In the Aftermath of Catastrophe: Founding Judaism 70-640 9780773576346

Table of contents :
Contents
Preface
Introduction
PART ONE: THE HALAKHIC AND AGGADIC REPONSES TO THE HURBAN
1 70-200 The Halakhah: The First Response to the Destruction of the Second Temple
2 200-400 The Aggadah: The Second Response to the Destruction of the Second Temple
3 Judaism and the Christian Triumph
PART TWO: THE PROPHETIC SOURCES OF RABBINIC JUDAISM
4 Prophetic-Rabbinic Judaism: 1 Jeremiah Redivivus
5 Prophetic-Rabbinic Judaism: 2 How Important was the Destruction of the Second Temple in the Formation of Rabbinic Judaism?
Afterword
Notes
Index
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
L
M
N
P
Q
R
S
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Citation preview

in the aftermath of catastrophe

mcgill-queen’s studies in the history of religion Volumes in this series have been supported by the Jackman Foundation of Toronto. series two In memory of George Rawlyk Donald Harman Akenson, Editor 1 Marguerite Bourgeoys and Montreal, 1640–1665 Patricia Simpson

10 Gentle Eminence A Life of Cardinal Flahiff P. Wallace Platt

2 Aspects of the Canadian Evangelical Experience Edited by G.A. Rawlyk

11 Culture, Religion, and Demographic Behaviour Catholics and Lutherans in Alsace, 1750–1870 Kevin McQuillan

3 Infinity, Faith, and Time Christian Humanism and Renaissance Literature John Spencer Hill 4 The Contribution of Presbyterianism to the Maritime Provinces of Canada Edited by Charles H.H. Scobie and G.A. Rawlyk 5 Labour, Love, and Prayer Female Piety in Ulster Religious Literature, 1850–1914 Andrea Ebel Brozyna 6 The Waning of the Green Catholics, the Irish, and Identity in Toronto, 1887–1922 Mark G. McGowan 7 Religion and Nationality in Western Ukraine The Greek Catholic Church and the Ruthenian National Movement in Galicia, 1867–1900 John-Paul Himka 8 Good Citizens British Missionaries and Imperial States, 1870–1918 James G. Greenlee and Charles M. Johnston 9 The Theology of the Oral Torah Revealing the Justice of God Jacob Neusner

12 Between Damnation and Starvation Priests and Merchants in Newfoundland Politics, 1745–1855 John P. Greene 13 Martin Luther, German Saviour German Evangelical Theological Factions and the Interpretation of Luther, 1917–1933 James M. Stayer 14 Modernity and the Dilemma of North American Anglican Identities, 1880–1950 William H. Katerberg 15 The Methodist Church on the Prairies, 1896–1914 George Emery 16 Christian Attitudes towards the State of Israel Paul Charles Merkley 17 A Social History of the Cloister Daily Life in the Teaching Monasteries of the Old Regime Elizabeth Rapley 18 Households of Faith Family, Gender, and Community in Canada, 1760–1969 Edited by Nancy Christie

29 With Skilful Hand 19 Blood Ground The Story of King David Colonialism, Missions, and the Contest David T. Barnard for Christianity in the Cape Colony and Britain, 1799–1853 30 Faithful Intellect Elizabeth Elbourne Samuel S. Nelles and Victoria University 20 A History of Canadian Catholics Neil Semple Gallicanism, Romanism, and Canadianism 31 W. Stanford Reid Terence J. Fay An Evangelical Calvinist in the Academy 21 The View from Rome Donald MacLeod Archbishop Stagni’s 1915 Reports on the Ontario Bilingual Schools Question Edited and translated by John Zucchi 32 A Long Eclipse The Liberal Protestant Establishment and the Canadian University, 22 The Founding Moment 1920–1970 Church, Society, and the Construction Catherine Gidney of Trinity College William Westfall 33 Forkhill Protestants and Forkhill Catholics, 1787–1858 23 The Holocaust, Israel, and Canadian Kyla Madden Protestant Churches Haim Genizi 34 For Canada’s Sake Public Religion, Centennial 24 Governing Charities Celebrations, and the Re-making of Church and State in Toronto’s Canada in the 1960s Catholic Archdiocese, 1850–1950 Gary R. Miedema Paula Maurutto 25 Anglicans and the Atlantic World High Churchmen, Evangelicals, and the Quebec Connection Richard W. Vaudry

35 Revival in the City The Impact of American Evangelists in Canada, 1884–1914 Eric R. Crouse

26 Evangelicals and the Continental Divide The Conservative Protestant Subculture in Canada and the United States Sam Reimer

36 The Lord for the Body Religion, Medicine, and Protestant Faith Healing in Canada, 1880–1930 James Opp

27 Christians in a Secular World The Canadian Experience Kurt Bowen 28 Anatomy of a Seance A History of Spirit Communication in Central Canada Stan McMullin

37 Six Hundred Years of Reform Bishops and the French Church, 1190–1789 J. Michael Hayden and Malcolm R. Greenshields 38 The Missionary Oblate Sisters Vision and Mission Rosa Bruno-Jofré

39 Religion, Family, and Community in Victorian Canada The Colbys of Carrollcroft Marguerite Van Die

46 Political Ecumenism Catholics, Jews, and Protestants in De Gaulle’s Free France, 1940–1945 Geoffrey Adams

40 Michael Power The Struggle to Build the Catholic Church on the Canadian Frontier Mark G. McGowan

47 From Quaker to Upper Canadian Faith and Community Among Yonge Street Friends, 1801–1850 Robynne Rogers Healey

41 The Catholic Origins of Quebec’s Quiet Revolution, 1931–1970 Michael Gauvreau

48 The Congrégation de Notre-Dame, Superiors, and the Paradox of Power, 1693–1796 Colleen Gray

42 Marguerite Bourgeoys and the Congregation of Notre Dame, 1665–1700 Patricia Simpson 43 To Heal a Fractured World The Ethics of Responsibility Jonathan Sacks 44 Revivalists Marketing the Gospel in English Canada, 1884–1957 Kevin Kee

49 Canadian Pentecostalism Transition and Transformation Edited by Michael Wilkinson 50 A War with a Silver Lining Canadian Protestant Churches and the South African War, 1899–1902 Gordon L. Heath 51 In the Aftermath of Catastrophe Founding Judaism, 70 to 640 Jacob Neusner

45 The Churches and Social Order in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Canada Edited by Michael Gauvreau and Ollivier Hubert series one: G.A. Rawlyk, Editor 1 Small Differences Irish Catholics and Irish Protestants, 1815–1922 An International Perspective Donald Harman Akenson

4 The Dévotes Women and Church in Seventeenth-Century France Elizabeth Rapley

2 Two Worlds The Protestant Culture of Nineteenth-Century Ontario William Westfall

5 The Evangelical Century College and Creed in English Canada from the Great Revival to the Great Depression Michael Gauvreau

3 An Evangelical Mind Nathanael Burwash and the Methodist Tradition in Canada, 1839–1918 Marguerite Van Die

6 The German Peasants’ War and Anabaptist Community of Goods James M. Stayer

16 Padres in No Man’s Land 7 A World Mission Canadian Chaplains and the Great Canadian Protestantism and the Quest War for a New International Order, Duff Crerar 1918–1939 Robert Wright 17 Christian Ethics and Political Economy in North America 8 Serving the Present Age A Critical Analysis of U.S. and Revivalism, Progressivism, and the Canadian Approaches Methodist Tradition in Canada P. Travis Kroeker Phyllis D. Airhart 18 Pilgrims in Lotus Land 9 A Sensitive Independence Conservative Protestantism in British Canadian Methodist Women Columbia, 1917–1981 Missionaries in Canada and the Orient, Robert K. Burkinshaw 1881–1925 19 Through Sunshine and Shadow Rosemary R. Gagan The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, Evangelicalism, and Reform in 10 God’s Peoples Ontario, 1874–1930 Covenant and Land in South Africa, Sharon Cook Israel, and Ulster Donald Harman Akenson 11 Creed and Culture The Place of English-Speaking Catholics in Canadian Society, 1750–1930 Edited by Terrence Murphy and Gerald Stortz 12 Piety and Nationalism Lay Voluntary Associations and the Creation of an Irish-Catholic Community in Toronto, 1850–1895 Brian P. Clarke 13 Amazing Grace Studies in Evangelicalism in Australia, Britain, Canada, and the United States Edited by George Rawlyk and Mark A. Noll 14 Children of Peace W. John McIntyre 15 A Solitary Pillar Montreal’s Anglican Church and the Quiet Revolution Joan Marshall

20 Church, College, and Clergy A History of Theological Education at Knox College, Toronto, 1844–1994 Brian J. Fraser 21 The Lord’s Dominion The History of Canadian Methodism Neil Semple 22 A Full-Orbed Christianity The Protestant Churches and Social Welfare in Canada, 1900–1940 Nancy Christie and Michael Gauvreau 23 Evangelism and Apostasy The Evolution and Impact of Evangelicals in Modern Mexico Kurt Bowen 24 The Chignecto Covenanters A Regional History of Reformed Presbyterianism in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, 1827–1905 Eldon Hay 25 Methodists and Women’s Education in Ontario, 1836–1925 Johanne Selles 26 Puritanism and Historical Controversy William Lamont

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In the Aftermath of Catastrophe Founding Judaism 70 to 640 jacob neusner

McGill-Queen’s University Press Montreal & Kingston London Ithaca G

G

© McGill-Queen’s University Press 2009 isbn 978-0-7735-3520-6 Legal deposit second quarter 2009 Bibliothèque nationale du Québec Printed in Canada on acid-free paper that is 100% ancient forest free (100% post-consumer recycled), processed chlorine free McGill-Queen’s University Press acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (bpidp) for our publishing activities. Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Neusner, Jacob, 1932– In the aftermath of catastrophe: founding Judaism, 70 to 640 / Jacob Neusner. (McGill-Queen’s studies in the history of religion. Series two; no. 51) Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-0-7735-3520-6 1. Judaism – History – Talmudic period, 10–425. 2. Judaism – Origin. 3. Rabbinical literature – History and criticism. i. Title. ii. Series. bm177.n48 2009

296.09’015

c2008-907495-5

Typeset by Jay Tee Graphics Ltd. in 10/13 Sabon

Contents

Preface xi Introduction

3

part one the halakhic and aggadic reponses to the HURBAN 1 70-200 The Halakhah: The First Response to the Destruction of the Second Temple 23 2 200-400 The Aggadah: The Second Response to the Destruction of the Second Temple 49 3 Judaism and the Christian Triumph 80 part two the prophetic sources of rabbinic judaism 4 Prophetic-Rabbinic Judaism: 1 Jeremiah Redivivus 119 5 Prophetic-Rabbinic Judaism: 2 How Important was the Destruction of the Second Temple in the Formation of Rabbinic Judaism? 167 Afterword 201 Notes 203 Index 209

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Preface

What commands attention to the first six centuries of the Common Era in the history of Judaism? I refer to the period that began with the destruction of the Second Temple of Jerusalem in 70 and concluded with formation of the Talmud of Babylonia and the advent of Islam after 600. In that period the system of Judaism that over centuries would attain normative status took shape; its canon of law and theology came to definition. It was then that the normative or Rabbinic Judaism carried forward by today’s Orthodox, Reform, and Conservative Judaisms emerged. But why should a reader not party to issues of either historical or living Judaism care about the long-ago and far-away time in which the contemporary systems of Judaism began? The answer is that the paramount Judaism that emerged in late antiquity experimented with solutions to a critical and enduring issue of culture that continues to engage humanity. It is the crisis provoked by calamity, in our own time the German war against the Jews, 1933–1945, and in antiquity the destruction in 70 c.e. of the Temple of Jerusalem and the cessation of its sacrifices. By the cultic calendar people had measured the passage of time in the heavens and maintained their relationship with God on earth. And the resolution of the crisis set forth a radical solution, the reversion to prophecy. The restoration of world order came about in consequence. So Judaism as we know it responded and continues to respond to the paramount problem of that day, the end of the old order and the advent of the new.

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My account of matters has unfolded over decades in a variety of discrete works. In these pages I compose a cogent account of several distinct lines of inquiry and correlate the results. In this way I put together a variety of discrete monographs and show how they yield a coherent thesis. The chapters draw on prior work in the following manner: chapter one Judaism. The Evidence of the Mishnah. Chicago, 1981: University of Chicago Press. Choice, “Outstanding Academic Book List, 1982–3.” Paperback edition: 1984. Second printing, 1985. Third printing, 1986. Second edition, augmented: Atlanta, 1987: Scholars Press for Brown Judaic Studies. Reprint, Eugene, or, 2003: Wipf and Stock. Hayyahadut le’edut hammishnah. Hebrew translation of Judaism. The Evidence of the Mishnah. Tel Aviv, 1987: Sifriat Poalim. Il Giudaismo nella testimonianza della Mishnah. Italian translation by Giorgio Volpe. Bologna, 1995: Centro editoriale Dehoniane. The Vitality of Rabbinic Imagination: The Mishnah against the Bible and Qumran. Lanham, 2004: University Press of America. chapter two The Theology of the Oral Torah. Revealing the Justice of God. Kingston and Montreal, 1999: McGill-Queen’s University Press and Ithaca, 1999: Cornell University Press. Rabbinic Judaism: Theological System. Boston and Leiden, 2003: E. J. Brill. Condensation of The Theology of the Oral Torah. The Presence of the Past, the Pastness of the Present. History, Time, and Paradigm in Rabbinic Judaism. Bethesda, 1996: cdl Press. Second edition, revised and augmented by six new chapters: The Idea of History in Rabbinic Judaism. Leiden, 2004: E. J. Brill. Judaism in Society: The Evidence of the Yerushalmi. Toward the Natural History of a Religion. Chicago, 1983: The University of Chicago Press. Choice, “Outstanding Academic Book List, 1984–1985.” Second printing, with a new preface: Atlanta, 1991: Scholars Press for South Florida Studies in the History of Judaism. Reprint, Eugene, or, 2003: Wipf and Stock.

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chapter three Judaism and Christianity in the Age of Constantine. Issues of the Initial Confrontation. Chicago, 1987: University of Chicago Press. Paperback edition: Chicago, 2007: University of Chicago Press. chapter four Rabbi Jeremiah. Lanham, 2006: University Press of America Studies in Judaism Series. chapter five How Important Was the Destruction of the Second Temple in the Formation of Rabbinic Judaism? Lanham, 2005: University Press of America. Jacob Neusner

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in the aftermath of catastrophe

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Introduction

i. making connections: a personal note To explain how the founding of Judaism from 70 to 640 intersects with persistent interests, present and past, a personal note is required. I need to tell the tale of how in 1953 I recognized the connection between the ancient calamity of 70 c.e. and the modern crisis precipitated by the events of 1933 to 1945, the destruction of European Jewry. I have spent more than fifty years studying the founding of Rabbinic Judaism to deal with issues that I believe have persisted from then to now. Why did I choose the subject of the founding of Judaism in the aftermath of the destruction of the Second Temple and how has it held my interest through the more than 1,000 books that I have published? The story that answers the question is briefly told. In October 1953, as a twenty-one-year-old student at Oxford University studying Jewish history – “English Jews in the usa in the 19th century” was my topic – I decided to devote my life to the study of the history of Judaism in the first six centuries of the Common Era. Of that age I then knew nothing but the main thing: it was the turning point, the time of the founding of Rabbinic Judaism, and Judaism was born in the travail of destruction. Why the focus on the aftermath of destruction and what drew my attention to late antiquity? The two questions have a single answer that responds to the initial issue: why a twenty-first century reader should take up an exposition of how

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Judaism took shape in the first six centuries c.e. I find the answer in what is implicit in the question, which is: What enduring and contemporary questions find answers in that story? We live in an age of reconstruction and renewal in the aftermath of the twelve years that saw the destruction of European Jewry, a principal chapter in the seventy-five years of struggle from 1914 to 1989 that ended the old order. The founding of Judaism over the first six centuries of the Common Era shows how a small group of sages resolved the crisis of the end of the old order. Mine was not a moment of conversion, but an instant of intuitive recognition. In autumnal Oxford I learned of the German war against the Jews and grasped its result: the destruction of the established order of European Judaism of fifteen centuries standing. At that same moment I saw a correspondence between the period following the destruction of the Second Temple and the times in which I lived, following the destruction of European Jewry. And I wanted to learn the lessons of reconstruction. I remember the occasion vividly. It came about through the publication of a book. One day that October I went to Blackwells, a book store, and saw at the entrance a mountain of copies of a new book, a new book on what I took to be a new subject: The Final Solution by Gerald Reitlinger.1 So far as I know, and then knew, it was the first comprehensive, systematic, sustained narrative in English of what had happened to the Jews of Europe before and during World War II. Eight years after the end of the war, it was not yet a privileged subject. I knew the facts vaguely, episodically. But, a third generation American, I could not name a single family member who had lost his life in the catastrophe. My grandparents spoke of none. Nor was the connection self-evident between “the final solution” and the events of 70 and the ultimate founding of Judaism. The term “the Holocaust” had yet to surface to encompass the horrors of the German genocide of the Jews. The word of choice, I soon found, was Hurban, destruction, which in the classical literature of Judaism carried the analogy to Hurban Bayit Rishon or Hurban Bayit Sheni, the destruction of the First or of the Second Temple. The event had not yet reached its full mythopoeic proportions, and the full weight of the losses in population and in culture

Introduction

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had yet to be felt. But at that time in my life I would read any book on any Jewish subject, particularly a history book; my curiosity knew no bounds. I bought The Final Solution and took it back to my rooms and started reading. I scarcely stopped until I had read the whole book. I was deeply affected by the narrative of the destruction of European Jewry from 1933 to 1945. It was a turning point for me. At the age of twenty-one, with life eternal spreading forth, questions turn attention towards the future. What is to be done tomorrow, not how to respond to yesterday, framed the issue. Specifically, I wondered where and how the survivors – and we who now lived were also survivors – were to undertake the restoration accomplished by Rabbinic Judaism. That struck me as the task of the coming generation, my generation, which came to maturity in the 1950s. I determined to devote my life to finding answers to the question of renewal. But what analogies presented themselves, and where were we, the survivors, to find models for the reconstruction of the religious system, Judaism? I had in mind not theodicy, a theological solution to the problem of evil raised by the Hurban, for I was no philosopher and also knew nothing of theology. I also ignored practical, political solutions to “the Jewish problem,” such as the one set forth through the recent creation of the State of Israel. I did not imagine that the State of Israel could take the place of the lost European Jewry. My initial visit to the State of Israel, in the summer of 1954, persuaded me that the American Exile (Golah) or Diaspora would have to solve its own problems. That meant finding its own place in the history of Judaism. As the proud son of a Reform Temple, I had an open mind on that matter. What I sought were intellectual programs, ideas containing solutions in social policy to problems of the Jews’ social order: how have Jews and their culture responded to crises of calamity? And what did Jews do to overcome the outcome? To tell the outcome in one sentence: from the encounter with the Final Solution, a decade later came my doctoral dissertation, A Life of Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai,2 the biography of the Rabbinic sage who is represented in the Rabbinical canon as having bridged the abyss from before the destruction of the Temple to the Rabbinic renaissance afterward.

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And everything since has carried forward the inquiry into the formative age and process of Rabbinic Judaism in response to the events of 70 and 132 that took shape in that October 1953. But why select 70 and what followed as the model, when a formidable menu of calamities presented itself from which I had to choose? One of them could hardly claim priority over another, and the blood of martyrs is always the same colour of red. A little reflection presented a variety of candidates for the consideration of cases of restoration: after 586 b.c.e.; the destruction of the first Temple, 70 c.e.; the destruction of the second Temple, 361–2; the abortive rebuilding of the Temple under the sponsorship of Emperor Julian, which failed, 1096; the massacre of Rhineland Jewry by the Crusaders, 1349; the murder of Jews blamed for the Black Death, 1492; the expulsion of the Jews of Spain, 1497; the same of Portugal, 1648–9; the massacres of the Polish and Ukrainian Jewish communities, 1914–1918 and beyond; the calamity of World War I and Communism in Eastern Europe and the forcible deJudaization of Jewry in the ussr thereafter – and these were only the high points. Not only so, but models for how calamity precipitated creativity had been freshly drawn in, among other then-current works, Gershom G. Scholem’s Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism.3 In the Stroock Lectures of 1938, as the German war against the Jews was gathering force, he had shown how important chapters in the unfolding of the Qabbalah were written in the aftermath of the expulsion of the Jews from Spain and Portugal, for one example. So the challenge of responding to 1933–1945 took its place at the end of a long line of corresponding crises, including other quite current ones. Why focus on this calamity and not that? I went in quest of an analogy and a model, an analogy to the destruction of vast communities of Judaism, and a model for what was to be done then. Most of the events in the catalogue of calamity precipitated theological reflection on the sins that suffering atoned for. Theological responses to the Hurban were already emerging in the 1950s. And as I said, the political response to the Hurban in the creation of the State of Israel, while compelling, did not accommodate the concerns of the diaspora, which encompassed the majority of Jews in the world, especially those that lived in America and Canada. So theol-

Introduction

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ogy and politics set the wrong agenda. Where was I to find a model for the social and intellectual reconstruction of Judaism that was now required to respond to the final solution? Ideas register. But European Jewry outside Britain had lost its cultural and religious institutions, and most of its intellectual leadership had perished or escaped into exile. Whence were the models of institutions and ideas to emerge to guide the age of reconstruction? Three possibilities presented themselves, represented by the dates 586 b.c.e., 70 c.e., and 1492 and 1497: Hurban Bayit Rishon, the destruction of the First Temple, Hurban Bayit Sheni, the destruction of the Second Temple, and 1492 and 1497, the expulsion of the Jews from Spain and Portugal. All three marked axial events. Each stood for renewal, rebirth, and renovation of the communities of Judaism. In the aftermath of 586 the Torah of Moses, the Pentateuch, was compiled by Ezra; in the aftermath of 70 came the Mishnah and the companion documents of Rabbinic Judaism; and in the aftermath of 1492 the Qabbalah produced its climactic documents and doctrines. Of these three moments the destruction of the Second Temple struck me as the compelling model, the most relevant one. The Torah that was compiled after 586 was subsumed within the Rabbinic system, and the chapters of the Qabbalah composed after 1492 spoke to a sectarian audience and did not universally define the norms of Judaism. So in the log of calamities that bore resemblances to the catastrophe of our own day, the age that saw the formation of Rabbinic Judaism promised to yield the lessons I wanted to learn. The formation of Rabbinic Judaism then bore direct and immediate connections to the condition of that same Rabbinic Judaism now. The very same Judaic system that defined the norms today found its beginnings in the Judaic system that emerged in response to the destruction of the Second Temple. The theology and law of medieval and modern and contemporary Judaism flowed from Scripture as mediated by the documents of Rabbinic Judaism, the Mishnah, 200 c.e., the two Talmuds, 400, 600 c.e., and the Midrash-compilations, ca 200–600 c.e. Rabbinic Judaism came to full expression in the centuries between the destruction of the Second Temple and the advent of Islam. From the advent of Islam forward that same Judaism predominated in most of the world of Judaism.

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What was required was a study of the formation of Judaism. So much for the starting point.

ii. drawing conclusions What, exactly, can such a study promise? I aim at an exemplary case of the social response to the end of the old order and the beginning of the new. The Rabbinic writings, legal, theological, and exegetical, are shown here to have responded to the calamity of the loss of the Temple and metropolis with a vast systematic statement. They translated Scripture’s Israelite Utopia into a concrete account of the projected social order. I promise an account of the design for the social reconstruction of Israel, meaning a picture of the community of Judaism as imagined by the Rabbinic sages – an intellectual portrait of a realized Utopia. Three questions produce the answers that sustain such an account: What modes of thought predominated in the post-70 documents? How does the upshot of those modes of thought signal the deep preoccupations of the Rabbinic sources, their law and theology? What logic governs, meaning what connections do we draw between the concerns of the Rabbinic sages and the paramount events of the their age – and ours? When we reckon with how they thought, chapter 1, what they thought, chapter 2, and what they thought about, their sense for the self-evident, chapter 3, we enter into the deep structures of intellect that animated the Rabbinic system. Then we go in quest of the foundations of their thought, which I find in ancient Israelite prophecy. The story did not end in late antiquity. The logic that governed continued to generate responses, later on, to problems comparable to those that were paramount in the period of the founding of Judaism. So we identify the focus of thought and its dynamics, which is precisely that to which the Rabbinic writings bear witness. This sort of cultural analysis of the preoccupations of a body of writings and its sponsorship permits inferring the generative conceptions and invites us to make connections between the ideas people held and the world to which they responded.

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To describe the Judaic religious system of 70 to 640 we focus on some of the principal documents of the nascent Rabbinic canon, which forms the body of evidence that makes possible this project. The Rabbinic canon differs strikingly from the diffuse writings produced from the Torah of Ezra, ca 450, to the destruction of the Temple in 70. Treating the first six centuries of the Common Era as a distinct period in the history of Judaism finds validation in the coherence of the Rabbinic canon and in its distinctive characteristics, which distinguish it from the writings that had preceded it and that had spoken for diverse Judaic systems. Notice the contrast between the sources for Judaism in the first six centuries c.e., 70–640, and those that attest to the Judaic religious systems of the last five centuries b.c.e., from the closure of the Pentateuch by Ezra ca 450 b.c.e. through the writings of Josephus and Philo in the first century c.e. For that period we have a broad selection of writings, some of them representing named authors. We hear voices from particular periods, places, perspectives. No process of homogenization distorts the natural sounds of the sources. The philosopher, Philo of Alexandria, and the general and historian, Josephus, illustrate the kind of source that attests to a particular named individual and his viewpoint, dealing with a specific time and place. The Rabbinic sources, however, not only represent a consensus but also speak for the generality of Rabbinic opinion over time. For the same period, second, we have writings that come to us directly from their authors, without the intervention of a protracted process of independent formulation and transmission. The Dead Sea scrolls do not reach us through tradition over generations. A process of formulation and transmission over time and circumstance intervenes in our quest for the opinion of a particular person or generation. Third, for the period from 450 b.c.e. to 70 c.e. we have a variety of sources, deriving from a range of circles and viewpoints, the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Israelite Scriptures illustrating the matter. For Judaism from 70 to 640 we possess the Rabbinic canon, which is remarkably cogent, and a small selection of associated liturgical writings, poetry in particular. We do not know

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whether Rabbis sponsored or influenced the synagogue art and architecture that archaeology has uncovered. So the controls that guide the study of the Judaic religious systems from Second Temple times, the diversity of evidence that makes possible comparison and contrast, do not function for late antiquity. We are left with the Rabbinic writings and limit our questions to those that those writings permit us to answer: the documentary evidence for what a small circle of sages were thinking. Perspective on the character of the Rabbinic canon comes to us through the comparison of that canon with its Christian counterpart for the same period. If in the first six centuries c.e. Christianity had been written down in the way in which Judaism is, what should we know about Christianity, and how should we know it? I cursorily paint a picture of our problem in studying early Christianity, if the sources of early Christianity had reached us in the way, and in the condition, in which those of early Rabbinic Judaism come down to us. That is to say, what should we know, and how should we know it, if the records of early Christianity were like the Rabbinic literature of late antiquity? (1) What could we know, if all the literature of early Christianity had reached us in a fully homogenized and intellectually seamless form? Not only the New Testament, but all the works of the church fathers, from Justin to Augustine, now would be represented as expressions of one communal mind, dismembered and rebuilt into a single harmonious logical structure on various themes. True, they would be shown to disagree constantly with one another. But the range of permissible disagreement would define a vast area of consensus on all basic matters, so that a superficial contentiousness would convey something quite different: one mind on most things, beginning to end. The names of the fathers would be attached to some of their utterances. But all would have gone through a second medium of tradents and redactors – the editors of the compendium (the Patristic Talmud, so to speak) – and these editors picked and chose what they wanted of Justin, of Origen, of Tertullian, and of Augustine, in line with what the editors themselves found interesting. In the end, the picture of the first six centuries of early Christianity would be the creation of people of the sixth century, out of

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the shards and remnants of people of the first five. Our work then would be to uncover what happened before the end through studying a document that portrays a timeless world. Not only would the document be so framed as implicitly to deny historical development of ideas but also the framers would gloss over diverse and contradictory sources of thought. I do not mean only that Justin, Irenaeus, and Tertullian would be presented as individual authors in a single, timeless continuum. I mean that all Gnostic and Catholic sources would be broken up into sense-units and their fragments rearranged in a structure presented as representative of a single Christianity, with a single, unitary theology. This synthesized ecumenical body of Christian thought would be constructed so as to set out judgments on the principal theological topics of the day, and these judgments would have been accepted as normative from that day to this. So the first thing we must try to imagine is a Christianity that reaches us fully harmonized and whole – a Christianity of Nicaea and Chalcedon, but not of Arians, Nestorians, monophysites, and the rest, so there is no distinctive Justin nor Augustine, no Irenaeus and no Gnostics, and surely no Nag Hammadi, but all are one “in Christ Jesus,” so to speak. (2) Let me emphasize that this would be not merely a matter of early Christian literature’s reaching us without the names of the authors of its distinct documents. What we must try to imagine is that there would be no individually differentiated documents at all. Everything would have gone through a process of formation and redaction that obliterated the marks of individuality. Just as the theology would be one, so would the form and style of the documents that preserved it. What would be striking about this picture of Christianity would be not that the tractate of Mark lacks the name of Mark but that all of the tractates of the Gospels would be written in precisely the same style and resort to exactly the same rhetorical and redactional devices. Stylistic unity so pervasive as to eliminate all traces of individual authorship, even of most preserved sayings, would now characterize the writings of the first Christians. The sarcasm of Irenaeus, the majesty of Augustine, and the exegetical ingenuity of Origen, the lucid historicism of Aphrahat – all are homogenized. Everyone talks in the same way about the same things.

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(3) And now to come to a principal task of the study of early Christianity: what should we know about Jesus, and how should we know it, if sayings assigned to Jesus in one book were given to Paul in a second, to John in a third, and to “They said,” or, “He said to them,” in a fourth. Can we imagine trying to discover the historical Jesus on this turf? If even the provenance of a saying could not be established on the basis of all those to whom it is attributed; if, often, even a single Vorlage and Urtext could not be postulated? Then what sort of work on the biography and thought of any of the early figures of Christianity would be credible? Rabbinic literature is simply not homologous to the writings of early Christianity and cannot be used in anything like the same way. Not only so, but that literature deals with different types of problems and answers altogether different questions, with the result that we cannot present to Rabbinic literature questions deemed appropriate for address to another kind of writing altogether. A life of Jesus or of Augustine is plausible; a life of Aqiba or Hillel is not. An account of the intellectual biography of Paul and his theology is entirely a propos, the sources answering precisely the questions that are asked. A counterpart picture of Judah the Patriarch, who allegedly wrote up the Mishnah, or of Rabbah, Abbayye, or Raba, the greatest geniuses of the Talmud, is not. So to use one type of writing to address questions appropriate to another type of writing is surely a dubious operation. The collective, homogeneous statement of the Rabbinic canon defines the founding of Judaism. The question that predominates in our reading of the Rabbinic canon is: What were the inner tensions, the profound concerns, that preoccupied the authorships of the Rabbinic writings, viewed each as a distinct statement? That program of intellectual analysis yields a picture of the unfolding of fundamental concepts. But it cannot fail to disappoint the reader seeking a continuous narrative of events and issues. The Rabbinic writings refer to the destruction of the Temple. Can we not translate those writings into a connected narrative of what happened from day to day in an account of the history of the age? The character of the extant literary sources produces a negative answer. They do not supply the wherewithal for a story or even reliable accounts of his-

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torical facts: precisely what happened on a particular occasion. The stories that they tell are episodic. They are conveyed by singletons, not by two or more independent sources that permit checking. They are not records composed on or near the occasions to which they bear witness, and marked by cultural conventions of how things should be set forth; they do not record ipsissima verba, records of what was really said. The Rabbinic sages did not write history and their records yield none.

iii. what facts sustain the inquiry? Therefore it is easier to say what cannot, rather than what can, be expected of the sources of Judaism from 70 to 640. A flowing narrative history requires what late antique Judaism does not provide, which are sustained and abundant accounts of the chronology and meaning of events, the sequence of ideas, contemporary records of things said and done. From 70 to 640 a long list of sources produces no counterpart to what we have for the study of Judaism in Second Temple times. A sizable selection of writings deriving from a variety of circles represents contemporary views. The problem is not simply that, from 70 forward, nearly all surviving writings derive from Rabbinic circles and were produced at the end of generations of formulation and transmission of traditions attributed to authorities in the remote past. It is that we do not have a single document that represents the viewpoint of a particular person or setting, that attests to the conditions at a determinate time. The collective character of the documents, their testimony to consensus formed over time makes unlikely the narrative history of events and ideas. Take for example the axial event, the destruction of the Temple and its consequences. Of the destruction of the Temple and Jerusalem we have narratives that express a viewpoint; whether they convey historical facts of a particular time and context raises a separate question. The founding of Rabbinic Judaism is represented as the consequence of the Rabbinic sages’ conducting public policy in the model of the prophet, Jeremiah, who at the destruction of the First Temple went over to the Babylonians and counselled surrender. The message of the story is that Israel should concentrate on Torah-

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study and practice of the commandments and should not aspire to contend with world empires. When the general, Josephus, wrote his picture of the War against Rome, he too taught the lesson that the Jews brought the calamity on their own heads by zealously resisting Rome, and were led by fanatics, not wise sages. A single case of the Rabbinic sources that derive from the period at hand will show why we cannot translate the Rabbinic writings into simple historical narrative. A dramatic story of how Yohanan ben Zakkai escaped from the destruction of Jerusalem serves to illustrate the kind of tendentious narrative that the Rabbinic canon provides. The Fathers According to Rabbi Nathan IV:VI.1 A. Now when Vespasian came to destroy Jerusalem, he said to [the inhabitants of the city,] “Idiots! why do you want to destroy this city and burn the house of the sanctuary? For what do I want of you, except that you send me a bow or an arrow [as marks of submission to my rule], and I shall go on my way.” B. They said to him, “Just as we sallied out against the first two who came before you and killed them, so shall we sally out and kill you.” C. When Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai heard, he proclaimed to the men of Jerusalem, saying to them, “My sons, why do you want to destroy this city and burn the house of the sanctuary? For what does he want of you, except that you send him a bow or an arrow, and he will go on his way.” D. They said to him, “Just as we sallied out against the first two who came before him and killed them, so shall we sally out and kill him.” E. Vespasian had stationed men near the walls of the city, and whatever they heard, they would write on an arrow and shoot out over the wall. [They reported] that Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai was a loyalist of Caesar’s. F. After Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai had spoken to them one day, a second, and a third, and the people did not accept his counsel, he sent and called his disciples, R. Eliezer and R. Joshua, saying to them, “My sons, go and get me out of here. Make me an ark and I shall go to sleep in it.”

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G. R. Eliezer took the head and R. Joshua the feet, and toward sunset they carried him until they came to the gates of Jerusalem. H. The gate keepers said to them, “Who is this?” I. They said to him, “It is a corpse. Do you not know that a corpse is not kept overnight in Jerusalem.” J. They said to them, “If it is a corpse, take him out,” so they took him out and brought him out at sunset, until they came to Vespasian. K. They opened the ark and he stood before him. L. He said to him, “Are you Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai? Indicate what I should give you.” M. He said to him, “I ask from you only Yavneh, to which I shall go, and where I shall teach my disciples, establish prayer, and carry out all of the religious duties.” N. He said to him, “Go and do whatever you want.” O. He said to him, “Would you mind if I said something to you.” P. He said to him, “Go ahead.” Q. He said to him, “Lo, you are going to be made sovereign.” R. He said to him, “How do you know? S. He said to him, “It is a tradition of ours that the house of the sanctuary will be given over not into the power of a commoner but of a king, for it is said, ‘And he shall cut down the thickets of the forest with iron, and Lebanon [which refers to the Temple] shall fall by a mighty one’” (Isa. 10:34). T. People say that not a day, two or three passed before a delegation came to him from his city indicating that the [former] Caesar had died and they had voted for him to ascend the throne. U. They brought him a catapult and drew it up against the wall of Jerusalem. V. They brought him cedar beams and put them into the catapult, and he struck them against the wall until a breach had been made in it. They brought the head of a pig and put it into the catapult and tossed it toward the limbs that were on the Temple altar.

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W. At that moment Jerusalem was captured. X. Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai was in session and with trembling was looking outward, in the way that Eli had sat and waited: ‘Lo, Eli sat upon his seat by the wayside watching, for his heart trembled for the ark of God’ (1 Sam. 4:13). Y. When Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai heard that Jerusalem had been destroyed and the house of the sanctuary burned in flames, he tore his garments, and his disciples tore their garments, and they wept and cried and mourned. This narrative finds a place in every account of the events of the war against Rome fought from 67 to 73 and forms the foundation of all conventional histories of the Jews and of Judaism. A number of problems require solution, however, before we can reliably translate the story into history, an account of precisely what was said and done on that particular day – or an actuality at all. First is the witness to the event: whose testimony do we have? Second is the venue of the tale, who told it, when, where, and for what purpose? Third, the story first occurs, in The Fathers According to Rabbi Nathan, a compilation of indeterminate date but certainly not contemporary with the events that are portrayed. It is commonly assigned to the later centuries of late antiquity. At that time stories about the destruction of the Second Temple surfaced in a number of roughly contemporary compilations, the Talmud of Babylonia, 600 c.e., and Lamentations Rabbah, for two examples. Why the destruction of the Temple should have engaged the Rabbinic sages at just that time cannot be said for certain. But the failure of the rebuilding of the Temple during the reign of the Emperor, Julian, 361–362, presents itself as a precipitating event, focusing attention on the ancient tragedy in the light of the current one. How the record of what happened was preserved is unknown. What issues interested those who chose the story, and the issues it raises, for inclusion in just this document have yet to be specified. The place of the tale in the program of the Fathers According to Rabbi Nathan demands attention. Then there is the theology of the narrative: Torah and resurrection vs Temple and destruction. When and why did the Rabbinic theology of Torah take over and define the norm?

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When we turn to the historicity of the tale itself, another set of questions intervenes. Who was present and recorded the exact words of the conversation between Yohanan and Vespasian? How was the story preserved and handed on to record the historical facts, if any? Who attests to it, bearing witness to those facts? And to what age and setting does the story attest? Not only are these standard questions of historical verification not answered, but the character of the story raises its own questions. For, suspiciously, it conforms to a convention deriving from Scripture. Yohanan ben Zakkai is modeled on the account of Jeremiah’s conduct in 586. He too counselled submission and was recognized by the conquerors as a collaborator and ally. In his narrative of the war, the Jewish general Josephus portrays how he went over to the Romans in the same manner. The blatant symbolism of the story, invoking the coffin as the medium of salvation, with the promise of death and resurrection, argues against its status as a singleton-event. That is why I cannot string together into a sustained narrative the harvest of a trawl through the Rabbinic documents for stories and sayings that refer to events of the day. A story awaits its telling, but it is not a narrative of recapitulation. Rather, it is the outcome of asking about the character and concerns of the Rabbinic documents of late antiquity, from the Mishnah, ca 200 c.e., through the Bavli, ca 600 c.e. So much for Rabbinic portrayal of politics. What about theology? There we are on firm ground in deriving from Rabbinic writing ample evidence of theological principles and cultural policy. But if we propose to recover the history of ideas, we face formidable obstacles. The Rabbinic response to the crisis is contained in another story of Yohanan ben Zakkai and his disciple Joshua: The Fathers According to Rabbi Nathan IV.V.1–2 IV:V.1 A. ... on deeds of loving kindness: how so? B. Lo, Scripture says, “For I desire mercy and not sacrifice, [and the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings]” (Hos. 6:6). C. To begin with the world was created only on account of loving kindness.

