The Idea of History in Rabbinic Judaism (Brill Reference Library of Judaism)

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Author: Jacob Neusner

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THE IDEA OF HISTORY IN RABBINIC JUDAISM

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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 12

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THE IDEA OF HISTORY IN RABBINIC JUDAISM BY

JACOB NEUSNER

BRILL LEIDEN • BOSTON 2004

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This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Neusner, Jacob The idea of history in rabbinic Judaism / by Jacob Neusner. p. cm. — (The Brill reference library of Judaism, ISSN 1571-5000 ; v. 12) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 90-04-13583-9 (alk. paper) 1. Historiography in rabbinical literature. 2. Rabbinical literature—History and criticism. 3. Judaism—History—Philosophy. 4. History—Religious aspects—Judaism. 5. Midrash—History and criticism. I. Title. II. Series. BM406.9.H57N48 2003 296.1’208901—dc22 2003065309

ISSN 1571-5000 ISBN 90 04 13583 9

© Copyright 2004 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands 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

preface to the first edition

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CONTENTS Preface to the First Edition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Preface to the Second Edition, Revised and Augmented . . .

xi xv

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1

Part One History, Time, and Paradigm in Scripture I.

II.

Hebrew Scripture and the Requirements of Historical Thinking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . i. Historical vs. Paradigmatic Thinking in Judaism . . . . ii. Historical Thinking in Ancient Israel . . . . . . . . . . . . . iii. Historical Writing in Ancient Israel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . History, Time, and Paradigm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . i. Historical Writing and the Conception of Time . . . . ii. From Historical Time to Time Cyclical and Time Paradigmatic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iii. Paradigmatic Time: A Definition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iv. Paradigmatic Time: An Example in Rabbinic Literature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v. Past, Present, Future Time and Eternity vs. Time Undifferentiated by Event . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

15 15 29 38 45 45 54 58 61 66

Part Two The absence of History III.

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Missing Media of Historical Thinking (I). The Sustaining Narrative of One-time Events, Biography . . . . . . . . . 71 i. General Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 ii. The Mishnah, Tosefta, Abot, Sifra, Sifré to Numbers, and Sifré to Deuteronomy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 A. One-time Events . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 B. Composite of one-time Events into a Narrative . 83 C. The Raw Materials for Biography . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84

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IV.

D. Lives of Sages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iii. The Later Midrash-Compilations: Genesis Rabbah, Leviticus Rabbah, and Pesiqta deRab Kahana . . . . . A. one-time Events . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . B. Composite of One-time Events into a Narrative . . C. The Raw Materials for Biography . . . . . . . . . . . . . D. Lives of Sages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iv. The Latest Midrash-Compilations: Song of Songs Rabbah, Ruth Rabbah, Esther Rabbah I, and Lamentations Rabbah . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A. One-time Events . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . B. Composite of One-time Events into a Narrative C. The Raw Materials for Biography . . . . . . . . . . . . . D. Lives of Sages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v. Does Rabbinic Literature Utilize the Media of Historical Thinking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Missing Messages of Historical Thinking (II): The Pastness of the Past . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . i. Temporal Order Does Not Apply to the Torah . . . . . ii. General Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iii. The Mishnah, Tosefta, Abot, Sifra, Sifré to Numbers, and Sifré to Deuteronomy: The Present-Tense Past: Scripture Re-Presented in the Immediacy of the Moment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iv. The Later Midrash-Compilations: Genesis Rabbah, Leviticus Rabbah, and Pesiqta deRab Kahana: The Present-Tense Past: Scripture Re-Presented in the Immediacy of the Moment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v. The Latest Midrash-Compilations: Song of Songs Rabbah, Ruth Rabbah, Esther Rabbah I, and Lamentations Rabbah: The Present-Tense Past: Scripture Re-Presented in the Immediacy of the Moment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

86 86 86 92 92 93

93 93 94 97 97 98 99 99 101

103

105

106

Part Three The Presence of the Past, The Pastness of the Present V.


The Enduring Paradigm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . i. Making Connections and Drawing Conclusions in Paradigmatic Thinking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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ii. The Mishnah, Tosefta, Abot, Sifra, Sifré to Numbers, and Sifré to Deuteronomy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A. The Paradigm of Israel’s History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . B. Israel and the Nations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C. Explaining the Pattern of Events . . . . . . . . . . . . . . D. The Future History of Israel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iii. The Later Midrash-Compilations: Genesis Rabbah, Leviticus Rabbah, and Pesiqta deRab Kahana . . . . . A. The Paradigm of Israel’s History . . . . . . . . . . . . B. Israel and the Nations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C. Explaining the Pattern of Events . . . . . . . . . . . . D. The Future History of Israel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iv. The Latest Midrash-Compilations: Song of Songs Rabbah, Ruth Rabbah, Esther Rabbah I, and Lamentations Rabbah . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A. The Paradigm of Israel’s History . . . . . . . . . . . . B. Israel and the Nations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C. Explaining the Pattern of Events . . . . . . . . . . . . D. The Future History of Israel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v. Paradigmatic in Place of Historical Thinking . . . . . . vi. Telling Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

118 118 120 122 122 123 123 127 130 132

134 134 136 137 137 138 139

Part Four From History to Paradigm VI.


Narrative: The Conduct of the Cult and the Story of the Temple . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . i. The Paradigmatic Counterpart to Continuous Narrative . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ii. The Mishnah, Tosefta, Abot, Sifra, Sifré to Numbers, and Sifré to Deuteronomy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A. The Conduct of the Cult . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . B. The Story of the Temple . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iii. The Later Midrash-Compilations: Genesis Rabbah, Leviticus Rabbah, and Pesiqta deRab Kahana . . . . . A. The Conduct of the Cult . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . B. The Story of the Temple . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iv. The Latest Midrash-Compilations: Song of Songs Rabbah, Ruth Rabbah, Esther Rabbah I, and Lamentations Rabbah . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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A. The Conduct of the Cult . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . B. The Story of the Temple . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v. Nature’s Time Instead of History’s, the Episode in Place of Continuous Narrative . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . VII. Biography: Exemplary Pattern in Place of Lives of Sages i. The Paradigmatic Counterpart to Biography . . . . . . ii. The Mishnah, Tosefta, Abot, Sifra, Sifré to Numbers, and Sifré to Deuteronomy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A. Birth. First Public Appearance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . B. Torah . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C. Virtue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . D. Death . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iii. The Later Midrash-Compilations: Genesis Rabbah, Leviticus Rabbah, and Pesiqta deRab Kahana . . . . . A. Birth. First Public Appearance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . B. Discipleship and Study of the Torah . . . . . . . . . C. Virtue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . D. Death . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iv. The Latest Midrash-Compilations: Song of Songs Rabbah, Ruth Rabbah, Esther Rabbah I, and Lamentations Rabbah . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A. Birth. First Public Appearance and Origins . . . . B. Discipleship and Study of the Torah . . . . . . . . . C. Virtue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . D. Death . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v. The Paradigmatic Person . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

162 162 165

167 170 170 172 175 179 180 180 182 182 183

185 185 186 186 188 189

Part Five Transcending the Bounds of Time VIII. Zakhor: Is Rabbinic Judaism a Religion of Memory? i. Marking Time: Memory or Dream . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ii The Scriptural Foundations of Paradigmatic Thinking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iii. Scripture’s Memory and Tradition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iv. Zakhor: Is Rabbinic Judaism a Religion of Memory? iv. Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, Zakhor. Jewish History and Jewish Memory Revisited . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .


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vi. Transcending the Bounds of Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii. Model-Explanation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . viii.Explaining the Explanation: Why Here? Why Now? So What? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix. Paradigm over Cycle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

216 219 222 228

Part Six Five Supplementary Studies: A Documentary Account of the Idea of History in Rabbinic Judaism IX.

The Mishnah’s Conception of History . . . . . . . . . . . . . i. History in the Mishnah . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ii. History and the Laws of History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iii. What Actually Happened that Matters . . . . . . . . . . . iv. The History of the Temple Not Narrated but Classified . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v. Not the Unique but the Exemplary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v. The Messiah in the Mishnah . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . X. The Yerushalmi’s Conception of History . . . . . . . . . . i. The Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ii. The Conception of History in the Talmud of the Land of Israel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iii. The Yerushalmi’s New History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iv. The Doctrine of the Messiah in the Talmud of the Land of Israel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . XI. Genesis Rabbah and the History of Israel . . . . . . . . . i. Genesis Rabbah . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ii. How the Rabbinic the Rabbinic sages Read the Book of Genesis, What They Found There . . . . . . . . . . . . . iii. The Case of Abraham . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iv. Isaac and Jacob and Israel’s History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v. Joseph, the Tribal Fathers, and Israel’s History . . . . . vi. Beginnings Reveal Endings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . XII. Astral Israel in Pesiqta deRab Kahana . . . . . . . . . . . . i. If not history, then what? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ii. The Negative side. Israel is not subject to astrological influence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iii. The Positive Side: Israel on earth matches the stars in the heaven. The Unstated Position of Pesiqta deRab Kahana . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .


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233 233 236 239 242 248 250 252 252 253 257 259 268 268 268 272 274 278 286 287 287 287

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iv. God is reasonable and when Israel has been punished, it is in accord with God’s rules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295 v. God will save Israel personally at a time and circumstance of his own choosing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295 vi. Theology of Pesiqta deRab Kahana . . . . . . . . . . . . . 296 vii. The Unique Theological Perspective of Pesiqta deRab Kahana . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 298 viii.Two cycles of time joined . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299 ix. The theology of astral Israel and the reading of Scripture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 300 x. The absolute, fixed order of the document once more 302 xi. Nature and renewal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303 xii. How Pesiqta deRab Kahana Forms a Theological Statement of Astral Israel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 304 xiii.Pesiqta de R. Kahana’s theology in the context of the Rabbinic system and structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305 xiv. Astral Israel in Pesiqta deRab Kahana . . . . . . . . . . . . 306 xv. Israel is not subject to astral influence because Israel forms a Celestial Body . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307 XIII. What, Exactly, Do We Mean by “an Event” in Judaism? Address at Collège de France, Paris, 1990 . . . . . . . . . . 308 Subject index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 329 Index of Ancient Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335


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PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION

A major part of any course in Old Testament is the study of the history of Israel...the fact that [the history of the Israelite people] constituted the context out of which the Scriptures of the Old Testament emerged gives it special significance...How can we really appreciate the messages of the Old Testament authors unless we are familiar with the situations which produced them and to which they were addressed? George W. Ramsey1

The answer to Professor Ramsey’s question given by many centuries of Judaic and Christian exegetes of the Hebrew Scriptures is, “Without the intervention of secular history, we of holy Israel (like our counterparts in the Church of Jesus Christ) appreciate the messages of the Torah very well indeed—just as we have in the millennia since God gave us the Torah, thank you very much!” Without the slightest familiarity with the situations that produced them and to which they are addressed, we have no difficulty whatsoever in appreciating the messages of Scripture. For in fact Judaic and Christian faithful through the ages take as premise that it is to us and to the faithful of all times and places that the ancient Israelite Scriptures were and are addressed. But contemporary reading of the Hebrew Scriptures not only takes for granted that exegesis begins in history. Statements such as that before us show how contemporary reading also has lost sight of the quite other-than-historical approach to history and to time that governs throughout the entire corpus of Judaic and Christian reading of Scripture—and, one may venture to add, that governs in the Hebrew Scriptures themselves. No boundary distinguished past from present; time was under-

1 George W. Ramsey, The Question for the Historical Israel. Reconstructing Israel’s Early History (London, 1982: SCM Press), p. xii.


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stood in a completely different way. Within the conception of time that formed consciousness and culture, the past formed a perpetual presence, the present took place on the plane of the past, and no lines of structure or order distinguished the one from the other. In this book I expound through the case of Judaism how both before historicism, that is, before the past two hundred years Judaism and Christianity ordinarily read Scripture. History provides one way of marking time. But there are others, and the Judaism of the dual Torah, set forth in the Rabbinic literature from the Mishnah through the Talmud of Babylonia, ca. 200600 C.E., defines one such alternative. If we wish to understand Judaism, we shall have to set aside the forms of consciousness we today find self-evident and explore those other forms that defined perception for “our sages of blessed memory” and all who made themselves their disciples through the ages. This book tells the story of how a historical way of thinking about past, present, and future, time and eternity, the here and now in relationship to the ages,—that is, Scripture’s way of thinking—gave way to another mode of thought altogether. It was one that replaced history with a different model for the organization of experience: things that happen and their meaning. This other model I call a pattern, or paradigm, because that appealed for sense to a pattern or paradigm that imposed meaning and order on things that happened. Hence I show how paradigmatic modes of thought took the place of historical ones. Thinking through paradigms, with a conception of time that elides past and present and removes all barriers between them, in fact governs the reception of Scripture in Judaism and Christianity until nearly our own time. In this book I propose to explain, through the single case of Rabbinic Judaism, precisely how that other way of reading Scripture, the paradigmatic and, to be sure, also ahistorical way, did its work, and why, for so many centuries, that reading of the heritage of ancient Israel governed. At stake, as we shall see, are [1] a conception of time different from the historical one and [2] premises on how to take the measure of time that form a legitimate alternative to those that define the foundations of the historical way of measuring time. Fully exposed, those alternative premises may prove more logical and compelling than the historical ones. It follows that I mean to regain that way of reading and responding to Scripture that, for nearly the whole


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of the history of Judaism and Christianity, governed the encounter between today and that other time portrayed in the Hebrew Scriptures. The difference is how time is marked and what the marks signify, and in these pages I propose to spell out that difference between historical and paradigmatic thinking and to specify what is at stake in the difference. In the chapters that form the shank of the book, I quote verbatim a small selection of the documents required to sustain the thesis at hand that Rabbinic Judaism thought not historically but paradigmatically. It is possible to keep these illustrative materials to a modest volume, because I have already published a massive set of selections of the Rabbinic literature’s presentation of what we should call “history.” My survey in these pages then depends upon alreadyavailable evidence and therefore provides a modest sample of the available evidence. Specifically, though moving in a quite new direction, this work depends upon the research reports contained in the following: From Text to Historical Context in Rabbinic Judaism: Historical Facts in Systemic Documents. I. The Mishnah, Tosefta, Abot, Sifra, Sifré to Numbers, and Sifré to Deuteronomy. Atlanta, 1993: Scholars Press for South Florida Studies in the History of Judaism. Now: Lanham, MD: University Press of America From Text to Historical Context in Rabbinic Judaism: Historical Facts in Systemic Documents. II. The Later Midrash-Compilations: Genesis Rabbah, Leviticus Rabbah, Pesiqta deRab Kahana. Atlanta, 1994: Scholars Press for South Florida Studies in the History of Judaism. . Now: Lanham, MD: University Press of America From Text to Historical Context in Rabbinic Judaism: Historical Facts in Systemic Documents. III. The Latest Midrash-Compilations: Song of Songs Rabbah, Ruth Rabbah, Esther Rabbah I, and Lamentations Rabbah. Atlanta, 1994: Scholars Press for South Florida Studies in the History of Judaism. Now: Lanham, MD: University Press of America

I review here only a sample of the findings set forth in these three volumes concerning the uses of history and the types of historical writing in the specified documents. In the biting cool of a Finnish spring, I wrote this book in my term as Visiting Research Professor at Åbo Akademi Forskningsinstitut and in association with my colleagues at Åbo Akademi’s Theologisk Fakultetet. My dual position as Research Professor in the Research Institute and also Theological Faculty member brought me into contact with a variety of Finnish professors and students,


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and I found not only a warm welcome but also much stimulating conversation in that intellectual community. I express thanks to the Åbo Akademi Forskningsinstitut for a very generous research stipend for April through August, 1993, and for providing comfortable living and working conditions. Among many valued Finnish friends, both Finnish- and Swedishspeaking, I thank most especially my host and friend, Professor KarlJohan Illman, for inviting me and making the visit memorable and happy. He made specific contributions to this book by calling to my attention important works in the area of ancient Israel’s history that I might otherwise have missed. He gave me the benefit of his opinion on a variety of controverted scholarly questions in Tanakh studies, which is not my field. Not only so, but the many long walks we took around Åbo/Turku, enriched by his wise reflections about life in Finland and about our shared scholarly interests led, by circuitous paths sometimes, to the pages of this book and the companions produced in my Finnish sojourn. Fortunate indeed are the Americans invited to pursue their scholarship in that sturdy and welcoming country; testimony to our appreciation of its virtues of hospitality and collegiality and learning is the number of Americans who return whenever they are able to live out life in the Nordic lands (especially in summer). Jacob Neusner July 28, 1993. My sixty-first birthday.


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PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION, REVISED AND AUGMENTED This book is the second edition, revised and augmented, of The Presence of the Past, the Pastness of the Present. History, Time, and Paradigm in Rabbinic Judaism. Bethesda, 1996: CDL Press, which I wrote ten years ago, in 1993, in Åbo Akademi University, Finland. While I have reread and extensively revised the eight chapters that constituted the first edition, that exercise does not explain the decision to produce this much augmented second edition. Reading the first edition in light of the additional five chapters sheds new light on the analysis of the problem of how in Rabbinic Judaism paradigmatic and not historical thinking was carried on. What I did not do in the first account of paradigmatic as against historical thinking accounts for this second statement. In the first edition I surveyed the data by documents. But I ignored the result of that unfolding in the documentary sequence for the canonical history of ideas, in this case, for the idea of history in Rabbinic Judaism. That is, even while grouping the documents in three sequential sets, I did not then characterize the documents seen as autonomous statements. So I did not systematically characterize the idea of history in the Mishnah, Talmud of the Land of Israel, Genesis Rabbah, or Pesiqta deRab Kahana. That is what I add here, along with a topical study of a particular problem that illustrates the importance of documentary characterization. In my judgment these five new chapters justify a second edition, which permits me, also, to make corrections and revisions of the first. In the first edition to be sure I paid attention to the documentary venues but treated these venues as inert. I did not draw conclusions suggested by them, for example, conclusions flowing from comparison and contrast between and among the respective documentary statements of the idea of history. Here I do that work systematically. The upshot is, in my first go-around I treat as unitary the premises as governing conceptions of the Rabbinic canonical documents, without asking how specific compilations portray matters in their own


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terms and contexts, respectively. In the first I defined matters in conventional terms and treated as irrelevant the matter of the documentary boundaries that, I have argued, define the correct divisions of the Rabbinic data. That is, if we wish to follow the sequence by which a given idea unfolded, we trace its configuration in the successive documents of the Rabbinic canon. Let me spell out what is at stake. The documentary approach to the Rabbinic canon treats each document as a coherent statement on its own. That approach characterizes how a given document sets forth its ideas on a topic shared with other distinct documents. It yields an account of the unfolding of a topic in successive compilations of law, exegesis, and theology—thus the documentary history of ideas. A comprehensive and systematic result is in my Rabbinic Judaism. The Documentary History of the Formative Age. Bethesda, 1994: CDL Press. In other words, having proposed in 1981 with Judaism: The Evidence of the Mishnah (Chicago, 1981: University of Chicago Press) to characterize the Rabbinic system document by document, and then in the unfolding sequence of the documents, I treated the topic as autonomous of its documentary representation. So I ignored my fundamental approach to the constructive and systematic study of the Rabbinic Judaism. I did not set forth matters in sequence, in its components, by the successive documents. An example of what I have done to refine matters derives from the classification of narratives by documentary preferences, completed in my systematic work by documents and types of narrative: Rabbinic Narrative: A Documentary Perspective. Volume One. Forms, Types, and Distribution of Narratives in the Mishnah, Tractate Abot, and the Tosefta. Leiden, 2003: Brill. The Brill Reference Library of Judaism Rabbinic Narrative: A Documentary Perspective. Volume Two. Forms, Types, and Distribution of Narratives in Sifra, Sifré to Numbers, and Sifré to Deuteronomy. Leiden, 2003: Brill. The Brill Reference Library of Judaism Rabbinic Narrative: A Documentary Perspective. Volume Three. Forms, Types, and Distribution of Narratives in Song of Songs Rabbah and Lamentations Rabbah. And a Reprise of Fathers According to Rabbi Nathan Text A. Leiden, 2003: Brill. The Brill Reference Library of Judaism Rabbinic Narrative. A Documentary Perspective. Volume Four. The Precedent and the Parable in Diachronic View. Leiden, 2003: Brill. The Brill Reference Library of Judaism

On the basis of work on the differentiation of narrative, completed


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after its publication, then, the first edition of the present work was rendered obsolete. That is why I carry forward the project of describing the idea of history in principal documents of Rabbinic Judaism in its formative age. Four of the five supplementary chapters describe the treatment of historical topics in the Mishnah, the Talmud of the Land of Israel (a.k.a., the Yerushalmi), Genesis Rabbah, that is, ca. 200, 400, and 450 C.E., and Pesiqta deRab Kahana, ca. 500 C.E. The fifth takes up special topics that supplement the basic theory set forth in these pages. Because they originate as free-standing essays, the supplementary chapters intersect at a few points and also adduce in evidence passages already cited in Chapters One through Eight. I tried to keep such repetition to a minimum. Mr. Mark Cohen of CDL Press was generous enough to allow me to reproduce, in revised form, the original edition, and I thank him for facilitating my work in this way. I am always aware of how fortunate I have been and now am that Brill has made itself the principal medium for the publication of my scholarly books. No one is better served by a publisher than I am by Brill. It is a pleasure after forty years of association with that ancient firm to point to its present staff as the best in my nearly half-century of work with that publisher. Ten years ago I dedicated the work to my friend and colleague in Åbo Akademi University, Kalle Illman. It is appropriate that I dedicate this new edition to his memory. Jacob Neusner July 28, 2003. My Seventy-first birthday.


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introduction

INTRODUCTION History writing answers to the needs to account for social change and to provide a basis for new meaning, new authority, and new legitimation for those traditional forms that have become dysfunctional in changing social circumstances. John van Seters1

The Hebrew Scriptures of ancient Israel (“the written Torah,” to Judaism and “the Old Testament” to Christianity), all scholarship concurs, set forth Israel’s life as history, with a beginning, middle, and end; a purpose and a coherence; a teleological system. All accounts agree that Scriptures distinguished past from present, present from future and composed a sustained narrative, made up of onetime, irreversible events. All maintain that, in Scripture’s historical portrait, Israel’s present condition appealed for explanation to Israel’s past, perceived as a coherent sequence of weighty events, each unique, all formed into a great chain of meaning. But that is not how for most of the history of Western civilization the Hebrew Scriptures were read by Judaism and Christianity. The idea of history, with its rigid distinction between past and present and its careful sifting of connections from the one to the other, came quite late onto the scene of intellectual life. Both Judaism and Christianity for most of their histories have read the Hebrew Scriptures in an other-than-historical framework. They found in Scripture’s words paradigms of an enduring present, by which all things must take their measure; they possessed no conception whatsoever of the pastness of the past. In due course, we shall consider an explanation for how and why, in Judaism, paradigmatic thinking replaced the historical kind. But first, let us explore the full and detailed character of the paradigmatic approach to the explanation of Israel’s condition, viewed (to state the negative side of matters) atemporal-

1 John van Seters, In Search of History. Historiography in the Ancient World and the Origins of Biblical History (New Haven and London, 1983), p. 4.

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ly, ahistorically, episodically, and not through sustained narrative or its personal counterpart, biography, composed of connected, onetime and unique, irreversible events, in the manner of history. Visually, we grasp the ahistorical perception in the union of past and present that takes place through representation of the past in the forms of the present: the clothing, the colors, the landscapes of the familiar world. But that is mere anachronism, which history can tolerate. Conceptually, we understand their mode of receiving Scripture when we understand that, for our sages of blessed memory of Judaism, as for the saints and sages of Christianity, the past took place in the acutely present tense of today, but the present found its locus in the presence of the ages as well. And that is something historical thinking cannot abide. Not only so, but it contradicts the most fundamental patterns of explanation that we ordinarily take for granted in contemporary cultural life. Historicism for two hundred years has governed. But that other, paradigmatic conception of marking time differs so radically from our own that reading Scripture in the way in which, for nearly the whole of its reception, it has been read proves exceedingly difficult. Our conception of history forms a barrier between us and the understanding of time that defined the Judaic and the Christian encounter with ancient Israel. The givenness of the barrier between time now and time then yields for us banalities about anachronism, on the one side, and imposes upon us the requirement of mediating between historical fact and religious truth, on the other. What I show here is that, receiving those Scriptures and systematically reviewing them, the Judaism of the dual Torah represented by the canonical writings of rabbis from the Mishnah, ca. 200, through the Talmud of Babylonia, ca. 600, recast this corpus of historical thinking, substituting paradigm or pattern for narrative sequence, by redefining the received notion of time altogether. That transformation of ancient Israel’s Scripture from history to paradigm defines the conception of history of Rabbinic Judaism— calling into question the notion that that Judaism possessed a conception of history at all.2 For what we shall see in these pages is 2 Chapter VIII goes over that question in its own terms, dealing with allegations that Rabbinic Judaism is a historical religion, examining the most current formulation, and showing its profound misunderstanding of Rabbinic literature.

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how, when, where, and why an alternative conception of time took over and replaced the historical conception of time altogether— and with what consequences. In the Judaism set forth by principal documents that record the oral part of the dual Torah, particularly those that reached closure from ca. 200 to ca. 600 C.E., both documents of law such as the Mishnah and Tosefta, and documents of Scriptural exegesis, such as Sifré to Deuteronomy, Genesis Rabbah, Leviticus Rabbah, and Song of Songs Rabbah, concepts of history, coming to expression in the categories of time and change, along with distinctions between past, present, and future utterly give way to a conception of recording and explaining the social order different from that of history. It is one that sets aside time and change in favor of enduring paradigms recapitulated in age succeeding age. The concept of history as we know it, and as Scripture knows it, surrenders to an altogether different way of conceiving time and change as well as the course of noteworthy, even memorable social events. The past takes place in the present. The present embodies the past. And there is no indeterminate future over the horizon, only a clear and present path to be chosen if people will it. With distinctions between past, present and future time found to make no difference, and in their stead, different categories of meaning and social order deemed selfevident, the Judaism of the dual Torah transforms ancient Israel’s history into the categorical structure of eternal Israel’s society, so that past, present, and future meet in the here and now. In that construction of thought, history finds no place, time, change, the movement of events toward a purposive goal have no purchase, and a different exegesis of happenings supplants the conception of history. No place in Rabbinic thought, portrayed in successive documents examined severally and jointly, accommodates the notions of change and time, unique events and history, particular lives and biography. All things are transformed by this other way of thinking, besides the historical one that Scripture uses to organize the facts of social existence of Israel. Here we deal with a realm in which the past is ever present, the present a recapitulation and reformulation of the past. When people recapitulate the past in the present, and when they deem the present to be no different from a remote long ago, they organize and interpret experience in an other-than-historical framework, one that substitutes paradigms of enduring permanence for

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patterns of historical change. Instead of history, thought proceeds through the explanation of paradigms, the likenesses or unlikenesses of things to an original pattern. The familiar modes of classifying noteworthy events, the long ago and the here and now, lose currency. Memory as the medium of interpretation of the social order falls away, and historical thinking ceases to serve. Universal paradigms govern, against which all things, now, then, anytime, are compared; events lose all specificity and particularity. The characterization of this Judaism as a historical religion and of the medium of that religion as memory in no way conforms to the facts of the Judaism that is studied here. In this Judaism, with the past very present, the present an exercise in recapitulation of an enduring paradigm, therefore, time and change signify nothing. It follows, too, that there also is nothing to remember; the exegesis of events invokes a different hermeneutics. The category of memory is null, containing nothing, forming no source of meaning. Rabbinic Judaism is ahistorical because it forms meaning in other than historical ways; it is ahistorical because it is paradigmatic in its structure and sensibility. So, with the loss of the experience of memory in favor of a different kind of encounter with time past, present, and future, time as a conception in the measurement of things ceases to serve. Time is neither linear nor cyclical; it simply is not a consideration in thinking about what happens and what counts. Instead, paradigms for the formation of the social order of transcendence and permanence govern, so that what was now is, and what will be is what was and is. The ideas set forth in these pages prove so unfamiliar that a measure of patience is required to understand and appreciate this other way of seeing things, besides the historical one we know so well and take so much for granted. I found myself puzzled and the going hard. The fact that at the start and finish, I turn for metaphors to the mathematics of our own time (however imperfectly grasped to be sure) indicates the difficulties I have faced. The strategy of exposition at not a few points seemed beyond my grasp. If I have succeeded, the readers will not find dense and difficult ideas that, when they came to me, proved alien and difficult to unpack. Now to turn to the program of the book.

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introduction Part One

My opening question is, what gives me reason to speak of history at all, and what do I mean by history? The answer derives solely from context. I do not deal with abstract definitions but only with accepted and conventional ones, not with history in general but only in the setting of the Hebrew Scriptures themselves. By “history” in the context of the religion of Israel through time, scholarship universally refers to the Hebrew Scriptures (“Old Testament”) and identifies the books of Genesis through Kings as a standard history, the story of Israel from creation to the expulsion from the Land of Israel.3 Therefore by “history,” I mean, writing that exhibits the indicative traits of those books of Hebrew Scripture that learning in general classifies as history. To establish the credentials of my later argument, I survey a wide variety of opinion on the traits of those writings, simply to establish some obvious facts. Writing history requires [1] narrative that in a teleological framework or pattern links [2] unique and meaningful events involving [3] singular persons, with traits of individuality. History tells what has happened so as to demonstrate propositions concerning the fate and faith of the community; it is a medium of explaining the social order and bears messages concerning how that order should be shaped and reformed. I mean to show that these simple indicators of historical writing, therefore of conceptions of history, characterize the Hebrew Scriptures’ historical books.

3 I am much influenced by the scholarship of David Noel Freedman, whose work is cited in specific contexts, but upon whom I draw even when I do not explicitly cite his work. His account of the structure and coherence of the Authorized History strike me as definitive for the purpose of this book. His insistence on reading the Hebrew Scriptures as a cogent statement by a small group at a determinate time, based on the internal evidence of the document itself, justifies my treating Genesis through Kings as a single coherent statement, as I do. I am also influenced by the work of Philip R. Davies, In Search of Ancient Israel (Sheffield, 1993: Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series 148), and I find striking the complementary results produced by the two scholars. But in the relevant chapters I cite and quote a great many other Old Testament scholars, all of whom concur on the historicity of Scripture as a principal medium of thought and expression.

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introduction Chapters I and II

Chapter I begins with a brief survey of the universal consensus that the Hebrew Scriptures present history and that what marks writing as historical is defined in terms of teleology given expression in narrative, of events as singular and also significant, and of persons (both women and men) as distinct and individually defined. Then I show the negative side, that the Rabbinic literature of late antiquity viewed in the aggregate and also document by document contains no evidences of historical thinking or indications of a concept of history comparable to that of Scripture: no sustained narrative, no biography, no conception of historical time defined whether teleologically or otherwise, whether cyclically or as linear in direction. My argument, hence my categories, works out four distinct points. We start with an overview of the requirements of historical thinking and writing that the Hebrew Scriptures define and exemplify. My account derives entirely from current biblical scholarship. Reviewing how accounts of history-writing in ancient Israel was carried on, I am able to give a definitive account of the indicators that historical thinking has generated historical writing in documents that are set forth as continuous with those Scriptures. Chapter II then proceeds to the heart of matters: the conception of time (and space) that animates historical thinking, including that of Scripture, contrasted with the conception of time that governs paradigmatic thinking. So much for Chapters I and II. Part One thus defines the analysis of the ideas of history and time and paradigm. Part Two With Part Two, a three-part demonstration commences. My task is to prove through a negative, then a positive, demonstration, that Rabbinic Judaism formulates time through paradigm, and that that accounts for the atemporality of that Judaism. My survey covers a sequential reading of Rabbinic literature down to, but not including, the two Talmuds. We survey the Mishnah and its continuators (Tosefta, Tractate Abot, Sifra and the two Sifrés), ca. 200-300, then the Rabbinic amplifications of Scripture, read in two groups, Genesis Rabbah, Leviticus Rabbah, and Pesiqta deRab Kahana, ca. 400-500, and Lamentations Rabbah, Song of Songs Rabbah, Ruth

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Rabbah, and Esther Rabbah I, as well as the Fathers According to Rabbi Nathan, ca. 500-600. Proceeding through the sequence of documents, we ask three questions, worked out in Parts Two, Three, and Four. The Absence of History: Part Two sets forth the testing of two null-hypotheses, aimed at showing through negative evidence that the Rabbinic documents do not resort to the media of historical thinking and do not contain the most fundamental messages of historical thinking. 1. I formulate the first null-hypothesis in these terms: if the Rabbinic documents conformed to historical modes of thought and yielded historical writings, I have now shown, in the model of Scripture, they would yield writing comparable to the historical writing of Scripture. That is to say, we should find resort to the media that expresses historical thinking: a linear narrative of onetime events for social history, on the one side, biography, on the other. In Chapter III we conduct a test of this null-hypothesis, asking for evidence of narrative, on the one side, biography, on the other. 2. A second null-hypothesis requires testing. Once more, in the model of the Scripture’s message yielded by historical thinking, if the Rabbinic documents yield the results of historical modes of thought, then we should find in them a clear representation of the past as past, the present as distinct from the past, and of time as linear or cyclical (in the terms defined in the present chapter). In Chapter IV we seek evidence that Rabbinic literature recognizes the past as over and done with, the present as distinct and separate therefrom. Part Three The Presence of the Past, the Pastness of the Present: Part Three then moves from the theory that paradigmatic, not historical, thinking generates the kind of writing characteristic of Rabbinic documents and defines in great detail precisely the model that governed throughout. That model comprises four fundamental components. Each is defined and shown in practice.

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introduction Part Four

From History to Paradigm: Temporal Taxonomies under the Aspect of Eternity: Part Four accomplishes that positive demonstration that corresponds to Part Two’s negative one. Here I show how narrative, on the one side, ands biography, on the other, find their counterparts in the paradigmatic conception that governs in Rabbinic documents. Narrative in a paradigm serves the purpose of the paradigm, selecting a topic and expounding that topic within the model’s rules; and the same is so for biography. So we find ourselves able to explain not only what we do not find, but also what we do have at hand. The upshot is that time is treated as divisible, even as historical or natural time is subject to taxonomic analysis: differentiated in accord with a specified set of indicators. But the taxonomy of time—my “temporal taxonomies”—takes place under the aspect of God’s perspective on things, here called “the aspect of eternity.” That “aspect of eternity” in theological language corresponds to the “paradigm” in secular formulation. In this way we reconsider the characterization of “the confessional use of the Bible” that stands at the head of Chapter I. Halpern’s description is now to be replaced by one that accounts for how things are, not only how they are not. If I had to select a single point, integral to his account and mine as well, it is his allegation, “Worshipers do not read the Bible with an intrinsic interest in human events.” That not only misrepresents matters, it states precisely the opposite of how things are. Our sages of blessed took an intense interest in human events, and these they addressed in all their specificity. But what defined the specific traits of events? It was not their uniqueness but their points shown consequential by the paradigm that defined remarkable events to begin with. The paradigm yielded not an account of the cause; our sages understood that, whatever happened, God was the ultimate cause. Nor did they seek what was timeless or permanent; the paradigm that informed their minds instructed them on the timeless and the permanent. Sages did not level historical differences in favor of the study of “life present...and eternal.” Historical differences hardly attracted their attention, because their minds were shaped in accord with a different model from the historical one, the premises of historical thinking finding no place in their consciousness. When we have examined the negative evi-

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dences—the absence of historical thinking—and the positive—the model that took the place of history, we shall grasp how an altogether different conception of time and change, order and chaos, provoked for sages a reading of Scripture that, in their deepest conviction, accorded with God’s purpose in revealing it. And this leads me to Part Five, where I propose to explain what is at stake in Judaism’s paradigmatic thinking, and how the historical modes of thought characteristic of the received, and definitive, Scripture gave way to a different pattern altogether. Part Five Part Five is complete in Chapter VIII: I conclude in Chapter VIII with a contrast between how historical and paradigmatic thinking yield each its own formulation of intellectual and emotional life. Since Rabbinic Judaism, or just plain “Judaism,” is often defined as historical, I therefore address the further allegation that Rabbinic Judaism is a traditional religion and ask whether traditionality necessarily signals the presence of historical thinking. I then turn to an important and current statement of the position contrary to the one treated here, spelling out his views and systematically analyzing them. At the end I restate the contrary view, the conception of thinking by appeal to models rather than linear sequences of events. This leads me to ask why, when, and where our sages of blessed memory made the shift from historical to paradigmatic thinking, and the explanation that I offer also permits me to account for the principles of selection that governed the meanings conveyed by the particular paradigm at hand. Omitting the two Talmuds: Readers will rightly ask why I have not surveyed the two Talmuds in examining documentary evidence of the historical and paradigmatic modes of thought characteristic of, dominant in Rabbinic Judaism. The reason is that I took for myself a more difficult challenge than is represented by the two Talmuds, with their now-well-documented traits of ahistorical thinking. It is the fact that earlier research4 has already shown me 4 See The Foundations of Judaism. Method, Teleology, Doctrine. Philadelphia, 19835: Fortress Press. I-III. II. Messiah in Context. Israel’s History and Destiny in Formative Judaism. Second printing: Lanham, 1988: University Press of America. Studies in Judaism series; Judaisms and their Messiahs in the beginning of Christianity. New York,

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how those two documents deal with the explanation of the social order formed by Israel, and it is an entirely ahistorical mode of thought. Paradigmatic thinking is fully exposed in the Mishnah, and the two Talmuds closely link their statements to the Mishnah. But in the nature of its work of setting forth the principles of Israel’s natural and social existence, the Mishnah is ahistorical and appeals instead to enduring paradigms. I took for granted (and also, as a matter of fact, have demonstrated) that writings closely tied to the Mishnah do not present occasions for the exploration of historical thinking. There, I reasoned, I was not going to find distinctions among time past, present, and future. Specifically, focusing upon the exposition of the Mishnah, an utterly ahistorical document, the two Talmuds set forth a conception of Israel that subordinates history to law and presents the Messiah as a sage and an ahistorical figure, who comes in response to the condition of Israel’s soul and heart, not in the aftermath of a sequence of historical events. I preferred for this exposition to focus most of my attention on the documents that, in the Rabbinic literature, take a position closest to that of Scripture, citing the Torah and the prophets throughout. Here, I theorized, if I am going to find a historical mode of thought, distinguishing among past, present, and future as the prophets do, it will be in the Midrashcompilations. There, I imagined, I should find a past clearly differentiated from the present and a perspective upon a distant future, not one time for all time. So too, I supposed, I should find in the exposition of the past tense of the written Torah, such as the Midrash-compilations provide, a clear formulation of the distinction between past and present. I wanted to center interest on the Midrash-compilations because they take as their focus the history of Scripture. If I was going to find any writings that bore the marks of historical thinking, they would be within those compilations in particular. Having failed in prior inquiries to find a conception of history of any kind in Rabbinic Judaism, I assumed that I had best formulate the problem so as to focus on the very writing closest to the most historical of the parts of the Torah. These are Midrash-compilations of ex1987: Cambridge University Press; and The Christian and Judaic Invention of History. Atlanta, 1990: Scholars Press for American Academy of Religion. Studies in Religion series.

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egeses of the Pentateuch, for one major example, and, as in the case of the books of Esther, Lamentations, and Ruth, in Esther Rabbah, Lamentations Rabbati, and Ruth Rabbah, on the one side, and Pesiqta deRab Kahana, on the other, treatments of themes defined by historical events (Esther, Lamentations), the Messiah-theme (Ruth), or commemorative occasions (Pesiqta deRab Kahana). Here, I imagined, if a concept of history governed the exegesis of Scripture and a clear pattern of time formed the principal mode of thought, I should find it. So far as the marks of historical thinking are defined as narrative, a conception of linear events with beginnings, middles, and ends, biographies cast along those same lines, let alone a clear perception of the pastness of the past and the acute distinction of present from past that history requires in order to accomplish its tasks, I have not found those traits of mind: not only no narrative and no biography, no evidence of a sustaining history, but a different conception of time altogether. In these pages, I show, I have found the very opposite. At the very passages in which Scripture records one-time events and imputes meaning to them, finding hope for the future in the rules yielded by the past, distinguishing among past, present, and future as the generative problematic of discourse, our sages of blessed memory serenely make their way, drawing their own conclusions concerning paradigmatic reality, not those invited by Scripture’s historical reality. That accounts for the selection of documents that are subjected to close analysis in this book. Now to the work at hand.

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hebrew scripture and requirements of historical thinking 13

PART ONE —— HISTORY, TIME, AND PARADIGM IN SCRIPTURE

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CHAPTER I

HEBREW SCRIPTURE AND THE REQUIREMENTS OF HISTORICAL THINKING The confessional use of the Bible is fundamentally ahistorical. It makes of Scripture a sort of map, a single, synchronic system in which the part illuminates the whole, in which it does not matter that different parts of the map come from divergent perspectives and different periods. The devotee uses it to search for treasure: under the X lies a trove of secret knowledge; a pot of truths sits across the exegetical rainbow, and with them one can conjure knowledge, power, eternity. Worshipers do not read the Bible with an intrinsic interest in human events. like the prophet or psalmists or, in Acts, the saint, they seek behind the events a single, unifying cause that lends them meaning and makes the historical differences among them irrelevant. in history, the faithful seek the permanent, the ahistorical; in time, they quest for timelessness; in reality, in the concrete, they seek Spirit, the insubstantial. Confessional reading levels historical differences—among the authors in the Bible and between those authors and church tradition—because its interests are life present (in the identity of a community of believers) and eternal. Baruch Halpern1

I. Historical vs. Paradigmatic Thinking in Judaism Halpern here characterizes what is under study in these pages, that alternative to the historical reading of Scripture that both Judaism 1 Baruch Halpern, The First Historians. The Hebrew Bible and History (San Francisco, 1988: Harper & Row), pp. 3-4.

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and Christianity selected and faithfully followed for eighteen hundred years. That was until the advent of historical learning in the nineteenth century and its transformation of a powerful instrument of exegesis of Scripture in the twentieth. Before that time another way of reading and responding to events, besides the historical one, governed the way in which the historical writings of ancient Israel were received. What is at stake is a different conception of time. It is, as I said, a way of understanding Scripture that in its context enjoyed the standing of self-evident truth and may now lay claim to a serious hearing as well. I argue that it provides a more plausible model than the historical one. Specifically, I propose to explain precisely how an other-than-historical reading of Scripture worked, identifying its premises and showing its results. For at issue is something different from indifference to whether or not things really happened as they are portrayed or in some other way or (most commonly) not at all. “Timelessness” obscures that vastly different conception of time that comes into play in the normative Judaic and Christian reception of ancient Israel’s Scripture, especially its history, for centuries. For nearly the whole of the history of Judaism and Christianity, a mode of reading Scripture predominated that today is scarcely understood and only rarely respected. In Halpern’s picture, it is characterized as “confessional,” and dismissed as ahistorical. But “confessional” tells us only that faithful practitioners of Judaism and Christianity come to Scripture with reverence and seek there to find what God has told to humanity. The faith of Judaism and Christianity need not insist upon the reading of Scripture as a single, synchronic system—but it does, so the pejorative, “confessional,” is both beside the point and accurate. For this “ahistorical” reading means to overcome the barriers of time and space and address Scripture in an unmediated present. The key to the uncomprehending caricature lies in the contrasts, with the climax, “insubstantial.” Militant, ideological historicism in that word makes its complete and final statement.2 Faith admittedly 2 I ignore the institutional foundations for the historicistic reading of sacred Scripture, the conduct of that reading under mostly secular auspices. In fact, the Bible is a privileged document, enjoying a central position in the academic study of religion that secular considerations alone will not have accorded it. The upshot

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hebrew scripture and requirements of historical thinking 17 is in things unseen, but not in what is “insubstantial,” not at all. Still, Halpern speaks for a century and a half of scholarship that has appealed to secular rules for reading documents of religions, Judaism and Christianity, that read the Hebrew Scriptures as the written Torah and the Old Testament, respectively. During the now-protracted spell since the advent of historicism, the holy books of Judaism and Christianity, have been asked to tell us everything but that to which they are devoted: about human events, not about God’s perspective on and dealings with humanity. And, in that same long period of time, the reason people have taken up these books and read and studied them—the quest for the written record of God’s intervention into human history (for the Torah of Judaism) or of God’s footsteps on earth (for the Bible of Christianity)—has been dismissed. After such a long span of time, people have forgotten the religious rules for reading those same holy books and, as Halpern’s statement makes clear. They even have lost the capacity even to understand those same rules. But for nearly eighteen centuries those norms governed, and whether or not we accept their discipline, we owe it to ourselves to try to make sense of them. But here I shall attempt not only to explain, but also to advocate the rationality of, a different model of reading from that defined by historicism. For there is more at stake than merely understanding a long-ago way of receiving Scripture. The historical way, so long dominant in the West’s reception of its own holy books, proves no longer a secure path to knowledge, secular or religious. For history’s premise—the self-evidence of the linearity of events, so that, first came this, then came that, and this “stands behind” or explains or causes that—contradicts the now-articulated experience of humanity. Chaos governs, while from history’s perspective, order should reign. Sometimes “this” yields “that,” as it should, but sometimes it is that academic scholarship on Scripture enjoys the sponsorship of the faithful and takes as its task the imposition of secular norms upon the documents of the faith—in the name of the rational labor of the academy. That is why I regard as critical to my venture here the demonstration of the rationality, within the norms of the academy, of the ahistorical, atemporal reading of Scripture that Judaism and Christianity have for most of their histories adopted for themselves, and that means I show the intellectual power of paradigmatic, as opposed to historical thinking. It is not enough to describe how people saw things, I have also to explain their modes of thought within the norms of academic rationality. Willy-nilly, the issue then is theological, though the evidence and argument and thesis merely academic.

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does not. To the contrary, what happens in ordinary life yields not events that relate to one another like pearls on a necklace, first this, then that, then the other thing, in proper procession. Not at all. Life is unpredictable; if this happens, we cannot securely assume that that must occur in sequence, in order—at least, not in the experience of humanity. That is proven by the irregularity of events, the unpredictability, by all and any rules, of what, if this happens, will follow next. Knowing “this,” we never can securely claim to predict “that” as well. And history’s inexorable stopping point, the present moment, calls into question the rationality of the past that history portrays for us. The iron wall between past and present for historical thinking marks the outer limit of rationality. This is expressed by the French philosopher of historiography, Jacques LeGoff in the following language: The opposition between past and present is fundamental, since the activity of memory and history is founded on this distinction...3

That distinction, commonplace and fundamental in every current account of history-writing, indeed, is given the status of a psychological norm, when LeGoff cites Piaget in this language: For the child, “to understand time is to liberate oneself from the present’ not only to anticipate the future in relation to the regularities unconsciously established in the past, but to deploy a series of states, each of which is different from the others, and whose connection can be established only by a gradual movement without fixation and stopping point.”...In societies, the distinction between past and present (and future) also implies this ascent into memory and this liberation from the present.4

But what psychology may we impute to a civilization that makes no such distinction, that manages memory in a different way altogether, finding the present a chapter of the past, defining the past as a component of an enduring present? And how shall we reconstruct the mentality of an entire group that denies what many maintain characterizes the normal, as does LeGoff in the following words: 3 Jacques LeGoff, History and Memory (N.Y., 1992: Columbia University Press). Translated by Steven Randall and Elizabeth Claman, p. xii. 4 LeGoff, p. 3.

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hebrew scripture and requirements of historical thinking 19 The pathology of individual attitudes toward time shows that ‘normal’ behavior maintains an equilibrium between the consciousness of the past, the present, and the future, but with a slight predominance of the orientation toward the future...The orientation toward the present, characteristic of very young children (who even ‘reconstitute the past in relation to the present,” as Piaget has noted), of mentally defective or insane persons...is encountered fairly commonly among old people...

That characterization of the incapacity of distinguishing past from present as an indicator of insanity or senility hardly prepares us to understand the many, long centuries in which Western civilization, Judaic and Christian, in no way conceded the pastness of the past or the barrier between past and present. For here we address that Scripture, that vast corpus of writing that contains no sustained narrative, concedes no gap or barrier to separate present from past, views the present as autonomous of past and future, and, it goes without saying, finds sustained story-history a useless medium for the making of its statement. Here we deal not with non-literate but with highly literate sages; not with a world of myth and ritual that relates past and present in such a way that history is both separated from the present and joined with it (LeviStrauss cited by LeGoff). My impression is that the mode of telling time so profoundly intimate to both Judaic and Christian conceptions of the social order lies beyond the power of theory of history not only to explain, but even to comprehend, except in primitive terms. That matter must remain a puzzle, as I establish that, for the Rabbinic sages history as defined by the Authorized History of Scripture yielded an altogether different form of consciousness, a quite ahistorical, atemporal, but profound and powerful mode of confronting and manipulating the historical record received in Scripture. Why do I insist on the anti-historical mode of thought characteristic of Scripture? It is because of the character of historical thought. The entire program of this book rests upon the certainty that historical thinking requires the distinction between past and present. Rabbinic thought, by contrast, rests upon a mode of representing the social order of a group in such a way that the past forms a vivid presence, but the present also takes place in the past.

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And that forms a mode of thought and re-presentation of matters that is simply not historical.5 The distinction between past and present is not the only indicator of historical modes of organizing experience. And the paradigmatic mode of thought, for its part, differs on more than the matter of fusing past, present, and future in a single moment. A further trait of historical thinking is the linearity of events, a sense for the teleology of matters, however the goal find its definition. Past was then but leads to now. It is not now but it guides us into the acute present tense, and onward to the future. For what may happen is not to be predicted. Linearity presupposes predictability, regularity, order,—and therefore contradicts the unpredictability of the world. Historical study correlates this to that, ideas to events, always seeking reasonable explanation for what has come about. Its very premise is that of the Enlightenment, concerning the ultimate order awaiting discovery. History then forms a subset of the quest for order—a pervasive one, one that enjoys the standing of self-evidence. But all premises concerning order, except the one that insists upon the ultimate chaos of things, now lose plausibility. In turning to another way of receiving Scripture, besides the historical way, we update our approach to the problem of defining how we shall identify what matters therein. If not historical explanation, resting on linear sequences of events, which we assume we really can recover in their fullness, then what? The end of history’s self-evident power of description, analysis, and explanation requires us to review other approaches and their logic. And among them, the received, religious approach (Halpern’s “confessional” one) demands attention, not because it served for so long with such power, but because it appeals to a different logic, one more current than the historical. Now, unlike history, religion takes into account the failure of linear logic, with its regularities and certainties and categorical dismissal of chaos. In its reading of Scripture, Judaism (along with Christianity) posits instead a world that may be compared to that of fractal shapes, in the language of mathematics, or classified as paradigms, models, or patterns, in the language of this book. These 5 Missing that basic fact of historical thinking accounts for Yosef Hayyim Yerushalmi’s astonishingly obtuse statements, to which we turn in Chapter VIII, concerning the absence of historical writing among the Rabbinic sages.

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hebrew scripture and requirements of historical thinking 21 fractals or paradigms describe how things are, whether large or small, whether here or there, whether today or in a distant past or an unimaginable future. Fractal thinking finds sameness without regard to scale, from small to large—and so too in the case of events. Fractal thinking therefore makes possible the quest for a few specific patterns, which will serve this and that, hither and yon, because out of acknowledged chaos they isolate points of regularity or recurrence and describe, analyze, and permit us to interpret them.6 Paradigms describe the structure of being: how (some) things are, whether now or then, here or there, large or small—without regard to scale, therefore in complete indifference to the specificities of context. They derive from imagination, not from perceived reality. They impose upon the world their own structure and order, selecting among things that happen those few moments that are eventful and meaningful. Paradigms form a different conception of time7 from the historical, define a different conception of relationship from the linear. Stated very simply, while historical thinking is linear, religious thinking corresponds to mathematics’ fractal thinking. Whether we draw our analogy from mathematics or from structures, the upshot is the same. To call the religious way of reading Scripture ahistorical is both accurate and monumentally beside the point; it is only to say what it is not, not what it is. I claim it is paradigmatic thinking, in place of linear thinking, and here I shall set forth precisely what that way of thinking is, so far as the Judaism of

6 I invoke the analogy of fractal mathematics only to introduce external evidence in support of my insistence upon the rationality of paradigmatic thinking. I find the points of analogy in fractals in particular in [1] the dismissal of considerations of scale; [2] the admission of chaos into the data out of which order is selected; [3] the insistence that a few specific patterns are all that we have, but that these serve in a variety of circumstances and can be described in a reliable and predictable way. The starting point is chaos, the goal, the discovery of order. The givenness, for historical thinking, of linearity then defines a different starting point, one of order, not chaos, and that strikes me as lacking all rationality, when measured against the perceived experience of humanity. As I shall argue in a moment, historical thinking forms the last remnant of the Enlightenment’s pious optimism, and paradigmatic thinking offers a more plausible way of ordering the chaos of nature and society alike. 7 Much of the this chapter and the next are devoted to the conception of time that underlies historical and paradigmatic thinking, with special attention to the paradigmatic thinking set forth in the Rabbinic literature in particular. These matters are spelled out in considerable detail presently.

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the dual Torah exemplifies paradigmatic thinking: how history and time give way to a different order of being altogether. The shift from historical to paradigmatic models of thinking is set forth in these pages in the contrast between two conflicting conceptions of how the social experience of Israel is to be organized and written down and formed into patterns of meaning. The one is linear, the other fractal, in the sense introduced in the opening paragraphs. These are the ones of the Hebrew Scripture and Rabbinic literature. The one—the Scriptural—sets forth its theological statement through the medium of history; all scholarship from the nineteenth century forward concurs on that simple statement. It is a linear statement of things: first this, then that, therefore that happened because of this (post hoc, ergo propter hoc). That mode of thinking came to compete with another, which defined a model or paradigm and selected, among happenings, those events that conformed to the paradigm; or that identified the paradigm in the here and now of ordinary persons’ lives and the nation’s alike—and that without regard to time or change. For time meant something else than it had in Scripture, and change meant nothing whatsoever. The other makes its statement through a different, quite ahistorical medium, one that explicitly rejects distinctions among past, present, and future, and treats the past as a powerful presence, but the present as a chapter of the past, and the future as a negotiation of not time but principle. A paradigm governs, all events conforming to its atemporal rule. Consequently, the two conflicting conceptions of social explanation—the historical, the paradigmatic—appeal to two different ways of conceiving of, and evaluating, time. Historical time measures one thing, paradigmatic time, another, though both refer to the same facts of nature and of the social order. It follows that, at stake in this study is a detail of the much larger problem of what we mean by “time,” but here I offer only a footnote to the study of that protean question. For its exposition of the cogency and meaning of Israel’s social experience, Rabbinic Judaism possesses no concept of history and therefore produces as its statements of the sense of the life of the people neither historical narrative nor biography. The negative of course is to be matched by a positive conception. That Judaism sets forth a concept of paradigm and produces its own counterparts to historical writing: stories about what it deems worth narrating, chapters, not “lives,” it identifies as worth emulating. People gener-

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hebrew scripture and requirements of historical thinking 23 ally concur that ancient Israel organized its social experience in historical terms: unique events formed into continuous narrative, biography, all formed into an account of what has happened and its meaning—and therefore where matters are heading. I show here that, while taking over the heritage of ancient Israel, the Rabbinic sages who produced the Mishnah, Tosefta, tractate Abot, and the score of Midrash-compilations surveyed here, made sense of the social experience of Israel in terms unrelated to conceptions of past, present, and future, composed into narrative formed out of distinctive events and distinct biographies. Precisely what took the place of historical thinking and consequent writing is to be spelled out and shown to prevail. Rabbinic Judaism formulates its conception of the social order— of the life of its “Israel” and the meaning of that life through time and change—in enduring paradigms that admit no distinction between past, present, and future. All things take form in a single plane of being; Israel lives not in historical time, moving from a beginning, to a middle, to an end, in a linear plan. Nor does it form its existence in cyclical time, repeating time and again familiar cycles of events. Those familiar modes of making sense out of the chaos of change and the passage of time serve not at all. Rather, Israel lives in accord with an enduring paradigm that knows neither past, present, nor future. Appealing to a world of timeless myth, that Judaism accounts for how things are not by appeal to what was and what will be, but by invoking the criterion of what characterizes the authentic and true being of Israel, an idea or ideal defined by the written Torah and imposed upon the chaos of time and change. The pattern that controls recapitulates, without regard to time or change, the paradigmatic lives of the patriarchs and matriarchs, so that a single set of patterns governs. Here history gives way to not eternity but permanence, the rules of the paradigm telling us not how to make sense of what was or how to predict what will be, but only what it is that counts. In the context of a Judaism what is at stake in all explanation, whether historical or paradigmatic, is the same thing, namely, accounting for the here and now of “Israel,” that social entity that a particular group of Jews conceives itself to constitutes. Now “Israel’s” existence may be explained in diverse ways. It is a group of people that has come about through a series of events, progressing through time and through its actions in relationship to God

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writing a history for itself. So to be “Israel” means, to have come from somewhere and to be en route to some other place, and to explain this “Israel” we tell the story of the journey. People then may join the trip, take up the burden of history and assume the hope for the future destination as well. Shared memory (fabricated or otherwise) forms the medium for the social message. Paradigmatic thinking defines and explains “Israel” in a different way.8 To be “Israel” means to conform to a pattern of actions and attitudes set forth for all time and without distinction in time. That pattern, or paradigm, comes to definition in the lives of the patriarchs and matriarchs. It is then recapitulated in a social world that knows not change but conformity to paradigm. Since the paradigm endures, we explain happenings by appeal to its rules, and the event is not what is singular and distinctive but what conforms to the rule: we notice what is like the paradigm, not what diverges from it. To the paradigm matters of memory and hope prove monumentally irrelevant, because they explain nothing, making distinctions that stand for no important differences at all. When we want to explain what it means to be “Israel,” therefore, we appeal to not time and change but eternity and permanence. Or rather, the conception of the category, time—what is measured by the passage of the sun and moon in relationship to events here on earth—altogether loses standing. In place of distinguishing happenings through the confluence of time, measured by the passage of the sun and moon, and event, distinguished by specificity and particularity, paradigmatic thinking takes another route. It finds an event in what conforms to the paradigm, what is meaningful in what confirms it. In our own setting, we make the distinction that operates here when we speak of nominalism as against realism, or the humanities as against the social sciences, or the individual and singular as against the general and the uniform, or the exception as against the rule. How these various modes of making sense of the social order pertain here is now clear. In historical 8

On the negotiability, the systemic particularity, of “Israel” or the concept of Israel, see my Judaism and its Social Metaphors. Israel in the History of Jewish Thought. N.Y., 1988: Cambridge University Press, and now, also, Philip R. Davies, In Search of Ancient Israel (Sheffield, 1993: Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series 148), who, alas, did not know of my work when he pursued exactly the same problem within precisely the same premises—the indeterminacy of “Israel”—though in a different temporal setting.

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hebrew scripture and requirements of historical thinking 25 thinking we ask the distinctive event and its consequences out of the past to deliver its meaning to the present and message concerning the future: if this, then that. In paradigmatic thinking we examine the norms for an account of how things ought to be, finding the rule that tells us how things really are. Then past, present, future differentiate not at all, the pattern of an eternal present taking over to make sense of the social order. It follows that in the paradigmatic mode of thinking about the social order, the categories of past, present, and future, singular event and particular life, all prove useless. In their place come the categories defined by the actions and attitudes of paradigmatic persons, Abraham and Sarah, for instance, or paradigmatic places, the Temple, or paradigmatic occasions, holy time, for instance. We identify a happening not by its consequence (historically) but by its conformity to the appropriate paradigm. We classify events in accord with their paradigms as not past, present, or future, therefore, because to the indicators of eventfulness—what marks a happening as eventful or noteworthy—time and change, by definition, have no bearing at all. Great empires do not make history; they fit a pattern. They are classified as great so far as they exemplify an important pattern (God’s intent, for example). What they do therefore does not designate an event, it merely provides a datum for classification within the pattern. To this way of thinking, apocalypse, with its appeal to symbol to represent vast forces on earth, makes its contribution; but paradigmatic and apocalyptic thinking about Israel’s social being scarcely intersect. The paradigmatic excludes the historical, the indicative, the categorical pattern, the possibility of noteworthy change. Matters are just the opposite, indeed: paradigmatic thinking accommodates historical thinking not at all, since the beginning of history, in the notion of the pastness of the past, contradicts the generative conception of the paradigm: the very paradigmatic character of the happening that bears meaning. In that context, therefore, the governing categories speak of not time and change, movement and direction, but the recapitulation of a given pattern, the repetition of the received paradigm. Being (ontology) then moves from the one-time, the concrete, the linear and accumulative, to the recurrent, the mythic, and the repetitive: from the historical to the paradigmatic. These modes of identifying a happening as consequential and eventful then admit no past or

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present or future subject to differentiation and prognostication, respectively. Time therefore bears no meaning, nor does the passage of time signify consequence. If, therefore, the historical mode of organizing shared experience into events forming patterns, its identification of events as unique and persons as noteworthy, of memory as the medium for seeking meaning, and narrative as the medium for spelling it out, paradigmatic thinking will dictate a different mode of culture. It is one in which shared experience takes on meaning when the received paradigms of behavior and the interpretation of the consequence of behavior come to realization once again: the paradigm recapitulated is the paradigm confirmed. What takes place that is identified as noteworthy becomes remarkable because today conforms to yesterday and provokes, too, tomorrow’s recapitulation as well. We notice not the unlike—the singular event—but the like, not what calls into question the ancient pattern but what reviews and confirms it. If, then, we wish to make sense of who we are, we ask not where we come from or where we are heading, but whom we resemble, and into which classification of persons or events we fit or what happens appears to repeat. The social order then finds its explanation in its resemblances, the likenesses and the unlikenesses of persons and happenings alike. Let me make this point concrete. The meaning of shared experience, such as history sets forth in its categories of past, present, future, and teleology through narrative of particular events or through biography of singular lives, emerges in a different way altogether. In the formulation of the social order through paradigm, past, present, future, the conception of time in general, set forth distinctions that by definition make no difference. Events contradict the paradigm; what is particular bears no sense. Then remarkable happenings, formed into teleology through history-writing, or noteworthy persons’ lives, formed into memorable cases through biography, no longer serve as the media of making a statement bearing intelligible, cultural consequence. Paradigmatic thinking is never generalized; it is a mode of thought that is just as specific to the case as is theological thinking in the historical medium. Specific paradigms come into play. They define the criteria for the selection as consequential and noteworthy of some happenings but not others. They further dictate the way to think about remarkable happenings, events, so as to yield

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hebrew scripture and requirements of historical thinking 27 sense concerning them. They tell people that one thing bears meaning, while another does not, and they further instruct people on the self-evident meaning to be imputed to that which is deemed consequential. The paradigms are fully as social in their dimensions, entirely as encompassing in their outreach, as historical categories. We deal not with the paradigms of universal, individual life, taking the place of those of particular, social existence, such as history, with its unique, one-time, sequential and linear events, posits. The result of paradigmatic thinking is no different from that of the historical kind. For before us is not a random sequence of entirely personal recapitulations of universal experiences, for instance, birth, maturing, marriage, love, and death; these modes of permanence in change, these personal paradigms that form a counterpoint to one-time, public moments play no role in the formation of what endures, whether past, whether past, whether future, in the eternal now. The definition of the consequential, permanent paradigms that replace the conception of history altogether will emerge in due course. At the outset what is at stake must be clear. The shift from historical to paradigmatic thinking represents a movement from one kind of thinking about the social order to another kind. The particularity of history finds its counterpart in the particularity of the paradigm of thought. This leads directly to the kind of thinking—paradigmatic, ahistorical, and I claim, utterly anti-historical and dismissive of particularities of time or circumstance but rather philosophical and generalizing—that characterizes Rabbinic writing. Here the past is present, the present is past, the future is then and now. So time contains no delineative future tense at all. Eschatological teleology gives way to paradigmatic teleology, and—it goes without saying— biography abdicates in favor of highly selective paradigms of exemplarity in the lives of persons, once more, from events to patterns. Sustained narrative is abandoned because it is irrelevant; biography, because it is filled with useless information. The concept of organizing the facts (real or fabricated) of the social world of Israel into history as the story of the life and times of Israel, past, present, and future, is succeeded by the concept of organizing the received and now perceived fasts of the social world of Israel into the enduring paradigm in which past, present, and future fuse into an eternal now.

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Chapter VIII then asks how the two versions of Israel’s reality, the historical and the paradigmatic, come together. That question, deriving from the Judaism that is under study here, is necessary to an understanding of the theology of the Judaism of the dual Torah, which obviously recognized what we for our part see, and of necessity asked about the complementarity and cogency of the two parts of the single Torah. At the outset a few general observations suffice. What is lost when recapitulative paradigms of meaning obliterate all lines between past, present, and future, so that the past forms a permanent presence among the living, and the present recapitulates the paradigm of the past? What falls away is the conception of history, with a beginning, middle, and end, a linear and cumulative sequence of distinct and individual events. And writing too changes in character, for with the loss of historical thinking perish three kinds of writing. These are, first, narrative, the tale of a singular past leading to present and pointing toward the future, the concretization therefore of teleology. The second kind of writing is biography, the notion of an individual and particular life, also with its beginning, middle, and end. The third is formulation of events as unique, with close study of the lessons to be derived from happenings of a singular character. And the loss of these three types of writing, commonplace in the standard history, Genesis through Kings, of the Hebrew Scriptures, signals a shift in categories, from the category of history, resting on the notion of time as a taxonomic indicator, to a different category altogether. For the concept of history generates its conception of time, made concrete through the writing of narrative and biography, the formulation of things that have taken place into the formation of consequential, singular events, comparable to the identification of particular persons as events of consequence, worthy of preservation; time starts somewhere and leads to a goal, and lives begin, come to a climax, and conclude as well. With the end of linear, cumulative, and teleological-historical thinking, the realization of history in narrative, event, and biography loses currency. Narrative strings together one time events into meaningful patterns, with a beginning, middle, and end; that is the medium of history, and that medium bears history’s self-evident messages (whatever they may be). Biography then does for individuals what narrative accomplishes for remarkable moments in the

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hebrew scripture and requirements of historical thinking 29 existence of the social entity; the narrative takes its measure in different dimensions, but the mode of thought is identical, and the medium for explanation the same. So too the conception of time, that is, a sequence of distinct moments, whether cyclical, following a pattern of recurrence, or linear, pursuing a single line from start to finish, also loses all self-evidence. In place, the passage of the fixed stars and planets, the moon and sun, cease to mark off ages and signify periods in human events—this year, this event, next year, that event—and instead measure something else altogether. Just as the passage of a person’s life from birth to death takes place outside of historical, that is, public, shared, eventful time, only rarely intersecting with the historical and the consequential, so the paradigms marked off something other than the cumulative passing of public time, or of any time that people ordinarily would measure at all. With the past eternally present, with the present simply another form of the immediate realization of times past, and with the future predetermined by rules long known and also formed as a recapitulation of the eternal paradigm, the conception of history as we know it from the Holy Scriptures of ancient Israel—“the Old Testament,” “the Written [part of the] Torah—loses all standing. Whether in the form of the view that what has been is what will be, that is, cyclical time, or in the version of the history from Genesis through Kings that posited linear time, with beginning, middle, and end, the concept of history simply gives way to another way of thinking altogether. Before we can proceed, we have now to establish that historical thinking did predominate in the Scriptures inherited by the Rabbinic sages and recast by them in the writings of legal, exegetical, and theological character through which they mediated Scripture into the(ir) Torah. II. Historical Thinking in Ancient Israel The Hebrew Scriptures of ancient Israel are nearly universally described as historical.9 Accordingly, the paramount position, “con9 Ideally, without further ado I should be able now to move directly into Chapter III of this book, but a respect for the expectations of colleagues requires me to spell out the evidence and argument of the received scholarship that sustain that

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siderations of priority or posteriority do not apply to the Torah” (én muqdam ume’uhar battorah),10 which characterizes the conception of history, time, and the eternal present of the Rabbinical literature, contradicts the deepest premise of the scriptural historian-theologians. The writings that attest to how ancient Israel organized and interpreted experience form a systematic history from creation to the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem in 586 B.C.E. That history, composed at ca. 560 B.C.E., is if not wholly continuous (leaving gaps as it does), yet quite coherent, beginning to end.11 It is formulated within a cogent theology of Israel’s life and experience, from the beginning to the present, and it expresses a clear sense of closure: past distinct from present, present separate from future. From the perspective of the final formation and closure, it is systematic and orderly and cogent from Genesis through Kings. This Primary History, as it has been called,12 both narrates and also accounts for the existence of Israel: how the group came into being, what happened to it over time. The narrative sets forth the meaning and message of its social existence. My purpose now is only to demonstrate two facts. First, all learning concurs that the Scriptures organize experience in a linear, historical way. Second, all learning concurs on the literary requirements for making a historical statement, which are, as we shall see, a sustained, continuous narrative of specific, unique events, on the one side, and the premise that the past leads into the present and adumbrates the future. statement. I have concentrated on writings in English, German, and, to a less extent, Swedish, but wherever the Hebrew Scriptures are studied in the academy, these same conclusions are set forth, and I could have included in these notes items in Hebrew, French, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese, not to mention Danish and Norwegian. The consensus is universal for Protestant, Judaic, and most Roman Catholic scholarship. I do not have access to Orthodox Christianity’s exegetical traditions or to its mode of reading Scripture, which accounts for the “nearly.” 10 The relevant source is given at the head of Chapter IV. 11 That fact has been definitively proven by David Noel Freedman; see his The Unity of the Hebrew Bible (Ann Arbor, 1991: The University of Michigan Press). This work is cited presently. See also Philip R. Davies, In Search of Ancient Israel, who assigns this cogent and systematic work to the same period as does Freedman, though for different reasons. 12 Sara Mandell and David Noel Friedman, The Relationship between Herodotus’ History and Primary History (Atlanta, 1993: Scholars Press for South Florida Studies in the History of Judaism).

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hebrew scripture and requirements of historical thinking 31 Third, Scripture’s representation of historical thinking not only follows a linear course but also posits a clear and present distinction between past and present, present and future, future and past. The beginning of its historical thinking lies in the recognition of an abyss and a barrier between now and then; the circumstance, as Freedman and Davies (among many) insist, is the age beyond the destruction of the first Temple in ca. 586 B.C. A succinct account of the received scholarly tradition on this matter begins with an account of why Israelite Scripture takes the path of history. The reason that the critical mass of the Hebrew Scriptures is set forth in the medium of coherent history is stated in the language of G. Ernest Wright, “Biblical theology is the confessional recital of the redemptive acts of God in a particular history, because history is the chief medium of revelation.”13 What marks Scripture’s treatment of history as distinctive is that while in the cultures surrounding Israel, the various types of history-writing are preserved in discrete form, “raw materials of history rather than history proper,” “...in the Old Testament, all these elements, as far as the Pentateuch and the Former Prophets are concerned, are embedded in a chronologically added narrative. It is this that provides their setting, it is only in this framework that they have eventually been preserved, and it is the narrative which is intended to determine their significance.”14 What is essential in the characterization as history of the Hebrew Scriptures is, first, the provision of a sustained and continuous narrative of distinct, sequential, and unique events. It therefore would be difficult to improve upon the great James Barr’s concise statement, “...in Hebrew thought the sequence of historical events, or of some historical events, is a purposive movement towards a goal; it is certainly not cyclic in the sense of something recurrent, but is non-recurrent, non-reversible, and unique.”15 The master having spoken, we may state very simply that the requirements for historical thinking in ancient Israel are the convictions that events are 13

G. Ernest Wright, God Who Acts. Biblical Theology as Recital (London, 1952), p. 13, cited in J. R. Porter, “Old Testament Historiography,” G. W. Anderson, Tradition and Interpretation (Oxford, 1979: Clarendon Press), p. 125. Porter’s survey of the matter is a good starting point throughout. 14 Porter, pp. 120-1. 15 James Barr, Biblical Words for Time (London, 1969). Second, revised edition, pp. 146-7.

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unique, bear meaning, come from an unrecoverable past, and point toward specific traits of the immediate and the here and now. Hence history is a composition of events aimed at explaining how things now are by appeal to how they came about. The conception of history may carry with it the idea of eternity, that is, beyond history; but then eternity is as distinct from history as is present from past time. The entire program adumbrated at the outset is covered in Barr’s statement. The importance of historical thinking in ancient Israel hardly requires extended exposition. The nearly universal conviction is stated very simply: “...almost any standard work on Old Testament religion or theology written in the last decades will agree, more or less explicitly, that the ‘knowledge of God was an inference from what actually had happened in human history’ and that ‘Yhwh is the God of history and history is his foremost means of revelation.’”16

We need not enter into debates on whether or not “revelation through history” accurately conveys the Hebrew Scriptures’ mode of thought. It suffices to observe that a broad consensus assigns to history a considerable place in the formulation of the world-view of ancient Israel, and any later development of an ahistorical mode of organizing experience, resting on the foundations of the Hebrew Scriptures, is going to require considerable attention. Rather, let us proceed to spell out the categories that are under discussion here. The historical mode of thought in the biblical history identifies boundaries between past, present, and future, and at the same time points to the paths that lead from the one to the next. Conventional and accepted statements take priority. That that brazen wall between past and present marks the presence of historical thinking comes to expression in the premise of Umberto Cassuto’s picture of why people want to know history. The somewhat florid passage serves to state definitively the premise of the present study: the pastness of the past marks the presence of historical thinking. Cassuto states: 16

Bertil Albrektson, History and the Gods. An Essay on the Idea of Historical Events as Divine Manifestations in the Ancient Near East and in Israel (Lund, 1967: CWK Gleerup), p. 11. The comparison of Israelite historiography to history-writing in other ancient Near Eastern settings is not germane to my argument, which concerns only Israel’s scriptures in their Judaic (and Christian) setting.

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hebrew scripture and requirements of historical thinking 33 ...there is not a person who does not feel in his heart the constant desire to know what is taking place around him—what is happening, what has already happened, and what will happen in the future. he strives to overcome distance of place and time, and to rend the veil that separates him from the facts that cannot be ascertained by his senses at the moment and the locality in which he finds himself. The wish to know what is occurring at a distance of place led to the technical inventions that were made in the course of the generations and which have reached a high level of development and success in our own times. It was harder to tear asunder the veil that hides the past from us; and it was still more difficult, if at all possible, to rend the curtain that conceals the future from us. nevertheless, despite the inherent difficulty, men constantly endeavored, in every place and time, in various ways and with varying degrees of skill and success, to tear apart the veil of the one and of the other. To the people of Israel are to be credited unique achievements in piercing the veil in both directions...As for the past, Israel has the distinction of being the first of the civilized peoples to create historiography, in the full and precise meaning of the word... In the days of Solomon, in the period of Israel’s political and social prosperity, there was created, for the first time, historiography in the sense with which modern scholarship invests the term, historical writing whose aim is to determine the facts as they are, and to explain how they originated and developed according to the laws of causality.17

We must not be put off by the writer’s verbosity and vacuity, since Cassuto stands for an entire literature on biblical history, which begins with the premise that history records times past, which are distinct from times present and future. The further premise, that an account of what happened, joined to an explanation of how things originated and developed, yields an example of the workings of the laws of causality.18 17

Umberto Cassuto, Biblical and Oriental Studies (Jerusalem, 1973: Magnes Press of the Hebrew University). Translated by Israel Abrahams. I. Bible, pp. 11, 16. 18 Among many works that state the same premises, note G. E. Wright, cited above, and William Foxwell Albright, From the Stone Age to Christianity. Monotheism and the Historical Process (Baltimore, 1946: The Johns Hopkins Press). The same views are broadly circulated in biblical scholarship reviewed by me in French, German, and Swedish,. but these instances suffice to make the point important for my argument: the pastness of the past, the power of the past to explain the present. But paradigmatic thinking will soon show us the very opposite: the power of the present to explain the past, along with the removal of any barrier between present and past. And, I shall claim in due course, that other way of thinking—a historical and explicitly anti-historical—more fully conforms to perceived experience (“Now I understand...”) than the historical, not only in the reversibility of time, but also in the conception of a governing paradigm that imposes itself on matters large

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Along these same lines, we find the formulation of John L. McKenzie, “...we speak of the experience of God in history as the experience of God in events, but in discussing the theology of history in the Old Testament, we mean the theology of the record of the events.”19 What is required is that “a series of events [is] seem to have an intelligible unity...The consciousness of history means the realization that the past lives in the present because the past has determined, antecedent to the decision of the present generation, the character of the group which makes the present decisions. The past has endowed the group with its peculiar strengths and weaknesses and at the same time has limited the options available to the group. A consciousness of history means that the group knows that it can affirm its identity only by affirming what it has been...”20 Once more, it is taken for granted that the past is over and done with, but also that the past bears power over the present. That power then serves to explain the character of the present and to set forth the choices confronting those who look toward the future. The given is that the past is over and done with, the present representing a free-standing moment, the future, another. The past does not form a presence in the here and now, though out of the past much that takes place in the present finds its origins; and the present does not recapitulate the past, undifferentiated and wholly integrated with it. To the contrary, that was then, this is now—but this teaches us about that, and that about this, a very different conception of time. That is to say, the Israelite scriptural history—the Official or Authorized History—speaks of past, present, and future, clearly delineating the boundaries that mark the one off from the other, at the same time carefully pointing to the orderly connections between the one and the other. Specifically, the story of Israel, encompassing the creation of the world, begins with Eden and the fall of humanity, then begins again with Abraham and the formation of Israel, and concludes with the fall of Israel out of its land. The past yields its lessons, but it is carefully distinguished from the present; and small, here and there, now and then. Certainly within psychology and chaostheory, paradigms, not sequential and linear patterns, take priority in explaining how things are. 19 John L. McKenzie, A Theology of the Old Testament (London, 1974: Geoffrey Chapman), p. 131. 20 McKenzie, p. 132.

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hebrew scripture and requirements of historical thinking 35 the present points toward the future, but the future is conceived as an autonomous realm of being. Time is sequential and differentiated. That is why Genesis through Kings tells that story, a coherent account of a past that is differentiated from the present yet connected to it, yielding a future that can be conceived out of the lines of order extended outward from the present moment. The standard history set forth by Scripture then accounts for a specific moment by appeal to what was and furthermore explains that same moment by prognosis concerning what will be. The lessons of the past then explain the present and dictate the shape of the future. The present state of affairs of course forms the centerpiece of interest. To think historically in the model of Scripture, then, is to recognize [1] the pastness of the past, [2] the difference between present and past, and [3] the linear, teleological lines that guide into the perceived future. Now what is at stake in this mode of thinking? It is a way of organizing experience by appeal to how things have been in explanation of how they now are and how they will, or ought to, be. Any other mode of thinking than the historical will have to find its own way to deal with the same intellectual tasks: to render plausible account of how things are. History chooses the past as the arena for the explanation of the present. Paradigmatic thinking makes other choices, on other bases, as we shall see in due course. The definition of history as a mode of social organization that animates these remarks derives from Jan Huizinga: “History is the intellectual form in which a civilization renders account to itself of its past.”21 That definition presents an obvious difficulty, since when “history” is defined as “account...past,” that which is to be defined turns out to form part of the definition; we find ourselves left with “past is past,” or “history is history.” By reference to a systematic, continuous, narrative story of how things were before now, a group of people may well explain who and what the group is. That view is underlined by Van Seters when he states, “The notion of a people or nation rendering account to itself has a dual connotation...on the one hand, to render account has a forensic sense of assessing responsibility for, and passing judgment upon, a 21 Cited by John Van Seters, p. 1. I found still more compelling the ideas of M. Sahlins, Islands of History (Chicago, 1985: University of Chicago Press).

