On the Formation and Transmission of Bereshit Rabba and the Yerushalmi: Questions of Redaction, Text-Criticism and Literary Relationships

The Jewish Quarterly Review, XCII, Nos. 3-4 (January-April, 2002) 521-567 Review Essay ON THE FORMATION AND TRANSMISSION OF BERESHIT RABBA AND THE YERUSHALMI: QUESTIONS OF REDACTION, TEXT-CRITICISM AND LITERARY RELATIONSHIPS Chaim Milikowsky, Bar-Ilan University Hans-Jürgen Becker. Die grossen rabbinischen Sammelwerke Palastinas: Zur literarischen Genese von Talmud Yerushalmi und Midrash Bereshit Rabba. Texte und Studien zum antiken Judentum 70. Tübingen, 1999. Pp. ? +217.1 I. INTRODUCTION Much thought and intellectual creativity went into the writing of this book, and it in turn prompts the reader to think thoroughly about some of the most fundamental problems facing rabbinic scholarship. Though I disagree with just about every critical stance taken by the author, as will become clear over the course of this review-essay, I found the encounter with the book both enlightening and enriching. The length of this essay is itself an indication of the importance of these questions to the study of rabbinic literature. The book consists of six chapters: a relatively brief introductory chapter (pp. 1-15), a short concluding chapter (pp. 149-156), and four chapters containing intensive, detailed analyses of parallel passages that occur in both the Yerushalmi and Bereshit Rabba. As we shall see, there is not much overlap between the theoretical superstructure of the book (the first part of the introduction and the conclusion) and the diligent exegeses of the particular texts Becker discusses.2 1 In the course of writing this review essay I used material generated by a research project co-directed by Margarete Schlüter and by me, which was funded by the GermanIsrael Foundation (G.I.F.). I wish to acknowledge their crucial support and thank them for it. 2The overlap that does exist focuses primarily on the question of whether one is dependent upon the other; also on the various hypothetical written sources that, according to Becker, were used by the redactors of the Yerushalmi and Bereshit Rabba in formulating their works and that he claims he has discovered in the individual analyses; and additionally on the wide recensional variation between the various textual witnesses to Bereshit Rabba 59.4, an issue that is discussed in his fifth chapter. All these matters will be discussed in this essay. 522TOE JEWISH QUARTERLY REVIEW Though many questions dealing with the formation of the Yerushalmi and Bereshit Rabba are discussed, the primary theme of the book is indicated by the four exegetical chapters, which focus on passages that are paralleled in those two texts, and additionally by the second half of the introductory chapter , which contains a Forschungsbericht on the question of the relationship between the Yerushalmi and Bereshit Rabba. For a number of reasons it is extremely difficult to determine relationships between these or any two rabbinic works. On the most basic level, there is the general problem of determining the dependence of one work on another without any explicit citation or mention of one work in the other. Criticism in all fields of humanistic scholarship is strewn with assertions and counter-assertions that claim the author of Text A used Text B or that Text A is not dependent upon Text B.3 These assertions are essentially based upon the critical acumen and instinctive judgment of the scholar, but are usually unverifiable in any empirical sense. Even when comparative analysis indicates that a passage in Text A is prior in form or content than a related passage in Text B, nothing definitive can be concluded about the relationship between the two texts. Questions focusing on the differentiation between traditions that can be shown to be primary and traditions that can be shown to be secondary and revised should not be conflated with questions of literary dependence. Undoubtedly , the two questions are related to each other, but by no means should they be identified with each other. Furthermore, as is obvious to anyone who has seriously grappled with works of the classical rabbinic period, their mode of composition was not at all similar to the modes of composition with which we are most familiar today. To a very large extent, these texts are compilations of preexisting material, and the amount of new material added by...