Seder Eliyahu

A Narratological Reading

Constanza Cordoni

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9783110531305
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Teología y religión
• Subtopic: Teología judía

The book is concerned with a so called ethical midrash, Seder Eliyahu (also known as Tanna debe Eliyahu), a post-talmudic work probably composed in the ninth century. It provides a survey of the research on this late midrash followed by five studies of different aspects related to what is designated as the work's narratology. These include a discussion of the problem of the apparent pseudo-epigraphy of the work and of the multiple voices of the text; a description of the various narrative types which the work, itself as a whole of non-narrative character, makes use of; a detailed treatment of Seder Eliyahu's parables and most characteristic first person narratives (an extremely unusual form of narrative discourse in rabbinic literature); as well as a final chapter dedicated to selected women stories in this late midrash. As it emerges from the survey in chapter 1 such a narratologically informed study of Seder Eliyahu represents a new approach in the research on a work that is clearly the product of a time of transition in Jewish literature.

1Introduction

1.1Seder Eliyahu and Scholarship: A Forschungsbericht

Seder Eliyahu has been quite heterogeneously appreciated in scholarly literature: It is described as a “uniform work stamped with a character of its own,”1 as “wahres Juwel innerhalb der rabbinischen Literatur,”2 but also as “one of the most baffling and intractable midrashim in our possession.”3 In the following pages, I will briefly discuss what appear to have been the main interests of research with respect to this work.

Among the aspects of the work that have received most scholarly attention, none has been as central as that concerning its date and place of composition. Myron Lerner even mentions Seder Eliyahu as prime example of how scholarship has passionately tried to fix the date of composition of a midrashic work:

Among the midrashic works dealt with by Zunz, special attention should be focused on Seder Eliyahu Rabba. An allusion to “more than 700 years” that have transpired since the fourth millennium (= 240 CE) in chapter two prompted Zunz to assign the composition of the work to a Babylonian rabbi c. 974 CE. Nevertheless, almost one dozen scholars of the nineteenth and twentieth century contested these conclusions and have consequently offered multiple conflicting solutions to the date and the provenance of this enigmatic aggadic work.4

1.1.1What Is Seder Eliyahu?

The question to which R. Natronai Gaon responded in the ninth century could have read more or less like this: What is Seder Eliyahu? The description cited above – the work consists of two parts, the former has three parts and thirty chapters, and the latter twelve chapters – targeted at a contemporary reader, is rather unsatisfactory for literary scholars of the present day.

Over the course of the twentieth century, there have been many attempts at defining Seder Eliyahu by giving it (or denying it) a generic name. The fact that it does not appear to fit into the traditional genre categories of Rabbinic literature is evidenced by the broad range of terms used to refer to it in scholarly literature: ethical aggadah;5 ethical midrash;6 something between midrash and ethical treatise;7 aggadic midrash work;8 semi-midrashic work;9 aggadic work, though in no way a midrash;10 “genuine midrash”;11 “exoterically moralistic treatise”;12 and “a puzzling and fascinating tradition of hybrid character,”13 to name but a few of the designations.

Instead of giving it a name, some scholars have attempted to describe it. It has been claimed that we are dealing with a text that is “admittedly faulty and corrupt, often beyond restoration.”14 A rather negative judgement of what others perceive as a coherent text, and one that reminds us of Werblowsky’s description of the work as a “baffling midrash,” is that given by Myron Lerner:

The literary structure of Seder Eliyahu is most enigmatic and prima facie defies a logical presentation of the midrashic material. One receives the impression that the author has preserved his ethical teachings in the form of a continuous monologue on what may be termed: “a midrashic stream of consciousness.”15

Seder Eliyahu is neither an anthology of homilies, such as those found in homiletical midrashim, nor an anthology of exegetical midrashim on a biblical book; even if it contains passages that have been seen as somehow resembling the genre of rewritten Bible,16 the work itself is not a typical example of this genre. In his book Parables, David Stern dedicates a section to the use of parables in Seder Eliyahu, describing the work itself in the following terms:

Its author appears to have wished to compose a book that would be more unified and self-contained than a conventional midrashic collection, but he also seems to have wanted to preserve the traditional exegetical frame of midrash. The result is a kind of transitional work: an exposition of themes and ideas, but one whose coherent presentation is always being sidetracked by the lure of exegesis.17

