2015 \"For Mark was Peter's Tana\": Tradition and Transmission in Papias and the Early Rabbis

$: 2015 \"For Mark was Peter's Tana\": Tradition and Transmission in Papias and the Early Rabbis$
“For Mark was Peter’s Tannaʾ”: Tradition and Transmissionin Papias and the Early Rabbis

Azzan Yadin-Israel

Journal of Early Christian Studies, Volume23, Number 3, Fall 2015,pp. 337-362 (Article)

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Journal of Early Christian Studies 23:3, 337–362 © 2015 Johns Hopkins University Press

I wish to thank AnneMarie Luijendijk and Annette Yoshiko Reed, who read an earlier version of this paper and offered helpful comments and suggestions. Thanks too to the anonymous reader at the Journal of Early Christian Studies, who offered a very detailed and incisive critique of my initial submission, and contributed directly to what I hope is a much more nuanced argument.

1. Papias’s fragments are cited according to Bart Ehrman, ed. and trans., The Apostolic Fathers, vol. 2, LCL 25 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003). Papias’s fragments are numbered differently in different editions; for consistency’s sake, I use Ehrman’s numbering throughout.

“For Mark was Peter’s Tannaʾ ”: Tradition and Transmission in Papias and the Early Rabbis

AZZAN YADIN-ISRAEL

The fragments and testimonia of Papias’s Expositions of the Sayings of the Lord contain a number of terms whose precise meaning remains elusive, among them auditor, presbuteroi, herme\neute\s, and parakoloutheo\. These terms, and the oral-traditional ideology in which they occur, are illuminated by comparison with the terminology associated with the Pharisees and preserved in early rabbinic writings. More broadly, the ideology of received tradition preserved in the latter sources offers a better analogue to Papias’s enterprise than does Hellenistic historiography, as Bauckham has influentially argued. In addition, Papias’s explanation that he set out to collect and order the sayings of the Lord from certified tradents, marks him as an important but heretofore largely unrecognized precursor to the rabbinic establishment of the Mishnah.

Of Papias’s five-volume Expositions of the Sayings of the Lord (Λογίων Kυριακῶν Ὲξήγησις) only fragments remain.1 But they, along with reports of later Christian authors, provide a reasonably coherent portrait of the man who served as bishop of Hierapolis during the last decades of the

338 JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES

2. Richard Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2006) offers indispensable discussions of Papias, his work, and the scholarship it has engendered.

3. Fragment 3.3 (Ehrman, 2:98–99).4. Rabbinic sources are cited according to the following MSS and editions:

Mishnah—MS Kaufmann (Budapest Academy, A 50); Tosefta—MS Vienna (National Library, Hebrew 20); Sifra—MS Vatican 66; Sifre Numbers—Menahem I. Kahana, Sifre on Numbers: An Annotated Edition (Hebrew), 3 vols. (Jerusalem: Magnes, 2011); Sifre Deuteronomy—Louis Finkelstein, Siphre ad Deuteronomium (New York: Jew-ish Theological Seminary, 1993); Jerusalem Talmud—MS Leiden (Or. 4720). Unless otherwise noted, translations are my own.

5. Fragments 3.7–3.8 (Ehrman, 2:100–101), and 3.14 (Ehrman, 2:102–3), respectively.6. Fragment 3.11 (Ehrman, 2:100–101). 7. Ralph Marcus, ed. and trans., Josephus: Jewish Antiquities, Books 12–13, LCL

365 (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1943), 377.

first century and the first decades of the second.2 More than any other, the theme that emerges from the extant fragments and testimonia is Papias’s commitment to received tradition, that is, his belief that the doctrines that came out of books would not benefit him “as much as that which came from a living and abiding voice.”3 The first part of the present essay argues that key Papian terms related to tradition can be productively compared with reports of the Pharisees and with early rabbinic sources.4 The second part offers a broader comparison of Papias and the early rabbis, focusing on their respective concepts of tradition and the role each played in their literary enterprises.

PAPIAS AND THE LANGUAGE OF TRADITION

Paradosis

The most important term for understanding Papias’s conception of tradi-tion is “tradition” itself, παράδοσις. According to Eusebius, Papias “sets forth the traditions (παραδόσεις)” Aristion and the elder John passed along, collects dicta regarding miracles that came to him “from the tradition” (ἐκ παραδόσεως), and transmits the sayings of Aristion “as well as traditions (παραδόσεις) from the elder John.”5 Most important for the present analy-sis is Eusebius’s assertion that a teaching reached Papias “from an unwrit-ten tradition (ἐκ παραδόσεως αγράφου).”6 This last statement characterizes Papias’s tradition in the same manner as Josephus and the Gospels char-acterize the Pharisaic παράδοσις. Josephus, when he speaks of ordinances “not recorded (οὐκ αναγέγραπται)” in the laws of Moses (Ant. 13.297),7 and the Gospels in the sharp contrast Jesus draws between scripture and the tradition of the Pharisees (Mark 7 and parallels: “Moses said . . . but you

YADIN-ISRAEL / TRADITION AND TRANSMISSION 339

8. See A. I. Baumgarten, “The Pharisaic Paradosis,” HTR 80 (1987): 63–77. Mason’s argument that paradosis in Ant. 13.297 reflects a fixed expression of his day only strengthens the parallel, see Steve Mason, Flavius Josephus on the Pharisees: A Composition-Critical Study (Leiden: Brill, 1991), 233–35.

9. There is some debate among scholars as to whether the chain of transmission is original to the tractate, see M. Bialik Lerner, “The Tractate Avot,” in The Litera-ture of the Sages, ed. S. Safrai (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1987), 1:367–403. However, the existence of other chains of transmission throughout the Mishnah reduces the weight of any one passage. See the discussion in the section Rabbis and Pharisees, below.

10. Fragment 5 (Ehrman, 2:106–9). For a discussion of the relevant apocalyp-tic sources, many of them Jewish, see Ulrich H. J. Körtner, Papias von Hierapolis: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des frühen Christentums (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1983), 101–4.

11. H. Bietenhard, “Die Bedeutung des Substantivs: . . . Tradition, überliefertes Gesetz, Mischna,” in RAC, vol. 3, ed. Theodor Klauser (Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann, 1957), s.v.: Deuterosis; columns 842–49. For a list of Christian sources that refer to δευτέρωσις in this sense see R. Hugh Connolly, Didascalia Apostolorum: The Syriac Version Translated and Accompanied by the Verona Latin Fragments (Oxford: Clar-endon, 1929), lviii–lix, and the sources cited in Tropper, Wisdom, Politics, and His-toriography (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 152–53 n.55.

12. The Mishnah is known as “the Mishnah of Rabbi (Yehudah)” or “our Mishnah,” and see the discussion in Seth Schwartz, “Rabbinization in the Sixth Century,” in The Talmud Yerushalmi and Greco-Roman Culture I, ed. Peter Schäfer (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2002), 62–65.

13. Jerome, ep. 121.10 (CSEL 56:48).

say . . .”).8 The rabbinic evidence is greater in quantity and in complexity and will be discussed more fully below, but for now I note only that non-scriptural tradition plays an important role in early rabbinic literature, the best-known passage in this regard being m. Avot 1.1 (“Moses received the Torah from Sinai and transmitted it to Joshua . . .”).9

Deutero\sisA close relative of παράδοσις, δευτέρωσις is associated with Papias by Jerome, who writes: “Hic dicitur mille annorum Iudaicam edidisse δευτέρωσιν . . .” (“He is said to have propagated the Jewish tradition of the millennium”).10 What immediately stands out here is Jerome’s use of a Greek term in the midst of his Latin prose, a linguistic shift that often, as here, marks the introduction of a technical term. Indeed, δευτέρωσις has long been recognized as a Greek calque of the Hebrew mishnah (literally: “repetition”).11 Note, however, that in early rabbinic sources unqualified mishnah refers to an extra-scriptural tradition, not to the authoritative collection of such traditions known as the Mishnah.12 This is the sense of δευτέρωσις in Jerome’s statement, as it is in, e.g., Epistle 121, when he refers to “traditiones Phariseorum . . . quas hodie vocant δευτερῶσεις . . .” (“traditions of the Pharisees . . . which today they call deutero\seis”).13


14. It is worth noting the existence of another sense of δευτέρωσις, namely, the Didascalia Apostolorum’s reference to the Hebrew Bible laws subsequent to the sin of the golden calf as the δευτέρωσις, on which see Azzan Yadin-Israel, “Qabbalah, Deutero\sis, and Semantic Incommensurability: A Preliminary Study,” in Envisioning Judaism: Studies in Honor of Peter Schäfer on the Occasion of his Seventieth Birth-day, ed. Ra’anan Boustan, Klaus Hermann, Reimund Leicht, et al. (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013), 917–40.

15. Birger Gerhardsson, the scholar most closely associated with the attempt to draw parallels between rabbinic oral-traditional practices and early Christian and gos-pel transmission, has been criticized for paying insufficient attention to the dating of rabbinic sources, relying on much later (often Babylonian) statements as a basis for comparison; see, Birger Gerhardsson, Memory and Manuscript: Oral Tradition and Written Transmission in Rabbinic Judaism and Early Christianity, trans. Eric Sharpe (Uppsala: Gleerup, 1961). By working almost exclusively with the earlier authorities preserved in Tannaitic sources, and including some key statements by Josephus, I hope to plausibly situate Papias along a continuum of first and second century Pal-estinian practices.

16. Fragment 5 (Ehrman, 2:106–7) and fragment 1.4 (Ehrman, 2:94–95), respectively.

According to Jerome, then, Papias propagates a mishnah—a Jewish extra-scriptural tradition—regarding the millennium.14 Jerome’s testimony is, of course, far-removed from Papias, but the notion that Papias’s traditions are affiliated with Jewish mishnayot (whatever the precise understand-ing of this affiliation) is suggestive and, as the following analysis argues, altogether on point.

The testimonies of Eusebius (παράδοσις as an unwritten oral tradition) and Jerome (δευτέρωσις as a Pharisaic received tradition) are late and must be taken with more than a grain of salt. Still, they are evidence that some of the leading authors of the first Christian centuries understood Papias as a champion of oral tradition in something like the sense that Josephus and the Gospels attribute to the Pharisees, and Tannaitic sources attribute to the rabbinic sages. If nothing else, these testimonies raise the possibility that there are other, less immediately evident similarities between Papias and early rabbinic oral-traditional terminology.15

Auditor

Jerome opens his Papias entry in Vir. Ill. by referring to his subject as “Papias the hearer of John” (Iohannis auditor), and similar language is used earlier by Irenaeus: “Papias . . . the one who heard John (ὁ Ἰωάννου μὲν ἀκουστής).”16 These phrases are a bit odd: in what sense was Papias the hearer of John? Many people heard him over the course of his life, so presumably a phrase such as “Papias who heard John” or “Papias who was present when John spoke” would have been more apposite. But it is not odd to speak of Papias in this manner if “hearing” is a technical term


17. I will discuss this term below; Ehrman translates: “interpreter [Or: translator].”18. Fragment 3.15 (Ehrman, 2:102–3); emphasis added.19. Fragment 3.2 (Ehrman, 2:98–99); emaphsis added.20. Fragment 3.7 (Ehrman, 2:100–101); I have departed from Ehrman’s translation:

“he himself had listened to Aristion and the elder John.”21. Herbert Danby, trans., The Mishnah (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1933),

537 renders the last phrase: “We have heard no tradition about these.”

for the reception of oral traditions from an authorized source, as we see from the following:

When Mark was the ἑρμηνευτής17 of Peter, he wrote down accurately everything that he recalled of the Lord’s words and deeds—but not in order. For he neither heard the Lord nor accompanied him; but later, as I indicated, he accompanied Peter, who used to adapt his teachings for the needs at hand, not arranging, as it were, an orderly composition of the Lord’s sayings. And so Mark did nothing wrong by writing some of the matters as he remembered them. For he was intent on just one purpose: to leave out nothing that he heard or to include any falsehood among them.18

We will have occasion to examine this passage more closely below. My point now is merely that Mark’s “hearing” refers to the reception of tra-ditions. Papias defends Mark’s decision to record the words and deeds of the Lord without imposing order on them on the grounds that he did not hear the Lord, that is, did not receive traditions directly from Jesus, but rather from Peter, who recited them in a different order as determined by the needs at hand. Mark presents the Jesus traditions in unordered form because he heard them in unordered form, which Papias finds altogether laudable since Mark’s goal was not to reconstruct Jesus’ original order (to which he had no direct access), but rather “to leave out nothing that he heard or to include any falsehood among them.”

Papias uses similar language in reference to his own work. When he receives traditions via intermediaries, he states that “. . . he himself nei-ther heard nor saw in person any of the holy apostles . . . [rather] received the matters of faith from those known to them.”19 Here hearing parallels the reception of the traditions known as “matters of faith.” But when Papias receives a tradition directly “he indicates that he himself was the ear- witness (αὐτήκοος) of Aristion and the elder John.”20

This oral-traditional sense of “hear” is attested in Tannaitic sources. For example, in m. Bekhorot 6.8, we find a discussion of the blemishes that disqualify an animal from being offered as sacrifice: “Ila enumerated these blemishes in Yavne and the sages consented. But he added three more and they said to him: ‘We have not heard these.’”21 This concluding


22. Sifra Nedava, parashah 4.4–5.23. Though not its only meaning, in Tannaitic sources halakhah generally denotes

extra-scriptural teachings, perhaps an ellipsis of halakhah le-moshe mi-sinai, “a ruling transmitted from Moses at Sinai.” On this phrase see Christine Hayes, “Halakhah leMoshe mi-Sinai in Rabbinic Sources: A Methodological Case Study,” in The Synop-tic Problem in Rabbinic Literature, ed. Shaye J. D. Cohen (Providence, R. I.: Brown Judaic Studies, 2000), 61–117, especially 66–77.

statement indicates the sages’ unfamiliarity with the last three blemishes by stating they had “not heard” them, that is, had received no tradition about them. Similarly, m. ʾ Avot 5.7 urges that a sage admit ignorance when he has received no tradition regarding a matter—an injunction couched in terms of hearing: “of what he has not heard he says ‘I have not heard.’”

Another auditory reference to received tradition occurs in the Sifra’s interpretation of Leviticus 1.5.22 Rabbi Akiva draws an analogy between two of the sacrificial acts enumerated in the verse, the collection of the blood and its dashing, an analogy met with a harsh response from Rabbi Akiva’s senior colleague, Rabbi Tarfon. According to the latter, Rabbi Akiva’s argument fails on the grounds that collecting and dashing are sub-stantively different rites and so cannot be used as elements in a midrashic analogy: “May I lose my sons if I did not hear a clear distinction between the collection of the blood and its dashing, but I cannot explain it.” This attack is not interpretive but rather hinges on what Rabbi Tarfon heard, that is, received as an extra-scriptural tradition. Rabbi Akiva then offers an explanation that acknowledge s the difference between collection and dashing, even as it maintains the viability of his original argument. To this Rabbi Tarfon replies: “May I lose my sons! You have not swerved to the right or the left. It was I who received the oral tradition but was unable to explain while you explicate (doresh) and agree with the oral tradition (shemuʿ ah) . . . ,” referring to tradition as shemuʿah, literally “the thing heard.”

Closer still to Papias’s language is the following debate between the same two rabbis:

Any movable object conveys impurity if it is as thick as an ox-goad. Rabbi Tarfon said: “May I lose my sons if this is not a perverted tradition (halakhah)23 that the hearer (ha-shomeʿ a) heard wrongly . . .” Rabbi Akiva said: “I will amend such that the words of the sages are sustained . . .” (m. ʾOholot 16.1)

The mishnah opens with an anonymous statement regarding the requisite size for a movable object to convey impurity, but Rabbi Tarfon knows of another tradition that appears to contradict the opening ruling, the accu-


24. The identification of individuals as authorized recipients of traditions is indica-tive of what Kenneth Bailey calls a formal controlled tradition. Bailey distinguishes three types of tradition: informal uncontrolled tradition (e.g., rumors); informal con-trolled tradition (whose transmission is communal but to some extent ritualized); and formal controlled tradition which is passed down a recognized chain of transmission with the goal of precise preservation. See K. E. Bailey, “Informal Controlled Oral Tradition and the Synoptic Gospels,” Asia Journal of Theology 5 (1991): 34–51. I learned of Baily’s work, and came to appreciate its significance, through Bauckham’s discussion, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, 252–63.

