American Academy of Religion

A Rabbinic Theory of Language?Author(s): Jacob Neusner and Howard Eilberg-SchwartzSource: Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Vol. 56, No. 4 (Winter, 1988), pp. 762-763Published by: Oxford University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1464464 .

Accessed: 15/06/2014 13:36

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

Oxford University Press and American Academy of Religion are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserveand extend access to Journal of the American Academy of Religion.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 188.72.96.21 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 13:36:58 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

762 Journal of the American Academy of Religion

A Rabbinic Theory of Language?

Professor Howard Eilberg-Schwartz's "Who's Kidding Whom?"?" (AAR 55:765-88) leaves one wondering to which rabbis, and precisely under which circumstances, portrayed by which documents, he refers. Any claim, after all, that "[all] the rabbis [everywhere, all the time, for two thousand years]" framed "a theory of language" should tell us which authorities presented and adopted such a theory, for which purpose, and in which context. Otherwise we find ourselves imputing to an indeterminate body of religious authorities, over fif- teen centuries and in many circumstances, what may have been an ad hoc fabrication of a particular circle for quite distinct purposes. Except for a hand- ful, that would not constitute a broadly-held "theory of language" at all. Puz- zled by the question of which rabbis Eilberg-Schwartz has in mind, I found his references to "the rabbis" and "the sages" balanced by a careful qualification: "this suggests that an inchoate theory of language was operative in at least one segment of early rabbinic culture." That is a considerable and important quali- fication. But in the course of the article, it seems to have escaped Eilberg- Schwartz's attention, since everywhere else "they" or "the sages" or "the rabbis" form the subject of discourse.

Not only so, but an admittedly rapid survey of other compilations of Mid- rash-exegeses, besides Genesis Rabbah, on which Eilberg-Schwartz concen- trates, does not yield a substantial corpus of "examples" of the phenomenon he endows with the status of a theory of language. A sizable corpus of pertinent evidence-Sifra, which deals with Leviticus, Sifre to Deuteronomy, and Leviti- cus Rabbah-indeed raises the possibility that Eilberg-Schwartz has given us a series of one. Since the examples he adduces all come from a single document, perhaps what is represented as a "theory of language" may turn out to serve exegesis of a particular kind of scriptural topic. Even if "the rabbis" turn out to be qualified into "one segment of early rabbinic culture," I am not entirely certain that the evidence adduced sustains the interpretation thereof. It may just be how people conventionally dealt with a given topic, that is, a genre. In legal texts of Scripture-exegesis, e.g., passages of Mikhilta Attributed to R. Ish- mael, Sifra, and Sifre to Deuteronomy that deal with law, diverse Midrash-com- pilations, otherwise rhetorically and logically unrelated, resort to a uniform rhetoric and logic of cogent discourse. This rhetoric and logic, moreover, char- acterize within the named documents legal but not non-legal passages. It there- fore forms a genre not linked to a particular authorship at all.

In line with that result in my recent research, it is equally possible that, for the Midrash-compilations of late antiquity, the sort of word-plays Eilberg- Schwartz adduces in evidence of a theory of language in fact served mainly, if not exclusively, for a limited agendum of topics, for instance, the creation of the world and associated subjects, at which point the Scripture's own claim that God made the world by saying words will have precipitated deep thought on that very matter. It would follow that, in the main if not always, when "the rabbis" were "playing" with language, it was the subject-matter and context-

This content downloaded from 188.72.96.21 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 13:36:58 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Responses and Rejoinders 763

hence the genre--that invited them to do so. In that case, his thesis in the present article overinterprets the data. But these remarks represent not criti- cisms, only possibilities deserving future consideration. Then too he will want to tell us how he knows he is right and how he might be wrong. A test of falsification and alternative explanation at some point demands its place.

Jacob Neusner Brown University

I share Professor Jacob Neusner's longstanding distrust of studies that pres- ent rabbinic Judaism as a seamless web. With respect to a theory of language, as in other matters, there is no single view that informs all rabbinic statements. Consequently, Neusner raises an important question when he asks whether the theory of language I discuss is reflected in other rabbinic documents. He is mistaken, however, in supposing that this phenomenon is limited to Genesis Rabbah and is thus an artifact of the kind of scriptural topic (i.e. creation) upon which the sages comment. Similar word modifications appear in other rabbinic texts including, contrary to Neusner, Leviticus Rabbah, Exodus Rabbah, and the two Talmuds. Furthermore, the examples cited in my essay show that it was not "a limited agendum of topics" that precipitated the kind of word trans- formations I describe.

Neusner is correct, however, in noting that such word transformations gen- erally do not appear in compilations dealing with legal portions of Scripture (the two

Sifrrs, Sifra, and Mechilta). In this sense, the genre of scriptural mate-

rial does influence how the rabbis interpret. But that is because the rabbis assume that God wrote the legal and narrative sections of Scripture according to different principles and consequently each requires its own distinctive interpre- tive procedures. For example, the authors of Sifra, the

Sifrrs, and Mechilta

assume that God did not include in Scripture any law that could be logically inferred from a law included elsewhere in Scripture, an assumption that does not inform the rabbis' understanding of Scripture's narratives. This is why the sages invoke different interpretive techniques when reading law and narratives.

Neusner's desire for falsification ignores recent arguments that have articu- lated alternative understandings of historical and cultural interpretation. I side with those who think that interpretations are more or less plausible from within certain paradigms that are currently available (eg. Winch, Gadamer, Kuhn, Foucault, Rorty). Plausibility is determined by a community of knowledgeable critics who work on similar or related problems.

Howard Eilberg-Schwartz Temple University

This content downloaded from 188.72.96.21 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 13:36:58 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions