From Scribes to Scholars: Rabbinic Biblical Exegesis in Light of the Homeric Commentaries by Yakir Paz (review)

Reviewed by: From Scribes to Scholars: Rabbinic Biblical Exegesis in Light of the Homeric Commentaries by Yakir Paz Ahuvia Kahane Yakir Paz. From Scribes to Scholars: Rabbinic Biblical Exegesis in Light of the Homeric Commentaries. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2022. xvii + 372 pp. "Rabbi Meir found a pomegranate. He ate the inside and threw away the husk." —B. Ḥagigah 15a The Tanna Rabbi Meir studied with Rabbi Elisha ben Abuyah, who later became a heretic and was thus named Aḥer (the Other). Yet Rabbi Meir continued to study with Aḥer, taking what he regarded as the good and casting away the rest. In the Talmud, as elsewhere, we often find ample evidence of complex Jewish interactions with "other" traditions. Indeed, we need only glance at the magnificent, often figurative, mosaic floors of synagogues in Roman Palestine to see this. Scholarship has explored such interactions at length. And yet, as Yakir Paz says in the introduction to his wonderful book about rabbinic exegesis and Homeric commentaries, these two traditions, emblems of canonical practice, "have barely been compared by scholars" (3). The potential was marked in the past, as Paz notes, by Saul Lieberman, David Daube, and others. But what was needed was a dedicated study. Paz's book attempts to do just that, with good knowledge, comprehensive scholarship, sensible structure, and an awareness of some of the larger issues at stake. Paz argues that the Greek commentaries influenced rabbinic exegesis, to such a degree that "we cannot understand the very appearance of edited Midrashic compilations and some of their core hermeneutical assumptions without a familiarity with contemporary Homeric commentaries" (3). This is, perhaps, slightly overstating the case, even if we do accept, as Paz stresses, the rapid appearance of the rabbinic scholastic corpus. But a small adjustment to such exclusive rhetoric would have left the argument persuasive yet more nuanced. Paz's work deals with terminology, critical technique, the "organization of knowledge," and "learning practice" (some sociology of knowledge might have helped? Foucault? Koselleck? Latour?). A useful introduction sets out the problem and its background. Chapter 1 ("Sources of Knowledge") considers the idea of text, canon (a term introduced by David Rhunkhen in the eighteenth century), and their heuristic potential, and argues for overlap between the practice of Homeric and rabbinic commentators. Chapter 2 ("Justifying Redundancies") considers rabbinic responses to redundancy in the Bible and its relation to the treatment of this phenomenon in the Homeric commentaries. Chapter 3 ("Questions and Answers") compares "dialogical End Page 207 activity" among scholars and traditions of zêtêmata (Greek long vowels are not always consistently marked in Paz's text). In chapter 4 ("Ambiguities"), Paz deals with grammatical approaches to textual "ambiguity" among Homeric scholiasts and the rabbis. Examples are well selected and informative, though the principle of "ambiguity" could have been better theorized. Chapter 5 ("Order and Disorder") considers the question of order and its relation to (assumed, idealized) authorial and editorial practice in both traditions. This is a productive scholarly work that offers many useful observations and points to some new transcultural ground. Part of its value, indeed, is the number of questions such observations raise. Of course, the Talmud says, "Jealousy among scholars increases wisdom" (B. Bava Batra 22a). A few comments, then, in the Talmud's spirit. At one point (43), Paz considers the topos didaskalikos, an "instructive" (Nünlist) locus classicus in a scholion attributed to Aristonicus and Aristarchus. In Iliad 5.856–57, the Greek hero Diomedes, aided by Athene, drives his spear through the war-god Ares's belly, where the "war-belt" (μίτρη) is worn. This passage informs three other Iliadic instances where the word's meaning is less clear—thus "clarifying Homer through Homer himself." The Talmud, as Paz notes, similarly advocates "interpreting that which is obscure by what is explicit/clear" (B. Ḥullin 132a, etc.), a principle attributed to Rabbi Ishmael. Philip Alexander plays down such methodological similarities, suggesting they are "commonsensical." Paz objects: both Homeric and rabbinic traditions read the text here as "a self-sufficient microcosm"; elsewhere, as in the Dead Sea Scrolls, such method is not used; and, where Alexander was unaware of terminological overlap, Paz argues for its...