an analysis of the relationship between msanhedrin 4:5, four traditions about adam attributed to rav...

Berghahn Books

AN ANALYSIS OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN mSANHEDRIN 4:5, FOUR TRADITIONS ABOUTADAM ATTRIBUTED TO RAV IN bSANHEDRIN 38A-B AND PSALM 139Author(s): Alexandra WrightSource: European Judaism: A Journal for the New Europe, Vol. 40, No. 1 (Spring 2007), pp.100-114Published by: Berghahn BooksStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41443878 .

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From the Tradition

AN ANALYSIS OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN mSA NHEDRIN 4:5, FOUR TRADITIONS ABOUT ADAM ATTRIBUTED TO RAY IN bSANHEDRIN 38A-B AND PSALM 139

Alexandra Wright*

Who wrote the Scriptures? [. . .] David wrote the Book of Psalms, including in it the work of the elders, namely, Adam [. . .J1

The opening and closing verses of Psalm 139 suggest that the poet's theme is his desire that God search him and know him thoroughly: his physical movements as much as his inner thoughts, the sublime reflections on God's eternal presence and the disquieting thoughts that give him cause for anxiety.2 The Hebrew root chakar occurring in verses 1 and 23 provides a tight chiastic framework, reinforced by the use of the Hebrew root yada which occurs seven times in the Psalm. The number is significant and its repeated use at the beginning and then towards the end of the Psalm, intensifies the poet's longing for intimacy with God, both God's knowledge of him and his knowledge of God. If these outer verses are an expression of the poet's personal yearning for God, the inner part of the Psalm is structured around three meditations, distinguished by their own internal structure and thematic integrity and resonances. Verses 7-12 are an intensely beautiful and poetic appreciation of God's presence in the created universe encompassing the Psalmist, from the highest heavens to the depths of Sheol, from the wings of dawn - the furthest point east, to the tip of the west - 'at the farthest limits of the sea' (vv. 8-9). Verses 13-18, which provide a connecting point with the two rabbinic texts to be discussed (mSanhedrin 4:5 and bSanhedrin 38b), are uttered in the context of a prayer of gratitude for the Psalmist's life. Even in the darkness of his mother's womb, God created his innermost being, moulding his unformed substance and knowing yet before his body and limbs took shape, how each day of his life would be formed, his deeds inscribed on a scroll even before

* Rabbi Alexandra Wright is the Senior Rabbi, Liberal Jewish Synagogue, London.

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Alexandra Wright

they had occurred. The third of these sections is an execration against the wicked (vv. 19-22) which appears to break the intensity and integrity of the Psalm both in its tone and in the way in which it cuts loose from the vocabulary of the Psalm around it. For all his gratitude and deep longing to cleave to God, the poet's hatred and loathing for those who speak maliciously of God, who arrogate to themselves the power to do evil, is as passionate and powerful as his contemplation of the presence and knowledge of God. Like the poetic play on the words 'darkness' and 'light' in verses 11-12, verses 21-22 are tightly structured chiastically, the root sana creating a double external framework to the somewhat unusual forms of the two roots at the end of verse 21. The hit-polel form of the root hum is the only word in these verses which creates an association with the earlier verses of the Psalm: 'You know when I sit down and when I rise up, v'kumV (v. 2). Is the poet suggesting that those who hate God are not external enemies, but rather his own inner lusts and desires which seduce him away from his longing for God and challenge his higher nature?3

The first two meditations which reflect on the physical aspects of the universe's creation and the formation of a human being, who may or may not be the first created being, take us back to the opening chapter of Genesis and its theme of creation. Therefore, in one sense, parts of this Psalm may be said to provide a form of interpretive exegesis on certain verses or themes in Genesis. One may expect this to occur in the way the poet chooses certain words or phrases, echoing the language of the creation myth. On the other hand, the paucity of descriptive language used in the account of the creation of the first human being, both in Chapters 1 and 2 of Genesis, although poetic and highly charged, creates an opportunity for the Psalmist to create his own poetic ' Midrash ' on the story of creation. Although simple Midrash is constructed around the use of biblical quotations as opposed to hermeneutic principles, this internal biblical exegesis employs the poetic language of the Psalms and Job, as well as significant borrowings from Aramaic that are not necessarily used elsewhere in the Bible, creating an impressionistic development and meditation on the images or ideas of Genesis.4 Of course, such a proposition works well if the dating of Psalm 139 is comparatively late and its author knows of the opening verses of the Book of Genesis - but what if he does not? Then the relationship between the significant themes and verses in Genesis and Psalm 139 is an ambivalent one historically, although perhaps one might suggest that the redactors' composition of the biblical books in their order allows the Psalmist to be capable of holding a dialogue with the poet of the opening verses of Genesis, and vice versa. In addition, it is worth noting that the Amoraic midrashist of the Gemara in Sanhédrin 38b takes his own route through the story of the creation of humanity and Psalm 139 to arrive at his

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Traditions about Adam

own homiletical interpretations. The Psalm verses employed in these short sermons, while not structured in proemic form, are central in the homilist's interpretation of Genesis and in his trajectory from the Mishnah text which draws neither from Genesis 1 and 2, nor from Psalms, but from Genesis 4:10.