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D. For so it is said, “For I have said, ‘the world is built with loving kindness, in the very heavens you establish your faithfulness’” (Ps. 89:3). IV:V.2 A. One time [after the destruction of the Temple] 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 which lies in ruins, the place in which the sins of Israel used to come to atonement.” 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). Four theological convictions register, and they define a system of thought, not an account of a particular event. First, the important consequence of the destruction of the Temple was not the loss of the Jews’ sovereignty over the Land but the cessation of sacrifices. It was not a political event. Second, there was a surrogate for animal sacrifice, which was a deed of loving kindness. Hence the loss of the Temple was not only temporary but subject to replacement for the time being. Third, in line with prophecy, God favours not only mercy and not sacrifice but also knowledge of God – which sages possess in the Torah – rather than burnt offerings. A theology of history emerges, which accords priority to morality over ritual, and to knowledge of the Torah over sacrifice. Fourth, a medium of atonement as effective as the Temple sacrifices afforded for Israel the possibility of reconciliation with God. Since the Rabbinic system laid emphasis on the importance of repentance for sin and conformity of one’s will with the will of God, issues of atonement formed a key part of the larger system. To this narrative issues of critical history prove monumentally irrelevant. Whether or not Yohanan and Joshua held the colloquy before us scarcely registers. The entire Rabbinic system is captured in the story and conveyed by it, and from the narrative we derive a

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critical chapter in an account of Rabbinic Judaism as a system in response to the crisis of 70. It goes without saying that the story of Yohanan ben Zakkai and Vespasian serves to register the same systemic statement.

iv. what is to be done? Where does that leave us and what is to be done? We are left with a vast corpus of writings that attest, each one separately, to a distinctive viewpoint and program, but that cannot be located in a particular time and place. Conventional narrative history therefore does not define a plausible, let alone a compelling, possibility. But the sequence of the documents group by group does register: the Mishnah and its associated documents of legal exegesis, ca 200, prior to the Tosefta, ca 300; and the two Talmuds, 400, 600, which respond to the Mishnah, for example. We do not require a detailed chart of the dates of the Rabbinic writings to rely on the approximate sequence of those writings group by group for an account of the unfolding Rabbinic program. The canonical writings present the picture of founding Judaism. How to proceed? What is to be done is to identify in those sequential writings the questions that recurrently preoccupy them, to characterize the deep structures of thought that inhere. Instead of the conventional narrative history that depends on attributions to named authorities, we trace the founding of the Rabbinic Judaic system by the unfolding of the documents preserved in its canon. The canonical documents demarcate the stages, if not the periods, of historical development. That brings us back to the questions I introduced earlier concerning the modes of thought that predominated in the post–70 documents, the upshot of those modes of thought in pointing to the deep preoccupations of the Rabbinic sources, their law and theology, and the logic that dictates the connections drawn between the concerns of the Rabbinic sages and the paramount events of the age. The upshot of the characterization of the canonical writings now leads to a different framing of the historical question and yields the story of founding Judaism. That brings us to the first of the documents that attest to the founding of the Rabbinic

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system, the Mishnah and the Halakhic system it portrays: what are the principal concerns of the Mishnah’s law and how do those concerns relate to the paramount issues of the age: destruction and reconstruction. The program that follows takes up three narrative chapters, chapters 2, 3, and 4, and two analytical chapters, chapters 5 and 6. In the crisis provoked by the calamity of 70 the Hurban yielded the philosophical thesis and provoked a historical antithesis. The philosophical thesis set forth an ahistorical, Utopian restoration of Temple and sacrifice as society regained its equilibrium (chapter 2). The historical antithesis provoked a return to prophetic and apocalyptic thinking about events (chapter 3). The crisis of the Christian triumph allows us to see an alternative response to the Hurban, one the Mishnah might have taken but did not take. We now focus on the Rabbinic response in the Yerushalmi and its companion, Genesis Rabbah, to a concrete event, one that recapitulated the crisis of culture provoked by calamity in 70. Here we see how the antithetical approach to the Mishnah’s worked itself out in a concrete context. The event was the decree of toleration of long-persecuted Christianity by Emperor Constantine in 312 and the progressive Christian take-over of the Roman government in the fourth century. Christian theologians pointed to the political triumph of Christianity as validation of their claim that Jesus was the Christ and found in Scripture prognostications of the current event. We then turn, in chapters 5 and 6, to the analogical thinking that guided the Rabbinic response to the unfolding crisis of the first six centuries c.e. We take up the comparison of Rabbinic thought to the prophetic heritage of Jeremiah, who faced a crisis comparable to that of 70 c.e., and we end with a judgment on the importance of the destruction of the Second Temple in comparison with the importance of the destruction of the First Temple. The implications for the contemporary crisis are transparent.

part one The Halakhic and Aggadic Responses to the Hurban

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1 70–200 The Halakhah: The First Response to the Destruction of the Second Temple i. the mishnah’s response to the destruction of the second temple In the Mishnah, ca 200 c.e., a systematic exposition, by topical categories, of the Halakhah or normative law, the destruction is acknowledged. In detail, however, the Hurban is not situated in the centre of the system that the first post-70 document of Rabbinic Judaism sets forth. It does not generate organizing categories but is classified along with comparable events; it is not treated as unique. That is counter-intuitive. The Hurban ought to make its mark not only in random details but in the structure and generative program of the law. Specifically, we should expect to find in the Mishnah evidence of a grand upheaval, a categorical reorganization effected in the social and the cosmic order. But that is not what the details demonstrate. We find rites of memorialization of incidents in the war against Rome, sumptuary laws directed at activities to be curtailed by reason of mourning for the Temple, and changes in the law to take account of the changed situation of the Israelites. All form ad hoc arrangements, not marks of a fundamental reorganization. Notice the signals of adaptation and accommodation, not revolution. Acts of loving kindness take the place of sacrifices, but no tractate is devoted to the performance of such surrogate sacrifices. Rabbis – so it is claimed – study the Torah and thus serve as surrogate priests

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presenting sacrifices, but no systematic exposition of the valid modes of Torah-study appears in the Mishnah’s program. And many of the topics expounded in the Mishnah are defined in complete indifference to the Hurban; the whole of the Fifth of the Mishnah’s six Divisions, on Holy Things, and of the Sixth Division, on Purities, for example, presuppose that the Temple is in operation and make no provision for its desuetude. The fully articulated program that would ultimately characterize Rabbinic Judaism, its system and structure, makes remarkably slight impact upon the Mishnah. For an event conventionally treated as axial and transformative why do we find no fundamental revision of the category-formations of the law? When by contrast we contemplate the formation of the Pentateuch by Ezra, ca 450, we recognize the work of restructuring, with ancient law codes recast into an unfolding narrative that encompasses the old traditions in a new framework. But the Mishnah organizes itself around a utopian program that hardly affords recognition to the catastrophe. No tractate is devoted to mourning for the Temple, none sets forth a systematic exposition of changes in the foundations of the law by reason of the destruction. The articulated changes in response to the Hurban are trivial. A constant bias denies unique status to the Hurban. The law aims at regularizing and ordering the event of 70 within the larger structure of similar events. The Hurban is not only not unique, it is subject to generalizations that cover comparable happenings. The commemoration of the ruined Temple forms a detail of laws, not a generative force animating the law overall. The revolutionary changes in the modes of divine service, the cessation of Temple sacrifice practiced from remote antiquity, for example, scarcely register. The synagogue succeeded the Temple, but the synagogue does not form the topic of a tractate. Still more: the categorical structure of the Mishnah hardly acknowledges the advent of the Rabbi with his Torah. A generation later, tractate Abot would show what could be done and would underscore the Mishnah’s remarkable reticence to legislate for the Rabbinic authority. So both the end of the old and the beginning of the new go un-remarked upon by the Mishnah in its category-formations.

70–200 The Halakhah

ii. the

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as trivial

The destruction of the Temple emerges in the Mishnah as an event treated like any other of its class, not as the unique turning point in Israel’s history. 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 narratives. Historical events do not supply organizing categories or taxonomic classifications. Along these same lines, there is no sustained narrative of the destruction, events leading up to it, or acts of martyrdom consequent upon the defeat. 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. Episodic snippets such as Yohanan ben Zakkai’s escape from Jerusalem underscore the absence of a narrative tradition in the Mishnah. When things that have happened are mentioned, it is neither 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. A single example of how the wars and upheavals registered in the law suffices. It concerns the administration of land seizures in the aftermath of the Bar Kokhba war, 132–135: M. Gittin 5:6 The law concerning the usurping occupant did not apply in Judah in the case of those slain in the war. From the time of those slain in the war and thenceforward the law of the usurping occupant did apply. How [does the law apply]? [If] one purchased a property [first] from the usurping occupant and [then] went and [also] purchased it from the householder, his purchase is null. [If he purchased it first] from the householder and [then] went and purchased it from the usurping occupant, his purchase is confirmed. [If] a man purchased it from a man and then purchased it from a woman, his purchase is null. [If] he purchased it from a woman and then purchased it from a man, his purchase

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is confirmed. This is the first Mishnah. The court after them ruled: He who purchases a property from a usurping occupant pays the owner a fourth of the value. Under what circumstances? When he [the original owner] has not got the means to buy it. But [if] he has got the means to buy it, he takes precedence over all other people. Rabbi called a court into session and they voted that if the property had remained in the hands of the usurping occupant for twelve months, whoever comes first has the right to purchase it. But he pays the owner a quarter of the value. The Mishnah encompasses the law governing the recovery of property seized by brute force, but it does not record the events that made possible the acts of property theft. That is a fine example of the subordination of history to social policy. Events on their own are trivial, and the Hurban among them. So when sages refer to what has happened, the Hurban for example, they do so casually 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 in the 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 (Mishnah-tractate Qiddushin 4:1). Narratives in the perpetual present tense describe Temple rites, in rhetorical forms particular to that task. They more often treat how things in the cult are done in general rather 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 mostly 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. The Mishnah absorbs into its encompassing system all events, small and large. With happenings the sages accomplish what they do with everything else: a vast labour of classification, an immense construction of the order and rules governing the hierarchization

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of everything on earth and in Heaven. The disruptive character of history – one-time events of ineluctable significance – scarcely impresses the Mishnah’s sages. 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 labour of classification, the historian’s way of selecting data and arranging them into patterns of particular meaning to teach lessons proves inconsequential. One-time events are not what matters. The world is composed of nature and supernature, subject to rules that cohere. 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 lawyerphilosophers 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 an 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 scriptural as 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

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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 those who made omen-series in ancient Babylonia to those who made the Mishnah. 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 one by one do not matter. 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 one-time event at the end, then no one will find reason to narrate 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, 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 towards lessons to be drawn about where things are heading and why. So until the Mishnah, the writing of history served as a form or medium of prophecy.

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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 signalled by what has happened, the pattern of the past yielding the prognosis for the future. 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. 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. 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 the end of time. And in antiquity that kind of writing proves commonplace among all kinds of groups and characteristic of all sorts of Judaic systems but one. And that is the Mishnah’s. 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, no effort is made to set any of the laws of the Mishnah into a

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historical context, e.g., a particular time, place, or circumstance defined by important events. That medium for the presentation of a system 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 places. 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 a description of how things are done in general and universally, that is, descriptive laws. Instead of reflection in narrative context on the meaning and end of history, it constructs a world in which history plays little part and narrative only a limited one. That is why the Hurban is treated as trivial. 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 historical-eschatological 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 the Judaic sector of 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 events. The Mishnah’s way of identifying happenings as consequential and describing them, its way of analysing 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 all historical frameworks. 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

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the capacity of the Mishnah’s framers to think in a different way about the same things astonishing. By “history,” I mean not merely events, but how events are so organized and narrated as to teach lessons, reveal patterns, tell us what we must do and why, what will happen to us tomorrow and how we can influence the course of events. In that context, some events contain richer lessons than others; the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem teaches more than a crop failure, teaches being kidnapped into slavery more than stubbing one’s toe. Furthermore, lessons taught by events – “history” in the didactic sense – follow a progression from trivial and private to consequential and public. To illustrate the trivial way in which the Mishnah treats the Hurban, a few examples suffice. 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 Four 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

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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 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 a 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. Mishnah-Tractate Rosh Hashanah 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:

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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 testimony], and not to the location of the head of the court.” – M. Rosh Hashanah 4:4 These passages leave no doubt about what the Mishnah’s 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 wellschooled in tragedy, know 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 an 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.

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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, (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 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. 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 labour of taxonomy, an immense construction of the order and rules governing the classification of everything on earth and in Heaven. The disruptive character of history – one-time events of ineluctable significance – scarcely impresses the philosophers. 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.

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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 labour 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. Where, if at all, does the Mishnah’s system attend to the events of the preceding century, which, after all, changed for all time the conditions of Israel’s existence. We should see a head-on confrontation with the great events of the age. 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 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 Nine, to which we now turn. The concluding chapter of Mishnah-tractate Sotah, M. 9:9–15, reflects on the decline of the times in general (M. 9:9–12) and the catastrophes that followed the destruction of the Temple (M. 9:12–14), and, finally, provides 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.

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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. 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.

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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. The following is not present in all manuscripts but forms a suitable conclusion to the reflections presented here: 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

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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. Later on we shall meet the Messiah-theme once more, with a similar outcome. The destruction of the Temple compares. Both form examples and yield generalizations. Neither is unique.

iii. the

HURBAN

as axial

If in detail the Mishnah focuses on trivialities, viewed as a whole the document takes charge of society and imposes upon it definitive traits of regularity and order. It marks a revolution in the modes of thought that characterize the Israelite canon. The requirements of responding to chaos, clearly the chaos precipitated by the Hurban, alone explain the Mishnah’s approach to the event. Seen in the context of prior documents, produced by other communities of Judaism, the Mishnah emerges as an utterly fresh reading of Israel’s condition. Assessed against comparable documents of Scripture and those preserved in the Qumran library, the Mishnah shows itself as a triumph of imagination. It exhibits remarkable capacity to think in new and astonishing ways about familiar things. If we compare the Mishnah to other Israelite law codes, specifically to four biblical codes and two codes found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, we recognize the uniqueness of the Mishnah in its Israelite context of Scripture and tradition.1 That shows how the Hurban, to which the Mishnah forms a sustained response, defines an axial event. The bias in favour of order that characterizes the Mishnah expresses itself in the Mishnah’s hierarchical classification of data. The framers of the Mishnah appeal solely to the traits of things. The Mishnah establishes its propositions through classification, so establishing a set of shared traits that form a rule compelling us to reach a given conclusion. Probative facts derive from the classifica-

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tion of data, all of which point in one direction. A catalogue of facts, for example, may be so composed that, through the regularities and indicative traits of the entries, it yields a proposition. A list of parallel items all together point to a simple conclusion; the conclusion may or may not be given at the end of the catalogue, but the catalogue – by definition – is pointed. All of the catalogued facts are taken to bear self-evident connections to one another, established by those pertinent shared traits implicit in the composition of the list, therefore also bearing meaning and pointing through the weight of evidence to an inescapable conclusion. The discrete facts then join together because of some common trait. This is a mode of classification of facts to lead to an identification of what the facts have in common and – it goes without saying – an explanation of their meaning. These and other modes of philosophical argument are entirely familiar to us all. How to see the Mishnah in context? Looking forward, everyone recognizes that the Mishnah forms the starting point for the entire Halakhic tradition of normative Judaism – Tosefta, baraita-corpus, Yerushalmi, Bavli, and beyond. But the true distinction of the Mishnah emerges only when we look backward from the Mishnah to models of how rules were ordinarily organized and collected (“law codes”). The models supplied by Scripture in the Covenant Code, the Priestly Code, the Holiness Code, and the Deuteronomic Code, or formed by other heirs of Scripture, those represented by the Damascus Covenant (cd) and the Manual of Discipline (1qs) of prior centuries, define the context of comparison. The outcome is simply stated: there is no comparison. The governing category-formation – law codes and how they compare – demands attention at the outset. A law code, a collection of norms or rules, is measured by three criteria: [1] its comprehensiveness in coverage of its topics; [2] its cogency; and [3] its capacity for extension to cases and circumstances not explicitly addressed by the code itself. The Mishnah is vast and comprehensive. It is remarkably cogent in its modes of list-making. And through the selective choices of the Tosefta and the Talmuds it extends its laws to a variety of secondary cases. A collection of laws that covers a topic in a comprehensive way is different from one that covers that same topic

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in a superficial way. One that is cogent (by any criterion of cogency, whether philosophical or literary or mythic) in its topical expositions is different from one that is incoherent. One that can set forth generative principles subject to extension and amplification is different from one that supplies ad hoc, case-by-case inert information. A comprehensive, cogent, encompassing code serves the purposes of the society that is conceived to require the code – the provision of regulations for the social order – in a way different from one that is episodic, incoherent, and particular to its miscellaneous cases. Linked to Scripture and in episodic dialogue with Scripture,2 the Mishnah struck out on new paths, altogether different from those set forth by Scripture’s codes and those that imitated them. The capacity to think in fresh ways about Scripture’s own imperatives and their implications attests to the validity of Rabbinic imagination that reaches concrete expression in the Mishnah, a triumph of reconstruction and creative recapitulation. Some of the prior codes compete in comprehensiveness, some in cogency, but none in capacity for extension and amplification, in syllogistic character, as I shall explain. And that is where I identify the marks of imaginative vitality. Those that compete in cogency do not attempt a comprehensive topical exposition, and those that undertake a comprehensive presentation do not exhibit an obvious principle of cogency. The Mishnah is distinctive in one aspect and unique in another. It is singular, first, in combining cogency and comprehensiveness. But it is unique, second, in undertaking syllogistic discourse to turn facts into examples, cases into facts illustrative of comprehensive principles affecting a variety of circumstances or transactions. That is how the Mishnah attests to massive intellectual energy, which completely redefined the modes of thought and inquiry characteristic of all prior exercises of collection and organization of the norms of the Israelite social order. The issue addressed here does not concern influence of earlier on later authorities or continuities from one document to another, other than Scripture. People make much of continuities of detail, which they maintain prove the unity of Jewish law and the normative standing, through all time, of a particular Judaic system (ordinarily the Rabbinic one). The standing of the Mishnah and its law does not come to definition in the appearance,

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in the Mishnah, of details that surface also in law codes of other communities of Judaism. The Mishnah is autonomous by reason of its system, its generative logic, its intellectual capacities. I do not for one minute conceive that the first and second century Rabbinic sages consulted or even knew about the law codes of the Qumran library3 or conceived of Scripture’s codes as particular models for their enterprise. Scripture supplied no model for the framers of the Mishnah, for the several collections of laws of Scripture were embedded in narratives, and the Mishnah invokes no narrative of origins and authority. The Mishnah’s definitive conception – a law code standing on its own and systematically expounding the law in a topical program, lacking narrative and bearing no theological implications – followed no precedent or parallel in Scripture. Nor does the Qumran library supply a comparable exercise of analytical presentation. But the framers of the Mishnah, for all their originality, took up the task carried out by the authorities represented in the Manual of Discipline or the Damascus Covenant or the Temple Scroll, and they recapitulated the work of those who produced Scripture’s Priestly Code (among the biblical codes) and certainly responded to that work. They undertook the same task as occupied the legislators of Qumran, and so they contemplated the result of the legislators of Deuteronomy – not a historical judgment of continuity, but a phenomenological judgment based on an imagined synchrony of the codes. If therefore we can imagine that the framers of the Mishnah met one day to plan their document in the light of the decisions made by others past and present who had undertaken the same task, to define its indicative traits, we may reconstruct from what they did or did not do their judgment of choices made by others. That is, they chose ways of constructing their code markedly different from those chosen by others. I refer to six recapitulations of the law. Four derive from the Pentateuch: the Book of the Covenant (Ex. 20:22–23:33), the Priestly Code (Lev. 1–15), the Holiness Code (Lev. 17–26), and the Deuteronomic Code (Dt. 12–26). Two come from the Dead Sea library, the Damascus Covenant (cd), the Manual of Discipline (1qs).4 The common trait of the framers of the Mishnah and the authors of

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these two, among the several principal law codes of Qumran, is the privilege accorded in them to Scripture. All authors and authorships (textual communities) concurred that Moses set forth God’s word in God’s language. To that all parties responded. That shared foundation validates the entire enterprise of comparison, forming the shared premise that permits contrast. In these six contexts of comparison the Mishnah proves remarkable for its vitality, its imaginative power to extend the law from cases to rules, from topical rules to abstract principles. Document by document the Mishnah presents topics that are systematically set forth in prior codes. In all cases we discern the indications of intellectual energy at play in the Mishnah but not in the comparable collection. By what criteria of intellectual activity? The three already noted pertain: [1] cogency; [2] comprehensiveness; and [3] capacity for extension and amplification. Thus we assess whether facts are inert or generative, self-contained or open to development. The laws in an excellent code will prove coherent, they will not merely be random bits of information treated as free-standing episodes but syllogistic in their consequence. The laws of an excellent code will cover a broad range of important topics pertinent to the Israelite social order. The topics that it covers will be systematically expounded. The framers of the Mishnah took up the topics of the Scriptural codes and in one way or another addressed every one of them. But they did not regard themselves as limited to Scripture’s topics, introducing their own as well, and they did not set forth a tractate to cover every topic of Scripture, imposing their own sense of proportion on the biblical program of laws. They made their own decisions on matters of coverage. That independence of thought characterizes imagination and energy of intellect. Above all, an imaginative code will present rules in patterns susceptible to development and so yield further analytical propositions and secondary syllogisms. It will impose patterns upon bits and pieces of data (cogency). It will address the widest program of topics (comprehensiveness). It will construct a syllogistic discourse, signalling problems of a theoretical character that invite further analysis

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(capacity for extension), moving from “two apples and two apples equal four apples” to “two and two are four” (anythings). The Mishnah sets forth a system for Israel’s social order that is cogent in presentation and comprehensive in coverage. The Mishnah’s system yields syllogisms, and the counterpart topical expositions of the other recapitulations of law do not. It suffices to point, furthermore, to the two Talmuds, commentaries and analyses of the Mishnah’s law together with that set forth in the Tosefta and in external legal traditions. It is a simple fact that the Mishnah invited the Talmud into its conversation on the law, and no other Israelite document provoked the response of a Talmud or even a Tosefta. It therefore provides for extension to further cases and amplification of the law to take up new problems. Accordingly, a comparison among the several law codes by these simple criteria of excellence affords perspective on the Mishnah and shows that it is unique by its own indicative traits. These criteria of uniqueness obviously derive from and characterize the Mishnah itself, which exhibits all of them. When it comes to cogency, Dt. 12–26 scarcely register. When it comes to comprehensiveness, none of the other Israelite codes, whether embedded in Scripture or free-standing in a library, compares, with the possible exception of the Deuteronomic Code. The Mishnah sets forth sixty topical expositions, a massive topical program not even attempted in such dimensions by any other code of ancient Israel.5 Looking backward, we see in detail exactly how the Mishnah stood in judgment upon Scripture, choosing a different way from Scripture’s for organizing, rationalizing, and systematizing its laws into a coherent legal system, as well as augmenting its laws. Hence the Mishnah differs from all prior compilations of rules in the range of its topical program. Its presentation of topics is purposeful and propositional, rarely a mere conglomerate of episodic data on a single topic or on multiple topics. Its data are characteristically generative not inert. And, as this exercise of comparison and contrast will further show, when other re-collections or recapitulations treat the same topic as the Mishnah does, the Mishnah’s presentation ubiquitously, if sometimes implicitly, conducts an analysis of the deeper layers of meaning implicit in the data. Furthermore, it

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invites further steps of analytical inquiry. By contrast, other codes, those of Scripture and the Dead Sea Library, which treat comparable topics, provide facts that are generative of nothing very much. For that purpose, specific comparisons of presentations of common topics establish the facts and prove the case, hence the plan for the shank of the book: a topic treated in the Mishnah and in another Israelite code, with the presentations of the same subject compared and contrasted. I do not for one minute maintain that the detailed law of the Mishnah began with the Mishnah. What begins with the Mishnah is only the system that is set forth in full detail by the Mishnah. The bits and pieces utilized in the systemic construction represent shards and remnants of a most ancient history. The history of the components of the legal system set forth whole and complete by the Mishnah extends backward deep into the age prior to the promulgation of the Mishnah, into the depths of Scripture. The framers of the Mishnah certainly grasped that the Pentateuch contained laws, indeed codified laws, e.g., the Priestly Code and the Holiness code of Leviticus, which they called Torat Kohanim, instruction for the priests. They exegetically worked over the details of the book of the Covenant (Ex. 20:22–23:33), and they conscientiously addressed those of the Deuteronomic law code, Dt. 12–26. As I said at the outset, like all other Israelite authorities they privileged Scripture. But it was not by imitating Scripture (or any prior code) that they wrote down their results. Rather, they produced a document that in its indicative traits of topic, rhetoric, and logic of coherent discourse parted company from Scripture and realized an utterly original theory of legal codification: a revolutionary method that recast the entire inherited legal corpus, Scripture and all, in a systematic labour of selection and reconstruction.6 The comparison of the Mishnah with six prior law codes, four in Scripture and two in the library found at Qumran, yields perspective on the Mishnah in diachronic context. The work produces a uniform outcome. Some of the codes are systematic and well-organized, as is the Mishnah. Other codes provide a comprehensive account of the Israelite social order that they contemplate, as does the Mish-

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nah. But none undertakes the systematic, analytical program that everywhere marks as unique the Mishnah’s systematic presentation of its topical program. When the Mishnah takes a topic treated by earlier codes, in density and complexity and profundity it formulates an utterly new statement. It is a presentation that transforms the topic and transcends its boundaries, treating facts as exemplary and identifying principles that govern other subjects as well as the one at hand. Generative logic prevails throughout, inert facts rarely define discourse. Six times over the same process of comparing the syllogistic aspect of biblical or Qumran codes with the Mishnah’s topical counterpart has yielded the same result. And that result was not trivial, nor did it rest on a singleton-proof. The systematic, philosophical reading of the law characteristic of the Mishnah alone in the Israelite setting before its time, and imparted by the Mishnah upon continuation-documents in that same setting afterward, distinguishes the Mishnah from all other law codes of the communities of Judaism.7 So different is the Mishnah from the received collections of rules (“law codes”) that we must classify it as a different kind of document altogether. If the Bible and Qumran have produced law-codes, then by the definition of law code that is realized in them, the Mishnah is something other than a law-code: not only larger in quantity but different in quality. How to explain the difference represented by the Mishnah? We may account for the innovation in legal discourse in more than one way. History, theology, culture – all modes and models of explaining the result of comparison and contrast present plausible and promising approaches to our problem. history The Mishnah is to be seen as a response to the events of 70 and 132–135: the end of the Temple and the closure of Jerusalem to Israelites. The Mishnah could not have been written as it was written had the Temple not been destroyed. The Mishnah belongs and responds to the aftermath of the cataclysmic event that defined its age, the destruction of the Temple ca 70 c.e. Its foci – emphasis on regularity and order, for example – stand in contrast against, and so

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correlate with, the destabilizing and disruptive effects of that event. Without the destruction of Jerusalem there can have been no Mishnah. That represents a historical model of explanation. It is an appealing model. Since the Mishnah came to closure many centuries after the counterpart composites of the Bible and Qumran, we should be tempted to appeal to that much later age and quite different context in which the Mishnah took shape. The Mishnah came to closure, it is generally assumed, ca 200, that is, a bit more than a century after the destruction of Jerusalem and the Second Temple in 70 and about three generations after the end of the rebellion of 132–135 confirmed the result of 70. Consequently, the historical, political context promises to explain the characteristics of the document. But though the explanation stands to reason, verisimilitude cannot be confused with actuality. A rigorous examination of the Mishnah’s treatment of the topic represents the first step in testing the proposed explanation. And that examination must encompass comparison and contrast with other documents of the Rabbinic canon, with the same question in hand. So a historical explanation is plausible but unproven. t h e o l o g y: The Mishnah takes its position in a larger context of conviction than is defined by its table of contents. Scripture and its authority, God and his plans for Israel, Israel and its task in humanity – all three components of a Judaic theological system impinge upon the character of the social order contemplated by the document. The Mishnah adumbrates a theological system and structure involving Torah, God, and Israel, and its traits ought to realize in literary and legal detail the main lines of that structure and system. a m b i e n t c u l t u r e : Then what about shifts in the cultural setting, specifically, fundamental changes, from the ancient Near Eastern world, in which Scripture locates itself, and which has supplied analogies and genres for biblical writing, to the world of GraecoRoman late antiquity? Shifts in the prevailing practice of the making of law codes can account for the difference in codes produced at successive stopping points in the Israelite context.

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How the Qumran codes compare with those of the Mishnah awaits investigation. Like Deuteronomy, the Qumran codes preface law with admonition, placing norms of conduct in the context of norms of conviction. Like the Priestly Code, they tend to topical cogency, item by item. Like the Holiness Code and the Book of the Covenant, they set forth a variety of items, some systematic, some episodic. So the Qumran codes, viewed from afar as we have seen them, continue the line of codification begun in Scripture. But the Mishnah does not adapt for itself the model of Scripture and its codes. It differs because overall it ignores the available Torah and recapitulates its expositions either wholly or in part – a free-hand, free-standing formulation of its own. Then the difference between the Mishnah and (in this case) the Holiness Code is explained by reference to the program of the compilers: the one constructing a systematic and complete statement not to complete Scripture but to replace it; the other filling gaps and correcting errors. The Mishnah is seen to have made a complete break from the received program of formulation of rules, their organization and articulation. That differentiation of the Mishnah from the context of ancient Near Eastern law codes that accommodates Scripture’s several codes is underscored by Alan Cooper,8 who says, “No ancient Near Eastern collection of laws is comprehensive or coherent, nor were they intended to be. The promulgation of law manifests divine or royal authority, provides exemplary cases for judges and legal scholars, and establishes basic principles of justice. But the texts that we have should be read as works of literature, related only tangentially to day-to-day legal practice.” All three approaches to the explanation of the character of a cultural artifact – historical-political context, theological system, the setting of prevailing culture – produce illuminating results. The contemporary context of historical explanation makes the first approach self-evidently plausible. Thus the social changes produced by political, institutional change (“catastrophe”) demand attention, their effects strike the heirs of the mid-twentieth-century calamity of the Jews as obvious. But not all Jews of antiquity focused upon Jerusalem and the Temple the social order in which they made their lives. Not only that, but the Mishnah is remarkably

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obsessed with issues that do not intersect with the theology of the Temple and its destruction, issues of sorting out mixtures, for one example, and the interplay of action and intention, for another. So the historical explanation awaits testing: at what point, in what documents, does the destruction of the Temple in 70 form the centre of interest, and how do those documents compare with the Mishnah’s treatment of the same matter? Where does the historical event form the category that sustains discourse? We shall answer that question in the next two chapters. The theological explanation, linking parts to a centre and a whole, yields a satisfying sense that all things cohere in a few overriding theological affirmations, susceptible to infinite extension and amplification. But the Mishnah takes its program from natural philosophy more than from theology, and we should be hard put, out of internal evidence only, to reconstruct its theological principles and their secondary articulation solely with reference to the Mishnah. As to codification, comparisons between Graeco-Roman law codes and the Mishnah yield contrasts, seldom commonalities.9 As in the ancient Near Eastern setting, so in late antiquity, if the Mishnah be defined as a law code, then it is unique in context – no other law codes exhibit comparable indicative qualities. That on the surface is an implausible outcome. So the upshot is, how to account for the vitality of the Mishnah’s imagination: its capacity to see all things fresh and new, whether historical, theological, or cultural in character? It is never easy to explain what is unique. But in the present instance, a powerful case can be made that the Mishnah forms a response to the destruction of the Temple and the following defeat of Bar Kokhba.

an

2 200–400 The Aggadah: The Second Response to the Destruction of the Second Temple i. the yerushalmi So, working like social scientists, sages sorted out events and classified them. In that way they looked for points of regularity – lessons, laws, and rules – that would explain and make sense of new episodes. In discovering through anecdotes a larger system of historical – we would say, theological – laws, sages treated history as the raw material for social science. How different the Yerushalmi! The Mishnah’s ahistorical response to the Hurban invited an antithetical reply, since the Israelite tradition from Scripture forward had found in historical (including apocalyptic) narrative a principal medium for theological expression. The Yerushalmi, the Talmud of the Land of Israel, ca 400 c.e., states the historical antithesis to the Mishnah’s philosophical thesis. The Yerushalmi comments on thirty-nine of the Mishnah’s sixty-two tractates and so takes second place in the unfolding of the Rabbinic canon. When we speak of “the Yerushalmi” it is because the document presents a single melody. The Yerushalmi’s rhetoric as much as its analytical thought is uniform throughout. The Yerushalmi is broken up into multiple brief discussions of the meaning and sense of the phrases and sentences of the Mishnah. Nearly every coherent construction – perhaps 90 per cent of the whole – of the Yerushalmi addresses one main point: the meaning of the Mishnah. Diverse

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topics produce slight variation in modes of analysis. The same sorts of questions phrased in the same rhetoric – an argument composed of questions and answers – turn out to pertain equally well to every passage of the Mishnah. The Yerushalmi generally takes up a single, not very complex or diverse, program of inquiry. The document also utilizes a single, rather limited repertoire of exegetical initiatives and rhetorical choices for whatever discourse about the Mishnah the framers of the Yerushalmi propose to undertake. Accordingly, the Yerushalmi presents both uniformity of discourse and monotony of tone. That is why I say that the Yerushalmi speaks in a single voice. That voice by definition is collective, not greatly differentiated by traits of individuals.1 For the Yerushalmi, the life of Israel reaches the level of analysis within the integument of the Mishnah. That is to say, the Mishnah is about life, while the Yerushalmi is about the Mishnah. Accordingly, the traits of the Mishnah defined the problematic issues, of both intellect and politics, confronting the heirs of the Mishnah. They, for their part, set the patterns that followed, treating the Mishnah as they did the Torah, proposing to receive and realize its revelation.

ii. the yerushalmi’s reversion to history If the Mishnah responded to the Hurban by indirection, the Yerushalmi reverted to the explicit confrontation with events made possible by historical modes of thought and discourse. The Mishnah classified events and generalized. The Yerushalmi set forth through sustained narratives the particularity of happenings. The Mishnah dealt with the laws of the social order illustrated by events, the Yerushalmi narrated the singular event and stressed its uniqueness. The Mishnah contains no narratives of the calamity; the Yerushalmi elaborately portrays its Bar Kokhba chapter. In its narratives it reverted to history and set forth the antithesis of the Mishnah’s approach. Historical, including apocalyptic, thinking dominated in all Judaic systems until the advent of the Mishnah. That mode of thought is simply described. Events bear meaning, specifically, God’s message and judgment. What happens is singular, therefore, an

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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 in the event. That meaning is to be discovered and revealed, extended and amplified through the nuances of the narrative of what has happened. So the writing of history serves as a form of prophecy. The Mishnah’s subordination of historical events to uniform laws of the social or natural order 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, which is salvation. Contrast the Mishnah’s approach to past time. Compare that reading with the Mishnah’s essentially ahistorical system of timeless sanctification, worked out through construction of an eternal rhythm centred on the movement of the moon and stars and seasons. Israel had suffered enormous loss of life and property, as the passage of Mishnah-tractate Gittin on land-grabbers shows. As we shall see, the Yerushalmi takes these events seriously and treats them as unique and remarkable. The memories proved real. The hopes evoked by the Mishnah’s promise of sanctification of the world in static perfection did not. For the philosophers of the Mishnah had to compete with the grief of an entire century of mourning: Yerushalmi Taanit 4:5 X. B. Rabbi would derive by exegesis twenty-four tragic events from the verse: “The Lord has destroyed without mercy all the habitation of Jacob; in his wrath he has broken down the strongholds of the daughter of Judah; he has brought down to the ground in dishonor the kingdom and its rulers” (Lam. 2:2). C. R. Yohanan derived sixty from the same verse. D. Did R. Yohanan then find more than did Rabbi in the same verse? E. But because Rabbi lived nearer to the destruction of the Temple, there were in the audience old men who remembered

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what had happened, and when he gave his exegesis, they would weep and fall silent and get up and leave. We do not know whether things happened as the story-teller says. But the framers of the Yerushalmi preserved the observation that, in Rabbi’s time, memories of world-shaking events continued to shape Israel’s mind and imagination. For people like those portrayed here, the Mishnah’s taxonomic classification of tragedy to accord with trustworthy rules cannot have solved many problems. Accordingly, we should not be surprised to observe that the Yerushalmi contains evidence pointing toward substantial steps away from the position of the Mishnah. We find materials that fall entirely outside the framework of anti-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 systematically classified 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. A glance at the catalogue, cited above from Mishnah-tractate Taanit 4:6, tells us what kind of happening constitutes an “event,” a historical datum demanding attention and interpretation. In the Yerushalmi, by contrast, in addition to Temple-events, we find two other sorts of stories: Torah-events, that is, important stories about the legal and supernatural doings of Rabbis; and political events. These events, moreover, involved people not considered in the Mishnah’s repertoire of historical actors: gentiles as much as Jews, Rome as much as Israel. The Mishnah’s history, such as it is, knows only Israel. The Yerushalmi 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 Yerushalmi’s theory of history yield a philosophy of history worthy of the name, that is, an account of what Israel is, the meaning of what happens to Israel, and the destiny of Israel in this world and at

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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 Yerushalmi. 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. When the Mishnah includes a statement of the “periods” into which time is divided, however, it speaks only of stages of the cult as at Mishnah-tractate Zebahim 14:4–8: Shiloh, Nob, Jerusalem. 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,” now finds a counterpart in the Yerushalmi’s contrast between “this age” and the age in which the Temple stood. And that distinction is very much an act of thisworldly historical differentiation. Accordingly, the Yerushalmi presents both the expected amplification of the established concepts familiar from the Mishnah and also a separate set of ideas, rooted in prior times but autonomous of what the Mishnah in particular had encompassed. Let us survey what is new and striking. From the viewpoint of the Mishnah, as I have suggested, the single most unlikely development is interest in the history of a nation other than Israel. 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 that signals the presence 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 – re-emerges within the framework of the

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Yerushalmi and other 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 Bavli would take up the case of Iran, in the empire of which Babylonia was located.) 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 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. First, 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. 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. A striking example of the tendency to explain Romans’ deeds through Israel’s logic is the reason given for Trajan’s war against the Jews: Yerushalmi Sukkah 5:1 VII. A. In the time of Tronianus, the evil one, a son was born to him on the ninth of Ab, and the Israelites were fasting.

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B. His daughter died on Hanukkah, and the Israelites lit candles. C. His wife sent a message to him, saying, “Instead of going out to conquer the barbarians, come and conquer the Jews, who have rebelled against you.” D. He thought that the trip would take ten days, but he arrived in five. E. He came and found the Israelites occupied in study of the Light of Torah, with the following verse: “The Lord will bring a nation against you from afar, from the end of the earth, as swift as the eagle flies, a nation whose language you do not understand” (Deut. 28:49). F. He said to them, “With what are you occupied?” G. They said to him, “With thus-and-so.” H. He said to them, “That man [I] thought that it would take ten days to make the trip, but arrived in five days.” His legions surrounded them and killed them. I. He said to the women, “Obey my legions, and I shall not kill you.” J. They said to him, “What you did to the ones who have fallen do also to us who are yet standing.” K. He mingled their blood with the blood of their men, until the blood flowed into the ocean as far as Cyprus. L. At that moment the horn of Israel was cut off, and it is not destined to return to its place until the son of David will come. What is important here is the source of what we might call “historical explanation,” deriving, as it does, from the larger framework of the sages’ conviction. Trajan had done nothing except with God’s help and by God’s design. We note the entry of the Messiah, son of David, a matter to which we return in chapter 3. Here is another example: Yerushalmi Gittin 5:7 I. A. In the beginning the Romans decreed oppression against Judah, for they had a tradition in their hands from their forefathers that Judah had slain Esau, for it is written, “Your hand shall be on the neck of your enemies” (Gen. 49:8).

