Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Jonathan Wyn Schofer is assistant professor of classical rabbinic literature in the Department of Hebrew and Semitic Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

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The Making of a Sage

THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN PRESS

Contents

Preface....................................................viiAcknowledgments............................................xiConventions................................................xiiiIntroduction...............................................3Part 1. The Text and Its Sages.............................231a. Rabbi Nathan and Its Contexts..........................251b. The Text Instructs.....................................421c. Concepts and Tropes....................................541d. The Text and Its Sages: Conclusion.....................65Part 2. Rabbinic Tradition.................................672a. Torah and Transgressive Tendencies.....................712b. The Heart and Its Formation............................842c. Rabbinic Tradition: Conclusion.........................116Part 3. Rabbinic Theology..................................1213a. Divine Reward and Punishment...........................1253b. Motivation and Emotion.................................1473c. Rabbinic Theology: Conclusion..........................161Conclusion.................................................167Notes......................................................175Bibliography...............................................275Index of Sources...........................................295Index of Names, Ancient and Modern.........................299Index of Subjects..........................................305

Chapter One

The creators of rabbinic texts were editors who received, adapted, expanded, and arranged earlier materials. Contemporary scholars debate the methods we should employ for thematic studies drawing upon such sources, and I am largely a pluralist in these matters. There are many ways one could frame a treatment of a given topic, and each has its possibilities and dangers. Taking a single text as my primary unit of analysis allows me to examine editorial work at various levels, including that of the entire compilation, though a constant risk is overemphasizing the hands of the editors or attributing a false unity to the process of compilation. When I consider the ethics of Rabbi Nathan in relation to rabbinic thought broadly construed, two dangers are overparticularizing (claiming that this text represents the viewpoint of only one school or set of compilers) or overgeneralizing (claiming that this text represents rabbinic thought as such).

Rabbi Nathan is a large and significant anthology of ethical material that represents an important strand of rabbinic ethical thinking and debate. The text includes a diverse range of teachings, and that diversity allows me to examine themes that have wide resonances in rabbinic literature. At the same time, like all rabbinic texts, Rabbi Nathan preserves many features that are specific to its stream of compilation. Despite its size, Rabbi Nathan surely does not represent all of rabbinic thought: its creators were selective and at times contentious. While I treat Rabbi Nathan as a key example for investigating rabbinic ethics broadly construed, I also identify the distinct features of the text in contrast with others produced by the movement. Part of my work will be to discuss the many groups of people that are excluded from its ethics, and one way that I signal that Rabbi Nathan represents a strand and not the totality of rabbinic views is to avoid the use of the definite article before the word "rabbis." Rabbi Nathan reveals what (certain) rabbis state, but not what (all of) "the rabbis" believed.

How, though, do we read a rabbinic text as a whole? What is the relation between this text and the classical rabbinic sages of Roman late antiquity, many of whom are portrayed in the text itself? Rabbi Nathan has an extremely complicated history of composition and editing, and we only understand small parts of it. Within the textual family, we find multiple recensions and a diversity of views and opinions, and beyond Rabbi Nathan there are challenges of contextualization in relation to other rabbinic material as well as to history. This section responds to such problems, first addressing the issues in delineating the text of Rabbi Nathan, situating it in contexts, and identifying the overall picture of a rabbinic community portrayed in the material. Then I examine the genres and literary structure of the text as a whole, including its maxims, their arrangement, the commentary upon them, and narratives within the commentary. My focus is on pedagogical features-how the text instructs its audience. Finally, I consider methodological questions in understanding the thought presented by the text, particularly its concepts and tropes. Everything that I discuss here is crucial for understanding Rabbi Nathan, but the generality of these points in relation to other rabbinic sources varies. My accounts of midrash and narrative probably can be applied to many other rabbinic sources, as can the procedures I set out for studying concepts and tropes. Much of my discussion of text and context, and my analysis of maxims, would be applicable to The Fathers as well as Rabbi Nathan, though the arrangement of maxims, their commentary, and aspects of the communal ideals are particular to Rabbi Nathan.

1a Rabbi Nathan and Its Contexts

What constitutes the text? The Fathers According to Rabbi Nathan really designates a group of texts, as there are a number of writings, often with significant differences, which have that title. Today's academic readers of rabbinic Hebrew likely encounter Rabbi Nathan in one of two sources: the printed edition of the Babylonian Talmud (as part of the extracanonical tractates), and Solomon Schechter's edition of 1887. Most scholars make use of Schechter's compilation, which is the first critical edition ever done of a rabbinic text and an incredible work. He arranged two different versions side by side: one based on printed editions labeled "A," and the other labeled "B." Drawing upon manuscripts, medieval quotations, and other sources, he made some corrections within the main text (at times making this explicit, at other times not), presented comments at the bottom of each page, and included several appendices with further notes and a full manuscript. Schechter's book has many flaws, and it is difficult to navigate, but it is a tremendous achievement and still the standard reference. This marks not the end but the beginning of the challenges. In the years since Schechter, critical studies of manuscripts and geniza fragments have been done by Louis Finkelstein, Marc Bregman, and, most recently and extensively, Menahem Kister. One of the manuscripts that Schechter used for Rabbi Nathan A was lost in the Holocaust, and Finkelstein was able to make use of a manuscript that Schechter did not have. Both Kister and Bregman have given us reason to see complexities in recension beyond the dichotomy of A and B.

My method concerning this diversity of writings is threefold. First, I aim to support all of my fundamental arguments through Rabbi Nathan A, and specifically the printed edition. Why the printed edition? The textual history of Rabbi Nathan is so complex that no one manuscript can be designated...