25. Ehrman translates “a companion of one of the elders,” on which see the dis-cussion of parakoloutheo\, below.

26. Fragment 3.4 (Ehrman, 2:98–99).27. Fragment 1 (Ehrman, 2:92–93).28. Fragment 3.3 (Ehrman, 2:98–99).

racy of which he disputes. Rabbi Akiva, however, offers a legal resolution that allows Rabbi Tarfon’s and the anonymous traditions to peacefully coexist. The details of this legal dispute are of no concern for the present analysis: what is important is Rabbi Tarfon’s reference to the tradent of the opening extra-scriptural tradition as ha- shomeʿ a, “the hearer.” Taken on its own, the Hebrew ha- shomeʿ a could mean simply “whoever heard it.” However, the context strongly suggests a more precise, technical sense. After all, the authority of the legal tradition does not depend on some individual who happened to hear it, but on its reception by a recognized (though here anonymous) tradent. Rabbi Akiva confirms as much when he explicates the tradition so as to assure “that the words of the sages are sustained.” If so, Rabbi Tarfon’s reference to “the hearer” precisely par-allels auditor / ἀκουστής in Papias; when Irenaeus and Jerome characterize Papias as the hearer of John, they appear to be identifying him as an (or the) authorized recipient of John’s extra-scriptural traditions.24

Presbuteroi

Papias refers to elders, πρεσβύτεροι, in a number of fragments:

• “But whenever someone arrived who had been a companion of the elders,25 I would carefully inquire after their words”26

• “Thus the elders who saw John, the disciple of the Lord, remembered hearing him say how the Lord used to teach about those days . . .”27

• “I also will not hesitate to draw up for you . . . an account of all the things I carefully learned and have carefully recalled from the elders.”28


29. Fragment 3.15 (Ehrman, 2:102–3).30. Johannes Munck, “Presbyters and Disciples of the Lord in Papias,” HTR 52

(1959): 223–44; the phrase occurs at 233. See also Körtner, Papias von Hierapolis, 114–22. Bauckham argues that the title “John the Elder” is based on the longevity of the John in question (Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, 420–37), but the oral-traditional contexts in which John appears, and of the existence of “elders” independent of John, makes it unlikely that chronological age is the issue, see n.33, below.

31. Fragment 3.7 (Ehrman, 2:100–101). 32. Fragment 3.7 (Ehrman, 2:100–101) and fragment 3.14 (Ehrman, 2:102–3),

respectively.33. The oral-traditional interpretation of “elder” calls into question Bauckham’s

claim that “[i]t seems plausible that John the Elder was so called not primarily in order to distinguish him from other Johns . . . but because of his longevity” (422). First, because it entails that Papias uses the phrase “the elders” in the first list in one sense (transmitters of tradition or “senior Christian teachers”) and in the second in another (old man). Second, it ignores the fact that John is indeed an elder in the first sense, a “Christian bearer of Tradition,” and Papias his hearer, the recipient par excellence of his traditions The putative senectitude of John is important to Bauckham’s identi-fication of John the Elder and the author of the Gospel of John, a question that lies beyond the purview of this study. See Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, 420–37.

Πρεσβύτερος has a wide range of meaning in early Christian literature, sometimes denoting chronological age, other times ecclesiastical authority, but the context of the above statements indicates that neither of these are key considerations; this is another term tied to oral-traditional transmis-sion. Note in particular Papias’s assertion that he “would carefully inquire” after the accounts of the companions of the elders, and his reference to “the things I carefully learned and have carefully recalled from the elders.” Thrice, then, he invokes the scrupulous investigation and memorization typical of a formal controlled tradition when recounting what he learned from the elders. Elsewhere Papias quotes verbatim a tradition received from an elder: “And this is what the elder used to say: ‘When Mark was the ἑρμηνευτής of Peter . . .’”29 Taken together, these sources indicate that Papias’s πρεσβύτεροι are, in Johannes Munck’s words, “Christian bearers of Tradition.”30

It is also worth noting in this context Eusebius’s identification of “the elder John” as one of the main sources (along with Aristion) of Papias’s oral traditions: “Papias . . . indicates that he himself was the ear-witness (αὐτήκοος) of Aristion and the elder John”31; “[Papias] passes along . . . traditions from the elder John.”32 In which case “elder” and “hearer” mark the two moments of the transmission process: John the elder is the authorized source of traditions, while Papias, John’s hearer, is their authorized recipient.33 The elder-hearer relationship may provide the key


34. Fragment 3.3–4 (Ehrman, 2:98–99). I have replaced Ehrman’s translation of λέγουσιν as a historical present (“were saying”) with “are saying,” for reasons enu-merated immediately below.

35. Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, 17.36. It is possible for a disciple to be an elder: a disciple by virtue of direct contact

with Christ, an elder because he is a recognized transmitter of Christ’s dicta. John is both a disciple of the Lord and an elder.

to an apparent anomaly in Papias’s writings—the different tenses Papias employs in fragment 3:

But whenever someone arrived who had been a companion of the elders, I would carefully inquire after their words, what Andrew or Peter had said, or what Philip or what Thomas had said (εἶπεν) or James or John or Matthew or any of the other disciples of the Lord, and what things Aristion and the elder John, disciples of the Lord, are saying (λέγουσιν).34

Echoing earlier scholarship, Bauckham argues that the distinction between the aorist εἶπεν (“had said”) and the present λέγουσιν (“are saying”) is due to the fact that, at the time of which Papias is speaking, the first group of tradents “were already dead and Papias could learn only what they had said, reported by the elders, whereas Aristion and John the Elder were still teaching—somewhere other than Hierapolis—and Papias could learn from their disciples what they were (still) saying.”35 It is more plausible, to my mind, that the distinction lies in the fact that Papias enjoyed a privileged relationship with Aristion and especially with the elder John, but not with the others, and that this difference underwrites the εἶπεν- λέγουσιν shift. Papias has no direct access to the disciples in the first list: their dicta are recorded by elders, then passed on to the individuals who accompanied them, and, when the latter arrived at Hierapolis, recounted to Papias.36 Papias, then, must inquire after what the disciples had said (εἶπεν) to their companions, but he maintains direct (though likely intermittent) contact with Aristion and the elder John, and so is able to report what they are saying (λέγουσιν). It is not that the disciples in the first list are necessarily alive—some or even all may be dead—but living versus dead is not the operative distinction for the different tenses.

Returning to the meaning of “elders,” the term has an unmistakable oral-traditional sense in reports of the Pharisees and early rabbinic texts. We have already seen that the Pharisees and scribes accuse Jesus of failing to uphold the extra-scriptural παράδοσις τῶν πρεσβυτέρων (Mark 7.1–23; Matt 15.1–20). While in rabbinic sources, m. ʿEruvin 3.4 transmits the following: “Rabbi Yose said: Abtolemos testified in the name of five elders (zeqenim) that a shared Sabbath space (ʿ eruv) whose status is in doubt is


37. Per Eusebius, “Papias made use of the testimonies (μαρτυρίαις) found in the first epistle of John” (Fragment 3.17 [Ehrman, 104–5]). To be sure, μαρτυρία is used in many early Christian texts, but in light of the presence of other oral-traditional terms in Papias’s fragments and testimonia, it is possible that μαρτυρία corresponds to ʿedut. In early Rabbinic sources, ʿeduyot are testimonies, generally cited in the name of an earlier authority and independent of Scripture (“This is the testimony Hezekiah the father of Aqesh bore before Rabban Gamliel” [m. Kelim 2.3]; “Rabbi Zadoq testified that the brine of impure locust is pure” [m. Terumot 10.9 and m. ʿEduyot 7.2]; “Rabbi Yose ben Yoezer of Tzereda testified regarding the liquids of the house of slaughter that they are pure” [m. ʿEduyot 8.4]). The Mishnah tractate ʿEduyot, which is devoted to such testimonies, is not organized thematically but rather by rabbinic tradent.

