CHAPTER 3         

JUDAISM—THE CANONIZATION OF CONTROVERSY

Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. (Ps. 119:105)

As Judaism became a text-centered tradition during the Second Temple period, expertise in interpretation was a source of power and prestige. Scripture was not simply to be obeyed but also studied in depth for the manifold meanings that could be discovered.¹ New possibilities seemed to grow organically from close reading of Torah, with its multiple tellings, gaps, and ambiguities. Historical-critical analysis explains how the redactors brought together diverse narrative sources and religio-political agendas from multiple time periods—but traditional exegesis discerned its own kind of multiplicity. The text itself also became an essential locus of religious experience. During the long exile that followed the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, rabbinic Judaism saw Torah as the primary sign of God’s ongoing covenant with Israel. Study of the text became a central part of their life of dialogue with the divine.² George Steiner commented on the adaptive value of this emerging theology of scripture: “Hermeneutic unendingness and survival in exile are, I believe, kindred. . . . In dispersion, the text is homeland.”³

POLYSEMY AND PLURALISM

The earliest rabbinic texts, redacted by the Tannaim near the beginning of the third century CE, took the forms of Midrash and Mishnah. As the building blocks of Oral Torah, they canonized exegetical multiplicity and legal controversy. Midrashic collections, organized around particular books of Torah, included diverse interpretations of the same verse without determining a “correct” reading; each was separated only by the marker davar acher, another interpretation. Multi-layered exegesis was eventually formalized using the acronym PaRDeS, although each layer could contain multiple possibilities:

   Peshat, the contextual meaning

   Remez, allusions derived through various hermeneutics

   Drash, philosophical, theological, and ethical notions “searched out” within the text

   Sod, esoteric or mystical interpretations

The framework is almost an afterthought; both before and beyond its construction, rabbinic anthologies established the legitimacy of contradictory readings (e.g., Mek. Baḥodesh 7, Shirata 9).⁴

Some passages explicitly affirmed scripture’s hermeneutical openness, marveling at God’s ability to express multiple (even conflicting) ideas in a single utterance (Mek. Baḥodesh 9, Sifre Deut. 313),⁵ and imagining that at the very moment of revelation on Mount Sinai, Israel examined each word to see how many different interpretations they could draw out. Each person received the word according to their ability.⁶ Such polysemy, embracing the notion that the canonical text legitimately yields multiple meanings, can discourage oppressive enforcement of a singular interpretation. According to David Stern, “The rabbis appear to have repudiated the absolutist claims of apocalyptic fulfillment in favor of hermeneutical multiplicity.” They raised the multivocality of Tanakh, which preserved diverse traditions as if they were compatible, to an exegetical ideology: “Editorial pluralism has become a condition of meaning.”⁷

The Mishnah is organized thematically; while its central topics were determined by biblical teachings (e.g., Shabbat and holy days, tithes, sacrifice, civil and criminal justice), it does not frequently use scriptural exegesis to support its determinations. For our purposes, the most interesting thing about the Mishnah is that it transmits the tradition through dialectical argument, presenting sages who disagree, and majority and minority opinions. At one point, it asks the purpose of recording an opinion rejected by the rabbinic community—and gives conflicting answers to the question! The majority maintain that it serves as precedent for potentially overturning their ruling in the future (m. Ed. 1:5),⁸ a view that recognizes the teachings of Oral Torah as provisional efforts to discern divine will. A sage may continue to teach according to his opinion even after he has been outvoted, as long as he does not publicly rule that others should do as he does (m. Sanh. 11:2).

There is also a poetic and powerful passage in the Tosefta, a collection of Tannaitic sayings not included in the Mishnah but redacted around the same time. In response to a question about how to (literally, why) learn Torah when one sage permits and another prohibits, one says clean and another unclean, it examines the various verses of God revealing divine “words” and asserts, “All the words have been given by a single Shepherd: one God created them, one Provider gave them, the Lord of all deeds, blessed be He, has spoken them. So make yourself a heart of many rooms and bring into it the words of the House of Shammai and the words of the House of Hillel, the words of those who declare unclean and the words of those who declare clean” (t. Sotah 7:12).⁹

