Lawrence H. Schiffman, From Text to Tradition, Ktav Publishing House, Hoboken, NJ, 1991.

The corpus of materials assembled in the Mishnah did not exhaust the oral traditions of the tannaitic period. Other traditions were intentionally excluded by Rabbi Judah the Prince, and some were simply not known to him. At the same time, the tannaitic tradition continued to develop in early amoraic times, so materials continued to be collected and even transformed as they were handed down and taught. These teachings eventually were collected in a number of different collections.

Tosefta

Tosefta, meaning literally “the addition,” is a collection of baraitot, “external traditions,” which are not found in the Mishnah but are attributed to tannaim. This collection is designed to serve as a supplement to and commentary on the Mishnah, following its arrangement of orders and tractates, and even, for the most part, the sequence of chapters. Only a few tractates of Mishnah have no parallel in the Tosefta, which represents the earliest sustained exegesis of the Mishnah as the canonical collection of oral law.

The material in the Tosefta relates to that in the Mishnah in a variety of ways. Some passages are exact parallels or even quotations of material in the Mishnah. Others are restatements of the same views in different form or using different terminology. Many statements in the Tosefta are actually supplements to the Mishnah and cannot be understood independently at all. Often, Tosefta passages contain traditions that provide material germane to the subject matter under discussion in the Mishnah but that are in no way directly parallel. Finally, there is material in the Tosefta that is at best tangentially related to the corresponding sections of the Mishnah.

Although talmudic tradition attributes the redaction of a Tosefta to students of Rabbi Judah the Prince, it is certain that the Tosefta that has come down to us was not redacted so soon after the completion of the Mishnah. Careful comparison of baraitot in the Tosefta and the Talmuds of Babylonia and Palestine indicates that the Tosefta was most probably not redacted until the end of the fourth century C.E. or later. This explains why it was not available in its present form to the amoraim.

The dating of the individual traditions in the Tosefta is a matter of greater complexity. We have already noted that tannaitic activity continued into the amoraic period, and this is in evidence in the continued development and redaction of Tosefta traditions. At the same time, for many statements, careful comparison of Tosefta material with mishnaic material shows us that the Tosefta versions are earlier than those in the Mishnah. This is sometimes the case where the Tosefta preserves a tradition with an attribution and the Mishnah does not. In many cases this is because the redactor of the Mishnah removed the attribution to present the statement as halakhah, whereas the Tosefta preserved the original version. Elsewhere, divergent opinions were reformulated as disputes in the Mishnah, whereas the original formulations, as separate opinions, are preserved in the Tosefta.

On the other hand, there are clearly many passages in which the reverse process has occurred. In such instances, statements from the tannaitic period have been reworked in order to serve as interpretations of the Mishnah or have been used as the basis for entirely new, post-mishnaic formulations designed to explain the Mishnah. Where such views assume rulings not determined until the redaction of the Mishnah, they are evidence of the continuation of tannaitic activity beyond the redaction of the Mishnah into the amoraic period.

Thus, the relationship of the Tosefta to the Mishnah is a complex one, and, in fact, different situations prevail in regard to different tractates. In general, however, we can say that the Tosefta, as the earliest commentary on the Mishnah, preserves evidence of tannaitic material not included in the Mishnah on the one hand, and, on the other, of materials that evolved after the redaction of the Mishnah and are clearly dependent on a redacted Mishnah similar to the text in our possession today.

Tannaitic Midrashim

Dating to the same period as the Tosefta are the so-called tannaitic Midrashim. These midrashic expositions of Scripture were in reality redacted in the amoraic period, probably at the end of the fourth century and the beginning of the fifth in Palestine. At this time, the same tendencies that led the redactors of the Tosefta to collect their material—namely, a desire to preserve the heritage of the tannaitic period and a need to assert that the authority of the mishnaic rulings was subject to challenge—also led those who collected the Midrashim to bring them to final form. Because they preserve much more halakhic material than do the later expositional Midrashim from the amoraic period and early Middle Ages, these Midrashim are also called halakhic Midrashim. This designation avoids the anachronistic term “tannaitic” (up to 200 C.E.) for texts clearly redacted in the amoraic period (ca. 200–500 C.E.), but it has the disadvantage of veiling the fact that some of these texts are primarily aggadic. Scholarly convention has therefore chosen to use the term tannaitic Midrashim while remaining aware of its limitations.

The midrashic method of teaching had been in use since the time of Ezra and Nehemiah. It lost prominence to some degree in the tannaitic period as the mishnaic, apodictic method of teaching became more popular. The redaction of the Mishnah and the establishment of its authority was for the Midrashim a two-edged sword. On the one hand, it established for the rest of Jewish history the superior status of the apodictic law and in this way eclipsed, to some extent, the study of midrashic interpretation. On the other hand, the existence of an apodictic code made it necessary for the code itself, its authority, and its regulations to be justified in light of the commandments of the Torah.

