Rebuke in Tanḥuma- Yelammedenu Literature
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chapter 8 An Inescapable Obligation: Rebuke in Tanḥuma- Yelammedenu Literature The final chapter of our exploration of early Jewish and Christian responses to Lev. 19:17 takes us to a late (or “post-classical”) midrashic text of ambigu- ous provenance: Midrash Tanḥuma. Like the term Midrash, Tanḥuma refers to both a process or genre of literature and an actual work.1 What I shall refer to as Tanḥuma Yelammedenu or simply Yelammedenu denotes a process or genre of Midrash that involves a particular set of features, especially a record of stu- dents requesting of a teacher that he teach them – yelammedenu rabbenu, the phrase from which this genre derives its name.2 Yelammedenu traditions ap- pear in a number of later midrashic texts including Shemot Rabbah, Bemidbar Rabbah, and Devarim Rabbah, as well as Pesiqta Rabbati. What I shall designate here as Midrash Tanḥuma or simply Tanḥuma is a collection of midrashim or- ganized according to a triennial cycle of Pentateuchal readings. This collec- tion, which will be our primary focus, appears in two main versions typically referred to as the “printed edition” and the “Buber edition,” the latter named for its editor Salomon Buber. Previous generations of scholars debated the existence of an “early Tanḥuma” that preserved more “original” versions of the traditions found in our extant collections.3 There has also been significant debate over the dating of the Tanḥuma collections more generally. Contemporary work on Tanḥuma Yelammedenu suggests that this genre “began to crystallize toward the end of the Byzantine period in Palestine (5–7th cen. CE), but continued to evolve and spread throughout the Diaspora well into the Middle Ages, sometimes devel- oping different recensions of a common text.”4 The major versions of Midrash Tanḥuma as we know them stem from the medieval period with the printed edition likely redacted in geonic Babylonia and the Buber edition redacted in 1 See Bregman, Sifrut Tanḥuma-Yelammedenu, chap. 1. 2 Weiss, “Confrontations with God in Late Rabbinic Literature,” 59. 3 For references to older scholarship, see Strack and Stemberger, Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash, 302–306; Kensky, “Midrash Tanḥuma Shemot,” 1–28; Mirsky, “The Structure of Midrash Tanhuma,” 93–95. For criticism of older scholarship, particularly that of Felix Böhl, see “Bregman, “Reviewed Work: Aufbau und literarische Formen des aggadischen Teils im Jelamdenu-Midrasch by Felix Böhl.” 4 Bregman, “Tanḥuma Yelammedenu,” 503. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi:10.1163/9789004376557_010 206 chapter 8 Italy-Ashkenaz (or perhaps Palestine).5 Thanks to the efforts of Marc Bregman, we can now identify three major redactional strata within the printed and Buber Tanḥuma collections.6 First there is an early layer from around the 5th century that regularly uses Galilean Aramaic as well as Greek and Latin terms. This is followed by the middle stratum (c. 6–7th cen.) that often replaces Aramaic with Hebrew and which is the most prominent layer, underlying a majority of Tanḥuma Yelammedenu passages. Finally, the late stratum dates from after the Islamic conquest and is roughly contemporaneous with the emergence of the two editions of Tanḥuma. The relevant passage for our discussion of rebuke only appears in the printed edition of Tanḥuma (Mishpatim, Section 7). This homily likely derives from the latest redactional layer of the two Tanḥuma collections and utilized some form of the Bavli as well as our sugya in particular. Our Tanḥuma homily purposefully reworks this earlier talmudic material in order to downplay its problematization of rebuke. Systematically purging the sugya of elements that challenge rebuke and Lev. 19:17, Tanḥuma introduces several alternative sourc- es culled from across the Bavli that strongly endorse the practice of reproof. This renewed valuation of rebuke aligns with a preference for other-oriented responsibility, a theme subtly present in the passage’s literary context. 1 Midrash Tanḥuma and the Bavli Sugya It is well-known that Tanḥuma adopts and reworks earlier rabbinic material. Particularly when it comes to earlier Palestinian midrashim, there are nu- merous examples to show how Tanḥuma draws from its forerunners. When it comes to the Bavli however, there are fewer obvious parallels to make as strong a case. Jacob Elbaum, in describing the nature of Tanḥuma, and late midrashim more generally, thus suggests that while it is clear that these works 5 Ibid., 503. Based upon somewhat limited evidence, Samuel Mirsky suggests that the printed edition derives from Babylonia while the Buber edition comes from Israel (i.e., Palestine) (Mirsky, “The Structure of Midrash Tanhuma,” 99, 114 ff.). With regard to the Buber edition, Marc Bregman argues for a final redaction in Italy while Israel Ta-Shma favors Ashkenaz as a more likely candidate (Bregman, “Textual Witness of Tanḥuma-Yelammedenu Midrashim,” 51; Ta-Shma, “The Library of the Ashkenazi Sages in the 11–12th century,” 302). However, Allen Kensky returns to the view of Samuel Mirsky (disagreeing with Bregman and Ta-Shma’s view of an Ashkenazi/Italian provenance) by suggesting that the Buber version was indeed written in Israel (i.e., Palestine), between the late 8th and end of the 10th century (Kensky, “Midrash Tanḥuma Shemot,” Abstract, 77–78). 6 Bregman, Sifrut Tanḥuma-Yelammedenu, chap. 4; Weiss, “Confrontations with God in Late Rabbinic Literature,” 63–64. .