The Beginning of the Rabbinic Tradition

Discussion about the Hebrew Bible, Septuagint, pseudepigrapha, Philo, Josephus, Talmud, Dead Sea Scrolls, archaeology, etc.
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DCHindley
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Re: The Beginning of the Rabbinic Tradition

Post by DCHindley »

Stephan,

I am reminded of the debates that went on in the Academy over Plato's unwritten doctrines. Different scholars inferred them from other writings of Plato, and a few believed that their teachers had also preserved some unwritten doctrines, or at least what they believed were Plato's unstated seminal principals. The dialogues make it clear that Plato's opinions shifted on several matters over time, but he pretty much stuck to his dialogue method to tease out important "facts" about how the natural world operates.

However, I think there was also a tension within the Academy from philosophers who didn't want to think that another teacher has a direct line to unwritten doctrine that he himself had not had from his own teacher(s). In other words, unwritten tradition could be considered of even higher authority than those plainly stated in, or deduced (really, inferred) from, his various Dialogues.

Gotta wedding to go to - in this case my niece.

DCH :cheers:
John2
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Re: The Beginning of the Rabbinic Tradition

Post by John2 »

Regarding the reference to "our" forefathers in Ant. 13.10.6, that this refers to all Jews (like in the passage in Against Apion I cited above) and not just the Pharisees seems clear enough to me because Josephus puts this word in the mouths of the Sadducees, but when he is speaking for the Pharisees he says "their" fathers:

Ant. 13.10.6:
What I would now explain is this, that the Pharisees have delivered to the people a great many observances by succession from their fathers, which are not written in the laws of Moses; and for that reason it is that the Sadducees reject them, and say that we are to esteem those observances to be obligatory which are in the written word, but are not to observe what are derived from the tradition of our forefathers.
Aren't the people mentioned in Avot 1:1 (Moses, Joshua and everyone else down to the Men of the Great Assembly) the forefathers of the Sadducees too? Even Karaites have regard for the Talmud; they just don't think it is of divine origin.

And I think the relationship between the Pharisees and Rabbinic Judaism is fairly secure when you compare the above with the following:

Ber. 5a:
And Rabbi Levi bar Ḥama said that Rabbi Shimon ben Lakish said: God said to Moses, “Ascend to me on the mountain and be there, and I will give you the stone tablets and the Torah and the mitzva that I have written that you may teach them” (Exodus 24:12), meaning that God revealed to Moses not only the Written Torah, but all of Torah, as it would be transmitted through the generations. The “tablets” are the ten commandments that were written on the tablets of the Covenant, the “Torah” is the five books of Moses. The “mitzva” is the Mishna, which includes explanations for the mitzvot and how they are to be performed. “That I have written” refers to the Prophets and Writings, written with divine inspiration. “That you may teach them” refers to the Talmud, which explains the Mishna. These explanations are the foundation for the rulings of practical halakha. This verse teaches that all aspects of Torah were given to Moses from Sinai.

https://www.sefaria.org/Berakhot.5a.3?lang=bi
Ex. Rab. 47:1:
When God revealed Himself at Sinai to give the Torah to Israel, He said [taught] to Moses the following order: Bible, Mishnah, Talmud, and Aggadah, as it says : "God spoke all these words, saying," even what a student will ask his teacher. God then said to Moses, after he had learnt it from the mouth of G-d, "Teach it to Israel". He said to him, "G-d! Should I write it down?" He replied "I am not asking you to give it to them in writing because it is known to Me that in the future the nations will rule over them, and take it [the Torah] from them, and it will be degraded by the nations. So the Scriptures I will give them in writing but the Mishna, Talmud and Aggada I will give orally. If the nations will enslave them, the Jews will be different [unique] to the nations. He said to the prophet 'If I write for them the great things of My law, they will be considered like strangers.' And what am I [G-d] going to do? I will give them the Bible written, the Mishna, Talmud and Aggada orally. 'Inscribe those words for yourself ' 'Inscribe' refers to the Bible, 'for according to those words' refer to the Mishna and Talmud, for those are what separates the Jews from the nations.