The heart in rabbinic imagination is the seat of the mind, and “a heart of many rooms” is likely a helpful image for how to retain knowledge that does not have a single, direct answer; it does not necessarily argue for the modern pluralism we might hear in such a phrase. Further, we must acknowledge that the passage’s affirmation of diverse voices is limited, representing only the community of sages and those who followed them.¹⁰ Yet it clearly claims that all their opinions derive from God, giving divine authorization to multivocality. Rabbinic culture embraced multiple schools of thought and saw positive value in teaching the controversy.¹¹

Pluralism became increasingly “thematized”—raised up as an ideological value—in the Talmuds, redacted during the Amoraic (c. 200–500 CE) and Savoraic (c. 500–600) periods. It seems especially prominent in the Babylonian context.¹² Unpacking the brief disagreements found in Mishnah and Tosefta with elaborate analysis, discussions in the Talmud tend to maintain the validity of conflicting viewpoints—grounding each one deeply in the soil of scripture—rather than resolve the argument. Local variation is affirmed by statements such as, “Each river follows its own course” (b. Hul. 57a, b. Git. 60b). Certain passages have become what Steven Fraade calls the poster children of Talmudic pluralism, including a repeated trope that identifies all the contradictory opinions from the sages as the word of the living God (b. Eruv. 13b, b. Git. 6b, y. Yevam. 1:6 [3b]). Another suggests that the argument is what substantiates Torah in the life of the community: “Had the words of Torah been given as clear-cut decisions, it would not have a leg to stand on” (y. Sanh. 4:2 [22a]). Even God is portrayed as involved in rabbinic controversy, studying the opinions of the sages, disagreeing with the heavenly academy, and occasionally deferring to the earthly one (b. B. Metz. 86a). Increasingly, the notion took hold that disagreement and difference play a uniquely important role in fulfilling the Word.

Rabbinic texts also developed a productive tension between conservatism and innovation. One example can be found in Avot d’Rabbi Nathan, extolling the virtues of diverse students. Some are lauded for piety, righteousness (literally fear of sin), or bringing joy to parents. The two that rise to the top of this esteemed group, however, are Rabbi Eliezer b. Hyrcanus and Rabbi Eleazar b. Arakh. The former is described as a cemented cistern that does not lose a drop, an apt metaphor for the faithful bearer of tradition. The latter is described as a flowing spring, representing the dynamic and life-giving nature of creative fidelity. In place of mechanical transmission of tradition just as one received it, it makes room for change. While there is disagreement about which of the two star pupils is most prized, one opinion describes Rabbi Eleazar b. Arakh as outweighing all the other sages in the world (Avot R. Nat. A 14).¹³ At the same time, there appears to be appreciation for the fruitful intersections of their disparate perspectives. Rabbinic thought preserves a dynamic balance between the religious requirements for boundaries and consistency versus openness and change.

Ultimately, as Jeffrey Rubenstein noted, the rabbis “thematize dialectical argumentation and portray it as the highest form of Torah.”¹⁴ Several passages present this discourse almost like an extreme sport. One Talmudic narrative tells of Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai after emerging from a cave where he had hidden for twelve years to evade the Roman emperor’s order of execution. When Rabbi Shimon’s son-in-law saw his distressed physical state, he lamented his father-in-law’s ordeal. Rabbi Shimon told him to rejoice instead, since he had devoted himself to Torah study during that time and could now offer twenty-four different scriptural and logical resolutions for any difficulty his son-in-law might raise (b. Shabb. 33b). Even more remarkably, the Palestinian Talmud recounts a tradition that God revealed to Moses forty-nine arguments for demonstrating the purity of an object and forty-nine arguments for declaring it impure. When Moses questioned how long the community would be subject to the obvious uncertainty such information would cause, God responded, “Follow the majority” (y. Sanh. 4:2; see b. Eruv. 13b, Num. Rab. 2:3, Midr. Ps. 12:4, Pesiq. Rab. 21). This trope privileges the power of persuasion rather than coercion; while the rabbis claim authority to interpret scripture, it is not absolute and their approach to truth is ultimately ambiguous.