38. See the survey of different translations in Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, 205–10. Despite some reservations, Bauckham ultimately sides with “translator” as it is “not only common but also seems more natural in this context” (Jesus and the Eyewit-nesses, 208).

39. Fragment 3.15 (Ehrman, 2:102–3). This is also how Irenaeus describes Mark memorizing/recording the sayings of Peter in Adv. Haer. 3.10.5 and 11.8, cited in Annette Yoshiko Reed, “‘ΕΥΑΓΓΕΛΙΟΝ’: Orality, Textuality, and the Christian Truth in Irenaeus’ Adversus Haereses,” VC 56 (2002): 11–46, here 27.

deemed valid.” “Testify” is here, and throughout the Mishnah, a tech-nical term for the transmission of an extra-scriptural tradition, and the Mishnah’s elders are its source.37 And elders also appear in m. Avot 1.1 (“Moses received torah from Sinai and passed it down to Joshua, and Joshua passed it down to the elders . . .”) as a link in the chain of oral law.

Herme\neute\sPapias’s commitment to oral-traditional transmission also illuminates the statement in 3.15, cited above, that Mark was Peter’s ἑρμηνευτής. Trans-lators have rendered this term either “translator” or “interpreter,” but neither is satisfactory. The former because Peter likely grew up in a major-ity Greek speaking community in Bethesda and would not have needed a translator; the latter because it does not accord with Papias’s descrip-tion of Mark’s verbatim preservation of Peter’s teachings:38 “When Mark was the ἑρμηνευτής of Peter, he wrote down accurately everything that he recalled of the Lord’s words and deeds—but not in order . . . he was intent on just one purpose: to leave out nothing that he heard or to include any falsehood among them.”39 Indeed, faithful recording and transmission appears to be the sole focus of Papias’s praise. As we saw above, Papias endorses Mark’s unordered writing in similar terms: he had not heard the Lord, but only Peter, and since the latter used to apply Jesus’ teachings to the needs at hand, Mark heard the traditions unordered, presumably memorized them unordered, then recalled and codified them unordered. Nothing in all this conforms with Mark being either Peter’s translator or his interpreter: what, then, is a ἑρμηνευτής?


40. See, E. Stauffer, “Der Methurgeman des Petrus,” in Neutestamentliche Auf-sätze: Festschrift für Josef Schmid, ed. J Blinzler, O. Kuss, and F. Mussner (Regens-burg: Pustet, 1963), 283–93. For additional proposals of Hebrew or Aramaic terms in Papias see Hermann Herbert Schmidt, “Semitismen bei Papias,” Theologische Zeitschrift 44 (1988): 135–46.

41. Sifre Numbers §140 (Kahana, 1:סו). And see the parallel in the Sifre Zuta to Numbers, Pinhas 27, §19 (H. S. Horovitz, Sifre Zuta [Lepzig: G. Fock, 1917], 321).

Ethelbert Stauffer’s argument that Papias’s ἑρμηνευτής is a Greek ren-dering of the Aramaic meturgeman represents a decisive step forward.40 Stauffer’s claim rests on a series of parallels he draws between Aramaic and Greek Bible translations or commentaries: “[Aaron] shall serve as a mouth for you” (Exod 4.16) is translated “serve as a turgeman” in Tar-gum Neofiti, while Philo (Vit. Mos. 1.84) refers to him as his brother’s ἐρμηνεύς; the biblical hapax legomenon malı \s in Genesis 42.23 (“[Joseph’s brother] did not know that Joseph understood them, since he spoke to them through a malîs˘”) is translated as meturgeman in Onqelos and again as ἐρμηνεύς in Philo (Jos. 175). Stauffer’s argument falters when he understands meturgeman as “translator,” a well-established meaning of ἐρμηνεύς, but one that leaves us in the same straits as before. But the term (or its Hebrew cognate) has another meaning in Tannaitic sources:

“So the Lord said to Moses, ‘Take Joshua son of Nun, a man in whom is the spirit, and lay your hand upon him’” (Num 27.18): He said to him, “Moses, give a turgeman to Joshua, who will ask and inquire and offer instruction during your lifetime, so that when you depart from this world Israel will not say, ‘during the lifetime of your master you did not speak but now you speak!’”41

In Numbers 27.18, God commands Moses to call Joshua forth and ordain him in the presence of the congregation, thereby preparing the way for the transition toward a new leader. The Sifre, however, interprets “lay your hand upon him” as God demanding that Moses “give a turgeman to Joshua,” that is, grant him the authority to transmit received traditions to an authorized recipient. After all, God commands Moses to “give him some of your authority, so that all the congregation of the Israelites may obey” (Num 27.20)—how else, the Sifre argues, can this be achieved except through oral-traditional transmission? The turgeman will “ask and inquire and offer instruction,” that is, gain a thorough understand-ing of Joshua’s rulings and communicate them the Israelites. This step, the Tannaitic passage imagines, will prevent gainsayers from undermining Joshua’s leadership on the grounds that he has not been fully authorized by Moses to offer instruction during his master’s lifetime. The turgeman, in other words, is charged with accurately preserving the teachings of a


42. Though this term does not occur in Tannaitic sources, I use it as it is the more familiar term.

43. The only difference I can see involves the medium of preservation: Mark receives the traditions orally but commits them to writing, whereas Joshua’s turgeman both receives and transmits orally.

44. Fragment 3.3 (Ehrman, 2:98–99).45. Armin Daniel Baum, “Papias als Kommentator evangelischer Aussprüche Jesu:

Erwägungen zur Art seinses Werkes,” NT 38 (1996): 257–76, esp. 270–73. Note that Baum’s position sits uneasily with the argument he champions in “Der Presbyter des Papias über einen <Hermeneuten> des Petrus: Zu Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 3,39,15,” Theo-logische Zeitschrift 56 (2000): 21–35. There he rejects the possibility that ἑρμηνευτής refers to an interpreter (it is rather, he argues, a translator), but here affirms that ἑρμηνείαι are interpretations.

master and presenting them to others, an office that later rabbinic sources will call the tannaʾ .42 Of course, the office of the tannaʾ is, in effect, that of the ἑρμηνευτής in the Papias passage—to record “accurately everything that he recalled of the Lord’s words and deeds . . . to leave out nothing that he heard or to include any falsehood among them.”43

The ἑρμηνείαι Papias mentions in fragment 3.3 may be part of this semantic field: “I also will not hesitate to draw up for you, along with these ἑρμηνείαι, an orderly account of all the things I carefully learned and have carefully recalled from the elders; for I have certified their truth.”44 Again, the standard semantics of the term endorse “interpretation” or “explanation.” Ehrman translates “expositions,” and Armin Daniel Baum argues that the term refers to comments or illustrations (Erläuterungen) that Papias added to the traditions he carefully collected from the elders.45 But if ἑρμηνείαι are the discrete traditions preserved by the ἑρμηνευτής, the term likely denotes the authoritative core traditions, to which Papias adds additional traditions he has gathered through careful interrogation of the elders that have passed through Hierapolis. This would explain why he describes himself arranging the carefully gleaned traditions alongside the (core) ἑρμηνείαι, and why he repeatedly affirms the truth of the (secondary) traditions (“I carefully learned and have carefully recalled . . .”; “I have certified their truth . . .”) but not of the ἑρμηνείαι themselves. The ἑρμηνείαι are the traditions Papias has received in his capacity as ἑρμηνευτής of John (and Aristion?), and as such are deemed secure; the traditions gathered from the companions of the elders and appended to the ἑρμηνείαι must be certified and the certification communicated to the readers.

Parakoloutheo\Another Papian term whose precise meaning remains contested is παρακολουθέω:


46. Fragment 3.4 (Ehrman, 2:98–99). 47. Fragment 3.15 (Ehrman, 2:102–3).48. Michael W. Holmes, ed. and trans., The Apostolic Fathers in English (Grand

Rapids, MI; Baker Academic, 2006), 309 (cited as fragment 3.4) and 310 (cited as fragment 3.15), respectively.

49. James A. Kleist, ed. and trans., The Didache, The Epistle of Barnabas, The Epistles and the Martyrdom of St. Polycarp, the Fragments of Papias, The Epistle to Diognetus, ACW 6 (Westminster, MD: Newman Press, 1948), 115 (cited as fragment 2.3) and 118 (cited as fragment 2.15), respectively.

50. Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, 15 and 15 n.17. In the same note, Bauckham asserts that Schoedel “rightly but awkwardly, translates: ‘someone . . . who had actually attended the elders.’” See William Schoedel, Apostolic Fathers, vol. 5, Polycarp, Martyrdom of Polycarp, Fragments of Papias (Camden: Nelson, 1967), 99. By these criteria, M. J. Routh merits at least qualified approval since he translated the first occurrence of the word correctly (“If, then, anyone who had attended on the elders came, I asked minutely after their sayings . . .”). See Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, eds., The Ante-Nicene Fathers (New York: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1885; Peabody, MA.: Hendrickson, 1999), 1:155 (cited as fragment 6), and 1:153 (cited as fragment 1), respectively.

51. Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, 203.

But whenever someone arrived who had been a companion of the elders (παρηκολουθηκὠς τις τοῖς πρεσβυτἐροις), I would carefully inquire after their words, what Andrew or Peter had said. . . . For I did not suppose that what came out of books would benefit me as much as that which came from a living and abiding voice . . .”46

And

And this is what the elder used to say, “when Mark was the ἑρμηνευτής of Peter, he wrote down accurately everything that he recalled of the Lord’s words and deeds—but not in order. For he neither heard the Lord nor accompanied (παρηκολούθησεν) him; but later, as I indicated, he accompanied Peter”47

Translators have gravitated toward terms of companionship or of disciple-ship. Michael Holmes’s recent edition of the Apostolic Fathers translates fragment 3.4: “And if by chance someone who had been a follower of the elders . . . ,” and 3.15: “For he neither heard the Lord nor followed him, but afterward, as I said, followed Peter . . .”48 James Kleist, in his Ancient Christian Writers volume has: “who had been closely associated with the presbyters,” and “for he had neither heard the Lord nor been in his company; be he subsequently joined Peter.”49 Bauckham renders the first passage “And if by chance anyone who has been in attendance on the elders”50 but opts for “accompany” in the second “For he neither heard the Lord nor accompanied him.”51


52. Sifre Deuteronomy §357 (Finkelstein, 429). The English follows Reuven Ham-mer, translator, Sifre: A Tannaitic Commentary on the Book of Deuteronomy (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1986), 382, though I have emended the report of Rabbi Akiva’s life to accord with MS London, on which see my “Rabbi Akiva’s Youth,” Jewish Quarterly Review 100 (2010): 573–97. The rendering of shimmesh as “attended upon” is Hammer’s.

53. The ruling—cited immediately after the narrative—is that a cadaver “lays claim to its location” and should be buried where found. My thanks to Mira Balberg for clarifying this point.

54. Y. Nazir 7.1, 56a.

Though there may not be sufficient evidence to decide the matter with certainty, in both passages the term indicates the proximity of an individual (the visitor to Hierapolis and Mark) to a person who is the source of an oral tradition (the elder and Peter, respectively). Given the significant parallels already uncovered between Papias’s terminology and that of the Tannaim, I propose that παρακολουθέω is semantically identical with the rabbinic leshammesh, in the sense of “to attend upon one’s master,” specifically with regard to the reception of traditions. Sifre Deuteronomy §357 teaches:

“And Moses was one hundred and twenty years old” (Deut 34.7): He was one of four who died at the age of one hundred and twenty, and these were Moses, Hillel the Elder, Rabban Johanan ben Zakkai, and Rabbi Akiva. . . . Hillel the Elder came up from Babylonia forty years old, attended upon (shimmesh) the Sages for forty years, and led Israel for forty years. Rabban Johanan ben Zakkai was a merchant for forty years, attended upon (shimmesh) the sages for forty years, and led Israel for forty years. Rabbi Akiva studied Torah forty years and attended upon (shimmesh) the sages forty years and led Israel for forty years.52

Similarly in the (later) Palestinian Talmud, Rabbi Akiva describes his initial encounter with rabbinic culture, when he undertook the arduous physical task of carrying a cadaver for four mil (over three miles), believing it to be a meritorious act. However, the act constitutes a violation of rabbinic law,53 and when he is informed of his error he states: “If, in a case where I intended to perform a meritorious act I have made myself liable like a wicked person, how much more will I deserve punishment when I have no meritorious intent. From that moment on I did not let an opportunity pass to attend upon (leshamesh) the Sages. He said: Whoever does not attend upon (meshammesh) the sages merits death.”54

The proposed meaning fits the two Papias passages beautifully. In 3.4, Papias states that he used to “carefully inquire after [the elders’] words” because the new arrival παρηκολούθησεν the elders, i.e., attended them as recipients of their teachings. In 3.15, Mark recorded the sayings and


55. If this interpretation is correct, Ehrman’s translation of Fragment 3.4 ought be slightly emended. Ehrman translates παρηκολουθηκὠς τις τοῖς πρεσβυτἐροις as “a com-panion of one of the elders,” when in fact the Greek speaks of “a companion of [or: to] the elders,” and it is precisely because the recent arrival to Hierapolis received tradi-tions from various elders that Papias must ascertain which tradition belongs to whom.

56. Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, 33.

deeds of Christ not in proper order, since he “neither heard the Lord nor παρηκολούθησεν him”—he attended upon Peter and received his traditions, but had not done so for Jesus.55

* * *

Surveying the argument thus far, I have offered a series of terminological correlates between Papias and the early rabbis. Of course, some overlap among authors (individual or collective) working within an oral-traditional framework is to be expected, but the number and specificity of the pro-posed correlates cannot be attributed to broad genre similarity. Especially as several Tannaitic terms shed light on words and phrases whose meaning has eluded Papias scholars for centuries: the odd description of Papias as the hearer of John is illuminated by the technical sense of “hear” in rab-binic sources; ἑρμηνευτής—by turgeman/tannaʾ ; and παρακολουθέω—by leshammesh. Moreover, the resulting readings are coherent both inter-nally to the Papian corpus—each pertains to the formal controlled tradi-tions Papias extols—and in relation to the ancient testimonies regarding his work (e.g., Jerome’s statement that Papias propagated δευτερῶσεις). Having set forth these philological arguments, I turn to discuss some of the broader ramifications of these findings.

SITUATING PAPIAS

Papias and the Eyewitnesses

One consequence of my argument involves what is undoubtedly the most influential study of Papias in this generation, Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. In this study, Bauckham sets forth two arguments relevant to the present discussion. He attacks the mainstream scholarly assump-tions regarding the nature of oral tradition, assumptions “dominated by a model of oral tradition that thinks of collective rather than individual transmission and presupposes that the origins of the traditions were far removed, by many stages of transmission, from the form the traditions took by the later first century.”56 I find this argument convincing, in no


57. Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, 25, referring to Josephus, C. Ap. 1.55.58. Fragment 3.4 (Ehrman, 2:98–99). This is not to suggest that some of these

individuals were not eyewitnesses, or that their status as eyewitnesses had no bearing on their standing as possessors of authentic traditions. It may have, but Papias does not characterize them in these terms.

59. Dunn is correct to challenge Bauckham’s suggestion that Papias is somehow opposed to oral tradition, since Papias contrasts the “living voice” to information from books, not to oral tradition. See James D. G. Dunn, “Eyewitnesses and the Oral Jesus Tradition,” Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus 6 (2008): 85–105, here 103. However, Dunn accepts Bauckham’s “eyewitness” terminology and in this regard is in greater agreement with Bauckham than I.

small part because Bauckham demonstrates beyond all doubt that the “anonymous transmission” model is irreconcilable with Papias’s emphasis on known tradents and discrete chains of transmission. The second argu-ment involves the model Bauckham champions in lieu of the anonymous-collective approach, a model that hinges on eyewitness testimony and is known from Hellenistic historiography. In support of this view Bauckham tries to situate Papias among a series of sources that privilege the concept of the eyewitness, including Galen, Polybius, Josephus (who “insisted on his qualifications, as a participant and eyewitness [αυτόπτης], for writing the history of the Jewish war”57), and the prologue to Luke. Bauckham does not consider other models, and assuming that Hellenistic historiography is the most natural—or perhaps the only—alternative to the “anonymous transmission” model. The title of Chapter Twelve,“Anonymous Tradition or Eyewitness Testimony?,” offers a false dichotomy: that Papias privileged eyewitness accounts does not entail the rejection of anonymous tradition.

Bauckham’s position should be rejected not least because Papias does not employ the term “eyewitness,” or, in a more literal rendering of αὐτόπτης, “one who himself sees” and more freely “one who sees for himself.” Instead he characterizes himself as the αὐτήκοος, “ear-witness” (“one who hears for himself”) of Aristion and the elder John. Moreover, Papias is through-out concerned with ascertaining “what Andrew or Peter had said, or what Philip or what Thomas had said, or James or John or Matthew or any of the other disciples of the Lord, and what Aristion and the elder John, dis-ciples of the Lord, are saying.” He is not concerned with what they saw.58 So while Papias lists all nine names to demonstrate the meticulous care with which he has identified each of these traditions, he does not recount the originary moment in which the tradition was established, that is, the experience of the elder who witnessed the words and deeds of Jesus. Papias vouches for the authenticity of the tradition by tracing it to an authorized origin—not in affirming the eyewitness experience of its originator.59 In this


60. The same is true of Bauckhams’ argument that the ordering and writing down of the traditions of the elders constitutes “a conventional part of the historian’s prac-tice” (Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, 27). This may be, but it is also a conventional part of the tradent’s practice, as evidenced by the recordings of traditions in a פנקס (=πίναξ), “writing tablet, on which see Martin S. Jaffee, Torah in the Mouth: Writing and Oral Tradition in Palestinian Judaism, 200 BCE–400 CE (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 141–42.

61. MS Kaufmann reads סיפרי מירון, which I have corrected according to MS Parma (Palatina 2596).

62. Jaffee, Torah in the Mouth, 56.

respect, rabbinic literature offers a much closer analogue to Papias than does Greek historiography.60 So, to reiterate, I think Bauckham offers a trenchant critique of the anonymous transmission model, but the notion that Papias is best understood against the backdrop of Hellenistic histori-ography is, to my mind, mistaken: the formal controlled traditions of the rabbis are a closer parallel.

Rabbis and Pharisees

One possible challenge to my argument involves the relationship between rabbinic and Pharisaic sources. For many generations it was self-evidently assumed—by Jewish and Christian scholars alike, though for very differ-ent reasons—that the rabbis were heirs to the Pharisees. Recent scholar-ship, however, has called this assumption into question. First, there are no extant texts of Pharisaic origin. Paul and Josephus are the only two self-identified Pharisees, but neither belong to the group when they com-posed their respective works. Our knowledge of the Pharisees is drawn, then, exclusively from outsider reports—Josephus, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Gospels, rabbinic literature—some of them openly polemic. Second, the Tannaim nowhere represent themselves as heirs to the Pharisees, and in some places are vocally ambivalent toward them:

Sadducees say: “We challenge you, Pharisees! For the rule ‘The sacred writings render the hands impure, but the Homeric books61 do not render the hands impure.’” Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai said: “And have we only this against the Pharisees? Behold, they rule: ‘The bones of an ass are pure, but the bones of Yohanan the High priest are impure!’” (m. Yadaim 4.6)

As Martin Jaffee notes, this mishnah is congruent with the portrait of the Pharisees known from other sources (they are concerned with purity and oppose to Sadducees), but “it does not confirm that the literary framers of the third-century c.e. tractate believed themselves to be descendants of the Pharisees.”62 Jaffee’s extensive survey of Tannaitic sources reveals


63. Jaffee, Torah in the Mouth, 57. 64. Jaffee, Torah in the Mouth, 59.65. Jaffee, Torah in the Mouth, 59.

no explicit identification of Pharisees and Sages, a link first established in “a source cited no earlier than fourth century c.e. Pumbedita (b. Qid-dushin 66a).”63

Given these scholarly advances, it is important to clarify that the first part of this essay does not espouse a naïve positivism concerning the Pharisees, nor does it seek to re-link the rabbis and the Pharisees. First, even though facile assumptions of continuity between Pharisees and rabbis have been discredited, they should not be replaced by equally facile assumptions of discontinuity. Jaffee himself states in no uncertain terms that “[i]t is futile to argue against some degree of continuity between the substance of Pharisaic legal and text-interpretive tradition and the substance of rab-binic halakhic thought in its earliest period,”64 even while rightly insist-ing that these points of continuity “are not evidence for continuities of social identity between the two communities.”65 My argument does not hinge on claims of social continuity, but only on the existence of a shared oral-traditional authority model independently attributed to the Pharisees and attested in some Tannaitic sources. In other words, I am merely indi-cating that Papias, the Tannaim, and (according to their contemporaries) the Pharisees, all employ the terms “elder” and “(unwritten) tradition” in a similar sense.

And it is clear that the Mishnah invokes received tradition as an autho-rizing mechanism on more than one occasion. Aside from the well-known opening of Mishnah Avot (“Moses received torah from Sinai and passed it down to Joshua, and Joshua passed it down to the elders . . .”), we find more local claims concerning the transmission of a particular teaching:

• “Rabbi Eliezer wept and said . . . I received a tradition from Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai who heard it from his teacher, and his teacher from his, and so back to a tradition (halakhah) given to Moses from Sinai, that Ammon and Moab must give tithe for the poor in the seventh years.” (m. Yadaim 4.3)

• “Nahum the scribe said: I have tradition from Rabbi Meʾasha, who received it from Abba, who received it from the pairs, who received it from the prophets as a tradition given to Moses from Sinai, that a man who sows his field with two kinds of wheat . . .” (m. Peʾ ah 2.6)


66. Tropper, Wisdom, Politics, and Historiography, 48.67. Albeck, Introduction to the Mishnah, 3.

• “Rabbi Yehoshua said: I have received a tradition from Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai, who heard it from his teacher, and his teacher from his, as a tradition given to Moses at Sinai, that Elijah will not come to pronounce impure and pure . . .” (m. ʿEduyyot 8.7)

As Amram Tropper notes, the existence of these chains of transmission means that even if m. ʾ Avot 1.1 does not subscribe to the concept of an Oral Torah as it comes to be understood in later generations, “the Torah of the chain of transmission should include the extra-scriptural traditions of the rabbinic sages.”66 Both the terminology and the ideology of extra-scriptural teachings are, then, attested in Tannaitic sources, and one can speak of commonality of this sort without committing to the now- discredited view that the Tannaim represent a later iteration of the Pharisees.

