does he see it from afar? The answer is clear: God “has driven created being far away from His essential nature, so that we cannot touch it with the pure spiritual contact of the understanding” (Post. 20). Philo solves the aporia by identifying the place as God Himself (Post. 14). The same interpretation we find in Somn. I, 61–67 which is a commentary on Gen. 28:11 (“he met a place”). According to Philo, place is either “a space filled by a material form,” or “that of a Divine Word,” or “there is a third significance, in keeping with which God himself is called a place, by reason of His containing things, and being contained by nothing whatever . . .” Furthermore Philo states: Witness is borne to what I am saying by this oracle delivered in Abraham’s case: “He came to the place of which God had told him: and lifting up his eyes he saw the place from afar” (Gen. 22:3f.). Tell me, pray, did he who had come to the place see it from afar? Nay, it would seem that one and the same word is used of two different things: one of these is a divine Word, the other God Who was before the Word. One who has come from abroad under Wisdom’s guidance arrives at the former place, thus attaining in the divine word the sum and the consummation of service. But when he has his place in the divine Word he does not actually reach Him Who is in very essence God, but sees Him from afar: or rather, not even from a distance is

I believe that whatever message Paul intended to convey, he was doing it in the contest of epistemological-philosophical-midrashic tradition. “The children of Israel could not steadfastly look to the end (telos) of that which is abolished (2 Cor. 3:13)” because, according to this tradition, telos was “the God of real Being . . . apprehensible by no one . . . incapable of being seen” (Philo, Post. 15). Actually, Paul is endeavoring to overcome the tradition by introducing spiritual apprehension of telos. Interestingly, according to Philo “the divine Word” is “the telos of the service” available for perception unlike God Himself (Somn. I, 66). Both for Paul and for Philo logos as telos is apprehensible.

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chapter three he capable of contemplating Him; all he sees is the bare fact that God is away from all Creation, and that the apprehension of Him is removed to a very great distance from all human power of thought . . .

The rabbis took the same episode of the Akidah story, tragic as it was, and converted it into a funny anecdote. I mean the famous midrash on Gen. 22:4 (“Then on the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes, and saw the place afar off.”) Abraham sees a cloud attached to the mountain. Isaac sees it as well, while the young men (the servants of Abraham) see nothing. “And Abraham said unto his young men, Abide ye here with the ass.”59 Through the play on words ( ym ha-khamor —am ha khamor) the “young men” are labeled as asses, foolish ones, unable to see what Abraham and his son clearly recognize (a cloud fastened to the top of a mountain). As a matter of fact, the notion of seeing and being shown is a leitmotif of the biblical episode. Abraham “saw (ar]Y"w") the place” (22:4); “God will see (ha,ry] )I for himself a lamb” (22:8); “And Abraham lifted up his eyes, and saw (ar]Y"w)" ” (22:13); “and Abraham called the name of that place ‘the Lord will see (ha,r]yI),’ as it is said to this day, ‘in the mount of the Lord it shall be seen (ha,r;w)E ’ ” (22:14). The verb “to see” appears five times in the episode, probably in order to explain the name of the mountain (Moriah). However, both Philo and the midrash not only made use of a motive already existent in the Bible, they also developed it into a conception of the human ability or inability to apprehend. In the Fragmentary Targum to Gen. 22 the motive of vision and knowledge is salient. The eyes of Isaac “were scanning the angels of the heights; Isaac saw them, but Abraham did not see them.”60 Geza Vermes suggested that the targumic belief that at the moment of sacrifice Isaac saw a divine vision, may have originated from an interpretation of “The Lord shall be seen (Gen. 22:14),” in conjunction with Isa. 53:11 “because of the travail of his soul he shall see” (the pericope about the suffering servant).61 Further in the Targum we read:

59

Lev. R. 20:2, Margalioth, p. 448. The Fragment-Targum of the Pentateuch According to their Extant Sources, trans. Michael L. Klein (Rome, 1980), vol. 1, p. 16. 61 Geza Vermes, Scripture and Tradition in Judaism: Haggadic Studies (Leiden, 1973), p. 202, n. 1. 60

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And Abraham worshiped and prayed the Name of the memra of the Lord, and he said: “You are the Lord God, Who sees but is invisible; everything is manifest and known before You . . .”

Philo knew that “God is invisible though sees everything” (éÒratÒw te gãr §stin aÈtÚw tå pãnta ır«n, Opif. 69). This was probably a commonplace of Greek and Roman philosophy. Early rabbinic literature used it as well (Lev. R. 4:8, p. 96; B. Ber. 10a).62 To what extent were the rabbis aware of Alexandrian epistemology? Let us consider another famous midrash, Tanhuma Buber, parashat Vayyéra 6. According to the midrash, the Mishna has been given to Moses orally since it is God’s secret mystery (mystorin) revealed only to holy ones. This thesis is based on two proof texts: Ps. 25:14 (“The secret of the Lord is with them that fear him”) and Gen. 18:17 (“Shall I hide from Abraham that which I am doing?”). A similar idea and nearly the same wording can be found in LA III, 27: What soul, then, was it that succeeded in hiding away wickedness and removing it from sight, but the soul to which God manifests Himself, and which He deems worthy of His secret mysteries (mysterion)? For He says: Shall I hide from Abraham My servant that which I am doing? (Gen. 18:17). It is meet, O Savior, that Thou displayest Thine own works to the soul that longs for all beauteous things, and that Thou hast concealed it none of Thy works.63

Is it by chance that the midrash uses Greek loan-word (mystorin) to express a notion so similar to Philo’s theory of God’s Mysteries? Are we perhaps confronting the dispersed remnants of Alexandrian epistemology in rabbinic exegesis? In any case, what appears to be an extremely serious philosophical exercise in Philo, takes on an anecdotal, sometimes comical form in Talmudic literature. *

*

*

From epistemology let us move to the basic national-religious problem that Alexandrian exegesis had to deal with: “why it was that, creation being one, the Jews were separated from other nations?” This crucial question was embodied in the “Apology for the Law,” a response of the High Priest Eleazar to the question of Ptolemaic

62

Urbach, The Sages, pp. 249, 798, n. 27. On Philo’s view of moral virtue as a condition of intellectual virtue see Harry A. Wolfson, Philo (Cambridge, Mass., 1947), pp. 53–54. 63

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envois (sections 128–71 of the Letter of Aristeas). The “Apology” was built on the pattern of “Homeric questions” or “Homeric problems,” in which Alexandrian grammarians identified contradictions (aporiai ) in Homeric texts and suggested solutions (lyseis). Posing questions to the Torah and formulating answers was also important in Alexandrian synagogues and was to be continued by the rabbis compiling kushiya (be’aya) and finding teshuvah (terutz).64 The question of Aristeas (section 129) was as follows: “why it was that, creation being one, some things are regarded as unclean for food and some even to the touch . . .?”65 Eleazar explained the separation of things unclean by the necessity to separate Israel from other nations, because those nations were totally corrupt. The Law with its scrupulous prescriptions fenced the Jews off from the rest of the world (“. . . we should mingle in no way with any of the other nations, remaining pure in body and in spirit. . . .” section 139). In addition, Moses expressed the idea of moral separation through allegory. He was unconcerned with clean and unclean animals, using the latter simply to give examples of proper and improper behavior. “Parting of the hoof ” and the “cloven foot” were used symbolically to distinguish between right and wrong. Those who possessed discrimination also possessed memory, which was symbolized by “chewing the cud.” All this showed that the scrupulosity of the Law was not trivial but serious. In the fragment, the words diastellein (to separate) and diastole (separation) are ubiquitous (they are used nine times). According to Eleazar, “our lawgiver . . . laid down (diasteilamenos) the principles of piety and justice. . . .” (131). “For the parting of the hoof and the cloven foot (diastellein hoples) is a symbol to discriminate (diastellein) in each of our actions with a view to what is right . . . (150). He constrains us, by taking note through these symbols, to do all things with discrimination (meta diastoles). . . . An additional signification is that we are set apart (diestalmetha) from all men” (151). Other nations plunge into terrible perversions, but “we have been kept apart (diestalmetha) from such things” (152). “Further, men who possess the aforementioned trait of separation (tes diastoles), the lawgiver has characterized as possessing the trait of memory too” (153). The admonition to

64 65

Freudenthal, op. cit., pp. 76–77; Philip S. Alexander, op. cit., pp. 106–7. I use (with some alterations) the translation of Moses Hadas, op. cit.

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remember “what great and marvelous things the Lord, thy God did in thee” (a combination of Deut. 7:18 and 10:21) Eleazar construes literally as an obligation to remember what happens inside a human being: “In the first place there is the articulation of the body and the means for digesting food, and the distribution (diastole) of the members” (155). Summing things up, Eleazar proclaims: “You have now received demonstration of the high worth of the doctrine concerning separation (ten diastolen) and memory” (161). Strangely enough, scholars have paid very little attention to this phrasing. John M. G. Barclay has pointed out that Aristeas subtly inserts diastellein (“distinguish”) into his citation of Lev. 11:2–8 (the “cloven hoof,” 150), and this distinction refers in particular to that between Jews and all “others” (151).66 J. N. Rhodes and Eilen Birnbaum repeat this observation of Barclay and note that Aristeas’s use of the words diastello and diastole underscores the separation of the Jews from others.67 Henry St. John Thackeray has noted that diastellein in section 152 combines the two senses of “to distinguish” and “to command,” with a reference to Lev. 18:6ff.68 As a matter of fact, the entire first part of the “Apology” (sections 130–52, not just section 152) is an exegesis of Lev. 18:3–24 (not just Lev. 18:6ff.). It starts with the allusion to Leviticus 18:3 (“You shall not do as they do in the land of Egypt, where you lived, and you shall not do as they do in the land of Canaan, to which I am bringing you”). In section 152 Eleazar mentions “promiscuous unions,” defiling of mothers and daughters (Lev. 18:6–18), and intercourse with males (Lev. 18:22). Further, allusions are not only semantic, but linguistic as well. In Leviticus 18:24 God “castes out” (exapo-stellei ) the nations who have defiled themselves; in sections 151–52 of the “Apology” God “keeps apart” (dia-stellei ) the Jews from the nations who defile themselves.69 Here, the change of the prefix changes the 66 John M. G. Barclay, The Jews in Mediterranean Diaspora: From Alexander to Trajan (323 B.C.E.–117 C.E.) (Berkeley, 1996), p. 146. Barclay is not connecting the use of diastellein here with the role of this verb in the rest of the “Apology”. 67 J. N. Rhodes, “Diet as Morality: Tracing an Exegetical Tradition” (master’s thesis, Catholic University of America, 2000), pp. 62–63. Unfortunately, I do not have access to this thesis. Therefore, I refer to the paper of Ellen Birnbaum, who accepts Rhodes’s point of view in “Allegorical Interpretation and Jewish Identity among Alexandrian Jewish Writers” in Neotestamentica et Philonica: Studies in Honor of Peder Borgen (Leiden, etc., 2003), p. 312. 68 Henry St. John Thackeray, The Letter of Aristeas (London, 1904), p. 32. 69 Thackeray (see above) has not noticed the play on words diastello—exapostello, which was, actually, the key to the exegesis.

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meaning of the verb. It still means “separation,” but through keeping the Jews apart, not through expelling other nations. This is the nub of the composition, the only place in the Apology where the key word (diastello) is explicitly quoted. In starting to paraphrase the biblical paragraph (that is, Lev. 18:3–24), the author apparently anticipated ending his paraphrase with the key word at the end of the quoted paragraph (that is, Lev. 18:24). This explains his choice of the paragraph in the first place. That is, he needs it to raise the question of the envois alluded to in the key word (diastello). The question in the beginning of the Apology (“why it was that, creation being one, some things are regarded as unclean (akatharton) for food and some even to the touch . . .?”) is raised in reference to Lev. 10:10 (“And that ye may put difference (diasteilai ) between holy and unholy, and between unclean (akatharton) and clean”). But to understand the nature of this “difference”, we must reach sections 150–51, in which Leviticus 18:24 is quoted with a word exapostello, read as diastello. In the treatises of Philo and in Talmudic literature, sister-quotations usually introduce and conclude a composition: a reader should reach the final quotation in order to understand the meaning of the first quotation.70 And in fact, such a teleological symmetrical structure underlies the “Apology.” With all this in mind, Eleazar can be seen to explain Lev. 10:10 via Lev. 18:3–24. Things unclean are separated in order to separate Israel, to keep her clean. The separation of Israel is actually the major theme of the Apology; it is this for which Eleazar apologizes (and not for the separation of mice and weasels). In doing so, he actually formulates the first known version of Havdalah.71 The proof text of Havdalah, in which Israel is separated from other nations as the light is separated from the darkness, the holy from the unholy, is also Leviticus 10:10. As José Faor noted, the meaning of Havdalah derives from a linguistic structure: “For the Hebrews . . . bina ‘intelligence’ is conceptually connected with ‘difference,’ ‘differenciation.’ It derives from the root BYN, from which also comes the proposition

70

Uri Gershowitz, Arkady Kovelman, “A Symmetrical Teleological Construction in the Treatises of Philo and in the Talmud,” The Review of Rabbinic Judaism 5.2 (2002): 228–46. 71 On the hypothetic version of the Amidah in a fourth-fifth century papyrus see: Peter W. Van Der Horst, “Neglected Greek Evidence for Early Jewish Liturgical Prayer,” Journal for the Study of Judaism 29.3 (1998): 278–96.

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ben, ‘between.’ ”72 The “Apology” plays on the likeness of dia-stello (to differentiate) and exapo-stello (to caste out). The inclusion of Havdalah in the fourth blessing resembles the inclusion of other material in the “Apology.” Knowledge (the essence of the fourth blessing) and memory are represented in the latter as a result of separation. According to the Talmud (B. Ber. 33a), the Men of the Great Synagogue formulated Havdala. One can hypothesize that Ps.-Aristeas borrowed the structure and the idea of the “Apology” from Palestinian tradition rooted in the Bible. A commandment to the Jews not to defile themselves by perversions of other nations refers back to Lev. 18:24, 28. Ezekiel underlines Israel’s failure to stop following the ways of Egyptians, saying “Cast ye away every man the abominations of his eyes, and defile not yourselves with the idols of Egypt . . .” (Ezek. 20:7). However, the idea of “separation” in order to prevent moral corruption was very much Alexandrian. This is apparent in a piece of anti-Semitic polemics dating from the first century B.C.E., the so-called Boule-papyrus (C. Pap. Jud. II 150=PSI X 1160). The “Boule-papyrus” contains a fragment of a petition handed by an Alexandrian embassy to Octavian, requesting the establishment of a city council in Alexandria “to see to it that none of those who are liable to enrollment of the poll-tax diminish the revenue by being listed in the public records along with the epheboi for each year; and it will take care that the pure citizen body of Alexandria is not defiled by men who are uncultured and uneducated” (lines 1–6). According to Viktor Tcherikover, “the Jews are not mentioned in the document, but there is little doubt that the Alexandrian spokesman had them in mind.”73 Polybius (XXXIV, 10) believed Alexandrians to be of mixed blood. On the word of Josephus, the kings granted to Alexandrian Jews a separate area to preserve their own way of life more purely by mingling less frequently with aliens (Bell. II, 487–88). Both Alexandrian Greeks and Alexandrian Jews insisted that they were clean, that it was their neighbors who defiled themselves either through immorality or a lack of education. Nevertheless, it was necessary to explain and apologize for the separation. Ps.-Aristeas sought 72 José Faor, Golden Doves with Silver Dots: Semiotics and Textuality in Rabbinic Tradition (Atlanta, 1999), p. xxiv. 73 Viktor Tcherikover and Alexander Fuks, Corpus Papyrorum Judaicarum, 3 vols. ( Jerusalem, 1960) 2:27.

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to harmonize it with the notion of a single creation. Yet the biblical notion was not the source of the difficulty in doing so. Rather, he confronted the stoic idea of the unity of humankind. Following Chrysippus, in my opinion, he was recognizing the contradiction between inequality and unity. This can be seen in the wording of the Life of Moses I, 278–79, in which Philo comments on the Numbers 23:9–10 (the blessing of Balaam): I shall not be able to harm this people, which shall dwell alone, not reckoned among the nations; and that not because their dwelling place is set apart and their land severed from others, but because in virtue of distinction of their peculiar customs they do not mix with others to depart from the ways of their fathers. Who has made accurate discovery of how the sowing (katabolen) of their generation was first made? Their bodies have been molded from human seeds, but their souls are sprung from divine seeds, and therefore their stock is akin to God. May my soul die to the life of the body that it may be reckoned among the souls of these men.

This exegesis, as F. H. Colson has noted, derives from the Septuagint’s rendition of Num. 23:10. Instead of “who can count the dust of Jacob?” the Septuagint asks, “Who counted accurately the seed of Jacob?” Instead of “let my last end be like his,” Septuagint utters, “and let my seed be like their seed.” Therefore Philo uses the word katabole, which could mean both “foundation” and “sowing” (“sowing” being the literal meaning).74 The same word, however, is in the opening question of the “Apology”: “why it was that, creation (sowing—katabole) being one, some things are regarded as unclean for food and some even to the touch . . .?” According to Philo, the “sowing” of the Jews was different from the “sowing” of other nations. This itself represents an answer to the question of the “Apology.” In two connected treatises (On Husbandry and Concerning Noah’s Work as a Planter), Philo radically solves the basic problem of Ps.-Aristeas. In his view, to say that all things were made by God, both beautiful and their opposites (Agr. 128), is basically wrong. “You ought never to have mixed and confused the matter by representing Him as Author of all things indiscriminately, but to have drawn a sharp line (meta diastoles) and owned Him Author of the good things only” 74 Cf. also Katell Berthelot, l’“Umanité de l’autre home” dans la pensée juive ancienne (Leiden, etc., 2004), p. 196. According to Berthelot, Philo used here the vocabulary of Gen. 2:7.

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(Agr. 129). “For of things good and holy, O Master, Thou art Maker, as from the corruptible creation come things evil and profane” (Plant. 53). From this point Philo goes to the separation of Israel (Plant. 59).75 Students of Philo are fully aware of the latter’s dependence on Ps.-Aristeas.76 Philo’s account of Septuagint’s making (in The Life of Moses) follows Ps.-Aristeas. In other treatises (On Special Laws IV, 103ff.; On Husbandry 128–45) Philo repeats the deliberations of Eleazar on clean and unclean animals, on the parting the hoof, and on chewing the cud. Philo’s use of the word katabole (“sowing”) in The Life of Moses is anything but casual. But where did Aristeas get this wording? The answer is to be found in Epictetus I,13: When someone asked, how may a man eat acceptably to the gods, he answered: If he can eat justly and contentedly, and with equanimity, and temperately and orderly, will it not be also acceptably to the gods? But when you have asked for warm water and the slave has not heard, or if he did hear and has brought only tepid water, or he is not even found to be in the house, then not to be vexed or to burst with passion, is not this acceptable to the gods? “How then shall a man endure such persons as this slave?” Slave yourself, will you not bear with your own brother, who has Zeus for his progenitor, and is like a son from the same seeds and of the same sowing (kataboles) from above? But if you have been put in any such higher place, will you immediately make yourself a tyrant? Will you not remember who you are, and whom you rule? That they are kinsmen, that they are brethren by nature, that they are the offspring of Zeus? “But I have purchased them, and they have not purchased me.” Do you see in what direction you are looking, that it is toward the earth, toward the pit, that it is toward these wretched laws of dead men? But toward the laws of the gods you are not looking.

According to Nature’s law, everybody was free and equal, but at the same time they were unequal according to the “laws of dead men”

75 Shlomo Pines, while looking for a source of Josephus’ account of the doctrine of Pharisees, touched upon the words of Apuleius: “One must not attribute to God the cause of any evil.” In the opinion of Pines, both Apuleius and Josephus were influenced by Antiochus of Ashkelon (first century B.C.E.). See Shlomo Pines, Studies in the History of Jewish Thought ( Jerusalem, 1997), pp. 83–88. Actually, Philo utters the same idea about God not being a creator of things evil and profane. In fact, this idea was ubiquitous in Hellenistic philosophy. See David Winston, “Theodicy in the Wisdom of Solomon,” in Theodicy in the Word of the Bible (Leiden, etc., Brill, 2003), pp. 525–29. 76 See, e.g., Gabriele Boccaccini, Middle Judaism: Jewish Thought, 300 B.C.E. to 200 C.E. (Minneapolis, 1991), pp. 196–205 et passim.

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(e.g., the laws of Solon, Lycurgus). Chrysippus expressed this in the clearest terms: nobody acquires his social status through nature. A slave is “a permanent hireling.”77 Philo explicitly refers to Chrysippus’s theory of creation in terms of sowing: Now suppose that as Chrysippus says the fire which has resolved the world as constructed into itself is the seed of the world which will result and there is no fallacy in his theories on the subject, primarily that its generation comes from seed and its resolution passes into seed . . . (Aet., 94).

Following Chrysippus, the contradiction between common sowing (equality in accordance with the law of Nature) and social difference (inequality resulting from local law) was a cliché of stoic philosophy. Ps.-Aristeas reinterpreted this contradiction. Instead of social difference he spoke of the separation between Jews and other nations. This was an enormously significant change. For Epictetus, inequality was illegitimate because it derived from “these wretched laws of dead men.” For Ps.-Aristeas and Philo, however, separation was legitimate, being validated in the Law of Moses. Thus the question of Ps.Aristeas became the stumbling point of Alexandrian Jewry.78 The rabbis took over both the problem and its wording. In parashat Aharé mot, pereq 13, chapter 194:2 § 1–3 (parashah 9, ch. 13:4) Sifra deliberates on Lev. 18:3 (“You shall not copy the practices of the land of Egypt . . .”).79 This text includes the words of rabbis about intermarriages with other nations: 77 Harold Caparne Baldry, The Unity of Mankind in Greek Thought (Cambridge, 1965), p. 165. 78 Alexandrian Christian theology had to tackle this problem. There is a clear reference to Eleazar’s “Apology for the Law” in Stromata 6.13, 106–7: “For, in truth, the covenant of salvation, reaching down to us from the sowing (kataboles) of the world, through different generations and times, is one (mia), though conceived as different in respect of gift. For it follows that there is one (mia) unchangeable gift of salvation given by one God, through one Lord, benefiting in many ways. For which cause the middle wall (mesotoikhon) which separated the Greek from the Jew is taken away, in order that there might be a peculiar people. And so both meet in the one unity of faith; and the selection out of both is one (mia).” Clemens uses the wording of Ps.-Aristeas in order to overcome this difficulty. Common sowing (mias kataboles ousas of Ps.-Aristeas) proves to be crucial for him in a historical dimension: God takes away the fence, mentioned by Eleazar. Even before Clemens Paul radically solved the problem of the separation in the Romans 10:12: “For there is no difference (diastole) between the Jew and the Greek: for the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him.” 79 The translation of Jacob Neusner in Sifra: An Analytical Inroduction, Vol. 3 (Atlanta, 1988), p. 76ff.

