The Memory of the Temple and the Making of the Rabbis. Naftali S. Cohn
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The distance from which the Court makes these changes to ritual procedure, its absence from the performance itself, points to the nature of the ritual authority that the narratives give them.32 This particular expression of authority seems to derive from the Court’s expertise on Jewish ritual and law as well as from a power to legislate or, more precisely, to determine what the law is.
Comparative Evidence for the Court of Temple Times: A Rabbinic Invention
The elders and the Court who play such an important role in Temple ritual narratives do appear in earlier Jewish literature. The Hebrew Bible and the Septuagint frequently mention elders (זקנים [zĕkēnim] in Hebrew; presbyteroi, in Greek). In the Septuagint, the term gerousia, council, is frequently used where the Hebrew reads “elders,” suggesting a relationship between the two. Post-biblical texts, especially the works of Josephus and the Gospels and Acts, refer to both elders and councils, namely local political, legislative, or judicial bodies in Judaea in late Second Temple times, which are called synedrion, gerousia, boulē, or other Greek terms.33 These earlier references to councils include the infamous synedrion (council) that tried and convicted Jesus. Traditional scholarship has generally assumed that the Mishnah’s Court and these councils are identical for a number of reasons. First, the Mishnah uses the Greek term sanhedrin to refer to the Court in a few instances. Similarly, both the Court and the councils appear to have some power to mete out capital punishment. And each institution appears to have a central role in Judaean society.34 If we assume that the institution of the Court is the same as those appearing in earlier literature, or, more likely, that the rabbinic Great Court/Sanhedrin of the Mishnah is based (loosely) on the institution of the local council that existed in the past and is mentioned in earlier, pre-rabbinic, literature,35 we can compare the Mishnah and the earlier sources. Such a comparison reveals unequivocally that the Mishnah is unique in giving the Court (or similar institution) a role in and authority over Temple ritual.36 According to the pre-rabbinic sources, the earlier institutions were not involved in, and did not have authority over, ritual in the Temple.37
Earlier scholarship on the Great Court or Sanhedrin already noticed this difference between the nature of this institution in the Mishnah and in the earlier literature, particularly the Gospels and Acts and the works of Josephus. Solomon Zeitlin, for instance, proposed that there were two different “Sanhedrins”: a political “Synedrion,” evidenced in the works of Josephus and the New Testament, which tried capital political cases; and a religious “Sanhedrin,” evidenced in rabbinic literature, which tried capital religious cases.38 Adolf Büchler had already taken a similar position, arguing that there were two Sanhedrins: the one of rabbinic literature, which was a religious court dealing with religious law; and the one of Josephus and the Gospels, which was the highest political court dealing with criminal cases.39
These earlier 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