Pharisees and Sadducees Debate Halakhah
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In this passage, Sadducees attack Pharisees for several halakhic stances, including their belief that scripture renders the hands ritually impure and their denial that the stream formed when a pure liquid is poured into an impure liquid connects the two into one unit, thereby rendering the upper liquid impure. (On the idea that scripture renders the hands impure, see “Debates over Canonicity.” On the dispute over the purity of streams of liquid, see “Sectarian Disputes over Purity.”) The rabbis here give voice to Sadducean complaints, putting those objections in the mouths of anonymous Sadducees, but the last word always belongs to the Pharisees. In this text, Rabban Yoḥanan ben Zakkai does not identify as a Pharisee, but he supports the Pharisees’ position by forcing the Sadducees to acknowledge that the capacity to defile can be correlated with holiness.
5. The Aramaic sections in Ezra and Daniel defile the hands. An Aramaic section written in Hebrew, or a Hebrew section written in Aramaic, or [Hebrew written in] Hebrew script1 does not defile the hands. It never defiles the hands unless it is written in the Assyrian script, on parchment, and in ink.
6. The Sadducees say: We complain against you, Pharisees, because you say that the Holy Scriptures defile the hands but the books of Homer do not defile the hands. Rabban Yoḥanan ben Zakkai said: Have we nothing against the Pharisees but this? Behold, they say that the bones of a donkey are clean, yet the bones of Yoḥanan the high priest are unclean. They said to him: According to the affection for them, so is their impurity, so that nobody should make spoons out of the bones of his father or mother. He said to them: So also are the Holy Scriptures: according to the affection for them, so is their uncleanness. The books of Homer, which are not precious, do not defile the hands.
7. The Sadducees say: We complain against you, Pharisees, that you declare an uninterrupted flow of a liquid to be clean. The Pharisees say: We complain against you, Sadducees, that you declare a stream of water which flows from a burial ground to be clean. The Sadducees say: We complain against you, Pharisees, that you say my ox or donkey that has done injury is liable, yet my male or female slave who has done injury is not liable. Now if I am responsible for damages in the case of my ox or my donkey, for which I am not responsible if they do not fulfill commandments, in the case of my male or female slave, for whom I am responsible to see that they fulfill commandments, how much more should I be responsible for their damages! They [the Pharisees] said to them [the Sadducees]: No, if you argue about my ox or my donkey, which has no understanding, can you deduce from there anything concerning a male or female slave, who does have understanding? If so, if I were to anger either of them and they went and burned another person’s stack, I would be liable to make restitution!
8. A Galilean Sadducee2 said: I complain against you, Pharisees, that you write the name of the ruler and the name of Moses together on a divorce document.3 The Pharisees said: We complain against you, Galilean Sadducees, that you write the name of the ruler together with the divine name on a single page [of Torah]. And furthermore that you write the name of the ruler above and the divine name below. As it is said: And Pharaoh said, “Who is the Lord that I should hearken to his voice to let Israel go?” (Exodus 5:2). But when he was smitten, what did he say? The Lord is righteous (Exodus 9:27).4
Notes
[The “Hebrew script” to which this mishnah refers is the older Phoenician script, in which Hebrew was written before the Babylonian exile. “Assyrian script” refers to the square (Aramaic) script that became the scribal norm after the Babylonian exile and in which Torah scrolls are written.—Ed.]
[Earlier manuscripts read “heretic” (min) rather than “Sadducee.”—Ed.]
[Divorce documents would be dated according to the reign of the current Roman emperor and would also refer to “the law of Moses and Israel.”—Ed.]
[The Pharisees point out that in the book of Exodus, not only do the names of Pharaoh and God appear together, but Pharaoh is named first. A fortiori, writing the names of the reigning emperor and Moses together on a divorce document must be acceptable.—Ed.]
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Published in: The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, vol. 2: Emerging Judaism.
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