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It was self evident to One who spoke and brought the world into being that they (the Jews) would bear unwillingly the restrictive laws concerning sexual relations . . . For it is said, “Moses heard the people weeping . . .” (Num. 11:10) . . . So too Malachi says to them (2:13), “And this you do as well” (literally: “you are doing it the second time”). . . . He (Malachi) said to them: “Now this is not your first time! You cried in the time of Moses.” They said to him, “ ‘Did not One make all, so that all remaining life-breath is his?’ (Mal. 2:15). Is not the One who created Israel the same one who created the nations?” He said to them, “ ‘And what does that One seek but godly folk?’ (Mal. 2:15).”

Literally the last phrase of Malachi sounds “And what does that One seek but godly seed?” From the exegetical point of view, Sifra presents a very complicated derash. Malachi’s plain meaning (complicated as it is) does not contain any notion of discrepancy between a common creation of all nations and the prohibition to marry “the daughter of a foreign god” (Mal. 2:11). I would rather suggest that Sifra borrows from Alexandrian Jewish tradition. It assimilates not only the Alexandrian idea (the contradiction between a single creation and the separation) but also the Alexandrian wording (the “godly seed”) in resolving the contradiction between the common creation (sowing) and the separation. As Philo stated, the Jews were separated because their very sowing (katabole) was different, “their souls are sprung from divine (godly!) seeds.”80 In § 11 of the same chapter we read an exegesis on Lev. 18:4. It capitalizes on dual phrasing: “my laws” and “my ordinances.” “You shall keep my laws”: This refers to matters that are written in the Torah. But if they had not been written in the Torah, it would have been entirely logical to write them, for example, rules governing thievery, fornication, idolatry, blasphemy, murder, examples of rules that, had they not been written in the Torah, would have been entirely logical to include them. Then there are those concerning which the impulse to do evil raises doubt, the nations of the world, idolaters, raise doubt, for instance, the prohibition against pork, wearing mixed 80 The idea of the “holy seed,” of course, may have come from Ezra 9:2. Yet there is no contradiction (either in Ezra or in Malachi) between general creation and the separation of the Jews. On the concept of the holy seed in Ezra-Nehemiah see: Christine E. Hayes, Gentile Impurities and Jewish Identities: Intermarriage and Conversion from the Bible to the Talmud (Oxford, 2002), pp. 28–33. In the opinion of Hayes “the holy seed ideology of Ezra . . . is surprisingly absent from rabbinic literature” (pp. 161–62). To my mind, that opinion does not take into consideration Sifra, Aharé mot 13.

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chapter three species, the rite of removing the shoe . . . the purification for the person afflicted with the skin ailment, the goat that is sent forth—cases in which the impulse to do evil raises doubt, the nations of the world, idolaters, raise doubt. In this regard Scripture says, “I the Lord have made these ordinances, and you have no right to raise doubts concerning them.”

The will of God and halakhic reasons are above the law of Nature. In §13 the study of the wisdom of the nations is prohibited. This may seem narrow and particularistic. However, the will of God and halakhic reasons provide Sifra (§ 15) with an idea so “cosmopolitan” that neither Ps.-Aristeas nor Philo would have dared to give it utterance: “R. Jeremiah says, ‘How do I know that even a gentile who keeps the Torah, lo, he is like the high priest? Scripture says, . . . by the pursuit of which man shall live (Lev. 18:5). And so he says, And this is the Torah of the priests, Levites, and Israelites, is not what is said here, but rather, This is the Torah of the man, O Lord God (2 Sam. 7:19).’ ” Pereq 13 of Parashat Aharé mot could be rightly called “The rabbinic Apology for the Law.” It is both the continuation and the reversal of Hellenistic Jewish apologies. Like these apologies it targets both the doubts of the Jews themselves and the slander of nonJews (“the impulse to do evil raises doubt, the nations of the world, idolaters, raise doubt”). It is no longer “serious” because there is no longer any need to harmonize the Law with stoic philosophy. God’s statement suffices to make the ordinances valid. Moreover, the rabbis are ready to ridicule the contradiction that Philo and Ps.-Aristeas sought to resolve. An anecdote about R. Aquiba (Avot de Rabbi Nathan, Version A, 16:4) reads as follows: When he (R. Aquiba) went to Rome, he was slandered before the authority. He sent to him two beautiful women, washed, anointed, and outfitted like brides, who threw themselves at him all night long. This one said, “Turn toward me,” and that one said, “Turn toward me.” He lay between them in disgust and did not turn to them. When morning came the women went and greeted the authority, saying to him, “We’d rather die than be given to that man.” He sent and called him, saying to him, “Why did not you do with those women what men naturally do with women? Are they not ordinary folk like you? Did not the same God who made you make them?” He said to him, “What could I do? Their odor reached me, from the meat of carrion and terefah meat and swarming things that they have eaten.”81 81 The translation of Jacob Neusner in The Fathers According to Rabbi Nathan: An Analytical Translation and Explanation (Atlanta, 1986), p. 117.

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The same motif lurks behind the words of a Moabite woman in Numbers Rabbah 20:23. “Why do we love you while you hate us? Take these garments free. Are we not ‘all descendants of one man?’ (Gen. 42:11), descendants of Terah, son of Abraham?” The literal meaning of the proof text has nothing to do with the idea of human equality and unity. In Gen. 42:11 the brothers of Joseph are just telling their family story: they are the descendants of “one man”—Jacob. This midrash stops short of the idea of the “single sowing.” It is not everybody that is equal and related, but only the descendants of Terah. However, the lament of Moabite women evidently echoes the stoic thought, making fun of it, parodying it.82 This is a clear parody of philosophic clichés. Talmudic literature had to concern itself with some of the major difficulties preoccupying the Alexandrians. Sometimes it even suggested solutions seemingly similar to the latters.’ That similarity, however, is illusory. The harmonization of Torah with natural law and with Greek wisdom was absolutely alien to the rabbis. While the Alexandrians tried to maintain decorum in the presence of elitist philosophy and rhetoric, the rabbis did not. With this in mind, I agree with the notion of Joshua Levinson: rabbinic literature did in fact respond to the dominant culture. I understand that response as a change “from decency to incivility.” The rabbis felt no obligation to make any concessions to gentile philosophy. The stumbling question of Ps.-Aristeas was not only answered but also ridiculed. However, rejecting “Greek Wisdom,”83 the rabbis accepted Greek “foolishness.” Talmudic literature had little in common with the serious discourse of Greek and Latin philosophy. At the same time, it shared a great deal with seriocomical genres of late antiquity (e.g., farce, anecdote, dialogues of the Lucian type, “Symposia,” romances). Jewish literature came from biblical epic to rabbinic spoudogeloion via Alexandrian philosophic exegesis, which was neither strange nor marginal among many things of Torah. * 82

*

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Ironically, the Talmud tells how the Jews used the same argument, asking the Government of Rome to annul repressive decrees: “Alas, in heaven’s name, are we not your brothers, are we not the sons of one father and are we not the sons of one mother? Why are we different from every nation and tongue that you issue such harsh decrees against us?” B.R.H. 19a; B. Ta. 18a. 83 On the problem of rabbinic aversion to Greek Wisdom see: Warren Zev Harvey, “Rabbinic Attitudes towards Philosophy,” in “Open Thou Mine Eyes . . .” Essays on Aggadah and Judaica Presented to Rabbi W. C. Braude (Hoboken, 1992), pp. 83–84.

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Having said this, I would certainly recognize that a link between Alexandrian exegesis and midrash is conjectural. There is no direct mention of Philo, Aristeas, or Aristoboulos in rabbinic literature. David Runia noted that “in the absence of any direct evidence, it is worth considering whether the rabbis were encouraged to reject Philo as an exegetical predecessor precisely because his thought had been exploited by prominent Christian thinkers such as Clement, Origen, Eusebius.”84 The absence of direct mentions of Philo notwithstanding, it would be more than conjectural to assume that the huge revolution produced by Hellenistic Jewish exegesis went unnoticed outside the narrow circle of elitist Alexandrian scholars. Ps.-Aristeas and his predecessors were the first to bring Torah systematically under the scrutiny of reason. This was even more radical than putting the Scripture into a zone of direct and crude contact with contemporary reality. In the Greek literature there was no immediate switch from the epic to the seriocomical. The sketches of Lucian were not immediate offspring of The Odyssey. In the same way Leviticus Rabbah did not derive directly from Leviticus. Palestinian literature of the Second Temple period is evidently too far from aggadic midrash.85 The transition from biblical epic to Talmudic spoudogeloion cannot be understood unless we recognize the place of Alexandrian exegesis in the process. The very basics of spoudogeloion may be seen in Philo’s critical approach to biblical style. Fighting with what looked illicit to him, the philosopher plunged into salient frivolity. Let us recollect his assessment quoted above: “. . . God is a whole not a part, so that we shall have to assign to Him the other parts of the body as well,

84 David T. Runia, Philo in Early Christian Literature: A Survey (Minneapolis, 1993), p. 13. 85 Cf. the statement of Geza Vermes in Scripture and Tradition in Judaism, p. 124: “A Hellenistic influence must, of course, not be precluded a priori, but . . . it is most probable that the literature of Hellenistic Judaism was built upon Palestinian foundations.” To prove his point, Vermes brings fourth Aramaic Genesis Apocryphon found in Qumran Cave I. In this manuscript Vermes sees “the lost link between the biblical and the rabbinic midrash” (ibid.). Yet, in the mind of the scholar, the author of this midrash “never attempts to introduce unrelated or extraneous matter. His technique is simple and he exercises no scholarly learning, no exegetical virtuosity, no play on words” (ibid., p. 126). To say this is to accept that this document is not midrash but simply belongs to the genre of rewritten Bible.

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neck, breasts, hands, feet, to say nothing of the belly and genital organs. . . .” Far from being an obstacle to the birth of rabbinic literature, Alexandrian exegesis must actually have provoked it. For in shattering the naïveté of the epic, Alexandrians paved the way for irony and laughter.

CHAPTER FOUR

TYPOLOGY AND PESHER IN THE “LETTER OF ARISTEAS”

The “Aristeas Letter” . . . is anything but a literary masterpiece and yet it deserves study. Günther Zuntz, “Aristeas Studies I: ‘The Seven Banquets,’ ” Journal of Semitic Studies 4 (1959), p. 21.

Günther Zuntz had a difficult choice between the weakness of Hellenistic Jewish literature and its wickedness. The Letter of Aristeas served for him an example of the former, while the Tale of the Tobiads was an illustration of the latter. “It is not its literary merit which caused this little book (the ‘Letter’—A. K.) to survive; it alone from among a probably vast number of similar productions. Josephus . . . summarizes a novel written to extol the Tobiad family. One may sympathize with E. Meyer who turned with indignation from this immoral laudation of brutal but successful tax-farmers; even so one will have to admit that in liveliness and interest this piece of propaganda appears to have been far superior to ‘Aristeas’; and yet it, too, has failed to survive. Joseph and Hyrcanus the Tobiads could not hold the interest of posterity; while in ‘Aristeas’ the Christian Church fond the story of its Scripture.”1 According to Zuntz, the author of the Letter “lacked the capacity to make his plan work and to give a semblance of reality to an imagined story.”2 “The legendary tradition suggests itself as a suitable, if slender, bond to hold together a number of chapters designed to impress pagan readers with the high quality of Judaism. These chapters surely were not of the writer’s own devising; the helplessness evidenced where he had no substantial tradition to follow—namely in the sections bearing upon the translation—suggests his faithful

1 Günther Zuntz, “Aristeas Studies I: ‘The Seven Banquets,’ ” Journal of Semitic Studies 4 (1959): 126. 2 Zuntz, “Aristeas Studies II: Aristeas on the Translation of the Torah,” in Studies in the Septuagint: Origins, Recensions, and Interpretations (New York, 1974), p. 208.

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adherence to some literary model in more substantial sections. . . .”3 Zuntz was not alone in his guilty verdict on the Letter. This verdict was mainly provoked by a composite character of Aristeas. Though devoted to the translation of the Torah in Alexandria, the Letter includes a lot of motley fragments—for example, the liberation of the Jewish prisoners, description of the royal presents and of Jerusalem and its vicinity, and Eleazar’s apologia for Jewish Law. James G. Février suggested two explanations of this diversity. First, various interpolations were inserted into the book after its publication; second, the book depended on various “literary patterns.”4 These suggestions met some though very irresolute resistance. Henry G. Meecham while stressing the unity of the Letter believed, however, that the Letter was “discursive and disproportionate.”5 O. Murray insisted that the importance of the Letter lied not in its mechanical use of an extensive previous literature, but in its “creative adaptation of previous Jewish and non-Jewish models.”6 According to Fausto Parente, the Letter, in spite of its apparent incongruence, is pretty coherent in comparison to other Jewish compositions of the same period, even if “Aristeas” used various sources (from “Esther” to a treatise “On the Kingship”) as models to edit various parts of his book.7 Creative or not, the use of models and patterns was seen as a mark of plagiarism. In the most concise way that approach was expressed by Février: “Without trying to lessen the merits of the Pseudo-Aristeas, please note that the frame of his narrative does not actually belong to him and that in part he has taken it from more ancient works.”8 The plagiarism makes the Letter jumbled since various “patterns” break its continuity. Ominously, Philo faced nearly the same charge of incoherence. As Valentine Nikiprowetzky noticed, 3

Ibid., p. 224. See also André Pelletier, Lettre d’Aristée a Philocrate (Paris, 1962), pp. 53–55. 4 Février, La date, la composition et les sources de la letter d’Aristée a Philocrate (Paris, 1925). 5 Henry G. Meecham, The Oldest Version of the Bible: “Aristeas” on its Traditional Origin. A Study in Early Apologetic with Translation and Appendices (London, 1932), pp. 210–15. 6 O. Murray, “Aristeas and His Sources,” Studia Patristica 12.1 (1975): 123–28. Among these Jewish models Murray (following Février) counted Ezra-Nehemia, so that the primary source for plot, construction, and even method of narrative was to be found there. 7 Fausto Parente, “La Lettera di Aristea come fonte per la storia del Guidaismo alessandrino durante la prima metá del I sec. a. C.,” Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa 2 (1972): 549–50. 8 Février, op. cit., p. 32.

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that happened because the critics ignored Philo’s “exegetical intentionality.”9 Instead of writing “Aristotelian” syllogistic tractates, Philo used peculiar compositional order because his foremost aim was to interpret the sacred text, not to expose some self-sufficient theory. If we take his “exegetical intentions” into account, Philo’s treatises appear masterpieces of compositional art.10 Of course, the Letter proclaims itself not an exegesis but a dihegesis, a story (section 1). Yet we do know that dihegesis can be exegetical in its own right. The gospels is the best known case of such a dihegesis.11 Episodes including the Virgin birth, the visit of the Magi, the flight to Egypt, the slaughter of “all the male children in Bethlehem,” the forty days in the desert, the Sermon on the Mount, and the Transfiguration were based on the models and patterns of Exodus story.12 Moreover, they contained implicit exegesis based on aggadic tradition. The Bible itself says nothing about the Virgin birth of Moses (which is a pattern for the Virgin birth of Jesus). The “sorcerers and charmers” of Egypt do not recognize the birth of Moses in the Bible (as the Magi recognize the birth of Jesus in the Gospels). Following aggadic tradition, the framers of the New Testament interpreted the Bible in order to tell about New Moses and New Exodus. In the words of E. P. Sanders, “this way of understanding and using the Bible, in technical language, is ‘typological.’ A person or event in Jewish scripture constitutes a ‘type,’ in the sense of an archetype or prototype. Something or somebody later is the fulfillment of the type, and the prior event gives information about the subsequent one.”13 There is another kind of fulfillment story in the Gospels yet, similar to Qumran pesher (charismatic exegesis).14 For example, we read: “Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was 9

Valentine Nikiprowetzky, Le commentaire de L’écriture chez Philon d’Alexandria: Son Charactère et sa Portée. Observations Philologiques (Leiden, 1977), pp. 170–235. 10 See Uri Gershowitz and A. Kovelman, op. cit., pp. 228–48. 11 Luke also represents his work as a dihegesis and writes (in the Gospel and in the Acts) nearly the same kind of introduction as “Aristeas.” That was noticed by nearly every commentator of the Letter. See, e.g., Meecham, op. cit., pp. 218–20. 12 Cf. David Daube, The New Testament and Rabbinic Judaism, (New York, 1973), pp. 4–9; William David Davies, The Setting of the Sermon on the Mount (Atlanta, 1989), pp. 25–93; E. P. Sanders, The Historical Figure of Jesus (Allen Lane, 1995), pp. 87–89. See also Daube, The Exodus Pattern in the Bible (London, 1963); idem, “Typology in Josephus,” Journal of Jewish Studies 31 (1980): 18–36. 13 E. P. Sanders, op. cit., p. 84. 14 Earle E. Ellis, Prophesy and Hermeneutic in Early Christianity: New Testament Essays (Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1978), p. 161.

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spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us” (Matt. 1:22–23). The composition of the Gospels (motley as it is) was definitely dictated by the logic of typology and pesher, not only by a scenario itself. Unless we know that the composition was dictated by the logic of typology and pesher. The meaning is that unless we recognize this specific composition of the Gospels we do not see the proper place of some fragments and believe them to be interpolations. In the Gospels, many biblical patterns are united into few motifs: New Adam, New Moses, New David. These motifs glue the multiple fragments together. Among many patterns (from Joseph to Esther and Ezra) that appear in the Letter, there is the cardinal one, the motif of Exodus. To the best of my knowledge, three scholars have made conjectures about this motif in few words. In 1992 David Dawson wrote on the “emancipation episode” of the Letter: “Before the meaning of Jewish scripture can be ‘led out’ to Greeks through translation by Jewish translators, Jewish slaves must be led out from Egyptian slavery in a new, contemporary exodus.”15 In 2001, Philip R. Davies spelled out an even more insightful guess: “. . . It is possible to consider the story as to some extent a reversal of the Exodus. The ‘exodus’ story was clearly known, in some form, to Egyptians, as both Hecataeus and Manetho relate it. Here, instead of an enslaving Egyptian king, we are present with one who liberates Jewish captives: the law, given to Moses after the exit from Egypt, is triumphantly returned and its glory acknowledged. Enmity between Egypt and Juda is replaced by amity. The presence of the translators in twelve tribes may hint at the growth of these tribes in Egyptian captivity.”16 Two years later Sylvie Honigman suggested that the story of liberation in the Letter is the parallel with the account of Exodus. Moreover, according to Honigman, “the imitation of the literary model was conscious and deliberate. . . . Basically, the compositional principle involved amounts to duplicating the narrative structure of a reference text in the new account.”17

15 David Dawson, Allegorical Readers and Cultural Revision in Ancient Alexandria (Berkeley, etc., 1992), p. 82. 16 Philip R. Davies, “Didactic Stories,” in Justification and Variegated Nomism. Vol. 1. The Complexities of Second Temple Judaism (Tübingen, 2001), p. 121. 17 Sylvie Honigman, The Septuagint and Homeric Scholarship in Alexandria: A Study in the Narrative of the Letter of Aristeas (London, etc., 2003), pp. 54–59; 76–83.

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Yet neither Dawson nor Davies nor Honigman developed their hypotheses on an exegetical level. What I am suggesting is more than the mere comparison between the Letter and the Bible. As in the case of the Gospels, we should apply to midrashic tradition.

