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| Tosefet Yom Tov (later Tosefot Yom Tov) Mishna commentary by R. Yom Tov Lipmann Heller, Prague, 1614-1617. |
Introduction
This article—based extensively on the research by Professor Jason Kalman[1]—examines the question of additional biblical verses, cited as proof texts added to our versions of the Mishna. Based on comparisons between our Mishna texts and their earlier manuscripts and printings, in almost twenty per cent of the cases, these scriptural citations are missing in the earlier and more original versions. This means that one out of five biblical verses, acting to compliment or support a contemporary Mishna text, is a later insertion.
Until recently, not much research had been conducted on the relative absence of biblical citations found in a vast array of manuscripts and early printings of the Mishnah, in comparison with our contemporary version of the Mishna where these extra verses are to be found.
The canonical Mishna text
The generally accepted and standard edition of the Mishna we use today is the Albeck (1958) edition which is based on the Romm edition (Vilna: 1908-9). The Romm edition, in turn, is based on that of R. Yom Tov Lipman Heller (Prague: 1614-1617) and has remained the primary Mishna text over the past four hundred years. There is not yet a critical edition of the Mishna.
Whether or not Avot (Pirkei Avot, or Ethics of the Fathers) was technically part of the original Mishna is subject to much scholarly debate. However, it has been included in Kalman’s analysis simply because it is included in modern editions of the Mishna. Without Avot, there would only be 491 biblical citations in the Mishna. It is in this standard edition of the Mishna, including Avot, that we find almost 600 proof texts and scriptural verses.
From a statistical point of view, taking Neusner’s translation of the Mishna, there are 1136 pages of text. With about 600 biblical citations, the Mishna averages out at about one biblical citation every two pages.
Samuel Rosenblatt (1935:5)[2] notes that, typically, biblical citations are introduced by certain common Hebrew formulae like האמור בתורה, אין...אלא, אינו אומר, זה, איזהו, כלומר, כמשמעו, and they generally convey the Tannaim’s (Mishnaic sages’) attempt at understanding the peshat or literal meaning of a verse. Kalman, however, argues that Rosenblatt had ignored the fact that the Mishna often derives multiple interpretations from a singular verse, making it difficult to establish the ‘literal meaning.’
The Mishna is divided into Six Orders (Sedarim), and together they contain a total of 63 tractates (Masechtot). As to the question of why certain tractates contain more biblical citations than others, Peter Acker Pettit maintains they depend on the time in which they were composed and developed. Thus, the more established rules require fewer biblical citations to buttress their observance:
“The orders of Agriculture and Purities, both of which were more fully developed in the earlier periods of the Temple and Yavne, show the fewest citation units. Since these are the largest orders among the six, the paucity of citation units proportionately is even more striking. There is some ground to support the view that the earliest Mishnaic discourse is independent of Scripture and that later contributors to the Mishna, like the post-Mishnaic commentators…and the talmuds, took greater care to develop Mishnaic issues with support from Scripture” (Pettit 1993:370).[3]
Kalman supports this notion, adding that around the second century CE:
“as the Mishnah drew to a close, the sages involved in its development were more concerned with linking their teachings with Scripture than their immediate predecessors were. It also seems to suggest that Judah the Patriarch, the Mishnah’s final redactor, would have been more inclined to include biblical citations than his predecessors would” (Kalman 2004:204).
This is perhaps backed up further by the observation that by the time the (post-Mishnaic, or Amoraic) Talmud or Gemara period was established, there were some 15,000 biblical citations in comparison with the earlier Mishnaic period and their 600 citations. Granted, the Gemara is a far larger corpus of literature than the Mishna, nevertheless, the large number of citations is noteworthy.
Over time, it seems that even during the Mishnaic period, there was an increasing need to secure the rabbinic teachings in biblical verses to provide the authority for the laws that were being finalised and recorded.
The manuscript tradition
Surprisingly, none of the previous studies on biblical citations that we have touched upon had made use of the vast array of manuscript evidence. However, it is prudent to analyse Mishnaic scriptural citations based—not only on the Textus Receptus, or received texts such as the contemporary copies of the text of the Mishna— but also on the layers of earlier manuscript records. If earlier manuscripts omitted certain biblical citations, that indicates that the original, or at least older, versions of the Mishna did not offer such citations. If all the citations are not original, then studying the later insertions of these citations will not enable us to understand the Mishna’s original attitude towards biblical prooftexts. Therefore, it becomes necessary to study the manuscript tradition and ascertain which citations actually belong in the Mishna text.
