And On The Earth You Shall Sleep, Satlow

"And on the Earth You Shall Sleep": "Talmud Torah" and Rabbinic Asceticism
Author(s): Michael L. Satlow

Source: The Journal of Religion, Vol. 83, No. 2 (Apr., 2003), pp. 204-225
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1206873
Accessed: 10-10-2017 16:55 UTC
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
http://about.jstor.org/terms
The University of Chicago Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and
extend access to The Journal of Religion
This content downloaded from 131.220.249.221 on Tue, 10 Oct 2017 16:55:22 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
"And on the Earth You Shall Sleep":
Talmud Torah and Rabbinic Asceticism*
Michael L. Satlow / Brown University
As described by the rabbis of antiquity, a life of Torah appears to have been

no fun at all: "Thus is the way of Torah: Bread with salt you shall eat, and
a misorah of water you shall drink, and on the earth you shall sleep, and a
life of sorrow you will live, and in the Torah you will labor. And if you do
this, 'You will be happy and good [will be] to you' [Ps. 128:2]. You will be
happy-in this world; and 'good [will be] to you'-in the world to come."'
As if this was not enough, the very next paragraph in Mishnah Avot details
the forty-eight things by which Torah is acquired, among which are ter-
ror, fear, humility, serving the sages, work, receiving punishments, and re-
ducing one's sleep, conversation, pleasure, and fun.2 Elsewhere, two later
rabbis (amoraim) expand on the connection between Torah study and
punishment: "R. Alexandrei says, 'There is no man without sufferings,
happy is the man whose Torah is suffering.' R. Yehoshua ben Levi says, 'All
sufferings that come to a man and take him away from his Torah are suf-
ferings of reproach, but all sufferings that do not take him away from his
* Translations of biblical texts are generally taken from or based upon Tanakh: The Holy
Scriptures: The New JPS Translation according to the Traditional Hebrew Text (Philadelphia:
Jewish Publication Society, 1988). Other translations, unless otherwise noted, are my
own. Versions of this essay were presented at Indiana University, Brown University, and
the Midwest Jewish Studies Colloquium. I thank the participants of each of these ses-
sions, as well as the referees of this journal, for their generous and trenchant critiques
and suggestions. The dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Indiana University pro-
vided critical financial support for this project. This article is dedicated to my friend
Henry Fischel.
SMishnah Avot 6:4 (Ch. Albeck, ed., The Mishnah, 6 vols. 1958-59; reprint, Jerusalem and
Tel Aviv: Bialik Institute and Dvir, 1988], 4:383-84).
2 M. Avot 6:5 (ed. Albeck, 4:383). Chapter 6 of M. Avot (perek kinyan torah) is generally
thought to be post-tannaitic. Since I use this and the previous text heuristically and as ex-
amples of a broader phenomenon for which I will argue throughout this essay, such a dating
does not effect my argument. See the parallel at Derek Eretz Zuta 5:1 (cf. 7:2); and the com-
mentary of Daniel Sperber, A Commentary on Derech Erez Zuta, Chapters Five to Eight (Ramat
Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 1990), pp. 17-23.
? 2003 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.
0022-4189/2003/8302-0002$10.00
204
Talmud Torah and Rabbinic Asceticism
Torah are sufferings of love."'" These and other rabbis link a life as a rab-
binic sage, a talmid hakam, to one of physical deprivation and suffering. It
is part of the same package.
Why this should be, however, is not at all clear. Are the rabbis suggesting
that such a life is a consequence of studying Torah (talmud torah), that is, that
one must devote so much time to the study of Torah that he must lead a life
of poverty? Or are they suggesting that such a disciplined regimen is in some
way necessary for the study of Torah? If the latter, then we confront another
set of questions. Is this rabbinic regimen instrumental, that is, a praxis that
helps one to acquire Torah, while remaining secondary to the ultimate goal
of mastering Torah? Or is it, in fact, essential for the acquisition of Torah?
In this essay, I will argue for the latter possibility, that (especially) Pales-
tinian rabbis of antiquity (ca. 70 C.E.-500 C.E.) saw ascetic praxis as an es-
sential component of talmud torah. "Asceticism," according to Susan Ash-
brook Harvey, "is the practice of a disciplined life in pursuit of a spiritual
condition. In late antiquity this discipline was exercised through a physi-
cal and mental process of ordering the self in relation to the divine."4 For
the rabbis, talmud torah was the ascetic practice par excellence, a "physical
and mental process of ordering the self."
As such, talmud torah cannot be viewed as a sui generis religious activity.
By construing talmud torah in this manner, the rabbis were participating in
the broader spiritual landscape of late antiquity, of which asceticism was
an important component. Although their means differed, ancient rabbis,
pagan philosophers, and church fathers were all engaged in a similar
quest to perfect the individual through physical and mental discipline in
order to bring him or her closer to the divine. According to Steven Fraade,
"For the ancients, including Jews, askisis was not simply the negative denial
of world, body, sense, pleasure, and emotion but the willful and arduous
training and testing, often through abstention from what was generally
permitted, of one's creaturely faculties in the positive pursuit of moral and
spiritual perfection."5 My argument is that talmud torah is a perfect ex-
ample of askisis in the context of late antiquity.
' Genesis Rabba 92:1 (J. Theodor and Ch. Albeck, eds., Midrash Bereshit Rabba: Critical Edi-
tion with Notes and Commentary [Jerusalem: Wahrmann, 1965], p. 1137).
SSusan Ashbrook Harvey, '"Asceticism," in Late Antiquity: Guide to the Postclassical World, ed.
G. W. Bowersock, Peter Brown, and Oleg Grabar (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 1999), pp. 317-18, p. 317.
5 Steven D. Fraade, "Ascetical Aspects of Ancient Judaism," in Jewish Spirituality: From the
Bible through the Middle Ages, ed. Arthur Green (New York: Crossroads, 1986), pp. 253-88,
p. 257. "In the philosophical tradition dominated by Stoicism, askisis means not renuncia-
tion but the progressive consideration of self, or mastery over oneself, obtained not through
the renunciation of reality but through the acquisition and assimilation of truth"; Michel
Foucault, "Technologies of the Self," in Technologies of the Self A Seminar with Michel Foucault,
ed. Luther H. Martin, Huck Gutman, and Patrick H. Hutton (Amherst: University of Mass-
achusetts Press, 1988), pp. 16-49, p. 35.
205
The Journal of Religion
Before proceeding, I should clarify what I am not claiming. While I am

arguing that the rabbis saw talmud torah as an ascetic praxis functionally
akin to Greco-Roman philosophy and other late-antique ascetic praxes, I
am not claiming that this was the only way in which the rabbis saw it. In-
deed, the rabbis saw talmud torah, among other things, as directly bringing
God's presence to earth and as substituting for the discontinued sacrifice
as a mode of atonement.' Viewing talmud torah as an ascetic praxis simply
helps us to see an important, yet often obscured, functional aspect of this
relatively innovative activity. Nor am I making any theoretical, or essen-
tialist, arguments about "asceticism".7 Throughout this essay, I am using a
very limited and tight definition of "asceticism," as discussed above. That
is, I am using the concept of asceticism as an analytical category that
brings into focus the comparisons that are at the heart of this paper.
Hence, here I make no claims regarding the general rabbinic view toward
pleasure and sexuality, which certainly had a strong positive strain.8
RABBINIC ANTHROPOLOGY
The study of rabbinic asceticism has been shaped by a famous

now about fifty years old, between Yitzhak Baer and Ephrai
According to Baer, strong ascetic tendencies in Judaism
around the second century B.C.E., and continued into and th
rabbinic period. Urbach sharply disagreed with this conclusion
asceticism as a rejection of the body that follows from the d
sumption that the individual consists of a body and a soul, U
gorically rejected the presence of asceticism in early Judaism
trast between the body and the soul, between the flesh and t
6 Bringing God's presence to earth: M. Avot 3:6; Palestinian Talamud (hereaf