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nation’s past actions and their consequences for the present state of affairs....However, another aspect of a civilization rendering account to itself has to do with corporate identity. A national history expresses what a nation is, and what principles it stands for.”22 Now let us first address in some detail what we anticipate in the historical mode of thinking about the social order.23 What are the distinctive traits of historical explanation of a group’s existence? History as a mode of social explanation takes the form of writing and only that form. Events may be preserved in a variety of ways, but formed into history only through narrative, and, for the case at hand, narrative is accomplished through the writing of sustained history, first this, then that; because of this, that happened. The narrative form realizes the conception of history. The components of that conception are, first, a clear sense of a division between past and present, second, an equally clear conception of the connection between what was and what is, and third, a conception of the selfevidence of the explanation contained in that connection. There must be a conception of the past, that which is over and done with; the present, that out of contemporary social existence that is seen continuous with, and explained by, what has gone before; and the meaning of what has been and what is, which is contained in an account of the future, the direction indicated by the course of past events that continue in the present. The whole takes the form of a story, a narrative that is continuous but also broken up into chapters, covering [1] once upon a time..., [2] therefore now..., and, [3] on that account, moreover in time to come.... Without a clear conception that some events took place once upon a time, at a point clearly differentiated from the present, we do not 22

Van Seters, p. 2. That is not to exclude the historical mode of thinking about the individual’s life, which yields biography. History is to society what biography is to the individual; just as much as history proves a social construction, so, obviously, does biography. But then, where we have a different mode of account for the social order from the historical, then we also must expect a quite distinct way of addressing the individual, other than the biographical one. That is to say, a different concept of time will produce neither history nor biography; it will account in a different way for the character of the social order, and it also will take up the topic of the individual that merits attention in a way different from the standard biographical “life.” 23

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hebrew scripture and requirements of historical thinking 37 have history, and narrative in the sense of sequence and order of past time, continuing into the differentiated present, does not take place. Not only so, but the differentiation of past from present requires also a clear perception that today is not the same as yesterday or tomorrow. It indeed is continuous with both but not at all the same. For if we do not know that what happened last week is not the same as what is happening today, there can be no historical mode of explaining how things now are, only a present-tense description. It must follow, therefore, that where we do not find a clear conception of the difference between the present and the past, we have an other-than-historical mode of explaining the life of the group. And—let me state with heavy emphasis: that is so, even when events perceived to form part of the past are addressed and encompassed within that explanation. Where we find recognition of what has happened in the past as consequential, it need not follow that historical thinking is in play. Only when the past is understood as separate from the present but critical in the formation of the present do we have historical thinking.24 It is important to differentiate historical thinking, fully realized in history-writing, from a variety of other approaches to taking account of what has happened. Recording facts out of the past, whether genealogies or events such as battles or great personalities now dead, need not and commonly does not yield history. Such records supply information, but that information is organized and interpreted in other-than-historical ways as commonly as in historical ones. The key to the matter lies in Van Seters’ statement that stands at the head of this chapter. History as a mode of thought and organization of social experience answers a specific set of questions; there are other ways to deal with these same questions, to accomplish the same intellectual tasks in the service of the social 24 Note that I have not introduced the word “tradition” into this discussion of history and its definition as a cultural artifact. The reason is that in the context at hand, I cannot say I know the meaning of the word. I find Van Seter’s treatment of this matter (pp. 2-3) effectively unintelligible. Nothing in the Rabbinic writings we survey justifies the identification of “tradition” with “the past” or with historywriting. So when he says, “History writing is also a genre of tradition” and when he speaks of “the functions of tradition—the uses of the past” treating these as one and the same thing, I simply do not know what he means.

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order. That is why clear indicators require specification, and Van Seters’s account serves: ...I would propose the following criteria by which to identify history writing in ancient Israel: 1. History writing is a specific form of tradition in its own right... 2. History writing is not primarily the accurate reporting of past events. It also considers the reason for recalling the past and the significance given to past events. 3. History writing examines the causes of present conditions and circumstances... 4. History writing is national or corporate in character... 5. History writing is part of the literary tradition and plays a significant role in the corporate tradition of the people...25

To these indicators I have already added a premise that Van Seters found unnecessary to list: history writing takes for granted the pastness of the past. It begins with the conviction that today is different from yesterday and from tomorrow, but also connected to both, and it takes as its task the identification of the connection between what is to begin with distinct and separate: yesterday, today, tomorrow. That I take to be the point of Nos. 2, 3, 4, and, given the teleology implicit therein, No. 5 as well. III. Historical Writing in Ancient Israel A brief account of how, in ancient Israel, history accomplished the task of accounting for the character of the social group—in the language of Van Seters, “...assessing responsibility for, and passing judgment upon, a nation’s past actions and their consequences for the present state of affairs...express[ing] what a nation is, and what principles it stands for...”—suffices. What concerns us is not the origin of historical writing in Israel, let alone the various components that comprise the cogent history that Scripture sets forth in its final form in Genesis through Kings. These issues of the history of historical writing have no bearing upon our problem. What we wish to know is how, seen whole and completed, the official history of Israel set forth its message. For that purpose, we begin with the brief summary provided by Van Seters in his account of the Deuteronomistic history: 25

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Van Seters, pp.. 4-5.

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hebrew scripture and requirements of historical thinking 39 ...The history moves from the founding of the nation under Moses, through the conquest under Joshua and the rule of the judges, to the rise of the monarchy under Saul and David. The fortunes of the monarchy are traced from its height under Solomon through its subsequent division and thew unfolding fate of the two kingdoms, down to the exile and the author’s own day...Dtr’s purpose, above all, is to communicate through this story of the people’s past a sense of their identity…The form of this national or corporate identity in Dtr’s work is quite simple. It is expressed, first and foremost, in the Mosaic (Deuteronomic) covenant by which Israel became the people of Yahweh and Yahweh became their God. The birth of the nation was the exodus from Egypt, and the conditions for its life in the land of promise were the laws of Moses. Violations of those conditions and of loyalty to Yahweh could only result in death as a nation and expulsion from the land—which happened in the exile.26

To fill out this definition, one further point is required. History is made up of stories. For stories to serve for historical purposes, they will prove unitary, as distinct from separate anecdotes denied all specific context; the story also will be given a chronological framework that sets it against a time scale.27 It follows that the requirements of history-writing implicit in this account are these familiar items: 1. narrative continuity among stories as just now defined, set forth on a grand scale, with a starting point and a coherent narrative extending from that point 2. systematic attention to the lives of consequential persons, the interplay of their distinctive personalities and policies with the history of the nation as a whole 3. sustained concern with the story of Israel the people, the covenant between Israel and God, the occasions that bring the covenant to realization. Yet a fourth requirement is set forth by Edmond Jacob, in his stress on the uniqueness of events, their non-repetitive character. He states, “...the nature of history is its inability to repeat itself. If,

26

Van Seters, p. 359. James Barr, “Story and History in Biblical Theology,” in his Explorations in Theology 7, London, 1980: SCM), pp. 6-7. But note that Barr distinguishes story from history: “story belongs to literary form,” and Barr will not regard stories as tantamount to history; that position governs here as well, as what follows indicates. 27

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therefore, God reveals himself in history, he does so through very precise events in time, the historicity of which is in no way weakened by the typological meaning acquired by those events.”28 Jacob makes a further point important in this survey: history is made up of not only raw facts but also their interpretation: “one’s idea of an event...assures for it its quality as an historical fact, that is, as a decisive fact in the course of events.”29 We may then add two further items to our catalogue of requirements: 4. the conviction that events are unique and not subject to repetition, exemplary but not typological 5. the intention so to portray a selection of happenings set forth as eventful as to convey a coherent account of things, to tell a story, once more, yielding a beginning and a middle and an end. That coherence, in Jacobs’ language, derives from faith in one God: “Faith in a single god who directs events according to the laws of justice for the purpose of establishing his kingdom was the basis of all presentations of Israel’s history and produced methods and results whose originality and value historians of antiquity are pleased to stress.”30 So the coherence of narrative, effected through a selection of happenings deemed to bear consequence and to form a statement of sense, proportion, balance, and cogency, forms an expression of a deeper conviction about the meaning of perceived experience, a theological conviction. We need not spell out the substance of that conviction, e.g., election, covenant, mission, miracles, providence and the like; such matters carry us far beyond the limits of our interest in the character of historical writing in the Hebrew Scriptures. That interest is defined by the requirement that we compare and contrast the character of history in ancient Israelite writing with the counterpart modes of organizing experience and explaining the social order that characterize the Rabbinic heirs of Scripture. But one point does demand close iteration. That concerns narrative, the composition out of this and that of a sustained and systematic account. The importance of sustained narrative in any definition of historical consciousness is underlined by Jacob Licht, when he states, 28 Edmond Jacob, Theology of the Old Testament (London, 1958: Hodder and Stoughton), translated by Arthur W. Heathcote and Philip J. Allcock, p. 183. 29 Jacob, p. 184. 30 Jacob, p. 194.

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hebrew scripture and requirements of historical thinking 41 “Reconstructing history means to narrate it...historians of ancient Israel did what all historians are basically doing: finding out as much as possible about past events and showing how they make sense....It was indeed quite an achievement to impose a more or less coherent single line of narrative on such a lot of events, beginning with the Creation and ending with the renewal of hope under Nehemiah....”31

The paramount requirement of history in Scripture is to show how one thing lead to another.32 This yields a theological point, e.g., divine reward, punishment, or mercy, or a theory of theodicy. But the main trait of historywriting is the narrative that is continuous and that bears a clear proposition. It is that the past explains the present, again Licht: “...everything becomes at least partially comprehensible when measured on the twin scales of chronology and development.”

These two matters—chronology and development—then form the center of interest. The latter poses few problems. It is simply the claim that one thing leads to another, “develops” from another. In extreme form the notion of historical sequence yielding historical explanation replicates in a crude way the logical error, post hoc, ergo propter hoc. That is to say, it is an error to suppose that merely because one event followed another, the earlier of the two events brought about, and therefore explains, the later of the two. That may be say, but it cannot be assumed to be so, and historical explanation appealing to development may well depend upon that assumption. But that problem need not detain us, since it scarcely captured the interest of the scriptural historians. But the issue of chronology—the very conception of what is measured by “the logic of time”—demands close consideration, as we shall see presently. Not all scholarship concurs on the proposition that narrative continuity yields history. We should err were we to ignore the important caveat of James Barr, who insists that we distinguish story from history: ...the Old Testament tells acts, events, speeches, thoughts, conversations, and all sorts of varied information, in a highly varied complex. Within this complex, however, certain relations receive particularly 31 Jacob Licht, “Biblical Historicism,” in H. Tadmor and M. Weinfeld, eds., History, Historiography, and Interpretation. Studies in biblical and cuneiform literatures (Jerusalem, 1983: Magnes Press), pp. 108-9. 32 Licht, p. 112. 33 34 35 36 37

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James Barr, Old and New in Interpretation (London, 1966: SCM Press), p. 81. Freedman, The Unity of the Hebrew Bible, pp. 4-5. Freedman, pp. 6-7. Freedman, p.6. Freedman, p. 8. 41

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part one: chapter i clear marking, and one of the clearest is that of temporal sequence. The narrative material has clear...marking of temporal sequence. It is characterized by chronological data, by family genealogies, by references back to earlier events, and by an unmistakable progression. It is thus like history, in that it reads in a temporal progression and tells a story which is cumulative from the beginning along a temporal scale. The nearness to history, however, should not be exaggerated. From some points of view what is related is rather a story than a history...33

At issue for Barr is whether we may say that history forms a medium of revelation, and Barr argues that that is not the case. Nonetheless, his position requires a clear statement of not only what we require to have history, such as Van Seters provides, but also of what we mean by history. What, specifically, is the substance of the ancient Israelite history? To answer that question we turn, finally, to David Noel Freedman, whose picture of historical writing in ancient Israel, encompassing the whole of the Hebrew Scriptures, suffices for our purposes. His is both the most current and also the most compelling picture we have of Scripture’s history as a whole. This he calls “the Primary History,” covering the Torah and Former Prophets, Genesis through Kings; these books form exactly one half of the Hebrew Scriptures.34 Freedman’s characterization will now form the definitive statement of the cogent narrative, made up of unique and irreversible events, that taken all together defines history in practice, therefore also in theory, in the received Scriptures. Freedman has demonstrated that the four parts of the Hebrew Scriptures—Torah, Former Prophets, Latter Prophets, Writings, form a symmetrical pattern. Divided in the middle, attaching the former prophets (Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings) to the Torah to form a single, continuous narrative, Genesis through Kings, we have precisely one half of the words of the entire Hebrew Scriptures. These nine books—Genesis through Kings, which Freedman calls “the Primary History,” reveal “the true nature of the initial main and central content of the Bible.35 Freedman’s reading of the Primary History is contained, in nuce, in the following: For the Hebrew Bible as a whole, the center comes at the end of the Primary History and at the beginning of the Latter Prophets—at which

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hebrew scripture and requirements of historical thinking 43 point the Bible tells of the captivity of the people of Judah, the loss of nationhood, and the destruction of the capital city of Jerusalem and the Temple. In a similar way, if we look at the corpus of the Latter Prophets, the same melancholy series of events is at the center, in the latter part of Jeremiah and the first part of Ezekiel. Even in the Writings, with its great diversity of materials, the central point is held by the Book of Lamentations...We can say, therefore, that the entire Hebrew Bible revolves around that point in time, that historical moment when the life of the nation came to an end, when tragedy struck in multiple blows at the kingdom, its ruling dynasty, and at the sacred center of worship and service of their God. Such a decisive event and its enveloping circumstances must have had a powerful effect and pervasive influence over the literature as a whole, and most of what is written in the Bible reflects this unquestioned fact of Israel’s (or Judah’s) experience.36

Now, lest we forget our starting point, which was Halpern’s characterization of the confessional reading of Scripture as ahistorical, we must take notice of how Freedman provides out of this historical reading, this Primary History, a clear statement of precisely those propositions that the ahistorical approach is meant to attain: ...what do these stories tell us about the humans in the picture? Briefly put, they tell successive stories of human disobedience and depravity, of resistance to the will of the Lord god, and of the necessary consequences in punishment and, more specifically, in banishment and exile. These stories are, simply put, successive parables about Israel’s experience, its relationship to its God and the consequences of its rebellion against the will of the sovereign Lord. For those writing and reading the finished version of the story, which was published shortly after the last entry at the end of Kings, the linkage would be unmistakable. Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden is a story of disobedience and rebellion against the commandment of God. The upshot is banishment from the Garden to the life of exile in the world. How could those in captivity in Babylon...miss the point or fail to compare the story in Genesis with theirs?37

In due course, we shall see that the Rabbinic sages read precisely the same stories in precisely the same manner to draw identical conclusions. But they formulated their reading and set forth their conclusions in a different way, one that transforms the Primary History into a statement of another sort altogether. It is this same

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Primary History that yielded for them precisely the meaning that they sought. But no less than for the framers of the Primary History, they came with an intrinsic interest in human events, and, as Freedman makes clear, the Primary History is so framed as to yield precisely the conclusions that that other-than-historical reading Halpern sets forth at the head of this chapter is meant to produce. The permanent, the ahistorical—these form other ways of statement the transitory and the material (in Halpern’s terms). But in so stating, I have moved ahead of my argument. I have now to ask about the premises of the Primary History: what makes that history historical? And then I have to spell out the nature of those other premises that underlie the paradigmatic reading of Scripture’s history, the reformulation of Israel’s being in other than historical terms that takes place in Rabbinic Judaism. It suffices to define the historicity of the Primary History through Freedman’s language: ...it is the first and perhaps the most important and influential prose narrative every written, preceding...Herodotus and his History of the Persian Wars by at least a century. The Primary History may be compared with such a historical work because it constitutes historical writing....it is clearly interested in real people, real places, and real events...38 The Primary History offered both an account of the origin , rise, ascendance, decline, and fall of Israel, and an interpretation of that prolonged and ultimately agonizing experience...39

These brief observations suffice to complete an account of historical writing in ancient Israel. The indicators of the presence of historical thinking, deriving from the concrete evidence of the character of historical writing, now are fully exposed. One need not follow all of Freedman’s theory to concur on his basic proposition, that the Primary History forms the center and unifying point of the Israelite Scriptures, and that the traits of this Primary History are historical in precisely the sense in which Halpern (among many) defines historical thinking and writing at the head of this chapter. So much for the surface of matters. Now we move to the deeper layers of thought, both historical and paradigmatic.

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CHAPTER II

HISTORY, TIME, AND PARADIGM “And the Lord spoke to Moses in the wilderness of Sinai in the first month of the second year after they had come out of the land of Egypt, saying, [‘Let the people of Israel keep the Passover at its appointed time. On the fourteenth day of this month, in the evening, you shall keep it at its appointed time; according to all its statutes and all its ordinances you shall keep it.”]” (Num. 9:1-14): Scripture teaches you that considerations of temporal order do not apply to the sequence of scriptural stories. For at the beginning of the present book Scripture states, “The Lord spoke to Moses in the wilderness of Sinai in the tent of meeting on the first day of the second month in the second year after they had come out of the land of Egypt” (Num. 1:1). And here Scripture refers to “the first month,” so serving to teach you that considerations of temporal order do not apply to the sequence of scriptural stories. Sifré to Numbers LXIV:I.1 I. Historical Writing and the Conception of Time Nature marks time in its way. Humanity marks time in its manner. Each accommodates the limits of existence—rocks, human beings, respectively, to take an obvious example. So geological time takes as its outer limit the five billion years of earth’s existence (the planet’s “history”), while human time is marked out in units of, say, the seventy years of a human life, or the two or three or four centuries of an empire’s hegemony. Now religion—Judaism and Christianity in particular—means to bridge the gap between creation’s and humanity’s time, speaking of time in aggregates that vastly transcend

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part one: chapter ii

the limits of historical, that is, human, time, and extend outward to nature’s time, that is, God’s evanescent moment. Scripture makes explicit the contrast between humanity’s time and God’s, “A day in your sight...,” and the task of religion, mediating between God’s creation’s time and humanity’s, defines the way in which Scripture is taken over by the paradigms that govern the Judaic and Christian reading thereof. But in so stating, I have moved far beyond my story. Let me start back at the beginning, with the critical task taken for itself by history: the making of distinctions among days, months, years, by reason of what happens in them. To call other-than-historical thinking merely “ahistorical” tells us only about what is not present, but not about what is, in the mind of those who read Scripture through the paradigmatic prism. To find out what is at issue, we have to penetrate into deeper layers of thought and consciousness, premise and presupposition. What is it that, at its foundations, history accomplishes for intellect? History serves as a means of telling time: measuring and evaluating and differentiating within spans of time and their sequence in passage. But there are other ways of doing so. So to identify what is at issue between historical and paradigmatic thinking about events—in other language, linear vs. fractal thinking—we have, therefore, to identify the premises concerning time and its measurement that define the basis for historical thinking and history-writing, on the one side, and paradigmatic thinking and reading of Scripture, on the other. What, exactly, do we mean by “time”? The word, “time,” standing on its own of course baffles us by its abstraction. Defining the term without appealing for assistance to the term itself in our definition presents formidable difficulties. But in this setting, these need not form obstacles to our goal. Once we recognize that the word can be defined, if not only, then at least best in context and for a concrete purpose, we may accomplish that provisional task that makes possible the accomplishment of our goal. That is, time as an abstraction defies my powers of definition, but time understood in the context of history, or for the purposes of cosmology, or in the setting of geology is readily defined. Utterly different units of time point to variables in context, from nano-seconds to aeons or ages measured in hundreds of millions of solar years. That is to say, in some disciplines of learning, cosmology, for example, time is measured in aggregates so vast as to defy our capacities of understanding and imagining. The units of time found

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history, time, and paradigm

indicative in history, days, months, years, and those treated as consequential in geology, multiples of millions of years, or in astronomy, light-years and beyond, show what is at stake. Historical time, by contrast to time required for the natural sciences and cosmological ones, appears trivial and inconsequential. That is for an obvious reason. “The ages” for humans, who live perhaps for seventy, perhaps for eighty years, and “the ages” for life on earth scarcely correlate. Not only so, but in other disciplines of learning, time, while measurable, is divided into units with no bearing upon the life of humanity—geology is a good instance. That is what makes the definition of “time” in abstraction parlous. Then let us define time in the setting of humanity and of history. For history takes for its arena of analysis that ephemeral moment out of cosmological or geological time in which humanity’s actions take place. But time even in the context of the life of humanity must be defined in both historical and also other than historical terms altogether. History takes as its premise definitions of time and its divisions, that derive from nature. History then further divides these divisions or characterizes them, imposing upon them history’s own indicators. So historical time forms a construct in which nature’s time (defined in a moment) and history’s time coincide. LeGoff expresses this same conception in a slightly different way when he states: The basic material of history is time. For a long while, therefore, chronology has played an essential role as the armature and auxiliary of history. The main tool of chronology is the calendar, which goes back far beyond the historian’s field, since it is the fundamental temporal framework within which societies function. The calendar shows the effort made by human societies to domesticate “natural” time, the natural movement of the moon or the sun, the cycle of the seasons, the alternation of day and night. But its most effective articulations, the hour and the week, are linked to culture and not to nature....The past/present opposition is essential to an acquisition of the consciousness of time.1

LeGoff underlines the interplay of nature’s time and history’s time, and that union is precisely what is at stake here, as I shall now explain.2 1

Jacques LeGoff, History and Memory, p. xix, xx. But LeGoff has no grasp whatsoever of systems of dealing with the past that are not historical and also not cyclical or mythical, He sees an effort “made by 2

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Let me spell out what I mean, beginning with time defined in the context of nature as humanity knows natural time. Nature marks day and night through light and darkness. Then, according to the most common human understanding of things, a set, a unit of light and a unit of darkness, forms one day.3 That is a convention that commonly serves to define the smallest whole unit of time, the complete cycle of a “day.” The solar day is not the sole natural unit of time. Nature moreover marks sets of such units of day and night by the phases in shape and size of the moon. The lunar unit of subunits of light and darkness then measures what we call a month. Here again, we find a complete sequence that is orderly and fixed, from new to full to waning size and shape. These too mark time, which then may be defined as a solar day or a lunar month. That is to say, “time” is the spell marked from one sunset to the next; or “time” is the spell marked from one new moon to the next. That definition hardly is ideal, leaving vague the sense of “spell.” But for our purposes (which become transparent in a moment) it suffices. Matters do not conclude (again, for the purpose of this exposition) with the solar day and the lunar month. Nature furthermore marks sets of such aggregates of light and darkness as the passage of the moon denotes. This is supplied through observations of the positions of the sun in the southern sky (from the perspective of the northern hemisphere), with the sun at noon high in summer, low in winter; with the shadows long in winter, short in summer; and so on. The solar year then marks off in a natural way still larger aghuman societies to transform the cyclical time of nature and myths, of the eternal return, into a linear time, punctuated by groups of years...centuries, eras, etc. Two important advances are intimately connected with history: the definition of the chronological starting point (the foundation of Rome, the birth of Christ, the Hegira...), and the search for a periodization, the creation of equal, measurable units of time” (p. xx. But we deal with a set of thinkers who inherited out of Scripture linear, historical time and utterly reshaped and recast that conception, and nothing in LeGoff’s treatment of matters recognizes those other than historical means of dealing with precisely the same facts as historical thinking that characterized Judaism, and Christianity, for so long a period in the West. 3 That is not to suggest the ubiquity of the conception of “a day” as a complete cycle of light and darkness. Indeed, even the Talmuds know the ‘onah, which is the smallest whole unit of time and is not equivalent to a solar day, light and darkness, ending with the next light. But it is sufficiently conventional to regard the smallest whole natural unit of time as a solar cycle of light and darkness that we may confidently define matters in that setting. I ignore the conception of “hours,” which nature on its own does not yield but form a social convention, all the more so minutes, seconds, and so on. These play no role in my exposition.

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gregates of time. These, then, form the simplest natural boundaries of time: the interplay of light and dark, the fixed sequence of lunar phases or appearances, and the equally fixed sequence of solar ones, further differentiated (in temperate climates) by the passage of the seasons (important, but not essential, in this argument). Now nature gives us three spans, units of time, and all three are correlated: the solar day, the lunar month, the solar year. If we wish to ignore the solar year we may claim that a fixed sequence of months denotes a lunar year, but that detail need not detain us, being irrelevant to the argument that is here unfolding. More to the point about the natural definition of time is a different fact. Nature’s time is repeated—cyclical, we should say—since in each solar year, the same events of nature repeat themselves. And the cyclicality of nature’s time bears a further consequence. It is reversible, in that what happens this year happened last year, as much as it will happen next year. Indicators of time in nature repeat themselves, by definition moving in any direction, forward or backward, equally naturally. Nature’s “events”—that is, points of differentiation of otherwise undifferentiated passages—are not unique but gain their signification through their points of commonality; one month is the same as the one before and the one to follow, so too the day (unit of light, unit of darkness), so too the year. So much for time as nature defines matters on its own: the interval between sunset and sunset, new moon and new moon, sun at apogee and sun at apogee. The earliest monuments of humanity attest to the widespread definition of these intervals by appeal to solar time (at Stonehenge, for instance), and lunar time is equally broadly attested as well. So for the purpose and in the context of nature as humanity perceives matters, time finds its definition through the taxonomy of natural phenomena: day, month, year. Now that simple digression into obvious matters is necessary to permit us to proceed to the question that is urgent here: the conception of time in history, which guides us in differentiating historical from paradigmatic thinking. Precisely what do we mean by “time” in the setting of history, and how does historical time relate to natural time? We commence with the simple question, How, in history, is time to be defined and measured? History recognizes natural time and imposes its taxic indicators, its points of differentiation, upon it. History knows days, months, years, but proposes to differentiate

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among them, treating this day as different from that because on this day, such and such happened, but on that day it did not.4 So historical time is a way of cutting down to human size the eternities of nature’s time. History takes over nature’s measures of matters and, making them its own, further marks them in its own way. The heritage of nature’s time is clear. Now, history—historical thinking, in its conception of time—takes over nature’s time and imposes upon it a second set of indicators or points of differentiation. History takes for granted the facticity of days, months, years, as indicating fixed points in time. But these spans of time are further differentiated by history, made into something that, in nature, they are not. Specifically, the power of history to measure time lies in its capacity to differentiate what in nature is uniform. Nature’s time is uniform, history marks unit off from unit; nature’s time is repeated and may be reversed; history’s events, the indicators of difference, have the power to mark off undifferentiated units of time by the very definitive fact of their uniqueness; and nature’s time is reversible, but, for the same reason history’s indicators are unique, history’s time also is irreversible, moving in only one direction. Nature knows no past that makes a difference from the present, no present that moves inexorably into the future. History’s time begins with the recognition that what is past is past, but leads to the present; what is present is here and now, separate from the past, also prelude to, but not part of, the future. History’s time is linear, marking past, present, future; history’s time can conceive of eternity, when time is past altogether. History does its work by recasting nature’s time into humanity’s dimensions, marking time in such a way that the human understanding can encompass and make sense of matters. History’s time forms humanity’s perspective 4

The same may description serves for astrology, with its interest in correlating the stars with human events; in that sense, astrology and history compete as modes of explanation of time and change. Appealing to the same kind of logic, linearity and the uniqueness of events, for instance, they propose different bases of explanation spun out of one logic. They differ in history’s insistence on the pastness of the past, a matter to which astrology finds itself indifferent. Admittedly, astrology invokes paradigms, but these derive from its alleged observations of natural and historical correlations, while religion’s paradigms (those of Christianity and Judaism) derive from God’s revelation of them, not humanity’s discovery. But astrology as an alternative to history and religion in the definition of time demands no consideration here; we have no astrological scholarship on Scripture, but a great deal of the historical kind.

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on the dimensions of nature, cutting down to human size the enormous dimensions of nature’s markings. How does history’s time impose itself upon nature’s time? As I have already indicated, history both depends upon, identifies the natural units of time—day, month, year—but further differentiates among them—beyond nature’s own points of differentiation—by reference to this-worldly events in the here and now. In such and such a year (however enumerated), in such and such a month (as indicated by its position in the sequence of months within a solar year), on such and such a day (as indicated, e.g., by the position of the moon within the lunar month), something noteworthy happened. That happening then marks the day, the month, the year, differentiating it from all other days and months and years. History’s way of marking time, then, is to differentiate among the units of time indicated by nature, and its medium of differentiation is the event that takes place and imparts its distinctive character on one day, month, year, rather than on some other. History therefore defines and measures time through two intersecting indicators, the meeting of [1] the natural and [2] the human. As is clear in the foregoing remarks, the context in which “time” is now defined is [1] the passage of days, weeks, months, and years, as marked by the movement of the sun and the stars in the heavens and [2] the recognition of noteworthy events that have taken place in specific occasions during the passage of those days and months and years. “Time” then refers to the passage of days, months, years, as marked off by natural phenomena and as differentiated, also, by human activity. For purposes of history, “time” is defined as the making of distinctions between and among days or weeks or months or years, and “history” refers to the utilization, for indicators of the difference between one day and the next or one year and the next, of noteworthy events.5 Let me spell out this mode of marking time, since the identification of its premises will lead us deep into the definition of the alternative mode. We know that in the course of nature, one season differs from the other by reason of the position of the sun and fixed 5 Barr’s discussion in Biblical Words for Time, pp. 170-284, provides as ample a survey of opinion on the conception of time as this work requires. The study of words for “time” and the like proves to have no bearing upon the discussion that follows, for reasons that will quickly become obvious.

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stars in the firmament, with corresponding changes in the character of the weather on earth, the sun high over the horizon, the heat, or low, the cold, for instance. One form of differentiation of day from day, hence one way of measuring time, then, will derive from events of nature, dry days, wet days, and the like. But there is another form of differentiation, and that concerns the correlation of the passage of the indicators of the natural world—in Israel’s context, the moons in their phases, the sun in the seasons— and chosen indicators of the social world. These, in the Israelite history, are simple enough to identify. King X ruled for so-and-somany years, and he did such and such, with the specified consequences. In this setting, then, natural time (divisions of, distinctions among days, weeks, months, years) and social time (divisions of, distinctions among days or years) are made to intersect. The advent of a king marks the counting of solar or lunar years; what happens in that sequence of days, weeks, months, years, then is treated as a coherent whole—a reign—and a set of such reigns then may be laid out in sequence. The sequence of reigns or other social significations of the differentiation of days, weeks, months, years already differentiated by natural indicators (position of the moon, shape of the sun, and the like) then forms the centerpiece of interest. For natural indicators left by themselves yield no sequential narrative, with a beginning, middle, and end, for the simple reason that nature on its own—once more, the sun or the moon in passage through the skies—differentiates days, weeks, months, or years, in only a single way. When we know the position of the sun or the shape of the moon, we know where we stand in the natural sequence of time, but in the nature of things, we also know that last year at this time, or next year at this time, we shall be precisely where we are now. So natural time yields no conception of beginnings, middles, and endings. It is only when the correlation between natural time and the condition of a this-worldly entity, a social group for instance, assumes self-evidence that beginnings, middles, and endings come under consideration. Then, and only then, questions of origins emerge: who are “we’? when did ‘we’ come into being? where are “we” heading? By appeal to the analogy of the “I,” the individual’s birth, life, and death, the social entity made up of individuals is given that same life-course, if not the same life-span. And that is the point at which the social world intervenes in the notation of the passing of the nat-

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ural indicators of things; time is no longer differentiated, day from day, week from week, month from month, year from year, by appeal to the course of the sun and the moon and the fixed stars. Time now is differentiated by two indicators, not one, the natural in correlation with, in response to, the social. In that lunar cycle, or in that solar cycle (in Israel: month, year, respectively), such and such happened. Then the cycle is indicated not only by reason of the natural difference, with its recurrence, but also of the social difference, with its trait of individuality and even uniqueness. Concretely, we note the confluence of occasion in the social world—the noteworthy event—and of season (day, week, month, year) in the natural world. And that permits us to define the premises of historical definitions of time: [1] human events (however defined), viewed as unique happenings, by contrast to the recurrent happenings of natural time, form givens, as much as natural events form givens, in the measurement of time; but these markers differ, being of a quite opposite character from the natural divisions of aggregates of time, the human events being unique, natural events common, human events particular, natural ones, general; [2] and nature’s time is cut down to size by history’s time. This is done by recasting nature’s time, which finds points of differentiation in cyclical events (lunar months, solar seasons), and is therefore marked off by recurrent points of differentiation. Since human events have the power to differentiate one unit of natural time from some other (whether day, month, or year), these events must be viewed as unique, irreversible, irrecoverable, and linear; for if they were not unique, irreversible, irrecoverable, and linear, they would not have the power to differentiate from one another the common, repeated, and cyclical units of measurement that operate in natural time [3] consequently, history’s premise is that nature’s time subordinates itself to history’s time; time is itself linear, marked off by unique events, irreversible in direction from past to future, clearly differentiated (for the same reason) into past, present, and future. Above all, history’s time differentiates past from present, present from future, future from past. The reversibility of nature’s time once lost, history’s time, its linearity above all, takes over. Chaos does not govern when things move in a line, that is to say, in order—in an order we can discern through close study of what has gone before.

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Kept in line, the sequence of events yields that order through its linearity. Events then can be strung together on a line, like pearls on a necklace. Linear history is not the only way of formulating that view of time and its meaning; cyclical history, to which we now turn, bears the same potential of ordering and explaining affairs. Neither linear nor cyclical time takes account of the irregularity of events; both accomplish the goal of demonstrating their regularity. Then neither can accommodate itself to chaos or admit to the unpredictability of things. The logic of history—linearity, division of past from present together with linkage of past to present—and the regularity of cyclical time contradict the disorder of the world and also fail to recognize what is orderly in the world, which, for mathematics, is expressed (for purposes of the present argument only) through fractals, and, for religion, as we shall see, through paradigms. Now briefly to recapitulate, nature divides time by appeal to not unique events but common ones. Nature marks the aggregates of time by reference to indicators that are reversible, recurrent, and not restricted by considerations of past, present, and future. Is there a way of dividing time in accord with dimensions humanity can accommodate, yet also congruent to nature’s divisions? That is, are there media for the division of time that humanity may adopt and that are reversible, recurrent, and unrestricted by lines of division between past and present, present and future? The answer is, there are two such ways, one familiar, the other represented here by the Rabbinic literature and at the same time unfamiliar and absolutely routine in the history of Scripture’s reception in Western civilization, Judaic and Christian alike. II. From Historical Time to Time Cyclical and Time Paradigmatic Time is understood in Scripture in a historical way: separated into past, present, future; irreversible; marked off by singular events; yet a powerful continuum into the present. If mythic time aims at the recovery of a primordial perfection, historical time in Scripture organizes reality in a different way. This is described by Brevard S. Childs in the following language: The Biblical understanding of reality in contrast to the mythical can be described as “three-stage.” There was a state of non-being pictured

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as chaos in the Old Testament. This was overcome by God’s gracious acts of `creation which brought world reality into being. A third factor was introduced by man’s disobedience … A history of sin began which was not a continuation of God’s creation but a perversion of reality. The Old Testament recounts the struggle between reality and the perversion of reality...The myth looks to the past, the Old Testament to the future. The reality which the myth wishes to maintain is understood by the Old Testament as part of the “old age” and therefore transitory.6

Childs’s stress on the difference between the Hebrew Scriptures’ history and the conception of myth closes off for us a range of issues that do not impinge on our inquiry. For, in the present setting, the real question is how to distinguish history’s time from that of paradigm or model or pattern, as I shall now explain. History is not the only way of thinking about natural time. History solves the existential problem posed by the enormous disproportion between humanity’s experience of time, which is by definition brief (a life-span or five successive life-spans) and ephemeral (here now, gone tomorrow), and natural time, from the perspective of mortal man and transitory, even ephemeral society, endless in its farthest limits. But that same problem may be worked out in another way of thinking about time altogether. Time is to be differentiated not only by events, unique, linear, irreversible, deemed to differentiate units of time by imposing their definitive character upon said units. Another way of measuring time within the human ambiance, besides nature’s way, may be formulated, in which humanly-sensible aggregates of time may be formulated in their own terms but not made to intersect with natural time at all. Defining this other way is made easy by finding the answer to a simple question. Can we differentiate nature’s time for humanity’s purposes not by appeal to indicators that contrast with nature’s indicators for dividing time but that cohere in character with them? Can we find indicators of the division of time that are human but also comparable to the natural ones? If we can find a way of thinking about time that both remains well within the dimensions of humanity’s sensibility and intellect (ephemeral, brief, yet encompassing) and also retains the character of consubstantiality with nature’s time, then we can answer the question in an affirmative way. 6

Brevard S. Childs, Myth and Reality in the Old Testament (London, 1960: SCM Press), pp. 83-4.

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part one: chapter ii Time Cyclical

One such way, entirely familiar in our context, is the cyclical one. That is the view of time that notes recurrent patterns, or cycles, repeated sequences of specific events that conform to a general pattern. Cyclical time differentiates natural time by marking of sequences of years or months or days marked by a given pattern of events, then further sequences of years or months or days that recapitulate that very same pattern of events. So time is viewed as forming not only natural but also social or historical aggregates, distinct from one another as much as one year is distinct from another, and yet repetitive of a single pattern throughout. The conception of cyclical time takes over from nature that uniformity of day, month, or year, but recasts the terms of uniformity to encompass humanity’s, not only nature’s, repetitions. Then history is the discovery of the cycles in an endless sequence. And profound historical thought will require the close study of cycles, with the interest in differentiating cycle from cycle, the discovery, for example, of when the cycles run their course (if they do). All of this intellectual labor is carried on well within the framework of natural differentiation of time. Nature’s time and history’s time then correspond in that both are differentiated by the appeal to the same recurrent indicators, though the indicators for natural time and those for historical time will differ. So the mode of differentiation is the same, but each said of differentiating indicators conforms to its setting, the human then corresponding to the natural one. Whence the sense of the cyclicality of time, such as Qohelet (Ecclesiastes) expresses in saying what has been is what will be? An answer drawn from human existence serves. Cyclical time extends to the human condition the observed character of natural time—or reverses the process, assigning to nature the orderly character of human life; the correspondence is what counts. Just as natural time runs through cycles, so humanity marks time through corresponding cycles. For instance, in the aggregates of humanity formed by family, village, or territorial unit (“kingdom,” “nation” for example), just as the seasons run from spring through summer to fall to winter, and the human life from youth to middle age to old age to death, so social aggregates prove cyclical. The territorial unit may be accorded a cycle of time, from birth through maturity, old age, and death, and its “history” may form a chapter in the cyclical patterns of human time, corresponding to

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natural time. Humanity’s mode of differentiating the time marked off by nature, then, accords with the natural indicators of differentiation: the life of the human being forming a metaphor for the life of the social unit. Then humanity’s indicators correspond in character to nature’s—the cyclicality of the one matching the character of cyclicality revealed by the other. Yet humanity’s indicators also prove natural to the human condition, with the life-cycle forming one (among a variety to be sure) means of differentiating humanly among the divisions of nature’s time. Time Historical If, now, we revert to the characterization of historical time offered just now, how shall we read the cyclical, as distinct from the historical, mode of formulating a human counterpart to nature’s time? Here are the point by point correspondences: [1] human events form givens, as much as natural events form givens, in the measurement of time; but these events correspond in character to those of nature, because, like those in nature, they recur in a fixed and predictable pattern, just as nature’s events do; human events, like natural divisions of aggregates of time, are not unique, not particular, not one-time only; they are recurrent and mark of an eternal return of the pattern set forth ab initio (whether from creation, whether from the formation of the social order); [2] but the problem of a human formulation of the nature of time is solved as much as it is by history, though in a different way; specifically, nature’s time is cut down to human size by cyclical time, but this is done in nature’s way. Cyclical time recasts nature’s time. As the latter finds points of differentiation in cyclical events (lunar months, solar seasons), so the former—historical time viewed cyclically—is marked off recurrent points of differentiation, but these are, in the nature of things, measured in the dimensions of the human life. [3] consequently, nature’s time does not subordinate itself to history’s time; time is itself not linear, not marked off by unique events, reversible in direction from past to future, and not at all clearly differentiated (for the same reason) into past, present, and future. It follows that nature provides the metaphor for cyclical time. That explains why cyclical time is coherent with nature in a way in which historical time is not. Specifically, nature in humanity is expressed through a cycle of birth, youth, maturity, old age, death. The next

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step, for cyclical time given the form of historical narrative (for example) is then readily to be predicted. How nature divides the time of a human life then is translated into, or raised to the level of, the social order. Then society (e.g., the territorial unit, the city, the community, the kingdom, the empire) is born, matures, grows old, dies, with a further cycle to follow, onward into time. That is how human time, like nature’s time, is deemed to conform to a cycle corresponding to the natural and the individual. The events of the social order viewed as comparable to the natural one are not unique, irreversible, irrecoverable, and linear, but common, recurrent, recoverable, and cyclical. Time Paradigmatic We see, therefore, two media for the taxonomy of humanity’s time, in response to the classification of nature’s time, the historical and the cyclical. But there is a third, which I call, the paradigmatic classification of humanity’s time; it is not historical, and it also is not cyclical. That is what has now to be defined. Time paradigmatic refers to a pattern, or a model, or a paradigm (the words are interchangeable here) that provides yet another way of defining time in human terms, which is to say, of taking the natural divisions of time and correlating with them aggregates of time that express time in human terms. But paradigmatic time takes a different measure altogether from historical, including cyclical time; and it deems nature’s time merely integral to its own. What, precisely, do I mean by “time paradigmatic”? III. Paradigmatic Time: A Definition What is at stake in the conception of time within paradigmatic thinking? By a paradigm time is marked off by indicators that are utterly free-standing, in no way correlated with natural time at all; a paradigm’s time is time defined in units that are framed quite independent of the epiphenomena of time and change as we know it in this life, on the one side or the cycle of natural events that define and also delineate nature’s time, on the other. Paradigms may be formed on a variety of bases, but all paradigmatic formulations of time have in common their autonomy of nature, on the one side, and events beyond their own pattern’s definitions, (whether by nature or by

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historical events), on the other. In the religions, Judaism and Christianity, it is God who in creation has defined the paradigms of time, Scripture that conveys those paradigms, and humanity that discovers, in things large and small, those paradigms that inhere in the very nature of creation itself. Reverting to matters set forth in Chapter I, these fractals (in mathematical language) or paradigms describe how things are, whether large or small, whether here or there, whether today or in a distant past or an unimaginable future. The paradigm identifies the sense and order of things, their sameness, without regard to scale; a few specific patterns, revealed in this and that, hither and yon, isolate points of regularity or recurrence. We know those “fractals” or paradigms because, in Scripture, God has told us what they are; our task is so to receive and study Scripture as to find the paradigms; so to examine and study events as to discern the paradigms; so to correlate Scripture and time—whether present time or past time then matters not at all—as to identify the indicators of order, the patterns that occur and recur and (from God’s perspective) impose sense on the nonsense of human events. A paradigm forms a way of keeping time that invokes its own differentiating indicators, its own counterparts to the indicators of nature’s time. Nature defines time as that span that is marked off by one spell of night and day; or by one sequence of positions and phases of the moon; or by one cycle of the sun around the earth (in the pre-Copernican paradigm). History further defines nature’s time by marking of a solar year by reference to an important human event, e.g., a reign, a battle, a building. So history’s time intersects with, and is superimposed upon, nature’s time. And, as I just said, cyclical time forms a modification of history’s time, appealing for its divisions of the aggregates of time to the analogy, in human life, to nature’s time: the natural sequence of events in a human life viewed as counterpart to the natural sequence of events in solar and lunar time. To use secular language, I cannot overstress the fictive, predetermined character of time as measured in the paradigmatic manner, that is, time as formulated by a free-standing, (incidentally) atemporal model, not appealing to the course of sun and moon, not concerned with the metaphor of human life and its cyclicality either. Paradigms are set forth by neither nature (by definition) nor natural history (what happens on its own here on earth); by neither

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the cosmos (sun and moon) or the natural history of humanity (the life cycle and analogies drawn therefrom). In the setting of Judaism and Christianity, paradigms are set forth in revelation; they explain the Creator’s sense of order and regularity, which is neither imposed upon, nor derived from, nature’s time, not to be discovered through history’s time. And that is why to paradigmatic time, history is wildly incongruous, and considerations of linearity, temporality, and historical order beyond all comprehension. God has set forth the paradigms that measure time by indicators of an other-than natural character: supernatural time, which of course is beyond all conception of time. So much for a theological formulation of matters. What, in thisworldly language, is to be said about the same conception? Paradigms derive from human invention and human imagination, imposed on nature and on history alike. Nature is absorbed, history recast, through time paradigmatic; that is, time invented, not time discovered; time defined for a purpose determined by humanity (the social order, the faithful, for instance), time not discovered by determined and predetermined, time that is not natural or formed in correspondence to nature, or imposed upon nature at specified intersections; but time that is defined completely in terms of the prior pattern or the determined paradigm or fabricated model itself: time wholly invented for the purposes of the social order that invents and recognizes time. Let me make these abstractions concrete, since I refer, for time paradigmatic, to perfectly familiar ways of thinking about the passage of time, besides the natural and historical ways of thinking. Once I define time paradigmatic as time invented by humanity for humanity’s own purposes, time framed by a system set forth to make sense of a social order, for example, the examples multiply. The use of B.C. and A.D. forms one obvious paradigm: all time is divided into two parts by reference to the advent of Jesus Christ. Another paradigm is marked by the history of humanity set forth in Scripture: Eden, then after Eden; or (as Freedman states matters, and, as we shall see, Rabbinic paradigms define matters), Adam vs. Israel, Eden vs. the Land; Adam’s fall vs. Israel’s loss of the Land. The sages will impose a further, critical variable on the pattern of Eden vs. Land of Israel, Adam vs. Israel, and that is, Sinai. A pattern then will recognize the divisions of time between before Sinai and afterward.

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IV. Paradigmatic Time: An Example in Rabbinic Literature These general definitions should be made still more concrete in the setting of Rabbinic Judaism. Let me give a single example of time paradigmatic, in contrast to the conceptions of time that govern in the Hebrew Scriptures. The character of paradigmatic time is captured in the following, which encompasses the entirety of Israel’s being (its “history” in conventional language) within the conversation that is portrayed between Boaz and Ruth; I abbreviate the passage to highlight only the critical components: Ruth Rabbah Parashah Five XL:i.1.A. “And at mealtime Boaz said to her, ‘Come here and eat some bread, and dip your morsel in the wine.’ So she sat beside the reapers, and he passed to her parched grain; and she ate until she was satisfied, and she had some left over:” B. R. Yohanan interested the phrase “come here” in six ways: C. “The first speaks of David. D. “‘Come here’: means, to the throne: ‘That you have brought me here’ (2 Sam. 7:18). E. “‘...and eat some bread’: the bread of the throne. F. “‘...and dip your morsel in vinegar’: this speaks of his sufferings: ‘O Lord, do not rebuke me in your anger’ (Ps. 6:2). G. “‘So she sat beside the reapers’: for the throne was taken from him for a time.” I. [Resuming from G:] “‘and he passed to her parched grain’: he was restored to the throne: ‘Now I know that the Lord saves his anointed’ (Ps. 20:7). J. “‘...and she ate and was satisfied and left some over’: this indicates that he would eat in this world, in the days of the messiah, and in the age to come. 2. A. “The second interpretation refers to Solomon: ‘Come here’: means, to the throne. B. “‘...and eat some bread’: this is the bread of the throne: “And Solomon’s provision for one day was thirty measures of fine flour and three score measures of meal’ (1 Kgs. 5:2). C. “‘...and dip your morsel in vinegar’: this refers to the dirty of the deeds [that he did]. D. “‘So she sat beside the reapers’: for the throne was taken from him for a time.” G. [Reverting to D:] “‘and he passed to her parched grain’: for he was restored to the throne. H. “‘...and she ate and was satisfied and left some over’: this indicates that he would eat in this world, in the days of the messiah, and in the age to come.

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part one: chapter ii 3. A. “The third interpretation speaks of Hezekiah: ‘Come here’: means, to the throne. B. “‘...and eat some bread’: this is the bread of the throne. C. “‘...and dip your morsel in vinegar’: this refers to sufferings [Is. 5:1]: ‘And Isaiah said, Let them take a cake of figs’ (Is. 38:21). D. “‘So she sat beside the reapers’: for the throne was taken from him for a time: ‘Thus says Hezekiah, This day is a day of trouble and rebuke’ (Is. 37:3). E. “‘...and he passed to her parched grain’: for he was restored to the throne: ‘So that he was exalted in the sight of all nations from then on’ (2 Chr. 32:23). F. “‘...and she ate and was satisfied and left some over’: this indicates that he would eat in this world, in the days of the messiah, and in the age to come. 4. A. “The fourth interpretation refers to Manasseh: ‘Come here’: means, to the throne. B. “‘...and eat some bread’: this is the bread of the throne. C. “‘...and dip your morsel in vinegar’: for his dirty deeds were like vinegar, on account of wicked actions. D. “‘So she sat beside the reapers’: for the throne was taken from him for a time: ‘And the Lord spoke to Manasseh and to his people, but they did not listen. So the Lord brought them the captains of the host of the king of Assyria, who took Manasseh with hooks’ (2 Chr. 33:10-11).” K. [Reverting to D:] “‘and he passed to her parched grain’: for he was restored to the throne: ‘And brought him back to Jerusalem to his kingdom’ (2 Chr. 33:13). N. “‘...and she ate and was satisfied and left some over’: this indicates that he would eat in this world, in the days of the messiah, and in the age to come. 5. A. “The fifth interpretation refers to the Messiah: ‘Come here’: means, to the throne. B. “‘...and eat some bread’: this is the bread of the throne. C. “‘...and dip your morsel in vinegar’: this refers to suffering: ‘But he was wounded because of our transgressions’ (Is. 53:5). D. “‘So she sat beside the reapers’: for the throne is destined to be taken from him for a time: For I will gather all nations against Jerusalem to battle and the city shall be taken’ (Zech. 14:2). E. “‘...and he passed to her parched grain’: for he will be restored to the throne: ‘And he shall smite the land with the rod of his mouth’ (Is. 11:4).” I. [reverting to G:] “so the last redeemer will be revealed to them and then hidden from them.”

The paradigm here may be formed of five units: [1] David’s monarchy; [2] Solomon’s reign; [3] Hezekiah’s reign; [4] Manasseh’s reign; [5] the Messiah’s reign. So paradigmatic time compresses events to

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the dimensions of its model. All things happen on a single plane of time. Past, present, future are undifferentiated, and that is why a single action contains within itself an entire account of Israel’s social order under the aspect of eternity. The foundations of the paradigm rest on the fact that David, Solomon, Hezekiah, Manasseh, and therefore also, the Messiah, all descend from Ruth’s and Boaz’s union. Then, within the framework of the paradigm, the event that is described here—“And at mealtime Boaz said to her, ‘Come here and eat some bread, and dip your morsel in the wine.’ So she sat beside the reapers, and he passed to her parched grain; and she ate until she was satisfied, and she had some left over”—forms not a one-event but a pattern. The pattern transcends time. More accurately, aggregates of time, the passage of time, the course of events—these are all simply irrelevant to what is in play in Scripture. Rather we have a tableau,7 joining persons who lived at widely separated moments, linking them all as presences at this simple exchange between Boaz and Ruth; imputing to them all, whenever they came into existence, the shape and structure of that simple moment: the presence of the past, for David, Solomon, Hezekiah, and so on, but the pastness of the present in which David or Solomon—or the Messiah for that matter—lived or would live (it hardly matters, verb tenses prove hopelessly irrelevant to paradigmatic thinking). Taking account of both the simple example of B.C. and A.D. and the complex one involving the Israelite monarchy and the Messiah, we ask ourselves how time has been framed within the paradigmatic mode of thought. The negative is now clear. Paradigmatic time has no relationship whatsoever to nature’s time. It is time invented, not discovered; time predetermined in accord with a model or pattern, not time negotiated in the interplay between time as defined by nature and time as differentiated by human cognizance and recognition. Here the points of differentiation scarcely intersect with either nature’s or history’s time; time is not sequential, whether in natural or historical terms; it is not made up of unique events, whether in nature or in the social order; it is not differentiated by indicators of 7 For the notion of the representation of Israel’s existence as an ahistorical tableau, see my Judaism. The Evidence of the Mishnah. Chicago, 1981: University of Chicago Press.

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a commonplace character. Divisions between past, present, and future lie beyond all comprehension. Natural time is simply ignored here; years do not count, months do not register; the passage of time marked by the sun, correlated with, or ignored by, the course of human events, plays no role at all. All flows from that model—in the present instance, the model of time divided into chapters of Davidic dynastic rulers, time before the Messiah but tightly bound to the person of the Messiah; the division of time here then can take the form of before Boaz’s gesture of offering food to Ruth and afterward; before David and after the Messiah; and the like. A variety of interpretation of the passage may yield a range of paradigms; but the model of paradigmatic time will remain one and the same. Not much imagination is required for the invention of symbols to correspond to B.C. and A.D. as a medium for expressing paradigmatic time. The case now permits us further to generalize. The paradigm takes its measures quite atemporally, in terms of not historical movements or recurrent cycles but rather a temporal units of experience, those same aggregates of time, such as nature makes available through the movement of the sun and moon and the passing of the seasons, on the one hand, and through the life of the human being, on the other. A model or pattern or paradigm will set forth an account of the life of the social entity (village, kingdom, people, territory) in terms of differentiated events—wars, reigns, for one example, building a given building and destroying it, for another—yet entirely out of phase with sequences of time. A paradigm imposed upon time does not call upon the day or month or year to accomplish its task. It will simply set aside nature’s time altogether, regarding years and months as bearing a significance other than the temporal one (sequence, span of time, aggregates of time) that history, inclusive of cyclical time’s history, posits. Time paradigmatic then views humanity’s time as formed into aggregates out of all phase with nature’s time, measured in aggregates not coherent with those of the solar year and the lunar month. The aggregates of humanity’s time are dictated by humanity’s life, as much as the aggregates of nature’s time are defined by the course of nature. Nature’s time serves not to correlate with humanity’s patterns (no longer, humanity’s time), but rather to mark off units of time to be correlated with the paradigm’s aggregates. It remains to reconsider those systematic comparisons between

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history’s time and other modes of keeping time that have already served us well. Since the comparison of historical and cyclical time is now in hand, let us turn directly to ask how we shall read the paradigmatic, as distinct from the cyclical mode of formulating a human counterpart to nature’s time? Here are the point by point correspondences: [1] in time paradigmatic, human events do not form givens, any more than natural events form givens, in the measurement of time; while both of those definitions of the eventful correspond in character to the course of nature, paradigmatic events find their definition in the paradigm, within the logic of the system, in accord with the predetermined pattern, and not in response to the givens of the natural world, whether in the heavens or in the life cycle; paradigmatic time also follows a fixed and predictable pattern, but its identification of what is eventful out of what happens in the world at large derives from its own logic and its own perception; nothing is dictated by nature, not nature’s time, not history’s time, not the linear progress of historical events, not the cyclical progress of historical patterns; [2] as we shall see much later—the matter is scarcely adumbrated in the case before us—nature’s time plays no independent rule in paradigmatic time; cut down to human size by cyclical time in nature’s way, nature’s time in paradigmatic thinking is simply absorbed into the system and treated as neutral—nature’s time is marked, celebrated, sanctified, but removed from the entire range of history, which is wholly taken over and defined by the paradigm. [3] consequently, nature’s time plays no role in paradigmatic time; time is neither cyclical not linear, it is not marked off by unique events, it is simply neutral and inert. Time is inconsequential; the issue is not whether or not time is reversible in direction from past to future, or whether or not time is to be differentiated (for the same reason) into past, present, and future. Nature’s time, with its sense of forward movement (within the natural analogy supplied by the human life, from birth to death) is simply beyond the paradigmatic limits, for the paradigm admits of neither past nor present nor future, differentiated but also linked; nor cycle and recurrence. These conceptions contradict its very character. A paradigm predetermines, selects happenings in accord with a pattern possessed of its own logic and meaning, unresponsive to the illogic of happenings, whether chaotic, whether orderly,

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from the human perspective. A model is just that: there to dictate, there to organize, there to take over, make selections, recognize connections, draw conclusions. To characterize paradigmatic time as atemporal therefore proves accurate but tangential, since atemporality is not a definitive taxic trait, merely a byproduct of that trait. Indeed, the very phrase, “paradigmatic time,” standing by itself presents an oxymoron. Paradigms admit to time—the spell that intervenes between this and that, the this and the that beyond defined within the paradigm. In that sense, time pertains, as much as the spell between sunset and sunset or new moon and new moon pertains in nature’s time. But in situating the events in the scale of human time, as history would have matters, to the model of Ruth and Boaz, David, Solomon, and the Messiah, captured in the little gesture, “and he passed to her parched grain; and she ate until she was satisfied, and she had some left over,” the matter of time simply does not pertain. For the action was not one-time (even for all-time) nor cyclical, but altogether out of history’s and nature’s time. Time is contingent, within the model. The paradigm serves to select events; model to endow events with order and meaning, structure and familiarity. Rich in time-sequences, the scene is a tableau, full of action but lacking temporality. Paradigmatic time organizes events in patterns, invokes a model that everywhere pertains; the atemporality then is a byproduct of the very character of thinking about time and change that governs. Time and change mark chaos; order is not discovered within time and change but V. Past, Present, Future Time and Eternity vs. Time Undifferentiated by Event Clearly, in paradigmatic existence, time is not differentiated by events, whether natural or social. Time is differentiated in another way altogether, and that way so recasts what happens on earth as to formulate a view of existence to which any notion of events strung together into sequential history or of time as distinguished by one event rather than some other is not so much irrelevant as beyond all comprehension. To characterize Rabbinic Judaism as atemporal or ahistorical is both accurate and irrelevant. That Judaism sets forth a different conception of existence, besides the historical one that de-

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pends upon nature’s and humanity’s conventions on the definition and division of time. Existence takes on sense and meaning not by reason of sequence and order, as history maintains in its response to nature’s time. Rather, existence takes shape and acquires structure in accord with a paradigm that is independent of nature and the givens of the social order: God’s structure, God’s paradigm, the Rabbinic sages would call it; but in secular terms, a model or a pattern that in no way responds to the givens of nature or the social order. It is a conception of time that is undifferentiated by event, because time is comprised of components that themselves dictate the character of events: what is noteworthy, chosen out of the variety of things that merely happen. And what is remarkable conforms to the conventions of the paradigm. Since we commenced this account of history, time, and paradigm, with a brief formulation of how ancient Israel’s historical thinking took place and how historical writing unfolded, let us double back and ask ourselves how the conceptions of time laid out here compare with the initial formulation of matters. Explaining what Judaic and Christian readings of Scripture do not do but unable to account for what they do accomplish, Halpern’s statement contains these important components: 1. The confessional use of the Bible is fundamentally ahistorical. 2. Worshipers do not read the Bible with an intrinsic interest in human events. like the prophet or psalmists or, in Acts, the saint, they seek behind the events a single, unifying cause that lends them meaning and makes the historical differences among them irrelevant. 3. In history, the faithful seek the permanent, the ahistorical; 4. in time, they quest for timelessness; 5. in reality, in the concrete, they seek Spirit, the insubstantial. 6. Confessional reading levels historical differences—among the authors in the Bible and between those authors and church tradition— because its interests are life present (in the identity of a community of believers) and eternal.

What we have found certainly conforms to Halpern’s observations, but hardly for his reasons. He stresses the ahistorical character of the religious reading of Scripture, and his stress is sound. But he has not explained that ahistorical reading, he has only described its components. The one point of explanation comes at the end. But the “because” clause strikes me as monumentally irrelevant to the matter at hand, since the ahistorical character of the religious reading

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of Scripture in Judaism and Christianity finds its explanation merely in the motive for reading Scripture. But that same explanation can serve for any number of readings of Scripture besides the ahistorical, and it is not particular to the data at hand. The explanation offered just now, the appeal to paradigmatic time as against historical or cyclical time, by contrast addresses a particular phenomenon and no other. The ahistorical character of the religious reading of Scripture turns out to derive from a conception of time quite different from that of history. And the rest follows.

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missing media: (i): narrative, biography

PART TWO —— THE ABSENCE OF HISTORY

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part two: chapter iii


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CHAPTER III MISSING MEDIA OF HISTORICAL THINKING (I). THE SUSTAINING NARRATIVE OF ONE-TIME EVENTS, BIOGRAPHY In many major currents of Judaism what I have here called story, unitary and cumulative, broke down into anecdote and annotation. The sense of temporal distance was lost, for in much Rabbinic discourse persons of remote antiquity are depicted as living and thinking in the terms of ...rabbis James Barr1

I. General Considerations The absence of historical thinking is signaled what we find and what we do not find by way of narrative.2 The survey of the requirements of historical thinking and writing identifies as indicators of history an interest in the formation of narratives out of the presentation of singular (“unique”) events. Along these same lines, historical thinking yields not only anecdotes but biography, not only incidents but 1 James Barr, “Story and History in Biblical Theology,” in his Explorations in Theology 7, London, 1980: SCM), pp. 15f. 2 My systematic analysis of Rabbinic narrative is in Rabbinic Narrative: A Documentary Perspective. Volume One. Forms, Types, and Distribution of Narratives in the Mishnah, Tractate Abot, and the Tosefta. Leiden, 2003: Brill. The Brill Reference Library of Judaism; Rabbinic Narrative: A Documentary Perspective. Volume Two. Forms, Types, and Distribution of Narratives in Sifra, Sifré to Numbers, and Sifré to Deuteronomy. Leiden, 2003: Brill. The Brill Reference Library of Judaism; Rabbinic Narrative: A Documentary Perspective. Volume Three. Forms, Types, and Distribution of Narratives in Song of Songs Rabbah and Lamentations Rabbah. And a Reprise of Fathers According to Rabbi Nathan Text A. Leiden, 2003: Brill. The Brill Reference Library of Judaism; Rabbinic Narrative. A Documentary Perspective. Volume Four. The Precedent and the Parable in Diachronic View. Leiden, 2003: Brill. The Brill Reference Library of Judaism

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a whole life, with a beginning, middle, and end. Scripture validates defining indicators in just this way. It follows that the next step is to formulate a null hypothesis. If the Rabbinic sages were to carry forward Scripture’s modes of historical thought and writing, then they ought to give us if not whole narratives (like those of Josephus) then at least fragments of a sustained narrative. They ought, furthermore, to give evidence of telling stories not to exemplify virtue or norm or conviction but to portray a singular moment, which is the opposite of narrative for exemplary purposes. It is now our task to characterize the writings’ formulation of events, on the one side, and incidents in lives of persons, on the other. How are events portrayed and for what purpose are they utilized? How are persons characterized, and to what end is the characterization employed? In setting forth the character of thought on the way to explain the present condition of Israel—an account of the social order and its meaning—we have to consider both how the Rabbinic sages set forth the results of their thinking and also how they do not do so. Since Scripture provided models, the character of those models— sustained narrative of events, “lives” of persons (e.g., Samson, Samuel, David, Solomon, Elijah, among many)—defines one part of our work: Do we find in Rabbinic literature any evidence of thinking comparable to the historical modes of thought that, in Scripture, yielded “story, unitary and cumulative,” or lives of important persons? The fact is that we find little sustained narrative or biography. But how to prove that fact? In what way shall we come to some reliable thesis on both the contents of the writings and also on what is absent from them? Because of the enormous volume of the writings, affirming what the documents contain is easier than declaring what they do not hold. But size is not the sole trait of the documents. Another, still more blatant one, makes the task feasible. The uniformity that characterizes the various compilations, respectively, most of which exhibit distinctive and internally consistent traits of formal rhetoric, logic of coherent discourse, and topical and even propositional program, makes a limited survey quite feasible. Since each compilation is uniform, we can accurately characterize the types of writing the respective documents set forth and on that basis draw reliable inferences concerning various composites’ authors’ conceptions and modes of

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thought. As a matter of fact, the documents have been shown to express a clear-cut program of writing and thinking,3 and, it follows, they also sustain the thesis that decisions have been made concerning both what is to be done and also what is not to be done. While readers will wish to examine cases that illustrate the character of the writings before us, a large sample will accomplish no more than a modest one to make the points critical to my argument. As a matter of fact, the uniform character of the documents means that we may gain access to the quality of the whole through an example of each of the parts. Among my selections in this and the following chapters through the shank of the book, Chapters Three through Seven, each item exemplifies the character of the whole, for the proposition at hand and for the document or set of documents subject to survey. Not only do I see no need to present the entire repertoire of available instances or even to catalogue them all. In fact, a thorough survey is already done, of which a reprise can contribute nothing to the problem at hand other than more data.4 On that basis I claim that each item I do present here exemplifies the kind of writing of the class before us that is characteristic of the document in which the item occurs. So much for the presentation of what we do find. But what about that which we do not find in Rabbinical writings, which (for this part of my argument) is the marks of historical thinking—methods of presentation, messages alike? While superficially an argument from silence, in fact it is an argument resting on substantial evidence. The argument from evidence is in two parts. First, as just noted, Scripture tells us what the Rabbinic sages can have done5 and chose not to do: narrative history, biography. When we maintain, then, that the absence of a particular kind of writing 3 This has been systematically defined by me in my Introduction to Rabbinic Literature. N.Y., 1994: Doubleday, which summarizes several score of monographs aimed at that proposition. 4 I did it in my From Text to Historical Context in Rabbinic Judaism: Historical Facts in Systemic Documents. I-III, cited in the Preface. 5 I could draw evidence from other Jewish documents, e.g., the writings of Josephus or of Jewish writers in Greek. But since the Rabbinic sages recognize and cite as authoritative only Scripture (excepting Ben Sira), we deal solely with the writings they themselves acknowledged as authoritative. They treat with perfect silence every other document held by scholarship to derive from Jews and to stand for (a) Judaism, and we must therefore do the same if we wish to understand the Rabbinic sages in particular.

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bears consequence, it is because, on the basis of the documents sages themselves deemed authoritative, we have reason to expect that kind of writing to make an appearance. Second, what we now do is draw inferences from not only what people do not do anywhere but also what people do everywhere, and this too then serves also to indicate what they choose not to do anywhere in their writings. For, in a literature of such consistency and uniformity, the choices people always make inform us, also, about what they have chosen never to do. That, in the nature of things, will be the opposite of what they do do. If sages tell stories as illustrative anecdotes but not as part of strings of meaningful events that point to a given proposition, that means they choose to supply anecdotes and not narratives thereof. If they treat chapters of lives of sages in isolation from the entire life of a given sage, telling stories but providing no biography, that is because they choose to give us episodes but not biography. The demonstration that historical thinking does not govern in the documents under study here requires two steps. We have first to characterize the one-time events that the documents under study do set forth, and, second, with the sequences of one-time events portrayed in Genesis or Kings in mind, ask about how these events serve the program of the framers of documents. So we both survey what we find and, along the way, take note of what we do not find. At issue are the matters of presentation and use of one-time events for historical purposes and the comparable narrative of lives of persons for biography. We examine the documents in sequential groups, and we consider a minimum of representative passages from each. II. The Mishnah, Tosefta, Abot, Sifra, Sifré to Numbers, and Sifré to Deuteronomy

A.

One-time Events

One-time events in the Mishnah mainly comprise precedents, hence not historical incidents of a singular character but exemplary ones, speaking of a pattern and not an incident. These may occur in narrative form, but, in the Mishnah, are meant to exemplify, rather than to characterize, to move from the particular to the general, rather

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than vice versa. Here, for example, Gamaliel’s report of the practice of his father’s household hardly constitutes an historical narrative: A. Said Rabban Gamaliel, “In my father’s household, they used to designate one [portion of produce as] peah for all of the olive trees that they owned in every direction [all that they had together]. B. “But as regards carob trees, all that are within sight of each other [constitute a single orchard, and peah is designated for all of them together].” M. Peah 2:4

The item is best classified not as a singular incident but as an exemplary one; it is preserved in context not to show what is unique or personal but the very opposite, providing a precedent. Here, then, we have not evidence of historical thinking but an example of the annotation of a law code with cases serving as precedents. Precedents, stating the law in the form of a case, are represented by the following: A. There was a case involving a boy who sanctified his spade to Heaven, and his father brought him before R. Aqiba. B. And R. Aqiba interrogated him. C. He said to him, “My son, to what did you sanctify it? Perhaps it was to the sun or to the moon or the stars and the planets, because they are pretty?” D. He said to him, “I sanctified it only to Him to whom iron belongs blessed be He.” E. R. Aqiba said, “This one has been interrogated and found in good order.” Mishnah-tractate Nedarim 5:16 A There was the case involving a certain child. B. They were traveling on a ship, and a sea-storm rose against them, and they were crying to their god, as it is said, “And the sailors feared and cried, each to his god” [Jonah 1:5]. C. That child said to them, “How long are you going to act foolishly? Cry out to him who created the sea!” D. And the case came before the sages and they said, “This one has been interrogated and found in good order.’’ Mishnah-tractate Nedarim 5:17

Items like these provide the opposite of one-time, unique events; what makes these items important is that they are not remarkable or eventful in a historical sense but authoritative in a legal context and only there. Where, moreover, we are told what sages did on some particular

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occasion, the little tale merely forms a setting for what matters, which is a report of an action that validates like actions. Here is a chapter that serves both as a precedent and as an allusion to an event in the life of several sages, that is, a trip that they made. A. One whose produce is unavailable to him [when the time for removal arrives] B. must make an oral declaration [designating the required agricultural gifts and transferring them to their proper recipients]— C. M‘SH B: Rabban Gamaliel and the elders were traveling on a ship [when the time for removal occurred]. Said Rabban Gamaliel, “The tenth I intend to measure out [and designate as first tithe] is given to Joshua [who is a Levite], and the place [in which it is located] is rented to him. The other tenth which I intend to remove [and designate as poor man’s tithe] is given to Aqiba ben Joseph, who will make it available to the poor and the place [in which it is located] is rented to him.” D. Said R. Joshua, “The tenth I intend to measure out [of the first tithe I will receive from Rabban Gamaliel and which I intend to designate as heave offering of the tithe for the priest], and the place [in which it is located] is rented to him.” E. And they received rent payment from one another. M. M.S. 5:9

The fact that sages were traveling on a ship is included not in order to tell us how sages went somewhere, for some singular purpose; it is only to explain why the actions that they took bear special interest. A final item suffices to prove that, for the document at hand, singular incidents served no role, and where we do find anecdotes, they are presented for an other-than-historical purpose; they are not preserved as the raw materials of either history or biography. They point toward what I call, the missing media of historical thinking. That at stake is the search for precedents becomes clear when two versions of a given incident are preserved. That allows us to identify the purpose of preserving the incident, and, it is clear, the reason is to preserve the law in narrative form. In this instance, the practice of Gamaliel’s household is recorded, but two versions are available, each to serve its respective legal position: A. “He who dwells in the same courtyard with a gentile, B. “or with [an Israelite] who does not concede the validity of the erub — C. “lo, this one [the gentile or nonbeliever] restricts him [from using the courtyard],” the words of R. Meir. D. R. Eliezer b. Jacob says, “Under no circumstances does any one

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prohibit [the believer in the erub to make use of the courtyard] unless two Israelites prohibit one another.” M. Erubin 6:1 A. Said Rabban Gamaliel, M’SH B: “A Sadducean lived with us in the same alleyway in Jerusalem. B. “And father said to us, ‘Make haste and bring all sorts of utensils into the alleyway before he brings out his and prohibits you [from carrying about in it].’” C. R. Judah says it in another version, “Make haste and do all your needs in the alleyway before he brings out his utensils and prohibits you [from using it].” M. Erubin 6:2

These compositions, and many like them, find a place in the Mishnah because they stand not for singular events but for the opposite, exemplary ones; all of them are readily translated into abstract language for the presentation of normative rules. The cases at hand serve for nearly the whole of the Mishnah. We do find narratives of a sustained order, but these have nothing to do with an effort to record a story that forms the counterpart to the Authorized History from Genesis through Kings or any part of it; and the narrative I shall portray later in no way conforms to the indicators of historical thinking that are set out in the Authorized History. As to the Tosefta, its still richer collection does not materially change the picture these items provide. What about stories about sages outside of the legal setting? A great many of these turn out to supply a narrative setting for a set of sayings, not an anecdote in any way resembling a “one-time event.” A single example of how a narrative setting is provided for what is in fact an encounter of talking heads suffices: Sifré to Deuteronomy XLI:II 4. A. And it says, “Thus says the Lord, ‘For three transgressions of Judah, yes, for four, I will not reverse it, because they have rejected the law of the Lord and have not kept his statutes” (Amos 2:4). 5. A. R. Tarfon, R. Aqiba, R. Yosé the Galilean were reclining [at a meal] in the house of Aris in Lydda. This question was presented to them: “What is more important, learning or action?” B. Said R. Tarfon, “Action is more important.” C. R. Aqiba says, “Greater is learning.” D. All responded, saying, “More important is learning, for learning brings about action.” E. R. Yosé the Galilean says, “Learning is more important, for the religious duty to learn [and study the Torah] came prior to the religious duty to separate dough-offering by forty years, to separate

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part two: chapter iii tithes by fifty-four years [the conquest of the land requiring fourteen], the obligation of the taboo of the years of release by sixty-one years, and prior to the requirement to observe the jubilee years by one hundred and three.”

Here again, “they were reclining at such and such a place...” in no way marks the anecdote as a historical account of a one-time event; true, the discussion is assumed to have been singular; but the inclusion of details of where and how it took place has no bearing on what happened; and the interest of the story for time to come derives solely from what was said. The contents concern enduring philosophical issues; the anecdote before us forms a counterpart to a Platonic dialogue in nuce, not to an event (of an other-than-intellectual character) in the lives of the persons portrayed; any other names will have served equally well; anybody else’s venue will have sufficed; and it goes without saying, even if we concede the facticity of every detail, we have no more history than if we denied them all. That is not to suggest sages make no allusions to important events of their times. But from what they say, we can scarcely reconstruct those events. And more to the point, sages make no effort at forming a narrative made up of singular happenings, telling the whole tale and conveying its implications and meaning. One example suffices. We have a clear reference to the siege of Betar and other events connected to the war of 132-135. But these matters serve only to illustrate the workings of the law, bearing no profound implications for the study of either history or the law. J. Said Rabban Simeon b. Gamaliel, “There was this precedent: A band of prisoners went to Antioch, and upon their return they said, ‘Of our group only So-and-so, a Jew, was killed.’ And the case came before sages, who permitted his wife to remarry.” Tosefta Yebamot 14:7 A. SWB M‘SH B: Sixty men went down to the fortress at Betar and not a single one of them came back. And the matter came before sages, who permitted their wives to remarry. B. They give testimony concerning him [the deceased] only by mentioning his name and the name of his father, his name and the name of his town. C. But if one said, “So and so has gone forth from such and such a town,” and they searched in that townD. if only he went forth from that town, his wife may remarry. Tosefta Yebamot 14:8

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The circumstances of the precedent invoke the catastrophe of Betar; sages knew perfectly well what was happening around them. That makes all the more striking their failure to put together a sequence of events into a coherent picture, or even to compose coherent anecdotal accounts of events one by one. Even stories that clearly record one-time, specific incidents, set forth not principally as precedents, still point toward normative behavior; we have a variety of instances in which the law is given a history. But ordinarily, the substance of that history, that is, the appeal to concrete events to explain the formation of the law, serves in context in the same familiar way, that is, as an account for why the law is one way, rather than another. So even when the narrator claims to tell us things that have actually taken place, the context of the account remains the same. More to the point, out of incidents such as these, no sustained narrative emerges, nor, indeed, an account of an event exemplary in any context other than that of the law that the Mishnah proposes to set forth. The point remains the same throughout, namely, where we do find writing that purposes to tell us how things were, the purpose of the narrative is very rarely other than the exposition of the law, its logic and its context in the enduring social order. Here is a set of such one-time narratives that yield an explanation for why the law is what it is: A. B. C. will

M’SH S: More than forty pairs of witnesses came forward. But R. Aqiba kept them back at Lud. Rabban Gamaliel said to him, “If you keep back the people, you turn out to make them err in the future.” M. Rosh Hashanah 1:6 A. A father and his son who saw the new moon should go [to give testimony]. B. It is not that they join together with one another [to provide adequate testimony], but so that, if one of them should turn out to be invalid [as a witness], the other may join with someone else [to make up the requisite number of witnesses]. C. R. Simeon says, “A father and his son, and all relatives, are valid to give testimony about the new moon.” D. Said R. Yosé, “M’SH B: Tobiah, the physician, saw the new moon in Jerusalem-he, his son, and his freed slave. And the priests accepted him and his son [as witnesses to the new moon], but they invalidated the testimony of his slave. But when they came before the court, they accepted his [testimony] and that of his slave, but they invalidated that of his son.” M. Rosh Hashanah 1:7

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We need not survey the entire repertoire of the first layer of the Rabbinic writings to make the point that, even when one-time events are set forth, they ordinarily serve an other-than historical purpose, and rarely account for the law by appeal to a specific, one-time event. The Mishnah’s authors have no interest in explaining the law as the response to episodes or ad hoc situations. Historical narrative in a legal context, while rare, provides important evidence that, in the formation of law, one-time concrete incidents were taken into account and did form the basis for law transcending the occasion. These are not many, but they provide evidence that historical thinking does form an occasion for transforming a singular situation and ad hoc law pertaining to it into an exemplary case and a fixed norm emerging therefrom. So far as I am able to discern, for the Mishnah, all such cases pertain to the Temple,6 which is the only locus in which singular events yield enduring, legal consequences. That result conforms to the fact that we shall examine later on, that the Temple is the only locus of history, and the cult the only focus of sustained narrative, for the Mishnah. Here are a historical events or facts accorded normative consequence: K. [At one time] all blessings in the Temple concluded with “forever.” L. When the heretics corrupted [the practice] and said, “There is but one world [but no world to come],” they ordained that they should say, “forever and ever” [thus suggesting the existence of a world to come]. N. And they ordained that an individual should greet his fellow with [God’s] name, O. in accordance with what is said, And behold Boaz came from Bethlehem; and he said to the reapers, “The Lord be with you!” And they answered, “The Lord bless you” (Ruth 2:4). P And it says, “The Lord is with you you mighty man of valor” (Judges 6:12). Q. And it says,” Do not despise your mother when she is old” (Prov. 23:22). R. And it says, “It is the time for the Lord to act, for thy law has been broken” (Ps. 119:126). M. Ber. 9:5

What is important here is the allegation that in response to a particular event or set of events, sages made the law different from what it had been. Comparable cases include these: 6

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That fact will take on meaning in Part Four, below.

