ŚAṬAN the nemesis: the Talmud’s curriculum on God’s attribute of justice

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Towson University Graduate Theses and Dissertations

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2016-10-28

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dissertations
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Towson University. Jewish Studies Program

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Abstract

The motif of ŚAṬAN appears in thirty-nine passages in the Talmud, clustered into eighteen sugyot. Historically, most of these statements are attributed to various sages who lived over a period of some four centuries. But the Talmud is not a mere historical record, it is a text crafted by a later group of rabbinic scholars. Although they chose to remain anonymous, much is known about their cultural orientation and motives for selecting and arranging these specific statements at the exclusion of all others. Similar to their choices of halachic sugyot, their selection of aggadot appears to reflect a deliberate sifting in order to create a theological curriculum. Based on the redactors’ likely interpretation of the ŚAṬAN source narratives in Tanach, and based on a close reading of the Bavli's thirty-nine ŚAṬAN passages, the rabbis conceived of ŚAṬAN as metaphorical. Applying a synchronic interpretation to the Bavli's eighteen ŚAṬAN sugyot reveals a consistent didactic message about divine justice which may be called a theology of nemesis. This theology conceptualizes the mechanics of divine justice as a didactic process of hindering a person on their present path of hubris in order to correct the path or learn a lesson. The Bavli's ŚAṬAN curriculum reflects an agenda that was likely responding to cultural influences, including theologies which may have impacted Talmudic redaction such as Christianity, Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism, Gnosticism and Greco-Roman paganism. The methodology expands on Jacob Neusner's research on Talmudic halachah, on the work of Moulie Vidas in uncovering the agenda of the Talmud's redactors on the scholarship of Yaakov Elman, Shai Secunda and others on the redactors’ cultural setting, and synthesizes the scholarship of Richard Hidary, Daniel Boyarin and Stephen Fraade to demonstrate how Talmudic dialectics and disputes may be understood as a type of oral performance, projecting the rabbis’ self-understanding as transmitters of oral texts. The thirty-nine ŚAṬAN passages in the Talmud present an exceptional laboratory for studying rabbinic theology. In addition, the Bavli emerged as a peak of a long period of rabbinic creativity that spans the entire period of early Christianity and therefore might provide clues to the ideas and cultures that spawned it. Ultimately, this dissertation will also contribute to the emerging consensus among scholars today that there is something called “the Bavli's perspective” which is the ideology and agenda of the Stammaitic redactors.The moti