4:2, 68a. Replacing the sacrifices: Leviticus Rabba 7:3 (M. Margulies, ed., Midr
Rabbah 1953-60; reprint, New York and Jerusalem: Jewish Theological Semin
ica, 1993], pp. 155-56).
7 On some of the confusion that using "asceticism" as a conceptual category c
Elizabeth A. Clark, "The Ascetic Impulse in Religious Life: A General Respon
cism, ed. Vincent L. Wimbush and Richard Valantasis (New York: Oxford Un
1995), pp. 505-10.
8 For discussions of this positive rabbinic view of pleasure and sexuality, s
Eros and the Jews: From Biblical Israel to Contemporary America (New York: Bas
pp. 33-59; Tikva Frymer-Kensky, In the Wake of the Goddesses: Women, Culture,
Transformation of Pagan Myth (New York: Free Press, 1992), p. 210; Daniel Boy
rael: Reading Sex in Talmudic Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 19
9Yitzhak Fritz Baer, Yisra'elBa-'Amim (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1955), pp
brew); Ephraim E. Urbach, '"Ascesis and Suffering in Talmudic and Midrash
Yitzhak E Baer Jubilee Volume (hereafter cited as Jubilee Volume), ed. S. W. Bar
S. Ettinger, and I. Halpern (Jerusalem: Historical Society of Israel, 1960),
printed in Ephraim E. Urbach, The World of the Sages: Collected Studies (Jer
Press, 1988), pp. 437-58 (in Hebrew).
206
is missing ... absolutely in the testimony of the Sages on abstinence and

seclusion."'0
Both Baer and Urbach erred, but their errors point toward a richer
understanding of early Jewish asceticism." No evidence supports Baer's
dating of asceticism to the "first pious ones (Hasidim)" and Pharisees, but
his working definition of asceticism-the obligation of a person (really a
man) to work and persevere in his moral development-is highly sug-
gestive."2 Urbach overargued his case but was correct to see little presence
within early Judaism of "body denying" asceticism: a conclusion that
does not address Baer's argument at all. For us, the value of Urbach's ar-
gument is his emphasis on the connection between anthropology and as-
cetic praxis: What, after all, is the purpose of ascetic praxis? As a "tech-
nology of the self," what are ascetic practices meant to do to the body and
the individual?"
As Urbach insists, anthropology is at the root of any adequate under
standing of ascetic praxis. Rabbinic anthropology is more complex than
Urbach suggests, and less clear than scholars would like." Unlike Greek
and Roman philosophers, the rabbis never systematically discuss their an
thropological beliefs. Recovering these beliefs requires sorting through a
mass of disjointed, sometimes contradictory, dicta. Moreover, there is
possibility that rabbinic anthropological views, even within Palestine itself,
changed over the course of late antiquity." Despite these problems, I be
lieve that it is possible to sketch a picture, however fuzzy, of the rabbini
understanding of the human.
When discussing the human, the rabbis use a variety of terms.16 Gu
body, is perhaps the clearest. Made the in the image of God, the guf is an
10 Urbach,Jubilee Volume, p. 51.

" For a useful summary of the debate between Baer and Urbach, see Fraade, "Ascetical As-
pects," pp. 258-61.
12 Baer, p. 40.
" Compare Foucault, "Technologies of the Self."
14 Urbach himself elsewhere acknowledges the complexity of rabbinic anthropology
Ephraim E. Urbach, The Sages: Their Concepts and Beliefs, trans. Israel Abrahams (Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987), pp. 214-54.
5 Both Urbach, The Sages, and Rubin argue for a shift in rabbinic anthropology, although
they attribute this shift to different causes (Nissan Rubin, "The Sages' Conception of th
Body and Soul," in Essays in the Social Scientific Study ofJudaism and Jewish Society, ed. Jack N.
Lightstone and Simcha Fishbane [Montreal: Concordia University, 1990], pp. 79-92).
16 There have been several treatments of rabbinic anthropology. Compare Urbach, The
Sages, pp. 214-54; Boyarin, Carnal Israel, pp. 31-35; George Foot Moore,Judaism in the Firs
Centuries of the Christian Era: The Age of the Tannaim, 2 vols. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Uni
versity Press, 1927-30), 1:445-59; Emero Stiegman, "Rabbinic Anthropology," Aufstieg und
Niedergang der Rdmischen Welt 2, no. 2 (1979): 487-579; Rubin; Emile Puech, La croyance des
Essiniens en la vie future: Immortaliti, resurrection, vie iternelle? 2 vols. (Paris: J. Gabalda, 1993),
1:209-20. My discussion comes closest to that of Urbach. A new, comprehensive discussio
of rabbinic anthropology is a desideratum.
207
essential part of what it means to be human." The referents of the other

terms are not as clear and in fact most likely meant different things to dif-
ferent rabbis. At least some rabbis understood the ruah as God's vitiating
force; it is the life that animates the body. Without the spirit, the body is
like a piece of spoiled meat.' God gives the spirit, and upon death, takes
it back.
While many rabbinic sources use the term ruah as a synonym for the
terms that often translated "soul" (nefesh, neshamah), some rabbis had a
more expansive view of the soul. Contrary to Urbach's claim, at least some
rabbinic anthropology does accord a place to the soul, although it is not a
simple dualistic understanding.
"Speak unto the children of Israel: When a nefesh [unwittingly incurs guilt ... ]"
(Lev. 4:2). Why [does it say] nefesh [and not "person" or "man"]? It overpowers the
soul. R. Yishmael taught: A parable. [It is similar] to a king who had an orchard
within which were nice figs. He placed two guards in it, one lame and the other
blind, to guard it. He said to them, "Be careful about the figs." He left them and
went. The lame man said to the blind man, "I see nice figs." He said to him, "Come
and let's eat [them]." He said to him, "Am I able to walk?" He said to him, "Am I able
to see?" What did they do? The lame man climbed on the blind man and they took
the figs and ate them. They went and returned, each to his place. After some time,
the king came and said to them, "Where are the figs?" Said the blind man to him,
"Can I see?" Said the lame man to him, "Can I walk?" The king, who was sharp,
what did he do? He placed the lame man on the blind man and judged them to-
gether.... Thus, in the world-to-come, the Holy One says to the nefesh, "Why did
you sin before me?" She says before him, "Master of the world! Am I the one who
sinned before you? The body sinned. From the day that I left it could I sin?" He
then says to the body, "Why did you sin?" He says before him, "Master of the World!
The nefesh sinned. From the day that she departed from me, can I not be compared
before you like clay on a trash-heap?" What did the Holy One, blessed be He, do?
He returned the soul to the body and judged both of them as one.20
This parable acknowledges the existence of two parts of the human but re-
fuses to value one over the other. Both are defective and both need the
other in order to function in this world, whether for good or ill. The soul,
"7 Boyarin, Carnal Israel. Compare Urbach, The Sages, pp. 226-32; Stiegman, pp. 508-12.
" Compare Y Kilayim 8:4, 31c (parallel at Babylonian Talamud [hereafter B.] Nidda 31a),
which posits three partners of human creation: the man (who contributes the "white stuff"
of the body), the woman (who contributes the "red stuff" of the body), and God (who con-
tributes the vivifying force [ruah], the soul [neshamah], and the spirit [nefesh]).
9 Compare B. Nidda 31a.
2o Lev. Rab. 4:5 (ed. Margulies, pp. 97-99). Another version of the story can be found at
Mekilta d'Rashbi ad Exod. 15:1 (J. N. Epstein and E. Z. Melamed, eds., Mekhilta d'Rabbi
Shim'on b.Jochai [reprint, Jerusalem: Hillel Press, n.d.], pp. 76-77); B. Sanhedrin 91 la-b. The
story may have been so well known that some manuscripts of the Mekilta d'Rabbi Yishmael
merely allude to it (Beshelah, d'shirah, 2 [H. S. Horovitz and I. A. Rabin, eds., Mechilta d'Rabbi
Ismael (1930; reprint, Jerusalem: Wahrmann, 1970), p. 125]).
208
then, appears to be a seat of moral agency. Like the "lame man" in the
parable, it has ideas but alone is unable to act upon them physically.2' The
body remains blind without its guidance.
The soul, however, is not necessarily a united composition. Although
the rabbis do not explicitly divide the soul into "inclinations," their dis-
cussions of these inclinations do suggest that they are located in the soul,
rather than the body. For the rabbis, moral choice is the result of the strug-
gle between a human's "good" and "evil" inclinations (yeser). The concept
of the good and evil inclinations, each pulling the individual toward and
away from God, is fundamental to rabbinic anthropology of all times and
places."
The good inclination receives relatively little rabbinic comment; it is
that which impels us to do good and live according to God's will. It must
always fight, however, against human desire, which is the most salient fea-
ture of the rabbinic understanding of the evil inclination.23 For the rabbis,
the "sin that couches at the door," about which God warns Cain (Gen. 4:7),
becomes the evil inclination, against which a person must always be alert.24
While the evil inclination is seen as necessary for human existence (ac-
cording to one tradition, it drives a man to have children and build a
house), it is also most frequently associated with sexual desire, covetous-
ness, and idolatry.25 The link between these three traits is the assumption
that the evil inclination is the desire that must be tightly circumscribed
and controlled (although not obliterated). There is a single source within
the human for these three traits. Thus, a loss of control that might start
with something small leads naturally down the slope to idolatry. Accord-
ing to one rabbinic story, the casual consorting of Israelite men with
Moabite (or Midianite) women (reported in Numbers 25) led to loss of
sexual control and, finally, idolatry.26
For some rabbis, then, the real struggle is not between the body and the
soul but within the soul itself, between the good and evil inclinations.27 The
21 Compare Rubin, pp. 53-55.

