MARC HERMAN Reading Rabbinic Debate in Medieval Al-Andalus

he chasm between in Contemporary scholars offer contrasting theories late antiquity and the medieval Islamicate about why rabbinic literature includes so many world (i.e., those societies whose domi- disagreements. Some have proposed that the nant religion was Islam) was, in many did so as an expression of a proto-pluralistic Timportant ways, quite vast. Even those who perspective on divine law and the rabbinic project, expressed fealty to the ancient rabbis had many while others have suggested that the rabbis simply philosophical and other assumptions that were sought to record as many traditions as possible. In simply out of sync with the rabbinic texts they fact, the second-century itself offers two endorsed. This phenomenon is perhaps best known positions as to why non-normative views are to be in the realm of theology, where the rabbis adopted preserved: either so that later authorities might rely perspectives on God and the celestial world that no on minority views or in order to clarify that one longer seemed true to authors who were deeply tradition is in fact a minority view. engaged in the Greco-Arabic philosophical tradition. Thegeonim of Baghdad—the first post-talmudic Jews in the medieval Islamicate world also read legal authorities—were clearly bothered by the presence passages guided by contemporary ideas about of rabbinic disagreement. The Qaraites, a loose revelation and its transmission that were shared coalition of Jews bound together by a shared across religious communities. One of the most antipathy for rabbinic authority, saw the lack of striking examples pertains to the ubiquitous debates consensus in rabbinic literature as an opening for in rabbinic literature. Given that, in the view of attack. How could the Oral reliably transmit medieval talmudists, the rabbis possessed divine divine law if its transmitters could rarely agree authority to transmit and interpret revealed law, about its contents and rulings? Thegeonim turned what were readers of the to make of to several tools found in contemporaneous Islamic unending disagreements among the rabbis? literature to answer this challenge, arguing, for 20 Frankel Institue Annual 2019

example, that a debate might arise because two rabbis heard different aspects of a single tradition or because one forgot the contents of a teaching. More fundamentally, several geonim suggested that part of the goal of the dialectical layer of the Talmud was precisely to resolve these disagreements. In this way, the geonim portrayed the Talmud as having performed the same task as Muslim jurists who sought to reconcile conflicting reports about Muhammad’s activities and rulings.

While this perspective amplified certain ideas in rabbinic literature, and thereby portrayed the Talmud in a new legal language, the idea that the Moses Breaking the Tablets of the Law, Rembrandt rabbinic chain of transmission was frequently a faulty “game of telephone” did not sit well with those outside the geonic academies in Iraq. (1138–1204) charged the rabbis with besmirching those who convey the ; if they cannot be trusted to have reliably communi- cated the tradition, he asked, how can the contents of that tradition constitute a valid source of law?

While the geonim might have answered that divine guidance served to assure that the “correct” tradition always won the day, or maybe that the Torah invests institutional authority in the talmudic academies that must be followed regardless of the “truth” of their rulings, talmudists from al-Andalus largely found such approaches wanting. Instead, they began to rethink the rabbinic project and the origins of the multiplicity of views recorded in rabbinic literature. One of the earliest Andalusi programmatic 21 Frankel Institue Annual 2019

statements about rabbinic tradition appears in the tion between legal and formal reasoning to help Commentary on Ecclesiastes of Isaac Ibn Ghiyāth explain why legal problems led to a range of possible (b. 1038). Ibn Ghiyāth argued—contra the geonim— solutions when logic allows just one solution. that the rabbis were not merely passive purveyors of Maimonides similarly adopted an idea, widespread divine law, but in fact used their intellects in order among Andalusi Muslims, that legal disagreement to plumb the depths of revelation and reach novel was the result of later jurists interpreting ambiguous conclusions. His contemporary, Bah.ya Ibn Paqūda texts transmitted by earlier authorities. A typical (fl. 1050–90), adopted this model, describing the example concerns the command that a negligent rabbis as having used reasoning and debate to individual repay a victim from “the best of his field” address legal questions they could not answer by (Ex. 22:4). Whose field, exactly, does this refer to, way of tradition, ultimately settling disagreements the victim’s or the perpetrator’s? Maimonides’s according to the majority. These eleventh-century Commentary on the Mishnah points to countless representatives of rabbinic learning in al-Andalus similar cases to underscore that rabbinic disagree- accepted that the rabbis were active creators of ment did not come about through failures in Jewish law, not passive participants in its transmission. transmission but by sorting out problematic texts. This methodology repeats an idea, apparently Although he did not cite earlier Andalusi authorities, unique to al-Andalus among the various schools of Maimonides clearly had the ideas that these authors Islamic law, that textual ambiguity causes juristic set forth in mind when he rebuffed the geonic debate. Later thinkers, then, might distill textual depiction of the rabbis and sought to reimagine triggers in an “objective” manner, to quote from the rabbinic activity. He insisted that after Sinaitic author of perhaps the most important work on legal revelation, leaders of Israel throughout the biblical disagreements, Ibn al-Sīd al-Bat.alyawsī (1052–1127). and rabbinic periods expanded on revelation in order to generate new law. Like other Jews in the For these medieval Jews, grasping and clarifying Islamic sphere of influence, Maimonides exploited traditions from long ago required drawing on several ideas that found expression among Muslim understandings of texts developed by their Muslim jurists to think through the rabbinic project. For neighbors. Paradoxically, fealty to rabbinic example, like Abū H.amid al-Ghazālī and a series of demanded reading beyond that canon. ● Andalusi Muslims who followed him, Maimonides suggested that legal reasoning operates according to a distinct set of rules that are not quite as formalistic or rigorous as logic. These thinkers used the distinc-