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Between Philology and Foucault: New Syntheses in Contemporary Mishnah Studies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 November 2008

Moshe Simon-Shoshan
Moshe Simon-Shoshan
Affiliation:
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer Sheva, Israel
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Extract

The work of many emerging young rabbinics scholars today, particularly that which is focused on the Mishnah, is animated by a desire to synthesize two distinct approaches to rabbinic texts. One is the traditional philological-historical approach, which traces its roots back to the European Wissenschaft des Judentums tradition of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In its current form, traditional Talmud criticism is perhaps most associated in Israel with the work of J. N. Epstein, the founder of the Hebrew University Talmud Department and the “father of exact scientific Talmudic inquiry.” While most of Epstein's students proceeded to shape the study of rabbinic literature in the Israeli academy, Saul Lieberman, perhaps his most distinguished disciple, moved to America, where his presence dominated the study of rabbinic literature at the Jewish Theological Seminary in the postwar decades. Traditional Talmud criticism is characterized by a scrupulous attention to manuscripts and textual variants, a systematic use of the findings of Semitic and comparative linguistics, and the use of form and source criticism to determine the history and development of larger textual units.

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Type
Research Article
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AJS Review , Volume 32 , Issue 2 , November 2008 , pp. 251 - 262
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Jewish Studies 2008

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References

1. Lieberman, Saul, Sifre Zuta (New York, 1968), 135Google Scholar. Epstein's, major works include Mav'o lenusaḥ hamishnah, 3rd ed. (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2000)Google Scholar; and Mav'o lesifrut hatanna'im (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1957).

2. Lieberman's major works include Tosefta Ki-Fshuta, 10 vols. (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1955–88); and Greek in Jewish Palestine: Hellenism in Jewish Palestine (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1994). On Leiberman's methodology and the historical-philological approach in general, see Rosenthal, Eliezer Shimshon, “Hamoreh,” Proceedings of the American Academy of Jewish Research 31 (1963), *1–71Google Scholar.

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4. See Halbertal, Moshe, Mahapekhot parshaniyot behithavutan (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1997)Google Scholar; and Hauptman, Judith, Rereading the Rabbis: A Woman's Voice (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997), 15–29Google Scholar.

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14. Ibid., 90.

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18. On these terms, see Solomon, The Analytic Movement, 117–20.

19. On distinctions of this nature in the work of the conceptual-analytic school, see Solomon, The Analytic Movement, 128–32; and Adler, Yitzchak, Lomdus: A Substructural Analysis of Conceptual Talmudic Thought (New York: Bet Sha'ar Press, 1989), 37–39Google Scholar.

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21. Clothes torn in mourning for a parent may never be resown and hence serve as a reminder of loss as long as they remain in the mourner's possession.

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23. Rosen-Zvi's discussion of these details of sotah ritual would be further enriched by a treatment of Foucault's discussion of the concept of exomologeisis in Christianity. In the course of this discussion, Foucault cites a passage from Jerome in which he describes the penance practiced by an adulteress that involves, among other things, the dishevelment of her hair and the revealing of her “naked breast.” This aspect of the sotah ritual might be a particularly good locale to compare and contrast the construction of the self in rabbinic Judaism and early Christianity. See Foucault, , “The Hermeneutics of the Self,” in Religion and Culture, ed. Carrette, Jeremy R. (New York: Routledge, 1999), 158–81Google Scholar.

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27. Albeck, Chanoch, Mav'o lamishnah (Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 1959)Google Scholar; and Epstein, Mav'o lenusaḥ. Note also Neusner's voluminous body of work on the Mishnah.

28. For example, Segal, M. H., Dikduk leshon hamishnah (Tel-Aviv: Devir, 1936)Google Scholar; and Azar, Moshe, Taḥbir leshon hamishnah (Jerusalem: Academy of Hebrew Language, 1995)Google Scholar.

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30. For a recent statement by Neusner on the nature of the Mishnah, see Making God's Word Work: A Guide to the Mishnah (New York: Continuum, 2004).

31. Moscovitz, Leib, Talmudic Reasoning: From Casuistics to Conceptualization (Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2002)Google Scholar; and Alexander, Elizabeth Shanks, Transmitting Mishnah: The Shaping Influence of Oral Tradition (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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33. Berkowitz, Beth A., Execution and Invention: Death Penalty Discourse in Early Rabbinic and Christian Cultures (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Chaya T. Halberstam, Evidence and Uncertainty: Rabbinic Judges Interpret the World (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, forthcoming).

34. Neusner, Jacob, Ancient Israel after Catastrophe: The Religious World View of the Mishnah (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1983)Google Scholar.

35. See Simon-Shoshan, Moshe, “Halakhic Mimesis: Rhetorical and Redactional Strategies in Tannaitic Narrative,” Dine Yisrael 24 (2006): 101*–23*Google Scholar; and Berkowitz, Execution and Invention, esp. 18, where she cites Neusner in the context of her own argument that “the ritual of the Mishnah creates a reality that is almost impervious to contingencies.”