As a sample study, Kalman has meticulously analysed the 137 biblical proof texts of four tractates - Berachot, Rosh haShanah, Sotah, and Sanhedrin. He demonstrates that a significant number of these citations are not found in the Mishnaic manuscript and early print evidence. These sample tractates were chosen because Berachot and Rosh haShana contain small numbers of biblical citations, whereas Sotah and Sanhedrin are among the tractates most saturated with citations. He immediately determined that:
“a significant number of their biblical citations are questionable in the light of the manuscript evidence” (Kalman 2004:210).
The manuscript evidence is not standard either because not all the biblical citations appear consistently in all the manuscripts. Although the manuscript citations are indeed much smaller in number than those in our ‘official’ Mishna, they do not form a uniform corpus of literature in that some citations appear in one manuscript but not in another. Sometimes the biblical citations are inserted between the lines and even in the margins—suggesting they may have been added as emendations. Other times the biblical citations have been replaced by alternate biblical verses. For example, Sotah 8:6 and Sanhedrin 11:4 have different manuscripts offering alternate verses as proof texts for a single teaching. There are also instances where the Mishnaic manuscripts misquote the biblical verses.
Kalman references which manuscripts he consulted:
“Passages containing citations in the Textus Receptus [our contemporary received text of the Mishna][4] were compared with available manuscripts that included the Cambridge and Kaufmann Manuscripts, Parma de Rossi 138 and Paris 328-329, as well as the Naples printing of 1492 and an ‘unknown printing from Pesaro or Constantinople’. Additionally, various collections of fragments from the Cairo Genizah were checked along with the Babylonian and Palestinian Talmudim and their respective medieval manuscripts and genizah fragments” (Kalman 2004:211).
The findings
The four selected tractates together contained 137 biblical citations, which is about one-quarter of the approximately 600 citations in our contemporary versions of the printed Mishna. Of the 137 citations in the four test tractates, 21 verses (over 15 per cent) do not correspond to the manuscript evidence. This means that at some point they were added to the original versions.
The standard contemporary tractate of Rosh haShana has only 7 citations and they do correspond to all the available manuscripts and even to an early Naples printing in 1492. The other three tractates, however, do not fare so well. The standard editions present citations that do not always conform to the manuscript versions. This means that many instances in our standard Mishna:
“the citations found in the printed text do not appear in all or the majority of the early editions. In others, different citations appear to support the same teachings” (Kalman 2004:212).
Additionally, if one examines the citations in the contemporary standard Mishna, one notices an interesting pattern that is absent from the earlier manuscripts, namely the ‘clumping’ of citations together:
“Certain individual mishnayot contain a remarkable number of biblical verses. Seventeen mishnayot contain four citations, five mishnayot contain five citations, and four contain between six and ten citations” (Kalman 2004:226, footnote 59).
In short, the standard Mishna contains nearly twenty percent more biblical citations than its literary predecessors preserved in the manuscript tradition.
The case of lost citations
In addition to the nearly twenty per cent increase in biblical citations in the current editions of the Mishna when compared with the manuscript versions, an inverse redaction also takes place, although to a lesser degree. This means that while some citations are evident in the manuscripts, they are removed from the standard canonised text. In both cases, though, the hand of a redactor (or redactors) is significantly apparent.
Relationship between the Torah and the Mishna
The relationship between the Torah and the Mishna is interesting. Both are seminal works. The Torah is the essence of the biblical literature while the Mishna is foundational to the Oral Tradition of the Talmud and by extension, Halacha. According to Kalman, their relationship is somewhat “ambiguous” (Kalman 2004:190). The Mishna had to be seen as an authoritative rabbinic work, but it also needed to show rootedness in the Torah. It could be said that there is some authoritative tension between the two:
“Although the Mishnah attempts to separate itself from Scripture by referring infrequently to it as the explicit source of its laws, it often presents the information found in Scripture on given topics” (Kalman 2004:190).
Jacob Neusner describes this underlying hegemonic strain as follows:
“On the surface, the Mishnah wishes to stand anonymous of Scripture ... the Mishnah, whatever it claims to be or to do, in no way links itself to Scripture. But ... hardly a second glance is needed to reveal the opposite … that the Mishnah depends in a deep way, for both thematic agendum and the facts of its topics and rules, upon Scripture” (Neusner 1981:171-2).[5]
Kalman notes that scrutiny of Mishnaic literature quickly reveals that the relationship between the Torah and the Mishna is certainly inconsistent. Sometimes the Mishna repeats Torah teachings verbatim, but other times it stands blatantly independent of it. Out of the 63 tractates, 53 exhibit biblical citations. Ten tractates (Demai, Ma'aserot, Orlah, Eruvin, Betza, Me’ilah, Kelim, Ohalot, Teharot and Tevul Yom) contain no scriptural references at all. There are 6 biblical books that are not referenced at all in the Mishna.