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A. Nittai and Teqoan brought dough offering from Beitar [to the Land of Israel to give it to a priest], and [the priesthood] would not accept [it] from him. B. People from Alexandria brought their dough offering from Alexandria [to the Land of Israel to give it to a priest], and [the priesthood] would not accept [it] from them. C. People from Mount Sevoim brought their firstfruits [to Jerusalem to give to a priest] before Pentecost [too early (M. Bik. 1:3)], and [the priesthood] would not accept [the firstfruits] from them... M. Hal. 4:10 A. The son of Antines brought firstborn [animals] up from Babylonia [to the Land of Israel to give to a priest], and [the priesthood] would not accept [them] from him. B. Joseph the priest brought the first of the wine and oil, [to the land of Israel to give to a priest], and [the priesthood] would not accept [it] from him. C. He even brought his children and the members of his household up [to Jerusalem] to celebrate Minor Passover [the festival on the fourteenth of Iyyar for those who were in a state of uncleanness on the fourteenth of Nisan, the date of Passover (Num. 7:3-11) in Jerusalem, and they sent him away, D. so that the matter would not be established as obligatory. E. Ariston brought his firstfruits from Apamea [to Jerusalem to give to a priest] and [the priesthood] accepted [the firstfruits] from him, because they said, “One who acquires [land] in Syria is like one who acquires [land] in the outskirts of Jerusalem.” M. Hal. 4:11

These episodes hardly qualify as paragraphs in a historical chapter. Another fine example of the focus upon the Temple in the narrative of specific incidents that affected the formation of the law is the case in which the Boethusians made troubles for sages in the determination of the lunar calendar, a matter critical to the conduct of the cult and determined in the Temple: A. At first they would accept testimony concerning the new moon from everybody [M. R.H. 2:1B]. B. One time the Boethusians hired two witnesses to come and fool the sages. C. For the Boethusians do not concede that Pentecost should come at any time except on the day following the Sabbath. D. One of them came along and gave his testimony and went his way. E. Then the second one said, “I was coming up at Ma#aleh Adumim, and I saw it crouching between two rocks, F. “its head looking like a calf, and its ears looking like a lamb, and its horns looking like a deer, and its tail lying between its thighs.

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part two: chapter iii G. “I saw it, I was astonished, and I fell backward. H. “And lo, [I found] two hundred zuz tied up for me in my purse.” I. They said to him, “The two hundred zuz are given over to you as a gift. The one who hired you will be laid out on the post. J. “Why did you get involved in this matter?” K. He said to them, “I heard that the Boethusians were planning to confuse sages. I said to myself, ‘It’s better that I should go and tell sages.”’ Tosefta Rosh Hashanah 1:15

The determination of the calendar provides one fine instance of how the interests of the cult determined the inclusion of a historical explanation for a matter of law. And once historical circumstance enters into deliberations on the law, then the circumstance will be preserved and described. But it is, we see, in the setting of not narrative history but legal exposition—and therefore underlines the negative result of this survey: history in the form of unique events set forth in sustained narrative is a neglected medium of expression. Linear thinking is replaced here by thought about the discovery and presentation of recurrent norms or patterns. So the very formulation of historical materials underscores the paradigmatic character of the thought behind the writing. A still weightier case than the foregoing concerns major changes in Temple procedures by reason of historical events of a formidable character. When the Temple was destroyed, various ordinances were made to take account of the loss of the Temple, and these responded to a specific, historical incident: A. The festival day of the New Year which coincided with the Sabbath B. in the Temple they would sound the shofar C. But not in the provinces. D. When the Temple was destroyed, Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai made the rule that they should sound the shofar in every locale in which there was a court. E. Said R. Eleazar, “Rabban Yohanan b. Zakkai made that rule only in the case of Yabneh alone.” E They said to him, “All the same are Yabneh and every locale in which there is a court.” Mishnah-tractate Rosh Hashanah 4:1

The continuation of the passage need not detain us. Just as the Temple alone receives a sustained narrative hearing, as we shall see, so the Temple is the principal place in which history is taken into account in the portrait of the formation of the rules. Seen in con-

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text, that fact is not only not surprising but confirms the general ahistorical picture of law, its history and the factors that contributed to its formation. It follows that, where we find a historical mode of thinking about the law and its formation, it is rare and ordinarily pertains to the cult and Temple. B. Composite of one-time Events into a Narrative Where we find one-time events formed into a narrative of some sort, the cult defines the occasion. Where weighty, singular events matter, it is because of the impact upon the Temple or its cult. History then is absorbed into an ahistorical framework, being deprived of independent standing in the great scheme of things. I give only part of the passage: A. When murderers became many, the rite of breaking the heifer’s neck was cancelled. B. [This was] when Eleazar b. Dinai came along, and he was also called Tehinah b. Perishah. Then they called him, “Son of a murderer.” C. When adulterers became many, the ordeal of the bitter water was cancelled. D. And Rabban Yohanan b. Zakkai cancelled it, since it is said, “I win not punish your daughters when they commit whoredom, nor your daughters-in-law when they commit adultery, for they themselves go apart with whores” (Hosea 4:14). M. Sotah 9:9 A. Yohanan, high priest, did away with the confession concerning tithe. B. Also: He cancelled the rite of the Awakeners and the Stunners, C. Until his time a hammer did strike in Jerusalem. D. And in his time no man had to ask concerning doubtfully tithed produce. M. Sotah 9:10 A. R. Simeon b. Eleazar says, “[When] purity [ceased], it took away the taste and scent; [when] tithes [ceased], they took away the fatness of corn.” B. And sages say, “Fornication and witchcraft made an end to everything.” M. Sotah 9:13 A. In the war against Vespasian they decreed against the wearing of wreaths by bridegrooms and against the wedding drum.

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part two: chapter iii C. In the war against Titus they decreed against the wearing of wreaths by brides, D. And [they decreed] that a man should not teach Greek to his son. D. In the last war [Bar Kokhba’s] they decreed that a bride should not go out in a palanquin inside the town. E. But our rabbis [thereafter] permitted the bride to go out in a palanquin inside the town. M. Sotah 9:13

Now these clear references to one-time events, treated as part of a coherent complex, do raise the possibility of a historical account of considerable proportions; these form not anecdotes but incidents in the presentation of a pattern, leading toward a conclusion. But, in due course, we shall see that they form not an exception to the rule that the first phase in the formation of the Rabbinic documents ignore the media of historical thinking, but proof of a different rule. It is that where sustained narrative does emerge in the Rabbinic literature in the initial phase of its unfolding, that narrative concerns only one topic, and that is, the Temple: the conduct of its cult, the history of its building. There we do find sustained narrative, and there we do find full utilization of the media of historical thinking; one-time events are formed into accounts that, if not linear, then at least show sustained and cogent character. C.The Raw Materials for Biography Where we deal with named figures, not sages, we find nothing that would generate or sustain a biography. Rather, where noteworthies are treated, they are turned into examples of virtue, on the one side, or the source of precedents, no different from sages, on the other. Here is a fine example of how a chapter in the life of a person is shaped by the requirements of finding, or fabricating, a useful precedent. Narrative of a specific person, other than a sage, in the setting of the fragment of a biography, is illustrated in the following: A. He who [while overseas] took a vow to be a Nazir for a long spell and completed his spell as a Nazir, and afterward came to the Land [of Israel]— B. the House of Shammai say, “He is a Nazir for thirty days.” C. And the House of Hillel say, “He is a Nazir as from the very beginning.” D. M’SH B: Helene the Queen—her son went off to war, and she said, “If my son comes home from war whole and in one piece, I shall be a Nazir for seven years.” Indeed her son did come home from war,

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and she was a Nazir for seven years. Then at the end of the seven years she went up to the Land. The House of Hillel instructed her that she should be a Nazir for another seven years. Then at the end of the seven years she was made unclean. So she turned out to be a Nazir for twenty-one years. E. Said R. Judah, “She was a Nazir only fourteen years.” Mishnah-tractate Nazir 3:6

Nothing would be added by examples of cases of exemplary virtue formulated as biographical snippets. Not all named subjects of stories yield negative lessons. Here is a fine, if rare, instance of how an exemplary figure is recorded in a quite particular historical setting. But even here, we find nothing remotely resembling the raw materials of biography. The Jewish king of Adiabene supported the poor in time of trouble, even while using up his patrimony; the anecdote exemplifies the virtue of poverty, just as anecdotes may exemplify right practice of the law. A. M’SH B: Monobases the king [of Adiabene] went and gave [to the poor; all of his treasures during years of famine. B. His brothers sent [the following message] to him: C. “Your ancestors stored up treasures and increased the wealth [left for them by] their ancestors. But you went and gave away all of these treasures, both your own and those of your ancestors!” D. He replied to them, “My ancestors stored up treasures for this lower [world], but I [through giving charity, have stored up treasures for [the heavenly world] above, as it is stated [in Scripture], Faithfulness will spring up from the ground below, land righteousness will look down from the sky (Ps. 85:11). E. “My ancestors stored up treasures [for the material world], where the [human] hand can reach, but I have stored up treasures [for the non-material world], where the [human] hand cannot reach, as it is stated [in Scripture], Righteousness and justice are the foundation of your throne, steadfast love and faithfulness go before you]” (Ps. 89:14). F. “My ancestors stored up treasures [of a type] that produce no [real] benefits, but I have stored up treasures [of the sort that do produce benefits, as it is stated [in Scripture], Tell the righteous that is shall be well with them, for they shall reap the benefits of their deeds (Is. 3:10). G. “My ancestors stored up treasures of money, but I have stored up treasures of souls as it is stated [in Scripture], The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life, and a wise man saves the souls of the poor (Prov. 11:30). H. “My ancestors stored up treasures [that eventually, after their deaths, would benefit only] others, but I have stored up treasures [that will benefit] myself [both in life and in death], as it is stated [in Scripture], It shall be a righteousness to you before the Lord your God (Dt. 24:13).

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part two: chapter iii I. “My ancestors stored up treasures in this world, but I have stored up treasures for myself in the world-to-come, as it is stated [in Scripture] Your righteousness shall go before you, land the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard (Is. 58:8).” Tosefta Peah 4:18

The treatment of individual lives conforms to the treatment of the historical setting of laws and the presentation of events in the form of stories. Two traits predominate. First of all, where we do have such stories, they are subordinated to the purpose of setting forth norms. Second, stories are told to portray what is not unique but what is exemplary. D. Lives of Sages While we have noted a large variety of stories told about sages, nothing in the documents considered here contributes to the formation of a sage’s “life.” What is noteworthy is that even the kinds of materials we find later on, for example, stories of sages’ entry into Torahstudy and their dignified deaths, makes an appearance in the first set of writings. Like narratives, where the first stage of writing admits named sages, it is for the narrow program of that stage; narratives then serve mainly the purpose of writing up precedents, biographical snippets likely are limited to an equally determinate and limited program. III. The Later Midrash-Compilations: Genesis Rabbah, Leviticus Rabbah, and Pesiqta deRab Kahana

A. One-time Events The second composite of documents changes the picture. We note a tendency to tell fairly substantial and well-articulated stories. Not only so, but the stories bear their own individual point, not only a general point in a distinctive setting. Now we do find important presentations of one-time events, and these are set forth not for exemplary but for ad hoc purposes. A number of discrete, but wellcomposed, pictures of one-time events derives from the second set 7 Here we do note that in the two Talmuds, that one item, given presently, does find its counterparts.

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of documents. While we do not find anything approaching sustained narratives except for one item,7 we still identify one-time events and more than routine pieces of biographical narrative, if not history, then more than exemplary anecdote and annotation. In the following we find the story of how the Romans permitted the Jews to rebuild the Temple, but nothing came of the project, because of Samaritan opposition: Genesis Rabbah LXIV:X. 3. A. In the time of R. Joshua b. Hananiah the government decreed that the house of the sanctuary should be rebuilt. Papas and Lulianos set up money changing tables from Acco to Antioch to provide what was needed for those who came up from the Exile in Babylonia. B. The Samaritans went and reported to him, “Let it be known to the king that if this rebellious city is rebuilt and the walls are finished, they will not pay tribute (mindah), impost (belo ) or toll (halak )” (Ezra 4:13). C. The words mindah, belo, and halak, respectively, mean land tax, poll tax, and a tax on crops [Freedman, Genesis Rabbah (London, 1948: Soncino) p. 580, n. 2]. D. He said to them, “What shall we do? For the decree has already been issued [for the rebuilding to go forward].” E. They said to him, “Send orders to them either to change its location or to add five cubits to it or to cut it down by five cubits, and they will give up the project on their own.” F. The community was assembled on the plain of Beth Rimmon, when the royal orders arrived they began to weep. They had the mind to rebel against the government. G. They said, “Let one wise man go and calm the community down.” They said, “Let R. Joshua b. Hananiah do it, because he is a scholar of the Torah.” H. He went up and expounded as follows: “A wild lion killed a beast and got a bone stuck in his throat. The lion said, ‘To whoever will come and remove it I shall give a reward.’ An Egyptian heron with a long beak came and removed the bone, then asked for his fee. The lion answered, ‘Go. Now you can boast that you stuck your head into the lion’s mouth whole and pulled it out whole.’ I. “So it is enough for us that we entered into dealings with this nation whole and have come forth whole.” [Likewise it was enough for Isaac to have gotten out as well as he did.]

The story is told in its own terms; it may exemplify virtue, but its focus is upon the event itself. But the story comes from nowhere and marks a dead-end. It conforms to Barr’s observation at the head of this chapter: narrative scaled down to anecdote. It does not take its place on a sustained narrative. It therefore does not suggest that a

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large-scale historical program animates the work of the compiler of the document, though the framer of the composition itself has certainly shown an interest in episodes that are not merely anecdotes. Here is an account of an important, one-time event, bearing longterm consequences, in which the law does not figure, but in which politics in its own terms intervenes. This story is important since it can have taken its place in a sustained narrative, and, in fact, it did. For a version of this story does yeoman service in Josephus’s narrative history as well; but in the present context, it stands in no context and performs no service of a broader narrative character: Genesis Rabbah XCI:III. 1. Z. [We now have a case in which one did not eat what the others ate, and the consequence is that he reframed the call to say grace accordingly.] Three hundred Nazirites came up in the time of Simeon b. Shatah. For one hundred fifty of them he found grounds for the dissolution of their vows as Nazirites, and for one hundred and fifty he did not find grounds for the dissolution of their vows. He went over to King Yannai and asked him, “Three hundred Nazirites came up, and they require nine hundred offerings [to complete their purification rites]. You give half and I’ll give half.” AA. Yannai gave his half. Then the gossip circulated that Simeon b. Shatah had not give anything at all. Simeon heard the rumor and fled. After some time, Persian nobles came up and ate at a banquet of King Yannai. They said, “We remember that there was here a certain wise man, who said very profound things to us when we were here.” BB. He said to his sister, “Send and bring him here.” CC. She said to him, “Give your word, and he will come.” He gave his word, and the other came and took his seat between the king and the queen. DD. He said to him, “What are you doing?” EE. He said to him, “For it is written in the book of Ben Sira, ‘Esteem her so she shall exalt you and seat you between princes.’” FF. He said to him, “Why did you cheat me?” GG. He said to him, “God forbid, I did not cheat you, but you gave what is yours to give, and I gave what is mine to give: ‘For wisdom is a defense even as money is a defense’ (Qoh. 7:12).” HH. He said to him, “Then why did you not tell me?” II. He said to him, “If I had told you, you would not have done your share.” JJ. He said to him, “Then why did you flee?” KK. He said to him, “For it is written, ‘Hide yourself for a brief moment until the indignation is past’ (Is. 26:20).” LL. He filled a cup of wine for him and said to him, “Recite the blessing for the food after the meal.”

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MM. He said, “Let us say a blessing for the food which Yannai and his friends have eaten.” NN. He said to him, “In my entire life I never heard this thing from you.” OO. [The following sentences, OO-PP, form the relevant point:] He said to him, “What do you want me to say? ‘Let us say a blessing for the food that I personally did not eat’?” PP. He ordered a cup of wine mixed for him a second time, and he said, “‘Let us say a blessing for the food which we have eaten.’”

The story itself is standard historical narrative, an incident that serves a larger narrative purpose; it forms an account of the relationships between sages and monarch, and a history of Israel, sages, monarch, and nation as a whole, not only will have used the story to good purpose, but, in the case of Josephus, did. That is all the more reason to invoke the story as evidence of the presence of the skills needed for historical writing together with the absence of the medium of historical thought. Even a chapter available for a biography of Diocletian turns out to serve an other-than-historical purpose; it is to teach the moral lesson that people should be careful in dealings with unimportant people; they may later on become very important indeed. Genesis Rabbah LXIII:VIII.7 A. Diocletian the king was originally a swineherd in Tiberias. When he came near a school, the children would go out and beat him up. After some time he was made king. He came and took up residence near Paneas and he sent letters to Tiberias just before the eve of the Sabbath, giving this command: “I command the rabbis of the Jews to appear before me on Sunday morning.” He gave orders to the messenger, telling him not to give the command to them until the last light on Friday evening. [It would not be possible for the rabbis to keep the order unless they traveled on the Sabbath day.] B. R. Samuel bar Nahman went down to bathe. He saw Rabbi standing before his school, and his face was white. He said to him, “Why is your face white?” C. He said to him, “Thus and so were the orders that were sent to me in letters from King Diocletian.” D. He said to him, “Go and bathe, for our creator will do miracles for you.” E. He went in to bath and a bath sprite came along, joking and dancing toward them. Rabbi wanted to rebuke him. Said to him R. Samuel bar Nahman, “Leave him alone, for there are times that they appear because of miracles.” F. He said to the sprite, “Your master is in distress, and you are laughing?”

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part two: chapter iii G. He said to them, “Go, eat and celebrate a happy Sabbath, for your creator is doing miracles, and I will place you on Sunday morning where you wish to be.” H. At the end of the Sabbath, when the session ended, he went out and set them before the gates of Paneas. They went in and said to Diocletian, “Lo, they are standing before the gates.” I. He said to them, “Then close the gates.” J. He took them and set them on the rampart of the town. K. They went in and told Diocletian. He said to them, “I order that you heat the baths for three days, then let them go in and bathe and come before me.” L. They went and heated the baths for three days, and the sprite went and cooled off the heat for them, so the rabbis went in, bathed, and appeared before him. M. He said to them, “Because you people know that your God does miracles for you, you ridicule the king!” N. They said to him, “True enough, we ridiculed Diocletian the swineherd, but to Diocletian the King we are loyal subjects.” O. He said to them, “Nonetheless, do not insult even an unimportant Roman or a soldier of the lowest rank.”

Like the story about Yannai and the sages, the tale at hand shows how a singular event of a biographical order can have been composed; but such compositions prove not only rare but also episodic, never coalescing into biography in any conventional sense. But stories of the character of the foregoing—specific, with individuals neatly distinguished by personal traits, so that names are not interchangeable—prove few and episodic, and much more common are those that provide a narrative setting for a picture of virtue. In contrast to the foregoing, a “one-time event” may also encapsulate a moral lesson in a historical framework. A single instance suffices to represent many. Here “the emperor” could have served as well as a named figure, and the lesson that is taught hardly requires the historical setting in which the tale is told. but as we have it, the emperor Hadrian honored an old man who planted trees, regarding foresight as valuable; the Jew who keeps the Torah is honored by the enemies of Israel: Leviticus Rabbah XXV:V.2. A. Hadrian (may his bones be ground up) was walking through the paths of Tiberias. He saw an old man standing and digging holes to plant trees. He said to him, “Old man, old man, if you got up early [to do the work, when you were young], you would not have stayed late [to plant in your old age].”

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B. He said to him, “I got up early [and worked in my youth] and I stayed late [working in my old age], and whatever pleases the Master of heaven, let him do.” C. He said to him, “By your life, old man! How old are you today?” D. He said to him, “I am a hundred years old.” E. He said to him, “Now you are a hundred years old, and you are standing and digging holes to plant trees! Do you honestly think that you’re going to eat the fruit of those trees?” F. He said to him, “If I have the merit, I shall eat it. But if not, well, just as my forefathers labored for me, so I labor for my children.” G. He said to him, “By your life! If you have the merit of eating of the fruit of these trees, be sure to let me know about it.” H. After some time the trees produced figs. The man said, “Lo, the time has come to tell the king.” I. What did he do? He filled a basket with figs and went up and stood at the gate of the palace. J. [The guards] said to him, “What is your business here?” K. He said, “To come before the king.” L. When he had gone in, he said to him, “What are you doing here?” M. He said to him, “I am the old man you met. I was the one who was digging holes to plant trees, and you said to me, ‘If you have the merit of eating the fruit of those trees, be sure to let me know.’ Now I in fact did have the merit, and I ate of their fruit, and these figs here are the fruit of those trees.” N. Then said Hadrian, “I order you to bring a chair of gold for him to sit on. O. “I order you to empty this basket of his and fill it with golden denars.” P. His servants said to him, “Are you going to pay so much respect to that old Jew?” Q. He said to him, “His Creator honors him, and should I not honor him?” R. The wife of the neighbor [of that man] was wicked. She said to her husband, “Son of darkness, see how the king loves figs and trades them for golden denars.” S. What did [the man] do? He filled a sack with figs and went and stood before the palace. T. They said to him, “What is your business here?” U. He said to them, “I heard that the king loves figs and trades them for golden denars.” V. They went and told the king, “There is an old man standing at the gate of the palace carrying a sackful of figs. When we asked him, ‘What are you doing here,’ he told us, ‘I heard that the king loves figs and trades them for golden denars.’” W. [The king] said, “I order you to set him up before the gate of the palace. Whoever goes in and out is to throw [a fig] in his face.” X. Toward evening they freed him and he went home. He said to

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part two: chapter iii his wife, “For all the honor [that I got], I owe you!” Y. She said, “Go and boast to your mother that they were figs and not etrogs, that they were soft and not hard!”

Change the name of the king, and no detail of the story will shift; nothing depends on the specificity of the circumstances; and the goal of the narrative is clear. B. Composite of One-time Events into a Narrative Nothing that would contribute to a sustained narrative comes to the fore in this layer of writing, so far as I am able to see. C. The Raw Materials for Biography As in the prior layer of writings, here again, named royal figures are presented as exemplars of virtue. They can have served as the focus of biography, and here is a chapter for such a document. A single example proves representative. The sons of King Ptolemy circumcised themselves and received divine protection on that account: Genesis Rabbah XLVI:X.2 A. There is the case of Monobases and Izates, sons of king Ptolemy, who were in session and studying the book of Genesis. When they came to this verse, “You shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskins [and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you]” (Gen. 17:11) this one turned his face to the wall and wept, and that one turned his face to the wall and wept. B. This one went and circumcised himself, and that one went and circumcised himself. C. After a while they were in session and studying the book of Genesis. When they came to the verse, “And you will circumcise...,” one said to the other, “Woe is you, my brother” [thinking he was not circumcised]. The other said, “Woe is you, not me.” Then each revealed the matter to the other. D. When their mother found out about the matter, she went and told their father, “As to your sons, a sore appeared on their flesh, and the doctor ordered that they be circumcised.” E. He said, “Then let them be circumcised.” F. How did the Holy One, blessed be he, pay him back? G. Said R. Phineas, “When he went out to battle, the enemy made for him in particular, but an angel came down and saved him.”

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D. Lives of Sages Here again, the raw materials of narrative are in hand, but in the end we are left with an anecdote, not a shred of a continuous biography. The same is to be said of a sequence of stories about the patriarch. A life of Judah the Patriarch will include that he advised the emperor on the administration of the empire; one such story stands for them all: Genesis Rabbah LXVII:VI. 2. A. “...’Behold of the fat places of the earth shall your dwelling be” refers to the fat-pursed people of the earth. B. Antoninus sent to Our Master [Judah the Patriarch], saying to him, “Since our treasury lacks funds, what should we do to fill it up?” C. He took the messenger and brought him into his vegetable patch. He began to pull up big radishes and to plant little ones in their place. D. He said to him, “Give me the answer in writing.” E. He said to him, “You do not need it.” F. He went back and said the king said to him, “Where is your answer?” G. He said to him, “He did not give me anything.? H. “What did he say to you?” I. “He did not say anything to me, but he took me and brought me into his vegetable patch and began to pull up big radishes and to plant little ones in their place.” J. He began to remove officers and bring in officers, until his treasury was filled [with the bribes people paid for high office].

The story sets forth a variety of lessons, and though they are particular to Judah’s message, they also serve the exemplary purpose of defining rules of wise conduct; explaining how to formulate sage administrative procedures; and other worthwhile goals. An incident in Judah’s life, the story makes only a marginal contribution to a biography; and a variety of such stories, such as we have, taken all together do not comprise a biography. IV. The Latest Midrash-Compilations: Song of Songs Rabbah, Ruth Rabbah, Esther Rabbah I, and Lamentations Rabbah A. One-time Events One-time incidents serve as the narrative framework for a philosophical polemic, as much as they present an occasion for recording law

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in the form of a case. In this instance, Hadrian and Joshua b. Hananiah conducted an argument which showed that the authority of Moses remained valid, while the authority of the emperor did not extend very far: Ruth Rabbah XXI:i.10. A. Hadrian—may his bones rot!—asked R. Joshua b. Hananiah, saying to him, “I am better off than your lord, Moses.” B. He said to him, “Why?” C. “Because I am alive and he is died, and it is written, ‘For to him who is joined to all living there is hope; for a living dog is better than a dead lion’ (Qoh. 9:4).” D. He said to him, “Can you make a decree that no one kindle a fire for three days?” E. He said to him, “Yes.” F. At evening the two of them went up to the roof of the palace. They saw smoke ascending from a distance. G. He said to him, “What is this?” H. He said to him, “It is a sick noble. The physician came to him and told him he will be healed only if he drinks hot water.” I. He said to him, “May your spirit go forth [drop dead]! While you are still alive, your decree is null. J. “But from the time that our lord, Moses, made the decree for us, ‘You shall not burn a fire in your dwelling place on the Sabbath day’ (Ex. 35:3), no Jew has ever kindled a flame on the Sabbath, and even to the present day, the decree has not been nullified. K. “And you say you are better off than he is?”

Change Hadrian to Titus or Antoninus, Joshua to Eliezer or Judah the Patriarch, and the force of the story is in no way diminished. The incident serves as the setting for a great moral lesson, nothing more. B. Composite of One-time Events into a Narrative One of the great, history-making moments, the war led by Bar Kokhba is represented in terms that qualify as fully-expressed narrative, a large and important chapter in a history of Israel. The following is the one important exception to the rule established in the items cited earlier. Here we do have the results of a sustained and coherent narrative, involving a variety of persons and incidents, not anecdotal or episodic but sustained and systematic. Writing of this kind points toward thinking of a historical character as defined by Scripture’s indicators; it shows us what might have been, and underscores the negative results now on display. The documents be-

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fore us contain little writing of the character of the following, and, where we find that kind of writing, it is in the second of the two Talmuds and the associated documents of Midrash-compilation: Lamentations Rabbati LVIII:ii.5. 5. A. When R. Aqiba saw Bar Koziba, he said, “This is the royal messiah.” B. R. Yohanan b. Torta said to him, “Aqiba, grass will grow from your cheeks and he will still not have come.” 6. A. R. Yohanan interpreted the verse, “The voice is the voice of Jacob” (Gen. 27:22) in this way: “The voice is the voice of Caesar Hadrian, who killed eighty thousand myriads of people at Betar.” 7. A. Eighty thousand trumpeters besieged Betar. There Bar Koziba was encamped, with two hundred thousand men with an amputated finger. B. Sages sent word to him, saying, “How long are you going to produce blemished men in Israel?” C. He said to them, “And what shall I do to examine them [to see whether or not they are brave]?” D. They said to him, “Whoever cannot uproot a cedar of Lebanon do not enroll in your army.” E. He had two hundred thousand men of each sort [half with an amputated finger, half proved by uprooting a cedar]. 8. A. When they went out to battle, he would say, “Lord of all ages, don’t help us and don’t hinder us!” B. That is in line with this verse: “Have you not, O God, cast us off? And do not go forth, O God, with our hosts” (Ps. 60:12). 9. A. What did Bar Koziba do? B. He could catch a missile from the enemy’s catapult on one of his knees and throw it back, killing many of the enemy. C. That is why R. Aqiba said what he said [about Bar Koziba’s being the royal messiah]. 10. A. For three and a half years Hadrian besieged Betar. B. R. Eleazar the Modiite was sitting in sack cloth and ashes, praying, and saying, “Lord of all the ages, do not sit in judgment today, do not sit in judgment today.” C. Since [Hadrian] could not conquer the place, he considered going home. D. There was with him a Samaritan, who said to him, “My lord, as long as that old cock wallows in ashes, you will not conquer the city. E. “But be patient, and I shall do something so you can conquer it today.” F. He went into the gate of the city and found R. Eleazar standing in prayer. G. He pretended to whisper something into his ear, but the other paid no attention to him.

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part two: chapter iii H. People went and told Bar Koziba, “Your friend wants to betray the city.” I. He sent and summoned the Samaritan and said to him, “What did you say to him?” J. He said to him, “If I say, Caesar will kill me, and if not, you will kill me. Best that I kill myself and not betray state secrets.” K. Nonetheless, Bar Koziba reached the conclusion that he wanted to betray the city. L. When R. Eleazar had finished his prayer, he sent and summoned him, saying to him, “What did this one say to you?” M. He said to him, “I never saw that man.” N. He kicked him and killed him. O. At that moment an echo proclaimed: “Woe to the worthless shepherd who leaves the flock, the sword shall be upon his arm and upon his right eye” (Zech. 11:17). P. Said the Holy One, blessed be He, “You have broken the right army of Israel and blinded their right eye. Therefore your arm will wither and your eye grow dark.” Q. Forthwith Betar was conquered and Ben Koziba was killed. R. They went, carrying his head to Hadrian. He said, “Who killed this one?” S. They said, “One of the Goths killed him,” but he did not believe them. T. He said to them, “Go and bring me his body.” U. They went to bring his body and found a snake around the neck. V. He said, “If the God of this one had not killed him, who could have vanquished him?” W. That illustrates the following verse of Scripture: “If their Rock had not given them over....” (Dt. 32:30). 11. A. They killed the inhabitants of Betar until their horses waded in blood up to their nostrils, and blood rolled along in stones the size of forty-seah and flowed into the sea for a distance of four miles. B. And should you suppose that Betar was near the sea, it was four miles away. 14. A. For fifty-two years Betar held out after the destruction of the house of the sanctuary. B. And why was it destroyed? C. Because they lit lamps on the occasion of the destruction of the house of the sanctuary. 19. A. There were two brothers in Kefar Haruba, and no Roman could pass by there, for they killed him. B. They decided, “The whole point of the thing is that we must take the crown and put it on our head and make ourselves kings.” C. They heard that the Romans were coming to fight them. D. They went out to do battle, and an old man met them and said, “May the Creator be your help against them.”

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E. They said, “Let him not help us nor hinder us!” F. Because of their sins, they went forth and were killed. G. They went, carrying his head to Hadrian. He said, “Who killed this one?” H. They said, “One of the Goths killed him,” but he did not believe them. I. He said to them, “Go and bring me his body.” J. They went to bring his body and found a snake around the neck. K. He said, “If the God of this one had not killed him, who could have vanquished him?” L. That illustrates the following verse of Scripture: “If their Rock had not given them over....” (Dt. 32:30).

Enough of the composite has been given to show the flavor of the whole. The entire composite provides us with the one example of what, overall, the documents ought to have supplied, had they conformed to the rules of thought and exposition of a historical character that Scripture defined for us. This vast and sustained set of events, all of them portrayed as unique and singular, then formed into a large and coherent narrative, shows what might have been— and underlines, therefore, what we do have before us. Sustaining narratives of one-time events, set forth in the Rabbinic literature, are defined by the case at hand. Alas, it represents a series of one, as this survey has shown. The media of historical thinking prove entirely accessible to the author(s) of the compositions comprising this composite, and the capacity to formulate sustained historical narrative—a chapter in a history—certainly is realized here. C. The Raw Materials for Biography The one-time events given above may as well fit here; I see no firm distinction in context, except that the items catalogued earlier are formulated not to record the life and deeds of the named figures but to convey an event of other than personal consequence. D. Lives of Sages The final set of documents contains some items of more than routine biographical interest, but no biography.

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part two: chapter iii V. Does Rabbinic Literature Utilize the Media of Historical Thinking

The testing of the null hypothesis yields a preponderance of evidence to characterize the Rabbinic writings, therefore the Judaism that they portray, as profoundly different in conceptual and literary character from Scripture’s Authorized History. If Scripture employs narrative to lay out a string of distinct and singular incidents, the Rabbinic literature knows no sustaining narrative of one-time events. In more than a single way, to be sure, the framers of that literature do derive meaning from events and do organize them in patterns they find sensible. But the patterns that encompass events differ from those of Scripture, as do the character of events. The events themselves prove more often exemplary than specific, particular, and singular. When happenings are laid out, it is to illustrate or prove a point concerning a matter out of time, a proposition of an other-than-historical character. What I mean is shown by the contrast between then authentically-historical linkage of singular persons and events into a sustained narrative of Bar Kokhba, on the one side, and the ahistorical formulation of sequences of cases in the equally sustained sets of legal precedents or moral illustrations, on the other. The one certainly conforms to the indicators of historical thinking and shows us the utilization of the media of historical writing, as Scripture (in the opinion of all scholarship) defines those media. And the other does not. It ignores those media in favor of others altogether. The first of our tests of a null hypothesis—if history were the governing mode of thought and its media shaped the preferred media of expression, we should find elements of a narrative of one-time events—produces a mostly negative result. The preponderance of evidence stands against that hypothesis. The second test of a null hypothesis requires a test on a considerably less elaborate scale, as we shall now see.

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CHAPTER IV

MISSING MESSAGES OF HISTORICAL THINKING (II): THE PASTNESS OF THE PAST ... the entire Hebrew Bible revolves around that point in time, that historical moment when the life of the nation came to an end, when tragedy struck in multiple blows at the kingdom, its ruling dynasty, and at the sacred center of worship and service of their God. Such a decisive event and its enveloping circumstances must have had a powerful effect and pervasive influence over the literature as a whole, and most of what is written in the Bible reflects this unquestioned fact of Israel’s (or Judah’s) experience. David Noel Freedman1 I. Temporal Order Does Not Apply to the Torah We shall now see that, in the documents surveyed here, events are reversible; no fixed order governs. The logic of sequence—first this, then that, therefore this caused that—plays no role. Under such conditions explaining the world as it is by reference to the past is impossible because, in an exact sense, it is unthinkable. That is to say, by means of thinking with principles such as we shall now examine, history—a mode of accounting for the social order by appeal to how things have been—in the simplest and most conventional definition then cannot be conceived.2 1

Freedman, p.6. In fact, as Chapter IX shows, the Mishnah’s portrayal of Israel’s life ignores all considerations of time and place (other than holy time and enchanted place) and sets forth a utopian Israel, ruling out all considerations of historical time and circumstance. But for the present purpose, a survey of how the past and present are treated as a single span of time is what is required. 2

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part two: chapter iv

On what basis, then, shall I show that historical thinking simply cannot be carried on, and in the main, was not carried on, among the framers of the documents before us or among the authors of the compositions that the framers assembled?3 The unity of time past and time present emerges in a simple axiom. It is that considerations of temporal order simply do not apply to the Torah. We need not infer that that view served as a premise, since it is stated in so many words: temporal order does not apply to the sequence of Scriptural stories. We met the following at the head of Chapter II: Sifré to Numbers LXIV:I 1. A. “And the Lord spoke to Moses in the wilderness of Sinai in the first month of the second year after they had come out of the land of Egypt, saying, [‘Let the people of Israel keep the Passover at its appointed time. On the fourteenth day of this month, in the evening, you shall keep it at its appointed time; according to all its statutes and all its ordinances you shall keep it.”]” (Num. 9:1-14): B. Scripture here expresses the disgrace of Israel, for they had been camping before Mount Sinai for eleven months [and had not yet observed the Passover]. C. And Scripture further serves to teach you that considerations of temporal order do not apply to the sequence of scriptural stories. D. For at the beginning of the present book Scripture states, “The Lord spoke to Moses in the wilderness of Sinai in the tent of meeting on the first day of the second month in the second year after they had come out of the land of Egypt” (Num. 1:1). E. And here Scripture refers to “the first month,” F. so serving to teach you that considerations of temporal order do not apply to the sequence of scriptural stories. G. Rabbi says, “Such a proof is not required, for Scripture in any event says, ‘And the children of Israel ate mana for forty years, until they came to the border of the land’ (Ex. 16:35). H. “And at this point they had not eaten it? That statement thus service to teach you that considerations of temporal order do not apply to the sequence of scriptural stories.”

The several proofs make the same point. Scripture narrates events in an other-than-temporal sequence: this, then that, then the other thing, without regard to the order in which the things actually took place. Therefore, the framers of the passage maintain, the account 3 For this distinction, see my The Rules of Composition of the Talmud of Babylonia. The Cogency of the Bavli’s Composite. Atlanta, 1991: Scholars Press for South Florida Studies in the History of Judaism.

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of existence that Scripture portrays transcends considerations of temporal sequence altogether. It follows that, to begin with, sages reject history’s conception of a linear and irreversible sequence of events, governed by the logic intrinsic in them: this cannot happen until that has happened, therefore this did not happen before that took place. II. General Considerations A further, now familiar, premise of all historical thinking is that the past has come to closure and awaits description, analysis, and interpretation. All data are in hand, the story now awaits telling. Without a clear point of conclusion, marked by the present or the present’s surrogate (e.g., a specific year at which the story is deemed to have come to fullness, even prior to the present), historical inquiry cannot succeed. That is because it fails to identify its data and must suspend its work pending further information. Not only so, but if history does not identify that dividing point between past and present, it also cannot project that linear sequence of events, singular and irreversible, that forms its second premise. For if past flows smoothly into present, then the reverse also commands plausibility, the present flowing into the past (as indeed we see in the paradigmatic mode of analyzing human events followed by the Rabbinic sages ). Hence we come to the null-hypothesis. What next requires testing is whether or not Rabbinic writings recognize the pastness of the past. If they do, we should find clear evidence, deriving from writings of both description and explanation, that the present is distinct from the past. The principal indicator of whether of not framers of documents view the past as distinct from, and prior to, their own day is simple to define: do we observe a sense of distance and difference between the writers and the events of Scripture that they consider?4 We shall know the answer to that question, one way or the other, when we consider how events in the life of ancient Israel are portrayed. If sages make the effort to project their formulation

4 Anachronism by itself is merely suggestive but on is own not probative; we cannot expect the Rabbinic sages to take account of considerations formulated only many centuries later. But people should be prepared to identify a gap in not only time but conception and conduct between themselves and their ancestors.

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of such events into an age other than, and prior to, their own, then we may say that they see the past as a different age from the present. The evidence we seek to sustain our null-hypothesis is not difficult to identify. What we look for is the direction of the continuity between past and present. Do sages treat the past as contemporary with their own time, bringing the past events into the language and framework of their situation? Or do they try to express their ideas in language calculated to conform to the character of the narrative of Scripture? In the former case, the past and present flow together, in the latter, the narrators intend to project themselves into the framework of the earlier age. An example of the latter mode of writing is the formulation of the book of Chronicles, which sets forth its ideas in such a way as to persuade the reader of the synchronicity of ancient and contemporary times. That is, the author of Chronicles wishes to propose that the tale told in Samuel and Kings and that told in Chronicles were set forth at the same time. Then the (much later) writers of Chronicles meant to direct attention away from their own time and into times past. The first case given below shows the opposite flow of thought, the utter obliteration of the lines between past and present. What shows the opposite of the null-hypothesis should be specified as well. Take the matter of language. Sages wrote a Hebrew different from that of Scripture, and they explicitly recognized the difference between the language of Scripture and the language of sages or of the Mishnah. Yet, when they invented conversations for Scriptural figures, it was in Mishnaic, not Scriptural Hebrew; there was no pretense at a pseudo-scriptural Hebrew. I see no evidence of an effort at replicating Scriptural morphology, syntax, or even word choice, when Scripture’s own stories were taken up and retold in other terms altogether. That is striking evidence that the present was conceived to flow into the past, and that no distinction between present and past operated. Scripture is rewritten to accord with contemporary convictions and conceptions; the present flows into the past, the past into the present, and at no point do we discern a trace of consciousness that the past is over and done with. These traits of the data before us cannot present any surprises, since, after all, until modern times, the West projected present onto past, representing the past, also, in the garments of today. So we shall not find it difficult to demonstrate that, for sages, the past and present formed a single plane of time—

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and consciousness. Accordingly, the survey of the data will remain appropriately brief. III. The Mishnah, Tosefta, Abot, Sifra, Sifré to Numbers, and Sifré to Deuteronomy: The Present-Tense Past: Scripture Re-Presented in the Immediacy of the Moment It is the simple fact that Scripture was rewritten, its events recast to suit the requirements of the authors of compositions. Innumerable examples of the rewriting of Scripture fill the documents before us. Every one of them exhibits the same traits: indifference to the criterion of evidence, oblivion to the notion of testing allegations concerning the past against evidence deriving from, or even pertinent to, the age, prior to the present one, that is under discussion. Conversations are invented, events fabricated, the order of Scriptural history recast, in complete indifference to all considerations of historicity, evidence, and criticism. A single case suffices to show us how events in Scripture were rewritten: SIFRÉ TO NUMBERS LII:I 1. A. “On the second day Nethanel the son of Zuar, the leader of Issachar, made an offering” (Num. 7:18): B. What does Scripture provide this information? C. It is because the tribe of Reuben came and entered a complaint, saying, “It is enough that Judah came before me [the elder] in the order of the tribal journeys. Let me give an offering in the sequence of the birth of the tribal ancestors [hence, first].” D. Moses rebuked him, saying, “It is directly from the mouth of God that the instructions have come to me to present the offerings in accord with the order in which the tribes are arranged for the journeys.” E. So it is said, “...Offer,” and that word bears the sole meaning that the Holy One, blessed be he, instructed him for the tribes to make their offerings in accord with the order in which they are arranged for the journeys.

There is a number of stories about events portrayed in Scripture, and, in a history of Israel from the beginnings to the present, stories such as these will have found a place along with the Scriptural narrative itself; in them, there is no pretense at joining the present narrative into the language or thought-patterns of Scripture. Not only does the present flow into the past, the past is made to

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flow into the present. To the contrary, in the type of narrative given here, Scripture is updated in every possible way; new speeches are written, and no one pretends these speeches were made long ago; new details are set forth without the slightest interest in formulating matters to conform to the style or discipline of Scripture: Sifré to Numbers XCV:II 1. A. “So Moses went out and told the people [the words of the Lord, and he gathered seventy men of the elders of the people and placed them round about the tent.] Then the Lord came down in the cloud [and spoke to him, and took some of the spirit that was upon him and put it upon the seventy elders; and when the spirit rested upon them they prophesied, but they did so no more.] Now two men remained in the camp, [one named Eldad, and the other named Medad]” (Num. 11:24-26): B. Some say that their names had remained in the lottery-box. For the Holy One, blessed be he, had said to Moses to choose seventy men for him. Moses replied, “How shall I do it? Lo, all of the tribes will get six representatives each except for two tribes, which will get only five. [Sixty from each of ten tribes, five from each of the other two.] Which tribe will agree to have only five selected from its midst?” C. Moses made an arrangement. He took seventy slips of paper and wrote on them the word “elder,” and he took two further slips and left them blank and mixed them up and put them all into a lottery-box. He said to them, “Come and pick your slips.” D. To everyone who chose a slip on which was written, “elder,” Moses said, “The Omnipresent has already sanctified you.” E. And to those who chose a slip on which was not written, “elder,” Moses said, “It’s from Heaven [and there is nothing I can do about it], so what can I do for you?”

Procedures attested in the Mishnah, e.g., for the division of the priestly sacrifices in Mishnah-tractate Tamid, are now retrojected into the remote past. No effort is invested into citing Scriptural evidence that the practice familiar from contemporary writings prevailed even long ago. That fact is simply taken for granted; past and present exist on the same plane. But more is at stake here than merely the atemporality of time. We shall now see how ancient times are fabricated out of contemporary materials.

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IV. The Later Midrash-Compilations: Genesis Rabbah, Leviticus Rabbah, and Pesiqta deRab Kahana: The PresentTense Past: Scripture Re-Presented in the Immediacy of the Moment Not only do scriptural stories undergo an up-dating and are made to accept a reformulation in acutely contemporary terms, but sages invent chapter for the life of biblical figures, e.g., Abraham. Once more we find no interest in joining the story to Scripture’s account; it is told entirely in its own terms, in the manner of a Rabbinic polemic-narrative. A single case suffices to make the point that, just as in the first set of documents, events are invented or totally recast, so in the second as much as in the first, considerations of the pastness of the past do not prevent fabrication of whole chapters in lives of saints. The premise once more is that the present is part of the past, and vice versa. I have chosen for my illustrative case the matter of David. What is interesting is that, when David is reworked into the model of the sages, the conception that the conditions of David’s life, as portrayed in scripture, and those of Torah study that rabbis recognized from day to day, were treated as uniform; here is a fine example of what I mean by obliterating the sense of the pastness of the past, while, at the very same time, insisting on the presence of the past in the time of the sages as well. No lines distinguished one age from the other, even while the account of Scripture, read in its own terms, is scarcely acknowledged as exhibiting points of contrast: Pesiqta deRab Kahana II:I.1 A. “O Lord, how many are my foes! Many are rising against me; many are saying of me, there is no help for him in God. Sela” (Ps. 3:2-3): B. R. Samuel bar Immi and Rabbis: C. R. Samuel bar Immi interpreted the verse to speak of Doeg and Ahitophel: D. “‘...many are saying of me,’ refers to Doeg and Ahitophel. Why does he refer to them as ‘many’? E. “For they formed a majority in Torah-study. F. “ ‘many are saying of me’—They say to David, ‘A man who has seized a ewe-lamb, killed the shepherd, and made Israelites fall by the sword—will he have salvation? There is no help for him in God.’ G. “Said David, ‘And you, O Lord, have concurred with them, writing in your Torah, saying, ‘The adulterer and the adulteress will surely die’ (Lev. 20:10).

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part two: chapter iv H. “‘’But you, O Lord, are a shield about me’ (Ps. 3:4): For you have formed a protection for me through the merit attained by my ancestors. I. “‘My glory’ (Ps. 3:4): For your restored me to the throne. J. “‘And the lifter of my head’ (Ps. 3:4): While I was liable to you to have my head removed, you raised my head through the prophet, Nathan, when he said to me, ‘Also the Lord has removed your sin and you will not die’ (2 Sam. 12:13).”

The point hardly requires elaboration. David is now turned into something that Scripture’s account does not adumbrate, a disciple of sages, and the politics of his court followed those of the academy. The flow from present to past is unimpeded. V. The Latest Midrash-Compilations: Song of Songs Rabbah, Ruth Rabbah, Esther Rabbah I, and Lamentations Rabbah: The Present-Tense Past: Scripture Re-Presented in the Immediacy of the Moment A still more striking revision of times past into the framework of the rabbis’ own times involves the rewriting of the story of Hezekiah and the Babylonians. Now the past forms a palpable component of the present. What is important in this example is the provision of an elaborate, sustained narrative, in which history is invented through a process of invention of anecdotes or events; not a single indicator of the presence of a historical mentality can be located in this historical narrative—not one: Song of Songs Rabbah XXXVIII:ii 34. A. [“At that time Merodach Baladan, the son of Baladan, sent” (Isa. 39:1)—Spelling out the story to which allusion has just now been made:] he was a sun-worshipper, and he would ordinarily eat at the sixth hour and sleep to the ninth hour. B. But, in the time of Hezekiah, king of Judah, when the sun reversed its course, he slept through it and woke up and found it was dawn. C. He wanted to kill his guards. He accused them, “You let me sleep all day and all night long.” D. They said to him, “It was the day that returned [the sun having reversed its course].” E. He said to them, “And what god reversed it?” F. They said to him, “It was the God of Hezekiah who reversed it.” G. He said to them, “Then is there a god greater than mine?”

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H. They said to him, “The God of Hezekiah is greater than yours.” I. Forthwith he sent letters and a present to Hezekiah: “At that time Merodach-baladan, son of Baladan, king of Babylonia, sent letters and a present to Hezekiah [for he had heard that he had been sick and recovered]” (Isa. 39:1). J. And what was written in them? K. He wrote him, “Peace to King Hezekiah, peace to the city of Jerusalem, peace to the Great God!” L. But when the letters had been sent, his mind was at ease, and he said, “I did not do it right, for I greeted Hezekiah before his God.” M. Forthwith he arose and took three steps and retrieved the letter and wrote another instead, in which he said, “Peace to the great God, peace to the city of Jerusalem, peace to King Hezekiah.”’ N. Said the Holy One, blessed be He, “You have risen from your throne and taken three steps in order to pay honor to me. By your life, I shall raise up from you three cosmopolitan kings, who will rule from one end of the world to the other.” O. And who are they? Nebuchadnezzar, Evil-Merodach, and Belshazzar. P. But when they went and blasphemed, the Holy One, blessed be He, crushed their eggs out of the world [exterminated them] and set up others in their place.

The story is made up, begin to end; Scripture’s event is recast in a process of imagination and retrojection, and we discern not the slightest interest in harmonizing the story with Scripture’s data. The process of writing history in the model of the present, obliterating all lines of differentiation between past and the present age, made by illustrated by one final case. In the following the death of the prophet is given a reprise. Here, the story-teller retrojects the destruction of the second Temple into the events of the first, or, more to the point, finds no point in distinguishing one from the other. Lamentations Rabbati CXIII.i.1. A. “This was for the sins of her prophets and the iniquities of her priests, who shed in the midst of her the blood of the righteous:” B. R. Yudan asked R. Aha, “Where did the Israelites kill Zechariah? Was it in the courtyard of women or in the courtyard of the Israelites?” C. He said to him, “It was neither in the women’s courtyard nor in the Israelites’ courtyard, but in the priests’ courtyard. D. “But they did not dispose of his blood like the blood of a hind or a ram: ‘He shall pour out the blood thereof and cover it with dust’ (Lev. 17:13).

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part two: chapter iv E. “But here: ‘For the blood she shed is still in her; she set it upon a bare rock; she did not pour it out on the ground to cover it with earth’ (Ezek. 24:7). F. “‘She set her blood upon the bare rock, so that it was not covered, so that it may stir up my fury to take vengeance’ (Ezek. 24:8).” 2. A. Seven transgressions did the Israelites commit on that day: they murdered [1] a priest, [2] prophet, [3] judge, [4] they spilled innocent blood, [5] they blasphemed the divine name, [6] they imparted uncleanness to the courtyard, and it was, furthermore, [7] a Day of Atonement that coincided with the Sabbath. B. When Nebuzaradan came in, he saw the blood of Zechariah begin to drip. He said to them, “What sort of blood is this dripping blood?” C. They said to him, “It is the blood of oxen, rams, and sheep that we offered on the altar.” D. He forthwith sent and brought oxen, rams, and sheep and slaughtered them in his presence, but the blood continued to drip. E. He said to them, “If you tell the truth, well and good, but if not, I shall comb your flesh with iron combs.” F. They said to him, “What shall we tell you? He was a prophet who rebuked us. We conspired against him and killed him. And lo, years have passed, but his blood has not stopped seething.” G. He said to them, “I shall appease it.” H. He brought before him the great sanhedrin and the lesser sanhedrin and killed them, [until their blood mingled with that of Zechariah: “Oaths are imposed and broken, they kill and rob, there is nothing but adultery and license, one deed of blood after another” (Hos. 4:2)]. I. Still the blood seethed. He brought boys and girls and killed them by the blood, but it did not stop seething. J. He brought youngsters from the school house and killed them over it, but it did not stop seething. K. Forthwith he took eighty thousand young priests and killed them on his account, until the blood lapped the grave of Zechariah. But the blood did not stop seething. L. He said, “Zechariah, Zechariah, All the best of them I have destroyed. Do you want me to exterminate them all?” M. When he said this, the blood forthwith came to rest. N. Then he considered repenting, saying, “Now if one soul matters are thus, as to that man who has killed all these souls, how much the more so!” [He fled and sent a parting gift and converted.] O. On the spot the Holy One, blessed be He, was filled with mercy and made a gesture to the blood, which was swallowed up in place. P. To that Scripture refers when it says, “This was for the sins of her prophets and the iniquities of her priests, who shed in the midst of her the blood of the righteous.”

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A final instance allows us to follow sages’ bold recasting of the scriptural narrative, inventing dialogue, action, and motive, without the slightest interest in inserting any detail into the framework of the Scripture’s picture. The following is invented out of whole cloth, no consideration is given to distinguishing the time of Moses from the time of the narrator; we detect not the slightest interest in identifying the sources of the story, e.g., in remote antiquity. History fabricated is simply not history; it is something else: The Fathers According to Rabbi Nathan XXXIII:V.1 A. When our fathers stood at the sea, Moses said to them, “Get up and pass through.” B. They said to him, “We are not going to pass through until the sea is turned into passages.” Moses took his staff and hit the sea, and the sea was turned into passages, as it is said, “You have hit through with rods, the head of his rulers” (Hab. 3:14). C. Moses said to them, “Get up and pass through.” D. They said to him, “We are not going to pass through until the sea is turned a valley before us.” Moses took his staff and hit the sea, and the sea was turned into a valley before them, as it is said, “He made a valley of the sea and caused them to pass through” (Ps. 78:13), and it is said, “As the cattle that go down into the valley, so did you lead your people” (Is. 63:14). E. Moses said to them, “Get up and pass through.” F. They said to him, “We are not going to pass through until the sea is cut into two parts before us.” Moses took his staff and hit the sea, and the sea was cut into two parts before them, as it is said, “To him who divided the Red Sea into two parts” (Ps. 136:13). G. Moses said to them, “Get up and pass through.” H. They said to him, “We are not going to pass through until the sea is turned clay for us.” Moses took his staff and hit the sea, and the sea was turned into clay, as it is said, “You have trodden on the sea with your horses, through the clay of mighty waters” (Hab. 3:15). I. Moses said to them, “Get up and pass through.” J. They said to him, “We are not going to pass through until the sea is turned into a wilderness before us.” Moses took his staff and hit the sea, and the sea was turned into a wilderness, as it is said, “And he led them through the deep as through a wilderness” (Ps. 106:9). K. Moses said to them, “Get up and pass through.” L. They said to him, “We are not going to pass through until the sea is turned into pieces before us.” Moses took his staff and hit the sea, and the sea was turned into pieces, as it is said, “You broke the sea in pieces by your strength” (Ps. 74:13). M. Moses said to them, “Get up and pass through.” N. They said to him, “We are not going to pass through until the sea is turned rocks before us.” Moses took his staff and hit the sea,

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part two: chapter iv and the sea was turned into rocks, as it is said, “You shattered the heads of the sea monsters” (Ps. 74:13). And where does one smash the heads of the sea monsters? One must conclude that they are shattered only on rocks. O. Moses said to them, “Get up and pass through.” P. They said to him, “We are not going to pass through until the sea is turned into dry land before us.” Moses took his staff and hit the sea, and the sea was turned into dry land, as it is said, “He turned the sea into dry land” (Ps. 66:6), and further, “But the children of Israel walked on dry land in the midst of the sea” (Ex. 14:29). ‘ Q. Moses said to them, “Get up and pass through.” R. They said to him, “We are not going to pass through until the sea is turned into walls before us.” Moses took his staff and hit the sea, and the sea was turned into walls, as it is said, “And the waters were a wall for them on their right hand and on their left” (Ex. 14:29). S. Moses said to them, “Get up and pass through.” T. They said to him, “We are not going to pass through until the sea [stands up and is] turned into the shape of a bottle before us.” Moses took his staff and hit the sea, and the sea was turned into the shape of a bottle, as it is said, “The water stood up right like a bottle containing liquid” (Ex. 15:8). U. Fire came down and licked up the water between the parts, as it is said, “When fire caused that which melts to disappear, and the fire lapped up the water, to make your name known to your adversaries” (Is. 64:1). V. And the bottles let out oil and honey into the mouths of infants, and they sucked from them, as it is said, “And he made them suck honey out of the rock” (Deut. 32:13). W. And some say, “They produced fresh water from the sea and they drank it in the paths, X. “(for sea water is salty), Y. “[continuing W] as it is said, “Flowing streams” (Deut. 32:13), and flowing streams refers only to sweet water, as it is said, “A well of living water and flowing streams from Lebanon” (Song 4:15).”

The examples just now set forth can be duplicated many times over. They embody the fundamental attitudes toward historical time that characterize the Rabbinic literature throughout its formative age (and beyond). To the past is imputed no autonomy. Between past and present is conceived no dividing line of any kind. Vastly transcending the mere flaws of anachronism, the conception that time past and time present flow together yields the principle that events may be ordered in accord with a logic quite autonomous of temporal order. The point at which we started forms a fitting conclusion to this brief experi-

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ment in the testing of a null-hypothesis. Not only do we find not a trace of historical thinking, as that mode of thought is defined in the Hebrew Scriptures. We find expressions of a quite different mode of thought altogether. Among the several quite viable definitions of history reviewed in Chapter I, one suffices to frame the question before us, that of Jan Huizinga: “History is the intellectual form in which a civilization renders account to itself of its past.”5 We have now to ask ourselves, if history does not define the intellectual form in which Rabbinic Judaism explains to itself its own past, then precisely how does it render account to itself of that which the past comprises, which is, its experience and existence? What alternative to historical thinking comes to full exposure? The next chapter answers that question, and the two chapters that follow, corresponding to the last chapter and this one, then show the alternative to historical thinking when we raise precisely the questions answered, also, by history.

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Cited by John van Seters, p. 1.

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part three: chapter v


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the enduring paradigm

PART THREE —— THE PRESENCE OF THE PAST, THE PASTNESS OF THE PRESENT

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CHAPTER V

THE ENDURING PARADIGM We live only in the present, but this present has several dimensions: the present of past things, the present of present things, and the present of future things... Augustine, cited by LeGoff1 Your years are like a single day...and this today does not give way to a tomorrow, any more than it follows a yesterday. Your today is Eternity... Augustine, Confessions 10:132 I. MAKING CONNECTIONS AND DRAWING CONCLUSIONS IN PARADIGMATIC THINKING For the Rabbinic sages, the Torah, the written part of the Torah in particular, defined a set of paradigms that served to impart order to raw data. These paradigms functioned without regard to circumstance, context, or, for that matter, dimension and scale of happening. A very small number of models emerged from Scripture, captured in the sets [1] Eden and Adam, [2] Sinai and the Torah, [3] the land and Israel, and [4] exile and return embodied in the Temple and its building, destruction, rebuilding. These paradigms served severally and jointly, e.g., Eden and Adam on its own but also superimposed upon the Land and Israel; Sinai and the Torah on its own but also superimposed upon the Land and Israel. So too the Temple, embodying natural Creation and its intersection with na-

1 2

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Jacques LeGoff, History, and Memory, p. 3. cited by LeGoff, p. 13.

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tional and social history, could stand entirely on its own or be superimposed upon any and all of the other paradigms. In many ways, then, we have the symbolic equivalent of a set of transparencies, for example, forming two- and three- or even fourdimensional grids. A given pattern forms a grid on its own, one set of lines being set forth in terms of, e.g., Eden, timeless perfection, in contrast against the other set of lines, Adam, temporal disobedience; but upon that grid, a transparency showing a comparable grid can be superimposed, the Land and Israel being an obvious one; and upon the two, yet a third and fourth, Sinai and Torah, Temple and the confluence of nature and history. In the Rabbinic canon and structure I can think of no more ubiquitous grids than the specified four. By reference to these grids, severally or jointly, the critical issues of existence, whether historical, whether contemporary, played themselves out in the system and structure of Rabbinic Judaism. In particular, I identify four models by which, out of happenings of various sorts, consequential or meaningful events would be selected, and by reference to which these selected events would be shown connected (“meaningful”) and explicable in terms of that available logic of paradigm that governed both the making of connections and the drawing of conclusions. These issues pertain to the following questions, systematically developed in this chapter: The Paradigm of Israel’s Past, Present, and Future (=“History” in the Counterpart Structure of Historical Thinking): how shall we organize happenings into events? On the largest scale the question concerns the division into periods of not sequences but mere sets of happenings. Periodization involves explanation since even in a paradigmatic structure, once matters are set forth as periods, then an element of sequence is admitted into the processes of description and therefore analysis and explanation. Israel and the Nations: moving from large aggregates, bordering on abstraction, we turn to the very concrete question of how Israel relates to the rest of the world. This involves explaining not what happened this morning in particular, but what always happens, that is, defining the structure of Israel’s life in the politics of this world, explaining the order of things in both the social, political structure of the world and also the sequence of actions that may occur and recur over time (the difference, paradigmatically, hardly matters). Explaining the Pattern of Events: Making Connections,

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Drawing Conclusions: Paradigmatic thinking, no less than historical, explains matters; but the explanation derives from the character of the pattern, rather than the order of events, which governs historical explanation. Connections then are drawn between one thing and something else serve to define a paradigm, rather than to convey a temporal explanation based on sequences, first this, then that, therefore this explains why that happened. The paradigm bears a different explanation altogether, one that derives from its principle of selection, and therefore the kinds of explanations paradigmatic thinking sets forth, expressed through its principles of selection in making connections and drawing conclusions, will demand rich instantiation. The Future History of Israel: just as studying the past is supposed to explain the present and point to the future—surely the rationale for historical thinking and writing, as Chapter I’s account of principles of history in the Hebrew Scriptures showed us—so paradigmatic thinking bears the same responsibility. That concerns not so much explaining the present as permitting informed speculation about what will happen in the future. And that speculation will appeal to those principles of order, structure, and explanation that the paradigm to begin with sets forth. So future history in historical thinking and writing puts forth out of past and present a trajectory over time to come. Future history in paradigmatic thinking forms projects along other lines altogether. I limit my presentation to an acutely-abbreviated exemplary repertoire, covering only the main points of a rich and complex literature of models, their definition and application. The important point throughout is that these paradigms serve to form and inform events large and small, now and then, here and there, without regard to dimensions or considerations of past, present, or future. Whatever happens that bears consequence and demands explanation is accommodated within these patterns, which serve equally well for past and present, public and private, small and large occasions. To refer once more to the analogy drawn from mathematics, fractal thinking, paradigmatic thinking in place of the historical kind finds sameness without regard to scale, from small to large and so makes possible the quest for a few specific patterns, which, controlling for chaos by claiming only a proportionate order, isolate points of regularity or recurrence and describe, analyze, and permit us to inter-

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pret them.3 In section v, below, I shall spell out the meaning of the types of writing briefly illustrated in the next three sections. II.

The Mishnah, Tosefta, Abot, Sifra, Sifré to Numbers, and Sifré to Deuteronomy

A. The Paradigm of Israel’s History Here is how the entire history of Israel, beginning to end, is to be portrayed in a systematic narrative of an other-than-historical character. The exegesis of “remember the days of yore” leads us to a review of God’s relationship with the world through Israel. “Remember” here does not precipitate a review of times perceived as past— not at all. Memory is an act that is contemporary, calling up the past as a player in the acutely-present tense of today’s world. Not only so, but the climax focuses not on the past but on the future. The catalogue is complete, the message clear. The past is now invoked as a model for the messianic future, which is to be anticipated. I abbreviate the passage to highlight the structure of the paradigm that takes the place of history in the description of the existence of Israel. Sifré to Deuteronomy CCCXIII:I 1. A. [“He found him in a desert region, in an empty howling waste. He engirded him, watched over him, guarded him as the pupil of his eye. Like an eagle who rouses his nestlings, gliding down to his young, so did he spread his wings and take him, bear him along on his pinions; the Lord alone did guide him, no alien god at his side” (Dt. 32:1012).] B. “He found him in a desert region:” C. This refers to Abraham. 2. A. “…He engirded him:” B. In line with this verse: “The Lord said to Abram, ‘Go from your land’“ (Gen. 12:1). 3. A. “…watched over him:” B. Before Abraham came into the world, it was as if the Holy One, blessed be he, was king only over heaven alone, as it is said, “The Lord, God of heaven, who has taken me...” (Gen. 24:7). C. But when Abraham our father came into the world, he made him king over heaven and also over earth, as it is said, “I impose an 3 In Chapter VIII I shall introduce another metaphor drawn from mathematics to clarify the character and function of paradigms, one that in its own framework explicitly invokes the language of philosophy.

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oath upon you, by the Lord, God of heaven and God of earth” (Gen. 24:2). 4. A. “…guarded him as the pupil of his eye:” B. Even if the Holy One, blessed be he, had asked from our father Abraham the pupil of his eye, he would have given it to him, and not only the pupil of his eye, but even his soul, which was the most precious to him of all things. C. For it is said, “Take your son, your only son, Isaac” (Gen. 22:2). D. Now was it not perfectly self-evident to him that it was his son, his only son. E. But this refers to the soul, which is called “only,” as it is said, “Deliver my soul from the sword, my only one from the power of the dog” (Ps. 22:21). Sifré to Deuteronomy CCCXIII:II 1. A. Another teaching concerning, “He found him in a desert region:” B. This refers to Israel, as it is said, “I found Israel like grapes in a desert” (Hos. 9:10). 2. A. “…in an empty howling waste:” B. It was in a difficult situation, a place in which were marauding bands and thugs. 3. A. “He engirded him:” B. Before Mount Sinai, as it is said, “And you shall set a boundary for the people round about” (Ex. 19:12). 4. A. “…watched over him:” B. Through the Ten Commandments. C. This teaches that when the act of speech went forth from the mouth of the Holy One, blessed be he, the Israelites saw it and understood it and knew how much amplification was contained therein, how much law was contained therein, how many possibilities for lenient rules, for strict rulings, how many analogies were contained therein. 5. A. “…guarded him as the pupil of his eye:” B. They would fall back twelve mils and go forward twelve mils at the sound of each and every act of speech, C. yet they did not take fright on account of the thunder and lightning. Sifré to Deuteronomy CCCXIII:IV 1. A. Another teaching concerning, “He found him in a desert region:” B. This refers to the age to come. C. So Scripture says, “Therefore behold, I will seduce her and bring her into the wilderness and speak tenderly to her” (Hos. 2:16). 2. A. “…in an empty howling waste:”

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part three: chapter v B. This refers to the four kingdoms, as it is said, “Who led your through the great and dreadful wilderness” (Dt. 8:15). 3. A. “He engirded him:” B. with elders. 4. A. “…watched over him:” B. With prophets. 5. A. “…guarded him as the pupil of his eye:” B. He guarded them from demons, that they not injure them, in line with this verse: “Surely one who touches you touches the apple of his eye” Zech. 2:12).

The paradigm then covers Abraham, Israel, and the world to come— person, community, age. It is not a historical paradigm, since it does not organize and classify sequential periods of the same character. What is set into relationship are three modes of being: Abraham, the model; Israel, to conform to the model; the world to come, to mark the fruition of the model. B. Israel and the Nations The urgent question confronted by this Judaic system (among others before and since) takes up the relationship of Israel and the nations. How is Israel’s place in world affairs to be accounted for? Elected by God, Israel’s this-worldly fate contradicted its supernatural standing. Now that question is readily framed in this-worldly, historical terms, and a variety of conventional historical writing did just that. What makes the following important is its demonstration of the way in which paradigmatic thinking takes over historical events. The paradigm defines that which counts, among the variety of events at hand: defines, but then explains: Sifré to Deuteronomy to Eqeb XLIII:III 7. A. Rabban Gamaliel, R. Joshua, R. Eleazar b. Azariah, and R. Aqiba were going toward Rome. They heard the sound of the city’s traffic from as far away as Puteoli, a hundred and twenty mil away. They began to cry, while R. Aqiba laughed. B. They said to him, “Aqiba, why are we crying while you are laughing?” C. He said to them, “Why are you crying?” D. They said to him, “Should we not cry, since gentiles, idolators, sacrifice to their idols and bow down to icons, but dwell securely in prosperity, serenely, while the house of the footstool of our God has been put to the torch and left a lair for beasts of the field?” E. He said to them, “That is precisely why I was laughing. If this is how he has rewarded those who anger him, all the more so [will

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he reward] those who do his will.” 8. A. Another time they went up to Jerusalem and go to Mount Scopus. They tore their garments. B. They came to the mountain of the house [of the temple] and saw a fox go forth from the house of the holy of holies. They began to cry, while R. Aqiba laughed. C. They said to him, “You are always giving surprises. We are crying when you laugh!” D. He said to them, “But why are you crying?” E. They said to him, “Should we not cry over the place concerning which it is written, “And the common person who draws near shall be put to death’ (Num. 1:51)? Now lo, a fox comes out of it. F. “In our connection the following verse of Scripture has been carried out: ‘For this our heart is faint, for these things our eyes are dim, for the mountain of Zion which is desolate, the foxes walk upon it’ (Lam. 5:17-18).” G. He said to them, “That is the very reason I have laughed. For lo, it is written, ‘And I will take for me faithful witnesses to record, Uriah the priest and Zechariah the son of Jeberechiah’ (Is. 8:2). H. “And what has Uriah got to do with Zechariah? What is it that Uriah said? ‘Zion shall be plowed as a field and Jerusalem shall become heaps and the mountain of the Lord’s house as the high places of a forest’ (Jer. 26:18). I. “What is it that Zechariah said? ‘Thus says the Lord of hosts, “Old men and women shall yet sit in the broad places of Jerusalem”’ (Zech. 8:4). J. “Said the Omnipresent, ‘Lo, I have these two witnesses. If the words of Uriah have been carried out, then the words of Zechariah will be carried out. If the words of Uriah are nullified, then the words of Zechariah will be nullified. K. “‘Therefore I was happy that the words of Uriah have been carried out, so that in the end the words of Zechariah will come about.’“ L. In this language they replied to him: “Aqiba, you have given us comfort.”

Here the paradigm that Aqiba finds in Scripture tells him what data require attention, and what do not. It further accounts for the facts that have been selected. The prosperity of the idolators matters only because the paradigm explains why to begin with we may take account of their situation. The destruction of the Temple matters also because it conforms to an intelligible paradigm. In both cases we both select and also understand events by appeal to the pattern of defined by the working of God’s will. The data at hand then yield inferences of a particular order—the prosperity of idolators, the disgrace of Israel in its very cult. We notice both facts because they

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both complement one another and illustrate the workings of the model: validating prophecy, interpreting experience in light of its message. C. Explaining the Pattern of Events The social world of Israel, subject to the historians’ description and explanation, requires a more nuanced pattern than one focused solely on the Temple. Not only so, but data demand attention beyond the cult. There is good in the world: how to account for it? And what paradigm explains evil as well? Here is a theory of the rhythm and direction of events in this world: Tosefta Sotah 10:1-2 10:1 A. When righteous people come into the world, good comes into the world and retribution departs from the world. B. And when they take their leave from the world, retribution comes into the world, and goodness departs from the world. 10:2 A. When bad people come into the world, retribution comes into the world, and goodness departs from the world. B. And when they depart from the world, goodness comes back into the world, and retribution departs from the world. C. How do we know that, when righteous people come into the world, goodness comes into the world, and retribution departs from the world? Since it is said, “And he called him Noah, saying, This one will comfort us in our work and in the toil of our hands” (Gen. 5:29)....

Here is a distinct paradigm, in which the periods into which spans of natural time may be divided are set aside, and time is classified in terms of “fire anger” or retribution as against goodness. D. The Future History of Israel Paradigmatic thinking, finding no interest in divisions of time into past, present, and future, nonetheless possesses in the paradigm a sure guide to what will be. That we have already noted in the colloquy between Aqiba and sages concerning the prosperity of Rome and the disgrace of the Temple. The working of the paradigm at one point provides assurance that it will work equally well at some other point, and considerations of future or past time play no role at all.

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the enduring paradigm III. The Later Midrash-Compilations: Genesis Rabbah, Leviticus Rabbah, and Pesiqta deRab Kahana A. The Paradigm of Israel’s History

I claimed that the paradigm does its work on all data, without regard to scale or context or circumstance, What this means is that any paradigmatic case—personality, event, idea—imposes structure and order on all data; and the structure will be the same for the small and the large, the now and the then. By that criterion of paradigmatic structuring of “history,” we should be able to tell the story of Israel’s past, present, and future, by appeal to any identified model, and what we need not predict is which model will yield what pattern, for the patterns are always the same, whatever the choice of the model. In the following, for a striking example, we are able to define the paradigm of Israel’s history out of the lives of the founders of the Israelite tribes. That is not a matter of mere generalities. The tribal progenitors moreover correspond to the kingdoms that will rule over Israel, so there is a correspondence of opposites: Genesis Rabbah XCIX:II. 1. A. “For the Lord God will do nothing unless he reveals his secret to his servants the prophets” (Amos 3:7). B. Jacob linked two of his sons, corresponding to two of the monarchies, and Moses linked two of the tribes, corresponding to two of the monarchies. C. Judah corresponds to the kingdom of Babylonia, for this is compared to a lion and that is compared to a lion. This is compared to a lion: “Judah is a lion’s whelp” (Gen. 49:9), and so too Babylonia: “The first was like a lion” (Dan. 7:4). D. Then by the hand of which of the tribes will the kingdom of Babylonia fall? It will be by the hand of Daniel, who comes from the tribe of Judah. E. Benjamin corresponds to the kingdom of Media, for this is compared to a wolf and that is compared to a wolf. This is compared to a wolf: “Benjamin is a ravenous wolf, [in the morning devouring the prey, and at even dividing the spoil].” And that is compared to a wolf: “And behold, another beast, a second, like a wolf” (Dan. 7:5). H. [Reverting to E:] Then by the hand of which of the tribes will the kingdom of Media fall? It will be by the hand of Mordecai, who comes from the tribe of Benjamin. I. Levi corresponds to the kingdom of Greece. This is the third tribe in order, and that is the third kingdom in order. This is written with a word that is made up of three letters, and that is written with a word which consists of three letters. This one sounds the horn and

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part three: chapter v that one sounds the horn, this one wears turbans and that one wears helmets, this one wears pants and that one wears knee-cuts. J. To be sure, this one is very populous, while that one is few in numbers. But the many came and fell into the hand of the few. K. On account of merit deriving from what source did this take place? It is on account of the blessing that Moses bestowed: “Smite through the loins of them that rise up against him” (Deut. 33:11). L. Then by the hand of which of the tribes will the kingdom of Greece fall? It will be by the hand of sons of the Hasmoneans, who come from the tribe of Levi.’ M. Joseph corresponds to the kingdom of Edom [Rome], for this one has horns and that one has horns. This one has horns: “His firstling bullock, majesty is his, and his horns are the horns of the wild ox” (Deut. 33:17). And that one has horns: “And concerning the ten horns that were on its head” (Dan. 7:20). This one kept away from fornication while that one cleaved to fornication. This one paid respect for the honor owing to his father, while that one despised the honor owing to his father. Concerning this one it is written, “For I fear God” (Gen. 42:18), while in regard to that one it is written, “And he did not fear God” (Deut. 25:18). [So the correspondence in part is one of opposites.] N. Then by the hand of which of the tribes will the kingdom of Edom fall? It will be by the hand of the anointed for war, who comes from the tribe of Joseph.

The same mode of thought, seeking correspondences, comparisons and contrasts, yields the scheme of the “history” of Israel in a variety of formulations. In the following, which I regard as the best formulation of paradigmatic thinking in the present set of documents, Israel’s history is taken over into the structure of Israel’s life of sanctification, and all that happens to Israel forms part of the structure of holiness built around cult, Torah, synagogue, sages, Zion, and the like; I give only a small part: Genesis Rabbah LXX:VIII. 2. A. “As he looked, he saw a well in the field:” B. R. Hama bar Hanina interpreted the verse in six ways [that is, he divides the verse into six clauses and systematically reads each of the clauses in light of the others and in line with an overriding theme: C. “‘As he looked, he saw a well in the field:’ this refers to the well [of water in the wilderness, Num. 21:17]. D. “‘...and lo, three flocks of sheep lying beside it:’ specifically, Moses, Aaron, and Miriam. E. “‘...for out of that well the flocks were watered:’ from there each one drew water for his standard, tribe, and family.”

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F. “And the stone upon the well’s mouth was great:” G. Said R. Hanina, “It was only the size of a little sieve.” H. [Reverting to Hama’s statement:] “‘...and put the stone back in its place upon the mouth of the well:’ for the coming journeys. [Thus the first interpretation applies the passage at hand to the life of Israel in the wilderness.] 3. A. “‘As he looked, he saw a well in the field:’ refers to Zion. B. “‘...and lo, three flocks of sheep lying beside it:’ refers to the three festivals. C. “‘....for out of that well the flocks were watered:’ from there they drank of the holy spirit. D. “‘...The stone on the well’s mouth was large:’ this refers to the rejoicing of the house of the water-drawing.” E. Said R. Hoshaiah, “Why is it called ‘the house of the water drawing’? Because from there they drink of the Holy Spirit.” F. [Resuming Hama b. Hanina’s discourse:] “‘...and when all the flocks were gathered there:’ coming from ‘the entrance of Hamath to the brook of Egypt’ (1 Kgs. 8:66). G. “‘...the shepherds would roll the stone from the mouth of the well and water the sheep:’ for from there they would drink of the Holy Spirit. H. “‘...and put the stone back in its place upon the mouth of the well:’ leaving it in place until the coming festival. [Thus the second interpretation reads the verse in light of the Temple celebration of the Festival of Tabernacles.] 5. A. “‘As he looked, he saw a well in the field:’ this refers to Zion. B. “‘...and lo, three flocks of sheep lying beside it:’ this refers to the first three kingdoms [Babylonia, Media, Greece]. C. “‘...for out of that well the flocks were watered:’ for they enriched the treasures that were laid upon up in the chambers of the Temple. D. “‘...The stone on the well’s mouth was large:’ this refers to the merit attained by the patriarchs. E. “‘...and when all the flocks were gathered there:’ this refers to the wicked kingdom, which collects troops through levies over all the nations of the world. F. “‘...the shepherds would roll the stone from the mouth of the well and water the sheep:’ for they enriched the treasures that were laid upon up in the chambers of the Temple. G. “‘...and put the stone back in its place upon the mouth of the well:’ in the age to come the merit attained by the patriarchs will stand [in defense of Israel].’ [So the fourth interpretation interweaves the themes of the Temple cult and the domination of the four monarchies.] 7. A. “‘As he looked, he saw a well in the field:’ this refers to the synagogue. B. “‘...and lo, three flocks of sheep lying beside it:’ this refers to the three who are called to the reading of the Torah on weekdays.

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part three: chapter v C. “‘...for out of that well the flocks were watered:’ for from there they hear the reading of the Torah. D. “‘...The stone on the well’s mouth was large:’ this refers to the impulse to do evil. E. “‘...and when all the flocks were gathered there:’ this refers to the congregation. F. “‘...the shepherds would roll the stone from the mouth of the well and water the sheep:’ for from there they hear the reading of the Torah. G. “‘...and put the stone back in its place upon the mouth of the well:’ for once they go forth [from the hearing of the reading of the Torah] the impulse to do evil reverts to its place.” [The sixth and last interpretation turns to the twin themes of the reading of the Torah in the synagogue and the evil impulse, temporarily driven off through the hearing of the Torah.]

