ALL THAT WRITING – AND NO WRITERS? THE PUZZLE OF RABBINIC AUTHORSHIP

Rabbinic literature of Late Antiquity certainly had its audience. But can it be said to have had authors? From the perspective of the rabbinic tradition itself, the axiomatic answer is, of course, “no.” A half millennium of tradition, the Mishnah tells us, links the moment at which “Moses received Torah from Sinai” to the teachings of the Men of the Great Assembly who, in the shadow of Persian hegemony, “said three things: be cautious in judgment, raise up many disciples, and build a fence for the Torah”

(M. Avot 1:1). In the rabbinic view, formulations of collective rabbinic wisdom, such as those ascribed to the Men of the Great Assembly, are “said,” “received” or “heard,” and “transmitted.” But they are not “authored.” Not any more than a rhythmic refrain, stemming out of seventeenth-century West African tribal dance, that - transplanted with its enslaved bearers to the cotton fields of the American South - adopts the musical scale of Scotch-Irish reels and emerges in 1938 as a chord progression supporting this recorded confession of a Robert Johnson: