Tractate Temurah and the Methodology of Talmud Text Criticism.

• Author: Milgram, Jonathan S.

INTRODUCTION: E. S. ROSENTHAL AND THE STUDY OF LISHANA 'AHARINA

It is well known that the Babylonian Talmud (or, Talmud, tout court) has reached us in multiple versions in medieval manuscripts, early printed editions, and in citations in the works of medieval and early modern scholars from lands as far-flung as Germany and Iran. (1) Over the last fifty years, the field has developed criteria for working with these materials and some have theorized about the implications of textual variants for the history of the Talmud's redaction. Tractate Temurah (dealing with substitutions for sacrificial offerings), although not part of the regular curriculum today or in yesteryear, has received considerable attention from scholars of rabbinic literature due to the great frequency and, at times, unique usage of the term lishana 'aharina (pl. lishanei 'aharinei), meaning varia lectio, or "alternative textual reading." (2) Stated succinctly, it is the fact that in Temurah the term lishana 'aharina does not only signal a difference in formulation, as in other tractates of the Talmud. That is, the Talmud will state something, and then, following the term lishana 'aharina, will restate the material with slightly different language. In addition to that usual usage of the term, and unlike in other tractates of the Talmud, in Temurah the term lishana 'aharina sometimes seems to introduce a separately redacted text of the tractate that has been integrated into a widespread and known base text (= vulgate), thereby creating the composite text of Temurah in our current editions.

It was Eliezer Shimshon Rosenthal, in a lecture published posthumously, (3) who famously suggested what the lishana 'aharina variants could mean for the history of Temurah's redaction--the discussion being framed in the light of his earlier work on the variants in the manuscripts of Tractate Pesahim (dealing with Passover). (4) Since the variation he observed in the manuscripts of Pesahim was primarily formulaic--that is, in any given spot in the text consistently two different formulations of the same idea were presented among the textual witnesses--Rosenthal concluded that talmudic redaction (during the period of the Amoraim, ca. third-sixth centuries CE) fixed only order and subject matter but not language. He posited that the linguistic formulations during the Talmud's oral recitation (which preceded its writing down) remained fluid into the period of the Geonim (ending ca. 1038 CE) and that two versions of a single redacted text of tractate Pesahim were preserved in the manuscripts.

Temwah was different. And while Rosenthal was not abundantly clear in formulating his conceptualization in his Hebrew article, I believe the idea is positively captured in the English summary of Rosenthal's article provided in the journal where the article was published: the lishana 'aharina of Temurah "is a separate recension, and not merely another version, of the tractate" (italics in the original). (5) As the text critic M. L. West reminds us, more than superficial variation and meaningful rearrangement of source material constitutes a separate recension of a work. (6) Indeed, in Rosenthal's view, that would possibly constitute a separate redaction of the tractate from the time of the Amoraim. Put simply, "recension," varia lectio: "redaction"!

For Rosenthal, the general reasons the term lishana 'aharina of Temurah could, at times, point to a separate redaction were because a) many of the lishanei 'aharinei appear in all of the textual witnesses, meaning they are part of the (early and) orally transmitted amoraic text of Temurah, b) he had in his possession what he argued were fragments of just the lishana 'aharina text (from which the base text drew, producing the integrated edition) attesting to the beginning (T-S F 2 (2).15) (7) and the end of the tractate (Modena, Archivo di Stato 91), (8) and c) a different Aramaic dialect (akin to Western) is used in the lishana 'aharina sections. Furthermore, Rosenthal listed no fewer than 8 (!) criteria (9) pointing to structural and formal aspects (i.e., the arrangement of the source material) of the talmudic discussion (sugya) that differentiate the embedded lishana 'aharina text, including but not limited to, use of different terminology, citations of different collections of beraitot (non-mishnaic tannaitic statements), and substantive differences in the order of the material presented in the lishana 'aharina vs. the base text. In sum, for Rosenthal, structural and skeletal variation (as in the inserted text in Temurah) indicated redactional--that is, early--differences: stylistic diversity (as in Pesahim and other sections in Temurah introduced by the term lishana 'aharina), later modification.

Goldstone and Schiffman's work (hereafter, Binding Fragments) is written, in part, as a response to Rosenthal's conceptualization of the phenomenon of lishana 'aharina. Before I discuss the authors' critiques of Rosenthal's approach, offer my response and an evaluation of the methods employed in the book, I highlight the importance of the volume before us.

BINDING FRAGMENTS

This book is primarily an edition of a thirteenth-fourteenth-century Ashkenazi manuscript of Temurah retrieved from the bindings of seventeenth-century Latin choral books housed in the Fales Library of New York University. The work is a significant contribution to the academic study of Talmud for a number of reasons. The discovery of any otherwise unknown manuscript of the Talmud is always a reason for celebration. However, the finding of this manuscript, like others "contained" in another work, is not just a discovery, but an act of redemption. One can only imagine the pillaging that preceded the recycling of this holy text for binding purposes. All those involved in the manuscript's discovery, identification, dismantling, and publication should, therefore, be commended.

In addition, the volume fills a gaping hole in the scholarship on textual criticism of the Talmud published in the English language. Quality photographs of the book-binding fragments supplied by NYU and a synopsis (line-by-line presentation) of their text compared to most of the other extant textual witnesses (manuscripts and first printed edition) of Temurah, provided in part by the Saul Lieberman Institute for Talmudic Research (The Jewish Theological Seminary), are important supplements. (10) The accompanying articles on "paleography" and "codicology" by experts in those fields are also welcome additions. Last, but certainly not least, the text of Temurah, as mentioned, has been the subject of extensive and exciting academic treatment. The volume's value, therefore, should be emphasized, especially as we note that the authors are not specialists in textual criticism of the Talmud.

Central to the work is the authors' contention that the texts retrieved from the book bindings, when compared with other textual witnesses, present new evidence regarding the embedded text (or, if you wish, as per p. 11, "interfiled" text) in our editions of Temurah. The new data, suggest the authors, attest to previously unexamined and significant textual variation within the multiple representations of the embedded text. Moreover, perhaps evidence for more than just the two original redactions of Temurah envisioned by Rosenthal is present as well (however, see below).

In the following, I...