JACOB NEUSNER
JACOB NEUSNER Whenever I lecture at universities, the first question is always the same, regardless of my topic— and it has nothing to do with the subject of my lecture. In various forms, it is...
...The Judaism portrayed in the Mishnah— unaffected by the challenge of Christianity—does not present a richly developed doctrine of the messiah That was then no issue...
...Its core markers are: 1) The central symbol of Torah, understood as the teaching of the sages...
...There is "When Christianity began, why didn't the Jews accept Christ...
...The problems with which the Mishnah struggles are presented in an altogether different context...
...If Christianity presented an urgent problem to the Mishnah's sages—if, for example, the Christian system gave systemic prominence to one category of concern rather than to another—we cannot point to a single line in the Mishnah that reflects this For the sages of the Mishnah, the figure of the messiah in no way provided them with an appropriate way of explaining the purpose and goal of their system, that is, its teleology...
...The teleology that appeals to the end of history with the coming of the messiah came to predominate only in the Yerushalmi and in the sages' documents after this What issues were paramount in a Judaism utterly out of relationship to Christianity in any form...
...The Mishnah contains no explicit or systematic theory of scriptural authority...
...For the framers of the Mishnah, these tragedies raised questions of Israel's sanctity: Is Israel still a holy people, even without its holy Temple, if so, what are the enduring instrumentaliues of sancufication...
...In its later confrontation with Christianity, Judaism laid great stress on Scripture, as evidenced in the important commentaries produced in the age of Constantine...
...In the Gospels, Jesus is placed in opposition to the Pharisees...
...But Judaic documents that evidently reached closure pnor to the time of Constantine—the Mishnah, Pirke Avot (Sayings of the Fathers), the Tosefta—scarcely took cognizance of ChnsUanity and did not deem the new faith to be much of a challenge...
...So, anyhow, that's why "the Jews" did not "accept" you-know-who then...
...Christianity made pressing the question of the standing and status of the Mishnah in relationship to Scnpture In effect, Christianity claimed that the Mishnah was man-made—a forgery of God's will...
...And the Torah still does—and we still do *fl' Jacob Neusner is Graduate Research Professor of Humanities and Religious Studies at the University of South Florida in Tampa His most recent books mcludeThe Midrash: An Introduction (Jason Aronson, 1990) and, together with Andrew M. Greeley, The Bible and Us (Warner Books, 1990...
...The Yerushalmi—the first of the two Talmuds (closed at the end of the fourth century)—set the compass and locked it into place The Talmud of Babylonia (the Bavh), the final Jewish document of late antiquity (c...
...The Mishnah's answer: Sanctity persists, indelibly, in Israel, the people, in its way of life, in its land, in its priesthood, in its food, in its mode of sustaining life, in its manner of procreating and so sustaining the nation...
...Because Judaism—the Torah, understood not simply as a scroll but as the unfolding wisdom of the sages—provided all the answers Jews needed to live the virtuous and holy life and because Jews wanted to be Jews and liked being Jews...
...God's will was truly contained only in Scnpture...
...The Mishnah rarely cites Scnpture and makes almost no effort to ground its laws explicitly on Scripture...
...and that is what became Judaism "as we know it...
...Only then did Jews have to take seriously the presence of Christianity in the world...
...And by that time, those Jews who wanted out had already gotten out...
...and 3) the doctrine that Israel is the family of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, heirs to the legacy and heritage of merit that they earned and handed on to their children But the Judaic system reflected earlier in the Mishnah emerged in a world in which there was no Christianity...
...But for the framers of the Mishnah, a doctrine of the authority of Scripture was unnecessary...
...they presented a system not only of sanctification but also of salvaUon...
...Then these issues permeate the Jewish documents shaped in the land of Israel But issues are not important in prior components of the unfolding canon of Judaism—not in the Mishnah nor in closely allied documents that reached closure before the fourth century The contrast between the Mishnah, about 200 C.E., and the Judaic system we see emerging in the fourth-century documents—the Talmud of the land of Israel (the Yerushalmi), Genesis Rabbah, and Leviticus Rabbah—tells the tale...
...But I always answer the question as though it were honest My answer is this...
...Because then there was nothing to "accept...
...From all this, it follows that the quite different position outlined in the fourth-century documents—pnncipally the Yerushalmi—represents the first reading of Chnstianity on the part of Israel's sages...
