Kinbar ~ Review of Apothaker

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This review was published by RBL 2007 by the Society of Biblical Literature. For more information on obtaining a

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RBL 03/2007

Apothaker, Howard L.

Sifra Dibbura deSinai: Rhetorical Formulae, Literary

Sturctures, and Legal Traditions

Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 2003. Pp. 464.

Hardcover. $49.95. ISBN 0878204520.

Carl Kinbar

University of South Africa

The modern study of Tannaitic texts, foundational to the formation of Judaism in the

period immediately following the destruction of the temple in 70 C.E., has focused on the

Mishnah and, at times, its relationship with the similar but much lengthier Tosefta. The

Tannaitic midrash collections have not gone without attention, however. For example, in

the past two decades, several scholars have produced important work on Sifra, the earliest

commentary on the Scripture’s book of Leviticus.1 Arguably the most cogent and

convincing of these is Howard L. Apothaker’s work on Sifra’s lengthy concluding section,

Dibbura deSinai.

Sifra, Dibbura deSinai consists of an introduction, part 1 (“Translation and Analysis”),

part 2 (“Synthetic Analysis”), and appendices listing rhetorical formulae, halakic rules

1. Louis Finkelstein, Sifra on Leviticus (4 vols.; New York, 1983–91); Herbert W. Basser, In the Margins of the Midrash, Sifre Ha’azinu Texts: Commentaries, and Reflections (Atlanta, 1990); Jacob Neusner, especially

Uniting the Dual Torah: Sifra and the Problem of the Mishnah (Cambridge, 1990); Günter Stemberger, “Zur

Redaktionsgeschichte von Sifra” in Approaches to Ancient Judaism, New Series 1.1 (ed. J. Neusner; Atlanta,

1997), 39–81; Ronen Reichman, Mishna und Sifra: Ein literarkritischer Vergleich paralleler Überlieferugen

(Tübingen, 1998). See also E. Z. Melamed, The Relationship between the Halakhic Midrashim and the

Mishna and Tosefta [Hebrew] (Jerusalem, 1967), esp. 9–78 and 182–196.





appearing in Dibbura deSinai, and the relationship between preclusions in Sifra and

positive affirmations in Mishnah and Tosefta.

Apothaker’s introduction (11–32) previews his goals, methods, and conclusions and

positions his work in the scholarship of Sifra (which he does with more specificity in part

2). He also discusses the textual basis for his translation and issues of dating and

authorship. The goal of Sifra, Dibbura deSinai is to explore and analyze the interpretive

and rhetorical characteristics of Sifra and thus to identify Sifra’s impetus and agenda.

Apothaker concludes that Scripture and its interpretation stand in the center of the Sifra’s

enterprise and are positioned as both the source and justification for rabbinic culture.

Apothaker identifies two complementary aspects of the Sifra’s reading of Scripture as

exegesis, in which the Scripture generates propositions that shape rabbinic culture, and

eisegesis, in which Scripture is shown to be the only valid source of the propositions of rabbinic culture that are otherwise found apart from a scriptural source or justification.

Scripture thus acts as both the source and justification for rabbinic culture and is also

positioned in its every detail and apparent anomaly as essential to the formation and

maintenance of rabbinic culture. Apothaker asserts that Sifra did not arise, as others have

suggested, either from a simple attempt to anchor halakah in Scripture or an attempt to

explain Scripture’s repetitions and anomalies but from the need to explain “the anomaly

of the text of Leviticus” (18), a text describing practices most relevant while the temple

stood and to place it in the postdestruction context in which so much of its contents

apparently had ceased to apply.

Contra Jacob Neusner and others, Apothaker is convinced that

Sifra operates for its own purposes and with its own agenda completely apart from

its relationship with Mishnah and Tosefta as documents. Its subject of inquiry is

neither Mishnah nor Tosefta but, as I have indicated, Scripture and its authority

to validate rabbinic culture as depicted in Sifra. Where that depiction intersects

the description of rabbinic culture offered in the Mishnah and Tosefta, Sifra has

something to say. But what it has to say is always voiced according to the agenda

of Sifra. (32)

It is notable here and elsewhere that Apothaker refers to and conceives of Sifra, Mishnah,and so forth primarily as “documents” in the Tannaitic period, an issue far from settled as





orality studies are applied increasingly to the study of the early rabbinic period. 2

Nevertheless, he supports his central thesis, that Sifra operates according to its own

unambiguous agenda, in several persuasive ways.

Part 1 (“Translation and Analysis”), takes up the bulk of this volume (33–336) and offers

a translation and unit-by-unit analysis of Sifra Dibbura deSinai. Apothaker’s fresh

translation differs at times from Neusner’s on technical matters such as paragraph

divisions and the amount of explanatory information bracketed into the translation.

Apothaker’s simple yet most striking improvement over Neusner’s translation is that he

not only marks the Mishnaic material in bold text and the Toseftan material in italics but

also sets halakic material unique to Sifra in small caps. This demonstrates even to the

casual reader that Sifra includes a substantial body of halakic material not found in the

Mishnah and Tosefta. Along with the lucid and helpful analysis, the formatting helps to

substantiate Apothaker’s thesis that Sifra is neither derivative nor reactive. Although Sifrais situated clearly in the matrix of Tannaitic works, it expresses a clear and unique agenda

in early rabbinic culture.