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This means, again, that things make sense wholly in the categories of Torah. The world retains its logic, and Israel knows (and can manipulate) that logic. At the foundations is the tension between Israel’s God and pagan gods. Historical explanation here invokes the familiar polemic of Scripture. Accordingly, the development of an interest in Roman history – of a willingness to take as important events in the history of some nation other than Israel – flows from an established (and rather wooden) notion of the world in which God and gods (“idols”) compete. Israel’s history of subjugation testifies, not to the weakness of Israel’s God, but to his strength. The present prosperity of idolators, involving the subjugation of Israel, attests only to God’s remarkable patience, God’s love for the world he made. This conception, familiar to be sure in the Mishnah itself, now becomes absorbed into historical categories of “now” and “then.” That is to say, the notion of competition between God and no-gods, Israel and Rome, is set within the framework of differentiation between (1) “this age” and (2) “the time to come.” Since that notion marks a stop beyond the way in which the same theme had come to expression in the Mishnah and Tosefta, we had best review the development of the same passage in its literary – hence canonical – sequences. The passage of the Mishnah is given in bold-face type, of the Tosefta in italics. This helps us see the sequential formation of the passage as a whole. Yerushalmi Abodah Zarah 4:7 A. They asked the sages in Rome, “If God is not in favor of idolatry why does he not wipe it out?” B. They said to them, “If people worshipped something of which the world had no need, he certainly would wipe it out.” C. “But lo, people worship the sun, moon, stars, and planets. D. “Now do you think he is going to wipe out his world because of idiots?” E. They said to them, “If so, let them destroy something of which the world has no need, and leave something that the world needs!”

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F. They said to them, “Then we should strengthen the hands of those who worship these, which would not be destroyed, for then they would say, ‘Now you know full well that they are gods, for lo, they were not wiped out!’” I. A. Philosophers asked the sages in Rome, “If God is not in favor of idolatry, why does he not wipe it out?” They said to them, “If people worshipped something of which the world had no need, he certainly would wipe it out. But lo, people worship the sun, moon, and stars. Now do you think he is going to wipe out his world because of idiots?” [M. 4:7A-D]. B. “But let the world be in accord with its accustomed way, and the idiots who behave ruinously will ultimately come and give a full account of themselves. If one has stolen seeds for planting, are they not ultimately going to sprout? If one has had sexual relations with a married woman, will she not ultimately give birth? But let the world follow its accustomed way, and the idiots who behave ruinously will ultimately come and give a full account of themselves” [T. A.Z. 6:7]. II. A. Said R. Zeira, “If it were written, ‘Those who worship them are like them,’ there would be a problem. Are those who worship the sun like the sun, those who worship the moon like the moon?! But this is what is written: ‘Those who make them are like them; so are all who trust in them’” (Ps. 115:8). B. Said R. Mana, “If it were written, ‘Those who worship them are like them,’ it would pose no problem whatsoever. For it also is written, ‘Then the moon will be confounded, and the sun ashamed’” (Isa. 24:23). C. R. Nahman in the name of R. Mana, “Idolatry is destined in the end to come and spit in the face of those that worship idols, and it will bring them to shame and cause them to be nullified from the world.” D. Now what is the scriptural basis for that statement? E. “All the worshippers of images will be put to shame, who make their boast in worthless idols” (Ps. 97:7). F. R. Nahman in the name of R. Mana, “Idolatry is destined in time to come to bow down before the Holy One, blessed be He, and then be nullified from the world.”

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G. What is the scriptural basis for that statement? H. “All worshippers of images will be put to shame ...: all gods bow down before him” (Ps. 97:7). The important point comes at II.C-H, at which the Yerushalmi’s sages present a temporal differentiation absent in the Mishnah. The problem of the Mishnah is a philosophical one. The Tosefta’s anonymous authorities make that point explicit. There is a certain logic, an inevitability, upon which Israel may rely. True, idolatry prospers. But idolators will be called to account. Now that essentially atemporal notion, which can sustain the interpretation of a last judgment for individuals, moves into a social, hence temporalhistorical, framework at the third stage. Not merely the idolater, as an individual, comes to account. The age of idolatry itself will come to an end. We differentiate between this age, which is bad, and another age, a period in time, which will be good. The notion of temporal sequences, upon which historical thinking rests, in no way serves the framers of the Mishnah passage. By contrast, it is essential to the thought, concerning idolatry, of the authorities cited in the Yerushalmi. The concept of two histories, balanced opposite one another, comes to particular expression, with the Yerushalmi, in the balance of Israelite sage and Roman emperor. Just as Israel and Rome, God and no-gods, compete, with a fore-ordained conclusion, so do sage and emperor. In this age, it appears that the emperor has the power, as does Rome, as do the pagan gods with their temples in full glory. God’s Temple, by contrast lies in ruins. But just as sages overcome the emperor through their inherent supernatural power, so too will Israel and Israel’s God in the coming age control the course of events. Yerushalmi Terumot 8:10 [Translated by Alan J. Avery-Peck] IV. A. As to Diocles the swineherd, the students of R. Yudan, the Patriarch, would make fun of him. B. He [Diocletian] became emperor and moved to Paneas.

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C. He sent letters to the Rabbis, [saying]: “You must be here [to see] me immediately after the end of the [coming] Sabbath.” D. He instructed the messenger [who was to deliver these orders], “Do not give them the letters until the eve [of Sabbath], just as the sun is setting.” [Diocletian hoped to force the Rabbis to miss the appointment, for they would not travel on the Sabbath. Then he could have revenge on them because of their cavalier treatment of him, A.] E. The messenger came to them on the eve [of Sabbath] as the sun was setting. F. [After receiving the message] R. Yudan the Patriarch and R. Samuel bar Nahman were sitting in the public baths in Tiberias. Antigris [a certain spirit, appeared and] came to their side. G. R. Yudan, the Patriarch, wished to rebuke him [and chase him away]. H. R. Samuel bar Nahman said to him [Yudan], “Leave him be. He appears as a messenger of salvation.” I. [Antigris] said to them, “What is troubling the Rabbis?” J. They told him the story [and] he said to them, “[Finish] bathing [in honor of the Sabbath]. For your creator is going to perform miracles [for you].” K. At the end of the Sabbath [Antigris] took them and placed them [in Paneas]. L. They told [the emperor], “Lo, the Rabbis are outside!” M. He said, “They shall not see my face until they have bathed.” N. [Diocletian] had the bath heated for seven days and nights, [so that the Rabbis could not stand the heat]. O. [To make it possible for them to enter, Antigris] went in before them and overpowered the heat. P. [Afterwards] they went and stood before [the king]. Q. He said to them, “Is it because your creator performs miracles for you that you despise the [Roman] Empire?” R. They said to him, “Diocles the swineherd did we despise. But Diocletian the emperor we do not despise.”

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S. Diocletian said to them, “Even so, you should not rebuke [anyone], neither a young Roman, nor a young associate [of the Rabbis, for you never know what greatness that individual will attain].” The this-worldly and practical wisdom contained at the end should not blind us to the importance of the story within the larger theory of history presented in the Yerushalmi. The Mishnah finds ample place for debates between “philosophers” and Rabbis. But in the Mishnah (Mishnah-tractate Sanhedrin 2:2–3) the high priest in the Temple and the king upon his throne are compared hierarchically to one another, not to outside powers. They do not weigh in the balance, or stand poised against, equal and opposite powers, the pagan priest in his temple, the Roman emperor on his throne. The very conception is inconceivable within the context of the Mishnah. For the Yerushalmi, by contrast, two stunning innovations appear: first, the notion of emperor and sage in mortal struggle; second, the idea of an age of idolatry and an age beyond idolatry. The world had to move into a new orbit indeed for Rome to enter into the historical context formerly defined wholly by what happened to Israel. To secular eyes these developments seem perfectly natural. After all, the Jews really had been conquered. Their Temple really had been destroyed. So why should they not have taken an interest in the history of the conqueror and tried to place into relationship with their own history the things that happened to him? We find selfevident, moreover, the comfort to be derived from the explanations consequent upon the inclusion of Roman history, in the Yerushalmi’s doctrine of the world empire. But Israel had been defeated many times before the composition of the Mishnah, and the Temple had lain in ruins for nearly a century and a half when Judah the Patriarch promulgated the Mishnah as Israel’s code of law. So the circumstances in which the Yerushalmi’s materials were composed hardly differed materially from the condition in which, from Bar Kokhba onward, sages selected from what was available and composed the Mishnah. The Scriptures that, after all, also lay at hand offered testimony to the centrality of history as a sequence of meaningful events. Biblical

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writings amply testified to the message and uses of history as a source of teleology for an Israelite system. 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 Yerushalmi, they did. In the Mishnah time is differentiated entirely in other-than-national-historical categories. For, as in tractate Abot, “this world” is when one is alive, “the world to come” is when one 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 up to this point constitute a significant shift in the course of intellectual events, to which the sources at hand – the Mishnah, Tosefta, and Yerushalmi – amply testify.

iii. periodization Differentiation between the time in which the Temple stood and the present age hardly would have surprised the authors of the Mishnah. It was a natural outcome of the Mishnah’s own division of ages. We recall how in Mishnah-tractate Zebahim 14:4–8 time was divided by the location of the altar, and how the divisions were explained by reference to what was done in that regard. Now we find a specification of the exact years involved. Not surprisingly, however, since the Mishnah does not speculate on when the Temple will be rebuilt, the framers of the passage in the Yerushalmi do not specify the year in which they think the Temple will be rebuilt. The Messiah’s coming plays no role at all. Yerushalmi Megillah 1:12 XI. O. So with the tent of meeting: it spent forty years less one in Gilgal. In Gilgal it spent fourteen years, seven when they were conquering the land and seven when they were dividing it. P. In Shilo it spent three hundred and sixty-nine years. Q. In Nob and Gibeon it spent fifty-seven years, thirteen in Nob and forty-four in Gibeon.

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R. In Jerusalem in the time of the first building it was there for four hundred and ten years. S. In the time of the second building it was four hundred ten years. This was meant to fulfill the statement of Scripture: “The latter splendor of this house shall be greater than the former, says the Lord of hosts; and in this place I will give prosperity, says the Lord of hosts” (Haggai 2:9). Strikingly absent is any prediction as to when the third temple would be rebuilt. In due course many would take up the work of speculation and calculation. But in his exegesis of the Mishnah the author of this passage does not do so. The principal point of differentiation between one age and another now remained the destruction of the Temple, which, in the spirit of M. Sot. 9:15, marked the turn of the age. Rules held applicable to Temple times were re-examined to see whether they continued to apply. For example, “What is the law as to tearing one’s garments at this time upon hearing God cursed in euphemisms?” (Y. San. 7:8 VII.C). But the important point is the least blatant. Not everything bad in the current age was to be blamed on the destruction. The explanation of contention in discussions of the law, for instance, involved not the differentiation between historical periods, but the (timeless) failure of the disciples. “In the beginning there was no contention; but ill-prepared disciples caused it” (Y. Hag. 2:1C). But the end of the matter still turns upon history: “The Torah is not going to be restored to its wholeness until the son of David comes (ibid., E). In context, the meaning is, “a long time from now.” The step seems a small one. “This age” and “the other age” shifted at 70. Now, as soon as some other point of differentiation enters, not based upon the destruction of the Temple, a new possibility emerged. Specifically, the potentiality for a theory of Israel’s life not spun out of the cult and its history begins to move toward realization. That much we can deduce from the slight evidence at hand. A further mark of the development of interest in differentiating among historical periods is found in the commemoration of important events. Once one day is differentiated from another because of what happened on that same date a long time ago, we move away

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from the Mishnah’s principal criterion for distinguishing the passage of time. How so? The framers of the Mishnah, following the priestly tradition, knew that one day differs from another because of the passage of the moon through fixed stars in heaven (e.g., Passover falls at the first full moon after the vernal equinox) and the consequent revision of the cultic offerings on earth (as at Numbers 28–29). True, as we noticed, sages also absorbed into their system one-time historical events, such as the seventeenth of Tammuz and the ninth of Ab. But those events proved incidental to the intended construction of a larger system, with Mishnah’s tractates named for festivals of the natural year and focused upon Temple rites for those days. When, therefore, we discover units of discourse devoted to specific historical events and their meaning, we find ourselves in a new situation. Why? Because events we regard as historical, as distinct from those we see as natural or supernatural, have now come to be taken seriously. One day differs from another not by virtue of the criterion of creation, but on account of a political or other historical event. As we recognize, the only such historical, non-natural, event absorbed into the Mishnah’s system involved the Temple. Accordingly, in what follows, we deal with a different approach to time from that characteristic of the Mishnah’s system. Having evidently inherited from former times a calendar of celebrations of important events in Israel’s history, marked by the prohibition against fasting, the Yerushalmi’s sages pursued the issue. In the following unit of discourse we find attention to the traits of commemorative days, consonant with the interest in historical periodization noted earlier: Yerushalmi Megillah 1:4 IX. B. On the twelfth of that month [of Adar] is Tirion’s day. [That day on which the decrees of Trajan were annulled is a holiday and it is forbidden to fast on that day, contrary to Meir’s view of acceptable behavior on the twelfth of Adar, in line with M. Meg. 1:4G.] C. And R. Jacob bar Aha said, “Tirion’s day has been annulled, for it is the day on which Lulianos and Pappos were killed.”

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D. The thirteenth of that month of Adar is Nicanor’s Day. E. What is Nicanor’s Day? The ruler of the Kingdom of Greece was passing by the Land of Israel on route to Alexandria. He saw Jerusalem and broke out into cursing and execration, saying, “When I come back in peace, I shall break down that tower.” F. The members of the Hasmonean household went forth and did battle with his troops and killed them until they came to see those nearest the king. When they reached the troops nearest the king, they cut off the hand of the king and chopped off his head and stuck them on a pole, and wrote underneath them, “Here is the mouth that spoke shamefully and the hand that stretched out arrogantly.” These he set up on a pike in sight of Jerusalem. The importance of this passage is that attention focuses upon the meaning of days distinguished because of specific, one-time events that took place on them. There is no further taxonomic interest. The events are of a clearly historical character – that is, in no way related to the cult or the natural course of the moon in the heavens – and bear no claim that what happens matters only if the Temple is directly affected. True, in the background the Temple is always an issue. Furthermore, the days under discussion appear on the socalled Fasting Scroll, on which it is forbidden to mourn; hence all the events fell into a single taxon. Yet the Mishnah’s treatment of that matter neglects the very thing the Yerushalmi’s authorities take up: the specifics of that happened, the exegesis, in its own terms, of the Scroll and the events to which it refers. And that is the main point. The framers of the passage at hand move out beyond the limits of the Mishnah’s system when they narrate events essentially autonomous of happenings in the cult. Such events moreover are distinguished from one another and in no way forced into a uniform taxon. In this step, as in others we have reviewed, we see how the authors represented in the Yerushalmi move into a framework of thought in which Israel’s being is described and interpreted in historical-eschatological terms, not in natural-supernatural ones.

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Still, the Temple’s destruction would always mark the caesura of time. Important political events were to be dated in relationship to that date. Israel lost the right to judge capital cases “forty years before the Temple was destroyed” (Y. San. 7:2III.A). So, too, forty years before the destruction, ominous signs of the coming end began to appear: Yerushalmi Sotah 6:3 IV. A. Forty years before the destruction of the Temple the western light went out, the crimson thread remained crimson, and the lot for the Lord always came up in the left hand. B. They would close the gates of the Temple by night and get up in the morning and find them wide open. C. Said Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai to the Temple, “O Temple, why do you frighten us? We know that you will end up destroyed. D. “For it has been said, ‘Open your doors, O Lebanon, that the fire may devour your cedars!’” (Zech. 11:1). Reference to the destruction of the Temple as a principal landmark in the division of history is hardly surprising. The framers of the Mishnah surely would not have been surprised, since, for them, as M. Sot 9:15 shows, with the destruction, the old age had turned into the new and darkening one. What was important to them was to find the counterpart in the life of the sages, since the holy life of the Temple and the holy life of the Torah-circles matched one another. So, in all, the Temple continued to provide the principal, and generative, paradigm – whether historical or cultic. But the definition of significant, hence historical, events now expanded to encompass things that happened beyond the Temple walls, yet still in connection with the Temple’s destruction. The main point is that, in the Yerushalmi passage at hand, the established symmetry was shattered. The Temple’s destruction had been made the counterpoise to the decline in the generations of sages. But now the Temple’s destruction stood for much more; testified, so to speak, in a wider variety of cases, than solely to the decline of the supernatu-

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ral world, whether priestly or scribal (to use our terms, not theirs). The message of M. Sot. 9:15 was one thing, the message of the tales at hand, a larger and more encompassing story. That then is the turning point, the transformation of the Temple’s destruction into an event bearing consequences in many other ways.

iv. israel’s suffering The most important change marks 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 centre of things. Accordingly, a new sort of memorable event came to the fore in the Yerushalmi. Let me give this new history appropriate emphasis: 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 themes of salvation 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, as we saw, 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 labour of history-writing (or at least, telling stories about historical events) went together with the work of law-making. The whole formed a single exercise in explana-

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tion 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. The components of the historical theory of Israel’s sufferings were manifold. Most importantly, history taught moral lessons. Historical events entered into the construction of a teleology for the Yerushalmi’s system of Judaism as a whole. What the law demanded reflected the consequences of wrongful action on the part of Israel. So, again, Israel’s own deeds defined the events of history. Rome’s role, like Assyria’s and Babylonia’s, depended upon Israel’s provoking divine wrath, executed by the great empire. This mode of thought comes to simple expression in what follows. Yerushalmi Erubin 3:9 IV. B. R. Ba, R. Hiyya in the name of R. Yohanan: “‘Do not gaze at me because I am swarthy, because the sun has scorched me. My mother’s sons were angry with me, they made me keeper of the vineyards; but, my own vineyard, I have not kept!’ (Song 1:6). What made me guard the vineyards? It is because of not keeping my own vineyard. C. “What made me keep two festival days in Syria? It is because I did not keep the proper festival day in the Holy Land. D. “I imagined that I would receive a reward for the two days, but I receive a reward only for one of them. E. “Who made it necessary that I should have to separate two pieces of dough-offering from grain grown in Syria? It is because I did not separate a single piece of dough-offering in the Land of Israel.” Israel had best learn the lesson of its history. When it did so, it also would take command of its own destiny. But this notion of framing one’s own destiny should not be misunderstood. The framers of the Yerushalmi were not telling the Jews to please God by keeping the commandments 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 of control by other nations only by humbly agreeing to accept God’s rule instead. The nations –

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Rome, in the present instance – rest in one pan of the balance, while God rests, as it were, in 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. With propositions such as these, the framers of the Mishnah would assuredly have concurred. And why not? For the fundamental affirmations of the Mishnah about the centrality of Israel’s perfection in stasis – sanctification – readily prove congruent to the attitudes at hand. Once the Messiah’s coming had become conditional upon Israel’s condition, not upon Israel’s actions in historical time, then the Mishnah’s system would have imposed its fundamental and definitive character upon the Messiah-myth. An eschatological teleology framed through that myth then would prove wholly appropriate to the method of the larger system of the Mishnah. What, after all, makes a Messiah a false Messiah? In the following passage of the Yerushalmi, it is not his claim to save Israel, but his claim to save Israel without the help of God. The meaning of the true Messiah is Israel’s total submission, through the Messiah’s gentle rule, to God’s yoke and service. So God is not to be manipulated through Israel’s humoring Heaven in rite and cult. The notion of keeping the commandments so as to please Heaven and get God to do what Israel wants – such a nakedly manipulative system is totally incongruent to the text at hand. Keeping the commandments as a mark of submission, loyalty, humility before God – this is what marks the Rabbinic system of salvation. So Israel does not “save itself.” 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 shall now see how this critical position is spelled out in the setting of discourse about the Messiah in the Yerushalmi. Bar Kokhba, leader of the second revolt against Rome, 132–135, above all, exemplifies arrogance against God. He lost the war because of that arrogance. In particular, he ignored the authority of sages. Yerushalmi Taanit 4:5 X. J. Said R. Yohanan, “Upon orders of Caesar Hadrian, in Betar they killed eight hundred thousand.”

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K. Said R. Yohanan, “There were eighty thousand pairs of trumpeters surrounding Betar. Each one was in charge of a number of troops. Ben Kozeba was there, and he had two hundred thousand troops who, as a sign of loyalty, had cut off their little fingers. L. “Sages sent word to him, ‘How long are you going to turn Israel into a maimed people?’ M. “He said to them, ‘How otherwise is it possible to test them?’ N. “They replied to him, ‘Whoever cannot uproot a cedar of Lebanon while riding on his horse will not be inscribed on your military rolls.’ O. “So there were two hundred thousand who qualified in one way, and another two hundred thousand who qualified in another way.” P. When he would go forth to battle, he would say, “Lord of the world! Do not help and do not hinder us! ‘Hast thou not rejected us, O God? Thou dost not go forth, O God, with our armies’” (Ps. 60:10). Q. Three and a half years did Hadrian besiege Betar. R. R. Eleazar of Modiin would sit on sackcloth and ashes and pray every day, saying “Lord of the ages! Do not judge in accord with strict judgment this day!” S. Hadrian wanted to go to him. A Samaritan said to him, “Do not go to him, until I see what he is doing, and so hand over the city [of Betar] to you. [‘Make peace ... for you.’]” T. He got into the city through a drain pipe. He went and found R. Eleazar of Modiin standing and praying. He pretended to whisper something into his ear. U. The townspeople saw [the Samaritan] do this and brought him to Ben Kozeba. They told him, “We saw this man having dealings with your friend.” V. [Bar Kokhba] said to him, “What did you say to him, and what did he say to you?” W. He said to [the Samaritan], “If I tell you, then the king will kill me, and if I do not tell you, then you will kill me. It is better that the king kill me, and not you.

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X. “[Eleazar] said to me, ‘I should hand over my city.’ [‘I shall make peace ...’].” Y. He turned to R. Eleazar of Modiin. He said to him, “What did this Samaritan say to you?” Z. He replied, “Nothing.” AA. He said to him, “What did you say to him?” BB. He said to him, “Nothing.” CC. [Ben Kozeba] gave [Eleazar] one good kick and killed him. DD. Forthwith an echo came forth and proclaimed the following verse: EE. “Woe to my worthless shepherd, who deserts the flock! May the sword smite his arm and his right eye! Let his arm be wholly withered, his right eye utterly blinded! (Zech. 11:17). FF. “You have murdered R. Eleazar of Modiin, the right arm of all Israel, and their right eye. Therefore may the right arm of that man wither, may his right eye be utterly blinded!” GG. Forthwith Betar was taken, and Ben Kozeba was killed. We notice 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, the true right arm of Israel, had the power to preserve Israel. Bar Kokhba destroyed Israel’s one protection. The result was inevitable. Now in noticing the remarkable polemic in the story, in favour of sages’ rule over that of Israelite strong men, we should not lose sight of the importance of the tale for our present argument about the Messiah and history. First, the passage quite simply demonstrates an interest in narrating events other than those involving the Temple, on the one side, or the sages in court, on the other. The story at hand and numerous others, not quoted here, testify to the emergence of a new category of history (or the re-emergence of an old one), namely, the history not of the supernatural cult, but of Israel the people. It indicates that, for the framers of those units of the Yerushalmi that are not concerned with Mishnah-exegesis, and for the editors who selected materials for the final document, the history of Israel the people had now attained importance and demanded its rightful place. Once

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Israel’s history thus reached centre-stage, a rich heritage of historical thought would be invoked. Second, at that point, the Messiah, centerpiece of the history of salvation and hero of the tale, would emerge as a critical figure. The historical theory of the framers of the Yerushalmi passage at hand is stated very simply. In their view Israel had to choose between wars, either the war fought by Bar Kokhba or the “war for Torah.” “Why had they been punished? It was because of the weight of the war, for they had not wanted to engage in the struggles over the meaning of the Torah” (Y. Ta. 3:9XVI.I). Those struggles, ritual arguments about ritual matters, promised the one victory worth winning. Israel’s history then would be written in terms of sanctification, in the prevailing metaphor, in terms of wars over the meaning of the Torah and the decision of the law.

v. return to scripture True, the skins are new. But the wine is very old. For while we speak of sages and the Torah, of which in the Rabbinic form Scripture knows little, the message is the familiar one of Scripture. It is Israel’s history that works out and expresses Israel’s relationship with God. The critical dimension of Israel’s life, therefore, is salvation, the definitive trait, movement in time from now to then. It follows that the paramount and organizing category is history and its lessons. As I suggested at the outset, in the Yerushalmi we witness a striking reversion to biblical convictions about the centrality of history in the definition of Israel’s reality. The heavy weight of prophecy, apocalyptic, and biblical historiography, with their emphasis on salvation and on history as the indicator of Israel’s salvation, stood against the Mishnah’s quite separate thesis of what truly mattered, which was sanctification. The true issue framed by history and apocalypse was how to move towards 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 an eschatology lacking a critical place for a historical Messiah – these take a position beyond the imagination of the entire antecedent sacred literature of Israel. Only one strand, the priestly one, had ever taken so extreme a position on

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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 Yerushalmi 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 invariably required evidentiary support, the authors of the Yerushalmi’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 free-standing and “non-biblical” Torah. The single most interesting indicator of the Yerushalmi’s framers’ reversion to Scripture lies in the effort to go beyond systematizing biblical events and showing their taxonomic status. Now they proposed to draw lessons from biblical history. True, the framers of the Mishnah would not have been surprised at their heirs’ effort to find in ancient Israel’s writings lessons for the new day. They had done the same within the pages of the Mishnah itself. The Mishnah contains no counterpart to vast stretches of the Yerushalmi’s treatment of Scripture, specifically, its amplification of biblical stories with a view to rewriting the repertoire of history of ancient Israel. Evidence of that tendency will be found, for one example, in the Rabbinization of the Messiah. A single, if lengthy, example may suffice to make the point. Before us is a striking instance of the amplification of the narrative of a major event in ancient Israelite history. Yerushalmi Abodah Zarah 1:1 I. V. Said R. Yudan, father of R. Matteniah, “The intention of a verse of Scripture [such as is cited below] was only to make mention of the evil traits of Israel.

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W. “‘On the day of our king when Jeroboam was made king the princes became sick with the heat of wine; he stretched out his hand with mockers’ (Hosea 7:5). X. “On the day on which Jeroboam began to reign over Israel, all Israel came to him at dusk, saying to him, ‘Rise up and make an idol.’ Y. “He said to them, ‘It is already dusk. I am partly drunk and partly sober, and the whole people is drunk. But if you want, go and come back in the morning.’ Z. “This is the meaning of the following Scripture, ‘For like an oven, their hearts burn with intrigue; all night their anger smolders; in the morning it blazes like a flaming fire’ (Hosea 7:6). AA. “‘All night their anger smolders.’ BB. “‘In the morning it blazes like a flaming fire.’ CC. “In the morning they came to him. Thus did he say to them, ‘I know what you want. But I am afraid of your sanhedrin, lest it come and kill me.’ DD. “They said to him, ‘We shall kill them.’ EE. “That is the meaning of the following verse: ‘All of them are hot as an oven. And they devour their rulers’” (Hos. 7:7) ... KK. When he would see an honorable man, he would set up against him two mockers, who would say to him, “Now what generation do you think is the most cherished of all generations?” LL. He would answer them, “It was the generation of the wilderness which received the Torah.” MM. They would say to him, “Now did they themselves not worship an idol?” NN. And he would answer them, “Now do you think that, because they were cherished, they were not punished for their deed?” OO. And they would say to him, “Shut up! The king wants to do exactly the same thing. Not only so, but [the generation of the wilderness] only made one [calf], while [the king] wants to make two.” PP. [So the king took counsel and made two calves of gold] and he set up one in Bethel, and the other he put in Dan (1 Kings 12:29).

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QQ. The arrogance of Jeroboam is what condemned him decisively. RR. Said R. Yose bar Jacob, “It was at the conclusion of a sabbatical year that Jeroboam began to rule over Israel. That is the meaning of the following verse: ‘[And Moses commanded them]. At the end of every seven years, at the set time of the year of release, at the feast of booths, when all Israel comes to appear before the Lord your God at the place which he will choose, you shall read this law before all Israel in their hearing’ (Deut. 31:10–11). SS. Jeroboam said, ‘I shall be called upon to read [the Torah, as Scripture requires]. If I get up and read first, they will say to me, ‘The king of the place [in which the gathering takes place, namely, Jerusalem] comes first.’ And if I read second, it is disrespectful to me. And if I do not read at all, it is a humiliation for me. And, finally, if I let the people go up, they will abandon me and go over to the side of Rehoboam the son of Solomon.’ TT. “That is the meaning of the following verse of Scripture: ‘[And Jeroboam said in his heart, Now the kingdom will turn back to the house of David;] if this people go up to offer sacrifices in the house of the Lord at Jerusalem, then the heart of this people will turn again to their Lord, to Rehoboam, king of Judah, and they will kill me and return to Rehoboam, king of Judah’ (1 Kings 12:27–28). UU. “What then did he do? ‘He made two calves of gold’ (1 Kings 12:28), and he inscribed on their heart, ‘... lest they kill you’ [as counsel to his successors]. VV. “He said, ‘Let every king who succeeds me look upon them.’” Familiar motifs, such as the danger of arrogance, occur here, just as in passages in which sages explain events of their own day. The main point, however, is not to be missed. The extensive recounting of biblical tales, the interest in making points through the narrative of historical events – these do mark a break from the Mishnah’s approach. For the framers of the Mishnah rarely found a use for the historical materials of Scripture. It is highly unusual to find passages

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like this in the Mishnah. Interest in expanding biblical history, apart from the salvific focus imposed by that history, testifies to the process at hand: the renewal, in the pages of the Yerushalmi, of the age-old practice of homiletical retelling of biblical tales. The earlier document contains slight signs of such interest; its successor is rich in such evidence. The reversion to the prophetic notion of learning the lessons of history carried in its wake re-engagement with the Messiah-myth. The climax of the matter comes in an explicit statement that the practice of conduct required by the Torah will bring about the coming of the Messiah. That explanation of the purpose of the holy way of life, focused now upon the end of time and the advent of the Messiah, must strike us as surprising in light of the facts surveyed earlier. For the framers of the Mishnah had found it possible to construct a complete and encompassing teleology for their system with scarcely a single word about the Messiah’s coming when the system would be perfectly achieved. So with their interest in explaining events and accounting for history, third- and fourth-century sages represented in the units of discourse at hand invoked what their predecessors had at best found of peripheral consequence to their system. The framers of the Yerushalmi took over a document that portrayed a system centred upon sanctifying Israel through the creation of a world in stasis, wholly perfect within itself. They left behind them a document in which that original goal of sanctification in stasis competed with another. A system centred on the salvation of Israel in a world moving towards a goal, a world to be perfected only at the conclusion of the journey through time, now came to full expression. So the bridge formed by the Yerushalmi leads from a world in which nothing happens but sanctification is, to one in which everything happens en route to salvation at the end. To understand the choices at hand, let us revert to the points of contrast and tension, the specification of opposites, in the materials now reviewed. If we were to administer a psychological test to the storytellers, asking them to state the opposite of a given word, the results cannot be in doubt. If we say, “This world,” the storytellers who speak of kings and wars would answer, “the world to come,” or “this age,” and “the age to come.” If, by contrast, we presented to

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storytellers who relate tales of sages, a given symbol of the natural world, they would reply with a counterpart – a symbol of the supernatural world. As we shall see in a moment, when (supernatural) Rabbis die, for example, the (natural) world responds with miracles. In this sense, therefore, we confront two separate constructions of the world – polar possibilities. The one involves historical-messianic explanation of historical events, the other, supernatural explanation of natural ones. True, prayer may speak of either kind of occurrence. But at the climactic moment on the Day of Atonement, the prayer of the high priest turned to the natural world: Yerushalmi Yoma 5:2 II. B. This was the prayer of the high priest on the Day of Atonement, when he left the Holy Place whole and in one piece: “May it be pleasing before you, Lord, our God and God of our fathers, that [a decree of] exile not be issued against us, not this day or this year, but if a decree of exile should be issued against us, then let it be exile to a place of Torah. C. “May it be pleasing before you, Lord, our God and God of our fathers, that a decree of want not be issued against us, not this day of this year, but if a decree of want should be issued against us, then let it be a want of [the performance of] religious duties. D. “May it be pleasing before you, Lord, our God and God of our fathers, that this year be a year of cheap food, full bellies, good business; a year in which the earth forms clods, then is parched so as to form scabs, and then moistened with dew, E. “so that your people, Israel, will not be in need of the help of one another. F. “And do not heed the prayer of travelers [that it not rain].” The high priest’s prayer by itself obviously does not prove that, in all circumstances or contexts of sanctification, at issue are nature and supernature alone. But it does illustrate the self-evident association proposed at the outset. And the principal point must not be missed. One could speak of the ultimate resolution of Israel’s present circumstance without invoking the name of the Messiah or the con-

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cept of events leading to a foreordained climax and conclusion with his coming at the end of time. Just as M. Sot. 9:15’s author could refer to the resurrection of the dead and in the same breath speak of the coming of the Messiah, so too it remained possible to do this in the pages of the Yerushalmi. Bar Kokhba’s way, sages maintained, was arrogant. What alternative did they offer? The answer is that, within the framework of sanctification, as in the Mishnah, so in the Yerushalmi, world-shaking events were treated as trivial, with history converted into a symptom of the condition of private life, and great events turned into epiphenomena within the framework of everyday reality. Accordingly, within this system, as the Yerushalmi expresses it, historical events play a decidedly subordinated role. Among the deeds that do make history, mainly personal and private actions come to the fore, not those that bear (to us) self-evident political and social consequence. Accordingly, historical events need not take a leading role in the salvation of Israel – even when salvation is at issue. The “harsh decree” may be averted through piety, charity, a proper attitude – surely not very consequential deeds in the larger historical scheme of things. Yerushalmi Taanit 2:1 IX. A. Said R. Eleazar, “Three acts nullify the harsh decree, and these are they: prayer, charity, and repentance.” B. And all three of them are to be derived from a single verse of Scripture: C. “If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land” (2 Chron. 7:14). D. “Pray” – this refers to prayer. E. “And seek my face” – this refers to charity, F. as you say, “As for me, I shall behold thy face in righteousness; when I awake, I shall be satisfied with beholding thy form” (Ps. 17:15). G. “And turn from their wicked ways” – this refers to repentance.

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H. Now if they do these things, what is written concerning them? I. “Then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.” The forgiveness of sin draws in its wake prosperity, represented by the “healing of the land.” These references therefore cannot apply solely to what happens to the individual. They deal with the fate of the whole of society. True, the harsh decree may come from the state; but the outcome is the same. Through repentance and its associated actions Israel can make its own history. In a statement like this, the issue of the coming of the Messiah simply plays no role. The historical-salvific-messianic does not merge with the timelesssanctificatory-sagacious in materials of this kind; so far as I can see, within the pages of the Yerushalmi, no such union appears. In Israel there were holy men who bore within themselves the power to save Israel. In this framework, the notion of the Messiah loses all pertinence. How so? Every sage, if sufficiently holy, could effect miracles for Israel. Whether salvation is at issue remains in doubt. For, in context, we deal with supernatural, not this-worldly, events: a miracle in nature, effected by a holy man, rather than a one-for-all historical resolution of Israel’s situation, that is, “salvation” in the ordinary sense. The power of the holy or righteous man to save Israel is made explicit in the following: Yerushalmi Yoma 1:1 V. D. Said R. Hiyya bar Ba, “The sons of Aaron died on the first day of Nisan. And why is their death called to mind in connection with the Day of Atonement? E. “It is to indicate to you that just as the Day of Atonement effects expiation for Israel, so the death of the righteous effects atonement for Israel.” F. Said R. Ba bar Binah, “Why did the Scripture place the story of the death of Miriam side by side with the story of the burning of the red cow? G. “It is to teach you that, just as the dirt of the red cow [mixed with water] effects atonement for Israel, so the death of the righteous effects atonement for Israel.”

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This brings us back to the Rabbinic doctrine of the Torah and salvation through the Torah. Address the sets of opposites – time vs eternity, life vs death, nature vs supernature, on the one side, and history vs end of time, this world vs time of the Messiah, death vs resurrection, on the other. Now these need not persist as separate and contradictory pairs. The sage as holy man does his work now and does it mainly through ongoing nature and unchanging supernature. The Messiah – as distinct from a (any) sage – does his work at the end of time. He does it once. In the resurrection of the dead, he carries out a single, one-time action, by its nature one that need not be repeated. He is a single and therefore unique figure, a kind of holy man to be sure, but one of a kind, who performs a single, unique deed. Once a messiah, in the sense of a high priest appointed for a given task to be repeated many times, gives way to the Messiah, meaning a man designed to do a single task, never to be repeated, we leave the framework of the Mishnah altogether. Our view of the second response to the calamity of 70 requires that we focus on the figure of the Messiah, and that requires attention to the crisis of the Christian empire.

