15 Zosimus, *New History*, trans. by Ronald T. Ridley (Canberra: Australian Association for Byzantine Studies, 1982), 123–24.

16 David Noy, *Jewish Inscriptions of Western Europe, Volume 1: Italy (excluding the City of Rome), Spain and Gaul* (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), no. 72 and no. 65 (hereafter *JIWE* I).

17 *JIWE* I, no. 48.

Hispania, or even Gaul—and epigraphic evidence shows that there were numerous Jewish households.18 The use of Greek cannot be used as evidence, since it is also found, although very rarely, on inscriptions in northern Italy.

On the other hand, we can state with certainty that Annas was staying in Ravenna in the years 415–416. By all appearances, he seems to have been a patron of the synagogue communities involved in the lawsuits. He personally supported the requests (supplications, prayers) of the ofcials of the synagogues to the chancellery, as the imperial responses were addressed specifcally to him. The search for a patron was an absolute necessity for those involved in a lawsuit. Jewish epigraphy shows that synagogue communities sought a patron to defend their interests before palatine, provincial or civil authorities.19

In Augustine's *Confessions* (6.14), we fnd a progression that might have resembled the course followed by Annas and the ofcials in the synagogue. In the 380s, Augustine had left Africa to follow his protector Romanianus, "whom the grievous perplexities of his afairs had brought up to court" to the imperial capital of Milan. However, their stay was extended for several months. As Augustine's correspondence shows, while there, Romanianus had to count on the support of infuential inhabitants of Milan to win his case.20

It might be that Annas was able to fnd accommodation in Ravenna. There had been a local Jewish community there since the ffth century, as well as one eight kilometers south of the city in Classis. This port, which would become the largest port on

18 I.e., according to the *Notitia dignitatum*, the fve dioceses of the praetorian prefect in Italy.

19 David Noy and Tessa Rajak, 'Archisynagogoi: Ofce, Title and Social Status in the Greco-Jewish Synagogue', *Journal of Roman Studies* 83 (1993): 75–93; Francesco Grelle, 'Patroni ebrei in città tardoantiche', *Epigrafa e territorio, politica e societa. Temi di antichità romane*, ed. by Mario Pani (Bari: Edipuglia, 1994), 139–58.

20 See Peter Brown, *Augustine of Hippo*: *A Biography* (London: Faber & Faber, 1967), 112.

the Adriatic, opened the doors of Annonarian Italy to the Orient, Africa, and Spain. 21 We may also suppose that Annas benefted from connections and support among palatine ofcials. As the March 418 imperial constitution shows, there were Jews in the ofces of the chancellery who had probably arrived from Milan with other ofcials when the imperial court was moved in 402.

How to explain Annas's success in the chancellery in Ravenna? Did he have a political career in a city, like other Jewish patrons? In Minorca, Theodorus chose a municipal career, although as an ofcial from the synagogue, probably an archisynagogue, he could have claimed immunity from *munera civiles*. 22 This was certainly why he was successfully elected *defensor civitatis* by the civic community, Christians included. In the era when Severus was writing, i.e., at the beginning of 418, Theodorus then became patron of the city of Magona, and his brother Caecilianus succeeded him as *defensor civitatis*. 23 We can see that these Jews owed their political power to the fact that they had local careers. In the same way, in Venosa in southern Italy, the Jew Marcellus, *pater pateron* of the Jews, was also involved in municipal life. The citizens of Venosa designated him as their *patronus*. 24 It is possible that Annas also had a municipal career.

Another possibility is that he had a career in the imperial administration, either at the provincial level or in the imperial palace in Rome, Milan, or Ravenna. When they had the means to do so, citizens of cities preferred to take ofcials as patrons, even senior ofcials with *dignitas*, who were in the best position to defend them.25 This second possibility seems less likely, as

21 Lellia Cracco Ruggini, *Gli ebrei in età tardoantica: Presenze, intolleranze, incontri* (Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 2011), 228, no. 103; Michael Toch, *The Economic History of European Jews: Late Antiquity and Early Middle Ages* (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 39.

22 On the strategies of choice employed by notable men from the synagogue, see Nemo-Pekelman, 'The Involvement of Jews in Municipal Life'.

23 Severus, *Letter*, 84–85 (*Epistula* 6).

24 *JIWE* I, nos. 90 and 114.

25 See Francesco Grelle, 'Patroni ebrei in città tardoantiche', 139–58.

it seems that if Annas had been granted *dignitas*, the imperial constitution would have mentioned him with this title and not with the title of *didascalus*. 26

It is quite interesting to note that Annas presented himself to the authorities as a *didascalus*, literally, 'a teacher'. In fourth-century Rome, the title was also used by Christians. In western Jewish inscriptions, the titles *mathetes*, *mathetes sophon*, *nomomathes*, and *nomodidaskalos* are also found. The last is the exact equivalent of the title of Theodorus of Minorca, whom Severus called a *doctor legis*. As Scott Bradbury explains: "The variety of titles referring to teachers and students of the Law attests that study of the Law was a central activity for Diaspora Jews."27 We know that, in the West, there were experts in the Law who did not carry the title of rabbi and who were totally foreign to the Talmudic scholars coming from the schools of Palestine.

Was he an ofcial from the synagogue, just as Theodorus was the archisynagogue of the community in Magona? The addresses of the imperial constitutions of 415 and 416 are ambiguous. They may signify that Annas intervened as archisynagogue, along with the elders of his community, or that he was an outsider patron whose assistance was requested by the synagogue community.

In any case, among the teachers of the Law and the ofcials from the synagogue, Annas probably had a specifc profle insofar as he belonged both to the Jewish world and apparently had the cultural, economic, and social capital to move successfully through the upper echelons of the imperial chancellery in Ravenna. This expert in Mosaic Law was therefore a member of the elite of the synagogue while at the same time he was, in a certain way, also a member of the political elite.

This conclusion leads me to associate Annas with the Jewish milieu that produced the famous *Collatio Legum Mosaicarum et Romanarum*. It appears to be an apologetic work defending Jewish

26 In other constitutions, Jewish authorities (patriarchs in Palestine) are mentioned with the titles of their dignities. Cf. *Cod. Theod.* 16.8.8 and 16.8.22 (Linder, *The Jews in Roman Imperial Legislation*, 187 and 269).

27 Severus, *Letter*, 30–31.

religious practices against pagan and Christian critics: it stresses the great antiquity of Mosaic Law (from the Pentateuch) and emphasizes its conformity to the Roman legal system. Ever since its publication by Eduardo Volterra in 1930, numerous scholars have attributed this Western work, written in Latin, to a Jewish author.28 Leonard Rutgers proves this in a particularly interesting manner by placing the work within the larger framework of Jewish and Christian attitudes towards the Torah from the end of the fourth century.29

We can also associate Annas with the milieu that produced the *Incipit Epistola Anne ad Senecam de superbia et idolis.* This letter, the end of which is missing, begins with a panegyric to God, continues with an attack against those who believe that they can understand the mysteries of the world without God, and ends with a condemnation of the cult of idols. For this reason, it should be regarded as a treatise designed to carry the sympathy and favour of a pagan audience. Bernhard Bischof, who discovered the letter and published the *editio princeps,*  regards it as a "Jewish-apologetic missionary treatise" of the fourth century. The author may be Jewish, because he refers neither to Jesus nor to Christian theological ideas. The dating is taken from its linguistic characteristics. According to Bischof, it was written before 325, as from the laws of Constantine onwards, Jewish missionary activities were banned.30 Rutgers thinks it was possibly composed after 325, because some of the issues it addresses had previously been addressed by Lactantius in his *Divinarum Institutionum*, written at the beginning of the fourth century. Rutgers emphasizes that the biblical passages included in the letter address issues that are not typically Jewish,

28 Edoardo Volterra, *Collatio Legum Mosaicarum et Romanarum* (Rome: Bardi, 1930).

29 Leonard V. Rutgers, *The Jews in Late Ancient Rome: Evidence of Cultural Interaction in the Roman Diaspora* (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 219–53. See also Cracco Ruggini, *Gli ebrei in età tardoantica*, 301–25.

30 Bernhard Bischof, *Anecdota Novissima: Texte des vierten bis sechzehnten Jahrhunderts* (Stuttgart: A. Hiersemann, 1984), 1–9.

but rather raise questions recognizable to non-Jews interested in popular philosophic discourse.31

The author of the work may have been a cultivated Jew who travelled in mixed intellectual circles. Peter Brown shows how, in cities such as Carthage, Rome, and Milan, the elites from the generation of Augustine shared a common discourse linked by the Greek ideal of *paideia*. The representatives of the Roman traditional religion debated philosophical and religious themes with Neoplatonists, Manicheans, and Christians.32

The incipit of the letter refers to the name of Annas. According to Bischof, the title does not designate the true author of the work, who is anonymous. In fact, this incipit would seem to indicate that Annas was a contemporary of Seneca and thus a man of the frst century CE, either the frst high priest of the newly formed Roman province of Judaea, who died around 40, or the Annas who was high priest from 62–68. However, Rutgers hypothesizes that only the name of the Stoic philosopher is apocryphal. Annas could therefore be the true author of the work. This Annas, who lived in the fourth century, chose to write a fctitious dialogue with the philosopher. Rutgers identifes him with the man mentioned in the imperial constitutions of 415 and 416.33

In a certain sense, what I have said about Annas in the preceding lines may add to this hypothesis. His social and cultural profle seems to match. According to Rutgers, the work may be of uncertain Roman origin, and the Annas mentioned in the imperial constitutions may well have originated from the very important Jewish community in Rome. In particular, it seems that the concerns noted in the letter and in the imperial constitutions are similar. The letter talks about a pagan audience in an apologetic and missionary sense, and the matter leading to both imperial constitutions of 415 and 416 concerns cases of conversion.

31 Rutgers, *The Jews in Late Ancient Rome*, 255.

32 Brown, *Augustine of Hippo*, chap. 7.

33 Rutgers, *The Jews in Late Ancient Rome*, 254.

Even if this identifcation depends on rather weak evidence, it is nevertheless likely that the authors of the *Collatio* and the *Epistola Anne ad Senecam* came from a western Jewish literary and political elite, to which the Annas of the imperial constitutions also belonged, a patron of the community, teacher of the Law, and a skilled politician.

In any case, what interests us in terms of the theme of this volume is that the events of 415–418 cast an unexpected light on the sociological and intellectual profle of Jewish elites from the western part of the Mediterranean, who appear as Romanized Jews "instructed in the liberal arts" (*Cod. Theod*. 16.8.24). Thus, as Rutgers notes, the diference between the political and social situation of western Jewish populations and the Jewish populations of Constantinople and the Hellenistic cities of the East—still very powerful in the ffth century, as we know from renewed archaeological research—may not have been as wide as we usually think.34

## **Bibliography**

Andt, Edouard, *La procédure par rescrit* (Place: Sirey, 1920).

Brown, Peter, *Augustine of Hippo: A Biography* (London: Faber & Faber, 1967).

———, *The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity* (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), http://dx.doi.org/10.7208/ chicago/9780226076386.001.0001.

Cracco Ruggini, Lellia, *Gli ebrei in età tardoantica: Presenze, intolleranze, incontri* (Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 2011), http://dx.doi.org/10.5840/ agstm1988281/217.

34 Ibid., 256.

## **9. RABBIS IN SOUTHERN ITALIAN JEWISH INSCRIPTIONS FROM LATE ANTIQUITY TO THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES**

*Giancarlo Lacerenza (University of Naples "L'Orientale")*

### **1.0. Premise**

Many questions inherent in the wide catalogue of the so-called epigraphical rabbis in the ancient Mediterranean were already been directly posed more than thirty years ago in an important article by Shaye J. D. Cohen. The very same questions have more recently been reconsidered by Hayim Lapin, building on Cohen's work, within the framework of a debate that has interested a number of scholars for many years.1

In the following pages, I shall not reopen the discussion of earlier conclusions, which are presumed to be well-known to all specialists. Our goal, starting from the preliminary conclusions drawn up by Cohen and Lapin, shall be to focus more closely on the epigraphs of southern Italy where, more than in any other place, the epigraphic evidence shows how, between the ffth and ninth centuries, the title *rabbi* gradually lost its vagueness and became connected, at least in ofcial (funerary) epigraphs, only with people arguably related to rabbinic Judaism.

1 Shaye J. D. Cohen, 'Epigraphical Rabbis', *Jewish Quarterly Review* 72 (1981): 1–17; Hayim Lapin, 'Epigraphical Rabbis: A Reconsideration', *Jewish Quarterly Review* 101 (2011): 311–46.

## **2.0. The Rome Anomaly**

In the list of epigraphical rabbis drawn up by Cohen, limited to the period between the third and seventh centuries CE, there can be found just fve inscriptions covering the Mediterranean, from the Aegean area to the Iberian Peninsula. Among them, one text belongs to Cyprus (Lapethos/Karavas), one to North Africa (Volubilis), one to Spain (Emerita), and two to southern Italy (Naples and Venosa). Lapin's list, slightly more precise, rightly includes in the same entry not only the Western Diaspora, but also the Eastern and collects as a whole a total of ten inscriptions (double Cohen's tally). The *tituli* for southern Italy increase from two to three (Naples, Venosa, Brusciano). An increase to two is also recorded in the case of North Africa (a text from Cyrenaica has been added), while counts of one each persist for Cyprus and Spain (but from Tortosa; indeed, the example from Emerita given by Cohen is excluded as too late). Finally, there is one record in Egypt (a papyrus of unknown provenance); one in Syria (Nawa); and one in Mesopotamia (from Borsippa, on a magic bowl).2

In the map resulting from these place-names, it appears that, in the period considered, it is southern Italy—more precisely, the *Regio Prima et Secunda*—which holds the greatest number of attestations. This fact may well be, of course, totally insignifcant in itself: following new discoveries, the picture could be completely diferent in ten years' time, and so it is better not to attribute any particular signifcance to this circumstance. On the other hand, we can only speculate on the data we have at our disposal and, among these, there is also a negative circumstance, which is worthy of refection.

In southern Italy alone, about two-hundred Judaic inscriptions have been found. Among these, as we have seen above, three attestations of *rabbi/rebbi* have been found. In the Jewish catacombs of Rome, which have yielded no fewer than sixhundred epigraphs, no such attestations are extant. Indeed, as already stressed by Cohen, in this vast assemblage of inscriptions,

2 Lapin, 'Epigraphical Rabbis', 333–34.

there are "references to *archisynagogues*, *archons*, *gerousiarchs*, *grammateis*, *patres synagogae*, *matres synagogae*, *exarchons*, *hyperetai*, *phrontistai*, *prostatai*, priests, teachers, and students, but not one with a reference to a rabbi."3

Hundreds of inscriptions are found in a homogeneous context and over a period of several centuries, by no means an insignifcant sample. This circumstance, however, does not necessarily lead to the conclusion that in Ancient and Late Antique Rome there were no rabbis. If we look at the epigraphs as bearers of archaeological indications (positive or negative) and not only textual ones, it can be suggested that, for example, in the Eternal City, rabbis—if some people there were designated in this way as bearers of a *rabbinic* title—were not buried in this type of common sepulchral structure, but were buried elsewhere.

The rabbi Mattiah ben Heresh, the founder of a school, lived in second-century Rome. We do not have his epitaph, but various sources deal with his teaching both in Judaea and in Rome. 4 As for the subsequent period, considering the eleven or more diferent synagogues attested by the Judaic inscriptions of Rome, each bearing a specifc designation and possibly suggesting the existence of a plurality of Judaisms practiced there, we should admit that, at least as a realistic possibility, rabbinic Judaism was also represented there.5 Moreover, the existence of a quarrel

3 Cohen, 'Epigraphical Rabbis', 15.

4 Lester A. Segal, 'R. Mattiah ben Heresh of Rome on Religious Duties and Redemption: Reaction to Sectarian Teaching', *Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research* 58 (1992): 221–41; Leonard V. Rutgers, *The Jews in Late Ancient Rome: Evidence of Cultural Interaction in the Roman Diaspora* (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 203–04.

5 On the many synagogues (buildings and/or communities) attested in the epitaphs from the Jewish catacombs of Rome, see Jean-Baptiste Frey, *Corpus Inscriptionum Judaicarum, Volume 1: Europe* (Vatican City: Pontifcio Istituto di Archeologia Cristiana, 1936), lxx–lxxxi; Margaret H. Williams, 'The Structure of Roman Jewry Reconsidered: Were the Synagogues of Ancient Rome Entirely Homogeneous?', *Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik* 104 (1994): 129–41; Peter Richardson, 'Augustan-Era Synagogues in Rome', in *Judaism and Christianity in First-Century Rome*, ed. by Karl P. Donfried and Peter Richardson (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998), 17–29.

between the Palestinian Sages and the Diaspora religious leaders already in the frst century CE can be inferred from the rabbinic criticism of the main Roman Jewish authority, Theudas/Thodos or Theodosius, for a Passover custom not in agreement with that of the Land of Israel. According to the sources dealing with this Theudas, it appears that he was a wealthy man and, at the same time, a renowned scholar: an outstanding personality, whose authority in religious matters relied on something we are not able to discern.6 A couple of centuries later, a certain Mnaseas, who was buried in Rome in a sumptuous marble sarcophagus, possibly held a similar position. In his Greek epitaph, he faunted his high status within his Jewish community, both in the social scale, as *pater synagogion* 'father of the synagogues' (with a signifcant plural form) and also, and rather surprisingly, as *mathetes sofon* 'student of the Sages'.7 This latter is a precise calque of the Hebrew title *talmid hakhamim* and, perhaps, this qualifcation was intended to stress his alleged proximity to members of the rabbinic movement.

A similar title, *nomodidaskalos* 'teacher of the Law', appears just once in Rome, in Vigna Randanini.8 Unfortunately, while a rabbi might be, among other things, a *nomodidaskalos*, it is impossible to postulate a rabbi behind every teacher of the Law: this explains why the term is still controversial, even considering that, in the New Testament, *nomodidaskalos* almost always appears in connection with the Pharisees (e.g., Luke 5.17; Acts 5.34; but not in 1 Tim. 1.7).9 It could be added that *nomodidaskalos* is an

6 Rutgers, *The Jews in Late Ancient Rome*, 204 and 207. For a recent overview on the rabbinic interest in Italy, see the work of Anna Collar, *Religious Networks in the Roman Empire: The Spread of New Ideas* (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 146–223.

7 David Noy, *Jewish Inscriptions of Western Europe, Volume 2*: *The City of Rome* (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995; hereafter, *JIWE* II), no. 544, dated to third–fourth century.

8 *JIWE* II, no. 307, dated again to the third or fourth century (?).

9 Note also, in the above mentioned *JIWE* II, no. 68, Eusebius: both *didaskalos* and *nomomathes*.

equivalent to the Latin *doctor legis* (or *legis doctor*, as in the Vulgate rendition of Acts).10 The use of *nomodidaskalos* seems, at any rate, somewhat more specifc than the more common adjective *nomomathes* 'student of the Law', found on three epitaphs from, once again, the catacombs of Vigna Randanini and in a funerary inscription from Monteverde, where the term was apparently used to praise the deceased's skill in letters or his knowledge of the Law in general.11

In summary, while the existence of rabbinic contacts between Galilee/Palestine and the Jewish communities of Rome (as well as a rabbinic presence in Rome) can be taken for granted, the anomaly of the absence of the title *rabbi* in the epigraphs remains.

#### **3.0. Campania Felix**

The area of the *Regio I* once called Campania, is the one Italic region where the Jewish presence is attested epigraphically before Rome itself. Rather than the dubious testimony from Pompeii, the evidence comes from ancient Puteoli (modern Pozzuoli) and its territory. In a funerary area along the road to Naples, the

10 A third example of a double titulary with a possible rabbinical favour can be detected elsewhere in the Western Mediterranean, particularly in the fgure of Theodorus, head of the synagogue of Magona (Mahon, Minorca), mentioned in the epistle of the bishop Severus on the conversion of the Jews of Minorca, written in 418: see Severus of Minorca, *Letter on the Conversion of the Jews*, ed. by Scott Bradbury (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 30–32. Like our Roman Jews Mnaseas and probably Theudas, this Theodorus also had a double title: as a religious leader he was called, in Latin, *legis doctor*, but as leader of the community he was called (this time in Greek) *pater pateron* 'father of the fathers'. According to Bradbury, this linguistic shift may suggest the persistence of Greek as the liturgical language of Magonian Jewry. The connection does not seem certain, however, since the expression *pater pateron*, also attested in Italy (Venosa), had a civic and not a religious signifcance.

11 *JIWE* II, no. 68 (Monteverde); *JIWE* II, nos. 270, 374 and 390 (Vigna Randanini).

epitaph of Claudia Aster, *Hierosolymitana captiva* 'prisoner from Jerusalem', was found, dating back to the last quarter of frst century CE.12 It is the same period in which the above-mentioned R. Mattiah ben Heresh is said to have spent some time in Puteoli, before establishing himself in Rome (Sifre Deut. 80). Up to the fourth/ffth centuries, Jewish attestations in Campania are limited to scarce epigraphs and various literary sources. Later on, they grew in number—not, however, around the ports, but rather in areas protected from Vandal incursions: well-fortifed areas such as Naples or inland places such as Fondi, Terracina, Minturno, Capua, Benevento, and Nola. Here, economies were based not on trade but rather on large-scale agricultural production, in a network of rustic villas and farms scattered over a wide territory, characterized by just a few urban centres with a relatively high population density.

#### **3.1. The Epitaph of Rebbi Abba Maris**

The frst epigraphical attestation of *rabbi* (here spelled, as elsewhere, *rebbi*) emerges from such a context, in the agricultural area surrounding Nola. It is the Greek epitaph of Abba Maris (Fig. 1), which runs as follows:

שלום ἔνϑα κῖτε ὁ ῥεββὶ Ἀββᾶ Μάρις ὁ ἔντιμος

*Shalom!* Here lies the *rebbi* Abba Maris, the revered one

In its concision, the epitaph is quite noteworthy, and in modern syntax we should read: "*Shalom!* Here lies the revered *rebbi* Abba Maris." The epitaph was found in Brusciano and, being written in Greek, it dates, like other inscriptions in the area, to no later than the fourth century. The inscription is a completely isolated fnding in Brusciano, and it seems likely

12 Giancarlo Lacerenza, 'L'iscrizione di *Claudia Aster Hierosolymitana*', in *Biblica et semitica: Studi in memoria di Francesco Vattioni*, ed. by Luigi Cagni (Naples: Istituto Universitario Orientale, 1999), 303–13; David Noy, Susan Sorek, 'Claudia Aster and Curtia Euodia: Two Jewish Women in Roman Italy', *Women in Judaism* 5 (2007), 2–14.

Fig. 1: Epitaph of Rebbi Abba Maris (Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale). Photograph by Giancarlo Lacerenza. © All rights reserved.

that it originates from the nearby territory of Nola, an important Roman city, where, however, the use of Greek in epigraphs was rather rare.13 It probably belonged to an extra-urban burial area, probably exclusively Jewish, as also suggested by the notable distance of Brusciano from the city (c*.* 10 km). This recalls the similar collocation of the catacombs of Venosa, well outside the town centre (c*.* 2 km), and the suburban location of the unique Jewish burial site in Naples, far from the centre and even from the most frequented burial places around the city (on which, see below). Finally, the *titulus* of Abba Maris falls in a district, though rural, with other attestations of Jewish presence, both literary

13 David Noy, *Jewish Inscriptions of Western Europe, Volume 1: Italy (excluding the City of Rome), Spain and Gaul* (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993; hereafter *JIWE* I), no. 22.

and archaeological. Not far from there, near the ancient town of Nuceria, two other Jewish funerary inscriptions have been found and, again, both in Greek: one belonging to a certain Pedonius, who is called a scribe (*grammateus*), the other one to his wife, Myrina, who holds the title of priestess, *presbytera*. 14 As is known, various hypotheses have been expressed about the meaning of these as well as other terms. My intuition is that they should be accepted literally but, unfortunately, I cannot deal with such a question here.

The title *rebbi* in the epitaph of Abba Maris has until now been considered merely an appellative, i.e., an honorary title, not indicative of a real function (so Cohen and Lapin). On this point I have some doubts. The distinction between appellative and noun cannot be established through reference to the placement of the term *rebbi*. Examining the list of attestations of epigraphical rabbis in the Diaspora, in practice the term *rebbi* has been understood as an honorifc whenever it precedes a name or patronym, as for example in *Benus flia rebbitis Abundanti* from Naples (on which see more details below). Also, when the title follows the name, it was considered an appellative, as in the funerary inscription on a fourth century sarcophagus from Nawa (Syria) where it is written simply Ἀρβιάδες ὁ ῥαββί 'Arbiades the rabbi', with the defnite article, which also appears in the inscription of Abba Maris. 15 In isolated cases, most of which lack anthroponyms, *rabbi*/*rebbi* was considered a noun and an actual rabbinic title.

14 Maria Conticello de' Spagnolis, 'Una testimonianza giudaica a Nuceria Alfaterna', in *Ercolano 1738*–*1988: 250 anni di ricerca archeologica*, ed. by Luisa Franchi dell'Orto (Rome: L'Erma di Bretschneider, 1993), 243–52; Noy, 'Jewish Inscriptions of Western Europe: Addenda and Corrigenda', in *Hebraica Hereditas: Studi in onore di Cesare Colafemmina*, ed. by Giancarlo Lacerenza (Naples: Università "L'Orientale", 2005), 123–42 (128, New 41a–b).

15 David Noy and Hanswulf Bloedhorn, *Inscriptiones Judaicae Orientis, Volume 3: Syria and Cyprus* (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004), 55–57 (Syr36).

The expression ὁ ἔντιμος, unique in this type of documentation, seems to indicate public rather than private recognition,16 but we do not know the precise meaning the writers of the epigraph, relatives or disciples of Abba Maris, intended. Should they have had the liturgical (biblical) vocabulary in mind, ἔντιμος in the Septuagint usually indicates a person held in special consideration, esteemed by his people. Indeed, it is by no means rare to fnd ἔντιμος translating Hebrew *yaqar* (e.g., 1 Sam. 26.21; Isa. 13.12; 43.4). In this case, however, a private connotation of the adjective cannot be excluded and then it would not be inappropriate to translate ἔντιμος as 'revered' or even 'dear, beloved', very appropriate in a funerary context and semantically connected with 'precious'.17 The fnal point to consider is Abba Maris's name. In western Jewish inscriptions it appears only here. In general terms, Jewish or Semitic anthroponyms in this kind of document are rare. In some contexts, they are simply non-existent, demonstrating a clear preference for Greek and, to a lesser extent, Latin names. The name Abba Maris can be explained by admitting that its bearer came from abroad, arguably from Palestine. 18

#### **3.2. The Epitaphs of Binyamin from Caesarea and Venus, Daughter of Rebbi Abundantius**

Besides the instance of R. Abba Maris, there is additional evidence that at least some of the Jewish elite of Late Antique Campania

16 On the adjective ἔντιμος here, see also Andrew Chester, 'The Relevance of Jewish Inscriptions for New Testament Ethics', in *Early Christian Ethics in Interaction with Jewish and Greco-Roman Contexts*, ed. by Jan Willem van Henten and Joseph Verheyden (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 107–45 (114).

came from abroad, from both Palestine and also North Africa. This emerges from a small collection of Jewish funerary epigraphs found at the beginning of the twentieth century in Naples, in an ancient burial area outside the city (presently within its eastern suburbs).19

These inscriptions have no date, but it is reasonable to assume that they all belong to the same period, around the ffth or sixth century. The texts are all in Latin, with appearance and formulae similar to that of contemporary Christian epitaphs. Their Jewishness is marked by the addition of some typical epigraphic .שלום, שלום על מנוחתך, אמן, סלה as such ,expressions Hebrew Moreover, three out of ten of the individuals mentioned in the epitaphs are qualifed as Jews or, more precisely, as "Hebrews." They are: Numerius, *ebreus* (*JIWE* I, no. 33); Criscentia, *ebrea* (*JIWE* I, no. 35); Flaes, *ebreus* (*JIWE* I, no. 37). Like all the deceased in this cemetery, the three bear Latin names. In the case of Numerius, his name is also transcribed in square Jewish characters. In this handful of Latin inscriptions commemorating both "Hebrews" and Jews,20 there is one that difers considerably from the others because it is the only one in Greek and the only one where the deceased individual bears a typically Jewish name, Binyamin (Fig. 2; *JIWE* I, no. 30). The text is very short, if not laconic, and reads:

ἔνϑα κῖτε Βενιαμὶν ὁ προστάτες ὁ Κεσαρεύς

Here lies Binyamin the *prostates*, the Caesarean.

