Ink Sea, Parchment Sky: Rabbinic Reading Practices in Late Antiquity By Daniel Max Picus B.A., Macalester College, 2010 M.St. University of Oxford, 2011 Thesis Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Religious Studies at Brown University PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND DECEMBER 2017 © Copyright 2018 by Daniel M. Picus ii This dissertation by Daniel M. Picus is accepted in its present form by the Department of Religious Studies as satisfying the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Date__________ ______________________________________ Michael Satlow, Advisor Recommended to the Graduate Council Date__________ ______________________________________ Susan Harvey, Reader Date__________ ______________________________________ Eustratios Papaioannou, Reader Approved by the Graduate Council Date__________ ______________________________________ Andrew Campbell, Dean of the Graduate School iii Curriculum Vitae Daniel Max Picus was born in Houston, Texas to Mark Picus and Nancy Pryzant Picus. He attended The Shlenker School, I. Weiner Middle School, and Carnegie Vanguard High School before moving to Minnesota to attend Macalester College. While there, he majored in Classics, with minors in Religious Studies and English. He spent the fall semester of 2008 studying at the Intercollegiate Center for Classical Studies in Rome, and graduated magna cum laude in 2010. After college, Daniel spent a year at the University of Oxford, where he attained a Masters degree in Jewish Studies in the Greco-Roman Period at Wolfson College. After completing his exams with distinction, he returned to the United States, where he moved to Providence, Rhode Island to study for a Ph.D. at Brown University. Over the course of his Ph.D., he spent the 2014-2015 academic year in Rome, working as the Residential Instructor at the Intercollegiate Center where he had studied as an undergraduate. He also spent the summer of 2015 as the on-site director for Brown Summer in Rome program, and taught in Summer@Brown for two years. iv Acknowledgments When describing the limits of their own intellect in the face of their teachers, the rabbis compared their own minds to the eye of a needle, and their teachers’ to the wide- open doors of the Temple. I have been lucky to feel the same way: to stand in awe at the breadth of my teachers’ wisdom, and in thankfulness in the face of their generosity. If I am being honest, however, it is in the presence of Tina Creamer and Nicole Vadnais that I feel this the most keenly: somehow, they manage the lives of multiple undergraduates, professors, and graduate students every day, while the rest of us can barely even manage one. As one of the people whose life has been improved by their work and care, I am forever grateful to them both. Without Michael Satlow, this project would not exist. If the texts I read are read well, it is because he taught me to read them so, and if my questions are sharp and interesting, it is because he spent six and a half years teaching me how to ask them. I could neither ask nor expect more in an advisor: the number of shocked, jealous looks on my colleagues’ faces when I told them how quickly he read and commented on every draft of every chapter (and, truthfully, of everything I wrote in graduate school) is testament enough to both his willingness to make time for me, to push me, and to give me space to think for myself. For this, I cannot thank him enough. Susan Harvey taught me to read Syriac when I was a young graduate student attempting to find a path through Late Antiquity. She gave me the gifts of Ephrem and Jacob, but more importantly, the gracious kindness and human presence that are so vitally necessary in an undertaking like this one. Long hours of discussion in her office left me, and still leave me, filled with an excited hope and lengthy bibliographies: it is with a sense of awe that I consider myself one of her students, and I thank her for making me one of them. Stratis Papaioannou helped me to understand myself as no longer a onetime classics major, but instead a sure and steady reader of texts—and, perhaps most importantly, manuscripts. For his attention to detail and willingness to chase down the smallest, most obscure detail, I am indebted to him: his model of scholarship and writing rests ever before me. Two other professors at Brown have had profound effects on my life and work. I was lucky enough to arrive before both Ross Kraemer and Stan Stowers retired. My first year, I took a course with Ross each semester. Hers is the voice I hear asking questions when I read Josephus, Philo, and numerous other texts, and it was she who prodded and pushed me to ask questions not only about what a text held, but what it did. Perhaps most of all, though, I am grateful to Ross for forever reminding me of how little we actually know. This dissertation was born from a seminar paper I wrote for her. Stan Stowers, over the course of two seminars my second year, carefully and patiently helped me think through the intricacies of Greek and Roman religion, and never once complained when I insisted on writing seminar papers on rabbinic sources. The rabbis believed that reading sustained the world. While I cannot deny the importance of reading in my own life, my own world is sustained just as much, if not more, by the web of friends and family that have shared their lives with me. At Brown, I was lucky to meet colleagues who became my dearest friends. I am incalculably grateful to Megan McBride, Kerry Sonia, Andrew Tobolowsky, Fannie Bialek, Rebecca Falcasantos, Laura Dingeldein, Niki Clements, Heidi Wendt, Aaron Glaim, Reyhan Durmaz, Sarah Berns, Alexis Glenn, Caroline Kory, Michael Payne, and Chumie Juni: v this work is better because of you, both because your own wisdom has contributed to its creation, and of the friendship you have chosen to share with me. Too many other friends to name have helped me at innumerable points along the way. Their names would fill far more pages than these acknowledgments would allow for—which is the only reason they don’t appear here. I spent a year in Rome working with and learning from three of the most talented educators I could ever hope to teach alongside. While part of me wants to thank the city itself, my colleagues Catherine Baker and Marilyn Evans deserve it far more for providing insight and entertainment and every step of the way, and Beth Severy-Hoven for not only putting up with me through my undergraduate degree, but also helping me discern who I want to be as a teacher. Hers is the model I strive to emulate. My parents were my first teachers, and these acknowledgments would be incomplete without them and my siblings. Mali and Aaron have provided comfort, joy, and laughter over the years—and recently, more excuses to visit home, to see my nephew. My father will happily tell anyone who will listen the story of the day I came home from kindergarten suddenly knowing how to read: while most people notice the similarities in the way he and I look, I owe him also for our shared delight in study and arcane detail. My mother taught me to read Torah when I was ten, and was the first person to explain to me how a diacritical mark functioned. She taught me Mishnah over a series of Saturday afternoons during high school. Neither of us could have predicted where that would lead, although I’ve always suspected that the results surprised me far more than they ever surprised her. And to Isaac: what is there left to say? You gave me a new family, a new home, and a new world—and somehow, you don’t get too upset when I keep the light on to stay up late reading. Without everyone else, this project might not have started—but without you, it wouldn’t have ended, and it certainly wouldn’t have its heart. vi Table of Contents Introduction: A Drop in the Ocean ..........................................................................1 Introduction ..................................................................................................1 Rabbis as Intellectual Elites and Religious Specialists ................................5 Reading as a Religious Practice ...................................................................9 Introduction to the Sources: Rabbinic Literature .......................................13 Orality, Literacy, and Materiality ..............................................................22 Chapter Outline ..........................................................................................27 Chapter 1: Bundles of Law: Excerpting and Rabbinic Education .........................30 Introduction ................................................................................................30 Education in Late Antiquity .......................................................................33 Reading in Parts .........................................................................................40 Tannaitic Excerpting ......................................................................43 Mekhilta d’Rabbi Yishmael ...............................................43 Mishnah Avot.....................................................................46 Amoraic Excerpting .......................................................................48 Babylonian Excerpting: Paseq Sidra ..............................................60 bAvodah Zarah 19a ............................................................60 bBava Batra 164b ...............................................................63 bYoma 87a .........................................................................64 Conclusion ............................................................................................66 Chapter 2: Sing Me Constantly: Repetition as an Educational Reading Practice ..69 Introduction ............................................................................................69 Tannaitic Repetition ...................................................................................75 Palestinian Amoraic Repetition .................................................................78 Repetition in the Bavli ...............................................................................91 Repeating in Syriac: .................................................................................105 Conclusion ..........................................................................................115 Chapter 3: Reading Cycles: Liturgical Reading Practices ...................................118 Introduction ..........................................................................................118 The Formation of Parshiyyot ...................................................................122 Tannaitic Material ........................................................................122 Talmud Yerushalmi .....................................................................127 Talmud Bavli ...............................................................................130 Reading Homer’s Songs ..............................................................139 Special Readings and Their Holidays ......................................................142 Tannaitic Literature ......................................................................144 mMegillah 3:4-6...............................................................145 tMegillah 3:1 ....................................................................151 tMegillah 3:5 ....................................................................153 Yerushalmi ...................................................................................155 yMegillah 3:5 73c ............................................................155 yMegillah 3:6 74b ............................................................156 Bavli: bMegillah 29a....................................................................162 Reading in the Cosmic Order: bTaanit 27b .............................................171 vii Conclusion ..........................................................................................177 Chapter 4: Finding the Gods: Reading and Divination........................................179 Introduction: Reading the Gods ...............................................................179 Extraordinary Knowledge: Divination in the Ancient World ..................182 Counting Crowns: Text Critical Reading ................................................186 bQiddushin 30a ............................................................................190 Division in the Dead Sea Scrolls .................................................195 bMenachot 29b.............................................................................199 Origen and Zenodotus ..................................................................205 Books and Phantoms: Ancient Jewish Bibliomancy ...............................208 1 Maccabees 3:46-49 and 2 Maccabees 8:22-23 .........................209 Talmud Bavli ...............................................................................213 bGittin 67a .......................................................................213 yShabbat 6:9 8c and bChullin 95b ...................................217 bYoma 75b .......................................................................223 bGittin 56b .......................................................................229 bChagigah 15a-b ..............................................................232 Bibliomancy’s Main Features ......................................................239 Christian Bibliomancy in Late Antiquity .................................................243 Athanasius’ Vita Antonii ..............................................................245 Augustine’s Confessions ..............................................................248 Conclusion ..........................................................................................252 Chapter 5: Humble as the Wilderness: Reading as Ethical Formation ................254 Introduction ..........................................................................................254 Rabbinic Ethical Formation .....................................................................256 bEruvin 21b ..........................................................................................260 bEruvin 53b-54a.......................................................................................275 bShabbat 33b-34a.....................................................................................283 Ethical Reading in Late Antique Christian Writings ...............................296 Athanasius’ Letter to Marcellinus ................................................297 Pierre Hadot’s Spiritual Exercises ...............................................299 Hagiography.................................................................................301 Conclusion ..........................................................................................306 Conclusion: Reading Rabbis, Reading Texts, Reading on the Brink ..................308 Appendix: A Preliminary Glossary of Rabbinic Words Involving Reading .......313 Bibliography ..........................................................................................336 viii A DROP IN THE OCEAN INTRODUCTION I. Introduction Though few people could read in the late antique Mediterranean, for those who could, reading mattered. In a world where literacy rates never climbed above fifteen percent of the general population,1 and even then, mostly included only males born to elite families (and sometimes the slaves who were purchased to teach them), 2 those who read often had access to power, privilege, and prestige. 3 Words and texts covered temples, marketplaces, and important civic spaces.4 The future could be found in a book and the gods’ will deciphered in the arrangement of letters on a page. A reader could transform from a human into a living embodiment of the deity’s word by reading, and reading correctly. Though few could do it, reading mattered. 1 William V. Harris, Ancient Literacy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989), 267, 285. Fifteen percent, which is Harris’s highest estimate, is exclusively reserved for the Italian peninsula in the high empire, and based, among other things, on the density of inscriptions among the population. Harris also suggests that there was a decline in literacy in late antiquity, noticeable by the beginning of the fourth century. He also, however, suggests that we can begin to see “new literate groups” and “new uses of writing” starting in the middle of the third century, even as the general rates fall. 2 See, for example, Harris, 160; and Robert Kaster, Guardians of Language: The Grammarian and Society in Late Antiquity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988). Kaster mentions slaves (p. 55, for example) who attain literacy as slaves of grammarians, although this indicates to me the slipperiness of our categories in this particular endeavor. 3 Peter Brown, Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Toward a Christian Empire (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992), 2-4; 37. Brown’s book is a study of ancient paideia in late antiquity: the discursive field by which power was controlled, mediated, and spread in late antiquity. 4 Mary Beard, “Writing and Religion: Ancient Literacy and the Function of the Written Word in Roman Religion,” in Literacy in the Roman World, ed. Mary Beard (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1991) 35-58. 1 Reading provided access to knowledge that was not publicly available; whether through the act of book divination, or simply reading to learn, there was wisdom to be had in books. It provided access to power and cultural capital that resided in the authority of texts so ancient their origins were often considered divine (such as the Hebrew Bible, or Homer). It created yet another field on which the elite and educated could play, displaying their knowledge and mastery of the worlds they occupied through subtle games of textual and verbal manipulation. As a constellation of practices that constituted part of the performance of culture across a wide swath of the ancient Mediterranean world, reading practices were (and still are) discussed, analyzed, and mandated in the writings of elite figures. There were few, if any, corners of the Mediterranean world in which this did not hold true. Reading was a technology of empire and governance on every level, be it Roman, East Roman/Byzantine, or Sassanian.5 Figures who aspired to a modicum of power under the dominance of these structures did so in a variety of ways, but the cultivation of education and the use of reading and literacy to establish authority was so common as to almost be universal. We see these strategies in Christian bishops as well as late antique rabbis; even figures for whom the renunciation of the world was important were often paradoxically presented as learned and literate.6 5 The relationship between reading and the nation-state in the modern world has been explored by James Scott, who argues that the Zomia of the South Asian uplands are illiterate as a form of resistance against state violence. This is a provocative claim, although generally less useful for the ancient world: illiteracy was less a choice, and more a fact of life, when the media of reading were so much less available. I still, however, think that the relationship among reading, governance, and power in the ancient world holds the answers to important questions, and is an area worth exploring. See James Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland South Asia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009) 220-238. 6 See, for example, the example of Antony of Alexandria: Athanasius presents him as a simple ascetic renouncing the world, while his letters, which Samuel Rubenson suggests are possibly authentic, reveals a man of intense learning (as well as Origenist sympathies). Samuel Rubenson, The Letters of St. Antony: Monasticism and the Making of a Saint (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995). See also David Brakke, Athanasius and the Politics of Asceticism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995) 200-265 on Athansius’ depiction of Antony. 2 This dissertation is premised on the inclusion of late antique rabbis, from the early Palestinian Tannaim to the later redactors of the Babylonian Talmud, into this stratum of religious figures attempting to acquire, express, and maintain a certain type of authority through the reading of texts and the usage of literacy. I argue here that for late antique rabbis, reading was one of the many practices that constitute the practice of religion, and that their reading was based on several assumptions. A text was a powerful, important object, and contained much more within it than the simple words that were written on the page. A text read correctly could transform, shape, and renew the reader. This power was partially realized in the fact that reading was always a bodily practice. Regardless of whether or not a physical text was present (although scholarship underestimates how often the rabbis did have physical texts, and what those texts looked like), reading involved the correct orientation and positioning of the human body. This orientation, in turn, effected change in the subject herself.7 In sum: this dissertation examines how the rabbis read in order to come to a more nuanced understanding not only of why they read the way they did, but why they might have read at all. While it seems clear that late ancient rabbis were influenced by, and sometimes even had direct access to, Greek, Latin, and Syriac literature, the text that we will deal with most completely here is the one to which the rabbis ascribed the most authority: the Hebrew Bible, or the Torah. The rabbinic elevation of scripture is one of the seeming paradoxes of their movement: while its authority was supreme in rabbinic Jewish circles, the text was atomized, torn apart, interpreted, and reinterpreted. 8 Satlow sees this as the result of an interpretive, 7 Rabbinic anthropology was less focused on a split between the body and soul than other late ancient, largely Platonic, understandings of the human. Humans were bodies animated by a divine spark of life. See Daniel Boyarin, Carnal Israel (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994) 5, 33, 231. 8 Michael Satlow, How the Bible Became Holy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014) 259. 3 ideological conflict between the Saducees and Pharisees of the early rabbinic movement: while the Sadduceean elevation of scripture was a norm, the Pharisaic understanding thereof ultimately prevailed. Describing this notion of scripture’s authority in relation to an early Christian understanding, Satlow states that “if the early Christians chose the message over the text, the early rabbis chose the text over the message.” 9 The orientation of the rabbis to this text, while it was likely an aspect of their overall attitude toward reading and textuality, should not be taken for granted. This dissertation will trace the assumptions that undergird this rabbinic orientation toward texts, and especially the Torah, through the articulation of one particular group of reading practices: those that involve the segmentation and division of a text into smaller pieces, and the practices that are then able to be performed with those smaller texts. Textual segmentation begins, in large part, as an educational practice, and that this is the root of rabbinic liturgical reading practices, which form some of the more recognizable modes of rabbinic reading to modern readers. The segmented text, however, could also be used for divination, a widespread practice in the ancient world that had profound implications for the one performing it. Even in pieces, though, the text was powerful, and sometimes even dangerous. This introduction first situates the rabbis within their late antique religious context, showing how they can most productively be understood as participants (and even competitors) in a vast field of religious activity that centers around intellectual engagement with texts, and is largely limited to specific religious specialists. Following that, I consider the category of “reading,” separating out what we mean as scholars when we use “reading” as an analytic term, and what the rabbis meant when they discussed “reading.” From there, the introduction moves on 9 Satlow, How the Bible Became Holy, 259. 4 to a discussion of the evidence: how scholars know what they know about the rabbis, and how they wrote about, and how scholars read, the texts that they left for us. This includes a brief introduction to rabbinic literature. Finally, the end of this introduction traces the trajectory of three important themes in the scholarship of reading and ancient Judaism that help to frame the argument going forward, and lastly provides a brief outline of this dissertation’s chapters. II. Rabbis as Intellectual Elites and Religious Specialists The place of the rabbi in the broader scheme of late antique religion has been an animating research question over the course of this project. What follows discusses the embedded nature of rabbinic Judaism within a broader culture, and outline the place of intellectual elites in late ancient religion, showing how, in agreement with other scholars, the rabbis can be productively included in such a category. This is important for several reasons: most importantly, it serves to integrate the rabbis into the study of religion in the ancient world, rather than leave them as something separate and “unknowable.” The uniqueness of the rabbis, often based on the inaccessibility of their texts to the outsider, has a long pedigree in scholarship on rabbinics.10 While this represents an older, outmoded view based in theological assumptions both from within Judaism and certain forms of Protestant theology, the fact remains that very few scholars of Greek, Latin, Syriac, and Persian-speaking world incorporated rabbinic evidence into their studies of ancient religion until recently. 10 Aaron Hughes has spoken a bit to the problem of “uniqueness” in Jewish Studies, but this is another important area of future research. See Aaron Hughes, The Study of Judaism: Authenticity, Identity, Scholarship (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2013) 8-13. See, however, Moshe Rosman’s important critique, which warns against going too far in the other direction: Moshe Rosman, How Jewish is Jewish History? (Portland, OR: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2007). 5 Since the pioneering work of Saul Lieberman, this situation has slowly been changing. 11 Recent studies of the rabbis attempt to understand them as members of a Roman provincial elite, and examinations of scholasticism and education in late ancient Mesopotamia incorporate the insights of work from rabbinics.12 Of particular importance for this project is scholarship that either places the rabbis into wide-reaching religious frameworks, making them legible alongside other religious figures, or work that enables us to do so. Comparisons between the rabbis and Greek, Roman, and Christian religious specialists both show that there is a broader Mediterranean framework in which all these figures are intelligible to each other, and point out the often-minute, but always-important differences that serve to make them distinct. Both Jews and Christians engaged in bibliomantic practices, for example; the context for these practices in Jewish sources, however, are generally educational, while they seem to be self-reflective and “confessional” in Christian literature. In both sets of sources, bibliomancy is entangled with liturgy. Stanley Stowers has characterized ancient Mediterranean religion as comprised of four distinct modes, of which the rabbis, he suggests, fit into the second. 13 Stowers terms this the 11 Saul Lieberman’s two best-known books in this arena both attempt to situation Palestinian Rabbinic material in a Greek-speaking milieu. See Saul Lieberman, Greek in Jewish Palestine: Studies in the Life and Manners of Jewish Palestine in the II-IV Centuries C.E. (New York: The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1942) and Saul Lieberman, Hellenism in Jewish Palestine: Studies in the Literary Transmission, Beliefs, and Manners of Palestine in the I Century B.C.E.-IV Century C.E. (New York: The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1962). 12 Hayim Lapin, Rabbis as Romans: The Rabbinic Movement in Palestine, 100-400 C.E. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012); Adam Becker, Fear of God and the Beginning of Wisdom: The School of Nisibis and Christian Scholastic Culture in Late Antique Mesopotamia (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006); Joel Walker, The Legend of Mar Qardagh: Narrative and Christian Heroism in Late Antique Iraq (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006). 13 Stanley Stowers, “The Religion of Plant and Animal Offerings Versus the Religion of Meaning, Essences, and Textual Mysteries,” in Ancient Mediterranean Sacrifice, ed. Zsuzsanna Varhélyi and Jennifer Wright Knust (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011) 35-56. 6 “religion of the literate cultural producer,” 14 and it includes both these often-luminous figures, and those who gathered around them. While there were rarely very many (owing to the already- discussed sparsity of literate cultural producers), the few that there were, were often closely connected, regularly reading, interpreting, and reinterpreting each other’s texts. The textual practices in which they engaged were, according to Stowers, more or less common across this field. I take this observation seriously, using it as a springboard to examine forms and methods of reading that were common among religious specialists of all stripes in the late ancient world. The manner in which study and discussion became central religious practices, Stowers argues, are features of this particular class of religious specialist. 15 The study of independent religious specialists has been expanded significantly by the work of Heidi Wendt.16 Though her work is focused specifically on the Roman Empire and in some cases, the city of Rome itself from the first century BCE to the second century CE, Wendt’s observations are crucial for situating the rabbis as part of a wider-reaching phenomenon. She argues that there was an expansion of the influence of freelance experts, themselves members of the class of independent religious specialists, during this time period. 17 This is also the time period that sees the rise of the rabbis in Judaea: Wendt suggests that we can see these figures particularly clearly on the outskirts of the empire. 18 Wendt defines a member of this category as a “self-authorized purveyor of religious teachings and other practices who drew 14 Ibid, 41. 15 Ibid, 47. 16 Heidi Wendt, At the Temple Gates: The Religion of Freelance Experts in the Roman Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016). 17 Ibid, 9. 18 Ibid, 10. 7 upon such abilities in pursuit of various social benefits and often more transparent forms of profit.”19 The members of the rabbinic movement were not necessarily freelance: there were, at various times, heads of rabbinic academies, patriarchs, and other figures that granted at least a notional form of organization to figures identified as rabbis. This organization, however, seems to have been largely internally (rather than externally) meaningful, and whatever forms of authority rabbis exercised in their communities were quite possibly the results of other forms of social capital (monetary, political) than religious. Wendt’s definition is helpful because it shifts the focus from institutionalized forms of recognition and religious practices to modes by which the specialists can authorize themselves. This is an important feature of the rabbis’ own literary production and their religious practice: the varying modes by which they construct their own authority are tied to their textual practices, the way they read, and their orientation towards text. To read like a rabbi was, in some sense, to “buy into” their self-authorized strategies, much like reading in the same manner as one’s teacher was to lend credence to that figure’s teachings, intellect, and authority. 20 Catherine Hezser’s recent work on rabbis as intellectuals also helps to round out the picture of their activity, and place them more squarely in this category. 21 Utilizing the work of Kendra Eshleman, 22 she identifies the self-constructed features of an intellectual as “socializing 19 Ibid, 10. 20 H. Gregory Snyder, Teachers and Texts in the Ancient World: Philosophers, Jews, and Christians (New York: Routledge, 2000). 21 Catherine Heszer, “Rabbis as Intellectuals in the Context of Graeco-Roman and Byzantine Christian Scholasticism.” Unpublished. 22 Kendra Eshleman, The Social World of Intellectuals in the Roman Empire: Sophists, Philosophers, and Christians (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2012). 8 in networks of like-minded scholars,” producing literature, and developing long-lasting “school traditions.”23 These dovetail nicely with Wendt’s and Stowers’ categories: by producing literature and developing schools that ensure the perpetuation of their own teachings, rabbis place themselves in the broad field of textually-focused intellectual elites in the late Roman world. These practices enable them to communicate legibly with other intellectuals, a feature that in turn serves to bolster their own authority. Early rabbinic activity in Palestine flourished during the period of intellectual production known as the Second Sophistic, and Babylonia in late antiquity was a center of various forms of Christian scholasticism. 24 We must be careful, however, not to elide the important differences between these forms of religion and scholarship: while a broad discursive and cultural field helped to make most late ancient intellectuals intelligible to each other, it is the differences that come about as a result of language, culture, ideology, and geography that give us a sense of how these figures understood and interacted with one another. III. Reading as a Religious Practice The practices with which this dissertation is primarily concerned revolve around the rabbinic orientation toward reading. As such, before going further, it is necessary to define what, exactly, is meant by reading, and how such a practice works within the framework of the religion 23 Hezser, “Rabbis as Intellectuals,” 1. 24 I have found Adam Becker’s work particularly helpful on this point. He emphasizes that where there are similarities, we must be willing to do the hard work of figuring out how they came about before assuming they are part of the same phenomenon, or that the paradigm is one of “influence” and “appropriation.” See Adam Becker, “The Comparative Study of ‘Scholasticism’ in Late Antique Mesopotamia: Rabbis and East Syrians,” Association of Jewish Studies Review 34 (2010): 91-113; “Positing a ‘Cultural Relationship’ between Plato and the Babylonian Talmud: Daniel Boyarin’s Socrates and the Fat Rabbis (2009),” Jewish Quarterly Review 101 (2011): 255-269; and “Polishing the Mirror: Some Thoughts on Syriac Sources and Early Judaism,” in Envisioning Judaism: Studies in Honor of Peter Schäfer on the Occasion of his Seventieth Birthday, ed. Ra’anan Boustan et al. (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013) 2: 897-915. 9 practiced by the rabbis. “Reading” signifies the interaction of a reader and a text in which the content of the text is the primary factor that lends meaning to the practice. This practice is generally visual, and generally material, although not necessarily always so: practices that engage a set, stable text without utilizing a physical document are as much a part of this broad category of reading as the use of a scroll or codex to access a literary work. With this definition, reciting Homer, or recalling verses of the Torah, are forms of reading. This definition attempts to circumscribe reading so as not to include all practices that involve texts: a child playing with books, for example, is not necessarily reading them. In the same way, however, there are practices that seem to fall somewhere in between: uses of books or texts that are reliant on their content without actually involving an ocular or auditory experience of the words inscribed thereon. This can include rituals that involve the presence of certain texts, like ordinations enacted by striking the ordinand with a bible, or healings effected with an inscribed tablet that is not read.25 These practices are not explicitly reading, but they do, I think, rely on much of the same logic that ancient reading practices make use of. There are a variety of ways in which a text can be read, and a variety of methods through which that reading can occur. The goal with which a reader approaches a text helps to shape the way that she reads it; recent scholarship on the cognition of reading has proven this.26 In examining rabbinic reading practices, this research seeks to understand the 25 See, for example, the Syriac Life of Miles (forthcoming, Gorgias Press) in which a bishop is rebuked by the titular saint by being struck with a gospel book. 26 Andrew Elfenbein, “Cognitive Science and the History of Reading,” PMLA 121, no. 2 (March 1, 2006): 484–502. While this dissertation will not focus on, or explicitly engage, cognitive research into the history of reading, some of this work has been crucial in helping me think through the ways in which the broader category of “reading” can be framed and broken up. Elfenbein’s article is an excellent introduction into this field. He outlines different types of reading practices available to Victorian readers by examining four different reviews, or reactions, to the work of one poet. 10 different goals the rabbis had when they approached texts, and the methods that they used to accomplish those goals. Having a sense of how reading works in consonance with other religious practices has distinct significance for the study of the rabbis specifically, and religion in late antiquity more broadly. First of all, it will put the activities of the rabbis in a framework similar to those of other late ancient literate elites, further helping us to see the vastly complex religious landscape of late antiquity not as “Jewish” and “Christian,” but as dominated by practices that are often too close for the comfort of those who are concerned with drawing borders. Secondly, it will further complicate the paradigm of orality and literacy that has so long dominated the study of the rabbis. This is the idea that rabbinic texts were entirely oral, and that the rabbis were suspicious of any written text that was not the Torah (and even then, generally only knew it orally). Lastly, and in a related vein, the study of reading practices contributes to our understanding of how the rabbis ascribed authority to the Bible, and were ultimately able to achieve certain forms of authority over a vast number of Jews, especially by the Middle Ages. Making sense of reading as a religious practice, then, requires a framework in which religion is a social activity composed of practices. This presents us with the context of reading practices, an important frame of analysis. In this framework, reading becomes just one of many different categories of practice that may or may not make up the broader category of religion. Reading is, of course, not a sine qua non of religious activity. Religious specialists of late antiquity, however, largely because of their shared inheritance of the Classical Greek and Roman worlds, utilized reading practices within a framework that is easily identified as “religious” relatively often. Moreover, because a practice-oriented framework for religion allows the grouping of practices together regardless of contemporary understandings of “religious boundaries” such as “Judaism,” “Christianity,” or “Islam,” it will become clear that these 11 religious elites, identified as Jews, Christians, and even practitioners of Greco-Roman religion, are all, to a greater or lesser extent, performing similar practices, with slight modifications. Prior scholarship has placed less emphasis on the embodied aspect of reading practices, often focusing instead on the resulting interpretive traditions that result from the act of reading. While it is true there are some studies on the history of reading that focus on a more embodied approach to the practice, these studies rarely account for the effects of such embodied, material realities in the interpretive world of the reader. 27 These understandings of reading thus feel strangely isolated from each other. It is difficult to see how the more interpretation-focused definitions relate to the more physical, material, bodily understandings of the term. This is where the understanding of practice as Pierre Bourdieu outlines it becomes helpful. Any action performed by an agent is governed by a set of dispositions, which Bourdieu refers to as habitus, as well as the environment in which it is completed. 28 The action, when it is performed, reproduces the habitus—that is, the environment and its accompanying dispositions. During the act of reading, the agent produces interpretation, which reproduces its habitus. This interpretation of the text, tied to an agent and an action, will always be contingent on both the reader and her environment. The doing of an action and its result within a specific domain (in this case, the 27 See, for example, Matthew P. Brown, The Pilgrim and the Bee: Reading Rituals and Book Culture in Early New England, Reprint edition (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007). 28 Bourdieu discusses habitus in much of his work, but I have found the articulation in Distinction (Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste, Richard Nice trans. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984), 170) to be particularly useful in this instance. “The habitus is necessity internalized and converted into a disposition that generates meaningful practices and meaning-giving perceptions; it is a general, transposable disposition which carries out a systematic, universal application beyond the limits of what has been directly learnt— of the necessity inherent in the learning conditions….Because different conditions of existence produce different habitus systems of generative schemes applicable, by simple transfer, to the most varied areas of practice-the practices engendered by the different habitus appear as systematic configurations of properties expressing the differences objectively inscribed in conditions of existence in the form of systems of differential deviations which, when perceived by agents endowed with the schemes of perception and appreciation necessary in order to identify, interpret and evaluate their pertinent features, function as lifestyles….” 12 physical act of reading and how the reader makes sense of the text) are thus both part of a practice. Writing a history of reading practices in this way, then, in which interpretations and actions are understood as mutually entailing and contingent on each other, allows for reading and interpretation to be contextualized together, and to be done within a specific environment: in this case, the late antique Mediterranean. IV. Introduction to Rabbinic Literature The literary output of the early rabbis was a product of their own reading practices, an important element in creating them, and ultimately, a record of both. As such, the evidence in this project is comprised of the corpus of classic rabbinic literature, a set of texts ranging from the tannaitic period to just before the advent of the classic Babylonian Geonim—a span of years ranging from the second century CE to the seventh, and a spatial range from the Galilee in northern Palestine to the academies of Sura, Pumbedita, and Mahoza on the Tigris and Euphrates. This section briefly introduces the major texts and contexts of rabbinic literature. The earliest period of rabbinic activity is referred to as the “tannaitic” period, in reference to the earliest rabbis who are often referred to as “tannaim,” or “reciters” in later literature. The word tanna is derived from the Aramaic root tn’/‫תנא‬, which is itself cognate to the Hebrew šnh/‫שנה‬, meaning “repeat,” or “recite.”29 Scholars do not agree on the beginning dates of this period, largely because there is some disagreement over dating the beginning of the rabbinic movement itself. In this study, when I refer to the tannaitic period, I am referring to the earliest period of rabbinic activity, spanning from the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE to the middle of the third century CE. 30 29 See the entry for these roots in the appendix, pp. 335-336. 30 For a general overview of Judaea/Palestine in the tannaitic period, see Seth Schwartz, “Political, Social, and Economic Life in the Land of Israel, 66-c. 235” in the Cambridge History of Judaism, Vol. 4: The Late Roman- 13 Several important compositions from the tannaitic period remain to us, three of which will appear in this dissertation. These comprise the Mekhilta d’Rabbi Ishma’el, the Mishnah, and the Tosefta. These texts are identified as tannaitic based on two broad criteria: first, they only cite rabbis from the early, tannaitic generations, and secondly, they are written in a specific style of Hebrew known as “mishnaic Hebrew.” 31 Neither of these criteria is without its problems: the division of rabbis into generations is based on a tenth-century letter authorizing a rabbinic chain of transmission by Rav Sherira Gaon, 32 and scholars have questioned if the Mekhilta, in particular, is not a significantly later text. 33 The general consensus, however, places these texts in the period between the second and third centuries. The Mekhilta is a commentary on the book of Exodus, arranged lemmatically, and often discussed as part of the “midrash halakhah,” the halakhic, or legal, interpretive texts of the tannaitic period. This category also includes the Sifra and Sifre Numbers and Sifre Deuteronomy, and comprises some of the earliest rabbinic texts. There are two important critical editions of the Mekhilta: the Horowitz-Rabin edition,34 and the Lauterbach. 35 This dissertation Rabbinic Period, ed. Steven Katz (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006) 23-52. Hayim Lapin delves into the structure of the early rabbinic movement itself in “The Origins and Development of the Rabbinic Movement in the Land of Israel” in the same volume (pp. 206-229), and his book Rabbis as Romans, while less concerned with the origins of the rabbinic movement per se argues that we should understand them as a Roman provincial elite, using rabbinic texts and scant archaeological remains to understand the power structures and hierarchies of the group that ultimately produced the Palestinian Talmud. For more on the origins of the rabbinic movement, see Shaye Cohen, ‘‘The Significance of Yavneh: Pharisees, Rabbis, and the End of Jewish Sectarianism,’’ HUCA 55 (1984), 27–53. 31 Moshe Bar-Asher, “Mishnaic Hebrew: An Introductory Survey,” in the Cambridge History of Judaism, Vol. 4: The Late Roman-Rabbinic Period, ed. Steven Katz (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006) 369-403. 32 Sherira Gaon, Igeret Rav Sherira Gaon, ed. Benjamin Menasseh Lewin (Haifa: Bidfus Godah, 1921). 33 Ben Zion Wacholder, “The Date of the Mekilta De-Rabbi Ishmael,” Hebrew Union College Annual 39 (1968) 117-144. 34 H. S. Horowitz and I. A. Rabin, Mechilta d’Rabbi Ismael (Jerusalem: Bamberger & Wahrmann, 1960). 35 Jacob Z. Lauterbach, Mekilta de-Rabbi Ishmael 3 vols (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1933-1935). 14 relies primarily on the Horowitz-Rabin, which produces the superior text, in consultation with the manuscripts: in this case, MS Oxford 151 and MS Munich, Cod. Hebr. 117. 36 The Mishnah and Tosefta present a different set of problems for scholars. While they are both generally agreed to be products of the tannaitic period, the exact relation between the two texts—and indeed, the nature of either text—is a matter of constant debate. In general, debates over the Mishnah are over the text’s purpose: is it a textbook of law, a practical guide, or a series of more interpretive, imaginative exercises?37 Here the Mishnah is understood as residing somewhere in between these poles: it presents itself as an authoritative legal guide for a world that only partially existed when it was written (see, for example, the extensive material on sacrificial rituals in s’darim Mo’ed and Qodashim). The Mishnah is the rabbinic text upon which both Talmuds are based, and in many ways is the core, or basic, text of rabbinic Judaism. The form in which we have it probably dates from the end of the tannaitic period, and its redaction is traditionally ascribed to Rabbi Yehuda Ha- Nasi, or Judah the Prince, the patriarch of Palestine who died around the year 200. 38 The Mishnah is divided into six orders, called s’darim (seder in the singular). Each seder is further divided into masekhtot (singular masekhet), or tractates. When citing a mishnaic source, the letter ‘m’ is followed by the tractate, then the chapter and individual portion (also called a ‘mishnah’). 36 H. L. Strack and Günter Stemberger, Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash, trans. Markus Bockmuehl, second edition (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996), 255. 37 Much of this recent debate was summarized in a forum in the AJS Review: See the contributions and cited literature of Steven Fraade (221-223), Elizabeth Shanks Alexander (225-234), Ishay Rosen-Zvi (235-249), and Christine Hayes (291-297) in particular in “Symposium: What is the Mishnah?” AJS Review 32:2 (2008), 221-297. 38 The literature on Rabbi Judah is enormous. See, for a beginning, Lapin, Rabbis as Romans, 23-24; for a concise account of much of the earlier literature, see Martin Jacobs, Die Institution des Jüdischen Patriarchen: Eine quellen- und traditionskritische Studie zur Geschichte der Juden in der Spätantike (Tübingen, Mohr Siebeck: 1995). 15 Therefore, mBerakhot 1:1 stands for “Tractate Berakhot, chapter 1, mishnah 1.” There are three main manuscripts of the Mishnah, and no true critical edition: while the Albeck edition remains standard in scholarly circles, it is not clearly based on manuscript evidence. 39 The three complete manuscripts are the Kaufmann (in Budapest), the Parma, and the Cambridge manuscripts, with the Kaufmann being the earliest. In general, mishnaic quotations follow the text of the Kaufmann in consultation with the other two when there are serious divergences. 40 The Tosefta is organized much like the Mishnah; when citing it, one uses the initial letter ‘t’ rather than ‘m.’ It contains the same six orders and tractates as the Mishnah, and its relationship to the main text of the tannaitic corpus is the subject of much debate. The priority of one text over the other is difficult to ascertain most of the time, and is, in fact, rarely consistent. Arguments that the Tosefta is a commentary on the Mishnah fall apart when material in the Mishnah explicitly comments on what is found in the Tosefta; the opposite is also true. It seems likely at this point that the texts reflect, in some way, a common source, and can be said to be composed from the same material. 41 For this reason, when sources from both the Tosefta and Mishnah are used, they will be presented together. There are two critical editions of the Tosefta: the Lieberman edition, which is incomplete, remains the better text, but the Zuckermandel contains the last two orders.42 There is only one complete manuscript of the Tosefta: the MS 39 Chanoch Albeck, Shisah Sidrei Mishnah, 6 vols (Jersalem: Mosad Biyalik, 1954-1959). 40 M. Krupp, “Manuscripts of the Mishna,” in S. Safrai, ed., The Literature of the Sages (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987) 252-62; Strack and Stemberger, Introduction, 141-142. 41 S. Friedman, “The Primacy of Mishnah to Tosefta in Synoptic Parallels,” in Introducing Tosefta: Textual, Intratextual, and Intertextual Studies, ed. H. Fox and T. Meacham (Hoboken: KTAV, 1999) 99-121; Strack and Stemberger, Introduction, 152-155. 42 Saul Lieberman, Tosefta Ki-fshutah: Be’ur Arokh la-Tosefta (New York: Hotsa’at Mekhon Me’ir Lev Rabinovits, 1955-1988); M. S. Zuckermandel, Tosefta, Mischna und Boraitha in ihrem Verhältnis zu Einander: Oder, Palästinische und Babylonische Halacha: Ein Beitrag zur Kritik und Geschichte der Halacha (Frankfurt: J. Kauffmann, 1908-1913). 16 Vienna. Citations from the Tosefta are made using this manuscript, in consultation with the Erfurt manuscript, and Lieberman’s critical edition. The next major period of rabbinic activity is known as the amoraic period, after the figures known as “amoraim,” (singular amora) or “pronouncers.”43 There were amoraim active in both Palestine and Babylonia, and the vast majority of what is known as rabbinic aggadic midrash was produced by Palestinian amoraim between the third and seventh centuries. 44 We have no individual texts of Babylonian amoraim; rather, we have their sayings and dicta in the Babylonian Talmud, which was itself redacted by rabbis from a later period yet. The midrashic compilations of this period are often termed “exegetical,” or sometimes “homiletical” midrash, as well as “aggadic”: this is to be differentiated from the midrash halakhah, which was a feature of earlier tannaitic midrash, and largely focused on the exposition of law and other forms of legal material. Aggadah/‫ אגדה‬is the Hebrew word for “narrative,”45 and signifies a type of interpretation that involves the weaving of stories, the expansion of characters, and the introduction of plots into the earlier material. There are four classic works of aggadic midrash from amoraic Palestine, and each of them appears, at some point or another, in this dissertation. These are Genesis/Bereshit Rabbah, Leviticus/Vayikra Rabbah, Song of Songs/Shir Ha-Shirim Rabbah, and Lamentations/Eichah 43 See the entry for this root in the glossary, p. 314. 44 For general overviews of this period, see David Gooblatt, “The Political and Social History of the Jewish Community in the Land of Israel, c. 235-638,” in the Cambridge History of Judaism, Vol. 4: The Late Roman- Rabbinic Period, ed. Steven Katz (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 404-430 and Joshua J. Schwartz, “The Material Realities of Jewish Life in the Land of Israel, c. 235-638,” in the Cambridge History of Judaism, Vol. 4: The Late Roman-Rabbinic Period, ed. Steven Katz (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006) 431-456. For an overview of classical rabbinic aggadic midrash in this period, see Avigdor Shinan, “The Late Midrashic, Paytanic, and Targumic Literature,” in the Cambridge History of Judaism, Vol. 4: The Late Roman-Rabbinic Period, ed. Steven Katz (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006) 678-698 and Strack and Stemberger, Introduction, 288-321. 45 See the entry for this word on pp. 325-26 of the glossary. 17 Rabbah. Genesis and Song of Songs Rabbah are arranged relatively lemmatically, similar to earlier works like the Mekhilta, while Levitcus and Lamentations Rabbah, though they do contain lemmatic elements, also contain much more highly stylized compositions, such as the proem. As with the texts cited above, they are cited in consultation with the best possible manuscript and the critical edition. 46 The other great composition of the Palestinian amoraim, of course, is the Palestinian Talmud, also known as the Yerushalmi. The terms are interchangeable in this dissertation. The Palestinian Talmud, like the Babylonian, is arranged as a commentary on the Mishnah: it too contains orders divided into tractates. In discussions of the Yerushalmi (and the Bavli as well), material that forms the “commentary” on the Mishnah is referred to as gemara. Citations from the Yerushalmi are given with a ‘y’ before the tractate; then the chapter and halakhah are given, along with the page and column. The page and column are cited from the Venice printing of the text. Importantly, the Yerushalmi only exists for the first four orders of the Mishnah: whether this is because the latter two were lost in the course of transmission, or simply never committed to writing, is unknown. 47 The most important manuscript of the Yersushalmi is the Leiden manuscript: it is the only known complete text of the Yerushalmi, and dates from 1289. 48 I cite 46 The oldest manuscript of Bereshit Rabbah is MS Vat. Ebr. 60, which is not used in the critical edition, as it was discovered after its publication. The critical edition is J. Theodor and Ch. Albeck, Midrash Bereshit Rabba: Critical Edition with Notes and Commentary 3 vols. (Jerusalem: Wahrmann Books, 1965). Lamentations Rabbah has a complex textual tradition, and exists in two different recensions: when cited, I indicate whether I am utilizing the Buber edition (Salomon Buber, Midrasch Echa Rabbati: Sammlung Aggadischer Auslegungen der Klaglieder (Hildesheim: G. Olms, 1899) or the facsimilie of the Pesaro 1519 printing. For Leviticus Rabbah, I utilized Margolioth’s edition, which is based on the MS. 27169 at the British Museum. For Song of Songs Rabbah, I use a facsimile of the Pesaro printing. 47 Strack and Stemberger, Introduction, 166. 48 MS Leiden, Scaliger 3. The text of the Yerushalmi is consistently problematic. Even in this manuscript, the scribe, Yehiel b. R. Yequtiel b. R. Benjamin Ha-Rofe’, complains about the quality of the text. 18 quotations from the Yerushalmi based on the Leiden manuscript, in consultation with the printed edition and other manuscripts when the text proves particularly problematic. The content of the Yerushalmi is also the subject of much scholarship. In addition to parallel sugyot, or dialectic units of discussion, between the Yerushalmi and the Bavli, a significant amount of material in the Yerushalmi is shared with Genesis Rabbah. 49 This parallels in some ways the issue of the relationship between the Mishnah and the Tosefta, and helps to create an image of rabbinic literature not as composed of discrete texts, but rather a body of tradition, some of which was crystallized in writing, and ultimately passed down and transmitted. The dating of the Yerushalmi has also proven problematic: while there is general consensus on a date of redaction sometime in the late fourth or fifth centuries, some scholars look to the total absence of material regarding the Emperor Julian’s attempt to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem as a sign that the entire text was redacted before 363 CE.50 This argument is less convincing: it seems unlikely that Julian’s failed attempt to rebuild the Jerusalem Temple would have elicited much notice from a highly internally-focused group of religious specialists who were mostly concerned with the exertion of their own authority over other Jews. The last, largest, and most complex text that appears in this dissertation is the Babylonian Talmud, or Bavli. The Bavli is the product of a long period of composition, compilation, and redaction, and contains three distinct strata that scholars use to date traditions and understand their relationship to each other and other rabbinic texts.51 Like the Yerushalmi, it is organized 49 Cohen, Shaye J. D. The Synoptic Problem in Rabbinic Literature (Providence: Brown Judaic Studies, 2000). 50 Lieb Moscovitz, “The Formation and Character of the Jerusalem Talmud,” in the Cambridge History of Judaism, Vol. 4: The Late Roman-Rabbinic Period, ed. Steven Katz (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006) 663-677. 51 The division of the Bavli into strata was a monumental achievement in the twentieth-century study of Judaism. The identification of the latest layer, or the stamma, the anonymous material, with the period of redaction was an insight arrived at independently by two scholars: David Weiss Halivni, and Shamma Friedman. Weiss Halivni’s theory of the Talmud’s organization and redaction is most succinctly recounted in David Weiss Halivni, The 19 around the Mishnah. Also like the Yerushalmi, it is not a complete commentary on every one of the Mishnah’s tractates: only one of the tractates in the first seder, Berakhot, has Bavli gemara. The Yerushalmi and Bavli can look quite similar, as they are both typically transmitted as selections from the Mishnah followed by gemara. As noted earlier, there are often parallel sugyot, and even almost identical narratives. 52 It was the Bavli, however, that became normative for Jews across the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe in the medieval period. 53 The three layers of the gemara are an important aspect of the academic study of the Bavli and Yerushalmi. First is the tannaitic layer: this is composed either of quotations from the Mishnah, or statements from tannaitic rabbis that do not appear in the Mishnah. These latter are known as baraitot/‫( בראייתות‬baraita/‫ ברייתא‬singular). Some baraitot appear in the Tosefta, but others are exclusively present in the Bavli and other later rabbinic writings. Given this pedigree and the fact that citation and ascription are crucial aspects of rabbinic educational reading practices, it is not unreasonable to assume that some baraitot are authentic, and that others are formulated explicitly to lend authority to the statements of later rabbis. The second layer of the gemara is composed of statements made by named amoraic figures. These statements are often cryptic and confusing: in Halivni’s theorization, they are the Formation of the Babylonian Talmud, trans. Jeffrey Rubenstein (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). It is, for the most part, Weiss Halivni’s theorization of the Bavli’s formation that I rely on. 52 One of the most important studies of these parallels (and the differences between them) is Christine Hayes, Between the Palestinian and Babylonian Talmuds: Accounting for Halakhic Difference in Selected Sugyot from Tracate Avodah Zarah (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997). Hayes ultimately argues that the differences between the two Talmudim are the result of different legal cultures. While this is surely true, I find it less than compelling, as it is a completely inward-facing argument: these different legal cultures were surely the result of contextual, historical factors. 53 For a recent discussion of how this might have happened, see Talya Fishman, Becoming the People of the Talmud: Oral Torah as Written Tradition in Medieval Jewish Cultures (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013). 20 briefest of notations regarding much longer dialectic discussions between rabbinic figures. 54 The last layer, which appears at its zenith in the Bavli, is the stam or stamma: the anonymous, Aramaic stratum that shapes and frames the other two, and often adds its own authoritative voice to the discussion. The period of stammaitic activity is a long one, and the beginning and ending dates are constantly debated; Weiss Halivni limits it the half-century between 550 CE and 600 CE,55 although it is more likely that the bookends are a little fuzzier. There is no critical edition of the Babylonian Talmud, and only one complete manuscript exists: the Munich 95 manuscript. Produced in Paris in 1343, this document, however, is often recognized to contain an inferior text.56 The other manuscripts are too numerous to list here, but many of them reflect an older, and relatively reliable, text type. The general practice in this dissertation has been to use the manuscript for each tractate that the Historical Dictionary of the Hebrew Language has identified as the “best” base text for a specific tractate, and to the reproduce it, noting significant divergences with the received, printed text. The standard text of the Bavli, known as the Vilna Edition, was printed by the Bomberg publishing house in the late 19th century, and contains the entire Bavli in thirty-seven volumes. Locations in the Bavli are referred to by their pagination in the Vilna edition; bBerakhot 5b, for example, refers to the recto of folio 5 in Bavli Berakhot. As the literary output of the classical rabbinic period forms the bulk of our corpus of evidence, I have here highlighted the most important aspects of the texts that will appear in the following chapters. This is not the entirety of classical rabbinic literature: there are several earlier 54 Weiss Halivni, Formation, 5. 55 Ibid, Formation, 4. 56 Strack and Stemberger, Introduction, 209. 21 tannaitic legal midrashic collections, such as the Sifra and Sifre Numbers and Deuteronomy that do not appear here, and other later collections from the Palestinian Amoraim. From here, though, we move on to explore some of the more conceptual issues surrounding the reading of rabbinic literature, both in the ancient world and as scholars. V. Orality, Literacy, and Materiality For a long time, it was considered a truism that texts from the ancient world were remnants of a primarily oral phenomenon, and that rabbinic literature especially reflected an exclusively oral and auditory culture. The issue with this line of thinking, of course, is that we only have access to these texts through writing. Scholarship on rabbinic orality has progressed rapidly in the past few decades, although there are certain assumptions that still grip the vast majority of the field. The reigning assumption of rabbinic literature as exclusively oral until the very end of late antiquity, or even the early middle ages, has been supported largely through deference to theories of orality. Martin Jaffee was instrumental in complicating this conversation by pointing out that the rabbis were capable of making orality into an ideologically loaded discourse, like any other cultural practice. 57 He showed that the deep concern with oral texts in rabbinic literature, and the very conception of the Oral Torah, were constructs of the later rabbinic period, rather than an inherent part of the culture from the beginning as had previously been assumed. Building on his work is the scholarship of Elizabeth Shanks Alexander, 58 who looks closely at one tractate of the Mishnah in order to consider the ways in which its transmission had a hand in constructing the text’s authority. Most central to her argument is a 57 Martin Jaffee, Torah in the Mouth: Writing and Oral Tradition in Palestinian Judaism 200 BCE-400 CE, 1st edition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001). 58 Elizabeth Shanks Alexander, Transmitting Mishnah: The Shaping Influence of Oral Tradition (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006). 22 conceptualization of transmission as an actively intellectual, engaged process—a reading practice. With Alexander’s work on the Mishnah, we are given a glimpse into one of the ways that the rabbis utilized the practice of deep, engaged reading and recitation in order to legitimize their own authority. Alexander does not explicitly theorize the practice of reading in her work. For her, the recitation and transmission of the text is part of the broader field of rabbinic education, or training. By moving it into the field of reading, of which certain educational practices constitute a part, we can better see this process as one of the ways that late ancient rabbis use reading to construct their own authority. Working on the other side of the argument is Yaakov Zussman, who claims that rabbinic literature was exclusively oral until quite late, and not written down until the early middle ages. 59 He bases his arguments on the paucity of terms for the accoutrements of reading and writing in classical rabbinic literature, as well as the formalized, oral-performative style of the texts. Rabbinic society was, in his estimation, an “oral society,” and therefore not concerned with texts as “texts,” or physical, material things, but rather only as loci of religious beliefs and dogma. Zussman’s article is representative of a majority position in the study of rabbinic texts: that the “textuality” of these documents is a much later phenomenon than their actual composition. When the rabbis are understood as part of a small group of literate intellectual religious elites, a category that, in the rest of the late ancient Mediterranean, would have been deeply involved in textual practices involving actual books (or at least, scrolls and codices), it becomes clear that our understanding of their textual engagement needs to allow space for “reading” as a practice actually performed with physical texts. Yaakov Zussman, “Torah She-Be’al Peh P’shutah Ka-Mashma’ah: Kocho Shel Kutzo Shel Yod,” Mechqerei 59 HaTalmud 3:1 (2005): 209–384. 23 The material realities of reading in the late antique Mediterranean were not substantively different among rabbinic, Jewish, and Christian communities. Contingent local and economic factors contributed to what reading “looked” like as much as anything else, and there is little reason to believe, in my opinion, that different communities made use of radically divergent technologies. When the rabbis do discuss the materials of reading and writing, they are typically recognizable. The ritual of the sotah, or the suspected adulteress, is outlined in mSotah. Part of this ritual involves the writing of a text for literal consumption, and mSotah 2:4 discusses the materials by which it must be written. This mentions quite a number of writing materials that are familiar from the Greek and Roman worlds: ‫ואינו כותב לא על הלוח ולא על הנייר ולא על הדיפתרא אלא במגילה שנ״ בספר‬ ‫ואינו כותב לא בקומוס ולא בקלקנתום ולא בכל דבר שהוא רושם אלא בדיו שנ״‬ 60 ‫ומחה כתב שהוא יכול להימחות‬ And he does not write upon a tablet, or upon papyrus, or parchment, but a scroll, as it is written: “in a book.” And he does not write it with gum resin, or calcanthum, or with anything that leaves an impression, but rather with ink, as it is written, “and erase it,” a writing that is able to be erased. The materials listed here are all familiar from other studies of writing in the Greek and Roman worlds. A tablet, or luach, is likely a reference to the wooden writing tablet coated with wax that were used to transmit writing messages from the end of the eighth century BCE onwards. 61 Niyyar seems to indicate parchment, although the presence of “scroll,” or “megillah” later suggests that in this context, it is a loose sheet rather than a more commonly seen papyrus scroll. 60 Transcribed from MS Kauffmann A 50, where it is mSotah 2:5 rather than 4. 61 Hurschmann, Rolf (Hamburg), “Writing tablets”, in: Brill’s New Pauly, Antiquity volumes edited by: Hubert Cancik and Helmuth Schneider. 24 “Diftra” is a transliteration of the Greek διφθέρα, or prepared parchment. The various ingredients used in ink here are, again, all recognizable elements of Mediterranean scribal and literary culture. We are rarely, if ever, given a reason to assume radical difference in the material realities of rabbinic reading and writing cultures from the cultures surrounding them. 62 Though few could read, and books, scrolls, codices, pens, and ink were expensive, the rabbis imagined themselves to inhabit a rarefied world that was bookish and literary, at least for those whom they recognized as members of the same group. In describing the extent of their own wisdom and learning in the face of the deity’s, two early rabbis in a Palestinian amoraic text provide us with the quote that forms the title of this dissertation. ,‫ וְ שָּ מַ יִּם וְ אֶ ֶרץ ְמגִּ ּלֹות‬,‫מֹוסין‬ ִּ ְ‫ וַאֲ ג ִַּמים קּול‬,‫ ִּאם יִּ הְ יּו כָּל הַ י ִַּמים ְדיֹו‬,‫ַרבִּ י אֱ לִּ י ֶעזֶר אֹומֵ ר‬ ‫ וַאֲ נִּ י לא‬,]‫ אֵ ין מַ ְספִּ יקִּ ין לִּ כְ ּתֹוב [דברי תורה שלמדתי‬,‫וְ כָּל בְ נֵי הָּ אָּ דָּ ם לַבְ ל ִָּּרים‬ ‫ ַרבִּ י יְ הֹושֻׁ עַ אֹומֵ ר ִּאם יִּ הְ יּו כָּל‬.‫חִּ סַ ְר ִּּתיהָּ אֶ ּלָּא כְ אָּ דָּ ם שֶ מַ ְטבִּ יל זַכְ רּותֹו כְ ִּמכְ חֹול בַ יָּם‬ ‫ אֵ ין‬,‫ וְ כָּל בְ נֵי אָּ דָּ ם לַבְ ל ִָּּרין‬,‫ וְ שָּ מַ יִּ ם וָּאָּ ֶרץ יְ ִּריעֹות‬,‫מֹוסין‬ ִּ ְ‫ וַאֲ ג ִַּמים קּול‬,‫הַ י ִַּמים ְדיֹו‬ ‫ וְ לא חִּ סַ ְר ִּּתיהָּ ַרק כְ אָּ דָּ ם שֶ מַ ְטבִּ יל זַכְ רּותֹו‬,‫תֹורה שֶ ּלָּמַ ְד ִּּתי‬ ָּ ‫מַ ְספִּ יקִּ ין לִּ כְ ּתֹוב ִּד בְ ֵרי‬ 63 .‫כְ ִּמכְ חֹול בַ יָּם‬ Rabbi Eliezer said, “If all the seas were ink, and the reeds were pens, and heaven and earth were scrolls, and every man were a scribe, they would not be enough to write down the words of the Torah which I have learned, and I would not have lessened it any more than a man dipping his pen in the blue of the sea.” Rabbi Joshua said, “If all the seas were ink, and all the reeds were pens, and heaven and earth were parchment scrolls, and every man a scribe, they would not be enough to write the words of Torah which I have learned, and I would not have lessened it even as much as a man dipping the tip of his pen in the blue of the sea.” 62 Some of the most important work describing the realities of reading in the Roman and Byzantine worlds are gathered in Guglielmo Cavallo and Roger Chartier, A History of Reading in the West, trans. Lydia G. Cochrane (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1995). See also Guglielmo Cavallo, Lire à Byzance (Paris: Belles Lettres, 2006). 63 Song of Songs Rabbah, I.3.1. 25 The extent of their learning is enormous, and Joshua and Eliezer are aware of this. The extent of their learning in relation to the amount that there is to be learned, however, is minuscule—and the only images sufficient to capture the disparity between what they know, and what they could know, are images that turn the entire world into books to be read. This image brings together the importance of the material in reading: learning is a practice that is done with other things, and not solely in the mind of the reader. It has cosmic significance: here we see the entire world become a book. In chapter 3, we will see the entire world hinge on a book’s reading. Before concluding this introduction with a brief outline of the argument and chapters, it is worth making explicit a material concern that will be argued implicitly throughout the course of this dissertation. When considering readers and reading practices among rabbinic Jews, it is worthwhile to ask how many of them were women. The short answer, of course, is: not many, at least that we can see. When gender is deployed in rabbinic narratives of reading, it is done so in a way that constructs a female figure (such as Beruriah) as appropriately rabbinic, and in some cases, particularly masculine. In other places in rabbinic literature, women as readers are identified with lechery and witchcraft. 64 Women reading is a significantly more common trope in late ancient Christian literature, although again, many of these female readers are likely just as constructed as Beruriah. Still, though: it is just as problematic to assume that no women within the rabbinic orbit read, and that none of them were involved in the enterprise of interpretation and cultural production, as it is to assume the opposite. Text and image attest to a robust, if not particularly common, class of wealthy, educated women in the late Roman and early Byzantine worlds. 65 64 mSotah 3:4 Philip Rousseau, “Learned Women and the Formation of a Christian Culture in Late Antiquity,” Symbolae 65 Osloenses 70 (1995) 116-147. 26 Though the explicit reading practices of the Jewish women in this class were ephemeral, and no longer available for us to analyze, it would do them a disservice to pretend that they never existed. Similarly, Jerome, John Chrysostom, and Augustine all wrote to and about pious, reading women. While scholarship has shown time and again that many of them—Eustochium, Paula, and Olympias, for example—serve an important purpose as the author’s foil, or idealized construction, or intended audience, these were also real women, who read, listened to, or even composed texts.66 For every Eustochium, the ideal virgin falling asleep as she reads her bible in Jerome’s nineteenth epistle, there is a Sulpicia or a Proba, actively reading, writing, and pushing against the assumptions of a particular culture. It is these tensions and moments of incongruity that characterize the interaction of gender and reading in antiquity, and that we must keep in mind when we come across descriptions thereof, and allusions thereto. VI. Chapter Outline The main contention of Chapters 1 and 2 is that educational reading practices in the rabbinic orbit were, by and large, the same types of practices used to teach literacy in the wider Greco-Roman Mediterranean. Chapter 1 focuses on the first: the practice of “excerpting,” or selecting portions of a text for learning and memorization. Several examples from the surrounding environment are brought into play: excerpting was a common late ancient reading practice with a long history, and was particularly employed by scholars and commentators, like Stobaeus. Traditions of formalized versification, as well as ad hoc textual divisions, create the groundwork for practices that use the Hebrew Bible for divination, as well as the long tradition of creating parshiyyot, or weekly readings. 66 Elizabeth Clark, “The Lady Vanishes: Dilemmas of a Feminist Historian After the ‘Linguistic Turn’” Church History 67:1 (1998) 1-31; Ross Shepard Kraemer, Unreliable Witnesses:Religion, Gender, and History in the Greco-Roman Mediterranean (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011) 243-274. 27 Chapter 2 examines the rabbinic educational practice of repetition and recitation as a strategy that is built upon the division of texts into smaller parts. The evidence suggests that rabbinic understandings of education hold it as an embodied, lived practice; additionally, the practices adduced become substantially more institutionalized and explicit as we move later through rabbinic history. This latter stays true for every category of reading practice adduced in this dissertation. Repetition as a practice of literacy and subject formation is examined in the Cause of the Foundation of the School of Nisibis, which rewrites creation as an idealized reading lesson between God and his angels. In Chapter 3, the argument proceeds in three parts. It first argues that the practices of division, segmentation, and repetition that characterized rabbinic educational reading maintain their importance in the liturgical realm. It is these practices, and the reading habits that they instilled in rabbis, that are most significant in the creation of parshiyyot, or individual readings from the Torah which are assigned to specific weeks. Secondly, the interpretive practices enabled by the presence of an atomized text enable a specific type of thematic connection between particular readings and various days of the year: in this way, the reading of the Torah along with the simple fact of its liturgical placement in the yearly cycle become a form of study and debate as liturgy. Finally, we see a late development of the idea of an “order,” or seder of reading. This concept has cosmic resonances, and should be understood as both a more formalized, set reading cycle, and an actual “script” for liturgical performances. After defining divination as a specific form of seeking extraordinary knowledge, the next chapter looks at the way that rabbinic divisions of texts enable this practice. The first part of Chapter 4 deals with a practice not often considered divinatory: the marking and counting of texts, and the writing commentaries. As becomes apparent from both the practice of pesher and 28 various types of rabbinic lemmatic commentaries, this was yet another way of seeking extra divine knowledge from texts. The balance of the chapter deals with bibliomancy: a practice by which rabbis utilize randomly selected verses to tell the future (or in some cases, the present). The vocabulary utilized for bibliomancy is highly textual, and even technical, and two of the most famous scenes in early Christian literature—the “conversions” of Antony and Augustine— are based on its divinatory logic. This last body chapter of the dissertation clarifies and synthesizes some of the assumptions that rabbis held in regard to texts. Reading was a powerful thing: depending on what was read, and the way in which it was read, a reader could be powerfully changed, or effect powerful changes. This chapter examines three passages (one narrative, and two more exegetical) to uncover these assumptions. Similar notions were at play in the work of late ancient Christians. Athanasius’ letter to Marcellinus, for example, dictates exactly how consistently reading the Psalms produces spiritual and bodily changes. I tie together several threads in the conclusion. The dissertation focused on a specific type of reading practice: those that involve reading a text divided into smaller parts. This practice of division is crucial because it helps us understand some of the thinking behind rabbinic midrash, and how midrash itself is closely related to the practices of late ancient scholars and writer- intellectuals. Examining these reading practices reveals a certain type of orientation towards texts, and an orientation toward one text in particular: the Hebrew bible. Even broken down, reordered, and infinitely explained, it remains a source of enormous transformative power and authority. 29 BUNDLES OF LAW: EXCERPTING AND RABBINIC EDUCATION CHAPTER 1 I. Introduction Education in reading, writing, and literature was, for the most part, a prerequisite for membership in the class of independent religious specialists.1 The process by which that education was acquired, however, could take many forms, depending on the relative spatial, temporal, and social location of the practitioner. For late antique rabbis, that education typically happened, at least at first, in small, informal disciple circles, and then later in more formalized academies. For years, scholars have been indebted to the work of Henrich Graetz, whose monumental work on Jewish history attempted to identify many early rabbinic academies in Palestine.2 Graetz’s work, while regularly acknowledged as problematic, still occupies pride of place in many treatments of this subject, much as Marrou does in the history of Greek and Latin 1 Wendt, At the Temple Gates, 138-141. 2 Heinrich Graetz’s monumental, six-volume Geschichte der Juden was published in 1853 in German and quickly translated into multiple languages; the English-language translation appeared in 1891 (Heinrich Graetz, History of the Jews (trans. P. Bloch and B. Löwy; 6 vols; Philadelphia, PA: JPS, 1891-1898)). He discusses the ancient “schools” of the Jews in several different places; see, for example, vol. 2, pp. 426-30 (Hadrian’s persecution of the Jews and disestablishment of their schools, along with the martyrdom of those who continued teaching in spite of his edicts); 433-434 (the establishment of a school in Usha); 560 (the heads of the Babylonian schools in the time of Constantine); and 574-588 (on the differing interpretive methods of the academies of Sura and Pumbeditha, and their respective leaders). Graetz’s work represents an important watershed in the Wissenschaft des Judentums movement, and many of his assertions and uncritical claims were not only taken directly from rabbinic narrative, but are also still considered historical today. The prime example of this is his “creation” of the council of Yavneh, or Jamnia; on this, see Daniel Boyarin, “Anecdotal Evidence: The Yavneh Conundrum, “Birkat Hamminim,” and the Problem of Talmudic Historiography” in The Mishnah in Contemporary Perspective II ed. Alan J. Avery-Peck and Jacob Neusner (Boston: Brill, 2006), 1-35.d 30 education.3 Both works, and the subsequent scholarship, tend to focus on the institutional aspect of ancient education. Rather than starting with the institutions and working down to the lived, embodied practices that might have been performed within them, however, this chapter begins at the level of practice. What assumptions were foundational rabbinic educational practices based on? How did these assumptions manifest in the practices themselves? In the rabbinic world, education was the process by which a subject became a rabbi. 4 This process was composed of embodied practices, many of which surrounded text, and were similar to other educational reading practices in the ancient Mediterranean. These practices, which largely involved repetition, recitation, and ascription, were predicated on an orientation toward text that allowed it to be subdivided, segmented, atomized, and excerpted. In order to understand the background of these practices of repetition and recitation, this chapter analyzes the practice of dividing text into smaller pieces for the purpose of learning it thoroughly, and argues that such a practice is foundational to many other rabbinic reading practices. Textual division and segmentation lies at the bedrock of how late ancient rabbis conceived of texts, and the ways in which they considered it important to read them. This is the practice of excerpting, dividing, and subdividing texts: breaking up a much larger textual unit into several smaller ones which may, depending on their size, be useful for repetition, memorization, divination, liturgical reading, or even the writing of a lemmatic commentary. Such division was a basic part of educational reading for the rabbis: it was likely part of learning how to read, and certainly a component of learning the contents of texts. It was also a basic part 3 Henri-Irenée Marrou, A History of Education in Antiquity (3rd ed.; trans. George Lamb; Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1982). 4 The rabbinic sage is not only the living embodiment of Torah, but often the Torah himself: see, for example, yMoed Qatan 3:7, in which a dead sage’s disciple is compared to a burning Torah scroll. Jacob Neusner, The Talmud: What it is and What it Says (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006) 121. 31 of educational training across the ancient Near East and Greco-Roman world. The rabbis were not the first to subdivide the biblical text: we have evidence of this from Qumran and Philo’s writings.5 They were, however, the group whose implicit theorization of this practice as an educational norm is most clear. Once a text can be divided into smaller units, such units are typically standard elements of the numerous late ancient educational strategies for which we have evidence. They can be repeated, recited, and strung together into longer units; they can be shifted, mixed, and used to illuminate each other, much in the same as Aristarchus did with Homer. 6 Scholars familiar with rabbinic literature will recognize the beginning glimmers of midrash in this reading practice.7 This chapter begins with a brief discussion of rabbinic education within the context of broader late antique educational reading before turning to the practice of rabbinic textual segmentation, moving from tannaitic texts to the Babylonian Talmud. The division of texts, or excerpting, was a basic educational practice throughout the various periods of rabbinic activity in late antiquity, although it is much less apparent in tannaitic literature than it is in later amoraic and Babylonian stammaitic material. 5 Gregory Snyder, “Naughts and Crosses: Pesher Manuscripts and their Significance for Reading Practices at Qumran,” in Dead Sea Discoveries 7:1 (2000) 26-48. 6 To Aristarchus is attributed the classic interpretive motif “Homeron ex Homerou safenizen”: Homer is clarified from Homer. For more on Aristachus and this principle, see Gregory Nagy, Homeric Responses (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2003), x, 7-13. Nagy is very clear, however, that he does not see cross-referencing, or interpreting Homer through Homer as necessary evidence of a written, academic tradition: see the notes on pp. 9-10 for citations regarding his detractors. See also Maren Niehoff’s discussion of Aristarchus: Maren Niehoff, Jewish Exegesis and Homeric Scholarship in Alexandria (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 6-16. 7 The origins of midrash are an enormously complex and theologically loaded topic in the contemporary study of rabbinic literature. My contention here is small: that midrash was made possible by a certain orientation towards texts (see, for example, James Kugel, “Two Introductions to Midrash,” Prooftexts 3:2 (1983), 131-155; particularly pp. 133-4), and that that orientation also enabled a host of other practices centered around reading texts. 32 II. Education in Late Antiquity There are numerous end goals of the educational process, and this was no less true in antiquity. Education can signify a wide variety of models and practices, although for the most part, “education” in this dissertation refers to the ancient scribal model: the mastery of a certain set of skills involving texts, a specific body of knowledge, and the enculturation of a certain type of personhood that a “standard curriculum” was meant to reinforce. 8 Goals were contingent on the social class and aspirations of the student: a slave learning to read and write so that he might be useful for his owner’s business read significantly less Demosthenes and Isocrates (or Sumerian hymnography), for example, than the scion of a wealthy family who needed to maintain a certain amount of cultural capital in his or her daily interactions with other members of the elite.9 This does not, however, mean that students learning to read for a more “functional” career would not have had access to what we consider more literary texts. As far as we can tell, the types of texts, and even the texts themselves, that were used to teach basic literacy, and the higher levels of education for citizens, remained relatively stable across time and space in the late ancient Mediterranean, from at least the Hellenistic period on. These were, as the evidence of Egyptian papyri tells us, Homer (especially the Iliad), Isocrates, and Alexandrian hexameter, like Callimachus.10 These texts—this “beginning syllabus”—are significant because, at least in 8 David Carr, Writing on the Tablet of the Heart: Origins of Scripture and Literature (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 31. Carr is talking about Sumerian scribal education here, although his conclusions convincingly prove that similar goals motivated educational processes and practices across the ancient Mediterranean. 9 In Greek and Roman late antiquity, of course, we speak of the wide-reaching phenomenon of paideia, a set of learned codes and dispositions based on a “classical” understanding of certain texts that created a field of discourse in which the elite could effectively communicate with each other. 10 Raffaella Cribiore, Gymnastics of the Mind: Greek Education in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt (2nd ed.; Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), 140. There is also some evidence that Euripides was used, although in 33 the Greek and Roman world, they were used to inculcate a specific set of cultural values while acting as tools to instruct students in the basic skills of literacy. Learning to read and write was at the same time a process of learning to be a human—or at least, a specific, elite class’s vision of a human.11 The education of this specific class is often referred to as paideia.12 Coming from the Greek word παῖς, or “child,” παιδεία was the umbrella term used for the transmission of cultural values and norms in the Greco-Roman Mediterranean. 13 More than “education,” we can take it to mean “discipline,” “training,” “enculturation,” or even child-rearing. Education and the way it produced enculturated citizens was not a monumental system that stretched from Britannia to Babylon, but rather a tool that the elite could use to create a certain realm of discourse in which their own interests with regard to imperial policy and action could be served. Paideia in Late Antiquity was not a system, but a crystallization of certain expectations surrounding the Roman emperor and his court. 14 As a tool of education, discipline, and formation, it helps us to foreground the actual practices that constitute educational reading in late antiquity. As our gaze moves later and later, the continuities that run through ancient educational processes, especially in the Greek-speaking eastern half of the Mediterranean basin, stand out. The most classic formulation of a stable educational system can be found in Henri-Irenée significantly lesser quantities: manuscripts of Homer’s Iliad alone were found in educational contexts ten times more often. 11 Carr, Writing on the Tablet of the Heart, 31. Carr shows that this was not simply the case for Greek educational practices, but also for ancient Egyptian, Babylonian, Assyrian, and Sumerian cultures as well. The example he brings from Sumerian literature is perhaps the most compelling: a scribe’s literacy allows him to boast that he is “more human” than his master. 12 Peter Brown, Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity. For an earlier treatment, see Werner Jaeger, Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture (trans. Gilbert Highet; New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1944). See also Werner Jaeger, Early Christianity and Greek Paideia (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1961). 