Daniel Boyarin is one voice among many contemporary scholars who have captured something of the nature of that dialogue between texts, both the internal dialogue that occurs in significant verses or books of the Hebrew Bible and the exegesis that is so prodigious in rabbinic literature. Commenting on the way in which rabbinic Judaism maintained a powerful literary culture of 'intertextuality' to preserve the texts of the Hebrew Bible, he argues that a new created discourse of 'poetic texts are understood to make free use of pre- existing linguistic material without any necessary responsibility to the original context in which the linguistic material appeared'.5 Drawing on the philosophical work of writers such as Mikhail Bakhtin, Julia Kristeva and others, Boyarin understands the genre of Midrash to be 'ultimately dialogical', in conversation with other texts, and standing certainly not, as he argues against Neusner, as 'self-contained unities, created out of the spontaneous, freely willed act of a self-identical subject',6 but rather 'as a continuation of the literary activity which engendered the Scriptures themselves'.

The rabbis, as assiduous readers of the Bible, developed an acute awareness of these intertextual relations within the holy books, and consequently their own hermeneutic work consisted of a creative process of further combining and recombining biblical verses into new texts, exposing the interpretive relations already in the text, as it were, as well as creating new ones by revealing linguistic connections hitherto unrealized. This recreation was experienced as revelation itself, and the biblical past became alive in the midrashic present.7

The nature of the relationship between the opening verses of Genesis and parts of Psalm 139 may lead us towards an understanding of how rabbinic midrashic exegesis can attribute specifically the subject of certain verses of the Psalm to Adam and in the case of the baraita in Bava Batra 14b, the entire Psalm. As Louis Jacobs argues in his commentary to this sugya , what appears to be a crucial and significant rabbinic statement, is actually introduced in an 'incidental, casual manner'. The fact that there is no parallel to this passage which attributes the biblical books to various authors, is a source of surprise and astonishment. The Rabbis, he maintains, were not particularly interested in who wrote the books, but that the books were inspired.8 The authorship of the Book of Psalms is discovered partly because their 'authors' are found in the superscriptions to certain Psalms 'or "found" to be authors by the midrashic process'.9 Thus, there is a tradition that Adam is found in Psalm 139: 16: 'Your eyes beheld my unformed substance'. Precisely how and when that association

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Alexandra Wright

is made is difficult to pin down. Irving Jacobs explores the tantalizing questions of how particular verses in the Hebrew Scriptures are connected to certain homilies: 'Did congregation and preacher share an awareness of certain exegetical traditions, linking aspects of pentateuchal narratives with specific sections of other biblical books [. . .]?'10 Perhaps it is enough for the Psalmist to refer to darkness and light and his perception of that extraordinary inversion of light and dark that comes in verses 1 1-12, to be reminded of the primeval light of creation and the ordered separation of day and night. From these verses, it is only one small step to an association of the following verses (13-16) with the first human being and the earth's pregnancy with Adam based on the phrase 'in the depths of the earth' (b 'tachtiyyot aretz ).n

In verse 16, the hapax legomenon golmi 'my unformed substance' is employed to describe how the Creator sees the potential of the unfinished vessel even before it is fully created. Perhaps because the word itself is so unusual and only used in a verbal form elsewhere in Scripture (2 Kings 2:8) and in a slightly different substantive form in Ezekiel 27:24, the verse gives rise to a traditional motif about the origin of the first human being. Thus we find in Genesis Rabbah 8:1, an exegetical tradition on the verse Genesis 1:26 'And God said: Let us make man', that God 'created him as a lifeless mass (golem) extending from one end of the world to the other'. The Psalm verse not only fills a gap in the Genesis account of humanity's creation, but functions as a kind of lynch-pin in all versions of this theme, holding together the different motifs about the creation of Adam, answering questions about how he was created, even before Eve was formed, and - so to speak - resolving a conflict between the Psalm verse itself which comes to refer to Adam's lifeless primeval form and his appearance in the Garden of Eden as a down-sized, functioning male.12 Genesis Rabbah is just one example of the legend about Adam's stature, which played an important part in the views of Gnostic sects in which Adam was a gigantic monster without any intelligence and moved about by creeping. Rabbinic literature - including Sanhédrin 38b - alludes to the time when Adam's body was not yet endowed with intellect and as Ginzberg demonstrates, according to readings of manuscripts of Midrash Ruth:

God created, as the very first act of creation, the soulless (golem in all these passages does not mean 'lifeless') Adam and then all the other creatures. Accordingly, Adam, though the first creation, did not receive his soul before all other creations had been formed, in order that he should not be considered as God's assistant in creation . . . Hence man is rightfully regarded as the beginning and the end of creation.13

We will see later on how Psalm 139:5 is another significant verse generating a variety of different meanings in relation to the creation of Adam,14 but for now we must turn to the Mishnah to examine its relationship to the Psalm. Two





observations should be made about the Mishnah and its relationship to midrash : one is the nature of the dispute on the antiquity of the one over the other. Most, although not all, scholars agree that Midrash is the older genre of literature and transformed itself into a mishnaic form which eventually supplanted its aggadic forebear.15 Lauterbach in his essay 'Midrash and Mishnah'16 traces the gradual adoption of the Mishnah- form by the tannaim of the first two centuries C.E. and explains how it evolved out of the need on the part of the Pharisaic teachers to assert their authority and indispensability against the opposition of the Sadducees. The second observation is made by David Weiss Halivni,17 who remarks that the creation theme is used sparsely as a motif in the Bible compared to the theme of the Exodus from Egypt. This is an important point for two reasons: firstly, because of the unusual presence of aggadic material found in Sanhédrin 4:5, and secondly because its use of the verse from Genesis 4: 10 and its deviation from the halakhic content of the Mishnah singles it out from a context which might not otherwise lend itself to an aggadic allusion. It is almost as though the Mishnah anticipates a potential question which the Gemara might ask: what is the Scriptural proof for the halakhic statement? As Neusner argues, the Mishnah does not have to cite Scripture because 'it stands on the same plane as Scripture and enjoys the same authority'.18

The Midrash in mSanhedrin 4:5 is found in the context of a discussion about how witnesses in capital cases are to be admonished. The background to this passage is the great caution exerted by the Rabbis in relation to the administration of the death penalty. The celebrated Mishnah in Makkot 7a underlines the aversion attributed to certain Rabbis against capital punishment:

A Sanhédrin that effects an execution once in seven years, is branded a destructive tribunal. R. Eliezer b. Azariah says: Once in seventy years. R. Tarfon and R. Akiba say: Were we members of a Sanhédrin , no person would ever be put to death. [Thereupon] Rabban Simeon b. Gamaliel remarked, [Yea] and they would also multiply shedders of blood in Israel!

Therefore, the judges would bring them into the court and inquisition them, suggesting that perhaps their testimony is being given on the basis of supposition, hearsay or what one witness has told another, or that they might have heard it from a reliable person, or that they might have given testimony not realising that they would be interrogated at the end of their witness statements. Be warned, says the Mishnah , that capital cases are not like property cases where the perpetrator of a dishonest act can achieve atonement for himself by paying money. In capital cases, the accused's blood and the blood of all those who were destined to be born from him are held against the one who testifies falsely and condemns an innocent man, until the end of time. The opening sentences of this Mishnah are given quite independently without any kind of scriptural proof and unconnected with the words of the written law,




Alexandra Wright

just as the Mishnah in Makkot stands unsubstantiated by any scriptural proof texts. Indeed the naming of distinguished tannaitic teachers - R. Eliezer b. Azariah, Rabban Simeon b. Gamaliel, R. Tarfon and R. Akiva - asserts precisely the authority of the Mishnah and its perceived self-revelatory quality. In the continuation of Sanhédrin , however, we have something quite different: the presence of Midrash-Halakhah , wherein the admonishment of the witnesses by the judges is underlined not only by the threatening nature of their interrogation but by a scriptural proof-text. The story of the fratricide of Abel by Cain is used to teach the lesson that the murder of one single individual is tantamount to the killing of all that individual's descendants:

For so we have found it with Cain that slew his brother, for it is written, The bloods of thy brother cry [... Genesis 4:10] It says not 'The blood of thy brother', but The bloods of thy brother - his blood and the blood of his posterity.

The presence of this Midrash in mSanhedrin 4:5 suggests perhaps that knowledge of the law concerning the admonition of witnesses in capital cases was predicated much earlier on this verse from Genesis and on the construct plural form of the word for 'blood', worthy not only of a rabbinic remark, but of a halakhic point. It is possible, perhaps, to see the opening and closing halakhah of this Mishnah as later appendages around an earlier rabbinic tradition based on Genesis 4: 10. That verse sets off, unusually for the Mishnah , one further interpretation of the word 'bloods': 'Another saying is: Bloods of thy brother - because his blood was cast over the trees and stones'. This is interpreted to mean that Cain did not know what to use to kill his brother, so he picked up first a stick of wood and then a stone. This digression, however, may be an interpolation as it interrupts the flow of the earlier interpretation that a false witness is answerable for the crime of putting to death the accused. The Mishnah returns indirectly to the subject of the admonition of witnesses:

Therefore but a single man was created in the world, to teach that if any man has caused a single soul to perish from Israel19 Scripture imputes it to him as though he had caused a whole world to perish; and if any man saves alive a single soul from Israel Scripture imputes it to him as though he had saved alive a whole world. Again [but a single man was created] for the sake of peace among mankind, that none should say to his fellow, 'My father was greater than thy father'; also that the heretics should not say, 'There are many ruling powers in heaven'. Again [but a single man was created] to proclaim the greatness of the Holy One, blessed is he; for man stamps many coins with the one seal and they are all like one another; but the King of kings, the Holy One, blessed is he, has stamped every man with the seal of the first man, yet not one of them is like his fellow. Therefore every one must say, For my sake was the world created.





The Mishnah then returns to its halakhic subject of admonishing witnesses who might question why they should be at pains to witness against a defendant publicly, and by invoking Leviticus 5:1, addressed to those who have witnessed a crime but do not speak out and testify, even though publicly adjured, warns people that they will bear the burden of their sin. So this Mishnah discusses the admonition of witnesses from two aspects: warning those who are tempted to give false testimony, and those who are afraid of testifying and therefore withhold their witness statements.

Is there any evident relationship between Psalm 139 and the passage from the Mishnah ? It is difficult at first glance to find any connection and yet, if we look carefully, we find that the language of the Mishnah faintly echoes extracts from the Psalm. 'O Lord, you have searched me and known me' are the words which open the Psalmist's plea. Like the witness who is to undergo 'examination and inquiry', the poet is subject to profound inquisition, and perhaps it is no accident that the root chakar is used in both cases, followed by the word yada in Psalm 139: 1, 2, and so on, and in the warning to witnesses in the Mishnah : 'Know ye, moreover, that capital cases are not as non-capital cases While the Psalm focuses on the miraculous nature of human creation, the intricate and secret way in which humanity is formed and woven together, the Mishnah focuses on the singularity of humanity's creation, that the first human being is created alone and unique to teach the preciousness and equality of all human life which stems from God's first creation.

The Mishnah provides a tenuous link between Psalm 139 and the four sayings given in the name of Rav in Sanhédrin 38b. These are introduced at the foot of 38a with a baraita taught by R. Meir: 'The dust of the first man was gathered from all parts of the earth, for it is written, Thine eyes did see mine unformed substance. ' This statement follows a number of developments and variations on the midrashic elements of the Mishnah on the subject of Adam, some polemical against the challenges and opposition of the Sadducees, others expressed as a parable,20 or as paradigmatic citations in which a biblical verse is quoted and followed by short substitutable statements.21 Psalm 139:16, which, as we have seen, came to be associated with the creation of the first human being, is here juxtaposed with a verse from Zechariah 4:10: 'The eyes of the Lord run to and fro through the whole earth.' The baraita brings this verse to its teaching because both verses refer to the anthropomorphism of God's eyes. As Rashi comments on this verse: with the sweep of your (God's) eyes, I was formed from the whole world. The hermeneutic principle of g'zerah shavah , whereby two similar or identical words in two different scriptural verses are brought to substantiate a statement or piece of legislation, is employed to demonstrate that the first human being was created both from an unformed substance and that his body was formed from earth taken from




Alexandra Wright

different parts of the world. The statement in the Mishnah that the first human being was created singly and uniquely so that no one should say, 'my father is greater than your father' is here underlined further. Although Adam's head comes from Eretz Yisrael , being the highest part of his body, and his torso from Babylon, his extremities are formed from places where the inhabitants are less than noble in their conduct.22

The four statements by Rav Judah in the name of Rav take as their common theme Adam and his creation, and are introduced by a three-word mnemonic which might suggest that these talmudic Midrashim formed part of an anthology of homilies for preachers, their stock in trade - as it were, and a device to remember the first three statements which they would tell orally. The various parallel sources to the sermon about the angels who contest God's desire to create the first human being, the nature of the dialogue, the central Psalm verse from Psalm 8:5 and its underlying theological message, all combine to suggest these Midrashim are not rough and ready commentaries on biblical verses, but highly sophisticated, literary forms, meditations on the theme of creation with profound interpretations conveying profound and complex responses to challenging theological questions. All these passages which weave interpretations around Genesis 1 :26 address the question of whom God addressed when he said: 'Let us make humankind'.23 In the first statement, there is no opening verse, no proem or petichta to introduce the Midrash. This is not a chain of interpretations as one might find in exegetical collections of Midrashim that follow a narrative chronologically, but a re-creation of the moment when God says 'Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness' (Genesis 1 :26). Even before the creation of the first human being, God creates a company of ministering angels and asks them: 'Is it your desire that we make a man in our image?' This is an extraordinary inversion of God's power at the very moment when God is about to create the crown of all creation and a marvellous and arresting opening to the sermon. How is it that God can, as it were, hand over the question to his ministering angels, only just on the scene. Their answer takes us into a sphere of theological discussion about the nature of humanity. 'Sovereign of the Universe, what will be his deeds?' Of course, we, the listener know that humanity is not going to remain in a state of blissful innocence and integrity and God too, cannot avoid his own omniscience. 'Such and such will be his deeds.' Is this the first divine lie? God evades giving a straight answer. It is as though the Rabbis cannot bear thinking about their merciful, compassionate and loving God contemplating humanity's propensity for evil, and yet the portrayal of God in this Midrash is vaguely absurd - God is determined, evasive, disarmingly human, impatient and impulsive.24 To the angels is attributed the more responsible, more celestial, more judgemental response: 'What is man that thou art mindful of him, and the