19 Of the various tombs, inscriptions, and other artifacts found there, only about ten texts survived and are known today. See *JIWE* I, nos. 27–35.

20 Various hypotheses have been proposed to explain the distinction between *iudaeus* and *ebraeus* in ancient Jewish epitaphs as well as in various literary sources. The only positive conclusion achieved up to this day is that a substantial diference existed between the two terms. See the detailed discussion in David Noy, 'Letters out of Judaea: Echoes of Israel in Jewish Inscriptions from Europe', in *Jewish Local Patriotism and Self-Identifcation in the Graeco-Roman Period*, ed. by Siân Jones and Sarah Pearce (Shefeld: Shefeld Academic Press, 1998), 106–17 (111–15).

Fig. 2: Epitaph of the *prostates* Binyamin (Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale). Photograph by Giancarlo Lacerenza. © All rights reserved.

The only title present here is *prostates*, and it is possible that this refers to the head or president of the community. It has been suggested that the city of Caesarea mentioned here could be the one in Mauretania, because there is another inscription in the same cemetery where a *civis Mauritaniae* (*JIWE* I, no. 31) is commemorated; however, for various reasons—not least of all the use of Greek—I am more inclined to see here Caesarea Maritima. 21 Among these inscriptions the title *rabbi* does not appear, but it is possible, if not probable, that another epitaph mentioning a *rebbi*, found long before the other epigraphs, pertains to the same burial area. It is the Latin epitaph of a young girl, Venus (spelled

21 Other people from Caesarea and other Palestinian locales attested in western Jewish inscriptions are mentioned in Noy, 'Letters', passim.

Benus, with betacism), daughter of a *rebbi Abundantius* (Fig. 3; *JIWE* I, no. 36):22

*Hic requiescit in pace Benus flia rebbitis Abundanti qu vixit annis pl(us) m(inus) XVII d(e)p(osita) II Id(us) Iun(ias)*

Here lies in peace Venus, daughter of rebbi Abundantius, who lived about seventeen years. Buried on the 12th day of June.

Fig. 3: Epitaph of Venus, daughter of Rabbi Abundantius (*Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum* X 3303). Public Domain.

There are also two lines in Hebrew following the Latin text, difcult to reconstruct precisely from the old apographs. It is probably just an abridgment of the main text and it is perhaps to be read:

הנה תשכב בשלום בנוס בנוחה / יהי >ה<שלום

Here lies in peace Venus. In her repose / be peace.

22 The epitaph, often and erroneously referred to the city of Salerno, is lost and it is known only from eighteenth-century copies: see Giancarlo Lacerenza, 'Frustula iudaica neapolitana', *Annali dell'Istituto Universitario Orientale di Napoli* 58 (1998): 334–46.

The *rebbi* mentioned in this inscription (the term in this case is the singular genitive *rebbitis*) has been considered solely as an appellative based on the doubtful criteria mentioned above. The name does not help much, since *Abundantius* (probably the form behind the genitive *Abundanti*) is common in Christian contexts, but not at all in Jewish inscriptions. Maybe our *rebbi* converted his original name to a Latin form: if the name was Yosef, an adjective or a predicate related to 'addition' appears to be a good choice. As an aside, the coincidence between the adjective *abundans* whose Greek equivalent is πολὺς or περισσόν—and the Hebrew *rav* is noteworthy.23 The name *Abundantius* and the presumed title *rebbi* are, in this perspective, substantially equivalent, but it would be hazardous to venture further.24 Finally, the name of the deceased daughter, Venus, is of interest. Although apparently pagan, it is also an ancient adaptation of the name Esther, through its more common Greek equivalent Ἀστήρ. 25

#### **3.3. Evidence of Synagogues and Jewish Liturgies in Late Antique Naples**

As we have seen, the search for rabbis among the Jews of southern Italy has mainly led to some attestations in funerary epitaphs. These are not, however, the only ones that provide direct information on the religious life of the Jewish communities in the south, particularly in Naples.

Thanks to Procopius of Caesarea, we know that in the frst decades of the sixth century the Neapolitan Jewish community was demographically strong and politically infuential. They

*magnifcentia ut quoque vinum* :Vulgate; וְ יֵין מַ לְ כות רָ ב כְ יַד הַ מֶ לֶ ך 1.7: .Est See 23 *regia dignum erat abundans et praecipuum*.

24 On *Abundantius* as a possible translation of *rebbi*, see the ingenious but problematic suggestion of Robert Mowat, 'L'élément africain dans l'onomastique latine', *Revue Archéologique* 19 (1869): 233–56 (247–48).

25 Gerard Mussies, 'Jewish Personal Names in Some Non-Literary Sources', in *Studies in Early Jewish Epigraphy*, ed. by Jan Willem van Henten and Pieter Willem van der Horst (Leiden: Brill, 1994), 242–76 (247–48). See also Beate Ego, *Targum scheni zu Ester* (Tübingen: Siebeck, 1996), 221.

had an important economic role and were able to guarantee provisions to the city during sieges. This is exactly what happened in May 536, when the Byzantine army came to take the city from the Goths. The Jews played an important role on the eve of the Byzantine victory: Procopius writes that when the town authorities met to decide if the city should surrender immediately to the imperial army or resist and support the Goths, it was the Jewish community that tipped the scales in favour of resistance. Thereafter, the Jews guaranteed grain supplies to the city during the siege and ofered to man the most dangerous stretch of the walls, the one facing the sea.26 As was demonstrated elsewhere, this is probably the same area where their main synagogue was situated.27 For some decades after this, no further information is available, but at the beginning of the seventh century, the letters of Pope Gregory the Great (591–604) again shed light on the Jews of Naples. In spite of the feared Byzantine domination, the community still had members who were active in foreign trade, especially in the importation of slaves, whom they purchased from merchants in Gaul. 28

Among the various references in the epistles of Gregory to the Neapolitan Jews—who, in that period, appear to have already sufered from pressure to convert—it is worth mentioning Gregory's last letter, from November 602, also known as *Qui sincera*. Unlike the numerous occasions of confict between Jews and Christians mentioned in the letters, in this case it was the Neapolitan Jews themselves who turned to the pope, complaining that several citizens, encouraged by Paschasius, the bishop of Naples, regularly interrupted Jewish rites observed during the

26 Procopius, *Bellum Gothicum*, I.8.41 and I.10.24–26.

27 Giancarlo Lacerenza, 'La topografa storica delle giudecche di Napoli nei secoli X-XVI', *Materia giudaica* 11 (2006): 113–42 (115–18).

28 Gregory the Great, *Epistulae* 4.9 (596 CE), on which see Giancarlo Lacerenza, 'Attività ebraiche nella Napoli medievale: Un *excursus*', in *Tra storia e urbanistica: Colonie mercantili e minoranze etniche in Campania tra Medioevo ed Età moderna*, ed. by Teresa Colletta (Rome: Kappa, 2008), 33–40.

Christian holidays, sometimes violently. Unexpectedly, Gregory intervened in defence of the Jews, and he wrote directly to the bishop to remind him that for a long time (*longis retro temporibus*) Neapolitan Jews had been granted the right to observe their religious holidays (*quibusdam feriarum suarum sollemnibus*) even on Christian feast days.29

Who had guaranteed until then, indeed, "for a very long time," the regular observance of synagogue services in Naples? The letters of Pope Gregory give no answer but, at the very least, their contents lead us to reject a recurrent commonplace, namely, that the Jewish communities at that time in this part of southern Italy were isolated. We know from these letters and various other sources that they were in continual contact—commercial, social, and cultural contact—with the whole of the Mediterranean, from Marseilles to the Balkans, Syria, and Egypt.

## **4.0. The Epitaph of Faustina:** *Apostuli* **and** *Rebbites* **in Sixth-Century Venosa**

To avoid excessively broadening this survey, I shall not extend it into the Calabria and Puglia regions, but limit my observations to a single location: the city of Venosa, a town with a high concentration of Jews, at least from Late Antiquity onwards, who perhaps fourished in connection with the spread of local textile manufacturing.30 Venosa is known for its Jewish catacombs, which stood next to the Christian catacombs. At the time of their discovery, the tombs were still undisturbed, and there were probably hundreds of epitaphs, but only seventy have reached us, painted or scratched on the plaster sealing the tombs (*JIWE* I, nos. 42–112). The inscriptions are dated from the third/fourth centuries onward. The last epitaphs probably do not go beyond

29 Gregory the Great, *Epistulae*, 13.13 (602 CE).

30 David Noy, 'The Jewish Communities of Leontopolis and Venosa', in *Studies in Early Jewish Epigraphy*, ed. by Jan Willem van Henten and Pieter Willem van der Horst (Leiden: Brill, 1994), 162–82.

the sixth century, as indicated by the epitaph of Augusta, the only text with a certain date, from the year 521 (*JIWE* I, no. 107).

Epitaphs show that the Venosian Jews were well-integrated into local society, and some of them even enjoyed high social status. The Jews also had a degree of religious infuence on local society, as indicated by the burials of proselytes in a separate cemetery, not far from the catacombs, the so-called "Lauridia hypogeum" (*JIWE* I, nos. 113–16). The titular functions attested at Venosa are the same as in Rome and elsewhere in the West, and the community included presbyters, *gerusiarchs*, *archisynagogoi*, and *patres synagogae*. It seems that also the Venosian Jews preferred non-specifcally Jewish names, with some notable exceptions, as in the bilingual (Greek-Hebrew) epitaph remembering a teacher called Jacob (*Iakob didaskalos*; *JIWE* I, no. 48).

Besides teachers, scribes, and other people connected with communal duties, two rabbis appear in the particularly long Latin epitaph of Faustina, the young daughter of Faustinus: *duo apostuli et duo rebbites* 'two apostles and two rabbis' are portrayed as reciting dirges for the deceased girl. The text (Fig. 4; *JIWE* I, no. 86) runs as follows:

*Hic cisqued Faustina flia Faustini pat(ris), annorum quattuordeci<m>, m*η*nsurum quinque, que fuet unica pare[n]turum. Quei dixerunt tr*η*nus duo apostuli e[t] duo rebbites. Et satis grande(m) dolurem fecet parentebus, et lagremas cibitati(s).*

משכ<ב>ה ש[ל] פווסטינה נוח נפש שלום

*Que fuet pronepus Faustini pat(ris), nepus Biti et Acelli, qui fuerunt maiures cibitatis.*

'Here rests Faustina daughter of Faustinus, father (of the community), aged fourteen (years and) fve months, who was her parents' only child. Two apostles and two rabbis said the dirges for her, and she had great grief from her parents and tears from the community.

[Hebrew:] Resting place of Faustina, may her soul rest, peace.31

31 My translation, slightly diferent from Noy's in *JIWE* I.

She was the great-granddaughter of Faustinus, father (of the community), granddaughter of Vitus and Asellus, who were notables of the city.'

Fig. 4: Epitaph of Faustina, daughter of Faustinus (Venosa, Jewish Catacombs). Photograph by Cesare Colafemmina. The University of Naples "L'Orientale" Archive. © All rights reserved.

Written in a mixture of late Latin, Greek, and some Hebrew, this text has been the subject of many attempts at dating and interpretation, all instigated by the intriguing phrase *duo apostuli et duo rebbites*, known only in this inscription, which I shall return to later. Before continuing the analysis of the epitaph, I would like to discuss its context. The inscription, currently missing, was almost hidden in a small space between other tombs and epitaphs in a specifc *arcosolium* (D7) within the catacomb. As foreseen already in the nineteenth century by Rafaele Garrucci, and then more recently demonstrated by Margaret H. Williams, 32 this *arcosolium* belonged to members of a single family, the Faustinii, who also owned a second *arcosolium* (D2) nearby. In *arcosolium* D7 there are numerous tombs, some on the pavement and some on the walls; all were originally accompanied by an inscription, but most of the epitaphs have been lost over the course of various attempts to rob the *loculi*. Therefore, today we have a rather distorted picture of the original appearance of this burial place, which like the whole catacomb—must have once been very diferent: with the walls covered in light stucco where the inscriptions would stand out, painted or fnished in red, often accompanied by Hebrew terms and the symbol of the menorah. The Faustinii family was not an ordinary one. It is said of the two relatives mentioned in Faustina's epitaph, Vitus and Asellus (or Asella), that they were *maiores civitatis*—a title which does not correspond to any specifc public ofce known in the sources, but which denotes the high status enjoyed by the family a few generations prior to Faustina and so, presumably, in the Gothic period. In any case, there is no doubt that, at the beginning of the sixth century, the Jews in Venosa could have access to public ofce. In the above-mentioned epitaph of Augusta, from 521, the deceased woman is named as the wife of a certain Bonus, whose name is followed by the abbreviation for *vir laudabilis*: He belonged to the rank of *decurions*. 33 Over time and, above all, with the transition to Byzantine domination, the Faustini family must have progressively sufered from a social point of view, probably accompanied by an economic decline. However, it does not seem that it lost its prestige within the

32 Rafaele Garrucci, 'Cimitero ebraico di Venosa in Puglia', *Civiltà Cattolica* 12 (1883): 707–20; Margaret Williams, 'The Jews of Early Byzantine Venusia: The Family of Faustinus I, the Father', *Journal of Jewish Studies*  50 (1999): 38–52.

