The Memory of the Temple and the Making of the Rabbis. Naftali S. Cohn
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out its judicial procedures—which I will call “judicial” or “court-centered” ritual narratives. Perhaps the most famous rabbinic text of this type is the narrative in Mishnah Sanhedrin 4:3–7:1, about how the Great Court would adjudicate capital cases and mete out the death penalty. In this and similar narratives describing how the Court used to carry out its functions—including adjudication in financial disputes—the Court carries out characteristically judicial tasks.3 It hears testimony, adjudicates the case, renders a verdict, metes out punishment, and delivers speeches meant to instill fear in the witnesses, a process called איום (’iyyum).4
These particular Court functions are not surprising because courts in numerous societies and cultures, including those in the Roman Empire in classical to late antiquity, have performed and do perform many of these functions. What is striking about the appearance of the Court in the Mishnah’s narratives about ritual in Temple times is that it is said to have been intimately involved in a variety of Temple rituals and, more important, to have had ultimate authority over these rituals. The Mishnah’s insistence that the Court is important in the realm of Temple ritual may explain why the single mishnaic subgenre, the Temple ritual narrative, includes descriptions of both Temple ritual and purely judicial ritual (which I call “court-centered ritual narratives”). As Martin Jaffee has pointed out, the genre focuses on “the most important institutions in ancient Palestinian Jewish society: the Jerusalem Temple and the Sanhedrin.”5 The reason for this dual focus seems to be that in the Mishnah, the two institutions are not distinct but are intertwined. The Court, according to the narratives about Temple-era ritual, is an authoritative body in the domain of the judicial and the domain of the Temple and its ritual.
The Court’s Role in Temple Ritual
There are three ways in which Temple ritual narratives establish the authority of the Court to determine Temple ritual practice: by asserting that the court was involved in and had control over the ritual procedure; by recounting sectarian resistance to the correct ritual procedure established by the Court; and by narrating the Court’s changes to ritual procedure when ritual fails. The first way, inserting the Court into the ritual and giving it authority over the procedure, can be seen most clearly in two examples: parts of the Day of Atonement narrative in Mishnah Yoma 1:1–7:4; and parts of the red-heifer narrative in Mishnah Parah 3:1–11. In both these biblically mandated rituals, most of the ritual performance is done by a priest—the high priest in the case of the Day of Atonement narrative, and the “priest who burns the cow” in the red-heifer narrative.6 Yet at a certain point in each of the rituals, a group of “elders” (זקנים) become involved in the procedure. The Court and its members in these examples seem almost to intrude on the otherwise exclusively priestly affair.
According to the narrative in Mishnah Yoma, the Day of Atonement (יום הכיפורים) ritual begins “seven days before the Day of Atonement”:
שבעת ימים קודם ליום הכיפורים מפרישים כהן גדול מביתו ללישכת
פרהדרין
Seven days before the Day of Atonement, they separate the high priest from his house [and bring him] to the Parhedrin chamber [lishkāh] [in the Temple]. (Yoma 1:1)
The first chapter of Mishnah Yoma proceeds to describe what can be called preparations before the Day of Atonement, which take place during this entire week and during the day and night before the Day of Atonement. It is during these weeklong preparations that members of the Court become involved ritually and play an important role:
ג’ מסרו לו זקנים מזקני בית דין קורין לפניו בסדר היום ואומרין לו אישי
כהן גדול קרא אתה בפיך שמא שכחתה או שמא לא למדתה ערב יום
הכיפורים בשחרית מעמידין אתו בשער המזרח ומעבירין לפניו פרים
ואלים וכבשים כדי שיהא מכיר ורגיל בעבודה’ ד’ כל שבעת הימים לא היו
מונעין ממנו מאכל ומשתה ערב יום הכיפורים עם חשיכה לא היו מניחין
אותו לוכל הרבה שהמאכל מביא את השינה ה’ מסרוהו זקני בית דין לזקני
כהונה הוליכוהו לעליית בית אבטינס השביעוהו ונפטרו והלכו להן
ואומרין לו אישי כהן גדול אנו שלוחי בית דין ואתה שלוחינו ושלוח בית
דין משביעין אנו עליך במי ששיכן את שמו בבית הזה שלא תשנה דבר
מכל מה שאמרנו לך הוא פורש ובוכה והם פורשים ובוכים’
(1:3) They gave [the high priest] elders from among the elders of the Court. They read him the order of the day [from the Torah]. And they say to him, “Sir high priest, read with your own mouth [yourself] in case you forgot or in case you never learned [it]!” On the eve of Yom Kippur in the morning, they stand him at the eastern gate and they lead the bulls and rams and sheep before him so that he will be familiar with the service.
(1:4) All seven days, they did not used to keep food or drink from him. On the eve of the Day of Atonement from when it became dark, they used to not allow him to eat much, for food leads to sleep.
(1:5) The elders of the Court handed him over to the priestly elders and led him to the bēit avṭinās upper chamber and adjured him and took leave, and left. And they say to him, “Sir high priest, we are the emissaries of the Court and you are our emissary and the emissary of the Court. We adjure you by the One who caused His Name to dwell in this house that you not make any changes from what we have told you.” He separates and cries, and they separate and cry.
The elders of the court do not appear again during the ritual of the day itself, yet they are central in the preparations. According to the narrative, their role includes instructing the high priest in the correct procedure and ensuring that he will follow their instructions precisely. As non-priests, the elders of the court are necessarily peripheral to the main ritual, but in their role in the preparatory stages, they appear to be critical to ensuring correct performance.
An identical body of elders, this time called “the elders of Israel,” plays a similar role in the red-heifer narrative in Parah. Strikingly, this narrative begins with language nearly identical to that of the Day of Atonement narrative:
שבעת ימים קודם לשריפת הפרה מפרישין כהן שורף את הפרה מביתו
ללשכה שעל פני הבירה צפונה מזרחה ובית אבן היתה נקראת
Seven days before the burning of the heifer, they separate the priest who [will] burn the cow from his house [and bring him] to the chamber [lishkāh] that is facing the northwest of the birāh [the Temple], and it was called bēit ’even [the place of the stone].7 (Parah 3:1)
The nearly identical language may suggest that one of the accounts is built upon the other or simply that the two narratives draw from a common pool of formulaic language and ritual elements. Either way, the strikingly similar opening creates a strong resonance between the two narratives. And the red-heifer narrative seems consciously aware of such a resonance when it explicitly mentions the Day of Atonement ritual and compares the ritual sprinklings for the red-heifer preparation with those of “the Day of Atonement”