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Reviewed by:
  • Rereading the Mishnah: A New Approach to Ancient Jewish Texts
  • Rivka Ulmer
Rereading the Mishnah: A New Approach to Ancient Jewish Texts, by Judith Hauptman. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005. Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism, Texte und Studien zum Antiken Judentum, 109. 285 pp. $185.00.

This work contains the results of many years of carefully reading and evaluating the relationship between the Tosefta and the Mishnah. The book has the following chapters: (1) Rethinking the Relationship between the Mishnah and the Tosefta; (2) The Tosefta as a Commentary on an Early Mishnah; (3) Rewriting Tosefta's Halakhic Paragraphs for Inclusion in the Mishnah; (4) Condensing Aggadah; (5) Editing for the Ease of Memory; (6) From Tosefta to Mishnah to Talmud; (7) A New Model of the Mishnah-Tosefta Relationship. This book contains a bibliography and an index that lists sources, modern authors, and subjects. Most of the materials were presented as papers at [End Page 200] academic conferences such as the Association for Jewish Studies Conferences; this reviewer was present at virtually all of Judith Hauptman's presentations that led to this revolutionary book which sets forth the premise that the Tosefta preceded the Mishnah.

Hauptman is justified in providing the following subtitle to her book: "A New Approach to Ancient Jewish Texts." Her engagement with the tannaitic stratum of rabbinic legal texts, which led to the redaction of the Mishnah and the Tosefta, challenges the widely accepted Lehrmeinung (the view that is commonly taught) as to the chronology of these two rabbinic documents. The prevailing understanding has been that subsequent to the creation of the Mishnah, the Tosefta was an addendum, supplement, or afterthought to the Mishnah. However, other scholars have noted that the interrelationship between the two texts is far more complex. For example, referring to Shamma Friedman, Günter Stemberger states that "the Tosefta often seems to have the more original arrangement as well as the more primitive form of the halakhah itself"; he emphasizes that the connections between the Tosefta and the Mishnah are "similar to the basic facts of the synoptic problem in New Testament studies" (Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash, p. 152).

Hauptman states that the Mishnah that is extant should be approached from the premise that the Tosefta and an (assumed) "Ur-Mishnah" were the base documents; this approach resembles New Testament scholarship which contends that parts of the Gospels are based upon the "Q" source. Although Hauptman presents a highly provocative and partially convincing argument to support her position, nevertheless, her conclusion is problematic since we have little documentary evidence to corroborate her hypothesis. The term "Ur-Mishnah" seems to be based on the notion of an "Urtext," i.e., the precursor of an edited text. Hauptman presents the reader with a new model which involves reading the Mishnah as a response to this "Ur-Mishnah" and to the Tosefta. For example, according to Hauptman, the extensive aggadic material concerning the Exodus that is found in the Tosefta has been "condensed" in the Mishnah. Still another example offered by Hauptman is that on occasion the redactor of the Mishnah adds narrative material to make his point and in the process rewrites Toseftan halakhot. This expansive strategy by the Mishnaic redactor appears to be the reversal of the "condensation" response. These conflicting redactional approaches demonstrate that in order to maintain her hypothesis Hauptman has to make comparisons unit by unit.

An example of the condensation procedure in the Mishnah is based upon Tosefta, Yom Tov 2:3; someone forgot to set an Eruv and there are questions in respect to what he and other people may prepare on his behalf. The redactor of the Mishnah omits this passage; for the redactor of the Mishnah the [End Page 201] "ruling is after the fact," whereas the Tosefta presents the ruling "ab initio." The problematic relationship between the Mishnah and the Tosefta is illustrated in the following passages:


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Table 1.

Hauptman contends that in the above texts the redactor of the Mishnah was aware of a preceding Toseftan document. In support of her position Hauptman asks: "If the redactor of the Mishnah knows...

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