scholars treated all the sources as repositories of objective historical facts about these institutions and attempted to harmonize them. Perhaps a better approach, as espoused nearly two decades ago by David Goodblatt, is to explain the Mishnah’s Great Court as a rabbinic idealization of the earlier institution.40 Thus those who composed, edited, and transmitted the Mishnah characteristically remember the historical institution of the “council” as a fixed judicial body located in the Temple and with authority over Temple ritual.41 In reality, or at least in the written representations of earlier sources, such an institution was not involved in, and did not have authority over, ritual in the Temple.
A single exception in the earlier Jewish sources is found in the works of Josephus in a passage in which a synedrion is involved in changing Temple ritual. This passage emphatically demonstrates that the synedrion was not ordinarily involved in such matters. In Antiquities 20:216–18, Josephus recounts an incident regarding King Agrippa, who was persuaded by the Levites to convene a synedrion, a council, to allow him to grant them “permission to wear linen robes on equal terms with the priests.”42 This council—possibly similar to the Mishnah’s Court—is involved in making a change to ritual practice in the Temple. But in this case, it is not the ultimate authority because the king is the one who actually makes the change. Furthermore, in Josephus’s view, the change to Temple practice here is exceptional because it violates “the traditional laws.” Presumably, the authority to interpret these traditional laws, in Josephus’s view, properly lies with those he calls elsewhere “priestly experts on the traditions.”43 As Ellis Rivkin argues, Josephus treats this change as a political incursion into the realm of ritual, usually controlled fully by the priests.44 The Mishnah’s frequent insertion of the Court into this role makes it seem natural that the Court controls ritual; but why should a court and its members play such a role? This role should be—and it seems was in fact—reserved for priests.45
The Court and Its Members as Rabbinic Predecessors
Part of the reason that the mishnaic rabbis gave the Court and its members such an important role is that they understood them to be their Temple-era predecessors who transmitted to them authority over Judaean law and tradition. Two sets of evidence scattered throughout the Mishnah establish that the rabbis saw the relationship in this way. The first are the chain-of-transmission narratives that link rabbis to figures in the past through a chain of transmission; the second are the reports of taḳḳānōt, emendations or enactments made by rabbis and earlier legal authorities.46
Chain-of-transmission narratives describe a series of transmissions from person to person or group to group whereby tradition in general, a tradition about a particular law, or authority travels through time from Moses at Sinai to an early rabbi or early rabbis. Some of these texts, particularly the first chapters of ’Avot, have been treated in detail in recent scholarly works.47 Yet previous scholarship has failed to notice the prominence of the Court and its members as rabbinic predecessors.48
The identification of the rabbinic predecessors as Court members occurs in three of the Mishnah’s five chain-of-transmission narratives. In two of the narratives, Mishnah ’Avot 1–2 and Pe’ah 2:6, a generic set of “pairs” (Pe’ah 2:6) or a detailed list of pairs of individuals—from Yose son of Yoezer man of Tseredah and Yose son of Yoḥanan man of Jerusalem (’Avot 1:4) to Hillel and Shammai (’Avot 1:12–1:15; and see 2:8)—precede the rabbis in the chain. Elsewhere in the Mishnah, in Ḥagigah 2:2, these pairs are referred to as nĕśi’im (plural of naśi) and ’ăvōt bēit din (chiefs of the Court).49 Though significant evidence, largely circumstantial, has been marshaled to claim that naśi in the context of the chain means “patriarch,” a leadership position attested in Christian and Roman sources,50 its simple meaning in the Mishnah is “leader of the Court.”51 Certainly, ’av bēit din refers to a position of Court leadership. While the single example of Mishnah Ḥagigah 2:2 does not prove that the pairs are considered court leaders in Mishnah ’Avot and Pe’ah 2:6, several additional examples throughout the Mishnah, as well as in the Tosefta, treat individual members of the pairs as leaders of the Court. In Tosefta Pisḥa (Pesaḥim) 4:14, Hillel is said to have been appointed naśi. Further, some earlier individual members of the pairs are said to have performed functions normally associated with the Court or the Great Court (or, Sanhedrin). Shimon ben Shetaḥ, a member of the pairs (Mishnah ’Avot 1:8), is said to have meted out the death penalty (Mishnah Sanhedrin 6:4) and to have threatened to excommunicate Ḥoni the circle drawer (Mishnah Ta‘anit 3:8), a power attributed to the Court in Mishnah ‘Eduyyot 5:6. Similarly, Shemaiah and ’Avtalyon (Mishnah ’Avot 1:10–11) are said to have enacted the sōṭāh (accused adulteress) ordeal ritual in Mishnah ‘Eduyyot 5:6, also a role given, at least partially, to the Court in Soṭah. Thus in multiple instances throughout the Mishnah, there is an assumption that the pairs who precede the rabbis in the two chain-of-transmission narratives are members or leaders of the Second Temple–era Court.52
In addition to these two chain-of-transmission narratives that refer to “the pairs,” there is a third example, which has not previously been included in consideration of this mini-genre. In Mishnah Rosh Hashanah 2:9, a statement is made that connects Rabban Gamliel (and his bēit din) in Yavneh back to Moses through a series of courts (כל בית דין ובית דין, every single court) that span history “from the days of Moses until now (the time of Rabban Gamliel).”53 In this case, the entire chain is imagined to be composed of courts linked in time from the biblical era to the earliest rabbi in the post-destruction era.54 Taking the various chain-of-transmission narratives as variants of the same motif expressed differently in different contexts, there appears to be a recurrent assumption evidenced by this motif that the Court and its members preceded individual rabbis—and ultimately, all rabbis—in a chain of transmission going back to Moses. It is worth emphasizing that those who precede the rabbis are constructed as Court members and not Pharisees, as is typically assumed. As Shaye Cohen has demonstrated for rabbinic literature in general, “at no point in antiquity did the rabbis see themselves clearly as Pharisees or as the descendants of the Pharisees.”55
The second body of evidence that demonstrates that the rabbis are seen as heirs of the Court consists of reports scattered throughout the Mishnah of taḳḳanot, or emendations made to particular laws.56 In total, nineteen pericopae describe an emendation to a law using the formulaic word hitḳin (התקין, “he emended”) or hitḳinu (התקינו, “they emended”). They are attributed as follows (listing the number of pericopae;57 arranged chronologically):58
| Anonymous | 7 |
| The early prophets | 1 |
| Bēit din (Court of Temple times) | 3 |
| Hillel the elder | 3 |
| Rabban Gamliel the elder | 1 |
| Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel | 1 |
| Rabban Yoḥanan ben Zakkai | 3 |
The toseftan examples that expand the Mishnah’s list can be summarized similarly:59
| Shimon ben Shetaḥ | 1 |
| Rabban Gamliel | 3 |
| Rabbi (Yehudah the Naśi) | 1 |
| “Our rabbis” | 1 |
