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Mr. Sanders' Pharisees and Mine A Response to E. P. Sanders, Jewish Law from Jesus to the Mishnah*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

Jacob Neusner
Jacob Neusner
Affiliation:
735 Fourteenth Avenue Northeast, St Petersburg, Florida 33701–1413, U.S.A.
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Extract

Despite the risible misnomer of his book of miscellaneous essays, which, claiming to speak of ‘Jewish law to the Mishnah,’ discuss mere anecdotes and episodes in Jewish law in the first century with special reference to the Gospels, Professor Edward P. Sanders’ current account of his views should not be dismissed as the merely random thoughts of one who wanders beyond the boundaries of his field of first-hand knowledge. Holding Sanders to his claim that he knows something about what he calls ‘Jewish law,’ let us take seriously his conception of the Pharisees of the first century. Since, intending to persuade colleagues that his picture of, and apologia for, the Pharisees, not mine, accurately portray how things really were in the first century, Sanders devotes two of his five chapters to that subject, we turn forthwith to the contrasting results contained in his current book.

Type
Article Review
Information
Scottish Journal of Theology , Volume 44 , Issue 1 , February 1991 , pp. 73 - 96
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 1991

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References

1 My principal results are in two major works, first, The Rabbinic Traditions about the Pharisees before 70. Leiden, 1971: Brill. I–III. I. The Rabbinic Traditions about the Pharisees before 70. The Masters. II. The Rabbinic Traditions about the Pharisees before 70. The Houses. III. The Rabbinic Traditions about the Pharisees before 70. Conclusions. In Vol. III, pp. 320–561, through a detailed survey of all of the prior writing on the Pharisees, I show that the reason why all prior work on the Pharisees is nullified is by a gullible credence in whatever a rabbinic source assigns to an early authority. And second, Eliezer ben Hyrcanus. The Tradition and the Man. Leiden, 1973: Brill: I. Eliezer ben Hyrcanus. The Tradition and the Man. The Tradition. II. Eliezer ben Hyrcanus. The Tradition and the Man. The Man. I am not sure that Sanders has fully grasped the methodological issues that I have worked out in doing my analysis in this way, rather than in some other. I have given reprises of some of these results in the following: Oral Tradition in Judaism: The Case of the Mishnah. N.Y., 1987: Garland Publishing Co.Google ScholarAlbert Bates Lord Monograph Series of the journal, Oral Tradition.; Das pharisäische und talmudische Judentum. Tuebingen, 1984: Mohr, J.C.B. (Siebeck, Paul). Edited by Lichtenberger, Hermann. Foreword by Hengel, Martin, and The Pharisees. Rabbinic Perspectives. N.Y., 1985: Ktav Publishing HouseGoogle Scholar. On problems of method — how we claim to know what we know, on the basis of sources that exhibit the traits of those on which we work – my summary of matters is in Reading and Believing: Ancient Judaism and Contemporary Gullibility. Atlanta, 1986: Scholars Press for Brown Judaic Studies.

2 One example: 'Shall we call these ‘oral law’? That is just the question. To get at it, I wish to make further distinctions: [1] between conscious and unconscious interpretation of the written law; [2] between interpretation and consciously formulated supplements, alterations or additions, which are known not to be in the law at all. These distinctions are easier to state than to demonstrate, since exegesis can be fanciful and produce results which are now thought to be remote from the text, and since we have no direct access to what was ‘conscious’ and ‘unconscious.’ Nevertheless, if we bear these distinctions in mind and consider some examples, we shall improve our understanding of the problem’ (Jewish Law, pp. 102–103). The most powerful arguments against Sanders' distinctions are stated in his presentation of them: [1] there is no evidence; [2] we also do not know what was‘conscious’ and what was ‘unconscious.’ But these powerful considerations do not impede Sanders' progress. He simply dismisses them and moves ahead. That seems to me a fine instance of how he just makes things up as he goes along.

3 A current example is the recent writings of S. Michael Fishbane, but he is only one among many.

4 These figures of course are rough; they enumerate the items in my Rabbinic Traditions about the Pharisees before 70. Sanders' criticism of them is entirely fair. I catalogued everything I found, then counted. Other counts are certainly defensible, as is mine.

5 As to the topical program of the Pharisees, Josephus' agenda of Pharisaic doctrine hardly coincides with those of the rabbis. For example, while Josephus seems to paraphrase Aqiba's saying, that all is in the hands of heaven yet man has free choice, that saying is nowhere atttributed to pre-70 Pharisees, certainly not to the Pharisees who would have flourished in the period in which Josephus places such beliefs. We find no references to the soul's imperishability, all the more so to the transmigration of souls. The Houses' debate on the intermediate group comes closest to Josephus’ report. As to Josephus' allegation that the Pharisees are affectionate to one another, we may observe that is not how the Hillelites report matters. Josephus knows nothing of the Shammaites' slaughter of Hillelites, their mob-action against Hillel in the Temple, and other stories that suggest a less than affectionate relationship within the Pharisaic group. So, for Josephus, the three chief issues of sectarian consequence are belief in fate, belief in traditions outside of the Laws of Moses, and influence over political life. The Pharisees believe in fate, have traditions from the fathers, and exercise significant influence in public affairs. The Sadducees do not believe in fate, do not accept other than Mosaic laws, and have no consequence in public life. For the rabbinic traditions about the Pharisees, the three chief issues of sectarian consequence are ritual purity, agricultural taboos, and Sabbath and festival behavior.

6 Sanders, p. 111.

7 Jewish Law, p. 244.

8 Cambridge and New York, 1990: Cambridge University Press.

9 Sanders discusses so many groups that quite how evidence drawn from any one of them pertains to the principal group under discussion is not at all clear.

10 Jewish Law, p. 131.

11 Jewish Law, p. 171.

12 But there are equally probative examples to be adduced, e.g., from Mishnahtractate Tohorot Chapter Two, which, like the passage at hand, place within a single continuum, so far as cultic cleanness of food in the Temple and not in the Temple is concerned, priests and non-priests. That passage does not make explicit reference to the Pharisees, which is why I have given the present one as my single example, among countless candidates.

13 The hierarchical classification of all things defines the Mishnah's authorships' principal concern, as I have shown in my Judaism as Philosophy. The Method and Message of the Mishnah. Columbia, 1991: University of South Carolina PressGoogle Scholar. This work now leads directly into The Bavli's One Statement. The Metapropositional Program of Babylonian Talmud Tractate Zebahim Chapters One, Two, and Five, and of Babylonian Tractate Niddah Chapter One. Atlanta, planned for 1991: Scholars Press for South Florida Studies in the History of Judaism, and its sequel, The Message of the Method of the Talmud of Babylonia. The Metapropositional Program of Babylonian Talmud Tractates Erubin, Yebamot, Qiddushin, Gittin, Baba Qamma, Baba Batra, Zebahim, and Menahot. Atlanta, planned for 1993: Scholars Press for South Florida Studies in the History of Judaism.

14 Jewish Law, pp. 206–207.

15 ibid, p. 234.

16 ibid, p. 235.

17 spell out this matter in my The Transformation of Judaism. From Philosophy to Religion. Champaign, 1991: University of Illinois Press. I regard this work as my principal contribution to learning to date.Google Scholar

18 Jewish Law, pp. 236–242.

19 Jewish Law, pp. 240–241.

20 Jewish Law, p. 240.

21 Jewish Law, pp. 245–246.