Beware of Turbid Water
If you were wondering how controversial the International Bible Quiz (Hidon ha-Tanakh) could be, this year proved you wrong. An Israeli girl who is apparently a Messianic Jew is in the finals, and there are some who want to prohibit her participation. (See these two posts by ADDeRabbi and don’t miss this video whose link was supplied in one of the comments.) Rabbinic literature describes many instances of Rabbis having confrontations or disputes with heretics, with the interpretation of Biblical verses often the point of contention. (For one example see bAZ 4a) Richard Kalmin has written about the differences in the portrayal of these contacts as found in Palestinian and Babylonian sources. [1] He has shown that Palestinian rabbis has “frequent interactions with Bible-reading non-Jews,” with one rabbi warning against drinking “turbid water” (מים עכורים, see Sifrei Devarim no. 48). Regarding the situation in the Land of Israel, Kalmin writes,
The urgency and persistence with which Palestinian sources forbid contact between Palestinian rabbis on one hand and Minim and Christians on the other suggests strongly that such contact took place and was probably routine. (68)
On the other hand in Babylonia,
Babylonian sources, in contrast, have nothing to say on the subect of the danger of rabbinic contact with Minim and Christians, apparently because such contact was too rare to be considered a problem. (70)
Kalmin addresses another important problem, and it is
…that disputes between rabbis and Minim are virtually non-existent in Palestinian documents such as the Yerushalmi but are relatively common in the Bavli. The Bavli records many disputes between heretics and Palestinian rabbis, but Palestinian compilations record fewer than a handful of disputes. (73)
He offers three possible explanations:
1. “The general tendency of Palestinian compilations to contain relatively little dialogue, even dialogue between rabbis.”
2. Maybe there is a different use of terminology between the Palestinian and Babylonian sources. It could be that the Palestinian sources just don’t use the term Min and therefore we might discover evidence of these dialogues if we looked for different terms.
3. A deliberate suppression of dialogues by Palestinian sources “in an effort to avoid insulting the Bible-reading non-Jews and heretics who were prominent in the Roman world.”
I guess that this controversy is the Jewish version of the call to boycott the upcoming Olympics. This might have been a bit more interesting if one of the contestants wanted to wear clothing like this that might give them an unfair advantage.
[1] Richard Kalmin, The Sage in Jewish Society of Late Antiquity, pp. 68-74. This chapter was originally part of an article “Christians and Heretics in Rabbinic Literature of Late Antiquity” which appeared in the Harvard Theological Review, 87:2, pp. 155-169.
May 2nd, 2008 at 2:39 pm
R’ Yosef Zechariah Stern’s suggests that the word “Min” is related to Manos and Manicheism. Its entirely impossible though, because the term appears much earlier.
What does the Bei Avidan in Sabbath 117a refer to?