Another general appreciation of the work, one which emphasises its coherence and consistency, is provided by Braude and Kapstein, the translators of the work into English. They remark:

Tanna debe Eliyyahu has a unity of thought and feeling, of style and structure, that makes it seem the work of a single individual. Even if it be considered the product of a school, it is still likely that the text as we have it came from the head of the school, possibly a school named for him. In any event, he was a man of so strong a spirit as to impress it deeply upon the work, no matter how many of his disciples may have participated in its composition.18

Both parts, Seder Eliyahu Rabbah and Seder Eliyahu Zuta, seem to have been conceived as distinct parts (or cognate texts19) that transmit an ethical discourse consisting of religious teachings, passages of retold Bible, exegesis, and parables. Partly due to its textual coherence, Seder Eliyahu tends to be viewed as the literary product of a transitional time in the history of Rabbinic literature, between the time of the classical, collectively authored documents and the literature of single authors who use their names as authors, in the modern sense of the word.20 There is a clear continuation from Seder Eliyahu Rabbah to Seder Eliyahu Zuta, which can be grasped in their common topics, but above all in the phraseology used and in the characteristic first-person narratives. Each of the three sections that constitute the so-called Pseudo-Seder Eliyahu Zuta – as edited by Friedmann in 1904 according to the editio princeps Venice 1598 and the MS Parma 3111 (de Rossi 1240)21 – has characteristic features of its own, which suggests that these are not related to the main body of Seder Eliyahu in the same way that its two parts are related to form a whole. Probably the most salient of the distinguishing traits of this Pseudo-Seder Eliyahu Zuta-conglomerate is the fact that the sages are quoted profusely in all three parts. The governing voice22 of these parts conveys its message by letting named sages speak. Their voices open the three chapters of Pirqe Derekh Erets in the manner of a petichah, with the formula “R. X says/said”

In the case of Pirqe R. Eliezer, the chapters open with a question posed by R. Eliezer’s disciples and the sage’s subsequent answer, introduced with the formula

Finally, Pirqe ha-Yeridot, which offers an exposition on the fourth, fifth, and sixth descents of God, also quotes traditions in the name of several sages.

1.1.2Textual Transmission

The complete Seder Eliyahu – that is, its Rabbah and Zuta parts – is transmitted in only one manuscript, the Codex Vat. ebr. 31,23 as well as in the editio princeps Venice 1598, printed by Daniel Zanetti on the basis of a manuscript from the year 1186, which has not been preserved.24 Codex Vat. ebr. 31, which also transmits the tannaitic midrash Sifra, was published in a facsimile edition as Torath Cohanim (Sifra) · Seder Eliyahu Rabba and Zutta.25 Ulrich Berzbach, who studied the transmission of Seder Eliyahu Zuta, lists the following five manuscripts as independent textual witnesses to this part of the work: MS Parma 2785 (de Rossi 327); MS Parma 2342 (de Rossi 541); MS Oxford, Bodl. Libr., Mich. 910; MS Parma 3111 (de Rossi 1240); and MS Firkovitch Evr. IIa 157/1.26 The character of Seder Eliyahu Zuta’s transmission in manuscripts, the print edition, and the Yalqut version has led scholars to assume several redactions.27 Moshe Lavee reminds us that, although the manuscript transmission is almost exclusively European, “there is evidence for the cultural presence of the book in the Cairo Geniza” – for example, in the fragments discussed by Louis Ginzberg in chapters 22 and 23 of his Genizah Studies.28 Certain manuscripts as well as the editio princeps of Wayiqra Rabbah preserve passages from the seventh chapter (i.e. Friedmann’s chapter [6] 7) of Seder Eliyahu, annexed as concluding sections to the first three pericopes.29

Depending on the textual witness, the Rabbah part consists of 29 (MS) or 31 (editio princeps) chapters, whereas the Zuta oscillates between 15 (MS) and 25 (editio princeps) chap...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Abbreviations of Ancient Sources
• 1 Introduction
• 2 The Voices of Seder Eliyahu
• 3 A Typology of Narrative Forms of Seder Eliyahu
• 4 Parabolical Passages on the Disciples of the Wise
• 5 Men with Scripture but No Mishnah
• 6 Late-Midrashic Stories of Women
• 7 Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Indices