22 Compare Frank Chamberlin Porter, "The Yeger Hara: A Study in the Jewish Doctrine of
Sin," in Biblical and Semitic Studies: Critical and Historical Essays by the Members of the Semitic and
Biblical Faculty of Yale University (New York: Scribner's, 1901), pp. 93-156; Solomon Schechter,
Aspects of Rabbinic Theology (1909; reprint, Woodstock, Vt.: Jewish Lights, 1993), pp. 242-63;
Boyarin, Carnal Israel (n. 8 above), pp. 64-67.
23 Compare Schechter, pp. 24-46.
24 See n. 67 below.
25 Compare Michael L. Satlow, Tasting the Dish: Rabbinic Rhetorics of Sexuality (Atlanta: Schol-
ars Press, 1995), pp. 158-60, and the sources cited there.
26 Y Sanhedrin 10:2, 28d. Compare B. Sanhedrin 106a.
27 This assertion is provisional. While there is no direct evidence for it, the sources adduced
above, and the parallels adduced below, do point in this direction. Compare Porter,
pp. 110-11.
209
challenge is to control the evil inclination, so that the good inclination,

together with the body, can walk in God's path. This idea is summarized in
a rabbi's prayer that it may be God's will to "shatter and carry off the yoke
of the evil inclination from our hearts, for thus You created us to do Your
will... [may it be Your will] that you carry it off from us and subdue it [that]
we may do Your will as our will with a complete heart."28
This rabbinic anthropology owes more to Greek and Roman concepts
than it does to anything within the Jewish tradition. Biblical anthropology
is predominantly monistic, and Jewish literature from the Second Temple
period, while more dualistic, does not understand the "inclinations" as do
the rabbis.29 1 Enoch 22, for example, does assume a dualism between the
body and soul, but no division within the soul. Ben Sira (Ecclesiasticus)
uses the term yeser, but most likely as a reference to the human delibera-
tive faculty generally, rather than to a distinct part of the soul."3 Even the
Dead Sea Scrolls, with their frequently stark dualism, exhibit a monistic
understanding of the human.31
Fourth Ezra, a document contemporaneous with the earlier rabbis, most
strongly parallels the rabbinic anthropology sketched above.32 The "first
Adam" was burdened with "an evil heart," which was since passed down "to
all who were descended from him." "Thus the disease became permanent;
the Torah was in the people's heart along with the evil root, but what was
good departed, and the evil remained."33 The first Adam was created with
"an evil heart" and a cure to that condition, the Torah. Here, for the first
time, appears a theme that gains popularity in the later rabbinic sources.
28" Y Berakot 4:2, 7d (in the name of R. Tanhum bar Iskolastica). A similar prayer, attributed
at B. Berakot 17a to R. Alexandrai, omits reference to the evil inclination.
29 Compare Urbach, The Sages (n. 14 above), pp. 214-17. Scholars have perhaps overem-
phasized the monistic anthropology of the Hebrew Bible, but for the sake of this argument
biblical anthropology is certainly far from that of the rabbis. Compare Stiegman (n. 16
above), pp. 512-15.
30 For the interpretation that Ben Sirah's use of the term yeser (15:14) parallels that of the
rabbis, see Porter, pp. 136-46. Against this interpretation, see Moshe Zvi Siegel, Seper Ben
Sira Hashalem (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1953), p. 97 (in Hebrew).
3' The most coherent statement on the nature of the human in the Dead Sea documents is
1QS 3:13-4:1 (Garcia Martinez Florentino and Eibert J. C. Tigchelaar, eds., The Dead Sea
Scrolls Study Edition, 2 vols. [Leiden: Brill, 1997-98], 1:75-77). On this passage, see G. G.
Stroumsa, "The Manichees and the Two Souls," in G. G. Stroumsa and Paula Frederiksen,
"Two Souls and the Divided Will," in Self Soul and Body in Religious Experience, ed. J. Assman,
A. I. Baumgarten, and G. G. Stroumsa (Leiden: Brill, 1998), pp. 198-217, pp. 202-3. For
similar interpretations of 1QS 4:23-24, see Shmuel Safrai and David Flusser, "The Slave of
Two Masters," Immanuel 6 (1976): 30-33, 32; Michael Edward Stone, Fourth Ezra: A Commen-
tary on the Book of Fourth Ezra, Hermeneia-a Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible (Min-
neapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1990), p. 74. Puech comments passim throughout vol. 2 on the
place of the soul in the Dead Sea Scrolls.
32 Compare Porter (n. 22 above), pp. 146-52. On the language and dating of 4 Ezra, see
Stone, pp. 9-11.
334 Ezra 3:20-21 (trans. Stone, p. 59).
210
Jewish sources written in Greek from this time offer an anthropology

that is closer to both the rabbinic one and to that of contemporaneous
Greeks and Romans. According to Philo, for example, "I am soul and
body. To soul belong rational and irrational parts.... The irrational por-
tion is sense and the passions which are the offspring of sense."3" For Philo,
who clearly devalues the body in relation to the soul, the soul has an up-
per and lower part.35 The upper part is rational, superior, and created in
the image of God."3 The irrational part of the soul, which houses the bod-
ily senses, is a necessary "helper" to the rational part. While for Philo the
human struggle is between the body and the soul, it is with the body "un-
der the dominance of the irrational soul.""' While, obviously, the rabbis do
not share Philo's devaluation of the body, they do share the understand-
ing that the human "problem" is not the struggle between body and soul
but within the soul. Other Jewish writings in Greek from this time share
some elements of this anthropology, although none are nearly as complete
as Philo's or as similar to the rabbinic version.38
Philo's understanding of the self, of course, follows Plato's. According to
Plato, the soul is comprised of three parts. The largest part of the soul is
"appetitive" and irrational; this part generates bodily desires. Plato iden-
tified two other parts of the soul, the rational and the spirited. These, he
thought, were "higher" than the appetitive part. They band together to
control the irrational appetitive part of the soul: "And these two, thus
reared and having learned and been educated to do their own work in the
true sense of the phrase, will preside over the appetitive part which is the
mass of the soul in each of us and the most insatiate by nature of wealth.
They will keep watch upon it, lest, by being filled and infected with the so-
called pleasures associated with the body and so waxing big and strong, it
may not keep to its own work but may undertake to enslave and rule over
the classes which it is not fiting that it should, and so overturn the entire
3" Philo, Legum Allegoria 2.2, 6 (trans. E H. Colson and G. H. Whitaker, Loeb Classic Li-
brary [hereafter cited as LCL] 1:225, 229).
15 Harry Austryn Wolfson, Philo: Foundations of Religious Philosophy in Judaism, Christianity,
and Islam, 2 vols. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1947), 1:360-423; David
Winston, "Philo and the Contemplative Life," in Green, ed. (n. 5 above), pp. 211-15; Bo-
yarin, Carnal Israel (n. 8 above), pp. 31-32; Philo, Legum Allegoria 1.103, 106, 2.10.
36 Philo, Quaestiones ad Gen. 2.62. Compare Sobrietate 18.
37 Wolfson, 1:426.
"8 Wisdom of Solomon 9:15; Josephus, War 3.362, 372-78; 7.344-48; T Asher 1:3-9. Compare
Boyarin, Carnal Israel, pp. 67-70. Collins, however, suggests that this passage should be seen
as a statement of metaphysical (rather than anthropological) dualism. Compare John J.
Collins, Between Athens and Jerusalem: Jewish Identity in the Hellenistic Diaspora, 2d ed. (Grand
Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2000), pp. 182-83. On Paul, cf. Gal. 5:16-17; Rom. 7:14-25. Joel
Marcus argues that James has a notion of the "evil inclination" in its background. Compare
Joel Marcus, "The Evil Inclination in the Epistle of James," Catholic Biblical Quarterly 44
(1982): 606-21.
211
life of all.""39 Philosophers throughout late antiquity subscribed to this un-

derstanding of the soul, with its inner conflict between its rational and ir-
rational (appetitive) parts.40
When E. R. Dodds declared, "Contempt for the human condition and
hatred of the body was a disease endemic in the entire culture of [the late
second and third centuries, C.E.]" he ignored a very powerful strain of
thought that emphasized the soul's inner struggle over the soul's battle
with the body.41 Middle Platonists, Neoplatonists, Stoics, and even some
church fathers (most notably Origen) essentially followed the Platonic no-
tion that the soul had a rational part that struggled with its "lower" part(s),
which generated desire.42 While there were certainly major differences be-
tween the anthropologies of these groups, all do locate the essential hu-
man "problem" to be within the soul. The struggle between body and soul
might be an outgrowth of that inner struggle, but ultimately the division
within the soul itself causes human bane.
When the rabbis, then, understood what it meant to be human, and the
essential problem that faced the individual human, they drew on ideas
that were popular in the non-Jewish, and some segments of the Jewish,
world around them; they shared a mentalit6. Drawing on the world
around them rather than depending solely on exegesis or adherence to
tradition, the rabbis, like Philo, created a '3ewish" version of a common
anthropology. And this central understanding of the human condition
had implications that helped shape the very core of the rabbinic
enterprise.
9 Plato, Republic 442A-B (trans. Paul Shorey, LCL 1:406-9).

40 Plato's understanding of the soul is not consistent, either in his works as a whole or even
within Republic (cf. 611B-612A).
4' E. R. Dodds, Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety: Some Aspects of Religious Experience
from Marcus Aurelius to Constantine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965), p. 35.
The main sources for this assertion, as it applies to paganism, are on pp. 29-30 and are very
weak. In support of Dodds, however, see Julian, Oration 225D-226C, a description of a Cynic
way of life that despises the body.
42 This is obviously an oversimplified assertion, made for limitations of space. For some
supporting evidence, see Musonius Rufus, Discourse VI (Musonius Rufus, Musonius Rufus:
"The Roman Socrates," trans. Cora Lutz, Yale Classical Studies, vol. 10 [New Haven, Conn.: Yale
University Press, 1947], pp. 53, 55); Plutarch, Moralia 442A; Plotinus, Ennead 1.1.10, 1.2.5;
Origen, Peri Archon 1.3.8, 3.4, 4.2.4. Compare John Dillon, The Middle Platonists: 80 B.C. to A.D.
220 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1996), pp. 290-93; Carlos G. Steel, The Changing
Self: A Study on the Soul in Later Neoplatonism: lamblichus, Damascius and Priscianus (Brussels:
Paleis der Acadamiin, 1978), pp. 34-38, 63-66; Pierre Hadot, Philosophy as a Way ofLife: Spir-
itual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault, trans. Michael Chase (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1995),
p. 100, and The Inner Citadel: The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, trans. Michael Chase (Cam-
bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998), pp. 82-100; Jacques Dupuis, "L'esprit de
l'homme": Etude sur l'anthropologie religieuse d'Origine (Paris: Descl6e de Brouwer, 1967); Henri
Crouzel, Origen, trans. A. S. Worrall (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1989), pp. 87-91; Hal
Koch, Pronoia und Paideusis: Studien iiber Origenes und sein Verhdltnis zum Platonismus (Berlin:
Walter de Gruyter, 1932), pp. 163-304.
212
TALMUD TORAH
For the non-Jewish philosophers, the diagnosis of the human c

some extent predetermined its solution. Many of these philos
sentially agreed that the problem of the "self" was within the
the irrational portion of the soul interferes with human goo
piness. The solution, then, was to strengthen the rational part
in order to subdue its irrational part. This can be done with p
Hard and rigorous training-of both body and mind-w
strengthening one's rational faculty.43 A strong rational part
dampens one's passions and allows for true human good, happ
equanimity.44
Plotinus, for example, advocated a strict ascetic regimen, and
self appears to have led such a life.45 But the goal of this pract
to deny the body. Rather, Plotinus saw ascetic activity as a form of
cation of the irrational appetites: "purification is a vigorous cl
mud from golden soul, the perfection (teleiosis) of which lies in in
This purification is achieved through a disciplined training of
self, body and soul.4' Ascetic practice, for Plotinus, is necessary in
elevate the rational element of the soul, which in turn is necessary
perfection.48
Similarly, the Stoic Epictetus advocated training in three disc
Only the rare individual, the sage, can actually obtain the ide
state in which one's rational soul always makes true judgments.5
"4 Compare Ludwig Bieler, Theos Aner: Das Bild des "gottlichen Menschen" in Sp
Friihchristentum, 2 vols. (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1967
many of these Greek and Roman philosophers, according to Bieler, ascet
"erzieherische Wert... fiir die Stirkung des Charakters" (original emphasis, 1:6
4 See the useful survey in Johannes Leipoldt, Griechische Philosophie undfriihchris
(Berlin: Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig, 1960), pp. 3-31, who argues
philosophers linked askisis to godliness.
5 Compare Porphyry, Life ofPlotinus 2, 8. Plotinus praises Rogatianus for his a
of his wealth and his moderate eating (Life of Porphyry 7). It is unclear in this p
ever, precisely why Plotinus thought him worthy of emulation.
46 Daniel A. Dombrowski, "Asceticism as Athletic Training in Plotinus," Aufstieg
gang der Romischen Welt 36 (1987): 708. Compare Plotinus Ennead 1.2.3; 1.2.5
47 Plotinus, Ennead 1.1.10.
4" Compare John Dillon, "Rejecting the Body, Refining the Body: Some Rem
Development of Platonist Asceticism," in Wimbush and Valantasis, eds. p. 87, n. 9
own position, though thoroughly ascetic, is on the whole world-affirming to a g
than was that of Plato."
49 Compare Epictetus 3.2.1-2.
50 George B. Kerferd, "The Sage in Hellenistic Philosophical Literature (39
C.E.," in The Sage in Israel and the Ancient Near East, ed. John G. Gammie and L
(Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1990), pp. 320-22. The model of the Cynic sa
even better model of how the body-one's concrete way of life-is deeply impl
philosophical quest for the ultimate.
213
philosopher must work to control his or her passions so that it does not
overwhelm the hegemonikon, rational part of the soul, thus leading it "to
something inappropriate and contrary to the choice of reason."'' Accord-
ing to Richard Valantasis, Musonius Rufus recommends that "by dual as-
cetical work on soul and body, and on the soul, the person is freed again
to attain the virtuous life that communicates the mind of God.""52 Pierre
Hadot claims that Marcus Aurelius's Meditations is, in fact, a set of philo-
sophical exercises through which Marcus attempted to discipline his
soul.53 Both Cynics and Pythagoreans also appear to have advocated a
dual asceticism, of both body and "soul" (psyche).54 According to lamblicus,
Pythagoras instituted general practices of moderation (sophrosyne) "to
rouse the soul's reasoning power and to keep it pure from things hinder-
ing its exercise."''55 The emperor Julian's "puritanical" lifestyle very much
drew on this complex of ideas.56
Even Origen, who in many places simply asserts dogma, treats "theol-
ogy as research."'' That is, Origen would often address theological prob-
lems philosophically, explicating all sides with equal force without declar-
ing the winner. These were "by way of exercise," apparently meant to
sharpen the reader's mind and to elevate his or her rational faculty.58 "The
purpose of Scripture" and its study, according to Karen Jo Torjessen, "is
the formation of the soul."''59 For Origen, the study of Scripture-and the
unlocking of the divine spirit within it-elevates one's soul to its purest
5' Plutarch, Moralia, 441C-D, cited in Hadot, Inner Citadel, p. 89. Stoics, among other philo-
sophical movements, allowed for the training of women. Compare Musonius Rufus, Discourse
IV; Porphyry, Ad Marcella (ed. Porphyry, To Marcella, trans. Kathleen O'Brien Wicker [At-
lanta: Scholars Press, 1987]).
5 Richard Valentasis, "Musonius Rufus and Greco-Roman Ascetical Theory," Greek, Roman,
and Byzantine Studies 40 (1999): 207-31, at 224.
5 Hadot, Inner Citadel (n. 42 above), pp. 35-53.
14 Compare Diogenes Laertius 6.70; Marie-Odile Goulet-Caze, L'ascese cynique: Un commen-
taire de Diogene Laerce Vi 70-71 (Paris: Libraire Philosophique J. Vrin, 1986), esp. pp. 210-22:
"Nous parlerions certainement d'une asese corporelle a finalite spirituelle" (p. 212).
55 Iamblichus, De vita pythagorica 187 (lamblichus, On the Pythagorean Way ofLife, trans. John
Dillon [Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 1991], p. 197).
56 G. W Bowersock, Julian the Apostate (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
1978), pp. 79-93.
57 Crouzel, Origen (n. 42 above), p. 166.
58 Compare Origen, Peri Archon, preface 3, where he states that the apostles left investiga-
tion of the reasons for their assertions to the intellectual elite. See also 1.3.8; 1.1.6 (Henri
Crouzel and Manilo Simonetti, eds., Traiti des principes [Sources Chretiennes 252; Paris: Les
Editions du Cerf, 1978]), 1:102: "sed eruditionibus atque exercitiis adhibitis acumen quidem
elimatur ingenii, quaeque sunt ei insita ad intellegentiam prouocantur, et capax maioris ef-
ficitur intellectus non corporalibus incrementis aucta, sed eruditionis exercitiis elimata."
Compare Henri Crouzel, "Qu'a voulu faire Origene en composant le traiti des principes?" Bul-
letin de Littgrature Ecclisiastique 76 (1975): 245-50.
9 Karen Jo Torjesen, Hermeneutical Procedure and Theological Method in Origen's Exegesis
(Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1986), p. 43. Compare Koch (n. 42 above), pp. 86-89.
214
state. Moreover, such study is directly linked to bodily practice. One who
is highly educated, "his reason ... formed by practice and study," can
more easily resist bodily temptation than one who is not.60 For Origen, as
for the Neoplationists, the goal was to restore the pure soul, by means of
the body.6'
For all of these thinkers, the path to self-perfection was a praxis that
might be called "world-affirming" asceticism.62 This praxis seeks to disci-
pline both the irrational part of the soul and the body, through training of
the rational part of the soul and the body, in order to purify the whole or-
ganism. As has been frequently observed, moderation and self-control
were important values for both Greeks and Romans.63 In the words of
A. D. Nock, ancient philosophy offered "life with a scheme."6' The disci-
plined and ascetic life of the philosopher was rewarded with "the sense of
freedom ... the joy of the life of contemplation.""65
For the rabbis, talmud torah served the same function as philosophy did
for these non-Jewish writers; talmud torah was the means by which the soul
was made pure or whole, thus bringing the individual closer to the divine,
or into the "spiritual condition." Talmud torah required the same mental
and physical discipline demanded by the non-Jewish study of philosophy.
Body and soul, working together in a disciplined (i.e., ascetic) fashion, can
help a man overcome his evil inclination.66
Torah's true value is as the ultimate weapon in the continuing struggle
of the person against his (or her?) evil inclination:
"And you will place these words on your hearts"-this says that words of Torah are
compared to a life-giving drug. A parable: [It is to be compared] to a king who was
angry with his son and gave him a powerful blow. He then put a bandage on his
wound and said to him, "My son, as long as you keep this bandage on your wound,
60 Origen, Peri Archon 3.1.4 (ed. Crouzel and Simonetti, 3:28).