https://www.sefaria.org/Shemot_Rabbah.47.1?lang=bi
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Secret Alias
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Re: The Beginning of the Rabbinic Tradition

Post by Secret Alias »

Why does any of this matter John? Of what possible value is it that one group of Jews in antiquity thought that they had a direct connection to Aaron? The Samaritans think the same thing. Not following you at all (as usual).
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
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DCHindley
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Re: The Beginning of the Rabbinic Tradition

Post by DCHindley »

John2 wrote: Sat Sep 23, 2017 12:08 pm Regarding the reference to "our" forefathers in Ant. 13.10.6, that this refers to all Jews (like in the passage in Against Apion I cited above) and not just the Pharisees seems clear enough to me because Josephus puts this word in the mouths of the Sadducees, but when he is speaking for the Pharisees he says "their" fathers:
Ant. 13.10.6:

What I would now explain is this, that the Pharisees have delivered to the people a great many observances by succession from their fathers, which are not written in the laws of Moses; and for that reason it is that the Sadducees reject them, and say that we are to esteem those observances to be obligatory which are in the written word, but are not to observe what are derived from the tradition of our forefathers.
I don't want you to make too much of this before you know what you have before you. The first thing I asked myself was this: Does the original Greek really speak of "their" or "our" fathers at all?

Whiston's English Translation
Niese's Greek text
JOE Antiquities of the Jews 13:297 but of these matters we shall speak hereafter. What I would now explain is this, JOS Antiquities of the Jews 13:297 περὶ [concerning] μέντοι [however] τούτων [this] αὖθις [again] ἐροῦμεν νῦν [now] δὲ [but] δηλῶσαι [declaring] βούλομαι
that the Pharisees have delivered to the people a great many observances by succession from their fathers, ὅτι [that] νόμιμά [rightly] τινα [certain things] παρέδοσαν [hand down] τῷ [to the] δήμῳ [people] οἱ [the] Φαρισαῖοι [Pharisees] ἐκ [out of] πατέρων [from fathers] διαδοχῆς [by succession]
which are not written in the laws of Moses; ἅπερ [which] οὐκ [not] ἀναγέγραπται [enscribed] ἐν [in] τοῖς [of the] Μωυσέως [of Moses] νόμοις [laws]
and for that reason it is that the Sadducees reject them, καὶ [and] διὰ [through] τοῦτο [this] ταῦτα [these] τὸ [(one) of the] Σαδδουκαίων [Sadducean] γένος [kind] ἐκβάλλει [he repudiates] λέγον [a spoken thing]
and say that we are to esteem those observances to be obligatory which are in the written word, ἐκεῖνα [which] δεῖν [it is necessary] ἡγεῖσθαι [to be regarding] νόμιμα [rightly] τὰ [the] γεγραμμένα [enscribed things]
but are not to observe what are derived from the tradition of our forefathers. τὰ [the] δ᾽ [but] ἐκ [out of] παραδόσεως [a tradition] τῶν [of the] πατέρων [from fathers] μὴ [not ] τηρεῖν [to be keeping]

This means the phrase is functionally the same in both places, and the "their" and "our" are the translator's attempt to put them in context. I have stricken them out of the Whiston translation to make the point.

DCH
John2
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Re: The Beginning of the Rabbinic Tradition

Post by John2 »

I was wondering about that too. Thanks, DC. I have Willamson's Jewish War, but online I can usually only find Whiston for everything else, and I have yet to find a go to site that has the Greek for Josephus. Is there a "Josephus hub" like the bible hub, where you can search the Greek and all translations? That would help me a lot. Maybe it's been in front of my face all these years, but better late than never.
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Ben C. Smith
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Re: The Beginning of the Rabbinic Tradition

Post by Ben C. Smith »