Pharaoh the Liberator Let us start with the story of enslavement and liberation of the Jews in Ptolemaic Egypt. Zuntz sees in this “tale” an impediment for a smooth development of the narrative. In his opinion, the scene in sections 9–11 was duplicated by the author in sections 32–35. “He who attentively compares this tale with the sources on which it is based—namely the royal order preserved, largely, in the papyrus published by H. Liebesny . . . and, secondly, pseudo-Hecataeus’ report . . . about the many Jews following Ptolemy I into Egypt after the battle at Gaza in 312—will gain an instructive insight into Aristeas’s attitude towards history.”18 According to Jonathan A. Goldstein, “We thus have 16 sections (§§ 12–27) devoted to the promised digression when a single paragraph might have sufficed.”19 Yet if the major source of this story is the biblical account of Israel’s emancipation from Egyptian bondage, the tale should not be seen as a digression at all. According to the Letter, the Jews were enslaved and brought to Egypt by Ptolemy I Soter, the father of Ptolemy II Philadelphus, the incumbent king in the story. Ptolemy I reduced the Jews to bondage “not out of his own individual choice indeed, but because he was overborne by his soldiers, in return for the services which they had rendered in military action” (section 14). When Philadelphus ordered 18

Zuntz, “Aristeas Studies II,” p. 209, n. 1. Jonanthan A. Goldstein, “The Message of Aristeas to Philokrates: In the Second Century B.C.E., Obey the Torah, Venerate the Temple of Jerusalem, but Speak Greek, and Put Your Hopes in the Ptolemaic Dynasty” in Eretz Israel, Israel, and the Jewish Diaspora: Mutual Relations (Lanham, Md., 1991), p. 2. Goldstein suggests (p. 10) that “so long a digression on the liberation of Jewish slaves” relates to the letter of the Seleucid King Demetrius I to the Jews (152 B.C.E.). John J. Collins, on the other hand, believes that the account of liberation of the slaves may have been designed as a subtle appeal to Ptolemy VIII Euergetes II (Physcon) by praising the clemency of his ancestor. See Collins, Between Athens and Jerusalem: Jewish Identity in the Hellenistic Diaspora (New York, 1983), p. 83. Finally, according to Ernest L. Abel, all the story of Jewish enslavement under Ptolemy I (told both by Agatharchides and Ps.-Aristeas) is a pure myth. See Abel, “The Myth of Jewish Slavery in Ptolemaic Egypt,” Revue des études juives 127 (1968): 253–58. 19

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that the laws of the Jews should be translated, Aristeas, his courtier, took the opportune moment to address to the king as follows: “Surely it would be illogical, Your Majesty, to be proven inconsistent by our deeds. For inasmuch as the legislation which we propose not only to transcribe but to translate is laid down for all Jews, what justification shall we have for our mission when a large multitude subsides in slavery in your realm? Rather with a perfect and bountiful spirit release those who are afflicted in wretchedness” (15). Even at this point we may see some parallelism with the Exodus story. It starts when Pharaoh the Father enslaved the Jews. The death of the enslaver at first did not change the situation. “And it came to pass in process of time, that the king of Egypt died: and the children of Israel sighed by reason of the bondage, and they cried, and their cry came up unto God by reason of the bondage” (Exod. 2:23). “And afterward Moses and Aaron went in, and told Pharaoh, Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, Let my people go” (Exod. 5:1). The son of the enslaver must liberate the enslaved on the appeal of certain persons. Dawson is not precise in his suggestion that in the Letter “instead of an enslaving Egyptian king, we are present with one who liberates Jewish captives.” Both in the Letter and in the Bible the one who enslaves the Jews is King the Father, the one who liberates them is King the Son. The image of Pharaoh the Liberator was not unknown to Tannaim. We find it in Mekhilta according to Rabbi Ishmael 19, Beshlah 1. Mekhilta brings an anonymous commentary on Exod. 13:17 (“When Pharaoh let the people go”): “The mouth that had said, ‘And moreover I will not let Israel go’ (Exod. 5:2) turns out to be the same mouth that would say, ‘I will let you go’ (Exod. 8:24). The reward? ‘You shall not abhor an Egyptian’ (Deut. 23:8).”20 In the next chapter of Mekhilta we meet the quotation from the Book of Psalms (105:20) concerning the liberation of Joseph: “The king sent and loosed him, even the ruler of peoples, and set him free.”21 May we see here a tradition benevolent to the kings of Hellenistic Egypt?

20

Jacob Neusner, Mekhilta According to Rabbi Ishmael: An Analytical Translation (Atlanta, 1988), p. 125. 21 Ibid., p. 139.

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“And remember that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt . . .” In Exodus 6:7 we read: “I am the Lord your God, which bringeth you out from under the burdens (literally—“oppression”—katadunaste¤aw) of the Egyptians.” The same noun and his derivative are used twice in the decree of the Ptolemy Philadelphus about the emancipation of the Jews (section 23: katadunaste¤a, 24: katadunasteuom°noiw). Moreover, the notion of katadunaste¤a, oppression, comes forward four times in the Apology for the Law, which is supposed to be another “digression” alien to the major topic of the Letter (sections 146, 147, and 148). The High Priest Eleazar (in the words of Ps.-Aristeas) explains why some animals are regarded as unclean. “By such examples . . . the lawgiver has commended to men of understanding a symbol that they must be just (dika¤ouw) and achieve nothing by violence, nor . . . must they oppress (katadunasteÊein) others” (148). “But of the winged creatures which are forbidden you will find that they . . . oppress (katadunasteÊonta) the rest . . .” (146). “Through these creatures then, by calling them ‘unclean,’ he set up a symbol that those for whom the legislation was drawn up must practice righteousness in spirit and oppress (katadunasteÊein) no one . . . but must guide their lives in accordance with justice (§k dika¤ou), just as the gentle creatures among the birds . . . do not tyrannize (oÈ katadunasteÊei) . . . ” (147). Justice is counter opposed to oppression. According to the edict of the king, “the further oppression (katadunaste¤a) was wholly inequitable. Therefore, since it is our professed purpose to award justice (tÚ d¤kaion) to all men, and more particularly to those who are unreasonably tyrannized (katadunasteuom°noiw), and since we strive in every respect to deal fairly with all men in accordance with justice (tÚ d¤kaion) and piety, we have decreed that so many Jewish persons as are held in bondage . . . their owners shall release . . .” (23–24). The same notion of justice is salient in the oration of Eleazar. Men “must guide their lives in accordance with justice . . . must be just.” On the other hand, prohibited birds symbolize “injustice” (146). Thus Ps.-Aristeas relates the Ptolemaic redemption of the Jews from Egyptian bondage to the biblical commandments. That relation was deeply rooted in Deuteronomy (5:15; 16:12; 24:18, 22; 26:5–12). Whenever the Law cares of the slave, the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow, it reminds: “And thou shalt remember that thou wast a bondman in the land of Egypt, and the Lord thy

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God redeemed thee . . .” The same bond glues the “Tale of liberation” to the “Apology for the Law.” In light of this tie we may see also Aristeas’ statement (15): “Inasmuch as the legislation which we propose not only to transcribe but to translate is laid down for all Jews, what justification shall we have for our mission when a large multitude subsides in slavery in your realm? Rather with a perfect and bountiful spirit release those who are afflicted in wretchedness, for the same God who has given them their law guides your kingdom also, as I have learned in my researches.”

Unknown God and the Catechesis for Pharaoh In the continuation of his plea Aristeas goes on with a theological discourse: “. . . For the same God who has given them their law guides your kingdom also, as I have learned in my researches. God, the overseer and creator of all things, whom they worship, is He whom all men worship, and we too, Your Majesty, through we address Him differently, as Zeus and Dis; by these names men of old not unsuitably signified that He through whom all creatures receive life and come into being is the guide and lord of all” (15–16). That passage is usually regarded as an epiphany of Alexandrian universalism, far away from narrow Palestinian parochialism. Yet it has a close simile in Midrash Tanhuma Vaéra 5 (ed. Buber, Vaéra 2) with a parallel version in Exodus Rabbah 5:14 under the name of R. Hyya b. Abba, a Palestinian Amora of the third generation (290–320 C.E.). The Amora expounds on Ex. 5:2: “Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, Let my people go, that they may hold a feast unto me in the wilderness. And Pharaoh said, Who is the Lord, that I should obey his voice to let Israel go? I know not the Lord, neither will I let Israel go.” In the Bible the question of Pharaoh stays with no answer. Instead of explaining who is the Lord that Pharaoh should obey his voice, Moses and Aaron just say: “The God of the Hebrews hath met with us” (Exod. 5:3). That “inconsistency” would certainly inspire rabbinic imagination to fill the gap. In the midrash, when Moses and Aaron come and tell Pharaoh “Let my people go,” Pharaoh tries to find the name of the Lord in his “list of gods” and fails (compare “as I have learned in my researches” in the “Letter”). According to R. Levy (Tanna of the transitive period, 200–220 C.E.), Pharaoh failed because he looked

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for dead gods, while the Lord is alive and He is the king of the world.22 He created Pharaoh himself and gave him the spirit of life. (Compare in the Letter: “He through whom all creatures receive life and come into being is the guide and lord of all.”) Pharaoh asks about the deeds of the Lord, and receives a quotation from Isaiah 51:13: “that hath stretched forth the heavens, and laid the foundations of the earth.” (Compare in the Letter: “God, the overseer and creator of all things . . .”) The midrash also refers to Daniel 2:21, “He removeth kings, and setteth up kings.” (Compare in the Letter: “Guides your kingdom also.”) In the midrash Pharaoh cannot find the name of the Lord while Aristeas addresses him “differently” (as Zeus). The motive of the Name is absent from the Bible. It is present, however, in the Targums. In the Targum Onqelos to Exod. 5:2 we read: “And the Pharaoh said, ‘The name of the Lord is not revealed to me that I should obey his command to send away the Israelites; the name of the Lord is not revealed to me, neither will I send away the Israelites.’ ”23 Targum Ps.-Jonathan to Exod. 5:2–3 develops the tradition of Onqelos towards the tradition of Tanhuma and Exodus Rabbah: “But Pharaoh said: ‘The name of the Lord has not been revealed to me, that I should listen to his word and let Israel go. I have not found the name of the Lord written in the book of Angels. I do not fear him, and moreover I will not let Israel go.’ They said, ‘The name of the God of the Jews has been called upon us . . .’ ”24 In the third to fourth century B.C.E. Alexandrian Jewish writer Artapanus conveys a tale where the name of God is revealed by Moses to Pharaoh. Pharaoh “bade Moses say the name of the god who had sent him, mocking him. But he bent forward and pronounced it into his ear. When the king heard it, he fell down speechless but revived when taken hold of by Moses.”25 Evidently, this tale alludes to Exod. 5:2 (“I know not the Lord”). Various midrashim

22

Here the version of Tanhuma Buber Vaéra 2 ends. The Targum Onqelos to Exodus, trans. Bernard Grossfeld (Wilmington, Del., 1988), p. 12 (Aramaic Bible, Vol. 7). 24 Targum Pseudo-Jonathan: Exodus, trans. Michael Maher (Collegeville, Minnesota, 1994), p. 173 (Aramaic Bible, Vol. 2). 25 Fragment 3.24–25, in Eusebius’s version, Prep. IX, 26:1. Trans. by John J. Collins in The Old Testament Pseudoepigrapha, ed. James H. Charlesworth, 2 vols. (New York, 1983–85), 2:901. The same paragraph of Artapanus is found in Clement of Alexandria, Strom. 1, 154, 3. 23

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contain the story of Moses killing an Egyptian taskmaster by pronouncing the sacred name of God (Lev. R. 32:4; Tanhuma Shemot 9; Exod. R. 1:29). Exodus Rabbah builds this interpretation on the play of the words: “Intendest thou (literally: “pronounce you”) to kill me, as thou killedst the Egyptian?” (Exod. 2:14). In the Bible, Moses received the knowledge of God’s sacred name before returning to Egypt (Exod. 3:14). Certainly it happened after he killed an Egyptian, but the midrash as usual presumes that there is neither “before” nor “after” in the Torah. What is the root of the “name” motive? It was noticed by Elias J. Bickerman that “to the Greeks and the Romans, the God of the Jews appeared to be nameless. . . . Thus we can see that the Hellenization of Jerusalem also had to lead to naming of the ‘nameless’ lord of Zion. But since no native name for him existed (the tetragrammon filled also the Greeks with awe and was praised by them as a power . . .), the God of Jerusalem had to receive a Greek name: Zeus Olympius.”26 M. Simon, following the theory of Bickerman, subscribed this designation to a “liberal theology,” and found it at the Letter of Aristeas.27 The same “liberal theology” we actually discover in the Paul’s oration at Areopagus (Acts 17:22–31). It is strikingly similar to both the Letter and the midrash. “Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious. For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you. God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands; Neither is worshipped with men’s hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing he giveth to all life (jvØn), and breath, and all things. . . . For in him we live (j«men), and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said. . . .” In the language of Paul we may recognize the play on words (Zeus and zao—“to live”) that we have already met in the Letter. 28 26 Elias J. Bickerman, The God of the Maccabees: Studies on the Meaning and Origin of the Maccabean Revolt. (Leiden, 1979), p. 63. 27 Marcel Simon, “Juptiter-Yahvé: Sur un essai de théologie pagano-juive,” Numen: International Review for the History of Religions, 23.1 (1976): 66. 28 On this play on words in Acts 17:25, 28 see Hilary Le Cornu with Joseph Shulam, A Commentary on the Jewish Roots of Acts ( Jerusalem, 2003), pp. 963–64. These authors also pointed out that “the Greek idea that the Jewish God is ‘nameless’

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That etymology was deeply rooted in Greek philosophical tradition.29 Athenians do not know the name of God exactly as Pharaoh does not know it. Paul explains that God is a source of every life. May we suggest that there was Alexandrian exegetical tradition that capitalized on the words of Pharaoh: “I know not the Lord”? This tradition is recognizable also in the fragments of Aristobulus, who flourished some decades before Ps.-Aristeas. Aristobulus, while quoting an astronomical poem, Phaenomena, by Aratus of Soli, substituted “God” for Zeus and Dis. He founded that substitution as follows: “I believe that it has been clearly shown how the power of God is throughout all things. And we have given the true sense, as one must, by removing the (names) Dis and Zeus through the verses. For their (the verses’) intention refers to God, therefore it was so expressed by us. We have presented these things therefore in a way not unsuited to the things being discussed” (Eusebius, Prep. XIII, 12:7).30 Aristobulus presented this discourse as his own dialogue with Ptolemy VI Philometer.31 Both “Aristeas” and Aristobulus were speaking to a King of Egypt. Both of them were explaining the essence of the Lord whom Kings of Egypt knew not. Both endeavored to show that the Lord was not just God of Israel, but God of Greeks and Egyptians as well, God of Pharaoh himself. Paul followed the same exegetical tradition while speaking about THE UNKNOWN GOD of the Athenians.32 The tradition may somehow have survived in Tanhuma and in Exodus Rabbah. appears in some Jewish texts” (p. 960) and that “Paul’s thought here is characteristic of Hellenistic Jewish literature,” including the Letter of Aristeas, section 16 (pp. 962, 964). 29 Parente, op. cit., p. 224, 537. Cf. Plato (Cratylus 396a–b). Charles Kingsley Barrett refers the thought, expressed in Acts 28, to pre-Stoic tradition, e.g., to Orphic Fragment 164. See Barrett, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles, 2 (Edinburgh, 1998), p. 849. 30 Translated by A. Yarbo Collins in The Old Testament Pseudoepigrapha, ed. James H. Charlesworth, vol. 2, p. 841. On the similarity of the play on words (Zeus—zen) in Aristobulus and in “Aristeas” see Dawson, op. cit., p. 80. 31 Naomi Janovitz, “The Rhetoric of Translation: Three Early Perspectives of Translating Torah,” Harvard Theological Review 84.2 (1991): 130. 32 Sidney Jellicoe has already suggested that the Third Gospel and Acts had a measure of debt to the Letter of Aristeas. He built his case mostly on Luke’s account of the Mission of the Seventy (or Seventy-two) and on some other points. See Jellicoe, “St. Luke and the Letter of Aristeas,” Journal of Biblical Literature, 80 (1961): 149–55; idem, “The Occasion and Purpose of the Letter of Aristeas,” New Testament Studies 12 (1965–66): 144–50. John R. Bartlett has noticed that the statement of Aristeas about God is “reminiscent both of the psalms (104:27, 145:15) and of the

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To convey the idea of God’s universality, the exegetes chose precisely a passage in the Bible that mostly expressed the Jewishness of God (“Thus saith the Lord God of Israel,” “The God of the Hebrews hath met with us”). As in the rest of the “Letter,” here the literal meaning of the Law was vehemently opposed and revised from a philosophical point of view. Side by side with “philosophical” exegesis, there was another one, also based on the words of Pharaoh (“I know not the Lord”) and on the Greco-Roman presumption of God’s anonymity. According to this exegesis, Moses struck Pharaoh (or some of his servants) by the sacred name of God (tetragrammon). This fairy tale survived in rabbinic literature, yet it had first appeared in the book of Artapanus, in the midst of Alexandrian culture.

Pharaoh’s Heart The plea of Aristeas was followed by his pondering on the causes of possible decision-making: “The king refrained himself for a little while, and I prayed inwardly to God to dispose his mind to a general release. Human beings, since they are creatures of God, are by Him turned and swayed; and therefore repeatedly and in various terms I called upon Him who rules the heart that the king might be constrained to fulfill my petition. For I had high hope, in presenting an argument concerning the deliverance of men, that God would effect the fulfillment of my petition; when men piously believe that what they do is for the sake of justice and the promotion of good deeds, then God, who is Lord of all, guides their actions and designs” (17–18). In Exod. 7:3 and related verses God hardens the heart of Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, and Pharaoh does not hearken unto Moses and Aharon, and refuseth to let the people go. Just to the contrary, when Aristeas called upon Him who rules the heart (tÚn kurieÊonta katå kard¤an), the king of Egypt was constrained to fulfill his petition and free the Jews. speeches of Paul to Gentiles at Lystra and Athens (Acts 14:15–17; 17:25), where Luke shows Paul presenting Jewish-Cristian belief as compatible with Athenian wisdom.” See Bartlett, Jews in the Hellenistic World: Josephus, Aristeas, the Sibylline Oracles, Eupolemus (Cambridge, etc., 1985), p. 14.

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The topic of God’s hardening Pharaoh’s heart is one of the most important in Christian literature at list since the first century C.E. We read in Rom. 9:17–18: “For the scripture saith unto Pharaoh, Even for this same purpose have I raised thee up, that I might shew my power in thee, and that my name might be declared throughout all the earth. Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth (sklhrÊnei).” Paul strives to explain an aporria: “Why doth he yet find fault?” (Rom. 9:19). Why was Pharaoh guilty if God Himself hardened his heart?33 Paul’s answer is very much similar to the answers of the friends of Job: “For who hath resisted his will? Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God?” (Rom. 19:20) Origen devoted the first chapter of De Principiis Book 3 to the problem of freedom of will. The apporria of Pharaoh’s heart is in the center of the chapter. In order to solve it, Origen referred to the deliberations of Paul (Rom. 9:17) and also quoted Sap. 7:16: “For in the hand of God are both we and our words; all wisdom also and knowledge of workmanship” (Prin. 3, 1:14). The idea expressed in this passage could be seen in the Letter as well: “Human beings, since they are creatures of God, are by Him turned and swayed.” One can say that the Wisdom of Solomon is supposedly a century later then the Letter.34 Indeed, the Wisdom was not the prooftext of “Aristeas.” M. Hadas and other commentators referred this passage to Proverbs 21:1, “The king’s heart is in the hand of the Lord as the water-courses: He turneth it whithersoever He will.” That reference, however, is neither complete nor sufficient. First, our passage alludes not only to Prov. 21:1, but to Prov. 21:2–3: “Every way of a man is right in his own eyes; but the Lord guides the hearts. To do justice and truth is more acceptable to the Lord than sacrifice.” The wording of “Aristeas” is nearly the same as in Proverbs but Aristeas 33

Interestingly, in the Bible itself the pattern of Pharaoh’s heart is rethought so that the apporia extinguishes. In I Sam. 6:6 the priests and the diviners of Philistines say to their people: “Wherefore then do ye harden your hearts, as the Egyptians and Pharaoh hardened their hearts? When he had wrought wonderfully among them, did they not let the people go, and they departed?” Here, it is Pharaoh himself who hardens his own heart. 34 There are some other similarities between the “Wisdom” and the Letter of Aristeas. Février pointed out to the invitation of Salomon to his colleagues, the kings, to abandon the cult of idols. He also noticed that the saying of a Jewish sage about wrath (the Letter, section 253) coincides with Sap. 12:16.

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has cut off the second part of verse 3 (“is more acceptable to the Lord than sacrifice”), merged the first part of this verse with verse 2 and changed the meaning of the verse 3 completely. Instead of two different verses (“Lord guides the hearts. To do justice and truth is more acceptable to the Lord than sacrifice”), it became one: “God guides (kateuyÊnei) the hearts to do justice (d¤kaia) and truth.” According to Aristeas, God guides (kateuyÊnei) actions and designs when men piously believe that what they do is for the sake of justice (dikaiosÊnhn). In other words, Aristeas not just alludes to Proverbs 21:1–3. He builds a midrash by contaminating two and a half verses, which originally were separate. The combination of Exod. 7:3 and 14:8 with Prov. 21:1–3 is a classical gezerah shavah. “The Lord guides the hearts” and “I will harden Pharaoh’s heart.” “The Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh, king of Egypt” and “The king’s heart is in the hand of the Lord as the water-courses: He turneth it whithersoever He will.” It would have been strange if Jewish exegetes never noticed the possibility of that midrash. As a matter of fact, we find exactly that gezera shava in Nachmanides’ commentary on the Book of Exodus. Nachmanides confronted the same aporria as Paul and Origen. He called that aporria “a question that everybody asks: what is the sin of Pharaoh, if God hardened his heart?” Eventually Nachmanides quotes Prov. 21:1 (“the king’s heart is in the hand of the Lord . . . He turneth it whithersoever He will”). Nearly the same gezerah shavah we meet in the treatise by Augustine De gratia et libero arbitrio (41–42, chs. 20–21). Augustine developed the topic of Pharaoh and free will on the basis of Exod. 7:3, 10:1, Prov. 21:1, and Ps. 105:25. We do not know if Nachmanides himself compiled this midrash or borrowed it from some ancient source. In his commentary on Exod. 7:3 he refers to a well-known piece of exegesis by Palestinian amoraim of the third century C.E. (contemporaries of Origen) Resh Lakish and R. Johanan). We find these exegesis in Exod. R. 13:2: “R. Johanan said: Does this not provide heretics with ground for arguing that he had no means of repenting, since it says: For I have hardened his heart? To which R. Simeon b. Lakish replied: Let the mouth of heretics be stopped . . .” Heretics (minim) are probably the same Gnostics who are the opponents of Origen (Prin. 3, 1:8). Both Origen and Resh Lakish are fighting against those who want to see in Exod. 7:3 a proof that there is no free will in the world. If we are not mistaken, Ps.-Aristeas was solving the problem of

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Pharaoh’s heart with the help of Prov. 21:1–3. Of cause, the solution suggested by Ps.-Aristeas had nothing in common with the suggestions of Paul, Origen, Resh Lakish, and Nachmanides. It was a typical optimistic answer of the Second Temple period: God graciously responds to the requests of pious Jews (or made on the behalf of pious Jews) and softens the heart of a king (e.g., of Persia, of Egypt), since “the king’s heart is in the hand of the Lord.” The same theory may be found in the Greek Addition to Ester (5:1e): “Then God changed the spirit of the king to gentleness.” The entire episode 5:1d–f is very similar to paragraphs 17–19 of Aristeas. The queen faltered, and turned pale, but then God changed the spirit of the king, and he comforted her with soothing words. Aristeas also feels anxiety while the king “refrained himself for a little while.” Finally, the king “raised his head, showing a friendly countenance . . .” Considering that the addition came from Alexandrian Jewish milieu, this similarity is quite expected. In another episode of the Letter (“the seven banquets”) Ps.-Aristeas makes one of the seventy-two interpreters of the Torah to answer the question of the king, how to “preserve all his status intact and in the end transmit it unaltered to his descendants.” The king himself should pray “always to God to receive good impulses for future actions” (196). Providence works through a person’s own heart (softening it or hardening it), but a person is able to influence the providence by prayer.35

The King’s Generosity When Aristeas finishes his deliberations on the king’s heart, the king makes up his mind. Let us continue reading the letter. “The king then raised his head, showing a friendly countenance, and said, ‘How many thousands do you suppose to be?’ Andreas, who was standing in attendance, declared, ‘A little more than a hundred thousand.’

