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On the Status of the Tannaitic Midrashim Author(S): Daniel Boyarin Source: Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol Review: On the Status of the Tannaitic Midrashim Author(s): Daniel Boyarin Source: Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 112, No. 3 (Jul. - Sep., 1992), pp. 455- 465 Published by: American Oriental Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/603081 Accessed: 19/08/2010 19:11 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=aos. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. American Oriental Society is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of the American Oriental Society. http://www.jstor.org REVIEW ARTICLES ON THE STATUS OF THE TANNAITIC MIDRASHIM* DANIEL BOYARIN UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY A critique of Jacob Neusner's latest contribution to Midrashic studies. THE PRESENT WORK BY JACOB NEUSNER is part of a gi- estinian midrashim, that is Genesis and Leviticus gantic project of redescription of the history of Juda- Rabbah and Pesikta derav Kahana. The first of these ism in Late Antiquity. Since each volume of this two systems is called a "philosophical system," while project essentially recapitulates the claims of the whole the second is a "religious theory." The project of the with different emphases, any volume can serve as an present work is to determine where the tannaitic mid- introduction to the whole project, and a review of any rashim fit into this system. Or to put it bluntly, the part is, in effect, an evaluation of the whole. Neusner question is whether the tannaitic midrashim are rele- makes very dramatic and impressive claims for his re- vant for describing the Judaism of the tannaim. search on the history of rabbinic thought. He believes that he has shown that 1. Method and the History of Judaism there are two distinct Judaic systems, each comprising Neusner's method is not in any sense an adequate re- a theory of the social order made up of a worldview, sponse to the challenges of modern critical thought for way of life, and doctrine of the social entity ("Israel"); the history of Judaism, except to the extent that it does each system, or Judaism, is internally coherent, re- clear away some of the underbrush of uncritical work sponding with an answer deemed self-evidently true to that has been done (and in some quarters is still being a question regarded as urgent and critical. We can eas- done, but not nearly as widely as Neusner claims).' He ily differentiate one system from the other. And we claims that his method involves no a priori assump- also know in what ways they are connected, both in tions, that it is scientific on the model of the natural form (the later documents present themselves as exege- sciences; he repeatedly refers to this book as an exper- ses of the earlier ones), and in mode of thought or iment with definitive results, which can be repeated by method. The points of connection validate the claim others. However, as we shall see, in fact his work is that we deal with a single unfolding Judaism in pro- animated by a series of very strong assumptions: cess. The points of differentiation vindicate the claim that the two systems, though connected, are autono- I maintain that it is by reference to the time and cir- mous of one another, each identifying its urgent ques- cumstances of the closure of the document, that is to tion and setting forth its self-evidently true answer. say, the conventional assignment of a piece of writing (pp. 8-9) to a particular time and place that we proceed outward from context to matrix. (p. 22) The first of these "Judaisms" is that attested to by the Documents reveal the system and structure of their Mishna and the Tosefta, while the second is that at- authorships, and, in the case of religious writing, out of tested to by the Palestinian Talmud, and the major Pal- a document without named authors we may compose an account of the authorship'sreligion: a way of life, a worldview, a social entity meant to realize both. Read * Review article of: The Canonical History of Ideas, The one by one, documents reveal the interiority of intellect Place of the So-called Tannaite Midrashim: Mekhilta Attrib- of an authorship, and that inner-facing quality of mind uted to R. Ishmael, Sifra, Sifre'to Numbers, and Sifre to Deu- teronomy. By JACOB NEUSNER. With an Appendix on the Dating of the Mekhilta. University of Southern Florida Studies 1 However even here, the uncritical mode of Neusner's cri- in the History of Judaism (Atlanta: SCHOLARS PRESS, 1990). tique dulls it considerably. 455 456 Journal of the American Oriental Society 112.3 (1992) inheres even when an authorship imagines it speaks tions is simply, therefore, a self-delusion. More impor- outward, toward and about the world beyond. (p. 23) tantly, many thinkers about texuality would now claim ... what we have to do is simply ask the principal that texts (even single-authored texts) are not created documents, one by one, to tell us their picture of the by their authors but produced within a heteroglottic topic at hand, hence, Rome and Israel's relationship to socio-linguistic matrix that is necessarily heterogene- Rome.... Each document, it is clear, demands de- ous, inasmuch as it is the product of social conflict and scription, analysis, and interpretation, all by itself. cultural contention. By definition, then, a text could not Each must be viewed as autonomous of all others. reflect its "author's" interiority. All discourse is con- (p. 185, emphasis added) strained, at least in part, by the past of the language and the other texts that are being produced in the language. What are the assumptions that these very central This is the notion of intertextuality, a notion which quotations reveal? First of all, they assume that texts Neusner either ignores or consistently and conveniently are autonomous, transparent reflections of the inten- mischaracterizes in his writing as an analogue of his tions of their authors. Even more pointedly, they as- straw-men scholars who hold that all of rabbinic litera- sume that a collective can have a single mind, an ture is a unity. This is, of course, only more to the point "interiority of intellect," which can produce a coherent, when the texts are not the product of a single author but single worldview. And more extravagantly, the first of whole communities working over generations, a quotation explicitly claims that the final editors (the point even Neusner surely does not deny. This is nei- "authorship") of a work built up over centuries of ac- ther equivalent to accepting the attributions as "iner- cretion have such complete control over the material rant" nor the quotations as verbatim transcriptions of that it can only be referred to the time and place of that what was said but only to recognize that the text very authorship for its socio-historical context or matrix, often is citing and contesting, or interpreting, or dis- and that, indeed such reference is possible. torting other texts it has received and is constrained to I submit that not one of these assumptions holds treat. The best way to do cultural history, then, is to in- water, following contemporary paradigms of critical vestigate such moments within and between the texts of thinking. Most theorists now hold that texts do not rabbinic literature, not to gloss them over by the as- "tell" us their meanings unaided by a reading process sumption of a wholly coherent, self-consistent "author- that is partly governed by assumptions from outside of ship" identical with the final editors of the document the text.2 The notion of a reading without presupposi- at hand. In short, intertextuality produces more differ- ence, not less, within and between texts. 2 Note that this formulation is specifically intended to be Finally, the assignment of all citations to the date of noncommittal with respect to any particular stronger or the putative closure of the document (as if that were weaker version of this principle, which as stated is consistent not a matter of scholarly conjecture as well) involves with any position from Dilthey to Derrida. It is extraordinary assumptions no less than the contrary method of criti- that Neusner wishes to make theoretical interventions in the cally assessing the likelihood that they are earlier than study of "History of Ideas" and yet makes no reference to the final redaction. We just do not know for sure such seminal works as Dominick LaCapra's"Intellectual His- whether a given citation is contemporary with the clo- tory and Critical Theory," in Soundings in Critical Theory sure of the document or not, and the likelihood that it (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989), 182-211.
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