What happened when a heretic walked into a rabbinic bet midrash? Or better put, how did the rabbis imagine conversing with this heretic? Would they even engage with what they considered heretical views? In my new book, Jewish-Christian Dialogues on Scripture in Late Antiquity: Heretic Narratives of the Babylonian Talmud, I set out to show that the Babylonian Talmud, in at least some of its minim stories, is doing just that: the Talmud engages with contemporaneous Christian readings of biblical verses in a satirical and polemical ways.
Stories depicting minim, or heretics, are plentiful in rabbinic literature. The vast majority of these stories are found in the Babylonian Talmud. Interestingly, they almost always feature a Palestinian rabbi, generally a tanna, even though they appear in the Babylonian corpus. In other words, the talmudic stories portray rabbis who lived before their time and far away—in the land of Israel. While the etymology of the word minim is unclear (most likely a derivation from the Biblical Hebrew “type” or “kind”) and its exact meaning is debated, the context suggests it is meant as a derogatory term. In this book I join a larger scholarly discussion and ask: what is the nature of talmudic stories about minim and their interactions with rabbinic figures? Are these literary depictions of actual historical polemics, or are they merely Jewish rabbinic fantasies meant to ridicule the “other”? Are they something else entirely? This question, I believe, has fundamental ramifications for both historical research into Jewish-Christian interactions in Late Antiquity and the literary study of the composition of the talmudic corpora. These stories, in the Babylonian Talmud, are a literary genre that can potentially teach us about rabbinic awareness and anxiety of contemporaneous Christian biblical discussions
The choice to translate minim as heretics (in a specific group of stories) is not trivial. I argue that minim narratives reflect a boundary-defining discourse directed at Christians. The term meant “heresy,” or “wrong belief,” and a story featuring the min was meant to be understood as a literary attempt to raise the issue of heretical beliefs. I make the claim that the common practice to avoid such translations, using the transliteration min instead, is also avoiding the weight of the term within the heresy-making discourse. This term was used in a certain discursive way in the past, and should be understood as such when read today.
The group of talmudic stories involving minim discussed in this book was selected because the stories share a common literary structure: (1) a min asks a question or makes a claim about a biblical verse, which appears to be easily refuted; (2) the rabbinic figure answers, ridiculing the min and demonstrating his basic misunderstanding of the biblical verse using the insult, “fool” (shatya).[1]
The Christian debates, which I bring as background to the talmudic passages, illuminate the brief interactions between rabbis and minim over biblical verses and explain the apparent urgency of their reactions to this encounter. When Beruriah (b. Berakhot 10a) argues with a min over the interpretation of Isaiah 54:1, “Sing, o barren one, you who bore no child!” she points out the apparent stupidity of the min’s question, calling him a fool, directing him to read to the end of the verse, and declare his future punishment in hell. Setting the min’s statements against the background of the Christian readings of scripture, such as Paul in Galatians 4 or the Second Epistle of Clement, sheds light on Beruriah’s polemical response: contemporaneous Christian texts assume that the joy of the barren woman is the joy of the Church, which stems from her being a virgin.
Notably, such readings shed light on the possible Christian references in these talmudic passages, and highlight elements of irony and satire that would otherwise go unnoticed. The minim in these encounters represent what the rabbinic authors preserved as heretical views, found in contemporaneous Christian traditions.
In most cases, the min’s words in the story do not expose the full Christian argument, which lies at their foundation. They are often very short and enigmatic. However, one example, in this group of stories supplied more than just the typical brief few lines. The story in tractate Hullin, which included such elements as one “good” min and one “bad,” and numerous satirical elements and subtle references to Christian motifs, supplied me with a foundation significant enough to make a case for the mini- corpus as a whole.
The use of the insult “fool,” to which an entire chapter is dedicated, further bolsters this decision and the proposed framework for reading these stories. The use of this term in Second Temple literature, the New Testament, and patristic writings illuminates the semantic field of this term, which intimates an accusation concerning the proper understanding of scripture. The insult “fool,” therefore, in the min stories I examine, does not merely demean the heretic’s academic capabilities, but carries a more specific meaning in the talmudic context. It pertains specifically to the misunderstanding of scripture. This term is yet another important part of the late antique heresy-making discourse.
The minim stories, I argue, while different in many other aspects, still constitute a literary work of boundary-making discourse, similar to Christian texts which name their opponents as heretics and in their literary strategies of satire and insults. The book thus frames the rabbinic talmudic texts in their time and place. It demonstrates the importance of drawing on external knowledge in order to better understand the Talmud’s content and context. As I and others have repeatedly claimed (Bar-Asher Siegal 2013; Becker & Reed 2003; Boyarin 2007; Kalmin 2006), scholars of the Babylonian Talmud can no longer be satisfied with learning the Talmud from within the rabbinic sources only. Viewing the Talmud only from within its pages, gives us a distorted view of its literal meaning, the world in which it operated, and the goal of its passages. Scholars of rabbinic texts are realizing that the historical and religious contexts in which these texts were written, are crucial to it understanding. As part of this historical context, we must also be armed with contemporary Christian and other non-Jewish sources in order to better understand the rabbinic text. And on the other side, scholars of Christianity read these traditions as well, as doing so enables them to map the spread of literary traditions in time and place in non-Christian communities. The rabbinic sources can thus supply a new trove of literary points of contact between the two religious communities, points that were polemicized against or negotiated into the talmudic fabric.
While points of contact naturally testify to the rabbinic authors’ awareness of many Christian traditions, they also tell us something about the intended audience. Satire and parody derive meaning from, and make fun of, events and historical contexts as a whole. The joke is funny only if one understands the object of ridicule. There was no point in composing and transmitting these talmudic paragraphs, with their succinct references to Christian beliefs and satire and parody of their traditions, if there was no one on the receiving end who could understand the Christian references. For example, in the story from tractate Hullin, Rabbi is being told “good news,” using the Hebrew mevaser tovot. This good news is that his min-opponent, in the midst of a fierce debate, died, and won’t return after three days as agreed. The term “good news” appears, in the entire rabbinic corpus, only in this story. It is also a direct translation of the Greek euangelion, which in Christian traditions denoted the announcement of the coming of the kingdom by Christ. In other words, in the talmudic min story, the “good news” is that the Christian heretic is NOT coming back after three days, and he is quite dead. The deliberate use of this unique term is meant, I claim, to satirize the Christian “gospel”.
How many of the people hearing this talmudic story could “get it”? I don’t know. Whether it was an elite group of scholars or a dvar torah at the local big schul, is hard to know. But someone must have understood in order to make the composition of these stories, their incorporation in the Talmud and their transmission, at least at first, worthwhile. The book, accordingly, adds one more piece to a historical puzzle scholars have been trying to solve: how much Christianity in the Bavli? What can we learn about the rabbinic composers of these traditions and their knowledge of, and familiarity with, the Christian world around them?
Thus, the study of such stories has the potential to enrich our understanding of the talmudic stories, give us information about the literary interactions of its composers (and intended audience) with contemporaneous Christian traditions, and contribute to the growing field of study of the Babylonian Talmud in light of its time.
[1] They are found in b. Ḥullin 87a; b. Berakhot 10a; b. ‘Eruvin 101a; and b. Sukkah 52b.
Michal Bar-Asher Siegal is an associate professor in the The Goldstein-Goren Department of Jewish Thought at Ben Gurion University