son of man that thou thinkest of him?' (Psalm 8:5). In the context of the biblical Psalm, the question is rhetorical. Despite the majesty and glory of God, the miracle and beauty of creation, the poet questions the attention that God pays to humanity, as if to say, how wonderful that you can set your mind to creation, to the heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars established by you, and yet at the same time, be mindful and care for humanity. In the Midrash , the angels inject the biblical phrase with more than a hint of sarcasm and contempt as if to say, how can you, Sovereign of the Universe, deign to think about creating this creature from the dust and ashes of the earth?

The amoraic author contrasts the rather peremptory and evasive words of God in the Hebrew with the poetic eloquence of Psalm 8:5, placed in the mouth of the sanctimonious angels. No wonder then that God stretches out his little finger among them and burns them up. God is capricious and determined, impulsive and unilateral, and the Rabbis must be aware that their economic language and the anthropomorphic dialogue in which God engages with the angels, is designed to be witty and humorous. The same thing happens three times - this is the structural backbone of a good story, keeping the listener alert and waiting for the denouement. The third company of angels, however, are more canny; they have reached a deeper understanding, perhaps voicing the resigned acceptance of the Rabbis themselves on the subject of humanity's flaws and weaknesses. 'Sovereign of the Universe, what did it avail the former [angels] that they spoke to Thee [as they did]? The whole world is Thine, and whatsoever that Thou wishest to do therein, do it.' They will bide their time from the moment of humanity's creation and witness the gradual descent of its conduct from the Flood to the Tower of Babel and then retort: 'we told you so'. Even then, however, God has a response and the homilist brings to the close of his sermon a verse from Isaiah 46:4: 'Even to old age I am the same, and even to hoar hairs will I carry [...].' In other words, as the verse implies, God is prepared to bear the imperfections of his creation and suffer their iniquities under all conditions, even until the end of time. By quoting only half of the biblical verse, the true import of its meaning is partly lost, for it is not only that God will suffer and bear Israel until their old age, but that as God acknowledges the imperfection and inadequacy of his creation, so too will he forgive (I think there must be a pun on the Hebrew root nasa which can mean both 'to carry' and 'to forgive' - of God bearing away the iniquity of the people) and deliver His people. There is no question that God floors the angels with a divine quip, but perhaps more pertinently for ourselves, the author of this Midrash raises the difficult questions about the meaning of human existence and why God brought us into being.

Rav Judah's second statement in Rav's name is an example of rabbinic hyperbole, constructed around two biblical verses from Deuteronomy 4:32




Alexandra Wright

and Psalm 139:5. The Midrash draws on the tradition that attributes the Psalm's authorship to Adam as stated in the baraita from Bava Batra 14b. There is a strong mythic quality to this homily, which draws from widespread and specifically Gnostic traditions about the first human being, who is said to be colossal - a macroanthropos - hence the opening clause: 'The first man reached from one end of the world to the other' and the scriptural proof text, 'Since the day that God created man upon the earth, even from the one end of Heaven unto the other' (Deuteronomy 4:32). In the context of Deuteronomy, the verse is found in a wonderfully eloquent, rhetorical passage placed into the mouth of Moses: 'For ask now about former ages, long before your own, ever since the day that God created human beings on the earth [. . .] has anything so great as this ever happened or has its like ever been heard of?' The Deuteronomist is drawing attention to the dramatic and miraculous nature of the revelation at Sinai, of the voice of God speaking out of the fire and the selection of Israel to be a nation 'for himself'. The biblical passage is a sophisticated, poetic interpretation of the wondrous events that have drawn Israel together as a people. The midrashic interpreter, however, has taken the verse quite literally to refer to the enormity of the first human being's stature, which is then diminished by God after the first act of sinfulness. It is here that the verse from Psalm 139:5 is employed: 'Thou hast hemmed me in behind and before, and laid Thy hands upon me'. This is not an easy verse to understand even in the context of the Psalm itself. On one level, the exegete is reading the Hebrew words achor vakedem not as 'behind and before', but more literally as 'west and east'. On another level, it raises the question: is it a protective and loving gesture by God, whose presence encompasses the poet? Or is there a sense that somehow God judges the Psalmist, shuts him in and besieges him, controls him and fills him with fear and dread? Already in the Targum to this verse, God has somehow moved closer to the poet, hemming him in back and front, pressing him and controlling his agitation with the palm of his hand.25 The image of God diminishing the stature of Adam Kadmon is a variation on the previous statement. The angels are burned up by God's little finger, Adam feels the palm of God's hand pressing him down towards the earth, reducing his stature - which according to Rav Judah reached from one end of the world to the other. The riposte that comes from R. Eleazar appears to be identical except that while Rav Judah interprets the verse from Deuteronomy as referring to the horizontal stature of Adam, R. Eleazar understands the verse to describe Adam's height. The disagreement between the Babylonian and Palestinian schools almost seems artificial. What can it matter whether the dimensions of Adam are measured from one side to the other or from top to bottom, except as a difference of interpretation to the biblical verse? Unless R. Eleazar is making a point about the nature of the first human being whose head reached the