35

Gabriele Boccaccini noticed that Ps.-Aristeas described God as the master of the human heart both in the episode of the seven banquets and in section 17. He writes: “It is only the rule of prayer that makes good behavior and a good will possible.” Boccaccini, however, totally ignores the exegetical dimension of the theme and its traditional Jewish and Christian setting. See Boccaccini, Middle Judaism: Jewish Thought, 300 B.C.E. to 200 C.E. (Minneapolis, 1991), pp. 171–74.

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‘It is but a small matter indeed,’ the king said, ‘that Aristeas asks of us.’ Sosibius and others of those present said, ‘Surely it is worthy of your magnanimity that you dedicate the release of these people as a thank-offering to God the Greatest. Greatly as you have been honored by Him who rules all things, and greatly as you have been distinguished above your forefathers, it is fitting if you make your thank-offering very great’ ” (19). The words of the king (“How many thousands do you suppose to be?”—“It is but a small matter indeed”) is nothing but a replica of Pharaoh’s respond: “And Pharaoh said, Behold, the people of the land now are many (poluplhye› ı laÒw), and ye make them rest from their burdens” (Exod. 5:5). There are too many Jews to let them go. It is too costly even for King the Liberator, let alone Pharaoh the Wicked. However, Ptolemy’s sound of resignation (“it is but a small matter, indeed, that Aristeas asks of us”) is followed by a demonstration of the king’s generosity. Not only those who had accompanied his father’s army were liberated, but also any who were there previously or had been brought into the kingdom subsequently (20). “The king himself . . . made the addition” to his decree (26). Pharaoh, on the other hand, also issued an additional order. He “commanded the same day the taskmasters of the people, and their officers, saying, Ye shall no more give the people straw to make brick, as heretofore” (Exod. 5:6–7). While Pharaoh looks like a classical Scrooge, Philadelphus exhibits generosity and magnanimity. A huge price included a token fee of twenty drachmas each to be paid to the dispossessed owners out of the royal treasury. According to William Linn Westerman, in the time of Philadelphus, the lowest price paid for a slave was fifty drachmas.36 Even that compensation looks totally unrealistic for Ernest Abel: “The Ptolemies were not the kind of rulers who readily paid out money from their own treasuries for the advancement of their subjects’ welfare, and the fantastic idea only illustrates a fanciful imagination.”37 It seems to me that the source of this imagination may be the story of Joseph. That patriarch was sold to the Ishmeelites for twenty pieces of silver (according to the Septuagint, for twenty pieces of gold) “and

36

William L. Westermann, “Enslaved Persons Who Are Free,” American Journal of Philology 59.2 (1938): 25, n. 85. 37 Abel, op. cit., p. 256.

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they brought Joseph into Egypt” (Gen. 37:28). The Jews are liberated in Egypt for the money paid for their forefather to sell him to Egypt. A midrashic play on this sum (twenty pieces of silver) is to be found in rabbinic literature. According to Gen. R. 84:18, “Said the Holy One, blessed be he, “You have sold Rachel’s son for five selas. Therefore each one of you will have to separate five selas, a Tyrian minah, for the first-born son’s redemption.”38 In the Palestinian Talmud (Shekalim 9:12) this midrash is ascribed to Resh Lakish.

The Table of Show-Bread The inscription of the gifts of Ptolemy Philadelphus to the Temple is considered a departure from the subject made on a pattern of Hellenistic ekphrasis.39 According to Hadas, it “goes far beyond the simple requirements of the context.”40 Even Josephus felt the irrelevance of this digression.41 On the other side, it was long ago noticed that the description of the major gift—the table of show-bread—follows, uses, and greatly amplifies the brief description in LXX Exod. 25:23ff. and 37:10ff.42 If we take this borrowing from the Torah seriously, we will find that the description of the table is not a digression but a continuation of the Exodus story, an episode of providing the tabernacle with furniture. Again, the person who provides the furniture is the king of Egypt who liberated the Jews. Ps.-Aristeas himself explains why this table was modeled on the biblical pattern. “Originally the king was eager to build it up to colossal dimensions, but he ordered inquiries to be made of persons in the locality concerning the size of the previous table which stood in the Temple at Jerusalem. . . . Hence the correct measure must neither be deviated nor surpassed” (52–55). This is actually a paraphrase of biblical commandment: “Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall ye diminish ought from it, that ye may keep the commandments of the Lord your God which I

38

Translated by Jacob Neusner in Genesis Rabbah: The Judaic Commentary to the Book of Genesis. A New American Translation, 3 vols. (Atlanta, 1985), 3:198. 39 M. Hadas, op. cit., pp. 47f. 40 Ibid., p. 48. 41 Ibid., p. 120f. 42 Février, op. cit., pp. 40f., Hadas, op. cit., p. 121.

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command you” (Deut. 4:2). That commandment is repeated in the Letter referring to the LXX: “Inasmuch as the translation has been well and piously made and is in every respect accurate, it is right that it should remain in its present form and that no revision of any sort take place” (310). In a sense, the table is another translation, “piously made and . . . in every respect accurate.” Translation of the Temple onto Egyptian ground was produced in the second century B.C.E. At least, that happened according to a fragment of a novel preserved for us in Jewish Antiquities 13, 63–73. In the fragment the High Pries Onias asks Ptolemy VI Philometer to grant him to build in Egypt a temple to Almighty God “after the pattern of that in Jerusalem, and of the same dimensions.” In historical reality the kings of Egypt not only liberated Jewish slaves (according to famous edict of Ptolemy Philadelphus, P. Rainer 24,552), but also did construct the Jewish temple in Leontopolis. Ptolemaic reality itself (intentionally and casually) was a paraphrase, a mimic of the Bible.

The Temple, the City, the Land Février suggested that the description of Jerusalem and its vicinity could be nothing but an interpolation into the Letter. It is omitted in Josephus, the junctures seem awkward, and all the section sounds like the enthusiastic account of devout but humble pilgrims rather than the report of ambassadors of a great king bringing royal presents. The section is a utopian account of a travel to an exotic country, a genre very popular in Hellenistic literature.43 E. Bickermann also stressed Greek utopian and rhetorical motives in the geographical description. At the same time he pointed out to Aristeas’ dependence on the biblical tradition (some of biblical allusions, actually, had been already noticed by Février).44 Indeed, the description of the Temple curtain is based on Exod. 26:36; priest’s “coats of linen” are taken from Exod. 36:35; the description of the vestments of the High Priest (as Hadas notes) 43

Février, op. cit., pp. 24f, 55–59, Hadas, op. cit., pp. 48–50, 130f. Elias J. Bickermann, “Zur Datieriung des Pseudo-Aristeas,” Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft und die Kunde der älteren Kirche 29 (1930): 291–93. See also Tcherikover, op. cit., p. 77. 44

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makes free use of the phraseology of LXX Exod. 28:29. Aristeas even mentions “the oracle” (logion, Hebrew hoshen) that the High Priest “wears upon his breast” (97). That never took place in the Second Temple period and relates to Exod. 28:23, 26. In fact, Ps.Aristeas continues to paraphrase Exodus story (the tabernacle and the priests’ vestments). He even mentions 600,000 men who had received allotments in Judea (116). That evidently refers to the number that went up from Egypt (Exod. 12:37). In two points the fragment exceeds the borders of the Book of Exodus. It mentions mines of copper and iron (Deut. 8:9) and contains an allusion to Isaiah’s prophesy (Isa. 2:2). This allusion comes as a fantastic (detached from topographical reality) description of Zion: “When we reached the region we beheld the city situated in the center of all Judaea upon a mountain which rises to a lofty height. Upon its crest stood the Temple in its splendor.” In Isaiah we read: “And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills.” According to Tcherikover, the main point of Ps.-Aristeas was the intention to describe a Holy Land, where the sublime ideal of biblical theocracy was fulfilled.45 I would maintain, that the Holy Land was not the essence of Aristeas’ Utopia. Moreover, it served a subsidiary role in his Utopian story. What Aristeas meant was not idealized biblical description of the Land of Israel, but the embodiment of specific prophesies referred to Alexandria. To understand it properly we should read not only Isaiah 2:2, but Isaiah 2:3 as well: “And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it. And many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.” That is exactly the message and the plot of the Letter: Ptolemaic envois are coming up to the mountain of the Lord, and the Law (nomos) goes forth to Alexandria out of Zion. For the readership of the Letter (as for the readership of Philonic commentaries)

45

Ibid., p. 200.

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it must have been natural to know the Scripture by heart and to recognize not only the words quoted but neighboring words as well. We confront here specifically Alexandrian prophetic vision. That kind of vision we recognize in a story about the foundation of Onias’s temple in Leontopolis (see above). Onias writes a letter to the king with a reference to Isaiah 19:19 proving that this temple should be erected: “For the prophet Isaiah foretold that ‘there should be an altar to the Lord God;’ and many other such things did he prophesy relating to that place” (Ant. XIII, 64). It looks like the Alexandrian version of pesher. The exegete (Onias) finds hints about future events in the old prophesy of Isaiah. In a very insightful paper, Robert Hayward suggested that Onias intended his temple and the city to be the Sanctuary and Jerusalem of a new age.46 It’s interesting to see how Tannaim reached nearly the same point with their midrashtechnique. Sifré to Deuteronomy, Shofetim 17, Pisqua 15247 comments on Deut. 17:8–10 “If the case is too baffling for you to decide . . . you shall promptly go up to the place that the Lord your God will have chosen. . . . You shall carry out the verdict that is announced to you from that place that the Lord chose.” In the commentary to Deut. 17:8 Sifré refers to the high court in the hewn-stone chamber. Litigants would go there. “They all would go to the high court in the hewnstone chamber. From there Torah would go forth to all Israel, as it is said, ‘From that place that the Lord chose (Deut. 17:10)’. ‘. . . you shall promptly go up (Deut. 17:9)’: This teaches that the land of Israel is higher than all other lands, and the house of the sanctuary is higher than the whole land of Israel.” Using the play on words (“go up”) Sifré establishes the idea expressed in the Letter: the high position of Zion, from which “Torah would go forth to all Israel.” It implicitly alludes to Isaiah 2:2–3, but explicitly refers to Deut. 17:10. Patently, Ps.-Aristeas shares with the framers of Sifré a common place of the Jewish thought of the Second Temple and Talmudic periods. Again, under the disguise of Hellenistic Utopian travel description we see Jewish exegesis. What is highly curious, both Sifré and the Letter see in Mount Zion the seat of the seventy elders. 46

Robert Hayward, “The Jewish Temple at Leontopolis: A Reconsideration,” Journal of Jewish Studies 32.1–2 (1982): 429–43. 47 Translation by Jacob Neusner in The Components of the Rabbinic Documents: From the Whole to the Parts. Vol. 7. Sifré to Deuteronomy, Pt. 2 (Atlanta, 1997), pp. 13–14.

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Virtues of the Elders Sections 121–27 contain a farewell of the High Priest Eleazar with the translators. The “biblical roots” of the LXXII translators are pretty clear. It was already noticed that “seventy was the traditional number for a supreme council, both for the Sanhedrin and for other bodies. The basis for the tradition is doubtless the body of seventy elders which Moses set up.”48 Again, we see a paraphrase of the Book of Exodus. Hadas continues: “At Exod. 24:11 where the elders are spoken of and where the Hebrew gives ‘And upon the nobles of the children of Israel He laid not his hand,’ the LXX gives ‘And of the chosen ones of Israel not one perished.’ The verb used is diaphonein, of which the common meaning is ‘disagreed.’ Such a homonym is ideal material for midrashic ingenuity. The context in Exodus is the solemn transmission of the Law, for which the elders represented the people. No better verse could be imagined to prove the unanimity and demonstrate the authority of a new transmission of the Law; and since the representatives of the people numbered seventy in the one case, it is easy to see how they came to number seventy in the other.”49 It is possible to suggest that Ps.-Aristeas was really keeping this midrash in mind (or, better to say, building his own midrash) when describing the process of translation: “And so they proceeded to carry it out, making all details harmonize (sym-phona) by mutual comparisons. The appropriate result of the harmonization (tes sym-phonies) was reduced to writing . . .” (302). The words sym-phona and tes symphonies could have related to dia-phonein in LXX Exod. 24:11. We can also guess that the legend about miraculous unanimity of the translators (which was gradually getting more and more marvelous from Philo to Epiphanius) derived either from the midrash of Ps.Aristeas, or from the Septuagint itself. Anyway, Ps.-Aristeas was not just alluding to a general tradition of the seventy elders in the Book of Exodus. Actually, he was building exegesis of specific verses. Let us return to the first appearance of the translators in the episode of the Farewell. Ps.-Aristeas presents their virtues: “Eleazar, then, selected men most excellent and of outstanding scholarship . . . (121). They zealously cultivated the quality

48 49

Hadas, op. cit., p. 71. Ibid., p. 71f.

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of the mean (and that is the best course), and eschewing a crude and uncouth disposition, they likewise avoided conceit and the assumption of superiority (Íperfrone›n) over others” (122). Hadas immediately recognizes here a clear Aristotelian echo. Jonathan Goldstein goes even further. In his opinion, Aristeas’s attitude toward the virtues of the translators has nothing to do with the Bible. Indeed, “the writer (Ps.-Aristeas,—A. K.) turns to describe the translators selected by Eleazar . . . [as] men of moderation, mildness, and humility, who loved Eleazar and were loved by him. . . . Why does the writer go out of his way to tell all of this? Are these correct sentiments for a Jew? . . . Were the prophets men of moderation, mildness and humility? Is the ideal of the ideal expert in the Torah a man to be loved? Should he not rather be a man of severity, deterring many from sin?”50 The solution of this riddle, according to Goldstein, is easy: “Beginning with old Matthathias, the Hasmonaeans were remarkable for their severity to sinners. . . . Against this background, our author’s emphatic and insistent preaching on moderation, mildness, mercy, and humility as the essence of Judaism is understandable.”51 Yet the text of Aristeas, far as it is from the severe spirit of the Bible, contains a clear allusion to (if not quotation of ) LXX Exod. 18:21, which is God’s order to Moses about the elders: “And you shall choose out of all the people able men, such as fear God, men of truth, hating arrogance (Íperhfan¤an).” Of all the qualities of the translators Ps.-Aristeas underlines two: their ability and their avoidance of arrogance. Let us remember, that the Septuagint here differs from Masoretic version. MT gives us [x'b; yaen ]c (“hating unjust gain”) and not “hating arrogance.” Targums and medieval commentators (Onkelos, Yohanan b. Ouziel, Maimonides, Nachmanides) translated “hating unjust gain.” Paradoxically, however, the Septuagint version is present in the Talmud. In Bavli, Sanhedrin 88b we read: “From there [the Hall of Hewn Stones] documents were written and sent to all Israel, appointing men of wisdom and humility and who were esteemed by their fellowmen as local judges. From there [sc. the local Beth din] they were promoted to [the Beth din of ] the Temple Mount, thence to the Court, and thence to the Hall of Hewn Stones. They sent word 50 51

Goldstein, op. cit., pp. 3–4. Ibid., p.13.

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from there: ‘Who is destined for the world to come? He who is meek, humble, stooping on entering and on going out, and a constant student of the Torah without claiming merit therefor.’ [Thereupon] the rabbis cast their eyes upon R. 'Ulla b. Abba [as endowed with all these qualities].”52 There is no doubt, that the courts (specifically Sanhendrin) were modeled on the seventy elders of the Book of Exodus.53 Of all the virtues of the elders the Talmud (in accordance with the Letter) stresses their ability (wisdom) and humility. Humility evidently substitutes for the hate of unjust gain. Should we suppose that Alexandrian tradition under lied the Talmudic one? Or, vice versa, early Palestinian tradition (different from Massorah) influenced the Septuagint?

The Gift of Torah It is well agreed among most of the commentators that Ps.-Aristeas has pictured the very act of the translation as the Gift of Torah. According to Harry M. Orlinsky, “the author of the Letter made use of identical or similar expressions and circumstances for the making of the Septuagint that the Hebrew Bible did for the making of the Torah.”54 First of all, this is the expression “to read aloud to the entire gathering” followed by an expression of consent by the assembly, which described the biblical procedure in designating a document as official and binding (cf. Exod. 24:3). Besides, the imprecation pronounced upon those who should revise the text by adding or transposing anything or by making any excision lent to the translation the nature of a Revelation, like that on Mount Sinai (cf. Deut. 4:1–2). In the words of Orlinsky, “the main reason, then, that the author of the Letter involved the twelve tribes of Israel, through their elders, in the translation of the Torah was that it was the twelve tribes, through their elders, that were involved in the Revelation of the Torah in the first place. . . . Following the example at Sinai, all 52

Cf. Jerusalem Talmud: wise, modest, sensible, humble, etc. (Y. San. 1:4). See, e.g., Joshua Efron, Studies on the Hasmonean Period (Leiden, etc., 1987) p. 293: “The early Talmudic tradition exhibits a clear stable view of the Great Sanhedrin, which appears on the distant horizon in an idealized picture exclusively against the background of biblical episodes.” 54 Harry M. Orlinsky, “The Septuagint as Holy Writ and the Philosophy of the Translators,” Hebrew Union College Annual, 46 (1975): 94. 53

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the Jews of Judea authorized the making of the Septuagint.”55 “In every way he could think of, even in choosing a name for his high priest, the author of the Letter made the Septuagint nomos the equivalent of the Hebrew torah.”56 Eleazar (Elisha, according to Hadas), the elder of the translators mentioned in §184, substitutes for Aaron himself and for the third son of Aaron, Eleazar. Yet there is an important point of similarity between the two stories (the Gift of Torah and the Making of the Septuagint) that was (to the best of my knowledge) overlooked by the scholars. The description of the translation starts with the following words: “After three days Demetrius took the men (LXXII elders.—A. K.) with him and crossed (dielyΔn) the breakwater (literally “the causeway of the sea”— énãxvma t∞w yalãsshw), seven studies long to the island; then he crossed the bridge and proceeded to the northerly parts. There he called upon the men to carry out the business of translation . . .” (301). In Num. 11:24, we read: “And Moses went out (§j∞lyen), and told the people the words of the Lord, and gathered the seventy men of the elders of the people, and set them round about the tabernacle.” In both cases there is a leader, who guides the seventy (or seventy-two) elders to prophesize or to translate Torah. Nearly the same verb is used: di-eltho and ex-eltho. Even more, crossing the sea by the elders headed by Demetrius may be a close analogy of crossing the sea by the Jews headed by Moses: “And the children of Israel went into (efis∞lyon) the midst of the sea (t∞w yalãsshw) upon the dry ground ” (Exod. 14:22). In the Letter of Aristeas we have Pharaoh the Liberator. We have also Aristeas and Andreas, the courtiers, asking Pharaoh to liberate the Jews (what Moses and Aaron were doing in the Bible). Now, it is not Eleazar who paves the way for the elders and crosses the sea, but Demetrius of Phalerum, a Greek philosopher and a librarian of Pharaoh. Besides, Demetrius is a person to assemble the Jewish community to approve of the translation (308) as Moses got the consent of the people (Exod. 24:3). He is the equivalent of Moses.

55 Ibid., p. 98. Tcherikover wrote on this point: “The imprecation lent to the translation the nature of a Revelation, like that on Mount Sinai, and not unjustly do modern commentators point out the corresponding places in the Bible, such as Deut. 4.2; 13.1; 28.15 sqq.” See Tcherikover, op. cit., p. 74. See also Hadas, op. cit., pp. 221–22, n. 311. 56 Orlinsky, op. cit., p. 102.

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The Safety of the Elders and their Banquets The gift of Torah was followed by the presentation (reading) of the Law to the king. The king “marveled exceedingly at the intellect of the lawgiver. To Demetrius he said, ‘How has it not occurred to any of the historians or poets to make mention of such enormous achievements?’ And he said, ‘Because the Law is holy and has come into being through God; some of those to whom the thought did occur were smitten by God and desisted from the attempt.’ Indeed, he said, he had heard Theopompus say that when he was on the point of introducing into his history certain matter which had previously been translated from the Law, too rashly, he suffered a derangement of the mind for more than thirty days; upon the abatement of the disorder he implored God that the cause of what had befallen be made plain to him, and when it was signified to him in a dream that it was his meddlesome desire to disclose divine matters to common men, he desisted, and was thereupon restored to health. ‘And of Theodectes also, the tragic poet, I have heard,’ he added, ‘that when he was on the point of introducing into one of his plays something recorded in the Book, his vision was afflicted with a cataract. Conceiving the suspicion that this was the reason for his calamity, he implored God and after many days recovered” (312–16). There is no doubt that Ps.-Aristeas used a Greek cliché of divine punishment for a poet guilty of sacrilege. The case of Stesichorus is most exemplary. Plato in Phaedrus 243 a–b described it as follows: “Stesichorus, who was a philosopher and knew the reason why; and therefore, when he lost his eyes, for that was the penalty which was inflicted upon him for reviling the lovely Helen, he at once purged himself. And the purgation was a recantation . . . and when he had completed his poem, which is called ‘the recantation,’ immediately his sight returned to him.” That story was immensely popular in antiquity.57 However, Jewish midrash lurks behind the Greek motive. While Theopompus and Theodectes were punished for conveying the Law, the LXX were not. That safety was also bestowed on the seventy elders in Exodus 24:4–11, “And Moses wrote all the words of the Lord, and rose up early in the morning, and builded an altar under

57

Plato, Resp. 586c; Suda, s.v. Stesichorus.