13 Liddell and Scott, Lexicon, 1286. 14 Brown, Power and Persuasion, 2. 34 Marrou’s magisterial History of Education in Antiquity.15 Marrou focuses almost exclusively on literary references to the education of elite youths, arguing that the system attained its height in the Hellenistic period, and did not change until the fall of the Roman empire (with subtle excuses made for the introduction of certain pieces of Latin literature to the educational corpus).16 The papyri of Egypt, patristic testimony, and rabbinic literature, however, present a different trajectory: the later we look, the more explicitly educational practices are built on earlier models, and they rely more solidly on earlier literature. Rather than inferring that these similarities indicate a stable, unchanged system, however, local differences should be regarded as real, important, and indicative of significant divergences in ideology and practice. There have been numerous correctives to Marrou’s claims in the nearly seven decades since his book’s publication, even though many of his more careful analyses still stand. 17 Most importantly, the discovery of papyri in several locales—especially trash heaps—across Egypt has provided an assemblage of documentary and material evidence that both corroborates and complicates Marrou’s largely literary narrative. Beginning classrooms seemed to contain students from various levels of the social pyramid, for example, and the emphasis seemed to be on learning to write long before learning to read. 18 Perhaps the most groundbreaking study in this 15 Henri-Irenée Marrou, A History of Education in Antiquity. 16 Marrou, History of Education, 342-357. 17 These studies are numerous, and there are far too many to cite them all here. Among the most important are Elizabeth Rawson, Intellectual Life in the Late Roman Republic (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985), in which the conception of education as helping to cultivate a certain type of “expertise,” or “expert class,” is outlined; Martin Bloomer (ed.), A Companion to Ancient Education (Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell, 2015); Matthew Hauge and Ryan Pitts (eds.), Ancient Education and Early Christianity (New York, NY: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2016); Yun Lee Too, The Pedagogical Contract: The Economies of Teaching and Learning in the Ancient World (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2000); and Yun Lee Too (ed.), Education in Greek and Roman Antiquity (Boston, MA: Brill, 2001). Significantly, many of these works are edited volumes, rather than full monographs: a testimony to the hold Marrou’s work still has on the field. 18 Cribiore, Gymnastics of the Mind, 2-4. 35 vein is Raffaella Cribiore’s Gymnastics of the Mind, which focuses narrowly on papyrological evidence for educational practices in Roman Egypt, showing that ancient education was a considerably messier and less formalized process than Marrou would have us believe— classrooms could contain both men and women, and contrary to older positions, materials such as papyrus and ink were not so prohibitively expensive as to completely bar the entirety of the lower classes from education.19 The discussion of papyrological evidence is important for the study of rabbinic educational practices because, as our only witnesses to actual lessons in the late antique classroom, it offers insights that other, more literary sources cannot. Even though the content taught in rabbinic disciple circles differed from what might be learned in an Alexandrian rhetorical school, the ways in which knowledge was transmitted and enculturated likely looked more similar than different. Jewish education in antiquity has in many cases also been taken monolithically, and the literary sources have been taken as gospel, partially because of the absence of almost any material evidence. 20 Many scholars are troubling this monolithic construction, however. They include David Goodblatt, in his reevaluation of rabbinic educational institutions as products of the later Sasanian context; Catherine Hezser, who utilizes archaeological, epigraphical, and textual evidence to show that Jewish society in the land of Israel was not more literate than the surrounding cultures; and Marc Hirshman, who points out the relative lateness of explicit rabbinic meditations on education. None of them, however, have focused explicitly on the 19 The volume of work on Egytpian papyri, especially from Oxyrhynchus, is staggering. See, for example, William A. Johnson, Bookrolls and Scribes in Oxyrhynchus (Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press, 2004) and Roger Bagnall, Everyday Writing in the Graeco-Roman East (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2010). 20 What material evidence there is, of course, is subject to disagreement: see the now classic piece, Shaye Cohen, “Epigraphical Rabbis,” Jewish Quarterly Review, 72:1 (Jul. 1981), 1-17 and its response, Hayim Lapin, “Epigraphical Rabbis: A Reconsideration,” Jewish Quarterly Review 101:3 (July 2011), 311-346. 36 specific reading practices that constituted ancient Jewish education, in whatever place and time. 21 Additional important contributions have been made by Moulie Vidas, who examines the rhetorical force of “tradition” as both a liberating and constraining concept in rabbinic thought, and rabbinic education in particular, as well as the work of Jeffrey Rubenstein, whose analyses of shame and dialectic in the Babylonian rabbinic academy provide a sense of “classroom dynamics” that might otherwise be lost.22 A synthetic history of rabbinic Jewish education in late antiquity begins with disciple circles of the pre-Rabbinic period in Roman Judaea, largely composed of wealthy, urban Jews. 23 These are typically understood as informal, if not quite ad hoc gatherings of students around a particular teacher, meeting either in the teacher’s home or some other public meeting space. The assumption is that Palestinian24 academies began to coalesce a little before the production, codification, or edition of the Mishnah, which is traditionally dated to ca. 200 CE, and associated with the activity of Rabbi Judah the Prince, or Yehuda Ha-Nasi, the first Gamalielide patriarch. 25 Only after the locus of rabbinic activity moves to Babylonia in the later amoraic period, is the 21 David Goodblatt, Rabbinic Instruction in Sasanian Babylonia (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 1975); Catherine Hezser, Jewish Literacy in Roman Palestine (Tübingen, Germany: Mohr Siebeck, 2001); and Marc Hirshman, The Stabilization of Rabbinic Culture, 100 C.E.-350 C.E.: Texts on Education and their Late Antique Context (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2009). 22 See, for example, Moulie Vidas’ Tradition and the Formation of the Talmud (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014) and Jeffrey Rubenstein, The Culture of the Babylonian Talmud (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003) 16-38; 67-79. 23 An important study of this phenomenon is Catherine Hezser’s The Social Structure of the Rabbinic Movement in Roman Palestine, TSAJ 66 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1997). See also Lapin, Rabbis as Romans, 71-73 and 76-78. 24 After the Bar Kochba revolt, of course, the province is renamed Palestina. 25 For a recent discussion of how various streams of authority seem to have coalesced in the position of the Gamalielide patriarch, as well as the association of institutionalization and the production of the Mishnah ca. 200, see Hayim Lapin, Rabbis as Romans, 54-59 (esp. 58). 37 institution of the Rabbinic Academy crystallized, most concretely in the geonic period.26 It is these academies that are most productively compared to Christian, Persian, and later Islamic academies of late ancient Mesopotamia. 27 We see the highest level of academic and scholastic institutionalization in these later Babylonian academies, 28 which leads to a more formal articulation of various practices—among those, practices associated with reading. 29 This chapter subscribes to the narrative presented above. As rabbinic education, and indeed the rabbinic movement itself, move more and more towards an institutionalized, formal structure in late ancient Babylonia, we see more careful attention paid to the act of reading itself. As rabbis come to be heads of schools, councils, and local structures of civic importance, 30 the various techniques of establishing and reaffirming their own authority, reading among them, become more and more important. It will also become apparent that written into the articulation of these practices is another set of assumptions, which is just as weighty: we will see an often- unvoiced assumption that reading is a serious, sometimes dangerous practice that can leave the reader indelibly marked. This was not an assumption unique to the rabbis: Carol Harrison has 26 On the geonic academy, see Robert Brody, The Geonim of Babylonia and the Shaping of Medieval Jewish Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), xx-xxi and 35-53. 27 Rubenstein, The Culture of the Babylonian Talmud, 67-79. 28 Brody does point out that there seems to have been a Geonate in Palestine that wielded both political and academic authority, but he insists that it was not as influential as the Babylonian Geonate, and that our evidence for it is much later (see Brody, xxi). 29 This narrative can be seen most explicitly in Catherine Hezser’s work: cf. Catherine Hezser, “Private and Public Education,” in the Oxford Handbook of Jewish Daily Life in Roman Palestine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010) 465-481. 30 See Cohen, “Epigraphic Rabbis,” Lapin’s “Epigraphical Rabbis: A Reconsideration,” and Hezser, The Social Structure of the Rabbinic Movement, esp. 353-404. 38 argued that listening and hearing texts, as theorized by ancient Christian authors, “stamped” the soul of the student just as much as reading did. 31 Paying attention to the senses, as Harrison does, highlights another important aspect of education in general: it is an embodied, physical discipline. To return to the insights of Pierre Bourdieu that we have already laid out, we can consider education as a cultural practice governed both by the environment in which it takes place, and the set of dispositions which allow it to occur.32 As a practice embedded in and governed by habitus, it is crucial to remember that education was both a practice of the mind—a practice that reproduced culture—and a practice of the body. The rabbis knew this. We would be hard-pressed to find discussions of educational reading practices that do not, in some way, make manifest the physical nature of what is taking place. Whether it is Beruriah’s insistence that study must be performed with all two-hundred-forty-eight limbs of the body, 33 or descriptions of memorization as a text residing in 31 Carol Harrison, The Art of Listening in the Early Church (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 30-32. 32 Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice trans. Richard Nice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977) 78-79. This is one of Bourdieu’s clearest outlines of habitus. “The habitus, the durably installed generative principle of regulated improvisations, produces practices which tend to reproduce the regularities immanent in the objective conditions of the production of their generative principle, while adjusting to the demands inscribed as objective potentialities in the situation, as defined by the cognitive and motivating structures making up the habitus. It follows that these practices cannot be directly deduced either from the objective conditions, defined as the instantaneous sum of the stimuli which may appear to have directly triggered them, or from the conditions which produced the durable principle of their production. These practices can be accounted for only by relating the objective structure defining the social conditions of the production of the habitus which engendered them to the conditions in which this habitus is operating, that is, to the conjuncture which, short of a radical transformation, represents a particular state of this structure. In practice, it is the habitus, history turned into nature, i.e. denied as such, which accomplishes practically the relating of these two systems of relations, in and through the production of practice. The “unconscious” is never anything other than the forgetting of history which history itself produces by incorporating the objective structures it produces in the second natures of habitus: “... in each of us, in varying proportions, there is part of yesterday's man; it is yesterday's man who inevitably predominates in us, since the present amounts to little compared with the long past in the course of which we were formed and from which we result. Yet we do not sense this man of the past, because he is inveterate in us; he makes up the unconscious part of ourselves. Consequently we are led to take no account of him, any more than we take account of his legitimate demands. Conversely, we are very much aware of the most recent attainments of civilization, because, being recent, they have not yet had time to settle into our unconscious.”” 33 See bEruvin, 55b. 39 the student’s heart, 34 the human body is never far from the rabbinic student’s mind and soul. This theme of bodily physicality will stay with us through the dissertation, but I will highlight it specifically in reference to educational reading practices. The importance of the bodily nature of education resides in the fact that becoming a rabbi meant submitting to an education that worked on, with, and through the body at every point. In this observation, I build on the argument of Martin Jaffee, who points to the ideology of orality as an instantiation of the broader rabbinic ideal by which sages become “living Torah.” This happens, I argue, not in the abstracted, intellectual world of the mind, but in the lived, learned, habitus of the late ancient educational world. Teachers bring eternal life to their students by giving them Torah—a practice which is only possible because the teacher himself has completely internalized and subsumed it.35 III. Reading in Part(s) Dividing a larger text into “usable” pieces, and the subsequent selection of texts to recite and repeat is an integral part of the broader rabbinic educational endeavor. This section deals with something fundamental and basic: how did late ancient rabbis talk about dividing texts into smaller parts for the purpose of learning them? This practice leads to other practices that will be examined more fully in succeeding chapters: the division of a text is a central element of scholarly, “text-critical” practices, divinatory practices, and even elements of the liturgy. This is also, as we can see from later manuscript evidence from chreia and apophthegmata, a practice with a firm foundation in the Classical world. 36 While the Greek textual scholars and experts of 34 See bEruvin, 54b. 35 Jaffee, Torah in the Mouth, 126-152; see especially 151. 36 Though Marrou mentions the educational utility of various selected passages (including chreiai) throughout his History of Education in Antiquity (cf. pp. 218, 238, 240, etc.), he does not, overall, treat the mechanism of selecting and excerpting those passages. Lillian Larsen has treated the utility of such chreiai as educational texts: cf. Lillian 40 Alexandria were certainly not the first to engage in practices we might subsume under the category of “academic close reading,” the stamp their efforts left on the practice of textual education is very clear in the remains of late ancient rabbinic material.37 The questions they asked of texts were made possible by a division of that text into manageable units—a fact that holds true for the questions rabbis asked as well. In the late ancient educational context, this dissertation refers to the practice of selecting portions of a text for an educational exercise as “excerpting.” David Konstan has written extensively on the practice of excerpting as a form of involved, careful reading, and we shall return to the particular ancient authors he treats at the end of this section.38 Excerpting, he argues, is a distillation of an active, careful reading practice. A selection of excerpts like Stobaeus’ are, he argues, both the remains of a lifetime of active reading, and an instructional primer for those who might take up the challenge to read on their own. 39 When late ancient rabbis excerpt, they do so in a way that indicates that the part—the verse, the word, the chapter—is just as important as the whole. The implicit practice typically involves biblical texts, and is inherent in the practice of midrash. Verses are interchangeable, and the entirety of scripture serves to illuminate itself. 40 The explicit practice is more proscriptive, Larsen, “Early Monasticism and the Rhetorical Tradition: Saying and Stories as Schooltexts” in Education and Religion in Late Antiquity (Peter Gemeinhardt and Peter Van Nuffelen, eds.: Farnham: Ashgate Publishing, 2016), 13-34. 37 This is a highly contested issue. I agree with the analysis of Michal Bar Asher-Siegal, in her discussion of rabbinic and patristic literatures as part of a “shared world.” See Michal Bar Asher-Siegal, Early Christian Monastic Literature and the Babylonian Talmud (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013). 38 David Konstan, “Excerpting as a Reading Practice,” in Thinking Through Excerpts: Studies on Stobaeus, ed. Gretchen Reydams-Schils (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2011) 9-22. 39 This is also comparable to the ancient and late ancient practice of scripture compilation: numerous examples exist of independent collections of Paul, for example, in florilegia and catenae. 40 The classic work on midrash as a genre that operates in this exact way is Daniel Boyarin, Intertextuality and the Reading of Midrash (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990). Boyarin’s ultimate argument is that the 41 and seems to involve the texts which they themselves compose. 41 Texts are divided into smaller units in order to enable their students to learn them more completely. This latter practice, of course, is only excerpting in a temporal sense: students are ultimately to learn the entirety of the text.42 It is simply during the day-to-day practice of study that they are able to divide the text into separate parts. The same principles, however, apply to both: the part is both important on its own, and also a useful gesture towards the whole. The rabbinic practice of excerpting texts for study, contemplation, and reading is often related implicitly, and almost always as a means to a specific end, rather than a practice in and of itself. There is no rabbinic theorization of excerpting in the same way that we might expect to find one in Stobaeus or an Alexandrian grammarian. As such, the evidence brought forth in this section can be frustrating: we will mine rabbinic literature for hints of such practices. Making selections from a text is almost always attendant on another practice. development of rabbinic midrash as a literary genre was part of the same practice that resulted in the formation of the Hebrew Bible. While I do not agree with this specific argument, his writing on the work of quotation in midrashic literature has been thought-provoking and generative (see pages 22-38). By suggesting that midrash is a type of intertextuality, his work was pioneering in thinking through the significance of scripture as a whole versus Scripture divided into parts. 41 I will discuss this in more detail later in the dissertation, but I see it as a crucial part of the broader project of rabbinic literature: forming more rabbinic subjects through the reading of certain texts. 42 The argument could be made—and indeed, I think is quite likely—that the implicit practice of excerpting that defines midrash is also, in some way, geared toward helping students learn the entirety (or at least more) of a text. 42 Tannaitic Excerpting Mekhilta Vayassa 3 The Mekhilta,43 an early rabbinic collection of midrash on the book of Exodus, contains one of the earliest references to the practice of excerpting and dividing a text. 44 As a commentary, the Mekhilta (also referred to as the Mekhilta d’Rabbi Yishma’el, to differentiate it from the Mekhilta of Rabbi Shim’on bar Yochai) operates lemmatically: it presents a line from the biblical text, and then its interpretation. In this formal characteristic, then, it looks something like the p’sharim from Qumran.45 Our text is an interpretation of Exodus 16:4, in which God instructs Moses about the manna. ‫יֹום‬-‫הַ שָּ מָּ יִּם; וְ יָּצָּ א הָּ עָּ ם וְ לָּקְ טּו ְדבַ ר‬-‫ הִּ נְנִּ י מַ ְמ ִּטיר ָּלכֶם לֶחֶ ם ִּמן‬,‫משֶ ה‬-‫וַיאמֶ ר יְ הוָּה אֶ ל‬ ‫לא‬-‫תֹור ִּתי ִּאם‬ ָּ ְ‫ לְ מַ עַן אֲ נַסֶ ּנּו ֲה ֵילְֵך ב‬,‫בְ יֹומֹו‬ And God said to Moses, “Here, I shall cause bread to rain down from the heavens for you, and the nation shall go out and gather a daily portion on its day, in order that I may test them, to see if they are walking in my teaching or not.” 43 There are two standard editions of the Mekhilta. The Hebrew critical edition by Horowitz-Rabin (H. Horowitz and Y. Rabin, Mekhilta de-Rabbi Yishma’el (Jerusalem: Sifrei Wehrmann, 1970) is the better text, but Lauterbach’s three-volume edition (Jacob Z. Lauterbach, Mekilta de-Rabbi Ishmael: A Critical Edition, Based on the Manuscripts and Early Editions 2nd ed. (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2004) with a translation is more accessible to non-specialists. 44 The Mekhilta’s dating has been a significant source of controversy for a long time. It has traditionally been dated, on the basis of style and cited sources, to the second century: Zunz, Lauterbach, and Epstein, among others, have advanced this dating. Ben-Zion Wacholder, however, on the basis of external references, rabbinic personages present in the text, and the text’s exegetical method, dates it to sometime between 600 and 800 of the common era (Cf. Ben Zion Wacholder, “The Date of the Mekilta De-Rabbi Ishmael”). Jacob Neusner was a proponent of this dating (Jacob Neusner, review of Intertextuality and the Reading of Midrash, by Daniel Boyarin, Journal for the Study of Judaism in the Persian, Hellenistic, and Roman Period 21:2 (1990) 254), while Daniel Boyarin accepted the older, traditional dating. I follow this older dating for the purposes of this dissertation, based on the similarity of the Mekhilta to other tannaitic midrashic compilations, as well as the Mishnah. I concede, however, that as with all rabbinic texts, there is a very real possibility that the form of the text which we have received is the product of a much later period than much of the content in that text. H. Gregory Snyder, “Naughts and Crosses: Pesher Manuscripts and Their Significance for Reading Practices at 45 Qumran.” Dead Sea Discoveries 7 (2000): 26-48. 43 This verse already has several elements which suggest that there is more at stake than simply the collection of food. Gathering manna bears a metonymic relationship to “walking in God’s teaching,” and God’s conversations with Moses are always fruitful loci of interpretation— especially legal interpretation—for the rabbis. The entire lemmatic interpretation reads thus: ‫ ר״ יהושע אומר כדי שילקוט אדם מהיום למחר כעין מערב שבת‬,‫דבר יום ביומו‬ ‫ ר״ אלעזר מודעי אומר כדי שלא ילקט אדם מהיום למחר כעין מערב‬.‫לערב שבת‬ ‫שבת לערב שבת שנ״ דבר יום ביומו מי שברא יום ברא פרנסתו מכאן היה ר״‬ ‫אלעזר המודעי אומר כל מי שיש לו מה יאכל היום ואומר מה אוכל למחר הרי זה‬ ‫מחוסר אמנה שנאמר למען אנסנו הילך בתורתי אם לא‬ “A day’s portion in its day”: Rabbi Yehoshua says that this is in order that a man may gather on one day the portion for the next day, just as is done on Sabbath eve for the Sabbath. Rabbi Eleazar the man of Modi’in says that it is in order that a man might not gather each day the portion for the next day, like on the Sabbath eve for the Sabbath. As it is written: “A day’s portion in its day.” He who created the day created its sustenance. From this, Rabbi Eleazar used to say, “All who have something to eat today and says, “What shall I eat tomorrow?” Behold: He is lacking in faith. As it is written, “In order that I may test them, to see if they are walking in my teaching or not.” ‫ר״ יהושע אומר שנה אדם שתי הלכות בשחרית ושתים בערבית ועוסק במלאכתו‬ ‫כל היום מעלין עליו כאלו קיים כל התורה כולה מכאן היה ר״ שמעון בן יוחאי‬ ‫אומר לא נתנה תורה לדרוש אלא לאוכלי המן הא כיצד היה יושב ודורש ולא היה‬ ‫יודע מהיכן אוכל ושותה ומהיכן היה לובש ומתכסה הא לא נתנה תורה לדרוש אלא‬ 46 ‫לאוכלי המן ושניים להם אוכלי תרומה‬ Rabbi Joshua says, “When a man repeats two halakhot in the morning and two halakhot in the evening, and engages in his work the entire day, they consider it for him as if he has fulfilled the entire Torah.” From this, Rabbi Shim’on son of Yochai used to say, “The Torah is not given to expound except for those who eat the manna: Behold, how could he sit and expound and not know from where he will eat and drink, and from where he will dress and cover himself? Behold, Torah is not given except to those who eat the manna. And they are like those who eat the Terumah.” 46 Lauterbach, Mekilta 103-4. 44 This passage treats many crucial themes. The intersection of study and sustenance, which has animated scholarship on the social location of the early rabbinic movement, is particularly prominent here.47 The study of halakhot is compared to the consumption of manna—and study, or at least acquisition, of Torah is deemed to only be possible by those who have been given the manna. Acquiring manna in the prescribed daily manner is equated to studying in a regular, daily pattern. By connecting the two, the Mekhilta is able to highlight a tension inherent in Torah study: it is an occupation worthy only of those who engage in it, but also an occupation that requires its practitioners to participate in the broader world. The division of a text into halakhot (‫ )הלכות‬is a reference to rabbinic texts, rather than the actual Hebrew Bible. While there is no self-evident hard-and-fast rule, biblical texts tend to be divided into units called “p’raqim” (‫ )פרקים‬or “p’suqim” (‫)פסוקים‬. Rather than continuous study throughout the day, we see here a theorization of the correct method of study based on small, discrete units: four halakhot a day, divided between the morning and the evening, are considered sufficient—as long as one is engaged in labor, or “melacha,” (‫ )מלאכה‬for the intervening time. The usage of the word halakhah as a unit of text, rather than a specific law, legal ruling, or general term referring to the broad category of rabbinic legal writing suggests, among other things, that a reasonably-sized unit of rabbinic text to learn in one sitting might be two rulings. 47 This is an enormously fruitful avenue of study. Jacob Neusner has argued that the rabbis should be considered in the light of Greek and Roman philosophers—men of means who had the leisure to devote their lives to study. The locus classicus of this argument is Jacob Neusner, Judaism: The Evidence of the Mishnah (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988), but see Shaye Cohen’s response in “Jacob Neusner, Mishnah and Counter-Rabbinics” Conservative Judaism 37:1 Fall (1983) 48-63. There are other, earlier works that examine continuities between rabbinic and Greco-Roman philosophical thought, although they spend less time considering the social context of these writings: see, for example, H. A. Fischel, Rabbinic Literature and Greco-Roman Philosophy: A Study of Epicurea and Rhetorica in Early Rabbinic Writings (Leiden: Brill, 1973). Catherine Hezser, in a recent unpublished piece, has also suggested that Rabbis are best understood in the context of late ancient intellectuals of the Roman world: men for whom study could be conflated with sustenance because sustenance was as much a given in their life as constant study was. 45 Additionally, the sonic resonances between halakhah and melacha create a pun that conflates the two, allowing them to bleed together. 48 The range of associations here is broad: manna is given, as is Torah—but Torah is only given to those who acquire the manna first. Similarly, the acquisition of manna is contingent on the performance of labor: manna, then, is not a gift freely given, but something that is labored for day by day, like Torah (likely the oral Torah in this case), which is learned halakha by halakha. It is even explicitly stated that one makes a subject worthy of the other. Implicit in this selection is also one of the most important underlying themes of rabbinic education in late antiquity: its physical, bodily dimension. Food and study are presented together: both sustain the student, and are necessary for the continued survival of rabbinic subjects. More importantly, both are forms of sustenance that have their origins in God. Mishnah Avot Many tannaitic traditions regarding education can be found in Mishnah Avot, a tractate that is singularly concerned with ethical formation. This fact underscores one of the larger arguments of this dissertation: that rabbinic literature assumes that there is more to texts, physical and metaphorical, than meets the eye. Texts contain more than what is written in their pages (or on their skins), and more importantly, can change the reader. We can see a slightly different strategy of excerpting, or perhaps “bundling,” content and reading material in Mishnah Avot 3:18. Certain subjects are identified as the “main body” of the laws, while others are considered “condiments,” or supernumerary. The text reads: ‫רבי אליעזר בן חסמא אומר קינין ופתחי נדה הן הן גופי הלכות תקופות‬ ‫וגמטריאות פרפראות לחכמה‬ Rabbi Eliezer ben Hisma says that the laws of qinin (bird offerings) and the openings of niddah (menstruation)—these are 48 It is also possible that this pun is, in fact, the reason halakhah was the chosen word. 46 the body of the laws. Seasons and gematria are the condiments to wisdom. The word used for “body,” which is the Hebrew word guf/‫גוף‬, follows our own usage of the word in reference to texts and humans: it is both the human figure, and the central portion of a text. Burton Visotzky has pointed out how similar this term is to the Greek σῶμα, which, in addition to meaning body (and scroll, in Byzantine Greek), can be used to signify the main portion of a miscellany text.49 The separation of a corpus 50 into various parts—the main body and the “condiments,” or additions, is clearly related to other types of division and grouping. This particular instance highlights the combination of like texts: those that have to do with one set of laws go together, and so forth. There is also a hierarchy of study represented. Certain laws are considered more important than others, hence their appellation as “body” instead of “condiment.” We are also given a glimpse into what the format of these laws, or halakhot, might have been. The laws of menstruation are not given in full, but rather described as the “pitchei,” or “openings,” of the menstrual laws. Whether this means an introductory treatise, an initial set of legal material, or a more formal composition, like the later peticha, or proem, is unclear, but it suggests that collected rabbinic material was transmitted in more ways than those to which we have access. Together, these two sets of passages reveal a tannaitic preference for dividing a body of knowledge—typically in the form of a text—into discrete parts. The Mekhilta is is concerned with the amount of text appropriate for reading and learning in a certain day, while Mishnah Avot shows a desire to divide the text, and then produce hierarchies: the important material is grouped together, and the less important material forms another coherent bundle. A text can be 49 Burton Visotzky, Golden Bells and Pomegranates (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003) 31-40. 50 Another textual word that signifies our own commitment to reading as a bodily practice. 47 excerpted for a variety of reasons, but in the examples present here, their recombination’s purpose is education. Amoraic Excerpting Leviticus Rabbah 3:1 While there are brief mentions of dividing and breaking up texts for study in tannaitic materials, we have significantly more evidence from later periods. It is, of course, possible that this is simply an accident of preservation, although it seems more likely to me that, in following with the general trend, such practices become more and more commonplace as the rabbinic enterprise moved toward more and more institutionalized structures. A later Palestinian text, Leviticus Rabbah, 51 presents a slightly modified version of this practice, and ties it to an educational ideology. The importance of learning well, and learning deeply, is presented in opposition to learning broadly, but carelessly. The text is a complicated one. The middle chapters of Leviticus Rabbah resemble a lemmatic commentary, 52 but the beginning chapters each contain rabbinic formal compositions that have traditionally been known as petichot/‫( פתיחות‬or petichta’ot/‫ פתיחתאות‬in Aramaic). This composition is a lengthy chain of associations that leaps from biblical verse to biblical verse; while the initial verse can be anywhere in the Bible (and is often from somewhere in the Writings), the last verse is always the expounded verse in the text. Therefore, a peticha on Lamentations 1:1 (of which there are 51 The standard critical edition of Leviticus Rabbah is Mordecai Margalioth, Midrash Va-yikra Rabah, 5 vols (Jerusalem, 1953). Burton Visotzky has published a recent series of studies on this text, arguing, among other things, that the tradition understanding of Leviticus Rabbah as a “homiletic midrash” (or collection of “literary homilies”) is a misnomer, and that it bears far more in common with the Greco-Roman miscellany, or collection of chreiai. Cf. Burton Visotzky, Golden Bells and Pomegranates, 31-40. 52 Or a miscellany: Visotzky identifies the ‫גופה‬, or lemmatic portion of the text, as parallel the σῶμα portions of a Greek miscellany. The relation between the two forms of commentary of miscellany are the subject of another study altogether. 48 many—the entire first chapter of Lamentations Rabbah is also comprised entirely of p’tichot) might start with a verse from the Psalms, but it will always end with Lamentations 1:1. 53 In recent years, Visotzky has resurrected an older argument that counsels against considering petichot as highly stylized, formal compositions, or even referring to them as petichot. The term itself is much later, and only based on the standard opening of many (although nowhere near all, or even most) compositions of this type: “Rabbi x patach/‫פתח‬,” or “opened.” Visotzky suggests translating this term as “expounded,” and referring to these various compositions as “proems,” rather than petichot. This dissertation follows his lead. Even as a purely literary form, the proem speaks to a practice of constant excerpting and internal interpretation. For one verse to be interpreted in the light of another, a text needs to be understood, at least in one dimension, as composed of smaller, mutually illuminating units. This does not necessarily preclude the understanding of a text as linear or narrative—the division of a text into lectionary readings, for example, and the attendant rules and customs thereon, show us that such interpretive units can include entire stories. 54 The proem next analyzed reveal a practice of excerpting on both an implicit (form) and explicit (content) level. 53 There is a significant amount of literature on the petichah, or “proem,” as it is often translated. The classic early piece on petichot is the Joseph Heinemann, “The Proem in Aggadic Midrashim,” Scripta Hierosolymitana 22 (1971) 100-122. See also A. Goldberg, “’Petiha und Hariza: Zur Korrektur Eines Mißverständnisses,” Journal for the Study of Judaism 10 (1979), 213-218. Burton Visotzky has done a significant amount of recent work on the petichah: in his 2011 article in the Jewish Studies Quarterly (Burton Visotzky, “The Misnomers “Petihah” and “Homiletic Midrash” as Descriptions for Leviticus Rabbah and Pesikta De-Rav Kahana,” Jewish Studies Quarterly 18:1 (2011) 19-31) he calls the entire category in question, with the two petichot here included in the examples. Some of this is also reflected in his earlier book on Leviticus Rabbah, Golden Bells and Pomegranates: Studies in Midrash Leviticus Rabbah (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003). 54 Many ancient metaphors for texts use images of streams or oceans: these are images of plenitude and multiplicity (an ocean composed of drops, a sea of ink formed from individual letters) rather than explicit narrativity. For more, see Eva Mroczek, The Literary Imagination in Jewish Antiquity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 86-90. 49 The next text fulfills some of the major requirements of the proem. Rather than the classic chain of connections linking a verse from the Writings (in this case, Ecclesiastes 4:6) to a verse from the target text, this particular composition seems to be a series of connections that that might be drawn directly between the two verses, rather than a lengthy chain of associations. Even so, this text is a proem for two reasons: first, and perhaps most importantly, it still represents the practice of charizah/‫חריזה‬, the stringing together of verses through associative logic (even if it is only two verses here). Secondly, it opens with the classic phrase “Rabbi Yizchaq opened,” or “patach.” Norman Cohen has written obliquely about this proem in a longer article about Leviticus Rabbah 3.55 He identifies it as the first in a series of several that exegete Leviticus 2:1-2:56 ָּ‫יה שֶָ֔ מֶ ן וְ נ ַ ַָּ֥תן עָּ לֶ ֹ֖יה‬ ָּ֙ ‫וְ ֶֶ֗נפֶש ִּ ִּֽכי־תַ קְ ִּ ִ֞ריב קָּ ְר ַבַּ֤ן ִּמנְ חָּ ה֙ ַ ִּֽליה ָ֔ ָּוה ֹ֖סלֶת יִּ הְ יֶ ֶ֣ה קָּ ְרבָּ נ֑ ֹו וְ י ַ ַָּּ֤צק עָּ ֶֶ֙ל‬ ‫ּומשַ ְמ ָָּ֔נּה עַ ֹ֖ל‬ ִּ ֙‫יאּה אֶ ל־בְ נֵ ֶ֣י אַ הֲרן֮ הַ כהֲנִּ י ֒ם וְ קָּ ֶ֙ ַמץ ִּמשָָּּׁ֜ ם ְמ ֶ֣לא קֻׁ ְמ ֶ֗צֹו ִּמסָּ לְ ּתָּ ּה‬ ָּ ֶ֗ ִּ‫ ִּֽ ֶוהֱב‬:‫לְ ב ָּנִּֽה‬ ‫ַיהוה‬ ִּֽ ָּ ‫יחחַ ל‬ ֹ֖ ִּ‫כָּל־לְ בנ ָּ ָּ֑תּה וְ הִּ קְ ִֶּ֙טיר הַ כהֵָּׁ֜ ן אֶ ת־אַ ְזכ ָָּּרתָּ ּה֙ הַ ִּמז ָ֔ ְֵבחָּ ה ִּא ֵ ֵּׁ֛שה ֵ ַ֥ריחַ נ‬ And a person, when he brings an offering of meal to Yahweh, his offering shall be choice flour, and he shall pour oil upon it, and put incense on it. And he shall bring it to Aaron’s sons, the priests, and the priest will grab from it a handful of the choice flour and oil and all of its incense, and offer it as a smoke offering on the altar, a burnt offering, a pleasing odor to Yahweh. Leviticus Rabbah 3:1 begins with a verse from Ecclesiastes (4:6) and ends with the “target verse” of Leviticus 2:1. In this particular proem, we are given six cases in which it is shown how much better it is for a person to have less than to strive for the unattainable: to attempt to learn small portions of Torah, rather than attempt to commit the entire thing to memory (and likely to do so poorly). Learning, reading, and the practice of dividing texts into smaller portions for ease 55 Norman Cohen, “Leviticus Rabbah, Chapter 3: An Example of a Classic Rabbinic Homily,” Jewish Quarterly Review 72:1 (1981) 18-31. 56 Cohen, “Leviticus Rabbah,” 22. 50 in learning are all incidental to this passage: as Cohen shows, its main concern is the expiatory power of the sacrificial ritual. 57 ‫ ר' יצחק פתח טוב מלא כף נחת‬.)‫ א‬,‫נפש כי תקריב קרבן מנחה לי"י (ויקרא ב‬ .)‫ ו‬,‫ממלא חפנים עמל ורעות רוח (קהלת ד‬. “A person, when he brings a sacrificial offering to Yahweh…” (Lev. 2:1). Rabbi Yitzchaq opened, “Better is a full handful of gratification58 than two fistfuls of labor, and the pursuit of the wind” (Ecclesiastes, 4:6). ‫ אלא ורעות‬,‫טוב מי שהוא שונה שני סדרים ורגיל ממי ששונה הלכות ואינו רגיל‬ .‫ רעותיה מתקרי בר הילכן‬,‫רוח‬ Better is one who repeats two sedarim, and is fluent, than one who repeats halakhot and is not fluent; but it is the “desire of the spirit”59: it is his desire to be called “bar hilkhan,”60 (master/son of the laws). ‫ אלא ורעות‬,‫טוב מי שהוא שונה הלכות ורגיל ממי ששונה הלכות ומידה ואינו רגיל‬ .‫ רעותיה מתקרי בר מכאלא‬,‫רוח‬ The one who repeats halakhot and is fluent is better than the one who repeats halakhot and middah and is not fluent, but it is the “desire of the spirit,” it is the desire to be called “bar mekha’la’”61 (master/son of the precept?). ‫טוב מי שהוא שונה הלכות ומידה ורגיל ממי ששונה הלכות ומידה ותלמוד ואינו‬ .‫ רעותיה מיתקרי בר אולפן‬,‫ אלא ורעות רוח‬,‫רגיל‬ Better is the one who repeats halakhot and middah and is fluent than one who repeats halakhot and middah and talmud and is not 57 Cohen, “Leviticus Rabbah,” 29. In the exegesis of this verse, whatever is identified with the “handful of gratification” brings redemption. See 58 Cohen, “Leviticus Rabbah,” 22. 59 This is a sonic pun: the “pursuit of the wind” can also be translated as the “desire of the spirit,” or that which the spirit pursues. 60 This phrase only appears here in classical rabbinic literature, according to a search run on the Bar Ilan Online Responsa Database. 61 Again, this phrase is unique, according to the Bar Ilan Online Responsa Database. 51 fluent, but it is the “desire of the spirit,” it is his desire to be called “bar ulpan”62 (master/son of teaching). ‫טוב מי שיש לו עשרה זהובים נושא ונותן בהן ומתפרנס בהן ממי שהולך ולווה‬ ‫ רעותיה מיתקרי‬,‫ אלא ורעות רוח‬.‫ במתלא אמ' מאבד דיליה ודלא דיליה‬.‫בריבית‬ .‫פרגמטוטא‬ Better is the one who has ten gold coins and lifts them up, and gives them, and is prosperous from them, than he who goes and borrows on interest (they say in in a proverb that (one who borrows on interest) loses what is his and what is not his), but it is the desire of his spirit: his desire is to be called a trader. ‫טוב מי שהולך ופועל ועושה צדקה משלו ממי שהולך וגוזל וחומס ועושה צדקה‬ ‫ רעותיה‬,‫ אלא ורעות רוח‬.‫ במתלא אמ' גיפא בחזורי ומיפלגא למיבשיא‬.‫משלאחרים‬ .‫מיתקרי מרי מצואתא‬ Better is he who goes and works and performs tzedakah from his own belongings than he who goes and robs and does violence and gives tzedakah from the belongings of others (they say in a proverb that she commits adultery for apples and divides them among the ill/wicked) but it is the “desire of the spirit,” it is his desire to be called “bar mitzvata.” 63 ‫טוב מי שיש לו גינה מזבלה ומעדרה ומתפרנס ממנה ממי שהולך ונוטל עבד‬ ‫ דאגר גינין אכלין ליה‬,‫ במתלא אמ' דאגר גינה אכיל ציפרין‬.‫שלאחרים למחצה‬ .‫ רעותיה מיתקרי מרי אוסיאן‬,‫ אלא ורעות רוח‬.‫ציפרין‬ Better is one who has a garden, and manures it, and helps it, and makes a living from it, than one who carries off the gardens of others in half (they say in a proverb that one who rents a garden eats birds, but one who rents gardens, the birds eat him) but it is the desire of his spirit: it is his desire to be called “mar asiyan,”64 (a master of substance/property). 65 ‫ היך מה דאת אמר‬,‫אמ' ר' ברכיה טובה דריסה אחת שדרס הקב"ה בארץ מצרים‬ .‫ ממלא חפנים פיח הכבשן שלמשה ושלאהרן‬.)‫ יב‬,‫ועברתי בארץ מצרים (שמות יב‬ ‫ אמ' ר' חייה בר אבא טוב מלא כף‬.‫ בזה היתה גאולה ובזה לא היתה גאולה‬,‫למה‬ ,‫ אלא ורעות רוח‬.‫ אילו ששת ימי המעשה‬,‫ ממלא חפנים עמל‬.‫ זה יום השבת‬,‫נחת‬ 62 This phrase also occurs in Genesis Rabbah 81. 63 This phrase occurs later in Ecclesiastes Rabbah 4. 64 The Aramaic word here is clearly borrowed from the Greek οὐσία, similarly to the Syriac ousis/‫ܐܘܣܝܣ‬. 65 This is another unique phrase. 52 .‫ תדע לך שהוא כן שאין ישראל נגאלין אלא בשבת‬.‫רעותיה למעבד עיבדתיה ב הון‬ ‫ בשבה ונחת תיושעון‬,)‫ טו‬,‫הה"ד בשובה ונחת תיושעון (ישעיה ל‬ Rabbi Berekhiah said, “Better is one treading, which the Holy One, Blessed be He, tread in Egypt, (as they say, “And I shall pass through the land of Egypt on this night,” (Exodus 12:12)) than full fistfuls of powder, the furnace of Moses and Aaron. Why? Because there was redemption in this, and no redemption in that. Rabbi Hiyya bar Abba said, “A single handful is better—this is the Sabbath day—than two fistfuls of labor—these are the six days of work. But it is the desire of the spirit: his desire is to work through his work on them, to thus let you know that Israel will only be redeemed through the merit of the Sabbath, as it is said, “You shall be saved through stillness and quiet (shuvah v’nachat)”66 (Isaiah 30:15). ‫ זה‬,‫ ממלא חפנים עמל‬.‫ זה העולם הבא‬,‫ אמ' ר' יעקב בן קורשאי טוב מלא כף נחת‬. ‫ רעותהון דרשיעיא למעבד עיבידתהון בעלמא הדין‬,‫ אלא ורעות רוח‬.‫העולם הזה‬ ‫ כדתנן הוא היה אומר יפה שעה אחת בתשובה‬.‫מיסת ליתפרע מנהון לעלמא דאתי‬ ‫ יפה שעה אחת שלקורת רוח‬.‫ומעשה הטוב בעולם הזה מכל חיי העולם הבא‬ .‫בעולם הבא מכל חיי העולם הזה‬ Rabbi Yaaqov bar Qorshoi said, “A single handful is better—this is the world to come—than two fistfuls of labor—this is this world. But it is the desire of his spirit: the desire of the wicked men is to work through their work in this world in accordance with being paid back for them in the world to come, as they recite, he used to say: “One hour of repentance and good deeds in this world is better than the entire life of the world to come, and one hour of pleasure of spirit in the world to come is better than the entirety of life in this world.” ‫ בשעה שנכנסו שבט ראובן ושבט גד‬.‫ר' יצחק פתר קריה בשבט ראובן ובשבט גד‬ ‫לארץ וראו כמה בית זרע יש בה כמה בית נטע יש בה אמרו טוב מלא כף נחת‬ ‫ הה"ד יותן את‬.‫ רעותהון הוות‬,‫ אלא ורעות רוח‬.‫בארץ ממלא חפנים בעבר הירדן‬ .‫ חזרו ואמרו לאו אנן בחרנן לן‬.)‫ ה‬,‫הארץ הזאת לעבדיך לאחוזה וגו' (במדבר לב‬ ‫ זו קטרת‬,‫ ממלא חפנים עמל‬.‫ זה קומץ מנחה נדבה שלעני‬,‫ד"א טוב מלא כף נחת‬ ‫ אמ' הקב"ה חביב עלי קומץ מנחה נדבה שלעני ממלא חפנים‬,‫סמים דקה שלציבור‬ ‫ והוה זו‬.‫ שזו טעונה כפרה וזו אינה טעונה כפרה‬,‫קטרת ס מים דקה שלציבור‬ "‫ נפש כי תקריב קרבן מנחה לי‬,‫עשירית האיפה‬ Rabbi Yizchaq interpreted the reading to be the tribe of Reuben and the tribe of Gad, in the hour when they entered the land and saw how many seeds were in it, and how many plantings were in 66 This is another sonic pun: shuvah and nachat together create “Shabbat.” 53 it, and said: “A handful of gratification in this land is better than two fistfuls on the other side of the Jordan.” They turned and said, “We are not trying ourselves.” So it is written: “He will give this land to your servants” (Num. 32:5). Let it be the desire of the spirit: it was their desire. Another thing: A handful of gratification is better, this is the handful of the free-will offering of the poor person; than two fistfuls of labor and the desire of his spirit, this is the tender incense and spice offering of the congregation, the former of which bears expiation, and the latter of which does not bear expiation. And this one was a tenth of an ephah, “A person, when he brings a sacrificial offering to Yahweh…” The fundamental connection in this text is only understandable through the ritual of sacrifice in the Hebrew Bible. The text from Leviticus is the very beginning of a passage which describes the meal offering—an offering of choice flour, with oil and frankincense poured upon it. The offerant presents the materials of the offering to Aaron’s sons, the priests, who then take a handful of them and burn them on the altar. 67 The key term here is the handful that the priests take, even though the text from Leviticus uses a different word for handful (qometz/‫ )קומץ‬than the text from Ecclesiastes (m’lo kaf, chofnaim/‫)מלא כף חפניים‬. The handful of grain, oil, and incense becomes the handful of gratification and the two fistfuls of labor, of the verse from Ecclesiastes. The general organizing principle is that a small, certain amount of something good, or positive, is better than a large, precarious amount of something else. This second substance, it should be noted, might be good on its own—labor is an example of this—but when experienced in great amounts, it becomes clearly inferior to what it is being compared to. It is this association that allows the rabbis to spin a web of associations, many of which are grounded in assumptions about study and text. 67 Lev 2:1-2: ‫יאּה אֶ ל־בְ נֵ ֶ֣י אַ הֲרן֮ הַ כהֲנִּ י ֒ם וְ קָּ ֶ֙ ַמץ‬ ָּ ֶ֗ ִּ‫יה שֶָ֔ מֶ ן וְ נ ַ ַָּ֥תן עָּ לֶ ֹ֖יהָּ לְ ב ָּנִּֽה׃ ִּֽ ֶוהֱב‬ ָּ֙ ‫וְ ֶֶ֗נפֶש ִּ ִּֽכי־תַ קְ ִּ ִ֞ריב קָּ ְר ַבַּ֤ן ִּמנְחָּ ה֙ ַ ִּֽליה ָ֔ ָּוה ֹ֖סלֶת יִּ הְ יֶ ֶ֣ה קָּ ְרבָּ נ֑ ֹו וְ י ַָּצַּ֤ק עָּ ֶֶ֙ל‬ ‫ַיהוִּֽה׃‬ ָּ ‫יחחַ ל‬ ֹ֖ ִּ‫ּומ שַ ְמ ָָּ֔נּה עַ ֹ֖ל כָּל־לְ בנ ָּ ָּ֑תּה וְ הִּ קְ ִֶּ֙טיר הַ כהֵָּׁ֜ ן אֶ ת־אַ זְכָּ ָּרתָּ ּה֙ הַ ִּמז ָ֔ ְֵבחָּ ה ִּא ֵ ֵּׁ֛שה ֵ ַ֥ריחַ נ‬ ִּ ֙‫“ ִּמשָָּּׁ֜ ם ְמ ֶ֣לא קֻׁ ְמ ֶ֗צֹו ִּמסָּ לְ ּתָּ ּה‬And a person, when he brings a sacrificial offering to Yahweh, choice flower shall be his sacrifice, and he shall sprinkle oil upon it and put incense on it. And he shall bring it to the sons of Aaron, and he shall grab from it a handful of the choice flour and oil and all the incense, and the priest shall offer it as smoke upon the altar, a burnt offering with a pleasing scent.” 54 This text not only gives the reader a glimpse into how the rabbis conceived of certain types of reading and education, but it actually presents a curriculum of study. Unfortunately, some of the words used are obscure and debatable, so it is not entirely clear what, exactly, is being studied at any given moment, and in what order. Still, there is a clear progression, and the text makes it clear that there is a strong preference for fluency in a text gained by repetition and depth of understanding, rather than broad command that might have gaps in it. The first hierarchy that is given is that of orders, or “s’darim/‫סדרים‬,” and laws, “halakhot/‫הלכות‬.” Traditionally, an order is one of the six sections of the Mishnah—Mo’ed, Zera’im, Nashim, Neziqin, Tohorot, or Qodashim. In order for the logic of this passage to make sense, however, “seder” (the singular) is unlikely to refer to an entire order, but rather a smaller grouping of statements and sayings.68 It is better, the text says, to be fluent in two orders than to repeat “laws”—in this case, I think, likely referring to a large grouping, or even more possibly, the Mishnah itself—and not know them back to front. There is also an important sonic wordplay here. The word for “fluent” or “regular” is ragil/‫רגיל‬, which comes from the same root as regel, a word meaning leg, or pilgrimage—or, in rabbinic terminology, the sacrifice that is attendant on the pilgrimage festivals. This is a subtle reference, granted, but it underscores the general connection between study and sacrifice—and correct apportionment—that this text is suggesting by linking study back to the original context of the verse from Leviticus. The root ‫ר‬-‫ד‬-‫ ס‬again in a phrase that means “to read verse by verse.”69 This root has as much to do with the correct ordering of passages—and learning the correct order of passages—as it does with repetition and memorization. The scholar who can recite these orders regularly, the 68 ‫ סדר‬can also mean “row,” like in M. Keilim 14:2 or M. Middot 3:5. 69 See pp. 60-66. 55 passage tells us, is referred to as a “bar hilkhan,” a “son of the tractates,” or one who has mastered them. The occurrence of these titles throughout the passage seems to suggest that these are formal appellations for students (or perhaps scholars) who have achieved a certain rank in their learning.70 As this text contains a significant amount of Aramaic and appears in a Palestinian amoraic collection, it is possible that it reflects a greater degree of institutionalization than the Mishnah and other tannaitic midrashim. The next portion of the passage proceeds in much the same way. We now have a student who repeats halakhot and does so fluently, as the “handful of gratification,” and one who repeats halakhot and middah/‫ מדה‬as the one whose two handfuls are labor. The title associated with this achievement is bar m’kha’la. Middah is a relatively common rabbinic term: it can mean principle, statement, or measure, and seems to also signify a unit of text or law. M’kha’la/‫מכאלא‬, however, is a difficult term: with two letters transposed it is m’la’cha, which means “work” or “labor,” and is specifically used by the rabbis to define the categories of labor that are forbidden on the Sabbath (an association that I think must be intentional). As it stands, however, it seems to also be a unit of measure, related to the term mekhilta/‫מכילתא‬. The one who recites and repeats halakhah well is the master of a certain portion of teaching. The next level is one who recites halakhot and middah—such a one who has mastered them, and not tried to add Talmud, is called a bar ulpan—the son of teaching, or perhaps the law. As a word associated with education, ulpan occurs with some regularity in passages that detail the reading and intensive study of the law. 71 Elsewhere, especially in Palestinian midrashim like 70 The fact that the titles only appear here, however, should give us pause. 71 See, for example, yRosh Hashanah 4:1, 59b. 56 Bereishit Rabbah, it seems to signify tradition, or something that has been passed down. 72 While it is possible that talmud in this instance does indeed signify the gemara (it would have to be of the Yerushalmi, given the likely provenance of Leviticus Rabbah), it is just as reasonable to assume that it means a more generic type of study, which we see in the phrase “Talmud Torah.”73 I think it most likely that the three components of being a bar ulpan—a son of the law—are the repetition of laws, of precepts, and the interactive dialectic that often occurs in the rabbinic commentary of the two. These are the only three explicit mentions of reading practices and potential curricula in this passage, but the comparisons that are drawn between them and other fields of activity are similarly important. The passage goes on to discuss the desire to be a “trader,” a “son of the commandments,” and a “master of substance.” Attaining each of these desires involves doing several things poorly, while the passage advocates doing fewer things, but doing them well, even if the title that might otherwise accrue to one’s actions must be foregone. As we have noted, the first three examples presented in support of this thesis have to do with one of the rabbis’ most characteristic activities: study. The next example involves business. Several scholars have discussed rabbinic involvement in business as an important aspect of their social location: while rabbis seem not to have been traders and tradesmen, they needed to have 72 Genesis Rabbah, 80 73 MPeah 1:1 and parallels ‫ אלו דברים שאדם‬.‫ וגמילות חסדים ותלמוד תורה‬.‫ והראיון‬.‫ והבכורים‬.‫אלו דברים שאין להם שיעור הפאה‬ ‫ כיבוד אב ואם וגמילות חסדים והבאת שלום בין אדם לחבירו ותלמוד תורה כנגד‬.‫אוכל פירותיהן בעולם הזה והקרן קיימת לו לעולם הבא‬ ‫כולם‬: “These are the things that do not have a bounded reward: The first-fruits offering, the appearance offering, acts of loving kindness, and Talmud Torah. These are the things of whose fruits a man eats in this world, but whose profit endures for him in the world to come: Honoring father and mother, deeds of loving kindness, and bringing peace between a man and his companion. And Talmud Torah is equal to them all. 57 some form of financial security in order to devote their time to study and teaching. The proximity of study and business, then, should not necessarily surprise us. 74 The next comparison can even be understood as occupying the space between the previous two. The performance of tzedaqah makes one into a “son” or “master” of the commandments (a formulation that is, interestingly, close to the contemporary bar mitzvah). There are many statements in rabbinic literature that equate study with the performance of tzedaqah, or charity—again, Mishnah Peah 1:1 provides a locus classicus for this conflation. As a practice that is enjoined upon the wealthy and successful, being a bar mitzvata is also an important aspiration for the businessman who falls within, and would be accepted within, the rabbinic orbit.75 The last significant comparison concretizes the privileged social location of many members of the rabbinic movement to an even greater degree. The activity discussed is the renting of a garden, while the title given is “mar asi’an,” a son or master of property. This a natural companion to the trader or merchant, and even the son of tractates and laws: the landed, monied member of society is the only one who is most likely to be able, at first, to participate in practices of study and reading to the degree that the composers of Palestinian literature dictate as desirable. The passage ends by widening the scope of the two verses dramatically, bringing study, charity, and daily life into the broader purview of eschatology, history, and salvation. The single full handful at the beginning of the verse from Ecclesiastes becomes the world to come, and is, through this interpretive logic, linked back to the study of less material with more thoroughness, 74 See Hayim Lapin, Rabbis as Romans, 70-76. This term is also associated with the performance of charity: see Michael Satlow, “Fruit and the Fruit of Fruit: 75 Charity and Piety Among Jews in Late Antique Palestine,” Jewish Quarterly Review 100:2 (2010) 244-277. 58 interpretive regularity and fluency, appropriate generosity, the Exodus from Egypt, the world to come, and ultimately, the expiation of sin. The two full fistfuls of labor, on the other hand, are associated with learning too much, too poorly; generosity tempered by greed and sin, the tenth plague, this world, and a sacrificial ritual that does not expiate the sin of the offerant. We see an important strand of rabbinic ideology beginning to take shape here, as well: the strong association between reading and sacrifice, and more explicitly, reading as a replacement for sacrifice and its ability to thereby sustain the world. This theme will be explored more fully in the following chapters, especially as it relates to liturgical forms of reading. 76 The “dwindling” or “rejection” of sacrifice has long been noted by scholars of late ancient Judaism and Christianity.77 A traditional line of thinking identifies book-centered ritual as the “replacement” for sacrifice. 78 Rather than assume that this is an indication of some sort of late- ancient religious revolution, however, I will argue that such an ideology represents, at most, a shifting of discourse that comes about because of a higher rate of institutionalized educational practices. The actual reading practices in question have deep histories that go as far back as ancient Greek and Roman schoolrooms. Rather than constructinh a “revolution” around these practices, then, it makes sense to consider the discourse that surrounds them as a conscious choice made by those who advocated and performed them. This passage is one of those instances. With this proem, the rabbis create a chain of associations that brings a basic educational reading practice, that of apportioning a text into smaller portions to read, into cosmological 76 See chapter 3, 171-178. 77 Most importantly, Guy Stroumsa, Le Fin du Sacrifice: Les mutations religieuses de l’Antiquité tardive (Paris: Odile Jacob, 2005) and Daniel Ullucci, The Christian Rejection of Animal Sacrifice (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012). 78 See Jan Assman, The Price of Monotheism, trans. Robert Savage (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010). 59 significance. An educational reading practice takes the reader from the world in which he lives to the Exodus, from this world to the next, from sin to salvation. It is, however, not only the content of the proem that gives us insight into how the rabbis divided, subdivided, and partitioned texts. The form of the text itself is a testament both to the text’s atomization and fluidity. This resembles, in no small way, the methods with which Alexandrian grammarians treated the works of Homer several centuries earlier. The lingering question, however, is whether these attitudes are oriented towards texts in general, or the specific text that stands as a cultural monument in the center of rabbinic thinking. The insights to be gleaned from this amoraic text build on the conclusions drawn regarding tannaitic excerpting. Perhaps most clearly is the strategy of hierarchy: the explicit subordination of certain parts of a text to other parts in Mishnah Avot is overlaid onto the entirety of the rabbinic curriculum, showing that one progresses through the curriculum both in importance and in difficulty. The completion of specifically apportioned texts, as seen in the Mekhilta, is also present here: the smaller part of the text learned well is the handful of gratification, and the larger text learned incompletely, the two fistfuls of labor. Babylonian Excerpting bAvodah Zarah 19a The last example of excerpting and dividing a text comes from BAvodah Zarah 19a, and various parallels to the phraseology it uses. While it suggests the recitation of a text out loud, it also makes use of important terminology for the division and fragmentation of a text in an educational context.. Additionally, it presents a scene in which rabbis are making clear use of a physical text—and more than that, it is a text in which various sections of scripture are written in 60 separate scrolls. Marc Hirshman has discussed his passage in depth. 79 It begins as a meditation on the claim that one can only study Torah where one’s heart’s desire is, which is related to Psalm 1:2. '‫אין אדם למד תורה אלא ממקום שלבו חפץ שנ' כי אם בתורת יי'י חפצו לוי ור‬ ‫שמעון בר' הוו יתבי קמיה דר' וקא פסקי סידרא סליק סיפרא לוי אמ' ליתו לן‬ '‫משלי ר' שמעון בר' אמ' ליתו לן תלים כפייה ללוי ואיתי תלים כי מטא הכא פיר‬ ‫ר' ואמ' אין אדם למד תורה אלא ממקום שלבו חפץ שנ' כי אם בתורת יי'י חפצו‬ 80 ‫אמ' לי' לוי לר' אתה נתת לנו רשות לעמוד‬ A man cannot study Torah except in a place where his heart’s desire is, as it is written: “But in the Torah of God is his desire” (Psalm 1:2). Levi and Rabbi Shim’on b’Ribbi were sitting before Rabbi and pasqei sidra. The book was completed, and Levi said, “Let him bring us Proverbs!” Rabbi Shim’on b’Ribbi said, “Let him bring us Psalms.”81 He forced Levi, and they brought Psalms. When they reached this spot (Psalm 1:2) Rabbi interjected and said, “Man cannot study except in the place where his heart’s desire is, as it is written, ‘But in the Torah of God is his desire,’” Levi said, “Rabbi, you have given us permission to stand up from this.” Our primary interest is the practice that the two rabbis seems to be engaging in before their teacher. Hirshman translates the Aramaic “pasqei sidra”/‫ פסקי סידרא‬as “reciting verse by verse.” The usage of the root‫ק‬-‫ס‬-‫ פ‬signifies a practice of reading carefully, closely, and in small pieces.82 It is the division of the text that takes precedence when this word is used: along with -‫פ‬ ‫ק‬-‫ר‬, nominal forms derived from this verb signify units of text. This practice seems to have also 79 Hirshman, The Stabilization of Rabbinic Culture, 65-82. 80 I am here using the text of the Paris manuscript, which is the most complete for this section of the Bavli. 81 The correct reading of this word is very unclear. This manuscript reads ‫תלים‬, while Munich 95 and JTS Rab.15 read ‫תילים‬. Neither of these words means “Psalms,” but the Vilna edition adds a letter to render the word ‫תהילים‬, which does. Jastrow suggests that this is simply a shortened form of the word. 82 See p. 242 in the chapter on divination, where this root also figures importantly. This word is also the source of the rabbinic word pasuq/‫פסוק‬, which comes to mean verse, and is the outcome of the identified reading practice. 61 involved interpretation: they read slowly, carefully, and piece by piece, and their teacher interprets (‫ש‬-‫ר‬-‫ )פ‬for them as they read.83 We should also allow, of course, that the act of dividing a text into pieces is in itself a form of interpretation. Again, this is exactly concurrent with other usages of paseq that we see elsewhere in rabbinic literature. The practice of dividing up a text into smaller sense units is simply one of many practices that make up a broader category of interpretation. The fact that we see it occurring with the books of the Hebrew Bible—specifically Psalms and Proverbs—reinforces the fact that these practices of interpretation through close, partitive readings of texts were tied to religious practice, and often conceived as such. This is a momentary yet lucid glimpse into a teaching moment in the Babylonian Jewish world, imagined back into the tannaitic past. The passage is written in Babylonian Aramaic, and is located in one of the latest strata of the Talmud. We can assume that the compiler, redactor, or author was imagining the structures and practices of a late Sassanian academy onto the more casual disciple circles of tannaitic Palestine. 84 This makes the presence of physical texts, then, all the more striking, and all the more important. Interestingly, this passage does not use a separate word for “scroll.” The text uses “sifra,” which can be a reference to an individual scroll, or a more abstract idea of a text. In this case, however, it is clear that an actual scroll is intended: it is difficult to “bring” an abstract idea of a text to someone who asks for it. Here, as elsewhere, we are reminded of the physical, embodied nature of reading. It is not solely an intellectual exercise, 83 The abbreviation ‫ פיר״‬in this text is generally taken to be a shortened form of this root. 84 Goodblatt, Rabbinic Instruction, 11-43; Rubenstein, The Culture of the Babylonian Talmud, 16-38; see also David Weiss Halivni, The Formation of the Babylonian, passim. 62 or an activity of the mind: for the rabbis (as well as for us today) it takes place in the real world, with real objects. This is not the only place in which a physical text is signified as the object of an excerpting practice, nor is it the only place in which this type of recitation and excerpting is discussed in an educational context in the Babylonian Talmud. Hirshman lists seven instantiations of this particular terminology—‫פסק סדרא‬, paseq d’sidra, reciting verse by verse— in the Bavli.85 Our source (bAvodah Zarah 19a) and two others (bYoma 87a and bBava Batra 164a) present the recitation as happening before the Patriach, Rabbi Judah HaNasi. This is an important phrase, and serves as a bridge between the practice of dividing up the next, and reciting it aloud in an educational context. bBava Batra 164b The narrative of recitation on bBava Batra 164b could very well be part of the same narrative we quoted above. It involves (through prior context, because these characters are not explicitly named in the quoted text) Rabbi Shim’on b’Ribbi and his father, Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi. Once again, a physical copy of a text is being read before a teacher, or general authority figure. '‫זמנין הוה יתיב קמיה וקא פסיק סידרא בספר תלים אמ' ר' כמה מיושר כתב זה אמ‬ ‫ליה לאו אנא כתבתיה אלא יהודה חייטא כתביה אמ' ליה כלך מלשון הרע הזה‬ Another time, he was sitting before him reciting a book of Psalms verse by verse. Rabbi said to him, “How straight is this handwriting!” He said to him, “I did not write it—Yehudah Hayyata wrote it.” He said to him, “Turn away from this kind of evil language!” 85 Hirshman, 72; 152 n. 6 63 This source is confusing, although it provides us with a very material understanding of what the practices of recitation, excerption, and repetition might have looked like. There is no question that a physical text is involved, just as in BAvodah Zarah. Why, however, does Rabbi tell his son to stop complimenting another’s work? Why is it called “evil language,” or lashon hara’/‫לשון הרע‬, a rabbinic term that is most often translated as “gossip?” The gemara eventually explains this, teaching in the name of Rav Dimi that one should never speak the praises of another, since another might come and speak to his detriment. Presumably, this pertains to situations where the other is not present. bYoma 87a The Yoma source underscores the importance of repeating a tradition verse by verse, and starting from the proper point. 86 This narrative presents a student who starts over and repeats himself every time a ranking figure in the academy appears. ‫רב הוה פסיק סידרא קמיה דרבי עייל אתא ר' חייא הדר לרישא עייל בר קפרא‬ ‫הדר לרישא אתא ר"ש ברבי הדר לרישא אתא ר' חנינא (בר) חמא אמר כולי האי‬ ‫נהדר וניזיל לא הדר איקפיד ר' חנינא אזל רב לגביה תליסר מעלי יומי דכפורי ולא‬ ‫איפייס‬ Rav was reciting verse by verse before Rabbi, when Rabbi Hiyya entered. He returned to the beginning. Bar Kappara entered, and he returned to the beginning. Rabbi Shimon b’Ribbi came, and he returned to the beginning. Rabbi Hanina bar Hammah came, and he said, “Should I go back every time?” He went on, and did not return. Rabbi Hanina was angry. Rav went before him thirteen times on Yom Kippur for forgiveness, and he did not forgive him. By refusing to start over again, Rav upends the hierarchy of the classroom (or the disciple circle, or whatever sort of formal or informal educational session is going on). We see the social order encapsulated in a reading practice that centers around teachers and students. The 86 This passage also reflects another Talmudic source on repetition, from BEruvin 54b. See pp. 91-105 in this chapter. 64 repercussions of Rav’s action are dire: Rabbi Hanina refuses to forgive him. This is, of course, a reversal of the yearly narrative of forgiveness and remission to which Yom Kippur is the pinnacle. The narrative continues at some length, ultimately explaining why both Rav and Rabbi Hanina were correct in their actions; this continuation, however, does not concern us here. The other usages of this phrase are largely similar: they involve the obvious recitation of a text in front of a teacher, or group of teachers, and need not be explicitly quoted here. 87 Its occurrence in bShabbat 116b is the only instance of this particular phrase in the Bavli that does not explicitly involve the presence of a teacher and a student, or two figures in a similar hierarchical relationship. That text informs us of a reading practice particular to the Jews of Nehardea: they would recite the “Ketuvim,” or section of the Tanakh known as the Writings, verse by verse on Sabbath afternoons. 88 It would, of course, be incorrect to assume that the presence of a physical text locates these narratives entirely within Sasanian Babylonia, although I think that, similar to the image of God “marking up” a Torah scroll in bMenachot 29b,89 the presence of a physical object as the focus of these reading practices is an important, and often-overlooked, feature of their materiality. Even though there is significantly less evidence for formalized educational reading practices in Tannaitic Palestine, I further believe that it is safe to assume that the examination of physical texts would have formed a significant portion of the education of young men. This is not because the Torah, or a text or group of texts that we might anachronistically assume to be 87 Hirshman, 72. The other instance is BMoed Qatan 16b. 88 This is a fascinating and complicated text. ‫ושמואל אמר בין במקום בהמ"ד בין שלא במקום בהמ"ד בזמן בהמ"ד אין קורין שלא‬ ‫בזמן בית המדרש קורין ואזדא שמואל לטעמיה דבנהרדעא פסקי סידרא דכתובים במנחתא דשבתא‬ 89 See pp. 199-203 in the chapter on Divination. 65 the canonized Torah, held a particular pride of place, but rather because the education of students in general, all across the Mediterranean, involved physical texts in some capacity. Teachers are almost uniformly depicted as holding scrolls and bookrolls.90 Papyri show us that students made copies of texts for their own use, much like how they read texts repetitively in order to internalize them. Certain texts are marked significantly, showing that the practices of editing and grammatical commentary were not constrained to an elite circle in Alexandria. Over the course of the rabbinic texts briefly examined here, there has been a palpable move from vaguer, more theoretical discussions of excerpeting (“bundles of text,” “handfuls of gratification,”) to a more explicit practice. The explicit practice, conversely, is the most difficult to discern, because it is taken for granted in the Babylonian Talmud, but its presentation as an unremarkable mode of study and instruction mark excerpting and repetition as central rabbinic reading practices. IV. Conclusion Evidence of excerpting and dividing texts for recitation or later thought is not always, however, confined to the material aspects of ancient evidence, as we have just seen. There are many ancient authors who theorize, both through their practices and through explicit language, the various ways in which texts might be broken up and reconstituted into new wholes, and why a reader might choose to do that. David Konstan has published extensively on this phenomenon, and it is to one of the ancient scholars that he illuminates that we now turn. 91 90 See, for example, the sources brought to light in Kim Haines-Eitzen, The Gendered Palimpsest: Women, Writing, and Representation in Early Christianity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 23-38. 91 David Konstan, “Excerpting as a Reading Practice,” in Thinking Through Excerpts: Studies on Stobaeus, ed. Gretchen Reydams-Schils (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2011) 9-22. Other important works on excerpting include: Konstan, “The Active Reader in Classical Antiquity,” Argos 30 (2006) 7-18; Jeremy Schott, “Plotinus’ Portrait and Pamphilus’ Prison Notebook: Neoplatonic and Early Christian Textualities at the Turn of the Fourth Century C.E.” JECS 21:3 (Fall 2013), 329-362; Lorraine Datson, “Taking Notes,” Isis 95:3 (2004) 443-448; Penelope Meyers Usher, “‘Pricking in Virgil,’: Early Modern Prophetic Phronesis and the Sortes Virgilianae” Journal of Medieval 66 Konstan points out that there is a long history of excerpting and its attendant practice of recopying in the classical world. Texts as old as Aristophanes’ The Frogs make reference to smaller portions of text copied from larger texts for personal use. 92 In Xenophon’s Memorabilia, Socrates declares that “If we see something good, we excerpt it.” 93 Despite this long pedigree, 94 the practice of excerpting has long been considered a mark of literary decline, or at the very least, decadence, indolence, and the lack of creativity. Konstan endeavors to show that excerpting is anything but a mark of declining intellect: it is a mark of creativity and critical thinking, and just as much authorial intent and consideration goes into the selection of passages for excerpting as goes into the eventual arrangement of the selected material. He points out that excerpters select their own material—a creative endeavor in itself. They organize the work, and play a crucial role in the transmission of knowledge. 95 Ultimately, Konstan claims, the excerpting practices of ancient writers are “better conceived as a part—perhaps even the culmination—of a long tradition of excerpting that goes back to the very beginnings of Greek and Latin literary culture[.]” 96 The segmenting, bundling, and excerpting of traditions did not begin with the early rabbis. It was a practice which origins lay far back in the roots of a scholastic tradition that permeated the ancient Mediterranean and manifested in numerous cultures across the basin. As a and Early Modern Studies 45:3 (September 2015) 557-571; Rocco Di Rio, “‘Selecta Colligere’: Marsilio Ficino and Renaissance Reading Practices,” History of European Ideas 42:5 (2016) 595-606. 92 Konstan, “Excerpting,” 11; Aristophanes, The Frogs, 149. 93 Ibid, 12; Xenophon, Memorabilia 1.6.14 “καὶ ἄν τι ὁρῶμεν ἀγαθὸν ἐκλεγόμεθα.” 94 Konstan presents numerous other classical examples: Plato Leges 7, 811A; Phaedrus 278D-E; Aristotle, Categoriae, 1.14, 105a35-b14; Isocrates, Ad Demonicum 51-52. 95 Konstan, “Excerpting,” 10. 96 Ibid, 11. 67 rabbinic reading practice, however, it is difficult not to see it everywhere once our eyes have been trained to notice it. It extended far beyond the habit of portioning out sections from the Bible as specific study texts: rabbis applied it to their own corpus of non-biblical teachings, the Oral Torah, creating both hierarchies and groupings of related material. Even closer to the text itself, however, we see a version of this practice present in the division of a large collection of writings collectively known as “The Bible,” or Tanakh, into individual books with chapters and verses. A large portion of text is made intelligible by a series of marks that indicate to a reader how the sense units fit together: these can be inscribed over the text, under it, inside it, or even written into the very format of the text itself, as it is in traditional scribal editions of Exodus 15 and Judges 5. These divisions in the text, which testify to the practice of making meaning by making smaller, are basic, and in fact foundational, to most forms of classical rabbinic interpretation. 97 More than that, they represent practices of literary examination and criticism that are strikingly similar to those of Greek scholars, Orphic intellectuals, and priests from the fourth century BCE onwards. This helps to reveal a rabbinic notion of the division and versification of the Torah as one of, if not the, origins of midrash, and a locus of their own exegetical authority. While I do not argue for the historical priority of textual division as a requirement for interpretation, I maintain that it is an option that must be considered, and that at the very least, it was a fundamental interpretive practice of the rabbinic enterprise. It was grounded, as we will continue to see, in practices of education that strongly resemble those current in Greek and Roman education. 97 While I trace the deep roots of this practice back to the grammarians of Hellenistic Alexandria, it did not stop then, or simply reappear with the rabbis: there was a long tradition of dividing up text, attested in both writing and manuscripts from late antiquity onwards. See, for example, Simon Crisp, “Scribal Marks and Logical Paragraphs: Discourse Segmentation Criteria in Manuscripts of the Pauline Corpus,” Current Trends in Scripture Translation 198/199 (2005), 77-87, which discusses the Euthalian apparatus, an early witness to this tradition, and its relevance for the division of the Pauline corpus into verses. 68 Sing Me Constantly: Repetition as an Educational Reading Practice Chapter 2 I. Introduction If reading with an eye toward the division, subdivision, and subsequent reconfiguration of a text is a basic component of rabbinic education, it stands to reason that this practice formed the foundation for others. This chapter shows that repetition was one of the most standard educational activities to result from textual segmentation, and that repetition took on greater and greater significance in both religious and scholastic spheres over the course of the centuries in question by becoming associated with both earthly and divine hierarchies. Discussions of repetition are more explicitly theorized in later rabbinic texts, although this is likely a result of both the latest layer of the Bavli’s dialectic tendencies, along with an actual increased interest in making these valuations explicit—perhaps as a result of greater rabbinic educational institutionalization. As with all ancient religious practices, these did not exist in a vacuum. This chapter concludes with an in-depth analysis of a Syriac text that reproduces many of the same tendencies apparent in later rabbinic texts, in which Creation is a reading lesson, and the ordered existence of the world is predicated on the divine educational hierarchy. 1 We have also already seen some indications of this practice. In the last section of the previous chapter, the phrase ‫ פסק סידרא‬was taken to mean “read verse by verse.”2 There is good 1 Barhadbeshabba, Cause of the Foundation of the School of Nisibis. Addai Scher, ed., Cause de la Fondation des Écoles, PO 4:4 (1908). 2 See pp. 60-66. 69 reason to assume that not only were texts read verse by verse, but that each individual verse was repeated until it was internalized or committed to memory. Students are expected to learn to read, and to learn the contents of individual texts, by repeating segments over and over: this aids them in internalizing the contents, and also teaches them, in the case that repetition is being used to impart literacy, how letters form words, and words form phrases and sentences. This has a direct parallel in Greek and Roman educational practices. Herodas, a Hellenistic poet from Alexandria, references the regular recitation and repetition of a simple verse, as well as continual chanting as an aid to spelling and reading, in his third mime, on the schoolmaster. 3 The importance of reading repetitively is twofold in rabbinic texts: it ensures that traditions that are read over and over again are remembered by the student, and it perpetuates chains of attribution that ensure each teacher is credited with his own teachings. Rabbinic statements that require the repetition of certain texts are assumed to require their multiple iterations as an aid to memorization. Memorization of important texts was an important effect of constant repetition, but the larger body of evidence from rabbinic literature and the ancient world suggests that memorization itself was not the goal, but rather complete internalization. The sage who is constantly repeating Torah makes it his own; the metaphor consistently used in rabbinic literature is that a tradition “is found in the hands” of a teacher, or “remains in the heart.”4 Once again, we see the embodied, physical nature of reading: to learn from a text is not only to hold its words in one’s mind, but to hold the text and teaching itself in 3 Herodas, III.22-23; 30-36. 4 See, for example, the statement cited above from bEruvin 54a, in which a tradition is “kept” or “retained” because of bodily praxis. 70 the hands and heart. The physical nature of repetitive reading practices strengthens the bodily associations of this metaphor. “Repetition” in reference to a rabbinic reading practice actually refers to two distinct, but related, practices. The first is that of continuous recitation. Students are expected to learn and internalize their lessons through a process of constant repetition and recitation. This encourages not only memorization of the important texts, but also their internalization and enculturation: a vital part of the process of becoming a properly formed rabbinic subject. The second practice is that of ascription, or citation. Extra-biblical traditions, specifically those that constitute what later becomes known as the “Oral Torah” must be repeated word-for-word, and ascribed to their appropriate tradents. These practices are closely related for two reasons. Firstly, the vocabulary that is used to describe them overlaps to such a degree that it is not clear that they were considered particularly distinctive practices at any point during the period in which the classical rabbinic corpus was compiled. The basic Hebrew and Aramaic words used to mean “recite” or “repeat,” 5 ‫ שנה‬or ‫תנא‬,6 are also used to imply the practice of crediting a tradition to one’s teacher. In this latter sense, the words “‫ ”בשם‬or “‫משום‬,” meaning “in the name of,” in Hebrew and Aramaic respectively, are often included in the phrase. Secondly, and more importantly, the ascription to a teacher was seen as an important part of the received tradition. Reciting a statement word-for-would would have included these identifications simply as a matter of course. There is a direct parallel in Greek and Roman monastic educational practices. Lillian Larsen has shown that the “middle” length of apophthegmatic exercises included, almost as a rule, the philosopher or teacher in 5 See the entry on pp. 335. 6 Se the entry on pp. 336. 71 whose name a teaching was transmitted. Copying—and surely reciting—this information was a part of learning it. 7 From this we can see that ascription and the identification of tradents and sources were both tied up in the idea of “repetition” as it applied to late antique education in the eastern Mediterranean. Repetition is a reading practice for several reasons. Most importantly, the technical reference to what appears to be a specific text, grouping of words, or identifiable teaching, falls under a definition of reading. Secondly, the role of physical texts as aids to learning in rabbinic educational practices has been understated. There are numerous references to writing tablets and notebooks in classical rabbinic literature, 8 and comparative evidence would suggest that papyrus scraps were common educational tools. 9 It is dangerous, of course, to simply translate this evidence over to the rabbis, and claim that they performed the same practices in the same manner, but in the absence of any significant material remains from the rabbis, we can cautiously assume that the broad strokes of ancient educational practices were similar, even if they differed in their specifics and their ideological formulation.10 Evidence from ancient educational papyri further buoy this point, even though they do not apply directly to the rabbinic milieu. Early reading and writing exercises for children during their elementary education were typically lines taken from longer works, often Homer or 7 Lillian Larsen, “Early Monasticism and the Rhetorical Tradition: Saying and Stories as Schooltexts” in Education and Religion in Late Antiquity (Peter Gemeinhardt and Peter Van Nuffelen, eds.: Farnham: Ashgate Publishing, 2016). 8 YShabbat 6:1, 7d; yKilayim 1:1, 27a; yMaas 2:4, 49d. 9 See, for example, Raffaella Cribiore, Writing, Teachers, and Students in Graeco-Roman Egypt (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1996), 27-33 on school exercises, and 57-62 on papyrus itself. 10 This is a broader issue with the papyri of Egypt: they are preserved largely by an accident of the climate, and the question of how representative they are always lingers. For a brief treatment of this, see Cribiore, Gymnastics of the Mind, 6-7 and the literature cited there. 72 Isocrates. A teacher might provide a student with a tablet that has a line correctly inscribed at the top, and expect the student to copy the line over and over again. 11 An instructor might also dictate a short passage, which students would recite back, and then commit to writing down on their tablets.12 Finally, in a manner similar to a contemporary grade-school classroom, we can picture students reading a passage aloud in unison, repeating it over and over again in order to smooth the jagged edges of difficult words and phrases. These practices, common in both Greek and Roman classrooms, were not geared toward the memorization of a specific text: they were designed to teach students to listen, read, and write correctly. The texts that a teacher chose to use for this type of lesson were not incidental. Memorized selections from Homer, Isocrates, or Demosthenes—or even a lyric poet—did not simply serve as verbal ornamentation for an educated citizen. Since practices of repetition were important at all levels of education and not simply advanced rhetorical training, they were a crucial avenue by which values and mores of the dominant culture were learned and internalized. Just as learning how to read was conceived of as a parallel process to learning how to be a citizen (or even, in some instances, a human), the individual practices that constituted the longer arc of one were mirrored in the other. A student who consistently repeated a proverb—perhaps a phrase from Heraclitus, or the first verse of the Psalms (“Happy is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked”) would not only learn to read and recognize that phrase, but also internalize its meaning. 11 Cribiore’s Notebook 383 (Writing, Teachers, and Students, 271), from the second century CE, is an example of this: a teacher has written two different short sentences, and a student has copied them twice between ruled lines. For an edition on this papyrus, formally named P.Lond.Lit. 253, see W. Brashear, ZPE 86 (1991) 231-32. 12 This method was less common: Cribiore identifies papyri 179 (O. Bodl. Gk. Inscr. 1205), 241 (P.Lond.Lit. 75; O. BM inv. 18711), 265 (P. Oxy. II 213; P. Yale inv. 34), and 317 (BKT VIII 10; T. Berol. Inv. 10501) as clear examples of dictation in Writing, Teachers, and Students (93). 73 For these reasons, I consider repetition a reading practice. Whether or not the text is physical and present is ultimately immaterial: the phrases being repeated are fixed, and are clearly utilized because of a certain cultural status that their putative presence in a written book exemplifies. In what follows, this chapter goes through some of the most salient texts that describe repetition and repetitive reading in an educational context, starting with tannaitic texts, and moving through amoraic and talmudic passages. In each time period, it is evident that repetition is closely tied to the establishment of authority and hierarchy, and is consistently formulated as a bodily, physical exercise. Later texts from the Palestinian and Babylonian milieus seem to take different directions in their understanding of repetition and its significance. In a lengthy sugya from the Yerushalmi, clear links between repetition and rabbinic authority were closely tied to the proper citation of one’s teachers. A set of narratives from the Bavli, on the other hand, emphasizes the real, lived, physical aspect of repetition as reading and reciting the same lesson over and over again. At the end of this section, the rabbinic evidence is compared to a sixth-century Syriac text, the Cause of the Foundation of the Schools, by Barhadbeshabba Arbaya, which similarly presents repetition as a reading practice that not only internalizes a text, but orders and shapes the very creation of the world. Before delving into the sources, a few words regarding the vocabulary of repetition are necessary. The word mishnah (‫ )משנה‬itself means “repetition”: it derives from the Hebrew root ‫ה‬-‫נ‬-‫ש‬, or ‫י‬-‫נ‬-‫ש‬, which bears the base meaning of “to repeat.”13 Because of the association of repetition with educational reading practices, the verbal form of this root comes to be translated as “learn” or “study,” especially when the object of study is rabbinic teaching. 14 The Aramaic 13 Jastrow, Dictionary, 857. 14 Jastrow, Dictionary, 1605. 74 form of this verb is ‫י‬-‫נ‬-‫ת‬,15 a root that is also present in Syriac as ‫ܝ‬-‫ܢ‬-‫ܬ‬.16 The root word tanna (‫)תנא‬, signifying the early period of rabbinic activity, is from the same source. This has led to no small amount of confusion. As a noun, mishnah can have two distinct meanings: it can refer to the text of the Mishnah itself, or an individual unit within the text, which is how scholars tend to use it today. It can also, however, refer to rabbinic teaching, either as a specific unit or a generalized notion thereof. 17 The close relationship of this second meaning and the general use of related verb roots meaning “repeat” to signify educational reading practices have done much to undergird the important ideology of orality that figures so strongly in later rabbinic literature. 18 II. Tannaitic Repetition Both types of repetion are present in the tannaitic sources (the Mishnah and Tosefta, in this instance), and they present repetition as something performed in an ad hoc manner. It can occur in or out of a classroom, alone or with a teacher, and it covers a wide variety of texts that are to be repeated. Mishnah Avot 3:7 presents a scenario in which repetition occurs on the road: Rabbi Yaaqov imagines a situation in which someone is walking and repeating his teaching at the same time, and interrupts his study because of something he sees. 19 He states that “the one 15 Jastrow, Dictionary, 1681. 16 Smith, Dictionary 616. 17 Tannaitic teaching, for example, can hardly be assumed to use the word mishnah to refer to what we think of as the Mishnah, since the Mishnah itself seems only to have been compiled, at least initially, at the end of the tannaitic period. The Aramaic form of mishnah—matnita (‫ )מתניתא‬appears in amoraic literature and the Bavli with some regularly, and seems to be a reference to the actual Mishnah, especially when it is called “‫מתניתין‬,” “our Mishnah.” 18 Martin Jaffee, Torah in the Mouth: Writing and Oral Tradition in Palestinian Judaism, 200 BCE-400 CE (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 3-12; 67-72. 19 ‫ מעלים עליו הכתוב כאלו מתחיב בנפש‬,‫ המהלך בדרך ושונה ומפסיק ממשנתו ואומר מה נאה אילן זה ומה נאה ניר זה‬This is the reading of Ms Palatina 3173; Kaufmann A 50 reads ‫מעלין‬. 75 who is walking and reciting, and interrupts his repetition to say, ‘How lovely is this tree!’ or ‘How lovely is this field!’ is considered, by Scripture, as if his life is forfeit.” This Mishnah locates the environment of study outside of a specific classroom—the scholar or student can practice their “Mishnah” on the run. Additionally, completion is important. The entire passage must be recited, otherwise, according to this Mishnah, it counts as a critical offense.20 This passage might also suggest that educational habits learned in a more formal environment continue to be important after the student has left his training. Being a scholar of Torah means not simply learning the text, but continually studying it, meditating on it, and repeating it even after it has been formally presented in an educational context. 