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i. the turning point No policy of patient endurance could shelter Israel, the Jewish people, from the storm that swept over them in the fourth century c.e. Imagine what the Israelites remembered as they looked back in the year 400. The emperor Constantine early in the fourth century had become a Christian. The pagan emperor Julian’s mid-century promise of rebuilding the Temple had produced nothing. Christian emperors by the end of the century had secured control of the Empire for Christ and even abridged long-standing rights and immunities of Israel. Then what hope could remain for Israel? Of greater consequence, was not the tide of history turning to vindicate the Christian claim that God had saved humanity through the suffering people of God, the Church? Christians believed that the conversion of Constantine and the Roman government’s toleration, then sponsorship, of Christianity proved beyond a doubt that Christ was King-Messiah. For Israel the interpretation of the political happenings of the day required deep thought about the long-term history of humanity. Conceptions of history carried with them the most profound judgments on the character of the competing nations: the old people, Israel, and the Christians, a third race, a no-people – as some called themselves – now become the regnant nation, the Church. The Rabbinic sages compiled documents rich in thought on the subject: the Yerushalmi, ca 400; and Genesis Rabbah, ca 450 c.e., a

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protracted commentary on the book of Genesis with emphasis on how contemporary issues had been adumbrated in Scripture. The two documents set forth both a doctrine and an apologetic remarkably relevant to the issues presented to Christianity and Judaism by the crisis of Christianity’s worldly triumph. A shared program brought the two religions into protracted confrontation on an intersecting set of questions. Scripture taught them both that vast changes in the affairs of empires came about because God willed them. History proved principles of theology. In that same Torah, prophets promised the coming of the Messiah, who would bring salvation. Who was, and is, that Messiah, and how shall we know? These questions insisted on attention. And that same Torah addressed a particular people, Israel, promising that people the expression of God’s favour and love. But who is Israel, and who is not-Israel? Both Christians and Jews responded – and knew the other’s answer. Scripture defined the categories shared in common, enabling Judaism and Christianity to engage, if not in dialogue, then in two monologues on the same topics. The terms of this confrontation continued for centuries because the conditions that precipitated it – the rise to political dominance of Christianity and the subordination of Judaism – remained constant for fifteen hundred years.

ii. the yerushalmi and the messianic crisis Contrast the Mishnah’s with the Yerushalmi’s treatment of the Messiah-theme. The Mishnah had put forth in tractate Abot, ca 250 c.e., a teleology without any eschatological dimension. It spoke of the end and goal of things without invoking the figure of the Messiah and the doctrine of the end of days. By the closure of the Yerushalmi, a century and a half later, by contrast, the purpose and end of everything centred upon the coming of the Messiah, in sages’ terms and definition, to be sure. That is surprising in the light of the character of the Mishnah’s system, to which the Yerushalmi attached itself as a commentary. If history proves propositions, as the prophets and apocalyptic visionaries had maintained, then how could Jews deny the Christians’ claim that the conversion of the emperor, then of the Empire,

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demonstrated the true state of affairs in heaven as much as on earth? Christian theologians had also to restate the Messianic facts shared by all parties. Scripture had explicitly promised that Israel would receive salvation from God’s anointed at the end of time. The teleology of Israelite faith, in the biblical account, had focused on eschatology, and, within eschatology, on the salvific, therefore the Messianic, dimension. The Mishnah had taken up a view of its own on the issue, presenting an ahistorical and essentially non-Messianic teleology. Sages’ response to the Messianic crisis explained what the Messianic hope now entailed, and how to identify the Messiah, who, of course, would be a sage. They further encompassed the Messianic issue into their larger historical theory. The sages responded with a far-reaching doctrine of their own, deeming the question, in its Christian formulation, trivial. In the Mishnah we look in vain for a doctrine of a or the Messiah. There “Messiah” serves as a taxonomic indicator, e.g., distinguishing one type of priest or general from some other. There is no doctrine of the Messiah, coming at the end of time; in the Mishnah’s system, matters focus on other issues entirely. Although the figure of a Messiah does appear, when the framers of the Mishnah spoke of “the Messiah,” they meant a high priest designated and consecrated to office in a certain way, and not in some other way. The reference to “days of the Messiah” constitutes a conventional division of history at the end time but before the ultimate end. But that category of time plays no consequential role in the teleological framework established within the Mishnah. Accordingly, the Mishnah’s framers constructed a system of Judaism in which the entire teleological dimension reached full exposure while hardly invoking the person or functions of a Messianic figure of any kind. Salvation comes through sanctification. The salvific figure then becomes an instrument of consecration and so fits into an ahistorical system quite different from the one built around the Messiah. In the Yerushalmi we find a fully exposed doctrine of not only a Messiah, but the Messiah: who he is, how we will know him, what we must do to bring him. Two historical contexts framed discussion of the Messiah, the destruction of the Temple and the Messianic claim of Bar Kokhba. Rome played a role in both, and the authors of

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the materials gathered in the Yerushalmi made a place for Rome in the history of Israel. This they did in conformity to their larger theory of who is Israel, an extended family related to common ancestors, specifically by assigning to Rome a place in the family. As to the destruction of the Temple, we find a statement that the Messiah was born on the day that the Temple was destroyed. That is comparable to the narrative of the founding of Yohanan ben Zakkai’s master-disciple circle in Yavneh in the context of the destruction of the Temple. In both cases life arose out of death. The Yerushalmi’s doctrine of the Messiah therefore finds its place in its encompassing doctrine of history. What is fresh in the Yerushalmi is the perception of Rome as an autonomous actor, 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). So as Rome is Esau, so Esau is part of the family – a point to which we shall return – and therefore plays a role in history. And – yet another point of considerable importance – since Rome does play a role in history, Rome also finds a position in the eschatological drama. This sense of poised opposites, Israel and Rome, comes to expression in two ways. First, Israel’s own history 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 would bring Rome’s downfall. Here is the way in which the Yerushalmi presents the match: Yerushalmi Avodah 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 hate Jacob” [Gen. 27:41]. [G] R. Isaac b. R. Eleazar said, “In Rome they call it Esau’s Saturnalia.” [H] Kratesis: It is on 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 Neccho, King of Egypt. On that

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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. 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 conduct. The concept of two histories, balanced opposite one another, comes to particular expression, within the Yerushalmi, in the balance of Israelite sage and Roman emperor. Just as Israel and Rome, God and no-gods, compete (with a foreordained conclusion), so do sage and emperor. In this age, it appears that the emperor has the power. God’s Temple, by contrast to the great Churches of the age, lies in ruins. But just as sages can overcome the emperor through their inherent supernatural power, so too will Israel and Israel’s God in the coming age control the course of events. In the doctrine at hand, we see the true balance: sage as against emperor. In the age of the Christian emperors, the polemic acquires power. The sage, in his small claims court, weighs in the balance against the emperor in Constantinople – a rather considerable claim, lacking all proportion. So two stunning innovations appear: first, the notion of emperor and sage in mortal struggle; second, the idea of an age of idolatry and an age beyond idolatry. The world had to move into a new orbit for Rome to enter into the historical context formerly defined wholly by what happened to Israel. How does all this relate to the Messianic crisis at hand? The doctrine of sages, directly pertinent to the issue of the coming of the Messiah, holds 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

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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. Once the figure of the Messiah has come on stage, discussion arises on who, among the living, the Messiah might be. The identification of the Messiah begins, of course, with the person of David himself: “If the Messiah-King comes from among the living, his name will be David. If he comes from among the dead, it will be King David himself” (Yerushalmi Ber. 2:3 V P). A variety of evidence announced the advent of the Messiah as a figure in the larger system of formative Judaism. The Rabbinization of David constitutes one kind of evidence. Serious discussion, within the framework of the accepted document of Mishnaic exegesis and the law, concerning the identification and claim of diverse figures asserted to be Messiahs, presents still more telling proof. Yerushalmi Berakhot 2:4 (Translated by T. Zahavy) [A] Once a Jew was plowing and his ox snorted once before him. An Arab who was passing and heard the sound said to him, “Jew, loosen your ox and loosen the plow and stop plowing. For today your Temple was destroyed.” [B] The ox snorted again. He [the Arab] said to him, “Jew, bind your ox and bind your plow, for today the Messiah-King was born.” [C] He said to him, “What is his name?” [D] “Menahem.” [E] He said to him, “And what is his father’s name?” [F] The Arab said to him, “Hezekiah.” [G] He said to him, “Where is he from?” [H] He said to him, “From the royal capital of Bethlehem in Judea.” [I] The Jew went and sold his ox and sold his plow. And he became a peddler of infant’s felt-cloths [diapers]. And he went from place to place until he came to that very city. All of the women bought from him. But Menahem’s mother did not buy from him.

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[J] He heard the women saying, “Menahem’s mother, Menahem’s mother, come buy for your child.” [K] She said, “I want to bring him up to hate Israel. For on the day he was born, the Temple was destroyed.” [L] They said to her, “We are sure that on this day it was destroyed, and on this day of the year it will be rebuilt.” [M] She said to the peddler, “I have no money.” [N] He said to her, “It is of no matter to me. Come and buy for him and pay me when I return.” [O] A while later he returned to that city. He said to her, “How is the infant doing?” [P] She said to him, “Since the time you saw him a spirit came and carried him away from me.” [Q] Said R. Bun, “Why do we learn this from [a story about] an Arab? Do we not have explicit scriptural evidence for it? ‘Lebanon with its majestic trees will fall’ [Isa. 10:34]. And what follows this? ‘There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse’ [Isa. 11:1]. [Right after an allusion to the destruction of the Temple the prophet speaks of the Messianic age.]” This is a set-piece story, adduced to prove that the Messiah was born on the day the Temple was destroyed. The Messiah was born when the Temple was destroyed; hence, God prepared for Israel a better fate than had appeared. A more concrete matter – the identification of the Messiah with a known historical personality – was associated with the name of Aqiba. He is said to have claimed that Bar Kokhba, leader of the second-century revolt, was the Messiah. The important aspect of the story, however, is the rejection of Aqiba’s view. The discredited Messiah figure (if Bar Kokhba actually was such in his own day) finds no apologists in the later Rabbinical canon. What is striking in what follows, moreover, is that we really have two stories. At G Aqiba is said to have believed that Bar Kokhba was a disappointment. At H-I, he is said to have identified Bar Kokhba with the King-Messiah. Both cannot be true, so what we have is simply two separate opinions of Aqiba’s judgment of Bar Kokhba/Bar Kozeba.

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Yerushalmi Taanit 4:5 [X G] R. Simeon b. Yohai taught, “Aqiba, my master, would interpret the following verse: ‘A star (kokhab) shall come forth out of Jacob’ [Num. 24:17] “A disappointment (Kozeba) shall come forth out of Jacob.” [H] R. Aqiba, when he saw Bar Kozeba, said, “This is the King Messiah.” [I] R. Yohanan ben Toreta said to him, “Aqiba! Grass will grow on your cheeks before the Messiah will come!” The important point is not only that Aqiba had been proved wrong. It is that the very verse of Scripture adduced in behalf of his viewpoint could be treated more generally and made to refer to righteous people in general, not to the Messiah in particular. And that leads us to the issue of the age, as sages’ had to face it: what makes a Messiah a false Messiah? When we know the answer to that question, we also uncover the distinctively Rabbinic version of the Messiah-theme that the Yerushalmi contributes. What matters is not the familiar doctrine of the Messiah’s claim to save Israel, but 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 sage, the Messiah will teach Israel the power of submission. So God is not to be manipulated through Israel’s humouring heaven in rite and cult. The notion of keeping the commandments so as to please heaven and get God to do what Israel wants is totally incongruent to the text at hand. Keeping the commandments as a mark of submission, loyalty, and humility before God is the Rabbinic system of salvation. So Israel does not save itself. 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 in the setting of

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discourse about the Messiah in the Yerushalmi. Bar Kokhba weighs in the balance against the sage, much as the Roman emperor weighs in the balance against the sage, and for the same reason. The one represents arrogance, the other, humility. Bar Kokhba, above all, exemplified arrogance against God. He lost the war because of that arrogance. In particular, he ignored the authority of sages – a point not to be missed, since it forms the point of critical tension of the tale: But we should not conclude that the Yerushalmi has simply moved beyond the Mishnah’s orbit. The opposite is the case. What the framers of the document have done is to assemble materials in which the eschatological, therefore Messianic, teleology is absorbed within the ahistorical, therefore sagacious one. The Messiah turned into a sage is no longer the Messiah embodied in the figure of the arrogant Bar Kokhba (in the Yerushalmi’s representation of the figure). The reversion to the prophetic notion of learning history’s lessons carried in its wake a re-engagement with the Messiah myth. But the re-engagement does not represent a change in the unfolding system. Why not? Because the climax comes in an explicit statement 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. The framers of the Mishnah had found it possible to construct a complete and encompassing teleology for their system with scarcely a single word about the Messiah’s coming at that time when the system would be perfectly achieved. With their interest in explaining events and accounting for history, sages represented in these compositions 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 [X J] “The oracle concerning Dumah. One is calling to me from Seir, ‘Watchman, what of the night? Watchman, what of the night?’” [Isa. 21:11].

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[K] The Israelites said to Isaiah, “O our Rabbi, Isaiah, what will come for us out of this night?” [L] He said to them, “Wait for me, until I can present the question.” [M] Once he had asked the question, he came back to them. [N] They said to him, “Watchman, what of the night? What did the Guardian of the ages tell you?” [O] He said to them, “The watchman says: ‘Morning comes; and also the night. If you will inquire, inquire; come back again’” [Isa. 21:12]. [P] They said to him, “Also the night?” [Q] 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.” [R] They said to him, “When?” [S] He said to them, “Whenever you want, He too wants [it to be] – if you want it, he wants it.” [T] They said to him, “What is standing in the way?” [U] He said to them, “Repentance: ‘Come back again’” [Isa. 21:12]. [V] R. Aha in the name of R. Tanhum b. R. Hiyya, “If Israel repents for one day, forthwith the son of David will come. [W] “What is the scriptural basis? ‘O that today you would hearken to his voice!’” [Ps. 95:7]. [X] Said R. Levi, “If Israel keeps a single Sabbath in the proper way, forthwith the son of David will come. [Y] “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”’ [Exod. 16:25]. [Z] “And it said, ‘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’” [Isa. 30:15]. A discussion of the power of repentance would hardly have surprised a Mishnah sage. What is new is at V-Z, the explicit linkage of keeping the law with achieving the end of time and the coming of the

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Messiah. That motif stands separate from the notions of righteousness and repentance, which surely did not require it. We must not lose sight of the importance of this passage, with 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 world will revert to its condition on the first Sabbath and Adam and Eve will regain Eden. Then 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 invoked as having salvific power. Second, the persistent hope of the people for the coming of the Messiah is linked to the system of Rabbinic observance and belief. In this way, the austere program of the Mishnah develops in a different direction, with no trace of a promise that the Messiah will come if and when the system is fully realized. Here a teleology lacking all eschatological dimension gives way to 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 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. A corollary to the doctrine at hand carries a second point of interest. Israel may contribute to its own salvation, by the right attitude and the right deed. But then Israel bears responsibility for its present condition. So what Israel does makes history. Any account of the Messiah-doctrine of the Yerushalmi must lay appropriate stress on that conviction: Israel shapes its own destiny. This lesson, sages maintained, derives from the very condition of Israel even then, its suffering and its despair. How so? History taught moral lessons. Historical events entered into the construction of a teleology for the Yerushalmi’s system of Judaism as a whole. What the law demanded

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reflected the consequences of wrongful action on the part of Israel. So, again, Israel’s own deeds defined the events of history. Rome’s role, like Assyria’s and Babylonia’s, depended upon Israel’s provoking divine wrath. In the Yerushalmi’s theory of salvation, 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 Yerushalmi’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. Looking backward from the end of the fourth century to the end of the first, the framers of the Yerushalmi surely perceived what two hundred years earlier, with the closure of the Mishnah, need not have appeared obvious and unavoidable, namely, the definitive end, for here and now at any rate, of the old order of cultic sanctification. After a hundred years there may have been some doubt. After two centuries more with the fiasco of Julian’s invitation to rebuild the Temple followed by failure to do so near at hand, there can have been little hope left. The Mishnah had designed a world in which the Temple stood at the centre, a society in which the priests presided at the top, and a way of life in which the dominant issue was the sanctification of Israelite life. Whether the full realization of that world, society, and way of life was thought to come sooner or later, the system had been meant only initially as a utopia, but in the end, as a plan and constitution for a material society in the Land of Israel. Two hundred years had passed from the closure of the Mishnah to the completion of the Yerushalmi. Much had changed. Roman power had receded from part of the world. Pagan rule had given way to the sovereignty of Christian emperors. The old order was cracking; the new order was not yet established. But, from the perspective of Israel, the waiting went on. The interim from Temple to Temple was not differentiated. Whether conditions were less favour-

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able or more favourable hardly made a difference. History stretched backward, to a point of disaster, and forward, to an unseen and incalculable time beyond the near horizon. Short of supernatural events, salvation was not in sight. Israel for its part lived under its own government, framed within the rules of sanctification, and constituted a holy society. But when would salvation come, and how could people even now hasten its day? These issues, in the nature of things, proved more pressing as the decades rolled by, becoming first one century, then another, while none knew how many more, and how much more, must still be endured. So the unredeemed state of Israel and the world, the uncertain fate of the individual – these framed and defined the context in which all forms of Judaism necessarily took shape. The question of salvation presented each with a single ineluctable agendum. But it is not merely an axiom generated by our hindsight that makes it necessary to interpret all of a system’s answers in the light of the single question of salvation. In the case of the Judaism to which the Yerushalmi attests, the matter is explicitly stated. Sages maintained that keeping the law now signified keeping the faith: the act of hope. This means that the issues of the law were drawn upward into the highest realm of Israelite consciousness. 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. How like, yet how different from, the Mishnah’s view. Keeping the law of the Torah represented the visible form of love of God. The Messianic hope in concrete political terms also required neutralization, so that hopes would not be raised prematurely, with consequent, incalculable damage to the defeated nation. That was true in the second century, in the aftermath of Bar Kokhba’s war, and in the fourth century, for obvious reasons, as well. This “Rabbinization” of the Messiah-theme meant, first of all, that Rabbis insisted the Messiah would come in a process extending over a long period of time, thus not imposing a caesura upon the existence of the nation and disrupting its ordinary life. Accordingly, the Yerushalmi treats the Messianic hope as something gradual, to be worked toward, not a sudden cataclysmic event. That conception was fully

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in accord with the notion that the everyday deeds of people formed a pattern continuous with the salvific history of Israel. What is most interesting in the Yerushalmi’s picture is that the hope for the Messiah’s coming is further joined to the moral condition of each individual Israelite. The focus on corporate Israel characteristic of the Judaic systems down to 70 c.e. here gives way to a religious system centred on the individual. Hence the Messianic fulfillment was made to depend on the repentance of Israel via individual Israelites. The entire drama, envisioned by others in earlier types of Judaism as a world-historical event, was reworked in context into a moment in the life of the individual and only in consequence of individual conformity in the life of the people of Israel collectively. The coming of the Messiah depended not on historical action but on moral regeneration. So from a force that moved Israelites to take up weapons on the battlefield, the Messianic hope and yearning were transformed into motives for spiritual regeneration and ethical behaviour. These depended on individual virtue. The energies released in the Messianic fervour 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. The advent of the Messiah will not be heralded by the actions of a pagan or a Christian king. Whoever relies upon the salvation of a gentile is going to be disappointed. Israel’s salvation depends wholly upon Israel itself. Two things follow: first, the Jews were made to take up the burden of guilt for their own sorry situation; but, second, they gained not only responsibility for but also power over their fate. They could do something about salvation, just as their sins had brought about their punishment. This old, familiar message, in no way particular to the Talmud’s bureaucrats, took on specificity and concreteness in the context of the Yerushalmi, which offered a rather detailed program for reform and regeneration. The message to a disappointed generation, attracted to the kin-faith, with its now-triumphant Messianic fulfillment, and fearful of its own fate in an age of violent attacks upon the synagogue buildings

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and faithful alike, was stern. But it also promised strength to the weak and hope to the despairing. No one could be asked to believe that the Messiah would come very soon. The events of the day testified otherwise. So the counsel of the Talmud’s sages was patience and consequential deeds. People could not hasten things, but they could do something. The duty of Israel, in the meantime, was to accept the sovereignty of heavenly government. Yerushalmi Sanhedrin A. R. Abbahu was bereaved. One of his children had passed away from him. R. Jonah and R. Yose went up [to comfort him]. When they called on him, out of reverence for him, they did not express to him a word of Torah. He said to them, “May the Rabbis express a word of Torah.” B. They said to him, “Let our master teach us.” C. He said to them, “Now if in regard to the government below, in which there is no reliability, [but only] lying, deceit, favouritism, and bribe taking – D. “which is here today and gone tomorrow – E. “if concerning that government, it is said, And the relatives of the felon come and inquire after the welfare of the judges and of the witnesses, as if to say, ‘We have nothing against you, for you judged honestly’ [M. San. 6:9], F. “in regard to the government above, in which there is reliability, but no lying, deceit, favouritism, or bribe taking – G. “and which endures forever and to all eternity – H. “all the more so are we obligated to accept upon ourselves the just decree [of that heavenly government].” I. And it says, “That the Lord . . . may show you mercy, and have compassion on you” (Deut. 13:17). The heavenly government, revealed in the Torah, was embodied in this world by the figure of the sage. The meaning of the salvific doctrine just outlined becomes fully clear when we uncover the simple fact that the rule of Heaven and the learning and authority of the Rabbi on earth turned out to be identified with one another. It follows that salvation for Israel depended upon adherence to the sage

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and acceptance of his discipline. God’s will in Heaven and the sage’s words on earth – both constituted Torah. And Israel would be saved through Torah, so the sage was the saviour.

iii. genesis rabbah takes on rome The Judaic sages worked out a view of history consisting in a rereading of the book of Genesis in the light of the entire history of Israel seen 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. Typological in what sense? The events of Genesis served not as singleton narratives of individual patriarchs but 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. Sages had inherited two conflicting ways of sorting out events and declaring some of them to add up to history. From the biblical prophets they learned that God made his will known through what happened, using pagan empires to carry out a plan. So some events formed a pattern and proved a proposition. This sages did not propose to deny. They inherited, also from Scripture, a congruent scheme for dealing with history. This scheme involved differentiating one period from another, one empire from another, assigning to each a symbol, e.g., an animal as in Daniel’s apocalypse, and imputing to each animal traits characteristic of the empire, and the age, symbolized by it. This apocalyptic approach to history did not contradict the basic principles of the prophetic view of events, but expressed that view in somewhat different, more concrete terms. But there was a separate and conflicting theory of events and how to discern their meaning, and that was the Mishnah’s. Israel’s sages, in Genesis Rabbah, went back to the beginnings. From the history of former times they wanted to draw lessons for

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present and future history. From the story of the beginnings of the world and of Israel they sought meaning for their own times. For that purpose they proposed to identify the patterns in events that would convey the will of God for Israel. In looking to the past to explain the present, the Judaic sages turned to the story of the beginnings of creation, humanity, and Israel. Genesis became the principal mode of historical reflection and response for the sages of the age. Genesis Rabbah introduced a conception of history that would have surprised the framers of the Mishnah. The Mishnah, promulgated two hundred fifty years prior to the composition of Genesis Rabbah, set forth a theory of how events are to be interpreted and what meaning is to be inferred from them. That theory lay in the background of all thought on the same subject, given the Mishnah’s authority in the estate of the sages. The framers of the Mishnah explicitly refer to very few events, treating those they do mention with a focus quite separate from the unfolding events themselves. Recall that we find in the Mishnah no tractate devoted to the destruction of the Temple, no complete chapter detailing the events of Bar Kokhba or even a sustained celebration of the events of the sages’ own historical lives. When things that have happened are mentioned, it is neither to narrate nor to interpret and draw lessons from the events. 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. Narrative, in the Mishnah’s limited rhetorical repertoire, is reserved for the narrow framework of what priests and others do on recurrent occasions around the Temple. Accordingly, in Genesis Rabbah the sages took for granted that Scripture speaks to the life and condition of Israel, the Jewish people. God repeatedly says exactly that to Abraham and to Jacob. So the framers of Genesis Rabbah intended to find those principles of society and of history that would permit them to make sense of the on-going history of Israel. The entire narrative of Genesis is so formed as to point toward the sacred history of Israel, the Jewish people: its slavery and redemption; its coming Temple in Jerusalem; its exile and salvation at the end of time. In the reading of the authors at hand, therefore, the powerful message of Genesis pro-

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claims 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 and contributed to their own day. 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. 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 of Daniel – Babylonia, Media, Greece, Rome – and beyond the fourth will come Israel, fifth and last. So the sages’ message, in their theology of history, was that the present anguish prefigured the coming vindication of God’s people. Once we recognize the mode of inquiry, we ask about the results. What are the laws of history and, more important, how do they apply to the crisis at hand? The principal message of the story of the beginnings, as sages read Genesis, is that the world depends upon the merit of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; Israel, for its part, enjoys access to that merit, being today the family of the patriarchs and matriarchs. That sum and substance constitutes the sages’ doctrine of history: the family forms the basic and irreducible historical unit. Israel is not so much a nation as a family, and the heritage of the patriarchs and matriarchs sustains that family from the beginning even to the end. So the sages’ doctrine of history transforms history into genealogy. The consequence, for sages, will take the form of the symbolization through family relationships of the conflict between (Christian) Rome and eternal Israel. The rivalry of brothers, Esau and Jacob, Rome and Israel, then contains the history of the fourth century – from the sages’ viewpoint a perfectly logical mode of historical reflection. That, in detail, expresses the main point of the system of historical thought yielded by Genesis Rabbah. Historical study commonly leads to the periodization of history, the division of time into a number of distinct epochs. That patterning of history, its division in eras each with its own definitive traits, indeed, constitutes one important exercise of historical thought of a social scientific order. A principal mode of explaining the identification and status of Israel, the Jewish people, involved the

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periodization of history among four monarchies, as specified by Daniel. Rome then stands as the penultimate epoch; Israel as the end. Time and again events in the lives of the patriarchs prefigure the four monarchies, among which, of course, the fourth, last (but for Israel), and most intolerable was Rome. Here is an exercise in the recurrent proof of that single proposition. Genesis Rabbah XLIV:XVII. 4. A. “[And it came to pass, as the sun was going down,] lo, a deep sleep fell on Abram, and lo, a dread and great darkness fell upon him” (Gen. 15:12): B. “... lo, a dread” refers to Babylonia, as it is written, “Then was Nebuchadnezzar filled with fury” (Gen. 3:19). C. “and darkness” refers to Media, which darkened the eyes of Israel by making it necessary for the Israelites to fast and conduct public mourning. D. “... great ...” refers to Greece. G. “... fell upon him” refers to Edom [Rome], as it is written, “The earth quakes at the noise of their fall” (Jer. 49:21). H. Some reverse matters: I. “... fell upon him” refers to Babylonia, since it is written, “Fallen, fallen is Babylonia” (Is. 21:9). J. “... great ...” refers to Media, in line with this verse: “King Ahasuerus did make great” (Est. 3:1). K. “and darkness” refers to Greece, which darkened the eyes of Israel by its harsh decrees. L. “... lo, a dread” refers to Edom, as it is written, “After this I saw ... a fourth beast, dreadful and terrible” (Dan. 7:7). The fourth kingdom is part of that plan, which we can discover by carefully studying Abraham’s life and God’s word to him. The inevitable and foreordained salvation follows this same pattern of historical epochs. Genesis Rabbah XLIV:XVIII. 1. A. “Then the Lord said to Abram, ‘Know of a surety [that your descendants will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs,

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and they will be slaves there, and they will be oppressed for four hundred years; but I will bring judgment on the nation which they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions’]” (Gen. 15:13-14): B. “Know” that I shall scatter them. C. “Of a certainty” that I shall bring them back together again. D. “Know” that I shall put them out as a pledge [in expiation of their sins]. E. “Of a certainty” that I shall redeem them. F. “Know” that I shall make them slaves. G. “Of a certainty” that I shall free them. Reading the verse as a paradigm for all time, we recognize its piquant relevance to the age of the document in which it occurs. There is oppression, but redemption is coming. The lives of the patriarchs bring reassurance. The proposition is that God has unconditionally promised to redeem Israel, but if Israel repents, then the redemption will come with greater glory. If Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob stand for Israel later on, then Ishmael, Edom, and Esau represent Rome. Hence whatever sages find out about those figures tells them something about Rome and its character, history, and destiny. Ishmael, standing now for Christian Rome, claims God’s blessing, but Isaac gets it, as Jacob will take it from Esau. Details, as much as the main point, yielded laws of history. In the following passage, the sages take up the detail of Rebecca’s provision of a bit of water, showing what that act had to do with the history of Israel later on. The passage at hand is somewhat protracted, but it deserves attention because it contains in a whole and cogent way the mode of thought and the results: salvation is going to derive from the merit of the matriarchs and patriarchs. Genesis Rabbah XLVIII:X. 2. A. “Let a little water be brought” (Gen. 18:4): B. Said to him the Holy One, blessed be he, “You have said, ‘Let a little water be brought’ (Gen. 18:4). By your life, I shall pay your descendants back for this: ‘Then sang Israel this song,’ spring up O well, sing you to it” (Num. 21:7).

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C. That recompense took place in the wilderness. Where do we find that it took place in the Land of Israel as well? D. “A land of brooks of water” (Deut. 8:7). E. And where do we find that it will take place in the age to come? F. “And it shall come to pass in that day that living waters shall go out of Jerusalem” (Zech. 14:8). G. [“And wash your feet” (Gen. 18:4)]: [Said to him the Holy One, blessed be he,] “You have said, ‘And wash your feet.’ By your life, I shall pay your descendants back for this: ‘Then I washed you in water’” (Ez. 16:9). H. That recompense took place in the wilderness. Where do we find that it took place in the Land of Israel as well? I. “Wash you, make you clean” (Isa. 1:16). J. And where do we find that it will take place in the age to come? K. “When the Lord will have washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion” (Isa. 4:4). L. [Said to him the Holy One, blessed be he,] “You have said, ‘And rest yourselves under the tree’ (Gen. 18:4). By your life, I shall pay your descendants back for this: ‘He spread a cloud for a screen’” (Ps. 105:39). M. That recompense took place in the wilderness. Where do we find that it took place in the Land of Israel as well? N. “You shall dwell in booths for seven days” (Lev. 23:42). O. And where do we find that it will take place in the age to come? P. “And there shall be a pavilion for a shadow in the day-time from the heat” (Isa. 4:6). Q. [Said to him the Holy One, blessed be he,] “You have said, ‘While I fetch a morsel of bread that you may refresh yourself’ (Gen. 18:5). By your life, I shall pay your descendants back for this: ‘Behold I will cause to rain bread from heaven for you’ (Ex. 16:45)” R. That recompense took place in the wilderness. Where do we find that it took place in the Land of Israel as well? S. “A land of wheat and barley” (Deut. 8:8).

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T. And where do we find that it will take place in the age to come? U. “He will be as a rich cornfield in the land” (Ps. 82:16). V. [Said to him the Holy One, blessed be he,] “You ran after the herd [‘And Abraham ran to the herd’ (Gen. 18:7)]. By your life, I shall pay your descendants back for this: ‘And there went forth a wind from the Lord and brought across quails from the sea’” (Num. 11:27). W. That recompense took place in the wilderness. Where do we find that it took place in the Land of Israel as well? X. “Now the children of Reuben and the children of Gad had a very great multitude of cattle” (Num. 32:1). Y. And where do we find that it will take place in the age to come? Z. “And it will come to pass in that day that a man shall rear a young cow and two sheep” (Isa. 7:21). AA. [Said to him the Holy One, blessed be he,] “You stood by them: ‘And he stood by them under the tree while they ate’ (Gen. 18:8). By your life, I shall pay your descendants back for this: ‘And the Lord went before them’” (Ex. 13:21). BB. That recompense took place in the wilderness. Where do we find that it took place in the Land of Israel as well? CC. “God stands in the congregation of God” (Ps. 82:1). DD. And where do we find that it will take place in the age to come? EE. “The breaker is gone up before them ... and the Lord at the head of them” (Mic. 2:13). The passage presents a sizable and beautifully disciplined construction, making one point again and again. Everything that the matriarchs and patriarchs did brought a reward to their descendants. The enormous emphasis on the way in which Abraham’s deeds prefigured the history of Israel, both in the wilderness, and in the Land, and, finally, in the age to come, provokes us to wonder who held that there were children of Abraham beside Israel. The answer then is clear. We note that there are five statements of the same proposition, each drawing upon a clause in the base verse. The

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extended statement moreover serves as a sustained introduction to the treatment of the individual clauses that now follow, item by item. When we recall how Christian exegetes imparted to the Old Testament the lessons of the New, we realize that the sages have constructed an equally epochal and encompassing reading of Scripture. They now understood the meaning of what happened then, and, therefore, they also grasped from what had happened then the sense and direction of events of their own day. So history yielded patterns, and patterns proved points, and the points at hand indicated the direction of Israel. The substance of historical doctrine remains social in its focus. The sages present their theory of the meaning of history within a larger theory of the identification of Israel. That follows from their vision: they see Israel as an extended family, children of one original ancestral couple, Abraham and Sarah. Whatever happens, then, constitutes family history, which is why the inheritance of merit from the ancestors protects their children even now, in the fourth century. What, one asks, did the sages find to validate their insistence that the biblical story, in Genesis, told the tale of Israel’s coming salvation? Obviously, it is the merit of the ancestors that connects the living Israel to the lives of the patriarchs and matriarchs of old. Never far from the sages’ minds is the entire sweep of Israel’s long history. Never distant from the lips of the patriarchs and matriarchs is the message of Israel’s destiny. Israel’s history takes place in eternity, so considerations of what comes first and what happens later – that is, priority and order – do not apply. The lives of the patriarchs and matriarchs therefore prefigure the life of Israel, as we have seen throughout. The entire history of Israel then takes place in each of the great events of the lives of the patriarchs, as in the following composition: Genesis Rabbah LIII.X. 2. A. “ ... and Abraham made a great feast on the day that Isaac was weaned” (Gen. 21:8): B. R. Judah said, “The Great One of the ages was there.” C. R. Yudan in the name of R. Yose bar Haninah: “‘The king made a great feast’ (Est. 2:18). The Great One of the ages was

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there. That is in line with this verse: ‘For the Lord will again rejoice over you for good’ (Deut. 30:9), in the days of Mordecai and Esther, ‘As he rejoiced over your fathers’ (Deut. 30:9), in the days of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” We see that in this typological reading Israel’s history takes place under the aspect of eternity. Events do not take place one time only. Events, to make a difference and so to matter, constitute paradigms and generate patterns. Salvation is all the same; its particularization is all that history records. So we can move in an interrupted flow from Abraham to Esther to David. The lessons of history therefore do not derive from sequences of unique moments but from patterns that generate recurring and reliable rules. That is what I meant when I said that the sages read the present in the light of the past, rather than following the way of reading the past in the light of the present. Given their present, they had little choice. The passage before us explicitly links Isaac’s feast with the miracle in the time of Esther and, should we miss the point, further links the two matters explicitly. The reciprocal flow of merit found its counterpart in the two-way exchange of penalty as well. When Abraham erred, his descendants would pay the price. The merit of the patriarchs and matriarchs sustains, and the failures exact a cost, because the history of the nation and the on-going life of the family form a single entity in history. That is a point we should not miss. Genesis Rabbah LIV:IV. 1. A. “Abraham set seven ewe lambs of the flock apart” (Gen. 21:28): B. Said the Holy One, blessed be he, to him, “You have given him seven ewe lambs. By your life I shall postpone the joy of your descendants for seven generations. C. “You have given him seven ewe lambs. By your life matching them his descendants [the Philistines] will kill seven righteous men among your descendants, and these are they: Hofni, Phineas, Samson, Saul and his three sons. D. “You have given him seven ewe lambs. By your life, matching them the seven sanctuaries of your descendants will be

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destroyed, namely, the tent of meeting, the altars at Gilgal, Nob, Gibeon, Shiloh, and the two eternal houses of the sanctuary. E. “You have given him seven ewe lambs. [By your life, matching them] my ark will spend seven months in the fields of the Philistines.” No. 1 reverts to the theme of indignation at Abraham’s coming to an agreement with Abimelech, forcefully imposing the theme of the later history of Israel upon the story at hand. An exemplary case derives from the binding of Isaac, the point from which the merit of Abraham flows. The aptness of the incident derives from its domestic character: relationship of mother, father, and only child. What Abraham and Isaac were prepared to sacrifice (and Sarah to lose) won for them and their descendants – as the story itself makes explicit – an on-going treasury of merit. So Abraham’s and Isaac’s children through history will derive salvation from the original act of binding Isaac to the altar. The reference to the third day at Gen. 22:2 then predictably invokes the entire panoply of Israel’s history. The relevance of the composition emerges at the end. Prior to the concluding segment, the passage forms a kind of litany and falls into the category of a liturgy. Still, the recurrent hermeneutic which teaches that the stories of the patriarchs prefigure the history of Israel certainly makes its appearance. Because of the importance of the treatment of the story at hand, we dwell on a protracted passage. Genesis Rabbah LVI:II. 2. A. Said R. Isaac, “Will this place [the Temple mount] ever be distant from its owner [God]? Never, for Scripture says, ‘This is my resting place for ever; here I will dwell, for I have desired it’ (Ps. 132:14). B. “It will be when the one comes concerning whom it is written, ‘Lowly and riding upon an ass’” (Zech. 1:9). 3. A. “I and the lad will go thus far [and worship and come again to you]” (Gen. 22:5): B. Said R. Joshua b. Levi, “[He said,] ‘We shall go and see what will be the end of “thus”’ [Freedman, 492n5: God had said,

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“Thus shall your seed be” (Gen. 15:5). So the sense is, “We will see how that can be fulfilled, now that I am to lose my son.”] 4. A. “... and we will worship [through an act of prostration] and come again to you” (Gen. 22:5): B. He thereby told him that he would come back from Mount Moriah whole and in peace [for he said that “we shall come back”]. 5. A. Said R. Isaac, “And all was on account of the merit attained by the act of prostration. B. “Abraham returned in peace from Mount Moriah only on account of the merit owing to the act of prostration: ‘... and we will worship [through an act of prostration] and come [then, on that account] again to you’ (Gen. 22:5). C. “The Israelites were redeemed only on account of the merit owing to the act of prostration: And the people believed ... then they bowed their heads and prostrated themselves’ (Ex. 4:31). D. “The Torah was given only on account of the merit owing to the act of prostration: ‘And worship [prostrate themselves] you afar off’ (Ex. 24:1). E. “Hannah was remembered only on account of the merit owing to the act of prostration: ‘And they worshipped before the Lord’ (1 Sam. 1:19). F. “The exiles will be brought back only on account of the merit owing to the act of prostration: ‘And it shall come to pass in that day that a great horn shall be blown and they shall come that were lost ... and that were dispersed ... and they shall worship the Lord in the holy mountain at Jerusalem’ (Isa. 27:13). G. “The Temple was built only on account of the merit owing to the act of prostration: ‘Exalt you the Lord our God and worship at his holy hill’ (Ps. 99:9). H. “The dead will live only on account of the merit owing to the act of prostration: ‘Come let us worship and bend the knee, let us kneel before the Lord our maker’” (Ps. 95:6). No. 2 takes up the language of “seeing the place from afar,” and by a play on the words, asks whether this place will ever be made far from its owner, that is, God. The answer is that it will not. No. 3

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draws a lesson from the use of “thus” in the cited verses. The sizable construction at No. 4 makes a simple point, to which our base verse provides its modest contribution. But its polemic is hardly simple. The entire history of Israel flows from its acts of worship (“prostration”) and is unified by a single law. Every sort of advantage Israel has ever gained came about through worship. Hence what is besought, in the elegant survey, is the law of history. The Scripture then supplies those facts from which the governing law is derived. 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 be 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.’” 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.’” For the sages it is quite natural to link the life of the private person, affected by transgression, and the history of the nation, troubled by its wandering among the kingdoms. For the nation is an extended family. 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. 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. Once more we see that the theory of who is Israel 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 sages of Genesis Rabbah, we note once again, 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 sages maintained, is Israel after the flesh, in a most literal

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sense. But the basic claim, for its part, depended upon the facts of Scripture, not upon the logical requirements of theological dispute. And that claim constituted not merely a social theory of the classification of Israel – family, not nation like other nations – but also the foundations of a historical theory of the past, present, and future of Israel. Given their mode of typological thought, the sages found a place for Rome in Israel’s history only by assigning to Rome a place in the family. Their larger theory of the social identity of Israel left them no choice. But it also permitted them to assign to Rome an appropriately significant place in world history, while preserving for Israel the climactic role. 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 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 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.” So Rome really is Israel’s brother. No pagan empire ever enjoyed an equivalent place; no pagan era ever found identification with an event in Israel’s family history. The passage presents a stunning concession and an astounding claim. The history of the two brothers

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forms a set of counterpoints, the rise of one standing for the decline of the other. I cannot imagine a more powerful claim for Israel: the ultimate end, Israel’s final glory, will permanently mark the subjugation of Esau. Israel then will follow, the fifth and final monarchy. The point of No. 1 is to link the present passage to the history of Israel’s redemption later on. In this case, however, 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. Apart from the struggle with Esau, Jacob still serves as a model and paradigm of Israel’s history. For example, his dream of the ladder to heaven encompassed all of Israel’s history, with the stress not on Esau but on Sinai. Genesis Rabbah LXVIII:XII. 3. B. “‘That there was a ladder’: refers to the ramp to the altar. C. “‘... set up on the earth’: that is the altar, ‘An altar of dirt you will make for me’ (Ex. 20:24). D. “‘... and the top of it reached to heaven’: these are the offerings, for their fragrance goes up to heaven. E. “‘... and behold, the angels of God’: these are the high priests. F. “‘... were ascending and descending on it’: for they go up and go down on the ramp. G. “‘And behold, the Lord stood above it’: ‘I saw the Lord standing by the altar’” (Amos 9:1). 4. A. Rabbis interpreted the matter to prefigure Sinai: “‘And he dreamed: B. “‘... that there was a ladder’: this refers to Sinai. C. “‘... set up on the earth’: ‘And they stood at the lower part of the mountain’ (Ex. 19:17). D. “‘... and the top of it reached to heaven’: ‘And the mountain burned with fire into the heart of heaven’ (Deut. 4:11). E. “‘... and behold, the angels of God’: these are Moses and Aaron. F. “‘... were ascending’: ‘And Moses went up to God’ (Ex. 19:3).

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G. “‘... and descending on it’: ‘‘And Moses went down from the mount’ (Ex. 19:14). F. “‘... And behold, the Lord stood above it’: ‘And the Lord came down upon Mount Sinai’” (Ex. 19:20). No. 3 reads the dream in terms of the Temple cult, and No. 4 in terms of the revelation of the Torah at Sinai, and No. 5 has the dream refer to the patriarchs. None of these modes of reading the book of Genesis presents surprises. Since both Jacob and Moses explicitly spoke of the sons of Jacob as paradigms of history, the sages understood the text precisely as the Torah itself told them to understand it. That is, the sages simply took seriously and at face value the facts in hand, as any scientist or philosopher finds facts and reflects upon their meaning and the implications and laws deriving from them. So the sages’ mode of reading derived from an entirely inductive and scientific, philosophical mode of thought. 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, as much as Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, provides a model for the future; reference to what Joseph did guides us to the later history of Israel. So the history of Israel here is compared to the life of Joseph: 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.

