Transmitting Mishnah: The Shaping Influence of Oral Tradition (review)

Transmitting Mishnah, based on Elizabeth Alexander’s dissertation, focuses on the dynamics of rabbinic text production, transmission, and interpretation as exemplified in tractate Shevuot. Alexander engages scholarship in rabbinics and orality studies, and thus her work will be of interest to scholars in both fields.

Alexander’s introductory development of an “oral conceptual lens” through which to view early rabbinic work sets the stage for the textual analyses at the heart of this book. In “Chapter 1: Mishnaic Textuality,” she argues that the Mishnah (with other tannaitic works) was created in an environment shaped by both oral and literary forces. In this environment, no one version of a textual parallel was considered more authentic or authoritative than any other. The nature of oral texts not only allowed for, but encouraged, multiple versions. Thus, Alexander differs from scholars who attribute variants to literary manipulation or textual corruption.

Alexander forefronts “nonlinear” and “non-literal” aspects of tannaitic parallels. Like multiple performances of oral folk tales, parallel mishnaic and toseftan texts tell the “same” story (or rather make the same halakhic point) by using a variety of well-known options available in the tradition. Mishnah and Tosefta parallels use equivalent “overarching structural frameworks,” but elaborate those structures differently. The Tosefta presents a more detailed legal framework, thus assuming less knowledge on the part of the hearer/ reader. Meanwhile, the Mishnah elaborates the debate itself, assuming more background knowledge. Alexander cautiously speculates that these differences may represent different pedagogical settings. These texts also use common “fixed phrases” (such as “he swears and collects” in Mishnah Shevuot 7:1ff. and Tosefta Shevuot 6:1ff.). Finally, these works have the same “underlying conceptual concerns,” that is, abstract principles which they express in different surface language and even through the use of different legal concepts that, in the end, make the same point. Thus, Mishnah and Tosefta draw on a shared storehouse of legal concepts and language that is their common source.

In “Chapter 2: The Scripturalization of the Mishnah,” Alexander shows how the fluid oral textuality of the Mishnah, reflective of oral performances and informal scripts, became for Talmuds’ sages a fixed text in which every phrase, word, and even letter bore “omnisignificance.” They saw these details of the text as highly intentional, chosen to express certain precise ideas while precluding others. The Mishnah was becoming a singularly authoritative work; midrashic strategies that were previously reserved to interpret Scripture were now applied to the Mishnah.

Admitting that the process from fluid text to fixed, omnisignificant, and authoritative text may never be fully known, Alexander sees a general development from the Yerushalmi to the later Bavli. She exemplifies this process with a number of Talmud passages, beginning with Y and B’s analysis of m. Shev. 3:1, which reads:

1. a. [If a person said:] I swear that I will not eat, and [then] he ate and drank—he is liable on one count.

2. b. [If a person said:] I swear that I will not eat and I will not drink, and [then] he ate and drank—he is liable on two counts.

In the Mishnah, these paired sentences are found in a discussion of the relationship between violated oaths and required sacrifice. R. Aqiba (or the redactor) exemplifies that relationship by referencing this unit of two sentences (in which it is implied that a sacrifice is brought for each count). But the Yerushalmi reads these as two distinct cases, beginning with an inquiry about the relationship between eating and drinking, thus “atomizing” the Mishnah and drawing conclusions far beyond what a straightforward reading of the Mishnah calls for. After covering the same basic ground, the Bavli goes even further in its atomization of the Mishnah, drawing additional inference from the sequence of the oaths, assuming that word order in the Mishnah conveys additional meaning beyond the actual statements of the text. At the same time, the Bavli’s understanding of Mishnaic textuality allows it even to...