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Midrash and Legend: Historical Anecdotes
in the Tannaitic Midrashim
Joshua
L. Moss
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This
study collects every example of an historical anecdote in the tannaitic Midrashim - any
passage which relates any incident purported to have occurred from the close of
biblical times up to the composition of midrash
collection being studied. These stories are of particular interest from an
inter-religious and comparative literary point of view, because New Testament
studies have often referred to certain narratives in the gospels as "midrashic". There are indeed some dynamics shared in
common between the two genres of gospel narrative and rabbinic anecdotes.
Both are didactic accounts. Both represent transmitted material shaped to
function in specific contexts. But the fundamental matrices governing each
genre are strikingly different. In this study the author sets
forth, in positive terms, an understanding of what functions historical anecdotes
serve in the tannaitic midrashim,
along with a catalog of the rhetorical conventions used to fulfill those
functions. The data does not bear out the notion that each collection has a
rigid ideological program, but it certainly bears out the notion that
different documents exhibit different preferences of style, of authorities, of
argumentation, and of sources. In the anecdotes of the tannaitic midrash collections
we find a body of texts which, in highly formalized fashion, describes
behaviors and conversations of sages which provide legal information serving
to fill in gaps discovered in Scripture by means of exegesis, or served to
illustrate virtues revealed in Scripture. Their actions are paradigmatic,
timeless, and normative, providing sources of law or educations of law. Joshua
Moss teaches rabbinics at the |
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