So much for the correlation of the structures of the social and cosmic order with the condition of Israel. In the passage just reviewed, paradigms take over the organization of events. Time is no longer sequential and linear. What endures are the structures of cosmos and society: prophets, Zion, sanhedrin, holy seasons, and on and on. Clearly, the one thing that plays no role whatsoever in this tableau and frieze is Israel’s linear history; past and future take place in an eternal present. That formulation, however, cannot complete the picture, since Israel’s experience encompasses the nations, on the one side, Rome, on the other. Any claim to classify spells of time has to take account of the worldly political experience of Israel; that, after all, is what sets the agenda of thought to begin with. The periodization of history can be worked out in terms of Rome’s rule now, Israel’s dominance in the age to come. The comparability of the two is expressed in various ways, e.g.: Genesis Rabbah LXIII:VII. 2. A. “Two nations are in your womb, [and two peoples, born of you, shall be divided; the one shall be stronger than the other, and the elder shall serve the younger]” (Gen. 25:23): B. There are two proud nations in your womb, this one takes pride in his world, and that one takes pride in his world. C. This one takes pride in his monarchy, and that one takes pride in his monarchy. D. There are two proud nations in your womb. E. Hadrian represents the nations, Solomon, Israel. F. There are two who are hated by the nations in your womb. All the nations hate Esau, and all the nations hate Israel.

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G. The one whom your creator hates is in your womb: “And Esau I hated” (Mal. 1:3).

Thus far, paradigmatic thinking has come to expression in the transformation of actions or traits of the patriarchs into markers of time, modes of the characterization of what history treats as historical. But any conception that thinking about social experience by appeal to patterns or models, rather than sequences in teleological order, requires attention to data of a narrowly historical character, e.g., persons or events paradigmatized, misconstrues the character of the mode of thinking that is before us. We may indeed make sense of Israel’s social world by appeal to the deeds or traits of the patriarchs or tribal progenitors. But other statements of the Torah serve equally well as sources for paradigmatic interpretation: models of how things are to be organized and made sensible, against which how things actually are is to be measured. B. Israel and the Nations The foregoing takes over Israel’s institutions; in what follows, we see a similar transformation of its history among the nations. Paradigmatic thinking by definition treats events of the past not as privileged but as comparable to ahistorical data. History is subordinated to the model or pattern, and the paradigm takes into itself data in no way historical in category alongside events of a world-historical order. No better example of paradigmatic thinking and its outcome in Rabbinic Judaism can be presented than the one at hand. Here, the history of Israel among the nations is foreseen by prophecy and conveyed by apocalyptic. The nations at hand are Babylonia, Media, Greece, and Rome, the fourth-named time and again differentiated from the first three. The matter unfolds rather majestically, introducing first one theme the nations’ role in the history of Israel, their hostile treatment of Israel—and then the next, the food taboos, finally bringing the two themes together. We can identify each of the successive kingdoms with the four explicitly tabooed animals of Lev. 11:1-8: camel, rock badger, hare, pig. Then, as we see, the reasons for the taboo assigned to each of them are worked out, in a triple sequence of plays on words, with special reference to the secondary possibilities presented by the words for “chew the cud,” “bring up GRH.” So while the first impression is that a diverse set of materials has been strung together, upon a

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closer glance we see quite the opposite: a purposive and careful arrangement of distinct propositions, each leading to, and intensifying the force of, the next. That is why at the climax comes the messianic reference to Israel’s ultimate inheritance of the power and dominion of Rome. The following statement best represents paradigmatic thinking: encompassing, balanced, proportionate, pertinent to all the dimensions of human existence, taking account of time past, present, and future within a single, homogenizing structure. Once more, I abbreviate and give only a few of the systematic demonstrations of the same proposition: Leviticus Rabbah XIII:V 1. A. Said R. Ishmael b. R. Nehemiah, “All the prophets foresaw what the pagan kingdoms would do [to Israel].... 7. A. (=Gen. R. 42:2:) Abraham foresaw what the evil kingdoms would do [to Israel]. B. “[As the sun was going down,] a deep sleep fell on Abraham; [and lo, a dread and great darkness fell upon him]” (Gen. 15:12). C. “Dread” (YMH) refers to Babylonia, on account of the statement, “Then Nebuchadnezzar was full of fury (HMH)” (Dan. 3:19). D. “Darkness” refers to Media, which brought darkness to Israel through its decrees: “to destroy, to slay, and to wipe out all the Jews” (Est. 7:4). E. “Great” refers to Greece. J. “Fell on him” (Gen. 15:12). K. This refers to Edom, on account of the following verse: “The earth quakes at the noise of their [Edom’s] fall” (Jer. 49:21). 8. A. Daniel foresaw what the evil kingdoms would do [to Israel]. B. “[Daniel said], I saw in my vision by night, and behold, the four winds of heaven were stirring up the great sea. And four great beasts came up out of the sea, [different from one another. The first was like a lion and had eagles’ wings. Then as I looked, its wings were plucked off.. . And behold, another beast, a second one, like a bear.. . After this I looked, and lo, another, like a leopard.. . After this I saw in the night visions, and behold, a fourth beast, terrible and dreadful and exceedingly strong; and it had great iron teeth]” (Dan. 7:3-7). C. If you enjoy sufficient merit, it will emerge from the sea, but if not, it will come out of the forest. D. The animal that comes up from the sea is not violent, but the one that comes up out of the forest is violent. K. “The first was like a lion [and had eagles’ wings]” (Dan. 7:4). L. This refers to Babylonia. M. Jeremiah saw [Babylonia] as a lion. Then he went and saw it as an eagle.

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N. He saw it as a lion: “A lion has come up from his thicket” (Jer. 4:7). O. And [as an eagle:] “Behold, he shall come up and swoop down as the eagle” (Jer. 49:22). P. [People] said to Daniel, “What do you see?” Q. He said to them, “I see the face like that of a lion and wings like those of an eagle: ‘The first was like a lion and had eagles’ wings. Then, as I looked, its wings were plucked off, and it was lifted up from the ground [and made to stand upon two feet like a man and the heart of a man was given to it]’“ (Dan. 7:4). V. “And behold, another beast, a second one, like a bear. [It was raised up one side; it had three ribs in its mouth between its teeth, and it was told, Arise, devour much flesh]” (Dan. 7:5). W. This refers to Media. X. Said R. Yohanan, “It is like a bear.” Y. It is written, “Similar to a wolf” (DB); thus, “And a wolf was there.” Z. That is in accord with the view of R. Yohanan, for R. Yohanan said, “‘Therefore a lion out of the forest [slays them]’ [Jer. 5:6]—this refers to Babylonia. AA. “‘A wolf of the deserts spoils them’ [Jer. 5:6] refers to Media. BB. “‘A leopard watches over their cities’ [Jer. 5:6] refers to Greece. CC. “‘Whoever goes out from them will be savaged’ [Jer. 5:6] refers to Edom. DD. “Why so? ‘Because their transgressions are many, and their back-slidings still more’” (Jer. 5:6). EE. “After this, I looked, and lo, another, like a leopard [with four wings of a bird on its back; and the beast had four heads; and dominion was given to it]” (Dan. 7:6). FF. This [leopard (NMR)] refers to Greece, which persisted (MNMRT) impudently in making harsh decrees, saying to Israel, “Write on the horn of an ox that you have no share in the God of Israel.” GG. “After this I saw in the night visions, and behold, a fourth beast, terrible and dreadful and exceedingly strong; [and it had great iron teeth; it devoured and broke in pieces and stamped the residue with its feet. It was different from all the beasts that were before it; and it had ten horns]” (Dan. 7:7). HH. This refers to Edom [Rome]. 9. A. Moses foresaw what the evil kingdoms would do [to Israel]. B. “The camel, rock badger, and hare” (Deut. 14:7). [Compare: “Nevertheless, among those that chew the cud or part the hoof, you shall not eat these: the camel, because it chews the cud but does not part the hoof, is unclean to you. The rock badger, because it chews the cud but does not part the hoof, is unclean to you. And the hare, because it chews the cud but does not part the hoof, is unclean to you, and the pig, because it parts the hoof and is cloven-footed, but does

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part three: chapter v not chew the cud, is unclean to you” (Lev. 11:4-8).] C. The camel (GML) refers to Babylonia, [in line with the following verse of Scripture: “O daughter of Babylonia, you who are to be devastated!] Happy will be he who requites (GML) you, with what you have done to us” (Ps. 147:8). D. “The rock badger” (Deut. 14:7)—this refers to Media. E. Rabbis and R. Judah b. R. Simon. F. Rabbis say, “Just as the rock badger exhibits traits of uncleanness and traits of cleanness, so the kingdom of Media produced both a righteous man and a wicked one.” G. Said R. Judah b. R. Simon, “The last Darius was Esther’s son. He was clean on his mother’s side and unclean on his father’s side.” H. “The hare” (Deut 14:7)—this refers to Greece. The mother of King Ptolemy was named “Hare” [in Greek: lagos]. I. “The pig” (Deut. 14:7)—this refers to Edom [Rome].

It would not be possible to identify a more ample statement of paradigmatic thinking about matters dealt with, also, by history. Here we transform events into patterns, patterns into encompassing structures, capable of accommodating all of the experience of humanity that the community addressed by the paradigm chooses to take into account. The basic outline set forth here governs in numerous other passages in the documents of the present group and the next set as well. Given this rather substantial abstract, we need not review the broad range of ways in which the same ideas are laid out. One of the traits of paradigmatic thinking—by definition—is its repetitious character. Just as, in historical thinking, events are set forth because they are singular and proceed one to the next, so in paradigmatic thinking, events are set forth because they are exemplary and conform to no single linear pattern at all. C. Explaining the Pattern of Events The passages just now reviewed leave no doubt about the character of the explanations of the paradigms of Israel’s experience. Explanation will derive from whether or not Israel obeys the Torah, whether or not Israel studies the Torah, the character of Israel’s moral condition, Israel’s separating itself from the ways of the gentiles, and the like. None of these explanations will have surprised or even much puzzled the framers of the Authorized History. A single case suffices to show the character of paradigmatic explanation. Here we have quite a remarkable statement, that the great men, and the nation,

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are punished for their sins in such a way that the punishment derives from them themselves; we move along a rather strange line of people who sinned through their arrogance: Adam, Esau, Sennacherib, Hiram, Nebuchadnezzar, then: Israel. But the part of Israel under discussion is the part punished through the affliction, through natural, internal causes, of leprosy or flux. This then yields a comprehensive theory of Israel’s history. I have abbreviated the passage as much as possible: Leviticus Rabbah XVIII:II.1 A. “Dread and terrible are they; their justice and dignity proceed from themselves” (Hab. 1:7). B. “Dread and terrible” refers to the first Man. G. “Their justice and dignity proceed from themselves” (Hab. 1:7). H. This refers to Eve. I. That is in line with the following verse of Scripture: “The woman whom you gave to be with me is the one who gave me of the tree, and I ate” (Gen. 3:2). 2. A. Another interpretation: “Dread and terrible” refers to Esau. B. That is in line with the following verse of Scripture: “And Rebecca took the most coveted garments of Esau, her elder son” (Gen. 27:15). [This clothing came from Nimrod, so Esau was more of a hunter than he, hence, “dread and terrible.” C. “Their justice and dignity proceed from themselves” (Hab. 1:7). D. This refers to [the prophet] Obadiah. E. Said R. Isaac, “Obadiah was a proselyte of Edomite origin, and he gave a prophecy concerning Edom, ‘And there shall not be any remnant of the house of Esau for the mouth of the Lord has spoken it’” (Ob. 1:18). 3. A. Another interpretation: “Dread and terrible” refers to Sennacherib. B. “Who among all the gods of the lands has saved their country from my hand” (Is. 36:20). C. “Their justice and dignity proceed from themselves” (Hab. 1:7). D. This refers to his sons: “And it came to pass, as Sennacherib was worshipping in the house of Nisroch, his god, [that Adrammelech and Sarezer, his sons, smote him with the sword]” (2 Kgs. 19:37).

Once more, we notice that the appeal to one paradigm obliterates lines of structure and order that we should have anticipated, e.g., differentiation between the personal and the public, or the social and the natural. As much as lines of differentiation among spells of time

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(past, present, future) are obscured, so all other indicators of classification are set aside by the ones that are in play here. Indeed, the power of paradigmatic thinking is not only to order what should be classified, but also to treat as lacking all differentiation what does not require classification. What we have is a reordering of all of the lines of existence, nature’s and humanity’s, as much as an obliteration of conventional points of differentiation, e.g., of time or space for that matter. D. The Future History of Israel The purpose of paradigmatic thinking, as much as historical, points toward the future. History is important to explain the present, also to help peer into the future; and paradigms serve precisely the same purpose. The choice between the one model and the other, then, rests upon which appeals to the more authentic data. In that competition Scripture, treated as paradigm, met no competition in linear history, and it was paradigmatic, not historical, thinking that proved compelling for a thousand years or more. The future history of Israel is written in Scripture, and what happened in the beginning is what is going to happen at the end of time. That sense of order and balance prevailed. It comes to expression in a variety of passages, of which a severely truncated selection will have to suffice: Genesis Rabbah XLII:II. 2. A. Said R. Abin, “Just as [Israel’s history] began with the encounter with four kingdoms, so [Israel’s history] will conclude with the encounter with the four kingdoms. B. “‘Chedorlaomer, king of Elam, Tidal, king of Goiim, Amraphel, king of Shinar, and Arioch, king of Ellasar, four kings against five’ (Gen. 14:9). C. “So [Israel’s history] will conclude with the encounter with the four kingdoms: the kingdom of Babylonia, the kingdom of Medea, the kingdom of Greece, and the kingdom of Edom.”

Another pattern serves as well, resting as it does on the foundations of the former. It is the familiar one that appeals to the deeds of the founders. The lives of the patriarchs stand for the history of Israel; the deeds of the patriarchs cover the future historical periods in Israel’s destiny. A single formulation of matters suffices to show how the entire history of Israel was foreseen at the outset:

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Pesiqta deRab Kahana XXI:V 1. A. R. Hiyya taught on Tannaite authority, “At the beginning of the Creation of the world the Holy One, blessed be He, foresaw that the Temple would be built, destroyed, and rebuilt. B. “‘In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth’ (Gen. 1:1) [refers to the Temple] when it was built, in line with the following verse: ‘That I may plant the heavens and lay the foundations of the earth and say to Zion, You are my people’ (Is. 51:16). C. “‘And the earth was unformed’—lo, this refers to the destruction, in line with this verse: ‘I saw the earth, and lo, it was unformed’ (Jer. 4:23). D. “‘And God said, Let there be light’—lo, it was built and well constructed in the age to come.”

A single specific example of the foregoing proposition suffices. It is drawn from that same mode of paradigmatic thinking that imposes the model of the beginning upon the end. In the present case the yield is consequential: we know what God is going to do to Rome. What God did to the Egyptians foreshadows what God will do to the Romans at the end of time. What we have here is the opposite of cyclical history; here history conforms to a pattern, end-time recapitulated Creation’s events and complementing them; here we see a good example of how paradigmatic thinking addresses the possibility of cyclicality and insists instead upon closure: Pesiqta deRab Kahana VII:XI.3 A. R. Levi in the name of R. Hama bar Hanina: “He who exacted vengeance from the former [oppressor] will exact vengeance from the latter. B. “Just as, in Egypt, it was with blood, so with Edom it will be the same: ‘I will show wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke’ (Job 3:3). C. “Just as, in Egypt, it was with frogs, so with Edom it will be the same: ‘The sound of an uproar from the city, an uproar because of the palace, an uproar of the Lord who renders recompense to his enemies ‘(Is. 66:6). D. “Just as, in Egypt, it was with lice, so with Edom it will be the same: ‘The streams of Bosrah will be turned into pitch, and the dust thereof into brimstone, and the land thereof shall become burning pitch’ (Is. 34:9). ‘Smite the dust of the earth that it may become lice’ (Ex. 8:12). E. “Just as, in Egypt, it was with swarms of wild beasts, so with Edom it will be the same: ‘The pelican and the bittern shall possess it’ (Is. 34:11). F. “Just as, in Egypt, it was with pestilence, so with Edom it will be the same: ‘I will plead against Gog with pestilence and with blood ‘(Ez. 38:22).

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part three: chapter v G. “Just as, in Egypt, it was with boils, so with Edom it will be the same: ‘This shall be the plague wherewith the Lord will smite all the peoples that have warred against Jerusalem: their flesh shall consume away while they stand upon their feet” (Zech. 14:12). H. “Just as, in Egypt, it was with great stones, so with Edom it will be the same: ‘I will cause to rain upon Gog...an overflowing shower and great hailstones’ (Ez. 38:22). I. “Just as, in Egypt, it was with locusts, so with Edom it will be the same: ‘And you, son of man, thus says the Lord God: Speak to birds of every sort...the flesh of the mighty shall you eat...blood shall you drink...you shall eat fat until you are full and drink blood until you are drunk’ (Ez. 39:17-19). J. “Just as, in Egypt, it was with darkness, so with Edom it will be the same: ‘He shall stretch over Edom the line of chaos and the plummet of emptiness’ (Is. 34:11). K. “Just as, in Egypt, he took out their greatest figure and killed him, so with Edom it will be the same: ‘A great slaughter in the land of Edom, among them to come down shall be the wild oxen’ (Is. 34:67).”

The exposition of matters through the small sample given here leaves no doubt on precisely how paradigmatic thinking recast Israel’s recorded experience (“history”) into a set of models that pertained everywhere and all the time. The picture does not change in the final set of documents, which we shall survey only cursorily. IV. The Latest Midrash-Compilations: Song of Songs Rabbah, Ruth Rabbah, Esther Rabbah I, and Lamentations Rabbah A. The Paradigm of Israel’s History The history of Israel in Egypt, at the Sea, at Sinai, and subjugated by the gentile kingdoms, ends when the redemption will come. The entire message of history is contained within these theological statements: Song of Songs Rabbah XVIII.i 4. A. Another explanation of the phrase, “I am a rose of Sharon:” B. Said the Community of Israel, “I am the one, and I am beloved. C. “I am the one who was hidden in the shadow of Egypt, but in a brief moment the Holy One, blessed be He, brought me together to Raamses, and I [Simon:] blossomed forth in good deeds like a rose, and I said before him this song: ‘You shall have a song as in the night when a feast is sanctified’ (Isa. 30:29).” 5. A. Another explanation of the phrase, “I am a rose of Sharon:”

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B. Said the Community of Israel, “I am the one, and I am beloved. C. “I am the one who was hidden in the shadow of the sea, but in a brief moment I [Simon:] blossomed forth in good deeds like a rose, and I pointed to him with the finger [Simon:] (opposite to me): ‘This is my God and I will glorify him’ (Ex. 15:2).” 6. A. Another explanation of the phrase, “I am a rose of Sharon:” B. Said the Community of Israel, “I am the one, and I am beloved. C. “I am the one who was hidden in the shadow of Mount Sinai, but in a brief moment I [Simon:] blossomed forth in good deeds like a lily in hand and in heart, and I said before him, ‘All that the Lord has said we will do and obey’ (Ex. 24:7).” 7. A. Another explanation of the phrase, “I am a rose of Sharon:” B. Said the Community of Israel, “I am the one, and I am beloved. C. “I am the one who was hidden and downtrodden in the shadow of the kingdoms. But tomorrow, when the Holy One, blessed be He, redeems me from the shadow of the kingdoms, I shall blossom forth like a lily and say before him a new song: ‘Sing to the Lord a new song, for he has done marvelous things, his right hand and his holy arm have wrought salvation for him’ (Ps. 98:1).”

Once more the capacity of the paradigm to take over random events and form them into an intelligible pattern is fully exposed. It is banal by this point to observe that history is not the sole way to set forth an account of how things are and why they are the way they are. A reading of matters in which events are not singular but exemplary, in which a pattern is not for one time only but for all time, and in which the past, present, and future are formed into a single model competed successfully, rewriting history along the lines of eternity. In this final set of documents, a single statement serves to bring to a climax and conclusion a pattern of reading Scripture that proves uniform, beginning to end. Here is a summary statement of matters. The merit of the fathers sustains the children for generations to come; what Abraham did provoked an exact correspondence in God’s dealing with the Israelites in Egypt; Israel’s history spins out the effects of the ancestors’ merits: The Fathers According to Rabbi Nathan XXXIII:III.1 A. In response to the ten trials inflicted upon Abraham, our father, from all of which he emerged whole, the Holy One, blessed be he, performed ten miracles for his children in Egypt. B. And corresponding to them also, the Holy One, blessed be he, brought ten plagues on the Egyptians in Egypt. C. And corresponding to them also, ten miracles were done for the Israelites at the sea.

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part three: chapter v D. And corresponding to them also, he brought ten plagues on the Egyptians at the sea. At this point, readers will concur, to state the entire matter, we need only use the formulation invited by paradigmatic thinking, which, after all, does yield a certain tedium as a market of its power and success: etc.

B. Israel and the Nations Just as the paradigm transforms history, so paradigmatic thinking takes over the natural symbols of Scripture and makes those symbols into further statements of the same model that prevails elsewhere. Here the pattern is a simple one. God surrounds Israel with enemies, but in the end, when the last empire collapses, God will save Israel. That pattern comes to expression not in a paradigmatization of historical events, but in an equivalent treatment of poetic formulations of a different order altogether: Song of Songs Rabbah XIX:i 9. A. R. Abihu interpreted the cited verse to speak of the coming redemption: B. “[‘As a lily among brambles’:] when the lily is among the brambles, it is hard for the farmer to pick it, so what does he do? He burns the thorns around it and plucks it. C. “So: ‘The Lord has commanded concerning Jacob that those who are around him should be his enemies’ (Lam. 1:17), D. “for example, Halamo [which is gentile, is enemy] to Naveh [which is Israelite], Susita to Tiberias, Qastra to Haifa, Jericho to Nauran, Lud to Ono. E. “That is in line with the following verse of Scripture: ‘This is Jerusalem. I have est her in the midst of the gentiles’ (Ez. 5:5). F. “Tomorrow, when redemption comes to Israel, what will the Holy One, blessed be He, do to them? He will bring a flame and burn the area around Israel. G. “That is in line with this verse: ‘And the peoples will be as burnings of lime, as thorns cut down that are burned in fire’ (Isa. 33:12). H. “And in the same connection: ‘The Lord alone shall lead him’ (Dt. 32:12).” 10. A. R. Abun said, “Just as a lily wilts so long as the hot spell persists, but when the dew falls on it, the lily thrives again, B. “so Israel, so long as the shadow of Esau falls across the world, Israel wilts, C. “but when the shadow of Esau passes from the world, Israel will once more thrive: D. “‘I shall be like the dew for Israel. It will blossom as the lily’ (Hos. 14:6).”

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We see that not only historical events are made to serve the purposes of the paradigm; all of Scripture is taken over and reworked for that one purpose. C. Explaining the Pattern of Events The history of Israel and humanity is written in terms of sin, specifically, impulses to do evil. Whatever happens forms a response of God to Israel’s behavior, and nothing takes place that violates that pattern and rule: The Fathers According to Rabbi Nathan XXXVIII:VI.1 A. Exile comes into the world because of those who worship idols, because of fornication, and because of bloodshed, and because of the neglect of the release of the Land [in the year of release]. B. On account of idolatry, as it is said: And I will destroy your high places...and I will scatter you among the nations (Lev. 26:30,33). C. Said the Holy One, blessed be he, to Israel, “Since you lust after idolatry, so I shall send you into exile to a place in which there is idolatry. D. Therefore it is said, And I will destroy your high places...and I will scatter you among the nations.

The rest is predictable. We once more are struck by the uniformity and simplicity of the paradigm, alongside the elaborate and detailed manner in which it is elaborated. D. The Future History of Israel The Exodus and conquest, the return to Zion, and the ultimate salvation then form the entire corpus for which the language of the Song serves as metaphor. The Messiah’s coming, drawing to a close the gentiles’ rule, will be marked by this-worldly historical events, spelled out in the following: Song of Songs Rabbah XXX:iv 2. A. “Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away, for lo, the winter is past:” B. Said R. Azariah, “‘...for lo, the winter is past’: this refers to the kingdom of the Cutheans [Samaritans], which deceives [the words for winter and deceive use some of the same consonants] the world and misleads it through its lies: ‘If your brother, son of your mother...entices you’ (Dt. 13:7).” 3. A. “...the rain is over and gone:” B. this refers to the subjugation. 4. A. “The flowers appear on the earth:”

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part three: chapter v B. the conquerors appear on the earth. C. Who are they? D. R. Berekhiah in the name of R. Isaac: “It is written, ‘And the Lord showed me four craftsmen’ (Zech. 2:3), E. “and who are they? Elijah, the royal Messiah, the Melchizedek, and the military Messiah.”

We need hardly tarry over a passage such as this, which mixes the historical and the cultic, the social and the natural. V. Paradigmatic in Place of Historical Thinking As a medium of organizing and accounting for experience history in the Rabbinic canon does not enjoy the status of a given. Nor does historical thinking concerning the social order lay claim on plausibility. It is one possibility. For reasons proposed in the opening chapter, historical thinking—sequential narrative of one-time events— presupposes order. History means linearity. History depends upon the distinction between time past and time present. History contains with itself its own teleology. But the data do not sustain such presuppositions. Questions of chaos intervene; the very possibility of historical narrative meets a challenge in the diversity of story-lines. Narrative history furthermore first posits a gap between past and present, but then bridges the gap. So why not entertain the possibility that to begin with there is none? These and similar considerations invite a different way of thinking about how things have been and now are, a different tense structure altogether. A way of thinking about the experience of humanity, whether past or contemporary, now competes with historical thinking. It is one that makes other distinctions than the historical ones between past and present. It eschews linear narrative and so takes account of the chaos that ultimately prevails. The category, “history,” as conventionally defined and as further realized in the Authorized History of Scripture, Genesis through Kings, defines merely one way of addressing the past in order to find sense and meaning therein. I have now shown that, with its emphasis on linear, irreversible events and the division between past and present, history is not the way taken by canonical documents of Rabbinic Judaism in organizing Israel’s experience. We know that that is the fact because none of the indicators of historical writing and thinking comes to the surface in the documents under study.

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The very opposite traits predominate. Rabbinic literature contains no sustained historical or biographical narrative, only anecdotes, makes no distinction between past and present but melds them. But that writing, resting as it does on the Hebrew Scriptures, then presents a paradox. A set of writings of a one-sidedly historical character, the Hebrew Scripture deriving from ancient Israel finds itself expounded in an utterly ahistorical way by its heirs, both Judaic and Christian. What Scripture yields for Rabbinic Judaism is not one-time events, arranged in sequence to dictate meaning, but models or patterns of conduct and consequence. These models are defined by the written Torah. No component of the paradigm emerges from other than the selected experience set forth by Scripture. But the paradigms are at the same time pertinent without regard to considerations of scale and formulated without interest in matters of singular context. Forthrightly selective—this matters, that is ignored—the principle of selection is not framed in terms of sequence; order of a different sort is found. VI. Telling Time The models or paradigms that are discerned pertain not to one time alone—past time—but to all times equally—past, present and future. So “time” no longer forms an organizing category of understanding and interpretation. The spells marked out by moon and sun and fixed stars bear meaning, to be sure. But that meaning has no bearing upon the designation of one year as past, another as present. The meaning imputed to the lunar and solar marking of time derives from the cult, on the one side, and the calendar of holy time, on the other: seven solar days, a Sabbath; a lunar cycle, a new month to be celebrated, the first new moon after the vernal equinox, the Passover, and after the autumnal, Tabernacles. Rabbinic Judaism tells time the way nature does and only in that way; events in Rabbinic Judaism deemed worth recording in time take place the way events in nature do.4 What accounts for the difference, between history’s time and paradigmatic time as set forth here, I maintain, is a conception of time quite different from the 4

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This is amplified in Chapter XII, “Astral Israel.”

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definition of historical time that operates in Scripture: the confluence of the nature’s time and history’s way of telling time: two distinct chronographies brought together, the human one then imposed upon the natural one. In Rabbinic Judaism (and not there alone),5 the natural way of telling time precipitated celebration of nature. True, those same events were associated with moments of Israel’s experience as well: the Exodus above all. The language of prayer, e.g., the Sabbath’s classification as a memorial to Creation and also a remembrance of the Exodus from Egypt, leaves no doubt on the dual character of the annotation of time. But the Exodus, memorialized hither and yon through the solar seasons and the Sabbath alike, constituted no more a specific, never-to-be-repeated, one-time historical event, part of a sustained narrative of such events, than any other moment in Israel’s time, inclusive of the building and the destruction of the Temple. Quite to the contrary, linking Creation and Exodus classified both in a single category; the character of that category—historical or paradigmatic—is not difficult to define; the Exodus is treated as consubstantial with Creation, a paradigm, not a one-time event. It follows that this Judaism’s Israel kept time in two ways, and the one particular to Israel (in the way in which the natural calendar was not particular to Israel) through its formulation as a model instead of a singular event was made to accord with the natural calendar, not vice versa. That is to say, just as the natural calendar recorded time that was the opposite of historical, because it was not linear and singular and teleological but reversible and repetitive, so Israel kept time with reference to events, whether past or present, that also were not singular, linear, or teleological. These were, rather, reconstitutive in the forever of here and now—not a return to a perfect time but a recapitulation of a model forever present. Israel could treat as comparable the Creation of the world and the Exodus from Egypt (as the liturgy commonly does, e.g., in connection with the Sabbath) because Israel’s paradigm (not “history”) and nature’s time corresponded in character, were consubstantial and not mutually contradictory, in the terms introduced in Chapters One and Two. And that consubstantiality of what to us are distinct events ex5 An account of ways of telling time in history and in nature will vastly transcend the limits of this study.

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plains why paradigm and natural time work so well together. Now, “time” bears a different signification. It is here one not limited to the definition assigned by nature—yet also not imposed upon natural time but treated as congruent and complementary with nature’s time. How so? Events are eventful by a criterion of selection congruent in character with nature’s own. To understand why I think so, we must recall the character of the Torah’s paradigms: [1] Scripture set forth certain patterns which, applied to the chaos of the moment, selected out of a broad range of candidates some things and omitted reference to others. [2] The selected things then are given their structure and order by appeal to the paradigm, or described without regard to scale by the fractal, indifference to scale forming the counterpart to the paradigm’s indifference to context, time, circumstance. [3] That explains how some events narrated by Scripture emerged as patterns, imposing their lines of order and structure upon happenings of other times. And this yields the basis for the claim of consubstantiality: [4] Scripture’s paradigms—Eden, the Land—appealed to nature in another form. The upshot, then, I state with heavy emphasis: the rhythms of the sun and moon are celebrated in the very forum in which the Land, Israel’s Eden, yields its celebration to the Creator. The rhythmic quality of the paradigm then compares with the rhythmic quality of natural time: not cyclical, but also not linear. Nature’s way of telling time and the Torah’s way meet in the Temple: its events are nature’s, its story a tale of nature too. Past and present flow together and join in future time too because, as in nature, what is past is what is now and what will be. The paradigms, specified in a moment, form counterparts to the significations of nature’s time. These events of Israel’s life (we cannot now refer to Israel’s “history”)—or, rather, the models or patterns that they yielded—served as the criteria for selection, among happenings of any time, past, present, or future, of the things that mattered out of the things that did not matter. They set forth a way of keeping track, a mode of marking time. But then much was left, if not unaccounted for, then not counted to begin with. We cannot take for granted that the range of events chosen for paradigms struck everyone concerned as urgent or even deserving of high priority. Here were other Judaic systems besides

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the Rabbinic one. Other Israelites, besides those responsible for writing and preserving the books surveyed here, identified other paradigms altogether. But—for those who accorded to these books authority and self-evidence—the paradigm encompassing the things that did conform to the pattern and did replicate its structure excluded what it did not explain. That yielded a self-fulfilling system of enormously compelling logic. For the system could explain what it regarded as important, and concomitantly it dismissed what it regarded as inconsequential or meaningless.6 The upshot is simply stated. When a religious system takes into account the failure of linear logic with its premise of ubiquitous order, it does so through the formation of paradigms or models of order, which, as I said, in Chapter I, describe how things are, whether large or small, whether here or there, whether today or in a distant past or an unimaginable future. Not all things are orderly, but some things are. Fractal thinking (in mathematics) and paradigmatic thinking (in religion) makes possible the quest for a few specific patterns, which isolate points of regularity or recurrence and describe, analyze, and even in the face of chaos and disorder, permit us to interpret them. Proportionality as much as context gives way; the cosmic and the humble conform to the same paradigm (much as is the case mutatis mutandis in fractal mathematics). That is the reward of paradigmatic thinking in place of historical; but it also represents a considerable charge. Why was it worthwhile? At stake in the paradigm is discerning order and regularity not everywhere—in the setting of these books, “everywhere” defied imagining—but in some few sets of happenings. The scale revised both upward and downward the range of concern: these are not all happenings, but they are the ones that matter—and they matter very much. Realizing or replicating the paradigm, they uniquely constitute events, and, that is why by definition, these are the only events that matter. Paradigmatic thinking about past, present, and future ignores issues of linear order and temporal sequence because it recognizes another logic all together, besides the one of priority and posteriority and causation formulated in historical terms. To recapitulate: that mode of thinking, as its name states, appeals to the logic of models or patterns that serve without regard to time 6

The foundations of a comparative study of Judaisms and their various ideas of history are implicit in these remarks..

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and circumstance, on the one side, or scale, on the other. The sense for order unfolds, first of all, through that logic of selection that dictates what matters and what does not. And, out of the things that matter, that same logic defines the connections of things, so forming a system of description, analysis, and explanation that consists in the making of connections between this and that, but not the other thing, and the drawing of conclusions from those ineluctable, selfevident connections. At stake now is the definition of self-evidence: how did our sages know the difference between event and mere happening?

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PART FOUR —— FROM HISTORY TO PARADIGM

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CHAPTER VI NARRATIVE: THE CONDUCT OF THE CULT AND THE STORY OF THE TEMPLE “In the intense struggle to relate to the tradition, Israel encounters again through the medium of her memory the God of the past. Her attention no longer focuses on specific historical events, but on the divine reality who imprinted her history...To remember is to grasp after, to meditate upon, indeed, to pray to God.” Brevard S. Childs1

Rabbinic literature does not contain history books because its conception of time does not make provision for sustained history. Rabbinic literature treats stories as exemplary because its fundamental mode of thought comprises rules that demand only exemplary cases, paradigms to be replicated, but not tales to be told by way of explanation of how things are. Once people do not think historically, they do not write history; and when they think paradigmatically, they produce the counterpart of the paradigm, which is, on the one side, law and realizations in narrative of law; and, on the other side, cases that serve in the exegesis of the permanent, enduring, constantly replicated, received text. Law and exegesis of Scripture serve as two media for the re-presentation of paradigms. Then stories, subordinated to law and exegesis, do their service too. I. The Paradigmatic Counterpart to Continuous Narrative Paradigmatic thinking in part utilizes the form of narrative to recapitulate patterns. History enjoys no monopoly. But while historical thinking produces its sustaining narrative of sequential, one-time 1

Brevard S Childs, Memory and Tradition in Israel (London, 1962: SCM Press), pp. 64-5..

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part four: chapter vi

events and counterpart biography, paradigmatic thinking utilizes a different way of organizing narrative, including stories about exemplary figures. The writing expresses the structure of the thinking. History’s insistence on the linear sequence and singular character of events accounts for the kind of writing it requires. Paradigmatic thinking, dictates the kind of writing it will produce too. The paradigm takes the place, in the expression of the sense and order of things, of the notion that events relate to one another like pearls on a necklace, as I said in Chapter I. The upshot is, paradigmatic thinking sees no meaning in sequential narrative. Its practitioners do not tell long sets of connected stories, because they do not perceive the world as made up of linear events. Accordingly, they take cognizance of no proper processions of matters. What captures such order as unpredictable affairs produce is the paradigmatic event, and that stands in no sequence with other such patterns or models of how things are. The result must be the exemplary story or biographical incident, meant to convey the model on its own, and not in relationship, linear or otherwise, with other such exemplary moments. The realization of the paradigm, without regard to time or context, then is conveyed through the story standing on its own: the moment viewed alone. Linear logic dismissed, the world of fractal shapes (in mathematics) or models (in religion) is comprised by alltime episodes, and that accounts for the anecdotal character of story-telling in the Rabbinic writings. Let me give a single example of the kind of writing of narrative we find in particular in the account of the history of the cult, and the way in which those narratives are taken over into the law. The collection of grain for the sheaf of new grain that is waved on the fifteenth of Nisan as an indication that the new crop of grain may be utilized is formulated in the same narrative style; here is how history—how things “used” to be done—shades over into paradigm—how things are perpetually to be done: Mishnah-tractate Menahot 10:3 A. How did they do it [cut the sheaf of first barley for the ‘omer]? B. Agents of the court go forth on the eve of [the afternoon before] the festival [of Passover]. C. And they make it into sheaves while it is still attached to the ground, so that it will be easy to reap. D. And all the villagers nearby gather together there [on the night

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after the first day of Passover], so that it will be reaped with great pomp. E. Once it gets dark [on the night of the sixteenth of Nisan], he says to them, “Has the sun set?” F. They say, “Yes.” G. “Has the sun set?” H. They say, “Yes.” I. “[With] this sickle?” J. They say, “Yes.” K. “[With] this sickle?” L. They say, “Yes.” M. “[With] this basket?” N. They say, “Yes.” O. “[With] this basket?” P. They say, “Yes.” Q. On the Sabbath, he says to them, “[Shall l reap on] this Sabbath?” R. They say, “Yes.” S. “[Shall l reap on] this Sabbath?” T. They say, “Yes.” U. “Shall l reap?” V. They say, “Reap.” W. “Shall I reap?” X. They say, “Reap”Y. three times for each and every matter. Z. And they say to him, “Yes, yes, yes.” AA. All of this [pomp] for what purpose? BB. Because of the Boethusians, for they maintain, “The reaping of the [barley for] the omer is not [done] at the conclusion of the festival.” Mishnah-tractate Menahot 10:4 A. They reaped it, B. and they put it into baskets, C. They brought it to the court [of the Temple]. D. “They did parch it in fire, so as to carry out the requirement that it be parched with fire [Lev. 2:14],” the words of R. Meir. E. And sages say, “With reeds and with stems of plants do they [first] beat it [to thresh it] so that it not be crushed. F. “And they put it into a tube. G. “And the tube was perforated, so that the fire affect all of it.” H. They spread it out in the court, and the breeze blows over it. I. They put it into a grist mill and took out therefrom a tenth ephah, J. which is sifted through thirteen sieves [M. 6:7]. K. And the residue is redeemed and eaten by anyone. And it is liable for the dough offering, but exempt from tithes. L. R. Aqiba declares it liable for both dough offering and tithes. M. He came [on the sixteenth of Nisan] to the tenth [ephah of flour], and put in its oil and frankincense [M. 6:31.

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part four: chapter vi N. He poured in [oil] and mingled it and waved it. O. And he brought it near [M. 5:6] and took out the handful and offered it up. P. And the residue is eaten by the priests.

This protracted narrative shows that the Rabbinic sages had the capacity to tell long stories. But how is the passage situated? It is in the account not of the annual cycle of rites of the Temple, e.g., a sustained narrative from beginning to end, but rather the tractate of the law on grain-offerings, of which the waving of the sheaf of new grain (the omer) is an important instance. So the narrative is subordinated to a topical program, preserving an episode or anecdote only in language that conveys the exemplarity of the anecdote. Here is the counterpart of paradigmatic thinking to a historical story. It shows how that same thinking uses narrative style to represent an element of its large model. The generative paradigm concerns the social counterpart to nature’s order, namely, the Temple and its cult. We therefore cannot find surprising the fact that the narrative style utilized in the case before us characterizes for the Mishnah the standard accounts of the cult, and, for the exegetical compilations, the Temple’s course through time (“history”). It is in that context that the matter of narrative in the Rabbinic writings has to be taken up. What we should now expect to find is what we do in fact identify: narratives of the cult and of the Temple. In the earlier phase of the documents, the former predominates, in the later, the latter. So far as stories concern history, it is the history of the Temple. So far as anecdotes portray events, they are events in the actual cult. Between these two matters, which are one, we account for nearly the entire corpus of narratives before us. II. The Mishnah, Tosefta, Abot, Sifra, Sifré to Numbers, and Sifré to Deuteronomy A. The Conduct of the Cult A survey of the Mishnah and closely related documents yields a striking result. Most, though not all, of the narratives of these writings concern the conduct of the Temple cult. By collecting all of the narratives on the cult that the Mishnah sets forth, moreover, we are able to reconstruct an orderly and quite encompassing account of how the cult is carried on. The language of the narrative appeals to

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continuous action: this is how things are done ordinarily, always, regularly; here is the pattern of action. The character of the narrative—episodic, always dictated by the context of the story, never by the relationship of one story to another—corresponds to the requirement of paradigmatic thought. The negative requirement is already clear. We do not conceive of the world in linear sequences of events, so we also do not present the model of cult event and action in linear sequences either. But how are we supposed to set out the exemplary tales? The answer is, in the larger context of the law’s presentation of the details of the model in all their splendor. What establishes the context of narrative, for the paradigm, is the larger setting of the exposition of the paradigm; to that exposition, narrative is useful, not constitutive. That is why the narrative of the cult is not continuous and sustained but episodic. But it does exhibit traits of coherence, in that one episode preserves the stylistic character of the next, and all of the episodes, put together, do portray a single cogent cultic program. To show the character of the narrative, I lay out severely-abbreviated parts of the various abstracts, in the order, in the Mishnah, in which they occur. The form is the historical present tense, expressed in brief declarative sentences, and very commonly, with the use of dialogue. This form is different from the ordinarily formal character of the Mishnah, on the one side, and it is utilized, in the Mishnah, only for the exposition of episodes in the enduring, sustaining life of the cult. Our first episode involves a historical account of the annual sequence of events connected with the upkeep of the Temple house and its public offerings is offered by the following story of how, in general, things were done: Mishnah-tractate Sheqalim 1:1, 3 A. On the first day of Adar they make public announcement concerning [payment of] sheqel dues and concerning the sowing of mixed seeds [Lev. 19:19, Dt. 22:9]. B . On the fifteenth day of that month they read the Megillah [Scroll of Esther] in walled cities. C. And they repair the paths, roads, and immersion pools. 1:3 A. On the fifteenth of that same month [Adar] they set up money changers’ tables in the provinces. B. On the twenty-fifth [of Adar] they set them up in the Temple. C. Once they were set up in the Temple, they began to exact pledges [from those who had not paid the tax in specie].

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part four: chapter vi Mishnah-tractate Sheqalim 3:4 A. He took up [heave offering] the first time and covered [the residue] with coverings. B. [He took up the heave offering] a second time and covered [the residue] with covers. C. But the third time he did not cover [it up]. D. [He covered the first two times], lest he forget and take up heave offering from those sheqels from which heave offering already had been taken. E. He took up the heave offering the first time in behalf of the Land of Israel, the second time in behalf of cities surrounding it, and the third time in behalf of Babylonia, Media, and the more distant communities.

The same tractate presents a broad range of information on the organization and management of the temple. Most of it is framed in “historical” terms, meaning, specific offices and the names of specific persons who occupied those offices; continuous-present tense descriptions of how things were and what procedures were followed. The following entries serve as a narrative of the conduct of the Temple rite of the Day of Atonement; they form the basis for a historical account of how things were done on that occasion: Mishnah-tractate Yoma 1:1 A. Seven days before the Day of Atonement they set apart the high priest from his house to the councilors’ chamber. B. And they [also] appoint another priest as his substitute, C. lest some cause of invalidation should overtake him. Mishnah-tractate Yoma 1:2 A. All seven days he tosses the blood, offers up the incense, trims the lamp, and offers up the head and hind leg [of the daily whole offering], B. But on all other days, if he wanted to offer it up he offers it up. Mishnah-tractate Yoma 1:3 A. They handed over to him elders belonging to the court, and they read for him the prescribed rite of the day [of atonement]. B. And they say to him, “My lord, high priest, you read it with your own lips, C. “lest you have forgotten-or never [even] learned it to begin with.” D. On the eve of the Day of Atonement at dawn they set him up at the eastern gate and bring before him bullocks, rams, and sheep, E. so that he will be informed and familiar with the service.

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Mishnah-tractate Yoma 1:4 A. All seven days they did not hold back food or drink from him. B. [But] on the eve of the Day of Atonement at dusk they did not let him eat much, C. for food brings on sleep. Mishnah-tractate Yoma 1:5 A. The elders of the court handed him over to the elders of the priesthood, B. who brought him up to the upper chamber of Abtinas. C. And they imposed an oath on him and took their leave and went along. D. [This is what] they said to him, “My lord, high priest: We are agents of the court, and you are our agent and agent of the court. E. “We abjure you by Him who caused his name to rest upon this house, that you will not vary in any way from all which we have instructed you.” F He turns aside and weeps. G. And they turn aside and weep.

What we have in this continuous present tense story is an account of how things are done in general, not a specific, “historical” event. But the intrusions of the more characteristic Mishnah-style—abstract, general formulation of a rule in legal terms, with equivalently-framed contrary opinion—show us the true character of what is before us, which is, narrative as a mode of presenting the law. The paradigmatic account of time and explanation of Israel’s world finds legal and narrative modes of writing equally suitable; but when it comes to the cult, it is narrative that takes over. Let us continue our survey with the picture of how the rite is carried forward, with the story of further chapters: Mishnah-tractate Yoma 3:1 A. The supervisor said to them, “Go and see whether the time for slaughtering the sacrifice has come.” B. If it has come, he who sees it says, “It is daylight!” C. Matithiah b. Samuel says, “[He says], ‘Has the whole east gotten light?’ D. “‘To Hebron?’ E. “And he says, ‘Yes.’” Mishnah-tractate Yoma 3:4 3:4 A. They spread out a linen sheet between him and the crowd. B. He took off his clothes, went down, immersed, came up, and dried off.

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part four: chapter vi C. They brought him golden garments, and he put them on, and (1) he sanctified his hands and feet. D. They brought him the daily whole offering. E. He cut [the windpipe and gullet], and another priest completed the slaughtering on his behalf. F. He received the blood and tossed it. G. He went in to offer up the incense offering of the morning, to trim the lamps, and to offer up the head and limbs, Baked Cakes, and wine. Mishnah-tractate Yoma 3:6 A. They brought him to the Parvah chamber, and it was in the sanctuary. B. They spread out a linen sheet between him and the crowd. C. (2) He sanctified his hands and feet and took off his clothes, D. R. Meir says, “He took off his clothes, sanctified his hands and feet.” E. He went down, immersed, came up, and dried off. F. They brought him white clothes. G. He put them on and (3) sanctified his hands and feet.

Nearly the whole of the tractate’s presentation of the rite of the Day of Atonement follows the same story-telling mode. The tractate forms the counterpart to Leviticus Chapter Sixteen (indeed, it is incomprehensible without a line-by-line reading in the context of that chapter). But while Leviticus Chapter Sixteen says what Aaron should do—“with this shall he come to the sanctuary...,” “and he shall do such and so...”), the Mishnah-chapter’s authorship prefers to use the descriptive past tense or the continuous present tense, interchangeably. The stylistic preference stems from a more profound theory of how paradigms form the organizing, enduring principle of reality: this is how things were or are done, and out of the narrative we derive an account of how they are always to be replicated. Along these same lines, Mishnah-tractate Tamid presents a sustained narrative of the conduct of the cult in the presentation of the daily whole offering; a small selection suffices: Mishnah-tractate Tamid 1:1 A. In three places do the priests keep watch in the sanctuary: in the room of Abtinas, (2) in the room of the flame, and (3) in the room of the hearth. B. The room of Abtinas and the room of the flame were upper rooms. C. And youngsters keep watch there.

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D. The room of the hearth is vaulted. E. And it was a large room surrounded by a raised pavement of stone. F. And the mature members of the [priestly] household [of the day] sleep there [on the raised pavement] , G. with the keys to the courtyard in their charge, H. and [there sleep] the fledgling priests, each with his mattress on the ground. I. They [the priests] did not sleep in the consecrated garments. J. But they spread them out, doubled them over, and lay them down under their heads, and cover themselves with their own clothes. K. [If] one of them should have a nocturnal emission of semen, he goes out, proceeding along the passage that leads below the building L. and lamps flicker on this side and on that M. until he reaches the immersion room. N. And there was a fire there, O. and a privy in good taste. P. And this was its good taste: [if] he found it locked, he knows that someone is there; [if he found it] open, he knows that no one is there. Q. He went down and immersed, came up and dried off, and warmed himself by the fire. R. He came and sat himself down with his brothers, the priests [in the house of the hearth], S. until the gates were opened. T. He goes out, proceeding on his way [home].

Nearly the whole of the tractate unfolds in the same narrative style. Not only rites involving the community, but those concerning individuals are presented in the same way. Here is the presentation of the trial of the wife accused of adultery: Mishnah-tractate Sotah 1:4 A. They would bring her up to the high court which is in Jerusalem and admonish her as they admonish witnesses in a capital crime. B. They say to her, “My daughter, much is done by wine, much is done by joking around, much is done by kidding, much is done by bad friends. For the sake of the great Name which is written in holiness, do it so that it will not be blotted out by water [Num. 5:23].” C. And they tell her things which neither she nor the family of her father’s house should be hearing. Mishnah-tractate Sotah 1:5 A. [Now] if she said, “I am unclean,” she gives a quittance for her marriage contract [which is not paid over to her], and goes forth [with a writ of divorce].

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part four: chapter vi B. And if she said, “I am clean,” they bring her up to the eastern gate, which is at the entrance of Nicanor’s Gate. C. There it is that they force accused wives to drink the bitter water, D. and they purify women after childbirth and purify lepers. E. And a priest grabs her clothes-if they tear, they tear, and if they are ripped up, they are ripped up-until he bares her breast. F. And he tears her hair apart [Num. 5:18]. G. R. Judah says, “If she had pretty breasts, he did not let them show. And if she had pretty hair, he did not pull it apart.”

The following continues the same kind of narrative, yielding the story of how a rite was carried out. Another cultic rite concerned the preparation of purification-water in line with the requirements of Numbers Chapter Nineteen. The presentation of the theme follows the usual legal style. But when it comes to the account of the rite itself, the tractate’s framers turned to the narrative style and set forth an exemplary account of an episode: Mishnah-tractate Parah 3:1 A. Seven days before the burning of the cow, they separate the priest who burns the cow from his house, [bringing him] to the chamber which faces the northeast corner of the Temple building, and it was called the stone house. B. And they sprinkle on him all seven days [with a mixture] from all the purification [waters] which were there. Mishnah-tractate Parah 3:2 A. There were courtyards in Jerusalem, built on rock, and under them was a hollow, [which served as a protection] against a grave in the depths. B. And they bring pregnant women, who give birth there, and who raise their sons there. C. And they bring oxen, and on them are doors, and the youngsters sit on top of them, with cups of stone in their hands. D. [When] they reached the Siloam, they descended and filled them, and mounted and sat on top of them. Mishnah-tractate Parah 3:3 A. They came to the Temple mount and dismounted. (B. The Temple mount and the courtyards-under them is a hollow against a grave in the depth.) C. And at the door of the courtyard was set up a flask of [ashes of] purification [rites done in the past].

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D. And they bring a male sheep, and tie a string between its horns, and they tie a stick or a bushy twig on the head of the rope, and one throws it into the flask. E. And one hits the male, and it starts backward. F And one takes [the ashes spilled onto the stick] and mixes as much of it as could be visible on the surface of the water. G. R. Yosé says, “Do not give the Sadducees an opportunity to cavil. But he takes it and mixes it.” Mishnah-tractate Parah 3:7 F. And the elders of Israel would precede [them] on foot to the Mount of Olives. G. And a house for immersion was there. H. And they would render the priest who burns the cow unclean, because of the Sadducees, I. so that they should not say, “It is done by one on whom the sun has set.” Mishnah-tractate Parah 3:8 A. They placed their hands on him, and they say to him, “My lord, High Priest, immerse one time.” B. He descended and immersed, emerged and dried off.

Another purification rite involved the leper. The presentation of the cultic rite at the same time ignores Leviticus Chapter Fourteen and also replicates its facts, in Mishnah-style and language: Mishnah-tractate Negaim 14:1 A. How do they purify the leper? B. (1) He would bring a new flask of clay, and (2) put in it a quarterlog of living water, and (3) bring two undomesticated birds. C. He slaughtered one of them over the clay utensil and over the living water D. He dug [a hole] and buried it before him [the leper]. E. He took cedar-wood and hyssop and scarlet wool and bound them together with the ends of the strip [of wool] and brought near to them the tips of the wings and the tip of the tail of the second [bird]. F. He dipped [them in the blood of the slaughtered bird] and sprinkled [the blood] seven times on the back of the hand of the leper. G. There are some who say, “On his forehead.” H. And thus did he sprinkle on the lintel of the house on the outside.

The reprise of Leviticus Chapter Fourteen need not detain us. The cases before us stand for a considerably larger corpus of narratives in the Mishnah. Nearly all of the narratives of that document portray the cult and how it is conducted, or incidents in connection with the Temple cult.

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B. The Story of the Temple For paradigmatic thinking to yield a sustained picture of time, counterpart to history’s time, however, it will not suffice to tell us only about the cult. We need a picture of events spread over time, to help us organize not only the here and now of incidents in conformity to models, but the sustained sequence of months, seasons, and solar years. These too require presentation in a large-scale framework, or paradigmatic thinking will not accomplish all of the systemic goals that historical thinking, for its part, carries out. The Mishnah presents the story of the Temple, not only the narrative of its rites. The larger documents then expand on that story, leaving to the legal writings the exposition of the details of the cult. Here is a general, large-scale theory of the decline of the times, which can have guided the writing of history in a conventional sense: and this, predictably, involves the cult and the Temple as the key to everything else: Mishnah-tractate Sotah 9:15 0. R. Pinhas b. Yair says, “When the Temple was destroyed, associates became ashamed and so did free men, and they covered their heads. And wonder workers became feeble. And violent men and big talkers grew strong. And none expounds and none seeks [learning] and none asks. Upon whom shall we depend? Upon our Father in heaven.” S. R. Eliezer the Great says, “From the day on which the Temple was destroyed, sages began to be like scribes, and scribes like ministers, and ministers like ordinary folk. And the ordinary folk have become feeble. And none seeks. Upon whom shall we depend? Upon our Father in heaven. With the footprints of the Messiah: presumption increases, and The vine gives its fruit and wine at great cost. And the government turns to heresy And there is no reproof, and dearth increases. The gathering place will be for prostitution. And Galilee will be laid waste. And the Gablan will be made desolate. And the men of the frontier will go about from town to town, and none will take pity on them. And the wisdom of scribes will putrefy. And those who fear sin will be rejected. And the truth will be locked away. Children will shame elders, and elders will stand up before children. For the son dishonors the father and the daughter rises up against her mother, the daughter-in-law against her mother-in law; a man’s enemies are the men of his own house (Mic. 7:6). The face of the generation in the face of a dog. A son is not ashamed before his father. Upon whom shall we depend? Upon our Father in heaven.”

Not only the cult, but the Temple, therefore, is situated in time; but we note that, when it is, the story-telling gives way to a different

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mode of expression altogether; we find no dialogue, and specific incidents no longer occur. Here is a way of thinking about time that is at once systematic and also other than episodic. In the setting of the history of the Temple, the Mishnah and related writings include specific events, not only general accounts of the conduct of the cult in narrative form. These specific events deal with named persons (Agrippa in the case already in hand), and they speak of one-time anecdotes. But when the Mishnah records particular persons and incidents, these commonly concern Temple rules and rites, as in the following cases: Mishnah-tractate Yoma 2:2 A. M’SH S: There were two who got there at the same time, running up the ramp. B . And one shoved his fellow. C. And he [the other] fell and broke his foot. D. When the court saw that the matter was dangerous, they ordained that the right of clearing off the ashes from the altar should be apportioned only by lot.

The treatment of the above story in the Tosefta shows how a received (“historical”) incident will be expanded, dialogue invented, the narrative reshaped to make its point in a more dramatic way. A single example suffices to show how sages amplified received incidents and recast them in dramatic form. I reproduce the Mishnahcitation in bold-face type: Tosefta Yoma 1:12 A. There was this incident: There were two who got there at the same time, running up the ramp. One shoved the other [M. Yoma 2:2A-B], within four cubits [of the altar]. The other then took out a knife and stabbed him in the heart. B. R. Sadoq came and stood on the steps of the porch and said, C. “Hear me, O brethren of the house of Israel! Lo, Scripture says, ‘If in the land which the Lord your Cod gives you to possess, any one is found slain, lying in the open country, and it is not known who killed him, then your elders and your judges shall come forth, and they shall measure the distance to the cities which are around him that is slain’ (Deut. 21:1-2). D. “Come so let us measure to find out for what area it is appropriate to bring the calf, for the sanctuary, or for the courts!” E. All of them moaned after his speech. F. And afterward the father of the youngster came to them, saying, “O brethren of ours! May I be your atonement. His [my] son is still writhing, so the knife has not yet been made unclean.”

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part four: chapter vi G. This teaches you that the uncleanness of a knife is more grievous to Israelites than murder. And so it says, “Moreover Manasseh shed very much innocent blood, till he had filled Jerusalem from one end to the other” (2 Kings 21:16). H. On this basis they have said, “Because of the sin of murder the Presence of God was raised up, and the sanctuary was made unclean.”

The picture then is clear: in the Mishnah narrative concerned the cult in particular, the Temple in general. The paradigmatic mode of thought identified as the source and focus of its model the Temple in particular. In due course we therefore shall ask why Rabbinic Judaism should mark time by appeal to that paramount topic. III. The Later Midrash-Compilations: Genesis Rabbah, Leviticus Rabbah, and Pesiqta deRab Kahana A. The Conduct of the Cult The Midrash compilations contain narratives of a historical character, e.g., events, and, for the cult, they provide narratives of a historical character about the one source of story that matters, which is, the Temple, hence, episodes in the Temple’s paradigmatic existence. This collection of documents yield no stories about the conduct of the cult. But they provide something still more indicative: the history of the Temple. B. The Story of the Temple As a matter of fact, the second and third sets of documents tell the story of the Temple, rather than the cult, but principally in one chapter of its history alone, the destruction of 586 and its counterpart in 70 C.E. That one event defines the task of narrative, and, while as we have already noted in prior chapters, we find in these compilations a variety of narratives, e.g., concerning Bar Kokhba and the like, it is the destruction of the Temple that takes up most of the narrative. Only a few examples are necessary to portray the outcome. Here is the story of Titus’s conquest of Jerusalem: Leviticus Rabbah XXII:III. 2. A. Titus, the wicked, entered the house of the Holy of Holies, with his sword drawn in his hand. He pierced the two veils. B. He took two whores and spread out a scroll of the Torah under

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them and fucked them on the altar. C. And his “sword” came out covered with blood. D. There are some who say that it was covered with the blood of the holy things. E. And there are some who say it was covered with the blood of the goat of the Day of Atonement. F. He began to curse and blaspheme toward Heaven, saying, “The one who makes war with a king in the desert and conquers him is not the same as the one who makes war with the king in his own palace and conquers him!” G. What did he do? He collected all the utensils of the house of the sanctuary and put them into a single net and lowered them into a boat. When he had embarked, a powerful storm broke over the sea. H. He said, “It appears to me that the power of the god of this nation rules only in water. I. “The generation of Enosh was punished only by water, the generation of the Flood was punished only by water, the generation of the Dispersion was punished only by water, Pharaoh and his entire army were punished only by water. So as to me, when I was in his house and in his domain, he could not stand against me. Now he has gotten here before me.” J. Said to him the Holy One, blessed be he, “By your life! By the least of all the creatures that I created in the six days of Creation I shall exact punishment of that wicked man.” K. Forthwith the Holy One, blessed be he, signaled to the sea and it ceased from its fury. L. When [Titus] reached Rome, the citizens of Rome came out and celebrated him: “Victor over the barbarians!” M. Then they heated the bath for him and he went in and bathed. When he came out, they mixed for him a double shot of a drink for after the bath. N. The Holy One, blessed be he, prepared a gnat for him, and it flew into his nose. It just kept eating its way in until it reached his brain. It began to bore into his brain. O. He said, “Call the physicians to split open that wicked man’s [my] skull, so that I may know how the God of that nation exacted vengeance from that wicked man [me].” P. Forthwith they called the physicians, who split open his skull, and they found in it something like a young pigeon, weighing two liters. Q. Said R. Eleazar b. R. Yosé, “I was there, and they put the pigeon on one side and two liter weights on the other side, and each one weighed exactly what the other did.” R. They took it and put it into a bowl. Just as this one [the pigeon] changed, so that one changed. S. When the gnat flew off, the soul of the wicked Titus flew off.

Here is a single example of the kind of sustained narrative that, in

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the second set of documents, is devoted to the destruction of the Temple. Not fixed into a larger story of Israel’s history in the manner of the framers of the Authorized History, Genesis through Kings, the account at hand can certainly have formed a larger chapter in such a sustained history. But it is situated in an exegetical setting instead, serving to make a point in the presentation of a paradigm, even though the point is expressed through a sequence of one-time, and not-exemplary, actions. IV. The Latest Midrash-Compilations: Song of Songs Rabbah, Ruth Rabbah, Esther Rabbah I, and Lamentations Rabbah A. The Conduct of the Cult This collection of documents yield no stories about the conduct of the cult. B. The Story of the Temple What we observe in the foregoing set of exegetical compilations recurs here. Once more, a few examples suffice to show how matters are set forth. First, we account for the tragic events that led to the destruction, and this we do in the style of historians, by telling about a one-time event in explaining the condition of the world today. In the following the destruction of Jerusalem was caused by a particular incident: LAMENTATIONS RABBATI PARASHAH CII:i 4. A. There was the case of a man who was in Jerusalem and made a banquet. He said to his messenger, “Go and bring my friend, Qamsa.” B. He went and brought to him his enemy, Bar Qamsa. C. The latter came in and sat himself among the invited guests. D. He said to him, “How is it that you are my enemy and you sit in my house? Get out of here.” E. He said to him, “Since I have come, don’t humiliate me. I’ll pay you back for the cost of whatever I eat.” F. He said to him, “You are not to recline at this banquet.” G. He said to him, “Get out of here.” H. R. Zechariah b. Eucolus, who was there, could have stopped it, but he did not intervene. I. Bar Qamsa then left. He said to himself, “Since these are feasting in luxury, I am going to go and inform against them at court.”

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J. What did he do? He went to the ruler and said to him, “These sacrifices that you contribute [to the temple] they eat, and they offer others in their place [which are inferior].” K. He put him off [rejecting the charge]. L. He went back to him again and said, “These sacrifices that you contribute [to the temple] they eat, and they offer others in their place [which are inferior]. If you don’t believe me, send an hyparch and some animals for sacrifice back with me, and you will know that I am not a liar.” M. He sent with him a third-grown calf. N. While they were on the way, the hyparch dozed off, and the other got up by night and secretly blemished the beasts [so that they could not be offered on the altar and had to be replaced]. O. When the priest saw it, he substituted others for them. P. The king’s agent said to him, “Why don’t you offer the animals I brought?” Q. He said to him, “I’ll do it tomorrow.” R. He came on the third day, but the priest had not offered them up. S. He sent word to the king, “That matter involving the Jews is true.” T. The king immediately came forth against the temple and destroyed it. U. That is the source of the saying, “Because of the difference between Qamsa and Bar Qamsa, the temple was destroyed.” V. R. Yosé said, “It was the self-effacing character of Zechariah b. Eucolus that burned the temple.”

Events of course serve a paradigm when they illustrate a rule not bound by time or location. The fall of Betar is similarly accounted for by appeal to the moral failures of the generation. The past yields rules, and the rules govern without regard to occasion or time. The reason that the past is present, the present cast backward as well, is that rules apply under all circumstances; the paradigm takes over and obliterates considerations of time, because it provides a still more compelling explanation than that of history. Here is a restatement of precisely the point given above: LAMENTATIONS RABBATI PARASHAH CXVIII:i.2. A. For fifty-two years Betar held out after the destruction of the house of the sanctuary. B. And why was it destroyed? C. Because they lit lamps on the occasion of the destruction of the house of the sanctuary. 3. A. [The following story explains why the inhabitants of Betar hated Jerusalem.] They say that there was a place in which the coun-

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part four: chapter vi cilors of Jerusalem would go into session, in the center of the city. B. Someone from Betar would go up for prayer, and they would say, “Do you want to become a councilor?” C. He said, “No.” D. Someone would say to him, “Would you like to become a city magistrate?” E. He said, “No.” F. Some would say to him, “I heard you have an estate for sale. Will you sell it to me?” G. He would say, “I never thought of it.” H. The Jerusalem would write out and send a deed of possession to the steward of the man from Betar, bearing the message, “If so-and-so [the owner] comes, do not let him enter the property, for he has sold it to me.” I. The man would exclaim, “Would that my leg had been broken, so that I could not have gone up to that corner.” J. That illustrates the verse of Scripture: “Our steps were checked, [we could not walk in our squares. Our doom is near, our days are done, alas, our doom has come]” (Lam. 4:18).

We see that, had the Rabbinic sages wished to write continuous history, they certainly had the capacity to frame suitable chapters for their history-book. But that was not their purpose. The “narrative” of the destruction of the Temple served paradigmatic, not historical purposes—like all other data, without regard to its character as historical, political, cultic, or personal. This brief survey of narratives in the several sets of compilations shows how the history of the Temple, with special attention to its destruction, supplied the occasion for narrative.2 A survey of the same documents will turn up no other event than the story of the Temple, in particular, its destruction, to which sustained and systematic attention is devoted. That reinforces our finding that the law of the Mishnah will produce no other topic, besides the cult of the Temple, for which narrative style is the selected medium. We have now to explain why paradigmatic writing in narrative form selects as its principal topic the story of the cult and the Temple.

2 To save space, I have not reproduced the enormous tales of Yohanan ben Zakkai that occur, respectively, in Lamentations Rabbati Parashah XXXIX:ii.1. The Fathers According to Rabbi Nathan IV:VI.1. These provide excellent instances of how the latest Midrash-compilations portray, in a protracted and sustained narrative, the destruction of the Temple. But they do not change the picture supplied by what I have cited.

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V. Nature’s Time Instead of History’s, the Episode in Place of Continuous Narrative The sample before us yields a one-sided result. The presentation of the narratives is not sustained and sequential, as are the narratives of Scripture. That is because a system of thought that perceives no linear sequences is not likely to call forth the presentation of any. Rather, what we have are brief chapters, narratives with a beginning, middle, and end, which can be located where needed, without regard to the inner order and sequence of groups of chapters. The topic and formulation of these narrative units present no surprises; dialogue commonly bears the burden of the tale; a simple and unadorned style does the rest. But their placement requires notice. No effort is invested into joining one episodic chapter to another. Rather, the narratives are situated where the documentary genre requires them. That is, in the setting of, for the legal documents, legal topics, for the exegetical ones, exegesis. There are no historical documents in the Rabbinic canon, for an obvious reason. A mode of thought that does not conceive of sustained, linear, connected narratives also is not going to choose as a medium of expression the documentary formulation of narrative. Why does the topic of narrative focus on the Temple, its rites and its fate? To answer the question, we have first to recapitulate the contrast of history’s time and nature’s time. Paradigmatic thinking formulates its conception of time by counting time in line with nature. Time is divided into nature’s sequences—lunar, solar alike. But then, paradigmatic time attaches to nature’s sequences the components of its own order: Eden/Adam = Land of Israel/Israel, to take a principal one. Then how shall we tell time? It must be in that correlation between nature and the generative and exemplary moments of Israel’s life. The rites are organized to respond to natural time: new moons, seasons, the day, the seven-day week, and the like. The offerings signify the day (“daily whole offering”), week (Sabbath and additional offerings), month (New Moon offerings), and seasons (Passover-Pentecost, then Tabernacles in particular, for spring and fall, thus bringing the lunar calendar and the solar into alignment). The personnel of the Temple are organized in linear relationship with the social order of Israel (as imagined by the priests, at any rate), with the orderly hierarchy of society culminating in the priesthood itself. The

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place and the actions being permanent (“eternal”), moreover, the eternity of nature finds its counterpart in the eternity of the celebration of nature in Jerusalem: the highest place in natural geography set aside to return to God the products of the holy land in age succeeding age. There is nothing else to commemorate through narrative than the eternal paradigm realized in the Temple, its rites and reality alike. And that is what brings us to the answer to our question, why the Temple forms the focus of narrative. From the Temple lines of structure and order emanate through space and time alike. For that is where nature is celebrated and, at the same time, the orderly structure of Israel’s life is also commemorated. And here is the answer to our question: the Temple rites commemorate those patterns that the Rabbinic system has identified as exemplary and generative.

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CHAPTER VII

BIOGRAPHY: EXEMPLARY PATTERN IN PLACE OF LIVES OF SAGES I. The Paradigmatic Counterpart to Biography Paradigmatic episodes in place of distinctive and individual biography yielded the model of the life framed by the Torah. That is a life lived within the rules of nature, but facing outward toward supernature, a life transcending the natural world. Such a life is measured by four moments of transcendence: [1] advent into the Torah, [2] the active and complex realm of negotiation within the Torah, [3] virtue measured by the Torah and responding to the special vices that the Torah can nurture, and [4] death in the supernatural setting that overcomes nature: not dirt to dirt, but soul to Heaven, along with the Torah. What made a species of biography necessary, and why did Temple narratives not suffice? To make that statement, narrative yielding an account of the realization of nature in the cult cannot have served; only anecdotes about persons convey the message of how Israel through the Torah transcends nature. The question asked at Eden for Adam, restated in the Land of Israel for Israel, finds its answer in the Torah, and its resolution in the person of the sage. Exemplary pattern realized in a lifetime was the only way to say so. Just as the Rabbinic canon set forth no history of Israel, so it provided no “life” for a sage—not one. Notice the contrast. Just as the historical mode of thought generates the composition of sustained narratives, so practitioners of history also will write lives of persons, e.g., Moses. Or they would produce at least continuous tales of a biographical character, with some sort of connected narrative, real

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part four: chapter vii

or contrived, to give the impression of personal history. . Linear and sustained narrative of the events of the social entity (“nation,” in general, “Israel” in particular) corresponds to biography, in the present context, lives of sages.1 Thus practitioners of the historical sciences—Josephus for instance—give us not only biography but autobiography, just as much as philosophers or theologians of history, Augustine being the best example, will supply a biographical counterpart to a history. Where history leads, biography follows close behind.2 But once we have recognized the distinctive traits of paradigmatic thinking concerning time, comparable to historical thinking about the same matter, what place can we define for the counterpart to biography? The answer is self-evident: exemplary anecdotes, the counterpart to singular events. But within my theory of matters there can be no “lives” or biographies, the counterpart to sustained historical narrative. The real question is the character of those exemplary, one-time anecdotes. Knowing that they are going to exemplify paradigmatic concerns or realize the model through the medium of persons, rather than public events does not guide us to a theory of the particular character of the personal anecdotes that the model generates. How does paradigmatic thinking define the work of biography? Lives of persons, beginning to end, need not be told; indeed, cannot be told, for the same reason that sequential, continuous narrative also cannot be constructed. Consider, then the comparable principle of selectivity governing narrative in the paradigmatic system: of the many empires of antiquity, four counted to the paradigm of Rabbinic Judaism, Babylonia, Media, Greece, and Rome. What of Parthians, what of Sasanians, certainly weighty as Greece and Rome and for long centuries quite able to hold their own (with their huge Jewish populations) against Greece and Rome? They did not count, so were not count1 In this context, see my Why No Gospels in Talmudic Judaism? Atlanta, 1988: Scholars Press for Brown Judaic Studies. 2 This chapter does not provide a significant sample of biographical stories, but selects only a few to make with special force the points that pertain. For a complete repertoire, I refer the reader to my From Text to Historical Context in Rabbinic Judaism: Historical Facts in Systemic Documents. Atlanta, 1993: Scholars Press for South Florida Studies in the History of Judaism I-III. Because the stories are readily in hand, I am able to introduce only a few of the most important and representative ones to portray the character and uses of stories about named persons (“biography”) in the documents surveyed here.

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ed. We know why they did not matter: they never intersected with the natural life of the holy people, Israel, in the holy land, the Land of Israel; they never threatened Jerusalem, in the way in which Babylonia, Greece (in Seleucid times), and Rome did.3 That principal part of the paradigm points to one main principle of selection in the range of events. Working back from events to the principle of selection that operates within the model governing Rabbinic Judaism’s disposition of time (past, present, future), we are able to define out of what is selected the operative criterion: the congruence of the selected model to nature’s time, not its contrast in conjunction therewith. Then what is to be said about the paradigm’s points of interest in human lives? Since the paradigm will not elicit interest in a continuous life and so will not produce biography let alone autobiography, at what points will the model encompass episodes in human lives? To state the question more simply: where, when, and why, will individual persons make a difference, so as to warrant the writing down of episodes of personal lives? Asked in this way, the question produces a ready answer, in three parts, two of which take but a moment for their exposition. First, does the paradigm before us take an interest in the lives of persons? We shall see that it does. Second, if it does, then at what point in a human life will anecdotes preserve the model for exemplary conduct, defining, then, the principle of selection, out of a human life as much as out of the happenings of the social world, of what counts? The principle of selection, at each point, somehow relates to the Torah. And, third, how does the paradigm emerge, having received a richer and more nuanced definition, out of the encounter with individual lives? First, the model that governs the formation of the Rabbinic writings examined here certainly does narrate episodes in personal lives, not only events in the social order. Second, the points of special interest are [1] how an individual undertakes to study, and then studies, the Torah; [2] remarkable deeds of virtue in the individual’s life; [3] how the individual dies. Learning, virtue, and a dignified death—these form the paradigmatic points of interest.

3

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Why Media but not Parthia I simply cannot say.

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But third, only after reviewing a few instances of the way in which the writings set forth their paradigms of Torah-study, on the one side, and virtue, on the other, shall we address the third question. This review will yield questions of a still deeper order than has yet been suggested here, questions that concern the interplay of nature, the Torah, and truth. The stakes grow higher. II. The Mishnah, Tosefta, Abot, Sifra, Sifré to Numbers, and Sifré to Deuteronomy A. Birth. First Public Appearance These documents contain no reference to the birth or beginnings of sages. Individuals on their own terms bear nothing of interest to the paradigm; individuals distinguished by the paradigm’s sole points of interest in private persons of course make their weighty contribution to the detailed realization of the paradigm. That explains why birth-stories, accounts of up-bringing, early signs of distinction, and other conventions of standard historical biography play slight if any role in the documents overall, and none in the first group of them. People matter for two reasons. First, they represent the exemplary study and realization of the Torah. Second, they stand for the concrete realization of virtue. The first point at which an individual will emerge, therefore, will be when he presents himself as a master of the Torah, a principal authority, endowed with powerful reason or compelling tradition. That explains why we do find attention to the first public moment in the lives of principal figures. In the first compilation of writings, one account of the first appearance of a principal player is set forth: Hillel’s confrontation, in the Temple, with an opposition group. In light of the findings of Chapter VI, we cannot find surprising the setting and subject-matter that define that initial appearance. They are precisely what we should anticipate, as history shades over into biography. Just as paradigmatic history takes its sights on the conduct of the cult and the history of the Temple, so interest in individuals (“biography” being no more appropriate a word in this setting than “history”) begins with their initial self-manifestation in the Temple and in connection with the cult. The self-manifestation-story involves Hillel; and what the story tells is how the combination of reasoning and mastery of traditions elevated him to the position of patriarch.

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To highlight what is to be learned in the example at hand, I mark the words that for my argument are operative: Tosefta Pisha 4:13 A. One time the fourteenth of Nisan coincided with the Sabbath. B. They asked Hillel the Elder, “As to the Passover-sacrifice, does it override [the prohibitions of] the Sabbath?” C. He said to them, “Now do we have only a single Passoversacrifice in the course of the year which overrides [the prohibitions] of the Sabbath? We have many more than three hundred Passoversacrifices in the year, and they all override [the prohibitions of] the Sabbath.” D. All the people in the courtyard ganged up on him. E. He said to them, “The daily whole-offering is a public offering, and the Passover-sacrifice is a public offering. Just as the daily whole-offering is a public offering and overrides [the prohibitions of] the Sabbath, so the .Passover-sacrifice is a public offering [and] overrides [the prohibition of] the Sabbath.”... C. “And furthermore: I have received a tradition from my masters that the Passover-sacrifice overrides [the prohibitions of the Sabbath]—and not [solely] the first Passover but the second Passoversacrifice, and not [solely] the Passover-sacrifice of the community but the Passover sacrifice of an individual.” D. They said to him, “What will happen with the people, who did not bring knives and Passover-lambs to the sanctuary?” E. He said to them, “Do not worry about them. The holy spirit rests upon them. If they are not prophets, they are disciples of prophets.” F. What did the Israelites do in that hour? G. He whose animal for the Passover-sacrifice was a lamb had hid it [the knife] in its wool. H. He whose animal for the Passover-sacrifice was a goat had tied it between its horns. I. So they had [in any event] brought both their knives and their Passover-sacrifices to the sanctuary. J. And they sacrificed their Passover-sacrifices. K. On that very day they appointed Hillel to be patriarch, and he taught them laws of Passover.

Only the marked passages are particular to the named authority; everything else is impersonal, and the anecdote does little more than provide a dramatic setting for the presentation of logical arguments. Without most of the details, the passage could have been phrased in a completely impersonal way with: named sages + he said to him...he said to him.

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What is important for our study should not be missed. It is, first, that the story has no interest in any personal traits of Hillel; he is not characterized in any way. What individuates Hillel is his election to the patriarchate, but what accounts for that election is not his personal traits but his mastery of the skills of argument, on the one side, and his knowledge of traditions from acknowledged authorities, on the other. What we learn from this story is not biography but an anecdote concerning the social order; a named sage matters when he is not individual but exemplary. B. Torah The Torah stands for the written Torah in particular, the entire Torah, oral or written, in general, and God’s revelation of the truth to Moses at Sinai, in the aggregate. The important point is this: the “Torah” defines not an inert taxon, that is, something that one studies, hence, that which is acted upon; nor even s uniform one, that is, something that, when mastered, produces predictable results, hence, that which acts but in one way only, hence not as a source of differentiation, in context, individuation. On the contrary, if I had to characterize the uses of “Torah” as a taxon in the presentation of persons for the purposes of the governing paradigm, it would be as a point of differentiation—the one active and uncertain, therefore individuating component of the corpus of personal stories. Stories in which Torah-study and its consequences figure in the present part of the documents yield a variety of particular points. That fact is reinforced by the clear allegation that studying the Torah does not guarantee virtue and may not even hold a sage within the fold. I find this fact surprising, since I should have anticipated that the paradigm—the model for what matters and makes sense out of the world’s chaos—would identify stability and order. But instead, the Torah turns out to locate arenas for negotiation, areas where nothing is certain, though everything is of worth. The first exemplary story indicates that studying the Torah produces supernatural consequences, not only those affecting virtue or public order. As before, I present in bold face type citations of the Mishnah. Tosefta Hagigah 2:1 2:1 E. or about the Chariot [described in Ezekiel Chapter One] before one, unless he was a sage land understands of his own knowledge [M. Hag. 2:IA-B].