As later figures reflected on possible motivations behind this “unorthodox” approach to transmitting divine instruction, many of their suggestions focused on pragmatic considerations. Saadia Gaon (ninth to tenth century CE) wrote in the introduction to his commentary on Genesis that there was often only a pretense of disagreement, in order to draw out the train of thought more completely. In other cases, he determined that each opinion was right for a different context, or a sage thought he heard a matter in its entirety but in fact heard only part.¹⁵ Some commentators argued that the rabbis imagined dialectical engagement as the most rigorous way to distill the truth, or saw the anthology of traditions as the most effective pedagogy. In the fourteenth century, for example, Rabbi Abraham Akra wrote in his Talmudic commentary: “They were all spoken by one shepherd, which means that most times we gain a good understanding of something by considering its negation, and we cannot understand the matter on its own so well as by considering its negation. Therefore the Holy One, blessed be He, sought to endow us with dissenting opinions, in order that when we arrive at the true opinion, we will understand it thoroughly” (Meharerei Nemarim 17a).¹⁶

A strange rabbinic ruling is explained along similar lines: If the Sanhedrin unanimously arrived at a death sentence, they would not carry it out. Only when doubts force rigorous investigation of all possible considerations, can one arrive at the truth (Lev Avot on m. Avot 5:17).

It is also likely that the rabbis considered pluralism as the best strategy for retaining community cohesion. Lo titgodedu: do not form factions, they warned (b. Yevam. 13b).¹⁷ While they still determined which opinion to endorse as normative practice, they could present divergent teachings as authentic embodiments of Torah. Allowing dissent kept all the parties inside the system, domesticating subversive forces to some degree and adding legitimacy to their authority. As minority populations in the Sassanian and Roman empires, Jews struggled to resist the unceasing imperial and cultural pressures that caused communities to fracture. Perhaps the rabbis’ theology of exile, which they attributed in part to baseless hatred among the diverse Jewish groups of the late Second Temple period, also pressed upon them the importance of holding the community together. They were afraid of division, not diversity.

Disagreement is not easy to manage, however, and rabbinic efforts at pluralism did not preclude oppressive wielding of scriptural authority. Although many passages within Oral Torah present an idealized form of respectful controversy, some acknowledge how fraught disputes could be. Ongoing discord between Rabbi Joshua and Rabban Gamaliel II prompted the former’s public repudiation and the latter’s temporary removal as head of the Sanhedrin (b. Ber. 27b–28a).¹⁸ Rabban Gamaliel II was also responsible for the expulsion of his brother-in-law from the rabbinic community after a halakhic dispute, a move that he defended as necessary to prevent division from multiplying within Israel, but one that reportedly led to great suffering as well as his own death (b. B. Metz. 59b). As material redacted in Babylonia about the early Palestinian sages, the narratives may not be historical, but they represent ongoing anxiety about the possibility of factionalism, with a preference for tolerating diversity despite the challenges.

NATURE OF TRUTH AND HUMAN AUTHORITY

These dilemmas become more complex as we move from the practical value of pluralism to polysemy as an exegetical ideology. As Moshe Halbertal pointedly asked, “How does the canonization of controversies relate to the problem of truth in interpretation, especially when the word of God is concerned?”¹⁹ One way of thinking about this issue is to consider what the rabbis meant when they asserted that divergent ideas are all the word of the living God. Did they mean that God intended multiple senses, either simultaneously or for different circumstances? Or were the rabbis being authorized to distill God’s purposes, by which legitimate processes of interpretation could yield equally legitimate alternatives? Or is divine meaning singular, with the rabbis striving toward the single correct answer based on proper procedure? Not surprisingly, each of these possibilities can be found within Jewish tradition.

At times, the rabbis of the classical period explicitly affirmed the multifaceted nature of scriptural truth—e.g., “Turn it over and turn it over again, for everything is within it” (m. Avot 5:22). This perspective became more pronounced in Jewish mysticism. A thirteenth-century kabbalistic commentary on the Talmud, for example, emphasized that the divine teaching by definition can lack nothing and therefore contains all possibilities of meaning, with every sage grasping a portion.²⁰ Rationalist legal texts picked up on the theme as well, as in Rabbi Yehiel Epstein’s nineteenth-century lyrical introduction to his halakhic code:

Truly, for one who understands things properly, all the controversies among the Tannaim, Amoraim, the Geonim and the decisors, are the words of the living God, and all are grounded in the law. And furthermore, this is the glory of our pure and holy Torah, all of which is called a melody. And the glory of the melody, the essence of its delight, is that the tones differ from each other. And one who sails the sea of the Talmud will experience the diverse delights of all these distinct voices. (Arukh haShulkhan)

In this way, Jewish tradition understood scriptural truth to be multiple and contextual, yielding a dynamic praxis and theology that adapted to changing circumstances.