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the hill, and twelve pillars, according to the twelve tribes of Israel. And he sent young men of the children of Israel, which offered burnt offerings, and sacrificed peace offerings of oxen unto the Lord. And Moses took half of the blood, and put it in basons; and half of the blood he sprinkled on the altar. And he took the book of the covenant, and read in the audience of the people: and they said, All that the Lord hath said will we do, and be obedient. And Moses took the blood, and sprinkled it on the people, and said, Behold the blood of the covenant, which the Lord hath made with you concerning all these words. Then went up Moses, and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel: And they saw the God of Israel: and there was under his feet as it were a paved work of a sapphire stone, and as it were the body of heaven in his clearness. And upon the nobles of the children of Israel he laid not his hand: also they saw God, and did eat and drink.” The fact that not Priests and Levites but the “young men (the servants) of the children of Israel” and “the nobles (the elders) of the children of Israel” were chosen to offer burnt offerings, that they saw the God of Israel and not perished was a stumbling block for early exegetes. According to the rabbis, this story was among “the things that were changed for Talmai the King” (in the Septuagint), so that zetutei (young men, students) bnei Israel were substituted for naarei bnei Israel and azilei bnei Israel.58 The rabbis wondered why the “seventy of the elders of Israel” had been exempt from punishment for the sacrilege in the aftermath of Torah reading, though, according to Deuteronomic tradition, they should have been punished (cf. the case of Uzzah in 2 Samuel 6:7). In the same way, the seventy were spared from penalty for translating the Pentateuch, unlike Greek poets and historians who had not have divine sanction to convey Torah. The verse telling about the safety of the elders and their banquet could have triggered the famous “seven banquets” episode in the Letter (182–300). “And upon the nobles of the children of Israel he laid not his hand: also they saw God, and did eat and drink” (Exod. 24:11). 58 Guiseppe Veltri, Eine Tora für den König Talmai: Untersuchungen zum Übersetzungsverständnis in der jüdisch-hellenistischen und rabbinischen Literatur (Tübingen, 1994), pp. 78–88. Cf. B. Meg. 9a. As a matter of fact, the Septuagint did change the meaning of the verse. Not only did the LXX translate “the chosen ones” instead of “the nobles”; the Septuagint (as well as Targumim) also put “and they were seen in the place of God,” instead of “they saw God.” Besides, the Septuagint used the verb diaphonein that might mean both “to disagree” and “to perish.”

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As a matter of fact, there was a tradition of Greek-style symposium with the biblical elders decorated with wreaths lying on a couch and talking. A Passover meal (as far as it was based on Exod. 24:11) may be an element of this tradition. The Last Supper (actually, being a Passover meal) was evidently modeled on the banquets of the elders in Exod. 24:11. The apostles played the role of the seventy elders, while Jesus substituted for Moses. As Moses “took the blood, and sprinkled it on the people, and said, Behold the blood of the covenant, which the Lord hath made with you concerning all these words” (Exod. 24:9), so Jesus “took bread, and gave thanks, and brake it, and gave unto them, saying . . . This cup is the new testament in my blood, which is shed for you” (Luke 22:19–20, cf. Matt. 26: 26–28, Mark 14:22–25).59 As the elders “saw God,” so the apostles: “Philip saith unto him, Lord, shew us the Father, and it sufficeth us. Jesus saith unto him . . . he that hath seen me hath seen the Father” ( John 14:8–9). Even in the kingdom of God the apostles will “eat and drink . . . and sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel” (Luke 22:30). Probably this is an allusion to the elders of the tribes who “saw God, and did eat and drink” According to B. Ber. 17a and the second chapter of masekhet Kalah, in the World to Come there is no eating nor drinking nor propagation, but holy ones sit decorated with wreaths. The proof text is Exod. 24:11 (“they saw God, and did eat and drink”). This is a rather ancient exegesis since we see nearly the same image of the future world in Mark 12:24, Luke 20:35, and Matt. 22:30: “For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven.”60 The contents of the table-talk at the banquet are nothing but derekh erets, general rules of moral or prudent conduct. Nearly the same questions on derekh erets were put by Alexandrians in front of R. Joshua (B. Nid. 69b): “Three [questions] were concerned with matters of conduct (derekh erets): ‘What must a man do that he may become wise? . . . What must a man do that he may become rich? . . . What must a man do that he may have male children?” Cf. the questions

59 See Davies, The Setting of the Sermon on the Mount, p. 59; Davies and Allison, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel According to Saint Matthew. 3:460. 60 On the parallels between B. Ber. 17a and Mark 12:25 see William David Davies, Paul and Rabbinic Judaism: Some Rabbinic Elements in Pauline Theology (London, 1977), p. 307.

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of Philadelphus: “How he might remain rich” (204), “what is the teaching of wisdom” (207), “how he might always have right reason at hand” (244). The answers of R. Joshua and the following comments were built on the same pattern as the answers of the translators. They contain what Zuntz calls “one Jewish feature, primitive yet significant . . . namely the reference of the actions or attitudes recommended to the model of God and to the need for his help.”61 For example, R. Joshua when asked, “What must a man do that he may become rich?” replied: “Let him engage much in business and deal honestly.” “Did not many, they said to him, do so but it was of no avail to them?— Rather, let him pray for mercy from Him to whom are the riches, for it is said, Mine is the silver, and Mine the gold. What then does he teach us?—That one without the other does not suffice.” Cf. the answer of a translator: “If he . . . never incurred expenses for empty and foolish things, but by benefactions drew his subjects to be well disposed to him; for God is the author of blessings to all men, and His example must be followed” (205). Furthermore, we meet the derekh erets questions (nearly similar to those of Ptolemy in the “Letter”) in the Jewish version of the Alexander Romance by Pseudo-Callistenes (B. Tam. 32a). Alexander asks “the elders of the South”: “Who is called wise? . . . Who is called rich? . . . Who is called mighty? . . . What should a person do to live? . . . What should someone do to die? . . . What should someone do to be accepted by others?”62 The answers, however, are totally different. While Aristeas follows conformist ways of Hellenistic treatises on kingship, the romance inclines towards stoic-cynic synthesis. Kingship, wealth, even life itself are mostly despised. Again, we meet an adaptation, nearly a translation, of Greek novel, inserted, however, into Jewish tradition and situation. Those, who ask the questions, are Jewish elders. I would suggest that the tradition of the feast of the elders in the wake of Torah-gift (Exod. 24:11) explains the presence of the symposium in the Letter of Aristeas. And what about the High Priest Eleazar Apology for the Law (sections 121–27)? In my opinion, the Apology represented the Law itself, the prescriptions and commandments given

61 62

Zuntz, Aristeas Studies I, p. 22. See the translation by Jacob Neusner: The Talmud of Babylonia, p. 125.

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to the people on Sinai and conveyed in the books of the Pentateuch. It takes the same place in the Letter that the Sermon on the Mount takes in the Gospels, the place of a New Sinai.

The Kings’ Copy of the Torah It is time now to approach the major riddle of the Letter. Demetrius wants the Law to be copied for the library. Yet as the Jews have their own language and script, different not only from Greek but also from Syrian one. Therefore, “a letter should be addressed to the High Pries of the Jews that the design above mentioned might be carried to completion” (11). In his memorandum to the King, Demetrius points out that the books of the Law “have been committed to the writing somewhat carelessly and not adequately” (30). Experts should be invited to give “an accurate translation” (32). What exactly was needed, translation or just making a copy? Why does Demetrius bother with the state of Jewish manuscripts? According to Zuntz, Aristeas deliberately used the terms of Alexandrian textual criticism to describe the works of translation in order to add respectability to the Septuagint. Therefore Aristeas introduced his reference to imperfect manuscripts.63 David Willonghby Gooding tried to prove the consistency of Aristeas on this point. In his view, translation was impossible without interpretation. The elders should have guaranteed that their translation perfectly matched the meaning of the original.64 In fact, Gooding does not annihilate the discrepancy. His theory would have made sense if the elders were comparing different copies in the course of their interpretation. This was not the case, however. To my mind, this inconsistency could have appeared since all the idea of the translation in the Letter alluded to Deut. 17:18 (“And it shall be, when he sitteth upon the throne of his kingdom, that he shall write him a copy of this law in a book out of that which is before the priests the Levites”). What the King James Version makes

63

Zuntz, “Aristeas Studies II,” pp. 210–25. David Willoughby Gooding, “Aristeas and Septuagint Origins: A Review of Recent Studies,” in Studies in the Septuagint, p. 377. I do not refer here to many other attempts to solve the problem. Gooding described and criticized them in his review rather profoundly. Since the time his paper was first published (1963) the situation has not changed. 64

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“a copy of this law” and the Septuagint renders tÚ deuteronÒmion, sounds in Hebrew as jr;wT O h' hnEv]m.i Rabbinic midrashim, using the play on words mishneh (a copy, repetition) and leshanoth (to change), unanimously65 understand jr;wOTh' hnEv]mi as “a Torah which is destined to be changed.” This is a change of characters (from Hebrew or Raas to Assyrian) and a change of language (from Hebrew to Aramaic). Yerushalmi discusses Deut. 17:18 in the context of the saying by R. Simeon b. Gamaliel, “Even sacred scrolls, they have permitted only that they be written in Greek.” The Torah, that the king must copy, is going to be translated or transliterated. That is exactly what Ptolemy II Philadelphus does. He gets Torah both translated and copied. Moreover, he actually follows the commandment to copy “in a book out of that which is before the priests the Levites.” He sends envoys to the High Priest of Jerusalem for the correct copy of Torah. Let us notice also, that in the Targum Pseudo-Jonathan it was not a king himself who ought to write a copy of the Law, but the elders would do it for him. In Talmudic tradition Deut. 17:18 was read simultaneously as an order to copy and an order to interpret (translate). The word “to write” pointed to copying, while the word “a copy” (mishneh) pointed to interpretation (translation). That duality (born of atomistic reading which was usual for the rabbis and for Philo as well) may have affected the scenario of the Letter. There are also two minor points of similarity between Deut. 17:18–20 and the Letter. In the Letter, the king is regarding the day when the translators come “as a great day, and each year through all the length of my life it shell be held in high esteem” (180). In Deut. 17:19 the king is supposed to read the Law “all the days of his life.” In the next episode of the Letter, the first question of the king to the translators was “how he might preserve his kingdom unimpaired to the end.” The answer followed: “You would maintain it best by imitating the constant gentleness of God. For by exercising long suffering patience and dealing with those who merit punishment more gently than they deserve, you will turn them from wickedness and bring them to repentance” (187–88). It looks like a paraphrase of Deut. 17:20: the king should read the Law “that his heart be not lifted up above his brethren . . . that he may prolong his days in his kingdom, he, and his children, in the midst of Israel.”66 The prolongation 65 Sifré on Deuteronomy, Shofetim 17, pisqua 160; T. San. 4:5; Y. Meg. 1:9; B. San. 21b. 66 Cf. allusion to this verse in Philo, Decal. 40.

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of the king’s rule is the major motif in the “banquet” talks.67 It can be argued that the rabbinic interpretation is younger than the text of “Aristeas.” Besides, the Hebrew play on words (mishneh— leshanoth) could not speak a lot for the Letter based on the Septuagint. Yet let us look into the context of Deut. 17:18. The entire pericope telling about a king (Deut. 17:14–20) must have been very problematic for Alexandrian Jewry. First of all, the king had to be not a stranger but “from among thy brethren.” In Ptolemaic kingdom it would be a preposterous demand. Therefore, probably, the Septuagint uses here êrxvn (ruler, lord, prince, Ethn-arch in the case of the Jews of Alexandria) instead of basileÁw (king). Second, the king should not “cause the people to return to Egypt” and that was actually done by Ptolemy I and his descendants. In the earliest rabbinic exegesis Alexandrian Jews were blamed for breaking this commandment.68 Finally, the king “shall write . . . a copy of this law.” And that exactly, according to the letter, was done by Ptolemy II Philadelphus. It looks like both the Septuagint and the “Letter” sought to overcome the problematic passage. *

*

*

All in all, the Letter is not just a story of the translation of Pentateuch. It includes all the major contents of Exodus, from Egyptian enslavement of the Jews to the gift of Torah on Mount Sinai, from the construction of the tabernacle to the banquets of the elders. What looks like digressions on the surface is the real essence inside. What seems to be the plot is nothing but the upper layer, which is designed both to veil and to expose the essence of the book. In the Letter of Aristeas we find both typology and a pesher. Actually, the Letter is a Gospel, a good message. Aristeas informs his brother (and the readership in general) that the Jews were liberated by the king of Egypt, that the Law was translated and excepted by the people, that the commandments and the doctrines of the Law were totally relevant to the educated society, both Jewish and Gentile. Moreover, in the way of a pesher, he generally alludes to prophesy

67 Zuntz found a “verbal allusion” of section 188 to Prov. 18:10 though there is none (see “Aristeas Studies II,” p. 23). Hadas (op. cit. pp. 173–74) compared the section to Diod. I, 70.6. The fundamental connection of motives (king’s making copy and interpretation of the Torah—obeying the Torah—prolongation of the rule) was overlooked, while some casual similarities were underlined. 68 See below, n. 70.

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of Isaiah (2:2) that “out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.” In the words of William David Davies, “While, therefore, the advent of Jesus is a new departure in history, a new creation by the Spirit, looked at from another point of view the same advent is not a new departure but the last stage in a long . . . development.”69 The same could be said about the Letter of Aristeas. The new liberation of the Jews not only repeats the old one (as the new enslavement repeated the old one) but it serves a prelude to a new departure which is the Law going forth. Of cause, unlike the Gospels, the Letter does not proclaim the new to be bigger than the old, but it definitely means the new to be a further development and fulfillment of the old. In a sense, the Letter not only follows the biblical story of Exodus, but also defies (refutes) it, though not to the same extend as the New Testament defies the Old one. The meaning of this defiance was the proclamation of the very right of Alexandrian Diaspora to exist. We do not know if this right was questioned in the Second Temple period.70 Later on, however, the rabbis insisted that Israel were “warned” not to return to Egypt. Since they came back and settled in Alexandria they were smitten by Trajan.71 The new was connected to the old by the way of exegesis. That exegetic layer, however, was never made explicit. The motif of the New Exodus is veiled in the Letter as it is veiled in the Gospels. It took the efforts of Melito of Sardis and other Christian authors to get the hidden layer exposed.72

69

Davies, The Setting of the Sermon on the Mount, p. 72. George Howard suggested that the Letter of Aristeas was “an apology of Diaspora Judaism in the face of charges brought against it by Palestinian Judaism.” To that end, the Letter defended the Septuagint, commended on Egyptian officials, and underlined the absence of arrogance in the attitude of the High Priest Eleazar toward Ptolemy. See Howard, “The Letter of Aristeas and Diaspora Judaism,” Journal of Theological Studies, N. S. 22.2 (1971): 337–48. 71 See Raphael Loewe, “A Jewish Counterpart to the Acts of the Alexandrians,” Journal of Jewish Studies 12.3/4 (1961): 106, n. 7. Actually, there were two traditions about Jewish settlement in Ptolemaic Egypt: the Jews came either voluntary or were brought by force ( Josephus, Contra Apionem, I, 186–89; II, 200–205; Ant. XII, 5–8). The second tradition could have been supported by Deut. 28:68 (“And the Lord shall bring thee into Egypt again with ships, by the way whereof I spake unto thee, Thou shalt see it no more again: and there ye shall be sold unto your enemies for bondmen and bondwomen, and no man shall buy you”). 72 Alister Stewarts-Sykes, The Lamb’s High Feast: Melito, Peri Pascha and the Quartodeciman Paschal Liturgy at Sardis (Leiden, etc., 1998): 84–92. 70

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There is also the third though very scanty layer, which refers us to the time of the author himself. At section 28 Aristeas tells about the era of the story: “These kings used to administer all their business through decrees and with great precaution; nothing was done negligently or casually.” According to Moses Hadas, “the tone . . . is that of a wistful laudator temporis acti.”73 The same kind of anachronism could be found at section 182 (“and it may still be seen to this day”). I am not sure about the author’s “naïveté” (Hadas’s term).74 Perhaps Aristeas was uncovering himself deliberately in order to hint to the grim changes that had happened in Ptolemaic kingdom. That would alter the prospective of the message and make its optimism more cautious. In section 37 Aristeas quotes the king writing to the High Priest Eleazar: “We . . . have given liberty to above a hundred thousand captives . . . making good whatever injury may have been inflicted through the impulses of the mob.” That sentence reminds us of Philo’s invectives against Alexandrian rabble. To better understand the structure of the Letter, let us look into the theory of leitmotif composition formulated by Boris Gasparov in his essay on the famous novel by M. Bulgakov Master and Margaret. According to Gasparov, a motif is totally different from any component of traditional scenario composition. These traditional components (characters or events) are usually determined beforehand as letters of alphabet. Motifs, on the other hand, are born by and through the structure of a novel. Motif connections appear in different points of a novel mostly by association. Each of the associations may look dubious unless it is supported by sister-associations later on. Motif composition has its central core and its periphery.75 Gasparov describes the motif composition of Master and Margaret as built of three layers. The first layer is Jerusalem in the time of Jesus. The second one is Moscow in the end of the 1920s when the main story happens. The third one is the time of the teller, the end of the 1930s, the time slightly mentioned between the lines and in the epilogue. Not only the first layer, but the second as well looks like a legend, myth, and proverb. It died without taking note of its

73

Hadas, op. cit., p. 6. Ibid. 75 Boris Gasparov, Literary Leitmotifs: Essays on Russian Literature of the Twentieth Century [Russian], (Moscow, 1994), pp. 30–31. 74

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own death. What is very important is that each layer not only refers to the previous one, but also refutes it.76 To my mind, leitmotif composition is embedded into the Letter of Aristeas as it is embedded into the Gospels. Motifs prowl between specific events and their prototypes, between a figure and its fulfillment. They represent different layers of a book. As Gasparov notes, each of the associations may look dubious unless it is supported by sisterassociations later on. The tale of liberation could look totally unrelated to the story of Exodus, if the making of the Septuagint were not so similar to the gift of Torah. Hidden quotations are to draw our attention to the motifs and support the associations. Being overtly an apology for the Pentateuch, the Letter covertly refutes some of its major statements. The second layer (the time of the action) defies the first one (the time of Exodus), while the third layer (the time of the author) makes the second one bleak, unsecured, and vulnerable. The world of Aristeas died in a bloody mess of pogroms and riots. The Letter, however, has survived to be labeled as anything but a literary masterpiece—which for some curious reason deserves study.

76

Ibid., pp. 54–55.

CHAPTER FIVE

THE SAGES AND THE CROWD: SOCIETY BEHIND THE CULTURE

Three events are supposed to have determined the boundaries and shaped the image of Jewish literature in late antiquity: the destruction of the Temple in 70 C.E., the failure of the Bar Kochba revolt in 133–35 C.E., and the annihilation of the once flourishing Jewish community in Alexandria in 115–17 C.E. The last event, it is believed, effectively brought Hellenistic Jewish culture to its end, while the first led to the emergence of Talmudic literature (starting with the Mishnah and targumim).1 Yet there are reasons to beware exaggerating the importance of these events. First, the Greek speaking Jewish Diaspora did not disappear after 117 C.E. Flourishing communities remained in Syria, Asia Minor, and even Rome. Second, a major revolution in Greco-Roman culture (involving the appearance of secular Scripture and the collapse of old genres) occurred almost simultaneously with that in Jewish culture, though neither Rome nor Athens shared the fate of Jerusalem. With this in mind, we might examine social transformations common to much of the Roman Empire that could conceivably lie behind all these changes. The first of these transformations was the appearance of preaching scholarly communities. According to Henry A. Fischel, a “scholar-teacher-jurist-administrator class” (mostly rhetoricians) arose in the early Roman Empire. Fischel put “the intriguing question whether the Tannaim and their Pharisaic predecessors, using rhetorical techniques and the ideology of the Sage in a similar fashion,

1 Cf. the statement of Joseph Heinemann: “To a certain extent, the Aggadah represents a creative reaction to the upheavals suffered by Israel in their land . . . It also represents an attempt to develop new methods of exegesis designed to yield new understandings of scripture for a time of crisis and a period of conflict, with foreign cultural influence pressing from without and sectarian agitation from within. This period demanded a response to the crises brought about by historical events, foremost, the destruction of Jerusalem and its Temple and the total loss of political independence.” See “The Nature of Aggadah,” in Midrash and Literature, ed. Geoffrey G. Hartman and Sanford Budic (New Haven and London, 1986), pp. 42–43.