33 Francesco Grelle, 'Patroni ebrei in città tardoantiche', in *Epigrafa e territorio, politica e società: Temi di antichità romane*, ed. by Mario Pani (Bari: Edipuglia, 1994), 139–58 (reprinted in idem, *Diritto e società nel mondo romano*, Rome: L'Erma di Bretschneider, 2005, 394–95).

Jewish sphere, if young Faustina's funeral was accompanied by a following that has no parallel in any other inscription, whether in Venosa or elsewhere.

The declared participation of two "apostles" and two rabbis at the girl's funeral can be read in several ways. There is no other testimony for comparison or other sources, so these are, of course, hypotheses. First of all, since the presence of four ofciates for the funerary dirges does not correspond to any ritual need, it seems evident that this was perhaps a show of public importance—not for the girl herself, but for her family—even if the days of its greatest splendour had passed.34 On the other hand, parallel to this general decline one can trace a growing awareness of cultural Jewishness, if the increasing use of Hebrew exhibited in the catacomb can be used as an indicator. This evolution has been also recognized in the two *arcosolia* of the Faustinii, where Williams has revealed a progressive change in the composition of the epitaphs: frst, an early phase, with very simple epitaphs in Greek, then an increasing use of Latin, with self-identifying symbols, such as the menorah and, progressively, the use of Hebrew. This passes from the simple use of the word *shalom* to more elaborate texts (see *JIWE* I, nos. 80–82a, 84). Such a cultural 'Hebraization' of these prestigious Jews of Venosa in the mid-sixth century implies a small, though not secondary, cultural revolution. It is reasonable to assume that this development came from outside.

I would like to return to the four guests at Faustina's funeral. The whole passage mentioning them is unique in shape and content, considering the general economy not only of the epitaph in question, but of all the *tituli* in the catacomb of Venosa. This fact alone indicates the exceptional nature of the event, and it is clear that the presence of four ofciates at a funeral was by no means a daily occurrence. It is undisputed that the *rebbites* were

34 Pieter Willem van der Horst, *Ancient Jewish Epitaphs: An Introductory Survey of a Millennium of Jewish Funerary Epigraphy (300 BCE–700 CE)* (Kampen: Kok Pharos, 1991), 100; *JIWE* I, 119; Grelle, 'Patroni ebrei', 152; Williams, 'The Jews'.

rabbis, but rabbis from where? Probably from elsewhere, and this impression is reinforced by the presence of the two "apostles," whose identifcation has always been problematic. Many scholars identifed them as envoys of the Palestinian patriarchate in Italy who were passing by Venosa at the time of Faustina's death. The patriarchate was abolished within the frst half of the ffth century, and the text appears to be later (in my opinion, it is not earlier than the second half of the sixth century). Trying to resolve this incongruity, I once proposed that the term *apostuli* here could refer simply to representatives of the local assembly (ציבור שליחי(.35 I am no longer convinced by this hypothesis, and I am inclined to consider the *apostuli* to be strangers no less than the *rebbites*. The fact that they were emissaries from outside and not members of the local community is indicated, as well, by the very use of the term *apostuli* or rather *apostoli*: this calque from the Greek ἀπόστολοι appears in late and medieval Latin directly from the Vulgate, while its epigraphic use is recorded only in this case. Semantically speaking, it is hard to think that the term was not used for emissaries originating from elsewhere: Byzantium? Palestine? Mesopotamia?

Finally, it can be no coincidence that Faustina's epitaph, which records the presence of rabbis and apostles in southern Italy in the mid-sixth century, falls precisely within the period of dispute regarding Greek and Hebrew in the synagogue liturgy, over which the Jewish communities in both the East and the West would split, and indeed someone would decide—most inopportunely—to turn to the emperor to resolve the question. This led, as is known, to the promulgation of the famous Novella 146 in 553, whereby Hebrew was allowed in the synagogues on condition that the ofciates did not proft from the occasion to alter the text. It is not without signifcance that, according to the *prologus*, Justinian issued the Novella as a response to petitions by

35 Giancarlo Lacerenza, 'Ebraiche liturgie e peregrini *apostuli* nell'Italia bizantina', in *Una manna buona per Mantova: Studi in onore di Vittore Colorni per il suo 92° compleanno*, ed. by Mauro Perani (Florence: Olschki, 2004), 61–72.

Jews and not by the *praefectus* Areobindus, the formal recipient of the text. On the meaning and objectives of the Novella, there are already various and authoritative analyses.36 Nevertheless, it has perhaps not been sufciently stressed that rabbis as such are not mentioned at all. The only Jewish authorities who could commute punishments or issue anathema, according to the text, are the *archipherecita*, the *presbyterus*, and the *magister*. 37 The reason why the legislator ignored rabbis can be understood in various ways;38 but it may also be a strong *argumentum ex silentio* that the representatives of the rabbinic movement were not considered, at least in that period, interlocutors with the imperial power.

## **5.0. Emerging Rabbis: From Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages**

The examination of the above-mentioned inscriptions seems to support the impression that, although we cannot prove that these *rebbites* were actually in possession of a rabbinic title (whatever this would imply in that period), it must be accepted that, as suggested by Fergus Millar, these texts confrm the importance of the study of the Law, the gradual revival of Hebrew, and the coming into currency of the term *rabbi*—or rather *rebbi*, now treated as a declinable Latin word with both genitive (*rebbitis*) and plural (*rebbites*) forms.39

After the last inscriptions in the Venosa catacombs, there is a gap of nearly two centuries. When Jewish dated texts reappear in Venosa at the beginning of the ninth century, they are no longer paintings or grafti hidden underground, but epitaphs carefully carved on stones and fxed in the ground, *en plein air*. Most importantly, there are no longer any traces of Greek and Latin: Hebrew appears to be the only language. What happened in the meanwhile? This was, without any doubt, a signifcant cultural change that can be understood in several ways. Undoubtedly, the fact that the Jews in their inscriptions dropped the use of the common epigraphic languages, Latin and Greek, possibly indicates that they no longer wanted or needed to represent themselves as integrated into the surrounding social context: their cultural identity was felt to be irreversibly diferent. Who was responsible for this change? It would be tempting to say this happened thanks to a strong rabbinic presence or infuence,

39 Fergus Millar, 'The Jews of the Graeco-Roman Diaspora between Paganism and Christianity, A.D. 312–438', in *The Jews among Pagans and Christians in the Roman Empire*, ed. by Judith Lieu, John North, and Tessa Rajak (London: Routledge, 1992), 97–123 (111), reprinted in *Rome, the Greek World, and the East, Volume 3: The Greek World, the Jews, and the East*, ed. by Hannah M. Cotton and Guy M. Rogers (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 432–56. A similar and reasonable conclusion can be found in Rutgers, *The Jews*, 205.

which could well explain a funerary inscription such as that of Put ben Yovianu of Lavello (near Venosa; undated, possibly late eighth century), which is entirely in Hebrew, full of biblical and midrashic echoes, and following the taste of the times, in rhymed prose. Moreover, it contains the earliest quotations of the Babylonian Talmud (b. Ber. 17a and 58b)—or, at least, the frst allusions to it—in the Latin West.40 This inscription, as well many others from Venosa, cannot be absolutely considered as standardized or formulaic.41 They are, among other things, clearly aligned with the poetic and literary productions of that time.

The growth of the rabbinic presence in southern Italy is perhaps supported by some epigraphs of the seventh to ninth centuries from Basilicata and Salento, where three tombstones of individuals bear the title *rabbi*. The most ancient is the bilingual epitaph of Anna, daughter of Rabbi Julius, in Latin and Hebrew (undated and probably belonging to the seventh century). The title *rabbi* appears abbreviated as *R.* in the Latin text; the Hebrew version of the epitaph is longer and rhymed, but it lacks the patronym (Fig. 5).42

40 Cesare Colafemmina, 'Una nuova epigrafe ebraica altomedievale a Lavello', *Vetera Christianorum* 29 (1992): 411–21; idem, 'Hebrew Inscriptions of the Early Medieval Period in Southern Italy', in *The Jews of Italy: Memory and Identity*, ed. by Barbara Garvin and Bernard Cooperman (Bethesda: University Press of Maryland, 2000), 65–81 (71–77).

41 As they are described (strangely enough, given the rigour and general soundness of the volume) by Hayim Lapin, *Rabbis as Romans: The Rabbinic Movement in Palestine, 100–400 CE* (Oxford-New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 259, n. 45.

42 *JIWE* I, no. 195. Latin text: *Hic requi/scit d(omi)na / Anna fli/a R(abbi) Guliu et/ate LVI ani /* {*LVI*}.  שנפ{ט}רה \ חנה שנה נו \ בת. A recent re-examination of the epitaph and its dating can be found in Mauro Perani, 'A proposito dell'iscrizione sepolcrale ebraicolatina di Anna fglia di Rabbi Giuliu da Oria', *Sefer Yuhasin* 2 (2014): 65–91. For a complete presentation of all the late ancient and medieval Jewish epigraphs in southern Italy, see Giancarlo Lacerenza, 'L'epigrafa ebraica in Basilicata e Puglia dal IV secolo all'alto Medioevo', in *Ketav, Sefer, Miktav: La cultura ebraica scritta tra Basilicata e Puglia*, ed. by Mauro Perani and Mariapina Mascolo (Bari: Edizioni di Pagina, 2014), 189–252.

Fig. 5: Memorial stone of Anna, daughter of Rabbi Julius (Oria, Biblioteca Comunale). Photograph by Giancarlo Lacerenza. © All rights reserved.

Then in Brindisi, not far from Oria, there is the epitaph of a certain Rabbi Barukh ben Rabbi Yonah, in Hebrew, undated but belonging to the frst half of the ninth century (Fig. 6).

Fig. 6: Epitaph of Rabbi Barukh ben Rabbi Yonah (Brindisi, Museo Archeologico Provinciale). Photograph of the University of Naples "L'Orientale" Archive. © All rights reserved.

The second part of the epitaph includes a series of biblical verses (from Isa. 52.7; Nah. 2.1; Ps. 145.19; Job 25.2; Est. 10.3) also known from a *Tziduk Hadin* burial hymn written by Amittay of Oria (grandfather of the more celebrated paytan Amittay ben Shefatyah), and this hymn is still present in the ancient *minhag b*e *ne Roma*. 43 Finally, back in Venosa, we fnd the epitaph of a certain Rabbi Abraham. It is also in Hebrew and bears a year, 821 or 822 (Fig. 7).44 The title *rabbi* appears four times in this epitaph. The renowned scholar and Italian rabbi, Umberto (Mosheh David) Cassuto, once wrote:

In later times [i.e., from the High Middle Ages onwards], it was common in Italy to call all men by the title 'Rabbi', as we say today 'signore'. Here, however, since in this early period they did not preface the proper names of people with any descriptive title, it appears that the word 'Rabbi' is indeed descriptive of a Rabbi, in the sense of a scholar.45

Regardless of this conclusion, a stable rabbinic presence in southern Italy can be detected from the tenth century onwards, if not earlier. The progressive rabbinization of Judaism in this territory can therefore be situated between the late sixth and the

43 Cesare Colafemmina, 'Iscrizioni ebraiche a Brindisi', *Brundisii res* 5 (1973): 91–106, no. II; idem, 'L'iscrizione brindisina di Baruch ben Yonah e Amittai da Oria', *Brundisii res* 7 (1975): 295–300. The text of the epitaph runs as follows (line 1 is just a header): רבי שכב]מ ברוך בן רבי יונ[ה] \ פה הרגיע במרגוע נפש ר[בי] \ ברוך בן רבי יונה נוח נפש \ מבן שישים ושמונה שנים \ יהי שלום על מנוחתו \ קול נשמע מבשר שלום רצון \ יראיו עושה .שלום שמעו \ דבר שלום ינוח נפשו משכבו \ בשלום

44 Umberto Cassuto, 'Nuove iscrizioni ebraiche di Venosa', *Archivio Storico per la Calabria e la Lucania* 4 (1934): 1–9 (5 no. 2); idem (as Moshe David Cassuto), 'The Hebrew Inscriptions of Ninth-Century Venosa', זה(?)] המצבה [שהוצב ] :(Hebrew; 6 .no 8,–107 (120–99 :)1945 (2 *Qedem* על] \ [קבר(?)]

Fig. 7: Epitaph of Rabbi Abraham (Venosa, Abbey of the Most Holy Trinity). Photograph by Giancarlo Lacerenza. © All rights reserved.

early ninth centuries. This process accompanied the dominance of Hebrew in every part of written culture, from funerary epigraphy to the emergence of a signifcant literary production in halakhah, hymnography, secular poetry, historiography, and medicine.46

Does this mean that the rabbis in the tenth century triumphed everywhere? On this point wisdom dictates caution. Besides the

46 In the absence of any complete overview on this literature, see the introductory essay in *Shabbatai Donnolo's Sefer Hakhmoni: Introduction, Critical Text, and Annotated English Translation*, ed. by Piergabriele Mancuso (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 3–40, including a good bibliography.

impact and consequences of the Karaite movement, the episode of Silano, a Venosian scholar, is suggestive. According to a tradition preserved in *Megillat Ahimaʿaz* (c. 1054) referenceing events that took place in the frst half of the ninth century, Silano set a trap for an unnamed foreign rabbi during his visit to Venosa by changing the text of his synagogue homily. Consequently, Silano was excommunicated. He was later rehabilitated after changing a verse in another text to condemn the *minim*—probably the Karaites. If Silano was one of the last representatives of the traditions of southern Italian Jews,47 it seems that the price of his rehabilitation was the recognition of rabbinic Judaism as imported from the East.

## **Bibliography**

47 On the continuity of this tradition, see already Nicholas de Lange, 'The Hebrew Language in the European Diaspora', in *Studies on the Jewish Diaspora in the Hellenistic and Roman Periods*, ed. by Benjamin Isaac and Aharon Oppenheimer (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, 1996), 111–38 (114) and, in more general terms, Shlomo Simonsohn, 'The Hebrew Revival among Early Medieval European Jews', in *Salo Wittmayer Baron Jubilee Volume on the Occasion of His Eightieth Birthday*, ed. by Saul Lieberman and Arthur Hyman, 3 vols. (Jerusalem: American Academy for Jewish Research, 1974), II, 831–58.