heavens. It is conceivable that the disagreement is about something more profound: R. Eleazar suggesting perhaps that the first human being has something of a celestial quality about him which is removed after he has sinned, hence the diminishment not simply of physical but also of spiritual or moral stature; while the teaching of Rav speaks more simply about Adam's physical stature that spans the breadth of the earth.

The talmudic commentary which closes the discussion is anxious about the contradiction between the two interpretations of these verses and seeks to harmonize them in an awkward way by explaining that the measurements of the first human being are identical, while ignoring the method of measurement. However, this is not important in relation to the way in which this Midrash relates to Psalm 139. As we have seen, the benevolent, attentive portrayal of God in the Psalm, who may search or examine the poet to know what he is thinking, is transformed subtly into a God who is more ready to judge, control and diminish the human creature. These changes in understanding of the biblical verse are subtle. In some ways, the use of the verse from Psalm 139 is awkward, the interpretation predicated on the difficult and ambiguous vocabulary of the verse which lends itself to multiple meanings.

In the third statement, we move from the physical image of the first man, and possibly something about his spiritual and moral stature to the question of what language he spoke. The question must arise because of a significant number of Aramaisms in the Psalm, and particularly because of the verse which is cited (v. 17), giving rise to two completely different interpretations. There is a chronological sequence to these four statements - if the first deals with God's contemplation of Adam's creation, the second with his physical creation as an unformed substance filling the earth and the heavens, the third moves on to discuss the language spoken by him and the fourth, the nature of his belief. The third Midrash , like its companions, is stated economically: 'The first man spoke Aramaic'. What is the meaning of this statement? Rav's teaching must be taken in the context of a passage in Sotah 33 a, a comment on the Mishnah which states that the Tefillah , the daily prayer, may be recited in any language. The Gemara in the name of the same Rav Judah whom we find in our own passage, qualifies the Mishnah by stating that a person should never pray their needs in Aramaic 'because the Ministering Angels do not pay attention to him, because they do not understand that language'. We need not be concerned with the essential contradiction between the Gemara and the Mishnah which is resolved by explaining that one text refers to private, individual prayer, while the other text refers to congregational prayer. The Gemara continues to relate an incident that happened to Johanan the High Priest, who heard a Bat Kol - a divine voice issuing from within the Holy of Holies and speaking in Aramaic. If the Gemara is uncomfortable with the idea




Alexandra Wright

of God speaking Aramaic, it again qualifies the story by suggesting that it was not a voice that came from God directly but from one of his angels.

In the passage in Sanhédrin , the statement is substantiated by the verse in Psalm 139:17: 'How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God!' The Hebrew term rei'echa is understood not as the ancient versions interpret - 'your friends'; instead an association is made with verse 2 'my thoughts' - re 7. 26 There is most likely an historical reason for this statement that the first human being spoke Aramaic, and therefore communicated with God in Aramaic. If the use of Hebrew was so limited in the first two centuries of the Common Era, confined to an elite group of Rabbis who found it difficult to disseminate a common message or to centralize their authority, then it was necessary to find a way to validate the use of Aramaic. Not only that, but Adam symbolizes the common origin of humanity - he becomes a universal symbol for all humanity to whom God must communicate, hence the following verse from Genesis 5:1: 'This is the book of the generations of Adam'. So tightly and economically is this Midrash constructed that it almost appears as if a second verse from Psalm 139 has been omitted: 'In your book were written all the days that were formed for me, when none of them as yet existed' (v. 16). Both the Genesis and Psalm verses would suggest the next comment, that God showed Adam every generation and its thinkers, every generation and its sages until he came to the generation of Rabbi Akiva whose learning and death he witnessed and who recited Psalm 139:17, imbuing it with a different interpretation: 'How weighty are Thy friends to me, O God.' This is a complex and difficult Midrash that moves from the idea of God and Adam communicating in Aramaic, based on the Aramaic reading of Psalm 139:17, to an interpretation of Genesis 5:1 with its associative reference to the previous verse of the Psalm and an almost hidden development leading to a Hebrew interpretation of the Psalm. The use of Aramaic and Hebrew are held in the balance. The verse has two or more interpretations, reflecting a real linguistic difficulty for the Rabbis - is Aramaic or Hebrew the holy tongue?

