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Sunday, 13 October 2024

490) How the rabbis used interpretive tools like Kal vaChomer to assert their independence and unseat the Second Temple sects

Introduction

This article – based extensively on the research by Rabbi Professor Richard Hidary[1] continues on the previous article’s theme of Sadducees (Priests) and Pharisees (Rabbis). It examines what can only be described as one of the most dramatic internal revolutions within Jewish thought, as the priestly class of Kohanim (צָדוֹקִים/Tzadokim/Sadducees) gave way to the developing class of Rabbis (פְּרוּשִׁם/Perushim/Pharisees). The priestly Sadducees dominated the approximately one thousand years of the First and Second Temple eras as they managed the Temple and administered the sacrifices. 

However, at the beginning of the first century CE, towards the end of the Second Temple period, the Sadducees lost their primacy and hegemony to the rising rabbinic class. This culminated in the birth of the Mishnaic period, as rabbinic Judaism as we know it, began to dominate, in place of the priestly Sadducees. 

The religious arguments and polemics that ensued between these two rival Jewish factions of priestly Sadducees and rabbinic Pharisees, went on to shape the face of future Judaism. Surprisingly, the seemingly innocuous Greco-Latin Argumentum a fortiori, or Kal vaChomer (arguing from a ‘mild’ to a more ‘compelling’ case)[2] had a primary role to play in this revolution that brought rabbinic Judaism to the fore. Here is an example of a rabbinic Kal vaChomer: 

“If when a person definitely comes to steal [without threatening violence] and he [the homeowner] kills him [the thief], he [the homeowner] is liable, all the more so [qal va-ḥomer] one about whom there is a doubt whether he comes to steal or whether he does not come to steal [that his killer would be liable]” (Mekhilta d’R. Yishmael, Nezikin 13). 

Uniqueness of the Kal vaChomer argument to the Pharisees (Rabbis)

Hidary points out that while it might seem that the Kal vaChomer argument is a universal style of rhetorical (=persuasive argumentation) engagement, this was not the case because only the Pharisees and Greco-Romans made use of this style of argument. Hidary makes the case that, in the Jewish world, the Kal vaChomer was a uniquely rabbinical argumentative methodology, not used internally by any of the Sadducean or Qumranite sects. As we shall see, the rabbis/Pharisees needed to ‘own’ the Kal vaChomer as a means of demonstrating the authority of (and ability to formulate) their oral tradition over the more static literal interpretation of the written Torah as held by the Temple priests/Sadducees. 

Greco-Roman origins of the Kal vaChomer argument

To assert themselves over the Sadducees, the Pharisees were not hesitant to adopt the Argumentum a fortiori, or Kal vaChomer argument a Greco-Roman method of arguing and interpretation for purposes of expounding rabbinic Torah. This was considered a small price to pay for rabbinic dominance over the priestly class of Sadducees. 

The Greek thinkers adopted two argumentative techniques that sometimes worked together and sometimes worked against each other. These were ‘logic’ and ‘rhetoric.’ Logic was the attempt at attaining absolute truth through a process of proofs. Rhetoric was the perhaps less advanced and less technical process of persuasion using eloquence, analogy, and artistry. There were different schools for both these approaches of logic and rhetoric, and the differences were recognisable. 

Some suggest that the Kal vaChomer is representative of the school of logic while others claim it falls under the category of rhetoric. Hidary is convinced that the Kal vaChomer falls more under the category of rhetoric than logic: 

“[T]he project of naming, listing, and systematizing one’s modes of exegesis, as found in Hillel’s list of rules at t. Sanhedrin 7:11, goes beyond natural popular reason and most likely derives from the classical rhetorical tradition” (2018:165).

 Hillel’s list of seven interpretive rules through which the Torah may be studied (and R. Yishmael’s thirteen interpretive rules) suggest that a firm systematic program was underway in the developing rabbinic world to formalise interpretive methods of Torah study, similar to, and perhaps reflective of, the formalised rhetorical schools of Greece. 

Hillel introduces the Kal vaChomer rule

Rabbinic Judaism does not record or acknowledge the Greco-Roman origins of formalised interpretive methods such as the Kal vaChomer, but it does have its own origin story in which Hillel, active in the late pre-Mishnaic period (d.c.10CE), is said to have introduced this rule. 