...That holiness would endure...
...2) the figure of the messiah as a sage...
...The issues presented to Jews by Christianity do become important in the fourth century, when Christianity triumphed...
...the Judaism of the Mishnah is not a messianic religion It works out issues of sanctification rather than issues of salvation The reason for this is plain: The Mishnah emphasizes issues that arose following the Roman destruction of the Temple in 70 C.E...
...In these accounts, we see the confrontation of two systems talking about different things to different people...
...The Mishnah laid out the structures of sanctification: It told the people what it means to live a holy life...
...the questioner really wants to know about now, not about then...
...Nor did they formulate a systematic exegetical link between the Mishnah and Scripture...
...Insofar as the vast majority of Jews in the world were concerned, Christianity then simply did not exist Christianity was not something to be considered—either accepted or rejected—until the fourth century, when the Roman Empire became Christian through the political process...
...Christians and Jews in the first century did not recognize one another, nor did they argue with one another...
...Whatever the intent of the Mishnah's authors, it clearly did not encompass explaining to an Israel in competition with Chris-uanity, an Israel that was heir to the Scriptures of Sinai, just what authonty validated the Mishnah and how the Mishnah related to Scripture Second, in the Mishnah we look in vain for a teleology that focused on the coming of the messiah as the end and purpose of the system as a whole...
...But why not later on...
...and the subsequent defeat in the failed war (132-135 C.E) for the restoration of the Temple...
...In implicit response to this claim, the doctrine of the dual Torah— explaining the ongin and authority of the Mishnah and grounding it in Scnpture—came to full expression The Mishnah's sages had produced a document so independent of Scnpture that, when they wished to say what Scripture said, they did so in their own words and in their own way...
...Each—the family of Christianities and the family of Judaisms—went its own way During the first century, when Christianity came into being, one important strand of the movement stressed salvation, maintaining, as we read in the Gospels, that Jesus was and is Christ, come to save the world and impose a radical change on history...
...Why not' Because the Mishnah's authors saw no need for this...
...The authors of that Talmud put forth a Judaism that was messianic...
...Pnor to that time they did not give senous consideration to the existence of any Christian competition Afterward, of course, they would draw on the position outlined here to sort out the issues made urgent by the success of Christianity throughout the Roman world...
...In various forms, it is this "In the first century, when Christianity began, why didn't the Jews accept Christ'" The question is disingenuous...
...At that same time, an important group within the diverse Judaic systems of the age, the Pharisees, emphasized sancti-fication, maintaining that the task of Israel was and is to attain that holiness of which the Temple represented the singular embodiment...
...The Mishnah presents ajudaism that answered a single encompassing question concerning the enduring sancufication of Israel—the people of Israel, the land of Israel, the way of life of Israel In the aftermath of the destruction of the holy Temple and the holy cult, what remained, the Mishnah implicitly asks, of the sanctity of the holy caste (the priesthood), of the holy land and, above all, of the holy people and its holy way of life...
...Neither Jews nor pagans took much interest in Christianity for the first century and a half of the new faith's existence The authors of the Mishnah framed a system for which Christianity bore no relevance...
...This Judaism took slight interest in the messiah and presented a teleology lacking all eschatological, therefore messianic, focus...
...If certain unsystematic and scattered allusions in these early works were meant to refer to Chnsuanity—and that is by no means clear—the sages evidently regarded Chnstianity as an irritant, an exasperating heresy among Jews who should have known better...
...Mishnah Judaism is this-worldly Third, Mishnah Judaism laid little stress on Torah as a symbol, although the Torah as a scroll, as a matter of status and as a revelation of God's will at Sinai, of course, enjoyed prominence...
...The Mishnah's Judaism was for a world in which Chnstianity did not play a significant role...
...really no communication...
...That successor system, which is both continuous with and asymmetrical with the Mishnah, took over the Mishnah and turned it into the one whole Torah of Moses, our rabbi...
...600 C.E), represenung the end of the process, laid equal emphasis on sanctification in the here and now and salvation at the end of time...
...Two hundred years after the Mishnah, the Yerushalmi took over and recast the Mishnah's system...
...The Mishnah's teleology in no way invokes an eschatological dimension...
...The questioner really wants to know about now, not about then...
...Later, the Mishnah's answer was absorbed in a successor system that had its own points of stress and emphasis...
Vol. 16 • February 1991 • No. 1