Tradition: Papian and Rabbinic

Another possible objection to a comparative analysis of Papias and the early rabbis involves the concept of tradition operative in each. Papias’s oral traditions serve as an independent source of authority; he does not try to anchor them in Scripture. Many scholars of rabbinics, however, tend to efface the difference between tradition and Scripture, between the Oral Law and the Written Law. Chanoch Albeck, one of the twentieth century’s leading Mishnah scholars, describes the relationship between the two as follows:

Every text can be interpreted in various ways . . . [and] as a result, foundational books receive, over time, various interpretations. So too with the Torah. From the day it was handed down to Israel it was accompanied by an oral explanation that clarified its intent and offered a detailed interpretation of its general statements. This explanation is the Oral Law, also known as qabbalah and masoret.67

For Albeck, the Oral Law is wholly dependent upon the Written. While it appears as an autonomous source of authority in Tannaitic sources, this is the result of developments that obscured the original relationship between the Oral and Written Torahs. For “over time the law grew and expanded, and the detailed discussions and derashot that were appended to the Torah overwhelmed it to the point that Scripture became scanty and the halakhot


68. Albeck, Introduction to the Mishnah, 40–41. 69. Halivni, Midrash, Mishnah and Gemara, 47–48.70. For a fuller discussion see my Scripture and Tradition: Rabbi Akiva and the

Triumph of Midrash (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), 186–91.71. The word merubot is added in the margins.

numerous, the addendum outweighing the original . . .”68 Appearances notwithstanding, Oral Law is, then, an ancilla scripturae, with no standing as an independent source of legal authority. A more recent formulation of this view is David Weiss Halivni’s:

No law is really binding on the Jew unless it can be shown to have its origin in the Bible. Midrashic form continued to exist, therefore, even after the change to Mishnaic form. It existed in the laws that are found only in the Midreshei Halakhah (that is, those not found in the Mishnah), and it existed concomitantly in the laws that are found in both the Midreshei Halakhah and the Mishnah. For the latter, Midrash served as the ground, the justification, the life support. Indeed, one may legitimately wonder whether the Mishnah would have survived at all were it not for the parallel existence of Midreshei Halakhah.69

I do not intend to offer an exhaustive survey of scholars championing this view, and affiliated positions that diminish the standing of extra-scriptural tradition,70 but merely to indicate that the insistent “scripturalization” of rabbinic tradition drives a wedge between it and its early Christian counterpart. If rabbinic tradition is au fond dependent on Scripture, its authority claims are so different from those of, inter alia, Papias, that the prospects of comparative analysis yielding significant insights are greatly diminished. In fact, the suggestion that the rabbis conceive of tradition as ultimately scriptural is without basis. Rabbinic sources regularly contrast extra-scriptural tradition to midrash, affirm its independent authority, and, in a number of cases, privilege oral-traditional authority over midrashic. That Scripture and tradition represent distinct categories is evident in, e.g., the debate over the legal status of the Sukkot willow: “The willow ritual is an extra-scriptural tradition (halakhah) given to Moses at Sinai. Abba Shaul says: It is from the Torah . . .” (t. Sukkah 3.2). And m. Hagigah 1.8 refers to the scriptural independence of certain areas of rabbinic law when it characterizes the laws of the Sabbath, the festal-offerings, and sacrilege as “mountains hanging by a hair, with little biblical grounding but many halakhot” (miqra memuʿat ve-halakhot merubbot).71

A more robust assertion of the independence of non-scriptural tradition is found in a passage preserved in the Sifra, the Tannaitic commentary


72. See my Scripture and Tradition, 120–21; Ishay Rosen-Zvi, “Who Will Uncover the Dust from Your Eyes: Mishnah Sotah 5 and Rabbi Akiva’s Midrash” (Hebrew), Tarbiz 75 (2005–2006): 95–128, especially 96–101, and the literature cited therein.

73. m. Sot≥ah 5.2; Sifra Shemini parashah 7.12.74. m. Negaʿ im 11.7; Sifra Tazriʿa Negaʿ im pereq 16.9. Rabbi Yehuda ben Batira

does not cite Scripture, but his position appears to be based on the two week-long probation periods ordered by the priest to determine whether a garment is impure (Lev 13.55).

to Leviticus, and in the Mishnah.72 In it, Rabbi Akiva offers an innova-tive interpretation to Leviticus 11.33, according to which a loaf of bread found in a vessel into which a dead animal falls can transmit impurity to others. This scenario involves various degrees of impurity—the first level impurity of the dead animal, the second level impurity of the vessel into which it has fallen, and the third level of the loaf within the vessel—so the latter is referred as “the third level loaf.” Upon hearing Rabbi Akiva’s midrash, his teacher, Rabbi Yehoshua said: “Who will uncover the dust from your eyes, Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai, for you used to say that a future generation will declare the third level loaf pure since it is not scrip-tural (she-loʾ min ha-torah)—but your disciple Rabbi Akiva adduced a scriptural proof text for its impurity . . .”73 In other words, he invokes the fear of his deceased master, Rabbi Yohanan Ben Zakkai, lest the extra-scriptural tradition concerning the transmission of third-level impurity be forgotten, since “it is not scriptural.” But now that Rabbi Akiva has adduced a scriptural prooftext for its impurity, the ruling will be main-tained by future generations. The key point for the present analysis is that the lack of scriptural basis is not inherently problematic for these rabbis. The ruling regarding the third level of impurity was known and accepted by Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai and by his disciples even though it is not scriptural. Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai’s only concern is that future gen-erations will not abide by the extra-scriptural ruling, and Rabbi Akiva is lauded for having provided an ex post facto midrashic justification for it.

A similar dynamic is evident in the exposition of Leviticus 13.49–57, the impurity laws governing an affection that appears in a fabric. Rabbi Eliezer is queried on the matter—“what if the affection is on one stripe only?”—but he replies: “I have heard no tradition about this.” Another rabbi, Yehuda ben Batirah proposes to investigate the matter, to which Rabbi Eliezer replies: “If in order to sustain the words of the sages—yes.” After Rabbi Yehuda ben Batirah offers his interpretation, Rabbi Eliezer lauds him: “You are a great sage, for you sustained the words of the sages.”74 In other words, the interpretation will be admitted so long as it supports


75. m. Keritot 3.9; Sifra Hova pereq 1.12. See also Rabbi Shimon’s affirmation of the priority of received tradition. When asked whether his legal position is based on din, a logical midrash, he responds: “Not so, rather I declare an oral tradition ( halakhah)” (m. Yebamot 8.3).

76. E. E. Urbach, “The Derashah as the Basis for Halakhah and the Problem of the Soferim” (Hebrew), Tarbiz 27 (1958): 166–82, here 173.

“the words of the sages,” the rabbinic tradition. Or as Rabbi Akiva states: “If this is halakhah, we receive it, but if it is a logical scriptural argument (din), there is a rebuttal.”75 In all these sources, extra-scriptural tradition stands as an independent (that is, non-scriptural) source of authority, and in this sense offers a viable comparandum to the notion of tradition operative in Papias.

Does rabbinic tradition constitute a formal controlled tradition? Not always, since rabbis can transmit “rulings, attestations, and exemplary deeds (maʿ as;im),”76 not all of which will require meticulous care in trans-mission. But several Mishnah passages indicate the care with which some traditions were passed down:

If a barleycorn’s bulk of bone is divided into two, R. Akiva declares it impure, but R. Yohanan ben Nuri declares it pure. R. Yohanan ben Nuri said: They did not say ‘bones of a barleycorn’s bulk,’ but ‘a bone of a barlyecorn’s bulk’ (loʾ ʾ amru ʿ atzamot kis;ʿorah ʾ elʾa ʿ etzem kis;ʿorah). (m. ʾOhalot 2.7)

An earlier mishnah has established the minimum volume of bone required to be in a state of impurity as the equivalent of a barleycorn. The mishnah cited above asks whether this is still the case for two pieces of bone whose cumulative volume is equal to that of a barleycorn. Rabbi Akiva holds that it is—the two halves are impure—while Rabbi Yohanan ben Nuri takes the opposite position: “They did not say ‘bones of a barleycorn’s bulk,’ but ‘a bone of a barleycorn’s bulk.” Through cited anonymously, the precise wording of the earlier tradition is held up as dispositive—a clear indica-tion that Rabbi Yohanan ben Nuri believes the tradition was transmitted with utmost care and precision. A similar argument is made, this time by Rabbi Akiva, in m. Miqvaʾot:

If two persons each poured into a pool a log and a half of water; of if one squeezed out of his raiment pouring in water from many places, or emptied out a water-cooler pouring in water from many places, R. Akiva declares the pool valid, but the sages declare it invalid. R. Akiva said: “They did not say ‘if many pour’ rather ‘if one pours’ (loʾ ʾamru met≥ilin ʾelʾa met≥il).” They replied: “They said neither the one nor the other, rather ‘If there fell therein three logs.’” (m. Miqvaʾot 3.3)


77. Fragment 3.3 (Ehrman, 2:98–99).

Here the legal question is whether a pool that has been filled with three log (a measure of volume roughly equal to one third of a liter) of drawn water counts as a miqvah. Rabbi Akiva argues in the affirmative so long as the water is poured by an individual since the ancient tradition speci-fies that one pours, rather than many pouring. The other sages argue that the language of the tradition is altogether different, allowing them to rule differently on the matter.

