Rabbinic Literature and the N.T.
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RABBINIC LITERATURE AND THE NT. The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls and renewed study, since World War II, of the Jewish pseudepigraphic writings have given new impetus to the study of the NT in its Jewish setting (Saldarini fc.; Vermes 1983: 58–68.) W. D. Davies’ studies on Paul and Palestinian Judaism (1955) provided an early model for using rabbinic sources. Most English-speaking NT scholars in the 1950s and 1960s depended on the sketch of normative Judaism worked out by G. F. Moore (1927–30) as a framework for their understanding of Judaism and the topical collection of rabbinic texts by P. Billerbeck as their source for rabbinic literature. The older German evaluations of Judaism as late, legalistic, and inferior to Christianity were less determinative but not entirely absent for the English-speaking world (Klein 1978). Although rabbinic literature dated from the 2d century and later, it was widely used to interpret the NT because it contained material which claimed to be by and about Jewish teachers of the 1st and 2d centuries and also because it presented a wealth of legal, exegetical, and cultural detail about Judaism lacking in the Pseudepigrapha and historical sources. Descriptions of diverse types of prerabbinic Judaism witnessed by the Dead Sea Scrolls and renewed study of the Pseudepigrapha have only gradually eroded the uncritical acceptance of the rabbinic reconstruction of the Second Temple period and provided a more variegated foundation for understanding the NT in its Palestinian context.
A. Problems in the Use of Rabbinic Literature
The use of rabbinic literature (Mishnah, Tosefta, Palestinian and Babylonian Talmuds, midrashic collections, Targums, and mystical writings) as a resource for interpreting the NT has been questioned increasingly in recent years for several reasons. The vision of a coherent and continuous normative Judaism implied by the rabbinic sources and presented by Moore has been shown to be anachronistic for the 1st century. Prior to the destruction of the temple (70 c.e.), Judaism comprised many social groups, including the chief priest and Jerusalem notables, landowners, merchants, Pharisees and Essenes, peasants, and the economically displaced. Among them, many views of how Judaism should be lived and how it should adapt to or resist Hellenistic culture competed for recognition and ascendancy. Serious conflicts separated the governing class, who controlled the wealth and collected taxes for the Romans, from the majority of the people, who were loyal to local customs and the traditional Jewish way of life. The rabbinic way of life and thought had yet to be articulated and certainly was not dominant. The rabbinic sources retrojected their understanding of Jewish life and institutions onto Judaism as far back as Ezra in the 5th century, much as the Gospels retrojected problems and teachings of the early Church into the story of the life of Jesus. Literary and redactional studies of rabbinic sources have shown the later biases of these works and the difficulty of isolating earlier sources and literary strata. Statements and stories attributed to named Jewish authorities, which were previously accepted as historical fact, must now be subjected to the same critical scrutiny applied to the stories and sayings of Jesus (Neusner).
NT scholars who have used rabbinic literature have often succumbed to “parallelomania,” the associative linking of similar words, phrases, patterns, thoughts, or themes, in order to claim the influence or dependence of one text or tradition on another. Many of the earlier studies using rabbinic sources were based on isolated and superficial similarities in very dissimilar texts. Their argument for a relationship between the NT and rabbinic literature was based on the assumptions that the later traditions in rabbinic literature were unchanged from the 1st century, and that the fabric of Judaism was uniform enough for literary and theological details to be related to one another as if deriving from one context (for a review of NT studies using rabbinic literature, see Saldarini fc..). Such fragmentary and uncontrolled use of this complex literature must be replaced by a wholistic grasp of rabbinic life and thought which can then be compared with early Christianity (Sanders 1977: 12–24). The final documents and the traditions within them must be set within their historical, social, and religious contexts, using both literary analysis of the documents’ social world and rhetorical goals and historical analysis of their political and social settings.
Rabbinic texts from later centuries have been habitually used as evidence for 1st-century Jewish institutions, leaders, and social structures. Since the rabbinic traditions reached their final forms from about 200 c.e. on, traditions must first be dated before being employed as historical evidence. No rabbinic document or set of traditions can be presumed to be early in its entirety; nor does a late historical reference in a large collection prove that all its traditions are late. The continuity and variations in Jewish and early Christian traditions must be traced by using dated texts and traditions which can be demonstrated by internal criteria to be early. The extensive and repeated redaction of rabbinic materials makes form-critical and redactional dating of texts extremely difficult.
The rabbinic view of earlier centuries is not historically reliable unless verified by 1st-century texts or the general pattern of the culture and empire. The social situation of Palestine in the 1st century was complex in the extreme. Any comparison of Judaism and Christianity must take into account the internal dynamics of the Jewish and Christian communities, their intricate relationships with each other, the divergent developments of both Christian theology and Jewish Talmudic literature, and the external pressure of the Roman Empire, all of which influenced the literature which has survived.
The Palestinian cultural context common to early Judaism and Christianity and the relative stability of traditional society make it probable that the two literatures share traditions, attitudes, and assumptions. However, later rabbinic outlooks and teachings must be separated from more fundamental, traditional, and widespread aspects of Judaism, some of which were foundational for the Jesus movement. The two possibilities of the rabbinic and Christian movements deriving materials from common sources, and of Christianity influencing Jewish literature, must be taken into account. The most likely common source for features of Judaism and Christianity is the Greco-Roman culture, within which both religions developed. For example, the rabbinic exegetical rules, attributed to Hillel, were known to Hellenistic scholars centuries earlier and were part of a common fund of knowledge available to all. Similarities and differences can only acquire significance and promote understanding when placed in a larger social, cultural, historical, and religious context.
