The Documentary History of Judaism and the Problem of Dating Sayings

✍ Scribed by Jacob Neusner

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1993
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 915 KB
• Volume: 23
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0048-721X
• DOI: 10.1006/reli.1993.1026

✦ Synopsis

eyewitness accounts of great events or stenographic records of what people actually said. On the contrary, it is anachronistic to suppose the Talmudic rabbis cared to supply such information to begin with. Since they did not, and since they asserted that pcople had said things of which they had no sure knowledge, we are led to wonder about the pseudepigraphic mentality. By the time we hear about a speech or an event, it has already been reshaped for the purpose of transmission in the traditions. It is rarely possible to know just what, if anything, originally was said or done. Sometimes we have an obvious gloss, which tells us the tradition originated before the time the glossator made his addition. But knowing that a tradition was shaped within half a century of the life of the man to whom it was attributed helps only a little bit. It is very difficult to build a bridge from the tradition to the cvent, still more difficult to cross that bridge. The fact is that the entire Babylonian Talmud is a completely accurate record of the history of those who are responsible for it. But the specification of those pcople, the recognition of the viewpoint of a particular group, place, and time to which the Talmud's various facts pertain-these remain the fundamental task still facing us. . .