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Chapter 3 Naturalizing the Border: Apostolic Succession in the Mishna As has been shown in a different context by David Halperin,' an epistemic shift consists not in the invention of a particular form of distinction, but in the aggregation of several modes of distinction into one new categorical dispositif Halperin demonstrates that all of the elements that would make up male homosexuality existed well before the nineteenth century, but their aggregation into one "name" initiated the history of sexuality. Similarly, the various elements of heresiology surely existed before Justin; the epistemic shift that this writer effected consisted in bringing together rules of faith, apostolic succession, diabolical inspiration, and false prophecy under one principle-the principle of heresy. In the last chapter, I argued that the concept of minut, the rabbinic equivalent to heresy and the rule of faith that defines it, could be said to have developed over the course ofthe second century and can be read as part ofa discursive development that comprehends the beginnings of Christian heresiology. The rabbinic parallel to the second pillar of the new Christian discourse of orthodoxy , apostolic succession, was also a product of the second half of the second century, not before. For the Rabbis, some of the elements of the new heresiological discourse may have existed before the late second century, but I would suggest that the aggregate which produced rabbinic Judaism as such was first formulated in the Mishna at the very end of that century. The new rabbinic regime of knowledge/power was epitomized-or perhaps one might better say "epistemized"-in the concept of Torah. This is the rabbinic ideology of an oral tradition communicated from Sinai, a bestowal of authority in which the Rabbis are represented as its sole heirs. Crucial to this epistemic shift in the locus of authority was the disenfranchisement of the previous holders of knowledge/power, the priests, and other traditional sources of knowledge, including perhaps women.' The production of a genealogy complemented this arrogation of authority by instituting a legitimating narrative of origin and succession, a story of orthodoxy perpetuated by transmission. Rabbinic Judaism thus was the end product of an extended struggle for hegemony. Naturalizing the Border 75 It appropriated religious authority exclusively into the hands of a male elite devoted primarily to the study of Torah and genealogically normalized that elite's particular traditions and modes of interpretation. As we have seen above, the third element in the rabbinic "rule of faith" (in addition to assertion that there is resurrection and eternal life for the soul) is the assertion that the "Torah;' by which is surely meant the Oral Torah, is from heaven. This article of faith constitutes , on my view, the necessity of asserting that the only source oflegitimate, "orthodox" religious authority is in the institution of its House of Study. Just as, according to Le Boulluec, the notion ofapostolic succession was for Justin a crucial invention for the promulgation of Christian orthodoxy, so too, I claim, it was for the development of rabbinic authority. In his reconstruction of the earliest stages of Christian heresiology, Le Boulluec argues that the notion of apostolic succession, so crucial to the discourse of heresiology-at least in its early, Justinian and Irenaean form, to which the question of institutional authority is centraP-is indebted to "the Jewish, i.e., rabbinic tradition of divinely inspired oral transmission." As Le Boulluec writes, "Very probably through this enterprise they were able, by imitating Palestinian Rabbinism, which succeeded in securing around itself the unity of Judaism after the destruction of the Temple, to draw a list of'succession ' capable of guaranteeing the authority and validity of an ecclesiastical current ." Given the revisionist evaluation of rabbinic historical evidence that I adopt, I offer a friendly but pointed amendment to Le Boulluec's conclusion that "the Jewish example served once again to affirm the theme of the succession at the moment when the crucial difficulty was that of the divisions in the interior of Christianity, at the moment when Justin devised his heresiological scheme with the goal of controlling and limiting them [the divisions]. It is very likely that the effort of reconstituting and unifying Judaism accomplished by rabbinical orthodoxy was imitated by the Church, stimulated by the competitive desire to supplant once more the elder brother, a desire that the renewed vitality (of the elder brother) could not help but reinforce." On the contrary, I would suggest that the heresiological techniques promulgated in the rabbinic texts are as...

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