21 Mishnah Eduyot 1:3 is an early representation of the second type of repetition: transmitting teachings exactly as they were learned. It suggests the importance of repetition as a technique that ensures that both the credit due to one’s teacher is accorded him, and that creates a chain of tradition that correctly emphasizes the importance of teachers and transmitters. “A man is obligated,” says the Mishnah, “to speak using his teacher’s language.” “ ‫שאדם חייב לומר בלשון‬ ‫רבו‬.”22 It is true that this statement does not directly refer to the practice of repeating teachings over and over in order to learn them, but it does emphasize one of the effects of such an educational practice. It highlights the importance of word-for-word learning: a practice that, while often performed without the aid of written texts and papyri, was learned, at least to start, 20 This is a recurring theme. See pp. 48-60 for the importance of completing and entire passage of law for study, and pp. 124-124 for the importance of completing an entire liturgical reading. 21 Other examples of the importance of constant repetition include: and later, Shir Ha-Shirim Rabbah, IV.i.2, V.xiii.1, 22 This is the reading of both the Mss Palatina 3173 and Kaufmann A 50. 76 with written texts serving as educational guides. 23 One who repeats consistently learns the language and wording exactly, and is able to transmit a tradition exactly as it was transmitted to him.24 Repetition does not occur in a vacuum. It is not the only important reading practice, nor is it the only important practice in general: in fact, rabbis tend to be quite explicit that it is simply a step on the way to a larger goal. Rabbi Akiva himself advocates the practice of constant repetition in Tosefta Oholot 16:8, which has a formulation of this ideology. ‫ר' יהושע אומר השונה ואינו עמל כזורע ולא קוצר והלמד תורה ושוכח דומה‬ ‫לאשה שיולדת וקוברת ר"ע אומר זמר בית דירה זמר‬ Rabbi Yehoshua would say, “The one who repeats, but does not labor, is like the one who plants but does not harvest. The one who learns Torah and forgets it resembles the woman who gives birth and then immediately buries [the stillborn]. Rabbi Akiva said, “Sing me constantly, minstrel.” 25 Repetition is important, and standard—but it is also not enough. It is clearly an important step on the way towards becoming a rabbi—a figure who has so internalized the oral and written Torahs that his every action is suffused with righteousness and religious meaning. The rest of this process, however, involves the practice of the commandments, and the fulfillment of various other ritual obligations. Just as repetition builds on the divisions of texts, so does training to be a rabbi build on repetition. 23 See, for example, the quotation from the Hermeneumata that Cribiore brings forth on Gymnastics of the Mind, 15: “[The teacher] asks me to read and I give [the text] to another pupil; I learn the colloquia and I recite them.” 24 This tradition comes in the context of a purity law: Hillel makes a ruling about the amount of water that defiles a miqvah, or ritual bath, and gives the measurement in an archaic unit. The reason presented, according to later commentators, is that he used this unit, the hin, rather than the more contemporary qav, because he learned the tradition from his teacher, who used the archaic system of measurement. 25 This is a highly complex text and corrupt manuscript tradition. The exact meaning of what Akiva says is unclear. 77 III. Palestinian Amoraic Repetition The Palestinian Talmud adds a new element to this narrative, showing us the intertwined nature of repetition and scholastic hierarchy in a particularly explicit passage from Sheqalim. We begin to see a more organized and institutional setting for rabbinic education here, which is concomitant with both our scant archaeological evidence, and the broader theory that later (amoraic and subsequent) rabbinic materials were composed in increasingly formalized settings. This section examines one lengthy Yerushalmi sugya (with reference to its parallels) that deals with this issue. It shows that repetition is explicitly tied to the practice of ascription and the proper attribution of authority to one’s teachers. This is not the only place that themes of ascription and hierarchy are combined in Palestinian rabbinic literature, of course, but reading one sugya in depth, rather than simply citing several, provides a better understanding of the forces at play.26 In the sources examined in this section, the Yerushalmi tends to use words from the root “‫ר‬-‫מ‬-‫א‬,” or “speak” to signify the transmission of a tradition in the name of a specific tradent. Palestinian tannaitic literature, as noted in the previous section, utilizes similar language, reserving the root “‫ה‬-‫נ‬-‫ ”ש‬for the act of repetitive recitation. Later Babylonian literature, however, unites these two meanings and patterns of usage, a phenomenon also borne out explicitly in contemporaneous Syriac texts. While the earlier instantiations, some of which are to be examined here, utilize a wider range of vocabulary, there is a pattern emerging in later texts of the root ‫א‬-‫נ‬-‫ ת‬being used for both these meanings. Yerushalmi Sheqalim 2:7 47a begins as a commentary on the latter portion Mishnah Sheqalim 2:5. Martin Jaffee has contributed greatly to the understanding of this passage; what 26 I will, of course, reference other parallels. 78 follows relies heavily on his analysis and is built upon it.27 The operative phrase comes at the end, in which Rabbi Meir instructs that a grave memorial be built should a burial fund have leftover money. It is this grave memorial that initiates a stream of interpretations that bring us to a discussion of repetition and ascription. The Mishnah is reproduced here. ‫ מותר עניים לעניים מותר עני‬.‫מותר שבוים לשבוים מותר שבוי לאותו שבוי‬ ‫ רבי מאיר אומר מותר‬.‫ מותר המת ליורשיו‬.‫ מותר המתים למתים‬28.‫לאותו עני‬ ‫ בונין לו נפש על קברו‬.‫המת יהא מונח עד שיבא אליהו רבי נתן אומר מותר המת‬ The leftover ransom collected for captives is for the captives; the leftover ransom collected for a particular captive is for that captive. The leftover money collected for the poor is for the poor, the leftover money collected for a poor man is for that poor man. 29 The leftover money collected for the dead is for the dead, the leftover money collected for a particular dead man is for his heirs. Rabbi Meir says, “Let the leftover money for a particular dead man sit until Elijah comes.” Rabbi Nathan says, “With the leftover money for a particular dead man, they built a memorial on his grave.” The Yerushalmi begins to build on this passage thus. ‫גבו לו בחזקת שאין לו ונמצא שיש לו רבי ירמיה סבר מימר מותר המת ליורשיו‬ ‫אמר ליה רבי אידי דחוטריה הגע עצמך דלא כוונון אלא ליה אמר ליה אנא לא‬ ‫אמרית את מנן לך‬ With regard to the situation in which they collected funds for someone who had no resources, and it was found that he did have resources, Rabbi Jeremiah suggested, saying, “The leftover money [collected for] a dead person is for his heirs.” Rabbi Idi of Hutra said to him, “What if the donors were only thinking of that person himself?” He said to him, “I did not say that—from where are you saying that?” 27 Martin Jaffee, Torah in the Mouth, 147. In Jaffee’s reading, this sugya’s various parts swirl around a core set of values regarding the relationship between a teacher and disciple. For him, the focus on exact repetition and ascription as crucial values in the rabbinic orbit was part of the “pursuit of intimate discipleship in shaping a life of transformative piety.” I believe that part of this “transformative piety” was located in the ordering, reordering, and structuring of hierarchy that rabbinic practices of repetition and recitation enact. By paying attention to some of the eschatological elements at work (specifically, those that involve the boundary between life and death), we can adduce some of the contours of the relationship cosmic hierarchy and educational reading practices, and how they contribute to Jaffee’s ideology of orality. 28 This is an addition. 29 This is an addition. 79 ‫תני בשם רב י נתן מותר המת יבנה לו נפש על קברו ויעשה לו זלוף על גבי מיטתו‬ [Baraita] It has been taught in the name of Rabbi Nathan that the leftover money for a particular dead person will build a memorial on his grave, or will make a sprinkling [of aromatics?] on his funeral bed. ‫תני אין פודין שבוי בשבוי ואין גובין טלית בטלית ואין ממחין ביד פרנסים לכך‬ [Baraita] It has been taught that they do not redeem a captive with a captive, and they do not collect a garment with a garment, and they do not restrict the powers of charitable associations in this instance. ‫תני רבן שמעון בן גמליאל אומ״ אין עושין נפשות לצדיקים דבריהם הן זכרונן‬ [Baraita] It has been taught that Rabbi Shimon ben Gamliel says, “They do not make grave-markers for the righteous. Their words are their memorials.” The connection between these passages in the Mishnah and Yerushalmi, which deal with community charitable collections and their appropriate usage in the event there is a surplus, relies on a statement by Shimon ben Gamliel which the Yerushalmi gemara presents shortly after it comments on this Mishnah. Various rabbis argue about the exact ramifications of the rules the Mishnah sets out here, and eventually, a baraita of Rabbi Nathan is given which presents a more stringent rule. A baraita immediately afterwards also claims that “‫ואין ממחין ביד פרנסין לכך‬.” One does not restrict the power of the charitable association in this instance (it is unclear whether or not we should associate both baraitot with Rabbi Nathan). As a response to this, Rabban Shimon declares that one does not make “n’fashot” (‫ )נפשות‬which in this case likely means grave markers, for the righteous: “‫דבריהן הן זכרונן‬.” Their words are their memorials. 80 It is this phrase that forms the context for several interrelated vignettes and declarations in the Yerushalmi’s expansion of the cited Mishnah. 30 The importance of a sage’s words is central to our understanding of repetition and recitation in late ancient Palestinian rabbinic education. The first vignette involves Rabbi Eliezer, who gravely insults Rabbi Yochanan by refusing to greet him and avoiding his presence. ‫רבי יוחנן הוה מסמיך דאזיל עאל ר' חייא בר אבא והוה רבי אליעזר חמי ליה‬ ‫ומטמר ליה מקמי ואמר הלין תרתין מיליא הדין בבלאה עביד ביה חדא דלא שאיל‬ ‫בשלומיה וחדה מיטמר א״ל רבי יעקב בר אידי כך נהגין גבהון דזעירא לא שאיל‬ 31 ‫בשלומיה דרבה דאינון נהגין ומקיימין ראוני נערים ונחבאו וישישים‬ Rabbi Yochanan was leaning and walking along with Rabbi Hiyya bar Abba, and Rabbi Eliezer saw him and avoided him. He [Yohanan] said, “There are two things now that the Babylonian man has done to me—the first, that he did not ask after my well- being; and the other, that he avoided me.” Rabbi Jacob bar Idi said to him, “But that is the way they behave over there. For the lesser does not ask after the well-being of the greater [the rabbah], which they do in order that they might fulfill the verse, “The young men saw me, and they withdrew; and the elders [rose and stood] (Job 29:8).” Rabbi Eliezer, a Babylonian, hides himself from the presence of Rabbi Yochanan and Rabbi Hiyya bar Abba. Rabbi Yochanan is upset by this: he calls Rabbi Eliezer “the Babylonian,” and claims that he is insulting him in two different ways. Eliezer refuses to greet 30 Guggenheimer suggests that this entire passage is a later addition to the tractate, given its absence in manuscript ‫ג‬ and the presence of Babylonian Aramaic and classic Babylonian names. Some of this text is reproduced in YBerakhot 2:1 and Mo’ed Qatan 3:7 (83c). Guggenheimer, Šeqalim, 59. Jaffee (207 n. 74) notes the same thing: while it appears in exactly this manner in most printed editions of the Yerushalmi, it is scribbled in the margin of MS Leiden. See also Yaakov Zussman, “The Study Tradition and Textual Traditon of the Talmud Yerushalmi: Clarifying the Texts of Yerushalmi Sheqalim” (Heb.), in E. Urbach, ed., Studies in Talmudic Literature: A Celebration of the 80th Birthday of Saul Lieberman, 8-9 Sivan, 5738 (Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences, 1983), 12-76 (48). 31 This is presented, I think, as a direct contrast to a teaching in yBerakhot 2:1, 4b, which states that one is allowed to greet one who is “greater than himself with respect to Torah,” and then goes on to turn this permission into a requirement. I wonder if this is not an instance of the phenomenon Moulie Vidas identified in Tradition and the Formation of the Talmud (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014), in which later rabbis express their alterity from earlier rabbis using these compositional techniques. A teaching in the same passage, declaring that the amount of time it takes for a student to greet a teacher is the basic unit of measurable speech, is presented in the name of Rabbi Yohanan. 81 him, and even more than that, he is hiding himself: the ultimate insult. There is a pun in Rabbi Jacob’s conciliatory response, however. When he claims that the lesser does not ask after the well-being over the greater, the word he uses for “greater,” rabbah, is of course a sonic pun on “rabbi” (and is indeed even from the same root). This is a complete inversion of Palestinian tradition, it would seem, and feels counterintuitive to those who are familiar with teacher-student relationships in the late ancient Mediterranean. The journey of Rabbis Yochanan and Jacob continue, with Rabbi Yochanan expressing his continual displeasure. ‫קמו עמדו אמר ליה מהו למיעבר קמי דארורא צילמא אמר ליה מה את פליג ליה‬ ‫יקר עבור קמוהי וסמי עינויי א״ל יאות רבי אליעזר עבוד דלא עבר קמך ועוד עביד‬ ‫הא בבלאה דלא אמר שמעתא משמיה‬ They stood and he [Rabbi Jacob] said to him, “What about a procession in which an idol is carried?” He responded to him, “What, are you undecided about this, dear? Go before it and blind its eyes.” He said to him, “Rabbi Eliezer did right by you by not passing before you.” “That Babylonian man did another thing: He did not speak a tradition in its name.” This section is a bit more obscure, but it seems to indicate (at least according to Neusner32 and Guggenhimer33) that Rabbi Jacob and Rabbi Yohanan continue their walk, ad continue their discussion of both appropriate customs and Rabbi Eliezer’s offenses. Rabbi Jacob tries to defend Rabbi Eliezer; and the next phrase, even though it is not marked as such, would seem to be a retort from Rabbi Yohanan, giving yet another manner in which the Babylonian has insulted him. He has refused to transmit Rabbi Yochanan’s teachings in his name. 34 In addition 32 Jacob Neusner, The Talmud of the Land of Israel: A Preliminary Translation and Explanation, Vol. 15 Sheqalim (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 52. 33 Guggenheimer, Šeqalim, xx. 34 In this case, I am taking the third person masculine ending of “name” to refer to the antecedent “shama’ta”: He does not transmit a tradition in its name, i.e., the name of its tradent. The vocabulary here is important, and sure to raise some objections. The word that the Yerushalmi uses for teaching is “shama’ta,” which comes from a root meaning “to hear.” Many scholars, in agreement with Sussman, have taken this to mean that the traditions described are transmitted solely orally. It is not clear to me that this is the case. The etymological argument is often the 82 to the scholar’s indignation at not seeing his own work cited, we can understand Rabbi Yohanan’s anger through the previously cited baraita of Rabbi Shim’on ben Gamliel (as the editor of the Yerushalmi surely meant us to). The words of the righteous are their memorials. This might be the only memorialization that Rabbi Yohanan can expect, but when it is done properly it is a memorial that endures far into the future. It should also be noted that, while the physicality of this formulation lies not in the actual body of the sage (although that, too, is present in the reference to burial), it is no less present: the memorial is a very real, very material substance. It is memory inscribed in stone, the product of successful reading, and itself an object to be read in the future. 35 As Jaffee states, this is a profoundly clear articulation of the ideology of Palestinian rabbinic orality.36 There is more to this statement than simply glorifying the words of rabbinic teachers as eternally enduring monuments, however: the editor that compiled the final version of this sugya was very clearly setting up rabbinic oral teaching, in all its dangerously ephemeral aurality, in direct contrast to the more physical and durative contents of written books and scrolls. This becomes clear in the next portion of the sugya, which has often been overlooked as a digression. ‫נכנסו לפניו רבי אמי ורבי אסי אמר לו רבי כך היה מעשה בבית הכנסת‬ ‫של טרסיי״ בנגר שיש בראשה גלוסטר״ שנחלקו ר״ אליעזר ורבי יוסי עד שקרעו‬ weakest, and as I have stated numerous times before, an ideology of orality, whether latent or explicit, is most likely to make its appearance in the labels and names that are used to perpetuate it. In ideological contexts, calling something by a specific name often means that the exact opposite of what the name implies is true. Consider, for example, the American religious right’s usage of “pro-family” in order to denote themselves as opposed to gay marriage. They were, in fact, violently opposed to the formation of certain types of families and their recognition under federal law; however, by calling themselves “pro-family,” they were able to identify themselves as in line with an ideology that valued nuclear family structures. 35 See page 320 in the appendix, in which the valence of the root ‫ר‬-‫כ‬-‫ ז‬and its reference to memorialization is discussed. 36 Jaffee, Torah in the Mouth, 150. 83 ‫ספר תורה בחמתן קרעו ס"ד אלא שניקרע ספר תורה והיה שם זקן אחד ורבי יוסי‬ ‫בן קיסמא אמר תמוהני אם לא הוה בית הכנסת זה ע"ז וחזר ואמר הכדין מחבריה‬ Rabbi Ammi and Rabbi Assi came before him, and said to him, “Rabbi, this was something that happened in the synagogue of the Tarsians/artistic weavers, regarding the carpenter’s pin which was on top of the locking bar. Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Yose disagreed about it until they tore a Torah scroll in their anger. They tore? Surely you mean until a Torah scroll was torn! There was an old man there, Rabbi Yose ben Qisma, who said, “I wonder if this synagogue will not become a place of foreign worship.” He came back and asked, “Where is that colleague?” Rabbis Immi and Assi then come forward to tell Rabbi Yochanan a story about Rabbi Eleazar and Rabbi Yose, who get into a fight about a minuscule mishnaic point regarding a door with a lock in the middle of the “synagogue of the weavers.” Their fight becomes so heated that they actually rip a scroll of the Torah in half. This story seems to concern Rabbi Yohanan more than it causes him to relax, as we learn a few lines later, when Rabbi Yohanan asks Immi and Assi why they are not as good at calming him down as Jacob bar Idi. The fact that Rabbi Yochanan is disturbed by this story is telling, however, and its placement after a statement about the words of the righteous serving as their grave monuments, and before another passage expounding that claim, is crucially important. Two rabbis tear a Torah scroll37 as the culminating moment of an argument, and a third rabbi wonders if this means that the synagogue will now become a home to idol worshippers (the ever-mysterious “avodah zarah,” strange worship). The contrast between the two rabbis with their torn Torah scroll and the proper relationship between rabbinic scholars and students is stark. The words of the righteous, according to the baraita cited earlier, last forever, and stand as testaments to the lives of their speakers. As we will see soon, the proper care of these monuments (in this case, the correct 37 It is the stam that is uncomfortable with this action, and changes it from active to passive. 84 ascription of teachings) causes them to endure, and even brings the dead back to life. Their ephemerality does not matter, because they are anything but: they are funerary monuments, which were, by and large, made of stone. The scroll of the Torah, however, important as it is (and it is important, because we see a nervous shying away from the idea of rabbis tearing it), is only a scroll. It might be the focus of ritual, liturgy, education, and even divination—but in the end, it is still a physical book. This passage, and its continuation, give us a glimpse into the role that physical texts might play in the rabbinic construction of an ideology of orality, and how their reading practices reflect that role. As the sugya continues, Rabbi Jacob bar Idi comes to the rescue and cites a biblical verse, expounding it in such a way that Rabbi Yochanan’s mind, so distraught by the last tale, is put at ease. The verse is Joshua 11:15: “When God commanded Moses his servant, so Moses commanded Joshua, and so Joshua did; he did not leave anything aside from all the things that God commanded Moses.”38 Jacob bar Idi, ever the peacemaker (at least in this story), expounds it thus. ‫ניכנס לפניו רבי יעקב בר אידי אמר לו כתיב כל אשר צוה יי' את משה עבדו כן‬ ‫צוה יהושע וגו' וכי כל דיבור ודיבור שהיה יהושע יושב ודורש היה אומר כך אמר‬ ‫משה אלא יהושע יושב ודורש ויודעין הכל שהתורה של משה היא אף אתה אלעזר‬ ‫יושב ודורש והכל יודעין שהתורה שלך היא אמר להן מפני מה אי אתם יודעין‬ ‫לרצות כבן אידי חבירינו‬ Rabbi Jacob bar Idi came before him and said, ‘“And all that God commanded to his servant Moses, so Joshua commanded.” And so: every time that Joshua would sit and expound, would he say, “Moses?” No! Rather, Joshua would sit and expound, and they would know that it was the Torah of Moses. So it is the same with you when Eleazar sits and expounds. Everyone knows that it is your Torah.’ And he said to them, “How come you do not know how to appease me like the son of Idi, our colleague?” 38 ‫עָּשה יְ הֹושָֻׁ֔ עַ ִּֽלא־הֵ ִּ ֶ֣סיר דָּ ָ֔ ָּבר ִּמ ֵּׁ֛כל אֲשֶ ר־צִּ ּוָּ ַ֥ה יְ הוָּ ֹ֖ה אֶ ת־מ ֶ ִּֽשה‬ ֶ֣ ָּ ֙‫כַאֲשֶֶ֙ ר צִּ ּוָּ ַּ֤ה יְ הוָּה֙ אֶ ת־מ ֶ ֶ֣שה עַבְ דָ֔ ֹו כֵ ן־צִּ ּוָּ ַ֥ה מ ֶ ֹ֖שה אֶ ת־יְ הֹושֻׁ ֑עַ וְ כֵן‬ 85 Ascription is important—so important, Jacob bar Idi argues, that we don’t even need to do it all the time: just as all of Joshua’s teachings are to be assumed to come directly from Moses unless otherwise noted, so should Rabbi Yohanan assume that everything Rabbi Eleazar teaches is assumed by all who know to originate in Rabbi Yohanan’s teachings. This satisfies Rabbi Yochanan; he even rebukes his other students, asking them why they are not capable of calming him in the same way that Rabbi Jacob is. The sugya goes on to expound the reason behind Rabbi Yochanan’s insistence on correct citation and ascription. A biblical prooftext is presented, and as happens so regularly, a connection is drawn between the rabbi and an important figure from the past: in this case, king David. ‫ורבי יוחנן מאי כולי האי דבעי דיימרון שמעתא משמיה דאף דוד ביקש עליה‬ ‫רחמים שנאמר אגורה באהלך עולמים אחסה בסתר כנפיך סלה וכי עלתה על דעתו‬ ‫של דוד שיהא חי וקיים לעולמים אלא כך אמ״ דוד לפני הקב"ה רבונו של עולם‬ ‫אזכה שיהו דברי נאמרין בבתי כנויסיות ובבתי מדרשות‬ And how come Rabbi Yochanan was this way, requesting that they speak teachings in his name? Did not David ask for mercy like this, as it is said: “May I dwell in your tent forever, I shall seek shelter under the cover of your wings, Selah” (Ps. 61:5). Did it occur to David that he might have enduring eternal life? No! Rather, he said this before the Holy One, Blessed be He: Master of the World, let me merit that my words are spoken in synagogues and study houses.” A verse from Psalm 61 is, as is traditional, given Davidic authorship. 39 While at first glance, the Psalmist may seem to be asking for eternal life (“May I dwell in your tent forever” has certainly been interpreted this way by other, especially Christian commentators), the 39 The superscription of the psalm itself (‫ (למנצח על נגינות לדוד‬identifies it with David. There is an enormous literature on the traditions of Davidic authorship in the Psalms; for a more recent suggestion as to the significance of this, and references to the voluminous secondary literature, see Eva Mroczek, “The Hegemony of the Biblical in the Study of Second Temple Literature,” Journal of Ancient Judaism 6:1 (2015), 2-35 (esp. 17-25, and the literature cited therein). 86 Yerushalmi suggests that this is an incorrect reading. The eternal dwelling of the Psalm is not an extended age of the body, but of memory: as long as David’s words endure and are continually recited, it is as if he is still living. This is the first link that our passage makes between death, merit, and ascription. There is still more, however: the Yerushalmi makes it quite explicit that word-for-word repetition includes ascription, and that this ascription is a crucially important factor in the proper comportment of respect and subordination that a student should have before his teacher. ‫שמעון בן נזירא בשם רבי יצחק אמר כל תלמיד חכם שאומרין דבר הלכה מפיו‬ ‫בעולם הזה שפתיו רוחשו״ עמו בקבר שנאמר דובב שפתי ישנים מה כמר של‬ ‫ענבים זה כיון שמניח אדם אצבעו עליו מיד דובב אף שפתותיהם של צדיקי״ כיון‬ ‫שאומרין דבר הלכה מפיהם של צדיקי״ שפתותיהן מרחשות עמהן בקבר מה הנאה‬ ‫לו בר נזירא אמר כהדין דשתי קונדיטון ר״ יצחק אמ״ כהדין דשתי חמר עתיק‬ ‫אע"ג דשתי ליה טעמא בפומיה‬ Shim’on son of the Nazirite said in the name of Rabbi Yitzchak, “Every sage student who speaks a word of halakhah from his mouth in this world, his lips move with him in the grave.” As it is said: “Dripping from the lips of those who sleep,” (Song of Songs, 7:10). Just like a shrunken cluster of grapes, if a person places his finger upon it, it immediately drips, so the lips of the righteous, when they speak a word of halakhah from the mouths of the righteous, their lips move along with them in the grave. What is the benefit of this? The son of the Nazirite said, “It is just like one who drinks spiced wine.” Rabbi Yitzchak said, “It is just like one who drinks old wine, even though it has no taste.” Not only does the appropriate citation of a teaching bring merit to both a student and a teacher, but it also ensures, in a way, that the teacher lives on after death: the lips of a dead teacher literally move when their teachings are repeated in the world above, just as they did when they were teaching in the classroom. There is a deep parallelism at play here. Just as the student faithfully recapitulates his teacher’s words when he himself becomes the teacher, his teacher’s lips recapitulate his words when he teaches in his own right. 87 The images used in this passage also fit into a wider visual vocabulary for a meditation on learning and teaching. The cluster of grapes that has been sitting in the sun drips when it is touched: similarly, the teachings of the righteous drip from heaven when their names are invoked.40 At one point in the Babylonian Talmud, the Torah is described as a fruiting fig tree, a full breast, and a graceful doe; 41 elsewhere, teachers and students are likened to vines, flowers, and fruits.42 The language of the natural world as a template for beauty and abundance is not foreign to the discourse of rabbinic education. Guggenheimer points out another important element at play here: there is a pun in the word ‫“ דבב‬dovev,” or “drip,” which is used to describe the sweet bounty of wisdom and Torah. 43 Flowing honey and wine were common metaphors for divine wisdom even as far back as the Psalms.44 While dovev implies dripping honey, and in its biblical context certainly suggests the endless, plentiful nature of love (the subject of the Song of Songs) by comparing it to flowing moisture from a plant or flower, the same root can be used to mean “whisper,” or “speak softly.” This highlights the nature of the mouth: it tastes, and it speaks. The metaphors of this section play on this connection, turning learning into a process of taste, and teaching into a practice of speech. 40 Grapes are also a particularly important image in Palestinian rabbinic midrash that touches on learning and education: in Shir Ha-Shirim Rabbah I.xiv.2 and 3, in which the word “‫אשכול‬,” eshkol, meaing a cluster of grapes, is interpreted as “ish kol”: a man him whom everything (Torah, Mishnah, Talmud, Tosefta, and Aggadah) resides. 41 BEruvin 54a, see pp. 283 42 BEruvin 21a see pp. 261-263 43 Guggenheimer, 59. 44 Psalm 19:11, e.g.: ‫הנחמדים מזהב ומפז רב ומתוקים מדבש ונפת צופים‬, “More desirable than gold, more so than refined gold, sweeter than honey, and than a flowing comb.” Song of Songs Rabbah contains another lengthy midrash in which the words of Torah are compared to water, wine, oil, honey, and milk: cf. Shir Ha-Shirim Rabbah, I.ii.3. 88 A second layer of meaning is added in the word the rabbis use for a dead teacher’s lips “moving”: ‫“ רחש‬rachash,” which means “to set astir,” especially in the Psalms. 45 It is also sonically close to ‫“ לחש‬lachash,” which means whisper. Speaking the name of one’s teacher causes their lips to move and the teachings to drip down; it also, quite literally, enables them to speak again—even if their voice only mutters softly from below the grave. Once again, the endurance of teaching, even beyond death, is highlighted, in contrast to the potentially destructible nature of texts—of physical scrolls. The passage continues beyond this with still more meditation on the importance of correct attribution. Rav Giddul, an amoraic sage, gives a teaching that reinforces this. Teaching with correct attribution does more than simply venerate the memory of the dead and give them the opportunity to speak from the grave: it literally brings them back from it, creating a situation in which a teacher’s authority is heightened and likened to the authority of their own teacher. ‫גדול אמ״ כאן שמועה בשם אומר יראה בעל שמועה כאילו עומד לנגדו שנ״ אך‬ ‫בצלם יתהלך איש רוב אדם יקרא איש חסדו והשאר כל אדם ואיש אמונים מי‬ ‫ימצא זה ר״ זעיר״ דא״ר זעירא למה לי שאני צריכין רחושין לשמעתיה דרב ששת‬ ‫דהוא גברא מפתחא אמר ליה רבי זעירא לרבי אסי חכים רבי לבר פתייא דאתא‬ ‫אמ״ שמעתא משמיה אמר ליה רבי יוחנן אמרה משמיה אמר ליה רבי זעירא לרבי‬ ‫אסי ח כים רבי לרב דאת אמר שמעתא משמיה א"ל ר' אדא בר אהבה אמרה‬ ‫משמיה‬ Giddul said, “Here, a teaching in the name of its speaker appears as if the original speaker himself is standing before him. As it is said, “Only in the image does a man walk” (Ps. 39:7). “A great number of men he calls a loyal friend,” (Prov. 20:6) this is the majority of humanity, “but who can find a faithful man?” This is Rabbi Zeira. As Rabbi Zeira said, “How come it is necessary for me to move (attribute?) the teachings of Rav Sheshet, since he is a blind man?” Rabbi Zeira said to Rabbi Assi, “Does Rabbi know Bar Petaiah, that he came and gave traditions in his name?” He said to him, “Rabbi Yochanan spoke in his name.” Rabbi Zeira said to Rabbi Assi, “Does Rabbi know Rav, that you said teachings in his name?” He said to him that Rav Adda bar Ahava spoke in his name. 45 See Psalm 45:2: ‫רחש לבי דבר טוב‬, “A good word set my heart astir.” 89 The passage concludes with general knowledge regarding ascriptions and attributions: there is an open question about the ascription of traditions to a blind man, and various rabbis are presented as giving traditions in the names of their teachers. The Palestinian Talmud, then, seems to have less of a focus on the explicit, continuous repetition of traditions that we saw in the earlier passages from the Mishnah. Its focus is reoriented to repetition as a practice that brings honor to a teacher, providing credit for a teaching’s genesis and bringing merit to its formulator even from beyond the grave: we could even consider it a form of cultic care of the dead. 46 We might consider this a transitional period in the institutionalization of rabbinic education: the Yerushalmi was formulated in academies that were far more formalized than the earlier tannaitic disciple circles, but as classes and study groups commonly met in synagogues and “study houses” rather than purpose-built academies, the concretization of rule structures, curricula, and calendars were still a thing of the future (and reached their zenith in Sassanian Babylonia, around the time of the redaction of the Talmud, and certainly the Geonic period). It also serves to further embed the ideology of Oral Torah in the very structure of learning: as Martin Jaffee says, “[t]he crucial nourishment of Torah in the Mouth sustains and transforms as long as memories are disciplined to preserve the proper associations of teachers and their teachings.” 47 This is particularly close to educational practices from the Greco-Roman classroom. Importantly, the rhetoric of the Babylonian Talmud itself also presents an explicit understanding of “ascription” as a practice that falls under the semantic 46 I thank my colleague Kerry Sonia for attuning me to this language. See her dissertation, “The Enduring Dead: The Cult of Dead Kin in Ancient Israel,” Brown University, 2016, for more material on the cult of dead kin and cultic care for the dead (and a useful definition of terms) in ancient Israel. This is also fits into a much larger pattern in rabbinic ideology, which has received a significant amount of attention in recent years: the transformation of certain forms of practice and ritual into textually-focused practices. (See, for example, the transformation of the Temple sacrificial cult into rituals of reading about the temple sacrificial cult, in the chapter on liturgy.) 47 Martin Jaffee, Torah in the Mouth, 150. 90 umbrella of “repetition” when it utilizes citation formulas with the root ‫ה‬-‫נ‬-‫ ש‬or ‫י‬-‫נ‬-‫ת‬. The significance of these practices for the eventual furthering of an ideology of orality is highlighted in the contrasts raised between material and spoken texts, both of which can be repeated, recited, and ascribed, albeit in different ways. IV. Repetition in the Bavli The theme of repetition and ascription continues throughout much of rabbinic literature, and is also present in the Babylonian Talmud. The importance of repetition, and the subsequent mechanics of learning attendant upon it—specifically, the division of texts and traditions into smaller pieces that are the studied (and often memorized)—is characteristic of rabbinic learning. Babylonian rabbis attach cosmic, eschatological importance to correct, exacting repetition and reading—a move that is also made by contemporaneous Syriac authors. BEruvin 54b contains multiple sources that attest to practices of repetition, and especially their importance for understanding hierarchies, both cosmic and scholarly, in the master-disciple relationship.48 In what follows, I will go through the most salient parts of this lengthy passage, showing how it builds on traditions of tannaitic educational practices regarding repetition, and reorients the focus of repetition from pure recitation and ascription to innovation. Parts of this passage are relevant to other portions of this dissertation: rather than skip over them completely, I will only summarize them here, and point the reader to where they are discussed in full. BEruvin 53a-54b is built on a series of connections that spring from Mishnah Eruvin 5:1, which deals with the creation of Sabbath boundaries around irregularly shaped cities. Our passage from the gemara takes its starting point from the first two words of the mishnah, “ ‫כיצד‬ ‫מעברין‬,” “how do we extend.” The gemara begins by noting a disagreement in the Mishnah’s 48 See, for example, Marc Hirshman, The Stabilization of Rabbinic Culture, 49-64. 91 orthography, with one rabbi (Rav or Shmuel—we are not told who stands on which side) reading it as we read it, “‫מעברין‬,” “extend,” and the other rabbi reading it “‫מאברין‬,” which is claimed to have the same meaning, but is only used in special cases regarding irregular extensions of the Sabbath boundary. The crux of the disagreement is that the two words are pronounced the same. The first option, “‫מעברין‬,” spelled with an ‘ayin, is a relatively common word for “extend” (and is even the same word used by ancient rabbis to refer to intercalating the year). The second option, “‫מאברין‬,” highlights the human body, which remains a recurring theme throughout the passage: its triliteral root, ‫ר‬-‫ב‬-‫א‬, typically means “limb,” “member,” or sometimes “penis” in rabbinic literature.49 Various other examples of debates between Rav and Shmu’el are brought forward, most of which involve disagreements over the interpretation of certain biblical verses (Genesis 14:1, Exodus 1:8, and the meaning of the name of the Cave of Machpelah from Genesis 23:17-19). The sugya, however, begins explicitly treating themes of education soon after that. The thematic relationship of the parts helps to highlight the way the rabbis ascribed great importance to educational reading practices, particularly those of repetition and recitation. The sugya’s culmination shows that repetition was not only a common educational reading practice that served to reify the hierarchy present between student and teacher, but that it was also a meritorious religious action. After a brief mnemonic device that supposedly provides a tool for remembering the lengthy material that comes afterward, the gemara states that Rabbi Yochanan claims to have studied with Rabbi Oshaya, and that in all the eighteen days he spent with him, he learned only that the Mishnaic text on which the sugya is built should be read and understood with an alef: 49 Jastrow, Dictionary, 8-9. 92 ‫מאברין‬. Rabbi Yohanan then goes on to describe how incredibly crowded Rabbi Oshaya’s study house was, while Rabbi Judah the Prince does the same for Eleazar ben Shamua; this continues with a lengthy list of metaphors describing the intellectual capacities of the great rabbinic minds. The question of orthography and mnemonics is taken up again. The people of Judaea are said to have been “strict in their tongue,” ‫הפקידו על לשונם‬, which in turn caused the Torah to endure “in their hands.” The bodily metaphor is again present: Torah is a thing that is materially held in the learner’s body, and it is maintained in the hands, through the actions of the tongue. Judaeans are contrasted with Galileans, who are not “strict in their tongue,” and therefore lose their Torah. The stam goes on to repeat the same distinction, but with a different educational principle: Judaeans learned their Torah from one teacher, while Galileans had many; for this reason, Torah endures for Judaeans, and not their northern compatriots. The third and last distinction between the two regions comes in the form of an administrative procedure: Judaeans publicized (‫גלו‬, revealed) in advance the tractate to be studied in a given study session, which Galileans did not. 50 This, of course, causes the same pattern to endure. This pattern is then applied to David and Saul: David, who is positively remembered, disclosed the tractate he studied, while Saul did not. There are deep resonances here with the Yerushalmi sugya previously examined, in which study, reading, and citation are crucial elements of a scholar’s afterlife. 50 This seems to be a reference to a particularly late rabbinic practice: that of the kallah, or study session. Twice yearly (in Elul and Adar), rabbinic scholars would gather together to study a predetermined section of Torah in the Babylonian academies. The fact that this text retrojects such a practice into the Palestinian past is unsurprising, and is, in fact, a feature of Babylonian discourse on rabbinic education. For more information on the kallah and its disputed origins, see Isaiah Gafni, “Nestorian Literature as a Source for the History of the Babylonian Yeshivot,” [Hebrew] Tarbiz 51 (1981-82) 567-576; for an earlier treatment (although one that is still greatly influential), see David Goodblatt, Rabbinic Instruction in Sasanian Babylonia, 155-170. 93 The gemara then, in a classic move, returns to an earlier topic of conversation: the orthography of the Mishnah. Is the word spelled with an ‘ayin or an ‘alef? Given that the text has just established the superior linguistic status of the Judaeans, however, it relates that they were asked about the correct spelling: unsurprisingly, perhaps, they claim that both spellings are correct.51 The sugya then continues for some time in this vein, citing specific examples of the distinctive speech patterns of Judaeans and Galileans. This shades into numerous examples of speech so specific it takes on the characteristic of riddles. The next element of this sugya is two separate stories of Beruriah, the wife of Rabbi Meir, an important tannaitic figure. 52 While the first can be understood as fitting into the sugya’s larger preoccupation with Galilean and Judaean differences in education and scholarship, the second highlights an important element of rabbinic educational reading practices. ‫רבי יוסי הגלילי הוה קא אזיל באורחא אשכחה לברוריה אמר לה באיזו דרך נלך‬ ‫ללוד אמרה ליה גלילי שוטה לא כך אמרו חכמים אל תרבה שיחה עם האשה היה‬ ‫לך לומר באיזה ללוד‬ Rabbi Yose the Galilean was walking on the road, and he came upon Beruriah. He said to her, “By which road may I go to Lod?” She said to him, “Stupid Galilean! Haven’t the sages said, ‘do not increase your speech with women?’ It would have been more fitting for you to say, ‘Which way to Lod?’” 51 This is a compelling instantiation of what we might think of as text criticism as a marker of rabbinic religious expertise. 52 Beruriah, the wise wife of Rabbi Meir, is an important and perplexing figure in rabbinic historiography. She has variously been held up as an example of lenient rabbinic attitudes towards the education of women and the exact opposite; an image of a rabbinic fantasy, and a complete foil for hapless male scholars. David Goodblatt’s study on the various “Beruriah traditions” is still relevant: David Goodblatt, “The Beruriah Traditions,” Journal of Jewish Studies 26:1-2 (1975) 68-85. For a historiography of scholarship on Beruriah (and other learned women of the Talmud), see Tal Ilan, “The Quest for the Historical Beruriah, Rachel, and Imma Shalom,” AJS Review 22:1 (1997) 1-17. Other modern approaches include Daniel Boyarin, Carnal Israel 181-196; Tova Hartman and Charlie Buckholtz, “‘Beruriah Said Well’: The Many Lives (and Deaths) of a Talmudic Social Critic” Prooftexts 31:3 (Fall 2011) 181-209 and Naomi Cohen, “Bruria in the Bavli and in Rashi Avodah Zarah 18b” Tradition 48.2/3 (Summer/Fall 2015) 29-40. 94 ‫ ביה אמרה‬54‫ בלחישה בטשה‬53‫ברוריה אשכחתיה לההוא תלמידא דהוה קא גריס‬ ‫ליה לאו הכי כת״ ערוכה בכל ושמורה אם ערוכה במאתים וארבעים ושמונה איברים‬ ‫של אדם שמורה בלב אם לאו אינה שמור״ בלב תנא תלמיד אחד היה לו לר״ אליעזר‬ 55 ‫בן יעקוב שהיה שונה בלחש לאחר שלוש שנים שכח תלמודו‬ Beruriah came upon a certain student who was learning in a whisper. She kicked him and said to him, “Is it not written, ‘Prepared in every way, and preserved’ (2 Sam 23:5)? If it is prepared in the two-hundred-forty-eight limbs the body of a human, it will be preserved in the heart, and if not, it will not be preserved in the heart.” A baraita: Rabbi Eliezer ben Yaakov had a student who would recite traditions in a whisper, and after three years, he forgot his talmud. The second of these stories is crucial for our understanding of rabbinic educational reading practices, I believe—at least in their Babylonian iteration. The text establishes study as a physical, bodily practice: one that, according to Beruriah, at least, engages the entire body. There are also, apparently, important protocols to be kept: one of them seems to be speaking aloud, rather than whispering. The vocabulary utilized for the practice of study—‫—גריס‬also seems to indicate a practice of repetition and recitation. 56 The metaphor for retention of knowledge should also be noted: it is preserved in the heart. 57 In Goodblatt’s treatment of the Beruriah traditions overall, he recognizes that her education and wisdom seem to be a particularly Babylonian phenomenon,58 an observation that fits with an understanding of educational reading practices attaining a more formalized, hierarchical format in their later setting. 53 The Venice printing has ‫גרים‬. 54 MS Munich has ‫בששיה‬. 55 I am following Vatican MS 109 here. Variants in other manuscripts other than those noted here are minor: the spelling of Beruriah’s name and emendations of Aramaic particles. 56 At other points in the Talmud, the repetitive nature of this action is made clear: bAZ 19a, bBer 8a, bMeg 29a, bTaanit 10b. 57 The preservation of learning on the heart is a classic ancient Mediterranean metaphor for memory. 58 Goodblatt, The Beruriah Traditions, 85. 95 A short vignette about another hapless student of Rabbi Eliezer is followed by an injunction from Shmu’el to read and study out loud. ‫אמ' ליה שמואל לרב יהודה שיננא פתח פמך קרי פתח פמך תני כי היכי דתוריך חיי‬ ‫ותתקיים בידך שנ' כי חיים הם למוצאיה' ולכל בשרו מרפא אל תיקרי למוצאיהם‬ 59 ‫אלא למוציאיהם בפה‬ Shmu’el said to Rav Yehudah, “Sharp one, open your mouth and read, open your mouth and recite, for thus your Torah lives and endures in your hands, as it is said, ‘For they are life to those who find them, and to all its flesh, they are healing’ (Proverbs: 4:22). Do not read “to those who find them,” but rather, ‘to those who express them with the mouth.’” Reading and reciting—typically understood to mean reading Torah and reciting rabbinic traditions—are both meant to be done out loud. The pun in this passage, which plays on the sonic similarities between “those who find them” and “those who express them” is clearly mean to indicate that both readings, not just the latter, are correct, even though the latter is obviously privileged. Encountering Torah, both oral and written, is good, but as the passage will eventuallyshow, actually teaching it can extend one’s life. The interchange continues with various other metaphors and instructions. The connection between study, Torah, and the human body is brought to a climax in the next section, in which the study of Torah becomes a remedy for all sorts of human ailments. ‫חש בגרונו יעסוק בתורה שנ' וענקים לגרגרותיך חש בבני מעים יע(ק)[ס]וק‬ ‫בתורה שנ' רפאות תהי לשרך חש בעצמותיו יעסוק בתורה שנ' ושקוי לעצמותיך‬ 60 ‫חש בגופו יעסוק בתורה שנ' ולכל בשרו מרפא‬ One who feels pain in his throat should engage in Torah, as it is written, “And they are chains for your neck” (Proverbs 1:9) One who feels pain in his intestines should engage in Torah, as it is 59 Vatican MS 109. 60 Vatican MS 109. The Vilna edition, as well as a few other manuscripts, begin with the phrase, “ ‫חש בראשו יעסוק‬ ‫בתורה שנאמר כי לוית חן הם‬,” “One who has a headache, he should study Torah, as it is written, “For they a graceful chain” (Proverbs 1:9). 96 written, “Let it be healing to your navel” (Proverbs 3:8). One who has pain in his bones should engage in Torah, as it is written, “And it is marrow to your bones,” (Proverbs 3:8). One whose body hurts should engage in Torah, as it is written, “And it is health to all flesh” (Proverbs 4:22). The next part of the passage insists that the Torah is a “drug of life” for the entire body: “And it is for them a drug of life for their entire body, as it is written, ‘For they are life for those who find them, and healing for all its flesh.’” 61 The sugya continues in a similar vein, stressing the vocal aspect of Torah study. Torah must be forever on the sage’s lips: it must be constantly, physically, vocally, bodily present, and it must be audible, present, and easily recalled. The next portion of the sugya will be studied in detail later, in the chapter on ethical reading. While it introduces new themes—particularly humility and transformation—the remainder of this section remains focused on repetition, recitation, physicality, and hierarchy. The text picks up again on bEruvin 54b, with a statement that refers to division and slow diligence as the most important part of learning: ‫אמ' רבא אמ' רב סחורא מאי דכת' הון מהבל ימעט וקובץ על יד ירבה אם עושה‬ ‫תורתו חבילות חבילות מתמעט ואם קובץ על יד ירבה אמ' רבה גמירי רבנן להא‬ 62 ‫מילתא ועברי עילוה ואמ' רב נחמן בר יצחק בדידי הוה עובדא ואיתקיימא בי‬ Rava said that Rav Sehora said: ‘What does it mean, ‘Wealth from vanity will decrease, but the one who gathers by hand will increase?’ If a man makes his Torah into [large] bundles, it will decrease—and if he gathers by hand, will increase.” Rava said, “The Sages knew this thing, but passed over it.” Rav Nachman bar Yitzchaq said, “I did it, and it remained with me.” There is an immediate connection here to Mekhilta Vayassa 3, discussed in chapter 1, in which educational content is packaged in “bundles.” 63 The interpretation here relies on a piece of sonic 61 ‫והיא להם סם חיים לכל גופם שנ' כי חיים הם למוצאיהם ולכל בשרו מרפא‬ 62 MS Vatican 109 63 See pp. 43-46. 97 wordplay: the biblical Hebrew word for “vanity,” which appears in the verse from Proverbs, is ‫הבל‬/hevel, which sounds very similar to ‫חבילה‬/chavilah, the word that the rabbis use to mean “large bundles.” The repetition of chavilot implies large, unorganized chunks, rather than small, tidy packages, and the sonic similarities between “vanity” and “bundle” underscore the pedagogic point: what is learned in large, unwieldy amounts is difficult to remember, and rarely learned properly. Rav Nachman’s statement presents a justification for this practice: even if it seems juvenile, difficult, and time-consuming, it has proven successful for the later rabbis. This is an oblique reference to repetition. Sections comprised of lengthy paragraphs, chapters, and books are far too lengthy to memorize efficiently, quickly, and accurately: as any middle schooler attempting to memorize the Gettysburg Address can attest, it is done phrase by phrase. Smaller selections, equivalent to harvesting only what can be held in the harvester’s two hands, ensure that the teaching endures, and that the harvest is gathered correctly. The sugya continues, and goes on to discuss repetition even more explicitly. The manner in which traditions were relayed from God to the Children of Israel at large forms the subject, and while various scholars have concluded that this complex schema of repetition, learning, and deference to authority in fact reflect the way traditions were taught in Palestinian academies of late antiquity,64 it is far more likely that this next passage is a further crystallization of various ideologies—specifically, the ideology of orality, and the ideology of perfect transmission attendant upon oral formulation. The absolute absence of texts in favor of speech as the medium of memorization is a function of that ideological fashioning rather than an actual reality of the ancient Jewish classroom. 64 J.N. Epstein, Mevo’ot Le-Sifrut Ha-Tana’im: Mishnah, Tosefta, U-Midreshei Halakhah [Heb] (Jerusalem, 1957), 188. 98 ‫תנו רבנן כיצד סדר משנה משה למד מפי הגבורה נכנס אהרן ושנה לו משה פרקו‬ ‫נסתלק אהרן וישב לשמאל משה נכנסו בניו ושנה להן פרקן נסתלקו בניו אלעזר‬ ‫ישב לימין משה ואיתמר לשמאלו של אהרן ר' יהודה אומ' לעולם אהרן לימין משה‬ ‫הוא חוזר נכנסו זקנים ושנה להן משה פרקן נכנסו כל העם ושנה להן משה פרקן‬ ‫נמצא ביד אהרן ארבעה ביד בניו שלשה ביד זקנים שנים ביד כל העם אחד‬ Our rabbis taught, “What was the order of repetition? Moses learned from the mouth of the Mighty One. Aaron entered and Moses repeated his portion for him, then Aaron ascended and sat at Moses’ left. Then his sons entered, and Moses recited their portion for them, and his sons ascended. Eleazar sat to Moses’s right, and Itamar sat to Aaron’s left. Rabbi Yehuda says, ‘Aaron would always return to Moses’ right.’ Then the elders entered, and Moses repeated their portion to them, and the elders ascended, then the entire nation entered, and Moses repeated their portion for them. So, it was found in Aaron’s hand four times, in his sons’ hands three times, and in the hands of the elders twice, and once in the hands of the whole nation. This passage gives voice to several important features of rabbinic education. The concern for hierarchy and the proper order of learning is key here, as is the emphasis on repetition and a tradition’s authoritative source. Repetition has already been theorized as a strategy that keeps what has been learned safely secured in the student’s memory (termed in bodily metaphors), and this passage furthers that notion. Moses hears the tradition once, from God, and then repeats it four times, both ensuring that he himself cannot forget it, and that everyone present hears it from an authoritative source. The continuation explains that Moses then leaves, and Aaron repeats the tradition; Aaron leaves, and his sons repeat it; they leave, and the elders repeat it, and then the nation repeats it for themselves. In this manner, everyone hears the tradition four times, and more importantly, everyone has the chance to repeat it for themselves. In this manner, the gemara claims, do we learn that everyone who teaches must repeat his teaching four times: if Aaron had to hear it four times from Moses, then how much more so for the rest of us! What is striking, of course, is that Moses only hears the teaching once, even if it is directly from the mouth of God. 99 It is possible that this passage is based in the reality of a late ancient rabbinic classroom, although the relationship is more ad hoc, and much less formal, than J. N. Epstein’s analysis would allow for. Epstein suggests that a passage in the Tosefta, Sanhedrin 8:1, depicts a similar situation in which Rabban Gamliel and his sons would sit at the front of the academy of Yavneh in like manner to Moses and Aaron. 65 Epstein’s conclusion is that these two traditions are linked in practice; the repetitive recitation, reading, or reading-recitation of a teaching occurred in the academy of Yavneh exactly as the Rabbis envisioned it happening in the Tabernacle. It is more likely that these traditions are linked in the way that they represent authority. Rabbis depicting other rabbis as occupying the same position as Moses, Aaron, and Aaron’s sons does not mean that they were necessarily doing the same thing: it means that there was something important in that shared depiction. In this case, that importance is the transmission of authority directly from God to Moses and his family. By placing Rabban Gamliel in Moses’ position (or indeed, Moses in the Patriarch’s!), the Tosefta claims not that he taught as Moses taught, but that his position was due the same honor as Moses’. The sugya eventually culminates in a meditation on education and repetition that weaves all of these themes together. Deference to authority and proper comportment in front of one’s teachers is crucial—but a teacher’s dedication to a student trumps all. The study of Torah is the equal of all other commandments, indeed. Before this last story, however, the discussion of 65 Hirshman, The Stabilization of Rabbinic Culture, 61; Epstein, Mevo’ot, 188 n. 74. The Tosefta passage in question, from the Zuckermandel edition, reads: ‫כל סנהדרין שיש בה שנים יודעין לדבר וכולן ראויין לשמוע ראויה לעשות סנהדרי‬ ‫שלשה בינונית ארבעה חכמה סנהדרין היתה כחצי גורן עגולה כדי שיהיו רואין זה את זה הנשיא יושב באמצע וזקנים יושבין מימינו ומשמאלו‬ ‫אמ' ר' אלעזר בר' צדוק כשהיה רבן גמליאל יושב ביבנה אבא ואחר מימינו וזקנים משמאלו ומפני מה אחד יושב על זקן מימינו מפני כבודו של‬ ‫“ זקן‬Every council in which there are two who know how to speak [trained in rhetoric?] and all are fit to hear, is fit to serve. Three, and it is average; four, and it is a wise council. The council was in the shape of half a circular threshing-floor, in order that they could each see each other. The patriarch would sit in the middle, and the elders would sit to his right and his left. Rabbi Eleazar said in the name of Rabbi Zadok that when Rabban Gamliel would sit in Yavneh, his [Rabbi Eleazar’s?] father and another would sit to his right, and the elders to his left. And why does one sit according to age on his right? Because of the honor of age.” 100 pedagogic method continues. We first have a brief statement from Rabbi Akiva that is worth quoting in full. ‫ר' עקיבה אומ' מניין לאדם שחייב לשנות לתלמידו עד שילמדנו ת'ל ולמדה את בני‬ ‫ישר' שימה בפיהם ומניין עד שתהא סדורה בפיו ת'ל שימה בפיהם ומניין שחייב‬ 66 ‫להראות לו פנים בה שנ' ואלה המשפטים‬ Rabbi Akiva says, “From where do we know that it is necessary for a man to repeat to his student until he learns it? As it is written, ‘And teach it to the children of Israel,’ (Deut 31:19). And from where do we know [that it is necessary for a man to repeat to his student] until it is ordered in his mouth? As it is written, ‘Place it in their mouths.’ And from where do we know that he is obligated to show his face? As it is written, ‘And these are the laws which you shall place before them,’ (Exodus 21:1). Repetition is given a basis in Scripture. The word used in Deuteronomy, ‫לשנות‬, is the same root that the rabbis use to mean repetition. In Aramaic, this root becomes ‫א‬-‫נ‬-‫ת‬, which forms the basis of the appellation “tannaim,” or “reciters.” The command to relay God’s teaching to one’s children contains an instruction to continually repeat it. The second question, asking about the ordering of the teaching “in his mouth,” suggests that the pedagogic process only ends when the student is actually capable of teaching the material himself. Again, this assumption is located in Scripture: in this case, it is even traced back to the same verse that the previous injunction was proven with. “Placing the teaching in their mouths” is understood quite figuratively: it is not transmitted statically, but rather dynamically, between the mouth of the teacher and the mouth of the student, rather than simply the ears. It is this dynamic transmission, of course, that then came to be codified in writing, which itself became one of the most important reading practices of later Judaism: the study of the Talmud. 66 MS Vatican 109 101 The third question, answered by a different prooftext, treats the context of the classroom as well. Students are taught by their teachers in face-to-face interactions.67 Torah cannot be transmitted by reading and listening alone; it is the face of the sage that is able to provide the essence of the laws. Together, these three qualifications—learning involves constant repetition, learning can only be considered successful when the student is able to teach, learning happens in the physical presence of both student and teacher—ensure not only that learning endures, but that the shape and scope of it is specifically rabbinic. Repetition inscribes the Torah, both written and oral, on the heart—but more than that, it ensures that the process by which rabbis form other rabbis repeats itself as well. The gemara presents a few more modifications to this passage before moving on to its next narrative. Specifically, it wants to know why Moses didn’t just teach Aaron, who would then simply teach his sons, and so on. The answer that the text presents is that in this way, everyone was able to hear the text repeated at least once from the mouth of Moses, who heard it directly from the mouth of God. The fact that Aaron hears it from Moses four times, his sons three, and so forth, is simply a matter of honor: they are honored by hearing Moses teach more than anyone else, and they are similarly honored by being offered the chance to teach on their own. Finally, we come to the story of Rabbi Pereida, who had to repeat his lesson eight hundred times before his student could understand it. It reads thus: ‫ר' פרידא הוה ליה ההוא תלמידא דהוה תני ליה ארבע מאה זימני זימנא חד אתו‬ ‫אמרו ליה איכא מילתא דמצוה תנא ליה ולא גמר ליה אמ' ליה האידנא מאי שנא‬ 67 There is some disagreement about the actual meaning of the Hebrew phrase, “‫להראות לו פנים‬.” I take it quite literally: “to show his face,” to actually be present in the moment of teaching. The Steinsaltz translation of the Talmud prefers the more legally-oriented “reason”: specifically, the reasons for which the teacher is interpreting a text in a certain manner. This is a rarer usage of the noun, and therefore less likely. Additionally, the combination of ‫ להראות‬and ‫ פנים‬occurs elsewhere in rabbinic literature, specifically to mean a physical appearance. See, for example, Rachel Neis’ The Sense of Sight in Rabbinic Culture: Jewish Ways of Seeing in Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013) 18-40. 102 ‫אמ' ליה מההיא שעתא דאמרו ליה למר איכא מילתא דמצוה אסחתא לדעתאי מיני‬ ‫אמינא השתא קאים מר השתא קאים מר אמ' ליה הב דעתך דאיתני לך תנא ליה‬ ‫ארבע מאה זמני אחריתי וגמר נפקא בת קול ואמרה ליה ארבע מאה שנין ניחא לך‬ ‫דלוספ?ו?ן לך חייך אי דתיזכי את ודארך לעלמא דאתי אמ' בעינא דאיזכי אנא ודרי‬ 68 ‫לעלמא דאתי אמ' להן הקב'ה תנו לו זו וזו‬ Rabbi Pereida had a certain student, and he would repeat [the lesson] for him four hundred times before he would learn it. One day, [other students] requested a word regarding a commandment from him. He repeated the lesson, but the student did not learn it. He asked him, “What’s different now?” He responded, “From the moment that they said to you that there is a matter regarding a commandment, my intellect was distracted, and every moment I thought, ‘Now is when my master will rise, now is when my master will rise.’” He responded to him, “Give me your intellect, and I shall repeat it for you again. He repeated it for him four hundred more times. Afterwards, a bat qol went out from heaven and said to him, “Is it preferable for you that four hundred years be added to you, or that you and your generation shall merit the world to come?” He said, “That my generation and I will merit the world to come.” The Holy One, Blessed be He, said, “Give him both!” This section’s themes are laid bare here, and shown to not only be desirable, but ultimately worthy of adulation and compensation from God himself. Rabbi Pereida is presented as the consummate teacher, and presumably the consummate legal authority. He goes far beyond the requisite four repetitions of Moses: for his own student, he is willing to regularly repeat a lesson four hundred times.69 The interruption of his lesson—or rather, the expected interruption that never happens—marks him as exceptional in three ways. Firstly, he is of sufficient importance to merit his opinion being asked on a legal matter. Secondly, his dedication to his student is apparent from the fact that he refused to stop his repetitions, even when his petitioners entered. Unfortunately, this is not enough to ensure that his student learns his lesson: even 68 MS Vatican 109 69 As four hundred is simply a hundred times greater than the previously stated four, it seems safe to say that we should take this number figuratively, rather than literally. 103 though Rabbi Pereida remains completely dedicated to his student, his student is distracted, worrying that he will be abandoned. Finally, in the wake of this, rather than rebuking his student, or giving up for the day, Rabbi Pereida repeats his lesson again—all four hundred times. There are subtle cues in this story as well, and they also reveal the sense of awe and honor with which we are to revere Rabbi Pereida. He is seated: teachers, readers, and reciters are typically shown as being seated in the ancient world, 70 but in the Babylonian context, this has an extra valence of honor and status. 71 In this narrative, the editor of the Bavli has woven together disparate thematic strands surrounding the honor of a teacher and his responsibility to a student. The themes of the previous three questions—the necessity of repetition, the necessity of learning until able to teach, and physical presence—are all highlighted here, in the story of a rabbi who refused to leave his student alone until he had performed his lesson for him eight hundred times. We see yet again the crucial importance of physicality, in this case, bodily presence, in rabbinic education, as well as the intertwined discourses of respect and education as they relate to a specific reading practice: repetition. This sugya is not the only location in which repetition is touted as a key strategy of rabbinic education. Famous rabbis are also depicted as repeating their studies numerous times in order to learn them properly. This serves two purposes, both of them didactic. By depicting a figure who is regularly presented as a persona to emulate engaging in an otherwise mundane reading practice, the text ensures that students will imitate these legendary teachers, and learn their lessons properly. Additionally, by identifying some of the greatest rabbis of the rabbinic 70 Snyder, Teachers and Texts, 230 n. 2 71 We see this in numerous depictions of teachers from the Bavli: cushions and rows are the easiest places to identify this. 104 period as figures who learn in the same way as “typical” students (repeating a text twenty-four or forty times,72 if not four hundred!), the distance between the student and the end of goal of becoming a rabbi seems significantly shortened.73 V. Repeating in Syriac: The Cause of the Foundation of the Schools Repetition was not exclusive to the rabbinic movement, of course, and even though we can find several examples of its primacy as a form of educational reading in Greek and Roman educational texts, the closest comparandum comes from a fascinating sixth-century Syriac text known as the Cause of the Foundation of the Schools. The parallels between the Eastern Christian school movement and rabbinic academies have long been noted by scholars. Important similarities in form and structure, as well as the existence of both in the nebulous borderlands of the eastern Roman and Sassanian empires, give scholars good reason to examine them as part of a shared scholastic culture. 74 The feature that makes rabbinic repetition a distinctive practice is its orientation towards hierarchy and authority: even as it aids the enculturation of the reader, it also reinforces the hierarchies of teacher-student that are necessary for the wider-scale project of rabbinic subject formation to take place and have meaning. The Cause, in its retelling of the biblical Creation narrative as the history of a series of schools, makes use of repetitive reading within this rubric. When creation becomes a reading lesson, repeating the word of God places the created within a set hierarchy that is ordained by the creator. The scale of these interacting ideologies might be 72 See bTaanit 8a. 73 Other instances of repetition, particularly verse-by-verse, include BAZ 18a, BYoma 87a, BBB 164b, BMoedQ 16b, and BShab116b. 74 See Gafni, “Nestorian Literature;” Rubenstein, The Culture of the Babylonian Talmud, 35-38; and Adam Becker, Fear of God and the Beginning of Wisdom 14, 18. 105 different—the Syriac texts spans the entirety of creation, while rabbinic texts (for example, ySheqalim 2:7 47a) mark its importance by causing it to move from this life to the next—but they work in largely the same way. By bringing these varying strands of ascription, hierarchy, repetition, and education together, the Cause serves as an important parallel to development of similar rabbinic ideas that reach their culmination in the Babylonian Talmud. The Cause of the Foundation of the Schools is a complicated text. Several manuscripts attribute it to Barhadbeshabba; whether this is the same Barhadbeshabba who wrote an Ecclesiastical History and was the bishop of Halwan, or a different figure with the same name (some manuscripts name him as Barhadbeshabba Arbaya, or “of the Arabs”) is an open question.75 The manuscript tradition itself is also incredibly messy: the first edition of the text was edited by Addai Scher, and many of the manuscripts that he utilized were destroyed in the same genocide that killed him. 76 The Cause of the Foundation of the Schools is associated, by virtue of its author, as well as the content of the text itself, with the foundation of the school of Nisibis. It presents itself as a speech given to students at the beginning of a period of learning, and after several different meditations on the nature of God’s goodness, wisdom, and power, 77 it falls into a series of philosophical discussion of various topics surrounding education and the divine intellect. 78 It is in the midst of this section of more philosophical musings, and before the account of creation as 75 Adam Becker, Sources for the Study of the School of Nisibis (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2008) 11-15. 76 Becker, Sources, 165-171. 77 Scher, Cause of the Foundation of the Schools, 327-333; Becker, Sources, 94-101. 78 Scher, Cause of the Foundation of the Schools, 335-342; Becker, Sources, 103-111. 106 a series of schools, that we come across the first important instance of reading as a creative act that establishes hierarchies between God and the angels, and God and humanity. Because the spiritual powers are prior in creation and more excellent in substance, 79 God brought forth his teaching to them, lest they fall into error and falsely suppose great things about themselves, when he wrote a scroll of imperceptible light with his finger of creative power and with (his) command, (a scroll) which he had them read (aqri /‫ )ܐܩܪܝ‬with an audible voice: Let there be light, and there was light,80 and because there was an understanding mind in them, at that very moment they knew that everything that comes into being comes into being from another and everyone who is in authority is commanded by someone who is in authority, and from this they knew exactly that that one who brought this excellent nature into being also created them. Therefore all of them in a group with an audible voice repaid their creator with thanks, as he (i.e. God) said to Job: When I was creating the stars of dawn, all my angels shouted with a loud voice and praised me. In a similar manner we have a practice, after we have a child read the simple letters 81 and repeat them, we join them one to another and from them we put together names that he may read syllable by syllable and be trained. Thus also that eternal teacher did, after he had them repeat the alphabet, then he arranged it (i.e. the alphabet) with the great name of the construction of the firmament and he read it in front of them that they might understand that he is the creator of all of them, and as he orders them, they complete his will, and because they are quick-witted, they receive teaching quickly.82 79 Syriac usiya/ ‫ ܐܘܣܝܐ‬from Greek οὐσία (Becker, Sources, 117). 80 This wording has caused trouble for translators. Scher insists that we translate the causative verb as God reading aloud to the angels, although an easier translation more in keeping with the verb’s semantic range would be “caused to read.” Scher was apparently uncomfortable with the angels being the ones to recite the creative utterances; surely, however, there is no reason that he did not instruct them to read it by performing the reading first, and having them repeat. This is, in fact, a standard meaning of the verb. Furthermore, Becker points out that God is being analogized to a maqryana/‫ܡܩܪܝܢܐ‬, a “reader,” an office in the School of Nisibis. Cf. Becker, Sources, 117. 81 This is a multi-lingual pun: Becker shows that atwata pshitata/‫ ܐܬܘܬܐ ܦܫܝܜܬ‬is a calque of the Greek τὰ ἃπλα στοιχεία, the most basic/simple elements. Element and letter here play off each other. Cf. Becker, Sources, 118. 82 Translation Becker, from Sources. 107 The images in this section are lucid, bookish, and biblical. They are also somewhat subversive and unexpected: the order of events that we might come to expect from the received text of Genesis 1 has been interpreted far from literally. As Adam Becker has shown, they rely heavily on Theodore of Mopsuestia’s interpretation of Genesis 1. 83 The passage begins with a claim about the “prior powers” of creation: as they are powerful and “more excellent in substance” (mitrin b-usiya/‫)ܡܝܬܪܝܢ ܒܐܘܣܝܐ‬, it is necessary that the deity educate them quickly, so that they do not cause any damage to the world that is being created. 84 The phrase that is used here is literally “suppose great things about themselves.” God is not worried about an active destruction of his creation: he is worried about an upending of the universal hierarchy which he established at the beginning. God’s solution is to instruct the angels in reading. He writes a scroll with “imperceptible light” (nuhra d-la mitragshana/‫ )ܢܘܗܪܐ ܕܐܠ ܡܬܪܓܫܢܐ‬and has the angels read from it: the contents of this scroll are revealed to be the very words of Genesis itself. As they read, they begin to understand important matters surrounding the priority of creation, and the relationship between creator and creature: that which is created is created by someone, and the hierarchy of creation corresponds perfectly to the order in which matter itself was created. By instructing the angels to read, God is inscribing this hierarchy into the narration of creation itself. Reading is physical in the utmost here: it is the very material structure of the world. Just as important, I think, is the fact that God writes a scroll from which to transfer this knowledge. He does not tell the angels that they are second in authority to him, the creator: he has them read it themselves. This reflects, I think, an important theorization of education and the 83 Becker, Sources, 117. 84 I follow Becker in understanding these “powers” as angels. 108 internalization of content in the Syriac-speaking world. More importantly, however, it is a subtle move on the part of the author that argues for the priority and authoritative status of the Biblical text: the bible precedes humanity and was used to educate the angels. It is the blueprint and rubric by which the world is ordered and established, and is therefore a crucial element in its construction. By revealing the writing on the scroll to be the very words of creation themselves, Barhadbeshabba establishes writing and reading as integral parts of the narrative of Genesis. God’s power creates matter, but it is writing, reading, and learning that turn that matter into order: that make light the substance by which humans might look upon their creator. The passage goes into greater detail, describing the exact educational process that God used on the angels. Just as a child reads simple things and the repeats (tna/‫ )ܬܢܐ‬them, so too did God teach the angels in this fashion. Eventually, this human process teaches the child how to put together letters into words and words into sentences, enabling her or him to read; it also helps them learn and internalize specific texts in great detail. The text also suggests that when God “made them read,” this was a lengthier process that involved repetition: God rearranges the alphabet and reads it out to the angels which aids them in understanding his purpose (and supposedly also causes them to repeat it themselves). As they learn the commandments that are present in the text, they perform them quickly and dutifully, knowing that they are subject to the God’s will. God teaches the angels in six days, and the entirety of creation that he teaches them is a “wholly accurate teaching” (kulah hatitutha d-yulpana/‫)ܟܘܠܗ ܚܬܝܬܘܬܐ ܕܝܘܠܦܢܐ‬. When he is done creating the world and simultaneously teaching the angels to read, he hands the world—and the alphabet—over to them: just as one who has learned to read and write now has control of the alphabet, and can use it to say what she wants, so too do the angels now have the tools of 109 creation, that “they might write them in their continuous variations.” The earth itself is even described as a schoolroom (beth yulpana/‫ )ܒܝܬ ܝܘܠܦܢܐ‬as the passage concludes, and the angels are the diligent students who move about it, performing tasks for their ultimate teacher, the God who created the world. After a brief history of the lazy angels who fell from heaven, and the diligent angels who were ultimately honored by God with titles and duties,85 the text moves into a discussion of the schools of humankind, which trace themselves back to the schoolroom of creation. The narratives of Genesis and subsequent stories are related as educational moments in a long tradition of schools and lessons. Adam, for example, is given a tablet (luha/‫ )ܠܘܚܐ‬to read from, which contains the names of domesticated and wild animals. His success in this task meant that God then felt comfortable teaching him higher lessons: laws, justice, and judgments. The sin of eating from the tree in the Garden of Eden is relayed in the language of writing and the materials of reading, and Adam’s reception of the Tree of Life is promised should he successfully maintain the text of his teachings, and repeat the names that are contained there. 86 On that day that you erase one of the letters of this tablet and you eat from the fruit of this tree that will grant you wisdom, you will die. But he did not let him go only with this threat, but he promised, as a master to his student and like a father to his son, that if he should read and apply his mind to this commandment, and when asked, repeat the names that he had him read as well as show all the letters as not erased, he (i.e. God) would give him the tree of life that he might eat from it and live forever. 87 85 Becker, Sources, 120-122; Scher, Cause of the Foundation of the Schools, 349-352. 86 Becker, Sources, 122-123; Scher, Cause of the Foundation of the Schools, 352-353. 87 Becker, Sources, 123; Scher, Cause of the Foundation of the Schools, 353. 110 The transgression of a direct order is relayed as a metaphor lifted from the world of texts, tablets and manuscripts: erasure. Repetition is related to the preservation of a text. It ensures that it passes correctly from one generation to the next, and as we have seen with the rabbinic formulation of repetition, bestows a certain type of life—or at the very least, life after death. In this text, correct repetition is related to the gift of eternal life that is transmitted by the Tree of Life. The very real, material consequences of this comparison should not be overlooked: precise repetition, especially in the rabbinic orbit, preserves the tradents of a specific tradition. It allows that tradent’s name to live on, constantly repeated from one generation to the next. Repeating a name and a teaching brings a teacher back from the dead. There need be no memorial for the righteous—not only are their words their memorials, they are they are the very materials of creation that bring the dead back to life. The relationship between a teacher and a student is also compared to the relationship of a father and son, another feature that we have seen before (although in the rabbinic orbit, the texts make it seem that the teacher/student relationship takes precedence over that of father and son, as opposed to the simple comparison here). 88 The issue of transmission and eternal life is again found here. The language of a parent’s life becoming everlasting, or even extended, through the 88 See, for example, Mishnah Baba Metzia 2:11: ‫אבדתו ואבדת אביו אבדתו קודמת אבדתו ואבדת רבו שלו קודמת אבדת אביו‬ ‫ואבדת רבו של רבו קודמת שאביו הביאו לעולם הזה ורבו שלמדו חכמה מביאו לחיי העולם הבא ואם אביו חכם של אביו קודמת היה אביו ורבו‬ ‫נושאין משאוי מניח את של רבו ואחר כך מניח את של אביו היה אביו ורבו בבית השבי פודה את רבו ואחר כך פודה את אביו ואם היה אביו‬ ‫“ חכם פודה את אביו ואחר כך פודה את רבו‬In the case of his own lost thing and his father’s lost thing, his own lost thing takes precedence. In the case of his own lost thing and the lost thing of his teacher, his own takes precendence. In the case of his father’s lost thing and the lost thing of his teacher, his teacher’s takes precendence, for his father brought him to this world, and his teacher taught him the wisdom that brings him to the eternal life of the world to come. And if his father is a sage, his father’s thing takes precedence. If is father and and teacher were carrying burdens, he relieves that of his teacher, and afterwards he relieves that of his father. If his father and his teacher were in prison, he redeems his teacher and and afterwards redeems his father, and if his father was a sage, he redeems his father, and after that he redeems his teacher.” BBM 33a-b contains a series of homilies that expand on this theme, which borrow heavily from yHorayot 3:8 48c. See Aaron Amit, “The Homilies on Mishnah and Talmud Study at the Close of Bavli Bava’ Metsi’a’ 2 and Yerushalmi Horayot 3: Their Origin and Development” Jewish Quarterly Review 102:2 (Spring 2012) 163-189. 111 properly executed duties of a child, is common in biblical literature, and seems to be yet another overlay on this conflation of students and teachers with children and parents. 89 The bookish and educational context of the Cause of the Foundation of the Schools does not stop here, however. The text narrates the history of the Bible and its characters as a history of schools, moving from Creation as God’s school for the angels through Adam, Cain and Abel, and Noah, all the way to the prophets Elijah and Elisha. 90 The theme of repetition is picked up again in the section of the text describing the school established for Moses. Moses acts as the mouthpiece of God, and his intermediary, when the school is established at the initial giving of the Ten Commandments; however, after the episode of the Golden Calf and Moses’ subsequent supplication on behalf of the Israelites—because they were foolish, like children—God makes Moses into the head teacher of the school. God retreats from teaching after he makes Moses into the head of his school of “perfect philosophy.” His last action is to “descend” and make the people of Israel—including Moses— “read the ten sayings,” and “repeat them and observe everything which was commanded.” 91 Even at this, the second epiphany of the Ten Commandments—an event significantly less theophanic than the first, at least according to Exodus 92—the practice of repetition is still crucial to reading, and crucial to the obedience of the Ten Commandments and the enculturation of a 89 Again, I am grateful to my colleague Kerry Sonia for helping me arrive at this insight. For a classic formulation of this concept in the Hebrew Bible, see Isaiah 56:5: ‫ּומבָּ נֹות שֵ ם עֹולָּם אֶ ּתֶ ן לֹו אֲ שֶ ר לא‬ ִּ ‫יתי ּובְ חֹומתַ י יָּד וָּשֵ ם טֹוב ִּמבָּ נִּ ים‬ ִּ ֵ‫וְ נָּתַ ִּּתי לָּהֶ ם בְ ב‬ ‫“ יִּכָּ ֵרת‬And I have given them in my house and in my walls a monument and a name. An eternal name which I shall give to him is better than sons or daughters, for it shall not be cut off.” 90 Becker, Sources, 124-132; Scher, Cause of the Foundation of the Schools, 354-362. 91 Becker, Sources, 128. 92 Exodus 20-24, in which the first set of tablets is given, includes a theophanic feast in which Moses, Aaron, Nadav, Avihu, and seventy elders of the Children of Israel are all present before the feet of the deity. Exodus 34, in which the second set of tablets is given after the episode of the Golden Calf, presents a narrative of more intimate contact between Moses and Yahweh. 112 text that the Cause sees as central to its own understanding of history, and the Children of Israel’s past. Before continuing on to Jesus, the text swerves away from biblical figures to other important names in ancient education: the Greek and Roman schools of philosophy are briefly called out and described in a similar manner. 93 None of their teaching practices, or the education of their students, are described in terms of repetition and reading; similarly, Jesus himself, while he “renews” (hadtheh/‫ )ܚܕܬܗ‬the original school that God had established with the creation, does not repeat, but teaches anew. The establishment of schools after Jesus, proceeding in a direct line through his disciples, occupies the rest of this portion of the text, which ultimately gives an important description of the life of the school itself before concluding with an exhortation to study and reading. For both the author of the Cause for the Foundation of the Schools and the rabbis in late ancient Palestinian and Babylonian academies, repetition was a crucial reading practice for enculturing texts and reinforcing authoritative social and institutional hierarchies. Repetition takes on a cast as a practice far greater than simply reciting the words of a text over and over again in hopes that some of them will stick. For the rabbis, it reaches beyond the grave, and causes the lips of important teachers to move along with their students; it allows a teacher to merit a portion in the world to come as well as an extended life in this world, as long as he continues repeating for the sake of his student. Barhadbeshabba presents repetition as generative of the creative act of the world itself: by causing the angels to read the text that he inscribes with 93 Becker, Sources, 133-137; Scher, Cause, 362-368. This section of the text includes Plato, and especially Aristotle, whose works were of fundamental importance for the School in Nisibis. Pythagoras and Epicurus are mentioned as well, as are non-Greek and Roman philosophers: Mani and Zoroaster are the main examples here. 113 light, God makes repetition and learning a part of the very fabric of the world, and a critical element in the early generations of its construction. In the conclusion to his book Fear of God and the Beginning of Wisdom (which is titled “Study as Ritual in the Church of the East”), Adam Becker advocates an approach to the study of late ancient scholasticism and education that deviates from our contemporary, Enlightenment- influenced understandings.94 The East-Syrian school movement, he claims, was a movement “integral to the Church of the East in general and to East-Syrian monasticism in particular.” 95 While it is difficult to build a case for calling the late ancient Babylonian enterprise a “school movement,” the scholastic orientation and ritualized academic practices of both cultures clearly exist on a shared spectrum. Students in both worlds were expected to learn both content and context: not only what the text said, but what it meant for their world and their place in it. As a shared field of cultural production and an enterprise that inculcated certain norms and dispositions in the subjectivities and on the bodies of those involved, 96 eastern Mediterranean and Near Eastern religious scholasticism in late antiquity was a habitus in which the cultural elite could dwell. The vanishing line between study and worship has also been interrogated by Moulie Vidas, who concludes that texts about “reciters,” or tannaim/‫ תנאים‬in the Babylonian rabbinic academy reveal a series of polemics about the role of the tanna in rabbinic education. Scholars 94 Becker, Fear of God and the Beginning of Wisdom, 204. 95 Becker, Fear of God and the Beginning of Wisdom, 204. 96 We see over and over again that body and mind are never separated, that the cultivation of one is the creation and nurture of the other. Becker brings to light a text about Narsai in which his ritual study is presented in the terms of his ascetic discipline (Becker, Fear of God and the Beginning of Wisdom, 205); similarly, Michael Satlow has written about Talmud Torah as an important instantiation of rabbinic asceticism within the wider ascetic landscape (Cf. Satlow, “And on the Ground You Shall Sleep: ‘Talmud Torah’ and Rabbinic Asceticism,” The Journal of Religion 83:2 (2003) 204-225). 114 have traditionally assumed that the Bavli prioritizes innovation and dialectic over the older, more “traditional” practices of recitation and transmission. 97 Vidas argues that this distinction is in fact part of the ideology of the Talmud’s creators—but not necessarily the reality of the world in which the Talmud was formed. 98 Recitation, as we have seen, is a generative and creative reading practice: within the rubrics of repetition, there is room for worlds to be created and destroyed, for the dead to be born anew. Vidas locates these polemics in the midst of an inter- religious debate happening in the late ancient Sasanian Empire: Zoroastrian priests, Eastern Christian writers, and rabbis all had an axe to grind when it came to the status of repetition and recitation as a form of authorized ritual. 99 VI. Conclusion A simple fact resides at the foundation of rabbinic educational reading practices, and even enables some of those practices to develop from others. Reading begins with a text. It begins with a scroll with writing on it, and more often than not, a teacher present. It begins with a text in smaller portions, with recitation, and with repetition, and continues to extended versions of all three. Excerpting, a form of close reading still practiced today, is the practice that allows other forms of rabbinic reading practices to occur. By breaking a text into smaller pieces, or isolating various pieces of a text—a verse, a chapter, a lengthier portion—rabbis produced the raw material by which their students both learned to read, learned the content of the bible, and 97 Vidas, Tradition, 115. 98 Ibid, 116. 99 Ibid, 150-166. Vidas identifies continuities between the role of recitation and reciters in the Dādestān ī Dēnīg, BBM 33b, and the Life of ‘Isho’sabran, by Isho’yahb III. He relies heavily on the work of Adam Becker, previously cited, and Jonas Greenfield, “‫רטין מגושא‬,” (Eng.), in Joshua Finkel Festschrift (ed. S. B. Hoenig and L. D. Stritskin; New York: Yeshiva University Press, 1974), 63-69. 115 learned to become rabbis. An examination of repetition, recitation, and ascription reveals this: not only were they the basic methods by which literacy and general fluency in a cultural tradition were transmitted, they were also the methods by which a universal hierarchy was created and reinforced. The practice of dividing a text into smaller portions lies at the heart of every other reading practice considered in this dissertation. As the root of certain divinatory practices, we see it in both the production of lemmatic commentaries and bibliomancy; as part of liturgical reading, the selection of readings and passages for public exposition and chanting comes naturally prior to ritualized reading. In a modern, academic setting, we often take reading for granted, assuming it is a straightforward, easily understood practice. It is anything but, and the rabbis of late antiquity knew that. Reading is a multifaceted phenomenon composed of numerous different practices depending on the setting, intention, and goals of the reader. Late ancient rabbis, as I have shown through their attention to two types of educational reading, were attuned to these complexities, and were able to weave their own ideology of orality, education, and Torah through them. 100 The final body chapter of this dissertation examines a crucial rabbinic assumption that underlies these practices, and a related practice that rises out of them. I term that practice “ethical reading” because it deals with the transformation of the reader and their subjectivity. This transformation is possible, however, because late ancient rabbis believed that texts were powerful: that reading could change you. This assumption is even borne out in the practices of excerpting and repetition. If a text is powerful, small parts of it are as well. They can be used as 100 They were also remarkably well attuned to the dangers of reading: corrupted texts, heretical texts, and texts that were not properly vetted were all considered dangerous by various rabbis at various points. This is the thesis of Rebecca Scharbach Wollenberg’s dissertation: for more, see Rebecca Scharbach Wollenberg, “The Dangers of Reading as We Know it: Sight Reading as a Source of Heresy in Early Rabbinic Traditions,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 85:3 (2017) 709-745. 116 charms, ritual scripts, spells, and divinatory materials, and learning from excerpts, like learning from the whole, can help to create a rabbi. In this way, we can more easily understand how practices of reading fall under the broader rubric of religion. When Adam Becker discusses the seeming inextricability of study and asceticism in the late ancient Near East, he claims that both were wide-ranging schemes of subject formation, geared towards bringing the practitioner closer God and making her or him more like the angels. To study or deny oneself singly was to begin to imitate Christ: to do both together was to become a saint. 101 Becker builds on this point, suggesting that the texts from which we glean this information, such as the Cause of the Foundation of the Schools were in fact agents of the formation of these idealized subjects. In much the same way, rabbinic texts, as “product[s] and reflection[s] of life…served to propogate that form of life.”102 Both the practices of study and the texts from which we learn them are crucial components in the broader project of creating rabbinic subjects. 101 Becker, Fear of God and the Beginning of Wisdom, 205. 102 Becker, Fear of God and the Beginning of Wisdom, 207. 