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Proche et Moyen-Orient anciens

Social History from early Rabbinic Texts

Conférences de l’année 2013-2014
Martin Goodman
p. 11-13

Résumé

In these four sessions, the seminar examined the extent to which valid data about the social history of Roman Palestine can be extracted from the early rabbinic texts preserved from antiquity building on the British Academy research project published in Goodman and Alexander (2010).

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Texte intégral

1In these four sessions, the seminar examined the extent to which valid data about the social history of Roman Palestine can be extracted from the early rabbinic texts preserved from antiquity building on the British Academy research project published in Goodman and Alexander (2010).

2The first lecture discussed the nature of the rabbinic texts from late antiquity, examining the wide variety of genres represented in the texts and the different purposes and audiences for which they seem to have been composed as revealed in Ben Eliyahu, Cohn and Millar (2012), a handbook about early rabbinic materials which was produced as an offshoot of the British Academy project. Considerable time was spent discussing the transmission of these texts from antiquity and the difficulty of asserting with confidence with regard to an oral tradition when the texts preserved in the medieval manuscripts took their present form. The inclusion of rabbinic-type passages in the sixth-century Rehov synagogue mosaic was cited as evidence of the existence of this discourse by this time, but not as proof that the compilations in which these passages are later found were already in existence. The existence of the Mishnah in more or less its present form by the early third century CE was considered as a special case, both because the divergent commentaries on much of the Mishnah text in the two Talmuds suggest that the Mishnah text itself must be quite accurately recorded in the two later compilations and because, as was first noted by Jacob Neusner in the 1970s, the apparent accuracy of attributions of sayings to particular sages in this text and in the Tosefta (in comparison with the pseudepigraphic attributions frequent in later rabbinic compilations) suggests a higher degree of reliability in the transmission of these traditions at least in the final stages of compilation. A number of Mishnaic texts were then examined to extract from them the social conditions assumed by the text, such as the siting of shops in narrow alleyways through which heavily-laden pack animals might pass (Mishnah, Baba Kamma 6:6) or the availability of bath houses into which a rabbi might enter for recreational purposes (Misnah, Abodah Zara 3 :4).

3The second lecture delved into economic history as revealed by the innovative legal formula of the prosbul, which is attributed in the Mishnah to Hillel (Mishnah, Gittin 4:3). The lecture demonstrated both the extent to which this innovation constituted a direct break with biblical regulations in Deut. 15:1-9 and the reasons for believing that the traditions about the prosbul in Mishnah Shebiith 10:1-9 represented a genuine social institution in late Second Temple Judaean society, whether or not Hillel was responsible for the innovation. Moralising explanations of the innovation in rabbinic texts were shown to make no economic sense in a society which retained a taboo against lending on interest, and the seminar therefore investigated an alternative model for the distribution of wealth in first-century Judaea in which the introduction of the prosbul might have an economic rationale (Goodman 1982). The discussion was much enhanced by the provision of evidence by members of the seminar of attitudes to interest and lending in other periods of Jewish history.

4The third lecture looked at the development and cessation of religious taboos, such as the failure of Jews (apart from Essenes, according to Josephus, BJ 2.148-9) to carry out the requirement in Deut. 23:12-13 (Heb. 23:13-14) to carry a hatchet for covering excrement, and alterations in the laws about fasting on the Sabbath (I Macc. 2:29-41 ; Josephus, AJ 18.319-24), and investigated rabbinic evidence for the lifting of a specific religious taboo on the use of gentile oil (Mishnah, Abodah Zara 216). The taboo was shown to have been sufficiently widespread in Jewish society over a number of centuries for it to be taken for granted in anecdotes in the writings of the historian Josephus (AJ 12.119-20 ; BJ 2.591-2 ; Vita 74-6). Both the reasons for the taboo and the reasons for its abrogation were shown to have puzzled rabbis as cited in the two Talmuds (b. Abodah Zara 35b-36a ; y. Abodah Zara 2:9,41d). Economic explanations were investigated and found implausible against the background of other evidence, primarily archaeological. An explanation of the lifting of the taboo in terms of rabbinic modes of authorising customary religious law either through biblical exegesis or through other forms of rationalisation was proposed.

5The final lecture compared the evidence in the Mishnah for marriage and divorce procedures to the procedures presupposed in the biblical texts (e.g. Deut. 24.1-4) and those actually used by Jews in the first and early second centuries CE according to the evidence of documents from the Judaean Desert. It was demonstrated that the Mishnah presupposes both the ubiquity of marriage documents (ketubot) (nowhere mentioned in the biblical texts) and the possibility of marriage without a ketubah (Mishnah, Ketubot 11:1-6). A comparison with documents from the Judaean Desert (DJD II nos. 20 and 21 ; DJD XXVII no. 65) showed that these documents resembled the customary documents presupposed by the rabbis in some respects but not in others, and it was proposed that in marriage law, as in the laws surrounding taboos examined in the previous lecture, rabbis shaped existing customs rather than creating law on their own authority. The seminar looked closely at a number of the Judaean Desert documents as part of these proceedings and a number of important suggestions were made to improve the reconstruction of lacunae (especially in DJD II no. 20).

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Bibliographie

Ben Eliyahu, E., Cohn, Y., and Millar, F. (2012). Handbook of Jewish Literature from Late Antiquity, 135-700 CE. Oxford.

Goodman, M. (1982). ‘The First Jewish Revolt: social conflict and the problem of debt, Journal of Jewish Studies 33, 417-27.

Goodman, M. and Alexander, P., eds. (2010). Rabbinic Texts and the History of Late-Roman Palestine. Oxford.

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Pour citer cet article

Référence papier

Martin Goodman, « Social History from early Rabbinic Texts »Annuaire de l'École pratique des hautes études (EPHE), Section des sciences historiques et philologiques, 146 | 2015, 11-13.

Référence électronique

Martin Goodman, « Social History from early Rabbinic Texts »Annuaire de l'École pratique des hautes études (EPHE), Section des sciences historiques et philologiques [En ligne], 146 | 2015, mis en ligne le 28 septembre 2015, consulté le 29 mars 2024. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/ashp/1675 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/ashp.1675

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Auteur

Martin Goodman

Directeur d’études invité, University of Oxford, Faculty of Oriental Studies, École pratique des hautes études – Section des sciences historiques et philologiques

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Le texte et les autres éléments (illustrations, fichiers annexes importés), sont « Tous droits réservés », sauf mention contraire.

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