By carefully reading the following Tosefta text within the context, and against the background, of the rise of the Pharisees (Rabbis) over the dominant Sadducees (Kohanim/priests), we will see how Hillel was beginning to draw authority away from the priestly class and towards the nascent and emerging rabbinic class: 

“Once the fourteenth [day of Nisan, i.e., the day before Passover] fell on the Sabbath. They asked Hillel the Elder, ‘Does the Passover [sacrifice] supersede the Sabbath [i.e., can one prepare the Passover sacrifice on the Sabbath]?’ 

1) He said to them, ‘Do we have but one Passover [sacrifice] during the year that supersedes the Sabbath? We have [what amounts to] more than three hundred Passovers during the year, and they [all] supersede the Sabbath.’ 

The whole courtyard [of the temple priests] joined up against him [in protest]. 

He [Hillel] said [in response] to them, ‘The regular sacrifice [offered each morning and twilight] is a communal sacrifice, and the Passover is a communal sacrifice. Just as the regular sacrifice is a communal sacrifice that supersedes the Sabbath, so the Passover is a communal sacrifice that supersedes the Sabbath [in other words, both can be brought on the Sabbath].’ [This argument could be considered to fall under the rabbinic category of Hekesh, where similarities are emphasised.] 

2) ‘Another proof: It [Scripture] says in connection with the regular sacrifice, [Present to me] at its appointed time (Num 28:2), and it says in connection with the Passover, [Keep the Passover] at its appointed time (Num 9:2). Just as the regular sacrifice, of which it says, At its appointed time, supersedes the Sabbath, so the Passover, of which it says, At its appointed time, supersedes the Sabbath.’ [This argument could be considered to fall under the rabbinic category of Gezeira Shava, where similar words (‘appointed time’) used in different contexts may be considered comparible.] 

3) ‘Moreover, [it can also be deduced from a] qal va-ḥomer. If the regular sacrifice, for which one is not subject to [the punishment of] excision [i.e. being excommunicated from one’s people if one omitted to bring it], supersedes the Sabbath, is it not logical[3] that the Passover, for which one is subject to [the punishment of] excision, supersedes the Sabbath? [This argument clearly falls under the classical rabbinic category of Kal VeChomer.] 

4) ‘In addition, I have received [a tradition] from my masters that the Passover [sacrifice] supersedes the Sabbath…’ [This is no longer a rabbinic form of argumentation as it simply relies on a stated earlier oral tradition.] 

On that very day they appointed Hillel patriarch [nasi], and he taught them the laws of the Passover (Tosefta Pesachim 4:13–14). 

The Talmud Yerushalmi observes that Hillel used three Rabbinic interpretive rules, and then offers an oral tradition: 1) Hekesh (comparing similarities), 2) Gezeira Shava (similar wording), 3) Kal vaChomer (a fortiori), and 4) Hillel finally brought a tradition from his teachers, Shemaya and Avtalion, who permitted the Passover sacrifice to be prepared on Shabbat.

In this text, we see how Hillel is depicted as starting out as the subject of a priestly protest and ending up as the rabbinic teacher and leader. In a sense, this story is the kernel and pivot point of the great revolution of the rising rabbinic class (Pharisees) over the long-enduring priestly class (Sadducees).

It is also significant to note that in the Tosefta text, the Temple priests (after running the Temple and conducting sacrifices for a thousand years!) are described as not being sure what to do about preparing the Passover sacrifice on Shabbat when Pesach falls out on Saturday night.[4] 

The moment of revolutionary transfer of authority

Hillel’s various interpretive enterprises regarding the permissibility of preparing the Passover sacrifice on Shabbat ultimately signified the moment of transfer of authority from the Sadducees to the Pharisees. The gravitas of such a moment should not be lost on the reader, because Hillel through his interpretive methodologies and particularly his Kal veChomer enacted an extremely innovative ruling, apparently going against all previous Halachic priestly precedents: 

“In fact, ancient halakha would most likely have prohibited preparing the Passover on the Sabbath, which explains why the people present ganged up on Hillel” (Hidary 2018:167). 