117 READING CYCLES: LITURGICAL READING PRACTICES CHAPTER 3 I. Introduction The “religious revolution” of late antiquity is a standard refrain for scholars writing about the period, and is in many ways described through what are perceived as radical shifts surrounding liturgy. How else to explain the broad, rapid-fire success of early Christianity, and the widespread acceptance of the radical vision of Judaism that rabbis present? The articulation of this “revolution” and the reasons for it take many different forms: Jan Assman, for example, speaks of a shift from “book-centered religion” to “Buch als Kult,” 1 while a typical narrative from classical scholarship attributes it to the growing intensity of “personal” relationships with the deity, with Christ, of course, being the paragon. 2 Explanations are as varied as forms of cult: the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem set in motion a series of events that forever changed the landscape of worship;3 the crumbling infrastructure of the empire and increasingly frequent 1 Jan Assman, The Price of Monotheism, trans. Robert Savage (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010). 2 A classic study that makes this claim is the early Egyptological monograph by Flinders Petrie: Personal Religion in Egypt Before Christianity (New York: Harper, 1909). See also the now-classic first volume of A History of Private Life: From Pagan Rome to Byzantium, ed. Paul Veyne (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987). The first section, especially, by Paul Veyne (pp. 5-234) and the second, by Peter Brown (pp. 235-312) are concerned with our time period, and make claims based on these assumptions. For a more contemporary treatment that focuses on Christianity, see Brouria Bitton-Ashkelony, Between Personal and Institutional Religion: Self, Doctrine, and Practice in Late Antique Eastern Christianity (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2013). 3 Guy Stroumsa, Le Fin du Sacrifice: Les Mutations Religieuses de l’Antiquité Tardive (Paris: Odile Jacob, 2005). 118 natural disasters caused laypeople to seek comfort in deities who would answer their prayers directly and promise abundance, comfort, and peace in the next world. 4 This chapter pushes back against some of these claims, arguing that whatever changes there might have been in late antique religion, they were not the result of radically different material textual practices (the shift from scroll to codex, for example) or a completely shifted mentality, but rather manifestations of much lengthier processes, most of them involving practices with deep roots. To ascribe these changes to a massive shift “in the air,” rather than to the long, lived differences that come about as a result of time, location, and other contextual, contingent factors is to profoundly underestimate the manner in which human agency shapes history, as well as the power of the human intellect to shape that history into an ideological narrative.5 When we take (as we must) the writings of ancient rabbis as aspirational and rhetorical alongside their putative normativity, this becomes significantly clearer.6 Many of these traditional narratives—a change in the air, a growing need for personal deities, the proliferation of natural disasters—can be traced to ancient writers themselves. In examining these writings, we must be careful not to uncritically reproduce their ideologies. What does seem clear is that this period gives us a significant number of religious specialists for whom the “meaning” of a certain authortized text is of utmost importance. 4 The classic formulation of this position is E. R. Dodds, Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety: Some Aspects of Religious Experience from Marcus Aurelius to Constantine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965). 5 Peter Brown begins to consider the first of these when he describes “the grandeur et misère of life in a small community” as “the humus from which profound religious and cultural changes spring,” although his understanding of religion fits within a largely structural-functionalist framework, which means that even he misses certain details of that “life lived twenty-four hours in a day.” See Peter Brown, The Making of Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978), 6. 6 The normativity of rabbinic literature is in itself an enormous question in scholarship, and while I have benefited greatly from the work of medievalists and early modernists who have attempted to answer this question, I have no real intellectual commitment to an answer, other than this one: rabbinic literature was not normative in late antiquity. 119 In a provocative essay which classifies ancient Mediterranean religion into four distinct modes (or rather, two distinct modes, and two additional overlays), Stanley Stowers suggests that the crucial feature of the second mode—the mode of literate religious specialists, a group of which the rabbis were certainly a part—was the consideration of “meaning” as an essential feature of a practice.7 The locus of “meaning,” Stowers argues, typically came from the texts from which practitioners claimed their authority. This sets it apart from his first mode, that of “everyday social exchange:” to quote Stowers, “…what ordinary people practiced as local, particular, and unsystematic, the specialist translates into another idiom that tends toward the universal, the nonlocal, and harmonized knowledge.”8 Stowers even references the rabbis in his elucidation of this category: they translate a temple- and sacrifice-oriented religion into something broader and non-locative, but rather than utilizing their own specialized texts as the locus of this meaning, they use practices as texts to be interpreted and translated. 9 In this way, study and reading, debate and dialectic, became religious practices and forms of piety, and not only the strategies by which late ancient rabbis locate their own authority in the past. 10 This chapter carries both Stowers’ and Brown’s insights—that a universalizing tendency in interpretive traditions can be easily understood as a standard practice for religious specialists of the elite literate class, and that practices that might look radically different are in fact the result 7 Stanley K. Stowers, “The Religion of Plant and Animal Offerings Versus the Religion of Meanings, Essences, and Textual Mysteries,” Ancient Mediterranean Sacrifice, ed. Jennifer Wright Knust and Zsuzsanna Várhelyi (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 35-56; 46. 8 Ibid, 47. 9 Ibid, 47. 10 This is a theme that continues to resonate throughout late antiquity: as in the last chapter, see the conclusion of Adam Becker, Fear of God and the Beginning of Wisdom, 204-207. 120 of long, lived processes—forward to examine the contours of a late ancient rabbinic reading practice that developed from earlier traditions of segmenting the text of the Torah. The argument proceeds in three parts. I first argue that the practices of division, segmentation, and repetition that characterized rabbinic educational reading maintain their importance in the liturgical realm. It is these practices, and the reading habits that they instilled in rabbis, that are most significant in the creation of parshiyyot, or individual readings from the Torah which are assigned to specific weeks. Secondly, the interpretive practices enabled by the presence of an atomized text enable a specific type of thematic connection between particular readings and various days of the year: in this way, the reading of the Torah along with the simple fact of its liturgical placement in the yearly cycle become a form of study and debate as liturgy. Finally, we see a late development of the idea of an “order,” or seder of reading. This concept has cosmic resonances, and should be understood as both a more formalized, set reading cycle, and an actual “script” for liturgical performances. For the purposes of this chapter, a working definition of “liturgy” and “liturgical” functions as a reference to ritualized, scripted actions, typically led by a ritual specialist, often performed in an ordained space, on behalf of a community that is itself partially constituted by its participation in that same liturgy. 11 11 This understanding of liturgy is informed by Catherine Bell’s work on ritual (Catherine Bell, Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992)) and Stan Stower’s work on the constitution of communities (Stanley Stowers, “The Concept of ‘Community’ and the History of Early Christianity” Method and Theory in the Study of Religion 23:3/4 (2011) 238-256). I am also influenced by the work of Susan Harvey (Susan Harvey, Scenting Salvation: Ancient Christianity and the Olfactory Imagination (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006) and Derek Krueger (Derek Krueger, Liturgical Subjects: Christian Ritual, Biblical Narrative, and the Formation of the Self in Byzantium (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014), as well as constant conversations with my colleague Rebecca Stephens Falcasantos. 121 II. The Formation of Parshiyyot Tannaitic Material The Mishnah and Tosefta use the word parashah/‫( פרשה‬plural parshiyyot/‫ )פרשיות‬to refer to a specific reading from a book of the Bible that extends beyond a single verse or chapter. The root of the word parashah, ‫ש‬-‫ר‬-‫פ‬/p-r-sh, is present in Biblical Hebrew and means “to divide, to separate.”12 Traditionally, scholars have associated this root with the word “Pharisee” (perush), a word that is also often translated in the Mishnah as “ascetics,” or “those who separate,” although this is by no means a consensus opinion.13 In later rabbinic Hebrew, this root would also be used to signify detailed, interpretive readings. The other words used to describe textual divisions in rabbinic texts, pasuq and pereq, also come from roots that signify breaking up, dividing, plucking, and separating. They also ultimately come to be used as technical terms for various types of reading practices, as we will see in later chapters, with pasuq being a primary example. These terms seem to be innovations of rabbinic literature: neither pasuq nor pereq appear with these meanings in the Dead Sea Scrolls, and while the root lifrosh is often used as “to explain” or “to separate,” the noun parashah does not yet appear as a formalized term for a set reading. 14 The Mishnah and Tosefta provide little information about the formation of parshiyyot, most of it limited to the length of the reading, and the rituals to be performed directly before or 12 Jastrow, Dictionary, 1241-1243; Francis Brown, S. Driver, and C. Briggs, The Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1906) s.v. 831-832. 13 Jastrow, Dictionary, 1223. On the origin of the word Pharisee, see Mary D. Hussey, “Origin of the Name Pharisee,” Journal of Biblical Literature 39.1/2 (1920), 66-69; Louis Finkelstein, “The Pharisees: Their Origin and their Philosophy,” Harvard Theological Review 22.3 (1929), 185-261, and Solomon Zeitlin, “The Origin of the Pharisees Reaffirmed,” The Jewish Quarterly Review 59.4 (1969) 225-267. This etymology is by no means settled, however. 14 Martin G. Abegg, Jr., James E. Bowley, and Edward M. Cook, The Dead Sea Scrolls Concordance, Volume One: The Non-Biblical Texts from Qumran [Part Two] (Boston: Brill, 2003), 625. 122 after. Mishnah Megillah 4:4 gives explicit instructions regarding the reading of the Torah: how much is read, and in what manner it is done. ‫הקורא בתורה לא יפחות משלשה פסוקין לא יקרא לתרגמן יתר מפסוק אחד‬ ‫ובנביא שלשה אם היו שלשתן שלש פרשיות קורן אחד אחד מדלגין בנביא ואין‬ :‫מדלגין בתורה עד כמה הוא מדלג עד כדי שלא יפסוק התרגמן‬ The one reading the Torah shall not do less than three verses. And he will not read more than one verse to the translator. And in the Prophets, (he can read) three. And if the three are three separate parshiyyot, they read them one at a time. They may skip in the Prophets but may not skip in the Torah. And how much time may he skip? Until the translator does not interrupt. 15 We learn a significant amount from this short mishnah. Proper liturgical reading of the Torah is performed in the presence of a translator, and an appropriately sized parashah for a ritual lectionary is composed of three verses, each of which is read one at a time, so that the translator can successfully relay their meaning to the congregation in time with the reading—at least as far as reading from the Torah goes.16 The rules of the ritual relax a bit for haftarot: the reader can read three verses at once, and the meturgeman (targeman in this manuscript) can translate them all at once.17 The only time this does not hold explicitly true is when three verses are seen as three separate divisions, necessitating three separate translations. The intent of this qualification is unclear. Does the Mishnah mean three separate divisions, or “praqim,” in the text itself, 15 The Mishnah text is this chapter is from Ms. Add.470.1, the Cambridge Mishnah manuscript. Megillah 4:4 (in this manuscript, 4:5) falls on 66v. 16 The presence of a meturgeman, or translator, during a ritual reading is typically taken for granted in rabbinic literature. This figure seemingly translated the text being read into the common tongue (typically Aramaic), and did so, at least according to the rabbis, while abiding by a certain set of rules. There is a growing body of scholarship on the meturgeman, especially regarding their relationship to targumim. See Avigdor Shinan, “Live Translation: On the Nature of the Aramaic Targums to the Pentateuch,” Prooftexts 3:1 (1983), 41-49; Azzan Yadin-Israel, “For Mark was Peter’s Tanna: Tradition and Transmission in Papias and the Early Rabbis,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 23.3 (2015) 336-362; Anthony Giambrone, “Aquila’s Greek Targum: Reconsidering the Rabbnical Setting of an Ancient Translation,” Harvard Theological Review 110.1 (2017) 24-45. 17 It seems likely to me that this “grouped” translation was more similar to paraphrasing. 123 therefore making this a practical matter, relating to how the text is written? Or is this an interpretive, contextual issue, in which three separate verses are understood as having three different intents and referents? The implications of these two different outcomes are important: in the former, the format of the reading itself is dictated by the physical form of the text, by decisions made by scribes and earlier rabbis, and not by the liturgical participants themselves. In the latter situation, a reader and translator could decide between them what counted as “three individual parshiyyot,” three verses that are differentiated enough to constitute three separate readings. The implications are significant, but unfortunately, we cannot, at the moment, make a sound judgment regarding which understanding is preferred. It seems likely that both explanations hold true in different cases: sometimes, the text clearly provides three clear divisions, while at other times, the reader and meturgeman must use their own judgment. The relationship of the creation of parshiyyot to the segments of the text broken up for educational purposes is implicit here. Three verses constitute a relatively short amount of text: it is somewhere between the word-by-word repetition and the longer rhetorical oration that a student might perform. 18 A passage from the Tosefta (tMegillah 2:5) shows us that, even outside the reading of the weekly Torah portion, there are different opinions on how much of any given text should be read. The Tosefta claims that the entirety of the scroll need not even be read, according to some rabbis: there are three different starting points, according to Rabbis Yehuda, Shim’on, and Liezer, but the important thing, they are all sure to say, is that the scroll is read from that point until its end. 18 I am not suggesting that the three-verse parashah was a standard unit of rabbinic education, but rather that its size was influenced by educational practices. 124 ‫מצות מגלה מתחלתה ועד סופה דברי ר' מאיר או' מאיש יהודי ר' יוסה או' מאחר‬ ‫הדברים האלה ר' שמעון בן לעזר או' מבלילה ההוא אבל הכל מודים שמצותה‬ 19 ‫לגמור עד סוף‬ The commandment for the Megillah is from the beginning to the end—the words of Rabbi Meir. [Rabbi Yehudah]20 says, from “There was a certain Jew.” (Esther 2:5). Rabbi Yoseh says, from “One of these things.” (Esther 2:3) Rabbi Shim’on ben Liezer says, from “On that night.” (Esther 6:1) But all agree that the commandment is to finish it until the end. This picks up on other passages in tannaitic literature that stress the importance of a text’s integrity. It is not the completeness of the text that matters or is at stake, but its order and internal logic. Starting later, but still reading through to the finish, preserves this integrity. 21 The absence of certain formal strictures for the liturgical reading of the Megillah in Mishnah Megillah yield to the much more rigid regulations of reading the Torah, and in some cases, the Haftarah. The latter half of mMegillah 4:1 presents a series of rules that delineate and specify the regular, cyclical reading of the Torah: how often it happens, and the manner in which it should be done. ‫בשני ובחמישי ובשבת במנחה קורין שלשה אין פוחתין מהן ואין מוסיפין עליהן‬ :‫ואין מפט ירין בנביא הפותח והחותם בתורה מברך לפניה ולאחריה‬ On Monday and Thursday and Shabbat in the afternoon, they read three—they do not reduce the number, and do not add to them, and they do not conclude with a prophet. The one initiating and closing the Torah blesses before it and after it. 19 All Tosefta texts are from the Vienna Manuscript, Codex Hebr. 20. 20 Rabbi Yehuda’s name is cited in mss. Erfurt and London. 21 MMegillah 3:6, for example, dictates that the curses of Leviticus 26 must be read in their entirety, and not interrupted. 125 Already, this is a significant shift from the first portion of that mishnah, which describes the reading of the Megillah as a relatively casual (or at least, less formalized) affair. 22 The reading that takes place on Mondays, Thursdays, and Shabbat afternoons—the Torah reading— must be done in a certain way. There are three parshiyyot, or individual lectionaries, and no selection from the Prophets. The blessings that begin and end the reading are performed, it seems, only once: once before the reading begins, and once after it ends. This is in sharp contrast to the way they are performed today, with each reading receiving a blessing prior and a blessing after. The proper order of reading, as well as the amount of reading that is to be done on a specific day, also has a bearing on the formation of parshiyyot. Mishnah Megillah 4:2 continues in a similar vein, relaying instructions on how many parshiyyot are to be read on certain holidays. The New Moon (Rosh Chodesh) and the intermediate days of long festivals are each given four, without an addition from the Prophets; the first and last days of longer festivals have five readings, Yom Kippur has six, and the Sabbath seven. These latter three all conclude with haftarot, or readings from the Prophets, and in addition, it is entirely acceptable to have extra readings on them. ‫בראשי החדשים ובחולו של מועד קורין ארבעה אין פוחתין מהן ואין מוסיפין‬ ‫עליהן ואין מפטירין בנביא הפותח והחותם בתורה מברך לפניה ולאחריה זה הכלל‬ ‫כל שיש בו מוסף וא ינו יום טוב קורין ארבעה ביום טוב חמשה ביום הכפורים‬ ‫ששה ובשבת שבעה אין פוחתין מהן אבל מוסיפין עליהן ומפטירין בנביא הפותח‬ 23 :‫והחותם בתורה מברך לפניה ולאחריה‬ On the first day of the month, and the middle days of holidays, we read four. We do not decrease from them, nor add to them, and we 22 ‫ לא יְבָּ ֵרְך‬,‫ וְ שֶ ּלא ּנָּהֲגּו לְ בָּ ֵרְך‬.‫ יְבָּ ֵרְך‬,‫ ְמקֹום שֶ ָּּנהֲגּו לְ בָּ ֵרְך‬.‫ יָּצְ אּו‬,‫ קְ ָּראּוהָּ ְשנַיִּם‬,‫ קְ ָּראָּ ּה אֶ חָּ ד‬.‫ּקֹורא אֶ ת הַ ְמגִּ ּלָּה עֹומֵ ד יֹושֵ ב‬ ֵ ַ‫ה‬. The one who reads the Megillah either stands or sits. One person reads it, two people reads it—it is fulfilled. In a place where they are accustomed to blessing, they bless, and where they do not bless, they do not bless. 23 Ms. Add.470.1 66r-v, mMegillah 4:2-3 126 do not conclude with a section from the prophets. The one who initiates and concludes the Torah blesses before it and after it. This is the general rule: every day on which there is an additional service/sacrifice and it is not a festal day, we read four. On a festal day, five. On Yom Kippur, six. On Shabbat, seven. We do not decrease from them, but we may add to them and conclude with the Prophets. The one who initiates and concludes the Torah blesses before it and after it. In providing a general rule, the Mishnah suggests that there was something resembling an attempt at formalization on the part of the rabbis. The liturgical reading cycle for the Torah was completely differentiated between Palestine and Babylonia, and likely even among communities within those two centers, but the “kelal,” or general rule which we are given here, represents a slightly different reading cycle overlaid on top of the more regular, cyclical, continuous one.24 The degrees to which these two influenced each other are likely deep, and in all probability, mutually entailing. For our purposes, though, it is important to note that the rabbis stipulate both the length and the number of readings, and both of these things, as we will see, are important factors in the formation of individual parshiyyot. Talmud Yerushalmi The Yerushalmi continues to interpret the Mishnah, with some help from the Tosefta, as regards the appropriate divisions of Torah readings for specific events. Mishnah Megillah 3:6, which states that the curses, to be read on fast days, cannot be interrupted, is expanded and elucidated in the following passage, from yMegillah 3:8 74b. This segment also includes a relatively explicit theorization of how a parashah, or reading, is constructed. ‫אין מפסיקין בקללות אמר רבי חייה בר גמדא אל תקוץ בתוכחתו אל תעשה קוצים‬ ‫קוצים אמר רבי לו י אמר הקב"ה אינו בדין שיהו בני מתקללים ואני מתברך אמר‬ ‫רבי יוסה בי רבי בון לא מטעם הזה אלא זה שהוא עומד לקרות בתורה צריך שיהא‬ ‫פותח בדבר טוב וחותם בדבר טוב‬ 24 The most comprehensive work on the regular Torah reading cycle has been done by Shlomo Naeh. See Shlomo Naeh, “Sidrei Qri’at Hatora Ba’eretz-Yisrael: Iyyun Mehudash,” Tarbitz 67:2 (1998) 167-187 and Shlomo Naeh, “Al Hamachzor Hasheva-Shnati shel Haqri’ah Batorah Ba’eretz Yisrael” Tarbitz 74:1 (2004) 43-75. 127 One does not interrupt in the curses. Rabbi Hiyya bar Gamda said, “Do not be repelled by his reproach” (Proverbs 3:11). Do not make many thorns. Rabbi Levi said that the Holy One, Blessed Be He, said, “It is not in justice that my children are cursed and I am praised.” Rabbi Yose ben Rabbi Bun said, “It is not for this reason, but because the one who stands up to read in the Torah needs to begin with a good word and conclude with a good word.” The Mishnah states that the parashah to be read on fast days—the curses from Leviticus 26—cannot be interrupted. Several reasons are given for this in the Yerushalmi, all of them revolving around stated and unstated rules regarding the importance of crafting a biblical pericope correctly. The first of these, the statement of Rabbi Hiyya, revolves around the interchangeability of two words: curse and reproach. The section of “curses” in Leviticus 26 is often also called the “reproaches:” the tokhchot. The verse “do not be repelled by his reproach,” from Proverbs 3:11, 25 presents something of an oddity, however: its relevance to the matter at hand is difficult to discern. The gemara’s explanation afterwards is not particularly lucid, at least at first: “Do not make thorns upon thorns.” “Thorn,” in this case, is a pun: the verb for being repelled is a homophone with the noun meaning thorn: qotz/‫קוץ‬. The implication is that a singular curse stings like a thorn, and that by dividing the text into multiple readings, or parshiyyot, the reader is multiplying the effects of that sting. This stands in contrast to the sense of the biblical verse, however: if one should not be repelled by divine reproach, it should stand to reason that breaking up the text makes very little difference one way or another. The verse and its explanation make a little more sense, however, if we consider another layer to the word qotz. Shlomo Naeh has suggested that this word should actually be read as 25 ‫ל־ּת ְמ ָּ ֑אס וְ אַ ל־ּתָָּּ֝ ֶ֗קץ בְ תֹוכַחְ ִּּֽתֹו׃‬ ִּ ַ‫מּוסר ְ֭ ְיהוָּה בְ נִּ ֶ֣י א‬ ֶ֣ ַ The discipline of God, my son, do not hate, and do not be repelled by his rebuke. 128 “pericope,” as a shortened form of the rare Hebrew noun qotzah.26 When this meaning is read into the passage, it becomes significantly subtler. Instead of “do not be repelled,” the pun suggests that Proverbs 3:11 means something like, “do not make pericopes (or, with a very minor leap, parshiyyot) from his rebuke.” The gemara’s explanation similarly instructs the reader to not make too many pericopes. This meaning brings out a tension in the rabbinic use of this verse, a tension that is ultimately resolved later. The paradoxical shifting of meanings in the Proverbs verse highlights this tension: read alone, the verse instructs a reader to submit to reproach: to be willing to be chastised and corrected in the pursuit of knowledge and ethical formation. Read in the gemara’s context, it tells the reader to not submit to the text’s literal reproach, the curses—at least, not completely: the curses should be read in one fell swoop, rather than broken into smaller bits. Of course, by leaving the curses in one large reading, the Yerushalmi is ultimately ensuring that they be heard as one, and therefore serve as a disciplinary, reproachful reading for those in the congregation. Rabbi Levi’s statement is also cryptic, although makes sense in the context of what comes later. The issue at stake, I believe, is the recitation of a blessing before and after each individual reading. Should the curses be broken up into multiple readings, there would be multiple blessings recited before and after them. This, according to Rabbi Levi, is indecorous: it would mean breaking up a curse with multiple blessings. The gemara goes on to discuss lectionary blessings directly after the next statement. The last statement in this section, however, encodes a significant amount of information about the way in which parshiyyot are established, and the theorization of reading that lies 26 Shlomo Naeh, “The Script of the Torah in Rabbinic Thought (B): Transcriptions and Thorns,” Leshonenu 71 (2010): 89–123 (Hebrew); 108-111. 129 behind them. Rabbi Yose ben Rabbi Bun disagrees with Rabbi Levi, and says that the actual issue at stake is not the interspersing of blessings and curses, and the fragility of the deity’s emotions, but rather the proper composition and performance of an oral reading. “One who stands up to read the Torah,” he declares, “must begin with a good word, and end with a good word.” The force of “good word” is not entirely clear. Is it, quite literally, a “good word?” Should the reading begin with the name of God, for example, or some other divinely favored noun? Or is “davar,” the “word,” more metaphoric? It could possibly construe an “event,” or even a “passage.” “Good” in this sense might mean something in which a divine act, or a “good thing” occurs—but as we have already seen, relative order is important in addition to absolute value judgments. Such distinctions, then, are difficult to tease out, although it seems most likely to me that a spectrum exists for the identification of a “davar tov.” If we take the curses as our example, it seems relatively clear that anything that might be construed as negative—in this case, a strong rebuke—does not count as a davar tov, hence the parashah must go on until the rebukes are completed. The material from the Yerushalmi moves beyond the material, length-oriented concerns of the tannaitic compositions to consider content in the construction of a parashah. This concern was likely present in the tannaitic period, even if it was not explicit in the text: rather than considering the concern with beginning and ending on divrei tovim as coming new out of whole cloth, it makes more sense to see it as a crystallization of practices that were already performed in an ad hoc manner. This concern also mirrors the division of Homer into books. The Talmud Bavli The Babylonian Talmud contains a relatively lengthy disquisition on the formation of a parashah in tractate Megillah, beginning on 21b. This sugya makes it clear that the number of 130 readings to be performed on a given day are instrumental in the division of a text into its proper segments. It also testifies to the fact that the verse divisions we today take for granted were, in practice, not set in stone in late antiquity, even if the rhetoric surrounding them attributed their formation to Moses. Most importantly, this sugya attests directly to the division of a text into smaller parts as a practice used in the education of children. This sugya is very concerned with the reasons that lie behind certain traditions of reading the Torah. It takes its start in this manner, questioning the tradition of reading the Torah in three sections, as mandated in the latter half of mMegilla 4:1. The answer is brought forth in a baraita by Rav Assi, placing the coordination of weekday and Sabbath afternoon Torah readings into the tannaitic period. The next question, however, regards the minimum number of verses to be read in one of these liturgies. The correspondence drawn there, between the ten verses and various instantiations of ten utterances, including those by which God created the world, is not proven from a baraita, but rather an Amoraic statement. ‫בשני וב()[ח]מישי ובשבת במנחה קורין שלשה וג' הני שלשה כנגד מי אמ' רב אסי‬ 27 ‫כנגד תורה נביאים וכתובים רבא אמ' כנגד כהנים לוים וישראל‬ On Monday and Thursday, on the Shabbat at Mincha, we read three, etc. What do these three correspond to? Rav Assi said: They correspond to the Torah, the Prophets, and the Writings. Rava said: They correspond to the priests, the Levites, and the Israelites. ‫והא דתאני רב שימי מבירתא דשיחורי אין פוחתין מעשרה פסוקין בבית הכנסת‬ ‫ווידבר עולה מן המנין והאחרון קורא ארבעה הני עשרה פסוקין כנגד מי שפ'ן סימן‬ ‫אמ' ר' יהושע בן לוי כנגד עשרה בטלנין שלבית הכנסת רב יוסף אמ' כנגד עשרת‬ ‫הדיברות שנאמרו לו למשה בסיני ור' יוחנן אומ' כנגד עשרה מאמרות שבהן נברא‬ ‫העולם והי נינהי אי נימא ויאמר ויאמר דיש בבראשית הני תשעה הוו בראש' נמי‬ ‫מאמר הוא דכת' בדבר ייי שמים נעשו‬ 27 Texts from bMegillah are taken from Ms. New York, Columbia T-141, which has been identified by the Historical Dictionary of the Hebrew Language as the base text for Bavli tractate Megillah. 131 But with regard to this baraita Rav Shimi taught, “We do not read less than ten verses in a synagogue, and “Vayidabber” counts for the total,28 and the last one reads four verses. What do the ten correspond to? Sh”pn-a mnemonic. Rabbi Joshua ben Levi said: They correspond to those who are idle in the synagogue. Rav Yosef said: They correspond to the ten utterances which were spoken to Moses at Sinai. And Rabbi Yochanan said: They correspond to the ten speeches by which the world was created. What were these? Instances of “vayyomer” in Bereishit? But there are only nine! “Bereishit” is almost a speech, for as it is written, “That by the word of God, the heavens were made [and the wind of his mouth, all their host]” (Ps. 33:6). There is a rhetorical move in these statements that shifts the scope of the Torah reading from a literary context (“they correspond to the Torah, the Prophets, and the Writings”) to a cosmic context (“They correspond to the ten speeches by which the world was created”). This is an important key for understanding the later rabbinic perception of the yearly lectionary, and how it functioned within the broader scope of liturgical reading practices. The Torah, Prophets, and Writings are, of course, the traditional Jewish divisions of the Hebrew Bible—divisions that, as we see here, were present during the later Babylonian rabbinic period. 29 It is also, I think, no coincidence that the interpretive statements are made by rabbis of increasingly earlier generations as they progress. Rav Yosef, who identifies the ten utterances with the Ten commandments—another literary connection—was a Babylonian Amora. In some manuscripts, there is next an additional line, in which Rabbi Levi associates the ten verses with King David’s ten “utterances” when he recited the Psalms. Rabbi Levi was possibly the father of Rabbi Yehoshua, an earlier Amoraic figure, and his connection of the ten verses to the ten 28 This is a reference to verses that state only, “And God spoke to Moses, saying…” 29 For rabbinic descriptions of the Bible as composed of Torah, Nevi’im, and Ketuvim, see bShab 88a, bSanh 101a, bKid 49a, bMoedKatan 21a. I have yet to find mentions of this division in Palestinian amoraic or tannaitic compositions, even though this particular tradition is presented as a baraita. 132 recitations of the book of Psalms is a likewise literary gesture, connecting the verses of the parashah to the content of the text itself—a text, however, that would not be read in a liturgical setting like the Torah would be. 30 Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai, who ultimately connects the ten verses of a Torah reading to the very act of creation itself, was, according to the rabbis’ own testimony, the founder of the school of Yavneh, an important early figure in the rabbinic movement, a seer, and a rabbi who survived the fall of the Second Temple. 31 The authority of the claims is linked to the cosmic nature of the text they are being made about: to read ten verses of the Torah, the bare minimum required, is to participate, in some manner, in the creation of the world. While the sacrificial ideology that so dominates some of this discourse in the same period is not present here, it is still significant that, in a manner similar to what we shall see in bTaanit 29a and yMegillah 74a, reading a text becomes one of the sustaining powers of the world. 32 The next section of the text focuses on the actual practice of reading these ten verses in three differentiated readings: when only ten are read, this means that one reading must be composed of four verses, and the other two of three verses. Which reading is longer, who reads it, and the honor the reader gains from reading a longer text are sources of much debate for the rabbis, although they do not bear directly on our discussion here. We rejoin the text at the very 30 The Psalms, or at least some of them, would be read during the Hallel. See "Hallel." Encyclopaedia Judaica, edited by Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik, 2nd ed., vol. 8 (Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007) 279- 280. 31 It is possible that this Rabbi Yochanan is not Yochanan ben Zakkai, but rather a later Amora: in which case, the text does not move through a progression of earlier and earlier authorities. Even if this is the case, however, an early reader of the gemara (and later readers, like this one) might still associate the name Yochanan with an earlier generation of rabbinic activity. 32 For more sustainted treatments of these texts, see section IV of this chapter. 133 end of bMegillah 21b, when mMegillah 4:2, which instructs that there be four readings on New Moons and the first days of festivals, is introduced. 33 An important feature of this section is the usage of the Hebrew word parashah/‫פרשה‬. While today the word is most commonly used in religious Jewish circles to refer to either the weekly division of the Torah into “portions,” or the division of those portions into specific readings, it seems to have a slightly more amorphous quality in this sugya. It sometimes seems to indicate the entirety of a set reading—“Parashat Rosh Chodesh,” for example, signifies the entire reading for the New Moon. Other times in the same passage, however, it clearly indicates a particular division of the text, and is perhaps best conceived of as we might consider a paragraph. ‫בעא מניה עולא בר רב מרבא פרשת ראש חדש כיצד קורין אותה צו את קרבני‬ ‫דהויא תמניא פסוקי היכי נעביד תרי תלתה תלתה פשו לה תרי ואין משיירין‬ ‫בפרשה פחות משלשה פסוקין ליקרו ארבעה ארבעה וביום השבת תרי ובראשי‬ ]‫חדשיכם חמשה הינו ליעביד ליקרו תרי דהא וחד מיהך אין מתחילין בפרש(ת)[ה‬ ‫פחות משלשה פיסוקים ליקרו תרי דהא ותלתה מיהך פשו להו תרי ואין משיירין‬ '‫בפרשה פחות משלשה אמ' לו זו לא שמעתי כיוצא בו שמעתי דתנן ביום הראש‬ ‫בראשית ויהי רקיע פרשה גדולה קורין אותה בשנים קטנה קורין אותה ביחיד‬ ‫ותאני עלה בראשית בשנים ויהי רקיע באחד‬ [At the New Moons, and on the intermediate days of holidays, four read…etc.] Ulla bar Rav raised a problem from this before Rava: The parashah of Rosh Chodesh, how does one read it? “And command [the children of Israel and say to them,] ‘My offerings,’” is eight verses, what is to be done? 34 If you say that two should 33 mMegillah 4:2: ‫בראשי החדשים ובחולו של מועד קורין ארבעה אין פוחתין מהן ואין מוסיפין עליהן ואין מפטירין בנביא הפותח והחותם בתורה מברך לפניה‬ ‫ולאחריה זה הכלל כל שיש בו מוסף ואינו יום טוב קורין ארבעה ביום טוב חמשה ביום הכפורים ששה בשבת שבעה אין פוחתין מהן אבל‬ ‫מוסיפין עליהן ומפטירין בנביא הפותח והחותם בתורה מברך לפניה ולאחריה‬ On New Moons, and on the intermediate days of festivals, four read. They do not reduce from that, and they do not add to it, and they do not conclude it with the Prophets. The one who begins and the one who ends in the Torah blesses before it and after it. This is the general rule: every day on which there is an additional offering, but is not a Good Day (a holiday), four read. On a holiday, five read. On Yom Kippur, six; on Shabbat, seven. They do not reduce from them, but they may add to them, and they conclude with the Prophets. The one beginning and the one ending in the Torah blesses before it and after it. 34 The issue here is the division. The first paragraph alone is eight verses, and not dividing it into pieces would mean that the remaining readings are too short. 134 read three verses each, then only two remain, and we cannot leave less than three verses in a parashah. You might say let each read four—then seven will be left. “And on the Sabbath,” [the next paragraph] is two verses, “And on your New Moons” [the paragraph after that] is five, so what is to be done? Should he read two verses from this and one from the next, [this violates] that we do not begin to read a parashah/paragraph with less than three verses. And if he should read two from this and three from that one—then there are only two remaining! He said to him: “I have not heard of this problem, but I have heard about one similar. As we learned: “On the first day of creation,” “And let there be a firmament.” The large parashah is read by two people, the small one reads together. And they taught regarding it: Two read “Bereshit,” and one reads “Let there be a firmament.” The important points in this section are that the reading for the New Moon/Rosh Chodesh (or the first part of this reading) is composed of three visual sections, one of which is eight verses long, one two verses, and one five verses; there are supposed to be four readings, each reading must have at least three verses, and that (and this is the part that throws everything into confusion) sections of the text should not have “orphan lines.” This last stipulation means that in a paragraph of eight verses, two three-verse readings would leave two verses orphaned at the end, unable to constitute an entire reading on their own, and unable to be added to another, as they might cross the boundaries that are themselves written into the text. The solutions that are offered in this section create more problems. If the first paragraph of eight verses is divided into two readings, then the next two paragraphs are troublesome to divide: thought they are seven verses in total, the fact that the first paragraph is simply two verses means that more must be added to it. If an appropriate amount is added, however—and the text instructs that a full three verses from the beginning of a paragraph must be utilized—then the remainder of the paragraph is too short for a proper reading. The entire dilemma is presented as a question that Ulla bar Rav brings to Rava. Rava claims that he is stymied, but he proceeds to speak about a similar problem: the Sunday Torah 135 reading of the ma’amadot,35 the non-priestly watches, which is comprised of the first two days of creation, is similarly eight verses,36 with the first day comprised of a paragraph of five verses, and the second a paragraph of three. He cites a tannaitic tradition, which is also paralleled on bTaanit 26a,37 that the first paragraph of five verses should be read by two people, and the second paragraph by one. This is a problem, of course: one or the other of the readers of the first paragraph will only be reading two verses. The Gemara agrees, and articulates this problem. ?‫ אלא בראשית בשנים‬,‫ דתלתא פסוקי הוו‬- ‫ באחד‬,‫ בשלמא יהי רקיע‬:‫והוינן בה‬ :‫ הקורא בתורה לא יפחות משלשה פסוקים! ואיתמר עלה‬:‫ ותניא‬,‫חמשה פסוקי הוו‬ ?‫ מאי טעמא לא אמר פוסק‬,‫ רב אמר דולג‬.‫ פוסק‬:‫ ושמואל אמר‬,‫ דולג‬:‫רב אמר‬ ‫ כל פסוקא דלא פסקיה משה אנן לא פסקינן ליה‬:‫קסבר‬ And we discussed it: Granted, “let there be a firmament” is read by one, for it is three verses, but “Bereshit” by two? It is five verses, and it is taught: The one reading from the Torah cannot read less than three verses! And it was stated with regard to this: Rav said, “He repeats” and Shmu’el said, “He divides it in half.” Rav said he repeats it, how come he does not say to divide it? He believes that every verse that Moses did not divide, we do not divide it.” Two solutions are suggested for the problem paragraph. The first, articulated by Rav, is to repeat the middle verse, making each reading three verses; the second, given by Shmu’el, is to divide the middle verse in half, thus effectively creating a sixth verse. An additional reason is given for the solution that Rav gives: the versification of the Torah is the result of Mosaic activity, and must therefore be preserved at all costs. This statement, provided in the anonymous stam of the Gemara, is a major indicator of rabbinic ideology. The words of the Torah are not the only part of the Bible that was transmitted 35 mTaanit 4:2. 36 This is stated on bTaanit 26a. 37 ‫(פרשה גדולה קורין [אותה] בשנים והקטנה ביחיד‬Ms. Munich 140). 136 by Moses: how those words fit together, the way in which they were written, and the divisions between them were also part of the text that Moses gave. As remnants of Moses’ scribal hand, they must be respected and remain unchanged. 38 As all-encompassing as this statement might seem, however, it is not the end of the issue. Shmu’el’s opinion is not universally popular, and Rabbi Hanina Kara39 claims that the dividing of verses into smaller pieces is only acceptable in a scholastic context: so that students may learn them. ‫ושמואל אמר פסקינן ליה ומי פסקינן והא אמ' ר' חנינה קרא צער גדול היה לי אצל‬ ‫חנינה הגדול ולא התיר לי לפסוק פסוק אלא לתינוקות שלבית רבן הואיל ולהתלמד‬ ‫הן עשויין התם טעמא מאי משום דלא אפשר הכי נמי לא אפשר‬ And Shmu’el said: We divide it, and how do we divide it? And did not Rabbi Hanina Kara say, “I had great distress on account of Rabbi Hanina the Great, and I did not allow him to divide except for schoolchildren, so that they might be taught! In this case, why is it allowed? Because it is not possible otherwise. Here too—it is not possible otherwise. This statement hearkens back to chapter 1, in which we discussed the division of texts as a basic and foundational reading practice for late ancient rabbis. Its status as foundational is emphasized here—it is a practice that is only utilized for the proper teaching of children. The import seems clear: dividing verses into smaller pieces is an appropriate activity for the school room, but not for the public reading of the Torah—unless, according to Shmu’el, there is simply no other choice. The Gemara also offers a reason for Shmu’el’s not suggesting that the second reader repeat a verse. ‫ושמואל מאי טעמא לא אמ' דולג גזרה משום הנכנסין וגזירה משום היוצאין‬ 38 There is a tension here with other stammaitic statements: bMenachot 29b, for example, portrays God as the scribal architect of scripture, adding the final touches to the Torah. This will be discussed in full in chapter 4, pp. 199-203. 39 Hananya in other mss. 137 And Shmu’el said, “He divides,” how come he does not say, “He repeats it?” It is a decree on account of those who enter and it is a decree on account of those who leave. The reasoning here, though succinct, is complex: “those who enter” and “those who leave” are typically understood as congregants who leave or enter a synagogue in between readings from the Torah. If a congregant should enter and hear the third verse of Genesis 1 read as the first verse of a reading, he or she might assume that the previous parashah had only contained two verses, and therefore be invalid, and improperly performed. To avoid this eventuality, then Shmu’el suggests that the verse itself be divided into two. The concern is with perception, rather than the actual performance. The sugya does not end conclusively here, but we have seen enough of it to examine the particular concerns about forming a parashah that it evinces. A parashah is constrained by the internal structure of the text, as well as the external factors of its reading: it can be either (or both) formed by the reader, or a textual division that the reader him or herself responds to and reads. The word parashah itself is a useful indicator of what we are looking for: it is both the formal division of the text, written into the material of reading itself, and an interpretive grouping of material, composed from internal criteria—the Yerushalmi’s “good ending”—and the external criteria, such as the Bavli’s liturgical constraints. The tannaitic sources discussed, largely from Mishnah and Tosefta Megillah, describe a parashah as needing to consist of at least ten verses, made up of three readings of three or four verses each. The Yerushalmi expands on this, providing some internal guidelines and explaining, at least initially, why some parshiyyot are longer than others: there are rules of content and continuity that must be observed. Finally, the Bavli’s interest lies in both the performance of the 138 reading, and the proper choreography thereof, and it gives several solutions for problems that might arise from the correct reading of properly formed parshiyyot. Reading Homer’s Songs The rabbis were not the only literarily-inclined figures concerned with the content and scope of individual portions of text, and if we expand our gaze outward, we can better understand the context within which their specific rubrics formed. Classical orations, of course, needed to be composed according to a specific formula: length, speed, diction, style, and argument were all crucial elements of a public speech in the Greek and Roman worlds, and fundamental aspects of the higher levels of education. Similar principles could govern the phenomenon of public reading: lengthy texts were rarely read aloud in one session, and therefore choosing where to begin and end a reading were important decisions.40 These rules and notions often come from the educational background of literate elites, and have as much to do with the ways in which texts and reading were themselves learned as they do with ideas about style, grandeur, and elegance. 41 Late ancient rabbis were not the only elite literate specialists concerned with the actual form of a text: the way it was written, divided, taught, and read. Similar concern with both internal and external factors helped to create the standard divisions of the Homeric epics. Internal factors refer to content and interpretation; external ones concern length and performance. Both the Iliad and the Odyssey are divided into twenty-four books, which came to be associated with letters of the alphabet by the Hellenistic period. These divisions are more than just accidental: the 40 Thomas Habinek, Ancient Rhetoric and Oratory (Malden, MA: Blackwell) 2005. 41 Larsen, Lillian I. "The Apophthegmata Patrum and the Classical Rhetorical Tradition." Studia Patristica (Leuven: Peeters, 2007). 139 books are of varying lengths, and while a general material concern can be deduced (each book, or several books together, could easily fit on one standard-length roll of parchment), 42 it is clear that there is more at work in the divisions between books. The division of Homer into books, or “songs” as they were called in antiquity, however, represents a significant issue in the scholarship. Scholars are divided on when, exactly, it occurred, and how standardized it was. An older consensus view which states that the divisions were imposed by scholars in Hellenistic Alexandria has recently been challenged, although the evidence for this remains somewhat scanty. 43 The explicit evidence for Homeric book divisions (rather than actual papyrological evidence, which is largely later) comes from passages in Pseudo-Plutarch, Eustathius, a commentary on the fourteenth book by Apollodorus of Athens, and an h-scholion. Rene Nunlist suggested that the traditional view of scholars, that Pseudo- Plutarch invented both the divisions and the reasons for them, is less than tenable, given the other evidence. 44 Bruce Heiden, on the other hand, has examined the actual book divisions themselves. In two articles—one on the Iliad and one for the Odyssey, he examines the breaks in the text that the book divisions seem to represent. 45 For the Iliad, he concludes that book divisions happen at 42 See Cavallo, Guglielmo (Rome), “Scroll”, in: Brill’s New Pauly, Antiquity volumes edited by: Hubert Cancik and Helmuth Schneider. Cavallo argues that Greek scrolls were significantly shorter than their Egyptian predecessors. A scroll was typically 16-17 cm to 28-30 cm tall, and between 2.5 to 12 m long; it is reasonable to imagine Homeric books, or groups of Homeric books (or songs as they were known in antiquity) gathered in groups of scrolls. 43 Minna Skafte Jensen, “SO Debate: Dividing Homer: When and how were the Iliad and the Odyssey Divided into Songs?” Symbolae Osloensis 74 (1999) 5-22. The h-scholia, according to Dickey (Eleanor Dickey, Ancient Greek scholarship: A Guide to Finding, Reading, and Understanding Scholia, Commentaries, Lexica, and Grammatical Treatises, from their Beginnings to the Byzantine Period (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 21) are a group of scholia to the Iliad that date from the eleventh century. 44 Rene Nunlist, “A Forgotten Testimonium on the Homeric Book Division” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 157 (2006) 47-47. 45 Bruce Heiden, “The Placement of ‘Book Divisions’ in the Iliad” The Journal of Hellenic Studies 118 (1998) 68- 81; Bruce Heiden, “The Placement of ‘Book Divisions’ in the Odyssey” Classical Philology 95.3 (2000) 247-259. 140 junctures in the text that follow a consistent pattern. They enclose narrative passages that are somewhat consistent, and draw attention to what he terms “high-consequence scenes”: scenes that affect the narrative considerably beyond their occurrence. 46 His examination of the Odyssey reveals other important aspects of the text, and both epics at large. 47 Like the Iliad, the Odyssey’s book divisions come after low-consequence scenes, and before high-consequence scenes. Moreover, they occur at points of entrance and exit in the text, and provide useful information, enabling the audience to keep track of the plot and narrative. He suggests that they are, in fact, native to the text itself, to a degree: as the Odyssey would not have been performed straight through, the segment markers represent an “intermission.” 48 Heiden’s conclusions are compelling, although they ultimately fall short of convincing that the division of Homer’s epics into books, or “songs,” are original to the composition of the texts themselves. What seems more likely is a process similar to what we might observe in the biblical text. There are both narrative and textual breaks in the text: these are a result of the various “seams” that come about from the composite redaction of Bible from a wide variety of sources.49 Seams can be more or less obvious: the break between Genesis 2:3 and 2:4 is very clearly a gap between sources, and the traditional Jewish lectionary schedule reflects this. At other times, the seams might be more subtly interwoven, such is in the intertwined flood narratives in Genesis 7. There is also an additional layer of division possible in the text of the 46 Bruce Heiden, “The Placement of ‘Book Divisions’ in the Iliad,” 69. 47 Bruce Heiden, “The Placement of ‘Book Divisions’ in the Odyssey,” 250-251. 48 Ibid, 259. 49 This is, of course, the Documentary hypothesis, which is even today a controversial topic and subject of much scholarship. See Joel Baden, The Composition of the Pentateuch: Renewing the Documentary Hypothesis (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012). 141 Hebrew Bible: the Masoretic text is written in paragraphs, or parshiyyot, a tradition that likely existed in some form at the time of the Babylonian Talmud. Divisions could easily have been traced along the physical paragraphs of the text. 50 In this instance, dividing the text into separate readings based on internal consistencies would rip the narrative to shreds. This does not mean, of course, that there was necessarily a formalized structure of dividing the text of the Hebrew Bible into chapters and verses at the moment of composition. It does mean, however, that the activities of those scholars who did divide the text—late ancient rabbis, and eventually the Tiberian Masoretes—might have done so based on “natural” seams or breakages in the text, at least part of the time. Alexandrian scholars of the Homeric epics may have done exactly the same: read the text of their epics, and over a period of varying degrees of formalization, established divisions based on natural breaks and textual irregularities. III. Special Readings and Their Holidays The last section looked at the rabbinic material that indicates how a parashah was constructed: both internal and external factors determined, for the rabbis, the length and contours of a specific reading. This section examines the placement of some of those parshiyyot. There was a regular reading cycle, during which the entire Torah was read, although whether this took place over the course of a year, three years, or seven years was a matter of great contention for the rabbis. Readings for holidays, however, could come from anywhere in the Torah, and were specifically mandated and laid out. In this section, I examine when special readings were read, and rabbinic reasons for why were they read on specific days. This ultimately tells us about rabbinic attitudes towards the biblical text: that along with the study and reading of the text becoming an important form of piety, the discussion of how to read the text, and when to do it, 50 There are two types of pargraph in the Masoretic text: open and closed. See Geoffrey Khan, A short Introduction to the Tiberian Masoretic Bible and its Reading Tradition (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2012) 35-37. 142 should be considered a part of the liturgy as well. An analysis of the relevant material in tannaitic literature, the Yerushalmi, and the Bavli reveal that there were two types of connections between text and calendar, and the more interpretive of these was reliant on the practices of division, segmentation, and close reading that characterized early rabbinic education. The liturgical reading of a specifically selected text is an important component of many Jewish holidays, and this section shows that evidence for these practices goes back at least as far as the tannaitic period. The Torah (or the Pentateuch, or Five Books of Moses) is read in a cycle that repeats itself either on an annual, triennial, or septennial basis. 51 These readings happen on Sabbaths and two other days during the week. In addition to the standard lectionary readings from the Torah, there is also the tradition of the haftarah: a portion from one of the Prophets that is appended (the root ‫ר‬-‫ט‬-‫ פ‬literally means to “to part,” or “to end something”) to the cyclical weekly reading. “Special” readings, outside the yearly cycle but still from the Torah, are assigned to various weeks of the year, typically to coincide with holidays, or other days that are designated as in some way liturgically distinct: it is these that are considered most closely in the latter sections of this chapter. Other books of the bible are to be read on certain days: most famously, the scroll, or Megillah, of Esther is associated with the holiday of Purim. The readings assigned to specific holidays are all connected to those holidays, or specific weeks, in complicated ways, and it is this relationship that is particularly important for a discussion of rabbinic liturgical reading practices. There are two main types of relationship between a reading and its appointed time. The first of these is a liturgical relationship, in which the reading outlines, describes, or explicates a specific liturgical action that is related to that day. For the most part, the reading for each holiday in mMegillah is the portion of the Pentateuch that 51 Naeh, “Sidrei Qri’at” and “Al ha-Machzor.” 143 delineates the proper sacrifices (and other rituals) for that particular day of the year. This is the mythologization of ritual, and the ritualization of that mythology: reading about the sacrifices fulfills the same religious purpose as performing the sacrifices themselves. It is, to paraphrase Jonathan Z. Smith, a ritual of a myth about a ritual. 52 In a classic rabbinic move, even these rituals come to be mythologized in the Palestinian Talmud. The second method of association is the thematic relationship, and these, on the other hand, are a bit more difficult to discern: the reading bears some sort of thematic connection to the holiday, even if it is not specifically about the day being celebrated. These served as particularly fruitful loci of discussion for late ancient rabbis, and it is that particular discussion that will come to serve as a model of liturgical study. Tannaitic Literature The Mishnah and Tosefta contain a variety of instructions for the reading of the Megillah on Purim. These instructions are in turn more broadly applied to the practice of liturgical reading for various holidays. The ritual-choreographic element of these instructions fall into two categories: the actual, physical situation of reading, and the contours of the text that is itself read. Together, these create a recognizable habitus: the set of dispositions and attitudes that constitute, and are in turn constituted by, the practice’s environment. The specifics of this environment are expanded and described in greater detail in the treatment of later texts, and the assumptions that those texts make relative to the tannaitic material is of paramount importance for piecing together information about their settings, and the borders of practice in their own time. When the rabbis discuss the coordination of readings and holidays, much, I think, centers around the verb that they use to describe what is done with the texts in question. Rabbis tend to be exacting with their vocabulary, and while pinning large arguments on the choice of a single 52 Jonathan Z. Smith, Relating Religion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004) 223. 144 word is something of a castle in the air, the word in question is common enough, and unexpected enough, to merit some attention. In the following material, it will become clear that one does not “read” or even “expound,” “preach,” or “interpret” the laws of Passover, Shavuot, and Sukkot in their correct seasons—one “asks” them. The word used is “‫שואלין‬,” “sho-alin,” which comes from the root ‫ל‬-‫א‬-‫ש‬/š-‘-l, and means to request, to ask, to question, to beg, or to inquire. 53 Jastrow suggests “discuss” as a possible definition as well, citing its usage in this instance. While this certainly makes sense in context, the base definition of “questioning” and discussion helps to arrive at a more nuanced understanding of what the rabbis were saying. Keeping in mind the academic and dialectic context of these discussions, the liturgical nature of study and debate itself comes into sharper focus. MMegillah 3:4-6 The Mishnah and Tosefta both contain material that dictates when certain “special readings” should be read. This discussion begins in Mishnah Megillah 3:4 with the assignment of special readings, or parshiyyot, to the Sabbaths that fall in the month of Adar. This leads, in classic Mishnaic style, to a much broader list of regulations regarding “special readings.” These readings are “special” because they do not fall within the regular Torah reading cycle: they are out of sync with the annual, triennial, and septennial cycles, and therefore represent a “special” jump forward or back in the Torah text. What follows is mMegillah 3:4-6 in full, with notes regarding the specific content of the Torah readings suggested for specific holidays. ‫ראש חדש של אדר שחל להיות בשבת קורין בפרשת שקלים חל להיות בתוך‬ ‫השבת מקדימין לשעבר ומפסיקין לשבת אחרת בשניה זכור בשלישית פרה אדומה‬ ‫ברביעית החדש הזה לכם בחמישית חוזרין לסדרן לכל מפסיקין לראשי חדשים‬ 54 :‫לחנוכה ולפורים לתעניות ולמעמדות וביום הכפורים‬ 53 Jastrow, 1506-1508. 54 Ms. Add. 470.1 66r, mMegilla 3:5-6 145 If the month of Adar should begin on Shabbat, they read the parashah of Sheqalim (Shekels)55 (Exodus 30:11). If it should begin in the middle of the week, they read it the Shabbat prior, and then interrupt it [the special reading cycle] on the next Shabbat. On the second [Shabbat], “Zakhor,” (Remember) (Deut. 15:14) and on the third, “Parah Adumah,” (The red heifer) (Num. 19) and on the fourth, “Hachodesh Hazeh Lakhem” (This month shall be for you) (Exodus 12:2), on the fifth we return to the reading according to the order. They are all interrupted for New Moons [the beginning of the month], Chanukkah, and Purim, for fasts and assemblies and Yom Kippur. This Mishnah sets the stage, and outlines the general program of what is to come. The four Sabbaths of Adar each have a special reading, either instead of, or in addition to, the regularly scheduled reading of the lectionary cycle. The Mishnah uses the term “mafsiq,” or “interrupt,” to signify the break in readings: this is also the term used for “plucking” a portion of the text out from its larger context, or making a specific portion of the text into a verse. This mishnah contains a list of special readings for specific Sabbaths in Adar and their thematic relationships with the calendar. Of the four special parshiyyot defined here, one of them seems to have a liturgical, or at least temporal, connection to the calendar. The last Sabbath in Adar is accompanied by a reading from Exodus 12:2: “This month shall be for you the first of the months: it is the first, for you, of the months of the year.” Nisan, the month which comes directly after Adar and begins shortly after the last Sabbath thereof, is the first month of the year: it is clear, then, that this reading was selected to coincide with Nisan’s arrival. This week is referred to as Shabbat HaChodesh—the week of the New Moon. What of the parshiyyot of Sheqalim, Zakhor, and Parah Adumah?, If the connection is not obviously liturgical or calendrical as it is with the last Sabbath in Adar, then it must either be 55 Torah portions are typically identified by a word near their beginning. 146 thematic, or follow a different logic entirely. The reading of Sheqalim, beginning at Exodus 30:11, recounts the census Moses takes of the Israelites, and the subsequent tax that is levied on them “as an offering to God”: ‫תרומת ליהוה‬/terumat l’YHWH. The reading for parashat Zakhor, from Deuteronomy 25:17, is an injunction to remember the crimes of Amalek: because Amalek tried to attack the Children of Israel at their most vulnerable, it is their responsibility to blot them out from the face of the earth. The third of the special readings, called parashat Parah Adumah, is the ritual of the red heifer from Numbers 19. An elaborate sacrificial ritual focused around the finding, slaughter, and burning of an entirely red cow is performed, leaving the offerands impure. Unfortunately, the Mishnah does not offer any insight into the thematic connection between these parshiyyot and the Sabbaths of the month of Adar. This meant, however, that there was fertile ground for later rabbis to interpret. MMegillah 3:5 reads: ‫בפסח קורין בפרשת המועדות שבתורת כהנים בעצרת שבעה שבועות בראש‬ ‫השנה בחדש השביעי באחד לחדש ביום הכפורים אחרי מות ביום טוב הראשון של‬ 56 :‫חג קורין בפרשת מועדות שבתורת כהנים ושאר כל ימות החג בקרבנות החג‬ On Passover, we read parashah “Moadot” (Appointed times) of Leviticus (Lev. 23), on The Assembly, “Shiv’ah Shavuot” (Seven weeks) (Deut. 16), on Rosh Hashanah, “Bachodesh Hashvi’i b’echad lachodesh” (In the seventh month, on the first of the month) (Num. 29:1), on Yom Kippur, “Acharei Mot” (After the death) (Lev. 16), on the first festal day of the Holiday, we read parashah “Moadot” which is in Torat Cohanim 57 (Lev. 23), and on the rest of the days of the Holiday, about the sacrifices on the holiday (Num. 29). This mishnah deals with the special readings for the three Pilgrimage festivals (Passover, Shavu’ot, and Sukkot, called in the Mishnah Pesach, Atzeret (Assembly), and HeChag (The Holiday)) and the High Holidays—Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur. Leviticus 23, read on both 56 Ms. Add. 470.1 66r, mMegilla 3:7 57 Torat Cohanim is often understood as a rabbinic title for Leviticus. 147 Passover (presumably the first day, but it is not made explicit in the Mishnah) and the first days of Sukkot, is a lengthy passage about sacrifices, and the appointed times (mo’adim) at which to offer them. This chapter includes the sacrifices for both the days on which it is to be read: Leviticus 23:5 mandates the Passover sacrifice, 58 and Levitcus 23:34-36 contain the Sukkot sacrifices.59 Similarly, the reading from Deuteronomy 16, to be read on Shavu’ot (or Pentecost, the feast of Weeks, exactly fifty days after the beginning of Passover, and coinciding with the wheat harvest) relates the broad contours of the holiday, as does Numbers 29 for both Rosh HaShanah and the intermediate days of Sukkot. Leviticus 16, to be read on Yom Kippur, has the interesting distinction of being both embedded in a narrative, as well as a broader sacrificial rite: it takes place immediately after Nadav and Avihu, the sons of Aaron, are killed for offering “strange fire,” and outlines the purificatory sacrifice that Aaron must go through, as well as the ritual of the scapegoat. This ritual, in particular, is very closely tied to the expiatory understanding of Yom Kippur, and forms the root of a significant interpretive tradition in early Christianity.60 The Yom Kippur reading, which takes up the scapegoat and locates it immediately following the death of Aaron’s sons, is more liturgical than it is thematic, but an argument could 58 Leviticus 23:5: ‫בחודש הראשון ארבעה עשר לחדש בין הערבים פסח ליהוה‬ In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month, there will be a pesach to God, at twilight. 59 Leviticus 23:34-36: ‫ ְמלֶאכֶת‬-‫קדֶ ש; כָּל‬-‫ ִּמקְ ָּרא‬,‫ לה בַ יֹום הָּ ִּראשֹון‬.‫ לַיהוָּה‬,‫ חַ ג הַ סֻׁכֹות ִּשבְ עַת י ִָּּמים‬,‫ לַח דֶ ש הַ ְשבִּ יעִּ י הַ זֶה‬,‫ בַ ח ֲִּמשָּ ה עָּשָּ ר יֹום‬:‫ לֵאמר‬,‫יִּש ָּראֵ ל‬ ְ ‫ בְ נֵי‬-‫דַ בֵ ר אֶ ל‬ ‫ ְמלֶאכֶת‬-‫כָּ ל‬--‫ עֲצֶ ֶרת הִּ וא‬,‫ קדֶ ש יִּ הְ יֶה לָּכֶם וְ הִּ קְ ַרבְ ּתֶ ם ִּאשֶ ה לַיהוָּה‬-‫ ּתַ קְ ִּריבּו ִּאשֶ ה לַיהוָּה; בַ יֹום הַ ְש ִּמינִּ י ִּמקְ ָּרא‬,‫ לו ִּשבְ עַת י ִָּּמים‬.‫ לא תַ עֲשּו‬,‫עֲבדָּ ה‬ .‫ לא תַ עֲשּו‬,‫עֲבדָּ ה‬ “Speak to the children of Israel saying, ‘On the fifteenth day of the seventh month, this will be the Feast of Booths, seven days for God. On the first day, there will be a holiday—do not do any type of work. Seven days you will make burnt offerings to God, and on the eighth day, it will be a holiday for you, and you shall make a burnt offering to God. It is an assembly, and you shall do no type of work.” 60 See, for example, Daniel Stökl-Ben Ezra, The Impact of Yom Kippur on Early Christianity: The Day of Atonement from Second Temple Judaism to the Fifth Century (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003), esp. 78-143. 148 be made that its connection to the holiday relies on both logics. The ritual of the scapegoat is necessitated by the death of Aaron’s sons, and the guilt that adheres to his bloodline because of that. The next mishnah continues: ‫בחנוכה בנשיאים בפורים ויבא עמלק בראשי חדשים ובראשי חדשיכם במעמדות‬ ‫במעשה בראשית ובתעניות ברכות וקללות אין מפסיקין בקללות אלא אחד קורא‬ ‫את כולן בשני ובחמישי ובשבת ובמנחה קורין כסדרן ואין עולה להן מן החשבון‬ 61 :‫שנ״ וידבר משה את מועדי ייי וגו״ מצותן שהיו קורין כל אחד ואחד בזמנו‬ On Chanukkah, “Ba’nsi’im” (With the chieftans) (Num. 7), on Purim, “Vayavo’ Amalek” (And Amalek came) (Exodus 17:8), on New Moons, “Uv’rashei Chadsheichem” (And at the beginnings of your months) (Num. 28:11), and during ma’amadot, “Maaseh Bereishit” (The works of creation) (Genesis 1), and during fasts, “Berakhot uqlalot” (the blessings and curses) (Lev. 26:3). One does not interrupt the curses, but rather one person reads all of them. On Monday, Thursday, and Shabbat afternoon we read according to the set order, and they do not go up for them from the number, as it is written, “And Moses spoke to the festivals of God to the children of Israel,” (Lev. 23:44)—their commandments will be read each in their own time. The connection between the specific liturgical reading and its associated holiday is significantly less clear in this passage, and provides a ripe interpretive soil for the rabbis of a later generation to find resonances and interpretive parallels. Chanukkah is celebrated with a reading from Numbers that outlines the offerings to be given by the chieftains of the Children of Israel. Purim, on the other hand, is commemorated with something rather different: Exodus 17:8 is the story of Amalek and his attack on the Children of Israel while they are at Rephidim. The Israelites ultimately triumph in this battle, but not without some help. Moses stands atop a hill and watches, and while his arms, holding his rod, are raised, Israel triumphs; when he grows weary and lowers them, Amalek prevails. It is only with the help of Aaron and Hur, who stand on either side of him and hold up his arms, that 61 Ms. Add. 470.1 66r, mMegilla 3:8 149 he is able to raise his staff long enough for Joshua to defeat Amalek. The connection between Purim and this story is, at least in the Mishnah, left unstated. 62 These readings, then, must follow a different logic than those that relate special sacrifices for specific days in a straightforward manner. The must be thematically related—or, at the very least, later rabbis must find thematic logic in order to make sense of them. The reading for New Moons falls back into a liturgical relationship: Numbers 28:11 describes the offerings to be made during the New Moon, which signifies the first day of every month in the Hebrew calendar. The reading of the ma’amad, is constituted of the “works of creation,” or ma’aseh b’reishit: this is very likely a reference to Genesis 1:1-2:3, which comprises the narrative of creation’s seven days, and implies a thematic relationship, since no specific rituals are outlined in those chapters. Fast days are also home to a slightly more thematically oriented reading: rather than a passage from the Pentateuch about fasting, one is commanded to read the blessings and curses of Leviticus 26, a passage that outlines the abundant blessings of God’s pleasure, and the consequences of failing to faithfully obey God’s word. This particular reading even comes with an injunction: the passage detailing the curses, or the consequences, cannot be broken up into separate parts: it must be read by one person. The end of this mishnah iterates an aspect of the liturgical reading of the Torah that we often taken for granted, namely that it happens three times a week, and these weekly readings participate in a “set order,” or seder, which is only interrupted for the sake of a holiday with its own special reading.63 The Purim reading, on the other hand, seems to be completely thematic (especially 62 Although a later tradition identifies Haman the Agagite as a descendant of Amalek. A version of this tradition appears in the Mekhilta d’Rabbi Ishmael, in which Haman is identified with Amalek (Mesekhta d’Amalek, parashah 2), but the actual identification as a descendant seems to come later, first attested in Pesikta Rabbati, piska 12. 63 The full valences of the term “seder” will be discussed later in this chapter. 150 since it contains no reference to a sacrifice, or any other ritual that might be performed on a holiday). TMegillah 3:1 The Tosefta expands many of these lectionary assignments, but it does not offer any clear-cut rationale for the thematic readings. In many cases, it adds additional readings from the Prophets, or gives contingency plans for specific calendrical oddities. TMegillah 3:1, for example, tells us more about parashat Sheqalim: ‫ראש חדש אדר שחל להיות בשבת קורין פרשת שקלים ומפטירין פרשת שקלים‬ ‫שביהוידע הכהן אי זו היא שבת ראשונה כל שראש חדש אדר חל להיות בתוכה‬ ‫אפי' בערב שבת‬ If Rosh Chodesh Adar falls on Shabbat, one reads parashat Sheqalim, and concludes parashhat Sheqalim with Yehoiada the priest (2 Kings 12). What is the first week? Any during which Rosh Chodesh Adar also falls in its midst, even if it comes on Friday. This passage helps to clarify certain issues in the Mishnah text—and in this instance, it is particularly difficult to understand which came first, whether one relies on the other, or whether, in fact, the two are complementary, and produced in a simultaneous fashion. The first week of the month of Adar is more explicitly defined here, for the ease of those planning the lectionary schedule. Any week in which the New Moon of Adar falls, even if it falls the day before the Sabbath, is the first week of that month. When the New Moon (Rosh Chodesh) of Adar falls on a Sabbath, this is also Shabbat Sheqalim, and a special haftarah from the Prophetic books—in this case, 2 Kings 12—is to be read. The connection between this haftarah and the special Torah reading is clearer than the relationship between parashat Sheqalim and the week on which it is read. It is a thematic connection: 2 Kings 12 relates how king Yehoash commands the priests to collect a tax for repairs to the Temple in Jerusalem. The priests fail to do this, and Yehoiada, the 151 high priest, establishes a donation box to the right side of the altar, and the money is finally used to enact the necessary repairs to the sanctuary. The link is in the vocabulary, and the theme that it suggests: both the sheqalim with which the Israelites are to pay their taxes after the census, and the money Yehoiada collects, are silver. Both readings have to do with the collection of funds, although their relation to this specific week is unclear. The next passage of the Tosefta gives us the haftarah reading for the next Sabbath, on which one reads parahsat Zakhor. Again, the connection is immediately obvious: the first line of the Torah reading enjoins the reader to remember what Amalek did, and the first line of the haftarah announces the same: “Thus said Yahweh of Hosts: “I shall exact payment for what Amalek did to Israel, what he did to them on the road, when they were coming up from Egypt” (1 Kings 15:2).64 There is a similar connection between the Torah reading of parashat Parah and its haftarah, which comes from Ezekiel 36:25: the act of sprinkling water to purify in Ezekiel 36 is clearly related to the act of sprinkling water and ashes of the red heifer. The same pattern holds true for fourth special reading in Adar, on Shabbat HaChodesh: the Tosefta adds a haftarah reading that focuses on the upcoming new month, from Ezekiel 45. None of these additions, however, serve as explanations for the thematic connection between the calendar and the reading. They simply provide additional readings that seem closely related to the Torah lection. The connections the rabbis make between these texts raise a host of questions. Many of these are texts that we now, as modern scholars, recognize as being connected to each other through acts of inner-biblical exegesis. Whether or not the rabbis recognized these connections 64 tMegillah 3:2: ‫בשניה זכור (ומטי) ומפטירין כה אמר ייי פקדתי את אשר עשה עמלק לישראל אי זו היא שבת שנייה כל שפורים חל להיות בתוכה ואפילו‬ ‫בערב שבת‬ On the second week, they conclude “Thus spoken YHWH of Hosts: ‘I shall exact payment for what Amalek did to Israel.” What is the second Week? Any in which Purim falls in its midst, even on the eve of Sabbath. 1 Kings 15:2: ‫ בַ עֲֹלתֹו ִּמ ִּמצְ ָּריִּ ם‬,‫שָּ ם לֹו בַ דֶ ֶרְך‬-‫אֲשֶ ר‬--‫יִּש ָּראֵ ל‬ ְ ְ‫עָּשָּ ה עֲמָּ לֵק ל‬-‫ אֵ ת אֲשֶ ר‬,‫ פָּקַ דְ ִּּתי‬,‫ יְ הוָּה צְ בָּ אֹות‬,‫כה אָּ מַ ר‬ 152 on the compositional level, or simply understood the texts as being related in a less explicit, more general manner, is a difficult question to consider at the present moment, but one well-worth considering. Tosefta Megillah even provides a brief summary of special readings, both from the Torah and the Prophets, as it continues to outline them. The passage, Tosefta Megillah 3:5a, reads thus: ‫שואלין הלכות הפסח בפסח והלכות עצרת בעצרת והלכות החג בבית הועד שואלין‬ ‫בהלכות הפסח קודם לפסח שלשים יום רבן שמעון בן גמליאל אומ' שתי שבתות‬ ‫יום טוב הראשון של פסח קורין בפרשת הנף שבתורת כהנים ושאר כל ימות הפסח‬ ‫מדלגין מעניינות הפסח הכתובין בתורה בעצרת שבעה שבועות ויש אומ' בחדש‬ ‫השלישי‬ They ask about the laws of Passover on Passover, and the laws of the Assembly (Shavuot) on Shavuot, and the laws of the Holiday (Sukkot) on Sukkot. In the council house, they ask about the laws of Passover thirty days before Passover—although Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel says two weeks. On the first festal day of Passover, they read the portion of Hanaf which is in Leviticus, and the rest of the days of Passover, they skip to where things concerning Passover are written in the Torah. And on Atzeret, “Seven weeks,” and there are some who say, “And in the third month.” This passage does several things. If we extrapolate from the directive regarding the latter days of Passover, it gives a general theory of festival Torah reading: one skips around to read the passages concerned with the holiday. 65 It also provides a few more specific readings, specifically that regarding the wave or sheaf offering. Lastly, and most importantly for our purposes, it provides a context for both the thematically and liturgically connected readings for the holidays. Tosefta Megillah 3:6-9 continue the general pattern of assigning readings for special holidays based on either thematic or liturgical connections. Interestingly, there are sometimes two readings given: tMegillah 3:6, for example, assigns the Rosh Hashanah sacrifice as a reading 65 This is certainly the way that the passage has been taken by subsequent interpreters, although it does not seem to me to be inherent in the passage itself. 153 for the New Year, and then concedes that there are some rabbis who instead prefer, “And God visited Sarah,”66 from Genesis 21:1, which relates the birth of Isaac. The former of these is clearly a liturgical reading; we can only assume that the latter bears a thematic connection. An alternative reading is also offered for Tisha b’Av, which falls into the general category of fast days: tMegillah 3:9 says that some authorities suggest a reading from later in Leviticus 26, starting at verse 14 rather than 3. This, however, does not trade out a liturgical reading for a thematic one, but rather relates a different selection of curses. In sum, the Mishnah and Tosefta mandate specific readings for certain weeks of the year, and those readings are related to the calendar either liturgically, based on the rituals that would have been performed in the Temple, or thematically. The thematic connections are sometimes difficult to discern, because the tannaitic sources do not spend much time explaining them. In later sources, thematic connections are explored in much greater depth. It is to these explanations in Palestinian sources that this chapter turns to next. The division of readings into individual parshiyyot, a process we explored in the first portion of the chapter, will be shown to be a crucial element of the interpretive practice by which the rabbis link the liturgical calendar and the reading of the Torah. Talmud Yerushalmi YMegillah 3:5 73c At this point, we move from the tannaitic evidence into Palestinian amoraic sources, in order to examine tractate Megillah in the Palestinian Talmud, and analyze the way later rabbis interpreted the assignment of special readings to specific holidays. The first, which follows the order in the Mishnah, is parashat Sheqalim. The Yerushalmi states in yMegillah 3:5 73c: 66 ‫ויהוה פקד את שרה‬ 154 ‫ר' לוי בשם רשב"ל צפה הקב"ה שהמן הרשע עתיד לשקול כספו על ישר' אמר‬ ‫מוטב שיקדום כספן של בני לכספו של אותו הרשע לפיכך מקדימין וקורין בפרשת‬ ‫שקלים‬ Rabbi Levi said in the name of Rabbi Shim’on ben Lakish: The Holy One, Blessed be He, saw that in the future, Haman would weigh (lishqol) his money (kaspo) against Israel. He said, 'It is better that the money of my children should come before the money of that evil man.’ For this reason, we come before and read parashat Sheqalim. The explanation is thematic, and attributed to a statement by Resh Lakish, a Babylonian rabbi who eventually settled in Palestine. The explanation, though it manages to link the idea of money, or sheqalim, as well as the concept of priority, to the placement of the reading in the weeks before Purim, seems particularly forced. The operative word is not simply sheqel, but also kesef, which translates as “silver,” and is a common term for money. The exegetical line of thought runs thus: the reading of parashat Sheqalim revolves around the payment of the Temple tax in shekels, and shekels, in other parts of the biblical text, are identified as being silver. The word “shekel” comes from a root that signifies “to weigh” (the original usage of the word “shekel” is as a weight of metal), hence the description of God “weighing” the money (or silver) of Israel against the money of Haman. A link is drawn between the shekel of the text from Exodus and the silver that Haman offers to King Ahashuerus in order to entice him into allowing Haman rid his kingdom of the Jews, whom he characterizes as a “people scattered and diverse,” who “follow different laws,” and “do not obey the laws of your kingdom” (Esther 3:8). Haman uses the word “‫אשקול‬,” “I will weigh,” to describe his deposit of silver into the treasury. From here, Rabbi Levi extrapolates the relationship of parashat Sheqalim to its place in the calendar: its proximity and priority to the holiday of Purim. 155 As a reading about the collection and deposit of the Temple tax,67 its connection to the calendar is slim. It is made stronger, however, by the connection of the Temple tax to Haman’s deposit of the spoils of the Jews into Ahashuerus’ treasury. In the book of Esther, the weighing of silver comes with the promise of the destruction of the Jews; in the Torah reading before Purim, this is reversed, and the discussion of the Temple tax becomes part of the longer process of liturgical reading which reaches its zenith at the end of Esther, in which the Jews are not destroyed, but rather saved. A similar trope—the deposit of money—has been used to illustrate the scope of reversal possible in the liturgical reading of the Torah. yMegillah 3:6 74b The Yerushalmi continues with an explanation of the reading calendar in the month of Adar. This passage is yMegillah 3:6 74b. It seems to reflect some of the concerns of the earlier tannaitic compositions, extending the notion that certain texts must be read in their entirety, without interruption, to the reading cycle itself—or at least, according to this gemara, the parshiyyot of parah and HaChodesh must be read consecutively, without interruption. An acrostic for the sake of ease is offered: the readings are likened to wine cups, and there should be no pause between the drinking of the third and the fourth. 68 67 For a comprehensive treatment of the Temple tax, see Marty E. Stevens, Temples, Tithes, and Taxes: The Temple and the Economic Life of Ancient Israel (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2006). See also the overview in Cecil Roth and Menachem Elon, "Taxation." Encyclopaedia Judaica, edited by Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik, 2nd ed., vol. 19, (Macmillan Reference USA, 2007) 532-558. 68 ‫ו' ר' בא בשם ר' חייה בר אשי אין מפסיקין בין פורים לפרה ר' לוי בשם ר' חמא בר חנינה אין מפסיקין בין פרה להחודש א"ר לוי סימניהון‬ ‫דאילין פרשתא בין הכוסות הללו אם רצה לשתו' ישתה בין השלישי לרביעי לא ישתה‬ Rabbi Ba in the name of Rabbi Hiyya bar Assi: One does not interrupt between Purim and Parah. Rabbi Levi in the name of Rabbi Hama bar Hanina: One does not interrupt between Parah and LaChodesh. Rabbi Levi said, “An acrostic for these parshiyyot: Between these cups, if he wants to drink, let him drink. Between the third and the fourth, he may not drink.” 156 The discussion continues, focusing on the correct ordering of the special Sabbaths in Adar. Rabbi Levi presents a question which he then answers—first with an incorrect statement, and then the theologically loaded answer that also serves as a more general statement. ‫רבי לוי בשם רבי חמא בר חנינה בדין הוא שתקדום החודש לפרה שבאחד בניסן‬ ‫הוקם המשכן ובשני נשרפה הפרה ולמה פרה קודמת שהיא טהרתן של כל ישראל‬ Rabbi Levi said in the name of Rabbi Hama bar Hanina, “By right, HaChodesh should precede Parah since the tabernacle was erected on the first of Nisan, and the cow was burnt on the second. And why does the cow come first? Because it is the purification of the entirety of Israel. The reading of parashat Parah gains its place relative to the reading of parashat HaChodesh. As the great exemplar of an expiatory purification ritual, 69 its reading is deemed necessarily prior to a reading in which the Tabernacle is constructed, even though calendrically, the ritual of the red cow (or red heifer) took place, according to the Yerushalmi, on the second of Nisan, and the building of the Tabernacle on the first.70 The latter must be done in a state of purity, even if it is only done with the words and ritual reading of a congregation. Just as reading the construction of the tabernacle and the offering of various sacrifices constructs them within the mythic framework of the liturgy, so does reading about the red heifer purify the reader—if not physically, then at least in a way that enables him to liturgically construct God’s dwelling. 71 69 The scholarship on the red heifer, or the parah adumah, is extensive. See Nathan MacDonald, “The Hermeneutics of the Red Cow,” Harvard Theological Review 105.3 (2012), 351-371. He also cites the past literature extensively. One of MacDonald’s points, which I believe lies behind the rabbis’ attention and interpretation of the ritual, is that the purification that comes about from the ashes of the red cow is not only the purification of past impurity: the ashes are able to be stored and used for later, future impurities. It seems possible to me that the rabbis are attending to this nuance, and claiming that reading the ritual of the red cow, or parah adumah, purifies the readers because of this feature of the ritual text, and the possible future use of the ashes. 70 Additionally, the texts themselves are out of the order that they hold in the Torah: the red cow is in Numbers, and the reading for Shabbat HaChodesh is in Exodus. 71 This is an important concept, both for liturgy in general and liturgical reading specifically. The reading of the sacrifice does not “represent” the purification of the readers: it actually enacts it. This is more common than you might think in late ancient literature, although it is often implicit, rather than explicit, and signifies the ritual logic of a written text as much as it does the actual ritual implementation and use of it. See, for example, the Gospel of Mark, 157 The remainder of this passage goes on to discuss the combinations of readings that might occur when holidays fall together: Rosh Chodesh and the Sabbath, for example, or the trifecta of holidays in which Rosh Chodesh and the Sabbath fall together during Chanukkah. There is disagreement between various authorities regarding which holiday receives more readings, and Guggenheimer points out that the argument itself can only take place in the Palestinian triennial cycle, in which only one scroll at a time is used. 72 This passage is also likely not in its original place: it also appears in yTa’aniot 4:1 (67c) and seems to make more sense there. The repetition of texts between yTa’aniot and yMegillah is not surprising, given that both deal with the liturgical reading “schedule” to varying degrees. ‫ירמיה ספרא שאל לרב ירמיה ראש חדש שחל להיות בשבת במה קורין אמר ליה‬ ‫קורין בראש חדש א"ר חלבו קומי רבי אימי מתניתא אמרה כן לכל מפסיקין‬ ‫לראשי חדשים לחנוכה ולפורים יצחק סחורה שאל לרבי יצחק ראש חדש שחל‬ '‫להיות בחנוכה במה קורין אמר ליה קורין שלשה בראש חדש ואחד בחנוכה ר‬ ‫פינחס ר' סימון ורבי אבא בר זמינא מטי בה בשם ר' אבודמא דחיפה קורין שלשה‬ ‫בחנוכ' ואחד בראש חדש להודיעך שלא בא הרביעי אלא מחמת ראש חדש בר‬ ‫שילמיא ספרא שאל לרבי מנא הגע עצמך שחל ראש חדש של חנוכה להיות בשבת‬ '‫ולא שבעה קרויין אינון אית לך מימר שלא בא הרביעי אלא מחמת ראש חדש אמ‬ ‫ליה והדא שאילתיה דספר‬ Jeremiah the scribe asked Rav Jeremiah: A Rosh Chodesh that falls on the Sabbath, what does one read?” He said to him, “One reads about Rosh Chodesh/the new moon.” Rabbi Helbo said before Rabbi Immi, “The Mishnah says thus: ‘One interrupts for everything, for new moons, for Chanukkah, and for Purim.” Isaac the trader asked Rabbi Isaac, “When Rosh Chodehn falls on Chanukkah, one does one read?” He said to him, “We read three which begins with the narration of a baptism that not only identifies Jesus as the son of the Holy Spirit, but also purifies the reader, allowing her to proceed in the text. The Gospel of Mark is a good example of a text whose literary construction serves to actively work on its readers: in addition to the baptismal episode, it contains the messianic secret, in which the reader is, at the end, initiated into the mystery of Christ by being the only participant in the text to understand the full valence of his position as Messiah and son of God. See Lewis S. Hay, “Mark’s Use of the Messianic Secret,” JAAR 35:1 (1967) 16-27 and William Wrede, The Messianic Secret, trans. J. C. G. Greig (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971). Textualized rituals were also, of course, present in Jewish texts. Ophir Münz-Manor explores this theme in piyyut: see “Narrating Salvation: Verbal Sacrifices in Late Antique Liturgical Poetry in Jews, Christians ,and the Roman Empire: The Poetics of Power in Late Antiquity ed. Natalie Dohrmann and Annette Y. Reed (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013) 154-166. 72 Guggenheimer, 128. 158 for Rosh Chodesh, and one for Chanukkah.” Rabbi Pinchas, Rabbi Simon, and Rabbi Abba bar Zamina brought it in the name of Rabbi Abudima (Eudaimon?) of Haifa: They read three on Chanukkah and one on the new moon, so that you know that the fourth only comes because of the new moon. Bar Shelemiah the scribe asked Rabbi Mana, “Consider it for yourself, if the new moon of Chanukkah falls on a Sabbath, aren’t seven read? How can you say that the fourth only comes on account of the new moon?” He said to him, “And this is the question of a scribe.” 73 This passage provides a broader sense of how the readings relate to each other, and how the calendar is expected to work. Special readings take precedence to Sabbath readings, and when holidays fall concurrently (an occurrence that really only happens during Chanukkah, since the holiday always encompasses the New Moon of the month of Tevet), the priority of readings must be established. There is a disagreement here, of course. The New Moon requires four readings, and Chanukkah three: Rabbi Isaac states that when the two fall together, the first three readings are about the New Moon, and the fourth, the designated reading for Chanukkah. This is, presumably, because the New Moon is assigned more readings in the Mishnah: by giving it more readings, and using the reading for Chanukkah to “make up” the appropriate number, deference is being made to its importance. Three other rabbis disagree, insisting that the numbers should be reversed: Chanukkah, perhaps since it comes only once a year, should have three readings, and the fourth should “make up the numbers” for Rosh Chodesh. Both options are left on the table as a scribe—a decidedly non-Rabbinic figure—brings another suggestion forth. Why would one simply not read three readings for Chanukkah, and four for the New Moon? His suggestion is roundly rejected without even a moment’s consideration: he is informed that his question is “the question of a scribe”: not worthy of asking a rabbi. 