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F. M#SH B: Rabban Yohanan b. Zakkai was riding on an ass, and R. Eleazar b. ‘Arakh was driving the ass from behind G. He [Eleazar] said to him, “Rabbi, repeat for me a chapter of the works of the Chariot.” H. He said to him, “Have I not ruled for you to begin with that they do not repeat [the tradition] concerning the Chariot for an individual, unless he was a sage and understands of his own knowledge” I. He said to him, “Now may I lay matters out before you?” J. He said to him, “Say on.” K. R. Eleazar b. ‘Arakh commenced and expounded concerning the works of the Chariot. L. Rabban Yohanan b. Zakkai got off his ass, wrapped himself in his cloak, and the two of them sat down on a rock under an olive tree, and [Eleazar] laid matters out before him. M. [Yohanan] got up and kissed him on his head and said to him “Blessed be the Lord, God of Israel, who gave to Abraham, our father, a son who knows how to understand and expound upon the glory of his father who is in heaven. N. “Some preach nicely but do not practice nicely, or practice nicely but do not preach nicely. O. “Eleazar b. ‘Arakh preaches nicely and practices nicely. P. “Happy are you, O Abraham, our father, for Eleazar b. ‘Arakh has gone forth from your loins, Q. “who knows how to understand and expound upon the glory of his Father who is in heaven.”

Here we really do find a matter of individuation; Eleazar b. Arakh is distinguished by his exposition, so that Heaven itself responds to what he says. Not only so, but what is exemplified here is the power of the Torah within, and over, the natural world. Mastery of the Torah affords, and also signifies, natural power, not only social virtue; the Torah then stands for the union of nature and society, forms the bridge from the one to the other. It is there that that natural union of nature’s time and Israel’s time comes to fruition; it is in the person of the sage that the union takes place. In our context, the one thing that an exposition of the Torah yields is a supernatural event, vastly transcending the limits of the Torah. Nothing in the conception of an inert Torah, that which is to be studied, prepares us for the conception of the Torah as an active verb, yielding results for nature as much as society and personality. That claim, represented in behalf of the governing paradigm in the anecdote (“life”) of the sage but not in the presentation of the story (“history”) of the social order of Israel, does not stand by it-

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self. To the contrary, the union of nature and society in the Torah’s principal embodiment, the sage, produces unpredictable results, as I said. Some sages win praise, others wander off on their own, and still others The passage above continues along these lines: Tosefta Hagigah 2:3 A. Four entered the garden [Paradise]: Ben ‘Azzai, Ben Zoma, the Other [Elisha ben Abbuya], and ‘Aqiba. B. One gazed and perished, one gazed and was smitten, one gazed and cut down sprouts, and one went up whole and came down whole. C. Ben ‘Azzai gazed and perished. D. Concerning him Scripture says, “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints” (Ps. 116:15). E. Ben Zoma gazed and was smitten. F. Concerning him Scripture says, “If you have found honey, eat only enough for you, lest you be sated with it and vomit it” (Prov. 25:16). G. Elisha gazed and cut down sprouts H. Concerning him Scripture says, “Let not your mouth lead you into sin” (Qoh. 5:5). 2 :4 A. R. ‘Aqiba went up whole and came down whole B. Concerning him Scripture says, “Draw me after you, let us make haste. The king has brought me into his chambers”] (Song of Songs 1:4).

We cannot take for granted, then, that mastery of the Torah by itself secures for the sage the status of exemplar; it may, it may not. The same passage completes its account with the explanation of the fate of one master: Tosefta Hagigah 2:6 A. M#SH B: R. Joshua was walking in a piazza, and Ben Zoma was coming toward him. B. When he reached him, he did not greet him. C. He said to him, “From whence and whither, Ben Zoma?” D. He said to him, “I was concentrating upon the works of Creation, and there is not even a handbreadth [of distance] between the upper waters and the nether waters, E. “for it says, ‘The spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters’ (Gen. 1:2). F. “And it says, ‘Like an eagle that stirs up its nest [that flutters over its young, spreading out its wings, catching them, bearing them on its pinions, so the Lord alone did lead him’] (Deut. 32:12). G. “Just as this eagle flutters above its nest, touching and not touching, so there is no more space between the upper waters and the nether waters than a handbreadth.”

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H. Said R. Joshua to his disciples, “Ben Zoma already is on the outside [among the sectarians].” I. The days were only a few before Ben Zoma disappeared.

When, at various points, the Mishnah and its successor-documents allege that the study of the Torah is the principal action, when they say that man was created to study the Torah, and when they tell numerous stories about how Torah-study secures one in this world and opens the door to the world to come, they scarcely prepare us for the delineation of the concrete power of Torah-study in individual lives. In the present instance, the role of personality (once again, biographical anecdote) serves to make concrete and individual what is set forth in the legal sources in general and impersonal terms. But in the process of concretization and individuation, the Torah and its study serve a more formidable purpose than merely exemplification of the character and consequence of Torah-study. They form a bridge between the two components of the paradigm: nature and Israel. It is only through attention to specific personalities—personal names—that the writers attend to the paradigm’s own requirement, to specify how the private person enters into the paradigmatic framework. The answer, while always aimed at defining a model, proves remarkable for its attention to a much more specific matter, the relationship between nature and Israel via the Torah. Here again, the paradigm utilizes the Torah to raise the issue of uncertainty: just because one has studied the Torah, that does not mean the result is sure; learning in the Torah may destroy, not build. C. Virtue Social virtue meant bringing the social order into conformity with the natural order, and personal virtue, according with the requirements of the nature of things, the nature of being. The individual could attain virtue, therefore, only by obscuring traits of individuality and exemplifying those of the Torah, which, in social terms, conveyed the same structure that, in natural ones, the order of nature set forth. What this entailed in concrete terms proved as various as the results of mastery of the Torah—as various and as unpredictable. On the negative side, it meant excluding even the valid teaching of a heretic or schismatic. Jacob of Kefar Sama and Eliezer b. Hyrcanus both figure in stories that make that point. In its own

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way, the present story is as astonishing as the one that blames a sage’s disappearance upon his mastery of the Torah: Tosefta to Hullin (Shehitat Hullin) 2:22 2:24 A. M#SH B: R. Eliezer was arrested on account of minut [heresy, schism; here: suspicion of Christianity]. They brought him to court for judgment. B. That hegemon said to him, “Should an elder of your standing get involved in such things?” C. He said to him, “The Judge is reliable in my view” [I rely upon the Judge] . D. That hegemon supposed that he referred only to him, but he referred only to his Father in heaven. E. He [the hegemon] said to him, “Since you have deemed me reliable for yourself, so thus I have ruled: Is it possible that these gray hairs should err in such matters? [Obviously not, therefore.] [you are] Dimissus [pardoned]. Lo, you are free of liability.” F. And when he left court, he was distressed to have been arrested on account of matters of minut. G. His disciples came to comfort him, but he did not accept their words of comfort. H. R. ‘Aqiba came and said to him, “Rabbi, May I say something to you so that you will not be distressed?” I. He said to him, “Go ahead.” J. He said to him, “Perhaps some one of the minim told you something of minut which pleased you.” K. He said to him, “By Heaven! You remind me. Once I was strolling in the camp of Sepphoris. I bumped into Jacob of Kefar Sikhnin, and he told me a teaching of minut in the name of Jesus ben Pantiri, and it pleased me. “So I was arrested on account of matters of minut, for I transgressed the teachings of Torah: ‘Keep your way far from her and do not go near the door of her house . . .’ [Prov. 5:8].”

Avoiding actions that were not virtuous by the standard of the Torah included not accepting valid teachings from an invalid source— a paradox that makes a point critical to the system as a whole. It is not the appearance of a teaching in the Torah (inclusive of oral tradition) that validates the teaching. It is the validity of the source of the teaching that accounts for its inclusion in the Torah. Or, to state matters in more familiar terms, context, not only contents, dictate what is virtuous. A further formulation of virtue, among many candidates, tells us that within the group of sages, a hierarchy governs, so that obedience to the master—in the following story, the patriarch, but in oth-

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ers, the sage’s authority—takes precedence over the facts of the case. The following story forms a counterpart to the one concerning Jacob and Eliezer in relationship to the perfectly valid teaching of the Torah that Jesus had put forth. Just as the source of Torah-teaching takes priority over the validity of the teaching, so acknowledging the authority of Torah-tradition takes priority over the facts of the case, on the one side, or even the validity of compelling reason (as in Hillel’s rise to the patriarchate), on the other: Mishnah-tractate Rosh Hashanah 2:8 A. A picture of the shapes of the moon did Rabban Gamaliel have on a tablet and on the wall of his upper room, which he would show ordinary folk, saying, “Did you see it like this or like that?” B. M’SH S: Two witnesses came and said, “We saw it at dawn [on the morning of the twenty-ninth] in the east and at eve in the west.” C. Said R. Yohanan b. Nuri, “They are false witnesses.” D. Now when they came to Yabneh, Rabban Gamaliel accepted their testimony [assuming they erred at dawn]. E. And furthermore two came along and said, “We saw it at its proper time, but on the night of the added day it did not appear [to the court].” F. Then Rabban Gamaliel accepted their testimony. G. Said R. Dosa b. Harkinas, “They are false witnesses. H. “How can they testify that a woman has given birth, when, on the very next day, her stomach is still up there between her teeth [for there was no new moon!]?” I. Said to him R. Joshua, “I can see your position.” 2:9 A. Said to him Rabban Gamaliel, “I decree that you come to me with your staff and purse on the Day of Atonement which is determined in accord with your reckoning.” B. R. Aqiba went and found him troubled. C. He said to him, “I can provide grounds for showing that everything that Rabban Gamaliel has done is validly done, since it says, These are the set feasts of the Lord, even holy convocations, which you shall proclaim (Lev. 23:4) . Whether they are in their proper time or not in their proper time, I have no set feasts but these [which you shall proclaim] [vs. M. 2:7D].” D. He came along to R. Dosa b. Harkinas. E. He [Dosa] said to him, “Now if we’re going to take issue with the court of Rabban Gamaliel, we have to take issue with every single court which has come into being from the time of Moses to the present day, F. “since it says, ‘Then went up Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel’ (Ex . 24:9). G. “Now why have the names of the elders not been given? To teach that every group of three [elders] who came into being as a court

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part four: chapter vii of Israel-lo, they are equivalent to the court of Moses himself.” H. [Joshua] took his staff with his purse in his hand and went along to Yabneh, to Rabban Gamaliel, on the Day of Atonement which is determined in accord with his [Gamaliel’s] reckoning. I. Rabban Gamaliel stood up and kissed him on his head and said to him, “Come in peace, my master and my disciple—My master in wisdom, and my disciple in accepting my rulings.”

The exemplary character of the story hardly presents a surprise. Joshua’s submission to authority, to the continuity of authority, is of course a virtue. What is noteworthy, rather, is the congruity of this story to the earlier ones; in all instances, the Torah’s truth proves relative to questions of context, whether the source of the Torahteaching, on the one side, or the status of the teacher, on the other. The Torah’s truth then is subject to negotiation; is stipulative, conditional, relative. These then conform to the natural order of things: right source, in proper hierarchy. Facts of the Torah or of nature for that matter by themselves, like logical arguments, prove interesting but not decisive. Considerations of that inner structure and logic of being represented by the Torah properly set forth in tradition by an authorized master of tradition override all considerations of mere fact. These compositions accurately represent the character of “personal anecdotes” as these form the counterpart, for paradigmatic thinking, of biographies in historical thinking. What I find striking about them is not the recognition of the private person as a public and exemplary figure, for, after all, lives of virtuous men presented the same judgment as to exemplarity that we find implicit before us. The qualities that seem to me indicative of the traits of paradigmatic thinking are two, one general, the other particular to the documents. The anecdote finds its setting rarely in a sequence of stories about a named person, important in himself, but ordinarily on its own. It stands by itself, not continuous with other stories of its classification, for the same reason that, when it comes to writing the counterpart of history, events stand on their own and are not made to form a sequence leading from somewhere to some other, determinate point defined by teleology. It goes without saying that our anecdotes are entirely ahistorical, considerations of time and circumstance playing no role. After all, a literature that to begin with treats the past as very present, but the present as undifferentiated from the past, has no reason to in-

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troduce points of differentiation, in describing a story about a person, that underscore the pastness of the past. Exemplarity on its own may be expressed in times past as much as in times present; the exclusion of such considerations here is not by reason of the intention to exemplify virtue. It is because divisions of time into past and present are simply irrelevant to the story, which takes place—as most events portrayed in these writings take place—in a timeless world that is neither present nor past. D. Death Human life and natural life converge at death, when the dust that made up the person returns to the dust of the earth. While tales of birth and early precocity, e.g., in Torah-study, prove rare, deathstories in abundance do occur. These are of two kinds. First, reference to changes in the order of society or nature when a sage died make the point that the sage marks the confluence of the natural and social order, which are not distinguished from one another in his person. The death of various authorities marked the decline of the age and of the generations: Tosefta Sotah 15:3 A. When R. Eliezer died, the glory of the Torah ceased. B. When R. Joshua died, men of counsel ceased, and reflection ended in Israel [cf. M. Sot 9:15D]. C. When R. ‘Aqiba died, the arms of Torah were taken away, and the springs of wisdom ceased [cf. M. Sot. 9:15G].

The Tosefta’s version stresses the correspondence between the sages’ deaths and the character of the social order, the Mishnah’s adds the decline in the natural order. The point is the same. A second, and separate type of presentation of the closing chapter in human life underscores the matter of martyrdom. In each group of stories of a personal (“biographical”) character we find important statements concerning how and why people give their lives for the Torah. What renders the paradigm of martyrdom particular to Rabbinic Judaism is the center of things, which is, burning the sage along with the Torah-scroll. Here the paradigm makes its most particular and characteristic statement: Sifré to Deuteronomy CCCVII:IV 1. A. Another comment concerning the verse, “The Rock—his deeds are perfect. [Yes, all his ways are just; a faithful God, never false, true and upright is he]” (Dt. 32:4-6):

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part four: chapter vii B. When they arrested R. Haninah b. Teradion, a decree against him was issued, that he be executed by burning, along with his scroll. C. They told him, “A decree against you has been issued, that you be executed by burning, along with your scroll.” D. He recited this verse: “The Rock—his deeds are perfect.” E., They informed his wife, “A decree against your husband has been issued, that he be executed by burning, along with his scroll, and against you that you be put to death, and she recited this verse: ‘a faithful God, never false, true and upright is he.’” F. They told his daughter, “A decree against your father has been issued, that he be executed by burning, along with his scroll, and against your mother, that she be executed, and against you, that you ‘do work,’ and she recited this verse: ‘Great in counsel and mighty in work, whose eyes are open’ (Jer. 32:19).” G. Said Rabbi, “What great righteous people are these, for in their hour of trouble they called forth three verses which justify God’s decree in a way that none of the rest of the verses of Scripture do it. H. “All three of them formed the exact intention in such a way as to justify the judgment of God concerning them.” 2. A. A philosopher went to the ruler and said to him, “My lord, do not boast that you have burned the Torah, for to the place [heaven] from which it has come forth, it now returns, namely, to the house of its father.” B. He said to him, “Tomorrow you will be judged in the same way as these [and be put to death].” C. He said to him, “You give me very good news, that tomorrow my share will be with theirs in the world to come.”

In the context of a body of writings that proposes to join nature to the social order through the instrumentality of the Torah, the martyr-story presents a special message. As the body returns to nature, so the Torah returns to heaven. What the martyr earns is that same trip to Heaven that the Torah is going to take. None of this bears political consequence; the entire matter is represented in terms that are personal, on the one side, natural, on the other. II. The Later Midrash-Compilations: Genesis Rabbah, Leviticus Rabbah, and Pesiqta deRab Kahana A. Birth. First Public Appearance The story about Eliezer’s entry into Torah-study and his first public appearance has Eliezer break with his father and enter into a supernatural family, indicated by the disinheritance, but then find

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acceptance from the father and family by reason of his achievement in Torah-exposition. Genesis Rabbah XLII:I. 1. A. “It came to pass in the days of Amraphel, [king of Shinar, Arioch, king of Ellasar, Chedorlaomer, king of Elam, and Tidal, king of Goiim]” (Gen. 14:1): B. R. Joshua in the name of R. Levi opened discourse [by citing the following verse]: “The wicked have drawn out the sword” (Ps. 37:15). C. The illustrative case concerns R. Eliezer. His brothers were ploughing on level ground, and he was ploughing on hilly ground. His cow fell and broke its leg. But it was to his advantage that his cow had broken its leg. [For] he fled and went to R. Yohanan b. Zakkai. D. He was eating clods of dirt [having no money to buy food] until his mouth produced a bad odor. They went and told Rabban Yohanan b. Zakkai, “R. Eliezer’s breath stinks.” E. He said to him, “Just as the odor of your mouth stank on account of your studying the Torah, so may the fragrance of your learning pervade the world from one end to the other.” F. After some days his father came up to disinherit him from his property, and he found him sitting and expounding a lesson with the great figures of the realm in session before him, namely, Ben Sisit Hakkeset, Nicodemus son of Gurion, and Ben Kalba Shabua. G. He was giving an exposition of this verse, as follows: “‘The wicked have drawn out the sword and have bent the bow’ (Ps. 37:14) refers to Amraphael and his allies. H. “‘To cast down the poor and needy’ (Ps. 37:14) refers to Lot. I. “‘To slay such as are upright in the way’ (Ps. 37:14) refers to Abraham. J. “‘Their sword shall enter into their own heart’ (Ps. 37:15) in line with this verse: ‘And he divided his forces against them by night, he and his servants, and routed them’ (Gen. 14:15).” K. His father said to him, “My son, I came up here only to disinherit you from my property. Now, lo, all of my property is handed over to you as a gift [and not by the law of inheritance, which would not allow me to give you everything].” L. He said to him, “So far as I am, concerned, the property falls into the category of herem [and is forbidden to me]. Rather, divide them equally among my brothers.”

It goes without saying that a story of this kind underscores the conception that study of the Torah imposes a new set of relationships upon the family, removing the disciple from the authority of the father and placing him under that of the master. That is by reason of the supernatural character of what is learned—and the consequently enchanted nature of the relationship to the master, from whom it is learned.

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B. Discipleship and Study of the Torah Study of the Torah encompassed knowledge of nature, and, further, the proper tending of one’s health and hygiene. But none of the illustrative anecdotes warrants presentation here. C. Virtue The virtue that the Torah is supposed to inculcate is humility, certainly as rare a virtue as the attitude of forbearance, conciliation, and forgiveness that Yosé shows in the preceding story. This second virtue, which concludes our very brief survey of the matter, corresponds to the first, once more translating into biographical terms the virtue defined also for social relationships between Israel and the nations: Leviticus Rabbah IX:IX.7 B. R. Meir would sit and expound [the Torah] on Sabbath nights. A certain woman would attend regularly. [Once] when his exposition ran on, she remained until he was finished. When she got home, she found that the lamp had gone out. Her husband said to her, “Where were you?” C. She said to him, “I was in the session and listening to the exposition.” D. He said to her, “You will not come in here until you go and spit in the face of the expositor.” E. She stayed away [from home] one week, then a second, then a third. Her neighbors said to her, “Are you people still mad at one another? Let us go with you to the expositor.” F. When R. Meir saw them, he understood through the Holy Spirit [what was going on]. He said to the women, “Among you is there a woman who is knowledgeable about whispering over [treating] a sore eye?” G. Her neighbors said to her, “If you go and spit in his face, you will be permitted to go back to your husband.” H. But when the woman sat down before him, she became afraid of him. She said to him, “My lord, I am not really an expert at whispering over a sore eye.” I. He said to her, “Spit in my face seven times, and I’ll get better.” J. She spit in his face seven times. He said to her, “Go and tell your husband, ‘You said to do it once, but I did it seven times.’” K. His disciples said to him, “My lord, is that the way people should abuse the Torah? Could you not have told one of us to whisper [over your eye] for you?” L. He said to them, “Is it not sufficient [honor] for Meir to be merely equal to his Creator?

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M. “For R. Ishmael has taught, ‘The greatness of peace is shown in that the great name [of God], which is written in a state of sanctification, did the Holy One, blessed be he, instruct to have blotted out in water, if only to bring peace between a man and his wife.’”

The purpose in examining these stories should not be missed. It is not to survey ideas of virtue in Rabbinic literature. It is to identify the occasions on which stories about what named persons did (“biographical stories”) are introduced. We wanted to know how the framers of the documents utilized episodes involving named persons to accomplish their purposes. The answer is, to make that same statement, in terms of individuals, that the documents make through stories. We note that the latter never are set into relationship with sustained and continuous narratives; doing so would not accomplish the purposes of telling stories about events. Now we see the comparable quality: stories about individuals are not situated in the setting of a life or biography. Sustained narrative and lives formed media for the presentation of history and biography, because the conception of time that history, including biography, as defined by Scripture proposed to set forth required just that. And the conception of paradigm, in place of historical time, required just the opposite: a sustained narrative or a life would not serve the paradigmatic purpose, constituted a medium found not useless but misleading and wrong. That is why I invoke to account for the character of Rabbinic Judaism the conception of a paradigm, meaning, a model that finds and describes sameness without regard to scale, from small to large, one that makes possible the quest for a few specific patterns, which will serve this and that, hither and yon. Noting the congruity of biographical episodes with historical narratives—the one says in the setting of private life what the other conveys in the context of national politics—shows what is at stake. Sages’ writings yield no narrative because they find narrative useless; they tell episodic stories set into a different context all together because that is the form and the context they find congruent to their view of time, their expectation of where and how order and sense are conveyed. D. Death Here, again, the primary focus of stories about death remained martyrdom. The martyrs show perfect loyalty to God, even in the smallest things, and do everything they can to appease their creator,

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even at the loss of their life. Life in Eden is the reward. The following presents no surprises: Genesis Rabbah LXV:XXII.4 A. “See the smell of my son is as the smell of a field which the Lord has blessed” (Gen. 27:27): B. For example, Joseph Meshitha and Yaqim of Serorot. C. As to Yosé, when the time came that the enemies wanted to enter the mountain of the house [of the sanctuary], they said, “Let one of them go in first.” D. They said to Yosé, “Go in. Whatever you take out will belong to you.” E. He went in and took out the golden candelabrum. F. They said to him, “It is not proper for an ordinary person to make use of such a thing, so go in a second time, and what you take out will belong to you.” G. But he did not agree to do so. H. Said R. Phineas, “They offered him the taxes for three years, but he did not agree to go in.” I. He said, “It is not enough for you that I have made my God angry once, should I now outrage him yet a second time?” J. What did they do to him? They put him on a carpenter’s vice and they sawed him in two, and he cried out, “Woe, woe that I angered my creator!” K. Yaqim of Serurot was the son of the sister of R. Yosé b. Yoezer of Seridah. He was riding on his horse. He passed before the beam on which [Yosé] was to be hanged. He said to him, “Look at the horse on which my master has set me riding and look at the horse on which your master has set you riding!” L. He said to him, “If that is what he does for those who spite him, how much the more will he do for those who do his will!” M. He said to him, “And has anyone done his will more than you have?” N. He said to him, “And if that is what happens to those who do his will [that they are tortured to death], all the more so will he do for those who spite him.” O. That statement penetrated into his heart like the venom of a snake, and he went and applied to himself the four modes of the death penalty applied by a court, namely, stoning, burning, decapitation, and strangulation. P. How did he accomplish it? He brought a beam and stuck it into the ground, and put up a wall of stones around it, then tied a cord to it. He made a fire in front of the beam and put a sword in the middle of the post. He first hung himself on the post. The cord burned through, and he was strangled. Then the sword caught his body, and the wall of stones fell on him, and he burned up. Q. Yosé b. Yoezer of Seredah dozed off and he saw the bier of

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the other flying through the air. He said, “By a brief interval he reached the Garden of Eden before me.”

The main point remains the same as before: the ultimate return of the sages’ body to Heaven, along with the return of the Torah to its point of origin. III. The Latest Midrash-Compilations: Song of Songs Rabbah, Ruth Rabbah, Esther Rabbah I, and Lamentations Rabbah A. Birth. First Public Appearance and Origins Study of the Torah transforms all relationships; the normal course of a lifetime is changed. A single example, in the context of advent stories, registers that point: the grace that made of an unlettered adult a major authority. The story before us underscores the points at which Aqiba’s entry into Torah study contradict the natural course of events: The Fathers According to Rabbi Nathan VI:V.1 A. How did R. Aqiba begin [his Torah-study]? B. They say: He was forty years old and had never repeated a tradition. One time he was standing at the mouth of a well. He thought to himself, “Who carved out this stone?” C. They told him, “It is the water that is perpetually falling on it every day.” D. They said to him, “Aqiba, do you not read Scripture? ‘The water wears away stones’ (Job. 4:19)?” E. On the spot R. Aqiba constructed in his own regard an argument a fortiori: now if something soft can wear down something hard, words of Torah, which are as hard as iron, how much the more so should wear down my heart, which is made of flesh and blood.” F. On the spot he repented [and undertook] to study the Torah. G. He and his son went into study session before a childrens’ teacher, saying to him, “My lord, teach me Torah.” H. R. Aqiba took hold of one end of the tablet, and his son took hold of the other end. The teacher wrote out for him Alef Bet and he learned it, Alef Tav and he learned it, the Torah of the Priests [the books of Leviticus and Numbers] and he learned it. He went on learning until he had learned the entire Torah. I. He went and entered study-sessions before R. Eliezer and before R. Joshua. He said to them, “My lords, open up for me the reasoning of the Mishnah.”

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part four: chapter vii J. When they had stated one passage of law, he went and sat by himself and said, “Why is this alef written? why is this bet written? Why is this statement made?” He went and asked them and, in point of fact, reduced them to silence.

Once more the origins of a sage, meaning, how he undertook to study the Torah, are specified; the story is remarkable, so the narrator wishes us to notice, because, like Eliezer, Aqiba undertook Torahstudy only in his mature years. Contrary to the natural order of things, he and his son went together; his wife was left alone. Once more, then, the use of biographical anecdote is shaped by paradigmatic interests: the relationship between the Torah and the natural world, even more, the negotiation that is required, case by case, to bring the world of ordinary doings into alignment with both nature and the Torah. B. Discipleship and Study of the Torah While attractive and engaging, the stories pertinent to this rubric add nothing fresh to our survey. C. Virtue Rather than concluding with an account of the Torah’s virtues, we turn to the picture of the sage who left the fold yet retained acknowledged learning. Here again, we note the range of the negotiable. A sage who has abandoned the faith retains vast and vital learning; his greatest disciple, loyal to the band of Torah-sages, with dignity encourages him to return to the fold and to the faith. The apostatemaster with dignity declines. I abbreviate the passage, recording only its principal parts: Ruth Rabbah LXII:ii.1 A. “...and in the morning, if he will do the part of the next of kin for you, well; let him do it; but if he is not willing to do the part of the next of kin for you, then, as the Lord lives, I will do the part of the next of kin for you. [Lie down until the morning]” (Ruth 3:13): B. On the Sabbath R. Meir was in session and expounding in the school of Tiberias, and Elisha, his master, was passing in the market riding a horse. C. They said to R. Meir, “Lo, Elisha your master is passing by in the market.” D. He went out to him. E. He [Elisha] said to him [Meir], “With what were you engaged?”

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F. He said to him, “‘So the Lord blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning’ (Job 42:12).” G. He said to him, “And what do you have to say about it?” H. He said to him, “‘blessed’ means that he gave him twice as much money as he had before.” I. He said to him, “Aqiba, your master, did not explain it in that way. This is how he explained it: ‘“So the Lord blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning:” it was on account of the repentance and the good deeds that were in his hand to begin with.’”... S. “And there is this case [which illustrates Aqiba’s view]: Abbuyah, my father, was one of the leading figures of the generation, and when the time came to circumcise me, he invited all the leading men of Jerusalem, and he invited R. Eliezer and R. Joshua with them. T. “And when they had eaten and drunk, these began to say psalms, and those began to say alphabetical acrostics. U. “Said R. Eliezer to R. Joshua, ‘These are engaged with what matters to them, so should we not devote ourselves to what matters to us?’ V. “They began with [verses of] the Torah, and from the Torah, they went on to the prophets, and from the prophets to the writings. And the matters gave as much joy as when they were given from Sinai, so fire leapt round about them. W. “For was not the very act of giving them through fire? ‘And the mountain burned with fire to the heart of heaven’ (Dt. 4:11). X. “[My father] said, ‘Since such is the great power of Torah, this son, if he survives for me, lo, I shall give him over to the Torah.’ Y. “But since his true intentionality was not for the sake of Heaven [but for the ulterior motive of mastering the supernatural power of the Torah], my Torah did not endure in me. FF. [Meir said to Elisha,] “Turn back.” GG. He said to him, “Why?” HH. [Elisha] said to [Meir], “Up to here is the Sabbath limit [and within this space alone are you permitted to walk about].” II. [Meir] said to him, “How do you know?” JJ. [Elisha] said to him, “It is from the hooves of my horse, for the horse has already traveled two thousand cubits.” KK. [Meir] said to [Elisha], “And all this wisdom is in your possession, and yet you do not return?” LL. He said to him, “I don’t have the power to do so.” MM. He said to him, “Why not?” NN. He said to him, “I was riding on my horse and sauntering past the synagogue on the Day of Atonement that coincided with the Sabbath. I heard an echo floating in the air: ‘Return, O backsliding children’ (Jer. 3:14), ‘Return to me and I will return to you’ (Mal. 3:7)— except for Elisha b. Abbuyah. OO. “‘For he knew all my power, but he rebelled against me.’“

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It would be difficult to identify, in the Rabbinic compilations, a more singular or individual portrait than this one, which has no counterpart or parallel in those documents. So long and elegant a narrative surely shades over into biography—or invites us to. And yet, a close look shows, the story underscores a variety of familiar propositions. First, learning by itself is nothing; the master who apostatized no longer exercises authority, even though he does, to be sure, possess accurate traditions. The correct motive in mastery of Torah defines the value of learning; here too, a range of negotiation is undertaken. The ultimate virtue of Israel must be submission to God’s will, reconciliation with the nation’s destiny as an expression of the nation’s complete acceptance of the Torah. The private person must exhibit the same virtue, and the worst sin, social or personal, is the same: “he knew all my power, but he rebelled against me.” Whether speaking of Israel led by Bar Kokhba or of Elisha, the judgment is the same. And the challenge to Israel is to accept and submit, conciliate and be reconciled, no matter what happens; Israel and individuals alike are forbidden to say, “Now where is the goodness and the long life of this man?” The concluding components of the tale approach the sublime in their working out this perfectly commonplace motif of the governing model. D. Death The death-scene of Ishmael conforms to the message that Israel is always welcome to repent; submission to God’s will, by the nation or by the private person, is invariably welcome and effective. A single set of martyr-stories, abbreviated as before, suffices to register the main point: The Fathers According to Rabbi Nathan XXXVIII:V.2 A. When they seized Rabban Simeon b. Gamaliel and R. Ishmael on the count of death, Rabban Simeon b. Gamaliel was in session and was perplexed, saying, “Woe is us! For we are put to death like those who profane the Sabbath and worship idols and practice fornication and kill.” C. Said to him R. Ishmael b. Elisha, “Would it please you if I said something before you?” D. He said to him, “Go ahead.” E. He said to him, “Is it possible that when you were sitting at a banquet, poor folk came and stood at your door, and you did not let them come in and eat?”

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F. He said to him, “By heaven [may I be cursed] if I ever did such a thing! Rather, I set up guards at the gate. When poor folk came along, they would bring them in to me and eat and drink with me and say a blessing for the sake of Heaven.” G. He said to him, “Is it possible that when you were in session and expounding [the Torah] on the Temple mount and the vast populations of Israelites were in session before you, you took pride in yourself?” H. He said to him, “Ishmael my brother, one has to be ready to accept his failing. [That is why I am being put to death, the pride that I felt on such an occasion.]” I. They went on appealing to the executioner for grace. This one [Ishmael] said to him, “I am a priest, son of a high priest, kill me first, so that I do not have to witness the death of my companion.” J. And the other [Simeon] said, “I am the patriarch, son of the patriarch, kill me first, so that I do not have to witness the death of my companion.” K. He said to him, “Cast lots.” They cast lots, and the lot fell on Rabban Simeon b. Gamaliel. L. The executioner took the sword and cut off his head. M. R. Ishmael b. Elisha took it and held it in his breast and wept and cried out: “Oh holy mouth, oh faithful mouth, oh mouth that brought forth beautiful gems, precious stones and pearls! Who has laid you in the dust, who has filled your mouth with dirt and dust. N. “Concerning you Scripture says, Awake, O sword, against my shepherd and against the man who is near to me (Zech. 13:7).” O. He had not finished speaking before the executioner took the sword and cut off his head. P. Concerning them Scripture says, My wrath shall wax hot, and I will kill you with the sword, and your wives shall be widows, and your children fatherless (Ex. 22:23).

What happens happens for good reason; justice is done and seen to be done. The Torah sets at the foreground of the death of worth and dignity. V. The Paradigmatic Person This survey leaves no reasonable doubt that the function of presenting—not biography but—episodes of individual’s lives is to show the union of the nature and the social order through the person of the sage. That union takes place within the medium of the Torah, which corresponds to nature and lays out the governing rules thereof, but also encompasses the social order and defines its laws as well. An-

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ecdotes about the master of the Torah then serve to convey principles of the Torah, with the clear proviso that anecdotes about events may equally set forth precisely those same principles. So the paradigm describes regularities without regard to considerations of scale, whether social or private, any more than matters of earlier or later, past or present or future, make any difference at all. That fact, by the way, also explains why the paradigm in play really excludes not only biography but personality in any form. Individuals make a difference, so as to warrant the writing down of components of personal lives, at that point at which they lose all individuality and serve in some way or other to embody and exemplify a detail of the paradigm best set forth in the dimensions of private life. We then identify no difference between the social entity and the private person, because the paradigm works out indifferent to matters of scale or context; says what it says wherever it says it. Now to take up the question postponed at the outset, how does the paradigm emerge, having received a richer and more nuanced definition, out of the encounter with individual lives? The answer is now clear. A paradigm that proposes to present a single, coherent, and cogent picture of the life of Israel under the aspect of the timeless Torah has to make its statement about not only the social order viewed whole, but the individuals who comprise that order. The paradigm requires the counterpart to biography, as much as the counterpart to history, for its own reasons; it cares about individuals for the same reason that it cares about the social entity, Israel. We end up at our starting point. Biography does for history what personal anecdotes do for the paradigm. Just as the one renders the large conclusions of its companion manageable and in human scale, so the other expresses the statements of the paradigm in a form accessible of human imitation and identification. But anecdotes about people also deepen our perception of the paradigm. For the issue of time is recast, now, as the span of a human life enters consideration. Paradigm in place of history yielded the narrative of the cult and the story of the Temple. Episode in place of biography produces stories of how the Torah intersects with everyday life of the holy people.

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PART FIVE —— TRANSCENDING THE BOUNDS OF TIME

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CHAPTER VIII

ZAKHOR: IS RABBINIC JUDAISM A RELIGION OF MEMORY? For the rabbis the Bible was not only a repository of past history but a revealed pattern of the whole of history, and they had learned their scriptures well. They knew that history has a purpose, the establishment of the kingdom of God on earth, and that the Jewish people has a central role to play in the process. They were convinced that the covenant between God and Israel was eternal...Above all, they had learned from the Bible that the true pulse of history often beat beneath its manifest surfaces, an invisible history that was more real than what the world...could recognize....Ironically, the very absence of historical writing among the rabbis may itself have been due in good measure to their total and unqualified absorption of the biblical interpretation of history. In its ensemble, the biblical record seemed capable of illuminating every further historical contingency. Yosef Hayyim Yerushalmi Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory, pp. 21-2.

I. Marking Time: Memory or Dream As the dance is the physicalization of music, and memory, the immediate realization of history, so is the lived dream the here-andnow embodiment of paradigm. The task of dance is to give physical form to music; of memory, contemporary formulation to the past, and of dream, immediacy and concreteness to the model. The marriage of music and motion yields dance; the monument and rite of commemoration, history; the serene sense of familiarity with the new put forth in response the lived paradigm: Purim in Patagonia, Exodus in America: “...as if we were slaves to Pharaoh.” Essential to historical modes of thought is memory. So too, criti-

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part five: chapter viii

cal to the paradigm that identifies event out of happenings, consequence out of the detritus of everyday affairs is the dream (in sleep) or the intuition (when awake). Then everything is changed. When the model takes shape and takes place in the radically-present moment, past and future meet in neither past nor future but paradigm. And then the mode of thought through paradigm accomplishes its enchantment: Paradigm or pattern or model then forms an alternative to historical knowledge, a different way of thinking about the same things and responding to the same questions. What is the function, in history, of memory? People who see time in the framework of history, past, present, future forming distinct spells, experience the passage of time through the medium of memory. They look backward, into an age now over and done with. Affirming that that was then, and this is now, they evoke memory as the medium for renewing access to events or persons deemed formative in the present moment. A religion that frames its statement out of the conception of historical time—one-time events, bound to context and defined by circumstance, but bearing longterm effects and meaning—then will evoke memory as a principal medium for the recovery of sense and order out of the chaos of the everyday and here and now. By remembering how things were, moving beyond the barrier of the present moment, people institute a certain order. They form a certain sense for the self-evident quality of matters. Israelite Scripture certainly qualifies as a religion of memory.1 It recognizes both the pastness of the past and also invokes its power to explain the present. But what are we to make of a religion that insists upon the presence of the past and the pastness of the present, instructing the faithful to view themselves, out of the here and now, as living in another time, another place: “Therefore every person must see himself or herself as slave to Pharaoh in Egypt,” as the Passover Haggadah-narrative2 phrases matters. But the same invo1

Chapters One and Two have reviewed the scholarship on that point, which is unanimous. That is not to suggest the Authorized History of Genesis to Kings tells us what really happened; at stake here are modes of thought, issues of the social construction of reality, conventions and protocols of interpretation, that are ordinarily classified as historical. That point suffices, and accords with the established facts of scholarship, as I have demonstrated in a brief way in the opening part of this book. 2 Once more, I express uncertainty as to the relationship of the Passover lit-

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cation of the present into the past also serves to convey the past into the here and now. Once a religious obligation imposes past upon present, shifting the present into a fully realized, contemporary-past, rites of commemoration give way to the reformulation of the ages into a governing paradigm that obliterates barriers of time as much as those of space.3 Rules of structure and order apply without differentiation by criteria or time or space. These rules comprise a paradigm. The paradigm not only imparts sense and order to what happens but also—and first of all—selects out of what happens what counts— and is to be counted. The paradigm is a distinctive way of marking time, telling time. Rites of reenactment with clear focus upon times long gone will form a principal expression of a religion of memory: we do this now in commemoration of that singular (“unique”) event long ago, so that we may remember, so that we may draw the right conclusions for today. What makes such rites those of memory and not return to an eternal present finds definition in what distinguishes history from urgy to the sages’ Judaic system. Certainly sages accepted and sponsored the rite, as Mishnah-tractate Pesahim shows beyond doubt. But whether the liturgy is particular to sages is unclear to me, just as I am not certain concerning the sponsorship of those components of Siddur and Mahzor that go back to late antiquity. These matters have no bearing upon the argument of this book, based as it is on documents that certainly derive from and speak for the Rabbinic sages. Nonetheless, in due course I deal with memory in the New Year liturgy, if only in a footnote. Were I to admit the liturgy into evidence, I should have to demonstrate that in its present wording, it circulated in the same period as the Midrash-compilations that have defined the focus of inquiry. That has not yet been accomplished; the structure of the service, but not its details, is plausibly assigned to late antiquity. Since the Rabbinic sages legislated in regard to the liturgy, we have to take account of its data, even though, as I said, we cannot show that they not only sponsored or accepted the liturgy but also originated it as part of their statement, along with the Mishnah and Tosefta, Talmuds, and Midrash-compilations. That we do not yet know, in the way in which we know, for example, that Targum Onqelos certainly speaks in behalf of the Rabbinic sages, while the other Targumim do not. Only within the premise of a single Judaism, everywhere uniform and harmonic, normative and orthodox, do all bodies of evidence have to come under examination at one and the same time. That premise no longer circulates broadly. 3 I am sure that considerations of space and its divisions are at least as important as those of time, which have defined the work of this book. It seems to me necessary that the Rabbinic sages treat as null boundaries of space as much as those of time, but I have not worked on that problem. I should anticipate that Rabbinic Judaism will emerge as not only paradigmatic, not historical, but also utopian, not locative. But the shift from bounded space to utopia is to be traced in its own terms.

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other modes of formulating social organization. It is that defining barrier between present and past, that insistence on the uniqueness of events, but also on their linear and teleological character. We recall in this context the statement of LeGoff, “The opposition between past and present is fundamental, since the activity of memory and history is founded on this distinction.”4 The work of historical imagination, then, is, through the processes of narrative shaping thought, sentimentality and emotion, to move people from here to there, from now to then. The governing proposition of imagination is easily framed: we are here as if we were there; then is as if it were now. The “as if” then embodies in language the working of imagination transcending the barrier of time. Historical imagination forms a powerful tool for the reconstruction of the every day by appeal to the model of another, long-gone but still living age. Memory then is the chosen medium for imagining. If for our purposes Scripture has supplied the definitions of historical thinking,5 then the traits of paradigmatic thinking will take shape in their opposites and counterparts, and these we have found in a few, clear and unmistakable ways in the Rabbinic documents we have surveyed. We simply took the opposites of the indicators of the presence of historical thinking: linear history, sustained narrative, differentiation of present from past, contrasted against episodic story-telling but no linear, sustained narrative, and the fusion of times into one time.6 The traits of paradigmatic thinking characteristic of the Rabbinic sages emerge in both what we do not find in those documents and also in what we do find by way of counterpart: how do Rabbinic writers deal with those same themes out of Israel’s (alleged) past as are laid out in historical terms in Scripture? Having denied the distinction between present and past, the very dilemma of history—bridging the imagined gap between present and past—finds no comprehension at all. In that setting a distance between here and there, a spell between now and then—both allude 4 Jacques LeGoff, History and Memory (N.Y., 1992: Columbia University Press). Translated by Steven Randall and Elizabeth Claman, p. xii. 5 As Chapters II through IV have shown beyond reasonable doubt. 6 Which is not to be called “eternity.” That would represent a profound misunderstanding of the conception of time in Rabbinic Judaism. It is only in the context of history that I have dealt here with the conception of time; the much more interesting problem of time viewed in its own terms in the Rabbinic document remains to be addressed.

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to a separation none perceives. That atemporality, we now understand, with its corresponding notion of space derives from a different conception of marking time from the historical one. Time defined by nature imposes its morphology on time marked by the community and its conventions. We need hardly rehearse the protracted arguments and array of evidence now completed to recognize a simple fact. A religion that organizes experience by appeal to enduring paradigms therefore will find no more use for memory than it assigns to the concept of “history.” Memory matters only to those who organize affairs historically; the barrier between present and past removed, memory is assigned no task at all. Once people mark time nature’s way, history’s insistence on difference between now and then makes no sense. Other questions take priority: identifying the pattern, replicated in no special context. As we noted, once we are obligated to see ourselves as if we were not now but then, not here but somewhere else, paradigmatic thinking takes over. Then the as-if—“to see ourselves as if we were slaves in Egypt”—is dropped in favor of the “is,” the paradigm takes over. That then excludes all considerations of historical specificity. No longer do the faithful think in terms of now, not then, but like then. Then memory is to history as what is to paradigm? What medium in ordinary life corresponds in the experience of paradigm to the medium of memory for history? The question phrased in this way produces an obvious answer. If we wonder when or where we compare ordinary affairs with an enduring paradigm, it is in dreaming or free-ranging imagination or instinct. Nostalgia then is to historical thinking what realized dream is to the paradigmatic kind. Then, to summarize: the Rabbinic sages do not look back with longing, because they do not have to; nor do they look forward with either dread nor anticipation either, for there is no future that is not already present and awaiting realization. So theirs is a different model for perceived experience from the one that distinguishes past from present, present from future, invoking the one to “make sense” of the next phase in differentiated time. Paradigms or models take over and replace the sense of history with a different sort of common sense. How does the dream-time of paradigmatic thinking take place? There we put together, in our own mind’s eye, in the undifferentiated realm of night—the age of sin and exile, to be specific—those patterns and models of experience that coalesce and endure, taking

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the paradigm of one set of generative experiences and imposing themselves on chosen moments later on. Dream and fantasy select, as much as history selects, out of a range of happenings a few incidents of consequence, history’s events, paradigm’s models. But in dreaming there is no earlier or later, no now or then, no here or there. Things coalesce and disintegrate, form and reform, in the setting of a few, highly restricted images. In the realm of dreams, paradigms (of experience, real or imagined) come together, float apart, reassemble in a different pattern, unrestricted by considerations of now or then, here or there.7 Whatever is chosen, out of the chaos of the everyday, to be designated a pattern imposes its order and structure on whatever, in the chaos of the here and now, fits. Paradigmatic thinking more precisely corresponds to human media for the organization of experience than the historical kind. I claim that it matches how we live out our lives. The Rabbinic sages formed their conception of time out of the materials of the everyday perceptions of people, for whom past, present, and future give way to the recapitulation of patterns of meaning formed we know not how.8 Dreams, fantasies, moments of enchantment, occasions or circumstances or places that invoke the model or fit it—these form the medium for the organization of experience. To it time bears no meaning, memory no message. But sages saw matters the way they did because they took the measure of history, not because they ignored it. They formulated another and different reading of history from the historical one; aware of the one, sentient of the other, they transcended history and cast off the bounds of time. II. The Scriptural Foundations of Paradigmatic Thinking Scripture not merely supplied the facts but laid the foundations for paradigmatic thinking. Before proceeding, let me give the single most important case of paradigmatic reading of Scripture: the comparison of Adam and Israel, the loss of Eden and the loss of the Land. 7 That explains the aesthetics of the theology of symbolic expression worked out in my Symbol and Theology in Early Judaism. Minneapolis, 1991: Fortress Press. 8 But that is of course disingenuous. For psychology knows how, and so does theology.

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For the creation-narrative formed the primary, generative paradigm of the Rabbinic theological system. In this paradigmatic reading of Scripture Israel is like Adam, but Israel is the Other, the Last Adam, the opposite of Adam. We shall now systematically compare Adam and Israel, the first man and the last, and show how the story of Adam matches the story of Israel— but with a difference: Genesis Rabbah XIX:IX.1-2 2. A. R. Abbahu in the name of R. Yosé bar Haninah: “It is written, ‘But they are like a man [Adam], they have transgressed the covenant’ (Hos. 6:7). B. “‘They are like a man,’ specifically, like the first man. [We shall now compare the story of the first man in Eden with the story of Israel in its land.]

Now the composer identifies an action in regard to Adam with a counterpart action in regard to Israel, in each case matching verse for verse, beginning with Eden and Adam: C. “‘In the case of the first man, I brought him into the garden of Eden, I commanded him, he violated my commandment, I judged him to be sent away and driven out, but I mourned for him, saying “How...”’[which begins the book of Lamentations, hence stands for a lament, but which, as we just saw, also is written with the consonants that also yield, ‘Where are you’]. D. “‘I brought him into the garden of Eden,’ as it is written, ‘And the Lord God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden’ (Gen. 2:15). E. “‘I commanded him,’ as it is written, ‘And the Lord God commanded...’ (Gen. 2:16). F. “‘And he violated my commandment,’ as it is written, ‘Did you eat from the tree concerning which I commanded you’ (Gen. 3:11). G. “‘I judged him to be sent away,’ as it is written, “And the Lord God sent him from the garden of Eden’ (Gen. 3:23). H. “‘And I judged him to be driven out.’ ‘And he drove out the man’ (Gen. 3:24). I. “‘But I mourned for him, saying, “How...”.’ ‘And he said to him, “Where are you”’ (Gen. 3:9), and the word for ‘where are you’ is written, ‘How....’

Now comes the systematic comparison of Adam and Eden with Israel and the Land of Israel: J. “‘So too in the case of his descendants, [God continues to speak,] I brought them into the Land of Israel, I commanded them, they violated my commandment, I judged them to be sent out and driven away but

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part five: chapter viii I mourned for them, saying, “How....”’ K. “‘I brought them into the Land of Israel.’ ‘And I brought you into the land of Carmel’ (Jer. 2:7). L. “‘I commanded them.’ ‘And you, command the children of Israel’ (Ex. 27:20). ‘Command the children of Israel’ (Lev. 24:2). M. “‘They violated my commandment.’ ‘And all Israel have violated your Torah’ (Dan. 9:11). N. “‘I judged them to be sent out.’ ‘Send them away, out of my sight and let them go forth’ (Jer 15:1). O. “‘....and driven away.’ ‘From my house I shall drive them’ (Hos. 9:15). P. “‘But I mourned for them, saying, “How....”’ ‘How has the city sat solitary, that was full of people’ (Lam. 1:1).”

Here we end where we began, Israel in exile from the Land, like Adam in exile from Eden. The case illustrates the mode of thought. The Rabbinic sages identified in the written part of the Torah the governing models of Israel’s enduring existence, whether past, whether future. And that is precisely why they formed the conception of paradigm, and whence they drew the specificities of theirs. They knew precisely what paradigms imparted order and meaning to everyday events, and their models, equivalent in mathematics to the “philosophy,” then selected and explained data and also allowed prognosis to take place. In place of a past that explained the present and predicted the future, sages invoked a paradigm that imposed structure on past and future alike— a very different thing. And what, precisely, was the paradigm? Images, in dreaming, form the counterpart to the paradigm’s formulations: dream of Eden, dream of Land, nightmare of Adam, nightmare of Israel—and the waking at Sinai.9 In that dream world formed of the paradigms of Scripture matched against our own immediate and contemporary experience, time stands still, its place taken by form. And in the world of paradigms set forth by Scripture and defined in simple, powerful images by the documents of Rabbinic Judaism, imagination asks of itself a different task from the one performed in a religion of history through the act of memory. Imagination now forms an instrument of selection out of the here and now of those particular facts that count, selection and construction out of the data of the every day a realm of being that conforms to the model that is always present, 9 I allude to both Freedman’s brief and ample formulation of the Authorized History, cited above, and also the formulation given in Song of Songs Rabbah.

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waiting to be discerned and, not recapitulated once again but, realized—as always, whenever. Seeing the dream in the setting of the everyday defines the task of imagination: not “let’s pretend,” but rather, “look here....” In that particular vision lies the power of this Judaism to make of the world something that, to the untrained eye, is scarcely there to be seen, but, to the eye of faith, evokes the sense of not déjà-vu or temps perdu but—self-evidence. III. Scripture’s Memory and Tradition A document such as Scripture that formulates its statement in historical categories will negotiate data through the medium of memory, on the one hand, and through the doctrine of tradition, on the other. Remembering what was done, handing down the memory— these will formulate the rules for composing the social order in the unfolding present. Memory forms an act of prayer, an effort to overcome the separation from God, as Childs’s statement at the head of this chapter formulates matters. For at stake in the historical as against the paradigmatic reading of the everyday in the context of Judaism is the encounter with God: where do we identify the “divine reality...imprinted”? Childs’ formulation of what is at stake in memory and in its theological companion, the concept of tradition, carries us to the heart of the matter, which is, Scripture’s understanding of memory, concomitant with its selection of the medium of history: To remember was to call to mind a past event or situation, with the purpose of evoking some action...To remember was to actualize the past, to bridge the gap of time and to form a solidarity with the fathers. Israel’s remembrance became a technical term to express the process by which later Israel made relevant the great redemptive acts which she recited in her tradition. The question of how to overcome the separation in time and space from the great events of the past become the paramount issue.10

The premise of Scripture’s historical framing of Israel’s situation— the pastness of the past—then generates the question that that same framing of matters satisfactorily answers. Once we recognize that great events belong to the past, we undertake to remember them so as to realize them once more, in 10

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Childs, pp. 74-5.

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Childs’s language, “to overcome the separation in time and space....” If to begin with we did not conceive of time in a historical manner, we also should not have to overcome that barrier, to close that separation.11 First comes the here-and-now conception of “exile” and “return,”12 then comes the utilization of the category, history, to frame matters by explaining them. The insistence on the pastness of the past that defines the concept of history in the Scriptural setting then forms a way of stating that sense of distance or separation—whether from Land, whether from God—that is to be recognized and overcome. “History” then makes a statement that from the perspective of “here,” a separation has taken place, and from the viewpoint of “now,” there is a then. And “tradition” forms the medium by which that statement’s tension is resolved: how to overcome the gap. That is not accomplished by a return to that moment of the past, as Childs says, “...Old Testament actualization cannot be correctly identified with a return to a former historical event.”13 Such a return would violate the first law of historical thinking, as we have noted many times; we can never go back. Then what kind of history does that thinking yield in Scripture? Childs answers in these terms: The Old Testament witnesses to a series of historical events by which God brought the people of Israel into existence. These events were placed in a chronological order within the tradition and never recurred in Israel’s history. There was one Exodus from Egypt, one period of wilderness wanderings, one conquest of the land. These events were determinative because they constituted Israel’s redemption. in other words, they became the vehicle for a quality of existence, redemptive time and space.14 11 In this context I need hardly attempt to explain that powerful sense of the pastness of the past that animates the Hebrew Scriptures. But it seems to me to derive from the perspective of the return to Zion, which conceives of an “Israel” once separated from the land but now restored to it, thus conception (“myth”) of a return after an interval of time begins with the notion of the separation of space, and that then provokes the sense of the separation in time. A rich account of what is at stake here is set forth in Philip R. Davies, In Search of Ancient Israel (Sheffield, 1993: Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series 148), especially pp. 113-133. 12 I say “conception” rather than “experience,” since I do not know what experience, if any, comes to expression in the conception; and I say “conception” rather than “myth” or “tradition” since these terms bear weight that would overload the argument here. 13 Childs, p. 83. 14 Childs, p. 83.

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Then, we ask ourselves, what task is assigned to memory, that is, the medium for the actualization of the statement of history? Childs’ reply serves us well: Our study of memory has indicated that each successive generation encountered anew these same determinative events...It means more than that the influence of a past event continued to be felt in successive generations...there was an immediate encounter, an actual participation in the great acts of redemption....15

Memory then serves as the medium for overcoming the barrier between present and past, opening the way for the present to participate in what happened long ago. By remembering, people were able to relive, regain access to, that time and that event that they knew was once upon a time. How, precisely, does that working of memory craft the world? Childs’ final contribution completes this exposition of history, memory, and tradition in ancient Israel’s Scriptures: Actualization is the process by which a past event is contemporized for a generation removed in time and space from the original event. When later Israel responded to the continuing imperative of her tradition through her memory, that moment in historical time likewise became an Exodus experience. Not in the sense that later Israel again crossed the Red Sea. This was an irreversible, once-for-all event. Rather, Israel entered the same redemptive reality of the Exodus generation. later Israel, removed in time and space from the original event, yet still in time and space, found in her tradition a means of transforming her history into redemptive history. Because the quality of time was the same, the barrier of chronological separation was overcome.16

It would be difficult to imagine a more concise statement of the religious experience of the historical mode of organizing matters than Childs’s, since he touches on every element critical to the description of history—the pastness of the past, the singularity and irreversibility of events, but also the power of events in times past to affect the present moment and to effect change therein. The touchstone, then, is simple: that sense of separation that precipitates the quest for reconciliation, restoration, renewal of relationship. Childs defines the final question to be taken up here: if historical thinking begins with a sense of separation of present from past, then what accounts for the datum of paradigmatic thinking, which 15 16

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Childs, pp. 83-4. Childs, p. 85.

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forms the union of present and past and abandons any notion that the one is distinct from the other? Where present and past meet, there paradigmatic thinking commences, as I shall explain in due course. But first, we have to attend to a different characterization of Rabbinic Judaism from that offered here, the claim that Rabbinic Judaism in its classical phase set forth a religion of memory and took shape on the foundation of Scripture’s exercise in historical thinking. IV. Zakhor: Is Rabbinic Judaism a Religion of Memory? On the face of matters, Rabbinic Judaism defines itself as a religion of tradition and formulates its authorized medium for the transmission of tradition through processes of memory. How can the following famous allegation yield any other conclusion? Tractate Abot 1:1-2 Moses received Torah at Sinai and handed it on to Joshua, to elders, and elders to prophets. And prophets handed it on to the men of the great assembly. They said three things: (1) “Be prudent in judgment. (2) “Raise up many disciples. (3) “Make a fence for the Torah.” 1:2 A. Simeon the Righteous was one of the last survivors of the great assembly. B. He would say: “On three things does the world stand: (1) “On the Torah, (2) “and on the Temple service, (3) “and on deeds of loving kindness.” A. Joshua B. C.

Here is an explicit allegation that the Torah, which is the native category for “Judaism,” is formulated through a process of receiving and handing on, that is, of tradition. Implicit, further, is the claim that there is a Torah besides Scripture, since what is assigned to the named authorities are statements that do not cite Scripture or go over points in Scripture but formulate propositions autonomous of statements of Scripture. The order of liturgy adopted and sponsored by, if not original to, Rabbinic Judaism,17 contains ample reference 17 The relationship of the Prayerbook, or Siddur, to “the Rabbinic sages “ recorded in the Mishnah and its exegetical literature, Tosefta and the two Talmuds, as already noted, simply is not settled. Clearly, sages legislated in respect to the

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to “a memorial to the Exodus from Egypt,” and paramount liturgies make reference to the past in the medium of memory.18 None may doubt, therefore, that indicators of the presence of historical thinking—appeal to memory and to tradition—form an ample presence in Rabbinic Judaism. Yet statements such as the ones at hand hardly require us to juxtapose “tradition,” which we do have, with “memory” and “history.” A statement that the Rabbinic sages stand in the line of tradition—receiving, handing on—that commenced at Scripture need not be read to convey a historical fact, that is, the facticity of a barrier between past and present, a wall of separation penetrated by a process of tradition out of the past and into the present. That reading of matters—the historical way, with a clear distinction between present and past—in fact contradicts the sense of the passage. It does so because it misses the character of what is transmitted in this process of tradition. The examples given above suffice to make a simple point: the substance of what is transmitted as tradition in no way recognizes the authority of the past, in no way claims to hand onto the future what has been received out of the past, in no way represents itself as a historical process at all. Why not? Because what is transmitted as tradition is not a citation of anliturgical documents and their contents; they took for granted the theology in them; they obviously said those prayers, even though there were other prayers they recognized as particular to their own setting and group (the master-disciple-circle and its prayers are so designated). But whether or not sages in particular composed the prayers assembled in the (much-later) Siddur, or whether they wrote some of them but not others, remains to be considered. It has no bearing upon the problem at hand; I take for granted in this context that the prayers spoke for sages as much as for others in the synagogues where the prayers were recited. 18 One example well attested for sages is the Remembrance-verses (Zikhronot) for the Additional Service of the Day of Atonement, to which reference is made explicitly in the Mishnah and Tosefta. Precisely what is meant by “Remembranceverses” however derives from the purpose for which they are invoked. That is to beseech God to “remember the acts of memory that he performed in the past and to “remember” Israel now in the same way. The recitation of acts of memory then forms the counterpart to the recitation of acts of revelation ({Shoferot) and acts of sovereignty (Malkhuyyot); in all three cases we assemble the evidences to construct a paradigm of God’s actions: this is how things are. The Zikhronot-verses are no more commemorative in a historical, past-tense sense than the Malkhuyyotverses are commemorative, that is, allude to past moments when God ruled; for at no point do sages in the liturgy concede that there was a time in which God did not rule; and so too with the Shoferot-verses, the acts of revelation are not commemorative but recapitulative, a very different thing, since in recapitulation the pattern is realized once again, a presence that takes place.

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cient Scripture, e.g., writings of Moses or Jeremiah, nor, yet, an amplification thereof. What is transmitted as tradition is the opinion of the named sage himself. “Be prudent in judgment” is set forth not along with, “as it is written...,” plus a proof-text; “make a fence for the Torah” clearly belongs to the generation that makes the statement; and at every point thereafter, the joining of a name and an ethical or theological statement yields a clear, anti-historical claim: this is what this particular sage said on his own account, not what he said out of a received, ancient, historical tradition. Indeed, the very formulation, occasionally, of a saying in the setting of a pseudo-narrative, bears the same signal: Tractate Abot 2:6 A. Also: he saw a skull floating on the water and said to it, “Because you drowned others, they drowned you, and in the end those who drowned you will be drowned.”

Not only do we find no union of “traditionality” with history, we find an explicit statement that what a given sage “says” in the chain of tradition that tractate Abot lays out is his own, not what he has received out of the legacy of history. Tradition here is not conceived as a historical category at all, and the chain of tradition to Sinai forms not a medium for transcending the barrier of history, but for making a different statement altogether from a historical one.19 In a circle that denies that historical categories to begin with are native to the Torah—“considerations of temporal priority or posteriority do not apply in the Torah”—the category, “tradition,” simply serves in a structure that assigns to that category a quite ahistorical meaning. That is why what a sage “says,” not “said,” stresses the all-timeness of the statement. It explains, also, why it seldom is necessary to specify the circumstance in which, or to which, a given statement is made. IV. Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, Zakhor. Jewish History and Jewish Memory Revisited In the past two centuries, dominated as they have been by historicism, the tractate’s “chain of tradition:” has been read in a narrow19 It would carry us far afield for me to spell out here what statement I conceive to be made in the chain of tradition that forms the shank of the tractate. It suffices to say that history plays no role, and the claim of authority imputed to the named sages and their Torah is not a historical one.

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ly historical framework, within a grid the lines of which are laid out in terms of the pastness of the past, the separation of the present from the past, the clear recognition that memory and commemoration forms the foundation of commonsense interpretation and realization of the category, “tradition.” On that basis, and certainly not without ample reason therefore, Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, formulating “a number of issues concerning the place of historiography within Jewish civilization generally,”20 alleges that “...memory of the past was always a central component of Jewish experience.”21 Yerushalmi leaves no doubt that he means history. His criterion for the presence or absence of history, or what we should prefer, less pretentiously, to call simply “historical thinking,” derives from the writing of narrative history and its surrogates or the absence of that writing. Yerushalmi quite properly asks about how people wrote history or why they did not do so, and, it follows, he takes for granted the normative status of that barrier between past and present that to begin with marks the presence of his “history” (inclusive of “memory”) and my “historical thinking.” What we shall now see is that Yerushalmi has completely misunderstood the thinking of the Rabbinic sages. He presents as historical a mode of thought that rejects every premise of history and that invokes a mode of explaining the social order that is—and by others has been characterized as—a temporal, anti-historical, and utterly out of phase with Scripture’s historical thinking. Since he builds the rest of his book upon his representation of “Biblical and Rabbinic Foundations,” as we shall see, in point of fact the entire thesis he argues rests upon deeply flawed foundations. But he has correctly set forth the main facts. So his construction of matters, not the materials with which he works, is what produces the faults; the collapse of the structure is on account of a massive failure of intellect. Before addressing that judgment of mine, let us carefully review his operative judgments. By “Jewish memory” he refers to “transpersonal memory: “...even individual memory is structured through social frameworks...collective memory is not a metaphor but a social reality transmitted and sus20 Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, Zakhor. Jewish History and Jewish Memory (Seattle and London, 1982: University of Washington Press), p. xiii. 21 Yerushalmi, p. xiv.

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tained through the conscious efforts and institutions of the group.”22 Having stated matters in such language, Yerushalmi explicitly carries us from the category, “civilization,” to that of religion, namely, Judaism, that in this context is defined by the documents examined here. In his own categories and terms, it is fair to say, Yerushalmi characterizes what in the categories and terms operative here is meant by “Judaism.” It is specifically to Rabbinic Judaism that Yerushalmi devotes part of his initial formulation, which he calls, “Biblical and Rabbinic Foundations: Meaning in History, Memory, and the Writing of History.”23 In Scripture, “meaning in history, memory of the past, and the writing of history...are linked...overlap...are held together in a web of delicate and reciprocal relationships. In post-biblical Judaism...they pull asunder.”24 Specifically, “Unlike the biblical writers the rabbis seem to play with Time as though with an accordion, expanding and collapsing it at will. Where historical specificity is a hallmark of the biblical narratives, here that acute biblical sense of time and place often gives way to rampant and seemingly unselfconscious anachronism.”25 Anachronism by itself, Yerushalmi admits, need not exclude from the category of historical writing the reformulation of Scriptural stories in the Rabbinic compilations. But even though the rabbis did not write the history of times beyond Scripture’s or try to preserve events in their own day,26 Yerushalmi argues, rabbis still were interested in history. He is explicit about what he means by “interested in,” the ambiguity being resolved in so many words; clearly, the documents we have examined would sustain the generalization, “rabbis were interested in” the ancient Israelite Scriptures’ historical narratives. But what that interest in those writings led sages themselves to write is a quite other question; they did not receive and comment upon the Scriptural history except in their own terms and for their own purposes, as we have seen in abundant evidence, and they also did not write history of their own. It is that fact, so ominous for Yerushalmi’s 22

Yerushalmi, p. xv. Yerushalmi’s views are shared by LeGoff, who uses much the same language to argue for the same proposition but who unfortunately does not appear to have read Yerushalmi’s book. 23 Yerushalmi, pp. 1-27. 24 Yerushalmi, p. 14. 25 Yerushalmi, p. 17. 26 Yerushalmi, p. 20.

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thesis that, in our language, Judaism is a religion of memory, that Yerushalmi has to address in his terms. This he does in so many words, and his account of matters permits us to identify what is at stake in recognizing that not a historical, as against a paradigmatic, way of thinking governed in the Rabbinic writings we have examined. The stakes prove remarkably weighty. A complete statement of his characterization of Judaism, made explicit at the end, begins as follows: For them, history was no less meaningful, their God no less the ultimate arbiter of historical destinies, their messianic hope no less fervent and absolute...If the rabbis, wise men who had inherited a powerful historical tradition, were no longer interested in history, this indicates nothing more than that they felt no need to cultivate it. Perhaps they already knew of history what they needed to know. Perhaps they were even wary of it.27

The important language here is the allegation that the rabbis “were no longer interested in history.” What can he possibly mean by that? And what evidence can he adduce to show what is (in his estimation) absent? Giving him the benefit of the doubt left by such an unintelligible formulation, we must assume that what Yerushalmi must mean they is, did not write history any more. If that is what he has in mind, he is wrong. The documents we have surveyed leave no doubt that sages were deeply interested in ancient Israel’s historical writings. Yerushalmi’s confession that in the failure to write history, sages indicated “they felt no need to cultivate it,” and his remarkably obtuse guess, “perhaps they already knew of history what they needed to know” prove startling. They form a striking admission that Yerushalmi faces a phenomenon he cannot explain and wishes to explain away. That is to say, here he has to confront the enormous exception to his ethnic rule: the sages whose documents mediated Scripture to Judaism through the processes of Midrash did not write any history. His thesis is the opposite; Zakhor, for him, is the key-word for Judaism, and he even alleges that the ethnic group imposes historical consciousness upon all its members. He has therefore either to explain, or explain away, the fact that the principal documents of

27

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Yerushalmi, p. 21

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Judaism attest to a conception of history that can in no way be characterized as historical. That is the point of Chapters One and Two. But the issue is poorly framed. Yerushalmi notes that sages did not write history, but he does not tell us whether the indicative traits of historical thinking characterized sages or did not characterize their modes of thought. If sages did not write history but thought historically, then Yerushalmi’s repeated allegation that sages knew of history what they needed to know would bear some plausibility. But as we have seen, sages did not think historically; the rules of the ordering of data and explaining them that govern in Scripture history do not apply in Rabbinic literature. So Yerushalmi’s characterization misses the point, because the character of the data is misrepresented. Sages did not write history because they wrote something else. That is because to begin with they did not think historically— by Scripture’s own indicative marks of historical thinking. Rather, they thought in another way altogether, the paradigmatic way that I have defined and documented. And the way of paradigm, model, or pattern excludes the way of history; it does not accommodate historical thinking but contradicts that mode of thought at its indicative premises and generative problematic alike. Pursuing in a single-minded way a thesis that contradicts the facts, Yerushalmi could find no explanation of the facts other than the rather odd one before us. For Yerushalmi has indeed done his homework. That makes all the more curious that Yerushalmi has observed precisely the phenomenon that Chapter V showed here: the paradigmatic mode of thought. He says so in so many words, and I mark language critical to what follows: For the rabbis the Bible was not only a repository of past history but a revealed pattern of the whole of history, and they had learned their scriptures well. They knew that history has a purpose, the establishment of the kingdom of God on earth,28 and that the Jewish people 28 We need not quibble on small points, but I find bizarre Yerushalmi’s conception that the purpose of “history” is “to establish the kingdom of God on earth.” He means “the kingdom of Heaven,” but that is of no consequence. The paradigm of Scripture as worked over by the Rabbinic sages makes remarkably little reference to establishing the kingdom of Heaven; it is encompassed by a rite, to be sure, but plays no part in the formation of the Halakhic category-formations that govern. Indeed, as shown in my Theology of the Halakhah (Leiden, 2002: Brill), I am unable to demonstrate that “the kingdom of God” forms a generative category-formation of the Halakhic system at all. One fundamental category-formation of that system is to restore Israel to the Land/Adam to Eden, as the passage

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has a central role to play in the process. They were convinced that the covenant between God and Israel was eternal...Above all, they had learned from the Bible that the true pulse of history often beat beneath its manifest surfaces, an invisible history that was more real than what the world...could recognize....Ironically, the very absence of historical writing among the rabbis may itself have been due in good measure to their total and unqualified absorption of the biblical interpretation of history. In its ensemble, the biblical record seemed capable of illuminating every further historical contingency. No fundamentally new conception of history had to be forced in order to accommodate Rome...29

The underlined words prove jarring; once we speak of “not only...past history,” we invoke the conception of a barrier between past and present; but then the language of “pattern of the whole of history” tears down any such barrier. The further underlined language, beginning with “above all,” once more signals the presence of an other-than-historical, temporal, linear, sequential conception of time and rationalization of events. Apart from the final sentence, the statement at hand serves very nicely to express the thesis of this book, as my presentation of the same statement at the head of Chapter V has already indicated. Yerushalmi gives us everything but the point.30 What is remarkable is that in stating the results of paradigmatic thinking, Yerushalmi did not recognize the ahistorical, atemporal character of his statement. Once Scripture contains not the record of the past but the pattern of all time, Scripture is no longer read as cited earlier indicates. As to the Aggadic structure, I have not yet undertaken an inquiry into the documentary occurrences of “kingdom of Heaven,” so I cannot say whether it is a primary category-formation or subordinate or inert, and how it fits into the Aggadic structure. But it is clear, neither does Yerushalmi validate his assertion through rigorous inquiry into the Rabbinic sources of late antiquity. 29 Yerushalmi, p. pp. 21-2. 30 Not only so, but I could not improve upon Yerushalmi’s formulation of what is, in fact, paradigmatic thinking: In its ensemble, the biblical record seemed capable of illuminating every further historical contingency. Yerushalmi’s failure lies not in his characterization of the facts, but in his incapacity to explain them. In his defense, we should note, the power of “the biblical record” to “illuminate” what happens in the future may certainly derive from the notion of precedent, yielding an appeal to the past to explain the future,. But, as we realize full well, that is not at all what the Rabbinic sages meant when they worked out their paradigms, formulated through Scripture, for addressing everything that would take place. Once more, the difference lies in whether or not the past forms a chapter of the present, the present, the past, or whether a distinction between past and present is drawn. Yerushalmi does not address that critical point, because he assumes the historical mode of thought and identifies no other.

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a historical work at all. The following statement is important because it shows that Yerushalmi takes for granted precisely those minimal indicators of historical thinking that I identified at the outset and demonstrated definitive in the Scripture’s Official History: The biblical past was known, the messianic future assured; the inbetween-time was obscure. Then as now, history did not validate itself and reveal its meaning imminently...They obviously felt they had all the history they required...31

Any claim that I have imputed to Yerushalmi a mode of thought he does not, in fact, utilize—the historical one— is excluded by the statement at hand. Here he articulately recognizes the boundaries that separate between past, present, and future. The “in-between” between past and future corresponds to that sense of the present and its difference from past and future that LeGoff, among many, identifies as the first requirement of historical thinking. In light of these observations, Yerushalmi’s final allegation proves beyond all comprehension. He alleges that while sages did not write history, they continued to think historically, or, in his language, “belief in the meaning of history remained.” So he recognizes that sages’ modes of thought were ahistorical. But he does not then explain what these same modes of thought produced in place of the historical ones: ...in Rabbinic Judaism...historiography came to a long halt even while belief in the meaning of history remained. We can freely concede...that much in the Rabbinic...heritage inculcated patterns and habits of thought in later generations that were...if not anti-historical, then ahistorical.32

Not able to explain matters, Yerushalmi finally alleges that the facts he has recognized in fact did not matter; he insists that the distinction that he has drawn, between historical and ahistorical thinking, simply makes no difference, and made no difference: Yet these factors did not inhibit the transmission of a vital Jewish past from one generation to the next, and Judaism neither lost its link to history nor its fundamentally historical orientation.33

The statement before us is surely the most puzzling one of all. Yerushalmi claims that sages’ ahistorical thinking did not “inhibit the transmission of a vital Jewish past.” But what sages handed on 31 32 33

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Yerushalmi, p. 24. Yerushalmi, p. 25-26. Yerushalmi, p. 25-26.

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was a paradigm that selected what it wished and ignored most of the “Jewish past” altogether, including the sages’ own past. The Rabbinic sages’ paradigmatic mode of thought passed the bounds or selectivity in historical narrative. Its episodic character denied the very continuity that forms the premise of all narrative. The “Judaism” of the Rabbinic sages acknowledged no connection to the kind of writing Yerushalmi has in mind as “history.” It is not historical in orientation. In its rejection of the premises of historical thinking— the difference between present and past, the coherence of events in narrative—that mode of thought is nothing short of anti-historical in fundamental character. This is what I mean by Yerushalmi’s not explaining but merely explaining away data he himself has identified. Sages handed on no record of their own part of this supposedly “vital Jewish past.” They left no history of their own day. Their tangential allusions to events permit us to understand nothing of the consequential history of their time. A simple comparison of Josephus’s writings to any Rabbinic document tells the story; if the one is history, the other is not. If the one transmitted a “vital Jewish past” to coming generations, the other did not do so. If the Judaism of the one exhibits tight links to history and evinces a fundamentally historical orientation, the other simply did not. So Yerushalmi’s allegation here not only ignores his own correct understanding of the main traits of Rabbinic writing, he also contradicts his own findings. For Yerushalmi knows full well that sages did not add a chapter to the Jewish past, one that recorded what happened in their own day. Even though Rabbinic literature utilizes materials that appear, nearly verbatim, in Josephus’s histories and have been shown to recapitulate and depend upon Josephus’s formulations, being incomprehensible without point-by-point review in Josephus’s counterpart formulation,34 sages did not preserve Josephus’s writings or any other historical documents; they did not make chronicles; they did not preserve records of the past. Indeed, out of sages’ records, we could not write a history of the Jews in late antiquity. Take for example one enormous event: Julian’s edict permitting 34 I showed this in my The Rabbinic Traditions about the Pharisees before 70. Leiden, 1971: Brill. III. The Rabbinic Traditions about the Pharisees before 70. Conclusions, which Yerushalmi does not seem to have read.

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the Jews to rebuild the Temple, ca. 360. We know, as a matter of fact, the story of what happened. We also know that the failure to rebuild the Temple was broadly known and entered into the Christian polemic against Judaism, for a quarter of a century later, John Chrysostom (among many) pointed to the fiasco as evidence that the Temple would never be rebuilt, the Jews would never regain their self-government in Jerusalem. But a thorough examination of Rabbinic literature of the fifth through seventh centuries, encompassing both Talmuds and many of the largest and most powerful midrash-compilations, yields no narrative of events, nothing more than the possibility of a veiled allusion, or inchoate response, to that amazing calamity. And that is only one example among many, contradicting Yerushalmi’s groundless claim that “these facts did not inhibit the transmission of a vital Jewish past.” Sages transmitted nothing of the kind, if in that “vital Jewish past” was supposed to be encompassed the chapter of their own life and times.35 The opposite is the case. Sages in fact left accounts of events of their own day—out of which no sustained historical narrative is to be constructed. They provided anecdotes of lives—but neither biography nor even the raw materials thereof. They set forth episodes— but no intelligible sequences, stories—but nothing approaching a continuous narrative. They persistently represented the present within the framework of the past, not only the past within the setting of the present, and that constitutes a far more gross offense against historical thinking than mere anachronism. Bringing the past into the present means denying the pastness of the past, and that, in turn, represents not the absence of history but the repudiation of its generative premise. What sages transmitted was an account of a “vital Jewish present,” one that in no way acknowledged the pastness of the past or the autonomy, either, of the present moment but insisted upon their fusion. Had sages wished to deliver the statement that they acknowledged as worthy of transmission to the future no “vital Jewish past” at all, what they did not address would have provided ample evidence of that fact. Most of the turning points in contemporary history, e.g., 35 But Yerushalmi’s exact meaning here is not to be deduced from the words that he has chosen; what a “lifeless Jewish past” would comprise he also does not tell us. The formulations overall shade over into a vacuous rhetoric, perhaps in response to the medium of the public lecture that he chose for his message.

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the war of Bar Kokhba, the rise of Christianity to the position of the state-religion of Rome, the world-historical significance of Sasanian Iran, counter-weight to Rome, and the meaning, for the Jews, of Iranian hegemony—none of these enormous and formative facts of life could have been reconstructed out of the Rabbinic writings. Out of the Rabbinic literature we should know nothing important at all about Rome and Iran beyond their occasional intrusions into Israelite affairs, and little enough about Israel beyond the framework of sages’ own circles and circumstances. What can Yerushalmi possibly imagine that “transmission of a vital Jewish past” to have comprised, in face of these simple and well-known facts? He chooses to ignore them, and he prefers to utilize rhetoric to cover over the evidence of what is in fact a gross misrepresentation of the facts. Out of those same documents we cannot even write a history of the Jews’ institutions, nor can we explain the archaeological records of the synagogues by appeal to what sages have to say about them. So of precisely what components did this “vital Jewish past” consist, that sages are alleged to have handed on as “link to history”? And what evidence, out of paradigmatic writings, permits us to claim that sages persisted in a “fundamentally historical orientation”? Since Yerushalmi is explicit about what he means by a historical orientation, we may answer very simply: by his criteria (as by mine), sages in no way exhibited a “fundamentally historical orientation.”36 Since, as I have shown, in his presentation of history in Rabbinic literature, Yerushalmi has indeed recognized the atemporal and ahistorical character of the writing, we cannot maintain that his judgments rest upon a rather infirm grasp of the documents. And yet his allegation that the Judaism set forth by the Rabbinic sages as having a “fundamentally historical orientation” proves massively erroneous. A final point is worth observing. Having begun a book that alleges Jews have “collective memory,” Yerushalmi’s account of the formative documents of Judaism—the Talmuds and Midrash-compilations—in the end simply omits reference to that supposed “collective memory,” which scarcely puts in an appearance, and focuses, as we have seen, on the monumental challenge to his point of 36 Much of the argument may be dismissed as fabricated and dubious, e.g., “Perhaps they already knew of history what they needed to know. Perhaps they were even wary of it.” The basis for Yerushalmi’s “perhaps” can be nothing more than whim: maybe, maybe not. No one need be detained by nonsense: allegation of possibilities beyond all reasonable tests of falsification or validation.