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represent in Judean culture the identical class, similarly entrusted with the practical tasks of law, administration and cult . . . and similarly clashing with the hoi polloi, i.e., the Am ha-arets.”2 To the mind of Philip S. Alexander, “The centrality of canonic texts and the role of the schools—largely defined the framework of hermeneutics both in rabbinic and in Greco-Roman culture.”3 The schools, of course, represented a certain social class themselves. If this is so, then the destruction of the Temple would have simply facilitated the ongoing process of forming this new class and its literature in Jewish society, while in Greco-Roman society the Second Sophistic would have brought the new “learned” culture (created by the “educated”) to its acme. The sheer number of the “educated” was amazing. According to Lucian, Zeus speaks to Justice, comparing the time of Socrates to the new time: “The people were still unfamiliar with the teaching of philosophy at that time, and there were few that pursued it. . . . But at present, do not you see how many short cloaks and staves and wallets that there are? On all sides there are long beards, and books in the left hand, and everybody preaches in favor of you; the public walks are full of people assembling in companies and in battalions, and there is nobody who does not want to be thought a scion of Virtue. In fact, many, giving up the trades that they had before, rush after the wallet and the cloak, tan their bodies in the sun to Ethiopian hue, make themselves extemporaneous out of cobblers or carpenters, and go about praising you and your virtue. Consequently, in the words of the proverb, it would be easier for a man to fall in a boat without hitting a plank than for your eye to miss a philosopher wherever it looks.”4 The new educated elites were not self-sufficient, however. Their existence must have been conditioned by and connected to a certain 2 Henry A. Fischel, “Story and History: Observations in Greco-Roman Rhetoric and Pharisaism,” in Essays in Greco-Roman and Related Talmudic Literature (New York, 1997), p. 465. Cf. also: Halevy, The Values of Haggadah, p. 141; Lee I. Levine, The Rabbinic Class of Roman Palestine in Late Antiquity (New York, 1987); Johannes Hahn, Der Philosoph und die Gesellschaft: Selbstverständnis, öffentliches Auftreten und populäre Erwartungen in der hohen Kaiserzeit (Stuttgart, Wiesbaden, 1989); Maud W. Gleason, Sophists and Self-Representation in Ancient Rome (Princeton, 1955); Aharon Oppenheimer, The Am Ha-Aretz: A Study in Social History of the Jewish People in the Hellenistic-Roman Period (Leiden, 1997), pp. 180–84. 3 Alexander, “Quid Athens et Hierosolymis?” p. 120. 4 Lucian, Bis accus. 6.

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kind of audience, one that could apprehend and appreciate the speeches of popular rhetoricians, the sermons of famous preachers, and the lectures of renowned professors. The existence of this audience must have been even more significant than the rise of the new preaching class. The papyri of the second to fourth centuries witness the obsession of the middle and lower middle classes with popular moral philosophy. In the first chapter of this book, I suggested that “not ordinary peasants but town elite, scribes, and the like were the milieu to absorb this vulgar teaching. They picked up the most primitive and the most vital (for them) elements of popular philosophy, like the dignity of the poor and the importance of the law. These elements applied to their conditions, though they derived from very elitist sources, from Plato and Seneca. Not folk tradition, but vulgarized philosophy nurtured the new way of thinking.” In the second century, these people started acquiring some biblical knowledge. Ramsey MacMullen is very pessimistic about the qualifications of the Christian audience of the fourth century. “They expended little enough of their leisure in familiarizing themselves with Scripture. . . .”5 To MacMullen, overall . . . it was a distinctly upper-class audience, enriched or impoverished, depending on one’s point of view, by a less narrow sampling of the population on certain days of special importance and in special settings, notably in martyr-churches. Obviously a speaker would have to take account of the background and experience of his listeners and may be heard modifying his language and thought to their capacities. For example, he would on predictable though few occasions find crowds of peasants in his church, barbaroi as he might call them and far removed in culture from himself as from the ladies and gentlemen he was used to.”6 In Constantinople, “as serious disputes arose among the Christian leadership, bystanders became partisans at all levels of education and comprehension.”7

How knowledgeable were the Jews? The answer depends on the setting of rabbinic midrash. In his recently published paper, Gary Porton insists that “the evidence before us does not support the contention

5 Ramsay MacMullen, “The Preacher’s Audience (A.D. 350–400),” Journal of Theological Studies 40 (1989): 510. 6 Ibid. 7 Ibid., p. 508.

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that the ancient synagogue was the main venue in which the rabbis interpreted Scripture. While there may have been some midrashic activity within the synagogues, the main arena in which rabbinic midrash functions appears to be the academy. . . . Sages themselves comprised the primary audience for rabbinic midrash.”8 Porton’s contention is in line with the ideas of Jonah Fraenkel9 and in opposition to the theory of Samuel Krauss,10 Joseph Heinemann,11 Marc Hirshman,12 et al. Yet even Porton would not reject the possibility of at least “some midrashic activity within the synagogues.” The very fact that the Jews regularly attended Torah reading was meaningful. Education of the masses became an obsession of the educated as early as the first two centuries C.E.13 Both Plutarch and Josephus criticized Plato for his lack of interest in such education. Plutarch presented Plato and Socrates as philosophers who took only a few pupils speaking their own language, whereas Alexander the Great taught civilization in one form or another to many barbarian peoples.14 In the same way Josephus reproached Plato and praised Moses: The wisest of the Greeks learnt to adopt these conceptions of God from principles with which Moses supplied them. . . . These, however, addressed their philosophy to the few, and did not venture to divulge their true beliefs to the masses who had their own preconceived opinions; whereas our lawgiver, by making practice square with precept, not only convinced his own contemporaries, but so firmly implanted this belief concerning God in their descendants to all future generations that it cannot be moved . . . 15 Plato himself admits that it is hazardous to divulge the truth about God to the ignorant mob.16 8 Gary Porton, “Rabbinic Midrash: Public or Private,” The Review of Rabbinic Judaism Ancient, Medieval and Modern, 5.2 (2002): 162. 9 Jonah Fraenkel, The Methods of Aggadah and Midrash [Hebrew], 2 vols. (Givatayyim, 1991). 10 S. Krauss, “The Jews in the Works of the Church Fathers,” in Jewish Quarterly Review, Old Series, 5 (1893): 122–57; 6 (1894): 82–99; 225–61. 11 Joseph Heinemann, Public Sermons in the Talmudic Era [Hebrew], ( Jerusalem, 1982). 12 Marc Hirshman, “The Preacher and his Public in Third-Century Palestine,” Journal of Jewish Studies 42.1 (1991): 108–14. 13 In the paper of 1912, Juda Bergmann noticed that both stoic popular philosopher and Jewish sage wanted to be teachers of people. See “Die stoische Philosophie und jüdische Frömmigkeit,” in Essays in Greco-Roman and Related Talmudic Literature (New York, 1977), p. 4. 14 Plut., De fortuna Alexandri, 328c–e. Cf. Graham Anderson, The Second Sophistic, p. 116. 15 Josephus, Contra Ap., II, 168–69, trans. Henry St. John Thackeray in Josephus, The Life; Against Apion (Cambridge, Mass., etc., 1997), pp. 259–61. 16 Josephus, Contra Ap., II, 224, trans. ibid., p. 383.

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Rhetoricians and philosophers, though, were anything but unanimous on teaching the crowd. Seneca the Philosopher was extremely negative: There is no reason why pride in advertising your abilities should lure you into publicity, so that you should desire to recite or harangue before the general public. Of course I should be willing for you to do so if you had a stock in trade that suited such a mob; as it is, there is not a man of them who can understand you. One or two individuals will perhaps come in your way, but even these will have to be molded and trained by you so that they will understand you.17

In contrast, Dio Chrysostom, the most popular rhetorician of the Second Sophistic, proclaimed: . . . Not every gathering of the people must be avoided by men of cultivation. . . . The fault may lie rather at the door of those who wear the name of a philosopher. For some among that company do not appear in public at all and prefer not to make the venture, possibly because they despair of being able to improve the masses. . . .18

The schools of Hillel and Shammai are reported to have argued about something similar: should a master teach everyone or only those who are meek, wise, etc.19 Evidently, Rabban Gamaliel belonged to the “elitist” party.20 The Jewish sages opposed their study halls and synagogues to Greco-Roman theaters and circuses.21 Seneca22 and Philo23 complained about the competition of theaters and cafés as well. It looks as if what was once a traditional people became to a certain extent an audience, a public. It could be won over by an eloquent rhetorician, it could be drawn away by theaters or circuses, but it could also be attracted to lecture halls and synagogues. This combination of educated and half-educated audience members and highly competent scholars and philosophers could have given birth to spoudogeloion. Somewhat “scientific” (medical and juristic) 17 Seneca, Epist., 7:9, trans. Richard M. Gummere in Seneca, Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales. Vol. 1 (London, etc., 1917), p. 35. 18 Dio Chrys. XXXII, 8. See Dio Chrysostom. [Works]. Trans. J. W. Cohoon, H. Lamar Crosby, Vol. 3 (Cambridge, Mass., etc., 1932–36), p. 179. 19 ARNA 2:9. 20 B. Ber. 28a. 21 J. Heinemann, op. cit., pp. 8–9. 22 Seneca, Epist. 95:23. 23 Philo, Ios. 59; cf. idem, Mut. 196; Cf. Plato Philebus 49a.

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thinking would only have strengthened the sensationalism which was necessary to attract the audience. At the same time, that audience was serious and learned enough to absorb religious and vulgar philosophical teachings, to perceive allusions to Greek classics, Jewish scriptures, and Roman or Halakhic law. Even the undemanding comical novel of Apuleius was allegedly written to preach the religion of Isis. The matter should not be oversimplified. The comic novel did not necessarily target a “vulgar audience.” That audience could have been extremely elitist. The very border between things elitist and popular blurred. Apuleius was a renowned Platonic philosopher. Petronius, called “Arbiter of Elegance,” did not compose his Satyricon for Trimalchio and other Syrian lads. Instead he mocked the latter for hiring a professor (like Agamemnon) to enlighten them about the difference between Cicero and Publilius (Sat. 55). He laughed at their pretense to have mastered grammar and rhetoric. Yet the frivolity of his style didn’t simply mirror the vulgarity of the characters. The style reflected the essence of the culture that united freedmen-parvenus with Cicero. That culture was inside Petronius, not outside him. The men of culture interiorized an existential situation “in front of the crowd.” The growth of misanthropy became a sign of that psychological process. *

*

*

Misanthropy is one of the most seductive ideas of western civilization. It has appeared in the Timon of Athens by Shakespeare, in the Misanthrope by Moliere, in European romanticism, and in the writings of Nietzsche. As its very name shows, it originated from Greek culture. An exemplary misanthrope, Timon, lived in Athens in the fifth century B.C.E. and was probably mentioned by Plato in Phaedo 89b–90b.24 Yet the high point of misanthropy came later, in the first centuries C.E. To understand this phenomenon, we must analyze it from the perspective of Jewish culture of the same period. With commendable consistency, Philo defended his famous characters from accusations of misanthropy. His Abraham “withdraws from the public and loves solitude . . . not because he is misanthropical,

24 A. Macc Armstrong, “Timon of Athens—A Legendary Figure?” in Greece and Rome, 2nd series 34 (1987): 7–11.

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for he is eminently a philanthropist, but because he has rejected the vice which is welcomed by the multitude. . . .” (Abr. 22). His Therapeutae “pass their days outside the walls pursuing solitude in gardens or lonely bits of country, not from any acquired habit of misanthropical bitterness but because they know how unprofitable and mischievous are associations with persons of dissimilar character” (Cont. 20). Philo’s consistent interest in this idea betrays something profound and essential. Allegations of Jewish misanthropy were common in Greek and Roman literature, based mostly on the self-segregation of the Jews.25 At the same time, the figure of the misanthropic philosopher, with an “acquired habit of misanthropical bitterness,” was ubiquitous in satirical prose. Both as a Jew and a philosopher, Philo would try to refute the indictment. The refutation was not that easy though. Apparently philosophers in the time of Philo came close to pleading guilty with regard to misanthropy. Seneca wrote, “Sometimes we are possessed by hatred of the human race (odium genris humani )” (De Tranquilitate Animi 15:1). The novella in letters that relates to Hippocrates’ visit to Democritus makes Democritus say, “Do not you see that even the cosmos is full of misanthropy?”26 Democritus was supposed to laugh at humankind, while Heraclitus had wept. Seneca invited philosophers to imitate Democritus rather than Heraclitus: “We ought . . . to bring ourselves into such state of mind that all the vices of the vulgar may not appear hateful to us, but merely ridiculous” (De Tranquilitate Animi 15:2). Heraclitus himself, in another philosophical novella, voices this view: “Sirs, don’t you want to learn first why I am always without laughter? It is not out of hatred for men but rather for their vice.” The Ephesians were about to introduce a law against philosophers: “Every man who does not laugh and who is a misanthrope is to depart from the city before the setting of the sun.”27 Philosophers were not only accused of misanthropy. Possessed by hatred of the human race, they were in fact tempted by misanthropy. 25 Louis H. Feldman, Studies in Hellenic Judaism (Leiden, etc., 1996), pp. 293–94; Katell Berthelot, Philanthrôpia judaica. 26 Hippocrates Epist. 17.9. On the date of the novel (second century B.C.E. to first century C.E.) see Wessley D. Smith, Hippocrates: Pseudoepigraphic Writings (Leiden, 1990), p. 29. 27 Heraclitus Epist. 7. Cf., Harold W. Attridge, First-Century Cynicism in the Epistles of Heraclitus (Missoula, 1976).

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They would use logical arguments to withstand that temptation. Epictetus advised enlightenment: “Why are we any longer angry with the multitude? ‘They are thieves’ says someone, ‘and robbers.’ What do you mean by ‘thieves and robbers?’ They have simply gone astray in questions of good and evil. . . . Only show them their error” (Diatribae I, 18:2–4). Seneca recommended forgiveness: “That you may not be angry with individuals, you must forgive mankind at large, you must grant indulgence to the human race” (De Ira II, 10:2). “What keeps the wise man from anger? The great mass of sinners” (ibid. 10:4). A specific entity embodied all the sinfulness. Philosophers called it “the vulgar,” “the crowd,” or “the multitude.”28 Hatred of the crowd derived from Greek democracy. For Plato, “the crowd” mostly meant the Athenian people, disobedient and aggressive toward the political and cultural elite. How did this elitism relate to stoic egalitarianism? Why did Seneca so ardently criticize the crowd? Jan Nicolaas Sevenster believes that “although Seneca . . . theoretically considered a man’s value to be wholly independent of his social status, and although he theoretically acknowledged the equality of all men, his deeply rooted consciousness of his own intellectual aristocracy made him in practice despise the masses even more profoundly than he probably would otherwise have done as a prominent Roman, belonging to the oligarchical elite.”29 I would argue that the sharpness of Seneca’s misanthropy and his hatred of the crowd appeared not in spite of his acknowledgment of equality but because of it. Plato, with all his elitism, eventually justified the crowd, made its existence lawful. The crowd was doomed to exist. Most people were born to the crowd; it was not their fault. Their souls had been maltreated before reincarnation. The ideal state was designed not to render everybody a philosopher but to provide 28 Cf. Arkady Kovelman, The Crowd and the Sages (Moscow, 1996); idem, “The Masses in the Literature of the Sages” [Hebrew] in Jewish Studies: Forum of the World Union of Jewish Studies 36 (1996): 111–32. 29 Jan Nicolaas Sevenster, Paul and Seneca (Leiden, 1961), p. 218. William D. Barry applies the same kind of accusation to Dio Chrysostom: “His moral denigration of Alexandrian popular culture and his designation of the populace as savage beasts reflect his assumptions about the unruly and irrational nature of the mob and serve to reinforce the social hierarchy of the Roman world from which Dio himself profited both in terms of power and prestige.” See, “Aristocrats, Oratores, and the ‘Mob’: Dio Chrysostom and the World of the Alexandrians,” in Historia 42.1 (1993): 98.

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philosophers with power to rule over everybody, just as a soul must rule over a body. In contrast, Seneca made no allowances to the commoners. He preached “going out of the crowd” as a categorical imperative. Those who did not follow his preaching were deemed definitely immoral. Plato was probably the first to give a philosophical definition to misanthropy. In Phaedo, he wrote that “misanthropy arises out of the too great confidence of inexperience; you trust a man and think him altogether true and sound and faithful, and then in a little while he turns out to be false and knavish, and then another and another, and when this has happened several times to a man . . . he at last hates all men.” According to Plato, “few are the good and few the evil, and . . . the great majority are in the interval between them” (Phaedo 89b). That was not the case for Seneca, who disagreed with Aristotle’s theory of “moderate passions.” Those are “nothing else than a moderate evil” (De Ira I, 10:4). Since life subjugated to passions is the major feature of the crowd, those who are not philosophers are all evil, moderate or extreme. In his anticrowd sentiment, Seneca was egalitarian. No social position could guarantee that a person would not be one of the crowd. “By the rabble I mean no less the servants of the court than the servants of the kitchen” (De Vita Beata 2:2). Eventually philosophical misanthropy of the first century comes to seem a result of high esteem for the individual, unrelated to his status and wealth. “It is not a simple task, this fulfilling the profession of a man,” uttered Epictetus (Diatribae I, 9:1). For Stoics and Cynics, the great majority of persons between the evil and the good would fail in fulfilling the profession of a man. Hence they developed moral indignation, blaming humankind for its herd behavior. Paradoxically they followed the trail drawn by Plato: “misanthropy arises out of the too great confidence.” Too great confidence in humankind would inevitably lead to disillusionment; philanthropy would end up in misanthropy. This was probably the most sophisticated passion of the time— hatred of humankind. It was based on abstract ideas such as those of humankind and the individual. Therefore we would not expect to find it in the Bible. The prophet Hosea used nearly the same accusations as Seneca—but the former chastised just Israel, and the latter, all humankind. “There is no loyalty, no faithful love, no knowledge of God in the country, only perjury and lying, murder, theft, adultery and violence, bloodshed after bloodshed” (Hos. 2:4). Hosea’s

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criticism is limited in time: Israel will be punished and then repent. Philosophical criticism, however, is always valid: as far as humankind exists, the crowd remains vicious. It does not even deserve punishment. Of course, implicitly the Bible contains some vision of man per se and his viciousness. We can derive it, for example, from the stories of the Book of Genesis and from sayings of the Book of Proverbs. This, however, cannot substitute for the broad ideas and generalizations of the philosophers. Nevertheless, in the first centuries C.E., the Jews as well as philosophers earned the honorable name of misanthropes. First, they acquired a philosophical posture, rebuking heathens just as philosophers rebuked the crowd. The Mishnah, for example, taught that, “they do not leave cattle in gentiles’ inns, because they are suspect in regard to bestiality. And a woman should not be alone with them, because they are suspect in regard to fornication. And a man should not be alone with them, because they are suspect in regard to bloodshed” (M. A.Z. 2:1).30 Second, they internalized the idea of the crowd and applied it to all humankind, including themselves. Hanina, the Vice-High Priest, said: “Pray for the welfare of the government, for were it not for the fear thereof, one man would swallow up alive his fellow-men” (M. Ab. 3:2). Hillel the Elder “saw a skull floating on the face of the water, he said to it: because thou didst drown [others] they drowned thee, and the end of those that drowned thee [will be that] they will be drowned” (M. Ab. 2:6). He also used to say, “In a place where there are no men, try to be a man” (M. Ab. 2:5).31 It was the same idea that Diogenes expressed walking through the streets of Athens with a lantern in broad daylight, saying, “I am looking for a man” or describing the gathering assembled at Olympia, “a great crowd, but few men” (Diog. Laert. VI, 60). The sentence of Epictetus, “It is not a simple task, this of fulfilling the profession of a man,” and the words of Pontius Pilate, introducing Jesus to the crowd, “Here is the man” ( John 19:5), apparently belong to the same philosophical tradition. Early rabbinic literature borrowed the Greek notion of the abstract man, independent from estate and nation. In the third chapter of 30

Trans. by J. Neusner in The Talmud of Babylonia, p. 85. For another interpretation of the same dictum, see Michael L. Satlow, “ ‘Try to Be a Man’: The Rabbinic Construction of Masculinity,” in Harvard Theological Review 81 (1996): 19–40. 31

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this book I quoted the saying of R. Jeremiah (Sifra, pereq 13, ch. 194:2, §15); the Talmud (B. A.Z. 3a) attributes a similar saying to R. Meir: R. Meir would say, “How on the basis of Scripture do we know that, even if it is a gentile, if he goes and takes up the study of the Torah as his occupation, he is equivalent to the high priest? Scripture states, ‘You shall therefore keep my statutes and my ordinances, which, if a human being does them, one shall gain life through them’ (Lev. 18:5). What is written is not ‘priests’ or ‘Levites’ or ‘Israelites,’ but rather, ‘a human being.’ So you have learned the fact that, even if it is a gentile, if he goes and takes up the study of the Torah as his occupation, he is equivalent to the high priest.”32

The abstract man was placed in rabbinic literature on the same height as in Greco-Roman philosophy. He was subject to the same moral expectations. The entire world was created only to be associated with him, so long as he behaved properly. The biblical story of “man in the image of the God” was interpreted as a “great principle” of imitatio dei. In the same way Diogenes declared good men to be the images of gods.33 Naturally, these expectations could not be satisfied. Diogenes and Hillel both were fated to look for a man in vain. What is the cause of not being a man? Epictetus clarified this (Diatribae II, 24:19): The man, who does not know who he is, and what he is born for, and what sort of a world this is that he exists in, and whom he shares it with; and does not know what the good things are and what are the evil . . . such a man, to sum it all up, will go about deaf and blind . . .