73 Cf. yTa’anyot 4:1, bMegillah 29b, bBerakhot 32b 159 The above-cited gemara, regarding the pejorative “question of the scribe,” indicates that the correct division of reading, along with the association of texts and holidays, is a proper rabbinic activity—an interpretive and textual practice that can only be performed by those with the proper rabbinic education. An earlier tradition in the Tosefta emphasizes this as well. Interpretation plays a significant role in the practice of dividing a text into specific readings, and then assigning readings to the appropriate holidays and weeks of the year. We have already seen Tosefta Megillah 3:5a, which states that “They ask about the laws of Passover on Passover, and the laws of the Assembly (Shavuot) on Shavuot, and the laws of the Holiday (Sukkot) on Sukkot. In the council house, they ask about the laws of Passover thirty days before Passover—although Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel says two weeks.” The connection between holidays and readings describing the liturgical actions necessary on those holidays is clear. What is also evident from this passage, I believe, is the importance of study and debate about the liturgical calendar of readings. When the rabbis theorize the manner in which text and calendar are connected, the terminology they use to discuss it is an important locus of meaning. The use of the word “ask,” “question,” or “discuss” in this instance, and the presence of these discussions in the text itself, indicate a relationship between the placement of a reading in the calendar and the interpretation of that reading. The dialectic surrounding a liturgical performance is, in some ways, as important as the performance itself. Study, to borrow a phrase from Adam Becker, is not only a form of piety: it is its own liturgy. 74 The tradition of “questions and answers” as a form of intellectual, academic, philosophical discourse in the ancient Mediterranean has a long lineage that extends both 74 See Jeffrey Rubenstein, “The Thematization of Dialectics in Bavli Aggada,” The Journal of Jewish Studies 54:1 (2003) 71-84 for more on the dialectic mode of the Bavli. 160 forward and back in time. The Greek term for this phenomenon—a series of discussions organized around specific, piercing questions—was ζητήματα.75 To a certain degree, this is one of the oldest traditions in the history of philosophy: Socrates and Plato were often characterized as participating in exactly these types of dialogues.76 We have evidence for its Jewish background as early as Philo, who was, of course, educated in the tradition of Aristotelian allegory and Platonic interpretation that was current in first-century-BCE Alexandria. 77 As the rabbs participate in something that resembles this practice, they are also further institutionalizing a form of widely recognizeable study and reading practice as a type of liturgy. Talmud Bavli BMegillah 29a The Babylonian Talmud maintains this emphasis on dialectic, discussion, and study when it relates the interpretive traditions that link special readings to their designated holidays. It goes into somewhat more detail (and with contains significantly more dialectic) than the Yerushalmi, stating the significance of the specific timing of parashat Sheqalim in numerous ways. The presence of the stam—the anonymous layer of dialectic that characterizes the Bavli and 75 Liddell, Scott, and Jones, Greek English Lexicon, 756. See also, Gärtner, Hans Armin (Heidelberg), “Zetema”, in: Brill’s New Pauly, Antiquity volumes edited by: Hubert Cancik and Helmuth Schneider, and Pierre Hadot, “La préhistoire des genres littéraires philosophiques médiévales dans l'antiquité,” in: Les genres littéraires dans les sources théologiques et philosophiques médiévales (Publications de l'Institut d'Études Médiévales, Louvain 2.5), 1982, 1-9. 76 See Plutarch’s Platonika Zetemata, in the Moralia 999c-1011e. 77 See Philo’s Questiones in Genesim, which is extant only in a sixth-century Armenian translation, and a fourth- century Latin translation. These questions typically include both allegorical and literal interpretations. See D.M. Hay (ed.), Both Literal and Allegorical: Studies in Philo of Alexandria's Questions and Answers on Genesis and Exodus (Atlanta: Scholar’s Press, 1991). 161 differentiates it from the Yerushalmi—means that there is a significantly greater quantity of give-and-take in this text, and a greater focus on argumentation and dispute than we have previously seen. This quality lends the Bavli sugya a slightly different flavor than the earlier texts. This section turns now to a passage from the Babylonian Talmud’s tractate Megillah. It focuses on the sugya that follows on mMegillah 3:4 because this is the first mishnah that deals with the “special” Torah portions of Sheqalim, Zakhor, and Hachodesh, and this chapter has already examined both its relationship to the Tosefta and its reception in the Palestinian Talmud. Similar insights could be gleaned from the expansions and interpretations of other mishnayot, but for the sake of space, we focus largely on this one. For the sake of ease, the Mishnah is repeated here: ‫ראש חדש אדר שחל להיות בשבת קורין בפרשת שקלים חל להיות בתוך השבת‬ ‫מק דימין לשעבר ומפסיקין לשבת אחרת בשניה זכור בשלישית פרה אדומה‬ ‫ברביעית החדש הזה לכם בחמישית חוזרין לכסדרן לכל מפסיקין בראשי חדשים‬ ‫בחנוכה ובפורים בתעניות ובמעמדות וביום הכפורים‬ If the month of Adar should begin on Shabbat, they read the parashah of Sheqalim (Shekels) (Exodus 30:11). If it should begin in the middle of the week, they read it the Shabbat prior, and then interrupt it [the special reading cycle] on the next Shabbat. On the second [Shabbat], “Zakhor,” (Remember) (Deut. 15:14) and on the third, “Parah Adumah,” (The red heifer) (Num. 19) and on the fourth, “Hachodesh Hazeh Lakhem” (This month shall be for you) (Exodus 12:2), on the fifth we return to the reading according to the order. They are all interrupted for New Moons [the beginning of the month], Chanukkah, and Purim, for fasts and assemblies and Yom Kippur. The Bavli sugya begins with an immediate reference to another part of the Mishnah, attempting to explain the timing of parashat Shekalim. The unspoken question is one that has animated this chapter, as well as Palestinian rabbis: why do we read about the collection of the half-shekel tax at the beginning of Adar, in the series of special readings that lead up to 162 Passover? By appealing to mSheqalim 1:1, the Bavli provides at least part of an answer—an answer that differs dramatically from the scripturally-motivated explanation of the Yerushalmi. The following material from the Bavli begins on bMegillah 29a. ‫תנן התם באחד באדר משמעין על השקלים ועל הכלאים‬ We learned there78: On the first of Adar, they make an announcement about the sheqalim and about the kilayim (forbidden mixed plantings). It acknowledges, however, that this answer seems incomplete. As usual, Scripture must be searched for specific passages that might explain why the announcement about the kilayim and the sheqalim come on the first of Adar, and why that means that the shekalim are deserving of their own special Torah reading. ‫בשלמא ע ל הכלאים זמן נטיעה הוא אלא על השקלים מנא לן אמר רב‬ ‫טבי אמ' ר' יאשיה דאמ' קרא זאת עולת חדש בחדשו לחדשי השנה אמרה תורה‬ ‫חדש והבא לי קרבן מתרומה חדשה וכיון דבניסן בענן אקרובי מתרומה חדשה‬ ‫קדמינן וקרינן מריש ירחא דאדר כי היכי דלי הוו שקלין למקדש‬ The kilayim make sense: for it is the time of planting, but about the sheqalim? Where does this come from? Rabbi Tabi said in the name of Rabbi Yoshaia, “As the verse says, “This the burnt- offering of the new moon in its renewal for the months of the year” (Num 28:14). The Torah is saying to renew and bring the offerings from the new terumah. And since, during Nisan, they must be brought from the new offerings, we do the reading earlier, on the first of the month ofAdar, so that people will bring sheqalim for the sanctuary. 78 The “there” in this case is mShekalim 1:1: ‫באחד באדר משמיעין על השקלים ועל הכלאים בחמשה עשר בו קורין את המגילה בכרכין ומתקנין את הדרכים ואת הרחובות ואת מקואות‬ ‫המים ועושין כל צרכי הרבים ומציינין את הקברות ויוצאין אף על הכלאים‬ On the first of Adar, they make a pronouncement about the shekalim and about the kilayim. On the fifteenth of the month, the read the scroll in the walled cities, and they repair the roads and the roads, the highways, and the pools of water, and they take care of all public needs, mark graves, and remove the kilayim. 163 The gemara grants a calendrical reason for the announcement regarding the kilayim: the beginning of Adar marks the beginning of the planting season (and as it falls in the early spring, this is likely true). It makes perfect sense to warn farmers against sowing seeds in forbidden combinations at this time. The sheqalim, however, remain a problem. What relation do they bear to the kilayim, or the month of Adar? Rabbi Tabi brings forth a teaching of Rabbi Yoshaia, which begins with a verse from Numbers, and then proceeds with an explanation. The terumah, or the collection, becomes the source of money for new offerings: Steinsaltz and Rashi suggest that the money collected in the previous year, the shekalim, is the ultimate source of the animals that are to be sacrificed for the New Moons.79 Another explanation, this one unattributed, suggests that the connection is made for purely logistical reasons. Nisan, the month after Adar, is the month in which new offerings must be made: therefore, it stands to reason that the collection for these offerings should take place in Adar. For that reason, the announcement about the collection is made on the first of Adar—and by analogy, we can conclude that this is why the Torah reading that chronicles this announcement is made during that week, as well. These reasons, while obviously formulated from an extended interpretation of the text, are provided as thematically-derived liturgical reasons. These liturgical reasons, however, are themselves also grounded in scripture, and even they seem to function in a thematic manner: there is an analogy made between the terumah and the sheqalim, and relevant verses for each are valid scriptural fodder. The Gemara then questions the origins of this latter opinion, and relates it to Shimon ben Gamliel by relating it to another teaching of his. The gemara also quotes and expands the Tosefta 79 Steinsaltz, Megillah, 394. 164 here, presenting the baraita in which the halakhot of Passover (and, according to the Tosefta, the readings of other holidays) are discussed, or “asked,” thirty days in advance. ‫נימא מתניתין דלאו כרבן שמעון בן גמליאל אומ' שתי שבתות אפלו תימא רבן‬ ‫שמעון בן גמליאל כיון דתנן בחמשה עשר בו שלחנות יושבין במדינה משום‬ ‫שלחנות קדמינן וקרינן‬ Let us say that this is not Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel’s mishnaic opinion. Did he not say two weeks were sufficient reminder? [As it is taught: They ask about the halakhot of Passover thirty days before Passover, and Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel said, “Two weeks.”]80 Even you say it is Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel, since they taught, “On the fifteenth, the tables sit in the city, for this reason, they set up the tables and read earlier. We see echoes of the Tosefta here, and certain manuscripts make that connection explicit: Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel makes this statement (or a similar one) in tMegilla 3:5, claiming that two weeks prior to the beginning of the holiday is an appropriate amount of time within which to begin philosophically debating the holiday’s regulations. 81 The gemara raises a possible objection that this is not the reason for reading shekalim on the first of Adar: Rabban Shimon only wanted the laws of Passover studied two weeks before the holiday, rather than an entire month, and the placement of parashat Shekalim at the beginning of the month means that there is an entire month of warning. The gemara rejects this contradiction, however, citing another teaching in which the tables for the collection of the shekalim were set up two weeks before the start of the month of Nisan. The guiding principle seems to be one of caution. There is also, as we will see in the next section, in Yerushalmi Megillah and bTaanit, a subtle but clear connection being drawn between the reading of Torah, and the laws and rituals that are inscribed in the Torah, and the sacrificial service. A certain Torah portion is read on a 80 Included in other mss, and the Vilna edition. 81 See this chapter, page 153. 165 specific date to commemorate, and stand in for, the announcement of a tax collection that was then used to purchase sacrifices. It is less obvious than some of the other links we have seen, but this subtlety is possible, I think, because the connection between sacrificial liturgy and the reading liturgy was considered to be so implicit. The sugya continues with an examination of what, precisely, constitutes the parashat Shekalim that needs to be read on the first Sabbath in Adar. There is a disagreement over the exact text that should be read, and various reasons are presented for each side before a conclusion is reached. ‫מאי פרשת שקלים רב אמ' צו את בני ישראל ואמרת אלהם את קרבני‬ ‫לחמי לאשי ושמואל אמ' כי תשא בשלמא למאן דאמ' כי תשא הינו דקרו ליה‬ ‫פרשת שקלים אלא למאן דאמ' את קרבני לחמי לאשי מידי שקלים כתיבי התם אין‬ ‫כדרב טובי דאמר זאת עולת חדש בחדשו התם דכת' איכא דאמרי בשלמ?א? למאן‬ ‫דאמ' צו את קרבני הינו דכתיבי קרבנות התם כדר' טבי אמ' ר' יאשיה אלא למאן‬ ‫דאמ' כי תשא קרבנות מי כתיבי התם שקלים לאדנים הוא דכתיב‬ What is parashat Shekalim? Rav said: “Command the children of Israel and say to them, “My offering, my bread, as fire offerings” (Numbers 28:2). And Shmu’el said, “When you take a census” (Exodus 30:12). Granted, for the one who said “When you take a census”—it makes sense to call it Parashat Shekalim, for the shekalim are written there. But for the one who said the reading is “My offering, my bread, as fire offerings,” is there anything written about the shekalim there? Yes, according to Rabbi Tabi, who said, ‘This is the offering, ‘a new moon in its month,’’ as it is written. There are those who say, granted, for the one who said “Command my offering,” because the offerings were written there, according to Rabbi Tabi. Rabbi Yoshaia said, ‘But for the one who said, “When you take a census,” are the offerings written there? The shekalim for the sockets are written! The issue is framed as a debate between Rav and Shmu’el, two rabbinic personalities who are often at odds with each other. 82 In this case, it is Shmu’el’s opinion that ultimately 82 Richard Kalmin, “Changing Amoraic Attitudes Toward the Authority and Statements of Rav and Shmu’el: A Study of the Talmud as a Historical Source,” Hebrew Union College Annual 63 (1992) 83-106. 166 becomes the standard rabbinic position. The gemara, in a similar pattern to the earlier disagreement, suggests that Shmu’el’s position makes more sense: the reading he proposes, from Exodus, which outlines the census and the half-shekel tax that comes about from it, fits the calendar both thematically and liturgically. Here we see the close relationship between the formation of a parashah and the placement of that parashah in a reading cycle. The stam is unwilling to stop there, however, because its due diligence hasn’t been done. A saying from Rabbi Tabi, a Palestinian amora, is brought forth, asking if there is anything about shekels written in Numbers 28, the passage Rav suggests. He claims that there is, but that it is hardly relevant: the shekalim there are simply those that are collected to produce the “sockets,” or adanim, of the Tabernacle. The gemara ultimately goes on to explain the strange-seeming selection with another opinion, this one from Rav Yosef. ‫אין דהא תאני רב יוסף שלוש תרומות הן שלאדנים לאדנים ושלמזבח‬ ‫למזבח ושלבדק הבית לבדק הבית‬ [The portion] is in accordance with what Rav Yosef taught: There are three contributions of sockets: one for the altar, which is for things sacrificed on the altar, one for the sockets, which is for sockets [of the Tabernacle], and one for maintenance, which is for [the Tabernacle’s] maintenance. The implication here is that the mention of one contribution of a shekel is enough to call to mind the contributions of two other types, both of a half-shekel, and both associated with the Tabernacle and sacrificial liturgy. The gemara continues in this vein, questioning the relevance of the readings. The issue at hand seems to be that of a disagreement over the very nature of the Torah reading cycle. Are the special readings simply additional readings from elsewhere in the Torah (later called maftirim) that are added to the end of the regular weekly reading? Or are they rather complete replacements for the otherwise standard, progressive (meaning, in this case, that it moves 167 through the text in a chronologically progressive manner) reading calendar? This is the issue raised in the next section of gemara, along with a question about the differentiation of this particular New Moon from other New Moons. The difference, of course, depends on which reading is done: the special reading for Sheqalim makes it a completely different ritual, while Rav’s suggestion, from Numbers, identifies it as a standard new month. ‫בשלמא למאן דאמ' כי תשא הינו דשאני האי ראש חדש מכולהו חדשים אלא למאן‬ ‫דאמ' את קרבני מאי שנא שני דאלו כולהו ראשי חדשים ()[ק]רו שיתה בענינא‬ ‫דיומא וחד קרי בראש חדש ואילו האידנא כולהו קרו בראש חדש הניחא למאן‬ ‫דאמ' לסדר פרשיות הוא חוזר אלא למאן דאמ' לסדר הפטרות הוא חוזר ופרשתא‬ ‫דיומא קרינן מאי שנא‬ Granted, according to the one who said “When you take the census,” this is what is different about this Rosh Chodesh from all the other New Moons, but to the one who said “Command the children of Israel and say to them, ‘My offering,’” what is different about this portion and the portion read on other New Moons? Six people read on the matter of the day [the weekly Torah portion, when the New Moon is on the Sabbath] and one about the New Moon. And this time, everyone reads about the New Moon. This works for the one who said that we resume the order of Torah portions [meaning that we do not read the regular portion at all on special Sabbaths]. However, for the one who says that we then return to the order of additional readings [that special Sabbaths include on a special additional reading] and one also reads the portion of the day, what is different? The difference is ultimately revealed to be that, on this particular New Moon (which, we must remember, falls on a Sabbath), rather than dividing the seven readings with six being “the matter of the day” and just one being for the New Moon, the balance must be calibrated differently. The majority are for the New Moon, and only three are from the weekly portion. We saw a similar issue discussed earlier, for the New Moon that falls during Chanukkah. ‫שני דאילו כולהו ראשי חדשים קרו שיתה בעניינא דיומא וחד קרי בראש חדש‬ ‫ואילו האידנא קרו תלתה בענינא דיומא וארבעה קרו בראש חדש‬ 168 They are different, for while on most New Moons, they read six readings from the matter of the day, and they read one for the New Moon, this time three read from the matter of the day and four read for the New Moon. The number of readings about the New Moon are intimately related to the manner in which that reading is constructed. How else can the rabbis follow their own principles regarding the formation of parshiyyot and lectionaries? The next objection that is raised in the stam comes from the Tosefta, and has to do with the connection between the reading from the prophets and the two proposed Sheqalim readings. Shmu’el’s suggestion, that the reading be about the census, has an obvious connection to the haftarah: the latter includes a phrase that makes it clear a census is being taken with sheqel weights. The other reading, however, remains an open question until Rabbi Tabi comes along claiming it also relates to the Torah reading (or “resembles” it)—although without any reasoning offered. This is proof, I think, that rabbinic discussion of the lectionary, and the calendrical nature of their readings, was highly self-aware. Not only was it important for the rabbis to schedule readings correct, but the very act of discussing when a certain reading was supposed to fall was important: important enough, at least, for it to appear in the dialectic of the Talmud. ‫ ומפטירין‬,‫ ראש חודש אדר שחל להיות בשבת קורין בפרשת שקלים‬:‫מותיבי‬ ‫ דדאמי‬,‫ביהוידע הכהן בשלמא למאן דאמר כי תשא הינו דמפטירין ביהוידע הכהן‬ ‫ מי‬,‫ אלא למאן דאמ״ את קרבני‬,‫ דכת״ בה כסף עובר איש כסף נפשות ערכו‬,‫ליה‬ ‫כדרבי טבי‬,‫ אין‬- ‫דאמי‬ There is an objection: when the New Moon of Adar falls during the week, we read parashat Sheqalim, and we conclude with the story of Yehoiada the Priest [tMegillah 3:1]. Granted, for the one who said “When you take the count,” they conclude with Yehoiada the priest, for it resembles [the reading], as it is written “The money for the assessment of people,” but for the one who says “My offering, my bread,” does it resemble it? It resembles it, according to Rabbi Tabi. 169 Rabbi Tabi offers no reasoning here, but he seems to be suggesting that a reading about offerings is, in some way, comparable to a reading about the collection of the half sheqel: this is likely because the half-sheqel tax was used to purchase offerings for the Temple. A connection is forged between reading and sacrifice—this is only one of many. The gemara continues, and plunges into a discussion of how many Torah scrolls are to be removed from the ark when certain New Moons fall on certain holidays, but for the purposes of this argument we can stop here. The most salient features of this sugya for understanding the relationship of parashah formation to their placement in the calendar are the ever-present concerns over the appropriate amount of reading, and the fitness of certain readings for certain days. The latter of these concerns can itself be seen as a part of the wider process by which study and debate became marks of sanctity, and acts of piety, in rabbinic Judaism. Thus far, the rabbinic texts examined in this chapter have coalesced around several distinct themes: the internal and external factors that come together to determine the formation of a parashah, and way in which a parashah’s relationship to the calendar could be a fruitful locus of discussion and debate for late antique rabbis, and perhaps even had a role in helping certain scholastic forms take on the valence of liturgical practices. The next section discusses a theme that has underlied both, and is present in the rabbinic attitude toward texts in general: reading as a cosmic activity. Reading in the Cosmic Order This chapter’s concern thus far has been primarily with the division of parts of the Hebrew Bible into specific readings called parshiyyot, the manner in which specific readings are attached to specific holidays, and the ways those readings are chosen, rationalized, and divided. We have seen both thematic and liturgical reasons for the ascription of specific readings to 170 certain weeks, and even examined some of the internal logic that governs the relationship between certain special readings. While tannaitic rabbis tend to be a little bit less explanatory in their delineation of when to read specific texts, later rabbis use the interpretive opportunities such juxtapositions present to construe reading and its importance in a more expansive way. Rabbis in the talmudim provide significant hints that they understood reading as a practice that does something: a practice that effects not only the reader, but the congregation and the world. This helps to explain the specificity of the rabbinic reading practice: why they are so concerned with what is read when, how it is read, and the ritual surrounding it. The rabbis articulate the importance of liturgical reading—both the practice in general and the annual, triennial, or septennial cycle—by relating it to the ancient offering of sacrifice, and claiming that since one now stands in for the other, it is the practice of reading—a mainstay of the rabbinic enterprise—that sustains the world. Statements such as these represent significant formulations of rabbinic ideology. If reading is a practice that sustains the world, it makes sense that reading be a practice closely associated with the rabbinic enterprise. We must always be careful with rhetorical formulations of ideology of course: only by reading them against the grain can we come close to what lies behind them. Just as Martin Jaffee, however, has suggested that the focus on pure orality is in fact an ideological claim among a text-based literate elite, claims that reading sustains the world seem to indicate a similar attitude. 83 This section turns to the actual cycle of reading itself, often termed by later Babylonian rabbis as a seder, or “order.” The concept of the reading cycle as a set unit is a somewhat later crystallization of numerous strands of ideology, all of which we have already seen reflected in the earlier sections of this chapter. As a set unit, it begins to take on cosmic significance. In the 83 Martin Jaffee, Torah in the Mouth, 84-99. 171 same way that the kosmos in Greek is both an organized order of operations and the entire universe, so is a rabbinic seder a specific liturgical script and a liturgical universe in itself. In this section, I focus on texts that sustain this reading of a seder as having both valences. The word seder was often used as a technical term for a cycle of liturgical readings. MMegillah 3:4, which stipulates the “special” readings for the month of Adar, states that “‫בחמישית חוזרין לכסדרן‬,” “On the fifth week, we return [to the readings] according to their seder. In this context, seder implies the regular cycle, although whether that cycle is annual, triennial, or septennial is left unclear (and is, in fact, a source of contention for later rabbis). The seder here is less of a liturgical script, and more a broader idea of “order” or “arrangement”: the set order in which the Torah is supposed to be read. In an educational context, we also saw seder as a term for a generic “order” by which material might be learned: bEruvin 54b 84 describes the “order” or repetitions in an imagined Mosaic study session, in which the word of God is directly transmitted through Moses and his disciples to the people of Israel. BAvodah Zarah 19a contains another educational usage of this word, describing a specific repetitive practice: pasqei d’sidra, which is Aramaic rather than Hebrew, indicates going through a text verse by verse—also in order.85 In all these usages, the root ‫ר‬-‫ד‬-‫ ס‬is utilized to indicate a specific arrangement of texts. There are numerous other instances of this word in an educational context, indicating both an order of operations, and a more formalized compilation. 86 Later in the Geonic period, seder comes to mean a specifically 84 See page 99. 85 See pp. 60-66. 86 See, for example, bYoma 73a-b, in which King David does not ask his questions in an ordered fashion; bKetubot 103b refers to an “order of wisdom,” and an “order of the patriarch,” both seemingly referring to rules for conduct. 172 systematic arrangement of rituals, especially in the context of the Passover meal: we can consider this a relatively clear indication for the word as a liturgical script. 87 There is another strand at work in the meaning of seder, however, and this is the strand that makes the Greek κoσμός a reasonable comparandum, even if we are not arguing for a genetic relationship. Seder can also indicate the order of the entire universe: in bShabbat 53a, for example, it used twice in the phrase “‫סדר בראשית‬,” seder bereishit, meaning “the order of creation.” In this particular context, it implies a cosmic order that is shifted to benefit a person, in this case a widowed father who develops breasts in order to nurse his son. (Rav Yosef and Abaye disagree about the moral valence of this story, with Yosef claiming it as an indication of the father’s worth, and Abaye saying the opposite.) The entirety of the universe is indicated by this phrase, as well as its proper ordering and sensible functioning. A man breastfeeding disrupts this order. The culmination of this theme, then, in which seder as both liturgical and cosmic order comes into play, comes from the Babylonian Talmud, Taanit 27b. In this passage, the reading of a specific text at a specific time is said to sustain the world. As the gemara expands and explains this section, it is revealed to Moses that the continued existence of the world is also a function of sacrifices, and that reading about sacrifices fills the same niche. 88 In this way, study and reading, debate and dialectic, became religious practices and forms of piety, and not only the strategies by which late ancient rabbis locate their own authority in the past. 89 87 I thank Rachel Scheinerman for helping me to pinpoint the earliest use of seder as a word for the Passover meal in Saadia Gaon. 88 The endurance of the world as a function of the sacrifices in the Temple is not exclusive to this passage: see, for example, yMegillah 3:7 74b. 89 This is a theme that continues to resonate throughout late antiquity: as in the last chapter, see the conclusion of Adam Becker, Fear of God and the Beginning of Wisdom, 204-207. 173 BTaanit 27b This Talmudic passage builds off of a Mishnaic passage regarding the institution of the priestly mishmarot, or “watches,” in mTaanit 2:4, and includes information about the ma’amadot, or non-priestly assemblies that are associated with the priestly watches, and are instructed to read from Genesis when their correlated mishmar is serving in the Temple. The narrative conversation between Moses and God is related anonymously, in the stam of the Talmud. The initial statement that instigates the narrative, however, is provided in the name of Rabbi Yaakov bar Aha, in the name of Rav Asi: Asi was an early Babylonian Amora, and Rabbi Yaakov a much later Babylonian sage. '‫אמ' ר' יעקב בר אחא אמ' ר' אסי אלמלא מעמ דות לא נתקיימו שמים וארץ שנ‬ ‫ויאמר יי אלהים במה אדע כי אירשנה בא אברהם לפני הקב"ה רבונו של עולם‬ '‫שמא יחטאו ישראל לפניך ואתה עושה להן כאנשי דור המבול וכאנשי דור הפלג‬ ‫אמ' לו לאו במה אדע כי אירשנה קחה לי עגלה משולשת אמ' לפניו רבונו של עולם‬ ‫תינח בזמן שבית המקדש קיים בזמן שאין בית המקדש קיים מאי כבר תקנתי להם‬ ‫סדר קרבנות בזמן שקורא בהן מעלה אני עליהם כאילו הקריבום לפני ואני מוחל‬ 90 ‫להם על כל עונותיהם‬ And the Israelites of that same Priestly Watch gather in their cities, and read the works of Creation. From where is this matter? Rabbi Yaakov bar Aha said that Rav Asi said, “Were it not for the the ma’amadot [the non-priestly assemblies described here], the heaveans and the earth would not endure, as it is written, “And he said, “Yahweh God, by what shall I know that I shall inherit it?” (Genesis 15:8). Abraham said, “Master of the universe! What if Israel sins before you, and you treat them like the generation of the flood, and the generation of the division [Babel]?” He said to him, “No.” He said to him, “Master of the universe, make it known to me. By what shall I inherit it?” He said to him, “In taking for me a three-year- old heifer, and a three-year-old goat” (Genesis 15:19). He said to him, “Master of the universe, this suffices for the time in which the 90 Text from the Ms. Munich 140, a 13th-century Spanish manuscript. While Ta’anit was problematically recorded by two scribes, this portion, at least, seems to reflect a stable tradition. 174 Temple is standing, but in the time when the Temple is not standing—what will happen to them?” He said to him, “I have already established for them the Order of sacrifices. At the time when they read in them before me—I shall consider it for them as if they made offerings before me, and I shall forgive them of all their sins.” Mishnah Ta’anit91 contains a description of the priestly “Watches,” or ‫משמרות‬/mishmarot, which are referenced here. Though “mishmar” technically means “watch,” it is perhaps more correctly translated as “course,” or “rotation,” and to the best our knowledge, references twenty- four divisions of priests who serve in the Temple in Jerusalem on a rotating basis. 92 Associated with each course is a “ma’amad.” Whether the ma’amad is formed of non-priestly Israelites somehow affiliated with a particular watch, or the members of the priestly watch who do not journey to Jerusalem to minister in the Temple, is not particularly clear. What is clear from this passage is that a ma’amad reads Genesis while their mishmar is in Jerusalem, and that this reading is a crucial activity for the continued existence of the world. Eventually, however, the Temple is destroyed (not once, but twice), and there is no longer a need for priestly mishmarot to approach Jerusalem on a regular basis. Sacrifice has ended, although the reading of the Torah continues. This reading comes to replace the sacrifice, and does so quite explicitly, according to the gemara. The expiatory function of sacrifices in the Temple—itself a certain type of translation of the more basic, social act of feeding and feasting with the deity—becomes attached to the reading of texts about those sacrifices. 93 To paraphrase 91 mTaanit 2:4, 4:2-3 For an overview of mishmarot and ma’amadot, see Jacob Liver and Daniel Sperber, “Mishmarot and 92 Ma’amadot,” in Encyclopaedia Judaica. Ed. Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik. Vol. 14. 2nd ed. (Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007) 317-319. 93 For sacrifice as a feature of the religion of everyday social exchange, Stowers’ first category of religion in the ancient world, see Daniel Ullucci, The Christian Rejection of Animal Sacrifice (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 3-14. Additionally, Aaron Glaim’s dissertation (Aaron Glaim, “Reciprocity, Sacrifice, and Salvation in 175 Bruce Lincoln, the rabbis tell a story about the story that others tell, and both that story and its retelling become central practices.94 The narrative given here is largely unsubstantiated outside of rabbinic literature: while there is biblical evidence for the mishmarot in the book of Chronicles, it is not clear that they actually existed in a later period (or any period at all). It is entirely possible that the service of the mishmarot and the liturgical reading of Genesis by their attendant ma’amadot were rabbinic fantasies created by an interpretation of 1 Chronicles 24-26. There is a folk history lurking beneath the surface of this text, even if it is, in parts, too subtle to fully grasp. Without explicitly saying so, Bavli Taanit relates the repetitive recitation of certain parts of the Torah to the broader sacrificial liturgy, and then expands it to encompass the sustained existence of the universe. In Stowers’ formulation, a regular practice is set into an “epic, mythic framework.” 95 Sacrifice, through its association with the read, written text, is intimately tied to the continued endurance of the world, and both are subtle reminders that it is the rabbis, and not the priests, who are making the normative claims over Jews in late antiquity. It is not simply the reading of text that is important here, however: it is the repeated nature of the practice, and the fact that it is constitutive of a liturgy, that generates the seeds of this interpretive story. The repetitive nature of a liturgy, coupled with the base rabbinic assumption that texts are important, and that reading them is an effective practice, help us to then understand both the Judaean Religion at the Turn of the Era,” PhD Dissertation, Brown University, 2013) has a helpful framing of reciprocity and expiation in ancient Judaean sacrifice, as well as the letters of Paul. 94 Bruce Lincoln, Theorizing Myth (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999) ix. Lincoln refers to his own endeavor as “to tell a story about the stories others have told about the stories of others still,” to the end that “one should treat all these narratives and metanarratives with considerable care and caution.” Narratives create, and are created by, ideology. 95 Stowers, “The Religion of Plant and Animal Offerings,” 47. 176 cosmic valences of this text, and the seemingly technical meaning of the “order,” or seder, of sacrifices as a liturgical script. As a ritual “script,” we can understand the order of sacrifices, or the seder qorbanot, within the same realm as the sedarim of the Mishnah, or the sedarim of texts that the Bavli refers to elsewhere: an organized collection arranged for a set purpose. A seder is also a form of liturgical calendar: we have seen it used to refer to the cyclical reading of texts. As a ritual script that helps to sustain the world, we can begin to see some of the broader implications of the existence of various sedarim. Similar to how ascription and attribution as functions of recitation serve to organize a hierarchy, the division of texts into proper readings is understood by later Babylonian rabbis to have ramifications that reach much more widely than simply their classrooms. This is, of course, a furthering of their own ideology: if their own specific forms of study are understood as liturgy, as well as the stand-in for world-sustaining sacrificial practices, their importance as ritual specialists need is manifestly clear to those over whom they are attempting to exercise authority. V. Conclusion This leaves us, then, poised to continue onward in an examination of rabbinic reading practices that are rooted in the division and segmentation of a text. Against scholars like Stroumsa, I have shown that liturgical reading practices in late antiquity did not represent a religious revolution centered around a new material form, or idea of, the book. Rather, they were moments in a longer process of continuous change, with Greek and Roman educational reading practices, utilized in a Jewish environment, standing at one end, and the congregational reading of the Torah standing at the other. Rabbinic narration of their own reading practices is redolent with formulations and reformulations of an ideology that simultaneously glorifies the text, making it the foundation and 177 sustaining aspect of the world, and denigrates its ephemerality and physicality. As in previous chapters, we are seeing a greater push toward ideology and institutionalization in later rabbinic texts, although it seems clear that certain aspects of practices that later became institutionalized were performed in a regular, if perhaps ad hoc manner, starting in the tannaitic period. Looking forward, we will examine another set of practices that developed from the atomization and close reading of the text: rabbinic textual divination, and the seeking of divine knowledge from specific forms of the text. Like other practices, rabbinic divination was shaped and in many ways made possible by an orientation toward the Biblical text that allowed (and encouraged!) rabbis to divide the text into smaller segments. 178 FINDING THE GODS: READING AND DIVINATION CHAPTER 4 I. Introduction: Reading the Gods The first three chapters of this dissertation examined the rabbinic reading practice of textual segmentation and division, and argued that it was this particular practice that lies at the root of other rabbinic educational and liturgical practices. Recitation and ascription gain importance as fundamental steps in the educational process because they make use of texts that are both practically usable (it has been divided into smaller pieces) and still meaningfully sized. The liturgical reading of the Torah involved the creation of readings—parshiyyot—that were themselves informed, in both size and content, by the tradition of reading the Torah in parts. Both these practices—educational and liturgical—are understood as common elements of the rabbinic repertoire. It is not surprising that late ancient rabbis were involved in education and liturgy: both scholarship and contemporary Jewish practice trace the deep roots of these traditions at least as far back as the rabbinic period. This chapter examines and analyzes another realm of practice that arose from the rabbinic reading practice of segmenting and dividing the Torah: divination. Divination is not often considered alongside education and liturgy in scholarship on late ancient rabbis, but as a practice that was deeply rooted in the reading of a text, it follows naturally in our discussion. 1 1 An argument can be made that divination is part of the larger category of liturgy: it is comprised of ritualized actions performed by an expert, often (although not always) in the presence of an audience. I have chosen to separate them here because rabbinic divination, while it clearly becomes an institutionalized practice, is typically performed for the benefit of answering a specific actor’s question. This does not, of course, mean that it is not 179 The rabbis lived in a world where things that were unknown could be made known by any number of religious rituals; where divine knowledge was readily available for those who knew how to sense it. They lived in a world where “most people practiced or witnessed some form of divination at least once every few days.” 2 Divination was widespread across the ancient world, and seemingly widespread across people’s lives. Ancient authors attest to its presence in numerous genres of literature, 3 and archaeological finds from across the Mediterranean speak to the pervasiveness of various divinatory practices.4 This chapter begins with a definition of “divination,” and where it fits into the idea of religion that was discussed in the introduction. After placing divination squarely as a religious practice (rather than a “magical” one), it looks at the scope of divinatory practices performed by ancient Jews before narrowing in on late antiquity. This has the twofold benefit of showing the longevity and widespread nature of practices of bibliomancy and divinatorily-oriented textual analysis and commentary, as well as enabling us to see the close ways in which these two practices relate over a long period. These divinatory practices, I argue, are ordered around the reading of a text, and therefore qualify as important divinatory reading practices that were, if not necessarily garden-variety, known within the rabbinic orbit. The first practice, bibliomancy, is the oracular interpretation of a randomly selected piece of writing (in this case, the Hebrew liturgical, but rather that it is different enough from the types of liturgical reading discussed in the previous chapter that more is learned from separating them than putting them together. 2 Sarah Iles Johnston, Ancient Greek Divination (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), 3. Johnston continues, “[D]ivination was always part of offering sacrifices to the gods, usually part of deciding whether to undertake a military maneuver, often part of puzzling out a bewildering dream, sometimes part of diagnosing and treating an illness or choosing a bride, and even, sometimes, part of understanding why your body was twitching or your child was sneezing.” 3 Such as, for example, Cicero’s De Divinatione, the Greek Oracula Sibyllina, or even Lucian’s De Dea Syria, which contains an oracular statue of Apollo. 4 For example, the Piacenza liver in Italy, or Babylonian microzodiacs. 180 Bible). The second is subtler, but as will hopefully become clear, highlights the deep undercurrents that connect the divinatory reading practices of the rabbis to the divinatory reading practices of other groups in the ancient Mediterranean. This is the close and critical reading of texts, with an eye towards the establishing of authoritative textual versions, a practice which, like the others we have seen, is attendant on the division of these versions into smaller pieces for interpretation. This is “text critical” reading, or even “literary critical” reading. This practice was typically oriented towards seeking divine knowledge, and often included the production of commentary as an end product. In order to make sense of this practice’s relation to more standard divination, we will examine it first. The rabbis, of course, did not live in a vacuum, and after examining the central texts for both types of divinatory reading practice, this chapter turns its gaze to the wider late ancient Mediterranean. There was a lively discourse on divination among late antique philosophers writing in Greek, and a significant number of archaeological finds from across the late Roman Empire reveal bibliomantic practices that look similar to the rabbis’. The chapter’s scope narrows to focus on the writings of two late ancient Christian bishops: Athanasius and Augustine. Both make use of bibliomancy to great narrative effect, and along with the rabbis, reveal a central contention of literary elites who were concerned not only with their own reading practices, but the correct performance of others’ reading. Reading changes the subject, they believed, because it is one of the techniques by which mortals might come closer to the divine. Reading is a practice that involves the entire body, and is therefore constitutive of the entire person. There is knowledge to be gained from reading that far transcends whatever might be written on the page. More than that, they share a common assumption with the rabbis: any unit of the text, no matter how small, is capable of containing this massively important power. 181 The trajectory of divinatory reading practices is a complex one. There are several axes along which it can be traced, none of them without their own problems: we see bibliomancy, for example, moving from a public practice to something significantly more private and personal, 5 even if its rubrics are presented as more tied to the rabbinic academy. On the other side, the tradition of commenting on divinely inspired texts—or even the tradition of commentary as a divinely inspired practice—is part of a much longer arc of literary and scholarly activity, with deep roots in ancient Mesopotamia, 6 and which flourished in numerous ancient academies in the Greek speaking world, most notably in Alexandria. 7 By examining critical reading and commentary, as well as bibliomancy, as reading practices, this chapter will iron out some of the more obvious difficulties in their study. II. Extraordinary Knowledge: Divination in the Ancient World There are a wide variety of practices from the ancient world that rightly fall under the category of “divination.” These range from dream interpretation 8 to the consultation of oracles, 9 from the reading of entrails to examination of bird flight. 10 These practices are attested from as 5 The initial, Greek language instances of bibliomancy that we see occur in front of a large, public audience, while rabbinic narrations present it as a scholarly, schoolroom activity. Augustine, on the other hand, is completely alone for his bibliomantic experience. I do not, it is important to note, see this as a justification of the traditional scholarly view that religion in late antiquity became more “personal”: I think that this is largely a convention of writing style and artifice. 6 I thank my friend and colleague Zackary Wainer for the access to his dissertation, “The Series If the Moon at Its Appearance and Mesopotamian Scholarship of the First Millennium BCE,” which has helped me with this material. 7 Eleanor Dickey, Ancient Greek Scholarship: A Guide to Finding, Reading, and Understanding Scholia, Commentaries, Lexica, and Grammatical Treatises, from Their Beginnings to the Byzantine Period (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007). 8 See, for example, the Oneirocriticon of Artemidorus, (Daniel E. Harris-McCoy, Artemidorus’ Oneirocritica (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012)), or the Bavli “Dream Book,” bBerakhot 55a-57b. 9 The classic study and collection of Greek oracular traditions is H. W. Parke, Greek Oracles (London: Hutchinson, 1967). 10 Augury and extispicy were common to, although by no means exclusive to, Roman divinatory practice. 182 early as the secondly millennium BCE (see, for example, extispicy practies at Ugarit), 11 and range from as far west as Spain and Gaul (the Sortes Sangallenses12) to beyond the Euphrates. What exactly constitutes a divinatory practice? In this chapter, divination is defined as the seeking of “extraordinary knowledge” from a divine source and the subsequent technical examination of the provided response. Similar to liturgy, divination require a ritual expert. Extraordinary knowledge is distinguished from other types of knowledge by its origin: it is information that is not accessible to laypeople, but must rather be obtained by appeal to an expert who claims some sort of specific knowledge of a deity or other non-obvious being. Divination is further distinguished from other types of expertise by the divine nature of the knowledge acquired. 13 A diviner, a type of religious specialist, often acts as the mediator between the seeker and the source of knowledge. Divination requires technical knowledge, typically from a religious specialist: the lots are meaningless (or at least, pointless) if no one can read how they fall, and the entrails are just the offal of a sacrifice if a haruspex is not present to examine them. Randomly selected portions of the bible are just that, unless a rabbi is present to ensure that the lines selected constitute a proper portion and to apply them to the present situation.14 11 Ann Jeffers, “Magic and Divination in Ancient Israel.” Religion Compass 1:6 (November 2007), 628-642. 12 Alban Dold, Die Orakelsprüche im St. Galler Palimpsestcodex 908 (die sogennanten ‘Sortes Sangallenses’) auf Grund neuer Lesung und mit erweitertem Text nach Materien geordnet (Vienna: In Kommission bei R. M. Rohrer, 1948). 13 A healer, for example, might be a source of extraordinary knowledge to most people. 14 In this sense, divination is distinct from revelation. While revelation often implicitly requires a religious specialist (how else are we to conceive of the author that inscribes a record of revelation, even if they make claims to illiteracy and disadvantage?), divination explicitly requires someone who is trained, and carries a certain form of authoritative expertise, in order to be properly conducted. 183 Along these lines, divination applies to knowledge that is typically actively sought. 15 Texts are read, lots are cast, and animals are slaughtered with a specific goal or question in mind. Revelation, by contrast, is often unsought: think, for example, of the difference between a fortune cookie, which is opened and read without a question (and therefore, which is revealed knowledge rather than an answer) and a magic eight ball, which has a set variety of answers, geared towards a certain set of questions. The latter is much closer to most forms of ancient divination. Today we might think of such practices as whimsical, or at the very least, a little foolish (although, Johnston points out the staying power of certain divinatory techniques: how many newspapers still carry horoscopes?).16 The simple breadth and frequency of divinatory practices across the ancient world, however, should disabuse us of this notion for our ancient subjects. Divination was serious business. People built homes, sacrificed animals, waged war, and performed major life events based on divinatory responses. It was one of the most common forms of seeking “extraordinary” knowledge in the ancient world. 17 Because of its widespread and seemingly “popular” presence, divination has often been grouped with other practices that are labeled “magic,” or “magical.” 18 In Gideon Bohak’s study of ancient Jewish magic, for example, the word “divination” is almost always coupled with 15 Interestingly, this need not always be the case. We will see an example of divinatory technique performed involuntarily. In this instance, however, I still consider such practices divination because they follow the exact same rubric and ritual logic. 16 Johnston, Ancient Greek Divination, 2. 17 Peter I. Struck, “2013 Arthur O. Lovejoy Lecture: A Cognitive History of Divination in Ancient Greece,” Journal of the History of Ideas 77, no. 1 (2016): 1–25. 18 Fritz Graf, “Magic and Divination,” in The World of Ancient Magic: Papers from the First International Samson Eitrem Seminar at the Norwegian Institute at Athens 4-8 May 1997 (Bergen: The Norwegian Institute at Athens, 1999), 283. 184 “magic.”19 An introductory article on the topic groups the two together as well: “Magic and Divination in Ancient Israel.”20 Fritz Graf points out that the habit of conflating “magic” and “divination” was a rhetorical strategy used by late ancient Christian authors: 21 to do the same thing without examination, then, is to reinscribe their narrative. This dissertation does not make use of the category of magic as such: it follows the practice of scholars such as Frankfurter and Wendt, who recognize that labeling certain practices as “magical” is a rhetorical strategy that is meant to delegitimize them.22 Magic, like superstition, is simply religion when someone else performs it.23 The category is as vague and amorphous as its counterpart is meant to be, at least in the minds of those who deploy it. Therefore, divination is a legitimate religious practice, and is treated as such, alongside such practices as liturgy, self- formation, and sacrifice. This chapter deals with the intersection of divination and reading. 19 Gideon Bohak, Ancient Jewish Magic: A History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). See, for example, pp. 13, 16, 18, 33, 59, 83, and passim. 20 Ann Jeffers, “Magic and Divination in Ancient Israel.” 21 Graf, “Magic and Divination,” 284. Graf points out the instantiations of this rhetoric in Isidore of Seville's Etymologiae (early 7 th century CE) and Augustine’s De Doctrina Christiana (early 5th century CE). Graf also shows the association of these fields in early texts from the Roman Empire: in my opinion, this just goes to show the subsumption of all these practices under the broader category of “religion.” 22 Heidi Wendt, At the Temple Gates: The Religion of Freelance Experts in the Roman Empire (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 114-145; David Frankfurter, “Dynamics of Ritual Expertise in Antiquity and Beyond: Towards a New Taxonomy of ‘Magicians’” in Magic and Ritual in the Ancient World, ed. Marvin Meyer and Paul Mirecki (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 159-178. 23 See Ross Shepard Kraemer, Her Share of the Blessings (New York: Oxford Univeristy Press, 1994), 2. She discusses the ancient application of deisidaimonia to religious practices performed by women in the ancient world as a rhetorical strategy: by calling a group’s legitimate religious practice, or ritual, “superstition,” or “magic,” the author (in this case Strabo) robs it of its legitimacy. This usage claims that these practices are illegitimate, as opposed to “proper” religious practices. Using these categories in scholarship without analyzing them as rhetorical terms simply reinscribes the narrative that their proponents are writing. 185 III. Counting Crowns: Text Critical Reading In Peter Struck’s 2004 book on ancient literary criticism, its origins, and context, The Birth of the Symbol: Ancient Readers at the Limits of their Texts, he claims that much of what we think of as ancient scholarly practice regarding text—the reading of allegory, the creation of symbols, and the division of text into discrete parts for interpretation—originated as religious practices.24 “The interpretive urge in literary criticism,” he argues, “has deep classical roots and the telos of this view points toward the divine.”25 The use of text for divination is one of these reading practices that points towards the divine, and is in many instances the result of close examinations, manipulations, and critical evaluations of a text. This section examines two closely intertwined practices that are built on a general principle of dividing and segmenting a text into smaller pieces. The first of these is the physical marking of texts in order to break them into discrete units. There is evidence for this practice in some of the oldest Hebrew manuscripts from Qumran. The second is the close attention to textual detail, such as the number of words in a passage, or the number of lines on a column. This is often a preliminary step towards more “literary” forms of interpretation, and helps to set the stage for the practice of bibliomancy, helping to understand the importance and meaning that late ancient rabbis impute to each and every letter, word, and verse of the biblical text. Though it might not always be termed so, or explicitly named as such, these practices, as forms of seeking extraordinary knowledge, are closely rooted in a physical text, with the reader’s eyes facing the divine. From this point, the capter proceeds by examining the rabbinic evidence for “text critical” reading of the bible. This includes evidence for the versification of the text, or other forms of 24 Peter T. Struck, Birth of the Symbol: Ancient Readers at the Limits of Their Texts (Princeton, N.J., 2004), 1. 25 Ibid., 20. 186 division, as well as evidence for practices that bear similarities to other forms of scholarly textual practices, such as that practiced by Zenodotus on the text of Homer at the Great Library in Alexandria. The evidence takes three forms: rabbinic texts that reference divisions of the bible into verses, chapters, or other portions; rabbinic texts that reference other forms of text-critical activity, and manuscript evidence for text divisions prior to the Masoretic text. Saul Lieberman has written on the similarities between what he considers rabbinic “scribal” activity in the Talmud and the practices of Greek grammarians, pointing out numerous parallels. 26 Ultimately, however, Lieberman believes that rabbinic descriptions of their own practices are attestations of an earlier period, while I believe that they are, mostly likely, describing their orientation toward texts closer to the moment of the Talmud’s composition. At the very least, even if the text was already “marked” and “divided” in the Persian Period, as Lieberman seems to suggest, the rabbinic attitude toward such division is reflective of their own ideas, rather than those of an earlier period. It is this type of attention to texts that should begin to attune us to the idea that a divinely given work of literature, like the Torah, could be a source of continued revelation through the mediation of textual experts: in this case, the rabbis. The contemporary division of the Hebrew Bible into chapters and verses is based on the Masoretic text, a version of the bible that was produced in very early medieval Palestine. 27 The earliest manuscripts of this text are the Leningrad and Aleppo codices, which date from the early eleventh century and tenth century, respectively. 28 It is unclear exactly how closely the late 26 Lieberman, Hellenism in Jewish Palestine, 27. 27 Geoffrey Khan, A Short Introduction to the Tiberian Masoretic Bible and its Reading Tradition (Piscataway, NJ: 2012). 28 Jordan S. Penkower, “Verse Divisions in the Hebrew Bible,” Vetus Testamentum 50, no. 3 (2000): 379. The Aleppo Codex is older, and the Leningrad Codex was corrected against it, but a large portion of the former has been missing since 1947. 187 ancient rabbinic versification of the Bible resembled the Masoretic, although in the cases where we have evidence of both, it seems that they do not vary from each other too dramatically (although the reality that this is a result of “corrections” against early texts and manuscripts must be kept as a possibility). 29 The versification of contemporary, non-Jewish versions of the Bible, is based on Stephen Langton’s versification of the Vulgate from 13th-century England; a study on the relationship between this versification and the Masoretic tradition, as well as contemporary Greek versification, is still a desideratum. 30 In their earliest texts, however, it is clear that the rabbis are dividing the bible into smaller sub-units contained within the biblical books. We know that they made distinctions between the major divisions of the bible (Torah, Prophets, and Writings) 31 as well as books within those divisions, although rabbinic names for Biblical books could be very different from ours. Mishnah Menachot 4:3, for example, refers to Leviticus and Numbers as ‫תורת כהנים‬/“Torat Kohanim” and “‫חמש הפיקודים‬/Chamesh HaPiqqudim” respectively. Mishnah Sotah 7:7 refers to Numbers in this way as well, implying that even if these were not well known titles for these texts, they at least had some traction within the early rabbinic orbit. Smaller sections of the biblical text, as noted in the last chapter, are referred to as “parshiyyot,” and are often referred to as names that imply their main thematic point. Some of these can be found in Mishnah Megillah 3:4-6: Parashah Parah Adumah, or the portion of the Red Heifer, for example, is read on the third Shabbat after the full moon of Adar. The first few 29 The Talmud itself indicates that there are differences in verse divisions between the East and the West; no manuscripts that I know of, however, indicate these different traditions of versification. 30 Khan, 14; George Foot Moore, “The Vulgate Chapters and Numbered Verses in the Hebrew Bible,” Journal of Biblical Literature 12:1 (1893) 73-78. 31 This division is present at least as early as the Babylonian Talmud: bShabbat 88a, bSanh 101a, bQidd 49a, bMoedQatan 21a. 188 chapters of Genesis (the extent length isn’t entirely clear, although from bTaanit 26b it seems to be the first two chapters) seem to be known as the “ma’aseh Bereshit,” or the “deeds of creation,” to be reading during the ma’amadot.32 Rabbinic literature is rife with references to the division of the Hebrew Bible into smaller units referred to as pasuqim, or verses. What, though, counts as a verse? What exactly is a pasuq? Pasuq comes from the rabbinic Hebrew root peh-samekh-qof, which itself comes from the Biblical Hebrew peh-sin-qof. Dictionaries give its meaning as “to separate, to part, or to distribute,” eventually coming to mean “to divide” or “interrupt.”33 Today, a pasuq is a unit of the biblical text that can be identified as ending with a “sof pasuq,” or “silluq” accent.34 The exact technical definition of pasuq for the rabbis might remain elusive for us, but we can at least piece together a general understanding of how the term functioned for them by following its trajectory in rabbinic literature. Mishnah Megillah 4:4, for example, states that the one reading the Torah may read no less than three pasuqim.35 Even within those three verses, the reader must read only one at a time, so that the meturgeman, or translator,36 has sufficient time to render the biblical verse into another language. This changes when one is reading publicly from the Prophets: the reader reads three verses at a time before the meturgeman translates. Whether or 32 M.Megillah 3:6. See pp. 127-128. 33 Jastrow, Dictionary, 1199; Ludwig Koehler and Walter Baumgartner, A Bilingual Dictionary of the Hebrew and Aramaic Old Testament: English and German (Boston: Brill, 1998) 784. 34 Khan, 38. 35 ‫הקורא בתורה לא יפחות משלושה פסוקים לא יקרא למתרגמן יותר מפסוק אחד ובנביא שלשה‬ The one reading the Torah does not read less than three verses. The translator does not read more than one verse at a time, and in the Prophets, three. 36 Jastrow, Dictonary, 860; Michael Sokoloff, A Dictionary of Jewish Babylonian Aramaic of the Talmudic and Geonic Period (Ramat-Gan: Bar Ilan University Press, 2002), 719. 189 not these verses were the same as today’s biblical verses is a matter of some debate, although there is evidence, it seems, in both directions. Mishnah Sotah 2, for example, which details the writing of the scroll to be used in the performance of the Sotah ritual, references a number of biblical verses that seem to be divided in the same manner as the contemporary Hebrew bible. 37 BQiddushin 30a Later rabbinic literature, especially the Babylonian Talmud, makes explicit reference to the various practices of text-critical reading, although we should note that most of these traditions appear in tannaitic, or early, layers of the Talmud. A Talmudic tradition from Qiddushin 30a discusses the act of counting letters, words and verses: ‫לפיכך נקראו ראשון סופ' שהיו סופרים כל אותיות שבתורה שהיו או' ויו‬ ‫[דגח?ו?ן] חציי' של אותיות של ספר תורה דרש דרש חציין של תיבות והתגלח‬ '‫חציין של פסוקי' יכרסמנה חזיר מיער עין [ד]מיער חציין של אותיות מספר תיל‬ 38 ‫והוא רחום יכפר עון [חציין] דפסוקים‬ For this reason, the earlier ones were called scribes (soferim): because they would count (soferim) all the letters in the Torah. Thus, they would say, “The vav of gachon (Lev. 11:42)39 is the middle of the letters of the Torah scroll. Darosh darash (Lev. 10:17) is the middle of the words, and v’hitgalach (Lev. 13:33) is 37 In the Biblical version of the ritual, found in Numbers 5, the man writes “these curses,” ‫האלות האלה‬/ha’alot ha’eleh, on the scroll. The Mishnah tells us exactly what those are. “When he comes to write the scroll, from which place does he write? From “If no man has lain,” etc. (Num 5:19) and “If you have strayed from under your husband’s authority,” etc. (Num 5:20).” These are two consecutive verses, and the phrases given are their initial phrases. The Mishnah continues: “But he does not write, ‘And the priest makes the woman take an oath’ (Num 5:21). But he does write, ‘May God give you a curse as an oath,’ and ‘And these cursing waters shall come into your innards, to swell your belly and cause your thigh to fall’ (Num. 5:22). But he does not write, ‘And the woman shall say, Amen! Amen!’ (Num 5:22).” The rest of the Mishnah continues with variations on the writing, and rabbis who disagree with this exact combination. 38 I am utilizing the text of Qiddushin from Ms. Vatican 111, identified by the Historical Dictionary of the Hebrew Language as the base text for the tracate. 39 Adin Steinsaltz points out that this vav is not the middle letter of the Torah: according to the Masoretic text, the middle letter appears in Leviticus 8:28. Steinsaltz suggests that the Talmud is referring to the vav of Leviticus 11:42 as the middle of the “extraordinary letters” of the Torah: it is the exact center of the letters that are written, in some way, outside of the norm (although the rubric for what classifies as normal is unclear: are we only considering larger or smaller letters? What about letters with puncta extraordinaria, or inverted letters?). Just as likely, I think, is that this tradition either operates with a different understanding of what the “middle” letter of a text is, or that the text it refers to is in some way different from the Masoretic text. 190 the middle of the verses. “The boar from the woods ravages it” (Ps. 80:14), the ayin of “woods” is the middle of the Psalms. “And he, merciful, shall forgive iniquity” (Ps. 78:38) is the middle of the verses. The Bavli text continues with a short digression on the feasibility of counting verses, words, and letters in order to find out if the designated midway markers belong to the first or second half of the text. 40 Tannaitic traditions are brought forth to show that the scholars actually counted the letters, words, and verses of the text, while the Aramaic stamma, the later, anonymous voice of the Bavli, mourns that the knowledge gained from these traditions and practices—specifically the instantiation of full and defective readings—is now lost.41 Additionally, the rabbis worry about the reliability of Lev 13:33 as the middle verse of the Torah, because, apparently, Exodus 19:9 (“And YHWH said to Moses, ‘Behold, I am coming to you in a thickness of cloud, in order that the people will hear my speaking with you, and that they may also believe in you forever.’ And Moses told the words of the people to YHWH”)42 was divided into three verses in “The West,” and was only one verse in “The East.” Whether or not there actually were differences in verse divisions between Babylonia and Palestine, the supposed disagreement suggests that the system of versification was not so set in stone as to be certain, even by the time of the stam. 40 ‫בעי רב יוסף ויו דגחון מחד גיסא או מהך גיסא‬ Rav Yosef inquired: “The vav of “gachon,” [if it is in the middle], on which side does the vav fall?” 41 Certain words in the Masoretic text are written differently than they are pronounced: this can represent any number of things, from defective manuscript traditions to changes in the language. Geoffrey Khan introduces this idea in his A Short Introduction to the Tiberian Masoretic Bible and its Reading Tradition (Piscataway, NJ: 2012) 14-15. See also: Saul Lieberman, Hellenism in Jewish Palestine: Studies in the Literary Transmission, Beliefs, and Manners of Palestine in the I Century B.C.E.-IV Century C. E. (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America Press, 1962) 21. 42 -‫ אֶ ל‬,‫דִּ בְ ֵרי הָּ עָּם‬-‫ַאֲמינּו לְ עֹולָּם; ַו ַיגֵד משֶ ה אֶ ת‬ ִּ ‫בְ ָך י‬-‫ וְ גַם‬,‫יִּשמַ ע הָּ עָּם בְ דַ בְ ִּרי עִּ מָּ ְך‬ ְ ‫ בַ עֲבּור‬,‫ הִּ ּנֵה אָּ נכִּ י בָּ א אֵ לֶיָך בְ עַב הֶ עָּ נָּן‬,‫משֶ ה‬-‫וַיאמֶ ר יְ הוָּה אֶ ל‬ ‫יְ הוָּה‬ 191 The next part of the sugya, though, is also directly relevant to our purposes. It reads, in Hebrew, “There are five thousand, eight hundred, and eighty-eight verses in the Sefer Torah. Psalms has eight more, and Chronicles has eight less.”43 A tradition is being brought forth as a baraita (introduced with tanu rabbanan) that quantifies the number of verses in the bible. The rabbis themselves are here claiming that the tradition of versification is much older than they are: as a baraita, the tradition is supposedly tannaitic, even if it is only recorded in the Babylonian Talmud. It is unclear exactly why these numbers, and how close they are to each other, are significant, although I would argue that the fact that we are given any numbers at all suggests that the later rabbis imputed great importance to such things. The measure of words and letters is significant: I believe that the practice of dividing a text up into verses was, for the rabbis as well as other late ancient elites, related to the practice of searching through texts to divine for hidden meanings. One of the methods by which texts were searched was the counting of letters and words, and the ascription of certain meanings to the numerical values thereof. 44 It bears remembering that some of the rabbinic methods of interpretation, especially those that stand in close relationship to methods used by Greek and Roman literary scholars, were contingent on finding hidden meanings in texts.45 One of the ways that hidden meanings could be found was through the counting of various elements in the text—the rabbinic practice of gematria, for example, is one such method, as is the practice of notariqon. In this passage, we see the actual 43 ‫תנו רבנן שמונ' אלפים ושמנה מאות ושמנה פסוקים הויא התו' ית?י?ר(ה) על[יו] ספר תילים שמנה חסר ממנו דברי הימי' שמונה‬ 44 This practice was known as stichometry, among other things, and was relatively commonplace. See James Rendel Harris, “Stichometry,” The American Journal of Philology 4:2 (1883), 133-157; James Rendel Harris, “Stichometry, Part II,” The American Journal of Philology 4:3 (1883), 309-331; Gregor Damschen, “Stichometry,” in Brill’s New Pauly, Antiquity volumes edited by: Hubert Cancik and, Helmuth Schneider (Leiden: Brill, 2006). 45 Of course, one could argue that the entire enterprise of literary interpretation is based on this assumption. 192 division of a text into discrete parts. While the contingent practices of interpretation are not explicitly referenced here, their presence is implied. Both of these practices, which are built on the counting of words or letters and the ascription of meaning to their numbers, have long histories outside of rabbinic literature, even if we tend to associate them with the literary output of the rabbis. Notariqon is a practice in which every letter of an individual word is given a specific meaning—often, each letter is said to be the first letter of a new word. This is a type of shorthand, and was relatively common in the Byzantine world: the name itself seems to be taken from the word notarii, who were figures similar to our court stenographers. 46 Another type of notariqon involved dividing words into pieces, and then ascribing meanings to those words: while this is less common among Greek interpreters of Homer, we do see it in Philo, when he interprets ‫ישראל‬/“Israel” as ‫איש ראה אל‬/“ish ra’ah el,” “the man who has seen God.”47 In both instances, we see meaning being made when words are made smaller. Gematria has a similarly wide scope across the classical Mediterranean. Called “ἰσόψηφον” in ancient Greek (the term means literally “equality of number”), it was a standard practice in various forms of interpretation. 48 Perhaps most famously, in occurs in Artemidorus’ Oneirocriticon, in which the author claims that figures that appear in dreams might be interpreted with this method: something in a dream need not represent itself, but rather something whose letters contain the same numerical value. 49 46 See Krauss, Byzantinische Zeitschrift II, 1893, 512. 47 See Philo, De Abrahamo 57; Leg. All. III.15; QE II.38, 47, et alia. For more on this particular formulation, see C. T. R. Hayward, Interpretations of the Name Israel in Ancient Judaism and Some Early Christian Writings: From Victorious Athlete to Heavenly Champion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005) 156-193. 48 Lieberman, Hellenism in Jewish Palestine, 69. 49 Artemidorus, Oneirocritica, 3.34, 4.24. 193 Uses of both strategies can appear together in rabbinic literature as well: in Lamentations Rabbah 1:1, an injunction to go to Cappadocia in a dream is interpreted as a sign indicating that there was treasure under the “tenth beam” after the word “Cappadocia” is divided in half, and then interpreted numerically (“docia” is interpreted to mean “deka, while “qappa” is an Aramaic word for beam).50 It is even more apparent in later versions of this story: the Palestinian Talmud switches the meanings, claiming that “Cappa” means “kappa,” the tenth letter of the alphabet, and therefore, the number ten. 51 In addition to rabbinic assumptions and interpretive practices involving the division of texts into discrete units, we also have physical, archaeological evidence in ancient manuscripts to support this hypothesis. The great Masoretic codices, of course, are divided into verses and even smaller units by a complex set of punctuation marks that also serve as cantillation marks for contemporary readers. 52 The practice of physically marking where verses start and end, or even separating individual words with specific markers, does not begin with the Masoretes: we have evidence for a form of this practice from the Dead Sea Scrolls, almost a millennium earlier. 53 It is important to note that this evidence is not abundant. There are a few texts written in Hebrew that seem to have verse and section divisions; in the corpus from Qumran, however, there are more 50 This story and its paralells are discussed at length in Galit Hazan-Rokem, “An Almost Invisible Presence: Multilingual Puns in Rabbinic Literature,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Talmud and Rabbinic Literature, ed. Charlotte Elisheva Fonrobert and Martin Jaffee (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 222-239. 51 Y. Maaser Sheni 4:12, 55b 52 Khan, 37-41. 53 Punctuation appears in some Greek inscriptions; cf. Daniel J. Geagan, “Spaces, Diareses, and Breathings,” The American Journal of Philology 110:3 (1989) 467-470. We also have significant evidence for punctuated texts at least as early as the Hellenistic period: the grammarians of Alexandria have a complex vocabulary for describing the way texts were marked and divided (cf. Eleanor Dickey, Ancient Greek Scholarship, 125-126). In general, there is very little physical manuscript evidence for Greek punctuation until the middle Byzantine period. 194 Targumic and Septuagint texts with verse markers, in Aramaic and Greek, than there are classical Hebrew biblical texts. 54 Even with these caveats in place, there is not a distinct continuity between the scribes of the scrolls found at Qumran and the group that later came to be known as the rabbis (although the similarities are important). There is also not a direct lineage from the rabbis of late ancient Babylonia to the Masoretes—this is the lineage that the Masoretes, implicitly or explicity, themselves strive to establish. 55 In the same way that thinking about the practices of punctuating, subdividing, and exegeting texts that were current among Greek and Latin speaking scholars in late antiquity is helpful for establishing the contours of a wide-spread practice, so too is establishing that similar practices were performed on the same text by readers in disparate periods. Division in the Dead Sea Scrolls Many texts in the ancient world were written or inscribed in scriptio continua. Scribes wrote words end to end, without any divisions between them. 56 Sometimes a new paragraph, chapter, book or other sense unit was indicated with an indentation or some other signification, but not always.57 Other times, documented first in Semitic languages, words composed of 54 Emanuel Tov, Scribal Practices and Approaches Reflected in the Texts Found in the Judean Desert. Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah. Boston: Brill (2004), 136. 55 Aron Dotan, “Masorah,” in Encyclopedia Judaica, ed. Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik. Vol. 13. 2nd ed. (Detroit: MacMillan Reference USA, 2007) 603-656. 56 M.P.M., “Word Division,” in Brill’s New Pauly, Antiquity volumes edited by: Hubert Cancik and Helmuth Schneider (Leiden: Brill, 2007). 57 This practice, it should be noted, is one of the pieces of evidence marshalled for the now-defunct assumption that all reading in the ancient world was performed orally. In order to make sense of the continuous text, the reasoning goes, one had to read slowly enough, which meant out loud, to parse the nuances of the text. This has been disproven: even when reading silently, our eyes glance ahead to contextualize the words we are actively reading, and the same would be done for a text in scriptio continua. For more on this, see A. K. Gavrilov, “Techniques of Reading in Classical Antiquity,” The Classical Quarterly 47:1 (1997) 56-73. 195 individual letters (in alphabetic languages) were separated by spaces or other markers. 58 The scribes responsible for the Dead Sea Scrolls used both these methods (which should be no surprise, given the number of scribes responsible for the scrolls over a long period of time). 59 In his analysis of scribal practices in the Dead Sea Scrolls, Emanuel Tov points out several features of this phenomenon. Some paleo-Hebrew texts employ dots between words (4QpaleoExod and 11QpaleoLev, for example). 60 Others utilize a differently-shaped divider: small, oblique strokes, as in 2Qpaleo-Lev, 4QpaleoDeut, and 6QpaleoGen, 61 while a few have triangular marks.62 Most texts written in square script used spaces between words, rather than symbols, although this practice was not particularly consistent, especially in regards to the size of the space.63 Among the texts found at Qumran, the practice of dividing a text into sense units that were larger than words, but smaller than chapters or large section divisions, is found only in biblical texts, and then, only in a few.64 Tov believes that this tradition combines with the traditional Jewish lectionary practice to become the verse divisions that we are accustomed to in the Hebrew Bible; he is clearly relying on the Mishnaic passage cited earlier when he claims that 58 See, for example, the Tel Dan inscription. Joseph Naveh and Avraham Biran, “An Aramaic Inscription of the First Temple Period from Tel Dan,” (Hebrew) in Qadmoniot 103/104 (1993) 74-81 and George Athas, The Tel Dan Inscription: A Reappraisal and a New Introduction (London: T&T Clark International, 2003). 59 Emanuel Tov, Scribal Practices and Approaches Reflected in the Texts Found in the Judean Desert, 131. Tov also points out that the majority of texts from Qumran are not written in scripta continua, and when they are, this seems to have been an issue of economy, rather than an embedded scribal practice or tradition. 60 Ibid, 132. 61 Ibid, 132. 62 Ibid, 132. 63 Ibid, 133. 64 Ibid, 135. 196 the verses were first utilized for the benefit of the meturgeman. At the core, though, he seems to believe that the text was divided for the benefit of an oral reader. He points out that even though only the Torah and certain other selections were typically read liturgically, the practice of versification is present in other biblical texts that are present at Qumran. It is possible, in Tov’s view, that this started in the Torah, and spread to the entire biblical corpus. “Thus,” he claims, “while the system of subdividing the text into open and closed sections reflects a writing tradition, similar to other writing traditions, the division into verses has its origin in the oral tradition of scripture reading.”65 There are several problems with this, not the least of which are the dual assumptions of a “canon,” or stable idea of “Tanakh” at Qumran, and of the oral origins and purposes of these texts. This chapter’s contention, is that liturgical reading is not the only practice that might result in this type of division: the use of texts for divination is just as likely to produce the sort of close reading, textual criticism, and division as we see at Qumran. This is apparent, in fact, in the practice that is commonly referred to as pesher in the Qumran scrolls. In this divinatory and exegetical technique, a text is divided into smaller portions, each of which serves to reveal extraordinary information about the future (or rather, the present day as foretold in the past).66 The divisions are marked in the form of the text on the manuscript itself: a few words of a verse are given as a lemma, and then, after a short space, its interpretation, often marked at the beginning with the word “pitro”/‫ פיתרו‬or “pishro,”/‫פישרו‬, meaning “its interpretation.”67 The 65 Ibid, 136. 66 The similarity of this tradition to textual exegetical techniques current in Egypt at the same time should not be overlooked, and I think that it is not coincidental. The literate specialists of Qumran were participating in some of the same practices as the scholars and elites of Alexandria. 67 See H. Gregory Snyder, “Naughts and Crosses: Pesher Manuscripts and their Significance for Reading Practices at Qumran,” in Dead Sea Discoveries 7:1 (2000) 26-48. Snyder points out that these features are often not included in the published editions of Qumran texts, hence the fact that scholars often overlook them. He holds that p’sharim 197 interpreted texts are biblical: the most well-known examples of this genre include Pesher Habbakuk and Pesher Nahum.68 The fact that the only texts in which certain types of sense division appear are now all part of the Hebrew Bible might signify nothing more than the fact that these were the texts which were used for certain types of reading—one of those types being divination. 69 There is no evidence that texts such as the War Scroll, or the Community Rule, were also not read orally, although the contours of such a claim are difficult to parse. The fact that these texts are not marked as if divided into verses does not necessarily mean that they were not read liturgically or orally. This section has endeavored to show that there was an attestable scribal practice of dividing texts into smaller units among scribes working in Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic. Additionally, it has shown that these practices were not necessarily the exclusive result of oral, liturgical, and performative traditions, but that they also fit in neatly with the broader practice of divinatory textual exegesis. We are now well placed to draw some conclusions about the relationship between versification, or the close and technical reading of texts, and divination— especially as pertains to the rabbis. Explicit rabbinic descriptions of the practices associated with are a “different kind of commentary” (27); while this may be true, it seems to me that an interpretive practice like the one we have present in the p’sharim is much closer to a type of divination than a traditional commentary. Importantly, however, the p’sharim are much earlier than the rabbinic texts we are dealing with, even if they are relatively contemporaneous with Hellenistic scholarly activity in Alexandria. For more on the pesher form, see James Charlesworth, The Pesharim and Qumran History: Chaos or Consensus? (Grand Rapids, MI: W. B. Eerdmans, 2002); and Timothy Lim, Pesharim (London: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002) and the literature cited in both. 68 Frank Moore Cross, David Noel Freedman, James A. Sanders., eds., Scrolls from Qumran Cave I: The Great Isaiah Scroll, the Order of the Community, the Pesher to Habakkuk (Jerusalem: Albright Institute of Archaeological Research, 1972); Gregory L. Doudna, 4Q Pesher Nahum: A Critical Edition (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001). 69 By saying “nothing more,” I mean to highlight that we cannot base assumptions about the scope of a canon from this type of evidence. 198 textual criticism are rare, although some scholars have identified what seem to be specific terms that the Bavli uses.70 Rare though they are, it is one of these few instances, I think, that reveals this connection the most clearly. BMenachot 29b Babylonian Talmud tractate Menachot, page 29b, is commonly cited as one of the most representative stories regarding the rabbinic method of interpretation. There have been numerous treatments of this story, some of them taking it in its larger literary context, and others focusing on what it tells us about the rabbis’ own conception of their project. 71 Set in a larger context, however, this story contains, I think, a description of the scribal practice of closely reading a text, as well as indications of the sorts of divinatory practices that may eventually come from it. This story is set in the larger context of a sugya about the writing of mezuzot, doorpost amulets with scrolls containing biblical text inside them. The mishnah that introduces the sugya, mMenachot 3:7, is essentially a list of ritual materials composed of individual parts. Each of these parts must be perfect in order for the material to be valid: the menorah must have seven perfect lampstands, a garment must have four perfect fringes. Our specific section of the 70 The most relevant of these is Yonatan Moss, “Noblest Obelus: Rabbinic Appropriations of Late Ancient Literary Criticism,” in Homer and the Bible in the Eyes of Ancient Interpreters, Jerusalem Studies in Religion and Culture 16 (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 260. Moss redefines the word “‫ ”לסרג‬in Genesis Rabbah 85 as denoting a form of textual analysis and ordering as opposed to meaning “to strap.” 71 There is a huge bibliography on this story. For varying opinions and views of its interpretation, see: Burton Visotzky, “Jots and Tittles: On Scriptural Interpretation in Rabbinic and Patristic Literatures,” in Fathers of the World: Essays in Rabbinic and Patristic Literatures (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1995) 28-40; Laurence L. Edwards, “Rabbi Akiba’s Crowns: Postmodern Discourse and the Cost of Rabbinic Reading,” Judaism 49, no. 4 (October 1, 2000): 417; Nachman Levine, “Reading Crowned Letters and Semiotic Silences in Menachot 29b,” Journal of Jewish Studies 53, no. 1 (2002): 35–48; Daniel Boyarin, Socrates & the Fat Rabbis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 230–242; Jeffrey L. Rubenstein, Stories of the Babylonian Talmud (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010), 182–201; Shlomo Naeh, “The Script of the Torah in Rabbinic Thought (B): Transcriptions and Thorns,” Leshonenu: A Journal for the Study of the Hebrew Language and Cognate Subjects 82, no. 1 (2010): 89–123; Azzan Yadin-Israel, “Rabbi Aqiva: Midrash and the Site of Revelation,” in Revelation, Literature, and Community in Late Antiquity (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2012), 177–216; Azzan Yadin-Israel, “Bavli Menahot 29b and the Diminution of the Prophets,” Journal of Ancient Judaism 5, no. 1 (2014): 88–105. 199 mishnah, about mezuzot, reads thus: “Regarding the two portions of text in the mezuzah, one invalidates the other, and even one letter invalidates.”72 The sugya takes its start from this statement, contemplating the nature of text in a mezuzah, and wondering how, exactly, a letter can be invalidated. The rabbis are worried that the statement is too obvious: letters must be written correctly, and everyone knows this, even regarding the dot, the qutzah, of the yod, the smallest letter. Rav Judah resolves the conundrum by saying that what is really meant is that every letter must be surrounded on four sides by blank parchment—letters must not be joined together, and must be clearly legible. Examples of legible and illegible letters are given, and then a test for whether or not a letter is written acceptably is offered by Rami bar Temri: “Go, bring a child who is not wise or foolish. If he reads vayaharrog [the word in question], then it is acceptable, and if not, then it is yaharrog, and it is unacceptable.” After the test of the child is discussed, our story appears. This context is important: the story is set in a broader pericope about certain writing practices. These practices are concerned both with the proper writing of the words on ritual objects, and the interpretations that these proper writing techniques then engender. The beginning of our text reads thus: ‫אמ' רב יהוד' אמ' רב בשעה שעלה משה למרום מצאו להקב"ה שקושר קשרים‬ ‫לאותיות אמ' לפניו רבונו של עולם מי מעכב על ידך אמ' לו [אדם] אחד יש שעתיד‬ ‫להיות בסוף כמה דורות ועקיבא בן יוסף שמו שעתיד לדרוש על כל קוצין וקוצין‬ ‫תילי תילים של הלכות אמ' לפניו רבונו של עולם הראהו לי אמ' לו חזור‬ '‫(ב)[ל]אחורך הלך וישב לו בסוף שכינה עשר שורות ולא היה יודע מה הן אומ‬ ‫תשש כחו כיון שהגיע לדבר הלכה אמרו לו תלמידיו ר' מניין לך אמ' להן הלכה‬ ‫למשה מסיני נתיישבה דעתו חזר ובא לפני הקב"ה אמ' לפניו רבונו של עולם יש‬ 73 ‫לך אדם כזה ואתה נותן תורה על ידי אמ' לו שתוק כך עלתה במחשבה לפני‬ 72 .‫שתי פרשיות שבמזוזה מעכבות זו או זו ואפילו כתב אחד מעכבן‬ 73 I am here using the text of bMenachot from Ms. Vatican 120, which the Historical Dictonary of the Hebrew Language has identified as the both the oldest and most reliable manuscript of the this tracate. Ms. Vatican 120 is a very early manuscript: though it represents an Ashkenazic recension, it is from the end of the 12 th century. 200 Rabbi Yehudah said, “Rav said, ‘In the hour that Moses ascended on high, he found the Holy One, blessed be He, who was sitting and attaching q’sharim to the letters. He said to him, “Master of the Universe! Who is delaying your hand?” He said to him, “There will be one man in the future, at the end of so many generations, and his name will be Akiva son of Joseph. In the future, he will expound upon every thorn mounds and mounds of halakhot.” He said before him, “Master of the Universe, show him to me!” He said to him, “Turn behind you.” He went and sat at the end of eight rows, and he did not know what they were saying. He got upset. When he reached another thing, his students said to him, “My teacher, from where do you know this?” He said to them, “It is a law of Moses from Sinai.” His intellect was put at ease. He returned and came before the Holy One, Blessed be He, and said before him, “Master of the world, you have a man like this, and you give Torah by my hand?” He said to him, “Be quiet! This is what I have thought.” Most scholarly treatments of this pericope end here, treating simply this narrative, or continues on to the gemara’s description of Akiva’s flesh being weighed in the marketplace, a grim statement about theodicy. The story is an authorization of rabbinic interpretive authority, or a specific type of rabbinic interpretive authority: no matter how far-fetched, or ungrounded in the text an interpretation seems to be, it is ultimately located in the very writing that God himself performed, and passed on, through Moses, to Akiva, and thus to the rabbis (or, again, a certain group of rabbis that claimed their authority through Akiva). 74 The broad contours of this interpretation are correct; some of its mechanics, however, can be clarified so that we more clearly understand how the “heaps upon heaps” that Akiva is able to interpret from a qutza on a letter legitimate his practice. What comes next in the sugya is crucial for understanding what occurs, and why it shows up where it does—as well as decoding some of the language present. Directly after the narrative 74 See Azzan Yadin, Scripture and Tradition: Rabbi Akiva and the Triumph of Midrash (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania University Press, 2015). 