The Mishnah also provides occasional glimpses of sages in the role of tradents of a formal controlled tradition, as in the Mishnaic debate con-cerning the age of the red heifer whose ashes are part of the purification ritual for individuals who have come in contact with a corpse (see Num 19.2–10):

R. Eliezar says: “The red heifer must be one year old; and . . . [not more than] two years old” . . . R. Yehoshua said: “I have never heard that any [was valid] save a ‘three-year-old’ (sheloshit).” They said to him: “Why do you use the term sheloshit?” He said to them: “Thus have I heard it but without explanation (stam).” (m. Parah 1.1)

Rabbi Yehoshua uses an unusual term, sheloshit, to designate the three-year age of the heifer. When other sages ask him why he uses this term, he replies that he has received the tradition in this language but cannot justify it since the tradition has no explanation (stam). That is to say, even though Rabbi Yehoshua does not know an explanation to justify the term sheloshit, he preserves it in the legal dictum because he received it thus. As with m. ʾOhalot 2.7 and m. Miqvaʾ ot 3.3 (“They did not say . . .”), the transmission practice in m. Parah 1.1 reflects the commitment to precise literal preservation constitutive of a formal controlled tradition.

The Sayings of the Lord and the Traditions of the Mishnah

To this point, I have argued for a shared terminology between Papias and early rabbinic sources, and for the broad commensurability of the respec-tive concepts of tradition in which these terms occur. Alongside these, we find another commonality that speaks to the very formation of the two corpora. As noted, Papias describes his enterprise in the following terms: “I also will not hesitate to draw up for you, along with these ἑρμηνείαι, an orderly account (συνκατατάξαι) of all the things I carefully learned and have carefully recalled from the elders; for I have certified their truth . . .”77 What, precisely, does “order” mean in this context? Nearly a century ago


78. See F. H. Colson, “Τάξει in Papias (The Gospels and the Rhetorical Schools),” JTS 14 (1913): 62–69.

79. J. Kürzinger, “Das Papiaszeugnis und die Erstgestalt des Matthäusevangeliums,” BZ 4 (1960): 19–38 and “Die Aussage des Papias von Hierapolis zur literarischen Form des Markusevangeliums,” BZ 21 (1977): 245–64, both reprinted in his Papias von Hierapolis und die Evangelien des Neuen Testaments (Regensburg: F. Pustet, 1983).

80. See Alistair Stewart-Sykes, “Τάξει in Papias: Again,” JECS 3 (1995): 487–92, who provides a survey of the debate.

81. Fragment 3.15 (Ehrman, 2:102–3).82. J. Mansfeld, “Papias over traditie,” Nederlands theologisch tijdschrift 49 (1995):

140–53, cited in Baum, “Der Presbyter des Papias,” 25 n.23. 83. Which is not to deny the possibility that both Papias and Rabbi Akiva are

influenced by the cultural diffusion of Hellenistic rhetorical ideals.84. The manuscript tradition of the Tosefta is wanting here, and the passage is

cited according to the editio princeps (Venice, 1521).

F. H. Colson proposed that Papias uses τάξις in the fashion of the rhetorical schools, referring to the literary ideal of a well-ordered collection of say-ings or anecdotes,78 a view defended by Kürzinger,79 and affirmed more recently by Alistair Stewart-Sykes.80 A main plank of this argument is the claim that Papias’s statement that Peter “used to adapt his teachings πρὸς τὰς χρείας”81 refers to unordered collections of chreiai. Since Papias also speaks of Mark preserving Peter’s sayings accurately “but not in order” (ου . . . τάξει) in fragment 3.15—this term too is understood to be rhetori-cal. However, the rhetorical interpretation of Papias is significantly and perhaps irreparably weakened by J. Mansfeld’s finding that the phrase πρὸς τὰς χρείας is not attested in the sense of “in the fashion of the chreiai” even a single time in Greek literature.82 If πρὸς τὰς χρείας is not, then, drawn from the rhetorical schools, there are no compelling reasons to hold that τάξει (in fragment 3.15) or συνκατατάξαι (in fragment 3.3) are rhetorical.

A more direct parallel to Papias’s reference to “an orderly account” of the traditions is the activity the Tosefta attributes to Rabbi Akiva:83 “When Rabbi Akiva was arranging oral traditions (halakhot) for the students, he would say: ‘Whoever has an argument about his colleague let him come forward and state it’” (t. Zav 1.5).84 The similarities between the two accounts are unmistakable. Each of the scholars is faced with an unedited mass of traditions—legal rulings for Rabbi Akiva, logia for Papias—and sets out to produce an ordered corpus, certifying each tradition through examination. The fact that Papias and Rabbi Akiva are contemporaries makes the congruence between the two arrangers (Rabbi Akiva mesader, Papias συνπαράτασσει) more remarkable still.

Moreover, Papias does not explicitly address the motivation for his five-volume collection, but he does recount (according to Eusebius) how


85. Fragment 2 (Ehrman, 2:96–97). I have translated “passed down to them orally” instead of Ehrman’s “given to them orally” to better highlight the oral-traditional force of τῆς διὰ λόγου παραδοθείσης.

“. . . those who heard Peter . . . were not nearly satisfied with a single hearing or with an unwritten account of the divine proclamation. And so with all kinds of entreaties they begged Mark . . . a follower of Peter, that he might leave behind a written record of the teaching that had been passed down to them orally.”85 With this account in mind, let us recall the Mishnah passage involving Rabbi Akiva’s interpretation of Leviticus 11.33, the loaf with third level impurity. As noted, when Rabbi Yehoshua hears Rabbi Akiva’s midrash he cries out: “Who will uncover the dust from your eyes, Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai, for you used to say that a future generation will declare the third level loaf pure since it is not scrip-tural but your disciple Rabbi Akiva adduced a scriptural prooftext for its impurity . . .” Now, the sages did not doubt that the third level loaf transmits impurity—the ruling was established and transmitted prior to Rabbi Akiva’s midrash—yet Rabbi Yohanan Ben Zakkai feared that this law would be breached by a future generation since the ruling has no scriptural grounding. In this regard, both Papias’s description of Mark’s codification of Peter’s traditions, and Rabbi Yehoshua’s response to Rabbi Akiva, reflect an anxiety about the durability of oral traditions. Mark is faced with those “not nearly satisfied with a single hearing or with an unwritten account,” Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai with a future generation not beholden to oral tradition.

The anxiety of Peter’s hearers is assuaged when Mark commits the received traditions to writing. And since Papias holds Peter and Mark’s relationship up as a model for his own with John, it is likely that he under-stood his codification project in similar terms: to carefully recall the tradi-tions he had received, append to them established teachings transmitted by reliable elders, and arrange them in the proper order, thereby providing a permanent written record of the sayings of the Lord. The Tannaim respond in two ways. One response, exemplified in Rabbi Akiva’s interpretation of Leviticus 11.33, is to provide ex post facto biblical prooftexts to existing traditions—and this path has no equivalent that I can see in Papias’s work. The other is to collect the halakhot in a single, well-ordered collection—the Mishnah. This second response, which results in the textual founda-tion of rabbinic Judaism, is remarkably similar to Papias’s literary project, and can be described in much the same terms. If so, the terminological overlap between Papias and the Tannaim reflects a profound similarity


between the Expositions of the Sayings of the Lord and the Mishnah as two attempts at collecting and preserving the disparate components of various chains of formal controlled tradition—and marks Papias as the single most important precursor for the literary corpus that would come to define rabbinic Judaism.

Azzan Yadin-Israel is Professor of Jewish Studies and Classics at Rutgers University

2015 \"For Mark was Peter's Tana\": Tradition and Transmission in Papias and the Early Rabbis

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Transcript of 2015 \"For Mark was Peter's Tana\": Tradition and Transmission in Papias and the Early Rabbis