The Critical Use of the Rabbinic Literature in New Testament Studies
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THE CRITICAL USE OF THE RABBINIC LITERATURE IN NEW TESTAMENT STUDIES MIKEAL C.PARSONS SOUTHERN BAPTIST SEMINARY LOUISVILLE KENTUCKY 40280 INTRODUCTION More than twenty years have passed since Samuel Sandmel delivered the Presidential Address at the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Litera ture on 27 December 1961. The address concerned the problem of parallel- omania in biblical scholarship.1 Concentrating on the areas of rabbinic literature and the gospels, Philo and Paul, and the Dead Sea Scrolls and the NT, Sandmel sought to define parallelomania as "that extravagance among scholars which first overdoes the supposed similarity in passages and then proceeds to describe source and derivation as if implying literary connection flowing in an inevitable or predetermined direction."2 Of particular interest is Sandmel's assessment of the value of the study of parallels between rabbinic literature and the NT. Sandmel begins his dis cussion of rabbinic literature with a sagacious critique of Strack-Billerbeck's Kommentar zum NeuemTestament aus Talmud und Midrasch. This multi- volume work was the effort of Lutheran pastor, Paul Billerbeck, with the nominal collaboration of Hermann Strack. The Kommentar supplies illustra tive parallels to the NT from the Mishnah, Tosefta, Talmud, and Midrash. Samuel Sandmel, ''Parallelomania," JBL 81 (1962): 1-13. 2Ibid.,l. 86 PERSPECTIVES IN RELIGIOUS STUDIES Sandmel notes that Str-B is "a useful tool. So is a hammer, if one needs to drive nails. But if one needs to bisect a board, then a hammer is scarcely the useful tool. "3 Four crucial errors in the use of Str-B are identified by Sandmel: (1) the parallels, as presented, lead to the unfortunate comparison of first-century Hellenistic literature with passages emerging from fourth- century Palestine and fifth-century Babylonia; (2) the atomistic study of ex cerpts is confused with a genuine acquaintance with the tone, texture, and significance of a body of literature; (3) the excessive piling up of rabbinic passages confuses quantity for quality; (4) there is a Christian bias that insists that even where Jesus and the rabbis appear to share almost identical sayings, what Jesus said was finer and better.4 Sandmel's article seems to be a reaction against those NT scholars who, for the past three hundred years, have happily believed themselves to be equipped fully for the scientific study of the NT background materials. As early as 1659, John Lightfoot (1603-1675) concluded: in the obscurer places ofthat [New] Testament (which are very many), the best and most natural method of searching out the sense is, to inquire how, and in what sense, those phrases and manners of speech were under stood, according to the vulgar and common dialect and opinion idiom of the Jewish nation.5 Much more recently, no less eminent a figure than Stephen Neill, well-known British conservative, has written: "In this bright post-Strack-Billerbeck ep och, we are all rabbinic experts, though at second-hand."6 A spate of modern scholars could be cited for their willingness to aban don historical interests in favor of theological ones when studying Judaism.7 Matthew Black is somewhat representative of the way bias can subtly creep into scholarship. At the conclusion of his article on the "Pharisees" in the IDB, Black claims: "Pharisaism is the immediate ancestor of rabbinical (or normative) Judaism, the arid and sterile region of the Jews after the fall of Jerusalem and, finally, the Bar Cocheba debacle (A.D. 134)."8 As Philip S. Alexander has noted: "An expert Rabbanist could not but be impressed by 3Ibid.,8-9. 4Ibid.,9-10. 5 John Lightfoot, A Commentary on the New Testament from the Talmud and Hebraica, Vol. 2 (Oxford: Oxford University, 1859) 3. 6Stephen Neill, The Interpretation of the New Testament: 1861-1961 (London, 1964) 292. 7For a history and critique of the use and abuse of rabbinic literature by Christian scholars, cf. George Foot Moore, "Christian Writers on Judaism," HTR 14 (1921): 197-253; E. P. San ders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1977) 1-12. 8Matthew Black, "Pharisees/' IDB (ed. George A. Buttrick; New York/Nashville: Abingdon, 1962): 791a. Emphasis mine. RABBINIC LITERATURE IN NT STUDIES 87 the New Testament scholar's new-found enthusiasm for things Rabbinic. However, he would be less impressed to discover that this enthusiasm is not always matched by knowledge, or tempered by caution."9 Recently, NT scholarship has charted a more cautious course with regard to the study of rabbinic literature, as Sandmel had hoped. Another equally prominent British conservative, F. F. Bruce, has restated the case: "And anyone who makes pronouncements on the basis of Strack-Billerbeck alone will swiftly expose the second-hand and limited character of his knowl edge."10 Yet Sandmel's plea to replace "partisan apologetics" with "sober scholarship' '1 * has not received a close hearing, even among those most sym pathetic to his cause. Barry R. Sang has shown that even E. P. Sanders, who has written an ebullient critique of Christian misuse of rabbinic literature, has failed to employ a consistently critical methodology in dating the rabbinic tra ditions.12 Nonetheless, Sanders and other scholars attempt to be sensitive to the problems inherent in using the rabbinic literature. Despite the progress that has been made in recent years in the study of rabbinic literature, certain serious limitations still remain for the NT scholar. These delimitating factors may be classified under one or the other of two categories: (1) limitations of the NT student, and (2) limitations of the liter ature. 