201 I have just presented, there is a lengthy section on the correct way to write certain letters. The very first line of this section is responsible for many of the more traditional interpretations of the preceding. “Rava said: there are seven letters that need three ziyyunim, and they are shin, ayin, tet, nun, zayin, gimel, and tsadi.”75 The text continues in this vein, discussing scribes who add extra strokes to the tops of certain letters, writing others in a specific order, and even giving interpretive reasons for the appearance and practice of writing these letters (for example, “They add in a vertical stroke to the top of the letter chet, as it says, “He lives in the height of the world.”76 These might be understood as scribal instructions, or rather technical professional details. They are markers of a certain level of authority and expertise in the production and claiming of texts, and markers of a class of activity that includes not only writing texts properly, but also interpreting, editing, and performing other forms of scholarship upon them. This means, then, that the traditional understanding and interpretation of the story of God, Moses, and Akiva needs to be slightly tempered. It has been assumed that the q’sharim that God is adding to the letters, as well as the “thorns” from which heaps and heaps of laws will be expounded, are the calligraphic embellishments that we are familiar with from contemporary Torah scrolls. The next line of the Talmud is even the oft-cited passage regarding the letters that receive three vertical strokes on top. It is just as likely, however, if not more likely, that the extra “q’sharim” and “thorns” that God is adding to the text are not just embellishments to the letters themselves, but potentially also markings that signify the division of the text into verses. 75 ‫אמ' רבא שבעה אותיות צריכה שלשה זיין שעטנז גץ‬ 76 ‫חטריה ליה לגגיה דחית כלומ' חי ברומו של עולם‬ 202 Firstly, the words that are used for God’s writing and the vertical strokes are completely different in the two parts of the sugya. The narrative refers to them as q’sharim, or connectors, first, and then qotzim, thorns. The description of how to write certain letters, on the other hand, refers to the vertical strokes as ziyyunim. The close proximity of the narrative and the description of the letters has added momentum to the assumption that the connectors and thorns are the same as the strokes: but, since the Talmud itself uses different vocabulary, and these words all appear in the same stratum, I think it is important to see if we cannot differentiate between them. One of the most important features of this text is a crucial difference between the printed edition and the oldest manuscript. Where the Vilna edition tells us that God was putting “crowns,” or ktarim, on the letters, the manuscript itself uses the word ‫קשרים‬, which can most easily be understood as “connectors.” It seems relatively clear that the Vilna edition, and the manuscripts it was based on, corrected q’sharim to ktarim to make the two sections of the sugya seem more in line with each other. Q’sharim, which means, most basically, “connectors,” makes less sense than “crowns” if one is thinking only in terms of the physical manifestation of the letters, rather than the extended practice of reading and writing that the rabbis clearly discuss as part of the production of a scroll. The rabbis are telling us something, I believe, about the function of the marks themselves. Rather than simply serving as decorations, it is entirely possible that these “crowns,” or more properly, “connectors,” serve a connective purpose in the text—they are punctuation marks of a sort, marking sense breaks or endings. These could be as simple as a dot, as we see in later Greek texts, or take other forms, like dashes or commas (which we could even understand as being called a “thorn,” or qotz). Alternatively, though qotz is typically translated as “thorn,” this translation has recently been called into question by Shlomo Naeh. Naeh argues that qotz means not “thorn,” but rather 203 “pericope,” designating a specific unit of the text and coming from the rare Aramaic form qutzah.77 The “heaps and heaps” that are interpreted from the crowns and thorns, then, are not simply imaginative interpretations based on physical, non-semantic decorations on the parchment. They are interpretations that derive from divisions in the text, the arrangement of words and sentences, and the portioning of paragraphs. We have in fact already seen a similarly compelling usage of this retranslation in the previous chapter. 78 I think that qotz as a descriptive name for a certain textual mark is just as likely as any other explanation, and in fact, see no reason why it might not contain both valences in this case: both a unit of text, and a sign that designates division within a unit of texts. Signs developed by other ancient scholars, specifically those associated with the Alexandrian school, were named after what they resembled. Most famous, perhaps, are the obelos, or spit, and the asteriskos, or little star; sigma and antisigma were named for their resemblance to the lunate sigma and its reversed counterpart. 79 It is not just in the signs and their names, however, that we can see these important similarities. Yonatan Moss has recently shown that the practice of Greek-style textual criticism was known in rabbinic literature: he puts forth a strong case for translating lisrog in Genesis Rabbah 85 as “to make a cross,” “to score,” implying the same sort of semantic field as the Greek obelizein.80 All these forms of evidence have shown us that, when it came to finding extraordinary knowledge in texts, rabbis, like other religious specialists who made heavy use of texts in 77 Shlomo Naeh, “The Script of the Torah in Rabbinic Thought.” 78 See pp. 128-129. 79 Dickey, Ancient Greek Scholarship, 133-134. 80 Yonatan Moss, “Noblest Obelus,” 260. 204 antiquity, were engaged a practice that might be called “making meaning by making smaller.” Sometimes the physical manifestations of this meaning-making appear on the text; we might consider the masorah of the Tiberian tradition, or the lost “marked up” texts of the rabbis themselves to be representations of such a process. Origen and Zenodotus If we wish to find examples of this close, critical-minded readings of texts in the Christian world, we need look no farther than Origen of Alexandria. 81 Though he quickly made his way into the lists of heretics that were so popular in late antiquity (especially Epiphanius’), he is an unavoidable figure in the intellectual genealogies of all later Christian writers. 82 The scale of his project—both his theological, philosophical interpretation of various texts, as well as the Hexapla, a massive attempt to systematize and establish the correct text of the Bible—means that it has rarely been considered as a whole, or that it has been rightly construed as many different projects.83 This section does not argue for a unifying logic to all of Origen’s writings, but rather shows that both of these major projects were, to some degree, made possible by an attitude towards texts that is similar to the one we saw with the rabbis, and their concern for counting, categorizing, and dividing the text of the Torah in order to read it closely, and gain extraordinary knowledge from it. 81 The classic study of Origen is Jean Daniélou, Origen, trans. Walter Mitchell (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1955). More recent is Joseph Wilson Trigg, Origen (London: Taylor and Francis, 1998). On his life and legacy, see Elizabeth Clark, The Origenist Controversy: The Cultural Construction of an Early Christian Debate (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992). 82 Epihanius of Salamis, Panarion, IV. 72.1 83 For the Hexapla, see Arthur Vööbus, The Hexapla and the Syro-Hexapla: Very Important Discoveries for Septuagint Research (Stockholm: ETSE, 1971). 205 Origen was active in the first half of the third century, first in his putative home city of Alexandria, and then in Caesarea Maritima, in Palestine. 84 Alexandria, of course, was home to a long tradition of literary scholarship, much of it focused on the texts of Homer. It also holds pride of place as the location of the production of the Septuagint—a claim that is based on highly literary, likely fictional texts, to be sure, but one that most scholars hold in consensus.85 The study of Origen is complicated by the fact that so few of his texts remain to us (such is one of the disadvantages of being named a heretic). Of the texts that do remain, many of them survive only in their Latin translation, which was done by Rufinus.86 Still, the figure of Origen, and his scholarship, loomed so large that numerous contemporaries and later scholars either preserved smaller pieces, or summarized great swathes of his work. If the practice of textual criticism was initiated by Zenodotus and his school, it was brought to new heights by Origen. We are dealing with more than similar intellectual contexts here: Origen’s training in the Academy of Alexandria occurred in the direct context of contemporaneous Homeric scholarship, which had historically been centered around the Library, of which Zenodotus was the first librarian. 87 Today, Origen is considered responsible for the introduction of many new symbols and techniques into the practice of textual criticism—the asterisk and obelus, for example, while introduced to the study of Homer by Aristarchus of 84 Matthias Baltes, “Origenes,” in Brill’s New Pauly, Antiquity volumes ed. Hubert Cancik and Helmuth Schneider (Leiden: Brill, 2006). 85 See, for example, Tessa Rajak, Translation and Survival: The Greek Bible of the Ancient Jewish Diaspora (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009) 64-90. 86 Walter Berschin, “Rufinus,” in Brill’s New Pauly, Antiquity volumes ed. Hubert Cancik and Helmuth Schneider (Leiden: Brill, 2006). 87 Dickey, Ancient Greek Scholarship, 26. 206 Samothrace,88 were applied to the Bible, and used differently than before, by Origen. Rather than signify repeating lines with them, Origen used them to signify when certain passages were missing from the Hebrew or Greek versions of the Bible in his Hexapla. The Hexapla represents a solution to a rather specific problem: there were multiple “versions” certain biblical books circulating in Origen’s day, including translations in Greek and Aramaic. The Hexapla was an attempt to establish the correct text of these books. The critical symbols, as well as the columns of text laid out laterally on the page, were all intended to bring the reader to the most authentic version of the text possible. It was this text that could then be interpreted correctly, and used to understand the true nature of the cosmos. Origen does not explicitly state anywhere that the text itself has to be perfectly laid out in order to then be interpreted correctly. He does, however, speak of his own practice of interpretation in metaphors that equate the bible with something complete and perfect which must then be treated: it is a treasure that is buried, and must be dug up and examined; a loaf of bread that is fresh and beautiful from the oven, and must then be crumbled into its constituent parts in order to be consumed. Just as the rabbis atomize the biblical text, both as verses that can be used to interpret disparate parts of the bible, and as words and letters that can be counted, and whose counting is redolent with meaning, so does Origen establish a text and find meaning in its constituent parts.89 88 Dickey, Ancient Greek Scholarship, 41, 134. 89 Daniel Boyarin, “Philo, Origen, and the Rabbis on Divine Speech and its Interpretation,” in The World of Early Egyptian Christianity: Language, Literature, and Social Context. Ed. James Goehring and Janet Timble (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2007) 113-129. 207 IV. Books and Phantoms: Ancient Jewish Bibliomancy With pesher and Origen’s activity in mind, we can begin to see how practices of dividing a text lay at the foundation of certain types of divination and gaining knowledge about the future. Before delving into these more specific divinatory reading practices, however, it is instructive to look at the broader scope of divination in the ancient Near East, and especially ancient Israel and Babylonia. The long history of bibliomancy—of randomly selection a portion of a text, and then interpreting it as a reference to the future—shows that, as early as the Hasmonean period, it was publicly performed, if only in an ad hoc manner. While its practice may have become more formalized and associated with the “schoolhouse” by the time of the Babylonian Talmud, its use became more personal. As it developed with the field of assumptions common to textual elites in late antiquity, it was understood as a manifestation of just how powerful of an effect a text could have on a reader. The books of 1 and 2 Maccabees both include instances of bibliomancy, as well as the Gospel of Luke, although this is significantly later. Van der Horst discusses the two instances of bibliomancy in the books of the Maccabees, in addition to the later Babylonian rabbinic material.90 He points out the large chronological gap between the two clusters of traditions, as well as the subtle differences that mark them, but ultimately argues that bibliomancy was a widespread practice with specific cultural instantiations, and not a specific feature of Jewish divination that only resurfaces at specific points in time. There are Christian echoes of this practice as well, and we will them especially in the writings of Athanasius and Augustine. Before examining the rabbinic evidence for bibliomancy, evidence of Jewish bibliomantic practices in 90 Pieter W. van der Horst, “Ancient Jewish Bibliomancy,” Journal of Greco-Roman Christianity and Judaism 1 (2000): 10–12. 208 Greek literature will be brought forward. Afterwards, we will turn our gaze to the Christian sources. Robert Wiśnewski has argued that there is a distinctive shading to the Christian iteration of this practice, which suggests that it developed among Christians differently than among Jews.91 This argument is less convincing: while the specific mechanics of the divinatory method do sometimes differ, it seems more likely that this has to do with the practitioner and their material environment, rather than the distinctiveness of a religious tradition. 1Maccabees 3:46-49 and 2 Maccabees 8:22-23 1 Maccabees was composed sometime in the latter part of the second century BCE, after the Hasmonean defeat of the Seleucid Greeks and the establishment of the independent Hasmonean kingdom with its capital in Jerusalem. 92 Chapter 3:46-49 describes the preparations that the leaders, Judas and his brothers, underwent before going into battle against the Seleucids at Emmaus. Included in these preparations are fasting and wearing sackcloth, and the assembling of the priests and Nazirites. Verse 48 reads, “καὶ ἐξεπέτασαν τὸ βιβλίον τοῦ νόμου περὶ ὧν ἐξηρεύνων τὰ ἔθνη τὰ ὁμοιώματα τῶν εἰδώλων αὐτῶν.” “And they spread out the book of the law, seeking those things [guidance] which the nations seek from their statues.” 93 91 Robert Wiśnewski, “Pagans, Jews, Christians and a Type of Book Divination in Late Antiquity,” in The Journal of Early Christian Studies 24:4 (2016) 553-68. 92 The dating and composition of 1 Maccabees is a complicated issue. Most scholars maintain that there was an original Hebrew text, composed shortly after the narrated events, which was translated into Greek by the time of Josephus (end of the 1st century CE, although Bartlett maintains it was earlier) at the lates. See John R. Bartlett, 1 Maccabees (Sheffield: University of Sheffield Press, 1998), 18. 93 This verse is highly problematic from a text-critical point of view. Some Greek manuscripts (group r) render the later part, “…where the gentiles sought to inscribe their likenesses.” Syriac 2 Maccabees, for its part, says, “They spread out the scroll of the Law and mourned before the Holy One over the fact that the pagans were compelling them to follow practices like theirs.” These citations come from Jonathan A. Goldstein, 1 Maccabees: A new translation with introduction and commentary. Anchor Bible Series (Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Company, Inc.), 261. 209 This is a standard pre-battle divination.94 Are the omens favorable? Will victory come to the ones who wage war? A parallel is being set up here: the Hasmoneans seek these signs from the book of the law (traditionally understood as the Torah, or the five books of Moses), while the nations, or gentiles, seek their signs from “εἲδολα,” or phantoms and images. 95 We are not given the verse that was acquired, or even its interpretation, but since the battle goes forth as planned, it is likely safe to assume that the divinatory ritual is implied to have been successful.96 2 Maccabees 8:23 is less obviously bibliomantic, although scholars have read it as such because of the obvious relation that it bears to 1 Maccabees 3:48. 97 2 Maccabees is a later text than 1 Maccabees, and seems to have been aware of, and used, the earlier text. 98 It presents a history of the Hasmonean dynasty in the Greek historiographic tradition; it even goes so far as to claim in the introduction that it is a concise version of a longer work by Jason of Cyrene, or an epitome, just like the work of Polybius. 99 94 Consultation of divinatory specialists before going into battle was standard in the ancient world: examples from Greece, Rome, and the ancient Near East abound. Sarah Iles Johnston has a comprehensive account and list: Johnston, Ancient Greek Divination, 116-118. 95 John R. Bartlett points this out in his commentary on 1 and 2 Maccabees, as well. John R. Bartlett, The First and Second Books of the Maccabees (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), 55. 96 Goldstein has a completely different read of this passage. He takes the Greek to mean, “They spread open the scroll of the Torah at the passages where the gentiles sought to find analogies to their idols.” He understands ὁμοιώματα to signify “similarities,” or “analogies,” rather than “likenesses,” or more likely, “statues.” I find this a very difficult reading, however: the standard meaning of ὁμοίωμα is “likeness” or “image,” and when it is used to mean “analogy,” it is typically part of a prepositional phrase (e.g., ἐξ ὁμοιώματος) (LSJ, 1225). In Goldstein’s reading, the scroll is brought out not for divination, but rather to point out the places where gentiles might try to prove that Jews participate in the same practices that they do. This has an analogy in II Kings 19:14-19 and Isaiah 37:14-21. Other than a resonance between two instances of a piece of writing being spread out, I do not see a reason for this connection to be more compelling than a performance of bibliomancy. 97 van der Horst, “Ancient Jewish Bibliomancy,” 10. 98 The relationship between the first two books of Maccabees has long been, and remains, an important question. For a recent view of 2 Maccabees as an epitome in light of other ancient “auxiliary texts,” see Francis Borchardt, “Reading Aid: 2 Maccabees and the History of Jason of Cyrene Reconsidered,” Journal for the Study of Judaism 47:1 (2016) 71-87. 99 2 Macc 2:19-32. 210 Even though 2 Maccabees 8:22-23 are less obviously bibliomantic, their context makes it difficult to not understand the act of reading that is illustrated as bearing some relation to pre- battle divinatory practices. The setting is the same as 1 Maccabees 3: Judah is preparing his army for an attack after Nicanor, a Seleucid general, has invaded Judea. The verses in question read: τάξας καὶ τοὺς ἀδελφοὺς αὐτοῦ προηγουμένους ἑκατέρας τάξεως, Σιμωνα καὶ Ιωσηπον καὶ Ιωναθην, ὑποτάξας ἑκάστῳ χιλίους πρὸς τοῖς πεντακοσίοις, (23) ἔτι δὲ καὶ Ελεαζαρον, παραναγνοὺς τὴν ἱερὰν βίβλον καὶ δοὺς σύνθημα θεοῦ βοηθείας τῆς πρώτης σπείρας αὐτὸς προηγούμενος συνέβαλε τῷ Νικάνορι.100 And Judah, having also quickly appointed his brothers Simon and Joseph and Jonathan, to each lead a division, five hundred and a thousand under each, still also appointed Eleazar, reading aloudthe holy book, and set the signal as “the help of God.” Then, leading the first unit himself, he fell upon Nicanor. The Greek word used for “read aloud” here, παραναγιγνώσκω, has a wide range of meanings.101 In other contexts, it seems to mean “to compare” or “to read beside.” In this instance, however, along with in the third book of Maccabees, Philo, and Polybius, it seems to signify “to read aloud.”102 When used this way, it generally refers to the public reading of a treaty: such is its use in Polybius and 3 Maccabees. It seems likely to me, given the comparison with Polybius, that this is also the usage here. Regardless of this difficulty, it is clear that 100 Goldstein points out that these verses are also quite possibly corrupt: Manuscripts AVqLa -v instead read, “He appointed his brothers commanders of each force, Simon and Joseph and Jonathan, assigning one thousand five hundred to each, as well as Eleazar. After reading aloud the sacred book and after giving as the password “God’s help,” he took command of the first division himself…” From Jonathan Goldstein, II Maccabees, 334. All texts from 2 Maccabees are from the critical edition in Rahfs Septuagint. 101 Bartlett points out that the passage is quite obscure. He also suggests that this scene is constructed in parallel to the previously discussed narrative from 1 Maccabees. This seems likely to me, given the reliance of 2 Maccabees on 1 Maccabees. Bartlett, 282-3. 102 Henry J Liddell and Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon: With a Revised Supplement 9th, 9 edition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 1319. Polybius 2.12.4, 3 Maccabees 1:12, and Philo, In Flaccum 2.531. 211 something is done with a text—a “ἱερὰ βίβλος,” a text that is somehow sacred—prior to engaging in battle and becoming victorious. Both of these passages are corrupt in the manuscripts, and prove difficult to read. Robert Doran follows on Jonathan Goldstein’s suggestion that the original reading of 2 Maccabees 8:23 was “Ezra,” rather than Eleazar. 103 He gives a reason for this as well: the scribes were uncomfortable with the thought of Judah officiating over a service, and therefore turned “Ezra” into “Eleazar,” a priest, who could unproblematically read from the biblical text. Rather than bibliomancy, Doran suggests that the referent is Deuteronomy 20:2-4, in which a priest must read certain passages to the assembled army before the battle commences. This tradition also has resonances in Qumran’s Temple Scroll (11QT 61:15).104 While this is certainly a possible referent, it does not exclude a bibliomantic practice. There is significant evidence for divinatory rituals having taken place before battles in the ancient Mediterranean. While there is no material evidence for the reading of Deuteronomy prior to a battle initiated by Jews, it is certainly possible than the author of 2 Maccabees might have written about this divinatory practice in such a manner as to recall the commands of Deuteronomy 20. The picture that 1 Macc 3:48 and 2 Macc 8:23, as well as the texts soon to be examined (bHagiga 15a-b, bChullin 95, bGittin 56a and 67b-68a, and Yoma 75b) can be fleshed out considerably with an understanding of divination as a common religious practice across the ancient Mediterranean, practiced by Jews, Christians, and others alike. 105 The rabbinic texts that 103 Robert Doran, 2 Maccabees: A critical commentary. Hermeneia—A Critical and Historical Commentary of the Bible (Fortress Press: Minneapolis, MN), 176-177. 104 Doran, 177. 105 Daniel Schwartz understands both these passages as indicative of divination as well. He points to the commentary of Felix-Marie Abel, who reads the passages in the same way, as well as the work of Saul Lieberman. See Daniel Schwartz, 2 Maccabees. Commentaries on Early Jewish Literature. (New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2008), 340; Felix-Marie Abel, Les Livres des Maccabées (Paris: Gabalda, 1949), 68-70. 212 will be covered in the next section do not represent practices that are direct genealogical descendants of the practices shown in this section, even though there are striking similarities. Rather, outlining the broad contours of ancient Jewish bibliomancy prior to the rabbinic period gives a sense of the practices that the rabbis might have been familiar with, and the broader landscape into which their own practices, somewhat the same but somewhat different, might have fit, as well as to show the increasingly formalized nature of the rabbinic practice. Talmud Bavli BGittin 67a Our first passage comes from the Babylonian Talmud, tracate Gittin 56a. It follows a lengthy sugya on mGittin 7:1, which declares that a man with a certain defect (qardiaqos, which is either a type of demonic possession, or another type of state that puts someone out of their normal capacities) is incapable of pronouncing a valid divorce get. The sugya spends a great deal of time discussing what, exactly, counts as a qardiaqos,106 its remedies, and then launches into two different narratives about the Exilarch’s107 household in Babylonia. Bibliomancy occurs in one of these stories. The Exilarch has invited Rav Sheshet, a Babylonian authority, to dinner with his household, and asks why the rabbi refuses to dine with him. It is important to note that 106 This term has come under scrutiny lately, and rather than being understood as an affliction of the hard and therefore derived from the Greek καρδία, Jesse Rainbow posits that it originates in καρδιόω, which is used in the LXX Song of Songs translation to signify an illness of the heart. The term then, rather than meaning an “afflicted heart,” carries an active valence of disease, along with resonances to language surrounding Solomon’s binding of demons. For more on this, see Jesse Rainbow, “The Derivation of Kordiakos, A New Proposal.” Journal for the Study of Judaism 39:2 (2008), pp. 255-266. The classic treatment of this word is Fred Rosner, “Kordiakos in the Talmud,” Israel Journal of Medical Sciences 10 (1974): 278-79. 107 The Exilarch was the head of the Jewish community in Babylonia, and is not a rabbinic figure. Stories of tension between Exilarchs and rabbis are common. The most comprehensive contemporary work on the Exilarch is Geoffrey Herman, A Prince Without a Kingdom (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2012). 213 rabbinic aggadot are actually rife with stories regarding conflicts between rabbis and Exilarchs: this story falls easily in to that category, and ends with the rabbis coming out on top. ‫א'ל ריש גלותא לרב ששת מאי טע' לא אתי מר גבן‬ The exilarch said to Rav Sheshet: “How come the master does not dine with us?” ‫א'ל משום דלא מעלי עבדי דחשידי אאבר מן החי‬ He [Rav Sheshet] said to him, “Your servants are not reliable, as they are suspected of taking limbs from living animals.” '‫א'ל ומי יימר א'ל השתא מחוינא לך א'ל לשמעיה גנוב ואייתי לי חד כרעא אייתי ל‬ He [the Exilarch] said to him, “Who says this?” He [Rav Sheshet] said, “Let me show you.” He said to his attendant, “Go and steal and bring me a piece of meat from the leg of an animal,” and he brought it to him. ‫אמ' ל' אהדמו לי הדמו דחיותא אייתו תלתא כרעיה אותיבו קמיה אמ' להו האי‬ ‫בעלת שלש הואי פסקו ואייתיו חדא מעלמא אותיבו קמיה א'ל לשמעיה אותבת נמי‬ ‫להך דידך א'ל האי בעלת חמש הואי‬ He said to the servants, “Dismember it for me.” They dismembered the animal and brought him three of its legs and placed them before him. He said to them, “Was this a three-legged animal?” Then they cut a leg off another and brought it before him. He said to his servant, “Now show me yours” [the let he had previously stolen]. He produced it. He said to them, “Was this a five-legged animal?” ‫א'ל אי הכי ליעבדוה קמי דמר וליכול א'ל לחיי אייתו תכא לקמיהו אתיבו‬ ‫קמיה דיסתנא חנקא חמתא גששיה ושקיל כרכה בסודריה‬ He [the Exilarch] said to him, “If this is so, let them prepare it in front of my master, so that he may eat it.” He [Rav Sheshet] said to him, “Good.” They brought the tray before him, and they brought before him a portion with a something in order to choke him. He touched it and took it out and wrapped it in his scarf. ‫לבתר דאכול אמרו ליה איגנוב לן כסא דכספא בהדי דקא מעייני ואתו‬ ‫אשכחוהלההוא דיסתנא דכריכא בסודריה אמרו ל' חזי מר דלא למיכל קא בעי אלא‬ '‫לצעו‬ 214 And after he had eaten, they said to him, “A silver cup has been stolen from us!” As they were looking and going, they found the portion that was wrapped in his scarf, and said to him, [the Exilarch] “Look, lord, he did not eat, but rather seeks to worry us!” ‫אמ' להו אנא מיכל אכילנא וטעימנא טעמא דחיוורא אמרו ל' חיוורא לא‬ ‫עביד לן האידנא א'ל בדקוה בדוכתיה ואמ' רב חסדא חיורא באוכמ' ואוכמא‬ ‫בחיורא לקותא בדוק ואשכח‬ He [Rav Sheshet] said to them, “I ate my food, and I tasted the taste of a skin pustule.” They said to him, “An animal with a pustule has not been prepared by us today.” He said to them, “Check in its place.” For Rav Hisda has said, “Black in white, and white in back—it is illness.” It was checked, and they found it. ‫כי קא נפיק כרו ליה ?בי?רא ושד?ו? ל' ציפתא עילויה אמרו ליתי מר‬ ‫ולינח נחר ליה רב חסדא א'ל לינוקא פסוק לי פסוקך א'ל נטה לך על ימינך או על‬ ‫שמאלך א'ל לשמעיה מאי קא חזית א'ל ציפת' דשדיא א'ל הדר מינח בתר דנפק א'ל‬ ‫רב חסדא מנא ידע מר א'ל חדא דנחר לי מר ועוד דפסק לי ינוקא פסוקיה ועוד‬ 108 ‫דחשידי עבדי דלא מעלו‬ When he was leaving, they dug it a hole and threw a mat over it, and said to him, “Come, lord, rest,” and Rav Hisda snorted behind him. He said to a child, “Verse me your verse,” and he [the child] said to him, “Turn to your right side, or to your left.” (2 Sam 2:21) He said to his servant, What did you see? He said, “A cast mat.” He [Rav Sheshet] said to him, “Turn from it.” And after he left, Rav Hisda said to him, “How did you know this, Lord?” He said to him, “Once, because you snorted at me, lord, and furthermore, because I versed the child’s verse; and still more, the servants are suspected of being untrustworthy.” This is a highly complex sugya. As will become apparent, it bears a resemblance to the narrative to be discuss next, in B. Chullin 95b. Both involve the correct preparation of meat, 109 rabbis being willing or unwilling to eat it, and the mysterious methods by which rabbis gain 108 The text I use for bGittin is from Ms. Vatican 130, which the Historical Dictonary of the Hebrew Language has selected as the base manuscript for tractate Gittin. 109 There is a significant body of work on the relationship between animal sacrifice and divination, and it is possible that there is something similar underlying this text. See, for example, Johnston, Ancient Greek Divination, 128; also Stanley K. Stowers, “Greeks Who Sacrifice and Those Who Do Not,” in The Social World of the First Christians: Essays in Honor of Wayne Meeks, ed. L. Michael White and O. Larry Yarbrough (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995) 293-333. 215 “extraordinary knowledge.” This is not insignificant. In this case, as in other bibliomantic narratives, the knowledge comes from the interpretation of a biblical verse that has been acquired from a random child. Apparently, the servants of the Exilarch are untrustworthy and unpleasant: in this narrative, they have it in for Rav Sheshet. When asked why he does not dine with the Exilarch, he responds honestly: the Exilarch’s servants cannot be trusted to prepare food that the Rabbi is willing to eat. The Exilarch insists that he attend, and the servants prove the rabbi correct—they serve him meat from an unkosher animal (in this case, one that has not been slaughtered properly). When it is revealed that he has refused to eat it, they plot against him, and prepare a trap in front of the house. The rabbi, however, performs an act of divination before setting out on his journey home. He asks a child for his verse, and receives one, from the book of 2 Samuel. He moves aside, skirts the trap, and reveals to his companion, Rav Hisda, how he gained this knowledge: the divination, his suspicion of untrustworthy servants, and perhaps most curiously, Rav Hisda’s snort. Another important feature of this section is the use of the word ‫ בדק‬to refer to the process of checking or examining the meat. This word appears often: it appears in other divinatory contexts for the process of “checking” or validating a certain action. Here it validates meat as being fit for consumption, and again, if we are to push the evidence in a provocative direction, delineates a process that likely looked quite similar to ancient Roman practices of extispicy and haruspicy. It is also the title of an official in the School of Nisibis: Badoqa.110 Badaq does not necessarily include divinatory practices surrounding sacrificial slaughter in its range of meanings. Rather, its range of meaning includes the close examination of a certain 110 Ute Possekel, unpublished paper: Institutional Aspects of the School of Nisibis. 216 object, and potentially even the validation of that object as legitimate and correct. It is not insignificant that two instances of this word, when it occurs in the context of a bibliomantic tradition, follow in the wake of narratives and legal discussions regarding the legitimate status of slaughtered animals. The rabbis are not operating with a direct inheritance or influence of Roman traditions, per se, but rather a wider matrix in which the interrelation of all these practices would have been intelligible. “Checking” can mean using divination to ascertain the legitimacy of certain acts, the examination of texts to determine their correctness, or the scrutiny of foodstuffs to ensure they are acceptable. This fits in to a broader matrix in which ancient divinatory practices surrounding text, sacrifice, and their intense examination were closely interrelated. “Checking,” as signified by the root badaq, can be yet another process by which humans might access extraordinary knowledge. yShabbat 6:9 8c and bChullin 95b The next passage we examine involves a narrative that occurs in both the Palestinian and Babylonian Talmuds. The narrative itself is simple: two rabbis in Palestine wish to see Shmu’el, who lives in Babylonia. Before taking the arduous journey, they seek divine advice, and it is granted in the form of a child’s verse calling out from a schoolroom. In the Palestinian Talmud, this passage appears in yShabbat 6:9 8c, and is the earliest instance of bibliomancy in rabbinic literature that I have found so far. ‫רבי יוחנן ורבי שמעון בן לקיש הוו מתחמדין מיחמי אפויי דשמואל אמרין נלך‬ ‫אחר שמיעת בת קול עברון קומי סידרא שמעון קליה דטלייא ושמואל מת וסיימון‬ 111‫וכן הוות ליה‬ R. Yohanan and R. Shimon b. Laqish desired to see the face of Samuel. They said, “Let us follow the advice of a bat qol.” They passed before a hall of studies. They heard the voice of children, 111 Texts from the Yerushalmi are all taken from the Leiden manuscript. 217 “‘And Samuel died’ (1 Sam 25:1).” They took it as a sign, and thus it was for him. A bat qol is a heavenly, prophetic voice. Directly translated, it means “daughter of the voice,” and is to be understood as an idiomatic appellation for a divine utterance. According to Stephanie Bolz, whose 2012 dissertation on rabbinic discourse on divination examined the bat qol, it is a technical term.112 In this case, we have a conflation of bibliomancy and the bat qol. The rabbis say they are waiting for a heavenly voice, but instead follow the voice of children as the text that must be interpreted. They learn that Rav Shmuel, the Babylonian rabbi, has died, from a quotation of 1 Samuel. The verse hardly even needs to be interpreted. Rather, the rabbis simply apply it to their current endeavor and realize that it is pointless. It is possible that in this instance “bat qol” is being used as a broader term for prophecy, and that the child’s verse 1 Samuel 25 is simply one out of many types of prophecy that Yochanan and Resh Lakish might have accepted. The divinatory technique, however, is presented as unproblematic. It is also associated with children and with a school house, two features that carry through into the Babylonian Talmud’s description of bibliomancy as well. A version of this story appears in the Bavli as well. It is embedded in a much longer passage about meat laws in tractate Chullin, and goes on to theorize divination a little more explicitly. The interpretation of a verse randomly provided by a child is listed as one of several types of appropriate divination, labeled ‫ סימן‬by the Bavli. They are listed in contrast to ‫נחש‬, a category both condemned by the biblical text, and the rabbis themselves. 113 The passage in 112 Stephanie Bolz, “Rabbinic Discourse on Divination,” PhD Dissertation, University of Michigan (2012), 59. For more on the bat qol, see José Costa, “Littérature Apocalyptique et Judaisme Rabbinique: Le Problème de la Bat Qol,” REJ 169 (2010): 89-91 and Peter Kuhn, Bat Qol: Die Offenbarungsstimme in der rabbinischen Literatur (Regensburg: F. Pustet, 1989). 113 Bolz, 134-135. 218 question, b.Chullin 95b, is related in its entirety. I will analyze it in order, which means departing from the story of Rabbi Yochanan and Rav Shmuel for a few pages before we return to them. ‫רב הוה אזיל לבי רב חנן בר רבה חתניה חזא מברא דהוה קאתי' לאפיה א' מברא‬ ‫דאתי לאפאי יומא טבא לגו אזל קם על בבא וטרף אודיק בדשא(י) חזא דתלא‬ ‫חיותא ושבקוה כולי עלמ' אזול ונפקו (לא) לאפיה אפי' טבחא ולא עלים רב עיניה‬ ‫מיניה א'ל השתא כי ספת להו איסורא לבני בית ולא אכל רב מההוא בישרא מאי‬ ‫טעמ' אי משום איעלומי עיני הא לא עלים ואלא משום דנחיש והא' רב כל נחש‬ ‫שאינו כאליעזר עבד אברהם וכיהונתן בן שאול אינו נחש אלא ההוא סעודת‬ 114 ‫הרשות הוה ורב לא מתהני מסעודת הרשות‬ When Rav was visiting the house of Rabbi Chanan son of Rava, his son-in-law, he saw a ferry-boat coming towards him. He said: “There is a ferry-boat coming towards me, it will be a good day for it.” He went and stood in the gate. He knocked and pounded on the door, and he saw an animal hanging, and the entire world came out in order to meet him, even the butchers. Rav did not conceal his eyes from it [the animal]. He said to them, “Oh, that you have given forbidden food to the sons of my daughter!” Rav did not eat from this meat. How come? Because he concealed his eyes from it? Behold, he did not conceal his eyes from it. Rather, he performed nachash. And didn’t Rav say: “All nachash that is not like that of Eliezer, servant of Abraham, and like Jonathan, son of Saul, is not nachash?” But rather it was an optional meal, and Rav did not derive benefit from an optional meal. ‫רב בדיק במברא שמואל בדיק בסיפרא ור' יוח' בדיק בינוקא כולהי שניה דרב כתב‬ ‫ליה ר' יוח' לפני רבינו שבבל כי נח נפשיה דרב כתב לשמואל לקדם חביריני‬ ‫שבבל א' לא ידע לי מידי דרביה אנא כתב שדר ליה עיבורא דשיתין שנין א' השתא‬ ‫חושבנא בעלמ' הוא דידע הדר שדר ליה טעון ()[ת]ליסר גמלי טריפתא א' אית לי‬ ‫רבה בבבל איקו איזיל איחזייה קם למיזל א'ל לינוקא מאי פסוקיך א'ל ושמואל מת‬ '‫א' ש'מ נח נפש[י]ה דשמו' ולא היא לא נח נפשיה אלא ()[כ]י היכי דלא ליטרח ר‬ ‫יוח‬ Rav tested/examined by means of a ferry-boat, and Shmuel tested/examined with a book, Rabbi Yochanan tested/examined with a child. During all the years of Rav, Rabbi Yochanan would write to him, “To our master who is in Babylonia.” When his soul rested, he would write to Shmuel, “to our friend who is in Babylonia.” He said, “Is something not known to me, that I am his master?” He wrote and sent to him the intercalations for sixty years. He said, “Now he knows calculations of the world.” He wrote and send to him thirteen camel-loads of doubtful terefah cases. He said, “I have a master in Babylonia. I will go and see 114 All texts from bChullin are according to ms. Vatican 122, which the Historical Dictionary of the Hebrew language has identified as the base manuscript for this tractate. 219 him.” He went to see him. He said to a child, “What is your verse?” He said to him, “And Samuel died.” (1 Sam 28:3) He said, “Hear from this, that the soul of Samuel rested. But this was not the case, Samuel was not dead, but rather it was so that Rabbi Yochanan would not take pains. ‫תניא ר' שמעו' בן אלעזר או' בית תינוק ואשה אע'פ שאין נחש יש סימן א'ר אלעזר‬ ‫ו הוא דאיתחזק בתלת ז(י)מניה דכת' יוסף איננו ושמע' איננו ואת בנימ(י)ן תקחו וגו‬ A teaching: Rabbi Shim’on son of Eleazar said: A house, a baby, and a woman—even though there is no nachash, there is divination. Rabbi Eleazar said: Only if it was made known three times, as it is written, “Joseph is no more, and Shim’on is no more, so you take Benjamin.” (Gen 42:36). ‫בעא מיניה רב הונא מרב בשר בחרוזין מהן א'ל אל תהי שוטה בשר בחרוזי' הרי‬ ‫זה סימן איכ' דא' א' רב הונא א' רב בשר בחרוזי' הרי זה סימן‬ Rabbi Huna sought this from Rav: What about if they were strung together? He said to him, “Don’t be foolish! If they are strung together, it is divination. There are those that say that Rav Huna said this in the name of Rav: Behold, there is divination in the stringing together. There are numerous types of divination present in this section. It begins with Rav, a Babylonian rabbi, visiting his son-in-law, Rabbi Chanan. He sees an omen on the way: a ‫מברא‬, or ferry-boat, which signifies to him that the day is an auspicious one. While this is not a form of bibliomancy, it is still a divinatory act, and serves to highlight just how suffused the reading of divine signs and symbols was in the late ancient world. This section of the gemara is commenting on Mishnah Chullin 7:2, which states that “a person may send a thigh to a foreigner with the sciatic nerve inside, since its place is distinguishable.”115 This helps make sense of the lines that follow this passage’s introduction, regarding Rav’s consumption of meat (or refusal to partake thereof). The section prior to our selection is a lengthy discussion on ‫( טריפה‬terefah), or meat that comes from animals who have 115 ‫בתוכה הנשה שגיד לנכרי ירך אדם שולח‬, ‫נכר שמקומו מפני‬ 220 died due to injuries or defects. Rav’s views on ‫ טריפה‬are given (he would only eat meat when it had never been out of sight, bChullin 95a116 and 95b117). The passage then turns to a discussion of when he would and would not eat meat. The selection above comes from this subsequent discussion. Once the context of the pericope is clear, some of the more mysterious elements make more sense. The scene is in fact somewhat comical: Rav arrives at his son-in-law’s house, and sees meat that is supposedly going to become his meal hanging on the door. A parade of humanity (including the butchers of the meat themselves!) pours out, but Rav keeps his eyes fixed on the meat at hand. He bemoans that his grandsons are being fed such meat, and refuses to eat it. This creates a problem for the stam, though: why did Rav refuse to eat the meat, if he had been watching it the whole time? He must have had some other source of knowledge regarding its impurity. This source is identified as ‫נחש‬/nachash, illegitimate divination. Even though nachash is typically illegitimate, another quotation of Rav is brought forth, claiming that ‫נחש‬ which follows in the pattern of Eliezer or Jonathan is not really ‫ נחש‬at all: ultimately, this answer is deemed unsatisfactory and another reason is given: the meal was instead optional. 118 From here, though, the text proceeds into a lengthy discourse on the subject of divination itself. 116 ‫אסור העין מן שנתעלם כיון בשר רב אמר‬ 117 ‫בסימנא נמי ואי וחתומא בציירא אימא איבעית מיניה עיניה עלים דלא בשעתיה בשרא אכל היכי רב אלא‬ 118 Stephanie Bolz argues, rightly, I think, that the statement about Rav’s knowledge coming from ‫ נחש‬is discounted because the narrative bears no resemblance to the biblical stories mentioned. According to Bolz (pp. 98-99), both Eliezer and Jonathan requested specific signs, and received them, without needing to interpret them (see Gen 24:14 and 1 Sam 14:9-10). The only sign that Rav received, the ferryboat, required interpretation, and is therefore unlike the ‫ נחש‬of Jonathan and Eliezer, and therefore illegitimate. 221 The word used for divining in this next passage is again ‫( ״בדיק״‬badeq), which means to check, or examine. 119 Shmuel is said to have “tested” by means of a book, or a ‫ספרא‬. Out of context, it is difficult to know what this phrase means, although it seems relatively clear that some form of bibliomancy is being ascribed to the Babylonian rabbi. I think it likely that the process described above, in bGittin, is similar to Shmuel’s “testing with a book,” especially since an identical process is described directly after. Rather than asking a child for a random verse, however, Rav Shmuel is probably understood to have selected a random verse from the text himself.120 Rabbi Yochanan, in contrast, “tested” through the use of a child. The story is quite similar, although certain elements are missing. Resh Laqish, an amora who was reputed to have been born in Babylonia before moving across the Jordan to settle in Sepphoris (as well as for being a brigand) is no longer involved. Additionally, the Bavli version gives a qualification regarding the verse: we learn that its interpretation is not true, even if it does convey the information the deity wanted it to convey. This part is obviously a later addition, since its language is Babylonian Aramaic, and appears in the anonymous Talmudic stratum, the stam. In the Bavli, Rabbi Yochanan also deliberately requests the verse: he is seeking a specific type of knowledge. In the Yerushalmi, Resh Laqish and Rabbi Yochanan declare that they will await a bat qol—and apparently hear it when it comes to them in the form of children’s voices emanating from a schoolroom. I think it likely that these texts are closely related to each other, and potentially even come from a common source. 119 Its primary meaning is “to break,” or “to burst” (see bChullin 105a, ‫חזא צינורא דבדקא‬, “he saw a pipe that burst”), but its secondary meaning, which is what we have here, implies a sense of testing or examining. Included in this semantic range is the checking of a text for mistakes (see, for example, Tosefta Shabbat 13:1), as well as the examination of witnesses, the research of ancestry, and other activities we might think of as “research.” 120 This is also the reading of Stephanie Bolz (p. 99). 222 It is also possible, however, that the slight changes that the Bavli makes are evidence of a different theorization of divination, or at least bibliomancy, in rabbinic Babylonia. Divine knowledge as something that must be sought is largely in line with late antique philosophical writing on divination, and is perhaps more at home in the highly academic Babylonian milieu. Signs and prophecies that appear at random, like the voice of schoolchildren chanting as a sage walks past a schoolroom, seem to me to be closer to something like revelation, even if the signs must then be interpreted. Unfortunately, the paucity of our evidence in the Palestinian sources keep us from drawing more concrete conclusions. bYoma 75b The next passage, bYoma 75b, also takes its discursive starting point from a discussion about a certain type of meat: in this case, quail. The context is a bit different, however, and the same terminology is not used—additionally, the quail is not actually “checked” to see if it is acceptable or not. The gemara expands from M. Yoma 8:1, which states that: ‫יום הכיפורים אסור באכילה ובשתייה וברחיצה ובסיכה ובנעילת הסנדל ובתשמיש‬ ‫המטה המלך והכלה ירחצו את פניהם והחייה תנעול את הסנדל דברי ר״ אליעזר‬ ‫וחכמי״ אוסרי״‬ “On the day of atonement, it is forbidden to eat, drink, wash, anoint, wear leather shoes, and to make use of the bed. The king and the bride may wash their faces. The recently pregnant may wear leather shoes—these are the words of Rabbi Eliezer, but the sages prohibit it.” The ensuing discussion, perhaps understandably, covers topics that range from the consumption of various foodstuffs to the technical aspects of sandal wearing. The rabbis are also interested in the punishment for breaking the fast. The section of the gemara that we are interested in comes a little later. It is initiated by a quotation from Numbers 11:33. I quote it in its entirety. 223 ‫הבשר עודנו בין שניהם טרם יכרת וכת' עד חדש ימים הא כיצד בינונים נידונין בו‬ ‫ומתים לאלתר רשעים עד חדש ימים וישטחו להם אמ' ריש לקיש אל תיקרי‬ ‫וישטחו אלא וישחטו מלמד שנתחייבו ישראל שבאותו הדור כלייה שטוח תנא‬ ‫משמיה דר' יהושע בן קרחה אל תיקרי שטוח אלא שחוט מלמד שירד להן לישראל‬ ‫דבר שטעון שחיטה‬ “The meat was still between their teeth” (Num 11:33) and it is written, “For a whole month” (Num 11:20). How so? The regular people, they died on the spot. Evil folk—they suffered along for an entire month. “And they spread abroad,” (Num 11:32) Resh Laqish says, “Do not read “and they spread,” but rather “and they were slaughtered.” It teaches that Israel in that entire generation earned slaughter. “Spread abroad,” a teaching in the name of Rabbi Joshua son of Qarhah: Do not read “spreading abroad,” but rather “slaughter,” which teaches that something requiring ritual slaughter went down with the manna. ‫אמ' רבי וכי מכאן אתה למד והלא כבר נאמר וימטר עליהם כעפר שאר וכחול‬ ‫ימים עוף כנף ותניא כאשר צויתיך מלמד שנצטוה משה על הושט ועל הקנה ועל‬ ‫רוב אחד בעוף ועל רוב שנים בבהמה אם כן מה תלמוד לומר שטוח שירד להן‬ ‫משטוחין משטוחין‬ Rabbi said: And did you not learn it from here? And was it not already said, “and he caused flesh to rain upon them as the dust, and winged fowl as the sands of the sea” (Psalm 78:27). And it was taught, Rabbi said, “And you shall slaughter when I have commanded you.” (Deut 12:21). It teaches that Moses was commanded on the gullet and on the trachea, on the one multitude of birds, and on the second multitude of cattle. But what does “spread across” mean? It teaches that they came down layer upon layer. ‫כתי'ב לחם וכת' שמן וכת' דבש אמ' ר' יוסי בר' חנינא לנערים לחם לזקנים שמן‬ ‫לתינוקות דבש כת' שלו וקרינן סלו אמ' ר' חנינא צדיקין אוכלין אותו בשלוה‬ ‫רשעים נדמה להן כסלואים‬ It is written, “Bread,” and “oil,” and “honey.” Rabbi Yose said in the name of Rabbi Hanina: for the youth, bread; for the old, oil; for the babies, honey. It is written “quail,” and we read, “quail” (with a samekh). Rabbi Chanina said: the righteous eat it in security, and the evil eat it and it appears to them as thorns. ‫אמ' רב חנן בר רבא ארבעת מיני שלו הן שיכלי וקיכלי פיסיוני וסלו מעליא‬ ‫דכולהו שיכלי גריעא דכולהו סלו כציפרתא הוי ומותבי ליה בתנורא וראבולהוי‬ ‫מלי תנורא ומסקי ליה אתליסר ריפי וההיא תתיתא דכולהי לא מיתכלא אלא על ידי‬ ‫תערובת רב יהודה משתכח ליה בי דני רב חסדא משתכח ליה בי ציבי רבה מיתי‬ 224 ‫ליה צי רא מאגמא יומא חד נפק לא אשכח לאיתויי ליה אמ' איפוק איחזי מאי‬ ‫שמענא סליק לאיגרא שמעיה לינוקא דקאמ' שמעתי ותרגז בטני לקול צללו שפתי‬ 121 ‫אמ' שמע מינה נח נפשיה דרב חסדא ובשביל רבה אכיל תלמידא‬ Rav Chanan bar Rava said, There are four types of quail, and they are: Sikhli, kikhli (partridges), fisioni (pheasants), and slav. Sikhli is the best of them, and slav is the lowest. And it is like a bird, and we put it in an oven, and it swelled up, and it filled the oven, and we placed it on thirteen loaves of bread, and the lowest it was inedible, even with a mixture. Rav Yehudah would find it among his jars. Rav Hisda would find it among his twigs. Rava would bring it to his field laborer. One day he did not come, and he said, “How come?” He climbed to the roof, and he heard a child that said, “I have heard and my stomach trembled” (Hab. 3:16). He said, “Learn from this that Rav Hisda had died, and on account of the master, the student eats.” The broader context of this passage highlights another aspect of rabbinic divinatory reading that is central to understanding it: the close reading and interpretation of texts alongside the affirmation of correct spellings and variants in the physical text itself. The first debate, regarding the correct interpretation (and therefore, vocalization and pronunciation) of a word in Numbers 11:32, sets the stage (vayishtchu vs. vayashchitu). The redactor presents a reading that contrasts with the standard pronunciation and spelling of the Biblical text: when two consonants are switched, or metathesized, the meaning drastically changes. This in itself causes an interpretive difficulty on our end: are the rabbis reading against the grain of an accepted reading, setting up “and they spread” as a straw man reading to then be cast down, or doing something else entirely? As the passage continues, this problem is never totally resolved. 121 The text of bYoma is quoted from Ms. Munich 6, which is identified as the base manuscript for this tractate by the Historical Dictionary of the Hebrew Language. 225 Two reasons are offered for reading the passage in question as “slaughter” rather than “spread abroad”: Resh Lakish, a Palestinian Amora, suggests that it refers to the enemies of Israel, who have earned slaughter for themselves. Rabbi Joshua ben Qarhah, a Tanna, has a very different opinion. He believes that the slaughter refers to the quail that have been gathered in the preceding verse, rather than a human enemy. This harmonizes the accounts of the manna and the quail, proving that something requiring slaughter went down with the manna, and that it was itself properly killed and prepared. Rabbi Judah disagrees with this argument: he says that the word should be read as “spread across,” rather than “slaughter,” because the information contained in “slaughter” is already conveyed in Psalm 78:27 and Deuteronomy 12:21. “Spread across,” then, is the correct reading, and it should be understood as describing the way that the quail descended: in layers, flying down from the sky. This is an image of abundance and divine intervention. These discussions are based on a common feature of ancient manuscripts, and a common scribal error: the switching of two letters that are situated next to each other.122 This is especially common if such an error would result in a more common word, which, I believe, is the case in this instance. Words from the root sh-ch-t, meaning slaughter, are more common than sh-t-ch, meaning “spread.”123 These discussions are highly relevant to the next portion of the text. Rather than an issue involving similar spellings and different pronunciations, the next crux involves the identical pronunciation of a word spelled two different ways. This word is ‫( שליו‬slav) in the biblical text, which the rabbis identify with their own Aramaic word, ‫( סליו‬slav). Rabbi Chanina gives the first 122 Dickey, Ancient Greek Scholarship, 361. 123 Koehler and Baumgartner, Dictionary, 964; Brown, Driver and Briggs, 1008. 226 explanation for this discrepancy: the biblical word, spelled with a sin, is related to the root shin- lamed-vav, which means security and safety. The rabbinic word, on the other hand, is related to ‫סילון‬, silon, which means thorn or rod. 124 These two spellings highlight the miraculous nature of the quail for Rabbi Chanina: it was safety and security for the righteous and punishment for the wicked, containing, as it did, both natures, based on the sonic ambiguity of its spelling. The sugya’s narration of bibliomancy comes at the end of this discussion, which includes the varying types of quail and their merits and disadvantages. Rav Yehudah, Rava, and Rav Hisda are all identified as eating quail, and Rav Hisda even, according to the text, brought some to his laborer in the field every day. When Rav Hisda neglects to bring the laborer his daily meal, he climbs the roof (whether this is in search of his master, or related to another activity is unclear). There he hears a child quoting the Bible, and from the verse that is given—Habakuk 3:16—he learns that Rav Hisda has died, and that he shall no longer receive his daily quail. This act of bibliomancy is less purposeful than the previous ones. The worker is not a rabbinic subject, and he does not actively seek out the counsel that a child’s verse might provide. He may even have been doing something else entirely when he happened to hear it. Even though it deviates from some of the rubrics that we have seen established so far, the core principles of bibliomancy remain. A randomly selected portion of text is used to answer a question. In order to answer that question, the text must be appropriately interpreted. That interpretation gives either an accurate accounting of events, or the accounting that is appropriate for a certain moment in time: in this case, we are to assume that Rav Hisda has actually died. The entire narrative, short as it is, comes in service of another amoraic dictum: “On account of the master, the student eats.” 124 Sokoloff, Dictionary, 804. 227 The sugya continues in much the same manner. The thematic unifier, it seems, is miraculous substances that come from both the earth and heaven; after the discussion of quail, the stam takes on the question of dew. It is the interpretive methodology that is used to arrive at an understanding of the dew that proves important. The manna is described in Exodus 16:14 as mechuspas, ‫מחוספס‬. This is a problematic word for the rabbis, who seem to not understand it: Resh Lakish relates it to pisat hayad,‫פיסת היד‬, the palm of the hand, while Rabbi Yochanan uses gematria to assign the word a value of two hundred and forty-eight, which is, in other parts of the Talmud, shown to be the number of limbs in the human body. 125 According to him, this means that it is something ‫נבלע‬, nivla’, or swallowed, by the limbs of the body (many modern translations use “absorbed”). The stam interjects that the numerical value of ‫ מחוספס‬is far more; Rav Nachman bar Yizchak comes to the rescue, showing that if the word is spelled defectively— that is, without the vav of the shooreq vowel that is present in the manuscripts—the numeric value comes out correctly. These types of distinctions continue: as above, words that are spelled and understood a certain way are disputed and corrected. Later on, the same is done for ‫אבירים‬/ ‫ אברים‬abbirim/evarim. These techniques are highlighted not for the purpose of attempting to explain the sugya in excruciating detail, but rather to emphasize that certain types of reading practice seem to cluster together. Bibliomancy and the detailed, close, and critical reading of texts, focused on spelling, exacting interpretation, and counting, are intertwined here. The broad umbrella of divination— the search for extraordinary knowledge, predicated on the assumption that it is available in certain texts—becomes a very applicable term for many of these practices that have heretofore been considered solely interpretive and literary. 125 Including one place we have seen: bEruvin 54a. 228 BGittin 56a The next bibliomancy narrative appears in bGittin 56a, which is ostensibly about divorce writs. It is in a larger cycle of stories about the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, which Jeffrey Rubenstein has written about extensively. 126 Before spending more time on the setting and background of this story, I will relate it in its entirety. ‫שדר עלויהו לנירון קיסר כי את' שדא גירא למזרח נפל בירושלם שדא למערב‬ ‫אתא נפל בירוש' א'ל לינוקא פסוק לי פסוקך אמ' ל' ונתתי נקמתי באדום ביד עמי‬ ‫ישר' ועשו באדום באפי ובחמ'תי אמ' קוד' בר' הו' בעי לאיחרובי ביתיה וכפורי‬ 127 ‫ידיה בההוא גברא בעי ערק ואזל איגייר ונפק מיניה ר' מאיר‬ He [God] sent Nero the Caesar against them [Jerusalem]. When he was coming, he shot an arrow to the east, and it came to fall in Jerusalem. To the west—it came to fall in Jerusalem. He [Nero] said to a child, “Verse me your verse!” and he said to him, “And I have given my vengeance in Edom by the hand of my people Israel [and they will act in Edom according to my anger and my fury, and they shall know my vengeance. Oracle of God, YHWH]” (Ezekiel 25:14). He said, “The Holy One, Blessed be He, is seeking to destroy his house, and is seeking to atone his hands by means of this man!” He fled, left, and converted, and Rabbi Meir was descended from him. Prior to the episode of bibliomancy that interests us, Nero is portrayed as engaging in a practice of belomancy: divination through the shooting of arrows, and the interpretation of where they land. The meaning here seems relatively obvious. The arrows all land in Jerusalem, signifying divine favor on Nero’s attempt to conquer the city. The second divination, however, scares him. He finds a child to provide a verse for him. The verse seems obvious enough, and the interpretation scares him: Edom is commonly used in rabbinic literature to signify Rome, and 126 Rubenstein, Talmudic Stories: Narrative Art, Composition, and Culture (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999) 139-175. 127 The text of bGittin is from Ms. Vatican 130. Some manuscripts as well as the Vilna edition add an extra line: “He shot arrows to the four winds, and they all landed in Jerusalem.” 229 Nero understands that, even if his conquest of Jerusalem is successful, he is but a pawn in the divine plan. Even more than that, he will have vengeance enacted upon him. Rather than suffer this fate, he converts and becomes the ancestor of a famous rabbi. This episode is a brief moment in a much longer story cycle: some scholars have counted up to twenty-five “stories of destruction” in bGittin 55b-58a.128 The destructions described are not just Jerusalem’s. Tur Malka and Betar are included. The stories span temporal as well as spatial distances. The destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE is central, of course, but the invasion and destruction by the Babylonians is recounted and expanded as well. Because so many stories have been brought together, it is no surprise that many of these episodes have parallels elsewhere in rabbinic literature. The story of Qamza and Bar Qamza, for example, which appears directly before this one in bGittin 56a, is paralleled in Eikhah Rabbah 4:2, and the story of Vespasian’s siege occurs also in Avod d’Rabbi Natan and Eikhah Rabbah 1:5. Our story, however, about Nero, has no parallels. Rubenstein suggests that it either originated as an autonomous source, or, more likely, was composed by the redactors of the Talmud to fit in this specific location. 129 This would fit with a more Babylonian context for bibliomantic traditions. When considered in context, the activities of Nero also serve as an ironic counterpoint to the actions of the sages, and the wealthy men of Jerusalem, in the rest of the pericope. The first story, that of Qamza and Bar Qamza, relates how two enemies, Qamza and Bar Qamza, appeared at a feast in Jerusalem. Bar Qamza was forced to leave, and even though he offered to pay for the entire banquet, he is forced out while the rabbis sit and watch. Bar Qamza then, angry and embittered, informs the emperor that the Jews are plotting against him. The emperor takes the 128 Rubenstein, Talmudic Stories, 140. Rubenstein is here citing Avraham Weiss. 129 Rubenstein, Talmudic Stories, 144. 230 opportunity to test them. The rabbis realize this, but rather than kill the informant, they sit back and let him return to the emperor. This causes him to send Nero against them. 130 Nero, in contrast to the rabbis, acts carefully and decisively, and with divine sanction: he makes sure of the divine will not once, but twice. Even then, in an impossible situation, he manages to make the right choice by converting. 131 Conversely, the rabbis choose to do nothing, and because of them, Jerusalem, Betar, and Tur Malka are destroyed. Rubenstein suggests that this entire story cycle is composed as an extended meditation on ‫ענותנות‬/’anvetanut, or meekness. What is normally a virtue—deference and humility—becomes a liability when the destruction of Jerusalem is at stake. 132 Nero’s consultation of not one, but two different divine oracles, is the appropriate exercise of this quality, and for this he is rewarded by escaping YHWH’s vengeance and becoming a Jew, and the ancestor of an important rabbi. Even aside from this story’s complex redactional and literary setting, the intersection of divination and reading is clear. Nero is presented as a general consulting the divine will prior to embarking on a military endeavor. The resonances between this text and the previously discussed verses of 1 and 2 Maccabees are undeniable. The text presents bibliomancy using the biblical text as a valid form of divination. 133 130 My summary of this narrative comes from bGittin 55b-56a, as well as Rubenstein, Talmudic Stories, 140-141. 131 Rubenstein, Talmudic Stories, 152. 132 Ibid, 150. 133 Rebecca Scharbach Wollenberg suggests in her dissertation that these narratives speak not to the ubiquity of bibliomancy, but rather the lack of physical texts in the elementary education of young children. I disagree with this. First, we have extensive evidence for the use of material texts in ancient elementary classrooms: much of this evidence (admittedly from the Egyptian desert) is covered in Raffaella Cribiore’s Gymnastics of the Mind (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004). I find it highly unlikely that the methods employed in late antique Palestine and Babylonia were radically different, especially when the outcomes seem to have been so similar. Wollenberg, “The People of the Book Without the Book,” 244. 231 This narrative and the end of the previously discussed section, in which Rabbi Yochanan asks a child for a verse before setting out to visit Shmuel, bear a strong resemblance to each other. Both figures are given a verse that, when properly interpreted (and as readers, we are able to know that they interpret correctly, or at least as the deity has intended), stops them from continuing with a certain course of action. 134 One is the action of a Roman general, the other a rabbi; one has immense national consequences; the other, more personal. The evidence from the Babylonian Talmud thus far is showing us the wide range of knowledge for which bibliomantic practices could be utilized. BChagigah 15a-b The last narrative of bibliomancy occurs as the climatic end point of a lengthy narrative regarding Elisha ben Abuyah, a Palestinian sage also known as Acher, or “the other.” Acher’s story has been much studied: articles and books (and even a novel by Milton Steinberg) have been written about him and his supposed apostasy, or his going over to an “evil way of life. The main moment of departure this analysis from prior scholarship is at the climactic moment of this story, when Acher asks children in thirteen different schoolrooms to provide a verse for him to interpret. This moment is not indicative of a school exercise, but rather is a form of divination that exhibits a profound ethical effect on the diviner: Acher, or Elisha. The Acher narrative in b. Hagigah 15a-b takes it start from a tradition in the Tosefta. Four rabbis are said to have “entered the orchard,” and their fates, according to the earlier text, are wildly different. ‫ארבעה נכנסו לפרדס בן עזיי ובן זומא אחר ור' עקיבא אחד הציץ ומת אחד הציץ‬ ‫ונפגע אחד הציץ וקיצץ בנטיעות ואחד עלה בשלום וירד בשלום בן עזיי הציץ ומת‬ '‫עליו הכת' או' יקר בעיני ייי המותה לחסידיו בן זומא הציץ ונפגע עליו הכת' או‬ 134 Stephanie Bolz suggests that the child was consulted in this instance because long distance travel was a major undertaking, and quite dangerous in the ancient world. I think that this is true, but that, like waging war, it also simply fell under the umbrella of activities before which one sought the advice or approval of the gods. 232 ‫דבש מצאת אכול דייך וגו' אלישע הציץ וקיצץ בנטיעות עליו הכתו' אומ' ()[א]ל‬ '‫תתן את פיך לחטיא את בשריך וגו' ר' עקיבה עלה בשלום וירד בשלום עליו הכתו‬ '135‫או' משכני אחריך נרוצה וגו‬ Four entered the orchard: Ben Azzai and ben Zoma, Acher, and Rabbi Akiva. One looked and died, one looked and was stricken, one looked and cut the shoots, and one ascended and descended in peace. Ben Azzai looked and died. About him, the verse says, “Precious in the eyes of God is the death of his faithful” (Psalm 115). Ben Zoma looked and was stricken; about him, the verse says, “Have you found honey? Eat what is sufficient [then be satisfied and vomit it]” (Proverbs 25:16). Elisha looked and cut the shoots. About him the verse says, “Do not let your mouth give your flesh over to sin [nor say before the messenger that it was a mistake. Why should God be angry at your voice and destroy the work of your hands?]” (Ecclesiastes 5:5). Rabbi Akiva ascended in peace and descended in peace. About him, the verse says, “Take me after you, let us run,” (Song of Songs 1). This narrative is the basis of a great deal of metaphysical speculation in the Palestnian and Babylonian Talmudim, especially in the tractate Hagigah, which deals with the laws of Sukkot. When the extended Acher narrative appears in the Bavli, it comes on the heels of a story about ben Zoma’s altered state after his own return, which in turn is placed after a lengthier discourse on the merkavah: the vision of the divine chariot from Ezekiel 1, and the point of departure for much ancient Jewish mystical writing. 136 ‫אחר קצץ בנטיעות ועליו הכתוב או' אל תתן את פיך לחטיא את בשרך ואל תאמר‬ ‫לפני המלאך כי שגגה היא למה יקצף האלה' על קולך וחבל את מעשי ידיך מאי‬ ‫חזא חזא מטטרון דאיתיהיבא ליה רשותא חדא שעתא ביומא למיתב ומיכתב‬ ‫זכוותא דישראל אמ' גמירי דלמעלה לא עמידה ולא ישיבה לא קנאה ולא תחרות‬ ‫ולא עורף ולא עיפוי שמא חס ושלום שתי רשויות יש אפקוה למטטרון מחיוה‬ ‫שיתין פולסי דנורא‬ Acher cut the shoots, and about him the verse says, “Do not let your mouth give your flesh over to sin” (Ecclesiastes 5:5). What is 135 The text of the Tosefta used here is transcribed from the Vienna manuscript. 136 For an introduction to Merkavah writings, see Ithamar Gruenwald, Apocalyptic and Merkavah Mysticism (Leiden: Brill, 2014). 233 this? He saw the angel Metatron, to whom permission was given to sit and write the merits of Israel. He said, “There is a tradition: Above, there is no sitting, no copying, no turning one’s back, and no slumber. However, god forbid! Perhaps there are two powers.” They took Metatron away, and they give him sixty lashes of fire. ‫איתיהיבא ליה רשותא למיקלינהי לזכוותא דאחר יצתה בת קול ואמרה שובו בנים‬ ‫שובב' חוץ מאחר אמ' הואיל ואיטריד ליה ההוא גברא מאידך עלמא ניפוק וניתהני‬ ‫בהאי עלמא‬ Permission was granted to him to erase the merits of Acher. A heavenly voice went out and said, “Return, return, you backsliding children (Jeremiah 3:14)—except for Acher.” He said, “Since this man was banished from that world, he should go and enjoy himself in this one.” ‫יצא לתרבות רעה שאל אחר את ר' מאיר לאחר שיצא לתרבות רעה מאי דכת' גם‬ ‫את זה לעמת זה עשה האלהים אמ' ליה כל שברא הקב'ה ברא כנגדו ברא הרים‬ ‫ברא גבעות ברא ימים ברא נהרות אמ' לו עקיבא רבך לא כך אמ' אלא ברא‬ ‫צדיקים ברא רשעים ברא גן עדן ברא גיהנם כל אחד ואחד יש לו שני חלקים אחד‬ ‫בגן עדן ואחד בגיהנם זכה צדיק נטל חלקו וחלק חברו בגן עדן נתחייב רשע נטל‬ ‫חלקו וחלק חברו בגיהנם‬ Acher went over to an “evil culture.” Acher asked Rabbi Meir after he went over to an evil culture. He said to him, “What does this mean: ‘Even this opposite, this God created” (Ecclesiastes 7:14). He said to him, “All that the Holy One, Blessed be He, created, he created its mate. He created mountains, he created hills. He created seas, he created rivers.” He responded, “Rabbi Akiva, your teacher, did not say this to you. Rather, he said, “He created the righteous, he created the wicked; he created the garden of Eden, he created Gahenna. Everyone has two portions: one in the garden of Eden, and one in Gahenna. A righteous man merits taking his portion and the portion of his friend in the garden of Eden. If he was found evil, he takes his portion and his friend’s in Gahenna.” ‫אמ' רב משרשיא מאי קראה לכן בארצם משנה יירשו וכת' ומשנה שברון שברם‬ Rav Mesharshaya said, “What is the meaning of the verse written about the righteous, “Therefore, in their land, they shall inherit double” (Isaiaha 61:7)? And about the wicked, “And their destruction shall be twice over” (Jeremiah 17:18)? 234 ‫שאל אחר את ר' מאיר לאחר שיצא לתרבות רעה מאי דכת' לא יערכנה זהב‬ ‫וזכוכית ותמורתה כלי פז אמ' לו אלו דברי תורה שקשין לקנותן ככלי זהב וככלי‬ ‫פז ונוחין לאבדן ככלי זכוכית האלהים אפלו ככלי חרס אמ' לו עקיבא רבך לא כך‬ ‫אמר אלא מה כלי זכוכית אף על פי שנשבר יש לו תקנה אף תלמיד חכם אף על פי‬ ‫שסרח יש לו תקנה אמ' לו אף אתה חזור בך אמ' לו כבר שמעתי מבת קול שובו‬ ‫בנים שובבים חוץ מאחר‬ ‫‪Acher asked Rabbi Meir after he went over to an evil culture,‬‬ ‫‪“What does this mean: Gold and glass cannot equal it, and its value‬‬ ‫‪is refined gold?” (Job 28:17). He said to him: “These are the words‬‬ ‫‪of Torah, which are hard to acquire, like gold vessels, and refined‬‬ ‫‪gold vessels, and easy to destroy, like glass vessels.” He said to‬‬ ‫‪him, “Rabbi Akiva, your teacher, did not say it like this! Rather,‬‬ ‫‪“Just as gold vessels and glass vessels, even though they are‬‬ ‫‪broken, they can be fixed, so a sage, even though he as rotted, can‬‬ ‫‪also be fixed.”” He said to him, “So you too, return.” He said to‬‬ ‫‪him, “Except that I have already heard from behind the veil:‬‬ ‫”‪“Return, backsliding children—except for Acher.‬‬ ‫תנו רבנן מעשה באחר שהיה רוכב על הסוס בשבת והיה ר' מאיר מהלך אחריו‬ ‫ללמוד תורה מפיו אמ' לו מאיר חזור לאחורך ששיערתי בעיקבי סוסי עד כאן‬ ‫תחום השבת ואף אתה חזור בך אמ' לו כבר שמעתי מבת קול שובו בנים שובבים‬ ‫חוץ מאחר‬ ‫‪Our rabbis taught: a story about Acher. He was riding on a horse on‬‬ ‫‪the Sabbath, and Rabbi Meir was walking after him to study torah‬‬ ‫‪from his mouth. He said to him, “Meir, go back! I have calculated‬‬ ‫‪with my horse’s steps that we are at the Sabbath border.” He said‬‬ ‫‪to him, “You also, then, return.” He responded, “Haven’t I already‬‬ ‫‪told you? I have already heard a bat qol:137 “Return, backsliding‬‬ ‫”‪children—except for Acher.‬‬ ‫תקפיה ועייליה לבי מדרשא אמ' ליה לינוקא פסוק לי פסוקיך אמ' ליה אין שלום‬ ‫אמר אלהי לרשעים עייליה לבי כנישתא אחריתי אמ' ליה כי אם תכבסי בנתר‬ ‫ותרבי לך בורית נכתם עונך לפני נאם ייי צבאות עייליה לבי כנישתא אחריתי אמ'‬ ‫ליה ואת שדוד מה תעשי כי תלבשי שני וכי תעדי עדי זהב וכי תקרעי בפוך עיניך‬ ‫לשוא תתיפי מאסו בך עגבים נפשך יבקשו עייליה לתליסר כנישאתא פסקו ליה כי‬ ‫האי גונא ינוקא דסוף תליסר אמ' ליה ולרשע אמר אלהים מה לך לספר חקי ותשא‬ ‫בריתי עלי פיך ההוא ינוקא מגמגם בלישניה הוה אישתמע ליה כמאן דקאמ'‬ ‫ולאלישע אמר אלהים שקל סכ ינא קרעיה לתליסר קירעי ושדריה לתליסרי בי‬ ‫מדרשי איכא דאמרי אמ' ליה אי הואי סכינא בידאי קרעתיה ‪138‬‬ ‫‪137‬‬ ‫”‪,” “from beyond the veil.‬פרגוד“ ‪Mss. say‬‬ ‫‪138‬‬ ‫‪The text is reproduced from ms. Munich 6.‬‬ ‫‪235‬‬ He took him to a house of study. He said to a child, “Verse me your verse!” He said to him, “There is no peace, God says, for the wicked” (Isaiah 48:22). He brought him to another synagogue. He [another child] said to him, “For if you wash with natron, and use much soap, your sin is still stained before me” (Jeremiah 2:22). He brought him to another synagogue. He [another child] said to him, “And you, brazen one, what do you do, that you wear scarlet and put on gold, and enlarge your eyes with kohl? In vain you beautify yourself” (Jeremiah 4:30). He brought him to thirteen synagogues. All had versed for him like this. To the last child, he said, “Verse me your verse!” He said to him, “And to the evil one, God says, what is it to you, to tell you my laws?” (Ps. 50:17). This child stuttered with his tongue, and it sounded as if he had said, “God said to Elisha…” He took a knife and he tore him up and sent him to thirteen synaogogues. There are those who say that he said, “If I had a knife, I would tear him.” It is clear from his appearances in the Tosefta, Yerushalmi, and Bavli that Acher, or Elisha ben Abuyah, was a well-known rabbinic figure. Only in the Bavli, however, does he engage in bibliomancy. His narrative in the Bavli, reproduced above, has a parallel in the Yerushalmi, and though they share many features, they are quite different. The Yerushalmi vesion can be found in Y. Hagigah, 2:1 77b-c. Other scholars have expounded on its relationship to B. Hagigah 15a-b, and such discussions need not be rehashed or summarized here. 139 The important distinction, however, is the fact that in the entire Palestinian narrative, there is no mention of bibliomancy: there is no point at which Acher asks a schoolchild for his verse and receives it, despite there being ample opportunity. The Yerushalmi narrator instead has Acher walk past a schoolhouse, and rebuke the children for studying Torah when they should instead be learning the professions of building, carpentry, hunting, and tailoring. This should indicate to us a pattern that is becoming more and more evident: bibliomancy utilizing the biblical text as a form of 139 Perhaps the most important of these studies is Jeffrey Rubenstein’s “Torah and the Sinful Sage,” pp. 64-104 in Talmudic Stories. Also notable is Alon Goshen-Gottstein, The Sinner and the Amnesiac: The Rabbinic Invention of Elisha ben Abuya and Eleazar ben Arach (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000). 236 authoritative, oracular extraordinary knowledge was more commonly practiced, or at least written about as being practiced, in the scholastic, academic milieu of the Babylonian rabbis. Elisha ben Abuya becomes an apostate after his descent from the orchard. It is unclear exactly how the Talmud intends for us to understand “cutting the shoots” in relation to the lengthy narrative that it presents, but the placement of the narrative implies that it has to do with what he saw in the orchard: Metatron sitting and inscribing the deeds of Israel. 140 The sight of an angel sitting in the presence of the Most High confuses Elisha, which is why he asks if there are two powers in heaven. 141 For this reason, Metatron erased Elisha’s merits. It is because of this that he apostasizes: no matter how much Torah he observes, he is incapable of being a rabbinic “sage” anymore. The bibliomantic activity present in the Bavli narrative is notable for several different reasons. Perhaps most noticeably, it occurs not once, but several times: Rabbi Meir takes Acher to thirteen different synagogues (or houses of study), and in each one, a message regarding the sinfulness of the sage, and the utter hopelessness of his situation, is given in the form of a biblical verse. Stephanie Bolz argues that, since Acher is no longer a proper rabbinic figure, his bibliomancy ends “poorly,” or in disaster.142 After the climax reproduced above, Acher dies, and the question of his forgiveness in the afterlife becomes a topic of worry for Rabbi Meir and his wife. 140 Metatron is a complex and problematic figure in Jewish mythology. Even his name generates controversy. See Gershom Scholem, “Metatron,” in Encyclopaedia Judaica. Ed. Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik. Vol. 14. 2nd ed. (Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007) 132-134. A recent piece with significant bibliography is Daniel Boyarin, “Beyond Judaisms: Metatron and the Divine Polymorphy of Ancient Judaism,” Journal for the Study of Judaism in the Persian, Hellenistic, and Roman Period 41:3 (2010) 323-365. 141 For the significance of this phrase, see Alan Segal, Two Powers in Heaven: Early Rabbinic Reports about Christianity and Gnosticism (Leiden: Brill, 1977), esp. 60-73. 142 Bolz, 111. 237 There is more to the requesting and interpreting of verses here than a simple question- and-answer oracle, or even the habitual nature of an oracle consulted while on the road. In fact, this narrative has much in common with the Nero narrative, already discussed. After learning the future from a requested biblical verse, Nero changes his plans, and even converts to Judaism. More than that, according to the Talmudic source, he becomes Rabbi Meir’s ancestor. Acher undergoes a “conversion” of his own after hearing the last biblical verse. In some manuscripts of the Bavli, Elisha ben Abuya becomes “Acher,” “The Other,” when he finds a prostitute and violates the Sabbath. Her response to watching him perform one of the forbidden activities is to say that it can’t be Rabbi Elisha be Abuya, the teacher of Rabbi Meir: “It is another.”143 “Another,” of course, is “acher”/‫ אחר‬in Hebrew, the very name by which the onetime sage is identified throughout the rest of the story. Until the child stutters, and Acher thinks that he hears “Elisha” instead of “the wicked” (‫הרשע‬/harasha), Acher is the only name by which he is known. Even without the narrative of the prostitute, Elisha is not referred to by his name from his ascent to heaven until the child’s stutter. Being invoked in such a way becomes too much for him. This is a subtle move, and one that reveals the intensely literary mind that compiled this story. All the baraitot shared in the middle of the narrative name the main character only as Acher, further underscoring the change that occurs between the sage’s mystic ascent narrative and his subsequent life as an apostate. Even the voice that calls out from heaven, calling God’s children to repentance, refuses to use Acher’s given name: he is no longer Elisha, son of Abuya, but utterly and completely the Other. 143 While this pericope does not appear in the manuscript cited above, it does appear in the standard version of the text, from the Vilna edition. 238 The child’s voice, however, in the last synagogue he visits, does something to him. He stammers, and Acher hears not “the wicked,” but rather his own name, Elisha. The biblical verse is no longer about the worthlessness of God’s giving the laws to the wicked, but rather the vanity of having taught them to Elisha. 144 Something changes in Acher upon hearing this verse, his own name, or both of them, and he goes from apostate to murderer. He either tears the child into thirteen pieces, or threatens to do so. 145 Bibliomancy’s Main Features The rabbis were engaged in a practice of dividing their biblical text into verses, and this practice likely involved the physical marking of scrolls, a process which potentially lies behind the image of God writing the “connectors” and “thorns” of the Torah in bMenachot 29b. The practice of versification was also part of a larger constellation of textual practices amongst late ancient literate elites that involved the counting of and analysis of parts of texts for the discovery of hidden meanings. Stephanie Bolz claims that since Acher is no longer a rabbinic figure, his bibliomancy ends poorly. He not only fails to interpret it (although in this case, it seems relatively certain that the meaning of the given verse was implied, and did not need to be teased out), he also moves even farther from the rabbinic ideal: he loses control and kills a child. It seems to me, however, that the bibliomantic activity had exactly the desired intent. Perhaps the child’s verse is meant to be understood as bringing Acher back into his former self as Elisha, and therefore requiring him to account for all his sins. The number of sins, however, is too high, and the strain destroys him. 144 Psalm 50:16-17 ‫אחריך דברי ותשלך מוסר שנאת ואתה פיך עלי בריתי ותשא חקי לספר לך מה אלוהים אמר ולרשע‬ “And to the wicked one, God says, “What is it to you, to tell my laws and raise up my covenant into your mouth? And you have hated my teaching, and cast my words behind you.” 145 It seems possible to me that this ending, in which the body is ripped into thirteen pieces, has resonances with Plutarch’s recounting of the death of Osiris in his body being torn into thirteen pieces. 239 Regardless, it seems relatively clear that bibliomancy is presented as an effective form of divination: whether or not things turn out well for the diviner, the practice “works.” This is not the first time that this type of “conversion” occurs in the Bavli. We have already seen one instance, in the previously discussed Nero narrative of B. Gittin 56a. The following pages show that the intertwining of bibliomantic divination and what we moderns might call “conversion” was not uncommon in the literature of late antiquity. In his Life of Antony, Athanasius outlines a similar phenomenon, and Augustine, picking up on this half a century later, narrates his own first person account of conversion (the first in the West) in an almost identical fashion. Divination is certainly not a sine qua non of rabbinic narrative, but as these texts have shown, bibliomancy was not an unknown feature of rabbinic reading. The practice of searching for extraordinary knowledge in a text carries with it certain assumptions: that that text, at the very least, contains more than what it seems, and that it has a connection to the divine (whether through its own authorship, or some other numinous feature). Both of these assumptions have their formations in rabbinic literature. This does not imply, of course, that there was a stable notion of the biblical text, its origin, its authorship, and its status. It does mean, however, that for the rabbis formulating the bibliomancy narratives in the Bavli, the Torah was a repository of all knowledge, and that the mouth of a child, more often than not, was one of the most important vessels for communicating that knowledge. Keeping in mind all of the aforementioned caveats attending to the formulations of statements about “the rabbis,” or even “rabbinic literature,” what can we say after examining these few instances of bibliomancy? Firstly, the vast majority of them appear in the Babylonian Talmud, and even more than that, seem to cluster around loci of teaching and instruction: 240 synagogues and study houses, or to involve subjects that are themselves associated with teaching and instruction (rabbis, or children of an age to be educated). Bibliomancy seems to have been closely associated with the figures and places of communal, academic reading. Bibliomancy also works: whether or not the extraordinary knowledge that is gleaned from texts is to the diviner’s advantage, the practice itself is, in the Babylonian Talmud, always shown as being effective and correct. Another feature that binds some of narratives together is the use of children in divination. Sarah Iles Johnston has written on the use of children in ancient divination, starting, at least as far as can be told from Greek and Latin sources, in the first century BCE. 146 It was a particularly common practice: children were seen as fitting vessels for divine knowledge for various reasons. Johnston reminds us that purity was not the issue at stake here: divination typically occurred in a state of purity regardless, and the child’s purity was part of standard operating procedure. 147 Rather, it is the child’s artlessness, according to ancient authors like Iamblichus and Olympiodorus, that makes them such elements of divinatory practice. 148 This makes the child a good “randomizing device,” or element that ensures the questioner of the truthfulness of the divination and knowledge procured. 149 Another crucial feature of all these narratives is the terminology used for the portion of text utilized in divination. As noted earlier, the word that the rabbis use for a verse is pasuq, from a root meaning “to pluck,” “to separate,” or “to divide.” In the context of our earlier discussion, Johnston, Sarah Iles, “Charming Children: The use of the child in ancient divination.” Arethusa 34:1, 2001 (97- 146 117). 147 Ibid, 107. 148 Iamb. Myst. 3.24 (157.16-20); Olympiod. In Alc. P. 8. Citations are from Johnston, “Charming Children,” 107. 149 Johnston, “Charming Children,” 110. 241 it also indicates the actual process of dividing text into verses: in Bavli Megillah 22a and Taanit 27b, for example, “poseq” clearly means to divide up the text. In the light of the foregoing bibliomantic narratives, I posit that the verbal form of this root can take on a highly specialized, technical meaning in certain contexts. When the infamous apostate goes up to young children in synagogues or study houses and demands that they “p’soq li psuqkha,” it is traditionally translated as “Tell me your verse!” but this doesn’t quite capture the cognate accusative: it is closer to “verse me your verse.” The word choice is significant, and points to a related constellation of terms that are commonly used in both bibliomancy and text-critical reading. A word that can mean a discrete unit of text—pasuq—and even the process of dividing up the text into those discrete units— lifsoq—can also mean a divinatory process that involves that text—p’soq. Such usage has parallels in Greek terminology. Προγράφω, for example, can mean “to write as a public notice,” or “to copy out.”150 It also, however, has a very technical, divinatory meaning, especially as Paul uses it: it can mean “to write before,” as in, to write something with foreknowledge, for the purpose of prophecy (as in Galatians 3:1). 151 Peter Struck argues that much of what we think of as ancient scholarly practice regarding text—the reading of allegory, the creation of symbols, and yes, the division of text into discrete parts for interpretation—originated with religious practices. 152 What we are seeing here is part and parcel of the same phenomenon. The textual practice of the late antique Palestinian and 150 Henry J Liddell and Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, 1473. 151 For more on the use of προγρἀφω in these two senses, see Heidi Wendt, “Galatians 3:1 as an Allusion to Textual Prophecy,” Journal of Biblical Literature 135:2 (2016) 369-389. 152 Peter T. Struck, Birth of the Symbol: Ancient Readers at the Limits of Their Texts (Princeton, N.J., 2004), 1. 242 Babylonian rabbis was, if not constantly oriented toward the divine, certainly rooted in it. The fact that the Bible contains divine knowledge should not be taken for granted. Nor should we assume that they took the text itself for granted: its letters, symbols, divisions, lacunae, and irregularities were wellsprings of interpretive imagination and close reading just as much as the text’s poetry and grandeur. Both, however—the divine knowledge the Bible contained, and the ordered representation of its text—came about as a result of close, careful reading practices, performed constantly and repeatedly over the centuries by readers from the earliest days, through the medieval Masoretic period, and even the present day. The process by which the practice of certain readers became the dominant mode for reading certain texts written by Jews is a crucial and fascinating historical question—and one that this dissertation will not be able to treat in any great detail.153 As a gesture towards an answer, however, it seems clear that it was the consonance of the reading practices of late ancient Babylonian and Palestinian rabbis with the reading practices of other contemporary writer-intellectuals that gave them purchase. Moses might not have been Homer, and the Hebrew Bible not the Iliad or Odyssey, but the readers of both were, if not reading together, at least doing so side by side. 154 IV. Christian Bibliomancy in Late Antiqity The use of the biblical text as a locus of divinatory activity has a long tradition not only among Jewish religious specialists, but Christians and Christ-followers (and likely others) as well. Paul himself makes reference to this practice; Heidi Wendt has suggested that Galatians 153 Rebecca Wollenberg has begun to treat this question in her dissertation (The People of the Book without the Book, dissertation, University of Michigan, 2014). Talya Fishman also tries to examine this, as it relates to the Babylonian Talmud, in Becoming the People of the Talmud: Oral Torah as Written Tradition in Medieval Jewish Cultures (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011). 154 We have seen much of this in the world of Maren Niehoff: Jewish Exegesis and Homeric Scholarship in Alexandria (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011). 243 3:1b, traditionally translated as, “You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly exhibited as crucified!”155 is better understood as a reference to textual divination: “You unknowing Galatians! Who has bewitched you, you to whom (or for whom), before your very eyes, Jesus Christ having been crucified was forewritten?”156 Paul is referring, Wendt argues, to the foretelling of Christ that is present in the Judean holy writings. Other examples of Christians using texts that appear in the New Testament and Hebrew Bible as divinatory texts appear in the sortes tradition. The sortes tradition itself is quite ancient: Cicero mentions it in De Divination when he describes the origins of the oracle of Fortuna Primageneia: sacred lots were found in a well near the temple of Fortuna Primageneia in Praeneste, and placed in a box made from a sacred oak tree. 157 These sacred lots can be inscribed with phrases, and chosen through a process of throwing dice, or some other random selection process.158 William Klingshirn has shown that various biblical books, especially in late ancient Gaul, were the subject of “sortilogical” techniques: Gregory of Tours, for example, cries out against them.159 David Frankfurter refers to writing and textual divination as “traditional divination technologies” in the practice of divination in Egypt. 160 He looks at the Sortes 155 NRSV. οἷς κατ’ ὀφθαλμοὺς Ἰησοῦς Χριστὸς προεγράφη ἐσταυρωμένος 156 Heidi Wendt, “Galatians 3:1 as an Allusion to Textual Prophecy,” 379. 157 Cicero, De Divinatione 2:85-86 William Klingshirn, "Christian Divination in Late Roman Gaul: the Sortes Sangallenses," in Mantikê: Studies in 158 Ancient Divination, ed. Sarah Iles Johnston and Peter T. Struck (Leiden, 2005), 99-128. 159 Ibid, 100. 160 David Frankfurter, “Voices, Books, and Dreams: The Diversification of Divination Media in Late Antique Egypt,” in Mantike: Studies in Ancient Divination, Religions of the Greco-Roman World 155, ed. Sarah Iles Johnston and Peter Struck (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 233-54, 238. 