Toward a More Complete View of Talmudic Hermeneutics

282REVIEWS is taken to indicate a pre-Mosaic date for the narratives (Genesis xiv), which, however, could create problems for the antiquity of the YHVH cult asserted elsewhere. The fact that no king of Israel before Jehoshaphat bears a YHVH-name may suggest that the onomastic problem is not as easily solved as is suggested here. The five volumes are handsomely laid out, user-friendly, a credit to the publisher. The exposition is clear and attractively presented, and the authors have had the benefit of advice from the well-known novelist Chaim Potok in literary matters. All four are particularly strong on linguistic matters, Near Eastern parallels, and the careful and detailed treatment of specific issues, usually in the form of an excursus, e.g., Sarna on the Testament of Jacob and the Decalogue, Levine on L·shrut, Milgrom on the Korahite rebellion, Tlgay on the Shema' and tefillin. After a briefintroduction, each section is interpreted phrase by phrase, and the liturgical parashot are indicated alongside the familiar medieval chapter divisions. Commentary is based on the JPS Tanakh, but the commentators occa- ' sionally disagree with the translation of a word or phrase. Both Sarna and Milgrom, for example, prefer to have the tent covered with leather dyed yelloworange rather than the JPS's "dolphin skins" for Orot tehashim at Exod. 25:5, Num. 4:6 and elsewhere. JOSEPH BLENKINSOPP Department of Theology University of Notre Dame Toward a More Complete View of Talmudic Hermeneutics Christine Elizabeth Hayes. Between the Babylonian and Palestinian Talmuds: Accountingfor Halakhic Difference in Selected Sugyotfrom Tractate Avodah Zarah. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997, xi + 270 pp. History or exegesis? Which one should be understood as the driving force behind rabbinic literature? Did the Rabbis make their interpretative and legal choices based on sociohistorical considerations or based on a careful reading of texts? This question has a long history in modern rabbinic scholarship. Those in the historicist camp have tended to emphasize the role current events played in shaping rabbinic choices and to view the exegetical form of much of rabbinic literature as only a guise for such historically determined choices. Those in the hermeneuticist camp, on the other hand, have argued that the exegetical form of rabbinic literature should be taken seriously and that the Rabbis' interpretative and legal choices were primarily determined by textual/exegetical considerations, not by any contemporary circumstance external to the text. While in the past, this debate has been carried out primarily and most intensively in the field of midrash,1 Christine Hayes's recent book, Between the Prooftexts283 Babylonian and Palestinian Talmuds, brings the question to the fore in the realm of talmudic halakhah. More specifically, the book deals with the halakhic differences between the Babylonian and Palestinian Talmuds in tractate 'Avodah Zarah and seeks to answer this "history or exegesis" question with respect to such halakhic differences. As Hayes articulates the question, are halakhic differences between the two Talmuds to be understood primarily as the result of "internal" (i.e., textual or hermeneutical) or "external" (i.e., historical) factors? While not removing external historical factors entirely from the picture, Hayes takes a decidedly hermeneuticist stand in this book. Indeed, her goal is to correct the reductive historicism of certain Talmud scholars (chiefly Ginzberg, Urbach, and Alon)2 who have tended to emphasize history over hermeneutics in talmudic halakhah. Thus, in parts 1 and 2, which make up the bulk of the book, Hayes demonstrates, through a series ofcareful textual analyses, the various ways in which textual and hermeneutical factors play a decisive role in the determination of halakhah. Differences in halakhah are thus to be understood in these cases not as resulting from some historically motivated manipulation of the law, but from the rabbinic activity of reading and explicating earlier texts such as the Mishnah. By emphasizing hermeneutics, Hayes does not intend to exclude culturalhistorical analysis but rather to rein in its practice to more appropriate parameters. For this reason, she does allow some room in this book for a consideration of historical factors in the determination of halakhic difference. Part 3 is devoted entirely to this task, with a number of fine examples of halakhic...