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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). The parallel drawn between Joseph and Benjamin, that is, 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, and No. 3 presents an argument in favour of its authenticity, at the same time linking the present story to the two that have preceded. God, of course, governed Joseph’s destiny, detail by detail, and as this becomes clear, the conclusion surfaces: God’s providence and benevolence continues to dictate what is to happen to Israel, even though that fact does not always prove self-evident. The sages also had to account for the present condition of Israel, not only make promises about future redemption. An established explanation held Israel responsible for its fate. When the nation did God’s will, it enjoyed security, and when it violated God’s will, it suffered. That basic theological conviction, familiar from ancient

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times, translated into quite specific statements on what sorts of sins had caused Israel to suffer in later times. The tribes would suffer punishment because of the misdeeds of their ancestors. Genesis Rabbah LXXXIV:XX. 1. A. “Then Jacob tore his garments and put sackcloth upon his loins and mourned for his son many days” (Gen. 37:34): B. R. Phineas in the name of R. Hoshaiah: “The tribal fathers caused their father to tear his garments, and where were they paid back? In Egypt: ‘And they tore their clothes’ (Gen. 44:13). C. “Joseph caused the tribal fathers to tear their clothes. He was paid back in the case of the son of his son: ‘And Joshua tore his clothes’ (Josh. 7:6). D. “Benjamin caused the tribal fathers to tear their clothes. He was paid back in Shushan, the capital: ‘Mordecai tore his clothes’ (Est. 4:1). E “Manasseh caused the tribal fathers to tear their clothes. He was paid back by having his inheritance divided into half, with half on the other side of the Jordan, and half in the land of Canaan.” 2. A. “... and put sackcloth upon his loins:” B. Said R. Aibu, “Because Jacob took hold of sackcloth, therefore sackcloth did not leave him or his children to the end of all generations: C. “Ahab: ‘And he put sackcloth on his flesh and fasted’ (1 Kgs. 21:27). D. “Joram: ‘And the people looked, and behold, he had sackcloth within upon his flesh’ (2 Kgs. 6:30). E. “Mordecai: ‘And he put sackcloth and ashes’” (Est. 4:1). Once more what the brothers did, their descendants had to pay for. The premise of this entire account comes to explicit statement in the treatment of Jacob’s blessing of the tribal ancestors. Here he reviews the entire future history of Israel.

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Genesis Rabbah XCVIII:II. XCVIII:II 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. 38:15). ‘Behold, it shall come upon Edom’” (Isa. 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’” (Isa. 2:2). D. Rabbis say, “He came to reveal the time of the end to them, but it was hidden from him.” 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

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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.” We see the ultimate typology: each pagan empire finds representation among the brothers. This impressive theory of Israel’s history

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finds a place here only because of E. Yet the larger relevance – Jacob’s predictions of the future – justifies including the composition. What sense, then, did the sages in Genesis Rabbah make of the history of Israel? Israel is the extended family of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Whatever happens now works out events in the life of the family long ago. The redemption in the past prefigures what is to come. The merit that protects Israel in the present derives from the heritage of the past. So history is one and seamless, as the life of a family goes on through time. Do people wonder, with the triumph of Christianity in politics, what is to become of Israel? In rereading the story of Israel’s beginnings, sifting and resifting the events in the life of the patriarchs and matriarchs, the sages found the answer to the question. What will happen is what has happened. History recapitulates the life of the family. And to a family, the politics of empire makes slight difference. Israel therefore will endure in hope. The sages had also to account for the present condition of Israel, not only make promises about future redemption. An established explanation held Israel responsible for its fate. When the nation did God’s will, it enjoyed security, and when it violated God’s will, it suffered. That basic theological conviction, familiar from ancient times, translated into quite specific statements on what sorts of sins had caused Israel to suffer in later times. The crisis of 70 recapitulated in the fourth century elicited a response that formed a paradigm from then to now. But where did it emerge? Was the fourth century the starting point for the theology and law of Judaism? To that question we turn in our account of the founding of Judaism in the aftermath of catastrophe.

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part two The Prophetic Sources of Rabbinic Judaism

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4 1

Prophetic-Rabbinic Judaism Jeremiah Redivivus

Jeremiah and the Rabbinic sages responded in the same way to the same sort of crisis. Jeremiah and the Rabbis set forth exactly the same theology in response to exactly the same kind of event: the destruction of the Temple in Jeremiah’s time, in 586, and in that of the Rabbis, in 70. In the model of Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai in his instruction of R. Joshua after 70 as portrayed in a late Rabbinic compilation we discern the vision of Jeremiah. The Prophetic response to and the Rabbinic reading of the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem – the certainty of God’s pardon and love – intersect. Accordingly, Rabbinic Judaism carries forward the Prophetic heritage. Rabbinic Judaism then should be characterized as Prophetic-Rabbinic Judaism. By this term I refer to the religious system produced by the Rabbis of late antiquity. That system derived from their reading of the Torah and the Prophets in the light of the existential turning faced in common by both the ancient Prophets and the Rabbis of late antiquity. The Rabbis of the formative canon in the case of Jeremiah naturalized – thus Rabbinized – Prophecy to their system. At issue is the relationship between two kindred systems of religious thought, the Rabbinic, represented by the Mishnah, Talmuds, and Midrash of the first six centuries of the Common Era, and the Prophetic, represented by Jeremiah six hundred years earlier. Comparing the systems aims at affording perspective on the character of Rabbinic Judaism in its established context of continuity with

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Scripture. A formal continuity is signalled in the provision of scriptural proof-texts over and over again. On the surface, therefore, what singles out Rabbinic writings is the constant recourse to Scripture for proof-texts, bearing the implicit claim to represent the received revelation. But what of the substance of matters? Here through comparison and contrast we test that claim of continuity with Scripture against the datum of Prophecy. We take up categories of theology yielded by Jeremiah’s diverse and diffuse statements and compare those categories with the positions taken in the Rabbinic canon of late antiquity by the ancient Rabbinic sages – thus, systemic comparison. Why speak of comparing systems of thought? Why not just array a host of parallels – free-floating sentences or sentiments? Singleton verses of a Prophetic writing do, after all, intersect here and there with singleton statements of Talmudic Rabbis. But I aim to show continuities of thought and proposition, not merely to carefully paraphrase the received text. At issue is theology, not culture. The Rabbis of the formative age of Judaism, from the Mishnah through the Bavli, read the book of Jeremiah and made its author one of their own. They extensively cited Jeremiah to clarify the meanings of words and phrases and to demonstrate matters of fact.1 His language and his propositions settled questions of meaning and truth. He is treated as a primary authority of Halakhic rulings. He sets forth theological propositions of a profound order. Jeremiah therefore formed part of the normative Torah of Sinai. But it was a reciprocal exchange. For we shall see that in this process of adaptation and extenuation, the Rabbis of the formative canon learned the lessons that Jeremiah in his time and condition had to teach them for their age and circumstance. For example, everybody recognizes that the details of Jeremiah’s relationship with Nebuchadnezzar formed the model for Rabbinic narratives of Yohanan ben Zakkai’s relationship with Vespasian. Rabbinic Judaism recapitulated Jeremiah’s theology of catastrophe and covenant. As much as it adapted his ideas to their system, it adopted and was shaped by them as well. This reading of Jeremiah within the Rabbinic system rests on several transparent premises. First, the Rabbinic sages took for granted that Rabbis and Prophets participated in the same tradition of the

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Torah originating at Sinai. Second, they further took as a main principle that a given authority takes coherent positions and can and should be read critically, systematically, comprehensively. Third, because they regarded Jeremiah as a source of authoritative teaching, they determined to make a place for the facts deriving from Jeremiah in their system of law, theology, philology, and exegesis of Scripture. And, fourth and most important, it goes without saying, they found a place for their data in his system of law and theology. These things they did by lavishly citing, in the context of their system, statements made by Jeremiah. Furthermore, they made up stories about him, viewing him as a Rabbi like themselves but also as a prophet, very much not like themselves. His teachings and use of language derived from the same Torah that they mastered in the tradition, written and oral, commencing at Sinai. Accordingly, they created, but they also were created by, Rabbi Jeremiah, among other prophets. How much they were shaped by him, and how much they reshaped him in their image, after their likeness, remains to be seen.

i. jeremiah in the rabbinic context Jeremiah is absorbed into the canonical documents of Rabbinic Judaism, but in the end is not a Rabbi like other Rabbis of the Mishnah, Talmuds, and Midrash. While he is, first, a source of Halakhic proof texts, he is inert, never setting forth the exegesis of his own proof-texts. Rabbis do that all the time. He contributes to dialectical arguments, but only facts, not contentions. Typical rabbis participate in analytical inquiries. Second, he exhibits traits not characteristic of Rabbis, and counterpart narratives of Rabbis impute to Rabbis traits not characteristic of Jeremiah. Rabbis rarely announce how they are feeling or engage in deep introspection. Jeremiah spreads out for all to see the record of his inner life. Thus Scripture’s Jeremiah parts company from the Rabbis when he provides a full account of his inner struggle with God, a solipsistic kind of writing with no counterpart in the formative Rabbinic Aggadah. So when we speak of “Rabbi Jeremiah,” it is with ample recognition that Jeremiah the Prophet remained always the Prophet, participating in Rabbinic discourse but never ultimately transformed into a

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Rabbi like (other) canonical Rabbis of the Mishnah, Talmuds, and Midrash. The upshot is more subtle than mere anachronism. What emerges is the amalgamation of systems, the Prophetic and the Rabbinic. That is what the canonical Rabbis accomplished, because to them too Jeremiah delivered messages, and the Rabbinic exegetes respected those messages. It was a reciprocal process. Consequently, in the present context we may speak of Prophetic-Rabbinic Judaism, a coherent union of two massive, cogent but distinct bodies of doctrine and tradition. That is typical of Rabbinic participants in the late antique canon of Rabbinic Judaism. They get no continuous biographies, let alone produce materials for autobiography, and rarely are they individually differentiated as entire personalities, one from another.2 Rather, they register item by item, explaining a phrase, accounting for a verbal usage. These ad hoc contributions, in the name of a particular rabbi, are woven together into a uniform tapestry of information, but the individual rabbi possesses no differentiating traits beyond the case at hand. Jeremiah becomes a rabbi like any other when he is cited for philological or exegetical purposes, that is, out of biographical, all the more so systematic, theological context. Jeremiah, like any other rabbi, contributes facts. A few examples suffice to show Jeremiah as a rabbi, undifferentiated in personality and system like any other rabbi. When it comes to philological writing, Jeremiah supplies probative examples of the use of words, contexts for texts. Some representative samples follow: Tosefta Zebahim 13:20 In Judah’s reading Jeremiah supplies proof-texts that prove “the inheritance” of Dt. 12:9 is Jerusalem. That produces a negative judgment of Jerusalem, which is rejected by Simeon. He assigns to Shiloh the allusions of Jeremiah to the painted bird/lion in the forest. Sifré to Numbers LXXXIV:IV 1 “But my people has exchanged its glory” (Jer. 2:11), Scripture has used a euphemism. Sifré to Deuteronomy VI:II.1 = Sifré to Deuteronomy XXVIII:III.1 How do we know that “Lebanon” refers to the temple? As it is said, “You are Gilead to me, head of Lebanon”

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(Jer. 22:6), “And he shall cut down the thickets of the forest with iron, and Lebanon shall fall by a mighty one” (Isa. 10:34). Mekhilta Attributed to R. Ishmael XXVI:I.17. R. Yosé the Galilean says, “Lo, Scripture says, ‘Out of the mouth of babies and sucklings you have founded strength’” (Ps. 8:3). Rabbi says, “‘... babies’ refers to those old enough to be outside: ‘To cut off the babies from the street’ (Jer. 9:20), ‘The babies ask for bread’” (Lam. 4:4). Genesis Rabbah XXXI:VI.1. A. Another matter: “For the earth is filled with violence” (Gen. 6:13): Said R. Levi, “The word for violence refers to idolatry, fornication, and murder. Idolatry: ‘For the earth is filled with violence’ (Gen. 6:13) Fornication: ‘The violence done to me and to my flesh be upon Babylonia’ (Jer. 51:35). [And the word for ‘flesh’ refers to incest, as at Lev. 18:6]. Jeremiah proves that “violence” of Gen. 6:13 includes fornication. In these cases and the many dozens like them, Jeremiah serves as probative example of how a word carries meaning and what that meaning is. In these contexts Jeremiah is inert and contributes only a fact of language-usage. The exegesis of Jeremiah’s statements forms the other body of writing that encompasses Jeremiah within the Rabbinic framework. Some examples follow: Tosefta Sotah 9:5 “But we are about to bring great evil upon ourselves” (Jer. 26:18–19), so said the proper ones among them. The evil ones among them said, “This entire pericope is a mixture of the words of different parties, so that one who said one thing did not say the other.” Sifré to Deuteronomy I:I. 3. Moses, Amos, and Jeremiah all contribute proof to the proposition that “these are the words ...” refers to teachings of admonition, and Jeremiah’s admonition at Jer. 30:5–7 is then cited to prove the point in his case. Sifré to Deuteronomy CCXIII:I.3 = Ruth Rabbah XXXVII:i “... lamenting her father and mother a month’s time”: R. Aqiba says, “‘Her father and mother’ refers only to idolatry, as it is said,

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‘Saying to a piece of wood, you are my father’” (Jer. 2:27). Aqiba cites Jeremiah to prove that “her father” refers to her idol. Mekhilta Attributed to R. Ishmael XXI:I.17 = Esther Rabbah I I:i 6 In three passages the Omnipresent warned Israel not to go back to Egypt. With these three, nonetheless, they went back, and on all three occasions they fell. The second in the time of Yohanan b. Kareah, “Then it shall come to pass that the sword which you fear shall overtake you there in the land of Egypt” (Jer. 42:16). On all three occasions they went back, and on all three occasions they fell. Mekhilta Attributed to R. Ishmael XLVI:II.6. R. Nathan says, “Greater is the covenant that was made with Jonadab b. Rahab than the one made with David. For the covenant made with David was made with him only conditionally: ‘If your children keep my covenant’ (Ps. 132:12), and if not: ‘Then I will visit their transgression with the rod’ (Ps. 89:33). But the covenant made with Jonadab b. Rechab was not conditional: ‘To the Rechabites Jeremiah said, “These are the words of the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel: ‘Because you have kept the command of Jonadab your ancestor and obeyed all his instructions and carried out all that he told you to do, therefore these are the words of the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel: Jonadab son of Rahab shall not want a descendant to stand before me for all time’”’ (Jer. 35:18–19). Yerushalmi Ber. 5:1 I:2 [C] Said R. Eleazar, “[All the Prophets concluded with praise and consolation] except for Jeremiah who concluded with reproof.” Said R. Yohanan to him, “Even he concluded [his Prophecy] with words of consolation saying, ‘Thus shall Babylon sink, [to rise no more, because of the evil that I am bringing upon her. Thus far are the words of Jeremiah]’” (Jer. 51:64). These cases exemplify the way in which Jeremiah’s statements are subjected to analysis and extension. In the massive collection of exegeses of Jeremiah’s statements I search in vain for differentiating traits of mind or position. I look for dominant motifs, explicit confrontations with the scriptural-Jeremiah’s doctrines, estab-

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lished tendencies and biases. I find not established tendencies but only random samples of I know not what: exegesis for the sake of clarification of original intent. When it comes to philology and exegesis, Jeremiah supplies mere facts for the larger Rabbinic enterprise. Nothing particular to Jeremiah emerges, so far as I can see. Philologically and exegetically, Jeremiah is not treated as an individual but as a case and is undifferentiated from other Prophets, indeed from other scriptural heroes. So the body of evidence that pertains to the issue addressed here does not encompass the whole of the corpus of references to Jeremiah but only those that actively bring about an engagement between Jeremiah’s law and theology and the prevailing Rabbinic systems of law and theology. But to the Rabbinization of the Prophet in the naturalization of his prophecy within the Rabbinic domain only the narrative, Halakhic, and Aggadic compositions pertain. A single body of doctrine emerges, which embodies the Rabbis’ recapitulation of Jeremiah’s. The Rabbinic sages in their incessant proof-texting may have formally rabbinized Jeremiah, but Jeremiah when read whole and cogently has substantively imposed his vision and his doctrines on the Rabbis.

ii. the shared moment: what does a rabbi have to do with a prophet? Did the Rabbis, in the case of Jeremiah, absorb into their system the teachings of the Israelite Prophets? And if so, where and how did the Prophets’ principal doctrines make an impact upon Rabbinic Judaism in its formative age? The Rabbinic canon clearly thinks so, because, as we have seen in the brief illustrations given, the legal and exegetical documents contain many citations of Jeremiah as an authority of philology and exegesis. The correct theological characterization of normative Judaism depends on the answer to the following question: Do the Rabbis say the same thing as the Prophet(s)? If we find systematic evidence that Prophetic writings shaped Rabbinic thought, then we may properly speak of Prophetic-Rabbinic Judaism and approach the teachings of the Rabbis from the perspective of the Prophetic heritage. And if the outcome

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of a survey of how the Rabbis read Prophecy shows picking and choosing in accord with the Rabbinic, not the Prophetic, program of thought, then we must characterize Rabbinic Judaism as unaffected by Prophecy. The answers to those questions afford perspective on the context and character of Rabbinic Judaism. The Rabbinic sages differentiated themselves from prophets but claimed to possess prophetic gifts, even while holding that prophets no longer flourished. Bavli Baba Batra 1:6 12A-B II.4 A. Said R. Abdimi of Haifa, “From the day on which the house of the sanctuary was destroyed, prophecy was taken away from prophets and given over to sages.” B. So are sages not also prophets? C. This is the sense of the statement: Even though it was taken from the prophets, it was not taken from sages. D. Said Amemar, “And a sage is superior to a prophet: ‘And a prophet has a heart of wisdom’ (Ps. 90:12). Who is compared to whom? Lo, the lesser is compared to the greater.” E. Said Abbayye, “You may know that [sages retain the power of prophecy,] for if an eminent authority makes a statement, it may then be stated in the name of some other eminent authority [who can have gotten it only by prophecy].” F. Said Raba, “So what’s the problem? Maybe both were born under the same star.” G. Rather, said Raba, “You may know that that is so, for an eminent authority may say something, and then the same thing may be reported [12B] in the name of R. Aqiba bar Joseph.” H. Said R. Ashi, “So what’s the problem? Maybe as to this particular matter both were born under the same star.” I. Rather, said R. Ashi, “You may know that it is the case, because an eminent authority may say something, and then the same thing may be reported as a law revealed by God to Moses at Mount Sinai.” J. But perhaps the sage just makes a good guess [literally: is no better than a blind man groping about to a window]?

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K. But doesn’t the sage give a reason for what he says [so it cannot be merely a good guess]! II.5 A. Said R. Yohanan, “When the house of the sanctuary was destroyed, prophecy was taken away from the prophets and handed over to idiots and children.” B. As to idiots, what does this mean? C. It is in line with the case involving Mar b. R. Ashi, who was standing in the manor of Mahoza and heard an idiot exclaim, “The man who is going to be chosen head of the session in Mata Mehassia signs his name Tabyumi.” D. He said to himself, “So among the rabbis, who signs his name Tabyumi? I am the one. That means the hour is mine!” E. He went there. Before he got there, rabbis had appointed R. Aha of Difta as the head. When they heard he had come, they sent off a pair of rabbis to him to take counsel with him. F. He kept them with him. They sent another pair, whom he also detained, and so it went on until ten were there. G. When ten had assembled, he commenced and repeated Tannaite formulations and gave an exposition of Scripture, since they open such a discourse only when there are at least ten present. H. R. Aha recited in his own regard, “Anyone who is in disfavour will not quickly be shown favour, and anyone who is in favour will not quickly be shown disfavour.” I. As to children, what does this mean? J. It is in line with the case involving the daughter of R. Hisda. She was sitting on her father’s lap, and in session before him were Raba and Rami bar Hama. He said to her, “Which one of them do you want?” K. She said to him, “Both.” L. Said Raba, “And I want to come last.” What is rejected after 70 represents the externals of prophecy, the capacity to speak of a divine revelation through a given person. But prophecy in the scriptural record remained central to the Rabbinic system.

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What then does a Rabbi have to do with a prophet – or with prophecy? The case of Jeremiah yields an obvious response. Jeremiah bears in common with the Rabbinic sages the sense that an epoch of Israelite history was reaching a conclusion and a new era was commencing. That sense for the changing of the age found its counterpart in the Rabbinic portrait of the beginnings of Rabbinic Judaism in a this-worldly, political sense. Specifically, Jeremiah marked the end of the old order and the beginning of the new at the destruction of the first Temple in 586, just like Yohanan ben Zakkai, a critical figure within the Rabbinic narrative of the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 c.e. Of all the Prophets, he is the likeliest candidate for citizenship in the kingdom of Heaven designed by the ancient Rabbis. That is a matter of shared biography. In the crisis of destruction and survival Jeremiah and Yohanan in common faced the issue, what of Israel’s covenanted relationship with God in the Torah? Does the loss of the Temple signify the end of that relationship? Jeremiah endured the experience of catastrophe. His message was, surrender and submit, which is a mark of repentance for sin. And he promised the restoration of Israel to the Land of Israel, the children to their boundaries. How the authorities of Rabbinic Judaism responded to the same situation is clear: they counselled surrender and submission. They identified the destruction of the Temple as a catastrophe that defined their program of restoration. But for both systems surrender and submission represented only the superficial, the political, dimension of the common message. Each at the foundations of matters would have to renegotiate, theologically at least, the terms of the covenant that joined Israel to God. Jeremiah found in the catastrophe of 586 the promise of the new covenant, one of the heart, and Yohanan ben Zakkai in that of 70 uncovered the eternity of the covenant embodied by the Torah of Sinai. And both of them affirmed the priority of the attitude and aspiration of the faithful, the centrality of the heart above all. Rabbi Jeremiah gave more to the formation of the Rabbinic system than he (anachronistically) received from the Rabbinic system. Here is my answer to the question, what does a Rabbi have to do with the Prophet? The two exemplary figures out of axial ages more than half a millennium apart – 586 and 70 – responded to the turn-

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ing with a promise of renewal; Jeremiah, renewal of the covenant; Yohanan ben Zakkai, restoration of the Torah. Jeremiah’s contribution to the Rabbinic system consisted in his promise of the new covenant, and Yohanan ben Zakkai’s contribution was to find in the Torah the covenantal program and project. For the Rabbinic narrator the destruction marked a turning point in the Israelite relationship with God, as we saw in the passage cited in the Introduction from The Fathers According to Rabbi Nathan IV:V.2. Clearly, the context of the loss of the Temple and the challenge of replacing the sacrificial system, which confronted Jeremiah in the sixth century b.c.e., defined the theological issues taken up by the Rabbinic sages of the formative age of normative Judaism. The covenant embodied in the Torah of Yohanan ben Zakkai represents the concretization of Jeremiah’s new covenant. The mode of atonement left with the Temple in ruins involved deeds of loving kindness, the covenant of the heart.

iii. narratives of the fall So much for Jeremiah where he is absent but surely exercises influence. What about where he is subject to narrative under Rabbinic auspices? What tasks are assigned to his teachings? If Jeremiah saw himself as he is portrayed in Rabbinic literature of the formative age, the Mishnah, Talmud, and Midrash of the first six centuries c.e., we wonder whether he would have recognized himself. So far as he conversed with God and contended with him, the Jeremiah of Scripture would have found familiar the Jeremiah of Lamentations Rabbah. And he would have been able to affirm that the main points of his Prophecy register in the presentation of the Rabbinic sages of late antiquity. A. Messenger of God The Rabbinic narratives of Jeremiah in the canonical documents (mainly in Lamentations Rabbah, which the Rabbis attributed to his authorship) deal only with the events of 586 and draw Jeremiah and God into dialogue on the tragedy. I discern no effort at characteriza-

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tion; Jeremiah does not emerge with distinctive traits of personality or character, rather, the fully framed personality of God does, and Jeremiah responds to God’s traits. In the first of the narratives God calls on Jeremiah to join in the mourning in Heaven for Jerusalem. Jeremiah plays straight man to God, responding to his statements but taking no initiatives. Jeremiah fears the criticism of the patriarchs and Moses that such an event has taken place on his watch. Lamentations Rabbah XXIV.II 2 A. Said the Holy One, blessed be He, to the ministering angels, “Let’s go and see what the enemies have done to my house.” B. Forthwith the Holy One, blessed be He, and the ministering angels went forth, with Jeremiah before them. C. When the Holy One, blessed be He, saw the house of the sanctuary, he said, “This is certainly my house, and this is my resting place, and the enemies have come and done whatever they pleased with it!” D. At that moment the Holy One, blessed be He, wept, saying “Woe is me for my house! O children of mine – where are you? O priests of mine – where are you? O you who love me – where are you? What shall I do for you? I warned you, but you did not repent.” E. Said the Holy One, blessed be He, to Jeremiah, “Today I am like a man who had an only son, who made a marriage canopy for him, and the son died under his marriage canopy. Should you not feel pain for me and for my son? F. “Go and call Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Moses from their graves, for they know how to weep.” G. He said before him, “Lord of the world, I don’t know where Moses is buried.” H. The Holy One, blessed be He, said to him, “Go and stand at the bank of the Jordan and raise your voice and call him, ‘Son of Amram, son of Amram, rise up and see your flock, which the enemy has swallowed up!’” I. Jeremiah immediately went to the cave of Machpelah and said to the founders of the world, “Arise, for the time has come for you to be called before the Holy One, blessed be He.”

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J. They said to him, “Why?” K. He said to them, “I don’t know,” because he was afraid that they would say to him, “In your time this has come upon our children!” L. Jeremiah left them and went to the bank of the Jordan and cried out, “Son of Amram, son of Amram, rise up, for the time has come for you to be called before the Holy One, blessed be He.” M. He said to him, “What makes this day so special, that I am called before the Holy One, blessed be He?” N. He said to them, “I don’t know.” O. Moses left him and went to the ministering angels, for he had known them from the time of the giving of the Torah. He said to them, “You who serve on high! Do you know on what account I am summoned before the Holy One, blessed be He?” P. They said to him, “Son of Amram! Don’t you know that the house of the sanctuary has been destroyed, and the Israelites taken away into exile?” Q. So he cried and wept until he came to the fathers of the world. They too forthwith tore their garments and put their hands on their heads, crying and weeping, up to the gates of the house of the sanctuary. R. When the Holy One, blessed be He, saw them, forthwith: “My Lord God of Hosts summoned on that day to weeping and lamenting, to tonsuring and girding with sackcloth.” S. Were it not stated explicitly in a verse of Scripture, it would not be possible to make this statement. T. And they went weeping from this gate to that, like a man whose deceased lies before him, and the Holy One, blessed be He, wept, lamenting, “Woe for a king who prospers in his youth and not in his old age.” Jeremiah is God’s companion. Jeremiah facilitates the unfolding of the narrative, but the focus is on God’s mourning for Israel. Jeremiah is represented as tactful, but I see no other qualities distinctive to a rabbi that come to the fore in the narrative. God seeks the patriarchs because of their humanity: they know how to weep. Jeremiah is incidental to that motive. In the narratives of the destruction no rabbi figures in the way in which the patriarchs and prophets do.

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B. Bystander In Lamentations Rabbah XXIV.ii3, Jeremiah is a bystander, with still less of a role to play than in the foregoing. Even the respect shown Enosh, the idolater, has not been shown to Israel. He alludes to “my beloved ... in my house ...” meaning Abraham, who reproaches God for sending his children into exile. Jeremiah leads Moses to the waters of Babylon. Finally, at the climax, when Rachel prevails on God to bring her children back to the Land, Jeremiah’s Prophecy comes to the fore. At none of these points does Jeremiah emerge with distinctive personal traits, and no where does he embody virtues particular to Rabbis and so designated elsewhere. The Jeremiah of Scripture, principal voice in Israel’s contention with God, finds no counterpart in the Rabbinic narrative, in which he plays a minor part. Here he is no man of strife and struggle with the whole Land, he is an errand boy. I wonder whether Jeremiah would have recognized himself in these routine transactions, which any one could have carried out as well as he does. C. Jeremiah Precipitates Dialogue between God and Abraham The motif of God’s dialogue with Abraham precipitated by Jer. 11:15 recurs, with Jeremiah no more of a player than before. Lamentations Rabbah XXXV:IX. 1. A. [“Why should my beloved be in my house, who executes so many vile designs? The sacral flesh will pass away from you, for you exult while performing your evil deeds” (Jer. 11:15):] Said R. Uqba, “On the night of the ninth of Ab Abraham, our father, went into the Holy of Holies. The Holy One, blessed be He, took him by the hands and walked him back and forth. B. “He said to him, ‘What has my beloved to do in my house’ (Jer. 11:15). C. “He said to him, ‘Where are my children?’ D. “He said to him, ‘They sinned against me and I sent them into exile: “who executes so many vile designs”’ (Jer. 11:15).

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E. “He said to him, ‘But were there no righteous among them?’ F. “He said to him, ‘The majority were wicked: “so many of whom execute vile designs.”’ G. “‘And was there no circumcision among them?’ H. “‘Even that they nullified: “The sacral flesh will pass away from you.” I. “‘Not only so, but they rejoiced in one another’s misfortune: ‘for you exult while performing your evil deeds.’” J. “And it is written, ‘And he who is glad at calamity shall not go unpunished’” (Prov. 17:5). Abraham rebuked God for destroying the Temple, reviewing judgment of Sodom and the merit of circumcision, both of which formed his legacy. Jeremiah contributes to God’s indictment of Israel. His proof-texts embody dialogue with God. Where Rabbis engage in dialogue with God, ordinarily it is through free-hand speech, not proof-texts. Bavli Menahot 5:1 I. 3 A. Said rabbis to R. Perida, “R. Ezra the great-grandson of R. Eutolus, himself a tenth generation descendant of R. Eleazar b. Azariah, who is a tenth generation descendant of Ezra, is standing at the door.” B. He said, “What’s all this nonsense? If he is well informed [a son of the Torah], well and good; if he is well informed and offspring of well informed ancestors, still better. But if he is descendent of well informed authorities but himself is not well informed, then let a fire eat him up!” C. They said to him, “Well, he is well informed.” D. He said to them, “Let him in.” E. He saw that he was muddle-headed. He commenced by citing the verse, “‘I said to the Lord, you are my Lord, my gratefulness is not with you’ (Ps. 16:2). Said the community of Israel before the Holy One, blessed be he, ‘Lord of the world, show me how grateful you are for having made you known in the world!’

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F. “He said to her, ‘“my gratefulness is not with you.” I am grateful only to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who are the first ones to make me known to the world: “with the saints that are in the earth, they are the mighty ones in whom is all my delight”’ (Ps. 16:3). G. When [Ezra] heard “mighty,” he commenced by saying, “Let the Almighty come and exact vengeance for the mighty from the mighty through the mighty! H. “‘Let the Almighty come:’ this is the Holy One, blessed be he, of whom it is written, ‘The Lord on high is mighty’ (Ps. 93:4). I. “‘and exact vengeance for the mighty:’ this refers to Israel, in line with what is said: ‘they are the mighty ones in whom is all my delight.’ J. “‘from the mighty:’ this refers to the Egyptians: ‘the might sank like lead in the water’ (Ex. 15:10). K. “‘through the mighty:’ this refers to water: ‘above the voices of many waters, mighty waters, breakers of the sea’ (Ps. 93:4). L. “Let the beloved, son of the beloved, come and build the beloved, for the Beloved, in the portion of the beloved, so that the beloved may come and gain atonement therein. M. “‘Let the beloved:’ this refers to King Solomon: ‘And he sent by the hand of Nathan the Prophet, and he called his name Jedidiah [beloved of the Lord] for the sake of the Lord’ (2 San. 12:25). N. [53b] “‘son of the beloved, come:’ this refers to the son of Abraham: ‘what has my beloved to do in my house’ (Jer. 11:15). O. “‘and build the beloved:’ this refers to the sanctuary: ‘‘How beautiful are your tabernacles’ (Ps. 84:2). P. “‘for the Beloved:’ this refers to the Holy One, blessed be he: ‘Let me sing of my beloved’ (Isa. 5:1). Q. “‘in the portion of the beloved:’ this refers to Benjamin: ‘Of Benjamin he said, The beloved of the Lord shall dwell in safety by him’ (Dt. 33:12). R. “‘so that the beloved may come and gain atonement therein:’ this refers to Israel: ‘I have given the dearly beloved of my soul into the hand of her enemies’ (Jer. 12:7).

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S. “Let the good come and receive the good from the Good for the good. T. “‘Let the good come:’ this refers to Moses: ‘And she saw that he was good’ (Ex. 2:2). U. “‘and receive the good:’ this refers to the Torah: ‘For I give you good doctrine’ (Prov. 4:2). V. “‘from the Good:’ this refers to the Holy One, blessed be he: ‘The Lord is good to all’ (Ps. 145:9). W. “‘for the good:’ this refers to Israel: ‘Do good, O Lord, to the good’ (Ps. 125:4). X. “Let this come and receive this from This for this people. Y. “‘Let this come:’ this refers to Moses: ‘For as for this Moses, the man’ (Ex. 32:1). Z. “‘and receive this:’ this refers to the Torah: ‘And this is the Torah that Moses set’ (Dt. 4:44). AA. “‘from This:’ this refers to the Holy One, blessed be he: ‘This is my God and I will glorify him’ (Ex. 15:2). BB. “‘for this people:’ this refers to Israel: ‘This people, which you have gotten’” (Ex. 15:16). Jeremiah at N refers to the son of Abraham, and at R to Israel, in the context of the exegesis of the statement, “Let the beloved, son of the beloved, come and build the beloved, for the Beloved, in the portion of the beloved, so that the beloved may come and gain atonement therein.” The intimacy between Scripture’s God and Jeremiah, which the Prophet records, finds no counterpart here. Jeremiah is a messenger-boy, not a principal voice of God to the generation of the fall. At no point in the narratives is a verse of Jeremiah quoted for more than formally probative, illustrative purposes. The Rabbinic narratives portray Abraham and Moses as Rabbis, engaged in intimate conversation with God as is not uncommon in Aggadic settings. God is fully realized in mortal traits in Rabbinic narrative, illustrated in the stories I reproduced here. Moses “our rabbi” embodies in extreme form the indicative qualities of the Rabbi, and Abraham carries forward the capacity to challenge God in debate. Rachel is distinguished, too, by her courage in compelling God to show mercy. In the context of these typically Rabbinic

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portrayals of scriptural heroes, Jeremiah stands out for his neutral qualities. He is drawn wholly from Scripture and is otherwise inert. Not only is he not portrayed as a Rabbi but also he is not much of a prophet; his contention with God and his power of recrimination, such blatant traits of the scriptural record, find no counterpart in the Rabbinic narratives. If we want to find out how the Rabbis of the late antique canon have adapted his teachings to their tasks and purposes, we shall have to look elsewhere. Scripture’s narratives have shaped the Rabbinic representation of Jerusalem only in general terms. They place him at the time of the destruction and make him a witness to the tragedy. But they do not take up the personal and subjective prophecies that place God and Jeremiah in contention. Jeremiah reveals much of himself in his writings; none of this carries over into the Rabbinic narrative. Scripture’s deeply human, nuanced personality of Jeremiah plays no role in the Rabbinic recapitulation, such as it is, of his life. The Rabbinic narratives of Jeremiah encompass Jeremiah in his scriptural representation; there is no hint of a process of rabbinization under way. That carries us to his teachings, first of law, then of theology. Here is where Rabbi Jeremiah makes his appearance – but always on his own terms.

iv. prophetic and rabbinic theology: jeremiah in rabbinic encounter How did the Rabbinic sages in their classical documents of late antiquity respond to the issues of Jeremiah’s program, his radical reading of repentance for example? The reason is that his Prophecies contain not only admonition but instruction, not only comments on the affairs of the hour but enduring doctrines concerning Israel’s eternal relationship with God. What we want to know is how the Rabbinic sages responded to those doctrines in their systematic theological realization. The outcome of the encounter is contained in the answers to this question: Does the Rabbinic system take over Jeremiah’s more important principles wholly or in part, or does that system go its own way, indifferent to the Prophet’s categorical composition and instruction? I shall now show that Jeremiah’s system-

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atic doctrines and those of the ancient rabbis cohered and formed a single coherent statement on a cogent agenda. That agenda takes up three issues: [1] Israel’s dismal fate among the nations and how to explain it; [2] Israel’s damaged relationship to God and how to repair it; and [3] Israel’s dubious future and how to guarantee it. Israel is responsible for its fate among the nations, which expresses its relationship with God. Israel has the power through repentance to repair that relationship. God will then restore Israel to the Land and renew the covenant with Israel. On all three points, the Rabbinic sages concur in so many words. On that basis I invoke the notion of a single coherent religious system, Prophetic- Rabbinic Judaism. How to explain that the ancient Prophet and the Rabbinic sages who flourished more than a half-millennium later concur on the issues and how they are to be resolved? A very particular experience of exile and defeat shaped the imagination of Jeremiah and the same experience governed the fate of his Rabbinic counterparts, so that the Prophetic and the Rabbinic systems shared a common concern. Because Jeremiah and the ancient Rabbis identified the experience of catastrophe, loss of the Land in particular, as critical to Israel’s existence, we have reason to wonder how the Rabbis solved the same theological problems that engaged Jeremiah. In a word, are we able to construct for the case at hand a single theological system, Prophetic-Rabbinic Judaism? The two bodies of writing say the same thing about the same thing. On that basis, in the case of Jeremiah, I see Prophetic and Rabbinic systems as coherent and uniform, thus: Prophetic-Rabbinic Judaism. How matters work themselves out for Isaiah, Ezekiel, Amos, Hosea, and the other prophets remains to be seen. But to use the word “system” in connection with Jeremiah jars. For Jeremiah’s writings do not readily yield a systematic statement.3 They are subjective, occasional, ad hoc. Jeremiah is preoccupied with his indictment of the Israelites of his generation, dwelling on their sin. His writings do not engage in sustained exposition of ideas in the abstract and often concentrate on feelings and emotions. The Rabbinic counterpart exhibits different qualities of mind and heart. While Jeremiah communicates with God his feelings and his fears,

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engaging with God in recrimination, the Rabbinic portraits of the Prophet present a cool and detached commentator, engaged but not emotionally affected. Much of the book of Jeremiah devotes itself to events in Jeremiah’s life and happenings in his times. He records a vivid emotional life with God and with his contemporaries. The Rabbinic writings on Jeremiah contain no counterpart to the biographical snippets and the autobiographical stories. But had his writings limited themselves to the personal and notional, they would not have illuminated coming generations of Israelites as they did. The personal hardly yields the paradigmatic. But Jeremiah addressed problems of his day in such a way that his teachings continued over time to engage Israelites, and we may identify principal motifs of his thought that do cohere in a system. As I said, I see three important, predominant themes of doctrine, theological doctrine: [1] Israel’s fate among the nations; [2] Israel’s relationship to God; [3] Israel’s future. These themes encompass much of the biographical and political detail of the book of Jeremiah. But they vastly transcend the personal and the subjective and represent objective principles. More to the point, they form the thematic structure that holds together the ad hoc observations and animate the personal and private mediations of the Prophet. Without the paramount status of these three propositions, Jeremiah’s writings form little more than a scrapbook of bits and pieces of emotion and observation, a protracted moan. That capacity to identify principal components of a systematic explanation of Israel’s condition explains how and why the religious teachings of Jeremiah form a theological structure with coherent parts that sustain one another. Specifically, they yield the propositions that [1] Israel is fated to occupy a subordinate position among the nations, which carry out God’s will for Israel and therefore Israel should surrender and not resist the pagan empire that has come to lay siege; [2] God brings misfortune upon Israel to punish Israel for its sins, particularly its violation of the covenant between God and Israel, but Israel has it in its power to accept its punishment and repent its sins and restore its good relationship with God; [3] Israel will enter a new covenant with God, one to which Israel will conform by nature,4 and when the new covenant takes effect, Israel will be restored to the Land and live there eternally.

