historical perspectives: from the hasmoneans to bar kokhba in light ...

120 ADIEL SCHREMER
The absence of scriptural proof-texts from halakhic rulings attributed
to authorities of the Second Temple era, on the one hand, and
the close correspondence between these halakhic rulings and Scripture,
on the other, indicate that the appeal to Scripture as a source for
guidance in halakhic matters was uncommon, at the beginning, and
very primitive. The following example will illustrate this assertion.
In a baraita preserved in the Tosefta, the Palestinian Talmud, and
the Babylonian Talmud, we find the following account:
Hillel the Elder expounded (2m) ordinary language. When the people
of Alexandria would betroth women, another man would come and
abduct her from the market, and the case came before the Sages, and
they wanted to declare (lit.: to make) their children bastards
Said Hillel to them: "Show me the marriage contracts of your
mothers." They showed him, and it was written in it: "When you
enter my house you shall become my wife according to the laws of
Moses and Israel," [so they (i.e., the Sages) did not declare their children
bastards]. 47
As Saul Lieberman noted, 48 medieval commentaries on the Babylonian
Talmud were perplexed by this text. Taken at face value, it is difficult
to see what Hillel could have added to the explicit words of the
Alexandrians' marriage contracts, and therefore it is difficult to understand
why the baraita refers to it as a drashah. They took it for granted
Press, 1996 2 ], 454-74 [Hebrew]); D. W. Halivni, "Reflections of Classical Jewish
Hermeneutics," PAAJR 62 (1996): 21-22; D. W. Halivni, Revelation Restored: Divine
Writ and Critical Responses (Boulder: Westview, 1997), 22-26. Elsewhere I hope to
show that Sadducean and Baethesian halakha are closely related to the plain meaning
of Scripture, as it is traditionally taken to be (cf. Kister, "Some Aspects of
Qumranic Halakhah," 574); if this is proven correct, then, with respect to these
two groups as well, the use of the term 'midrash' should be avoided. Cf. Sussman,
"History of Halakha," 57 n. 185; D. Henshke, "The Sanctity of Jerusalem: The
Sages and Sectarian Halakhah" Tarbiz 67 (1997): 28 (Hebrew), and the bibliography
cited there in n. 88.
47 See t. Ket. 4:9 (ed. Lieberman, 68); j. Ket. 4:8, 28d (= j. Yeb. 15:3, 14d); b. B.
Mes. 104a. The concluding remark is found only in the Palestinian Talmud's version,
but it is implicit in the Tosefta.
48 See Lieberman, Tosefta Kifshutah, vol. 6 (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary
of America, 1967), 245-47.