In this Tosefta, Hillel is depicted as the eye of the revolutionary storm as he wrested hegemony and authority from the temple priests to the emerging rabbinic class: 

“Hillel, an important religious leader of the Pharisaic movement, played a central role in advancing the authority of the Pharisaic oral law and the project of legal biblical exegesis” (Hidary 2018:168). 

Read in this light, it is striking to note that the narrators of the Tosefta go out of their way to emphasise how Hillel used three Hermeneutical (interpretive) rules when he already had an authoritative oral tradition on the matter all along. It was necessary, however, for the Tosefta to go to such lengths because it wanted to make the point that the authoritative oral traditions of the past, held largely by the Sadducean priests, were no longer as valid as the new interpretive methodologies of the emerging rabbinic class. 

Was the Kal vaChomer used in Qumran sources?

We shall now explore whether or not the contemporaneous non-rabbinic sects active at this time, used techniques like the Kal vaChomer. If it can be shown that they did not, then we have a strong basis to support the innovatory and revolutionary nature in which these rabbinic tools were employed to undermine the existing and traditional priestly structures.

There are no examples of Kal vaChomer in the Dead Sea Scrolls or in the literature from the Qumran sects. Their approach was somewhat nuanced because, on the surface, it seems that they adopted Hellenistic approaches and attitudes, but, on the other hand, in their “internal self-conception” (Hidary 2018:174) they reject all foreign influences and they: 

“remain wholly devoted to their purist view of the single correct interpretation of Scripture. The scrolls never cite Greek thinkers and, in fact, their authors consciously strove to remove all Grecisms from their vocabulary as they took a separatist stance against Romans and other Jews” (Hidary 2018:175). 

This means that the Qumran sects would never have accepted an argumentative technique originating in the Greco-Roman philosophical schools of logic and rhetoric. The Qumranites believed that the: 

“Torah law must conform to a monistic truth that is known to the sect’s leader and that accords with a divine cosmic plan” (Hidary 2018:175). 

Similarly, Steven Fraade explains: 

“The Qumran community claimed divine authority for their rules not by virtue of their reasoned derivation from sacred scriptures, but rather by virtue of the divine election, inspiration, and dedication of their priestly leaders and holy community.”[5] 

The Qumran sects discouraged debate and human interpretation. They had no tolerance for opposing views or multiple opinions because the one and only law was to be literally and directly taken from the Torah. This is why we find no references to interpretive methodologies like Kal vaChomer in Qumran. 

Was the Kal vaChomer used in Sadducean sources?

Some scholars (like Daniel Schwartz) have claimed that the Sadducees frequently used the Kal vaChomer rule in their arguments. This is because, in his view, it is the ‘most logical form of reasoning’ and therefore corresponds to the Sadducean legal realism where the law must accord with nature or objective reality. 

Other scholars (like Jeffery Rubenstein) disagree and regard the Kal vaChomer, not as a tool of ‘logic’ but rather as ‘’rhetoric’ or persuasive argumentation. 

The fact is that rabbinic literature records about twenty controversies between the Pharisees and the Sadducees and about ten of those cases do make use of the Kal vaChomer. This does seem to support the notion that the Sadducees did indeed make use of the Kal vaChomer rule. 

Hidary, however, thoroughly examines these examples and concludes that these texts do not represent authentic Sadducean arguments but rather are rabbinic versions of these cases, compiled by later rabbinic authors and editors of the texts: 

“Such cases were written by the rabbis most likely for their own adherents and so cannot reveal much information about the value of such arguments in Sadducean legal circles” (Hidary 2018:179). 

Sometimes the Sadducees may have used the Kal vaChomer as a challenge to the Pharisees using the Pharisees’ own system of interpretation: 

“]W]e should consider as one possible theory that the Sadducees sometimes cited qal va-ḥomer arguments polemically, to use the Pharisees own arguments against them” (Hidary 2018:185). 

But Hidary is convinced that the more likely solution is that the Sadducees never engaged with the Kal vaChomer at all, and that its apparent usage in Sadduccean/Pharasaic polemics is the result of rabbinic authorship. 