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departure. It is as though, in treating the definitive data, he forgot his own thesis. Why has he discussed the Midrash and Talmudic compilations without adducing evidence of that “collective memory” that his book is supposed to bring to light? That is, clearly, because he is baffled by the character of the evidence, and wishes to evade it with what is evidently meant as a witty, if off-hand allegation. VI. Transcending the Bounds of Time Then is it really true that “Judaism neither lost its link to history nor its fundamentally historical orientation”? The Judaism of which Yerushalmi speaks possessed no historical orientation, whether fundamental or superficial. The contrast between Chapters Three and Four and Six and Seven leaves no doubt at all about that fact. Then what has gone wrong, other than a massive and embarrassing failure of intellect? The first source of Yerushalmi’s gross misunderstanding of his own results is commonplace. Yerushalmi takes for granted as fully proved what is merely the very proposition of his book, when he alleges, without evidence or argument, that sages read Scripture as history. We have seen more than ample evidence that sages read Scripture in a manner that, by the criterion of Scripture’s own history, was not historical in any way whatsoever. The result of begging the question surfaces in the further whimsical statement, “Ironically, the very absence of historical writing among the rabbis may itself have been due in good measure to their total and unqualified absorption of the biblical interpretation of history.” I take Yerushalmi to intend to say that, since sages found ample history in Scripture, they did not write any of their own, meaning, did not respond in writing to the history of their own times. But in the pages of this book, we have seen that they did, but not in the manner of Scripture at all. The main point that Yerushalmi sets forth is his final judgment: “Judaism neither lost its link to history....” That is, in the context of his thesis, simply false. The second source of Yerushalmi’s misrepresentation of matters— which consequently calls into question his entire characterization of “Jewish memory”—is intellectual: he has not only begged the question, as we have now seen in detail, chapter and verse, he also has not understand his own data. Yerushalmi’s conclusion from the facts

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he has correctly (if rather perfunctorily) identified contradicts his statement of the facts. The absence of historical writing among the rabbis is because they did not write history; they wrote something else. But Yerushalmi has not grasped what it is that they did do. When he says that they had “absorbed” the biblical interpretation of history, he is right; they did absorb that history—they absorbed it into their system, and that was by means of their way of thinking. His language yields an illuminating contrast. Yerushalmi uses “absorption” in a passive sense (“be infused by”), I, in an active one (“take over”). The reason that for the Rabbinic sages the biblical record illuminated every further event is that the record defined a paradigm. Illumination was possible because, between the light and the event, no barrier marking off past from present intervened. The reason then that no new conception of history was required to accommodate Rome is that a paradigm of an ahistorical character served to explain Rome, and everything else. How, in this very same context, Yerushalmi can make sense of the paradigm that imposes upon Rome not the status of a symbol for an ever-returning (mythic) politics but rather a one-way pattern, with Israel coming beyond Rome, is scarcely obvious. Yerushalmi’s explanation of the data at hand shades over into an appeal to cyclicality; but there is nothing cyclical in sages’ conception of time, and, as we see, Yerushalmi has in no way understood that sages’ conception of time, both nature’s time and the Torah’s time. “Enough history” indeed!—the question presents itself, how have matters so come about that a serious scholar has given a silly answer to a perfectly valid question.37 If, after all, the Rabbinic sages did not write history because they “had enough” or “knew what they wished to know,” then why did other Judaisms of the same time and place write history or otherwise represent it, as apocalyptic Judaic writings surely did? And how come that other heir to the same Scriptures, Christianity (in some of its many systems or forms) did preserve history, including Josephus’s for instance, did write biography, did continue the same Scriptural tradition of history writing, did produce the climactic figures of not only Eusebius but also Augustine? 37 We need not speculate on why for such shoddy thinking the book got a prize, as it did. The contemporary politics of scholarship proves too ephemeral to require attention.

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An explanation of why one set of heirs had enough history should tell us why the other set of heirs kept writing it, and Yerushalmi never considers that question. But the character of the evidence and the use put to it by the one party requires comparison and contrast in particular where a solid basis for such comparison exists: shared premises, shared documents—but different results. Ignoring others faced with the same Scripture, taking for granted a linear, cumulative, harmonious, single Judaism, even going so far as to introduce the curious concept of an ethnic memory (however packaged in appropriately non-racist language), Yerushalmi not only fails to answer the question, in the end, so persuaded he is by his own rhetoric, he does not even try to beg it. Then let us try to pursue Yerushalmi’s own ignored thesis: exactly what evidence do we find that sages have “enough history,” and what would constitute valid evidence for such a proposition, and what evidence do we have that sages in fact took the position Yerushalmi fabricates in their behalf? To ask these questions is to move far beyond the pages of Yerushalmi’s book. The conception of sages’ having had enough history (he means, “enough of history”) falls away. The notion of a collective Jewish propensity to memory requires, for testing, some sort of broad survey of public opinion. Synagogue art represents opinion of an other-than-literary and selective character; it is a different slice of Jewish opinion, perhaps representative of a much larger sample. We have documents from a handful of sages in Babylonia and the Land of Israel, while synagogues occur from the Balkans to Egypt, and from the Middle East to Tunisia and Italy. Attention to the use or neglect of history in synagogue art will surely have contributed evidence of consequence. Some of the art, as a matter of fact, makes reference to events and has been read as historical in its formulation, some does not. None of the material evidences of Jewish opinion throughout the ancient world receives sustained attention in Yerushalmi’s picture of the times portrayed, also, by the Rabbinic literature, and that suffices to justify the simple conclusion that he has not only not understood his data, he also has not done his homework. But if he had, he could not have mounted a sustained demonstration in behalf of his book’s proposition, to cite his language once more, “...memory of the past was always a central component of Jewish experience.”38 So far as the Rabbinic writings shaped Israel’s un38

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Yerushalmi, p. xiv.

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derstanding of experience, memory of the past was never a central component at all, but models of the social order, encompassing present and past and future, the hearth and home and also the politics of the nation in its life with the nations, served to organize and explain the world instead. Sages did not write history not because they had enough already, but because they did not think historically. And that meant, they recast the entire received Scriptures in the models of their own formulation and fabrication—in response to Scripture, to be sure. VII. Model-Explanation Having repeatedly spoken of patterns or models or paradigms, let me complete the exposition of how paradigms work instead of historical narrative with an effort to show the plausibility of this other mode of thought. Can I offer an accessible and quite contemporary example of that same mode of thought,39 so that the way in which the Rabbinic sages organized and explained experience will prove accessible and reasonable to the world of historical explanation that retains plausibility, even self-evidence, to us? Having begun with a metaphor borrowed from the mathematics of our own time to explain why I conceive as entirely rational 40 the modes of thought of the Rabbinic sages let me conclude by turning once more to mathematics for help in explaining the alternative to historical thinking represented in Rabbinic Judaism’s principal exegetical documents. Specifically, since I have used the word “model” as interchangeable with paradigm or pattern, I turn to a brief reference to the use of model in mathematics, since that is the source for my resort to the same word and that mode of description, analysis, and interpretation of data for which it stands. My purpose is to render reasonable a mode of thought that, until now, has been dismissed, as in Halpern’s words, as “fundamentally ahistorical...insubstantial.” But it would be difficult to find a more substantial, a more concrete and immediate mode of addressing events and explaining the concrete 39 Other than the metaphors drawn from dreaming, pointing toward the psychological basis of paradigmatic thinking, introduced only casually earlier in this chapter. 40 And therefore reject as merely uncomprehending the strictures of Baruch Halpern, cited at the head of Chapter I.

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here and now than the paradigmatic: ahistorical, yes, and from one angle of vision atemporal too, but far from insubstantial, and, in the context of natural time, profoundly time-oriented. The paradigm forms a medium for the description, analysis, and interpretation of selected data: existence, rightly construed. In this, paradigmatic thinking forms a counterpart to that of the mathematics that produces models. Specifically, mathematicians compose models that, in the language and symbols of mathematics, set forth a structure of knowledge that forms a “surrogate for reality.”41 These models state in quantitative terms the results of controlled observations of data, and among them, the one that generates plausible analytical generalizations will serve. Seeking not so much the regularities of the data as a medium for taking account of a variety of variables among a vast corpus of data, the framer of a model needs more than observations of fact, e.g., regularities or patterns. What is essential is a structure of thought, which mathematicians call “a philosophy:” As a philosophy it has a center from which everything flows, and the center is a definition,...42

What is needed for a model is not data alone, however voluminous, but some idea of what you are trying to compose: a model of the model: Unless you have some good idea of what you are looking for and how to find it, you can approach infinity with nothing more than a mishmash of little things you know about a lot of little things.43

So, in order to frame a model of explanation, we start with a model in the computer, and then test data to assess the facility of the model; we may test several models, with the same outcome: the formation of a philosophy in the mathematical sense. To understand the relevance of this brief glimpse at model-making in mathematics, let me cite the context in which the matter comes to me, the use of mathematics to give guidance on how to fight forest fires:

41 Norman Maclean, Young Men and Fire (Chicago, 1992: University of Chicago Press), p. 257. 42 Maclean, p. 261. 43 Maclean, p. 262.

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If mathematics can be used to predict the intensity and rate of spread of wildfires of the future (either hypothetical fires or fires actually burning but whose outcome is not yet known), why can’t the direction of the analysis be reversed in order to reconstruct the characteristics of important fires of the past? Or why can’t the direction be reversed from prophecy to history?44

Here the reversibility of events, their paradigmatic character, their capacity to yield a model unlimited by context or considerations of scale,—the principal traits of paradigmatic thinking turn out to enjoy a compelling rationality of their own. Reading those words, we can immediately grasp what service models or patterns or paradigms served for the Rabbinic sages, even though the framing of mathematical models began long after the birth of this writer, and even though the Rabbinic sages lived many centuries before the creation of the mathematics that would yield models in that sense in which, sages’ paradigms correspond in kind and function to model-explanation in contemporary mathematics. Before us is a mode of thought that is entirely rational and the very opposite of “insubstantial.” What is at stake in the appeal to “paradigm” or “model” to explain how sages answered the same questions that, elsewhere, historical thinking admirably addresses is now clear. To use the term in the precise sense just now stated, philosophy now took the place of history in the examination of the meaning of human events and experience. Forming a philosophical model to hold together such data as made a difference, sages found ready at hand the pattern of the destruction of the Temple, alongside explanations of the event and formulations of how the consequences were to be worked out. And, since the Temple represented the focus and realization of the abstractions of nature—from the movement of sun and moon to the concrete rhythm of the offerings celebrating these events, from the abundance of nature, the natural selection, by chance, and presentation of God’s share on the altar—nature’s time took over, history’s time fell away. In these two facts—the transformation of event once into pattern by recurrence, the identification of nature’s time as the way of keeping and marking time for the social order as well—paradigmatic thinking was born. But in stating my twin-conclusions, I have moved ahead 44

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Maclean, p. 267.

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of my story. Let me turn back and unpack the stages of argument, one by one. Precisely why did the Rabbinic sages recast the received historical mode of thinking in such a way as to reread Scripture as a source for not narrative but paradigm? And on what basis did they presume to treat as models what the revealed history of Scripture set forth as a sequence of linear, one-time events? It is time to explain the facts that characterize the documents as ahistorical, atemporal, and non-linear, but rather as paradigmatic: history in quest of philosophy. VIII. Explaining the Explanation: Why Here? Why Now? So What? Since the Rabbinic sages subverted the historical thinking they inherited and substituted for it an altogether different kind, recasting the essential of history, the definition of time, in anti-historical terms, we have to wonder how and why sages thought the way they did. Here are rigorous thinkers, whose minds were shaped in Scripture and whose souls were cast in its models, who utterly rejected what Scripture clearly said—and said to other Jews. Not only so, but the heirs of Scripture and masters of its every detail even substituted modes of thought and patterns of reading of a kind quite alien to the written part of revelation. Here in the Rabbinic documents we have surveyed45 we have sustained and systematic thought that shows an alternative to history as a mode of accounting for how things are; that treats as null the most fundamental datum of the historical thinking to which we are accustomed; and that served Judaism (and Christianity) for nearly the whole of its history, to the nineteenth century and (outside of reformist Judaisms) beyond. If I had to explain why paradigmatic rather than historical thinking predominated, I should have to revert to that very mode of explanation, the historical and contextual, that Scripture set forth but the Rabbinic sages abandoned. Precisely where and when, in the context of Israel’s life, did historical thinking emerge? With the answer

45 And in all of the others, the two Talmuds providing ample instantiation of the same theses as I have documented out of the Mishnah, Tosefta, and earlier, middle, and later Midrash-compilations.

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to that question in hand, we proceed to take up the issue that confronts us. First, we must ask, whence the source of the sense of separation of present from past? To answer that question (which is a historical one), we turn to the setting in which, in Israel, history first was set down in a sustained narrative about times past. The Official History of ancient Israel set forth by Genesis through Kings recognizes the pastness of the past and explains how the past has led to the present. That Official, Authorized, or Primary History, came to literary formulation (whatever the state of the facts contained therein) in the aftermath of the destruction of the first Temple of Jerusalem, in 586. Faced with decisive closure, looking backward from the perspective of a radically different present, the thinkers who put together the Primary History took up two complementary premises, the definitive pastness of the past, its utter closure and separation from the present, and, alongside, the power of the past to explain the present and of its lessons, properly learned, to shape the future. The historical thinking that produced the Authorized History took place at a very specific time and responded to an acute and urgent question by taking account of the facts of the moment. An age had come to a conclusion; the present drastically differed from the nowclosed past. History might begin, the sense of closure having taken hold. Since, all scholarship concurs, the Official or Primary History represented by Genesis through Kings came to closure at just this time, the allegation that historical thinking in Israel in particular46 reaches literary expression in the aftermath of the catastrophe of 586 rests upon solid foundations. Here is when people wrote historybooks; here is why they wrote them; here, therefore, is the circumstance in which, for Israel, historical thinking took place. In this context, we recall Childs’s formulation, “The question of 46 We are not concerned with the advent of historical thinking in other contexts or in defining historical thinking in Israel by comparison with, or contrast to, historical thinking in either the Near Eastern or Hellenic worlds. Historical thinking in Israel has defined itself in its own writings, and those who received those writings and so radically recast them have responded to the historical thinking they learned in Scripture with this other kind of thinking of their own. Hence I explain not the origins of history or historical thinking in general, or even what is special about Israel’s historical thinking, whether in the sixth century B.C. or in the fifth century C.E., but only the circumstances in which in this setting historical thinking took shape, by contrast with the circumstances in which, later on, another mode of thought took precedence.

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how to overcome the separation in time and space from the great events of the past became the paramount issue.” The advent of historical thinking and writing became possible precisely when great events from the past receded over the last horizon, and those responsible for the books at hand recognized a separation from those events and so produced a history of how things had reached their present pass. The Rabbinic sages, however, evinced no sense of separation that precipitates the quest for reconciliation, restoration, renewal of relationship between now and then; therefore they thought in a different manner about the same events. That is the starting point of matters, and it also brings us to a conclusion: why did they think in a different way, what, in particular, led them to this other mode of thought? The Rabbinic sages recognized no barrier between present and past. To them, the present and past formed a single unit of time, encompassing a single span of experience. Why was that so? It is because, to them, times past took place in the present too, on which account, the present not only encompassed the past (which historical thinking concedes) but took place in the same plane of time as the past (which, to repeat, historical thinking rejects). How come? It is because the Rabbinic sages experienced the past in the present. What happened that mattered had already happened; an event then was transformed into a series; events themselves defined paradigms, yielded rules. A simple formulation of this mode of thought is as follows:47 Mishnah-tractate Taanit 4:6 A. Five events took place for our fathers on the seventeenth of Tammuz, and five on the ninth of Ab. B. On the seventeenth of Tammuz (1) the tablets [of the Torah] were broken, (2) the daily whole offering was cancelled, (3) the city wall was breached, (4) Apostemos burned the Torah, and (5) he set up an idol in the Temple. C. On the ninth of Ab (1) the decree was made against our forefathers that they should not enter the land, (2) the first Temple and (3) the second [Temple] were destroyed, (4) Betar was taken, and 47

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We shall meet this passage again in Chapter IX.

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(5) the city was ploughed up [after the war of Hadrian]. D. When Ab comes, rejoicing diminishes.

We mark time by appeal to the phases of the moon; these then may be characterized by traits shared in common—and so the paradigm, from marking time, moves outward to the formation of rules concerning the regularity and order of events. In the formulation just now given, we see the movement from event to rule. What is important about events is not their singularity but their capacity to generate a pattern, a concrete rule for the here and now. That is the conclusion drawn from the very passage at hand: Mishnah-tractate Taanit 4:7 A. In the week in which the ninth of Ab occurs it is prohibited to get a haircut and to wash one’s clothes. B. But on Thursday of that week these are permitted, C. because of the honor owing to the Sabbath. D. On the eve of the ninth of Ab a person should not eat two prepared dishes, nor should one eat meat or drink wine. E. Rabban Simeon b. Gamaliel says, “He should make some change from ordinary procedures.” F. R. Judah declares people liable to turn over beds. G. But sages did not concur with him.

Events serve to define paradigms and therefore, also, to yield rules governing the here and now: what we do to recapitulate. This brings us back to our question: how an event is turned into a series, what has changed what happened once into something that happens. The answer lies in the correspondence (real or imagined) of the two generative events sages found definitive: the destruction of the Temple, the destruction of the Temple. The singular event that framed their consciousness recapitulated what had already occurred. For they confronted a Temple in ruins, and, in the defining event of the age just preceding the composition of most of the documents surveyed here, they found quite plausible the notion that the past was a formidable presence in the contemporary world. And having lived through events that they could plausibly discover in Scripture—Lamentations for one example, Jeremiah another—they also found entirely natural the notion that the past took place in, was recapitulated by, the present as well. When we speak of the presence of the past, therefore, we raise not generalities or possibilities but the concrete experience that gen-

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erations actively mourning the Temple endured. When we speak of the pastness of the present, we enter into the consciousness, the dream-world, of people who could open Scripture and find themselves right there, in its record. And that was in not only Lamentations, but also prophecy, and, especially, the books of the Torah, for reasons already instantiated in the parallel of Adam and Israel cited earlier.48 Here we deal with not the spiritualization of Scripture, but with the acutely contemporary and immediate realization of Scripture: once again, as then; Scripture in the present day, the present day in Scripture. That is why it was possible for sages to formulate out of Scripture a paradigm that imposed structure and order upon the world that they themselves encountered. Since, then, sages did not see themselves as removed in time and space from the generative events to which they referred the experience of the here and now, they also had no need to make the past contemporary. If as Childs insists, the Exodus was irreversible, once for all time event, then, as we see, the Rabbinic sages saw matters in a different way altogether. They neither relived nor transformed one-time historical events, for they found another way to overcome the barrier of chronological separation. Specifically, if history began when the gap between present and past shaped consciousness, then we naturally ask ourselves whether the point at which historical modes of thought concluded and a different mode of thought took over produced an opposite consciousness from the historical one: not cycle but paradigm. For, it seems to me clear, the premise that time and space separated the Rabbinic sages from the great events of the past simply did not win attention. The opposite premise defined matters: barriers of space and time in no way separated sages from great events, the great events of the past enduring for all time. How then are we to account for this remarkably different way of encounter, experience, and, consequently, explanation? The answer has already been adumbrated. Sages assembled in the documents of Rabbinic Judaism, from the Mishnah forward, all recognized the destruction of the Second Temple and all took for granted that that event was to be understood 48 The paradigm of course also would govern the way in which Scripture would be read and responded to, the way in which historical events would be identified and defined and responded to. That is a point that scarcely requires amplification in this context.

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by reference to the model of the destruction of the first.49 A variety of sources reviewed here maintain precisely that position and express it in so many words, e.g., the colloquy between Aqiba and sages about the comfort to be derived from the ephemeral glory of Rome and the temporary ruin of Jerusalem. It follows that for the Rabbinic sages, the destruction of the Temple in 70 did not mark a break with the past, such as it had for their predecessors some five hundred years earlier, but rather a recapitulation of the past. Paradigmatic thinking then began in that very event that precipitated thought about history to begin with, the end of the old order. But paradigm replaced history because what had taken place the first time as unique and unprecedented took place the second time in precisely the same pattern and therefore formed of an episode a series. Paradigmatic thinking replaced historical when history as an account of one-time, irreversible, unique events, arranged in linear sequence and pointing toward a teleological conclusion, lost all plausibility. If the first time around, history—with the past marked off from the present, events arranged in linear sequence, narrative of a sustained character serving as the medium of thought—provided the medium for making sense of matters, then the second time around, history lost all currency. The real choice facing the Rabbinic sages was not linear history as against paradigmatic thinking, but rather, paradigm as against cycle. For the conclusion to be drawn from the destruction of the Temple once again, once history, its premises disallowed, yielded no explanation, can have taken the form of a theory of the cyclical49 Then heirs to the same Scriptures who did not attach to the Temple any consequence at all, and did not assign to its destruction a central place in their consciousness, also would not look in Scripture for a paradigm to interpret that particular event. Their modes of paradigmatic thinking—and among Christianities the paradigmatic, not the historical, hermeneutic would reach full articulation— would continue to compete with historical ones, so that biographies—Gospels concerning Jesus, lives of the later sayings—and sustained histories, beginning with that of Eusebius, would come forth, right alongside writings of a paradigmatic kind. The question Yerushalmi does not raise has, in fact, a clear response: what mattered to one set of heirs did not make much difference to many among the other. One could, after all, draw the conclusion that the destruction of the second Temple represented the penalty for “the Jews” rejection of Jesus as Christ and not then abandon all manner of historical modes of thought. The origin of paradigmatic, as against historical, thinking in among Christianities requires an explanation in its own terms and context, but, I should claim, the explanation will conform to the model of explanation that is offered here.

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ity of events. As nature yielded its spring, summer, fall and winter, so the events of humanity or of Israel in particular can have been asked to conform to a cyclical pattern, in line, for example, with Qohelet’s view that what has been is what will be. But the Rabbinic sages obviously did not take that position at all. They rejected cyclicality in favor of a different ordering of events altogether. That is because they did not believe the Temple would be rebuilt and destroyed again, rebuilt and destroyed, rebuilt and destroyed, and so on into endless time. They stated the very opposite: the Temple would be rebuilt but never again destroyed. And that represented a view of the second destruction that rejected cyclicality altogether. Sages instead opted for patterns of history and against cycles because they retained that notion for the specific and concrete meaning of events that characterized Scripture’s history, even while rejecting the historicism of Scripture. What they maintained, as we have seen, is that a pattern governed, and the pattern was not a cyclical one. Here, Scripture itself imposed its structures, its order, its system—its paradigm. And the Official History left no room for the conception of cyclicality. If matters do not repeat themselves but do conform to a pattern, then the pattern itself must be identified. IX. Paradigm over Cycle Paradigmatic thinking formed the alternative to cyclical thinking because Scripture, its history subverted, nonetheless defined how matters were to be understood.50 Viewed whole, the Official History indeed defined the paradigm of Israel’s existence, formed out of the components of Eden and the Land, Adam and Israel, Sinai, then given movement through Israel’s responsibility to the covenant and Israel’s adherence to, or violation, of God’s will, fully exposed in the Torah that marked the covenant of Sinai. Scripture laid matters out, and the Rabbinic sages then drew conclusions from that lay-out that conformed to their experience. So the second destruction precipitated thinking about paradigms of Israel’s life. And these came to

50 Here—for the wrong reasons to be sure—Yerushalmi is right in saying, “In its ensemble, the biblical record seemed capable of illuminating every further historical contingency” The important language is “in its ensemble.”

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full exposure in the thinking behind the Midrash-compilations we have surveyed. The episode made into a series, sages’ paradigmatic thinking asked of Scripture different questions from the historical ones of 586 because the Rabbinic sages brought to Scripture different premises; drew from Scripture different conclusions. But in point of fact, not a single paradigm set forth by sages can be distinguished in any important detail from the counterpart in Scripture, not Eden and Adam in comparison to the land of Israel and Israel, and not the tale of Israel’s experience in the spinning out of the tension between the word of God and the will of Israel. The contrast between history’s time and nature’s time shows that history recognizes natural time and imposes its points of differentiation, upon it.51 History knows days, months, years, but proposes to differentiate among them, treating this day as different from that because on this day, such and such happened, but on that day, it did not. History’s time takes over nature’s time and imposes upon it a second set of indicators or points of differentiation. History therefore defines and measures time through two intersecting indicators, the meeting of [1] the natural and [2] the human. As is clear in the foregoing remarks, the context in which “time” is now defined is [1] the passage of days, weeks, months, and years, as marked by the movement of the sun and the stars in the heavens and [2] the recognition of noteworthy events that have taken place in specific occasions during the passage of those days and months and years. By contrast, paradigmatic time in the context of Judaism tells time through the events of nature, to which are correlated the events of Israel’s life: its social structure, its reckoning of time, its disposition of its natural resources, and its history too. That is, through the point at which nature is celebrated, the Temple, there Israel tells time. The upshot is the conception of astral Israel, which comes to its full climax in Pesiqta deRab Kahana, as I explain in Chapter XII. Predictably, therefore, the only history the Rabbinic sages deem worth narrating—and not in sustained narrative even then—is the story of the Temple cult through days and months and years, and the history of the Temple and its priesthood and administration through time and into eternity. We now fully understand that fact. It is because, to begin with, the very conception of paradigmatic 51

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This is spelled out in Chapter II.

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thinking as against the historical kind took shape in deep reflection on the meaning of events: what happened before has happened again—to the Temple. Ways of telling time before give way, history’s premises having lost plausibility here as much as elsewhere. Now Israel will tell time in nature’s way, shaping history solely in response to what happens in the cult and to the Temple. There is no other history, because, to begin with, there is no history. Nature’s time is the sole way of marking time, and Israel’s paradigm conforms to nature’s time and proves enduringly congruent with it. Israel conforming to nature yields not cyclical history but a reality formed by appeal to the paradigm of cult and Temple, just as God had defined that pattern and paradigm to Moses in the Torah. Genesis begins with nature’s time and systematically explains how the resources of nature came to Israel’s service to God. History’s time yielded an Israel against and despite history, nature’s time, as the Torah tells it, an Israel fully harmonious with nature. At stake in the paradigm then is creation: how come? So long as the Judaism set forth by the Rabbinic sages in the Mishnah, Tosefta, Talmuds, and Midrash-compilations governed, Israel formed itself in response to the eternities of nature’s time, bringing into conformity the ephemera of the here and now. That answers the questions, why here? why now? so what? When and where this Judaism lost its power of self-evidence, there history intervened, philosophy and theology, including normative law, gave way to narrative, and the lines of structure and order took a new turning. But that was only recently, and, it now appears, for only a brief spell.

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PART SIX —— FIVE SUPPLEMENTARY STUDIES —— A DOCUMENTARY ACCOUNT OF THE IDEA OF HISTORY IN RABBINIC JUDAISM

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CHAPTER IX

THE MISHNAH’S CONCEPTION OF HISTORY I. History in the Mishnah The Mishnah, the first document of the Rabbinic canon, revises the inherited conception of history and reshapes that conception to fit into its own system. When we consider the power of the biblical myth, the force of its eschatological and messianic interpretation of history, the effect of apocalypse, we must find astonishing the capacity of the Mishnah’s framers to think in a different way about the same things. As teleology constructed outside the eschatological mode of thought in the setting of the biblical world of ancient Israel, the Mishnah’s formulation lacks all precedent. Scripture had framed teleology in historical terms, therefore invoked the conception of eschatology as the medium for thought about the goal and purpose of matters. By contrast the sages in the Mishnah set forth a teleology entirely outside of the framework of historical-eschatological thinking. The framers of the Mishnah explicitly refer to very few events, treating those they do mention within a focus quite separate from what happened—the unfolding of the events themselves. They rarely create or use narratives. More probative still, historical events do not supply organizing categories or taxonomic classifications. We find no tractate devoted to the destruction of the Temple, no complete chapter detailing the events of Bar Kokhba, nor even a sustained celebration of the events of the sages’ own historical life. When things that have happened are mentioned, it is neither in order to narrate, nor to interpret and draw lessons from, the event. It is either to illustrate a point of law or to pose a problem of the law—always en passant, never in a pointed way. So when sages refer to what has happened, they do so casually

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part six: chapter ix

and in a manner that is tangential to the main thrust of discourse. Famous events, of enduring meaning, such as the return to Zion from Babylonia sixth century and onward to the time of Ezra and Nehemiah, gain entry into the Mishnah’s discourse only because of the genealogical divisions of Israelite society into castes among the immigrants (M. Qiddushin 4:1). Where the Mishnah provides little tales or narratives, moreover, they more often treat how things in the cult are done in general than what, in particular, happened on some one day. It is sufficient to refer casually to well-known incidents. Narrative, in the Mishnah’s limited rhetorical repertoire, is reserved for the narrow framework of what priests and others do on recurrent occasions and around the Temple. In all, that staple of history, stories about dramatic events and important deeds, in the minds of the Mishnah’s jurisprudents provide little nourishment. Events, if they appear at all, are treated as trivial. They may be well-known, but are consequential in some way other than is revealed in the detailed account of what actually happened. The Mishnah absorbs into its encompassing system all events, small and large. With what happens the sages accomplish what they do with everything else: a vast labor of classification, an immense construction of the order and rules governing the classification of everything on earth and in Heaven. The disruptive character of history—onetime events of ineluctable significance—scarcely impresses the philosophers. They find no difficulty in showing that what appears unique and beyond classification has in fact happened before and so falls within the range of trustworthy rules and known procedures. Once history’s components, onetime events, lose their distinctiveness, then history as a didactic intellectual construct, as a source of lessons and rules, also loses all pertinence. So lessons and rules come from sorting things out and classifying them, that is, from the procedures and modes of thought of the philosopher seeking regularity. To this labor of classification, the historian’s way of selecting data and arranging them into patterns of meaning to teach lessons, proves inconsequential. Onetime events are not what matters. The world is composed of nature and supernature. The repetitious laws that count are those to be discovered in Heaven and, in Heaven’s creation and counterpart, on earth. Keep those laws and things will work out. Break them, and the result is predictable: calamity of whatever sort will supervene in accordance with the rules. But just

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because it is predictable, a catastrophic happening testifies to what has always been and must always be, in accordance with reliable rules and within categories already discovered and well explained. That is why the lawyer-philosophers of the mid-second century produced the Mishnah—to explain how things are. Within the framework of well-classified rules, there could be messiahs, but no single Messiah. Theirs was a teleology without eschatology. The framers of the Mishnah recognized the past-ness of the past and hence, by definition, laid out a conception of the past that constitutes a historical doctrine. But it is a different conception from the familiar one. For modern history-writing, what is important is to describe what is unique and individual, not what is ongoing and unremarkable. History is the story of change, development, movement, not of what does not change, develop, or move. For the thinkers of the Mishnah, historical patterning emerges as today scientific knowledge does, through classification, the classification of the unique and individual, the organization of change and movement within unchanging categories. That is why the dichotomy between history and eternity, change and permanence, signals an unnuanced exegesis of what was, in fact, a subtle and reflective doctrine of history. That doctrine proves entirely consistent with the large perspectives of scribes, from the ones who made omen-series in ancient Babylonia to the ones who made the Mishnah. That is why the category of salvation does not serve, but the one of sanctification fits admirably. History as an account of a meaningful pattern of events, making sense of the past and giving guidance about the future, begins with the necessary conviction that events matter, one after another. The Mishnah’s framers, however, present us with no elaborate theory of events, a fact fully consonant with their systematic points of insistence and encompassing concern. Events do not matter, one by one. The philosopher-lawyers exhibited no theory of history either. Their conception of Israel’s destiny in no way called upon historical categories of either narrative or didactic explanation to describe and account for the future. The small importance attributed to the figure of the Messiah as an historical-eschatological figure, therefore, fully accords with the larger traits of the system as a whole. If what is important in Israel’s existence is sanctification, an ongoing process, and not salvation, understood as a onetime event at the end, then no one will find reason to narrate history.

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But Judaism was to emerge from late antiquity: richly eschatological, obsessed with the Messiah and his coming, engaged by the history of Israel and the nations. Judaism at the end did indeed provide an ample account and explanation of Israel’s history and destiny. The explanation emerged as the generative problematic of Judaism; the theory of “Israel” set forth here framed the social reality confronted by Jews wherever they lived. So, to seek the map that shows the road from the Mishnah, at the beginning, to the fully articulated Judaism of the end of the formative age in late antiquity, we have to look elsewhere. For as to the path from the Mishnah through the Tosefta—this is not the way people took. II. History and the Laws of History The framers of the Mishnah present us with a kind of historical thinking quite different from the one that they, along with all Israel, had inherited in Scripture. The legacy of prophecy, apocalypse, and mythic-history handed on by the writers of the books of the Hebrew Scriptures of ancient Israel, for instance, Jeremiah, Daniel, and Genesis, Exodus, and Deuteronomy, respectively, exhibits a single and quite familiar conception of history. First of all, history refers to events seen whole. Events bear meaning, form a pattern, and, therefore, deliver God’s message and judgment. The upshot is that every event, each one seen on its own, must be interpreted in its own terms, not as part of a pattern but as significant in itself. What happens is singular, therefore an event to be noted and points toward lessons to be drawn for where things are heading and why. If things do not happen at random, they also do not form indifferent patterns of merely secular, social facts. What happens is important because of the meaning contained therein. That meaning is to be discovered and revealed through the narrative of what has happened. So for all Judaisms until the Mishnah, the writing of history serves as a form or medium of prophecy. Just as prophecy takes up the interpretation of historical events, so historians retell these events in the frame of prophetic theses. And out of the two—historiography as a mode of mythic reflection, prophecy as a means of mythic construction—emerges a picture of future history, that is, what is going to happen. That picture, framed in terms of visions and supernatural symbols, in the end focuses, as much as do prophecy and history-writing, upon the here and now.

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The upshot is simple. History consists of a sequence of one-time events, each of them singular, all of them meaningful. These events move from a beginning somewhere to an end at a foreordained goal. History moves toward eschatology, the end of history. The teleology of Israel’s life finds its definition in eschatological fulfillment. Eschatology therefore constitutes not a choice within teleology, but the definition of teleology. That is to say, a theory of the goal and purpose of things (teleology) is shaped solely by appeal to the account of the end of times (eschatology). History done in this way then sits enthroned as the queen of theological science. Events do not conform to patterns. They form patterns. What happens matters because events bear meaning, constitute history. Now, as is clear, such a conception of mythic and apocalyptic history comes to realization in the writing of history in the prophetic pattern or in the apocalyptic framework, both of them mythic modes of organizing events. We have every right to expect such a view of matters to lead people to write books of a certain sort, rather than of some other. In the case of Judaism, obviously, we should expect people to write history books that teach lessons or apocalyptic books that through pregnant imagery predict the future and record the direction and end of time. And in antiquity that kind of writing proves commonplace among all kinds of groups and characteristic of all sorts of Judaisms but one. And that is the Judaism of the Mishnah. Here we have a Judaism that does not appeal to history as a sequence of one-time events, each of which bears meaning on its own. What the Mishnah has to say about history is quite different, and, consequently, the Mishnah does not conform in any way to the scriptural pattern of representing, and sorting out, events: history, myth, apocalypse. The first difference appears right at the surface. The Mishnah organizes its system in non-historical and socially unspecific terms. That is to say, there is no effort at setting into a historical context, e.g., a particular time, place, a circumstance defined by important events, any of the laws of the Mishnah. The Mishnah’s system is set forth out of all historical framework. That is a medium for the presentation of a system that has no precedent in prior systems of Judaism or in prior kinds of Judaic literature. The law codes of Exodus and Deuteronomy, for example, are set forth in a narrative framework, and the priestly code of Leviticus, for its part, appeals to God’s revelation to Moses and Aaron, at specific times and plac-

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es. In the Mishnah we have neither narrative nor setting for the representation of law. Instead of narrative which, as in Exodus, spills over into case-law, the Mishnah gives description of how things are done in general and universally, that is, descriptive laws. Instead of reflection on the meaning and end of history, it constructs a world in which history plays little part. Instead of narratives full of didactic meaning, the Mishnah’s authorship as we shall see in a moment provides lists of events so as to expose the traits that they share and thus the rules to which they conform. The definitive components of a historicaleschatological system of Judaism—description of events as one time happenings, analysis of the meaning and end of events, and interpretation of the end and future of singular events—none of these commonplace constituents of all other systems of Judaism (including nascent Christianity) of ancient times finds a place in the Mishnah’s system of Judaism. So the Mishnah finds no precedent in prior Israelite writings for its mode of dealing with things that happen. The Mishnah’s way of identifying happenings as consequential and describing them, its way of analyzing those events it chooses as bearing meaning, its interpretation of the future to which significant events point—all those in context were unique. In form the Mishnah represents its system outside of all historical framework. Yet to say that the Mishnah’s system is ahistorical could not be more wrong. The Mishnah presents a different kind of history. Its authorship revises the inherited conception of history and reshapes that conception to fit into its own system. When we consider the power of the biblical myth, the force of its eschatological and messianic interpretation of history, the effect of apocalypse, we must find astonishing the capacity of the Mishnah’s framers to think in a different way about the same things. A teleology constructed outside the eschatological mode of thought in the setting of the biblical world of ancient Israel proves amazing. By “history,” as Part One makes clear, I mean not merely events, but how events are so organized and narrated as to teach (for them, theological, for us, religions-historical or social) lessons, reveal patterns, tell us what we must do and why, what will happen to us tomorrow. In that context, some events contain richer lessons than others; the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem teaches more than a crop failure, being kidnapped into slavery more than stubbing one’s toe. Furthermore, lessons taught by events—“history” in the didac-

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tic sense—follow a progression from trivial and private to consequential and public. III. What Actually Happened that Matters The following provides a stunningly apt example of how the Mishnah’s philosophers regard what actually happened as being simply changes in the law. Mishnah-tractate Rosh Hashanah Chapter IV A. The festival day of the New Year which coincided with the Sabbath – B. in the Temple they would sound the shofar. C. But not in the provinces. D. When the Temple was destroyed, Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai made the rule that they should sound the shofar in every locale in which there was a court. E. Said R. Eleazar, “Rabban Yohanan b. Zakkai made that rule only in the case of Yabneh alone.” F. They said to him, “All the same are Yabneh and every locale in which there is a court. M. Rosh Hashanah 4:1 A. And in this regard also was Jerusalem ahead of Yabneh: B. in every town which is within sight and sound [of Jerusalem], and nearby and able to come up to Jerusalem, they sound the shofar. C. But as to Yabneh, they sound the shofar only in the court alone. M. Rosh Hashanah 4:2 A. In olden times the lulab was taken up in the Temple for seven days, and in the provinces, for one day. B. When the Temple was destroyed, Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai made the rule that in the provinces the lulab should be taken up for seven days, as a memorial to the Temple; C. and that the day [the sixteenth of Nisan] on which the omer is waved should be wholly prohibited [in regard to the eating of new produce] [M. Suk. 3:12]. M. Rosh Hashanah 4:3

First, let us examine the passage in its own terms, and then point to its consequence for the argument about history. The rules of sounding the shofar run to the special case of the New Year which coincides with the Sabbath, M. 4:1A-C. Clearly, we have some diverse materials here since M. 4:1A-D (+ E-F), are formally different from M.

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4:3. The point of difference, however, is clear, since M. 4:3A has no counterpart at M. 4:1A-C, and this is for redactional reasons. That is, to connect his materials with what has gone before, the redactor could not introduce the issue of M. 4:1A-C with the formulary, In olden times... When the Temple was destroyed.... Consequently, he has used the more common, mild apocopation to announce his topic, and then reverted to the expected formulary pattern, which, I think, characterized M. 4:1A-C as much as M. 4:3. M. 4:2A assumes a different antecedent construction from the one we have, a formulary which lists points in which Jerusalem is ahead of Yabneh, and, perhaps, points in which Yabneh is ahead of Jerusalem. But M. 4:2 clearly responds to M. 4:1E’s view. The meaning of the several entries is clear and requires no comment. But the point as to the use and meaning of history does. What we see is that the destruction of the Temple is recognized and treated as consequential—but only for the organization of rules. The event forms division between one time and some other, and, in consequence, we sort out rules pertaining to the temple and synagogue in one way rather than in another. That, sum and substance, is the conclusion drawn from the destruction of the Temple, which is to say, the use that is made of that catastrophe: an indicator in the organization of rules. What we see is the opposite of an interest in focusing upon the one-time meaning of events. Now it is the all-time significance of events in the making of rules. Events are now treated not as irregular and intrinsically consequential but as regular and merely instrumental. 4:4 A. At first they would receive testimony about the new moon all day long. B. One time the witnesses came late, and the Levites consequently were mixed up as to [what] song [they should sing]. C. They made the rule that they should receive testimony [about the new moon] only up to the afternoon offering. D. Then, if witnesses came after the afternoon-offering, they would treat that entire day as holy, and the next day as holy too. E. When the Temple was destroyed, Rabban Yohanan b. Zakkai made the rule that they should [once more] receive testimony about the new moon all day long. F. Said R. Joshua b. Qorha, “This rule too did Rabban Yohanan b. Zakkai make: G. “Even if the head of the court is located somewhere else, the witnesses should come only to the location of the council [to give

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testimony, and not to the location of the head of the court].” M. Rosh Hashanah 4:4

A-C form a complete unit. E is distinctly secondary. The long antecedent narrative, A-D is formally out of phase with M. 4:3. The appendix supplied at F-G is thematically appropriate. The passages before us leave no doubt about what sages selected as important about the destruction: it produced changes in synagogue rites. Although the sages surely mourned for the destruction and the loss of Israel’s principal mode of worship, and certainly recorded the event of the ninth of Ab in the year 70, they did so in their characteristic way: they listed the event as an item in a catalogue of things that are like one another and so demand the same response. But then the destruction no longer appears as a unique event. It is absorbed into a pattern of like disasters, all exhibiting similar taxonomic traits, events to which the people, now well-schooled in tragedy, knows full well the appropriate response. So it is in demonstrating regularity that sages reveal their way of coping. Then the uniqueness of the event fades away, its mundane character is emphasized. The power of taxonomy in imposing order upon chaos once more does its healing work. The consequence was reassurance that historical events obeyed discoverable laws. Israel’s ongoing life would override disruptive, one-time happenings. So catalogues of events, as much as lists of species of melons, served as brilliant apologetic by providing reassurance that nothing lies beyond the range and power of ordering system and stabilizing pattern. Here is yet another way in which the irregular was made regular and orderly, subject to rules: MISHNAH-TRACTATE TAANIT 4:6-7 4:6 A. Five events took place for our fathers on the seventeenth of Tammuz, and five on the ninth of Ab. B. On the seventeenth of Tammuz (1) the tablets [of the Torah] were broken, (2) the daily whole offering was cancelled, (3) the city wall was breached, (4) Apostemos burned the Torah, and (5) he set up an idol in the Temple. C. On the ninth of Ab (1) the decree was made against our forefathers that they should not enter the land, (2) the first Temple, (3) the second [Temple] were destroyed,

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part six: chapter ix (4) Betar was taken, (5) the city was ploughed up [after the war of Hadrian]. D. When Ab comes, rejoicing diminishes. M. Taanit 4:6 4:7 A. In the week in which the ninth of Ab occurs it is prohibited to get a haircut and to wash one’s clothes. B. But on Thursday of that week these are permitted, C. because of the honor due to the Sabbath. D. On the eve of the ninth of Ab a person should not eat two prepared dishes, nor should one eat meat or drink wine. E. Rabban Simeon b. Gamaliel says, “He should make some change from ordinary procedures.” F. R. Judah declares people obligated to turn over beds. G. But sages did not concur with him. M. Taanit 4:7

I include M. Taanit 4:7 to show the context in which the list of M. 4:6 stands. The stunning calamities catalogued at M. 4:6 form groups, reveal common traits, so are subject to classification. Then the laws of M. 4:7 provide regular rules for responding to, coping with, these untimely catastrophes, all (fortuitously) in a single classification. So the raw materials of history are absorbed into the ahistorical, supernatural system of the Mishnah. The process of absorption and regularization of the unique and one-time moment is illustrated in the passage at hand. IV. The History of the Temple Not Narrated but Classified A still more striking example of the reordering of one-time events into all-time patterns derives from the effort to put together in a coherent way the rather haphazard history of the cult inherited from Scripture, with sacrifices made here and there and finally in Jerusalem. Now, the entire history of the cult, so critical in the larger system created by the Mishnah’s lawyers, produced a patterned, therefore sensible and intelligible, picture. As is clear, everything that happened turned out to be susceptible of classification, once the taxonomic traits were specified. A monothetic exercise, sorting out periods and their characteristics, took the place of narrative, to explain things in its own way: first this, and then that, and, in consequence, the other. So in the

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neutral turf of holy ground, as much as in the trembling earth of the Temple mount, everything was absorbed into one thing, all classified in its proper place and by its appropriate rule. Indeed, so far as the lawyers proposed to write history at all, they wrote it into their picture of the long tale of the way in which Israel served God: the places in which the sacrificial labor was carried on, the people who did it, the places in which the priests ate the meat left over for their portion after God’s portion was set aside and burned up. This “historical” account forthwith generated precisely that problem of locating the regular and orderly, which the philosophers loved to investigate: the intersection of conflicting by equally correct taxonomic rules, as we see at M. Zebahim 14:9, below. The passage that follows therefore is history, so far as the Mishnah’s creators proposed to write history: the reduction of events to rules forming compositions of regularity, therefore meaning. Mishnah-tractate Zebahim Chapter Fourteen 14:4-8 I A. Before the tabernacle was set up, (1) the high places were permitted, and (2) [the sacrificial] service [was done by] the first born [Num. 3:12-12, 8:16-18]. B. When the tabernacle was set up, (1) the high places were prohibited, and (2) the [sacrificial] service [was done by] priests. C. Most Holy Things were eaten within the veils, Lesser Holy Things [were eaten] throughout the camp of Israel. M. Zebahim 14:4 II

A. B. C. Things,

They came to Gilgal. The high places were prohibited. Most Holy Things were eaten within the veils, Lesser Holy anywhere. M. Zebahim 14:5

III A. They came to Shiloh. B. The high places were prohibited. C. (1) There was no roof-beam there, but below was a house of stone, and hangings above it, and (2) it was ‘the resting place’ [Deut. 12:9]. D. Most Holy Things were eaten within the veils, Lesser Holy Things and second-tithe [were eaten] in any place within sight [of Shiloh]. M. Zebahim 14:6 IV A. B.

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They came to Nob and Gibeon. The high places were permitted.

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part six: chapter ix C. Most Holy Things were eaten within the veils, Lesser Holy Things, in all the towns of Israel. M. Zebahim 14:7 V A. They came to Jerusalem. B. The high places were prohibited. C. And they never again were permitted. D. And it was ‘the inheritance’ [Deut. 12:9]. E. Most Holy Things were eaten within the veils, Lesser Holy Things and second-tithe within the wall. M. Zebahim 4:8

Let us rapidly review the formal traits of this lovely composition, because those traits justify my insistence that we deal with a patterning of events. This set of five formally balanced items bears remarkably few glosses. The form is best revealed at M. 14:5, 7. M. 14:6C is the only significant gloss. M. 14:4 sets up a fine introduction, integral to the whole despite its interpolated and extraneous information at A2, B2. M. 14:8C is essential; D is a gloss, parallel to M. 14:6C2. The unitary construction is self-explanatory. At some points it was permitted to sacrifice on high places, at others, it was not, a neat way of harmonizing Scripture’s numerous contradictions on the subject. M. 14:4B depends upon Lev. 17:5. M. 14:5 refers to Joshua 4:19ff.; M. 14:6, to Joshua 18:1. The ‘resting place’ of Deut. 12:9 is identified with Shiloh. At this point the obligation to separate second tithe is incurred, which accounts for the conclusion of M. 14:4D. M. 14:7 refers to I Samuel 21:2, 7, after the destruction of Shiloh, and to I Kings 3:4. M. 14:8 then identifies the ‘inheritance’ of Deut. 12:9 with Jerusalem. The ‘veils’ are familiar at M. 5:3, 5, and the walls of Jerusalem, M. 5:6-8. 14:9 A. All the Holy Things which one sanctified at the time of the prohibition of the high places and offered at the time of the prohibition of high places outside – B. lo, these are subject to the transgression of a positive commandment and a negative commandment, and they are liable on their account to extirpation [for sacrificing outside the designated place, Lev. 17:89, M. 13:1A]. C. [If] one sanctified them at the time of the permission of high places and offered them up at the time of the prohibition of high places, D. lo, these are subject to transgression of a positive commandment and to a negative commandment, but they are not liable on their account to extirpation [since if the offerings had been sacrificed when they were sanctified, there should have been no violation]. E. [If] one sanctified them at the time of the prohibition of high places

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and offered them up at the time of the permission of high places, F. lo, these are subject to transgression of a positive commandment, but they are not subject to a negative commandment at all. M. Zebahim 14:9

Now we see how the Mishnah’s sages turn events into rules and show the orderly nature of history. The secondary expansion of M. 14:48 is in three parts, A-B, C and E-F, all in close verbal balance. The upshot is to cover all sorts of circumstances within a single well-composed pattern. This is easy to represent by simple symbols. We deal with two circumstances and two sets of actions: The circumstance of the prohibition of high places, (-), and that of their permission (+), and the act of sanctification of a sacrifice (A) and offering it up, (B), thus: A: –A –B = negative, positive, extirpation C: –A +B = negative, positive E: +A +B = positive only. We cannot have +A +B, since there is no reason to prohibit or to punish the one who sanctifies and offers up a sacrifice on a high place when it is permitted to do so (!). Accordingly, all possible cases are dealt with. In the first case, both sanctification and offering up take place at the time that prohibition of high places applies. There is transgression of a positive commandment and a negative commandment. The negative is Deut. 12:13, the positive, Deut. 12:14. Take heed that you do not offer your burnt-offerings at every place that you see; but at the place which the Lord will choose in one of your tribes, there you shall offer your burnt-offerings... The mixtures, C and E, then go over the same ground. If sanctification takes place when it is permitted to sanctify animals for use in high places, but the offering up takes place when it is not allowed to do so (e.g., the former for M. 14:4, the latter, M. 14:6), extirpation does not apply (Lev. 17:5-7). When we then reverse the order (e.g., M. 14:6, M. 14:7), there is no negative (Deut. 12:13), but the positive commandment (Deut. 12:14) has been transgressed. C surely conforms to Simeon’s theory, M. 14:2P, but sages, M. 14:2Q, need not differ. But matters do not stop here. The rule-making out of the raw materials of disorderly history continues unabated. 14:10 A. These are the Holy Things offered in the tabernacle [of Gilgal, Nob, and Gibeon]: B. Holy Things which were sanctified for the tabernacle.

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part six: chapter ix C. Offerings of the congregation are offered in the tabernacle. D. Offerings of the individual [are offered] on a high place. E. Offerings of the individual which were sanctified for the tabernacle are to be offered in the tabernacle. F. And if one offered them up on a high place, he is free. G. What is the difference between the high place of an individual and the high place of the community? H. (1) Laying on of hands, and (2) slaughtering at the north [of the altar], and (3) placing [of the blood] round about [the altar], and (4) waving, and (5) bring near. I. R. Judah says, “there is no meal-offering on a high place [but there is in the tabernacle]” – J. and (1) the priestly service, and (2) the wearing of garments of ministry, and (3) the use of utensils of ministry, and (4) the sweetsmelling savor and (5) the dividing line for the [tossing of various kinds of] blood, and (6) the rule concerning the washing of hands and feet. K. But the matters of time, and remnant, and uncleanness are applicable both here and there [by contrast to M. 14:3F-I]. M. Zebahim 14:10

When M. 14:4-8 refer to a high place which was permitted, and refer also to the presence of veils, it is assumed that there were both a tabernacle (hence the veils) and also high places. This must mean Gilgal, M. 14:5 and Nob and Gibeon, M. 14:7. Now the issue is, if there are both a tabernacle and a high place, which sorts of offerings belong to which kind of altar? It follows that the pericope treats the situations specified at M. 14:5, 7, a secondary expansion. A is answered by B. C-F go on to work out their own interests, and cannot be constructed to answer A, because they specify are offered in the tabernacle as a complete apodosis, which A does not require and B clearly does not want. B tells us that even though it is permitted to offer a sacrifice on a high place, a sacrifice which is set aside for the tabernacle (obviously) is to be offered there. Then C-F work the matter out. C and D are clear as stated. Holy Things which are sanctified for the tabernacle are offerings of the congregation (C). It is taken for granted that they are meant for the tabernacle, even when not so designated as specified. Individuals’ sacrifices are assumed to be for high places unless specified otherwise (D). Obviously, if they are sanctified for the tabernacle, E, they are sacrificed there. But there is no reason to inflict liability if they are offered on a high place, F. The whole is carefully worked out, leaving no unanswered questions. G then asks what difference there is between the high place which

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serves an individual, and “the high place”—the tabernacle—which serves the congregation, that is, the ones at Gilgal, Nob, and Gibeon. H specifies five items, J, six more, and Judah brings the list up to twelve. K completes the matter. Time refers to the improper intention to the flesh or burn the sacrificial parts after the appropriate time, thus refuse. The word-choice is unexpected. The inclusion of M. Zeb. 14:9, structurally matching M. Taanit 4:7, shows us the goal of the historical composition. It is to set forth rules that intersect and produce confusion, so that we may sort out confusion and make sense of all the data. The upshot may now be stated briefly: the authorship at hand had the option of narrative, but chose the way of philosophy: generalization through classification, comparison and contrast. The Mishnah absorbs into its encompassing system all events, small and large. With what happens the sages accomplish what they do with 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—onetime events of ineluctable significance—scarcely impresses the philosophers. They find no difficulty in showing that what appears unique and beyond classification has in fact happened before and so falls within the range of trustworthy rules and known procedures. Once history’s components, one-time events, lose their distinctiveness, then history as a didactic intellectual construct, as a source of lessons and rules, also loses all pertinence. So lessons and rules come from sorting things out and classifying them, that is, from the procedures and modes of thought of the philosopher seeking regularity. To this labor of taxonomy, the historian’s way of selecting data and arranging them into patterns of meaning to teach lessons, proves inconsequential. One-time events are not what matters. The world is composed of nature and supernature. The repetitious laws that count are those to be discovered in Heaven and, in Heaven’s creation and counterpart, on earth. Keep those laws and things will work out. Break them, and the result is predictable: calamity of whatever sort will supervene in accordance with the rules. But just because it is predictable, a catastrophic happening testifies to what has always been and must always be, in accordance with reliable rules and within categories already discovered and well explained. That is why the lawyer-philosophers of the mid-second century produced the Mishnah—to explain how things are. Within the frame-

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work of well-classified rules, there could be messiahs, but no single Messiah. V. Not the Unique but the Exemplary Up to now I have contrasted “history” with “philosophy,” that is, disorderly and unique events as against rules governing all events and emerging inductively from them. I therefore have framed matters in such a way that the Mishnah’s system appears to have been ahistorical and anti-historical. Yet in fact the framers of the Mishnah recognized the past-ness of the past and hence, by definition, laid out a conception of the past that constitutes a historical doctrine. Theirs was not an anti-historical conception of reality but a deeply historical one, even though it is a different conception of the meaning of history from the familiar one. It was, in a single word, social scientific, not historical in the traditional sense of history-writing. Let me explain this difference, since it is fundamental to understanding the Mishnah’s system as essentially philosophical and, in our terms, scientific. To express the difference, I point out that, for modern historywriting, what is important is to describe what is unique and individual, not what is on-going and unremarkable. History is the story of change, development, movement, not of what does not change, develop, or move. For the thinkers of the Mishnah, historical patterning emerges as today scientific knowledge does, through taxonomy, the classification of the unique and individual, the organization of change and movement within unchanging categories. That is why the dichotomy between history and eternity, change and permanence, signals an unnuanced exegesis of what was, in fact, a subtle and reflective doctrine of history. That doctrine proves entirely consistent with the large perspectives of scribes, from the ones who made omen-series in ancient Babylonia to the ones who made the Mishnah. How, then, in the Mishnah does history come to full conceptual expression? History as an account of a meaningful pattern of events, making sense of the past and giving guidance about the future, begins with the necessary conviction that events matter because they form series, one after another. And when we put a series together, we have a rule, just as when we put cases together, we can demon-

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strate the rule that governs them all. The Mishnah’s authorship therefore treats historical events just as they sort out anything else of interest to them: correct composition of contracts, appropriate disposition of property, proper conduct on a holy day, all things imputed through specific events, formed so that we can derive out of the concrete the abstract and encompassing rule, just as I pointed out in Chapter I. What we see, therefore, is the congruence of language and thought, detail and main point, subject-matter and sheltering system. That is why we may not find surprising the Mishnah’s framers’ reluctance to present us with an elaborate theory of events, a fact fully consonant with their systematic points of insistence and encompassing concern. Events do not matter, one by one. The philosopher-lawyers exhibited no theory of history either. Their conception of Israel’s destiny in no way called upon historical categories of either narrative or didactic explanation to describe and account for the future. The small importance attributed to the figure of the Messiah as an historical-eschatological figure, therefore, fully accords with the larger traits of the system as a whole. Let me speak with emphasis: If what is important in Israel’s existence is sanctification, an ongoing process, and not salvation, understood as a one-time event at the end, then no one will find reason to narrate history. By this point the reader must wonder where, if at all, the Mishnah’s system attends to the events of the preceding century, which, after all, changed for all time the conditions of Israel’s existence. If my thesis about the meaning and uses of history in the Mishnah’s Judaism is valid, then we should see a head-on confrontation with the great events of the age. And so we do, but we must be prepared for the identification of what matters. To the framers of the Mishnah, a great sage is an event, as much as a battle is noteworthy, and the destruction of the temple finds its counterpart in the death of a sage. In both instances, we shall see a pattern, and it is the same pattern. With the decline in the holiness of the Temple and the cult, changes took place, leading to disaster. With the death of the great sages (most of them second century figures, as a matter of fact), changes took place, leading to social disaster. That is the message conveyed by the details of Mishnah-tractate Sotah Chapter IX, to which we now turn.

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part six: chapter ix VI. The Messiah in the Mishnah

The concluding chapter of Mishnah-tractate Sotah, M. 9:9-15, reflects on the decline of the times in general (M. 9:9-12), the catastrophes which followed the destruction of the Temple (M. 9:12-14), and, finally, a very long potpourri of sayings on the equivalent catastrophes attendant upon the death of sages, principally of the second century (M. 9:15). Then comes the one point at which the Mishnah concerns itself with the coming of a Messiah in the historical framework. Mishnah-tractate Sotah 9:15 A. When R. Meir died, makers of parables came to an end. B. When Ben Azzai died, diligent students came to an end. C. When Ben Zoma died, exegetes came to an end. D. When R. Joshua died, goodness went away from the world. E. When Rabban Simeon b. Gamaliel died, the locust came, and troubles multiplied. F. When Eleazar b. Azariah died, wealth went away from the sages. G. When R. Aqiba died, the glory of the Torah came to an end. H. When R. Hanina b. Dosa died, wonder-workers came to an end. I. When R. Yosé Qatnuta died, pietists went away. J. (And why was he called Qatnuta? Because he was the least of the pietists.) K. When Rabban Yohanan b. Zakkai died, the splendor of wisdom came to an end. L. When Rabban Gamaliel the Elder died, the glory of the Torah came to an end, and cleanness and separateness perished. M. When R. Ishmael b. Phabi died, the splendor of the priesthood came to an end. N. When Rabbi died, modesty and fear of sin came to an end. O. R. Pinhas b. Yair says, “When the Temple was destroyed, associates became ashamed and so did free men, and they covered their heads. P. “And wonder-workers became feeble. And violent men and big takers grew strong. Q. “And none expounds and none seeks [learning] and none asks. I R. “Upon whom shall we depend? Upon our Father in heaven.” S. R. Eliezer the Great says, “From day on which the Temple was destroyed, sages began to be like scribes, and scribes like ministers, and ministers like ordinary folk.

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T. “And the ordinary folk have become feeble. U. “And none seeks. II V. “Upon whom shall we depend? Upon our Father in heaven.” W. With the footprints of the Messiah: presumption increases, and dearth increases. X. The Vine gives its fruit and wine at great cost. Y. And the government turns to heresy. Z. And there is no reproof. AA. The gathering place will be for prostitution. BB. And Galilee will be laid waste. CC. And the Gablan will be made desolate. DD. And the men of the frontier will go about from town to town, and none will take pity on them. EE. And the wisdom of scribes will putrefy. FF. And those who fear sin will be rejected. GG. And the truth will be locked away. HH. Children will shame elders, and elders will stand up before children. II. “For the son dishonors the father and the daughter rises up against her mother, the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; a man’s enemies are the men of his own house” (Mic. 7:6). JJ. The face of the generation in the face of a dog. KK. A son is not ashamed before his father. III LL. Upon whom shall we depend? Upon our Father in heaven. MM. R. Pinhas b. Yair says, “Heedfulness leads to cleanliness, cleanliness leads to cleanness, cleanness leads to abstinence, abstinence leads to holiness, holiness leads to modesty, modesty leads to the fear of sin, the fear of sin leads to piety, piety leads to the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit leads to the resurrection of the dead, and the resurrection of the dead comes through Elijah, blessed be his memory, Amen.” M. Sotah 9:15

The theology of the Mishnah encompasses history and its meaning, but, we now realize, history and the interpretation of history do not occupy a central position on the stage of Israel’s life portrayed by the Mishnah. The critical categories derive from the modalities of holiness. What can become holy or what is holy? These tell us what will attract the close scrutiny of our authorship and precipitate sustained thought, expressed through very concrete and picayune cases. If I had to identify the two most important foci of holiness in the Mishnah, they would be, in the natural world, the land, but only The Holy Land, the Land of Israel, and, in the social world, the people, but only The People of Israel. And to these, the Messiah forms little more than a footnote, hardly integral to the system.

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CHAPTER X

THE YERUSHALMI’S CONCEPTION OF HISTORY I. THE CONTEXT Rabbinic Judaism reached its full statement in the first six centuries of the Common Era, an age in which the people, Israel, confronted three enormous historical crises. The first took place in 70 C.E., when the Temple was destroyed by the Romans, and the political foundations of Israel’s life changed. That called into question the permanence of the restoration in the aftermath of 586-450. The second was marked by the defeat of Bar Kokhba, who led a war aimed at regaining Jerusalem and rebuilding the Temple, in 132-135. As a result of the failure of the second war against Rome, the established paradigm, destruction, repentance, restoration, that Scripture set forth, lost purchase. The third crisis imposed the requirement to rethink the paradigm altogether. It was the one that confronted Israel in the fourth century, when Christianity, reading the same Scriptures and speaking in many of the same categories, became the official religion of the Roman Empire and claimed that its political triumph validated its reading of Scripture and invalidated that of Judaism. These cataclysmic events required sages to explain history and define the future for which Israel could and should wait in patience and hope. By “history” is meant how happenings identified as consequential, that is to say, as events, are so organized and narrated as to teach lessons. They are made to reveal patterns, tell what people must do and why, point to what will happen tomorrow. The Pentateuchal and Prophetic writings of Scripture lay heavy stress on history in the sense just now given, as Chapters One and Two of

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this book have shown. By contrast, as we saw in Chapter IX, the framers of the Mishnah presented a kind of historical thinking quite different from the one they, along with all Israel, had inherited in Scripture. The legacy of prophecy, apocalypse, and mythic-history handed on by the writers of the books of the Hebrew Scriptures exhibits a single and quite familiar conception of history seen whole. Events bear meaning, God’s message and judgment. What happens is singular, therefore, an event to be noted, and points toward lessons to be drawn for where things are heading and why. If things do not happen at random, they also do not form random instances of merely secular, social facts. What happens is important because of the meaning contained therein. That meaning is to be discovered and revealed through finding a pattern in the narrative of what has happened. So for all forms of Judaism until the Mishnah, the writing of history serves as a form of prophecy. Just as prophecy takes up the interpretation of historical events, so historians retell these events in the frame of prophetic theses. And out of the two—historiography as a mode of mythic reflection, prophecy as a means of mythic construction—emerges a picture of future history, that is, what is going to happen. That picture, framed in terms of visions and supernatural symbols, in the end focuses, as much as do prophecy and history-writing, upon the here and now. II. The Conception of History in the Talmud of the Land of Israel The Mishnah’s subordination of historical events contradicts the emphasis of a thousand years of Israelite thought. The biblical histories, the ancient prophets, the apocalyptic visionaries—all had testified that what happened mattered. Events carried the message of the living God. That is, events constituted history, pointed toward, and so explained, Israel’s destiny. An essentially ahistorical system of timeless sanctification, worked out through construction of an eternal rhythm centered on the movement of the moon and stars and seasons, represented a choice taken by few outside of the priesthood. Furthermore, the pretense that what happens matters less than what is testified against palpable and remembered reality. For Israel had suffered enormous loss of life. Its political situation had taken a turn for the worse and gave little grounds for hope. The Talmud of the Land of Israel takes these events seriously and

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treats them as unique and remarkable. The memories of loss and defeat proved real. The hopes evoked by the Mishnah’s promise of sanctification of the world in static perfection did not. We should not be surprised to find in the Yerushalmi materials that fall entirely outside the framework of historical doctrine established within the Mishnah. These are, first, an interest in the periodization of history, and second, a willingness to include events of far greater diversity than those in the Mishnah. So the Yerushalmi contains an expanded view of the range of human life encompassed to begin with by the conception of history. Let us take the second point first. So far as things happen that demand attention and so constitute “events,” within the Mishnah these fall into two classifications: (1) biblical history, and (2) events involving the Temple. In the Talmud at hand, by contrast, in addition to Temple-events, we find also two other sorts of Geschichten: Torah-events, that is, important stories about the legal and supernatural doings of rabbis, and also political events. These events, moreover, involved people not considered in the Mishnah: gentiles as much as Jews, Rome as much as Israel. The Mishnah’s history, such as it is, knows only Israel and its interior affairs. The Talmud greatly expands the range of historical interest when it develops a theory of Rome’s relationship to Israel and, of necessity also, Israel’s relationship to Rome. Only by taking account of the world at large can the Talmud’s theory of history yield a philosophy of history worthy of the name, that is, an account of who Israel is, the meaning of what happens to Israel, and the destiny of Israel in this world and at the end of time. Israel by itself—as the priests had claimed—lived in eternity, beyond time. Israel and Rome together struggled in historical time: an age with a beginning, a middle, and an end. That is the importance of the expanded range of historical topics found in the present Talmud. When, in the other Talmud, created in Babylonia, we find a still broader interest, in Iran (Persia in the biblical and Rabbinic writings) as much as Rome, in the sequence of world empires past and present, we see how rich and encompassing a theory of historical events begins with a simple step toward a universal perspective. It was a step that the scribes and priests represented by the Mishnah were incapable of taking. As to the second, the concept of periodization—the raw material of historical thought—hardly presents surprises, since apocalyptic writers began their work by differentiating one age from another.

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When the Mishnah includes a statement of the “periods” into which time is divided, however, it speaks only of stages of the cult: Shiloh, Nob, Jerusalem, as we saw in Chapter IX. One age is differentiated from the next not by reference to world-historical changes but only by the location of sacrifice and the eating of the victim. The rules governing each locale impose taxa upon otherwise undifferentiated time. So periodization constitutes a function of the larger system of sanctification through sacrifice. The contrast between “this world” and “the world to come,” which is not a narrowly historical conception in the Mishnah, now finds a counterpart in the Talmud’s contrast between “this age” and the age in which the Temple stood. And that distinction is very much an act of this-worldly historical differentiation. It not only yields apocalyptic speculation. It also generates sober and worldly reflection on the movement of events and the meaning of history in the prophetic-apocalyptic tradition. Accordingly, the Talmud of the Land of Israel presents both the expected amplification of the established concepts familiar from the Mishnah, and also a separate set of ideas, perhaps rooted in prior times but still autonomous of what the Mishnah in particular had encompassed. From the viewpoint of the Mishnah the single most unlikely development is interest in the history of a nation other than Israel. For the Mishnah views the world beyond the sacred Land as unclean, tainted in particular with corpse-uncleanness. Outside the holy lies the realm of death. The faces of that world are painted in the monotonous white of the grave. Only within the range of the sacred do things happen. There, events may be classified and arranged, all in relationship to the Temple and its cult. But, standing majestically unchanged by the vicissitudes of time, the cult rises above history. Now the ancient Israelite interest in the history of the great empires of the world—perceived, to be sure, in relationship to the history of Israel—reemerges within the framework of the documents that succeeded the Mishnah. Naturally, in the Land of Israel only one empire mattered. This is Rome, which, in the Yerushalmi, is viewed solely as the counterpart to Israel. The world then consists of two nations: Israel, the weaker, Rome, the stronger. Jews enjoy a sense of vastly enhanced importance when they contemplate such a world, containing as it does only two peoples that matter, of whom one is Israel. But from our perspective, the utility for the morale of the defeated people holds no interest. What strikes us is the evidence

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of the formation of a second and separate system of historical interpretation, beyond that of the Mishnah. History and doctrine merge, with history made to yield doctrine. What is stunning is the perception of Rome as an autonomous actor, that is, as an entity with a point of origin, just as Israel has a point of origin, and a tradition of wisdom, just as Israel has such a tradition. These are the two points at which the large-scale conception of historical Israel finds a counterpart in the present literary composition. This sense of poised opposites, Israel and Rome, comes to expression in two ways. The first is that it is Israel’s own history that calls into being its counterpoint, the anti-history of Rome. Without Israel, there would be no Rome—a wonderful consolation to the defeated nation. For if Israel’s sin created Rome’s power, then Israel’s repentance will bring Rome’s downfall. Here is the way in which the Talmud presents the match: Yerushalmi-tractate Abodah Zarah 1:2 IV. E. Saturnalia means “hidden hatred” [sina’ah temunah]: The Lord hates, takes vengeance, and punishes F. This is in accord with the following verse: “Now Esau hated Jacob” (Gen. 27:41). G. Said R. Isaac b. R. Eleazar, “In Rome they call it Esau’s Saturnalia.” H. Kratesis: It is the day on which the Romans seized power. K. Said R. Levi, “It is the day on which Solomon intermarried with the family of Pharaoh Necho, King of Egypt. On that day Michael came down and thrust a reed into the sea, and pulled up muddy alluvium, and this was turned into a huge pot, and this was the great city of Rome. On the day on which Jeroboam set up the two golden calves, Remus and Romulus came and built two huts in the city of Rome. On the day on which Elijah disappeared, a king was appointed in Rome: “There was no king in Edom, a deputy was king” (1 Kings 22:47).

The important point is that Solomon’s sin provoked Heaven’s founding of Rome, thus history, lived by Israel, and provoking anti-history, lived by Rome. Quite naturally, the conception of history and anti-history will assign to the actors in the anti-history—the Romans—motives explicable in terms of history, that is, the history of Israel. The entire world and what happens in it enter into the framework of meaning established by Israel’s Torah. So what the Romans do, their historical actions, can be explained in terms of Israel’s conception of the world.

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III. The Yerushalmi’s New History The most important change is the shift in historical thinking adumbrated in the pages of the Yerushalmi, a shift from focus upon the Temple and its supernatural history to close attention to the people, Israel, and its natural, this-worldly history. Once Israel, holy Israel, had come to form the counterpart to the Temple and its supernatural life, that other history—Israel’s—would stand at the center of things. Accordingly, a new sort of memorable event came to the fore in the Talmud of the Land of Israel. It was the story of the suffering of Israel, the remembrance of that suffering, on the one side, and the effort to explain events of that tragic kind, on the other. So a composite history constructed out of the Yerushalmi’s units of discourse pertinent to consequential events would contain long chapters on what happened to Israel, the Jewish people, and not only, or mainly, what had earlier occurred in the Temple. This expansion in the range of historical interest and theme forms the counterpart to the emphasis, throughout the law, upon the enduring sanctity of Israel, the people, which paralleled the sanctity of the Temple in its time. What is striking in the Yerushalmi’s materials on Israel’s suffering is the sages’ interest in finding a motive for what the Romans had done. That motive derived specifically from the repertoire of explanations already available in Israelite thought. In adducing scriptural reasons for the Roman policy, sages extended to the world at large that same principle of intelligibility, in terms of Israel’s own Scripture and logic that, in the law itself, made everything sensible and reliable. So the labor of history-writing (or at least, telling stories about historical events) went together with the work of lawmaking. The whole formed a single exercise in explanation of things that had happened—that is, historical explanation. True, one enterprise involved historical events, the other legal constructions. But the outcome was one and the same. Clearly, for the authorship of the Talmud of the Land of Israel, as much as for the ancient prophets, history taught lessons, and in their view, Israel had best learn the lesson of its history. When it did so, it also would take command of its own destiny. So the stakes were very high. What lesson, precisely, did the sages represented by the document at hand propose Israel should learn? Stated first negatively, then positively, the framers of the Talmud of the Land of Israel were not telling the Jews to please God by doing command-

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ments in order that they should thereby gain control of their own destiny. On the contrary, the paradox of the Yerushalmi’s system lies in the fact that Israel frees itself from control by other nations only by humbly agreeing to accept God’s rule instead. The heavy weight of prophecy, apocalyptic, and biblical historiography, with their emphasis upon history as the indicator of Israel’s salvation, stood against the Mishnah’s quite separate thesis of what truly mattered. What, from their viewpoint, demanded description and analysis and required interpretation? It was the category of sanctification, for eternity. The true issue framed by history and apocalypse was how to move toward the foreordained end of salvation, how to act in time so as to reach salvation at the end of time. The Mishnah’s teleology beyond time, its capacity to posit a teleology without an eschatology, a theory of end things lacking all place for a historical Messiah—these take a position beyond the imagination of the entire antecedent sacred literature of Israel. Only one strand or stream, the priestly one, had ever taken so extreme a position on the centrality of sanctification, the peripherality of salvation. Wisdom had stood in between, with its own concerns, drawing attention both to what happened and to what endured. But to wisdom what finally mattered was not nature or supernature, but rather abiding relationships in historical time. This reversion by the authors of the Talmud to Scripture’s paramount motifs, with Israel’s history and destiny foremost among them, forms a complement to the Yerushalmi’s principal judgment upon the Mishnah itself. For an important exegetical initiative of the Yerushalmi was to provide, for statements of the Mishnah, proof texts deriving from Scripture. Whereas the framers of the Mishnah did not think their statements required support, the authors of the Talmud’s Mishnah-exegetical units of discourse took proof texts drawn from Scripture to be the prime necessity. Accordingly, at hand is yet another testimony to the effort, among third-and-fourth-century heirs of the Mishnah, to draw that document back within the orbit of Scripture, to “biblicize” what the Mishnah’s authors had sent forth as a freestanding and “non-biblical” Torah. The centerpiece of what we may call with little exaggeration “the rehistoricization of Judaism” accomplished by the framers of the Talmud of the Land of Israel and related writings is the reversion to Scripture. The Scriptures that, after all, also lay to hand, offered testimony to the centrality of history as a sequence of meaningful

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events. To the message and uses of history as a source of teleology for an Israelite system, biblical writings amply testified. Prophecy and apocalyptic had long coped quite well with defeat and dislocation. Yet, in the Mishnah, Israel’s deeds found no counterpart in Roman history, while, in the Talmud of the Land of Israel, they did. In the Mishnah, time is differentiated entirely in other than national-historical categories. For, as in Abot, “this world” is when one is alive, “the world to come” is when a person dies. True, we find also “this world” and “the time of the Messiah.” But detailed differentiation among the ages of “this world” or “this age” hardly generates problems in Mishnaic thought. Indeed, no such differentiation appears. Accordingly, the developments briefly outlined here constitute a significant shift in the course of intellectual events, to which the sources at hand—the Mishnah and Talmud of the Land of Israel—amply testify. In ca. 200 C.E. events posed a problem of classification and generalization. In ca. 400, events were singular and demanded interpretation because, in all their particularity, they bore messages just as, in prophetic thought, they had. In the reconsideration of the singularity of events and the systematic effort at interpreting them and the lessons to be drawn from them, the sages of the Talmud of the Land of Israel regained for their theological thought the powerful resources of history, the single most powerful arena for, and principal medium of, Judaic theology then as now. The ethos of Rabbinic Judaism comes to full expression not in the mere concession that history matters, but in specific lessons that are spelled out. Scripture forms a handbook for making sense of this morning’s headlines. Genesis Rabbah, which we shall meet in Chapter XI, is that handbook. IV. The Doctrine of the Messiah in the Talmud of the Land of Israel The Talmud of the Land of Israel set forth the Judaic doctrine of the Messiah. The issue was, when will the Messiah come to raise the dead, and what must Israel do to hasten that day? The answers to these questions would form a doctrine of history, specifically, how to position Israel in the pattern of history from the beginning in Eden to the end in the restoration of Eden. The Talmud of the Land of Israel took up the theme, established from Scripture’s time forward of the Messiah’s claim to save Israel.

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It set forth the doctrine that Israel will be saved through total submission, under the Messiah’s gentle rule, to God’s yoke and service. In the model of the Rabbinic sage, the Messiah will teach Israel the power of submission. God is not to be manipulated. Keeping the commandments as a mark of submission, loyalty, and humility before God defines the Rabbinic system of salvation. So Israel does not save itself. On its own Israel never controls its own destiny, either on earth or in heaven. The only choice is whether to cast one’s fate into the hands of cruel, deceitful men, or to trust in the living God of mercy and love. We now understand the stress on the centrality of hope. Hope signifies patient acceptance of God’s rule, and as an attitude of mind and heart, it is something that Israel can sustain on its own as well, the ideal action. We shall now see how this critical position that Israel’s task is humble acceptance of God’s rule is spelled out. It is, specifically, in the setting of teachings about the Messiah in the Talmud of the Land of Israel. Bar Kokhba is the key figure. He had led the second war against Rome, culminating in the defeat of 135. He is represented as the embodiment of arrogance. Since some had thought he was the Messiah, he serves as the figure of the false Messiah. Then he weighs in the balance against the sage. The false Messiah represents arrogance, the sage, humility. Bar Kokhba, above all, exemplified arrogance against God. He lost the war because of that arrogance. In particular, he ignored the authority of the Rabbinic sages, humble as they were. In the Rabbinic sages portrayal of Bar Kokhba we find two complementary themes. First, Bar Kokhba treats heaven with arrogance, asking God merely to keep out of the way. Second he treats an especially revered sage with a parallel arrogance. The sage had the power to preserve Israel. Bar Kokhba destroyed Israel’s one protection. The result was inevitable. Lamentations Rabbah LVIII:ii.5ff. 5. A. When R. Aqiba saw Bar Koziba, he said, “This is the royal messiah.” B. R. Yohanan b. Torta said to him, “Aqiba, grass will grow from your cheeks and he will still not have come.” 6. A. R. Yohanan interpreted the verse, “The voice is the voice of Jacob” (Gen. 27:22) in this way: “The voice is the voice of Caesar Hadrian, who killed eighty thousand myriads of people at Betar.” 7. A. Eighty thousand trumpeters besieged Betar. There Bar Koziba

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was encamped, with two hundred thousand men with an amputated finger. B. Sages sent word to him, saying, “How long are you going to produce blemished men in Israel?” C. He said to them, “And what shall I do to examine them [to see whether or not they are brave]?” D. They said to him, “Whoever cannot uproot a cedar of Lebanon do not enroll in your army.” E. He had two hundred thousand men of each sort [half with an amputated finger, half proved by uprooting a cedar]. 8. A. When they went out to battle, he would say, “Lord of all ages, don’t help us and don’t hinder us!” B. That is in line with this verse: “Have you not, O God, cast us off? And do not go forth, O God, with our hosts” (Ps. 60:12). 9. A. What did Bar Koziba do? B. He could catch a missile from the enemy’s catapult on one of his knees and throw it back, killing many of the enemy. C. That is why R. Aqiba said what he said [about Bar Koziba’s being the royal messiah]. 10. A. For three and a half years Hadrian besieged Betar. B. R. Eleazar the Modiite was sitting in sack cloth and ashes, praying, and saying, “Lord of all the ages, do not sit in judgment today, do not sit in judgment today.” C. Since [Hadrian] could not conquer the place, he considered going home. D. There was with him a Samaritan, who said to him, “My lord, as long as that old cock wallows in ashes, you will not conquer the city. E. “But be patient, and I shall do something so you can conquer it today.” F. He went into the gate of the city and found R. Eleazar standing in prayer. G. He pretended to whisper something into his ear, but the other paid no attention to him. H. People went and told Bar Koziba, “Your friend wants to betray the city.” I. He sent and summoned the Samaritan and said to him, “What did you say to him?” J. He said to him, “If I say, Caesar will kill me, and if not, you will kill me. Best that I kill myself and not betray state secrets.” K. Nonetheless, Bar Koziba reached the conclusion that he wanted to betray the city. L. When R. Eleazar had finished his prayer, he sent and summoned him, saying to him, “What did this one say to you?” M. He said to him, “I never saw that man.” N. He kicked him and killed him.

