Rabbinic Scholarship in the Contextof Late Antique Scholasticism: The Development of the Talmud Yerushalmi
(Bloomsbury Academic, 2025), by Catherine Hezser
Reviewed by Rabbi Reuven Chaim
Klein (Rachack Review)
This work is a significant contribution
to the study of rabbinic literature — especially the Talmud Yerushalmi
(Jerusalemic Talmud) — and its place within the broader intellectual landscape
of late antiquity. The book provides a thorough and scholarly examination of
how the rabbinic circles in Roman-Byzantine Palestine compared and contrasted
with their contemporary Graeco-Roman and early Christian counterparts,
particularly in terms of educational structures, intellectual pursuits, and
compilation techniques. In doing so, Hezser’s scholarship represents a valuable
resource for understanding the development of the Talmud Yerushalmi and the
broader cultural and scholastic environment in which it emerged.
The author begins by positioning
the rabbis of the Talmud Yerushalmi as intellectuals on a par with their Graeco-Roman
contemporaries, despite the differences in the subject matter of their studies.
She highlights the rabbis’ self-identification as “sages,” and draws parallels
between their scholastic culture and that of Greek-educated early Christian
writers. This comparison sets the stage for her exploration of the educational
frameworks within which the rabbis operated, including the disciple circles that
mirrored those of Hellenistic and Roman philosophers, Roman jurists, and early
Christian writers.
In the first part of the book,
Hezser examines the settings of rabbinic learning — whether in formal study
sessions, informal interactions, or public lectures — and discusses the extent
to which ancient higher education can be considered to have been
institutionalized. As she demonstrates, rabbinic learning could happen in seated
study sessions (where a master taught a close circle of students) and in
everyday life and outdoor settings (like when students attended to the master’s
personal needs, or even when walking with the master in the marketplace). There
is much discussion about seated learning sessions versus impromptu ones.
Furthermore, the author suggests that some of said rabbinic students would have
been members of their masters’ immediate family, whereas others were outside
pupils who came to study with them. In the context of Graeco-Roman education she
also delves into the question whether the actual studying took place in a
dedicated building and concludes that late antique higher study usually took
place in disciple circles rather than institutionalized schools.
One of the book’s strengths,
which the second part focuses on, is its detailed analysis of the transmission
of rabbinic knowledge from teacher to student and from one generation to the
next. She argues that transmission was primarily oral, but also seems to have
included limited note-taking for personal reference. Indeed, the author
stresses the point that rabbinic culture was averse to producing written
collections of individual rabbis’ teachings, because their dissemination could
have led to halakhic confusion amongst the public. Within the framework of oral
transmission, the author brings to the fore evidence of reliable repeaters, who
would simply repeat verbatim the teachings of earlier sages — even if the
repeaters themselves were not necessarily sages. To that end, Hezser explores
the role of tradents (transmitters) in preserving and passing down rabbinic
traditions across generations, often through legal statements and stories in
ways that parallel similar methods of continuing traditions in late antiquity.
She also emphasizes the impact of
network connections amongst rabbis that determined which traditions were
perpetuated and selected to be included in the Talmud. The nodes within those
networks may have crisscrossed both horizontally (between rabbinic colleagues,
usually located within close geographic proximity) and vertically (in
teacher-student relationships). This discussion is particularly illuminating,
as it situates rabbinic scholarship within the broader context of late antique
methods of knowledge transmission in which similar networks existed to
differing degrees.
Hezser’s comparison of the Talmud
Yerushalmi to Hellenistic philosophical compilations and collections of Roman
jurists’ law is another highlight. She argues that the Yerushalmi’s pluralistic
approach to juxtaposing opposing opinions more closely hews the trends in philosophical
compilations by Diogenes Laertius and Plutarch and in Justinian’s Digest,
in contrast to the more dogmatic tendencies of single-authored early Christian
works (which sought to tout one true version of “the truth,” instead of
allowing discourse on a multiplicity of interpretations). This perspective
underscores the rabbinic emphasis on dialogue and debate. Moreover, she sees
parallels between the rabbinic penchant for viewing rabbinic scholars as
paragons of lived virtue (not just important theoretical sources of
information) in ways that are similar to how ancient philosophers were viewed
(as not just purveyors of philosophical truth, but as followers of those truths
in their personal lives and lived experience).