———, 'Ebraiche liturgie e peregrini *apostuli* nell'Italia bizantina', in *Una manna buona per Mantova: Studi in onore di Vittore Colorni per il suo 92° compleanno*, ed. by Mauro Perani (Florence: L. S. Olschki, 2004), 61–72.

———, 'La topografia storica delle giudecche di Napoli nei secoli X–XVI', *Materia Giudaica* 11 (2006): 113–42.

———, 'Attività ebraiche nella Napoli medievale: Un *excursus*', in *Tra storia e urbanistica: Colonie mercantili e minoranze etniche in Campania tra Medioevo ed Età moderna*, ed. by Teresa Colletta (Rome: Kappa, 2008), 33–40.

———, 'L'epigrafia ebraica in Basilicata e Puglia dal IV secolo all'alto Medioevo', in *Ketav, Sefer, Miktav: La cultura ebraica scritta tra Basilicata e Puglia*, ed. by Mauro Perani and Mariapina Mascolo (Bari: Edizioni di Pagina, 2014), 189–252.

———, *Rabbis as Romans: The Rabbinic Movement in Palestine, 100–400 CE* (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acprof :oso/9780195179309.001.0001.

———, *Jewish Inscriptions of Western Europe, Volume 1: Italy (Excluding the City of Rome), Spain and Gaul* (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511520631.

———, *Jewish Inscriptions of Western Europe, Volume 2: The City of Rome* (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/ cbo9780511520631.

———, 'Letters Out of Judaea: Echoes of Israel in Jewish Inscriptions from Europe', in *Jewish Local Patriotism and Self-Identification in the Graeco-Roman Period*, ed. by Siân Jones and Sarah Pearce (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998), 106–17.

———, 'Jewish Inscriptions of Western Europe: Addenda and Corrigenda', in *Hebraica Hereditas: Studi in onore di Cesare Colafemmina*, ed. by Giancarlo Lacerenza (Naples: Università "L'Orientale", 2005), 123–42.

———, 'Justinian's Novella 146 between Jews and Christians', in *Jewish Culture and Society under the Christian Roman Empire*, ed. by Richard Kalmin and Seth Schwartz (Leuven: Peeters, 2003), 385–407.

ed. by Martin Hengel and Anna Maria Schwemer (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1994), 116–30.

Williams, Margaret H., 'The Structure of Roman Jewry Re-Considered: Were the Synagogues of Ancient Rome Entirely Homogeneous?', *Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik* 104 (1994): 129–41.

———, 'The Jews of Early Byzantine Venusia: The Family of Faustinus I, the Father', *Journal of Jewish Studies* 50 (1999): 38–52, http://dx.doi. org/10.18647/2165/jjs-1999.

## **10. JEWISH DEMOGRAPHICS AND ECONOMICS AT THE ONSET OF THE EUROPEAN MIDDLE AGES**

*Michael Toch (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)*

The Jewish nuclei of medieval Europe defned themselves religiously, culturally and linguistically—as parts of the broader entity of a Jewish people historically anchored in the Middle East. Indeed, most of them can be traced back to the Middle Eastern Jewish populations of antiquity, although nowhere by direct evidence of actual migration, but rather by tenuous lines of ritual and literary traditions that must have been carried abroad by migrants and were often reworked into myth.1 Against this mainstream approach, a persistent strain in scholarship postulates non-Jewish origins for both Sephardi and Ashkenazi Jews, claiming that communities consist mostly of converts from other faiths, most notably the Khazars. 2 The debate has not been

1 See the chapters by Robert Bonfl, Steven Bowman, and Ivan Marcus in *The Midrashic Imagination: Jewish Exegesis, Thought, and History*, ed. by Michael Fishbane (Albany: SUNY Press, 1993) and, most recently, Robert Bonfl, *History and Folklore in a Medieval Jewish Chronicle: The Family Chronicle of Ahima'az ben Paltiel* (Leiden: Brill, 2009).

2 For the hypothesis of Yitzhak Schipper on the Khazar origins of Polish Jewry and its scholarly criticism, see the sympathetic account by Jacob Litman, *The Economic Role of Jews in Medieval Poland: The Contribution of Yitzhak Schipper* (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1984). For a linguistic reworking of this notion, see Peter Wexler, *The Ashkenazic Jews:*

restricted to academia, but resonates strongly with contemporary political contentions. Thus, the origins of the Ashkenazim have been tied to the fght over the legitimacy or illegitimacy of the Jewish claim to the Land of Israel. In the heat of the political argument, the issue of Ashkenazi origins has moved from the fringes into the centre of public debate, for instance, in the writings of Shlomo Sand. A similar assertion of non-Jewish origins has been made for central and northern France, where converts of Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages were thought to have been numerous enough to produce the substantial Jewish population emerging there in the eleventh century.3

Running parallel to this mainstream/fringe dichotomy of views on the origin of European Jews, there is a similar one concerning the antiquity of their presence. Most scholars, the present one included, see the Jewries of northern Europe as recent—that is, ninth- or tenth-century—arrivals, with no continuity backwards to a sparse and hazy presence in Late Antiquity. In contrast, the Jews of the Mediterranean south are believed to have a much longer history, to the point that Italian Jewry has been called "millenary," one that "has lived in one of the Diaspora countries for a millennium or more."4 To the Italian Jews one must add

*A Slavo-Turkic People in Search of a Jewish Identity* (Columbus, OH: Slavica Publishers, 1993); idem, *The Non-Jewish Origins of the Sephardic Jews* (Albany: SUNY Press, 1996). The year 2008 saw the publication in Hebrew (English translation 2009) of yet another polemic denying Jewish nationhood, ostensibly on Khazar grounds: Shlomo Sand, *The Invention of the Jewish People*, trans. by Yael Lotan (London: Verso, 2009). In place of the large and usually contentious literature on the subject see now *The World of the Khazars: New Perspectives*, ed. by Peter B. Golden et al. (Leiden: Brill, 2007).

their coreligionists in Byzantium. There is considerable overlap between the two in most regions of southern Italy.

Contrary to this majority view, since the nineteenth century (and, lately, with renewed vigour), there has been a tendency to claim signifcant continuity of the Jewish presence not only in the Mediterranean region, but also north of the Alps, in northern Gaul and even in Germany. Here, too, present day concerns can be discerned behind scholarly opinion, for instance, the desire to present the city of Cologne as "the cradle of Ashkenazic Jewry" in a yet-to-be-built Jewish Museum that will cater to an expected torrent of Jewish tourists.5 Elsewhere, in Normandy, a sudden bloom of cultural creativity in the twelfth/thirteenth centuries could not be explained except by "a lengthy prehistory of Jewish settlement and legal rights [...] apparently beginning during the period of Roman colonization of Gaul," one thousand years earlier.6 In both cases, the evidence profered for these assertions ranges from fimsy to non-existent.

A short sketch of the general political and economic background of Europe might help fesh out the essential timeline. All regions of Mediterranean Europe (Byzantium, Italy, southern France, and Iberia) experienced a headlong economic and demographic crisis between the sixth and eighth centuries, in which the prime victim was the urban population, among which were, of course, the Jews. Each region variously witnessed slow (and sometimes more rapid) demographic and economic recovery from the ninth century or, in places, from the tenth century onwards.7 Politically, this means the mid-Carolingian period in France,

5 For details and critique, see Michael Toch, *The Economic History of European Jews: Late Antiquity and Early Middle Ages* (Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2012), 295–98.

6 Norman Golb, *The Jews in Medieval Normandy* (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 33. For a reasoned critique, see Toch, *Economic History*, 305–06.

7 Of the vast literature, see Michael McCormick, *Origins of the European Economy: Communications and Commerce, AD 300–900* (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).

northern Italy, and Catalonia; the Byzantine *reconquista* in the Mediterranean; and the formation of a Muslim state in Iberia. In terms of settlement structure, this was the time of a hesitant re-urbanization in the south—consider Venice and Amalf and of an altogether new semi-urban and urban formation in the north—to wit, the numerous commercial *wik* settlements on the northwestern seaboard and in England. It is our thesis that Jews, as with other urban and commercial elements, had little incentive to settle or expand in the crisis-ridden European regions of the frst medieval centuries, but good reasons to do so from the ninth century onwards. This is indeed the picture our detailed examination of the evidence has illuminated: a double movement, consisting of re-population in the south and of immigration to the north.8 Except for Iberia, we have not found evidence for the migratory movement from the Islamic world into Europe that has been alleged in a recent book.9

In more detail, the Jewish settlement history in the diferent regions of Late Antique and Early Medieval Europe can be characterized thus:10

In the course of Roman antiquity, Jews came to make up a signifcant component of some town populations of the Eastern Roman Empire (later Byzantium). Of the one hundred sites of archaeological evidence for Jewish life in the Balkans, Greece, and Asia Minor, more than half are on/near the Mediterranean or Black Sea shores and on islands in the Mediterranean. Of the inland sites, the vast majority are in Asia Minor, mostly on the ancient trans-Anatolian highway leading from Smyrna (Izmir) and Ephesus on the Aegean coast via Iconium (Konya) to Mesopotamia. The archaeological evidence, though considerable,

8 Toch, *The Economic History*, passim.

9 Maristella Botticini and Zvi Eckstein, *The Chosen Few: How Education Shaped Jewish History, 70–1492* (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 2012), 173–75.

10 For details and references the reader is directed to the frst part and the appendices of Toch, *Economic History*. In the appendices, the evidence for each place of settlement is laid out and critically appraised.

in no way supports the widely-held opinion of a vast Jewish population in the Roman Empire, a notion that has lately been subjected to well-deserved criticism.11

Seen from the perspectives of extent and numbers of communities, medieval Byzantine-Jewish settlement never reached the Late Antique high point. For the earlier period (sixth to ninth centuries), it is difcult to decide whether only a lack of sources or an actual demographic low is refected. I tend to accept the second view. For the later part (tenth to twelfth centuries), the decline in numbers, roughly half that of Late Antiquity, is substantial. Still, given the premise of an earlier dramatic drop in the Jewish population, such a ratio implies a remarkable recovery. The evidence also provides a further distinctive and apparently persistent feature—the migratory geography of Jewish Byzantium. It may thus be safely stated that two basic demographic phenomena mark Byzantine Jewry throughout our entire period. First, there was a continuity of Jewish presence in the Eastern Roman Empire from Late Antiquity into the High Middle Ages, though ebbing and surging at a pace apparently attuned to that of the population at large. Second, there was geographical dissemination and a migratory fow throughout the Byzantine space.

Italy presents a complex picture. Home to a sizeable Jewish population in antiquity, especially in Rome, here, too, the beginning of the Middle Ages saw a general retreat of human settlement and of population numbers. In only a small number

11 Abraham Wasserstein, 'The Number and Provenance of Jews in Graeco-Roman Antiquity: A Note on Population Statistics', in *Classical Studies in Honor of David Sohlberg*, ed. by Ranon Katzof (Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University, 1996), 307–17; Brian McGing, 'Population and Proselytism: How Many Jews Were There in the Ancient World?', in *Jews in the Hellenistic and Roman Cities*, ed. by John R. Bartlett (London: Routledge, 2002), 88–106. For the historiographical context of the maximalist view of antique Jewish demographics see the aptly-titled study of Alf Thomas Kraabel, 'The Roman Diaspora: Six Questionable Assumptions', *Journal of Jewish Studies* 33 (1982): 445–64.

of locations—Rome and some towns in the south—is there a continued Jewish presence into the Middle Ages. A similar disparity between the south and the rest of the country holds for the more numerous places where Jews frst settled during the Middle Ages. Many of these lay in regions ruled, to varying degrees, by Byzantium until the eleventh century. Culturally and demographically, southern Italian Jewry was much infuenced, if not directly derived, from its Byzantine equivalent, and this involved some degree of migration. However, compared to Byzantium, the low rate of continuity indicates a considerable diference in the stability of the Jewish presence.12 Altogether, the number of communities everywhere in Italy is small, much smaller than in Byzantium. The ecclesiastical reformer Peter Damian (1007–1072), who spent all his life in Italy, remarked in the prologue to his treatise *Against the Jews* (1040– 1041) that writing such a tract is barely worth the efort, as "the Jews are now almost deleted from the face of the earth."13 This might have been somewhat exaggerated, as witnessed by Benjamin of Tudela's Italian itinerary a century later. Benjamin's late-twelfth-century travels were situated in a new era of general demographic growth.

On the Iberian Peninsula, the sparse Jewish population of Roman Late Antiquity seems to have barely survived into subsequent Visigothic times. In contrast, the data available by the late tenth and early eleventh century refects a diferent order of magnitude, in terms of both the number of inhabited places and population fgures. This appears to parallel the general

12 For visual confrmation of this fnding, see Hanswulf Bloedhorn et al., 'B VI 18 Israel nach der rabbinischen Literatur: Die jüdische Diaspora bis zum 7. Jh. n. Chr.', in *Tübinger Atlas des Vorderen Orients, Teil B. Geschichte*, ed. by Horst Kopp and Wolfgang Röllig (Wiesbaden: Ludwig Reichert, 1992).

13 *Die Briefe des Petrus Damiani*, ed. by Kurt Reindel, 4 vols. (Munich: Monumenta Germaniae Historica, 1983-1993), I, 66, no. 1. I owe this reference to my friend Alexander Patschovsky of Munich. Cf. David Berger, 'St. Peter Damian: His Attitude toward the Jews and the Old Testament', *Yavneh Review* 4 (1965): 80–112.

demographic curve—upwards—in al-Andalus and is clearly linked to a more favourable Arab regime and to immigration from North Africa. These together produced a Sephardic Jewry showing no visible similarity to, and continuity with, the few indistinctive Jews of the Roman and Visigothic periods. In the Christian north, Barcelona and Gerona were the earliest places of residence (in the ninth century), due to the impetus given these parts by Carolingian colonization in Catalonia. In Leon-Castile, Jews came to be present in the capital during the tenth century and in other places in the course of the following one. In the kingdoms of Aragon and Navarra, they appear not earlier than the eleventh to early twelfth century. They came from the south of the peninsula, where a now highly intolerant Muslim regime caused signifcant numbers of Jews to fee to the Christian north. According to one opinion, there were also migrants from France. Population growth apparently reached its apogee towards the end of the thirteenth century and the beginning of the fourteenth, making Iberian Jewry the largest of all Europe.