Conclusion
The Talmud does record the notion of Beraitot, which were from the same Mishnaic period but did not carry the same authority as the Mishnayot themselves, but here we are dealing with a more intense and active editorial process of actual text addition and subtraction.
There may be three ways to interpret these findings:
1) Given the interplay of both additions and omissions of biblical citations, it is possible that the final redaction of the standard Mishna was shaped by a somewhat arbitrary editorial approach with regard to its scriptural references.
2) It is also possible to deduce—by focusing on the more dominant trend of adding citations over time— that there was a need to secure the Mishnaic teachings and root them more solidly in biblical sources. This would counter the criticism that rabbinic works were an innovation of the rabbinic class. By increasing the number of citations, it could be shown that seminal rabbinic works like the Mishna were built upon the solid bedrock of biblical authority.
3) Then there is another possibility. If citations were also removed—although to a lesser degree—from the original manuscripts and not recorded in the canonical and final text of the Mishna, it could support another theory of rabbinic hegemony. Nausner suggests that there had been a trend in the rabbinic world to portray their own writings as authoritative as the Torah itself. This attitude may be detected in the famous tale of the Oven of Achnai, where it is taught that even if G-d declares something, the ultimate Halachic authority does not rest with G-d but with the rabbis because the Law is not in Heaven:
״לֹא בַשָּׁמַיִם הִיא!״ מַאי
״לֹא בַּשָּׁמַיִם הִיא״? אָמַר רַבִּי יִרְמְיָה: שֶׁכְּבָר נִתְּנָה תּוֹרָה
מֵהַר סִינַי, אֵין אָנוּ מַשְׁגִּיחִין בְּבַת קוֹל, שֶׁכְּבָר כָּתַבְתָּ בְּהַר
סִינַי בַּתּוֹרָה ״אַחֲרֵי רַבִּים לְהַטֹּת״. אַשְׁכְּחֵיהּ רַבִּי נָתָן
לְאֵלִיָּהוּ, אֲמַר לֵיהּ: מַאי עָבֵיד קוּדְשָׁא בְּרִיךְ הוּא בְּהַהִיא
שַׁעְתָּא? אֲמַר לֵיהּ: קָא חָיֵיךְ וְאָמַר, ״נִצְּחוּנִי בָּנַי! נִצְּחוּנִי
בָּנַי!״
This may tie up with Pettit who, as mentioned earlier, found “some ground to support the view that the earliest Mishnaic discourse is independent of Scripture.” Some later rabbis (Amoraim) may have continued with that more independent approach as we see in the case of Achnai’s oven:
“[I]f the redactor was removing citations, was it because he was trying to separate his text from the Bible? Certainly the confirmation for this position on the part of the redactor would lend weight to Neusner’s assertion that the Mishnah’s authority does not stem from having its source in Scripture but by claiming to be on a par with it” (Kalman 2004:238).
The last two approaches all have one thing in common: The question of rootedness in the authority of biblical citations could be used either way to sustain rabbinical hegemony and domination. Citing the authority of the Torah could bolster the status of any rabbinic text. Not citing the authority of the Torah could also bolster the authority of a rabbinic text because the authority of the rabbis could stand independently of the proof text.
Whichever position one chooses to assume, the point remains that sometime between the early manuscripts and final canonisation of the contemporary text of the Mishna in the seventeenth century—whether intentional or accidental—there was intense editorial activity surrounding the inclusion and exclusion of biblical citations.
It is hard to imagine, though, that any later rabbinic editorial activity surrounding the sacrosanct notion of pesukim or biblical citations would ever be accidental. This raises the question of whether the standard approach to Mishna study—where the citation of biblical verses is often integral to the discussion—is adequate and even reliable as an expression of the actual intent of the Mishna. A more pressing question is who was responsible for inserting the additional twenty per cent of biblical citations into our contemporary and canonical Mishnah—and to what end?
Further Reading
For more on the differences between earlier manuscripts and
later canonised texts—this time, Rashi texts—see: Kotzk
Blog: 213) AND WHAT DOES RASHI SAY?
[1]
Kalman, J., 2004, ‘Building houses on the sand: the analysis of Scripture
citation in the Mishnah’, Journal for Semitics, 186-244.
[2]
Rosenblatt, S., 1935, The interpretation of the Bible in the Mishnah, Johns
Hopkins, Baltimore.
[3]
Pettit, P., 1993, Shene’emar: The Place of Scripture Citation in the Mishnah. Unpublished
doctoral dissertation, Claremont Graduate School, Claremont.
[4]
Square brackets are mine.
[5]
Neusner, J., 1981, Judaism: the evidence of the Mishnah, University of
Chicago, Chicago.
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