B. Problems in the Study of Rabbinic Literature
The use of rabbinic literature in NT interpretation is impeded by a number of problems inherent to the study of rabbinic literature. Rabbinic literature often strikes the Western Christian reader as strange, a perception which has contributed to anti-Semitism. It is a closed, self-referential, elliptical body of literature which is understood only by those fully familiar with it. Fundamental cultural and theological presuppositions, such as a detailed knowledge of biblical law, are assumed. Discussions of legal and exegetical arguments and their solutions often begin without a statement of the biblical or Mishnaic problems to be discussed, because a prior detailed knowledge of the texts and problems is presumed. Legal, logical, and philosophical arguments and minutiae about matters far from traditional Christian or modern concerns fill pages, while multiple, alternative interpretations of each word, phrase, opinion, and consequence are dialectically related to one another. Such discussions, especially prevalent in the Talmuds, take place in a timeless world of academic study and spiritual love for the Torah as God’s relevation. The ultimate coherence and meaning of this world of discourse becomes evident only to those persons who enter into the dialogue and adopt the world as their own. Needless to say, such a literature resists both historical analysis and limited use as “background” for the NT. It must be studied on its own and then with the NT as part of the larger history of Judaism (Vermes 1983: 69–71).
Most rabbinic works are collections of earlier material, some of which are consistently and coherently edited with great sophistication (Mishnah, Babylonian Talmud); and others are more like loosely organized compendia (late midrashic collections). Traditions have been added and rearranged in multiple stages in accordance with the presuppositions, purposes, ethos, and interests of the community of scholars which produced rabbinic literature. The views of the final documents can sometimes be determined by literary analysis, but such documents are difficult to place in historical context. Many studies have attempted to determine which traditions are earlier and how they developed. Though some progress has been made in this area, widely differing results and methodological criteria indicate that this type of study is very hypothetical and subjective (see Saldarini 1977, and a review of studies on the Babylonian Talmud in Goodblatt 1979: 281–318). Few of the rabbinic traditions can be securely dated to the 1st century, a result pertinent for NT study.
Most rabbinic documents have yet to be subjected to sustained and extensive higher criticism which seeks to understand the original apart from its later interpretation (e.g., the Mishnah apart from the Talmuds) and the history of interpretation as a mirror of changing Jewish interests and circumstances. All rabbinic documents have received extensive traditional interpretations which treat them as one cultural whole extending over centuries, minutely examine wording and variations in formulation, and attempt to work out a consistent and coherent way of life and thought for the Jewish community. Such traditional interpretations can aid the scholar in understanding the subtleties of the texts and provide a range of possible interpretations, but many of the interpretations reflect the views and interests of later commentators rather than of the original authors.
Finally, few thoroughly scientific critical editions have established reliable texts that do justice to the long and complex manuscript tradition of rabbinic literature. Many passages in the printed editions are corrupt, so Talmudic scholars habitually make use of collections of variants and important manuscripts in precise scholarly studies. Sayings are attributed to various sages in different manuscripts, and blocks of similar or related material are often added or omitted in various manuscripts. Some manuscripts, especially of midrashic and mystical works, differ so greatly from one another as to be independent books rather than variants of one original text (e.g., the traditional Midrash Tanhuma and the Tanhuma manuscript published by Buber).
C. Uses of Rabbinic Literature
Despite the cautions voiced above and the late date of much of rabbinic literature, familiarity with it is helpful for the study of the NT. Rabbinic literature can be used along with other Jewish literature of the Hellenistic-Roman period, including the so-called Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and Diaspora Greek works, to understand Jewish culture in its breadth and diversity within the Roman Empire. Both the NT and early Church history benefit from insertion into their larger contexts, Near Eastern, Jewish, and Roman. Many assumptions, traditions, practices, and concerns of Judaism either remained constant for centuries or underwent instructive changes already in antiquity. Realistic information concerning Jewish teachings and practices—combined with an empathetic grasp of their fundamental attitudes toward God and humans—will blunt the bias often produced by NT anti-Jewish polemics and will help cure anti-Semitic NT theology which has created the caricature of the spiritually dead and legalistic Jew living a decadent way of life in a proud and hypocritical relationship with God while rejecting the obvious signs that Jesus was Messiah. Firsthand knowledge of Judaism as a vital and growing faith and way of life makes clear both the attraction of Judaism in the 1st century and the clear alternative to it offered by Jesus and the early Christian missionaries. Finally, such knowledge provides a stimulus and guidance for taking up the still-unanswered Christian theological problem of the place of Israel in God’s plans after the coming of Jesus Christ.
Detailed studies of Jewish beliefs, traditions, and practices in the NT require a comprehensive overview of Judaism and its development in the Second Temple and early rabbinic periods (Vermes 1983: 72–73). Within that context, extended rabbinic commentaries on Scripture, in conjunction with the Qumran and other Jewish interpretative literature, can illuminate hermeneutical procedures used in the NT and can sometimes demonstrate the continuity of interpretative traditions. Though the elegant structure of Mishnaic and Talmudic law cannot be attributed to the 1st century, redactional studies of rabbinic sources and comparison with other sources can sometimes place certain laws and customs in the 1st century and add to the understanding of the Jewish community’s inner life. Fundamental affirmations about God and humans which Christianity derived from Judaism, and which are assumed rather than articulated in 1st-century literature, often receive a fuller treatment in rabbinic literature. A comprehensive analysis of the development of Jewish traditions, including early NT traditions and later rabbinic literature, if done with sensitivity to historical development, will yield results which illuminate the Jewish substrate of the NT (Vermes 1983: 84–87) and also reveal, by contrast, the Greco-Roman contributions to NT literature as well.
Bibliography
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Anthony J. Saldarini
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