The second possibility is represented by people like Nachmanides (thirteenth century) and his students. They held that rabbinic sages have the privilege, granted by the scriptural Author, to constitute the meaning of divine instruction. Some believed that God would not let them rule contrary to divine intent, but the perspective emphasized procedural authority over the fixity of truth; it left open the reality of diversity, change, and even error.²¹ As twentieth-century orthodox halakhist Moshe Feinstein wrote about disagreeing with sages from the classical period, “Truth is as it seems correct to the scholar after he has studied the law properly. . . . This is indeed the true ruling, and he is required to proclaim it, even if in heaven it is really known that the true interpretation is otherwise.”²²

The most famous passage expressing this idea is found in the Babylonian Talmud; it recounts a rabbinic dispute in which Rabbi Eliezer was the lone dissenter in a decision, but various miracles suggested that God agreed with him. Each marvel was contested by the other rabbis as invalid proof for his position, with the final challenge lifted from Deuteronomy: “It is not in heaven” (Deut. 30:12). The sages thus claimed authority to determine scripture’s meaning, and God’s purported response was to laugh and proclaim with delight, “My children have defeated Me.” It is the same passage, however, that records Rabbi Eliezer’s expulsion from the rabbinic community; affirming human authority does not ensure a liberating embrace of all voices (b. B. Metz. 59b).²³

Christine Hayes has argued that rabbinic pluralism is pragmatic, not philosophical; debate was designed to yield God’s intended meaning. This brings us to the third perspective, represented by figures like Abraham ibn Daud (twelfth century), in which God’s will constitutes the singular truth of scripture. He claimed that certain knowledge eroded over time due to harsh conditions and human failings; halakhic reasoning is an attempt to retrieve and reconstruct God’s teaching. While his perspective limited the possibilities of multiple truths, it also acknowledged room for error in the negotiation of scripture’s meaning. This line of thinking raised some concerns about rabbinic authority. Maimonides, for example, claimed that actual disagreement attached only to newly derived practices; in general, the process of rabbinic adjudication could be trusted to secure the right answer.²⁴ At the same time, he opened another door to limit the ultimacy of scriptural truth. Both he and his son were emphatic that revelation did not extend to all areas of knowledge; one need not defer to the rabbis in matters of medicine, science, astronomy, etc. These medieval Jewish Aristotelians affirmed truths derived from human experience and observation; they drew on threads within classic rabbinic thought that made room for other sources of knowledge.²⁵

The value of human reason is well-established in the tradition, even though the rabbis knew it would sometimes be in tension with revelation. David Kraemer cited fourteen instances in the Babylonian Talmud in which a rabbinic dispute was explained by determining that one sage relied on scriptural interpretation in his decision, and one relied on reason—both legitimate ways of trying to discern truth. There are also over two hundred instances in which the rabbis suggested that the biblical text “should” be different than it is.²⁶ Although they generally found ways to reconcile the text with what they thought correct, they repeatedly affirmed the exercise of their God-given intellect, free will, and moral capacity. The sages also knew that proper procedure would not always yield the best answer, even if it was technically correct. In such cases, they privileged overarching values that the law was meant to embody—e.g., justice and fairness, cultivation of compassion, humility, righteousness, and peace—naming this functional emphasis as lifnim m’shurat hadin, beyond the letter of the law. Literally translated as “inside the line of law,” the phrase implies resolutions that are not against the law but focus on higher principles. The rabbis imagined that God, too, sometimes set truth aside for the sake of compassion, and extolled it as a divine virtue.²⁷

Ultimately, rabbinic explication of scripture is not primarily about pursuit of “truth.” Describing halakhah, the rabbinic praxis developed to flesh out the values of Torah, Hayes explained: “Rabbinic literature reflects a desire to discern what is just, equitable, pious and obedient to God’s will in the realm of human behavior and to do so through interpretation and debate, rather than ratiocination from first principles.” Philosophy aims to describe “a uniform and eternal truth,” while rabbinic Judaism addresses “the shifting conditions of human existence.”²⁸ Reckoning with the shifting conditions of our existence embeds an ultimate contingency in the authority of Written and Oral Torah, moderating the dangers of scripture without succumbing utterly to relativism and post-modern indeterminacy.²⁹ It stakes out a middle ground.

