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

"[T]HE[Y] DID NOT READ IN THE SEALED BOOK" 123
most "traditionalist" of all the rabbis, Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus. 55
All this leads to one and the same conclusion, as we have formulated
it: the appeal to the written text of the Torah as an authoritative
source for halakhic matters, and as a means by which one is able
to discuss halakhic questions, was a revolutionary innovation of firstcentury
BCE Judaism, and it was actually unknown prior to that era. 56
("although he sat down
and explicated [Scripture] all day long they did not accept from him until he said
to them 'I swear, so I heard from Shemma'aya and Avtalion'"), found in the version
of the Palestinian Talmud, reflects "a principle refusal to the drasha as a base for
the halakha" (n. 35). However, not only this phrase is absent from the parallel (and
more primitive?) version of the Tosefta, but also a comparison with the Babylonian
version seems to indicate that the issue might be different—namely, the tension
between "remembrance" and knowledge, on the one hand, and scholastic abilities,
on the other hand. On this tension, which is fundamental to the rabbinic study
circles, see A. Schremer, "'He Posed Him a Difficulty and Placed Him': A Study
in the Evolution of the Text of TB Bam Kama 117a," Tarbiz 66 (1997): 415 n. 47.
50 On Rabbi Eliezer's conservative character, see Y. D. Gilat, R. Eliezer Ben
Hyrcanus: A Scholar Outcast (Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 1984); M. Fisch,
Rational Rabbis: Science and Talmudic Culture (Bloomington and Minneapolis: Indiana
University Press, 1997), 63-64.
56 The affinity of Sadducean halakha to Scripture (Josephus, Ant. 13.297; scholion
to Megillat Ta'anit, 4 of Tammuz [I hope to touch upon this issue in a forthcoming
study; see above, end of n. 46]) has led most scholars, starting with A. Geiger, Urschrift
und Ubersetzungen der Bible in ihrer Abhangigkeit von der innern Entwicklung des Judentums (Breslau:
Julius Hainauer, 1857), 134, to view the Sadducean halakha as a 'conservative' halakha,
as opposed to the more 'liberal' one of the Pharisees. Seen in that light, it was customarily
assumed that the Sadducean position was extremely conservative and faithful
to ancient halakha and that they preserved the ancient Israelite religious cult that persisted
from the time of the First Temple, through the Exile, until the late days of
the Second Temple era. See, for example: R. Meyer, "Saddoukaios," TDNT 7:50;
Schurer, History of the Jewish People, 411; Sussman, "History of Halakha," 65 n. 206,
69 n. 226; I. Knohl, "The Priestly Torah versus the Holiness School: Sabbath and
the Festivals," HUCA 58 (1987): 104-6; I. Knohl, "Post-Biblical Sectarianism and
the Priestly Schools of the Pentateuch: The Issue of Popular Participation in the
Temple Cult on Festivals," in The Madrid Qumran Congress, 607—9. Also on the antiquity
of several Sadducean (but also Pharisaic) halakhic positions, see A. Rofe, "The
Onset of Sects in Postexilic Judaism: Neglected Evidence from the Septuagint, Trito-
Isaiah, Ben Sira, and Malachi," in The Social World of Formative Christianity and Judaism:
Essays in Tribute to Howard Clark Kee, ed. J. Neusner et al. (Philadelphia: Fortress
Press, 1988), 39-49; S. Naeh, "Did the Tannaim Interpret the Script of the Torah
Differently from the Authorized Reading?," Tarbiz 61 (1992): 439 (Hebrew).
As I noted above, however, since text-based ideologies, as a rule, are of secondary
and reformative character vis-a-vis the prevailing, 'tradition-based,' type of
religiosity, it might be argued that the Sadducean halakha is a revolutionary return
to the text, not a conservative preservation of ancient, biblical tradition. Here I find
myself in agreement with Goodman, "Note on Josephus, the Pharisees and Ancestral
Tradition," who writes, "the Pharisees were essentially conservative in behaviour,
and, incidentally, the Sadducean rejection of normal custom far more radical than
it is usually portrayed" (p. 18). Cf. A. I. Baumgarten, "The Pharisaic Paradosis"
63-77.