In part 2 (“Synthetic Analysis,” 337–409), Apothaker examines Sifra’s rhetorical

formulae, literary structures, and legal traditions, also theorizing about Mishnah and

Sifra’s “parting of the ways.” In this section, he also interacts in depth with other views of

Sifra’s program. For Apothaker, “The rhetoric of Sifra accomplishes the task of

positioning divine revelation as necessary in its most minute and manifest detail as

Israel’s necessary and only sufficient source of truth” (339–40). This is accomplished

through three primary rhetorical devices: specification (a portion of scripture leads to aspecific proposition or idea; for example, “[a scripture] teaches that…”), ratification (a

portion of scripture is found sufficient because it endorses a specific proposition; for

example, “From where [that is, from what scripture] do we learn that…”), and preclusion

(a portion of scripture is found necessary because it precludes a false proposition; for

example, “One may erroneously conclude that … Scripture, however, specifies that…”).

Apothaker works through examples of each of these devices and other less common

stratagems, as well as examples of their use in combination with one another.

Apothaker comments on Neusner’s thesis that the main purpose of Sifra is to

demonstrate that the logic underlying and permeating the Mishnah is insufficient in itself

and that only Scripture provides a firm basis for halakah. Apothaker claims that Neusner,

in his attempt to prove his point, overemphasizes Sifra’s use of the rhetorical formula “Is

2. For this reason, I prefer to call Tannaitic productions “works,” leaving open the issue of whether they

were oral and/or written in their own time. These works were eventually expressed in written texts, to

which manuscripts scribed about a millennium later bear witness.





it not logical? … [No, thus] Scripture says.…” This formula appears only nine times

among the hundreds of units in Sifra Dibbura deSinai. Even Neusner notices that the

formula does not pervade Sifra, yet this rhetorical device continues to drive Neusner’soverall view of the Mishnah-Sifra relationship. Apothaker responds that, taking the

rhetoric of Dibbura deSinai as a whole, the framers of Sifra are less interested in

undermining the Mishnah’s logic than they are in establishing the preeminent place of

Scripture as the singular source of rabbinic culture.

Both Neusner and E. Z. Melamed argue for the historical primacy of the Mishnah over

Sifra. Melamed specifically asserts that in parallels between Sifra and Mishnah-Tosefta,

the Mishnah-Tosefta material is uniformly early and Sifra is late (Melamed 1967, 182).

Apothaker shows that some of the Mishnah and Tosefta’s halakah are clearly refined

versions of material framed in a more elementary manner found only in Sifra. This would

indicate a logical, if not also a historical, primacy of at least some material in Sifra.

In his chapter on the Mishnah and Sifra’s “parting of the ways” (401–9), Apothaker agrees

with Stemberger that the material found now in our Mishnah and Sifra began with a

common pool of material that was shaped in complex and layered processes. At some

point, these processes diverged into (at least) two streams that may have continued to

interact with each other. In their final stages, the Mishnah and Sifra were shaped by two

increasingly distinct agendas. Apothaker’s heuristic paradigm of this complex redactional

interrelationship is similar to some working theories about the redactional relationship of

the Mishnah and Tosefta and very much in line with critical theories of preprint

redaction brought into the world of rabbinic studies by Peter Schäfer (1986)3

andfollowed up (and often tempered) by others.

The portions of Sifra, Dibbura deSinai that discuss the relationship between Sifra and

Mishnah are marked, however, by a methodological flaw that at least partly undermines

all theories assuming a clear identity of the Mishnah as known by Sifra. When Sifra uses

citation formulae (such as wrm) Nkym) to introduce Mishnaic and Toseftan material, it

makes no distinction between them. Nor does Sifra label or otherwise identify the

Mishnah or Tosefta or differentiate between the two. Simply put, if we had no Mishnah or

Tosefta in our hands today, there would be no way for us to discern either the Mishnah or

Tosefta as they are quoted or cited in Sifra. Thus, it would be more sound to investigate

the relationship between Sifra and the body of non-Sifraic Tannaitic halakah embedded

within it.

3. “Research into Rabbinic Literature: An Attempt to Define the Status Quaestionis” JJS 37 (1986):

139–52. This article expressed ideas already well-developed among German textual critics in the

1970s and 1980s.





Nevertheless, Sifra, Dibbura deSinai is work of vital scholarship marked by depth, clarity,

and painstaking scholarship. By careful commentary and synthetic analysis, Apothaker

has demonstrated that the center of Sifra’s program is to affirm Scripture and itsinterpretation as both the source and justification for rabbinic culture. Sifra’s agenda is

active, not reactive. He has highlighted the interpretive dynamics and rhetorical devices

that Sifra uses to further that agenda. He has also successfully addressed the work of other

scholars. Sifra, Dibbura deSinai clarifies Sifra’s place in the Tannaitic world and is thus a

work that future scholars of Sifra will be obliged to engage.

Documents

Kinbar ~ Review of Apothaker