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These three motifs and the propositions that realize them form a coherent system, a cogent statement with a beginning, a middle, and an end. Not only that, but the theological system of Jeremiah stands comparison with that governing Rabbinic theology on Israel’s fate and destiny. The Prophet and his Rabbinic heirs addressed in common the question of how great events yield an enduring message and a reliable truth.

v. jeremiah’s doctrine of [1] israel’s fate among the nations and how to explain it To represent Jeremiah’s doctrines, I have Jeremiah speak through his own words, which are italicized. God punishes Israel justly, and the principle that governs is measure for measure. Israel has abandoned Gods for idols, and God will abandon Israel to idolatrous nations. “As you have forsaken me and served foreign gods in your land, so you shall serve strangers in a land that is not yours” (Jer. 5:19). Israel is fated to occupy a subordinate position among the nations, which carry out God’s will for Israel, and the Israelites therefore should surrender and not resist the pagan empire that has come to lay siege.5 God rules all nations and Jeremiah embodies God’s rule over the nations “I have set you this day over nations and kingdoms, to pluck up and break down, to destroy and overthrow, to build and to plant” (Jer. 1:10). Speaking of Babylon: “You are my hammer and weapon of war; with you I break nations in pieces; with you I destroy kingdoms ...” (Jer. 51:29). Israel is punished by God through the activities of the nations, who will invade the Land of Israel and carry out God’s plan. “Lo, I am calling all the tribes of the kingdoms of the north ... and they shall come and every one shall set his throne at the entrance the gates of Jerusalem ... and I will utter my judgments against them, for all their wickedness in forsaking me; they have burned incense to other gods and worshipped the works of their own hands” (Jer. 1:15–16). It is futile for Israel to look for alliances among the nations. It is God who is responsible for their situation. God responds to Israel’s wickedness and apostasy, which have brought about the political crisis. “Now what do you gain by going to Egypt to drink the waters

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of the Nile? Or what do you gain by going to Assyria to drink the waters of the Euphrates? Your wickedness will chasten you and your apostasy will reprove you. Know and see that it is evil and bitter for you to forsake the Lord your God; the fear of me is not in you, says the Lord God of hosts” (Jer. 2:19). That is why there is no hope to be realized in Egypt or in Assyria. “You shall be put to shame by Egypt as you were put to shame by Assyria. From it too you will come away with your hands upon your head, for the Lord has rejected those in whom you trust and you will not prosper by them” (Jer. 2:37). The nations themselves have nothing on which to depend. They look to the heavens, but their astrology has nothing to contribute: “Learn not the way of the nations, nor be dismayed at the signs of the heavens, because the nations are dismayed at them, for the customs of the peoples are false” (Jer. 10:1–3). Part of God’s justice involves his punishment of the nations for what they have done to Israel. Jeremiah has no doubt of the justice of his curse: “Pour out thy wrath upon the nations that know thee not, and upon the peoples that call not on thy name; for they have devoured Jacob; they have devoured him and consumed him and have laid waste his habitation” (Jer. 10:24). God responds: “How Babylon is taken, the praise of the whole earth seized! How Babylon has become a horror among the nations ...” (Jer. 51:41).

vi. jeremiah’s doctrine of [2] israel’s relationship to god and how to repair it Israel relates to God in accord with the covenant that links the two.6 God saved Israel from Egyptian bondage and agreed that if Israel kept the covenant embodied in that action God would protect Israel, but if not, God would punish her. “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘Cursed be the man who does not heed the words of this covenant which I commanded your fathers when I brought them out of the Land of Egypt ... saying, listen to my voice and do all that I command you. So shall you be my people, and I will be your God, that I may perform the oath that I swore to your fathers to give them a land flowing with milk and honey as at this day.’ ... And the Lord said to me, ‘Proclaim all these words ... hear the words of this cove-

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nant and do them. For I solemnly warned your fathers when I brought them up out of the Land of Egypt ... Obey my voice.’ Yet they did not obey ... but every one walked in the stubbornness of his evil heart, Therefore I brought upon them all the words of this covenant ...’” (Jer. 11:2–8). But Israel repented insincerely and has now to repent with a whole heart.7 God had planned only to do good for Israel, hoping for a long-term relationship of loyalty and devotion. But Israel was faithless and worshipped other gods: “I thought how I would set you among my sons and give you a pleasant land, a heritage most beauteous of all nations. And I thought you would call me, My Father, and would not turn from following me. Surely as a faithless wife leaves her husband, so have you been faithless to me, house of Israel” (Jer. 3:19–20). God entered into the covenant with Israel: if Israel keeps the terms of the covenant, then God will be their God and they will be his people. If Israel does this, all will go well. “But this command I gave them: ‘Obey my voice and I will be your God and you shall be my people; and walk in all the way that I command you, that it may be well with you’” (Jer. 7:23). But, if not, the land will be ruined and Israel will be scattered among the nations: “Why is the land ruined and laid waste like a wilderness so that no one passes through?” And the Lord says, “Because they have forsaken my law which I set before them and have not obeyed my voice or walked in accord with it but have stubbornly followed their own hearts and have gone after the Baals as their fathers taught them. Therefore ... I will scatter them among the nations whom neither they nor their fathers have known, and I will send the sword after them until I have consumed them” (Jer. 9:12–16). Accordingly, God brings misfortune upon Israel to punish Israel for its sins, particularly its violation of the covenant between God and Israel; but Israel has it in its power to accept its punishment and repent its sins and restore its good relationship with God: “If you return, I will restore you and you shall stand before me ...” (Jer. 15:19). God exercises power over Israel and can do what he will with them. This power he exercises with justice. If Israel obeys justly, God will protect and reward Israel. If Israel does wrong but repents, God will forgive Israel and restore her fortunes. “Behold like the clay in the potter’s hand so are you in my hand, house of

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Israel. If at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it, and if that nation ... turns from its evil, I will repent of the evil that I intended to do. And if at any time I declare ... that I will build and plant it, and if it does evil in my sight, not listening to my voice, then I will repent of the good that I intended to do it ...” (Jer. 18:6–10) But God finds Israelite conduct irrational, because Israel abandons God, who has done Israel no wrong, in favour of idolatry. So God asks why the Israelites have abandoned him: “What wrong did your fathers find in me that they went far from me and went after worthlessness and became worthless? They did not say, Where is the Lord who brought us up from the land of Egypt ... and I brought you into a plentiful land to enjoy its fruits and its good things. But when you came in you defiled my land and made my heritage an abomination ...” (Jer. 2:4, 7). This conduct on Israel’s part is bizarre, because nations do not change their gods as Israel has, and especially they do not give up the worship of gods who have done them only good in favour of no-gods who can do them no good: “Cross to the coasts of Cyprus and see, or send to Kedar and examine with care; see if there has been such a thing. Has a nation changed its gods, even though they are no gods? But my people have changed their glory for that which does not profit?” (Jer. 2:10–11). Such conduct violates the rationality of ordinary conduct. Israel expects its gods to save, but they can do nothing: “In the time of their trouble they say, Arise and save us. But where are your gods that you made for yourself? Let them arise if they can save you in your time of trouble. For as many as your cities are your gods, O Judah” (Jer. 2:28) Israel can restore its relationship with God through repentance,8 meaning, through returning to God. “If a man divorces his wife and she goes from him and becomes another man’s wife, will he return to her? Would not that land be greatly polluted? You have played the harlot with many lovers, and would you return to me” (Jer.3:1). The answer to this rhetorical question is affirmation: God calls on Israel to return. He will forgive the penitent and show his mercy. All that he requires is that Israel acknowledge her guilt and rebellion against God, and God will respond: “return o faithless Israel ... I will not look on you in anger, for I am merciful ... I will not be angry for ever.

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Only acknowledge your guilt, that you rebelled against the Lord your god and scattered your favours among strangers ... return O faithless children ... for I am your master, I will take you one from a city and two from a family and I will bring you to Zion. And I will give you shepherds after my own heart, who will fill you with knowledge and understanding” (Jer. 3:12–15). “Return faithless sons, I will heal your faithlessness” (Jer. 3:22). Repentance radically interpreted resolves Israel’s condition of sin. What is radical in Jeremiah’s doctrine is that the power of repentance is greater than sin: however great the sin, the least measure of repentance reconciles God and sinful Israel. The requirements of repentance and restoration match the causes of Israel’s alienation from God. Israel had to give up its idols and affirm God’s rule in truth, justice, and uprightness. Then the nations will honour Israel and God will protect her: “If you return, Israel ... to me you should return. If you remove your abominations from my presence and do not waver, and if you swear ‘As the Lord lives’ in truth, justice, and uprightness, then nations shall bless themselves in him and in him shall they glory” (Jer. 4:1–2.) The result of radical repentance is that God will keep Israel in the Land and respond to repentance with loyalty: “Amend your ways and your doings and I will let you dwell in his place” (Jer. 7:3). The exile from the Land represents the most severe punishment inflicted on Israel for serving other gods. Then Israel is sent to a foreign land, there to serve other gods. But God will restore Israel to the Land in response to her repentance. The destruction of the Temple came about by reason of faithlessness, and the restoration will signal repentance. “If you will not listen to me to walk in my law which I have set before you and to heed the words of my servants the Prophets whom I send to you urgently, though you have not heeded, then I will make this house like Shiloh and I will make this city a curse for all the nations of the earth” (Jer. 26:4–6). “And when ... they say to you, ‘Why has the Lord pronounced all this great evil against us ... what is the sin that we have committed against the Lord our god?’ then you shall say to them, ‘Because our fathers have forsaken me ... and have walked after other gods and served and worshipped them ... therefore I will hurl you out of this land into a land that neither

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you nor your fathers have known, and there you shall serve other gods ... for I will show you no favour. Therefore behold the days are coming, says the Lord, when it shall no longer be said, ‘As the Lord lives who brought up the people of Israel out of the land of Egypt,’ but, ‘as the Lord lives who brought up the people of Israel out of the north country and from all the countries where he had driven them.’ For I will bring them back to their own land which I gave to their fathers” (Jer. 16:10–15).

jeremiah’s doctrine of [3] israel’s future and how to guarantee it The covenant between Israel and God outlasts creation and nature. It is enduring and can never be broken. “Thus says the Lord, ‘If you can break my covenant with the day and my covenant with the night, so that day and night will not come at their appointed time, then also my covenant with David my servant may be broken ... as the host of heaven cannot be numbered and the sands of the sea cannot be measured, so I will multiply the descendants of David my servant and the Levitical priests who minister to me” (Jer. 33:20–22). Therefore God has a plan for Israel’s future. He will restore Israel to the land, but it will be an Israel that has changed through repentance and suffering. Israel’s heart had been deceitful, but with the restoration it will be purified. “When seventy years have passed for Babylon, I will visit you and I will fulfill my promise and bring you back to this place. For I know the plan I have for you, says the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me; when you seek me with all your heart, I will be found by you ... and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you ... and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile” (Jer. 29:10–14). A new covenant will follow the exile and repentance brought on by the exile,9 one that will be enduring: “Behold the days are coming say the Lord when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I made

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with their fathers when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant which they broke ... but this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days: I will put my law within them and I will write it upon their hearts; and I will be their God and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each man teach his neighbour and each his brother, saying, Know the Lord, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest ... for I will forgive their iniquity and I will remember their sin no more” (Jer. 31:31–34). The heart forms the centre of the matter:10 “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately corrupt; who can understand it? I the Lord search the mind and try the heart, to give to every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his doings” (Jer. 17:9–10). Accordingly, Israel will enter a new covenant with God, one to which Israel will conform by nature, and when the new covenant takes effect, Israel will be restored to the Land and live there eternally. “When you have multiplied ... in those days ... they shall no more say, ‘The ark of the covenant of the Lord.’ It shall not come to mind nor be remembered or missed; it shall not be made again ... At that time Jerusalem shall be called the throne of the Lord, and all nations shall gather to it, to the presence of the Lord in Jerusalem; and they shall no more stubbornly follow their own evil heart. In those days the house of Judah shall join with the house of Israel and together they shall come from the land of the north to the land that I gave your fathers for a heritage” (Jer. 3:16–18). The heart is the main thing, and the new covenant will be engraved on the heart, so correcting the flaw of creation: the deceitfulness characteristic of the heart. Judah’s sinfulness is engraved on the heart, so the new covenant represents a final solution to the problem of the natural condition of man: “The sin of Judah is written with a pen of iron, with a point of diamond it is engraved on the tablet of their heart and on the horns of their altars” (Jer. 17:1). When Israel is restored to its Land, it will be with a heart capable of carrying out its responsibilities under the covenant. By nature Israel will know that the Lord is their God, the act of repentance assuring that they will not again stray and suffer as they have suffered now: “So will I regard as good the exiles from Judah, whom I

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have sent away from this place to the land of the Chaldeans. I will set my eyes upon them for good and I will bring them back to this Land. I will build them up and not tear them down ... I will give them a heart to know that I am the Lord and they shall be my people and I will be their God, for they shall return to me with their whole heart” (Jer. 24:5–7). So Israel’s fate lies in Israel’s own hands. Israel will suffer but repent and God will respond to her repentance by according to Israel a future of quiet and ease. The nations that have punished Israel as God’s agents will be punished too. “Israel is a hunted sheep driven away by lions. First the king of Assyria devoured him, and now at last Nebuchadrezzar, king of Babylon, has gnawed his bones. Therefore thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, ‘Behold I am bringing punishment on the king of Babylon and his land as I punished the king of Assyria. I will restore Israel to pasture and he shall feed on Carmel and in Bashan ... in those days and at that time ... iniquity shall be sought in Israel and there shall be none, and sin in Judah, and none be found; for I will pardon those who I reserve” (Jer. 50:17–20). But Israel need not fear and in the end may look forward to restoration: “Fear not, O Jacob my servant, nor be dismayed, O Israel, for lo, I will save you from afar and your offspring from the land of their captivity. Jacob shall return and have quiet and ease, and none shall make him afraid. Fear not, O Jacob my servant ... for I am with you, I will make a full end of all the nations to which I have driven you, but of you I will not make a full end. I will chasten you in just measure and I will by no means leave you unpunished” (Jer. 46:27–28). To all this program of regeneration and renewal, the Temple is tangential. The people looked to the cult for purification from their sins, but it was sincere repentance that would bring about the restoration of Israel’s fortunes.11

viii. prophetic-rabbinic judaism How does Jeremiah’s theology in its principal categories compare with the theological repertoire of Rabbinic Judaism, particularly as

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set forth in the Aggadic compilations of the formative age? When we formulate an epitome of the Rabbinic theology on the same categories just expounded, we find that the later Rabbis recapitulated the positions and main points of Jeremiah. The theology of Rabbinic Judaism conveys the picture of world order based on God’s justice and equity. The categorical structure of Rabbinic Judaism encompasses the components, God and man; the Torah; Israel and the nations. The working system of Rabbinic Judaism finds its dynamic in the struggle between God’s plan for creation – to create a perfect world of justice – and man’s will. That dialectic embodies in a single paradigm the events contained in the sequences: rebellion, sin, punishment, repentance, and atonement; exile and return; or the disruption of world order and the restoration of world order. Let me now define the principles of the theology of classical Rabbinic Judaism: 1 God formed creation in accord with a plan, which the Torah reveals. World order can be shown by the facts of nature and society set forth in that plan to conform to a pattern of reason based upon justice. Those who possess the Torah – Israel – know God, and those who do not – the gentiles – reject him in favour of idols. What happens to each of the two sectors of humanity, respectively, responds to their relationship with God. Israel in the present age is subordinate to the nations, because God has designated the gentiles as the medium for penalizing Israel’s rebellion, meaning through Israel’s subordination and exile to provoke Israel to repent. Private life as much as the public order conforms to the principle that God rules justly in a creation of perfection and stasis. 2 The perfection of creation, realized in the rule of exact justice, is signified by the timelessness of the world of human affairs, their conformity to a few enduring paradigms that transcend change (theology of history). No present, past, or future marks time, but only the recapitulation of those patterns. Perfection is further embodied in the unchanging relationships of the social commonwealth (theology of political economy), which assure that scarce resources, once allocated, remain in stasis. A further indication of perfection lies in the complementarity of the components of creation, on the one side, and, finally, the correspondence between God and man, in God’s image (theological anthropology), on the other.

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3 Israel’s condition, public and personal, marks flaws in creation. What disrupts perfection is the sole power capable of standing on its own against God’s power, and that is man’s will. What man controls and God cannot coerce is man’s capacity to form intention and therefore choose either arrogantly to defy, or humbly to love, God. Because man defies God, the sin that results from man’s rebellion flaws creation and disrupts world order (theological theodicy). The paradigm of the rebellion of Adam in Eden governs, the act of arrogant rebellion leading to exile from Eden thus accounting for the condition of humanity. But, as in the original transaction of alienation and consequent exile, God retains the power to encourage repentance through punishing man’s arrogance. In mercy, moreover, God exercises the power to respond to repentance with forgiveness, that is, a change of attitude evoking a counterpart change. Since, commanding his own will, man also has the power to initiate the process of reconciliation with God, through repentance, an act of humility, man may restore the perfection of that order that through arrogance he has marred. 4 God ultimately will restore that perfection that embodied his plan for creation. In the work of restoration death that comes about by reason of sin will disappear, the dead will be raised and judged for their deeds in this life, and most of them, having been justified, will go on to eternal life in the world to come. The paradigm of man restored to Eden is realized in Israel’s return to the Land of Israel. In that world or age to come, however, that sector of humanity that through the Torah knows God will encompass all of humanity. Idolators will perish, and humanity, comprising Israel, at the end will know the one, true God and spend eternity in his light. If we translate into the narrative of Israel, from the beginning to the calamity of the destruction of the (first) Temple, what is set forth in both abstract and concrete ways, we reprise the Authorized History laid out in Genesis through Kings and amplified by the principal Prophets. That brings us back to Jeremiah and to the question: Do the Rabbinic sages carry forward Jeremiah’s theological doctrines as I have identified them?

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ix. the rabbinic doctrine of [1] israel’s fate among the nations and how to explain it The nations reject the Torah and make themselves God’s enemies. Israel accepts the Torah and makes itself God’s friend. Knowing God through the Torah governs all relationships. The category, the gentiles or the nations, without elabourate differentiation, encompasses all who are not Israelites, that is, who do not belong to Israel and therefore do not know and serve God. That category takes on meaning only as complement and opposite to its generative counterpart, having no standing – i.e., no self-defining characteristics – on its own. That is, since Israel encompasses the sector of humanity that knows and serves God by reason of God’s self-manifestation in the Torah, the gentiles are not-Israel, comprising everybody else. They are those placed by their own intention and active decision beyond the limits of God’s revelation. Guided by the Torah Israel worships God; without its illumination, gentiles worship idols. At the outset, therefore, the main point registers: by “gentiles” the sages understand God’s enemies; and by “Israel” the sages understand those who know God as God has made himself known, which is through the Torah. In no way do we deal with secular categories, but with theological ones. The Rabbinic sages devote a considerable account to the challenge represented by gentile power and prosperity, and Israel’s subordination and penury. For if the story of the moral order tells about justice that encompasses all creation, the chapter of gentile rule vastly disrupts the account. Gentile rule forms the point of tension, the source of conflict, attracting attention and demanding explanation. For the critical problematic inherent in the category, Israel, is that its anti-category, the gentiles, dominate. So the urgent question to which the system must respond is what rationality of a world ordered through justice accounts for the world ruled by gentiles. How can justice be thought to order the world if the gentiles rule? That formulation furthermore forms the public counterpart to the private perplexity: how is it that the wicked prosper and the righteous suffer? The two challenges to the conviction of the rule of

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moral rationality – gentile hegemony, matched by the prosperity of wicked persons – correspond. Who, speaking categorically not historically, are these “nonIsraelites,” called gentiles (“the nations,” “the peoples,” and the like)? The answer is dictated by the form of the question: who exactly is a “non-Israelite”? Then the answer concerning the signified is always relative to its signifier, Israel? Within humanity-otherthan-Israel, differentiation articulates itself along gross, political lines, always in relationship to Israel. If humanity is differentiated politically, then, it is a differentiation imposed by what has happened between a differentiated portion of humanity and Israel. It is, then, that segment of humanity that under given circumstances has interacted with Israel: [1] Israel arising at the end and climax of the class of world empires, Babylonia, Media, Greece, Rome; or [2] Israel against Egypt; or [3] Israel against Canaan. That is the point at which Babylonia, Media, Greece, Rome, Egypt, or Canaan take a place in the narrative, become actors for the moment, but never givens, never enduring native categories. Then, when politics does not impose its structure of power-relationships, humanity is divided between Israel and everyone else. This brings us to the urgent question of the contemporary condition of Israel among the nations. The now-routine question, which the system identifies as critical, requires no elabouration: why, for all that, do the gentiles rule Israel? The answer is, that is how God has arranged matters, and at every point the divine plan to impose justice is realized. The key proposition contains two elements: God has decided to do things in just this way, and God’s plan accords with the requirements of the just governance of world order. It is the second of the two components that is elabourated, provoking the question natural to the theology at hand: what has Israel done to deserve its punishment? And why this punishment in particular? Within this theology world history orbits about Israel, so we cannot find it surprising that the present arrangement of world politics responds to Israel’s condition, specifically, its sinfulness. The reason the gentiles rule is that Israel sinned. When Israel repents, they will regain dominion. This simple proposition comes to expression in so many words in the following statement:

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Esther Rabbah XI:I.11 A. Said R. Aibu, “It is written, ‘For the kingdom is the Lord’s and he is the ruler over the nations’ (Ps. 22:29). B. “And yet you say here, ‘when King Ahasuerus sat on his royal throne’? C. “In the past dominion resided in Israel, but when they sinned, its dominion was taken away from them and given to the nations of the world. D. “That is in line with the following verse of Scripture: ‘I will give the land over into the hand of evil men’” (Ez. 30:12). F. [Continuing D:] “In the future, when the Israelites repent, the Holy One, blessed be he, will take dominion from the nations of the world and restore it to Israel. G. “When will this come about? ‘When saviours will come up on Mount Zion’” (Obadiah 1:21). Israel controls its own condition; its attitude governs its own fate. Because Israel sinned, gentiles rule; when Israel by an act of will repents, then Israel will regain dominion over itself. The nations serve as instruments of God’s wrath; nothing that they do comes about by their own volition, but only by consequence of Israel’s. Israel is justly punished for its own sins, and its present condition demonstrates the working of God’s justice. All things are foreseen, but free will is accorded to Israel, and within those two principles is located a clear and reasonable explanation for the enormous anomaly that idolaters rule God’s people. That turns out not anomalous but wholly coherent to the principle of the rule of justice. But if Israel is in control, why should punishment take the particular form of subjugation to idolaters? The reason is that Israel’s condition responds not only to its own actions and intentions, which ought to have subjected Israel to the penalty meted out to Adam for his act of rebellion. Israel enjoys also the protection and intervention of the founders of Israel, the patriarchs. They establish the point of difference between Adam and Israel: God’s intervention, his identification of the patriarchs as the means by which he will ultimately make himself known to humanity. Hence the very formation of Israel bears within itself the point of differentiation between Adam

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and Israel. As to the dominion of the gentiles, entailing also exile from the Land of Israel, that penalty for sin represents a choice made by Abraham. Foreseeing all that would come about through time, God set forth the four constituents of Israelite being: the gentiles, Gehenna, the sacrifices, the Torah. They formed a balance: if Israel practices the commandments and studies the Torah, they will be spared gentile rule and Gehenna; that is, they will thrive under the dominion of the Kingdom of Heaven, on the one side, and they will inherit the world to come, on the other. But God knows that Israel will sin, so to begin with, Abraham is offered the choice of penalties. He chooses the lesser of the two penalties, the dominion of the gentiles, reserving for Israel the greater of the two alternatives, life eternal. The system at each point recapitulates its main principles. Here is how the matter is spelled out. Pesiqta Rabbati XV [=Pesiqta Derab Kahana V]:II.1 1. A. “Great things have you done, O Lord my God; your wonderful purposes and plans are all for our good; [none can compare with you; I would proclaim them and speak of them, but they are more than I can tell]”(Prov. 40:5) Now begins the process of the justification of subjugation to the nations; whatever happens, happens for the good of Israel: B. R. Hinenah bar Papa says two [teachings in respect to the cited verse]: “All those wonders and plans which you made so that our father, Abraham, would accept the subjugation of Israel to the nations were for our good, for our sake, so that we might endure in the world.” C. Simeon bar Abba in the name of R. Yohanan: “Four things did the Holy One, blessed be he, show to our father, Abraham: the Torah, the sacrifices, Gehenna, and the rule of the kingdoms. D. “The Torah: ‘... and a flaming torch passed between these pieces’(Gen. 15:17). E. “Sacrifices: ‘And he said to him, Take for me a heifer divided into three parts’ (Gen. 15:9).

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F. “Gehenna: ‘behold a smoking fire pot.’ G. “The rule of the kingdoms: ‘Lo, dread, a great darkness’” (Gen. 15:12). Here is the principal message: Torah and sacrifice preserve Israel, the subjugation to the nations and Gehenna penalize Israel for failing to maintain Torah-study and sacrifice: H. “The Holy One, blessed be he, said to our father, Abraham, ‘So long as your descendants are occupied with the former two, they will be saved from the latter two. If they abandon the former two of them, they will be judged by the other two. I. “‘So long as they are occupied with study of the Torah and performance of the sacrifices, they will be saved from Gehenna and from the rule of the kingdoms.” Israel’s failure is foreseen, if not foreordained, and now Abraham is offered a choice for his descendants’ future: J. “‘But [God says to Abraham] in the future the house of the sanctuary is destined to be destroyed and the sacrifices nullified. What is your preference? Do you want your children to go down into Gehenna or to be subjugated to the four kingdoms?’” All this conformed to Abraham’s wishes: K. R. Hinena bar Pappa said, “Abraham himself chose the subjugation to the four kingdoms. L. “What is the scriptural basis for that view? ‘How should one chase a thousand, and two put ten thousand to flight, except their rock had given them over’ (Deut. 32:30). That statement concerning the rock refers only to Abraham, as it is said, ‘Look at the rock from which you were hewn’ (Isa. 51:1). M. “‘But the Lord delivered them up’ (Deut. 32:30) teaches that God then approved what he had chosen.”

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With the sages once more working out their own narratives in response to Scripture’s, we now have an account of Abraham’s thinking when he made the fateful choice: 2. A. R. Berekhiah in the name of R. Levi: “Now Abraham sat and puzzled all that day, saying, ‘Which should I choose, Gehenna or subjugation to the kingdoms? Is the one worse than the other?’ B. “Said the Holy One, blessed be he, to him, ‘Abraham, how long are you going to sit in puzzlement? Choose without delay.’ That is in line with this verse: ‘On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram saying’” (Gen. 15:18). C. What is the meaning of, saying? D. R. Hinena bar Pappa said, “Abraham chose for himself the subjugation to the four kingdoms.” E. We have reached the dispute of R. Yudan and R. Idi and R. Hama bar Haninah said in the name of a certain sage in the name of Rabbi: “The Holy One, blessed be he, [not Abraham] chose the subjugation to the four kingdoms for him, in line with the following verse of Scripture: ‘You have caused men to ride over our heads, we have been overcome by fire and water’ (Ps. 66:12). That is to say, ‘you have made ride over our heads various nations, and it is as though we went through fire and through water’” (Ps. 66:21). Since Israel lives out the patterns originally set by the patriarchs, to understand Israel’s condition, we must examine the deeds of Abraham and his selected son and grandson. But those deeds embodied the fundamental truths of the system. Torah and sacrifices preserve Israel from Gehenna and the rule of the kingdoms (the one personal, the other communal, in both instances). Faced with the choice of Gehenna or subjugation, Abraham chose the latter. From these specific points of correlation, we turn to the more general, consequential claim, that God foresaw all that has come upon Israel. The importance of that conviction comes to the surface when we see the corollary: [1] the Kingdom of Heaven continues to encompass Israel, even while it is ruled by the gentiles; and

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[2] the anomaly and injustice of gentile hegemony will ultimately come to an end, by reason of Israel’s own act of will. The Prophets called the gentiles the instruments of God’s wrath. The sages took the same view. They explained that the gentiles do not act on their own but carry out God’s will. What happens to Israel therefore reassures Israel that the holy people continue to live in the kingdom of Heaven, and the very fact of the anomaly of pagan rule turns out to guarantee God’s rule and Israel’s role. Israel has not lost its position in the unfolding of the story of creation of a just world order set forth in the revelation of Sinai. Israel is now writing, and will continue to write, its own chapter of that story. Not only that, but Israel is not subordinate to the world-empires but their equal, standing in its assigned position at the end and climax of that part of the story of creation that the gentile empires are assigned to write. So to conclude: the just world order encompasses the division of humanity into Israel with the Torah, and the gentiles with their idols. The one is destined to life eternal with God, the other to the grave, there to spend eternity. World order then finds its centre and focus in Israel, and whatever happens that counts under Heaven’s gaze takes place in relationship to Israel. That division yields rich and dense details, but only a simple story, easily retold. In a purposeful act of benevolence, the just God created the world in so orderly a way that the principle of justice and equity governs throughout. Fair rules apply equally to all persons and govern all circumstances. God not only created man but made himself known to man through the Torah. But man, possessed of free will, enjoys the choice of accepting and obeying the Torah, therefore living in the kingdom of Heaven, or rejecting the Torah and God in favour of idolatry and idols.

x. the rabbinic doctrine of [2] israel’s relationship to god and how to repair it Sin explains the condition of Israel. The governing theory of Israel, that had Israel kept the Torah from the beginning, holy Israel would never have had any history at all but would have lived in a perfect

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world at rest and balance and order, is now invoked. There would have been nothing to write down, no history, had Israel kept the Torah. I can imagine no more explicit statement of how the world order is disrupted by sin, and, specifically, by sinful attitudes, than the following: Bavli-Tractate Nedarim 3:1 I.14FF./22A-B I.18 A. Said R. Ada b. R. Hanina, “If the Israelites had not sinned, to them would have been given only the Five Books of the Torah and the book of Joshua alone, which involves the division of the Land of Israel. B. “How come? ‘For much wisdom proceeds from much anger’” (Qoh. 1:18). Adam ought to have stayed in Eden. With the Torah in hand, Israel, the new Adam, ought to have remained in the Land, beyond the reach of time and change, exempt from the events of interesting times. Sin ruined everything for Adam, and for Israel, bringing about the history recorded in Scripture – not a very complicated theodicy. First, the system must account for imperfection in the world order of justice; sin supplies the reason. Second, it must explain how God remains omnipotent even in the face of imperfection. The cause of sin, man’s free will corresponding to God’s, tells why. Third, it must allow for systemic remission. Sin is so defined as to accommodate the possibility of regeneration and restoration. And, finally, sin must be so presented as to fit into the story of the creation of the perfect world. It is. Defined in the model of the first sin, the one committed by man in Eden, sin is an act of rebellion against God. Rebellion takes two forms. As a gesture of omission sin embodies the failure to carry out one’s obligation to God set forth in the Torah. As one of commission, it constitutes an act of defiance. In both cases sin comes about by reason of man’s intentionality to reject the will of God, set forth in the Torah. However accomplished, whether through omission or commission, an act becomes sinful because of the attitude that accompanies it. That is why man is responsible for sin, answerable to God in particular, who may be said to take the matter personally,

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just as it is meant. The consequence of sin is death for the individual, exile and estrangement for holy Israel, and disruption for the world. That is why sin accounts for many of the flaws in creation. If sin is what introduces rebellion and change, and the will of man is what constitutes the variable in disrupting creation, then the Rabbinic theology makes provision for restoration through the free exercise of man’s will. That requires an attitude of remorse, a resolve not to repeat the act of rebellion, and a good-faith effort at reparation; in all, transformation from rebellion against to obedience to God’s will. So with repentance we come once more to an exact application of the principle of measure for measure, here, will for will, each comparable to, corresponding with, the other. World order, disrupted by an act of will, regains perfection through an act of will that complements and corresponds to the initial, rebellious one. That is realized in an act of willful repentance (Hebrew: teshubah). Repentance, a statement of regret and remorse for the sin one has committed and hence an act of will, effects the required transformation of man and inaugurates reconciliation with God. Through a matched act of will, now in conformity with God’s design for creation, repentance therefore restores the balance upset by man’s act of will. So the act of repentance, and with it atonement, takes its place within the theology of perfection, disruption, and restoration, that all together organizes – shows the order of – the world of creation. Apology does not suffice; an atoning act also is required. That is why repentance is closely related to the categories of atonement and Day of Atonement, and is integral to them. The one in the cult, the other in the passage of time, respond to the change of will with an act of confirmation, on God’s part, that the change is accepted, recognized, and deemed effective. That is because, through the act of repentance, a person who has sinned leaves the status of sinner, but must also atone for the sin and gain forgiveness, so that such a person is no longer deemed a sinner. Self-evidently, within a system built on the dialectics of competing wills, God’s and man’s, repentance comes first in the path to reconciliation. That is because the act of will involves a statement of regret or remorse, resolve never to repeat the act, and, finally, the test of this change of heart or will

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(where feasible). Specifically, it is a trial of entering a situation in which the original sin is possible but is not repeated. Then the statement of remorse and voluntary change of will is confirmed by an act of omission or commission, as the case requires. Followed by atonement, therefore, repentance commences the work of closing off the effects of sin: history, time, change, inequity. It marks the beginning of the labour of restoring creation to Eden: the perfect world as God wants it and creates it. Since the Hebrew word, teshubah, is built out of the root for return, the concept is generally understood to mean returning to God from a situation of estrangement. The turning is not only from sin but toward God, for sin serves as an indicator of a deeper pathology, which is, utter estrangement from God – man’s will alienated from God’s. Teshubah then involves not humiliation but reaffirmation of the self in God’s image, after God’s likeness. It follows that repentance forms a theological category encompassing moral issues of action and attitude; wrong action, arrogant attitude, in particular. Repentance forms a step on the path to God that starts with the estrangement represented by sin: doing what I want, instead of what God wants, thus rebellion and arrogance. Sin precipitates punishment, whether personal for individuals or historical for nations, punishment brings about repentance for sin, which, in turn, leads to atonement for sin and, it follows, reconciliation with God. That sequence of stages in the moral regeneration of sinful humanity, individual or collective, defines the context in which repentance finds its natural home. True, the penitent corrects damage one has actually caused to his fellow man. But apart from reparations, the act of repentance involves only the attitude, specifically substituting feelings of regret and remorse for the arrogant intention that lead to the commission of the sin. If the person declares regret and undertakes not to repeat the action, the process of repentance gets underway. When the occasion to repeat the sinful act arises and the penitent refrains from doing it again, the process comes to a conclusion. So it is through the will and attitude of the sinner that the act of repentance is realized; the entire process is carried on beyond the framework of religious actions, rites, or rituals. The power of repentance overcomes sins of the most heinous and otherwise unforgivable character. The

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following is explicit that no sin overwhelms the transformative power of repentance:

A. B. C. D. E. F. G.

Bavli Gittin 5:6 I.26/57B: A Tannaite statement: Naaman was a resident proselyte. Nebuzaradan was a righteous proselyte. Grandsons of Haman studied Torah in Bene Beraq. Grandsons of Sisera taught children in Jerusalem. Grandsons of Sennacherib taught Torah in public. And who were they? Shemaiah and Abtalion.