This is the same as that attributed to Yose: “Alas for creatures that they see but know not what they see; they stand but know not on what they stand” (B. Hag. 12b). One might say that Yose merely quoted the Bible: “Listen and listen, but never understand! Look and look, but never perceive!” (Isa. 6:9; cf, Isa. 42:2, Jer. 5:21, Ezek. 12:2). Of course the Bible was there, but with regard to his meaning the rabbi was much closer to Epictetus than to Isaiah, Jeremiah, or Ezekiel. According to the prophets, it was Israel that listened and did not understand, looked and did not perceive. In contrast, the rabbis were speaking about abstract human beings, men. 32

Trans. by Neusner in The Talmud of Babylonia, p. 5. Henry A. Fischel, Rabbinic Literature and Greco-Roman Philosophy: A Study of Epicurea and Rhetorica in Early Midrashic Writings (Leiden, 1973), pp. 92–97. 33

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This constituted a great difference. All Israel was deaf and blind. As for human beings, they were divided into a great crowd of ignoramuses and a little group of sages. Both the philosophers and the rabbis blamed ignorance for leading men to viciousness. The injunction of Hillel—“in a place where there are no men, strive to be a man”—was preceded by another saying: “An uncultured person is not sin-fearing, neither is an ignorant person (am ha-aretz) pious” (M. Ab. 2:5). So there is nothing easier than merging philosophical criticism with disdain for the am ha-aretz and presenting the hostility of the rabbis towards the am ha-aretz as similar to the conflict of the Greek and Roman spiritual elite with the uneducated mass.34 The emergence of educated elites in both Jewish and pagan society must not be underestimated. However, it was not elitism but egalitarianism that engendered criticism, exactly as in the cases of Stoic and Cynic philosophy. Aharon Oppenheimer has pointed out that the generation of Yavneh witnessed the spread of a tendency toward equality among the various strata of society, including equality between scholars (talmidei hakhamim) and those who did not engage in the study of the Torah. Everybody was supposed to join the normative community. Against this background, the harsh disapproval of the ammei ha-aretz becomes comprehensible, for they were not prepared to take upon themselves the ways of life and the full obligations imposed upon the people by the Nasi and the Sanhedrin.35 The rabbis criticized not “the masses” but those who opposed education. Moreover, Jewish sages targeted chiefly not the uneducated but “the creatures” (bri’ot). The very creation of a human being became controversial. The School of Shammai and the School of Hillel argued over the question: Is it better that man was created or would it have been better if man had not been created (B. Erub. 13b)? The same kind of discussion was supposed to have occurred between God and angels even before the creation (B. San. 38b). The assessment of creatures was not purely a scholarly problem. Like Stoic philosophers, rabbis were condemned to tolerate fellow-men. How were they to do it? The first piece of advice was to avoid dependence on creatures. Aqiba charged his son Joshua: “Treat thy Sabbath like a weekday

34 35

See note 2 above. Oppenheimer, op. cit., pp. 180–82.

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rather then be dependent on creatures” (B. Shab. 118a; B. Pes. 112a). The same rabbi said: “He who throws his bread to the ground or scatters his money in his anger will not depart from this world before he falls in need of creatures” (ARNA 3:1). “It was ordained at Usha that if a man wishes to spend liberally [on charity] he should not spend more than a fifth . . . [since by spending more] he might himself come to be in need of creatures” (B. Ket. 50a). One may say that the rabbis simply were protecting the interests of the charity foundations. But here is another quotation: “R. Yose said, an individual is not allowed to afflict himself by fasting, for he might become dependent upon creatures and find no mercy on their part” (B. Ta. 22b). The Talmud of the Land of Israel (Y. Ber. 9:2) tells a story of Jonathan, the grandson of Moses, who was a priest to the tribe of the Danites ( Judg. 18:30). When David became king, he sent for and brought Jonathan before him. He said to him, “You are the grandson of that righteous man. How can you worship a foreign god?” He said to him, “I have received this tradition from my grandfather’s house. It is better to sell yourself into service of a foreign god rather than to be dependent on creatures.”36

According to the Palestinian Talmud (Y. Ber. 4:2), the house of Yannai said: When one wakes up from his sleep, he must say, “Blessed are You, Lord. . . . Do not make us the subject of evil talk among your creatures. . . . And do not make our welfare depend on gifts from flesh and blood. And do not make us depend for sustenance on flesh and blood. For their beneficence is small and their hatred is great.”37

This prayer evidently derived from the Bible: “And you will be the astonishment, the by-word, the laughing-stock of all the peoples where the Lord is taking you” (Deut. 28:37; cf., Jer. 24:9, Ps. 44:14–15). However “all the peoples” of the Bible are foreigners, whereas “your creatures,” “flesh and blood,” of the Talmud seem to be any human beings. The mass of humans were diligent in spreading rumor and gossip. “R. Simeon ben Gamaliel says: There is no session [of a court]

36 37

Neusner, The Talmud of the Land of Israel, p. 282 (with my alterations). Ibid., p. 148 (with my alterations).

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without creatures complaining about it and saying, ‘What made Soand-so see fit to sit, and what made So-and-so see fit not to sit?’ ” (Sifré on Deuteronomy, Devarim 1, pisqua 13). Finally, the Greek word “misanthropy” appeared in Hebrew translation as “hatred of creatures.” “R. Joshua said: an evil eye, the evil inclination, and hatred of creatures put a man out of the world” (M. Ab. 2:11).38 Quite logically, “philanthropy” occurred as love of creatures. “Hillel used to say: be of the disciples of Aaron . . . one that loves creatures . . .” (M. Ab. 1:12). Yes, indeed, Jewish sages counted themselves among “the creatures” together with the common masses. “A favorite saying of the rabbis of Yavneh was, ‘I am a creature and my fellow is a creature. My work is in the town and his work is in the country’ ” (B. Ber. 17a). Hence the saying of Yose (“alas for creatures that they see but know not what they see, they stand but know not on what they stand”) might relate both to the educated and uneducated. This is clear at B. San. 101a: Said Rabbah bar bar Hanah, “When R. Eliezer fell ill, his disciples came in to call on him. “He said to them, ‘There is great anger in the world (to account for my sickness).’ “They began to cry, but R. Aqiba began to laugh. They said to him, ‘Why are you laughing?’ “He said to them, ‘Why are you crying?’ “They said to him, ‘Is it possible that, when a scroll of the Torah [such as Eliezer] is afflicted with disease, we should not cry?” “He said to them, ‘For that reason I am laughing. So long as I observed that, as to my master, his wine did not turn to vinegar, his flux was not smitten, his oil did not putrefy, and his honey did not become rancid, “I thought to myself, ‘Perhaps, God forbid, my master has received his reward in this world.’ But now that I see my master in distress, I rejoice [knowing that he will receive his full reward in the world to come].”39

The disciples are definitely not amei ha-aretz. They are, however, ordinary creatures, and that is why they share vulgar views. They belong to the multitude, who, according to Philo, “rejoice at calls for mourning and grieve where it is to be glad” (Abr. 22). 38 Herbert W. Basser referred to the words of Rabbi Joshua as “the matter of misanthropy.” See op. cit., p. 82. 39 Trans. by Neusner in The Talmud of Babylonia, p. 541.

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Who, then, does not belong to the multitude? Who knows when to rejoice and when to grieve? Let us read another story about human blindness (Deut. R. 9:1): Once, R. Simeon b. Halafta went to a circumcision ceremony. The father of the child made a feast and gave those present wine seven years old to drink. He also said: “Of this wine, I will store away a portion for my son’s wedding feast.” The feast continued until midnight. R. Simeon b. Halafta, who trusted in his own strength, left at midnight to return to his city. On the road, the Angel of Death met him, and R. Simeon noticed he was laughing. He asked him: “Who are you?” And the latter answered: “I am God’s messenger.” He asked him: “Why are you laughing?” He replied: “On account of the talk of the creatures who say: ‘This and that we will do,’ and yet not one of them knows when he will be summoned to die. The man in whose feast you have shared, and who said to you: ‘Of this wine I will store away a portion for my son’s wedding feast,’ lo, his child’s time has come, he is to be snatched away after thirty days.’ ”40

The angel laughs at the blindness of the creatures. In the Aramaic version of the same story (Eccles. R. 3:1) he is even called “the angel of the creatures.” Apparently this is a laugh of Democritus. At B. A.Z. 3a–b we similarly find an argument about the laugh of God. God is going to laugh at heathens in the days of the messiah, when they try to convert. But except for this one occasion, God never laughs at his creatures. The interlocutor of the Angel of Death seems not to belong to the latter’s domain, and not to be the object of the laugh. “R. Simeon said to him [to the Angel]: ‘Show me my end.’ He replied: ‘Neither over you nor over the likes of you have I any dominion; often God finds delight in your good deeds and grants you additional life’ . . .” This seems similar to Philo’s words: “For those who have been well pleasing to God, and whom God has translated and removed from perishable to immortal races, are no more found among the multitude” (Post. 42). Let us consider another story (B. Ber. 33a): There was the case concerning a certain place in which a lizard was going around and biting people. They came and told R. Hanina ben Dosa. He said to them, “Show me its hole.”

40 I use the reconstruction of Jonah Fraenkel, Studies in the Spiritual World of the Haggadic Literature [Hebrew] (Tel Aviv, 1992), pp. 41–42.

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chapter five They showed him its hole. He put his heel over the mouth of the hole. The lizard came out and bit him and died. He took it on his shoulder and brought it to the school house. He said to them, “See, my sons, it is not the lizard that kills but sin that kills.”41

Note the similar way in which a viper bit St. Paul but did him no harm (Acts 28:3–6). Thus the righteous, the miracle worker, is supposed to be not a creature (or not an ordinary creature) at all: He [Antoninus] said to him [to Rabbi], “When I come to you, let no one be found before you.” One day he found R. Hanina bar Hama who was in session. He said, “Did I not say to you, ‘When I come to you, let no one be found before you’?” He said to him, “This is not an ordinary man.” He said to him, “Tell him to arouse the slave who is sleeping at the door and to bring him in.” R. Hanina bar Hama went out but found that the man had been killed. He said, “What should I do? Should I call and say the man is dead? But one should not bring a sad story. Shall I leave him and depart? That would insult the king.” So he besought mercy for the man, who was restored to life (B. A.Z. 10b).42

“A legend of the righteous,” both in its Jewish and Greco-Roman versions, is well known to scholars.43 We would argue that in stories like this, the main function of the righteous was to serve as an antithesis to the crowd, to ordinary people, to creatures. The righteous was “the other” of the ordinary, the vulgar. He did not share the common opinion, the common sense. That is why he could see, while the average person was blind. Philo showed how the hatred of “the many” (in other words, misanthropy) inspired some persons to perfection. “The highest admiration, then, is due to those in whom the ruling impulses were of free and noble birth, who accepted the excellent and just for their own selves and not in imitation or in opposition to others. But admiration is also due to him who stood apart from his own generation and conformed himself to none of the aims and aspirations of the many” (Abr. 38). To accept the excellent in opposition to the others, to stand apart, 41

Trans. by Neusner in The Talmud of Babylonia, p. 221. Trans. by Neusner, p. 47. 43 Urbach, The Sages, p. 492; Peter Brown, Society and the Holy in Late Antiquity (Berkeley, etc., 1982). 42

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not to conform to the aims and aspirations of mankind, became very fashionable in the Early Roman Empire. The very existence of the crowd with its “mass culture” (circuses and vulgar theatrical performances) pushed intellectuals aside. Pliny the Junior boasted that he did not share the joy of chariot fans: “When I observe such men thus insatiably fond of so silly, so low, so uninteresting, so common an entertainment, I congratulate myself that I am insensible to these pleasures” (Epist. IX, 6:2–3). Gaius Petronius “his days passed in sleep, his nights in the business and pleasures of life” (Tacitus Annales XVI, 18), and many Roman nobles behaved alike—not because they loved nights but just because they despised the ordinary way of life.44 Jewish sages shared with Roman intellectuals the desire not to be “like other men.” This, of course, is the point of the well-known group of stories at M. Ber. 2:5–6: Rabban Gamaliel was married and recited the Shema on the first night of his marriage. [His students] said to him, “Did our master not teach us: ‘A bridegroom is exempt from the recitation of the Shema on the first night?” He said to them, “I cannot accede to you so as to suspend myself from [accepting] the kingdom of heaven [even] for one hour.” [Gamaliel] washed on the first night after the death of his wife. [His students] said to him, “Did not our master teach us that it is forbidden for a mourner to wash?” He said to them, “I am not like other men, I am frail.”45

Let us compare this with another example of frailty. “Mary brought in a pound of very costly ointment . . . and with it anointed the feet of Jesus. . . . Then Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples . . . said, ‘Why was this ointment not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor? . . . So Jesus said, ‘Leave her alone; . . . You have the poor with you always; you will not always have me” ( John 12:3–8). “Me” is “not as other men.” The disciples are confused just because they do not see the difference. They judge a teacher according to the common rules, the rules he used to teach.46

44 Seneca Epist. 122:14, 18. Cf.: Geza Alfäldy, Die Rolte des Einzelnen in der Gesellschafi des Römishen Kaiserreiches: Erwartungen und Wertmassstäbe (Heidelberg, 1980). Alf äldy believes that the Romans revealed their individualism in craving to be the first in communal virtues, not in eccentricity. Considering that eccentricity was immensely popular in the Early Empire, I would not agree with this statement. 45 Trans. by Neusner in The Talmud of Babylonia, p. 102. 46 Ernest Best, in his article “The Role of the Disciples in the Mark,” in New

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Here is another anecdote about Gamaliel (M. Ber. 2:7): And when Tabi, [Gamaliel’s] servant died, [Gamaliel] received condolences on his account. Said to him [his students], “Did not our master teach us that one does not receive condolences for [the loss of ] slaves?” He said to them, “Tabi my slave was not like other slaves. He was proper (kasher).”47

To be “not as all others” makes a great difference. It puts you above common rules, above mankind. At the same time, it makes people hate you: “If a man sets his face against every temptation and starts off on the straight and narrow, he is immediately hated because of his different ways. No one can approve of conduct different from his own. And, second, those who are interested in piling up money don’t want anything else in life regarded as better than what they have themselves” (Petronius, Satyricon 84).48 This is the complaint of Eumolpus, a poet whose recitations were usually interrupted with a shower of stones. Some decades later, Ben Azzai expressed the same idea in nearly the same words: “If a man debases himself for the sake of Torah, eats dry dates, wears shabby clothes, and sits and keeps guard at the door of the wise, though every passer-by may think him a fool, in the end you will find that the whole Torah is within him” (ARNA 11:2). This cliche probably descends from the utterance of Plato about a philosopher: “Since he separates himself from human interests and turns his attention toward the divine, he is rebuked by the vulgar, who consider him mad and do not know that he is inspired” (Phaedrus 249 c–d). The nature of this “madness”—“inspiration”—was explained by Ben Azzai (T. Ber. 3:4): “It is good to go mad (to have an opinion

Testament Studies 23 (1977): 384, notes, “It was customary in material from that period which concerns a teacher and disciples for the disciples to ask questions and to perform actions which elicit instruction from the teacher. Indeed, since it is natural that on many occasions it should be their failure to understand or to act which drew out the teaching of the master, it may be that much of that failure . . . is natural. . . .” I would argue that the failure of the disciples, while certainly being a literary convention, usually opposed vulgar opinions to the truth and ordinary persons to the sage. 47 Trans. by Neusner, p. 105. 48 Petronius. The Satyricon and Seneca, The Apocolocyntosis. Trans. J. P. Sullivan (London, 1986), p. 96.

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injured) because of wisdom, but it is bad to have wisdom injured because of an opinion.” Two psychological phenomena are contrasted: an opinion (deia) and a piece of wisdom (hokhmah). “To have an opinion injured” usually meant “to go mad.” Hebrew deia corresponds to Greek doxa—a mere opinion, conjecture as opposed to real knowledge. While knowledge would belong to philosophers, opinion was widespread among the crowd.49 In the Bible, deia indicates “knowledge, knowing,” even the knowledge of God.50 I would guess that the Hebrew word acquired a new, low meaning—reflecting a mere opinion—because of homophony to the Greek philosophical term. Just as in Greek philosophy, so in Ben Azzai’s saying daily matters, ordinary human interests, are opposed to divine wisdom. The wise person is despised by the crowd who thinks him a fool, a madman, because the crowd lives in the realm of opinion and not in the realm of wisdom.51 At B. B.M. 84a, we read of how Yohanan died. He lost his friend, Resh Lakish, who used to oppose him severely in scholarly discussions. The rabbis, seeing his despair, sent Eliezer b. Pedat to console Yohanan. Eliezer proved to be hopelessly vulgar. Instead of profound deliberations, he only referred to tradition. This was the last straw that drove Yohanan mad. He “had his opinion injured.” He confronted not a member of the amei ha-aretz but just an ordinary person, a creature (though a well-nown scholar). Misanthropy grew from moral and intellectual roots. Moral indignation matched intellectual disgust. The “every man” apparently failed to be “a man.” Hence the temptation arose not to be like the “every man.” This was more than conceited individualism; it was a craving to be a superhuman. Of course, neither Hillel nor Epictetus actually hated mankind. Indeed, they were the first to treat the disease of misanthropy with the medicine of philanthropy. Yet they

49

Aspetti dell’ opinione publica nel mondo antico (Milan, 1978), pp. 3–6. Gesenius’ Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon to the Old Testament Scriptures, trans. Samuel P. Thregelles (Grand Rapids, 1982), s.v. 51 Cf. Fischel, Rabbinic Literature and Greco-Roman Philosophy, p. 91. According to Fischel, the saying of Ben Azzai “reflects Epicurus’ view as formulated in Seneca’s Ep. LXVI 45 . . ., “With Epicurus there are two goods of which that highest bliss (Supreme Good) consists, that the body be without pain, the mind without perturbation.” Actually, Bet Azzai’s idea is totally different: “it is good to go mad (to have an opinion, mind, injured) because of wisdom.” This is nor epicurean, neither stoic, but platonic position. 50

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were the first to feel the disease as well. Overcoming misanthropy was one of the most important problems of Roman civilization. Rabbinic Judaism and Roman philosophy took active part in solving the problem. However, they needed themselves to experience misanthropy in order to overcome it.

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Suetonius. [Works]. Trans. J. C. Rolfe. Vol. 2. Cambridge, Mass., and London: Harvard University Press, 1950 (Loeb Classical Library). Swain, Simon. Hellenism and Empire: Language, Classicism, and Power in the Greek World A.D. 50–250. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996. Sweet, John P. M. “The Theory of Miracles in the Wisdom of Solomon.” In Miracles: Cambridge Studies in their Philosophy and History. Ed. C. F. D. Moule. London and New York: A. R. Mowbray, Morenhouse-Barlow, 1965: 115–26. Szesnat, Holger. “Pretty Boys in Philo’s De vita contemplativa.” The Studia Philonica Annual: Studies in Hellenistic Judaism 10 (1998): 87–107. ——. “Philo and Female Homoeroticism: Philo’s use of gÊnandrow and recent work on tribades.” Journal for the Study of Judaism 30.2 (1999): 140–47. Talmon, Shemaryahu. “Between the Bible and the Mishnah: Qumran from Within.” In Jewish Civilization in the Hellenistic-Roman Period. Ed. Shemaryahu Talmon. Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1991: 214–57. Targum Neofiti 1: Exodus. Trans., with introduction and apparatus by Martin McNamara and notes by Robert Hayward. Targum Onqelos to Exodus. Trans., with apparatus and notes by Bernard Grossfeld. Wilmington, Del.: Michael Glazier, 1988. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan: Exodus. Trans., with notes by Michael Maher. Collegeville, Minn.: The Liturgical Press, 1994. Tcherikover, Viktor. “The Ideology of the Letter of Aristeas.” In Studies in the Septuagint: Origins, Recensions, and Intrpretations. Selected Essays with a Prolegomenon by Sindey Jellicoe. New York: Ktav Publishing House, 1974: 181–207. (Reprinted from Harvard Theological Review 51, 1958.) Tcherikover, Victor A., Fuks, Alexander, Stern, Menahem, Lewis, David M. Corpus Papyrorum Judaicarum, 3 vols. (Cambridge: Mass. Pub. Co. for the Magnes Press, the Hebrew University, Harvard University Press, 1957–1964. Thackeray, Henry St. John. The Letter of Aristeas. London: Macmillan, 1904. Tibiletti, Giuseppe. Le Lettere privati nei papyri greci del III e IV secolo d.C.: Tra paganesimo e cristianesimo. Milano: Vita e pensiero, 1979. Tobin, Thomas H. The Creation of Man: Philo and the History of Interpretation. Washington: Catholic biblical Association of America, 1983. Urbach, Ephraim E. The Sages: Their Concepts and Beliefs. Trans. Israel Abrahams. Cambridge, Mass., and London: Harvard University Press, 1979. Veltri, Guiseppe. Eine Tora für den König Talmai: Untersuchungen zum Übersetxungsverständnis in der jüdisch-hellenistischen und rabbinischen Literatur. Tübingen: Mohr, Seibeck, 1994. Vermes, Geza. Scripture and Tradition in Judaism: Haggadic Studies. 2d rev. ed. Leiden: Brill, 1973. Vernay, E. “Note sur le changement de style dans les constitutions imperiales de Diocletien a Constantin.” Etudes d’histoire juridique offertes a P.-F. Girard. Pt. 2. Paris, 1913: 263–77. Via, Dan O. Jr. Kerygma and Comedy in the New Testament: A Sructuralist Approach to Hermeneutic. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1975. Walsh, P. G. The Roman Novel: The ‘Satyricon’ of Petronius and the ‘Metamorphoses’ of Apuleius. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970. Westermann, William Linn. “Enslaved Persons Who Are Free.” American Journal of Philology, 59.2 (1938): 1–30. Whedbee, J. William. The Bible and the Comic Vision. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Wills, Lawrence M. The Jewish Novel in the Ancient World. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1995. Winston, David. “Philo and the Rabbis on the Sex and Body.” Poetics Today: International Journal for Theory and Analysis of Literature and Communication 19.1 (1998): 41–62.