244 Astrampsychi and argues that they stand alongside the books of Homer, or the Bible, as texts in which extraordinary knowledge might be found. Athanasius’ Vita Antonii Beyond these broader trends in the history of textual divination, however, there are several moments of distinct bibliomantic practice that bear obvious and important similarities to the rabbinic bibliomancy narratives already discussed. The first, and perhaps more foundational of these, is found in the Vita Antonii, the hagiography of St. Anthony of Alexandria written by Athanasius, the bishop of the same. The Vita Antonii is considered a foundational text for the emerging practice of hagiography. Many of the themes and tropes apparent in this text form the basis for later saints’ lives. The most important of these in many respects, of course, is the rejection of worldly wealth and the turn to the desert. The manner of Antony’s rejection of the world is what concerns us here. It does not come about solely as the result of a lengthy period of internal self-examination and reflection, but rather because of a biblical verse that he happens to hear at random. I reproduce the text of the relevant section in full, along with my own translation. Μετὰ δὲ τὸν θάνατον τῶν γονέων, αὐτὸς μόνος κατελείφθη μετὰ μιᾶς βραχυτάτης ἀδελφῆς· καὶ ἦν ἐτῶν ἐγγὺς δέκα καὶ ὀκτὼ ἢ καὶ εἴκοσι γεγονώς, αὐτός τε τῆς οἰκίας καὶ τῆς ἀδελφῆς ἐφρόντιζεν. Οὔπω δὲ μῆνες ἓξ παρῆλθον τοῦ θανάτου τῶν γονέων, καὶ κατὰ τὸ εἰωθὸς προερχόμενος εἰς τὸ κυριακόν, καὶ συνάγ knowων ἑαυτοῦ τὴν διάνοιαν, ἐλογίζετο περὶ πάντων, πῶς οἱ μὲν ἀπόστολοι πάντα καταλιπόντες ἠκολούθησαν τῷ Σωτῆρι, οἱ δὲ ἐν ταῖς Πράξεσι «πωλοῦντες» τὰ ἑαυτῶν «ἔφερον καὶ ἐτίθουν παρὰ τοὺς πόδας τῶν ἀποστόλων» εἰς διάδοσιν τῶν χρείαν ἐχόντων, τίς τε καὶ πόση τούτοις ἐλπὶς ἐν οὐρανοῖς ἀπόκειται. Ταῦτα δὴ ἐνθυμούμενος εἰσῆλθεν εἰς τὴν ἐκκλησίαν, καὶ συνέβη τότε τὸ εὐαγγέλιον ἀναγινώσκεσθαι καὶ ἤκουσε τοῦ Κυρίου λέγοντος τῷ πλουσίῳ· «Εἰ θέλεις τέλειος εἶναι, ὕπαγε, πώλησον πάντα τὰ ὑπάρχοντά σου, καὶ δὸς πτωχοῖς, καὶ δεῦρο ἀκολούθει μοι, καὶ ἕξεις θησαυρὸν ἐν οὐρανοῖς.» Ὁ δὲ Ἀντώνιος, ὥσπερ θεόθεν ἐσχηκὼς τὴν τῶν ἁγίων μνήμην καὶ ὡς δι’ αὐτὸν γενομένου τοῦ ἀναγνώσματος, ἐξελθὼν 245 εὐθὺς ἐκ τοῦ κυριακοῦ τὰς μὲν κτήσεις ἃς εἶχεν ἐκ προγόνων (ἄρουραι δὲ ἦσαν τριακόσιαι εὔφοροι καὶ πάνυ καλαί), ταύτας ἐχαρίσατο τοῖς ἀπὸ τῆς κώμης, ἵνα εἰς μηδ’ ὁτιοῦν ὀχλήσωσιν αὐτῷ τε καὶ τῇ ἀδελφῇ. Τὰ δὲ ἄλλα ὅσα ἦν αὐτοῖς κινητά, πάντα πωλήσας καὶ συναγαγὼν ἱκανὸν ἀργύριον, διέδωκε τοῖς πτωχοῖς, τηρήσας ὀλίγα διὰ τὴν ἀδελφήν. Ὡς δέ, πάλιν εἰσελθὼν εἰς τὸ κυριακόν, ἤκουσεν ἐν τῷ εὐαγγελίῳ τοῦ Κυρίου λέγοντος· «Μὴ μεριμνήσητε περὶ τῆς αὔριον», οὐκ ἀνασχόμενος ἔτι μένειν, ἐξελθὼν διέδωκε κἀκεῖνα τοῖς μετρίοις.161 And after the death of his parents, [Antony] was left alone with one younger sister. And he was near eighteen or twenty years in age, and he took care of the house and his sister himself. Not even six months passed away from the death of his parents when he went, as was his custom, to the Lord’s place, gathering his own way of life, he thought on all things, how the Apostles, leaving everything, followed the savior, and how in the Acts, “they sold” their own things “and brought and lay them at the feet of the Apostles,” for donation to those having need, and of what sort and how great a hope was set aside for them in the heavens. Thinking deeply over these things, he entered the church, and it happened that the gospel was being read aloud, and he heard the Lord saying to the wealthy man, “If you desire to be perfect, go out, sell all your possessions, and give to the poor, and then follow me, and you shall have a treasure in the heavens.” And Antony, just as if he had had from God a memory of the saints, and as if the reading had occurred on his account, immediately left the place of the Lord and gifted those things which his ancestors had held (they were three hundred acres, very productive and entirely beautiful) to those from the village, in order that they should no longer be a hindrance for himself and his sister. And the other things of theirs, which were movable, having sold everything and gathered the appropriate money, he gave it to the poor, keeping a little for the sake of his sister. And again, entering the Lord’s place, he heard in the the Lord say in the Gospel: “Do not worry about tomorrow.” Being no longer able to remain, he left, and gave those things to the poor as well. This narrative is relevant to the argument on several counts. Firstly, Antony does not simply wander into the church and hear the reading which causes him to renounce the world. This is perhaps the standard format of reiterating the story, but Athanasius makes it quite clear that 161 The text is the critical edition of Bartelink: G.J.M. Bartelink, Athanase d'Alexandrie, Vie d'Antoine (Sources Chrétiennes 400. Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 2004): 124-376. 246 Antony had been thinking deeply on the act of renunciation that the Apostles themselves had performed in order to follow Jesus. He was in fact “thinking deeply” over these things when he entered the church. The expectation that a holy text contained extraordinary knowledge, and that this knowledge was accessible to humans in certain ways, was certainly not out of the question for late ancient figures like Antony. Athanasius, too, as the author of this text, is the figure that clearly lies behind this assumption. Antony is not presented as walking into the church without any expectations: he is shown as meditating on the consequences of renunciation prior to doing so. It is the context of the Apostles giving up their possessions in Acts 4:35 that makes the Gospel passage into a divinatory command. It is the practice of pre-meditation, then, that allows the hearing of the text to become divinatory. This is strengthened by the fact that the bibliomantic practice occurs not once, but twice. After understanding Matthew 9:21 in the context of Acts 4:35, Antony gives up most of his worldly possessions, keeping some for the sake of his younger sister. He hears another lectionary, however, that causes him to give away even that: Matthew 6:34, “Do not worry about tomorrow.” This text is clearly interpreted by Antony in the light of Acts 4:35: by keeping certain possessions as a safeguard against his sister living in poverty, Antony was living in contravention to the Gospel’s command. Only when he gave up everything could he be “perfect,” τελείος. This passage from Athanasius’ Life of Antony underscores some of the assumptions that lay behind bibliomantic activity in the ancient world, and shows us that they were present amongst not just Jews, but Christians as well. Some of the more divinatory aspects of the practice are perhaps lost—we could also rather easily understand this passage as evidence of a form of 247 ethical reading—but the manner in which this narrative was taken up and expanded by Augustine highlights the divinatory method rather plainly. Augustine’s Confessions Augustine makes use of Antony’s own narrative in the famous scene in the garden. His usage of Antony’s “conversion,” which we have termed a bibliomantic narrative, is highly self- conscious. In Book VIII of the Confessions, chapter 6, he tells us of two of the emperor’s comrades wandering into the home of two of “your servants, poor in spirit” (servi tui, spiritu pauperes) and finding a copy of the Vita Antonii. One of them reads it, meditates on it, and “is inflamed by it.” There is a certain logic that undergirds interactions with texts, and that reading, and being changed because of that reading, was a practice that had purchase in late antiquity. Confessions VIII, 12-13, is one of the best-known “conversion” narratives in early Christianity. Paula Fredriksen has shown that later understandings of Augustine’s conversion have been read back onto Acts’ narration of Paul’s “change of heart,” and even into his letters. 162 As a moment that stands at the center of the history of ideas like “self” and “consciousness” in much of the West, it has received an enormous amount of scholarly attention. The self-conscious way in which Augustine models himself on Antony here, and even the divinatory nature of the reading practice, have been noted before, as have the similarities that this moment bears to some of the rabbinic narratives earlier discussed. 163 It is the combination of these things, however that make this such a compelling text, and so revealing for broader practices of divinatory reading in late antiquity. I quote the passage in full, so that all of the elements that we are bringing to bear might be fully considered. 162 Paula Fredriksen, “Paul and Augustine: Conversion Narratives, Orthodox Traditions, and the Retrospective Self” Journal of Theological Studies 37:1 (1986) 4-34. 163 Lieberman, Hellenism in Jewish Palestine, 197. 248 Ubi vero a fundo arcano alta consideratio traxit et congessit totam miseriam meam in conspectu cordis mei, oborta est procella ingens, ferens ingentem imbrem lacrimarum. et ut totum effunderem cum vocibus suis, surrexi ab Alypio -- solitudo mihi ad negotium flendi aptior suggerebatur -- et seccessi remotius, quam ut posset mihi onerosa esse etiam eius praesentia. sic tunc eram, et ille sensit: nescio quid enim, puto, dixeram, in quo apparebat sonus vocis meae iam fletu gravidus, et sic surrexeram. mansit ergo ille ubi sedebamus nimie stupens. ego sub quadam fici arbore stravi me nescio quomodo, et dimisi habenas lacrimis, et proruperunt flumina oculorum meorum, acceptabile sacrificium tuum, et non quidem his verbis, sed in hac sententia multa dixi tibi: et tu, domine, usquequo? usquequo, domine, irasceris in finem? ne memor fueris iniquitatum nostrarum antiquarum. sentiebam enim eis me teneri. iactabam voces miserabiles: quamdiu, quamdiu cras et cras? quare non modo? quare non hac hora finis turpitudinis meae? Dicebam haec, et flebam, amarissima contritione cordis mei. et ecce audio vocem de vicina domo cum cantu dicentis, et crebro repentenis, quasi pueri an puellae, nescio: tolle lege, tolle lege. statimque mutato vultu intentissimus cogitare coepi, utrumnam solerent pueri in aliquo genere ludendi cantitare tale aliquid, nec occurebat omnino audisse me uspiam: repressoque impetu lacrimarum surrexi, nihil aliud interpretans divinitus mihi iuberi, nisi ut aperirem codicem et legerem quod primum caput invenissem. audieram enim de Antonio, quod ex evangelica lectione, cui forte supervenerat, admonitus fuerit, tamquam sibi diceretur quod legebatur: vade, vende omnia, quae habes, da pauperibus et habebis thesaurum in caelis; et veni, sequere me: et tali oraculo confestim ad te esse conversum. itaque concitus redii in eum locum, ubi sedebat Alypius: ibi enim posueram codicem apostoli, cum inde surrexeram. arripui, aperui et legi in silentio capitulum, quo primum coniecti sunt oculi mei: non in comissationibus et ebrietatibus, non in cubilibus et inpudicitiis, non in contentione et aemulatione, sed induite dominum Iesum Christum, et carnis providentiam ne feceritis in concupiscentiis. nec ultra volui legere, nec opus erat. statim quippe cum fine huiusce sententiae, quasi luce securitatis infusa cordi meo, omnes dubitationis tenebrae diffugerunt. When truly, a lofty thought from the secret depths drew up and amassed all my misery within sight of my heart, a huge storm arose, bearing an enormous shower of tears. And then, in order that I might pour forth completely, with my own voice, I rose up from Alypius—it was suggested to me that solitude is more appropriate for the business of weeping—and I withdrew more remotely, so that even his presence would not be able to be burdensome to me. 249 So I was at that time, and he sensed it: for something which I do not know, I think I had spoken, in which the sound of my voice appeared also pregnant with tears, and this I had stood up. Therefore he remained where we were sitting, totally at a loss. And I, I threw myself down underneath a certain fig tree, I know what in what matter, and allowed free rein to my tears, and the rivers of my eyes rushed forth, an acceptable sacrifice to you, and not with these very words, but in this manner, I spoke many things to you: “And you, lord, how long? How long shall you be angered at the end? Remember not our ancient iniquities.” For I felt that that I was bound by them. I threw up miserable cries: “How long, how long, tomorrow and tomorrow? Why not now? Why is there not in this hour an end to my disgrace?” I spoke these things, and I was weeping with the most bitter contrition of my heart. And behold, I heard a voice from a nearby house speaking, chanting, and often repeating—either of a boy or a girl, I know not—“Pick up, read! Pick up, read!” At once, my face was changed, I began to consider intently whether children were in the habit of singing such words in any type of game, nor could I remember if I had heard the like anywhere: so, I arose, with the vigor of my tears suppressed, interpreting it in no other way than to be commanded from heaven to open the book and to read what first chapter I might find. For I had heard about Antony, who had arrived during the reading from the gospel, was warned, just as if what was read were said to him: Go, sell all that you have, give to the poor and you shall have treasure in the heavens, and come, follow me.” And by such an oracle he was immediately turned to you. And so inflamed, I returned to the place where Alypius was sitting: for there, I had left the bak of the apostle, when I had gotten up from that place. I grabbed hold of it, I opened it, and I read in silence the chapter on which my eyes were first thrust: “Clothe yourself not in feasting or drunkenness, not in sex and impurity, not in competition and rivalry, but rather with the lord Jesus Christ, and do not make a provision for the flesh, for the fulfilling of desires. I wished to read no more, nor was there need. For instantly, you see, just with the end of this sentence, as if by a light of security infused into my heart, all darkness of doubt diffused. Several elements of this text resonate with what has been previously discussed. First, Augustine poses a question to the deity. This might be entirely rhetorical—and in fact, surely is: the text of the Confessions is rife with second-person direct pleas to God, interspersed throughout the narrative framework. This is, of course, what makes the text a “confession.” The rhetorical 250 techniques present in Augustine’s work are studied elsewhere. Regardless of the question’s rhetorical value, however, the narrative arc of the scene, at its core, consists of a question posed to a deity, and an answer provided through divination. This is recognizable not only in most of the rabbinic narratives already discussed (particularly involving Nero and Acher), but also from a host of literature across the ancient Mediterranean regarding the consultation of oracles. “How long shall you be angered in the end?” Augustine cries out. “Why is there not this hour and end to my disgrace?” The answer comes, as it so often does, from the mouth of a child. This is another aspect of divination broadly, and bibliomancy specifically, seen across the ancient world. Even though the child tells Augustine to pick up the book and read, rather than actually speak out the verse his or herself, the presence of the child in the practice of divination is too important to be overlooked. Again, this is seen in the narratives of Nero and Acher, when the last verse a child studied is (sometimes repeatedly) requested, in order to be interpreted and understood as a divinatory pronouncement. The last feature that figures so strongly in Augustine’s narrative is, of course, the idea of “conversion.” So much of how we conceive of this process—the radical, internal, turning from one way of life to the next—is centered around Augustine’s own narrative that it is difficult to disentangle the story from its aftereffects. The resonances of this last feature with rabbinic literature are also compelling, and, I think, among the most important lessons that we can take away from reading these texts together. Augustine, Acher, and Nero all undergo a radical change of heart after performing an act of bibliomancy with the Hebrew Bible. Acher returns to his former identity as Elisha ben Abuyah (if only for a moment before his death), Nero refuses to attack Jerusalem, and in fact becomes a Jew, and Augustine, in the style of Antony, understands 251 that he must leave his life of pleasure and luxury and turn to one of asceticism renunciation. This is also a feature of ethical reading, which will be discussed in greater depth in the next chapter. It is not insignificant that these two features (the question and and the child) are most obvious in B. Gittin 56a and Haggish 15a-b, which are later narratives, and present in the stammaitic layer of the Talmud. They are products of a religious academic culture that placed a certain amount of emphasis on the presence of extraordinary, divine knowledge in specific texts at the same time as it grappled with its own relationship and inheritance to the broader currents of scholarship in the late antique Greek speaking East. Though Augustine’s Confessions were written in Latin, and far to the West of Rome, both it, and the texts of the Babylonian Talmud are clearly reliant on themes, knowledge, and traditions that are also present in earlier texts, such as the Life of Antony. We are not looking at a direct line of influence—Augustine and the late Babylonian rabbis did not learn bibliomancy from Athansius, who learned it from the books of the Maccabees, and so forth. We are looking at evolutions and crystallizations of practices and traditions that were, if not commonplace, ultimately to be understood as features of the literary, or book-centered world of religious intellectual elites in late antiquity. We can see more evidence of the shared world of divinatory reading practices if we turn to some of the actual practices themselves, as such as the intersection between text-critical and divinatory reading that was discussed earlier. VI. Conclusion One of the most common assumptions about material texts in the ancient world held as true for texts read by Jews as it did for those consumed by Christians, Greek philosophers, and others. Texts were loci of various sorts of divine power: they were numinous, and when read properly, they could be sources of extraordinary knowledge. The ability to read a text properly and extract 252 this extraordinary knowledge—the practice of divination—was closely tied to the process of establishing and examining the text as an object of critical scholarly study. We have closely examined two concrete practices that developed out of this assumption. The first was bibliomancy: the interpretation of (typically randomly) selected verses of a text (typically from books of what became the bible) as personally relevant to the inquirer. This is a common form of divination in later rabbinic literature, and is always depicted as effective. It appears in earlier texts as well, the most obvious being 1 and 2 Maccabees and the divinatory, interpretive literature from Qumran. The second practice might be termed “close critical reading,” or even “literary criticism.” These reading practices are especially typical of reading practices associated with religious elites, and independent religious specialists. The last chapter of this dissertation examines some of these assumptions a little more closely as they appear in three different Babylonian sugyot. Attention to the body, which has remained a crucial aspect of ancient rabbinic reading for us, comes into the forefront again as we examine stories of reading and bodily denial. We will also see the theme of texts, even down to their smallest portions, containing the potential for great change. Reading, like all other practices, was conditioned in and by the body, and as a locus of discussion and debate, reading even the smallest portion of important texts was transformative. 253 HUMBLE AT THE WILDERNESS: READING AS ETHICAL FORMATION CHAPTER FIVE I. Introduction The past four chapters have shown that, for the rabbis, reading was a sensuous, embodied practice. As an exercise that involved the entirety of a reader, both body and intellect, it was capable, as a form of interaction between reader, text, and environment, of completely changing a subject: of turning a regular reader into a rabbi. This assertion has been traced through the performance of one specific type of practice: the division and segmentation of a text, and the resulting forms of reading that arise from it. If the embodied reading of a text can change a reader, so too can the embodied reading of a small part of that text. If the text is the right text—if it is part of the ongoing revelation contained in both the written and oral Torahs—the changes enacted serve to create rabbis and scholars. The broad contention of this dissertation has been that, for the rabbis, all reading was ethical. Whatever else it did—whatever broader field of practice reading was a part of—it was also understood as something that profoundly changed the reader, for good or for ill. Rebecca Scharbach Wollenberg’s recent work has examined some of the negative outcomes of rabbinic reading.1 This chapter takes a more sustained look at the positive outcomes associated with 1 Rebecca Scharbach Wollenberg, “The Dangers of Reading as we Know It: Sight Reading as a Source of Heresy in Rabbinic Traditions,” JAAR 85:3 (2017) 709-745. Wollenberg insists that all references to the reading of “new” texts are presented as sources of heresy in classical rabbinic sources. I think that this is overstating the case, for the most part, but either way, my concern here is largely with texts of the Bible, and the rabbis’ own literary production. 254 reading in Babylonian rabbinic texts: specifically, at acts of reading that by their potency create rabbis and rabbinic scholars. It reads three texts from the Bavli (bEruvin 21a-22b, bEruvin 54b- 55a, and bShabbat 33b-34a) in depth in order to illustrate this process, and combine them with insights from the four previous chapters and texts discussed there, as well as additional Greek language texts from the broader Mediterranean world. Before delving into these texts, it is important to consider what, exactly, is meant by “ethical reading.” “Ethical reading” here follows Kim Haines-Eitzen, who is herself following John Dagenais as he describes the reading of the medieval Libro del Buen Amor, although it is more useful to consider “ethical reading” within the broader category of a Foucauldian “technology of the self.”2 Reading as an “ethical activity” effects a bodily response: for Haines- Eitzen, it is the cultivation, maintenance, and protection of virginity in the letters of Jerome and monastic texts from the Egyptian Desert. 3 The act of reading has a twofold (at least) effect when we consider it an ethical activity. First, and perhaps most obviously, the content of what is read shapes and forms the reader’s subjectivity. Reading about Christ’s abstinence in order to become an ideal Christian virgin makes the reader more like Christ, providing a set of dispositions and ideas which, depending on the theory of the subject a particular text or author has, can shape the reader’s subjectivity in specific ways. This reading does not happen in a vacuum. It occurs in a lived environment that is already enmeshed in the cultural norms and assumptions that the reader 2 Foucault defines a “technology of the self” as practices “which permit individuals to effect by their own means or with the help of others a certain number of operations on their own bodies and souls, thoughts, conduct, and way of being, so as to transform themselves in order to attain a certain state of happiness, purity, wisdom, perfection, or immortality.” Michel Foucault, Technologies of the Self: A Seminar With Michel Foucault, ed. Luther H. Martin, Huck Gutman, and Patrick H. Hutton (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1988), 17. 3 Kim Haines-Eitzen, The Gendered Palimpsest: Women, writing, and representation in early Christianity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 11. Haines-Eitzen uses the formulation of ethical reading provided by John Dagenais, The Ethics of Reading in Manuscript Culture: Glossing the Libro de buen Amor, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994). 255 carries with her, the broad field that Bourdieu referred to as habitus.4 This environment, of course, affects the way what is read is understood—and in turn, the reading then affects the reader. Put another way, ethical reading is the practice of reading that shapes and changes the habitus. Habitus is the set of embodied dispositions that order the way a subject experiences the world: this idea is the central component of Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of practice. II. Rabbinic Ethical Formation Ethical formation involves the training and cultivation of dispositions within the self: the creation of the person into a subject that fits within a culturally determined pattern of “rightness.” There are multiple strategies by which a person might “form” or “cultivate” themselves, many of which fall into categories that we typically associate with “religion.” 5 Rabbinic ethical formation has received some attention in recent years, as a web of dispositions, discourses, and practices that focus on subjection and vulnerability in the face of a teacher, master, ruler, or deity. 6 As the subsequent texts all deal with the formation of the rabbinic subject—or a specific type of rabbinic subject—in some way, it is helpful to go over the scholarship that has proven most influential in this discussion. Jonathan Wyn Schofer’s account of ethical formation in the introduction to The Making of a Sage is the fullest extant description of the relationship between ethics and the subject in rabbinic literature.7 Even though the text that he is working with, Avot d’Rabbi Natan, is difficult 4 Bourdieu, Distinction, 170. 5 These can include practices as wide ranging as education or liturgy; see, for example, Susan Harvey, “Liturgy and Ethics in Ancient Syriac Christianity: Two Paradigms,” Studies in Christian Ethics 26:3 (2013), 300-316. 6 Jonathan Wyn Schofer, The Making of a Sage: A Study in Rabbinic Ethics (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2005); Jonathan Wyn Schofer, “Ethical Formation and Subjection,” Numen 59:1(2012) 1-31. 7 Schofer, The Making of a Sage, 17-22. 256 to place temporally, and at least in part later than the “classic” rabbinic period, his formulation is helpful for understanding how these texts form subjects. 8 He articulates that the attempt to understand the formation of an ethical subject is essentially a Foucauldian project: how is the subject formed through discourses, practices, and institutions? How do these “condition, and are conditioned by, ‘power’?” 9 Ethics, in the classic formulation which Foucault draws upon in the latter two parts of his History of Sexuality,10 is the way the subject is formed through relations with itself. How does the subject choose to act? How are the changes that a subject undergoes conditioned by the subject herself? Ethics, of course, are never fully separate from knowledge—how the subject knows—and relations with other subjects; this is one of many things that makes the study of subjectivity so difficult. Schofer goes on to describe the ways in which these are interrelated in rabbinic literature: Rabbinic subject formation was premised on a particular system of knowledge, which involved the exegesis of texts and the teachings of sages. It was also primarily concerned with males who had entered a “rabbinic” community: while rabbinic texts do construct women in specific and important ways, it is often just that: the construction of a woman in terms of her relationship to a proper rabbinic male subject. Within this framework, Schofer goes on to describe the particularly rabbinic mode of constructing the self as one of “cultivated relations of subordination to external authorities.”11 Many of these relations are described, or even taken for granted, in rabbinic texts, themselves 8 Strack, Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash, 225-227. 9 Schofer, The Making of a Sage, 17. 10 These are The Use of Pleasure and The Care of the Self: Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Vintage Books, 1990). 11 Schofer, The Making of a Sage, 18. 257 produced in complex webs of social, political, and personal relations, most of which are lost to us. Reading is one of several strategies of ethical formation available to rabbis in late antiquity. It is highlighted here as yet another example of the myriad goals rabbis held when they read, or spoke about reading. Of the manifold strategies that late ancient rabbis use to construct a subject that is properly “rabbinic,” ethical reading provides what might be the clearest links to other categories of practice in which the rabbis were engaged: ethical reading variously resembles shades of liturgy, study, and even divination. This is, in large part, because ethical reading is a category of reading practice that focuses more heavily on the effects of reading, rather than on the actual form that the practice takes: regardless of what the reading looks like, it is always in some way ethical. The intersection of reading as a form of subject formation often, if not always, falls within the broad discursive field of asceticism in late antiquity: the three passages from the Bavli that I will discuss here can all be understood as partaking of this varied field of practice and discourse. We can understand this partially through the focus on the body that is present in accounts of reading among ascetics. The very act of reading in certain ways is tied to certain bodily habits and dispositions that are themselves often understood to bring about certain changes of affect in the subject. When Jerome tells Eustochium, in Epistle 22,12 to “read often, and learn all [she] can…and let the sacred page be a pillow for [her] drowsing head,” he is doing more than encouraging her to be an educated, literate woman. Telling her to read herself, holding the book (and it is a book—the word he uses is “codex”), is a striking image. Rather than being read to by a slave, like the wealthy woman she is, or by a teacher like Jerome (who would surely have 12 Crebrius lege et disce quam plurima. Tenenti codicem somnus obrepat et cadentem faciem pagina sancta suscipiat. 258 preferred this above all things), she holds the book and reads it herself. This is an act of subjection and humility: a practice that shapes a disposition of humility within the Christian soul, making the subject into someone totally new—a member of Christ’s new creation. The sheer presence of the text is also important here. By going to sleep with the codex, Eustochium ensures that it remains ever near her, present and waiting for her the moment that she wakes up. This passage also highlights that ethical formation is not entirely internal: it relies on a host of interacting axes, including gender, religion, and class, as highlighted in this short passage. Asceticism is a constant theme in the study of ethical formation in late antiquity.13 Many scholars following in the wake of Foucault have used early Christian ascetic literature as a prime locus for exploring the various forces that constitute the subject, and the history of understanding the construction thereof. 14 Asceticism is a prominent feature of late ancient Christianity, with an intellectual genealogy that traces itself back to Antony of Alexandria (whose hagiographer Athanasius, in turn, traces it back to the sayings of Jesus).15 Asceticism was an important part of the late ancient religious landscape, and as a visibly identifiable set of practices, it was also a 13 Asceticism is an enormous topic that has been studied by scholars with wide-reaching interests. Of foundational importance is Peter Brown’s The Body and Society: Men, women, and sexual renunciation in early Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998). The critical studies are vast, but pieces that have been particularly helpful or influential include: David Brakke, Athanasius and the Politics of Asceticism (Oxford: Clarneon Press, 1995); Elizabeth A. Clark, Jerome, Chrysostom, and Friends: Essays and Translations (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1979); Elizabeth A. Clark, Ascetic Piety and Women’s Faith: Essays on Late Ancient Christianity (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1986); Susanna Elm, Virgins of God: The Making of Asceticism in Late Antiquity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994); Sydney Griffith, “The Hermeneutics of Early Syrian Asceticism,” in Asceticism, ed. Vincent Wimbush and Richard Valantasis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002); Teresa Shaw, The Burden of the Flesh: Fasting and Sexuality in Early Christianity (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1998). 14 For a similarly important work that takes this in a slightly different direction, see David Halperin’s Saint Foucault: Towards a gay hagiography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995). See also the work of Niki Clements, who utilizes John Cassian’s writings to trouble Foucault’s account of the subject’s history. 15 Though Antony is often considered the first monk and the first ascetic, however, even Athanasius reveals that there were others living solitary lives devoted to Christ in the desert when Antony chose to renounce his former life. 259 phenomenon with which late ancient Jews would have been familiar. 16 As we move through the Babylonian rabbinic texts that constitute the bulk of this chapter, ascetic themes will continually make themselves known. III. B. Eruvin 21b Some of the most striking images of ascetic reading in later rabbinic literature come in tractate Eruvin, which contains the Bavli’s longest and most sustained meditation on education. 17 Earlier in the tractate, however, is a lengthy passage that treats ethical ascetic reading, and the transformation of the subject that results therefrom. Rava, an Amoraic sage, uses the interpretation of the Song of Songs 7:12-13 as an opportunity to describe the virtue and honor of scholars who engage in Torah study even in the midst of abject poverty. Study among the destitute is contrasted to the way that those dwelling in cities and fine homes—the wealthy— engage in negative activities, specifically robbery, adultery, and vain oathtaking. This entire passage, as well as the passages preceding and subsequent to it, are heavily reliant on biblical intertexts from the Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, and Proverbs. Though the transformation of the subject is perhaps most evident through the interpretation of the Song of Songs, it is no less present in the exegesis of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. The biblical text (Song of Songs 7:12-13) and resulting commentary in question (bEruvin 21b) reads as following, and is reproduced in full in order to make sense of the wordplay. The verses to be interpreted read thus: ‫ נ ְַשכִּ ימָּ ה לַכְ ָּר ִּמים נִּ ְראֶ ה ִּאם פָּ ְרחָּ ה הַ גֶפֶן פִּ ּתַ ח‬:‫פָּרים‬ ִּ ְ‫דֹודי נֵצֵ א הַ שָּ דֶ ה נָּלִּ ינָּה בַ כ‬ ִּ ‫לְ כָּה‬ :‫הַ ְסמָּ דַ ר הֵ נֵצּו הָּ ִּרמֹונִּ ים שָּ ם אֶ ּתֵ ן אֶ ת דדַ י לְָּך‬ 16 For three central works on Jewish asceticism, see: Steven D. Fraade, “Ascetical Aspects of Ancient Judaism,” in Jewish Spirituality: From the Bible through the Middle Ages, ed. Arthur Green (New York: Crossroad Publishing, 1986), 253-288; Michael Satlow, “’And on the Earth You Shall Sleep’: ‘Talmud Torah’ and Rabbinic Asceticism.” The Journal of Religion, 83.2 (2003), 204-225; Eliezer Diamond, Holy Men and Hunger Artists: Fasting and Asceticism in Rabbinic Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). 17 Hirschman, The Stabilization of Rabbinic Culture, 49-64. The earlier parts of this sugya were discussed in detail in chapter 2; the latter parts will be discussed next. 260 Let us go, my Beloved, to the field, and let us lodge in the villages. Let us make our way to the vineyards early in the day, let us see if the vine has flowered, if its blossoms have opened. Are the pomegranates in bloom? Then I shall give my love to you. The Gemara that interprets it follows. ‫דרש רבא מאי דכתי' לכה דודי נצא השדה אמרה כנסת ישראל לפני הקב"ה רבונו‬ 18 ‫של עולם אל תדיננו כיושבי כרכין שיש בהן גלוי עריות ושבועת שוא‬ Rava taught, what does it mean: “Come, my beloved! Let us go to the field.” The congregation of Israel says this before the Holy One, Blessed be He: “Master of the Universe, do not judge me as those who dwell in cities, places that have within them open adultery and vain oaths.” ‫אלא לכה דודי נצא השדה אראך תלמידי חכמי' שעוסקין בתורה על יד הדחק‬ But let us go, my Beloved, to the field, and I will show you wise scholars who engaged in Torah alongside distress. ‫נלינה בכפרים אל תקרי בכפרים אלא בכופרים אראך זרעו של עשו שהשפעת להן‬ ‫כמה טובות והן כפרו בך‬ “Let us lodge in the villages.” Do not read villages (k’farim) but rather unbelievers (kofrim). I will show you the seed of those to whom you have granted abundant goodness, and they do not believe in you. ‫נשכימה לכרמים אלו בתי כנסיות ובתי מדרשות‬ “Let us make our way to the vineyards early in the day.” These are the synagogues, and the places of study/interpretation. ‫נראה אם פרחה הגפן אלו בעלי מקרא‬ “Let us see if the vine has flowered.” These are the masters of scripture. ‫פתח הסמדר אלו בעלי משנה‬ “If its blossoms have opened.” These are the masters of Mishnah. 18 All text from bEruvin is transcribed from the ms Oxford 366, identified as the most reliable manuscript for this tractate. 261 ‫הנצו הרמונים אלו בעלי תלמוד‬ “Are the pomegranates in bloom?” These are the masters of Talmud. ‫שם אתן את דודי לך שם אראך בשבח בני ובנותי‬ “Then I shall give my love to you.” I will show you my glory and my greatness, the praise of my sons and daughters. It starts with a move to the country: “Come,” the sages of Israel say to their god, “Judge me as one who lives in the fields.” The field is here contrasted to the developed urban space, which is a contrast that seems to be located in the biblical text as well. 19 Towns and villages are contrasted with the open country for dramatic effect here: the wealthy engage in sinful practices, and are largely unbelievers. The righteous—here described as “wise scholars,” or “wise students,” perform their study and read their texts amidst oppression and distress, in the countryside rather than the city.20 There is an enormous amount packed into this distinction. The rabbis are making use not only of the biblical distinction between the city and the field, but also a Roman literary topos that identifies the city with corruption and squalor, and the countryside with virtue and dignity. 21 Many scholars have noted that the early members of the rabbinic movement, rather than being Very often, for example, we see the “beasts of the field” (‫ )חיות השדה‬contrasted with domesticated cattle, ‫בהמה‬: 19 Genesis 1:24-26, for example, or Exodus 23:10-11. 20 In biblical and other ancient West Asian texts, the field, whether or not it is cultivated, is not the habitation of the wealthy and learned. Such folk dwell in the city, where there are resources to support a lifestyle that involves reading, study, and culture. See, for example, Exodus 23:10-11, which is an example of the rhetoric of inversion: the beasts of the field and the poor, who dwell in the fields outside the city, are given the property of those who dwell in the city itself once every seven years, in order to feed themselves. 21 This is a distinction that extends far past Roman literature: in Aristophanes’ Clouds, for example, Strepsiades laments about the clash of culture between himself, a countryman, and his urban wife. For a good background with multiple citations, see the volume edited by Irene Sluiter and Ralph Rosen, City, Countryside, and the Spatial Organization of Value in Classical Antiquity (Leiden: Brill, 2006). Particularly helpful in thinking through this rabbinic text were Diana Spencer’s chapter, “Horace’s Garden Thoughts: Rural retreats and the urban imagination” (239-274) and Mathilde Skoie’s, “City and Countryside in Vergil’s Eclogues” (297-326). 262 destitute scholars, were in fact men of means and some wealth, often landed, often with an independent income that came from agricultural production. 22 While these men might have gathered in cities, their concentration seems to be less in large urban areas, and more in smaller towns. The contrast of city and country, of course, is not specific to this passage: it happens throughout Palestinian tannaitic and amoraic literature. Rabbis in Babylonia seem to have been more urbanized, reflecting the urban nature of institutionalized rabbinic academies. In this passage, however, the contrast is doing important work. It sets up study as an opposite to various forms of corruption, tracing them along the same axis as rural and urban life. Because it is decidedly not an “urban” activity in the sense of being something performed by the corrupted inhabitants of towns and villages, reading is an ethical activity that aids moral progress toward virtue. Just as important, though, is the meaning of the word “engage” here. What exactly are the wise scholars who engage in Torah in the midst of “distress” (or oppression) doing? Are the sages studying Torah? Are they reading it? Or does “engage” have a more active sense here—are they living the Torah’s commandments amongst the oppression of the fields? This would include giving charity, as well as teaching those who have no teacher. The point, though, is that the exact meaning is unclear, and given the word’s wide semantic range, this is perhaps intentional. Those who engage in Torah do so in many ways—through its text, through practices, and through 22 In this formulation, late antique rabbis most closely resemble Greek and Roman philosophers: men of means who could afford to spend time reading, studying, and engaging in philosophical practices rather than working the land and overseeing their property themselves. The most classic formulation of this theory can be found in Jacob Neusner’s Judaism: The Evidence of the Mishnah (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981). While I do not wholeheartedly agree with the entirety of Neusner’s argument, I do think that it is more likely than not that most rabbis throughout late antiquity were members of a societal class for which study and engagement with texts and literature would have been, if not completely normal, at least one of several options. The presence of education implies a group of people wealthy enough to both own land, and participate in established Roman discourses surrounding the idyllic nature of life in the countryside. 263 obedience to the deity’s laws. This is important because it gives a sense of studying Torah as part of a larger set of practices of ethical and ascetic formation that cause one to become a rabbinic sage. Though the comparison should not be pushed too far, “to engage” in Torah, ‫לעסוק בתורה‬, fills much of the same semantic field as “practice,” in the sense that it has been used in this dissertation. This passage is not only important for the way it sets up engaging with Torah as an ethical practice, however. It also contains an important formulation of the rabbis’ own literary output. The metaphor of the vineyard here is crucial for understanding how this text positions rabbinic scholarship and biblical interpretation, and the members of their community who are learned in them. The image begins with a vineyard. The vineyard, according to the gemara, represents the “synagogue,” the beit k’nesset. This locale is grouped with the beit midrash, which is traditionally translated as the “house of study,” and understood either technically or abstractly as a rabbinic “schoolroom,” especially in earlier tannaitic literature. 23 This juxtaposition of the vineyard with the schoolroom, and of the longer, homiletic form of the sugya with the finer points of biblical interpretation, argues against an older view that divides the “homiletic” practice of rabbinic interpretation from the “academic,” and shows that, at least in Sasanian Babylonia, the line between the two was much more blurry. 24 The places of study are the vineyards in the rural fields: they are the soil from which those who read and master the Torah grow. 23 For a nuanced discussion of the pairing of the terms “bet midrash” and “bet k’nesset,” see Hayim Lapin, Rabbis as Romans (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012) 79, 272 n. 73. Lapin argues that this is likely a projection of rabbinic authority through the discursive creation of rabbinic communal space into the towns and villages of an earlier period. Lapin identifies the combination of these terms as likely distinctly fifth-century CE: this means that their presence in a teaching ultimately attributed to Rava is likely a Stammaitic intervention. In Rava’s own time and earlier, a bet midrash would quite possibly simply have been a room in a rabbi’s house. Gary Porton, “Rabbinic Midrash: Public or Private.” The Review of Rabbinic Judaism: Ancient, Medieval, and 24 Modern, 5.2 (2002) 141-169. 264 The next level of the metaphor follows naturally. The vines that flower are the “ba’alei miqra,” ‫בעלי מקרא‬, the “masters of scripture.” It is not the Torah that grows from the soil of the academy: the Torah clearly precedes the vineyard. The vineyard is the locale in which those who master the Torah can come into their own. Miqra is another word for “bible” or “scripture,” and importantly, it gives us a notion of how the bible is being understood here. It is scripture: something that is attained primarily through reading. The next segment of the verse being interpreted is about the vine’s blossoms, and whether they have opened. These, according to the gemara, are the ba’alei mishnah: the Masters of the Mishnah, or those who have mastered the Mishnah. The Mishnah scholar is the flower that grows on the vine of the Torah scholar, which itself grows in the soil of the beit midrash. There is a distinct genealogy at play here, and the rabbis are using an agricultural metaphor to make it explicit. The Mishnah and those who know it best are the direct offshoots of the locus of rabbinic education. After questioning the status of the blossoming vines and flowers, the verse from Song of Songs asks whether or not the pomegranate fruit has bloomed yet. The Talmud identifies the pomegranate as the masters of Talmud 25: those who have not only mastered the Mishnah, but who are also able to engage in the dialectic that so characterizes the later layers of the Talmud. There is also a recursive element to the usage of a pomegranate. Pomegranates are common symbols of fruitfulness and fertility in the ancient world, partially because they are filled with an abundance of seeds, each of which is capable of producing still more pomegranates. Masters of 25 Some mss, as well as the Vilna edition, refer to these as the masters of gemara rather than masters of Talmud. The force, I think, is the same. 265 Talmud produce more masters of Talmud—and for all the reader knows, the seeds within the pomegranate could produce more masters of scripture and Mishnah, as well. The terminology used in this passage—“masters of Mishnah” and “master of Talmud”— should be familiar to use from earlier rabbinic texts, specifically those that discuss the division of a text into smaller pieces for the sake of learning it well. In Leviticus Rabbah 3:1,26 learning a small passage well is better than learning a variety of passages poorly: the latter, however, comes with the title of “ba’al,” or “master,” or a specific text. This passage seems to be referencing something similar, although the ba’alim of Mishnah and Talmud in bEruvin are not scholars so eager for glory and title that they forget how to learn well: rather, they are the products of the divine garden that is the rabbinic study house. This passage does several things. It locates the study of scripture, Mishnah, and Gemara in synagogues and study houses, and even conceptually places them in the “fields” and “countryside.” It also identifies them all as generative activities: mastering one leads to either the mastery of the others, or training of masters of the others. This generative quality is emphasized in the final image of the pomegranate, one of the most common symbols of fertility in the ancient world. Reading is a practice that forms not only the acting rabbinic subject, but also future generations. Reading in “fields”—among the agriculture that is so symbolically important in the Hebrew Bible, and likely historically important to the rabbinic movement—produces masters of Torah, mishnah, and gemara that are able to endure, and ultimately behold the splendor of God’s glory. This portion of the passage closes with the last part of the verse: the lover gives his love to the beloved, which the rabbis understand as his “glory.” 26 See pages 48-60. 266 This passage also introduces the Song of Songs as a crucial text for understanding late antique rabbinic asceticism and ascetic reading. Rabbis were not the only religious elites who returned to the Song of Songs time and time again to make sense of an ascetic practice. Jerome famously interpreted it as such in his letter to Eustochium, and Gregory of Nyssa and Origen both wrote commentaries of it that highlight an ascetic way of life. 27 Ephraim Urbach has written about the potential points of contact between rabbinic interpretation of the text and its early Christian exegesis. 28 The ascetic connections are significant, but the actual relationship between the two forms of exegesis is still hotly debated. After a slight digression into the exact nature of certain forms of study and literary production, the gemara spends some time on the figures of Solomon and Qohelet/Ecclesiastes. When Rav Hamnuna asks for the meaning of 1 Kings 5:12, in which Solomon’s numerous compositions are mentioned, the gemara responds that he gave three thousand parables for each word of the Torah, and a thousand and five te’amim, or reasons, for each word of the scribes.29 This is partially a statement of composition, to be sure: but more importantly, it showcases language of abundance and plenitude in the service of Solomon’s wisdom. ‫אמ' רב המנונא מאי דכתי' וידבר שלשת אלפים משל ויהי שירו חמשה ואלף מלמד‬ ‫שהיה דורש שלמה על כל דבר ודבר של תורה שלשת אלפים משל ועל כל דבר‬ ‫ודבר של סופרים היה אומ' אלף וחמש' טעמים‬ 27 For Jerome’s letter to Eustochium, see Ep. 22, CSEL 54. Patricia Cox Miller writes about his ascetic exegesis of the Song of Songs in Patricia Cox Miller, “The Blazing Body: Ascetic Desire in Jerome’s Letter to Eustochium,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 1:1 (1993), 20-45. Gregory of Nyssa’s Homilies on the Song of Songs can be found in Homilies on the Song of Songs, trans. Richard A. Norris, Jr. (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2012). Origen’s commentary on the Song of Songs can be found in The Song of Songs: Commentary and Homilies, trans. R. P. Lawson (Westminster: Newman Press, 1957). For an analysis of the ascetic eroticism of this text, see Patricia Cox Miller, “’Pleasure of the Text, Text of Pleasure,’ Eros and Language in Origen’s Commentary on the Song of Songs,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 54.2 (1986), 241-253. 28 See Ephraim Elimelech Urbach, “The Homiletical Interpretations of the Sages and the Expositions of Origen on Canticles and the Jewish-Christian Disputation,” Scripta Hierosolymitana 22 (1971) 247-275. 29 The word use for “parable,” mashal/‫משל‬, comes from a root meaning “comparison,” and is also commonly translated as “proverb.” For an extensive study of this type of proverb in rabbinic literature, see David Stern, Parables in Midrash: Narrative and Exegesis in Rabbinic Literature (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991). 267 Rav Hamnuna said, “What does this mean: ‘And he spoke three thousand mashal (parables), and his poetry numbered five thousand?’ It teaches that Solomon was constantly expounding on each and every word of the Torah three thousand mashal, and for each and every word of the scribes, he would provide five thousand reasons.” The passage continues with a question from Rava, who asks about the meaning of Ecclesiastes 12:9: ‫ד־דעַ ת֙ אֶ ת־הָּ עָָּ֔ ם וְ ִּאזֵ ֵֶּ֣֣ן וְ חִּ ּקֵָ֔ ר ִּּת ֵ ֹּ֖קן ְמשָּ ִּ ַ֥לים הַ ְר ֵ ִּֽבה׃‬ ַ֙ ַ‫“ וְ יתֵֵ֕ ר שֶ הָּ יָּ ַ֥ה ק ֶ ֹ֖הלֶת חָּ כָּ ֑ם ֶ֗עֹוד לִּ מ‬And furthermore, because Qohelet was wise, he continued to instruct the nation in wisdom, and he listened and tested the foundations of many proverbs.” ‫דרש רבא מאי דכתי' ויותר שהיה קהלת חכם עוד לימד דעת את העם וגו' דאגמרה‬ ‫בסימני טעמים ואסברה במאי דדמי ליה איזן וחיקר תיקן משלים הרבה אמ' רב‬ ‫חסדא אמ' ר' אלע' בתחלה היתה תורה דומה לקופה שאין לה אזנים עד שבא‬ ‫שלמה ותיקן לה אזנים‬ Rava asked, “What does this verse mean: ‘And furthermore, because Qohelet was wise, he continued to instruct the nation in wisdom, etc.’ It means that he instructed them in the simanei te’amim, and explained by means of similarities. “And he listened (izzen) and tested the foundation of many proverbs,” Rav Hisda said in the name of Rabbi Eleazar that at first, the Torah resembled a box without handles (ears/oznayim) until Solomon came and established handles for it. Solomon’s literary activity is discussed in relation to the Torah: not only did he write and expound, he also gave the Torah “handles”—literally ears, named for their shape, and the source of a pun—by which it could be carried everywhere. Wisdom, then, is more than simply acquisition of knowledge: it is the accessibility and transmission of that knowledge, as displayed in Solomon’s efforts to explain the Torah and the mysterious “words of the scribes.” Crucially, however, these handles can also be understood as the te’amim—the marks of accentuation and division by which a solid block of text becomes an intelligible and differentiated grouping of sentences, phrases, or verses. 268 The addition of “markings,” traditionally understood as vowels or cantillation marks, is attributed to Qohelet (who is also traditionally identified with Solomon). The result of Solomon’s literary intervention with the text of the Torah is described as “affixing handles to a basket”: presumably, this metaphor means that his activity made the Torah easier to “handle,” or perhaps even more importantly, to “carry with.” The addition of extra markings—vowels or cantillation marks, one of which makes the text easier to interpret, the other of which makes it easier to memorize—is formulated as a utilitarian, helpful activity. 30 The vocabulary used here is different from the vocabulary used in bMenachot 29b, although it is possible that the “handles” of the Torah—the “simanei te’amim”—are related to the q’sharim, or connectors. Simanei te’amim are traditionally understood as cantillation marks, and this is the phrase that is often used to describe them today in contemporary Judaism.31 What are commonly called cantillation marks, however, are simply the visual markings of the Masoretic accentuation system. 32 This particular name for the markings is also telling. Siman/‫סמן‬, the singular of simanei, is a standard rabbinic word for acceptable divination, shown in the last chapter.33 Te’am/‫טעם‬, on the other hand, contains a wider semantic range, seeming to cluster around a root meaning of “to test”: while it can mean “to taste,” in rabbinic literature it often has the sense of “explanation,” and as a noun, is part of the technical phrase “‫”?מאי טעמא‬34 “What’s the explanation?” The 30 This section of the sugya is discussed in more detail in chatper 4, as it more appropriately falls under the rubric of text-critical reading. 31 Avigdor Herzog, "Masoretic Accents." Encyclopaedia Judaica, edited by Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik, 2nd ed., vol. 13, Macmillan Reference USA, 2007, pp. 656-664. 32 Aron Dotan, "Masorah." Encyclopaedia Judaica, edited by Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik, 2nd ed., vol. 13, Macmillan Reference USA, 2007, 603-656; 612. 33 See pp. 220-222. 34 Sokoloff, Dictionary of Jewish Babylonian Aramaic, 510. 269 simanei te’amim, then, need not necessarily be understood primarily as Masoretic accents (although they certainly come to be understood that way, and it is possible that they even evolve into them): they are the signs of explanation, the divisions by which a text becomes intelligible, and by which meaning is able to be found in it. The connections with the bMenachot passage continue as we move forward in bEruvin. Another interpretation of a verse from the Song of Songs is added on to this one, seemingly with very little connection to the previous passages of the sugya. The text gives a lemma from Song of Songs 5:11, “His locks are curled, black as a raven.” (These are the second two strophes of the verse; the first, “His head is finest refined gold,” is left out: ‫ראשו כתם פז קוצותיו תלתלים שחרות‬ ‫כעורב‬.) The gemara reads thus: ‫קווצתיו תלתלים אמ' רב חסדא אמ' מר עוקבא מלמד שהיה (?כ?)[ד]ורש על כל‬ ‫קוצה וקוצה של תורה תרי תלים של הלכות‬ “His locks are curled”—Rav Chisda said that Mar Ukba said, “This teaches that it is possible to expound from each and every mark of the Torah two heaps of halakhot.” ‫שחורות כעורב במי אתה מוצאן במי שמשכים ומעריב עליהם לבית המדרש רבה‬ ‫אמ' במי שמשחיר פניו עליהם כעורב‬ “Black as a raven”—With whom do you find this? With the one who goes out early and stays out late for their sake in the study house. Rabbah said, “With one who blackens his face like a raven for them.” It is easy to assume that this verse (Song of Songs 5:11) and its interpretation are simply added on because it is from a latter part of the Song of Songs, which seems to be the most important intertext here—but I believe that its presence belies a much stronger, thematic concern with reading as a practice that changes the subject, and strategies that make such reading possible. These concerns likely rely on wider traditions about asceticism, the Song of Songs, and the role of text and reading in the process of ascetic formation. 270 The first interpretation in the text, regarding the heaps of laws that come from a single mark, is familiar to us: it is parallel to the story of God and Moses found in b. Menachot 29b, in which the marks with which God finishes the Torah are explained as sources for “heaps upon heaps” of laws. The wordplay between “lock” and “mark” (both come from the root qof-vav- tzadi) and “curl” and “heap” (both use the root tav-lamed) suggest that this drash’s origin was as an exegesis of this verse, and that its positioning in bMenachot 29b is, in fact, a later intervention: the interpretation involving the “thorn” or “pericope” makes more sense here, following a biblical verse in which a related noun (curl) is present. The absence of the attendant verse from the Song of Songs in bMenachot, even though the verse contains the scriptural prooftexts that connect the “marks” and “heaps” with the person of God, suggest that the story in which it appears is a later composition. There is another instance of wordplay that further connects this passage about ascetic reading to the Song of Songs. It occurs in the next strophe of the verse (“black as a raven”), which is interpreted in a variety of different ways. The first way is significant here, as it has obvious links to asceticism. Being “black as a raven” is identified with a certain type of discipline in study. This interpretation also hinges on a pun: the words for “black” and “dawn” come from identical roots (‫ר‬-‫ח‬-‫)ש‬, although interestingly, the word for “dawn” is not explicitly used here, either in the printed text or the manuscripts. One who “blackens his face” is one who greets the dawn with his study. This verse unites themes of discipline, physical appearance, and subjection within the previously discussed context of ascetic study. The intertexts of this passage are complicated, partially because the biblical passages themselves utilize a significant amount of paronomasia. In the Talmudic text, being dark as a raven is associated with awakening early in the morning in 271 order to study Torah, because the word for darkness, or the “darkened one,”—an important word for the speaking subject of the Song of Songs—comes from a root identical to that of “dawn,” or “morning.” The difficulty of the ascetic life is also the new dawn that breaks forth from a dark night. As noted earlier, the theme of intense eroticism, drawn together by the use of the Song of Songs, that surrounds the performance of ethical reading in this section cannot be ignored. Late ancient rabbis were by no means the only religious figures to turn reading into an erotically charged activity: Origen speaks of it as such, as does Jerome, in his letter to Eustochium. 35 Even more strikingly, both these figures use the Song of Songs as a reference point for the erotically charged relationship between a human and a text that manifests when it is read ethically. Another layer of meaning is present when we consider the biblical intertexts from Ecclesiastes and Song of Songs in this sugya. These texts are traditionally ascribed to King Solomon, a figure that the book of Kings notes for, among other qualities, his great wisdom. 36 Legends and stories about Solomon abound, and a text’s ascription to him was often a marker of its important status, much like a poem’s ascription to King David. One of these traditions regarding David, in fact, appears in this sugya. There are several rabbinic traditions about Solomon’s wisdom, and his literary output. The three texts ascribed to him are said to have been 35 See the material cited above in note 26. 36 Solomon’s prayer for wisdom occurs in 1 Kings 3:9: “‫טוב לרע‬-‫”ונתת לעבדך לב שמע לשפט את עמך להבין בין‬, “And grant, then, your servant an understanding heart, to judge your people, and to understand good and evil.” This verse, and subsequent narratives in the text regarding Solomon’s wise and discerning judgment, form the basis of many traditions surrounding Solomon’s activities. 272 produced at different points in his life: Song of Songs is the poetry of his youth; Proverbs the wisdom of his maturity, and Ecclesiastes the rumination of his old age. 37 In an article and her book on the Jewish literary imagination, Eva Mroczek has pointed out that there are several “different Davids” depending on which grouping of texts and traditions one follows. There is David the king and warrior, and David the poet and composer. 38 Similar analyses can be made for traditions surrounding king Solomon: in Islamic and later Jewish literature, he is the great banisher of demons and controller of spirits, while in the superscriptions of some Second Temple period or earlier texts, he is a prolific author and dispenser of wisdom. 39 37 The attribution of Song of Songs, Proverbs, and Eccleasiates to Solomon occurs most famously in Seder Olam Rabbah 15 and Song of Songs Rabbah 1:5: “But in Solomon’s old age, close to his death, the holy spirit rested on him and he composed three books: Proverbs, Song of Songs, and Ecclesiastes.” The dating of Seder Olam Rabbah is, of course, a complicated issue. It is not normally incorporated in collections of early tannaitic midrash, or even amoraic midrash: as far as we can tell, it seems to have become popular in the eleventh century (Strack and Stemberger, Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash, 326). The Bavli refers to a text, or a set of traditions, called the “Seder Olam” several times (bShabbat 88a, bYevamot 82b, bNazir 5a, bMegillah 11b, bAvodah Zarah 8b, bNiddah 46b), although whether it is referring to some form of the now-extant text, or a set of traditions surrounding the creation of the world and the ordering of years is at this point uncertain. Chaim Milikowsky regards Rabbi Jose ben Halafta as the redactor of this text, placing its composition sometime in the late second century CE (see C. J. Milikowsky, “Seder ‘Olam and Jewish Chronography in the Hellenistic and Roman Periods,” Papers of the American Academy of Jewish Research 52 (1985), 115-39). He makes this claim based on the comparison of several passages in Seder Olam Rabbah and Tosefta Sotah, arguing that SOR must have been redacted prior to the redaction of the Tosefta. This is, of course, highly unlikely. Ben Zion Wacholder suggests that the extant text is post-talmudic (Ben Zion Wacholder, Eupolemus: A Study of Judaeo-Greek Literature (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, 1974), 109 no. 53, apud. Strack and Stemberger 326). The Seder Olam Rabbah citation, however, is not the only one that matters for us. Proverbs and Song of Songs both carry superscriptions that identify them with Solomonic authorship. Song of Songs 1:1 reads, “ ‫שיר‬ ‫השירים אשר לשלמה‬,” “the song of songs, which is Solomon’s.” Proverbs 10:1 bears the superscription, “‫משלי שלמה‬,” “the proverbs of Solomon.” While they need not be original to the poetic text, similar to the David superscription of certain Psalms, it seems relatively clear that the text as the rabbis knew it contained these ascriptions. In that case, then, it is the attribution of Ecclesiastes that becomes most important. Ecclesiastes 1:1 also contains a superscription that can be understood as Solomonic: “‫דוד מלך בירושלים‬-‫דברי קהלת בן‬,” “the words of Qohelet son of David, king in Jerusalem.” If the “King in Jerusalem” is read as an apposition of “Qohelet,” then the only logical option for Qohelet’s identity, at least for late antique rabbis, was Solomon. 38 Eva Mroczek, The Literary Imagination in Jewish Antiquity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 61-85. See also Eva Mroczek, “The Hegemony of the Biblical in the Study of Second Temple Literature” in Journal of Ancient Judaism 6:1 (2015), 2-35, esp. 17-25. 39 For a good background on the varying Christian, Jewish, and Islamic variants of the Solomonic characterization, see Sarit Shalev-Eyni, “Solomon, His Demons and Jongleurs: the Meeting of Islamic, Judaic, and Christian Culture” in Al-Masāq 18.2 (2006), 145-160. Also important is the Hellenistic Greek text the Wisdom of Solomon, included as part of the apocrypha in Catholic Bibles. 273 This is a sub-strand of the Solomonic tradition here. His status as a dispenser of wisdom and author of texts is implied in the presence of three biblical books associated with him. The added layer of asceticism, however, makes this interesting. As Solomon is not typically associated with any sort of ascetic formation, this theme is present here because of the linked associations between wisdom, learning, reading, and asceticism. The writings of Solomon do not make one wise because they are ascetic; they enable a subject to undergo ascetic formation because they are wise, and have the effect of making the reader wise. This is a theme that we will see continually. Not only is ascetic formation a type of bodily re-education that changes who a subject is, but one of its many effects is to also make a person wiser. Though the transformation of the subject is perhaps most evident through the interpretation of the Song of Songs, it is no less present in the exegesis of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. What distinguishes the Talmudic passage from other late ancient ascetic discourse, I think, is the ambiguous directionality: rather than asceticism being the result of wisdom, or wisdom being the result of ascetism, both seem to be mutually entailing. There is still a further link between the physical, embodied practice of reading and the practice of interpretation present in this sugya. The material we have discussed comes towards the tail end of a very lengthy sugya that spins off from a mishnah concerned with the arrangement of posts around a well for the purpose of drawing water on the Sabbath. 40 The 40 mEruvin 2:1: ‫עושין פסין לביראות ארבעה דיומדין נראין כשמונה דברי רבי יהודה רבי מאיר אומר שמונה נראין כשנים עשר ארבעה דיומדין וארבעה‬ ‫פשוטין גובהן עשרה טפחים ורוחבן ששה ועוביין כל שהוא וביניהן כמלא שתי רבקות של שלש שלש בקר דברי רבי מאיר רבי יהודה אומר של‬ :‫ארבע ארבע קשורות ולא מותרות אחת נכנסת ואחת יוצאת‬ One makes pasin (stakes) for wells of four double posts that appear as eight: the words of Rabbi Yehuda. Rabbi Meir says, “Eight should appear as twelve—four should be double and four single.” The height should be ten handbreadths, and six wide, and their thickness anything. Between them there should be a gay of two revaqot of three oxen apiece, the words of Rabbi Meir. Rabbi Yehuda says, “Of four, connected and not loose, one entering while the other leaves.” 274 sugya, as so many do, makes its way through a variety of topics, from well posts to the significant of the double yod in the text of Eve’s formation in Genesis before reaching the text with which we are concerned. This sugya treats several significant themes, including the relationship between physical boundaries—the boundaries and borders of towns, and how to count them41—and the boundaries of interpretation. Tractate Eruvin, of course, is organized around the notion of boundaries, so perhaps it is unsurprising that a sugya found within it asks us to push the boundaries of authorship, reading, study, and asceticism so far. By expanding the boundaries reading and interpretation, the text similarly expands the boundaries of ascetic practice, showing the reader that not only is profound change through reading possible: it is already being enacted upon them as they read the text itself. IV. BEruvin 53b-54b At this point, I move on to the next major talmudic text regarding ethical reading, which also includes examples of the rabbinic figuration of ethical reading—and even reading in general—as an erotic activity. Bavli Eruvin 53b-54b is a lengthy sugya that largely treats the theme of education. Its beginning, however, treats the theme of ascetic reading and humility in some detail, so I shall discuss it here. Additionally, its latter portion contains several images of reading as an erotic activity. While this is not strictly ethical, the broad scope of reading as an erotic activity generally occur within the realm of ethical reading, partially, I argue, because the rabbinic conception of ethical reading is contingent on an understanding of reading as a broadly- defined practice that always involves the body. This is made even more explicit by an interaction between a well-known rabbinic woman, Beruriah, and a student. This occurs at the very bottom of bEruvin 53b, the last in a 41 This is the source of the tractate’s name: Eruvin, the Sabbath boundaries. 275 series of stories in which Beruriah, rabbi Meir’s wife, gets the intellectual best of several male rabbinic figures and students.42 ‫ברוריה אשכחתיה לההוא תלמידא דהוה קא גריס בלחשא בטשא ביה אמרה ליה‬ ‫לאו הכי כתי' ערוכה בכל ושמורה אם ערוכה במאתים וארבעים ושמונה איברים‬ '‫של אדם שמורה בלב ואם לאו אין שמורה בלב תאנא תלמיד אחד היא לו לר‬ ‫אליעזר בן יעקב שהיה שונה תלמודו בלחש לאחר שלש שנים שכח תלמוד‬ Beruriah came upon a certain student who was reciting his studies in a whisper. She kicked him, and said to him, “Is it not written, ‘Arranged in every way, and kept?’ (2 Sam 23:5). If it is arranged in all two hundred and forty-eight limbs of the body, it is kept in the heart, and if it is not, it is not kept.” A tanna says: There was once a student of Rabbi Eliezer ben Yaakov who would repeat his talmud in a whisper. After three years, he forgot his talmud.” Several moments from the text leap out as immediately relevant. First and foremost is the physical, bodily nature of study that Beruriah advocates. Study that does not involve the entire body is study that does not last. An important metaphor from earlier texts returns to us here, as well: it remains “in the heart,” literally inscribed on the body of the student by the movement of his lips as he repeats the words that he has read, heard, and learned over and over again. The “whisper” that Beruriah advocates against, I think, is an indicator that proper learning is learning that occurs with the lips moving: this is the referent of the two-hundred-forty-eight limbs. We should also be reminded of another text regarding educational reading practices: ySheqalim 2:7 47a, in which the lips of the dead move when their teachings are transmitted word for word. 43 Learning is not only performed with the body: it is inscribed on the body, changing it indelibly. Beruriah’s gender is also important in this context. Rabbinic writers are far more circumspect than Christian writers about women reading. The reasons for this are complicated, 42 See above, pp. 94 n. 54 43 See Chapter 2, p. 89. 276 and have more to do, I think, with the way women are being used “to think with” by late ancient Jewish and Christian writers than an essential misogyny that is fundamentally different between the two groups. While there are passages of the Mishnah and Yerushalmi that famously legislate against women learning Torah, saying that teaching a woman Torah is tantamount to teaching her lewdness (mSotah 3:5), this seems to me to be a construction of gender, rather than a response to it. The presence of a woman like Beruriah, who speaks with rabbinic authority and buttresses their own claims, means that one should consider this moment as particularly important, rather htan a throwaway. Before continuing with the rest of the text from bEruvin, we look first at a passage from Mishnah Avot 6, upon which the bEruvin text is built. This is the last chapter of the tractate known as Pirkei Avot, and while it is generally considered to be a later addition to the text, the Bavli utilizes this passage (mAvot 6:2) and expands it. 44 ‫אמר רבי יהושע בן לוי בכל יום ויום בת קול יוצאת מהר חורב ומכרזת ואומרת‬ ‫אוי להם לבריות מעלבונה של תורה שכל מי שאינו עוסק בתורה נקרא נזוף‬ ‫שנאמר נזם זהב באף חזיר אשה יפה וסרת טעם ואומר והלוחות מעשה אלהים‬ ‫המה והמכתב מכתב אלהים הוא חרות על הלוחות אל תקרא חרות אלא חירות‬ ‫שאין לך בן חורין אלא מי שעוסק בתלמוד תורה וכל מי שעוסק בתורה תדיר הרי‬ :‫זה מתעלה שנאמר וממתנה נחליאל ומנחליאל במות‬ Rabbi Joshua ben Levi said, “Every day, a voice emerges from Mount Choreb and proclaims, “Woe to them, the creatures who disparage the Torah!” For everyone who does not engage in Torah is called “rebuked,” as it is written: “A ring in the snout of a pig is a beautiful woman lacking taste,” (Proverbs 11:22). It says “And the tablets were a work of God, and the writing was the writing of God, engraved upon the tablets” (Exodus 32:16). Do not read “engraved,” but rather “freedom,” for there is no freedom for 44 Chapter 6 of Mishnah Avot does not appear in many of the early manuscripts (e.g., the Cambridge MS), and according to Lerner, was likely appended to the previous five chapters in the Geonic period. It was commonly known by the name Kinyan Torah, “The Acquisition of Torah.” There is no doubt that the composition of Avot 6 is later than the Babylonian Talmud; however, given the way that bEruvin 53b builds on it and expands it, it seems highly likely to me that this particular tradition predates the chapter’s redaction, and was known in a somewhat similar form to the Babylonian rabbis. For the dating of perek Kinyah Torah, see M. B. Lerner, “The Tractate Avot,” in The Literature of the Sages, Pt. 1, ed. Shmuel Safrai (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987) 263-281, esp. 273-275. 277 you unless you engage in talmud torah, and all who engage in talmud torah, behold, he is elevated, as it is written, “And from Matanah to Nahaliel, and from Nahaliel to the high places” (Numbers 21:19). Even presented without the later talmudic expansions of this passage, the text present some difficulties. The two parts seem to be barely connected—the first half of the passage compares engaging in talmud torah to an internal, subjective adornment, while the second half insists that the idea of freedom and its relationship to the Torah is inscribed—literally—in the physical material of the Ten Commandments itself. The theme that ties the two halves together is engagement with talmud torah. Talmud torah is the essential ingredient that changes the pig with a snout-ring into a woman with discretion;45 an ordinary man into one with freedom—the freedom to study Torah. Michael Satlow describes this freedom as the freedom “from one’s own material and mundane concerns.”46 What unifies this passage, which seems to be two exegetical traditions stitched together, is the notion that there is something fundamental about the study of Torah: its study makes one a human being, and engaging with it is a freedom as important as the freedom from slavery that led to the giving of the Ten Commandments. The second half of this passage relies on several instances of wordplay, the latter of which is made more explicit in the Babylonian Talmud. The first wordplay is simple enough: in Hebrew’s consonantal script, the word for “engraved” and the word for “free” are identical (‫)חרות‬. Once pointed, they are pronounced differently (cherut and charut). This is a classic rabbinic move: there are numerous other examples of words being re-pointed for the rabbis’ 45 For a discussion of this passage in Proverbs that covers much of the earlier scholarship, see Knut M. Heim, “A Closer Look at the Pig in Proverbs xi 22,” Vetus Testamentum 58 (2008) 13-27. 46 Satlow, “And On the Earth You Shall Sleep,” 217. 278 exegetical purposes; we have already seen an instance of this above, where “villages” becomes “unbelievers (k’farim to kofrim). The last biblical text in the passage is pulled from a longer description of the travels of the Children of Israel in the wilderness. This verse was selected because of the wordplay that “Mattanah,” “Nachaliel,” and “Bamot” allow: Mattanah means “gift,” Nachaliel means “inalienable inheritance of God,” and Bamot means “high place.” The “gift” in question is clearly the Torah. Freedom from mundane and material concerns make the Torah into a sage’s inalienable inheritance, and then serves to elevate him before all the world. Bavli Eruvin 54a builds on this, extends the puns, and builds the connection between the elements of the verse more explicitly. '‫אם משים אדם עצמו כמדבר זה שהכל דשין אותו תורה ניתנה לו במתנה שנא‬ ‫וממדבר מתנה כיון שנתנה לו במתנה נחלו אל שנא' וממתנה נחליאל כיון שנחלו‬ '‫אל עולה לגדולה שנא' ומנחליאל במות ואם הגיס דעתו הב"ה משפילו שנא‬ ‫ומבמות הגיא ואם חוזר בו הב"ה מגביהו שנא' כל גיא ינשא‬ “If a man makes himself like this wilderness, so that everyone treads upon him—Torah is given to him as a gift. As it is written, “And from the wilderness of Mattanah.” And when it is given to him as a gift, it is the inalienable inheritance of God, as it is written, ‘from Mattanah to Nahaliel.’ And when it is his inalienable inheritance, he rises to greatness—as it is written, ‘and from Nachaliel to Bamot’—and if his heart should grow haughty, the Holy One, Blessed Be He, lowers him, as it is written, ‘from Bamot to the valley.’ And if he returns to it, the Holy One, Blessed be He, raises him, as it is written (Isaiah 40:4), “Every valley shall be raised up.” Themes that we have already seen are repeated here, as is the exegesis from Mishnah Avot. This passage, however, goes a bit farther, continuing on with the next verse, rather than ending after Bamot. From Bamot, according to Numbers 21:20, the Children of Israel went “to the valley, which is in in the plain of Moab, at the peak of Pisgah, and overlooking the wasteland.” This accounts for the extension of the metaphor: after the scholar has been raised up and becomes 279 haughty, he is brought low (the valley), and then raised up again, since the valley is near the peak of Pisgah. The compilers of the gemara, however, chose to cite a new verse, from Isaiah 40:4, rather than simply continue on with Numbers 21:20. This new verse, from Isaiah, calls for the creation of a highway for the deity, and describes the attendant changes to the landscape that will occur. “Every valley will be raised, and every mountain and hill will be brought low; let rugged ground become straight, and let the clefts become a plain.” When read with the verse from Numbers, and through the lens of rabbinic subject formation, the theme of reversal is clear. We are not talking about an ordinary journey here: we are talking about the transformative power of Torah. Humility causes Torah to be granted as a gift. While I think there is a subtle difference between the idea of “freedom” in the Mishnah and the concept of the “gift” in the Bavli, both get at a central point: this is not something that the sage receives without any effort. Rather, it is the effort that makes the gift possible. The gift then becomes the sage’s possession, which can cause pride: with pride, however, comes a return to humility, brought about by the deity. This return to humility eventually evens out into another height, although this height, according to the biblical prooftext, is a roadway that leads to God. This roadway, like the wanderings of the children of Israel, is in the wilderness: a wilderness (‫מדבר‬/midbar) that exists both in the world, and in the humble heart of the sage. The tension between humility and pride, the splendor of achievement and the necessarily lowly disposition that come with engaging the Torah, is not only present in the practice of study, but literally inscribed in the Torah (and on the tablets of the Ten Commandments). Reading is divine, and changes a person. It makes him humble, while simultaneously worthy of praise; should he become proud, the source of his honor will make him humble yet again, while 280 ultimately raising him to glory. Humility and honor, study and practice: they are all part of the reading that changes who a person is, and makes one who pursues Torah into a rabbi. It is also not a coincidence that the verse that is quoted comes from the passage in Numbers that outlines the wanderings of the Children of Israel in the desert. The acquisition of Torah is a journey, the juxtaposition seems to suggest. Just as the Children of Israel could not leave Egypt, cross the Sea of Reeds, and then pass immediately into the land of Canaan after receiving the Ten Commandments, so too must the process of acquitting Torah be lengthy and difficult. At the same time, the acquisition their inalienable inheritance is not the only end result of the Children of Israel’s lengthy travels. They are changed in the process: the go from being the Children of Israel to a “chosen nation,” a “nation of priests,” and a “holy people.” 47 The scholar who acquires Torah is changed, too. He is raised up and brought down, proud and humbled, and ultimately made into an ideal rabbinic subject by the work of God and the presence of the Torah. At the end of this sugya, after several lengthy disquisitions on learning, 48 the words of Torah are compared to a fig tree and a doe. ‫א"ר חייא מאי דכתי' נוצר תאנה יאכל פריה למה נמשלו דברי תורה לתאנה מה‬ ‫תאנה זו כל זמן שאדם ממשמש בה מוצא בה תאנים אף דברי תורה כל זמן שהוגה‬ )‫בהן מוצא בה (תאנים‬ Rabbi Hiyya said “Why is it written, ‘The one who guards the fig will eat her fruit?’ Why are the words of Torah compared to a fig tree? Just as the fig tree, every time a person uses it, he finds in it figs, so too is it true with the words of Torah. Every time a man meditates upon them, he finds figs within them. ‫אמ' ר' שמואל אמ' ר' יונתן מאי דכתי' אילת אהבים ויעלת חן למה נמשלה תורה‬ '‫לאילת לומ' לך מה אילת זו רחמה צרה וחביבה על בעלה כל שעה ושעה בשע‬ ‫ראשונה אף דברי תורה חביבין על לומדיהן כל שעה ושעה בשעה ראשונה‬ 47 See, for example, Deut. 7:6-8, Deut. 14:2, Psalm 135:4, 1 Kings 8:53. These verses point out another striking parallel: the people of Israel are the deity’s own inalienable inheritance, just as the land of Canaan is theirs, and the Torah is the sage’s. 48 Many of which were discussed in chapters 1 and 2. 281 Rabbi Shmuel bar Nahmani said that Rabbi Yonatan said, “Why is it written, “A loving hind, a graceful doe?” Why are the words of Torah compared to a hind? To tell you that, just as a hind’s vulva is narrow, and pleasurable to her husband each time like the first time, so too are the words of Torah dear to those who study it each time like the first time.” ‫ויעלת חן שמעלת חן על לומדיהן דדיה ירווך בכל עת למה נמשלו דברי תורה לדד‬ ‫לומ' לך מה דד כל זמן שהתינוק ממשמש בה מוצא בה חלב אף דברי תורה כל זמן‬ ‫שהוגה בהן מוצא בהן טעם‬ “And a graceful doe?” Because the Torah gives grace to her studiers. “Her breasts will fill you up at every hour.” Why are the words of Torah compared to a breast? To teach you: As with a breast, every time that a child uses it, he finds in it milk, so too with the words Torah: every time that a man meditates upon them, he finds flavor in them.” This section provides us with far-reaching metaphors for learning and Torah as substance and sustenance. The Torah is compared to a fig tree, a doe’s vagina, and a breast. The comparison with the breast is less erotic than it might seem: rather than an image of delight and pleasure, as we might expect from the presence of a breast in Greek or Latin literature,49 the salient feature of the metaphor is the breast’s seemingly miraculous power to be forever full of milk, no matter how hungry the child is. The comparison with the fig tree is similarly one of nourishment and sustenance: a fig bears fruit throughout the whole year, just as the words of Torah are continually beneficial. This intensely erotic image is sandwiched between two, while still sensual, perhaps less overtly sexual comparisons. The Torah is sustenance of all types, and 49 Douglas E. Gerber, “The Female Breast in Greek Erotic Literature,” Arethusa 11.1-2 (1978) 203-212; R. Hunter, “’Breast is Best’: Catullus 64:18,” Classical Quarterly 41 (1991) 254-155, Jordan Rosenblum, “‘Blessings of the Breasts’: Breastfeeding in Rabbinic Literature.” Hebrew Union College Annual 87 (2016) 147-179. This does not, of course, preclude the possibility of the breast as a symbol of fertility and abundance in Greek and Roman literature as well: it was surely utilized in the same way, often concurrently. 282 its study is best compared to images of abundance, satiety, and pleasure: plucking figs, suckling milk, or having sexual intercourse with a virgin. V. B Shabbat 33b-34a I will close this chapter with a well-known text: the narrative of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai and his son in the cave. Many scholars have written about this particular narrative, although only a few of these previous treatments are immediately germane to the rabbinic treatment of reading as an ascetic and ethical practice. Charlotte Elisheva Fonrobert argues that this narrative is an inversion of the “politics of philosophy” that are present in Plato’s Republic.50 Jeffrey Rubenstein outlines the dynamic tension that shapes the entire story: the relationship between devotion to the Torah, and devotion to everything else in the world. 51 Finally, Michal bar Asher-Siegal uses this story as a case-study in her book on the Talmud Bavli and early Christian monastic literature, arguing that the ascetic tendencies of this narrative are echoing similar tropes which can be found in texts like the Apophthegmata Patrum and the Life of Paul the Hermit by Jerome.52 It is Bar Asher-Siegal’s work in particular that helps to draw out the ascetic resonances of this text, and show how they connect to contemporary Christian literature. Yishai Kiel has also recently published on this text and its resonances with contemporary Iranian 50 Charlotte Elisheva Fonrobert, “Plato in Rabbi Shimeon bar Yohai’s Cave (B. Shabbat 33B-34A): The Talmudic Inversion of Plato’s Politics of Philosphy.” AJS Review 31.2 (2007), 277-296. 51 Jeffrey Rubenstein, “Torah and the Mundane Life: The Education of R. Shimon bar Yohai (Shabbat 33b-34a)” in Talmudic Stories: Narrative Art, Composition, and Culture (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), 104- 138. 52 Michal bar Asher-Siegal, Early Christian Monastic Literature and the Babylonian Talmud (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013) 133-169. 283 traditions, both Zoroastrian and Manichaean, suggesting that it is part of a religious landscape that extends farther than Christianity and Judaism.53 A version of this narrative appears in the Palestinian Talmud, in Shevi’it 9:1, 38d, as well as Genesis Rabbah 79:6. While the similarities are important, there is one major difference that reveals much about the story and its assumptions regarding ascetic reading practices: neither of the Palestinian versions make any mention of reading or study whatsoever. This comports with what has already been noted regarding the institutionalization of divinatory reading practices over time, and the general progression towards a bookish, textual orientation in the Babylonian Talmud. As rabbinic texts are composed, redacted, or embellished in situations that are more like formal academies rather than informal disciple circles or ad-hoc schoolrooms, the practices that they outline and describe are affected by that institutionalization. The Babylonian Talmud version of this story appears in tracate Shabbat, in the section commenting on Mishnah Shabbat 2:6. This Mishnah reads: ‫על שלוש עבירות נשים מתות בשעת לידתן על שאינן זהירות בנדה ובחלה‬ ‫ובהדלקת הנר‬ Women die in childbirth for three transgressions: not be careful regarding menstruation, the separation of dough, and the lighting of the lamp. This mishnah comes at the end of a longer list of laws regarding the kindling of lamps on the Sabbath, and precedes a mishnah that prescribes exactly what a man should say to his household as they prepare for the Sabbath. The mishnaic context, then, is that of care and exacting preparations. 53 Yishai Kiel, “Study Versus Sustenance: A Rabbinic Dilemma in its Zoroastrian and Manichaean Context.” AJS Review 38.2 (2014), 275-302. 284 The Talmud takes up this discussion by listing sins and their punishments, inviting questions about the sympathetic relationship between an action and its divine consequence. Eventually, however, it comes to a baraita that quotes Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai claiming that the neglect of Torah causes an ailment called “’askara” (which Rubenstein identifies as croup). 54 This opinion is unpopular: women, gentiles, and children all get the croup, but they are not obligated to study Torah. Rabbi Shimon, also known as Rashbi, sees no problem: all three groups can cause Jewish males to neglect the study of Torah, and are therefore just as responsible, and liable to be punished. The problematic baraita refers to Rabbi Yehuda as the “first speaker in all matters.” After these disagreements and the stam’s rebuttals, the stam returns to the baraita, asking why Rabbi Yehuda has this title. The story then commences. 55 ‫ואמאי קארו ליה ראש המדברים בכל מקום‬ And why do they call him [Rabbi Yehuda] the head of speakers in every place? ‫דיתיב ר' יהודה בר' אלעאי ור' יוסי ור' שמעון ויתיב יהודה בן גרים גבייהו‬ Because Rabbi Yehuda son of Rabbi Ilai and Rabbi Yose and Rabbi Shimon were sitting together, and Rabbi Yehuda the son of Proselytes sat with them. ‫פתח ר' יהודה ואמ' כמה נאים מעשיה של אומה זו תקנו שווקים תקנו גשרים תקנו‬ ‫מרחצאו ר״ יוסי שתק‬ Rabbi Yehuda started off and said, “How pleasant are the works of this people! They set up markets, they established bridges, and they built bathhouses.” Rabbi Yose was silent. ‫ענה ר' שמעון ואמ' כל מה שתקנו לא תקנו אלא לצורך עצמן שווקים להושיב בהן‬ ‫זונות מרחצאות לעדן בהן עצמן גשרי' ליטול מהם מכס‬ Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai answered him and said, “All that they established, they only established for their own needs. They 54 Rubenstein, Talmudic Stories, 133. 55 All text from bShabbat is transcribed from ms. Oxford Bodleian 366. 285 established marketplaces to set up prostitutes in them; bathhouses for their own adornment, and bridges to take taxes from them.” ‫הלך יהודה בן גריס וסיפר דברים ונשמעו למלכות אמרו יהודה שעילה יתעלה יוסי‬ ‫ששתק יגלה לציפורי שמעון שגינה יהרג‬ Rabbi Yehuda the son of Proselytes went and told their words, and they were heard by the authorities. They said, “Yehuda that elevated us shall be elevated. Yose that was silent shall be exiled to Sepphoris, and Shimon who disgraced us should be killed.” This section of the narrative is related entirely in Hebrew. The rest of the story is in a mixture of rabbinic Hebrew and Aramaic, which is relatively standard for the later strata of the Talmud. ‫אזל איהו ובריה וטשו בי מדרשא כל יומא הוה מייתיא להו דביתהו ריפתא וכרכי‬ ‫כדתקיף גזרתא אמ' ליה לבריה ידענא דנשים דעתן קלה עליהן דילמא מצערי לן‬ ‫ומיגליא לן אזלו ואיטשו במערתא‬ He went, and his son, and hid in the house of study. Every day, his wife would bring them bread and a container of water, and they ate. When then decree grew stronger, he said to his son, “Women have frivolous minds. Perhaps they will distress her and she will reveal our location.” They want and hid in a cave. ‫איתרחיש ליהו ניסא ואיברי להו חירובא ועינא דמיא הוו יתבי עד צוורי[י]הו בחלא‬ ‫כולי יומא וגרסי לעידן צלויי לבשי ומכסו ומצלו והדר שלחי מאניהו כי היכי דלא‬ ‫ליבלו‬ A miracle happened, and a carob tree and a spring of water were created for them. And they would take off their clothes and sit up to their necks in sand, and all day they would [recite]. And at the time for prayers, they would dress themselves, cover themselves, and pray, and then they would go back and take of their clothes so as not to wear them out. ‫איתיבו תרתי סרי שנין במערתא‬ They dwelled for twelve years in the cave. The sequestering of Rashbi and his son happens by degrees. They first retreat from the world by entering the academy. They are not completely shut off here: Rashbi’s wife brings them 286 food and water. Scholars have pointed out, though, that this is only a half-way point: when the decree is strengthened, Rashbi becomes worried about relying on his wife, and retreats even farther from humanity. 