Judaism in the First Three Centuries of the Christian Era: The Age of Tannaim, 3 volumes

1277 Pages·1997·49.03 MB·English

by  George Foot Moore

JUDAISM

JUDAISM
In the First Centuries
of the Christian Era:
The Age of Tannaim
VOLUME I
GEORGE FOOT MOORE
Jfel HENDRICKSON
Hendrickson Publishers, Inc.
RO. Box 3473
Peabody, Massachusetts 1960
ISBN 1-56563-286-9
Printed in the United States of America
First printing Hendrickson Publishers7 edition, March 1997
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior permission of the original publisher.
Volume 1, JUDAISM IN THE FIRST CENTURIES OF THE CHRISTIAN ERA,
THE AGE OF THE TANNAIM, by George Foot Moore, © 1927 by the
President and Fellows of Harvard College.
Reprinted by arrangement with Harvard University Press.
IN MEMORIAM
OBIIT MDCCCCXXIV

PREFACE
THE aim of these volumes is to represent Judaism in the centuries
in which it assumed definitive form, as it presents itself in the
tradition which it has always regarded as authentic. These
primary sources come to us as they were compiled and set in
order in the second century of the Christian era, embodying the
interpretation of the legislative parts of the Pentateuch and the
definition and formulation of the Law, written and unwritten,
in the schools, in the century and a half between the reorganiza­
tion at Jamnia under Johanan ben Zakkai and his associates,
after the fall of Jerusalem in the year 70, and the promulgation
of the Mishnah of the Patriarch Judah. i\.bout the schools of
the preceding century, especially about the two great masters,
Hillel and Shammai, and the distinctive differences of their
disciples, our knowledge comes incidentally through their suc­
cessors. The whole period, from the time of Herod to that of
the Patriarch Judah is the age of the "Tannaim," the represen­
tatives of authoritative tradition.
The learned study of the two-fold law is, however, much older,
and other sources of various kinds disclose not only the continu­
ity of development in the direction of the normative Judaism of
the second century, but many divergent trends — the conflict
of parties over fundamental issues, the idiosyncrasies of sects,
the rise of apocalyptic with its exorbitant interest in eschatology
— a knowledge of all of which is necessary to a historical under­
standing of the Judaism which it is the principal object of this
work to describe.
In the Introduction I have sketched the external and internal
history of the centuries with which we are concerned so far as
religion was affected by it, and have given a summary account
of the sources on which the presentation is based. The chapters
on Revealed Religion are meant to make plain at the outset the
PREFACE
Vlll
fundamental principle of Judaism and some of the ways in
which it was applied. The succeeding parts treat of the Idea of
God; the Nature of Man, and his relation to God; the Observ­
ances of Religion; Morals; Piety; and the Hereafter.
I have avoided imposing on the matter a systematic disposi­
tion which is foreign to it and to the Jewish thought of the times.
The few comprehensive divisions under which it is arranged are
not sharply bounded, and the same subject often naturally be­
longs in more than one of them. In such cases repetition has
seemed preferable to cross-references.
The nature of the sources makes simple citation insufficient,
and large room has therefore been given to quotations from them
or paraphrases of them, thus, so far as possible, letting Judaism
speak for itself in its own way. The translations keep as close
as may be to the expression of the original, even at some sacrifice
of English idiom. A peculiar difficulty arises in the biblical
quotations, which rabbinical exegesis, following its own rules or
giving rein to the ingenuity of the interpreter, frequently takes
in a way quite different from the familiar versions of the Bible
or our philological commentators. But when the meaning or
the application hinges on the turn given — at least for the nonce
— to the words, the translation must try to convey the peculiar
interpretation, however strange it may be.
References are given in the footnotes to the sources from which
the quotations are taken or on which the statements in the text
are based. In many cases these references are a selection from
a large array of different age, character, and authority. It has
seemed desirable to represent this range and variety of attesta­
tion even by what might otherwise appear a superfluity of learn­
ing. The homiletical Midrashim, for example, illustrate the
popularization of the teaching of the schools as well as the fertil­
ity of the homilists, and give evidence of the perpetuation of
the tradition in later centuries.
For the rest, I have confined the footnotes to things necessary
to immediate understanding, reserving all discussions for an
PREFACE IX
eventual volume of detached notes and excursuses. In the first
volume anticipatory references to such detached notes are made
in full-faced type; in order not unduly to delay the publication
of the work itself, similar references are not made in the second
volume.
The transliteration of Hebrew words and names follows, with
slight adaptation, the simplified system adopted in the Jewish
Encyclopedia. Proper names familiar to English readers are
left as they are in the Authorized Version.
These volumes are the outcome of studies which have ex­
tended over more than thirty years and ranged over a wide
variety of sources. The plan of the present work was conceived
ten years since; the execution has taken much more time than I
foresaw, but I venture to hope that the presentation has gained
thereby in maturity as well as in completness. When I projected
it, I contemplated a similar work on Hellenistic Judaism; the
occasional parallels and comparisons in these volumes may serve
at least to illustrate the fundamental unity of Judaism, as well
as to indicate the influence of Greek thought on the religious
conceptions of men like Philo.
The material in these volumes is drawn in great part from ex­
tensive collections made in the course of my own reading, but it
will be evident on every page that I have availed myself largely
of the work of others, especially of the mustering and critical sift­
ing of tradition in Wilhelm Bacher's Agada der ^annaiten.
Exhaustiveness I have not aimed at; inerrancy is the last thing
I should pretend to; but I trust that no essential point has been
altogether overlooked, and I am confident that those who know
the material best will be the most considerate in their judgment.
My colleague, Professor Harry A. Wolfson, has taken upon
him the onerous task of verifying in the proof-sheets the thous­
ands of references to the Talmuds and Midrashim, and by his
painstaking examination of the passages quoted or cited has
contributed much to the accuracy of the text as well as to the
correctness of the references.