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Each Rabbinic document, from the Mishnah through to the Bavli, defines itself by a unique combination of indicative traits of rhetoric, topic and particular logic that governs its coherent discourse. But narratives in the same canonical compilations do not conform to the documentary indicators that govern in these compilations, respectively. They form an anomaly for the documentary reading of the rabbinic canon of the formative age. To remove that anomaly, this project classifies the types and forms of narratives and shows that particular documents exhibit distinctive preferences among those types. This detailed, systematic classification of rabbinic narrative supplies these facts concerning the classification of narratives and their regularities: what are the types and forms of narrative in a given document?; how are these distinctive types and forms of narrative distributed across the canonical documents of the formative age, the first six centuries CE? The answers for the documentary preferences are in Volumes One to Three, for the Mishnah-Tosefta, the Tannaite Midrash-compilations, and Rabbah-Midrash-compilations, respectively. Volume Four then sets forth the documentary history of each of the types of rabbinic narrative, including the authentic narrative, the maOEaseh and the mashal. How the traits of the several types of narratives shift as the respective types move from document is spelled out in complete detail. This project opens a road towards the documentary analysis of rabbinic narrative. It fills out an important chapter in the documentary hypothesis of the rabbinic canon in the formative age.
E-Book Content
RABBINIC NARRATIVE: A DOCUMENTARY PERSPECTIVE VOLUME I
THE BRILL REFERENCE LIBRARY OF JUDAISM Editors J. NEUSNER (Bard College) — H. BASSER (Queens University) A.J. AVERY-PECK (College of the Holy Cross) — Wm.S. GREEN (University of Rochester) — G. STEMBERGER (University of Vienna) — I. GRUENWALD (Tel Aviv University) — M. GRUBER (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev) G.G. PORTON (University of Illinois) — J. FAUR (Bar Ilan University)
VOLUME 14
RABBINIC NARRATIVE: A DOCUMENTARY PERSPECTIVE Volume One: Forms, Types and Distribution of Narratives in the Mishnah, Tractate Abot and the Tosefta BY
JACOB NEUSNER
BRILL LEIDEN • BOSTON 2003
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Neusner, Jacob, 1932Rabbinic narrative : a documentary perspective / by Jacob Neusner. v. cm. — (The Brill reference library of Judaism, ISSN 1566-1237 ; v. 14) Includes bibliographical references and index. Contents: v. 1. Forms, types, and distribution of narratives in the Mishnah, Tractate Abot, and the Tosefta — v. 2. Forms, types and distribution of narratives in Sifra, Sifré to Numbers, and Sifré to Deuteronomy. ISBN 90-04-13023-3 (v. 1 : alk. paper) — ISBN 90-04-13034-9 (v. 2 : alk. paper) 1. Narration in rabbinical literature. 2. Rabbinical literature—History and criticism. 3. Mishnah—Criticism, Narrative. 4. Midrash—History and criticism. 5. Parables in rabbinical literature. I. Title. II. Series. BM496.9.N37N48 2003 296.1’2066–dc 21
2003050220
ISSN 1566-1237 ISBN 90 04 13023 3
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