Finally, we come to the fourth statement on the nature of Adam's belief. He is described as a 'Min' because after Adam and Eve have sinned, God seeks them out in the garden and cries out to them 'Where are you?' The talmudic gloss adds: 'Whither has thine heart turned?' Adam is described as having transgressed the covenant by reversing his circumcision. In a subtle change, R. Nahman observes that Adam denied God and therefore broke the covenant, and then in a final quotation, yet a third verb is used to describe Adam's abrogation of the covenant.

It is not clear if there is any correlation or relationship between this paragraph in the Talmud and either the Psalm or the Mishnah. Certainly the two middle sections of the Gemara quote from Psalm 139 and illustrate some of the complexities of interpretation.





Standing alone and independently, it is possible to read the Psalm without the rabbinic tradition that attributes it to Adam. Indeed its superscription suggests that it is written quite specifically for 'the choirmaster', perhaps for one whose intense longing for God can be matched only by his desire to be rigorously examined by God for moral blemishes. Verses 7-10 resonate strongly with Deuteronomy 30: 1 1-14:

It is not in heaven, that you should say, 'Who will go up to heaven for us, and get it for us so that we may hear it and observe it?' Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, 4 Who will cross to the other side of the sea for us, and get it for us so that we may hear it and observe it?'

The Psalmist hypothesizes, suggesting that God's presence is in every corner of the universe; the Deuteronomist is searching for something different - for the commandment from God which is very near to him in his mouth and in his heart for him to observe. The Psalm embodies a meditative dialogue between the Psalmist in his place in the present, and the mythic history of God's creation, and with skill and great beauty he weaves the appropriate and evocative language and ideas throughout his Psalm.

However, the Talmud brings something else to a reading of this Psalm. It brings a strong rabbinic tradition that Adam is the author of the Psalm and that certain references in the Psalm are about Adam or about humanity - about its potential to do harm as well as good, about the jealousy that exists between the angels and the first man, about the size of Adam, whose stature filled the universe until he sinned, about the language spoken by the first human being, and about the nature of his belief. All these questions are, as it were, trajectories from the Psalm, via the passage in the Mishnah, which is about the creation of a unique individual, the father of all humanity, and which takes the reader into a realm of discussion and interpretation that the biblical could not even have conceived.

Midrash arises out of many different and often opposing readings of Scripture. The importance of the dialogue between texts from different historical periods is clearly important, but so too is the organic development of legends, themes or motifs which can be read back into scriptural texts. The association of the themes of creation and in particular, the legends connected with the first human being, are important in discussing the relationship between our three texts. As Irving Jacobs points out, though, there is also a third element in this conversation between texts and their ideas, 'the people for whom the text was intended'.27 How a congregation listens to a text, the way in which a generation brings its own concerns and perceptions to legal or aggadic texts and imbues them with new, multiple and complex meanings, is as important as the textual relationship itself.




Alexandra Wright

Notes

1. bBaba Bathra 14b. 2. Mitchell Dahood, S.J., The Anchor Bible, Psalms III, 101-150 (Doubleday, New York,

1970), pp. 283-299. Hereafter Dahood, Anchor Bible III. 3. For a more detailed analysis of Psalm 1 39, see Amos Chacham, Sefer Tehillim (Mossad

HaRav Kuk, Jerusalem, 1984); Thijs Booij, 'Psalm 139: Text, Syntax, Meaning', Vetus Testamentum 55/1, 2005, pp. 1-19; Jan Holman, The Structure of Psalm 139', Vetus Testamentum 21, 1971, pp. 298-310. Booij offers a linguistic analysis of the Psalm focussing on the difficulties of the language and in particular the translation of the verbs, while Holman argues that the Psalm is centred concentrically around verse 10.

4. Dahood, Anchor Bible III , p. 286 where the commentator identifies a similar phrase in Job 16:21 and argues that both this verse and verse 2 in Psalm 139 employ the 'Aramaism' 'my thoughts'. 'This striking rapprochement with the Book of Job affords invaluable insight into the literary ambience of our poet.' Dahood cites other examples of 'Aramaism[s]' in the poem, such as in w. 4, 20, etc.

5 . Daniel Boyarin, Intertextuality and the Reading of Midrash (Indiana University Press, 1994), p. 23. Hereafter Boyarin, Intertextuality.

