Rabbinic Literature

This next chapter in the evolution of messianism is an exciting one. We will enter the world of rabbinic literature, in lieu of what we previously discussed - the missing acute messianism in the biblical literature, and the outbreak of acute messianism before our very eyes in the New Testament, the writings of Jewish Early Christianity. 

This chapter on rabbinic literature is fascinating in my eyes because there are so many amazing levels of text and of interpretation. 

What is rabbinic literature? What is its nature? This is a world in and of itself. We are just scratching the surface. 

Textual Traditions

The Jews are “the people of the book/s”. Textual traditions are perhaps the most famous feature of the Jewish culture and religion. 

A textual tradition is not like one person sitting down and writing a book. Rather, it is a complex of oral traditions written down at some point and passed on through centuries by others, edited, all sorts of things added to it, some things removed, some things expanded, copied, interpreted, miscopied or mistranslated, etc. 

So we have large collections of texts that you cannot know exactly what was really written by whom nor when, but everything is up for analysis and interpretation. The texts become a textual tradition, and has or creates or becomes into kind of a life of its own. 

Major Trends in Jewish Writing

Anyhow, the biblical writings are such a textual tradition. The main textual tradition in rabbinic literature is the Talmud, which is a textual tradition on top of another textual tradition - the Mishna. 

Both were passed along orally and then written over centuries, so it is hard to say when they are from but we could say the Mishna after 200 years developing orally it was written in the second century (AD) and the Talmud was written maybe in the 5-6th century and includes materially from the 2nd century on. 

The Mishna is mostly, but not only, there is some variety and other literary items, but mostly, it is religious legal rulings - if this happens, this is lawful, if this happens, that is lawful, etc. 

“Mishna”, the name itself, means “that which is memorized”, in other words, it is the book of the memorizing agents, those who memorized and passed on orally the traditions. It was a book that was not written, but was written in their memory, and only later on paper / scroll.

The Talmud, is generation upon generation of interpretation and commentary of the Mishna, by religious scholars, sometimes practical but often theoretical legal discussions, loosely following the structure of the Mishna. 

The style of writing of the Mishna and especially the Talmud is exceptional. The Talmud is extremely dense. There are particular words and phrases which point to the structure - what is being quoted, who is being quoted, what is the nature of one point after another as discussion or argument - for example, “here is a challenging view”, or “here is a decisive position”...

By the way there are 2 variations of the Talmud - the Babylonian and the Palestinian Talmud. They are different, and the differences between them are random or a matter of ideological interpretation.

Besides these main textual traditions, Judaism has other early textual traditions, or rather all sorts of texts, in the prayer book - which is a textual tradition of sorts. 

Also, there is the “midrash” or “agada” texts, which are not halacha (religious law) nor history, this is kind of a categorical description of these other stories and homilies, sometimes books of this type of literature, sometimes the literary items appear in various form in other books or on their own and some found their way into the Talmud. These sometimes seem like folklore, and often quite surreal.

Finally, worth mentioning, are biblical translations, some of which, namely “Onkelos”, became almost authoritative as an interpretation, as a text of the biblical material, into Aramaic. Remember! Every translation is of course somewhat of an interpretation in and of itself.