Furthermore, Hezser delves into
the judicial role of the rabbis, drawing parallels with Roman jurists, which
adds another layer to her comparative analysis. In their community-facing
roles, rabbinic sages also preached/lectured to the public and their students
also learned from them at those events. Rabbis also fielded questions from the
public at large and their students often stood by to absorb the subject-matter
and be able to later relay their master’s rulings.
The third part of this book is
dedicated to discussing the editing and redaction of the Yerushalmi. Unlike
other works from antiquity, rabbinic literary output was never attributed to a
single author; rather, it functioned as a digest incorporating multiple voices,
with some degree of editorial shaping. The author examines the nature of this
editing, particularly how the redactors of the Yerushalmi collected, selected,
organized and combined the various traditions they received, arranging them in
a thematic manner, following the structure of the Mishnah but going beyond it
in their halakhic discussions. One interesting question she considers in this
context is the relationship between the editors and scribes. Some of the
editors may have been scribes themselves, but they also used scribes for as
secretaries note-taking and copy-editing purposes. Hezser also expands on Rabbi
Shaul Lieberman’s assertion that the Bavot tractates of the Yerushalmi
represent an early recension in its development and editing, explaining what
this might entail and identifying the tell-tale signs of this more rudimentary
editorial layer.
Despite this work’s great
contribution to scholarship on the topic, one may disagree with some of the
suggestions and formulations. For example, in discussing the nature of the oral
transmission of rabbinic teachings, she writes: “If written collections
circulated, the power of the rabbi as a living incorporation of rabbinic
knowledge would be diminished” (p. 81). Here the author may have overlooked the
rabbis’ own stated reasons for preferring oral transmission, namely that
orality mirrors the mode in which God Himself revealed the Torah at Sinai.
Although she does address this argument later in the book (Part II, Section 2),
she does not explore it further.
Likewise, the author may have overstated
the case for the unreliability of attributions in rabbinic literature, treating
them largely in the context of the literary agendas, of the editors rather than
as historically-grounded traditions (pp. 133–149). In reality, many of the
difficulties with such attributions stem from the manuscript transmission of
these texts after their initial “editing.” These issues are often mitigated by
variant readings preserved in manuscripts and in medieval sources. That said,
this reviewer acknowledges that attributional inconsistencies are indeed more
prevalent and problematic in the Jerusalem Talmud than in the Babylonian
Talmud.
For a book that uses the
Jerusalem Talmud as its main example for exploring rabbinic compilatory
techniques in late antiquity, the author does not cite the text as frequently
as one might expect. This is probably due to the many subject areas she
addresses, which leaves limited space for detailed analysis of specific texts. Moreover,
when she draws on examples from the Talmud and other sources—such as the New
Testament, the Dead Sea Scrolls, or Roman jurists—she assumes a high level of
prior knowledge on the part of the reader. She sometimes presents these
examples without providing sufficient background or context for non-academic
readers, using them as evidence for her claims without adequately introducing
or explaining them. Perhaps this is more of a shortcoming of the reviewer than
the author.
While the writing is dense and
academic and therefore most suitable for academic readers, the study is
well-sourced and meticulously researched. The author poses important and
thought-provoking questions, even if her answers and suppositions may not convince
everyone. Her application of insights from Graeco-Roman and Byzantine Christian
contexts to rabbinic literature may sometimes be speculative, but she
demonstrates impressive familiarity with a wide range of late antique sources
and is undeniably a scholar of considerable erudition. She is certainly at-home
in many different corpora of writings from late antiquity and draws from that
body of knowledge to benefit our understanding of the formation of the Talmud
Yerushalmi. In my final assessment, this book is a deeply scholarly and ambitious
work that sheds new light on the Talmud Yerushalmi and its place within the
intellectual world of late antiquity. While some of its conclusions and
hypotheses may be contested, the book is a must-read for scholars of rabbinic
literature and late antique studies, offering fresh perspectives and
stimulating ideas that will undoubtedly inspire further research and
discussion.