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——. “Theodicy in the Wisdom of Solomon.” In Theodicy in the Word of the Bible. Eds. Antti Laato, Johannes C. de Moor. Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2003. Wolfson, Harry A. Philo. Vol. 1–2. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1947. Yerushalmi, Yosef Hayim. Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory. Foreword by Harold Bloom. With a New Preface and Postscript by the Author. New York: Schocken Books, 1989. Youtie, Herbert Hayyim. Scriptiunculae. Pt. 1–3. Amsterdam: Hakkert, 1973–75. ——. Scriptiunculae posteriors. Pt. 1–2. Bonn: Habelt, 1981–82. Yuval, Israel Jacob. “Yitzhak Baer and the Search for Authentic Judaism.” In The Jewish Past Revisited: Reflections on Modern Jewish Historians. Ed. David N. Myers and David B. Ruderman. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1998: 77–87. ——. Two Nations in Your Womb: Perceptions of Jews and Christians. In Hebrew. TelAviv: Alma/Am Oved, 2000. Zilliacus, Henrik. Untersuchungen zu den abstraklen Anredenformen und Hoflichkeitslisten im Griechischen, Societas scientiarum fennica. Commentationes humanarum litterarum, Bd. 15, Hft. 3 (1949) ——. Sesbstgefühl und Servilität: Studien zum unregelmässigen Numerusgebrauch im Griechischen. Copenhagen, Helsinki, 1953 (Commentationes humanarum litterarum 18.3). ——. “Zum Stil und Wortschatz der byzantinischen Urkunden und Briefe,” Akten der VIII Internationaler Kongresses fur Papyrologie. Vienna: Rohrer, 1956: 157–65 (Mitteilungen aus der Papyrussamlung der Österreicheschen Nationalbibliothek. Papyrus Erherzog Rainer. Neue Serie, Folge 5). Zuntz, Günther. “Aristeas Studies I: The Seven Banquets.” Journal of Semitic Studies 4 (1959): 21–36. ——. “Aristeas Studies II: Aristeas on the Translation of the Torah.” In Studies in the Septuagint: Origins, Recensions, and Intrpretations. Selected Essays with a Prolegomenon by Sindey Jellicoe. New York: Ktav Publishing House, 1974: 208–224. First published in Journal of Jewish Studies 4 (1959): 109–26.

INDEX OF NAMES AND SUBJECTS

Abel, Ernest L., 105 n. 19, 116 Agelast, a character in Plautus and in the Talmud, 49 Akidah story, 85–86 Alexander the Great, 138 Alexander, Philip S., 136 Alexandria, the metaphor of, xiv Alfäldy, Geza, 151 n. 44 Allison, Dale C., 65 Ammei ha-aretz, 136, 146, 148, 153 An-aiskhunto-graphoi, 59, 60 Androgynous, the myth of, 79–81 Apuleius, 44, 140 Aristobulus, 111 Artapanus, 73, 109, 112 Athenaeus, 61 Auerbach, Erich, 47 Averintsev, Segrey S., 30 Baer, Yitzhak F., viii, ix, 69, 70, 81 Bagnall, Roger S., 9, 13 n. 62, 17 n. 76, 28 n. 115 Bakhtin, Mikhail M., 41, 42, 45, 52 Barclay, John M. G., 89 Barrett, Charles Kingsley, 111 n. 29 Barry, William D., 142 n. 29 Bartlett, John R., 111 n. 32 Basser, Herbert W., 148 Becker, Hans-Jürgen, 76 n. 39 Ben-Amos, Dan, 76 n. 39 Best, Ernest, 151 n. 46 Bickerman, Elias, J., 110, 118 Birnbaum, Ellen, 89 Bloch, Mark, 10 Bloom, Harold, 3 Boccaccini, Gabriele, 115 n. 35 Boyarin, Daniel, x, xi, 57–58, 60–63, 78 n. 42 Brewer, David Instone, 73 Bri’ot, 146 Brown, Peter, 17, 63 Cadell, Hélène, 12 Carnivalesque, 45 Chrysippus, 92, 94 Cohen, Naomi G., 69 Collins, John J., 105 n. 19

Colson F. H., 92 Craig, Kennet, 45 Daube, David, 68 Davies, Philip R., 104 Davies, William David, 65, 132 Dawson David, 104, 106 Decharneux, Baudouin, 75 n. 37 Delling, Gerhard, 74 Derekh erets, 127–8 Dialectic historical, xi Dihegesis, 103 Dio Chrisostom, 19, 142 n. 29 Dodds, Eric. R., 17 Eleazar, the High Priest and his Apology in the “Letter of Aristeas,” 87–97 Elon, Ari, 56 Engelmann, Benjamin, 42 n. 9 Epistemology in Rabbinic and Hellenistic thought, 81–87 Esther Rabbah, 44 n. 18 Février, James-G., 102, 113 n. 34, 118 Fischel, Henry A., 135, 153 n. 51 Foucault, Michel, xi Fraenkel, Jonah, 138 Freudenthal, Jacob, 67 Frye, Northrop, 41 Gans, Eduard, vii Gasparov, Boris, 133 Ginzburg, Lydia Y., 7 Goldstein, Jonathan A., 105, 122 Gooding, David Willoughby, 129 Gruen, Erich S., 43, 44 Guttmann, Julius, vii, 75 n. 37 Hadas, Moses, 72, 113, 117–18, 121, 131 n. 67, 133 Halevy, Elimelekh E., 48, 50 Havdala (separation), idea of, 90 Hayes Christine E., 95 n. 80 Hays, Richard B., 84 n. 58 Hayward, Robert, 120 Hegel and Hegelianism in Rabbinic Studies, vii, ix, x, xi

168

index of names and subjects

Heinemann, Joseph, 135 n. 1, 138 Heinemann, Yitzhak, viii, ix, 39, 40, 43, 70, 71 Henry, Madeleine M., 61 Herr, Moshe David, 52 Hirshman, Mark, 138 Historicism, 1–3, 37 Hobson, Deborah W., 9 Honigman, Sylvie, 104 Hooker, Morna D., 84 n. 58 Horace, 49 Howard, George, 132 n. 70 Irshai, Oded, 31 n. 126 Jellicoe, Sidney, 111 n. 32 Kadushin, Max, viii, ix, 76 n. 39 Kamesar Adam, 73 Krauss, Samuel, 138 Krochmal, Nahman, vii Levinson, Joshua, 52, 56, 57 Lieberman, Saul, 68 Likhachev, Dimitry S., 32 Lucian, 52, 136 MacCoull, Leslie S. B., 000 Marxism, xi Meechem, Henry G., 102 Meeks, Waine A., 80 n. 51 Melito of Sardis, 132 Merkel, Helmut, 65 n. 87 Miletian tales (Milesiaka), 42, 81 n. 53 Miracle, idea of, 75–77 Moliere, 140 Morris, Royce L. B., 8 n. 30 Multiculturalism historical, xi, xii Murray O., 102 Myers, David N., viii Neusner Jacob, xii, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 39 n. 1 Niehoff, Maren R., 74 Nietzsche, philosophy of, vii, 3, 140 Nikiprowetzky, Valentine, 102 Oppenheimer, Aharon, 146 Origen, 113 Orlinsky, Harry M., 123 Organism as a metaphor (organic approach, organic cultures), viii, ix, 71 Ostrannenie, 78

Parente, Fausto, 102 Parker, Holt N., 59 Petronius, Gaius, 63, 140, 151 Pines, Shlomo, 93 n. 75 Plautus, 49, 50 Pliny the Junior, 151 Plato, Platonism, ix, xi, xiii, 64–67, 69, 70, 80, 82, 84, 140, 142–43 Plutarch, 138 Porton, Gary, 137–8 Postmodernism and Jewish Studies, x, 1, 42 Ptolemy I Soter, 131 Ptolemy II Philadelphus, 116–18, 128, 130–31 Ptolemy VI Philometer, 111, 118 Rhodes, J. N., 89 Richlin, Ami, 63 Runia, David T., 98 Said, Edward W., x Sandmel, Samuel, 68 Sasson, Jack M., 44 Schubart, Wilhelm, 8 Schwartz, Seth, xi Segal, Eliezer, 48 Segal, Erich, 49 Self-awareness of a society, vii, xii, 10 Seneca, 30, 141–42 Sevenster, Jan Nicolaas, 142 Shakespeare, 140 Sidre Bereshit, 76 Simon, Marcel, 110 Sophocles, 51 Spengler, Oswald, vii, viii Stern, David, 42, 56, 57 Stern, Sacha, 3–6 Sweet, John P. M., 75 n. 37 Sybaritian tales (Sybaritici libelli ), 81 n. 53 Tacitus, 50 Talmon, Shemaryahu, 39 Tcherikover, Viktor, 91, 119, 124 Thackeray, Henry St. John, 89 Tobin, Thomas H., 80 n. 50 Trajan, emperor, 132 Urbach, Ephraim E., 1 Verein für Cultur und Wissenschaft der Juden, vii Vermes, Geza, 86, 98 n. 85

index of names and subjects Walsh, P. G., 42 Westerman, William Linn, 116 Whedbee, J. William, 43, 44, 45, 46 Winston, David, 58 n. 64 Wissenschaft des Judentus, VII, 2, 67

169

Yuval, Israel Jacob, viii, xi Yerushalmi, Yosef Hayim, 2, 3 Zuntz, Günther, 101, 105, 128–29, 131 n. 67 Zunz, Leopold, vii

INDEX OF SCRIPTURE AND ANCIENT SOURCES

Greek and Latin Works Achilles Tatius Leucippe et Clitophon VI, 20–1

26

Apuleius Metamorphoses X, 30–31

46

Aristeas Aristeae epistula 11 14 15 16 17–18 19 20 23–24 26 28 30 32 37 52–55 97 116 121–27 128–71 146–48 161 171 180 182 184 187–88 196 204–7 244 253 302 308 310 312–16 322

129 105 106, 108 108 112, 115 115–16 116 107 116 133 129 129 133 17 119 119 121, 128 87–91 107 89 71 130 133 124 130–31 115 128 128 113 n. 34 121 124 118 125 72

Aristotle, Poetics 50a34 452a22

24 23

Artapanus Fragment 3.24–25, in Eusebius’s version, Prep. 9.26.1

109

Augustine De gratia et libero arbitrio 41–42, chs. 20–21

114

Clemens Stromata 1, 154, 3 6, 13, 106–7 Dio Cassius Historia Romana LIV, 9:8–10 Dio Chrysostom, Orationes XXXII, 8–9

109 n. 25 94

79 19, 139

Diogenes Laertius Vitae Philosophorum vi, 60

144

Epictetus Diatribae I, 9:1 13 18:2–4 II, 24:19

143 93 142 145

Eusebius Preparatio Euangelica IX, 26:1 XII, 12:1–3 XIII, 12:7

109 n. 25 80 111

index of scripture and ancient sources Heraclitus Epistulae, 7

141

Hippocrates Epistulae, 17.9

141

Horace Epistulae II, 1:93–102

49

Josephus Antiquitates Iudaicae XI, 247 257 XII, 5–8

47 47 132 n. 71 XIII, 63–73 118, 120 De Bello Iudaico II, 487–88 91 Contra Apionem I, 186–89 32 n. 71 II, 168–69 138 200–5 132 224 138

Ps.-Longinus, De Sublimitate 9 Lucian Verae hist. 1:2–3 Dearum judicium 9 Bis accusatus 6 Marc Aurelius Meditations I, 17:9 IV, 32, 1:2 33:1 VI, 37:1 46:1

72 72 46 136 37 37 37 37 37

Plato Phaedo 89b–90b Cratylus 396a–b Philebus 49a Symposium 189e Phaedrus 243 a–b 249 c–d Respublica 518a 586c Timaeus 75d–e Plutarchus De fortuna Alexandri 328c–e Polybius Historia XXXIV, 10

114 113 140 152 151

140, 143 111 n. 29 139 80 125 152 84 125 64

138 91

Seneca De Superstitione, apud: Augustinus, De Civitate Dei, VI, 11 50 De Ira. I, 10:4 143 II, 10:2,4 142 De Vita Beata 2:2 143 De Tranquilitate Animi 15:1–2 141 Epistulae 7:9 139 95:23 139 122:14 151 122:18 151 Strabo Geographica, XI, 6:3 XV, 1:73 Suda, s.v. Stesichorus

Origen De Principiis 3 1:8 1:14 Petronius Satyricon 55 84 Pliny the Junior Epistulae IX, 6:2–3

171

Suetonius Divus Claudius 32 Divus Vespasianus 251 Tacitus Historia V, 4 Annales XVI, 18

72 79 125 64 63 50 151

172

index of scripture and ancient sources The Works of Philo

Creation (De Opificio Mundi ) (Opif.) 2 71 4 72 45–46 75 69 87 71 84 76 79 119 64 134 79 164 72 Interpretation of Genesis (Legum Allegoriae) (LA) II 13 79 19 ff. 74, 80 21 77 III 27 87 The Posterity and Exile of Cain (De Posteritate Caini ) (Post.) 3 82 14 85 15 82, 85 17 85 20 85 42 149 169 82 On Husbandry (De Agricultura) (Agr.) 128–45 92–93 Noah’s Work as a Planter (De Plantatione) (Plant.) 35 66 53 93 59 93 On the Preliminary Studies (De Congressu Quaerendae Eruditionis Gratia) (Congr.) 61 73 On Flight and Findings (De Fuga et Inventione) 42 73 165 83 Change of Names (De Mutatione Nominum) (Mut.) 9 196 139 240 65 n. 87

On Dreams (De Somniis) (Somn.) I 39 74 61–67 85 66 85 n. 58 234 72 Abraham (de Abrahamo) (Abr.) 20–22 14 22 141, 148 38 150 Joseph (de Iosepho) (Ios.) 59

139

Moses (De Vita Mosis) (Mos.) I 3 81 n. 53 4 74 156 75 161 72 278–279 92 302 72 II 154 75 211 75 267 75 The Decalogue (De Decalogo) (Decal.) 40 130 n. 66 On Special Laws (De Specialibus Legibus) (Leg. Spec.) I 41–50 93 1V 103ff 93 On the Contemplative Life (De Vita Contemplativa) (Cont.) 20 141 63 79 On the Eternity of the World (De Aeternitate Mindi ) (Aet.) 94 94 Against Flaccus (In Flaccum) (Flacc.) 41 14

index of scripture and ancient sources

173

Roman and Byzantine Legal Codes Codex Theodosianus (CTh) I, 29:1 29:5

16 16

Codex Justinianus (CJ) II, 12:1 V, 51:10

16 16

Greek Papyri and Inscriptions BGU VIII 1815 11 1843 11 C.Pap.Jud. II 150 91 In. Métr. 22, IV 12 M.Chr.127 13 P.Abinn. 36 35 50 12, 13 P. Amh. II 142 13, 15 P. Bon. 5 11 P. Cair. Isid. 62 13 68 9 69 9 73 10, 13 74 12, 13 75 13, 15 P.Cair.Masp. I 67002 22, 23, 32 67004 22, 23 67005 21, 22, 25 67009 21, 22, 23, 32 67019 23 67117 30 II 67153 29 67154 29 n. 121 67156 29 P.Cair.Masp. III 67283 22 67295 31 67297 22 P. Enteux. 9R 14 25 14 26 14 29 14 44 14 P.Flor. I 9 29 n. 121 P. Fouad 26 15 P. Herm. 17 11 n. 40 19 11, 13 P. Lips. 39 13

P.Lond. V 1674 1675 1676 P.Mich. XIII 660–661 P. Mert. II 91 P. Naldini 62 P. Oxy. I 71 120R 131 II 16 281 VIII 1117 XVI 1873 XXIV 2410 XXVII 2479 XLII 3065 XLVI 3302 L 3581 P. Panop. 26 P. Rainer 24,552 P.Ross.Georg. III 1 P.Tebt. II 334 P. Thead. 17 P. Tibiletti 25 PSI X 1160 XIII 1323 1337 XIV 1422 SB IV 7436 VI 9105 9622 XII 11219 11220 Sel. Pap. I, 160 162 II 290 295

22, 23 23 29 21, 25 12, 13 11 14 11 34 14 27 n. 114 11 28 14, 15 35 28 27 28 11 118 28 n. 118 27 11 11 91 15 14 12 28 n. 117 12 14 10, 11 13 11 11 15 11

174

index of scripture and ancient sources Hebrew Bible/Old Testament

Genesis 1:26–27 2:7 2:21 5:2 12:10 16:1 18:17 22:3–14 27:3 28:11 37:28 42:11 Exodus 2:6 2:14 2:23 3:14 5:1 5:2 5:3 5:5 5:6–8 6:7 7:3 8:24 10:1 12:37 13:17 14:22 15:2 18:21 20:2–15 24:3 24:4–11 24:9 24:11 25:23 26:36 28:23 28:26 28:29 33:10ff 33:12–23 34:27–35 36:35 Leviticus 10:1–2 10:10 11:2–8

79–80 80 n. 50, 92 n. 74 74, 80 79 35 35 87 85–86 34 85 117 97 77 110 106 110 106 106, 108–109 108–109 116 36, 116 107 112, 114 106 114 119 106 124 77 122 54 123–24 125 127 121, 126–28 117 118 119 119 119 117 82, 83–85 83 118 52 n. 44 90 89

18:3–24 18:5

89–91, 94–96 145

Numbers 11:10 11:24 23:9–10

95 124 92

Deuteronomy 4:1–2 5:15 7:18 8:9 10:21 13:1 15:12–15 17:8–10 17:14–20 17:18 17:19 17–20 23:8 24:18 24:22 26:5–12 28:15 28:37 28:68 Judges 18:30 1 Samuel 6:6

118, 123 107 89 119 89 24 n. 35 107 120 131 29–31 130 130 106 107 107 107 124 n. 35 147 132 n. 71 147 113 n. 33

2 Samuel 6:7 7:19

126 96

Isaiah 2:2–3 6:9 19:19 30:20 42:2 53:11 51:13 53:11 60:1–2

119–20, 132 145 120 81 145 86 109 86 83 n. 56

Jeremiah 5:21 24:9

145 147

index of scripture and ancient sources Ezekiel 12:2 20:7

145 91

Hosea 2:4

143

Micah 1:17

63

Malachi 2:11–15

95

Psalms 2:1–4 8:2 8:10 8:5 25:14 44:14–15 68:27 68:47 104:27 105:20 105:25 113:7 127:3 145:15 Proverbs 14:30

47 77 54 54 87 147 77 54 111 n. 32 106 114 48 51 111 n. 32

175

15:30 17:22 18:7 18:10 21:1–3

78 n. 44 78 n. 44 50 131 n. 67 113–15

Ecclesiastes 6:9 12:7

62 78

Esther 2:20 4:4 6:10

56 58 50

Ezra 9:2

95 n. 80

Daniel 2:21

109

Wisdom of Solomon 7:16 12:16 19:18

113 113 n. 34 .75

Greek Addition to Ester 5:1d–f

115

78 New Testament

Matthew 1:22–23 15:11 17 18:10 22:30 26:26–28 27:34 27:57

104 65 84 14 127 127 25 25

Mark 7:15–20 14:22–25 15:42

4, 65 n. 87 127 25

Luke 20:35 22:19–20 22:30

127 27 127

John 11:49ff. 12:3–8 14:8–9 19:5 Acts 14:15–17 17:22–31 28:3–6 Romans 9:17–20 10:12 2 Corinthians 3:13 3:6–18

25 151 127 144 112 n. 32 110, 112 n. 32 150 113 94 85 n. 58 83, 84 n. 58

176

index of scripture and ancient sources Rabbinic Literature

Mishnah Berakhot 2:5–6 2:7 Abodah Zarah 2:1 Abot 1:12 2:5–6 2:11 3:2 Makshirin 6:7 Tosefta Berakhot 3:4 Sanhedrin 4:5 Palestinian Talmud Berakhot 4:2 9:2 Shekalim 9:12 Besah 5:2 Megillah 1:9 Moed Qatan 3:1 Sanhedrin 1:4 Babylonian Talmud Berakhot 10a 33a 17a 62a Shabbat 53b 88b–89a 118a 151b 152a 152b Erubin 13b Pesahim 112a

151 152 144 148 144, 146 148 144 77

152 130

147 147 117 64, 81 130 48 123 n. 52

87 91, 149 127, 148 60 75 54 147 51 51, 62 78 81, 84, 146 147

Yoma 29a 74b 87a Rosh Hashanah 19a Taanit 18a 22b Megillah 9a 12b 13a 13b 14a 15a 16a Hagigah 12b 15a Ketubot 50a 77b Nedarim 20a–b Sotah 12b 30b–31a Gittin 56b Qiddushin 2b Baba Mesia 84a Sanhedrin 21b 38b 88b 101a Abodah Zarah 3a 3b 10b 17a Tamid 32a Niddah 16b–17a 69b Sophrim 16b

56, 62 62 48 97 97 147 126 n. 58 46 56, 58 56 59 58 47, 50 145 53 147 53 60 77 77 78 n. 44 80 153 130 146 122 148 47, 145, 149 47, 149 150 62, 63 128 61 127 40

index of scripture and ancient sources Midrash Mekhilta according to Rabbi Ishmael 19, Beshlah 1

106

Ecclesiastes Rabbah 2:8, 1 3:1 20:2

177 40 149

Sifra Aharé mot, pereq 13, ch. 194:2 § 1–15 94–96, 145

Tanhuma parashat Vaéra 5 parashat Shemot 9

108 110

Sifré to Deuteronomy Devarim 1, pisqua 13 Shofetim 17, pisqua 152 Shofetim 17, pisqua 160

Tanhuma Buber parashat Vayyéra 6 parashat Vaéra 2

.87 108

148 120 130

Genesis Rabbah 8:1 30:8 84:18

79–80 77 117

Exodus Rabbah 1:29 5:14 13:2

110 108 114

Leviticus Rabbah 4:8 12:1 20:2 32:4

87 52 n. 44 86 110

Numbers Rabbah 20:23

97

Avot de Rabbi Nathan, Version A (ARNA) 2:9 139 3:1 147 11:2 152 16:4 96 Pesikta de-Rab Kahana be-Hodesh ha-shlishi 24 Targum Onqelos Exodus 5:2 Exodus 34:29 Targum Ps.-Jonathan Exodus 5:2–3 Deuteronomy 17:18 Fragmentary Targum Gen. 22 Rashi on B. Erub. 13b

Deuteronomy Rabba 9:1 Esther Rabbah 3:13 7:12 8:3

149 46 n. 28 49, 50 58

40 109 83 109 130 86 82

Maimonides, Guide of the Perplexed, Pt. 1, Ch. 21, 37, 38, 54 83 Nachmanides on Ex. 7:3

114