In Gaul, a transient presence can be noticed in the fourth century along the Roman borders, slightly later also in a few towns, primarily in the south. Only in Arles, Narbonne, and possibly Marseilles did Jewish habitation continue uninterrupted into the ninth–eleventh centuries. As in other parts of Europe, the post-Carolingian era saw considerable growth overall. The new communities in northern Gaul became the western branch of Ashkenazic Jewry, with congregations in the Île-de-France, Maine-Anjou, Burgundy, Champagne, Lorraine, and Normandy. As elsewhere, the greatest number and widest distribution was attained during the third quarter of the thirteenth century, surely due in some measure to immigration, which is, however, very hard to discern and could have come only from the Mediterranean south. There is little room for the hypothesis raised some years ago that the French part of Ashkenazic Jewry derived from immigrants from Germany. 14 Given the very small numbers of

14 Simon Schwarzfuchs, 'L'opposition Tsarfat-Provence: La formation du judaïsme du Nord de la France', in *Hommage à Georges Vajda: Études*

souls in these tiny communities, population expansion is better explained by internal growth.

In Germany, Jewish life was, for a long time, a small-scale afair wholly dependent on immigration. In the ninth century, migrants to Germany cannot have made up more than a few dozen families and, in the tenth century, maybe a few hundred. In the course of the eleventh century there was marked growth in numbers, nourished by ongoing immigration from France and, to a lesser degree, from Italy, in addition to internal demographic growth. It appears that proselytes, though present, contributed only a handful of persons to the early Jewish population.

In Eastern Europe, the sizeable Roman-era Jewish settlement along the shores of the Danube and the Black Sea did not continue into the Early Medieval period. The earliest evidence for renewed presence—in the tenth/eleventh century—speaks of a transient one, of traders coming mostly from the west—Germany—and less frequently from the east—the lands of the Turks. These merchants crossed Bohemia, Hungary, and Poland on their way to and from Russia, but some of them were also active in the former countries. A stable resident community, possibly of Khazar origin, apparently settled in Kiev in the tenth century. In Bohemia, Hungary, and Poland, Jews inhabited individual communities in the eleventh century. Outside of these principal places, further settlement did not occur before the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Thus, Eastern Europe was populated by Jews considerably later and at considerably lower density than all other regions of Europe. Of a possible pre-Ashkenazic stratum— Byzantine, Turkish-Khazar, or Slavonic—little can be discerned in the sources.

To sum up: population numbers and distribution are a critical factor for realistic assessment of the weight and role of Jews in the economies and polities of medieval Europe. There can be no doubt that in Late Antiquity some groups in southern Europe—in Italy and Byzantium—were quite substantial, even though the millions

*d'histoire et de pensée juives*, ed. by Gérard Nahon and Charles Touati (Leuven: Peeters, 1980), 135–50.

profered in scholarship do not stand up to scrutiny. In other parts, such as Spain and southern Gaul, much smaller numbers were present, while northern Gaul had few and the Roman parts of Germany had no Jews, except for some itinerant merchants or craftsmen. The administrative centre of Trier might have been an exception, and the same has been alleged for Cologne. Along the Danube border in eastern Austria and Hungary more Jews were present, in some places amounting to synagogue communities, and the same holds for the Black Sea shores and the Crimea. In Eastern Europe proper, as in Germany beyond the Roman border, no evidence of an antique Jewish presence, however slight, has been found. Not surprisingly, such existence was confned to the urban landscape of the Roman world, in its Western and even more in its Eastern parts.

In the frst centuries of the Middle Ages, Jewish life continued on a diminished scale in the Byzantine Empire. Elsewhere, the evidence dwindles to almost nothing, except for a few places in Italy and southern France. In Visigothic Spain, the total absence of archaeological fnds and other evidence produced by Jews themselves is difcult to square with the spate of repressive legislation enacted by the Visigothic monarchy and church after the conversion to Catholicism. In a similar way, in northern and central Gaul, our investigation has raised doubts whether ecclesiastical literature can provide confrmation of actual Jews rather than the virtual ones serving polemical or rhetorical purposes. Everywhere, indicators point to a severely restricted Jewish population, although to diferent degrees in diferent regions.

By the ninth/tenth centuries, new growth, slow at frst and then accelerating, becomes visible everywhere. In Spain and possibly also in Sicily, it is clearly tied to the more favourable Arab regime, to immigration from North Africa, and to new links forged with the Middle Eastern centres of Jewish learning. In Italy and southern France, the factors contributing to growth are still obscure, but trends are similar. In central and northern Gaul and western Germany, the Jewish presence was a new phenomenon, wholly dependent on immigration from the south. From there it drew demographic and cultural resources, to be transmitted and transformed, with a time lag, to the north. Save for the enigmatic Khazar entity, whose Jewish character is much in doubt and which completely disappeared from the stage, the Jewish population in Eastern Europe began its growth at the very end of the period under consideration. By this time, the eleventh century, both northern and southern Jewries had come of age: part of the European landscape; strong enough to claim intellectual independence from the centres of religious authority in the Middle East; equipped with ready legal procedures to navigate a range of economic pursuits that were very diferent from the antique ones. In this and many other senses, the medieval Jewries of Europe represent a rupture, a new phenomenon quite dissimilar from the Greek-speaking Mediterranean Diaspora of Late Antiquity.

In this view, the unmistakable demographic decline of the Late Antique Mediterranean Diaspora provided a clean slate for the reconstruction of a new medieval European Jewish population, one that was to exhibit a very diferent cultural and linguistic profle.15

What are the implications for the topic of our conference? As I see it, the main problem is the way demography and culture interact. One example: in a talk at the Jerusalem World Congress of Jewish Studies in August 2013 entitled 'The Origins of the Halakhic Culture of Ashkenaz: A Proposal', Hayim Soloveitchik put forward an intriguing hypothesis.16 It fies in the face of hitherto accepted opinion, which sees southern France, Italy, and ultimately the Land of Israel as the places of origin of Ashkenazic culture: "Given their command of Babylonian Aramaic, their

15 Shlomo Simonsohn, 'The Hebrew Revival among Early Medieval European Jews', in *Salo Wittmayer Baron Jubilee Volume on the Occasion of His Eightieth Birthday,* ed. by Saul Lieberman and Arthur Hyman, 3 vols. (Jerusalem: American Academy for Jewish Research, 1974), II, 831–58.

16 Published as 'The "Third Yeshiva of Bavel" and the Cultural Origins of Ashkenaz–A Proposal', in Haym Soloveitchik, *Collected Essays*, 2 vols. (Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization 2014), II, 150–215.

ignorance of and indiference to the Yerushalmi, and their exclusive preoccupation with the Bavli, the founding fathers of Ashkenazic halakhah hailed from Babylonia rather than from Palestine." Here Soloveitchik did what most of us also tend to do unhesitatingly: to equate culture with origins. The same problem animates this conference. Rabbinization implies a process, the notion that antique, Mediterranean, Hellenistic Judaism in some way changed, developed, or morphed into rabbinic Judaism. From my point of view, if we accept that large segments of European Jewry had no antique antecedents, at least part of this assumed process of change is not really necessary. If so, we might want to examine methodically the assumption that the development of a culture necessarily needs a demographic carrier, a 'mule' (so to speak) on which to travel. To put it in an ofhand way, with medieval Judaism being such an elite culture *par excellence*, did these few family groups really need more than a handful of family traditions? A second assumption to be queried says that one needs time for such changes to come into their own. Medieval European Jewish history has a number of examples where a rich local culture came into fruition within a very short time span, for instance the bloom of the German *ShUM* communities that took less than a century. In short, it is possible that Western European communities were never 'rabbinized' in the sense that these new Jewries were of the rabbinical persuasion from their very outset. This would still leave the question: where, or rather how, did they acquire this cultural profle?

### **Bibliography**

*Vorderen Orients, Teil B. Geschichte*, ed. by Horst Kopp and Wolfgang Röllig (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 1992).

———, *The Non-Jewish Origins of the Sephardic Jews* (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1996).

## **PART 4. RABBINIZATION**

## **11. THE RABBINIZATION TRACTATES AND THE PROPAGATION OF RABBINIC IDEOLOGY IN THE LATE TALMUDIC PERIOD**

*Ron Naiweld (CNRS)*

### **1.0. What is Rabbinization?**

The term rabbinization is used in contemporary Talmudic scholarship in two diferent, but related, senses. First, it denotes a process by which Jewish knowledge of the past is integrated into classical rabbinic literature. Sometimes this process also entails adaptation of the non-rabbinic tradition to rabbinic ideology and interests—in the words of Jacob Neusner, when rabbinic literature "rabbinizes" ancient Jewish traditions (biblical or not), it introduces into them "generative myths and symbols particular to rabbinic Judaism."1 In his classic article from 1984, 'The Signifcance of Yavneh', Shaye Cohen, following Jacob Neusner, talked about "the rabbinizaiton of the past": how the redactors of ancient rabbinic texts depicted people from the past as rabbinic Jews. This is also the way the term is used by Isaiah Gafni and Richard Kalmin, among others.2

1 Jacob Neusner, *A Theological Commentary to the Midrash, Volume Six: Ruth Rabbah and Esther Rabbah I* (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2001), 59. See also the discussion in José Costa's article in this volume.

2 Isaiah Gafni gives the following defnition: "By rabbinization I refer to the representation of earlier fgures and institutions of Jewish

Next to the meaning of rabbinization as a text-related process, the term can be used in scholarship to denote a sociological process in which Jews accept rabbinic discourse as normative. Seth Schwartz uses it in this sense in an article from 2002 entitled 'Rabbinization in the Sixth Century'.3 In general, when historians deal with rabbinization in the sociological sense, they look for the external signs of the phenomenon: whether a certain piyyut, synagogue, or mikveh is constructed according to rabbinic norms. Notwithstanding the difculty that sometime arises in establishing these norms, we try to use our fndings in order to understand the scope of rabbinization, its mechanisms, and dynamics.

The two senses are of course interrelated—the rabbinization of the Jewish past contributes to the rabbis' claim of authority among Jews.4 It is the relationship between the sociological and textual facets of this process that is the subject of this article. What I hope to achieve is a glimpse into the actual dynamics of the dissemination of rabbinic knowledge and ideology in Jewish societies during the Talmudic period and later. My question is

history—primarily biblical but quite a few post-biblical ones as well in the image of the rabbinic world in which the sages functioned," in 'Rabbinic Historiography and Representations of the Past', in *The Cambridge Companion to the Talmud and Rabbinic Literature*, ed. by Charlotte E. Fonrobert and Martin S. Jafee (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 295–312 (305). Another example is the rabbinization of the fgure of Jesus in the Babylonian Talmud: see Richard Kalmin, 'Christians and Heretics in Rabbinic Literature of Late Antiquity', *Harvard Theological Review* 87 (1994): 155–69.

not if and to what extent a certain (textual) object or a human individual or community was rabbinic. I am more interested in the encounter between the rabbinic texts and the yet-to-be rabbinized person.

This raises a methodological problem, since the encounter has a signifcant subjective dimension that resists objectifcation. It can never be fully represented, because it takes place in between a textual tradition that we have today and the person who received it, about whom we know very little. When we choose it as our object of study we have to use our imagination in order to fll in the gaps and to reconstruct the moment where the 'magic' took place and the rabbinic project recruited, perhaps only temporarily and partially, another adept.

To help us to imagine this subjective component, we can think of rabbinization as an ideological process that manipulates knowledge of the past in order to change conception of the present. Thus, even someone who had never been 'rabbinized' knows something essential about it: we all accept and reject preconceived notions about 'our' history that inform our behaviour and understanding of ourselves (our ethos). And we know, from our experience and that of others, and also from our work, that the mere divulgation of true knowledge about the past is not sufciently efective. In order to produce an ethical efect, this knowledge need not be completely true, but it must be presented as such. The study of rabbinization is also the study of that space between the past and its representation, where the past becomes an agent of power and change.

## **2.0. Between the Talmud and the People**

Where did the encounter between rabbinic knowledge and Jews take place? The synagogue, for example, is a perfectly suitable candidate as a place where Jews gathered to practice their Judaism and rabbis came and presented their version of Jewish knowledge. Another possibility is the Kallah gathering that took place in the Babylonian academies in the late Talmudic and Geonic periods, where many Jews who did not follow the rabbinic curriculum joined the yeshivot for a limited period of time. We can also think of other types of formal gatherings attested in Geonic sources and in the Talmud itself.

More crucial is the task of identifying the texts that were used in the process. Most of the rabbinic documents from the Talmudic period seem to address an institutionalized rabbinic study group. Their form and format, the way they use technical terms, and the fact that they give a lot of place to discussion or, at least, the presentation of diferent opinions on the same subject, show that their public had already accepted the authority of rabbinic discourse and was ready to participate in the project of its development and conservation.

There are, however, some exceptions. First, in the more 'scholastic' documents of the corpus we fnd many stories and legends about the Jewish past that convey a rabbinic worldview. These stories appear already in the Mishnah and the halakhic Midrashim and occupy an important place in the Talmudim. We can consider them texts of rabbinization in the frst, textual sense: they produce rabbinic knowledge about the past. As for their use as agents of rabbinization in the sociological sense, it is more complicated. Unless these texts appear in more popular compilations from the period, such as the Targumim or other documents I will discuss later, it is possible that they were developed and consumed only within rabbinic circles.