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part six: chapter x O. At that moment an echo proclaimed: “Woe to the worthless shepherd who leaves the flock, the sword shall be upon his arm and upon his right eye” (Zech. 11:17). P. Said the Holy One, blessed be He, “You have broken the right arm of Israel and blinded their right eye. Therefore your arm will wither and your eye grow dark.” Q. Forthwith Betar was conquered and Ben Koziba was killed. R. They went, carrying his head to Hadrian. He said, “Who killed this one?” S. They said, “One of the Goths killed him,” but he did not believe them. T. He said to them, “Go and bring me his body.” U. They went to bring his body and found a snake around the neck. V. He said, “If the God of this one had not killed him, who could have vanquished him?” W. That illustrates the following verse of Scripture: “If their Rock had not given them over....” (Dt. 32:30). 11. A. They killed the inhabitants of Betar until their horses waded in blood up to their nostrils, and blood rolled along in stones the size of forty-seah and flowed into the sea for a distance of four miles. B. And should you suppose that Betar was near the sea, it was four miles away. 12. A. Hadrian owned a vineyard eighteen miles square, from Tiberias to Sepphoris. B. They surrounded it with a fence made of the bones of those killed at Betar. 13. A. Nor was it permitted that they might be buried until a certain kind came and ordered it. B. R. Huna said, “On the day on which those killed at Betar were handed over for burial, they invoked the benediction, ‘...who is kind and deals kindly’ [in the Grace after meals]. C. “‘...who is kind:’ because the bodies had not putrefied. D. “‘...and who deals kindly:’ because they were handed over for burial.” 14. A. For fifty-two years Betar held out after the destruction of the house of the sanctuary. B. And why was it destroyed? C. Because they lit lamps on the occasion of the destruction of the house of the sanctuary.

The Messiah is transformed into a sage. He is no longer the Messiah embodied in the figure of the arrogant Bar Kokhba (in the Talmud’s representation of the figure). So the Messiah-theme comes to the fore when through advent to power Christianity makes its claim stick. But in the Rabbinic sages’ hands the Messiah-theme reinforced

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the teaching of the way of life through acts of holiness. That is because the climax comes in an explicit statement, cited in a moment, that the conduct required by the Torah will bring the coming Messiah. That explanation of the holy way of life focuses upon the end of time and the advent of the Messiah—both of which therefore depend upon the sanctification of Israel. So sanctification takes priority, salvation depends on it. So with their interest in explaining events and accounting for history, the sages invoked what their predecessors had at best found to be of peripheral consequence to their system. The following contains the most striking expression of this viewpoint. Yerushalmi Taanit 1:1 II:5 A. It has been taught by R. Simeon b. Yohai, “To every place to which the Israelites went into exile, the presence of God went with them into exile. B. “They were sent into exile to Egypt, and the presence of God went into exile with them. What is the scriptural basis for this claim? ‘[And there came a man of God to Eli, and said to him, Thus the Lord has said], I revealed myself to the house of your father when they were in Egypt subject to the house of Pharaoh’ (I Sam. 2:27). C. “They were sent into exile to Babylonia, and the presence of God went into exile with them. What is the scriptural basis for this claim? ‘[Thus says the Lord, your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel]: For your sake I will send to Babylon [and break down all the bars, and the shouting of the Chaldeans will be turned to lamentations]’ (Is. 43:14). D. “They were sent into exile into Media, and the presence of God went into exile with them. What is the scriptural basis for this claim? ‘And I will set my throne in Elam [and destroy their king and princes, says the Lord]’ (Jer. 49:38). And Elam means only Media, as it is said, ‘[And I saw in the vision; and when I saw], I was in Susa the capital, which is in the province of Elam; [and I saw in the vision, and I was at the river Ulai]’ (Dan. 8:2). E. “They went into exile to Greece, and the presence of God went into exile with them. What is the scriptural basis for this claim? ‘[For I have bent Judah as my bow; I have made Ephraim its arrow]. I will brandish your sons, O Zion, over your sons, O Greece, [and wield you like a warrior’s sword]’ (Zech. 9:13). F. “They went into exile to Rome, and the presence of God went into exile with them. What is the scriptural basis for this claim? ‘[The oracle concerning Dumah]. One is calling to me from Seir, “Watchman, what of the night? Watchman, what of the night?” Is. 21:11).’” G. The Israelites said to Isaiah, “O our Rabbi, Isaiah, What will come for us out of this night?”

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part six: chapter x H. He said to them, “Wait for me, until I can present the question.” I. Once he had asked the question, he came back to them. J. They said to him, “Watchman, what of the night? What did the Guardian of the ages say [a play on ‘of the night’ and ‘say’]?” K. He said to them, “The watchman says: ‘Morning comes; and also the night. [If you will inquire, inquire; come back again]’” (Is. 21:12). L. They said to him, “Also the night?” M. He said to them, “It is not what you are thinking. But there will be morning for the righteous, and night for the wicked, morning for Israel, and night for idolaters.” N. They said to him, “When?” O. He said to them, “Whenever you want, He too wants [it to be]—if you want it, he wants it.” P. They said to him, “What is standing in the way?” Q. He said to them, “Repentance: ‘come back again’” (Is. 21:12). R. R. Aha in the name of R. Tanhum b. R. Hiyya, “If Israel repents for one day, forthwith the son of David will come. S. “What is the scriptural basis? ‘O that today you would hearken to his voice!’” (Ps. 95:7). T. Said R Levi, “If Israel would keep a single Sabbath in the proper way, forthwith the son of David will come. U. “What is the scriptural basis for this view? ‘Moses said, Eat it today, for today is a Sabbath to the Lord; [today you will not find it in the field]’ (Ex. 16:25). V. “And it says, ‘[For thus said the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel], ‘In returning and rest you shall be saved; [in quietness and in trust shall be your strength.’ And you would not]’” (Is. 30:15). By means of returning and [Sabbath] rest you will be redeemed.

What is new is the explicit linkage between keeping the law of the Torah and the coming of the Messiah. We must not lose sight of the importance of this passage. What makes it important is its emphasis on repentance, on the one side, and the power of Israel to reform itself, on the other. The Messiah will come any day that Israel makes it possible. Let me underline the most important statement of this large conception: If all Israel will keep a single Sabbath in the proper (Rabbinic) way, the Messiah will come. If all Israel will repent for one day, the Messiah will come. “Whenever you want ...,” the Messiah will come. Now, two things are happening here. First, the system of religious observance, including study of Torah, is explicitly described as having salvific power. Second, the persistent hope for the coming of the

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Messiah is linked to the system of Rabbinic observance and belief as set forth in the Halakhah of the Mishnah and related expositions. In this way, the austere program of the Mishnah develops in a different direction. The Mishnah of 200 C.E. contains no trace of a promise that the Messiah will come if and when the system is fully realized. Here in a document that came to closure two hundred years later we find an explicitly Messianic statement that the purpose of the law is to attain Israel’s salvation: “If you want it, God wants it too.” The law of the Mishnah is now encapsulated within the frame of repentance: a change of heart brought about by keeping the covenant with God contained in the Torah. The one thing Israel commands is its own heart; the power it yet exercises is the power to repent. These suffice. The entire history of humanity will respond to Israel’s will, to what happens in Israel’s heart and soul. With the Temple in ruins, repentance can take place only within the heart and mind. That reminds us of what is attributed in a later document to Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai in response to the same fact: there are actions Israelites can carry out that serve to atone as sacrifices used to serve. The Fathers According to Rabbi Nathan IV:V.2 A. One time [after the destruction of the Temple in August, 70] Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai was going forth from Jerusalem, with R. Joshua following after him. He saw the house of the sanctuary lying in ruins. B. R. Joshua said, “Woe is us for this place that lies in ruins, the place in which the sins of Israel used to be atoned for.” C. He said to him, “My son, do not be distressed. We have another mode of atonement, which is like [atonement through sacrifice], and what is that? It is deeds of loving kindness. D. “For so it is said, ‘For I desire mercy and not sacrifice, and the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings’ (Hos. 6:6).

The Temple has its counterpart in the life of the holy people, the sacrifices in the conduct of that people toward one another. Israel may contribute to its own salvation, by the right attitude and the right deed. But Israel bears responsibility for its present condition. So what Israel does makes history. Israel makes its own history, therefore shapes its own destiny. This lesson, the Rabbinic sages maintained, derives from the very condition of Israel even then, its suffering and its despair. How so? History taught moral lessons.

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Israel’s own deeds defined the events of history. Rome’s role, like Assyria’s and Babylonia’s, depended upon Israel’s own sins. Israel had provoked divine wrath. Then the great empire punished Israel. It was God’s agent. Paradoxically, Israel kept Rome in charge. The Talmud of the Land of Israel’s system of history and Messiah presents a paradox. It lies in the fact that Israel can free itself of control by other nations only by humbly agreeing to accept God’s rule. The nations—Rome, in the present instance—rest on one side of the balance, while God rests on the other. Israel must then choose between them. There is no such thing for Israel as freedom from both God and the nations, total autonomy and independence. There is only a choice of masters, a ruler on earth or a ruler in heaven. In the Talmud’s theory of salvation, therefore, the framers provided Israel with an account of how to overcome the unsatisfactory circumstances of an unredeemed present, so as to accomplish the movement from here to the much-desired future. When the Talmud’s authorities present statements on the promise of the law for those who keep it, therefore, they provide glimpses of the goal of the system as a whole. These invoked the primacy of the rabbi and the legitimating power of the Torah, and in those two components of the system we find the principles of the Messianic doctrine. And these bring us back to the argument with Christ triumphant, as the Christians perceived him. Keeping the law in the right way is represented as not merely right or expedient. It is the way to bring the Messiah, the son of David. Levi states this, as we saw: “ If Israel would keep a single Sabbath in the proper way, forthwith the son of David would come.” Here, in a single saying, we find the entire Talmudic doctrine set forth concerning Israel’s salvation in the coming of the Messiah. What is most interesting in Talmud of the Land of Israel’s picture is that the hope for the Messiah’s coming is further joined to the moral condition of each individual Israelite. Hence the Messianic fulfillment was made to depend on the repentance of Israel. The coming of the Messiah depended not on historical action in war and in politics but on moral regeneration. So from a force that moved Israelites to take up weapons on the battlefield, as in the war led by Bar Kokhba, the Messianic hope and yearning were transformed into motives for spiritual regeneration and ethical behavior. The energies released in the Messianic

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fervor were then linked to Rabbinical government, through which Israel would form the godly society. When we reflect that the message, “If you want it, He too wants it to be,” comes in a generation confronting a dreadful disappointment, its full weight and meaning become clear.

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CHAPTER XI

GENESIS RABBAH AND THE HISTORY OF ISRAEL I. Genesis Rabbah Genesis Rabbah provides a complete and authoritative account of how Rabbinic Judaism proposes to read and make sense of the first book of the Hebrew Scriptures. At the time at which the document reached closure, the Roman empire in general, and the Land of Israel in particular, went from pagan to Christian rule. The Rabbinic the Rabbinic sages proposed to read the book of Genesis for purposes important in their circumstance and context. They researched the beginnings to investigate the pattern of the present. The patriarchs signaled in their words and deeds the future history of their children, the children of Israel. II. How the Rabbinic the Rabbinic sages Read the Book of Genesis, What They Found There The entire narrative of Genesis is so formed in Genesis Rabbah as to point toward the sacred history of Israel: its slavery and redemption; its coming Temple in Jerusalem; its exile and salvation at the end of time. The powerful message of Genesis proclaims that the world’s creation commenced a single, straight line of events, leading in the end to the salvation of Israel and through Israel all humanity. Therefore a given story will bear a deeper message about what it means to be Israel, on the one side, and what in the end of days will happen to Israel, on the other. So another point of method will be the Rabbinic sages’ persistent search in Scripture for meaning for their own circumstance and for the condition of their people.

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The Rabbinic sages read Genesis as the history of the world with emphasis on Israel. So the personal lives that are portrayed, the domestic quarrels and petty conflicts with the neighbors, all serve to yield insight into what was to be. Just as the deeds of the patriarchs taught lessons on how the children were to act, so the lives of the patriarchs signaled the history of Israel. These propositions really laid down the same judgment, one for the individual and the family, the other for the community and the nation. Every detail of the narrative therefore served to prefigure what was to be, and Israel found itself, time and again, in the revealed facts of the history of the creation of the world, the decline of humanity down to the time of Noah, and, finally, its ascent through Abraham, Isaac, and Israel. The Rabbinic sages read Genesis as history. What in fact does that mean? It was literally and in every detail a book of facts. Genesis constituted an accurate and complete testimony to things that really happened just as the story is narrated. While, therefore, the Rabbinic sages found in Genesis deeper levels of meaning, uncovering the figurative sense underlying a literal statement, they always recognized the literal facticity of the statements of the document. The following picture of the way in which facts of Scripture settled claims of living enemies makes the matter clear. To the Rabbinic sages Genesis reported what really happened. But, as we see throughout, Genesis also spelled out the meanings and truth of what happened. Genesis Rabbah LXI:VII 1. A. “But to the sons of his concubines, Abraham gave gifts, and while he was still living, he sent them away from his son Isaac, eastward to the east country” (Gen. 25:6): B. In the time of Alexander of Macedonia the sons of Ishmael came to dispute with Israel about the birthright, and with them came two wicked families, the Canaanites and the Egyptians. C. They said, “Who will go and engage in a disputation with them.” D. Gebiah b. Qosem [the enchanter] said, “I shall go and engage in a disputation with them.” E. They said to him, “Be careful not to let the Land of Israel fall into their possession.” F. He said to them, “I shall go and engage in a disputation with them. If I win over them, well and good. And if not, you may say, ‘Who is this hunchback to represent us?’” G. He went and engaged in a disputation with them. Said to

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part six: chapter xi them Alexander of Macedonia, “Who lays claim against whom?” H. The Ishmaelites said, “We lay claim, and we bring our evidence from their own Torah: ‘But he shall acknowledge the firstborn, the son of the hated’ (Deut. 21;17). Now Ishmael was the firstborn. [We therefore claim the land as heirs of the first-born of Abraham.]” I. Said to him Gebiah b. Qosem, “My royal lord, does a man not do whatever he likes with his sons?” J. He said to him, “Indeed so.” K. “And lo, it is written, ‘Abraham gave all that he had to Isaac’ (Gen. 25:2).” L. [Alexander asked,] “Then where is the deed of gift to the other sons?” M. He said to him, “‘But to the sons of his concubines, Abraham gave gifts, [and while he was still living, he sent them away from his son Isaac, eastward to the east country]’ (Gen. 25:6).” N. [The Ishmaelites had no claim on the land.] They abandoned the field in shame. O. The Canaanites said, “We lay claim, and we bring our evidence from their own Torah. Throughout their Torah it is written, ‘the land of Canaan.’ So let them give us back our land.” P. Said to him Gebiah b. Qosem, “My royal lord, does a man not do whatever he likes with his slave?” Q. He said to him, “Indeed so.” R. He said to him, “And lo, it is written, ‘A slave of slaves shall Canaan be to his brothers’ (Gen. 9:25). So they are really our slaves.” S. [The Canaanites had no claim to the land and in fact should be serving Israel.] They abandoned the field in shame. T. The Egyptians said, “We lay claim, and we bring our evidence from their own Torah. Six hundred thousand of them left us, taking away our silver and gold utensils: ‘They despoiled the Egyptians’ (Ex. 12:36). Let them give them back to us.” U. Gebiah b. Qosem said, “My royal lord, six hundred thousand men worked for them for two hundred and ten years, some as silversmiths and some as goldsmiths. Let them pay us our salary at the rate of a denar a day.” V. The mathematicians went and added up what was owing, and they had not reached the sum covering a century before the Egyptians had to forfeit what they had claimed. They abandoned the field in shame. V. [Alexander] wanted to go up to Jerusalem. The Samaritans said to him, “Be careful. They will not permit you to enter their most holy sanctuary.” W. When Gebiah b. Qosem found out about this, he went and made for himself two felt shoes, with two precious stones worth twentythousand pieces of silver set in them. When he got to the mountain of the house [of the Temple], he said to him, “My royal lord, take off your shoes and put on these two felt slippers, for the floor is slippery,

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and you should not slip and fall.” X. When they came to the most holy sanctuary, he said to him, “Up to this point, we have the right to enter. From this point onward, we do not have the right to enter.” Y. He said to him, “When we get out of here, I’m going to even out your hump.” Z. He said to him, “You will be called a great surgeon and get a big fee.” 2. A. “[But to the sons of his concubines, Abraham gave gifts, and while he was still living,] he sent them away from his son Isaac, eastward to the east country]’ (Gen. 25:6): B. He said to them, “Go as far to the east as you can, so as not to be burned by the flaming coal of Isaac.” C. But because Esau came to make war with Jacob, he took his appropriate share on his account: “Is this your joyous city, whose feet in antiquity, in ancient days, carried her afar off to sojourn? Who has devised this against Tyre, the crowning city” (Is. 23:7). D. Said R. Eleazar, “Whenever the name of Tyre is written in Scripture, if it is written out [with all of the letters], then it refers to the province of Tyre. Where it is written without all of its letters [and so appears identical to the word for enemy], the reference of Scripture is to Rome. [So the sense of the verse is that Rome will receive its appropriate reward.]” E. [As to the sense of the word for] “the crowning city,” F. R. Abba bar Kahana said, “It means that they surrounded the city like a crown.” G. R. Yannai, son of R. Simeon b. R. Yannai, said, “They surrounded it with a fence of thorns.”

No. 1 is deposited here because of the case of the Ishmaelites, Abraham’s children, deprived as they were of their inheritance. That issue pressed on the consciousness of the exegete-compositors. No. 2 carries forward the eschatological reading of the incident. Israel’s later history is prefigured in the gift to Isaac and the rejection of the other sons. The self-evidence that Esau’s reward will be recompense for his evil indicates that the passage draws upon sarcasm to make its point. The upshot is simple. The Rabbinic sages essentially looked in the facts of history for the laws of history. We may compare them to social scientists or social philosophers, trying to turn anecdotes into insight and to demonstrate how we may know the difference between impressions and truths. Genesis provided facts. Careful sifting of those facts will yield the laws that dictated why things happened one way, rather than some other. The language, as much as

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the substance., of the narrative provided facts demanding careful study. We understand why the Rabbinic sages thought so if we call to mind their basic understanding of the Torah. To them the Torah came from God and in every detail contained revelation of God’s truth. Accordingly, just as we study nature and derive facts demanding explanation and yielding law, so we study Scripture and find facts susceptible of explanation and yielding truth. Let us now turn to a sustained reading of how the biblical patriarchs prefigured the history of Israel in the fourth century, when the document reached closure. III. The Case of Abraham We follow the presentation of the patriarchs, beginning with Abraham, to see how the lives of the patriarchs reveal the paradigm of Israel’s future history. GENESIS RABBAH LVI:IX. 1. A. “And Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him was a ram, [caught in a thicket by his horns. And Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son]” (Gen. 22:13): B. What is the meaning of the word for “behind”? C. Said R. Yudan, “‘Behind’ in the sense of ‘after,’ that is, after all that happens, Israel nonetheless will be embroiled in transgressions and perplexed by sorrows. But in the end, they will be redeemed by the horns of a ram: ‘And the Lord will blow the horn’ (Zech. 9:14).” C. Said R. Judah bar Simon, “‘After’ all generations Israel nonetheless will be embroiled in transgressions and perplexed by sorrows. But in the end, they will be redeemed by the horns of a ram: ‘And the Lord God will blow the horn’ (Zech. 9:14).” D. Said R. Hinena bar Isaac, “All through the days of the year Israelites are embroiled in transgressions and perplexed by sorrows. But on the New Year they take the ram’s horn and sound it, so in the end, they will be redeemed by the horns of a ram: ‘And the Lord God will blow the horn’ (Zech. 9:14).” E. R. Abba bar R. Pappi, R. Joshua of Siknin in the name of R. Levi: “Since our father, Abraham, saw the ram get himself out of one thicket only to be trapped in another, the Holy One, blessed be he, said to him, ‘So your descendants will entangled in one kingdom after another, struggling from Babylonia to Media, from Media to Greece, from Greece to Edom. But in the end, they will be redeemed by the horns of a ram: ‘And the Lord God will blow the horn...the Lord of Hosts will defend them’ (Zech. 9:14-5).

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2. A. “... And Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son]” (Gen. 22:13): B. R. Yudan in the name of R. Benaiah: “He said before him, ‘Lord of all ages, regard the blood of this ram as though it were the blood of Isaac, my son, its innards as though they were the innards of Isaac my son.’” C. That [explanation of the word “instead”] accords with what we have learned in the Mishnah: “Lo, this is instead of that, this is in exchange for that, this is in place of that”—lo, such is an act of exchanging [one beast for another in the sacrificial rite, and both beasts then are held to be sanctified] [M. Tem. 5:5]. D. R. Phineas in the name of R. Benaiah: “He said before him, ‘Lord of all ages, regard it as though I had offered up my son, Isaac, first, and afterward had offered up the ram in his place.’” E. That [sense of the word “instead”] is in line with this verse: “And Jothan his son reigned in his stead” 2 Kgs. 15:7). F. That accords with what we have learned in the Mishnah: [If one says, “I vow a sacrifice] like the lamb,” or “like the animals of the Temple stalls” [it is a valid vow] [M. Ned. 1:3]. G. R. Yohanan said, “That is in the sense of ‘like the lamb of the daily whole offering.’” [One who made such a statement has vowed to bring a lamb.] H. R. Simeon b. Laqish said, “...’like the ram of Abraham, our father.’” [One who has made such a statement has vowed to bring a ram.] I. There they say, “...’like the offspring of a sin-offering.’” J. Bar Qappara taught on Tannaite authority, “...’like a lamb which has never given suck [thus, a ram].”

The power of No. 1 is to link the life of the private person, affected by transgression, and the history of the nation, troubled by its wandering among the kingdoms. From the perspective of the Land of Israel, the issue is not Exile but the rule of foreigners. In both cases the power of the ram’s horn to redeem the individual and the nation finds its origin in the Binding of Isaac. The exegetical thrust, linking the lives of the patriarchs to the life of the nation, thus brings the narrative back to the paradigm of individual being, so from patriarch to nation to person. The path leads in both directions, of course, in a fluid movement of meaning. No. 2 works on the language of “instead,” a technical term in the cult, and so links the Binding of Isaac to the Temple cult.

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part six: chapter xi IV. Isaac and Jacob and Israel’s History

While Abraham founded Israel, Isaac and Jacob carried forth the birthright and the blessing. This they did through the process of selection, ending in the assignment of the birthright to Jacob alone. The lives of all three patriarchs flowed together, each being identified with the other as a single long life. This immediately produces the proposition that the historical life of Israel, the nation, continued the individual lives of the patriarchs. Theory of who is Israel, therefore, rested on genealogy: Israel is one extended family, all being children of the same fathers and mothers, the patriarchs and matriarchs of Genesis. This theory of Israelite society, and of the Jewish people in the time of the Rabbinic sages of Genesis Rabbah, made of the people a family, and of genealogy, a kind of ecclesiology. The importance of that proposition in countering the Christian claim to be a new Israel cannot escape notice. Israel, the Rabbinic sages maintained, is Israel after the flesh, and that in a most literal sense. But the basic claim, for its part, depended upon the facts of Scripture, not upon the logical requirements of theological dispute. Here is how those facts emerged in the case of Isaac. GENESIS RABBAH LXIII:III. 1. A. “These are the descendants of Isaac, Abraham’s son: Abraham was the father of Isaac” (Gen. 25:19): B. Abram was called Abraham: “Abram, the same is Abraham” (1 Chr. 1:27). C. Isaac was called Abraham: ““These are the descendants of Isaac, Abraham’s son, Abraham.” D. Jacob was called Israel, as it is written, “Your name shall be called more Jacob but Israel” (Gen. 32:29). E. Isaac also was called Israel: “And these are the names of the children of Israel, who came into Egypt, Jacob and his” (Gen. 46:8). F. Abraham was called Israel as well. G. R. Nathan said, “This matter is deep: ‘Now the time that the children of Israel dwelt in Egypt’ (Ex. 12:40), and in the land of Canaan and in the land of Goshen ‘was four hundred and thirty years’ (Ex. 12:40).” [Freedman, p. 557, n. 6: They were in Egypt for only 210 years. Hence their sojourn in Canaan and Goshen must be added, which means, from the birth of Isaac, Hence the children of Israel commence with Isaac. And since he was Abraham’s son, it follows that Abraham was called Israel.]

The polemic at hand, linking the patriarchs to the history of Israel, claiming that all of the patriarchs bear the same names, derives proof,

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in part, from the base verse. But the composition in no way rests upon the exegesis of the base verse. Its syllogism transcends the case at hand. The importance of Isaac in particular derived from his relationship to the two nations that would engage in struggle, Jacob, who was and is Israel, and Esau, who stood for Rome. By himself, as a symbol for Israel’s history Isaac remained that same shadowy figure whom we encountered earlier. Still, Isaac plays his role in setting forth the laws of Israel’s history . GENESIS RABBAH LXV:XIII. 1. A. “[He said, ‘Behold I am old; I do not know the day of my death.] Now then take your weapons, [your quiver and your bow, and go out to the field and hunt game for me, and prepare for me savory food, such as I love, and bring it to me that I may eat; that I may bless you before I die’]” (Gen. 27:2-4): 3. A. Another matter: “Now then take your weapons, your quiver and your bow and go out to the field:” B. “Weapons” refers to Babylonia, as it is said, “And the weapons he brought to the treasure house of his god” (Gen. 2:2). C. “Your quiver” speaks of Media, as it says, “So they suspended Haman on the gallows” (Est. 7:10). [The play on the words is the same as at No. 2.] D. “And your bow” addresses Greece: “For I bend Judah for me, I fill the bow with Ephraim and I will story up your sons, O Zion, against your sons, O Javan [Greece]” (Zech. (9:13). E. “and go out to the field” means Edom: “Unto the land of Seir, the field of Edom” (Gen. 32:4).

No. 3 moves from the moral to the national, making the statement a clear reference to the history of Israel (as though, by this point, it were not obvious). What the author of the item at hand contributes, then, is the specific details. What the compositor does is move the reader’s mind from the philological to the moral to the national dimension of exegesis of the statements at hand. GENESIS RABBAH LXV:XXIII. 1. A. [“See the smell of my son is as the smell of a field which the Lord has blessed” (Gen. 27:27):] Another matter: this teaches that the Holy One, blessed be he, showed him the house of the sanctuary as it was built, wiped out, and built once more. B. “See the smell of my. son:” This refers to the Temple in all its beauty, in line with this verse: “A sweet smell to me shall you observe” (Num. 28:2). C. “...is as the smell of a field:” This refers to the Temple as it was wiped out, thus: “Zion shall be ploughed as a field” (Mic. 3:12). D. “...which the Lord has blessed:” This speaks of the Temple

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part six: chapter xi as it was restored once more in the age to come, as it is said, “For there the Lord commanded the blessing, even life for ever” (Ps. 133:3).

The conclusion explicitly links the blessing of Jacob to the Temple throughout its history. The concluding proof-text justifies the entire identification of the blessing at hand with what was to come. GENESIS RABBAH LXVI:II. 1. A. R. Berekhiah opened [discourse by citing the following verse:] “‘Return, return, O Shulammite, return, return that we may look upon you’ (Song 7:1): B. “The verse at hand refers to ‘return’ four times, corresponding to the four kingdoms in which Israel enters in peace and from which Israel comes forth in peace. C. “‘O Shulammite:’ the word refers to the nation who every day is blessed with a blessing ending with peace [which shares the consonants of the word at hand], as it is said, ‘And may he give you peace’ (Num. 7:26). D. “It is the nation in the midst of which dwells the Peace of the ages, as it is said, ‘And let them make me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them’ (Ex. 25:8). E. “It is the nation to which I am destined to give peace: ‘And I will give peace in the land’ (Lev. 26:6). F. “It is the nation over which I am destined to spread peace: ‘Behold, I will extend peace to her like a river’ (Is. 66:12).” G. R. Samuel bar Tanhum, R. Hanan bar Berekiah in the name of R. Idi: “It is the nation that makes peace between me and my world. For if it were not for that nation, I would destroy my world.” H. R. Hana in the name of R. Aha: “‘When the earth and all the inhabitants thereof are dissolved’ (Ps. 75:4), as in the statement, ‘All the inhabitants of Canaan are melted away’ (Ex. 15:15). I. “‘I’ (Ps. 75:4), that is, when they accepted upon themselves [the Ten Commandments, beginning,] ‘I am the Lord your God’ (Ex. 20:2), I established the pillars of it’ (Ps. 75:4), and the world was set on a solid foundation.” J. Said R. Eleazar bar Merom, “This nation preserves [makes whole] the stability of the world, both in this age and in the age to come.” K. R. Joshua of Sikhnin in the name of R. Levi: “This is the nation on account of the merit of which whatever good that comes into the world is bestowed. Rain comes down only for their sake, that is, ‘to you’ [as in the base verse], and the dew comes down only ‘to you.’ L. “May God give you of the dew of heaven.”

The point of this rather sizable composition comes at the end, but the intersecting verse is worked out in its own terms. We have a

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philosophy of Israel among the nations, stating in one place every component. We begin with a reference to the four kingdoms, but then we move out of that item to the name of the Shulammite, and, third, we proceed to work on theme of Israel as the nation of peace. Once the praise of Israel forms the focus, we leave behind the issue of peace and deal with the blessings that come to the world on Israel’s account. Only at that point does the base verse prove relevant. Whatever future history finds adumbration in the life of Jacob derives from the struggle with Esau. Israel and Rome—these two contend for the world. Still, Isaac plays his part in the matter. Rome does have a legitimate claim, and that claim demands recognition— an amazing, if grudging concession on the part of the Rabbinic sages that Christian Rome at least is Esau. GENESIS RABBAH LXVII:IV. 1. A “When Esau heard the words of his father, he cried out with an exceedingly great and bitter cry [and said to his father, ‘Bless me, even me also, O my father!’]” (Gen. 27:34): B. Said R. Hanina, “Whoever says that the Holy One, blessed be he, is lax, may his intestines become lax. While he is patient, he does collect what is coming to you. C. “Jacob made Esau cry out one cry, and where was he penalized? It was in the castle of Shushan: ‘And he cried with a loud and bitter cry’ (Est. 4:1).” 2. A. “But he said, ‘Your brother [Jacob] came with guile and he has taken away your blessing’” (Gen. 33:35): B. R. Yohanan said, “[He came] with the wisdom of his knowledge of the Torah.” 3. A. “Esau said, ‘Is he not rightly named Jacob? [For he has supplanted me these two times. He took away my birthright and behold, now he has taken away my blessing.’ Then he said, ‘Have you not reserved a blessing for me?’]” (Gen. 27:36): B. “‘He took away my birthright, and I kept silence, and now he has taken away my blessing.’” 4. A. “Then he said, ‘Have you not reserved a blessing for me?’” (Gen. 27:36): B. —even an inferior one?

The concession for Christianity should not be missed. Rome really is Israel’s brother. The history of the two brothers forms a set of counterpoints, the rise of one standing for the decline of the other. The ultimate end, Israel’s final glory, will permanently mark the subjugation of Esau. The point of No. 1 is to link the present passage to the history of Israel’s redemption later on. In this case, how-

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ever, the matter concerns Israel’s paying recompense for causing anguish to Esau. No. 2 introduces Jacob’s knowledge of Torah in place of Esau’s view of Jacob as full of guile. V. Joseph, the Tribal Fathers, and Israel’s History Along with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as in the book of Genesis itself, Joseph takes up an important role in the revelation of Israel’s history. His brothers, founders of the tribes bearing their names, obviously give their testimony too to what will happen in the time to come. Since Jacob, in Genesis 49, and Moses, in Deuteronomy 32 treat the brothers of Joseph, founders of the tribes, as precursors of what was to happen in the future history of Israel as well as at the end of days, none of these modes of reading the book of Genesis presents surprises. Because both Jacob and Moses explicitly spoke of the sons of Jacob as paradigms of future history, the Rabbinic sages understood the text precisely as the Torah itself told them to understand it. The laws of history begin with the principle that the merit of the founders sustains the children to come. The model for the transaction in merit—which underlines and explains the theory of genealogy as the foundation of Israel’s social entity,—comes to expression in the life of Joseph. Joseph both derived benefit from the merit of his ancestors and handed on merit to his descendants. GENESIS RABBAH LXXXIV:V 2. A. “These are the generations of the family of Jacob. Joseph [being seventeen years old, was shepherding the flock with his brothers]” (Gen. 37:2): B. These generations came along only on account of the merit of Joseph. C. Did Jacob go to Laban for any reason other than for Rachel? D. These generations thus waited until Joseph was born, in line with this verse: “And when Rachel had borne Joseph, Jacob said to Laban, ‘Send me away’” (Gen. 30:215). E. Who brought them down to Egypt? It was Joseph. F. Who supported them in Egypt? It was Joseph. G. The sea split open only on account of the merit of Joseph: “The waters saw you, O God” (Ps. 77:17). “You have with your arm redeemed your people, the sons of Jacob and Joseph” (Ps. 77:16). H. R. Yudan said, “Also the Jordan was divided only on account of the merit of Joseph.”

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No. 2 asks why only Joseph is mentioned as the family of Jacob. The inner polemic is that the merit of Jacob and Joseph would more than suffice to overcome Esau/Rome. Joseph’s life, as much as Abraham’s or Jacob’s, represents the history of Israel and its meaning. GENESIS RABBAH LXXXVII:VI. 1. A. “And although she spoke to Joseph [day after day, he would not listen to her, to lie with her or to be with her. But one day, when he went into the house to do his work and none of the men of the house was there in the house, she caught him by his garment, saying, ‘Lie with me.’ But he left his garment in her hand and fled and got out of the house]” (Gen. 39:10-13): B. R. Yudan in the name of R. Benjamin bar Levi: “As to the sons of Levi, the trials affecting them were the same, and the greatness that they achieved was the same. C. “...the trials affecting them were the same: ‘And although she spoke to Joseph [day after day.’ ‘Now it came to pass, when they spoke to him day by day’; (Est. 3:4). [Mordecai, descended from Benjamin, was nagged every day.] ‘He would not listen to her.’ ‘And he did not listen to them’ (Est. 3:4). D. “...and the greatness that they achieved was the same: ‘And Pharaoh took off his signet ring from his hand and put it upon Joseph’s hand’ (Gen. 41:42). ‘And the king took off his ring, which he had taken from Haman and gave it to Mordecai’ (Est. 8:2). E. “‘And arrayed him in fine linen clothing and put a gold chain about his neck’ (Gen. 41:42). ‘And Mordecai went forth from the presence of the king in royal apparel of blue and white, and with a great crown of gold and with a robe of fine linen and purple’ (Est. 8:15). F. “‘And he made Joseph ride in the second chariot which he had’ (Gen. 41:43). ‘And cause Mordecai to ride on horseback through the street of the city’ (Est. 6:9). G. “‘And they cried before him, Abrech’ (Gen. 41:43). ‘And proclaimed before Mordecai, “Thus shall it be done to the man”’ (Est. 6:11).” 2. A. “...he would not listen to her, to lie with her or to be with her:” B. “...to lie with her” in this world, that he would not have children with her. C. “...or to be with her” in the world to come.

The parallel drawn between Joseph and Benjamin=Mordecai permits the exegete to draw a parallel between the life of Joseph and the history of Israel. No. 2 expands on the base verse. 1. A.

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GENESIS RABBAH LXXXVIII:V. [“So the chief butler told his dream to Joseph and said to

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part six: chapter xi him, ‘In my dream there was a vine before me, and on the vine there were three branches; as soon as it budded, its blossoms shot forth, and the clusters ripened into grapes. Pharaoh’s cup was in my hand, and I took the grapes and pressed them into Pharaoh’s cup and placed the cup in Pharaoh’s hand. And I took the grapes and pressed them into Pharaoh’s cup and placed the cup in Pharaoh’s hand’” (Gen. 49:1113)]. “...there was a vine before me:” this refers to Israel: “You plucked up a vine out of Egypt” (Ps. 80:9). B. “...and on the vine there were three branches:” this refers to Moses, Aaron, and Miriam. C. “...as soon as it budded, its blossoms shot forth:” specifically, the blossoming of the redemption of Israel. D. “...and the clusters ripened into grapes:” as soon as the vine budded, it blossomed, and as soon as the grapes blossomed, the clusters ripened. 2. A. “‘Pharaoh’s cup was in my hand, and I took the grapes and pressed them into Pharaoh’s cup and placed the cup in Pharaoh’s hand. And I took the grapes and pressed them into Pharaoh’s cup and placed the cup in Pharaoh’s hand.’...’ you shall place Pharaoh’s cup in his hand:’” B. On what basis did the Rabbinic sages ordain that there should be four cups of wine for Passover? C. R. Hunah in the name of R. Benaiah: “They correspond to the four times that redemption is stated with respect to Egypt: ‘I will bring you out...and I will deliver you...and I will redeem you...and I will take you’ (Ex. 6:6-7).” D. R. Samuel b. Nahman said, “They correspond to the four times that ‘cups’ are mentioned here: ‘Pharaoh’s cup was in my hand, and I took the grapes and pressed them into Pharaoh’s cup and placed the cup in Pharaoh’s hand. And I took the grapes and pressed them into Pharaoh’s cup .’” E. R. Levi said, “They correspond to the four kingdoms.” F. R. Joshua b. Levi said, “They correspond to the four cups of fury that the Holy One, blessed be he, will give the nations of the world to drink: ‘For thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, to me, “Take this cup of the wine of fury”’ (Jer. 25:15). ‘Babylon has been a golden cup in the Lord’s hand’ (Jer. 51:7). ‘For in the hand of the Lord there is a cup’ (Ps. 75:9). ‘And burning wind shall be the portion of their cup’ (Ps. 11:6). G. “And in response to these, the Holy One, blessed be he, will give Israel four cups of salvation to drink in the age to come: ‘O Lord, the portion of my inheritance and of my cup, you maintain my lot’ (Ps. 16:5). ‘You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies, you have anointed my head with oil, my cup runs over’ (Ps. 23:5). ‘I will lift up the cup of salvations and call upon the name of the Lord’ (Ps. 116:13). H. “What is said is not ‘cup of salvation’ but ‘cup of salvations,’

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one in the days of the Messiah, the other in the time of Gog and Magog.” 3. A. Joseph said to him, “[Since the dream refers to Israel’s coming redemption,] you have brought me a good gospel, so I shall now give you a good gospel: ‘within three days Pharaoh will lift up your head and restore you to your office.’”

No. 1 reads the vision in light of the story of Israel’s redemption from Egypt. No. 2 then brings the point home, by linking Israel’s redemption specifically to aspects of the language of the vision. Obviously, our base verse plays only a modest role in the grand vision of No. 2. No. 3 carries forward No. 2 and therefore cannot be understood without it. If, as it would appear, No. 2 is an independent composition, then No. 3 surely was added afterward, at the level of redactional composition, to link the whole still more tightly to our context and to exploit in the service of that context the enormous conceptions introduced in No. 2. GENESIS RABBAH LXXXIX:I. 1. A. “At it came to pass at the end of two years, [Pharaoh dreamed that he was standing by the Nile]” (Gen. 41:1): B. “He sets an end to darkness...the stones of thick darkness and the shadow of death” (Job. 28:3): C. A span of time has been assigned to the world, decreeing how many years it would spend in darkness. D. What is the scriptural evidence? “He sets an end to darkness...the stones of thick darkness and the shadow of death” (Job. 28:3). E. For all that time that the impulse to do evil is in the world, darkness and gloom are in the world. When the impulse to do evil is uprooted from the world, darkness and deep gloom will pass from the world. 2. A. Another interpretation of the verse: “He sets an end to darkness...the stones of thick darkness and the shadow of death” (Job. 28:3): B. A span of time was assigned to the Joseph, decreeing how many years he would spend in prison. C. Once the end came, Pharaoh had his dream: “At it came to pass at the end of two years, [Pharaoh dreamed that he was standing by the Nile]” (Gen. 41:1).

The cited verse introduces at No. 1 the theme of the prevailing interpretation of Joseph’s life, which has emphasized his power to sin and his regeneration. So the underlying point is that Joseph’s impulse to do evil reached the end of its allotted span of time, at which point the end of his period of suffering also came. Since Joseph’s

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story has repeatedly been linked to Israel’s history, with strong emphasis on the links between Joseph and Mordecai, the deeper message addresses Israel’s condition and links its impulse to sin with its degraded condition. GENESIS RABBAH XCVIII:II. 4. A. “Then Jacob called his sons and said, ‘Gather yourselves together, that I may tell you what shall befall you in days to come:” B. “Gather yourselves together” from the land of Israel, “and assemble and hear” in Raameses. C. “Gather yourselves together” the ten tribes. D. “And assemble and hear” the tribes of Judah and Benjamin. E. He commanded them to treat the tribes of Judah and Benjamin with honor. 5. R. Aha said, “‘Gather together” means “purify’ in line with this verse: ‘And they gathered themselves together...and they purified themselves’ (Neh. 12:28).” 6. A. Rabbis say, “It means that he commanded themselves about dissension. He said to them, ‘All of you should form a single gathering.’ B. “That is in line with this verse: ‘And you, son of man, take one stick and write upon it, “For Judah and for the children of Israel his companions”’ (Ez. 37:16). C. “What is written is ‘his companion,’ meaning, that when the children of Israel form a single assembly, then they prepare themselves for redemption. D. “For what is written afterward? ‘And I will make them one nation in the land’ (Ez. 37:22).” 7. A. “Then Jacob called his sons and said, ‘Gather yourselves together, that I may tell you what shall befall you in days to come:’” B. R. Simon said, “He showed them the fall of Gog, in line with this usage: ‘It shall be in the end of days...when I shall be sanctified through you, O Gog’ (Ez. 38:165). ‘Behold, it shall come upon Edom’ (Is. 34:5).” C. R. Judah said, “He showed them the building of the house of the sanctuary: ‘And it shall come to pass in the end of days that the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established’ (Is. 2:2).” D. Rabbis say, “He came to reveal the time of the end to them, but it was hidden from him.” E. R. Judah in the name of R. Eleazar bar Abina: “To two men the secret of the time of the end was revealed, but then it was hidden from them, and these are they: Jacob and Daniel. F. “Daniel: ‘But you, O Daniel, shut up the words and seal the book’ (Dan. 12:4). G. “Jacob: ‘Then Jacob called his sons and said, “Gather yourselves together, that I may tell you what shall befall you in days to come. Assemble and hear, O sons of Jacob, and hearken to Israel, your

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father. Reuben, you are my first-born.”’ H. “This teaches that he came to reveal the time of the end to them, but it was hidden from him.” I. The matter may be compared to the case of the king’s ally, who was departing this world, and his children surrounded his bed. He said to them, “Come and I shall tell you the secrets of the king.” Then he looked up and saw the king. He said to them, “Be most meticulous about the honor owing to the king.” J. So our father Jacob looked up and saw the Presence of God standing over him. He said to them, “Be most meticulous about the honor owing to the Holy One, blessed be he.”

No. 4 interprets the language at hand both in its immediate context and in the larger setting of Israel’s history. No. 5 goes over the same language., and No. 6 introduces, in the identical context, an eschatological dimension. No. 7 successfully carries forward this final theme, which surely is invited by the base verse, so that the personal history of the individual, dealt with at the opening compositions, gives way to the national history of Israel. GENESIS RABBAH XCIX:II. 1. A. “For the Lord God will do nothing unless he reveals his secret to his servants the prophets” (Amos 3:7). B. Jacob linked two of his sons, corresponding to two of the monarchies, and Moses linked two of the tribes, corresponding to two of the monarchies. C. Judah corresponds to the kingdom of Babylonia, for this is compared to a lion and that is compared to a lion. This is compared to a lion: “Judah is a lion’s whelp” (Gen. 49:9), and so too Babylonia: “The first was like a lion” (Dan. 7:4). D. Then by the hand of which of the tribes will the kingdom of Babylonia fall? It will be by the hand of Daniel, who comes from the tribe of Judah. E. Benjamin corresponds to the kingdom of Media, for this is compared to a wolf and that is compared to a wolf. This is compared to a wolf: “Benjamin is a ravenous wolf, [in the morning devouring the prey, and at even dividing the spoil.” And that is compared to a wolf: “And behold, another beast, a second, like a wolf” (Dan. 7:5). F. R. Hanina said, “The word for ‘wolf’ in the latter verse is written as ‘bear.’ It had been called a bear.” G. That is the view of R. Yohanan, for R. Yohanan said, “‘Wherefore a lion of the forest slays them’ (Jer. 5:6) refers to Babylonia, and ‘a wolf of the deserts spoils them’ refers to Media.” H. [Reverting to E:] Then by the hand of which of the tribes will the kingdom of Media fall? It will be by the hand of Mordecai, who comes from the tribe of Benjamin.

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part six: chapter xi I. Levi corresponds to the kingdom of Greece. This is the third tribe in order, and that is the third kingdom in order. This is written with a word that is made up of three letters, and that is written with a word which consists of three letters. This one sounds the horn and that one sounds the horn, this one wears turbans and that one wears helmets, this one wears pants and that one wears knee-cuts. J. To be sure, this one is very populous, while that one is few in numbers. But the many came and fell into the hand of the few. K. On account of merit deriving from what source did this take place? It is on account of the blessing that Moses bestowed: “Smiter through the loins of them that rise up against him:” (Deut. 33:11). L. Then by the hand of which of the tribes will the kingdom of Greece fall? It will be by the hand of sons of the Hasmoneans, who come from the tribe of Levi.’ M. Joseph corresponds to the kingdom of Edom [Rome], for this one has horns and that one has horns. This one has horns: “His firstling bullock, majesty is his, and his horns are the horns of the wild ox” (Deut. 33:17). And that one has horns: “And concerning the ten horns that were on its head” (Dan. 7:20). This one avoided kept away from fornication while that one cleaved to fornication. This one paid respect for the honor owing to his father, while that one despised the honor owing to his father. Concerning this one it is written, “For I fear God” (Gen. 42:18), while in regard to that one it is written, “And he did not fear God” (Deut. 25:18). [So the correspondence in part is one of opposites.] N. Then by the hand of which of the tribes will the kingdom of Edom fall? It will be by the hand of the anointed for war, who comes from the tribe of Joseph. O. R. Phineas in the name of R. Samuel b. Nahman: “There is a tradition that Esau will fall only by the hand of the sons of Rachel: ‘Surely the least of the flock shall drag them away’ (Jer. 49:20). Why the least? Because they are the youngest of the tribes.”

This impressive theory of Israel’s history finds a place here only because of E. Yet the larger relevance—Jacob’s predictions of the future—justifies including the composition. GENESIS RABBAH XCIX:III. 1. A. “Benjamin is a ravenous wolf, in the morning devouring the prey, and at even dividing the spoil” (Gen. 49:27): B. The verse speaks of the judge that comes from Benjamin, that is, Ehud. C. Just as a wolf seizes, so Ehud seized the heart of Eglon: “And Ehud came to him and he was sitting by himself alone in his cool upper chamber” (Judges 3:20). D. “And he said, I have a secret errand for you, O king” (Judges 3:19):

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E. He said to him, “Thus has the master of the world said to me, ‘Take a sword and thrust it into his belly.’” F. “And the dirt came out” (Judges 3:22): G. This refers to his shit. H. “Then Ehud went out onto the porch” (Judges 3:23): I. R. Yudan said, “Out into the public square “ J. R. Berekhiah said, “There the ministering angels said all in a row.” 2. A. Another matter: “Benjamin is a ravenous wolf, in the morning devouring the prey, and at even dividing the spoil” (Gen. 49:27): B. The verse speaks of the king that comes from Benjamin, [that is, Saul]. C. Just as the wolf seizes, so Saul seized the monarchy, as it is said, “So Saul took the kingdom over Israel” (1 Sam. 14:47). D. “...in the morning devouring the prey:” “And he fought against his enemies on all sides” (1 Sam. 14:47). E. “...and at even dividing the spoil:” “So Saul died, and his three sons” (1 Sam. 31:6). 3. A. Another matter: “Benjamin is a ravenous wolf, in the morning devouring the prey, and at even dividing the spoil” (Gen. 49:27): B. The verse speaks of the queen [that comes from Benjamin, [that is, Esther]. C. Just as the wolf seizes, so Esther seized the monarchy: “Esther was taken into the king’s house” (Est. 2:8). “D. “...in the morning devouring the prey:” “On that day did the king Ahasuerus give the house of Haman the Jews’ enemy to Esther the queen” (Est. 8:1). E. “...and at even dividing the spoil:” “And Esther set Mordecai over the house of Haman” (Est. 8:2). 4. A. Another matter: “Benjamin is a ravenous wolf, in the morning devouring the prey, and at even dividing the spoil” (Gen. 49:27): B. The verse speaks of the land that belongs to Benjamin, [that is, Jericho]. C. Just as the wolf seizes, so the land of Benjamin seizes its crops [making them ripen fast]. D. “...in the morning devouring the prey: this speaks of Jericho, where the produce ripens first. E. “...and at even dividing the spoil:” this speaks of Beth El, where the produce ripens last. 5. A. [“Benjamin is a ravenous wolf, in the morning devouring the prey, and at even dividing the spoil:”] R. Phineas interpreted the verse to speak of the altar: “Just as a wolf seizes, so the altar would seize the offerings. B. “‘...in the morning devouring the prey:’ ‘The one lamb you shall offer in the morning’ (Num. 28:4). C. “‘...and at even dividing the spoil:’ ‘And the other lamb you shall offer in the evening’ (Num. 28:45).”

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The systematic reading of the reference to Benjamin links the blessing to successive events in the later history of Israel, the judge of Benjamin, then the king that Benjamin produced, then the queen, then the land, and, finally, the Temple, located as it was in Benjamin’s territory. The clear intent of the compositors, to read Jacob’s blessing in the light of future history, has attained realization time and again. VI. Beginnings Reveal Endings The Rabbinic sages thus worked out a view of history consisting in a rereading of the book of Genesis in light of the entire history of Israel, read under the aspect of eternity. The book of Genesis then provided a complete, profoundly typological interpretation of everything that had happened as well as a reliable picture of what, following the rules of history laid down in Genesis, was going to happen in the future. The events of Genesis served as types, prefiguring what would happen to Israel in its future history. Just as the Christians read stories of the (to them) Old Testament as types of the life of Christ, so the sages understood the tales of Genesis in a similarly typological manner. For neither party can history have retained that singular and one-dimensional, linear quality that it had had in Scripture itself. In the reading of the authors at hand, therefore, the powerful message of Genesis proclaims that the world’s creation commenced a single, straight line of events, leading in the end to the salvation of Israel and through Israel of all humanity. That message—that history heads toward Israel’s salvation—sages derived from the book of Genesis. Therefore in their reading of Scripture a given story will bear a deeper truth about what it means to be Israel, on the one side, and what in the end of days will happen to Israel, on the other. True, their reading makes no explicit reference to what, if anything, had changed in the age of Constantine. But we do find repeated references to the four kingdoms, Babylonia, Media, Greece, Rome—and beyond the fourth will come Israel, fifth and last. So sages’ message, in their theology of history, was that the present anguish prefigured the coming vindication, of God’s people.

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CHAPTER XII

ASTRAL ISRAEL IN PESIQTA DERAB KAHANA I. If not history, then what? If not history, then what? Israel is not represented by Rabbinic Judaism as an historical entity; it is not time-bound; it recapitulates a transcendent paradigm. Then if Israel is not limited to historical time, what model for Israel’s life serves instead? The question presents itself, is Israel, not limited to historical time, subject to any other natural paradigm, that of the stars for instance? In Pesiqta deRab Kahana we find an implicit statement that tells the rest of the story of Israel not bound by historical time. It is the representation of Israel in a cosmic framework, as part of the celestial system: astral Israel. II. The Negative side. Israel is not subject to astrological influence If Israel is not bound to secular time, is it governed by secular celestial signals? The answer is negative. Israel is sui generis, because God alone, and not determinism in any form, dictates what happens to Israel and to Israelites. What happens to Israel realizes God’s will, that alone. Gentiles, by contrast, live within the ordinary rules of nature that pertain to all but Israel and so are subject to astrology, having rejected a position in God’s dominion and chosen not to live under his rules, beyond nature’s. That is why God does not choose to overrule the stars. That is, gentiles do not accept his dominion in the Torah, and that is why they are ruled by impersonal forces of physics. Where God chooses to govern and is so chosen, there the stars affect nothing. While recognizing the scientific standing of astrolo-

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part six: chapter xii

gy, therefore, most sages represented in the Oral Torah therefore concurred that when it comes to Israel, God rules, not the stars. The documentary focus is on Pesiqta deRab Kahana, as we shall see in a moment. But I find in the Bavli the definitive pericope on astrology and Israel, and that provides perspective on what we shall observe in the Midrash-compilation on which we shall concentrate. Since the Bavli sets forth systematic topical expositions, not merely random opinion, and organizes those composites in such a way as to indicate the thrust and direction of opinion, I choose for the authoritative statement on astrology the Bavli’s one sustained statement on the subject. That systematic statement is so organized as to yield only a single conclusion. Specifically, I focus upon the single most systematic composite on the subject, which is so framed as to demonstrate that astrology does not apply to Israel: Bavli tractate Shabbat 24:4 III.9/156a-b 2. A. It has been stated: B. R. Hanina says, “One’s star is what makes one smart, one’s star is what gives wealth, and Israel is subject to the stars.” C. R. Yohanan said, “Israel is not subject to the stars.”

Clearly, two opinions competed. Two characteristics mark the normative one in a dispute: [1] whose opinion is explored, whose neglected; and [2] whose opinion is complemented with sustaining authorities’ views, whose not. In the following, Yohanan’s position is analyzed, Hanina’s ignored: D. And R. Yohanan is consistent with views expressed elsewhere, for said R. Yohanan, “How on the basis of Scripture do we know that Israel is not subject to the stars? As it is said, ‘Thus says the Lord, Do not learn the way of the gentiles, nor be dismayed at the signs of the heavens, for the nations are dismayed at them’ (Jer. 10:2). They are dismayed, but the Israelites are not dismayed.”

Now begins a long sequence of systematic demonstrations that Israel is not subject to astrology. We begin with exegetical-scriptural proof: III.10 A. And so Rab takes the view that Israel is not subject to the stars, for said R. Judah said Rab, “How on the basis of Scripture do we know that Israel is not subject to the stars? As it is said, ‘And he brought him forth outside’ (Gen. 15:5). Said Abraham before the Holy One, blessed be He, ‘Lord of the world, “Someone born in my household is my heir” (Gen. 15:3).’ He said to him, ‘Not at all. “But he who will come forth out of your own loins” (Gen. 1:4).’ He said

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before him, ‘Lord of the world, I have closely examined my star, and I have seen that I am destined to have no children.’ He said to him, ‘Abandon this astrology of yours—Israel is not subject to astrology. Now what’s your calculation? [156B] Is it that Jupiter stands in the west [and that is your constellation]? I’ll turn it back and set it up in the East.’ And so it is written, ‘Who has raised up Jupiter from the east? He has summoned it for his sake’ (Isa. 41:2).”

Scripture, as always, supplies the initial demonstration. Wherever possible, the patriarchs will be asked to show that, even at the very beginning of Israel, the besought principle applied. At the next stage, we are given exemplary cases that show us how and why sages maintain that Israel is not subject to astrology. The first case pits astrological judgment against divine intervention; the latter sets aside the testimony of the stars. Not only so, but a specific reason is adduced to account for the special favor shown the man, which is the man’s own supererogatory act of generosity, to which Heaven responds with a supererogatory miracle: B. It is also the position of Samuel that Israel is not subject to the stars. C. For Samuel and Ablat were in session, and some people going along to a lake. Said Ablat to Samuel, “That man is going but won’t come back, a snake will bite him and he’ll die.” D. Said to him Samuel, “Yeah, well, if he’s an Israelite, he will go and come back.” E. While they were in session, he went and came back. Ablat got up and took of the man’s knapsack and found in it a snake cut up and lying in two pieces.

So there must be a reason, and the reason has to do with an act of generosity or some other source of zekhut. The man acted in a way that the law could not require, but that God could, and did, much appreciate: F. Said Samuel to the man, “What did you do [today in particular]?” G. He said to him, “Every day we tossed our bread into one pot and ate, but today one of us had no bread, and he was shamed. I said to him, ‘I will go and collect the bread.’ When I came to him, I made as if to go and collect the bread, so he shouldn’t be ashamed.” H. He said to him, “You have carried out a religious duty.” I. Samuel went forth and expounded, “‘But charity delivers from death’ (Prov. 10:2)—not [merely] from a grotesque death, but from death itself.”

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In the next case astrology is set aside by a sheer accident, which, we shall see in a moment, sages identify as a medium of God’s will. Here the astrologers (“Chaldeans”) make a flat prediction, and an accident overturns their prognostication; once more, the supererogatory act of generosity accounts for God’s personal intervention: III.11 A. It is also the position of R. Aqiba that Israel is not subject to the stars. B. For R. Aqiba had a daughter. Chaldeans [astrologers] told him, “On the day that she goes into the bridal canopy, a snake will bite her and she’ll die.” C. This worried him a lot. On that day she took a brooch and stuck it into the wall, and by chance it sank into the eye of a snake. The next day when she took it out, the snake came trailing along after it. D. Her father said to her, “What did you do [today in particular]?” E. She said to him, “In the evening a poor man came to the door, and everyone was busy with the banquet so no one could take care of him, so I took some of what was given to me and gave it to him.” F. He said to her, “You have carried out a religious duty.” G. R. Aqiba went forth and expounded, “‘But charity delivers from death’ (Prov. 10:2)—not from a grotesque death, but from death itself.”

If piety on the part of an Israelite overcomes astrology, a lapse in piety for even a moment subjects the man to the influence of the stars. Here keeping one’s head covered serves as a sign of fear of Heaven, and the rest follows: III.12 A. It is also the position of R. Nahman bar Isaac that Israel is not subject to the stars. B. For to the mother of R. Nahman bar Isaac the Chaldean said, “Your son will be a thief.” She didn’t let him go bareheaded, saying, “Keep your head covered, so fear of Heaven may be upon you, and pray for mercy.” C. He didn’t know why she said that to him. One day he was in session, studying under a palm tree. His head covering fell off. He lifted his eyes and saw the palm tree, and was overcome by temptation; he climbed up and bit off a cluster of dates with his teeth.

The proof therefore is positive and negative, and the composite leaves no doubt as to the position taken by the Oral Torah, even while dissenting opinion registers.

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III. The Positive Side: Israel on earth matches the stars in the heaven. The Unstated Position of Pesiqta deRab Kahana The positive side is not articulated, but implicit in a single document. To understand how it is expressed, we have to take some time to describe the document that forms the medium for a message of great subtlety and power. A compilation of twenty-eight propositional discourses, Pesiqta deRab Kahana innovates because it appeals for its themes and lections to the liturgical calendar, rather than to a Pentateuchal book. It sets forth expositions of verses of Scripture chosen in accord with the requirements of the liturgical calendar, e.g., a verse important in the Passover lection or one pertinent to the ninth of Ab. The other Midrash compilations of the formative age organize their materials around books of Scripture, e.g., Leviticus Rabbah around passages of Leviticus, Sifra around Leviticus as well. But that is not the case in Pesiqta deRab Kahana, That is why we cannot present an account of how Pesiqta deRab Kahana treats the book of Leviticus, but rather, how Pesiqta deRab Kahana treats the festival of Passover, and so throughout. Pesiqta deRab Kahana abandons the pretense that fixed associative connections derive solely from Scripture. In each exposition, a holy day has told our authorship what topic it wishes to take up— and therefore also what verses of Scripture (if any) prove suitable to that topic and its exposition. These are by seasons, as follows: Adar-Nisan-Sivan Passover-Pentecost: Pisqaot 2-12 (possible exception: Pisqa 6) Tammuz-Ab-Elul The Ninth of Ab: Pisqaot 13-22 Tishré Tishré 1-22: Pisqaot 23-28

Only Pisqa 1 (possibly also Pisqa 6) falls out of synchronic relationship with a long sequence of special occasions in the synagogal lections. The twenty-eight pisqa’ot of Pesiqta deRab Kahana in order follow the synagogal lections from early spring through fall, or, in the Western calendar, from late February or early March through late September or early October, approximately half of the solar year, 27 weeks, and somewhat more than half of the lunar year. On the

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very surface, the basic building block is the theme of a given lectionary Sabbath—that is, a Sabbath distinguished by a particular lection—and not the theme dictated by a given passage of Scripture, let alone the exposition of the language or proposition of such a scriptural verse. The topical program of the document may be defined very simply: expositions of themes dictated by special Sabbaths or festivals and their lections. Pisqa

Base-verse

Topic or Occasion 1. On the day Moses completed (Num. 7:1) Torah-lection for the Sabbath of Hanukkah 2. When you take the census (Ex. 30:12) Torah-lection for the Sabbath of Sheqalim first of the four Sabbaths prior to the advent of Nisan, in which Passover falls 3. Remember Amalek (Deut. 25:17-19) Torah-lection for the Sabbath of Zakhor second of the four Sabbaths prior to the advent of Nisan, in which Passover falls 4. Red heifer (Num. 19:1ff.) Torah-lection for the Sabbath of Parah third of the four Sabbaths prior to the advent of Nisan, in which Passover falls. 5. This month (Ex. 12:1-2) Torah-lection for the Sabbath of Hahodesh fourth of the four Sabbaths prior to the advent of Nisan, in which Passover falls 6. My offerings (Num. 28:1-4) Torah-lection for the New Moon which falls on a weekday 7. It came to pass at midnight (Ex. 12:29-32) Torah-lection for the first day of Passover 8. The first sheaf (Lev. 23:11) Torah-lection for the second day of Passover on which the first sheaves of barley were harvested and waved as an offering 9. When a bull or sheep or goat is born (Lev. 22:26) Lection for Passover 10. You shall set aside a tithe (Deut. 14:22) Torah-lection for Sabbath during Passover in the Land of Israel or for the eighth day of Passover outside of the Land of Israel 11. When Pharaoh let the people go (Ex. 13:17-18) Torah-lection for the Seventh Day of Passover

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12. In the third month (Ex. 19:1ff.) Torah-lection for Pentecost 13. The words of Jeremiah (Jer. 1:1-3) Prophetic lection for the first of three Sabbaths prior to the Ninth of Ab 14. Hear (Jer. 2:4-6) 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28.

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Prophetic lection for the second of three Sabbaths prior to the Ninth of Ab How lonely sits the city (Lam. 1:1-2) Prophetic lection for the third of three Sabbaths prior to the Ninth of Ab Comfort (Is. 40:1-2) Prophetic lection for the first of three Sabbaths following the Ninth of Ab But Zion said (Is. 49:14-16) Prophetic lection for the second of three Sabbaths following the Ninth of Ab O afflicted one, storm tossed (Is. 54:11-14) Prophetic lection for the third of three Sabbaths following the Ninth of Ab I even I am he who comforts you (Is. 51:12-15) Prophetic lection for the fourth of three Sabbaths following the Ninth of Ab Sing aloud, O barren woman (Is. 54:1ff.) Prophetic lection for the fifth of three Sabbaths following the Ninth of Ab Arise, Shine (Is. 60:1-3) Prophetic lection for the sixth of three Sabbaths following the Ninth of Ab I will greatly rejoice in the Lord (Is. 61:10-11) Prophetic lection for the seventh of three Sabbaths following the Ninth of Ab The New Year No base verse indicated. The theme is God’s justice and judgment. Return O Israel to the Lord your God (Hos. 14:1-3) Prophetic lection for the Sabbath of Repentance between New Year and Day of Atonement Selihot No base verse indicated. The theme is God’s forgiveness. After the death of the two sons of Aaron (Lev. 16:1ff.) Torah-lection for the Day of Atonement And you shall take on the first day (Lev. 23:39-43) Torah-lection for the first day of the Festival of Tabernacles On the eighth day (Num. 29:35-39) Torah-lection for the Eighth Day of Solemn Assembly

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This catalogue draws our attention to three eccentric pisqa’ot, distinguished by their failure to build discourse upon the base verse. These are No. 4, which may fairly claim that its topic, the red cow, occurs in exact verbal formulation in the verses at hand; No. 23, the New Year, and No. 25, Selihot. The last-named may or may not take an integral place in the structure of the whole. But the middle item, the New Year, on the very surface is essential to a structure that clearly wishes to follow the line of holy days onward through the Sabbath of Repentance, the Day of Atonement, the Festival of Tabernacles, and the Eighth Day of Solemn Assembly. These synagogal discourses, read in their entirety, form a coherent statement of three, now familiar, propositions: God loves Israel: That love is unconditional, and Israel’s response to God must be obedience to the religious duties that God has assigned, which will produce merit. Israel’s obedience to God is what will save Israel. That means doing the religious duties as required by the Torah, which is the mark of God’s love for—and regeneration of—Israel. The tabernacle symbolizes the union of Israel and God. When Israel does what God asks above, Israel will prosper down below. If Israel remembers Amalek down below, God will remember Amalek up above and will wipe him out. A mark of Israel’s loyalty to God is remembering Amalek. God does not require the animals that are sacrificed, since man could never match God’s appetite, if that were the issue, but the savor pleases God (as a mark of Israel’s loyalty and obedience). The first sheaf returns to God God’s fair share of the gifts that God bestows on Israel, and those who give it benefit, while those who hold it back suffer. Observing religious duties, typified by the rites of The Festival, Tabernacles, brings a great reward of that merit that ultimately leads to redemption. God’s ways are just, righteous and merciful, as shown by God’s concern that the offspring remain with the mother for seven days. God’s love for Israel is so intense that he wants to hold them back for an extra day after The Festival in order to spend more time with them, because, unlike the nations of the world, Israel knows how to please God. This is a mark of God’s love for Israel.

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astral israel in pesiqta derab kahana IV. GOD

ISRAEL WITH GOD’S

IS REASONABLE AND WHEN IN ACCORD

295

HAS BEEN PUNISHED, IT IS RULES

God forgives penitent Israel and is abundant in mercy. Laughter is vain because it is mixed with grief. A wise person will not expect too much joy. But when people suffer, there ordinarily is a good reason for it. That is only one sign that God is reasonable and that God never did anything lawless and wrong to Israel or made unreasonable demands, and there was, therefore, no reason for Israel to lose confidence in God or to abandon him. God punished Israel to be sure. But this was done with reason. Nothing happened to Israel of which God did not give fair warning in advance, and Israel’s failure to heed the prophets brought about her fall. And God will forgive a faithful Israel. Even though the Israelites sinned by making the golden calf, God forgave them and raised them up. On the New Year, God executes justice, but the justice is tempered with mercy. The rites of the New Year bring about divine judgment and also forgiveness because of the merit of the fathers. Israel must repent and return to the Lord, who is merciful and will forgive them for their sins. The penitential season of the New Year and Day of Atonement is the right time for confession and penitence, and God is sure to accept penitence. By exercising his power of mercy, the already-merciful God grows still stronger in mercy. V. GOD

WILL SAVE

ISRAEL

PERSONALLY AT A TIME AND

CIRCUMSTANCE OF HIS OWN CHOOSING

Israel may know what the future redemption will be like, because of the redemption from Egypt. The paradox of the red cow, that what imparts uncleanness, namely touching the ashes of the red cow, produces cleanness, is part of God’s ineffable wisdom, which man cannot fathom. Only God can know the precise moment of Israel’s redemption. That is something man cannot find out on his own. But God will certainly fulfill the predictions of the prophets about Israel’s coming redemption. The Exodus from Egypt is the paradigm of the coming redemption. Israel has lost Eden—but can come home, and, with God’s help, will. God’s unique power is shown through Israel’s unique suffering. In God’s own time, he will redeem Israel. To develop this point, the authorship proceeds to further facts, worked out in its propositional discourses. The lunar calendar, par-

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ticular to Israel, marks Israel as favored by God, for the new moon signals the coming of Israel’s redemption, and the particular new moon that will mark the actual event is that of Nisan. When God chooses to redeem Israel, Israel’s enemies will have no power to stop him, because God will force Israel’s enemies to serve Israel, because of Israel’s purity and loyalty to God. Israel’s enemies are punished, and what they propose to do to Israel, God does to them. Both directly and through the prophets, God is the source of true comfort, which he will bring to Israel. Israel thinks that God has forsaken them. But it is Israel who forsook God, God’s love has never failed, and will never fail. Even though he has been angry, his mercy still is near and God has the power and will to save Israel. God has designated the godly for himself and has already promised to redeem them. He will assuredly do so. God personally is the one who will comfort Israel. While Israel says there is no comfort, in fact, God will comfort Israel. Zion/ Israel is like a barren woman, but Zion will bring forth children, and Israel will be comforted. Both God and Israel will bring light to Zion, which will give light to the world. The rebuilding of Zion will be a source of joy for the entire world, not for Israel alone. God will rejoice in Israel, Israel in God, like bride and groom. VI. Theology of Pesiqta deRab Kahana Pesiqta de Rab Kahana’s compilers thus register standard points. What we have here is a new way of conveying a familiar theological proposition. But what is new makes all the difference. Consider the unfolding message imposed by Pesiqta deRab Kahana upon the lectionary cycle and essentially distinct from it. From Hanukkah through Pentecost, Israel in nature’s time celebrates its meeting with God in the Temple. Then follow the days of desiccation and death, three weeks of mourning, when Israel’s rebellion against God brings about God’s abandonment of the Temple. With Israel’s rebellion fully requited in the disaster, there succeed the seven Sabbaths of consolation for the penitent, corporate Israel. Then, correspondingly, come the Days of Awe, the individual Israelite’s time to recapitulate in his own being the main lines of corporate Israel’s story of sin, punishment, suffering and atonement and the rest. The Days of Awe, the New Year and the Day of Atonement, marked by repentance for sin, atonement, and prayer for forgiveness, then cor-

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respond to the days from the seventeenth of Tammuz to the ninth of Ab and the weeks following. At the end follows the climactic moment, the Festival par excellence, Tabernacles, with the promise of renewal. That program, laid out in the lectionary cycle superimposed on the Pentateuchal one, presents the main points of Rabbinic theology in its doctrine that builds on the correspondence of Adam and Israel, Eden and the Land. And this Rabbinization of the liturgical experience does not match the way in which the Pentateuchal lections, whether annual or triennial, organize the sacred calendar of synagogue worship. A curious disjuncture imposes itself on the two distinct sequences, [1] the narrative-historical sequence of the Pentateuch, [2] the paradigmatic of the lunar cycle. The Pentateuchal lectionary cycle recapitulates the narrative sequence from Adam to the border of the promised land. By extension through Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings, the narrative (if not the lectionary) cycle ends where it began: loss of Eden, loss of Jerusalem. By contrast, the lectionary program of Pesiqta deRab Kahana hardly works through the same narrative in the same sequence at all. There is no beginning, middle, and end, constructed in a teleological sequence out of the narrative history of Israel. Now, the events of the natural year, signified in the movement of the lunar months correlated with the solar seasons, built around the first full moon after the vernal and autumnal equinoxes in particular, do match certain moments in Israel’s life. But these are not in the temporal order so paramount in the lectionary narrative from Genesis through Numbers plus Deuteronomy. They follow their own order and sequence. The occasions of nature matched by moments in Israel’s pattern of conduct and its consequence thus are removed from the narrative framework, e.g., of Genesis through Kings. Events are no longer unique, linear, sequential—teleological. They now are formed into moments of an exemplary character, out of time altogether, out of phase with the Pentateuchal-narrative setting. Thought is no longer teleological but rather paradigmatic. No wonder, then, that Pesiqta deRab Kahana starts where it does, with the rededication of the Temple signified by Hanukkah. In the repertoire of events gathered in the document, that is the only logical starting point; the alternative, the end point, is impossible. That is then followed by the leap to the four Sabbaths preparatory to Passover, with the rest in sequence! With the preparations for the

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celebration of Israel’s beginning in the Exodus and at Sinai marking the starting point, the rest of the natural year lays itself out against the main lines of the liturgical year. There is then this cycle: (1) the preparation of the Temple, dedication, then purification; (2) the beginnings at Passover-Pentecost, (3) the catastrophe of Tammuz-Ab, the season of death, then the consolation quick to follow, and at the end, (4) the recapitulation of the same cycle in Elul and Tishré—sin, punishment, atonement, consolation and renewal, as the life-cycle of nature and the rhythm of Israelite existence correspond and signify, each, the reliability and renewal of the other. VII. The Unique Theological Perspective of Pesiqta deRab Kahana Change the order and the entire construction collapses into gibberish. What is unique in the document’s theology thus emerges not from the discrete statements but only when we see the total message in lectionary context. Pesiqta’s “text” is nature, not Scripture— the passage of the seasons, on the one side, and the sequence of lunar months, on the other, as these correlate and are correlated with exemplary occasions in Israel’s existence. The Pisqa’ot follow the sequence of nature’s year, as I have already stressed. Internally, the individual Pisqa finds coherence in the unfolding of the message that pertains to that occasion in nature and history. So Pesiqta deRab Kahana does not organize its discourse around Scripture at all. The base-verses all are selected utterly out of the context of the books of Scripture in which they occur. Chosen for a focus are those passages of Scripture that speak to liturgical occasions set by the passage of the moon and the solar seasons in the heavens. And the sequence and sense of coherence then derive from the lunar-solar calendar, that alone. Pesiqta deRab Kahana therefore forms an exercise in correlating Israel’s affairs on earth with the movement of the heavenly bodies. Israel’s history, linear and sequential, no longer governs. Now exemplary moments, chosen out of time and not arranged in temporal sequence, define matters. Hence—history set aside, its sequence no longer pertinent— the natural, seasonal passage of the moon in the heavens signals paradigmatic moments in Israel’s life on earth. Israel on earth responds—and corresponds—to the heavenly bodies above. It would

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claim more than the document establishes to describe Pesiqta deRab Kahana as an exercise in astral religion—but not by much. The parts and the whole: The parts count only as part of the whole; seen one by one, they find counterparts in other documents, if not verbatim then in proposition or implication. It is only as part of a whole possessing its own logic of coherent discourse that we grasp that logic and understand the documentary program and message. When we look back over the theological compositions and composites, we discern the sequential unfolding of the document’s themes. These form a continuous statement, with a beginning, middle, and end: beginning with the dedication of the Temple/tabernacle, ending with the climactic moments of Tabernacles (including the Eighth Day of Solemn Assembly). They therefore turn out to conform to a required, logical order. By that I mean, if we change the sequence of themes in any detail, situating one theme somewhere other than in its present location, and the entire document falls to pieces. Its logic and cogency then derive from the lunar calendar, which signals moments in Israel’s encounter with God through the natural life of the Land and its seasons, rainy, then dry, then rainy, spring, summer, autumn. VIII. Two cycles of time joined In their present sequence and only in that sequence, the purposeful ordering of the document’s theological propositions emerge. And these represent a decision by the authorship of the document. They bring into relationship two cycles of time: historical-narrative and natural-paradigmatic. The one—the historical-narrative built on teleology—recapitulates the cycle of synagogue lections of the Pentateuch, the one that sets into sequence the events of humanity’s history from creation, through the fall, past the flood, to the formation of Israel as a family and its reformation as a kingdom of priests and a holy people. It is the story of Israel’s recapitulation of Adam’s experience, with its calamity but, in the case of Israel when repentant, also with the promise of a different ending. The natural-paradigmatic, highlighted, among the Rabbinic Midrash compilations, only here, is the cycle of the seasons, as these flow in sequence from the dedication of the Temple through its rites on distinguished occasions defined by the movement of heavenly

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bodies, the moon correlated with the solar seasons. It is nature’s logic, heaven’s logic—a different mode of organizing time altogether, one in which the paradigm of Israel’s existence is recast. It is transformed from a linear sequence of one-time historical events into a pattern of recurrent moments in nature. These heavenly occasions capture points of intersection between Israel and God, corresponding to the unfolding of the seasons—hence, in the language used earlier, “natural-paradigmatic.” The details correspond. And why not? For both cycles focus upon the same entity, Israel in relationship to God. But the one, the established lectionary cycle from Genesis through Deuteronomy, tells a story, and the other, the supererogatory lectionary cycle of particular Sabbaths and special occasions, celebrates events in the heavens and their corresponding moments in Israel’s eternal existence. The narrative-teleological cycle conveys its messages through the story that it tells. By the natural-paradigmatic cycle these messages are abstracted from that story and set forth as propositions of a general character. The upshot may be simply stated. In bypassing the Pentateuchal cycle altogether, the authorship of Pesiqta deRab Kahana has adopted an intellectual structure of its own. It is one that is different from the unfolding of Israel’s life in time through a sequence of one-time, particular events: the day this happened, the time that remarkable, unique event took place. Sequence is everything, story nothing. The sequence invokes that logic to which I have already made reference: the logic of Israel’s moral, covenanted existence, its life with God. Pesiqta deRab Kahana builds upon its own, cosmic sense of world order. It makes its own judgment on the meaning of the cyclical sequence of the movement of the heavenly bodies. It defines in its own way the encounter of Israel and God, in earth and in heaven, always in correspondence. This is, then, a different way of framing Israel’s and God’s relationship from the established one that begins with Genesis and concludes with Deuteronomy, the familiar comparison of Adam and Israel, Eden and the Land. IX. The theology of astral Israel and the reading of Scripture The theology of astral Israel bears its consequences for the reading of Scripture. Now the times and the seasons embody heaven’s ac-

