Historical Thinking in the Post-Talmudic Halakhah

From the close of the Babylonian Talmud in the sixth century CE down to the period of the Emancipation (late eighteenth century), the preponderance in Jewish studies was in the Halakhah, the legal side of Judaism. Of course, in this period, too, many works were produced on other aspects of Judaism Biblical exegesis, Hebrew grammar, liturgical and general poetry, mysticism and the Kabbalah, and, especially, Jewish philosophy and theology -but the main emphasis everywhere was in the direction of Halakhic studies. Every legal system is to some extent indifferent to history. The law pursues its own way, with a life of its own, as it were, impervious to notions of historical development. This is true a priori of the Halakhah, conceived of, at least on the surface, as a complete, self-contained system reaching back to the Torah given to Moses at Sinai. Even later Rabbinic legislation is thought of as part of the same process, unchanging and with ultimate Biblical sanction, so that, so far as Jewish practice is concerned, the origins of the laws become irrelevant. The key-note is sounded in the Talmudic expression, used when a law is discussed of only past application: difference does it make? What has been has been.' Moreover, medieval Jewish philosophy tended towards a meta-historical view of the whole Torah, to see the Torah as beyond the flux of time. The greatest of the medieval philosophers and also the most distinguished Halakhist, Moses Maimonides (1135-1204), could calmly say of works of general history that they are of no practical consequence so that to read them is a sheer waste of time. In addition, real historical study, as opposed to mere chronology, is largely the product of modern Jewish learning. It is, consequently, a little precarious to speak at all of historical thinking in the post-Talmudic Halakhah. For all that, such thinking can be detected as it entered through the back door, so to speak

Epistemology · History · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies · Philosophy

• The Fate of Jewish Historiography after the Bible

  Open Access•Amram Tropper•History and Theory•2004

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