Other exceptions are the midrashic compilations that seem to have been redacted with a clear intent to propagate rabbinic knowledge. This is the case of at least some of the aggadic Midrashim whose synagogal *Sitz im Leben* is more-or-less clear. Rachel Anisfeld argues that Pesiqta de-Rav Kahana is a text meant to propagate rabbinic Judaism.5 This view may apply to other 'homiletical' compilations from the Amoraic period.

The problem with this solution is that it covers only the Palestinian side and leaves us in the dark with regard to the situation in the other important centre of rabbinic culture. If

5 Rachel A. Anisfeld, *Sustain Me with Raisin-Cakes: Pesikta deRav Kahana and the Popularization of Rabbinic Judaism* (Leiden: Brill, 2009).

the aggadic Midrashim indeed functioned as textual agents of rabbinization in the Land of Israel, what were the texts used for this purpose in Babylonia?

My hypothesis is that during the Talmudic period Babylonian rabbis produced texts whose function was precisely the dissemination of rabbinic knowledge and ideology. Unlike the Talmudic discourse that was produced and received among rabbinic scholars, these 'rabbinization tractates' were produced within rabbinic circles, but circulated among Jews from outside the yeshiva. These tractates are relatively simple to understand and do not require extensive legal knowledge. In general, they focus a lot on the early Tannaitic period and describe the ancient rabbis as mythical fgures.

In the following, I will give two examples of rabbinic texts that can be regarded as rabbinization tractates: the 'minor' tractate Kallah and the Sar ha-Torah tradition from Hekhalot Rabbati. I will argue that in both cases we fnd a text redacted by people within or close to rabbinic circles in an attempt to promote rabbinic ideology. They do it either by the redaction of a Mishnah-like text (as in tractate Kallah) or by the creation of a mythical story presenting the foundation of rabbinic Judaism as a messianic event (Sar ha-Torah). Reading these texts as rabbinization tractates can deepen our understanding of the spread of rabbinic discourse among Late Antique and Early Medieval Jewish individuals.

## **3.0. Tractate Kallah**

Let us start with tractate Kallah. As we have it today, the tractate contains one chapter with twenty-fve teachings. It is focused on gender relations and sexuality. Almost all of the rabbis cited by name are Tannaim.

The question of the place of tractate Kallah in the corpus of classic Talmudic literature has drawn considerable scholarly attention, perhaps more than in the case of other minor tractates. Whereas there is consensus on the post-Talmudic date of most of the minor tractates, that is not the case with Kallah, mainly because of three references in the Bavli to a "tractate Kallah" (b. Qidd. 49b, b. Taʿan. 10a, and b. Shabb. 114a). The frst two are *baraitot*, and the third is a *memra* attributed to R. Yohanan.

Whether 'tractate Kallah' in the Bavli refers to our tractate was already debated by medieval Talmudic scholars. The debates about the date and provenance of the tractate were summarized by David Brodsky in 2006.6 Brodsky proposes a detailed analysis of the tractate before concluding that according to its current state it was probably redacted towards the end of the second generation of Babylonian Amoraim, that is, the end of the third century.7 Following Brodsky, I tried to situate the tractate in the social and religious context of the Babylonian rabbinic movement at the turn of the fourth century.8 The technical simplicity of the tractate, especially when compared to other rabbinic compositions dealing with the same subjects (*niddah*, marriage), as well as other factors, lead me to believe that it was not intended for advanced Talmudic scholars, i.e., *talmide hakhamim*, but rather for Jews who were not well-versed in rabbinic traditions, but who still attributed to the rabbis and their scholarship some sort of authority (perhaps potential new *talmidim*). I suggested reading the tractate as an ideological tool designed to promote rabbinic discourse among Babylonian Jews.

I will focus here on two points. First, the emphasis the tractate puts on marriage and on the possibility of living a 'holy life' in this state.

In a well-known passage of his *Demonstrations*, the fourthcentury Christian author Aphrahat recalls a conversation that took place between a Christian and a Jew revolving around the question of celibacy. This passage opens a long discourse in

6 David Brodsky, *A Bride Without a Blessing: A Study in the Redaction and Content of Massekhet Kallah and its Gemara* (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006).

7 Ibid., 9–86.

8 Ron Naiweld, 'Saints et mondains: Le traité *Kallah* et la propagation du mode de vie rabbinique en Babylonie', *Revue des études juives* 172 (2013): 23–47.

which Aphrahat, who writes in Syriac in the northern part of the Sasanid Empire, promotes the value of celibate life.

According to Aphrahat, the Jew mocked the Christian, telling him that he and his fellows are impure because they live in celibacy, whereas the Jews are holy (*qdishin*) because they marry and procreate and "increase seed in the world." Aphrahat wrote this discourse around 340 CE, meaning that the conversation was at least imaginable in some parts of the Sasanid Empire.

This conversation, imagined or not, has to be put in the context of Eastern Christianity and its focus on sexual abstinence.9 It tells us something about the status of the question in an environment geographically and 'religiously' close to that of rabbinic Jews. The possibility of living a holy life while participating in a conjugal relationship was a subject of debate in Christian and Zoroastrian circles. It was a conversation in which Jews must have participated.10 As the dialogue in Aphrahat shows, the diferent ways of treating the question could also be used as identity markers. It was one of the possible spiritual-ethical discussions where Jews and Christians negotiated their borders.

A large part of tractate Kallah is dedicated to the question of holiness within marriage. It contains a series of very explicit halakhot concerning the pious behaviour in a marriage as well as during the wedding celebration. If indeed tractate Kallah of the Bavli is our tractate and was known among Jews in Babylonia, then its focus on the interaction between marriage and holiness can be understood against the background of the debate on the possibility of living a holy life in marriage. At least, according to Aphrahat, the debate was a key factor in the distinction between Christians and Jews.11

9 Another Christian text from the period, the Acts of Thomas, which enjoyed a broad difusion among Syriac-speaking Christian, also cites celibacy as a dsitinguishing feature of Christian identity.

10 See also Naomi Kolton-Fromm, *Hermeneutics of Holiness: Ancient Jewish and Christian Notions of Sexuality and Religious Community* (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).

11 Note also the centrality of the question in the fourth-century Acts of Thomas.

What distinguishes Kallah from other rabbinic texts promoting the value of marriage is that it presents itself as a classical rabbinic text—a Mishnaic tractate—but at the same time it is highly accessible to any Jew with knowledge of Hebrew. For Jews in the Sasanid Empire, for whom the question of holiness was relevant, the tractate could provide good rabbinic advice, a kind of manual on how to live a holy life while remaining married and having children. The question of holiness was the channel through which rabbinic knowledge could reach Jewish subjects.

The second point that allows us to think of Kallah as a rabbinization tractate concerns rabbinic ideology in a stricter sense—the hierarchy inside the Jewish world between rabbis and non-rabbis. Teaching 4 of the tractate reads:

One who reads a verse from the Song of Songs and makes it like a ditty, as well as one who does not read a verse of the Torah at its appropriate time, brings a food upon the world, because the Torah puts on sackcloth and stands before the Holy One, blessed be he, and says: "Master of the Universe, your sons have made me like a lyre that the gentiles play." He says to her: "My daughter, if so, what should they do when they are happy?" She replies before him: "Master of the Universe, if he is a disciple of a Sage (*talmid hakham*), let him busy himself with Torah and Talmud and good deeds and aggadot. If he is an ordinary person ('*am ha-aretz*), let him busy himself with the laws of Passover on Passover, and of Atzeret on Atzeret, and of Sukkot on Sukkot."12

Another version of this teaching is found in b. Sanh. 101a (see also t. Sanh. 12 and Avot R. Nat. A 36). However, in the Bavli version, the Torah distinguishes between diferent classes of rabbinic students defned according to their feld of expertise— Miqra, Mishnah, or Talmud. In the Kallah's version of the text the distinction is between rabbinic students and *ʿam ha-aretz*. The

12 Translations of tractate Kallah are based on the Munich manuscript, which was also used by Michael Higger for his edition: *Tractate Kallah: Tractate Kallah and Tractate Kallah Rabati* (New York: Deve Rabanan, 1936).

latter are defned here clearly by their relationship to rabbinic discourse. It is very strict—they should study the laws only when they are supposed to follow them. They should not feel free to do whatever they fancy. Compared to them, the rabbinic student has much more freedom in his engagement with the Torah. He can busy himself with any part of it—both intellectually and practically (good deeds)—whenever he likes.

This teaching portrays a mythical image of the hierarchy between rabbis and other Jews based on their relationship to halakhic discourse. However, even though the distinction between the two groups could not be clearer, we do not fnd here the hostile tone of some Talmudic references to *ʿam ha-aretz*. Both classes of Jews—rabbinic or not—are the subject of the conversation between the Torah and God. Both have a place in the intersection between the Law (Torah as it is studied and elaborated by the rabbis) and the Holy One (God, the *Qadosh Barukh Hu*). Thus, especially when compared to its Talmudic parallel, this teaching articulates a hierarchical partnership between rabbis and non-rabbis.

Other teachings of the tractate display a close conception of the relationship between the two groups, but instead of using mythical imagery, they use the early rabbinic period as background. Thus, in teaching 16 we read:

R. Judah says: The bold-faced are destined to hell and the shamefaced are destined to heaven. The bold-faced—R. Eliezer says *mamzer*; R. Joshua says the child of a menstrually impure woman. One time the elders were sitting at the gate, and two children passed before them. One covered his head, but the other uncovered his head. The one who uncovered his head—R. Eliezer says: He is a *mamzer*. R. Joshua says: He is the child of a menstrually impure woman.   He said to them: I will establish it. He went to the child's mother and saw that she was sitting and selling beans in the market. He said to her: My daughter, if you tell me what I ask you, I will bring you to the life of the world to come. She said to him: Swear it to me. R. Akiva swore to her with his lips, but nullifed the oath with his heart. He said to her: This son of yours, what is his nature? She replied: When I entered the marriage canopy, I was menstrually impure. My husband separated from me, and my groomsman came upon me, and I had this son.  They said: Great is R. Akiva who bested his rabbis. At the same time, they said: Blessed is YY, God of Israel, who revealed his secret to R. Akiva b. Joseph.

A version of the same story is found in another popular Jewish composition, Toledot Yeshu. In that narrative, the child is Jesus, and R. Akiva is presented as a Jewish religious hero—not only is he the one who exposes the scandalous circumstances of the birth of the Christian Messiah, but he is also the one who has a special relationship with the God of Israel, akin to the relationship that Christians draw between Jesus and God.

I will not treat here the question of the relationship between the two versions, but would rather like to focus on the image of R. Akiva, especially the way in which his *ʿazut-panim* or *chutzpah* is described (to some extent the analysis is valid for both versions). The boldness of R. Akiva is a motif that we also fnd in several Talmudic stories about him—not only his encounter with the Roman governor, but also his relationship with his master, R. Eliezer b. Hyrcanus. In the Talmud, Akiva's boldness is parrhesiastic in nature: it consists of his courage to tell the truth. In the Kallah story, this boldness is explained otherwise: Akiva allows himself to be bold because God has revealed his secret to him.

Obviously, the courage to speak the truth is not something with which the Akiva of the Kallah story preoccupies himself. He has no problem lying to the woman in order to show to his fellows that he was right. Indeed, in the Kallah story, Akiva's power is not to tell the truth, but rather to see it and to use it in order to make a change in the world.

The story of Akiva concludes a thematic section of the tractate that deals with impious sexual relations and how they engender defective sons.  The Akiva story that concludes this section takes the warning to the next level. It presents the rabbi as a holy man whose mission is to control the sexual purity of the Jews. Thus, even if there are no visible signs of the impious condition in which the child was conceived, the rabbi's X-ray eyes allow him to see the truth and to impose rabbinic order on subjects who tried to transgress it.

#### **4.0. Sar ha-Torah**

The mystical allure of R. Akiva in the Kallah story brings us to the other composition I wish to deal with here, the Sar ha-Torah (SH) story of Hekhalot Rabbati. Here I would like to present the conclusion of another French article I published in 2012.13 My analysis of the SH story draws on previous studies, mainly those of Michael Swartz, 14 Moulie Vidas, 15 Ephraim Urbach, 16 and Joseph Dan. 17 Notwithstanding their diferences, all seem to agree that the text was written by people who knew the rabbinic academy (yeshiva) from within, a crucial point to which I will return.

Another important source of inspiration was Ra'anan Boustan's 2011 article from the *Jewish Quarterly Review*, 'Rabbinization and the Making of Early Jewish Mysticism'. Although he does not

13 Ron Naiweld, 'Le mythe à l'usage de la rabbinisation: La tradition de *Sar ha-Torah* dans son contexte historique et social', *Henoch* 34 (2012): 245–69.

directly address the SH tradition, Boustan proposes rethinking the relationship between the Talmudic corpus and Hekhalot literature. The 'rabbinization' he deals with is mainly the frst kind, that of textual tradition. One of his main arguments is that from the middle of the frst millennium onwards we fnd attempts at harmonization between the two corpora (Talmud and Hekhalot), with the penetration of Hekhalot traditions into the Talmudic corpus to an extent that at some points it is impossible to distinguish between a 'Talmudic' and a 'Mystical' composition. In my article I proposed that at least some parts of Hekhalot literature were used in order to propagate rabbinic ideology to Jews who were at the margins or completely exterior to the yeshiva.

It was already suggested that the authors of the SH tradition were those members of the yeshiva who oversaw the conservation and transmission of early rabbinic oral teachings. The two groups, Talmudic and Mystical, shared the same body of knowledge, but each one had a diferent relation to it. Behind the confictual relationship that must have existed between them, there was also an important basis for collaboration, a common ground or a common general understanding of the religious and national project of Judaism.

The SH tradition joins other Hekhalot stories in which the heroic side of the earliest rabbis is portrayed without the ironic distance we often fnd in the Talmud. The rabbis in Hekhalot literature are heroes or even superheroes—not only because they can access the divine realm and converse with angels and God himself, but also because of their ability to bring divine wisdom to their fellows in the lower world. What distinguishes the SH narrative from the other stories in Hekhalot literature is the important role it gives to the people of Israel as interlocutors with God. It stages a second national revelation that took place when the Second Temple was built.