ACCOUNTING FOR THE HUMAN: EPISTEMOLOGICAL HUMILITY, DOUBT, ACCOMMODATION, AND CHANGE

Jewish tradition frequently acknowledges that which we do not know. The Tannaim spoke of the end of prophecy and ruach hakodesh (divine inspiration), as well as elimination of the urim and tumim—diverse gifts that had enabled ancient Israel to ascertain God’s will (m. Sotah 9:12, t. Sotah 13:2). Recognizing that subsequent decisions necessarily relied on the art of interpretation, they cautioned, “The prudent person sees danger and takes precautions” (Prov. 22:3). Almost every independently authored rabbinic text included an apology in the introduction (still common in academia today) for any errors contained within. Although humility did not always prevail, the rabbis valorized it and cited it as the one virtue ascribed to Moses in Torah (Num. 12:3, Deut. 34:10). As one of the preeminent Jewish scholars of the Middle Ages, Moses Maimonides was not particularly humble. But he stressed epistemological humility—the limits of human understanding—in several ways. Ferreting out a difficulty in Genesis 2, he wondered why God would not want human beings to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Would it not be of benefit, providing the necessary understanding to make moral choices? His interpretation of the narrative held that we had a superior knowledge before eating from this tree—knowledge of truth and falsity. All we have after violating the divine command is relative judgment, uncertainly grounded in personal feelings about right and wrong, contingent upon culture and context (Guide for the Perplexed I:2).

Maimonides also stressed epistemological humility in relation to our understanding of God’s essence, claiming in Guide for the Perplexed (I:56–59) that we can make no true affirmative statement about the nature of the divine. The best we can do is to speak in negative terms—e.g., “God is not lacking in power.” In other words, God has power but does not possess it in a way that is comparable to anything else. Along with this “negative theology,” he also established an intellectual distinction between faith and certainty. He argued, for instance, that traditional and metaphysical reflection led him to affirm the creation of the universe in time, but neither creation ex nihilo nor the eternality of the universe could be demonstrably proven. His conviction was a matter of faith, not certainty (Guide for the Perplexed II:25).³⁰

In canonizing controversy, the rabbis also made room for doubt as the counterpart rather than the enemy of faith. Even when they believed fervently in the rightness of their perspective, they could not claim absolute proof. Nachmanides, for instance, dedicated an entire treatise to contest a commentary on Alfasi but wrote in the introduction, “Every student of our Talmud knows that in a controversy between commentators, there are no incontrovertible arguments, and in most instances no absolute refutations” (Milchamot haShem). The Maharshal (sixteenth century) believed that no text existed without lacunae, even Torah: “Were all the heavens above scrolls and all the oceans ink, they would not suffice to expound even one passage and all the doubts arising from it.”³¹ A few medieval voices added more space for doubt by questioning the inerrant transmission of Torah: Abraham ibn Ezra, Judah heHasid, and David Kimhi thought that Ezra, the biblical scribe, had a hand in correcting the text.³²

Ibn Ezra was also among those who argued that Torah speaks in the language of human beings, communicating in ways that we can understand. When rabbis of the classical period first invoked this principle (dibra Torah kileshon benei adam), they generally meant that one should not overread the text, contrary to interpreters who felt every jot and tittle overflowed with meaning. Yet Ibn Ezra understood it as a hermeneutical principle of accommodation. He assumed that divine revelation was adapted to the capacity of ancient Israel to receive it, vitiating the ultimacy of scripture by opening the doorway to change. God’s teaching is adjusted to “the process of intellectual, moral and even political advancement of man.”³³