Shemaiah and Abtalion are represented as the masters of Hillel and Shammai, who founded the houses dominant in many areas of the Halakhah set forth in the Mishnah and related writings. The act of repentance transforms the heirs of the destroyers of Israel and the Temple into the framers of the redemptive Torah. The power of repentance is disproportionate, out of all balance with sin. The penalty for sin never exceeds the gravity of the sin. But repentance outweighs the gravity of that which is repented. We may say that, while, when it comes to sin, God effects exact justice, when it comes to repentance, God accords mercy out of all proportion to the arrogance of the act of rebellion. The act of will that is represented by repentance vastly outweighs in effect the act of will that brings about sin. That is because one may commit many sins, but a single act of repentance encompasses them all and restores the balance that those sins all together have upset. So repentance makes sense, in its remarkable power, only in the context of God’s mercy. It follows that any account of repentance and atonement must commence with a clear statement of God’s mercy, the logical precondition for the act of repentance. Two other media of atonement for sin are death, on the one side, and the advent of the Day of Atonement, which accomplishes atonement: “For on this day atonement shall be made for you to cleanse you of all your sins” (Lev. 16:30). Death marks the final atonement for sin, which bears its implication for the condition of man at the resurrection. Because one has atoned through sin (accompanied at

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the hour of death by a statement of repentance, “May my death be atonement for all my sins,” in the liturgy in due course), when he is raised from the dead, his atonement for all his sins is complete. The judgment after resurrection becomes for most a formality. That is why “all Israel has a portion in the world to come,” with the exception of a few whose sins are not atoned for by death, and that is by their own word. The Day of Atonement provides atonement, as the Written Torah makes explicit, for the sins of the year for which one has repented, and that accounts for the elabourate rites of confession that fill the day.

xi. the rabbinic doctrine of [3] israel’s future and how to guarantee it The Rabbinic theology and Jeremiah’s thinking come together on the covenant between God and Israel. How the Rabbis interpret the doctrine of the new covenant forms the centre of interest. For it is their response to Jeremiah that defines the question of this study. In the Rabbis’ interpretation, Jeremiah to begin with takes the rite of circumcision to express in physical form the relationship between God and Israel. That covenant endures as long as do heaven and earth. But that is not the whole story of the Rabbinic reading of the new covenant. The covenant is to be renewed by God. The old covenant, on the occasion of the liberation from Egyptian bondage, has been broken and will be succeeded by a covenant that will be inviolable. The condition of man accounts for the change. Israel will keep that covenant by nature; it will be natural to adhere to it. Israel’s covenant with God is eternal as nature is eternal. Here is where Israel takes its leave from Adam. Jeremiah as read by the Rabbis understands by the covenant the rule of God, and Israel was like Adam in violating it but, unlike Adam, knows the promise of repentance. Tosefta Nedarim 2 7 Another matter: Great is circumcision, for if it were not for that, the heaven and the earth could not endure, since it says, “Thus says the Lord. Bul for my covenant day and night, I should not have set forth the ordinances of heaven and earth” (Jer. 33:25). The covenant of circumcision is

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treated as eternal as heaven and earth. The theme of the eternity of the covenant permeates the encounter with Jeremiah. Sifra CCLXII:I, 13. “... and will confirm my covenant with you:” It will not be like the original covenant, which you annulled as it is said, “[Behold the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah,] not like the covenant which I made with their fathers, when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant which they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord” (Jer. 31:32), but a new covenant, which will never be broken from now on, as it is said, “Behold the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah” – a new covenant. Sifré to Deuteronomy CCCVI:IX,1. As nature is unchanging, so ought Israel stand firm in the covenant. God set bounds to the seas, and the seas have not changed in quality or character, so Jer. 5:22. That is what is meant by the new covenant: the one that endures. Mekhilta Attributed to R. Ishmael XXII:I. 6. R. Simeon b. Yohai says, “The sun and the moon gave testimony concerning them: ‘Thus says the Lord, who gives the sun for light by day, who stirs up the sea, that the waves thereof roar, the Lord of hosts is his name: if these ordinances depart from before me, says the Lord, then the seed of Israel also shall cease from being a nation before me forever’” (Jer. 31:35–56). Mekhilta Attributed to R. Ishmael XXII:I. 8. Simeon of Teman says, “‘On account of the merit gained by circumcision, I shall split the sea for them:’ ‘Thus says the Lord, if not for my covenant of day and night, I would not have appointed the ordinances of heaven and earth’ (Jer. 33:25). Now go and find out what is the covenant which applies by day and by night? You shall find only the religious duty of circumcision.” At issue in the covenant is the act of circumcision in particular, so Jeremiah. Leviticus Rabbah XXXV:IV 1. A. Another interpretation: “If you walk in my statutes” (Lev. 26:3). [God speaks,] “The statutes by which I ordained heaven and earth. If my covenant is not

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with day and night, if I have not made the statutes governing heaven and earth’ [Jer. 33:25]. The statutes by which I ordained the sun and the moon, as it is said, ‘Thus said the Lord who gives the sun for a light by day, the statutes of the moon and the stars for a light by night’ [Jer. 31:35]. The statutes by which I ordained the sea: ‘When he set the statute for the sea’ [Prov. 8:29]. The statutes by which I ordained the sand: ‘Who set the sand for the boundary of the sea, an everlasting statute’ [Jer. 5:22]. The statutes by which I ordained the deep: ‘When he ordained a statute for a circle upon the face of the deep’” (Prov. 8:27). The words for statute and circle (HWQ, HWG) serve to provide an analogy. God’s statutes are as enduring as the covenant with the natural world. His covenant is with the day and night, heaven and earth, sea and shoreline boundaries. Song of Songs Rabbah CXV:ii 1. A. Another interpretation of the verses, “O you who dwell in the gardens, my companions [are listening for your voice; let me hear it. Make haste, my beloved, and be like a gazelle or a young stag upon the mountains of spices]:” R. Jeremiah in the name of R. Hiyya the Elder: “If two companions who are occupied with a matter of law and give way to one another in law, in their regard Scripture says, ‘Then they who feared the Lord spoke with one another and the Lord hearkened and heard’ (Ma. 3:16). “For the word ‘spoke’ bears the sense of concession: ‘He subdues peoples under us’ (Ps. 47:4). “Not only so, but if they should err [by excessive conciliation reaching the wrong decision,] the Holy One, blessed be He, makes up their error for them [and corrects it]: ‘And the Lord hearkened and heard, and a book of remembrance was written before him, for those who feared the Lord and thought about his name’ (Ma. 3:16).’ “‘... heard and a book of remembrance was written:’ for he writes it on their heart, ‘In their heart I will write it’ (Jer. 31:33), a book of remembrance ... before him:’ for he reminds them. “Whom? ‘for those who feared the Lord and thought about his name.’” Jeremiah’s covenant of the heart clarifies the statement of Malachi. Bavli Shabbat 19:6 III.1 B. Our rabbis have taught on Tannaite authority: He who performs the rite of circumcision

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says, “Blessed ... who has sanctified us by his commandments and commanded us concerning circumcision.” He who recites the blessing over wine says, “Blessed... who has sanctified us by his commandments and commanded us to circumcise proselytes and to cause a drop of blood of the covenant to flow from them; but since but for the blood of the covenant, heaven and earth would not endure, ‘if not my covenant by day and by night, I had not appointed the ordinances of the heaven and earth’ (Jer. 33:25). Blessed are you, Lord, who makes the covenant.” He who circumcises slaves says, “Blessed ... who has sanctified us by his commandments and commanded us concerning circumcision.” He who says the blessing over the wine says, “Blessed ... who has sanctified us by his commandments and commanded us to circumcise slaves and cause drops of the blood of the covenant to flow from them, since but for the blood of the covenant, heaven and earth would not endure, ‘if not my covenant by day and by night, I had not appointed the ordinances of the heaven and earth’ (Jer. 33:25). Blessed are you, Lord, who makes the covenant.” The covenant secures heaven and earth and they will last as long as it does. Bavli Pesahim 6:1–2 V.5 A. R. Sheshet: every thirty days he would review his learning and would stand and lean at the side of the doorway and say, “Rejoice, O my soul, rejoice, O my soul, for you I have recited Scripture, for you I have repeated Tannaite statements!” Well, now, can this be true? But didn’t R. Eleazar say, “[Great is the Torah, for] were it not for the Torah, the heaven and the earth could not endure: ‘Thus says the Lord, but for my covenant by day and night, I would not have appointed the ordinances of heaven and earth’ (Jer. 33:25).” When, to begin with, someone commences the work, it is with his own soul that he does the work. The covenant secures heaven and earth and they will last as long as it does. One cannot study Torah only for one’s own benefit, but to begin with, that is the proper motivation. Bavli Nedarim 3:11G-R I.3 Another statement: “Great is circumcision, for were it not for circumcision, the heaven and the earth could not endure: ‘Thus saith the Lord, but for my

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covenant by day and night, I would not have appointed the ordinances of heaven and earth’ (Jer. 33:25).” This differs from what R. Eleazar said, for said R. Eleazar, “Great is the Torah, for were it not for the Torah, the heaven and the earth could not endure: ‘‘Thus saith the Lord, but for my covenant by day and night, I would not have appointed the ordinances of heaven and earth’ (Jer. 33:25).” Jeremiah says that the covenant of circumcision sustains heaven and earth, or that the Torah embodies the covenant. Bavli Sanhedrin 4:5V.7 A. And R. Judah said Rab said, “The first Man was a min. For it is said, ‘And the Lord God called to Adam and said to him, where are you’ (Gen. 3:9), meaning, ‘Where has your heart gone?’” Said R. Isaac, “He drew out his foreskin [to obliterate the mark of circumcision]. Here it is written, ‘But like Adam, they have transgressed the covenant’ (Hos. 6:7), and it is written further, ‘He has broken my covenant’ (Gen. 17:14).” R. Nahman said, ‘He denied the very principle [that God ruled]. Here it is written, ‘They have transgressed the covenant’ (Hos. 6:7), and elsewhere it is written, ‘Because they forsook the covenant of the Lord their God’ (Jer. 22:9) [speaking of belief in God’s rule].” Jeremiah understands by the covenant the rule of God, and Israel was like Adam, so Hosea 6:7, hence Adam violated the covenant. Bavli Sanhedrin 11:1–2 III.1 H. One who exposes aspects of the Torah [not in accord with the law] [M. Abot 3:11]: Rab and R. Hanina say, “It is one who humiliates a disciple of sages.” R. Yohanan and R. Joshua b. Levi say, “It is one who humiliates his fellow before a disciple of a sage.” Now from the viewpoint of him who says it is one who humiliates a disciple of a sage himself, then one who reveals aspects of the Torah, one who humiliates his fellow before a disciple of a sage, would be an Epicurean. But from the viewpoint of him who says that it is one who humiliates his fellow before a disciple of a sage, with one who reveals aspects of the Torah [in an improper way] as an Epicurean, then who would fall into that latter category? Said R. Joseph, “It would, for example, be those who say, ‘What good are the rabbis for us? It is for their own benefit that they study

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Scripture. It is for their own benefit that they repeat Mishnah-teachings.’” Said Abbayye to him, “That too falls into the category of one who reveals aspects of the Torah in an improper way, for it is written, ‘Thus says the Lord, But for my covenant [studied] day and night, I had not appointed the ordinances of heaven and earth’ (Jer. 33:25). [Freedman, p. 676n3: The world endures only because the Torah – ‘my covenant’ – is studied. To deny the utility of scholars therefore is to express disbelief of what is asserted in the Torah.]” Jeremiah holds that those that study the covenant day and night keep the world going. The Rabbinic reading of the new covenant adheres to Jeremiah’s conception, which is voluminously cited. What is new about the new covenant that is coming is that it will be inviolable. The first covenant Israel broke, the second will never be broken. It will contradict the nature of man for the new covenant to be violated. The world of nature attests to the eternity of the covenant, so Jeremiah. Israel’s existence is eternal as nature is eternal. What Jeremiah says, the Rabbinic sages repeat. Prophetic-Rabbinic Judaism reaches its fulfillment in the doctrine of the new covenant, which the Rabbinic sages expound precisely as Jeremiah pronounced.

xii. rabbi jeremiah The upshot is simply stated. Prophets as the Rabbinic sages read them set forth coherent ideas concerning God in relationship to humanity at large and to Israel in particular. Like Halakhic masters’ teachings of law, these ideas circulated within a larger framework of coherent principles, and each of them found its place in that cogent construction. Halakhic sayings fit into a larger composition, and the implicit principles of those sayings formed a theory of the Israelite social order. Aggadic sayings fit into a larger composition and, hypothetically at least, implicitly express elements of a theological program that inheres. The theological system that pervades the Rabbinic canon and the one of Jeremiah as read by the Rabbinic sages respond to the same issues of monotheism and its logic. The theological system common

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to Jeremiah as read by the Rabbis and to the Rabbis on their own takes on concrete meaning within the theory that Rabbi Jeremiah investigated the implications of the defeat and destruction of Israel by the pagan world powers. Along with the Rabbinic sages from the Mishnah through the Bavli, Jeremiah consequently addressed a common program of theological response to the pattern – the shared event – of 586/70. At issue was how the one God who made heaven and earth and made himself known to Israel through the Torah and the covenant of Sinai could have subjected Israel to pagan rule. The Prophetic response was the record of admonition to repent lest God bring punishment on Israel. And what is to be done in consequence of the advent of that punishment? The response explored themes involving sin and atonement, covenant and reaffirmation, and other matters made acute and contemporary by the crisis of the defeat of God’s people. Is Israel still God’s people, despite the manifest consequences of its sin? Does God still keep Israel, and what are the marks of God’s enduring faithfulness? These questions drew Jeremiah together with the other rabbis and set the program of theological issues that engaged all parties. The great motifs of Prophetic and later Rabbinic theology pass in succession – punishment, repentance, atonement, forgiveness, and restoration – and match the moment. The Prophets warned of disaster if Israel did not repent; God would punish Israel for its sin and would bring about suffering leading to repentance. Israel was defeated and the Temple destroyed. What the Prophets had foreseen came about, and the reasons they adduced and the consequences they predicted found confirmation. When we survey the Rabbinic reading of Jeremiah we find exactly those themes that the defeat highlighted, and the Rabbinic theologians gave precisely the same response that Jeremiah set forth a half-millennium earlier. Prophetic and Rabbinic Judaism merge, for Rabbi Jeremiah set the course for the Rabbinic sages to fulfill the Prophetic message of hope.

nic Judaism

5 2 Prophetic-Rabbinic Judaism How Important was the Destruction of the Second Temple in the Formation of Rabbinic Judaism? i. context What marks a composite-corpus of thought as important in Rabbinic Judaism? First, the set of ideas will make its presence felt in both native categories of Rabbinic Judaism, Halakhah and Aggadah. Why insist on data deriving from both Halakhic and Aggadic contexts? The Rabbinic system comprises the two encompassing native category-formations, the Halakhah and the Aggadah, the sciences and the humanities of Judaism. It seems reasonable to ask, then, for the topic to constitute, or correspond with, a native category-formation or to affect the definition of both classifications of data and category-formations, Halakhic and Aggadic. A Halakhic topic, such as women/family, on the face of matters enjoys a primary and critical place in the Rabbinic system, since fully a sixth of the Mishnah’s fundamental category Halakhic formations finds its definition in reference to women/family. That is not a judgment based on volume of data alone, but on the capacity of the sub-system to answer new questions and generate fresh propositions, all of them coherent with the basic conceptions of the law. So the governing principles of the sub-system of women and families generate rulings on problems not raised in the initial instantiation of the law. Conceptions subject to generalization and diverse cases of instantiation flourish. Second, it will come to the surface in diverse settings, being invoked finally to solve a broad variety of fresh questions. The

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destruction of the Temple in 70 is treated in both the Halakhic and the Aggadic sectors of the Rabbinic canon. The topic surfaces in a variety of Halakhic settings and plays a role in a range of Aggadic expositions as well. So on the face of things, we deal with a significant matter. But how important? The matter of systemic logic, permeating the whole, here enters into the assessment of importance. The idea of God’s justice, for example, forms the centre of the Rabbinic system, with the issue of theodicy, fully exposed, fully resolved, everywhere in play. A moment of thought on the centrality of, e.g., teshubah in Aggadic settings and middah keneged middah, measure for measure, in Halakhic settings, shows what I mean by systemic centrality of the indicated principle of generative logic. The Messiah-theme, by contrast, cannot make a claim to systemic importance in the system that animates the Rabbinic canon. That is because, first, it makes no impact on Halakhic discourse at all, later on being explicitly excluded by the null-category-formation, “Messiah-laws,” meaning, what never registers as norms in this world, where the Halakhah governs. In the Aggadic framework, moreover, the Messiah-theme provokes diverse, incoherent expressions of episodic opinions. It scarcely rises to the level of a category-formation, rather comprising singletons on a common theme, each with its own free-standing fact, few joining together to form cogent propositions. So God’s justice forms an important category-formation in Rabbinic Judaism, Halakhic and Aggadic alike, and, by the same criteria, the Messiah-theme does not. By contrast, let us consider topics that do not comprise active and effective category-formations but rather mere collections of information. A fine example is presented by the minor tractates of the Bavli devoted to objects of ritual significance, such as the mezuzah, Tefillin, and the writing of the Torah scroll. These topics, while subjected to legislation, define no Halakhic category-formations in the Mishnah and its continuators, forming topics for exposition only in the Bavli. And, more to the point, when they are expounded, they remain inert and do not generate fresh problems. But the issues that animate the category-formation women/family penetrate into the profound levels of the social order, and accommodate problems not

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contained in the initial formulation of matters. By contrast Tefillin, and the Torah-scroll and burial rites and the other topics of the so-called minor tractates of the Talmud involve inert information. They do not precipitate active inquiry into a problematic bearing broad consequence for many topics of the law, many sub-sets of the Halakhic category-formations. For instance, they do not serve as the arena for inquiry into the power of intentionality, the relationship of potential to actual and the classifications of causation, and other perennial and ubiquitous issues that animate principal categoryformations across the face of the Halakhah. Now to the problem before us: estimating systemic importance. In the events or topics, the calamities of 586, 70, and 132–135, we possess a fairly simple set of ideas, elaborately instantiated. These viewed all together do not coalesce into a coherent systemic statement at all, but merely recapitulate in a fresh context quite commonplace ideas of Scripture. The Rabbinic reading of 70 continues the scriptural-prophetic reading of 586. That is shown in the lead-document on the theme before us, Lamentations Rabbah, for the Aggadah, and in the corpus of rulings in Mishnah-tractate Rosh Hashanah chapter four and parallels pertinent to the fallen Temple, for the Halakhah. It is thus difficult to affirm that the destruction of the Temple marked an important turning in the categorical formation of Rabbinic Judaism. Rather, it is continuous with Scripture and scarcely does more than adapt a received scriptural conception to a new context. So we form the impression of a secondary recapitulation of an established and conventional construction of ideas. We deal with familiar forms imposed on fresh facts: adaptation, not innovation. The established system of Scriptural prophecy shaded over into a Rabbinic recapitulation of the same system. The event of 586 governs, the reception of the event of 70 conforms to that paradigm, and the events of 132–135 scarcely register except for propositions meant to account for the disaster and exculpate the Rabbinic sages from responsibility therefor. The destruction of the Second Temple is commonly taken as the principal turning point in the history of Rabbinic Judaism – the starting point of that Judaism. It marked a complete transformation

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of values, a restructuring of the symbolic system of Judaism from priests and Scripture to rabbis and Torah. Accordingly, our results run contrary to expectations. A close review of the Halakhic category-formations will show that those results – the year 70 stands only for itself – are precisely the ones the Rabbinic sages wished us to attain: nothing important changed in 70. It was an event that the Israelites could adapt to, tragic but familiar. That message permeates the Halakhic interventions in the aftermath of 70. The Halakhic system forms a vast exercise of denial of the enduring outcome of the destruction of the Temple. And the Aggadic counterpart in its own way then confirms that program. Now to show that these conclusions are correct, as announced at the outset, demands argument, not just iteration. For prevailing opinion, mine included, has identified the destruction of the Temple in 70 as the precipitating event in the foundation of Rabbinic Judaism. Before 70 Pharisees pursued certain issues of purity and sanctity. Afterward the Rabbinic system expanded to address the entirety of the Israelite social order: not sanctification only but also salvation. Those who have worked on the matter concur: the catastrophe of 70 brought about a revolution in the symbolic system and mythic construction – the law and theology – constituted by Rabbinic Judaism. That system sharply contrasts with what had gone before, whether in Pharisaism, deemed continuous with Rabbinism later on, or in other Judaic systems altogether, and the event of 70 explains why. In that context we seek perspective on the corpus of compositions and constructions that comprise the Rabbinic response to the events of 586, 70, and 132–135. Do these responses conform to a single model, so that the Rabbinic formulation simply repeats the received pattern, or do we witness in 70 the beginnings of that essentially new system that, from the present perspective, Rabbinic Judaism is taken to constitute? To state my conclusion at the outset: the Rabbinic response to 70 and 132–135 represents a close recapitulation of the prophetic response to 586. Concomitantly, nothing that characterized Rabbinic Judaism after 70 requires us to form an explanation based solely on the destruction of the Second Temple in particular.

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ii. the halakhic perspective Compare the affirmative claim of Mishnah-tractate Rosh Hashanah chapter 4 (and parallels) with the negative judgment of Mishnahtractate Hullin chapters 5 through 7 and 10 through 12. The former, cited in chapter 1, logs in changes in the Halakhah by reason of the destruction of the Temple, and these concern the conduct, after the 9th of Ab in 70, of Temple rites on festivals. The latter catalogues rules governing food and insists that they continue even after 70. By any criterion the changes, transient to begin with, are vastly outweighed in practical importance by the rules that survived the Temple’s ruin. The Mishnah’s Halakhic system acknowledges that the Temple is for the moment inaccessible but does not recognize that temporary circumstance as the end of Israel’s story. The Halakhic system not only trivializes the destruction of the Temple in its principal category-formations but in its affirmative statements denies that beyond the lamentable facts known to all, anything much has changed. The Halakhic component of my argument is simply stated: The Halakhah of the Mishnah in its articulation of its categoryformations absorbs the pattern of catastrophe into its encompassing system but does not permit that pattern to shape the Mishnah’s own structure of category-formations. These presuppose in form and substance that the Temple, priesthood, altar, and its blood-rite of atonement all flourish; that the principal locus of celebration of appointed times is the Temple in Jerusalem; that the priests continue to receive God’s share in the produce of the Land; that nothing that matters has changed. All this is implicit in the formulation of Mishnah-tractate Hullin and articulated in a wide range of category-formations of cultic topics. Let us consider the Mishnah’s eloquent statement that Israel’s sanctification endures without regard to the temporal or locative context. Mishnah Hullin 5:1 The prohibition against slaughtering on the same day it and its young, Lev. 22:28, applies (1) in the Land and outside the Land,

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(2) in the time of the Temple and not in the time of the Temple, (3) in the case of unconsecrated beasts and in the case of consecrated beasts. Mishnah Hullin 6:1 The requirement to cover up the blood applies in the Land and abroad, (2) in the time of the Temple and not in the time of the Temple, (3) in the case of unconsecrated beasts, but not in the case of Holy Things. Mishnah Hullin 7:1 The prohibition of the sinew of the hip sciatic nerve, Gen. 32:32, applies (1) in the Land and outside of the Land, (2) in the time of the Temple and not in the time of the Temple, (3) to unconsecrated animals and to Holy Things. Mishnah Hullin 10:1 The requirement to give to the priests the shoulder, the two cheeks, and the maw, Dt. 18:3, applies (1) in the Land and outside of the Land, (2) in the time of the Temple and not in the time of the Temple, (3) to unconsecrated beasts, but not to consecrated beasts. Mishnah Hullin 11:1 The requirement to give to the priest the first of the fleece, Dt. 18:41, applies (1) in the Land and outside of the Land, (2) in the time of the Temple and not in the time of the Temple, (3) to unconsecrated beasts but not to consecrated beasts. Mishnah Hullin 12:1 The requirement to let the dam go from the nest, Dt. 22:6–7, applies (1) in the Land and outside of the Land, (2) in the time of the Temple and not in the time of the Temple, (3) to unconsecrated birds but not to consecrated ones. The sanctity of Israel, expressed here in the Halakhic system, endures beyond the loss of the holy city, the holy Temple, and, ultimately, the holy Land. The events of 132–135 registered in the same

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context. As to fundamental facts of the social order, Israel the people remains holy after 70 as before 70 and beyond the bounds of the Holy Land as much as within the Land. Mishnah-tractate Hullin shows what the Mishnah could have accomplished had its framers wished articulately to legislate for the interim without the Temple. Between Mishnah-tractate Rosh Hashanah and Mishnah-tractate Taanit, the tractate on the 9th of Ab and the Temple after that event takes shape, and one need not tax the imagination to conceive of other candidates. But the Rabbinic sages did not choose to legislate for what they did not plan to acknowledge. Nowhere else are we told about how to conduct affairs both now and then, both here and there, both with and without a building, a working priesthood, a corps of Levites, and all Israel assembled for the pilgrimage to see God on the festival. For one example, Bikkurim, on the presentation of firstfruits, does not explain how – absent the Temple – one hands over to the priest the firstfruits of the Land. Is that rite suspended now, and are the priests deprived of the firstfruits of the Land? The Mishnah’s topical exposition does not respond. Mishnah-tractate Tamid on the daily whole-offering does not propose a surrogate for the present age or acknowledge that today differs from yesterday and, it is hoped, also from tomorrow. Mishnah-tractate Yoma chapters 1 through 7 describe the progression of the rite of atonement on the Day of Atonement, without taking note that “in this time” it is null. Only its exposition of repentance and self-affliction as media of atonement, Mishnah-tractate Yoma chapter 8, shades over into an answer to the question of Israel in the here and now of deprivation. Mishnah-tractate Sheqalim describes the management and financial arrangements of the Temple as though the enterprise was in full swing. No one makes provision for the utilization of the half-sheqel offering for the public sacrifice of atonement in the age in which at sunrise and sunset there is no public offering. Perhaps everybody knew the Romans were collecting it from 70. But there is a great deal else that everybody knew but that the Mishnah records: 70 did happen, and the conditions brought about by the war of 132–135 continued to define the politics of Israel in the Land of Israel, beginning with the status of Jerusalem.

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Then what difference did the destruction make in the norms of conduct? For the law of the Mishnah the destruction of the Temple formed an established fact bearing obvious liturgical consequences. These were deemed transient and trivial, readily coped with. When it comes to the destruction of the Temple in 70, the Mishnah concerns itself with these issues: Sukkot after 70; the Shofar after 70; taking testimony of the New Moon; the 17th of Tammuz and the ninth of Ab and rules covering the categories in which each falls; the status of Nazirites after 70; signs of mourning for the Temple after 70 (with stress on avoiding excessive asceticism); and the status of new produce on the 15th of Nisan after 70. These few items add up to very little. To repeat, they do not form a Halakhic categoryformation, but rather footnotes to received category-formations, details of a larger whole. How does the Mishnah place into its distinctive perspective the historical moments of 586, 70, and 132–135? Once more to review a familiar passage: Mishnah Taanit 4:6 A. Five events took place for our fathers ... on the 9th of Ab: C. On the 9th 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 (5) the city was ploughed up [after the war of Hadrian]. In the Halakhic system, with its stress on the classification of actions and transactions and events and the rule governing all those that fall into a single classification, history loses all weight. Events abandon their singularity, their individual implications. They are homogenized into a classification of events and yield not markers of time but timeless laws for the enduring social order. They bear not consequences unique to themselves but rules common to a given type. History thus loses its specificity and becomes a source of exemplary data yielding social rules that predict the consequence of actions. The events of 586, 70, and 132–135 in the Mishnah are treated as not unique – that is, as turning points in the story of the

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cosmos – but exemplary. They registered not the end of time but mere symptoms of the human condition of Israel, merely deplorable turnings in Israel’s condition, to be responded to in accord with the Torah’s enduring lessons. The happenings brought about changes, to be sure, but they left intact that pattern of sanctification in Israel’s way of life that the Mishnah defines in its systematic manner. And the Mishnah’s Halakhic category-formations affirm the cult, priesthood, Temple, Jerusalem – the whole institutional system of sanctification that succeeded the destruction of the First Temple in 586. A superficial survey of the Mishnah, accordingly, yields the generalization that 70 and 132–135 do not define decisive events in the supernatural life of holy Israel, which is lived beyond time and above history. In the language of the Mishnah and of the Tosefta nothing has changed in 70 and 132–135, except for Israel’s circumstance, and that change is transient. What endures is the corpus of rules that, when realized, bring about sanctification. Evidence would therefore derive from the Mishnah’s categoryformations in relationship to the destruction of the Temple in 70. There is none. First, the Mishnah provides category-formations for particular occasions or days or events: for example, Yoma, for the Day of Atonement; Sukkah, for Tabernacles; Megillah, for Purim and its salvation; Taanit, for fast days and their engagement with disaster. The Mishnah, while recognizing the seventeenth of Tammuz and the 9th of Ab, does not accord to those unique occasions the recognition contained in the Halakhic category-formations, which form the building blocks of the Mishnah’s system. There is a tractate for fast-days in general, Taanit, but not for the 9th of Ab in particular, which is taken to constitute yet another fast-day subject to a common set of rules. Second and more tellingly, the Mishnah, reaching closure perhaps two generations after 132–135, describes an Israelite social order centred on the Temple and its rites, governed by priest and king (Mishnah-tractate Sanhedrin 2:1–2). The focus of the Mishnah on the Temple and priesthood forms a definitive fact: the destruction is for the moment, the holy place and its sacrifices are for all time. To

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express this conviction in form, not only in substance, the Halakhah employs a rhetoric of an eternal present tense: this is how things are and how they are perpetually done. Its narratives of specific Temple rites form scripts for recapitulation of permanent liturgical or ritual patterns. The Mishnah is silent not about the events of 586, 70, and 132–135, but about the destruction of the Temple and the cessation of its blood rite of atonement. That fact is shown in both affirmative and negative facts. The affirmative fact has been briefly alluded to. It is that the greater part of the Mishnah – four of its six divisions – explicitly focuses on the Temple: support for the priesthood (all of Zeraim); its rites for Appointed Times (most of Moed); the conduct of the offerings and the upkeep of the Temple (all of Qodoshim); and cultic purity, sacerdotal and domestic alike (Tohorot). Strictly speaking, then, an account of the Rabbinic canonical account of the events of 70 and 132–135 must begin with the massive record of remembered rules and rites of the Temple. The way to the restoration lay open, fully mapped. But there is more: note what the Mishnah never concedes. The negative fact is simply stated: in the Mishnah’s account of the Temple, priesthood, cult and rite, its Halakhic rhetoric and topical program scarcely acknowledge that the Temple lies in ruins. Here is a simple example of the script followed in Temple rites: Mishnah-tractate Menahot 6:3 A. How did they do it? 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 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?”

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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 I reap on] this Sabbath?” T. They say, “Yes.” U. “Shall I 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 offering of the first sheaf of barley is not [done] at the conclusion of the festival.” The scripted rite governs in the restoration. Apart from the opening clause, the whole describes how things are done, not conceding that this is a record out of the past or a proposal for an indeterminate future. The rhetoric on the liturgies of the Temple speaks of the Temple as it is, not as it was or will be. If we permitted the allegations of a document and the language that conveys them to dictate the venue in which a document was written, then the Mishnah was written when the Temple was standing and in operation. For Mishnah-tractates Yoma, Negaim, Parah, Sotah, Menahot, Sheqalim, Tamid, and others contain elaborate, continuing-present-tense narratives about what at specific liturgical turnings the priest does and says, where he goes or does not go, what he does or does not do.

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These narratives of the Temple are the only ones in the Mishnah that exhibit the indicative formal traits noted just now. When the Mishnah’s writers devote themselves to the conduct of the Temple, its management and its offerings and its upkeep, the whole is scripted, word and deed alike, for an abiding portrait, a motionless tableau. Slight provision is made for the present age, lacking a Temple and an altar. And, more to the point, there is no narrative counterpart for any other rites than the Temple’s and the priesthood’s, for example, involving the synagogue on a given occasion or the public life of the Rabbinic sages themselves, to the ritualization of which much attention is paid in the later Halakhic compilations. What might we have anticipated had 70 denoted a decisive turning? An obvious candidate is an account of the life and affairs of the synagogue, supposedly the surrogate for the ruined Temple, its rites replacing, for the interim, the altar’s offerings. For one striking instance, the Halakhah in the Mishnah’s category-formations never provides for rites to replace those of the Temple during the interim of the Temple’s ruin. Prayer is supposed to be the surrogate, but that is a generic judgment, not made specifically in the context of a particular prayer corresponding to a particular offering. True, the canon contains sayings that the study of the laws of sacrifice yields the same result as if one had actually made the offering. But when it comes to practice, these allegations yield nothing. Study of the Torah is not characterized by any Halakhic category-formation as the substitution for the Temple offerings. For example, the Rabbinic canon does not contain a single story or saying about a master who unintentionally violated the law of the Sabbath and consequently studied Mishnah-tractate Zebahim. Rather, we have the following: Tosefta Shabbat 1:13 A. Said R. Ishmael, “One time I read by the light of a lamp, and [forgetfully,] I wanted to tilt it [to get more oil on the wick]. B. “I said, ‘How great are the words of sages, who rule, ‘They do not read on Sabbath nights by the light of a lamp.’” C. R. Nathan says, “He [Ishmael] most certainly did tilt it.

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D. “And written on his notebook is the following: ‘Ishmael b. Elisha tilted a lamp on the Sabbath. E. “‘When the sanctuary will be rebuilt, he will bring a sin-offering.’” So much for the standing of claims that studying the law of the Torah of sacrifice is tantamount to making the sacrifice. They have no Halakhic standing whatsoever, because they generate no specific and practical rules. And as to prayer taking the place of sacrifice, the rites of the synagogue in no way replaced, but only corresponded with, the rites of the Temple, as in the case of the Additional Service on Sabbaths and Festivals. More to the point, in the Mishnah the synagogue prayers centred on the declamation of the Torah figure casually and in severely limited aspects, for example in Mishnahtractate Megillah. The liturgical wording and regulations figure in Mishnah-tractate Berakhot. In neither instance does substitution of prayer for sacrifice in the ruined Temple figure as a motivation. The Mishnah’s Halakhic system never acknowledges the synagogue with a category-formation at all, for example, and legislates for the synagogue only partially, for its presentation of the declamation of the Torah. The latest Rabbinic documents contain statements that prayer takes the place of animal sacrifice, acts of loving kindness substitute for atonement-offerings, study of Torah forms the counterpart of sacrifice, and the like. But no Halakhic consequences follow from these statements; there is no Halakhah, let alone a Halakhic category-formation, to realize the conception that loving kindness serves as atonement as the Temple sacrifice once did. I cannot point to a single Halakhic ruling that realizes the beautiful idea that acts of loving kindness atone as sin-offerings atone, e.g., the sage said to him, “Go, atone by an act of altruism.” I have stressed the probative standing of the category-formations of the Halakhah as systemic indicators. The synagogue offers a striking case: there are tractate Middot to describe the architecture of the Temple and tractate Tamid to portray its liturgy. There is no counterpart tractate devoted to the building used for a synagogue (in the context of the Halakhic category-formations one cannot

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speak of a synagogue building), nor does the Mishnah assign to the synagogue the unique locus for the recitation of prayers, the Shema and the Prayer, for example. These may be recited nearly anywhere. The Torah is declaimed in a dedicated space in the presence of a quorum. Why not provide more than episodic rules for synagogue buildings and their liturgy such as we find in Mishnah tractate Megillah? To provide for buildings and rites uniquely performed in them would have required acknowledging the loss of the holy house and its atonement-rites. That the Mishnah declined to do, and with that decision, the Halakhic categorical system for a thousand years took shape. The opposite is the case. In the Mishnah’s vast, detailed account of Israel’s holy life portrayed in the building blocks of large-scale, topical expositions, the priesthood has not lost its position at the side of the altar and the Levites have not fallen off their platform for singing. The sacerdotal estate continues to receive its holy rations from the Land of Israel and to eat its food in a state of cultic cleanness, as if in the Temple, as if in Jerusalem. Nor is this only in the realm of imagination. The Halakhah provides for the priests to continue to receive their holy rations, as Mishnah Hullin says in so many words, noted earlier, and as is implicit in Mishnah-tractates Maaserot and Terumot and elsewhere. Jerusalem is still the metropolis and goal of pilgrimage, as Mishnah-tractate Maaser Sheni indicates. No thought is given to other loci for pilgrimage. No one suggests – or troubles to condemn – spending Passover at the Temple of Onias in Egypt, for example. Were we to describe the world for which the Mishnah legislates, whether in the presentation of the firstfruits as described by Bikkurim, or in the rite of ordeal for the wife accused of adultery as set forth by Sotah, or in the account of right attitude and right action for the sacrificial procedures of Zebahim and Menahot, or in the cutting of barley for the offering of the “omer for the fifteenth of Nisan,” as we noted a moment ago – all would yield an acutely present-tense script. The single picture accordingly emerges from the Mishnah’s and the Tosefta’s Halakhic category-formations. The Halakhah accordingly encompasses a fully functioning altar, Temple, metropolis: a Jerusalem of priests free of all impurity and up to

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their ankles in blood; a Jerusalem of pilgrim-Israelites assembled before the Lord in the Lord’s house. Not only the absence of the synagogue but the presence of what it allegedly replaced – that is what delivers the Halakhic judgment on 70 and 132–135. Consider the alternative, which is the formation of the Mishnah without the Temple as a paramount motif. If we were to remove from the Mishnah every paragraph, every chapter, every tractate that describes the status quo of an Israel located in or restored to its holy place and holy vocation, of Jerusalem and its Temple offerings, we should be left with bits and pieces, shards and remnants of this and that – but the Halakhic system as we know it would be lost. It would consist of the larger part of the division of women and much of the division of damages (civil law). But lacking all supernatural connection, what is left would form no system at all, only components awaiting further required parts for composition into one. More to the point: we should have nothing like the recognizable ruins of the Mishnah as we know it. The discernible pattern would disappear, the system not merely diminished but destroyed, and the surviving ruins in their chaotic incoherence would not allow for its recovery. To state the matter simply: the Mishnah, the first document of Rabbinic Judaism beyond Scripture, without its account of the working cult of the Temple, without its lines of structure and order radiating out into the Land of Israel and into the life of the people of Israel in the villages and in the fields, in time and out of time – without all that the Mishnah is something utterly beyond imagining. For every passage that for local exigencies acknowledges the destruction of the Temple, the cessation of the cult, and the loss of Jerusalem, such as at Mishnah Hullin 5:1 or Mishnah Taanit 4:6, there are tens, indeed, hundreds of passages that describe the sanctification of Israel in its priesthood, cult, holy land and holy place, and holy city in an ideal present tense of realized eternity. If 70 made a difference, then the status of the location of the Temple now in ruins ought to show what that difference was. In that context it suffices to note continuing reverence for the holy place, as though the rites persisted on it. Two examples of rules that legislate for what was a ruin – “no stone on stone” – when the Mishnah was

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promulgated suffice to make the point clear that the Mishnah is designed as more than as a handbook centred on the Temple (though that is what it is), rather as an account of that eternal Presence that intrudes on time whether acknowledged or whether not even palpably perceived: M. Berakhot 4:5 A. If he was riding on an ass, he should dismount [to say the Prayer]. B. But if he cannot dismount, he should turn his face [toward the east]. C. And if he cannot turn his face, he should direct his heart toward the Chamber of the Holy of Holies. M. Berakhot 4:6 A. If he was traveling in a ship or on a raft, he should direct his heart towards the Chamber of the Holy of Holies. The Tosefta’s complement follows: Tosefta Berakhot 3:15 A. Those who are outside the Land turn toward the Land of Israel [when they recite the Prayer], B. as Scripture states, “And pray toward their land which thou gavest to their fathers, the city which thou has chosen, and the house which I have built for thy name” (2 Chron. 6:38). C. Those who are in the Land of Israel turn toward Jerusalem, D. as Scripture states, “And they pray to thee toward this city which thou hast chosen, and the house which l have built for thy name” (2 Chron. 6:34). Tosefta Berakhot 3:16 A. Those who are in Jerusalem turn toward the Temple, B. as Scripture states, “When he comes and prays toward this house” (2 Chron. 6:32). C. Those who are in the Temple turn toward the Chamber of the Holy of Holies and pray,

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D. as Scripture states, “When they pray toward this place” (1 Kings 8:30). E. It turns out that those standing in the north face south, those in the south face north, those in the east face west, and those in the west face east. F. Thus all Israel turn out to be praying toward one place [cf. M. Ber. 4:5–6]. Legislation for Jerusalem is commonplace, always presupposing the conditions that prevailed before 70, well over two centuries before the closure of the Tosefta ca 300 c.e.: Tosefta Berakhot 5:22 A. One who is about to offer meal offerings in Jerusalem says, “Praised be Thou, O Lord ... who has brought us to this time.” B. When he offers them he says, “Praised be Thou, O Lord ... who has sanctified us through his commandments and commanded us to offer meal-offerings.” C. When he eats them he says, “[Praised be Thou, O Lord ... ] who brings forth bread from the earth.” D. One who was about to offer [animal] sacrifices in Jerusalem says, “Praised [be Thou, O Lord ... ] who has brought us to this time.” E. When he offers them he says, “Praised [be Thou, O Lord ... ] who has sanctified us through his commandments and commanded us to offer sacrifices.” F. And when he eats them he says, “Praised [be Thou, O Lord ... ] who has sanctified us through his commandments and commanded us to eat sacrifices.” Finally, although the Temple mount was transformed into the site of a pagan Temple, Israel was to conduct itself as though the Temple still stood on the spot and as if God were resident in it: M. Berakhot 9:5 G. One should not act in a silly way while facing the Eastern Gate [of the Temple in Jerusalem] for it faces toward the Chamber of the Holy of Holies.

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H. One should not enter the Temple mount with his walking stick, his overshoes, his moneybag, or with dust on his feet. I. And one should not use [the Temple mount] for a shortcut. J. And spitting [there likewise is forbidden, as is proven by an argument] a minori ad majus [if you may not use it for a shortcut, you obviously may not spit there]. The upshot is simply stated. True, the Mishnah affirms, Rome took Jerusalem, cancelled the holy offerings, burned the Temple, ploughed up the Temple mount, and built a pagan temple in the place of God’s altar. But that has no effect whatsoever upon the sanctification of the place or the people. Prayers are directed to that very same place, which means that Israelites on the surface are directing their prayers to what was from 135 onward a pagan city, temple, and altar. But that has no bearing upon the Halakhah. So the category-formations of the Mishnah find their counterpart in the small details of the law of the Temple Mount. Whether in the principal building blocks of the whole or in the most trivial rules of the parts, the outcome is the same: remove the Halakhah of Jerusalem, the Temple, the cult, and the priesthood, and the Mishnah’s system viewed whole and in its principal parts simply loses its categorical heart. What proposition is presented in the law and its normative narratives? The obvious answer is denial, denial, denial. Nothing has happened that cannot be corrected: Israel endures holy and unique. That is why the destruction of the Second Temple cannot claim a primary place in Rabbinic Judaism’s Halakhic statement. To the Halakhah the destruction of the Temple in 70 is temporary and superficial and raises only some few minor questions of adaptation and temporary accommodation. That is because in the conception of the Halakhic system and in its paramount rhetoric, the Temple still stands. It has not been, and cannot be, razed. It forms the heart of the legal system realized in rich detail in the Mishnah and the Tosefta and the articulation of the Halakhah. That is why the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 cannot be assigned a critical place in the formative history of Rabbinic Judaism. It was more than

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a footnote, but less than a principal text: to be coped with, not to be confirmed, let alone affirmed as enduring. As long as the Mishnah defined the Halakhic category-formations, meaning, until Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah, the same categoryformations would persist in defining matters and the same implicit judgment contained within them would endure. The Temple is where God takes up residence on earth, the point to which one turns in prayer, the holy place. Legislation pertaining to the Temple fills the Mishnah and points to the restoration of the holy house and the resumption of its sacrificial cult, and that is for eternity, in eternity. That explains why it is rare for provision to be made by the law of the Mishnah for the present age, when the Temple has fallen into desuetude. And as we saw, that also is why the synagogue as an institution, possessing a corpus of law governing its building, in place of the Temple, its rites, instead of those of the Temple, and its leadership, we assume the rabbi in place of the priest, finds no place in the category-formations of the Halakhah. Now briefly to answer, out of the Halakhah, the question, how important was the destruction of the Temple to Rabbinic Judaism? The Halakhic answer is that nothing that matters has permanently changed. The sanctification before 70 of city, people, and Land, sacrifice, priesthood, and Temple, endures afterward. The destruction of the Temple in 70 recapitulated the lessons of 586 and yielded no new ones: it cannot be judged as important to the Halakhic system of Rabbinic Judaism, where the systemic theology came to realization in norms of conduct. When we come to the matter of norms of conscience, beliefs not behaviour, the picture changes, but the outcome is the same.

the aggadic perspective Aqiba’s judgment on the matter of 70 and its place and importance carries us from the Halakhic to the Aggadic sector: Sifre to Deuteronomy 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

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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 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’ (Isa. 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).