The critical tone that our story contains regarding the Talmudic rabbis is not necessarily personal, but may result from a diferent approach to the rabbinic project. We can imagine the authors of SH (possibly of other Hekhalot stories as well) as rabbis who wished to provide a more joyful account of the beginning of the rabbinic movement in a way that would also be appreciated by non-rabbis. They wished to take the ancient rabbinic teachings outside the 'ivory tower' of the yeshiva and to show the people why rabbinic activity matters—how it can afect their lives in a positive way, how it can provide them with a framework to practice their religion, their spirituality, their Judaism.

For the Tannaitic rabbis of the SH tradition, the essence of rabbinic teaching and activity is not the production of legal/ halakhic knowledge or the 'mystical' act of communicating with the divine world. Like the other Hekhalot rabbis, they desire to be afected by the Torah, to obtain its secret. And according to the SH story, the secret of the Torah gives not only the intellectual ability to remember it, but also the power to shape people's minds on the spiritual, ethical, political, economic, liturgical, and aesthetic levels. It is a self-sufcient existential framework, a divinely-designed matrix for Jews to live their lives.

The mythical story of Sar ha-Torah is brought to us through a chain of three rabbis:

R. Ishmael said that R. Akiva said in the name of R. Eliezer that from the day the Torah was given until the day when the last Temple was built—the Torah was given, but its splendour was not. And not only its splendour, but also its greatness, its honour, its beauty, its awe, its fearsomeness […] were not given until the day when the last Temple was built and the Shekhinah resided in it.18

18 Translations are based on manuscript M40. See also §§281–306 of *Synopse zur Hekhalot-Literatur*, ed. by Philip Schäfer (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1981). At least two manuscript versions of the story (M22 and B328) add a portion from which one can conclude that the splendour in question is the secret (*raz*) of the Torah, a kind of magic allowing the rabbinic student to remember all the Torah he has learned. But this passage does not appear in the other manuscripts, which give a diferent understanding of the secret. According to the short version of the story, those who possess the secret (*sod*, *raz*) of the Torah are those who hold the power to apply it as Law.

The point of departure is a situation of defciency: God communicated his Law to the people of Israel without providing them with its power. The knowledge was there, but it had no aesthetic, ethical, emotional, or psychological efect. It left people indiferent. They acknowledged the Torah's existence and the fact that it came from God, but they were not subjectively invested in it. It was not even a yoke, just a curiosity, an ancient Law to which they were distantly related.

Everything changed when the Second Temple was built. Somehow the defciency was flled, and the people received the missing element that allowed them to lift the burden and to relate to their Law easily. The story tells us how. While they were building the Temple, the people of Israel complained to "their Father in Heaven": "You have bestowed many troubles upon us […] you have cast a huge burden on us, a heavy weight. You told us: 'Build me a home and, even while you build it, busy yourself with Torah'."

God answers his people. He accepts that the two dispensations the Temple and the Torah— are too complicated to be followed simultaneously, and explains the reasons for his demand: "You became idle because of the Exile, and I was yearning to hear you pronounce matters of Torah'". He continues by admitting that he did not act correctly when he punished Israel as harshly as he did and that the people proved him wrong by their prayers and by their agreement to rebuild his house. Therefore, he says, he will give them whatever they need. In fact, he knows already what they want:

I know what you are asking for; my heart knows what you desire you are asking for a multiplied Torah (*torah merubah*) and a lot of Talmud and many traditions (*shmuʿot*) […] To multiply Talmud outside (*beḥutzot*) and *pilpul* in the streets […] To put *yeshivot* in the gates of the tents, to interpret what is forbidden and what is permitted, to declare the impure impure and the pure pure. The *kasher kasher* and the *pasul pasul*. To know [recognize?] the living, to instruct women in menstruation what to do, to decorate your heads with crowns of kings, to force kings to submit to you […] You will appoint *nesiʾin*, *avot bet-din*, and exilarchs; you will have the authority to appoint judges of towns; you will pronounce the eternal regulation (*tiqqun ʿolam*), and no one will contradict it…

According to the story, the desire of the people is to live in a theological-political order ruled by the rabbis. This is presented as a solution to the problem at the outset: the burdensome nature of the Law. In the utopian rabbinic order, people will not need to busy themselves with Torah, because the rabbis will do it for them. The people will live in a Talmudic universe and be surrounded by agents of rabbinic knowledge. Whatever question or hesitation they will have on how to apply Torah in their daily lives—there will always be a rabbi around the corner to tell them what to do.

The desire is articulated by God in a moment of reconciliation with his people: not only did he forgive them for their sins, he practically asks them to forgive him. It is a rare moment of balance, where the people and their God speak the same language, with which they negotiate their relations. From this rare dialogue emerges an ideal rabbinic world. It allows the people to follow the Law of their God efortlessly. Rabbinization is presented thus as a project both divine and popular. It binds Israel to its God.

This is a very bold way to describe the rabbinic project, especially when compared to the Talmud, which practices a more encyclopedic process of rabbinization. Mythical language is, of course, present in Talmudic discourse, but the framework itself is never mythical—the truth of the story is not presented as complete, as there can always be another version of it, another way to remember what happened. When the Talmud rabbinizes the Jewish past, it does so as part of a discussion about the ideological and legal implications of rabbinic knowledge for Jewish life. It gives an intellectual context to the manipulation of the past. Its aim is the production of new knowledge and the development of new discursive mechanisms to produce this knowledge.

Hekhalot discourse is organized according to a diferent order. Its function is not to produce new rabbinic knowledge, but to give an image of the world to which the already-existing knowledge applies. It does not busy itself with the establishment of the discourse, but rather with the conditions that make it viable. It gives a mythical image to the structure that holds the rabbinic world together (God-Law-Israel). This is a completely diferent horizon from the Talmud, and it dictates the way Hekhalot literature, in general, and the Sar ha-Torah story, in particular, conceives of the project of rabbinization.

Indeed, the messianic horizon of Hekhalot literature expresses itself perfectly in our story. It divides Jewish history in two: the period in which only the Torah was given and the one in which Israel received its power. The present, i.e., the time when the story is told, is already in the new period, after the second revelation of God to his people. It is already messianic—it will end with the end time—*sof kol hadorot*. It is the world to come.

Whatever their intentions, the Hekhalot authors produced a discourse that presented the rabbinic project as a part of the national Jewish myth. Through the myth, rabbinic knowledge could connect to non-rabbinic Jews and participate in the shaping of their ethos. Thus, the diference between the Hekhalot rabbis and those of the Talmud, which was articulated in many ways throughout history, hides an interesting and perhaps unintended collaboration between two diferent agents of rabbinization: one focused on the production of knowledge and the other on the power of this knowledge to afect lives—its biopower.

The category of 'rabbinization tractates' introduces a distinction within the rabbinic corpus that seems to be relevant to many other textual corpora. It is the distinction between two types of texts: those where knowledge is developed and others that promote the power of this knowledge to afect lives. From this point of view, their study can contribute not only to our understanding of the historical phenomenon of the spread of rabbinic Judaism. It can also enrich a discussion about the epistemological, political, and ethical conditions of our own historiographic enterprise.

\*

Neither the Talmud nor the rabbinization tractates are a historiographic project in the modern sense, but the diferences between their conception of the Jewish past resembles a constituent tension within the project of modern Jewish historiography. These tensions were brought to light by Y. H. Yerushalmi in the famous fnal chapter of *Zakhor*. 19 The chapter can be read as the confession of a Jewish historian's inability to achieve the goal of the founders of his discipline—healing the Jews by providing them with a new rational collective memory, a universal knowledge of their past. Yerushalmi reminds us that the founders of the discipline believed that scientifc historical discourse had the potential to become a living memory of the Jewish people; they wanted their work to infuence how Jews remembered their past.

On the one hand, they had immense success. Despite all the difculties and the obstacles imposed on them because of their Jewishness, they started a machine that, in less than a century, produced an ever-growing scientifc discourse about Judaism.20 On the other hand, their project was doomed to failure, because of the stark opposition between memory and modern historiography that "stand, by their very nature, in radically diferent relations to the past." 21 A discourse such as modern historiography cannot do what memory does: generate "a catharsis or reintegration."22 On a very basic level it leaves the actual agents of memory indiferent. It has no real power over them and can promise nothing.

What is described as defciency has its great advantages, as Yerushalmi notes. The popular indiference towards modern historiography provides it with the space it needs to explore the past and to represent it more accurately. The product of historiographical research is always mediated to others in order to become a part of the memory (or not). This process of mediation is done outside the yeshiva of the historians. That is why they cannot prevent the possibility that their fndings will be manipulated by agents of interest. Jewish historiography, both traditional and modern, provides us with numerous examples.

19 Yosef Yerushalmi, *Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory* (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1996).

20 Ibid., 87.

21 Ibid., 94.

22 Ibid., 95.

The study of rabbinization is a precious opportunity to renegotiate our rights and duties as producers of knowledge of the past. The attempt to imagine the subjective power of rabbinization, i.e., the modalities of rabbinic knowledge, recalls the conditions of our own intellectual production. It gives us a metaphorical platform to refect upon the purpose of our project and to deal with at least two important questions: how should we communicate our knowledge of the past, and how should we deal with the possibility of its manipulation?

## **Bibliography**

———, 'Saints et mondains: Le traité *Kallah* et la propagation du mode de vie rabbinique en Babylonie', *Revue des études juives* 172 (2013): 23–47.

## **12. WHO IS THE TARGET OF TOLEDOT YESHU?**

*Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra (École Pratique des Hautes Études, PSL)*

In his groundbreaking study *Verus Israel*, Marcel Simon was the frst to recognize the historical value of John Chrysostom's polemical homilies *Adversus Iudaeos* for study of the phenomenon of Judaizing Christians.1 He, followed by others, such as Robert Wilken, showed that Chrysostom's primary target (much more than the Jews) was undecided pagans hovering between Judaism and Christianity and, even more, members of his own Christian fock who blurred the boundaries by attending ceremonies or taking oaths in synagogues—those whom John Gager called "dangerous ones in between."2

Among the Jewish compositions written between 400 and 1000 CE, the period relevant for this conference, is also the polemical treatise Toledot Yeshu. 3 The following lines are an

1 Marcel Simon, *Verus Israel: A Study of the Relations between Christians and Jews in the Roman Empire AD 135–425*, trans. by H. McKeating (London: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 1996).

2 Robert Wilken, *John Chrysostom and the Jews: Rhetoric and Reality in the Late Fourth Century* (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983); John Gager, 'Jews, Christians and the Dangerous Ones in Between', in *Interpretation in Religion,* ed. by Shlomo Biderman and Ben Ami Scharfstein (Leiden: Brill, 1992), 249–57.

3 For a recent edition of most of the Hebrew and Aramaic witnesses, along with a very useful introduction, see *Toledot Yeshu*: *The Life Story of Jesus*, ed. by Peter Schäfer and Michael Meerson, 2 vols. (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014). Among the most important classical studies are

attempt to read Toledot Yeshu in a manner similar to the way Marcel Simon and Robert Wilken understood Chrysostom, in order to learn more about a group that has lost its voice.

In its briefest version (the 'Pilate recension' in Riccardo Di Segni's nomenclature), Toledot Yeshu gives a counter-narrative of Jesus's miracles and his expiatory, vicarious death and resurrection as told in the Gospels: Jesus is depicted as an impostor who is executed and whose corpse is hidden and found again. The other recensions add a birth narrative (where Jesus's father is a villainous neighbour who rapes Mary during the period of her monthly impurity) and explain Jesus's miracles as deriving from the power of the Inefable Name, which was stolen from the Holy of Holies in the Temple.

Most manuscripts also include a sort of 'Anti-Acts of the Apostles', with stories about Peter, Paul, and Nestorius. 4 In the frst tradition, the rabbis send out an agent, Elijah, alias Paul, to separate Jewish Christians from Judaism by introducing new festivals and ethical standards and abolishing *kashrut* and circumcision. This is followed by the Nestorius episode, where the heresiarch converts some Persian Christians back to pre-Pauline Christianity by reintroducing circumcision. 5 Finally, Simon Kephas turns out to be a famous rabbi and paytan who agrees to become a crypto-Christian, but lives alone in a tower while continuing to compose important piyyutim for the Jewish liturgy.6

Samuel Krauss, *Das Leben Jesu nach jüdischen Quellen* (Berlin: S. Calvary, 1902; reprint Hildesheim: Olms, 1977, 2006); William Horbury, 'A Critical Examination of the *Toledoth Yeshu*' (PhD diss., Cambridge, 1970); Riccardo Di Segni, *Il vangelo del ghetto* (Rome: Newton Compton, 1985).

4 Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra, 'On Some Early Traditions in Toledot Yeshu', in *Toledot Yeshu in Context: Jewish-Christian Polemics in Ancient, Medieval, and Modern History*, ed. by Daniel Barbu and Yaacob Deutsch (TSAJ 182, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2020), 43–58.

5 Stephen Gerö, 'The Nestorius Legend in the *Toledot Yeshu*', *Oriens Christianus* 59 (1975): 108–20.

6 John Gager, 'Simon Peter, Founder of Christianity or Saviour of Israel?', in *Toledot Yeshu ("The Life Story of Jesus") Revisited*, ed. by Peter Schäfer,

The redaction history of the Toledot is highly complex. We can discern three main recensions and many subdivisions among the principal recensions. Di Segni identifes three: Pilate, Helena, and Herod, named after the ruler of Judaea given in the text. Peter Schäfer and Michael Meerson have modifed his model slightly. Only the Pilate recension (Meerson-Schäfer Recension I) is materially attested for the frst millennium. The earliest manuscripts in Aramaic from the Cairo Genizah are dated approximately to the tenth century. Two recent linguistic analyses have dated the Aramaic dialect to around 500 CE.7 The earliest external attestations of Recension I are by Agobard and Amulo, bishops of early ninth-century Lyon, on the opposite corner of the Mediterranean. In their recent edition of the Hebrew and Aramaic versions, Meerson and Schäfer conclude that this was the only recension extant in the frst millennium.