61 Compare Koch, pp. 36-46. More expansively, Leipoldt (n. 44 above), pp. 3-67, esp.
pp. 60-67, argues that Christian asceticism as a whole sprung from Greek philosophical
influence.
62 For an excellent description of this term, see Dillon, "Rejecting the Body" (n. 48 above).
63 Compare Michel Foucault, The Use ofPleasure, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Random
House, 1985), esp. pp. 95-139; Helen North, Sophrosyne: Self-Knowledge and Self-Restraint
in Greek Literature (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1966); Vincent L. Wimbush,
"Sophrosyne: Greco-Roman Origins of a Type of Ascetic Behavior," in Gnosticism and the Early
Christian World, ed. James E. Goehring and James McConkey Robinson (Sonoma, Calif.:
Polebridge, 1990), pp. 89-102. For Suetonius, the "good" emperors all display moderate ap-
petites, e.g., Aug. 72-77.
6 A. D. Nock, Conversion: The Old and the New in Religion from Alexander the Great to Augus-
tine of Hippo (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1933), p. 167.
65 Ibid., p. 174. Compare Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life (n. 42 above), esp. pp. 126-44,
264-76.
66 Schechter (n. 22 above), pp. 273-78, errs when he identifies ascetic practice as an ind
pendent antidote to the evil inclination. Compare Porter (n. 22 above), pp. 127-59.
215
eat whatever pleases you, drink whatever pleases you, and wash either in warm or
cold water, and no harm will come to you. But if you remove it immediately a sore
will arise." Thus the Holy One, blessed be He, said to Israel: "My children, I cre-
ated for you an evil inclination from which is no evil, 'Surely if you do right there
is uplift' [Gen. 4:7], when you are occupied with words of Torah it will not rule over
you, but if you separate from words of Torah behold it will rule over you, as it is
written, 'sin couches at the door, its urge is toward you."'67
The midrash is based on a wordplay: it reads the biblical word vesamtem

(you will place) as sam tam (a perfect drug). The wordplay may be playful,
but the theological assertion is complex. This short tradition is wrestling
with the theological problem of the evil inclination, that is, how the always-
good God can create something evil. The answer-which admittedly re-
mains theologically problematic-is that the evil inclination is not truly
evil, for humans can avoid its sway by engaging in its God-given remedy,
talmud torah.
Other sources, both tannaitic and amoraic, use a different metaphor to

explain the relationship between talmud torah and the evil inclination.
Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi said: Every day a divine voice goes forth from Mt. Horev
and announces and says: "Woe to those creatures who have spurned the Torah!
For anyone who does not occupy [himself] with the Torah is called 'rebuked,'" as
it is written, "Like a gold ring in the snout of a pig is a beautiful woman bereft of
sense." And it is written: "The tablets were God's work, and the writing was God's
writing, incised [4arut] upon the tablets" [Ex. 32:16]. Don't read harut, but herut
[i.e., free], for the only one who is free is one who occupies himself with the study
of Torah. And everyone who constantly occupies himself with Torah, behold, he is
exalted, as it is written, " . . and from Mattanah to Nahaliel, and from Nahaliel to
Bamoth." (Num. 21:19)68
R. Levi in the name of R. Hama b'Rabbi Hanina said: Laws that are engraved on
the evil inclination, "Ha, those who write out evil writs" (Is. 10:1). R. Levi said:
There was a deserted place that was in confusion on account of invaders. What did
the king do? He appointed an officer in order to guard it. Thus said the Holy One,
blessed be He: The Torah is stone and the evil inclination is stone. The stone will
guard the stone. The Torah is stone: "And I will give you the stone tablets" (Ex.
24:12). The evil inclination is stone: "I will remove the heart of stone from your
body." (Ezek. 36:26)69
Both traditions associate the tablets of the law with freedom from the evil
inclination and its fruits. The first, tannaitic, tradition implies that the free-
67 Sipre on Deuteronomy 45 (ed. L. Finkelstein [reprint, New York: Jewish Theological Sem-
inary of America, 1969], pp. 103-4). For other rabbinic comments on the efficacy of Torah
study, see B. Berakot 5a; B. Sukka 52a-b; B. Qiddushin 30b; B. Sanhedrin 107a.
68 M. Avot 6:2 (ed. Albeck, 4:382).
69 Lev. Rab. 35:5 (ed. Margulies, pp. 822-23) (parallel at Song Rabba 6:11 [ed. Vilna, 35a]).
216
dom that Torah helps achieve is that from one's own material and mun-
dane concerns. A man who does not seize this God-given gift scorns God,
and in recompense is scorned by God. The second, amoraic, tradition pits
Torah and evil inclination against each other as near equals. Only talmud
torah can adequately defend against the evil inclination, but the battle is a
constant one, and victory is not assured.
The rabbis, unlike contemporary non-Jewish philosophers and church
fathers, rarely used athletic metaphors to describe the effort to purify
one's soul, but they did use metaphors of combat."7 On occasion these
metaphors are martial, as when a tannaitic source mentions the "war of
Torah.""71A later Palestinian amoraic tradition discusses men who exchange
great physical power for great facility in talmud torah: the two domains ap-
pear to be interchangeable, if mutually exclusive.72 Sometimes the image
is less violent but still implies the continuous struggle to subdue the evil
inclination: "R. Hanina said: If your inclination comes to sport with you,
fling it against words of Torah, 'The confident mind (yeser) will guard [in
safety (shalom), in safety because it trusts in You]' (Is. 26:3). And if you do
this, I will account you as if you created peace-'you guard shalom'. ...
R. Simon said: If your inclination comes to sport with you, gladden it with
Torah, 'a confident mind.' And if you do this, I will account to you as if you
created two words: 'shalom' is not written, but 'shalom shalom.'"" One source
found only in the Babylonian Talmud, but attributed as tannaitic, advises
one to drag the evil inclination to the study house: "If it is stone, it will dis-
solve, and if of iron, it will shatter."74
Just as the philosophers appoint themselves as the guides for the pu-
rification of the self, so too do the rabbis. "'Jabez invoked the God of Is-
rael, saying, 'Oh, bless me, enlarge my territory, stand by me, and make
me not suffer pain from misfortune.' And God granted what he asked'
(1 Chr. 4:10). 'Oh bless me'-with Talmud Torah. 'Enlarge my terri-
tory'-with students. 'Stand by me'-that I will not forget my learning.
'Make me not suffer'-that you make for me evils like me. 'Pain from
misfortune'-that the evil inclination not have power over me to pre-
vent me from studying."75 This tannaitic midrash converts Jabez's very
concrete, materialistic prayer into a rabbinic fantasy that links talmud
70 On the use of athletic metaphors to describe this inner struggle, see Dombrowski (n. 46
above).
" Compare Sipre Deut. 321 (ed. Finkelstein, p. 370); B. Megilla 15b (ascribed here to
R. Eleazar in the name of Rabbi Hanina).
72 Song Rabba 5.14.3 (ed. Vilna 32a). For a discussion of this theme in a Babylonian rabbinic
text, see Daniel Boyarin, Unheroic Conduct: The Rise of Heterosexuality and the Invention of the
Jewish Man (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), pp. 127-50.
73 Gen. Rab. 22:6 (ed. Theodor and Albeck, pp. 210-11).
74 B. Qidushin 30b.
75 Mekilta d'Rabbi Yishmael Yitro d'Amalek 2 (ed. Horowitz and Rabin, p. 201) (cf. B. Temura 16a).
217
torah, rabbinic discipleship, and the evil inclination. Elsewhere the rab-
binic sage is portrayed as the very embodiment of Torah: "Anyone who
sees a sage die, [it is] as if he sees a Torah scroll that was burnt."''76 The
rabbinic sage, at times, appears little different from the philosophical
sage, whose behavior reflects his learning and validates his (hoped for)
leading role in society."
RABBINIC ASCETICISM
As understood by the rabbis, talmud torah required discipline

and physical. Intellectually, the enterprise was ongoing and
rabbis often compare talmud torah to "labor"; just as a labor
job so too does a rabbinic disciple (talmid hakam).`7 Palestin
sources presume a (relatively) clear rabbinic curriculum: "R
Shmuel said: Even words of Torah, which are given from ab
only by measure. And they are: Bible, mishnah, talmud, and
might warrant Bible; another warrant mishnah; another wa
another warrant aggadah; and another warrant them all.""79
another tradition, the crowning achievement of this curriculum
in talmud, or dialectics.80 The tannaim appear to praise the d
76 Y Mo'ed Qatan 3:7, 83b. Compare Steven D. Fraade, From Tradition to Com
and Its Interpretation in the Midrash Sifre to Deuteronomy (Albany: State Univer
Press, 1991), pp. 69-121; Martin Jaffee, "The Oral-Cultural Context
Yerushalmi: Greco-Roman Rhetorical Paideia, Discipleship, and the Concept
in The Talmud Yerushalmi and Graeco-Roman Culture, ed. Peter Schifer (T
Mohr/Paul Siebeck, 1998), pp. 27-61.
77 I leave aside here the image of the rabbi as "holy man," in the sense that
some scholars of late antiquity understand the term. Compare Peter Brow
Late Antiquity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1978) (with the m
Peter Brown, Authority and the Sacred: Aspects of Christianisation of the Roman W
Cambridge University Press, 1995], pp. 57-78, and the articles in the Journal
ian Studies 6, no. 3 [1998]). On the rabbinic applications of this concept
Hezser, The Social Structure of the Rabbinic Movement in Roman Palestine (T
Mohr/Paul Siebeck, 1997), pp. 462-66; Richard Kalmin, The Sage in Jewish Soc
tiquity (London: Routledge, 1999), pp. 75-77. The extent to which Palestini
authority from their status as "holy" or "wonder-workers" merits further in
in any case, is not exclusive of their image as "sages." On the idea of th
philosopher being considered a holy man, see Bieler (n. 43 above), esp.
Nock (n. 64 above), pp. 175-76.
78 M. Avot 4:10 (ed. Albeck, 4:370-71); Sipre Deut. 41 (ed. Finkelstein, pp
Finkelstein, p. 90). See further the illuminating discussion in Eliezer Diamond
Hunger Artists: Fasting and Asceticism in Rabbinic Culture (Oxford: Oxford Un
press), chap. 1. I am grateful to Professor Diamond for sharing his manuscr
79 Lev. Rab. 15:2 (ed. Margulies, p. 322). This list of topics is also found, i
texts, at Y Pe'a 2:4, 17a; Gen. Rab. 15:4 (ed. Theodor and Albeck, p. 147).
80 Compare Y Horayot. 3:9, 48c (parallel at Y Shabbat 16:1, 15c). This tradi
precedence of the study of mishnah and talmud, ultimately deciding that today, a
lation of the Mishnah by R. Judah the Patriarch, talmud is preferred. This d
218
dent, the "winnower," who refines his teaching and retains only the best of
it.8" Talmud torah is (nearly) a full-time job.82
It is also physically demanding. As the sources cited at the beginning of
this article indicate, talmud torah is not for the weak of heart. "If a man does
not make himself as cruel as a raven over his body, his children, and those
of his household he does not merit to learn Torah.""8 This advice, of course
only applies when one has a family-there is significant ambivalence
within rabbinic literature on the compatibility of having a family with
studying Torah."4 Scholars, according to one later tradition, are "repulsive
and black in this world.""85 The rabbis also link fasting to torah study.86
The ascetic practices linked to talmud torah are, in fact, essential to it.87
That is, as understood by the rabbis, talmud torah has a bodily as well as an
intellectual component. If, as I have argued here, a primary purpose oftal-
mud torah is perfection of the self and gaining mastery of the evil inclina-
tion in order to move closer to God, then the inclusion of a bodily praxis
is unavoidable. One of the most common prayers of rabbinic sages is to
grant them "fear of sin" and keep their actions pure."88 The overindul-
gence of one's evil inclination is antithetical to the study of Torah.
Rabbinic sources explicitly link talmud torah to proper conduct."9 One tra-
dition gives partial credit to one who attends the study house but does not
underlie M. Avot 2:8 (ed. Albeck, 4:360), which debates whether the ideal sage is one who retains
all of his learning or one who can add to it. Compare M. Avot 4:12 (ed. Albeck, 4:371), which
advocates diligence in talmud, which here might simply mean the study of received traditions.
8 M. Avot 5:15 (ed. Albeck, 4:379).
82 Compare Tosepta (hereafter T) Avodah Zara 1:20 (ed. Zuckermandel, p. 461) that under-
stands Joshua 1:8 ("Let not this Book of the Teaching cease from your lips, but recite it day
and night") literally. Compare Urbach, The Sages (n. 14 above), pp. 606-8.
83Lev. Rab. 19:1 (ed. Margulies, p. 415). The statement is attributed to the Babylonian
amora Rava at B. 'Eruvin 22a.
84 Compare Boyarin, Carnal Israel (n. 8 above), pp. 134-66; Michael L. Satlow, Jewish Mar-
riage in Antiquity (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2001), pp. 30-34.
85 Song Rabba 1:5 (ed. Vilna 8b).
"6 Compare Diamond, chap. 4. Lamentations Rabba 1:31 (ed. Vilna 14b-15a) links
R. Zadok's holiness to both his fasting and his Torah study.
87 Just as I am not claiming that this particular aspect of talmud torah is exclusive of others,
so too I do not claim that all examples of rabbinic asceticism are connected to talmud torah or
disciplining the self. Other motives for ascetic behavior include purity (especially in pre-
paration for mystical ascent), mourning, penance, and substitution for the discontinued
Temple sacrifices. See S. Lowy, "The Motivation of Fasting in Talmudic Literature," Journal
of Jewish Studies 9 (1958): 19-38; Michael D. Swartz, "'Like the Ministering Angels': Ritual
and Purity in Early Jewish Mysticism and Magic," AJS Review 19 (1994): 135-67. Compare
Herbert Musurillo, "The Problem of Ascetical Fasting in the Greek Patristic Writers," Tradi-
tio 12 (1956): 1-64.
88 Compare T Berakot 6:18 (ed. Lieberman, 1:38); Y Berakot 9:2, 13b; M. Avot 2:5 (ed. Al-
beck, 4:358); Y Shabbat 14:3, 14c.
"9 The connection between Torah study and proper conduct is demonstrated most vividly
in the later text, Derekh Erez Zuta, which derives from many earlier sources. Compare Sper-
ber (n. 2 above).
219
uphold the commandments, as to one who upholds the commandments but

does not attend the study house: the man who does both is termed pious. '
Another tradition in Mishnah Avot compares one whose wisdom exceeds his
"deeds" to a tree with much foliage but few roots, destined to fall."' Ideally,
the sage will be well-grounded in deeds. A famous rabbinic dispute about
the precedence of fulfilling the mitzvot and studying Torah clearly prefers a
combination of the two: they all are part of the same praxis.92
Although in theory all Jewish men were obligated to engage in talmud
torah, the rabbis did not expect that all would. In fact, the rabbis under-
stood talmud torah-an intensive study of the Torah, as opposed to mere
superficial knowledge of it-as an activity of the elite."9 One rabbi prays
that he, who labors in Torah, should dwell in Eden, in contrast to the com-
mon folk who were destined to descend into the "pit of destruction.""
Amoraic sources explicitly state that few will be able to master the rabbinic
curriculum, and that paths other than talmud torah, for example, fulfilling
the mitzvot or working for the communal good, were available for the com-
mon Jew." Palestinian rabbis construed their movement and the activity
at its core, talmud torah, as elitist, and assumed that most Jews would not
engage in it, even as they claimed a universal mantle.96
Jewish inscriptions, from Palestine and throughout the pan-
Mediterranean, appear to bear out this assumption. Many of these in-
scriptions are epitaphs and often praise the deceased. Yet among the
many terms of praise found in these inscriptions, references to one's flu-
ency in, or even love of, the "law" are rarely found.97 This absence is even
90M. Avot 5:14 (ed. Albeck, 4:378-79).

