Ancient Rabbinic Stories and Parables

Traditionally, rabbinic literature was primarily mined for its legal material and scrutinized by historians in search of relevant sources. In recent decades, however, increased attention has been paid to its literary content—especially the narrative passages—and its rhetorical strategies, providing new and important insights into its depth and richness. These texts, reworked by many hands over the course of centuries, were carefully constructed. They abound in irony, wordplay, biblical allusion, repetition, and parallelism, all of which code meaning into the texts. Literary analysis, which looks at all these elements and how authors deploy them, has yielded insightful interpretations.

Rabbinic authors, we find, employ sophisticated linguistic techniques, brilliantly manipulating language and imagery in order to make their ethical, polemical, and political points. Narrative structure, for example, is often an important key to the story’s message. One technique was to recapitulate elements of one scene in another that follows it. Linguistic parallels, such as similar verbs and phrases, strengthen the connections between the two scenes, highlighting common themes and underscoring meaningful differences. One central value that shines through in these texts is the study and pursuit of Torah.

Telling stories was one of the many ways the rabbis interpreted the biblical text, debated the law with past and present interlocutors, and engaged with a variety of abstract ideas. To some extent, then, each story illustrates an idea, a moral, or a lesson. In the texts in this chapter, the reader will find stories that explore questions about God and humankind. Authors questioned how precisely religious law should be determined and by whom, whether God has a say in legal determinations after giving the law to Israel at Mount Sinai, and what role God has played since creating the universe. Even more explicit in its didactic function is the parable (Heb., mashal, pl. meshalim), a rabbinic genre of its own. Meshalim take the form of literary parables with their use of narrative content, usually with high entertainment value, for ethical or moral instruction. These parables include animal fables, stories about non-Jewish figures, and tales of fantastical situations. Meshalim, moreover, are a vehicle through which rabbis talk about God, who is often portrayed as a flesh-and-blood king.

Some of the rabbinic stories present themselves as quasi-historical narratives, but, like ancient historical and biographical writing in general, they do not follow the conventions of modern historiography. Recording events as they actually occurred was, for these authors, of far less interest than teaching a moral code or transmitting a worldview. These texts contain accounts of events, but they are filtered through an ideological lens. They are of interest not because they reflect historical reality (they do not) but because they are susceptible to careful analysis. They open a window to the values and ideals of the rabbinic communities in which they were written, transmitted, and reworked. Information about these values and ideals is also the stuff of history.

Rabbinic stories are embedded in collections of different kinds. Some are in the Talmud, while others appear in midrashic collections consisting primarily of biblical exegesis, such as the amoraic Genesis Rabbah and Leviticus Rabbah and the tannaitic Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael. Each collection is different in character and form.

Rabbinic stories often appear in variant versions that are incorporated into different corpora. The context in which a story is embedded informs its interpretation. In one example, there are two different versions of a story about the extent to which one is obligated to honor one’s parents. One version, drawn from the Babylonian Talmud, appears under rabbinic stories and parables. The other, from the Palestinian Talmud, appears in real and imagined “Others,” because the protagonist is not Jewish. Although these stories are presented here as self-contained units, each has been chosen because it demonstrates the characteristics of the genre and how the rabbis employed various literary techniques.