6. Ibid., p. 14. 7. Ibid., p. 128. 8. Louis Jacobs, Structure and Form in the Babylonian Talmud (Cambridge University

Press, 1991), p. 32-33: 'The Order of the Prophets: Joshua and Judges; Samuel and Kings; Jeremiah and Ezekiel; Isaiah and The Twelve. The order of the Ketuvim [the Hagiographa]: Ruth; the Book of Psalms; Job; Proverbs; Ecclesiastes; Song of Songs; Lamentations; Daniel; the Scroll of Esther; Ezra and Chronicles. And who wrote them? Moses wrote his book; the portion of Balaam and Job. Joshua wrote his book and the last eight verses of the Torah. Samuel wrote his book, Judges and Ruth. David wrote the Book of Psalms through ( 'alyedey) ten elders, namely, Adam Melchizedek, Abraham, Moses, Heman, Yeduthun, Asaph and the three sons of Korah. Jeremiah wrote his book, the Book of Kings and Lamentations. Hezekiah and his associates wrote Isaiah, Proverbs, Song of Songs and Ecclesiastes. The Men of the Great Synagogue wrote Ezekiel, The Twelve, Daniel and the Scroll of Esther. Ezra wrote his book and the genealogies to his own.'

9. Ibid., p. 39. 10. Irving Jacobs, The Midrashic Process (Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 2.

Hereafter Irving Jacobs. 11. Louis Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews , Vol. 5, pp. 69-73, where Ginzberg quotes

sources on the opposition of the angels to the creation of Adam, various mother-earth legends and the myth that Adam's body was created with dust taken from the whole earth. Hereafter Ginzberg, Legends.

12. See Boyarin, Intertextuality , p. 41 on the 'concept of the gap' which he describes as 'those silences in the text which call for interpretation if the reader is to "make sense" of what happened, to fill out the plot and the characters in a meaningful way [. . .] I am extending the application of the term "gap" here to mean any element in the textual system of the Bible which demands interpretation for a coherent construction of the story, that is, both gaps in the narrow sense, as well as contradictions and repetitions, which indicate to the reader that she must fill in something that is not given in the text in order to read it.'





13. Ginzberg, Legends , p. 79, n. 22. 14. Boyarin, Intertextuality, p. 39. Boyarin develops the theme of how midrash 'builds its

discourse out of textual fragments as a biblical mosaic'. The Bible ' because of its textual heterogeneity - allows for the multiple self-glossing readings of midrash. The heterogeneity - the multivocality of the biblical text itself, its hiatuses and gaps, creatively but not open-endedly filled in by the midrash - allows it to generate its meanings - its original meanings - in ever new social and cultural situations.'

15. David Weiss Halivni discusses the disagreement fully in Midrash, Mishnah and Gemara (Harvard University Press, 1986) and asks how the intertwining of halakhah and drashah occurred in the Mishnah. Was it, for example, done by the editor? This relationship is also discussed by Neusner in his introduction to The Mishnah -A New Translation (Yale University Press, 1988); he argues that Scripture plays little role in the Mishnaic system, rarely citing a verse of Scripture as an entity, and appears to be 'totally indifferent' to Scripture. This is because the Mishnah too constitutes revelation, handed down orally as testified in mAvot 1:1. Hereafter, Halivni and Neusner.

16. Jacob Z. Lauterbach, Rabbinic Essays (Cincinnati, 1951), pp. 163-256. 17. Halivni, p. 11. 18. Neusner, op. cit. 1 9. Danby, The Mishnah (Oxford University Press, 1 933) notes that some texts omit 'from

Israel', p. 388, n. 4. 20. On the subject of the parable as literary form in Midrash , see for example, David

Stern, Midrash and Theory (Illinois, 1996), pp. 39-54. Hereafter, Stern, Midrash. 2 1 . Boyarin, Intertextuality , pp. 26-3 8 . 22. Rashi, Sanhédrin 38b, ad loc. 23. Stern, Midrash discusses two different midrashim from Genesis Rabbah 8:3, a debate

between Rabbi Berechiah and Rabbi Hanina, and the theological questions that arise from God's act of deception before the angels. See pp. 88-90.

24. See Stern, Midrash , ch. 4 on 'Midrash and Theology: The Character(s) of God', p. 74:

Far from being generalized or stock representations, mere personifications of God's sovereignty in the world, these portraits of God are vivid, highly particularized depictions of recognizable human figures who frequently act in ways that are shockingly wa? divine: sometimes exhibiting a moving if pathetic vulnerability, at other times acting despotically and injustly toward their subjects and inferiors.

25. Targum to Psalm 139:5 ad loc. See also Dahood, Anchor Bible III , p. 288. 26. Dahood, Anchor Bible III , p. 296. 27. Irving Jacobs, The Midrashic Process , p. 13.

1 14 European Judaism Volume 40 No. 1 Spring '07



an analysis of the relationship between msanhedrin 4:5, four traditions about adam attributed to rav...

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