Reading Material: Textual Objects as Ritual Artifacts in Tannaitic Literature

Abstract: This article examines tannaitic depictions of textual objects as effective ritual artifacts. Through case studies of tefillin, marriage and divorce documents, and descriptions of material texts used in the sotah ritual, this article shows that the Tannaim highlighted the effectiveness of these textual objects through reference to the material spaces they inhabited and indexed the effectiveness of these objects through their conceptual proximity to the Torah scroll. Viewing textual objects in this manner reveals both a broader tannaitic set of ideas about texts and shows how rabbinic ideas were reflected in their understanding of a wide variety of nonrabbinic textual artifacts. This comports with developments we see across Mediterranean religion in late antiquity, where discourse about texts, and texts themselves, seem to gain wider prominence and use.