Put otherwise, the existence of this digest of oral law led to a renewed need to demonstrate the nexus of the oral and written laws. There was now a need to show that the two were in reality one, and this indeed was the main agenda of the tannaitic Midrashim. Thus they present much of the same halakhic material that is found in the Mishnah and Tosefta, but arranged in the order of the Torah. Whenever possible, the Midrashim seek to tie each particular halakhah directly to its scriptural basis or to what the redactors argue is its scriptural basis.

The tannaitic Midrashim comprise five texts of central importance and a number of smaller texts not detailed here. The major texts are the Mekhilta of Rabbi Ishmael and the Mekhilta of Rabbi Simeon ben Yohai to Exodus, the Sifra to Leviticus, the Sifre to Numbers, and the Sifre to Deuteronomy. These titles themselves need explanation. Mekhilta is an elusive term for a set of hermeneutical rules or a body of tradition. Sifra means “the book,” as Leviticus was, in priestly circles, the central book of the curriculum of study. Sifre, meaning “the books,” is most probably an abbreviation for “the rest of the books of the house of study,” a designation for the Midrashim on Numbers and Deuteronomy.

These books are sometimes classified into schools, some said to stem from the school of Rabbi Akiva and some from that of Rabbi Ishmael. This theory claims that the literary products of each school, as they are now preserved, exhibit characteristic exegetical and redactional traits. Assigned to the school of Rabbi Ishmael are the Mekhilta of Rabbi Ishmael, the Sifre to Numbers, and some other texts. To the school of Rabbi Akiva are attributed the Mekhilta of Rabbi Simeon ben Yohai, Sifra, Sifre Zuta to Numbers, and Sifre to Deuteronomy. This distinction has often been called into question, however, and its usefulness is limited. Despite the parallels that have been cited, the two groups of texts do not evidence uniform redactional traits.

The form of these works may hark back to the techniques of scriptural study practiced in the tannaitic academies. The Torah, as well as relevant laws, some aggadic homilies, and a variety of related topics were discussed together. It was this method that provided the form for the post-tannaitic redactors of these materials. Yet, as in the Tosefta, we are confronted with a mix of material. Some is clearly of tannaitic origin but not preserved in the other corpora. Other material is constructed out of a continuation of tannaitic activity and tradition by later scholars in the amoraic period. Only careful literary and textual analysis allows the separation of the literary strata in these works. The Sifra adheres most closely to the Mishnah, and its neatly set out redaction is based heavily on the Mishnah. Yet even here much earlier material has been incorporated, including preredactional versions of mishnaic material. Sifre to Deuteronomy is somewhat less heavily mishnaic than Sifra but is still strongly influenced by the redacted mishnaic tradition. Much earlier material is found in the two Mekhilta texts and in the Sifre to Numbers, which in general are looser agglomerations of material collected over a much longer period of time.

These Midrashim were intended to convey specific messages by those who labored to redact them. In varying degrees, these texts argue strongly for the unity of the written and oral laws. In an age when mishnaic, apodictic law had become supreme, these texts sought to remind those who studied them of the inseparable link between the two Torahs, the oral and the written. Therefore, they derive many of the laws found in the Mishnah from Scripture, claiming biblical exegesis as their basis. At the same time, in many cases, these texts preserve the logical and exegetical argumentation that was indeed the source for the determination of the halakhah by the tannaim. In texts like the Sifra and Sifre to Deuteronomy, in which the Bible is followed closely, the point is made repeatedly that there is nothing superfluous in Scripture and that each feature of the text, each apparent duplication, is designed to reveal the will of God. The Mekhilta texts tend to move further from these limited purposes, collecting many aggadot and often dealing with side issues. Nevertheless, the basic notion that Scripture and tradition are intimately linked is carried through all these works.

Many of the traditions included in the Tosefta and the tannaitic Midrashim found their way, in parallel versions, into the Palestinian and Babylonian Talmuds. Such traditions are termed baraitot, “external traditions.” While the process by which they were incorporated in amoraic collections will be taken up later, it should be noted that the versions of the traditions found there are often different from those in the collections surveyed here. This confirms the view that these collections were not available to the rabbis of the Talmuds in their present edited form. Rather, the Talmuds drew their versions of the traditions from the same unedited and unredacted sources as did the tannaitic Midrashim and the Tosefta. To a great extent medieval Judaism inherited a similar situation, for the tannaitic Midrashim were destined to be stepchildren in the family of rabbinic texts. Their contents were to be known largely from parallels in the Babylonian Talmud.