Life After Death_ A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion - Alan Segal [366]
Rabba and R. Zera joined together for a Purim feast. They became mellow and Rabba arose and cut R. Zera’s throat. On the next day, he prayed on his behalf and revived him from the dead. Next year he said: “Will your honour come and we will have Purim feast together? He replied: “A miracle does not take place on every occasion.” [In other words, “I respectfully decline your kind invitation. I can’t count on a miracle happening every year.”] (b. Meg. 7b)
Not only does this illustrate the Rabbinic sang froid in discussing resurrection, it illustrates some of the properties of humor that, unfortunately, we will need to analyze, which will spoil the humor. There are multiple ironies in this passage. The first irony is that intended by the teller of the joke itself: that the sadder but wiser Rabbi Zera refuses the invitation of Rabba because he fears for his life, despite Rabba’s best intentions. The second irony is an inadvertent one, the euphemism “mellow” understood at the expense of the translator, whose work is evident. Nothing is so tedious as humor explained; unfortunately, in order to get at the Rabbinic notion of resurrection and life after death we will need to locate the source of subtle ironies, finding textual evidence for the intention of the Rabbis. This is not always easy. In this case, however, we can be sure that the original issue in the text is “drunkenness” not “mellowness.” The Rabbis were not talking about marijuana intoxication. That was added by the translator inadvertently.
The Mishnah
THE EARLIEST identifiable book of Rabbinic Judaism is the Mishnah, a compendium of law largely from the enactments of a group of Rabbis we know as the Tannaim, whose activity ends at the beginning of the third century CE. It is a communal book of law, with multiple authorship, recording the many discussions of the earlier Rabbis, redacted by Judah the Prince around the year 220 CE, when the Tannaitic enterprise ends and a new age, the Amoraic or Talmudic period of commentary, begins. It is based on the Israelite law of the First Temple period 922-587 BCE and second Temple Period (515 BCE-70 CE) and includes many subsequent developments in legal discussion. Although it is a systematic legal code and legal commentary, tailored by the Patriarch Judah the Prince from a variety of earlier Mishnahs, individual traditions in them are notoriously difficult to date.
Rabbi (that is how Rabbi Judah the Prince is known in the Mishnah) kept careful control on what the Mishnah contains. He kept out all angelology, and most Messianism, and most discussion of resurrection and life after death (with one notable exception).8 Since Rabbi Judah the Prince’s Mishnah is the basis of the Talmud, and is a very rationally organized work of law with little attention to such issues as resurrection or life after death, the Talmuds are in turn mostly lacking a systematic theological discussion of the issue. It is easy to see how, in modern times, many Jews wrongly believe that afterlife issues are not properly part of Judaism. Even the magisterial compendium of Ephraim E. Urbach, The Sages,9 contains no subject heading for resurrection or immortality of the soul, though the subject is touched on in the chapters on “Reward and Punishment” and “Redemption,” which deal mostly with Messianism. Such is the Rabbinic ranking of these issues in the minds of modern experts.
Rabbi Judah the Prince’s editing was the last systematic organization of Rabbinic material until the “stam” (the “just” or “only” or “nameless”), the unattributed voice who appears to organize the Gemarahs, more than four centuries later. In the meantime, the material had grown enormous by gloss and commentary so that all sorts of topics appear by association with topics where one would never expect them. The Gemarah to each Mishnah, the records of the commentary offered by the Palestinian and the Babylonian sages, was organized around the text of the Mishnah in a line-for-line commentary.