Transcript PowerPoint Presentation - History 282/Jewish Studies 234

History 282/Jewish Studies 234
Emergence of Rabbinic Judaism
Torah Centered
• trend to book is now solidified
• commentary already in the text
• prophecy is replaced by pseudipigrapha,
wisdom literature, apocalyptic
• notion of Oral Law
Institutions in Israel
• centrality of community in Land of Israel
continues?
• Patriarchate (nasi) -- head of Sanhedrin
– rabbinic leadership backed up by a claim to
Davidic lineage
• period of great religious creativity
Types of Study
• halakha (law)
• hagada (agada) (mystical; legendary; nonlegal)
• midrash (intensive interpretation of text)
– task is to tie practice to available texts
Halakha
• repeated, ritualized action as method of
approach to spirituality
• avoid rigidity by legitimizing the
contemporary judge
• “et la-asot”
• takanot
Haggada
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attach meaning and color to text
speculate on God and man
link folk literature to texts
non-exegetical (Avot; Chapters of the
Fathers)
• Kadushin: “organic thinking”
Midrash
• both a method and a text
• as a text, may be halakhic or non-halakhic
Talmud
• Mishna and Gemara
• Tana’im and Amora’im
• Eastern (Babylonian) and Western
(Jerusalem/Palestinian)
Mishna
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definition
institutionalization
Rabbi Judah ha-Nasi (the Prince), d. 217
is this a code?
sources of authority
other collections: Tosefta, Braitot (Braita),
Midrashim on last 4 books of bible
Akiva
• central figure in establishing tradition
– contemporary of Bar Kokhba
– his school dominates
• Louis Finkelstein: emphasis on Akiva’s role
in making the tradition more “humane”
Ethics of the Fathers
• "Moses received the Torah from Sinai and
transmitted it Joshua. Joshua transmitted it
to the Elders, the Elders to the Prophets,
and the Prophets transmitted it to the Men
of the Great Assembly. They [the Men of the
Great Assembly] said three things: Be
deliberate in judgment, raise many students,
and make a protective fence for the Torah.”
Claim to Tradition
• vast project of recreating the Jewish past as
an unbroken chain of authority and
transmission
• read the rabbinical figure and debate into
the past
• centralization and uniformity but with
flexible mechanisms
Gemara
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period of the Amora’im
role of Rav (Abba Areikha) in transporting the text
Resh Galuta’s authority
academies in Sura and Neharde’a [later
Pumbeditha] with different areas of expertise
• Rav Ashi (375-427)
Babylonian & Palestinian
• 2 Gemara texts
• Babylonian
– Eastern Aramaic has more Hebrew
– texts are more voluminous
– more popular elements
• Palestinian (Yerushalmi)
– in recent years it is being studied again
• reflect a split in chains of authority that will be
relevant later