Catherine Hezser's Pioneering Research into Rabbinic Scholarship

Catherine Hezser's Rabbinic Scholarship and the Rise of Scholasticism: The Case of the Talmud Yerushalmi is a richly ambitious and learned book on the history of rabbinic literature. Situating the Talmud Yerushalmi in the wider intellectual universe of late antiquity, Hezser offers the reader a bold new vision of how rabbinic scholarship developed in Roman-Byzantine Palestine.

Hezser starts by relocating the Yerushalmi rabbis as intellectuals on a par with their Greco-Roman and early Christian peers. She makes astute comparisons between rabbinic "sages" and Greek-trained Christian authors, laying the groundwork for detailed examination of educational systems of the era. Rabbinic education, she demonstrates, occurred in various venues—from study groups to public ad hoc encounters—instead of within the formal institutional schools. This is typical of Roman and Hellenistic practice, under which sophisticated studies had a tendency to group themselves around close disciples' circles. One of the book's strengths is the manner in which rabbinic scholarship was transmitted orally from one generation to another.

The procedure, it is claimed, was largely oral, with written records being taken as little as possible for personal use. She points out the antipathy which rabbis held against codified compendia due to fear of widespread dissemination into halachic anarchy. Her critique of the activity of "tradents," the ideologically correct to quote verbatim the sayings of sages, is especially astute, offering a comparison to such behavior elsewhere in late antique scholarship. The book further engages with the networks along which rabbinic traditions were circulated and maintained, both horizontally in relations between contemporaries and vertically in lines of teacher and student. Hezser's comparative methodology is strongest here, comparing rabbinic means of transmission of knowledge against more general tendencies in Greco-Roman and Christian intellectual networks.

Another highlight is her comparison of the Yerushalmi’s compilation techniques with those of Hellenistic philosophical works and Roman legal digests. Unlike early Christian texts that often aimed for doctrinal unity, the Yerushalmi embraces a pluralism of voices and opinions, echoing the works of Diogenes Laertius, Plutarch, and the Roman jurists. This plurality underscores the rabbinic value placed on debate, dialogue, and interpretive diversity.

Hezser also analyzes the rabbis' judicial functions in relation to Roman jurists who combined knowledge and public service. The rabbis not only instructed students, but they also addressed the public, responding to questions and providing advice and thereby expanding their mission of teaching into the public sphere.

In explaining editing and redaction of the Talmud Yerushalmi, Hezser demonstrates to us how it developed as a multi-voiced, layered digest instead of being the work of one author. She explains meticulously how redactors structured traditions topically based on the structuring of the Mishna, but expanded on it in halakhic debates too. Her analysis of editor-scribe interactions provides us with another vision of how the Talmud developed.

Yet a few of Hezser's conclusions are maybe debatable. Her account that the orality of rabbinic instruction was largely to maintain the authority of the rabbis underemphasizes theological motivations for orality, i.e., Sinai-like imitation. Likewise, her doubts over the reliability of attributions in rabbinic literature might have been less categorical, given the dynamics of manuscript transmission.

Although the scholarly level of the book might render it a challenge to a general readership, its well-researched material is a requirement for scholars. Hezser's command of sources in late antiquity—the New Testament to Roman law—is a deep expression of scholarship in depth.

Last but not least, Rabbinic Scholarship in the Context of Late Antique Scholasticism is a rich new contribution to our understanding of the intellectual culture that produced the Talmud Yerushalmi. Even if readers do not agree with some of Hezser's speculations, the book will surely stimulate additional research and discussion. For anyone genuinely interested in rabbinic literature or late antique intellectual history, this book is a necessary and rewarding read.