This idea was already broached in the Tannaitic period, imagining that God—the Teacher of all teachers—operated differently according to context, even changing “appearances” to meet the needs of the moment. God appeared as a warrior when the Israelites were trying to escape Egypt across the sea, but as a kindly elder for the revelation at Sinai (Mek. Yitro 5). An Amoraic midrash on Leviticus suggested that sacrifice was designed as a stopgap measure to wean Israel from idolatry (Lev. Rab. 22:6). Medieval commentators expanded on these themes, pointing out how God judged people’s actions according to context: eating meat was not allowed for Adam, for example, but it was for Noah—and then constrained by the conditions of kashrut for the people of Israel.³⁴ Bahya ibn Pakuda (eleventh century) and Maimonides believed that biblical anthropomorphisms were utilized to accommodate the lesser capacity of the masses in terms of abstraction. (Philo had suggested the same thing in the first century CE.) They maintained that various aspects of halakhah, even something as fundamental as the system of reward and punishment, embody pedagogical value rather than ultimate truth.³⁵ Interpretation of scripture is intended to evolve, potentially liberating many problematic passages and previous exegeses from the dangers of fixity and ultimacy.

There is a classic pericope at the beginning of Genesis Rabbah that illustrates the rabbis’ sense of scripture as a dynamic rather than static guide: with artful rhetoric and close reading of Genesis 1:1 (and Prov. 8:30), the rabbis imagined that God created the world with Torah. The idea is presented in a parable, compared to a king who wants to build a palace. He does not construct it out of his own head, but hires an architect who fashions scrolls and wax tablets to work out the plans. Determining the referents for these figures in the parable, all three are associated with Torah: the architect is the primordial Torah as the sum of divine instruction, the scrolls represent the Five Books of Moses, and the wax tablets signify Oral Torah—the part that is designed to be written, erased, and reinscribed differently to fit each new situation.

Scholars also acknowledged how the meaning of scripture shifts for each person, according to capacity or temperament. Leḥem Mishneh (sixteenth century) asserted that souls differ, inclined to strict or lenient readings of the text; thus, it is important that Torah can be expounded in forty-nine different ways to provide the teaching each person requires (comment on m. Avot 5:17). In the early twentieth century, Ahad Ha’am commented in poetic fashion: “The book exists forever, but its content is changed by life and learning. What have men not found in the Holy Scriptures from the time of Philo until the present day? . . . In the Holy Scriptures they all sought only the truth, each his own truth, and they all found what they sought, found it because they were compelled to, for if not, the truth would not be the truth and the Holy Scriptures would not be holy.”³⁶ The tradition knows itself to be provisional because it is the bearer of multiple voices and modifications—a manifestation of historical consciousness.³⁷ Mikra’ot Gedolot, the medieval commentary that set diverse exegetes together in literary “conversation” across the generations, may reflect this kind of historical awareness as well.

Rabbinic literature also recognized the mutability of scripture in affirming the prospect of ḥidush, an innovative interpretation. Rashbam claimed that his grandfather Rashi (1040–1105) said he would have loved to write a whole new commentary if he had time, to incorporate all the fresh interpretations that emerge daily. Innovations with implications for observance could be slow in coming, but they were still seen as essential mechanisms for sustaining the relevance of religious instruction. Non-halakhic innovations came from all kinds of sources and were celebrated for their vibrant range and creativity. Writing in Ladino in the eighteenth century, Turkish scholar Rabbi Eliyahu haCohen made it sound like a mitzvah (divine commandment): “One should find new interpretations of the Torah . . . for just as a person is required to procreate his kind, he must procreate in Torah . . . until he innovates great and weighty matters.”³⁸

Rabbinic appreciation for the paradox of the eternal and eternally changing notion of Torah is perhaps best encapsulated in a Talmudic aggadah that imagines Moses sitting in Rabbi Akiba’s classroom in the second century CE. He is completely lost and has to sit in the back (the sign of a beginner). When one of the students asks Rabbi Akiba for the source of his knowledge, however, Akiba replies, “It is from Moses on Sinai,” and Moses is comforted (b. Menah. 29b). Whether meant as metaphorical transmission or an actual chain of instruction, the passage reckons with how tradition is remolded in each generation. The result may be unrecognizable to its forebears but it stands as an authentic embodiment of Torah teaching. With the meanings of scripture always in flux, we have another tool in the moderation of scriptural ultimacy.