Tal Ilan comes to a similar conclusion which is that the rabbis placed their conceptualisations of the Kal vaChomer in the mouths of the Sadducees because: 

“[t]here is no independent historical data that could lead us to suppose that it [i.e., the Kal vaChomer principle] was also acceptable to the Sadducees.”[6] 

Hidary concludes that: 

“[W]e should not expect to find qal va-ḥomer usage by the sectarians [i.e., the Sadducees or Qumranites] because sectarian/priestly law tended towards realism and claimed direct prophetic derivation while qal va-ḥomer works only within a rabbinic approach that is more open to nominalism[7] and that explicitly allows room for textual interpretation and human reason” (Hidary 2018:189). 

Conclusion

The Pharisees/Rabbis successfully engineered their revolution against the Sadducees/Temple priests and changed the face of Judaism forever. One of their most important techniques that proved so successful in their dethroning of the Sadducees, was their use of the Kal vaChomer. The Kal vaChomer allowed for a range of independence of Torah interpretation over the Sadducean notion of a literal reading, revealed in absolute truth and prophecy to their priestly leaders with no room for human participation, interpretation or dialectics. 

Ironically, the Kal vaChomer was not a rabbinic innovation but a methodology adopted by the rabbis from the surrounding Greco-Roman philosophical schools of logic and rhetoric. Yet it later came to be intrinsically associated with rabbinic interpretation and argumentation. Nevertheless regardless of its origins it won the battle against, and unseated, the Sadducean priestly class, leading to the emergence and eventual domination of the Pharasaic rabbinic class at the dawning of the Mishnaic period.



[1] Hidary, R., 2018, ‘Hellenism and Hermeneutics: Did the Qumranites and Sadducees Use qal va-ḥomer Arguments?’, in Hā-ʾîsh Mōshe: Studies in Scriptural Interpretation in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Related Literature in Honor of Moshe J. Bernstein, edited by Binyamin Y. Goldstein Michael Segal George J. Brooke, Brill, 155-189.

[2] A simple example of a Kal vaChomer argument is: If its cold enough to wear a jacket now, then later when it gets even colder, it will require a coat.

[3] In this case it seem that Hillel maintained that the Kal vaChomer fell more under the category of logic than rhetoric.

[4] Hidary (2018:167) explains that according to Isaac Sassoon, “the Second Temple followed a fixed calendar for most of its history until it was changed to an empirical calendar during later Hasmonean times— perhaps as a renunciation of Greek influence. Under the fixed calendar, the eve of Passover could have been preset never to fall on the Sabbath in order to avoid this very problem, just as it was preset in Amoraic times when they reverted back to a fixed calendar in order that the shofar and the ritual of the willow branches not fall on the Sabbath (y. Sukkah 4:1, 54a). It is therefore possible that during Hillel’s time, Passover fell out on Sunday for the first time since the fixed calendar was replaced with an empirical calendar.” (See Sassoon, I., 2001, Destination Torah, Ktav, Hoboken, 186–92).

[5] Fraade, S., 1998, ‘Looking for Legal Midrash at Qumran’, in Biblical Perspectives: Early Use and Interpretation of the Bible in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls, edited by. Michael E. Stone and Esther Chazon, Brill, Leiden: Brill, 77–78.

[6] Ilan, T., 2006, Silencing the Queen: The Literary Histories of Shelamzion and Other Jewish Women,  Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, 145.

[7] ‘Nominalism’ is defined as the doctrine that universals or general ideas are mere names without any corresponding reality. Only particular objects exist - and properties, numbers, and sets are merely features of the way of considering the things that exist. 

7 comments:

  1. I fail to see anything in the Tosefta that indicates that Hillel introduced the Kal Vchomer and not that Hillel tought this particular Kal Vchomer. Am i missing something?
    By this logic did Hillel introduce Hekesh and Gezeira Shave as well?

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  2. Thanks anon. Hillel certainly, according to this Tosefta, 'taught' the Kal vaChomer and the other rules as well, but not in the sense we would use the term 'taught' today (where we are long familiar with its use and efficacy). He lived before the Tannaim, and the Saducees (Kohanim in the Temple) were not used to using these rules of Torah interpretation, and anyway, did not want to use them because of their Greek and Roman origins in legal argumentation.