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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.” The Aggadic response to the destruction of the Second Temple differs from the Halakhic one in its invocation of the analogy of 586 and its iteration of the paradigmatic quality of the destruction of the First Temple, which is now replicated. But let us start from the beginning. The components of the Rabbinic response to 586, 70, and 132–135 all together set forth the following Aggadic proposition, summarizing the theological components of the system: 1. The destruction in each case (586, 70) and the disaster of 132–135 came about because of Israel’s own failings or sins, chief among them arrogance. For this Israel can atone by humility expressed through repentance, on the one side, study and fulfillment of the Torah, inclusive of acts of loving kindness, keeping the Sabbath, and other specified remedies, on the other. 2. Meanwhile Israel mourns appropriately, but, as in Aqiba’s construction of matters, finds hope for the restoration in the realization of the prior prophetic admonitions. 3. All in all, Israel preserves its uniqueness among the nations. The pattern is clear: sin, punishment, repentance, atonement, reconciliation – all possible because of God’s own passionate engagement with Israel. The premises of the statement derive from the Torah, e.g., the second paragraph of the Shema: “If you will earnestly heed the commandments ... I will favor your land ... Take care lest you be tempted to forsake God and turn to false gods ... for then the wrath of the Lord will be directed against you” (Dt. 11:113ff.)

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The condition of the covenant between God and Israel governs, and when Israel meets misfortune, it is because of the violation of the covenant of the Torah. The destruction of the Temple in 586, then in 70, represents the loss of the medium for the atonement of sin – the last step in total estrangement. Yet, in line with the message of prophecy, the Rabbinic response reaffirms Israel’s place in the covenant with God: sin punished by suffering produces repentance, atonement, and reconciliation. The lesson of 586, repeated in 70, animates the Rabbinic response throughout. But the event of 70 taught no lessons not already imparted in 586. That statement presents as general propositions of theology the particular allegations of Aggadic exposition and exegesis. The Tosefta makes these points. The first Temple was destroyed because of idolatry, licentiousness, and bloodshed. The second Temple was destroyed not for neglect of the Torah or tithing but because of cupidity and mutual hatred. The third Temple will stand forever (T. Men. 13:22). These events marked the decline in the conditions of nature and the virtue of Israel. Israel’s supernatural standing was compromised (T. Sot. 13:2, 15:2–3). The destruction of the Temple effected atonement for Jerusalem. The desolation of 586 did not complete the process. The first destruction effected atonement. But God’s presence will not return to the midst of Zion until it is once more destroyed and desolated. Then God will return to Zion (T. Ber. 1:15). Three positions on how to respond to the loss of the Temple register. Ishmael, T. Sot. 15:10 proposed making a decree against marriage and reproduction. The Torah has been uprooted from Israel’s midst, so Israel should abandon the world and leave it desolate. Sages concede the logic of his position, but desist for practical reasons: it won’t happen. Second, abstainers take drastic measures of self-punishment. They abandon meat and wine (T. Sot. 15:11). These represent offerings once presented on the altar and now no longer media of atonement and thanksgiving. Joshua shows the logical absurdity of this position: bread, water, figs, grapes – everything is covered in some way or another. That leads to the third way, T. Sot. 15:12 = T. B.B. 2:17: memorializing the Temple in some small, symbolic manner, but not disrupting the conduct of life. The norma-

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tive position of the Halakhah is, life goes on, burdened by memory but buoyed by hope. The Tosefta differs from the Mishnah in that the Mishnah is wholly Halakhic in its focus, while the Tosefta encompasses also theological-academic propositions. The Halakhah set forth in the Mishnah asks whether Israel’s sanctity endures beyond the burning of the Temple and the cessation of the sacrifices and explicitly states that it does. We note very little tendency to treat the destruction as a cosmic event, a caesura in time. The Halakhic reading emphasized practical issues: the conduct of liturgy in the interim when the Temple is inaccessible, the effects of the destruction on the administration of the community, the continuing applicability of laws that derived from the cultic or sacerdotal context, and the like. Wherever the Tosefta intersects with and amplifies the Mishnah’s Halakhic rulings, it remains within the Mishnah’s conceptual limits. The prophetic heritage, with its emphasis upon sin and retribution, repentance and atonement, makes its impact through the Tosefta’s bits and pieces of a historical theodicy. The catastrophe happened for a reason and expresses God’s justice and his mercy. Israel can repent and atone and attain reconciliation. The destruction of the Temple now provokes thought on issues of Israel’s persistence in time – should Israel not cease to procreate altogether? Is mere remembrance sufficient? The upshot is simple: the governing paradigm was constructed by 586, and 70 added nothing but details. The Tosefta, beyond its Halakhic program, sets forth these Aggadic propositions: the destruction effected atonement for sins, the Temple was destroyed for Israel’s sins, the restoration of Jerusalem will take place in the end of days, and until that point a curse affects the world. There are valid reasons to account for what has happened: first, idolatry, licentiousness, and bloodshed; second, avarice or neglect of the Torah. If we take the Mishnah’s Halakhic program in response to the destruction and the Tosefta’s supplementary theological program together, we find in hand the entire Rabbinic system, lacking only Aggadic refinements and theological amplifications, e.g., the matter of martyrdom. Are we able to position in time the set of ideas just now summarized? The entire system had emerged fully exposed within the

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framework of the Mishnah and the Tosefta, that is, not before 150 (the martyrs of the post–135 repression are integral), not after 250–300 c.e., depending on the closing data of the Tosefta. And – returning to our question, how important was 70 – of what did that system consist? In its generative principles, stressing God’s justice and focusing on theodicy, it represented nothing more than a reprise of the original statement of Moses and the prophets: the articulation of the working of the covenant upon the fate of holy Israel. The Temple was burned for Israel’s faults, but Israel remained holy and possessed the means of reform. The Mishnah’s Halakhic category-formations, we recall, ignore the destruction of the Temple and contain a massive affirmation of the restoration to come. What of the Aggadic counterpart: the propositions of the Tosefta? We cannot call them category-formations in the model of the Halakhic ones but rather theological propositions amply instantiated in diverse ways. But they serve to account for the interim. They answer the question, how and what is Israel to think between Temples, the Second and the Third and last? And the answer proves obvious: Israel is to think precisely how and what Moses and the other prophets had taught them to think. Rabbinic Judaism recapitulates the prophetic theology of sin and repentance, atonement and forgiveness, in response to the loss of the Land and the Metropolis and the holy altar. True, the details vary. But the received theological principles describing the just God govern, with their contemporary realizations fully exposed. The events of 586, 70, and 132–135 then serve to make concrete the condition of exile to which the Aggadic narrator refers. But the Rabbinic theologians, particularly of the fifth and sixth centuries c.e., simply assessed the condition of Israel in the aftermath of 70 and 132–135: the loss of the Land comparing with Adam’s loss of Eden. That statement is precisely where it should be located, which is in the systematic exegesis of the book of Lamentations. Lamentations Rabbah IV.I.1 = Genesis Rabbah XIX:IX.1–2 = Pesiqta Derab Kahana XV:I.1 1. A. R. Abbahu in the name of R. Yosé bar Haninah: “It is written, ‘But they [Israel] are like a man [Adam], they have transgressed the covenant’ (Hos. 6:7).

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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 sage identifies God’s 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. Adam is brought to Eden as Israel is brought to the Land, with comparable outcomes: 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 [Israel] into the Land of Israel, I commanded them, they violated my commandment, I judged them to

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be sent out and driven away but 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). Appropriately, this climactic response to 586/70, placing the condition of Israel as counterpart to the condition of all humanity, comes to expression in Lamentations Rabbah, in the context of the book of Lamentations, the writing of mourning attributed to Jeremiah and produced after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 586 by the Babylonians. Here we end where we began, Israel in exile from the Land, like Adam in exile from Eden. But the Torah is clear that there is a difference: Israel can repent. Jerusalem and Eden, Israel and Adam – this ultimate interpretation of 586 places the event of 70 in the centre of universal history: the entire human race is involved in Israel’s fate, and Israel in humanity’s. The Mishnah and the Tosefta, accordingly, invite the theologization of the destruction of the Temple, invoking the case of 586 to find the rule for 70. Then the late Rabbah-Midrash compilations and Pesiqta deRab Kahana would complete the process. To conclude: The compilers of the Mishnah and the Tosefta and their continuators in the Tannaite Midrash-compilations in the century from 150 to 250 thus did two things. First, they adapted the normative Halakhah to take account of the contemporary condition, the interim loss of the Temple. Second, as best illustrated by Aqiba’s message cited above, they adapted the received prophetic teachings to provide detailed sense and structure to their experience,

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finding in what happened to them the recapitulation of the ancient paradigm of sin and punishment, suffering and repentance, and so to the end of days. All they did, and all they thought they had to do, was identify the consequential events in their own day – the transactions, the outcomes that counted – and show how these fit into the pattern revealed by ancient Israelite prophecy. The Judaism – the Judaic religious system – that reached documentary expression in late antiquity, from the Mishnah through the Bavli, should rightly be called “Prophetic-Rabbinic Judaism.”

iv. how important was the destruction of the second temple in the formation of rabbinic judaism? To that Prophetic-Rabbinic Judaism how important was the event of 70? The answer lies right on the surface. God had dwelt in the Temple but now has abandoned it. What could lay claim to greater importance than that event of cosmic consequence? The destruction of the Temple in 586, as interpreted in the Torah and prophets, defines the precipitating event in the composition of the Rabbinic system of sin, punishment, repentance, atonement, reconciliation. This was as the prophets had admonished but also promised, all realized in that event and its aftermath. So, if we ask how important was the destruction of the Temple in the formation of the PropheticRabbinic Judaism, of necessity we respond: which Temple, First or Second? The event of 586 precipitated the construction of model to which the Rabbinic system too conformed. The event of 70 merely confirmed the original paradigm. Without that confirmation, however, the paradigm still governed. Which Temple mattered? As to the primacy of the Temple destroyed in 586: nothing in the Rabbinic canon does more than explore the implications embedded in the original construction of 586 as laid out in the Torah and the Prophets. That point is best illustrated by the repertoire, beginning with the Tosefta’s, of reasons for the loss of the Temple, the bulk of them located in the flaws and failures of the Israelite social order as the prophets before and after 586 would have it. So much for 586.

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As to the subordinate position of the Temple destroyed in 70: to answer the question “how important?”, a mental experiment is required. We must commit an act of imagination. To do so we begin with the premise contained in another question: what if Israel had not raised a rebellion against Rome and what if the Temple had not been destroyed by the Romans in 70? The answer is clear: nothing new would have happened; the Temple offerings would have continued for centuries. For the established system in response to 586 had made its points. It had met the challenge of change by recasting its statement, never intact, but always unimpaired, from the formation of the Torah-book and the prophetic collections forward. If, in the Prophetic-Rabbinic system, nothing much changed with the destruction of the Second Temple, nothing in the established paradigm would have changed by reason of the Temple’s continuing to flourish for a long time to come. The PropheticRabbinic Judaism reinforced by the Temple’s powerful presence would have endured because it had the power to accommodate new challenges and respond to new crises. The Halakhic categoryformations and Aggadic theology accommodated the Temple, whether standing or whether in ruins or whether restored once more. The event of 70 brought no new challenge to the system. And without that event, the received system with category-formations, which matched the social order of pre–70 Jerusalem and the people of Israel surrounding the metropolis, served perfectly well. That is not to suggest that without the Zealots and their wars against Rome the Jerusalem Temple would have survived indefinitely. Only when the Roman Empire had definitively adopted Christianity as the state religion in the fifth century (not merely as a licit religion, which Constantine accomplished in the early fourth century) and campaigned to destroy paganism and its temples would the Israelite Temple in Jerusalem have been endangered, as synagogues in various cities were demolished. At that time synagogue buildings suffered assaults, so why not the very Temple itself? But who knows what might have happened had the Temple stood for three or four more centuries? Of one thing we may be sure: what would not have happened. And that is, a profound revision of the established system, a decision to suspend the blood rite of atone-

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ment. As the story of Joshua’s anguished question to Yohanan ben Zakkai shows, that took the recognition of the utter destruction of the Temple to effect. That story, however, first surfaced in a document that reached closure late in the unfolding of the Rabbinic canon and captures the climax of the system, not its origin. Enough centuries had to pass to render the permanent absence of the atonement-rite a critical event. The Tosefta’s story about Ishmael’s recording his liability to an offering tells us how matters registered in the third century, two hundred years after the destruction. After 70 – long afterward – no one imagined that the Temple would never be rebuilt. And never is a long time. So had Yohanan ben Zakkai’s nephew opposed the Zealots and, taking over, sued for peace, the original message of 586 and Jeremiah would have persisted unaffected. The enduring Temple, the on-going sacrificial system – these would have lasted as long as the narrative of 586 and the restoration that followed enjoyed prominence in Israel’s politics and culture. The reading of 586 would have yielded the lesson: Israel has kept the covenant, so God has kept Israel. How far distant was that celebration of grace from its opposite: Israel has not kept the covenant, so God has punished Israel? True, that view of the Temple and Jerusalem as media of the covenanted relationship did not enjoy universal assent. Groups of Israelites turned their backs on the Temple and its offerings, Jerusalem and its pilgrimages. For still others, distance had the same consequence as doctrinal difference. The Samaritans, the community represented by the Dead Sea library, the Israelites in Egypt who sacrificed in the temple of Onias and the Christians all found – in the language of Yohanan ben Zakkai to Joshua b. Hananiah – a means of atonement that yielded the same result as the atonement offerings that were set forth morning and night. And the Jews of the distant Diasporas, Babylonia and Rome, for example, of necessity found other centres for their encounter with God and other media of atonement and conciliation, besides Jerusalem and its offerings. In that context, the destruction of the Temple in 70 cannot be deemed an important, let alone a unique, event in the history of Judaism. For those components of the Israelite complex that did not value the Temple, the destruction confirmed their negative judgment

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of Jerusalem and its offerings, and for those that did, the destruction produced no theological consequences that had not already come to full exposure in Scripture, in the thought of Jeremiah for example. How important was the destruction of the Temple in 70? To those to whom it was important, it mattered only to confirm what they already knew; to others, it also confirmed what they already knew. For neither sector of Israelite opinion did the destruction of 70 make much of a difference. That does not complete matters, for we must also ask about what importance the Bar Kokhba fiasco made in the formation of Rabbinic Judaism. To be sure, without 70 there was no 132–135. But 70 did take place, so we are constrained to ask, what can we say if matters had turned out differently in 132–135? Specifically, would Rabbinic Judaism as we know it in the Mishnah and the Tosefta, the exegetical compilations of Midrashim and the Talmuds, have come to systemic fulfillment had Bar Kokhba won the second war against Rome? That is to say, what would have followed the destruction of the Second Temple and its restoration three generations later, under the auspices of Bar Kokhba? Had Bar Kokhba rebuilt the Temple in 135, I do not think the Rabbinic system would have made a statement substantially different from the one that it made in the Mishnah, which better suits an age of restoration than an age of repression. On the contrary, had Bar Kokhba won, the Mishnah would all the more so have organized the Israelite social order within its familiar category-formations. For the Mishnah’s category-formations would have better matched the configuration of the Israelite social order in the Land of Israel with a Temple than without. True, personnel – ruling families – would have changed in the shift in politics from the Hillelite household of Gamaliel and the patriarchate, under Roman sponsorship, to Bar Kokhba and his army. But the Rabbinic sages, masters of the traditions collected in the Mishnah, would have had no reason to abandon their engagement with public administration. Indeed, in its category-formations of the Halakhah Rabbinic Judaism found itself fully prepared for the restoration of the Temple such as victory would have brought about – indeed, categorically better prepared than they were for the defeat of the Bar Kokhba enterprise and the loss of Jerusalem altogether. The

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Halakhic system, ready and waiting for its moment, addressed the issues of the Temple and priesthood, Land and people, and set forth a coherent plan for the reconstruction of the Israelite social order centred on the cultic processes of sanctification: time, place, people. Not only sacerdotal but civil law, court procedures, criminal justice – all aspects of the civic society came under the Halakhic system. That is why the categorical structure of the Halakhah as defined by the Mishnah more suitably matches the social order of an Israel well settled in the Land and centred on the Temple of Jerusalem and its offerings than the Israel that survived the war: Galilean, more than Judaean, guided by a law code two-thirds of which legislated for a social order that did not exist and that could not easily be reconstituted. But would not the Rabbinic sages have faced a political calamity in the victory of Bar Kokhba, in some narratives represented as a Messiah, a matter on which the Rabbinic sages took conflicting positions? The Rabbinic sages are represented by the Mishnah as clerks in the patriarchal government from 70 forward. The government organized by Rome after 70 and governed by the patriarch sponsored by Rome would have been discredited had Bar Kokhba won. So what would have happened in the aftermath of a Zealot victory to what we call Prophetic-Rabbinic Judaism as portrayed by the Mishnah and the Tosefta? We cannot take at face value the narrative of Aqiba’s recognition of Bar Kokhba as a Messiah. But for the present speculation, we do not have to. It suffices to observe that the Rabbinic sages did not require political hegemony to accomplish their systemic goals of the social reconstruction of Israel in the model of the Torah. They worked with the patriarchate of the Land of Israel and the exilarchate of Babylonia and ultimately subverted both institutions to their purpose. And Bar Kokhba’s post-war administration required trained clerks too. The archaeology of the war has yielded well-prepared documents, and someone had to have written them and would be needed to interpret and apply them in the future. Where better to find scribes and lawyers than in the ranks of masters of the Torah out of whose circles – if the Rabbinic martyrologies are to be believed – martyrs in the recent war had emerged?

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That carries us to an obvious answer to the question, what would have happened had Bar Kokhba won? Had Bar Kokhba established an Israelite government in Jerusalem and rebuilt the Temple, the priests would have resumed their positions around the altar, the Levites on the platform, and the sages, administrators and clerks of the government, would have found their opportunity to translate the laws of the Torah, written and oral, into the rules of the cult. Bar Kokhba’s government, Gamaliel’s administration – it was all the same to the Rabbinic estate. Possessing the law of the Torah, as far as we know lacking competition from other groups of Israelite sages with other doctrines, the Rabbinic sages would have continued their work of exposition of the received tradition, only now in a position more fully to realize in concrete affairs the abstract conceptions of the law. Had Bar Kokhba won, the Rabbinic sages would have entered the public administration of Israelite affairs under his auspices, and with his defeat they simply found employment with the patriarchate. In the long term who sponsored the Israelite politics hardly mattered. So how important was the destruction of the Second Temple in the formation of Rabbinic Judaism? Two facts answer the question: [1] The destruction of the First Temple marked the beginning of the principal components of the Rabbinic system, with the shared emphasis on repentance and obedience to the Torah and Israel’s covenant with God. [2] The destruction of the Second Temple precipitated the recapitulation of the original event. The first time presented a crisis, the second merely an opportunity to confirm the systemic outcome of the original crisis. The war of Bar Kokhba whether won, whether lost, made, and could have made, no difference in the Rabbinic sages’ progress to power. We may then wonder whether that outcome – the proposition that the destruction of the Second Temple was not an important event in the formative history of Rabbinic Judaism – is not counter-intuitive. After all, the destruction of the Second Temple surely is treated in the formative canon as a critical, epoch-making event. But a second look at the question of what importance Rabbinic Judaism imputed to the destruction of the Second Temple produces a different result.

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Just as the Halakhah treats as trivial and transient the effects of 70, so the Aggadah affords evidence of a balanced, moderate reading of matters. Rabbinic Judaism represented by Joshua and Ishmael in their meetings with mourners of Zion did not treat 70 as an apocalyptic caesura in the history of God’s relationships with humanity through the extended family of Israel. Rather, the Rabbinic sages took the middle path, between dismissing as null the events of 70 and 132–135 (as did the Christians) and designating the destruction of the Second Temple as the end of days. Rabbinic Judaism represents a very particular reading of 586, 70, and 132–135. It self-evidently dismisses the Christian interpretation of the destruction as the signal of God’s rejection of the old Israel. But it also rejects the judgment of those who deem the destruction to mark the end of days. The Rabbinic view that matches the Halakhic evaluation of matters surfaces in a composition in the familiar passage of the Tosefta. It makes explicit the Rabbinic rejection of the rejectionist position: not to mourn “too much”: Tosefta Sotah 15:12 A. He said to them, “My children, to mourn too much is not possible. B. “But thus have the sages said: A man puts on plaster on his house but he leaves open a small area, as a memorial to Jerusalem.” The Rabbinic sages thereby deny that the destruction of the Temple and cessation of its cult mark the end for Israel. But the Halakhic statement of matters is probative. As we have seen, the governing category-formations recognize liturgical problems in the context of a recapitulation of the entire, enduring sacrificial system. The implication of that fact is readily seen: in the Rabbinic system the destruction of the Temple in 70 constitutes a mournful event but not a unique catastrophe and not a caesura in the life of still and eternally holy Israel. And that position on the meaning of a historical catastrophe simply repeats the lessons of 586: suffering and repentance, exile and return. The Second Temple did not have to suffer destruction in 70 for the lessons of 586 to be incorporated into a Judaic system for Israel’s

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social order, and in 70 the Prophetic-Rabbinic system in Judaism did not have to come into being to teach them. The destruction of the Second Temple made no difference in the received system and was readily absorbed into the established structure of law and theology. The received category-formations of the law easily accommodated the new data presented by history, the established dialectics of the ancient theology encompassing with facility the renewed task of theodicy. The Prophetic-Rabbinic Judaism began not in 70 but in the aftermath of 586 with the formation of Scripture – the Torah of Moses and the teachings of the prophets. In its late antique canon Prophetic-Rabbinic Judaism would simply recapitulate the theology of the Torah of Moses and its law. To that enterprise of reiteration the destruction of the Second Temple presented a chronic and recurrent concern, not an acute crisis.

An Afterword

We conclude at a considerable distance from our starting point in the Introduction. But the course of my inquiry over a half-century of work has also taken its own direction and moved far from the original question that I set out to answer. I do not think the initial stimulus, the correspondence between the Hurban of 70 and 132–135 and the Shoah of 1933–1945, afforded guidance in responding to the catastrophe of our own times. On the contrary, if the response to the Hurban of 70 and 132–135 teaches a lesson for the twenty-first century, it is to intensify the quest for analogies and not to confuse verisimilitude with authenticity. For the result of the present inquiry is to find in the response to the Hurban a recapitulation of Scripture’s portrait. My original motivation in devoting my life to the founding of Judaism in 70–640 derived from the Shoah. I drew an analogy of the catastrophe of the twentieth century to the Hurban of the first and second centuries c.e. But what I found out concerned the deep thought of the late antique Rabbinic sages about Scripture, how they found an analogy for their situation in the ancient Israelite prophets. Analogical thinking governs the Rabbinic sages’ response. They did not find unique lessons from unparalleled events but rather enduring truths that illuminated singular events and formed them into patterns. They trusted in the Torah of Sinai to illuminate what happened in their day as much as what took place in remote antiquity. One can do worse than uncover permanent patterns in the past and affirm the enduring truth of the ancient experience.

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Notes

introduction 1 The Final Solution: The Attempt to Exterminate the Jews of Europe, 1939–1945. London, 1953: Vallentine, Mitchell. 2 A Life of Yohanan ben Zakkai. Leiden, 1962: Brill. Awarded the Abraham Berliner Prize in Jewish History, Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1962. Second edition, completely revised, 1970. 3 Major trends in Jewish mysticism. Jerusalem, 1941: Schocken Publishing House. The Hilda Stich Stroock lectures, 1938.

chapter one 1 I conduct such a comparison in The Vitality of Rabbinic Imagination: The Mishnah against the Bible and Qumran. Lanham, 2004: University Press of America. 2 I have systematically examined the data in the following: Scripture and the Generative Premises of the Halakhah. A Systematic Inquiry. I. Halakhah Based Principally on Scripture and Halakhic Categories Autonomous of Scripture. Binghamton, 2000: Global Publications. Academic Studies in Ancient Judaism series. Scripture and the Generative Premises of the Halakhah. A Systematic Inquiry. II. Scripture’s Topics Derivatively Amplified in the Halakhah. Binghamton, 2000: Global Publications. Academic Studies in Ancient Judaism series. Scripture and the Generative Premises of the Halakhah. A Systematic Inquiry. III. Scripture’s Topics Independ-

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4

5

6

7

Notes to pages 40–5

ently Developed in the Halakhah. From the Babas through Miqvaot. Binghamton, 2000: Global Publications. Academic Studies in Ancient Judaism series. Scripture and the Generative Premises of the Halakhah. A Systematic Inquiry. IV. Scripture’s Topics Independently Developed in the Halakhah. From Moed Qatan through Zebahim. Binghamton, 2000: Global Publications. Academic Studies in Ancient Judaism series. Second printing, revised and condensed: under the title, The Torah and the Halakhah: The Four Relationships. Lanham, 2003: University Press of America. The relationship of the laws of the Mishnah to those of the codes of the Dead Sea library is subject to debate; it has no bearing on the thesis of this book. I chose cd and 1qs because they cover a variety of topics and combine theology with law; the comparison could have extended to other law-codes found in the Qumran library. And as to syllogistic character, the Mishnah alone of all Israelite codes produced a talmud. a systematic analytical amplification of principles through cases. So in diachronic context the Mishnah is unique. And there is no synchronic context in Israelite culture of late antiquity, from the first century forward. Centuries would pass before competition arose outside of that Judaism, a millennium until an explicit competitor within that Judaism met the challenge of the Mishnah head-on (I refer to the Mishneh Torah of Maimonides). See my Is Scripture the Origin of the Halakhah? (Leiden, 2005: Brill); and Scripture and the Generative Premises of the Halakhah. A Systematic Inquiry. I. Halakhah Based Principally on Scripture and Halakhic Categories Autonomous of Scripture. II. Scripture’s Topics Derivatively Amplified in the Halakhah. III. Scripture’s Topics Independently Developed in the Halakhah. From the Babas through Miqvaot. IV. Scripture’s Topics Independently Developed in the Halakhah. From Moed Qatan through Zebahim. Binghamton, 2000: Global Publications. Academic Studies in Ancient Judaism series. Second printing, revised and condensed: under the title, The Torah and the Halakhah: The Four Relationships. Lanham, 2003: University Press of America. But compare the Zoroastrian counterparts, in my Judaism and Zoroastrianism at the Dusk of Late Antiquity. How Two Ancient Faiths Wrote Down Their Great Traditions. Atlanta, 1993: Scholars Press for

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South Florida Studies in the History of Judaism. Now Lanham: University Press of America. 8 E-mail, 13 May 2004. 9 See my “The Mishnah in Roman and Christian Contexts,” based on Steven Stertz, “The Second Century: Roman Legal Codification,” both published in J. Neusner and Alan Avery-Peck, editors, The Mishnah in Contemporary Study. Volume One. Leiden, 2002: E. J. Brill, 121–66.

chapter two 1 Individuals in the Yerushalmi, unlike in the Mishnah, do not speak uniformly, but the differences are not marked.

chapter four 1 For the canon of late antiquity I collected these references in Jeremiah in Talmud and Midrash (Lanham, 2006: University Press of America). See also the collection made by Louis Ginzberg in Legends of the Jews (Philadelphia, 1947: Jewish Publication Society of America). 2 See my Judaism and Story: The Evidence of The Fathers According to Rabbi Nathan. Chicago, 1992: University of Chicago Press. Reprint, Eugene, OR, 2003: Wipf and Stock. 3 S. David Sperling, “Jeremiah,” Encyclopaedia of Religion (N.Y., 1987: MacMillan), 8:2: “It is difficult to treat Jeremiah’s thought systematically for a number of reasons. First, Israelite Prophets did not write systematic treatises. Second, the textual history of the book is very complicated.” I also consulted Martin Buber, The Prophetic Faith (N.Y., 1949: Harper); Abraham J. Heschel, The Prophets (New York and Evanston, 1962: Harper & Row); John Skinner, Prophecy and Religion. Studies in the Life of Jeremiah (Cambridge, 1922: Cambridge University Press); John Bright, The Anchor Bible. Jeremiah. Introduction, Translation, and Notes (Garden City, 1965: Doubleday and Co. Inc.) Jack R. Lundbom, The Anchor Bible. Jeremiah 1–20. A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary. (New York, 1999: The Anchor Bible Doubleday) p. 141–52. 4 S. David Sperling, “Jeremiah,” Encyclopaedia of Religion (N.Y., 1987: MacMillan), 8:1–6. On the new covenant, Jer. 31:31–34, Sperling states (6), “The new covenant is necessary because Israel and Judah lacked the

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innate ability to keep the old one. Yahweh’s recognition of the deficiency of his people inspires him to remember it by a change of their nature. Once Yahweh has effected the change, his people will be able to keep his covenant and remain permanently on his land. The new covenant itself was designed for the salvation of Israel and Judah. Yet its implications that a radical change of human nature is possible became universal. In a great irony of religious history the words of the Prophet who spent much of his career prophesying doom became to his direct and indirect descendants a legacy of hope.” Note also J. Phillip Hyatt, “Jeremiah,” Encyclopaedia Britannica 15th Edition Chicago, 1975. Macropaedia 10:134–36. He prophesied of a time when Yahweh would make a covenant with Israel, superseding the old Mosaic covenant; Yahweh would write his law upon the hearts of men rather than on tablets of stone, and all would know God directly and receive his forgiveness. See further H. Freedman, Jeremiah (London, 1949: Soncino) who states, “One of the most strongly marked of Jeremiah’s teachings is that a bond exists between God and Israel ... in the form of a covenant, an agreement whereby God has chosen Israel as his people in consideration of the latter’s acceptance of him in a peculiar sense as their deity.” xvi. The duties that the covenant entails are not enumerated in detail but it involved ... observing God’s laws, statutes and judgments. Two matters are singled out. One is the Sabbath (xvii.21f). Covenant is not explicitly mentioned in that passage, but it strongly emphasizes that the Land will remain intact only if Israel keep the Sabbath ... The other was the freeing of slaves after their six years of bondage. xxxiv.13f xvii. 5 Nebuchadnezzar and his army were God’s appointed agents of the judgment that would shortly fall upon the unrepentant people of Judah. “Jeremiah believed that God had revealed Himself to Israel and chosen it to be His servant. Therefore he affirmed to the men of his generation the unique character of the God in whom he and they alike believed, together with the resultant uniqueness of his demands and the consequent reality of his guidance, which was not at the mercy of outward conditions or circumstances (Jer. 18:3–10). The worship of the God of Israel thus could not disappear even if His shrine and the sacrificial system disappeared, for it needed no more than prayer and obedience to His word. According to Jeremiah everything else was an accessory” (Edward Lipinski, “Jeremiah,” Encyclopaedia Judaica (Jerusalem, 1971: Keter) 9:1345–1359 col. 1350).

Notes to pages 140–5

6

7

8

9

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Submission to Nebuchadnezzar was the will of God, who so punished the unfaithfulness of His people. The king of Babylon was the divine servant whom the Lord was to employ for His purposes.” “Jeremiah urges submission to the Lord on His own terms, expressed in the covenantal law. The Covenant required that Israel should acknowledge no other god than the unique God of Israel. Its leading principle was that Israel owed everything to the divine love which had brought it into being and without which it could not continue. The only worthy response to this free grace was a love involving submission and loyalty” (Edward Lipinski, “Jeremiah,” Encyclopaedia Judaica (Jerusalem, 1971: Keter) 9:1345–1359 col. 1347–8) S. David Sperling, “Jeremiah,” Encyclopaedia of Religion (N.Y., 1987: MacMillan), 8:4: He believes that his contemporaries are worse because they have returned to the ancestral sins after supposedly repudiating them and they have broken the ancient covenant that demanded Yahweh’s exclusive worship ... the notion that returning to sin after allegedly repenting is worse than sinning without repentance is characteristic of Jeremiah. In Jeremiah 34 for example the Prophet rebukes the people who had first reinstated the provision for the release of Hebrew slaves under the leadership of Zedekiah, but then turned around and enslaved them a second time. The sin of insincere repentance underlies Jeremiah’s attitude toward the cult of his time, 4. J. Phillip Hyatt, “Jeremiah,” Encyclopaedia Britannica 15th Edition Chicago, 1975. Macropaedia 10:134–136: Jeremiah had more to say about repentance than any other Prophet. He called upon men to turn away from their wicked ways and dependence upon idols and false gods and return to their early covenantal loyalty to Yahweh. Repentance thus had a strong ethical coloring, since it means living in obedience to Yahweh’s will for the individual and the nation (135). “He was convinced that God’s purpose could not be exhausted in punishment. After 70 years of a human life-span, nearly the entire sinful generation would be dead, and God ... would then contract a new covenant with the new people (Jer. 29:10–11, 31:31–34) (Edward Lipinski, “Jeremiah,” Encyclopaedia Judaica (Jerusalem, 1971: Keter) 9:1345–1359 col. 1351). J. Phillip Hyatt, “Jeremiah,” Encyclopaedia Britannica 15th Edition Chicago, 1975. Macropaedia 10:134–136, 135: “He found the source of sin to be in the weakness and corruption of the hearts of men – in what he

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often called ‘the stubbornness of the evil heart.’ He considered sin to be unnatural; he emphasized that some foreign nations were more loyal to their pagan deities than Judah was to Yahweh, and he often contrasted nature’s obedience to law with man’s disobedience to God.” 11 S. David Sperling, “Jeremiah,” Encyclopaedia of Religion (N.Y., 1987: MacMillan), 8:4 “It is clear that the people believed the cult could purify them of all their sins. If such violations as theft, murder, adultery, and false oaths could succumb to purificatory rituals, why could not the worship of foreign gods? ... Jeremiah’s mission is to bring the people to true repentance (Jer. 3:14, 3:22, 4:1). Compared with sincere repentance the obligations of the cult are secondary.”

Index

Abot, 24 Abraham, 97, 99, 101–2, 104, 132–6, 154 Abtalion, 159 Adam, 190–2 adaptation, 23–4 Aggadah, 167, 185–93 Aqiba, 86–7, 185–7, 197 atonement, 157–8, 179, 187–9, 195 Babylonia, 97 Bar Kokhba, 25, 77, 82–3, 86–8 Bar Kokhba war, 25–6, 50, 68–70, 196–8 Bavli, 168 Benjamin, 111 Bikkurim tractate, 173 Book of the Covenant, 41, 44, 47 Christianity, 80–1, 81–95, 91 circumcision, 160–5 classification, in Mishnah, 26–7, 33–4, 38–9 commemorative days, 63–4 Constantine, 80

covenant, 128–9, 144–6, 160–5, 205n4, 207n6 Covenant Code, 39 creation, 148 cult, stages of, 53, 61 Damascus Covenant (cd), 39, 41, 204n4 David, 85 Day of Atonement, 76, 159, 160, 173 death, 159–60 denial, 184–5 Deuteronomic Code, 39, 41, 44, 47 Deuteronomy, 30 Eden, 148, 190–2 Edom, 99 Esau, 99, 108–10 eschatology, 27, 28, 29, 35–8, 68, 82. See also Messiah; Messiahtheme exile, 143, 148 Exodus, 30

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Index

free will, 155, 157 Gamaliel, 196 genealogy, 97 Genesis, 96–7 Genesis Rabbah, 80–1, 95–115 gentiles. See pagan empires God: and dialogue with Abraham, 132–6; Israel’s relationship to, 140–4, 155–60 Greece, 97 Halakhah, 167; Mishnah as starting point of, 39; on Temple destruction, 171–85. See also Mishnah historiography: apocalyptic vs prophetic, 95; Mishnaic conception of, 31–5; as patterning, 27–8; as prophecy, 29; suffering of Israel in Yerushalmi, 66–71; in Yerushalmi, 50–61 Holiness Code, 39, 41, 44, 47 Hullin tractate, 171–3, 180 Hurban Bayit Rishon, 187, 193, 198 Hurban Bayit Sheni: Aggadic perspective on, 185–93; as axial event, 38–48; Halakhic perspective on, 171–85; importance to formation of Rabbinic Judaism, 169–71; and Messiah-theme in Yerushalmi, 82–3; Mishnah as response to, 45–6; Mishnaic response to, 23–5, 31–5; and periodization in Yerushalmi, 64–5 idolatry, 58, 60, 84, 143. See also pagan empires Isaac, 97, 99, 104, 108

Ishmael, 99, 188 Israel: fate among nations, 139–40, 149–55; future of, 144–6, 160–5; relationship to God, 140–4, 155–60; responsibility of, 111–15; and Rome, 52–3, 54, 83–7, 108–10; salvation of, 89–93, 97; sanctity of, 172–3; sin and atonement of, 187–90; social identity, 108; suffering of, 66–71 Jacob, 97, 99, 108–10, 112–15 Jeremiah, 119–21; as bystander, 132; on Israel’s fate among nations, 139–40; on Israel’s future, 144–6; on Israel’s relationship to God, 140–4; as messenger of God, 129–31; precipitates dialogue between God and Abraham, 132–6; as prophet, 125–9; and PropheticRabbinic Judaism, 146–8; as rabbi, 121–5, 165–6; treated by Rabbinic sages, 136–9 Joseph, 110–11 Joshua b. Hananiah, 195 Julian, 80, 91 Lamentations Rabbah, 129, 169, 192 land seizures, 25–6 law codes, 39–40 Leviticus, 30 Maaser Sheni tractate, 180 Maaserot tractate, 180 Maimonides, 204n5 Manual of Discipline (1qs), 39, 41, 204n4 measure for measure, 168

Index Media, 97 Messiah, 28, 35–8, 55, 68, 77–9, 81; Rabbinization of Messiah, 72–4, 85, 92–3 Messiah-theme, 81–95, 168 Middot tractate, 179 Mishnah: categorical response to Hurban, 23–5, 30; cultural considerations, 46, 48; historical patterning, 27–8; as historical response to Hurban, 45–6, 47–8; holiness in, 38; Hurban as axial event in, 38–48; intellectual characteristics of, 41–5; and law code traditions, 39–40; lessons of Hurban in, 31–5; Messiahtheme, 81–2, 88; narrative in, 26; periodization in, 53, 62; and Scripture, 72, 74–5; as singular and unique, 40–1; as starting point of Halakhic tradition, 39; on Temple destruction and formation of Rabbinic Judaism, 171–85; tense, 176, 177; theology of, 46, 48; topical program, 43; vs Genesis Rabbah, 96; and Yerushalmi, 49–50 Mishneh Torah of Maimonides, 204n5 Moed tractate, 176 Mordecai, 111 Moses, 135 narrative, 26 nations. See pagan empires Nebuchadnezzar, 120, 206n5 pagan empires, 97, 99, 108–10, 114–15; Israel’s fate among, 139–40, 149–55

211

patriarchs, 102–3, 107, 113–15 Pentateuch, 24 periodization of history, in Yerushalmi, 53, 61–6 Pesiqta deRab Kahana, 192 prayer, 178, 180 Priestly Code, 39, 41, 44, 47 prophecy, 28–9 Prophetic-Rabbinic Judaism, 119, 125–9, 146–8 Qodoshim tractate, 176 Qumran community, 195 Rabbah-Midrash compilations, 192 Rabbinic Judaism: Aggadic perspective on Temple destruction in, 185–93; Halakhic perspective on Temple destruction in, 171–85; importance of Temple destruction in formation of, 167–71, 193–200 Rabbinization of Messiah, 72–4, 85, 92–3 Rachel, 135 Rebecca, 99–101 religious observance, 90, 106 repentance, 89–90, 93, 99, 143, 157–9, 187–9, 207n8 Rome, 82–4, 97, 99, 108–10 Rosh Hashanah tractate, 169, 171 salvation, 77, 90–5, 97 Samaritans, 195 sanctification, 68, 71, 75, 91, 175 Scripture: historical thinking in, 28; and Mishnaic topical program, 44–5; reversion to, in Yerushalmi, 71–9 Shemaiah, 159

212 Sheqalim tractate, 173 sin: after repentance, 207n7; Israel’s, 155–60, 187–9 social order, 43 Solomon, 84 synagogue, 24, 179

Index Torah-study, 90 Tosefta, 189 Trajan, 54–5 Vespasian, 120 worship, 106

Tamid tractate, 179 taxonomy. See classification, in Mishnah Tefillin, 169 Temple destruction. See Hurban Bayit Sheni Terumot tractate, 180 teshuba, 157–8, 168 theodicy, 168, 190 time. See periodization of history, in Yerushalmi Tohorot tractate, 176 Torah, 92 Torah-events, 52 Torah-scroll, 169

Yerushalmi: Messiah-theme, 82–95; and Mishnah, 72; periodization of history in, 53, 61–6; reversion to history in, 50–61; reversion to Scripture, 71–9; single voice of, 49–50; suffering of Israel, 66–71 Yohanan ben Zakkai, 25, 83, 119, 128–9 Yoma tractate, 173 Zealots, 194 Zeraim tractate, 176