9P. S. Alexander, ''Rabbinic Judaism and the New Testament," ZNW 3/4 (1983): 237. ,0F. F. Bruce, "Charting New Directions for New Testament Studies," Christianity To day 24 (October, 1980): 21. The misuse of rabbinic literature did not begin with Str-B, though it may have culminated there. As much as 175 years before Str-B, Jacob Wettstein's work evoked the following naive statement by A. Souter (Text and Canon of the New Testament [Oxford, 1913] 99): "So valuable is the amount of illustrative material that those who know the commentary best would not hesitate to place it first among all that ever one man has pro duced." On the other hand, George Foot Moore ("Christian Writers on Judaism," HTR 14 [1921]: 221) astutely remarked that "these parallels and illustrations [found in Wettstein] were used by subsequent commentators and theologians, and passed into a secondary tradition which in the course of repetition has forgotten its origins." "Sandmel, "Parallelomania," 11. 12Barry R. Sang, "The New Testament Hermeneutical Milieu: The Inheritance and the Heir," (Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Drew University, 1983) 207-208. Sanders (Paul, 63) claimed, "For convenience attributions will be considered as generally reliable [Italics not in original]." Sanders then moves from this assumption to construct a Judaism represented by the Tannaitic literature and to compare it with Paul. Sang ("The NT Hermeneutical Milieu," 208) maintained ' 'this conclusion [that Paul rejects Judaism because it is not Christianity] can not make sense without the presupposition that this material does in fact reflect the Judaism which Paul is rejecting." 88 PERSPECTIVES IN RELIGIOUS STUDIES LIMITATIONS OF THE NT SCHOLAR Many of the problems involved in the study of Jewish literature stem from deficiencies on the part of the NT student. Below are mentioned just a few of the limitations facing most NT scholars. 1. Naivete toward the literature. The NT student, particularly on the professional degree level, rarely receives more than a cursory introduction to the Palestinian world in which Jesus lived or the broader milieu that provided the context for the composition of the gospels and the epistles, Pauline or oth erwise. In another article, Samuel Sandmel comments on the state of theo logical education in Christian seminaries: The seminarian gets his introduction to the New Testament literature with out any comparable effort to portray the conditions economic, political, so cial and religious which existed in the Roman Empire out of which the New Testament books were written.13 The result is that NT students approach the pertinent bodies of Jewish liter ature—Apocrypha, Josephus, Philo, Qumran, Rabbinic—from a point of weakness and ignorance. The students come with a naivete toward the liter ature that would never be allowed in their NT studies.14 Jacob Neusner has aptly described the chief historical faults found in the results of many NT writers: Among the historiographical errors of pseudocritical scholars, three are so serious as to render their historical results useless: first, the failure carefully and critically to analyze the literary and historical traits of every pericope adduced as evidence; second, the assumption that things happened exactly as the sources allege; third, the use of anachronistic or inappropriate anal ogies and the introduction of irrelevant issues.15 While it is extremely difficult to become familiar with, much less master, rabbinic literature, Michael Cook has proposed "one may indeed suggest procedures and programs that go at least part of the way toward meaningfully 13Samuel Sandmel, *'Judaism, Jesus, and Paul: Some Problems of Method in Scholarly Research," Two Living Traditions (Detroit, 1972) 144. 14P. S. Alexander ("Rabbinic Judaism," 238) was perplexed "to observe New Testa ment scholars (especially Gospel critics), who in their own field can be so subtle and nuanced, apparently losing all their critical instincts when they come to deal with Rabbinic texts which are in many ways similar to the material they handle in the New Testament." 15Jacob Neusner, Method and Meaning in Ancient Judaism, 3, Brown Judaic Studies 16 (Chico CA: Scholars Press, 1981) 213. RABBINIC LITERATURE IN NT STUDIES 89 ameliorating the situation."16 In addition to individual programs of study, certain universities and colleges are offering courses or degree programs en abling students to acquire specialized knowledge in Jewish history, litera ture, religion, and culture from the second century B.C.E.