    Obviously, the idea of an a fortiori argument, in general, was much older, but in our context, with Hillel and the Beit haMikdash, it may be considered an 'introduction' of these rules. And the permitting of these rules to be applied to Torah study, despite their Greco-Roman origins, was 'authorised' and the rabbinic age dawned.

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    Replies
    1. Hi
      First of all can you delineate which rishonim would call them compete heresy? What I mean is, this is being said as if it’s just another theory but if indeed all of the rishonim and the Gemara imply that a kal vachomer is from the Torah, meaning to say God intended and expressed that mode of derivation to Moshe, this would indeed be a contradiction of that.
      Also, how do you see from the tosefta that this was invented by Hillel just because it wasn’t known to the Saducces?

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    2. Hi Jack
      I think the Tzadokim not apparently knowing about the Kal vaChomer (otherwise they would not have asked about preparing the Korban Pesach on Shabbos) is a significant indicator that Hillel was bringing something new to them. The Tzadokim, after all, ran the Beis haMikdash during two Temple periods and they surely would have been very familiar with Jewish law. There is no evidence that they used the Kal vaChomer.

      Of course, if it can be shown that the Kal vaChomer was indeed used before Hillel in a textual exegesis, then this theory would no longer be accurate.

      It seems, however, that no Jews, or even break away Jewish sects adopted the Kal vaChomer before Hillel - and therefore, at this stage, it seems feasible to assume that this Tosefta captures the moment of it been introduced (or if one prefers, practically applied) in the pre-Tannaic era.

      The Kal vaChomer certainly was not 'invented' by Hillel as it was used frequently in Greco-Roman culture. This was, as mentioned, also the time when other 'laws of Torah interpretation' were being considered.

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    3. ok so what about the logic used when God explains to Moshe why Miriam had to endure Leprosy (or more accurately Tzara'as)? there the torah says “If her father spat in her face, would she not bear her shame for seven days? Let her be shut out of camp for seven days, and then let her be readmitted.”

      that seems to be an example of a fortiori explicit in the torah.

      there's another one in Jeremiah chapter 12 verse 5.

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    4. Fabulous question. I don't think the Miriam posuk is a Kal vaChomer because the numbers do not expand (seven is compared to seven not a higher number). But the Yirmiyahu posuk certainly seems to be a good example of a Kal vaChomer. Yirmiyahu, though, was quite removed from the biblical period, having passed away in 580 BCE, compared to Moshe who lived between the 14-13th c BCE. Yirmiyahu had also spent some time in Egypt.

      In any case, the question is not whether the 'idea' of Kal vaChomer reasoning (as in the notion of a mathematical 'ratio') existed before the rabbinic period - obviously that kind of thinking did, and Yirmiyahu certainly used it - but the question is: when was it first implemented as an authoritative and LEGAL (i.e., Halachic) means of determining practical Halachic outcomes.

      The answer seems to be during the time of Hillel (otherwise, as mentioned, the Tzadokim would have already known the answer to their question about whether they could prepare the Korban Peach on Shabbos.

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  3. Your explanation as to the nature of rhetoric ("Rhetoric was the perhaps less advanced and less technical process of persuasion using eloquence, analogy, and artistry.") is both speculative and wrong.

    Aristotle himself explained the outright NEED for rhetoric because, well, I will let him explain in his own words:

    "Rhetoric is useful because things that are true and things that are just have a natural tendency to prevail over their opposites, so that if the decisions of judges are not what they ought to be, the defeat must be due to the speakers themselves, and they must be blamed accordingly. Moreover, before some audiences not even the possession of the exactest knowledge will make it easy for what we say to produce conviction. For argument based on knowledge implies instruction, and there are people whom one cannot instruct."

    Logic is only useful when discussing things with people who think logically. This is not most people. Most people, are ineducable, even when presented with logically clear and compelling arguments. They think and react emotionally. Hence, rhetoric.

    Vox Day has commented extensively on rhetorical vs dialectical (ie logical) argumentation, along with the necessity of the former, at his blog, as well as is his two excellent books SJWs Always Lie, and SJWs Always Double Down.

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