9 M. Avot 3:17 (ed. Albeck, 4:368).
9 Sipre Deut. 41 (ed. Finkelstein, pp. 85-86), and the parallel at B. Qiddushin 40b. Compare
Urbach, The Sages (n. 14 above), pp. 608-11.
93 Common Jews may well have known Torah. Philo (Legatione 206, 210) and Josephus
(Contra Apion 1.60, 2.178) both testify, for an earlier time, to Jewish training in the Torah.
Y Y Berakot 4:2, 7d.
9 Compare Lev. Rab. 19:1 (ed. Margulies, p. 415); Y Berakot 5:1, 8d, in which Rav Yirmiyah
credits one who engages in communal needs "as if" he was engaged in talmud torah.
96Compare Catherine Hezser, Jewish Literacy in Roman Palestine (Tiibingen: J. C. B.
Mohr/Paul Siebeck, 2001), pp. 94-95, 353-404. Alon argues that the rabbinic movement be-
gan somewhat democratically and then became increasingly hierarchical (Gedaliah Alon,
The Jews in Their Land in the Talmudic Age [70-640 c.E.], trans. Gershon Levi [Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989], pp. 501-6). It is doubtful, however, if even in its ear-
lier period talmud torah was not an elite activity. Compare Shaye J. D. Cohen, "The Place of
the Rabbi in Jewish Society of the Second Century," in The Galilee in Late Antiquity, ed. Lee I.
Levine (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1992), pp. 165-68.
97 See, e.g., Jean Baptiste Frey, Corpus Inscriptionum ludaicarum (Rome: Pontifico Instituto di
Archeologia Cristiana, 1936), colens legem (CIJ 72); philonomos (CIJ 1 11). Compare Pieter W. van
der Horst, AncientJewish Epitaphs: An Introductory Survey of a Millennium ofJewish Funerary Epig-
raphy (300 B.C.E.-700 C.E.) (Kampen: Kok Pharos, 1991), pp. 65-68: "It cannot be denied that
the number of inscriptions in which these distinctive epithets are used is very small compared
to the overwhelmingly great numbers in which the traditional 'pagan' epithets occur" (p. 68).
220
more striking among those inscriptions found in synagogues, or those

that commemorate "rabbis."98 The absence of these terms from inscrip-
tions does not, of course, prove that individuals did not engage in talmud
torah, but it at least indicates that the majority ofJews in antiquity did not
see this activity as culturally worthy of commemoration. To my knowl-
edge, no non-Jewish author in antiquity comments on the practice of tal-
mud torah. Again, even if many Jews did engage in it, it escaped the
scrutiny of public discourse.
In summary, talmud torah can, iri fact, be seen as the rabbinic form of
askisis par excellence. An activity for the elite, talmud torah was a whole
body practice, disciplining the "good" (i.e., rational) part of the soul to-
gether with the body to defeat the evil inclination in the pursuit of close-
ness to the divine.
HOW INNOVATIVE?
The rabbinic emphasis on talmud torah and the way it understood t

tivity radically broke with previous modes of Jewish spirituality. M
Fishbane has argued that the rabbis mark a "movement from a cu
based on direct divine revelations to one based on their study and
terpretation.""99 This movement, he continues, was an "axial trans
tion" in Jewish religious history.
The rabbinic transformation extended to the way in which it u
stood talmud torah as a form of discipline. Several earlier Jewish wr
contain elements of what would eventually become the rabbinic u
standing of talmud torah, but none put it together in the ultimate rabb
form. The rabbinic self-understanding certainly owes a debt to the
cal idea of the sage. The biblical sage meditates on Torah "day and n
instructs the people, and displays generally pious characteristics.'0
there remains a gap between this idea of the sage and the rabbini
that envisions meditation on the Torah not only as a means for stre
ening one's trust in God but also as a means of self-healing.
*"Compare Shaye J. D. Cohen, "Epigraphical Rabbis," Jewish Quarterly Revie

(1981-82): 1-17; Hezser, Social Structure (n. 77 above), pp. 119-23.
9 Michael Fishbane, The Garments of Torah: Essays in Biblical Hermeneutics (Blooming
diana University Press, 1989), p. 65.
.00 Obviously space does not allow for a full discussion of biblical wisdom and its con
ities (and discontinuities!) with the rabbinic tradition. On meditation on the Torah, see
1:8, Ps. 1:2, 119:97. For evidence that the authors of biblical wisdom literature saw
selves as instructors, see Nili Shupah, Where Can Wisdom Be Found? The Sages' Lang
the Bible and in Ancient Egyptian Literature (G6ttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 199
pp. 31-77. On the morality of the biblical sage, see Prov. 10-15; and Gerhard von Ra
dom in Israel (Nashville: Abingdon, 1972), pp. 74-96. More generally, see James L. Cr
Urgent Advice and Probing Questions: Collected Writings on Old Testament Wisdom (Mac
221
Jewish literature from the Second Temple period similarly offers tanta-
lizing, but ultimately unsatisfying, parallels to the rabbinic model. Ben
Sira had already connected the wisdom tradition to Torah: wisdom is "the
book of the covenant of God Most High, the law laid on us by Moses, a pos-
session for the assemblies of Jacob" (24:23). The sage, according to Ben
Sira, is both occupied with study of Scripture and is worldly, appearing as
a sophisticated political leader (38:24-39:11).1'1 Ben Sira's image of the
sage, however, is not quite that of the rabbis. Ben Sira appears to under-
stand "wisdom" as being practical, directing proper, mundane, behavior
in this world.'02 As John Gammie states, "Ben Sira's ideal sage was God-
fearing; a student of rhetoric, Israelite law, proverbs, and prophecy; and a
self-conscious composer."'03 One wonders to what extent Ben Sira would
have seen wisdom as a cure to the ailment of the human condition.
For Philo, "the unwritten law is the law of nature ... [and] Mosaic law
is the most perfect particular, written copy of the law of nature."'14 Like the
rabbis, Philo believes that the serious pursuit of wisdom requires self-
discipline. He demonstrates this attitude most clearly in his admiration of
the Essenes and Thereputae, both of whom he portrays as ascetic, study-
ing communities."'5 In these descriptions and elsewhere, however, he sug-
gests that the purpose of ascetic practices is to purify the body. To some ex-
tent, in fact, food of the mind can replace physical food: Moses had no
thought of food for forty days.'06
Mercer University Press, 1995), pp. 78-89, 250-64; Joseph Blenkinsopp, Wisdom and Law in
the Old Testament, Oxford Bible Series (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995). On the dis-
similarities between the biblical sage and the one presented in apocalyptic sources from the
Second Temple period, see John J. Collins, "The Sage in the Apocalyptic and Pseudepi-
graphic Literature," in his Seers, Sybils and Sages in Hellenestic-Roman Judaism, suppl. 54 to the
Journal for the Study ofJudaism (Leiden: Brill, 1997), pp. 339-50. Collins briefly notes that the
rabbinic sage draws more upon the biblical models than the ideal sage in the apocalyptic and
pseudepigraphic writings. Henry Fischel, however, has argued for the dissimilarity between
rabbinic and biblical wisdom. See his "The Transformation of Wisdom in the World of
Midrash," in Aspects of Wisdom in Judaism and Early Christianity, ed. Robert L. Wilken (Notre
Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1975), pp. 67-101.
101 Compare John G. Gammie, "The Sage in Sirach," in Gammie and Perdue, eds. (n. 50
above), pp. 364-70.
102 Ben Sira advises bodily moderation, e.g., in order to maintain good health and man-
ners, not because the body is in any way problematic (31:12-21, 38-31). Compare Emil
Schtirer, The History of the Jewish People in the Age ofJesus Christ, ed. G6za Vermes, Fergus Mil-
lar, Mathew Block, and Martin Goodman, 3 vols. (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1973-87),
3.1:199.
'03 Gammie, p. 368.
04' Hindy Najman, "The Law of Nature and the Authority of Mosaic Law," Studia Philon
Annual 11 (1999): 72. Compare Philo, Moses 2.9-14, and 4 Maccabees, which equate
phrases sophron nous with logismos, which in turn includes the idea of rational control o
passions (e.g., 1:35, 2:15-18).
105 Philo, Quod omnis probus 80, 88-91; De vita contemplativa.
106 Philo, Moses 2.68 (trans. Colson, LCL, 6:483).
222
A second, related, line of thought that precedes the rabbinic notion oftal-
mud torah appears in the Dead Sea Scrolls. The emphasis on the text of the
Torah itself, Adiel Schremer has argued, is just the tip of the iceberg, the
most visible example of a movement toward "rabbinism" during the Sec-
ond Temple period.'07 Not only do the Dead Sea Scrolls reflect a growing
interest in the interpretation of Torah as a source for revelation, but they
also prescribe its study: "And in the place in which the Ten assemble there
should not be missing a man to interpret the law (doresh batorah) day and
night, always, one relieving another. And the Many shall be on watch to-
gether for a third of each night of the year in order to read the book, ex-
plain the regulation (velidrosh mishpat), and bless together."'0' According to
Fraade, regular study of both the Torah and the sectarian laws constituted
a core practice of the Qumran community."'0 While it is tempting to de-
scribe this program of regular study as analogous to the rabbinic notion of
talmud torah, there remain significant differences between the two groups'
understandings of the role of talmud torah.l'0 Among the differences, neatly
surveyed by Fraade, is the understanding of the purpose of study:
Just as [the Qumran community's] disciplined life according to the rules laid down
by [the Interpreter of the Law] links them to the originary teacher and observers
of the "first rules" and vouchsafes their expected redemption, so too their collec-
tive study in the context of that life is both a continuation of the study which
marked the community's original going into exile and the medium for continuous
revelation in anticipation of the final teacher. In short, not only does their collec-
tive study provide a justification for their laws, but their common life in accord
with those laws justifies their study as a medium of revelation.111
Because the full members of the Qumran community are, by definition,

