of the rabbis over the past. The narratives’ verisimilitude, iterativity, and cohesiveness, as well as the seemingly intrusive rabbinic comments throughout the narratives, further the authority claims embedded in the rabbinic memory of Temple ritual at the level of the telling.
In Chapter 4, I contend that an additional way in which Temple ritual narratives argue for rabbinic authority is by constructing the Temple’s sacred space. By repeatedly imagining ritualized entry into and exit from the Temple—which constructs the Temple’s boundaries within the narrative world and in the minds of those who read or heard the narrative—and by creating a map of the Temple in the architectural description of Middot, the rabbis assert the centrality of their own version of Temple ritual practice, of their predecessors, the Court, and ultimately of themselves.
Chapter 5 returns to the social and cultural context of Roman Palestine and the larger Roman world. The rabbinic discourse about the Temple was not the only one. Other groups, including non-rabbinic Judaeans, Romans, and Christians, also continued to talk about the Temple (or, more abstractly, Jerusalem or Judaea) long after its destruction. The rabbis, in remembering the Temple in their unique way, were asserting the primacy of their version of what it means to be Judaean, the authority of their version of the traditional way of life, and the power to determine how all Judaeans would follow the traditional way of life.
Together, the chapters of this book argue that the memory of the Temple and its ritual and the discourse about Temple ritual put forth a claim for rabbinic power and authority. Moreover, the ways in which this memory—in the Temple ritual narrative genre—make an argument for the rabbis are firmly bound up with the social and cultural realities of the time and with the way the rabbis situated themselves within the larger Roman and Judaean societies. The Temple and the past were useful for the rabbis, and they exert a good deal of creative energy imagining the Temple in ways that ultimately argue for a Judaean society remade in their own image.
Chapter 1
Rabbis as Jurists of Judaean Ritual Law and Competing Claims for Authority
Who were the rabbis? Who, at least, did they claim to be? In the Mishnah, which is largely about law, the rabbis represent themselves as legal authorities engaged in a variety of activities pertaining to traditional Judaean law. Most commonly, rabbis in the Mishnah hold legal opinions, though they are also frequently described as teaching, debating, and issuing rulings, among other legal endeavors. To build a fuller picture of the rabbis’ legal role, however, and to understand where such a role would place them in the larger society, it is necessary to consider their claims in more detail and to read their self-representations in light of the Roman provincial context in which they were situated.
What the evidence suggests is that the rabbis drew on a prestigious model from the dominant Roman culture to lay claim to the only area of law that would have been available to them: they fashioned themselves as jurists, specifically in the realm of traditional Judaean ritual law. By making such a claim, the rabbis not only asserted the validity of their body of teaching but insisted that they—and no others—had the authority to determine how all Judaeans would practice the traditional biblically based rituals.1
Rabbis as Jurists
Living under full Roman domination and control, the rabbis could not have had any officially recognized role in the legal system. As Seth Schwartz points out: “When the Romans annexed a province, they subjected it to Roman law and entrusted all legal and political authority in the province to the Roman governor and his staff, and to the local city councils. They did not recognize the autonomy of the local population … and they did not appoint intermediaries between the “natives” and themselves.”2
There may have been some room, however, for playing a legal role in settling disputes. While the Romans controlled all official legal venues in the provinces, they seem to have allowed for unofficial or informal arbitration. As Jill Harries puts it: “Arbitration [could] consist of an informal agreement brokered by an adjudicator, without introducing the legal formalities required by a formal process.”3 The existence of this type of arbitration may be supported by evidence from a later period, a constitution (law) issued by Arcadius and Honorius at the very end of the fourth century and codified in the Theodosian Code (CT). This law asserts that Judaeans (Jews) fall under the jurisdiction of Roman law but nonetheless have a right to adjudicate civil cases by official “arbitration before Jews or Patriarchs.”4 This later law may make official what had been practiced unofficially for two centuries or longer. Building on this evidence, Hannah Cotton argues that the rabbis imagine themselves as this very sort of unofficial arbitrator tolerated by the Romans.5
An example in the Mishnah describing a rabbinic legal ruling may support this identification of rabbis as arbitrators. In Mishnah Bava Ḳamma 8:6, Rabbi Akiva appears to arbitrate a dispute between a man and a woman whose hair the man had uncovered:
It was a case [ma‘ăśeh] involving a man who uncovered a woman’s hair in the marketplace. She came before Rabbi Akiva, and he obligated him to pay her four hundred zuz. [The man] said to [Rabbi Akiva], “Rabbi, give me some time [to pay],” and he gave him some time. [The man] waited for her to be standing at the entrance to her courtyard, and he broke a jug with an ’issar’s worth of oil in it in front of her. She uncovered her head, and repeatedly patted her hand onto her head [using the spilled oil]. He had witnesses witness her, and he came to Rabbi Akiva. He said to [Rabbi Akiva], “Rabbi, I have to pay four hundred zuz to this [woman] [as a payment for shaming her when she shamelessly uncovered her own head]? [Rabbi Akiva] said to him, “You have made no argument. One who injures himself, even though he is not permitted, is exempt from liability, but others who injure him are liable.”6
Since Rabbi Akiva is not part of a typical Jewish court of three members but is acting alone, he appears to be arbitrating the case between the two disputants, who, according to the story, both appear before him.7 And since the man goes to some lengths to argue against the verdict, the story implies that Rabbi Akiva’s authority is accepted.8 This reading of the case story—put forth by Cotton—is plausible, and it is even possible that rabbis served as arbitrators. Yet this is not the predominant way in which the Mishnah represents the rabbinic legal role. The vast majority of similar examples in the Mishnah in which a rabbi or rabbis issue a legal opinion or are in some way involved in a case (השעמ [ma‘ăśeh]) are not about a dispute between parties that is resolved but rather a case in which there is an ambiguity on a matter of Jewish law.9 In most of these narratives, the rabbi or group of rabbis issue an opinion that resolves the legal ambiguity and establishes the law.10 Furthermore, the legal issue arising in these cases seems to pertain only to a single individual rather than two parties. A typical example occurs in Mishnah Kil’ayim 4:9:
The one who plants the rows of his vineyard sixteen ’ammōt [approximately twenty-four feet] apart is permitted to plant seeds in the space between the rows [though normally seeds, or, non-grapes, cannot be planted together with grapes].
Rabbi Yehudah said:
There was a case [ma‘ăśeh] in Tsalmon regarding an individual who planted his vineyard with the rows sixteen ’ammōt apart. And he would put the vines from two [adjacent] rows all to one side [filling the space between every other row] and plant the empty row with seeds. And the following year, he would flip the vines to the other side and plant the empty row with seeds [where all the vines had been the previous year]. And the case came before the sages, and they permitted.
The narrative does not give much detail about the setting of the rabbinic ruling, except