56 He and his son find a cave, and are nourished not on bread brought to it, but on the raw fruit that a miraculous carob tree provides for them. Their withdrawal from the world becomes apparently not only in their physical location, but in the disappearance of social mores: they do not wear clothes while in the cave. They are completely naked, studying or reciting, wearing their clothes only when the time for prayers comes. 57 The nudity of Rashbi and his son is important. Michael Satlow suggests that rabbis “understood exposure of the penis in the sancta as an offense against God.” 58 Putting their clothes on while praying suggests that praying is a sacred activity. The fact that they remain without clothes while studying, then, is particularly interesting. By the time this narrative appeared in the Babylonian Talmud, the act of study was certainly considered a sacred, holy act—while it was not a sacrifice or a prayer service, it was still something that was ordained and understood within the orbit of “religion.” 59 This is why the burial in sand is so important: neither Rashbi nor his son are officially “naked” before God while they are studying. Charlotte Fonrobert discusses this moment in the story—the sojourn in the cave—as an inverted echo of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave (Republic, 514a-517d).60 The cave is not the only 56 Rubenstein, Talmudic Stories, 135. 57 Michael Satlow, “Jewish Constructions of Nakedness in Late Antiquity,” Journal of Biblical Literature 116:3 (1997), 429-454. 58 Satlow, “Nakedness,” 431. 59 Study and reading have had a “numinous” quality in the ancient Mediterranean and Near East since at least Sumerian times. For more on this, see David Carr, Writing on the Tablet of the Heart: Origins of Scripture and Literature (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), especially 3-15. 60 This is, of course, one of the most famous portions of Plato’s corpus. 287 important part: as Fonrobert points out, there are many narratives involving caves in Jewish and Greek mythological traditions, and one cave need not be the same as another. 61 For Fonrobert, the key is that the philosopher and the cave, in both instances, “articulate the fraught relationship of the philosopher or sage with civic life and the polis.”62 How the philosopher or sage relates to the community from which he derives—either that which supports him or has supported him, or the one in which he finds himself—is the tension that lies at the core of both narratives. Michal Bar Asher-Siegal finds a different resonance in Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai’s cave. Rather than Fonrobert’s Platonic sage, she sees the core of the narrative—in which a sage enters a cave, then exits to reintegrate into society—as being similar to the life of the pre-Socratic philosopher Epimenides.63 She builds upon this using the work of Ben-Zion Rosenfeld, showing that the Talmudic creation of Rashbi as a miracle-working chasid who emerges from his cave positions him like a late ancient Christian holy man. 64 Ultimately, Bar Asher-Siegal compares Rashbi to several “monastic heroes,” like Paul the Hermit and Abba Timothy. In neither of these comparisons, however—to Plato’s sage, or the monastic hermit—does the figure retiring to the cave read. Reading and study is a notable absence in these other narratives, as is Rashbi’s son. While Plato’s philosopher is not necessarily alone in the cave, he has no way of communicating 61 Fonrobert, 279. 62 Ibid, 279. 63 Bar Asher-Siegal, 151-152. This is an earlier position of Lee Levine, in “Rabbi Simeon b. Yohai and the Purification of Tiberias; History and Tradition.” Katedrah 22 (1982): 9-42 [Hebrew]. 64 Bar Asher-Siegal, 152, and Ben-Zion Rosenfeld, “R. Simeon b. Yohai—Wonder Worker and Magician Scholar, ‘Saddiq’ and ‘Hasid.’” Revue des Etudes juives 158 (1999): 351-386. For the most classic treatment of the "holy man" (in fact, the treatment that coined the term as a mainstay of scholarly discourse), see Peter Brown, "The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity," Journal of Roman Studies (1971) 80-101. There have been numerous responses to this article, and the influence it has had on the study of late antique religion is incalculable. 288 with his compatriots. Paul the Hermit, the figures from the Lives of the Desert Fathers, and the other monastic figures who disappear into caves, and then re-emerge as saintly figures, are all alone throughout the process. Rashbi enters with his son, and even studies and prays with him. These two features are important both in the Babylonian rabbinic context of the story, and when analyzing this type of reading practice as a strategy of ethical formation. Reading is often communal in rabbinic contexts, as is study and engagement with Torah. This is clear in the increasing institutionalization of rabbinic education: the presence of an academy increases the likelihood that education will take place in a communal context. Chevruta, or studying with a partner, has long been a mainstay of rabbinic learning, and still is in many traditional communities. While it is difficult to know all of the mechanics of the Babylonian rabbinic academy, and the study practices of a mythical rabbi and his son, studying in pairs is also common in the Babylonian Talmud. In Eruvin, for example, two students studying together are berated by a rabbi’s wife for doing so incorrectly (bEruvin 54b). Study houses, even those retrojected into Palestine, are also typically depicted with multiple students studying together. 65 The verb used for the action that Rashbi and his son perform, gras, is an important, but potentially vague, rabbinic word for a certain type of study. While it literally means “scrape together,” “collect,” or “accumulate,” in modern contexts, it can also refer to the process of collating manuscripts for the purpose of textual criticism. Jastrow suggests that it is used to signify a “preliminary” process of learning—much like the verb tachen, this is a physical, mundane process being used as a metaphor for a reading practices. Other usages of this verb (bTaanit 10b, bMegillah 29a) seem to suggest that the process it specifies is a review, or a 65 David M. Goodblatt, Rabbinic Instruction in Sasanian Babylonia (Leiden: Brill, 1975). 289 practice. The active participle, for example, in bBB 21a, is paired with a phrase meaning “inexact” to create a picture of a scholar who knows the text by heart, but inexactly. 66 What happens in the cave is as important as what happens before and after Rashbi enters it. He and his son study, presumably Torah—and this is what forever changes them. It is this study that constitutes a practice of ethical reading. Though the gemara is vague about the type of reading that actually happens in the cave, it is clear, based on what occurs afterwards, that the act of study Rashbi and his son performed was something that involved both of them, and something that changed them. Additionally, given the vocabulary that is used to describe their activity, it is likely that the narrative assumes a text in the cave with them. The narrative surrounding the cave presents the most salient points of contact for Bar Asher-Siegal and Fonrobert. ‫אתא אליהו וקאי אפיתחא דמערתא אמ' מאן אודעיה לבר יוחאי דמית קיסר ובטלה‬ ‫גזירתא נפקו חאזו אינשי דקא כרבי וזרעי‬ Elijah came and stood at the entrance to the cave, and said, “Who will let the son of Yochai know that Caesar has died, and his decree has been annulled?” They exited, and saw people that were plowing and planting. ‫אמ' מניחין חי י עולם ועוסקין חיי שעה כל מקום שנתנו עיניהם נשרף‬ [Rashbi] said, “They are leaving behind eternal life, and engaging in temporal life.” Every place upon which they set their eyes was immediately burned. ‫יצתה בת קול ואמרה להן להחריב עולמי יצאתם חזרו למערתכם הדור ואזול‬ ‫ואיתיבו תריסר ירחי שתא במערתא‬ A bat qol emerged and said to them, “Did you exit in order to destroy the world? Return to your cave!” They returned and went back, and sat for twelve months there in the cave. ‫אמרי משפט רשעים בגיהינם שנים עשר חדש יצתה בת קול ואמרה להם צאו‬ ‫ממערתכם‬ 66 Jastrow, 270, and see appendix pp x. 290 They said, “The judgment of the wicked is twelve months in gahenna.” A bat qol emerged and said, “Leave your cave.” ‫נפקו כל היכא דהוה מחי ר' אלעזר הוה מסי ר' שמעון אמ' לו בני דיו לעולם אני‬ ‫ואתה‬ They exited, and everywhere that Rabbi Eleazar (Rashbi’s son) struck, Rasbhi would heal. He said to him, “My son, you and I are enough for the world.” '‫חאזו לההוא סבא דהוה נקיט בידיה תרי מדאני דאסא אמרו ליה הני למה לך אמ‬ ‫להו לכבוד שבת אמרו ליה ותסגי לך בחד אמ' להו חד כנגד זכור וחד כנגד שמור‬ They saw a certain old man holding two bundles of hyssop, running at twilight. They said to him, “What are these to you?” He said to them, “For the honor of the Sabbath!” “And one would not suffice for you?” “One is for Exodus 20:8—Remember; the other is for Deuteronomy 5:12—Keep.” ‫אמרה ליה לבריה חזית כמה חביבה מצוה עלייהו דישראל‬ [Rashbi] said to his son, “Behold, how beloved are the commandments to Israel!” And their intellects rested. ‫שמע ר' פינחס בן יאיר חתניה נפק לאפיה עייליה לבי בני ואסחיה הוה קא חכיך‬ ‫ליה לבשריה חזא דהוו אית ליה פילי בגביה הוה קא בכי וקא נתרן דמעי וקא‬ ‫מצווחן ליה משום דחריכן בגו פילי אמ' אוי לי שראיתיך בכך‬ Rabbi Pinchas ben Yair, his son-in-law, heard and came out to greet him. He brought him to the bath-house, where he massaged his flesh and saw that there were cracks in his body. He began to weep, and the tears were falling from his eyes and injuring him [Rashbi]. He said to him, “Alas, woe to me that I have seen you in this way!” ‫אמ' לו אשריך שראיתני בכך שאילמלא לא ראיתני בכך לא מצאתי בי כך‬ ‫דמעיקרא כי הוה מקשי ר' שמעון יוחאי קושיא הוה מפריק לה ר' פינחס בן יאיר‬ '‫בתריסר פירוקי ולבסוף כי הוה מקשי ר' פינחס בן יאיר קושיא הוה מפריק לה ר‬ ‫שמעון בן יוחאי בעשרים וארבעה פירוקי‬ He said to him, “Happy are you that you have seen me in this way! For if you had not seen me like this, you would not have found me so.” For at the beginning, when Rabbi Shimon son of Yochai would raise an objection, Rabbi Pinchas ben Yair would respond to 291 him with twelve piruqei. Eventually, when Rabbi Pinchas ben Yair would object, Rashb would counter him with twenty-four piruqei. The story continues after this point. Rashbi goes to purify a place of impurity, and when all is said and done, lays eyes upon rabbi Yehuda the son of proselytes, whom he reduces to a heap of bones. It is the final paragraph above, however, that I think is so interesting, and that places the practice of study (the grisah) that occurred in the cave into the category of ethical reading. After thirteen years in the cave, Rashbi is changed. His body is covered in cracks, and when his son-in-law attempts to make him more comfortable by taking him to a bathhouse (and possibly even massaging oil into his skin), he realizes the extent to which the past thirteen years have made his father-in-law into a different person. It is when Rashbi speaks, however, that we realize the full extent of this transformation. Interestingly, however, neither Rashbi nor his son- in-law make the change explicit: it is the anonymous, narrative voice of the Talmud’s stam that describes the internal changes that have occurred. The changes are physical—Rashbi’s skin is cracked, and he no longer resembles the man he once was. They are also psychic, or spiritual: his eyes are capable of healing with a glance, after previously having been capable of burning. The changes are also intellectual. Prior to entering the cave, Rashbi’s son-in-law, Rabbi Pinchas ben Yair, had been a formidable intellectual opponent. After thirteen years of grisah, however, Rashbi can now best him in intellectual discourse twice as well as he was used to being bested. Thirteen years in a cave, studying, reciting, and reading with his son, Rabbi Eleazar, have made Rashbi into a different man. It is this profound change: his changed attitude, his changed physicality, and his changed mentality, that relays that whatever the physical mechanics of Rashbi’s reading practice was, its effect was ethical: it changed him. 292 Fonrobert figures these changes as the return of a philosopher, or theoros, to the polis after his sojourn outside of Plato’s cave. This is a moment of crisis: the philosopher has seen and contemplated things that are foreign and new, which are capable of bringing either benefit or corruption—or both.67 The gaze with which Rashbi kills is part of this benefit and corruption (as is, surely, the gaze with which he heals). For Fonrobert, this is almost too perfect of a coincidence between the dually-fashioned gaze and the Platonic philosophical theoria. The Talmud, however, inverts the story as it so often does: Torah, which she claims is Plato’s equivalent to divine knowledge, is not present beyond the world and only accessible to sages. It is in the world, which Rashbi and his son discover when they see the old man with his two bundles of hyssop preparing for the Sabbath. 68 In their thirteen years in the cave, Rashbi and his son might have mastered Torah: but the old man rushing home for the Sabbath had done with same while living in the world. Bar Asher-Siegal takes the converging narratives in a different direction, focusing instead on Rashbi as a monk in a cave. She neglects, however, to draw the connection between Rashbi and his son’s time in the cave and the idea of theoria, or philosophical contemplation, an idea with much currency in the Christian east in late antiquity. 69 Rather, she focuses on shared themes between this story and others from the Apophthegmata Patrum. The life of Abba Silvanus, for 67 Fonrobert, 289. 68 Ibid, 291. 69 Theoria as a concept traces back to Aristotle, but was particularly important in the writings of the theologians known as the Cappadocian Fathers in late antiquity. The locus classicus for this discussion is J. Daniélou, Platonisme et Théologie Mystique, Essai sur la Doctrine Spirituelle de Saint Grégoire de Nysse (Paris: Aubier Editions Montaigne, 1994), 145-151. See also Christopher Beeley, Gregory of Nazianzus on the Trinity and the Knowledge of God: In your light we shall see light (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). For a more general treatment of theoria, especially as it relates to pilgrimage (a category of surprising overlap with rabbinic reading practices), see Ian Rutherford, State Pilgrims and Sacred Observers in Ancient Greece: A study of theōria and theōroi (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). 293 example, also contains a sage who criticizes the performance of agricultural labor. 70 Rashbi’s changed attitude finds its similar instantiation as well: Abba Arsenius declares that the peasants of Egypt acquire virtue through hard work. 71 For her, the monastic analogies tell us something about the context in which the story was composed—or in this case, redacted and edited, as there is a well-known Palestinian version as well. Similar conclusions arise by focusing on the ethical reading practice itself. Rather than a simple, independent reading of a text, the story presents something that approaches a scholastic and educational practice. Rashbi and his son are not reading for pleasure, or in search of specific answers: they are studying. As with most other reading practices that have been examined so far, this addition in the Babylonian milieu likely reflects the greater emphasis on institutionalized education in the later eastern rabbinic centers. Yishai Kiel understands these similarities in a slightly different context. The rejection of worldly occupation is a Manichaean theme, in his view: he points to Manichaean writings in Sogdian, as well as Augustine writing in Manichaeism, to support this. 72 For him, Rashbi’s wife sustaining him and their son in the study house is comparable to the Manichaean tradition of “Auditors” bringing food to the “Elect.” Ultimately, Rashbi and his son realize the error of their ways. Torah is not the only sustenance: even in the cave, they consumed carob from the tree. Kiel places this in context with Zoroastrian Pahlavi critiques of “exclusive models”: modes of life that have no room for both study and sustenance. 73 This reading is implausible for several 70 Bar Asher-Siegal, 160 citing PG 65:409, Ward Sayings 223. 71 Bar Asher-Siegal, 163 citing PG: 65:88-9, Ward Sayings 10. 72 Kiel, 297-8. 73 Ibid, 302. 294 reasons: first and foremost, the Pahlavi sources that Kiel cites are significantly later than the Bavli.74 In addition, bringing evidence on Manichaean practice from the writings of Augustine is to attempt to describe a group from the writings of one of its fiercest opponents: at best, one can develop an understanding of Augustine’s construction of Manichaeism. With this in mind, it is most fruitful to consider the story of Rashbi in the cave in light of contemporary monastic literary trends, as Bar Asher-Siegal does, as well as its reliance on much older Greek philosophical ideals, as Fonrobert does. Underlying Fonrobert and Bar Asher-Siegal’s work is an understanding of the place of theoria in late antique religion. As an idea with a significant amount of currency in the late ancient Near East, practices that involved theoria and discourses surrounding it could take multiple, often related, forms. Several of those are present forms here: perhaps most significantly, theoria, the act of philosophical contemplation that can result in the formation of a sage, philosopher, or scholar, is figured as an act of study which involves the Torah. While theoria was not initially a practice, or even an idea, that required reading, many of its later instantiations were focused around it. Theoria itself, however, is a difficult concept to pin down. Aristotle describes theoria as one of the soul’s defining features: it is that which allows the soul to be the “fullest actuality of the body,” and not simply a static idea or activity. 75 Knowing how to cook is knowledge, while actually cooking is theoria—theorein, “to see,” or “contemplate” (although Roochnik does not like that translation) means to actively engage the 74 This is a general issue with the study of the Bavli and Pahlavi materials: the Pahlavi corpus, though it represents an older oral tradition, was put in writing and crystallized in its current form much later than the Bavli’s redaction. See Shai Secunda, The Iranian Talmud (Philadelphia: The University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014) 23-28. 75 David Roochnik, “What is Theoria?” Nichomachean Ethics Book 10.7-8” in Classical Philology 104.1 (2009) 69- 82. 295 knowledge that one has. An eye’s soul, for example, would be vision, while a rabbi’s might be to become a living embodiment of Torah. 76 VI. Ethical Reading in Late Ancient Christian Writings This chapter has briefly mentioned the points of contact between rabbinic ascetic reading and late ancient Christian ascetic reading. In order to situate rabbinic ethical reading practices within their wider context, this section sketches some of the broader contours of late ancient ascetic reading practices. We see ethical reading across a wide landscape of Christian praxis: the texts range from Latin to Greek, from Coptic to Syriac. For certain authors, reading was a crucial strategy in the formation of the early Christian subject. It was, of course, not the only strategy—the vast majority of Christians, whether or not they were literate, were unlikely to have had access to an extensive number of texts. It is more likely that their ethical formation—the transformation of their subjectivity into a proper Christian soul—was understood as happening in a general way through ritual and presence at the appropriate lectionary readings. 77 For a significant number of early Christians, however, and especially those Christians that we can most easily place in a social context as somewhat similar to the rabbis’, the what and how of reading was a vital step on the journey to towards ascetic virtue. This includes both the “curriculum” of what was read, and also the way in which the practice of reading itself was mandated. 76 Aristotle, De Anima, 412b18-19 (apud Roochnik, 71). 77 For a recent study of subjectivity and early Christian liturgy, see Derek Krueger, Liturgical Subjects: Christian Ritual, Biblical Narrative, and the Formation of the Self in Byzantium (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014). 296 Athanasius’ Letter to Marcellinus In a letter to Marcellinus, which Paul Kolbet has discussed, Athanasius reveals his strategy for reading the Psalms as a form of ethical formation. 78 He suggests the Psalter over other books because of his understanding of it as a text that leads to other texts: “For indeed, the book of the Psalms is like a garden singing the things borne in it, and revealing its own things again along with them, chanting them.” 79 From this description of the Psalter, it seems relatively clear that, for Athanasius, the reader of the text gains more than what the words of the text themselves contain. The reader of the Psalms learns not just the Psalms, but the entirety of the bible.80 Athanasius goes through the Psalter in some detail, showing his young friend Marcellinus how each of the important themes of various biblical books are recapitulated in the verses of individual poems. Athanasius goes farther, however. More than simply acting as a summary, or microcosm, of a larger number of books, he claims that, “it has this also this very marvelous thing, that each movement of the soul has its differences and varieties portrayed and depicted in it.”81 The Psalter is a map of the human—a map which the devout reader follows. This is an important configuration of a specific part of the bible. While one sacred text holding information about another, and thus allowing remarkable interpretive gymnastics, is one of the foundational scholarly descriptions of rabbinic midrash, there is a deeper assumption here. 78 Paul Kolbet, “Athanasius, the Psalms, and the Reformation of the Self,” Harvard Theological Review 99:1 (2006), 85-101. 79 J.-P. Migne, Patrologiae cursus completus (series Graeca) (MPG) 27, Paris: Migne, 1857-1866: 12-45; 12:38-40. Ἡ δέ γε βίβλος τῶν Ψαλμῶν, ὡς παράδεισος τὰ ἐν αὑτῇ φέρουσα μελῳδεῖ, καὶ τὰ ἴδια δὲ πάλιν μετ’ αὐτῶν ψάλλουσα δείκνυσι. 80 Kolbet, 93. 81 λοιπὸν καὶ ἴδιον ἔχει τοῦτο θαῦμα, ὅτι καὶ τὰ ἑκάστης ψυχῆς κινήματα, τάς τε τούτων μεταβολὰς καὶ διορθώσεις ἔχει διαγεγραμμένας καὶ διατετυπωμένας ἐν ἑαυτῇ (Athanasius, Epistula, 20:35-38). 297 Eva Mroczek has written about the notions of plenitude and endless bounty as common descriptors of ancient Jewish texts from the pens of ancient authors. 82 A text’s divine, numinous quality can be reflected in the fact that it is uncontained: that regardless of how many psalms or revelations are written in a scroll, the fact that there are always still more, either stored up in heaven, or simply hidden away from our eyes, is a marker of its importance, and a fundamental feature of its textual existence. There is something similar at play here: The importance of the Psalter is signified not only by the fact that it contains the entirety of the bible within it (and while Athanasius’ conception of the “entirety of the bible” is crucial for contemporary notions of what the “canon” is, it need not be explained here), but also by Athanasius’ statement that the entirety of the human soul is contained within the individual poems of the text. This is yet another illustration of the key assumption that lies behind the rabbinic orientation toward reading: that there is more to the text that meets the eye (or the ear). Also tied in with this assumption is the notion that the text itself is capable of changing the reader. Athanasius shows us just how neatly these two assumptions work together to create a program of ethical reading. The object of ethical formation, for him, is a process of continual imitatio Christi. This is encapsulated in the Psalms, because the Psalms, within the multitudes they contain, are also home to a retelling of Christ’s life. 83 With Christ as the “extraordinary knowledge” located in the Psalms, their daily recitation forces the reciter, through both habit and exposure to the life of Christ, to become more and more like the divine type. 82 Eva Mroczek, The Literary Imagination in Jewish Anitquity, 45-50. The image that Athanasius uses for the Psalter, that of a garden, is even similar to some of the metaphors that Mroczek discusses: a channel from a river, a storehouse, etc. 83 Kolbet, 94. 298 There is still more, however. Reading the Psalms daily also allows the reader to read and contemplate the reflection of her own soul in the text of the Psalms. The Psalms help the reader see her own soul—but as a textual vessel of Christ’s life, they also provide a model of perfection upon which to reorder her own life. It is not just the entirety of Christ, but the entirety of humanity that the Psalms contain. “For I believe that the whole of human existence, both the dispositions of the soul and the movements of the thoughts, have been measured out and encompassed in those very words of the Psalter.” 84 The Psalter teaches as much as it gives pleasure through its beauty—and in doing so, it leaves its mark upon the souls of its readers. Pierre Hadot’s Spiritual Exercises Kolbet considers Athanasius’ injunction to read the Psalms daily within the framework of Pierre Hadot’s spiritual exercises. These are philosophical practices that defined the way of life of the ancient sage: according to Hadot, they most typically involved the memorization of a philosophical school’s dogmas and rules. 85 For Hadot, the quintessential example of this form are the exercises of Ignatius of Loyola. 86 Athanasius’ treatment of the Psalms, however, turns the biblical text itself into a type of spiritual exercise. Individual poems are made into texts that are effective for specific spiritual ailments and issues. 87 The Psalms are also taken holistically: their entirety is just as important as each poem’s individuality. It is in their entirety that they mirror and change the human soul, just as it is in each poem’s uniqueness that the reader’s particular need might be addressed. 84 Athanasius, Ep. Ad Marcellinum 30 (PG 27:41c), apud Kolbet, 94. 85 Pierre Hadot, “Forms of Life and Forms of Discourse in Ancient Philosophy,” trans. Arnold I. Davidson and Paula Wissing, in Critical Inquiry 16:3 (1990) 483-505; 494-496. 86 Pierre Hadot, Exercices Spirituels et Philosophie Antique (Paris: Albin Michel, 1981). 87 Athanasius, Ep. Ad Marcellinum, 10 (PG 27:25). 299 An important distinction, however, is that in his framing of the Psalms as a type of “spiritual exercise,” Athanasius neglects one of the core components of the spiritual exercises of the traditional Greek and Roman philosophical schools. This is the physical dimension of the idea of exercise: the famous notion that the care of the human body imitates and helps to drive the development of the soul.88 Jonathan Schofer, writing about the Avot and Avot de-Rabbi Natan A as indicative of rabbinic spiritual exercises, makes this point as well. For both Athanasius in this particular letter, and the rabbis who composed Avot and its commentary, the parallels between physical and spiritual exercise, if they exist, are unimportant. While Schofer’s main argument is heuristic (he states that he is not necessarily drawing a historical or genealogical connection between rabbinic and Greco-Roman philosophical spiritual exercises, but rather creating a scholarly category; he does, however leave this option open), the ways in which both Athanasius and the rabbis differ from earlier philosophical models are important. The first set of exercises that Schofer adumbrates are those that emphasize prosoche, or attention.89 These are formulations that involve the phrase “examining,” “turning one’s heart” or “giving over to one’s heart,” and are typically understand as objects of contemplation: if one examines or considers certain questions, the possibility of sinning is greatly reduced. The similarities between a practice, or set of practices, like this and Athanasius’ programmatic statements about the reading of the psalms should be clear, although the crucial difference is that Schofer’s exercises do not actually involve reading: while a verse of the Torah can be the object of contemplation, it is more often simply an idea: lowly origins, the ultimate human destiny of a 88 There is a huge body of work on this. A comtemporary beginning point are the essays collected in Burkhard Reis and Dorothea Frede, Body and Soul in Ancient Philosophy (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2009) and Heather L. Reid, Athletics and Philosophy in the Ancient World: Contests of Virtue (New York: Routledge, 2011). 89 Jonathan Wyn Schofer, “Spiritual Exercises in Rabbinic Culture,” AJS Review 27 (2003) 203-225; 208-215. 300 rotting corpse, and similar concepts. (An important possibility remains, however, that the actual text of Mishnah Avot, or Avot d’Rabbi Natan A and B, for example, were themselves meant to be read as ‘spiritual exercises.’) It should also be noted here that the language Schofer discusses: giving or turning one’s heart, focusing the attention, and other formulae, can in fact be understood to place the subject spatially. Rachel Neis has discussed how instructions such as this might in fact be part of a bodily and spiritual choreography90—thus tying these spiritual exercises even more closely to those of the Greek and Roman philosophical schools, which included physical exercise. Late Ancient Hagiography Like the rabbinic exercises, Athanasius’ focus not on “nature, reason, or the immediate moment,”91 but on the text of scripture and the subject’s own soul. Unlike the rabbinic exercises, Athanasius’ letter, as carefully and rhetorically crafted as it is, casts its focus fully on the subject and the text, eschewing the possibilities of a more explicitly embodied model, which we would certainly expect from Greek and Roman spiritual exercises, and would not be surprised to find in the rabbinic corpus.92 Both, however, are strategies of subject formation that are concerned with the performance of repeated, deliberate exercises, and that, at least in Athanasius’ formulation, explicitly involve reading. The genre of hagiography contains a trope of ethical reading as well. The early development of numerous saints and holy people is often presented as a form of ethical reading: 90 Rachel Neis, unpublished work shared privately. 91 Schofer, “Spiritual Exercises,” 225. 92 David Brakke discusses some of the close points of contact between Evagrius Ponticus and Athanasius in his piece on “Reading the New Testament and Transforming the Self in Evagrius of Pontus,” in Asceticism and Exegesis in Early Christianity: The reception of New Testament texts in ancient ascetic discourses. Ed. Hans-Ulrich Weidemann. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht (2013), 284-299. 301 the subject encounters a text that changes them, and is partially responsible for setting them on the path toward holiness. This text can be encountered aurally or visually, and as a category, it is more successfully defined by the effect that the text has on the subject, rather than by the form that the actual practice of reading takes. Our first example of this comes from the Acts of Paul and Thekla, and bears a striking resemblance to the divinatorily-mediated “conversions” of Acher, Antony, and Athanasius from the previous chapter. This much-studied late ancient text, which resembles most closely the erotic novels of the Greek Second Sophistic, narrates the life of a young noblewoman from Iconium, in Asia Minor, who leaves her family to follow Paul. 93 According to the various manuscripts of the text, Thekla has a long and illustrious career performing miracles and living as an ascetic. It is the beginning of this career, however, the very moment in which Thekla turns from her life as a noblewoman to a life following Paul, that is important here. Thekla undergoes a radical change that is instigated by hearing a teaching from the mouth of Paul. The important text for Thekla is a reworking of the Beatitudes from Matthew 5. Paul blesses several groups of people while preaching at the house of Onesiphorus: the pure in heart, chase, the continent, those who renounce the world. These differ from the traditional, received text of Matthew 5, and seem to have been reworked to focus on a set of ascetic values. In a manner profoundly similar to the way both Antony and Augustine encounter the gospel, Thekla is dramatically changed by what she hears from the mouth of Saint Paul. She sat at the window hard by, and hearkened day and night unto the word concerning chastity which was spoken by Paul: and she stirred not from the window, but was led onward (or pressed onward) by faith, rejoicing exceedingly: and further, when she saw many women and virgins entering in to Paul, she also desired earnestly to be accounted worthy to stand before Paul’s face and to hear 93 Richard Pervo, “The Ancient Novel Becomes Christian,” in G. Schmeling, The Novel in the Ancient World (Leiden: Brill, 1996) 685-712. 302 the word of Christ; for she had not yet seen the appearance of Paul, but only heard his speech.94 Acts of Paul and Thecla, 7 The few words that Thekla hears are enough to keep her glued to the window; as she begins listening, faith itself leads her forward. Divine words, or words of teaching, as active agents in the transformation of the reader or listener are common themes in late ancient Christian writings. Ephrem, for example, in his hymns on Paradise, describes the act of reading Genesis as being lead bodily into Eden by the words of the biblical text themselves.95 Thekla’s mother notices and remarks on the transformation to Thekla’s fiancé, Thamyris: she is shocked that she has listened to Paul, unmoving, for three days straight, and comments that she is “held by a new desire and a fearful passion.”96 The language is martial, or at least reminiscent of punishment: Thekla is “captured,” and she “hangs” on every word. Eventually, after much civic disturbance, Thekla helps Paul to escape from a prison cell and continues to have her own adventures. Reading is not explicit here, but its effect is. The composition, reception, and literary genre of the Acts of Paul and Thekla are all important subjects in their own right, but the moment at which Thekla hears Paul’s voice reciting the Gospel—or a version thereof—is the relevant reading practice. She is depicted, like Antony, like Augustine, and like Acher, as going through a radical change because of an encounter with a certain text. The architecture of this practice is divinatory—or at least close enough to divinatory that we should understand them in the same realm. Just like Antony, Augustine, and Acher, however, the effect the reading practice has on Thekla is ethical. Her character and life are 94 Jeremy W. Barrier, The Acts of Paul and Thecla: A Critical Introduction and Commentary (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009). 95 Ephrem, Hymns on Paradise, III. 96 APTh, 9. 303 changed, and even though the “reading” in this case is neither a set text that we know of, or performed visually, it still retains enough power to cause her to radically alter the expected course of her life. This helps us glimpse both the fluidity of reading practices, and the different ends to which similarly-constructed practices could be put, as well as one of the basic assumptions that undergirded many reading practices in antiquity. Texts contains extraordinary knowledge, and reading can change you. Not all formative, ethical reading needs to happen following a divinatory rubric, however, nor does it need to herald a great change, or turn, in a subject’s life. Sometimes, the childhood (or adult) education of a saint involves the formation of their soul through the act of reading, and this, in particular, straddles the line between ethical reading practices and educational reading practices. John of Tella, for example, in his sixth century hagiography supposed composed by the Bishop Elias, is described has being educated by his mother, and particularly being formed as an ascetic after reading the life of Saint Thekla. 97 Palladius, in his Lausiac History, describes the elderly virgin Silvania as an avid reader: Αὕτη λογιωτάτη γενομένη ἢ καὶ φιλήσασα τὸν λόγον τὰς νύκτας εἰς ἡμέρας μετέβαλε πᾶν σύγγραμμα τῶν ἀρχαίων ὑπομνηματιστῶν διελθοῦσα· ἐν οἷς Ὠριγένους μυριάδας τριακοσίας, Γρηγορίου καὶ Στεφάνου καὶ Πιερίου καὶ Βασιλείου καὶ ἑτέρων τινῶν σπουδαιοτάτων μυριάδας εἰκοσιπέντε· οὐχ ἁπλῶς οὐδὲ ὡς ἔτυχε διελθοῦσα, ἀλλὰ πεπονημένως ἕκαστον βιβλίον ἕβδομον ἢ ὄγδοον διελθοῦσα. Διὸ καὶ ἠδυνήθη ψευδωνύμου γνώσεως ἐλευθερωθεῖσα πτερωθῆναι τῇ χάριτι τῶν λόγων ἐλπίσι χρησταῖς ἑαυτὴν ὄρνιν ἐργασαμένη πνευματικὴν διαπεράσασα πρὸς τὸν Χριστόν. Palladius, Lausiac History, LV.3 And she, being most lettered, and loving liturature, turned nights into days, by going through every composition of the ancient commenters, including three million (thirty myriads) of (lines) of Origen, and two and a half million (twenty five myriads) of Gregory and Stephen and Pierius and Basil, and others of the most zealous ones. Nor did she happen to go through them singly, but with great 97 This is notable as one of the few literary instances of a male saint consciously modeling himself after a female saint. 304 effort went through each book seven or eight times. And on account of this she was also able, having been freed from false knowledge, to fly by the grace of words, having made herself by kind hopes into a spiritual bird, journeying to Christ. Reading the appropriate books has enabled Silvania to tell the difference between false and proper knowledge—and given her the grace to approach Christ. This is not a turn, like we saw with Thekla—or at the very least, it is not narrated as such. Rather, the cumulative effort of Silvania’s life has resulted in a certain closeness to Christ that defines her later years (and possibly, depending on how we read the language used, her death). Melania the Younger was also described as reading endlessly by her biographer, Gerontius. He describes how her day to day life was in fact defined by the schedule of her reading. Her life is defined by the rhythms of reading and writing. Not only that, but the texts she reads become her nourishment as she lives an ascetic lifestyle: rather than the simple bread and water of the monks in the Egyptian Desert, she consumes a feast of words, biblical, non-biblical, homiletic, interpretive, and hagiographic. Ἔγραφεν δὲ εὐφυῶς πάνυ καὶ ἀπταίστως ἐν σωματίοις· ὥρισεν δὲ ἑαυτῇ, πόσον ὀφείλῃ γράψαι τῆς ἡμέρας καὶ πόσον ἀναγνῶναι τῶν ἐνδιαθέτων βιβλίων καὶ πόσον ἐν τοῖς συντάγμασιν τῶν ὁμιλητῶν. Καὶ μετὰ τὸ κορεσθῆναι, καθάπερ πλακοῦντα ἐσθίουσα, οὕτως διήρχετο τοὺς βίους τῶν πατέρων. Εἶτα ἐκοιμᾶτο ὡς ὡρῶν δύο διάστημα. She was by nature gifted as a writer and wrote without mistakes in notebooks. She decided for herself how much she out to write every day, and how much she should read in the canonical books, how much in the collections of homilies. And after she was satisfied with this activity, she would go through the Lives of the fathers as if she were eating dessert. Then she slept for a period of about two hours. Gerontius, Life of Melania II.23 It is not only the content of what Melania reads that makes her into the ascetic model she is: it is the discipline with which she reads, the fact that she keeps a bible always in her hands, and that Scriptural interpretation comes to her as naturally as reading or eating, that make her 305 into a figure worthy of admiration and praise. This association with reading is not incidental. Melania herself ties her own lifespan to textual and reading practices: at the end of her life, she performs a liturgy at the shrine of Saint Stephen, and reads the tale of his martyrdom from the book of Acts (Life of Melania, II.64). Her reading is particularly skillful, and she receives praise from them, as well as a blessing that she live for many more years. Melania, however, even as she returns their blessing, reveals that she will no longer read in public again. “You will hear me reading publicly no more.”98 Immediately after this, her words are shown to be prophetic: she grows sick, and dies. Both Gerontius and Palladius show us women who have achieved a profound level of education, as well as a profound level of virtue as they progress toward Christ. Their reading has shaped them—both the content of what they have read, and the various practices they engage in order to read it. It is also important, I think, that all the examples I have brought forth here fall under the broad umbrella of asceticism, insofar as it helps us to orient our understanding of reading practices as practices that involve the body as much as the soul. VII. Conclusion Reading as a practice that shapes, changes, and builds the subject—whether the rabbinic sage or the ascetic self—is often associated not only with the moneyed, class-stratified world of those who could afford to learn to do it, but also with the world in which various types of reading carried great symbolic value. This happened not only because of the numinous quality that was regularly ascribed to texts. It was an effect of the literary representation of the Jewish and Christian landscapes of late antiquity—a representation that certainly skewed toward the representation of the ascetic on the Christian end. 98 ἐμοῦ γὰρ οὐκέτι ἀναγινωσκούσης ἀκούσετε 306 Reading was one of the main strategies by which a sage in the late ancient Mediterranean could help the soul progress toward virtue. This strategy had a long lineage—it can be traced back to Plato and Aristotle, who laid the groundwork for frameworks in which ideas imprint themselves on the soul, and enable to soul to work toward changing and improving itself. Rabbinic texts paint a complicated picture of ethical reading. The study of Torah is unquestionably one of the most important activities in certain places and at certain times—but the effects of Torah study vary widely. Sometimes, it pushes scholars out among the people, causing them to aid the poor and needy. Other times, it makes them worthy of higher honors: developing within them a sense of humility and subjection to the divine. The forms that ethical reading practices can take differ wildly, and at times, they resemble the forms of other reading practices. Augustine, Athanasius, and Acher, when they encountered a biblical text that engendered a dramatic change in their lives, were all engaged in a divinatory practice—a divinatory practice, however, that had an ethical effect. Other types of ethical reading practices can take educational, or even liturgical forms: it should come as no surprise that liturgy has a profound effect on an agent’s subjectivity, as does the enculturation process of ancient education that was so standard in the ancient world. What remains standard, however, is that the person encountering the text is, in some way, changed: that the text is the mechanism by which body and soul are transformed. 307 READING RABBIS, READING TEXTS, READING ON THE BRINK CONCLUSION Even if the forms and rubrics in which reading practices took place in Late Antiquity were the products of deeply rooted practices held in common across the ancient Mediterranean, the rabbinic orientation toward texts and reading reflected the cultural, political, and religious particularities that at times helped to distinguish rabbis from their counterparts and at other times made them difficult to discern. While most literate elites in the late ancient Mediterranean held that texts were powerful, and that reading was a practice capable of profound transformation, the exact manner in which reading acted upon the subject was mediated through culturally specific metaphors, language, and practices. Ephrem the Syrian, for example, links reading to the sensual attainment of Paradise. 1 Late ancient hagiographic writings in Greek and Latin were more prone to presenting reading as a strategy of personal formation on the road to ascetic virtue, 2 and the rabbis, of course, transformed the liturgical reading of the Torah into a practice that was only necessary for the fulfillment of halakhah, but also for the continued existence of the world. This dissertation has offered a method for understanding the rabbinic instantiations of reading as an effective religious practice through the examination of practices that involve the division, subdivision, and segmentation of texts. This is by no means the only way by which we might understand reading as a religious practice. Rebecca Wollenberg’s recent work focuses on 1 Ephrem, Hymns on Paradise, V-VII. 2 See pages 302-307, above. 308 the negative side of rabbinic reading, arguing that sight-reading, a rare largely unknown practice to the late antique rabbis, was ultimately conceived of as a form of heresy. 3 Yonatan Moss has also presented a framework to consider late antique reading practices in his article on the rise and function of the holy text: he suggests that, just as Peter Brown’s “holy man” came to serve as a between the human and divine, the personal and political, the local and the imperial, so too did certain books take on these mediating qualities in late antiquity. 4 His work largely focuses on the work of Severus of Antioch, but his observations are similar to this dissertation’s: it is in the way these texts are read that they become holy, powerful, and effective. If we choose to emphasize a shift, it is a shift in focus, rather than practice: religious authority springs from “human acts, divinely endowed, to divine texts, humanly interpreted.” 5 The beginning of the sixth and seventh centuries saw both a crystallization of what eventually became the Bavli, numerous controversies among the bishops and emperors of the Byzantine and Sasanian empires, and, of course, the rise of Islam. By way of concluding, I offer a text from the Qur’an that exemplifies the concerns present in this dissertation. It suggests that the culture that produced the Qur’an was part of the broader expanse of reading cultures in the late antique Mediterranean. Recite in the name of your Lord who created—created man from a clinging substance. Recite, and your Lord is the most Generous— who taught by the pen—Taught man that which he knew not. No! [But] indeed, man transgresses, because he sees himself self- sufficient. Indeed, to your Lord is the return. 6 3 Wollenberg, “The Dangers of Reading as we Know It,” 710. 4 Yonatan Moss, “The Rise and Function of the Holy Text in Late Antiquity: Severus of Antioch, the Babylonian Talmud, and Beyond” in Bitton-Ashkelony, Brouria, ed. Patristic Studies in the Twenty-First Century: Proceedings of an International Conference to Mark the 50th Anniversary of the International Association of Patristic Studies (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015) 521-547. 5 Moss, “The Rise and Function of the Holy Text,” 540. 6 Qur’an, sura 96:1-8. 309 According to traditional Muslim interpretation, Sura 96 of the Qur’an records the first spoken words of Allah’s revelation to Muhammad. The first word of this revelation is “Iqra’!,” typically translated as “Proclaim!” or “Recite!,” but it is a word that can just as easily be translated as “Read!” Its origin is the same Semitic root that forms the Hebrew, Aramaic, and Syriac words for reading: ‫א‬-‫ר‬-‫ק‬.7 I conclude this dissertation with reference to the Quran for two reasons: first, because the world of late antique reading practices that I have tried, in some small manner, to illuminate forms the background for the composition and content of the Quran, and secondly, because the presence of a different source of evidence helps to clarify much of what I have attempted to bring to light in the previous pages. If we take iqra’ to mean recite, Allah’s revelation to Muhammad falls into a pattern recognizable from late antique educational practices. We know that the root used can mean read- recite, as Rebecca Wollenberg demonstrates;8 we have also seen it used to indicate the recitation and repetition of traditions in the process of education. This form of reading is one of many strategies that the rabbis used to cement hierarchies of authority in learning, and in the wider world around them: recitation involved the ascription of traditions to the relevant authorities, creating a chain of transmission that implicitly went back to God. The same is true for Muhammad’s recitation: it comes to him from Allah, via Gabriel. The word Qur’an itself also refers to a reading practice: the recitation of a text, much like the reading of the Torah that late antique rabbis began formalizing. The broad landscape of liturgical reading—lectionaries, parshiyyot, and the like—all stand behind this terminology, and 7 See pp. 329-333 in the glossary. 8 Wollenberg, “The Dangers of Reading as we Know It,” 710. 310 the eventual modes of incredibly formalized reading performance that came to characterize the reading of the Qur’an. The Qur’an is also a repository for extraordinary knowledge that can be gained by reading: an individual verse is referred to as an aya, a word that also means “sign.” 9 These are the signs by which one comes to understand: the natural world, the progression of history, or, in this case, Allah. As a component of the Qur’an, each aya is a receptacle of extraordinary knowledge, waiting to be accessed by the reader. A sign as a portion of the text stands close to the rabbinic tradition of calling portions of a text by names associated with interpretation: pasuk, pereq, parashah. Yet again, we see the close relationship between divination and the partition of a text: both are practices that rely on, and make visible, the divinely inspired content that lies behind the actual words of a piece of writing. Less explicit, but still present, is the assumption that the act of reciting Allah’s revelation is a deeply transformative process. Just as the rabbi who reads properly becomes a living embodiment of Torah, and the paragon of a hierarchy built on ancient Greek and Roman models of education, so too does Muhammad transform into the Messenger of Allah. Peter Brown’s vision of Late Antiquity begins and ends with the holy man, and Yonatan Moss has introduced the concept of the holy text: in Muhammad, as with the rabbis, we see clearly that it is both holy texts that make holy men, and holy reading done by human that create holy texts. Reading was a varied practice, and never a single, monolithic category. In this dissertation, I have endeavored to reveal some of the underlying assumptions that bound these practices together by tracing the complex paths that one specific type of reading practice took through various realms. This practice atomized the text, dissolving it into bits only to ascribe 9 Andrew Rippin, “Aya.” Encyclopedia of Islam, THREE (Leiden: Brill, 2003) s.v. 311 ultimate authority to each luminous crumb. It was these shards of text that the rabbis of Late Antiquity used to fashion themselves; it was these scraps with which they engaged in midrash. To be a rabbi was to be many things: a sage, a teacher, an expert, and a religious authority figure. To become a rabbi was to read appropriately, just as to read correctly was to become, bodily and otherwise, a rabbi oneself. 312 A PRELIMINARY GLOSSARY OF RABBINIC WORDS INVOLVING READING APPENDIX BDB= Brown, Francis; Driver, S.; Briggs, C. The Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1906) Koehler/Baumgartner= Koehler, Ludwig and Baumgartner, Walter. A Bilingual Dictionary of the Hebrew and Aramaic Old Testament: English and German (Boston: Brill, 1998). Sokoloff B=Sokoloff, Michael. A Dictionary of Jewish Babylonian Aramaic of the Talmudic and Geonic Periods (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003) Sokoloff P=Sokoloff, Michael. A Dictionary of Jewish Palestinian Aramaic of the Byzantine Period (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002) Jastrow= Jastrow, Marcus. A Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1903). CAL=Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon ‫ר‬-‫מ‬-‫א‬ Biblical Hebrew to utter or to say;1 Rabbinic Hebrew to speak, to think, to say, or to relate.2 Thiis one of the basic verbs used to denote a speech act in biblical Hebrew, and is typically translated as “to say,” or “to speak.” As such, it seems to be a weaker form of the verbs translated as “to bless” or “to pray” (l’varrekh and l’hitpalel). In mBerakhot 5:2, one “says” a blessing, as well as in mBerakhot 6:3 and 6:6. Why the text uses a different verb than l’varrekh is unclear, but the two words ultimately seem to signify the same thing: the practice of reciting the set text of a blessing. It can ultimately be used in the same way as any of the other verbs that signify the recitation of a text: verses of Torah can be spoken, as can ritual texts proscribed for a 1 BDB 55, Koehler/Baumgartner 63-64. 2 Jastrow 79. 313 specific ritual (see, for example, mSukkah 3:10 for the speaking of Hallel, or mRosh Hashanah 4:6 for the speaking of verses from the Torah). This is also a common rabbinic Hebrew word for the transmission of traditions. When relating tannaitic traditions, a text will often read, “Rabbi X said in the name of Rabbi Y….” See, for example, bBerakhot 3b. This is important as an educational strategy; while it certain can indicate the reading of a specific tradition, there is nothing inherent in the word that requires it. This root also supplies the name for the second period of rabbinic activity, the amoraic period. The rabbis of this period are known as the amoraim, or the “pronouncers.” ‫גליון‬ Biblical Hebrew great tablet (Isaiah 8:1),3 Rabbinic Hebrew margin4 In mYadaiim 3:4, the margins at the top and bottom of a scroll (presumably a sacred scroll, like a Torah) render the hands impure. ‫ר‬-‫מ‬-‫ג‬ Biblical Hebrew to finish, to complete;5 Rabbinic Hebrew to complete, to end, to know well, to answer.6 This is an important word in later rabbinic literature, and signifies an academic, or at least intellectual, form of reading practice. The biblical root means “to end,” or “complete,” but of course this takes on a completely different meaning when used by the later generations of Amoraic rabbis. The technical term for the writing of the Talmud, sometimes used by the rabbis themselves, is gemara, which comes from this root. Jastrow relates the use of this noun, and the 3 BDB, 163. 4 Jastrow, 248. 5 BDB 170. 6 Jastrow, 255. 314 verb for the actions associated with the study of gemara, to the sense of “completion,” or “perfection” that are inherent in a root meaning “to finish.” Ligmor does not only mean to study, however. As a reading practice, it can also signify the end of a reading, as in mTaanit 2:2, when a reader completes the blessings he was performing. ‫ר‬-‫ב‬-‫ד‬ Biblical Hebrew to speak,7 Rabbinic Hebrew to speak, not to be confused with the same root in Aramaic, which means to take, to lead.8 This is one of the most basic words for speech in the Hebrew bible, as well as in rabbinic Hebrew. The nominal form, dvar, means either “word” or “thing,” and the intensive form of the verbal root is one of the most common terms used to designate the speech-act in the biblical text. It is used relatively often in rabbinic literature as well. It is sometimes the verb used to signify the performance of a biblical text, such as in mBikkurim 3:4, when the Levites are said to perform Psalm 30 using this word. The Yerushalmi refers to the hearing of the Torah and its interpretation as a dvar, or word, of Torah (yBerakhot 3a 1:5). It is also a technical term: d’var acher signifies a topic change in a rabbinic text. ‫ג‬-‫ל‬-‫ד‬ Biblical Hebrew ascend;9 Rabbinic Hebrew to leap, to reduce.10 As a reading practice, this verb seems to refer to the liturgical reading of non-consecutive portions of the text: we might translate it as “to skip around.” See mMegillah 4:4 for an example, and pp. 123-124 for a discussion of this text more broadly. 7 Koehler-Baumgartner 199. 8 Jastrow, 278; Sokoloff B 312-3. 9 Koehler-Baumgartner, 210. 10 Jastrow, 308. 315 ‫דפתרא‬ Rabbinic Hebrew parchment.11 This is a technical term for the physical realia of writing. It comes, according to Jastrow, from the Greek διφθέρα, which means a “prepared hide” or a “piece of leather,” or any leather implement. 12 Jastrow suggests that it keeps this meaning, but that it is an inferior piece of leather for writing: neither vellum nor parchment, since it has not been prepared with gallnut. 13 In mSotah 2:4 it is mentioned in contrast to niyar, which may be papyrus, as a material that may be written upon. ‫ש‬-‫ר‬-‫ד‬ Biblical Hebrew to seek with care, to care for;14 Rabbinic Hebrew to seek, to examine, to expound, to interpret.15 This is one of the most complicated roots to translate in rabbinic literature. It gives rise to the nominal form midrash, a category of rabbinic literature and interpretation that scholars have attempted to define for years. The root means “to resort to, to seek,” but can also, according to most dictionaries, mean “to trample,” and subsequently “to discuss.”16 Later usages seem to have a meaning closer to “expound” or “interpret,” and sometimes it even seems that the word is being used to mean “preach,” or to give a public 11 Jastrow, 304. 12 Henry J Liddell and Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon: With a Revised Supplement 9th, 9 edition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 486. 13 Jastrow, 304. 14 Koehler/Baumgartner, 219. 15 Jastrow, 325; Sokolff B 353-355. 16 Ibid., 205. 316 discourse about a specific text. 17 Sokoloff even claims that, by the time of the Yerushalmi, the noun drash can be understood as a “homiletical interpretation.” 18 MPesachim 10:6 stands as a good example for the complexity of translating this verbal root. The latter part of the mishnah reads, “[The father] begins with shame and ends with glory, and expounds from ‘My father was a lost Aramaean’ (Deut. 26:5), until he finishes the entire portion.” The subject, the patriarch who presides over a ritual Passover meal, or seder, is responsible for teaching his son about the holiday, and answering any questions he might have about it. After the questions are asked (and these are the four questions of the Passover seder), the father begins with a passage from the book of Deuteronomy, “expounding” it. It seems clear that he is doing more than simply reading it out loud, and the public, performative nature of the word seems clear in this instance. What is unclear, however, is what exactly is signified by this act. Is the patriarch interpreting word by word? Is he paraphrasing? Is he relating midrash related to the biblical text? These questions are left unanswered. As brief as it may be, mSheqalim 5:1 refers to a subject “doresh,” or expounding words in various languages, which seems to be a similar usage. MChagigah 2:1, with its list of restrictions on what may be expounded in front of certain numbers of people, also speaks to the public and performative nature of this term. MSheqalim 1:4 gives us a slightly different usage of the word, which seems to lie closer to “interpret.” The priests of the Temple interpret (doršin) Leviticus 6:16 “for their own benefit,” claiming that since the barely-measure and the show-bread in the Temple is their unconsumed offering, they are not responsible for providing another source. What is important here, though, is that while the interpretation seems to be public, it speaks to a slightly different practice than 17 Jastrow, 325. 18 Sokoloff P, 156. 317 the usage above. It is less educational, and less performative. MSheqalim 6:6 refers to a midrash that was “expounded” or “interpreted” by Yehoyada the high priest, which again, implies this sort of authoritative interpretation, and action subsequent to it. See also mSotah 5:4, 5:5 and mChullin 5:5 for a similar usage. This action is typically performed by this with a certain type of authority. MYoma 1:6 states that if the high priest was a “chakham,” or a sage, he would doresh before the Torah reading—and that if he were not, other sages would do so in his presence. This is also evident in the instances in which a father performs the action for the benefit of his children, or a rabbi interprets a verse, and subsequently a law or changed practice is outlined. Paul Mandel offers a new genealogy of darash and midrash. He claims that the this root, and the subsequent noun, do not initially refer to textual interpretation, but rather begin as words describing a form of legal reasoning. 19 ‫הלכה‬ Rabbinic Hebrew practice, adopted opinion, rule20 Rabbinic Aramaic hilkhta— traditional law, purpose, section of the law.21 Literally “way” or “that which is walked” from the Biblical Hebrew root ‫כ‬-‫ל‬-‫ה‬, to go. This is the rabbinic word for law, and is often set up in contrast to aggadah. Importantly, it is also considered a unit of text: the Mekhilta refers to learning a set number of halakhot in a day, and the Yerushalmi is divided according to chapters and halakhot (although this is a feature of the Venice printing; for divisions of the Mishnah into halakhot in Geonic literature, see Iggeret Rav Sherira Gaon 16:14, 32:8). 19 Paul Mandel, The Origins of Midrash: From Teaching to Text (Boston: Brill, 2017). 20 Jastrow, 353. 21 Sokoloff B, 378-9. 318 ‫כ‬-‫פ‬-‫ה‬ Biblical Hebrew to turn, to overturn;22 Rabbinic Hebrew, to turn, to overturn, to change, to turn around.23 This terms usage as a reading practice comes from its figurative, metaphoric sense. In rabbinic literature, especially in the pa’el form, this verb means “to be engaged in,” or eventually, “to study.” We can see this usage most clearly in mAvot 5:22: “Turn it over and turn it over, for it contains everything.” The “it” here is likely the Torah, and while the verb conjures up images of physically turning the text over and over again to read both sides, it is probably more likely that this word should be understood figuratively, as a signifier for “poring over” a text. ‫ר‬-‫ה‬-‫ר‬-‫ה‬ Rabbinic Hebrew to meditate.24 This root is, according ot Jastrow, a reduplicated form of the root heh-resh-heh, which means to “conceive,” or “be pregnant with.” It is another word for thinking or considering, and in the Mishnah, its usage seems to indicate meditation over a specific text. It occurs in mBerakhot 3:4, when the Mishnah states that one with impure genital emissions should meditate on the Shema in his heart, rather than vocally. ‫ר‬-‫כ‬-‫ז‬ 22 Koehler-Baumgartner, 240. 23 Jastrow, 361. 24 Jastrow, 366. 319 Biblical Hebrew to remember, to call to mind;25 Rabbinic Hebrew remember, mention, celebrate.26 See also the cognate ‫ר‬-‫כ‬-‫ד‬.27 This root is rarely used to signify a reading practice. While the biblical nominal forms, zikkaron and zekher, both mean “memorial” or “remembrance,” it is possible that both carry valences of writing when used to denote inscribed grave stelae. In rabbinic literature, however, it is when the root zayin-khet-resh appears in the hif’il, or causative (l’hizkir), form (to cause to remember, to remind) that it seems to signify an interaction between a reader and a text. 28 In mBerakhot 1:5, it is commanded to “mention” or “recall” the Exodus every night. It is unclear exactly what this means: if it is a recitation of a Biblical text that tells the Exodus, then it is clearly a reading practice. It is also possible, however, that it is in reference to a prayer of rabbinic composition, or something else entirely. The same word is also used later on in the masekhet, to refer to the practice of reciting the seasonal prayer for rain: “We recall the powers of the rains during the [prayer] of the resurrection of the dead” (mBerakhot 5:2). ‫ה‬-‫ז‬-‫ח‬ Biblical Hebrew to see29 Rabbinic Hebrew to see, to gaze30 is a very rarely used Hebrew verb for seeing. In the Hebrew bible, this word is almost entirely poetic, although in Aramaic, it becomes one of the standard words for the sense of sight. It also appears, according to Sokoloff , 25 Koehler-Baumgartner 256. 26 Jastrow 399-400. 27 Sokoloff B, 337. 28 Jastrow, A Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli, and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature, 400. 29 BDB, 302 30 Jastrow 443, Sokoloff P 194 320 as a corruption of the root ‫חמר‬. When used in reference to a text, it means to read, although it seems to be a more intensive form of reading than other “seeing” verbs when they are used for reading. This is evident in mAvot 5:22: “Turn it over and turn it over; everything is in it. And look in it, and grow old and be worn out in it, and do not move away from it.” “Looking” here is definitely not a simply glance: it is a sustained process of reading, studying, and intensively engaging the material of “it,” which is likely the Torah. ‫ף‬-‫ל‬-‫י‬ Rabbinic Hebrew: to learn, to grow accustomed to. 31 Likely from ‫פ‬-‫ל‬-‫ א‬in biblical Hebrew, this is the a rabbinic Hebrew word for “learning” or “growing accustomed to.” It suggests the process itself, rather than the actual act of studying, like ‫ד‬-‫מ‬-‫ל‬. Interestingly, this is also the main cognate verb for learning and teaching in Syriac. ‫ב‬-‫ת‬-‫כ‬ Biblical Hebrew to write32 Rabbinic Hebrew to write.33 This is, of course, not an explicit word for reading, but rather writing. Instead of assuming that the subject encounters the text as something already meaningful, it refers to the creation of that text: a necessary aspect of reading. As a noun or an adjective, however, it refers to that which has already been written, and is therefore indicative of reading practices, specifically in the sense of what has been, or is being, read. See mEruvin 1:7, e.g., for an example of this term being used to describe the creation of a text in the context of that text also being read (in this case, a divorce bill). MMoed Qatan 3:3 also contains examples of the types of texts that may be written, especially on certain holidays. This 31 Jastrow, 579. 32 BDB 507 33 Jastrow 678-680. 321 word also, of course, can refer to the writing of sacred texts. For particularly interesting examples, see mSotah 7:5 and mSanhedrin 2:4. The Mishnah makes use of many nominal forms of this root. MShabbat 16:1 uses kitvei, the nominal construct form, as well as the passive adjectival form, katuvim, to describe sacred writings that one may save from a fire on the Sabbath. MSheqalim 3:2 uses the same adjective to describe labeled baskets for the collection of sheqels; what is particularly interesting about this passage is that it refers to the inscription in Greek as well as Hebrew. For similar uses of this word, see mYoma 3:6 or 4:1. Being “inscribed,” or “written upon,” however, does not necessarily mean that what is inscribed is alphabetic writing. MSheqalim 5:3 discusses tokens, or seals, with “calf, ram, kid, and sinner” inscribed on them. It is left entirely ambiguous if these are images or short inscriptions. ‫לוח‬ Biblical and Rabbinic Hebrew tablet.34 Typically used in rabbinic literature to talk about the tablets of the Ten Commandments. 35 In mSotah 2:4, this word is used in the context of other scribal implements. ‫ד‬-‫מ‬-‫ל‬ Biblical Hebrew to be joined, to be affixed, to train;36 Rabbinic Hebrew to learn, to study, to teach.37 This root and its derivative verbal and nominal forms are the most common words in the Hebrew Bible and rabbinic literature for the practices of teaching, learning, and studying. 34 Koehler/Baumgartner 479; Jastrow 696. 35 Ibid., 531; Jastrow, 696. 36 BDB, 540. 37 Jastrow, 712. 322 Teaching is not an activity that occurs among equals. Most of the time, it is clear that a master, or someone who has a great amount of mastery over a body of material, is teaching a student, or someone in a lower position (often a chakham, a wise one or sage, teaching a talmid, or disciple). This is seen strikingly in mSotah 3:4, where a man is forbidden to teach Torah to his daughter. Later in the same tractate, mSotah 9:14, parents are forbidden from teaching “Greek wisdom” to their children (and see also mKiddushin 4:14 for more usage of this verb with parents and sons). As a verb meaning “learn,” in the simple form, lamad can be done individually. In mBaba Metzia 2:8, one who finds a set of books is instructed to read from them, but not necessarily learn from them “from the beginning.” This is an important distinction between studying and reading, then: reading may be done from a text already known, but study occurs when one is approaching it for the first time. This is further supported by the use of the word in Mishnah Avot, where study of Torah is required to retain it, because it is not “an inheritance”—a yerushah—for the student (mAvot 2:12). Studying can also be done for a specific end. YBerakhot 3b 1:5 contains a reference to studying in order “to do,” in contrast to studying without intending to practice. The most common nouns derived from this root are talmid, which means “scholar” or “disciple,” and talmud, a more abstract noun that is typically translated as “study, teaching, lesson, learning.” Talmud is often seen in conjunction with the world Torah, creating the phrase talmud torah, a set phrase that is often considered by scholars to be represent the core of the Rabbinic enterprise (see mPeah 1:1, for example). It also denotes a stage of education in mAvot 5:21, implying that the rabbis considered a certain age ideal to teach their progeny the content of their own intellectual production. 323 ‫ק‬-‫ח‬-‫מ‬ Biblical Hebrew to annihilate38 Rabbinic Hebrew to erase.39 This is a relatively violent verb, typically meaning “utterly destroy” or “annihilate” in biblical Hebrew. 40 In rabbinic Hebrew and Aramaic, the meaning softens to be come “erase” or rub out, and can be used to describe a parchment that has been scraped and then written on again—a palimpsest.41 This image is used to great effect in mAvot 4:20, in which Elisha ben Abuyah describes an old person learning as a palimpsest, as opposed to a child, who is a sheet of new parchment. ‫ר‬-‫ס‬-‫מ‬ Biblical Hebrew to bind42 Rabbinic Hebrew to transmit43 This is a contested verb form. According to Driver, it appears in Biblical Hebrew as yod-samekh-resh or alef-samekh resh, with the meaning of binding, or perhaps admonishment. Jastrow connects it to alef-samekh-resh as well, suggesting a meaning of seizing, handing over, or transmitting, while Kohler-Baumgartner actually give the root as mem-samekh-resh.44 In rabbinic literature, the word is used, like qof- bet-lamed, to describe the transmission of knowledge, education, and traditions. It appears in conjunction with the same root, seemingly used to signify similar, if not interchangeable, practices. For am example, see mAvot 1:1. 38 BDB. 563. 39 Jastrow, 763-764. 40 BDB, 563. 41 Jastrow, 764. 42 BDB, 416. 43 Jastrow 810-811. 44 Koehler/Baumgartner, 608. 324 In rabbinic literature, the nominal form masorah also bears the meaning of endnotes and marginalia in manuscripts. ‫ד‬-‫ג‬-‫נ‬ Biblical Hebrew to draw;45 Rabbinic Hebrew to tell, to announce, to narrate.46 This term is rarely used as a verb indicating a reading practice in this dissertation, but its nominal form, ‫אגדה‬/aggadah, represents an important feature of rabbinic composition: narrative, story-based interpretation, as opposed to the legal interpretation of halakhah. A famous definition claims that all that is not halakhah is aggadah, and all that is not aggadah is halakhah; while the two need not be considered so diametrically opposed, they are certainly two features of the larger rabbinic interpretive project, and certainly closely related to other forms of interpretive reading. For this word in context, see Gen. Rabbah 94, Lev. Rabbah 22. There is also some question as to whether or not there were books of aggadah compiled in late antiquity. ‫ניר‬ Rabbinic Hebrew paper. 47 A scribal implement described in mSotah 2:4, typically meaning the warp of a loom, or perhaps mesh. Possibly paper, or papyrus. ‫ר‬-‫ד‬-‫ס‬ 45 BDB, 616-7. 46 Jastrow 871-72. 47 Jastrow, 909; Sokoloff P, 349. 325 Biblical Hebrew to order;48 Rabbinic Hebrew to arrange, to order, to do in order.49 There are two important uses of this root in in the context of late ancient rabbinic reading practices, both of them occurring as nominal forms of this root: ‫סדר‬/seder and ‫סידרא‬/sidra. A seder is a set order, or a unit of something in that order. The Mishnah is divided into six orders, each of which contains several tractates. In bTaanit 26a, we see the word seder used in a sense that seems to indicate something more like “lectionary”: a set order of readings, which content in this case has to do with the performance of sacrifices. BYoma 73a, for example, contains another similar usage, in which a seder is a set of questions in their proper order. MMegillah 3:4 refers to the regular reading cycle of the Torah in the same way. A sidra, on the other hand, is a specific section of a text, although also situated in its proper context, and read in the correct order. Combined with the word paseq, this word indicates that a text is being read verse by verse, in the correct order. ‫ר‬-‫פ‬-‫ס‬ Biblical Hebrew to count, to enumerate, to tell;50 Rabbinic Hebrew to write, to count, to tell.51 This word is often used to signify the oral retelling of a specific story or teaching, but is more importantly used in its nominal form, sefer. This word has many possible translations: it can mean “book,” such as a book of the bible, or “scroll,” as in sefer Torah: the scroll of the Torah. The ambiguity of the word “text” perhaps captures its wide valences best: it is both the content of the writing, and the physical document in which the writing resides. 48 BDB, 690. 49 Jastrow, 958-959. 50 BDB, 706-709. 51 Jastrow, 1017-1018. 326 The nominal forms of this root are far more common, and tell us more about rabbinic reading practices. Sefer, for example, is a basic word for a written document—a letter, a book, or even a contract, like a ketubbah. The sefer, of course, is a scroll and not a codex: something that the reader is reminded of most effectively when the rabbis use the word “nitgalgel,” or “unroll,” to describe a book falling off of a stand, table, or podium (mEruvin 10:3). Various books and collections of books are named, such as Hezekiah’s book of healings (mPesachim 4:9), the “found books” of mKiddushin 4:13 , or the Books of Homer (mYadaiim 4:6). The other important noun to come from this root is the word for “scribe”: sofer in Hebrew, or safra in Aramaic.52 This is a broadly used term, and can signify any number of more specific occupations, such as the scribe in the marketplace who writes divorce documents (mGittin 3:1), or the more technically skilled scribe who writes a Torah scroll (possibly referenced in mYadaiim 3). ‫ג‬-‫ר‬-‫ס‬ Rabbinic Hebrew to strap.53 This is a highly technical verb that seems to be used metaphorically when it describes reading. It does not appear in biblical Hebrew, but is relatively common in rabbinic Hebrew. It means “to strap” or “to make a net.” When it describes other actions, Jastrow suggests that it takes on the meaning of “to do a thing in a manner in which straps are drawn in bedsteads &c., i.e. in zig-zag; to skip.”54 One can read the Megillah of Esther in this manner, apparently, and still fulfill the ritual obligation, according to mMegillah 2:2. ‫ק‬-‫ס‬-‫ע‬ 52 Jastrow., 1018; Sokoloff, 386. 53 Jastrow, 1022. 54 Jastrow, 1022. 327 Rabbinic Hebrew to work at, to take pains with, to be engaged in;55 Rabbinic Aramaic to engage in, to deal with.56 This word it has the broad meaning of “working at” or “being engaged in,” and is often used in conjunction with Torah. A sage should “work at” Torah. Used in this capacity, it appears in similar contexts as the root for studying or learning, lamed-mem-dalet. To engage in Torah is either a solitary or group activity: mAvot 6:1 shows us three men doing it together. It is often, especially in the Yerushalmi, used in tandem with the phrase Talmud Torah, the broad study of Torah which is supposed to encompass the entirety of a rabbis’ days and nights (yBerakhot 3b 1:5). ‫ח‬-‫ת‬-‫פ‬ Biblical Hebrew to open;57 Rabbinic Hebrew to open, to begin;58 Rabbinic Babylonian Aramaic to open, lance, begin.59 This root means “to open” in its simple form, especially when used in biblical Hebrew.60 Nouns derived from it mean “opening,” “doorway,” or “entrance.” When referring to a text, it can mean to “start reading”: mMegillah 4:1 refers to the blessings that come when one “opens” and “closes” a text. In rabbinic Hebrew, however, a different set of more interpretive meanings are added to the root of peh-heh-chet. “To open,” especially in classical literature of the amoraic period (although certainly in the tannaitic period as well) 55 Jastrow, 1098. 56 Sokoloff B, 873. 57 Koehler/Baumgartner, 787. 58 Jastrow, 1251. 59 Sokoloff B, 947. 60 BDB, 834-836. 328 means to begin a discourse, or to start an interpretation. It is almost always used in reference to a biblical text, such as in mSheqalim 5:1. A large number of specific interpretive forms that utilize a technique which later commentators have called charizah begin with this word: “Rabbi x opened verse x:xx” (see, for example, Leviticus Rabbah or Lamentations Rabbah 1). This form came to be called the petichah, or petichta, in Aramaic. One verse from anywhere in the Bible is linked to another verse, called the “target,” by a process of slowly progressing interpretation, with intermediary verses in the middle. This process is called charizah, or “stringing.” It is not necessarily dissimilar to the catena style of interpretation. ‫א‬-‫ר‬-‫ק‬ Biblical Hebrew to call to read61 Rabbinic Hebrew to call to read62 Words stemming from this root are by far the most commonly used to signify the act of reading: the interaction of an agent and a text in which the text is engaged as something productive of meaning. The root contains a wide range of definitions. Possibilities for the Biblical Hebrew root range from “call,” or “proclaim,” to “read” and “recite.” The word can also mean to invoke, or to name, or even to summon or appoint. It maintains the same range of meanings in rabbinic literature, although with a more specific shade: much of the time, the activity in question, or the nouns that are formed from the root, are related to the biblical text. Miqra’, for example, is a portion of the biblical text, and Jastrow even goes so far as to translate the nominal Qara’ as “Biblical scholar” or “Bible 61 BDB 894-896. 62 Jastrow 1409, Sokoloff P 503. 329 teacher” (bKiddushin, 49a). The Palestinian Aramaic transformation of this verb, qoph-resh-heh, according to Sokoloff, is similarly associated with the Biblical text. 63 Many scholars, perhaps most notably Daniel Boyarin64 and David Carr, have attempted to understand what, exactly, this root signifies in the Hebrew Bible and Rabbinic literature, and how it differs from our own conceptions of “reading.” Rebecca Scharbach Wollenberg, in her 2015 dissertation, has critiqued much of this work, and attempted to do the same for the translation of “liqrot” and related words in Rabbinic literature. 65 Boyarin’s central claim is that “‘[r]eading,’ in ancient Jewish cultural signifies an act which is oral, social, and collective, while in modern (and early-modern) Europe it signifies an act that belongs to a private or semiprivate social space.” 66 Where contemporary reading is voluntary, pleasurable, and typically performed alone, ancient reading was a profoundly social speech act that was constitutive of communities and social norms. There are several important aspects of the biblical liqro’ that Boyarin emphasizes. The first is that its entire semantic range is not grounded in the interaction of agent and text, but rather the realm of speech acts: hence summoning, calling, and naming as activities that are included in its definition.67 Biblical verses about that use this verb with a physical text and without a physical do so in exactly the same way: what is significant, according to Boyarin, is the calling out of the 63 Sokoloff P, 503. 64 Daniel Boyarin, “Placing Reading: Ancient Israel and Medieval Europe,” in The Ethnography of Reading (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 10–38. 65 Rebecca Wollenberg, The People of the Book Without the Book: Jewish Ambivalence Towards Biblical Text After the Rise of Christianity (unpublished doctoral dissertation), University of Chicago, 2015. 66 Boyarin, “Placing Reading: Ancient Israel and Medieval Europe,” 11. Importantly, Boyarin is still indebted, in some way, to the narrative of Christianity marking a “turn to the private” in the history of religion. This idea has come under serious critique in recent years as a form of special pleading for the eventual “triumph” of Christianity. 67 Ibid., 12. 330 text, rather than the reading of it. To read is to call out, to act, to speak. Miqra’ is both the text that is read, and also the assembly before which the reading is pronounced: to read is to call out and to speak, but also to do so publicly. 68 Boyarin also suggests that this communal, social sense is maintained in rabbinic literature. One of the most common usages of qara’ is in rituals of reading, where a subject recites a biblical passage at the appropriate time and place (the primary example, of course, being the Shema: the twice-daily recitation of Deuteronomy 6:4). He does concede, however, that liqrot can also signify the act of studying scripture, but claims that this act of studying is profoundly different from ours: it is necessarily oral. 69 Given these aspects of reading, Boyarin makes the claim that qore’ not only signifies a religious practice, but that it is typical of public prayer. As we will see, the evidence bears out many of these conclusions. David Carr’s central claim in Writing on the Tablet of the Heart is that physical texts did not exclusively—or even primarily—serve as sources of new knowledge to be read and ingested. Rather, they performed a variety of functions, many of them ritual, liturgical, and apotropaic, and rarely seemed to have been involved in the transmission of texts themselves.70 To be overly schematic, texts were transmitted completely by a cultural elite who had memorized a large portion of what might be considered a culture’s set of standard texts, bits and pieces of which were known by a larger spread of elite societal members. Reading, then is the process of this education (or enculturation, as Carr calls it) and transmission. 68 Ibid., 14. 69 Ibid., 17. David Carr, Writing on the Tablet of the Heart: Origins of Scripture and Literature (Oxford ; New York: Oxford 70 University Press, 2005). 331 Rebecca Scharbach Wollenberg uses Carr’s work to argue that qri’ah, the rabbinic word most commonly translated as “reading,” as well as the associated verbs, do not signify reading as we know it at all. Qri’ah is the standard biblical and rabbinic Hebrew word, in her estimation, for the process that Carr describes. She claims that it refers to the practice of “reciting a precise oral formula from memory, with or without reference to a physical text.”71 In this way, there were two transcripts of the Bible: the written, consonantal text, and the memorized text. 72 Liqrot is by far the most common word for “reading” and related activities in the Mishnah. As a signifier of an interaction between an agent and a text, it does not necessarily refer to a physical text: sometimes, the text merely acts as a referent. The text seems, however, to almost always (and perhaps even exclusively) be the Biblical text. This is clear in the first chapter of the Mishnah’s very first tractate, Berakhot, and even its very first words: Me’ematai qor’in et shma’ b’arvin? “From when may one recite the Shema in the evening?” (mBerakhot, 1:1). The question, its answers, and the related questions that are asked afterwards do not require the text of the Shema (Deuteronomy 6:4, recited every morning and evening) to be present as a physical text. Most of the time, in fact, it seems to be taken for granted that the text is not physically present (although it is interesting to note that the time for reciting the Shema in the morning— when there is enough light to distinguish between blue and white—would also likely be enough light to read by, mBerakhot 1:2). Meaning is also a crucial aspect of reading when this verb is used. In order for an obligation to count as fulfilled, one must intend to do so: one cannot read or recite the Shema without 71 Wollenberg, “The People of the Book Without the Book: Jewish Ambivalence Towards Biblical Text After the Rise of Christianity,” 31. 72 Ibid., 11. 332 intention and expect to not have to recite it again. The second chapter of Mishnah Berakhot makes this clear. “If one was reading in the Torah, and the time for the miqra’ arrived: if he directed his heart, he has fulfilled it; if not, he has not fulfilled it.” Miqra’ here is taken to mean the recitation of the Shema, and while it is possible for the recitation of the Shema in the midst of a Torah reading to fulfill an obligation, it must be done while one’s “heart is directed.” To direct one’s heart in Tannaitic literature has a very specific valence,73 typically referring to the bodily disposition of the reader, as well as their intentionality. One must be intending to recite the Shema in order for its recitation to count: simply saying the words in the course of a Torah reading does not count. Additionally, qri’ah does not require audibility. As long as the text is recited correctly and in its entirety, it counts as an appropriate act of reading. This is made explicit in mBerakhot 2:3: “One who reads the Shema but does not make it heard to his ear, he has fulfilled his obligation.” In the Mishnah, liqrot often takes a text from the Bible as its object. Berakhot 1 is generally concerned with the reading of Deuteronomy 6:4. Sometimes this is quite explicit: the High Priest reads from the Torah after it has been physically handed to him during the Yom Kippur service (mYoma 7:1). Other prayers that have their roots in biblical texts are also “read” using the same vocabulary, as are ritual recitations of biblical texts are certain events, like the festival of the first fruits (see, for example, mBikkurim 1:1, where the ritual of Deuteronomy 26, and the recitation of Deut. 26:5-11, is explicated), or the ceremony of the chalitzah, which is even more striking because the agent is a woman reading the proper biblical verses (mYevamot 12:3). See also texts that refer to the recitation, or reading, of Hallel: a collection of Psalms sung on the three 73 Rachel Neis, unpublished work shared privately. 333 pilgrimage festivals (mPesachim 5:7, e.g.). It is interesting to note that the translation of a biblical text can also be “read” using the verb qara’: see, for example, mMegillah 2:1. There are cases, of course, where the Bible is not the object of reading or recitation signified with qore’. These iterations, however, are often vague, and it is left unclear whether or not the texts being read are biblical in nature or not. MEruvin 10:3, for example, paints a picture of someone “reading” a scroll on a threshold. The nature of this scroll is entirely unclear. Additionally, a scribe in the marketplace reads, or calls out, the words of the gittin, or divorce documents, that he is attempting to sell (mGittin 3:1). There is also a curious reference to the reading of “outside books,” haqore’ bas’farim hachitzyonim, as an action that guarantees one will not have a portion in the World to Come. ‫י‬-‫נ‬-‫ש‬/‫א‬-‫נ‬-‫ש‬/‫ה‬-‫נ‬-‫ש‬ Biblical Hebrew to repeat or do again;74 Rabbinic Hebrew to repeat or to reply.75 See also Aramaic cognate root ‫י‬-‫נ‬-‫ת‬/‫א‬-‫נ‬-‫ת‬. This is one of the standard words for various forms of textual practice in rabbinic literature. Its Aramaic cognate, tav-nun-alef, is one of the most common roots for technical terms in the tannatic and amoraic strata of the Mishnah and Talmudim. The root comes from the word for the number “two,” and bears as a base meaning the sense of “repeating” something. The name of the Mishnah comes from this root—translated either as the “repetition,” or the “recited teaching.” As a noun used in rabbinic literature, “mishnah” seems to mean “portion of study” (see, for example, mAvot 3:8 and 5:21, yBerakhot 3b 1:5). 74 BDB 1040, Koehler-Baumgartner 996 75 Sokoloff B 1165, Jastrow 1606. 334 This word can be used to denote simple repetition. In mPesachim 5:7, for example, if a group making the Passover offering finishes reading the selection of appropriate praise-psalms before the sacrifice is done, they simply repeat them. It can also, it seems, be a technical term for the study of Torah. MAvot 2:4 uses it in this way: “Do not say, ‘When I am available, I will repeat/study (‫)אשנה‬,’ lest you are never available.” See also mAvot 3:7 for a similar usage. The Yerushalmi is a bit more specific in its usage of this root, and seems to use it with a performative sense. The term “‫ ”שינון‬can mean the public repetition of a lesson, as in yBerakhot 2d 1:2, or it can even mean the “diligent teaching” or “memorization” of a body of knowledge. Additionally, it also seems to have the meaning of “study,” or perhaps review one’s teaching, when used as a verb, as in yBerakhot 3a 1:5. ‫י‬-‫נ‬-‫ת‬/‫א‬-‫נ‬-‫ת‬ Palestinian Aramaic to relate or to narrate;76 Babylonian Aramaic to repeat, to learn a tannaitic tradition, to recite, to do a second time, or to report a tradition.77 See also Hebrew cognate root ‫י‬-‫נ‬-‫ש‬/‫א‬-‫נ‬-‫ש‬/‫ה‬-‫נ‬-‫ש‬. In addition to having clear meanings that indicate repetition, recitation, and learning (see, e.g., bBerakhot 33b, bMegillah 25a), several important nouns and rabbinic technical terms come from this root. The most obvious is ‫תנא‬/tanna, or “reciter,” which refers to the members of the earliest stage of the rabbinic movement—hence this stage’s appellation as “the tannaitic period.” Tannaitic teachings are often introduced with some form of this verb: the phrase “‫תנו רבנן‬/tanu rabbanan,” “our rabbis repeated,” typically introduces a Mishnaic statement or a baraita, and is a classic indication of this earliest stratum. 76 CAL, Sokoloff P 77 Sokoloff B 1218-1222; Jastrow 1681 335 The later Aramaic term for the Mishnah, ‫מתניתא‬/matnita, also derives from this root. See examples on bYoma 72b and bKetuvim 72a. It is often referred to as “our Mishnah,” or ‫מתנתן‬/mitnatan (bYevamot 64b), although Sokoloff holds that this word can simply be another term for a tannaitic tradition. 78 Other related words and phrases are ‫תניא‬/tanya, meaning “it is taught,” and ‫מתני‬/matnei, a participle that indicates transmitting a tannaitic tradition. 78 Sokoloff B 722. 336 Bibliography Primary Texts Acts of Paul and Thecla. Jeremy W. Barrier, The Acts of Paul and Thecla: A Critical Introduction and Commentary (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009). Artemidorus, Oneirocriticon. Daniel E. Harris-McCoy, ed. Artemidorus’ Oneirocritica (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). Athansius, Life of Antony. G. J. M. Bartelink, ed. Athanase d'Alexandrie, Vie d'Antoine (Sources Chrétiennes 400. Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 2004). Babylonian Talmud. (Vilna: Widow and Brothers Romm, 1886). Barhadbeshabba, Cause of the Foundation of the School of Nisibis. Addai Scher, ed., Cause de la Fondation des Écoles, PO 4:4 (1908). 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The Making of Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978). --. Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Toward a Christian Empire (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992). --. The Body and Society: Men, women, and sexual renunciation in early Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998). Cancik, Hubert and Helmuth Schneider. Brill’s New Pauly: Antiquit Volumes (Leiden: Brill, 2002). Carr, David. Writing on the Tablet of the Heart: Origins of Scripture and Literature (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005). Cavallo, Guglielmo, and Roger Chartier. A History of Reading in the West, trans. Lydia G. Cochrane (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1995). Cavallo, Guglielmo. Lire à Byzance (Paris: Belles Lettres, 2006). Charlesworth, James. The Pesharim and Qumran History: Chaos or Consensus? (Grand Rapids, MI: W. B. Eerdmans, 2002). Clark, Elizabeth. Jerome, Chrysostom, and Friends: Essays and Translations (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1979). --. 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