From Text to Tradition: A History of Second Temple and Rabbinic Judaism (review)

Hebrew Studies 35 (1994) 207 Reviews P. 95 (TS K1.71 Verso): The editors read: nnD'R 10 1'''-cm RC?l1 ?P Tfl'IR which they render, "Who overturns the entire world which shatters from fear of Him" and annotate as follows: "I. ?po Emend to ?~. It is unlikely that ?P, 'voice', is intended.1,.,.,:ln'. Energic nun added to second person plural imperfect ending." Yet the third letter of the text is clearly $ade, and a final nun is perfectly normal in an Aramaic context, so why comment on it? On the other hand, the non-active voice of their translation and the double resh do need comment. P. 107 (re TS K1.100) maintains that "the bulk of our text is Aramaic," yet less than twenty percent of the text in question is not in Hebrew. P. 1081. 1 for "and in" read "command." P. 150 (TS Kl.l68 ) right side 3: [ ] IZlm il?~ restore not '0n, but rather 11Zln, and translate "gloom and darkness." Stephen A. Kaufman Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute ofReligion Cincinnati, OH 45220 FROM TEXT TO TRADITION: A HISTORY OF SECOND TEMPLE AND RABBINIC JUDAISM. By Lawrence H. Schiffman. pp. xvi + 299. Hoboken: Ktav Publishing House, 1991. Paper. This volume offers a concise narrative history of the Jewish people from the Persian period up to, but not including, the rise and spread of Islam, as a background for an interpretation of Judaism from its presumed emergence in the period of the Second Temple until its decisive formulation in the Babylonian Talmud as what has come to be called Rabbinic Judaism. It holds the narrative together by means of a series of chronological and genealogical charts that often record the names of a great many persons not mentioned in the narrative itself. An initial problem with this study is its title: From Text to Tradition to which the question, "What text?" may be addressed. It is not until p. 56 that "the canonization of the Hebrew Scripture" is discussed although Torah, that is, Pentateuch, does appear on p. 24 as a text whose "dating and authorship" need not be discussed since the problem of the book is "rather to understand the nature of the text as it was written down and transmitted to later generations ." Thus on p. 38 Ezra arrives in Jerusalem with a "copy of the Torah and a document from the [Persian1 king authorizing him to enforce it." Thus Hebrew Studies 35 (1994) 208 Reviews all critical questions concerning its origin are put aside. Ezra's book is apparently the "text" from which the "tradition" grew. A second problem may be seen from the following example: Tannaitic and amoraic rnidrashim first appear on p. 11 as "sustained interpretation of Scripture arranged according to biblical sequence." [This is certainly not correct with regard to amoraic homiletic midrashim.] It is, however, not until pp. 47-48 that what this interpretation involves and the "technique of legal midrash" is explained. The explanation is clear and helpful, but a little late for an uninformed reader. In connection with this explanation, the way in which it was used by Ezra to support the decision to expel foreign wives is alluded to although that expulsion has already been referred to as being based on "a covenant by which they voluntarily expelled 113 foreign wives in the community." There is an insightful discussion of the terms "sect" and "sectarianism" at the beginning of the chapter "Sectarianism in the Second Commonwealth," in which it is pointed out that the terms are problematic "since [they] usually assume a dominant or normative stream from which others have diverged." Nonetheless, the author uses them rather than "identifying these various ideologies as independent •Judaisms'." What is wrong with using "ideologies"? The "Jewish-Christian Schism" is quite correctly viewed from this perspective no matter what term is used. Christianity is seen as rooted in "apocalypticism" such as is exhibited in the Qumran documents, although the author wisely avoids making Jesus a "Dead Sea sectarian." The account of the rise of the Jewish-Christian ideology and the emergence of Gentile, that is, non-Jewish, Christianity is summarized "from the standpoint of Christianity" as "by sometime...