the "elect," study did not have the same personal transformative func-
tion for them as it did for the rabbis."' Rather, it is a communal praxis
'07 Adiel Schremer, "'[T]he[y] Did Not Read in the Sealed Book': Qumran Halakhic Revo-
lution and the Emergence of Torah Study in Second Temple Judaism," in Historical Perspec-
tives: From the Hasmonans to Bar Kokhba in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls: Proceedings of the Fourth
International Symposium of the Orion Center for the Study of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Associated Lit-
erature, 27-31 January, 1999, ed. David Goodblatt, Avital Pinnick, and Daniel R. Schwartz
(Leiden: Brill, 2001), pp. 105-26.
108 1QS 6.6-8 (trans. Garcia Martinez, The Dead Sea Scrolls, 1:83).
109 Steven D. Fraade, "Interpretive Authority in the Studying Community at Qumran,"
Journal ofJewish Studies 44 (1993): 46-69.
10 Viviano exaggerates the similarity between the Qumranic and rabbinic enterprises of
Torah study (Benedict Thomas Viviano, Study as Worship: Aboth and the New Testament [Leiden:
Brill, 1978], pp. 146-52).
111 Fraade, "Interpretive Authority," pp. 61-62. See also his comparison of the Qumran
community with the rabbis on pp. 66-69.
112 Compare Steven D. Fraade, "Shifting from Priestly to Non-priestly Legal Authority: A
Comparison of the Damascus Document and the Midrash Sifra," Dead Sea Discoveries 6
(1999), esp. 123-25.
223
that points back, toward the group's formation, and forward, toward
redemption.
These earlier Jewish precedents to the rabbinic notion of talmud torah do
not demonstrate a diachronic development in the history of Judaism as
much as they show a common dependence on the ascetic mentaliti of the
pan-Mediterranean."3 That is, all of these Jewish spiritual formations
spring from similar soil. Scholars have long noted the similarity of aspects
of the rabbinic movement and the way it approaches talmud torah to Hel-
lenistic and Roman academies and philosophical schools. Rabbinic ex-
egetical techniques have strong parallels to those practiced in the classical
world."114 Palestinian rabbinic education drew on classical philosophical
models."' At least later Babylonian rabbis, and perhaps even his contem-
poraries, understood the Jewish patriarch as a scholarch, the head of a
philosophical school."' There is no doubt that the rabbis drew upon the
world around them for the tools and institutional models for their prac-
tice of talmud torah." v
My argument goes beyond the tools and institutional models to the very
practice of talmud torah. Talmud torah was essentially a Greco-Roman form
of spirituality, expressed, of course, in a uniquely Jewish idiom. For many
Greek and Roman philosophers, as well as some church fathers, a disci-
plined life of body and intellect was the "answer" to the "problem" of the
human condition. Philosophy was a bodily praxis; the immoral or licen-
tious sage was as much an oxymoron for these Greek and Roman philoso-
phers as it was for the rabbis.""8
"' Guillaumont argues that the core of Christian monasticism was an emphasis on the
"single heart," which he traces back, in part, to the biblical expression "with all your heart"
and the notion of "simplicity," with its associated ascetic practices, found in Jewish Hellen-
istic texts (A. Guillaumont, "Monachisme et 6thique Judeo-Chr6tienne," in Judio-
Christianisme: Recherches historiques et thdologiques offertes en hommage au Cardinal Jean Daniglou
[Paris: Recherches de Science Religieuse, 1972], pp. 213-18). Ascetic practices in these Jew-
ish texts, in my view, have an entirely different function.
"' Saul Lieberman, Hellenism in Jewish Palestine (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of
America, 1950), pp. 47-82; David Daube, "Alexandrian Methods of Interpretation," in Essays
in Greco-Roman and Related Talmudic Literature, ed. Henry A. Fischel (New York: Ktav, 1977),
pp. 165-82.
"5 Compare Judah Goldin, "A Philosophical Session in a Tannaite Academy," Traditio 21
(1965), 1-21; Hezser, Jewish Literacy (n. 96 above), pp. 99-109.
"6 Shaye J. D. Cohen, "Patriarchs and Scholarchs," Proceedings of the American Academy of
Jewish Research 48 (1981): 57-85.
"7 For a more general statement that Jews were similar to their Greco-Roman neighbors,
see Martin Goodman, 'Jews, Greeks, and Romans," in his Jews in a Graeco-Roman World (Ox-
ford: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 3-14.
"8 Compare B. Berakot 28a, which attributes to R. Gamaliel a statement that "every student
whose inside is not like his outside shall not enter the study house." The parallels to non-Jewish
philosophical literature are discussed in Cohen, "Patriarchs and Scholarchs," pp. 76-79. On
the connection between abstinence and virtue, see Musonius Rufus, "peri askeseos" (Discourse
VI); Valerius Maximus 4.3 ("de abstinentia et continentia"), 4.5 ("de verecundia").
224
The rabbis adapted from their cultural world not only their anthro-
pology but also the solution to the problem that anthropology posed. Tal-
mud torah was functionally similar to that of philosophy, as understood by
many contemporary Greek and Roman philosophers."' Talmud torah,
born of the same mentalit6, was but one ascetic praxis among the many of
late antiquity.12
"119 Bieler's conclusions about Greek and Roman philosophers offers a strong, if not iden-
tical, parallel to the rabbinic enterprise as sketched above: "Sein Lebenswerk ist Dienst eines
Gottes, Zeugnis ffir eine gottheit, sein Wissen unmittelbar von Gott gegeben, seine Lehre Of-
fenbarung" (n. 43 above), 1:141.
120 All of these ascetic praxes fall into the category of "reflective piety" as discussed by
Andr&-Jean Festugiere, Personal Religion among the Greeks (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1954), pp. 19-36. Festugiere, however, seems to exaggerate the importance of "taking
flight from the world" in these praxes.
225

And On The Earth You Shall Sleep, Satlow

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

You might also like

And On The Earth You Shall Sleep, Satlow

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

And On The Earth You Shall Sleep, Satlow

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

"And on the Earth You Shall Sleep": "Talmud Torah" and Rabbinic Asceticism

Author(s): Michael L. Satlow

Michael L. Satlow / Brown University

As described by the rabbis of antiquity, a life of Torah appears to have been

Before proceeding, I should clarify what I am not claiming. While I am

The study of rabbinic asceticism has been shaped by a famous

6 Bringing God's presence to earth: M. Avot 3:6; Palestinian Talamud (hereaf

is missing ... absolutely in the testimony of the Sages on abstinence and

10 Urbach,Jubilee Volume, p. 51.

essential part of what it means to be human." The referents of the other

21 Compare Rubin, pp. 53-55.

challenge is to control the evil inclination, so that the good inclination,

Jewish sources written in Greek from this time offer an anthropology

life of all.""39 Philosophers throughout late antiquity subscribed to this un-

9 Plato, Republic 442A-B (trans. Paul Shorey, LCL 1:406-9).

For the non-Jewish philosophers, the diagnosis of the human c

60 Origen, Peri Archon 3.1.4 (ed. Crouzel and Simonetti, 3:28).

The midrash is based on a wordplay: it reads the biblical word vesamtem

Other sources, both tannaitic and amoraic, use a different metaphor to

As understood by the rabbis, talmud torah required discipline

uphold the commandments, as to one who upholds the commandments but

90M. Avot 5:14 (ed. Albeck, 4:378-79).

more striking among those inscriptions found in synagogues, or those

The rabbinic emphasis on talmud torah and the way it understood t

*"Compare Shaye J. D. Cohen, "Epigraphical Rabbis," Jewish Quarterly Revie

Because the full members of the Qumran community are, by definition,

You might also like