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count of Israel on earth. Scripture is not the only voice of God, nature’s time and sequence speak for him as well. And, it follows, if Scripture is no longer the sole supernatural message, then Israel in time no longer follows a simple, linear sequence, this happened, then that; Israel did this, with that result. Rather we have a perspective on matters formed from Heaven’s view: this season responds to Israel’s conduct in that circumstance, this event in the heavens correlates with that activity of Israel on earth. The account bears a cyclicality that the Pentateuchal narrative does not possess. Thus the document viewed whole imposes upon the cycle of narrative—the story of Israel in time—that other cycle, the cycle of nature. One may characterize the resulting cycle as a competing, or at least, as a correlative, mode of recapitulating Israel’s record from its beginnings to now. Annually Israel dedicates the Temple, prepares it for the pilgrims, celebrates the advent of freedom and receives the Torah. Annually Israel rebels against the Torah and sins, is punished through the loss of the Temple. Annually Israel atones and repents, and God consoles and forgives. And annually Israelites recapitulate that same cycle of sin and atonement, consolation and forgiveness, so that, year by year, the rains follow the Festival, Tabernacles, in a renewal of nature’s—and Israel’s— cycle. What has happened to the scriptural story, which is linear, sequential, and historical, not cyclical, episodic, and exemplary? Pesiqta deRab Kahana takes over and reshapes the results of Israel’s continuous narrative from Creation to destruction and the hope of restoration and incorporates the linear into the paradigmatic structure. The narrative tells of Adam’s loss of Eden, then—with Genesis through Kings in hand—Israel’s loss of the Land. The consequences to be drawn from that story—sin leads to punishment, but repentance leads to restoration and renewal—define the paradigm discerned in the very movement of the moon and the solar seasons by Pesiqta deRab Kahana. At issue then is how to break the cycle signified by the natural year. Israel has the power, any time, any year, to disrupt that cycle and inaugurate the end of history and nature as then known. So when I say that Pesiqta deRab Kahana has folded the results of Israel’s narrative into a pattern yielded by the very givens of the natural world and its times and seasons, I refer to the recapitulation, in reference to the natural year, of the consequences to be drawn from the comparison of Israel and Adam, the

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Land and Eden, that the scriptural account, read continuously, has yielded. Then the continuous, linear, one-directional narrative is folded into the cycle of nature’s time, marked by seasons and events in heaven, with their counterpart. That is the celebration of nature at the altar of the Temple through offerings that signify particular events in the unfolding of the natural year. These, further, are correlated with paradigmatic moments in Israel’s year. So the story of the Temple on earth recapitulates in Israel’s setting the story of the passage of the seasons. But that is with this proviso. The seasons follow the course that they do because they signal the unfolding existence of Israel, with special reference to its Temple altar, where God and Israel meet. Because Israel repeats its conduct, nature recapitulates its cycles. But there will come a new heaven and a new earth, when Israel completes the work badly begun by Adam. X. The absolute, fixed order of the document once more Now we see the basis of the claim that the tight logic of the document was such that changing the position of a single exposition or pisqa’ will have ruined the entire construction. A moment of reflection on the articulated plan of the whole shows that for a construction with its focus on the Temple, nexus of heaven and earth, the sole possible starting point was Hanukkah: today the Temple commences. Then what can have followed? The only logical continuation is with the four Sabbaths prior to the advent of Nisan, with Passover following two weeks later. These Sabbaths then prepare the way for the pilgrim festival, Passover-Pentecost. From the climactic season, Passover-Pentecost, with the end of the rains, follows the long dry season, marked by the Temple’s destruction. Then comes Israel’s repentance. That is in two correlated phases, corporate and individual. First is the corporate with the ninth of Ab, then the individual with the penitential season of Elul followed by the New Year, the day of remembrance, and the Day of Atonement. So is realized the time of renewal marked by judgment of the year gone by and renewal of life in the year to come. Once the natural year, celebrated in Temple rite, defines the heart of the matter, then the matter was set. That is why, within the logic of the natural year embodied in the Temple rites, there is no other sequence

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that can have served, no other starting point that can have realized the governing program of the document viewed whole. Here—as mediated by the theology of Pesiqta deRab Kahana— is how Israel encounters that other reading of the Torah. That is besides the one beginning with Creation and ending at the border of the Land of Israel in the lectionary cycle encompassing Genesis through Deuteronomy, week by week. The document’s authorship has undertaken to expound the Torah in the sequence of the natural year in such a way as annually to tell the tale of Israel’s conduct embodied in the passage of the seasons, celebrated in the realization of the Temple, where God and Israel meet. The plan is therefore to show how what happens to the Temple, then, now, and in time to come, signifies the relationship of God and corporate Israel and recapitulates the relationship of God and the individual Israelite. Then the liturgical lections of the synagogue’s special occasions. It is the story encompassing the Festival cycle and related, special Sabbaths. Autonomous of the sequence of Sabbath lections that begins with Genesis and concludes with Deuteronomy, it makes its own selections of appropriate occasions and their inexorable themes. In its context, its statement is unique. XI. Nature and renewal Through its lectionary cycle, Pesiqta deRab Kahana makes Israel’s progress through the year of nature into an annual journey of renewal. So while Pesiqta deRab Kahana participates in the common theology of Rabbinic Judaism, it affords a rare theological moment within that same Judaism. That is the moment at which theology becomes natural, by which I mean, an interpretation, a realization, of nature. Here theology as intellectual proposition gives way to theology as the explanation of realized experience, both corporate and individual, of nature in all its majesty. No wonder, then, that the issue of the end of days, the resolution of linear time in its Messianic climax, plays so negligible a role in the document. Cyclicality in nature has taken over and assigned a marginal position to those critical components of the historical-Messianic view of Israel’s existence, the end of days and the advent of the Messiah. Here, consolation means restoration, and the Temple is the focus. Then nature takes over and the movements of the heavenly bodies become determinative. And withal Israel makes all the difference. In the

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unfolding of the natural year within the theology of Pesiqta deRab Kahana, Israel lives out its theology of repentance and restoration in the inexorable passage of the times and the seasons. All that history can contribute is the unique event that can be transformed into a paradigmatic moment, part of a recurrent pattern. XII. HOW PESIQTA DERAB KAHANA FORMS A THEOLOGICAL STATEMENT OF ASTRAL ISRAEL Israel on earth embodies the course of the moon and the solar seasons in heaven, and when Israel mends its way, all of astral nature will respond. All else forms a commentary and is made up of details. The synagogue through the paramount Torah-cycle calls Israel to rehearse, week by week, the chapters of Israel’s formative life: Genesis for the foundation of Israel, Exodus through Numbers, then Deuteronomy, for the definition of Israel. Then, on a given week, Israel once more recapitulates through its paradigmatic and definitive narrative the earthly story of itself. This week the world was made, that week recalls the Flood, the next, the call to Abraham, and so throughout. So through the lectionary cycle, annually or triennially, the past is made present, the present resituated in the past, historical time, marked by unique, one-time events, is recapitulated, the past both recognized and renewed. In that context, we recall, Pesiqta deRab Kahana has made a remarkable choice. It is to impose upon the story of Israel’s formation and definition another dimension, another layer of being: the heavenly. It is now Israel in the context—indeed, in control—of natural time, marked by the stars and the seasons. The Sabbaths of Joseph’s story, for example, that in the annual lectionary cycle come in Kislev in accord with the annual cycle of lections, embody also the occasion of the rededication of the Temple. But these do not intersect. While an exegetical initiative may link the one with the other (reading Scripture to underscore the Temple in the patrimony of Benjamin, for instance, joining the two distinct themes), that is a mere serendipity. In fact, Pesiqta deRab Kahana invokes a distinct layer of Israelite being. Our review of the theological components of the document identifies that layer of being: it concerns Israel’s celebration in the Temple, its loss of the Temple, and its hope for forgiveness and restoration of the Temple. It is no wonder that ten of the twen-

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ty-eight Pisqa’ot concern themselves with the destruction and consequent consolation. Nor is it surprising that the following sequence of heavenly events—those of Elul and Tishré—recapitulates the pattern of Tammuz-Ab! The one concerns corporate Israel, the other Israel as Israelite, one by one, all before God but judged as individuals. So what Pesiqta deRab Kahana contributes to the Israel’s encounter with God in the Torah is the matter of the coming consolation and redemption. That is now portrayed as heaven’s promise. This survey shows that Pesiqta de Rab Kahana makes a theological statement that is, in its own terms, entirely cogent. On eschatological matters Pesiqta deRab Kahana has its own points of interest, even while concurring with the main propositions given here. The document wishes to underscore that what God is going to do he has already done; that what will happen in the ultimate redemption is already prefigured in this world’s experience. What will happen at the end of time has already happened at the beginning, and the advent of the end of time will mark the restoration of the condition of Eden. These propositions do not fit tightly with the framing of matters in more general terms. For the correspondence of end to beginning, while part of the repertoire of the governing theology, hardly limits the eschatological doctrine of that theology. But it is the main point of Pesiqta deRab Kahana. So the theological structure of Pesiqta deRab Kahana is asymmetrical with that of the Aggadic documents viewed systematically; but it coheres. Where Pesiqta deRab Kahana intersects, it conforms in conception with the encompassing system. But the proportions and the emphases are its own. XIII. Pesiqta de R. Kahana’s theology in the context of the Rabbinic system and structure Pesiqta deRab Kahana takes an essential role in the larger theological program of Rabbinic Judaism. This it does by superimposing, upon the Pentateuchal story of Israel’s beginning, the narrative of the ending—destruction but also atonement, forgiveness, renewal, for both corporate Israel and the Israelite. The reliable heavens then guarantee what is to come about, the seasons in their sequence embody the promise of the coming redemption: consolation and restoration following repentance, atonement, and forgiveness. The summer drought, the advent of the early rains—these now are made,

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in the very heart of synagogue liturgy, to signify the existential reality of Israel in its encounter with God. What makes Pesiqta deRab Kahana’s revision of the lectionary encounter powerful and persuasive ought not to be missed. It is its emphasis upon the correspondence of the cycle of nature with the exemplary moments of Israel’s existence, the whole abstracted from linear history. The dedication and celebration in the Temple, loss of the Temple, atonement and renewal and restoration correspond to nature’s cycle. Then, after the season of desiccation and death, the renewal signified by the winter rains, comes the climax of Passover-Pentecost. Then the sequence concludes with the advent of the summer’s drought, followed by the renewal once more. We should not miss the radical change represented by this reading of the cycle of nature that defines the rhythm of the Israelite year. While the lunar-solar calendar conventionally interpreted knows two climactic moments, the first full moon after the vernal equinox, then the same after the autumnal equinox, for Passover and Pentecost, respectively, Pesiqta deRab Kahana has constructed a single, continuous cyclical sequence, as I have explained. Events of nature, the unfolding of the lunar year, and events of history, the unfolding of Israel’s life in historical time, are formed into a single, unitary construction. That is, furthermore, transformed into a paradigm of the life of not only corporate Israel but also the individual Israelite. Nature, Israel, the Israelite—all now are given their moment in the lectionary life of the synagogue. XIV. Astral Israel in Pesiqta deRab Kahana Implicit in every Pisqa’, then is the intent to highlight Israel as the counterpart, on earth, to the heavenly bodies. And, as I stress, the unfolding of Israelite existence on earth, the patterns of its relationship with God—these correspond down here to the movement of the moon and sun in the heavens above. But though taken with that correlation, we should not miss the point: the stars in their courses respond to Israel’s conduct. The cycle of time as told by Pesiqta deRab Kahana treats Israel not as a principal player in world history on earth alone, as does the Pentateuchal cycle as framed by the Rabbinic masters. Rather, Israel now represents a cosmic presence, a heavenly actor on the natural stage of the Temple, along

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with the moon in relationship to the sun and the passage of the natural seasons. That is why Pesiqta deRab Kahana is unique among the Midrash compilations of the formative age of Rabbinic Judaism. No other Midrash compilation organizes itself around that conception of Israel in relationship with heaven that governs here. No Midrash compilation viewed whole but Pesiqta deRab Kahana proposes that what happens to Israel on earth correlates with the movement of the heavenly bodies, the moon and the sun in particular. It is the Midrash in the formative canon of Rabbinic Judaism that endows Israel with astral setting and dimensions, raising Israel from earth to heaven. XV. Israel is not subject to astral influence because Israel forms a Celestial Body Discerning in its activities the recurrent pattern of the skies, Pesiqta deRab Kahana substitutes theology for astrology. Then, along with the Bavli’s famous composite, “Israel is not subject to planetary influences” (Bavli Shabbat 152b-153a) it forms a kind of anti-astrology, one might say. That is because the message throughout, normative for Rabbinic Judaism, is, Israel makes choices and bears responsibility for those choices. So it relates to the movement of the moon and the sun through the seven levels of heaven signified by the fixed stars. But this is not in the way in which others are subject to the same heavenly movements. Israel drives its own chariot through the skies, the nations are merely passengers on a chariot they do not drive.

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CHAPTER XIII

WHAT, EXACTLY, DO WE MEAN BY “AN EVENT” IN JUDAISM? ADDRESS AT COLLÈGE DE FRANCE, PARIS, JANUARY, 1990 In an exact sense, “event” has no meaning at all in Judaism, since Judaism forms culture through other than historical modes of organizing existence. Without the social construction of history, there also is no need for the identification of events, that is, individual and unique happenings that bear consequence. That is because, within the system and structure of Judaism, history forms no taxon, assuredly not the paramount one, and, it must follow, no happening is unique, and, on its own, no event bears consequence. These statements rest upon modes of the analysis of history as the fabrication of culture, including a religious culture, and require us to review the recent formation of thought on history as culturally ordered, and on the event as “contingent realization of the cultural pattern,” for it is only in that context that we may make sense, also, of the representation of both history and its raw materials, events, in Judaism in its definitive canon. Until modes of historical thinking of a social scientific character got under way—beginning, as a matter of fact, in this most distinguished collegium itself—narrative history, ordinarily a paraphrastic chronicle, served as a medium for organizing and explaining perceived experience. That kind of history enjoyed the status of objective truth, a principle of explanation of self-evident validity. Its generative data, events, meaning, happenings of self-evident consequence, defined the foci of learning. They formed an episteme ultimately formulated as the search for precisely what happened. When people contemplated the past, it was because they proposed through such precise knowledge to explain whatever mattered in the present. What

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they chose to interpret in the present then defined their curiosity about the past. They then identified out of the unlimited agenda of the past those things that mattered, and these they called events, occasions of consequence, as distinct from undifferentiated and unperceived happenings—from eating breakfast to losing one’s keys— which of course bear no material consequence in the explanation of the world. Now it hardly mattered, in the long era during which historical study predominated as the medium for the explanation of the social order, that the received manner of doing history as a mode of organizing and explaining experience involved a series of logical fallacies. Explaining the outcome by reference to a sequence of ordered events, after all, formed an intellectually legitimate way of appeal to the intellectually illegitimate argument, post hoc, ergo propter hoc. So too, explanation without verification through a process of generalization, interpretation without a process of comparison and contrast, analysis as mere paraphrase of received accounts—these traits of historical learning did not attract attention. Historical explanation of the world, specific and ad hoc and episodic, found no competition and enjoyed the standing of self-evident truth. It would carry us far afield to trace the long history of historical explanation of the social order by appeal to the definition, selection, and sequence of events. Chronicles and other exercises in Listenwissenschaft go back to remote antiquity. But history as arbiter of truth, history as mediator of sensibility and source of explanation—these honored roles in the court of intellect came to history only in the formative centuries of our own civilization. We should, after all, have to trace the path back in immediacy not to Scripture but to the Protestant Reformation. Its insistence on the priority of historical fact, deriving from a mythic age of perfection, in dictating the legitimacy of social reality in the present moment, forms a fine example of historicistic theology. Cutting through the detritus and sediment of the long centuries of increment and accumulation, therefore appealing not to Listenwissenschaft, but to a different, more autonomous kind of judgment altogether, for the logic of their discourse, the Reformation theologians identified history, the record of what happened (in this case) in Scripture, as the instrument for the validation of reform. Reform then would accomplish the renewal of times past, times perfect, appealing therefore to the court of appeal formed by history.

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part six: chapter xiii

But history of a particular order, events of a very specific character, reaching their definition in the second way station, beyond the Reformation, in our quest for the self-evidence of history as a medium of social explanation. And that is the nineteenth century with its interest in historical explanation of not merely the life of faith but the reality of society, above all, the formation of the nation. Here at the Collège de France I stand in the right place to speak of the appeal to history, once more with its canon of well-chosen events, in explanation of the social order, this time, the “we” of the nation, the other-ness of other peoples. If history with its proof-texts in selfevidently probative events served the purpose of religious reform, it provided a still more abundant source for explaining the self-evidence of the nation-state. No wonder, then, that in the American State of Texas, once an independent nation, all school children must study Texas-history in three elaborate sequences, but American history in only one. No wonder, too, that Zionism precipitated the massive rewriting of the histories of Jews as a single, unitary Jewish history, with a beginning, middle, and end, with the self-evident message of Zionism as its ubiquitous proposition. The State of Texas and the State of Israel exemplify the uses that for so long guaranteed for history a principal place in the academy, for both appeal to facts to validate the claims of social ideology. Now it is only in the recent past that we have begun to recognize that history forms a discourse of contemporary taste and judgment. Just in our own times people have realized that events become eventful only because we make them so. Even now, in some circles it is still news that history is culturally ordered, and events are defined and identified as statements of an intensely contemporary perception. It follows, we now understand, that all histories are the creation of an eternal present, that is, those moments in which histories are defined and distinguished, in which events are identified and assigned consequence, and in which sequences of events, “this particular thing happened here and therefore...,” are strung together, pearls on a string, to form ornaments of intellect. And, with that understanding well in hand, fully recognizing that history is one of the grand fabrications of the human intellect, facts not discovered but invented, explanations that themselves form cultural indicators of how things are in the here and now, we find ourselves no longer historians of ideas of history, or analysts of the history of culture,

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let alone practitioners of the dread narrative history that makes of historical writing a work of elegant imagination. We find ourselves, rather, archaeologists, working from the surface, that is known, through the detritus of the unknown, in quest of a material understanding of a reality that is not known but for its artifacts, not susceptible of explanation and understanding except in categories and terms that are defined by those same artifacts. And that quest is, we all recognize, not a very smooth one. The metaphor of archaeology for historical study, chosen for obvious reasons, is jarring, because, after all, nearly all historical evidence is in writing, and we are used to thinking of archaeology in terms of the pick and the shovel. But it is an apt metaphor, nonetheless, for it teaches us how to examine the written evidence on which most of us work in our cultural analysis of we know not what. The archaeologist (in theory at least) peels back from the surface to the underneath, and so must we. The archaeologist knows no categories other than the boundaries of the dig and the strata of the dig, knows no categories, imposes no categories, invents no categories that are not there. Then the things dug up define the categories and impose their own questions, their location in situ defining their “text,” by which I mean, their circumstance, their relationships with other artifacts in situ defining their context, their stratum in situ dictating the matrix of interpretation. For us, the site is the document, and our task is to treat the document as not a candidate for paraphrase, that is, for descriptive historical study within the premise of explaining how things were and how they got to be the way they are. For us the task is to treat the document—as we have all learned from the faculty of this college—as a cultural artifact, as evidence for the working out of a social order in small detail. I fear these remarks have suggested in your mind, however generous your spirit, that I have come to Paris to reinvent the intellectual wheel that, after all, has already been invented here. But then consider how fresh and remarkable are the initial results of the antihistoricistic revolution you have sparked. For the consequences for hermeneutics, which I have outlined in the analogy of the archaeology of knowledge, are such that just now we cannot have too many examples of what only recently has become obvious. In sustaining the self-evidence of a new order of learning, I mean to take part in the task of rereading cases and reconsidering problems long thought settled. In the present instance at stake is the proposition that the

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definition of events forms an acutely concrete statement of the larger systemic principles, and when we understand how a system defines events, we grasp the working of that system. The task is important, even though narrative history in the academy no longer enjoys immediate recognition as how things must be done. For still, in the English language at least, the annual lists of new historical writings devote the larger part of the catalogue to narratives of how things were, explaining how they now are. Analytical history does not yet predominate, and the anthropology of history has achieved its greatest successes in the study of not Europe and its overseas dependencies in North America but the Pacific. And it is equally true that we are trying to teach ourselves to regard written evidence as a cultural artifact, no less than the broken shard dug up in the field. But as a matter of fact, in entire ranges of learning the urgent question remains, did it really happen? And the urgency of the question derives from the conviction that, if so, certain important consequences must follow. The self-evidence of a connection between past and present competes with the view of the systemic character of culture, and we who propose to hold the whole together in a different way from the historical may not yet claim to hold the field. Consequently, we do not waste our energy by exercises in the rehearsal of other modes of reading the writing of prior ages than the historical-historicistic ones. One fresh way of reviewing old things is to ask how the historical invention of history defines and identifies its raw materials. I mean to say, when we know what literary site presents to us as its artifacts, and when we can read those artifacts in our vocation as archaeologists of knowledge, rather than as historians of how things were (perhaps then theologians or story-tellers of how things are connected and so what they mean), then we gain perspective on the new way by contrast to the old. No more telling indicator of the shift in the processes of understanding than the definition of an event comes to hand. For the event is to the composition of history as the atom is to the molecule, the thread to the fabric, or the steel beam to the building. And yet, these diverse metaphors reverse matters. The molecule defines the atoms that it wants (to impute teleology to the inanimate, in the manner of historians), the fabric requires that thread and no other, the building dictates the requirements, as to tensile strength, of its beams. And so, I wish to show, the culture

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identifies the events that explain and justify the culture. And, in consequence, we must ask ourselves, are not the literary records of events so constituted as to dictate the shape of the parts by appeal to the necessities of the whole? For it is my view that the system forms its events, not as a matter of mere consciousness, but as a diktat of culture. History therefore emerges as not the source for the explanation of culture, but rather as the best evidence for the shape, structure, and system that a culture comprises. Let us take as our initial instance not Judaism but a different matter altogether, one that gives us perspective on our question, what, in Judaism, is an event, and how, from Judaism, do we learn about the hermeneutics of events? It is the clash of cultures that produced a long-remembered event indeed, the death of Captain Cook in the Hawaii two hundred years ago. Marshall Sahlins argues1 in behalf of the view, adumbrated in my remarks, that “history is culturally ordered, differently so in different societies, according to meaningful schemes of things.”2 Sahlins further cites Clifford Geertz’s observation that “an event is a unique actualization of a general phenomenon, a contingent realization of the cultural pattern.” Sahlins selects as his probative case the death of Captain Cook, because he is able, through his analysis of exactly what happened, to show the cultural indicators to which “events” testify—and which explain “events.” To state matters briefly, “When the English anchored next year at Kealakekua, Hawaiian priests were able to objectify their interpretation of Cook as the Year-God Lonon, on his annual return to renew the fertility of the land.” Then, when Cook came back to repair the broken main-mast, he violated the rules and had to be, and was, killed. In his “Anthropology of History,” Sahlins states the upshot with lapidary clarity: “different cultural orders have their own modes of historical action, consciousness, and determination—their own historical practice.”3 That is not to argue in favor of historical, let alone intellectual, relativity. It is only to insist upon the study of what a culture, as represented by its documents, defines as its past: the events, their order and connection, the meanings to be derived from 1 In his landmark work, Islands of History (Chicago, 1985: The University of Chicago Press). 2 p. vii. 3 p. 34.

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them. History therefore serves as a capital indicator of the hermeneutics, and hermeneutics defines the system and structure—theirs but ours too—that all together form intellect. When we come to the case of Judaism, we bring with us a substantial intellectual heritage, composed, as a matter of fact, of misinformation or no information. First, we wrongly take for granted that Judaism (whatever else it may be) is the religion of the “Old Testament.” That means to find out the position of practice of Judaism, we need only open Scripture. Then we have as an established fact the utter misrepresentation that Judaism is a historical religion, in that it appeals for its world-view to not myth about gods in heaven but the history of Israel upon earth—interpreted in relationship to the acts of God in heaven to be sure. Whether history in this form materially differs from myth in the Greek form is not at issue here. I take it as a broadly-held conviction, third, that Judaism is a religion that appeals to history, that is, to events, defined in the ordinary way, important happenings, for its source of testing and establishing truth. True, what Scripture’s writers deem events is not to be gainsaid. God’s descending to Sinai surely proves more dramatic than the failure of rain on a village. But to Amos and the Talmudic saages, what does not happen—rain, for instance—defines an event as rich in revelation as what does happen defines an event to the Yahwist, Elohist, and Priestly authors of the strands of the Pentateuch. The fundamentally historical character of Scriptural narratives, with their beginnings, middles, ends, their lessons and their demonstrations— that basic historical character is so broadly held as not to require comment. And so I shall refrain from comment, even though I doubt that anyone in this august assembly can concur, as I cannot concur, that there is a shred of historical consciousness, as distinct from mythic fantasy, in “the Old Testament.” But then, I need hardly rehearse Professor Paul Veyne’s arguments on “the constitutive imagination,” in his Did the Greeks Believe in their Myths?—a book waiting to be written for ancient Israel as well. But Judaism is not only “the religion of the Old Testament.” As a case in the study of the cultural definition of events, only in its full canonical expression does Judaism serve to show us how culture identifies event through its own cognitive processes. Judaism is the religion of not “the Old Testament” but the Torah, and the canonical Torah encompasses “the Old Testament” only as it is

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reworked, as an object of rewriting and revision, in the vast canon of the two Talmuds and the Midrash-compilations that took shape in late antiquity, the first seven centuries C.E., under the title, the Oral Torah. That labor of rewriting and recasting of one thing in light of something else that produced the Judaism of the dual Torah forms a rich set of cases in cultural transformation, in the determination, by a system, of its own past, in the identification, within a system, of its own resources. For, after all, while a system speaks through its canon, and while theologians commonly read the canon to describe the system, in point of fact it is the canon that recapitulates the system, the system that speaks, in detail to be sure, through the canon. When, therefore, we can affirm, with Sahlins, that “the different cultural orders studied by anthropology have their own historicities,” the result of that affirmation is not a conclusion (the relativity of historical knowledge) but a question: how shall we frame history into a cultural indicator? In the case of the Judaism of the dual Torah, the answer to that question proves quite accessible, for that Judaism makes ample use of “the Old Testament” in its account of itself. We should therefore anticipate that the canon of the dual Torah will encompass narrative history, but it does not. We should expect to find therein accounts of events of not only times past but also the present explained by the past, but we do not. We should go in search of the description of one-time, unique happenings— events in the conventional sense—but, if we did, we should return disappointed. The result will be quite opposite. When we read matters properly, we shall find out how to read. For the archaeology of texts uncovers abstract structure in the identification and explication of the concrete event.4 This brings me directly to the problem at hand, what exactly does Judaism mean by events? To answer that question succinctly is simple. When we know how Judaism classifies events, we shall have the answer to the question of definition. So too, when we know how Judaism utilizes events, the heuristic value, the probative standing, of events, we once again shall have our answer. What I shall show is that, in the canonical literature of the Judaism of the dual Torah, formed between the second and the seventh centuries and authoritative to this day, events find their place, within the science of learning 4

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cf. Sahlin, p. 72.

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of Listenwissenschaft that characterizes this literature, along with sorts of things that, for our part, we should not characterize as events at all. Events have no autonomous standing; events are not unique, each unto itself; events have no probative value on their own. Events form cases, along with a variety of other cases, making up lists of things that, in common, point to or prove one thing. Not only so, but events do not make up their own list at all, and this is what I found rather curious when I first noted that fact. Events will appear on the same list as persons, places, things. That means that events not only have no autonomous standing on their own, but also that events constitute no species even within a genus of a historical order. For persons, places, and things in our way of thinking do not belong on the same list as events; they are not of the same order. Within the logic of our own minds, we cannot classify the city, Paris, within the same genus as the event, the declaration of the rights of man, for instance, nor is Sinai of the same order of things as the Torah. What then will you make of a list that encompasses within the same taxic composition events and things? One such list made up of events, persons, and places, is as follows: [1] Israel at the sea; [2] the ministering angels; [3] the tent of meeting; [4] the eternal house [=the Temple]; [5] Sinai. That mixtures an event (Israel redeemed at the sea), a category of sensate being (angels), a location (tent of meeting, Temple), and then Sinai, which can stand for a variety of things but in context stands for the Torah. In such a list an event may or may not stand for a value or a proposition, but it does not enjoy autonomous standing; the list is not defined by the eventfulness of events and their meaning, the compilation of matters of a single genus or even a single species (tent of meeting, eternal house, are the same species here). The notion of event as autonomous, even unique, is quite absent in this taxonomy. Another such list moves from events to other matters altogether, finding the whole subject to the same metaphor, hence homogenized. First come the events that took place at these places or with these persons: Egypt, the sea, Marah, Massah and Meribah, Horeb, the wilderness, the spies in the Land, Shittim, for Achan/Joshua and the conquest of the Land. Now that mixture of places and names clearly intends to focus on particular things that happened, and hence, were the list to which I refer to conclude at this point, we could define an event for Judaism as a happening that bore consequence, taught a lesson or exemplified a truth, in the present case,

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an event matters because it the mixture of rebellion and obedience. But there would then be no doubt that “event” formed a genus unto itself, and that a proper list could not encompass both events, defined conventionally as we should, and also other matters altogether. But the literary culture at hand, this textual community proceeds, in the same literary context, to the following items: [1] the Ten Commandments; [2] the show-fringes and phylacteries; [3] the Shema‘ and the Prayer; [4] the tabernacle and the cloud of the Presence of God in the world to come. Why we invoke, as our candidates for the metaphor at hand, the Ten Commandments, show-fringes and phylacteries, recitation of the Shema‘ and the Prayer, the tabernacle and the cloud of the Presence of God, and the mezuzah, seems to me clear from the very catalogue. These reach their climax in the analogy between the home and the tabernacle, the embrace of God and the Presence of God. So the whole is meant to list those things that draw the Israelite near God and make the Israelite cleave to God. And to this massive catalogue, events are not only exemplary—which historians can concede without difficulty— but also subordinated. They belong on the same list as actions, things, persons, places, because they form an order of being that is not to be differentiated between events (including things that stand for events) and other cultural artifacts altogether. A happening is no different from an object, in which case “event” serves no better, and no worse, than a hero, a gesture or action, recitation of a given formula, or a particular locale, to establish a truth. It is contingent, subordinate, instrumental. I can think of no more apt illustration of Geertz’s interesting judgment: “an event is a unique actualization of a general phenomenon, a contingent realization of the cultural pattern.” And why find that fact surprising, since all history comes to us in writing, and it is the culture that dictates how writing is to take place; that is why history can only paraphrase the affirmations of a system. That is why events recapitulate in acute and concrete ways the system that classifies one thing that happens as event, but another thing is not only not an event but is not classified at all. In the present instance, an event is not at all eventful; it is merely a fact that forms part of the evidence for what is, and what is eventful is not an occasion at all, but a condition, an attitude, a perspective and a viewpoint. Then, it is clear, events are subordinated to the formation of

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attitudes, perspectives, viewpoints—the formative artifacts of not history in the conventional sense but culture in the framework of Sahlins’s generalization, “history is culturally ordered, differently so in different societies, according to meaningful schemes of things.” To make more concrete the evidence on which I have drawn to join the public discussion, let me refer to one important compilation of lists, of the sixth century C.E., Song of Songs Rabbah, a reading of the Song of Songs as a metaphorization of God’s relationship of intense love for Israel, and Israel’s relationship of intense love for God. In that document we find sequences, or combinations, of references to Old Testament persons, events, actions, and the like. These bear the rhetorical emblem, “another matter,” in long lists of composites of well-framed compositions.5 Each entry on a given list will be represented as “another matter,” meaning, another interpretation of reading of a given verse in the Song of Songs. As a matter of fact, however, that “other matter,” one following the other, turns out to be the same matter in other terms. These constructions form lists out of diverse entries. When in Song of Songs Rabbah we have a sequence of items alleged to form taxon, that is, a set of things that share a common taxic indicator, of course what we have is a list. The list presents diverse matters that all together share, and therefore also set forth, a single fact or rule or phenomenon. That is why we can list them, in all their distinctive character and specificity, on a common catalogue of “other things” that pertain all together to one thing. Since, on these lists, we find classified within a single taxon events, persons, places, objects and actions, it is important to understand how they coalesce. The rhetoric is the key-indicator, since it is objective and superficial. When we find the rhetorical formula, “another matter,” that is, davar aher, what follows says the same thing in other words, or at least something complementary and necessary to make some larger point. That is why I insist the constructions form lists. William Scott Green states the matter, in his analysis of a single passage, in these words: Although the interpretations in this passage are formally distinguished from one another...by the disjunctive device davar aher (‘another inter5 I estimate that approximately 80% of the document in bulk is comprised of “another-matter” compositions. The list in this form defines the paramount rhetorical medium and logical structure of the document.

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pretation’), they operate within a limited conceptual sphere and a narrow thematic range.…Thus rather than ‘endless multiple meanings,’ they in fact ascribe to the words ‘doing wonders’ multiple variations of a single meaning.…By providing multiple warrant for that message, the form effectively restricts the interpretive options...6

When we have a sequence of davar-aher passages forming a davaraher construction, the message is cumulative, and the whole as a matter of fact forms a sum greater than that of the parts; it will then be that accumulation that guides us to what is if implicit yet fundamental in the exact sense: at the foundation of matters; there is where we should find that system, order, proportion, cogency that all together we expect a theology to impart to discrete observations about holy matters. In general, “another matter” signals “another way of saying the same thing;” or the formula bears the sense, “these two distinct things add up to one thing,” with the further proviso that both are necessary to make one point that transcends each one. Not only so, but in Song of Songs Rabbah the fixed formula of the davar-aher-compilation points toward fixed formulas of theological thought: sets of coherent verbal-symbols that work together. These “other things” encompass time, space, person and object, action and attitude, and join them all together, for instance, David, Solomon, Messiah at the end of time; this age, the age to come; the Exodus from Egypt, Sinai, the age to come all may appear together within a single list. Let me give a single example of the list that makes it possible to redefine “event” into a category of quite a-historical valence. Chapter V. Song of Songs Rabbah to Song 1:5 V:i.1 A. “I am very dark, but comely, [O daughters of Jerusalem, like the tents of Kedar, like the curtains of Solomon]” (Song 1:5): B. “I am dark” in my deeds. C. “But comely” in the deeds of my forebears. 2. A. “I am very dark, but comely:” B. Said the Community of Israel, “‘I am dark’ in my view, ‘but comely’ before my Creator.” C. For it is written, “Are you not as the children of the Ethiopians to Me, O children of Israel, says the Lord” (Amos 9:7): D. “as the children of the Ethiopians”—in your sight. E. But “to Me, O children of Israel, says the Lord.” 6 In Jacob Neusner with William Scott Green, Writing with Scripture. The Authority and Uses of the Hebrew Bible in the Torah of Formative Judaism (Minneapolis, 1989: Fortress Press), p. 19.

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part six: chapter xiii 3. A. Another interpretation of the verse, ““I am very dark:” in Egypt. B. “but comely:” in Egypt. C. “I am very dark” in Egypt: “But they rebelled against me and would not hearken to me” (Ez. 20:8). D. “but comely” in Egypt: with the blood of the Passover offering and circumcision, “And when I passed by you and saw you wallowing in your blood, I said to you, In your blood live” Ez. 16:6)—in the blood of the Passover. E. “I said to you, In your blood live” Ez. 16:6)—in the blood of the circumcision. 4. A. Another interpretation of the verse, “I am very dark:” at the sea, “They were rebellious at the sea, even the Red Sea” (Ps. 106:7). B. “but comely:” at the sea, “This is my God and I will be comely for him” (Ex. 15:2) [following Simon’s rendering of the verse]. 5. A. “I am very dark:” at Marah, “And the people murmured against Moses, saying, What shall we drink” Ex. 15:24). B. “but comely:” at Marah, “And he cried to the Lord and the Lord showed him a tree, and he cast it into the waters and the waters were made sweet” (Ex. 15:25). 6. A. “I am very dark:” at Rephidim, “And the name of the place was called Massah and Meribah” (Ex. 17:7). B. “but comely:” at Rephidim, “And Moses built an altar and called it by the name ‘the Lord is my banner’ (Ex. 17:15). 7. A. “I am very dark:” at Horeb, “And they made a calf at Horeb” (Ps. 106:19). B. “but comely:” at Horeb, “And they said, All that the Lord has spoken we will do and obey” (Ex. 24:7). 8. A. “I am very dark:” in the wilderness, ““How often did they rebel against him in the wilderness” (Ps. 78:40). B. “but comely:” in the wilderness at the setting up of the tabernacle, “And on the day that the tabernacle was set up” (Num. 9:15). 9. A. “I am very dark:” in the deed of the spies, “And they spread an evil report of the land” (Num. 13:32). B. “but comely:” in the deed of Joshua and Caleb, “Save for Caleb, the son of Jephunneh the Kenizzite” (Num. 32:12). 10. A. “I am very dark:” at Shittim, “And Israel abode at Shittim and the people began to commit harlotry with the daughters of Moab” (Num. 25:1). B. “but comely:” at Shittim, “Then arose Phinehas and wrought judgment” (Ps. 106:30). 11. A. “I am very dark:” through Achan, “But the children of Israel committed a trespass concerning the devoted thing” (Josh. 7:1). B. “but comely:” through Joshua, “And Joshua said to Achan, My son, give I pray you glory” (Josh. 7:19). 12. A. “I am very dark:” through the kings of Israel. B. “but comely:” through the kings of Judah.

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C. If with my dark ones that I had, it was such that “I am comely,” all the more so with my prophets. V:ii.5. A. [As to the verse, “I am very dark, but comely,” R. Levi b. R. Haita gave three interpretations: B. “‘I am very dark:’ all the days of the week. C. “‘but comely:’ on the Sabbath. D. “‘I am very dark:’ all the days of the year. E. “‘but comely:’ on the Day of Atonement. F. “‘I am very dark:’ among the Ten Tribes. G. “‘but comely:’ in the tribe of Judah and Benjamin. H. “‘I am very dark:’ in this world. I. “‘but comely:’ in the world to come.”

The contrast of dark and comely yields a variety of applications; in all of them the same situation that is the one also is the other, and the rest follows in a wonderfully well-crafted composition. What is the repertoire of items? Dark in deeds but comely in ancestry; dark in my view but comely before God; dark when rebellious, comely when obedient, a point made at Nos. 3, for Egypt, 4, for the sea, and 5 for Marah, 6, for Massah and Meribah, 7 for Horeb, 8 for the wilderness, 9 for the spies in the Land, 10 for Shittim, 11 for Achan/Joshua and the conquest of the Land, 12 for Israel and Judah. But look what follows: the week as against the Sabbath, the weekdays as against the Day of Atonement, the Ten Tribes as against Judah and Benjamin, this world as against the world to come. Whatever classification these next items demand for themselves, it surely will not be that of events. Indeed, if by event we mean something that happened once, as in “once upon a time,” then Sabbath as against weekday, Day of Atonement as against ordinary day form a different category; the Ten Tribes as against Judah and Benjamin constitute social entities, not divisions of time; and this age and the age to come form utterly anti-historical taxa altogether. Events not only do not form a taxon, they also do not present a vast corpus of candidates for inclusion into some other taxon. The lists in the document at hand form selections from a most limited repertoire of candidates. If we were to catalogue all of the exegetical repertoire encompassed by davar-aher-constructions in this document, we should not have a very long list of candidates for inclusion in any list. And among the candidates, events are few indeed. They encompass Israel at the Sea and at Sinai, the destruction of the first Temple, the destruction of the second Temple, events as defined by the actions of some holy men such as Abraham, Isaac,

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and Jacob (treated not for what they did but for who they were), Daniel, Mishael, Hananiah and Azariah, and the like. It follows that the restricted repertoire of candidates for taxonomic study encompasses remarkably few events, remarkably few for a literary culture that is commonly described as quintessentially historical! Then what taxic indicator dictates which happenings will be deemed events and which not? What are listed throughout are not data of nature or history but of theology: God’s relationship with Israel, expressed in such facts as the three events, the first two in the past, the third in the future, namely, the three redemptions of Israel, the three patriarchs, and holy persons, actions, events, whathave-you. These are facts that are assembled and grouped; in Song of Songs Rabbah the result is not propositional at all, or, if propositional, then essentially the repetition of familiar propositions through unfamiliar data. What we have is a kind of recombinant theology, in which the framer (“the theologian”) selects from a restricted repertoire a few items for combination, sometimes to make a point (e.g., the contrast of obedient and disobedient Israel we saw just now), sometimes not. What is set on display justifies the display: putting this familiar fact together with that familiar fact in an unfamiliar combination constitutes what is new and important in the list; the consequent conclusion one is supposed to draw, the proposition or rule that emerges—these are rarely articulated and never important. True, the list in Song of Songs Rabbah may comprise a rule, or it may substantiate a proposition or validate a claim; but more often than not, the effect of making the list is to show how various items share a single taxic indicator, which is to say, the purpose of the list is to make the list. The making of connections among ordinarily notconnected things is then one outcome of Listenwissenschaft. What I find engaging in davar-aher-constructions is the very variety of things that, on one list or another, can be joined together—a list for its own sake. What we have is a kind of subtle restatement, through an infinite range of possibilities, of the combinations and recombinations of a few essentially simple facts (data). It is as though a magician tossed a set of sticks this way and that, interpreting the diverse combinations of a fixed set of objects. The propositions that emerge are not the main point; the combinations are. That seems to me an important fact, for it tells me that the culture at hand has defined for itself a repertoire of persons and events and conceptions (e.g., Torah-study), holy persons, holy deeds, holy

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institutions, presented candidates for inclusion in davar-aher constructions, and the repertoire, while restricted and not terribly long, made possible a scarcely-limited variety of lists of things with like taxic indicators. That is to say, since the same items occur over and over again, but there is no pattern to how they recur. By a pattern I mean that items of the repertoire may appear in numerous davar-aher constructions or not; they may keep company with only a fixed number of other items, or they may not. Most things can appear in a davar-aher composition with most other things.7 The upshot is simple. List-making is accomplished within a re7 To make this point concrete, here is a survey of sequences of components of such lists: Joseph, righteous men, Moses, and Solomon; patriarchs as against princes, offerings as against merit, and Israel as against the nations; those who love the king, proselytes, martyrs, penitents; first, Israel at Sinai; then Israel’s loss of God’s presence on account of the golden calf; then God’s favoring Israel by treating Israel not in accord with the requirements of justice but with mercy; Dathan and Abiram, the spies, Jeroboam, Solomon’s marriage to Pharaoh’s daughter, Ahab, Jezebel, Zedekiah; Israel is feminine, the enemy (Egypt) masculine, but God the father saves Israel the daughter; Moses and Aaron, the Sanhedrin, the teachers of Scripture and Mishnah, the rabbis; the disciples; the relationship among disciples, public recitation of teachings of the Torah in the right order; lections of the Torah; the spoil at the Sea = the Exodus, the Torah, the Tabernacle, the ark; the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, then Israel in Egypt, Israel’s atonement and God’s forgiveness; the Temple where God and Israel are joined, the Temple is God’s resting place, the Temple is the source of Israel’s fecundity; Israel in Egypt, at the Sea, at Sinai, and subjugated by the gentile kingdoms, and how the redemption will come; Rebecca, those who came forth from Egypt, Israel at Sinai, acts of loving kindness, the kingdoms who now rule Israel, the coming redemption; fire above, fire below, meaning heavenly and altar fires; Torah in writing, Torah in memory; fire of Abraham, Moriam, bush, Elijah, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah; the Ten Commandments, show-fringes and phylacteries, recitation of the Shema‘ and the Prayer, the tabernacle and the cloud of the Presence of God, and the mezuzah; the timing of redemption, the moral condition of those to be redeemed, and the past religious misdeeds of those to be redeemed; Israel at the sea, Sinai, the Ten Commandments; then the synagogues and school houses; then the redeemer; the Exodus, the conquest of the Land, the redemption and restoration of Israel to Zion after the destruction of the first Temple, and the final and ultimate salvation;

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stricted repertoire of items that can serve on lists; the list-making then presents interesting combinations of an essentially small number of candidates for the exercise. But then, when making lists, one can do pretty much anything with the items that are combined; the taxic indicators are unlimited, but the data studied, severely limited. And that fact returns us to our starting point, the observations on history as a cultural artifact that form the premise for the study of history within the archaeology of knowledge. In fact, in Judaism history serves the theological sciences and therefore cannot be said to constitute history in any ordinary sense at all; but that is a trivial and obvious observation. More to the point, history, in the form of events, contributes to a rather odd way of conducting theological science. For, forming part of the davar-aher construction, history constitutes one among a variety of what I call, for lack of more suitable language at this point, theological “things,”8—names, places, events, actions deemed to bear theological weight and to affect attitude and the Egyptians, Esau and his generals, and, finally, the four kingdoms; Moses’s redemption, the first, to the second redemption in the time of the Babylonians and Daniel; the litter of Solomon: the priestly blessing, the priestly watches, the sanhedrin, and the Israelites coming out of Egypt; Israel at the sea and forgiveness for sins effected through their passing through the sea; Israel at Sinai; the war with Midian; the crossing of the Jordan and entry into the Land; the house of the sanctuary; the priestly watches; the offerings in the Temple; the sanhedrin; the Day of Atonement; God redeemed Israel without preparation; the nations of the world will be punished, after Israel is punished; the nations of the world will present Israel as gifts to the royal messiah, and here the base-verse refers to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Sihon, Og, Canaanites; the return to Zion in the time of Ezra, the Exodus from Egypt in the time of Moses; the patriarchs and with Israel in Egypt, at the Sea, and then before Sinai; Abraham, Jacob, Moses; Isaac, Jacob, Esau, Jacob, Joseph, the brothers, Jonathan, David, Saul, man, wife, paramour; Abraham in the fiery furnace and Shadrach Meshach and Abednego, the Exile in Babylonia, now with reference to the return to Zion 8 I find myself at a loss for a better word-choice and must at this stage resort to the hopelessly inelegant, “‘theological’ things,” to avoid having to repeat the formula that seems to me to fit the data, namely, “names, places, events, actions deemed to bear theological weight and to affect attitude and action.” Still, better a simple Anglo-Saxon formulation than a fancy German or Greek or Latin one. And Hebrew, whether Mishnaic or modern, simply does not serve for analytical work except when thought conceived in some other language is translated back into that language, should anyone be interested.

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action. The play is worked out by a reprise of available materials, composed in some fresh and interesting combination. When three or more such theological “things”—whether person, whether event, whether action, whether attitude—are combined, they form a theological structure, and, viewed all together, all of the theological “things” in a given document constitute the components of the entire theological structure that the document affords. The propositions portrayed visually, through metaphors of sight, or dramatically, through metaphors of action and relationship, or in attitude and emotion, through metaphors that convey or provoke feeling and sentiment, when translated into language prove familiar and commonplace. The work of the theologian in this context is not to say something new or even persuasive, for the former is unthinkable by definition, the latter unnecessary in context. It is rather to display theological “things” in a fresh and interesting way, to accomplish a fresh exegesis of the canon of theological “things.” The combinations and recombinations defined for us by our document form events into facts, sharing the paramount taxic indicators of a variety of other facts, comprising a theological structure within a larger theological structure: a reworking of canonical materials. An event is therefore reduced to a “thing,” losing all taxic autonomy, requiring no distinct indicator of an intrinsic order. It is simply something else to utilize in composing facts into knowledge; the event does not explain, it does not define, indeed, it does not even exist within its own framework at all. Judaism by “an event” means, in a very exact sense, nothing in particular. It is a component in a culture that combines and recombines facts into structures of its own design, an aspect of what I should call a culture that comes to full expression in recombinant theology. We have been prepared for such a result by Jonathan Z. Smith, who has made us aware of critical issue of the recombinancy of a fixed canon of “things” in his discussion of sacred persistence, that is, “the rethinking of each little detail in a text, the obsession with the significance and perfection of each little action.” In the canonical literature of Judaism, these minima are worked and reworked, rethought and recast in some other way or order or combination— but always held to be the same thing throughout. In this context I find important Smith’s statement: An almost limitless horizon of possibilities that are at hand...is arbi-

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part six: chapter xiii trarily reduced...to a set of basic elements....Then a most intense ingenuity is exercised to overcome the reduction...to introduce interest and variety. This ingenuity is usually accompanied by a complex set of rules.9

The possibilities out of which the authorship of our exemplary document has made its selections are limited not by the metaphorical potential of the Song of Songs (!) but by the contents of the Hebrew Scriptures as the textual community formed of the Judaic sages defined those contents within their Torah. For every Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob that we find, there are Job, Enoch, Jeroboam, or Zephaniah, whom we do not find; for every Sea/Sinai/entry into the Land that we do find, there are other sequences, e.g., the loss of the ark to the Philistines and its recovery, or Barak and Deborah, that we do not find. Ezra figures, Haggai does not; the Assyrians play a minor role, Nebuchadnezzar is on nearly every page. Granted, Sinai must enjoy a privileged position throughout. But why prefer Shadrach Meshach and Abednego, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, over other trilogies of heroic figures? So the selection is an act of choice, a statement of culture in miniature. But once restricted through this statement of choice, the same selected theological “things” then undergo combination and recombination with other theological things, the counterpart to Smith’s “interest and variety.” If we know the complex set of rules in play here, we also would understand the system that makes this document not merely an expression of piety but a statement of a theological structure: orderly, well-composed and proportioned, internally coherent and cogent throughout. The canonical, therefore anything but random, standing of events forms a brief chapter in the exegesis of a canon. That observation draws us back to Smith, who observes: The radical and arbitrary reduction represented by the notion of canon and the ingenuity represented by the rule-governed exegetical enterprise to apply the canon to every dimension of human life is that most characteristic, persistent, and obsessive religious activity....The task of application as well as the judgment of the relative adequacy of particular applications to a community’s life situation remains the indigenous theologian’s task; but the study of the process, particularly the 9 “Sacred Persistence: Towards a Redescription of Canon,” in William Scott Green, ed., Approaches to Ancient Judaism 1978, 1:11-28. Quotation: p. 15.

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study of comparative systematics and exegesis, ought to be a major preoccupation of the historian of religions.10

Smith speaks of religion as an “enterprise of exegetical totalization,” and he further identifies with the word “canon” precisely what we have identified as the substrate and structure of the list. If I had to define an event in this canonical context, I should have to call it merely another theological thing: something to be manipulated, combined in one way or in another, along with other theological things. Have we access to other examples of cultures that define for themselves canonical lists of counterparts to what I have called “theological things”? Indeed, defining matters as I have, I may compare the event to a fixed object in a diviner’s basket of the Ndembu, as Smith describes that divinatory situation: Among the Ndembu there are two features of the divinatory situation that are crucial to our concern: the diviner’s basket and his process of interrogating his client. The chief mode of divination consists of shaking a basket in which some twenty-four fixed objects are deposited (a cock’s claw, a piece of hoof, a bit of grooved wood,…withered fruit, etc.). These are shaken in order to winnow out ‘truth from falsehood’ in such a way that few of the objects end up on top of the heap. These are ‘read’ by the diviner both with respect to their individual meanings and their combinations with other objects and the configurations that result.11

In Song of Songs Rabbah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, or the Sea and Sinai, or Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, are the counterpart to the cock’s claw and the piece of hoof. The event, in Judaism, is the counterpart to a cock’s claw in the Ndembu culture. Both will be fixed, but will combine and recombine in a large number of different ways. But then what of “the lessons of history,” and how shall we identify the counterpart to historical explanation? I find the answer in the Ndembu counterpart, the mode of reading “the process of interrogating the client”? Again Smith: The client’s situation is likewise taken into account in arriving at an interpretation. Thus...there is a semantic, syntactic, and pragmatic dimension to the ‘reading.’ Each object is publicly known and has a fixed range of meanings...The total collection of twenty-four objects is held to be complete and capable of illuminating every situation...What 10 11

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ibid. p. 18. Smith, p. 25.

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part six: chapter xiii enables the canon to be applied to every situation or question is not the number of objects...Rather it is that, prior to performing the divination, the diviner has rigorously question his client in order to determine his situation with precision...It is the genius of the interpreter to match a public set of meanings with a commonly known set of facts...in order to produce a quite particular plausibility structure which speaks directly to his client’s condition, which mediates between that which is public knowledge and the client’s private perception of his unique situation.12

That concludes our inquiry, since it draws us to the task of the exegesis of exegesis. Events then form a problem of exegesis, in which, from what a culture defines as a consequential happening, we find our way back to the system and structure that that culture means to form. The work before us will teach us, in the case of Judaism, how from the study of what are defined as events to describe the process of interrogation that has produced the result we see before us, this particular plausibility structure that has persuaded holy Israel, from then to now (as indeed all the Israels that revere the Song of Songs have been persuaded), to read the erotic as the best, the only way to express precisely who is God in relationship to Israel, and who is Israel in relationship to God. The theology of this Judaism—that is to say, our account of the world-view that comes to expression within this literary culture and textual community—will take shape within the exegesis of that exegesis.

12

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Smith, p. 25.

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index of subjects

INDEX OF SUBJECTS Abot continuity of past and present in, 103–104 exemplarity of sages’ lives in, 170–180 exemplarity (precedents) in, 74–83 explaining pattern of events, 122 future history of Israel in, 122 Israel and the nations in, 120–122 Israel’s history in, 118–120 narrative subordinated to topical program in, 150–157 Abraham, 272–273 Albrektson, Bertil History and the Gods, 32n16 Albright, William Foxwell From the Stone Age to Christianity, 33n18 anachronism, 101n4, 110 astrology, 50n4, 287–291 Bar Kokhba, 260–262 Barr, James Biblical Words for Time, 31n15, 51n5 Old and New in Interpretation, 42n33 “Story and History in Biblical Theology,” 39n27, 71n1 Bavli. see Talmud of Babylonia biography dearth of, in Rabbinic literature, 72–74, 84–86 irrelevance of, to paradigmatic thinking, 27, 28 in later Midrash, 89–90, 92–93 in latest Midrash, 97 in Mishnah, 84–86 nature of, 36n23 paradigmatic episodes in place of, 167–170, 189–190 Cassuto, Umberto Biblical and Oriental Studies, 33n17 causality, 33 chaos, creating order from, 20–21 Childs, Brevard S., 202–203 Memory and Tradition in Israel, 147n1

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Myth and Reality in the Old Testament, 55n6 chronology, in narrative, 41, 47 confessional reading, of Bible, 15–16, 67 creation-narrative, paradigmatic nature of, 198–201 cultic literature, 83–84, 148–157 cyclical time, 56–57, 228–230 Davies, Philip R. In Search of Ancient Israel, 5n3, 24n8, 30n11, 202n11 Day of Atonement, 152–154, 293 dream in paradigmatic thinking, 197–198 Eden, loss of, 198–201 Esau, 277–278 eschatology, 236–237 Esther Rabbah I continuity of past and present in, 106–111 exemplarity of sages’ lives in, 185– 189 exemplarity (precedents) in, 93–97 explaining pattern of events, 137 future history of, 137–138 history of, 134–136 Israel and the nations, 136–137 eventfulness cultural foundations of, 313–315 irrelevent in paradigmatic time, 65, 66–68 in Judaism, 316–319 paradigmatic vs. historical, 25, 28 as trait of humanity’s conception of time, 50, 52 exegesis, as medium for representation of paradigm, 147, 165 exemplarity (one-time events) in place of biography, 167–170 in Rabbinic literature, 74–77, 86– 92, 93–97, 147–148 Exodus, 140 Festival of Tabernacles, 293

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index of subjects

Freedman, David Noel, 5n3, 99n1 The Relationship between Herodotus’ History and Primary History, 30n12 The Unity of the Hebrew Bible, 30n11, 42n35 future as autonomous, in Scripture, 35 pathology of attitudes toward, 18 genealogy, 274 Genesis Rabbah continuity of past and present in, 105–106 exemplarity of sages’ lives in, 180– 185 explaining pattern of events, 130– 132 future history of Israel in, 132–134 Israel and the nations in, 127–130 Israel’s history in, 123–127 lives of patriarchs reveal paradigm of Israel’s future, 272–286 one-time events treated in, 86–93 sages read Genesis as history, 268– 272 gentiles, 287 Green, William Scott Writing with Scripture, 319n6 Hahodesh, 292 Halpern, Baruch, 67 The First Historians: The Hebrew Bible and History, 15n1 Hanukkah, 292 historical study, nature of, 310–312 historical thinking (historicism) advent of, 223–224 chronology and development in, 41 conception of Israel in, 23–24, 25 conception of time in, 49–54 distinction of past and present in, 19, 36–37 dominance of, 309–310 memory in, 193–198, 203–204 rise of, 16–17 history, as revelation, 42 history-writing culturally ordered, 310–311 identifying, in Israel’s tradition, 38, 39–40 Mishnah’s expression of, 248–250 as mode of mythic reflection, 236


330

modes of writing, 28–29 as prophecy, 253 Scripture as, 29–35 Isaac, 274–278 Israel annual journey of renewal of, 303– 304 future history of, in Genesis Rabbah, 272–286 God’s love for, 294 God’s will dictates fate of, 287–291, 294–296 history of, in Scripture, 34–35, 42– 44 history of, in Yerushalmi, 257–259 history-writing criteria, 38 and the nations, in Yerushalmi, 254–256 paradigmatic vs. historical “explanation” of, 23–25 Primary History of, 42–44 salvation of, 260–267, 295–296 social experience of, 23 Israel, Rabbinic literature’s paradigms about consubstantiality of nature’s time with, 139–143 explaining pattern of events, 117, 122, 130–132, 137 future history of, 117, 122, 137–138 history of, 116, 118–120, 123–127, 134–136 Israel and the nations, 116, 120– 122, 127–130, 136–137 Jacob, 274–278 Jacob, Edmond Theology of the Old Testament, 40n28 Jeremiah, 43 Joseph, 278–286 Judaism chaos accomodated by, 20–21 conception of social order in, 23 historical vs. paradigmatic thinking, and Israel, 23–25 lectionary cycle of, 296–298 memory and dream in, 193–198, 204–206 as religion of memory and tradition, 206–216 as religion of “Old Testament,” 314

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index of subjects kingdom of Heaven, 210n28 Lamentations, 43 Lamentations Rabbah continuity of past and present in, 106–111 exemplarity of sages’ lives in, 185– 189 exemplarity (precedents) in, 93–97 explaining pattern of events, 137 future history of, 137–138 history of, 134–136 Israel and the nations, 136–137 Temple story in, 162–164 law, exemplary cases and, 80–83, 147, 165 LeGoff, Jacques History and Memory, 18nn3–4, 47n1, 196n4 Leviticus Rabbah continuity of past and present in, 105–106 exemplarity of sages’ lives in, 180– 185 explaining pattern of events, 130– 132 future history of Israel in, 132–134 Israel and the nations in, 127–130 Israel’s history in, 123–127 one-time events treated in, 86–93 Temple story in, 160–162 Licht, Jacob “Biblical Historicism,” 41n31 linearity, of history, 53–54 liturgical calendar, 291–293 Mandell, Sara The Relationship between Herodotus’ History and Primary History, 30n12 martyrdom, 179–180, 183–185 McKenzie, John L. A Theology of the Old Testament, 34n19 memory as applied to Scripture, 201–204 in historical thinking, 18, 193–197 Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory, 193, 206–216 messianism in Mishnah, 250–251 in Yerushalmi, 259–267 Mishnah continuity of past and present in, 103–104


331

cultic rules extracted from events, 242–248 exemplarity of sages’ lives in, 170– 180 exemplarity (precedents) in, 74–83 explaining pattern of events, 122 future history of Israel in, 122 Israel and the nations in, 120–122 Israel’s history in, 118–120 messianism in, 250–251 narrative subordinated to topical program in, 150–157 social scientific philosophy of, 248– 250 use and meaning of history in, 233– 239 narrative dearth of, in Rabbinic literature, 72–74 in history-writing, 39, 40–42 irrelevance of, to paradigmatic thinking, 28, 148 in Lamentations Rabbah, 94–97 in later Midrash-compilations, 86– 93 mainly concerning Temple, in Rabbinic literature, 84 in Mishnah, 74–83 subordinated to exemplary cases in Rabbinic literature, 148–150 nature, conception of time in, 46–49, 52, 57–58, 65–66, 230, 301–302 Neusner, Jacob Introduction to Rabbinic Literature, 73n3 Judaism: The Evidence of the Mishnah, 63n7 Judaism and its Social Metaphors: Israel in the History of Jewish Thought, 24n8 Rabbinic Narrative I-IV, 71n2 The Rabbinic Traditions about the Pharisees before 70, 213n34 Symbol and Theology in Early Judaism, 198n7 From Text to Historical Context in Rabbinic Judaism, 73n4, 168n2 Theology of the Halakhah, 210n28 Why No Gospels in Talmudic Tradition?, 168n1 Writing with Scripture, 319n6 New Year, 195n2 Ninth of Ab, 293

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index of subjects

paradigmatic thinking conception of Israel’s social order in, 23–25 dream and imagination in, 197–198 eventfulness and importance in, 25– 27 exemplarity in, 27, 74, 147–148 mathematical model for, 219–222 nature of, 20–21 non-linearity of, 20 paradigmatic time defined, 58–60 example in Rabbinic literature, 61– 66 Parah, 292 Passover, 195n2, 292 past influence on present in historical thinking, 34, 37, 50 pastness of, marks historical thinking, 32–33 past and present bridging via memory, 201–203 continuity of, in Rabbinic Literature, 101–111 paradigmatic vs. historical conception of, 18–19 Pentecost, 293 periodization, 254–255 permanence, in paradigmatic thinking, 23 Pesiqta deRab Kahana continuity of past and present in, 105–106 cycles of time in, 299–303 exemplarity of sages’ lives in, 180– 185 explaining pattern of events, 130– 132 future history of Israel in, 132–134 God’s will dictates Israel’s fate, 287– 291, 294–295 Israel and the nations in, 127–130 Israel’s history in, 123–127 lectionary cycle of, 296–298 one-time events treated in, 86–93 Temple story in, 160–162 theology of, 304–307 Prayerbook (Siddur), 204n17 predictability, and teleology, 20 prediction, and historical model, 17 present, orientation toward, in children, 19


332

Primary History (of Israel), 42–44, 223 prophecy, as mode of mythic construction, 236, 253 Prophets, Former, as Primary History of Israel, 42–43 Prophets, Latter, 43 Qohelet, 56 Rabbinic literature continuity of past and present in, 101–111 dearth of narrative and biography in, 72–74, 84–86 exemplarity (one-time events) in, 74–77, 86–92, 93–97, 98, 147– 148 paradigmatic thinking dominates, 22–27, 138–139 uniform character of documents, 72–73 see also Israel, Rabbinic literature’s paradigms about; sages, Rabbinic Rome, and Israel, 254–256, 277–278 Ruth Rabbah continuity of past and present in, 106–111 exemplarity of sages’ lives in, 185– 189 exemplarity (precedents) in, 93–97 explaining pattern of events, 137 future history of, 137–138 history of, 134–136 Israel and the nations, 136–137 sages, Rabbinic ahistorical, paradigmatic thinking of, 19–20, 209–219 biography, and exemplarity, 84–86, 167–170 death of, and social order, 179, 183– 182, 188–189 first encounters with Torah, 170– 172, 180–181, 185–186 inconsequentiality of birth of, 170 martyrdom, 179–180, 183–185 as models of virtue, 175–179, 182– 183, 186–188 origins of paradigmatic thinking of, 222–228 and Prayerbook (Siddur), 204n17

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index of subjects rejection of cyclicality of time, 228– 230 Torah-study of, 172–175, 182, 186 Sahlins, Marshall Islands of History, 35, 313n1 scholarship, secular rules for reading holy documents, 16n2, 17 Scripture, Hebrew confessional reading of, 15–16, 67 historical, linear nature of, 22, 29– 35, 29n9 as Israel’s history, 34–35, 42–44, 314 language in, 102 memory and tradition in, 201–204 paradigmatic foundation of creation-narrative, 198–201 in Pesiqta deRab Kahana, 300–302 and Yerushalmi, 258–259 Sheqalim, 292 Sifra continuity of past and present in, 103–104 exemplarity of sages’ lives in, 170– 180 exemplarity (precedents) in, 74–83 explaining pattern of events, 122 future history of Israel in, 122 Israel and the nations in, 120–122 Israel’s history in, 118–120 narrative subordinated to topical program in, 150–157 Sifré to Deuteronomy continuity of past and present in, 103–104 exemplarity of sages’ lives in, 170– 180 exemplarity (precedents) in, 74–83 explaining pattern of events, 122 future history of Israel in, 122 Israel and the nations in, 120–122 Israel’s history in, 118–120 narrative subordinated to topical program in, 150–157 Sifré to Numbers continuity of past and present in, 103–104 exemplarity of sages’ lives in, 170– 180 exemplarity (precedents) in, 74–83 explaining pattern of events, 122 future history of Israel in, 122


333

Israel and the nations in, 120–122 Israel’s history in, 118–120 narrative subordinated to topical program in, 150–157 Smith, Jonathan Z. “Sacred Persistence: Towards a Redescription of Canon,” 326n9 Song of Songs Rabbah continuity of past and present in, 106–111 eventfulness in, 318–321 exemplarity of sages’ lives in, 185– 189 exemplarity (precedents) in, 93–97 explaining pattern of events, 137 future history of, 137–138 history of, 134–136 Israel and the nations, 136–137 space, 195 story, and history, 39n27 Talmud of Babylonia, 288 Talmud of the Land of Israel conception of history in, 253–256 expanded range of historical interest in, 257–259 messianism in, 259–267 taxonomy, and eventfulness, 320–324 teleology eschatology and, 237 and predictability, 20 Temple, destruction of, 225–227 Temple, writings about narrative subordinated to topical program in, 80–82, 158–164 nature of time in, 165–166 time continuity of past and present in Rabbinic Literature, 101–111, 139–143 cyclical, 56–58, 65 history’s conception of, 49–54 linearity and, 53–54 nature’s conception of, 46–49, 52, 57–58, 65–66, 230 paradigmatic, 58–66 paradigmatic vs. historical conception of, 26–27, 29 temporal order and Torah, 99–101 see also memory Torah model of life framed by, 167–170

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and sages’ deaths, 179–180, 183– 185, 188–189 sages’ first encounters with, 170– 172, 180–181, 185–186 study of, 172–175, 182, 186 and virtue, 175–179, 182–183, 186– 188 Torah, Written (Pentateuch) as Primary History of Israel, 42–43 temporal order in, 99–101 Tosefta exemplarity of sages’ lives in, 170– 180 exemplarity (precedents) in, 74–83 explaining pattern of events, 122 future history of Israel in, 122 Israel and the nations in, 120–122 Israel’s history in, 118–120 narrative subordinated to topical program in, 150–157


334

tradition, 37n24, 201–204, 205–206 Van Seters, John, 35, 38–39 van Seters, John In Search of History: Historiography in the Ancient World and the Origins of Biblical History, 1n1 Wright, G. Ernest God Who Act: Biblical Theology as Recital, 31n13 Yerushalmi. see Talmud of the Land of Israel Yerushalmi, Yosef Hayyim, 20n5 critique of Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory, 193, 206–218 Zakhor, 292

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index of subjects

INDEX OF ANCIENT SOURCES Bible Genesis 1:1 1:2 1:4 2:2 2:15 2:16 3:2 3:9 3:11 3:23 3:24 5:29 9:25 12:1 14:1 14:9 14:15 15:3 15:5 15:12 17:11 19:9 22:2 22:13 24:2 24:7 25:2 25:6 25:19 25:23 27:2-4 27:15 27:22 27:27 27:34 27:36 27:41 30:215 32:4 32:29 33:35 37:2 39:10-13 41:1


133 174 288 275 199 199 131 199 199 199 199 122 270 118 181 132 181 288 288 128 92 123 119 272, 273 119 118 270 269, 270, 271 274 126 275 131 95, 260 275 277 277 256 278 275 274 277 278 279 281

335

41:42 41:43 42:18 46:8 49:9 49:11-13 49:27 Exodus 6:6-7 8:12 12:1-2 12:29-32 12:36 12:40 13:17-18 14:29 15:2 15:8 15:15 15:24 15:25 16:25 16:35 17:7 17:15 19:1ff. 19:12 20:2 22:23 24:7 24:9 27:20 30:12 35:3 Leviticus 2:14 11:4-8 16:1ff. 17:8-9 17:13 19:19 20:10 22:26 23:4 23:11 23:39-43

279 279 124, 284 274 283 280 284, 285 280 133 292 292 270 274 292 110 135, 320 110 276 320 320 264 100 320 320 293 119 276 189 135, 320 177 200 292 94 149 130 293 244 107 151 105 292 177 292 293

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index of ancient sources

24:2 26:6 26:30 26:33 Numbers 1:1 1:51 3:12 5:18 5:23 7:1 7:3-11 7:18 7:26 8:16-18 9:1-14 9:15 11:24-26 13:32 19:1ff. 21:17 25:1 28:1-4 28:2 28:4 28:45 29:35-39 32:12 Deuteronomy 4:11 8:15 12:9 13:7 14:7 14:22 21:1-2 21:17 22:9 25:17-19 25:18 32:4-6 32:10-12 32:12 32:13 32:30 33:11 33:17 Joshua 7:1 7:19 Judges 3:19


200 276 137 137 100 121 243 156 155 292 81 103 276 243 100 320 104 320 292 124 320 292 275 285 285 293 320 187 120 243 137 129, 130 292 159 270 151 292 124, 284 179 118 136, 174 110 96, 97, 262 124, 284 124, 284 320 320 284

336

3:20 3:22 3:23 Ruth 2:4 3:13 1 Samuel 2:27 14:47 31:6 2 Samuel 12:13 1 Kings 8:66 22:47 2 Kings 15:7 19:37 21:16 1 Chronicles 1:27 Esther 2:8 3:4 4:1 6:11 7:4 7:10 8:1 8:2 8:15 Ezra 4:13 Job 3:3 4:19 28:3 42:12 Psalms 3:2-3 3:4 11:6 16:5 22:21 23:5 37:14 37:15 60:12 66:6 74:13 75:4 77:16

284 285 285 80 186 263 285 285 106 125 256 273 131 160 274 285 279 277 279 128 275 285 279, 285 279 87 133 185 281 187 105 106 280 280 119 280 181 181 95, 261 110 109, 110 276 278

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index of ancient sources 77:17 278 78:40 320 80:9 280 85:11 85 89:14 85 95:7 264 98:1 135 106:7 320 106:9 109 106:19 320 106:30 320 116:13 280 116:15 174 119:126 80 133:3 276 136:13 109 147:8 130 Proverbs 5:8 176 10:2 289, 290 11:30 85 Qohelet (Ecclesiastes) 5:5 174 7:12 88 9:4 94 Song of Songs 1:4 174 1:5 319 4:15 110 7:1 276 Isaiah 2:2 282 8:2 121 21:11 263 21:12 264 23:7 271 26:20 88 30:15 264 30:29 134 33:12 136 34:5 282 34:6-7 134 34:9 133 34:11 133, 134 36:20 131 39:1 106 40:1-2 293 41:2 289 43:14 263 49:14-16 293 51:12-15 293 51:16 133


337

54:1ff. 54:11-14 58:8 60:1-3 61:10-11 63:14 64:1 66:6 66:12 Jeremiah 1:1-3 2:4-6 2:7 3:14 4:23 5:6 10:2 15:1 25:15 26:18 32:19 49:20 49:21 49:22 49:38 51:7 Lamentations 1:1 1:1-2 1:17 4:18 5:17-18 Ezekiel 5:5 16:6 20:8 24:7 37:16 37:22 38:22 38:165 39:17-19 Daniel 3:19 7:3-7 7:4 7:5 7:6 7:7 7:20 8:2 9:11 12:4

293 293 86 293 293 109 110 133 276 293 293 200 187 133 129, 283 288 200 280 121 180 284 128 129 263 280 200 293 136 164 121 136 320 320 108 282 282 133, 134 282 134 128 128 128, 129, 283 123, 129, 283 129 129 124, 284 263 200 282

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338


Hosea 2:16 4:2 4:14 6:6 6:7 9:10 9:15 14:1-3 14:6 Amos 2:4 3:7 9:7 Obadiah 1:18 Micah 3:12 7:6 Nahum 12:28 Habbakuk 1:7 3:14 3:15 Zechariah 2:3 2:12 9:13 9:14 9:14-15 11:17 13:7 14:12 Malachi 1:3 3:7

119 108 83 265 199 119 200 293 136 77 123, 283 319 131 275 158, 251 282 131 109 109 138 120 263, 275 272 272 96, 262 189 134 127 187

Rabbinic Literature Bavli Shabbat 156a-b 288 Midrash Abot 1:1-2 204 2:6 206 Fathers According to Rabbi Nathan IV:V.2 265 VI:V.1 185 XXXIII:III.1 135 XXXIII:V.1 109 XXXVIII:V.2 188 XXXVIII:VI.1 137


338

Genesis Rabbah XIX:IX.1-2 199 XLII:I 181 XLII:II 128, 132 XLVI:X.2 92 LVI:IX 272 LVII:VI 93 LXI:VII 269 LXIII:III 274 LXIII:VII 126 LXIII:VIII.7 89 LXIV:X 87 LXV:XIII 275 LXV:XXII.4 184 LXV:XXIII 275 LXVI:II 276 LXVII:IV 277 LXX:VIII 124 LXXXIV:V 278 LXXXVII:VI 279 LXXXVIII:V 279 LXXXIX:I 281 XCI:III 88 XCVIII:II 282 XCIX:II 123 Lamentations Rabbah LVIII:ii.5 95 LVIII:ii.5ff. 260 CII:i 162 CXIII.i.1 107 CXVIII:i.2 163 Leviticus Rabbah IX:IX.7 182 XIII:V 128 XVIII:II.1 131 XXII:III.2 160 XXV:V.2 90 Pesiqta deRab Kahana II:I.1 105 VII:XI.3 133 XXI:V 133 Ruth Rabbah XXI:i.10 94 LXII:ii.1 186 Sifré to Deuteronomy XLIII:III 120 LXI:II 77 CCCVII:IV 179 CCCXIII:I 118 CCCXIII:IV 119 Sifré to Numbers LII:I 103

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339

index of ancient sources LXIV:I 100 XCV:II 104 Song of Songs Rabbah V.i.1 319 V:ii.5 321 XVIII.i 134 XIX:i 136 XXX:iv 137 XXXVIII:ii 106 Mishnah Berakhot 9:5 80 Bikkurim 1:3 81 Erubin 6:1 77 6:2 77 Hagigah 2:1A-B 172 Hallah 4:10 81 4:11 81 Ma"aser Sheni 5:9 76 Menahot 5:6 150 6:7 149 6:31 149 10:3 148 10:4 149 Nazir 3:6 85 Nedarim 1:3 273 5:16 75 5:17 75 Negaim 14:1 157 Parah 3:1 156 3:2 156 3:3 156 3:7 157 3:8 157 Peah 2:4 75 Qiddushin 4:1 234 Rosh Hashanah 1:6 79 1:7 79 2:1B 81


339

2:8 2:9 4:1 4:2 4:3 4:4 Sheqalim 1:1 1:3 3:4 Sotah 1:4 1:5 9:9 9:10 9:13 9:15 9:15D Sukkah 3:12 Ta’anit 4:6 4:6-7 4:7 Tamid 1:1 Temurah 5:15 Yoma 1:1 1:2 1:3 1:4 1:5 1:12 2:2 3:1 3:4 3:6 Zebahim 14:4-8 14:9 14:10 Tosefta Hagigah 2:1 2:3 2:6 Hullin 2:22 Peah 4:18

177 177 82, 239 239 239 240 151 151 152 155 155 83 83 83, 84 158, 250 179 239 224 241 225 154 273 152 152 152 153 153 159 159 153 153 154 243 244 245 172 174 174 176 86

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340


Pisha 4:13 Rosh Hashanah 1:15 Sotah 10:1-2 15:3 Yebamot 14:7 14:8


340

171 82 122 179 78 78

Yerushalmi Abodah Zarah 1:2 Taanit 1:1 Classical Works Augustine Confesssions 10:13

256 263

115

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the brill reference library of

judaism The Brill Reference Library of Judaism presents research on fundamental problems in the study of the authoritative texts, beliefs and practices, events and ideas, of the Judaic religious world from the sixth century bce to the sixth century ce. Systematic accounts of principal phenomena, characteristics of Judaic life, works of a theoretical character, accounts of movements and trends, diverse expressions of the faith, new translations and commentaries of classical texts – all will find a place in the Library.

1. Neusner, Jacob, The Halakhah. An Encyclopaedia of the Law of Judaism. 5 Vols. 2000. ISBN 90 04 11617 6 (set) Vol. I. Between Israel and God. Part A. ISBN 90 04 11611 7 Vol. II. Between Israel and God. Part B. Transcendent Transactions: Where Heaven and Earth Intersect. ISBN 90 04 11612 5 Vol. III. Within Israel’s Social Order. ISBN 90 04 11613 3 Vol. IV. Inside the Walls of the Israelite Household. Part A. At the Meeting of Time and Space. ISBN 90 04 11614 1 Vol. V. Inside the Walls of the Israelite Household. Part B. The Desacralization of the Household. ISBN 90 04 11616 8 2. Basser, Herbert W., Studies in Exegesis. Christian Critiques of Jewish Law and Rabbinic Responses 70-300 C.E. 2000. ISBN 90 04 11848 9 3. Neusner, Jacob, Judaism’s Story of Creation. Scripture, Halakhah, Aggadah. 2000. ISBN 90 04 11899 3 4. Aaron, David H., Biblical Ambiguities. Metaphor, Semantics and Divine Imagery. 2001. ISBN 90 04 12032 7 5. Neusner, Jacob, The Reader’s Guide to the Talmud. 2001. ISBN 90 04 1287 0. 6. Neusner, Jacob, The Theology of the Halakhah. 2001. ISBN 90 04 12291 5. 7. Schwartz, Dov, Faith at the Crossroads. A Theological Profile of Religious Zionism. Translated by Batya Stein. 2002. ISBN 90 04 12461 6 8. Neusner, Jacob, The Halakhah: Historical and Religious Perspectives. 2002. ISBN 90 04 12219 2 9. Neusner, Jacob, How the Talmud Works. 2002. ISBN 90 04 12796 8 10. Gruenwald, Ithamar, Rituals and Ritual Theory in Ancient Israel. 2003. ISBN 90 04 12627 9 11. Boyarin, Daniel, Sparks of the logos Essays in Rabbinic Hermeneutics. 2003. ISBN 90 04 12628 7 12. Neusner, Jacob, The Idea of History in Rabbinic Judaism. 2004. ISBN 90 04 13583 9 13. Neusner, Jacob, The Perfect Torah. 2003. ISBN 90 04 13033 0 14. Neusner, Jacob, Rabbinic Narrative. A Documentary Perspective. Volume One: Forms, Types and Distribution of Narratives in the Mishnah, Tractate Abot and the Tosefta. 2003. ISBN 90 04 13023 3 15. Neusner, Jacob, Rabbinic Narrative. A Documentary Perspective. Volume Two: Forms, Types and Distribution of Narratives in Sifra, Sifré to Numbers,

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and Sifré to Deuteronomy. 2003. ISBN 90 04 13034 9 16. Neusner, Jacob, Rabbinic Narrative. A Documentary Perspective. Volume Three: Forms, Types and Distribution of Narratives in Song of Songs Rabbah and Lamentations Rabbah and a Reprise of Fathers According to Rabbi Nathan Text A. 2003. ISBN 90 04 13035 7 17. Neusner, Jacob, Rabbinic Narrative. A Documentary Perspective. Volume Four, The Precedent and the Parable in Diachronic View. 2003. ISBN 90 04 13036 5 18. Gruber, Mayer I., Rashi’s Commentary on Psalms. 2003. ISBN 90 04 13251 1

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