John2 wrote: Sun Sep 24, 2017 10:31 am I was wondering about that too. Thanks, DC. I have Willamson's Jewish War, but online I can usually only find Whiston for everything else, and I have yet to find a go to site that has the Greek for Josephus. Is there a "Josephus hub" like the bible hub, where you can search the Greek and all translations? That would help me a lot. Maybe it's been in front of my face all these years, but better late than never.
My online go-to site for the Greek of Josephus is the Perseus collection: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/col ... reco-Roman. This is not exactly the handiest site to navigate, but there it is.
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John2
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Re: The Beginning of the Rabbinic Tradition

Post by John2 »

I have the day off today and can spend all the two hours the library gives me to see what other translations I can find of Ant. 13.297 on Google books (it was busy at work for me this past week and I did what I could with what I had, i.e., Whiston), and the first one I can see is Dickson's, which says:
The Pharisees passed on to the people certain regulations handed down by a succession of fathers and not recorded in the Laws of Moses, for which reason they are rejected by the Sadducaean group, who hold that only those regulations should be considered valid which were written down, and that those derived from the traditions of the fathers need not be observed.

https://books.google.com/books?id=zN4oD ... 97&f=false
Klawans has one too but I can't see the key part of it on Google books, and if anyone else can and wants to put it up that'd be great.

https://books.google.com/books?id=xKpHD ... 97&f=false

And that's all I can find on the first seven pages of Google books. I have Mason's Josephus and the New Testament at home and I wonder if he has a translation of it there.

To judge from Dickson and the Greek DC provided, I would say that my conclusion is still valid, i.e., "Aren't the people mentioned in Avot 1:1 (Moses, Joshua and everyone else down to the Men of the Great Assembly) the forefathers of the Sadducees too?" And, "I would suppose then that the Sadducees had a similar view [as the Karaites]. They would have had opinions and traditions, of course, but they did not elevate them to the status of the Torah (or impose them on everyone else) like the Pharisees did."
Last edited by John2 on Sun Sep 24, 2017 10:56 am, edited 1 time in total.
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John2
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Re: The Beginning of the Rabbinic Tradition

Post by John2 »

My online go-to site for the Greek of Josephus is the Perseus collection: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/col ... reco-Roman. This is not exactly the handiest site to navigate, but there it is.
Thanks, Ben. I will check that out.
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Re: The Beginning of the Rabbinic Tradition

Post by Secret Alias »

But let me chime in and say this. EVERY tradition says or thinks they are the correct tradition and most of them claim to be the original tradition. That the Pharisees or Sadducees say or thought this is hardly surprising. But the issue at hand is whether or not the rabbinic tradition was the Pharisaic tradition which it certainly wasn't. Of course to make the claim that they represented the original Jewish tradition the rabbinic literature connects itself as the continuation of the Pharisees. But this is plainly false. Perhaps the rabbanites knew something of what the Pharisees thought or believed but often times they didn't - as the example of what to do when the Passover fell on a Sabbath indicates.
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
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Re: The Beginning of the Rabbinic Tradition

Post by semiopen »

My personal overview is that Second temple Judaism was quite degenerate, and Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism developed from it at pretty much the same time.

It seems like a decent probability that the Rabbis got the mythical oral tradition idea from the Pharisees. However, to go from that and give the Pharisees credit for the Rabbinic Tradition is jejune, to paraphrase Neusner.

In Quest of the Historical Pharisees https://www.amazon.com/Quest-Historical ... 932792724

goes deeply into the issues. 500 pages basically explaining that we don't really know shit.

For example, there is a technique mentioned in the book to try and get Pharisaic thought from looking at the times Pharisee is juxtaposed to Sadducee (or Boethusian) in the Mishnah and Tosefta elucidated by Lighthouse in Chapter 10 - The Pharisees and Sudducees in the Earliest Rabbinic Documents.

In the next chapter, Neusner mentions the Hillel Shammai disputes but those aren't all that interesting or meaningful as far as this topic goes.

I might be wrong, but was under the impression that there is a general consensus that the Rabbinic Tradition was a reform movement, and identifying influences even back to the destruction of the second temple is unclear. On the other hand, wiki gives the Pharisees extra credit on the Talmud and some other pages with nobody bitching about it on the Talk tab.
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